Mommy's Martini -- think. write. laugh. love.

Anniversary

2013-02-02T21:16:00.004-05:00

Exactly a year ago at this time (8:42pm), I was sitting in an empty pediatric surgical waiting room. They don't schedule procedures at that time of night; they only do them in emergencies. I was alone because my husband was still on his way back from dropping our daughter off at a friend's house for the night so that we could stay at the hospital and devote all of our fretting and energy to the child who'd been hit by a car a few hours before.

The word hit seems wrong in that sentence.

Emotionally, smashed seems more appropriate. Careened into.

There really are no words that feel adequate to describe the horrifying slow-motion of watching an eight-year-old, your eight-year-old, on a scooter suddenly be plastered onto the front grill of a gold-tan minivan.

One minute, you are walking your dog, and the children are scooting through the glimmer of an unseasonably warm February day, and the next minute, the neighborhood street that was quiet and empty is filled with your panicked screams and the hulking car with your broken child in a limp pile at its bumper.

The point here, though, is not just that I have been having flashbacks all day long, or that I have been alternately on the verge of tears and the verge of near-hysterical laughter, but that I feel the most immense gratitude there ever was because He. Is. Fine.

Apart from two scars above his knee where the surgeons performed their miracles, there is not a mark on him to suggest what happened last February.

He used to be able to say, with definitive firmness "February 2," when asked when the accident happened. But today, he didn't even think of it.

I watched him playing basketball this morning, pounding up and down the court, catching rebounds, making shots on the impossibly high ten-foot baskets, guarding opponents, and the tears just rolled down my face. He is fine.

I can hardly believe I can write those words.

He laughed with his teammates, cheered them on from the bench, scored.

We took the dog for a walk in the snow today. My son didn't want to come. He wanted to stay on the couch and read. But I made him join me. Neither he nor his sister knew it, but I needed them both to come. I needed this peaceful snow, and this threesome, and this walk, if for no other reason than to remind myself that there are so many more days for dog-walking than there are days for horrifying accidents while dog-walking.

We laughed, and slid on the ice that lay concealed under the fresh snow (no unseasonable warmth this year), and raced the dog down the path. We came home to hot chocolate. We made a dinner that only my husband and I knew was a celebration, extravagance marking my own gratitude, cooking my medium for expressing love.

I sat on the couch between my two children and watched a silly television show and could only think of how it felt: Whole. It felt complete. The scent of hair and child and warmth, their individual scents mingled under my nose, their giggles and caresses enveloping me, I felt surrounded by good fortune.

"What was your favorite part of your day?" I asked him at bedtime, as usual. And when he asked me in return, I told him it was the whole day, every bit of it. "That makes no sense," he said. "You liked going to Home Depot?"

I thought about mentioning this anniversary to him by way of explanation.

But then I didn't. Why should I? He has moved forward. Run forward. Become whole and happy and put this accident in his past. He, thank God, did not see what I saw that day. He will never have that sight in the vocabulary of his memory. And so, having recovered, he should be allowed to stay that way.

Because a childhood should be filled with laughter like this.

Nine Years Old

2013-01-21T09:37:00.000-05:00

Do you know what nine years old looks like?

Many days, it looks like noise. Lots of noise. Loud laughter, jokes whose punchlines must be shouted, games that require enthusiastic cheers, and laments that are expressed with the vehemence of curse words that Nine Years Old is not bold enough to say.

Nine Years Old is critical commentary on the cheating propensities of Certain Boys on the playground at recess. The critique is less name-calling than matter-of-fact description, but the descriptions are rife with an indignant sense that right and wrong ought to be inviolable. The tone is tinged with disappointment that not everyone understands this. (Eight Years Old could be moved to tears over this injustice. Nine is not. He merely accepts it as a disappointing fact.)

Nine eats five pancakes, two slices of bacon, and two glasses of milk for breakfast, is hungry for a snack at 10am, and then has two helpings of lunch.

Or else, Nine is too busy to eat and picks at his food, occasionally resorting to frustrated tears over the iniquity of being forced to eat broccoli that has been cooked too soft and put into sauce.

Nine uses "verse" as a verb. As in: "I love versing you guys at Mario Kart!!!"

Nine Years Old talks a big big BIG BIG game. In this pivot moment, trying desperately to find its equilibrium between respect for authority and not being a baby any more, Nine misses the mark a lot. He jokes with parents as if they are peers, leading to all sorts of oddly-familiar comments that aren't exactly disrespectful but are uncomfortably not the relationship a child ought to have with his mother.

Nine wants to be read to and tucked in at night but does not want to be kissed. Nine will fight the kiss with every power of his being, pulling the comforter over his head and giggling uproariously. Nine will sing out, "night night, LADY!" as you leave the room, having given up again and consoled yourself with a kiss on the elbow that is under the blankets.

And then, five nights out of seven, Nine cannot sleep and must come down stairs to sit in your lap for a quiet cuddle, a caressing of hair, a dozen soft kisses on the back of the neck and the cheeks. Then, and only then, can he sleep.

Nine is sports. All sports. Any sports. He wants to play them all, watch them all, memorize the stats for them all. He has favorite teams and favorite players and favorite seasons.

He is old enough to understand that his mother doesn't want him playing tackle football in third grade because of the danger of injuries, and young enough to cry over the fact that she is being too protective and he won't get hurt anyway and it's just not fair. He is old enough to ask over and over what happened at Penn State but young enough to be silenced by the quiet answer that it was something terrible, too "inappropriate" to explain to a child.

Nine Years Old will practice trash talking at dinner with his friends.

It will regale you with detailed stories about the Recess Football League, and who plays which position on which team. (They have teams! With names! And positions!) Their friend, Eight Years Old, who is relegated to the second grade section of the playground, is both Defensive Coordinator and Offensive Coordinator, the Nines explain, because he isn't allowed to play in their game, but he wants to play with them and they want him to be a part of it all. He has stats too, which they will rattle off in great detail. And if you ask how he can have touchdown stats if he has to stand on the sidelines, the Nines will tell you that Eight gets credit for all the successful plays the others make that he has called. Because Nines are generous and inclusive and endlessly resourceful despite the rules made by adults--who have marked out definitive territories on the playground to ensure that older children are not selfish and exclusive with the younger ones.

Nine can make complex rules for any game, almost instantly establishing teams and guidelines and amending them as the game progresses. Everything will be fair, even if three warriors are armed with flying monkey slingshots, while two have laser tag guns, and one has a plastic sword. Each weapon will have its own rules of engagement, and all the Nines will abide by them.

Until they don't. And then all the Nines will erupt into noise even noisier than the noise of enjoyable battle to argue loudly about who is or isn't following the rules they have just invented.

But alone, Nine will duck its head to hide tears of happiness when it learns that a friend with a serious medical condition will be allowed his very first sleepover ever on the occasion of a ninth birthday party.

Nine has boundless energy, can stay awake until 11pm--LOUDLY--with friends around, seems like it never needs sleep. And yet, Nines will come to a sleepover with tattered blankets and stuffed lovies they have clearly owned since their baby days. One Nine will announce with pride that his misshapen, greying, knitted square is older than all the boys there.

"Look," a Nine will shout as you walk in the room--half their conversations will be shouted--"did you know his Chewy is older than anyone else here?!"

Nine is nothing if not competitive. But it is also, quite beautifully, able to be happy when someone else wins a contest. Any contest at at all.

Even one over whose lovie is oldest.

Reckoning Time; or, How I've Spent the Past Week

2013-01-10T16:37:00.000-05:00

Counts as working: Answering email from students
Fake working: Putting down the paper you're grading, mid-paragraph, to pop over to your faculty email account to see if there are any new messages

Counts as working: Sitting on the couch under a fleecy blanket, grading papers
Fake working: Sitting on the couch under a fleecy blanket with a pile of ungraded papers in your lap and a pencil in hand while "someone else" in the room is watching 30 Rock

Counts as working: Setting up a blog under your real, professional name because you've required your students to use a blogging platform for part of their semester's writing
Fake working: Staying up until 1am tinkering with the blog widgets to make the site prettier! and shinier! and more awesome!

Counts as working: Writing letters of recommendation for students applying to scholarships/jobs/advanced degree programs
Fake working: Re-reading letters of recommendation from five years ago and wondering where that one particularly brilliant student is now

Counts as working: Creating a Twitter account in your real, professional name because you've just signed on to be a monthly contributor to the online version of an Important Professional Journal
Fake working: Staying up until 1am trying to get your avatar photo to upload not sideways and endlessly reworking the 160-character bio

Counts as working: Staying up until 1am revising the syllabus from the last time you taught this class (five years ago) to make it both more intellectually focused and slightly less demanding (read: tone down that crazy Victorian reading load)
Fake working: Rereading whole portions of Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur in order to be absolutely sure you've assigned the right books as excerpts

Counts as working: Reading relevant scholarly articles to prepare to teach that one Browning poem you haven't taught before
Fake working: Getting interested in that wacky personal detail about Browning mentioned in a footnote in one of the articles, and spending 45 minutes reading online about the Brownings' Italian years

Counts as working: Taking a five-minute brew-a-cup-of-tea break after every two quizzes you finish writing
Fake working: Checking Facebook while drinking your five-minute cup of tea, and coming back to the quiz-writing an hour later

Counts as working: Uploading to the online course companion the essays you've assigned to your students
Fake working: Calling the online course companion Help Desk to complain about how no browser interfaces actually enable you to do all the things the system requires, and so you have to bop back and forth between Safari and Firefox, and then restart Firefox every time it times out saving a page (i.e. every time you save a page), and talking to someone who seems to be in India and who gives you a lot of useless information and sends you an email about how to fix the problem that doesn't actually fix the problem but makes you even more frustrated so that now you can't even get any work done anyway and probably better make a cup of tea to calm yourself down

Counts as working: Making a To Do list for the two days you work from home each week
Fake working: Putting "organize Documents folder" or "rearrange files" at the top of the To Do list, so that it takes 6 hours to get through the first item, and all the teaching prep gets crammed into Sunday night

Counts as working: Installing RescueTime Robot on your computer to help keep you accountable for the time you spend distracted online instead of working on the course websites, library databases, and other online platforms you need
Fake working: Writing a blog post about how you are going to be so much better this semester at staying focused while working, even though it's so easy to be distracted when so much of your work has to happen online anyway

2013: The Year of Dedication

2013-01-02T21:30:00.000-05:00

I read somewhere that the new challenge is to come up with one-word New Year's Resolutions. Many of the standard ones are pretty easy:

Exercise

Diet

Socialize

Donate

Read

They're also pretty boring as resolutions go. (Not to say unnecessary or unworthy. Just uninteresting in their very necessity.)

So, although I need to do more of all of those things listed above, I've been casting around for a really really good one-word resolution for this year. I'm thinking of:

Immerse.

As in: be deeply present in everything I do.

This means I need to work more efficiently when I'm working. No checking email between chapters I'm reading to teach. Stop making excuses that I need to grade papers and can't exercise today, and instead make exercise the reward for working smarter and getting the grading done. No frittering away time online because the work is tedious.

