a calling recalled

This week, I submitted my resignation from teaching.

I can't remember not wanting to be a teacher. I was an only child for nine years, playing School most of that time with a makeshift classroom of stuffed animals arranged in relentlessly neat rows, each assigned a name in an old ledger from my grandpa's business. Occasionally I roped my younger cousin into joining me but only as a student, never the teacher. If he thinks of those days fondly, he's being kind; I was a rigid taskmaster in my early days, assigning him (and the hostage toys) leftover handouts my former-teacher uncle gave me in an old briefcase. I also remember conjuring infractions to punish him for, as I hadn't yet learned the art of positive behavior reinforcement. Later, I divided my time between torturing my cousin with math & spelling worksheets and preparing 'lessons' for my baby sister, using Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and Captain Kangaroo as inspiration. As I got older and better at interacting with others not as a tyrant, I found myself seeking out other broader, more finessed ways of sharing information I learned from my constant reading and TV-watching.

All through real school, my favorite parts of the day were staring at cute boys, reading, and writing (order may vary); on the best days, I helped cute boys with their reading and writing. The one time I skipped class in high school was to finish an English paper due later that day. I admired most of my teachers, especially the English teachers, and those I didn't served as examples of What Not To Do when I got their job. I also babysat a lot and spent most of that time reading to and interacting with the kids before watching TV and eating snacks; I felt like I was a natural.

In college I fell in love with Thirtysomething and the idea of becoming an Advertising Executive (never mind that I was unclear on what that actually meant), but really I was only in love with the cool houses and wardrobes that apparently came with working as an Advertising Executive (maybe?). Teaching was still in my periphery but I knew it wouldn't pay well and in the late '80s, making money was The Goal. In my junior year, an honest professor mentioned that anyone not willing to sell every awful product being sold would never make it in advertising; I dropped the class and promptly enrolled in the School of Education. I relished the Literature classes directed at future teachers; I tutored other students in writing; I spent time working at the campus preschool and babysitting for graduate students. During student teaching, I surprised myself with instinctual moves like bonding with an otherwise difficult kid through our mutual love of football, and gently redirecting the teen who earnestly asked me to prom. I also incorporated Wayne's World and an SNL skit into lessons. Rock star.

I cherish the highlights of my time in classrooms: from the middle school where I designed curricula from scratch and helped 8th graders plan community projects to the GED prep work in a group home with adjudicated youth to the substitute teaching where I perfected my Love & Logic techniques, to these past 12 years at my favorite place outside of my own home. Despite the sometimes long hours and occasional emotional beatings, I continually felt called to teaching.

Until this year. When I signed my intent to return last spring, toward the end of my sabbatical, I didn't think twice. Why wouldn't I go back? I had gladly dedicated most of that time off to my daughter and she was graduating; I'd pursued some Fun Things but none of them had specifically offered me a new career. I put my classroom back together, planned some fresh lessons for different classes, made connections with my students, as usual. Yet, it felt different. My boy continued his monthly chemotherapy treatments; my girl marched alone in football games 450 miles away; I kept comparing my hours of preparing lessons to the hours I'd spent volunteering with homeless youth and at film festivals and with public radio pledge drives, and I longed for that freedom to use my time as I wanted. And, I realized, as I needed.

I knew what I was accepting when I chose to be a teacher. I have loved even the hardest, most mentally trying moments of all of my experiences as an educator. I consider every instance a gem in my crown - I couldn't have become the wife, mother, friend, or woman I am without having absorbed the digs and disappointments along with the praise for and pride in my classroom time.

It is strange now to be at the half-century point of my life deciding to change direction, to alter my identity, to become Something Else. More than strange to not even be able to name the Something Else I'm becoming - I might write, I might be a professional volunteer, I might be the substitute teacher some people love and others think is weird. Yet all of these things feel more acceptable than staying in a position where I ought to be uplifting but am instead feeling like a slow drain of inspiration & joy.

I hope that those coming into my place are feeling how I did for a couple of decades - excited about designing ways to engage sometimes-surly teens, energetic in their desire to instill a love of learning - and that they are open to embracing the unknowns of classroom life, the demands of loving other people's children, the challenges of balancing dedication to teaching with necessary self-care.

I don't think I failed, but I am exhausted and ready to move on.
Here's to a new calling.

the paradox of perspective

Sometimes when students ask how old I am
(after I give them a silent pointy raised eyebrow to remind them that not everyone loves this question since guesses about age usually skew to elderly and no one wants to be associated with that too soon)
I give them historical math problems by way of answer:

I was born the year before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
I was born a few months after Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated.
I was born the year before Woodstock.

Some search their brains for these facts, eyes squinted hard for maximum thinking power.
Many grab their smartphones and plug in keywords, triumphantly shout 1968!
then consult their calculators for the final number.
Others blink slowly and look away, uninterested in history & math,
my age not worth this effort;
obviously I was born a long time ago, maybe even before their parents, who are old and boring.

Whenever I go through this exercise I'm reminded
of how many events the whole world knows
sees
feels
happen at the same time
as tiny personal miracles and tragedies.

Other people were born exactly on the day of the moonwalk -
how did those mothers feel, their excruciating labors overshadowed by the constant coverage
of a guy kicking around space dust?

Other people died exactly on the days great men were murdered -
surely those families felt doubly gutted, lost in two worlds of grief, wondering whose mattered more.

Many Woodstock attendees left early, cold & muddy, hungry & tired,
were back at their desk jobs or slumped in classrooms,
while Jimi Hendrix stunned onstage with his Star Spangled Banner.

Perspective.

