"What Would Happen If..." v. 100%

I have two kids in high school. The Boy is a freshman and Claire-Adele is a senior, and both are such different people it is surprising they are from the same planet, let alone the same parents.

Claire-Adele is a great student. She is curious in the sense that she likes different subjects. This year, she is taking Psychology, Stats, U.S. Government, and Comparative Goverment. She is organized and motivated, almost to a fault, more concerned about her grades than she should be. She comes home from school and announces how well she has done on a bunch of tests. One hundred percent on this, one hundred percent on that. As a parent, I claim no credit or responsibility for having a child like this.

The Boy has the exact opposite personality and I wonder how he will survive high school. Not that he isn't motivated or curious, but just in a way that doesn't always match the expectations of conventional learning. Give him a robot or a rocket to build and he is off to the races. He will play and explore and test and try, for hours, for weeks, for months. For three years in middle school, he was in Rocket Club where he and his teammates spent month exploring what will happen if we change the fins of the rocket? Try a smaller motor? A large motor? Add more ballast? The Boy was always the last to leave the launch. His unflappable math teacher turned rocket coach would put up with the Boy's unpredictable moods and uneven temperament because Mr. G knew Boy cared more about rockets than any other kid out there.

I wish school were more like this for the Boy. I wish it were a giant lab that celebrates discovery where he could spend all day answering "What would happen if?"

Budget versus "Fend for Yourself"

This summer, we got the kids debit cards so they could buy lunch during the school day. This is different from buying a school lunch, as the kids usually grab a bite at Whole Foods, Starbucks, or a local burger joint within blocks of RHS. For the previous three years, Claire Adele would pack a lunch or scrap together a few bucks for a bagel at Whole Foods. Now that I am working--or so I tell myself--I don't have as much time to shop for food. Since there is generally less food in the house, I don't want the kids to starve during the day because I didn't feel like running to QFC the night before.

Last night, Jack and I went to dinner with some of his colleagues, and the kids were left to fend for themselves for dinner. The Boy went to Kidd Valley and got a burger. I am not sure what Claire-Adele did, but I am sure she ate.

After dinner, I checked the kids' bank accounts. I usually keep no more than $50 in each account. Both kids had less than $10, so I transfer money so they could buy lunch the next day. I noticed Claire-Adele made an online purchase.

"She bought a Camp Orkila shirt," the Boy said. He was aware that she made an online purchase. Last week, the Boy bought a new and much-needed sweatshirt with our permission.

"The kids need to learn to budget," Jack said. "We can't just keep handing them money." He paused, "But they do need to eat lunch and dinner."

I was thinking about this. I'd love for my kids to learn to budget, but right now I need them to learn to fend for themselves because I don't have time to take care of all of the little crap that I used to take care of, like making dinner on a regular basis. I am glad Claire-Adele bought her own t-shirt and I wasn't involved.

While I am not expecting masterful budgeting from the kids, I do expect them to be responsible. The minute I see upgrade charges for games for their phone on the debit card is the minute the card is canceled. But food and clothes? I am fine with funding them to fend for themselves.

Embracing Kumquat-itude

Claire-Adele is a senior and applying to college.

I can't wait for this whole thing to be over.

She is so stressed out and worried about it in a way that I never was and therefore cannot relate. I think I'll be the only parent who will be happy the fall they send their kid off to college. I won't be happy because I'll be kicking my daughter out of the house, but because it means the entire college admissions, rejection and acceptance process will finally be over.

This morning while I was making biscuits for breakfast, Claire-Adele came downstairs. She told me one of her college applications asks a few simple questions:

What books have you read in the past year for class that you have liked?
What books have you read for fun that you liked?
What media or publications do you read?

Those seem like a good way to quickly learn about a potential student. This college might think you are what you read. Are you curious? Serious? Funny?

Claire-Adele is a news junkie and followed last year's presidential election closely. While she was at camp for a month in the summer of 2016, I was expected to print out and mail articles about the election to her from a variety of news sources. "For the media, I am going to put down the New York Times and Cosmopolitan."

"That's fine, but what about the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal?"

"I don't want to list those. I don't agree with them all of the time," she said.

"You don't have to agree with what you read. In fact, it is good to read things you disagree with, that challenge your assumptions."

