Project: Extreme Mom

My one and only windsurfing day

        I sucked at windsurfing.  No, no, I'm not being humble, modest or unrealistic.  I really, really sucked.  Overthought it, froze up, landed my butt in the water on several occasions.

        And it was wonderful.

        It merits a longer essay, but here are snatches of why: I saw a horseshoe crab, big, prehistoric-looking, happy, out in the open and not in a zoo.  "Never grab them by the tail," warned Petra, my new idol, the windsurfing instructor.  Uh, not to worry, I won't grab them at all.  I'm a city girl.  It's extreme enough that we're sharing the same water.

        Ospreys.  Apparently they're making a big comeback down by Atlantic City, where I windsurfed.  Like for the bald eagles that are nesting not too far from my house, the environment is getting healthy enough down there for the ospreys to be making a comeback.  Very cool.

        Doing nothing.  Sat on the beach, blanked out my mind, listened to the gentle waves.  Not a common occurrence for me.

        Eating like the locals.  Petra turned me on to a cool little restaurant named Jo-Jos that served me up a nice whole wheat pasta and blackened shrimp salad.  And when the stomach is happy, life is good.

        Local newspapers.  At JoJos, I read some essays I never would have found unless I'd been reading the "Shore News."  It warms my writers' heart to see there are people working on writing everywhere you go.

To Mojito or not to Mojito?

by Maria E. Andreu

        I get home, feed the cat and the dogs, slip into a comfy t-shirt to sleep in.  I’ll sleep downstairs tonight, I decide.  The AC isn’t quite cooling the second floor bedrooms (gotta get that checked out, I think absently, for the hundredth time).  I sleep on the couch just because I can, because in this rambling house I am alone, with no one to ask for my explanations, my excuses, my reasons.  I’ll sleep on the couch where it’s so cool I’ll have to bring down my comforter, and I’ll feel like I’m sharing a house like a college kid.

        I look over the fridge.  Since the kids have been gone, I haven’t been able to get myself to have dinner, except eating out with friends, because everything in the refrigerator seems to darn uninteresting.  Some days, I’ll pull out some blueberries and almonds.  But somehow, fasting feels fine too, and I make the salad from lunch fuel me a bit longer.

        Today they are gone a week.  I get their daily calls.  Water park.  Beach.  Water park.  Today they parasailed.  They are with my ex, long an ex in spirit but not yet quite on paper, in his island home of Cyprus.  Some days when my kids call I can hear the laughter and the conversation in Greek, conversations I tried so hard to be a part of the years when I accompanied them on those trips, taking Greek lessons, studying the phonetic Greek book he bought me so I could know the names of the days of the week.  But now it’s a tradition that’s moved on without me.  I can’t say I’m sad.  I am busy forging traditions of my own over here: the tradition of rediscovering who I am without a nose to wipe or homework to check.  I love it and miss it, but love remembering myself too, the me that existed without relation to dependants.

        Tonight I’ll make myself a mojito, I decide.  Its tart lime taste is perfect for me, who drinks 5 or 6 cups of herbal tea doused with lemon daily.  My Catholic upbringing (or is it my teetotaling parents who never drank anything stronger than cider at New Years’?) still shudders at the idea of having a drink alone – it’s been probably 4 or 5 months since I’ve done it.  It seems slightly decadent, the road to all perdition, and that’s what’s exactly so delicious about it.  At 39, I’m pretty sure I’m not about to slide into alcoholic unconsciousness, but it’s faintly titillating to be concerned about where this solo mojito will lead.  As if I don’t know it will lead to drowsiness and Dexter reruns on Showtime on Demand and a headache in the morning.

        I make the mojito.  Fresh mint, ah, left over from the party we threw for my son a bit over a week ago.  It’s kept well and, after all, I’m just going to crush it.  I enjoy releasing its bubble-gum memories in the mortar and pestle my mother-in-law lovingly brought me years ago nestled between the goo-covered almonds I loved and the black marinated sugar walnuts I hated.  It was a miracle how that woman could smuggle half her farm right past customs and never get stopped for it.  Homemade cheeses, sausages, coffee (we have coffee in America, I’d tease her, in my best Greek), fresh almonds with coverings I’d never known almonds had, (being a city girl).  Now the trips go on without me but the goods still make it back to me through my children.  That will stop too, one day, I suppose.

        I settle down to drink the mojito.  One day I’ll make it from scratch, but today I’ve cheated and made it from mix.  Good enough.  TV?  Music?  Going outside to look at the amazing orange moon?  I’m mistress of my own night, a heady pleasure that only comes around once a year for three weeks, a 21-day-long eclipse of my motherhood.  I step outside and smell the grassy, moist air, sit under my new gazebo for a few minutes.  Mojito in hand, I smile at the moon.

