Home Base

I'm back from a ridiculously wonderful, way too brief trip back to my alma mater's reunions weekend. Every year, the day after I get back is one steeped in bittersweet melancholy: I am hung over on several levels, most of them emotional.

This was my 15th reunion year for my illustrious class, so although Husband and I attend reunions every year, this one was all about US and full of our friends, our classmates, our music, our memories. It was almost like having another wedding, with every face we have loved our that loved us in the virtual room at the same time.

While I cherished every second, I can't help but feel brokenhearted that it will take another five years to get everyone in the same space again. I am wondering if I can somehow pull off an initiative to get my entire class to agree to return every year instead of waiting until 2016. Unlikely, I know, but I am not one to shy away from a challenge. I'll work on that... tomorrow.

For me, going back to this place, to these people, is like tagging home base. I have been so many places since my four years on that campus and I have met so many people, but that is the place I loved, the place I grew up, and those are the people I loved and grew up alongside. Going back reminds me of who I was before all this and who I still am beneath it all. It is so, so valuable to me. It brings me both an aching longing (oh, the choices I would make differently!), an overwhelming sense of gratitude (how lucky I am to have this, and to have had it), and a full-to-the-brim kind of happiness.

There are funny observations, especially as we age -- the once-hotties who are now bald, or a little pudgy, or much more willing to stoop to talk to the likes of me and the former playas who now carry pacifiers in one hand and push a stroller in the other. Parenting small children outside, in heat, during a several-hour parade turns out to be a remarkably universal equalizer. No one looks suave and accomplished while surviving such a challenge, be he or she a hedge fund manager or CEO or regular stay at home parent. The older we get, the more we have in common, it seems, along with our common histories.

One big revelation this weekend was that part of my need to go back to my reunion every year is to see my guy friends. In college, I had many, many guy friends. In my career, I had many, many guy friends -- probably sometimes more than I had girl friends. As a stay at home mother, I really do not get the chance to interact with men very often, and when I do, it's kind of inappropriate for me to grow close to them. So my remaining guy friends from college, and these few chances to see them, have become incredibly important to me. Maybe that is why I enjoy Facebook so much -- and yes, I received tons of remarks about my Facebook activity this past weekend -- there, I am still allowed to talk to men! I felt so much more in balance this weekend, so much more able to engage both sides of my social personality. I love women and I cherish and adore my female friendships, but it was so nice to get to hang with my homeboys too.

I miss it all already. I am already upset about the people I missed or didn't talk to enough. I am dreading the long, hot summer ahead. I want nothing more than to scoop up my kids and go back now, reveling in the old sidewalks and the ice cream shops and the surreal green grass. I wish I could spend every day tagging home base.

Until we meet again, my friends, take care. I need you.

The Diet

This week, I go back to my alma mater for my fifteenth college reunion. I am trying not to think about how old "those people" seemed to me when I was a college undergrad -- how I snickered at the strollers in the courtyard, guffawed at the double strollers, and smirked at the placid, docile crowd. Our reunions are not known for being docile, but the denizens of the fifteenth reunion seemed to just be at that place in life.

And now I am one of them.

I am reveling in the fact that in the past few weeks, not one but TWO different people insisted I had to be in my twenties. They couldn't believe I had a child, much less three. Those were some awesome moments I had there. I have a notoriously young face, to which I credit my apple cheeks (read: plump cheeks). When I was younger, it annoyed me to be carded. Now, I want to kiss the person asking.

If you had asked me a month and a half ago, I would have told you that I was excited to go to my reunion, but I would have been a little bit lying. As a relentless extrovert, I usually love going to our annual reunions. I love seeing people, talking to people, standing in the crowds, seeing the familiar faces. I have loved it when employed with fabulous jobs, unemployed with no job at all, staying at home with children, newly postpartum, toting toddlers. But I had never gone back to a major reunion overweight before, and this year would be the first time.

Weight. It's such a tough subject for me to write about. Weight and I have been frenemies for lo these almost 37 years. In my adult life, we have mostly been on friendly terms, but in the past three years, it had turned ugly.

I gained a lot of weight with my third child. An unfair amount of weight, in my opinion, for how sick and awful I felt that pregnancy. Afterward, I lost a fair amount, but then my weight didn't budge at all for the past three years and change. Not at all.

I have tried to be healthy, but the truth is I have a sweet tooth and three small children who attract sugar like magnets. My sporadic attempts to work out and my third baby/toddler, he of the Hell-No-I-Won't-Go-to-Gym-Childcare, kept me firmly in a five-pound range of misery.

