What if every dollar you spend this year...meant something

What if
every dollar
that you take from your wallet
or transfer from your online account
was spent in line with what you value most
what if every dollar you spent was from your heart as well as your hand
what if you thought first
what if you realized you are wealthy
and then you spread that wealth in a way that those that are not would feel the comfort of it
what if you started today

you need shoes

buy Tom's.

Working and Playing

This morning my guys let me sleep in all the way to 9 AM (a big big thank you to my husband who played Lego's with Q for an hour and a half) and so I missed the morning news and was listening to an interview with an author while I made my coffee.  She said that she lived in Ohio in a place where the family was the center of everything and people didn't leave their children to be raised by others.  She then went on to say how difficult that is but that it was worth it.

Funny, that line "to be raised by others."  So innocently thrown out there.  The judgmental high tone of it all.  It's similar to "I'm a full-time mom."  Hmmmm.   

I'm a full time mom too.  I just happen to have a job that pays our mortgage.  Actually, wouldn't that make me a full time mom +.  At work on Tuesday, I mentioned to a male colleague that I would probably be taking Wednesday and Thursday off but if I didn't get everything at work done I would bring Q into work for a couple of hours and then he and I would putz around the city.  He asked if Q was out of school and I told him it was Spring break.  He looked off in the distance and said "Spring Break,  huh, I think my kids have spring break soon.  Actually, it might be this week too.  They might be on Spring break now also."  Now, just to be clear, this man is not divorced, he lives with his wife and his children.  And his children are young like Q also.  And there you have the huge difference between a working Dad and a working Mom.  While most dads would know when there kids were going to be home for a week and not in school, I cannot think of a single working mom that would have any choice but to know.  It's the expectations on the mom that make the big difference.  If child is off of school and hanging out all day on play dates with Mom and doesn't see dad but for dinner nothing is ever made of that.  But if the neighbor of that child is off of school and is hanging out with dad, playing lego's and basketball and going to play dates and sees mom just for dinner, well, everyone feels sorry for the kid and worse starts making the kid feel sorry for himself too.

Yes, folks it's different being a working mom from a working dad.

But as much as I would stay home if the mortgage would get paid without my salary I do not for one moment think Q's life would be better.  It would be different.  For what he would gain in my influence he would naturally lose in my husbands.  One of the nicest things about working outside of our home is seeing the relationship my son and my husband have developed.  While my husband has never been a 'stay at home' dad, his flexible schedule means that on vacations and after school we do not have to have a babysitter.  It's nice because school can be tough (much tougher than daycare) and on vacation days he really needs a rest.

The world I've been able to give Q is larger and more varied than what he would be living in if I were at home.  In the last job I had, as an executive assistant to the CIO of a Hedge Fund, my boss was woman, and the owner of the firm was African American.  At the job I have now I work for a man who is Mexican and speaks four languages and the CFO who again is a woman.  This is rarified air in the financial world, let me tell you, but Q doesn't know that.  He thinks it's normal that in Finance world (which has got to be 90 % white and the 10% non-white is asian and east asian predominately) I would have two female bosses and one of the two men one would be Hispanic and the other Black.  Hah!  Let him keep that perspective.  

Q has always loved coming to my work places.  And why wouldn't he.  Yesterday, when he walked in the receptionist gave him a pack of gum, one of the other admin's called him sir, took his coat and asked him if he wanted juice and my boss, the owner of the company went into his office and brought out a book of paper airplanes (tear out a page and follow the instructions to make a dozen different types of airplanes.)  "Here" he said with his slight spanish accent "you can make some airplanes and fly them around the office."  And that is what he did.  And while he did he soaked in the environment.  Men and women hard at work 33 floors above Manhattan.  Well spoken and engaging they looked even while they argued a bit, happy to be there.  And when for a very brief moment it started to snow and then the wind kicked up and really the snow started roaring past the windows as if it was December and not April, everyone stopped and went to the windows and looked out.  "Wow!!!"  We all said.  Q too.  And the man who didn't know whether his children were off that week said to me and Q "It's great isn't it?"  And Q and I said "Yea!"  

After the paper airplanes Q spent some time looking out the window at all that was going on in the city 33 floors down, then he made some drawings of the city on some 3 foot by 3 foot paper that had been saved for him.  In his drawings, there are tall tall buildings and lots of cars and there are people in planes, and people walking on the city streets, and below that people in the subway in tunnels and all of them, all the people are smiling.

