Things to know while traveling in DC:

The Obama for Yo’ Mama t-shirt you are wearing for your workout might not be as entertaining to your African American Barista as it is to you.

While trying to explain away your t-shirt, make sure not to say: “No man, really, I’m with you.”

Pretty sure my latte has a little something extra this morning…

Things overheard, well, almost never:

“I was listening to NPR in the tanning booth.”

“She said she felt skinny so she was going to eat a hamburger, whatever.”

I agreed to speak tonight to a group of college students on the topic of “influence.” I love to speak publicly; normally, the idea of a captive audience excites me. However, this time I am really nervous. I have been preparing for this for a while, yet I feel woefully inadequate for this event.

I feel as though every time I plan to teach someone something, it always involves a HUGE lesson for myself. The question of my own influence on others has been rolling around in my head like a marble, hiting corners and bouncing back.

What does my life say? What do my actions communicate? Working as a lobbyist I am supposed to be an experct in influence - yet in my personal life, how often do I think about what I project?

Also - in working on this speech, I found this quote…

“Setting an example is not the main means for influencing another, it is the only means.”

- Einstein

Thought provoking, eh?

 I don’t remember much about the decision to move to Carmel, I just remember being on the road with the car loaded. I knew that my mother loved the Coast and longed to be near its healing scenery. The feeling in the car that day was palpable joy. We, the team of my mother and daughter, were actually doing it. We were leaving the confines of Turlock for a new adventure.

The soundtrack to this trip was none other than Staying Alive. Needless to say the year was 1984 and I was seven. It was before I had much of an opinion on where we lived and my only real care was being close to my mom. She was my tether on this earth, as my family wasn’t like that of my friends. I didn’t really grasp the fact that my father was dead, mostly because I couldn’t really grasp the fact that he had ever existed. He passed away very unexpectedly at the age of 43 - when I was just 2 years old. He left behind two children from a previous marriage that were considerably older than me, one of which wanted nothing to do with me or my mother. I suspect he was so greatly wounded by the death of our father that he lashed out in the only emotion he deemed acceptable - anger. My sister would work hard to keep a relationship with me, although I would be an adult before I could really appreciate this.

By the age of seven, I had seen my fair share of dysfunction. Shortly after my father died, my mother fell into a deep depression and a relationship with a man she would later marry…twice. He was a tormented man with many demons that would haunt him well after his life and mine were connected. In fact, he would die of a drug overdose years later, after he had fathered a little girl with another woman.

I didn’t like him, even as a child. He never physically hurt me. In fact, more often than not he would try to buy my affection with gifts.  I was aware, however, that he hurt my mother in ways too adult for me to grasp. The move to Carmel in my mind was a way of fleeing this man and any connection to the world he occupied.

Near the corner of Santa Rita and Pico was a tiny flat roofed house that would be our home for the first year we lived in the 93921 area code. Carmel proper is only 1 square mile and it was a mix of old money, new money, vacationers and those who don’t fit any profile - namely my mother and I. Every morning before school my mother and I would walk a 3 mile loop around town. We would stop in at the Monterey Bay Baking Co. and get a muffin and then head back home to get ready for the day. My mom and I shared a room in this tiny house, a detail that was lost on me until adulthood. My mother had no space from her daughter that first year. Now, as a mother myself, I cherish the fact that my children go to their rooms and go to sleep before I call it a night. I have an hour or so to myself to read, take a bath, watch television, etc. Basically I have an hour to be an individual. That entire year, my mother would give up a part of that individuality to make her dream of living in Carmel a reality.

