Category: General

So, I got tagged in one of those notes in Facebook, and I don’t usually find time to play along and respond.  But I had one second this morning and did it and thought it was fun.

1) Come up with 25 things about you, it does not matter what you pick as long as they are true.
2) You then have to tag 25 people, including the person who tagged you.  (I’m also posting this in Facebook, and I’m tagging people there.)
So, here goes:

1.) For over 20 years, I saved my Barbies and Barbie trunk, full of clothes, to pass on to my children, in case I decided to have children.  I lugged them from house to house, East Coast to West Coast.
2.) My children broke the Barbies the first time they played with them.
3.) In the 90s, I used to collect children’s picture books. I had a little note card for each book, detaling the themes and how the book would be useful in the classroom.  (Can you say “nerd?”)
4.) One of my closest friends wrote a wonderful picture book called The Giant Hug.
5.) The laptop I’m using doesn’t type the number five, so I always have to copy and paste it.  Sometimes password fields don’t accept a paste, so then I’m SOL.
6.) I’m using Facebook to get connected with some of my cousins in Spain and am therefore practicing my Spanish (in writing, at least)!  This is good because my checks turn hot and get very red every time I try to speak Spanish.
7.) Every day, I miss my grandmother.
8.) I didn’t always think I’d have kids, but I did think that if I were to have kids, that I’d have twins.  (and I did!)
9.) The album that turned me on to the Beatles was Revolver, and the album that turned me on to Bob Dylan was Blood on the Tracks.
10.) Once, and only for a short time, I was an auctioneer.
11.) I love Valentine’s Day and jangly bracelets.  They don’t have to be expensive.  Just jangly.
12.) I cannot stand coconut shavings or water chestnuts.
13.) When I put dirty dishes in the sink, I have a hard time remembering to put water in them, and it drives my husband crazy.
14.) I love to play games and do crafts with my daughters, but I’m not much good at make-believe games, even though I pretended a lot when I was little.
15.) In gym class as a kid, I was dangerous with any type of equipment, like field hockey sticks or lacrosse sticks.
16.) I take modern dance classes, and I want to learn to do flamenco.
17.) When I was in college in the late 80s, I was very happy with my electronic typewriter and did not understand the relevance of computers.  I thought it was a fad that would die.
18.) My favorite book is Stuart Little.
19.) Lately, my favorite song is The Kinks’ “This Time Tomorrow,” but that could change, um, tomorrow.
20.) For a long time, I have been fascinated with the Civil Rights movement.  Lately, as I’ve been searching for a way to talk about Martin Luther King Day with my daughters, I have been learning a little more about Ruby Bridges.
21.) Sometimes, I think I enjoy my kids’ toys as much as they do.  Especially Playmobil.
22.) My husband and I can’t wait for the next Harry Potter movie to come out.
23.) I am a breast cancer survivor.
24.) When I had down-days during cancer treatment, it would cheer me up to think about the many ways that we are all inter-connected, how we all matter to each other.  For example, I am a mother, wife, daughter, sister, cousin, aunt, friend, teacher, writer/blogger/journalist, dancer, confidante, helper, lots of things … What are you?
25.) I am happy to be here.

My daughters’ names are of really special meaning to my husband and me.  Dinah’s name came from Louis Armstrong singing “Dinah, is there anyone finah, from the state of Carolinah, etc.”  There is also a much longer family story about Dinah’s name, but I’ll get into that another day.

And Djuna’s name came from a romantic escape my husband and I made to New York City on the day in December 1996 when the Woody Allen movie “Everyone Says I Love You” came out.  Natasha Lyonne plays the spunky lead character Djuna, and we fell in love with her, the name, the movie, the soundtrack, the day, the memory, everything.

So, you can imagine how I felt when, last night at the dinner table, my 5-year-old daughters announced to me that they hate their names and that they want different names.

The names they want?

Djuna wants to be called Crystal.

And Dinah wants to be called Sparkles.

Not only do we have to call them by these new names, they informed us, but we also have to tell everyone to call them by these names.

So, you’ve all been told.  Crystal and Sparkles, meet the internets.  Internets, meet Crystal and Sparkles.

Sparkles and Crystal, both California girls, examine snow from the sled ride at our local Christmas street fair.

When I was a little girl, my mother used to tell me about the importance of equal rights for women.  I remember listening carefully but not completely understanding because it seemed, from my point of view as a kid in the 1970s, that women did have equal rights.

I took it for granted and figured that my mom must really be from another era to know of something so different than what I was experiencing.

One of the greatest things about Barack Obama becoming president is that my daughters will take it for granted that a man with brown skin can lead our country.  My daughters will grow up looking at Michelle Obama as a role model, and they’ll grow up envying Malia and Sasha Obama and their new puppy and wondering about them and their life growing up in the White House the same way that I wondered about Amy Carter.

And just like I didn’t think twice about seeing women have equal rights or about women working outside of the home, my daughters won’t think twice about seeing a brown-skinned family in power.

Even though I have concerns about Barack Obama (I think his rhetoric regarding Pakistan and Afghanistan is further to the right than even John McCain’s; I am concerned that he is pro-death penalty in certain cases; I don’t think he goes nearly far enough to guarantee the rights of gay people), I voted for him for other reasons.

I cried along with so many other people on election night to see Obama and his beautiful, young family in that park in Chicago, claiming victory on such a historic night.

And now it will be my daughters who will know that their mom really is from another era when she explains to them that there was a time when she couldn’t have imagined that an African-American would be elected president in her lifetime.

I couldn’t be more excited at the thought that my daughters will think I’m that old-fashioned.