Ragnarokk

I know that these are Egyptian gods, not Norse.  We are equal-opportunity mythologists. Photo credit: chelle at Morguefile

Yesterday, my alarm did not go off. My husband woke me up, and the house was already alive, crawling like ants with humans needing to acquire food. There goes my writing time. (NaBloPoMo, my ass.) My middle child—the one who inherited my sleep disorder—woke under my jostle, a mess of softly breathing blankets, a monster of slumber-stolen, and begged me for more sleep. Finally, I relented, and consented that he miss Language Arts. I went downstairs.

The coffee was made and the house was warm. My teenager was up, glaring hostile at me for my participation in the indentured servitude he knows as high school. But he remembered he had half a left-over Subway sandwich for lunch and this cheered him immeasurably.

"It was nine dollars!" he tells me. "What happened to a five dollar foot-long?"

"This," I told him, "is why you never have any money."

We woke my youngest and stole him out of the bedroom he shares with my middle son.

"Today," I told him, "will be pajama day at school."

Since I am the principal and sole instructor of this school, I can make these last-minute decisions. Everything seemed quite auspicious until Mike got mad at him for not answering a question, for the hundred thousandth time. Then he fell into a sullen sulk and refused to eat his breakfast. He pushed at me with angry hands because I am his mother and therefore I am the force there always is to push. Talking this out did not assist him. We had to have a pillow fight. Afterwards,  he ate some cinnamon toast and practiced his violin.

We embarked on a study of grammar, began to memorize a poem and read the first two chapters of Morning Girl. Everything looked good until we ran into a sheet on urban, suburban and rural communities. Then my headache caught up with me and it turned out I had the patience and teaching talent of a mountain troll. Sometimes, I wish there were cameras in my house to capture the brilliance and commitment of our educational adventures. At other times, I am very glad no one else is here. At any rate, we recovered quickly. That is sometimes all one can hope for, to recover quickly. The rest of the day was lost in Egypt. My littlest became a bookie taking bets on various ancient gods.

"Who would win? Ares or Set?"

"I tend not to think of things in terms of relative destructive power, " I told him. "You might want to ask your older brother."

And later...

"Who would win? Set or Zeus? I definitely think Zeus."

"Set," said Rowan at dinner. "Definitely Set."

Sometimes, I really worry about my oldest son.

"Why did all the Norse gods die?" Mikalh asked wonderingly.

"Odin broke his word. It happened after Loki was punished. Read about it. The book is over by the couch. Ragnarokk, it was called."

Ragnarokk. The day ends in destruction. Torn bodies litter the floor. The villain is vanquished, but honor is destroyed. The hour of death is nigh. Every night, the hour of death is nigh. In the morning, the day dawns new, the gods are born again and cover the earth with their works. Battles are fought, bets are placed and the food of the gods is consumed. Again and again, the arc of the day rises before setting at their doom.

Epic.

Crutches

For the third time this year, my middle child is on crutches.

Crushed between the heavy pressure of indomitable Rowan and adorable Mikalh, Devin is somehow the one who Life chooses out to be repeatedly bent, broken, biffed, and deprived of what he had in mind. Earlier this year it was a sledding injury to his knee cap. While on crutches, he slipped on the ice and got a concussion. Later, he landed straight down on his leg while playing football with his dad and pinched a muscle. This time the damage was a torn muscle to the inside of his leg, a soccer injury.

The result of this latest, unfortunately, was that he missed a hike on his sixth grade field trip that was composed almost completely of that hike and instead spent the day sitting at a visitor's center waiting with his dad and munching beef jerky. This was because his mother (me) had looked absently at the hot lunch calendar that morning and told him he had a hot lunch, without connecting this with the fact that he would be at a national park all day. Another unfortunate result of this injury was that he missed the final game of the competitive season. He plays center mid, in general–a key position–and his team had to play without him. They had held their own this season and won four of seven games. This last would put them into the "won more than we lost" category, a major source of pride in a team's first competitive year. Instead, in his absence, they were mercy ruled when the score reached an eight point spread against them in the second half. As he told me what had happened, a quiet tear rolled down his cheek.

We are scheduled to go to Durango for Mother's Day weekend, where last year his team won the boys' tournament. This year, he was told there was some hope that, with luck, he might play keeper, but, almost certainly not center mid. The hits just keep on coming. Exhausted and in pain at the end of each day, Devin collapses on the couch, and tries to recoup before launching into his mountains of homework.

Devin is my hero. I am not sure why Life wants to keep testing him, but I am sure he is being prepared for something great. Those of us who have had to pass through fire, step out, catch our breath and then run from suddenly approaching tigers know that, by the end, if we have done it right, we are forged in strength and something even better. We are people of compassion. Devin is, by nature, the most compassionate and loving person I have ever met. Gentle with animals, tender with babies, forgiving of enemies and friends, Devin is one of the few sixth graders I know of whom I would say, if they were accused of any bullying, that there simply had to be a mistake. It is just not in his nature.

I insisted on taking his photo because, I told him, if we did not have a photo of him on crutches, we simply could not accurately reflect our year when I go to make a 2012 album.

I intended to photograph the crutches, but what I will remember is the smile.

The Story of My Failed Career as a Dancer

Here is my six year-old dancing in a little cramped corner of my kitchen. He's actually pretty good. A couple of months after this was taken, we enrolled him in a very expensive hip hop dance class so that he can continue to explore this passion and talent that he has for dance. We are nothing if not encouraging of passions around here. 

Our GBE2 topic this week is dancing, and I would very much like to use this to write a long-winded, highly metaphorical exploration of something important. However, I have spent a good deal of time recently showering you all with love poems for my asparagus, and so I think it is time for me to write something funny again. In my case, dance would then make the perfect topic.

I too wanted to be a dancer, as a child. Any girl child who spends her youth with her nose inside one classic children's book after another is bound to decide to become a ballerina. I was struck continually with visions of myself, suffused with the grace of the celestials and scattering rose petals in my wake, as I spun effortless pirouettes across the playground. Besides, everyone was doing it. It was the thing to do. This is where I first remember my vision of myself running headlong into the brick wall of reality at full force.

Apparently, I have problems learning to follow "steps." My memory of this is congealed into a lump of unpleasantness in third grade wherein two friends of mine who both studied ballet were trying to instruct me in some steps for a "show" we had all created. Their frustration with me was palpable as I kept putting up the wrong arm in the wrong way followed by moving my feet incorrectly and so on. There was a decided absence of the presence of rose petals scattering pleasantly about in my wake. The part I remember most vividly was their recognition of my dismay, which was followed by their trying, with the characteristic transparency of eight year-old girls, to make me feel better. Perhaps this was the moment in life when I first developed the relationship I still maintain to being cheered up, which I rank right with being made fun of in terms of being enlivening to the human spirit. I didn't feel better. I felt like the object of pity. So, there, in the shadow of a portable, on a playground in San Anselmo, died my grandiose dreams of ballet, never to be kindled again.

I continued, however, to be dogged by dance. I liked to act, something that I in fact did quite well and with confidence. For reasons that perhaps only Satan knows, this required that I also be something of a performing poodle. Over the summer break of my sixth to seventh grade year, I participated in a week-long acting camp which performed the musical Guys and Dolls. I was cast in the chorus line, which was an abysmal use of me, in particular, since I could act quite well but danced poorly. We were required to learn a tap step known as "the Irish" and I could just not get it. I muddled through two performances, faking this movement incorrectly, only to somehow master it just after the last performance. I still remember exactly how to do the Irish, in case anyone wants to know. A very useful skill, that.

