In the Matter of Saggy

As a former intellectual property lawyer, my ears perked up when my children began a spirited debate -- in the backseat of the car -- about whether my daughter could "be" a "person" her brother invented.

In short, they were fighting over the rights to Old Man Saggy.

My son's frail, elderly alter ego is a beloved figure in our home.  His signature gesture is to stick out his elbows and perform a spry dance in which his upper body moves side to side and his feet shuffle in rhythm.  Because of this, I consider Old Man Saggy a throwback to the vaudeville age, full of twinkly reminiscences about the Ziegfeld Follies and the showgirl he married in a shotgun wedding.

But his main purpose around here is getting my son out of things.  As in: "I [Old Man Saggy] can't walk to the park with you.  I'm old and tired, and my legs are broken!"

Though occasionally annoyed by Old Man Saggy's infirmity, my daughter and I are quite fond of him.  Sometimes we make up songs about him, or indulge his terrible knock-knock jokes, or hang out with him until my son re-emerges to play Minecraft and wants us to scram.

So when my daughter found a plastic smoking pipe somewhere, she wanted in on the Old Man Saggy action.

"Old Man Saggy!" she sang in the backseat, waggling her elbows, with the pipe in her mouth. 

My son reacted with the speed and ferocity of the Disney Corporation's legal department.  Old Man Saggy was his!  She could not "be" him!  Only my son "was" Old Man Saggy!

Driving, I tried to recall the principles memorialized in the federal law of copyright.  Failing that, I made a judicious attempt to "split the baby" -- or rather, the Old Man. 

"How about you can sing about him, but you can't be him?"  I suggested.

"You can be Old Granny Saggy," my son chimed in.  "You have to be a girl!"

This was completely unacceptable.  How dare we insult her like this!  Old Granny Saggy?  She had the freaking pipe! 

It seemed to me she had a point.  "You really can't tell her who she can 'be' or not 'be,'" I informed my son.  "Just let her play the way she wants."

"But I invented him!" came the retort. 

Yeah.  I got that, too.  If, as a child, I had gone to the trouble to put on a purple beret, pencil a thin mustache over my lip, and make arrogant pronouncements in a French accent to create a character called Pierre, mostly to amuse my mother, not that I ever did this, and a younger sibling had tried to "be" Pierre, I would have been like: "Mom!!"

As I tried to recall the factors weighed in the "fair use" defense, we pulled into the driveway.  My son went inside while my daughter sat in the car, mulling her options. 

When she came in five minutes later, my son was in his room.  "Mom," she said, entering the kitchen.

With the pipe in her mouth, she crooked her elbows and did a little soft-shoe, singing: "Old Man Saggy!" 

"Wonderful!" I said. 

This seemed to mark the end, for now, of the Old Man Saggy debate.  A few minutes later, she came into the kitchen again, "making a call" on an old cell phone. 

"I have a friend who's a policeman.  Did you know that?" she piped up. "He's going into San Francisco, and I'm calling him to tell him there's a donut shop there that's open at night, Monday and Tuesday." 

(Image: Albert V Bryan Federal District Courthouse - Alexandria Va, by Tim Evanson [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons)

Life-changing magic

Today at the library, there were 42 people on the waitlist to check out a book about cleaning the house.  Dave put us down as 43rd.  He estimates it will be our turn "around Thanksgiving." 

I have few opportunities to impress Dave with my frugality, so rather than just shell out $17 for the paperback edition, I am prepared to virtuously wait five months to learn how to declutter my house.  If the first chapter is called "Clean Out the Bathroom Drawer Full of Old Toothbrushes, Hairbrushes, Lice Removal Supplies, and Floss Picks," I'd like to think that, by November, I'll be able to skip to Chapter 2.

We started talking about the book because it has such a good title.  Whoever's idea it was to take an essentially dull subject ("tidying up") and preface it with the phrase "life-changing magic," I'd like to shake that person's hand.  My assumption is that it was some mini-Don Draper at a New York publishing house, but it could have been the author herself.  If so, she can add it to her list of accomplishments, which include being an adorable Japanese woman with perfect bangs and the ability to wear (I'm almost certain) horizontal stripes and tiny white shorts, and look great.

Also she seems to have written an international bestseller about -- as far as I can tell -- throwing things out.

The fact that we are 43rd on the waitlist is interesting.  I'm turning 43 this year, and when my mom was 43, every time she looked at a clock, it was 43 past the hour.  She'd glance up at random moments to find it was always 10:43, 1:43, or 3:43 -- even in the middle of the night.  None of us could explain it, but it did not seem good, not at all.  At fourteen, I concluded that 43 was a spooky age, when a malevolent universe began at last to take notice of your existence.

