by Zibby Owens
So I tried. I mimicked the disembodied fingers on the video. They were so fast, so deft, so sure.
“How is she—” I sputtered. “I mean, do we fold up, or down? Oh my—she’s going too fast! I can’t do this!”
It is my understanding that origami is relaxing, meditative. This was not the case for me.
It didn’t help to have my daughter providing a running commentary over my shoulder: “No, that’s not right—Mom! It doesn’t look anything like—Mom, Momomomom. THAT’S THE WORST STAR I EVER SAW!”
It’s one of the most important functions of family and friends, to help you keep moving forward, one small step at a time, to cheer you on, to tell you, “You can do it!”
“Just—would you just hold on . . .” I paused the video, then unpaused it, then paused it again, trying to make my paper look like the one on the screen. “I think we’re almost there, just one more foooooold.”
But that fold, when completed, resulted in a shapeless paper blob.
“Mom,” my daughter said, narrowing her eyes at me. “Mom! That’s terrible!”
I closed my laptop and stood up.
“Let’s go to bed. We can try again another time.”
My daughter’s face scrunched up and her eyes filled with tears. “You said our family motto is: We never give up!”
“Yes but—.”
“No buts!” She must’ve sensed that she was gaining leverage, because she continued. “We never give up.”
It is our family motto. For better or worse.
So I opened the laptop and made a fresh sheet of origami-ish paper. I watched the super speed video again. And this time, I noticed something I hadn’t before.
“I know what we’re doing wrong!” I shrieked, with mounting excitement. “Here—when we make this fold—see? The paper has been upside down!”
“It was upside down!” my daughter bellowed gleefully.
And then, in under two minutes, we were admiring our beautiful, though definitely not perfect, origami star.
“We did it,” I said with a satisfied sigh.
“Yep,” my daughter agreed.
“Aren’t you glad I didn’t let you give up?” I looked at her small, impertinent face.
“Yes, I am,” I told her.
It was true.
It’s one of the most important functions of family and friends, to help you keep moving forward, one small step at a time, to cheer you on, to tell you, “You can do it!” (or in the case of ruthless taskmaster children, to tell you, “You must do it!”) when you are sure you can’t.
This is always important but right now, with things so haywire, it’s essential. “You were right,” I told my daughter. “We never give up. Even in origami.”
“Good,” she nodded, satisfied. “Now let’s make a whole bunch more!”
Nicole C. Kear is the author of Foreverland, The Fix-it Friends and The Start-Up Squad series, and a memoir for adults, Now I See You.
Awake: 3:01 a.m.
JOHN KENNEY
See, you say / I swimmed.
You can’t swim
but insist you can.
So afraid but such courage
when you leap in
pop up
eyes wide
lost for a terrible moment
reaching for me.
See, you say.
I swimmed.
You don’t know who Bobby Orr is.
Or where I went to elementary school.
Or what my mother’s voice sounded like.
You are four
and it dawns on me now
Awake
that I am the exact age she was
when she died.
That’s a lie.
It didn’t just dawn on me.
I’ve always known.
Since the nurse told my father
A long time ago
pulled him aside and told my father
apparently had great difficulty getting it out
when she told my father
that my mother’s last words were
I can’t leave my children.
So now I stare up into the dark
thinking the same thing
about you
as the hot tears
stream down my face
into my ears
Smiling
because tears in my ears
is a phrase
that would make you laugh.
John Kenney is the New York Times bestselling author of the humorous poetry collections Love Poems for Married People, Love Poems for People with Children, Love Poems for Anxious People, and Love Poems for the Office (or Wherever), and the novels Talk to Me and Truth in Advertising, which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor.
Why I’m Glad No One’s Driving Right Now—Including Me
SALLY KOSLOW
On life in the perpetual passenger seat.
One reason I married my husband was that not only did he own a car, he possessed a homing pigeon’s internal GPS. Both of these things meant that for the duration of our relationship, I would blessedly be off the hook from ever having to get behind the wheel.
Some of my most crucial life decisions have been weighted by driving dread. After college in the Midwest, I considered moving to Chicago, Washington, DC, or Los Angeles, each a reasonably affordable, desirable destination. It was only Manhattan, however—the costliest city in the land—that called my name, strictly because its mass transportation system made it the easiest American city in which a driving weenie like myself could survive. It’s been ever thus.
Now that the pandemic is keeping us sheltered-in-place, I couldn’t care less about the road trips I’m not taking. I fail to understand why the fear of driving doesn’t merit its own handle, like gamophobia (fear of marriage) or taphephobia (fear of being buried alive).
I can’t believe I’m the only person who breaks a sweat when on the other side of a slender yellow line. Seriously: an ill-equipped individual—me, for example—is operating tons of machinery that can, with one false move, maim another human being? I have obsessed about this since long before texting was a thing.
Some of my most crucial life decisions have been weighted by driving dread.