In adulthood, dance continues to plague me. My husband studied dance for years, and periodically I find myself having to dance with him in public, which is wretched because it makes such marked evidence of my inferior ability. One is supposed to enjoy dancing with one's husband, but I can't say I ever have. I almost want to partner him with a more competent consort so that he would continue to have some avenue to enjoy his hard-won skill in this arena. Instead, I grin thinly, as if I have terrible tooth pain and cause everyone around me to flock over and try to force me somehow to enjoy myself by showering me with unwanted attention. (Word to the wise: Never cheer introverts up by drawing attention to their shortcomings publicly.)

I do like to dance in private. When I have a day with some physical energy, and music is playing, I find myself dancing around my living room, happy as a clam, to things like Kid Rock. My natural style of dance is very much like that of a pole dancer. This used to be some fun to pull out in public–no steps required–when I was a cute looking nineteen or twenty, but it suffers somewhat as performed by the pain-ridden thirty-six year-old mother of three.

I guess that the gist is, for me, dancing like nobody's watching requires that nobody is actually fucking watching me.

The War on Women Moves into My Duck Yard: a Video Documentary

I must confess that I have lost my cool. Recently, my adrenalin has surged more than once as I have heard the deluge of news detailing exactly how old white men around the U.S intend to make my life more difficult. Apparently, some of their plans include legislation to interfere with my right to obtain contraception that will prevent me from producing hordes more male children with attentional problems, and other insulting things. I promise, though, that I won't go too far in this vein, since I have no intention of researching this post well enough to make a well-reasoned political argument, and I want all of the lovely Catholic women, who offer to pray for me, to continue reading my blog. We all know where I am headed with this, anyway.

I am going to talk about ducks.

While white men with power and influence are bossing women around all over the U.S., white ducks are doing the same thing in my back yard.

In case somehow you didn't already know, we have pet ducks–two males and two females. That is at least one male too many. Let me explain their living arrangements. They have a fenced area of my large back yard, which they have entirely purged of grass. There are two coops built back there, which were intended as ladies and gentlemen's quarters. They choose, however, to sleep in the same one, all together, every night. In the summer, we fill up two or three baby pools in our side yard for them to swim in (and drink from) which need to be replenished with fresh water every day. In winter, when we can't use our hose outlet, they get no ponds and we have to fill large thermoses from our sink and hang them on nails for them to drink. Ducks don't need to swim, they just like to. During this pond-free time, they grow to resemble waddling cotton balls that have been used to clean someone's butt.

We had to turn the water off in late October this fall, five months ago. So yesterday, I looked at my four white ducks, who have been happily sloshing around in puddles of their own feces for the last few weeks, since things have begun to thaw, and decided that they could really use baths. This was how Project Empower the Duck Hens got underway. It began innocuously enough. The hose which extends out to our side yard, where the ducks live, is currently frozen just under the surface of the ground so I had to lug around my good garden hose from out front and use it to fill their turtle sandbox pond.  Naturally, it got all covered with poo. (Duck husbandry is not the romantic avocation you have been led to believe.) Having done this, I decided to sprinkle my oldest duck a little. Usually ducks like this, but today, having seen no hose water since 2011, Aflac had forgotten what it was and decided it was probably battery acid. He ran away, quacking in terror. (I have written his very funny history elsewhere, and you should read it.)

The systematic oppression which I have intimated is going on this mating season is being perpetrated thus: In the video below, please meet Nibbles and Sweet Pea. Currently, Sweet Pea, who is the bustier, larger duck, is being confined to the "non-bedroom" coop by Q-Tip, one of our two male ducks. I believe this is a misguided attempt on his part to compel to produce ducklings, much as the GOP is apparently compelling women to bear young. (Whoops, sorry.) Sweet Pea is laying eggs, but she is doing it only at night, in a separate coop, so he has her sitting all day in a coop on some utterly imaginary eggs, and for this she is denied food and water and, today, a bath. Men.

Observing this situation, my eldest son and I started guarding the pond so the poor girls could take a bath. Here, poor little Nibbles, my runty female with a voice like a squeaky toy, is attempting to get clean when she is rudely chased away from the bath which these asshole males clearly believe is theirs.

Understandably, Sweet Pea was a little too scared to get in, even though Rowan was holding the males at bay. Finally, we got her into the pond (which I couldn't film because of the water and feathers flying everywhere), but the boys escaped and bullied her and her sister back out again.

At this point, we got fed up with the Patriarchy of the Pond. Here you see Rowan, removing the offenders and my youngest, attempting to restore justice to the world. (Note Rowan's coldly delivered scientific explanation of the natural scheme of things and Mikalh's deeply empathetic reaction to the situation. That's my kids, in a nutshell there, in case anyone cares.)

The result of this twenty-minutes-long line drawn in the sand was, basically, that the girls got to bathe at least long enough that they now resemble ducks and not pieces of wadded up cotton stuck to a tush. We couldn't really keep the boys at bay for any length of time. They were hellbent on making sure the girls could not have access to the water, the food or their freedom.

What instinct governs this behavior in male ducks, and male humans, is difficult to say. My assessment is that we must remain forever vigilant, protecting our sisters in their baths from the nefarious attentions of misogynist and power-hungry white drakes, who wish to stand on our backs and crush us, to prevent us from bathing or from leaving our coops.

It takes a village to protect the liberty of one waterfowl. We are all of us, sisters.

The Quackers: From back L:-Sweet Pea, Q-Tip, Aflac. R-Nibbles.

Weirdly, my mother has also written on this subject this week. Apparently my ducks inspire writers in much the same way that that the Madonna inspired painters of the Renaissance. They have their own genre.

The Collected Works of Duck (all on the subject of these particular ducks)

By me

Animal Lover Part II: The Empire Quacks Back
The story of why the Hell I have these pet ducks and how this proves I am crazy.

Animal Lover Part III: The Duck Wars (or Our Adventures in Omnivorous Pet Husbandry)

Why it's OK to kill your pet, as long as it's a duck.

Duck Rental
A business enterprise I am thinking of starting.

By my Mom

I Don't Get It
Humans have a tangled relationship with animals. (Reflections on why her daughter–me–killed the duck.)

Ducks are Not Nice People
Thoughts on why ducks are really not as you have been lead to believe.

I just drove 548 miles with an unpaid stand-up comedian, a maharajah, a mustachioed brigand and a Christian-phobe.

I just drove 548 miles with an unpaid stand-up comedian, a teenage maharajah, a mustachioed brigand and a Christian-phobic person who is trying to tour the U.S. by way of leaving his personal belongings in as many different cities as possible.

We all went out of town this Thanksgiving, to be present at the eight months belated memorial of my 101 year old grandfather and to be with my extended family for the holiday. We had to get up early and drive to Tucson on Saturday morning the 19th.

So I spent several days before, busily scurrying around and gathering items to bring with us, fussing loudly and trailing various lists in my wake: Lists of items to go in the cooler in the morning. Lists of things to do at the last minute. Lists of clothes to bring. Lists of general agenda items. Lists of which lists to refer to. That kind of thing.