Now I am forty-two, and -- whoa!  That day is coming pretty fast!  Suddenly it seems important to start hitting the gym at 6 a.m., cooking healthy meals, organizing the house --in short, to have my act together.  I have always chased the dream of doing things right (at one point, my goal was to write a how-to book called Exemplary Living), so that even while banging the drum, blowing the horn, and squeezing the accordion in the one-man band of single parenting, my instinct is to try to add juggling and card tricks to the mix.  Because that would be better.
 
I'd like to go into 43 with the excellent habits of writing, exercising, menu planning, and -- yes -- keeping the house neat in swift, powerful strokes like a Zen master.  If not, though, Dave will still like me quite a bit -- clutter, takeout pizza, and all.  And I'll still like me quite a bit.

And that is the real life-changing magic.

Independence

Every four months, I get bored.  As an INTP (the same Myers-Briggs personality type that makes Big Bang Theory characters so adorable), I do not like doing the same mundane, predictable things over and over.  Rather, I need some kind of challenge so I can think about it. 

Being married was one such challenge, and I was hardly ever bored.  Next, being a single working mother of two preschoolers kept me on my toes. 

These days, the kids occasionally lose a tooth or argue, but I no longer cogitate about how I cannot possibly do this by myself.  This has freed me up, over the last two years, to take up tennis, meditation, online dating, blogging, and (briefly) cooking.  A few of these have been unqualified successes, and the others were fun while they lasted. 

Because the kids are sometimes with their dad, these jaunts don't take much time away from them.  Plus, they advance my parenting plan: showing that Being A Grown-Up is Not A Drag.  In fact, the main thing that separates adulthood from childhood is a heady sense of agency -- of being able to do pretty much what you want. 

The older I get, the more this sense of personal freedom expands.  (Sure, I have bills to pay and tasks to do, but -- in a larger sense --  I "chose" them, rather than choosing to be an itinerant rail-rider, which doubtless comes with its own set of problems.)

I've lived in the Bible Belt, New England, and the Bay Area; worked as a waitress, newspaper reporter, front desk clerk, corporate litigator, activist, English tutor, and government attorney; and studied chemistry, Constitutional law, and medieval poetry.  I got married, had two kids, and now am happily divorced and re-coupled.  Throughout it all, no one has said "You can't" or even "You shouldn't."   I have been waved through every door, with a "Sure, why not you?  Give it a try!" 

My latest venture is a 6 a.m. exercise class, three days a week -- because I felt like it was time for a new challenge.  By now, I am so accustomed to freedom and opportunity, I don't think twice about lighting out in any direction that strikes my fancy.  ("Sure, why not you?") 

Thank you America, for everything.  You really "get" me.  Mwah. 

(Image: "Statue of Liberty, WrestleMania" by Schen (Del Rio Fireworks) (CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Happy campers

I believe my son takes after me in that he considers large animals "smelly" and "not worth it."  Still, with his dad's encouragement, he is now signed up -- along with his sister, who is stoked -- for a week of riding lessons from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., aka Horse Camp.

Like many families with working parents, our summer is all about "camps."  Somehow, my children -- who hail from an undistinguished line of immigrants -- will be spending the next eight weeks in tennis lessons, swimming lessons, and English riding lessons, when they are not receiving combat training and spiritual instruction at the local dojo. 

"I feel like the freaking Kennedy Compound," I said to a work friend, staggering out of my office after the latest camp confirmation email.  "When I was a kid, I watched The Brady Bunch all summer.  That was it." 

Though it has cost a small -- okay, a large -- fortune to have my kids in childcare their entire lives, they seem none the worse for it.  They make friends easily with whatever playmates show up, and are trained in the niceties of taking turns, sharing, and fair play. 

Once, when my son was seven, he was chatting with a new acquaintance (age six) at the park.  The boy explained that he couldn't hang from the monkey bars, because his arm recently had been in a cast. 

"Sorry to hear that," said my son, and the conversation moved on.

This answer was so socially perfect, I doubt I could have pulled it off.  (Me, age 40: "Oh?  How did you break it? . . . Wow.  You really shouldn't have been doing that! . . . Sorry.") 

The difference between us makes sense, as growing up I was -- by both circumstance and preference -- a shut-in, whose idea of a big time at age seven was going across the street to my friend Michelle's house.  She had a playhouse in her backyard, and we used to pretend The Queen was coming and clean the house.  That was the game: cleaning.  Pretty soon, I'd be like: "It doesn't look like she's coming.  I'm going to go home and watch TV." 

(The Queen is still not coming, by the way.  This fact has saved me a lot of time and effort.) 

