Anatomy of a Helicopter

Tie One On

If I had to use one word to describe my parenting style it would be “feral.” For when it comes to protecting my children, I am as untamed as they come, my ferocity knowing no boundaries or rules. My motherly powers have shown both in the strength of my pen and my voice, as well as in the kind of miraculous adrenaline-fueled superpowers one might hear about on the news, like the time I literally threw my then-five-year-old son over a fence into the arms of a stranger with decisive force when my family got caught in a dangerous mob at a New Years Eve celebration gone wrong in Dubai. From that horrific day on, I have never doubted my ability to protect my children. Feral indeed. I guess my love language is action. But after leaving an extension of my heartbeat in New York City last month, I’ve delegated much of my job as protector of this human to a thin red ribbon, now tied onto the wire spring beneath my daughter’s dorm room bed. For centuries, neurotic Jewish mothers and grandmothers have tied red ribbons onto babies’ cribs to ward off the evil eye and neutralize negative energy. In my family, the tradition has extended far past the infant years. I descend from a long line of worrier-warriors. Our brand is not that of those who worry in silence or complain endlessly. We are action takers, we are the ones who sweep in, protect and fight. Parenting sweat equity perhaps. Eighteen years ago, while I lay in the hospital bed, oblivious to the delivery trauma that had just launched my child into this world and how very close I had been to death in that moment, my mother scurried to set up the baby’s room at home. Carrying a spool of red ribbon and a pair of long shears, my mom went around the house tying red ribbons in obscured places to keep the demons at bay. Each one was tied at well-considered places of potential danger, like a changing table where the baby could roll off if an exhausted parent lost their focus; or a crib where her tiny body could get caught in the slats or a mysterious illness could come for her in the middle of the nights; or the glider chair where I would nurse her to bring safety to us both. They were tiny threads of love, tucked out of sight but working their magic constantly. Last month, as we packed up the duffels and the suitcases for this now college-aged baby, I kept wondering how we would fit it all in, how all her belongings would fit in a tiny rectangle in a high rise on a minute slice of Manhattan. Where would her hoodies go? Her jackets? How would we fit all the makeup? And the many dresses packed just in case? And where will my love go? Where, in this tiny rectangle in a high rise on a minute slice of Manhattan, will my love fit? Amid packing the space maximizing hangers, the under bed storage, the curated selection of seasonal clothing and just the right amount of toiletries, I worried for days about how to pack just the right thing to leave behind so that my daughter would know I was there with her. Where do you squeeze the love in? Will your advice fit in the tiny going out purse to guide her in that moment when inevitably life changing decisions are made at 1am? Can you pack up a hug? Can you take a photo of unconditional love to hang on the wall? For a time, the college packing to-do list seemed to get longer rather than shorter and then, suddenly, it was, basically, done. How could that be? When I feel so much anxiety, when I so badly need something to do to channel my love, how could it be done? And so I added more things to the list. The list that, when your love language is action, never actually gets completed because that would mean you’ve stopped loving and that would be impossible. Impossible when this being is an extension of my very breath. Eventually it came to me. A red ribbon. Maybe my love can no longer be wild and feral. Maybe my love needs to be confident and slow, intentional when it speaks up. Yes — my love will be a soft-spoken red ribbon, discreet and confident, emanating its protection without demonstration of force. Once I tucked that ribbon and the shears into the duffel’s side pocket, the high-pitched quake of my anxious belly finally quieted. Bizarrely, I felt better, and though the goodbye was indeed teary, I felt I’d done my job and was confident she would be safe, happy – thriving even. But then, after I deplaned home in San Francisco, my inner critic began shouting obscenities at me for ever agreeing to send this child off to school so far away. The ribbon, I told the nagging voice. I did the ribbon! She is fine. Protected. It was that exact moment that I realized that I forgot to tie it to the bed. And now she’s there! No me! No ribbon! Who/what will protect her? A continent away, my feral love resisted the urge to buy a plane ticket and head straight back to New York to tie that ribbon on. I held back and made my way to baggage claim, hoping as my baby sleeps in that tiny rectangle, in a highrise on a minute slice of Manhattan, that she can feel my love. I packed it in those bags. I swear I did. I packed those bags with so much love it should ooze. Later that week, I texted my daughter with gentle but urgent words – she should not know that she is unprotected. I cannot project my worry onto her. “Honey, I need a favor...” Thanks for reading Anatomy of a Helicopter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mszolthara.substack.com [https://mszolthara.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Team White Shirt