I rode a school bus and a skate board for the first time that year. I also built a fort in a grove of trees, drove in a Porsche, walked to the beach, and looked at a Playboy. The year I turned 8 I was enrolled at Carmel River School and I had made a few friends. Most importantly, I was friends with the family across the street and their house would be my second home that year. They were an unconventional family. They were also “renters” like us and they didn’t seem to have much more than my mom and I as far as resources. The dad drove fancy foreign cars but only because he worked for a dealership in Monterey. Their other car was a VW wagon, which I would pile in nearly every weekend for trips to the beach. The mom was a total hippie, complete with long unkempt hair, Birkenstocks and no bra. I didn’t understand her at all but I thought she was fabulous anyway. Their two boys, Zach and Taylor would help transform me into a total tomboy that year, something that would be completely undone the next school year because of peer pressure.

Zach was a year older than me and he took pleasure in showing me the ropes. He would walk with me in the morning to the bus stop, teach me to ride a skateboard and be the first to try to kiss me. We built forts, hid in bushes above the street and threw water balloons at cars and generally got into childlike trouble.

Amazingly the kids at school in Carmel were pretty normal. I managed to make new friends and learn new social mores.  It wouldn’t be until junior high when I would notice the life of privilege that surrounded but didn’t include me.

That first year, I really enjoyed the adventure. Looking back I love how my life at times has flirted with the rich and famous. Clint Eastwood ran for mayor of Carmel in 1985 and won the post in 1986. One of the things he promised to do as Mayor was repeal an old law on the books forbidding the consumption of ice cream on the streets of Carmel. On those morning walks I mentioned earlier, my mother and I would campaign for Clint by wearing sweatshirts that said “Eastwood and Ice Cream, What more could you ask for?” We made the paper with those shirts and my mom got to meet Clint at a few different social functions in the year to follow.

The single square mile of Carmel By The Sea held a lot of promise and new experiences that, as an adult, I cherish. In late 1985 we would move out of Carmel proper and into a rented house in Pebble Beach. This year would bring a whole new set of challenges to be discussed at a later date.

Looking back on that first year, my mind’s eye is filled with sand and seagulls and the neighbors’ VW wagon. When I think of the memories of fog filled mornings, bran muffins and cuddling with my mom, a wave of nostalgia washes over me and I can instantly taste the salty sea air and feel the water at my feet.

I can still feel the plastic mesh cutting into my toes as I strained to see over the fence. I would wait patiently to see that green car round the corner and head to our condo complex. The yellow lawn furniture steadied beneath my 6 year old frame and I was as excited as a child can be waiting for her Grandma.

We lived in a modest condo in Turlock and my Grandma - aka Grammy -  lived in a little house in the country in Patterson. On the weekends and for weeks at a time during the summer, my Grammy would pick me up and I would take up residence in the Apricot Capitol of the World. My Grammy’s house was on Barch Avenue in the middle of an apricot orchard. I can remember only one or two houses on the whole street and a canal traversing the property to the west and south. The house was red with white trim and it had a chain link fence around the yard. My mother would always make a fuss about the ugly fence and now as an adult I can see why. My Grammy didn’t care what people thought and in her mind the fence was functional for keeping the dogs and stray cats in the yard.

The house was old. It had brown shag carpet and old mission style doors with glass handles. The kitchen had some exposed brick and the side room where I often slept inexplicably required a step down. The backyard had several fruit trees and a built in barbeque. My Grammy had a penchant for attracting stray animals and there was always a litter of kittens or puppies to play with. Looking back, the backyard was a mess with animals and a non functioning outdoor entertainment area. Yet as a child, it was a wonderland of freedom and imagination. I would make mud pies and bake them on the barbeque, I would name all of the kittens and wrestle with the dogs until I was as dirty as they were.

This house on Barch represented much more than just a place to stay. It was the place I could be a child. It was the place where my childhood would blossom, full of made up games and walks in the orchard with imaginary friends. After irrigating with my Grandpa, I would walk the canal bank looking for shells. I can still feel the mud between my toes and the amazement at finding a clam shell buried deep in the soft silt of the canal bed.

On hot summer nights, I remember my Grammy watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune on the old plaid couch. She’d whisper the answers in between puffs on her Marlboro Reds and sips of Pepsi.  She was a night owl, no doubt awake with the thoughts of her life gone by. I would barely keep my eyes open, exhausted from hours in the sun that day, drifting off to sleep with the sliding glass door open so the sound of crickets could lull me to dreamland like only a country night can.