But tomorrow, we're off on a family vacation to New Mexico, so all the camps will have to wait.  Or, if the kids prefer, we'll give it a camp name:

Camp Underpants in the Desert

Camp Don't Teach Your Cousin to Say "Poop Jet" Because, Like You Two Clowns, She Will Never Stop Saying It

Camp Go Bother Nana, For She Has Missed You So

Camp Get the Heck Out of Camp, Because We Really Don't Need to Learn Anything This Week

Camp Freeeedommmm!

Finally, a camp I'm qualified to lead. 

Let's do it.

One less

On the second day of our Fort Bragg camping trip, Dave and I took the four kids (ages 17 through 6) to Glass Beach.  They were exploring the rocks when three young siblings showed up with their mother and baby sister.  These were locals -- who seemed to understand things like "the tide" -- out killing time with a crab bucket.

Soon, all the kids were prying small, black crabs from the rocks and throwing them in the bucket.  The bucket's owner, a boy named Tommy, had a vision or master plan.  Because he enjoyed slimy things and exhibited the qualities of a leader, my daughter took to Tommy immediately as a kindred spirit.  Within minutes of meeting him, she was grabbing handfuls of crustaceans like she'd been doing it all her life, yelling "Tommy!  Pass the bucket!"

Meanwhile, my son -- who prior to this trip could not be roused from his Minecraft game for food or water -- was off climbing the sheer face of a cliff, which he had specifically been told not to do.  There was a sign about this very danger, in both English and Spanish, which depicted a Bart Simpson-like boy tumbling headfirst into the ocean as the cliff's edge crumbled.  First I read it to him in English.  Then I read it in Spanish, in a flamboyant accent that -- halfway through -- took too much effort, so I stopped.  "Los crumblos!" I paraphrased dramatically.

"No, I don't think that's . . ." said Dave.  Well, everyone got the idea.

Eventually, after a lovely time, we had to leave.  As he scaled a ragged wall of sand high above our heads, I yelled at my son a little bit, who looked bored because he was still alive.  So what was the big deal?

On the paved path above the beach, my daughter announced Tommy's plan for the dozens of crabs now squirming over each other in close quarters: It was to dump them into a single tide pool, where -- having been gathered from all over -- they would make a new life together, claw in claw.

"Probably some of them don't even want to be in there with all the others," Dave remarked to no one in particular, maybe just to see who would say what.

"Well, they're a family now," I said after a silence, "so they can lump it."  Probably the kids weren't even listening.  It was just one more obscure joke between the parents. 

"I'll tell you one thing," he continued.  "Somewhere in there's a guy who feels, right now, like one less lonely crab."

". . . You are my favorite grown-up," I said.

And then we all went to Starbucks to charge our phones.

(Image: "Fort Bragg, CA: Glass Beach, King Tide" by Ellin Beltz (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons)

Gearing up

Often when we are not good at something, we chalk it up to an ineradicable character flaw when the truth is, we simply lack the proper tools. 

Since my dental hygienist recommended soft picks, I have had champion flossing sessions, all while thinking how proud she would be of me.  For years, I felt I was being asked to play a primitive stringed instrument -- an erhu or diddley bow -- in my mouth.  I was not great at it.  Now I am like: Hello?  Where have you been, people at G.U.M.?  There's nothing wrong with me that this mass-produced plastic implement can't fix!

Cooking regular meals is another area where I need some help.  My domestic role model has always been Mrs. Murry of A Wrinkle in Time.  She heated up her children's dinners on the Bunsen burner in her home laboratory, where she was busy figuring out how to travel great distances by "folding" the fabric of space-time.

Certainly, sometimes she made French toast and other kitchen foods -- but just as often, her five-year-old genius was fixing himself a sandwich, the twins were at basketball practice, Meg was moping around, and Mrs. Murry was "watching a pale blue fluid move slowly through a tube" while trying to keep the chemicals out of a "big, earthenware dish of stew." (p. 39) 

For her, the Bunsen burner was the tool that enabled her to feed her family, before they were whisked away on an intergalactic adventure by witches.  For me, that tool is a full-service grocery store with an industrial-size kitchen, where -- at a moment's notice -- sushi, soup, and breaded chicken tenders can be purchased.  Self-affirmation: There's nothing wrong with me that a team of professional chefs, a roll of Saran Wrap, and a microwave can't fix!

The third thing I'm not good at is folding fitted sheets.  I think that was next on Mrs. Murry's to-do list of discoveries, but she died before she could figure it out. 

Nobody's perfect.

Off with her head

For a special project, the second graders learned to do portraits in the style of Modigliani.  Touchingly, my son chose to draw his sister.

All of us thought it turned out well, except . . .

"I look at that picture in class every day, and I feel ashamed." -- The Artist, who to this day cannot understand what possessed him to represent the human neck as he did

"Why did you make my neck like that?" -- The Subject, hitting The Artist with a stuffed monkey

Art is thankless work.