Why we live in the middle of nowhere

Isla was begging me, as she so often does, more often than I care to admit, to let her "watch something" the other day. Like Pavlov's dog, the minute she steps over the threshold of this house, she begins to feel the pull of the screen, in our case, the computer monitor that connects her to the world of Netflix, or PBS Kids,or Scooby Doo reruns on YouTube.

I watched TV as a child. I have vivid,visceral, memories of staring, thumb in mouth, shoulder's slumped, glass of milk and pile of Oreo cookies by my side, at the TV screen as Bobby Brady attempted to run away but only made it so far as the back yard.

I'm nostalgic for the days of television now, what with the built in governor it had, given the simple fact that TV programming ran on a schedule.

You watched a show. The show was over. You turned it off. The TV stayed in one room. You went to another. Or outside, beyond the reach, and the pull, of the screen.

There is no "over" on the internet. There is no fixed place where we engage with hand-held gadgets. Today our screens follow us wherever we go, if we want them to. Unless, of course, you live in a place that still has no cell-service.

Anyway, even though I dreamed of getting something done, I bravely told Isla "no," when she asked the inevitable question. When the next question came--"then what can I do?" I was prepared.

"Read, draw, climb a tree, look at birds, go outside, watch the ants, ride your bike, go to your room and be bored, be a kid, look around you, life is full of things to do, or not do," I said.

A well- practiced rant.

"Hey, I've got an idea," she said.

"Let's go to Maria's pond and catch some frogs."

"Okay," I said. "Let's go to Maria's pond.

  And so we went.

And Isla leaned in. Unafraid of the muck and mire. And the frogs seemed to be waiting, for a fearless little girl, just like her.

To tease.

But Isla persevered. Did I spell that right? It looks funny.
And Isla was rewarded for her perseverance.

And she never tired of the sensation of slippery frog in the palm of her hand. The Vermont version of a hand-held gadget.

Over and over again. She let the frog go, she caught the frog. She let it go. She caught it again. I wondered if this frog might possibly be Esther's old friend, Bernadette.
She seemed familiar. And almost as if she was enjoying the game of catch and release.

She'd jump away from the shore, then swim back directly towards Isla. Several times she jumped right out of the water near Isla's feet on the grass.

I had the rare of experience of watching all of this, without once feeling as if I should be somewhere else. Without once saying, "C'mon, Isla. We'd better get back."

I squatted on my haunches, or sat on a rock, at the edge of the pond, and waited.

Until she was done. And we went back home again. 

Leaving the frogs, of course, behind. With the unspoken promise that we'd be back.

Oh, we'd be back. You can count on that.

On a runaway train to join the global motherhood movement

I'm on my way, via Amtrak,  to New York City. The trees are whizzing past and every once in a while I can look out and see the wide, slow moving Hudson River on my right. Each time the train whistle blows I find myself swooning with some strange primal sense of nostalgia mixed with the pure excitement, anticipation, of moving through time and space from one place to another.

Travel.
To travel.
voyager.
reisen.
I like it.

But I like even more that I'm going to the Mom+Social global motherhood summit to take part in a collective pow wow about how to make the state of the world's mothers as safe and healthy and filled with hope for the future of their children as can possibly be.

The thought of people taking the time to put their heads together to figure out how to better spread the word of the importance of mothers around the world inspires and encourages me beyond words.

One day and a lot of walking later:

Now that I'm here, I don't know where to begin to describe what I've seen and heard.

I've seen Christy Turlington, 80s supermodel turned women and children's health advocate. Her youthful beauty was distracting only in that it made me insanely curious how old she was. She's 44, apparently. I was hoping I'd find out she's at least ten years younger than I am though I knew that was impossible.

I saw Robbie Parker, the father of Emilie Parker, one of the six-year olds shot dead in the Newtown school shooting, cry several times onstage as he explained just how much his daughter changed his life and made him a better person.

I heard Carolyn Miles, CEO of Save the Children, speak of the fierce determination of all mothers to ensure our children the best future possible future. I also learned how she came to devote her life to non-profit work. She described the day she locked eyes with a mother in the Phillipines and became profoundly aware that that woman's baby, just like Carolyn's baby at the time, had no less right than did her child to the very best future he could possibly have.

I listened to Fortunata Kasege talk about the sorrow of learning she had HIV and the joy of learning, a few months later, her newborn baby tested negative for the virus. 

I heard Jennifer Lopez and her sister, Lynda Lopez, banter on stage about being pregnant together and the importance of sisterhood, be it blood sisters or simply a tribe of supportive women around you. I experienced another superficial moment, ala Christy Turlington, when I could not take my eyes off sister Lynda's legs, which I described as leaving the stage five minutes after the rest of her body did. They were that long.

I was moved by a woman, a Latina blogger, named Jeannette Kaplun, when she said
"The fear of losing your kids can paralyze you no matter where you live, no matter what kinds of luxuries you can afford."

I learned about a United Nations campaign called Girl Up that inspires American girls to become global leaders and channel their passions to global issues.

We were presented at the beginning of the forum, with the question "What one thing, as part of the global community,  can we do to support the world's mothers?"

Can you answer that question?

April Vacation in pictures

Hide

I hide behind the rain
A transparent wall of wet noise
The grey darkness cloaks
my apathy
my inactivity
my desire to do nothing
but stay inside
for cerebral pursuits

Just read a book
Stare at the wall
Write poetry
Or think
Or remember
Or not

I need the rain for this
A claustrophobic's solution
to solitude without walls

What makes it okay
to stay inside
to wear comfortable clothes
all day long
just because there is water falling from the sky?