There's no crying in kickboxing

                By Maria E. Andreu

                “Jab, cross, uppercut, uppercut, knee, knee, roundhouse!” screams the young man with 3% body fat.  He demonstrates the routine with admirable ferocity.  Then he demonstrates it again, calling the moves out over the loud, slightly angry music.  Then, I’m on my own.  “Do that for thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…” he counts down as he lithely moves around the room.

                I try it.  I mess it up, but then I try it again.  I mess it up worse.  He comes over and helps me.  I get it.  I do it.  It exhausts me.

                “Okay, everybody!  Jog it out, jog it out!”  Then it’s sprints.  Then some kind of push-up combination I laugh at when he first demonstrates.  Does he really want me to attempt THAT?

                Then it’s back on the bag, punching it with all I’ve got.  Which is not a lot.

                Gone are the days when I was the youngest, most energetic girl at these classes.  I used to be able to pull the strength for these kinds of things out of some reserve that was never-ending.  But today I realize just how exhausted I am.  And I’m sad.  So sad.  I’m sad at the break-up of my marriage, watching all my happily-ever-after dreams dissolving into nothingness.  I’m sad over other losses, other things that make me realize how much time has passed in my life.

                Mr. 3% Body Fat demonstrates another punch/kick combination, one I just don’t get at all.  I try it, and fail.  I look at the clock.  I’m more than halfway done, but I’m not sure I’ve got enough steam to make it through.  I haven’t eaten in 3 days, I realize at that moment.  And, suddenly, much to my embarrassment, I begin to cry.

                Oh my goodness.  There is definitely no crying in kickboxing.

                Luckily, it’s not big, sobby crying.  It’s just stray tears of deep sorrow falling down my face.  Maybe it will all blend with my sweat.  I burrow in closer to the punching bag, like an opponent I really want to knock down.  I have boxing gloves on, so I can’t wipe them away.  They make me feel even more exhausted, and beat.  Really beat.

                But then a small voice says within me, “What if making it through doesn’t mean making it through on inexhaustible energy, but sticking with it even when you think you can’t make it?”  This thought dries up the tears slowly.  I do what I can.  I do the push-ups on my knees, woman-style, something I’ve always turned my nose up at doing.  But I do them.  I find my energy towards the end of the class, when I’m paired with someone for sprints and I beat her every time.  Leave it up to my old competitive nature to pick me back up.

                By this point, the tears have dried with the sweat, indistinguishable from each other.  I’m sad, I’m beat, but I finish the class.  Maybe it’s okay if there’s crying in kickboxing after all.

The weird thing about my brother

The guy at the bar bumps me, shoulder to shoulder.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” I say back.

“So, you with him?” he points with his chin to the handsome young man beside me that I’ve been engaged in lively conversation with all night.

“No,” I laugh.  “He’s my brother.”  It’s fun to go out with the young people my brother hangs out with, to the young-people places they go.  And, being ten years older than he is, sidling up to the end of my thirties as I am, I am always flattered when people mistake us for a couple, pushing aside the creepiness of the thought.  Do I really look like I could hook up with a hottie like my brother, who spends loads of time on his muscles and still has the youthful blush of his twenties full on him? 

The funniest story my brother and I like to tell on this topic is this: once, we were on a wine tour in South Africa.  Stellenbosch, the beautiful wine country, had amazing vistas, great wine, and a lot of fun people.  One was a bartender behind the counter at a fabulous old winery, who embraced conversation with us to avoid the drunken British college students that were beleaguering him.

He kept plying us with more wines to taste.  “Try the Shiraz!  It’s a specialty!”

Finally, I had to give up.  “I can’t have any more,” I said.  “I’ll get tipsy.”  I’ve never been great at holding my liquor.

The man looked knowingly at my brother, “That’s good for you, eh?” he said, a bit of shared man-humor about, presumably, how easy I’d be after a bit of wine.

There was an awkward silence.

“Uh, she’s my sister,” said my brother.

The look on the man’s face was absolutely priceless.

What's extreme about mom

    The answer to "What's extreme about Mom?" is, most likely, nothing.  But a mom without her kids -well, sometimes that feels like the most extreme sport of all.

    I am not one of these women that has no identity without my children.  I have great friends, career ambitions, lots of thoughts that don't involve stringing macaroni into necklaces.  But when they're not with me, it feels like a big part of what it means to be me - make dinner, nag about chores, locate missing Wii games - is gone.  Every year, for three weeks (when my ex takes the kids on vacation), I get to explore the extreme experience of being just me.

    This is an essay collection chronicling the experience.