At 1 PM we left the office and went, per his request to American Museum of Natural History.  We have now been  there so many times we could work as docents.  This time I think we both realized that our next time in the city we're going to another museum.  "Maybe the Met, Mom.  I'm missing it."  Yup, I love me my Q.  After we walked through the museum we stepped out onto Central Park West and grabbed a city bus headed downtown.  A bus ride through Manhattan can simply never get boring.  The cast of characters is just to broad.  We went through Time Square and then the garment district and ended up at Madison Square Garden where that bus line stopped.  We then took a taxi the last bit of a way to our very favorite place in all Manhattan (that doesn't serve food - I should say) Strand Bookstore.  Strand sells discount books but it's so much more than the sum of it's parts.  The old wooden floor squeaks and the aisles are packed with books and people who love them.  Every type of person.  It's beautiful.  Really.  We take the elevator up to the third floor and start our calisthenics, down on the floor with my glasses falling off my nose to look at comic books and up on a small stool reaching as far as I can to look for books on mythology.  An entire section of chapter books at pretty much his reading level.  We have a system now.  We each separate (I can always see him of course) and we each pull books we think might be of interest.  We arrive at the low tables (I think the chairs are six inches off the ground) and begin to go through our stacks.  This time we had more than twenty books.  I read the jacket of the book and we make a 'no' pile and a 'maybe' pile.  Most of the books go to the 'maybe' pile.  Then I have about 15 books that I now read the first one or two pages of.  From this he says 'no' to some (to obviously boring or 'young' which he says the way a wine connoiseur might say about a wine that has gone to vinegar) and I say 'no' to some (mostly because we should 'leave them for next time' Mommy speak for 'they are too old for you.)  Finally we have it down to about 4.  This is when it gets really hard.  The only thing that helps at all at this point is that we are both really hungry and he knows by now that we will be back some time in the future.  With his stomach growling he chooses one comic book and one chapter book.  We've spent $14.00 and an hour and a half and we couldn't be more pleased.  

I ask if he's willing to try Ethiopian and he looks unsure.  He's tired.  I say let's go look at it and if there is nothing on the menu that sounds good to you we'll go somewhere else.  We take another taxi and wind up at the little store front Ethiopian restaurant in the East Village.  There is no one in the restaurant and nothing on the menu that looks appealing to him.  No problem I say.  There are a ton of restaurants in this neighborhood.  We walk 1/2 a block down and there is a pizza place on one side (New York Style, lower east side pizza) and right in front of us a hamburger restaurant.  He hears hamburgers and we walk in.  It turns out to be a local food, grass fed beef type of hamburger joint with an acoustical guitar version of a Chopin tune coming from the speakers.  We are both happy, Q and I and we are the first people there so have the full attention of the waitress.   I decide to split a hamburger (much to his chagrin) and when we do finally take a bite of our sandwiches I regret that decision.  It was the best burger I have ever had.  Q too.  We ordered the cheddar, bacon burger with sauteed onions and mustard.  The look on Q's face was pure bliss.  The waitresss, a woman in her late fifties had been watching us and when she saw him bite into his burger she came over and started talking to us.  We talked about good food and not good food and she gave us a far too detailed story about why we should never again eat at McDonalds.  Before we left she gave us some home made chocolate chip cookies.

Outside of the restaurant the sun was going down, judging by the orange glow on the buildings and as we stood waiting for a cab to come down the street I pointed up at the 6 story tenements and told Q this was the neighborhood that a book we read recently was written about.  We talked about the jewish immigrants who came here from Europe, how they lived and how the streets had changed but the apartments maybe not so much.  We talked about all the people we saw on the streets now and how it wasn't one group but a mix of many different kinds of people.  He asked where all the jewish people went and I said I'm sure some people are still here but many families moved out once they began to succeed in America.  They moved out to the suburbs and other immigrants moved in.  As we stood there we could see Hispanic, African and Asian immigrants walking by.  And then a taxi drew up and we got in and the taxi driver was wearing a turban.  I love me some New York City.

We got out of the taxi onto the now dark street and entered the door with thousands of others.  The schedule told us we had 2 minutes 50 seconds to get from one end of Grand Central to the other.  "Can we do it?!"  I fake shouted and he shouted for real "Yes!"  And we were off holding hands, running and laughing like lunatics.  "Why did we move to B...If we lived in Connecticut THAT would be our train " I laugh yelled and pointed to the train nearest us.  Q was laughing so hard he had to stop running and literally fell to his knees laughing just near the big clock in the center of the grand hall.  "Get up, Get up, if you don't get up we'll have to take the 7:15 train.  I can't stand the 7:15 train the people are the worst!!!"  I tell him, to more peels of laughter.  "OK OK but you MUST STOP TALKING until we're on the train!  You are 'ridiklis' "  and we ran some more, hoping on the train 30 seconds before the doors shut behind us.  The train was packed and we were 5 min late for getting seats together.  We walked all the way through the cars and I finally found a single seat on the aisle and asked the woman next to it to remove her bag please from the seat.  She did so kindly and I began to take off our coats and put them and our bags over head.  "The books mom!"  Q said and I was retrieving the chapter book from the bag when I noticed an aquaintance of ours from our town.  I smiled and he said hi and then he stood up from his coveted third seat with a free seat next to him and offered it to us.  Yay!  Q wouldn't need to sit on my lap!  The woman saw us moving and I told her she had just been spared listening to the story of Lenny and Mel, investigative middle school reporters.  She laughed and when she saw how handsome our friend happened to be, she was even more happy.  Everyone won, except perhaps our friend who had given up his precious leg and elbow room.

