Perchance to Dream

“Mom?”

It was 10:04 p.m. From my late-evening slouch in the living room -- laptop on knee, butt in beanbag, hot tea within reach – I heard a plaintive call.  A familiar call. 

“Mama?”

A far, far, far too familiar call. 

Kid, you are eight years old. We are supposed to be at least four years past this phase.  To quote the title of a delightfully popular picture book that is definitely not intended not for actual children, Go the &$%# to Sleep.

I wanted to yell these things.  I wanted to morph into Mean Mommy, righteous monster of late-night annoyance.  However, long experience has taught me that anger and frustration will not solve this particular problem, but will instead turn it into a hideous nightmare of anguish, guilt and despair.

I heaved my complaining self out of my comfort zone.  I marched the six steps into the twins’ room.  I scrambled up the ladder of their exciting new Big Kid Loft.  On the left, Molly was a faintly snoring quilt-lump.  On the right…

I couldn’t see her face distinctly in the dimness of the multi-colored nightlight, but I could tell she was half propped on one elbow, a tiny huge-eyed figure amidst a wallowing sea of plush, crochet, and fleece.  One arm was wrapped around an old teddy.  The ample bulk of Winnie the Pooh dwarfed her back.  An assorted heap of other fuzzy creatures spilled across the area that would have contained legs, had the bed been occupied by a more-than-pint-sized human. 

“What’s up, Lizzy?” I whispered.

“It’s…”  She hesitated, desperate tension in her voice.  She knew she wasn’t supposed to be awake.  She knows she’s not supposed to call for me.  “It’s so… lonely.”

Seriously, kid?  Your twin sister’s mattress is, like TWO FEET away from yours.  Our family of four lives in a cabin that totals less than a thousand square feet, with no real internal doors. 

But this was no calculated manipulation, prevarication, or ploy.  This was the distress of a child who had spent the past forty minutes lying silently in the dark, waiting in vain for sleep, and fighting the shameful urge to beg for my help.   It was ten at night, and Lizzy was truly, deeply lonely -- a miniature, solitary insomniac.

For a long time, I didn’t think of her as an insomniac.  No one has an “insomniac” infant, because all newborns are insomniacs.  Whoever invented the phrase “sleeping like a baby” has never hung out with a minuscule person who doesn’t know the difference between day and night, and is planning to triple her bodyweight in one year via a ludicrously tedious sucking process. 

Before the kids were born, I tried to mentally prepare myself.  I knew that being the mother of twins would mean that I’d be a sleep-deprived-lunatic-milk-factory for a while.  For the first few months, I took the mayhem in stride.  The fact that I was finishing my PhD at the same time could be considered an additional exonerating circumstance, couldn’t it? Molly had some Gassy Infant issues that made her somewhat crankier than her sister, and Lizzy woke up every time I tried to transfer her off my lap, but who was really counting?  I mean, maybe I hadn’t showered in days and couldn’t remember my own name, but that was normal, right?

It was only when we’d passed the six-month-mark, when baby flatulence seemed under control, and when I’d sent all my dissertation chapters to be bound in hardcover ready for their glorious new life gathering dust in Rasmuson Library, that it dawned on me that other babies did this amazing thing called “sleeping through the night” – not to mention “spontaneously napping” and “falling asleep in cribs”.  Some friends of mine actually possessed such infants!  Jay and I wanted to be just like those people! 

So, we did what exhausted, frustrated parents do: we acquired vast amounts of entirely conflicting advice from friends, family, and iffy internet sites, and then misapplied it in a messy hodge-podge.  

We tried fixed routines.  We tried lights, music, nursing the kids to sleep, rocking them to sleep, going for not-really-necessary drives, putting them in mechanical swings, and endlessly dragging them around the frozen woods in sleds.  I recall, with appalling clarity, a night when we took turns swinging two car seats – one in each arm, like horribly awkward metronomes -- until our shoulder joints were on the verge of dislocating, because it was the only way to make the screaming stop.  PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE JUST MAKE THE SCREAMING STOP.

Eventually, desperate, we tried Cry It Out.  Yeah, I know, I know: there are strong proponents and even more vociferous opponents of this method of baby sleep-training.  Is it cruel abandonment of a helpless infant, or is it a sensible way to teach necessary self-soothing skills?  I belonged to neither camp, really.  I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.  All I knew was that there were books and articles that told me, unequivocally, that a baby will learn, relatively quickly, to calm the heck down and sleep.