Sometimes on weekends Grammy would have her friends over or my mom would come and stay with us. They would talk and play cards deep into the night, drinking coffee and chain smoking. I remember laying in my Grammy’s bed, the door cracked so I could hear the sounds of their adult conversation, never contemplating what was being said just taking comfort in their presence.

I didn’t come from much. My Grammy however, was raised in privilege that neither my mother nor I would know as children. Grammy didn’t create that life for herself, marrying a poor Air Force man from Arkansas. My Great Grandmother - Vava - married money and enjoyed a life of travel and leisure. This lifestyle however, would escape her children. I am not sure what happened in their house all those years ago, but Grammy and her brother, Buddy, would not seek the same type of environment as adults that they had as children. Buddy was plagued with alcoholism and what was, I suspect, a case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after the Korean War. He would never marry or settle down. My Grammy would live the beginnings of her adult life in fear of her husband and disconnected from her two children.

Mary Borba, my Vava, was the picture of stability. She had a solid Portugese husband whose family came to the United States with money and managed to expand it once here in the dairy business. She lived in reverence of the Catholic faith and understood the importance of family. Mary had a wicked sense of humor and was never one to mince words. If you were being stupid, she wouldn’t hesitate to tell you. Yet, in her presence, you knew you were loved. She told stories of trips the World Fair and life in San Francisco as a child. Her eyes would gleam with a secret sense of adventure. She did, however, seem to lack a deep understanding of her daughter. Grammy was fearful and shy, often painfully so. Mary would go to her grave never fully aware of what made her daughter this way.

After the unexpected death of my Grandfather, my Grammy would change exponentially. She married a man 13 years her junior and enjoyed a time of travel and experienced the type of deep romantic love that alluded her first marriage. She still carried the baggage of that first relationship and it would surface at times, but her love for my Papa Harold changed her deeply. I suspect this 180 degree turn would throw my uncle and mother for a loop. A life of alcohol and adultery and violence that ended in the tragedy of my biological grandfather’s death, would somehow blossom a stay at home mother with a desire to cook and clean.

This is the Grammy I knew. She loved my Papa and longed to connect with me, maybe in ways she had failed to with my mother. I suppose that is what grandparenting is for, to fill the gaps of parental inadequacy that appeared with the first generation. I remember Grammy and my mother fighting quite a bit when I was younger, I never was fully aware what the arguments were about but I suspect it had something to do with the changes my Grammy had made and the years of pain my mother had experienced.

My mother would go to the ends of her earth to provide for me as a child. I would never lack for anything but it wasn’t without much hard work. My father died when I was 2 years old. My mother was left with a business to run, a home to pay for and a child to raise at the ripe old age of 30. This would be the second time in her life the head of household would leave without so much as a warning. I can’t imagine how this abandonment spoke to her soul.

This is where Grammy and Papa would step in. They would seek to collectively be the parent that I tragically lost. They would bridge the gap between a mother that was deeply wounded and a father taken too early.

Nothing was perfect. Nothing was as it should be. But that house on Barch was a symbol of the community that would raise me. They would teach me what they could from their own lessons, at times leaving little cuts on my soul. Mostly though, they did nothing but good by me. I could complain of cigarette smoke and unconventional parenting by three broken people but without them I would have had even less. Without them, I wouldn’t be who I am. Even my tiny broken parts have purpose.

As I seek to parent my children wisely, I hope that they will share this perspective of looking back to the people who raised you and being graceful to them. I want them to know that even though their parents aren’t perfect and will no doubt create some neurosis for them to deal with, they truly are just a collection of their own experiences. I can be no one but who I am and I will always be respectful of the place from which I came. That is why a part of me is still just a little girl with mud between my toes looking over the fence with hope in my heart for a better day.

Kevin: Dude you only have like 4 minutes left of HD on your DVR!

