Diary
When I was in fourth grade I received my first diary as a Christmas present. That diary became my best friend, my confidant and the audience for my musings. On the first page I transcribed my favorite Mark Twain quote, “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” At the time I saw no great lesson to be learned by reading what I wrote. I saw little of value in it at all. But I wrote. I wrote every night and I wrote to an audience. I wrote to “you” and “whomever is reading this”. I wrote with the intention of someday being read. And now that’s happening.
Hayden is in fourth grade. Over Christmas break I told her about the diary and I told her that together we could start reading it. And, we have.
It’s difficult to describe the surreal quality of hearing my young self speak directly to my young girl. I have chosen to simply step aside and let the two of them converse. Hayden has learned that when I was her age I didn’t sleep, at all. Most of my entries were logged between 2am and 4am. I didn’t express my sadness directly, but I wrote extensively about teachers who didn’t understand or care about me, other kids who thought I was weird, and all sorts of other issues that collectively show that I was a very lonely child.
Hayden isn’t a lonely child. She has a solid social network and if anything she is the polar opposite of who I was at that age. While my fourth grade self was aligning to the “bad kids”– kids who smoked, cut class and got in trouble, Hayden is shocked that she has a mother who got a B- in art. “It’s art, Mom! I mean, really, are you my mother?!”. I love that she is able to see who I was at that age and that what she sees is a flawed, often confused girl attempting to navigate a challenging world.
I worry a bit about the door I have opened, because there’s no way to close it now. That door will lead to first loves and first heartbreaks, to choices that I hope she never makes, as well as choices that led me to the life I have now, which I wouldn’t change for anything. That door leads to the world of who I was an ultimately, who I am. I don’t know if I made the right choice by opening that dialogue now, many people hide their diaries until they die, or they burn them before they find their way into anyone’s hands, but we live in a crazy world; I watch the parents of my students as they attempt to find connection with their kids and to help them to navigate their challenging worlds. I don’t really know how to do that, but maybe my young self does. So, I’m going to stand back and listen to what my young self has to say.
Tests
Posted on October 26, 2016
I just spent the day at a seminar where we learned how to read, process and discuss standardized test results in order to direct our instruction. It’s best not to think too hard about all that this implies about the future of public education. Suffice it to say, it was an exhausting day. It would have been an exhausting day if I had gone through it with my “teacher hat” on, but, as luck would have it I was wearing my parent hat for the day and that made it so much harder.
A few nights ago I had a meeting at the school that the kiddos attend twice a week to work on their reading. The specialists there run a battery of tests at the start of the year to get a baseline for the kids so they can measure progress throughout the year. I knew Hayden’s tests would come back low; they always come back low. But, after a year of working with a specialist for an hour a day five days a week and all of the work we do at home with her I thought I’d have some great, shining moment when I saw the most recent battery of tests.
Not so. She’s still solidly stuck three years behind grade level. This, in spite of the interventions, in spite of the dedicated work by an incredible team, she’s still profoundly behind the “norm”. I asked the director of the program what she thought about her potential development as a reader and she said, “Looking at her test results, it doesn’t look great. The statistics tell us that we missed the window. She’ll never be a fluent reader.”
As an English teacher, a devoted reader and a parent this struck me like an anvil in the chest. It didn’t hurt in the same way that it did last year when I first heard this diagnosis, because the raw newness of it is no longer there. But, it was still profoundly, deeply saddening and it left me with all of the same “what ifs” that I had a year ago. What if we were in a position where Montessori had been an option? What if we had fought harder sooner? What if, what if, what if?
But, that ship has sailed. Now we’re left in a world where certain aspects of education are stacked against her. It doesn’t mean that we’re not looking to beat those odds, of course we are. But, in the meantime, I sit in trainings where we look at the need for “increased rigor” and for complexity of reading and where the world turns on the axis of standardized test scores. They tell us where we succeed and fail as teachers and where our children succeed and fail as well. It’s all illusion, of course, none of it is real. We have incredible thinkers who can’t bubble a scantron to save her life and we have solid test takers who can’t critically think their way out of a paper bag. None of it means anything really, and yet it does. The weight hangs heavy on us all.
I don’t care that Hayden might not score well on arbitrary standardized tests but I do care about the message those tests send. I see how kids internalize those scores and how those results categorize them both in terms of the academic tracks we place them on an in terms of the internal groups they place themselves in. Hayden knows that she’s creative and that she’s smart, but the tests don’t bear that out and I don’t like the message that sends her way.
I hate that when Elementary National Honors Society invites go out later this year she won’t make the list, not because she doesn’t represent the dedication, the work ethic or the values that the society embodies, but because she doesn’t meet the somewhat arbitrary academic benchmarks that indicate “success”. I hate that I’ll have to comfort her in the wake of awards ceremonies that equate high test scores with “hard work” in spite of the fact that there’s no real correlation between the two, and in spite of the fact that she arguably works harder than most at her age. She dedicates hours of her week to the work of reading. A forty minute drive each way and an hour with specialists twice a week, missing out on Girl Scouts, on after school activities and so much else. She never complains, because she sees the value of it, but those test scores, they may or may not respond accordingly, and I hate that for her.
There’s a place for standardized tests, I’m sure there is. But, we’ve placed them at the pinnacle of this illusion of achievement and at the end of the day, those of us who sit through seven hour long training seminars where we learn to “look at data” know the truth. They are one tool, nothing more, and, if we’re honest, they’re not a particularly good one. I just hope that’s a message I’ll be able to impart on Hayden before the world takes hold and tries to tell her otherwise.
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No Do Overs
Posted on October 20, 2016
There are no “do overs” in life. I know this of course, and while today in no way qualifies as a “do over” I was given the chance to say something that needed to be said to someone who needed to hear it.
I have a student who I see with a small group a few times a week. Up until last week there were eight girls and two boys in the group. But, then Jack died, and that left one boy. One boy who now sits alone at the table he shared with his friend, listening to music and tuning out the sounds of a group of wonderfully ambitious senior girls who talk about college essays and common applications and plans, and plans, and futures.
Yesterday I sat down to talk to him – I sit with him every time I see him now, since I can’t handle the gaping void left at his table, and because he lets me. I asked how things are going and he shrugged. “It’s not going well. It’s going perfectly shitty”, his shrug said. “My friend is dead, I’m failing my classes and I’m surrounded by talk of next year when I’m struggling to make it to next week.” He didn’t say any of this, of course. He shrugged and said nothing.
And then I did the worst thing I could have done. I, unable to handle the reality of the question I had asked and the depth of the answer he couldn’t give, asked him how his common application process was coming. I hated myself as soon as I asked. It’s not what I wanted to ask. I wanted to tell him that I miss Jack too, and that I think about him every day, and that I can’t stop reliving the last conversation I had with him when I asked him that same worst question of worst questions, “What are your plans for next year?” But, I couldn’t say that. So I asked him about his future. And he shrugged. The bell was about to ring, and there was no time to fix things, to have the conversation I so desperately wanted to have with him. So, I told him that I’d be in the cafeteria the whole next morning and if he’d come by I’d help him with the whole process. He said he’d come, but I think we both figured he was lying.
Today I was assigned the task of helping seniors with the college application process and as soon as I sat down, he came over and sat next to me.
“They told me you weren’t here,” he said, “and I was really upset, but then I saw you.”
I knew this was likely the only uninterrupted time I’d have with him before other seniors came over for help with those last minute tweaks on already perfect applications. So in that brief quiet moment, I turned to him and I told him everything I wish I had been able to tell Jack. I told him that really, none of this is real. We talk about college because it feels like a natural path but we act like it’s the only path, and then to make matters worse we act like only one kind of college path is the right path (that Community College doesn’t “count” somehow, or that if you don’t get into the “reach” school you’ve somehow failed). I told him that college is fine, but so is going off to Colorado and being a ski bum for a few years or taking a different path that life lays out. I told him that as long as it’s done with intention and not out of fear, it’s the right path. And, I told him that I really needed him to hear what I was saying. I told him that this was a conversation I always meant to have with Jack, but didn’t. I told him that I needed him to hear that really, honestly, it will be okay. College or no college, 3.8 GPA or 1.4 GPA, it will be okay.
Then, I told him that I was his for the morning. If he wanted to work on the common app, we would. If he wanted to chill out and listen to music, that was okay too. And I’d respect either choice. He smiled and told me he wanted to work on his application. So, we did. We spent the next three hours putting together his application and when he didn’t need my help I helped other kids. But, I made sure he knew that I was there for him and that my goal was to make sure he got what he needed.
We finished the morning with everything filled out except for his social security number (because he’s 17 and it’s not yet seared into his brain) and his religious affiliation because, “That’s just too deep a question to think about right now” (fair enough).
He left at the end of the morning and while I can’t say he seemed less sad or even less lost, I felt like the words that I so selfishly needed to say were heard.
I’ve spent the past week thinking quite a bit about what we tell kids and the pressures we put on them, and I’ve been struck so often by just how fortunate I was. My high school years were spent in the company of a crew of intelligent slackers. I love them all very much, and I don’t say that as in insult. Not in the slightest. We were all capable of more than we put out there, but we all lived comfortably in the knowledge that we’d all be okay. We knew some college was out there if we wanted it, but we also knew that wasn’t the only path, and it wasn’t the path all of us took. We looked out for each other and supported each other but we didn’t push each other, and the only competition I can remember were mental chess games between my brother and his friends.
I lived in a world where my parents supported my choices, whatever they were. They encouraged me to be a writer and photographer rather than pursuing the law career that I was considering. Either would be a solid choice, but they recognized that life is short and passions need to be followed. And, those passions can lead down unexpected paths, even, as it turns out, to teaching.
By telling our kids that college (and not just college but the “right” college) is the only option, we close so many doors to them. We close the door to adventure, to travel, to the dreaded opportunity to “find oneself”, which, let’s be honest, some kids need more than a four year degree on the heels of high school. But beyond that we send the message that if they don’t fall on that one path there’s no place for them in this world. And the consequences of sending that message can be tragic.
The conversation I had with my student today was totally self-serving. I needed to say those words to him because watching his face this past week I see the shadow of a boy we lost, and my soul can’t bear that kind of loss again. Not without at least saying those words. I don’t know if he’ll go off to college or become a ski bum in Colorado or work at Home Depot. And I don’t care. None of us should care. If he goes off to live a life that gives him more happiness than sorrow than that’s success. If he survives and finds his way out of this maze of stress and pressure that he’s in now, it will be success, no matter where the next road leads.
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An Open Letter to Kiddo’s Teacher
Posted on June 23, 2016
This letter expresses much of what I’m feeling as this year comes to an end.
Dear Anne,
This is the time of year when I feel like as teachers we look back to try to take stock of what we’ve accomplished, what kids we’ve reached, what differences we may have made. I find that for myself a lot of that time is spent reflecting not on the things that went well, but on those missed opportunities, those kids who, for whatever reason, I just wasn’t able to reach. I think it’s just part of being a teacher, we always strive to do more, to help more and to have more of the kind of impact that we know matters.
My grandfather taught history many years ago and over the course of his career his students included John F. Kennedy, Sargent Shriver and other people who later became some of the most vital in our society. A few months ago I came across a series of letters he wrote to my great-aunt. In them he wrote at length about how he really wasn’t sure that anything he did over the course of his teaching career really made a difference. His impact on his students was extraordinary and his name has been included in speeches, book dedications and more tributes than I can name. But, he still questioned his impact. I think it was because back then students didn’t often come back to talk to their teachers and the culture wasn’t one of parents reaching out to say thank you to the teachers who made a difference.