Yeah.  One baby will. 

I can attest that Cry It Out TOTALLY works.  Molly cried for perhaps twenty minutes the first night, and for shorter periods of time each subsequent evening, until she gave just a token ten-second whimper before snoring her bald little head off.  Yup, those childcare gurus sure knew what they were talking about! 

Except that while Molly was snoring, Lizzy was screaming.

And screaming.

And screaming.

We let her go for two hours.  TWO HOURS.  Anyone who has ever heard a full-on baby-wail for ten seconds … well, you still can’t imagine what it’s like to hear YOUR baby howling in red-faced choking despair for a goddamned eternity.  It was Hades -- complete with the three-headed dog, the hydra’s fifty black gaping jaws, and Tisiphone lashing a whip at the adamantine gates of Tartarus.  While my baby’s torment escalated from woe to fear to abject terror, I hid my head under a pillow and sobbed.

The empathy was crippling.  I couldn’t remember my own infancy, of course – and my parents tell me that I was a reasonable sleeper, anyhow.  But I do remember the later years of childhood, when – despite being generally able to sleep – I occasionally spent what seemed like decades lying awake.  I had all kinds of strategies to try to help myself.  I took stuffed toys to bed.  I took a red plastic truck to bed.  I tucked the covers super-tight.  I did math problems in my head.  (You don’t doubt this, do you?  No, of course you don’t.) 

I remember the shame of having the dentist ask me, when I was five, whether the incipient protrusion of my front teeth might be due to thumb-sucking?  “No, no!” I told him.  Technically, I didn’t suck my thumb, I sucked my index finger – but I knew myself to be a despicable little liar, nonetheless.  I remember hunching under the covers in rigid torment, trying to fall asleep without that oral comfort.  I’d wake with a start in the darkness to find that the Evil Finger had somehow crept into my mouth again.  I’d start all over, lying on my hands to prevent cheating, and giving myself pins and needles in the process. 

In particular, falling asleep in an unfamiliar bed was torture.  I recall one New Year’s Eve when my parents enjoyed the rare thrill of attending a Real Grownup Party, and left my sister and me with Grandma and Grandpa.  This was safe and familiar territory -- and yet, even as Sarah snoozed blissfully next to me on the fold-out couch, I heard the abysmal ticking of the living-room clock like mocking thunder.  Nine o’clock.  Ten o’clock.  Eleven.  I didn’t WANT to ring in 1979!  Do you know how long it takes to get to midnight, alone in the dark?  There are geologic epochs that have been shorter.   

As a parent, having a long memory and a modicum of empathy kind of sucks. It puts you on a guilty hook from which there is no escape.  On that terrible Cry It Out evening, Lizzy and I were both shaking with adrenalin and exhaustion, with fear and grief, by the time I finally – finally! – picked up my two-hours-howling baby. Dripping with remorse and milk, I nursed my tiny human to, at last, an uneasy sleep.

I swore to myself, after Cry It Out, that I was never going to do that to my kid again.  She needed my help going to sleep?  Fine.  I no longer cared if I was doing it all wrong.  I no longer cared if I wasn’t going to get to sleep through the night until she hit middle school.  Screw you, parenting manuals.  I’m her mommy.    

At age two, Lizzy still needed me to stand by her crib rubbing her back until she fell asleep -- a position that really did wonders for my spine -- but both kids were, finally, sleeping through the night.  Normally, that is.  There were still nights when Lizzy had nightmares.  Screaming, shaking, terrible nightmares.  What horrors does someone dream about, when they aren’t yet old enough for preschool, when the scariest motion picture they’ve viewed involves Dora the Explorer, and when their greatest accomplishment to date has been successful potty usage?  Two-year-olds are not very good at describing their dreams.  Two-year-olds are not, in fact, very good at knowing the difference between dreams and reality. 

I had nightmares as a child, too.  Vivid, awful, sweating nightmares from which I had trouble waking myself.  In preschool, I dreamed again and again that there were monsters in the basement.  They were lurking behind the dollhouse.  They would come and get me, if I made even the tiniest sound.  They dined on children, they had a particular appetite for chubby little three-year-olds, and they were VERY HUNGRY.  To this day, my dreams are overly vivid.  I refuse to divulge any of them, lest Nurse Ratched takes it upon herself to medicate me – but at least I now know that they are only dreams.  Usually.

