Searching For A Child-- Searching For An Answer

"Where's my kid?"

How many of us have ever asked that question? 

Perhaps it was while you were shopping at the mall and you were looking for that dress on the mannequin that caught your eye, but was not in your size? 

Or perhaps you were at the market and the tomatoes looked great, but you were searching for just the right one--not too soft or too hard.

And you became distracted. For what probably was a minute...or two.

And you looked up and what you thought was your little girl or boy standing next to you was not. And that question, “Where’s my kid?” came spewing out of your mouth, and for the split second or so that you went searching...as your stomach jerked and your head pounded...and your heart raced....

I had what I liked to call a “wanderer.” My older son was always a little headstrong and had to be watched like a hawk whenever we would go out. I even bought one of those children’s leashes for him, but couldn’t bring myself to use it. So there was a time or two when I looked and looked for him only to find him sitting deep within clothing racks, playing, And once I remember racing out of a store to find him happily sitting on a bench next to what might have been the smelliest and dirtiest homeless man in the city.

While those few times that I ran from parent to parent, child to child, searching, lasted next to nothing (but felt like an eternity), and thankfully ended happily, I can vividly remember the sheer, raw terror I felt as I looked for him. 

So, when I heard the horrific news about the slaughter of the children and their teachers in Newtown, Connecticut last week, my first thoughts were of the parents and how they felt as they drove and ran through the streets and parking lots wondering where their children were. I empathized with them as I watched them pile into the firehouse. How utterly heartbreaking it must have been as they ran past children who had already been reunited with their own parents. How utterly heart wrenching it must have been as they passed more and more families hugging and clinging to each other, still not knowing the fate of their own children. 

And for some--for 20 moms and 20 dads, to be exact--their searches did not end as happily as mine. The reality slammed into them like a freight train, and I grieve for them and for those innocent souls, those little sitting ducks, and their teachers who were lost. We are a country in mourning...once again. And even though it seems like it, we must not make a habit of it. Let it end here. Let this be the last lesson that teaches us we need more control...over guns, over mental health care. 

A school day should end with a child happily running out of the building, trying to maneuver newly drawn pictures on pieces of construction paper in one hand, while clumsily clutching sweaters and backpacks and lunch boxes in the other. It shouldn't end in a hale of bullets. 

 Robert Kennedy once spoke very eloquently of “the mindless menace of violence.” And then he too became a victim of exactly that. We are angry and while the wound is still raw, we must not let that anger dissipate, but put it to good use. Speak out--to your legislators, to your public policymakers.

We can no longer take the happy days for granted. We must stop the mindless menace of violence.

Let it end here. Let it end now. 

If you are on Twitter, please follow the hashtag #stopitnow. And please add your voice to the collective.

By Sharon Greenthal
“The Sandy Hook Massacre and Gun Control: What You Can Do to Help”

By Darryle Pollack
“Newtown, Old News”

By Lisa Belkin in the Huffington Post:
“Gun Control is a Parenting Issue”

“After Newtown, There is No Place for Parents to Hide”

“Parents of Violent Children Respond to Liza Long’s Essay”

By Lois Alter Mark
“Guns Do Kill People”

By Randi
“Monday Morning After Connecticut”

By Lisa Weldon
“Gun Control Would Not Have Prevented the Senseless Loss at Sandy Hook Elementary”

By After the Kids Leave
“Thoughts on Yet Another Senseless Tragedy”

“Of Guns and Sleeping Elephants”

By Connie MacLeod
“Ten Small Things I Can Do”

By The Fur Files
“Hope for Humanity Rests with the Individual”

By Daily Plate of Crazy
“On Love, On Silence, On Speaking Our Minds”

By Yvonne Condes
“Parents, It’s Up to Us to Stop Gun Violence”

By SoCal Mom
“After Newtown, Holding Them Close”

By Mindy Klapper Trotta
“Searching for a Child, Searching for an Answer”

By Ronna Benjamin
“Countdown to the End of the World”

By Kathy Thompson Combs
“A Call for Action”

By Jo Heroux
“AND NOW WHAT”

By Janie Emaus
“What They Should Have”

By Florinda Lantos Pendley Vasquez
“#stopitnow: Bullet Points—or, Me and a Gun, Revisited

By Ambling and Rambling
“Solve for X”

By Lori Lavender Luz
“Do Something”

By Donna Highfill
“Why I Believe We Are Bigger Than Our Weapons”

By Melissa Lawler
“A Broken Heart”

By Marci Rich
Wordlessness, Action and The Sandy Hook Tipping Point

Finally, please contact your congressman. Here’s a link with information on how to do so.

