danapop

Just over a year ago, while walking our dog, my husband and I witnessed something horrific. We saw a stray Shepherd get hit by a speeding car. The noise of the crash was awful and the pain this dog was experiencing was dreadful to watch.

Before the dog got hit, he’d been haunting us for months. We’d see him wandering around the neighborhood, cold, unloved and appearing miserable. The night he was hit, we were actually reaching for what we thought was a collar. We’d finally managed to get close enough to him to look for a tag … it was a choke chain with nothing on it. As soon as we discovered this, he jumped into the street at the same time a car was driving down it.

It truly was an accident. Nobody that saw it would’ve ever faulted the driver; in his or her defense, the dog came out of nowhere. But, they stopped a few feet past where they hit the dog, sat for a minute or so, then drove off. My husband sat with the dog in the freezing January while I got our dog home and frantically called animal control.

The days following became a flurry of chain emails pleading for someone to take this dog on, a visit to animal control, a lot of crying, and just all around sadness about what we’d seen.

Then, Nan and Cheley came along. They agreed to foster the dog (which Fulton County Animal Control had named Boscoe), and post his leg surgery (he was scheduled for an amputation). And now, here we are. This unloved dog that no one really knew beyond being a stray has changed us all a little bit.

A few weeks ago I received this email:

I thought you would be interested to know that after several months of fostering we knew we couldn’t part with our beloved Boscoe.  He has become a part of the family and we officially adopted him.  You probably would not believe what a sweet, gentle, good-natured soul he is…I just thought you would like to know that you saved a very, very special dog and he is absolutely loved and adored in his forever home.

And just this past weekend we had a little dog reunion with Boscoe, allowing him meet our dog under better circumstances. The whole experience reminded us that all this started with one email to help one animal. But, without that moment we would not have had the opportunity to meet Boscoe, Nan, and Cheley, who, in the end, have given us all so much.

I read somewhere that most people tend to stick to their goals better if they can visualize them. My mind is apparently wired the same as the majority, because if I see it, it’s generally easier for me to achieve it. In lieu of the standard resolutions for this coming decade, here’s my vision. My creative board of what I’d like to happen and what inspires me to make it a reality. Universe, are you listening? Bueller?… Bueller?… So, what’s on your vision board?

All photos courtesy "Mudbug"

I didn’t write this week’s post. An old friend tracked down through the power of social networking did. He has graciously written an extraordinary piece for danapop in what I think captures the true essence of the holiday season.

Happy holidays all.

dp

When I was a kid, I used to watch the holiday messages made by troops stationed overseas.  I aspired to be like those soldiers on television.  I envied those who were off in some far away country, doing interesting things.  I wanted to give a big smile, a wave and tell everyone best wishes from somewhere nobody had ever heard of.  Of course, when I was growing up, we were not at war.

I recently had the opportunity to make just such a video.   You could record a holiday message in an area set aside in the morale tent.  I sat down on the stool, looked at the camera, started to say something, but nothing came out.  I looked at film tech and said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.”  I then grabbed my helmet and walked off to a meeting to talk about the latest insurgent tactics.

I am not sure why I couldn’t say anything.  Maybe because it was September and it was 110 degrees.  Maybe because Christmas was the last thing I was thinking about.  Maybe because I didn’t want to make a video wishing everyone back home a Merry Christmas, when there was the possibility that I might be dead before the video even aired back home.  And when I tried to say Merry Christmas in September, it just sort of…died on my lips.

Time back home is marked by holidays and the passage of seasons.  The hands on the clock and the days on the calendar have meaning.  Around September, when the air first starts to get a chill, we pull our sweaters out of the closet and can’t help, but think that soon it will be Christmas.

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Oh, give me a home
Where the buffalo roam

The state song of Kansas is “Home on the Range.” I remember squawking it off-key at the top of my lungs as a child during school concert performances. Growing up in Leavenworth and Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, you’re always aware of the prisons. There they are. In my child mind I knew it housed and employed people, but that was the extent. In high school my biggest problems (thankfully) were worrying if anyone thought it looked strange that my boyfriend was 6’2” and I was only 5’2” and if I could get the timing right on Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s ‘Good Vibrations’ for a cheerleading halftime performance. But, the prisons were there the whole time. I didn’t see what they really meant, the strange juxtaposition against Leavenworth’s charming downtown filled with historic buildings–one man’s idea of home in sharp contract with another.