Ten o’clock at night. Eight years old. Wistfully, Lizzy sighed, “I wish you could sleep in my bed with me.”  She knows I’m not going to, so this isn’t manipulation.  It’s just… what she wishes – fervently and wholeheartedly.  One of the reasons that Lizzy adores camping trips is that, although she has to leave behind her familiar bed, she gets to sleep right next to us.  Or, in the confines of a small tent, sometimes partially on top of us, all friendly-like.  Welcome to the Grand Canyon!  Your kids will be sleeping on your head for the next five days!  Have a great hike! 

Everyone knows that lots of little kids will throw a fit, demand a million stories, beg for water, and any number of other antics to delay the final “good night”.  Popular wisdom also decrees that, duh, parents shouldn’t cater to this crap.  But where is the line between what is crap and what is genuine?  When is a kid demanding Mommy’s or Daddy’s attention in order to be a pain in the ass, and when is does a kid really need that attention?  My parents will undoubtedly admit that I was always more of a procrastinating, demanding whiner about bedtimes than Sarah was.  But was that because I was an intrinsically annoying little beast, or was it because Sarah always fell happily into nightmare-free sleep in ten seconds flat?

Over the years, Jay and I have given a lot of ground, in the name of sleep.  I never meant to be one of those uber-lactaters whose chunky toddlers stroll up and use full sentences to request a tasty warm beverage straight from the source.  Nonetheless, I nursed the twins at bedtime and naptime until they were two and a half, not only because they were really, really into it, but also because it was necessary for sleep.  When I finally weaned them, Molly grumbled a bit, but was assuaged with extra hugs and kisses.  Lizzy, however, needed her pacifier. 

Binky didn’t go away until we hit the kids’ fifth birthday, and Mommy and Daddy drew the line.  I didn’t want to relive my own humiliating confrontation with the dentist.  I didn’t want to have a kindergartener with a furtive collection of rubber nipples.  Even then, it was a miserable transition.  It wasn’t that Lizzy didn’t understand.  It wasn’t that she didn’t want -- and try -- to be a Big Girl.  But sleep did not come easily – to put it mildly.  Sometimes she lay in bed, compliant but miserable, for more than two hours before she finally conked out.  Could I blame her for calling me back every ten minutes to share, if only a little, in her lonely ordeal?

Things got better.  Sleep arrived faster.  Lizzy’s nightmares have also become less traumatic, over the years.  The going-to-bed routine has become, bit by tiny bit, easier.  Brush teeth.  Listen to a story.  And, for the past couple of years, read a story to yourself, too – but nothing too stressful.  Nothing too scary.  No Roald Dahl, and DEFINITELY no Harry Potter.  How about some Beverly Cleary?  Ribsy?  Henry and the Paper Route?  Good choice, good choice.   Snuggle down.  Close your eyes.  Winnie the Pooh is right here.  Sure, I’ll give you another kiss.

Yes, things improved.  But at age eight, there was another sleep transition to be weathered.  After five years of slumbering in a mini bunk bed designed to fit the four-foot-long crib mattresses, it was time for the twins to move to their Big Kid Loft.  Poor Molly, the taller twin, had been complaining of the cramped quarters for months.  She was fully four inches longer than her old mattress by the time Jay and I finally finished the new space and gave her a bigger one.  She moved into her new bed with joy and alacrity. 

The other twin… not so much.

Five months later, itching to get rid of the lumbering old bunks, Jay and I finally forced the issue.  The resulting drama was thick enough for an After School Special.

Four minutes after ten o’clock at night.  “Lizzy, we’re all here in the same cabin.  We love you, kiddo.  You’re safe.  You’re warm.  You don’t need to feel lonely.”

 “You get to have Daddy in your bed,” she sighed. 

“Well, but…” Parenting is full of these awesomely terrible and potentially creepy conversational segues.  How, I wondered, do I argue that Mommy sleeping with Daddy is different from Lizzy sleeping with – well, anyone?   

Or… is it? 

We humans are deeply, irrevocably, evolutionarily social creatures.  Lacking decent night vision – not to mention any sort of useful claws, canine teeth, sprinting potential, or armored hides -- we are pathetically vulnerable, especially at night.  Even the most stalwart of caveman warriors, armed with the most up-to-date flint spear, would have been jackal-meat on his own.  Not only did he need half a dozen other warriors at this back, but maybe he also needed the sharp-eared teenager to call the warning, the crone at the fire making sure it never went out, the grandfather gently guarding a lap full of toddlers… and perhaps even the wide-eyed little girl who just might be the first to spot some new danger. 