She thought she was being so smart, so stylish, packing us for this trip to New York City. It’s a biggie. A change of life, a change of pace, a new normal. A turning point. Big moments and turning points call for voluminous taffeta, silk shirts, layers of statement jewelry and a few sets of shoulder pads for good measure. She is a performer at heart and perhaps having the right costume on will convince her that she’s ready to stomp through the unknown. Can the right costume support this moment of productive discomfort? She seems to think so. And she is dressed to be seen, as they say. But back to us. Our soles are designed for stomping. They look treacherous, but are actually precision-designed German engineering for the sole. Block platforms set perfectly on-center at the toes and the heel, but not aligned like a typical shoe. Our shoe beds teeter atop the two blocks like a Jenga tower gone wrong, and we give her tiny frame nearly five inches without arching the heel like a stiletto. We are made for city clomping by women who mean business. But we are not made for strutting cobblestone streets like the one in front of the New York Stock Exchange. White bellowing silk cape tank elegantly blowing in the breeze of her wake, coffee in hand, she goes traipsing down the street to get to her office. She strikes her foot just slightly off center, hits a cobblestone on its curve, and flies, catching herself on the pavement with her palms – a miracle, really, for someone who can’t feel half of her left hand. The coffee droplets fly into the air, somehow – again, a true miracle – in an upward trajectory away from the silk shirt. The woman security guard encased in the plexiglass box in front of the NYSE glares from the safety of her window. Unflinching, unkind, unaccommodating, her face says it all – “Serves this dumb girl right to wear that outfit and those shoes on this street.” The street is packed with commuters. Not one stops to see if she is ok or if she needs a napkin. The tote on her back had been meticulously planned, like everything else for that week, with tissues to combat the occasional ugly cry. Or coffee disaster, she thinks with just a tad of residual smugness. She reaches back into the bag, carefully keeping the coffee drips on her arm away from the white silk top. Digging, she finds just one, lonely, cheap thin brown napkin. Why? Why? F*****g tissues are never there when I need them, she thinks, carefully bending to shake the coffee off her arm. At this point unscathed, it is Coffee vs White Shirt and the woman is solidly on Team White Shirt. The single ply napkin gets it done. Blots off the coffee and the woman sneaks into a small vestibule to inspect her shirt with her phone. Pure white. A New York miracle. Sloppy, now inelegant, coffee cup tossed in trash. Hair fixed. Lips glossed. Costume intact. Just a bit of eau de coffee aroma as evidence of the near disaster. She marches on. Thanks for reading Anatomy of a Helicopter! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mszolthara.substack.com [https://mszolthara.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Pockets full of sunshine

When my son was a little boy he loved to put things in his pockets. The smaller the better. Sometimes he would share his treasures. Sometimes he would reveal them with a soft voice and a trusting lean, his big brown eyes widening as he opened his chubby hand to reveal something deep inside his palm. But most of the time, the treasure had long been his secret, tucked away to run his tiny fingers over so this talisman could speak to him, soothe him or ground him. Tiny stones, good luck charms purchased with his allowance at the neighborhood store, a mini knock-off Gumby doll from the dentist office gum ball machine that we nicknamed “Stretchy Betchy,” a half-inch mini Lego head inside a mini Lego suitcase that he carried daily for about six months (that one had us a bit concerned). And then there was that one time he nabbed a red bead from a Montessori school work piece and the teacher was convinced he put it up his nose for safe keeping. Poor Miss Bridget called us frantically. It was in his pocket the whole time. Women’s clothes are notoriously absent of pockets, but I’ve taken to adorning myself with talismans and memories instead. In the mornings when I dress for the day, I layer on my treasures I think about what powers I need to summon. I slip on my mother’s wedding ring, an ornate, chunky lace band in gold that seems to tell me I’m being held by a fiercely super powered safety net, because that was and always will be my mom’s brand. I summon my grandmother’s give-no-f***s attitude when I wear my her stone, a chameleon-like alexandrite gem as multi-faceted as my grandma (almost). I carry them with me. I silently talk to them as I get dressed, “wait till you see where we are going today,” because