The true comfort of my space
my shelter
shines in the rain

Even  my car
becomes an appealing space
to take refuge
behind a windshield
that melts
with each raindrop

Random found journal entry, written in 1999 B.C. (before children)

Tonight, I am a voyeur

It's late.

I've been reading, like a voyeur, the blog of a total stranger, connected to me only through six, or maybe seven, degrees of separation. I found her blog through Facebook. The blogger, a woman far younger than I am, yet filled with words, thoughts, desires, emotions,  imagery and experiences that resonate right through my addled mom brain, is a mom like me. A mom like so many women, yet unlike so many women.

I like her writing style.

I like her written voice.

I was compelled, for the first time in a very long time, to keep reading, and reading, back, back, and further back into the annals of her blog. I was intrigued to see how the chapters of her young life unfolded. I felt compelled to track her progress-- from end to beginning-- from girl with a head full of dreams and passions to mother with a head full of the same things, which all of a sudden weigh  heavier, become fraught with choice and conflict, and I hoped maybe I'd see some things I recognized from my own experiences.

I did and I didn't.

But it is always interesting to see how other people do life, love, and motherhood. How they do the wacky 180 degree turnaround from all me all the time, to "holy shit there is a baby in my body, then in my house, then in my life in the most permanent of ways and I'm not sure how she got here."

But what really drew me was the tragically beautiful way she wrote about a childhood friend who died a freakish and unfair death recently. I was blown away by her words, her patterns of thought weaving in and out of memory and present time. A lovely web of the most intricate and random threads pulled together in a time of sorrow.

Again I don't know the writer and I don't know the man or family she is grieving for.  I know of them, live near them, but don't "know" them. I only know her writing moved me. I only know her love of words, her faith in words, her need to write it all down, make sense of it, own it, then let it go, expressing the un-expressable, felt familiar to me.

Familiar. Like family.

Happy speckled farty Easter eggs

  The first time we've used Paas in years.

 They look far better on film than in real life.

 Have I mentioned my extremely irreverent older sister, Nancy?

 Happy Easter one and all. May your hunting be fruitful. And chocoful....

A good a morning as any for a tango lesson ......................................................

Fidelity

Esther told me last night that she is a true "Sagittarian."

 "I like it here, but I always have that feeling that I want to go other places and see other things," she said.

I told her I know "exactly" how she feels. I'm so often plagued by this feeling. I think I'm still in denial that we are no longer in France and have ended up right back where we started from, on this breezy mound in Vermont. My only consolation about being back here, aside from the fact that it's stunningly beautiful, even in the dead of winter when you feel as if you're trapped in a charcoal drawing, black and white and multiple shades of grey wherever you look, is that I'm close to my parents again. That and it's an idyllic, you could say kick ass, place to raise children.

Is that enough of a reason to decide where you let your roots stretch the deepest? It will have to be, because it's all I've got.

Though I've kept up the appearance of being back, and having Ian with us again is an amazing relief, if you were to look closely you might see certain signs of lack of commitment here and there in between the lines.

Our phone, for instance. I bought it a year and a half ago and got a new account and phone number with Vermont Telephone and I still haven't figured out how to use my answering machine nor have I set up a greeting for said answering machine. We've been relying all this time on the automatic voice mail system. When someone calls and we're not here or, more likely don't get to the phone in time because I haven't adjusted the  ring limit,  a strange woman's voice says " The person you are calling, "Betsy Shaw (in my voice), is not available. Leave a message please." 

How hard could it be to record a greeting that says
"You have reached the home of Betsy, Ian, Essie and Isla? If you doubt we live here, check out the mess of hockey sticks and skis and poles on the porch. Then venture further and try to open the door fully without it getting stuck on the bumpy carpet of footwear for every occasion and every sport and every kind of weather possible, on the mudroom floor. Then, step into our kitchen where you will see evidence of humans who live a bit like squirrels, casting the shells of our nuts here and there, leaving cereal bowls in front of the fire where we ate breakfast, and the overstuffed compost bucket on the counter that all of us have learned to ignore until the moment a potato peel actually reaches out and grabs our sleeve when we are reaching past it for the olive oil."

Perhaps that's too long of a greeting?

I ran into someone I know the other day and she was telling me about her daughter who teaches at an international school in Germany. All at once I started swooning with envy at the thought of having a stable job that allowed me to bring my children with me to Europe.

But you've already done that, Betsy. You're back now. You chose to come home. Oh, right, yes. I'd almost forgotten. Silly me.

And as much as the kids are badgering me for new dog, preferably, by their standards, a puppy, I  am hesitant, nay petrified, to make that kind of commitment. I'm not sure this ship could handle an anchor that heavy. Next thing you know we'll have two cats in the yard......

Do you know the Regina Spektor song, Fidelity?  
 "I never loved nobody fully. Always one foot on the ground. And by protecting my heart truly I got lost in the sounds. I hear in my mind all of these voices I hear in my mind all of these words I hear in my mind all of this music. And it breaks my heart."

Though apparently about love, this song always makes me think of wanderlust. Instead of always having one foot on the ground, I seem to always have my mental bags packed. Just in case I get the urge for going.

But it's good to know at least one of my daughters has her bags packed too . Makes for a quicker getaway.