Do you stay in touch with your exes? Because I don’t.

First of all, I have only two. My high school boyfriend. And my college boyfriend. Sure, there were dalliances here and there between relationships, but nothing really worth mentioning here. Particularly because certain people read my blog. (Hey, Grammy!)

So, I have two exes. And I speak to them never.

Thanks to Facebook and a scattering of once-mutual friends, I have some vague sense of what they are up to, but that’s about  it. My high school boyfriend had a baby not long ago and I saw the photos of his adorable son (and his gorgeous wife) on Facebook. I looked through these photos, the bright blue eyes of his first-born, the impossibly vast smile on my ex’s face and I said to myself, This is ridiculous. If this were anyone else in the world, I would send a quick note of congratulations and say hello. It really should be no different for an ex-boyfriend whom I haven’t seen or spoken to in well over a decade.

And so. Being the little rebel I am (ha), I fired off a personal message to my high school ex welcoming him to the wonderful world of parenthood. I said something trite and true like, Having kids is the best thing that has ever happened to me, so enjoy this! And then, immediately upon sending, I felt a stab of guilt like I had crossed some invisible and ominous line. And then. Then I promptly fessed up to Husband over dinner that night. We dined at an outdoor table across from the Museum of Natural History. We shared a plate of delectable flash-fried artichokes. I told Husband that my ex from high school who is now a doctor in California had his first baby. And that I congratulated him via Facebook message. And Husband smiled. He couldn’t care less.

And then there is college boyfriend. We were together for more than four years. For better or worse, I don’t think he is on Facebook. But I do hear bits and pieces about him from time to time. I know that he is pursuing a career that is passionate about and last I heard he is dating a girl seriously and a great girl at that. He could be married now. Who knows. But hearing these things? It makes me smile. Because, once upon a time, I care a whole lot about this guy. And his family. And his happiness.

And so. Where are we going here? It is hard to say, but bear with me. Yesterday’s conversation about the viability of male-female friendships got me thinking. It was a phenomenal exchange – thanks to you guys – and sparked something in me. Many of you left comments mentioning exes. And I realized that this is a big, fat and interesting conversation unto itself.

Exes. What role do they play (or not play) in our current lives and minds?

And so. Here I am, racing the clock, clumsily writing about this. About this question. About these rules I intuit, perhaps foolishly, in our adult word. The rule that once we settle (and I say settle in the best possible sense of the word), we are implored not to shake things up by thinking (or writing) about past relationships or speaking to exes. The rule that once we walk away from someone, we are not meant to look back. The rule that once we finish one chapter of our life – whether it ends gracefully or messily – we are meant to get on with our story…

Maybe these rules don’t exist. Maybe I made them up in my head. Maybe they are aspects of my own prudence. I do know many people who keep in close contact with their exes and even see them from time to time. Truth be told, this baffles me. Maybe some of us can make this work and some of us just can’t.

But part of me thinks it is a shame to cut all ties and burn once robust bridges. My exes were once a part of my life and I have many fond memories of them and I think it is a bit arbitrary and capricious to insist that there is never ever any more communication ever. It just seems harsh.

Or maybe just smart?

____________________________________

• How many exes do you have? Do you ever speak with them or see them? Do you have a sense of what they are up to?
  
• Do you think this modern age of social media makes it too easy to keep tabs on our past flames?
  
• What dictates our willingness or unwillingness to stay in contact with exes? The nature of the breakup? Partner’s proneness to jealousy? Our own fears of what might happen? Societal expectations?
  
• Do you and your partner ever talk about your respective exes? Are you careful not to talk about past relationships in front of your children if you have them?

A few weeks ago, Husband and I were chatting with Toddler’s teacher at a school event and she said something wonderful. She said that Toddler is equally drawn to the girls and boys in her class. She is friends with girls and friends with boys. She doesn’t discriminate. At age three, it seems this is the way it should be.

But what about at age thirty-one?

Because I do not have a single stand alone friend that is a boy at this point. Sure, I consider my friends’ husbands to be friends, but there is no guy, not one, whom I would call up and say hey. There is no guy, not one, whom I would track down for a quick lunch or a quick drink.