"Nah," she said.

"What about the books?"

"I am going to out down Hillary's new book," she said.

"Great," I said. "What else?"

"I can't think of anything," she said.

"You spend hours reading," I said. "Just put down what you read, even if it is Harry Potter for the fifteenth time or Susan Mallory* or whatever."

"I don't know. I did read Nicholas Sparks," she said. "But I can't put that down."

"But you have read other stuff. You read all of the time," I said. She drifted off to something else, and that was the end of the conversation. We've had other conversations of a similar ilk. In this college admissions process, it seems Claire-Adele's goal is to make herself as vanilla and boring as possible. She wants to leave her favorite activity, Sports Boosters--the art club that makes all of the spirit signs around the school--off her applications.

"Why?" I asked.

"It is too hard to explain what the club does, and it isn't that interesting," she said.

"But it is you," I said. She didn't reply.

Later this morning, Carla asked me how the college admissions process was going, and I told her about my conversations with Claire-Adele.

"The college admissions committees are making a fruit salad when they pick their incoming classes," I said. "They get tons of apples, but they need strawberries, raspberries, bananas, and oranges. Claire-Adele is a little odd, but in a good way. She isn't an apple. She's a kumquat, and I wish she would embrace her kumquat-ness, but no. She wants to be an apple."

Carla nodded and listened. One of her kids is a papaya, so she knew where I was coming from. I suppose it is hard for kids who are different to embrace that, even if it is what makes them special.

* Claire-Adele wrote some short fiction romances for a class once, and they were great. Susan Mallory writes romances and has published 25 million copies or some crazy number of her books. I think Claire-Adele should get in the romance writing business. But no, she doesn't want my opinion.

What Do I Do All Day? and Venn Diagrams

I've been in my new job long enough that I've gotten paid three times (yay!) but I still haven't figured out how to explain to people what I do. A few nights ago at dinner, the Boy, Claire-Adele and Jack all talked about their days. I talked about what I ate for lunch. I ran into my neighbors while walking Fox who were just thrilled to hear about my new job, and I surely disappointed them when they asked what I do and I said "Uh..." After I a minute, I thought of how I deal with data like it is a jigsaw puzzle, but telling a story of how to solve a jigsaw puzzle would be infinitely boring. "First I did the yellow pieces, then I did the edges, and finally I did the sky. I was almost done and then I found a piece under the coffee table..."

I told my friend Carla about my situtation. She is an accountant, which in spirit isn't much different than what I do, except almost everybody knows about money. Not nearly as many people know about data.

As I was walking to the Macrina Bakery for lunch the other day (see? I'm doing it - talking about lunch instead of what I actually do), I saw an ad for the new Blade Runner movie, which made me think about venn diagrams, because in the past two weeks I've drawn a lot of venn diagrams.

While this has nothing to do with what I do at work, it has everything to do with what I do.

Should I have made the "Ryan Gosling" circles one circle or two? Hmm. This type of question is what I ask myself at work.

Back to Work and Life At Home; Or 400 Socks

I started a new job just over a month ago. I've gotten paid twice! Yay! Two weeks into my job, my manager checked in and asked how I was doing.

"Home is harder than work," I said. "Not in a bad way!" I quickly clarified, but he got the point. I went for coffee this morning with Ellen. She went back to work five years after her kids were born. I said work seemed reasonably easy compared to being at home. She laughed. 

"It is complete bullshit when people say you are lucky to stay at home with kids!" I said. "I get to dress up and go out to lunch and people are generally respectful and kind."

Ellen laughed again. "Work is the best!"

I know the honeymoon will come to an end at some point, but for now I am content with my delusions.

One major discovery I made about my home life since I've started working is that no one in my family besides me puts the clean laundry away. Jack will fold it, and put it on the bed. When it is time for bed, the laundry then goes back in the basket. Like a sand castle on the beach erased by the tide, folded laundry in the basket resorts back to its original unfolded state. Since I've started working, we have accumulated 400 single socks in the laundry basket at the foot of the bed. I say 400 for exaggeration purposes, but seriously, if we have four people in the family there were maybe twenty pairs of socks per person in that basket which means there were realistically (4x20x2) 160 single socks in that basket. How do we have that many socks? The favorite socks were picked off the top of the pile, while the less loved socks gravitated towards the bottom of the clean laundry basket, like unpopped popcorn kernels in the bowl.

