The immigration policies of the United States are a subject near and dear to my heart.  As a child, I was an undocumented immigrant who got a path to citizenship with the amnesty of the 1980’s.  Since then, I have been moved to work with people currently in the same situation.  It has been heartbreaking.

Regardless of where you fall on the issue, most sensible people can agree that our immigration policies today are riddled with loopholes, inconsistencies and downright unfairness.  Experts estimate that we currently have about 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country, making deportation unfeasible and Mitt Romney’s “self deportation” a cruel joke that would have catastrophic effects on the U.S. economy.  (How about a day without immigrants in every city Mitt Romney visits? Presidential campaign over).  Although the public is consistently told that Homeland Security and Customs efforts are targeted towards criminals, that is simply not the case, as I have seen with my own eyes time and time again.

So while the Obama’s Administration’s announcement on Tuesday of senior ICE adviser Andrew Lorenzen-Strait to this new liaison position seems like a sign of good will, it remains to be seen whether it’s going to make any difference for the thousands of people living in fear or caught up in a nightmarish detention system.

Despite big hopes for the Obama Administration, immigration activists (including me) have been disappointed as deportations have been ratcheted up to levels unprecedented even in the Bush Administration. Still, recently ICE officials have been announcing policy reforms, outlining when prosecutors could use discretion and urging that resources be focused on deporting immigrants with criminal records or repeat immigration offenses (even that criteria merits discussion, but we’re so not there yet). DHS officials earlier this year recommended closing more than 1,600 deportation cases involving non-criminal illegal immigrants and reviews are ongoing across the country. The liaison will help the public understand how the policy is implemented, field complaints and, as he puts it, “facilitate a two-way dialogue.”

I think we need more than a chat. Yes, I know we need to get through this election before we can deal with this issue in earnest, but we as Latinas have to hold this administration accountable for practices that destroy our communities, strike fear in our people and tear families apart. Appointing a liaison is nice, but it’s laughably small when what we need is comprehensive reform that helps everyone who is here become productive, safe and protected members of the society we came here to help build.

Originally published on February 7, 2012 on http://www.MamasLatinas.com

Mothering is a no-win sport, a point that was driven home to me today at my town’s pool. Our swim club is the most happening place in town, where kids can always find a school chum ready to join them for cannonballs and jumps off the diving board. There is ping pong and balls you can check out of the office with your membership card. There is a snack bar with greasy and sugary foods to delight the under-10 palate. The kids are watched like hawks by overly enthusiastic lifeguards who, when confronted with a kid who put his face down to look in the water for longer than 10 seconds, jumped in en masse (to the tune of 5 frantically diving, totally buff teenagers). Your kid would be more likely to drown in your driveway.

And yet, so many of the mothers I spoke to today just seemed exhausted. As I fluttered from one playground acquaintance to the next, the general sense was that bringing them to this kids’ paradise and sitting there for their pleasure wasn’t enough. We should be playing ping pong and sitting in the pool in our matronly little bathing suits and buying Spongebob ice creams on cue – anything less than full motherly compliance just makes us feel bad.

One such mom – I’ll call her “Nancy” (hi Nancy!) sat, like a slowly deflating balloon, while her freckled little boy kept tugging at her. “Mommy, come play ping pong with me.”

“I am tired. I just want to read my book for a little while.”

“No! I’m not going to stop until you play with me!”

I could see the battle raging beneath her afternoon slump – she wanted to give her son what he asked for, but she wanted to give herself what she needed too – some rest. The two goals were diametrically opposed, and someone had to lose. As happens too often with mothers, the one who would probably lose would be her.

“It’s just not on my agenda right now.”

I tried joking to lift her out of her dilemma. “Your mistake is that you play with him sometimes. You should be like me and tell him he’s got to play with another kid. Eventually they give up.” Even my joke was filled with the guilt of knowing I never push on the swings and never play ping pong – I just don’t have it in me after feeding, washing, clothing, Swiffering and overall caring for every need of every living thing in my abode.

“I just want to read my book for a little while,” she said, tired, as if she was hoping I would understand. I did. I bring 3 books to the pool just so I can have a selection, then withstand intermittent whining from my son that I’m no fun because I never go in the water.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

“Bad Mother,” she said. I almost laughed at the irony.

