I love this time of year. I love the turning of the weather: the dark evenings, the foggy still mornings. Today has been a tempest of wind and rain and I was completely delighted by it. I love that my feet are cold at night, that I fall asleep bundled in covers. I love burning fall candles. I love cooking soup, I love hearing the rain on the roof. I love the thought of our little home and what it must look like from the street, its windows glowing from the light within, tucked into our little neighborhood.
But I have a confession, Dear Internet, on this night when everyone -- myself included -- is posting pictures of their children in their costumes: I kind of hate Halloween.
It’s the hugeness of it all. The expectation -- of fancy costumes, of bucketfuls of candy. I went on this big old capitalism rant this morning, which made Matt tease me a bit; usually he’s the Get off my lawn person in our marriage. But I truly hate it. The good news is that my children do love to dress up but are also easy to please; Suzannah’s Harry Potter costume was mostly cobbled together by bits of other costumes. Her old Darth Vader cape, for instance, and she made her own wand out of a branch. I did find a nice Harry Potter scarf for her, and a pair of Harry Potter glasses, but I didn’t go too crazy. Last year’s Luke Skywalker costume was created with a women’s extra-small scrub top and plain old black leggings, plus the leather belt from an old Ewok costume. It was pretty great. I bought Isaac an actual Batman costume, but he loves to dress up so much that we more than get our money’s worth, and anyway, I’m just not remotely crafty. At all.
Another confession: I don’t care about pumpkin carving. I just don’t really like doing it; I guess that goes back to the “not remotely crafty” thing. But Matt does like pumpkin carving, and we have some nice fat pumpkins from Isaac’s field trip to the pumpkin patch last week. So this afternoon, Matt and the kids produced some Halloweeny works of art, and we set out a few flickering jack-o-lanterns. And I do like that.
The other nice thing is that while my children love trick-or-treating, they don’t actually have the expectation of tearing through their candy. They nibble on it all year, and yesterday morning we actually dumped their leftover stash from last year into a plastic bag that I’ll toss into our bowl by the front door -- because kids knock on our door and expect candy, so I will hand it out by the fistful. But then again, I should probably just focus on the fact that our neighborhood is friendly and walkable and I do love seeing all the little ones and their siblings and cousins and parents, right?
A year or two ago I read an article that really resonated with me. I’m such an introvert; what I want to do on Halloween is turn off all the lights and huddle in the dark with a book or a movie and just not answer the door. But this article was all about how Halloween gives us the opportunity to open our doors to our neighbors, to make this momentary connection and to be a part of our community. We live in a lovely little neighborhood, but we don’t often have the chance to open our doors to each other like this, even just for a moment. I thought about that tonight when Matt took the kids out into the rainy night and I sat on the couch and typed notes back and forth with one of my seniors who’s submitting her college essay tomorrow. And instead of feeling annoyed when the knocks came, I found that I enjoyed the kids, many of whom I recognized, as well as the little glances exchanged with their parents. I thought about all the small ways I hope the world treats my own children kindly. I thought about how lucky I am to have a partner who takes my children trick-or-treating in the rain while I stay in to hand out candy. And so, in the end, it wasn’t at all difficult to tell the kiddos how much I loved their costumes, that I hoped they were having fun. The kids were all gracious and polite, and the parents lingering behind them all called their thank-you’s. It felt friendly. And while I’m sure all of those kids went home and dumped their candy on the floor for a frantic inventory the way mine do (ugh), I would like to believe, for just a moment, that the candy is secondary. That it isn’t even really the point.
Also, I realized this year that adolescent boys dressed in their jeans and trick-or-treating with plastic grocery bags just don’t bother me anymore. In my mid-twenties this drove me nuts. I would lecture my students about being completely lame: If you think you still have to go trick-or-treating, I would tell them, you’d better at least dress up as something cool. I’m not sure what shifted, or when; maybe there are just enough years between me and a fifteen-year-old to see something sweet in a boy who wants to preserve a little of his childhood, as tough as he might be. Tonight, a boy appeared by himself on my doorstep. He wasn’t dressed up as anything, really, and he held one of those plastic grocery sacks. And he was cool. When he said, “Trick or treat,” I wasn’t worried that he’d egg my house (a common worry my peers share when they explain why they grudgingly hand out candy; is this really a thing?). I said, “Happy Halloween...and have fun, kiddo.” And he smiled in that way that teenage boys do when they’re a little unguarded. “Yeah,” he said. “Thank you.” And he shuffled down my driveway.