It also means I need to play more joyfully when I'm playing. No more feeling guilty over a board game with my kids that I "ought to be" checking email. No more reading a bedtime story while making a mental list of the tasks I need to accomplish after the kids are tucked in. I am going to try not telling the children "yes" if I don't really want to do an activity with them (I'm not very fond of certain board games *ahem, Monopoly, I'm looking at you*) but then suggesting something else we can do instead that will make us both really engaged and happy.

Immerse means being wholly in this moment rather than worrying about the one I haven't reached or the thing that I can't be doing simultaneously.

It means admitting aloud, to an actual coach, that I want to start taking some figure skating tests and then committing to the lessons and practices that I long to enjoy. Six hours a week of skating is hardly an extravagance of time; it's just that rink hours overlap with work hours, and so I always feel guilty about taking time away. But (see above), if I work more efficiently, there is no reason I can't skate at mid-day and grade three or four papers at night.

It means doing 15 minutes a day of diligent cleaning rather than two hours of resentful cleaning on Saturdays. And doing it even when I'd rather fritter away the time on the couch.

Immerse is about dropping the endless inclination to multi-task and realizing that doing one thing at a time, really well, for the amount of time I am doing it, is enough. In fact, it is preferable a lot of the time.

It means dedicating a weekly chunk of time to writing, and then not doing all the other procrastinator-y things that are so much easier to do than writing. Like laundry. Or answering email. Or walking the dog.

I will have to find myself a schedule, and I am not sure that will be easy for me, since I seem to be more of a make-a-huge-list-and-then-just-start-plowing-through-it kind of girl. But the problem with those lists is that it's so alluring to cross things off that the easy things always get done first. And then, all of a sudden, a whole week has gone by without any writing or any skating, and the bathroom needs cleaning again, and then the cycle starts over.

I suspect there are a lot of things I will have to figure out along the way. I tend to take on too many projects and then burn candles at both ends to finish them. So I may have to learn to say "no," to choose more wisely, to be more realistic.

But I really really love the idea of doing things deeply rather than just trying to do all the things.

Immerse.

I like it.

What will be your word for 2013?

An Open Letter to First-Grade Teachers Everywhere

2012-12-18T17:46:00.001-05:00

(with particular consciousness that we, as a culture, do not say these things nearly enough, and that it should not take horror and tragedy to remind us to say them)

Thank you.

Thank you for reveling in the chaos of twenty-six irrepressibly enthusiastic children: most of us could not imagine coping with this every single day.

Thank you for repeating directions over and over and over again. With a smile.

Thank you for singing.

Thank you for glue sticks and scissors and paper towels and pencil sharpeners.

For taking on the messy projects, so little hands could learn life-long skills.

Thank you for introducing Mozart and Shakespeare in ways comprehensible to six-year-olds, even while making it clear that this glorious romp through music and poetry was just the tip of those icebergs.

Thank you for proffering hugs.

Thank you for settling squabbles, and tolerating the chitter-chatter, and knowing when to be firm and help the children realize how to be responsible for themselves for a moment.

Thank you for zipping coats and tying shoes and finding mittens. (Thank you for knowing which mittens are whose.)

Thank you for reading in ways that open up for children the magic of books. And for talking to them about writing as if they--who can hardly spell--are budding authors. Thank you for planting the seeds that will later blossom into a consciousness about the power and beauty of language.

Thank you for instilling manners and habits and kindness.

For knowing that play can be work and good work can be playful.

For spending evenings cutting out shapes and weekends dreaming up projects and your own paychecks buying supplies to enrich your classes.

Thank you for math and spelling and geography and history...not just for the facts, but for the love of learning.

Thank you for taking our children for hours each day and returning them to us even better, brighter, more learned.

Thank you for protecting them and nurturing them and guiding them and loving them, even when you go long days without anyone telling you "thank you."

We, who could never stand in your shoes so effectively or gracefully, owe you a debt of gratitude as bright as the shiny hearts our children paint into the skies of their happy pictures.

Thank you for knowing, instantly, that those pictures mean love.

Thank you for taking the time to have the patience, and in moments of terrible crisis the bravery, of a thousand mothers rolled into one.

How to Hang Holiday Lights in 50 Easy Steps

2012-12-13T21:57:00.002-05:00

1. Bring up all the boxes of holiday decorations from the basement.

2. So THAT's where those strings of lights were hiding that you couldn't find last year! Right there in the open-topped box next to all the other decorations you were bringing up. No wonder you couldn't see them. Bring them up too.

3. [enormous

4. pause

5. for

6. detangling

7. strings

8. of

9. lights]

10. Dog runs through, scattering carefully aligned strings of light. Crate dog. Resume.

11. Plug strings of lights into outlet, one at a time.

12. Two strings will light. (Hurray!)

13. Two strings will not. (Of course.)

14. One string will light up halfway, while the remainder stays dark. (Obviously.)

15. Jiggle all the strings of lights that aren't working properly.

16. Unplug them. Jiggle them some more. Plug each string back in for confirmation.

17. One of the ones that was working 5 minutes ago will stop working.

18. One of the ones that was dark 5 minutes ago will alight!

19. The one that was half lit 5 minutes ago will flicker hopefully along its entire length and suddenly burst into a lovely glow.

20. You will cheer silently and feel a leap of gladness in your heart, and the string will sense your burst of happiness, flicker accusingly at you, and resume its former grumpy half-lit mode.

21. With a smirk.

22. Conclude that two-and-a-half strings is probably enough for your tree, and you can always buy a new string for outside tomorrow.

23. Carefully thread the lights around your tree, wadding up the dark half-string in the back corner of the tree that no one will see anyway.

24. Step back.

25. Tilt head thoughtfully.

26. Rearrange slightly.

27. Step across the room.

28. Return and reposition tree slightly.

29. Relocate one-foot section of lights to the perfect spot.

30. Smile.

31. Four-foot section of lights will go dark.

32. Summon inner reserves of patience normally allocated for dealing with no-nap toddler in grocery store.

33. Move slowly, jiggle string gently.

34. As soon as lights come back on (which they will) IMMEDIATELY. STOP. TOUCHING. THEM.

35. You have reached an uneasy truce.

36. Resume all other decorating activities with an attitude of utter calm: the lights will stay lit, obviously. They are just lights. Their circuitry is intact. They are plugged in. You can turn them off. You can turn them on. They will obey the laws of electricity.

37. Your attitude about this must be completely blase. This is not surprising. This is not cause for jubilation. This just is. Best not to disturb The Force with your emotions.

38. Find, upon your return to the basement to retrieve the ornaments/stockings/wreath/garland/all other decorative items that are not vindictive, two brand-new boxes of lights that you bought last year and could have used without any drama.

39. (Their first year, all lights behave.)

40. Make your peace with owning lights that have teenage-hormonal properties.

41. Head outside with the newfound strings to decorate the front porch.

42. Have no trouble at all with anything except your completely numb fingers.

43. Go to plug them in and realize you've put them up with the female end of the string adjacent to the only outlet.

44. Consider stretching the extension cord the entire length of the porch.

45. Reject the plan for all the obvious reasons.

46. Redo all the outdoor lights.

47. PLUG. THEM. IN.

48. !!! The house looks so pretty from the outside, especially with the tree in the window !!!

49. Store the belligerent lights that refused to light this year in an obvious place in the basement, so you will be able to find them next year. They will likely learn their lesson and behave better if given one more chance.

50. Drink.

You say "mid-life crisis," I say "goal-oriented"

2012-10-02T09:50:00.004-04:00

Last week, my daughter and I were watching a figure skating performance on YouTube--I can't even remember who or what we were watching, except I know it was a girl, and she was at about an Intermediate level, which means double jumps, and nowhere near the Olympics--and my daughter asked me, with wide eyes, "Is that what you want to be when you grow up?"

It took me mere seconds to consider whether my "grown-up" goals included emulating a twelve-year-old in stiff white boots hurling herself into the air and planning on landing on the tips of narrow steel blades. "Yes," I said definitively. "That is exactly what I want to be when I grow up."

This was not me indulging my kindergartner in a moment of irresistible cuteness. This was me dreaming big. And perhaps playing a little fast and loose with the definition of "grown up." As anyone who knows anything about skating will tell you, I have come to this sport approximately 35 years too late to get really good at it. And as anyone who knows anything about being in one's forties will tell you, my body is probably 25 years too old for learning new tricks of any airborne variety.

Notwithstanding all the insanity involved, I have been taking skating lessons for over a year now.

Am I any good? That depends on how you define that very relative term. I am much better than I was a year ago. I am much better than the people in rental skates who come out with their friends a few Sundays each winter to muck about on the ice and then go drink hot chocolate. But I am nowhere near as good as the nine-year-old I watched go through a series of program run-throughs yesterday in anticipation of tomorrow's competition.

If I worked really really really hard, I might one day be as good as she is today. No matter what I do, I will never be as good as she will be a year or two from now. Physics, age, timidity, and the limits of being an actual grown-up will certainly see to that.

But here's what I've learned from a year of skating:

Humility
If you've spent your whole life glued of televised ice skating, fantasizing about leaping off of pond ice into thin air while wearing a sparkly short dress, and generally becoming extremely good at the ideas of ice skating, there's a real disconnect between what you imagine your body doing and what it will actually do when perched atop those thin little blades.

The Power of Addiction
When you find a sport you truly love, you will want to do it every day. You will also want to talk to other people about it, read about it, pretend you need all the gear for it (and thus read about that gear), and fall asleep practicing it in your mind's eye. It's useful to remember that other people want to hear about this new addiction for about the same number of minutes that you want to hear about their knitting, and adjust your conversation accordingly.

The Value of a Good Teacher
I've had several different coaches through the rink classes. The one I had for the longest stretch was very kind and enthusiastic about working with an adult. (Some skating coaches find adults to be a waste of their time, since adults are not "going anywhere" with skating.) But then she had some personal issues come up, and I got a different coach, and she? Is quite simply perfect for me. The way she explains things makes sense to me. I can get my body to do what she is asking. It's made me realize that it is so worth matching a teaching style to a learning style when it comes to something really physical like this. Also that perhaps I ought to be more patient with my children if they don't do what I ask them to do occasionally: maybe they just don't understand the directions.

The Fickle Nature of Boundaries
A year ago, I could skate forwards and backwards without falling over. I could turn from forwards to backwards easily. I imagined that I might enjoy starting to work on ice dance footwork someday. Now, I'm totally bitten by the jump-and-spin bug. I no longer laugh at coaches who end sentences explaining why I need to correct X with "you'll need to be able to do this right for when you start working on an axel..." This is not to say that I am close to learning an axel. But in my secret heart of hearts? I want to get to the point where I start learning one.

It is possible that all of this is just silliness on my part. Perhaps I am simply indulging in childhood fantasies of gliding gracefully along wearing something sparkly with a floaty chiffon skirt. But, oh, in my mind's eye, I am really really good at being that skater girl.

Urban-Language Barrier

2012-06-24T17:35:00.001-04:00

When you let suburban American children loose in a city--especially in a European city--you are bound to discover a vast realm of knowledge they do not have.

