Redheaded Stranger

There are things that separate me in my house of boys. I am the other. I am the girl. I do not concern myself with the inner workings of solar panels and recharging batteries and hydrogen. My eyes glaze over when they talk about Minecraft and I simply do not understand the frenzies they work themselves into over the xBox. We are so very different, my children and I.

Or are we?

Our oldest, The Redhead, has made me see things differently lately. I have written before about how we get each other. But as he becomes firmly planted in the world of teenager-ness, those moments of connection are fewer and far between. So I take notice when they happen. I don't want him to become a stranger to me. I want to acknowledge and recognize and shout from the rooftops: "We have something in common! We share an interest! My sweet firstborn child is not lost to me forever!"

Here's the secret formula:
Books + Music = Connection

1) Books

I am a huge reader. I used to teach middle school English and high school Social Studies, and while I haven't taught for two years now, I still keep up with the new and good in YA fiction. I wouldn't characterize The Redhead as a huge reader (I had plenty of students that always had their noses in books for comparison.), but he does enjoy a good book and is usually reading something. We've connected before with books - The Hunger Games, Ender's Game, The Book Thief - reading them aloud as a family and then going to see the movie. But a few months ago for my book club I read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and loved it.

It wasn't going to be something we would read aloud with The Redhead's little brothers, who are in 7th grade. It involves kids dying from cancer. But I knew The Redhead was old enough to handle it. And I thought he'd like it. So I handed it over to him. He already knew the Green brothers from their Youtube channel, vlogbrothers, so he was willing to give it a try. I told him I cried through the last 30 pages. He smirked. I could see he was thinking I was just being a sentimental momma. Three days later, he came in to my room after everyone else had gone to bed. His eyes were wet. "I finished it. It was awesome."

And my heart was happy.

He got another John Green book from his English teacher at school: Looking for Alaska. When he was done, he pronounced it equally awesome and gave it to me to read. Do you see what's happening here? We are recommending books to one another. I started reading it and saw all the talk of teenage attraction and sex a bit differently knowing that my son had already read it. There is a pivotal scene involving oral sex - yep, oral sex - that embarrassed me for a moment. Only because I knew my 14-year-old had already read it. And yet he wasn't so embarrassed that he didn't recommend the book to me. So I got over my embarrassment and considered it a very good thing that we could "talk" openly - through reading - about a sensitive subject that most parents would avoid like the plague. We ended up having a great conversation about John Green and how he actually went to a boarding school (like the characters in the book) and how I also had gone to a boarding school. Which The Redhead knew but now sees in a whole new light.

We've got our own little book club. We are the only two members. So now we're on to Divergent by Veronica Roth. I read it and passed it on to The Redhead. I told him he has to finish it so we can go see the movie. And of course we are going to see The Fault in Our Stars when it comes out this summer - that goes without saying.

2) Music

As a mother who can impose my will on my children, I have insisted that they all learn to play an instrument. In this family, the band program offered as an elective at school is mandatory. The Redhead was the first to experience this tyranny, since he's the oldest. He started out taking piano lessons as a wee one. This helped him immensely when he joined band in middle school because he already knew how to read music. He suffered through a year of trying to play the french horn before he changed to the clarinet. He was so good he was asked to play the bass clarinet. This year has been his first year in marching band and it has been a success.

The Redhead after his winter concert.
That blurry thing is his bass clarinet.

Although my children may argue, my point is not forcing my will on them. I am hoping music will become something that they love and that brings them some enjoyment in life. But I can't make it happen. I can provide an environment that values music. I can make sure they have parents who listen to music at home and in the car. Parents who plan their entire day around the approaching Grammy awards and expect watching the show to be a family affair. I am a mom who turns it up and sings along. Aquaman is a dad who quizzes them when a song comes on the radio: "Who sings this?" he asks them and they scramble to answer correctly.

