Resolving to be Awesome

It's time once again to revel in my neuroses.

As long time readers know, I don't do New Year's resolutions. I set a series of achievable goals, and I work towards them. Or, I don't. But either way, I stop at the end of every day and rather than cross it off my calendar, I check all the boxes of things I wanted to do and accomplished from my list.

I start every year by cutting out about 370 tiny square lists, and yes, every night I mark whether or not I did the things I wanted to do. And then I tally them up, and see whether or not I succeeded in meeting my goals.

This year was a bit of a surprise. Some things, I thought I rocked. Some? I thought I tanked way worse than I thought had. So here's how it actually broke down.

It's on sale for $.99 until Monday!!!

Goal: Write daily
Target: 365
I didn't do so great. In fact, I did one worse than last year- I only wrote 292 days out of 365. I'm cutting myself a bit of slack on this- I did a lot of traveling in 2014, so that would be a problem for my writing routine. And while I might not have written every day... I did publish quite a bit. I own three lovely anthologies with work in them. I got an agent to represent my memoir! But the thing is, I know I can always at least scribble out a haiku about having no time to write... so I have no excuse. This year- 365 or bust.


Goal: Eat at least two meals
Target: 365
I'm going to call this one an unequivocal win. I managed to eat at least two meals during 358 days of 2014! In fact, it became so much my routine... I'm actually eating right now. That's right, I've finally gotten the hang of freezing leftovers and then moving them to the fridge the day before I know I'll have a hard time figuring out what to feed myself. Right now? Borscht. And I love borscht, even if the beets didn't particularly care for being frozen. It's become so much habit, it's completely come off my 2015 goals. I have actually succeeded in modifying my own behavior! Go me!


Goal: Maintained minimum hygiene
Target: 365

You'd think this would be easy. All I have to do is brush my teeth OR wash my face OR take a damn shower. But then, you probably never had a house full of toddlers and preschoolers if you think this is always easy. I'm happy to say I improved on last year's abysmal number... but sadly, only by three. I only managed to brush my teeth at a bare minimum 284 times last year. And actually, last year was an improvement over the year before. So I'm going to give myself a little break, and actually lower the number for 2015. I know, gross, right? But let's be honest. There are sick days, there are camping/travel days, there are times when I already know I won't have ACCESS to running water or a toothbrush or anything... so I'm knocking a whopping fifteen days off this goal. My goal for 2015: maintain my hygiene at least 350 days out of the year. Just splash some goddamn water on my face, almost every day of the year. At 284 times in 2014, I run no risk of overstepping this goal. But baby steps, right?

Picking apples!

Goal: Went outside
Target: 312

Hahahahahahah no.

Even though I intentionally gave myself one day a week to not even step onto the balcony, I did even worse on this than bathing- which is probably good. There was a lot of correlation between days I didn't brush my teeth and days I didn't leave the house- so you're welcome, world. I'm also cutting myself some slack. There were days last year that the school canceled for, I quote, "Life threateningly cold temperatures." No way in Frozen Over Hell am I making myself leave the house under those conditions. So I'm also dropping my standards here. I left the house 273 days last year. That's kind of depressingly low, but five days better than 2013, so... win? This year, I'm lowering the standard again. I'm going to give myself one day a week to be a shut in, and one day a month to just be antisocial. So, an even 300 for next year.

Goal: Sang
Target: 365
This is kind of depressing, but I did SO BADLY.
It actually kind of breaks my heart to say this, but in the month of October, I only sang during three days. Three days in an entire month that I didn't sing a single song.

I'm in shock. I love to sing. This goal has been a huge wake up call for me. I am vowing, not only to sing, but to resume what used to be my routine of doing vocal warmups in the shower. So when I'm showering (more frequently this year!) I'll be singing. Even warmup ditties. "See the swimmers swimming in the deep blue see," and whatnot.

That said, I also get that I do get sick. And when I get sick, I lose my voice. Pretty much every time. So I'm giving myself a little leeway here, too. One day off a week from singing, just in case the voice box needs a rest. So new goal- 312. Which is almost twice what I actually accomplished- my abysmal 176.

...I'm so ashamed.


Goal: Had alone time
Target: 260
I assumed it wouldn't be possible on weekends at the start of the year. but you know what?

296 bitches!!!!!!!

This one became so important to me I actually managed the behavior modification to make it part of my daily routine, too. So it comes off the list! I have officially learned to give myself "me time!" GO ME!

Thanks to all who sponsored me in the RAINN 5K!

Goal: Exercised
Target: 156
I didn't do too badly, honestly. I hit 137, up from last year's 123. That said, I don't feel like I got a solid two weeks of exercising in at ANY point last year, and I know the bulk of my most vigorous cardio came from dancing my ass off at every wedding people were dumb enough to invite me to. So while I don't feel exactly BAD about it, the goal stays. 156. If I improve as much this year as I did last, that should be an achievable goal.


Goal: Observe the Sabbath with the kids
Target: 35
Last year, I decided my goal of lighting Shabbat candles with the girls every Friday night was unrealistic, so I lowered the goal to 35. I figured, that more than accounted for date nights where I wasn't home, for days where we were traveling and in hotels or somebody else's home, and I should be able to nail it. I even felt like we did a pretty good job this year- all the kids know all the prayers, and they get totally thrilled whenever I remind them it's Shabbat.

I bombed. Oh, how I bombed. 22. A whole seven weeks worse than last year. This year I will do better. This year I will do better. The goal stands.

Goal: Read a book for pleasure
Target: 12
I was so embarrassed last year- I only managed to read nine- nine- books for pleasure in the year 2013. So I was determined to beat my previous goal of a book a month.

Finishing up "The Glass Castle" with a sleeping toddler

You ready for this?

I read 34 books in 2014. Take that, slacker brain!!!! I've decided that since, first of all, I loved reading as a part of my routing SO much, and second of all I often lost count of how many books I'd finished over a weekend (such nice weekends!), I'm going to go ahead and up my goal. This year? 36. Three books a month. Yes, graphic novels still count. (So get crackin' Kirkman!). But some extra fun? Now that the girls and I are reading chapter books together, I'm going to get to revisit a bunch of childhood favorites, and they DEFINITELY count. Anne of Green Gables, Pippi Longstocking, Little House in the Big Woods... these are all on the next few months' reading list. And that doesn't even count the dozen or so books I've got lined up on my kindle for after they're asleep. Should be a good year for books. :)


Goal: Finished a project
Target: 12
And how many projects did I finish this year?
Forty fucking one.
Take that, slacker hands!!!! In 2013, I felt amazing for finishing a whopping 13 projects. This year though, I finally got over some creative blocks, and I had a BLAST making things. Art, cakes, cards... and yes, I definitely counted the lavender honey roast duck I made for Thanksgiving as a project. I'm a vegetarian and let me tell you, that thing was pretty.

So I'm not going to push myself to do more next year- I'm just going to push myself to keep up. The goal for 2015- 36. Three projects a month. And yes, home improvement projects count. So when I repaint the trim in the living room, that is DEFINITELY a check mark for the day!



And that's how I did in 2014. I'm adding a new one, since I can't stand living in the kind of chaos my house has devolved into.

