Small world

I've written before about my old friend Michelle who was my first year (don't call them freshmen ;) ) roommate in college. A few years ago, she wrote a book about becoming a doctor and a mom after keeping a blog for over a decade, and since she's uber talented drawing comics for a decade before that. Since her book tour, she has a speaker's rep and is giving her first commencement address this weekend. Cool, right? Well, of all places it is at my father's alma mater near where my parents grew up in Ohio (post 'nam, he'd attended Iowa State out of HS). This is really funny given our history.

A quick recap... She is from Manhattan, born and raised. Her parents are both physicians, and immigrants from China. Her father came to the U.S. to go to college and where did he happen to start out but the UW in my hometown, living with a family a few blocks from where I grew up (in a not so big city in Wisconsin). He went on to finish undergrad at Madison, and med school in NYC (where he met her mom and had her and her two younger sisters).

When we got paired as roommates (in what was actually a Sr. single itty bitty dorm room) it was a year they didn't use whatever fancy system they usually do to pair people (it was broken or it was an experiment or something, I don't remember which). I remember from when we first talked on the phone over the summer before we met, we and both our families got a kick out of the fact that given our different backgrounds (beyond NYC and small town WI, I went to PS and my parents barely finished college and she went to Hunter and her family had not one, but two apts. on Park Ave.) we had this random tie going back decades and something in commom besides being general overachievers.

After college, she returned to NY to go to Columbia (where my step sister was by then an undergrad) where she met her husband (a white guy from OH) in med school. They now live in Atlanta where they practice and are raising their three kids. Her youngest and only daughter, Nina, is just younger than the twins, so I figure we might just assume that she and Mari may end up coincidentally paired together at Whatever U. in 2030...

Have you ever met people far from home with whom you have something random in common?

Everyone has a story

While I already sadly have cancer on my mind as we mourn my dear aunt, in light of Angelina Jolie's Op-ed in the NY Times regarding her decision to have a prophylactic breast (and at a later date ovarian) removal after learning she had the BRCA1 "cancer gene", the Times is revisiting their Pulitzer Prize winning story from 2007 about other women who've undergone this procedure.

The woman featured in the "Previvor" story, Dr. Deborah Lindner (the original story and her recent video update) was the OB/GYN who I met/saw the day of our anatomy scan as part of our rotation, when we found out we were on our way to losing the twins, and she told me there wasn't much they could do for me/them/us.  My regular OB (Dr. Levin) was unfortunately on vacation late that August and ironically the one in the practice of eight who ended up delivering the babies in Dec. (fellow twin mom, Dr. Kamel) was one I had never met before the day they were born.  

Anywho, upon promptly securing an MFM, the rest of the practice was very supportive of us and our desire to try to save our babies (though it later took half the practice to remove my cerclage).  I didn't write that much about all the details of what happened at the time, it was just too painful and difficult and I had already switched into crisis mode.

While it crossed my mind at the time, I have no way of knowing whether Dr. Lindner's prompt departure from the practice after our episode with her had anything to do with our case or not.  She now apparently works at a vein clinic in the city (and is a brunette).  If she left voluntarily, I can only guess it was likely due to her young family, which she's had since her surgery, as the scheduling demands of being an OB/GYN are rigorous, unless you can opt out of deliveries (like my old gyne had by the time we got around to TTC).

Of course the irony is not lost on me that a physician who is so proactive about her own health would be so nonchalant about that of her patient. But if my medical experiences of the last several years has taught me anything it is that while medicine is amazing, it and doctors are fallible and in the end you have to be your own advocate and not take one opinion without seeking others.

Passing of the old guard and good advice

As Chicago mourns the passing of movie critic and Illinois son, Roger Ebert, and the world of politics, Margaret Thatcher, and the entertainment world, Annette Funicello, I came across a bit in Lilly Pulitzer's obituary in the Washington Post that caught my eye.

After having three kids in five years, she had a nervous breakdown and while in a mental hospital in NY recovering, a doctor told her she had to get a job.  He apparently told her, "you are not happy because you are not doing anything," she recounted to The New Yorker in 2000 (clearly she had plenty of help).  She said she always gave the same prescription to her friends, if they were bored, she'd open one of her stores in their town.

“I don’t know how to explain what it was like to run my business, the joy of every day,” she told Vanity Fair magazine in a story in 2003. “I got a kick every time I went into the shipping department. ... I loved seeing (the dresses) going out the door. I loved them selling in the shop. I liked them on the body. Everything. There’s no explaining the fun I had. "

I need to find something that makes me feel that way.  The joy that my children bring me is amazing, but as I always knew I would, I need to find and have something that is mine.  I am looking at a new consulting project, which will likely be full time for several months, but I'm wondering if I need to do something different.  You know something risky, that really stretches me and gets me out of my comfort zone.

