The New Road

My daughter is being bullied at school. Today it’s her freckles and the shape of her face. Tomorrow it will be something else.

She gazes out the window on the ride home. I see her eyes fill up.

We live in a time when anything remotely different about you is like bloody water to sharks. They swarm. They attack. They leave you there to doubt your significance.

Despite all the anti-bullying campaigns all over the country, bullies seep out of every crevice in society.

Ally’s toothy grin has always filled up the room. She owns an aura of spring in radiant bloom. Her spirit is highly carbonated.

She was a baby who woke up happy, and has stayed that way for 11 years. Until now.

Until middle school, the bootcamp of K through 12. If you can make it here, you’ll make it anywhere, I think to myself.

A mother's instinct is to shield. Protect. Fight. I struggle with my inner Rocky Balboa. I feel compelled to act. To let it be known. Ally begs me not to for fear of retaliation.

Bullies are pervasive. Not exclusive to middle school. There is no demographic profile, no limit to age or education or occupation. They’re on every playground and in every corporation, in our government and in our churches. They exist on Facebook and Myspace and Club Penguin. And they reside in our families.

It begs the question: Haven’t we evolved beyond this? Why do we teach our young how to get ahead, but not how to get along?

How much longer can we say nothing and allow kids to suffer? What have we learned from Columbine and the countless acts of violence perpetrated by children and teens who have been bullied? How many kids can we afford to lose to suicide because we didn’t want to be called a rat?

Taking down the bullies is going to require a paradigm shift. A movement of individual acts. An achievement in courage and fortitude.

Each one of us is at a crossroads. We can either continue looking the other way or we can take a stand and carve a new road to a place where differences are respected and our children can feel good inside.

And stay that way.

More

Although Halloween has not yet been crossed off the calendar, the Christmas marketing campaigns are now entrenched. They arrive in camouflage mode in summer. By early fall they are in full-scale bombardment.

Choked by the country’s economic nosedive, most parents are scrambling to deliver the array of presents their children have come to expect living in the material world. While visions of video games and new wardrobes dance in their kids’ heads, parents are holding onto theirs wondering where it’s all going to come from.

After all, we need more. We are a country of more. Most of us were raised on little. Yet the notion of attainment was a seed that was planted and fertilized well. We gave and continue to give television our full attention. And the advertisers have their way with us.

I'm just as guilty. I worked in advertising for years, writing copy for nondescript products, propping them up as exceptional when the company and I both knew they were mediocre at best.

As a kid, I was captivated by television. I can still sing the jingles from McDonald’s, Burger King, Coke, Pepsi, Roto-Rooter and Oscar Mayer (both weeners and bologna, mind you). Somehow, somewhere along the line, the thought that “happiness is derived from having more” became a part of my psyche.

The older I get, the more overwhelmed I feel by my stuff. Why are we Americans in a constant state of lack? Are we so empty inside that we need to grasp at something, anything, to fill the void?

Perhaps we just don't know how to be happy.

Apparently, the Danes do. They are considered the happiest people on Earth. Oprah set out to find out why.

“Less things, more life,” the smiling, statuesque woman explained as she Skyped into the show from Copenhagen.

The city apartment she shares with her husband and three children is shockingly small, yet behind every sleek white surface is an entire town of organization.

On Oprah’s recent visit to Denmark, she met with a group of women to discuss Danish culture. It’s one that focuses on values over money, they explained. Values like education and family and creativity. They choose careers that fulfill them, not based on how much money they will earn.

They are heavily and happily taxed. Yes, happily.

“We feel we get a lot for our taxes,” explained Stine. She described how taxes allow everyone to access health care and get a university education, and how that makes for a healthier society – physically and mentally.

I couldn’t stop thinking about this segment. Happy with less? Truly a foreign concept.

In Peter Walsh’s book, It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living A Richer Life With Less Stuff, he writes, “We are at the center of an orgy of consumption, and many are now seeing that this need to own so much comes with a heavy price: Kids so overstimulated by the sheer volume of stuff in their home that they lose their ability to concentrate and focus. Financial strain caused by misplaced bills or overpurchasing. Constant fighting because neither partner is prepared to let go of their possessions. The embarrassment of living in a house that long ago became more of a storage facility than a home.”

In the end, more stuff makes us feel smothered. It’s more to manage. More to care for. More to look at. More to distract. It closes in on us. It clutters not just our environment, but our minds. It blocks us from being the best we can be – as individuals and as families.

