This draft has been sitting in my box for so long, wordpress thought it was written in 1999. It wasn’t, but it was written well before President Obama was elected. I shudder to think of the examples of how people thrive on demonization now, but think most of what’s here is still the core of the problem we’re facing as people.

This is in memory of all we lost that day, including the opportunity to be better connected as a people. Rest in peace, Fred.

A while back, I wrote about the exceptionally personal experience I had 8 years ago, as someone one degree of separation from the tragedy of September 11. But rather than go on a rant – I do enough of that, and others have already expressed sentiments in ways more articulate and moving than I could – I’m reflecting on a result I would call the agony of separation.

Some thoughtful writers have already talked about the distance they felt from the day’s events, and from the aftermath. After all, there were no calls to reduce consumption of any sort, only to trust that people in the government would act in our best interests, as long as we trusted them. The contrary, that any question or exploration of their actions would be the equivalent of treason, kept many people quiet. Too many people.

From the start, then, we take the tragic events, the loss of lives, and decide that grieving is too much, unless met with unreflective aggression, not just in retaliatory action, but also in words, in thoughts, and what we allow people to talk about publicly. This is more then than the loss one never stops grieving. We move from the commons into a bunker.

But it’s more than applying bunker mentality to communication. It’s also who’s doing the fighting. Economic factors (extra income, the only possible path to college) have put our most vulnerable people into military service. When they return, they’re both damaged and denied the resources they need to recover – not unlike the denial of resources and information they faced on the ground, in harm’s way.

In this bunker culture, there isn’t a lot of encouragement to substantively connect – yellow ribbon magnets repel question authority bumperstickers, and vice versa. I see one of those magnets in the parking lot of my child’s daycare center, and wonder how I would talk to the mom who drives the car. We would talk about our children, I suppose, and I would ask when her family member is coming home, and wish a safe and healthy return. Anymore than that, and there is a serious potential for bunker communications, shutting down, dropping connections. Or would we not even talk at all, as the wrinkled John Kerry sticker (not exactly question authority, but close enough in our media and politically illiterate culture) would serve as an effective deterrent to even the most surface greetings.

Broadband bunker communciations fully support the agony of separation. Information sources that sides rely upon are often suspect, and the louder suspect sources tend to come from one side. You know how it goes; “You’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists.” Who is this “us,” anyway? It is not the citizenry. How do you listen to someone who parrots Fox entertainers? Who has the interest, never mind the time, to read comparatively? Who would raise their hand and claim to be a media illiterate?

At the same time how does that person listen to me about the state of our nation in real time across the table, words at a breathtaking clip, all citations, disdain and by most standards, obscene privilege? How does that person communicate the realities they face

Where do we find the encouragement to stop, listen, connect? Is it even possible? Blogs certainly foster communities of interest, but my limited experience shows the only tangible evidence of crosspollination being the troll. I admit it, I don’t need to read another Clinton-bashing site as long as I live. Not because I think he was perfect – far from it – but because what they say is born of hatred of him, and while the hatred is real, the accusations range from overdone to truly bizarre.

And it is that unwillingness to ask and listen that stops connections from happening, that makes for gaps, for misinformed assumptions, for danger, for a strange sort of agony – one of a nation, unable to look at itself in the altogether.

Unlike the majority of my fellow Americans, I flew within two weeks, across country. And again the following week. And then in a ping-pong trip across central and western Europe. I can’t tell you what a mess I found – a tangled mess of ideas presented to me at every turn by colleagues from all parts of the globe. It wasn’t a bad mess, though many of the ideas were unpleasant, theories from the thoughtful to just shy of deranged, and a lot of anti-American sentiments. But the best part of that tangle was the chance to acknowledge it, and to listen. Not to agree, but to listen. To connect.

Whether it was at home or overseas (I lost count of the number of times I flew to Europe in the last 4 months of 2001), it became even more important to connect. To listen. To not dismiss. To understand, if only a little, and to consider and act on solutions. To untangle misunderstandings, while seeing some snarls were beyond my abilities to know at the time.

In my own way, because of my work and its very nature (I was a Communications Director of an international technical organization at the time), I was serving as an ambassador through listening, responding, asking.

I have to say, I wasn’t afraid of ideas, of people presenting them. I was glad to have the chance to hear it directly. To give a response if I had one, to simply say “I don’t know about that” if I didn’t, and to offer my own views if it seemed as though there was any interest.

