That wall's dead. Wrapped in plastic.

(Any Twin Peaks fans out there? If not, just disregard the title of this posting and move on to the next paragraph. Thank you.)

That's how it goes: one day, you're just an innocent, well-meaning wall, doing your part in holding up a house, providing a buffer between the working-class kitchen and the showy dining room, and the next, WHAM! You're out of there, stripped and left down to your bones. Goes to show, you've absolutely got to live each day as if it was your last, because, especially if you're a wall in our house, it might be. (Yep, this is the same wall that I posted earlier this week, only, naked.)

Alex scheduled an enormous Dumpster for delivery on Friday morning and was ch-ch-chomping at the bit to get started, but we had dear friends in town on Thursday night so we spent a fun evening out with them and our families hung out together on Friday (puzzles and pretend picnic for the kids, chortling and guffawing for the adults, followed by lunch at Clyde Common for all). And the minute we got home, I took SB up for quiet time and Alex got to work. Poor SB came downstairs, yet again (see the posting "Where It Begins") to life in a hazmat zone: the entire house tarped off and all the floors papered to isolate kitchen, dining room, part of the living room, and entry hall. Any comparisons here to a surgical procedure would be accurate.

We're still waiting for the engineer to approve our plans and size a couple of beams (the walls in question are load bearing), but we started demo to see what we had ahead of us. We pulled most of the lath and plaster off the kitchen side last night after SB went to bed--really disgusting, dirty, but yet satisfying work. Nothing makes you respect the craftsmanship of an old house like tearing it apart, bit by bit.

I was on kid-duty for most of today while Alex spent the morning removing ducts and beginning to pull apart the ceiling in the dining room while SB and I were at swim lessons, garage sales, and the library. He took a little "break" at midday to run a leg in the Rockin Relay marathon relay, then joined SB and I for Ten Tiny Dances, part of Linda K. Johnson's innovative artist in residence project down in the South Waterfront in Portland, before coming home to straighten up a bit and prepare for another day of demo tomorrow. Yes, Alex gives that other renaissance man DaVinci a run for the money.

Me? I'll keep taping floors and taking the kid to swimming lessons and schlepping buckets of plaster out to the Dumpster and arranging our social calendar. And, of course, I'll write about all of it. It's like that old saying, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, blog."

Remove a wall, invigorate a marriage

The tension is palpable. Can you feel it? Gaze upon this pristine expanse of white wall between our dated but functional kitchen and our dark and dreary dining room--but don't get attached to it because starting tomorrow, it'll be gone.

Not entirely gone. We're very noncommittal remodelers and like to draw out the decision-making process for as long as possible, so we're only taking out the top half of the wall, enough to move ductwork and wiring and experiment with just how open we want the space to be. We're on the verge of compromise here: I like an open floor plan, and Alex prefers a bit of separation between kitchen and dining. In this particular case, he should certainly have more say because he's the primary cook in the house. Look at the difference between his sliced cucumbers on the right and mine:



He etched in a pretty design on the skin of the cuke using a lemon zester or something. And this was just for a family dinner, not for guests! I don't bust out the fancy gadgets except when company comes over.

Cucumbers aside, remodeling is one of those things couples do that really smacks of optimism--or naivete. But in our case, let's call it optimism, because Alex and I have been down this road many times before, from the back-breaking work of constructing a brick patio at our first house to the huge tasks of refinishing the attic and remodeling the kitchen in our second house, with myriad other projects of varying complexity in between. Alex does the bulk of the work because he has a better idea of what he's doing. I help with things like planning, prep, demo, clean up, and painting, but he does pretty much everything else--with me at his shoulder asking questions, being annoying, and generally getting on his nerves. And when the going gets particularly dirty, I whisk SB away to safer, cleaner climes. Again, it seems like domestic work falling along gender lines (see my earlier post "Home-living over books and snack?")

But one thing in our marriage that seems to be genderless is the way that our dreams play out on the very structure of our houses. In much the same way that we daydreamed aloud about our shared future before we moved to Portland and while I was pregnant, we also dream (and argue and disagree and concede) together about our houses. We've done this so many times that we can predict each other's concerns before they're voiced, and sometimes rush into a quarrel without even articulating the problem. We know each other's aesthetics, politely acknowledge them, then make impassioned pleas for our own. We bicker and hold grudges and make up--or agree to disagree for the time being: when Alex showed me a mock up for how our new kitchen layout would look, I bit my lip and grimaced, and he smiled and closed his laptop. Remodeling has become a kind of proving ground for our marriage.