****
I remember being home sick from school on March 30, 1981, watching TV on the couch when breaking news announced President Ronald Reagan had been shot.
I remember feeling hollow, the hair on my arms shivering;
I'd wondered how my mom felt when her president was shot.
But then, I remember increasing aggravation
that the coverage was going to interrupt General Hospital,
the bright spot of sick days;
7th grade Me dismissed the possible death of a world leader
in favor of watching my favorite soap opera.
****
For a few days in September 1998, the troubles of the entire planet disappeared.
My son had been born
early
quick labor
fetal distress
try to sign the release with your wrong hand because we put the pen in your right and IV in your left
emergency Cesarean
only 4 pounds
low sodium & blood sugar
umbilical hernia
jaundiced
moved to another hospital
miles away.
Certainly there were discoveries and assassinations and victories and catastrophes
important to hundredsthousandsmillions of other people
but
I only cared about
one thing one thing one thing
minute after minute after minute
until I could bring my boy home.

Perspective.
****

It is a strange experience
troubling yet comforting
distasteful while delicious
to understand
this world is so vast, so full, so gigantic
and so enclosed, so limited, so minute.

relating in retrospect

As a teacher and mom, I know I'm expected to remind people that nothing is impossible. If I were a motivational speaker or Oprah or an abnormally perky optimist like I'm pretty sure Reese Witherspoon is, I'd point out how the word even says I'M POSSIBLE! I want to punch myself for just typing that.

The thing is though, some stuff is impossible and I think it's important that we face it in order to properly deal with it. I'm not talking about complicated tasks that seem despairingly unlikely - eradicating hunger, exacting world peace, having a million dollars to do with as I please, living in a pineapple under the sea, meeting/marrying Michael Fassbender...I mean something like time travel. Specifically, being able to return to my own teen world and help myself make different choices. This is impossible not only because no one that I know of has perfected a time machine yet, but mainly because what teenage person would ever listen to a grown-up's advice, even if she claimed to have come from the future?

I've found myself in a strange place lately [hello again, middle age, you fucking creeper]. I'm trying to go about my business, aging and contemplating my purpose and letting go of my children as they become adults, but I keep stumbling across these thoughts & memories that make me question what I even know about myself. And if I don't know myself, how do I help guide other people with any credibility? I believe myself to be content with how my life has been but then I fall into a pit of What If and start to retrace my steps - they usually go back to my foolish freshman year of college when I squandered 99% of my opportunities to be a better person (the 1% is miraculously not burning bridges with some classmates whom I still consider good friends and they seem to feel the same). So I try to get inside my own 18-year-old mind but memories are unreliably altered by age & perspective, and reading those loopy-cursive journal entries is so embarrassing; I cannot connect Now Me to Then Me other than generically recalling the events. Everything she wrote seems silly and shallow - I know that's because I'm looking at it through the eyes of a 49-year-old old person, but when I try to imagine asking her to think deeper, to understand why she's doing what she did, I'm at a loss. Why am I unable to relate to my own younger self? I remember feeling so mature, so capable of accomplishing whatever I wanted (though I can tell I had no idea what I really wanted...why??), so almost-sure of myself (disappointment with my hair is a lifelong theme); at the same time I also know I was far more insecure than I let on even in my private writings. I start to feel sad for Then Me and that's when I wonder about the time travel thing - if I could go back, what could I tell her that might inspire her? Would I just drop in as Future Me a la Kyle Reese (with a different end purpose, of course) or simply pose as a naturally occurring adult on campus whose wisdom is somehow welcomed? But then, I didn't listen to my smart best friend/roommate nor my cute Michael J. Fox-lookalike grad student advisor when they tried telling me how to not fuck up, so why pay attention to the righteous old weird mom-lady? And, I ultimately don't want her to drastically change her life because I am happy with how my life has turned out - if Then Me didn't flunk out and spend a year away from university, I probably wouldn't have met my man and had my kids and felt so strongly about helping other teens find their way.

So, what do I really want from this exercise?

I wish Then Me had made more meaningful connections with people, including herself; I wish she would realize how smart & funny & capable she really was - not based on what others told her but because she shut up the loud mean voices in her head and listened to the quieter gentle ones that matter most; I wish she could get comfortable sooner with her body and treat it kindly, with respect; I wish she liked herself more then, because it's been nice for the past handful of years, finally.

There is a paradox here - the past doesn't define me, but it does shape me. I am here only because of where I've been, yet I lament how I spent my time there. Maybe that all makes the now even better though...

Have I just accomplished the impossible?

memories, dull the edges of my mind

I wasn't exactly a mean girl when I was younger, but I was definitely an accessory to mean girls. My little sister might say I was an actual mean girl sometimes, especially regarding possessions. But, for example, I maintain that since I'm 9 years older than her, most of the Barbie stuff was mine before it was hers so how can I be accused of stealing that tiny copper pot and besides, she's known where I keep it not locked up, in plain sight AND I'm pretty sure I've offered it to her many times in our adulthood and she won't take it. So anyway, on the periphery of mean girlness. Moving on.

Lately (which, in an almost-50-year old's brain means "in the past 20 years") I've been giving increasingly more thought to the usefulness of memories. As someone who writes & reads and encourages others to do the same, I realize the importance of memories but after having had a few instances of my very vivid, certain memories turning out to be completely unverifiable with the people involved, I am now wondering what is their real purpose if they're ultimately unreliable? 

First, the case that basically invalidated most of my 6th grade year. To set the scene, I silently but forcefully disliked nearly everything about my teacher that year: he was old, he made us run and play sports CONSTANTLY, he called my mom to admonish her for letting me eat a Pop Tart and orange juice for breakfast every morning, and each week he would dump desks that he deemed 'messy.' Now, as a lucid adult + teacher myself, I can make these adjustments: he was only about 40 that year; we ran and played soccer maybe twice a week; that is a pretty terrible diet for a preteen girl [but still, I felt bad for my mom because she left the house to work at 5:30am so not her fault I was/am still no good at nutrition]; and while I would never shame students, I do promote neatness in my classroom.