Jack can load it into the washing machine, but just today I realized he was never fully trained on how to operate our new machines we purchased three months ago when our other washing machine died. 

"How do I set this again?" he asked. Oh my fucking god, I thought. This dude manages ECMO machines that bypass the heart so kids can have circulating blood and he can't use something as simple as a washing machine? I immediately assume this is some form of passive aggressive behavior, where he believes if he acts as if he can't do this simple task, someone else (meaning me) will do it for him. He did manage to take the clothes out of the washing machine and place them in the dryer. And he did fix the violent rattling that sounds like machine gun fire when the washing machine starts on the spin cycle. He took an old Kleenex box out of the recycling, folded it up a bunch, and stuck it between our stacked washer and dryer. The rattling stopped.

We just bought the washer and dryer set this spring so it probably still under warranty. "We could call Sears and have them fix it," I said. 

"One of us would have to stay home from work while we waited for four hours for them to show up," he said. Fair enough. The Kleenex box works.

While we were both standing at the washer, we carried the clean laundry from the dryer to the laundry basket, where there sat the 400 socks. The laundry beast in the basket had overflowed onto the floor. It could not be ignored. 

"I'll put the sheets on the bed," Jack announced. Jack always announces when he is about to do a chore. Like a child in December waiting for Santa Claus, he wants to make sure his good deeds are noted. 

Like the elves battling the Orcs, you can't stop after you knock down a few of them. We had to empty the entire basket. You would have thought it would have taken hours to sort and put away the 400 socks, but it really only took about fifteen minutes, maybe less. But they are now put away, until the beast comes back.

All About the Bass, or How the Boy Broke my Car

Over Labor Day, the Boy went to Bumbershoot, a three-day live music event at the Seattle Center. There, he learned what a bass drop is. I am not sure I can explain it, but it is when the music revs up to a point and then a large bass beat "drops." He said he could feel the bass in his whole body.

"You can't get that from listening to music with headphones," he said.

"I hope not. You would blow your eardrums out before the rest of your body would feel it," I said.

The next week, we had an hour-long ride home from his soccer game. Jack was working, so it was just the Boy and me in the car. We drove my car, which is a 2003 Lexus ES, which has what I thought was a decent stereo system. They Boy was tired and a little cranky, so on the ride home we listened to music instead of talked. When he mellowed out, we started to chat.

"Can I adjust this?" he said as he started pushing buttons on the stereo systems touch screen. He found the tuning section and cranked up the bass.

Before I get too far, let me say the target market for the type of car I drive is a sixty year old woman. We bought the car used with 45,000 miles on it in 2006. It was in perfect condition except for a ton of scratches under the driver's side door handle. I figure the previous owner's jewelry scraped the paint as she got in her car.

The Boy cranked up the volume, and we could feel the bass as we were driving 65 mph south on I-5. It was a warm sunny day, and the windows were down and the sun roof was open. It was great.

After about twenty minutes, we heard a rattle. Every time the bass hit, the something in the car would shake. After we stopped for lunch, the Boy climbed into the backseat while I ran the stereo.

"The upper brake light vibrates against the window every time a bass note hits," he said. "At least the noise is in sync with the music."

As we were driving up our street, "Lonely Boy" by the Black Keys came on the radio. We parked the car, rolled up the windows blasted the radio in a car with a stereo that was designed for listening to NPR or bands like Air Supply. The rear window rattled and the rest of the car rocked.

The next day, I drove home from the grocery store. The kids were doing homework so I sat in the car. I plugged in my phone to the stereo, and cranked The White Stripes "Seven Nation Army." It wasn't the same as a rock concert, but it wasn't bad for a Monday after grocery shopping.

Sleep, or Lack Thereof

The male creatures in my family are conspiring against me. They don't want me to sleep.


I. The Boy

The Boy doesn't turn his devices off until 9:30 or 10:00, after much pleading. After his device is locked and charged, he becomes very chatty at the exact moment I want to collapse from exhaustion. Sometimes he chats about the mundane.

"Mom," says the Boy, "Look how many times I can flip my toothbrush on my finger."