This is where you come in.
Hayden has always loved school and she came into third grade this year her usual happy, motivated, sweet self. Because of her nature it’s fairly easy for her to fall under the radar. She’s not a kid who demands attention or intervention. She’s just there, quietly plugging along and doing her best. For the past few years I’ve known that there were issues with her reading and we were told over and over that things were being done, that we didn’t need to worry, and that it would all work out. I can’t begin to tell you what a relief it was to meet with you at the beginning of the year and to hear you tell me that you were concerned. You didn’t tell me that it would all work out, that if we just gave it more time she would catch up. You didn’t tell me that my concerns were unfounded.
Beyond just sharing my concerns though, you jumped in as an advocate for Hayden. You made sure that she was getting the services she needed and that those services weren’t negatively impacting her time in class with her peers. You helped her to see that she can be a writer even as she struggles with spelling and that she can be a thinker, even as she works through her challenges as a reader. You helped her to feel smart and confident and capable. She has known from the first day that you were there in her corner quietly advocating for her. And, as her parents, Brian and I have known that we could turn to you to ask you honest questions about her progress and possible solutions. Your dedication has gone so far above and beyond; calling us on your own time to give us updates or to share concerns, meeting with us to go over results and to brainstorm possible paths to take to help Hayden, and just being there in our corner every step of the way. Hayden is finishing the year leaps and bounds beyond where she began, and while it has certainly been a team effort, you have been at the helm of the ship in many ways, making sure that things were happening for our girl every step of the way.
I know that Hayden will go far in life, and I know that she will, with time and effort find her way as a reader. I also know that you will be one of the teachers who will stay in her heart forever.
Maybe you will be among the fortunate ones who never, even for a moment doubts your value as a teacher. But, you are strong, passionate and invested, and for better or worse, with that dedication often comes self doubt. I didn’t want the year to end without you really knowing what you have meant to us and the extent to which you have helped to change the path of Hayden’s life. The statistics were not in her favor going into this year and while she still has a long haul ahead of her, you have helped to set something in motion that will continue on until she reaches the highest level.
It is my sincere hope that you will stay in education for many years to come. This profession needs people like you. And, when those moments of exhaustion and doubt strike, know that your impact is real and that what you do matters beyond our ability to express it.
Thank you.
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Primary Day
Posted on February 10, 2016
There really is nothing quite like living in New Hampshire during election season. We go from being a blip on the map that exists only for maple syrup and some decent skiing (you know, for the East Coast) to suddenly being courted, hard, by every candidate in the field. It gets to the point where we’re almost too blasé about the whole experience. “I know, I just saw Hillary again at Water Street Bookstore. She was at “Me and Ollie’s” just yesterday, and now she’s inviting me to see her in Concord? I mean, give it a rest already.” Seeing any candidate is as easy is showing up to an event, or in the case of my first run in with Bernie Sanders, taking my kids home from daycare.
I was driving back from daycare (a six-minute drive from home if the one light is read. Five minutes otherwise) and there was a guy on the corner holding a sign that said “Parking”. I slowed down and rolled down my window.
“What are we parking for?” I asked, since there’s nothing there except for a run down barn and I’ve never seen anyone advertise parking in that particular spot – not even for the annual town 5K road race.
“Bernie Sanders is going to be here in about ten minutes”, the man told me.
I pulled over and parked, explaining to the girls that we’d be taking a slight detour on the way home to see one of the candidates. I mean, he was literally in our back yard; it seemed like the hospitable thing to do.
That afternoon we ate deviled eggs with our neighbors in the warm May sun and listened to Bernie talk (yell really) about the issues facing the 99% and the need for significant change in our government. Kaya wandered off at times to check on the horses in a nearby pasture while Hayden sat, riveted by what he was saying about the importance of education and the need for change.
A month later I got word that Hillary Clinton would be speaking at my school. I took advantage of my faculty credentials (otherwise known as my key card) and I headed over to school to get a bit of work done and then check out another candidate. Brian, his mom and the girls came to meet me. This was good, because they scored the good seats. (Hillary’s handlers insisted that all staff watch from the back of the room by the kitchen, so as not to interfere with the “real audience”). As it turned out, Brian and the girls managed to sit second row center, and Brian’s mom was able to ask Hillary a question during the Q&A session. Kaya and Hayden were interviewed for a documentary about women in politics and by the end of the day Kaya had decided on her candidate.
The girls have heard stories about meeting candidates for years. During Obama’s first run for president we took Hayden to see him and we were given priority seating because the footage of us holding a tiny baby outside in line on a frigid January day was terrible PR. (We think her “I can’t read” onesie also sent the right message.) And we nearly broke John McCain’s hip with our stroller in a “meet and greet” line when we were pushed toward him as he walked sideways shaking hands. His secret service guys grabbed him in time, but we have a nice video clip of him stumbling over our slightly confused baby.
During the last campaign the girls spent months answering the home phone by simoutaniously screaming “BARAK OBAMA!” at the top of their lungs. (We keep our landline solely for the purpose of political polls.)
This year there was no unified scream. One child is an avid Hillary supporter while the other “feels the Burn”. They are both deeply passionate about their convictions. Kaya feels that we need “a girl president” and she finds Hillary’s delivery less confrontational and not as angry. Kaya is concerned about a potential president who throws around words like “hate” with no thought to their impact.
Hayden on the other hand is lured by Bernie’s policies regarding education; she knows that right now not everyone gets to go to college, even if they’re smart, and that concerns her. She likes his passion and his conviction, and I think she liked the fact that, that day on the farm; he looked at her while he was speaking. She saw something in him that resonated.
Today was the big day – primary day – and the girls were both ready to go and get their vote on. Kaya was a bit disappointed that Hillary wasn’t going to be at our polls (the problem with having such easy access to candidates is that it’s a let down when they aren’t literally everywhere you turn). Kaya was also upset that she didn’t have anyone to vote for her. We did find her a proxy voter who was willing to cast a Hillary vote for her, but she was still disappointed in our decision to stand behind Bernie. I assured her that the family will rally around Hillary if she’s the democratic nominee for the general election, but that’s a long way off and she’s only six.
Kaya is the more passionate of our two political kids, and it was challenging for her to keep her opinions to herself when she saw a man holding an enormous TRUMP sign outside the polling place. Kaya’s feeling is that the only reason someone would have such a sign would be to make it clear to all around that they are bullies so that people will give them a wide birth. “It’s good that they have those signs” she told me a few weeks ago, “That way we know where not to sell cookies”. I really couldn’t disagree. Kaya resisted the urge to go over to the “Trump Guy” to question his motives as a voter, but she did deep sigh as she walked by and said in her “Kaya voice” (that’s the stage whisper/yell designed to be heard by all) “He knows he’s holding that sign, right?” I explained that it’s his right to support whatever candidate he chooses. She looked at him and said, “Well, I don’t support what he supports,” and kept on walking. Later, when we left he tried to talk to her. She looked at him like he was a creepy guy trying to lure her into a van and kept walking. I explained again that part of what makes this country great is that people get to support whatever candidate they want. She was unconvinced and I’m pretty sure she thinks he went home and shot some puppies in his backyard for sport.
And now, as midnight approaches, another primary season is behind us. We’ll wake up tomorrow largely irrelevant, relegated back to our position as the keepers of maple syrup and mid-sized ski resorts. But, for that small window every four years we are the center of something deeply significant and, whether we want to admit it or not, profoundly meaningful. We have the rare opportunity to share deviled eggs and heated debate with the people who will be the next to take over the reins of leadership for our country. This is a privilege that’s not lost on me and I don’t want my girls to squander the gift of that access. No mater how they vote in the future I want them to treat visiting candidates the way Brian and I treat unexpected signs for wine tastings. You might not like what you taste, but you owe it to yourself to stop in and give it a try.
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Tiger Rising
Posted on February 8, 2016
On Sunday I took the girls to our local bookstore to make use of a gift card they received for Christmas from their after-school provider. The girls love books. They love collecting them, carrying them around, flipping through them, making up stories for them and being read to. Reading them? That’s been a challenge, especially for Hayden. Hayden’s comprehension is well above grade level and in terms of story complexity she can handle just about anything that comes her way. Unfortunately, because of her reading challenges her reading level has forced her to read books that are simple, repetitive and largely plot-free. As a result, getting her to read has been a challenge. She’s always willing to give it a try, but reading “baby books” has left her feeling stupid, and attempting to read books at her comprehension level leave her feeling frustrated and, again, stupid. It has been a lose-lose in so many ways and as a result, I’ve tended to default to reading to her, especially at night when she’s tired from long days working with various specialists for hours on end.
So, when Hayden chose Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo, I was torn. She picked it because her teacher recently read The One and Only Ivan to her class and Hayden quickly declared it the best book ever. The fact that this novel is also based on a relationship with an animal drew her in. I was all in favor of her choosing that book, but just looking at it I could tell that the reading level was far beyond anything she had ever attempted to tackle on her own. I suggested that she get Tiger Rising, along with another book that she could read herself, to help her to practice those skills.
Hayden flipped open to the first page of Tiger Rising. “I can read this,” she told me confidently.
“Okay” I said, and I brought the book to the counter. Inside though, I was apprehensive. Five months ago Hayden could barely make it through even the most basic Dr. Seuss books. Five days a week for an hour a day she works tirelessly with a specialist who is helping her to navigate her dyslexia. In addition to that, she works with a reading specialist and she has another teacher who pulls her out every day to work on “high frequency” words. Hayden has taken all of the changes to her schedule in stride; she understands that her struggles are something she was born with and that while they’re not the result of not trying hard enough, hard work is the only way to get to reach the milestones she’s striving for. So, day after day, hour after hour she works without complaint, and while the gains feel microscopic at times, we do see results. She can read the episode guide for shows that just a few months ago I would have needed to read to her. Just recently she’s begun to read spontaneously (cook book directions, street signs, everything she sets eyes on) and her confidence is growing by leaps and bounds. But, her reading is still extremely labored and as of Sunday I hadn’t heard her read anything even close to “grade level”.
I figured Hayden would grapple with the book a bit and then I’d take over and read to her. I was fine with this, as it still gives her a valuable connection to books and she’s working hard to develop her skills, but the learning curve is steep.
We got in the car and she immediately opened her new book.
“…The Kentucky Star sign was composed of a yellow neon star that rose and fell over a piece of blue neon in the shape of the state of Kentucky. Rob liked the sign; he harbored a dim but abiding notion that it would bring him good luck.”
It’s difficult to describe how it felt listening her to read to herself in the back seat. I wanted that swelling crescendo of Hollywood music to accompany the emotions that suddenly flooded through me. My girl was reading a chapter book that anyone her age would pick up and read, and she was navigating it pretty smoothly. As I listened I could feel the disconnect between her ideas and her ability beginning to shrink. She was able to read with inflection and while she didn’t know every word, the words she was missing were proper nouns and other words that anyone her age would struggle with. My girl went from “I like my new toy. My new toy is fun” to “a dim but abiding notion” in just a matter of months. Make no mistake, these months have entailed a herculean effort on her part and on the part of everyone who works with her, but it’s all starting to come together.
