Manifesting the Oui

“You do realize,” the daughter said, somewhere in between do you want to go to the beach and do you want pasta with your chicken parm. “That your default response is always no.”

“No it’s not!” I replied. “I say yes to everything.”

 

The daughter, the sister and the niece exchanged knowing smirks.

 

Olivia, my favorite niece, is marrying her favorite person in September with her favorite cousin who happens to be my favorite daughter, serving as maid of honor. We decided to do a mother-daughter Mother’s Day weekend in Charleston where Olivia’s mother, one of my favorite sisters lives.

 

Olivia and the daughter (mine, not hers) had just returned from a jewelry store where they created personalized necklaces. Olivia’s charms included the number six which is her future wedding date; a dog bone in honor of her loveable mutt, Bob; and a heart, for obvious reasons. The daughter’s choices were a flying pig because, duh, all things are possible; a horseshoe magnet to attract the attractable; and an evil eye to ward off life’s unpleasantries. They both added a charm etched with the word, Oui. Olivia will be saying yes in September and the daughter is vowing to say yes to new people, places, and experiences.  

 

“Oh, I need a oui!” I exclaimed.

 

“You can’t just get one. You have to earn it.” 

 

“How?”

 

Which earned me those knowing smirks again. 

 

“Manifest it,” said Olivia.

 

Believe it or not, I was once a full-out oui girl. 

 

“Want to go to Galax, Virginia for a folk festival?” asked my friend, Ann. 

 

“YES!” 

 

There were no worries about where would we stay, anxiety over impending rain, or words wasted on what ifs. Even if it had entered our minds that a tire might blow out on Skyline Drive in the middle of the night and then happen again an hour later, I seriously doubt we would have brought a spare spare. Some things were not meant to be pre-angsted about.

 

 “Want to spend the summer in Arizona?” suggested same friend.

 

“YES!”

 

Off I went across the country on a Trailways bus. Three glorious days of breathing in, breathing out the unlovely aroma of back-of-the-bus air freshener, brushing teeth in stainless steel sinks in bus station bathrooms, and ultimately befriending unwanted seat mates. 

 

“Let’s go to Florida for spring break!”

 

“I’m in!” I responded without hesitation.

 

So we hopped into my Ford Pinto with two guy friends, surfboards on the roof, sleeping bags in the trunk, driving through the night until we hit Sebastian Inset where we slept on the beach. Not in a tent on the beach. On the beach. A perfect vacation complete with a nice dose of sun poisoning. 

 

“We should just go down to Ocean City,” Patty and I concluded when there wasn't any fun to be found in Wyndmoor. An hour-and-a-half later we were knocking on boarding house doors looking for a ten-dollar-a-night room. No vacancy, no problem. We would surely meet new friends at the Anchorage (seven beers for a dollar) who would house us for the night.

 

I have had a life time of spur of the moment adventures including a pre-internet, late-night drive with my beau (who realized my worth on that trip and proposed soon after) to our nation’s capital to drop off a resume at the Washington Post (he didn’t get the job); a 300-mile round trip to see Jackson Browne in concert, getting back to college three hours before a final exam; sleeping in the back seat of an unlocked car at a truck stop somewhere in Nebraska; biking Grand Cayman in 95 degree heat with no map or water; toasting in the New Year in Moscow; singing karaoke off-key at a pig roast in the Philippines; succumbing to a frighteningly authentic shaman-run sweat lodge on a lesser-known Caribbean island; zip lining in the mountains of Jamaica; and perhaps scariest of all, trying to blend in with the debutantes at a Beaux Arts Ball in Philadelphia. 

 

Though I once welcomed airplane turbulence with a gleeful whoo hoo and would jump into a stranger’s car without a second thought, I wasn’t completely fearless. I was the only second-grader who refused to pet a snake on a class trip – back in the days when it was OK for teachers to publically shame an eight year old’s phobia. I never went downhill skiing knowing for sure that the young and handsome ski-renter dude would scream, "Do we have any skis for someone this heavy?"  I never jumped off Indian Head in all those years of vacationing at Charleston Lake with Rachel. And I never tried heroin. 

 

Somewhere along the line I got way more cautious/sensible/mature/scared/neurotic. I began hemming and hawing and verbally processing every possible scenario that would or could go wrong. And that eventually morphed into being the one who apparently always leads with NO. Yet, at the risk of another eye roll from dear sister, daughter, and favorite niece, I must contend that I am indeed a positive person. 

