Miami Part Two

Posted by mellissahughes on

Okay, so you’re back for more I guess… The adventure continues…

Tuesday morning, I’m sitting at the Starbucks on Miracle Mile. My friend Reggie the countertenor (aka The Great Black Hope) works at a Bucks chain, so he’s always good for free latte’s… and we all know about the hotspot if you’re a T-Mobile customer, which I am. So anyways, I’m sipping my latte, checking my e-mail, answering facebook and myspace requests, when I remembered that I wasn’t fronted my travel voucher. Upon arriving in Miami on previous Seraphic Fire gigs I was handed a check for my voucher, which I usually cashed in two large 100’s and the other chunk in twenties and fifties…. But this time I was told that my voucher would be included with my concert fee, one big check at the end of the week. In other words, I was on my own for food. Ok, not cool, but doable….

So to Bank of America’s webpage I went. I needed to know how much I could play with, and wanted to make sure certain bills had gone through, my direct deposit had hit, etc. What greeted me on my webpage was eighty-dollars in mp3 charges. I apparently am the last person on the planet to download Limewire, a bit-torrent friendly, file-sharing community in which you can request songs at whim, and download to your little heart’s content… One particularly lonely evening in New Haven, I had a real hankering for George Michael’s (technically Wham!, but come on, we all know GM and those shorts MADE that group) Wake me up…before you go, go… yeah, judge me, I care not…

So to Limewire’s page I went, and was asked if I agreed to terms, etc. Yes, I agreed wholeheartedly and double clicked away. Next I was brought to a page that asked me if I wished to download Frostwire….hmmmm. Frostwire is not Limewire…yet, they have the same root… I clicked back on my browser. Yep, I was on Limewire, this was the only option. Frostwire must be Limewire’s new and improved and definitely cooler, hence the Frost, cousin. I accepted and double clicked away. It asked for my credit card info, .99 a month for the first 12 months. Sounded reasonable, so I gave it, and within minutes my apartment was filled with the sounds of Wham!

Eighty-nine tracks later, and here I am, staring in dismay at my laptop in Miami. Hating myself for the evening I download everything Rufus Wainright ever sang, why, oh why?!? I called Matt because he had been the one encouraging me to download Limewire. I had no memory of him ever mentioning that it cost anything, especially with the way he would reach over, grab his laptop on a whim and download six Billy Joel songs at a whack. (Whim, Whack! Wham!…..completely unintentional, I promise, but go me.)

Matt told me that Limewire was free, and that I had been part of a scam, and I should never give out my credit card info, blah blah blah. He was right, I was an idiot. My next step was to cancel my debit card, since my credit card info was floating around in cyberspace, but being without your debit card when you’re traveling is impossible. I decided that I should go to a local BofA and write a check to myself for a couple hundred dollars, and then cancel my debit card. Have you ever tried to bank in Florida? I’m not sure if it’s because my BofA account is held in Connecticut, or because Florida is a land full of blue-haired people with 401K’s and pensions, but I would have had more luck convincing the Dali Llama to eat a Rib-Eye steak. Not so helpful…..

My next plan of action was to call BofA and at least try to get the charges reversed on my card. Except that this was Tuesday morning, and the previous day had been a holiday, President’s Day… so all financial records had not been updated, and all operators were busy, and my call was very important to them, and someone would be with me shortly, and this call may be monitored…blah blah blah…

Eventually, I was able to follow protocol off a webpage from mymusic.com, where I read many other accounts of people in my situation (as in gullible Wham! fans), and long story short, it was refunded to my account within the 24 hours I had been promised. Whew! So to a six-hour rehearsal I went, and when Patrick let us go early for dinner, I jumped into a car with three friends of mine destined for a mall. We were sick of Miracle Mile by day two, it happens when you’re down here a lot. (There’s only so much Baja Fresh I can take.)

Anywhoo, as we leave the car, I decide not to take my messenger bag into the mall (SO not Miami) and opt instead to carry my lime green Liz Claiborne wallet (Very Miami, except that I paid $12 for mine, and not $85, but whatevs) and blackberry, knowing at some point I can expect a call from both Matt and Kendra during my dinner break. I descend somewhat gracefully from our rented Toyota Highlander.