Goal: House cleaner when I go to bed than when I wake up
Target: 156
Three days a week. I think I can handle that. I hope I can handle that.




...but you know what? Something else has been seriously lacking in my goals. These have all been small, reasonable things. Something I can do and expect myself to do. But I haven't been giving myself enough credit. I have gotten better and better of expecting more of myself, not the bare minimum.

On facebook, I phrased it- "I resolve to be awesome!" But I don't do resolutions. I do achievable goals. So now here I am, adding another goal.

Opening up LTYM Chicago

Goal: Accomplish Something Amazing
Target: 4
One a season. Because you know what? I accomplished some really amazing things in 2014, and now I can't help but expect myself to meet that new standard.

I became a professional speaker- on behalf of RAINN and about sex positive parenting. I was a BlogHer VOTY. I stood on stage for Listen To Your Mother. I got an agent for my memoir. I was published in three anthologies. Those are serious accomplishments. And I deserve to expect them from myself.

So today, I'm already checking one off my list for 2015. Because this? This is my 700th blog post on Becoming SuperMommy.

Seven hundred posts.

That is no mean feat. That is hours and hours and hours and hours, months, years, of pouring my heart and soul into the internets and actually learning from it. Gaining the love and support and friendship of amazing people all over the world. Becoming a better person. Becoming a better writer. Becoming a better friend.

...Becoming SuperMommy.

I'm still not there yet. I am by no means SuperMommy, really. But I'm giving myself a little credit. I'm giving myself the benefit of the doubt. I am patting myself on the back and saying, "You know what? You kind of rock."

So all of you should pat yourself on the backs, too, because you're amazing. Without you, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have a stack of anthologies with my name in them, I wouldn't have a finished memoir and an agent representing it, I wouldn't have a list of appearances and interviews... all of that was your doing, and I am unfathomably grateful.


Here's to 2015, lovely readers! Here's to you!

I love you all.

The Twilight of Doubt

We were most of the way between lunch in Eau Claire with M's cousins and dinner in Milwaukee with a deploying friend. In the hour before, the sunset stretched from horizon to horizon. Bright purples and reds and orange puffs of clouds, hovering over fields glowing gold beneath the sky. Now the sun was beyond the treeline to the west, and a deep rainbow still clung to the air where it submerged, casting a warmth to the wintry purple of the sky ahead.

RH couldn't see the pages of her Pocoyo book, and she called to me from the rear of the car.

"Mommy, can you make the sunshine come back?"

Oh, God, how I wished I could.

I wished I could make the sun stop and go backwards, and spin the earth the wrong way round, until time reversed itself and I could freeze it exactly where I needed it right then.

I would spin the earth backwards 2735 full rotations, and freeze it on a sunny day in July when the heat danced on the outside our basement apartment, and M and I lay beneath the mid day glow of summer- wrapped in each others love and the endless flavors of possibility.

I would never give up the now; the dark, cramped, cold hours on a freeway between family and friends, after the chaos of the holidays has mostly passed, with the same awful rendition of The Alphabet Song playing on a loop from our back seat for eight hours and then some, winding out the gloomy December day.

I would never give up the darker times that always seem to follow the bright.

I would hold onto those hours after the Christmas presents were opened and the house was asleep, where I lay in bed and cried silent tears because it had been so good. It had been so joyous, and full, and there had been so much laughter and so much love, and if this was his last Christmas there was nothing anyone could have done to make it better.

There was nothing anyone could do to change it that would make it less painful in future years, if this was his last Christmas, so I cried because I wasn't ready for the best to be here. I bit my knuckles while my tears flooded my ears and I waited for Xanax to calm me to sleep, because these are my dark times. The moments the not knowing, the endless not knowing, is so much I can't bear it.

If I could bring back the sunshine, if I could make the sun come out from behind the clouds...

On the heels of every happy moment doubts follow me.

When I collected his photograph from the studio, framed and matted with its velvet backing, I cried. The nice girls in the nice shop smiled kindly, used to weeping mothers and wives who come for their happy memories.

I cried for the child in the picture, the toddler with her lips pursed, ready to kiss her daddy's cheek, because we don't know. For another few hours yet, I won't know. I'll sit in the friendly lobby of the MRI suite and not know until the news is ready. And this month I'm worse at waiting. This month I'm frazzled from lack of sleep and a house knee deep in empty cardboard boxes from Channukah and Christmas presents that are somehow already broken or lost and replaced again. I have an image in my mind of a toddler grown into a girl whose best memory of her father is a framed photograph of how much they loved each other when she was small.

She asked me to bring back the sunshine, but I have no power over light. I have no control over tides and clouds and microscopic infiltrations of a tumor we beat years ago, like a vampire chased away but never killed. Whose ashes we never sprinkled into running water to ensure they would never return.

It's a specter of destruction, our unknown, and some nights I laugh louder and drink faster and dance harder and hug tighter and read all the stories that mock the darkness and do the funny voices for the children. Sometimes I find myself teaching them to laugh at shadows, to find familiar friends in their darkness, because I can't bring back the sunshine.

The children spent their vacation in Minnesota climbing all over their father. Burying him in pillows, playing catch with him, chasing him around the house and snuggling onto his lap. As though somehow they shared the dull anxiety I carry increasingly longer and sooner before these days that I wait and our friend the oncologist can wash it away.

I can't tell myself any longer that each time is the same, that one day it will be different. The truth is that every time is different now. Every time we're waiting to see if THIS is the time, not that there's something, because now there will always be something, but that there is enough something. That it's time again to pick our poisons and spin the roulette wheel of radiations and surgeries and consultations and brave faces.

My brave face is always on for the children, always firm but kind as I say with a sigh that I can't bring back the sunshine. But I wish I could, honey. I wish I could.

If I could spin the earth backwards around the sun, I would go back to the sunny days when he tickled his daughters and they laughed and squealed and jumped all over him because they love him so much, and no matter what the stresses at work he knew everything was worthwhile.

I would go back to the mornings we lay in a different bed, the sunshine coming under different curtains, and listened to our children laughing. Listened to them singing their songs, and telling their stories, and laughing with each other; and us, aside. Other. Clockmaker parents in the sunset of greatest joy I never knew I could imagine.

I would stand outside of those moments, after spinning the sun, so I could always know. This is the thing we chose together, these children we had no idea we could love so much, these girls we didn't know would have the sweetest smiles and the brightest eyes, who would look so much like us and yet like only themselves, who loved us so intensely. Who love him so much they could never understand why I lay in the dark and cry over happiness.

Not from happiness.

But because it's not fair. It's not fair to see the sunshine, to see it shine so bright and so warm and know the day will end. It's not fair to choose between long afternoon naps in a family puddle and adventures outside with the sun on your cheeks.

It's not fair to see them love each other so much and know that it's going to end. Someday it's going to end. Someday, the news is going to be so bad I'll have to stop laughing into the oncoming darkness.

And if I could bring the sunshine back...

If I could only bring the sunshine back...

"Mommy, can you make the sunshine come back?"

As simple and straightforward as passing her a bag of crackers, or picking her book off the floor. Because I'm Mommy, I'm the omnipotent creator of darkness and light, of food and clothing, of routine and chaos. To her, I am just as capable of bringing back the day as of opening her juice box.