Watching some television yesterday, I noticed how tender the wounds still are for people not separated from the events of the day. Whether it was by location, or personal loss, or identification.

Back to that tragic week in 2001 – I was loading the trunk of my rental car in Downtown Boston on the way to my own bridal shower, when my friend handed me a copy of Time she had saved for me. I remember seeing for the first time photos of people jumping from buildings – the scenes broadcast in every other country around the world.  I literally screamed, dropping the magazine into the trunk, and extending my arms, my hands palms up. What I wouldn’t have given to be able to catch even one person – an irrational, impractical, emotional, visceral, true response. It wouldn’t have mattered what they believed, who they voted for, what they watched. When faced directly with the loss of a human being, with suffering, only connect.

I had a conversation with an uncle last week about politics. We rarely see eye to eye on issues, and he has had to apologize in the past for racist remarks he made in the presence of my friends, when I made it clear it was unacceptable. The remarkable part of the conversation, though, was getting a glimpse at how he arrived at his worldview.

My mother had told me he had it rough as a kid, but I didn’t know how rough. It was after WWII, and his family was immigrant German. He lost his father young, and had to work every day to support his family. At age 11, his paper route helped fed the family. He was the punching bag of the class, mostly friendless, until the day he fought back from a punch in the face.

This man now walks around the town as if he owns it – not in the way of a braggart, but with a quiet confidence. His story of alienation was an absolute shock – a sort of punch in the face in itself. But the lesson he learned from his childhood was anything but compassion. As we argued back and forth on the points of what the responsibilities of a government should be, what is a right and what is a privilege, I kept coming back to the same question: “Would you really want to penalize a child? What lush life do you think someone has in the projects? On food stamps? Why would you want a child to go through what you did?”

He never had an answer for me. I know he loves kids – a big part of his life’s work was in caring for them – and that he understands the anguish a parent feels when a child goes astray or worse. Still, I couldn’t understand why it didn’t transform him in a different way.

Another person who endlessly posts feeds from Newt Gingrich and the gop’s Website lost her father to cancer in a European country which waited too long to treat him. When I responded both with sympathy for her father’s loss but also with facts as to how the public health system performs in Denmark (according to my brother-in-law who is a physician there), she only answered, “It runs better in richer countries.” Then she continues to post and comment on the evils she has yet to understand – she only parrots what she is told.

Another conversation was with a conservative who had the benefit of private education, one she earned. And her comment wrt rights v. privileges was “paddle your own canoe”. I know she never lacked for material things, and her prep school pedigree made it easier to transition to private higher education, no doubt underwritten by the burden of loans. At least she has made some effort to read and comment without heat and with some intelligence, but even there, all roads lead to tort reform, socialism, and something my uncle comes closest to saying out loud.

Many of these people are afraid. Afraid that someone they may have discriminated against in the past has re-emerged in the form of a president. And the same disrespect, fear, prejudice, becomes the lens to best observe him and his actions. The most fearful are those who never attained President or Mrs. Obama’s level of success, and refuse to acknowledge that they achieved those goals because of their abilities, because of their willingness to work harder in the face of others’ discrimination. They blame the folks they think got a pass – almost all browner and poorer than them – instead of people who are the same color but are unwilling to share what they have.

I see this in my privileged neighborhood, and wonder what it will take to help the fearful people see the truth – their worst enemy is the one they think they will be, since they look the same.

Walking into the reunion room

I’m startled by the low light, the drafts, and the stale air.

I’m not 38 anymore, picking at imaginary lint balls on my sweater

But 17, anxious, anticipating something hard and hostile crackling behind me.

The bar charges more money for pre-packaged dark beer than for urine from the tap.

I stick with water in unopened bottles, and wait.

Wait for a kind, vaguely familiar face. There’s one, then two.

Some are more familiar than others, some more kind.

And then the phone at the bar rings – my child has exceeded my mother’s capacity to comfort him.

I drive to retrieve him, then bring him back to the banquet hall.

He is soft armor, but his five months of life cover me completely.

Impenetrable.

But beyond the protection he lends me, he has a strange effect on  others.

No one can be hostile to a baby; no one with a baby will be hostile to a simple greeting.

Men remark on the pawprints on the feet of his sleeper – pawprints made by their sons.

Women coo and gently touch his round soft creamy cheeks, asking softly for a smile.

And others as anxious as I am see a chance to sit down with someone who won’t threaten them, who will help them feel less lonely in the drafty ballroom.