I thought about how lonely the world can be sometimes. And about how maybe, even in the midst of my grumpy rants against buckets of sugared crap and capitalism, this night gives us these little moments to look into each other’s eyes and smile. To say, “I love your costume!” and “You are a perfect Elsa,” and “Have fun,” and “Be safe.” And I hope what was unspoken came through just as clearly: that I don’t care how fancy your costume is, or if you wear one. That I simply hope you transcend whatever ordinary moment you’re living in for a little while, and that the ordinary one is okay when you return. That I hope you see more kindness than scorn tonight. If only this night could just be about that.
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Sunday evening snapshot
It’s Sunday evening, and I’m writing at our dining room table. Suzannah sits across from me, coloring an elaborate butterfly with gel pens. My children have both taken to coloring mandalas lately; they wake early, and our mornings, now that we don’t have to take Isaac to daycare before school starts, are blessedly unhurried, so after bags are packed and teeth are brushed they often sit quietly and color. We fell in love with mandalas this summer when one of Matt’s cousins brought a book of them to the cabin, and now we color them all the time.
Isaac is in the family room playing in a fort constructed of a couple of our dining room chairs and the comforter from his bed. He’s taken the belt from his ninja costume and tied it around his head because the kids have spent the last week watching Karate Kid (I & II) and there’s a lot of crane moves and wild kicks happening around here these days.
Matt is out for an evening run. This afternoon he suggested a recipe I’ve had my eye on, too (a combination of vegetarian Italian “sausage”, escarole and white beans), and he volunteered to do all the food prep when he comes home, so I’m taking a moment to just enjoy the quiet. An hour ago I rose from the couch, frustrated because the nap I tried to take just didn’t happen, barked at the kids that they were not allowed to be in the same room because they were being terrible to each other and annoying the ever-loving shit out of me, and grumpily opened up my laptop to tweak a lesson plan I realized just won’t work this week. But the kids settled into their own quiet play, and I’m sipping a glass of wine, and the misty damp air hanging over our backyard is soothing my rough edges a bit. I do love this weather -- the stillness, the gradual darkening at five o’clock in the afternoon. I love that when I drove to school on Friday morning the light was still so soft even though the day promised sunshine, and Puget Sound shimmered against the mountains in a wash of brilliant blue. The leaves fall over the sidewalks, and there are certain ordinary streets around my neighborhood that take my breath away each morning right now. Yesterday afternoon I ran through those streets, through the fallen leaves still soft underneath my sneakers. A few weeks from now they’ll crunch and crumble and I will love that, too.
I paused in writing this to run a bath for my son, who’s spent the weekend playing soccer with his sister in the front yard and playing hard at gymnastics and is coated with that faint grime of boyhood, layers of sweat, that vaguely potato-y smell behind his ears. He danced around the hallway in his underwear, practicing his karate moves. I poured his bubble bath and returned to my laptop. He called to me, “Mommy? Did you check if there’s no spiders?”
“No spiders, Buddy,” I replied, distracted. He asks every time.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Did you check everywhere? Even the corners?”
“I always check everywhere, Baby,” I said. Satisfied, he proceeded to apply bubbles to his chin until he looked like Santa Claus. Now he’s got Batman and some other thing, a Rescue Bot maybe, and he’s absorbed in play. Five more minutes until we wash hair, I tell him.
I had an entire blog entry roiling about in my head earlier this week: it was about teaching and teenagers and how much I love them and how defensive I feel when someone who doesn’t work with them tries to tell me that they don’t know how I do it and how their kid is not like “those” kids and how I just smile even though I want to rage and how I wish I could talk about a frustrating day at work without it becoming a representation of all teenagers and all teachers and all of public education and how sometimes I feel sorry for people who don’t get to experience the hilarity and rawness and absurdity that I do in the course of a single day, because it is a privilege, a gift, a joy. But I’ve written that entry before, a million times. I will write it again. But tonight I’ve lost a little steam, I guess, and not in a bad way. Tonight I’m just trying to let go of my earlier grumpiness, the tiniest bitterness about my unsuccessful nap, and appreciate this moment: my son splashing in the tub. My husband, sautéing onions. My daughter, deep in concentration over her paper.
A bit ago I wrapped her in my arms and kissed her forehead. She tolerated it for a moment but grew impatient.
“Mom,” she complained.
