If you’re needing a good laugh, these are priceless. I was laughing out loud.

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/parents-say-the-darndest-things/

I’ve been thinking about addiction lately. A relative of mine is struggling mightily with this problem, prompting a great deal of concern among those of us who love him.

I’ve probably known more than an average number of addicts. My first job out of college was at a pysch hospital and various people I worked with were in recovery. I always seemed to get along well with them. Most of us go around trying to put on a good face for people, but recovering addicts tell it like it is. Honesty is what keeps them sober. And they always had interesting stories to tell.

I’m sure it was experiences past and present that drew me to David Sheff’s Beautiful Boy. It’s a father’s account of his promising young son’s descent into meth addition (I got it at the library in the “playaway” audio version, which is book and mini player in one and is the latest reason why I think we have the coolest library ever). The tale is heart-wrenching as Sheff watches his “beautiful boy” become a stranger.

“Yet he is a stranger whose every part I know intimately. I recall his soft eyes when they were elated and when they were disappointed, his face when he was pallid from illness and when he was burned red by the sun, his mouth and even each tooth from visits to dentists and the orthodontist, his knees from when he skinned them and I put on Band-Aids, his shoulders from putting on sun block, he feet from taking out splinters — every part of him.”

This passage gave voice to a nagging disquietude I’ve had about parenthood. There’s this being that you love more than anything in this world and know like the back of your hand but yet is completely separate from you. It’s like having an organ outside your body, exposed. When they’re young, like mine are, it’s easy to feel protecting them is within your power. But as they grow older, and more independent, we have to watch as they make their way in the world. Inevitably, some will wander into the insidious snare of addiction.

The hopeful message in Sheff’s account is that love can be the thread that draws addicts back from the brink (Nic Sheff wrote his own account of the experience in a book called Tweak. See them talking about their companion memoirs in this You Tube clip). The way back is fraught with uncertainty, and Sheff offers no simple solutions. The cure for addiction is as amorphous as the disease. But from what I have seen and read, it’s clear that for addicts — and troubled youth of all stripes – as long as they are alive, there is hope.

I am so thrilled that Nicholas Kristof is using his bully pulpit at The New York Times to sound the alarm on toxins in our environment. Everyday the evidence mounts that many common household products contain toxins that could be damaging to our children’s development. Kristof’s column today discusses evidence of a possible link between toxins and autism, the rising prevalence of which has alarmed and vexed researchers. Kristof notes that Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey is leading an effort to draft legislation that would strengthen the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Senator Lautenberg says that under existing law, of 80,000 chemicals registered in the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency has required safety testing of only 200. “Our children have become test subjects,” he noted.

While the legislation would definitely be a step in the right direction, parents should take steps now to try and reduce their children’s exposure to harmful chemicals. This includes not microwaving food in plastic containers, using personal care products that are phthalate-free and avoiding most plastics marked at the bottom as 3, 6 and 7. Non-stick pans, especially at high temperatures, also have been found to release toxins.

A great source for more information on this subject is the Environmental Working Group.

Unbelievably, Littleton has become the scene of another school shooting. Apparently, a 32-year-old unemployed ranch hand opened fire, shooting two students at Deer Creek Middle School. Both students are expected to recover. I just find it unconceivable what could bring a person to seek vengeance on a group of innocent young people. Thanks goodness a math teacher’s brave actions prevented him from doing greater harm.

Teacher tackles gunman in school shooting

By P. SOLOMON BANDA and CATHERINE TSAI, Associated Press Writers Wed Feb 24, 1:59 pm ET

LITTLETON, Colo. – The math teacher who has become a national hero after breaking up a potentially deadly school shooting near the site of the Columbine massacre said Wednesday that he was simply doing his job to protect his students from danger during his now-famous scuffle with the gunman. Read more.

Before children, I never would see the movie if I’d read the book (I preferred my interpretation over some director’s) and certainly would never see the movie instead of reading the book. But times have changed. So the following post is on the movie version of Revolutionary Road (starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio), which was a very worthy way to spend two hours but I’m just going come right out and admit that I probably won’t ever get around to reading the book, well-written as it may be.

In the movie, April and Larry Wheeler, parents to two children, watch their marriage and bohemian aspirations turn to dust amid the stifling conformity of suburban life in the ’50s. Artfully acted, it’s a stark reminder of how much things have changed for women, and by extension, men.

April finds herself increasingly restless and unhappy with the lack of an outlet for her wanderlust. Resentments grow between April and her equally trapped husband, who took a dead-end job to support his family. Desperate to escape, she proposes relocating the whole family to Paris. I won’t spoil the rest.

I’ve always been keenly aware that I’m only two generations removed from that reality. The first, really, to have grown up believing all opportunities were open to me.

But for all that has changed, there’s elements to April’s predicament that feel familiar. I remember as an angsty teenager exiled in suburbia feeling that there must be more than so much bland uniformity. Many of my friends’ homes had the same floor plan as mine. None was rich, none was poor. It was only through books that I became aware of the broader, more eclectic world out there.

What if like April, I never would have gone on to see that bigger world and instead it would have remained a mythological place of my imagining, growing every year more magical and alluring by comparison to my mundane reality? How would I feel about my kids? My responsibilities? The lack of fabulousness and glamour in folding clothes late into the night?

Instead, I got to have adventures, which were at times thrilling and at times overrated. Now that my life has moved on to another phase, I feel no regrets, no anxieties about the more avant-guarde existance I could be living. Making muffins with the kiddos is a perfectly grand way to spend an afternoon.

I see this among many mothers of my generation. Those that stay home don’t lack for fulfillment knowing childhood is fleeting and that they are its keeper. Those that go to work get to preserve something of their old lives along side their equally rewarding mommy selves (though the manual is yet unwritten on how to strike a perfect balance between the two). Most of my contemporaries seem quite comfortable in their skin, happily planted where wisdom and wonder meet. In that sense, April seems an intriguing by unfortunate relic of a bygone era.