in their wildest ceiling-crushing dreams they would not have envisioned this blessed life of mine. My dad carried his papa’s tie in his briefcase to and from work as long as I can remember. Even when his work didn’t require a briefcase per se, that bag went with him everywhere, every day, with all its special things inside: the tie, favorite photos, sentimental letters. In a journey that had proved unpredictable and rocky— as most journeys are — my dad carried his own life preserver in that case. It was a portable time capsule of unconditional love. Since I was a little girl, I loved to collect small pieces of memories. I still have the first necklace a boy ever gave me – a brass Mickey Mouse charm from a kid named Danny who passed it to me on the field of our elementary school in fourth grade when he asked me out. I have the letters my best friend Darcy and I exchanged throughout elementary school when she moved across the country. I have the first journal I ever kept that divulged serious secrets like “Look at this highlighter I got today. Three colors in one!” written in the tri-tip marker with swirls across the page. These days though, I find myself wanting to document my life like it were a movie, and hermetically seal it in a jar, forever preserved and viewable through the glass. I find myself wishing I could catch the little feelings hanging in the air to try on whenever I’m in need – elation, pride, even angst. There’s an emotion I feel often these days for which I’m not even sure there’s a name. It feels like joy in my heart, and pride in my mind, but in my gut, where all the truth lives, it feels like a twisting anxious stir. That is the feeling of living on the cliff of saying goodbye to a child, of loosening the vice grip of the first 18 years and slowly letting your arms out wide to release her into the universe, then holding those arms in place so you're ready to catch her again when she needs you. That feeling has no name that I know of. (But if you do, please, please share.) And though it may sound like pain, I know even now that it is, in fact, wonder. Wonderful wonder. It is something to hold and treasure for this moment too will pass, and it is the surest proof point I’ve lived yet that the journey is a hell of a lot more interesting than the finish line. And so I live these past months in a constant reach for the phone. I don’t want to miss a moment – a photo, a video, a note taken because time is moving too fast. So fast that I feel I can’t even stop to grab the tiny souvenir to put in my pocket, because as soon as I attempt to grab it, it is gone and another moment blindsides me. Emotionally, this life stage is a marathon. If I were to scoop up all the little ingredients of ephemeral moments, heart swells, butterflies within my belly… all the layers upon layers of complexity overwhelming me as my family begins this next chapter, there would not be a steamer trunk big enough to carry it with me along my way. — At dinner tonight, I asked my son if he had the notorious Lego head in the Lego suitcase in his memory box. “No, I look at my memory box every few months and it’s not there,” he said. “It got lost in life’s grains of sand.” I picture myself in the not-too-distant future, when the kids have left home, settled into their lives, my days no longer cluttered from juggling 15-minute billing increments and endless video calls with orthodontist appointments and school supply shopping. I sit cross-legged on a beach looking out at the glistening water, the waves slowly pulsing in and out from the shore. I pick up a handful of sand, and as the grains slip over and between my fingers I let the memories that I never managed to put in that jar wash over my heart. Thanks for reading Anatomy of a Helicopter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mszolthara.substack.com [https://mszolthara.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Riding the Bus with Grandma

I wait for the bus while standing in front of the chicken rice shop on River Valley Road. The smell is unavoidable, but I work hard to avert my eyes from the pallid poultry hung by their feet in a crowded row in the window behind me. The bumpy, flaccid chicken skin gleaming with slime. How this is considered gourmet, I will never understand. But then again there’s a lot I’ll never understand about this place, no matter how much I love living here or how long I stay. Singapore’s magic is on loan to me, like a library book I am privileged to enjoy but must return, and my rightful place – I am reminded again and again – to seek to understand, knowing I never fully will. Stepping onto the bus, I dial Grandma. This is our time. I surf in the middle of the most grounding influence in my life and this bizarre expat adventure as I pipe Grandma’s voice into my ears, while taking in the morning Singapore views from the bus window. “Helllooooo?” she answers the phone with the exact same intonation as she has in all my 32 years. Like a song you immediately recognize upon the first note, I will never in my life forget the tone of her phone greeting. “Hi Grandma!” “Stacey?!?!!” she answers with authentic surprise and trademark shriek