37!

I am nothing, if not transparent. That's a metaphor. I didn't wake up today invisble or something.

Though that would be a neat super power to get ON YOUR BIRTHDAY!! 

Yes, yes, today is my birthday. As you can see from the title, I have more than a few of those under the proverbial belt now. Each year, the day passes without much internal ado. Today, for some reason, as I got ready, I felt different. Today, I thought about all of the other birthdays and how I felt on those mornings, and I realized something. Today, I am probably more thankful than I have ever been. 

There's hesitation that precedes the pronouncement that I have everything right now that I've ever wanted. One doesn't want to jinx themselves, I guess. If I think about it, though, I don't buy the whole concept of "jinxing" as it applies to me. God has been good to me. Always. It's okay to be thankful. It's okay to acknowledge that in all the years that I have been alive, I look around today and see a great spouse, extraordinary children, a rewarding job, a nice place to live, and a life that unfolds free of any real or dire worries. 

What did I get for my birthday? Perfume, slippers, a bathrobe and lots of other things. But nothing I received filled emptiness, if that makes sense. Because I feel fulfilled today. It hasn't been easy to get to this feeling. If I trace back the moments to right now and try to define a point of origin, I would guess that it started with a celebration. Once upon a time, a few years ago, I decided to do more than just accept myself. I decided to celebrate myself. I thought about who I was and decided that everything should be as it should be. There would be no more struggling or self effacement. There would only be love for myself.

 I tried to explain to someone the other day that in desi culture, it is the person who is having a birthday that gives some kind of token of appreciation to their friends. A party, a dinner, a small treat of some sort. In the spirit of that, I would like to give you a gift today. 

In the comments section of this blog, I'd like you to type four things that you unequivocally celebrate about yourself in the comment section of this post. Tomorrow morning, at this time, I'll randomly pick a commenter and send them a $30 gift card to Amazon. Make sure you fill in your e-mail, so I can contact you.

Winner will be posted on the Native Born Facebook page.

Take My Sibling... Please.

This is not embarrassing AT ALL.My seven year old daughter informed me today that her younger brother embarrasses her. This information has left me conflicted. On the one hand, I am sympathetic. I had a younger brother and he embarrassed me. On the other hand, "Hey, you little Wednesday Addams wannabe, that's my SON you're talking about!"

Y. is a beautiful boy, both inside and out. At the age of three, he uses words like microscope and esophagus. He helps me mop the floor and puts his clothes in the laundry hamper without being asked. He's vibrant and talkative.

And my daughter is embarrassed by him.

This, I think, is one of those territories where one has to sit back and let the kids figure it out. I can't force her not to cringe when her brother starts chattering about how he'll be thirty two on his birthday when he'll actually be three. It terrifies me that one day, I will replace her brother. It's inevitable, I think. No matter how cool I am, I will embarrass her if I step outside of "normal" parenthood. Which I will because as my mother and mother in law have often said on different occasions, "you have strange ideas about parenting. 

It's taken me a long time to like me, and I don't know if I'm prepared to tolerate the girl's dislike for me. Can you force someone to love you? No? What if they're your child? Then?

I remember when Y. was born and how excited N. was about it. There's a beautiful photo of her holding him as she gazed at his little face with love and wonder. One might call the look "motherly." If I had been asked at that moment if N. would every be embarrassed by her brother, I would've scoffed. Grown ups aren't the only ones that change how they feel. Children tend to do it, too, if not more often.

I want to tell her that she, too, was once three years old.

I want to remind her how she used to run circles around her portable, little potty rhythmically chanting, "I need a diaper, I need a diaper, I need a diaper." 

Or about how one time we were lunching at the club at the  golf course near our home and she loudly proclaimed in a packed room where I was the only woman, "This chair hurts my vagina."

Or how about when she threw up on me without any warning once on the way to Saudi and I had to walk around the plane with a blanket full of vomit?

There was also the time she cried and cried and CRIED at preschool and I had no option other than removing her from the class.  I want to tell her how embarrassed I felt when the teacher of the class looked at me in a way that I was absolutely sure was full of blame.

I was embarrassed every single one of those times, but I loved her, you know? The love was more important than my feeling cool. Or even being cool.

I hope she gets that. 

Because, like I said, Wednesday Addams, that's my SON. 

Undefined: Working Outside of the Box with Parental Identities

Faiqa's Notes: Often I blog about identity on here as it relates to race or religion. Today, in this guest post, we'll learn about liminal identities that exist outside the boundaries to which we're accustomed. Thanks for taking the time to read and thank you, Rachel Reynolds, for the openness and compassion with which you share your experience.

***

 Our identity is the way in which we meet the world.  We present ourselves to the public in ways that are obvious and unchangeable (our gender and race) as well as in ways that require slightly more preamble. Sometimes we give outward hints to our identity through our clothing (an executive power suit, mom jeans), our leisure activities (fishing enthusiast, crafty crafter, football fan), our behavior, and our relationships (divorced, married, "just friends").