My girl is becoming a reader. She’s always been a lover of books, but now the world of reading is opening up to her. I know it’s still going to be a long road, and she may never be 100% “at grade level” (whatever that even is) but seeing her flip open a book with the casual ownership of a reader fills my heart with something beyond pride and beyond joy. Worlds she doesn’t even know exist will open themselves to her and with the casual flip of a hand she’ll be able to enter them. I can’t wait to see her explore Terabithia, to swim with Blue Dolphins and someday to explore the worlds of Narnia and Hogwarts. She’s embarking on a tremendous journey and I feel honored to witness it.
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Holden
Posted on January 22, 2016
The plan? Spend the hour and a half between the end of the school day and kiddo pick up time entering my students’ midterm grades, doing some lesson planning for “Hamlet” and cleaning and organizing my room in preparation for third quarter.
The reality? A student who is failing with a single digit average came to finish his midterm. He mentioned, in passing, that reading Catcher in the Rye made him realize some things about himself. Any conversation that opens with “The Catcher in the Rye made me realize…” is never going to be a short conversation. It’s just the nature of that novel and the power it holds.
Long story short, he’s experienced some significant trauma and, like Holden, nobody has really been there to help him to process it. He said, “You know how Holden is really smart, but he’s failing because he just can’t get out of his own head and move on from what he’s experienced? I think that’s like me.” Over an hour later we came up with a plan to get him someone to talk. We also scrapped any plans of turning him into a model student this year and replaced them with the goal of helping him so that he, in his words, “Can stop pretending to be happy and actually start to feel it”.
So, now my classroom is a fire hazard of papers and books, my planning for Monday stands at “Wing It” and I have two bags of papers that have come home with me that still need to be logged into my grade book. But, this was one of those days that will likely stand out when I think about why I teach. And, more specifically why I value teaching literature. For every kid who whines and “Spark Notes” and skims, there might be one kid in the back of the room who looks like he’s disengaged and disconnected but who, in reality is so much in his own head at that moment, and possibly even so far in the head of a character that he’s lost in ways we can’t begin to see.
It’s easy to forget the power of novels, especially the ones we teach year after year and it’s easier still to forget the power we hold as teachers, especially when we’re consumed with midterms and grades and planning, and frankly, all of the things that really, in the end don’t amount to a whole lot. Today was an important reminder to me of what it’s really about and why what we do really does matter. I don’t know that we’ll be able to help this kid in any substantial way, although I certainly hope we will, but I do know that he felt comfortable broaching the topic with me this afternoon because he had Holden Caulfield there to lean on. It makes me wonder how often these small, important moments get lost as we focus on assessments and core competencies and all of the minutia of our lives as teachers. Sometimes it just has to be about more than that, and about more than reading check quizzes and essays. Sometimes it has to be about letting our kids hang out with characters for a while to learn that they’re not alone.
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Not Here.
Posted on November 15, 2015
Last week, as part of an in-service at school I was given the opportunity to take part in an “active shooter” training. We were taught, in the midst of simulated gunfire, how to direct our students to the sides of the door, and if the situation calls for it, how to attack from the sides, hitting low, hitting hard, and taking the attacker down. We were trained, briefly but effectively as to the best methods of disarming an armed attacker in the classroom. This training was voluntary and afterward discussions ensued about whether or not it should be mandatory. There hasn’t been a tragic school fire since the 1930s, and yet we still do a half dozen fire drills a year. We do lockdown drills, but really, most of us don’t have the vaguest idea of what to do if things really get real. Well, we kind of do. Lock the door, cower in darkness, know that most attacks last less than 15 minutes so if you can survive that, you live, but beyond that, we’re left to wonder what we’d do if we found ourselves in that situation.
Last night I was watching the terrorist attacks unfold in Paris and it just brought that reality back to me again. We don’t live in the same world I grew up in. These things do happen, and they happen in unlikely places, at unlikely times; that being the nature of terrorism. So, what do we do? What do we tell our kids when they hear us talking about it?
The girls overheard Brian and I this morning as we talked about the Lego League Competition his team was taking part in. There was discussion of a moment of silence, pins, etc. The girls were curious. I told them the basics. There are people who don’t like the freedoms we have and they don’t like the way we live. They’re bullies and they try to hurt people. Sometimes they succeed.
Kaya said, “I’m glad we live here, where these things don’t happen”. I didn’t respond, because I want her to feel safe, but in my mind and heart I know that really, nothing separates us. The only reason Sandy Hook didn’t take place in our backyard was that Adam Lanza’s mother moved when he was a kid. The only reason other things haven’t happened is that they just haven’t. They didn’t lose their Nana on 9/11 because she changed her flight. They didn’t lose their mom (who wouldn’t even have been their mom) because I wasn’t working at the Trade Center when it happened, and our office was on a lower floor, and anyway I was always late and never would have been there when it happened anyway. But still, it’s all close.
I didn’t respond to Kaya because I want her to feel safe. I need her to feel safe. But, I also need her to know that danger can be real. She knows that if the “scary man” (an unstable man who is known to have problems) comes near, she is to find an adult. She knows that not everyone is to be trusted and that not everyone is good. But, really, she doesn’t know it. I can tell by the way she approaches life. And I don’t want it any different. I don’t want her to have to change. I want the world to change so that she doesn’t have to. She shouldn’t have to understand danger on that level. We need to find a way to change the world so that our kids can live in it safely.
I’m not naïve. I’m just sad. And scared. And utterly incapable of explaining Paris , and September 11th, and Sandy Hook to my kids. To say that I long for a simpler time is to, well, simplify the issue. I don’t long for it to be simple, it was never simple. I long for the strength to combat what comes our way and to feel that we have the fortitude to face the challenges ahead of us with intelligence and the right brand of strength to tackle the problem. I want to build a future where “At least it can’t happen here” isn’t a bold faced lie.
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Private: The lies we tell our teens, and why we need to stop.
Posted on November 30, 2013
1. These are the best years of your life
2. If you don’t work hard in high school, you won’t get anywhere in life
3. The decisions you make today will haunt you forever.
4. You need to play by the rules to succeed in life
6. Homework is more important than a social life
5. You’re too young to know what love is.
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The Power of Words
Posted on November 26, 2013
Yesterday, I read chapter 24 of Catcher in the Rye to my sophomores. In that chapter Holden leaves his apartment in the middle of the night and goes to see his old English teacher, Mr. Antolini. I always read that chapter out loud because it’s too important to gloss over. Not important in that “look, the red hunting hat is symbolic” kind of way, but actually important. It’s the chapter where Salinger as the author steps lightly into the text to talk to his readers for a brief, crucial moment.
Mr. Antolini, in an attempt to save Holden’s life, tells him that if he’s going to stop the terrible fall that’s he’s currently in the midst of; the best place to start is through books. In books, Mr. Antolini tells him, he will find that others have struggled with the same confusion and fear that he is facing. Others have walked through the darkness and some have written about those lonely journeys. They have found their way out and they have shared their experiences, and he too can find his way out, and he too can share his experiences with others. Mr. Antolini, and Salinger through him, is saying that the stories we tell and the stories we read can save our lives.
When I was young I lived inside stories. The everyday world left me an outsider. I didn’t have long, flowing hair and an abundance of purple hair clips. I had short, boyish hair, but without the athleticism that would make it okay. I was an invisible drifter on the edges of the playground. Sometimes bullied but mostly not seen. I lived on the periphery and in my own mind. During the day, I read books inside my desk, anything to take me away from the droning sound of teachers who didn’t want to teach and classmates who all knew the games I didn’t understand. The game of school, the game of popularity, the game of belonging. I made it through those days, but they were cramped and huddled, tucked in my desk and away from the prying eyes of my peers.
But, the afternoons were mine. I’d get home and I’d select a book the way I now choose wine, sometimes for comfort, sometimes for escape, sometimes for a new and unexpected taste. I’d take my book and I’d climb the catalpa tree in the back yard. It had that perfect, Y shaped nook that was as ergonomic to my young, flexible spine as the best leather recliner is now. I’d sit under the shade of those enormous heart-shaped leaves and I’d read until the last of the sun disappeared behind the far side of the house.
It was there, in that tree that I found companionship. I could escape into the Island of the Blue Dolphins over and over again; I could explore Terabithia, content in the knowledge that I would find my way out. I would make it over the river every time. I would survive.
Those voices and characters are as real to me today as they were then. I can still feel my rage toward that mean girl in “Blubber” who went so far in her bullying that she designed a Halloween costume with the sole purpose of humiliating the outsider. I hated that girl so much that for almost a week I hated Judy Blume too. The idea that an author could craft a character who was so mean and yet so vulnerable was both frightening and liberating to me as a young, barely emerging writer. It gave me permission to be my true, authentic self in my diaries. I could be hurtful, scared, confused and loving. I could explore all the selves I wanted to be and all the selves I was. I could have conversations on paper that I could never have out loud. I found my voice through reading the voices of others. And, more than that, I found community. My friends were fictional, to be sure, but they were as real to me as the air I breathed, and they still are today.
And now, here I sit, in a crowed auditorium, directly behind Judy Blume. My eleven-year-old self craves the chance to tell her what she did for me. How her words gave my young self a voice and, if I am to be completely honest, life. I wouldn’t be who I am today if her words, and the words of others like her, didn’t exist. I don’t know who I would be exactly, but I know I wouldn’t be the person I am now. That knowledge that I was okay, that I wasn’t broken and that I wasn’t wrong for being that quiet, internal girl, gave me comfort in a time when there wasn’t a whole lot of solace to be found. More than that, it gave me the right to my own voice, awkward and offbeat as it was.
That voice writes now; not as often as it wants to, and certainly not as often as it should, but when it does, I hear the voice of so many others in concert with mine. Judy Blume and SE Hinton, Katherine Paterson and Scott O’Dell, those voices of another time and another place still whisper in my ear. There is no way to thank them fully for what they have given me. The best thanks I can give is to share those voices, and the voices that speak for today, with my students and my girls. To keep that legacy alive, and to give them a whisper in their minds and hearts that may serve to drown out some of the other voices they’ll encounter in their travels.
Of course I hope against hope, as all teachers and all parents do, that all of my kids will navigate the challenges of their young worlds with ease and confidence. But, since I know in my heart that their roads will twist and turn and bring them down some dark, difficult paths just as mine did, I’m thankful that there are authors out there who can speak to that pain and ease a bit of that sense of aloneness. They may not walk hand-in–hand with the authors of my youth, but they can find their own Terabithias and Islands, and they can explore the world hand in hand with a new set of companions who can guide them in their journeys and give them solace on their paths.
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There is no Why
Posted on October 25, 2013
Grades closed today. That means that the entire day was a swarm of students clustering around my desk lobbying for points and angling for that slight bump that would bring a 79 to an 80 or an 89 to a 90. Those nines are the bane of my existence on days like this. Normally, the last day of the quarter is filled with that exhausted frustration that comes from the world of grades. What really is the difference between a 79 and an 80 after all? In the larger scheme of the universe, does it really matter? The answer to that question of course is no, but that’s another discussion for another day. Today I wasn’t thinking about any of that. As I sat in my room at 2:45 conferencing with a student about her college essay and her future prospects I couldn’t disengage my mind from the reality that three days ago this was, by all accounts, what Colleen Ritzer was doing.
