Mom in the Mirror

My favorite movie blog

"This is my favorite book in all the world though I have never read it," begins "The Princess Bride," my favorite book in all the world having read it many times.

"Rent" is one of my favorite Broadway musicals though I have never seen it. I heard the song "Seasons of Love" a few years ago, bought the show CD and have listened to it often ever since.

So I was thrilled to see the theatrical preview for the film version of "Rent." When I searched for the trailer online because I wanted to see it again, I discovered that the cast and others have blogged about the experience of making the movie.

There are sneak peeks, video entries, behind the scenes moments, and even entries by the playwright's family (he died 9 years ago, the day "Rent" was supposed to start in previews).

I wish more casts blogged about the making of films; I'd be much more excited about going to the movies. In fact, I wish TV casts did it, starting retroactively with "Sex and the City" and continuing with soap operas which lend themselves to the form.

Score!

I'm not particularly athletic, but I am a loyal sports fan, and my favorite player is my son Colter.

Colter is in a basketball league this summer, and while he is far from being the best player on his team, he is extremely committed. He goes to every practice, tries his hardest and encourages others to do the same.

He has four fantastic coaches, and there are only eight players on the team, so that's one adult for every two kids! This means the players get lots of feedback and individual attention from their coaches, young men in their 20s who know kids and know basketball.

Colter has improved tremendously under their tutelage, learning to box out and bounce pass and understand the game.

Today, Colter scored for the first time, not once, but twice. And throughout the game, every time he got a rebound or stole a ball or prevented a shot from going in the basket, he heard from the bench, "Good job, Colter!" And at some point, one of his coaches told him he was the hardest-working player on the court.

Even though his team lost by four points, he felt like a winner, and learned the most important less sports can teach us:

It really is how you play the game.

What was I saying?

Redirection is the only parenting strategy that has worked consistently with Colter.

When he was a baby, we'd distract him with sounds (like a rattle or music) or visual or tactile stimulation (a piece of cloth or mirror).

As a toddler, preschooler and young boy, he could be tickled out of many moods or coaxed out of them with a book or toy or game.

Now that he's 9, I've found it most effective to just change the subject.

If he's angry about something and we've already verbally hashed it out as completely as possible, I'll ask him about something else he did or whether he wants to go see a movie over the weekend or anything unrelated to the touchy topic.

If he responds, we're often able to restore calm so that when we return to the issue, we can resolve it. If he doesn't respond, he will often redirect himself by going into his room and playing alone until he can settle down.

Every once in a while, his ADHD works in our favor and he completely forgets about whatever was bothering him. More often, we can come up with a resolution once the heat of the moment has cooled.

But sometimes I feel guilty about this approach, like I'm tricking him and maybe unintentionally encouraging him to store his hostility away for another day...

...the day when he catches on and yells at me, "Don't change the subject!"

A meditation on meditation

It's Friday night at 7:30, and I am in a room with about a dozen other people hoping to relax.

I am trying to recover from the trauma of turning 40 earlier this week. It works -- as soon as I notice that I appear to be the youngest person in the room, I feel better.

Why do we need to pay for the privilege of relaxing? Why do we need classes to teach us what should come naturally? Why do we need massages and aromatherapy and CDs that play sounds we wouldn't really hear in a rainforest?

Why can't we just relax?

The meditation teacher is a beautiful older woman with the kind of long gray hair and clear eyes I hope to have when I'm her age, whatever ageless age she is. She wears comfortable cotton clothes, and her serenity fills the room.

She offers lavender mist to spray on my forehead. It sells for $8 a bottle. The cost of relaxing: how much am I willing to pay?

Soon we are all on our mats, gently drifting into an altered state.

And then I hear it.

A clock is ticking. Loudly. This is no internal clock trying to find its relaxation rhythm. This is a wall clock, several feet from me, that is louder than anything I've ever heard before.

Perhaps I'm in a heightened state of awareness and my senses are more acute. Perhaps it will drive me insane (I think of Charlotte in "Sex and the City" who could not "find her center" during an infertility acupuncture session because the noises of New York overwhelmed her).

I try to breathe along with the clock, to use the clock.

Why is relaxation such hard work?

I focus on the other sounds -- is that construction going on across the street? I listen to the instructor, who has a calm, peaceful voice. She's telling me where to put my hands. Wait. She wants me to put them where? Can she say that at a family spa?

Suddenly, the music stops. I cannot relax without the music. I need those subtle cicadas and waterfalls and wandering minstrels.

I remind myself to pay attention to my thoughts, to any mind tricks I may be playing on myself. But I've got nothing. Is that a good sign? Maybe the absence of thought is a sign of relaxation. Or is it a sign of idiocy?

