Stuff I Lie: Fried Egg Sandwiches

Fried egg sandwiches remind me of being a kid. They were the fast food of choice in my house growing up. We did not live near any drive thrus, and my mother eschewed fast food long before it was popular to do so. 

I now find my own family’s divergent schedules, unanticipated athletic events, and runaway can days really mess up the dinner hour, so we are rediscovering this low-brow delicacy.

I love that you can couple this simple comfort food with an apple or some carrot sticks and have a meal with protein, whole grains (if you forgo the Wonder Bread), and a nice fruit/veggie component in about three minutes. For pennies. No additives. No artificial anything.

For those of you who did not grow eating fried egg sandwiches. This is how you make them:

Over medium heat, coat a small skillet with cooking spray. Pop two slices of bread into the toaster.

Crack an egg onto the skillet and flip it after a minute or so, when the egg whites turn opaque. You can nick the yolk so that it cooks a bit, or enjoy a really gooey sandwich with the yolk intact. Salt and pepper to taste.

Here is where tastes vary. My brother loaded his toast with butter.  I preferred my sandwich with a smear of mayonnaise. My husband likes his with ketchup. I think this is nasty, but it how my kids ask for theirs, too, so I guess there’s no accounting for taste.

Serve this with a tall glass of milk and you have delicious fast food that you need not drive to fetch – or feel guilty about!

Uncomfortable Honesty

My daughter recently taught me a lesson about strength of character and bravery. In an age when much social interaction, particularly between teens, takes place via the back and forth of disembodied texting or by writing on somebody’s “wall”, she chose to apologize to someone she had hurt face-to-face. That she had not intended to be hurtful was strictly beside the point, at least to her increasingly uncomfortable conscience.

She had gotten caught up in the kind of third party nonsense that feels reassuringly old school to me. Some things in adolescence, it seems, never change. And getting friends to act as intermediaries appears to be one of them. Unwittingly, my daughter found herself at the center of one of the many minor romantic misadventures playing out in the hallways of her high school last Fall.

After repeatedly assuring friends, and friends of friends, that she did not “like” like a certain boy, and bearing the brunt of teasing that ensued simply because her name was being bandied about, she finally became emphatic. I Do Not Like Him. At All. And in doing so both hurt and embarrassed a really nice guy. Whom she did like, just not “that way”. In attempting to deflect some very unwanted and increasingly awkward attention, she had lashed out at someone whose only crime was thinking she was special.

A vague feeling of discomfort regarding the whole awkward scene ensued for her and simmered somewhere beneath the surface, occasionally percolating into her consciousness. Which made her feel uncomfortable and caused her to act a little snarly around the house. This was not a big deal, but it festered. And the rest of us suffered from an irritability she could not even put her finger on.

I recently suggested that she just try talking to the poor guy to clear up any misunderstanding. Well that sounded like a terrible idea to her. She thought I was crazy. How totally awkward! Plus, it was ancient history, except that it still bugged her. The subject was dropped.
But about a week later she came home fairly skipping and grinning ear to ear. “I did it.” She beamed. “I saw him and I told him that I got really flustered and did not mean to hurt his feelings.” “What did he say?” I asked. “Nothing really.” she replied cheerfully as she headed upstairs.

It was then that I knew she had discovered a great truth. When we make amends, when we seek to make something right with someone, we certainly do so hoping that it will make a difference to the person with whom we seek reconciliation. But the person with whom we really seek reconciliation is often ourselves. I am grateful that my daughter was keyed in enough to her feelings and to the feelings of someone other than herself to realize that she had behaved in a way that proved hurtful. And I am grateful that the still, small voice inside of her found this unsettling. But mostly I am grateful that she was willing to do something uncomfortable to rectify it. No texting. No intermediaries. No awkward avoidance. Eye contact was involved. And an apology. And just like that, a burden was lifted.

Sounds simple, but I would do well to take the advice I so wisely gave my daughter. I often shrink from initiating or participating in uncomfortable conversations that really should be held. I’m too busy. It’s too awkward. I don’t know how to say it. Yet, until I make my peace, or say my piece, or am open enough to truly listen, there is little chance I will know the peace that I crave. It is so low tech, but it works like a charm. Even, and especially, in a high tech world.

Stuff I Like: Crocuses, Forsythia and Phlox

I spied a rich purple carpet of crocuses this morning along my usual running route. I swear that it was not there yesterday. Glory be, spring has arrived! Or at least it is sending us a teaser in the form of brave little shoots sure to multiply by the day.

