The Internet of People

There has been a lot of talk lately about the Internet of Things. It's an intriguing concept. But I've been thinking more about what I wanted to call the Internet of People until I found out that this, rather perplexingly, does not refer to human beings but rather to the technological devices they might wear. Silly me. Here I was thinking people and their electronic accessories were entirely different entities. I for one have never confused a person for his Apple Watch...

Anyway. When I think "Internet of people," I am reflecting on what the Web can...and can't...do for human relationships. Note that I said "for" and not "to"– the latter is a subject for another day. Also note that I am not just talking about romantic relationships– those are yet another subject for yet another day. I mean all relationships.

Case in point: I logged onto social media for a few minutes the other day, something I hardly ever do any more. One of my Facebook friends had an entertaining post about his (mis)adventures in the kitchen. I smiled, read a few more posts from other friends, then logged off and went about my day. It was only later that I realized that my smile wasn't so much about the post as about the fact that this is someone from my real, day-to-day life. I know that kitchen, those pots and pans, that home. And thinking about all that is what made me click "like."

At the same time, I have online friends I've never met in real life, yet with whom I also share a lot. I'm thinking especially of my sister warrior moms. We may not have that extra layer created by meeting in person, yet I feel such a strong sense of connection with these women. Are those ties any less valuable just because they were made and might always remain in cyberspace?

And what about this blog? I have no idea how many people actually read it, though I see the page views are climbing. Does it reach people? Do they feel connected? A friend pointed out blogs can feel one-sided. She's right. Not to mention that it's hard to remain true to my voice when there's no dialogue. Maybe people will start commenting here and then the spirit of exchange will come to life. Meanwhile, I'll keep reading every post aloud to be sure I still sound like me.

This brings me to what I see as the biggest Internet relationship conundrum: one's relationship with oneself. As the mother of three teenagers, I am acutely aware of online promises and pitfalls when it comes to self-image. I see people, especially young women, post countless "selfies" in a desperate attempt to establish a sense of, well, self. Sometimes these posts annoy me, but more often, they just make me sad. I want to hug these kids, tell them to look in a mirror instead of a cell phone, and stop setting themselves up to be objects of others' derision or desire. I know they won't listen, but I want to do it all the same.

I guess all my rambling boils down to this: relationships can be built and sustained online. But if, along the way, you lose touch with your truest, best self, then in the end there is no relationship at all.

When The Muffins Win, Everyone Wins

The final horseman of the Apocalypse has arrived: I have been promoted to department chair, and of a brand-new department at that. I am honored, flattered, and... overwhelmed. My main problem? The number of non-spam emails a person can actually receive in one day. They are breeding like rabbits every time I walk away from my computer or phone!

And don't get me started on the pile of paper or the ten thousand other things that seem as though they should have been done yesterday. As for the meetings, I'm still playing ostrich about those. They'll be here soon enough.

Did I say overwhelmed? Feels more like drowning.

Thankfully, I have learned a thing or two over the years. One is that the solution to drowning is not to keep swimming out to deeper water. Instead, find the shore, regain footing if you can, then make a plan. Translated into yesterday, that meant enjoy my coffee first, then meditate and go for a run, all while leaving the phone behind. On purpose.

That done, I performed triage on the electronic rabbit colony and jumped in the shower. Following another round of triage on the only-slightly-less-alarming mountain of paper, I headed out to do a few errands.  As I drove, the cleansing effects of exercise and water began to wear off, replaced by a Pigpenesque cloud of impending doom...I mean email. 

(Huh. Just checked my thesaurus. Apparently "doom" and "email" are not synonyms. Who knew?)

Anyway. When I made my final stop, my friend Jane said, "do you want to come in for a minute? There's muffins." Part of me said, "Muffins? Seriously? No time for baked goods. Not today! Not unless they can occupy my right hand while I write or type with my left."  But a bigger, wiser, and more vocal part could smell muffiny glory and spoke up with an enthusiastic "sure!" The next two hours found us curled up on a couch to share coffee, muffins, and a good old-fashioned chat.