My husband, Mike, sat on the couch, tired from working all day, and tried to ignore me while I thrust various bulletins at him. Then we got in a fight about how I do all the list-making work, while he just waits and throws everything in a bag and then does all the driving while I sleep fucks everything up.

And so on.

Then, on Friday night, I was so tired from making all of these lists, and choosing which scarves to pack with which socks, that we had to go out to eat. We brought my mom with us, who was going to be doing the unpaid labor of running our insane asylum for ducks house sitting for us for a couple of days, until she left for her Thanksgiving trip to Maryland.

My mom had brought prints of a photo she had taken of our kids and our canine-donkey hybrid dog that she wanted to show us, to the restaurant. Some were in color and others were in sepia tones. Obviously I have never heard anyone actually say "sepia" before, because when she said it, I told her she was saying it wrong.

Yes, that is straw. We are wanna-be farmers. That's just how we roll.

Me: "I think it's "SEH-pee-UH."

Mom: "I'm pretty sure it's "SEE-pee-UH."

Me: "That sounds like a condition. Like something potentially fatal. 'I'm afraid you have SEE-pee-UH, ma'am.' (turning) Mike..."

Mike: "What?"

Me: "Do you say "SEH-pee-UH" or "SEE-pee-UH?"

Mike: (pauses) "No."

So, we ended up sending my eldest Rowan over to my friend Jenn's table to find out how it was really pronounced, and it turned out I was wrong. Meanwhile, Mike kept telling everyone that the correct term was "chromatic".

Rowan somehow ended up with a coloring book of biblical stories to entertain him while we waited for our food. This made me nervous. I don't want to end up being known as the family of heathens whose teenager defaced sacred coloring books at the Hill Diner. Nevertheless, since I obviously am incapable of substituting good judgement for a desire to amuse myself, I found myself suggesting that he tarnish a page full of archangels.

The page had four angels on it and said "Which one of these angels is different?" One of them had no wings, so the answer was gratuitously obvious. I couldn't help thinking it would be more interesting if one of the angels had horns and fangs, for instance. Having said that, I then had to insist that no one actually disfigure any heavenly creatures.

Which is what good parenting is all about.

"Which one of these did Jesus give to people to eat, Mom?" Rowan showed me a page with a puffy loaf of bread, a weird plant that looked like it might be part sea anemone and a broadly smiling fish that looked like a cuddly stuffed animal. Meanwhile, my mother and husband lapsed into discussing theology. This is normal for them.

Mom: "I read about one guy who claimed that he believes in what he calls 'prosperity Christianity' and says the justification for this is that the wise men brought the baby Jesus gold, frankincense and myrrh and that he accepted them."

Me: (disgustedly) "He accepted them???"

Mike: (making wide, adorable eyes and holding open his arms with infant-like excitement) "Gold! Ga ga goo goo! Myrrh! Ba ba boo boo!"

The thought of a Capitalist Baby Jesus caused all of us to laugh uncontrollably and, for no apparent reason, in the middle of a crowded restaurant, for most of an hour. I can hardly wait to have another baby so I can put frankincense and myrrh on my gift registry.

Idiosyncratic behavior also characterized the next day's car trip to Tucson.

He is...the most interesting man in the world.

At the half-way point, in Socorro, Mikalh, who is six, bought a mustache he could stick on his face like a sticker and wore it all day. We forced Rowan to make a phone call about his church service project, which almost lead to a public full-bore family rift when he threatened to walk out of the restaurant before relenting. Devin, my sixth grader, turned out to have lost the biography he was supposed to be reading at the restaurant we ate at.

Rowan's tombstone will probably just say: "What?"

We kept driving.

"Let's tell jokes!", said the newly mustachioed Mikalh. "What is a vampire's favorite food?"

"What?" said everyone.

"BROCCOLI!!" he announced happily.

(silence.)

"I think it'd at least be...red meat," Rowan offered delicately.

"BROCCOLI!" Mikalh insisted, becoming increasingly angry. An argument ensued and was quelled. The jokes continued.

Mikalh: "What is the finger's greatest enemy?"

Everyone: "What?"

Mikalh: "The GALAXY!"

(silence.)

Me: "WHY?"

Mikalh: "BECAUSE he doesn't like it."

And so on.

By the time, we hit Tucson, everyone was weak with hunger and desperate to find a place to eat. The kids were enlisted to do a visual scan for suitable restaurants. The guidelines were that we needed to ID places likely to have lots of vegetables available, and options other than pasta and cheese.

Devin, nervously contemplating the Fast Food Inquisition.

At some point, we drove past a Church's Fried Chicken, and Devin declared his disapproval with a voice full of dread.

Devin: "We can't eat THERE. I went there with the Smythes and it's a CHRISTIAN restaurant."

Me: "What do you MEAN by that?"

Devin: "They close on Sundays. And they asked us if we wanted the Christian chicken."

Me: "How can you even tell if a chicken is Christian?"

Mike: "It's simple. The chicken has accepted Jesus Christ as its lord and savior."

Me: "Or is it like a choice they offer: 'Do you want the Original Recipe, Christian, or Extra Christian Chicken?'"

Devin: "I'm not kidding, Mom."

Rowan: "I see an Italian restaurant!"

Me: "Too much pasta and cheese."

Devin: "What's wrong with pasta and cheese?"

Me: "Mike and I can't eat dairy or flour, still."

Mikalh:  (confidentially) "Milk makes me FART."

We ended up at a Teppanyaki grill, which was really good, and, through pure force of will, I made Rowan order a real Japanese dish instead of the fucking chicken fingers. The chef expertly tossed cooked shrimp into my boys' open mouths, and everyone had great fun. We even had enough vegetables. (Mike and I each have to eat twelve ounces of vegetables at lunch and dinner. Don't ask.)

Devin: "Mom, why didn't the guy toss you any shrimp? He tossed some to the other grown-ups over there."

Me: (sighing) "Because I'm uptight and he can just tell. He can tell, even though I'm wearing double pony tails and a tee shirt that says "Little Miss Sunshine", that it would be a bad idea to throw shrimp at me."

And then I got depressed.

But, after the landlord was done being mad at us for arriving so late, and Mike had come back from racing off  and leaving his Teppanyaki meal getting cold to go and get the key, we were happy because our rental was beautiful. And the week had just begun.

I have this parenting gig well in hand.

I have reached the stage of my blogging career where I am prostituting everything I write on virtual street corners. I say prostituting, except that I am getting paid in comments and page views instead of cash.

I wrote a letter to give my son Rowan, in honor of his adolescent coming of age ceremony Sunday, and he will not allow me to publish it to my blog. That I wanted to publish it–and that he said no–are not, in and of themselves, terribly problematic. What troubles me is that the evil desire to do it anyway is like a crumb in my bed sheets. I itch to publish every single artfully strung together collection of words that I produce. It happened again today, when I emailed a blogger friend, continuing a delightful back and forth which I look forward to the way other people anticipate American Idol. Afterward I thought, when I had sent the email, that there were some good lines in there. And yet I sent them in an email and can't post them on my blog.

Here begins my spiral into serious mental illness. Have you conversed with me in the staff room? If I tossed off a clever line, be sure to look for it later on Faith in Ambiguity. Heart to heart conversations with my kids? Captured on audio to be later transcribed into pieces for Blog Her. Pillow talk? Recorded for posterity. Look for my shopping lists to appear on Twitter. Nothing I write is unworthy of your public consideration.