in her voice, even though I call her at this exact time nearly every single day as I ride the bus to work. “Hi, Grandma, how are you?” She is home. My home. I move through this foreign land while tethered to her voice and the routine of daily connection. Her love unwavering, unquestioning. Always so much said and unsaid. “How are you feeling, Grandma?” “Great… I feel great.” “Are you lying?” I ask, as I always do. “Yes.” And I laugh and say, “ok.” No need to talk about it. I don’t judge her either. I don’t question. If she wanted to be nudged she’d talk to my mother. It is my privilege as the grandchild to be the enabler rather than the caregiving protector that my mother must always be. There is a grace in the things we don’t say. It’s our pact. I don’t actually need to ask how she feels to know. I know it in the decreased frequency of her hand-written letters, or in the recaps she gives me of her days. There is a direct correlation between the number of times she and Grandpa go out to lunch per week and the way she feels. I’ve discovered the ways of asking without asking. “Did you see the ballgame?” she asks. Um, no. I couldn’t care less about her beloved Cubs. Never did. The only thing about ball games I care about is the opportunity for sun on my face and a hot dog. Grandma hasn’t been to a game in over a decade, but she never misses watching one on TV. I laugh out loud when I think about her neighbors in the assisted living home hearing her shriek when yelling at the screen. Hopefully it brings them as much joy as it would me. Grandma didn’t live to see my 40th birthday, but if she had she would have lost her s**t witnessing the Cubs making it to the World Series after years of curses, false starts, and embarrassing seasons – but the loyalist fans in the business. When I took the Red Line that night with Simon on my shoulders and Rosie gripping my hand tight amid the crowds in Wrigleyville, I could feel Grandma with me. We did have a commonly held love for ballpark hot dogs though. Mine with ketchup only (much to the chagrin of every Chicago-dog purist in my life), hers with all the things, like a true Northsider. The hotdog and her weakness for it was an ongoing point of contention between my mother and I, when discussing the myriad things Grandma should be doing to take better care of herself, to help us by keeping her on this planet for even one more day because this planet was without a doubt a better place with my Grandma in it. Eating a hotdog complete with mustard, relish, onion and pickle was one of Grandma’s purist joys, but it would wreck her system for days. I’d shake my head when she would intimate to me that she celebrated a particularly fantastic Cubs inning by sending Grandpa out to get her a hot dog. I’d smirk and reply, “How’d that go?” To which she’d say, “Today I’m just relaxing.” The tacit agreement to leave things unsaid. The bus winds around the circular road holding Lau Pa Sat, one of Singapore’s most famous hawker stands, like a crown jewel. It’s a bustling center for kopi and kaya toast in the morning, char kway teow or chicken rice at lunch and satay late into the night, when they close the streets and the scents of grilled skewers and beer take over the central business district. Not a hot dog to be found. As I listen to Grandma chatting on and on about the latest “picture” she’s excited to see at the theater – “That Tom Cruise could park his shoes under my bed anytime,” she loved to say – I imagine her in this space. The aunties running these stalls would fall in love with my grandma, and she with them. She could talk to anyone and everyone, but she also listened deeply. I imagine her ordering what would surely become her usual – a big bowl of noodles perhaps or maybe something deep fried – from a woman who transformed her family recipes into a business. In this sliding door world, Grandma would return to this auntie’s stall every single week and in time would learn her backstory, her children’s names and her dreams for them. She would no doubt make a special trip to be there on the day the auntie’s prodigal son came to visit, home from a break from university, he’s studying business, of course – wants to be an entrepreneur like his mum. My daydream halts as the bus turns on Robinson Road. I’d give anything to have her here with me for real. Even just for one day, one hour. I feel the same today. She died over 11 years ago now, and I still feel a gaping, aching hole in my heart and tears immediately filling my eyes anytime I allow myself to remember how much I miss her. Grandma never did make it to visit me in Singapore, as 24 hours in the air isn’t in the cards for someone who isn’t well enough to attend the Cubs game, but some of my clearest memories of those four years are those when I was simultaneously apart from and together with her chatting on the phone during my commute. These two different realities bridged by a relationship for the ages. No matter where she was or where I was, she was my best friend. Still is. I make my way toward the door and carefully step onto the sidewalk, into the hustle of people channeling into the financial district’s skyscrapers. I spot a waving colleague and point to my phone. She knows who I’m talking to and smiles, giving me space for this ritual. “Grandma, I have to go to work. I promise I’ll see if the show is playing here. I love you.” “I love you love you love you, my Stacey,” she says, always ending in threes for good luck. “And feel better, Grandma,” I said. I couldn’t help myself. “Oh Stacey, Grandpa and I are going dancing today – I’m going to do the cha-cha.” She really was the most wonderful liar, but she will always be my truth. Thanks for reading Anatomy of a Helicopter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mszolthara.substack.com [https://mszolthara.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The Spot