Now, a funny thing about Miami is that there are no street drains, bad city planning. It may not rain for weeks, but if it has rained at some point in the last month, chances are that puddle will sit there until it finally evaporates. You know where this is going….. I step out of the car, my wallet tucked under my arm and clutching my beloved berry in my fingers, go to close the door, drop my berry at the same moment my right foot steps aside to allow my body weight to shift from the door closing move, and I side tap my blackberry into the puddle. If I were still playing soccer, this would have been a perfect side-pass fake….There’s my berry, floating in four inches of God-only-knows-how-old water.

Buddhists talk often about being in the moment. About how sometimes our coping mechanism for dealing with moments that we can’t handle is over dramatizing them, or bringing in our own emotions as a way of building a barrier between the problem and our selves. So remaining open to any given moment, without indulging in whatever our normal coping mechanisms are, is pretty tricky. I remember reading in one of Pema Chodron’s books about the first time she experienced this type of present moment stasis. This was before she had studied Buddhism, and before she was aware of the idea of a present moment. She was sitting on her front porch having a cup of coffee or tea, and her husband drove up the driveway, got out of the car, approached her and told her that he had been having an affair and was leaving her for another woman. She said in that moment, she could feel her cup in her hand, she was aware of the cups smoothness, the smell of the coffee, the warmth of the liquid in the cup, the warmth of the sun, and the smell of the grass, the blue of the sky…. All of these things flooded her mind for one moment, and she was able to hold them until her senses got the better of her and she hurled her coffee cup at her husband.
Not that my blackberry incident even remotely compares to being told a story of infidelity, but I have experimented with this kind of letting go of the self in order to make room for what’s really there.

This summer (oddly, right before I read that chapter in Pema’s book) I received an incredibly manipulative e-mail from a former friend. Upon reading it, I was struck by how much I wasn’t in that message. It was all about what he needed and was feeling, and wasn’t so much written to me, as it was just delivered to me. It’s obvious to me now that this message was written as a way of convincing himself that these were things that he was feeling, and that he didn’t really feel that way. I’ve been there…. Anyways, after reading it once. I closed my computer. I reached for my phone, grabbed my keys, and was ready to walk to the liquor store, grab a bottle of wine, a pack of cigarettes and settle in for an evening of misery.… instead I sat in the chair in the corner of my bedroom and opened the window and listened to the street sounds. I told myself that I could cry if I wanted to, but tears never came. I told myself that I could be angry if I felt anger, but I didn’t feel anger. I felt pity, and compassion, but no anger. I didn’t call Kendra, or my sister for a few hours, because I didn’t need to. Talking to them would have drawn the drama out of me, and that was my normal way of dealing with it. That constant cycle of heightened drama followed by the processing of it all was what I had become addicted to…. I was self-medicating. It was pretty obvious that this message had nothing to do with me, and I was only the object that he was directing all his anger and frustration at, but I was still just an object. I have to admit, it was pretty crazy, but kind of amazing.

So, my blackberry is floating in four inches of water. Collective gasp from my friends abound. I walked over to it and picked it up. It immediately started vibrating, and in fact, did not stop vibrating until 11 pm that night. It worked for five minutes, and then the keyboard shut down. My thoughts were flooded with many emotions. I needed a phone while I was down here. I need to be able to talk certain people, I need to be reachable, and need to have e-mail access… I had also become hopelessly addicted to it. Was I being forced to give up my blackberry for lent??? GASP!

For the next few hours of rehearsal, I tried to be really zen about my stupid phone. I told myself that I didn’t NEED it, I enjoyed it, I could get something lesser and still function fine.. but my spirit was being tested, big time. The next afternoon, nearly eighteen hours after the fated incident, after many, many attempts at blow-drying the berry and all its minuscule parts, it was time to give up the ghost.

