Life Skills, thanks mom & dad

Raising a Humanist, , , ,

There are certain small skills everyone should have.

They seem insignificant, but they make you self-sufficient.  And they give you the ability to help others.

Plus, I can honestly say “I can do this.”  Makes you feel better on a lousy day.

I can do this:

  • unclog a toilet
  • sew on a button
  • hem my pants
  • iron my shirt
  • make my bed
  • put together cheap furniture
  • follow directions
  • take apart random mechanical objects and put them back together again
  • push buttons at random
  • replace a light bulb without freaking out
  • use a hammer, a screwdriver, and drill
  • shrink wrap my windows
  • make an omelette
  • change a tire
  • admit defeat and call someone else

And, today, I remembered that I can:

  • take an electrical cable, bitten in half by my bunny and, using electrical tape and a pair of scissors, put it back together.

This is particularly important since a half an hour after this triumph I discovered that I can:

  • laugh at the four pieces of wire sitting on the floor, the result of said bunny wreaking havoc on the exact same cord.

Thanks mom & dad, you make me self-sufficient.

Can you work on my bunny next?

Silence Reviewed

Directing, get out of the way of the play, Silence, , , ,

I was just happy about getting to sleep a full night again and having time to cook a hot meal.

This review rounding out my opening weekend is the cherry on top: GAN-e-meed’s Silence is Golden

In a sense, the highest compliment to her is that you don’t notice her work; the play just seems to happen  spontaneously, surprisingly.

Plus, we got called “urban Stage-Warriors.”  Nice.

Read the whole review here on ArtsFuse.

Raising a Humanist: My Body, My Choice

Raising a Humanist, , ,

Avi cut her hair tonight.

Her hair which I was finally able to trim for the first time at the age of three and hasn’t been trimmed again since.

Her precious hair which I’ve been dying to turn into a bob because it’s so straight and shiny.

She grabbed a lock, with her kid scissors in the other hand and said “Mama, I’d like to see what it’s like to cut a piece.”

I made sure she understood it wouldn’t grow back right away.  She said okay and snipped.  Looked at it for a moment.  And then disappeared in to the bathroom.

I knew what was happening in the silence.  It was just long enough for me to think about what I really should do right now.  Any other mother would flip her lid.  But, really, when have I ever made my child wear anything she didn’t want to?  Child’s been picking out her own clothes since she was old enough to walk….which was early, trust me.

How is hair any different?  It’s been long not by my choice, but hers.  So, chopping it off is her choice too.

But I want to protect her because  I imagine the scene in the morning when she looks in the mirror again and realizes she didn’t really want it short after all.  And she will cry and cry and cry.  Or will she?  Maybe she will wake up and love it.  And what if she does cry?  Well, now she knows she like her hair long and she can grow it out again.  It is just hair, after all.  It does grow.  What an easy lesson to learn in life…you can make a mistake with your hair and it will grow back.

I wish we all got second chances with our choices, even if it’s a year later.  Maybe we do, come to think of it.

Here she is.  In her new shorn ‘do. Done entirely with kid scissors.  I only touched the back, I swear.

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Happy Birthday to Me

Personal

I approach my birthdays with trepidation.  The lead-up feels, well, long.  To know that I am approaching the completion of another revolution of my world.

I believe it is difficult for me not just because I watch myself aging in the eyes of others but because I never spent my childhood days imagining my world as a grown-up.  As a parent, yes, so I’m a very good parent.  As a grown-up, no, I never got that far.  So, I’m not really sure what I’m doing, as grown-up.  My imaginative plane crashed somewhere around college.  There are no life-long dreams on which to hang my hat.

I. just. am. a. grown-up.

And I don’t know how it happened.

But, here I am.

With new dreams, worlds, triumphs, fears.

Happy Birthday to me.

32.