Hasta La Gadget!

Out of the blue last weekend, apropos of basically nothing I could immediately ascertain, my 7-year-old announced that he wanted a brother. Or a sister. He’d take either, he informed me a bit wistfully as he squatted by a blueberry bush. He just wanted a sibling. And if I could produce one now, that’d be nice, thanks.

We’d been out picking blueberries at a local farm. Berry-picking on a Sunday morning being my best response to the perpetual I-have-no-flippin’-clue-how-to-entertain-my-kid-today dilemma that every parent who’s not indentured to a kid’s sports team confronts when they forget to make weekend plans. So when my dad texted me to see if we wanted to go pick berries with him and my mom, I grabbed at his invitation like it was the last ‘copter out before the fall of Saigon. Take us please!!

As we’d wandered up and down the rows of neatly planted bushes, looking for the darkest, ripest berries and dropping them into our buckets, I’d gotten lost in the zen-like, meditative quality of the pluck-n-drop, pluck-n-drop, pluck-n-drop of berry picking. So my son’s sudden request caught me totally off guard. Of course, the kid always wanted something. Like every kid I knew, mine had a major case of the Gimmes. But this wasn’t like the garden-variety pleas I usually got for Hot Wheels cars and water blasters and every Beyblade ever made.

Not that Fletcher had been the first to make such a request. Oh, noooooo. I’d been fielding questions about when Fletcher would be getting a sibling since before the kid was potty trained. The moment he turned 2, it seemed, there was an immediate pile-on of When? When? When? from all quarters. As if some biological timer had gone off that everyone could hear but me. Apparently, two years was long enough to gain some equilibrium in the parenting department, so um, Batter up! Let’s go for Number Two.

My standard reply to these really-not-your-business questions would typically alternate between “We don’t want to have more kids than we can afford to send through graduate school” and “Well, maybe if we’d started earlier….”

I was just six weeks shy of 40 when Fletcher was born, and three weeks past my 47th birthday when he made this particular grab for a sibling. I know that thanks to the wonders of reproductive science, women even in their late 50s have babies these days. And hey, if you wanna be pushing 80 at your kid’s college graduation, have at it. I hope that in the excitement of watching your child receive a diploma, you don’t fall over your walker and break a hip. Meanwhile, as far as I was concerned, my factory produced a single model and was hereby closed to business. I was plenty comfortable with that.

Last year, a TODAYMoms.com survey came out with the news that moms of three reported far and above more stress than moms of one, two or even four-plus kids. Not that it’s a contest, but believe me, I stressed enough for all 7,000 moms in that survey just having my one. I’d resigned myself to the fact that I would undoubtedly sleep the rest of my nights with one ear cocked for the sniffled cries of Mommy? Mommy! … and ceded the luxury of being permitted to pee solo (even now, my son still feels the need to “chaperone” me in the loo)… and relinquished precious DVR space, first to Sesame Street and Word World episodes, and now to a collection of Disney Channel and Cartoon Network shows… and given up any hope of ever again reading the New York Times on Sundays in peace. But even as I cradled my son as an infant, I knew I wanted at least half a shot of getting some of my grown-up, pre-mommy life back. At least in the form of a work day that wasn’t first disrupted by changing diapers and now dictated by homework, and a social life that didn’t revolve around play groups and birthday parties… unless said parties involved attractive consenting adults, condoms and some lube.

Besides, I was well-acquainted with the sturm und drang that even one more child could bring. Though my sister and I are incredibly close now — the best of friends who live just a quick 12-minute drive from each other — for much of our childhood, we fought our own bloody version of the Civil War, then approximated frosty Cold War relations for the early part of our adult life. I honestly don’t know how our mother withstood the chaos we two wrought. I am not a particular fan of chaos. I wasn’t eager to gamble on having World War III unfold in my house just because I had a momentary bout of baby fever. So, my husband and I had one, and firmly decided we were done.

That was one of the key reasons I’d wanted my son growing up near my sister’s kids, who I hoped would come to feel more like brothers than cousins. But considering all the time he spent playing with his older cousins, it never occurred to me that my son might miss having a sibling of his very own.

“What made you think about having a brother or sister?” I asked my boy gently.

“I just saw a brother and sister running up and down the hill,” he said softly. “And I thought, If I had a brother or sister, they could do that with me. I want someone to play with me.”

“Oh, Sweet Pea, I’ll play with you,” I said quickly, brightly, hoping to ease the sting of not being able to have the one thing I honestly could not give him. “I’ll be your playmate.”

“You’re always working,” he said, crossly.