Go the fuck to sleep, I think.

Other times he want to talk about things far from mundane, like his future life plans.

"Mom," says the Boy, "I've been thinking that M.E. is going to be the right choice for me. I like building things and understanding how they are made. I think mechanical engineering is going to be a good fit for me."

Lovely, I think, but could we have had this same conversation when the sun was up?

Other times, the conversation are profound.

"Mom," says the Boy, "I just feel better after a long run. I love getting up in the morning and starting my day running cross country with the boys."

For this, I stay up and listen, and force my eyelids open as he tells me how running is transformative for him. Why does he wait until I am so tired to talk to me? Does he know that he will have an open mike, that I am too tired to respond? That I will expect him to keep it short, thereby putting no pressure on him? Perhaps.

II. Jack

Jack has been on call at the trauma center this weekend. The new residents communicate by text instead of phone calls in the middle of the night. You think this might be an improvement, but it's not.

Before:
Pager screeches at 4:00 a.m.
Jack turns pager off and goes to other room to talk.
I fall back asleep or don't hear pager screeching in the first place.

Now:
Cell phone "pings" at 4:00 a.m.

A light flashes from the phone.

tap, tap, tap, goes the text reply

Swoosh.

pause for twelve seconds

ping
flash of light
tap tap tap tap
swoosh
pause pause pause
ping flash
taptaptapswoosh

Ping...

I am wide awake after the eighth ping. It is like chinese water torture except instead of water it is noise. They could use this method to wake people from comas. I bet I could tset this on someone in a coma to see if they would revive. If they did, I could write a paper and get a grant and be famous for bringing people back to living.

I tell Jack to make a phone call instead of texting. He does. The next night he is on call again. He sleeps on the couch. Thankfully.

III. Fox

Even the dog is keeping me awake. He has been wearing a cone since he was bitten by a raccoon so he doesn't lick his wound. Now when his head itches in the middle of the night, his leg whacks the cone. Loudly. And the cone prevents him from actually scratching the itch, so he just tried harder. The harder he tried, the more it itches and the more his leg whacks the cone. Egads. I pick up the dog, scratch his head, and put him on the bed, where he sleeps like a rock.

I wish I could do the same.

Ada J and the Missing Milestone

Claire-Adele started her senior year of high school this week and the Boy is a freshman. This year marks the first time since Claire-Adele started sixth grade that both of them are in the same school. Wednesday, I was waiting for the bus to go to work when I saw them walking to school together. This marked the first time ever the kids walked to school together. Prior to high school, both kids took a bus to school.

This is a big deal, both kids in high school--a major milestone for them and me. I have a missing milestone this fall. As some of you who read my blog know, I had a full-term stillbirth many years ago. Ada would have been nineteen next month. She would have graduated from high school last spring, and left for college this fall. I have countless friends whose kids are leaving the nest--some the oldest, some the youngest, some the only. Monica's and Jen's kids left early August. Ashley's left two weeks ago. Others are waiting for UW to start in a few weeks. Thankfully, all of these departures are spread out over two months, otherwise there might be a giant wail-fest and/or celebration depending on the mother and child in question. I am grateful for the staggered start of college so I don't have to drink in all of the departures at once.

I have other friends whose kids have left for college before, but I am paying more attention this year than I have in the past in part because Claire Adele will be going next year, but in part because this would have been/could have been, my year, too, to launch a kid off to freedom and independence.

One of my husband's colleagues had a daughter leaving for Magill. "This is the time you reflect on whether or not you were the parent you wanted to be," she told Jack. When kids leave for college, they stop needing their parents every day. I remember reading all of the "books" (shorthand for parenting books) when I was pregnant with Ada. I had all sorts of ideas about "I will do this" and "I won't do that." All that got tossed out the window and reset when she died.

I re-read Where'd You Go Bernadette this week. Bernadette had several miscarriages before her daughter Bee was born. When Bee arrived, she had a major heart defect. Bernadette made a deal with god that if the baby lived, she'd stop being an architect and take care of this child. The kid lived and Bernadette kept her end of the bargain, which resulted in major complications.