I am the man behind the curtain, pulling levers to emit puffs of smoke and the rumble of thunder, crying myself to sleep when the children are tucked into bed. Because I can't bring it back.

This might be twilight, but night is coming. And I have no way of knowing if tomorrow the sun will shine again.

Teaching Through Trauma: Sexual Violence and Sex Positive Parenting

You may recall that over the summer I caused a bit of a stir with my article, "Sex Positive Parenting, or, We Don't Touch Our Vulvas At The Table." In that post I talked about sex positivity and not shaming children for exploring their bodies, and how honesty empowers and protects children.

I've done a lot of talking about this in the months since. I've spoken at conferences, gone on the radio, interviewed on podcasts... it's been a wild ride.

But part of what I've been doing has been very quiet. And that's what I'd like to talk about now.

Since that article came out, people have been writing to me to ask advice on how to talk to their children about sex, with massive caveats.

Parents who were victims of childhood sexual assault.
Parents with children who were born from rape.
Parents with adopted children who came from a foster system that permitted gross sexual misconduct.

I had advocated honesty, total honesty, about sex and biology. I talked about explaining IVF and cesarean sections to children.

So what about these questions? What do you tell a child, honestly, when the honest truth is both horrible, and unacceptable?

I spent a lot of time thinking about this.

I always told those parents at least one thing, "Whenever you are ready to talk to your child about this, make sure you know that it is not their fault. Make sure you let them know that, no matter what happened to them, or to you, they are not to blame, and they are not diminished by having this as part of their personal history."

I recognized as I wrote these words, in endless variations, over and over again, how little they could do to heal the gaping wounds their parents have.

But as more and more parents wrote me, I felt more and more the need to discuss being sex positive with children in the context of a world filled with sexual violence.

You see, in addition to talking about sex positive parenting, I'm a member of the RAINN Speakers Bureau. I talk to groups of teenagers about rape culture and sexual violence. I talk a great deal about consent and power dynamics and the reality of rape versus the popular mythology.

And I always explain, when talking about sex positivity, that this is a way to protect children from rape culture. That when you empower children with the correct names for their organs, and an understanding of what is and is not appropriate, you can protect them from becoming victims. And more importantly, you can stop them from becoming predators.

This is little comfort to children who are already, in some way, victims.

So when speaking to a child about human biology, about how a sperm must meet an egg, and how that sperm usually comes out of a penis when it is inside of a vagina, is that the time to talk about rape?

As much as I, as a parent and a human being want to say no, it's not the time, I can't. I think that it is the time.

I think sooner is generally better, within reason. I wouldn't attempt to explain rape to two year old, but when a child is able to intellectualize human reproduction, I think it's not too soon to come clean with the facts.

And the facts are this- reproduction is beautiful. It is intimate and loving, it is a way to show that you care, and that you don't want to hurt somebody. Just like a hug, or a pat on the head. But sometimes, people do violent things that look like nice things. You can hug somebody too tight and hurt them. You can hit, instead of patting. These are things nobody should do, and that all of us must learn not to do. But sometimes, people do these things. And sex and rape are like that. Rape is not sex, it is turning sex into a violent act. The way a slap and a pat on the cheek are not the same, however closely they may seem to resemble each other in their mechanics.

These are comparisons a child can understand. And so long as the explanation of what rape is, and how it is related to the reproductive process, blame and shame for the child can be minimized or eliminated.

The problem is, rape is shameful. Not for the victim, but for the rapist. It is a shameful, awful thing to do to another human being, and yet people do. And because of the profound shame and discomfort regarding sex we share in our culture, the shame and blame is often misplaced onto the victim. This happens not because it is shameful to have been raped, but because as a culture we are all so afraid of sex that we cannot distinguish between an act of affection and an act of violence.

Telling a child that they are the product of a rape is never going to be easy. It should never be easy, because talking about sexual violence shouldn't be easy. But we still need to do it.

We desperately need to do it. Especially with children.

I've heard the advice, especially among adoptive parents, to associate the rape with the birth mom. To make it about her, not about the child. I understand this impulse, but to me it reeks of victim blaming. We should never associate a crime with the victim, always the perpetrator.

I have a confession. Until I began working on writing this post, months ago, I had not talked to my five year old daughters about rape. Not explicitly. I had done it obliquely, in terms I thought they would understand. I explained rape culture in terms of "hurting" rather than "sexual violence," because explaining to my children what rape is was something that I thought could wait.

I don't think it can anymore. Not as I've forced myself to sit down and read letter after letter from parents who can't wait. Who don't have the luxuries that I do.

And so, I told my daughters about rape. The five year olds, not the two year old. We read "Where Did I Come From?" and I paused after we finished the page that describes sex.

"You know," I said, "Sometimes people do that to hurt each other."

SI looked at me like I was insane. "They do. Sometimes, one person will want to do that, and the other doesn't, and it hurts them. The book says it feels good, and it does, when both people want to. The way hugging feels good. But it doesn't feel good if your sister chases you and pinches you, right?"

"I don't like that when RH does that," DD agreed.

"Yeah. So sometimes, people try to do that to other people who don't want to. And that's not okay. That's not the same thing as sex, it's something else entirely."

And we moved on.

I didn't use the word "rape." As I've discussed before, it's a hard word to use. I've gotten better at writing it down, the more and more and more I practice at it, but it's so much easier to write "rape culture" than it is to write "rape." And it is infinitely more simple to write than to say.

I did not use the word "rape," and I did not say that it had happened to me. Although I know if I'd let the conversation linger, the question would have come up, and I honestly don't know if I could have answered it.

I really, truly, genuinely don't know.

But this is important. It is vital that our children know what rape is, and that it is fundamentally different from consensual sex acts.

I can't recommend my script, because it is still full of holes. I still have no idea how I will one day tell my children that I was raped, twice no less. But it's something I've known since before I became a parent that I must do.

I, and all parents who have survived sexual violence, need to be the face of survival for our children. Not because we choose this, but because we are and always will be their role models. Because what we say and do is what they believe is the right way to say and do anything. And if we maintain a silence about being assaulted, we teach them that what is right and proper is to be silent. But it is not easy. It is never easy.

And if I cannot tell them this without the constant weight of my own misplaced shame, what would I tell them if they were born because of rape?

I know I would tell them that it wasn't their fault. I know I would tell them that I love them, and that nothing that anybody did to me before they were born has anything to do with who they are now.

And I know I would try to have those conversations now, while they would simply inform the facts of their existence, rather than complicate their already difficult adolescence when they must somehow correlate the facts of their burgeoning sexual identities with an understanding of the nature of the act that created them.

This is not easy. This is not simple. This is not fun. There is no solution to how to teach your children something traumatic. Ever.

There is no easy way to explain death. To explain that yes, someday mommy and daddy will die. Yes, someday they will die.

There is also no easy way to explain that human beings are capable of profound suffering, and worse, inflicting it upon each other.

The one question a parent asked me that truly haunts me is this, "There was a line in your blog about how only your daughters have the decision to have sex, but obviously that is not true in the case of rape. I know someday I will have to explain that women are supposed to have the right, but they don’t always. Any thoughts from you in this case?"

My thoughts are these- rape is not sex. The act may look similar, but it is not the same.

