La Mamacita

Fred's birthday is January 30. Mom's is March 13. Sue Biggar's birthday is March 16.

I don't know who any of these people are, but I have to say that I'm becoming more curious by the moment. You see, I'm peeking into someone else's life.

I'm not doing it on purpose, though. Really! I just bought a used PDA on Ebay to replace the dead one that I've been carrying around for the past month. Before buying the new one, I decided I'd see if I REALLY needed one. Well, after a month I still don't know if NEED is the correct term, but I still WANTED one, and after all I AM more organized when I use one.

The truth is, I love the chase. I enjoyed reading up on PDAs and searching for the best deal. After several nights of staying up late reading about them and sharing important bits of information with my husband, he started to look pretty frustrated. I knew it was time to buy. (I wonder how many purchase decisions I've made because my husband reaches the point where he can't stomach hearing one more word about the items I'm considering?) I ended up getting a Palm Vx on ebay, and getting a right good deal, if I do say so myself.

The kids went to sleep at a decent hour tonight, giving me a little time to play with the new (used) toy. It's colorful and fast -- it even connects to my wireless internet connection! I wasn't able to synch to my laptop until I returned to work the following Monday, so I was setting it up manually when I noticed someone else's memos. There are always some risks in buying a used item (this one did not come with a manual), but I've been pretty fortunate in my Ebay purchases so far. Not knowing how to delete more than one memo at a time, I found myself looking at each title as it passed -- tips on healthy eating, notes to a contractor, directions. I know that this person keeps up with birthdays and Valentine's Day, works out regularly, and does charity work. Calendar items were even more cumbersome to delete, because some had been programmed to repeat, which requires one extra step to clear them.

Let's delete several together, shall we? OK: March has four remaining items: I'll keep St. Patrick's Day (the 17th) -- it's always good to be reminded. But I'm deleting Helen Cooper's birthday on the 18th, although I wish her the best, wherever she may be. I'll do the same with Patricia O'Connor's (the 20th) and Michael Coso's (the 22nd). Victoria Angier's birthday is May 2 (the word God Father is noted here -- The Sopranos comes to mind). And on May 5, the owner of this device planned (plans?) to send off the NY State AIA Competition Packages. I'm curious about AIA, so I google it and find that it has something to do with building interesting figures out of sand... On May 29, the entry exclaims, DAY OFF -OFFICE CLOSED - MEMORIAL DAY.

I'm curious what the previous owner of this PDA will do to celebrate Memorial Day. Will he or she meet up with Michael Coso and Patricia O'Connor at, say, a place in the Hamptons? Or are they more Jersey Shore types?

I realize that this could easily become an obsession. I know that he/she pays his/her Expo account by the fist to avoid "interst", and that he participated in a "Poonam Sharma Interview." On June 2 at 11:30, he had something to do with "Starr Review of Bid Documents" -- Could that be KEN STARR????

As I delete each of these items (I know there must be an easier way to do this, but would it really be this interesting?) I think about how much of MY (less busy, less interesting) life will take their place. If a stranger looked at my PDA, he or she would certainly notice the Saturday riding lesson that overlaps with the toddler ballet class -- how does she swing that? they'd wonder (sometimes I wonder that myself). They'd find a file marked grocery list that might prompt them to suggest that I could really save some money if I just didn't worry about ORGANIC. But I don't think they could've helped me to remember my nephew Will's birthday, which I plain forgot to enter into the calendar -- darn!

Recently we hosted a get-together for friends on our block, something that my friend Beth makes look really easy, but for me is always somewhat stressful. I enjoy the company -- we're blessed to live on a block full of interesting people with children of a similar age. What gets me is that lately, when I host a get-together, no matter how well I plan or how much cooking I try to get done in advance, I'm always running around like a crazywoman and don't get to sit down and enjoy my guests.