For the hour + ride we read the book, which was a great one, very very funny and enjoyed the last bit of our delightful day.  Y picked us up at the train.  And the stories of our day would have to wait.  We both could hardly speak.  "The shoes are smokin'" said Y.  And Q and I looked at each other.   I love my Q.  I love 6.  And I love that I can give him this great big, big, wonderful, diverse, world.

Notes from Working-Mom-Land - A.M.

Notes from Working-Mom-Land

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2008

5:45 AM Alarm goes off 

5:55 AM Y hears the alarm and wakes me up

5:56 AM Shower

6:05 AM Still in the shower.  Having great difficulty leaving the peace and quiet and the warmth.  Temperature outside about 10 degrees.  Q wakes up and comes into the bathroom to talk to me about his day yesterday.  I've been in the shower so long I can't see him from the steam but I can hear him sit down on the little table while I try to drag myself away from the caress of the water - Q tells me the BIG NEWS - He read his first book all by himself - Green Eggs and Ham!!!!!!

6:10 AM I drag myself out of the shower - Q tells me he went snowboarding (Monday was a snow day!) but the snowboard wasn't good so he went sledding which WAS good because he and his dad went down the hill together and they both flipped off and fell face first into the snow!!!!!!! 

6:15 AM I'm dry - kind of - and I put on my outfit that I picked out on Sunday (all clothes hung in order from Monday through Friday - no way can I listen to Q AND choose clothes that make me look like an adult.)  Q yells from his room can he wear a short sleeve shirt under a long sleeve shirt and then he won't be so hot!!!!!! during gym?!!!!!  I scoot over to his room while pulling on my tights and see he is already wearing his t-shirt and it's tucked up under his chin in an effort to see the belt that he is trying very hard to belt on his own.  His jeans are too big in the waist and he's cinching the belt really tight.  I stop for a moment and watch him.  His room is a mess of all the magic of 6 years old stuff.  He is so earnest and happy and curious and loving and I feel - really feel -  the fullness of this life and say my quick prayer - thank - you - God - thank you thank you thank you thank you God.

6:25 AM Blow dry my hair while Q shows me how he can read Green Eggs and Ham - he is sitting on the floor of the hallway and I'm yelling over the blowdryer - "that's AMAZING!!!  Look at how all your hard work has paid off!!!  Wow!  Reading!"  He is ignoring me.  He is looking at the words and he's literally in a wonder of it all daze.  He cannot believe he can read.  The world has just exploded and it is no longer censored.  

6:30 AM Y brings up a cup of coffee and toast with cinnamon sugar.  Loveliness!  No time to sit down.  I eat while I am putting on my makeup.  I am about to put on my shoes but remember the snow storm yesterday and the 6 inches of slush on the city streets and decide to wear my boots.

6:40 AM Start asking Q to put on his boots - this will take several minutes - ok honey let's get your boots on - sweatheart - yes I saw the book - now let's get your boots on - yes, I saw you do a slide back flip off the couch several times but if you remember we're not supposed to do any kind of back flip off of the couch - now how about sliding those feet into those boots - yes I see your boots could be gloves but you couldn't easily eat anything if you had to - come to think of it - why don't you try them on your feet!  As this exchange goes on - I put my wallet in my purse, check for my subway pass, grab soup out of the fridge - toast two pot tarts - wrap pop tarts in paper towel - put soup and bread and poptarts in cool polka dot lunch thingy Y bought me - put my mega huge snow hiking boots (my nice shiny city girl boots are at work for some reason that I cannot recall) on - and put my shoes on top of my purse - put on my coat - put on my hat - try to resist helping Q zip his coat - fail resisting helping Q with his coat zipper - get scolded at by Q that he is NOT  a BABY and he will zip his own coat - remind my self that I am happy he has his boots on as he walks outside into the 10 degree temperature holding his coat closed because there wasn't time to zip it.

6:50 AM Car ride to the train station.  Listen to Q talk about how he hopes the lego station is open today.

6:55 AM sit in a car for a few minutes as we watch the ferry pull away from the dock and the people who have gotten off trudging toward the stairs to the platform - watch the people on the platform visibly shiver from the cold.