Ouch. I do work a lot. It’s true. But ouch. Besides, if I was honest, running up and down a hill wasn’t exactly what I’d call fun.

“You know –” I tried to salvage the situation with a little logic of my own. “If you had a brother or sister, you’d have to share your toys.”

“Then can I have an older brother or sister?” he asked, hopefully, not missing a beat. “If they’re older, they won’t want my toys.” I was both touched and tickled by his reasoning. Seriously, this kid is gonna be some kind of logistics expert one day. He is always trying to figure out a workable solution.

I thought about explaining the impossibility of pulling off a back-to-the-future maneuver that would allow me to go back in time and have another baby who would then become his older sibling. But that wasn’t really the point. My boy wanted something — badly — that was beyond my ability to give him. There are lots of things I have no problem saying No to — more Hot Wheels, more Beyblades, more Minecraft, more video games of any stripe, actually. But though there aren’t enough squeezable, dimpled baby cheeks to lure me back to the Diaper Genie days, it still made my heart ache to have to say No to this.

So I did what any mom does to soothe over sadness. I offered something sweet. Fresh-baked blueberry muffins, to be precise, to be made when we got home with the bucket of fresh berries we’d just picked. And I pinky-promised that next weekend, I’d come up with a less lame playdate than picking fruit at a farm with mom, so that my son would really have someone to play with.

A version of this essay was originally published on Lifescript.

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via “Mom Candy: 1,000 Quotes of Inspiration for Mothers”

“I’m done.”

It’s one of the most common remarks that I hear in interviewing people about their transitions. It seems to be a psychological plateau that women reach when they cannot give any more to their current pursuit. The scholar Ph.D. student who realizes that academia isn’t the place of her dreams. The woman who spent years in the home with four children. The single woman who gets fatigued after years supporting an all-consuming boss. The veteran executive who is faced with the political and emotional jujitsu that accompanies most senior level roles. Have you ever said it? I’m done?

I did. I said it one afternoon while on a business trip in London. A minor family crisis left me feeling the weight of the 3,300 miles that separated me from home. It took me another year to disengage entirely from that job. But I knew it in an instant. I was done.

The repetition of hearing this remark sent me investigating its possible drivers. I found something surprising… something I missed the first time through.

Anna Fels, author of Necessary Dreams, first introduced early Novofemina readers to the concept of being done. She studied women’s ambition and introduced us to the notion of ambition being an outcome of two critical inputs… mastery and recognition. The need for the latter is ongoing — in all sorts of circles, not just work.

At the book’s outset Fels, a practicing psychiatrist, described two female lawyers who sought her services. One had recently finished law school and joined a small but prestigious firm. At the firm she was performing well but becoming increasingly miserable. There were only two women at the upper levels of the firm, one of whom was difficult to work with. This challenging lady was this recent grad’s boss. Her boyfriend, a new partner at another firm, often complained when she had to work around the clock on “no notice.” She was concluding that career success didn’t seem worth the price.

The other attorney was a woman slightly older who also worked in a stodgy firm. She also didn’t admire the partners in the firm where she worked. However she was juiced about a new lens into law; the use of technology. She’d recently been asked to speak on the subject at a conference. The event brought her high praise. She was considering starting a legal-tech services company. Her husband, a lawyer and entrepreneur wannabe, was encouraging.

Fels wonders out loud how these lawyers experiences could be so different. One ready to start her own business, another feeling more and more dejected.

Fels argues convincingly that one had no intact “sphere of affirmation” in any area of her life. She was running on empty. No recognition.The other was enlarging her ambitions thanks to the reliable sources of recognition and affirmation that she received from a multiplicity of areas.

What role does affirmation play in your life? Can you even recognize it?

To thrive women must identify, critically assess, and purposefully develop situations that can provide sustaining affirmation – spheres of recognition. Without it, this condition women will engender painful and unnecessary self-doubt. — Anna Fels, Necessary Dreams

The time when I declared that I was “done,” sources of affirmation were scarce. The concept wasn’t on my radar screen. What was were the demands of my extreme job, my young family, an entrepreneurial husband in the throes of a start-up and a recently widowed mother and mother-in-law.

In comparison — and without knowing — I have developed a few spheres of affirmation. Thankfully. Blessedly. They are replenishing me as I write a book, a scary professional terrain for moi. Also, I serve as a sphere contributor to several others.

What’s different? Time — for sure. I’ve reduced my work hours by at least 1/3 since my business trip to London. What else?

Affirmation… seems like a big word. It is the simple bestowing of authentic recognition on someone. I saw it live last week in my son. He lit up as he was recognized for being “camper of the week” at his beloved day camp. The kick in his heels still present — adding air to his sails.

