Tainted Peanut Butter An Extreme of Corporate Greed

Just before she finally gave into sleep a few nights ago, Julia and I had a lengthy recap of her day, which included a circle-time conversation at school about what to do if a stranger approaches you. I was quizzing her on various situations: if someone you don't know says he/she has candy in the car, what do you do? Puppies? Kittens? Trained by her powerhouse teacher Miss Brenda Julia dutifully answered no to each question, though I suspect she would waver if chocolate, a fistful of sugar, or a stick of butter--her three favorite food groups--was the lure.

As a mom, sometimes I feel that these early lessons--how to look before crossing a street and what red, yellow, and green mean--are among the most important I can impart to my kids. Certainly there are more nuanced values about lying, for instance, to pass on as well as other things down the road about drugs and sex (they'll have to teach me about rock 'n' roll). But these first conversations--all bright lines--are like an old-fashioned orange life-preserver: you can't get in the boat without them.

I know that even as a diligent parent I can't protect my kids from everything. When Sam had just turned 1, we were in a car accident caused when a woman too old to be driving ran a red light (she had perhaps forgotten that red means STOP!) and broad-sided me. The car was totaled, but Sam, our family friend/babysitter, Marguerite, and I emerged unbruised. Sam thought the crash was great fun. It was hard to accept that bad things could happen on my watch, but it did make me slightly more forgiving when bad things happened on other people's watch. (Bad is a relative term here, because I'm not talking about anything more major than rug burn or a cut over an eye, thank goodness.)

But even knowing that my ability to shield my kids from danger is limited, I am enraged by the Peanut Corp. of America's behavior. It has been a bad few weeks for Corporate America. 

John Thain's $1.2 million redecorating job came to light as did Wall Street bonuses and news that Citibank, the recipient of federal bailout dollars, is buying a new jet. All of that is inexcusable, but it's not as irresponsible as the peanut people, who knowingly distributed salmonella-laden products, killing at least eight people and sickening 550. That puts them down on a par with kidnappers and pedophiles. Worse, really, because I can't drill my kids on a threat we can't see. 

I had been thinking last week when Barack Obama rapped Wall Street's knuckles that if his plate weren't so full, he should also do the same to the peanut folks, and yesterday on the Today show, he did, suggesting that the Food and Drug Administration needs to do a better job: 

"That's what Sasha eats for lunch probably three times a week. And you know, I don't want to have to worry about whether she's going to get sick as a consequence to having her lunch." 

I have no illusions that the President wakes up and makes the sandwiches every morning, despite the Obamas' exertions to normalize the White House with Pottery Barn furniture and J. Crew clothing, according to the cover of this week's US Weekly. Nonetheless, I am glad to have a dad (a mom would be okay, too!) running the country. Perhaps our everyday concerns might get a little more attention. And though neither I nor anyone else I know personally will ever have the President's secret Blackberry address, it does make me feel that we and the Obamas are having pretty much the same conversations, if not also the same food, come dinner time. 

Ring in the Old

As usual, the start of the new year was accompanied by a look back, including an entertaining interview with the Bush twins in People, on Malia and Sasha Obama. But one wrap-up that utterly baffled me was the In/Out List published last week by the Washington Post. It's not only that I hadn't heard of most of the things on the "in" list, I was also clueless about most of the "out" list, proving that I'm not just out, I'm out in the standing room section of the upper bleachers. I mean "LOLcats"? "Competitive cup-stacking"? "Gourmet Toast"? "Emphasizing. Things. With. Periods."? Please. The bafflement goes on. And on.

Just when I thought I hadn't been invited to the party at all, along came the ultra-hip SundayStyles section of the New York Times, which made me feel at least somewhat vindicated. For while the Post had declared absinthe--that sickly green liquid that made everyone in Toulouse-Lautrec's day feel so sickly green--soooo last year, the Times had a front-page story on its current popularity:

There are a number of bars in New York City these days that make cocktails with absinthe, mixing it with rum or tequila or gin to, um, complement the taste. A significant portion of them are on the Lower East Side and are the kind of bars that don't have a sign or a listed phone number...

I am declaring a moratorium on in/out lists. It's not just because of my incredible investigative work revealing a Styles war. It's because I'm fatigued by the idea that everything is disposable. It's definitely a lesson that Ralph and I are trying to un-teach Sam and Julia, who, up to now, have had the same toys bought and re-bought for them. And I think we're not alone. Most people I know aren't just thinking three times before spending money, they're also thinking a time or two before throwing anything away that could possibly prove to be useful later on. This includes good ideas. And it extends to the loaf of bread on the top of the fridge, gourmet or not. (Check out the food Web site Loulies, which recently had a post on not wasting food.) 