I walked to a T-Mobile store, fully expecting to pay $300 for a new berry. I couldn’t tell if I had insurance on it from the website, and I still hadn’t received the 100 rebate from my broken one, it didn’t seem fair to have to buy a new one. The question was, do I lie about what happened to it? Now, having been blow-dried, its screen was white and only displayed a sad face and a number -807. Was 807 T-Mobile code for “this moron dropped her phone in a puddle”… I had heard stories of people lying about what was wrong with their phone only to have it cracked open by an employee.. and the truth about spilling soy sauce or whatever always found them out…

In the end, and I am wrapping this up, I told the truth. I admitted that I was a human, and I dropped it. That I was unable to talk with my son for 48 hours now and was starting to twitch… and asked if there was anything they could do. They could- they knocked 100 off, for no reason, and told me I could get my old model for 300, now 200 with the good karma discount, or a new Pearl for 200 – 100 with karma… I opted for the pearl, it’s smaller, cuter, and has a camera. I also opted for the insurance, and got it in white so it looks different than Matt’s. So, I just paid 100 dollars for a phone, and when I get home I might have that 100 rebate check from my first model. They should cancel each other out, and I can chock the whole thing up to one crazy Miami experience. How can you not believe in Karma??

As a post script, yesterday as I was typing this blog, just as I got the part about being zen in the moment, my computer froze and deleted two pages worth of writing… you can ask my friend Paul, (who is going hair product free for his stay in Miami), he was sitting right next to me. I laughed hysterically for a minute, and then shared what I had just been writing about, and what had just happened. Oh, the irony…

Miami Part One

Posted by mellissahughes on

So this blog is unlike any of my other blogs in that it is completely unprovoked by an academic charge… I am not attempting to prove something, I’m merely about to rant for a few pages about my last few days in Miami. So, if you’re expecting something incredibly enlightening, you may want to skip this one, however, if you would like to be entertained, read on…..

So, Monday morning I woke up in Brooklyn, and after taking a hot shower, I kissed a sleepy Mafoo goodbye, and dragged my suitcases down to the curb at 6:45 am to be greeted by my cab ride. I’m usually a fan of being friendly and cordial, and for the first fifteen minutes talked with my driver, his name was Joe…. That got old real fast… I couldn’t tell if I was just cranky, and in desperate need for coffee, or if I was just being a bitch, but I really wanted him to be quiet! I tried to casually answer e-mails on my blackberry, and even make a phone call to my mother (who’s always awake by 6 AM) but nothing seemed to sway this gentleman from his long-winded tirade.

He dropped me off at the Delta domestic portion of the inner bowels of our lovely JFK airport amidst throngs of freezing cold passengers… It seemed that the lines inside the airport to check in were ridiculously long, and if we just waited through the cold, curbside check in would be the way to go…. Your bags checked in, and ticket in hand, you could proceed to security and be done with it. I, on my way to Miami, and thinking that I would be going from a warm cab to the airport, was only wearing a t-shirt and my fleece… I knew that I could stow the fleece in my carry-on when I got on the plane, and that I had a 2 downbeat, and my flight got in at 12:30, any surprises and I would be late, and therefore docked in pay…so I waited, and twenty minutes later dug through my suitcase to find my hat and gloves, twenty minutes from that the ONE man that Delta had assigned to work the curbside check in…. WENT ON BREAK! At this point, the line of pavement pounders had weaved itself into a pretty caterpillar shape… well, as you can imagine, mass mayhem was just around the corner.

The air was still, to say we waited with baited breath is not quite the affect…at first everyone was calm and still, and then slowly, murmurings from the crowd…. The caterpillar shaped line suddenly became a mob of formless people as the realization that somehow with the Delta employee gone, we were somewhat without order… One man stepped in front of another man and the other man yelled and pushed, and security had to be called over to break them up. At that point, I decided to break free of the caterpillar and do a self-check in and risk the confiscation of my explosive eye cream and shampoo…

As you can imagine, the inside of the airport was even crazier than the outside. It was 7:55, and my flight took off at 8:40. Things were not looking good for me. I checked myself in with a swipe of my credit card, and humped it over to security, where I witnessed a woman with a cardigan set and Coach briefcase attempting to appeal to other passenger’s good senses. Her flight left at 9, and she was asking if she could get ahead of them in the security line. Well, as you can imagine that morning, people weren’t feeling too compassionate. She approached me, although I was somewhat further back in the line. At this point, I had accepted the fact that there was a very good chance that I would miss my flight, and I couldn’t do a damn things about it, so when she asked me if she could cut, I let her. I could have been angry and ripped her apart for being so obnoxious when it was obvious to everyone that we all had somewhere to be, and the situation was just a little bit out of our control….