The parts of this teacher I did happen to like were his constant encouragement of my writing skills and praise for my tidy desk, which leads to the first memory I had that was blown to smithereens a few years ago: I saw the name of a boy tagged in a former classmate's 6th grade photo and immediately remembered him sitting quietly next to me at the back of the classroom, waiting for that teacher to come down the aisle to dump his desk. Every week. I had offered many times to show him how to organize his books and pencils and tissue box, reminded him to throw out crumpled papers & empty snack bags, actually rearranged his things myself + told him breathlessly, probably harshly (mean girl tendencies) when it was time to CLEAN HIS DESK! I'm starting to sweat again right now. In my twitchy memory, this kid sat with almost amused resignation, as our menacing teacher moved Gestapo-like toward us. 

I immediately sent this guy a friend request and waited, heart thumping, for him to accept so I could find out that he had fully recovered from this obviously horrible and humiliating treatment 30+ years ago. Except that when we did reconnect, he had zero memory of this situation. Nothing. In fact, he sent me a photo from his law office where boxes and papers were stacked impetuously around the room. And, inexplicably, beyond that, he said our 6th grade teacher was one of his favorites - they had gone running and rock climbing with other classmates on weekends; they'd kept in touch for many years afterward.

What?

After a tiny spark of irritation that I had spent so much mental energy trying to needlessly defend this kid's dignity for decades, I realized my own standards of what makes a good experience and solid relationship clouded my perceptions of what happened for him. (Hello, productive counseling sessions). That is, if that teacher even really dumped desks - how can I know for sure? I'm afraid to ask my friend, the classmate who posted our picture in the first place.

But then last week, I found out another situation I had been involved with (this is where the almost-but-probably-an-actual mean girl thing comes in) has apparently not lived on in the psyche of a key player. 

The summer before our Senior year, a friend & I decided to call a pay phone outside the Safeway. (I'm presuming all of my readers are old enough to know what a pay phone is, and understand why calling it randomly would be considered a fun thing to do during summer break in a small town). I think a couple of harried adults answered and hung up before we hit the jackpot with a couple of boys from our high school; we immediately became spectacular improv artists weaving elaborate storylines for ourselves: a couple of hot 18-year old girls from Las Vegas visiting our cousin. The details were embarrassingly, painfully silly and unbelievable but we had a captive, willing audience.

Fast forward to weeks later, after we've called these boys many times at their homes to talk about increasingly outrageous nonsense while somehow never being able to meet up with them in person, and school is starting so the Las Vegas girls have to return home. We promise to call again though, and that's when things become actually terrible - we notice in the halls what these guys wear then claim to have had a dream about them in those outfits, or we remark on something someone at our [pretend] school said or did, which happened to have been exactly what we saw one of our boys did that week.

Finally, because I wasn't a mean girl at heart, I decided we should stop. But also, we needed to tell them the truth. My reasoning, I (think) I remember very clearly, was that they would be confused & sad if the Las Vegas girls just stopped calling them. Somehow it seemed better in my mind to expose their utter gullibility face-to-face. To be fair to young stupid me, I saw myself as the bad guy in this scenario and thought of the reveal as more of a confession (and absolution, of course) of my crime. Regardless, I told "my" guy during a slow dance at school and he laughed. Again, young stupid me considered this a good sign - I actually wrote in my journal that I thought we were going on a date shortly after that, though I'm pretty sure he never spoke directly to me again. And for the last five years, he has not accepted my friend request on Facebook.

But here is the thing that makes me doubt my recollections: I finally found someone to tell him hello for me and mention I was sorry; my theory, based on my finally realizing that the 30-years-ago confession was more a humiliation than a relief, was that he thought I was a horrible person unworthy of being his friend, even in cyberspace, but if he knew I was apologetic we could move on - yet he told that person he has no idea who I am. No idea. Now, I know this thing actually happened because a) a friend was involved and can back me up plus b) I wrote about it in my journal and by God, that thing is full of unsettling true things. It stuns me that someone, like my 6th grade acquaintance, will have a completely opposite memory of a situation and I don't understand why.

However, again as a result of good counseling sessions, I am letting it all go. We with opposing memories will just have to forever agree to disagree. 

Maybe. (Is this a male/female thing? An age issue?)

Probably not. (Why does this matter so much to me??)

I guess I need a few more counseling sessions.

things we forget to remember

I went to my 30th high school reunion this past weekend, and I not only loved every minute of it but I've looked forward to it, and all of my reunions, for years. Somehow I had a childhood that left me unscathed and even happy, and I still enjoy being around the people I grew up with.

Because I am one of the planners (of course) and a huge fan of the Mortified concept, I decided to read some excerpts from my 1985-86 journal. I mainly thought it would be a funny addition to the evening but the more time I spent reading & choosing selections, the more I realized how significant those [insanely embarrassing] reflections really are.

To begin with, the picture I've kept in my mind of my teenage self did not match the voice I heard when I was reading through the journal. It seems strange that I would see myself so differently considering I literally am the person who wrote those things. Many times we will create a version of ourselves that is better than what we are/were but in a way, I've been remembering a Teen Me that was much less confident and more timid than what I presented on those pages three decades ago. Some of it is cringy to Adult Me - the unnerving, lengthy explanation of how I named a teddy bear after Prince, my Canadian boyfriend, and his best friend who I also thought was cute - but a lot of it makes me nod proudly for the moxie I had, at least on paper. Alone. In my bedroom with the door barricaded against parents who never knocked before entering.

Of course there is the obvious connection between my life today, full of Potential Second Husbands - though I didn't call them that then - and the constant celebrity crushes I wrote about: Many were completely understandable like Matt Dillon, Richard Gere, and Andrew McCarthy (who I mentioned at least 4 times in the 18 months of this particular journal, one time in detail as the basis for my fantasy future son's personality) but some were unexpected and intense (Phil Collins, Martin Short...??) or obscure: "I do like Carlo Imperato from FAME very much - yes. And I still feel weak when I listen to Friday Night." Props to Teen Me though - that performance is pretty hot [for 1982].

However, there are dozens - not an exaggeration - of entries featuring boys from school whom I now have no memory of being interested in.