 

I believe with all my heart that people are not inherently evil and do I not ALWAYS make excuses for the bad guy? When my washing machine bubbled over onto my brand new laundry room floor, did I not remember that children are dying in Gaza?  Am I not the one who, despite entertaining every potential catastrophe, knows that in the end things usually turn out okay?

 

It’s just the getting there that can be hard for me. 

 

Sometimes though, I surprise myself as well as those who know me best.

 

“I’m shocked you'd let a stranger touch you,” the sister said after I gave a thumbs up to a Saturday massage.

 

Somehow I’ve made it this far without experiencing a naked-on-the-bed massage and it never occurred to me that it should be something to be nervous about. And I wasn’t, until the masseuse spent more time coughing than massaging.

 
“Don’t worry, I don’t have Covid,” she said, planting the seed, but luckily not the virus.

 

“What time are we going to the beach tomorrow?” I asked as we drank cocktails out of our stripper man straws later that day,

 

I used to love the beach and could lie prone for hours on end with no sunscreen. Today’s me has a very strong aversion to it. I’m not sure exactly when it happened – but it was likely a culmination of all my sand and surf traumas that festered beneath the surface until they had nowhere to go but no. It may have stemmed from the time my sister Emily left me for dead in a riptide in Cape May. Or that infamous 1974 Bahamas beach adventure with my friend Madge. Or the aforementioned Sebastian Inlet vomit-inducing skin baking. Or the special July 4^thsurprise that could only have meant an engagement ring, but turned out to be a day trip to Sandy Hook with my ever-loving-spouse-to-be and his college buddy, Bruce. In his speedo. 

 

Because the weekend was supposed to be all about Olivia, I had preemptively surrendered and accepted my fate. I packed my swimsuit, had my kindle queued up to a Jennifer Weiner beach read, and may even have allowed one of my favorite people to slather sunscreen across my back. I could deal, knowing that those annoying grains of sand wouldn’t be lingering in MY car or MY house. 

 

“No, we’re going shopping on King Street instead,” they answered, too in unison for it not to have been previously discussed. 

 

In the past few weeks since yearning to earn my oui, I have done a great deal of reflection on my rote responses. And I must concede that there have indeed been a lot of instant no's:  No I won't apply for a job like that. No I won't go there on vacation. No I won't buy a used car. No I won't sit in the middle seat on an airplane. No I won't eat octopus (just can't get past those suction cups). No, I won't drink a beverage, any beverage without ice. No I won't get another dog after our old hound finally expires. 

And that string of no's actually made me a little sad. After all, doesn't everyone want to spew positivity? 

The other day I got an all caps text from the daughter. 

SOMETHING TRULY AMAZING HAS HAPPENED !!

Pause for effect. 

 

LILY AND I ARE GOING TO LYON TO SEE TAYLOR SWIFT NEXT WEEK!!! 

I grinned a great big grin. 

All is not lost! 

Despite my now well-documented proclivity to saying no, it brings me great joy to see that manifesting the oui is alive and well, living its best life in my DNA.

Letting Leo Live his Life

 

Parenting is hard. 

I could have stopped at two kids. But my warped reasoning was that unless I was outnumbered, I would have nothing to complain about. I already had one of each brand, so any contrasting personality traits would be automatically attributed to gender. I wanted to experience firsthand the differences between two brothers or two sisters. And I really wanted one more maternity leave. Yes, this was truly the thought process behind having that third child. And somehow my illogic trumped my ever-loving spouse’s very founded fear that I was already two children beyond my mothering capacity. 

We both knew before he was conceived that Leo (or Phoebe had he been a girl), was going to be the last of the offspring. So I extended my maternity leave from three months to five and since we had to pay for it anyway, plopped the other two in day care three days a week. I lugged little Leo from lunches with the girls to dental appointments to trips to Target because I had never had an infant who didn’t melt down in public. Or maybe he did, or they didn't, but by number three I just didn’t notice. I was living the life.

 

We lived in a crowded little Cape Cod house in those early days. I had no fear of burglars (or worse) coming in through the ground floor windows nor did I worry about not hearing a wailing child. So the older two had downstairs bedrooms while my spouse and I slept a full flight away. The other upstairs bedroom was a combo guest room / office and because once you have three kids you no longer get a lot of overnight visitors, it became Leo’s room. He would fall asleep to my tap-tap-tapping on the computer after six or seven or ten rounds of Owl Babies, a  book that ended with “I love my mommy!” said Bill.  