I have clearly lost all sense of perspective and purpose.

Maybe I'm dreaming of whoring out my day-to-day written communications because I can't seem to write anything else today. I sat down this morning and spent forty-five minutes on a single paragraph. The topic metamorphosed from spiritual transformation to writing advice to reflections on working with teenagers. I deleted more text than I committed. After carefully sculpting one single sentence with the same effort that Pygmalion beget Galatea, I looked at what I had written and realized that it was self-involved twaddle so boring I didn't even want to read it. And so, whooshing down the drain went the carefully safeguarded writing time for which I sacrifice sleep, exercise and worldly accomplishment.

I am, however, making this lost time up now through a means which is the tried and true stand-by of parents whose muse strikes at the wrong time: Parental neglect.

This is O.K. Many parents have pursuits which are important to them, and to their other family members, I tell myself, and these can sometimes cause disruption to the evening routine. Par for the course. One practice many parents seem to have abandoned is the preparation of dinner. This, at least, is the only conclusion I can draw from the following typical description of an afternoon's activities as related to me by mothers made of much stronger stuff:

"In five minutes Little Bobby and Betsy will be home. I have to take Betsy to violin lessons and Bobby to hockey. After that, my husband Jim is going to be home briefly before he heads out with Betsy to soccer practice. Then I promised to bake cookies and bring them to a PTA meeting. So I should go now."

I guess I can't do as much as other people. My feeling is I can  hold down a job or I can clean the kitchen. I can either have three children or go to the Post Office. But not both. That is much to much for me. However, I can damn well cook.

Clearly, these people are doing it wrong. They are serving their kids crap. Or sandwiches. Which are pretty much the same thing. What I do, on the other hand, is carefully plan and prepare nutritionally balanced meals with two or three varieties of vegetables apiece. I put these in front of my kids every night and afterwards, we compost them. It's part of the cycle on Nature.

So at least my neglected children, whose right to privacy has been undermined at every turn, will have had the opportunity to look at produce every night. And I can rest easy, knowing I have this parenting gig well in hand.

What is Not Simple

"Lovely Weed"

Easy as ABC. Simple as 123.

What could be simpler than setting pencil to paper, than cutting and pasting a letter in the proper position? What could be simpler than standing and walking in line, than sitting in a seat?


These things are so easy when a child is equipped to do them, it is hard to imagine that they could be difficult for anyone. Almost as simply done as flipping a light switch, the proper instruction is given and the light will turn on. This seems to be the hope and expectation of almost every teacher.

Frustratingly, though, often we flip the switch and the room remains in darkness. The child, though obviously intelligent, sits fiddling with his pencils and the worksheet is incomplete. The temptation is to flip the switch again. Again. Again. Now the child, although he has not completed the worksheet, has still learned something new. He has learned that there is something wrong with him. The light switch is simply not wired to work in this way. It cannot be cajoled or punished into triggering. It will not light until you discover the secrets of its wiring.

Children are not simple.

I work in education and what I know of teachers, generally, is that they work harder than you know, and that they care more than you suspect. Teaching is more difficult, more draining than you think and classroom dynamics quite different than people outside of classrooms understand. The comments left by parents on some blogs I have read, criticizing teachers for what seem like completely ordinary acts of discipline–which I have observed in every classroom I have worked in–leave me puzzled. What do these people want exactly?

I have two children with IEPs and have worked in a school for five years, and I will tell you that implementing an IEP, as it is written can be extremely difficult, in a room with twenty-four other students and limited staff. Sometimes it will dictate that a student have a scribe, but there will be only two adults available to the entire class. Sometimes a student needs a quiet environment and the classroom is small and crowded. They need additional time to work, but from where should this time come? From their play time? From recess? Often IEPs are written in ideals, and when translated to reality, things look entirely different.

Teaching is not simple.

My six year old son reads at third grade level. His handwriting is illegible. He demonstrates higher order thinking skills but can't fully understand the difference between reality and make-believe. He understood how to increment a digit in hexadecimal when shown by my husband, but has trouble completing addition worksheets because...they are worksheets. His teacher knows he is incredibly bright and grasps the concepts she has taught but has very little physical evidence to demonstrate his mastery of material.

Mikalh (MEE-koll) spoke late and didn't string sentences together at the typical age. He received the services of a developmental specialist which were, at one time, almost entirely focused on encouraging him to play imaginatively. This, for a child who now, has more costumes than clothes and spends every unscheduled moment of his day involved in make-believe. I felt then that none of this "help" hurt him, but I hardly felt that the diagnosticians had really seen my child, in all his beautiful complexity, for who he is.

Development is not simple.

Throughout all of Mikalh's years of being watched and diagnosed, notes have been made on his tendency to wiggle, his inability to "pay attention", his general spaciness. To anyone reading his file, flashing red lights appear around the obvious truth that Mikalh has AD/HD. Mikalh can't pay attention. It seems perfectly obvious.

Is it?

If there is one thing you should know, it is that I am not opposed to diagnostic labels. I also am not in any way categorically opposed to psychiatric medications. I have only somewhat jokingly written that my entire family has AD/HD. Two of my children currently take medications for this condition and I am the person who asked for the team meetings at school on the subject and who asked the questions that led to these diagnoses. My intuition as a mother told me that this was the right thing to do. 

With Mikalh, I just don't feel so sure. There is, at this point, no resounding "clunk" of recognition within me when it is suggested that my youngest child has AD/HD. He may, but I don't know how much of who he is can be explained by that particular label. My intuition tells me to be skeptical but still cooperative.

Parenting is not simple.

Mikalh is so young that no one really knows fully knows what makes him who he is. He is currently being served at school for language processing, fine motor and sensory issues, and is also seeing a therapist to deal with the fall-out of his extreme emotional sensitivity. He has a high IQ and a tendency to think creatively. How all of these factors complicate what we are seeing in him is impossible to tease out.

This child, who is apparently paying no attention, will walk up to his teacher, as the other children are leaving for recess and recount for her the most interesting portions of the story she read while he wandered aimlessly around the room. After a day of completing no work on a science unit on liquids and solids, he will come home and conduct experiments in our sink, chattering happily about why the table is solid and why his soy milk is liquid. In a quiet classroom with the attention of his sweet teacher or in our own kitchen, he blooms.

My deep suspicion is that the world comes at Mikalh undistilled. He seems to be attending to the sound of his teacher's voice, to the motion of classmates in the room, to the rhythm of the noisy heater, to the graceful ballroom dance of swaying branches in the wind, visible outside the window. The world gushes into him, full of beauty and horror and confusion to attend to, and he vibrates with the sensation of its touch. The endless worksheets shift like pieces of a Rubik's Cube, meaningless as clutter. The seat beneath him confines him.

He is a song composed of golden riddles and velvet images, forged to evoke instead of explain. The world wants not music, but a simple explanation from him.

Mikalh feels intensely the softness of fleece and the hardness and scratchiness of a plastic school chair. He stops to examine the beauty of individual snowflakes. He feels, with eyes wide and full of contemplation, the pain of toiling slaves, who lived and died one hundred fifty years before his birth, and the fear and bravery of Helen Keller. He wonders why it is ethical to put an injured animal to sleep, whom we cannot heal, but not an injured person. He is fascinated by the intricate design on the back of a spider.

Who is not paying attention?

My child is not simple.

