May Reads

Reading has always been my escape, well, as long as I can remember anyway. But like a lot of readers I've talked to recently, falling into a story has been harder than usual for me during quarantine. 

That got worse here at the end of May with police violence leading to protests that became riots. My low-level restless anxiety and imagination full of what-ifs whipped into something larger and harder to ignore. I know a lot of creatives are struggling similarly, with creation as well as consumption of art. I'm managing slow forward progress on my writing still, and am hopeful I can pick up my pace again when the school year ends here in a couple of weeks. 

Despite my struggles, I still read eight books in May, and I really liked six of them. 

I read three books written by friends and colleagues: Gidion's Hunt by Bill Blume, Chasing the Dragon: A Sherlock Holmes Romantic Mystery by Alexandra Christian, and The Reckoning by DM Taylor. 

I've read other books by Alexandra, and I know from being there for some of her readings that her work is clever, sexy, and spiked with humor. Chasing the Dragon: A Sherlock Holmes Romantic Mystery was no exception. Her imagined love story for Sherlock Holmes plays beautifully in the known world of those stories while bringing Alexandra's strengths into play. I hope she writes more in this universe! 

Bill and I have been on panels together at conventions for a few years now, but I hadn't yet read any of his work. Gidion's Hunt  was sweet in a wholesome sort of way, especially considering that it's a story about a teenaged vampire hunter. I loved the family relationships and it looks like Bill has a great foundation for future books in the series in this first volume. 

DM Taylor is a writer I know from Instagram. The Reckoning is a time travel thriller with elements of women's fiction. I enjoyed it quite a bit! It took me a little longer to read this one because I read it as a Kindle edition, and I'm suffering from screen-time overload right now, which is making me prefer paper and audiobook reading to ebooks. 

I also read three graphic novels this month. Graphic novels can be read quickly, often in a single sitting, and the combination of art with narrative really works to suck me in when my attention is scattered. The Sixth Gun, Volume 3: Bound really pleased me. I read the first two in this series last month and loved the way this volume took the focus to Gord and deepened his backstory. I'm looking forward to reading more in this series!

Newprints and Endgames by Ru Xu were passed my way by my thirteen-year-old daughter who loved them. She's a huge fan of Blue, the main character, and I can see why--she's so forthright, scrappy, and determined. Unfortunately, the storytelling disappointed me in that the narration pulled back from hard emotional moments, avoiding conflict that the story really needed. 

The second volume in particular felt rushed, like two books worth of story had been crammed into only one. Still, it evokes a Little Orphan Annie feel in a wonderful steampunk setting and there's a lot to recommend them, especially to younger readers. 

My last two reads were disappointments. I'd been looking forward to reading The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. I loved the cover and the premise of a secret society surrounding story and books intrigued me. I had positive memories of The Night Circus, so thought I might enjoy another book by the same author, but it really just didn't grab me at all. All atmosphere (gorgeous, beautifully rendered atmosphere) and no substance. Too light on plot and characterization to keep me, especially under current circumstances. 

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse was my First Monday Classics Book Club choice for the month and it was a slog for me. I kind of had a feeling it was going to be, just remembering the kinds of people who touted its praises back in my undergrad years--almost exclusively entitled young men I didn't like all that much. But, still, I tried to go in without bias and give it a go. 

I found some beauty and insight in the text, but was left with the overall yucky feeling that I get from reading literary representations of male academics having midlife crises which they overcome by having affairs with far younger women. 

There's nothing for me in a story like that. I can't sympathize with the main character, and often can't sympathize with the young woman either because she's a manic pixie dream girl or a complete cypher. Maybe this one was the first novel of this type? I don't know. But it didn't feel innovative or interesting. I've seen this story many times and it's irritated me every time. 

Luckily I'm finishing May in the middle of two good books I'll tell you about in June: Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey and The Haunting of the Tenth Avenue Theater by Alex Matsuo. 

What did you read in May? What's next on your list? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. 

Sending my Baby to College

My eldest daughter is a senior in high school. Almost eighteen. Almost a college student.

She's nearly as freaked out about that as I am. It's exciting and scary all at once.