Sure, you expect a language barrier in Paris. (And, to a lesser extent, in London, where even common sentences like "mind the gap between the train and the platform" will elicit endless repetitions of the phrase "mind the gap" in an approximated accent.)

But there is also an urban-language barrier, both more unexpected and more awkward to manage. Here is a partial list of things suburban children do not know--and that you will not be able to teach them in a few short weeks, no matter how much you try.

Apartment house etiquette. Such as: Do not shout down the central stairwell after your running sister. Do not run down the central stairwell. Do not sing annoying songs loudly while brushing your teeth and looking out the open window into the common courtyard. Do not stomp like a heard of elephants down the hall; there are people living below you. Do not use your outdoor voice, even in a fight; there are people living all around you. Do not practice your tap dancing, run races, escalate your voice to ever higher pitches, or--heaven help us--walk as if your feet are made of lead: There. Are. People. Living. Below. You.

Sidewalk etiquette. Such as: You and your sister cannot hold hands with me and your father and walk four-abreast on a sidewalk that is one meter wide. When there are oncoming people, you have to choose one side of the sidewalk or the other And. Stay. On. It. so that they can pass you. That wandering thing you do, as if you were meandering through a field of flowers, doesn't really work on urban pavement.

Museum etiquette. Such as: Do not make audible yawning noises when you walk into a room full of Picassos. Also, do not touch the thin little chains that are meant to separate the people from the art.

Dirt. As in: it is everywhere. Please keep your hands to yourselves. No. They will not. They will run their hands along building walls as they walk, along fences, along subway tunnel walls, along benches, around signs, along tops of poles, along any vertical surface meant to keep people in or out, along any horizontal surface that is approximately their height. Even if you explain what that disgusting smell is in the subway tunnels, they will still forget and run their hands along the walls. The grime of the city will cover them from head to foot. (They will, however, quickly acclimate to being forced to bathe every single night without fail.)

On the other hand, there are lots of urban things they will easily learn, and some of them are invaluable life skills.

Negotiating public transportation. Including, how to read a subway map and figure out the most efficient route from Here to Where I Want to Be. How to manage the subway ticket gates--in multiple languages and different systems. And how to keep track of subway tickets (these--the children who cannot keep track of their own coats in winter!--can hang onto innumerable tiny slips of paper that let them on and off miraculous underground trains).

Buying fresh food daily. Frankly, this one is easy. You just have to choose what kind of croissant you want for breakfast and then walk to the corner boulangerie/patisserie to purchase it. Or pick your fruit and vegetables and stop at the market that's halfway between home and the Underground. This is connected to learning to eat a baguette, chevre, and sundried tomato spread at 10pm when you have finally returned from the day's adventures home for dinner, which is also a very pleasant thing to learn.

Toilets. As in: go when you can. You may never get used to paying for the privilege, but your kids will quickly get used to taking advantage of the opportunity when a public toilet pops up. (Hint, if you're ever in Paris with kids: the nicest free public toilets around are in the round park just before the Place de la Concorde walking down the Champs Elysee from the Arc de Triumph; the most disgusting ones you will pay for the privilege of using are in Tuileries Gardens.)

And, through it all, they will get to see some amazing things--and you will get to see those things through their eyes, which is even more fun. Moments like this (in the modern art gallery of the Pompidou Center) are priceless:

Even if they cannot remember after ten days of reminders that they need to quit stomping through the apartment. There are people living below us.

Thoughts from the Train

2012-06-12T11:41:00.001-04:00

—for Beccy, she knows why

The train on the rails is surprisingly smooth and quiet, a small periodic squeak and the regular, inadvertent woggle in my seat the only things that betray the fact that we are moving. It is a far cry from the clickity-clack of Old West movies or the soot-filled Victorian journeys that marked the dawn of “progress” across England. And while I am drinking Starbucks and using wifi on the climate-controlled train, we are nonetheless passing whole villages of tile-roofed houses and fields thick with damp and redolent of prior ages. Deeply green, the grasses have a lushness that reflects how wet even an English summer is. It is as if all the color drained from the sky—which remains a dull gray day-in and day-out—and pooled in the fields and hedgerows instead. One begins to feel, after ten days in England, that a blue sky would be almost too much. Too dazzling. That the tints of green ought to be enough.

Especially when a dappled white horse kicks up its feet and trots along a fence. They are almost impossibly picturesque, these glimpses of a landscape that could have come straight from a Thomas Hardy novel. Of course, such snatched views punctuate the far less lovely—council houses built after WWII, an oversized box of a commercial distillery, power lines strung across the verdant fields and held up by towers like metal giants on iron girder legs. But as we move further from London and deeper into the Midlands, green fields dotted with white sheep and criss-crossed by wood fences and ageless stone-and-tile structures become the norm; the eye-sores are an occasional punctuation, an exclamation mark of surprised interruption to the soothing flow of rolling countryside.

It is hard to understand this green if you have never been to England or Scotland or Ireland. “It looks as if the whole country were irrigated,” says the man across from me, in a soft South African accent. I can tell that he, too, is unused to the unrelenting green. It is something of a marvel. Even in Michigan, which has four good seasons, the grass suffers patches of brown. Here, the shades of green are multiple, but none of them tend to brown, only to deep green and deeper still. Emerald and kelley and chartreuse and pine. Silver-greens and yellow-greens. Clear, fresh greens, and deep, nearly black greens. Greens piled upon greens as if there were so much water in the world that each green thing sought to outdo its neighbor for sheer green-ness.

I am headed to Edinburgh for two days of research in archives.

Yes, I know how lucky I am.

I also suspect that when I arrive, my friend Jodie will take one look and mock me for coming to Scotland without socks. (When packing in the heat of a Michigan May, it is hard to register summer as a time for cardigans and water-tight shoes.)

I should be working on my notes from all the research I’ve already done, making lists of the people to whom I must write follow-up emails, starting the syllabus for the fall course that will be based on these explorations. In short, I should be working. But the arched railway bridges, the flowering hedges, the church spires in the distance, surrounded by weathered stone hamlets and black-faced sheep, draw my eye away from page and screen. I can type while looking out the window. And so, for now, I take a pause in my work to stare at the landscape. To be reminded of the day—so many years ago—when a friend took me home with him for the weekend from college in Canterbury, and he drove at reckless speeds down single-lane country roads lined with high hawthorne hedges. To see, in my mind’s eye, the fields Tess walked through to gather the milk cows in her happy days.

To realize, for a moment, that not every minute of every day must be filled with obligation. And to smile at the pair of swans, placid in their tiny pond. . . a thick-set draft horse with shaggy ankles. . . an ancient stacked-stone wall with an unfamiliarly beautiful black-and-white bird sailing over it. . . smalls ferns, bright starbursts against the grey stone of a Victorian train shed. . .remnants of Hadrian’s wall plunging down a hill towards the River Tweed—picture postcards flitting past the window of seat 69, carriage E.

Educating Gracefully: A Minor Rant on Obligation

2012-04-30T21:11:00.000-04:00

As a professor, I have a lot of educator friends. And the vast majority of the time, they are teachers I deeply admire, thinkers and writers I respect, citizens of the world I would like to emulate.

But come the end of the semester, I start seeing all over my Facebook page, and on the blogs and pages of friends of friends, and in the comments sections of academic blogs written by people I don't even know, something that drives me crazy: "funny" quotations from student papers.

Someone will write something like this:

I learn something new every day. Today it was that "Shakespeare and his Mid Evil contemporaries had to be very careful about what kind of political references they put in their plays, because if the queen didn't like what they wrote about her government, it was 'Off with their heads!'"*

And the comments section will be full of people who find it hilarious that the student in question, after a full semester of a Shakespeare class, still confuses the Renaissance with the Medieval period. And apparently thinks that Medieval comes between the Early Evil and Late Evil periods. And is quite happy to create a mash up of Queen Elizabeth I and the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland.

And the commenters will quickly become jumpers on the band-wagon, who will share their best hilarious tales of student errors.

It's like the online version of Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" or of a movie's blooper reel, with everybody laughing till their sides split as a welcome break from grading their own stacks of 85 papers and 120 exams.

Only it isn't. Because a blooper reel is outtakes from a movie for which movie stars got paid giant buckets of money, and in the blooper reel, they are laughing at their own mistakes, which means they know they made them, and even they think it's hilarious. "Jaywalking" is a little more mean-spirited--and frankly it always made me a little uncomfortable for that reason. But if you are going to let Jay Leno interview you on the street, and you genuinely don't know who was the first president, or what the current one looks like, I get that you are kind of asking to be made fun of.

On the other hand, student errors in papers are not part of a mutually-agreed-upon context for mockery. In fact, they are precisely the opposite. They are the efforts of less-experienced learners to synthesize information they have gleaned over some period of time into a coherent set of claims and discussions for our evaluation.

Are some of them better at this than others? Of course. As with all things in the world.

Are some of the things we encounter in papers truly laughable? Absolutely.

Are there always students in a class who are downright intellectually lazy, or procrastinators, or people who only attended half of the class sessions, or ones who skipped all the short writing assignments and then requested extra credit opportunities to make up for work they'd missed? Yes.

And without a doubt, these are all deeply irritating facts for someone who has been writing detailed comments on papers all term trying to help students become better writers, and offering extra office hours, and putting dates and historical information on the board because students reading literature often also need history lessons--only to find that all of this has been ignored in favor of the unsupportable hypothesis and the inane generalization. ("Women in the eighteenth century [by which the writer means the 1800s] were pretty much confined to their houses for their whole lives."*)

But that doesn't give us the right to mock these claims--completely inane though they may be--in specific detail in public forums. In legal terms, it is a a violation of federal laws that protect a student's right to academic privacy to have lines from his or her paper thus publicly quoted without permission. But in moral terms, it's far worse than that. It is a violation of the basic trust that students place in their teachers--trust to guide their ideas, impart information to them, steer them when they falter, help them learn to participate in the discourse community that is a particular discipline.

Of course, there are occasional moments in student papers that really tickle our funny bones. But, in general, I think it is less hilarious and more a sad commentary on the state of the U.S. educational system when I realize that I have many students who have spent the all the years of their young lives not reading, not learning history, not thinking deeply about how to question and challenge things they find in print. (I teach at a university that admits many at-risk and first-generation college students who are under-prepared for what college will require of them.)

When students write really absurd things about history or poetry or what long-dead people "really thought," it is my job to realize that this is the mark of the reams of things no one has ever taught them, not least of which is often how to "do" school. If I have done my job, they are a little better about all of these things by the end of the term than they are at the beginning.

Even so, I cannot undo a lifetime of educational lack in four months.

But I can keep myself from laughing at their ignorance. I can offer them some kind of firm-but-gracious feedback that provides them with a sense of how to do better next time. I can avoid making their efforts the butt of my jokes, as if my PhD entitles me ruthlessly to equate a lack of facility with specific information or specific writing conventions with a lack of personal worth. And I should.

At least, I should if I want to hold my head up and call myself a teacher.