This 24 year-old teacher was sitting in her room conferencing with a student about an upcoming algebra test. He, a 14 year-old transfer student from Tennessee, she, a second-year teacher staying to help. She wasn’t even there late. At first when I saw the news I had images of her, of myself, working until 8pm on a Tuesday night, staying long after everyone but the custodians had gone, relishing that peace and that time to just settle in and grade without distraction.
That’s what I first pictured, because it’s not all that hard to transform that silence into something sinister. That sound in the hall, that unexpected opening of a door. But, they’re saying that’s not what happened. The reports, early that they are, are telling us that he did this sometime around 3pm on a Tuesday the week that first quarter grades closed. That means there were people all over that school. This wasn’t midnight on a desolate Friday, this was after school during one of the busiest periods of the year. The “when” of this situation takes away so much of my sense of comfort. It’s as scary to me as the why. The how is the least important really. It happened. That’s all that matters now. A 24 year-old teacher is dead and a 14 year -old kid is responsible.
And the why? That we never really know, do we? Even when we know, we don’t know. There’s just no rhyme or reason to it. He was by all accounts a “normal kid”. Words like “friendly” “nice” and “kind of quiet but, you know, not weird quiet” are floating around. Now, nobody really knew him well since this was his first year at the school, but still I buy it. It’s looking more and more these days like it’s not the TSKs you have to worry about.
TSK? Tower Shooter Kid. Those kids who you know in your deepest self as a teacher you don’t want to see in the school after hours. I’ve had a few. One wrote disturbing, detailed stories about killing animals and classmates and disposing of their bodies in rather mundane ways. His father said he was creative. His cold eyes told a different story. Another was a boy with anger issues who maintained a practiced calm before becoming frighteningly unglued. The teacher across the hall told me that if she ever turned up dead in her classroom he was the one to look to. We both laughed that uncomfortable laugh, but we both worked late a few nights a week and until he graduated we always kept a slightly closer eye on our doors after hours.
But, this kid, by all accounts wasn’t a TSK. To be honest, there aren’t all that many truly creepy kids. That’s why we tend to remember them so well. Most kids are fine. Beyond fine, most are engaging, interesting, wacky individuals who make what we do as teachers one of the most oddly fun professions around. But, that’s what makes this so scary. If an arguably normal kid can kill a teacher at 3pm on a Tuesday in a perfectly normal town on the North Shore of Massachusetts, then there really is no safety.
After every tragedy things change. Columbine brought us cameras; the same cameras they looked to for answers after finding blood in the upstairs bathroom of the school. Sandy Hook brought us locked doors and buzzed entries. (Those would be more effective if we didn’t let in everyone who buzzed, sight unseen. Plus, the Sandy Hook shooter blasted through those doors, so perhaps that’s a moot point anyway). What does this tragedy bring us? A renewed sense that we are responsible for our own protection perhaps. When you can be killed in a populated school in mid-day all bets are off.
I keep telling myself that the statistical likelihood of anything like this happening here is slim, and while that’s true, it’s small comfort. The Sandy Hook killer grew up a town away from where I teach, and had he not moved as a child their story could have been ours so easily. And this latest? Just a few minutes drive from the school where I first taught. Not that it matters really. These things shouldn’t happen anywhere, but when you can visualize the landscape, and certainly when you can visualize the schools, right down to those shiny, polished halls, it makes it all too real.
There is no greater point here, no larger meaning. A young teacher is dead and the kid who killed her is shrouded in mystery. Maybe the fact that he didn’t kill himself is a gift. Maybe he’ll give us some answers that will help us to make sense of what has been happening all too often lately. I certainly won’t hold my breath, but I will hope that at least that some small bit of knowledge can come out of this tragedy.
In the meantime, nothing changes. I conference with kids in the afternoon, alone in my room, and I believe to the very core of my being that nothing like that could every happen here, could ever happen to me. Because there is no other choice. There is no other way to do the job and to do it well. As teachers, if we’re heroes at all we should be heroes for what we do to inspire students, to help the next generation navigate their worlds. We should not be heroes for dying at their hands.
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Private: Is Forever Enough?
Posted on October 21, 2013
On Sunday night we were at Luanne and Dave’s house carving pumpkins with the kids. After the sun went down and the pumpkins were lit and shining, we sat in front of the fire pit and Luanne brought out the guitar. As Kaya fell asleep in my arms, Luanne sang the lyrics, “How long do you want to be loved? Is forever enough? Is forever enough?” from a song by the Dixie Chicks. It was that perfect fall scene, fire pit, smore sticky children dozing off under the full moon. One of those evenings you just want to freeze in time and hold onto.
Now I’m sitting here in the waiting room. The View in on; I forget sometimes just how much a loath the sounds of talk shows as background. They reek of rainy, cold days trapped inside, a captive audience. I’m sitting here playing the macabe game of “healthier. Sicker”. The woman in front of me who is easily 20 lbs underweight with a slightly grey face. Sicker. The Woman to my right who is a bit on the heavy side, but looks alert and happy…healthier? There’s just no way to know. Lungs are hidden; you can look for signs, the cough seems so much better lately, mom’s voice sounds pretty good. She doesn’t seem sick. She doesn’t seem sick. Doesn’t that count for something? I don’t know honestly. Does it? When they call us in at 2pm mom thinks they’ll have answers. I think they’re going to hold off for a few days before giving us the results. I don’t know who I hope is right.
And now there’s an ad for cancercenter.com . Suddenly all eyes are on the tv. Everyone looks up, pretends not to really be looking, and then glances back down at that outdated Architectural Digest again. Three older men just rolled in, all with oxygen masks hanging from high poles on their wheelchairs. They look so old to me. Does mom look that old to other people? Do they look at her and think, “well, at her age…”? I doubt it. She’s so put together, so polished. She looks so much younger than she is. Doesn’t that count for something? That gauzy blouse that she picked out this morning because it makes her feel in control. Classy. Does she get points from the universe for caring so much? For trying so hard in the small ways she can control?
I want her to be fine. God, I just want her to be fine. I want more time. I don’t know what that means. How much time exactly, but I want more. Is forever enough? I know in my heart that nobody ever really leaves us. I talk to Grandpa all the time. His portrait hangs in the corner of my classroom under the American flag. The kids pledge allegiance to him every Monday morning. He’s there. He’s so completely there. And, our discussions aren’t even all that one sided. When I’m feeling lost in piles of grading and damaged kids and the realities of the stress that really does come with this job some days, I look over at him and we talk for a moment. His answers are always there in that calm expression, those warm eyes. He’s there. I know this, and for that relationship it’s enough.
But, I’m so far from being ready to expand that world of talking to portraits. I want the people I love to be physically here with me. I know it’s an impossible dream, but dammit, that’s what I want. Ten years? Can I get a decade? Five years? I want the crystal ball. I want to know where it’s all heading so that I can wrap my brain around it all. But, that’s a lie. I don’t just want to know. I want it to be okay.
How far does love reach? The ends of the earth and back, to be sure. To other words and back again? I believe so. In my heart I really do. I need to hold that belief close. To nurture it, because in the end it all comes down to what we believe. Nothing else is real.
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Private: Tightrope
Posted on October 21, 2013
A few weeks ago I went to the Deerfield Fair with the family. The Flying Walandez family was performing their famous tight rope act; the whole family, four generations of people, on a thin rope high above the audience, without nets, as is their signature style. We were sitting right below them, at the very edge of the ring. Looking up at them I could see the concentration in their faces, the fear even, in those moments when the wind blew, when concentration was lost just for a moment. I could feel the fragility of those moments when they were all out there together, mounted on bicycles on top of rods on top of shoulders, those brief moments of perfection when it was all in balance.
That’s how it is right now. It’s that brief moment when it’s all right there, teetering but stable, above me. My family, imperfect yet perfect in its imperfection, my children, still at an age when they want and love me above all others, a husband who hasn’t grown too weary of my less enduring qualities – tying up the garbage but not bringing it out, washing and folding the clothes only to leave them in baskets everywhere in the house. Parents who, even as they age are still wholly there and part of our lives. It is a moment of perfection perched on uncertainty and a future that I know can’t withstand it all. Those bicycles can’t stay perched on a wire forever. At some point it all changes and the moment is lost.
Tomorrow mom goes for her second CT scan. The first was in late August. She had been struggling with something like bronchitis that wouldn’t’ quit and she finally decided to really have it looked at. The CT scan found a mass. Not a huge mass, but a mass nonetheless.. Tomorrow they do a follow up to see if it’s grown, shrunk or stayed the same. Shrunk is good, of course. That means it was nothing, and that we can all rest easy knowing that the walkers are still out there on the tightrope, poised in perfect harmony. A mass that has stayed the same leaves us in a holding pattern. Larger? The world will shift and tilt and we’ll be thrust into a new reality. One that I can’t begin to know how to navigate.
It could be any of those. I don’t dare to wish for the easiest. It seems almost unfair that I should have so much more than so many others. I’ve had an extra twelve more years already. I mark the days since September 11th and I know what they represent- my marriage, the birth of my two daughters, twelve Thanksgivings, twelve Christmases, birthdays, Mother’s Days, so much that the universe never owed me. I can count on one hand the people I know and love who still have their moms. I know this. I know that it’s not owed to me, and yet, I’m just not ready, so far from ready from facing that reality that I know is out there somewhere. I look at people who have lost a parent and I wonder, honestly wonder, how they breathe. How they just wake up, put on shoes and go about their day. These are the things you just can’t ask. And, in your forties with parents in their late seventies, everyone around you sees the inevitable and somehow expects that you see it too. There’s not the same outpouring of grieving injustice that comes with the thought of losing someone in their fifties. And in fairness there shouldn’t be. We should all be so lucky as to lose our parents rather than having them bury us. But still, I don’t know how to begin to find my way through it all.
Tomorrow might change so much. It might be the start of a whole new normal, a new reality that I’ll need to navigate. Or, it might be a day to give thanks and to embrace a future that for now feels comfortable and secure.
For right now that walker us up there on the tightrope, tense but grounded, sure but pushing back fear, living in the moment and the moment only, because really, isn’t that all any of us have?
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Horse Narratives 101
Posted on September 24, 2013
Recently I discovered that there are roughly two “horse novel” narratives at work in the world. I found this out when the kiddo began to gravitate toward horse books for her nightly bedtime stories.
Narrative One: Outcast girl joins a stable filled with rich, mean girls. She endures many tests before the rich girls realize with a smile and a hug that really, they’re all the same after all; which is to say, if you just work hard enough to conform to their mores, the rich girls will accept you too. Provided of course that you’re submissive, ingratiating and you have a cute pony.
I don’t allow Narrative One to cross our threshold. First of all, as the child of two teachers, our daughter will never have the option of playing the role of Rich Bitch, even if she wanted to. Second, the longer I can keep her away from the construct of girl-on-girl hatred, the better. But, Narrative Two is much more difficult to detect, and I would argue that in the end it does as much, if not more, to damage girls than girl-on-girl hatred.
I found myself neck deep in Narrative Two last night when we were curled up reading the only horse book that’s made it through the gates so far. It starts off innocently enough. Girl saves up money to buy a horse. Girl sees the most beautiful horse ever, but then decides at the last minute to rescue a horse that has been neglected and is now headed for certain slaughter. She nurses the horse back to health and her love and kindness turn the horse into a gentle, beautiful creature.
Injured horse as a metaphor that brings the reader to a place of compassion is fine, I suppose. However, injured horse as a metaphor for damaged boy that needs to be loved into goodness is another story altogether.