I am unhappy overweight. It doesn't feel like me. I'm a Leo and an extrovert, and I like to be seen, literally and figuratively, in the world. But when I am overweight, I don't just want to disappear, I feel like I actually am invisible. I feel like men do not look at me at all and women don't respect me. It's tough to write that, but that is how I feel. Less than. Ironic, when I feel "less than" only when I am actually "more than." The truth is, when I am overweight, it's probably the vibes I am actually putting out into the world that lead men to overlook me and other women to dismiss me, at least in part. But the result is the same, and I hate it.

Four and a half weeks ago, Husband and I started a diet. I don't want to proselytize, because diets are very personal, and all sorts of things work for all sorts of people at different times in their lives. My favorite "diet" is simply eating less and exercising more, for the record. But this time, we went on a medically-supervised, lower carb, lower calorie diet. It doesn't require exercise, which was what I could manage best right now. In the four weeks and change, I have lost twenty pounds. Husband, in typical male style, has lost more like thirty. (Bastard. Sigh.)

Now, I am really, really excited to go to my reunion. Not because I think I now look "acceptable" or thin -- because I still have a ways to go for that adjective -- but because now I feel like I look more like me. I feel more like what I am displaying to the world is more reflective of who and where I am in life. I still look very much like a mother of three children, with the muffin top and the somewhat depressing breasts to prove it. But now my face looks more like what I expect to find in the mirror. It's a face I haven't seen for a while.

I'm so glad my face is back.

The conversation

"Have people at school been talking about Osama bin Laden?"

Firstborn and C., in chorus: "Who?"

"Oh, nothing."

F: "No, who is that?!"

"Just a bad man who died a few days ago."

F: "Why was he bad?"

C.: "Did he hurt animals?"

"No, he hurt people. A lot of people. He was a terrorist."

C.: "Oh, I know what a terrorist is."

"Do you guys know what happened on 9/11?"

(in chorus) "No."

"Do you know about the World Trade Center? The Twin Towers?"

F: "You mean when the airplanes flew into the buildings and they fell down? And everyone in them died?"

"Yes. Osama bin Laden was the man -- the terrorist -- who made that happen. He ordered that to happen."

C. : "Then it is a good thing he is gone."

"Yes."

C.: "Mama, when there are bad men like terrrists, if we find them can we just pick up a shotgun and shoot them?"

"I don't know. I mean, I think it's probably better if you try to take them to prison alive. But that is what happened to this bad man. The soldiers found him and shot him."

C: "Are all terrrists bad men, Mama?"

"Yes. All of them are bad men. They try to scare people with violence. That's why we call them terrorists."

F: "Mom, didn't the Twin Towers fall down, like, a hundred years ago?"

"No, honey. That happened just ten years ago. Right before you were born."

And now they know. They know that there are real bad men in the world, and that they hurt real people. I had no idea that conversation would happen today.

Work

So, I got a job. I know, I know, I haven't told you anything! It all happened kind of fast. Long story short, I am helping another writer assemble a memoir for a celebrity. It's not writing my own book, but it certainly is a lot of writerly thinking and process. I'm enjoying the brain exercise and the material. I am learning a lot about a certain someone whom I cannot name!

This isn't the first time I have worked for this writer, and it's not the first time I have taken work since I have had children. But it is really the first time my children are old enough to appreciate that Mama has a job. I get to use nifty phrases like, "No, you can't play on my computer, because I have to work." These are not words they have heard from me before. It's kind of fun.

But sometimes, it's not fun. "What do you mean, you have to WORK?" Firstborn says. "Since when do YOU have a job?" Yeah, ouch. Nice. Sometimes it's not so fun when I have both a deadline for a man who pays me and deadlines for people who most certainly do not -- PTA obligations. Teacher Appreciation Week gifts to buy. Laundry to do. Bills to pay. Cleaning for the cleaning person (I know you do it too) who only comes every blue moon. Expectations.

I like this work because it's temporary -- the book is due in July -- and I can do it in chunks each day. But I don't like that when I feel like I COULD be putting clothes away, I feel like I REALLY should be doing work. I don't like that on Little B.'s days off from preschool, I feel relieved if I can work while he watches Nick Jr. instead of playing with him. That's not really ideal.

This is just a taste of what "real" working-outside-the-home or from-home moms experience. My hat is off to you. Because this whole juggling act is super hard, and my brain hurts from the thinking. I sure do sleep well at night, though!