• An excited note remarking on what an upperclassman wrote in my yearbook, which I revisited last week and found hardly eyebrow-raising at age 47. 
• The 4-page entry I read at my reunion that describes multi-day encounters (I'm avoiding the word 'stalking' as it has a deservedly negative connotation) with an underclassman I've literally never spoken a paragraph to, before or after that time. And I know this to be fact, not just an effect of my apparently-faulty memory, because I certainly would have written an all caps, exclamation point-filled follow-up, right? Nothing; I moved almost immediately on to other boys, most of whom were also eventual nonentities in my real life.

I've been trying to figure out what this all means. Maybe nothing; teenage brains are mercifully wired to dismiss a lot of once-monumental information in order to make room for more useful adult details like who will make a trustworthy partner, when rent is due, which vodka is actually good, and how to stay alive in general.

It is probably a good thing that we don't remember all of the things that happened to us in high school, when many of us were so rabidly insecure that we behaved like lunatics, spending half our time desperately trying to be noticed and the other half hoping to not stand out. But I do think that being able to revisit these times is useful in that it resurrects a person you didn't know you were, someone you might actually be proud of, so you can reevaluate who you think you are now and maybe even better understand other people. Reading about times I was nervous but rallied and cheered myself on makes me appreciate Teen Me better, which reminds me to like Adult Me more and stop second-guessing my skills, and praise myself for doing the things I'm afraid to. If I can do this for myself, I should do it for others more often.

I mean, after all, they might really love "Sussidio" too, and that's okay.

mom of bad mom, revised

I wrote most of this for my mom's birthday a few years ago. Today I revisited & revised it thinking I might share at her retirement party, but we were laughing too much about this woman's shenanigans as lunch lady for 31 years for me to step in and squelch the mood with a Hallmark moment.
Yet I still want to put it out there, because she is pretty kickass and deserves the recognition.
________________

She's been a young mother, a single mother, a drag racing & dating mother, a working mother, a mother of two, a second mother to many, a mother-in-law, a grandmother.


We've done a lot of things differently through the years - I never did drag race anyone... - but I have never doubted the influence of my mom's example as a brave & decent woman.


My mom taught me
family is important, even if they can be embarrassing and exasperating at times.
My mom taught me
we help people whenever & however we are able.
My mom taught me
quality is key, in work + play:
we mowed lawns like John Deere and colored like Van Gogh.
My mom taught me
it's best to let go of things sometimes.
But when I say 'things' I mean hurt feelings and bad memories, because...
My mom also taught me
garage sales & thrift stores are far more marvelous than the mall.
My mom taught me
napping is allowed.
My mom taught me
ice cream is a food group and we should eat it often.

And my mom taught me
if something is valuable to my child,
it should be valuable to me.
There is a difference between time spent
and time invested.

My mom is extraordinarily full of kindness. I'm proud of all that she has accomplished in her life with astonishing graciousness. She's even managed to stay devoted to the Seahawks despite 40 years of relentless Cowboys fanhood by her husband & first born. I'm actually beginning to think she has willed the switch in talent between the two teams...

I should say it more often but again, my mom is one sharp, capable woman so I think she knows how awesome I believe she is.

My mom (plus me)
July 1968

upon finding myself unplugged for an hour

Written on scratch paper at Powell's in Portland, Oregon this morning while my phone was being repaired 
________________________________________

I watched a woman in an SUV waiting at the light on 11th Avenue.
I thought she was zoning out like we all do at stoplights, her face expressionless. She could have been sleeping upright behind the steering wheel, with her eyes open. But then, I saw her lips pull down, her cheeks crumpled. I wondered then if she was lost in thoughts about someone - someone she broke up with or was considering breaking up with, or someone who had died. I know how that face feels.

I kept watching (it was a really long light) and saw her eyes brighten then, lips slipped into a half-smile. Maybe she was listening to a sad song on the radio then a happier one started. Or maybe she's listening to an audio book, I thought. Once I borrowed a cassette reading of The Phantom of the Opera for my long drive home from college. When I pulled off the highway for gas after a couple hundred miles, I couldn't remember passing any of the familiar landmarks; my shoulders were tense and my jaw tight from hours of being trapped in that story. The attendant must have thought me strange, a sleepwalker emerging from my car.

something far away

The second time I visited Singapore, in 2006, I flew alone the twentysomething hours to meet with my husband who had been there for a week already, working. I had plans for our time together - botanical gardens, night art festival, tour of Christmas lights, visiting an old Catholic convent and Snow City, lots of eating & drinking & taking probiotics. We did all of those things, and they were wonderfully memorable (partly because of how much we sweated through every outing). But like with most vacations, the mundane can become the sublime, too, if you're paying attention. 

I wanted to wash some clothes during our stay and after an hour-long adventure in miscommunications with the hotel staff - plus one confusing trip to a restricted area - I realized there was actually no place in the building where I was allowed to do it on my own, and the hotel service would cost somewhere in the realm of the US national debt. So Stu & I took a cab with our two bags of sweat-soaked garments to the mall and handed them to the old woman at Washy Washy, an even hotter place than the sidewalk outside, where the only area not taken over by clothing was our space at the counter. It felt a little scary considering I had only the outfit I was wearing and maybe one more left in my suitcase at the hotel, but my husband had had good luck here the week before. The old woman smiled & nodded at Stu like they were old friends as she grabbed our bags, pulled at a few items on top, then tossed them to a corner full of other bags, shouting in less-smiley Chinese to a worker.  We had to prepay our 22SGD, which was so significantly cheaper than the hotel rate that I once more doubted I'd see my clothes again. 

We had lunch at the Hard Rock Café (because, Americans) then shopped along the main road. I considered replacing all of the clothing I'd just handed over to Washy Washy but settled on just one Esprit shirt and a cute long denim skirt that ended up being very difficult to walk in. 