Chapters one through five show us a girl bonding with a broken horse. In the meantime though, a secondary plot is forming in which the “bad boy” in town has adopted the beautiful horse that our main girl turned down in favor of the damaged fixer-upper. This boy is cruel, taunting our main character, putting her down, even becoming mildly physically aggressive at one point. But, in chapter six we learn that the bad boy, much like fixer-upper horse, has been abused, and our main girl begins to discover what is at the heart of Horse Book Narrative Two – boys, like horses can be fixed if you care enough and devote enough of yourselves to them.
Halfway through chapter six I put the book down and initiated a conversation about “fixer upper people” and the difference between fiction and reality. It was put in six-year-old terms, but it’s a message that I’ll be returning to often. I don’t want my girls to be insensitive to the pain of others, but I’ll be dammed if I’m going to let them grow up to think that they can, or should be responsible for fixing the damaged people around them, especially in their future romantic lives.
Imagine a son coming home with a traditional sports book that centers around a boy’s growth as an athlete until he meets an angry, mean girl. Now, imagine the whole book changing course so that the boy can focus his energy on fixing the girl, comforting her and helping her through her angry, violent ways so that in the end she can find love, assumably with him. I haven’t read this book. This book doesn’t exist because this narrative doesn’t exist. Boys are not raised to become the saviors of broken girls. This isn’t to say that there aren’t boys who take on this role, but it’s not a role that’s actively encouraged by society at large.
Already our girls are rewarded for their passivity. Mine gets stickers for sitting quietly, she is frequently rewarded for passing up turns and activities so that others can have a chance, and she takes great pride in the fact that she’s seen as a “good girl”. These are all fine traits, but I worry that, particularly with a girl who tends to fall on the accommodating side, the message being sent is that the most desirable quality she possess is submissiveness. I’m certainly not saying that I want my child to be insensitive, loud and selfish, but I also don’t want her to see her role in the world as one of sitting back quietly, or worse, being responsible for fixing the Lost Boys of the world.
When a girl doesn’t have a strong voice or a sense of self that goes beyond being accommodating to others, it’s easy to find a sense of strength in fixing the damaged. The sense of power that comes from being the only one who can fix the damaged boy (or at least attempt to) can be addictive. It also allows for a narrative to develop in which the girl becomes consumed by the injustice done to the damaged boy. He is the way he is because he was abused, neglected, or otherwise harmed in some way. Therefore, the narrative goes, if she can show him what healthy love looks like, he can be cured.
Someday my little girl will ask about the pictures in the hall of Papa and Bammie’s house. The explanation I’ll give to her youngest self will be basic and sparse. If she asks who they are I’ll tell her they’re her cousins. If she asks why she hasn’t met them, I’ll tell her they’re angels. If she asks how they became angels? That I’m not quite ready for. There’s no way to have anything close to the real conversation with a child that young. Even to say that young children die is too much, although she knows it to be true. But, someday when she’s older I’ll have a conversation with her that will tie back to this savior narrative. I need her to know that not only can we not fix all the damaged people in the world, sometimes those damaged people destroy everything in their wake, even lives.
It’s not enough to rid our lives of Savior Narrative horse books, a larger discussion needs to take place. For now, we talk about circles of trust, and my daughter places people in various circles on a chart. She knows that the expectation is to be kind to everyone, but she’s also learning that not everyone belongs in what she refers to as the “huggy circle”. That place is reserved for those who have a truly special, healthy role in her life. Those who give to the relationship as much as they take, those who leave her feeling strong and smart and important, those who deserve to be in that deepest circle of trust. Right now that circle is small and easy to maintain. It’s just Mommy, Daddy, her sister, her grandparents and her best friend. There’s no room in there for more (she writes in a large first grade scrawl and her world is very small). But, as she grows, the circles will shift. I might not always be in the center of the huggy circle (though I certainly hope to be). Friends will come and go, hearts will break and be broken, and the lines of those circles will blur with time and the complexity of maturity.
But, I always want her to value herself and to keep herself and her heart at the center of that small, most important ring. She needs to love herself most.
I read something recently in which a mother talked about raising her kids to be selfless. It gave me pause. Maybe she doesn’t really know what that word means, maybe she hasn’t really stopped to think about what her children’s lives will look like if they’re truly selfless, but I have. The first definition of selfless is, “having little or no concern for oneself”. I don’t want my girls to be selfless and I don’t want them to be saviors. I want them to be good people who care about those around them and who strive to make the world a better place for them having been a part of it. But, I don’t want them to lose themselves in that pursuit. I don’t want them to find their sense of self in the fixing of broken people, unless it’s in a professional capacity and they’re able to shut that door and turn off the office light at the end of the day. I need them to understand that there are limits to compassion and that’s okay. They can be good people and still hold some people at arm’s length. I need them to know that some damage can’t be undone, can’t be loved through, and can’t be fixed. Some damage is too deep and throwing themselves on a drowning person will not save that person, they’ll simply slip under as well.
These discussions are difficult and important and scary, and I know they won’t get easier with time. Maybe I’ll be one of the lucky ones whose girls will always gravitate toward boys who are whole and sound, but if they’re anything like me they’ll find their way to at least a few damaged boys who will break parts of them, leaving lasting scars that never fully heal.
As for that book, that celebration of selfless weakness that implores girls to take on the role of savior at the expense of their own value, that book is gone. I didn’t throw it out though. I’m not sure I want to. Those books exist in this world, and that narrative exists. And, while I’m hiding the book from my girls for now, the reality is, they’re going to be confronted with this narrative in many forms and they’re going to have to learn how to navigate their “huggy circles” throughout their entire lives. I just hope they’ll come out with that perfect balance of kindness and self-preservation that will keep them grounded, secure and alive. Love does not, as the old adage suggests, conquer all. Not even close.
I don’t want my girls waiting for some prince on a white horse to save them, and I don’t want them out there attempting to save those who can never be saved. I want them to focus on finding a place of self-respect so that they can be their own saviors, the heroes of their own stories; the center of a narrative that’s all their own.
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Rememberance
Posted on September 12, 2013
It’s been twelve years now and I find that I still mark so many things by 9/11 time. When I worry about mom’s health, a deep part of me is always there to remind me that I’ve had over a decade of added time; a gift I did nothing to deserve any more than those who lost so much deserved to lose. So many of us had so many close calls that day, and there are so many things we said to ourselves in the wake of it all to make it all feel more distant, or closer, depending on our pain and our need to distance ourselves from it or to justify the magnitude of it. When I needed to distance myself I’d tell myself that the chances of a plane carrying my mother hitting a building filled with my friends was a statistical impossibility. That dialogue played in my head for a day, until those stories were shown to be true; a wife’s plane hitting her husband’s building, a family traveling on two separate flights, both of which hit the towers. Once the stories began to flow in the reality of it all began to filter through and to become more real, in that most surreal way.
That morning mom called me at 6am California time to tell me that a plane had hit my old building. I only had one “old building”, one place I worked the whole time I lived in New York. Tower Two was a stabilizing force in my life during my early twenties. That first summer I lived in NYU housing (even though I was never a student there) and I walked to the towers every day because I didn’t know how to navigate the subway. You didn’t have to know New York at all to find the Trade Center. All you had to do was look south and there it was. As I walked, if it got bigger, I was headed to work. The whole time I lived in New York the towers were my compass, especially in the village where the roads aren’t set up like the grid of an old Battleship game. If I felt hesitant, I’d look up, get my bearings and keep going.
Working in the towers had that same familiarity, a comforting intimacy. Every office job I had was in Tower 2. It was my tower, just as my various apartments were mine. Even more so really; I lived in four apartments in the time I lived in NYC, but I only worked in one building. That creaking sound and slight sway in the bathrooms on windy days, that smell of warm rubber on summer days walking through the tunnel to the Winter Garden for lunch, sitting on the dock watching the boats writing in my journal that first summer, feeling so much a part of the world all of a sudden, an instant New Yorker by virtue of the fact that I worked in a place where tourists came to pose for pictures.
There were certainly things to hate about that building; the endless security, the fact that it was nearly impossible to step out for fresh air without making a journey of it, the fact that running late meant elbowing through hoards of aimless tourists, but GodI loved that place. I loved the view from those skinny floor to ceiling windows that gave me vertigo if I stood too close to them, I loved the energy of those buildings, and most of all I loved the people I grew so close to while I was there, and those places that became such a part of the fabric of my life – the shoe guy in the concourse who always told me I had to stop treating my feet like they were cheap and buy better shoes, the bars in the Winter Garden where we’d end up every time there was even the vaguest hint of an excuse for a party. Those wacky palm trees that I always worried would die and leave the atrium feeling unbalanced somehow. All of it. It was mine.
That day when mom called though, I wasn’t thinking of all of that. My first thought was that mom had gone senile. When I turned on the tv and saw the Pentagon in flames I put on my best, “Okay mom, what meds are you on?” voice and I told here that I had never worked in Washington and that it wasn’t my building that had been hit. She kept repeating that mine had been hit too, but my brain couldn’t process that until the tv flipped over to a view of New York and I saw it. My building and it’s partner, both engulfed in flames. I watched an endless loop of what would have been my mom’s plane hitting what used to be my building and I tried to process it all in that slow motion way certain moments take on. The first one to check off my safety list was mom – she was scheduled to be on United Flight 175 but she had called to change her ticket a few days before when Kev told her he’d be in meetings for most of the day and she’d be stuck at the airport. She had changed the ticket to Thursday and that morning she was still sure things would be cleared up by then and she’d be able to fly. It hadn’t hit any of us yet that the world wouldn’t begin to turn again for over a week.
The second person to check off my safety list was Shirley, my “mom away from mom” who had watched out for me during my New York years. I knew she had been out for several months on medical leave and it didn’t occur to me that September 11th would be her first day back at work. The fact that I thought she was safe at home helped to carry me through that first day. I didn’t find out until later that she spent the better part of that morning trapped in a smoke filled, ash engulfed building praying and reflecting on the fact that she made it through cancer only to cheat death again because she stopped to treat herself to a muffin on her way to work.
The third person I needed to check off was Karen. September 11th is her birthday and I knew she’d be at work. There was no way she’d give up the opportunity to have her co-workers shower her with birthday ballads for the day and she, unlike me, would have been at her desk when the planes hit. (The reality is, I never would have been in that building that day. For me to be at my desk at nine on the dot, or God forbid, before nine, was so implausible that I could never count myself among those “It could have been me” people.) I called Karen’s office phone, because that’s what we did in the world before cell phones, before it hit me that, like most of downtown NYC, her phone was engulfed in flames. So, then I called her father, who lived in California. He told me that Karen had taken the day off for her birthday and she was safe. I panicked and told him she’d never miss a day. I must have asked him thirty times if she was really okay before I let him go. As it turns out, she was home that day, watching the horror unfold from her apartment in Queens and realizing that her birthday would become forever linked with tragedy unspeakable loss.
The last of my core group to be checked off was Vicki, my friend and supervisor from my last job in the Trade Center. She called me before I could get to her. She told me calmly that she was okay. She was walking. She might have said something about not having shoes, or people around her not having shoes, it was something so incongruous that it didn’t register for quite some time. Of course, most women didn’t have shoes on by the time they made it to ground level. Nobody is going to evacuate a building in heels, but the reality of walking through debris covered streets all the way to Brooklyn is difficult to fathom. Of all of my friends, Vicki is the one who has shared the most with me about what that day looked like from the perspective of those who were there. I remember vividly what she told me, and because that landscape is so familiar to me I can visualize some of that narrative. But, I wasn’t there, and her story is not mine to tell.
