Debbie Duncan

(April 3, 2007) Hear the audio version

D: Molly, you’re a Giants fan.

M: Yeah, Mom.

D: So today’s Opening Day.

M: Yep.

D: Back in the 60’s –

M: – the old days.

D: Right, the old days. San Francisco Giants fans knew who’d be on the team every year.

M: Who?

D: Mays, McCovey, Marichal, Cepeda, and an Alou –

M: – or two or three.

D: Right. But these days fans need a cheat sheet to know who’s on first.

M: Richie’s on first.

D: Rich Aurilia?

M: Yep.

D: But Richie’s a shortstop.

M: Except when he’s on first. Omar’s at short, Ray-Ray’s on second, and Pedro’s at third.

D: Hey! I know them. This isn’t so hard –

M: – except when Klesko’s on first.

D: You said Richie was on first!

M: Except when Sweeney’s on first.

D: MAKE UP YOUR MIND, MOLLY! Who is on first?

M: Lance Niekro?

D: The Giants have FOUR first-basemen?

M: Yep.

D: I don’t get it. It wasn’t that long ago when we needed only one first-baseman, the great J.T. Snow.

M: We HAVE J.T. Snow.

D: Then why do the Giants need anyone else on first???

M: J.T. retired, Mom. He’s a coach. And broadcaster.

D: Okay. Who’s in left?

M: Barry.

D: Barry Bonds?

M: Yep.

D: For one more year?

M: At least.

D: Okay . . . Who’s in center?

M: Dave Roberts.

D: The guy I call the jackrabbit, who ran around the bases for the Red Sox to come back against the Yankees in the ’04 playoffs? He’s a Giant now?

M: Yep, and he’s batting leadoff. He should get ON first a lot.

D: When he isn’t playing center.

M: Yep.

D: I like it. Who’s in right?

M: Randy Winn.

D: But he’s a center-fielder.

M: Roberts is in center. Winn’s in right.

D: Who’s pitching?

M: Barry.

D: You said Barry was in left!

M: Barry BONDS is in left, Barry ZITO is on the mound.

D: Barry Zito the A’s pitcher?

M: No, Barry Zito the Giants’ pitcher.

D: He left the A’s –

M: – and signed with the Giants.

D: Good! So who else’s gonna help the Giants win games this year?

M: LOTS of guys: Matt Cain –

D: – who’s your sister’s age.

M: Yep. And Noah Lowry and Bengie Molina and Todd Linden and Kevin Frandsen.

D: Got it. I hate to ask this, but . . . any of them play first?

M: Uh-huh.

D: So who’s on first?

M: Kevin. When it’s not Richie or Ryan or Mark or Lance –

D: Molly!

M: What?

D: Let’s just get on the train and go to the ballpark.

M: I’m ready!

D: With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

M: And I’m Molly Duncan Stone.

D & M: Play ball!

(January 18, 2007) Hear the audio version

I was fixing breakfast when I heard the news about the dramatic drop in breast cancer rates from 2002 to 2003 – 7 percent nationwide, 11 percent in California. Turn up the radio, stop the presses! After years of attending memorial services for our friends, holding our mothers’ hands during their chemotherapy treatments, and wondering “Who’s next?” or “Will I be that one in eight who gets it?” there was an actual decline in breast cancer incidence – the first since 1945. The hypothesis? Millions of women stopped hormone replacement therapy for menopausal symptoms in 2002 after a national study concluded that it slightly increased breast cancer risk. Stop taking hormones, and the fuel supply for certain tumors is cut off. This could explain the higher-than-average breast cancer rate, and subsequent drop, in places like Marin County, where more women have access to health care, and hormone therapy was standard – until four years ago.

Fortunately, I’m not one of the thousands who took hormones and also developed breast cancer. I’d be mad as hell if I had, even if the relationship between the two isn’t yet confirmed. Doctors were far too eager to prescribe hormones for what is a normal, natural change in women’s bodies.

I take breast cancer seriously, and personally. It killed my aunt. My mother has had two kinds of breast cancer. So when my younger cousin was diagnosed with it three years ago, I consulted the oncologist I credit with keeping my dear mother alive. She recommended I begin taking tamoxifen, which blocksestrogen. So long menstrual periods, hello hot flashes! Suddenly I knew quite well why women had asked for hormone replacements. But . . . I’ve decided to live with that space-heater feeling that suddenly comes over me. So have millions of other post-menopausal women who, ten years ago, might have been on hormone replacement therapy. Be patient with us. We’re trying to stick around so our children can take care of us in our oldage.

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

(September 12, 2006) Hear the audio version

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. No, thank you.” Everywhere these days, on the airwaves or on the street, a virtual ping-pong match of thank yous concludes every conversation, while the simple, elegant, and correct reply, “You’re welcome,” has gone the way of the Betamax. “Enough already, thank you very much.” It’s time to rescue “You’re welcome” and return it to its humble but rightful place in polite discourse.