Anyways, I got through security (exploding moisturizers and all), and with fifteen minutes left until take off, I ran from gate 1 to gate 29 and made my flight. Because of the mayhem with check in Delta delayed our take off twenty minutes…. I nestled into my window seat next to a friendly NY couple (they were Yankee fans) and popped my noise-reducing headphones on, and looked over my music for my rehearsal.

Now, I had thought that I had left myself plenty of time in the morning. If you can check yourself in the night before and print out your ticket, and carry your luggage on board, you save yourself oodles of time that you can spend having a decent cup of overpriced coffee and reading the paper…. Or if you’re a workaholic like myself, looking over music or sending e-mails, coordinating calendar, etc…. This morning left me sprinting towards my gate past not one, not two, but three Starbucks!! And oh, sweet Jesus, it smelled SOOO good, and I knew the watered down “hot and brown” they would serve me on the plane would suck, but I needed to make my flight!!!

So 45 minutes into the flight when the frazzled stewardesses were being pushed to their utter limits, I heard one summon one of the other stewardesses to the back of the plane where I overheard hushed and excited conversation… it seems that they had run out of coffee… these poor women found themselves mile high in the sky with a cabin full of cold cranky New Yorkers…. The time folks… 9:30 am….. and there was no coffee….

I landed safely, met my friend Paul at baggage, who was mourning the loss of his luggage. Paul flew into Fort Lauderdale, but it seems his luggage flew into Miami.. via Boston, Washington, Charlotte, Philly, Miami and finally Fort Lauderdale. On any other day, Paul would have rejoiced that the airline had offered to credit him the mileage that his luggage was collecting in the sky, but he was a gay man who had just had his Kiehl’s eye cream and Crew hair product removed from his suitcase, and at this point he just wasn’t having it anymore…We found lunch (and coffee) and settled in for six hours of rehearsal. But the story doesn’t end there folks…. It’s just the beginning….

Valentine’s Day

Posted by mellissahughes on

Tuesday afternoon Jack got off the bus as he would have any other day, and we went up stairs and took off our coats, and I began to unpack his backpack when I came across a piece of paper with a list of names on it. It was a class list from his teacher with a handwritten note on the top saying that if we wished to make Valentine’s Day cards these were the names to address them to.

I immediately was overwhelmed by this feeling of utter shame and disgust at how my son was embarking on the road to commercialism….. okay, that’s a little dramatic… let’s back it up a bit. There was a moment last year at one of Jack’s numerous doctor appointments with various specialists where he was subjected to a plethora of tests and was rewarded after by his choice of sticker. Which sticker did he choose? a generic sticker of a dog… Now, he could have chosen Sponge Bob, Mickey Mouse, Dora the Explorer or even Thomas the Tank Engine, but he has no relation to those characters. He hasn’t been exposed to them because I don’t own a TV, and only let him watch the one Sesame Street DVD I own as a last resort. I admit, I took great pride in that moment, my son reaching for the cute dog sticker, and with one hand rejecting what society assumed he would want. I was proud of him, and of myself… “I’m raising a free thinker”.. not that I would judge him for reaching for a sticker of some stupid sponge or some demonic looking mouse…but he genuinely likes dogs, and recognized the sticker of the dog and asked for what he wanted… in a few years the situation could be very different, I recognize that.

This whole free-thinking non-conformist world I was painting for him was intruded upon in December when he came home from school multiple times with presents… and little notes in his backpack explaining to me that Santa had come to visit the classroom, and later on in January, ANOTHER bag of presents in honor of Three King’s day! Not sure the average American knows what Three King’s Day is, and how did they explain this to Jackson?? I would love to hear that story… And let me clarify, we’re not talking about some ten dollar gift …. In December he came home with a yellow Tonka truck, a red striped turtleneck (??) and a playschool little people farm set. In January, Jack greeted me at the bus stop clutching a Matchbox car-wash station… one of those activity sets that came with hundreds of tiny stickers and required me to find a screwdriver in order to assemble the darn thing.