A New York Tale: How I Met My Husband

We met cute....

“Could you hand that can of Coke to Bob Trotta?” 

“Who?” 

“That guy over there.” 

And so I did--And through the chain link fence of a concrete ballfield on 34th and 1st, I caught the first glimpse of my future husband.

We worked for the same publishing firm--but I was in editorial and he was in accounting, so our paths had never crossed before that day. And the only reason we did manage to meet was because a friend of mine talked me into joining the company softball team to help get my mind off of the boyfriend who had just broken up with me.

“It will be fun,” she said.

“But I don’t know how to play softball,” I countered.

“No matter--you’ll learn. And you’ll make some new friends.”

And so it went. 

We would meet after work and all take the subway up to Central Park--once a week to practice, and once a week to play against other publishing companies. (Did anyone notice that I would position myself right behind him in the outfield, as he stood in the infield so that I could get a good view of his...”back?”) And after the games we would all usually head to a bar. While everyone was chatting and drinking, I was swooning. (Didn’t anyone else notice the slight crinkle around his eyes when he smiled?)  And then it was just the two of us leaving together. A classic New York City tale. Yuppies working, playing softball (I never really did perfect my softball skills), drinking...and falling in love.

After a while we would meet for lunch and sit on benches that lined the FDR Drive. We were very different--our backgrounds, our experiences, our religions. And so we were cautious. I was cautious. I worried that the differences would outweigh the similarities and eventually tear us apart.  But there was something there --a spark, a genuineness that I had not seen in so many of the others I had dated. And the more time we spent together, the less “different” those differences seemed.

 When I decided to enter what was then called “The Manny Hanny 5K Race in the Park,” I was a little apprehensive. I had never run a real race before, but knowing my partner would be there cheering me on gave me the confidence to do it. A week before the race we found out that I was going to have to go it alone because a business trip had come up.

And so there I was running along when I heard someone calling calling my name from the sidelines. And when I looked up there he was running through the park in a suit of armor, on a white steed...uh, I mean in a pinstripe suit, carrying a briefcase and trench coat. He had grabbed a cab at the airport and literally ran through the park and over to the race. And in that moment, as my pace quickened, and as cliche as it sounds, I knew...he was the one.

And the love’s still growin’

             --Buzzy Linhart


This is part of Blog Hop that my friends at GenFab are joining together on. If you'd like to read how the rest of them met their husbands/partners, click on this link:http://www.emptyhousefullmind.com/how-and-why-i-met-my-husband/

Fear Of Floating

 It has been my experience that metropolitan New Yorkers are not traditionally water people. They don’t readily take to the sea and talk about things like jibs and mainsails like New Englanders do--they don’t hang ten on surfboards like Californians. They avoid the water: they travel through tunnels that have been burrowed miles beneath it, and navigate across bridges that have been built miles above it. 

We in my family were true landlubbers. I remember hearing stories of how my dad almost died on the boat coming to the U.S., and had he actually died, I’m not sure what really would have done him in--the seasickness or the falling into the water as he was hanging over the edge because of the seasickness. 

When I was much younger, the extent of my water activities was taking a bath. We were not beach people either, no surprise there--my mom hated the sand. I found no joy in splashing around in the murky waters of Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn, and the thought of getting pulled under by riptides caused me undue paranoia whenever I got past the beachfront.  While the others were attempting to jump the waves and squealing with delight as a rush of seawater would come and send them tumbling, I adhered to the dilettante’s method of beach going, and would merely dunk my toes and search for shells. 

 Most of the memories I have of swimming pools come from my summers spent up in the Catskill Mountains. The pool’s side was a bigger draw, since that’s where we did our sunbathing. Our suntan lotion of choice was a very unscientific and now we know, dangerous, mixture of baby oil and iodine, and we slathered it all over our bodies. The iodine gave the concoction a rusty-red hue, and in turn our skin took on that color, as did our bathing suits and anything else it came into contact with. More time was spent outside the pool than in it. My friends would have diving contests and swimming races, but I would feign sleep, or be reading a magazine, and then merely go in for a dip. The water held no attraction for me, and I didn’t want to get my hair wet (the bane of a wavy-haired girl’s existence).