There are many ways for a baby to come into the world. They all begin the same way- sperm meets egg. But that can happen in so many ways.

Sex. IVF. Intrauterine insemination. Rape.

None of these are the same.

It is not your doing if your were born thanks to IVF. It is not your doing if you were born as the result of rape. You do not carry the weight of that act. You are loved. You are so loved. And when you are old enough, you will know the difference between what is affection and what is abuse, and in that way you are more than anything that came before you. You are empowered and precious.

This is what I would say, my thoughts.

To those parents whose children came from sexual assault, I would say I have no idea how difficult this conversation will be. I cannot begin to imagine how painful it will be. But remember, the fault always lies with the person committing the crime. Not you. Never you. And not your child.

We can be honest, even if it hurts. We must be honest when it hurts.

Especially when it hurts.

Because children are not obtuse. They see us struggling with our honesty, and it teaches them something important. It teaches then that no matter how hard honesty is, it is essential.

When we are uncomfortable, or in pain, and continue on- it teaches them about bravery.

They are watching us all the time, and they are always learning.

Let them learn the unspoken. Let them learn how utterly horrifying rape is by watching us struggle to even say the word. Let them learn how important it is not to use reproduction as a weapon by seeing how repulsed we are by it. Let them learn how much we love them by holding them and loving them through our own pain and trauma.

Let them learn bravery by watching ours.

I will keep trying. I will keep trying to do better.

And keep sending me letters. I will read them. I always read them. And if I think I can help, if I think there is anything I can do to lesson your burden, I will.

I hope someday, that is a lesson I can pass along, too.

Father Dies, Son Dies, Grandson Dies

When I was younger and felt, as I often did, that I had been the victim of some injustice, my father used to tell me a parable.

He would start telling it, and I would roll my eyes. Because I'd heard it before, and teenagers often roll their eyes when they think they know something already. But I also liked the story, and I always enjoyed my father telling it. So I listened.




Once upon a time, a holy man was wandering across China. He came to a farmer's humble home, and knocked on the door to ask if he might sleep in the barn. The farmer wouldn't hear of it. Instead, he ushered the holy man into his home. He sat the holy man at the head of the table, and fed him dinner with his family. He put the holy man to sleep in his own bed. And in the morning, he gave the holy man some food to carry with him.

As the holy man was leaving the house, the farmer stopped him.

"Please, would you do me the honor of blessing my family before you go?"

The holy man stood and stared for a minute. Then he nodded, and spoke. "Father dies, son dies, grandson dies." He turned and began to walk away.

The farmer was furious. "What kind of blessing is THAT?!"

The holy man shrugged. "Would you rather it happened another way?"

The farmer, dumbstruck, shook his head, and bowed in thanks as the holy man wandered off again.





My father would explain every time, that no, you would never want it another way. That one of the worst things that could happen to a human being was to deviate from that order. Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.

You never want to outlive your children.

This weekend, M and I learned that M's grandmother has cancer. She's having surgery as I type- removing a tumor the size of a football. This comes right on the heels of the word that M's grandfather has moved into hospice care, his Alzheimer's has become so advanced.

When we heard the news, I felt a wave of grief immediately. I know how rarely we get to see M's grandparents, and I may already have seen his grandfather for the last time. But I have always loved them. From the first time I met them, when M's grandpa made a joke, I don't even remember what it was, but it was friendly and kind and welcoming, and I was grateful to him for his thoughtfulness, welcoming me into his family. Well before M and I were engaged.

And M's grandmother. Mother of six, grandmother of nearly thirty, great-grandmother of six, in her eighth decade of life she has discovered she has a true talent for storytelling, and has been writing a history of sorts of the family. Each time we've all gathered together, she's read us all a new story, and they are beautiful and warm. I love sharing the bond of storytelling with her. I don't want to lose her from my life, let alone M's.

But M's grief took a different form.

"They've had a hard life," he said, "but it's been such a good one. They've never had to bury a child, or a grandchild... and I'm glad I could help give them that."

Since the first day of M's diagnosis, his biggest concern has been how his death would effect other people. How much it would hurt his sister, his parents, me, and now our children.

"Father dies, son dies, grandson dies," M said to me, and he managed a smile. "This is how it's supposed to happen. When you're very old, surrounded by people you love."

I think he might have even found it romantic, a little. I take that back. He definitely did.

Here's the thing- to M, I don't think there's any kind of romance greater than one that lasts a lifetime. That lasts until you're so old your body simply gives out, only you're together, you and the person you love.

Last summer we went to a wedding where the couple chose "The Luckiest," by Ben Folds as their processional.

They carefully planned not to include the last verse in their ceremony. I understand that. Any song that explicitly references death might not be appropriate for a wedding. But M hummed that last verse under his breath, squeezing my hand. Because he's that kind of romantic.

In the last verse of "The Luckiest," a couple gets married, lives into their 90s, and dies within a few days of each other. And that is the definition of true love that Ben Folds and my husband ascribe to.


I know M is comforted by the idea that he may lose both his grandparents instead of one, because it is important to him to know that they won't have to dedicate any more of their remaining days on this earth to grief than that.

For him, that is a tremendous comfort.

I often forget about other people. I often forget that M and I aren't our own little universe. I forget that there are other people who care about us. It's easier to forget, a lot of the time. It's easier to put little limits around your grief and your hope and pretend that nobody outside feels any of it.

But they do.

M is right. His death would have hurt people, will inevitably hurt people. And that he is alive isn't just a gift to me and his children and his parents. It is a gift to his grandparents. It is a gift to his friends. My friends. To everyone he hasn't yet met but whose life will be brightened by his presence. It is a gift. And he knows it.

How rare, to know that your life is truly a gift to others. And not in an egotistical way, no, in the profound language of grief and love and an understanding of the stark reality of life and death, M knows that his life has meaning for the people that love him.

M's little universe is much bigger than mine. Because he's fundamentally a better person than me. I've always known so. He only finds ways to remind me time and time again.

Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.

When somebody is ill, their family's should be scared, and sad. Because that is one of the greatest expressions of love we have, wanting to keep somebody with us. The way M and I, and M's aunts and uncles and cousins do. You can ask no more in life than to have the opportunity to cause somebody grief. You can ask no more in life than to be so well loved.

If you're the praying sort, or the sending-good-energy sort, or any of that, please keep M's grandparents in your thoughts. And please keep the rest of the family in your thoughts, too.

It's not so little a universe at all. It's all of ours.

With love and grief and hope enough for all of us to share.

M's grandparents

Drowning in the Creep

M and the kids tracking each others footprints in the snow on Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving. I've always loved Thanksgiving.

For Thanksgivukkuh last year, I bought my kids a wonderful book- "Rivka's First Thanksgiving." In the book, a little girl in Brooklyn learns about Thanksgiving, and convinces her orthodox Lubovitch community to celebrate the holiday.

Because as first generation immigrants to America, the story of being welcomed in and protected by a new community spoke to her.

And being immigrants fleeing religious persecution in Europe, the story spoke to her more still.

In many ways, Thanksgiving is like American Passover. You gather with your family to recreate a meal, a meal where peoples of different backgrounds came together to celebrate that they would survive. Squanto was like Moses to the Pilgrims, and Moses would have been a stranger to the Jewish slaves.

