Category: Inside Lane

I swim in a pretty small social pond.  It is mainly comprised of middle class, moderate-to-well educated, straight, white people.  Most of us are fiscally conservative, and are socially moderate-to-liberal.  Of my core group of friends, over half would self-identify as some strain of Protestant Christian.  We are all gainfully employed, all with children, mortgages, and car payments, and most of us are able to take pretty decent vacations.  We are rather homogeneous.

You know what you get when your gene pool is too small?  You get birth defects.  You get diseases like hemophilia.  You get the Habsburg Jaw.

You know what you get when your social gene pool is too small?  You get malformed ideas of society.  You become blind to the world at large.  You can turn ugly.

Diversity is important.  It is important genetically, and it is important socially.  It is vital.

I have been incredibly fortunate to live in major metropolitan areas, where diversity is not hard to come by.  I have worked in wonderfully diverse places, and at each one I have come up against my own privilege and prejudices that I would otherwise never have know were crowding my mind.  And, every single time I’ve had to stretch my mentality to accommodate a new truth based on that diversity, it has been ugly.

Why can’t I comment on the texture of your hair?  Why should I have to curtail my sense of humor for you?  Why do I have to learn a new pronoun?

Bottom line every time is that I can’t, shouldn’t, or must because it is a human being staring down the barrel of my verb, and my job is to do unto others as is my own entitled expectation of service.

Because I don’t want you asking about my body.  Because I don’t think your rape jokes are funny.  Because I want you to respect my femininity.

Because it doesn’t cost me anything to treat you well and respect your wishes.

My internet social group is much more diverse than my IRL crew.  I am daily and eternally grateful to these people who challenge my blue-eyed view of the world.

If my worldview is a jungle, my friends are explorers, researchers, doctors, architects, engineers, and adventurers whacking through old growth and underbrush, smoothing out paths, clearing out space for new ideas until I suddenly find myself halfway down a super-highway of new philosophies, new empathies, and new love and respect for the diversity around me.

Like I said, it is always painful.  Growth is painful.  If, when you are working out, pain is weakness leaving your body, then when you are opening yourself to learn about new people outside your comfort zone, pain is small-mindedness leaving your heart.  If it’s hurting, it’s working.  You are being separated from ideologies that are so ingrained, it is like taking off a layer of skin.  That’s a good thing.

We’re all just people.  We’re all just trying to get by.  Imagine how much easier that would be if each of us was intent on making the road just a little smoother for the guy to the right.  Because, to the guy on the left, you’re the guy on the right.

While you are Passing Over, He is Risen-ing, Ridvaning, or just Spring-ing, take a look at the guy to your right.  Make his road a little easier to walk.

I’ve been planning my participation in the Listen to Your Mother Austin show like some women plan for their weddings.  I have an outfit, shoes, jewelry, hair and makeup all queued up, and you might laugh to know that most of it came on the advice of my mother.

In my piece for LTYM, I’m talking a lot about how my mother influenced me.  I barely touch on the fashion, but if anyone has ever complimented my style, it’s my mother who helped make that happen.

When she was expecting me, she couldn’t afford maternity clothes, so she learned to sew.  She started making her own maternity items, and after I was born, continued sewing the most amazing clothes for me.  Everywhere I went, I was always dressed to the nines, right down to the ruffles on my butt.  My mother made every formal gown I ever wore, and the only reason she didn’t make my wedding gown is that I wanted us to still like each other by the time I walked down the aisle.  Nothing like being your mother’s human pin cushion to strain a relationship.

Everything she did was spectacular.  All seams were always even.  All fabric patterns matched perfectly.  Nothing buckled, nothing warped, nothing made so much as a wrinkle.  I don’t have that kind of patience.

What I did take away from all her work was an understanding of how to mix fabrics, patterns, and shapes effectively.  So, when I started shoe shopping for LTYM, along with sharing pictures of what I was liking with my Facebook, I was messaging her.

I explained the outfit, the jewelry, and sent her pictures of my shoe options.  Like a pro, she got back to me and confirmed exactly what I expected.  And it made me really happy to know that I had properly anticipated her response.  Even happier when I sent her pictures of the jewelry against the outfit and she declared it, “Perfect.”

Because no one knows the hours I have spent in JoAnn’s fabric store with that women, trying to find Perfect!

Listen, when I was a kid, I hated shopping with my mother because she would never let me buy what I wanted, and she would pick out these terrible outfits for me to try on.  What I hated most was how right she always was.  The things I chose–even when they were designer labels–looked cheap and tacky on me, and the things she picked out–no matter how cheap–always looked like they’d been made for me.

She did the same thing to me with my wedding dress!  I had picked out all these gowns I loved, and she pulled this limp looking thing off the rack and begged me to just try it on.  I put it on first to get it out of the way, then had five ladies following me around the boutique trying to buy it off my back while I was deciding whether, or not to admit she’d nailed it in our first five minutes in the store.  (I admitted it.  The Universe smiled on me, and not only was it on sale, it was on double double sale.)

As an adult I can appreciate her eye for shape and color.  As a teen, I just wanted to wear the day-glo yellow scuba dress.

I’d still like to wear the day-glo yellow scuba dress, but I carry my mother’s voice in my head, and when I’m shopping, I look at my choices through years of experience with her exacting eye.  I think I look the better for it.

Here are a few more of the gowns she made for me.

The Listen To Your Mother Austin cast had our first table read yesterday.  I walked away feeling warm and hopeful, and really fortunate to have my mother, and to have my son.

When I sent in my original essay to start my LYTM audition process, I didn’t have expectations.  I didn’t even tell anyone until I’d secured an actual audition.  Almost anyone.  I got my most difficult audience out of the way before I had even heard back from the LYTM producers:  my mom.