The thing about mothering is that it’s so unforgiving – a high stakes game in which there is no room for error. The choices each seem fraught with minefields of dangers – too much, not enough, too soon, too late. Every mundane detail of life – ping pong games denied, sugar allowed through unchecked, friends not screened carefully enough – hold the potential of being the flap of the butterfly’s wing that causes the hurricane later on in our precious cargo’s lives.

“I stress everything,” I tell Nancy, hoping she’ll see I understand.

“I wish I could stress everything,” she says. “Sometimes I think, ‘I should worry about this more.’”

Either way, Sigmund Freud, or Dr. Phil or the Today Show is whispering in both our ears, hinting that we might not be measuring up.

As we’re both contemplating how we’re doing, I see her absentmindedly running her hands over her son’s skin, noticing nicks and bruises, caressing them with an unselfconscious love. It is a moment of total intimacy, one human fully caring for another, without even realizing it.

And I know in that moment, that, ping pong game or no, Nancy is a good mother. Because good mothering is less about actions, the way we’ve been led to believe, than it is about intentions. Sure, you’ve got to show up, do the job, and do it well. But, at the end of the day, what you’ve most got to do is let your kids know that they’re loved. They’ll remember that much more than the ping pong games you wouldn’t play with them.

She gets up to play the ping pong game, but she’s earned her good mother stripes already. And I am left with the wish that every good mother, including me, could just give herself a break.

And I want to tell her, “Now go read. You’ve earned it.”

In Memory of Stefanie Miller Jacobowitz, the real “Nancy.”  Rest in Peace and know you were a great mother.  You will be missed.

Christmas has always been wonderful.  It is a cinnamony, pine-scented thing, a time of hopes and snowflakes, family pictures and comfort foods.  Yes, perhaps it isn’t as inclusive as those of us who are secularists would like to see it be.  Yes, perhaps it’s more pagan in origin than some Christians would like to admit.  But, as sheer family bonding time goes, evoking warm times in front of cozy fires, it is unparalleled in its wonderfulness.

Which is why it’s particularly sad that we are jacking it up full of steroids it doesn’t need.

Am I the only one who has noticed how we extend Christmas year over year?  How a holiday that used to take up a few weeks at the end of the year has come to loom large like your belly hanging over your belt?  Take “Black Friday.”  A once-casual observation on the news that some people took the opportunity to get early shopping done the day after Thanksgiving has, within my adult life, turned into the monstrosity that is “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” a non-holiday holiday that feeds on itself. In this garish display of consumerism and greed, big box stores set up pens for the mouth-foaming hordes to start lining up while the turkey and gravy is still on their breaths.  Does anyone remember that the minimum-wage workers that make our $3 t-shirts possible have to skip having a holiday meal with their families altogether just to fuel “Black Friday” with the gasoline of human unhappiness?  Yes, people, there are now officially holidays that celebrate buying things and to hell with what they cost in personal sacrifice and loss of casual family together time for shoppers and retail employees alike.

Decorations, which used to go up in early December, are now evident weeks before.  And stores, hoping to extend and thus bloat the Christmas season (and, more importantly, their bottom lines) further, start setting up Christmas displays and sales long before Halloween costumes are off the shelves.

It could be argued that this inexorable creep is just a part of progress.  We used to get our news in simple little half-hour blocks from a white man in a suit.  Now, we can turn on any number of “news” channels to watch people from all walks of life screaming at each other as they “analyze” the most sensational events of the day.  It used to be that we would wait a whole year to gather around the tube to catch Rudolph and Baby New Year.  Now, we’ve got them on DVD, on our cable “On Demand” feature, on Netflix and on YouTube, along with the scores of new holiday fare that pop up every year.  Progress shouldn’t mean just doing things because we can, but being grateful for choice and choosing with temperance and wisdom.

It first occurred to me that Christmas has a self esteem problem when, weeks before Thanksgiving, I tuned to my local easy listening station to find that it had gone to its “24-hour holiday music” format, as it usually does for Christmas, despite the fact that I hadn’t even finalized my Thanksgiving guest list and I was still wearing short sleeves.  “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” blared out the tired and premature old song.  I thought, “Methinks the holiday doth protest too much.”  There used to be a time when Christmas could just BE the most wonderful time of the year, without telling us over and over that it was.