I didn't quite make the same deal with god, but I did something similar. I quit my job when I was pregnant with Claire-Adele because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I lost another pregnancy. I wanted to stay at home and absorb every moment with her that I had missed with Ada, nevermind Ada would have been shuffled off to daycare because I made more money than Jack at the time and my salary paid the rent while his salary covered his school loans. I wanted to be there when Claire-Adele took her first steps and said her first words. I wanted to be there when she learned to read and do jigsaw puzzles and kick a soccer ball.

Is it or is it not a coincidence that I got a job when Ada would have left home? I am not sure, but at times I think it isn't. I could say the need to get a job was connected to when the Boy started high school or before Claire Adele leaves for college. Yet, something maternal in me is telling me I am done, that I have crossed a finish line. I have two more finish lines to go, but I feel like my first marathon is done. When I see Allison, Rick and Priya leaving for college, I feel as if Ada is leaving with them, even though she is a ghost. I feel a little bit like one of my own has left the nest, even though this little bird was never made it to the nest to start.

My rational self tells me none of what I wrote in the previous paragraph makes any sense. I wonder if there is a hormonal timer that was imprinted in me when Ada was born that started a clock ticking on my experience of motherhood. The timer was set to go off after nineteen years and wake me up, unaware that Ada had died before the timer started.

Flamethrower, or Why I Don't Drink

Last night, Jack had to work and Claire-Adele had her boyfriend over for dinner. Claire-Adele, Roberto, the Boy and I ate outside on the deck and chatted until it became dark.

"Let's get some candles," I said. Claire-Adele ran inside, picked out her favorite candles from my collection and put them on the table. Before I had kids, I was a bit of a pyro. I gave up my addiction to fire after Claire-Adele was born, but I've slowly started back again with my old habit.

The Boy and Claire-Adele started bickering over who would light which candles, when the Boy talked about camp. Claire-Adele and Roberto were both interns there this summer.

"At camp we made a flamethrower out of Pam," the Boy said. 

"Those Teen Expedition kids are the wildest," said Roberto.

"I can imagine," I said.

"Can I make a flamethrower out of our cooking spray in the backyard?" the Boy asked. He was asking in a natural, normal voice, as if he were asking for ice cream for dessert. He wasn't being a sociopath, either. His dream employers are NASA, SpaceX or JPL. The Boy was in rocket club for the past three years, and according to him a rocket is nothing but a "sustained, controlled explosion."

"No," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

"It hasn't rained since June and the grass might catch on fire," I said. "Plus it is dark out and you might not see what you are going to burn."

"How about the kitchen?" he asked again.

"No," I said. "You might set the house on fire."

"How about if I do it over the sink?" he said.

"No, you might catch my orchids on fire." 

"Oh," he said. "Okay." He went off and did something else before I could ask him to load the dishwasher.

If I had a glass of wine or beer with dinner, I might have said at this point. "Oh my fucking god, are you crazy?" The kid was perfectly serious and thought it is rational to want to start a fire in the house. I remember reading somewhere that the teenage brain has some serious gaps while it is being pruned and rewired for adulthood. Someone did a study and they asked a group of teens if they would rather do something dangerous and potentially fatal versus something mildly disgusting, like choose between swimming in a pool with sharks or eating an earthworm. The teenagers actually had to think about this. The answer was not obvious as it would be to sane adults.

So here I am, last night confronted with my son's own rational-irrationality. To him, making a flamethrower in the middle of the kitchen seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do. If I flipped out, he would have thought I was the crazy one.

Commuting, or Cost v Time

I am three weeks into my new job, and I've ridden by bike to work three times. I didn't want to try bike commuting during my first two weeks because I wanted to show up on time and not stinking when I walked in the door, so I rode the bus instead.

Evan, my physical therapist, would be proud of me. At my last physical therapy appointment, he told me I needed to join an exercise class or club. "If you settle into a desk job and never exercise, you will have blown all of the work you have done for the past year and a half and probably re-injure yourself skiing again. Please get yourself into an organized activity that forces you to get off your butt several times a week."

He didn't say exactly that, but that was the gist. I have biked a lot in my life, but I had never ridden from my home into Belltown where my new office is located. Before I rode to work, I practiced twice on the weekend on two different routes in case there was a problem. Last Saturday and Sunday, I didn't make it into downtown because there was construction on one route and Hempfest on the other.