Watch any military movie and some superior will shout at his enlisted soldier to shape up or he’ll be transferred to Leavenworth (meaning Ft. Leavenworth, which is the U.S. military’s only prison). Our house on post, the one I lived in from second grade until sixth, stood on a hill overlooking the back of the prison. People used to ask our family all the time if we were frightened to live there, and I don’t remember ever being scared. Even as a child I sort of thought the last place an escaped prisoner would want to be is hanging around in the same area he just tried to rid himself of.

Once we moved off post, to The Boss’s House, we were less than a mile from Leavenworth’s federal prison. Nicknamed, “The Big House,” it has housed the likes of Al Capone, Leonard Peltier, and more recently, Michael Vick.

Dahlia Lithwick wrote an amazing piece for Slate that stuck with me as it delves into topics and issues I won’t even begin to pretend I’m intelligent enough to bring up regarding the prison system in the United States. It’s incredibly well written and a must-read.  I suppose I give more thought about the justice and sentencing more than the average person because of where I’m from. But, when you pass the federal prison in Leavenworth, one thing that always sticks out to me isn’t the barbed wire, or the guards, or the gates … it’s the buffalo. Some yards from the prisoner’s cages are buffalo roaming, grazing and semi-free.

Since the culture of prison is so engrained in Leavenworth’s society, it comes as no surprise that a friend of mine from my high school graduating class is tied to the prisons. Both his parents were incarcerated during pivotal moments in his life. He broke the cycle and is strong enough and man enough to speak about it today. I’m so proud to share this Q&A a longtime in the making.

Especially now with the holidays approaching it’s the age-old lesson of–it doesn’t matter where you are, someone always has it better, but we must remember those who have it worse. We decided together to keep his identity anonymous, but his story could be anyone. For me, this story is one worth hugging everyone in your life a little tighter and never allowing the past dictate the future.
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How I wonder what you are.

As a child, I was obsessed with outer space. If I had to guess now, it was more likely the idea of a vast universe with all sorts of matter floating around. It intrigued me and filled my mind with curiosity for years, the existential questions of what is really out there, the unknown. Because I’m so familiar with these thoughts in my own mind, I often wonder why is it so scary, the unknown? I’ve always wrestled with it. Now, the full disclosure–after thinking our life was going one way, it’s clearly not.

This was supposed to be our baby year. This was supposed to be my writing year. This was the husband gets a promotion at work year so I could have both the writing and us working on trying for a baby. Then, the economy tanked, just after I’d started up my business.

Then, my husband’s company kept eliminating positions until finally, while I was in California (which you’ll read all about next week) visiting my sister, my husband calmly (err, sort of calmly) told me he’d been laid off. The news was delivered in a tone I recognized from five years prior when I was post-appendectomy with my husband tearing through the Piedmont Hospital hallway screaming, “My wife is throwing up!” and me sitting in the mechanical bed covered in vomit wearing my coke bottle glasses, crying, “I don’t know why you love me!” We really know how to hold it together, the both of us.

It didn’t come as a huge surprise. We’d been waiting for this day for a while, as the writing has been on the wall for ages now. But, if you ignore it enough, it goes away, right? Let me tell you, waiting for the shoe to drop doesn’t make it any less scary. Or easier. So, there’s quite a bit of unknowns at the moment. More than I can begin to wrap my head around.

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Leavenworth, Kansas circa 1800’s-Courtesy of the Command General Staff College of Ft. Leavenworth

When we visited Vancouver earlier this summer there was a chatty store owner talking to my mom, sister and I while we were shopping. She couldn’t fully comprehend how my sister could live in Maryland (she’s since moved to California), my mom in Kansas, and me in Georgia. None of it made sense to her. She kept asking why we didn’t live near each other–we all sort of struggled with an answer, but the easiest one was because of work. Which is true, but only partly.

There is something to be said about small towns. A quaint Main Street with boutiques, a past rich in history, where everyone knows your story. Leavenworth, Kansas, for me, is that place. Although we moved around quite a bit growing up, Leavenworth is (and likely will always be) home. It’s where my parents chose to set roots–where I attended school off of a military post for the first time, where I graduated high school, where friends I have known the longest live, and where my mother still is (with my brother and his family not too far either).

One of the oldest themes in everything from movies to music is the idea of leaving home. You know, putting the past town behind and starting fresh, in a new city. I did that. I left home almost a decade ago at 23 and haven’t returned much besides holiday visits and the occasional baby shower, hometown wedding, or milestone birthday celebration. I left my small town in Kansas in my rear view mirror for a job, which I’ve since also put in the rear view.

And while I look at my Leavenworth with fondness, I do feel a teeter-totter emotion of extreme complacency when I visit. When I go home I see the small town sadness and a desperation that is just not present in my life in Atlanta. Once I arrived here, I quickly came to the realization that I was a very small fish in a very large pond, especially compared to where I came from. I was nervous, scared shitless, excited and totally unprepared for the whirlwind of a life I would have here, those first few years.