I'm pretty sure I slept fitfully that night, worrying about whether I'd get my clothes back, if they'd be wearable (I had a feeling no one was looking at labels about dryer heat recommendations), if I would have to spend my teacher pay on a new wardrobe. But when we returned to the launderer, the old woman smiled & nodded in recognition and went right to our bags. Everything inside was clean and folded with care, nothing was missing or misshapen or shrunken; in my relief, I left an embarrassing tip. 

I tried many times to toss out the receipt for our laundry but something kept it in my wallet. Every time I saw it, I remembered how much I loved Singapore (despite the breathtaking heat) and I felt accomplished somehow. I felt like an adventurer, finding a way to get something done without taking the easier, expensive, tourist way. I realized later no one at Washy Washy had spoken English, yet we did great business together. 

I hope I can go back someday. 

yellow, for sam

This print belonged to my mother-in-law. After she died I decided I would like to have it, not realizing until I brought it home that it exactly matched the walls of our bedroom. I keep it above my nightstand and think of her every morning & night.

Sam championed just about everything I did - after not killing her son with my reckless driving out of the dorm parking lot where she stood meekly waving goodbye one sunny Pullman afternoon in 1989. She did not like it when I considered myself not good/smart/capable enough so she often praised my sense of style, my decorating skills, my writing, my teaching, and later my mothering. It took awhile for me to believe her but then I realized, she was not a woman who wasted time or energy with lies. Whenever I start to feel not good or smart or capable enough, I remember Sam's earnest face and I can hear voice telling me to just get moving. Try. Stop wasting time. 

Spirit. 

oxo

lucky? or, in the presence of decent humans

This morning I stood next to my 14-year old daughter in the kitchen. She blithely dismantled a pomegranate while I read the Rolling Stone article about campus rape. Every few paragraphs I reached out to stroke her back and hair, grounding her here in her footie pajamas and innocent teen girl bedhead. I wondered if my own mother ever worried like this about what might happen to me at college; we never talked about boys, really, much less what kinds of situations I could find myself in with them. I considered what kind of conversations I should have with my daughter now.

Of course there is the "Avoid ____________________" [fill in the blank with sketchy scenarios like Frat Parties, Secluded Areas, or Anyplace After Dark] mantra repeated to girls whenever they are sent out into the world. This seems like common sense for an intelligent person, which my daughter has shown herself to be. But I was (am) an intelligent person, and I found myself in these scenarios during my years at Washington State University. Often. Even (especially) when drunk and sometimes (frequently) alone. And I was never sexually assaulted. According to the statistics, 1 in 5 women will be at some point in their lives and according to some points of view, it is more likely to happen when a woman places herself in those sketchy scenarios that most with so-called common sense avoid.

So what kind of an example can I provide? Was I just a lucky idiot?

Maybe yes - because I should take responsibility for my actions, and if I were to fall off of a cliff because I stepped too close to the edge, no one would blame the rocks for slipping out from under me.

But more emphatically no - because rocks are not sentient beings deciding to slide under my foolishly placed feet to teach me a lesson. People who deliberately take advantage of others - whether or not they walked into ill-advised situations - are jerks at best. At worst, they are never ending nightmares.

I specifically remember two encounters from my freshman year at WSU that I have shared with my daughter - and my son too because, according to those damned statistics again, he will likely find himself positioned to either participate in or stop an assault during his lifetime. During the telling I fully admit that I made poor choices - underage drinking, getting separated from friends, walking alone in the dark. But I also point out the people I remember who chose to help me instead of harming me.

At a fraternity party, I innocently followed a polite young man into the basement to see their house dog. There really was a dog in the basement, and I petted his sweet head for at least 10 minutes of meandering small talk before realizing Polite Young Man had slowly moved his face to within an inch of mine. When I turned toward him, this boy I'd known for about 20 minutes, I immediately felt sick and told him so. Polite Young Man backed off and escorted me to the bathroom.

At another party, I could not find my friends after a couple hours of drinking and was being followed around by a mammoth guy, who was undeterred when I explained my type was a more wiry, funny nerd. I finally ditched him and wandered through a surprisingly dark number of blocks before stumbling into the parking lot by my dorm. I realized then that I had no key and no way to contact my roommate. As I considered my very bleak options, I realized someone I knew was listening to Paul Simon in his car nearby. I knocked on his window and waved; he was an upperclassman from the men's dorm next to mine. He waved, turned down the radio, reached across to open the passenger door for me. I told him my situation and he said he would let me stay in his room for the night. We listened to the rest of the songs on the tape before Nice Guy led me to his room, put out a blanket and pillow on his bed, then woke up his neighbor so he could sleep there and give me privacy. "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" always reminds me of Nice Guy and that safe feeling I had after making a series of stupid decisions one night.

We can shake our heads now, almost 30 years later, at my naïveté or what my kids perceive as my inherent "confident/scary" demeanor but the simple fact of the matter is this : in those scenarios, the men around me decided to behave like decent people. Of course they had hormonal desires, most certainly they considered at least for a moment what they could do to me for their own gratification. But they also overrode those desires and chose to see me as a fellow human who needed help, and they understood that meant more than satisfying urges.

I don't like thinking of myself as "lucky" to have avoided sexual assaults in college. Saying I was "lucky" promotes the idea that most men simply cannot control themselves in the presence of a vulnerable woman. Or it might tempt people to believe the men in my situations were gay, excusing them from the overwhelming impulses of heterosexual males. This is all nonsense - just like discussing what a person is wearing when attacked. Luck should have nothing to do with it.

I hope I am teaching my children to be smart in the world, to make safe choices. But we all make foolish decisions, for a variety of reasons, and nothing should excuse us from decent behavior toward each other. Otherwise we are all just as dumb as rocks.

fifth draft

This week in my Teacher As Writer workshop, which has been a million fucking times more difficult and emotional and exhausting and interesting and valuable than I expected, we wrote [and rewrote and rewrote] a Personal Narrative. I am posting here what I will take to professional writers for feedback tomorrow, which when I think about it (like I just did there, typing that sentence) makes me feel like throwing up. But it'll be cool, I'm sure. It's only my guts on a page.