_________
* These are made-up examples, not quotations, though all the errors are representative of the kind of historical anachronism, lackadaisical grammar and spelling, and casual attention to basic facts that I've seen educators mock.

Holding Back

2012-04-17T21:04:00.000-04:00

In the longer-term aftermath of the accident, we suddenly find ourselves having to put on the brakes and consciously hold back on things that feel like recovery. It's more than a little disorienting to want my son to get better more slowly.

At this point, he is so emotionally done being broken that he just wants to act as if he is completely whole. The leg may not be perfectly healed, but he has had it with being slowed down by that fact. The weather is has been unseasonably lovely this spring, and sunny days beckon him outdoors. He wants to be running and kicking and throwing and batting and tumbling and tackling and volleying. And so, he tries.

The amazing thing about a surgical repair to a broken leg is that femur-length pins provide a tremendous amount of stability--so much so, in fact, that nine weeks after the accident, my son feels capable of trying to do all the things he used to be able to do. It is hard (and, if you have ever had a sports-addicted eight-year-old boy, you will easily be able to imagine how hard) to keep him down.

Of course, it was hard to keep him down as a toddler as well. At eleven months, he dragged a chair across the kitchen, climbed onto it to investigate what was on the counters, and proceeded to drop the coffee pot--SMASH!--onto the tile floor. At fourteen months, he began climbing out of his crib and making his way downstairs alone in the dark, so we had to move him to a bed. At four years old, he climbed a forty foot pine tree to the very tippy top and nearly gave half the neighborhood a heart attack at the Halloween cookout.

So it is perhaps not surprising that at eight, now that he can (mostly) walk again, he is ready not simply to be done with the crutches for good but to begin playing flag football. Immediately. His left leg is not nearly as strong as his right. The foot flops awkwardly as he reaches somewhat tentatively out to kick a soccer ball. He can hobble pretty fast, nearly jog, but no one would really call his gait a run just yet.

More importantly, his physical therapist has told him that he is to do nothing where he has to block, or plant his foot and twist, or dash after a ball to catch it. Nothing, in short, where he can really move. Nothing that opens up the possibility for him to be knocked over or fall down hard.

He can be outside, but he has to be safe. Not sedentary. But not really active, either.

This, as you might guess, is nearly impossible. Allow him to play catch, and pretty soon two or three other kids want into the tossing action. Get four or five kids tossing around a football, and you have a game. Seamlessly, the gimpy kid goes from playing catch to being in the midst of a full-on game.

He came home yesterday complaining that his friend was refusing to play carefully enough with him -- that said friend kept on blocking him and trying to steal the ball in their basketball game. Pressing him for more information, I asked precisely what he had told the friend about what he was and wasn't allowed to do. Well, he said, he kept trying to explain that he wasn't supposed to be blocked, but his friend just kept getting in his way, and ... "and, I suppose some of it was probably my fault too..." he trailed off.

Indeed.

Of course it was. It was his fault because he was trying to be eight years old and play basketball with his friends, but every time he got a little nervous that things might be getting too rough, he suddenly wanted them to back off. Of course they didn't know what the rules were.

And of course he was having a hard time following the rules himself.

The majority of his exercise comes in the form of dully repetitive exercises designed to rebuild the strength in his hip and, ultimately, restore his gait. These are so boring that he has taken to counting them in exponential units just to keep himself going. Today, he did 120 billion box step-ups, for example.

Quite honestly, I'm pretty sure it feels to him like he's actually done that many.

So it was hardly a surprise that this afternoon, he came home and proudly told me that he was able to do the drills in gym class that involved running half the length of the gym, picking up a bean bag, turning, and running back. "I did it in eighteen seconds!" he announced with glee.

"That's very fast," I said. "But didn't Mike [his physical therapist] tell you this morning that you aren't supposed to run yet?"

His face collapsed in sobs. I felt as if I'd punched him. All I could do was hold him tight and tell him I was not mad at him, and say that I know this is really hard, and promise to call the surgeon's office tomorrow and see if she had some other guidelines or more relaxed restrictions to offer. Realistically, she may not.

There is "nothing to do" at recess on a sunny day if you are eight years old, and have narrowly escaped devastating injury being hit by a car, and now can manage something approximating a run. You must, from sheer joy of motion, you must RUN.

Every time I see his tousled hair and gleeful face when he manages a physical feat that makes him feel normal again, I understand that joy. My heart leaps for him. I, too, feel a surge of happiness when I see him move in a way that nears effortlessness.

In fact, the greatest effort now lies in holding back. In being careful. In exercising caution and putting on the breaks and not pushing himself. These are less painful than February's excruciating stretches of his tightened-up knee. They are less physically difficult than re-learning to walk. But they are as emotionally painful.

All he wants, I can see in his face as he cries over the devastating success at gym class, all he wants is to race across that shiny wooden floor, pick up a bean bag, and race back, grinning, to his waiting friends.

All he wants is to be eight years old and whole again.

My heart breaks for lack of the ability to give that to him.

In which I find myself defending Samantha Brick...

2012-04-05T16:51:00.001-04:00

Samantha Brick has caused a firestorm by announcing in a bold article that she is quite the prettiest thing in any house in the town in which she lives. Moreover, she gets all kinds of preferential treatment from men as a result. But the main point she would like to make is: women generally hate her because they feel so threatened by her astonishing good looks.

Let me just say up front that I don't know whether she is right or "deluded" about her own good looks, and I don't care. What I do care very deeply about, however, is the fact that she is under attack from all sides for having said her life is made more difficult by being so beautiful--and I think it's worth taking a deep breath and doing some good, hard self-examination before we hurl invectives her way.

If you haven't read the article, it is worth a gander so that you can get a sense of just how extensively she makes her argument. But if you pop over to the Daily Mail to read it, you really ought to browse some of the comments too. Their vitriol is breath-taking.

There is no doubt that Brick does a painfully thorough job elaborating just how many free gifts she's been given by doting men, just how many female bosses have apparently found her looks threatening, just how many friends have dropped her because, she laments, they were insanely jealous that their men might be flirting with her. One might have wished for a shorter catalogue of examples ostensibly supporting the idea "men love me, so women hate me." The article could have been far more powerful if she'd spent more time analyzing WHY all of these things really happen, instead of just assuming it is obviously because she is so beautiful.

But the comments she is getting do not take her to task for being a redundant writer or an over-simplifying thinker. Instead, they accuse her of being far uglier than she realizes, stuck up, full of herself, delusional.

Her syllogism is: "Women hate me. I am beautiful. Therefore, women must hate me because I am beautiful."

The logic is unsound. But her enraged detractors cry out in personal, vile, angry attacks: "You are an arrogant bitch." "You are narcissistic." "You are ugly on the inside, and that is why women hate you." "You are attractive enough for men to want to do you, but not so attractive that you look out of their league. Men give you things because they think you will be easy." Most of all, they tell her, in so many words: "You are plain. You are ugly. You have bad teeth. You would not be considered beautiful in my town," where, implicitly, the standards are a whole lot higher than they apparently are where she lives.

Of course, comments aren't limited to the article. They are all over NPR and late-night TV and the blogosphere and Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else you can possibly imagine anyone speaking out against the horrifying egotism of a woman daring to purr, "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful." (Those of you over a certain age will remember those ads.)

But here's the thing: the amount of vitriol that her article has spawned suggests she's really hit a nerve. And, quite frankly, I think the nerve is: women aren't allowed to say that they are comfortable with--even more, HAPPY ABOUT--how they look.

We are supposed to be modest, demure, and insecure. Aloud, we are supposed to insist that we believe all of our friends are prettier than we are. Silently, in our own minds, we are supposed to believe that all of our friends are prettier than we are. Insidiously, we have become acculturated so that we actually do believe that most women are thinner than we are, with better features, nicer hair, and bodies better suited to whatever style is currently the rage.

Most importantly, we are never, ever supposed to say aloud that we are wholly comfortable with our own levels of attractiveness--because, implicitly, we are never supposed to be wholly comfortable with our own levels of attractiveness.

Sure, we are allowed to have good days. On our wedding days, we are allowed to feel beautiful. For the rest of the afternoon, after we walk out of the hair salon, we are allowed to have that spring in our steps that makes our hair swish pleasantly over our shoulders.

But we have to credit the princess dress and the months of preparation and the being thoroughly in love for our beauty on our wedding days. And although we are allowed to agree with our friends who tell us our new haircuts look great, the acceptable way to do this is to say, "I know, right?! She [the stylist] is so good. Of course, it won't look like this again until the next time I get it cut." And then we laugh that particular laugh that is self-deprecating, and take a deep breath of satisfaction in knowing that we are not egotistical. That it is not that we have nice hair. It is just that we have paid a good stylist to make it seem so.

It is so deeply ingrained in us that we do not measure up that when someone says aloud that not only does she think she measures up, she thinks the female half of her world hates her for knowing it, our first response is to come up with a hundred other reasons to hate her even more.

And, to tell her she is ugly.

In short, I think it's probably true that women hate Samantha Brick for her beauty--but not precisely for the reasons she gives. I do not think women hate her because she represents some empirical standard of physical perfection (which, anyway, is somewhat subjective). I think women hate her because she dares to find herself beautiful. Because she thinks she is gorgeous and is not afraid to say so.

Now, you might argue that she could keep her mouth shut on that score a bit more. Perhaps she announces her own self-satisfaction with her looks too often for culturally accepted norms of modesty about any kind of accomplishment. I can't say what she does in the rest of her life, although this article certainly belabors her own assets in a way that might rankle whether the assets were beauty, brains, money, social connections, or any other litmus test of success. No one likes a braggart, whatever the category of bragging.

On the other hand, I think that people are reacting much more strongly to this article than they would to one by a man that said, "men hate me and are intimidated by me because I'm so smart and went to Yale."

And I think the reason people--not surprisingly, many many of these people are women--are commenting with such hatred, is that deep-down, we know that Samantha Brick does have something we don't. She is perfectly secure and comfortable in her own skin.

Coping

2012-02-24T20:22:00.000-05:00

Three weeks ago, my son was hit by a car.

Nearly every parent I know personally, on hearing the news, called or emailed or hugged me and offered some version of a horror-struck observation, "that is my worst nightmare." All I could do was nod dumbly, and then nod again, take the proffered hug and clutch it to my heart like a lifeline.

Often I would try to respond, but it is very hard to know what to say. He survived. In fact, he survived miraculously intact. His only injury was a broken leg. A barrage of possible responses, all focused on the ultimately positive outcome, would come bubbling to my lips: doctors tell me he will be running around again by June...I am so grateful he had on a helmet...there were no other marks--not a single injury on his lovely skin--apart from the faintest of pink smudges on his collar-bone...his brain is fine... his internal organs? fine...today he was laughing and giving me sass from the couch...he should be able to play on sports teams again in the fall.

With every positive statement, I would see a mother's shoulders relax, a father's jaw slightly unclench. I would feel a palpable relief, hear a sigh over the phone. Thank God. Thank goodness. Thank every power in which you believe that is higher than us. Thank you. He is alive and will recover.

And yet, every time I said those things I knew dispelled that nightmare, I also felt like I was lying. Or like I wanted to scream out the other side to the story. The story I saw.