Under a dark sky, with the sun still asleep, I cradle my weary body into the hug of my plush cushioned chair with my newborn son in my arms. As he nurses, I just stare down as his chest rises and falls with the miracle of breath. At just a few weeks old he seems to know my heart, and his tiny fingers softly press into my waist. A hug. Always a kid to say thank you at exactly the moment it will melt your heart, as a young mother I imagined this was his way of thanking me. I would feel the tiny tips of his fingers on my side, his arm slightly arc in, and I knew. I would kiss the top of his head and as if to say, silently, “you’re welcome.” This would become our linkage. Soft, gentle, knowing, connected without actually saying a word. He rests on the pillow as I inspect every millimeter of this small miracle that was so close to being ripped from my body so many times over the past eight months. Did I will him into being? Or was he such a fighter, such a focused spirit, and so connected to me that he performed this miracle of survival all by himself? I do believe in the energy of the universe, and I believe deeply in my own ability to manifest just about anything into existence, but the more I know my son, the more I believe deeply that no one can will him to do anything that he doesn’t already want to. He wanted to be here. And he chose us, he chose me. I lean down to kiss the deep brown birthmark next to his right eye as he lays with his left ear on the pillow. It is just one centimeter from the outward corner, exactly where the smiling lines will crease in time. I often wonder what it will look like when the lines come, and they will, for this boy of mine is a light of joy. I’ve been kissing that mark now for over 14 years. Everything around it has shape shifted, but not fundamentally changed – though I know he feels like it has been a radical change, and I’m sure for a boy in the depths of puberty each day feels like an alien took over. But, to me, it is actually gradients of the same, with that beautiful deep brown birthmark as the anchor – and I kiss it every chance I get. When I lean in to kiss that spot – my spot, because, as I always remind him, I made it! – I put my arm around him and snuggle in, if only for a minute, and the warmth radiates from my heart through my entire being. When he leans in to hug a grandparent or to hold a girlfriend’s hand, I see us in that chair. It’s the place where the ability to love began and where his nature was first revealed. I love to kiss the soft spot between his ever-more-defined jawline and his collarbone. I sneak in to kiss that soft spot both because I fit there and because when I do so it seems to always trigger him wrapping his arm around me, the exact same way he did when I would feed him as an infant. I still love to kiss the top of his mop of gorgeous, shiny brown hair. I inhale him as I softly peck the top of his head. He’s taller than me now and I need to prop up a bit on my tippy toes and tilt his head gently toward me with my palm. People talk about the scent of babies – the tops of their heads that exude that downy-like aroma. But I’ve fallen in love with the scent of adolescence: a mix of hair product, sweat, Calvin Klein Eternity and subtle notes of my baby’s unique pheromones. Bearing witness to a daughter’s natural evolution is somewhat more palpable for a mother in its familiarity and shared lived experience. Watching one’s son shape shift from boy to man is akin to witnessing Bruce Banner morph into the Incredible Hulk, but then you realize that despite the biceps and six pack, the more apt cinematic metaphor is Josh Baskin in Big, waking up one day to find his sweet young soul in a much older man’s exterior, bumbling through his new life, very much in need of his mom. Mornings when he stumbles out of his room in his pajamas and adolescent haze, my breath catches. I try to discreetly hold him in my gaze, to remember (for this moment too is fleeting), and to let him know he is seen and loved in all his iterations, one more handsome than the next, objectively. In these moments when my heart spins off its axis with love for my sweet boy, I gather my attention onto that birthmark I made way back when. There, I know, is the core from where we began and will always live. Thanks for reading Anatomy of a Helicopter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mszolthara.substack.com [https://mszolthara.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]