Truth be told, I am not the best case study. For whatever reason, I have never had a collection of boy friends. I’m not really sure why. It could be that as one of five sisters, I was always most comfortable hanging with girls. It could be that, deep down, I believed that platonic relationships between guys and girls were tricky and usually ended up being charged with romantic and sexual complications. This did happen to me at least once and maybe I just learned my lesson.

But I look around and I see a pattern. Take Husband. Once upon a time, he had a bevy of girl friends. Many of his closest buddies were members of the opposite sex. And now? He is Facebook friends with most, but that is the extent of it. Take the majority of my married – and mommy – friends. I have not taken an official poll, but it seems to me that boy friends have fallen off, have been relegated to the fringes of busy lives, or have been deleted from those busy lives all together.

And maybe that is what it is all about. Being busy. Maybe it is that this juggling act called Life is hard work. That between professional and parental and personal obligations, we feel stretched to the max. That there is no free time in which to phone up our less central buddies – whether they are girls or boys. Maybe the explanation for this sociological shift boils down to the practicalities and pulls of modern existence.

Or maybe there is something more. Once upon a time, things were less serious. There were not marriages to wreck and kids to screw up. Maybe the number of opposite sex friendships wanes – as a social or biological means – to protect monogamy? Maybe eliminating these relationships is a logical way to minimize distraction and competition and is simply part and parcel of commitment?

I don’t know. I don’t pretend to know. I’m guessing here. But when there are no answers, guessing is good.

Anyway, this all strikes me as weird. And as unfortunate. That at age three, the world is our classroom and our classroom is our world. That we are encouraged to play with boys and girls. But that time slips by, that life grows gray, and we retreat to our own side of the classroom. This seems a shame.

Part of me longs for that boy friend I never quite had. A benevolent fellow to offer a different view. A buddy to blue up my pink days. Part of me thinks I would be a more well-rounded person and a more nuanced writer if I had greater access to the male perspective.

So I need a boy friend. Or a handful. That would be cool.

(And of course I have one boyfriend. The one-word breed. A best friend. Husband. And I wouldn’t trade him for the world. But husbands don’t count here. Why? Because I say so.)

_____________________________________________

Do you have friends of the opposite sex (or attractive sex, to be more politically correct)? Did you used to have more boy friends or girl friends? Does adulthood or marriage or parenthood kill these relationships? Is there just no time to nurture these peripheral connections or is there a more complicated explanation at play here? Does this come down to (an unspoken or spoken) jealousy between spouses? Ultimately, is keeping these relationships to a minimum a way to safeguard a marriage or a family?

Our apartment is now officially on the market. After a week-plus of Operation DDD (Declutter, Deep Clean, & Donate), our home is looking pretty slamming, so I’m cautiously optimistic that it will strike some unknown New Yorker’s fancy. I hope so because we are slated to move into our new place in two months or so. Right around the time of my book release. This isn’t a busy time or anything. Nah.

Anyway, yesterday was our first open house. After yet another speed-cleaning operation, Husband, the girls and I left our place in the capable hands of our wonderful broker and drove to New Jersey to visit our good friends and their new home. While we were tending to backseat vomit volcanoes and touring our new friends’ palatial abode, our broker welcomed scores of strangers into our home. Strangers who then trouped through our space. Seeing our pictures. Seeing our stories. Seeing those terrible stains on our beleaguered white chairs.

It was an exquisite winter/spring day. We couldn’t have ordered up a better one. And we had a good time in New Jersey catching up with our friends and their two kids, watching our girls soak in the suburban splendor and run free in the space they will never quite have. And my mind was there. It was. On the laughter, on the appetizers, on the kiddie mayhem.

But my mind was also elsewhere. Here. On this house. On this home. This place that has pillowed me through so much. My safe haven. I kept imagining the parade of people walking from room to room. Running fingertips along surfaces. Our surfaces. Peeking through windows. Our windows. Loving or hating a layout. Our layout.

Yes, I couldn’t stop thinking of all those who stopped by to glimpse a house. A home. A world.