 

As the baby of the family Leo fell into place, deferring to his bossy older sister and volatile big brother. But he learned to defend himself, and after being attacked one too many times at daycare, bit that bully right on the fleshy part of his arm. He learned the fine art of stubbornness, climbing on top of the family car refusing to venture in to the annual Memorial Day party at the Schaeffer’s. Parents of well-behaved children simply shook their heads and said, “He does it because you allow it.” 

 

By five years old he was tamed by the no-nonsense, if this is what you want, this is how you get it, Coach Leon. Leo found his focus with the Teaneck Titans and became a devoted and disciplined baseball player with a plan in place that would lead him to the big leagues. And while the other two didn’t lack in their athletic prowess, pursuing cheerleading, wrestling, softball, basketball, soccer, football, gymnastics, and baseball, Leo was the one who devoted his life to the sport, never wavering, never complaining, always moving forward toward his goal. 

 

Despite shoulder surgery and persistent pain, Leo earned a spot on a Division I roster only to give up his dream at the end of the fall season. You can read that story right here.

 

It was a heartbreak to some, a shock to many, and to others an “I never would have let my kid quit baseball after spending that much time and money.”

Our biggest fear was that he would drop out of school all together, but sure enough, four years later, Leo graduated from Rutgers University with an “I can’t believe you let him switch his major” degree in Philosophy. 

 

After so many years of if you want to play on a travel baseball team you have to do this. If you want to be on an elite team you have to give up that. If you want to play in college you have to do this. If you’re serious about playing beyond college you can't do that. We knew we had to let Leo figure out how to live the rest of his life without a prescribed path in place.

 

There was a stint of student teaching, a season of driving for Uber Eats, a couple of freelance movie production gigs, some pretty fascinating but unsubmitted screenplays, summers at horse shows on our friend’s food truck. A little of this, a little of that. But nothing that even vaguely resembled a roadway to a career. And of course there were a lot of, “How can you let him live at home when he doesn’t even try to get a real job?” comments. 

 

I struggled, I really did. I was raised way more conventionally. I moved out of my parents’ house in my mid-twenties and would have been laughed out of any conversation (albeit lovingly) that started with, “But I don’t want to spend my whole life working 40 hours a week just because society tells me I have to.” 

 

Oh honey, how lucky you’d be to land a job that only required 40 hours a week. I’m not sure I ever had one of them until I started freelancing. And even then I was working all but eight hours a day, writing ad copy and battling my time-consuming offspring. 

 

Call it a mother's intuition, or pure lack of a better idea, but for Christmas three years ago I gave Leo a membership to a meditation center here in Teaneck. 

 

“There’s no way I’m doing that,” he said.

 

“Oh, but you have to,” I said for perhaps the first time in his life. 

 

And that was the beginning of the life that Leo has chosen to lead. 

 

He has twice walked the Camino de Santiago, a 600 (give or take) mile jaunt through Spain. He has been to ashrams in the Catskills, lived in a tent two different times for months on end at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat in the Bahamas, been on a silent retreat near Joshua Tree, spent a couple months at a center in Sacramento, and has just finished an intense 500-hour advanced yoga teacher training course. 

 

Once one of the biggest fans of BBQ ribs this side of Memphis, Leo is now a vegetarian. He eats healthy foods, thinks healthy thoughts, and is in better physical shape than he was as a 17 year-old baseball player. He doesn’t ask for money. He doesn’t have a credit card. He never has a Christmas list. He is kind, introspective, and a really fun person to banter with over topics like karma and reincarnation and why the soul and spirit are the most important gifts we possess.  

 

His father still belts out in the most random of moments, “GET A JOB!”

 

And I have to admit, I vacillate between thinking (not saying), “You’re 28 years old. It’s time to DO something,” to “You’re ONLY 28 years old. Do what you love while you can.”

 

But what has set me free as a parent was a real palm to the forehead epiphany. By the time Leo needs to tap into his 401K plan that he’s missed ten years (so far) of paying into – I’ll be long dead and it won’t be my problem. 

 

So today on the 28^th birthday of my free-spirited youngest yogi child, my thoughts go back to the very words I uttered when he hung up his cleats 10 years ago. 

 

Long may you run, Leo. Long may you run.