Sometimes those outward signs of an identity may mask a true reality. How many Lifetime movies are built around the premise of the woman who shows the world she has it "all together" but hides her destructive behavior/addiction/illegal act/mental illness from the outside world until it all comes crashing down?  These movies may be fiction but chances are good that someone in your neighborhood is living that life right now.

In the last two years, I have struggled with my identity.  While I am reasonably sure I know who I am, I am challenged by how I now present myself to the world.  

In January 2010, I faced the death of my only child.  

People who knew me before that date would probably tell you that my identity is fairly clear and relatively unchanged.  I am, among other things, mom to Charlotte Jennie. When I make new acquaintances, though, the line gets kind of blurry.  

A conversational topic seems banal until it strikes a nerve.  It's amazing how often the subject of your children (or lack thereof) will come up in casual conversation.  In college, the go-to personal questions were, "Where are you from?” or "What's your major?"  As adults, our small-talk shifts to "What do you do for a living?" "Are you married" and "Do you have children?"

How do I answer that last question?  In the past, the answer was the same no matter who was making the query.  Now the answer I give is dependent on multiple factors.  How well do I know this person?  How much will I interact with them after this conversation?  How do I think they may react to my answer?  Is this a business situation, a social situation, or just a casual conversation?  How vulnerable am I feeling today?  Answers to those questions usually determine how I respond.

Option 1
Question: "Do you have children?"
Answer: "No."
Pros: It's easy and deflects the conversation immediately away from a difficult subject. 
Cons: It's not really true.  I'm a mom and always will be.  

Option 2
Question: "Do you have children?"
Answer: "Not right now."
Pros: A more honest answer and relatively deflectable.  If someone's not paying attention, they usually don't catch the subtlety of my answer and move on.
Cons: If they are paying attention, follow up questions usually ensue.  

This leads us to...

Option 3
Question: "Do you have children?"
Answer: "I had a daughter and she died two years ago."
Pros: The most honest answer I can give.
Cons: The conversation gets awkward.  

A frequent reaction is, "I'm so sorry."  This is totally appropriate.  Sometimes people will ask follow up questions (“What happened?”).  Usually this is ok because I love talking about my daughter and I don't mind sharing our story.  Sometimes people are clearly unsure of how to respond and I look for ways to change the subject in an effort to deflect further awkwardness.  I have relative degrees of success with this.  More interesting reactions include immediate change of subject (as if I never said anything at all) or reactions like, "That's just terrible.  That's the worst thing I've ever heard."  I'm not sure if someone thinks they are being comforting when they say that, but they're not.  I think I know just how terrible it is.  I don't need reassurance or confirmation.    

Follow up questions are ok and usually lead to conversations around our foundation, treatment of brain tumors or other cancers, or questions about Charlotte herself.  I don't usually feel people have crossed the line until they ask the inevitable and most awkward question possible, "Will you ever have more children?"  

I don't have an easy answer to this question and it's rather painful to discuss so let's just say this is where I look to end the conversation as quickly as possible.  

I wish there was a word for who I am right now.  A widow is a woman whose spouse has died. The word is most immediately derived from the Sanskrit word widnewa, meaning "to be empty" or "to be separated".  An orphan is a child who has lost both parents, derived from the Greek word orbh, meaning "to change allegiance or status".  There is no word for a parent who has lost a child.  I think I need a word.  

When a lexical gap like this one occurs, sometimes society fills the void with new vocabulary.  The English language is composed of many words that have their derivation in Greek, Latin, or Germanic/Slavic languages. Words that have been in our vocabulary for centuries are often synergistic creations formed from the roots of these langauges: arthritis: joint inflammation, kindergarten: child's garden.  Frequent use makes it a "real" and recognized word.  

Likewise, most modern novel vocabulary seems to be made of word "mashups"  Spork, frenemy, ringtone, brunch...these are all words that have filled lexical gaps as the need evolves.    

I have thought of a few options.  Childless doesn't seem right as that implies that parentage was never established to begin with.  We could create words like apedia, literally meaning "child loss" in Latin, or kindertod, which translates as "child death" but these are more descriptions of what happened, not a description of the grieving person's identity.  Clearly, I'm not the first grieving parent to address this challenge but my research hasn't yielded any success in this endeavor.  

At the very least, it is an interesting statement on our society that this lexical gap even exists.  Losing a child is wrong, unnatural, and unfair. I continue to grieve.  I continue to heal.  I continue to allow my identity to evolve.  