My baby doesn’t make all the cliquery disappear, and cokelines still get consumed in the ladies room along with misdemeanor memories.

There are still drunken stumbling people, and others who get angry at the thought of someone wanting to know more, learn more, be more than what they were.

But the baby and I can walk out of the hall, facing forward, into the chill of late November, safely. He is in my arms, but tonight he is carrying me.

From the moment he let us know he wanted out, the race went on to see Mom or Dad in the little one. I saw my father-in-law, no fat, a touch of ET, gingery fringe in a male-pattern baldness arrayment, slate blue eyes.

Later, I saw him, and me. Something in his eyes, his smile, his colic. The wisps of hair that took two years to grow, his love of dancing and singing, and those eyes – now hazel, but with long black lashes and a twinkle. How he cracks himself up, and laughs at everyone else’s jokes. How honest he is with his feelings. How he would walk away from things that were hard for him to do – thank goodness we knew about “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” And his inability to successfully fend off teasing.

He talks about school, and how sad he feels not to have friends. It catches me off-guard. Yes, it’s true that this is the time when children are more likely to switch schools, and since he is staying an additional year in pre-K, his friends are leaving. But the sadness in his voice was painfully familiar: “I’d just like them to say, ‘I’m happy to see you, let’s play together all day!’”

Months of fragments, of the failure of one pill and non-failure of another, of the more frequent surprise of a full night’s sleep, all crawling towards 1 september and the beginning of my favorite time of year.

September, when scorching heat is still possible, but more as finale than act 2 of summer, where the firm and luscious pleasures of Italian prune plums and concord grapes make for an entirely welcome transition to the sweater drawer, and there is no end to the fragrant harvest. Well, at least not until mid October.

Maybe the years of school and later, the years of working for a University or in a college town have conditioned me to see September, not January, as the fresh start of the year. January feels like less than half-done – but September’s promise of what can be learned, tasted, and even what new love might be discovered makes me feel hopeful, and almost young again.

Nora’s morning naps mean abdominal exercises, shower, laundry, and writing to you. Sorry I’ve been gone so long.

How to measure the time, the changes of the last four months? In pounds? I’ve lost 43, N has gained 10.

In sleep? I get about 4 hours a night solid. N has good nights and bad nights. B wants me to take him to dreamland, in which case he is down for the count. H sleeps lightly, with earplugs, in another room. My jaw is sore from the clenching that evidently comes from snacking on rest rather than having a full meal of it.

In capabilities? N can laugh, talk, dance (with help), and blow out diapers as if they were kleenex. B is learning how to be a big brother, and now plays that he is the young one, not the baby. I learned how to get within minutes of blowing up a microwave oven.

Post partum depression? Yes, I have it again, but I’d liken it to being aware of a low grade cold. It’s there, aggravated by sleep deprivation, alleviated by companionship and a good stretch of sleep.

What might be most frustrating – though not full blown frustrating, because I rarely have the energy for it – is that I have ideas for writing which slip from me. A turn of phrase, an observation, a reaction to something I hear or read, and before I can put my fingers to it, give it a shape and color, something else demands my hands. The twitter 140 character limit starts to make sense – spitting out fragments instead of poetry in the beginning, and later, perhaps, looking at 140 chars like the structure of haiku or a sonnet. To be honest, I’d be lucky to make it to doggerel, and some rhyming couplets.

Walking with N in public makes me realize how far away I am from the sense of being at home, grounded, where I belong. It’s not that I don’t know I belong with her and B, walking alongside them until they pass me and my line of sight. But beyond that, I’m an invisible person, at the mercy of my bank balance and the paid substitute for care from salespeople.

On 19 November, we drove to Evergreen Hospital to evict my beloved tenant. She made no sign of leaving on her own, having blocked the exit with her bottom and legs.

I walked unassisted but not unaccompanied to the delivery room, took my spinal like a woman (nearly soundlessly and according to my labor nurse, like “a very tough woman”) and within a few minutes became mother to a daughter. A daughter, in the words of the surprised OB, assisting and nurses, who was “a very big girl”. Baby was 8lbs, 8oz, 20.5 inches. Strong. Pink. And with the most beautiful thatch of blond hair, which after her first bath made a silvery blond cap on her little head, prompting lovely spontaneous expressions from her nurses.