And this is where optimism comes in: We don't just move forward again on another project with the simple faith that we'll weather several weeks of disarray, of cracked moldings and shards of plaster, of the inevitable hurt feelings and misunderstandings followed by cold stony silences. We move forward in the face of all that. We move forward anticipating how the eastern light from the kitchen windows will dance on the dining room table at breakfast, whether by way of a large pass-through or a completely opened space. We move forward feeling grateful and lucky that after fifteen years together we're still in motion at all--moving in roughly the same direction, toward the same general end.

Koyaanisqatsi: when trashy magazines make you think

I don't know if it was the bliss of being on vacation--the blinding white sandy shores of Lake Take beaches, the lack of concern about time of day or day of week, the endless array of high calorie foods at my fingertips--but the trashy magazines I read last week were particularly good. Okay, so InStyle and Glamour were as mindlessly entertaining as usual, but I dogeared several pages of Domino (homemade tortillas! assembling a low-key picnic basket! exposed plywood and Formica countertops!) and got completely engrossed in Esquire's "Portrait of a School Shooter as a Young Man" and Stephen Marche's "A Thousand Words About Our Culture" column in which he posits that violence is innate to human existence and that "purification through violence" is a "necessary inheritance, perhaps, of a revolutionary nation's birth in blood."

Not exactly beach reading, nor was it very surprising that Esquire would publish such good stuff since the magazine's been eminently readable and thoughtful for years--especially if you skip the sillier bits about the world record for kicking oneself in the head (FYI: 77 times in one minute). So, instead, the award for most surprisingly satisfying beach reading goes to ... the August issue of Cookie magazine.

The thing is I started getting a free subscription to Cookie as a thank you gift for something that I don't even remember right now. And I've always treated the magazine like InStyle or my public broadcasting member's magazine: something to flip through while waiting for the dentist or as something to look at while eating breakfast at the kitchen counter. So I was surprised to find the magazine addressing the following "hot" topics in the parenting world:

1. No gift parties ("Party Police"): SB has had three birthday parties and all of them have been "no gifts, please" events. Though part of my motivation was so our friends wouldn't feel pressured to run out and buy a gift but could just come and celebrate with us, I sheepishly have to admit that writer Sally Schultheiss called a spade a spade when she writes that these parties are really "control masquerading as consideration." Personally, I love attending no gift parties because I am one of the most disorganized and indecisive moms on the planet. But on the birthday home front, would I mind so much if SB received only books and cute clothes made by indie designers? Of course, not. But I also get that the jig (i.e., controlling every aspect of my kid's life) will soon be up. The girl's getting savvy to the ways of the world, including the tradition of receiving loot wrapped in shiny paper a couple of times a year.

2. Gender disappointment ("Girl Crazy"): Okay, this piece about a woman who wanted a daughter but got sons wasn't particularly fresh or revelatory, but it made me wonder if it's not merely the fact of having children that changes people--what changes us most profoundly is that we have the children that we have.

When I was twenty weeks pregnant, Alex and I stood beside our car in the parking lot of my doctor's office discussing whether we should find out our baby's sex. We both felt sure it would be a boy and were stunned to hear an hour later that we were wrong. There was no lasting disappointment, but in that moment, I felt my imagined future shift along assumed gender lines: instead of having a son who would adore and champion me for all time, I'd have a daughter who would hate me in fourteen years but, if I was lucky, would then find her way back to me in twenty years. I became a mother of a daughter that day--my posture more protective and watchful, my efforts geared toward preparing her for future challenges. I don't think that I would have been more carefree as the mother of a son, but because parent-child relationships are intuitive and responsive--not only to children as people but also to the way they are positioned in the world--I'm certain that I would be a different person today in ways that I can't fully imagine.

3. How many children to have ("More or Less"): Four writers explain the number of children that they have. This one resonates with me on so many levels, so much so that I have to save it for another post. . . .

Mommy Crush #176

Forty-one-year-old mother qualifies for her fifth Olympics and, in the process, breaks the U.S. record in the 50-meter freestyle? Yes, please.