Yes, I wanted to say, he only has a broken leg. But have you ever been walking down the street with your dog and your children, happily enjoying an unseasonably warm winter's afternoon, watching them circling cul-de-sacs gleefully on their bikes or scooters, and then stunningly, horrifyingly, unexpectedly, watched a car plow into your child? Have you ever seen what it looks like to have your eight-year-old first-born plastered to the front grill of a gold-tan minivan and then drop to a heap on the street? Have you ever, I wanted to shout at the top of my voice, have you ever sprinted shrieking and hysterical down the street to gather up in your arms your precious, only-oldest child--not knowing what you will find when you arrive by his side?

Yes, he was talking. No, he had not been knocked out.

But in those endless, racing, hideous moments before finding that out, when your heart was bursting and your legs felt like they were moving without even touching the pavement, have you ever known the fear of the very real possibility that you may not find your child alive at the end of the longest short run of your life?

I could not and did not say any of those things to people who offered immediate condolences and aid. And yet, I could not bring myself to say either, "he only has a broken leg." Because the fact was, I felt like so much more had broken that day.

My most regular gesture towards getting rid of that "only" was to explain that he'd had surgery to repair the leg, to say that I was so deeply grateful that we live in proximity of one of the best children's hospitals in the country, to mention with some wonder that he'd been hit around 5pm and was in surgery by 8:30. Most parents can imagine that icy clutch of worry over the idea of their child in emergency surgery. In fact, it's far easier to imagine than is the horror of witnessing what I saw. Mentioning the surgery, the morphine, the two nights in the hospital, became my default way to indicate the seriousness of the accident without delving into my own sense of trauma--which, I felt, might have been a burden and also might have seemed like a kind of melodramatic excess. He is, after all, expected to recover fully.

My closest friends, of course, know that I've been struggling myself. They know that I spent the first two weeks after the accident sleeping in my son's queen-sized bed with him. I had to wake him every four hours to take pain medicine.

But I have not much said aloud that I also needed to reassure myself--at least every four hours--that he was still breathing. That he was sleeping peacefully, soft, warm, calm. That his thick, dark hair, long overdue for a cut, was still falling in locks over his eyebrows; that his body, miraculously, was lying there next to mine. When he was just coming out of the post-surgery anesthesia, groggy and floppy, with a raspy voice and little control over his limbs, his first sentence after holding out his arms for a hug was, "I need to see my leg." It made so much sense to me, over and over, in that first week, that he would need reassurance that the leg was not lost.

I needed the same reassurance about him.

After the first few nights, I stopped seeing the accident every time I closed my eyes. But it took more than a week before I could fully believe the many doctors and nurses who had told me there was nothing else wrong with him. When he got headaches and dizziness from one of the pain medications, I felt a chill horror again: had they missed something that was really wrong with his head?

They had not.

It was not until they changed the medication, and the dizziness went away immediately, that I finally began to think it was possible that somehow he really had come out of this with only a broken leg. After his first check-up, two weeks after the surgery, when I saw the x-rays (he has two internal pins, each the length of his entire femur) and heard the surgeon exclaim, "this looks fantastic!" I finally began to relax.

I have been tremendously lucky throughout all of this. Those first anguished nights in the hospital, social workers and doctors and friends and family all reached out to let me know that I was supported. A grandmother I didn't know, and saw only that once, stopped in the hallway to give me a long hug and reassure me that "we've all been there" as I sobbed quietly outside the door of my son's room, loathe to let him know the depth of my own fear. Her grandson was a long-time resident of the oncology ward, and I felt humbled and incredibly fortunate that my own child would be leaving the hospital so soon. So temporarily injured.

The outpouring of friendship within our town has been incredible. My son has received nearly a hundred cards--most of them handmade--from classmates, kids who ride his bus, neighbors, kids who play with him in after-school care, and relatives. People have shown up unannounced on our doorstep with pots of chili, homemade pasta sauce, muffins. All have come bearing sympathy. One mother organized classmates to drop by every afternoon to cheer up the long hours. Another came over with her dog, so that I would have a companion on that first, difficult walk that I would take again with my pet on a leash through the neighborhood. Close friends scooped up our daughter and kept her for more than 24 hours when we were first in the hospital, entertaining her with trips to the candy store and a hundred other fun moments.

It turns out that this accident, while awful, has not been a parent's worst nightmare.

My child is in physical therapy, slowly recovering his flexibility and strength. He still cannot lift his own leg an inch off the couch. But last week, he could not move himself into a sitting position without help, and today, he looked at me with a withering glance when I asked him about setting up an aide to help him to the bathroom when he returns to school on Monday. "I can go to the bathroom by myself," he said, a new-found confidence in his voice.

When he stumbles on his crutches, he panics, and I can see flash across his face all the terror of the most recent, shocking time he was knocked over. I can relate. A few days ago, I drove by a neighbor boy's scooter lying abandoned in their driveway and had to fight back waves of my own panic and nausea at the sight of an empty, fallen scooter on blacktop.

But we are coping, both of us.

Every time he stumbles and rights himself, he gets stronger. Every time I walk the dog, am passed by a car, and nothing bad happens, I breathe a little easier.

And every day, the tremendous community in which I find myself so fortunate to reside reminds me of how lucky we are. We have knit ourselves into a group of friends that are dear, but we have also become members of a far larger community of an elementary school and a town that looks out for each other. Parents I know only in passing have reached out with genuine kindnesses. Ones I knew only a little more have become friends.

I am thankful every day for the knowing looks and follow-up calls and emails from mothers who really have tried to imagine those awful first moments, and who have done their utmost to heal my spirit just as my son's leg is healing itself.

They have all made me realize that coping is a process best undertaken with the help of many many outstretched hands. I will be eternally grateful for the ones they have extended.

Fun and Games, 2011 Version

2011-12-30T21:23:00.000-05:00

This year, my Drafts folder, like my cup, runneth over. It is filled with glimmering tidbits, languishing un-fleshed-out. While one might be tempted to find something poignant to say about this, I am actually too buoyed up by tonight's Wii Family Obstacle Course and Slalom Skiing Showdown to seek out the maudlin or nostalgic.

Instead, then, I treat this like a little treasure-trove, a reminder of all the many good moments of the year.

Two great questions from the past year

His (after some weeks of discussing, in more or less detail, how the baby gets out): "But Mama, How does the baby get IN?"

Hers (standing on her bed and brandishing her dolly):
"Did you know my baby can fly?"
Me: "No, I didn't."
Her: "She can. Watch this." (hurling the baby-doll across the room)

Most pointed "I really ought to organize my life" moment

Inventory of the pocket of my car door, taken in June: preschool Sunscreen Alert form (from the previous year); pair of neoprene gloves (perfect for shoveling the driveway of snow); cozy ear band (THAT's where it went!); extra socks, size 5T, pink, slightly dirty.

Best overheard conversation, in serious tones

Friend: ". . . I was going to buy a van with my money because I have like a hundred dollars in my bank account, but then I decided not to because I have more money at home, so I have like a thousand dollars, and I decided to save it because I'm going to buy my own house, and then I don't have to live with my parents and I can do whatever I want, like watch movies any time I want..."

Son: "Yeah, but you have to be at least [pausing to consider] thirty to have your own house..."

Friend: "I know."

Son: "So you can't buy your own house."

Friend: "But I would put it right next to my parents' house, in the backyard."

Son: "Like a playhouse?"

Friend: "No, a real house."

Son: "Well, the police would put you in jail for breaking a law."

Friend: [still vaguely hopeful] "I know. . ."

Son: "So you can't have your own house."

Friend: "I know." [dejected sigh]

Awesome personal revelation

Grocery shopping with children is like parkour without the coolness. The only thing that redeems the exhaustion of climbing walls (or preventing your children from climbing displays) is that sometimes, they will come home from the grocery store and eat goat cheese and like it. And then they will try to learn how to pronounce "chevre" with the French gutteral "r." And then, just as with childbirth, the miracle of the aftermath overshadows the previous grim bits, and you feel convinced you could do that whole thing all over again next week.

(Unlike with childbirth, you actually will do the whole thing over again next week.)

Best proof that "dumb" animals are smarter than we think

Right around Halloween, the new pup (age 10 months) chose to chew up Bicycling Barbie, effectively turning her into Bicycling Zombie Barbie by removing her face but not fully destroying her. Her smiling mouth, chin and most of one cheek lay in one spot on the floor, while her eyes and the rest of her head perched a few feet away. The body looked as though it had never even met a dog. It was a perfectly zombie moment, perfectly timed for the holiday.

And then, around Christmas, though I hadn't managed to take a photo of Zombie Barbie to post online (but I also hadn't managed to throw her away), the dog found the head again and worried at it a little more. I found her hair on the staircase. Just one day after we watched John Wayne in The Searchers--a movie containing truly awful moments of racism against Indians--my dog scalped my daughter's Zombie Barbie.

In summary

2011 was a year of great family hilarity and so much fun that I found less time to write than I would have liked. In recompense, I was a whole lot happier than I had been the year before--which surely seems more than worth it.

Here's hoping you and yours have a 2012 worth celebrating!

Farm Children

2011-11-24T10:13:00.001-05:00

The slanting morning sun turns the ginkgo into something more like a blazing candle than a tree. But the children, oblivious to everything that is not the antique tractor, only notice the tree when its branches interfere with their clamoring play.

"There are still some plums on that tree over there," their grandfather says.

They do not register the offering--not because they do not hear him, or because they do not like plums, but because the sentence itself does not compute in their Midwestern brains.

I walk over to the tree, laden with the last of the dusty purple fruits. "Do you want a plum?" I call over to my children.

"YES!" my son shouts, leaping off the tractor, then pauses. "Wait. Where?" He looks around, confused.

"Right here," I say, pointing to the tree. "You have to choose the one you want."

He and his sister come running, wide-eyed. The small tree, purposefully kept to a height that makes plucking fruit a simple task, offers a wealth of choices to children who have never seen a plum that wasn't stacked in a grocery store display. It takes them a fraction of a second to choose their first plum, but many additional minutes to inspect a dozen more to ensure they have made the right choice before they actually do the picking. We wash off the dust at the outdoor spout, and bite deep into the pale, golden flesh. Tree-ripened to perfection. My son smiles and rolls his eyes in that peculiar way he has to indicate bliss.

Clutching their sticky, half-eaten treasures, the children climb to the top of another piece of once-useful farm equipment. As they munch plums, they look out over the land their father's family farmed for decades.

Three rows of gnarled peach trees mark the limit of their growing. Across the dirt road--in what used to be acres of grape vines tethered to their wires every summer by a boy who remembers the itchy sensation of rising allergies as he worked--the land is leased. The new farmer's tidy rows of baby clementine trees are encased in the high-tech drip irrigation system that has replaced the old irrigation ditch that once doubled as a children's swimming-hole on especially hot days.

My children are not nostalgic for these things. They simply marvel at the plums. "Can we have more?" they want to know.

