The Lisa Life

Mia And Bennie

Getting Older Is Hazardous To Your Health

My mother-in-law, Margaret, has been suffering from memory lapses for at least three years now.   We first realized this when we still lived out in the country, where the Blair Witch Project could have been filmed.  She had left her home in Brighton, and an hour later, still had not arrived at our house, fifteen minutes away.  She hadn't arrived because although she had been to our house hundreds, if not thousands of times, she had gotten lost on the way.

It was easy to dismiss this.  She was taking medication because she had low blood pressure and she and Peter, my father-in-law, wrote it off to that. 

Martin and I were concerned, and thought she should get evaluated, but were reassured by both Peter and Margaret that it was just her meds.

Fast forward to the next couple years, and the memory lapses are getting more pronounced.  Sometimes, it's little things, like not remembering what day it is.  Other times, it's things like not remembering where a store or restaurant she's gone to for years is, or we make plans and have to tell her several times.  Mia goes to school Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and she doesn't remember that.

Sometimes, in conversation with her, I'll tell her something and she'll say, "Oh, that's right!"  and I know she has no idea what I'm talking about.

Finally, last week, Peter took her to be evaluated.  It didn't go well.  She has to go back for some testing and it's going to be done in the evening.  Margaret is convinced that she's being taken away that evening and put in a home.  After the appointment, she was so upset, Margaret and Peter stopped by the house and Martin and I tried to reassure her.  Martin and his mom have always been exceptionally close and he is going with them for the evening tests.

I love my mother-in-law dearly.  I will never forget, when Martin and I started dating, his parents still lived on Brighton Lake and had a pontoon boat.  We went over one Sunday afternoon to go out on the boat and I met his parents.  As soon as I saw his mom, I recognized her from the car dealership I worked at as The British Dog Lady.  His parents "adopted" me as soon as we met and I've enjoyed my close relationship with them.

Margaret is a remarkable lady.  She grew up in a small town in the north of England and moved to the States with her husband and son in 1980.  She left behind family and friends and a world she knew well to start a new life.  She's very much the British Mum.  Her house is always immaculate (you never know when the Queen of England is going to stop by your house in Brighton, Michigan, for a cup of tea) and never has a mean word to say about anyone.  She loves her family and would do anything in the world for us.  She's friendly to everyone, has never met a stranger, and I've never met anyone better with dogs. 

I dearly hope when she has this testing done, something can be done to help her.  I know she is frightened,  and I want her to feel more like herself again.

Good Parenting

Shaun Of The Dead is on Comedy Central right now.  It's one of Martin's favorite movies, although I think it's juvenile and not very funny.  I'm sure, since it is on mainstream cable, lots of the "bad" stuff is cut but it wouldn't be a good idea to let Mia watch this, would it?  Especially since she still hasn't recovered from the trauma of the tornado in the Wizard Of Oz?

Good Morning

It is not quite nine a.m. on a Saturday morning and I am up.  You will note that I said "up" rather than the more popular, less accurate, "awake". 

The last time I looked at the clock before falling asleep was sometime between three and four a.m.  I had already watched two movies, Rush (very good) and Great Balls Of Fire (eh) on On Demand and read for a bit.  I just couldn't turn my brain off and sleep.

I got up this early on a week-end morning because I live with Cindy Brady.  My daughter is an incredible tattletale.  Since she doesn't have siblings around she can tell on regularly, she is reduced to telling on the dogs.  This morning, she dutifully reported that Boomer had pulled a bag of potatoes off the counter.  I had forgotten to put them away after grocery shopping yesterday.  What he was planning on doing with the potatoes, I have no idea.  Whipping up a batch of twice baked?  Hash browns?  The classic mashed version?  It was an eight pound bag.  Why couldn't it have fallen on his head?

She also informed me that something was moving in the microwave.  Although when we first moved into this home, there was some slight evidence of mice, they have long been gone, and that was my first thought.  That and, "How the hell did a mouse get the microwave door open?"  When I very cautiously opened the microwave door, nothing was inside it but what was left of the cherry cobbler I made for dessert yesterday and it looked fairly inanimate. Benign, even.  I do admit that I seem to have an extraordinary amount of spiders turn up in my kitchen but like the mice, I don't see how they would get the microwave door open.

