Time to Let Him Go

Being the mother of a soon-departing college freshman is not a new feeling - in fact, this is departure number three; the first two have already successfully completed that four-year experience in one piece. They've even decided to take up residence close to home and family, and we enjoy a close relationship where I can watch proudly as they navigate the adult world. It's just that this is the last to go. The landscape for my baby is about to change dramatically, and my own landscape will soon reflect his absence in a quieter, less chaotic home life, but also strangely empty of all that teen energy, angst and exuberance.

I pride myself on not being a helicopter mom: one of those parents buzzing overhead to monitor the life of her child, diving in at any sign of difficulty. But I like to think I am also supportive, available and reasonably helpful. This child's leaving is significantly different from the previous two in yet another way, however: he doesn't like to open up to us. His relative silence means I worry that I won't have any sense of the daily joys and struggles so far away, that he will not want me to get to know his friends, that he won't call, text or Skype regularly, so I won't be able to hear in his voice what's going right, or what's going wrong. "You're so annoying, Mom. I'm fine" is a regular refrain when I push him to share.

This newly emerging young man has some added challenges - not uncommon to many teens. Learning difficulties make school difficult. ADHD means it's hard for him to maintain focus. The fact that he finds it hard to find the words to explain what's going on in his brain leave him reticent to discuss this fact with teachers - particularly when they're strangers in a new setting. I feel for him. I wish I could talk to his professors myself. But I won't. Because he is also proud. And I am not a helicopter mom. So that task is now up to him.

My daughter consoles me that I have done all I can to help her little brother reach this point successfully, and that now it's up to him. I know that, developmentally, she is right, but Number 3 doesn't necessarily follow the clock. It's vexing.

It is not that he's never been away from home before. For the past six summers, he's gone to sleep-away camp in Maine for a two-month stretch. A natural athlete, and patient coach and instructor of younger children, he thrives at camp. But after two months, in an environment I know intimately, under the care of adults I've known since my own teen years, he comes home.

Still, the day of his departure for High Point University is drawing undeniably closer - only a week from today and we will be moving him into his dorm room. In what seems like a "kiss-and-run" policy, the university schedules move-in day on Saturday, a Convocation Sunday morning, and then it's off to the races.

Why does a mother worry about this so much? Is it because the definition of her role is about to change so radically? Is it the thought that our relationship is about to change forever? If this were a multiple choice test, I'd have to leave room not just for a choice of, d). all of the above, but one more option: e). all of the above and more.

I know enough about the brain to understand that this is my limbic system overruling my better judgment. The drive to protect, to nurture, to keep our offspring safe is a primal drive. My rational brain says, he'll be home in just over a month (his college has an extended fall break); he is just a phone call away; Southwest flies to a town close-by in less than an hour. All of these facts sound reassuring, but don't erase the feeling of looming loss and powerlessness.

It is, according to the calendar, time to let him go. He will experience all the newness of college life and adjust easily. Or he will struggle with the freedom, choices and changes of boundaries. He will be away from daily interaction with family and the comforts of home. In either case, I will continue to poke, call, text and be that "annoying Mom" who wants to stay involved in her son's life, even far away.

I am proud of my young man. He's accomplished so much in 17 years. I am thrilled for him that he is strong, autonomous, smart. I know he has the strength to take on life's challenges and I pray that the values we've worked to instill stand up under the pressure of adjustment to this new life, new friends, more strenuous academic expectations.

In a week, we cast our baby out of the nest. I will watch with pride and tears as he spreads his wings to fly. It is all a mother can do. Right?

The Wondrous Waltz of the Daffodils

William Wordsworth's classic verse, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, that ode to spring's temporal dance, evokes the seasonal dance of wind-struck daffodils, "Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Wandering and dancing in the breeze." The poet's gaze - espying clouds of yellow, "Waving their heads in spritely dance" - how can we help but be joyful in their company: "And I, beside them, dance in glee", even as the grey, icy winds of winter give way to the indomitable sunshine of spring.

Garrison Keillor recites the poem on April 15, 2011 in his daily Writer's Almanac (see podcast below). The date for me is meaningful: my father, David Stevens who, well into his 80s would visit nursing homes to read poetry he loved to "the old people", would recite this most beloved poem by heart at every reading. This year, it was as if he touched me from another dimension, channeled by Keillor: my father the accountant would have danced with glee at the conclusion of this day, April 15, that the long tax season, the grays of thousands of 1040 long forms and long days and nights under the sore artifice of office fluorescent lights, could finally give way to fresh air, suddenly lengthened days and the sunshine of spring.

Since my own childhood, when Daddy and I would walk of an early spring day, one of our favorite things to do, daffodil's have evoked the dance of freedom, light and love. So now, in this season of spring and light and hope, I think of him when I take my walk in the woods, and "when oft upon my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, I gaze upon the inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude."