Moving to southern California, land of year-round water sports, and experiencing life from an entirely different perspective (and coastline), may have emboldened me slightly when it came to my fear (and dislike) of the water.  

When my boys were old enough to go away to summer camp, I wanted them to experience what I felt was a true East-Coast-on-the-West-Coast camp experience, and being near a lake was a large part of it. Visiting day was always a bittersweet time for me. The first glimpses of my boys--dressed in mismatched clothes, their skin turned golden by the sun, looking so much more grown up than when they left weeks before--were heavenly. There were hugs and kisses and introductions to new friends, and a celebratory lunch of burgers and fries and thick, cold shakes at Miller’s, the local eatery. 

When our hearts and bellies were full, we would head down to the lake for our ritual visiting day activities. And what was up till then a wonderful yearly event, would become for me something akin to torture. As I mentioned, I believed no summer camp was a true summer camp without lake access. What I actually believed was this access should be for everyone but me. Gone were the days when I could sit back and watch everyone else head to the waterfront. My sons would have nothing of it, and rather than disappoint them, I joined them--with great trepidation. It wasn’t so much the being in the water that frightened me, it was being in a large body of water, with nothing to hold on to and nowhere to plant my feet. 

It took every last jot of courage I could muster to get myself on the speedboat. I would very carefully choose who I wanted to go with—we were always part of a large group—and usually it was someone who I thought would be able to save me if I fell in and proceeded to drown. Very often, that person was our friend Seth. When Seth would take the helm, I knew I was in good hands.  After all, he’s a gynecologist...he delivered my son--has had many years dealing with breech births, c-sections, and episiotomies, of course the man could handle a water emergency! He signed an oath, which is more than I could say for the other non-MDs in the group. My friend Carrie received the well-sought after second-place on my list.  She, although not a medical practitioner, did grow up around boats and merely emanated a strong nautical vibe.

Are you wondering why no one on the list was a blood relative? I don’t think I really need to answer that, other than tell you that I wouldn’t trust my family to save me from drowning even if they had a life boat. My husband and I did such a good job of making sure our boys were fearless in the water that they were, in my opinion, too fearless--and too reckless.

It’s interesting that years later, the very thing that scared the heck out of me for much of my life, became a great source of comfort. After a full day of visiting my mom who was lying very ill in a hospital bed in Santa Monica, I would take the coast route to get home.  As my car would leave the city streets and edge closer to the Pacific Coast Highway, I could feel the burdens of the day beginning to lift. The medicinal smells of the hospital ward and the vision of mom curled up in her white and blue hospital gown and fuzzy blue slipper-socks would be blown out to sea as the salty air filtered through the car windows. What was left of the sunlight danced on the water like little prisms. I am so far away from that ocean now, but I realize how much of my sanity back then was owed to those drives alongside it. 

 My dog Dashiell and I walk along the Charles River here in Cambridge every morning.The weather has turned and the winterized pleasure boats we pass look as though they’ve been vacuum-sealed in white plastic. The giant white “glaciers” creak as they bob up and down in the frigid water. I’ve read that water is a great healer, and even the ancient Egyptians and Romans recognized that. I now believe for me, it is more of a mental than physical healer. And I finally have realized that I am so happy being near the water--just not in it.  

Fish Stew

The winds they are a-blowin’ and we in New England were just hit with our first batch of (thankfully little) snow of the season. Yesterday was downright raw, and a day such as that just begs for hot soup.

The silky, smooth purees of potato or butternut squash are perfect for the Thanksgiving table, and the hearty Italian meatball zuppa are great for when you’ve got lots of prep and cooking time, but when it’s late afternoon on a blustery day, and you decide you’ve got to have soup soon, those are not the perfect choices. 

Soup is one of the easiest things to make if you’ve got the right ingredients on hand. If you’ve got a bunch of bags of frozen veggies in the freezer and some boxes of good chicken broth in the pantry, a pot of hot soup can be yours in a snap. Throw in chopped tomatoes, and finish it off with some cooked pasta or rice and a sprinkling of dried herbs, and you’re good to go.