Why was I inspired to ride my bike to work, besides Evan's admonishment to not sit still? First, I am a fan of not driving when I don't have to. When I lived in Chicago in my twenties, I didn't own a car. I took a bus everywhere and my life was perfectly fine. While Seattle doesn't have sufficient public transportation infrastructure, I still believe in riding buses and trains. The challenge is my bus route leaves me with a twenty minute walk from the stop into my office. In the summer, the walk in spendid through Pike Street Market.

View on my way into work. This is a hazy picture, taken when Seattle was getting the smoke from the wildfires in British Columbia.

In the dark and damp months, the walk might be less pleasant, so I thought I'd try to find different ways to get to work. My office has lots of bike commuters, and there is even an indoor bike parking area next to the lunch room which is great for so many reasons. Bikes won't get stolen, vandalized or wet inside the office.

I loaded up my panniers rode to work Monday, Tuesday and Thursday of this past week. It took me about forty minutes to ride in. I have a moderate uphill climb before I get into the office, so when I arrive, I am not gently perspiring. I am sweating like a pig, my hair dripping under my helmet. Each day I rode, I hoped and prayed that I brought all of the right clothes in my bags. I didn't want to get into the office and discover I forgot a clean bra or pair of underpants.

Wednesday, I took another way into work. I drove. I typically don't like driving in rush hour, especially in the last few years as traffic has gotten worse in Seattle. I had to be back home by 6:00 p.m. for a meeting with the cross country coach at my kids' high school. I was worried the bus and biking would be too slow, so I took the car. Driving out of my neighborhood, I was stuck behind a driver going five miles an hour. Another person "forgot" to merge into the lane they needed to be in, and then blocked my lane of traffic while no one let this jerk in. In both cases, I was cussing up a storm and my heart rate was about the same as when I was biking uphills.

And then I got to the office, twenty five minutes door-to-door. The drive home was shorter. The stress of driving went away when I realized I had saved between 25 and 45 minutes from my other modes of transportation. Financially, the other ways are less expensive. It cost $14 a day to park, but the bus costs $5.50 a day, making driving only $8.50 more expensive than public transportation. Here, I saw a new equation:

Time Saving > Cost

The amount of time I saved greatly outweighed the adjusted price of $8.50 it cost to park. As I walked into the office unsweaty and unwrinkled, I realized how old I have become, in good ways and bad. When I was in my twenties, I couldn't afford a car in Chicago, so driving was out of the question. Back then, even though I didn't really know it, the old equation was

Cost > Time Saving

where how much money I spent was more important than how long something took. Here I am, a middle-aged woman whose husband makes a decent salary. I can afford to drive when I want to. I don't need to nickle and dime everything, and I can easily justify spending money to make life easier. I thought "This is why god invented money" as I handed the parking attendant my Visa. On the way home, I drove past Lower Woodland, home turf for my kids' cross country meets this fall. It took me ten minutes to get there from the office.

So therein lies my privlege. I should have felt worse about driving, but I didn't. Instead, it felt awesome. I can drive if I want to, damn it. Plus, my butt was sore from riding between 14 and 20 miles a day for the previous four days.

My consciousness came back Thursday and Friday. Evan's voice and my memories of years of riding public transportation pulled me back to the bike and bus. The siren of the car will still be there, but I am hopeful that I am strong even to resist, but sensible enough to drive when I need to.

Ma Famille

A few months ago, I spit into a vial and mailed it off to Ancestry.com where I would await information about my ethnic heritage and be linked up with others who shared my genes. For many people, the results would be predictable, but for me, not entirely. My mom was adopted at birth in 1944. My father's side showed up on my family tree, but my mom's side was empty.

Until a few weeks ago.

I hadn't been to the ancestry website in ages, but I thought I'd check in. I had gotten an inner-ancestry message from another member. Ancestry had sent me an email a few months ago telling me I had a message, but I didn't open it thinking it was a sales pitch to upgrade my membership. The message was from a possible third or fourth cousin asking if I knew so-and-so, her delict grandfather who impregnated her grandmother and left. She wanted to find out about the scoundrel before she died. I had no recollection of hearing stories about a distant relative who scoundrel, but I replied anyway, even though I had no idea how we were connected.