Looking at her, all the names we preselected seemed wrong. And in fact, I thought she looked more like a Walter in those first hours. But with time, hospital discharges, and the 100,000 Baby Name book, we figured out her name by the 26th: Nora. Her full name is Eleanor, but when I looked into her dark eyes, I saw a determined, decidedly unfrivolous person, looking back at me. Nora. She cried only for food and cold – no sense in making a fuss otherwise – and was as content as could be once full and warm. Nora. And yet, such a delicate little face, a halo of silky filaments, a little beauty completely unaware of a world falling in love with her, and acting accordingly. My Nora. Welcome to the world, little one.

Most of my favorite dishes are connected to autumn – harvests, creeping twilight, and foods that provide a luscious but comforting counterpoint to the refreshing nip in the air.  I hadn’t made this one in years – perhaps hadn’t even made it for H – but it was something he really enjoyed. It’s worth doubling and tripling.

Another bonus in our world of competing diet restrictions – it’s entirely vegan, but lacks the 70’s co-op flavor. All you’ll want to do is find good bread to sop up the juices.

From Verdura by Viana La Place:

2 red peppers

2 yellow peppers

or

16 oz of roasted red or mixed red and yellow peppers, packed in water not vinegar

1 pound boiling potatoes

1 1/2 pounds tomatoes or 1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 large onion, sliced

1/2 cup oil-cured black olives, pitted and cut in quarters

10-12 basil leaves divided

salt and pepper to taste

Prepare the peppers by cutting them lengthwise and removing the cores, seeds, and white membranes. Cut the peppers into 1/2 inch strips. Peel the potatoes and cut into rough 1-inch dice. Peel, seed, and coarsely chop the tomatoes.

Place the olive oil and butter in a braising pan. Turn the heat to medium and when the butter melts, add the onion and toss quickly. Lower the heat and cook the onion until it softens and becomes light gold. Add the peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, black olives, 4 whole basil leaves, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir the mixture, cover, and cook over low heat for about 40 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender but still hold their shape. Be careful not to overcook the potatoes.

Before serving, coarsely chop the remaining basil. Transfer the stew to a shallow serving dish or to individual pasta bowls and sprinkle with the remaining basil.

In this case, the end of my gestational career. The scheduler at the hospital asked how I would celebrate my last night of pregnancy, when it hit me. This is the end of something, arriving later than expected.

I could have used the three extra weeks the first time around. But this time, with MDs predicting early deliveries, I found myself walking slowly, stunned, through November, getting bigger. And unlike the first time, beauty and peace came to my face and body the farther I went. People remark on my appearance, kindly. The combination of waddle and sashay is enough to get a measure of amused attention.

Ben came in to see my “biiiiig belly” and hug it, saying, “I can’t wait for you to see you, little one!” My mouth is dry, given that my last beverage was at 4:57am. I’m looking forward to little one too, and a tall cool glass of water.

see you all in a few!

My name is a product of my mother’s world – the time at which she got married, her religion, her class, her husband and where she lived. A throng of foo-Maries came out of the lower-to -middle-middle class Irish Catholic Northeast in the 50’s and 60’s, and in spite of my birth year, I got a fifties “foo”. Drop the Marie from my full name, and you end up with something that sounds less like a person and more like a media construct – so common, there are, according to a former reporter at CNET, at least three women with that name  and spelling in high-tech pr and media relations.

My birthname, also a foo-Marie, had a more distinct path. Sans surname, it’s shared with Elvis’ little lady. With the birth father’s name in place, it is the name of HRC’s pr counsel back in her First Lady days – which gave both my birthmother and me a little chuckle. As dowdy as Janet is, I never saw myself as a Lisa, much less a Lisa Marie, so I left it alone.

Ben came into the world early, and with a list of 19 possible names. Five days later, he was Benjamin, even though his father had vetoed it months before. I wish I could say we’re doing a better job this time around, but no.

The working list we had for some time had only 5 names:

• Lucia
• Maria
• Natalia
• Lily (H’s choice)
• Julia, then Rosalind (my choice)

It’s heavy on the latin names, because they can be pronounced in Danish and English. Of course, the usual rules apply – ex-lovers and annoying classmates and colleagues have wiped out a slew of perfectly reasonable names. H is beginning to think Maria sounds too religious. I have to explain to him that Lily Frystyk N. sounds to me like the star of the morning shift at a 24-7 German strip club… even if it is the name of his paternal grandmother.

His new test, no doubt inspired by the political season, is what name looks best on a lawn sign. But as someone with one of those names, I’d like to give her a little more than that. And so the list is very long, even though it is populated with names that he has pre-vetoed. (Like Benjamin.)