Feel free to give me your thoughts, too. Gently, though, please.
__________________________________________

Expert

I spend the day pretending not to feel contractions. One cinches my stomach, a yanked seatbelt feeling, as I navigate Portland’s noon traffic. I grimace and turn up the radio, smile dumbly at passing drivers. At home I reread the chapter in my pregnancy manual about false labor, eat a sandwich, rub my belly.

Later, I watch Monday Night Football and compare the slamming linebackers to this tiny human tackling my internal organs. I groan, poke a heel from under my ribs. I wander to the computer room, move a stack of papers from one shelf to another, return to the game. When my husband comes in, I mention the contractions. His eyes narrow, he counts the days to our due date, but I repeat facts from the manual. He nods, convinced, and we go to bed.

I cannot sleep. The baby gyroscopes whenever I adjust my body, creating a brisk countermovement. I try to lie still, stare at the ceiling, but even my breathing inspires him to reorient with each exhalation. My husband asks if everything is okay. Yes, I growl, I’m fine.

I sit up, click on the light and lean for a book on my nightstand. The baby rolls like a child’s bowling ball bumpering down its lane. My eyes skim over words mechanically until a stab across my abdomen snatches my breath. I hiss through my teeth expertly, a skill learned in childbirth class. When the pain passes, I wait with teeth bared for the next. I turn pages until it attacks, slashing harder than the others. My husband opens an eye. What is going on? he mumbles. I've got this, I say, hissing.

I slouch out of bed, the baby a giant roiling marble under my skin, and shuffle toward the stairs. I consider them but decide instead to move papers in the computer room again until another mean squeeze stops me. I lean against the wall, stare at the clock. Eight minutes tick away before the next contraction. Like my husband earlier, I recount the number of days left.

I run a bath and heave into steaming water. My husband opens the door, peers into the bright bathroom. What, he pauses, staring, are you doing? One leg contorts over the edge of the tub, I hold a razor in my left hand. He blinks. Should I call? I glance at the clock - almost 4 a.m. - press my lips to a white line. Another contraction. Hissssss. Okay. I twist back to my stubble, concentrating. Razor steady, I shave both legs.

We negotiate construction zones and tighter, faster contractions. At the hospital, a crowd of medical students surrounds us, fixes me with a paper gown, monitors, probes, punctures. Carefully packed suitcase abandoned. A beeping heartbeat quickens then slows. I sink to hands and knees, slide a clipboard placed on my right across the bed so I can sign the release. Husband? I can see only unfamiliar eyes alert and tense under so many masks. I lie down, wait, breathe, one last hiss. Then there is my husband, changed into sterile clothes, eyes wide and ready under his mask. He holds my hand as we roll to the operating room.

sisterhood

In the beginning, I was an only child. And it was good.

Or so I thought, because I was a spoiled, self-centered, sassy almost-9-year old.

 

July 1977

 

Then my parents apparently DID IT and suddenly I had a baby sister. Luckily they let me name her, which made this intruder seem more like a beloved pet that I could welcome into my teeny tiny single-wide trailer space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before she could walk very fast and get into my piles of preteen stuff, I thought Michelle was pretty cool. And, of course, she thought I was AMAZING. This is always endearing.

 

 

 

Because Michelle is a Cancer and therefore extremely loyal to family, I was able to convince her to do anything I wanted. (For example, not remark about how horrid my hair looked in 1981). Also endearing.

 

But I did play Barbies all the time, giving important fashion & relationship advice and even made her some awesome records for their décor using the little album cover pictures from Rolling Stone magazine reviews glued to 2-inch-square cardboard pieces.

 

However, I also took a sweet little copper pot to college because I really liked it, then insisted it was never really hers and I deserved it anyway for making the albums. I found a similar one in an Amsterdam antique store five years ago and bought it for her. See, LOVE! After deception...Still counts, right?

 

 

 

Eventually we became actual friends. I don't tell her what to do anymore (except when I make her do fun things instead of boring obligatory things). I sometimes still make stuff for her and I no longer steal her possessions. I definitely love her with all of my formerly selfish-girl heart.

 

It is not lost on me that my daughter, also a Cancer, shares an uncanny number of traits with my sister. They are both wary of strangers. They suffer no fools. They have scowls that trump mine, yet they are inordinately kind when it is most important. They seek solitude with each other. And that, is good.

 

Happy birthday, baby sister.  

thankful: roots

A rerun for Thanksgiving

My first family - the one with my mom & dad & sister - doesn't read my blog much ever, which is fine. Sometimes the voice I use and the things I say are not likely part of their vision of me; I know I still feel mildly shocked when my baby sister talks about drinking (she's in her 30s) and I certainly get edgy if my parents remotely reference the fact that they do it. So it's cool that we have some separateness.

But I still need to acknowledge how grateful I am for their presence in my world, even if that presence is 6 hours of driving (and no simple plane or train ride) away. And that I miss them when we go long stretches without visits.

My favorite things to think about from my original family life:

• the way my mom can smell a bargain from 80 miles away and will not only seek it out for herself but also for friends & relatives (or friends & relatives of friends & relatives) who might be interested
• the way my dad keeps himself from telling me to shut up during the game when I have some piece of trivia about a football player, and that he still always wants to watch with me anyway
• the way my sister rolls her eyes if I start bantering with a store clerk I've never met, and the way she threatens to leave me behind if I don't stop talking TO A STRANGER (but she never does leave)
• our house on Whidbey Island, which is in the same spot and contains the same odd, short, makes-you-trip-when-you-run-on-it staircase as when it was built more than three decades ago, even though the entire downstairs is completely remodeled, and smells like dryer sheets & good food & my mom's hard work
• our garage, which houses dozens of boxes of my extremely embarrassing notes from junior high and Fisher-Price Little People (the ones that would spontaneously choke unsuspecting American children today), and smells like gasoline & oil & my dad's patience with me
• our driveway, which used to lead to my grandparents' house across the way (I could run there in 14 seconds; I timed myself once when the big light in the center was out and I had to get something from my grandma after dark)
• the cozy warmth when we light the wood stove then pull out old blankets and sit together, in front of the TV with ice cream