“I know, I know,” I said. “But sometimes I just have to hug you for a second, because I know we get grumpy with each other, and I sound cranky, and I just want to have a moment when I get to remind you that I still love you so much, all the time.”
She smiled.
“I know,” she said, “but can you please let me go now?”
It’s so bittersweet. So much letting go.
And I suppose that’s why I write here, ultimately. To keep and hold each ordinary moment, because moments pass. But moments are also what make a life, and tonight, I am deeply grateful for mine.
Isaac is in the family room playing in a fort constructed of a couple of our dining room chairs and the comforter from his bed. He’s taken the belt from his ninja costume and tied it around his head because the kids have spent the last week watching Karate Kid (I & II) and there’s a lot of crane moves and wild kicks happening around here these days.
Matt is out for an evening run. This afternoon he suggested a recipe I’ve had my eye on, too (a combination of vegetarian Italian “sausage”, escarole and white beans), and he volunteered to do all the food prep when he comes home, so I’m taking a moment to just enjoy the quiet. An hour ago I rose from the couch, frustrated because the nap I tried to take just didn’t happen, barked at the kids that they were not allowed to be in the same room because they were being terrible to each other and annoying the ever-loving shit out of me, and grumpily opened up my laptop to tweak a lesson plan I realized just won’t work this week. But the kids settled into their own quiet play, and I’m sipping a glass of wine, and the misty damp air hanging over our backyard is soothing my rough edges a bit. I do love this weather -- the stillness, the gradual darkening at five o’clock in the afternoon. I love that when I drove to school on Friday morning the light was still so soft even though the day promised sunshine, and Puget Sound shimmered against the mountains in a wash of brilliant blue. The leaves fall over the sidewalks, and there are certain ordinary streets around my neighborhood that take my breath away each morning right now. Yesterday afternoon I ran through those streets, through the fallen leaves still soft underneath my sneakers. A few weeks from now they’ll crunch and crumble and I will love that, too.
I paused in writing this to run a bath for my son, who’s spent the weekend playing soccer with his sister in the front yard and playing hard at gymnastics and is coated with that faint grime of boyhood, layers of sweat, that vaguely potato-y smell behind his ears. He danced around the hallway in his underwear, practicing his karate moves. I poured his bubble bath and returned to my laptop. He called to me, “Mommy? Did you check if there’s no spiders?”
“No spiders, Buddy,” I replied, distracted. He asks every time.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Did you check everywhere? Even the corners?”
“I always check everywhere, Baby,” I said. Satisfied, he proceeded to apply bubbles to his chin until he looked like Santa Claus. Now he’s got Batman and some other thing, a Rescue Bot maybe, and he’s absorbed in play. Five more minutes until we wash hair, I tell him.
I had an entire blog entry roiling about in my head earlier this week: it was about teaching and teenagers and how much I love them and how defensive I feel when someone who doesn’t work with them tries to tell me that they don’t know how I do it and how their kid is not like “those” kids and how I just smile even though I want to rage and how I wish I could talk about a frustrating day at work without it becoming a representation of all teenagers and all teachers and all of public education and how sometimes I feel sorry for people who don’t get to experience the hilarity and rawness and absurdity that I do in the course of a single day, because it is a privilege, a gift, a joy. But I’ve written that entry before, a million times. I will write it again. But tonight I’ve lost a little steam, I guess, and not in a bad way. Tonight I’m just trying to let go of my earlier grumpiness, the tiniest bitterness about my unsuccessful nap, and appreciate this moment: my son splashing in the tub. My husband, sautéing onions. My daughter, deep in concentration over her paper.
A bit ago I wrapped her in my arms and kissed her forehead. She tolerated it for a moment but grew impatient.
“Mom,” she complained.
“I know, I know,” I said. “But sometimes I just have to hug you for a second, because I know we get grumpy with each other, and I sound cranky, and I just want to have a moment when I get to remind you that I still love you so much, all the time.”
She smiled.
“I know,” she said, “but can you please let me go now?”
It’s so bittersweet. So much letting go.
And I suppose that’s why I write here, ultimately. To keep and hold each ordinary moment, because moments pass. But moments are also what make a life, and tonight, I am deeply grateful for mine.
Friday, October 2, 2015
On what’s not enough (or, feeling firmly stuck...)