In the end, the people I worked with all made it out. It was months before I started to consider all of the others – the servers from the Dean Witter cafeteria, the security people I saw every day when I came and went, all of those people who pass through our lives every day who we don’t really think about, but who are part of the fabric of our lives nonetheless. Three years ago I was showing a class a clip from a documentary about the rebuilding of Ground Zero and the filmmakers interviewed people who worked in and around the Trade Center. And as I sat there with my period three class, I saw Mikonos, my shoe guy, for the first time since I left New York. He was working at his shoe repair shop in the concourse under the towers when the planes hit. He made it out and when he was able he rebuilt his business nearby. There was no way to explain to my class why the footage of the planes, horrifying as it is, doesn’t make me cry, but seeing my shoe guy left me fighting back sobs.
There’s so much more to say about that day, but so much of it has been said already. Watching tv until the dull ache in my head told me I had to shut it off, that there was nothing more to see once the landscape had been reduced to ash. Going to church with Brian and sitting there looking for some kind of God to lean on, to thank, to question, to scream at, and then going to the park, where we sat and listened to radio broadcasts telling us that the little towers, five and seven, were gone or crumbling too. Then, to the bar, our Boston bar in the heart of San Francisco where we drank and discussed the very real possibility that the Golden Gate Bride could be a target too. Everything was a target then, and would remain so for a long time.
A year later a job as a consultant brought me back to lower Manhattan for several weeks. It had become an unfamiliar world in my absence. Now, leaving the subway there was no way to get my bearings. I was lost in a maze of scaffolding and a lingering odor of cement dust hung in the air. I stayed in my hotel room most nights. It wasn’t my city anymore and I didn’t know how to find peace with that area. Ground Zero was still a hole in the earth where people stopped to take pictures and religious zealots shouted about eternal damnation. The place already felt like the land of the damned, with the tattered remains of memorials still hanging on the fences surrounding St. Paul’s. That little church was the only place that still felt right to me. That and the Century 21 department store were the only two landmarks still recognizable to me and sought refuge in both during those weeks.
Last summer I went to the memorial. An intense thunderstorm hit while I was waiting to go into the outdoor area where the towers once stood and in spite of a long line of people waiting to enter, the rain left everyone huddled under scaffolding waiting for a break. I didn’t have an umbrella or a coat, which was exactly right, given the number to times I walked to work on a seemingly clear morning that first summer in New York only to be hit with a freak storm that left me soaked and humbled by the realities of city pedestrian life. So, in that pouring rain and crashing thunder, I walked to the footprints of the buildings and for almost ten minutes I was the only one there. I looked for whatever one is supposed to find in cemeteries; peace maybe, or closure, or connection. I don’t know that I found any of that, but I was grateful to have a moment on my own to pay my respects in whatever humble way I could. I didn’t know any of the names, at least not that I’m consciously aware of, but I found myself paying my respects to my building, saying goodbye to that place that had been such a central figure in my life during my time in the city. The names were overwhelming, but the building I could grasp.
When the sun came out the tourists flooded the memorial. The momentary calm was shattered by laughter and voices and smiling faces posing for cameras, leaning against the names of the dead. It felt intrusive and horrid and wrong; and then suddenly it didn’t. As I stood back and watched my mind went back to my earlier self, angrily pushing through throngs of smiling tourists as I made my way to work, and I realized that this is exactly as it should be. The sounds of laughter and the clicking of cameras, the kids running around and being yelled at by security, that’s exactly how it should be. It’s a memorial, but it’s a memorial to a place that was always about that vitality. To see that legacy continue, as annoying and insensitive as it can seem at times, means that the bad guys didn’t win.
I don’t know if I’ll go back down there again. Maybe when the girls are older I’ll take them there. I’ll tell them stories of a girl in her twenties who came of age in that space. I’ll show them the brass “H” I stole from the door of our office, when the whole crew of us went up there drunk after my first job closed it’s doors for the last time; I’ll show them my ID tag, my young hopeful smile showing nothing but possibility, and I’ll tell them the stories of listening to season after season of “Blossom” and “90210” because my radio could get tv reception from that height and it was the only way to say sane during months of data entry. I’ll tell them about that place and the people there who I grew to care about so deeply. They’ll see the footage and know the loss, but that can’t be the only legacy of those towers. The good guys need to win.
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The Others
Posted on July 29, 2013
I’m very healthy. I’m one of those people who gets sick once a year, takes some Airborne, gets some extra sleep and feels better within a few days. That’s just the way it’s always been for me. And I’m damn lucky. These days I have the luxury of getting sick, even “go to the doctor, have some tests run” sick. I can even take an ambulance if necessary. It’s not my preferred mode of transportation, to be sure, but it’s an option for me. I can get sick now without having to think about anything but getting better. But, for a long time that wasn’t the case.
When I was nineteen I got my first big kid job, working at a law firm in New York City. I made $10 an hour, which seemed like great money after the $6 an hour I had been making working at a shoe store throughout high school. When I changed jobs and began working for an insurance company for $18 an hour (before taxes) I thought I had really arrived. I was working in the World Trade Center, making enough money to support myself in a little apartment in Brooklyn, and going to college full time. I was an independent contractor so I didn’t have insurance, but it wasn’t something I gave much thought to. I was never sick, and other than almost being hit by a cab once or twice I never really considered the possibility of needing medical care.
Ironically enough, the first time I really did get sick, I was living in Italy. My boyfriend brought me to the doctor where I was seen within minutes and given a prescription for medication. I wasn’t a citizen, not even a real resident, but I was given better medical care than I would have had access to at that time back home. Of course, I didn’t realize that. I just knew that I got sick, went to the doctor, was given medicine, and got better, just like it was when I was a kid. In the following years I would find myself marveling at the simplicity of that system and shaking my head at people’s horror at the idea that America could become like “them”. “Those people” who, apparently had to wait for months in grimy rooms for doctors with rusty instruments to cut into them without the proper training. My experience was that I was able to see a doctor quickly without any red tape, get treatment that I needed in a clean, comfortable environment and not have to file bankruptcy in the process.
A few years later when I lived in San Francisco, working for another insurance company at 40+ hours a week, still as an independent contractor and still without insurance, I decided to look into my options. As it turned out, as a 20-something year old women with no medical issues it would cost me around $700 a month to pay for my own insurance (with a $2,500 deductible). $1,400 a month if I wanted to let Brian in on the action. There was no way, even on two incomes that we could afford that, so instead, I relied on what I had always done. I tried not to get sick and I used Planned Parenthood as my primary care provider.
Planned Parenthood operates on a sliding scale so I could afford to get my annual pap and other “women’s maintenance” done there. I always told them that I didn’t have insurance, so if they could listen to my heart and lungs while they were at it, I’d really appreciate it. I figured they’d be able to catch major problems and even though I’d never be able to afford to do anything about them, it would at least give me some peace of mind to know that I’d have a heads up if something seemed terminal.
Brian was working as a fine art framer at the time and when he filleted his finger at work one day and called to say he needed to go to the hospital for stitches, my first thought wasn’t, “I hope he’s okay” or even “I hope he doesn’t lose his finger” it was, “I hope he doesn’t have to take an ambulance”. Our only mode of transportation was a motorcycle and I knew he couldn’t shift without both hands. But, I also knew that there was no way we could pay for an ambulance ride, so he had to wait for someone to drive him to the ER. He kept his hand elevated, and he was okay, and honestly, I don’t think we really discussed the issue of not taking an ambulance. We both just knew it wasn’t an option. That’s what life is without insurance.
Those long, white counters in the back of the pharmacy? Those were for other people. We could go there to ask the pharmacist for free advice regarding what over the counter medication might work in a similar way to, say, penicillin. But, the idea of just walking to that counter and getting that small white bag with the actual medication I’d need was beyond considering, in the same way that going to the doctor when I was sick wasn’t even a consideration. I’m just glad I was uninsured before the rise of the internet, because as we all know, one Google search will lead you from a cough to cancer. I was uninsured in a simpler time, there was no self-diagnosing; there was no diagnosing at all. When I got sick I just worked from the assumption that I’d get better. Severed fingers? Crazy glue. Bruised tailbone from a bad fall? Frozen peas. Bronchitis? Constant apologies to co-workers and lots of tea.
Did I survive? Yes. But, that period wasn’t without fear. You live life differently when you know that injury or illness will destroy you. I still took more than my share of risks, living in cities, relying on a motorcycle for transportation, but I lived, as all uninsured people do, under a dark cloud. That lump better be nothing, that cough better turn out to be okay, that fall better not be too bad. Because there just aren’t options.
I’ve had insurance for a decade now and I’ll admit that even I have fallen in the trap of forgetting. Once I started to complain about my co-pay going from $10 to $15 before I stopped myself. Other times I have sat silently and listened to people rant about how the uninsured get everything paid for anyway and how “they” (the insured I imagine) are forced to pay for “those people”. I don’t always speak up when I hear these comments because it’s a vulnerable place for me to go. I was one of “those people”; I worked forty-hour weeks, I paid taxes, I contributed, but I couldn’t even begin to afford insurance. And, I don’t know who the magic fairy is who pays those bills for the uninsured, but I’d sure like to meet her. If it’s as simple as putting out the tooth fairy pillow, that would be great, because that’s news I’d love to share with the people I care about who are struggling so much right now.
A few months ago I was struck again with the reality of how little has changed when I drove a loved one to the hospital against the advice of several urgent care workers, all of us sharing the unspoken code of the uninsured. “I know you can’t take an ambulance, but please drive quickly, because there’s a life in the balance here”. When we got to the hospital and the tests and blood work began we all knew that the priority was fixing the problem, saving a life, but we also knew that with every passing moment in the ER, every test, every night in a bed, the financial grave was growing deeper and deeper. There is no financial recovery from a prolonged hospital stay (and by prolonged I mean more than a night or two, particularly if tests are involved). At some point you just have to steel yourself to the reality of financial implosion. Hospitalization is only the beginning of course, because once you leave the ER and the bills come due, a new round of humiliation and despair commence.
Next year Obamacare will take affect. Is it perfect? No. Is it going to be embraced by everyone with open arms? Of course not. But, if it means that someone who is faced with life-changing news can focus on recovery rather than trying to get the major medical procedures done at once because post bankruptcy you have to wait seven years before you can get more treatment, if it means that someone can just call 911 and take the advice of the operator without having to balance out finances first, if it means that parents don’t have to host endless banquets to raise funds for their child’s cancer treatments, then it’s worth it. Do these changes in insurance benefit the 2013, insured me? No, not really. But, I can’t abandon the person I was that day talking to Brian on the phone mentally doing the math on what a simple ER trip would cost, and I can’t forget the look of determined fear on the faces of people I love as they faced a terrifying diagnosis and the reality that they couldn’t pay for it, and in the end I can’t ignore the fact that it isn’t about me. It’s about us as a society. We need to make it possible for people to survive. People can call it socialist, they can call it liberal, they can call it anything they want. I call it treating people with the dignity they deserve. I call it being human.