Until tapas night. The inspiration came admittedly late. Two nights before the party my husband and I were dreaming of planning a family trip to Spain in a couple of years, and memories of Barcelona tapas bars ushered in the idea. The Spanish eat dinner ridiculously late by my husband's standards, so during our summer there six years ago, we frequently joined the Spaniards in tapas bars, drinking a fino or sangría and eating small plates of potato and onion omelet, grilled shrimp, huge, delicious olives and countless other meditteranean goodies designed to get you through until the 10 p.m. evening meal. From time to time, we enjoy a potato omelet, green salad and glass of red wine for dinner and think about those wonderful weeks in Spain.

When the idea hit, I remembered my favorite tapas cookbook, Penelope Casas, and I turned to a couple of favorites (tortilla a la española, thyme-scented green olives) and a couple of new dishes (white bean salad, swiss chard omelet). The result was delicious, AND I found myself sitting with my friends, enjoying a glass of Rioja, watching the kids play. It was a great evening.

Tortilla a la Española (Spanish Potato Omelet)

1 c. olive oil
3-4 large potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/8 inch slices
1 large onion, thinly sliced
Coarse salt
4 large eggs

Heat the oil in an 8- or 9-inch skillet and add the potato slices one at a time so they don't stick together. Alternate layers of potato with the onion slices and salt the layers lightly. Cook slowly over medium heat (the potatoes will really "boil" in the oil rather than fry), lifting and turning the potatoes occasionally, until they are tender but not brown.

Drain the potatoes in a colander, reserving about 3 T. of the oil. Wipe out the skillet, scraping off any stuck particles. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, beat the eggs with a fork until they're slightly foamy. Salt to taste. Add the potatoes to the beaten egg, pressing them down with a spatula so that they are completely covered by the egg. Let the mixture sit for 15 minutes.

Heat 2 T. of the reserved oil in the skillet until it reaches the smoking point. Add the potato and egg mixture, spreading it out rapidly in the skillet with the help of the spatula. Lower the heat to medium-high and shake the pan often to prevent sticking. When the eggs begin to brown underneath, invert a plate of the same size over the skillet and flip the omelet onto the plate. Add about 1 T. more oil to the pan, then slide the omelet back into the skillet to brown on the other side.

Lower the heat to medium and flip the omelet two or three more times (this helps give it a good shape while it continues to cook), cooking briefly on each side. It should be juicy within. Transfer to a platter and cool, then cut in thin wedges or into 1-1 1/2 inch squares that can be picked up with toothpicks.

This omelet tastes better and can be cut more easily when left awhile at room temperature (score!)

White Bean Salad (Ensalada de Judías Blancas)

3/4 lb. cooked white beans or chickpeas (I used canned)
1 med. tomato, cubed
1 hardboiled egg, sliced, each slice cut in half
4 pitted cured black olives, each cut into 4 pieces
1 T. minced parsley
2 T. fruity olive oil
1 T. wine vinegar, preferably white
Salt
1 clove garlic, mashed to a paste or put through a garlic press

In a bowl, gently combine the beans, tomato, egg, olives and parsley. In a separate bowl, whisk the oil, vinegar, salt and garlic. Fold into the bean mixture and marinate in the refrigerator for several hours.

Growing up, I loved movies. I 'don't remember disliking a single one I saw. In fact, I had trouble understanding why critics picked apart the films that were, for me then, all so different and perfect in their own ways. I spent a good bit of my childhood in Atlanta, and I can remember sometimes walking, and sometimes being dropped off at Lenox Square or Phipps Plaza and paying $2 to see The Pink Panther series (I loved Peter Sellers), Escape to Witch Mountain, Monty Python's Holy Grail, Jaws (which I loved, but which, as the movie trailer and book jacket promised, kept me from ever enjoying the water again.) All of these are classics, except, possibly, Escape to Witch Mountain, which starred Eddie Albert as an RV-driving grump who is won over by two adorable children with magical powers. But I saw several that would be a bit more difficult to praise nowadays: Foul Play, with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase, and The Spy Who Loved Me (I had an inexplicable loyalty to Roger Moore as James Bond). I saw this one, and other Roger Moore Bond films, an embarrassing number of times.