I’m not going to sleep with my children, because it doesn’t jive well with my 21^st-century first-world lifestyle – but maybe I’m swimming against the tide.  Maybe I have to admit that we’re not really hard-wired to sleep alone. 

Lizzy was way ahead of me.  She informed me that when she’s grown up, and gets to choose everything for herself, she is going to ALWAYS have someone else in her bed.  Maybe several people.

“Well… gosh.  That sounds awfully… cozy, Lizzy.”  I’m all in favor of you making your own adult choices, even if they are, um, unusual.  “Will Winnie the Pooh still be there, too?”

“Yeah.  Of course he will.”

“I love you, kiddo.”  Really, you have no idea how much.  “Sleep tight.  Sleep tight.”

And she did.

Mirror, mirror

“Hi!”

I looked up in surprise, expecting to see one of my daughters demanding my attention – but no, they were happily whacking each other with pool noodles several meters away. Instead, I was being addressed by an unknown plump and energetic bundle of purple ruffled bathing suit, green inflatable ring, and half-wet brown curls.  She struggled and splashed all the way across the shallow end to accost me.  Having reached her goal, she thrust her face close to mine, and examined me from a distance that reflected both intense curiosity and juvenile optic focal distances.

“Hi,” she repeated. She didn’t wait for a response, but pressed on.  “Tell me why your eye is like that!  What’s wrong with it?  Tell me the story of your eye!”

My first reaction was delight. I’m a sucker for the honest charm of a kindergarten-aged person who has not yet had her curiosity subsumed by politeness.  Besides, the idea that my right eye has its very own “story” seemed to elevate its status from useless orb to mythic legend.

That was my first thought.  My second thought was, “Ugh… is it really that obvious a whole pool-width away?” 

I try not to be self-conscious about the many, many ways in which I do not meet the American Standard of Beauty – but that’s a tall order.  Magazines, movies, and my flickering computer screen all tout these exacting criteria with maniacal zealotry.  Are your teeth too stained?  Is your hair unmanageable?  Are your thighs too plump? Is your waist too plump?  Are your arms too plump?  Is everything too plump, because, goddammit, we’re really into fat-shaming you?  Are your toes unattractive?  Do you, perchance, have a mismatched, wandering, blind right eye?  

I’m not the only one who’s mightily pissed off about this, of course.  I’ve seen oodles of articles and photos that profess to tear the Western Standard of Beauty off its skinny, glossy pedestal.  I’ve seen websites and Facebook posts featuring photos of women who are older, heavier, saggier, smaller-breasted, or more racially diverse than the standards that we see in magazines and on billboards.   Men don’t really prefer skinny girls!  Everything you see is photo-shopped!  The average woman is a size [some-bigger-number], not a size [some-smaller-number].  Our beauty standards should be broader!  Our beauty standards should include average women!

Glancing at this oh-so-well-intentioned propaganda, I’ve often felt as if I ought to be hollering its message from bell-towers, and maybe shooting off a few fireworks for added emphasis.  Hey! Mainstream media!  If you tell us one more time that we should hate ourselves for how we look, things are gonna get ugly with this Roman candle!  At the very least, I should be “liking” and “sharing”, shouldn’t I?  And yet, somehow, I haven’t been.  All that UpWorthy hasn’t made me feel Up, or Worthy.  And for a long time, I didn’t really know why.

There in the pool, I must have hesitated for a microsecond, because my little interlocutor elaborated, and pointed. “That eye’s smaller.  And lower down or something, maybe. And you keep closing it and not opening it.  I mean, not even opening it at all!”

I laughed.  “Well, it’s blind,” I explained.  “I didn’t even notice that I was keeping it closed, because I can’t see anything from it, anyhow.”  Also, as far as I could tell from the choking fumes, the pool chlorine was dialed up to roughly 50% of the lethal dose for carbon-based life-forms.  My right eye may be blind, but I guess it has some independent-minded self-preservation instincts.  Independent-minded, and asymmetrical.

Asymmetrical?  Is it even possible to be self-conscious about facial asymmetry, of all things?