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Suspended Moments
Posted on July 24, 2013
That first year or two when every well-meaning person on the planet told me to embrace every moment because it all goes by so fast, there were times when I really did want to hit someone. I had a child who didn’t sleep and who cried until she vomited every night until we got to the point of putting plastic drop clothes under her crib. This was not part of some “let her cry it out” experiment either. In the time it took to get up and walk the seven or so feet to her room, she would projectile vomit like a child possessed. I remember our pediatrician making me cry when she said at our one-month well baby visit, “By now I’m sure you can recognize her different kinds of cries”. I couldn’t. She just cried. A lot. She cried. I cried. She cried some more. And then, she didn’t. One night she slept, and then she slept another night and before long this whole “not sleeping” thing was a distant memory.
And that’s how it is really. When you’re in the moment, in the thick of it, the idea of embracing it – the puking, the sleeplessness, the fears, both rational and not, that consume you, is just too much to bear. It’s not about embracing, it’s about muddling through the best you can in the moment. The embracing, that comes later sometimes. At least for me that’s how it always is. The embracing comes when you feel something ending and you take a moment to just stop time and take a mental snapshot. I do that every time I watch fireworks. When I feel that the finale is coming I just want to stop time right there, in that last moment before the finale, to just enjoy that build up. It’s the same reason that I sometimes like the day before vacation more than vacation itself. There’s a moment when the world just stands suspended, waiting for the shift.
The last time I nursed felt like that. Kaya was getting to the point where she had better things to do, and being all about efficiency she just wanted her bottle. Now, I’d love to say that I was the mom who stared lovingly into my child’s face and just took in the miracle of life every time I fed her. But, really, most of the time I read. I propped books on her soft little head and I read for a few minutes. Or I slept. There was very little gazing going on. But, one night I just felt like this would be the last time. So, I did. I gazed. I stroked Kaya’s soft peach fuzz head and I looked at her. And she looked at me. And then she bit me. Hard. And then we were done. But, I remember taking that moment and consciously looking at her. And I’m glad I did.
Tonight Kaya couldn’t find her Purple Monster (AKA “Monty”) at bedtime. Without missing a beat, Hayden turned to her and said, “If you want, you can have my Blue Bunny. I really don’t need him anymore”. Kaya is still all about Monty and for as sweet an offer as that was, she’s not looking for a replacement Lovey. But in that moment, I saw it. I looked at that girl who turned six today and I felt that moment. Something ended tonight. That little girl who clung to Blue Bunny for years just turned and left without so much as a wave.
She and her sister were riding the little carousel outside the grocery store the other day and I saw how she had to fold those long legs under her to get in there. And suddenly I wanted to go back to all those days when I was too busy to get the quarters and just let her ride. I wanted to go back and put the three-year-old her on there and just let her go for a spin, because I can feel time pulling that part of her away from me. She won’t always want to ride the carrousel, and she won’t always want her Mommy to play with her or to read with her, or even to be with her. But, still, I miss so many moments. More than I catch sometimes I’m afraid. But, I don’t know how to suspend time at all of those moments. I just don’t.
But, when I feel that ending happening, that changing of the tides, I just have to stand back and take that mental snapshot. Then, I look to the start of that next stage and I try to remind myself to be present, to take in as much as I can, because really, the time does fly by and for as much as I really hate being told that it all goes so fast, I know I’ll blink and they’ll be grown.
For my part, I’m trying. Trying to let Kaya pack six purses and a backpack for a ten-minute drive to the store. To listen to Hayden read her Puppy book at glacial speed even though it’s already a half hour past bedtime. To really be with them and to really be present even when my mind is racing with so many things I need to do. Most of the time I fail miserably. But, if I can catch more than I lose maybe someday when I pass on that annoying but inevitable bit of wisdom to my newly parenting friends I can say it with a nostalgic smile rather than with wistful longing for an impossible do-over.
Tonight my little big girl turned six. She’s entering a whole new phase of her life and I know it will be marked by so many incredible, beautiful, heart-wrenching moments; more than I could ever grasp. But, for now I just want to sneak into her room before I go to bed, to put Blue Bunny next to her one last time.
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Random Acts
Posted on July 18, 2013
Sure, there are those days that come close to crushing your faith in humanity. I’ve had my share of those, some of them recently, but there are also those other days when the universe just seems to be telling you to notice those small acts of genuine goodness out there. Today, thankfully, was one of those. It started simply this morning with the guy who pulled up to the far pump so that I didn’t have to back up, drive around to the other side and wait to get gas in what was already a 92 degree day at 9:45 am. Small, yes, but noticed. I paid that back silently at the beach later when two women who were engrossed in what looked to be a great conversation failed to notice (three times) that their shoes were about to drift out to sea. Every time I moved the girls’ toys out of range of the surf, I moved their shoes another three feet as well. Of course they didn’t recognize that their shoes weren’t gone when they came out of the water but it felt good to see them casually pick up their shoes and go on with their afternoon.
The universe then lobbed one back to me later when I was driving around aimlessly while the kids slept in the car. The beauty of driving aimlessly is that you never have a need to speed, or to break any traffic law for that matter. Mostly you just drift around trying to avoid anything resembling a sudden stop, lest your sun-drenched, over-tired children awake. There is nothing, and I’m pretty sure I mean nothing, worse than my children waking up prematurely from a car nap. I’ve circled a parking lot for close to an hour, I’ve driven two states away, I’ve done damn near anything to avoid stopping the car. Once the engine stops, the eyes open, and that can be brutal.
So, when the flashing lights appeared behind me as I rolled through the Barnes and Noble parking lot at 4mph, I assumed it was a mistake. But, still, they frown on keeping the engine on, so I reluctantly shut off the car. Thing One’s eyes opened immediately, like one of those creepy dolls that goes from “sleeping” to “awake” with a jolt of the head. I had to tell her I was being pulled over. She, of course, thought that was the coolest thing ever.
Thing Two (easily the more irritable of the two Things) was still sleeping and I wanted to keep in that way; wanted it so much in fact that I practically shushed the police officer when he came over to the car, as I talked to him in a stage whisper. He cut to the chase and told me that my car was unregistered. Then, he patiently waited while I pulled out my registration to show him that, no, of course I registered my car; after all, I’m a teacher, and April vacation is a wide open space with nothing to do really other than to register my car (that and vault through several rounds of failed inspections until I find some guy who does them out of his garage for cash and a fifth of whiskey). When I realized that, no, the ”April 2013” slip of paper indicated that the car expired in April of 2013 I had an instant vision of him telling me that he would be impounding my car. I don’t know what it says about my life that my greatest fear was that I’d have to wake the little one to take her out of the car and then endure the wrath of my sand-covered, angry child as she missed out on swim class and the rest of the evening’s activities.
But, the police officer, who, in my humble opinion is made of goodness and should go past “Go” and collect his $200, let me go with a warning with the understanding that I’ll go out tomorrow and take care of this mess (which, obviously I will). After he drove away we sat there for 45 minutes because I knew that turning the car back on would wake the beast. I spent some time wondering if the policeman would come back to let me know that, yes, I could drive home and no, I wouldn’t be impounded on route. Once Thing Two woke up I took the kids into Trader Joes for dinner provisions (and some Two Buck Chuck for Mommy) and Kaya proceeded to tell everyone who would listen that mommy was run over by a police officer. “Pulled over” I corrected her a few times. After that I just let it go.
At that point, my faith in the goodness of humanity was fully restored. But, that wasn’t quite enough. When we got home Kaya decided to go tunneling under the seat of the car, as she does on occasion to find lost articles, or just because she’s part gopher. But, anyway, in her digging she found the Leapster that we lost, ironically enough over that same April vacation when I forgot to register my car. We had been at a restaurant with said Leapster and then we were home without it. I called the restaurant to ask if it had been turned in, and of course, it hadn’t. I told the kids that someone might have found it after we left and decided to keep it. This was a strong teachable moment, but the kids were heartsick that someone would take such a special toy, and Hayden even offered to get a new one for her sister for her birthday because she was devastated that her sister’s Leapster from Santa had been taken.
But, there it was, in all its pink and purple glory. The girls celebrated the return of the prodigal Leapster and I took a second there in the driveway to reflect on the fact that people are mostly good, days are mostly good and really, we miss most of the okay stuff because we just don’t see it. Like those women who will never know that their shoes almost drifted off today, most of us don’t know about all of those things ranging from mildly annoying to life-changing awful that didn’t happen because they didn’t happen. I found out later tonight that Brian narrowly missed being hit full force by some huge machine wielding truck while he was driving his students back to school. The incident shook him up at the time, but nothing terrible actually happened, and so it was just another moment in the day.
It’s nearly impossible to reflect on the absence of bad things all the time and frankly it would be a bit weird to run around saying, “I didn’t get hit by a truck today!” but I do want to take a little bit more time to appreciate the positive things that do happen every day, especially those that involve people doing good in quiet, nondescript ways. Tack enough of those together and they build a nice fortress against the ugly out there.
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The God of Stones
Posted on July 14, 2013
On September 11th after the world imploded and after we stared numbly at the television for hours, and after I called all my friends who still worked at 2 WTC and a few who didn’t, and after I talked to mom for the third time, just to remind myself that she hadn’t taken flight 175, after all of that and without talking about it, Brian and I found ourselves at Grace Cathedral on top of a hill in the heart of San Francisco. I’m not sure if we had ever been to Grace before that day; we’re not Episcopalians and we’re not particularly religious. Maybe we went there once before from a “new to San Francisco” tourist perspective, but we had certainly never been there looking for spiritual comfort. But, that day we did. We sat there for hours with hundreds of other people who were there for the same reason – because there was just nowhere else to go.
Later that night we went to the place we always went to seek out solidarity and comfort – the Red Jack Saloon. The tvs were playing an endless loop of horror as we talked to fellow displaced New Englanders and shared our memories, thoughts and fears. This was our local bar and nearly every regular was from the Boston area; an odd little enclave in the midst of San Francisco. The drinks flowed and so did the conversations. At one point a woman I knew only slightly came over to me and she asked what we did when we heard. I told her about going to Grace Cathedral. She took a drink, turned to face me and said, “I know you don’t have kids, but if you ever do, please raise them with some kind of faith. I had nothing today and it’s the most alone I’ve ever felt.”
Twelve years and two children later I still struggle with that request. I believe to the core of my being that faith is important; I just haven’t really figured out what faith looks like for me. Having been raised Catholic I can put on the ritual like a comfortable sweater when I enter a church. It’s all there inside of me; when to kneel, when to stand, the call and response, even the scent brings back strong physical memories, most of them ranging from neutral to pleasant. I’m not one of these people who has horror stories of a Catholic childhood that destroyed the fabric of my being. In reality, that background gave me an appreciation of religious art that carried me through Italy, it gave me an appreciation of metaphor and figurative language that has enriched both my reading and my writing, and it has given me a place to go within myself at those moments when my inner voice needs an audience and my fears are larger than I can carry.
But, at the end of the day, I can’t embrace a religion that involves too many disclaimers on my part. At some point the list of, “Well, mommy and daddy don’t believe that” just grows too long and it becomes disingenuous. But, we need to find something because Kaya has announced that she plans to go to church with our without us, because she wants to see the God who takes care of Bertha.
Bertha was a close friend of Kaya’s who passed away a few months ago. She was in her 90s and she and Kaya met at a nursing home Kaya and Heidi, her daycare provider visited regularly. Bertha was also an active member of her local Catholic church and Kaya would see her there when she went to church with the grandparents or Heidi. Kaya loves church. I’m not entirely sure what the appeal is for her – the music maybe, or the opportunity to be still when she’s always going 100 miles per hour. I don’t know. All I know is, in this particular case, it will be the little child who will lead us.
