Archive for January 22nd, 2010
Just Because You’re a Mom
Today Emma and I went to the park to meet a friend and her son. We talked about how we are older moms. I certainly am. No two ways about it: 44, nearly twice as old as my mom was when I was the age of my daughter. And older than most moms of toddlers in most communities, I would guess. Add to that, I moved about two years ago to a new city, where I have family and some friends from childhood but that’s about it. The first year was lonely, trapped in the house in the dead of winter, self-quarantined by an endless series of winter colds, away from our close East Coast circle of friends. Mark looked at me one day, recalled how I had gathered more than a dozen close Boston girlfriends to see the Sex & The City movie the night before we moved, and remarked: “You’re withering.” He was right.
But things have gotten better. Summer brought people outdoors, and we found ourselves at the beach, in the coffeehouse, at concerts and at Emma’s school, having conversations and making acquaintances. But one aspect of friendship as a new mom hasn’t changed, and that is that motherhood alone is not enough of a bond in and of itself for a friendship. At least for me, and I know I’m not alone. I am still seeking friends in the same organic ways that I always found them, and conversations deeper and more far-ranging than how to get Junior to eat his peas. It’s an awkward kind of dance because there I am, in a toddler gym or preschool circle time or Wiggleworms music class, and bringing up Haiti or health care or writing or art or travel clearly has its own place and time. Conversation (understandably so) tends to revolve around potty training and sleeping habits before it extends to careers and culture, so I’ve tried to be patient. Not my strong suit. And I’ve tried to be outgoing – also not my strong suit – striking up conversations with strangers at the park and playground, walking in the neighborhood and standing in front of the pet store with our kids.
A playground chitchat with a mom in her late 30s, while pushing our girls on the swings, led to a long conversation about moving to a new city and academic dissertations and religion – and a good friend. Another time, it was running into the same woman three times in one morning as we raced around town, pushing strollers and running errands, that led to coffee on my porch and a long talk about marriage and divorce, yoga and motherhood. Another park run-in gave me a new acquaintance and my husband a professional colleague. Some of us joke that we “pick up” one another like we were meeting men at bars. And sometimes, in friendships as in love, mothers or not, we get lucky.
Brain Power
By Pamela Ferdinand | December 5, 2004 for the Boston Globe
As scientists move closer to understanding how the brain thinks, they’re making strides toward finding what causes schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Charles, a 55-year-old with schizophrenia, sits motionless and alone in the vaultlike chamber of a Charlestown laboratory. He leans back on a low-slung chair, and the white maw of an imaging machine swallows his head like a dryer in an old-fashioned hair salon – only this one contains more than 300 sensors bathed in liquid helium. Wires run down his neck from holes in a baby-blue cap where electrodes are pasted to his scalp and temples. He listens to a series of clicks, and, as his brain responds, red squiggles appear on a computer screen in an adjacent room. Read the entire article >
And Now, Something New To Worry About: Dengue Fever
By Pamela Ferdinand | May 6, 2007 for The Washington Post
One week I was lounging in paradise, snorkeling past giant clams and midnight blue starfish and eating freshly picked passion fruit and mangoes on a South Pacific beach with my fiance. The next week I lay in torment at my home in Cambridge, Mass., alternately suffering chills and sweats with excruciating joint pain, bleeding under the skin and severe dehydration that landed me in the hospital for nearly a week. Read the full article >
Open Mind, Open Heart
Started the day with a good cup of coffee, and I was thinking about how, like many single women I once had my laundry list of criteria for Mr. Right: honesty and humor, good looks and brains. I was a busy professional girl and wouldn’t meet a first blind date for more than coffee, lest too much of my precious time be wasted, and I rarely gave men without immediate chemistry a second shot.
But women? I’m sexually straight as an arrow, but I’d jump into new friendships with both feet and boundless optimism. I met one woman at a pottery studio and, barely knowing her, we spent a week driving halfway across the country to drop off her car in Texas before she headed to South America for the summer. Would I have done that with a man I barely knew? No chance in hell. But she and I? We became close friends. Take Beth Jones, one of my co-authors, whom I met on a walking tour of a Boston area cemetery. Two single girls, out for a quirky afternoon of intellectual enlightenment, we clicked immediately. Next thing I knew, I was inviting her to drive five hours to northern Maine to spend the weekend snowmobiling for an article I was writing for The Washington Post. Would I have invited a man to do the same? Again, noooooo way. Would she have gone with a man? Perhaps. But barely knowing each other, off we went. Years later, she is one of my best friends, and she is the woman who gave me her unused donor sperm so that I, too, could be a mother if I never found love. That’s friendship.
Not all of my gambles have been so lucky. I recently got a fast “friend crush” on a woman whose child is the same age as mine. Excited to have met someone I liked after moving to a new city, I instantly mentioned the things we could do together, from camping to homeschooling our kids. Would I have had that conversation about the future with a man on our first date? Hardly. I was hopeful. But when our husbands failed to click, that was the end of Us. Though I am thrilled and grateful to have Mark, my fiance, I realize now that perhaps I would have been luckier in romantic love earlier in my life if I had been more open in mind and heart to the men who came along. Just as I had been open to women.
Welcome: My First Blog
Welcome to my newly redesigned Web site, and thanks to Tom Pimental whose quick and creative work has officially launched me online for the first time not only as a journalist but an author. It’s exciting and daunting. I’m a pretty private person for someone who has co-written a memoir. In fact, I was so shy as a child that I practiced saying “Hello, how are you?” sitting alone at the back of the summer camp bus. It’s been easier as an adult to hide behind the journalist persona, pen and pad in hand, asking about other peoples’ lives, refraining from sharing my own opinions and views, delving into cultures and worlds very different from my own. I still love that. But I also loved writing our book and telling stories that I hope resonate with others who also have found it challenging to Get A Life and Have It All and achieve any of these conventional mottoes that really stand in for personal happiness, love, truth, fulfillment, family, and friendship — all of which can come about in unconventional ways. Maybe we don’t get all of those things; maybe we get more of them. Sometimes they aren’t exactly what we expect; sometimes they exceed our expectations. And sometimes we are just left to wonder.
U.S. Abusing Law to Get Species Off Protected List?
By Pamela Ferdinand | March 25, 2008 for National Geographic News
Columbian white-tailed deer in Oregon, grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park, and now gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains are just three species protected by U.S. law for decades that have been delisted in recent years. Critics say the federal government is placing these and other animals in peril by improperly using a little-known provision of the act that classifies groups as distinct population segments (DPSs). Read the rest of the article >