Though this is reason enough to cheer swimmer Dara Torres on next month, if you haven't already read the New York Times magazine profile of her, you must, at the very least, check out the photo of her in a bikini. ("A Swimmer of a Certain Age," in the June 29, 2008 issue) She's got a bod like no mom I've ever seen (and I've seen some tight Portland moms rollerblading, biking, and running their way through town).

I was so impressed that I showed the photo to my husband, who simply said, "Wow." SB asked to see it, too, and, looking concerned, asked, "What's wrong with her tummy? Why does it look like that?" Of course, she's never seen a six-pack before. (Neither have I on my body. Ever.)

Turns out, Torres drops something like $100K on a staff of folks (including a nanny) who help her make her body what it is: a lean, mean, racing machine. This staff includes two "stretchers" who watch for tensions and asymmetries in her body as she's training and then "mash"--contort, flex, massage, and stretch--her muscles a couple of hours a day, three times a week. The result is a body that earns admiring comments like, "Look at the way her scapula is traveling!" (If anyone complimented my scapula, I'd be set up with enough self-esteem to last for days.)

With cyclists being kicked out of the Tour and baseball player testifying before congressional committees, all eyes have been on Torres because she's been too good for too long. But she volunteered for a pilot program to test broadly for signs of doping because she's got nothing to hide. Girl's not on drugs: she's got bank.

Sure, I might not spend any extra cash I have trying to get another couple of medals for my trophy room, and don't ask me to speculate about her home life. But, after battling bulimia during college, landing this side of two divorces, and struggling with years of infertility, Torres now seems to have accepted exactly who she is: an extremely competitive person who's not letting age or gender get in the way of winning. It's hard not to admire that.

Home-living over books and snack?

Where does my daughter get her love of domestic chores? Here she is, voluntarily sweeping the porch with my BFF's adorable son.

From a very young age, SB has always been a regular in the home living area of her daycare, which is decked out with a play kitchen, dining room, couch, dress-up clothes, and baby dolls. During free play time, home living is a "choice"; there are lots of other "choices," including doing art, playing at the sensory table, reading in the library, and having a snack. But her teacher tells me that, 90 percent of the time, SB makes a beeline for home living to cook, clean, and take care of babies.

"She picks that over snack and books?" I asked, incredulous, wondering if this small person has been paying attention at all to how things go down at our house.

I mean, I rarely choose to hang out in the home-living section of our house. Alex likes to cook meals, even on weeknights; I could subsist on take-out and finger foods. He does a lot of the cleaning, too; I haven't touched the toilet or cat litter box in years (still coasting on the whole "pregnant women shouldn't clean the cat box for fear of contracting toxoplasmosis" rule). I specialize in fun domestic chores like making elaborate desserts and storing bulk foods in attractive containers and scheduling social activities.

In my observations of my friends' domestic lives, this arrangement seems fairly common--not at all as unusual as it might have been a generation or two ago. And it turns out that this kind of equity in domestic chores will at least keep us in the business of being a country: Did anyone catch the New York Times Magazine cover story this week, "No Babies?" It's fascinating look at how birth rates are dropping so drastically that some European countries are facing population declines and demographic shifts that are, according to one professor, "pathological." Some sociologists think one of the causes for this decline is the growing tension between traditional and modern roles of women: studies show that women who do the majority of the housework and child care have fewer children than those who have partners who "share the load."

But population replacement rates aside, I assumed this gender role shake up would somehow be visible in my daughter, evident in a kind of genderlessness--you know, playing with trains in a princess dress, bouncing a ball while rocking a baby to sleep. But maybe it's only been confusing to her? When she was about two, she commented that "Daddies go to the office and mommies stay home," and I corrected her by naming off all the working moms (myself included) she knew. But the reality/perception thing baffled her for months.

She's getting older, though, and figuring it out: A couple of months ago, she told me she was choosing art because she didn't like to clean up the home-living section after she was done playing. And a couple of weeks ago, she remarked, "Dada's a good cooker and cleaner. He's the boss of the house." Then she hurriedly added, "But Mama's the boss."

"Sure," I said, my defensiveness immediately quelled by the formula of Mama=omnipotent, Dada=middle management.

Then she wandered off to cook in her play kitchen, reciting a list of things she was going to pick up at the grocery store--after she was done with her "deadline." Aha. She's been watching us after all.