Talking heads are among the worst offenders. They’re usually experts on the topic under discussion, so it’s their job to speak eloquently and knowledgably. By parroting “Thank you,” what exactly are they thanking the interviewer for? I don’t know. Does false modesty prohibit them from replying “You’re welcome”? Then to be honest, they should say, “Aw shucks, thanks for asking my opinion.”

Or . . . has the “Thank you” echo become a mindless habit? Clearly, it has already spread beyond the broadcast media. I’ve caught myself repeating “Thank you,” even though I object to it. Every week I thank the people who thank me when I buy organic lettuce, heirloom tomatoes, crispy apples, and other goodies at the farmers market. I am thankful they grow this delicious produce that feeds and nourishes my family. Maybe I should smile and reply, “Thank you for coming to market,” or “See you next week.” More thoughtful, less mechanical.

Repeating “Thank you” also invites that silly, repetitive gratitude loop that’s in danger of ending with “No problem,” just to terminate the dialogue. [Gasp!] Oh, no, not that! “No problem” is the other increasingly common response to “Thank you,” especially among young people.

“You’re welcome” won’t come back unless you and I bring it back. And in the process, we will be setting a good example for our language-challenged media.

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan. Thank you!

(August 14, 2006) Hear the audio version

I could feel every beat of my racing heart as my 16-year-old daughter pulled the little red Jetta back into the DMV parking lot. The girl right before Molly had failed her behind-the-wheel test. Her father was in the middle of a long and obviously spirited discussion with the DMV examiner. How about Molly? I knew, in spite of my thumping heart, that she was a good driver – I’d spent dozens of hours in the car with her over the last six months. She’s careful by nature. She’d even practiced driving around downtown Redwood City – not our normal stomping grounds, but now the neighborhood of our nearest DMV office. Yet anything can happen on those tests. We’d heard about one particularly tricky curb on the Redwood City route.

I stared at the back of the car, and waited. Finally Molly opened the driver’s door, got out, turned around, and gave me a thumb’s up with a smile. Whew! My youngest would be a licensed California driver. Today. Cross that milestone off for our family.

Now I could switch gears (so to speak) and start worrying about her being out on the road by herself. And by herself she will be, thanks to California’s graduated license program. For a year Molly can’t have passengers under 20 in the car with her, unless they have a note from a parent – a rather odd stipulation, but one we employ for driving the neighborhood carpool to the high school. Molly also can’t drive after 11 at night for a year. I approve. More crashes happen late at night. Experience behind the wheel helps avoid those accidents.

Driving is dangerous, and some California roads and freeways scarier every year. If Highway 17 were a roller coaster ride, the amusement park would be ordered to shut it down in a week. I never stop reminding my kids that automobiles are lethal weapons and crashes happen in an instant.

But I can’t, and I don’t want to put Molly in bubblewrap. California is a car culture whether I like it or not. And I trust that the Department of Motor Vehicles knew what it was doing when it granted her a California drivers license.

“Drive carefully, Molly.”

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

(April 26, 2006) Hear the audio version

Back in ’94, when gas prices were low(er) and I had three children under the age of 10, my husband had what he thought was a good idea – to buy one of those SUV behemoths, a Suburban. His was only the second in our part of town, but soon there were more – many more – and they were EVERYWHERE, with their tall, tinted windows blocking my view in parking lots and on the freeway, as well as in my own driveway.

I quickly became an SUV basher. True, ours took the five of us and our gear to Yosemite and Tahoe in one vehicle many times, and came in handy when family or friends moved and needed help hauling their stuff. But more days than not Bill drove it all by himself to the office or on local errands. And then he started working at home. He knew we needed to dispose of the darn thing, but . . . how does one get rid of an SUV responsibly?

It was too big to stuff in the recycling bin. Bomb shelters aren’t in vogue – at least at the moment. Nor could it be genetically reengineered into two normal cars. This winter, a dealer offered to buy it for $4000 and sell it for ten. But then it might end up in the hands of someone who’d drive it solo, barreling down the highway, cell phone in hand. That could also very well happen if we donated it to a nonprofit that would have it auctioned. Ideally, we wanted it used by someone who actually needed an eight-passenger truck.

As luck would have it, a speaker at a fundraising breakfast had the perfect answer. “We need a replacement for our van.” Eureka! So last month the old Suburban found its new lease on life, as a workhorse for an organization in San Jose that helps teens in trouble to make healthy decisions. It’s already putting in full days ferrying young people to their community service projects, job interviews, and retreats out of the city. The director, staff and peer leaders are thrilled with their new set of wheels, which they’ve christened Chuck the Truck. We’re kinda happy about it, too.

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

(March 15, 2006) Hear the audio version

My 13-year-old daughter looked horrified when she came into the kitchen one morning. “I emptied my dresser drawers again last night,” she said. “All my clothes are in the middle of the floor.” And she didn’t remember doing it.

That night after Molly went to sleep, she ripped a stack of old photographs to shreds. Then she tore the posters off her bedroom walls. She didn’t remember that either. I was as terrified as she. I didn’t know if we needed a doctor – or an exorcist.