Done feels too late to intervene. It isn’t if my story or any of my interviewees’ stories are right. But I’d like to dream that we never reach done… we cultivate our own and contribute to other’s sphere of affirmation continuously. My guess is many of us have the giving side down.

Today I wish for you a smile or word in recognition of the wonderful contributions you make. I also wish that the kick in your heels stays with you… even beyond done.

Copyright © 2014 NovoFemina.com. All rights reserved. No content on this site may be reused in any fashion without written permission from NovoFemina.com.

“Programmatic” methods of buying and selling digital advertising space have come a long way since they were used only to shift un-loved banner slots.

“What started as a fringe trend in the digital advertising space is now taking over the entire industry,” AppNexus president Michael Rubenstein tells Beet.TV in this video. “Programmatic is eating the media world.

“Five to 10 years from now, we’ll see video advertising – which has, to date, been outside the realm of programmatic – will be fully bought and sold programmatically.”

Having recently acquired Alenti to help AppNexus customers validate whether their ads can really be viewed by humans, Rubenstein says: “Viewability is a revolutionary concept. Never in the history of media have companies only paid for impressions that were known to be viewable. Large ad agencies are saying this is the wave of the future.”

The company last week took on another $60 million investment to fuel further acquisitions.

We spoke withRubenstein for “The Road to DMEXCO,” a series of interviews with industry leaders produced in New York, London and San Francisco.    It is sponsored by the automatic content recognition (ACR) technology provider Civolution.

Please find more videos from the series here.   Beet.TV is a media sponsor of DMEXCO and will be covering the conference extensively.

You can find this post on Beet.TV.

Following up on the Monogamy post here.

Could I have loved my wife forever? In this moment, thinking of the time just before she told me she’d already consulted with a divorce attorney, I have an unequivocal yes. I was still madly, somewhat painfully, in love with my wife of 11 years, and single partner for 13 years. And even as things had gotten strained in our relationship, I was confident (stupidly or naively so, perhaps) that our relationship, our marriage, would never falter. I cared too much about her and my kids to worry about a temporary sexual hiatus or minor problems of communication and responsibilities.

Of course, I have no way of knowing what would’ve happened had she not asked for a divorce. I was certainly not happy with our relationship, but I was committed and confident that we would find our stride again. I was certain that the financial issues and struggles, for both of us, around work and money and shared efforts could be worked out. Nothing was as important as my marriage. Nothing.

Not even my sexual satisfaction or desires. I was very sensual and touch-oriented. And while sex was important, the deeper loss was when the casual touch left the marriage. I was not clear when this next level of isolation took place, but I was shocked one night when I experienced a moment of tenderness and caring from my wife. I was shocked because of how strange it felt.

She patted my head one night, as I was reading in bed. She had just quieted down our five-year-old daughter for the second time, and she was walking back into the bedroom. She put her hand on the top of my head and said, “I love you, John McElhenney.” And she paused there for a beat before moving on into the bathroom to do her bedtime ablutions.

I felt a warm rush in the moment. It was not a sexual excitement, it was something much deeper and more vital. I actually felt her saying she adored me. The impact of this moment didn’t arrive until almost a week later as I was leaving work on a Friday night.

Things were not going great between us. Money was tight, even though I was working a new high-paying job, and we had just survived Christmas, there was still tension. She was re-tooling her career and trying to decide what she wanted to be as she approached her 50s. So our earnings were quite lopsided, but we were in agreement that the next phase of our lives would be supporting the financial needs of our family so we could enjoy a less stressful future. At least, that’s what I thought our agreement was.

I was getting ready to head home for the weekend and I felt the need to write my wife a love note, a join, a repair for all the disconnects we were both feeling. It started out with an honest statement.

“I may not like you very much at this moment, but I love you with all my heart. We will get through this time.”

But something struck me at that moment. While I was holding out hope that all would be well again in our marriage, I was also stating that I was unhappy and struggling as well. And I tried to give an example. And I went back to the head pat moment. But then something else came out. Something I wasn’t really prepared to uncover.

“What I realized as you said that you loved me, was how strange it felt. It felt so strange, because it never happens. It was as if you were saying and doing something that I had wanted for such a long time, but it felt unreal, foreign. I didn’t have any memories of you exhibiting this sort of unbridled caring for me. And at that moment I became very sad.”