For Christmas, the boys requested things like laptops and iPhones and iPads - things we could not afford x3. This is in addition to the fact that we have successfully resisted giving our teenagers smartphones for many reasons. We tried to be creative with gifts - things that would encourage their interests. For The Redhead, I zeroed in on a record player as the perfect gift. At his high school's Open House in the fall, he had been most excited to introduce us to his English teacher because she had a record player in the classroom. It wasn't just an antique - she played it every day and displayed her collection of albums. She told us that she had to move The Redhead to a seat somewhat removed from the record player because he was mesmerized (read: distracted and unable to complete assignments) by it. This stuck in my head. I mentioned it to Aquaman as we did our Christmas shopping. He wasn't on board at first. "Do you really think he wants that?" he asked. "Are you sure? He didn't put it on his list, did he?"

I stood firm. "Yes. He'll love it. Trust me."

I did worry that I would be wrong -  that he would be disappointed when he opened the box Christmas morning and it wasn't a computer or a phone.

Only he wasn't. He was so surprised and pleased that he almost cried. He told me later it was the best present he had ever gotten.  

The best present ever.

We have had a great time hunting used bookstores for albums. Aquaman and I got him started with a few favorites of our own. We consider these essential to his music library.

The first album that was ever given to me.

A favorite of my parents.
We must have listened to this album a million times growing up. 

Only the best country album ever.

I am a child of the 80s. This proves it.

And while we guided him in the old wise ways of 80s pop, he introduced us to this:

His English teacher plays Daft Punk in class a lot - that's how he found out about them. I had never heard of them, but once I listened to the song Get Lucky, I had to scroll through Youtube and let The Redhead listen to Zapp and the S.O.S Band and Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder so that he could hear how 70s disco and 80s R&B had influenced this incredibly popular group of 2013. See what's happening here? We're recommending music to each other. And when Daft Punk won their Grammys this past weekend, I knew all about them. Which made me feel like a cool, hip momma - no easy task for a 43-year-old. Thank you, son. 

This past week, I heard the new song Say Something by A Great Big World on Pandora and was haunted by it. Have a listen. I challenge you not to cry. 

This song was playing one day when The Redhead came home from school and I asked him if he knew it. He did indeed. He was busy on the iPad, so I continued cleaning up the kitchen and washing clothes. And then, as I folded, I heard him picking out the notes to the song on his Casio keyboard. I paused in my work, straining to hear. He was playing the song. He searched it on Youtube and found a tutorial on the chords and now he was playing it. I had done the same thing countless times as a teenager (minus the Youtube part, since it didn't exist) - picking out a song from the radio on our piano. I almost cried. That was it. That was the moment that I knew exactly why I had insisted on piano lessons and band and music in our lives. It was for this. So that a person can connect with a piece of music on a level that makes them want to learn to play it themselves. 

I emerged from the laundry room and captured the moment.

We ended up moving to the living room where he played the keyboard and I played our out-of-tune piano, the music loud for us to follow and cover the sounds of our off key voices. We advanced to Coldplay and played Fix You and Clocks and The Scientist. It was a Partridge Family moment. We had fun together. 

And again, my heart was happy. 

This teenager thing isn't so bad.  

The Surprising Things You Need to Survive an Ice Storm with Three Teenage Boys

The library is closed. 

I survived the great Ice Storm of 2013 and so can you!

Icepocalypse 2013 arrived north of Dallas late Thursday night. I woke up to the sound of what I thought was gunfire. It turned out to be trees, breaking under the weight of ice half an inch thick. We still had power. I rolled over and went back to sleep. What? School was cancelled for the day. If you think I wasn't going to take advantage of not having to get three boys out the door, you're crazy.

Our backyard icicles.

Frosty.

The backyard was a popsicle when I looked outside our kitchen window Friday morning. Everything was encased in ice. The trees drooped. One of our peach trees still stood proudly, the other looked like a wilted house plant someone forgot to water. Our driveway, covered by arching limbs that provide shade, had become an icy tomb for my car. Limbs hung heavily, inches away from the car's roof. Other limbs had snapped, blocking the way. I wouldn't be going anywhere.

Happy Peach Tree

Sad Peach Tree

Can you see my car buried in there?

Those are icicles on the flag. Really.

The Redhead. The only one awake before noon.

I walked up and down our street, mug of coffee in hand, astonished at the number of ancient oaks that had split under the weight of ice.

Our street

One of my favorite trees right next door

It's a goner.

I tried to talk a neighbor out of driving to work and discovered that the rest of the street had been without power all night. I felt lucky. Neighbors came over and warmed up in our still cozy house. I made a pot of chili. Just as I finished, we lost power. I didn't feel so lucky.