I couldn’t tell what I was more upset about, that he had come home with presents, or that there was a Santa and Jesus presence in his classroom. It’s one thing to color pictures of snowmen and snowflakes, or give presents to each other in the spirit of giving, it’s quite another when the school hires a large man to parade around in a red suit and hands out presents -it’s the difference between the acknowledgment of a tradition and condoning one. In previous years, I had a tradition of buying Jack one new book, and one new toy for Christmas. This may sound really small, but believe me, he gets plenty of toys and books and clothes from his relatives. We also have a tradition in the New Year of going through all the toys and setting the ones aside that he no longer plays with. To those of you out there who think that there may be a time in your life when you have children, I highly recommend a clean-house approach once a year, if not more frequently.

I digress, I, as the crunchy, compassionate, non-material and highly idealistic Mommy have made an active choice not to saturate him with the smells and bells of Christmas holidays… We have no tree, no lights, not a snowflake or snowman in sight. Part of this is because I’m so busy singing a Messiah every freaking five minutes that the thought of erecting a Christmas tree bedecked with lights and tinsel makes me want to wretch… the greater reason is that I don’t want him to think that those things, while they are wholesome and nice, are essential to the spirit of Christmas and more importantly, the spirit of giving. Can we give and care and love without a tinsel-draped blinking tree, hell yeah, and we will.

Back to my point, at the moment that I looked down at those names, I thought to myself, crap, we have to make valentines. The note didn’t say that we HAD to make them, but I didn’t want Jack to be the only kid in class who didn’t send in valentines.. (not that he is capable of making valentines at the age of three, but whatever., it’s really a coolest Mommy contest, and the game was ON!) I admit, there were three seconds where I thought to myself, wow, oh to have a car! oh to have the ability to drive to Rite-Aid and buy some cheap box of pre-perforated Sesame Street valentines, and we could take 30 minutes filling out the To and From, and be done with the whole thing.

But, No! This was a teaching moment, not just for Jack, but for me, and I knew that how we dealt with this minor crisis (which I admit didn’t phase him in the least) was going to be huge. I didn’t want to toss off Valentine’s Day, just like I don’t want to toss off Christmas. They are both days where we remind people that we care, and we can do that in a completely non-commercial way. So, to the table we went! and for the next few hours I cut out paper hearts, and more paper hearts, and then some more paper hearts, and Jackson told me which of the names were girl names and which were boy names, and then we stenciled their names, stamped Jack’s name on the back and he glued little hearts onto the larger hearts for about an hour. The finishing touch on our project was stringing yarn through the sides and tying the slack into a bow. These weren’t just valentines, they were handmade name-cards, which could be worn around your neck or hung on a doorknob, whatever. My point is we spent about four hours working on them together, and it was awesome.

On a side note, my point is not that I am actively trying to deny Jack access to Sponge Bob or Dora or Thomas, or that those families that sent in store bought valentine’s were somewhat inferior. I recognize that his exposure to Dora and Thomas is for the most part, out of my hands, but by not actively buying into the commercialism I am hoping to encourage him to keep enjoying the things that he likes. I do ask myself at what point my aversion to commercialism begins to infringe upon his right to live a “normal” childhood. My favorite answer to this predicament so far has been “next year.” (thanks Kendra)… Well, I’ve been thinking about getting a tree next year, they’re real pretty, and I think decorating a tree with the popcorn and Christmas carols (which I really despise ) is something that he’s entitled to, and part of the act of loving is compromising and sacrificing, and I want my actions to be reflective of the qualities that I would like to see in him.

The funniest part of all the Valentine’s Day crisis was that we were hit with three inches of ice during the night and his school was cancelled. Not only had it stormed, but it was sleeting rain for the entire day-Jack and I were housebound. This is only interesting because I, indulging in my own materialistic demons, had ordered a Quentin Tarantino book to give to MY Valentine, and couldn’t get to the store to pick it up…. So what did I do? Well, the glue stick and construction paper were already out. I made a Valentine, and he loved it, probably more than if Tarantino had given it to him.

NORM!!!!!

Posted by mellissahughes on

It’s a surprisingly warm Saturday afternoon, and I have just returned from running errands. Normally, running to the market would not bring me such pleasure, but today’s experience really got me thinking about the sense of community.