Well, yeah.  Circa 1991, for a class in biological anthropology, I read a journal article that professed to debunk our ridiculous American standards of beauty – using actual science and cutting-edge cross-cultural research.  Skinny is a local fashion, not a universal standard! This article seemed to be full of hope for a college-aged misfit such as myself.  I was yearning to be told that I did not need to be thin to be acceptable.  I was desperate to learn that I did not need to have shiny blonde tresses, to boast perfect skin and a button nose, or to wear flirty skirts and mascara in order to be potentially desirable.  And, indeed, the article promised to do exactly that.  It reported that broad cross-cultural studies showed that only three qualities of feminine beauty were universal.  What were these standards?  Youthfulness, a waist-to-hip ratio close to 0.70, and facial symmetry. 

Pool Child was not done with me yet.  She needed to know how my specific peculiarity fit into the known peculiarities of her small world.  “That’s different from Lou,” she told me, after I’d explained my congenital cataract in terms understandable by the under-six set.  “Lou’s eyes go different, but not blind.”

“She has trouble getting both eyes to track together?  To look the same way?” I hazarded.

“Lou is a BOY,” the child corrected me, marginally offended by my foolish error.

Ah.  Well, maybe Lou doesn’t need to be so concerned about the beauty-related ramifications of the fact that he’s wall-eyed.  Or cross-eyed.  Or something.  Asymmetrical, anyhow.

Facial asymmetry isn’t exactly a phrase that rolls off the tongue (nor is it the name of a bad garage band.)  It also isn’t a quality I had at age nineteen.  Or could have.  Ever.  Back in the previous millennium, the tough truth was right there in black and white (because journal articles were printed on a substance known as “paper”).  I’d already been agonizing for years about my many, many other flaws.  And now this: facial symmetry.  I remember putting down that stapled, photocopied piece of literature with a feeling of bleak fatalism.  Screw you, world.  Screw you, and your immutable universal standards.

My best friend tried to cheer me up.  He wrapped a tape measure around my not-terribly small waist and my more-than-ample hips, and grinned at me.  A ratio of almost exactly 0.70!  Ergo, I was beautiful!  He hugged me as warmly as any man who has zero interest in the wide-hipped gender can possible hug.

“Lou sometimes only looks with one eye, though, because of seeing two of everything.” Pool Child tells me about Lou at some length.  Lou is a grownup. A grownup boy?  Well, okay.  Aren’t we all?  Lou can see from both eyes, but has trouble with convergence.  I’m betting Lou has no binocular depth perception.  I’m also betting Lou’s facial asymmetry can be spotted a whole pool away.  Hey, Dove Soap, can Lou be beautiful, too?

That’s right, Dove Soap wants “regular” women to feel more beautiful.  Feminist soap!  Empowered soap! Let’s all buy a crapload of Dove beauty products!  Look at all these artful photos of somewhat-but-not-really-diverse women whom we’ve now declared to fit the new, broader standard of “beautiful”!

Why don’t I click?  Why don’t I “like”? 

Well, partly because I’m just too damn cynical for Dove Soap.  Tear-jerkers don’t jerk me.  But I’m not just cynical, I’m also ludicrously logical. Okay, my brain says, what if we broaden our standards?  Where does that get us?  

I’ve heard it argued that the reason why our culture’s beauty standards are unfair, terrible, and misogynistic, and downright villainous is because only 1% of women can attain them (or 3%, or 5.6% -- I’m totally making these numbers up, just like everyone else does.)  But… if we create new beauty standards that are within the reach of, say, 73.8% of American women, is that a victory, or does it just make the other 26.2% (even if they are super-good at doing the math) feel even more turd-like?  No matter how much the beauty standards are broadened, I still haven’t seen the special website dedicated to Wall-Eyed Beauties (although that would also make an excellent name for a garage band).

Logically, then, the only way that we can alleviate the terrible, depressing strain placed upon girls and women (who are so desperate to meet our cultural beauty standards that they are actually willing to believe Dove ads) is to a) convince them that everyone is beautiful; b) convince them that nobody is beautiful; or c) persuade them not to give a shit. 

I’m in favor of all three.

Let me unpack that a little. 