Rachel Reynolds is a special educator and freelance writer. She writes for a variety of online publications, including her personal blog,See What You Meme. She is also the co-founder and executive director of CJ's Thumbs Up Foundation (CJSTUF). Rachel lives in Ashland, Virginia with her husband and two incredibly annoying (but completely adorable) cats. In her spare time, she obsesses over Don Draper, dark chocolate, and public radio personalities (not necessarily in that order). Four Seasons for Charlotte is her first book. 

If you would like to win an autographed copy of Rachel's new book, Four Seasons for Charlotte: A Parent’s Year With Pediatric Cancer, you can enter the giveaway on her author page on Facebook. The giveaway will be open until June 1^st.   

Photo Credit

Where I've Been And Where I'm Going

Here’s a funny story.

Eighteen months ago, I looked at my surroundings and realized that we didn’t belong here.

I spoke with Tariq and he agreed.

It’s a strange thing to realize that you’re living what most people consider a dream come true, and to then simultaneously feel that it’s all just wrong.

Let’s backtrack.  Values should be questioned.  Not necessarily in a “down with the establishment” kind of way, but more of a “gee, I wonder if this is really right for me” kind of way.  That’s complicated sounding.  Here’s what I mean.

I didn’t know until eighteen months ago that the worth of a value as it is applied in your life is completely subjective.  I assumed that if it worked for my parents, that it should work for me.  Period.  The End.

After we got married, with help from both of our parents, we bought a huge house in a beautiful, gated community right outside of Orlando.  We lived in this house and we filled it with lots of beautiful things.  We invited people over, we had parties, we had children, we created a life that revolved around this house and this community and we enjoyed this life as much as we could.

Tariq and I have many things in common.  One those things is that we try to make the best and do our best in just about any situation.

That sometimes leads to us never really stopping to ask ourselves about what we really want... This applied to our life.  We never asked ourselves if living in this little golf community thirty miles from any sort of museum, playhouse, real library or homeless person was a life that fit in with our values.  We just assumed that since it was something our parents, and it seems everyone else we’ve ever known, valued, then it was something we valued.

I guess we were afraid that if we directly confronted the disconnect between our values and those of the people we love that there would be hurt and feelings of rejection from the people who were living them and trying to pass them on to us.

That was silly.

If you don’t like chocolate and I lovelovelove chocolate, does this translate to me not loving or respecting you?  To an outright rejection of you?

Of course not.  You don't like chocolate.  I do.  The.end.  Period.

It’s the same with big houses in gated communities filled with lots of beautiful objects most of which are a deep red and gold which, hey, you really like and thanks so much for your generousity, but would not be your first choice in terms of decorating.  Ahem.

It’s true of values, too.

Eighteen months ago, long story made short, we decided to sell all of our furniture and move to a condo in downtown Orlando.  The decision to downsize from 3200 sq. ft to 1700 sq. ft seemed (and still seems) crazy to a lot of people.  You have to understand, though, we are not stay at home people.

We like to be out.  Having a big house keeps you from being out.  Trust me on this one.  We also crave diversity.  Not just among people, but within experience, within sights, within everything.  We have short attention spans, what can I say?

Anyway.

We decided not to sell the house for various reasons, so the option was to rent it out.

We did the thing everyone should do when they’re trying to pawn off their responsibilities er, make their home look attractive to others.  We examined critically from a consumer’s eyes and realized there were some very specific things that needed to be done: blinds, new paint, new flooring, pressure washing... the list went on and on.

So did the financial total.

It was going to be expensive to move out of this house.  If I were more clever, I could pinpoint the exact location of the irony in the situation.

I felt discouraged because, frankly, we didn’t have the money to do all that stuff.

As March neared, we talked a lot about it.

What should we do?

Maybe we should just stay in the house?

It’s a great house.

We should just stay.

But then.

Even more weekends would be spent doing house stuff instead of living stuff, so we realized that no, this was still not for us, and we shouldn’t allow the inconvenience of living our true values stop us from moving forward.

We listed furniture for sale even though we didn’t know if we were going to be moving any time soon.

We called out painters, blinds installers, and flooring people to do estimates even though we didn’t have the money to pay them, yet.

We stopped buying stuff for our house, so we could minimize on the amount of stuff we’d have to move.

We threw out stuff we didn’t absolutely need or that would not fit in a place that was going to be half this size.

We dreamed, we held on, we didn’t know how it was going to happen, but, we knew it was going to happen.

We were going to get a small place in the heart of the city.  We were going to leave the suburbs because every day we spent here was like losing a day we could spend living the life we wanted for ourselves.

Then came July.

A job offer finally confirmed with a full moving package.

We could get all that stuff done to the house.  We could hire a realtor to help us rent the house.

We put the house up on a Thursday, it rented the following Wednesday.

It’s done.

We’ve got movers coming on the 18th.

It’s done.

We’re going to look at condos in downtown.  It’s finally happening.

But not quite like I envisioned.

Because, um, I’ve never even actually been to Memphis, Tennessee.