Then, I saw I had a new "close" relative, someone who popped up between my aunt and my cousin. I called my dad to see if this woman was on his tree. She wasn't, which meant she was on my mom's side of the family.

I had been a little skeptical about spitting into the cup in the first place. What if there were people out there who didn't know that their grandma had a child out of wedlock or whatever seventy plus years ago, and now an entire family may have a bunch of skeletons uncovered. My mom's bio-mother was named Emily Corona and when Emily had a baby in 1944, she never could have imaged that in 2017 people would be able to track all of this down via technology that wasn't even imaged at the time. Would I want to ruin a bunch of people's lives that I didn't know?

I called my dad and asked what he thought. He thought it was cool. This was the fruit he had been wanting this tree to bear. He asked if he could be a custodian (or something) of my account so he could contact possible relatives of my mother. Since my mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's a few years ago, he has amped up his search for her family since she couldn't do it herself. She couldn't even spit into a cup to enter her own DNA into Ancestry.com, so my father needed me to be the conduit.

My Aunt Lorraine came to visit Seattle with my cousin at the time I found about this new possible relative. This was the first time I had seen my aunt in eight years. My family and I were busy with their visit, so I put Ancestry.com on the back burner. Two weeks later, my dad came to town--the first time he has had a break or vacation in five years. Even though my mom is in a nursing home, he had been afraid to leave town in case something bad might happen to her while he was gone. We didn't think about the Ancestry.com stuff, either.

The day my father flew back to Ohio, I got a message from Marissa, the possible relative.

"Do you know Emily Corona?" That was all it said. I wanted to talk to my dad before I replied, but he was on a plane. Before I contacted Marissa, I wanted to know if he had contacted her first. When we talked Thursday, he told me he hadn't talked to her.

I was nervous about replying. What if Emily were her mother or aunt, and she never knew one of her family members had another kid?

It turns out Marissa was adopted, too, and her bio-mother was Emily Corona. I figured that Marissa was my mom's half-sister since in the DNA stack-up she was not as close as my Aunt Lorraine but closer than my cousin. I emailed Marissa and told her my dad would likely be in touch. My dad called me yesterday afternoon saying he had talked to Marissa on the phone for an hour.

"What do think of all of this?" asked Jack. "It is not like you know her. She is a stranger. All you have in common is DNA. You have more in common with our neighbors, with Kate and Christy."

I was thinking about this. Now that we live in the hinterlands of the Pacific Northwest, we don't see our families very often. This spring, we saw Jack's sister when we went to Philadelphia. It was the first time we had seen her eight years. My aunt just visited, as did my dad. My son didn't know that my Aunt Lorraine was my dad's sister. He missed the memo, but why would he otherwise know? He met my aunt once when he was seven and my dad wasn't there. When I was a kid, all of my extended family except for my Uncle Bob all lived in the Chicago area. I'd see them for Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, birthdays, graduations, and ballet recitals, plus major events like weddings and funerals. Even after my parents moved to Ohio, we'd trek to Chicago several times and year. I moved there for college and stayed for years.

My kids didn't grow up with family in town. They have to get on a plane to see relatives--long-drawn out, expensive flights with multiple time zones changes. It is not simple to pop into Ohio for the weekend as it takes a day to get there and a day to get back.

So what do I think of this? As far as my kids are concerned, they have never met my Uncle Bob or many of Jack's aunts and uncles. Jack has family in Thailand that he met once and my kids have never met. We still consider them family, but I wonder what my kids will think of family when they are older. Our family is pretty much just the four of us.

So where does Marissa fall into this?

I think of her perhaps as a new fourth or fifth or sixth branch of my family. I have my dad's side and my mom's adopted side who I knew growing up. I am part of Jack's family--I know both his mother's and father's sides. I have my kids with Jack. My Grandma Conti will always be my grandma -- the one who always bought Eggo blueberry waffles when my brother and I came to visit. My Grandpa Conti made braciole for Christmas dinner. When my Grandpa Conti died in 1997, my mom gave me some money from his estate. When I told her I was going to use the money to take a trip to Thailand and buy a ticket for Jack's mom who hadn't seen her own mother in twenty-seven years, my mom said it was a good investment. She had never been to Sicily with her father, and she wished she had. She thought it was important that I should meet the family that my future children would be a part of, to understand the culture from which Jack's mother came.