Sadly, I didn't hold onto that unconditional adoration of cinema. A college roommate with discriminating taste in movies and music took it upon herself to educate me. Thanks in part to her, I am now much more particular about movies, and have so much less free time, so I find myself too often scouring the reviews to find one that's worth my time. But I guess my joy at finding a great one may equal the happiness I used to find at the theater as a child. It just doesn't happen as often.

One of the repercussions of spending so much time in a dark theater is that aspects of life start to take on characteristics of films I've seen. It's not that I lose my grip on reality, but a frightening number of the connections that my brain makes are to films instead of to books or, sigh, other life experiences. Sometimes it's because I don't have a life reference or an literary moment to refer to. Other times, though, I think it's because movies provide a safe and easy way to experiment with emotions that life and books, which require so much more imagination, don't offer as readily. The result is that some of the important moments of my life have a film-like quality in my memory. I think it's possible that I compartmentalize the strong feelings that come with these real-life events so that they might soften, as would happen when I walked out of the dark theater and squinted into the sunlight after watching a matinee and realized that it was daytime and that the shark was far, far away and I was safe.

I felt this way a couple of days ago watching my grandmother die. It was a surreal forty-eight hours in which my mother and I went to the nursing home in the mountains to visit her, knowing she was ailing, and ended up staying through the end of her life. Afterward, standing next to her lifeless body, so carefully and lovingly laid out on the bed, it just didn't seem real. You see, the whole event had every making of a cinematically scripted occasion.

My grandmother and I have always had a special relationship. I never did anything to earn it, and as a child I felt guilty that she liked me so much and, apart from being named for her, I didn't always merit her special feelings. I didn't visit often enough, and when I did visit, I sometimes dreaded making the trip. But when I would arrive at her house in Alexandria, we always had a wonderful time. She was never one for scheduled activities; she appreciated relaxation, and especially as teenager, I loved lying on her couch eating Captain Crunch out of the box after a day of swimming at her club and lying in the sun. That's about all we did. And maybe because I didn't require more, she enjoyed my company. Over the years, I tried to earn that special relationship we had. I visited as often as I could, and when it came time for her to go to the nursing home, I tried to be a regular presence. I never felt I quite lived up to the kind words she said to me, but it was a lesson for me that thinking the best of someone is a great way to help them raise their own expectations.

I didn't cry much during her death; I knew she wanted to go, and I wanted her suffering to end. A couple of times I felt a sense of deja-vu. Looking back, I wonder if watching the grief of too many characters in too many movies made my experience seem less authentic. From a directorial standpoint, it was quite a beautiful scene: My mother, brother and I stood around the bed and stroked Grandma's arms and hair and told her how much we loved her. After the nurses warned us that the time was rapidly approaching, she breathed shallowly and irregularly for about 30 minutes, and then she just stopped.

Apart from saying goodbye to my grandmother, my goal was to support my mother, for whom this has been very difficult. But when it came time to leave the nursing home, it was she who held me. I had a really hard time walking out of that place. Looking back, it was leaving that made it real -- walking out of the automatic doors of the nursing home into the late afternoon sunlight and realizing that my grandmother was still gone. That her body was still in that bed, and that it wouldn't be there the next morning. I felt myself crumble, and the emotions that I'd held at bay, behind that curtain of fantasy where I'd "tried on" so many feelings in the past, all came tumbling out.

My mother held me close in the parking lot and let me cry. I may have seen fifty sentimental deaths on the big screen, and uncountable moments of grief, but this moment was mine, and it was real, and it was clear and painful and full. And to soften it would be to cheapen it and rob myself of the true essence of what it is to live.

My husband's AP students have taken the dreaded exam and can now rest on their laurels a bit. In celebration, he's going to show them a couple of classic films, and last night he previewed The Graduate.