We've got one more semester with her at home and then shoom! off she goes.

We've been smart about this "leaving the nest" thing in some ways: we visited colleges last year, she's had a checking account for a couple of years now, we met the application deadlines, she has a good amount of driving experience, she's holding down a job and still making good grades, she can cook something besides peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We must have done okay, because she got accepted where she wants to go and we're already seeing some scholarship love.

In other ways, it feels like I'm running out of time to make sure she's ready. I've never made enough money to have significant savings, and I'm out of time now to put aside dollars for her schooling. We're just going to have to figure out how to make it work with what we have. She's never really done her own laundry. Will she go to bed at all if I'm not there to tell her that she has to stop and get some rest?

The oddest feeling, after planning for her to go to college her whole life, is wishing she just wouldn't go. Maybe that's the part people mean when they talk about "empty nest." My nest will hardly be empty. I have a younger daughter, a husband, and a very needy rescue dog, plus 150 or students each semester. Plenty of folks to take care of.

But still, I won't be taking of her, at least not in that day to day basis kind of way.

And it's like:

I know she'll love college. I remember how much I did. It's a wonderful opportunity, having four years to focus on what you love and learn how to make that into a way of making a living. Four years of having your mind and world expanded daily. She'll be awesome. She was made for this. 

Yeah. She's ready. 

I'm just not sure I am. 

Teachers are Superheroes

Ah, another year over and what have you done? Well, I completed my twenty-first year as a teacher, and, is often the case when I'm finishing a school year, I've got mixed feelings about the sustainability of this as a career choice.

While I watched students take state and federally mandated tests for days on end and tried not to the let the rage and heartache of all that wasted energy eat me alive, I considered the idea that teachers are superheroes.

Now, I don't mean anything very touchy-feely by that, though, of course, we do change and save lives. But I'm at the cynical end of the year, and will need to spend summer recapturing my optimism and faith. Right now, I'm just thinking that you *have* to be a superhero to do this work.

There are so many similarities!

Teachers need secret identities. Remember that time you saw your second grade teacher at the grocery store and just about had a heart attack thinking that teachers might go shopping? There's also the way people FREAK OUT if it turns out that a teacher (who is old enough) drinks a beer in public, or is photographed wearing a bathing suit (at the beach) or cusses in a social media post.

It's changing, and is definitely better from the days when you couldn't teach if you had a husband and being a teacher was akin to being a cloistered nun in the public eye, but many of us still build a protective persona and keep our private life as separate from the work as possible. It's not quite a cool domino mask and a cape, but there is a whole separate me hidden from my work life.

It's a job, but it's also a calling. Just like being a superhero.

Teaching is also one of the few professions where people who have no qualifications, expertise, or experience beyond having attended school themselves feel free to pass judgment on how the job should be done. I try not to be bitter about this and dwell on the idea that this is because teaching, at least through high school, is a female-dominated field.

Like superheroes we are vilified or lauded in the press and public discourse with very little in between, and we are expected to do the job for very little material gain because we're supposed to have a nobler, higher calling (which apparently matters more than whether you are a college educated professional who qualifies for food stamps).

So, if get the vitriol and criticism of superheroes, do we get the powers? Here are some of the superpowers you need to handle this job.

Endurance: Depending on what's going on in your school building on any given day, you may have to go as many as six hours in a row without any kind of break--bathroom, food, coffee, silence, and personal time are for wimps! You also have to be "on" for six hours a day, responding with grace under serious pressure and dealing with every curve ball thrown your way.






Speed: Teachers in my building get 90 non-supervisory minutes a day (if you don't have any meetings

taking up that time) in which to prep 2-7 lessons (depending on your course load), complete any assessment and correspondence, research and collaborate with colleagues, eat and see to personal needs. I can get more done in 90 minutes than many people can do with an entire day.

Extra-sensory awareness: Alone in a room with 30 tweens? You'll need eyes in the back of your head AND a sixth sense for trouble. A little ability to foresee the future wouldn't hurt either. I'd stay away from mind-reading though. You *don't* want to know what they're thinking.