And guess what? After that, it was all good. Yes, the paper and the e-mails were still right where I'd left them. In fact, they'd gone forth and multiplied. Again. But it was fine. I needed to run, to meditate, to shower. And yes, I needed to do the work (which did get done, by the way). But most of all I needed the connection that only a muffin, coffee, and friend can bring. With that, you can take on the world, doomsday rabbits and all.

On Poetry, My Favorite Poet, and Herons

My thoughts are still too far-flung to submit to the discipline of orderly, coherent words. School starts soon, for the kids and for me, and although two of us are returning to the same-old, same-old, my youngest will start middle school, while my oldest is off to her freshman year of college. We also had some sad news concerning the orange cat featured in the blog two weeks ago. Small wonder, then, that my musings refuse to coalesce into something worth sharing!

This is one reason I admire the talent of poets, although for the longest time, I thought I had no taste for poetry. I believed, wrongly, that it was too hard, that I didn't...couldn't..."get it." In fact, I may have been the person most shocked by my decision to write the bulk of my doctoral dissertation on poetry. Seventeenth century French poetry, to be exact. There were a few love poems in there, but mostly it was about satire. Turns out that satire, well, I totally "get" that!  Thus the door to poetry opened.

Since then, I have found comfort and inspiration in a number of contemporary poets. Chief among them is the incredibly wise and talented Mary Oliver. She sees the most ordinary things as though they were jewels, yet her style is anything but "precious." Yes, the writing is beautiful and evocative, the gift of an extraordinary mind, but it is also gentle and incredibly real. She does not condescendingly claim to see for us; rather she invites us to see with her, and so doing, brings us closer both to the world and to our own best selves. Take, for example, the following:

How Heron Comes

It is a negligence of the mind
not to notice how at dusk
heron comes to the pond and
stands there in his death robes, perfect
servant of the system, hungry, his eyes
full of attention, his wings
pure light.

I saw this beautiful creature on a difficult night not so long ago. I would have spotted him regardless. Birds fascinate me and the majesty of herons is impossible to ignore. Yet thanks to Mary Oliver, if this makes any sense, I saw him more.  

Nor, would it appear, am I alone. Just click here to learn more.

Bikes, bikes, and more bikes

Ever have thoughts so big they refuse to be disciplined into words? Yeah, me too. And when I'm not fighting that, I find myself wanting to rant extensively about, well, almost anything (trending now: LIARS, bad drivers, teenagers, and corruption, to name a few). Yet rants usually end up affecting no one but the ranter. So, in lieu of deep thoughts, the black cat brings you...

10 Reasons to Love the Tour de France
(in no particular order)

 At the end of every stage, there's a guy in polka dots.

What other sport rewards excellence with a yellow shirt and stuffed lion?

Clever (kind of) plays on words.

These guys climb mountains. On bikes...

...which gives new meaning to the term "switchback..."

...but also means you get to see views like this.

 Sunflowers.

 This church.

The guy with the yellow flag.

Need I say more?

Thank you to the official Tour de France website for posting these amazing photos. You rock!

Sometimes, The Cat is Orange...

This post is the first of several that I will occasionally publish on the theme of "questions I probably shouldn't ask."

One group of such questions usually arises between three and five in the morning, those hours when you've been in bed long enough to be blissfully asleep, and when, if wakened, you are unlikely to get any more true rest before life hauls you onto your feet for another day.

Lately, this question has all too often been, "who puked?" Follow-up questions include "where?" "how much?" and "what came up?" I have a dog, three cats, and three kids. This means seven candidates for the "who" question, not counting myself- I'd like to think I'd know if I'd vomited! And don't get me started on the answers to the follow-up questions. Let's just say that living with three cats exponentially increases the possibility of hairballs, and that my habit of walking around barefoot almost always shows me the answer to "where."