The good news about the preening and insecure condition of Christmas is that we have the power to cure it.  We can choose not to participate in the things that debase Christmas – shameless consumerism and over-hyping.  We can let Christmas rest by not doing anything about it until after Thanksgiving.  We can ignore fools who claim there’s a war against Christmas, and that the cure to that war is to buy more plastic things made in factories far away by impoverished and exploited workers.  We can make more, spend less, find unique, one-of-a-kind gifts hand-crafted locally, teach our kids the value of a handmade card over a gift card.   We can do more than pay lip service to the real meaning of the season, but, instead, focus on it: family, friends and time together as we cozy up for a long winter.  Christmas IS the most wonderful time of the year, not because the songs bleat at us that it is, but because it has the power to bring out the best in us: generosity, love, peace.

If only we can look away from the mall signs and the retail emails for just a little bit.

Her work has appeared in Newsweek, The Washington Post, the Star Ledger and NJ.com, among others.

Okay, I can’t do this third person thing any more.

You know that every writer’s bio that you read is written by the writer herself, right?  Unless the writer is, like, Henry Kissinger or the woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love (and even that last one is open for debate).  So, I started to write about myself all serious-like, in the third person.  I’ve done it before, but, for some reason, this time I couldn’t pull it off.

For a serious bio, scroll down below to the “bio I wrote for my memoir, Illegal.”  I first tried to cut and paste that in here, but it didn’t feel genuine any more, although everything in it is true.  Bios, like people, constantly evolve.

The truest thing I can say about myself is that, somehow, in one way or another, all my life I have been a writer.  I have only come to feel worthy of that title recently, with the luxury of decades of personal history to look back on.  Whether I’ve been writing short stories (really, really bad ones) late at night after working full time and taking a full course load in college, or submitting essays that got shot down by literary magazines or convincing a small magazine publisher who was trying to sell me advertising to let me write for him instead, somehow, I have always found my way back to the written word.  I have had some inspiring successes (look to my “Latest Published Essays” for examples).  More importantly, have come to learn that the external validation of a published piece doesn’t make me a writer.  It is this lifelong love affair that sings to me and lures me back to the computer every time that is the real triumph.

I love this crazy picture. Maybe because I've always wanted to be tough like a warrior. Or maybe because I've always wanted long, blond hair.

I have several drafts of a memoir, Illegal, a book still in search of its ending.  I am also halfway through a wonderful memoir (I think!) on some pretty ground-quaking events of this year (figuratively and literally).   I have a working title so funny I am not yet prepared to share it with the world.  But stay tuned.

I am also the author of the blog 51 First Dates after Divorce Project, a free-wheeling carnival ride through the landscape of finding love the next time around.

Friend me on Facebook.

Follow me on Twitter

Follow 51 First Dates After Divorce on Twitter (much more fun, since I post there more regularly).

Bio I wrote for my memoir, Illegal:

Maria E. Andreu is an American writer and immigrants’ rights activist. She is the author of the forthcoming Illegal: Growing Up Unwanted in America. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek and the Washington Post, and she is a regular blogger for the Newark Star Ledger.

Born in Madrid, Spain, she was brought to the United States as an infant by her parents, undocumented immigrants who had overstayed a visitors’ visa. She grew up American, but at age 6, the death of her paternal grandfather caused her and her mother to return to Argentina (where he lived) for what was intended as a month-long trip. They were unable to return to the States. After two years of attempting to get a visa, she, at age 8, and her mother, crossed the Mexican border illegally into the United States. She experienced the life of the undocumented until receiving amnesty after the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in the 1980′s.

Shortly after high school graduation she became a legal resident and, later, a citizen of the U.S. She used the opportunity to become a business owner, sought after marketing consultant and, when the immigration debate heated up, an advocate for those currently in the position she once experienced as a child.

Maria lives in New Jersey with her two great children, her three funny dogs and one wise ferret. After a lifetime of feeling excluded, she finally feels like she belongs.

Watch Maria on the topic of immigration.