Today we received Suzannah’s SBAC scores in the mail. The SBAC is the latest test, blah blah blah, and here is where I could engage in dialogue or debate about the test but I have zero desire to do that, for a billion reasons. Some of y’all People just make me tired, is why. And it’s Friday. I just typed and deleted and typed and deleted a lot of words about testing, but I am not here to write about testing, not really.
Full disclosure: Suzannah scored very well, if I’m reading it correctly (and I’m pretty sure I am). Well above the school, district, and state average. She also kind of enjoyed taking the test itself, which I love -- not at all because I care how she does on a standardized test, but because I feel it means we have been at least moderately successful in our endeavors to encourage her to try her best on whatever she’s doing but also have conveyed to her that no single test will tell us how smart, kind, capable, funny, or creative she is. She seems to enjoy tests as a fun challenge but doesn’t seem to worry about them much. She worries much more about whether or not Isaac has messed up her desk, or how the markers and paper are organized on our art supply table. (No, she did not get this from her father. She got lots of other cool things from him. The neurotic traits are all mine, I KNOW.)
Anyway, when the scores came she wanted to know how she did. I told her. She said, “Cool. That’s actually better than I thought I did.” But we didn’t make a big deal about it, because I didn’t make a big deal about when she took the test. And because I really, honestly, truly, could not care less. Here’s what I care about. Here’s what I want to celebrate. Adults who work at my children’s school have told me about seeing both of them stand up for other kids who were being picked on. Different adults, at different times. One teacher (not even Suzannah’s teacher) told me about how she walked up to a much bigger kid when he took something from a much smaller kid and demanded that he give it back. Isaac apparently stood up for one of his little buddies when another kid shoved him on the playground. That’s what I want to celebrate, that’s what I actually do care about, because that is not often the popular or easy choice, and I know that it won’t be the last time they’re faced with it. When I think about what I want to teach my children, what I desperately pray they learn from me, and from other good people in their lives, doesn’t have much to do with what goes on a test.
The world isn’t kind enough. It’s not an easy thing to each them. It’s not an easy thing to model. And frankly, when I take a good, hard look at myself, I find myself too often falling short. I lack patience and I yell too much and I am angry and I find it really difficult to extend grace to people who annoy or upset me. Not much of a model, am I?
It’s been a week like any other, really -- I had a really terrible day which left me wanting to stalk through the parking lot punching holes in everyone’s tires. I had a really sad day that left me crying at school (albeit briefly, and not in front of students). I had a really stressful, exhausting day that turned into a pretty satisfying day when I managed not to make a total ass of myself (or so my boss said) at a parent function I had to lead. I had a sad morning that turned into a surprisingly excellent day when a friend immediately cheered me up at school and my classes were absolutely fantastic. I had lovely late dinners with three different friends in one week, which is an unspeakable luxury. And now here we are on Friday, which is my time to sit and collapse with it all, collapse cozily, collapse gratefully, collapse in grief/anger/joy/fear/anxiety/relief. This is my time just to sit with it. To rage inwardly at all the “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people!” bullshit posts that spring up after every damn shooting we experience, which will continue to spring up because we don’t do anything to stop it. To feel paralyzed with anger and grief and total helplessness, to listen to the President in his own exhausted grief and anger, to wonder when it will hit even closer because it will, because my God, twenty school children can be murdered in their classroom and one of my friends actually says she’s annoyed that people are “making this about guns,” that very same day and that was the day I stopped reading her Facebook in order to preserve any possible relationship with her but there are so many more, there was another this week, and one of my former students was right there in the middle of it, and there will be more and more and more and we know this and we don’t. Do. Anything. To stop it. There’s no reason it won’t be us next time because it could happen at my school or it could happen at my church, and oh, wait, five years ago it did, or it could happen at the damn mall, or it could happen in a movie theater, and there are people who actually believe a solution is to send me into my own goddamned classroom with a gun, and that is where I just have to stop typing all of this and walk away from the computer and breathe. We are broken. We are broken and this is so crazy I can’t even process it. It’s crazy and I am angry and I do not know how to see past that tonight. I’m all out of understanding for people who say intolerable things right now, which, I realize, isn’t what I want to model or teach my children. But tonight that’s where I’m firmly stuck.
The world isn’t kind enough. But kindness, frankly, isn’t enough. Nor, as Obama said, are thoughts and prayers. I don’t think think that’s what we’re short on.
I didn’t know I was going to write all that when I sat down; I rarely know what’s going to happen when I curl up to write these Friday night musings. Here, Internet -- you get my messiness. I keep my desk organized so I can hurl my thoughts at the keyboard and watch them splatter.