In truth, my favorite flowers are hydrangeas, and my yard is loaded with them at the height of summer. I love their big mophead poms, an intoxicating contradiction of sturdiness and delicacy. They grace the landscape along with all manner of showy flowers and shrubs as summer bursts forth with its audacious display of horticultural beauty.

But there is no time of year that begs for a glimpse color and new life like early spring. Although forsythia blooms predictably each year, as do the crocus and the phlox, their appearance always takes me by surprise. Particularly on years when they have to push their way through remnants of tired snow, they seem an improbable juxtaposition to the landscape, almost too good to be true.

This is why I have planted generous clumps of phlox that burst into a border of vibrant splotches. It is why I devote one afternoon each Fall to planting bulbs. The squirrels think that I am burying little presents just for them, so I never know what will emerge in the spring.  But for eyes that have become accustomed to the drab of a Midwest February and the slop of early March, there is no more gratifying sight than the burst of color and life they provide.

And before I know it, the days begin to lengthen, the breezes blow more gentle and fragrant, and neighbors I haven’t seen in months are coaxed out of their houses along with their dogs and strollers and bicycles and friendly waves.

I love the brave early bloomers of Spring.  And armed with the immediacy of my appreciation it is the perfect time to plan for an even showier next year!

Setting Our Own Standard

My daughter was a little curt and snippy with me the other day, while we were out doing her bidding. Rather than being contrite or at least subdued when I called her on it, she was indignant. “You wouldn’t believe how other kids treat their parents!” she informed me, with a withering look that was calculated to put me in my place.

I stewed on that for a bit, resisting the urge to retort with the age old parental response, “I don’t care what everybody else is doing” because I wanted to give this one some thought. You see, my daughter is a great kid. She is honest, hard working, and responsible. Given what we could be dealing with at sixteen her father and I feel very lucky indeed. But in the end I realize that we are talking about separate issues. I don’t want to view her relative to others. The fact that so-and-so hurls profanities at her parents does not make it any more acceptable for my daughter to sulk through the mall without any acknowledgement of the time, energy, and resources being expended on her behalf.

The teen years seem to be ones characterized by rather unflattering self-absorption. My mother is happy to remind me of how, as a teen, I was at the center of my very own universe, caught up in the minutia of myself. It was the luxury I enjoyed as a child raised with enough love and abundance to be able to engage in some serious navel gazing. But what I did not enjoy was a lot of back-up to support this self-aggrandizement. There were behavioral expectations at school, at home, and in the community to live up to, or pay the price. Television seemed to echo these standards with programs like the Brady Bunch and The Cosby Show, where adults were portrayed as smart and credible, and courtesy and respect held sway. Now granted, I never met a family that actually resembled the Brady Bunch or the Huxtables, but still, I was getting the message about standards of behavior on a variety of fronts.

These days it seems as if television shows centered on teens are largely parent-free or use adults primarily for pratfalls or as punch lines. I remember a while back when my son said something uncharacteristically bratty to me and I realized that he was literally pirating lines from a Nickelodeon sit-com. This child seemed genuinely perplexed when I told him that such behavior was not going to fly. So, if we as parents are competing with the likes of Lindsey Lohan, Facebook, and Gossip Girls for airtime with our kids it is no wonder we may be experiencing a subtle descent into sarcasm and irreverence that often does not even register with them. I get the message being sent by my daughter: I don’t even know how lucky I have it.

But it doesn’t feel lucky to me if she simply exceeds the minimum standards of socially acceptable behavior. It doesn’t feel lucky if she is just not as rude as “everybody else”. I want her to operate from a foundation of values that reflect a sense of respect for herself and for others. I want her to become clear on who she is and what she believes in, and to use that as the measuring stick. In short, I want her to set the standard for her own life, not just pattern it after whatever is coming down the pike.

And so I continue to respond with the old adage, “I don’t care what everyone else is doing”. Then my husband and I give some thought to ways in which we can help her develop a sense of self not built on shifting sands. We share, and hopefully model, the values that we subscribe to. We tell our kids why they matter to us, and sometimes the hard earned lessons we learned that helped to us determine that. This does not seem to go very well when delivered in lecture form, but we seem to make some headway when it is brought up in the context of our everyday lives. We have shaken our heads at some ridiculous lapses in judgment we have seen with our kids, finding it hard to believe that certain things are not just plain common sense. We have gotten to the point, though, where we presume nothing. Values are caught and taught, but there is much that is not necessarily intuitive.