My father was also a poet in his own right. My own yard offers up a meager yield of only three lonely dancers, but I cut them to grace our Passover table and take delight in gazing upon them, as I know Daddy still must. "And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils."

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Note to Self: I Have Promises to Keep

I was grabbed by Orna Ross's Creative Intelligence blog post about the paradox of creative intention. She advises us to look at intention, not as a plan, but as a guiding principle, recognizing that despite the force that focused intention can create to make things happen, there are equally forceful and opposing actions being served up by the universe that may derail us from achieving what we really want.

For the sake of clarity, I am listing "Orna's paradoxes" here:
* To clearly visualise what we want, then let go of any attachment to the outcome.
* To be prepared to do our part while allowing life to do its.
* To work well and make appropriate efforts while also playing well, with lots of rest, relaxation, contemplation and meditation.
* To be persistent but not bull-headed.
* To work towards success while welcoming failure as a learning opportunity.
* To be resilient but not self-satisfied.
* To know what we want at the same time as knowing we are complete without it.
* To fully appreciate what we’ve already (co)created while directing energy towards what we’re (co)creating now.

But what about the question of setting clear intentions - and holding them central? Case in point: my novel in progress, After the Party's Over. Already two years in the writing and 90+ pages in, I have been stymied for months over forcing my seat in the chair to move the plot forward. I am waiting for the main character to tell me what's on her mind. She has revealed quite a bit recently, but I find my eyes glued elsewhere, not to her.

The paradox of inattention has derailed my best intentions. What's keeping me from writing?

First, paying clients. This is a good thing, as we have to eat and pay the mortgage. But there is a paradox. In my social marketing business, I help scientists, educators, researchers, and health professionals tell their stories. Storytelling still - just not my own.

Next, as part of my professional toolkit, I use social media. My professional blog offers a way to amplify client stories, as well as initiate discussions with colleagues and engage in conversations about social marketing. In my novel, some of the characters text and tweet, but no serious social networking is keeping them from living their lives as I write them.

Then, of course, Twitter. I am pretty judicious about turning off the Tweetdeck when it comes to meeting client deadlines. Just not my own. In fact, I had every intention of writing three pages a day during November or, in tweet-speak, #NaNoWriMo. That is, until client deadlines interfered. So I postponed my personal NaNoWriMo for December. And here we are, mid-December, and my poor main character Ellen is still frozen in time waiting at the airport in Detroit, having met up with her ex-husband, the one she walked out on, leaving their three children to his care years before. They are suspended in time until I get my butt on the seat and fingers on keyboard to write them a surprise encounter.

Family, college applications for youngest son, dogs...these are things I have let get in the way.

But it is still December, when miracles do happen. I have high hopes for the week between Xmas and New Year's, when NOTHING HAPPENS IN WASHINGTON, to turn my attentions to fulfilling my better intentions before another year slips away.

Because storytelling is what I do. Fully recognizing the paradox in this plan, my intention is to make my own at least as important as everyone else's.

What about you?

Families that Play Together: The Ultimate Block Party

Simon Says, "Play!" That was the message for the more than 50,000 parents and children making the pilgrimage to Central Park on October 3. While beautiful fall weather played a key role in its success, the Ultimate Block Party (UBP) organized by Play for Tomorrow, was undoubtedly a hit for the nursery through young teen set who engaged in the vast array of activities to encourage kids - and adults - to engage in creative fun at the park's Naumberg Band Shell.

Families came, teachers streamed in, caregivers from all over the city, and even from as far away as New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. While Gordon from Sesame Street led a sing-along of songs familiar to young children and grownups alike, the myriad other happenings families could explore, decorate and climb on - from the giant brain collage sponsored by the Children's Museum of Manhattan, to the half-million green Legos (to demonstrate that one doesn't need color or special adornment to encourage builders' imaginations) growing into an intricate Lego City - ensured a continuous and enthusiastic crowd at each play station. Stroller jams were seen in the vicinity of a corral of cardboard boxes, where kids eagerly clambered, colored and took cover in newly make-believe caves. PlayWorks offered a chance for children from all over the city to play together in hula hoop contests, four-square and playground games. Sidewalk drawing, drumming and dancing gave families an excuse to engage in the spontaneous silliness, brain and body stretching we normally associate with growing up. Clowns without Borders bent from their high stilts to shake awestruck little hands.