Chowders are very popular here in New England, and they do have their place: they taste of the sea and are perfect for when you’re sitting at a wooden picnic table behind a tiny clam shack smack on the coast of Maine in July. I love the little round crackers you can float on top. But I’m a New York girl at heart and the tomato-based red chowders are more to my liking. I’ve been throwing together a simple fish stew lately that is a cross between a Manhattan Clam Chowder (without the clams) and Bouillabaisse, a Provencal fish stew. The soup can be made as simply or as complex as you prefer, depending upon the types of seafood you use--I’ve just been using haddock and shrimp, but adding mussels and/or clams can only burnish its flavor. The broth is light, making this dish reasonably low in calories, but the fish and vegetables make for a very filling entree. Add some toasted baguette and a salad and you’ve got a meal that just may soften the sting of the foofaraw going on outside your window.

Fish Stew (little round crackers are optional)

(adapted from Ina Garten)

• 2 Tbsp. olive oil

• 1 cup chopped yellow onions (1 medium)

• 1 rib celery, chopped

• 1 cup chopped fennel (1/2 large bulb)

• 1 tsp. kosher salt

• 1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

• 1 cup good white wine
• 
  
• 1 (14-ounce) can plum tomatoes, with juice, chopped

• 1 quart fish stock, or chicken stock

• 2 cloves garlic, chopped 

• 1 tsp. turmeric

• 1 pound large, frozen shrimp, thawed
• 
  
• 1 pound haddock, cut into thick hunks

• 12 mussels, cleaned (opt.)

• 1 teaspoon grated orange zest

• Toasted baguette slices, buttered and rubbed with garlic

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or stockpot, add the onions, celery, and fennel, and cook until the onions begin to brown. Add the wine and scrape up the brown bits with a wooden spoon. Add the tomatoes with their juices, stock, garlic, and turmeric to the pot, bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes. Add the fish, and mussels (if using), bring to a boil, then lower the heat, cover, and cook for 5 minutes. Add the thawed shrimp. Turn off the heat and allow the pot to sit covered for another 5 minutes. The fish should be cooked and the mussels opened. Discard any mussels that don't open. Stir in the orange zest, and salt, to taste. Serve ladled over 1 or 2 slices of toasted baguette.

Dear 20-Year-Old-Self

This post is part of something my blogging buddies in a group called Generation Fabulous refer to as a “blogroll.” I’m complying with their request because I love them all, but please don’t ask me what I’m doing because I have no idea. (I think we’re all linking to each other’s posts...yeah, that’s the ticket!)

My birthday is in late September, so the summer before I turned 20, I was still technically 19, but I don’t believe that I was much different at 19 than I was at 20, so when I talk to my 19-year-old self, I’m talking to my 20-year-old self too. Got it?

That summer I was part of a large group of teens (remember, I was still a “teen”) who traveled to Israel to work on a kibbutz and do some touring around the country. I had a “boyfriend” who shouldn’t have been my boyfriend because he was also someone else’s boyfriend, and I was fed up with him and everything else that was going on in my young, but very complicated life. And being the very dramatic young woman I was back then, I approached my parents and screamed that I just wanted to “get away!” When I proposed the idea of heading thousands of miles away with a youth group, my mom and dad balked at first, but I had the smarts to find a Jewish group (because every Jewish youth group is upstanding and righteous, and abstains from alcohol, drugs and sex--uh-huh). When the group I chose was “properly” vetted, they agreed and off I went.

I won’t go into detail about the summer, but it was quite eventful, from a 19-year-old ‘s point of view. It was a glorious eight-week vacation that consisted of working in the kibbutz fields and kitchens, touring on buses, sunbathing around the pool (remember, this was a Jewish youth group), and dancing in the bomb shelter-cum-kibbutz disco where the sweaty young soldiers and locals would try their best to grind the “sophisticated” young American, Canadian, and French girls. You might say the summer was a lesson in interpersonal relationships, so to speak.

Dear almost-20-year-old-self, 

There is a line from a book/movie that comes out many years from now, but it applies to you: “You is kind, you is smart, you is important.” I know you know that sometimes, but you forget those great attributes when it matters and that will drive you into a rut. Your lack of self-confidence will hold you back from many wonderful opportunities. I think the girl you are at 20 could probably teach the girl,and then woman, you become a thing or two about bravery and boldness. You went on this trip knowing no one, and yet the idea of spending eight weeks with strangers in a strange land seemed exciting to you. 