We intrinsically know that real happiness comes from the level of our connectedness. Yet we go against our true nature when we put our money in things that separate us.

Last Christmas/Hanukkah, my husband and I told the kids they would get a few presents, but what we really wanted to do was spend more time together. I was expecting to hear groans. Instead, their eyes lit up.

My daughter hugged me and whispered, “There’s nothing I like better than to be with you.”

This year, we will add to that by giving things away and carefully selecting each gift by its level of interaction required. Board games with four or more players are high on the list.

I am clear on my New Year’s resolution for 2010: Less things, more life.

The Wake-up Call

I’ve been away from my blog for a good month now. Only, I wouldn’t consider it a good month.

On July 21, I was awakened by my son. Most mornings he wakes up talking and can be heard from any room in the house, his voice unusually deep for 12 years old.

This morning was different. He said nothing. He simply pulled on my arm.

It was earlier than usual. I splashed cold water on my face as he sat at the edge of my tub. As I turned to him, his gaze was distant. Before I could ask him what was wrong, his eyes rolled back. His body fell straight back into the tub and shook violently.

I knew right away this was a diabetic seizure. His first.

There I was. Overtaken by fear, thrust into action like an ER doctor with no training.

Don and Ally heard my screaming and raced to help. I fumbled with the glucagon shot, struggling to recall the one time I practiced with it. In that moment, time seemed to drag on, like trying to sprint through deep water. In and out I plunged the liquid into the vial, my hands shaking. Into Jack’s thigh it went easing the trembling in his limbs.

I rode in the ambulance and held him, sobbing as he fought to be set free from the straps that held him down. I was flooded with guilt. This was my fault.

After six years of staying up late to check him -- six years of living and breathing this unpredictable disease -- I fell asleep on the job. Literally.

I checked his glucometer. There was the evidence. He went to bed low, his blood glucose reading at 72. Without a snack to bring him back up.

How did I let this happen?

Just a few weeks before, I was among a group of parents listening to an endocrinologist speak frankly at diabetes camp. He said, “When I see one of my patients end up in ER, I know that someone was responsible for this. You cannot ever take a night off. You have to be on the job at all times.”

No one had ever issued such a warning. He was harsh, I thought, but he was right.

People say to me all the time, “You’re so strong.”

I want to say, “How would you be if this was your child?”

This is a sink-or-swim situation. You either educate yourself on the caring of your child with this disease or he could die. Those are the choices.

And here I was, educated about my son’s disease, and we still almost lost him. All it takes is one time. One moment of human frailty.

By the afternoon of the seizure, Jack was lucid and hungry and had little memory of the morning’s ordeal. I told him I’d make him whatever meal he wanted.

“I’ll have madras lentils, brown rice and a soy smoothie,” he said.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go to Burger King and get you a Whopper?”

“Nope,” he said with a smile.

There was that smile. After the morning’s trauma and a brush with death, there it was the way the sun sometimes breaks through a stormy sky.

My eyes were wet with tears that whole week. He stopped to hug me and said, “Mom, it’s okay. I’m just so happy to be alive.”

The old sage that resides within my son comes through once again. Every day he shows me the power of resilience. The ability to shift your perspective from all that is wrong to all that is right. He knows he has all that a kid needs: an overabundance of love. And with that at your back, you carry on.

The Good List

I’ve decided to be the assistant coach of my daughter’s soccer team this fall. My knowledge of the game is limited to which team has possession of the ball and when someone scores. What I bring to the table is four years on the sidelines reliving my cheerleading days, shouting, “Go, Ally!”

Let’s just say, these 11-year-olds will be teaching me a thing or two.

Tonight is the draft. I will attend fully prepared having studied the players like a gambling man examines his hand. My clipboard has the names categorized by ability and position. I am pumped up, my head spinning with plan A, plan B – whatever it takes to amass the best players. We are going to dominate that field, I’m thinking.

I asked Ally to review my picks.

She nodded.

“Mom,” she said, scanning the names, “Don’t pick all the good players.”

“Why?”

“Leave some for the other teams.”

I stared at her blankly.

“Some of the players I want on my team aren’t the best at soccer, but they’re really nice girls.”