I have now spent many years in my heroic husband’s passenger seat, where, being a creative type, my mind wanders. As a result, I retain only the dimmest grasp of how to navigate the megalopolis where I live. Mosholu Parkway? The Kosciuszko Bridge? The charmingly named Sunrise Highway? These locations sound vaguely familiar, thanks to the patois of traffic alerts, but do not ask me for directions, because I literally never know where I’m going. This compounds my underlying anxiety, along with the fact that New York City’s streets are home to a disproportionate number of audacious drivers who consider speed limits to be mere suggestions and who turn without signaling from whatever lane they fancy.
Given my history, you might assume I don’t possess a driver’s license. You would be wrong. I’ve been licensed to drive—and possibly kill—since I went kicking and screaming to the DMV a full year after all of my friends became certified at sixteen in my home state of North Dakota. Nonetheless, rarely did I ask to borrow the family car. Maneuver out of snowbanks? Merge with traffic? Maintain the speed limit? Not happening.
In my twenties I once found sufficient courage to drive all the way to Cape Cod, in a biblical downpour. I felt as proud as if I’d run a marathon. But unfortunately, just as I was on the cusp of becoming comfortable with driving, I caused two collisions. There was another car on the road? Really? These mishaps thoroughly obliterated my confidence and parked me, literally, on the curb for a good long while.
Recently, rational-me has tried to convince paranoid-me that not driving is barking mad, since it dramatically handicaps my independence. I can live without zipping to a suburban Costco or making a quick hop to the Hamptons on a cloudless, ninety-degree day. But I’ve recognized that, should I want to ditch NYC for a little respite from our
urban quarantine, I’m screwed, since driving is required in any other place where I can imagine living. Thus, I have sworn to get down and dirty behind the wheel. If 227.5 million adults and teenagers in the United States can drive a car, why can’t I?
My first recent foray, on a nearly deserted parkway one sunny Sunday afternoon pre-pandemic, was borderline pleasant. With my husband at my side, my terror alarm sounded only when I spotted a hell-for-leather Hells Angels brigade speeding—hand to God—directly toward my bumper.
“Right! Go! Move!” my husband shrieked as I white-knuckled the steering wheel, and then stalled the car at a busy intersection.
I was that driver, the one you curse.
“Right! Go! Move!” my husband shrieked as I white-knuckled the steering wheel, and then stalled the car at a busy intersection.
Since then, with considerable practice, I’ve improved. Give me a country road and no need to pass a double-wide or tractor puttering along at ten miles per hour, and I will get from A to B. You would not want me to ferry your baby home from the hospital and no one will mistake me for either Thelma or Louise. But I will get the job done, even if afterward I require a day to decompress.
In times like these, that feels like enough.
Sally Koslow is the author of multiple books including Another Side of Paradise, The Widow Waltz, and the nonfiction work Slouching toward Adulthood. Her debut novel, Little Pink Slips, was inspired by her long career as the editor-in-chief of McCall’s magazine.
Growing Up, Every Day Was Father’s Day
MAYA SHANBHAG LANG
In my dysfunctional Indian family, Dad’s needs always came first.
When I was a child, we never celebrated Father’s Day.
My family was Indian. We dismissed Father’s Day as a strange American custom. Yet we celebrated Mother’s Day each year without fail—a discrepancy that only dawns on me now that I’m in my forties.
My father, a difficult man with a temper, probably would have loved to be honored on that paternal holiday. In hindsight, it surprises me he didn’t insist on it—except I think he knew my mother called the shots in our household. He could get her to go along with him in certain ways, could get her to play a part at social functions or in front of others. But had he asked her to buy a Father’s Day cake, she would have laughed at him.
On Mother’s Day, my father went along with whatever plans my brother and I concocted. He was strangely passive as he drove us to the supermarket. We all needed my mother. This was never to be discussed aloud, but one day a year it could be acknowledged in the form of a sticky American breakfast served in bed and a modest potted African violet placed on the tray. I doubt my mom liked what we served her, but she made a big show of her delight.
When I think about what Father’s Day is supposed to be—a day when the whole family caters to the father’s needs—it occurs to me that every day was Father’s Day in my childhood home. He dictated what we should do. He insisted on certain forms of respect: being served first at dinner, lazing in front of the television all evening. My mom, a physician, worked longer hours than he did. She would then come home and make dinner and do the laundry and handle me and my brother while my dad relaxed. His daily life held a certain languid ease, barking out whenever he wanted a glass of water or a snack. He was served every day of his life, and he got what he wanted.
I know my dysfunctional Indian family was hardly typical. But I also wonder if our dynamic wasn’t so unusual: more of a to-do on Mother’s Day, little to nothing on Father’s Day. This atoned for a larger pattern: My mother did too much, my father not enough.
When I think about what Father’s Day is supposed to be—a day when the whole family caters to the father’s needs—it occurs to me that every day was Father’s Day in my childhood home.
In my own marriage, before I separated, I was showered with gifts every Mother’s Day. It made me uncomfortable, though I could never say why. The gestures were thoughtful and lovely. I readied myself to exclaim in delight over the flowers and wrapped presents, reprimanded myself that other women would envy me. But deep down, some part of me dreaded the gifts. I knew they were compensatory.