I started with medicine. An overnight sleep study at Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic showed that Molly stopped breathing about 23 times an hour. Diagnosis? Severe obstructive sleep apnea. Tearing her room apart made perfect sense to the pediatric sleep specialist. He told us it was a behavior that has been misinterpreted throughout the ages.

Sleep apnea is more common in children than parents realize, and is easily missed by pediatricians. Sleepwalking can be a symptom, as is snoring. Delayed development is another. Some children are thought to have ADHD, when really they’re suffering from chronic sleep deprivation. My daughter was getting an average of six bad hours of sleep for the 10 hours she was in bed. Many kids are cured with what the docs call “T and A” – tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy. Yet Molly still had apnea after they yanked her tonsils. We stopped her sleepwalking by waking her up 30 minutes after she went to sleep, but that didn’t cure the apnea. For that she needed to go to bed hooked up to a CPAP machine. A full night’s sleep meant she wasn’t sick all the time. Or tired. She also grew half a foot in the first few months. Finally, early last summer she was able to have surgery to move her jaws forward and out from blocking her airway. Now a high school sophomore, she sleeps well.

Parents often think their child’s sleeping problems end when the baby sleeps through the night. Not always! Thankfully, we no longer live in the Middle Ages, and there are wonderful resources available from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. As we learned, all sleep apnea sufferers aren’t middle aged and overweight. Some are 85 pounds and struggling to stay awake in algebra class.

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

(Note: please send me an email if you have questions about kids and sleep apnea. I’m happy to help.)

(November 21, 2005) Hear the audio version

Last Sunday I did something unusual for me, the mother of the house. I took care of myself. This is how it happened: the night before I’d been suddenly stricken with a nasty ailment. When I crawled into bed I felt like a cartoon character at the North Pole: my teeth would not stop chattering. Every bone and muscle ached. I lay awake most of the night, shivering and listening to the transistor radio under my pillow.

So on Sunday I dozed on the couch while meals were prepared and eaten. I missed my volunteer stint at the bookstore. My husband took our teenage daughter to her soccer game. She had an assist on the winning goal without my cheering her on. The dog didn’t go nuts without his daily walk. In short, my family and the community carried on quite nicely without me.

I’m not used to putting myself first. I’m the mom, after all, who knows best how to toast the bread, who keeps track of orthodontist appointments and the whereabouts of P.E. clothes and wake-up times and how to put on the dog’s new collar. Like so many mothers, I consider myself indispensable, even though: a) I am not; and b) my husband is perfectly able – and willing – to take on the tasks I always assume for myself. Some feminist! I’m acting like it’s 1955, not 2005. And as an active member of the sandwich generation, I also help take care of my parents. So when I was in charge of their move to a retirement home in August, I thought I didn’t have time to be sick and delayed going to the doctor until I required massive doses of antibiotics, two days in the hospital, and weeks of recovery before I felt like myself again.

Too bad it took a hospital stay to make me change my ways. It was only then that I realized I’d been setting a pretty poor example for my daughters by always putting everyone else’s needs far ahead of mine. But it’s hard to overcome the instincts I swear are imbedded on that second X chromosome. I’m still learning. That day on the couch, though, was precisely what I needed. By Monday I was able to get up and make my daughter’s chai tea just as she likes it. My husband fixed her breakfast and lunch.

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

(August 22, 2005) Hear the audio version

If you see a school bus tooling around town today, it’s probably not a test run. That’s because school starts this week for thousands of Bay Area children. And I must say that my 15-year-old and her friends are having trouble mustering the enthusiasm for going back to five straight days of seven periods of academic classes while there’s still a month left of summer.

I realize that the real crises in American education are more along the lines of crumbling school buildings filled with too many kids with multiple academic, behavioral, and language challenges. We should be ashamed that the U.S. has one of the highest high school dropout rates in the industrialized world. But in my household, the early start date has been the thundercloud over my daughter’s head since the summer finally began in mid-June. She never even had a chance to get bored! Unstructured time – daydreaming, exploring – has no place in the day planners of contemporary children, especially middle and high school students bound for college. With the school year now extended over ten full months, my child and her classmates will have precisely one weekend, after finals in January, without homework. Our district only pretends to pay attention to the alarm bells sounded by Stanford lecturer Denise Clark Pope’s Stressed-Out Students Project. A school calendar that begins two weeks before Labor Day is guaranteed to compound the stress.

All public schools in this No Child Left Untested era have become so obsessed with standardized testing in the spring that many feel the need to begin preparing their students early. In August. The school start date has been creeping up for the last several years, but finally, it’s reached the tipping point of annoyance among families who want their summers back. Tourism-friendly California legislators may want to take a look at laws already passed in four states that curb early back-to-school dates.

In the meantime, rather than enjoying the dog days of summer and going back on the more reasonable and traditional day after Labor Day, kids and teachers will be sweating it out in the classroom these weeks, trying not to dwell on opportunities missed and pleasures foregone in the incredible shrinking summer.

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.