When the heart of a home is gone

Last weekend, DH gave me the day "off" and I spent a whole six hours away from the kids, the most yet. It was nice to get out, but it also reminded me how much of my mental space they now consume.

One of the places I went to was Hinsdale, which is a haven for teardowns, but has an adorable historic downtown with several cute shops (now minus Lilly) that I used to get to on a regular basis and a few new ones I hadn't yet.  It is also known among followers of Giuliana & Bill Rancic as where they recently flipped one of their several investment homes.  Driving out of town, I happened past the Greek Revival that was the feature of the late designer Marija Stephens's blog "Holding Court" (which has been taken down, but the tribute blog "Holding Forth" has it now). I wrote about her passing here back in 2010...

So later I looked up what happened to the house and since I've apparently let my sub to Chicago Home lapse, I had missed this story from last fall.  Marija hadn't yet finished their family home she'd designed from the ground up when she was tragically killed in a car accident, so her husband had a friend of hers (Julie Edelmann of Buckingham Interiors) finish it before he sold it and moved with their two young children to my old neighborhood in the city before the story ran.  He'd written a beautiful final post on her blog about her and their life and their dreams and the house.  It is a lovely home, but when the heart of a home is gone, it is of course just a house...

  



From supernanny to superpatient to supermom...

This time of year always reminds me of school and work, which for me have always been synonymous, until this year of course. I started working as a babysitter (gulp) 23 years ago, as soon as I turned 12, and it was a significant source of income for me for many years, helping me pay for travel in high school and work my way through college. It has been so long, in fact, that some of my former charges now have kids of their own. I started my first "real" job four years later, working at a local apple orchard in their retail store w/my sister E for three fall seasons, which I'm also always reminded of this time of year.

I remember being so excited to start babysitting as soon as my mother would let me. First for neighbors, then co-workers of my parents (half the drs. in town), teachers, and referrals (including the couple who owned our local athletic club, setting me up for a summer getting buff and working in their day care). I literally worked for dozens of families before I got out of high school. I've always loved kids and it was undoubtedly great experience for someday becoming a mother myself, and also for experiencing first hand how other households were run. I ended up continuing in college, almost by accident, when it came time to decide what to do for the summer. When I decided I wasn't going to NYC to intern on Wall Street, I lived in during the three summers w/two families in Hyannisport and also worked weekends during the school year for the same Boston area families. Exactly a decade after I started, I "retired". Had I been more entrepreneurial at the time, I would have started a business, like fellow babysitter extraordinaire/college classmate Genevieve Thiers, a fellow Chicagoan who founded sittercity.com. She's quite a dynamo, and is now ironically expecting twins herself.

So now for over a decade, after as long immersed in all things kids, I've been shaping my adult life and grinding in the corporate world in preparation for when I would finally become a mother myself. Sadly, the last three years we have also been immersed in the world of infertility medicine, but we are obviously thrilled to finally be planning in real terms for our kids/family to come this fall. Like most women, I always considered staying at home, but I don't ever think I ever really thought I would. IF (and now bed rest) definitely ended up forcing my hand, which like when I got sick w/mono at the end of that last summer in college, forced me to cull the unnecessary out of my life. Though I couldn't be more thrilled to be solely focused on our family, for now anyway.

Though the more I think about SAH long term, the more I think that I will end up going back to work at some point, either for myself or back in the corporate world. While it is certainly an honorable vocation, it seems many SAH either because that's all they've ever wanted or been able to do and/or because paying for care for their children is just more than they would make in the workforce, making it less of a choice. From my experience, I think it is really important for children to have positive interaction and myriad role models outside of the family, thus making room for mom to have other interests.  And obviously the resources that are brought to bear by working, provide their children opportunities that those living more simply to SAH are not privy to.

So after all this time, it is so wild to think that in ten or so short weeks, I will have my very own kiddos. :)

Degrees of Separation

Remember that girl from college who always seemed it have it all together? Well, at W that girl was Stephanie Ercklentz. On our leafy campus, she stood out among the ~500 ladies in our class, especially whenever her uber-stylish mom came to visit.



A few years out of school, she was featured in this documentary where she talked about shopping and marrying well.

That she most certainly did. A few years later, she left Vera Wang and married Chase (that's Charles Payson Coleman III to you ;)). It seemed the chronicles were endless (including a full pg. in T&C), and here.



He is a hedge fund manager, who reportedly makes $400MM/yr . Her bridemaids included Chapin/Merrill Lynch chums who are founding partners in Earnest Sewn and Gilt.com .

The Coleman’s bought the Manhattan home last owned by Randolph Hearst (yes, that Hearst), and the home of his widow and step-daughter, Fabiola Beracasa(ironically another college classmate of mine @ BC). At last count, the Coleman’s have three kids and three homes (in Manhattan, Southampton, and Palm Beach). And to their credit, they are already very active philanthropists.