It's a lot like Passover, really. Almost uncannily. Except instead of an afikomen, you get pie for dessert.

I love Thanksgiving.

On Amazon!

Which is one reason I can't stand Christmas Creep.

For many people, Christmas is the only thing they seem to like about Thanksgiving. For many people, Thanksgiving is wonderful because it gives them permission to stop holding back in their Christmas zeal, and the minute the table is cleared after dinner it's time to ring those sleigh bells and move onward towards the real winter holiday.

Only the thing is, unlike Thanksgiving, not all Americans recognize Christmas.

Thanksgiving is wonderful to me in that it is so comprehensively American. From Turkey tamales to three sisters stew, from pumpkin crumble to persimmon pie, every corner of America is filled with people celebrating what might be a largely fictional story, but is a fundamentally hopeful one.

Christmas? Not so much.

For me, as for most non-Christian Americans, Christmas is an annual giant, exclusive party that seems to grow by a day or so every year.

And I had no idea how much more lonely it would be for me once I had interfaith children.

As you probably know, M borders on agnostic and I dabble with atheism. But we appreciate the traditions and familiarity of our respective faiths.

The historically Jewish city of Chefchaouen in Morocco-
where the Jews who built it so strongly identified with their heritage that they painted the city blue.

We always planned on celebrating Christmas and Channukah with our kids, and we've celebrated both holidays with them since the first. But the fact of the matter is, to be Jewish is to be excluded. Not just here, in the United States. Everywhere.

We, as Jews, exclude ourselves.

And in a way, I think that is what has allowed us to survive this long. As isolated strangers in non-Jewish communities, we have always excluded ourselves. Like Tevya says of the Cossacks in Anatevka, "We don't bother them, and so far, they don't bother us." Until of course, the Czar decided some bothering was due.

We carved our niches out of the communities we wandered into, and although we lived side by side, we lived separately.

Not so, in 20th and 21st century America. We managed to make ourselves seen, and heard, and somehow welcomed for the most part. We accepted the mantle of "whiteness" the civil rights movement offered us. We started seeing ourselves as Americans as well as Jews. Something we certainly never did in Russia or Morocco.

The blue streets of Chefchaouen

But part of the appeal of the United States, for all immigrants, has been that it is a country without a single faith. That it is a country without a unifying culture. That it was and has always been based on ideals of freedom from religious persecution.

And the fact is, to be so thoroughly surrounded by a single holiday that you do not celebrate is smothering. To be vilified as being a "Scrooge" or a "Humbug" for feeling no love for a holiday that means nothing to you is a form of duress. It is a culture that says, "Pretend you believe this, or you are not one of us."

For most of my life, that feeling of isolation and rejection for not trimming trees or writing letters to Santa was something that felt natural to me. That felt like as much a part of my heritage as the bland, mindless way the Shabbat bruchot came to my lips as a child waiting for Friday night dinner.

It is not the same now. Now, I have children. Children who love Christmas, and whose love of Christmas hurts me.

I feel petty and unkind and shallow saying so, but it's true. That I am and must be complicit in their affection for Christmas only makes it worse.

I have little love for Jesus, in whose name countless atrocities have been committed against my ancestors. In whose name, as a child, my best friend sobbed and begged me to convert, because she didn't want to go to Heaven if she knew I was going to Hell. I have made my peace with Jesus, for the most part, who I think was probably a man trying to do some good, if he existed, which I can never know.

But I don't understand what American culture has done to his birthday. And in his name.

I don't understand how Santa Claus came to be, or why I must lie to my children, in however sheltered terms, rather than saying what I know is true. But I continue to lie to them. I tell them that he is real to them, because they have somebody who loves them and wants to make him real. The way fairies are real to some people, when somebody loves them and wants to make fairies real to them.

It's a pretty lie. It's one that I had hoped wouldn't hurt me to tell. But it does. Because I cannot make Santa real. I can only drive this wedge further between my children and myself, isolating myself more and more from their understanding of the world and their understanding of mine.

Our friends, Santa and Mrs. Claus with their favorite elf, visiting our children several Christmases ago.
Friends who love our kids enough to make Santa real for them.

For me, and for most Jews, to be Jewish is to be excluded. It is to be separate, to use our own favorite turn of phrase, to be "Chosen."

Part of what we choose is this otherness, and I wonder if my sister wasn't really right when she warned me about having children with a Lutheran.

"Can your children really be Jewish, if they grow up in a house that has a Christmas tree?"

I said I didn't care, but I know now that I do. I care very much. I want them to feel what I feel about my heritage, about my ancestry and my history. Their ancestry and history.

I want them to learn that part of being Jewish is being isolated from the larger community. That as welcome as we may think we are, we are always waiting for the tides to turn. I want them to understand that on Thanksgiving we are all American, and we are proud, and we are humble, and we are unified. But on Passover we remember that in every generation there comes somebody who would try to destroy us. That in every generation there is a genocide, and we have made it to this day by seeing the tides when they turn, and remembering who we are and where we came from.

When, in October, my children squeal with delight at the sight of Christmas lights in a store, I feel more lonely than ever in my life. My children, these people I made who shared my blood and my body, and will always share my history and my life, my children have been anxious for Christmas to come since that first sparkly snowman made his appearance on the Costco floor.

They gush about Christmas. They tell me what they want, they tell me they want to see Santa, they tell me they want to make Christmas cards and have Christmas stockings and a Christmas tree.

As they have had every year.

And I ask them, "What about Channukah? What about lighting the menorah each night? What about singing Channukah songs with me and Poppa?"

For them it's an afterthought. Something nice that will happen as well as Christmas. Not their isolated holiday warmth, not the oasis of familiarity in a Christmas dessert, where costume clad volunteers on the public train stare with fear in their eyes when someone responds to their, "Merry Christmas!" with "Chag samayach to you!"

They learn that fear young. "Did you know?" an eight year old friend asked me, her face pale and numb, as we arranged Barbie shoe filled traps for each other on her bedroom floor, a la Home Alone, by the light of the garlands strung down her bannister. I was too ashamed to speak, now part of the mechanism that had built and shattered what would become a formative childhood experience.

It wasn't that I didn't believe, it's that I knew the truth. And the truth was my parents kindly but sadly explaining that I should not tell other children the truth. That I must distance myself to protect them. That my distance was essential to their happiness.

As a child, I resented Christmas, and I could not escape it. I could not escape singing Christmas songs at my public school. I could not escape the constant talk of what Santa would bring to other children, and not to me. I could not escape the ornaments and tinsel in every grocery store, on the light poles downtown, on the bulletin board outside the Principal's office. I could not escape the trees, covered in candy canes or tiny toys, standing resplendent in all my friends' homes- shrinelike on their velvet skirts, revered in their untouchable beauty. I could not escape the Christmas stories on my television, every beloved character celebrating the very holiday that excluded me, until I couldn't bear any longer to watch even the Muppets imply that I, like Scrooge, was a "humbug."

For me, Channukah became meaningful not because of the story, a military holiday as opposed to a religious one. For me, Channukah was meaningful because after all the loneliness and sadness of my friends slowly distancing themselves from me, I found myself surrounded by the familiar songs and faces and foods of my people. My holiday. My little light in the winter dark.