Our three teenage boys had been wandering the street, busting up anything encased in ice. Seriously. I had to confiscate a baseball bat from The Redhead and explain that plastic and wood will shatter if you hit it in freezing temperatures. They tried sledding down a hill with the lid from an ice chest and cardboard boxes. It worked about as well as you might think. The Redhead and Thing 2 talked me into walking the few blocks downtown to buy sleds at the only store that was open: The Ski Shop. They were doing a brisk business selling all things winter while everything else was shuttered. I had no idea that, for $30.00, I was buying my sanity for the next 50 hours.

And that brings me to the things that became absolutely essential to surviving Icepocalypse 2013 with three teenage boys. I've listed them in order of importance.

1) Sleds

Worth every penny and the dangerous trek downtown over icy sidewalks, sleds saved me. The boys were completely entertained, flying down nearby hills on plastic saucers. They stayed out for hours with other kids from the street, leaving me to fret over how to keep the pipes from freezing as temperatures hovered a few degrees above single digits. Thing 1 made a modified snowboard by removing the wheels from his skateboard. Genius. They came home only when they were too cold to stand it any more and to eat. Which brings me to my next item.

2) Beans

I can't tell you how grateful I was for the cans of beans we had stocked in our pantry. We ate baked beans, black beans, and refried beans. We ate them in chili, with cut up hot dogs and cheese, and plain. They're easy to heat up (we had a gas stove that we could light with matches), allergy friendly, and filling. There were consequences as a result of our legume-exclusive diet that could not be avoided. It was worth it.

3) A Fireplace

I had forsaken our fireplace last winter because it didn't draw correctly and we got smoked out of our living room. It was a frivolous item in Texas, I had decided. We didn't really need it. I cleaned that sucker out this spring and threw away the bulky fire screen and log grate. I thought about decorating it with pillar candles. And now I was kicking myself.

It was our only source of heat, smoky or not. Aquaman had carefully stacked logs he'd collected on the side of the house in various places. They were covered in ice now and I didn't know if they'd burn. But I thought back to our days in Alaska where we heated our home with a wood stove. We had cords of wood stacked up outside and it was certainly exposed to the snow and ice there. So I went and dug under the top layer of wood and found dry logs and hauled them in. I opened the flue all the way, crumpled up old paper grocery sacks underneath the wood, and lit a match. It burned the paper and went out. The Redhead wandered in and get this - brought me a Duraflame log from his room. I'm not kidding. You never know what those boys have in their room. He said it was left over from a camping trip. A kind neighbor also brought me a bag of Pinon wood. We soon had a roaring fire, which I tried to sit in front of nonstop over the next two days that we were without power.

I am sorry for all the nasty things I said about you, Fireplace.

4) Books

When the power goes out and school is cancelled and your car is frozen and everything is closed and it's too dangerous to travel on the icy roads, you have a lot of free time. I used it to catch up on reading. It was quite pleasant under piles of blankets in front of the fire. I finished Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. At night, we all huddled as close to the fire as we could and I read aloud with a flashlight. It got dark by 5:30. After we ate our beans, there wasn't much else to do while we tried to stay warm. I am a huge proponent of reading aloud - not just to children - to everyone. Icepocalypse gave me a captive audience. We breezed through Lois Lowry's Gossamer, a lovely book. Thing 1 and Thing 2 are reading The Giver in their 7th grade English class so it was nice to read something else from the same author.

5) A Dog

Yellow Dog was in heaven. There were no cars going up and down our street and few people, so she was free to be off leash, pursuing boys on sleds. She was exhausted each night. The ice took a toll on her paws and nails, but she's recovering. She was more than willing to snuggle up with me in front of the fire and help keep me warm.

"I will keep you warm, my human."

Other things that were pretty nice to have? A gas stove, gas water heater, sleeping bags rated to -20F, awesome neighbors, batteries and matches, flashlights and candles, and a hand crank radio.

At the height of the storm, there were 250,000 people without power. So I was very glad to see this outside our door Saturday night:

The line truck. 

The power came back on and I jumped out from underneath the blankets and ran around blowing out candles and turning on lights. I was just about to start the dishwasher when it went out again. This was hard on the psyche. The thermostat in the hall read 35 degrees. That's right. Inside the house it was close to freezing.