Maria E. Andreu’s interview on NY1

For too much of my life, I have half believed that I would lick this death thing somehow.  After all, it seems like such an inefficient and cruel thing, to learn and strive and polish yourself, only to snuff out without fanfare or recourse.  I did not sign up for this contract, and so I want out of it.  Despite my lack of participation, the day has marched inexorably closer, announcing itself with its crude reminders like the brow that will now not unfurrow, decay telegraphing itself in skin that refuses to bounce back like it used to.

But it is, perhaps, in watching others face the inevitable that the knock comes loudest.  We no longer live close to our older generations, watching illness and smelling death close by.  Now, we sanitize and distance it with moves across the country and nursing homes.  But still the visitor arrives, and claims us, like a relentless enemy on the battle field, mowing us down.  The lines that stand ahead of us groan, and we watch them succumb.   Because death rarely happens at home anymore, it is in hearing the tales of our modern day heroes, our celebrities and leaders and intellectuals, that we often come to face our own mortality.

So it was for me when I learned Christopher Hitchens was sick with Stage IV esophageal cancer.  Christopher Hitchens, atheist, poison pen, author who inexplicably chose, of all potential targets for his diatribes, God and Mother Theresa, was dying.  He was not very important in my life.  I mostly never agreed with him.  I watched him on television sometimes, accidentally, on my way to another channel.  He was usually arguing and being contrary, with a dull certainty about positions that seemed contradictory and untenable and more than a little curmudgeonly.

So… he was dying.  Who cares, right?  People die all the time.  But, there was one catch, and that was his absolutely exquisite command of the English language.   I could dislike him and disagree with him, but I was forced to stand in awe of turns of phrase that, like Salieri in the movie Amadeus, I could appreciate in their full glory, but never replicate.  Why allow someone to sharpen such a talent, only to shut it off?  And then he began to write about mortality, making it all the worse.  Turning a sharp and precise eye to his cancer diagnosis, he made me stand behind him on the battlefield as the bullets whizzed by my ear and I watched him take a couple in the gut.  I did not love him any more for it.

Christopher Hitchens is an atheist, or, as he would prefer us to call him, an antitheist, someone who not only doesn’t believe there is a god, but is glad about it.  This makes his mortality, and his examination of it, far more terrifying than the theist who can, at the end, at least placate us all about the soft and cushy alternative on the other side, helping us mask our own terrors with the velvet lies that help us function day to day in a world that’s ending: our own.   Hitchens refuses to tell us those bedtime stories, and, instead, reports from the front lines, stories we wish we could unknow but which, somehow, we know we must read.  No one knows what’s on the other side, even the preachers who peddle their certainty.  One thing we can say with a nearly unanimous voice, preacher and sinner alike: we don’t really want to know, or else we’d speed up the trip.  We have all had moments of terror when we’ve suspected that Hitchens’ view is true, and that all that’s coming is a whole lot of nothing.

In his essay about his cancer diagnosis, Hitchens writes, “I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.”  It’s a common human malady that it takes something like a cancer diagnosis to realize that we’re in the final round but, of course, our brief and sometimes brutal lives are all a final round, a pathetic little blink in the lifetime of the universe.  We are all finalists.

In the midst of facing Hitchens’ impending doom – whether it happens in a few months or whether he “beats” it and lives another 30 years, he is doomed, as are we all – I maximize my ever-present Facebook window and see a post from a friend: Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs.  (I get all my breaking news on Facebook these days).  Steve Jobs, visionary, gazillionaire, power broker, game changer, has died at 56 years old, 15 years older than I am now.  Somehow, although I am aware of the legions that have died younger than me, his death puts its creepy hand on mine in a way that others don’t.  If there is anyone who could beat this thing called death, it’s the guy who kicked ass in the game of life, living it to the fullest and creating the electronic best friend of millions around the world.  If Hitchens can write the hell of out if, surely Jobs can engineer his way around it, no?

No.

Death is trite and ever-present, leveler, humbler, the inscrutable final act.  When one of our great scribes takes a star performance in the show, it may not be pretty, but it’s important.  If there is one thing that contemplating death teaches us, it’s that all the distinctions we invent in life – riches and power and position and fame – mean absolutely nothing.  So why pay attention as Hitchens struggles with life and death?  His life is worth no more than the hungry orphan who slowly slips away alone and unseen, or the junkie who turns cold with the needle in his arm.   Death is the only true egalitarian thing on Earth and no one’s matters more than anyone else’s, although we make bigger deals of some over others.  Still, for the most part, we are sheltered and unprepared for it, afraid and avoidant.