Part a: Everyone is Beautiful

Despite my penchant for accessorizing with bandannas and decorating with duct tape, I am not opposed to beauty.  In fact, I think the world would be a sad and lifeless place without it.  I see beauty every day. Sometimes it stops me in my tracks.  Even setting aside the often ephemeral beauty of non-human things -- autumn sunlight scattering through the birch leaves, the languid and impossibly long stretch of a yawning feline, the distant white-topped crags of Denali against a cerulean sky – there is plenty of human loveliness to marvel at.  It’s the lithe energy of your child in motion, hand outstretched to catch your own.  It’s the delectably naughty twinkle of a shared joke in your lover’s glance.  It’s visual, yes, but the vision is caught in a mood, a moment, a memory.  It’s not something that can be bookended with a set of metrics.  It’s not something that can be used to judge others, or to deem them either acceptable or sub-par.  It’s something we can all attain, and all participate in, in certain transcendent moments, and in the eye of the right beholder.  However, much of the time…

Part b: No One is Beautiful

Human beings aren’t fixed works of art, like crystal candelabras or careful, static, pre-arranged photographic displays of pseudo-diversely “beautiful” women.    Do you prefer ginormous hooters?  Excellent.  Do you like the look of men who appear to have been snorting lines of testosterone?  Sublime.  Are you positive that you only want to date skinny blonde women?  Good luck with that.  But keep in mind that real people, regardless of boob bountifulness or pectoral proportions, look weird if you photograph them with a mouthful of spaghetti or while bent over to tie a shoe.  Real humans get zits, wrinkles, ingrown beard hairs, period-stained underwear, and horrendous cases of the stomach flu.  Everyone poops, and (unless you have a kink so odd that it sends you to the darkest backwaters of the internet) you probably don’t think they look beautiful while doing so.  Which brings me to…

Part c: Who Gives a Flying…

Oh, sure, physical attractiveness is important, in that it factors into what we call, in other species, “mate selection”.  But attraction and desire are ubiquitous – a delightful miasma that surrounds us all. Despite the unremitting, exorbitant, and boring-as-hell efforts of every advertiser under the sun, we still haven’t been fully brainwashed into rejecting all the lovely, sexy, fascinating, imperfect humans around us.  Look!  People are full of life, interest, spark, health, and humor!  People are dating.  People are marrying.  People are sneaking away in to the shrubbery.  (Wait, no – don’t look.)  The whole wide world is telling us that perfection is not necessary for lust, for love, for mutual admiration, for self-confidence, for happiness. 

Pool Girl eventually satisfied her curiosity.  She splashed her way back to where her mom, highly distracted, was playing Bounce the Beach Ball with two other even littler siblings.  In animated tones, with much smiling, pointing, and waving back in my direction, Pool Girl began talking to her mother.  I couldn’t catch everything she said, but from the woman’s look of abject and horrified embarrassment, I got the gist.

Bad Parenting Moment.  Been there, done that.  I smiled.  I waved.  I overflowed with empathy.  The mother smiled back, still mortified, but also relieved.  She was a heavy woman, with thin brown hair straggling wetly against the side of her head.  She was tossing the ball lightly to each of her kids.  They were giggling.  She was giggling.  Pool Girl looked back at me again, and tried to throw me the ball.  It fell short.  I retrieved it and threw it back anyhow.  My own kids, finally noticing that I was playing with someone else, lunged for the ball too – but their swimming skills are negligible at best.  No matter.  They giggled, too.

I looked at my scrawny, pale, awkward, sodden, giggling kids, and at that other mom’s chubby, browner, awkward, sodden, giggling kids.  What did I want for their mutual future?  A set of American Beauty Standards (complete with metrics for waist size, for bust size, for degree of facial symmetry) that was “realistic” enough to encompass all of them?

Um, no. 

What I wanted was for all of them to know that each of them will have moments of true beauty, as reflected in the eyes of some over-the-moon beholders – and that it will be joyful to savor these moments.  But I also wanted them to understand, without even having to think about it, that they will also have many, many more moments when beauty isn’t even on the radar – and doesn’t need to be.   Life is full of gardens to be planted, books to be read, and mountains to be climbed.  It’s full of crazy ideas to be chased -- and crazy kids to be chased, laughing, around an overly chlorinated oblong of tepid water. 

It was nice getting to know you, Pool Girl.  And you were right – my eye really did have a story, after all.

 

[Note: I’m pretty sure that gestating twins and hitting middle age have thrown off my waist to hip ratio a bit, but I don’t really feel like measuring.   Oh, and that thing about symmetry?  Turns out it was wrong, anyhow.  Go figure.  http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/theres-more-to-life-than-facial-symmetry/378807/]