"Of course," I tell them. I point out the limits of the family property--the rows of peaches on the south side, good for playing under now that the fruit is over, the dirt road the house faces, the bare track where the yard ends on the north side. "You can have anything you like from any of these trees. You don't have to ask permission. You can just pick what you want to eat -- only be sure to wash it first because it's very dusty." I point out the pear tree too. Tossing plum pits on the ground, we walk towards the backyard and spot a pomegranate tree. Pomegranates! So ripe they are literally bursting on the branches.

For an hour, my son sits diligently picking seeds out of the pomegranate, his fingers and face slowly turning crimson. "They look like red teeth," my daughter observes, poking at the fruit. She doesn't care for it too much, so I lead her to the two rows of grape vines that mark the back edge of the yard. Her grandfather has promised there should still be some good grapes back there, "though I didn't take very good care of them this year."

We have to walk past the small vegetable garden--hot peppers, eggplants, tomatoes--all neatly laid out in raised boxes, on our way to the grapes. (You cannot keep a farmer from farming, even when he's retired.) Next we stumble through a confusion of squash vines, hidden from view by the clipped hedge that borders the small lawn. Finally, we reach the grapes--towering, mountainous vines creating perfect hiding spots or forts. "Where are the grapes?" my daughter wants to know. "Look closely," I tell her. And then she spots them. The bunches are few and far between this late in the season, but the grapes, a dusky red, are still firm. She chooses two clusters and carries her treasures back to the spigot to wash them.

We have offered everything we picked to the grandparents, though they smiled and politely declined. "I don't eat much fruit," their grandfather says from his patio recliner. Again, my children seem not to understand. Surrounded by all of this, how can you do anything but gorge yourself on the ripe wonder?

And so they do, eating so much fruit that even the boy who is always hungry is too full to eat lunch.

Later that afternoon, our daughter looks around and says to her father, "This was a good farm." She pauses. "Wasn't it, daddy?"

"Yes," he says to her, "it was a good farm."

Things We Were Very Sure We Knew--But We Really Didn't Know at All--Back When We Were Teenagers

2011-11-15T21:27:00.000-05:00

(This is an easy list to start, though it may in fact be impossible to end.)

How to drive on the highway.
What "flabby" thighs looked like. On us.
All the words to that one song that Adam could play so great on his guitar and we all loved to sing softly late at night when we were supposed to be home already but we just had to stay out a few minutes longer and sing that one song, you know the one that goes...
How much curl was the right amount of curl to make our hair as perfect as possible.

Senior yearbook photo, circa 1987

Also: bangs, the value and proportion of.
Heartbreak.
That we would always, all our whole lives, be able to finish at midnight, with the help of just one laughing friend, a box of a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts--so hot and fresh that they dissolved into little puddles of happiness on our tongues.
That we were artists.
That no one would ever fall in love with us.
Fashion. More specifically: that your father's size extra-large, shell pink button down looked great on all of us (who were about size 5 back when that meant something). That earrings should be worn in threes, but none of the three should match. That multiple pairs of socks, of different colors, layered over one another and topped by shoes that channeled 1920s football boots looked good on anyone.
That the most boring thing in the world is dusting. (It turns out to be lying silent and stone still in your toddler's narrow bed at 8pm, uncomfortably pregnant, highly conscious of the fact that you have papers to grade and that if you make the slightest move to leave his room until he is completely asleep, this whole process will have to start all over. Closely followed by starting to grade those papers at 9pm.)
That the best place to read is in a tree.
That only babies and old people take baths.
That doing chores to loud music first thing on Saturday morning is a hardship.

The stuff we were (mostly) right about?

Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine. (It is gross. However, we don't have to drink it.)
That whatever you have to face, if you have at least one true friend to see you through, things will be fine on the other side. (Or, at least, finer than they were without that friend along for the ride.)
Leggings. (!)
That writing an outline before writing the paper is a stupid waste of time (because how are you supposed to know what your ideas are going to turn out to be until you've written the paper?)
That homemade macaroni-and-cheese is the best comfort food ever.

What goes on your lists?

Cozy Food

2011-11-01T20:27:00.000-04:00

There's a real bite in the air and frost on the grass every morning. In my book, that means it's time to start baking things, stewing things and making soup. In the last week, I've used a pound of butter in various breads, pies and crumbles. I've made a savory beef-and-mushroom pie, drunk good red wine and, tonight, concocted a soup that even the seven-year-old ate with relish. In case you need an easy soup that is satisfying (and that contains nothing they will pick around or moan about), I highly recommend the following.

Hearty Vegetable Soup with Cod

Combine the following ingredients in a stock pot. Bring to a boil, and then let simmer for approximately 20 minutes, or until potatoes and carrots are soft.

2 quarts water
2 Tbsp. good chicken bouillon
1 chopped onion
5-6 small red, russet, or gold potatoes (a combination is nice), chopped
3 small carrots, chopped
1 handful fresh spinach
4 cloves garlic
1/2 a yellow bell pepper, chopped bite-size
1/2 a red bell pepper, chopped bite-size
1 T. grated asiago or parmesan cheese

Season soup with the following, and then puree thoroughly with immersion blender until the mixture is very smooth.

1 tsp. thyme
good pinch salt
fresh ground black pepper

Adjust seasoning to taste. Then add to the pot:

1 pound cod, cut into bite-size pieces

Turn heat off, and leave pot covered, while you sautee the following in a small amount of olive oil, just until the peas are cooked, making sure to leave everything nice and crisp.

1/2 a yellow bell pepper, chopped bite-size
1/2 a red bell pepper, chopped bite-size
2 cups sugar snap peas (or other pea pods; or 1 cup shelled peas)

Check to make sure cod is cooked through. Then dump veggies into soup, and serve.

The soup broth becomes lovely and creamy with the potatoes for a base, and the richness of so many different vegetable flavors is delicious. It was a very nice contrast to the thick bites of cod and few crisp floating veggies.

The beautiful thing about this recipe is that as long as you make sure you have a good mixture of veggies simmering to make the broth nice and rich, you can vary what you choose to puree versus leave whole, depending on what the pickiest in your family will/won't eat in soup. I don't think any kind of peas in pods will puree nicely, so if your household won't eat pea pods, I'd recommend using shelled peas. Also, you could easily substitute shrimp, scallops, or some other firm fish for cod, as well as use other veggies that you like.

All you have to do is procure a crusty loaf to serve alongside, and delicious fall dinner is ready in almost no time.

Dual Citizens?

2011-10-27T08:36:00.001-04:00

Daily, with diligence if not enthusiasm, my children pledge allegiance to the Republic of Witchistan.

Mind you, they also pledge allegiance to the United States of America.

They do not seem to be bothered by--or even really to notice--the potential conflict of pledging allegiance to two nations simultaneously.

I would say that perhaps they've reconciled this in their own minds thanks to the whole "one nation, under God" bit. But I'm pretty sure that they haven't thought this through that thoroughly.

Or even really at all.

While it's funny to hear a five-year-old solemnly repeating this pledge over and over in your bed in the dark of the early morning (where "funny" = a better way to wake up than being poked in the ribs by the tiny-but-extraordinarily-pokey toes of the same five-year-old), it also makes you stop and think.

Actually, it made her stop and think. "What's justice?" she asked me this morning. I explained it meant fairness. "Oh," she said, murmuring her way through another rendition, "...with liverty and justice for all."

"Do you know what liBerty is?" I asked, emphasizing the B, so as to help remind her that we weren't talking about internal organs here.

"No," she replied, not really concerned at all.

"It means freedom," I said. "So, 'with liBerty and justice for all' means the country is supposed to have freedom and fairness for everyone."

She seemed unimpressed. Or at least, uninspired. I suppose it is difficult, at age five, growing up in a comfortable house and going to a good school where all the kids have their own desks and plenty of paper and the ones whose home breakfasts are scant or non-existent have a supplement from the school, to imagine a world in which freedom and fairness are NOT inalienable rights.

All the more reason, in my mind, for the teachers who are dutifully drumming this pledge into my kids' heads to do something to explain it to them. To give them a mini history lesson once a week. To explain why this pledge was written, why the flag is an important symbol.

At the very least, to explain to them that they do not, in fact, live in the Republic of Witchistan.

On Homework

2011-10-15T20:59:00.000-04:00

Partway through the year in Mrs. Zawarski's first-grade class, I was already a pretty good reader. And I was bored. A lot. When we did worksheets, we sat quietly at our desks until everyone was done. I was usually among the first to finish, and so I spent a lot of time just sitting at my desk. Quietly. Doing not much of anything that I can recall.

...Thankfully, once I entered second grade, I was allowed to check out books from the library--and after that, I was never bored because I always had a book tucked into my desk. But that was still a year away...

At one point, I tore a little scrap of paper from the corner of something, and penciled a tiny note. "Please give me some homework," it read. I stood up, and silently delivered it to the teacher while other children were still finishing their worksheets.

Mrs. Zawarski looked at the note, smiled at me, and said, "We don't have homework in first grade." And then she dismissed me by looking away. There was nothing I could say in response to her definitive claim, and so I wandered back to my seat. That was that.

Fast forward thirty-plus years.

I have a kindergartner of my own.

Last week, this was her homework:

1 short, repetitive book to read aloud daily
2 handwriting pages
a non-fiction book I was supposed to read aloud to her, and to which she is supposed to record her response in a journal
2 math pages done in class, to complete and/or correct the incorrect problems
a set of number-recognition flash cards to quiz on (preferably daily)
a set of sight-word flash cards to quiz on (preferably daily)
"sharing" items to bring in, that start with the letter of the week
an activities sheet to check off, indicating how many activities she did this week that start with the letter F

She is five. Let me repeat: in kindergarten.

Actually, broken down over the course of a week, this is probably half-an-hour to forty-five minutes of work each day. That doesn't seem like much, I realize. And I am not complaining, exactly.

But I am wondering: is it better (i.e. more productive for her? more likely to result in her learning these concepts) for her to do this rote work or for me to read her three books every night before bed? Because since kindergarten started, we're lucky if there's one book before lights-out any more.

Is it more useful for her to drill numbers or to bake with me and count scoops of flour, measure, pour, and begin learning the basis of fractions as we do all these things? Because we don't have time for baking during the week now that we have this homework to do.

I'm sure we're not the only family in the school whose kids like to rake leaves and jump in them, bike around the cul-de-sac with their friends, take the dog for walks, dig in the garden, paint pictures, have a dance party in the kitchen, or play board games while eating popcorn.

But between the after-school care a few days a week, and the ONE day per week (I made sure all the activities were centralized this year) that we go to ballet, soccer and skating (not everyone does every activity), it's not possible both to do homework and to play on the same day after school. Really.

And I'm not quite sure that missing out on playing is a very good idea. Isn't it through play that we learn to invent stories? We build narratives about what our dolls are doing in the doll house. We create back-stories for the pictures we paint. We invent relationships between our puppets, our lego guys, ourselves ("You be the puppy, and I'll be the owner -- [tossing a ball] FETCH!") Through play with others, we learn to share, to compromise, to negotiate. Through play on our own, we learn to be self-sufficient, imaginative, capable of feeling happy in our selves.