Perhaps in the end, having our children observe the widely divergent ways in which people think it is okay to operate will prove to be a blessing. Far too many of us from the Brady Bunch era knew how we were expected to behave, while giving little thought to why we did so. Many of us didn’t own the values that we subscribed to, which made them shifting sands in and of themselves, a real danger in conformity.

So we challenge our children to think through the things that will define them, while continuing to set our expectations high. Our hope is that they will know that we believe they are capable of great things and grow to believe this themselves. We hope that they will know how we have come to define some of the attributes that we hold dear and will know, also, that we trust them to define for themselves the standards by which they will choose to live. Just as with telling the truth, knowing who you are really helps you keep your story straight.

Stuff I Like: Blank Note Cards

I always try to keep a supply of little blank note cards handy. I have some stashed in the glove box of my car, in my desk drawer, sometimes even in my purse. I usually stock up at Target because their selection is cute, cheap and pretty extensive. Convenience plays a big factor, as I can hardly go a week without making a Target run.

I like to dash off quick notes of thanks or encouragement or just an “I’m thinking of you” card while I am waiting in the car pool line, at the dentist, or even in the infernally slow line at the Post Office. With note cards handy (along with a book of stamps) the effort expended to actually act on the inclination to drop a line is minimal. It is literally a two or three minute investment of time, but the impact can change a day. And the day that usually changes is mine.

Taking the time to connect reminds me of who and what really has meaning in my life. I feel the ripple throughout my day as invisible bonds of affection and concern strengthen. Emails are efficient, convenient and instantaneous. They certainly hold a place of prominence in my life. But there is nothing like spying the familiar handwriting of a friend amidst bills and junk mail to make my day. I love that I can offer this little boost to someone else.

The operative word, I have found, is “little”. Cute little note cards. Knowing that a couple of lines will suffice ups the odds that I will put pen to paper. And in the spirit of “it’s the thought that counts” those couple of lines are usually all that is needed to send a little love.

The Most Important Two Minutes of the Day

I stumbled upon an article, “The Two Most Important Minutes of the Day” years ago while flipping through a women’s magazine as I was getting my hair cut. I was intrigued. If these two minutes did, in fact, exist then I wanted know about them.

It turns out that this was a “can this marriage be saved” kind of article, and the two minutes it was referring to were the first two minutes after a husband walks through the door at the end of the day. Very June Cleaver, I thought. However, the concept of those two defining minutes has stuck with me and I have come to believe that there is great wisdom in taking the suggestion from that article to be particularly mindful of them, not only with my husband, but also with my children. The concept can easily be extended to friends, colleagues, extended family and pretty much anyone with whom we are in relationship.

Perhaps this is some offshoot of the advice most of us have been given about the importance of first impressions. The defining nature of initial encounters is also the premise for Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book Blink. The idea is nothing new. But the advice I found offered in that rather unlikely of spots has really made a difference to me. There are a variety of simple ways that I employ it in my daily life. Among them:

Picking the kids up from school. I try to make sure that I am not on the phone or otherwise distracted as I greet them. This does not always translate into special moments of meaningful sharing, but it is the time they are most likely to talk about the events of their day. One thing is for sure, when I am checked out as they are checking in, I can almost feel the wall of separation come down.

I try to extend this same courtesy to my husband when we first catch up at the end of the day. This is a tangible way that I can show him how much he is valued, and it sets the stage for the mutual regard and respect that I want to characterize our relationship and our home. While it may feel sexist, my extending this courtesy first, I have found that it does make a difference. And I have found that consideration is catchy. To paraphrase Gandhi, I am trying to “be the change that I want to see in the world”.

A very simple way that I employ this idea as I go about my day is just to try and be wherever I am. If I am talking to a colleague, interacting with a friend, or simply checking out at the grocery store, taking the time to be present, to make eye contact, and to read faces, can make all the difference. I have found that if I am willing to go first, I am usually rewarded with a considerate and surprisingly satisfying exchange in return.

It is such a simple little investment, but it pays such great dividends!

Stuff I Like: Gilt.com

A friend turned me on to www.gilt.com not long ago. Each day around noon an email alerts me to the day’s offerings. Men’s, women’s and children’s fashions and luxury brands are offered at up to 70% retail in the form of an on-line sale lasting up to 36 hours.