I woke up late (9:15, which for me is really, really late) and puttered around the apartment, made coffee, talked to my Mom, talked to Jack, wrote a few e-mails, did a Sudoku, you know, the normal Saturday morning activities…. I had my morning hankering for pancakes and coffee, and headed down to Faro’s. I should state right now that the apartment I’m referring to is not my own in New Haven, but Matt’s apartment in Brooklyn, which I have been staying at this week since I had two Tiffany concerts, a Western Wind concert, and my opera tomorrow.

When I’m in Brooklyn, Matt and I have a morning routine. In the many mornings that I’ve spent with him, I can only think of two or three that didn’t involve us walking down the street to Faro’s. We usually have the same waitress, a sweet girl with a nice smile, and a stunning belly button ring… anyways, I always get the short stack and Matt gets something involving lots of meat. At least once a week, one or both of us will stop at the market located three or four stores away from Faro’s and hit the ATM, buy a bag of M&M’s or a bottle of water.

Well this morning is a little different -Matt’s not here, he’s gigging with AWS in PA. I’m spending the weekend in his apartment without him, and there is definitely a reason for that, which I’ll get to later. Regardless of where Matt is, I wanted pancakes….or did I? As I slid into the booth that I sit in so often, the waitress asked me if ” he is coming?” Nope, I said. It’s just me, and I smiled to myself, partly because I was eating alone and that definitely gave me a sense of independent strength, until I realized that part of me was happy that she had called me out on my routine….. and that must mean that somewhere in me I really wanted to feel like I belonged here, that I was a staple of Faro’s.

I got the same feeling when I walked into the market to buy a loaf of bread. The same man who sells me my M&M’s and water smiles at me when I buy those items. It has become a routine for him and I, and that also encourages this whole sense of community.

In a world where I will go to extreme measures NOT to deal with humans, I found this sense of belonging to be fascinating….If automated checkout is an option at a grocery store, I’ll go for it EVERY time. I NEVER buy my train tickets at the ticket window, I can do it so much faster by myself. I pride myself on how speedily I can whip through the touch screen menu, and get really impatient when I stand behind someone who isn’t as familiar… they should go to the window, they have people to help you with that. God, I can’t think of the last time I spoke to a bank teller, haven’t they been made obsolete by now? And most recently, I bought my blackberry, got set up with a sweet new package, and even switched providers online, through wirefly.com, and I admit to you, part of the perk was that I wouldn’t have to deal with a cranky representative.

So why the satisfaction in being recognized by my waitress and marketman? Why will I go out of my way to avoid having an IMpersonal encounter with a human? I think on some level we associate the daily mundane things of life as being things that we need to take care of quick and dirty, and society recognizes that. Going to the bank is never a trip to the amusement park, and so they make it easier to do it yourself, whether that be at home online, or quickly at an ATM. It’s not a fun activity, so the bank has made it easier for you to take care of at your leisure, in exchange for your business. (However, have you noticed that banks now have hired people purely to greet you? I think they’re on to something.) The same goes for grocery stores, I’ll go to Stop and Shop over Shaw’s if it means that I pay a bit more, but can get in and out without having to deal with an (often incompetent) employee. (plus Stop and Shop has DD’s, and who doesn’t find shopping with coffee enjoyable?)

I’m getting off my point here. As I walked back to Matt’s apartment, I was overwhelmed by my simple Saturday morning- my interaction with my waitress, and the pleasant conversation about the weather with my marketman…. all leading me to think that I was part of this Kensington community, which of course, I’m not. I don’t live here, and this is where it all ties in folks. I have an apartment in New Haven, and I graduated in May. I live, albeit about two weeks a month, in a town that’s central pulse is the academic community of Yale, but I’m done with all that. I’ve said to many of you that it’s really strange to be living in a town that I don’t work in, and working in a town that I don’t live in, but this morning in one moment, I had this amazing clarity:

I have no reason to be here this weekend. My rehearsal got out early enough last night that I could have taken the train back to New Haven, and spent the weekend in my own apartment, but my life isn’t there anymore. The only reason I keep that apartment is because of Jack, and he’s in New Hampshire this weekend. If I had gone back to New Haven last night, I would have been incredibly lonely because there is literally nothing there for me this weekend.