I took a picture because I knew Aquaman wouldn't believe me.

You have power! For 10 minutes!

Thing 2 after power was restored and then cut off again.

We ended up in another heap in front of the fire, but I migrated to my bedroom with a sleeping bag. Sleeping inches away from teenagers full of beans is not ideal. Around midnight, friends out sledding showed up on our porch and insisted that we come stay with them. They had never lost power. I was cold. And tired. I gave in. I left the fire to die and faucets dripping and hoped for the best. I slept great at their house and had a hot shower the next morning. We went to check on our house Sunday at noon and found the power had just come back on.

We had survived. The boys said it was just as well that the power was back because it had warmed up enough that the sledding was no longer any good. Thing 2 plopped himself back in front of the xBox, Thing 1 in front of the laptop, and The Redhead in front of the iPad. Back to normal. School was cancelled again Monday. When Tuesday rolled around, I was willing to dig my car out of the ice to get them there for the two-hour delayed start. I didn't care how icy the roads still were - I was getting them back to school.  

I think it's safe to say that I have forgotten all my Alaska survival skills. It makes me a bit nostalgic, but also thankful that I no longer have to work so hard just to get through daily life. I don't even have the right gear anymore - no Sorel boots, no North Face jacket and pants, no proper socks and gloves. If I'm really honest with myself, I might admit that what I thought were my Alaska survival skills are really Aquaman's Alaska survival skills. He was stuck out on a shrimp boat while we were in Icemageddon, but I know if he had been landside, he would've excelled at keeping the fire going, wielding a chain saw to clear limbs, and holding his own sledding with the boys. Most importantly, he would've kept me warm.

Four days, three teenage boys, one dog, no power and no husband. That's one for the record books.

"All is Lost" was Lost on Me

Aquaman left on a shrimp boat today for a month or so. We all hope he'll be home in time for Christmas. Before he left, we rushed to see a movie that was high on our list.

I had high hopes for All is Lost, the film starring Robert Redford aboard a doomed sailboat. I must tell you that I can watch Robert Redford all day long. The Natural is one of my favorite movies - I even have the soundtrack. Don't even get me started on The Sting (also have the soundtrack), Out of Africa, The Way We Were, A River Runs Through It, Legal Eagles, Up Close & Personal - not to mention the films I only remember seeing as my folks watched them: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, The Great Gatsby, A Bridge Too Far and Downhill Racer. He is a Hollywood icon. Besides being easy on the eyes and a damn good actor, he is also the one to thank for the Sundance FilmFestival and the Sundance Channel. Oh, I almost forgot the Sundance Catalog. He's classy. Like I said, high hopes.

I - and Aquaman - along with The Redhead, Thing 1 and Thing 2 - were very disappointed. And here's why:

1) You don't even know the guy's name.

Seriously. It is never stated. They aren't kidding when they say he is the only actor in the movie. In the credits, he is simply listed as "Our Man."

2) There's no reason to care about this guy.

The film begins with "Our Man" reading a letter he has written - from whence the line "All is lost." comes. But we don't know who the letter is to. He's apologizing, but we don't know for what. Blech. We also don't know why in the hell he's out in the middle of the Indian Ocean, how long he's been there, where he came from, and where he's going to. I need these details, people. I need to know my character.

3) There's no backup handheld radio.

Here's where the fact that I'm married to a marine biologist probably began to ruin things for me. I see Aquaman charge his handheld radio before every trip on any kind of boat. I've been on a sailboat with him in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and while I know little to nothing about sailing, I do know enough to know that there is navigational equipment on board that very well could have been ruined by water pouring in when the sailboat is hit by a floating container, as is portrayed in the film. And I know enough to know that any sailor worth his salt would have a backup, battery-powered radio. Which leads me to my next point.

4) WHERE'S THE EPIRB?