Simplicity can be the ultimate truth and essence of the world. The room free of clutter, the Japanese garden, the raw and uncomplicated gorgeousness of a sunset over mountains. A moment of quiet meditation. Many things have been written in praise of simplicity, and they are beautifully true.

But simplicity can also be a shackle. When your heart is full of poems and the world wants neat demonstrations of knowledge. When creation settles on you in a bedlam of rich color and detail and you are asked to name the thing most important, but perhaps, not most interesting. Simple plans and objectives fail the child who is a swirl of lovely chaos.

He is a rangy, delicate wildflower in a garden of orderly tulips, and I am dumbstruck by his beauty.

I do not want for him to be more straight and tidy. I want, instead, for the world to love wildflowers as much as I do and renounce its blind devotion to simplicity.

We are Living in a Material World

I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that my children are not especially materialistic, as children go. When asked what they wanted for Christmas, for many years my older two children would respond with statements like "Green presents." or "A flute." Although they are older now and do covet the various accouterments that denote social rank among their peers, they tend to understand that these items need to be earned, that money is finite and that what is a function of privilege should not be taken for right.

Not so my youngest, Mikalh (MEE-koll). Somehow, circumstances have contrived to make this charismatic first grader the most acquisitive by far of my children. Don't get me wrong. He has an unflaggingly sweet nature and an unusual impulse to be charitable. But he also generally expects to receive every damn thing that he wants, whether plausibly attainable or not, and soon. Impressively, he manages to pull this off without seeming obviously bratty by politely contorting logic to justify whatever it is that he thinks should go his way. He is as relentless as a dripping faucet and as cute as a baby seal.

Last night he got onto a couple of jags which sort of typify his sense of entitlement. They also illustrate why he gets away with it without being beaten and sent to bed.

This began while I was cutting the plastic off a crate of canned dog food with a serrated knife, as he waited nearby to feed the dog.

He warned, "Please don't stab me through the heart and kill me."

"I will try very hard not to," I said tartly. "Despite it's being so close to Valentine's Day."

"Maybe you will shoot me through the heart with one of Cupid's arrows and then I will fall in love with you!", he squealed delightedly as I handed him a can of dog food. (Lately, Mikalh has been lying in bed past his lights out time reading illustrated books of Greek mythology.)

"I thought you already were in love with me, " I said. "And I think only Cupid can shoot his arrows. I'm not Cupid. I'm not even the right gender."

"I wish I was the right gender," he lamented.

"You are. Do you know what gender means?"

"No," he confessed.

"It means if you are a boy or a girl."

"OH!" he said with a gasp of recognition. Then his face turned sour "Well, why don't I have wings then?"

Wings, obviously, are something one should have if one wants. Discussion centered for the next ten or fifteen minutes around the mechanical wings he would build in his adulthood, while I made snide remarks about Icarus and cajoled him into feeding the dog, who was turning hysterical circles around the living room, in anticipation of his evening repast.

As soon as the dog was fed and the conversation had moved past his plans to conquer the human barrier to flight, Mikalh remembered that he had shopping to do. He has somehow, without instruction, learned how to use the internet to search for items he would like to purchase, and, if he had a credit card, we would be broke.

"Please can we Google a NASCAR costume?"

He had checked out a book on Wednesday, the subject of which is NASCAR Heroes, and now he needed an outfit to go with his reading material. Because clearly what the child needs is more costumes. Even though his closet looks like this:

Competently, he typed in NASCAR Heroes and brought up a costume he would like to have. But now he had a problem. Because I was not buying the damn thing for him. We just bought him three costumes for Christmas and he got himself another with his own good behavior money. (He earns this by putting marbles in a jar for worthy acts and, after two or three months, gets to buy something worth about $20.)

However, Nana was at our house. And Nana had lately realized that she "needed" more costumes for Mikalh to keep at her apartment. However, Nana has a Firm Rule.

None of the toys, books or costumes from her place can be brought to ours.

So, Mikalh's logical choices were to wait another couple of months until his marble jar filled up again, or to let Nana buy him the costume, but know that he could not wear it at home. And he very, very badly wanted to wear it at home. So, for ten minutes, he politely insisted that he both purchase the costume right now and that he be allowed to wear it back and forth from Nana's apartment to his home.

At one point, he did a dramatization to illustrate the ease with which this could be accomplished.

"I will just wear at your house and then..." He ran across the living room to demonstrate spanning the distance between the apartment and our house, "I will wear it here. Then..." He ran across the living room again. "I will bring it back again!"

The demonstration continued until he was out of breath. Then he switched tactics and explained that he would actually like to receive a NASCAR costume to wear at Nana's and another to wear at home.

"Don't you think you might want one for Grandma Valerie's?" Mike asked helpfully.

"Yes!" he replied.

"So let me get this straight" I said. "There are children right now who have no shoes, Mikalh, and so they can't even go to school, and you want duplicate costumes to wear at different houses?"

"If shoes come with the costume," he immediately responded, "I will give them to somebody else who doesn't have shoes and they can go to school."

Problem solved.  Another charitable act brought about through capitalism.

In the end, Nana held firm and Mikalh finally agreed to let her by the costume, knowing it must remain there. In two months, though...

"I will buy another one for at home."

So You Want to Know About Flavored Condoms?: Parenting is a Very Weird Job

Photo Credit: Flickr

Three years or so ago, when my oldest son was in fifth grade, I went to his elementary school to collect him from an afternoon Homework Club. He had finished his work, but needed to look for a misplaced hoodie, so we wandered the quiet halls for some time while he tried to locate it. As we gave up and were returning to the entrance, past classroom doors where dedicated teachers still labored over tomorrow's lesson plans and yesterday's papers to be graded, he asked me, with a curious voice loud and clear as a bell,

"Is it true that there are flavored condoms?"

To this I quickly replied that I would prefer that we discuss the matter after leaving his school, and he assented without embarrassment.

Later, I cajoled my husband into speaking with him about flavored condoms, homosexuality and a number of other topics which required some re-education, after the initial tutelage of classmates with incompatible religious views or odd ideas of human sexuality.

No, sex does not hurt. Or at least, it shouldn't.
No, the purpose of Sex Ed. in the schools is not to instruct humans in how to have sex lest they fail to undertake this activity and cause the sudden extinction of the entire race.
Yes, people do actually do that. No, it's not as gross as it sounds.

Et cetera. Et cetera.

One thing a future parent does not particularly imagine for oneself when fantasizing about their future lifetime with their growing child is their role as a sex educator. If we did imagine this, it would really put a damper on the baby-making, I think. It's kind of a gross thought.

I am lucky in that our religious denomination does offer a course for middle schoolers on the subject, which is oddly called OWL (Our Whole Lives), so at least some of the particulars of in-depth sexual education are taken off my hands.

But, by fifth grade, in my experience, normal boys are curious enough to have Googled 'hot chicks" on the family computer, inquired about flavored prophylactics and garnered a host of bizarre information about sex from their dealings with other sexually inexperienced males of their own age. So, you really can't get out of it.

I have not yet ventured into the world of parenting a potentially sexually active child, since my older ones are still in the process of going through puberty, but there are things that deeply worry me about this.

When I was a teenager, the thing to do was to buy condoms from machines that had been installed in bathrooms at colleges and cafes. This was completely discreet, if somewhat more expensive. Word spread around about where these could be found and kids knew where to get birth control on the fly. This probably prevented any number of children from being born, who would now be twenty year-old nervous wrecks.