Mia is also quick to tell me, "Boomer is trying to get upstairs."  This would not be a big deal except that Boomer enjoys sorting the laundry in the hampers for us.  Since he is color blind (he is a dog, after all), this consists of pulling out all of the underwear and socks and chewing them to shreds rather than sorting the lights from darks and the delicates.  Boomer can easily jump the baby gate we tried to block the stairs with, so Martin used one of the sides of Mia's crib to make a door of sorts.  It's a marvel of engineering, it is, secured to the banister with a bright red dog leash.  This, I might add, was my idea.  I was putting something in Mia's closet and noticed her crib, dismantled and abandoned since she got her big girl bed and thought the side would make a wonderful dog blocker.  It really adds a certain something to the decor, as well.

It's too early on a week-end morning for all this.  I need tea.

The Hair Chronicles, Volume II: Mia

Biracial hair can be tricky.  My daughter has beautiful spiral curls that reach to the middle of her back, but she also has many of the worst traits of both black girl hair and white girl hair.  Her hair is prone to matting, she is very tender headed, she gets "peas" in her kitchen (that means little knots of hair at the nape of her neck for you white folks) and she has baby fine, fly away hair, all at once. 

Her hair is also shiny, healthy, clean and done, no matter how many tears on both sides it takes.  Never have I been more tempted to drink a double martini at 11 a.m. than I am after doing Mia's hair.  I still wait for social services to show up after every session of combing we have because of the screaming (hers, not mine, I just grind my teeth and plead a lot).

I've had many people ask me, "Why don't you just let her hair be curly and natural?"  That would be fine, she has beautiful ringlets, but would you like to come over every day and comb the mats and tangles and the start of some good dreadlocks out while is she screaming and squirming like you are trying to poke her with a sharp stick in the eye?  I didn't think so.  For all the women who have little blonde headed girls who say, "Oh, I just use lots of conditioner on the snarls!" I say, "Honey, we're talking apples and oranges here, this ain't something a little Johnson's No More Tears conditioner is gonna take care of."

This is what Mia's hair looks like after I take her current braid arrangement out before her bath.  (Click on picture to enlarge.)

Oh and that thing she's holding over her nose is Blankey, not to be confused with Michael Jackson's son Blanket.  This is Mia's own very special (fragrant) Blankey.  Back to the hair. This is also what her hair looks like if it's not braided.  She could be a really short non-militant Angela Davis, couldn't she?

It's taken me a lot of practice, a lot of patience, a lot of tears and trial and error, but finally, FINALLY, after four years, I can do my daughter's hair and it looks as pretty as she is.

My tricks:  I use a conditioning shampoo, the best I can afford, and I save the conditioner tube thingies from when I color my hair and after shampooing, put a good tablespoon/palm full on her hair and don't rinse it out.  I blot her hair with a towel but leave it still mostly wet and put TCB hair grease (Note: I have naturally curly hair that can get frizzy dry ends and I use a little tiny dab of TCB on the ends every week or so and it works wonders) all through it without combing it. This is where the screaming begins:  I comb small sections, starting at the back of her neck in the kitchen and when I'm done, I clip it out of the way and go on to the next section.  I part it, according to how many braids we have decided on (two, four or eight) and I twist each section as tight as I can before I put a rubber band on close to her scalp.  Not just any rubber band, either.  They must be silicone or they break when you put them on.  I braid the ponytail as tight as I possibly can to the very bottom and twist the ends around a small colorful barrette.  After I've braided it all, I smooth a non-frizz creme over the non-braided parts. 

I should also note, I only shampoo Mia's hair about once every two weeks.  Why?  Because it doesn't need it.  I rinse it every time she bathes and if it's washed every time, it gets limp, fragile and breaks easily.  I rinse it and smooth conditioner over it. 

To freshen it up every day, I re-braid her pigtails if they need it and use more anti-frizz creme to smooth all of it.  She also wears a sleeping hat, which looks like a fabric shower cap, but it keeps her hair from getting smashed around. 

This is the end result.  Not bad for a white girl with bad hair herself, if I do say so.

A Summary Of The Ricky Holland Case

The Detroit Free Press has a well-written summary of the tragic Ricky Holland case.  You can read it here.  You will have to scroll down to Chapter One, as the series is in fourteen parts.

This case still breaks my heart.  There is no hell hot enough for Tim and Lisa Holland.

Loving Across The Color Line

Loving Across The Color Line, by Sharon E. Rush.

Subtitled, A White Adoptive Mother Learns About Race. 

For those of you who are just joining me, I am an adult adoptee, as in my husband.  We adopted our daughter Mia, who is biracial.  Martin and I are both white.

(Note to self: She's going to be four next month.  Where has the time gone?)