The Gilt Groupe was established to bring New York invitation-only sample sales to those of us who do not live in Manhattan or have special connections. Our personal invitation arrives via the internet.

Most days a two-second peruse assures me that I am missing nothing, but occasionally I will find a designer I love or funky costume jewelry or hand tooled leather-bound books or any number of things I didn’t know I needed just waiting to be had.

This has come in particularly handy in beefing up my stockpile of holiday and birthday gifts. I purchased the perfect wine journal for my brother, a great necklace for my niece and really cool salad tongs for my mother at incredible prices.

These all reside in a defunct linen closet I commandeered long ago and outfitted with a deadbolt lock. It has been dubbed the “Christmas closet” at our house and I cannot tell you what a pleasure it is to round the corner to the holidays knowing that I have effortlessly (and frugally) completed the bulk of my shopping simply by keeping my eyes peeled throughout the year.

This takes a great deal of stress out of the holidays, freeing me up to really appreciate the festivities. And it comes with the added bonus of knowing that I do not have to cringe when the credit card bills arrive in January. Guilt free shopping at gilt.com!

Can We Talk?

Our fourteen year old son has recently become monosyllabic. I can’t quite pinpoint the shift, but he used to chat about his day, join in dinner conversations, sometimes even share his feelings. But now? Now we are largely down to grunts. I know that underneath the tangle of gangly limbs and facial features morphing at an alarming rate beats the heart of my sweet and recognizable child. But the juxtaposition of awkward body parts seems like an apt metaphor for the awkwardness I sense on the inside.

This is driving my husband particularly crazy, which makes me laugh because I am confident that he went through this same Neanderthal phase. But, age appropriate or not, we are committed to walking with our son through this inarticulate season, holding him accountable to some reasonable standard of behavior as we help him to develop an expanded verbal and emotional vocabulary. It may not sound like much, but it feels like a big job as we bump up against a world that often seems to set the bar pretty low.
We never really bought into the “boys will be boys” philosophy which so often seems to be used by parents as a rationalization for bad behavior and an utter lack of self control. Our son was perfectly capable of taking the roughhousing outside. And while we have always recognized and celebrated the differences we observe between the ways he and his sisters navigate the world, we have too much respect for him to dumb down our expectations. We are looking not to excuse but to assist and to encourage. Certainly, gender has a fundamental impact on social development and communication skills, but we have a young man to raise here. He may become somebody’s husband. He may become somebody’s dad. Basic consideration and articulation seem to factor in as reasonable expectations. There is much work to be done.

I think that helping children mature into reasonable, contributing members of society has always been the job of parents. But in past generations a more generally agreed upon set of social mores seemed to better complement this endeavor. I am grateful for many aspects of a less rigid society that celebrates individualism and free expression. But sometimes these terms feel a bit like a smokescreen for self-absorption and immaturity. If everybody keeps fixating on getting their needs met, things are going to get pretty ugly around here.
Facebook, “tweeting”, and reality T.V. are some of the cornerstones of contemporary culture premised on a desire for self expression and a hunger for attention that sometimes feels like a relentless and desperate cry to “Look at me! Look at ME!” It is as if one is not living if life is not lived out loud – with copious amounts of feedback.
Much of my distaste for this self-focused approach to life stems from the fact that it often leaves out the “other” in social interactions. My hope in working with my son to move past his non-responsive state is to help him arrive at a place that honors both himself and those with whom he interacts. I do not want him to become a pleaser or repressed or sacrifice his individuality. I don’t want to emasculate him. But I do not want him to settle for truncated social/emotional development just because he’s a guy, and lots of guys limp through life with seriously limited interpersonal skills. These guys often seem to be the ones who put their fists through walls (or worse) when they’re frustrated. And they seem to be the ones who are frequently frustrated. Being macho – and monosyllabic – looks mighty lonely.

And that is why we are doing a little sensitivity training around here. Not only are we looking for some sort of response beyond “fine” to the question, “How was your day?” but we are hoping that he might actually begin inquiring about ours – and sincerely care about the answer. This fourteen year old of ours is a great kid, and I know that he does care. But in reminding him that he is an integral part of a larger whole and that his mood and manners have a fundamental impact on the rest of us, we hope that we are helping him to make connections that he can take with him out into the broader world. How he chooses to walk through his day will have a profound impact on the way that it will unfold, and on the people around him. Connecting in meaningful ways with the others in his life feels good, just as it feels good to be able to connect with himself. Way better than putting his fist through a wall.