I have not checked out the various bathrooms at gas stations in my small town, since I am a married woman of thirty-six with a desire not to even touch a gas station bathroom, but I hope that they have condom machines. Because the alternative is too horrific even to describe.

I live in a town of 12,000 people. We have one grocery store in our town, and it is like the town square. You can't go in there to get a quart of milk or a box of decongestants without running into five people to whom it would be rude not to say hello, and fifteen more that you recognize on sight and know by name. I am never buying anything nefarious since my life has for years been given over to the acquisition of copious produce, lactose-free beverages and children's toothpastes, so there is no need to feel embarrassed, but I would hate to have to purchase any intimate products locally.

The condoms and lubricants at Smith's are situated directly opposite the check-out lines, in plain view of God and everyone. You have to stand next to them in rather an uncomfortable way to get your prescriptions at the pharmacy. This is particularly entertaining when some poor woman is there with her sick toddler, waiting behind a sluggish line five people deep, while attempting to contain her child either in a stroller, or in her arms. Given the arrangement created by the narrow aisle with condoms to the right, cigarettes to the rear and tables of discounted vitamins to the left, it is impossible to place a stroller such that a child who can sit up and reach will not be able to grab hold of whatever catches their fancy. At eye level to a stroller are the lubricants, which are packaged in hues of vibrant electric purple, ravishing red and glossy pink. Without fail, children go for these items.

"Mommy, I want this!," the child will exclaim with delight and anticipation.

The mother, upon realizing the situation, with a look of blushing pink horror, then snatches the libidinous liquid from her child, and tries desperately to interest the toddler in a bottle of vitamins to hold while the long wait continues, all without attracting undue notice. All four other people in line watch with total amusement.

"I don't want this! I want that, Mommy!"

And a tantrum ensues.

I could no more imagine purchasing condoms or lubricant from this place than I could conceive of bumming smokes from a nun. Especially if I was a teenager. The clerks know who everyone is, to whom everyone is related and what health conditions we all have.

Privacy, I think, is something you sacrifice to live in cozy places.

So, I guess time will tell whether I will become the sort of parent who places all my bets on the hope that my boys will be abstinent throughout high school, or the kind who leaves condoms hidden all over the house for them to find, in a desperate hedge against the possibility of becoming an extremely young grandmother.

Parenting is a very weird job.

The Tale of Why My Son is Named After a Bag of Cement

Here he is impersonating a bag of cement, 12 hours old.

Let me preface this by saying that Mike and my marriage is marked primarily by our intellectual compatibility. We have been best friends for sixteen years and we have spent most of that time in long, caffeine fueled conversations about the nature of everything. We can talk any subject to death with delight, or, if we get off on the wrong foot, we can fight like two badgers protecting the same hole.

So when Mike and I discovered that my youngest son was on the way, there was some consternation over what we should name him.

My older two children, from my former marriage, have nice Celtic names, which had been chosen on the rationale that, since they would automatically carry their father's last name, and hence his ethnic brand, mine should be stamped on the first half of their moniker. The decisions on these, retrospectively, were easy ones.

I will say that if I had known what was coming, I could easily have saved some time by skipping the part where we picked names for girls. Apparently, I can only bear male children and only male children with ADD. But that's another story.

The situation with Mike and me was different. Mike is half Native American, and his last name is Adams, which is a testament to the loving memory of his adopted father, but not in any way to his native heritage. Somehow his being Indian trumped my being Welsh in the same way that paper covers rock or rock crushes scissors, and he won the ethnicity match without much debate. Our child would have an Indian name.

Fine. I'm O.K. with that. More than O.K., in fact.

But then things started to get a little  freaky. Mike wanted our child to have not just a Native name but a Lil'Wat name. The Lil'Wat are the Salish-speaking British Columbian tribe from which my husband's family hails.Their language is known as "Ucwalmicwts." I can't say it, either.

Mike started presenting me with choices.

Mike: "I like Ken'Knep."

Me: "What? We can't have a son called Ken'Knep! He will be tormented!"

Mike: "It will be totally unremarkable. Just look at all the unusual names kids have nowadays."

Me: "Mike, there may be some unusual names, but I promise you that there are no kids named Ken'Knep. And what the Hell do you know about what it would be like? You are named Mike Adams."

Mike: "All my life I have resented having such a boring name."

Me: "Right."

Various items of discussion were completely unpronounceable to me, but totally fine with Mike. Having grown up with a name that was butchered frequently, I am sensitive on this subject, but Mike was like a child in a candy store full of delightfully unusual signatures, totally unperturbed by thoughts of elementary school victim-hood or years of teacher garbling. These concerns to him were trifling.

So it went on and on like this, with both of us becoming more entrenched, irritated and tired, until finally it was suggested that our son be named "Mixalh" after an uncle. The pronunciation was best approximated as "MEE-koll" and it meant, very sweetly, "bear".

Mike: "Fine, but it's going to remind me of a bag of cement unless we do away with the 'x'."

Apparently, prominent in my husband's work at this time, which was carpentry, were the presence of large bags of cement marked "Mix-All".

So, it was decided.

We threw in two middle names, one for Mike and one for me, because that's just how we roll, and on May 16, 2005 was born Mikalh Justin Katigwa Adams, or, to be slightly more clear

{Lil'Wat Bear Who is Not a Bag of Cement} {To Be Set Free} {Justin from the Rats of NIMH} Adams.

Because this is what happens when stubborn people are allowed to breed.

When Compassion Goes Terribly Wrong, or How to Avoid Taking Goldfinches on Family Road Trips

I want to tell you about the Mother's Day weekend that my family traveled to the Durango Shootout Soccer Tournament.

News Flash:  Motherhood has reached such a debased level in our society that, in appreciation of their gift of life and subsequent unceasing nurture, mothers are in turn rewarded by spending Mother's Day Weekend sitting in uncomfortable camp chairs cheering for their sons at the sidelines of huge windy fields, holding bottles of Gatorade. There is no justice.

Devin loving soccer, 2006

My middle child, Devin has been playing soccer since kindergarten. It is his greatest passion. Playing competitive soccer where we live is an enormous commitment. It involves two to four road trips to  tournaments a year, with expenses. More onerous still is the commitment, for ten weeks each in spring and in fall to be in Bernalillo, an hour and half away from us, every Saturday morning for a game.

Saying no to a child who expresses such dedication to any endeavor seems somehow wrong to us, so here we found ourselves, taking an expensive road trip to Durango, just like we're some sort of upper middle class family that we are not, because we love this child.


At the time of this event, my son Devin was in fifth grade. It was three in the afternoon and Mike, my mom and I were waiting, minivan loaded, for Rowan and Devin to come back from school so that we could hop in the van and undertake the four hour drive to Durango.

Thirteen year-old Rowan arrived first, hanging up his backpack with the sound of his usual artillery of terse adolescent questions and total confusion as to what we were doing.

Ten more minutes passed. Then twenty. And still no Devin.

I began starting to really worry about where my soccer star was, when finally he arrived, thirty-five minutes after school had let out, on our front door step, holding a baby goldfinch.

Devin: "Can I keep him?"

Me: "What? We are going to Durango! We are going there right now for your soccer tournament! We cannot take a baby goldfinch with us!"