Our house. Our home. Our world.

After the open house was over, our broker called with a report. She said there were twenty-four parties who signed in! That there was a lot of good interest, that many people would like to make an appointment to come back and see our place again. And this is good. This is very good.

So why doesn’t this feel so good then? Why does this feel more complicated than good?

Because it is.

When night fell, we secured sleepy girls in car seats and made our way home. The drive was quick. And while Husband was returning Sister I’s car (I – there is no aromatic or physical evidence of baby vomit – I promise!), the girls and I settled in at home. We walked in and I turned the lights on.

And our place seemed different. There were no precarious piles of mail. There were no dishes in the sink. There were no cat toys littering the hardwoods. There was no mess. There was no noise.

The place already felt a little less ours.

I took the girls up to bed. We picked pajamas. We read a book. We sang a song. And as we did these things last night, I looked around. I lingered on things I wouldn’t otherwise notice. The pale yellow stripes on the wall we will leave behind. The black and white pattern on the carpet that won’t be ours for long.

And then I kissed my girls goodnight.

And this morning, I realize as I write these words, that my surge of emotion about moving, about big change, is probably perfectly par for the course. That transitions, even the most exquisite transitions, can be both beautiful and difficult at once.

And I realize something else – right here, right now – as I type these words one after the other. I realize that it is open house every day here chez ILI. You come here, benevolent strangers, and poke around. Some of you sign in with comments and some of you just come and go. But all of you take it in – the stories, the pictures, the questions. Each of you glimpses me and my world through the crafty and clumsy evidence I leave for you – my words, my worries, my wants. Some of you like what you see and come back. Some of you shake your head no and never return.

And now my mind flits feverishly, going where the metaphor, this good metaphor, takes me…

Is this blogosphere a virtureal estate market of sorts? Are we bloggers selling ourselves and our stories? Are we opening ourselves up and inviting others in? Are we advertising the aspects of our worlds? The layouts of our lives? The fixtures and fittings of our fears? The rooms of our regret? Are we, in effect, saying, Stop by, walk around, take a look, see if you like what I have to offer? See if it’s worth the investment?

Do we bloggers declutter our hearts and our heads and our homes before showing them off? Do we wipe down the surfaces of soul and psyche before letting people in? Do we touch up the paint of our parenthood or our personhood? Do we make ourselves seem more ordered, more open, more generic so that others will like us?

Or do we bloggers do the opposite? Do we welcome legions of strangers and say, I do not have it all together. Look at this clutter in my mind, look at this dirty pile of longing, look at the cracks in my ceiling?

Who knew that a simple open house would be (for me) not-so-simple? Who knew that contemplating good change would send me into a metaphorical Monday madness? Who knew that hanging a price tag on my past and my place would create a thicket of mixed feelings about permanence and progress?

(I did.)

_____________________________________________

How have you handled the moves in your life (between homes, relationships, jobs, etc)? Did you have mixed feelings too? Do you enjoy attending open houses? If so, why? Do you agree that blogging is – in some sense – like hosting a 24/7 Open House? Where do you think this metaphor breaks down?

ILI DAILY CHARMS

I am hard at work on Novel #2, so I am having a tough time staying on top of my favorite blogs, but I just read two posts from favorite cyber creatives. Both have been blogging for a year now and both write exquisitely and evocatively about the past year and the ways in which blogging has changed them (and not changed them). Check out these women and their words:

* Liz of the heartfelt and hilarious blog …But Then I Had Kids looks back over her last year in her post 365 Posts + 109 Posts = One Revised Me.

* Sarah, one half of the delightful Momalom sister duo, celebrates the fact that it’s Spring Again.

Last night, as part of Project Blonde Again, Husband and I snuggled up on the couch to watch the DVRed season finale of The Bachelor.

(I will give you a moment to judge me.)

Okay, onwards. You either watch this show and know how it everything turned out or you don’t watch this show and therefore don’t really care. The point is that I am not spoiling anything for anyone here. Phew.