There was a serious component to the joyous cacophony, one that "Play Doctors" wearing white lab coats took the time to explain to encourage parents, teachers and caregivers to incorporate play at home and school on a regular basis. Scientists have confirmed through years of research that play is an invaluable component of child development encouraging socialization, creativity, emotional adjustment, and brain development. To understand the link between play and learning, organizers gave everyone a "Play Book" at the gate - a guide to how kids learn through play and activities to take home. The UBP Web site links to various articles and research reports documenting play's effectiveness. According to Play for Tomorrow organizers Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a faculty member and researcher on play and learning at Temple University, and Dr. Roberta Golinkoff who studies play, language acquisition and learning as a faculty member at the University of Delaware, the current school climate in which children as young as five must forgo recess for "test preparation" is taking the joy - but also essential opportunities for brain growth, exercise and motor skills development - out of learning. And yet, play is how children explore their world, create possibilities, socialize and learn empathy, say the researchers.

As Andy Ackerman, Executive Director of the Children's Museum of Manhattan and a co-founder of UBP, put it, "We knew the event was a success because all day long, what we saw was a lot of the back of kid's necks." Everyone was absorbed in activity.

The Central Park event is only the beginning of what organizers envision as a movement to put play back into learning. Other cities, from Baltimore to Denver, are already planning to host their own block parties, with distinctive local flavor. As UBP President Susan Magsamen noted, "The New York Ultimate Block Party may be the kickoff, but it is our vision that cities all over the country will create their own festivals to bring home the art and science of play. We have to make sure parents, teachers and caregivers understand play is fundamental to learning - that it shouldn't happen on just this one day, but everyday."

"Sunny days, Sweepin' the clouds away...," sang throngs of smiling children as Gordon led them in the Sesame Street theme song. It's nice to remember that play is essential to learning. More important, it's vital to a child's development and well-being. Even more to the point, play may be a necessary ingredient to keep our brains flexible, our bodies fit and our emotional life in balance to create, innovate and learn through the lifespan.

So the next time your inner child calls you to stop work and go play - whether it's a walk in the park, a game of Scrabble, or chalk drawing on the sidewalk - pay attention to that voice.

Now go out and play - Simon Says!

Woolly Moves Audiences "Full Circle"

Woolly Mammoth, always avant of the unconventional, has once again created a tour-de-force theatrical experience. Full Circle, playing through November, pushes the envelope - or shall we say, the audience - in every direction possible, from lobby to rehearsal hall, from watching actors crosing a single wire "rope" bridge, to watching action from a descending catwalk in a reconfigured theater-in-the-round. As theater exercise, it is bracing; as art, it doesn't work.

How to "read" a play where Pamela Harriman and Warren Buffet meet in East Berlin at the start of the revolution (Tear down that wall, Mr. Gorbachev!) as Pamela is being left holding a baby until his mother returns, where socialite Harriman and billionaire Buffet then meet up again at wedding feast between a young woman, whom Pamela has hired as a young East German "revolutionary" as the baby's nanny, and both Pamela and the nanny are pursued for "kidnapping" former Prime Minister Erich Honecker's baby (Karl Marx Honecker is the result of a union between the aged P.M. and his young mistress Christa)? Where they escape the Stassi police with the help of the au pair pushing Pamela and baby in a grocery cart that passes for a truck with no transmission? Or where the play-within-a-play that starts the program is performed in ersatz Chinese and German, with subtitles, between a Chinese Communist Party apparatchik and an East German agricultural expert about selling sharing land for rice production? All this with occasional audience sing-alongs, karaoke style, to the Beatles' "All You Need is Love."

I frankly didn't get it.

According to program notes, playwright Charles Mee was inspired by The Chalk Circle, a Chinese "zaju" play by Li Qianfu, which in turn inspired The Chalk Circle by German poet Klabund, finally punching out in Bertolt Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle.

The knowledge of the play's antique provenance left me wondering about the "chalk circle" proscribed on the remodeled Woolly stage, where Woolly's Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz portrayed his fictional East Germany counterpart as artistic director of the East Berlin theater, belaboring his alleged artistic "crimes" during a long second-act monologue before being appointed judge for the crime of kidnapping the Honecker baby. His State-prescribed duty was to determine whose baby Karl Marx Honecker actually was - the birth mother (the now-deceased Honecker's ex-mistress), Pamela Harriman (who invited the audience to join her and Warren for their coming nuptials in Biarritz) or the young woman who nurtured the baby throughout the the chase by Stassi officers as they ran from Berlin to Dresden.

Shalwitz, instead of being prosecuted for cooperating with Communist authorities to remove the "art" from his theater, is named judge to determine who should retain custody of baby Karl Marx. As if to underscore the allusion, the police note that the theatrical director's task as judge is of Solomonic proportion.