7:01 AM Get out of the car as I see the train lights in the distance - kisses to the boys and waves and I try to dash down the stairs in the tunnel but quickly realize each boot weights ten pounds and so I kind of shuffle the toward the stairs the way a guy with cement 'shoes' who has just escaped the mafia might - with an earnest need to move forward quickly without the ability to actually do so.  I look and feel foolish - but decide my warm feet make up for my feelings of awkwardness.  

7:05 AM Train starts towards Grand Central.  I put in my ear phones and listen to my i-phone.  Try to watch adoption videos on you tube but AT&T is not having it - no connection.  I open my bag and eat my pop tarts - brown sugar type.  I cannot sleep so I look at the river and think in a couple of weeks there will be no more ice on it and all of the snow will be gone.

8:17 AM the train pulls into Grand Central.  I will never ever get bored of walking through Grand Central Station.  Early morning sunlight is pouring through the tall windows and making those long diagonal stripes down to the floor.  The clock stands sentry while people are walking or sprinting or running in every direction.  Thousands of people are getting off the trains from the towns West, North and East and heading into the subway or out into the street while a seemingly equal number of people are coming from the subway or street and walking through Grand Central in order to get into the office building above it.  There is no way to get through the center of the main hall at this time of day without being jostled.  It is CITY.  THE city.  Big, loud, wonderful, fast, purposeful, with a diversity that is without parallel.  It is literally one of my all time favorite places in the world, and as crazy as my day is I have 60 seconds of real childlike happiness each day I get to travel through it.

8:20 AM Escalator down into subway.  Stand watch over 10 turnstyles with hundreds of people coming at me through them - see a free moment and I dash through one in the opposite direction - get bumped several times as I make my way to my line - one of 6 or so.  The subway is crazier than Grand Central.  Walk down the steps very very carefully as my boots seem to be about 6 inches longer than each stair.  Get the the platform as a train is pulling up but it's an express.  I let it go because I know I will be trampled on the escalator when I get off the express as people literally run up the escalator at this time of day.  

8:22 AM Local train comes - I take it - it's more  crowded than express but when I get out I'm one level about the express platform  - so no escalator.  I now have just one flight of stairs.  

8:24 AM - Out on the street again - it's freezing!!!!!!  But my feet are nice and warm and dry.  I debate whether to walk a block for expensive coffee or just go into work and drink the coffee there.  

8:26 AM Standing in line so that I can pay $6.00 for coffee and 500 calories worth of bread!  I think about how sick that is.  I wonder if one day years from now we will watch a table full of woeful looking men testify in front of congress that indeed they never knew their product was addictive.

8:28 AM I am run/sliding/thumping my way across the street and then down the block to my work.  I hear a heavily accented "Maam!  Maaaaammmmm!!!!!!!!"  behind me and I turn around.  He is one building away and waving frantically in the direction of the intersection I have just crossed.  "IS THAT YOUR SHOE!"  He screams.  I look where he is pointing and sure enough in the direct middle of the cross walk is my black suede pump.  It's amazing what one lone shoe looks like in the middle of a busy street.  I scream (yes, I screamed.  I have seen accidents that caused blood to spurt in all directions and remained calm but the sight of my shoe made me burst out.)  The kind man waves his arms frantically to the cars that were about to run over my shoe and dashes out into the intersection.  He grabs my shoe and comes running toward me as I try as much as I can in my boots to run toward him.  "Your shoe!!!"  He says smiling as he hands it to me and then goes dashing back down the street in the opposite direction.  I look at him and am reminded how much I love New Yorkers.  I am about to put my shoe in my back but realize it is soaking wet and carry it in my hand as I go in the building.  

8:30 AM I try to manuver my shoe, lunch bag and coffee cup and purse so that I can get my security pass to go into the elevator bank of our building.  Finally get it and swipe it so that the turnstyle opens.  I get on the elevator with four other people and press the 33 floor button.  The elevator closes and the guy standing next to me looks at the shoe I'm holding in my hand which is dripping slush onto the floor of the elevator.  He looks up at me.  I smile at him.  He looks confused and gets off of the elevator.

8:31 AM I get out of the elevator, say hi to Pearl at the reception desk, take a left and walk past all of the cubicles.  I pass the kitchen and take another left and arrive at my cubicle which looks directly into a small conference room that is all glass and looks out over Park Avenue and Central Park.  I take off my coat, hat, scarf, gloves and boots.  I take out my dry shoe and put it on and try to dry off my wet one somewhat with a paper towel.  I put on the wet shoe and pull out the space heater and point it to my feet.  Not as bad as I thought. 

I sit look out of the window and take a sip of coffee.  I look at the clock.  Q is just getting to school and my day begins.