My point is that on a very basic level, we all need to feel like we belong to a community, whether that be the immediate community, the one that you are actively living in, or whether it be a larger social network, like my colleagues in the music world. Musicians live in a metaphysical “village” that is so much larger than the concert hall, it’s the betterment of our art and of our lives through that art, and by extension those in the immediate community and those that are part of the larger one; and it’s a very real and natural thing. For me, my personal sense of community has always been the larger one, my musical world, and I think that’s mainly because I live a rather transitory and nomadic life. But today I felt really struck by what it was to experience the concept of community on a much more basic level. Sometimes you do want to go where everybody knows your name.

Single Mom

Posted by mellissahughes on

This is not what I had envisioned for my first blog, but so be it. So I have recently joined a New Haven Moms group, a place to meet other moms. This may sound silly to you, but throughout my two years at Yale University, I only knew one other parent at the School of Music, and his daughter was significantly older than Jack, and his wife an aerobics instructor (good for him); somehow he didnt earn my sympathy.

Anyhow, my point is that it has been somewhat difficult, in fact, damn near impossible to meet other parents my age, let alone SINGLE parents my age. So this morning I accept the invitation to join this group, hoping to find other smart young women like me. I think to myself, SURELY in this male-dominated town there must be a few more go-against-the-flow-ersbut alas, I scroll through a decent sample of the women (and dont get me started on why its a MOMs group, and not a PARENTS groupgrrrrr) and find that most of them are indeed single or divorced, and have not received any college education, which, I admit, makes me hate myself just a bit more for wanting to separate myself from the majority of them.

But thats not what really gets me going. What infuriates me as I click my way through the pastel pink-rosette background is the way that most of these mothers are choosing to represent themselves. There are many photos which present various tattoos and piercings, and then there was the one that was so offensive to me, I slammed my laptop shut. This was the photo of the woman wearing a black teddy a thong, and lounging across some cheap ass pillows. Now hold on, before you dismiss me as a conservative prude, let me tell you that back in the day, I had LONG pink hair, and an elegant diamond nose ring. I still have a tattoo, which those of you who have seen, should count yourself among the elite, and I own teddies AND thongs, and have been known to sprawl, somewhat tastefully, across my Bed Bath & Beyond sheet set from time to time.

Now that we have that squared away, I will be the first to admit that the photo that I have chosen as my primary photo, my headshot well call it, is not the best one of me, but I feel it represents ME, nonchalant, lazy Sunday morning, pre-coffee (which you can tell if you look close enough). My point is that I have only photographed my face, and have not captured my entire body in some slinky DEB number, (nor have I only exposed my ass-crack with a profile name like TaMMeE, or eZZ-aXXcesss) Why have I chosen to only capture my face and not my bodacious ta-tas, as my sister would call them? Because Im somebodys Momma, and although I love my body, and I know that I could turn heads if I really wanted to, and although the bodacious ta-tas where a little more bodacious when I was breast-feeding, they are still fabulous! (maybe even more so for having nourished my little one) Yes they are fabulous, but they dont need to be showcased. Maybe they do deserve to be heralded in legend and song, but ladies, as a good friend of mine once said, No one wants to see your tired old-business. Cover that shit up!

Ladies: now that I have your attention, here what I have to say. We are mothers! We have manufactured life in our wombs! We are fabulously mysterious creatures, so celebrate it! We are brilliant by nature. There are more books written (mainly by men) on how to understand the female, than on ANY other subject. Were so much more complicated than teddies and throw pillows, so lets celebrate our complexity.

As I sit here at my kitchen table, I realize that Im wearing a T-shirt that an old boyfriend made for me while I was completing a course in Greek myth here at Yale. It reads Kallon Kakon which means beautiful-evil. These are the words that Hesiod used in his telling of the Pandora myth. We are beautiful, but we are also evil because we have within us the ability to create and sustain life, the desire to both delight and deceive, and the desire for MORE, the inability to sit complacent. We run to the tree and taste the forbidden fruit, we rip open that box and let out the evils into the world because we recognize that loving and living fully is having the CHOICE to obey, love, honor or hurt that we experience humanity, that we exercise our will.

Sounding a little academic here, but I guess my point, long-winded though it may be, is that as much as it may be scary to be “alone” at the end of the day (and single parents understand that although we are never really alone, it’s still lonely) I will not use any part of me other than my bodacious brain to engage interest in another human being, because I love myself and my son more than any Tom Dick or Harry could ever fathom.