When I got pregnant with my daughter, I worked at the law school on the UC Berkeley campus, known then as Boalt Hall. I described my position there as “petty bureaucrat,” doing payroll and other administrative duties. It so happened that nine women on the staff became pregnant that year. Rumors circulated among staff that we would do anything to avoid the new dean, or that maybe it was “the water,” but the nine of us had due dates scattered  throughout the year. Mine was last, in December. All the other women planned to return to their jobs, but I had had enough of it and looked forward to staying home with my baby. Little did I know that I would not be able to actually stay home with her for real until she was four months old. I’ve written about her stay in the UCSF Intensive Care Unit before, so let us leap ahead to those post-hospital days when I finally got to be a SAHM.

I’d been working and going to school  from the time I turned 18. When I finally earned enough credits to graduate from Cal, I was 25 and pregnant. Not working for a while seemed like a very good idea. My husband got his first job as a lawyer about an hour south of where we were living, and we moved two weeks before my due date. We had barely settled into our San Jose rental when we went shopping for a car seat and other baby necessities. I remember standing in line to check out and having someone shout, “You’d better hurry!” They weren’t wrong: I went into labor the next night.

Being a stay at home mom wasn’t something I had always dreamed about. In fact, I thought I never wanted to have children, afraid I wouldn’t be a good mother. But something clicked when I turned 25, and all I wanted was a baby. I hoped I’d have a boy because I didn’t trust myself to be a good mother to a girl. So of  course I had a girl–and a girl who immediately demanded my full devotion to her well-being.

I stayed home with her as she grew healthy and strong, doing all the things that young mothers do: play groups, trips to the park, lots of stories, fun adventures with other young moms with kids her age. And that was fine. When she was 18 months old, we moved back north to Oakland, and I had a brief period of employment which meant finding day care for her. It felt weird to be away from her, and my job was thankfully short-lived. When my second child came along, I was at home full-time with the two kids. This was in the ’80s, the era of  “having it all”  for women–with very little recognition for women who chose to opt out of the rat race for a few years. These were the “and what do you do?” years, when saying you stayed home with kids meant the small talk at the party was over and you were left standing alone next to the 7-layer dip. On more than one occasion, I tried to impress a stranger at a party by telling them who had been on “Sesame Street” that day, then feeling my husband tugging my arm to save me from a conversation that had already begun circling the drain. Sad.

Did I go to graduate school with a two-year old and a five-year old  just to spite those snobby  women in their suits and expensive haircuts? Or did I finally realize that five years was probably long enough to feel less than. Whichever it was, after five years I went back to school. I did homework at night after the kids went to bed, and raced home from my morning class in time to get my daughter to school on time. Lucky for me, my school had a fabulous day care center for students’ children. I don’t know how I would’ve managed without it.

I did go to work after earning my degree (and having a third child mid-thesis), and that last kid got less of me, but had the benefit of the family village of his helpful big brother and sister, and dad. I worked part-time until the fire in 1991, then made a career shift–which meant more course work and other opportunities.

Those early years are precious to me now, although sometimes it seemed like pushing a rock up a mountain every day, with a pile of laundry waiting at the top.

I ran across this photo the other day, when my daughter was supposed to “dress like a mom” for school.

I swear, I never dressed like this. I was in jeans and a t-shirt, usually barefoot. At the end of the day, my neighbor and I would pour ourselves a glass of wine and play Boggle until it was dinner time.

The featured image here, taken at the hospital on 6/6/86, has been re-enacted several times by my three grown kids: two pouting while one holds the newest addition to the family.

 

I am lucky to live in Newton, which is a very progressive city of about 200,000 people. They have good schools and services. They began a curbside recycling program of newsprint in 1971, just a year after the first Earth Day, followed in 1975 by adding glass and cans to their bi-monthly curbside pick-ups. That program disbanded a few years later. They tried again in 1981 with mandatory paper recycling and always had recycling at their Rumford Avenue site, a collection point to gather all sorts of household items including recyclables, oil and paint cans, light bulbs and the like.

We moved to Newton in 1986. In 1990, 2-stream weekly curbside recycling became mandatory; that is, we bundled our newspaper, and put clean glass and cans (with the labels peeled off) in green containers provided by the city, as seen in the Featured photo. I still keep that container in my home, as a convenient spot for all recyclables on their way to the big dumpster in my garage.

In 2009, the city adopted single stream recycling and all households got the large, green bin (as well as a blue bin for trash). Now we can mix all forms of paper, cardboard (I have to keep reminding my husband about the toilet paper rolls), as well as glass, plastic, aluminum. Though everything must be washed, it no longer has to be separated. I am careful to remove staples before I throw away old groups of paper, or bags that come from delivery services or the pharmacy.

With all the takeout we’ve eaten this year, there have been several news articles about what is and isn’t recyclable. First, everything must be CLEAN. We can’t have food clinging to the side of the container. That can be difficult with greasy food. Then I read that some of the black containers, even with the recycling logo, aren’t really (they have different numbers in the center and companies don’t really want them; just the clear plastic). So this is a point of confusion. I used to recycle the take-out pizza box, but realized that was not OK due to the grease on the bottom.