Devin now began weeping piteously and with utter sincerity.

Devin: "But he hopped up onto my pant leg! And all of my friends decided that I should the one to take care of him. Can I please just take care of him? Please??"

Me: "Devin, I need you to listen to reason here. We will be traveling in the car four hours and then staying in a hotel.  What are we going to do with a baby goldfinch? How would you take care of it?"

Tears now began rolling in spates down his reddened cheeks as he protectively clutched this tiny bird in his hands.

Devin: "Mom, my whole class is counting on me! They chose me to take care of this bird! Please let me take care of it!"

All reason aside, each deeply accented "please" was something of a pull on my own heart. He paused to catch his breath.

 "It's just that I've never had an animal to take care of all on my own."

At this point, I was struck speechless and had to walk away for a few moments.

You will not understand my reaction unless I explain that we had, at this time, five pet ducks, who were Devin's primary responsibility and which we got because he likes ducks. We also had three cats and a dog. It was, to put it mildly, very difficult to imagine a shortage of animals requiring his care.

These heated negotiations continued, well past the point when we should have already left, until finally he realized that he would not be able to keep this bird as a pet, and I finally realized that we were going to have to take this bird to a Wildlife Shelter on the way to Durango.

With an air of resignation on the part of everyone, we then loaded the three kids, my mother, and the tiny goldfinch into the car and drove to the Espanola Wildlife Center, an organization to which we have historically already been a major contributor–not of funds, but of fledgling birds, ineptly separated from their mothers.

After tearfully dropping the goldfinch off, and driving on toward Durango, I confided in my husband that perhaps I had no right to be so irritated with this particular incident, given the fact that as a full-grown adult of twenty-nine, I adopted a baby mouse and took it on a 1,000 mile road trip with two children under the age of seven, feeding it out of a dropper.

"Probably not," Mike said.

I suppose that when we strive to raise compassionate children, we don't have any right to be upset that they bring home baby birds, half-strangled rats or drug-addicted felons. This is what we raised them to do. Because we taught them that they should lend a helping hand, speak up for the downtrodden and restore justice through the provision of Friskies to all of the neighborhood feral cats.

Quite apart from winning soccer tournaments, they are making the world a better place.

Devin at the Durango Tournament, May 2011

P.S. I'll tell you later about the Tournament. That deserves it's own blog post.

In the Wake of the Gluten-Free vs. Dairy-Free Hostilities

Apparently, while I wasn't paying attention, there was a skirmish between the gluten-free people and the dairy-free people, which the gluten-free people won.

My youngest child, Mikalh, who is one quarter Native American, is lactose intolerant.

We recently made this discovery based on the evidence that both my husband and I are lactose-intolerant, that Mikalh farts all the time and says his stomach hurts, and that his pediatrician told us it was blindingly obvious that he was lactose-intolerant. So we took him off dairy shortly after Christmas.

I know you are wondering how to say his name. It is pronounced  MEE-koll, or as one caveman might say to another "Me call you later." It means "Bear."

Mike and I either tolerate or just go without all the things one eats with dairy. Since Mikalh is only six, I don't expect him to do this. So instead, I am spending what might have been his college savings on almond milk, coconut yogurt, soy cheese and tofu cream cheese.

The thing that surprised me, though is how few choices there were in macaroni and cheese, his favorite item of all time. Hence, I found myself in a store, angrily yelling at boxes of health food macaroni festooned with adorable rabbits, "What? I have six choices of cheese and two types of gluten-free flour but none with soy cheese? Really?"

This is when I developed my theory of gluten-free vs. dairy-free conflict. It seems like seventeen years ago, when I was vegan, there were way more dairy-free choices than there are now, but that all their aisle space has been given over to gluten-free products. This is especially annoying to me since, as someone who suffers from fibromyalgia, I have had to answer the question of my possible gluten-intolerance approximately 20,000 times at this point, since people so frequently assume gluten must likely be the cause of all suffering on this earth (apologies to those of you with actual gluten intolerance here).

Perhaps, though, this is an asshole thing for anyone to say who has a refrigerator filled with this:

Ready for the next knock on my door.

Amy

Here is but one apparent difference between the male mind and the female mind: Focus.

Whether my husband is seated at his computer writing code, reading news articles or sending imaginary mercenaries to their virtual deaths, his focus is total.  There is nothing tentative or casual in his appearance, sitting there, completely absorbed in the contents of his LCD screen. Nothing short of the smell of burning flesh really is really likely to intrude on his concentration. This is why it never really works out when he suggests that I go lie down and relax while he keep track of the kids. (Or at least why it works only if nothing is required of the kids other than their not burning to death.)

Conversely, whether I am writing, cooking or conversing with a particular child, my brain is wired to continue to receive sensory information about everything else that is going on at the same time. Hence my dinner preparations are nightly interrupted multiple times by instructions to my three sons to get off their I Pad or stop talking to their brother in that condescending tone of voice or explain to me their plan to complete their book report on time. My writing is interrupted by homework questions. My conversations with one child are derailed by the sudden need to discipline another for tracking mud all over the carpet. 

I have situational ADD. I can't really read a full page of text anymore without distraction, even if left completely alone. I'm listening for children fighting while I should be sleeping, or planning grocery lists while I'm washing my hair. I'm blogging while I'm supposed to be reading my kid to sleep.

I know that this situational ADD is familiar to all mothers with children still at home. I do wonder, however, if certain other mothers manage to maintain attention long enough to experience more sense of accomplishment than I do. Right now, the primary tangible accomplishment I can claim at the end of any day is dinner, which is prepared nightly with strict attention to taste and nutritional guidelines, and then consumed as if by a pack of indifferent hyenas who, far from being grateful, are pretty much pissed that we are out of Bacon Bits.

Alarmingly, I've observed that my mothering seems a bit patchy lately. For instance, I forgot to have my youngest son have a social life. It is unfortunate that somehow this is up to me, given my proclivity for shyness, but I gather than I should have scheduled a play date for him sometime during this school year and this hasn't crossed my mind until five months in. Another similar problem is that my oldest son is supposed to register for high school in four weeks, and I have totally forgotten to freak out about this and gather all the information in the world ahead of time. It all seems to take so much energy.

I want to say, in my defense, that I am devoting a lot of time and attention to my blogging, and that this is what is absorbing my mothering energy, but the evidence would suggest that I am devoting more time and attention to Twitter than to actually writing. (The use of Twitter was supposed to cause my page views to explode, but it hasn't, so it is probably just another source of distraction. I think I'm doing it wrong.)

To my relief, I think that I am still doing my paying job with full attention and effectiveness. However, given that I work only 26 hours a week, it seems like I should probably be able to be productive in some other way as well. 

I would like to feel that I have total command of the responsibilities I have assumed. This is not working out.

Thirteen years ago, I was lying in my bed with my infant son, watching TV and feeling utterly depressed. It was spring in Northern California, it had been raining forever, and we had moved to a new neighborhood, far away from my old friends. I was twenty-two, a new mother, and my husband was commuting to work every day, leaving me for hours and hours alone with a child whose one goal in life was to climb everything. It was 11 A.M. and I was still in my nightgown, having never bothered to get dressed, when I heard a knock on my door. I went to go answer it, and outside there stood a woman in a long waist-less dress, with a halo of untamed, frizzy brown hair and an air of authority.  She told me her name was Amy, and she was going door to door inviting people to a potluck dinner to build community. 