The record scratches. In the midst of my plan of attack, my young girl reminds me that greed isn’t good. That sharing the bounty with others is the right thing to do. And more importantly, that judging people on their inner goodness, not necessarily their outer successes, is perhaps the higher road -- the road I’ve been talking a lot about, but not always walking on.

I rearrange my list and Ally gives me the names of the nice girls. And off I go.

Everything

There are moments in life when someone says one line -- one line that completely realigns your thinking. So potent and flawless in its simplicity, the line comes to you as if spoken by God.

A few years ago, my babysitter came to watch the kids and brought her nephew along. He was new to California and his ability to communicate in English was surprising after just a few months of 10th grade.

Diego came to America in secrecy, his body stuffed into the hollowed-out space beneath the back seat of an old Toyota. Where he came from, wealth was a daily meal and a pair of shoes. His family worked most of his 15 years of life to gather the $4,000 border crossing fee. On the other side was his aunt, now a citizen, whose arms were waiting. On the other side was a life with possibilities.

Don and I said good-night to the kids and told them to be good for Marcella. As we were leaving, Jack pulled on Don’s arm.

“Can we go to the movies tomorrow, Dad?” he pleaded.

“Maybe next weekend. We have a lot to do tomorrow.”

“Like what? Why can’t we go?”

“Because we have a lot to do around our house.”

“Can we go to the toy store then?”

“No. We need to work on the house.”

“I don’t want to work on the house! Geez! It’s so unfair! Come on, Dad!”

“I’m not going to say it again. The answer is no.”

“I’ll have nothing to do! It will be so boring!”

Jack stomped away, marinating in the injustice. Don shook his head and looked at Diego.

“I don’t know why he acts like that.”

There was a long pause.

Softly, Diego said, “It’s because he has everything.”

There it was. Plain and simple.

But the line spoke to me as a statement well beyond the interaction with Jack.

It’s because we have everything. It’s about our advantage and their adversity. It’s about their destitution and our discontent.

I felt ashamed. Here we are. Americans with our big SUVs and cluttered houses and overflowing refrigerators. Here we are with our addictions and anti-depressants. With our firm grip on our kids’ overscheduled lives. With our heads immersed in technology and our disconnected families.

We live in the land of everything and yet we often feel nothing. It begs the question: How have we lost our way?

The line has stayed with me all these years. “It’s because he has everything.” It’s the voice in my head that warns me not to spoil. It’s the underlying guilt I feel when I whine about traffic or rude people or hot summers – all packaged as really big deals. It’s the line that resets my compass toward gratitude and simplicity.

In the book, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, author Wendy Mogel, Ph.D., writes: “When horticulturists want to prepare hothouse plants for replanting outdoors, they subject them to stress to strengthen them. Gently and progressively deprived of food and water and exposed to greater extremes of heat and cold than they’ve been accustomed to, the plants grow stronger root systems and thicker stems.”

Most of us haven’t been exposed to many extremes. To what degree have our lives been padded? And to what degree do we pad the lives of our children? How will they grow “stronger root systems” if we red carpet their way and break their every fall?

My babysitter shares her home with her husband, three children and extended family. Diego and the grandparents sleep on couches. Their home is full yet immaculate and their children are A students, Diego included. But what I have always marveled over is the way this family radiates pure joy and celebrates its togetherness.

They have so little, yet so much. They tune into one another instead of Ipods or cell phones or computers. Front lawn tag is an almost nightly event in which everyone takes part. They work together to pool their resources, and they see America for all its glory and wonder and opportunity. Their struggle has given them a different lens. The little things in life – that we consider daily hardships -- aren’t even visible on their radar.

There is much to glean from people who have suffered. Maybe we can’t know how they feel or what they've been through, but we can learn from their example. We can pause, take a good look around and really see everything. And maybe in the process, we’ll remember that our land of plenty is a place and a state of mind never to be taken for granted again.

Recycle This

My son, Jack, is the serious one in the family. Don’t know how I spawned a stone face from this pack of clowns, but I am forever on a mission to convert him to the cult of the ridiculous and sarcastic from which I was born.

Today he and his friend, Christian, barreled into the kitchen overflowing with giggles.

Jack: MOM! THERE IS A TOILET ON OUR FRONT LAWN!

Christian: Lisa, there IS!

Me: I know. Dad and I thought we could put it in the corner of the yard to make it convenient for you when you’re playing football with your friends.

Jack: MOM! You can’t do that! That is against the law!

Me: No. People do it all the time. We all have to use the toilet. This will save you time and keep all the kids out of our house.

