Call Me...Maybe?

I hate the phone.  Let me just put that right out there.  Oh sure, I call my sisters and girlfriends to chat, usually when I’m driving or cruising the grocery store aisles.   I like a good old catch-up convo as much as the next gal.  But when expediency is called for, the phone can suck time like a black hole. 


Set aside my skepticism at clutching a mobile device to our brains or the loony appearance of those blinking Vulcan blue earpieces.  What I hate about the phone when conducting business is the socially required chitchat, the lubrication, the “how are the kids” banter that doesn’t allow for cutting to the chase.  Wasn’t this precisely why Al Gore created the Internet --- so we could all be more efficient?


But lately it seems that even email is failing me.  I’m drowning in the sheer volume, suffocating in the volleys. Some conversations and decisions seem to require so many back and forths, so much cc-ing and reply-all-ing, that my knickers are twisted.  We are a society of over- communicators.  We text while we paint our toenails, we tweet while we’re getting frisky.  We feel a sense of rising panic if we haven’t responded to someone in 24 hours.

Good old-fashioned email can plunge you into hot water, if you’re not careful.   The written word lacks tone or inflection, there’s no indication that you are joshing (other than that silly smiley face symbol). Even a well-intentioned breezy missive can sound like you are dead serious, and a serious email can read as if a razor is poised at your wrist.  


Ooops.  It seems I’ve just offended someone with my sloppily dashed email.  But OMG, WTF?  I’d used LOL, added a smiley face and plenty of exclamation marks to lighten it all up.  Sigh.  More time spent on clarification, apologies and back–pedaling.  Now a phone call to hear our voices, palpate the hurt, define the intentions and un-do the damage.  And finally, are we good?  We’re good. OK. Thumbs up.  We like each other on Facebook again. 

Suddenly I’m nostalgic for my old black cord phone, the one I pulled into my childhood bedroom to whisper about cute boys.   A phone call back then had weight, carried a certain importance.  It was almost the equivalent of a written letter now, as quaint as composing your Santa list from the Sears & Roebuck catalogue. 

One of my favorite Nora Ephron essays is “The Six Stages of E-Mail.”  In the first stage she describes her excitement and infatuation at the new method of communication.  This gives way to her confusion over excessive spam for retail and personal growth opportunities like penis enlargement.  Note - my husband once changed his email address for this reason and let’s not go into the understandable insecurities this can breed when you’re a male recipient.  In the next stage, Ephron is overwhelmed by her email and finally the last section is simply entitled “Call Me.” 

 

 

Clicking on my email icon is like powering up a ball machine on a tennis court.  My returns are faster and the replies now shorter.  Anyone who emails me has to live with the fact that I don’t take the time to spell check. It’s my tiny stab at insurrection, a minimal but important time saving device.  To me, email is the written equivalent of a verbal response.  Of course there are exceptions, but you know you’re a friend if you have to read my messages fone- et-i- call-ee.

Sadly, from the looks of my inbox, email is here to stay.  And after years of attempting to be a nice, polite girl, dutifully answering even unsolicited emails, I’m getting ruthless.  I’m teaching myself to resist UFR (unnecessary further response) and to press delete when I see the FNOD’s (Forward to ten friends Now - Or Die a mysterious death within 24 hours).  I no longer send replies that say “great”, “OK,” “done,”  “thank you” or “really?” It’s liberating.  And frankly, do these people even remember they had the last word?  Did they care?  And don’t get me started on RAA (reply-all abuse).  Emailing someone is like accessing porn on the Internet.  Even a child can do it.  

I’m not sure exactly how I’ll solve this.  It’s unrealistic to assume I can throw my devices out the car window and walk away from the burning wreckage.  But I’m working on a healthier balance. 

But the next time we’re trying to set up a lunch date and its taking seven replies, don’t be surprised if you hear the phone ring.  That will be me— and please don’t be offended if I fail to enquire about your parent’s health. 




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Christmas Past and Future

I’m one of those people who never reads a book twice or doesn’t like to see a movie again.   But twenty years into my marriage, I broke my rule to re-read “Crossing to Safety” by Wallace Stegner.  

The book had originally been a bridal shower gift from a friend of my in-laws, and I’m embarrassed to say I can no longer remember who she was.  But I vaguely recall that the accompanying note said it was a mandatory tale for anyone embarking on marriage; a simple story of commitment and friendship amidst the backdrop of life.   It sounded banal enough that I set it aside and in the throes of wedding planning, it was left behind with my in-laws.  The day after our September wedding, my new husband and I left for China.

“Peking” in 1988 was still a relatively backward city. Residents wore Communist Mao suits and bicycles were the major mode of transport.  Bob was teaching at the Chinese Law University and our living conditions were Peace Corp poor; a concrete dorm room, jungle toilets down the hall and no potable running water.