It is in this sense that paying attention while Hitchens writes about it is key.  In watching him struggle and observe, we have the unique opportunity to press our noses up to the glass of mortality and truly face it.  It changes nothing but our own depth, and our sense of collective memory when we finally look down at our scoreboard and realize we are finalists too.

Write on, Christopher Hitchens.

Yes, that’s right, I had a threesome on Date # 15.  I didn’t know it was going to happen until right before it started.  My date texted me about it a half hour before and I figured in the spirit of 51 First Dates and being game for anything, I would go for it.  It wasn’t half bad.

So, there we were, me, my date, and his 7-year-old son.  (Why, what were you thinking?).

Jeff reached out to me on Plenty of Fish.  He wasn’t the kind of guy I would have chosen.  Not homely – just not the kind of guy who would catch my eye.  For the Real Housewives of New Jersey lovers in the crowd, he had a bit of a Joe Giudice kind of look to him, brawny, like a muscular guy who’s let the beer gut creep in, with a friendly smile and a kind face.  So, what the heck?  I’ve got quota to meet.  He moved fast, which I prefer (endless penpaling is just so pointless), and suggested a date 2 days after first contact: coffee at a Starbucks in the next town over from mine.

About a half hour before, he texted, “By the way, it’s my weekend and I’ve got my 7-year-old son with me.”  No “is that okay?” or anything, just a simple statement of fact.

Hmmm.  I wasn’t sure about this 7-year-old-on-a-first-date thing.  But okay.

This brings up an interesting theme in dating post-divorce.  When to introduce the kids?  First date?  Probably too soon.  But since my divorce nearly two years ago, I’ve never once mentioned dating to my 11 and 10-year-olds (except for the abstract statement that I’d like to find someone special eventually).  I’ve always thought I’d introduce them only to the guy who will become their stepfather (whenever he shows up).  I’ve been trying to spare them the heartbreak of falling in love with someone and then having to deal with losing him should the relationship end.

Jeff made me think about this in a new way.  I walked into Starbucks and spotted him right away.  He looked just like his pictures – no shock or false advertising.  Seated beside him was the most angelic-looking, blond haired, pouty lipped little boy, playing quietly on a laptop.

They say that cute dogs are chick magnets, but I have to say, cherubic little boys are pretty helpful in that department too.  I wouldn’t exactly say his son made Jeff any more my type, but he somehow made him realer.  Jeff bought me a raspberry scone and we sat down to talk.

I don’t know if it was the kid or the cumulative effects of all this dating, but I had a really pleasant time.  (And did he sedate him or was that kid really that good?  He never once interrupted us or looked up from his computer at all).  I have never had such a good time on a date with no expectation of what would come after.  Part of it was that Jeff was really chill, honest, a little sarcastic, funny, self deprecating.  He talked and listened in equal measure.  He told me about his medical practice, his travels, his former wives (yes, two).   In the middle of our date, someone he knew happened by and they talked about the band they’d once played in together.

Through it all, his son was enraptured with his computer.  Jeff said to him teasingly, “Don’t you do that gorgeous smile,” and the little boy’s face lit up, self-conscious and stunning, revealing two missing top front teeth.  Then, we ceased to exist to him again.   There was an effortlessness about their relationship, Jeff talking about all kinds of things I’d never mention in front of my kids.  It made me wonder whether in the spirit of protecting them I have also excluded them a little, tried to be someone less flawed and real and vulnerable than I am.  In trying to be the mom who always gets it right, perhaps I’ve underestimated their ability to deal with life’s realities.

I never once wondered what it would be like to be that kid’s stepmother.  (For anyone who knows my “need-to-know-how-this-all-works-out” tendencies, this is tantamount to an OCD clean freak eating an M&M off the floor.  Big progress).   And I didn’t flinch when he told me he’d been arrested a bunch of times for violating the restraining order his ex-wife had against him, or the fact that he was only “95% over her” 2 years after their divorce.  He wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t matter.