Full disclosure: Suzannah scored very well, if I’m reading it correctly (and I’m pretty sure I am). Well above the school, district, and state average. She also kind of enjoyed taking the test itself, which I love -- not at all because I care how she does on a standardized test, but because I feel it means we have been at least moderately successful in our endeavors to encourage her to try her best on whatever she’s doing but also have conveyed to her that no single test will tell us how smart, kind, capable, funny, or creative she is. She seems to enjoy tests as a fun challenge but doesn’t seem to worry about them much. She worries much more about whether or not Isaac has messed up her desk, or how the markers and paper are organized on our art supply table. (No, she did not get this from her father. She got lots of other cool things from him. The neurotic traits are all mine, I KNOW.)
Anyway, when the scores came she wanted to know how she did. I told her. She said, “Cool. That’s actually better than I thought I did.” But we didn’t make a big deal about it, because I didn’t make a big deal about when she took the test. And because I really, honestly, truly, could not care less. Here’s what I care about. Here’s what I want to celebrate. Adults who work at my children’s school have told me about seeing both of them stand up for other kids who were being picked on. Different adults, at different times. One teacher (not even Suzannah’s teacher) told me about how she walked up to a much bigger kid when he took something from a much smaller kid and demanded that he give it back. Isaac apparently stood up for one of his little buddies when another kid shoved him on the playground. That’s what I want to celebrate, that’s what I actually do care about, because that is not often the popular or easy choice, and I know that it won’t be the last time they’re faced with it. When I think about what I want to teach my children, what I desperately pray they learn from me, and from other good people in their lives, doesn’t have much to do with what goes on a test.
The world isn’t kind enough. It’s not an easy thing to each them. It’s not an easy thing to model. And frankly, when I take a good, hard look at myself, I find myself too often falling short. I lack patience and I yell too much and I am angry and I find it really difficult to extend grace to people who annoy or upset me. Not much of a model, am I?
It’s been a week like any other, really -- I had a really terrible day which left me wanting to stalk through the parking lot punching holes in everyone’s tires. I had a really sad day that left me crying at school (albeit briefly, and not in front of students). I had a really stressful, exhausting day that turned into a pretty satisfying day when I managed not to make a total ass of myself (or so my boss said) at a parent function I had to lead. I had a sad morning that turned into a surprisingly excellent day when a friend immediately cheered me up at school and my classes were absolutely fantastic. I had lovely late dinners with three different friends in one week, which is an unspeakable luxury. And now here we are on Friday, which is my time to sit and collapse with it all, collapse cozily, collapse gratefully, collapse in grief/anger/joy/fear/anxiety/relief. This is my time just to sit with it. To rage inwardly at all the “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people!” bullshit posts that spring up after every damn shooting we experience, which will continue to spring up because we don’t do anything to stop it. To feel paralyzed with anger and grief and total helplessness, to listen to the President in his own exhausted grief and anger, to wonder when it will hit even closer because it will, because my God, twenty school children can be murdered in their classroom and one of my friends actually says she’s annoyed that people are “making this about guns,” that very same day and that was the day I stopped reading her Facebook in order to preserve any possible relationship with her but there are so many more, there was another this week, and one of my former students was right there in the middle of it, and there will be more and more and more and we know this and we don’t. Do. Anything. To stop it. There’s no reason it won’t be us next time because it could happen at my school or it could happen at my church, and oh, wait, five years ago it did, or it could happen at the damn mall, or it could happen in a movie theater, and there are people who actually believe a solution is to send me into my own goddamned classroom with a gun, and that is where I just have to stop typing all of this and walk away from the computer and breathe. We are broken. We are broken and this is so crazy I can’t even process it. It’s crazy and I am angry and I do not know how to see past that tonight. I’m all out of understanding for people who say intolerable things right now, which, I realize, isn’t what I want to model or teach my children. But tonight that’s where I’m firmly stuck.
The world isn’t kind enough. But kindness, frankly, isn’t enough. Nor, as Obama said, are thoughts and prayers. I don’t think think that’s what we’re short on.
I didn’t know I was going to write all that when I sat down; I rarely know what’s going to happen when I curl up to write these Friday night musings. Here, Internet -- you get my messiness. I keep my desk organized so I can hurl my thoughts at the keyboard and watch them splatter.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)