Bullet-proof flesh: Kids are mean. Adults are worse. You'll need that bulletproof flesh to protect you

from attacks of all kinds. (Sadly, some of these bullets are literal, but we'll keep the focus metaphorical for this blogpost).

Reflexes. Emergencies, real or imagined, abound in buildings full of children. A teacher has to be able to jump in with no preparation and build a functional airplane before we hit the ground, all while calming panicking people.

Flexibility. Make all the well-constructed lesson plans you want. They WILL change, usually at the last minute. Resources will fall through, disaster will strike. The wifi will fail.

Wealth. Okay, this one's a pipe dream, but you'll have to teach with fewer and fewer resources every year, because this country likes to SAY it values education, but if you go by where our dollars are spent, we value LOTS of things more highly than education. So, it would help to be independently wealthy, so you can afford to buy all the clothing, food, and school supplies your students come to school without. If I *were* Bruce Wayne or Oliver Queen, you can bet my students would be spoiled rotten with all the best equipment, trips, and experiences.

Nostalgia Nights: Rewatching Buffy

When my daughter was but a wee thing, and I was in recovery from a yucky medical experience, we watched the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series together. M was an unusually fierce child, and unfazed by monster makeup (only one monster on it ever scared little her: The Queller Demon). She loved that the main character was a pretty girl who kicked serious butt. She even had a special credits dance that involved a lot of arm flailing and acrobatic leaping. Luckily for her, I do not have video of that dance, but it lives in my memory with all my most joyous visions.

We've been re-watching the series this fall, now that she's all but grown (college in on our near horizon now). In the intervening years, we've watched an episode here and there and memorized the soundtrack to the musical episode, but we've never watched it all again. It's a double nostalgia treat for me, remembering and enjoying again both the series itself and the girls' night bonding of watching it with my girl. We're in Season 2 currently, and plan to watch the whole thing again.

Stuff we love this go round:

• Whedon dialogue. We're especially enjoying all the random musing on words. We're word nerds ourselves, so we also wonder why you can't be gruntled, but you can be disgruntled or if sore thumbs really stick out or why it's the "whole nine yards." Nine yards of what?

• Oz. He's our geeky, fully self-actualized dreamboat. Watching the romance build up with Willow is even better when you already know it's coming. "Who is that girl?" (It's also kind of worse when you already know what's coming after that). 
• The Music: when the show was on, I didn't know most of this music, but now half the songs being played at the Bronze are songs I can sing along with. 
• Cordelia. She's a fuller and more interesting character from the get-go than I previously gave her credit for (even in previous watchings of the show). She doesn't put her head in the sand and pretend there are no monsters. Like any good rich girl, she wants a professional to take care of it for her. Like any independent woman, she also wants to supervise, and might even help sometimes. 
• The clothes. Especially Willow's. 
• Giles. The reveal in season 2 of his history as "Ripper." What a great build and unexpected treat that was!
• The monsters. The insect woman, the bug man, the cowboy Vampire brothers, Ted, Spike and Dru, the Incan Mummy girl, the big tentacled thing with the egg babies . . .and I remember there are still more to come!

Any other Buffy fans out there? What do you love about it? 

My Daughter Will be Driving

My eldest daughter turned fifteen on me a few months ago. That means we're in the downhill slide into getting a license. It's no longer this "when she grows up" thing. In fact, she goes to the driver's ed part of things here in just a couple of weeks.

http://www.gettingorganizedtoday.com/dreamstime_LittleGirlDriving.jpg

That's not her in the picture, but that's very much how it looks in my head when I imagine it. In reality, she's 5'9", that kind of fifteen-year-old who looks seventeen--so grown up and gorgeous that it's amazing to think that such a creature sprung from my loins. But, she is and always will be my little girl, too.

Like every parent who ever arrived at this moment (I suspect), I am both excited and terrified by the prospect of my girl behind the wheel. It's another one of those big moments, like when she learned to walk, or lost a baby tooth, or took off her training wheels, or performed her first solo, or got her braces off, or fell in love. In every one of these moments, I've reacted the same way. Part of me has wanted to cry and cling to the younger version of her and rail against the heavens for letting her grow up too fast. Part of me is proud of her, and anxious to see what this next phase of life brings us.