A smidge of background: Jake, a handsome and wholesome pilot decides to try his luck on the “Wings of Love” and see if he can land himself a wife. ABC producers corral a bevy of young women – some shockingly normal-seeming and some not so much – and off they go, gallivanting in and out of ubiquitous hot tubs, subsisting on a diet of booze and roses and test-run “kisses.” Now, I am not one to judge this format for finding true love. Seriously. I met my man in a bar at one in the morning. It’s all good.

Anyway. The weeks fly by (love these aviation puns) and I miss several episodes of the show because I’m too busy flailing like a drama queen in the deep end of my ocean. But I tune in here and there. Just enough to understand the trajectory of this season’s story. It becomes immediately clear that there is one girl who is universally detested by the others. Her name is Vienna. And there is one girl who allegedly “fell out of a Disney movie” and “dreams in cartoons” – Tenley – a creature who is cute and giggly and oozing with suspicious amounts of joy. Interestingly, both of these women were been married before The Bachelor. But that is neither here nor there. Just interesting to moi.

In the end, Jake narrows it down to these two women: the blonde and caustic Vienna and the brunettish and bubbly Tenley. When deliberating about his decision for the cameras, puppy-eyed Jake declares that it is so hard because he is in love with both women and that he can see both as his wife. But then he clues us into something and something critical: that he is more physically attracted to Vienna.

Cut to the chase. He picks Vienna. He proposes to her. She squeals yes.

Okay, fine. We’ll see how this turns out. The show’s track record isn’t so stellar. But I’m not that concerned with how Jake and Vienna fare in the big, bad real world. I’m more interested in some questions this flufffest raised for me. And the show might be a bit shallow, but I don’t think these questions are. Let’s see if you agree.

Is there anything wrong with being a “looks person”? With picking a life partner based on physical chemistry?

I don’t think so. Hey, we are biological creatures. There is something very Darwinian about all this. If I am being honest, I fell for Husband at first because he was such a gorgeous specimen. Fortunately, it turned out that he was exceedingly intelligent and funny and kind as well. But in the beginning? He was just an old school hottie.

Is it really possible to be in love with two people at once?

This is where I get confused. Lust is one thing. We can be attracted to many people at once, I imagine. But romantic love? Can it really be felt, truly be felt, for two people at once? And is it really possible to fall in love in six weeks while on camera?

Does the very format of this show render it almost impossible that the ultimate union will thrive?

It doesn’t really shock me that the couples that emerge after “the final rose” do not usually survive once the cameras stop rolling. Can a relationship predicated on scripted encounters and a game which pits several (often celebrity-hungry) creatures against each other really stand the test of time? Maybe so. Maybe I am judging from my little plot of real-world existential earth?

Who knows? Who cares?

Thank you for indulging me as I dip my toe in the shallow end once more. In doing so, I am all smiles because I realize something, something so many of you mentioned in your thoughtful comments yesterday: Deep and shallow are not mutually exclusive. These two sides can and do collide and commingle. In moments. In minds.

In blog posts.

_________________________________________

• Do you think a relationship or marriage rooted in physical attraction can flourish and last over time?
• Do you believe that you can find love anywhere, even on a television show?
• Do you watch The Bachelor? Did you watch this season?
  
• Do you think it is possible to be in love with two people at the very same time?
• Do you agree that meaning and deeper questions can be found almost anywhere as long as we squint and look?

ILI DAILY CHARMS

* Click and read this insightful Huffington Post piece on contemporary shifts in publishing industry roles by my incomparable literary agent Jean Naggar.

* Are we humans shaping our own evolution? Read this fascinating NYT article that identifies human culture as an evolutionary force.

* It seems I am not the only perfectionista who battles the Not Good Enoughs. Check out Tanya Geisler’s piece In Support of Settling.

* Do we really have to play with our kids? Is there a benefit to parental preoccupation and teaching our kids skills of self-reliance? Lenore Skenazy of Free-Range Kids ponders these and other provocative questions in her recent post Up With Boredom!