Now, as always, my friends are beginning to shrink away. Earlier and earlier every year, with facebook quizzes about "Holiday Movies" based on "It's A Wonderful Life" and "Miracle of 34th Street," as though by erasing the word "Christmas" from their enthusiasm I can join in, I can pretend that my own experience includes Santa Claus and Christmas Miracles, as if just by being American I must be part of this, as though despite making myself visible as someone "other," I am at fault for neglecting my cultural duty to watch the Greatest (Christmas) Films Of All Time.

I find myself less patient with my inability to participate. I find myself feeling like a liar more and more, even as I tell my children that Santa is only real if somebody makes him real for you.

"I can't make Santa real for you," I say, and this is also a lie. I am complicit. I am the one who fills the stockings when their backs are turned. I am the one who lies by omission, by saying that Santa is real for anyone, ever, when Santa is a fiction who brings comfort to the majority of our neighbors, but only ever hurt me. Only ever guilted me into prolonging the moment when my friends would be crushed by the destruction of their happy fantasies.

The truth is that I don't want my kids to believe in Santa. Not because I don't think they can't really be Jewish on a fundamental level if they have a Christmas tree in the house. I think that it's hard to really empathize, to really understand who their ancestors were and what they faced if they don't understand what it is to be other. To be excluded and to understand that purposeful exclusion is a threat, but at the same time that self imposed exclusion can be safety.

Jewish men praying under guard in a Polish shtetl in 1940

Last month, the children cheered when they saw a Christmas tree in Costco, and I ignored it, stony faced.

"Is Christmas soon?" they asked, eagerly.

"No, first comes Thanksgiving. And then Channukah," I said.

"So why are there Christmas trees?"

It was a simple question, and I answered it simply.

"Christmas Creep."

"What's Christmas Creep?"

"Christmas Creep is when people are so excited about Christmas, they forget there are other holidays that other people celebrate. Including Thanksgiving, which is next."

"Why do they forget there are other holidays?"

"Because they don't need to remember, sweetie," I said, sighing, pushing my cart into the cold parking lot. Pushing it past other carts laden with trees and lawn reindeer and mountains of tinsel.

They don't need to remember, but I do. Jews do. "Never forget," and all of that.

The truth is that Christmas Creep isn't just about forgetting other holidays, it's about forgetting other people. And worse than that, Christmas Creep is about forgetting Christmas as well.

My husband, the Lutheran, hates Christmas Creep more than I do. For me, it's a familiar angst. For him? It's a reminder of what is constantly being lost for people who DO celebrate that particular holiday.

M tells me that he didn't really learn what Christmas was about until he was in college. An adult. Until he left home, Christmas was about getting. Now, he says, Christmas is about family, and love. Seeing his cousins in Minnesota, who he sees so painfully rarely. Seeing his aunts and uncles and remaining grandparents. Meeting babies and seeing how absurdly much children have grown. Physically being with the people you love.

But it's hard to explain that to a child through the haze of tinsel and and the twinkling of fairy lights.

Just under half of M's family (half of them)- an eight hour drive away

M can't stand the Christmas Creep, not because it makes him feel alienated from the world around him, but because it makes him resent the waves upon waves of distraction from what he actually cares about.

Neither of us are likely to jump onto the Holiday Fever bandwagon before we've thoroughly enjoyed our Thanksgiving weekends. Neither of us are eager to give up time with our families to buy things we don't necessarily need for a holiday we feel, in the case of both Christmas and Channukah, shouldn't be about presents anyway.

Despite this, M loves Christmas. He loves putting on his cheezy Christmas sweater, drinking quarts of eggnog with a grin on his face, hanging a wreath on our front door. He loves the lights and the stockings, the tree and A Muppet Christmas Carol. He loves gingerbread houses and red and green m&ms on Christmas morning.

I've always known Christmas was important to M, and it never bothered me. It still doesn't. I love seeing him happy, and I love making him happy. I go to church every year with his parents, smile and shake hands with the pastor, sing along through all the carols. The first date I ever took him on was after he came back from spending Christmas with his family. I drove him up to Sauganash, and parked the car, and walked hand in hand with him in the snow through a magical world of Christmas lights brighter and more complex than any in the town where I grew up.

And it was beautiful and romantic, even to me, somebody who doesn't care about Christmas.

I understand that there is something special about Christmas for people who do care, and part of me has always been dedicated to helping M create that magic with his children. Who also happen to be my children.

And M has been equally understanding when it comes to my need to pass along traditions to my children. He has agreed with me on the importance of a Jewish preschool, not for religious indoctrination, but for the introduction of a long and complex history we both want them to know. He has been at every family seder, cracking jokes about gefilte fish and still eating it. He has learned the Shabbat bruchot, and sings them with more enthusiasm than I did at our children's age. And it has also, in a way, pained him. And I know that.

Some of M's relatives like to wear shirts with slogans like, "Put the Christ back in Christmas." And both of us are all for that. Because it's honest. Because Christmas isn't "the reason for the season," but Jesus is the fundamental reason for Christmas. And the more we as a society get back to remembering that, the less Christmas Creep we'll have. The less we'll be constantly bombarded by messages to buy buy buy buy buy, and the less I will feel like I have to protect my children, not just from losing their sense of their cultural identity, but from losing ANY sense of cultural identity.

M and the girls watching football before Thanksgiving dinner, while Grandmommy and I cook and chat,
and my sister and Poppa take turns napping away what ails them

I know that M often feels that he has no cultural identity. That compared to me, a person from a self-excluded group, a person who deeply feels tied to history and culture that make me unique from society at large, he occasionally feels bland. Empty. As though his own culture has nothing to offer but Hallmark and Black Friday.

He struggles with putting to words what his culture is, besides being White America. He is like a fish who cannot see the water, having lived it and breathed it beyond the limits of his own existence. And he is learning, but it does not help him define it.

It does not help him explain to his children, my children, what is and is not meaningful or important, what is or is not a privilege or an identity, what is and is not good or bad or empty fluff.

Nobody seems to believe that Christmas is about presents except children. But they're picking it up somewhere.

So what is it? Is it about Jesus? Is it about family, about sharing the warmth of love and joy and familiarity in the coldest months? Or is it about casting divisions between "us" and "them"?

I don't know. I may never know. I don't even know that I want to know. Knowing the meaning of Christmas might be a little too close for comfort to me. Having a true understanding of what Christmas is and what it means puts me so much closer to its epicenter than merely hanging stockings over my mantle, and lying to my children about the reality of fictional characters who brings gifts bought with my energy, my money, and my love.

I don't want to sympathize with Christmas Creep, because I want to be able to focus on the things that matter to me, and I cannot emphasize enough- that is not Christmas.

To me, Thanksgiving opens the winter, with welcoming arms and the promise that the winter will pass, that I will spend cold months ahead in the warm embrace of my friends and family, that the food will be abundant and the cheer even more so, despite the short days and the bitter cold.

To me, Channukah is a week when I reflect on winters past. When I gather with my family and share stories so old they've become legend; from the revolt of the Maccabees to one time my four year old sister forgot her lines in our family Channukah play and announced to our "audience" that her song was rewinding.