And now that China won’t take our waste material, is has become a dilemma. We want to do what is right for the environment by not adding more waste, but where is all this waste going, how is it being processed, does the processing add more pollution to the environment? The solution isn’t as simple as it used to be and I don’t necessarily feel as virtuous as I once did.

Nevertheless, I am grateful that Newton remains such a progressive community and continues to do it’s part to try to solve these looming problems.

 

Playing with Fire

As a child I spent summers with my family at my grandmother’s small Catskills hotel.  (See My Game Mother,  My Heart Remembers My Grandmother’s Hotel , The Troubadour,  Hotel Kittens, The Cat and the Forshpeiz and Our Special Guests)

One summer a family with a son about my age –  we both must have been 8 or 9 –  came to the hotel for a week or two.  His name was Miles,  and as we joked years later when we met by serendipity,  we were each other’s first lover.  In fact I have only a vague memory of us “playing doctor ”,   as Miles reminded me we did,  but I distinctly remember the day we got in a bit of trouble.

I don’t know what we were trying to burn that summer afternoon,  but I remember kneeling on the lawn behind the hotel kitchen as Miles struck a match,  and suddenly to our horror flames began licking the grass.

No fire trucks arrived on the scene,  and luckily there was no big conflagration.  Rather I remember some hotel staffers rushing out from the kitchen,   putting out the fire with a hose,  and comforting two very frightened children.

I assume we were both punished and I doubt we ever did anything that naughty again,  but I know Miles’ family came to the hotel for several summers after that and we continued our liaison.  Then,  when I was 11 my grandmother sold the hotel and our families lost touch.

By chance about 10 years later Miles and I were both taking the Graduate Record Exams in the same Columbia University hall.  No sparks flew that time, altho we did give it a try –  but that’s another story!

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

My mother was terrified of dogs. Dogs had been used during the 1906 pogroms against my grandparents in Russia. My grandmother would cross to the other side of the street to avoid coming close to a dog. She instilled that fear in my mother as well. I guess I understood, but I LOVED them and always wanted one, particularly after my brother left for college and I was lonely.

My mother also couldn’t keep a secret. One day in 1966, she spoke with her sister-in-law, Roz Sarason, who had some exciting news. Their French poodle, Jacques, had sired a litter of puppies to help the owner of the female dog raise the money to buy contact lenses from my cousin Steve (Roz’s son), who worked as an optician at the time. Penny, the female poodle had a litter of five cute little puppies. Steve claimed the one female in the litter. The rest were up for sale.

“Don’t tell Kenny or Betsy”, warned my aunt. “They’ll want one.”

Naturally, the first thing my mother said when I got home from school that day was to tell me about the puppies. Of COURSE I wanted one of those pups. Dad and I went to see them that weekend and chose one for me. Mom was apoplectic, but that’s what she got for not keeping the secret.

The puppies were, indeed, adorable; little bundles of black fur, their silver coats hadn’t yet come in under the puppy fur. These were miniature poodles (not toy but not standard either, just a perfect size for me). We picked one; a lively little male, paid for him, but left him with his mother until he was six weeks old and weaned.

We deliberated about names. His mother was Penny and she had five puppies, so we thought we’d be clever and name him “Nickel” (like “5 pennies”). But this was a pure-bred poodle (though we never gave him a fancy cut, always a “puppy” cut, we left his fur evenly trimmed across his whole body). We needed a name to register him with the American Kennel Club. I was in first year French class in high school and had a limited French vocabulary. I wanted him to be “Nickel of the Woods”, (in French) since we lived in Huntington Woods. But I did not yet know the word for “woods” which would be bois. I knew forêt, which is “forest”. So according to the AKC, my little puppy had the grand name of Nichol des Forêt. Yet, just as I am ALWAYS Betsy, never Elizabeth, my dog was ALWAYS Nicky. I don’t think anyone outside my immediate family even knew his official name.

I was very happy to have some companionship around the house, but my father adored this dog!

Nicky gave my dad unconditional love, never hassled or nagged him. Walking him gave Dad a reason to get out of the house and go visit friends around the corner, or have a private conversation with me. While Nicky was being trained, Dad took him to his car dealership for the day, so my mother didn’t have to deal with that. Poodles are a very smart breed and Nicky was quick to learn. Like most dogs, he just wanted to be loved and petted. I think that describes a lot of humans too.

Like many dogs, Nicky was deathly afraid of thunder storms and we had some doozies in Detroit. I’d hold him close, as I felt his whole body tremble. I missed him when I went off to college and looked forward to seeing him when I returned home.

But like so many of the breed, Nicky developed eye problems. His retina atrophied and he went blind. His doctor said he’d be fine as long as nothing in the house changed. My mother left the basement door open once when she went downstairs to do laundry. He bumped into the open door and fell down the steps, hurting himself. I was already married and gone from the household. My mother’s frantic voice reached me after she’d taken him to the vet. He was banged up, but nothing broken.

Shortly after that incident, my parents bought a condo in Laguna Beach, CA with plans to spend part of the winter there. They knew they couldn’t let Nicky languish in a kennel. Dad called me the night they put Nicky down. I understood that he couldn’t survive outside our home. I sincerely mourned the loss of my only childhood pet.