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My father wanted to be a veterinarian. He was attending Oklahoma State University on a wrestling scholarship, which was one of the only means for him to pay for tuition. His grades weren’t exactly on par with what was expected of collegiate athletes, and what happened to boys flunking out of college in the late 1960s was a little thing called Vietnam. There, my father went from vet to vet. I’ve often wondered how different his life might’ve been had he been a vet of the animal doctor kind instead of the one holding heavy artillery in the Da Nang Delta.

So, it got me thinking about all those moments in life when you’re headed one way and before you can blink, a crossroads occurs. I heard about these a lot when I worked at CNN–the stories of people who were running late to work at the World Trade Center the morning of September 11, 2001, or tourists who barely missed the 2004 Asian Tsunami by coincidently checking out of their hotel within hours of it getting hit. Or horrific outcomes of circumstance like Daniel Pearl who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time asking too many questions. It thankfully turned out differently for The Christian Science Monitor’s Jill Carroll whose updates I followed religiously and have left me wondering now, how that period has changed her life perspective.

But, these acts are all around us, not just on the news. Everyday, to folks much like my father.

They are the weddings being called off countered with those being planned. The teeter-totter of life, or as I call them, the Sliding Door moments. You know, the movie where Gwyneth Paltrow gets fired (or in the movie, “sacked”), in one scenario she misses the train, in the other, she catches it only to find her boyfriend carrying on an affair. Life’s parallel shifts.
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It recently dawned on me that I don’t write much about my marriage. I mean, I feel like at this point, you know quite a bit about my family (brother, sister, twin, mom and dad, and a bit about my extend family on my husband’s side), but not so much about my husband  – our life and marriage – and I want to talk about that.

But, oddly enough, in order to do that, I have to begin with my first twin – my birth twin…my sister, because figuratively, the second twin in my life is my husband, which I’ll get to later.

My mother found out in her seventh month of pregnancy that she was expecting twins; can you imagine learning that you had just T minus two months to prepare for dos bambinos…in addition to the six-year-old and four-year-old already at home and a husband who was often away on business…and all without a housekeeper, nanny or BlackBerry – my, oh my, how did women do it then? They must have been made of stronger stuff than me, I think I would pass out on the spot.

But, mine not only did it, she did it well. We’ve all grown up to become semi-productive members of society – no criminal records, tattoos, illegal addictions – no judgment if you have any of these, but in my family, any of the aforementioned would’ve been a major faux pas and likely cause years of the silent treatment. So, job well done there, I suppose.

One of the most common life questions I get is – what is it like to be a twin? The simple answer is – I love it, but it’s all I know. For all I know, I’m sitting here this whole time thinking that having a twin sister is fabulous, but really it’s horrible and my non-twin friends feel sorry for me (just a thought).  But it just is. I love her and know her likely more than anyone else on this planet (barring her boyfriend). And vice versa.

The more complex answer is that being a twin and having a partner is so ingrained into my identity as a person – one doesn’t go without the other. I’ve never truly been alone in my life because of this. We aren’t geographically close, but I’ve never flown truly solo or felt like I was going at anything without her full support. She keeps me sane, balanced and calls me out when I need to be called out. I’d like to think I do the same.

I equate marriage to twinship. I looked for a partner that would be with me no matter what, and in return, I’d do the same. That said I always knew that my mate for life and love would know me like my twin. And he does.

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This was a piece originally posted in April, but I find it only fitting to repost. Rest in peace, MJ. And thank you, for one of the greatest nights of my life. xoox, from danapop to the King of Pop.

Growing up, music was always a pretty big deal in our house (um hello Bruce Springsteen garage door). I remember slumber parties my twin and I hosted where we were embarrassed by my father’s wake up call – usually Stevie Wonder or Rod Stewart blaring through the Bose speakers in the living room at 7 am. Not fun after a night spent gossiping about boys and stuffing ourselves with soda and Pizza Hut and definitely not cool either.

Since music was such an enormous part of our life, it’s no surprise that my first concert would have an amazing back-story. The biggest concert of the year, hands down in 1984 was when Michael Jackson toured with his brothers in what was called The Victory Tour. The first stop of the tour was – you guessed it – Kansas City, Missouri and us folks in the Heartland were such big fans that they had to schedule three performances. You must remember this was at the absolute height of Michael’s career; back when MTV actually aired videos and would show Thriller in its half-hour entirety. All us kids were cuckoo for cocoa puffs over Michael Jackson.
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It’s summertime and for most American families that heralds a vacation together as a collective unit. Growing up, we weren’t exactly a vacation kind of family. I can remember only two honest-to-goodness true vacations with all six of us Hazels. One was in 1987 to attend the Pan American Games in Indianapolis, Indiana (and if memory serves, we only really went because my father knew the wrestling coach for the American team).