Families grow and families contract. Marissa is a new branch, like a new shoot popping off a rose bush or orchid. She doesn't take anything away from my current family, just as I don't take anything away from hers. She is new to me, but so was Jack at one point, and Claire-Adele and the Boy.

Seeing Love and Prima Donna

Before she had four kids, my neighbor trained to be an opera singer. Lisa is a soprano. Her kids range in age from late elementary school to one in diapers. Her husband regularly travels internationally for work. Lisa's mom lives nearby and helps her out a lot.

Unlike her first three children, the youngest babe doesn't sleep. Lisa is a loving and attentive mother, but not nearly a helicopter mom. Mothers of four can't be helicopters -- they don't have that many eyes in their heads. Pictures posted on Facebook of her youngest kid the past three weeks showed Lily digging up carrots, spilling flour and coffee in the kitchen. I could see Lisa was about to lose it.

Then we heard the singing. Last week, my family eating dinner on our back porch when we heard Lisa sing. She would sing until 9:00 or 10:00. Each night, she'd sing again. At one point, a tenor joined her with a piano and some strings. It was lovely to have a little concert in our neighborhood each night. This "racket" was the opposite of a teenage rock band practicing in a garage. This was a professionally training musician honing her craft.

"Lisa must be losing it," Jack said.

"I hope she is okay," I said, wondering if she was singing because she was going berserk. "Maybe she is getting ready for a concert or a recording."

My aunt came to town, so I didn't have time to stop by and ask Lisa herself. This Sunday I was working in the yard, and Lisa's oldest daughter stopped by to invite us to a concert at 7:30. "Please come!" her daughter said. I told Betsy that we would be happy to be there.

"I bet Lisa planned this to get Paul to clean up the yard!" Jack said. "He is out there arranging the patio and a setting up outdoor lights."

We arrive at Lisa's a few minutes early. A tray with flutes of pink champagne greeted us at the door. Her piano was moved to a different corner of her living room. The furniture was in the backyard, and there were two dozen wooden folding chairs in the living room. If the chairs were white, I'd feel like I was going to a wedding. Lisa was wearing a green formal dress and bare feet. Lisa's mom had catered the event with a dozen cheeses and desserts. Several large flower arrangements were in each room.

Lisa's second youngest daughter came up and gave her a hug. The dress had a little schmutz on it afterward, but that was okay. While Lisa knows how to throw an elegant party, she is one of the least fussy people I know. She isn't the type to not let her kids not touch her.

"Can you believe this?" Lisa said with a look of sincere wonder. "I told Paul I wanted to sing again and I thought we could have something small with a few neighbors and friends."

"What do you mean?" Jack asked.

"Paul planned the whole thing," Lisa said. "He ordered the chairs, the flowers, the food. He brought in people this week to work on the garden." So much for this being Lisa's plan to get her husband to clean up the yard.

The concert was lovely. I had heard Lisa sing lullabies to her kids now and then. Any mom can sing a lullaby, but not every woman can belt out O Mio Babbino Caro. Her friends and neighbors--half of whom had never heard her sing before--got to see the full range of her vocal capabilities. It was impressive. Lisa got a standing ovation from this appreciative audience. Unlike a real opera singer, Lisa thanked each of us for coming to her concert.

"You were beautiful!" I said. "Betsy was beaming when you sang. She was so proud of you." Lisa went off to be the prima donna, the first lady of the evening.

At the end of the night, Jack and I said good night to Paul. For most of the night, he was in the background, making sure things were running smoothly for his wife's day on the stage.

"It must be nice for Lisa to celebrate who she was before she had kids," I said.

"That was the point of this evening," Paul said. "That was the point." The woman he married loved to sing, and she didn't to sing very often. Here he was, giving her a forum to be the prima donna, the first lady, to be seen by her family, friends, and neighbors as something more than a mother and wife. In the concert, the tenor sang a song about the ideal, how in our lives we capture for a bit and then it is gone. Lisa had her week and evening of ideal, and now she is back to taking care of her unsleeping daughter. Still, I am sure all of Lisa's life--and her family's and neighbors' lives--will be richer after the concert.

Paul's gift to his wife was the most beautiful I have ever seen. I saw love.