Young Bad Mom with the Good Dad who took her on all the scary rollercoasters

My beautiful baby sister, my beautiful mom, and me

18/365 "joy"

Grandma's recipe
With some chocolate chips thrown in
Still tastes just like love

wait a minute

When I was pregnant with my son, I decided I would no longer say "I can't wait." After the hundredth person remarked "I bet you can't wait for that baby to be born!" I realized that was not necessarily true. Of course I was excited to have my child out in the world with me, but I also genuinely relished my time before he arrived - feeling a human growing & grooving inside my body, appreciating all of the enhanced sensory experiences that came with hormones in overdrive, enjoying multiple naps every day, looking forward to meeting this person no one else knew yet savoring those final days of simple couplehood with my husband. I felt like if I gave in to the "I can't wait!" mindset, I would be cheating the now out of its potential for specialness, and maybe even exaggerating the specialness of what was coming, making it anticlimatic. That was the beginning of my commitment to mindfulness.

Since then, if I catch myself saying or even thinking "I can't wait until...," I will stop and look around. Sometimes it seems perfectly justified - in the midst of a mammogram or pap smear, for example, or during hot f*cking yoga. But for the most part, I want to keep reminding myself that life is indeed short and we don't get many do-overs. Things can change in the proverbial blink of an eye, or if we're not paying attention to even the most seemingly mundane moments, passing years can start to feel like the blink of an eye.

Obviously I have known that my daughter was starting middle school today, but what I forgot about was the fact that no one would be watching for me to wave at the bus anymore, because instead of it rolling past the house, it picked up on the corner down the street (and also because, GAH, MOM, we're in MIDDLE SCHOOL). Since my son started kindergarten and through my daughter's 5th grade year, I have had the privilege of being home most mornings when the elementary bus came by; I always waved from the porch, the front door, or my bedroom window (depending on my state of readiness for the day) but every time I had a kid or two peering out of a sweaty window, waving back. This morning I drove by their bus stop, ready to not make a spectacle and embarrass my preteens with a sappy mom display but secretly hoping there might be some tiny acknowledgement.

Both of my big kids waved from the midst of a gangly crowd and yelled "BYE MOM!"

I did not blink.

love life

Yesterday was my 43rd birthday, though not many people were aware as I tend to be pretty secretive about these things.


So anyway.

I realize a lot of people might think it outrageously vain of me to celebrate my birthday with such abandon for [at least] a month. However, there is a clear reason I was born barely after the end of Leo on the zodiac, people - a portion of me really likes being noticed/pampered/applauded/worshipped. Repeatedly.

As an adult, I have decided to embrace most everything about me because the alternative seems sad and boring, for everyone. And, aside from my paralyzing moments of perfectionism, I enjoy trying new things & meeting new people & going different places as much as possible. But this is certainly not how I lived my childhood. Okay, maybe I was always smiling biggest and sitting in front of everyone else in every photo through 1981. Whatever.

In my memories of myself throughout junior high & high school, I was mousey and quiet and didn't make much of an impression. I can specifically remember wishing I were more outgoing, prettier, more fashionable, funnier - but I also specifically recall not speaking up in classes, being inordinately distracted by the state of my hair or the details on my jeans, and keeping my best comedy for only a few close friends. There is a part of me that regrets being afraid to live out loud then, but I am trying not to lament this because there is nothing I can do about it now. I just try to be a confident lover of life and beseech my children & students to please notice/sit by/talk to every one of their classmates at least once, just to be sure they are not overlooking some amazing individual because of that person's insecurity or shyness.

It has been a particular delight getting back in touch with my former classmates at reunions. Some of them have revealed startling facts about my young self - they thought I was funny, that I did have style, that they were certain I must have been part of the popular crowd. But more than these belated compliments, I am overjoyed to watch my own daughter - entering middle school in seven days - be what I always hoped to be. She boldly wears plaid shorts & striped shirts, knee-high zippered sneakers, headbands with giant flowers. My girl kicks ass in track without a thought about her hair and she is the first of her friends to say "Hey" to boys in the hall. When I remark that I'm proud she is willing to do what she wants without worrying about what people think, she gives me a furrowed brow and sideways look as if to say, "Why wouldn't I?"

Exactly.

stuff & nonsense

Because I'm pretending I have nothing else to do that matters, I have been surfing YouTube and Wikipedia for 80s music trivia. I have found some relatively fascinating items that I am willing to share with you, so you may actually be available for your family & friends instead of glued to a computer screen for two hours.

First, I finally looked up Aztec Camera after years of wondering why Fountains of Wayne seemed so enamored by them. Now I AM IN LOVE with a cute boy from 25 years ago (which is not at all unexpected, really). Must see:

That little nugget led me to look up sweet Roddy Frame to see what he's up to now (in case he's living in my neighborhood, volunteering at our PTA) and found out he performed with Mick Jones of The Clash. Then I found this treasure:

I will now be keeping my eyes & ears open for a repeat of that kind of event when we head to London this summer; I promise not to be the YEAH MAN! fan in the crowd.

Perusing Mick Jones's bio, I noticed he was briefly with the band General Public; I have always confused General Public with English Beat and wondered why as their names are clearly quite different. But guess what I found out in only 80 minutes of mindless web surfing?? The main singers are the same people! How did I miss this great big DUH? Seriously, I've heard & adored their songs since I was in junior high and just now made this discovery. It's like only recently realizing that the hottie cop in 21 Jump Street is the same guy who plays Captain Jack Sparrow! OMG!

Here, marvel over my dumbfounding inability to put these two together - the song Tenderness (which won't embed for some reason, sorry) and Save It For Later:

I am, however, relieved to know that no one from Modern English is associated with English Beat (because I would mix them up, too). Nor do they have anything to do with Fountains of Wayne, Aztec Camera, or Mick Jones, though the lead singer does look a little like a Clash wannabe.