Even so, I loved the poster I picked up from the games – it hung on my bedroom wall throughout my adolescence…I loved the colors and simple design of the X’s.

The other was between my Junior and Senior year of high school. In retrospect, I’m fairly certain this vacation was my mother’s brainchild because her own children were just about to fly the nest. We went white-water rafting on the White River somewhere in Missouri. It was really more like molasses than white water with its gentle flow, but fun, nonetheless.

So, how ironic that I should marry into a family who could give the Griswold’s a run for their money in the vacation department? My husband’s family, now they vacation. Like clockwork, my father-in-law would load the entire family (some years this included three kids and a Labrador Retriever) into the wood-paneled station wagon and set out from Cincinnati bound for Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where they’d proceed to car camp for two weeks. Oh and did I mention they had a pop up camper? Now, these are folks that vacation.

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Today concludes the five-part series on motherhood. To see past articles or full panel disclosure, click here. This piece was such an amazing one to write and I cannot thank the participants enough for both their time and candor. Here’s hoping for the loveliest of mother’s days…

dp Names say so much. I think naming a child would be incredibly hard – how did you and your husband choose the names of your kids?

Mommy A I was pretty adamant on giving my children middle names that honored my parents. I felt it important because of my parents’ cultural belief to have our family name passed on. Since I could not pass on my last name in the most traditional manner, I chose to include a Korean name as a middle name. Plus, once I had children, I really started to understand cultural beliefs or practices that insist on same race marriages. I realized that my children have the potential of having blonde hair, blue-eyed babies. By the time my grandchildren have children, all of the Korean will be gone! This thought kind of makes me sad. There will be no more of my parents left in the bloodline.

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It’s day four in our five-part series on motherhood. To see past entries and full details on the amazing panelists click here.

dp Did you find out your child’s gender while you were pregnant? Did you try to predict? Were you correct?

Mommy E Yes – we just found out we are having a boy, and are so excited!  This was one of the discussions that was agreed upon before even getting pregnant. My husband is a planner and wanted to know!  I could go either way, so maybe in the future we could keep it a surprise. Because I have been having such an easy time with pregnancy, I was feeling boy at first, but was also very partial to having a girl. I am so excited for the outcome, but either way I think we would have won the lottery.

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It’s the third part of our motherhood series. Click here for a full scope of the participating panelists.

dp For those of you with mixed gendered children, is there an easier sex to raise – girls or boys?

Mommy D Boys seem to be easier emotionally, but they are much noisier. Girls tend to be more emotional and dramatic.

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The motherhood series continues. Click here to see the full stats on the panelists.

dp In your opinion, how has child rearing through the years changed?

Mommy A There’s a lot that has changed. Spanking is controversial. If you spank your children, it’s because you’ve lost control and are an ineffective parent. There’s too much coddling and not enough discipline. I read a book by Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture, and he wrote of the way parents and teachers are afraid to give honest feedback to their children and students. Everyone is great at everything. This leads to an inability to accurately assess one’s self and ultimately stunts the growth, development, and learning of an individual. Children today are getting away with so much more than I did as a child.

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I’ve had the privilege and joy over the last few years of seeing some of my closest friends as well as my sister and sister-in-law become mothers. It’s made me realize that for as many hats as we women wear, being a mother appears to be, quite possibly, the toughest.

That has made me think more often of motherhood in general and my own relationship with mine. I can’t say I’ve ever written a letter to my mother. Sure, emails. Sure, lengthy telephone conversations with both of us carrying on about nothing in particular. But, an honest to goodness pen to paper letter – not so much. If I were to write her, I’d likely start with a simple thank you and then express my gratitude for her nurturing and her patience throughout my life (not counting the few late high school/early college years where we couldn’t stomach the sight of each other).

In honor of mother’s day, I’ve conducted a sociological experiment of sorts. Below is the beginning of a five-part series that I’ll be posting throughout the week. I interviewed nine women – eight of whom are mothers and one who is just about to be. Each gave me such amazing honesty and insight and they made this piece what it is; and for that, I am humbled. This article reflects their caring, their time and their generosity.

Happy Mother’s Day, a five-day tribute.

Editor’s note
While I chose to not to interview my own mother here in the interest of journalistic distance, it should be noted that all photos in the series are of her and are some of my favorites.
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