At that particular moment in time–at the advent of that knock–my life started to define itself around a central meaning again, something I chose. Amy swept me up in her community-building activities and in the meanings that surrounded her, and I moved away from that horrible uncomfortable crack in the table I had fallen into it with my new motherhood (you know, the cracks in between table leaves where all the crumbs stick to the nastiness–the place where nothing is ever clean) and toward something that felt like my own.

I have to remember that moment today because I have fallen into the damn crack in the table again, although this time it's just been a couple of weeks I've spent there–just feeling like all the gunk in the world is sticking to me and nothing will ever make me clean.

I am ready for the next knock on my door to remind me what I am here for.

How Spiders Saved My Son From Eternal Damnation

Photo Credit: Flickr

In case you don't know, we are Unitarian Universalists. Which means that, at least by the standards of our religion, we are not raising blasphemer heathens, although I realize that this might make very little difference to you, if you are already inclined toward thinking that way.

But, if that's the case, you really shouldn't read my blog anyway.

For a long period of time my eldest son, Rowan believed in Santa Claus but did not believe in God.  Because, hello, Santa keeps filling his stocking, people. What the hell has God done for him lately?

Don't answer that.

Anyway, that's fine if you are a U.U. We encourage our kids to think these things over and "build their own theology".

(crickets)

Anyway, my littlest had spent all of kindergarten an avowed atheist, which kind of got on my nerves, because if you believe in leprechauns, faeries, bathroom monsters, Rudolph and the magic blue light that can be used to protect you from the monsters no one sees but you, I find no cognitive dissonance in just going ahead and believing in God.

I am an atheist. In the sense that I don't believe in a conscious force guiding the universe. This is what most people mean by God. What I mean by God, when I do claim to believe in God–which I sometimes do–is that we are all connected, that a kind of sacred life force runs through everything–not in a supernatural way–but in a biological, relational, natural sort of way.

(more crickets)

Anyway, I would just as soon my kid not inform other kids in kindergarten that God is not real, have them tell him that he is going to Hell, and then have the other kid get in trouble. And so on. And I think that this particular child, who is a very imaginative, magical, Waldorf-y sort of child should get to have the supernatural if it makes him happy. Reason will catch up with him soon enough. But I could never convince him to re-language his atheism into anything more palatable, such as

"I don't believe God is a person." or

"I believe God is the Universe." or some-such.

Until his first grade class did a unit on spiders.

So, today he comes home and states that
"When I said God didn't exist, it was because I thought there were two Gods–the one that exists and the one that doesn't exist–but now I believe God is the Web of Life."

He goes on.

"Mom! I want to have a God party. I want to have a web of life party."

 I say, "Oh, what will we have to eat at this party?"

 "Web of life cupcakes." he says.

"It will be at Urban Park. Can we have it there? Please, Mom?"

I can just see the invitations now.


Update: I originally published this post in October. Tonight Mikalh brought up the subject of spiritual first grade parties again. What he proposed is that we gather his friends for a sort of natural Genesis party, but that first there first be auditions for parts in a play to take place there.

Mikalh: "I think I will have to ask Grandma Valerie for help to make me some costumes. I don't have any 'How-Life-Came-to-Be' costumes."

Me: "What exactly is a 'How-Life-Came-to-Be' costume? Can you give me an example?"

Mikalh: "There will be lots of costumes! Things like a dinosaur and a meteorite. I could be the meteorite."

And this is why I'm reluctant to schedule play dates for him.

How Children's Science Fair Projects Ruin Family's Lives

Photo Credit: Flickr

O.K., before I begin here, in the interest in full disclosure, I must make a couple of admissions.

First admission: I am currently employed at an elementary school, where, right now, there is a science fair set up.

Second admission: I have not one but two kids this year who will have projects in a school or district science fair. One of these is not even mandatory. I made him do it. (In my defense, he is middle schooler, and, therefore, pretty independent and also much closer to needing a college scholarship someday than my other child.)

So, basically, I have no credibility when I tell you that I believe that science fair projects are a national crisis on the same level of urgency as would be the poisoning of our national aquifers. That said, it's still true. Here is what I mean:

Science fair is mandatory at many grade levels at my children's school. Therefore, when science fair season approaches, the following steps become necessary for me or my husband as parents to take:

1. Be aware of when science fair projects are due, whether or not the teacher provides enough advance notice. As a seasoned school mom, I have learned to check the school's website multiple times a week as the familiar date nears.
2. Spend anywhere between thirty minutes and four hours talking to my unenthusiastic child about what experiment they will undertake while they behave as if they have unexplained brain damage and can't think of a single scientific phenomenon that is interesting to them.
3. Plan a whole day in our schedule during our holiday break when our child will execute the experiment under adult supervision.
4. Go with my child to gather the supplies for the experiment. In the past, these supplies have included red wiggler worms, halogen lights, and a special hammer, so some advance planning may be required here. We're not talking a quick run to the corner store.
5. (Optional step for geek parents) Build a device from scratch that allows my child to execute the experiment. Examples include an array into which halogen lights can be plugged so that my child can find out of colored ice cubes will melt faster than regular ones, or a wooden framework with an attached sledgehammer for breaking brittle materials in a controlled manner so that my child can examine how they fracture.
6. Spend what seems like forever in their company on an endless day while they perform "science".
7. In the ensuing weeks, listen to them daily ask the following questions: 
   "How do you spell hypothesis?"
   "Should I sharpen my pencil now or later?"
   "Should I put a period here?"
   "What is my conclusion?"
   "What does data mean?"
   "Can I be done for today?"
8. Spend hours searching for a usable chart-making whizziwig online, and then assist them to plug their data into the whizziwig.
9. Show them how to format their typing so that the font will be large enough to read, and then make countless suggestions as to how to put together an attractive display.
10. Attend science fair, scheduled throughout the dinner hour, during which time I have to extract my youngest child from behind a stage curtain, from underneath a table and from inside a polluted bathroom stall before finally insisting that we leave.

Photo Credit: Flickr

At the end of all this, my child will receive an A and will say to me, his eyes aglow with pride, the words "I did it!"

Right.

I'm all for educating kids about the scientific process and about technology, engineering, logical and critical thought and the value of hands-on education. I really, really am. Believe me. But, if our national school system weren't so hyper-focused on testing and standards, perhaps we could make time to do it at school?

Doing these elementary school long-term projects during school hours would accomplish three things:

1. Help to level the playing field between those kids with advantaged parents and those without, since no one is getting help from their nuclear physicist dad or their engineer mom, while someone else can't even get a hold of a real display board on time, much less scientific support. 
2. Make school more fun and meaningful. Hands-on education is fun. Messy but fun.
3. Save parents from the enormous inconvenience I just described. Call me a jerk, but I have other things I want to do with my family that are just as important, such as living together, and their regular homework is already sovereign in our home lives. Worse than that, what about the families who can't do what I just described? Is it OK that they miss out on this wonderful benefit that we hear the other kids–my kids–are getting?

There may well be insurmountable logistical problems with what I am suggesting and perhaps I am just tired out after seven, count them, seven consecutive years of science fair experiments. Perhaps I can blame only my badly spaced child-bearing and no one else. But I still think the whole things smacks of injustice.

Dress it up as opportunity, as progress, or as academic adventure. I still say science fairs ruin lives.