If at first this all felt like an adventure, by December, I was missing my family desperately.  One of my sisters was pregnant, and this would be the first Christmas I wouldn’t be there.  The fun of paring our lives down to the basics had worn off with the advance of the holidays in our drab and secular surroundings. 

When our first big package arrived by sea from Bob’s Mom, I enthusiastically assembled the foot-high fir tree with attachable ornaments, and hung the stockings she had included.  Snuggled under a few holiday music cassette tapes was the paperback “Crossing to Safety.”  I was eager to open it, desperate to connect with anything familiar back in America.

The tale of a husband and wife on the cusp of their new life together and their burgeoning friendship with another couple quickly absorbed me.  The novel moved from Wisconsin to the apple orchards of Vermont, familiar territory for me growing up in the Adirondacks.  And then, with time, the challenges began, the things that life often hides under its skirts when we first take our vows.

 

The simplicity of the story and the sparse eloquence of the writing captivated me. There was no sex or violence, no swear words, dystopia, or green aliens.  It was a tale about life the way it is really lived, with loss and love, successes and failures, disappointments and triumphs. The characters came alive with Stegner’s beautiful prose.

 

Two decades later, I was a seasoned wife with four children in various stages of leaving the nest.  The world had left its mark on us all.  When my journalist husband was injured in the Iraq war, we were all tested.  We celebrated in his recovery, while coming to terms with the preciousness of time together and the importance of resilience.  We were no longer the doe-eyed couple who believed that one’s path in the world could simply be forged from the sheer force of good intentions and hard work.

 

I had decided that re-reading “Crossing to Safety” would be a wonderful way to honor our twenty year anniversary and yet I was slightly worried that it might disappoint.  This second time, I was determined to re-read the story without any rose colored glasses.

 

Devouring the novel as a young bride far from home, I had originally identified with the newlywed couple at the beginning of the story.  Twenty years later, it was the older couple, the road-tested version of the newlyweds, with whom I felt a kinship.

 

I empathized with what life had thrown at the characters, the medical scares, the dings and dents, the disappointments, the strength of the women’s friendships, the determination to go the distance and see things through.  The gift of “Crossing To Safety,” I understood in hindsight, had been receiving a blue print for life.  At the time, I had simply been too young to comprehend.

 

 

Looking back now at that first Christmas with Bob, I am nostalgic.  Life in China was simple and unencumbered.  We had no children or mortgages, no mound of bills, savings or possessions, just the strengthening foundation of a growing love.  We would need to call upon that in the years to come, to summon up what we had worked hard to construct.  But as I write this, 24 years down the road, I am grateful and proud that we have done more than simply survive.

 

I can still see that stark Beijing dorm room, feel the thrill of devouring a great book that has more than stood the test of time.  Although I couldn’t have imagined then what course our lives would take, as I now prepare to gather the brood for another family holiday complete with traditions, music and food, I wouldn’t trade places with my old newlywed self for all the tea in China.

  

Happy Holidays and may they be filled with remembering what's important.

Lee

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Knocked Out: But A Christmas Baby Keeps on Singing

by Guest-Nancy McLoughlin

My son Collin McLoughlin was born on Christmas Day, which was not at all my plan.  There is nothing like that holiday birthday to ensure that your child doesn’t become a diva. But as the very first grandchild in our family, there was much fanfare leading up to the event. The Christmas holiday that year dovetailed with the arrival of my two sisters, who did a lot of “what does it feel like?” during the labor.

Although I failed, I spent life determined to spare any offspring the doom of a December birthday. My own is December22nd. I know what it means. All my own childhood parties were combined and shared with sister’s Lee and Megan in their birth month of May. When the grass is green, no one is as exhausted, strapped for cash or busy. It was like being a birthday foster child. No one really took it seriously and sometimes people forgot to bring the third gift, because honestly, why bother?

But having a December birthday builds character. I see that now. It breeds fighters and lowers expectations about what the world owes. It is one more secret weapon for life’s journey. And so when our Christmas baby Collin landed a slot on the current Season 3 of “The Voice,” NBC’s #1 rated show, it was cause for celebration among us.  The challenge brought the old feeling a child has when Santa Claus just might be coming.

Collin, Lee & Nan

After 100,000 singers tried out, Collin made it through two NY City auditions and then on to a pre-audition in California before an invitation to the blind auditions in L.A. There were lots of hurdles to jump through. Ultimately he made it on, and selected Adam Levine as his coach. Later he was stolen by Blake Sheldon before exiting the show.

The program format includes a taped series of episodes, (two thirds of the season) followed by the live portion which will end sometime right before Christmas. In other words, it is a LONG time. For months during the tapings I waved away discussion about “what’s to come” for my son Collin.

Fort Knox I am not known to be and it was challenging to keep the secret, for the better part of a year. My two sisters, proved a trusting place to park such valuable information. They were my vault and by confiding in them, I could still adhere to the “only family can know” interpretation of the rulebook.