My ex-husband was nothing like my father, was never controlling or abusive, but his gifts always felt addressed to what the two of us spent all year skirting. One day was supposed to make up for all we left unsaid.
For my part, on Father’s Day I showered my ex-husband with gifts right back. I threw him parties and bought him lavish presents. I wanted to view him a certain way. Celebrating him enabled me to heighten those qualities, to think about the partner I wanted instead of the one that I had. I, too, was trying to compensate.
Now that we are separated, my ex-husband and I are solid co-parents. We may have wanted to be fifty-fifty parents while married, but it felt impossible when we lived under the same roof.
People think of divorce as a terrible outcome, but I have seen my daughter form a closer bond with her father since he and I separated.
People think of divorce as a terrible outcome, but I have seen my daughter form a closer bond with her father since he and I separated. Their time together now is their own. I am not there in the background. When she is with him, she is with him. This benefits all of us. I am a far better mother because I get actual breaks. My daughter knows what it is like to have her dad’s undivided attention for long stretches.
Maybe this Father’s Day I will give my ex-husband a card. Maybe it will say something like this: We have had our differences and struggles, but I see you being a wonderful dad. You are more plugged in and engaged than ever. I am so glad.
What an awkward card that would be, not at all an array of perfectly wrapped, lovely gifts. But I find that as I get older, I would rather have awkward and true than perfect and fake.
Maya Shanbhag Lang is the author of What We Carry: A Memoir and The Sixteenth of June: A Novel.
Moms Don’t Have Time for the Movies
EVANGELINE LILLY
I watched the Oscars for the first time this year. Of the main half-dozen or so films being recognized, I had seen one. One! And that one I had watched under unusual circumstances.
I live in a very rural area of Hawaii. Three months ago, I drove forty-five minutes into “town” to get my hair bleached for an upcoming role. My amazing husband had the kids so they were good for as long as I needed. I knew the process would take hours and that I would be driving home during rush-hour traffic, which would double my driving time to an hour-and-a-half. So, instead of enduring the traffic, I opted to do something that felt indulgent for a working mother of two under ten: I decided to treat myself to a movie in order to wait out the traffic. There was a 6:00 p.m. showing of Little Women at the local four-room theater and I couldn’t imagine a more perfect film to see by myself—sans husband, sans kiddies.
Time and space seemed to open up before me as I walked toward the theater and purchased my ticket from the cranky old lady who owns the joint. There were zero demands. There was nothing pressing I needed to take care of. There was even . . . wait for it . . . no sense of guilt. (Shock-face emoji.) The circumstances were such that watching this film was the only reasonable thing to do with the next couple of hours of my life, and I could feel the creep of decadent pleasure seeping into my bloodstream.
I contribute to this modern world of storytelling. As a writer, I tell stories I want my children to hear. As an actress, can I say as much?
I bought a hot dog and popcorn. I ate them at my leisure without any groping little paws or begging little mouths. I saw a poster for the film Cats and pulled up the trailer on my phone. I was swept away in Jennifer Hudson’s rendition of “Memory” without interruption, distraction, or low-lying shame for ignoring my boys. And then I watched a film so beautiful, so relevant, so poignant and life-affirming that every pore in my rapidly aging face seemed to breathe a tender sigh of yes.
A few weeks later, I was back in the normal grind of working and mothering and wife-ing and self-
caring. Since we were now in Dallas shooting the film for which I had bleached my hair, and the weather outside was more often bleak than not, my boys (including my husband) were spending a lot of time watching one of the three big screen TVs in our Airbnb.
Back in Hawaii, our kids live primarily outdoor lives. Screen time is rare, and that’s how I like it. As an actress, I have to watch some content, but as a mother I find our global addiction to screens disconcerting. While I wasn’t thrilled at the amount of media consumption that was happening in our temporary home, I was, at first, happy to see that our boys were watching old classics from mine and Norm’s younger years: Big, Three Musketeers, and Police Academy were in the rotation.
If they’re going to fry their brains, I thought, at least those films will have slower pacing, less graphic violence, and be more innocent than most of the “crap” they make for kids today.
Sometimes I’d get lured down memory lane and sit for a few minutes to watch with them on my way out the door to work. When I did, my stomach would drop as I realized for the first time as an adult just how acutely most of the films I adored had misshapen my little 1980s girl mind. I could not believe the overt degradation of women that I was seeing on the screens before me. Women in tight clothing with perfect hair were casually leered at, poked, groped, catcalled, and downright molested, nine times out of ten in the name of humor. I could not fathom that it was ever okay for little girls, little boys, men, and women to sit back and chuckle at men being utter pigs with no more recourse than a put-off guffaw from the women they were diminishing.
The thought crossed my mind—we have come so far.
As an actress, I have to watch some content, but as a mother I find our global addiction to screens disconcerting.
I have a tendency to idealize my youth. The eighties with its blue-collar morality had a lot of great things to look back on and miss. But. Sitting there with my boys, I wanted to undo what was inevitably going into their brains through those actors, through that screen. I didn’t want them to be able to fathom a world where disrespecting women was okay, let alone funny. I didn’t want the idea of such behavior even introduced to their susceptible little psyches.