I know I'm lucky in that my daughter is an intelligent and capable young woman, with common sense and a good sense of self-preservation. I teach middle school, so I know a lot of teenagers. Some of them are complete flibberty-gibbets and I worry about them riding bicycles, let alone operating vehicles with engines. My girl is not one of those. She'll handle it well.

The question is, will I?

#1000Speak: 1000 Voices for Compassion

I've been feeling that compassion is sorely lacking in the world around me of late, so I was thrilled to learn of this hashtag movement for #1000Speak. Check it out on all your socials--you'll find some great writing about the idea of compassion.

Compassion is probably the one lessons I truly want to hammer home for my children (including the ones I only claim when they are at school with me).  The idea is simple enough: consider the other person.  Think about what that person might be feeling. Consider that there is history you are unaware of that might make a small thing more painful than it seems on the surface.

Around the middle school I teach in are several versions of the idea, hanging on posters outside various teachers' classrooms. In middle school, we have to fight the blurt factor. Kids this age have a thought and say it without considering the consequences or the effect on others. They often don't have ill intent at heart; they simply didn't THINK:

https://alanonmama.files.wordpress.com/a/05/imagesthink-before-you-speak.jpeg

Now the kids at my middle school are just that: kids. So when they blurt something hurtful out, we, the adults, step in and try to mitigate the pain caused, rebuild the bridges burnt, and encourage kids to learn from the teachable moment. 

But what happens among the adults out there? The ones who value their own zinger of a joke over the heart of a human being, or who have simply never outgrown their adolescent narcissism? For me, I've started to call them on it. Bullying among adults is just as large a problem as it is among children. Larger, maybe, because the kids are more likely to learn and outgrow it. But bullies will keep bullying as long as they get away with it. So, when you see it, speak up! It's not as small as it sounds. 

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The Fifteenth Year Begins

I don't remember what the weather was like on her first day. After all, I spent it (and several of the ensuing days) in the hospital being grateful for modern medical care.

But, today, on the first day of her fifteenth year, the weather is dreary--rainy and chilly. It doesn't matter though, she has always been able to make her own sunshine.

My daughter is fifteen today.

Whew! I've been practicing saying that out loud. It can be hard to get the words out around the lump in my throat. See, in my mind, she still looks like this:

 helping chaperone as a baby

Or maybe like this:

Me, age 31; Her, age 3

But these days, she looks like this:

See, what I mean? She's amazing. Strong, smart, beautiful, funny, and talented. But she's also my baby, and she's growing up much too fast.

Testing Season

http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/rabbit2.jpg?_sm_au_=isVHLDFJTMPWkQZt

So, it's testing season. When the teachers and students feel like rabbits being chased into their various holes.

It's not a happy time at school.

Everyone (teachers, administrators, students, families) is under stress and pressure, just when they are also exhausted and least able to deal with extra stress and pressure.

My oldest daughter in eighth grade. So, her list of standardized tests this year includes: Math End of Course Exam (for high school credit), English End of Course Exam (for high school credit), Reading End of Grade Exam, Math End of Grade Exam, Science End of Grade Exam, Social Studies Final Exam. On top of this she had a placement test for Humanities in high school and a choral audition for placement in high school.

She also had a major research essay due today in English, a math project due late last week, and a couple of other smaller projects due in the next few days.

It could have been worse. She didn't take yearlong world language for high school credit, so she isn't taking that End of Course Exam. She chose not to do the portfolio for advanced placement in visual art, even though she could have performed at that level. She just felt too buried and it was something she *could* take off her plate. So, she did.

I hope you've never seen such a bright and vivacious young woman turn into a grey and listless zombie in such a short time.  It's harrowing, as a teacher, and as her mother.

All this is required by external organizations at the state and federal levels. Very little of the decision making about how and when to test our children is in the hands of the individual schools, school districts, or parents.

I have to fight my anger or I could drown in the tide of it.

