Mom Mom Mom #38: Home Again

A day at the beach in New Jersey.

This column runs in the August 27 edition of the Alameda Sun. Comments are always welcome, here or on Twitter!

You can Go Home Again

We made our annual trek to the east coast again this summer, the girls and I. Although it was our third summer vacation east of the Mississippi in a row, this time it was different. This time we spent either every day or part of every day with family. Depending on your perspective (and your relationship with your own family), that kind of trip could be a heavenly experience or a harrowing one. For me, it was a little bit of both.

Usually on these vacations, we spend most of the time with friends and let the family see us coming and going, literally. The real difference this year was that my brothers and sisters and I found our way back home together with our father at the same time. It’s a rare occurrence—the last time we were all together was at my mother’s funeral 11 years ago. A lot has happened since then and I didn’t want my girls or me to miss this opportunity.

We covered a lot of ground during our trip. We caravanned up to Vermont to see my younger sister and got a quick taste of her family’s country living in a beautiful, pastoral setting. With her infinite hospitality, she managed to entertain 18 people throughout a very rainy day. Then we headed back to New Jersey, spending a good chunk of the remaining time driving from the New York to the Pennsylvania borders and down to the shore. In fact, one day, six of us packed into my Dad’s Buick to drive 200 miles, never leaving the fourth-smallest state in the union, to meet my father’s first great-grandchild (a girl, of course!) and then to see more cousins.

It’s amazing the dynamics that happen when you reunite with your family. I guess I should limit that statement to just one person—what happens to me. I return every year thinking that I have changed so much, seen so much, been through so much and I think people, both old friends and family, will see that, notice that I’ve changed and grown up into this fabulous person. What I noticed was that as soon as I land, I turn into an awkward teenage girl all over again, all the benefits of my age and wisdom quickly dropping to the wayside. It took a few days for me to realize this and I had to really shift my awareness. I am not a teenager anymore. This time, when I left the east coast, I left feeling like a grown up.

I wonder if it’s true for families that don’t separate. If I saw my brothers and sisters every day here in Alameda, would I still turn into the awkward teenage girl that I become now when I see them all? Or, if I hadn’t left New Jersey, would I be the same person I am today?

I don’t believe that people really change that much. Things happen to you—college, marriage, the deaths of loved ones, the birth of children, divorce, illness, careers—but what changes inherently? I often wonder if it’s all of your successes and failures that determine who you are or if it’s who you are that determines your outcome. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.

Thinking back over the journey, I can’t help but think, “Wherever you go, there you are.” The good news is that this time, I have realized what triggers the emergence of that awkward teenage girl and am learning to be the Mary Lee she has grown into. It’s a lesson I want to somehow teach my girls. That you are just you, a combination of all ages of you, and maybe it’s not all that bad.

Water, Water, Not a Drop to Drink

Hi~ We are back from our three weeks on the east coast and I will be posting the photos on Flickr as soon as I can. In the meantime, I wrote a commentary for the Op/Ed page of the August 21, 2008 edition of the Alameda Sun. (You can see it here.)

Comments are welcome and appreciated!
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I have started to obsess about water. As you know, our rainy seasons haven’t been very rainy in the past couple of years. As a result, East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) recently instituted a Drought Management Program and we folks living in the East Bay were asked to reduce our water usage. The announcement came in May, but it all didn’t really hit home until just before I left for a summer vacation with my three daughters.

In July, the Water people (EBMUD) sent a letter detailing the need for us to cut back on water usage by 19 percent, based on the average of the last three years of water bills, and provided the guideline for what we should strive for in our household. Next, the letter informed me that I was 150 percent over my rationed amount for the 58 days between May 6 and July 2, 2008. Oops. This was after I plugged up all the drips and had the leaky toilet replaced. This was us trying to be conservation minded. We don’t water anything outside because according to some sort of bad gardener blessing, the only things alive in the back yard are through an act of God. We try to limit our showers and take the appropriate steps to keep us out of hot water—literally. And yet we somehow managed to use 210 gallons of water per day.

So I left Alameda at the end of last month, happy that we wouldn’t be using water for a few weeks, but wondering, is 210 gallons per day too much water for a family of four? I can’t help feeling penalized for being cautious with our water usage in the past. If only I had a lawn to water, or operated a laundry service out of my home or took much longer showers in the past three years. My past water usage would have been much higher, making our ration higher than 103 gallons of water each day.

After spending a week in the rain-drenched New England state of Vermont and a few weeks traveling around the verdant East Coast, I returned a little bitter about the water shortage. Everywhere we turned on our trip the abundance of water struck me. With more than 9 inches of rain in some places, Vermont experienced the wettest July on record (the average precipitation for July is 3.84 inches). Creek beds, usually cracked dry at this point in the summer, looked like white water rapids. I took advantage of the bounty in an unusually selfish manner. I took long showers whenever I could. I did less-than-full loads of laundry. I boiled big pots of spaghetti and fresh corn. I reveled in the rain that fell while we were there. Back East summer storms took on new meaning with every crash of thunder and flash of lightning.

Now that we’re back, what’s a mother to do? My twin teenagers and ‘tween have discovered the joys of a long, hot shower. They also seem to care about their clothes being cleaner all of a sudden, requiring the repeated use of the washing machine. They are endlessly hungry, so the sink and the dishwasher seem to be in constant use, and subsequently, the bathroom, too. The thought of all that flushing is keeping me awake at night.

I’ve started counting the seconds I run the faucet in the kitchen sink for my coffee in the morning, I calculate the gallons used for the number of times we flush and have enforced a cut back on the number and length of our showers.

I am hoping that the rains return this winter in full force, that maybe, in some kind of cosmic meteorology, we brought back the potential for extra rain with our trip to Vermont. In the meantime, I will continue to obsess about the liquid gold, counting each drop as it disappears down the drain.