To me, Passover is about winter ending and spring beginning, with a warning. We survived another winter. Another spring has come. And again we must remember that next year might be different.

And in the middle there lies Christmas.

I look forward to the days spent in Minnesota, surrounded by M's family, who have become my family. I look forward to hugs and cookies and catching up on news. I look forward to laughing at M's aunt's inappropriate jokes, and drinking beers with his cousin on the farm. I look forward to seeing my children get to know their cousins, in whatever limited capacity they can with so little exposure to each other, and hoping that someday they will feel the bond of love and family for these people who share their history, their heritage, their genes, and their traditions.

Chicago's Sauganash neighborhood, where I took M for our first New Year's Eve together. To look at the Christmas lights.

I do not look forward to church, but I go because I am part of this family and I want my children to know that and to be as well.

I do not look forward to the endless Christmas trees on the street and non-stop Christmas Pop on the radio. I do not look forward to people I love asking my children about Santa, and building my complicity every time I keep my mouth closed in a smile.

I cannot look forward to Christmas, because before I am even ready to approach it, it's here. Christmas Creeping its way under my skin and fatiguing me before I can acknowledge it. By the time Thanksgiving groceries are bought, I am done with Christmas.

But I'm not done. I'm never done. I'm an American citizen, and each year Christmas is more American than apple pie for Thanksgiving dessert.

And now I am less done than ever, because each day my children see a new toy in a catalogue, and they want Santa to bring it to them, so I set them to the task of simply circling toys I know I have no intention of buying.

That I neither want to buy nor can afford.

That are as much the "reason for the season" as the yet unpacked suitcases from our Thanksgiving trip littering the foyer.

I am learning through my children what it is to be included in this holiday, and I fear it means I cannot teach them the benefits of the inclusion of exclusion.

I am teaching them the importance of family, and of sharing traditions with family, even if that isn't the lessons they learn about Christmas.

I am teaching them the very things about Christmas I despise each time I offer a Santa platitude. Yet I offer Santa platitudes, despite each word breaking my heart as it tears my children farther from me.

As my Lutheran husband would smile and shrug and say, "Diyenu."

M and RH last Passover

This is otherness in America. But what good is my exclusion, what good is my culture and my heritage and the relative safety of my isolated rhetorical shtetl, if my daughters are on the outside, while I am in?

If I can't embrace my otherness, what is left of my heritage for me to hang onto?

Is a Jew without her tribe a Jew any longer? Or am I something else? Something lost, and sad, grasping for an identity that can never be this version of American which only comes when the days shorten; or something hard, and cold, unable to find the warmth of any tradition when it's all obscured by the never ending "Holiday Sale" that sucks the meaning out of anything joyful?

If not even my children understand what it is to wander, but not be lost in the fold of their family, I am utterly alone.

And there will be precious little left to be thankful for in Novembers to come.

I will be a child again, standing back from a tree covered in toys I cannot touch, resenting it for bringing me no joy when the children around me gasp in awe.

Only those are my children.

And if they cannot know what it is to stand outside of Christmas and never come close enough to touch it, I fear they can never know me. And without my children to keep me warm, to stand by my side and hold my hands, it is a long, cold winter indeed.

Or, it's not.

Or, it's exactly what I agreed to a decade ago, when I felt myself falling in love with a man I took to look at Christmas lights for New Year's Eve. When I braced myself to feel exasperation and frustration on a cold walk on the last day of the year, and instead found pure delight and peace by looking at the smile on his face as he took in the displays.

I watched him grinning at the lights, and he said, "Thank you."

Because he knew I hadn't expected to go on that date to make me happy, but had done it for him. And he knew that seeing him happy was all I wanted in the first place, and getting that, I was also happy.

He and I agree that the best part of any gift giving holiday, Christmas or Channukah or any old birthday, is the moment when somebody you love opens the gifts and their face lights up. They are transported in their joy, and it is that joy, not the contents of the box, that you have given them.

It's a joy that knows how much you care. A joy that knows how deeply you love.

I love my children. I want them to experience joys I never did.

Our menorah, over our stockings and nativity scene

But it comes at a cost for me. It comes at the cost of becoming complicit in a lie that hurt me. In a culture that rejected me and laughed at me for being rejected. It comes at the cost of being part of the mechanism that perpetuates my own otherness, even, yes, from my own children.

It is a cost I accepted long before I had to pay. I still accept it. I am still learning to love Christmas, not for what it means but for what comes from it. Time with a family that is now my family, the beautiful joy of people whose love means everything to me, pretty lights in a dark, quiet street.

But I can only stretch so far.

The growing "season" overwhelms everything, including perspective.

I do have to remember- I do not have the luxury of forgetting other holidays, other people.

I see the water.

The Center of the Universe

Me and the center of my universe

Last week, M and I decided to (finally) take the plunge, and start watching Breaking Bad. (This post might have a few spoilers if you've never heard about the show before, but nothing big.)

Neither of us are generally the sort of person to get caught up in a cultural hype, we geek out about what we geek out about, and there's a lot of overlap for us. But we both feel a bit uncomfortable when everybody we know and everybody they know and everybody else seems to be obsessed with something new. Especially when it comes to TV. We don't want much television, so when we do we sort of want it to count. Well, now that Breaking Bad is of the air, now that it's over and we've distanced ourselves from the popular obsession, we decided it might be fun to watch just an episode and see what we thought.

Of course, we quickly learned it's pretty much impossible to watch the first episode of Breaking Bad and not immediately put on the next.

There's a lot on the show that makes us uncomfortable. Not the murder and drugs and gruesome comedy of errors regarding those things. No, what makes us uncomfortable is scenes like this.





I get a visceral fury whenever Skylar, Walter's wife, talks to Walter about his treatment. It's not about what he wants. It's about what she needs. I understand where she's coming from, sure, but she's going about it all wrong.

She's made up her mind what's going to happen to Walt, and he's going to do what she says because the alternative is to die.

I understand that. I do, I profoundly do. I see myself in Skylar a lot. But where we fundamentally differ is in how we address those same fears and needs. For me, M's cancer was always about him. It has always been about him, and his life, and his needs. I refused to believe he would die, but I tried to make sure he was feeling good about life as he lived it.

Whenever Skylar tries to bully Walter into a different treatment, or into a different doctor, or simply into her way of thinking, it comes across to me as cruel. She doesn't care if Walter's happy, so long as he's alive. Whereas Walter doesn't care if he's alive, so long as he's happy. Or at least, so long as he feels he has some direction and control over his destiny.

M and I watch these scenes snuggled up together on the bed, our hands gripped together and our breath shallow. Because these are real conversations that people really have when they know what they're facing.

I wonder if Brittany Maynard was a Breaking Bad fan.

When Walt's hair fell out during chemo, I wanted to punch Skylar in the face. She couldn't speak. She cried when she saw him bald- exactly as he had predicted. I remembered how I locked down my own feelings when M's hair started falling out and stayed cool, calm, and as relaxed as I could, helping him shave the patchy growth left on his head.

Because, as it seems I forgot in my grief and rage over Ms. Maynard, it's only about one person.

When somebody you love is in pain, is truly ill, you get over yourself and remember who really matters.

It's like this wonderful graph from the LA Times article- "How Not To Say The Wrong Thing."