Josh: I know, this is stressing me out.

Kevin: Man, when mine gets down to like 9 hours, I just start deleting. Like, that, right there, that Mickey Mouse Clubhouse has got to go.

Josh: Yeah, it is sooooo gone. Look at me, right now, I am just deleting like crazy. Bye Bye Mickey.

Kevin: Don’t delete that Dirty Jobs man, that one is classic.

Josh: Never.

I am a habitual pregnancy test taker.

I don’t know what my problem is but I always think I am pregnant. This makes absolutely no sense because I have been pregnant 5 times and I know what pregnant feels like. So why am I so faked out all the time? Well other than I am crazy, I’m not really sure what the answer to that question is.

For those of you wondering to yourself, “pregnant five times, what???” Well, I have two beautiful little boys but they didn’t come without a hell of a lot of heartache and 3 miscarriages. I have a genetic mutation that causes clotting in the placenta during pregnancy. You can read about it here.

I have been wondering how to write about all that I went through with my pregnancies. I love to write and I was writing long before I ever decided to post my thoughts on this page. Yet curiously, when I am in real emotional pain, I cease to write. There are months missing out of my journals and this website where I just couldn’t articulate the hurt in my heart.

Yet now that I have come out the other side, I want to write about all of the pregnancy drama because maybe it will help someone out there. I remember sitting at work surfing the internet looking for someone to put into words the situation I was experiencing. I found a lot of comfort in Tertia’s writing and also in Julie’s. I never even commented on their sites but I read them every day, hoping to find commonality with someone in my loneliness and quiet desperation.

I will write more about what I’ve been through, the lovenox shots, the d&c’s, the bi-weekly stress tests, the hospital stays, the ridiculous amount of bloodwork, etc. I know that the 4 years of both successful and unsuccessful conception changed me in ways I am barely even aware. The loss of a baby breeds a lonely ache so strong, your core is rocked. However, for now, I just wanted to open the door and begin the process of seeing what is inside.

So for those of you that read this site, you know about my fanatical love for Heather B. Armstrong of Dooce. Not love, love but you know, like love?

Anyway, today, as I checked out her site, I was shocked. I mean just shocked.

Please check this out and then come back to my site. Okay, are you back now? Now look up. Yeah at my header. Do you see what I see? OMG, it is like we share a brain.

 It gets better though…look at this on my flickr site.

 How crazy is that people? Heather, when will you see that we are destined to be best friends?

Dear Joshie,

I am sure you won’t remember this but, you love the mornings. You babble and squeel until I come in your room and pick you up from your crib. You laugh out loud the minute I open the door and it instantly makes me happy. You say “da da da da da” into infinity. At first I was upset because you said “Daddy” before you said “Mommy” but at least you first word wasn’t “dog” like your brother…

When you are really tired you say “ma ma ma ma ma” and then “ny ny ny ny ny” until I scoop you up and put you in your crib. Not that you readily go to sleep - you are not a big fan of naps. However, I love that you want me when you feel tired. I like to think that it is because you know where safety and peace can be found. I hope to always provide that for you.

You have also started this adorable thing where you crawl to wherever I am and sit down. You then promptly put your head down and both of your arms in the air (think field goal). This is your way of saying “I would now prefer to be held.”

I was cleaning out the bathroom today and I ran across my positive pregnancy test from you. I know that seems gross that I kept it, but it was so amazing to find out I was pregnant with you, that just looking at that plus sign (now faded) makes my heart feel full and complete. Joshua you have no idea what a blessing you are. You have changed me and challenged me so much from the moment I found out I was pregnant to now… and I suspect for as long as I am privledged to be your “ma ma ma ma.”

You turn 1 in less than a month, I suspect you will be officially walking by then. I can’t imagine how that will change the dynamics of our already busy household but I am ready for the next challenge. In the meantime, I am going to keep writing all of these things down, the little things you do because I just don’t want to forget.

I love you Joshie Bear.