First order of business. Thank you. For holding my virtual hand through my soggy Sunday moment and its precarious aftermath. For leaving a trail of words. For your existential echoes. It dawned on me after publishing yesterday’s post that one surefire way to feel not good enough is to set insane expectations for myself that only a robot could meet. Like, say, vowing to respond to every single comment left on this blog. Like promising to have a blog post up by 6am each morning. In an ideal world, these things would happen. But I am beginning to suspect that this world, this wonderful world, is not ideal. No, it’s real.

*

A few weeks ago, Husband and I went swimming with the girls in South Carolina and Toddler said something that I can’t stop thinking about. She wore both a water ring and water wings and she said to me, her little voice stuffed with panic, “Mommy! Help! I keep floating to the deep, deep part!” And like a good mom, I threw my arms around her and hugged her and assured her that she was okay and that we were in fact in the shallow end.

The shallow end.

Lately, my pool is lacking a shallow end. And this is odd. Because I used to be plenty shallow. Embarrassingly shallow. I used to subsist on shopping trips to trendy stores and celebrity gossip. I used to obsessively sample fad diets in an effort to be skinny and hot. I used to camp out at the gym for hours a day, spinning away, going nowhere. I used to panic when I was late to get my highlights touched up.

But somewhere along the way, life got delightfully deeper. Maybe it was becoming a wife or a parent or a fatherless girl? Maybe it was becoming a writer or a blogger or a Professor of Insecurities? Maybe it was flirting with the often harsh and humorless realities of adulthood, of aging, of lingering mortality? I would wager that it was all of these things.

But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I think I’ve swung too far in the other direction. What matters is that I miss my shallow end. I miss the superficial things I used to enjoy. I miss watching mindless reality television and searching for the most flattering jeans. I miss talking about celebrities.

I miss my goofy, silly, blondeness.

And so. I am reclaiming it. Consider yourself warned.

I came to this conclusion yesterday afternoon. We all know that I’m epiphany-prone and yesterday was no exception. I was talking with my friend (and superstar nutritionist) Lauren Slayton. I asked Lauren to meet me because I want to up the ante health-wise in my life. I want to focus on my body, on my nutrition, on the health of my young family. I want to feel more energetic and do what I can to prevent cancer and to raise good eaters. At the end of our meeting, I said to Lauren, “It’s so funny because for so many years I watched what I ate and worked out because I wanted to look hot, but now my priority is to be healthy.” And as I said this, I realized something.

I want both. I want to be healthy and hot.

“I want to be hot for my book party!” I said to her and she smiled. Truth be told, it’s not about losing weight. But it is about looking my best. Far more importantly though, I would like to feel my best. And then Lauren and I talked about this, whether it is shallow to want to maximize our attractiveness. Whether it is shallow or selfish to want to feel amazing. And we didn’t come to any ready conclusion. Maybe it is a bit shallow to want to be hot. But I think that’s okay. I think that’s more than okay.

We all need a shallow end.

At least I do. I love the deep end. I do. I love writing about the complex and shifting depths of human existence. I love scrutinizing the universal insecurities that shake our days. But I cannot do this all the time. It affects me. Maybe this is foolish, but it just occurred to me that I might not have control over most things in life, but I do have control over what I write about. And this is an important awakening for me. Because what I write about affects what I think about and what I think about affects how I feel and how I see the world.

This is all a long-winded and clumsy way of saying what Toddler said so succinctly,

I keep slipping to the deep end.

But there is a shallow end. A silly end. There still is. And writing about its mere existence makes me smile big. And so I will write about it from time to time. Not all the time because I love the deep end too much. But some of the time. And maybe by writing about the more superficial aspects of my existence, I will find my way to my shallow end once more. And if and when I get there, I will celebrate the fact that I can touch the bottom. And I will splash around a bit.

The blonde is back, kids. Get ready.

___________________________________________

• Is your pool of life more shallow or more deep?
• Do you think it is selfish or shallow to want to look good?
  
• Do you think there is something about adulthood that encourages us to drown out our shallow end (pun very much intended and amazing)?
• Are you more or less shallow than you used to be?
• Do you think that there is something important about cultivating a bit of shallowness or superficiality in life?
• Does the content of your writing affect the content of your life, how you feel and see the world?
• Could you stand to be healthier?
• Could you stand to be hotter?