And at that moment, as I was writing the note to my wife, I began to cry. It was a little embarrassing, but there were only a couple of folks still in the office, and I was in my boss’s office. The feelings that washed over me were deep and painful. When did my wife quit expressing her love for me? I couldn’t remember the last time she looked at me and said, “I love you.” And I said it all the time. I held her, caressed her and told her ALL THE TIME that I loved her. Why did this one reflection back of this feeling hit me so painfully hard?

It was because in our struggles she became more and more distant, isolated. And I began to reach out more. And as the imbalance went on we fell into these roles. I was the lover she was the pragmatic one who had to focus on bills, chores, kid discipline. Except it wasn’t true. It was true that she had begun to pour her energy and joy into the kids and not into our relationship. And it was true that she had become hyper-vigilant about chores, homework, bills, etc. But it wasn’t the stereotypical absent husband that was the issue, it was her withdrawal from the rest of the marriage that she was covering up with her over-active, one-adult-in-the-relationship parenting.

It was a false projection. I was standing tall and present with her on all issues. But as she continued to withdraw from my touch and loving words she began to get more angry with me about my transgressions. “How come you never ask to pay bills together?” she would shout. “Um, because we do it at the same time every week, and I didn’t think it was necessary.”

I’m sure that many husbands use this type of imbalance to blame their wives for the loss of passion. I was not doing this in any way. I was standing beside her, agreeing to all of her requests, and doing my best as a dad with a full-time and highly demanding job that was paying for all of our housing and insurance and food. I was doing all that I could as a husband. And I was lacking the partner who had any warmth or affection for me. I think, somehow, I had become the provider but lost the lover part of my role.

And I’m not sure how anger brews over months and turns into years of anger. But that’s also what it felt like. As our intimacy became monthly, or less, our intimate connection outside the bedroom also suffered. She was no longer sharing what she was so mad about, but it was coming out sideways, in random bursts of anger frustration. The pat on the head moment was so alien also because almost all the conversations I had gotten from her were about what I wasn’t doing or how I had disappointed her yet again.

And I did disappoint her. There is no doubt about that. But I was also doing the best I could to maintain the heavy work schedule, do 50 percent of the parenting as she was asking, and provide the loving environment for our entire family. I was an overachiever, and I was doing my best to keep everything afloat. But there was a poison that I couldn’t ever get at.

It came out one afternoon as we were driving to our couple’s therapy appointment together.

“I’m so sick of this therapy. I don’t feel like it’s getting us anywhere.”

I was stunned. It was the only thing I felt was keeping us hopeful. But she was no longer hopeful. She was cynical. She was already in the process of exiting the relationship. Even as we were going to therapy, we were not getting any closer together — a sad realization.

Could I have loved my wife for the rest of our lives? Certainly. But I wasn’t given that opportunity — a huge loss for both of us.

Always Love,

John McElhenney
@wholeparent

back to Positive Divorce

related posts:

• The Fading Passion of Monogamy
• At the End of Sex and My Marriage
• Dad’s Hand On My Head, Forever
• The Ballet of Waking Up as a Single Parent

image: lust, arhadetruit, creative commons usage

The weather has been wet in Illinois this week, with rain-inundated streets enough to set off middle-of-the-night emergency alert flood warnings.

But it’s not just the rain that Illinois has to thank for its flooding tendencies. The state’s rivers, infrastructure and landscape all play their parts. Sustainable water advocate Pete Mulvaney wants to know who is going to fix the state’s mess so floods don’t continue to flow in at every heavy downpour.

Illinois has 966 publicly owned waste water treatment plants, 1,742 regulated community water supplies[1] within 33 major watersheds. To regulate these assets, we have local utilities, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, State Water Survey, Department of Natural Resources and various health departments. Then there are the Feds–the Army Corps of Engineers, Department of the Interior, Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency. While managing water is no small task, getting all these agencies to coordinate is an even bigger challenge. This quagmire of management agencies fractures the water cycle–and too often undermines our ability to respond in times of crises-leads to inefficient use of resources and buries solutions in a byzantine bureaucracy.

How the state can more efficiently manage its water resources will be among the topics Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn and Republican governor nominee Bruce Rauner will address at the Metropolitan Planning Council’s Annual Luncheon on Aug. 28. I’ll be interested to hear their ideas because solving these issues in Illinois will not be easy.

Illinois’ problems with governments and floods don’t stop there. Back in 2010, Iroquois County Board Chairman Rodney Copas says, the Ford-Iroquois County Health Department funneled federal flood-relief funds into the homes of its own employees. Plus, he and Edgar County Watchdogs’ Allen Kirk says the same health department double-billed federal grants and the county’s Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, spend department money on personal items and mishandled county contract bidding. Check out the story of how one anonymous
whistleblower put a stop to it.