Time for me to stop the world and melt.

memory, loss

It's strange to me how we sometimes hold on to childhood memories as though they are absolute truths.

I reconnected with a classmate from 6th grade last year, and the first thing I thought of was how his desk was dumped nearly every week for being messy. That has been stuck in my mind for 30 years - the image of this shy kid sitting next to me with his desk crammed full of crumpled papers, resignedly waiting for our teacher to walk down the aisle and tip everything out; I was traumatized by this and certain he had been, too. Yet when I e-mailed John and relayed my story, he didn't recall any such travesty. In fact, he went on about how much he liked our 6th grade teacher because he was an outdoorsman and encouraged my classmate in running & hiking. Of course, I specifically did not like our 6th grade teacher for that reason (Run? Hike? I don't get it.) AND because he would humiliate (so I believed) kids for their lack of organizational skills. Not to mention he was so into nutrition that he called to chastise my mom when I said I had a Pop-Tart and orange juice for breakfast most mornings. The audacity, I'm sure.

Mr. Kloke died last month while rock climbing. My friend from 6th grade - the one who remembered that year far differently, and more fondly, than I did - had gotten in touch with him over the summer and encouraged me to do the same. But I couldn't shake those perceptions from my silly 11-year-old self and put it off, and now it's too late.

Clearly Mr. Kloke was not hurt by my ignorance - he passionately lived a full, adventurous life - but I am.

now like then

When I was growing up, I remember wanting to be four things: a mom, a teacher, a psychologist, and an advertising copywriter.

I see my little self taking care of our beloved wiry, ratty terrier Elly May, though "taking care of" meant to me running around with in the weeds, letting her tug on and tear tiny holes in my jacket sleeves, and inspiring her to howl on our trailer porch while I played my shrill recorder at 1000 decibels. When she was hit by a car [not on my watch, for the record], my (s)mothering attentions turned to my baby sister whom I doted on until she was old enough to open the door to my room and mess with my books & records.

I recall the numerous times I set up a classroom of stuffed animals & dolls - everyone in neat rows facing my propped-up garage sale chalkboard - and carefully called roll, pausing to wait for imaginary responses. My grandpa gave me old ledgers from his wrecking yard business that I used for recording class lists and assignments; my uncle gave me old worksheets from his teaching days that I kept in a briefcase and 'corrected' with a red pencil. When my younger cousin was around and later when my sister was old enough, I volunteered them to be my real-live students. We (I) loved every minute of playing School.

I envision my serious face as I studied stacks of teen-girl magazines, applying my rudimentary understanding of subliminal messages and reverse psychology and propaganda tactics. I was determined to resist the pull of Popular Fashion, at least in the sense that I would not be consumed by it; I attempted edgy style with fake military medals on my denim jacket, I bought EPs of The Cult and The Smiths, and I joined Amnesty International. Though I still secretly wanted Normandy Rose jeans, leather Nikes, and hair that could hold a decent curl, if only for just one day.

I revisit the solid certainty I felt in my whole 19-year-old being as I solemnly watched thirtysomething every week, vowing I would become one of those smart, hip adults with smart, hip friends and a smart, hip career. I would design advertisements with a conscience, I would lead people to make intelligent choices, I would change the world for the better. I would be real.

And now, I am a mother not of a wily canine but of two wondrous children; occasionally I run through weeds with them and let them rip things for fun; I've also been known to lock them out of my room, but they do have their own books to mess with.

Now I set up desks in not-so-straight (yet always orderly) rows and real students make up my class lists, but I never use red pencils. I (we) love most minutes of School.

Now I am pretty confident in my analysis of advertising, even when I succumb to its nefarious ploys and buy things I know I don't need. Yet I am never too proud to find my fashions & furnishings at garage sales and thrift stores, in fact I am a zealot about recycling, reusing, and repurposing.  My life is nothing if not conscientious; I am all about changing the world for the better whenever I can. Which leads to my final youthful aspiration - to be smart and hip, with smart, hip friends and a smart, hip career.

Done, done, and done, if I do say so myself.

And I feel real.

mail call

I find few things in ordinary life more disappointing than a mailbox full of nothing worthwhile. It's worse than an empty mailbox, frankly - at least then I can pretend the mail has not yet come, or the postal workers fell behind and didn't get my stuff together in time for the truck today.

This afternoon there was a small promising pile of letters in my box that I pulled out expectantly, but by the time I crossed the street to my house it was clear not a single item was remotely useful or even interesting (sometimes I get a Nordstrom catalog full of crazy things like $395 lime green watches but at least I can use that for a collage, or short fiction about insane people). Everything today was so uninspiring that I cannot even come up with amusing ways to make fun for this post.

I think my need for Mail of Substance comes from my childhood. When I was growing up in the boonies on Whidbey Island, our mailbox was at the end of a winding gravel driveway and across the road, so checking the mail was something of a production - shoes were required for sure, usually a jacket because we were only a mile from chilly Puget Sound, sometimes gloves. If I got out there and found nothing or worse, it felt like wasted energy. (Maybe my anti-exercise stance started here, too). Sometimes I was surprised & sated with a glimpse of rabbits or deer hiding in the woods behind the mailbox or a family of nervous quail skittering across the road, but usually I sullenly kicked rocks all the way back to the house with my handful of boring bills.

One would think that with this kind of outlook, I would be better at sending cards & letters to brighten other people's mailboxes. I wish. As my OCD has worsened, I get stuck at the start - I find something perfect for someone but then don't have an address or I need different stationery or must find time to decorate the envelope/box just right or need to buy stamps or have to go the post office or...ack.

A resolution for the summer: Set up a simple, accessible, no-obsessing-allowed mailing station and plan a weekly trip to the post office so I can/will send fun, worthwhile notes & parcels to my favorite people. That could be you; watch your mailbox.