Recycling extends to fashion, too. The same SundayStyles section, in fact, had a photo feature on pulling one's vintage designer wear out of mothballs. While I don't have a Balenciaga coat hanging in the back of my closet or anything else designer save Isaac Mizrahi for Target, I did rummage through to find a J.Crew cardigan I bought 10 years ago. (Okay, not everything weathers well.)

Along with in/out lists, I'm also putting new year's resolutions on ice. While I'm all for striving to be better, I've come to think that most resolutions aren't so new as they are another example of recycling from last year--or last decade. Lose weight. Check. Get more exercise. Check. Spend more time with the kids. Check. It's just a compilation of all the things that make us feel less than good about ourselves--or even downright guilty. 

Last night when I was flipping through the January issue of Real Simple, I came across a resolution that I could actually buy into. It's "controlling the controllables." And, while they didn't come out and say it, I will: Try not to worry--or feel guilty--about the rest.

I'm Not Company; I Live Here

Last night, I was reading The Trumpet of the Swan (about a swan who, like another famous trumpeter, is named Louis) to Sam and Julia, and it said that with so much stuff hanging around his neck--a trumpet, a chalk board and chalk pencil, a bag for his money, and a Lifesaving medal--Louis felt like a hippie. In the same chapter, a little boy commented, "That's groovy" (all this is from memory because the book has gone off to school for the day). I thought, How do I explain "hippie" and "groovy" to a six- and three-year-old who have never heard "Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In," let alone have a context for it. Fortunately, it was late, they didn't ask, and I was spared. Besides, I thought, That pile of necklaces seems more Coco Chanel than Jerry Garcia to me.

But the idea of hippies popped into my head again this morning when I read a recent post on the blog Woulda Coulda Shoulda about a visit from the grandparents: 

If you'd asked me before they got here what my favorite part of these visits is, I would've responded without hesitation that it's watching my parents interact with my kids . . . This morning, though, I realized that there's another thing I absolutely love on these trips: Having coffee and grown-up chat in the morning.

Woulda Coulda is written by a mom of two named Mir, and I believe she's right on both counts. Wearing a pink cashmere sweater from J. Crew today, I also look far more Coco than Jerry, too. But I firmly believe that apart from Haight-Ashbury and a few other pockets of hippiedom in the 1960s, communes were a brilliant idea that never got off the ground as they should have. When my sister Betsy was making a transition away from Atlanta to live in this part of the country a couple of years ago, she stayed with us for nearly two years; before that, we spent six weeks with our friends Katy and Steve while I was pregnant and our house was being sanded and painted. 

As with everything, there's a downside to communal living: you have to be highly strategic about when you walk around in your underwear or less. But overall, those experiences taught me that a woman should always have another woman in the house to take pressure off the marriage. Imagine how sparing your husband the question, "Honey, do these shoes look OK with this skirt?" would lift the relationship. (I hasten to add that having recently seen the movie The Duchess, in which Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire and ancestor to Diana, was forced to dine at the same table each day with her husband and his mistress and to hear their love-making, I'm talking here about a strictly platonic arrangement.) Betsy and I have put on our makeup side-by-side in front of a mirror since she was 17 and I was 14, she telling me I look better and vice versa. Who among us can't use that kind of boost in the morning, before the run to Starbucks?

Besides allowing for mutual admiration, the set up provides for instant community, including a wider audience for our children's moment-to-moment triumphs and tribulations. It's amazing to watch Betsy with Sam and Julia knowing that her love for them is only infinitesimally less intense than Ralph's and mine--if it's different at all. 

No matter what your age, everybody needs the kind of safety net that a long-ago acquaintance described as a "take-me-to-the-hospital-if-I'm-sick-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-feed-me-

J-ello" kind of friend. Besides the need for food, shelter, and the money to pay for both, feeling that you're not alone in this big world is perhaps our most elemental need. And perhaps that's why Sam asks every day, "Who else is coming for dinner?"

If I remember correctly, even though Louis the Swan gained fame as a trumpet player and stayed in a fancy room at the Ritz in Boston, what he craved most was to be in the company of his family and the other swans back on Upper Red Rock Lake in Montana.