Both of us had last seen the movie while we were in graduate school, and we were surprised at how different our perceptions of it are now than when we were at such a different stage in our lives. It's interesting how much more I identify with the adults in the movie. When we last saw it, they seemed so ludicrous, and the Dustin Hoffman character's ennui seemed so understandable. Last night I found myself wanting to tell him to get out of the damn pool and DO something. What's more, Anne Bancroft looked GOOD! I think I may be older than she was at the time, and I kept finding myself thinking how cute her skirt was and if she'd just change the highlights in her hair a bit...

Anyways, it makes me want to go back and watch other movies that we enjoyed in college and early in our marriage. Some of my favorites, like Harold and Maude I fear, may not stand the test of time. Others, I'm hoping, like A Private Function, might even get better with age.

In the end, Jeff decided to shelve The Graduate and is showing Citizen Cane instead. Hmmm... That's a class I'd like to take!

The boys and I had a moment today. Lately, our moments have been made up of kindly (and not-so-kindly) reminders that we've still got three more weeks of school, exams loom, it's too early to throw in the towel, etc., and we were headed in that direction today. But we had an unexpected visit that completely changed our focus.

I'm not sure how he found us, but somehow a frantic little yellow bird made it into the school, down the hallway and into my classroom. He flitted under my projector, which I was warming up to show an installment of Julio y su Ángel, a Mexican film that I use as an authentic text at the end of each year. He then proceeded to fly over the lights and toward the back of the room, hitting the windows repeatedly in an attempt, I'm sure, to reach the familiar green and blue that seemed oh, so close.

A not-so-distant memory came to mind. Years ago, during my first week teaching at this all-boys' school, the headmaster walked in and sat down. I felt confident: I had the boys' attention, they were learning, I was teaching, just the things you want your boss to see. With the chirp of a cricket, though, my fortune changed. The cricket called just loudly enough for the boys to notice. It jumped out into the middle of the room, and in a fraction of a second my classroom was bedlam as every boy tried to be the first to stomp the poor creature. After I'd quieted the boys and gotten them back in their desks, I looked around to see that my headmaster had quietly left the room.

This time, however, the boys were great. One ran to open the windows, which unfortunately wouldn't budge, and another tried to protect the little fellow by steering him away from the glass. Finally, one boy was able to trap him against the blinds, cupping him in his hands. My worries of avian flu aside, all of us quietly followed the boy and the bird outside, where my student, whose favorite pastime is shooting quail, gently set the bird in the grass.

There were a few moments of silence (which is a rare event among a group of 8th grade boys) as the bird remained perfectly still. Two boys bent down and softly stroked the bird's feathers, and I felt a lump start to form in my throat. A couple speculated as to whether he was in shock or perhaps suffered from a broken wing. Then, as if scripted, the bird sailed into the air and disappeared into some tall bushes lining the basketball court.

The boys filed back into the classroom, and sat down. I felt euphoric, and I could tell that the bird's visit had touched the boys as well, as they sat quietly discussing the bird's coloring and speculating as to whether it was a goldfinch or a warbler.

I shelved my lecture. Somehow it didn't seem necessary anymore.

Really, I do prepare other kinds of meals, too, but tex-mex does seem to be calling to me lately. These enchiladas from Eating Well turned out really well. I served them with cold black bean salad and plenty of cilantro and sour cream. Depending on the salsa verde that you use, they can be mild or muy picante.

Enchiladas

1 pound peeled cooked shrimp (21-25 per pound; thawed if frozen), tails removed, diced
1 cup frozen corn, thawed
2 4-ounce cans chopped green chiles (not drained)
2 cups canned green enchilada sauce or green salsa, divided
12 corn tortillas
1 15-ounce can nonfat refried beans
1 cup reduced-fat shredded cheese, such as Mexican-style, Monterey Jack or Cheddar
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 lime, cut into wedges

1. Preheat oven to 425. Coat a 9-by-13-inch glass baking dish with cooking spray.
2. Combine shrimp, corn, chiles and 1/2 cup enchilada sauce (or salsa) in a microwave-safe medium bowl. Cover and microwave on High until heated through, 2 1/2 minutes.
3. Spread 1/4 cup enchilada sauce (or salsa) in the prepared baking dish. Top with an overlapping layer of 6 tortillas. Spread refried beans evenly over the tortillas. Top the beans with the shrimp mixture, followed by the remaining 6 tortillas. Pour the remaining sauce (or salsa) over the tortillas. Cover with foil.
4. Bake the enchiladas until they begin to bubble on the sides, about 20 minutes. Remove the foil; sprinkle cheese on top. Continue baking until heated through and the cheese is melted, about 5 minutes more. Top with cilantro and serve with lime wedges.