Through play, we flex our muscles and our minds.

There is something I fear we are losing through all this homework. I'm sure my daughter will be a good reader by the time she enters first grade. But I also want her to be a happy child, a creative spirit, able to entertain herself, willing to try new activities, able to invent activities to fill the stretches of time that inevitably crop up in our lives. Stretches that used be every single Monday-Friday afternoon from 3-6pm, and every weekend, and all summer, but now are shrinking to the point where they feel like precious stolen moments rather than daily life.

Yesterday, a friend came home from school with Son. They played football in the yard while Daughter painted. They came in and set up the iPod (volume: loud) to make a dance party in the kitchen. The friend saw Daughter painting at the kitchen table and wanted to paint too. So they all painted, while bobbing up and down to the music in their chairs. They took my challenge to create whole paintings using nothing but dots, which led us to look up examples of pointillism online.

It was an impulsive, active, completely delightful afternoon. They might have learned something in the process. But more importantly, they had such a good time that it was almost a shock when dinner-time was suddenly upon us.

I want days like that to be de rigeur. But I fear they will be the glittering highlights, the random special moments we manage to tuck between the trudging days of flashcards, like occasional brave stars shining through on a cloudy night.

Presumably, the homework only gets to be more intense as the grades progress. How to manage it while still enabling the kind of creative, open-ended free time I think is so important for children's development will surely grow to be a bigger conundrum. Any tips you have would be gratefully appreciated.

Balance

2011-10-01T11:00:00.001-04:00

"Stupid dog," I mutter under my breath. The shrill-barking beagle, the one who will not stay off the furniture, is still in his crate downstairs. He cannot hear my invective, though certainly we can hear his baying. And it is only day two of dog-sitting.

"What did you say?" my son asks.

"Oh, nothing," I reply, vaguely too ashamed to have to repeat my frustration in a louder, clearer voice.

"Because I thought you said he was a stupid dog," my son adds, snuggling deeper under the comforter in the chill of the fall morning. "He's not really a stupid dog," he says, speaking slowly, as if feeling his way into his idea, "it's probably really hard to stay in a place where all the rules are completely the opposite of the rules where you normally live."

He is seven, this sage of mine.

I hug him close, affirming how deeply correct he is. "Yes," I say. "I need to have more patience with him. You are absolutely right."

I can hardly believe that here, with his head pressed into the hollow of my shoulder, his feet are approaching my own. How many more of these pre-dawn conversations do I have left? How many months before he sleeps through this precious half-hour, this sliver of our day in which we can talk freely about his interests, his fears, his triumphs, the difficulties he faces at school? In which we can listen to, and really hear, each other?

I wrap my arms around his sinewy child self, breathing deeply the smell of his hair, where still lingers the scent of the baby he used to be. How quickly will this child, who has his own ideas now about how his hair should be cut, outgrow wanting to talk to his mama first thing in the morning?

This fall, he suddenly seems to me to be poised on the edge of older-child-hood. Recently, he is shy of telling me he loves me too as he walks out the door to meet the school bus, though he is also still child enough to look me full in the face, smiling, and tell me he won't tell me he loves me because that laughing defiance is our code for the start of a tickle retaliation. He is wise--wiser than I am sometimes about matters that require patience and empathy, as he innocently reminds me on this chill fall morning. And he is silly--silly enough to squabble with his sister about who gets which bowl of berries at snack time.

I marvel at the balance he maintains. Effortlessly standing on the mid-line between work and play, between the sunshine of sudden full-face smiles and the brooding moodiness of an older child, between observations whose insight stuns me and pouting petulance over having to eat the meat he has been served at dinner.

He is balanced. To perfection. Precisely in the spot between six-years-old and eight-years-old.

In my own efforts at balance, I have neglected this blog for the past four months. I have poured myself into exciting projects and unexpected opportunities that work has given me. I have read, and written, and thought, and read some more. In between that, I have been ice skating with my daughter, reading with my son, walking our new dog, laughing with my husband. I have helped a dear friend move away, and I have made a new friend in one who similarly felt the giant hole our Chicago-bound-girlfriend left behind. I have striven for a balance between work and play.

And while I have made great strides (yes, I can do a half-lutz! I am learning a scratch spin! my four-volume edited collection is nearly done! my daughter has started kindergarten! my son has started playing a new sport! my husband and I have had several real date nights!), I have missed writing here. And I have missed you, my online community. I've been reading your words, feeling somewhat bereft of my own. I have been keeping up with your lives as best I can, feeling my way towards that balance of living my own and not losing a sense of yours.

And so, I am back. I hope more regularly, though probably not every day. I need this kind of creative outlet. I need to write. And I need this sense of community.

Here I am then, trying to take a page from my son's book. Perfectly inhabiting his age, his present, his life, he is a better role model than many others I might identify right now. Balanced, almost effortlessly.

It feels a worthy goal, in this instance, to try to emulate a child.

"You'll see."

2011-05-28T20:32:00.002-04:00

I'm not one of those people whose favorite time of life was high school.

Yes, there are those people. I've met them. At forty, they are still able to make me feel fundamentally certain that I am not part of the Popular Crowd.

Early in high school, I was the bespectacled, quiet, geeky kid who did better than most people on most tests and didn't get into any trouble. Later in high school, I was the contact-wearing, quiet, geeky kid who did better than most people on most tests and didn't get into any trouble.

I had friends, but they were a small circle.

Okay, "they" were one person. "They" were my best and dearest friend, who has gotten me through every heartbreak and triumph of the last thirty years. She was the kind of bubbly, out-going, hilarious, hip, and small-enough-to-be-carried-around-by-joking-boys girl that I wanted to be. She had a million friends. By extension, because she and I were dubbed Siamee I and Siamee II since we were never apart, I had a million friends-ish. "Ish" because while I was went to most of the parties, I knew that had it not been for her, I would have been welcome at none.

High school wasn't awful. I wasn't tortured or a loner or a screw-up. I was captain of this and editor of that and had big parts in all the school plays. (Perhaps I can act; perhaps it's just that my mother is a professional seamstress who will donate untold hours of sewing to her daughter's high school drama club if they are putting on Pride and Prejudice--which contains five daughters, a friend, and two mothers, all of whom appear in five acts and need different dresses in each--and they have a $100 budget for costumes.) I had great days--days when my brush curling iron produced perfect wings in my hair, and I rocked two layered pairs of different colored socks and three giant mis-matched hoop earrings (obviously only my left ear was double-pierced). And I had terrible days--days when I described my favorite animal in two words in creative writing class ("huge and graceful," as whales are) and everyone laughed at me when we had to read the words aloud after being told that they described how we secretly saw ourselves.

High school wasn't awful. But it wasn't the best time of my life either.

There were long afternoons lying drowsily on the bottle-green carpet in my attic bedroom, chin resting on my fists, listening to Madonna's "Crazy for You" over and over and thinking despairingly of The Boy in art class who never showed interest in me.

There were countless moments that seemed to me to prove that I lived on the fringes of the high school world. The Ecology Club camp-out where I had to sleep in an Army Surplus sleeping bag instead of a North Face one, and I was the only camper in our squirrel's nest platform not to sneak out--or even to be invited to sneak out--to drink rum and cokes in the woods...the Junior Prom for which I had no date...the less tangible but no less certain sense that I was not "in," discernible in all those subtle-but-powerful ways that fifteen-year-olds have of constantly, inexorably reinforcing the pecking order.

The ache and the longing of teenage-hood surrounded me. I wanted to be more, to feel different. To feel beloved. Witty. Pretty. Confident.

In short, I was as insecure as everyone else, only without the mask of real Izod shirts and orange base makeup precisely following my jawline to suggest smug confidence.

Of course, there were suggestions that life promised more. Such as the day in the middle of sixth period when I ran into Kirk in the otherwise silent hall, and this macho, velvet-voiced star of the gospel choir stopped me dead in my tracks by unabashedly looking me up and down and then asking, "Do you have a boyfriend?"

"No," I managed to whisper back, heart pounding, half dreading whatever was coming next.

He gave his head a short, sorrowful shake. "Man," he breathed, turning the word into a swear, "the white boys at Decatur sure are stupid."

And then he kept walking, surely unaware how completely stunned I was by the sentence that had burst out of him. Unaware that no one, ever, had given me a compliment so raw and genuine as that. Both of us ignorant of the fact that twenty-five years later, I would remember that moment as if it had happened yesterday, and that his appraisal was somehow profound in its ability to begin a shift in my sense of self.

Moments such as that--moments when we can pinpoint a sea-change--are rare, indeed. It is stunning thus to see ourselves through another's eyes and suddenly feel the power of honesty, instead of all the uncertainty and cliques and media-induced self-deprecation and the rest of the baggage that we learn to carry around with us from a very early age. With a flash of clarity, we see that being Being Popular is not as satisfying as knowing ourselves for whom we truly are. And even if we do not manage to embrace this as a permanent truth, even if we drop into the self-doubt and longing and angst of being sixteen again (which we will, probably at 16 and 26 and 36 and beyond), those moments are etched indelibly within us and gently help to propel us forward through dark days.

It must be said, however, that these moments are not the sum total of high school. In fact, they are in many ways the antithesis of high school. Their unexpected flash may glow fleetingly, occasionally, during those years, but hardly in a sufficient sum to make high school the best of one's days.

I don't care how Popular you were. There is far too much worry...about zits and brand names and who saw you talking to whom during the halftime show and who would give you a ride home and whether your mom was the only one uncool enough to insist you get home at midnight from the seniors' graduation party when you were a junior and a thousand other things...to make high school the best of life.

And yet, despite the lack of confidence and the longing and the feeling of being not-quite-whole without knowing why, high school--even high school boys, who have a notoriously bad rap for lack of emotional maturity--can provide moments that are breath-taking in their ability to show you the future, if only you are wise enough to see it.

I looked into my old yearbooks recently, and I found an upside-down note from Joe. It contained the lines, "You are a very attractive, intelligent, good girl. You'll see." At the time, I have no idea what I thought that meant. I don't even remember reading it. But now, with the wisdom of retrospect, I know that Joe saw what I did not: that my lack of confidence was hampering me, that if I could only give myself a few years, and grow into college where the boys were a little less emotionally stupid, I might find that my brand of quiet was attractive to some. That all it would take was time for me to become the person I wanted to be. And that, for the moment, I desperately needed someone to notice me for who I already was. I was awestruck a few weeks ago when I read those sentences. Who knew a high school boy could be so perceptive?

I am still fundamentally certain that I am not part of the Popular Crowd. I know women whose glances and mannerisms remind me of that pecking-order fact every time I run into them at elementary school functions with our children. Though I did not know them in high school, I know they were the Popular Crowd back then.

And they know I was not.

But the thing I am happy to have realized is that, unlike them, I have no desire to relive high school--its great moments or its angst. I no longer wish I were the sort of bubbly, petite girl that joking boys could pick up and carry around on the grassy hillside at lunch. I am not her (though she is wonderful). I am instead someone who was--like most of us in high school--unable to see what I might become.

