Not About the Name

It really isn't, about the name, I mean.  My delightful daughter always manages to find a way to take me by surprise, and especially, it seems, when I am feeling just a tad more secure about our relationship.

By secure, I mean, I think she likes me.  I don't believe for one minute that my daughter loves me.  I have this impression that she has a mindset of what she should feel, so if you ask her, she will say that she loves me.  But to read her description of our relationship on her recent blog (which is, after all, what this rant is about), she is "connected" to me by the fact that I raised her single-handedly, and, oh, she lived inside me for nine months.

My daughter has somewhere in there a flair for life, and an ability to dance with words far greater than mine.  Yet her cold analysis of tradition, and why she wants to take her future husband's name made me sad.  Because I heard denial, and defensiveness, and rationalization, all that stuff that continues to rear its ugly head in our relationship at the most unexpected moments.

I believe this happens whenever we get just a tad too close.  The offensive situation this time was my visit for her engagement party, when we shared a kitchen pre-party as well as one side of a beer pong table at the after-party.  For me, wrestling with living the rest of my life without my family, it was a nice weekend; I was happy enough to have been there, but I have learned not to gush too much about my children.  They have taught me in no uncertain terms where they end and I begin, and that is far, far from each other.

She had already told me, face-to-face, that she planned on taking Nick's name.  Big deal.  I took my first husband's name, too, and then I grew up.  I didn't say that to her.  But I certainly believe that that is her decision.  As well as that she plans on raising her kids, of all things, Catholic.  Been there, done that too.  Not the raising part, but the being raised part.  Not worth the papal pomp.

But she did manage to hit me from behind when she wisecracked her intention to "nuke-and-pave" the rest of her name, meaning, my last name, which I non-traditionally passed to her.  I guess she anticipated this would put me over the edge, just as she thought the other two firebombs would do it.

This is the thing.  My daughter keeps missing the fact that she is grown up now.  When she was in high school I reserved the right to tell her what to do.  I taught her all I could.  And now she's on her own.

Which she keeps needing to prove to herself.

What makes me sad is not the name; those things matter far more to her family-in-law than to me.  What makes me sad is that she is denying her self for her new family's values and calling it independence.

I am now 60, she is a mere 23.  At her age I was waging war with all the values my parents held.  I had been married and divorced and struggling to find meaning in myself and my life, alone.  That has held me in good stead, even as I wrestle with the meaning part and the alone part nearly 40 years later.

I see my daughter, who has a free spirit inside her, holding on tightly to a traditional family, that does, in fact, have rules for their son to live by.  And he does.  And so will she.

It's not about the name.  The name just draws lines in the sand, if you let it.   

Black Cats and Snakes

I have begun to do my Halloween reading, and the night before had just begun a pretty creepy novel by Graham Masterton.  I was getting ready for work, showered and drying off when, from across my bedroom, I heard a loud and prolonged rattle.  Molly, my newly adopted cat, appeared from another part of the room, and took off out of the bedroom.  The rattle sounded again.


You know how, during horror movies, when a character just knows the monster is in the house, and proceeds to look for it, while we all yell, "Don't do it, asshole!"?  Well, there I was, blind without glasses and barely sighted these days with them, semi-wrapped in bath towel, looking in the direction of the loud rattle, and wondering how I am going to get to my clothes, because I have to get dressed.


Of course, I didn't think there was a monster in the house. However, the only logical thing I could imagine was that a snake had gotten into the house.  A big snake.


Meanwhile, another long rattle.  So of course I took a step towards it.


Molly watched from the other side of the room.  Then she backed off, and, in the opposite direction came the rattle.  And I barely saw a length of string, originating in my sewing basket, and tangled no doubt in the long, bushy tail of my new housemate. Which rattled against the sewing basket whenever Molly moved.


All I can say is, I'm really glad I hadn't seen this segment of The Rachel Maddow Show before this happened:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Fast forward past John Boehner; he's way too scary even to contemplate.  And check out the snakes.


And there you have some Halloween greetings from Molly, my black cat, and me

Flying By the Seat of Our Pants

Let me sum up my recent trip to Champaign, Illinois, from Charleston, South Carolina:  I believe I traveled further than Flat Stanley without seeing anywhere near as much, and I also suspect that my luggage traveled even further than I.

The third leg of my flight to Champaign was delayed while we changed planes due to suspected brake problems.  That took 20 minutes.  Waiting for some official to sign off on the log book so we could take off took another hour and ten minutes.

That, I was to learn, was nothing.  Here are a few of the highlights from the return trip:

-- A change of the second leg of the flight from LaGuardia to Miami, due to NYC weather delays which would prevent me from making my New York to Charleston connection.  When I asked about alternatives, the 12:20 to Miami was suggested, boarding passes printed, luggage rerouted, at which time I was told, "Oh, that flight has been delayed.  It's in the hangar being held due to mechanical problems."

-- A change to a later Miami flight (2:00 p.m.) which was then held up on the ground for one-half hour due to problems with the audio-visual system – that's right, the television sets that American Airlines forces us passengers to watch (with or without sound) during the two hour flight.  And of course, this critical item had to be checked off by some bureaucrat before we could fly.  Causing me to get to the gate in Miami two minutes after scheduled take-off of my Charleston connection.

-- At which time I was put on a flight to Dallas/Ft. Worth, taking off two hours later, and leaving Dallas/Ft. Worth at 8:15 the next morning.  Without my luggage, I was to learn later.

-- Sitting next to an extremely wired young man, who was jumping around and singing – sans iPod – in a very large and crowded, sardine-style, flight from Miami to Dallas/Ft. Worth.  Which was, of course, delayed.  This was due to the federal marshal being called in to eject a passenger.  His crime was refusing to turn off his cell phone when told.  As he and his wife deboarded, he cheerfully yelled, "I guess we're just toooo drunk to fly tonight!"

-- And of course, inevitably, the lost luggage.  Could be in Miami, could be in … Charlotte???  The people at the 1-800-lost-luggage number had no idea why, two days later the bag had still not been returned to Charleston.  Could be because it was a small airplane and they had to get all the passengers' luggage on first.  No, they can't call Dallas/Ft. Worth to inquire about it because the people on the ground at Dallas/Ft. Worth are very busy.  And "we are just the liaison between the passenger and the airline".  Please, PLEASE get those folks at American a dictionary.

By the way, I noted at one point during one leg of the many legs of my flights that I had inadvertently left my cell phone on, leading me to wonder if I just may have come close to being responsible for the crashing of a plane.  One wonders.