Today we went to mass with my dad and step-mom. They go to a beautiful little stone chapel on an island. The chapel is right on the water and it’s exactly the sort of place that God would go to just get away from it all. Dad and Bonnie go every day. We went with them on Friday and Kaya sat through it all, but today she made it about ten minutes before she started to lose it. I leapt at the opportunity to take her outside. Outside is really where it’s all it for me in that place in terms of spirituality. When you leave the chapel if you walk down toward the water there’s a tiny little three-sided structure (a mini-chapel of sorts) that’s open to the ocean. Inside there’s a small alter where people leave notes, pictures, stones, mementos of loved ones, prayers and prayer requests. It is spirituality in its purest form, laid out in stones and scraps of paper.
I took Kaya in there and together we looked at what people had left. I told her that sometimes people put things on the alter to remember people. She said she wanted to get a stone for Bertha. We spent the next fifteen minutes walking along the rocks of the shore looking for the perfect stone. While we were out there we saw a pair of old fishermen on the rocks, silently casting and reeling in, wordlessly staring out to see. We saw a woman sitting on a bench by the water, just looking out there, engrossed in her own form of spiritual unity. And then there was Kaya, scanning the coast for the perfect stone to remember her friend.
In the end, she found four. One for Bertha, one for Stella (her best friend who also knew Bertha well), one for Heidi (her daycare provider who made the friendship possible) and one for herself. She brought them back to the chapel and ever so gently laid the stones one on top of another like those Tibetan stone monuments you see at the base of Everest, and then she turned to me. “Can we watch the water a little before we go back to the other church?” she asked.
So, we did. We listened to the waves rolling in, we watched the fishermen, we found patterns in the clouds for a while, and then we slowly headed back to the “other church”. And in her four-year-old unknowing wisdom, she was more right than she realized. Those are both churches and they both serve needs. One is the unity of a community, the sharing of song and the spoken statements of faith. The other is the quiet spirituality that comes from a chapel by the sea and a small remembrance of a friend who has died. Both are important and both are valid. Some of us may gravitate more toward the community of church while for others that spiritual core may be found in a hike at sunrise or a trail run at dusk.
I want my children to have access to both worlds of spirituality and I want them to navigate them freely. I still don’t know what organized religion will look like for us; that’s a bit of a work in progress. But walking along the shore hand in hand with my little girl on a Sunday morning? That one I’ve got.
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Why I Run
Posted on July 14, 2013
(This was accepted for publication and will appear in the “What Makes A Runner” column in 180ForBoston In a few weeks.)
For years I always said I’d only run if someone were chasing me. I just didn’t get the point of running and I couldn’t for the life of me understand the people I’d see running in all kinds of crazy New England weather. The few times I tried to run I made it about a block and I couldn’t continue. It always left me feeling weak and somehow excluded from a club I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a part of. But, after having my second daughter I realized that going to the gym wasn’t going to be a regular possibility for me. I had gained 30 lbs and for as happy as I was as a mom of two, I didn’t want to be the kind of person who used my kids as an excuse for being out of shape.
One day at work I saw two co-workers I didn’t know very well gearing up for a run. They had matching jackets from a running series and they just looked so confident and strong. In that moment I decided that I wanted to be like them and to someday run with them.
I downloaded the Couch to 5K plan and I began to run in secret. I didn’t want anyone to know in case I failed, but within a week I saw a posting for a local race that ended at my favorite restaurant. Free beer was involved. I signed up, posted my plans on Facebook and the next day I tentatively mentioned my plans to one of the jacket-clad “real runners”. They invited me to run with them and even though the idea terrified me, two weeks later I ran my first two mile run with them. We’ve been running together ever since.
Now, two years later I have my own series jacket (two actually), I’ve completed three half marathons a 25K and one full marathon (which I don’t entirely count since I wasn’t fully trained and a person could crawl it faster than I ran). Now, I’m gearing up for my first “real” marathon and running has become a part of who I am.
As for why I run, I think more than anything I run because it gives me a chance to feel strong, to feel at peace and, if I’m completely honest, to inspire. I love it when I inspire someone to take up running or to keep with it, or to not be self-conscious about their identity as a runner. Now that I run I know that there’s no such thing as a “real” runner or a “runner’s body” or a “good time”. If you run, you’re a runner. If your body moves you from point to point you have a runner’s body. And, if you had a good time, your time is good, whether you shaved off a minute in a PR or you got back out there after a particularly bad experience.
The other day, while I was running on the treadmill at home the girls lined up their dolls next to the treadmill. They made signs and they screamed, “Go Mommy Go!”. I love that they see me as a strong, athletic person who sets out goals and strives to achieve them. I may never break a 20 minute 5K and I’ll probably never qualify for Boston, but I will be out there running. I’ll be the mid-pack girl with the huge grin on my face.
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And So We Beat On
Posted on July 11, 2013
So, today I’m thinking about success. Not the “yippee, I did it!” moment when success is achieved, but rather success as a culmination of hitting wall after wall after wall and stubbornly refusing to stop slamming against it.
Less than 24 hours after their Kickstarter launched, Warmachine is 70% funded. They might just make their $550,000 goal in less than 24 hours. Even if they don’t, it looks like it’s really going to happen for them. After five years of working for virtually (and sometimes actually) no salary, of having producers express interest only to back out at the last minute, of calling themselves game designers, of being game designers, with so little in terms of actual product to show for it, it might actually be happening. Watching all of this unfold is deeply inspiring to me, but also deeply humbling.
Ten years ago when I was a first-year teacher I kept a yearlong blog chronicling my experiences working in an inner-city school. I had a strong following and writing gave me a much-needed outlet to process the challenges I faced every day. One night, on a whim I submitted one of my essays to Salon. I chose them because Anne Lamott was writing a column for them and since she was my biggest writing inspiration, it seemed like the thing to do.
Twenty minutes later I got a response. They wanted to publish the piece. Two thoughts immediately flooded in. One, “They must publish everything by everyone” Twenty minutes, after all is a freakishly fast turn around (akin to, say, having a Kickstarter funded in 24 hours). My other thought was, “Will this jeopardize my role as a teacher?” I had changed the names, but still, what if I wasn’t allowed to write about my kids? What if I lost my job? What if, what if, what if… I wrote back to them and told them that I would only publish it anonymously. They said no. The next day I contacted them again, having come to my senses, and I said I wanted to publish it with my name. They said no. It was gone. Just like that.
Now, I could have taken this experience and thought, “Salon wanted me. Sure, I messed up and turned them down, but damn, they like me, they really, really like me.” Not me. Instead it became a chasm I couldn’t cross. For the next eight years the only place I wanted to submit my work to was Salon. It was as if I couldn’t move on until I went back in time and changed that moment.
Rejection after rejection rolled in from the kids who had wanted me to sit at the cool table with them for that brief moment in time. It sapped my confidence and in my mind a division occurred between the writer I used to be and the non-writer I had become. My rational mind understood that editors change, the world changes, hell, the popularity of that magazine has changed considerably over the years, but the other part of me thought that if they once wanted me and now they didn’t I must have been a writer then and somehow ceased to be one. I just couldn’t let go and couldn’t move on. So, without really even realizing it I stopped writing. I hadn’t even hit a wall; I had locked a door on myself after slamming my hand in it, but somehow it came to represent so much more than it ever should have. I stopped reading Salon, I couldn’t read blogs by writers whose styles felt like my own. I just stepped out of that world and looked enviously at those who were still in it.
Then, yesterday morning I thought about those walls again. I thought about what they really represent and what they really reveal about who we are. Everybody has ideas they’d love to see come to fruition and everybody has goals. The difference between success and failure is the willingness to work past the blocks, both external and internal, to make it all happen.
On paper that all sounds so easy, but for me that realization has been a long time coming. I had to redefine my sense of self as a writer in the process. Am I still a writer if not another thing I ever write gets published? What is publishing anyway in a world where you simply write and the people who want to read simply read? The gatekeepers are all gone and the world is changing. No producer willing to pick up your game? Kickstart the hell out of it and make it happen. Not finding an agent who’s willing to take you on? Just write. It’s not as simple as, “If you build it, they will come” because they may never come. I may be here forever in my own world hammering away, but once the blocks are gone and everything else is stripped away, what we’re left with is the process; the “doing it” part. And really, isn’t that the fun part anyway?
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What Dreams May Come
Posted on July 10, 2013
The girls are downstairs deeply engrossed in a storytelling game. They’re taking turns crafting a tale about a raccoon who’s following a map to find his lost birthday presents. Kaya is a natural storyteller, weaving and drifting from plot to plot in that way that only stoners and four-year-olds can. I’m sitting here with my coffee thinking about how the inspiration of childhood can drive our lives if we let it.
A friend of mine told me that if you think back to your ten-year-old self, whatever you said you wanted to be when you grew up is what you should be. (Ten is important here because there’s just not enough of a market out there to sustain millions of princess fire fighters). My ten-year-old self planned to be a juvenile defender and a writer. I wouldn’t have said that I wanted to be a writer; I would tell you that I was a writer, I just planned to stay one. I had kept a journal every day for over a year at that point and my life was already a well-documented, winding narrative. There was no question in my mind that that’s who I’d remain. I wasn’t thinking about the demands of careers, the distractions of kids, the deep nagging fears that come with rejection (And sometimes, ironically, with success). I knew who I was. The juvenile defender part morphed into teaching over the years, but the parts of me that wanted to protect the damaged kids hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s not exactly what I envisioned, but it’s right.
More than myself and my dreams, or even the dreams that I wonder about for my kids, right now I’m thinking of my brother. His ten-year-old self was the boy in the basement playing Dungeons & Dragons and crafting tales that spun for days, sometimes weeks. What others saw as a loner, he saw as an inhabitant of a different world. His has always been the world of dragons and those who slay them, of worlds that span far beyond the reaches of an imagination like mine. He tried to fight his ten-year-old self for a while. He ended up working as a programmer on Wall Street and as his financial self exploded, his inner gamer kid struggled to push its way out. Finally, he left Wall Street for LA to create games for Disney. When he called me at 2am struggling to find a way to make a walrus shuck oysters with flippers, I knew he was back.
Now, in just a few hours a Kickstarter will launch to fund a video game for War Machine, a D&D style of game that he’s been working on day and night for years. It’s a labor of love and an enormous venture. His adult self is most likely at least a little bit terrified. But, his ten-year-old self? That kid must be blown away. That kid who created worlds in a basement on the pool table using shrubs from the model train set and scraps of wood from the wood pile is now set to reveal those worlds to thousands, millions maybe if it all goes according to the best possible plans.
It could fail of course. It could always fail. But, that’s why the ten-year-old self needs to hold the reins sometimes. Adult self will always run to failure and hide, but that kid self? Kid self doesn’t care because the process is so damn much fun.
The girls have finished the raccoon party story and now they’re recreating it in the living room using every single stuffed animal in the house. It looks like a toddler frat party gone terribly wrong. They’re not ten yet, we’ve got a few years to go, so I don’t know who their ten-year-old selves will want them to be. I just hope that when the time comes to decide between fear and exploration they always choose to explore, wherever that takes them.
So, here’s to process regardless of outcome, to weaving stories of raccoons and dragons, and to letting that ten-year-old get out there and play.