For the benefit of those of you who are not mariners nor married to one, you may not know what an EPIRB is. I'll enlighten you. It's an Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon. Aquaman is REQUIRED to have one on him when he is offshore in his gig as a Fisheries Observer. These lifesavers interface with an international satellite system for search and rescue. Since 1982, they have become commonplace and you can get them at any store like West Marine (whose name was stickered across a pole used in the first 5 minutes of the movie. Great product placement.). An EPIRB can be activated manually, by a crash, or a sinking. Aquaman also had one as a Ski Patrol member in Alaska for Avalanche Search and Rescue and planes also have them. I only know what I've picked up just by being around coastal towns and extreme environments, and even I know the rudimentary basics of this. But here's a visual that explains things much better.

Illustration from the Coast Guard Compass, the official blog of the US Coast Guard.

An EPIRB transmits a signal with location data (because you're required by the FCC to register it) that is quickly transmitted to a national authority -  most commonly the Coast Guard. But even an unregistered beacon is better than no beacon. Not only are there EPIRBs for your person (like Aquaman has) but most vessels have one mounted that is automatically deployed with increased water pressure that would happen in a sinking. It is legally required on all US commercial fishing vessels, uninspected passenger vessels carrying more than 6 people and uninspected commercial vessels. So technically, "Our Man" didn't have to have one. But most, if not all, sailors setting off for the Indian Ocean alone would.

So here's where All is Lost lost me. There was no personal EPIRB nor vessel EPIRB and there was no explanation as to why.

5) The sextant he saved was useless for navigation when he finally pulled it out.

"Our Man" goes to great effort to save a mysterious package from his sinking sailboat that turns out to contain a beautiful, unused sextant. It is presumably a gift from someone - but "Our Man" only briefly looks at the card and sets it aside, leaving us still unsatisfied as to any human connection he may have. He also has a book, a guide to celestial navigation. Navigation is impossible at this point. He is floating on a life raft. He should have used the sextant and book in the first hour that he awoke to find his electronics destroyed aboard the Virginia Jean. All it can do for him at this point in the movie is make him aware of where he is drifting - which is into a shipping channel. He can't do anything about it. But he can at least keep an eye and ear out for huge ships that might spot him. Which he does. In my opinion, this should have been made clear. He is not navigating. He is merely determining his location - over which he has no control.

I won't spoil things for you by telling you the ending, not because I hope you'll go see the movie, but because I still love Robert Redford. I blame myself, you see. In regards to boat-y stuff, I just know too much - purely by osmosis. The life of the wife of a marine biologist. Sniff.

I will recommend another movie, also boat related (technically, a ship), that is excellent and based on a true story.

I adore Tom Hanks. I watch Castaway any time I'm flipping through channels and it is on. I can't even begin to list all of the movies he has been in that I love, but Apollo 13 and Philadelphia come to mind. I have loved him since Bosom Buddies. He is superb in this film. I love that it is based on the book written by the real Captain Phillips, A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS and Dangerous Days at Sea. I don't know anything about pirates, and a dear friend of mine whose husband actually travels these seas as a ship's captain might be able to point out all kinds of Hollywood inaccuracies in this film like I just did in All is Lost, but somehow I doubt it. It is gripping and left me wondering when in the hell we will develop regulations that better protect the wheelhouse on huge ships.

Sadly, All is Lost wasn't my first disappointing experience with movies about the sea.

The first time I saw The Perfect Storm was in a movie theater in Anchorage. I loved it. It was riveting and also based on a true story and the excellent book by Sebastien Junger. Do I even need to go into my infatuation with Mark Wahlberg? I'll spare you. The second time I saw The Perfect Storm was in a makeshift theater in Cordova, Alaska - a small fishing village where we lived for eight years. The room was full of commercial fishermen. Real fishermen. And you should have heard them. "That never would've happened!" they shouted at the screen. "He would've had his survival suit on 20 minutes ago," they informed me out of the corners of their mouths. Inaccuracy after inaccuracy, so obvious to these fishermen, had been undetectable to me in the theater weeks before. But you know what? I still love that movie. You care about the characters and you're rooting for that little New England fishing village. I once heard Linda Greenlaw, the only female swordfish boat captain in the US who is portrayed in the movie by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, speak at a conference in Portland, Maine. She was wonderful to hear and has written numerous books about the sea.

Now I'm thinking it wasn't such a good idea to start talking about The Perfect Storm and other movies depicting the dangers at sea when Aquaman headed out into the Gulf of Mexico a few hours ago in rough seas.

I'll never learn.