Book Review: You're Wearing That? by Deborah Tannen

You're Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation
by Deborah Tannen

When my oldest daughter was entering her tweens, after a year of hearing she and I argue relentlessly, my husband ordered You're Wearing That? by Deborah Tannen and gave it to me for light reading. He hoped something in the book would help us girls work out our conflicts. I've been a daughter for almost four decades and a mother for almost 16 years. I've got two sisters (no brothers) and two daughters (no sons). Suffice it to say, I've spent my lifetime thinking about how mothers and daughters converse. I started a blog in order to work out my ideas. I have spent God-only-know-how-many dollars on long distance phone calls with friends and family discussing my angst. When the book was in my hands, I read it cover to cover in three days. I found out I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Chances are that you are...

...an adult daughter and that you have something to work out with your mother, or...

...the mother of a grown daughter, wondering why she's so angry or depressed or distant or riled whenever you talk to her, or...

...the mother of a daughter and you wonder what your relationship will be like with her once she is grown. You might even wonder what it will be like once she's past childhood and into her tweens and (gasp!) her teen years. Or...

...the husband or brother or son of a woman you KNOW needs to improve her communication with her mother or daughter.

If any of these apply, buy the book and read it. Or buy it secondhand. Or check it out from the library. Or go in together with five friends, read it one by one and passing it to the next when you are finished. Then talk about it together. It'll be worth your while, your effort and your pennies.

Tannen focuses on the relationships mothers and daughters have once the daughter is grown. It seems like the relationship should be easy enough to navigate, right? A mother nurtures her daughter through infancy and childhood, loves her, and wants the best for her. The daughter looks up to her mother, feels supported and loved, seeks her advice and approval in her times of need, and feels physical pain if her mother hurts. Sounds like the makings of a perfect symbiotic relationship. Perhaps that's why it's such a mystery to women around the world why they say the nastiest things to their mothers and why mothers are so quick to push all the wrong buttons with their daughters.

There is a dynamic push and pull of the mother-daughter relationship, one which Tannen explains is different from all other familial relationships. A daughter seeks her own identity and to define herself as an individual. Weighed against that is her mother's perspective, a woman who sees her daughter as an extension of herself. The two ideals work against each other, sometimes in ways the two women cannot even verbalize consciously.

As I read the book, I found myself realizing that I had to start changing the way I mothered NOW. My daughter was 12 at the time, but the push and pull was already there. This young woman, barely starting her adolescence, would (God-willing) be in a relationship with me for the next 50-60 years. We could continue down the rocky path I had set us on or I could make the choice to repave the path, a path we could walk down together and enjoy the beauty of the view instead of constantly criticizing each other's make-up, hair cut and choice of clothing.

The book is such an easy read, so enjoyable, and so enlightening. Tannen is a linguist (so am I), but I don't recommend the book because of our common research interest. For me, I was delightfully surprised to find that the book wasn't just another volume in my library of linguistics books, but instead it was a book that, when I was deeply engrossed in, I didn't even remember was written by a colleague at all.

So pick it up and treat yourself to a new perspective. I'm glad I did.

Wordless Wednesday: Avoid the flu of the pigs

Wordless Wednesday: Thank you, veterans

Thailand, circa 1967-8.
Downtime on the ground between missions as a 707 refueler with four fighters.

Pizza and a Movie

A long time ago, more than a decade ago, one of my dearest friends introduced me to Friday Night Pizza and a Movie Night. She had three children at the time, 5 years, 2 years and newborn. Every Friday night their whole family would watch a movie together and enjoy homemade pizza. It was always a kids movie that the children would enjoy. We found out about it because my daughter and I came by one Friday night to visit. My friend welcomed us in, gave my daughter a piece of pizza and a spot on the floor, and pulled me into the kitchen to visit while the children were happily occupied. At the time I thought, I wish our family could have something like this.

Since then, I've divorced my oldest daughter's father, been a single parent, remarried and had a second daughter. It was a few months ago, when I was in my last trimester of pregnancy, that I suggested to my husband we give the idea of Friday Night Pizza and a Movie Night a try in our family. I was on medical leave because my pregnancy had become very stressful to my body. My husband had just returned from South America after losing his father to a sudden death. My teenage daughter had been away for a month with her father and hadn't been home much at all. We were all a bit fatigued, drained, and generally in need of downtime to reconnect. We desperately needed to have some quiet family time.

We started with some movies we had around the house on DVD or recorded on DVR. Freaky Friday (the remake with Lindsey Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis), Men In Black and Beetlejuice. We loved it. It was great to get to laugh together.

The baby was born, the school year started for both my daughter and my husband. Things felt hectic again. So we continued to set aside Friday night for pizza and a movie.