My mom isn’t a difficult audience because she is a critic–quite the contrary.  She’s my biggest fan.  But, she was my most difficult audience because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to read the piece to her aloud without crying.  I didn’t either.  I think I got three paragraphs in before I started meeping, and had to choke out the last four because…my mom.

Still, I managed.  I read it aloud to her because she deserved to hear it before anyone else, and because if the essay had any success at all, it was down to her.  No Mom, No Essay.

Then, I took the piece to audition.  I made it most of the way through before I started to cry.

See, I love my parents–most of us do.  I don’t think I am any special case when it comes to that, but I do think my mom is a special case when it comes to being a mother.  Is she perfect?  No.  Are any of us?  Uh-uh.  But in her humanity, she took everything she had good in her, and used it for me.  She took everything dark in her, and shoved it down as deep as it would go, and did her best to keep it from me.  She absolutely did the very best she could, and you can’t ask for more than that.

I am one of those people who worries, “What if this is the last time I see Joe?”  Every morning when I drop off my son at school, I watch him walk away and think, “If this was it…”  Then I pull myself up short and turn on Sports Radio because that is a terrible way to start a morning.  But that concern colors my interactions with the people I love.  If this was the last conversation, did I leave it with your total assurance that beyond all of the minutiae of life, I love you?

I wanted to read the essay to my mom because if the piece wasn’t selected for audition, or if the audition didn’t go well, or if I got cast, but something terrible happened before I could perform it for her, I wanted her to have heard it first. I believe in eulogizing the living.  It doesn’t do the dead a lick of good.

My son wandered up while I was reading it to her, and he leaned against me.  Maybe one of the greatest gifts I can give him is to let him see my willingness to be vulnerably in love with his extended family.  Love exposes us more than any other emotion.  I want him to know that the exposure is worth the risk.

At the cast read, I was first in the line of order.  No relaxing into it.  Just feet first.  Cold water.  A room full of peers, some of whom are six rungs up the ladder from where I want to be.  What was coming?  Judgment?  Critique?  What?  Extreme vulnerability is what.  But my mom is worth the risk, so I jumped in.

I made it all the way to the last paragraph before my nerves shook the tears out of me.  That’s a win!  And there was no judgment.  Just appreciation.

We went in a circle, each woman reading out of her vulnerability because the risk was worth it.  Each story came from a tender place, an honest place, and a hopeful place.  Each story was about how the risk of love is worth the vulnerability of exposure, whether it is love for a mother, a child, a friend, or for yourself.

In part of my essay, I talk about how my mother’s unwavering faith in my ability has meant that even when I know I can’t win at something (like any sport, ever), I can still enjoy the process of losing.  I’m not embarrassed, or afraid of failing–I don’t like it, but I don’t let not liking it keep me from trying.  And that’s all my mother in me.  That is 100% because of her.

I hope if you’re near Austin, you’ll come out to the show.  I’d like you to get to hear me say the words out loud, and let you get a look at my mom, who will be in the audience.  I’d like her to hear your applause because the audience is really for her.  I’m just the voice getting to tell you what a fantastic mother she is.

Buy tickets here.

Robyn and I have been dancing in place, trying to hold it together long enough to wait for pre-order links before showing you the cover of Mommie Diarist.  Well, we have them, and HERE IT IS!

Motherhood makes you crazy. There is no function of life that will make you more certifiably insane.  Whether you are crazy in love, crazy busy, or just being driven up the wall, there is no insanity more worthwhile.  Mommie Diarist is about the good, the bad, and the boldfaced.  It is a collection of honest essays about the hardest and best job in the world.

We’re so happy with the collection, that we’re already working on Volume 2.

Order from Amazon at this link, or from Barnes & Noble here.

The book features essays from Virginia Woodruff, Emily Reese, Dona Hightower Perkins, Gina Curvin, Sheila Rosenberg, Susan Olson, Jackie Hennessey, Nanci Rathbun, Sharon Laidlaw-Almaguer, Kristin Vanderhey Shaw, and yours truly, Robyn Rasberry and Lane Buckman.

Personally, I could identify with something in every essay I read.  I know you’ll find something that touches you.

Tickets are on sale for Listen To Your Mother Austin!

There are two shows on April 25, one at 3pm, and one at 7pm.  Of course, I will be at both, telling you about how awesome my mother is.

This past weekend, we drove up to Oklahoma City.  On the way, we did a lot of talking, and Mom mentioned something that had happened when I was in elementary school, and I was amazed at how she had managed to normalize what was a tense situation.  See, when I was in early elementary school, my bus driver took me for an extra long ride.  He skipped my stop, dropped off all the other kids, and kind of drove off with me.

My recollection was of being out joyriding in the school bus.  My mother’s recollection was of having herds of people out looking for me, preparing to call the police, but finding the bus driver’s father first.  The bus driver’s father found the bus, me inside, and got me back to my mother.  My father paid a visit to the bus driver’s house.

I never knew it was more than me just getting to go a few extra miles down the road.  Way to go Lane’s Parents!  This meant I was never afraid to get on the school bus (with a different driver.)  I just had extra instruction about what to do if my bus driver ever missed my stop again.

How about this shot of my mother, my grandmother and me, visiting one of the old plantations in Eufala, Alabama?  Wasn’t I dainty?  I remember how much I loved those shoes.

I have been extremely fortunate to be surrounded by strong women, who valued education, and made sure I had a good one–bus drivers be damned.  There are millions of girls who are not so fortunate, and some of them end up involved in prostitution, trafficking, and addiction.  The good news is that there are groups like Magdalene and Thistle Farms.  I encourage you to check them out and support them by buying their awesome products, or adding them to your list of charities.