When we started talking seriously about adopting, we looked at many angles, foreign versus domestic, age, and yes, race.  We had a very gifted social worker who performed our home study and was an adoptive mother herself.  We quickly decided that foreign adoption was not for us; the travel, the cost; the red tape.  The most motivating factor against foreign adoption, however, was that there were children right here in the States who needed families and we could fill that need.

The race of a child was not the big motivating factor.  We just didn't care as long as we had a healthy infant.

On the other hand, I'm a white girl married to a pale blue guy.  I have friends from many ethnic backgrounds but I wanted to make sure I gave my daughter all the support and honored all of her heritage and wanted her to be able to negotiate through the world with confidence in herself.  I don't want her skin to be the only thing that determines who she is.

I read everything I could get my hands on regarding a child of a different  color than the parents.

Loving Across The Color Lines was one of the books I read.

It was also the worst.

Ms. Rush is a civil rights lawyer and a law professor at the University of Florida.  Obviously a highly educated woman.  She is also a single white woman who adopted a biracial girl.

Throughout the book, she capitalizes White and Black.  That is a constant irritant.  And weird.  Is that something I missed in the style guide?

She also seems to hunt for injustices done to her daughter.  It's as if every situation her daughter is in, whether playing team sports or interacting with other families, the only issue Ms. Rush focuses on is the race of the other people involved and if that affects her daughter's experience.

She admits she became obsessed with race and race relations.

Although this book is fairly short, 188 pages plus Notes, it took me a long time to read it because it just pissed me off so much.  I had to keep putting it down.  (Okay, sometimes I threw it down and told my husband, "This is such utter bullshit!"  Martin, I should add, read the first chapter and gave it up as a bad job.)

I may be naive or just Pollyanna, but I am not going through my life looking for prejudice.  I can say that so far, we have not encountered any obvious prejudice.

We have also had many frank discussions with friends of various ethnic backgrounds regarding race and the bottom line is that our friends and acquaintances look at Mia as a cute, bright, vivacious little girl.  Not a cute bright vivacious little (fill in color here) girl.

Note to Alaina:  If you send me your snail mail address, I will send you this book.  Of course, after you read it, you will come to my house and beat me about the head and shoulders with it since it is so awful, but hey, that is what friends are for, right?

Celebrity Adoption

This has been rambling around in my head for quite a while now.  Stacy also approached the topic and she shares many of  my thoughts about it.

The whole thing with Madonna kind of skeeves me out.   It sounds like she basically bought a child.  The thing that a lot of people who are only reading about it and have not been involved in adoption may not realize that many African countries are very difficult for anyone to adopt from.  Some take as long as three years. Throw in a controversial white woman and well.   So unless Madge had this in the works for a while, I suspect something not quite kosher. 

While in many ways I admire these celebrities for adopting trans racially and trans culturally, I also wonder how those children will come to view adoption and their native culture.  Especially Angelina Jolie's children.  While I don't doubt her sincerity, I do wonder about dragging toddlers all around the world and the exposure they get in the press. 

Like Tom Cruise's older children, I wonder what they will think as they grow up and if they will wonder if every soccer game was just another photo op.  (For the record, I think Suri Cruise was Artificial Insemination or Chris Klein's kid.  I just don't think Tom likes girls.)

I don't discuss details about Mia's adoption on my blog.  That is out of respect for Mia's birth family and Mia herself.  Anyone who knows me in real life knows the story, anyway.  It's something I choose not to send out into the blogosphere.  It's a personal thing.

As an adoptive parent and as an adult adoptee, I am a little wary of these celebrity adoptions and a bit sensitive about it.

I worry about those children.  Is this going to be a one way ticket into long term therapy for a lot of them? 

While there are many children in the world who need a family, there are many right here, in this country, who also need families.

The whole issue gives me lots of food for thought and I don't really know how I feel about it.

Happy Birthday, Mary

Today would have been my Mom's 80th birthday.  She was born in 1926 and died in 1999.

When I was teasing my mom, or trying to piss her off, I'd call her Mary.  My Mom was teeny tiny and feisty. She had that bright red hair you know.  She used to tell me when construction workers or cops or guys in general would yell, "Hey Red, what color is your hair?"  she would yell back, "Green, you color blind son of a bitch!"  You have to understand, she was 97 pounds soaking wet with heels on and a big purse at that point.  She used to call me Lisa B to piss me off or tease me.  And yeah, it does creep me the hell out that Patsy Ramsey used to call JonBenet JonnieB. 