We starting going for some serious films. Lean On Me with Morgan Freeman. I love the opening sequence, seeing the pristine school of the 1960s fade into the inner city graffitied school of 1987. To this day I think the use of the song "Welcome to the Jungle" in that scene is one of the best uses of a musical piece in film. While watching the violence and chaos ensuing at Eastside High in 1987, backed by Axl Rose screaming to cacophonic metal rock, my daughter couldn't take her eyes off the screen. After about half a minute, she said, 'OK, that is SO unrealistic. That would never happen in a high school." It was then that I realized that even though she had spent her entire educational career in Washington, DC and close to Detroit, she had no idea about the reality of inner city schools and neighborhoods.

My husband picked out Rabbit-Proof Fence. It's a 2002 film directed by Phillip Noyce (of Dead Calm and The Saint) depicting the true story of three girls journeying across the Australian Outback back to their home and their mother. The girls are journeying back because they have been forcibly removed by the government, a government who believes that mixed race people, half-aborigine half-white in this case, are members of an unwanted race, nature gone wrong. Such children were removed from their families and trained to be domestic servants -- until 1970. The movie is a bit too subtle for young children and maybe too complex of a topic for them to understand. But for my teenage daughter, it was perfect.

The next movie night was Baby Mama. The following week was my pick, a classic that I adore, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. For both of these flicks, we all laughed out loud through the comedy and antics of the SNL alums.

Aside from the selection of movie itself, our family has benefited so much since starting Friday Night Pizza and a Movie Night. Having a fixed time in the week set aside for family gives us a place to reconnect. Even more important, it's much better than a night out for so many reasons.

• It has a minimal cost, just the price of renting a movie, about $10 tops for a couple frozen pizzas ($15 is we order out, pick it up and use a coupon), and a few more bucks for the sodas bought in bulk and a salad made from scratch. I guess that the top price tag for the whole evening has never been more than $30 and sometimes that includes milkshakes and dessert.
• The night can go on into bedtime without the crankiness of still being out. If someone gets sleepy, they can just snuggle up on the couch with a warm afghan. The worst thing that happens is they doze off and watch the rest of the movie later in the weekend.
• Above all, the best advantage to being at home rather than being out is that we don't have the distraction of being in a crowd, having to interact with strangers, and interacting with the rest of the world. We get enough of all that during the week. By staying at home we get to focus on each other and enjoy each other's company.

For the time being, the planning involved is minimal. We order a pizza for take out or throw a few frozen ones in the microwave. The choice of movie just needs to entertain two adults and a teenager and not have a soundtrack that would upset an infant. As time passes, it may take a little more planning and tolerance. When the infant gets older, we'll have to change the movie selections to ones that are age appropriate for toddlers and preschoolers. Pizza will need to be cut up in small bite-size pieces and accompanied by carrots or some other nutritious side suitable for smaller kids. Eventually, I hope Friday Night Pizza and a Movie Night will become such a fixture in our family life that when friends stop by unexpectedly, we can easily fit them right into our festivities. Fix up a plate of pizza for each child and find a spot on the floor for them while we adults enjoy the end of another week in relaxed conversation.

Avoiding the piggie flu

It was a problem that didn't have a perfect solution. And the information needed to make a decision regarding the solution was ever-changing. Enter stage right: swine flu.

See, I'm already messing up. It's politically incorrect to call the virus "swine flu." Poor pigs. Ok, then. H1N1. It doesn't really matter, though, right? The new, more technical name still causes panic in people.

The problem was how to keep everyone safe and healthy, especially those most at risk in our household, my 3-month-old baby and me.

Our household, minus our youngest member, we all got the H1N1 vaccine last Thursday. The critical at-risk population that qualified us all to get it was that the wee 3-month-old in our household was at risk and not able to receive the vaccination. Since the only way to prevent her from getting the virus was for her never to encounter it, everyone in the household could to be vaccinated.

I've had my reservations about this whole thing. It's a brand new vaccine. What if something went wrong? What if I got the vaccine and I got sick or debilitated and couldn't take care of the baby? What about my older daughter? I don't want her to have some strange reaction to a vaccine. How would I feel then? Still, there were no reports of people suffering from the vaccine...and there WERE reports of babies getting the piggie flu and being dead 24 hours after diagnosis. One of those babies was in my state of Michigan. I couldn't get it out of my head: what if MY baby got the flu accidentally and died? How stupid and foolish would I feel for not going ahead and having everyone in our household protected against the virus?

Normally I'm not a person who is an alarmist. I take the wide angle lens to examine the world and try not to jump to hasty decisions. When swine flu hit the US last spring, back when I was just a pregnant woman with asthma, I didn't worry too much. Sure, all flu strains result in death for a few, but I always sought medical attention when needed. Surely if I caught the bug, me and my growing baby in utero would eventually be fine.