During the tapings in L.A., we understood that we might be monitored, even taped at all times. With no way to confirm when and even if big brother was listening, my sisters and I developed a simple sister code phrase that only we could break. We were gone for nail biting weeks at a time, and the sisters were eager for updates on Collins progress after each challenge. We settled on our own phrase, equivalent to a “thumbs up, he made it to another round.” It hails from a time in our history, an era of elephant bell bottoms and Bonnie Bell lip smackers.

A neighborhood baseball game went sour when the batter drove a hit right down the line and it slammed into my younger sister Meg’s forehead. The term traumatic brain injury hadn’t yet been invented and neither had the MRI. But the word concussion had.

The pediatrician instructed my parents to wake Meg up at intervals during the night and ask a pre-arranged question to which she was to deliver the correct pre-arranged answer. If she seemed confused and did not recall the phrase, then the family Buick Skylark was going in gear to the hospital for observation.

For our secret sister Voice updates, we used the same phrase from Meg’s concussion night. My nerves were fraying from several nine hour audition marathons and a west coast time difference, but I dialed the phone and uttered the code into the voice mailboxes of the sisters. After that it was their problem to keep the secret as they went about life in a small summer town where everybody knows everything.

Sister Lee and Collin forged a bond very early in his life because he belonged to all of us in the way that very first children do.  I am glad we named him Collin, avoiding the advice of some who thought Christmas Day was a great naming opportunity for “Nicholas,” or “Jesus” or “Noel.”  Collin was a chip off the old aunt block and had terrible colic, (like Lee did). It was so intense, Lee was the only one we could trust to babysit without beating him, or overdosing him with cold medicine as one baby nurse did.

Blood curdling screams and infant barf were her reward for harrowing hours that felt like a gift for us to safely run away from. Surely it curtailed Lee’s initial desire to rush in and start a family of her own, especially since our mother always lamented how horribly colicky she was as well. Thanks to Bob’s gene pool, none of her kids suffered with it. Just mine.

At Lee and Bobs wedding Collin wore his very first suit, making a celebrity appearance as only the first grand-baby can. It was a large scale social event at which Collin showed early promise as a performer. We had to leave early, rushing off before the bouquet was thrown, exhausted and disheartened after Collin refused to quiet down. At the time we could have cared less if his commotion would someday morph into a healthy set of vocal pipes. We were barely getting through.

Collin, Nan & Lee

The day after Hurricane Sandy hit our home, we huddled in darkness hoping only for a glimpse of that evening’s “Voice episode. The town was without power or cable TV but the universe eased up enough to comply with a mother’s desire to witness a son (for the last time) on his network T.V. journey.

Trapped by fallen trees we snuggled under blankets. With an hour to spare, my husband drained the last of our gasoline into the portable generator and discovered a way to rig our ancient satellite box to receive just one TV channel, (and in some quirk of electronics, it would have to be the last one viewed before the power was lost)!

NBC was what we wanted and that was what we had. After a full day of jaw dropping storm coverage, Brian Williams took a break from his extended news report and turned the airwaves over to the singers. Despite rain and wind and the stuff that makes disaster on TV hard to turn away from, NBC made a local programming decision to suspend the sadness for a showing of that evening’s episode of The Voice. We all knew what was going to happen for Collin but there is a huge difference between “knowing” and “seeing.”

Collin watched his Knock out round live (no one has a preview of how things are edited) and made a graceful exit from the competition after Michaela Paige a feisty high school rocker with a pink rooster comb was designated the winner of their elimination round. Their battle was like pitting Kermit the frog against a popular and trendy Pokeman character. They are both so different.

Despite the sputtering generator and spotty service, Collin fought to send the obligatory “thank you” twitter to his fans, timed appropriately and coordinated by the show along with his exit. ”Darn, it isn’t going through,” he said concerned it might appear that silence indicated a case of poor sportsmanship rather than storm constraints.

Collin Mcloughlin at The Voice

The Voice is not over for our family. Sequestered, gagged, and gossip-neutralized for months after the taped shows, we can now sing to the rooftops because anything can happen in the live shows and we have no more secrets to share.

What a wonderful experience it has been, a fantastic way to tap into America’s continued fascination with its newest top sport. The McLoughlin family has by no means lost its Voice. We have lots of new friends left to root for in the competition. I can still join in on the e-mails of other cluck clucking moms on the show, some of who have singers that are finished and others who still have some distance left to run, and Collin is headed back to L.A. to spend some time rooting for his friend at the end of the Voice from backstage.

On behalf of every mother that sat through years of school shows or singing pageants that made their ears bleed, I say “thank you” to shows like the Voice who give the aspiring musician a way to be heard. It does take a village. And “thank you” to a home town, and to an extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins and sisters who embraced an opportunity to cheer from the sidelines, making every play feel like a wonderful holiday celebration.

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