Her favorite cocktail was a gin & tonic, so tonight Mary, I raise my glass and remember you. (Pine-Sol, anyone?)

I miss her, every single day.  I miss the goofy things we used to laugh over, trading books, our fights over my hair.  (According to my mother, I had approximately two good hair days in my life.)  I miss our movie dates and going shopping because she was a bit of a control freak with personal belongings and how the house looked and man, one ratty towel in my bathroom and the bathroom was getting new towels, shower curtain, etc. She used to take me to Meijer's for this because she told me I didn't take good enough care of my linens to deserve good ones.  I thought the Meijer's towels were just fine.  I miss her gasps when I was driving.  These gasps could range from her finding a stick of gum in her purse to seeing a girl wearing a tacky outfit or too short skirt to a UPS truck almost creaming me. 

Mostly, I miss getting to see Mary watch her grandchildren grow up.  She loved Dexter so much.  She would have been over the moon with Mia.  I miss her seeing my friends all grown up with children.  She always welcomed my friends and liked them. 

Mary did a good job with me.  I know it must have been hard, her own mother died when she was a young teen.  Mary had some really tough years and it could have hardened her or she could have chosen a path of destruction.  Instead she basically said, Fuck You, World.  The only person I can depend on is Me.  I'm going to make what I want happen.

She got a couple breaks because she worked her ass off to make her goals attainable and sometimes, there are good people in the world who reward that sort of thing.  Mary always told me, "If you have a strong back and can work hard, no matter what, you can survive."  My dad, alternatively, told me I should learn to play golf and cards, so I wasn't lonely when I got old.

Mary made me strong and tough without being bitter and taught me the right way to dress and set a table and be a good hostess and how important it is to have an education and job skills.

Happy 80th anniversary of my Mom's Natal Day.

I miss you and I love you, Mary and I know you loved me so much.

It Takes A Village

We were invited to go camping by my co-worker Chip.  There is a bit of back story to this.  One of my oldest friends is Ellen.  Ellen was also friends with Linda.  We used to hang out at Linda's all the time back in the day since Linda was the only one of us who didn't still live with parents, back in the day when my mom used to accuse me of using their home as a hotel.   Linda's sister Ann and Ann's husband Chip lived next door.  So, I knew Chip years and years ago.  It took us about three days of working together and saying, "You look really familiar to me, how do I know you?"  to each other before we figured it out.  Fifteen years will do that.

The property we camped on is outside Mt. Pleasant and Chip's childhood friend Nick actually lives on the land.  Nick, after a nasty divorce, is all about living simply and without a lot of impact to the enviornment and making do with what is there.  Nick and Chip grew up together in Saginaw and consider each other brothers.  NOTE:  Nick's mom and dad were also there and Penny, Nick's mom, showed me the most hilarious picture of Chip from the 1980's, that decade of bad fashion choices.  Chip was dressed in very tight camo short shorts, knee high tube socks and a tight white tee shirt with a bandanna jauntily wrapped around his head, a la Pat Benetar.

All told, there were six kids there.  Mia, Chip's daughters Heather and Alyssa, his son Ryan and Nick's two girls Haley and Kristen.  Heather and Alyssa are both teen-agers (great girls, too, not only pretty but smart and witty too) and it became the Tribal sort of thing.  Everyone looked after everyone else's kids and Heather and Alyssa pretty much herded the younger ones.

It was so wonderful, to hang out with friends and do nothing more stressful than eat and drink and solve world problems late into the night.  So much great conversation.  Nick Sr. and Penny, Nick's folks, are true characters and were just a blast.  They were grandparents to all the children and the balloons that turned into animals didn't hurt a bit.  Nick Senior is a grave digger, how perfect for me.  He was also an absolute riot.  Penny fell in love with Mia and they had many earnest Miaesque conversations that I think you have to be a grandma to understand.

I think in our late night into the morning talks, we covered just about every subject.  Heather, at 16, provided a great point of view, a very intelligent young lady. 

The land we camped on was surrounded by trees and fields and filled with wildflowers.  On a whim, I bought black and white film and also on a whim, took black and white portraits of all the families individually with the woods and all the wildflowers as backdrop.  With some technical help from Chip, we also took a couple group photos of everyone.  I have two shots left on my camera and I have to take those so I can get the film developed.  I can't WAIT to see how they turn out.

Not to mention, it's a rare opportunity to see a picture of yours truly in a hat, glasses and no make-up.  Sweet!