The idea is the sick person is in the middle, and nobody is allowed to complain them about how their illness affects anyone else. That person can complain, or not, to anybody. All you give, from the outside in, is support.

I might have worried that M would die and I would never see my Happily Ever After with my One True Love, but M never heard that from me. Never. Because it's unfair and unkind. What could he do about it? Stop being sick?

No, M, was the center of the universe. He had to be. His universe was terrifying and it was collapsing. You never put more burdens on the person holding together the center of all existence. You just don't.

Skylar turns it on its head. No matter what Walter tries to do, she is critical. Who the hell wants that kind of person for a support structure?

Watching the show has been fun, so far. Lots of humor, meth related violence, and people saying, "Bitch!" with wild and conflicting inflections.

But we were not expecting to turn into a medical drama. Not hardly. And it's the side of medical dramas we don't particularly want to see. While M was on chemo, we watched House and Scrubs fanatically. We spend a few colder nights of our honeymoon watching Grey's Anatomy. We like the doctor side of things- doctors having fights and drama, and somehow coming out in the end to either cure the patient or to fail.

Watching Walter fall apart as the chemo ruins his body and his family's poorly concealed despair... that's not so much fun.

That's everything we never wanted.

We're still watching the show. Of course we are, it's too damned addictive.

But I have a renewed sympathy for the Maynard family. Actually, I'd like to offer her and her family an apology, for every bit of anger I harbored about her decision.

Nobody has the right, not me, to question Brittany Maynard. For her, she was the center of the universe. I'm so far outside the circles of contact and support, I don't even exist.

Me and the center of the universe

That's what I think I need to remember.

Dignity versus Nobility

It's been a long couple days in front of my computer.

Brittany Maynard chose to end her life on Saturday, surrounded by her loved ones. And as a result, I can't get away from the story.

It's all over facebook (although my friends and acquaintances thankfully have enough tact not to post it directly to my wall). It's all over the radio. It feels like it's everywhere.

A woman with the same brain cancer as my husband, three five years older than he was when he was diagnosed, and three years younger than he is now, ended her life in order to avoid suffering. When I say the same cancer, I mean THE SAME CANCER. The same size tumor. The same location. The same stage.

I've been cautious not to form much of an opinion. I've been careful to remind myself that she is not me, that she is not M, and that she was experiencing grief and fear and the desire to live a beautiful life in her own individual way.

I respect her choice, but as much as I sympathized with her and pitied her and wished for her to control her destiny to the best of her ability, it still enrages me now that she's gone. (Yes, I know, classic stages of grief.)

And here is why- it comes down to the word dignity.

To die with dignity.

I believe it is every person's right. But that word means many things.

M wanted, when he learned his diagnosis (but not his prognosis, mind you), to die with dignity. For him, that meant finding a medical trial to participate in. For him, that meant giving his death, not only his life, meaning.

He said over and over to me, he did not want to be defined by his brain cancer. He didn't want memorial funds in his name to raise funds for brain cancer research. He didn't want grey ribbons on all his friends' car bumpers, or 10Ks, or telethons. He wanted to be remembered for what he did, not what the cancer did to him.

He wanted to be remembered for his work on buildings that would stand for generations. He wanted to be remembered for his sense of humor and his brilliance. He didn't want to be forever associated with a disease. He didn't want to be Lou Gehrig.

He wanted to be himself, in control of himself. Just as Brittany Maynard did.

Only his idea of dying with dignity wasn't completing a bucket list of places to visit and things to see. It was saving other people. It was giving his death to other people, in the form of a medical trial. Of using his death to help understand the cancer, and perhaps keep other people from experiencing the same fate.

This contraption held his head down to a table for treatment.
The marks are for aiming the beams of radiation directly at the tumor.

At the time, the word that came to mind for me was noble. I thought he was unbearably noble. But he didn't see it that way.

For him, it was about dignity. About standing and facing his fate and making something better of it.

In a way, Brittany Maynard did the same thing. Her way of making something better of her death was to try to ensure that all other terminally ill people in the United States have the same option- the die before living is too painful to endure.

I know what kind of pain Brittany Maynard was facing. I know it. In one of her last statements, she said her helicopter flyover of the Grand Canyon was followed by her worst seizure yet.

Seizures are no joke. I know.

But dignity isn't just making sure you avoid pain. Dignity is prioritizing your humanity over your fear.

Yes, the right to die is incredibly important. And of course I have no way of knowing what options for treatment Brittany Maynard had. I don't know if a clinical trial was a possibility for her.

And as I've said a thousand times before, I don't believe that suicide is a selfish act. That Brittany was thinking of others is obvious to me, she made sure to say she hoped her husband would remarry and have children someday. She understood that life goes on for the loved ones of a dying person.

But at twenty nine years old, less than a year younger than me, I wish I could stare her in the eyes before she made the choice NOT to undergo any sort of treatment that would effect her quality of life for those last months, and ask her, "Who are you doing this for?"

I don't know if M's trial is saving any lives. I believe it could. I truly believe it could. It was dangerous, and it was frightening, but it worked.

And if it hadn't, doctors would know going forward what not to do, and why, when another terminally ill patient came along.

So maybe Brittany Maynard died with dignity. Maybe she did.

But maybe that kind of dignity isn't enough. Maybe, for me, death should be about more than dignity. It should be about more than avoiding suffering.

It should be about what you give the world with your life and death.

The OKO Tower, currently under construction in Moscow, and one of the projects M is most proud of.

When you're young, this is a much harder question. In your twenties, what do you really have to contribute to the wealth of human knowledge and understanding and beauty?

As you age though, you give more. You can't help it- living in of itself is giving.

My heart breaks for Brittany Maynard's family. Especially for her husband, who at least got to enjoy marrying the love of his life without the shadow of this prognosis and planned death over his head.

And I know that M is not typical. That his story is profoundly unique. But when I look at him, this man who at twenty four, the day after proposing to me, was diagnosed with the same brain cancer, and has since married and had three children...

I can't help but question the information Ms. Maynard was given. I can't help but question her motives. I can't help but question whether this wasn't about dying with dignity, but making a point.

And I would scream from the mountaintops to anyone else with a stage four, inoperable glioblastoma, "You can have more than dignity! You can be NOBLE!"

Maybe it's just from watching the man I love struggle always for what is best and most right for others, but I would always choose the latter.

Someday, the time may come when M is ready to choose to die. But I know him, and I know he would only ever make that choice if he thought living, under any circumstances, would give no more to the world than it would take from it.

M and his dad watching a pig race with the kids-
seven and a quarter years after being diagnosed with terminal, inoperable brain cancer.

I hope that is an equation that other people suffering from terminal illnesses can consider.



Edit:
In response to the question- what if *I* were diagnosed with a terminal, debilitating illness?
At this point in my life, if it were in fact the same glioblastoma, I might consider planning for a Brittany Maynard-esque death with dignity. Because the process of going through personality changes that might make me angry or even abusive towards my children is something they are not yet old enough to understand. My choice would be based on my desire to cause them the least amount of trauma- leaving them with memories of me intact. Again, the equation would be that living would give no more to the world than dying would take from it. But if faced with a similar illness before I had children or once they were old enough to understand the effects of diseases of the brain, my calculation would probably be different.