Now that I am forty, and I find myself actually becoming some of that, I am deeply grateful. Grateful that high school is over. And grateful that there are Kirks and Joes in the world, boys who are wiser than their years, who will help prop up the quiet, insecure girls in ways the girls themselves do not even clearly understand at the time.

I wish I knew where either one of them were today. I would like to tell them thank you. And that I finally see.

And that I hope my son offers up a sentence or two to a high school girl one day to let her know that someone truly sees her.

Finally! Crocs Perfect for a Four-Season Climate

2011-05-26T11:27:00.001-04:00

Well, the two-part verdict is in. The new lined Crocs are awesome. And four-year-olds are not the most eloquent marketers--though their enthusiasm is hard to beat.

Following is an interview with my preschooler, who was lucky enough to receive a pair of Crocs (in pink, of course) with their newest lining option. Ever since she received them, they've been her go-to shoe of choice.

What are Crocs good for?
If they don't have Crocs, they could use sandals for the beach. But instead of just sandals, they can use Crocs too for it. My Crocs are good for running. And playing at the beach. {Editor's note: we haven't been to the beach since last July, so I'm pretty sure this is the winter/grey springtime blues talking.}

What do you use your Crocs for now?
Now I use them lots of times when I am at school inside, and I use them for playing when it's warm out. {Of course, since we live in Michigan, it hasn't been warm out since last October. But see below for why I think they are great for indoor school play.}

What's the best part about your Crocs?
Playing at the sandy sandy beach. And when it's summertime I like to...hmmm...I'm still thinking about it...the best part of it is playing at school with it. {Ah, yes, the sandy sandy beach...}

What do you think about the color of your Crocs?
I like it. But I wish it could have a little purple and blue on it too. {Sorry, Crocs, that's what happens when you ask a four-year-old about color schemes. She wants all her favorites mixed together.}

Which Crocs do you like better? Your old ones without the lining or these new ones?
I love the ones with the linings because it keeps me comfortable.

She may not be the most flowery in her language, but rest assured, she loves these Crocs. If you have little feet in your house, here's my two cents about why you should get them these shoes too.

First, I love this new lining. It's not that heavy sherpa fleece, which I think looks ultra-warm and cozy but doesn't seem year-round useful to me. Instead, it's a cushiony lining that reminds me of the footbed of high-tech water shoes. It's thick enough to keep out the drafts while not being too hot. I would imagine that in summer, it will be the perfect solution to the problem of getting little bits of gravel and bark in her shoes on the playground, something that drives her crazy. And, when we do get to the beach, she will be able to use these, and the lining will clearly dry quickly.

Second, these are great preschool shoes for a winter climate, when the kids are pulling on their own snow boots for playground time and need an easy option for changing back to indoor shoes again. These are quick to get on and off (obviously), and the lining makes them warmer than traditional Crocs. So, they work year-round!

And finally, they come in great colors and seem to have more foot support than the traditional Crocs. What's not to love?

In fact, if my son didn't already have a new(ish) pair of Crocs, I would buy him some of these too.

Though I doubt he would find them quite as fashion-versatile as my daughter does. She especially likes to wear them with satin party dresses.

Disclosure: we were offered a free pair of Crocs of our choice to test-drive (test-run?) in exchange for posting a review. All opinions expressed here are our own.

I Can't Seem to Stop them Growing

2011-05-06T08:55:00.001-04:00

Son has lost six teeth. When I tuck him in at night, he doesn't always kiss me (though at least he always tells me he "loves me too"). When I pick him up at school wearing the hat he thinks is "stupid," he looks mortified and begs me not to wear that thing in the school. Of course, since he is only just seven, he whines this request.

He still crumples into tears when he gets truly hurt. He has lately taken to turning on the whine-and-cry faucet when the injustices practiced upon him by his pest of a little sister get to be too much.

And yet, there is no denying that my children are getting bigger. It is not just that I can hardly pick up Son or that the clothes that fit both of them in the fall are now perilously short in the legs and sleeves.

It is that they are growing up.

Son, I am realizing, has long conversations with his friends. Actual conversations. Because his best friend at school knew that Son's backpack zipper had broken, and so we had ordered a new one, but it was going to take a few days to arrive, and so he was carrying his boots and folder to school in a bag until the new backpack got here (and so on, in one enormous, breathless sentence). And she knew what he wanted for his birthday. He has friends who may well know things about him that I do not. He has connections and conversations and time that he spends over which I have no control.

Sure, he went to daycare and had hours at a time over which I had no direct supervision. But when I picked him up there, I could check the little chart on the wall to see what items of his lunch he ate (or not) or how long his nap was. He would chatter in the car all the way home about who said what, and who played with the truck first on the playground, and what tricks the visiting magician had done, and who didn't eat all of his fruit at lunch, and who had three time outs, and every other item he considered noteworthy of the day.

Now, I meet him at the school bus, ask him how his day was, and he murmurs, "good." When I ask him what he did, he responds, "I don't know." It's not that he can't have a conversation. In fact, he can have good ones about food or Star Wars or snowman building. But not about school. It's as if school is private. It's not that it's not going well. I get the sense, more, that it is that he has certain things he wants to keep to himself. That he doesn't want to share absolutely everything about his life. That he has a sense of independence at school, and that he wants to preserve that independence for himself.

Daughter, in her own right, is becoming more independent. She has recently announced, "I am going to do some art," and then gotten out her art box and spent two hours on her own, cutting and gluing and beglittering and decorating. She has firm ideas about what she wants to wear every day (a dress, "a pretty one," and no, a skirt is not the same as a dress, even though it also requires tights). The two of them can keep each other giggling for half an hour.

Make no mistake, they still need me plenty. "Mama!" she shouts from the bedroom, "Can you find me a show?" and that's my cue to go wield the remote through all the menus that require reading. "Mama," he beckons as I'm cooking dinner, "can you help me with these Legos?" "Mama," she whines, "he slammed himself in my face and closed the door and won't let me in." "MAMA!" he squawks, indignant, " she won't stop touching my airplane." And so on. They need me to mediate, to soothe boo boos, to help them read the directions, to keep them on task, to make their lunches and wash their clothes, to give them their special tucks in bed every night.

But I wonder sometimes how much longer they will snuzzle me in the morning. I worry that there may soon come a day when, instead of me asking them not to hang all over me, they suddenly do not want to sit on the same chair as I am using. I hope that I am teaching them kindness and empathy and a sense of emotional connection so that even when they outgrow their Mama adoration, they will not only still love their parents but be able to expand their hearts into loving other people as well.

But, oh, even as I admire their new skills (he will read to her! for an hour! she can ice skate! without holding onto anything!), I feel a little tug at my heartstrings for the babies melting away before my eyes.

Rude or Incompetent? You Be the Judge

2011-03-07T07:36:00.003-05:00

Today's rant is entitled: Seriously? Ten more steps is too far for you to walk pushing that completely empty grocery cart?

The title pretty much says it all, but I don't think one sentence constitutes a rant, so I'm just going to get it off my chest. People who are too lazy to walk their shopping carts to the cart corral and who leave them instead tucked on the lines that separate the parking spaces in the lot drive me crazy. You've just walked all over the entire grocery super store. Is it really that hard to spend thirty seconds walking to the nearest available cart corral? (And yes, you would get a pass if you get to park in the disabled section. But since I just saw you sashay out of the store and walk to the very far end of the row where you'd parked your shiny new car so no one would ding it, I know you can walk just fine.)

And also: If I bring in enough grocery totes to hold all my groceries, do you really think I want you to fill them half-full and then hand me a bunch of disposable plastic bags from your store, each containing no more than three items?

I realize that the flimsy plastic totes with the store logo on them can only hold three cans, but my bags are heavy-duty, with proper, sewn-on handles. They are large so that you can fill them with stuff. Two cans of soup, one head of lettuce and a loaf of bread does not constitute full. All of my vegetables could fit into that one bag that you stuffed with only five grapefruits, six apples, and one head of broccoli.

And, yes, I do care if you put my raw meat in with my fresh vegetables. Just because you can put a lot in each bag doesn't mean you have to be all food-poisoning-stupid about doing so. Here's a thought: fresh produce in one; cold and frozen goods in another; raw foods in a third; and cans in a the last one (like, maybe in that one that's got internal dividers separating it into columns that--shockingly!--are about the right size to hold cans). I even tried to help you out by separating my groceries into those clusters as I was putting them onto the belt and then leaving all the really light stuff for the end to tuck on top of the bags. So why did you put my bananas and tomatoes in with my cans of soup again?

And also: If I arrive at 9:30 for my 9:30 appointment, and I sit in a not-fully-closing sack of a gown for forty-five minutes on an exam table waiting for you to come in to see me, and you walk in at 10:20, I expect some kind of acknowledgment that you are running late. Especially since it's hard to imagine precisely what would constitutes a dermatological emergency that could make you run that late.

You check moles all day, dude. What could you possibly be doing in your first two appointments that would force you to need an extra forty-five minutes before getting to me?

I could have done all my grocery shopping in that amount of time.

With a preschooler in tow.

And bagged it myself. Just the way I like it.

The Birthday Party Principle

2011-02-18T14:09:00.000-05:00

At 9:30 this morning, the last load of laundry for the weekend went into the washer. 9:30am. On Friday.

The birthday present for the surprise party Husband and I are attending tonight? Was purchased and wrapped last Friday. One whole week early.

The new blouse I am going to wear? The black, silk, sleeveless, gorgeous, new blouse? I planned out the rest of the outfit last night, which includes even special "foundation garments" that have already been purchased and are just lying in wait.

[You know where this is going, don't you? You have that feeling of doom? The one I should have had when I realized everything was falling so nicely into place? Oh, yes, yes, you do.]

The fact that I kept forgetting to call the sitter, despite being so excited about an evening out with my husband at a swanky jazz club? Doesn't matter because my delightful neighbor offered to have the kids for a sleep-over with her son, and insisted that I bring them over an hour before we have to leave, so that I can have time to shower and do make-up and get ready like a proper grown up. And then the children will sleep over, so we not only don't have to pay a small fortune to a sitter: we also don't have to be home at any particular time, and we don't have to be worried that someone will creep into our room in the middle of the night...

By 1:00 this afternoon, I had spent an hour and a half volunteering at my son's school doing a creative and engaging art project with the class while teaching them about the great Louis Comfort Tiffany. The grocery shopping was all done and put away, and I had even organized the pantry to boot.

And then, at 1:23? It all came crashing down.

Hello, stomach flu. Not the slightest bit nice to see you. As much as my poor daughter hates you right now? I hate you even more.

It is a fair bet, however, that my son will not catch this bug from her. How do I know, you ask? Because he is supposed to attend a birthday party tomorrow. One for which there is no present as yet purchased, let alone wrapped. One for which I am not even sure the location and will certainly have to scramble to determine the where and when. And because we are completely unprepared for this party, nothing will stand in the way of his attendance.

Just as, because I am completely prepared for the jazz club birthday tonight, with its famous chef, and its grown up conversation, and its black silk attire, and its empty house afterwards, I will not be able to attend.

Because that is the Birthday Party Principle.

If you are the mother of a pre-schooler.