Black Bean Salad

4 large Roma tomatoes, cored, seeded and chopped
1 can black beans, rinsed
1 cup frozen corn, thawed
Olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Salt
Pepper
Cilantro, chopped

Spread the corn in a flat baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil and mix. Broil until lightly browned.
Allow corn to cool.
Meanwhile, mix together the tomatoes, beans, and cilantro.
Add corn.
sprinkle with oil and red wine vinegar to taste
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Refrigerate until serving.

*If you plan to make this ahead of time, it keeps pretty well over night, but wait to add the cilantro until just before serving.

I'm getting emails from the Sleep Lady.

Perhaps she senses that there's change afoot in our house, or perhaps I somehow got onto her mailing list while perusing various ways to increase the number of hours we get bonafide zs each night. It's also possible that my husband secretly submitted my email address. Hmmm...

For $125 an hour, her website says, the Sleep Lady will consult with me via telephone to sort out my 3-year-old's sleep "issues." Don't worry, it cautions, the Sleep Lady will not, a la Ferber, tell me to let my toddler "scream it out." Instead, the Sleep Lady will train me as a "sleep coach," and her website is full of success stories.

I first became aware of the parental sleep debate after I had daughter #1. From her first night onward, I wanted her in bed with me. I didn't plan it that way -- in fact, that first evening in the hospital I remember worrying that it wasn't safe and trying to stay awake so that one of the nurses wouldn't come in and scold me for not putting her back in the bassinett (actually, one may have). But I wanted to hold her and feel her against me and know she was breathing. It was purely instinctual and the only thing that felt right.

My husband was supportive, especially when he learned that we wouldn't have to get up at night (or, wake up, even) if she could nurse lying down. So for the short-term, I think we both got more sleep in our Family Bed than friends who made a trip to the nursery every two hours. As the months (OK, years) passed, though, the nursing continued, and as my healthy daughter grew, we seemed to sleep less and less. My sister had the same struggles and tried Ferber (who in all fairness doesn't really advise letting them scream it out), but in the end didn't seem to have any more success than I.

So now that child is nine years old and sleeping through the night in her own bed. But child #2 is following in her sister's footsteps. She's down to just nighttime nursing, but my husband started getting up and sleeping in the toddler's bed because the more she grows, the more she kicks. I, too, find that as much as I love snuggling up to that warm little body, the 4-5 a.m. nursing sessions are getting a bit, well, tiresome. So, we've started putting the 3-year-old to sleep in her very own bed. We've met with a bit of resistance, and she still comes into our room sometime after midnight each night, but we at least get our bed (and my breasts) to ourselves for several hours in the evening. That's on the nights when I don't fall asleep in the toddler's bed with her.

I don't think I'll be calling the Sleep Lady, although I can definitely empathize with those who do. I think I know what she would say. I expect she would tell me that I've got to be more consistent, and that it's my actions and needs that have prolonged my child's sleep "issues." She'd probably remind me that it doesn't hurt the child to sleep alone in her room, and that there are plenty of ways to let her know she is loved and safe. She'd be right, of course.

But somehow, and I know this sounds nuts, somehow that seems like cheating to me. These days are so short -- in the blink of an eye, she'll be sleeping through the night and impossible to wake in the morning like her sister. I'm not sure there is supposed to be a magic cure for this; instead, I think I'm just going to keep listening for those little feet padding in footy pajamas down the hall to my room each night and savor the feeling of that warm little body climbing up to snuggle next to me for a little while longer.

This comic strip, from SFGate.com, sums up my week pretty well.