At one point, while we were gathered in the theater, I found myself sitting next to Bob Mondello, theater critic, taking notes on a manilla envelope. While it was too dark to see what he wrote, I did note that the critic cracked a smile once or twice (the show is nothing if not absurdist humor), but I also saw a wide and undisguised yawn. Once we moved out into the lobby for intermission, which turned out to be an arranged wedding for the young woman with her brother's moronic next door neighbor/auto mechanic who changed tires only, replete with dancing on the table and fortune cookies (!) for the audience, I lost track of Mondello, but did wonder about the accessibility of this play for the elderly, wheelchair bound or otherwise-impaired theater-goer who might want to puzzle out the possibilities of this play.

Though people speculated aloud whether this show was designed to point up how those experiencing the opening between East and West back in '89 could have viewed the replacement of one -ism -- Communism -- for another 'ism -- Capitalism, most people appeared to take away the fortune cookies.

All together now, "All you need is love. Da-dah-dah-da-dah."

I can't say how this was supposed to fit together. Only thing I can say for certain: this show was not about was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Or the trials of King Solomon. Or the wisdom of Woolly.

Chéri

New Miramax film based on Colette's novels, Chéri, and La Fin de Chéri. Is it still taboo for a romance between an older woman and a younger man in our society? This was la Belle Epoque in France, where a "lady of the evening" (Michelle Pfeiffer) found herself too old to court the haute societe of the day but takes on the 19-year old son of one of her erstwhile friends and former rivals (Kathy Bates) and they find themselves, mysteriously, falling in love. But by that time, it is too late. A beautiful cinematic achievement, with lovely performances and gorgeous costumes.

What do we do make of the romantic love of an older woman for a young man today? Is that a romantic notion, or as the young woman who Cheri finally weds observes, do we still think of such liaisons as "debauched?" Is it okay for celebrities but not the rest of us?

Would such a pairing today end up in tragedy? What do you think?

Mortgage-Backed Suspense: Crisis Redux

Hubby and I wrote a novel in the '90s based on his work for the now-infamous Freddie Mac. We didn't know then that Freddie and its sister mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae would today be barely afloat under the weight of a nation of mortgage and derivative investment defaults and under U.S. government control. He was then working out their vast pool of defaulted multifamily loans, as opposed to today's multitudinous backlog of single family and subprime mortgages (what's old is new again). Most of his work took place in NYC, home of the neo-meltdown of 2008-09, among corrupt, greedy and unethical lenders and landlords in some of New York's seediest, pre-gentrified neighborhoods (remember, this was the last housing crisis - in the early 1990s).

The book is out now, the hardships experienced in the wake of this mortgage crisis eerily presaging today's economic melt down. The new suspense thriller is available on Amazon.com.

Check out an excerpt from Satan's Mortgage ©2009 by Robin S. Payes and Richard I. Payes:
It was noon when Tommy, Louis Peller's driver, dropped him off at the corner. Louis told Tommy to meet him back at the same corner at 2:30, sharp. No dilly-dallying in this neighborhood, especially not after 3 p.m., when the hoodlums got out of school and the dope dealers and their couriers took up residence on every-other street corner.

Despite the squalor of the street, Louis was savoring the sunshine on this brilliant blue spring day. The sidewalks, for once, were deserted. This part of the Bronx was generally teeming with life whenever he came up here to check out a building, boiling over with tension. Louis liked to get in quick, and get out.

Suddenly, he heard an explosion, the shattering of glass and the crash of brick on concrete. It sounded like a bomb detonating in his path. As he looked up, he witnessed the top two floors of this six-story apartment house crumble right before his eyes. He watched, dumbfounded, to see the upper third of the mural fold in on itself, leaving only the names and the lower third of the cross to mark the memory of the young victims of poverty.

Peller immediately ran, thrusting himself to safety. He crouched behind a dumpster, the closest cover he could find. He smelled fire. The air was blistering. Through his nostrils, he breathed in acrid smoke. He could almost feel the air singe his eyebrows. Chunks of brick and mortar rained down around him. He crouched down still further, searching for somewhere safer to hide, some cover to protect his head.

He could hear people wailing, whimpering, weeping nearby.

Looking at the luminous sky now choking with flame, he had to shield his eyes against the debris. When he dropped his gaze he saw people crawling from the building on hands and knees like animals, choking in the smoke-filled air, screaming, as panic flowed into the street. Smoky silhouettes of mothers with babies clutched in their arms their cast shadows against the sidewalk partially obscured by billowing smoke and yellow flames that were breaking out in what remained of the top two floors.

Peller was frightened, trembling. He had to get away. He decided to make a mad dash, even though he was partially sheltered now from the fallout of the apartment building. It was difficult to breathe. He must make it out of there, quickly.

No. He felt guilty for his selfish impulse to flee when people's lives were at stake. Could he -- dare he run back to help?

"Quit wasting time, Peller," he lectured himself, angrily. "Do something. The right thing." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

He ran.