I feel cold, which must mean I'm doing this right. Before class they handed out robes (which I declined), warning us that a fully relaxed body is chilled, like white wine. I think they turned on the air conditioner.

I get back to breathing and realize I've lost my rhythm. I feel as I did in Lamaze class when they tried to convince me that some well-timed "hoo-hoo-hoo"s and "he-he-he"s would get me through childbirth without medication. Ha!

I wonder: How have I survived this long without learning how to breathe?

Just when I think I might be drifting into a state of harmony with the earth, the earth erupts. It's snoring.

No, wait, that's the woman next to me. And then a man across the room. That too is a sign of relaxation, I'm told. And all this time I thought my husband had sinus problems.

Tomorrow, I'll try yoga.

How do you relax?

A version of this LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.

I think I love you (still)

In 1970, I was five years old and in love with David Cassidy. So when I discovered that "The Partridge Family" was available on DVD, I had to rent it. We watched the beginning of season one and Colter liked it. Gary stayed in the other room, trying not to turn as many colors as the psychedelic bus Shirley drove.

What's your favorite old TV show?

Not in the baby book

We were in the car earlier this week when Colter asked, "Mommy, when was the first time I ate chicken?"

I told him I had written down many of his firsts -- first word, first tooth, first steps -- but not the first time he ate chicken. I guessed it was on Thanksgiving or Christmas at his grandmom and papa's house, probably when he was about 7 or 8 months old, but I couldn't offer much more information than that.

What firsts have you forgotten?

Life is hard and then you graduate

My son graduated from third grade recently.

The year ended with successes unexpected in scale. We figured he passed Florida's standardized tests (the FCATs), but on the last day of school we learned he scored in the 99th percentile for the country.

We expected good grades (he's been getting As and Bs all year), but were surprised when his teacher -- who had limited her comments to a sentence or two in previous grading periods -- wrote a warm and positive paragraph praising him.

And we knew he'd won the yearlong checkers tournament in his gifted class, but the trophy he brought home with his name engraved was unexpectedly huge and heavy.

This was all critically important because the few weeks before the school year ended were disappointing and frustrating for Colter. He was pushed and kneed by one boy and teased by some girls. He was just starting to feel really different and wrong when he and his peers were given cause to celebrate his talents, instead.

So as summer began, we thought we were in for better times. We reminded him that he'd have a different teacher next year, a different class, different challenges. We reminded him he'd meet new kids at camp. And then he did.

Some of them were immediate friends. Others were really mean.

This turning point reminded me that just when you think the hard part is over, it really begins.

I graduated from high school on my 18th birthday, full of promise and sure that surviving my childhood and adolescence had been the most difficult part, with all that was easy ahead of me.

I was an adult now, I thought, and in college, I would have more freedom, more money, more choices.

Ha.

In college, I had more responsibilities, more debt and too many choices. But I also had more fun.

Someone once told me that you could either enjoy high school or college, not both. It turns out I was the collegiate type.

My four years of college were spent learning, growing, changing, and rarely sitting still long enough to fantasize what would follow, "If only…"

I had no sense that life would be better when X happened. X had happened. I had left home and was charging forward with my destiny.

We often think happiness requires having what we want. In fact, happiness is wanting what we have. And I wanted everything I had: strong female friends, a challenging education and work that was satisfying.

I was a big fish in a big pond.

It wasn't until graduate school -- when I overstayed my welcome in the academic world -- that I realized no matter the size of the fish or the pond, it's always possible to get lost or gobbled up.

Eventually, life is hard for most fishes in most ponds.

It's easy to look toward milestones hopefully. Once I'm in high school … in college … in "the real world" … life will be different.

And yet, life is always different, and it's always the same.

We never really start over, and we start over every day.

Kids are cruel, then adults are. Exams are difficult, then promotions are. Allowances are too small, then salaries are.

Happiness finds us in the gradual moments, the gradations, rather than the graduations. Life is in the details, the moments that seem unimportant, the seeds of today and tomorrow that were planted yesterday.

As I was writing this, I found my high school yearbook and re-discovered my favorite "quip" (quotes and bits that friends believed capture me). It was: "Mz. Editrix." At the time I was managing editor of my high school newspaper. I wore the title well. Today, I am managing editor of a different publication, and no job description fits better than the one I was given over 20 years ago.

In my college yearbook, next to my picture, appears this quote by Thoreau: "We are constantly invited to be what we are." I still believe that.

Every day is a graduation, ready to tell us what we've learned and send us on our way. At my college graduation, the school's president gave a speech I will never forget. She said, "Money and power will never ever love you back." I have always remembered that line.

It takes me here: In a school or outside of one, whatever size the pond or the fish, you just have to keep swimming.

A version of this LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.