The effects of the pandemic abated in the US over the summer. That was when the news hit about pregnant women being particularly susceptible to the fatal effects of this flu. The way I heard the guarded warnings in the news was like this: You shouldn't worry unless you are pregnant (I was) or if you are asthmatic (I am). Even if you are in one of those groups, don't worry too much because it's summer. Where the swine flu is really spreading right now is in the southern hemisphere, where it is the dead of winter. So really you're not at risk unless you travel to South America, like Brazil, or if you live with someone who recently has. Oops. My husband was in Brazil at the time. But we beat the odds and I didn't encounter anyone who seemed symptomatic. Groovy. The baby was born without so much as a hint of a flu-like symptoms on my part.

Then, just about the same time I was breathing a sigh of relief for no longer being pregnant and potentially being exposed to the virus every week due to my many medical appointments, the flu season reared its ugly head here in the northern part of the northern hemisphere. The promised vaccine was slow in coming. When I called the pediatrician's office, I heard a pre-recorded message before I could reach a live person: "If this a life-threatening emergency, hang up and dial 911. If you are calling to inquire about vaccination against the flu for your child, we are not scheduling appointment since our supply has not yet arrived..." ...and the recorded voice trailed off into a slew of conditionals and apologetics. I started getting a little more nervous. Maybe this thing WAS something I should worry about. The most likely groups to catch the flu? Teenagers and those on colleges campuses (that covers my older daughter and my husband). Those most at risk? Those whose respiratory systems aren't strong, like very young infants and asthmatics (that covers my baby daughter and me). I thought, we're screwed. My immunologist's office didn't have the vaccine at all and had no idea when it was coming. The county announced a free vaccination clinic; all the doses available were accounted for in the first hour when those who had already been waiting for 4-5 hours were assigned numbers. As a result, the county canceled the three remaining clinics scheduled in order to avoid similar panic-driven chaos.

Finally, the county announced a county-wide mass vaccination clinic held at one of the local university's large arenas. 4000 doses of the vaccine available. 10a-7p, one day only. I showed up at 9a with the baby, aiming to get wristbands (required to enter the building and to receive a vaccine) for me, my husband, and my older daughter. I was successful...and spent the next four hours in line. With the baby. Surrounded by hundreds of other people in a confined space. My husband ended up having to cancel his classes for the day in order to get his shot. I took my older daughter in the evening after the school day was over and she had completed swim practice. The whole time I was there with her, she kept saying, "this is JUST like I Am Legend. Maybe we'll all turn into ZOMBIES!" I told her to keep it down and not to incite panic. By the time we got home, it was far past dinner time. We raced through reheated leftovers and finally finished at about 9:30p.

But. The point is. We got our swine flu vaccines.

Wasn't the whole point of vaccinating against this virus so that the normal flow of activity in the country wouldn't be disrupted? I feel like there's some irony in here somewhere.

Crock Pot French Dip Sandwiches

This is my quick and easy recipe for French dip sandwiches, using a crock pot. I usually buy a roast or two when they are on sale and throw them in the deep freezer until I want to cook one.

For this recipe you need a roast (whatever kind you like the best!), a French loaf, beef bouillon cubes, 1 can of beef broth, cheese slices and water. In the morning, take your roast straight from the freezer and throw it in your crock pot. Then pour the can of beef broth in, along with some water and a few bouillon cubes (this will be your dipping juice when it's time to eat!) Set your crock pot on low and let it cook all day!

Just before you're ready to eat, cut your French loaf in half length-wise and line both sides with cheese. Pop the loaf in the oven for a few minutes to melt the cheese. While that's melting, cut your roast into small chunks or slices, then place them on the loaf with the melted cheese. Put the top on your sandwich, cut into pieces. Pour your au jus sauce into bowls big enough to dip your sandwiches.

Serve and enjoy!

Ten Favorite Grown-Up Authors

10 Favorite Authors

1. Maeve Binchy- My favorite book was Circle of Friends.
2. Anita Shreve - I don't think I've disliked any of her books.
3. Jodi Picoult - Her books are somewhat predictable for me, but still good.
4. LaVeryle Spencer - It's romance, what many would consider fluff but I enjoyed it during and after college when I needed something less than intense to read. Also she's a Minnesota author. I think Spring Fancy was my favorite.
5. Nora Roberts - More of what many would consider fluff, but really took me through that transition from reading textbooks to reading other novels that made me think.
6. Tami Hoag - Another author with Minnesota ties. I have two autographed hardcover copies of two of her books. She writes more murder mystery style with a little romance thrown in.
7. Wally Lamb - Really interesting stories...not the norm, yet compelling stories.
8. Steven King - I don't know who could dispute that he isn't a great writer. Perhaps not the most intellectual, but for his genre he's superior.
9. J.K. Rowling - Who doesn't love Harry and friends?
10. So I lied. I can only recommend 9 today. Maybe you have one to add to my list?