A somewhat related question is, "who ate the tops off all the corn muffins?" Again, we have seven potential candidates, eight if I have started sleep-eating, which I would not rule out just now. After all, I am the only adult caring for three human children and four fur babies.  Anything is possible, including the loss what little was left of my mind! All I know at six a.m., not having slept soundly since four, is that I really wanted a corn muffin with my coffee and now, I'm not going to get one.

The final question of recent days is, "do we have to hunt the orange felt mouse now? Really?!" The answer is always, invariably, a resounding YES. After minutes, or maybe hours (who's counting?) of yowling, pouncing, and dashing madly about, he sits by the side of the bed, expectant and triumphant. The old catnip mouse has once more been vanquished and left lovingly at my feet. And yet again, of course, it is not yet five o'clock. In the morning. I pet my baby and tell him what a wonderful cat he is, whereupon he flops over and curls into my side, purring contentedly. An hour later, when I give up on sleep for good and start yet another bleary-eyed day, he has made a nest of the covers, where he will likely stay until some new adventure, usually involving his belly, calls.

Dear readers, meet Norbert, the answer to today's questions I probably shouldn't ask.

The Art of Showing Up

Not so long ago I had someone offer what I'm sure she thought was "constructive criticism" on my performance at work, which she had found, well, lacking. I truly believe she meant well, but predictably enough, I got hurt, then mad, and by the time I went home, I was beating myself up over what she'd said.

Admittedly, it has not been my best year since entering the college teaching profession. It might even be one of the worst, given that the whole year has felt like a living illustration of Murphy's law. 

So yeah, it's not been my best year of teaching. I have definitely been distracted, and I hate that, most of all for my students, who deserve better. But it's time to grant myself a little grace too, something I'm just now learning to do. After all, it's pretty obvious that most of this stuff was beyond my control. And...in spite of everything, every time it was even remotely possible, I was there. Maybe I wasn't polished or put together, maybe organization became a distant memory, and maybe I was working off plan B or even C or D, but I showed up. I sat down with my students, and one way or another, we got it done.

It is true that we need people to be there in a real and productive way. We need effective teachers and doctors and people with snowplows and villages to help us raise our kids. But sometimes we just need people to be present. They might not know what to do or how to do it, but they muddle through with us anyway. They sit in hospital rooms, offices, restaurants, cars. They are THERE. Which, as it turns out, is almost always enough. So here's to the art of showing up, the one thing all of us can do.

Shadow mothers

True story: I never expected that my kids would forget their birth mothers. That's just not reasonable. I have always known those women would always be a very real and important presence in their lives.

What I did not realize is that I would spend so much time thinking about their birth mothers too.  So much so that it is not really a stretch to say that I feel like I too have a relationship with them, even if we have never met and are unlikely ever to do so.

I spend a lot of time sending thoughts and prayers through the universe, hoping that somehow my children's birth mothers will catch them and know that our kids are growing up healthy and strong. And once in a while, my thoughts seem to reach their intended destination, for I sometimes feel what I can only define as a presence. The strongest manifestation of this happened just after I dropped off my eldest for an overnight stay at a prospective college. Just as with any time my kids hit a major milestone, I sent a thought out to her birth mother.

About halfway home, I no longer felt alone in the car. Somehow, I felt like my daughter's birth mother was trying to tell me that we'd done it. Our girl was going to make it. That was all, but it was enough to make me cry. I turned off the radio to see if there was more. There wasn't.

"Shadow mothers" probably sounds ominous or sad, and maybe it is, but really, it's just how I've come to think of the women who brought my children into this world. They are here, with all of us, as much a part of our family as the members I can touch and see.

_________________________________________________

Author's note: While searching Google Images to find the images that accompany this post, I learned of a book entitled Shadow Mothers. This post was developed independently of and well before that discovery, and in fact is about another topic entirely.  Also, I want to give credit where credit is due, but can find no attribution for the first image, which appears on numerous sites, as does the second, which I believe was taken by Ruth Malhotra. Whoever they may be, thanks to the photographers for their excellent work.