So, no, probably not Prince Charming, but just another fellow traveler on the road of life, and love, who bought me a scone and whose handsome little boy lit up my morning with one last gap-toothed grin as we said goodbye.

As I walked off into a dazzlingly crisp fall day, I thought, “This dating thing ain’t half bad.”

Highest clicked-on posts:

Plenty of Fish Chats – I Think My Eyeballs are Bleeding
Date # 12 – Back-up Date is DTF.  Am I?
Nipple Guy Gets Creepy

Catch-up on all the dates:

Date # 1 – Bill a/k/a Angry Guy
Date # 2 – Little Johnny
Dates # 3-10 – Speed Dating
Date # 11 – George, Mr. Perfectly-Nice, Not-For-Me
Date # 12 – Back-up Date is DTF.  Am I?
Date # 13 – The Scariest of All
Date # 14 – Just What’s Your Angle Buddy?
Date # 15 – A Threesome
Date # 16 – What He Said
Date # 17 – Playing the Numbers
Date # 19 – Extreme Snow Dating- October Edition

More about the 51 First Dates After Divorce Project

  January, 2012:
Parenting articles on the Latin mom community and content site.
Satire, January, 2012:
Halle Berry Preemptively Files For Divorce– Hollywood takes ephemeral relationships to a new level.
Op-Ed: August 30, 2011:
Obama Administration’s New Immigration Policy Focus Just Not Enough– When appeasement and short-sighted solutions aren’t working anymore… what to do.
  The Crossing — “Lacking a visa, could I remember how to be an American?” This (Illegal) American Life — “I may not look like an undocumented alien, but until the age of 18 that’s just what I was.”
  Count Me In– What to do when the Census Bureau calls 

  Parental Guidance Columns– see parenting commentary and advice on topics as diverse as Free Range Kids, what to tell children about September 11th, and whether it’s okay to slap your kids in Walmart.

- “

The Crossing – “Lacking a visa, could I remember how to be an American?”

One thing I knew for certain: my methods and mindset when it came to finding satisfying relationships had not worked out well.  Everything was up for grabs.  I embarked on a complete re-examination of life, love and the search for The One.  Out of all this soul-searching, the 51 First Dates After Divorce Project was born.

The concept caught on right away.  It seems there is a market for an ironic and sometimes self-deprecating look at the process of finding love (or, at least, dating.  Let’s not confuse the two).  Twitter followers started coming, and acquaintances began stopping me on the street asking when I was going on a date next.  A writer long looking for her audience, I found it in the people who liked to laugh at my musings on looking for love the next time around.  Yes, a book is in the works.

I’ve been asked a lot:  Why 51 First Dates?  Why not 40 or 100?  Well, for starters, it was inspired by the movie “50 First Dates.”  I didn’t want the movie people mad at me, so I changed the number.  The movie is about a couple that has to have their first date over and over again because she’s got some kind of memory loss.  In the movie, it’s a problem to solve.

For me, it’s a mindset to aspire to.  Chronically risk- and pain-averse, I carry every first date, every heartbreak and every inexplicable thing any man has ever done around to every cocktail party, blind date and to every flirting session in the park.  In other words, I could do with some amnesia.  The 51 First Dates After Divorce Project is my chronicle of going on 51 first dates without baggage, without agendas, without expectations, without any goal other than having 51 first dates.  For a planner and an overthinker like me, quite a feat.

The main chronicle of the project is at its site, 51 First Dates After Divorce Project.  I will post some “fan favorite” essays here.

Highest clicked-on posts:

Plenty of Fish Chats – I Think My Eyeballs are Bleeding
Date # 12 – Back-up Date is DTF.  Am I?
Nipple Guy Gets Creepy

Catch-up on all the dates:

Date # 1 – Bill a/k/a Angry Guy
Date # 2 – Little Johnny
Dates # 3-10 – Speed Dating
Date # 11 – George, Mr. Perfectly-Nice, Not-For-Me
Date # 12 – Back-up Date is DTF.  Am I?
Date # 13 – The Scariest of All
Date # 14 – Just What’s Your Angle Buddy?
Date # 15 – A Threesome
Date # 16 – What He Said
Date # 17 – Playing the Numbers
Date # 19 – Extreme Snow Dating- October Edition

More about the 51 First Dates After Divorce Project