But that momentum doesn’t last, and you wind up having no direction once you get home. You fall back into the same patterns that you had been so anxious to get away from. I wish you would have asked more questions and sought out more mentors--people who would have given you direction. Find a career you will get great satisfaction from, and if you don't, then look again, and perhaps something in the "cooking field" (hint, hint) might be something you should consider.

You knew that you were capable of doing anything, but yet finding a boyfriend who would define your worth seemed more important too often (and boy, you did find some doozies). I wish you could have asserted yourself in so many of those relationships. But don’t worry, eventually you do find “the one.” It just takes you a while, and you come very close to not recognizing the signs.

And looking back through an over 30-year-lens I see you have difficulty recognizing signs...a lot. I know you were schooled on obsessing about what you didn’t have, as opposed to what you had, and I wish it wouldn’t have taken you so long to see the other side of that coin. But, know that it does flip...eventually.

I’m not telling you to be satisfied. I’m telling you to accept the good and change the not-so-good. Don’t settle, and (I know I’m sounding like your mom here) don’t be lazy. 

And oh, the places you’ll go. Embrace them and think of them as adventures, not trips to Hell. Because your attitude will affect your children--yes, children. They will be amazing, and when you are unhappy, they will be unhappy. 

And there’s one more thing: cut your parents some slack. Yes, they are the cause of many, many stressful days and nights in your future, but if you learn how to handle them and try to understand them a little better, you won’t suffer from agita all the time. They will eventually be gone, and you’ll make your peace with them, but sooner would be better than later for your physical and mental health.

Look to your future with wide-eyed, stomach-tumbling anticipation, not with dread. It will be a wild ride--enjoy it.

And one more thing...lose the Dorothy Hamill haircut. It’s not becoming, and it will be out of style very soon. And watch those steps at the Park Street T station...they’re a killer.

Scary Story

It was a dark and stormy night....

Perfect opening for a Halloween tale, but this was no tale--this horror story was very real. And unfortunately many of the characters are my friends and members of my family. I had originally planned on posting another article for today, but the events of the past week have left me feeling so unsettled, so not right with the world.

When the Wicked Witch, better known as Hurricane Sandy, bore down on the East Coast, she left a trail of destruction in her path that was insurmountable. Places my family and I had vacationed--Atlantic City, the Jersey Shore--decimated. My beloved home town of New York City--powerless, windblown, and flooded beyond belief. Towns in the outer boroughs, like Breezy Point in Queens, left broken and ablaze.

What’s to become of those places? Will they ever recover? Time will tell, but it will take lots and lots of time..and money, and blood, sweat, and no doubt, tears.

In years past, when many other disasters struck the East Coast, other hurricanes, 9/11, severe snowstorms, my husband, boys, and I were living in California. We were far away from our families and the distance, while not diminishing the intensity of any of the tragedies, did make it difficult for us to physically pitch in and help. We were here in spirit to lend our support across the miles. But at times, that support seemed hollow to us--we wanted to be here, but that was not possible. 

And now we are here, and even though the distance between Boston and New Jersey is a lot less than California and New Jersey, it still feels as though we are too far away to help. Six feet of water poured into my brother-in-law’s house, destroying two floors, and pretty much the rest of the house as well. My niece’s weekend home was also flooded, with the water reaching as high as the bottoms of her little girls clothes that were hanging in the closet. Boats were untethered and lost, the rest of the family lost power, and had roofing problems. Major damage to property, psyches, and spirits.

As strong and wise as we all think we are, at times like this, it becomes painfully obvious who rules the roost in this world--Mother Nature--and every once in a while when she feels we are perhaps getting too cocky, she unleashes her strength to underscore her power. Who are we to question? We can only pick up the pieces, as many as we can recover, and go on. A little bit whipped...a lot whipped, a little bit put back in our place. Things like elections and sniping, and negativity seem very trivial at times like this. 

So perhaps this weekend we’ll take the dog, and pack up the car with food and water, and tools and strong shoulders, and drive down there to help with whatever we can. We can do that now--we’re here. And next month, the Thanksgiving celebration we’d been planning on having will still go on (location still to be determined). We’ll all be together, because this time we’re here.

Oh, and the subject of the piece that I was originally going to post today: my fear of the water...guess I’ll save that for another time.