Jack: I am NOT using that.

Christian: Me either.

Me: Okay then, I’ll make it into a seat. You guys can sit on it when you’re tired.

Jack: Mom, I won’t sit there. That would be so embarrassing.

Christian: Totally.

Me: Guys, we are a recycling family. You know that. So it’s either going to be a toilet, a nice seat for you to sit on or we’re going to put dirt in it and make it into a flower pot. I found a nice spot for it right under your bedroom window.

Jack: No WAY!

Me: Pick one.

Jack: I don’t WANT a toilet under my window! Put it under YOUR window.

Me: My room faces the back of the house. Then no one will see it.

Jack: No one WANTS to see a toilet in our yard.

Me: Pick one.

Jack: All rrrrright I’ll pick the flower pot.

Christian: Seriously, what are going to do with that toilet?

Me: Well, the other thought I had was to wait til the middle of the night and put it in someone else’s yard. Sort of like the Neighborhood of the Traveling Toilet. Whoever gets it will know it means that someone likes them. And then they can put it in someone else’s yard the next night. And so on.

Christian: I don’t think my parents will think it’s a good thing.

Me: No they will. They’ll like it. Trust me.

Jack: Mom, you could get arrested.

Me: Arrested for giving my neighbor a gift? I doubt the police officer is going to see it that way.

Jack: Mom, please don’t.

Me: All right. We can keep it.

Jack: Ya, but I don’t like any of the choices.

Me: Honey, this is the country. A toilet on our front lawn is cool. This will help us bond with people.

Jack: Mom, now I think you’re just kidding with me.

A Feeling of Home

We’ve all heard the cliché, “Home is where the heart is.” But what if your heart doesn’t feel at home? For almost 19 years, I’ve lived in California. And if you ask me where home is, I would still tell you: Boston.

Anyone who knows Beantown like I know Beantown understands my love for the city. For me, it has little to do with the Red Sox or Patriots or Celtics. It has everything to do with Bostonians and who we are. It’s about the culture I left behind -- a culture of real people who talk funny. People who tell it like it is. People who practice sarcasm as much as their religion. People who say things like, “Put yeh shots on and get in the cah. We’re goin up noth to ride the hoss. It’s gonna be wicked fun."

It’s about people who are as salty as the air they breathe. It’s about generations of families who put up with the winters and each other because they can’t imagine being away from one another. Their lives overlap and intertwine.

It’s about neighbors who define “neighborly.” Growing up, I witnessed almost daily acts of kindness. It was natural for people to help each other shovel out their cars. On rainy days, someone in the neighborhood would collect the soggy kids trudging home. When our gardens overflowed with vegetables, we divided them up and left bags on our neighbors’ steps. When someone got sick, parents rallied to babysit and make extra meals and clean house.

What I miss is the sense of responsibility we had to each other. A commitment to our community.

So what’s not to love about California? There’s so much to brag about: almost year-round sunshine. Dry, warm days. Miles of untainted seashore flanked by sandy cliffs. Valleys polka-dotted with orange trees. Green and rocky mountains in the distance. Natural beauty in every direction.

It’s the transplants like me who have a measure of comparison. We realize after so many years that one cannot live on sunshine alone. Something is missing.

Marti Emerald, a local TV news reporter in San Diego, was quoted once about her take on Southern California culture. She called it a “social disconnect.” Aha! I thought. That describes it.

Too often, I have witnessed a lack of connection amongst people. Neighbors will drive straight into their garages, only to be seen when taking out the trash or retrieving the mail. Perhaps it is the absence of real connection that leads to a lack of accountability. No-shows and cancellations are a way of life. I’ve been to several kids’ birthday parties where we were the only ones singing happy birthday to a tearful child at the end of an almost empty table. I’ve seen teachers and community leaders with a skeleton staff of volunteers who take on more than they can handle.

For years I have lived my life looking back at the city I left behind. But everyone knows that when you spend your life in the rear view mirror, you never really see what’s right in front of you. I realized that if I wanted a sense of community here in San Diego, I would have to either find it or create it. So I started a playgroup when my kids were little. I created an online network for parents in Southern California. I give of my time to the local schools. I extend my hand at my kids’ games. I’ve become politically active. And I’ve gotten to know my neighbors.

Little by little, I am doing what I can to cultivate a community for my family. Because in the end, I realize that if you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.