My daughter has wonderful teachers. If you went to each of them and said, "Does Samantha's daughter know the class material?", they could tell you. They could even list her specific areas of weakness and strength and suggest materials to shore up her weaknesses. If you give them the time and resources to do so, they would address those weaknesses themselves, and shore them up before they send her on to the next level. They care about her and her learning. They are professionals with experience and expertise in assessment and instruction of their given subjects.

Even that one year, when she didn't have a wonderful teacher, she had an adequate teacher. She still learned. Not as much as she would have learned with someone more inspired, but she still learned. 

But for some reason, we've decided to spend millions of dollars in this country to get assessment information we could get by asking the teachers. Don't get me started on my theories about why. We don't want another diatribe about sexism and classism, do we?

I could write dissertations on what's wrong with this picture. But no one would read them.

Maybe it was always this way. I don't know. I've only been a teacher for eighteen years and a mom with a school age child for nine years. I do know there is more testing for higher stakes now then there was when I was a child. I feel that my daughter's education is not improved by it, that the education she receives is not more rigorous or challenging then the education I received. It's just full of more tests, written by companies that were created to write tests and take government dollars to torture our children with them.

Here's what I suggest. All politicians and policy writers must sit in public school classrooms during testing season and perform the same battery of tests the children do under the same constraints the children suffer in.  Then, they must go to another school, and administer all the tests to children under the same constraints that the teachers do. Do you think they can focus for four or more hours a day and perform well on these tests? Do you think they can go four or more hours a day without an opportunity to go to the bathroom or eat anything? I doubt it.

If they can defend this method of assessment after participating in it, then I'll listen. But, frankly, I'd be stunned if a one of them would have anything to say.

The youngest is only in first grade. There's two more years until we start torturing her. I wonder if I can get my entire government replaced by then.

O: Obsequious (A-Z Blog Challenge: Evocative words)

You might think that Eddie Haskell is a remnant of the 50s, long gone. But I assure he is alive and well and walking middle school hallways today. His obsequious tone is heard every day, every time a young man finds himself in trouble with his teachers, who are mostly women old enough to be his mother.

Mostly, these boys are using the tone ironically. It's not that they really think the insincere praise will be believed. Instead, they hope that it will make the angry woman laugh, that she will charmed by them and her ire will be defused.

I  don't know how I feel about it, being the teacher on the receiving end.

On the one hand, I understand the value of humor in diffusing a tense situation.  But it rankles a little. There's something patronizing in it, something that says my anger is not to be taken seriously. I don't anger easily. I'm not quick to raise my voice. But, when I do, I'm serious about it. I mean it. I don't like the gender relations implied here.

Then I waffle, thinking of it from the kid's point of view. A middle school age boy draws a lot of ire in this world. He is loud, giggly, wiggly, distractible. He may look like a man, but he is still a child.

If you look at classroom interactions for children of this age, the boys get in more trouble than the girls. They don't play the game as well as the girls yet. If I heard my name said in annoyance and anger as often as I know some of these boys do, I would be looking for a way to diffuse the situation, too.

So, as in so many things, I try to take it slowly. To guide young men through respectful, appropriate interactions with the women in their lives, one conversation at a time. It's a big job. I hope I can handle it with the grace and humor that Mrs. Cleaver did.
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This post is part of the Blogging from A-Z Challenge.

K: Kleptomaniac (A-Z Blog Challenge: Evocative words)

I think I was an older kid or an earlier teenager when I first heard the word kleptomaniac.

I misheard it and thought is was Keptomaniac. That made sense to me since my parents were talking about a visitor to our home who had stolen some small items of mine. I think they were talking about what to say to the girl's parents and how to get them back. She had Kept my stuff, and I thought she was a Maniac.

Sometime later, I learned the real word. And that it was a real thing. That idea that you could have an uncontrollable compulsion to steal was new to me and fascinating. Even cooler that we had a word for that.

Then I learned there was other "manias." Tons of them in fact. It was almost as fascinating a list as the list of phobias I had been collecting.

Language can be so specific at times. Who knew that we needed a word that means "excessive desire to stay in bed"? (It's clinomania, BTW) I mean, isn't that just called adolescence?

For a while, I thought I wanted to be a psychiatrist because I was so interested in these kinds of words to describe our obsessions, peccadilloes and predilections. But really, I was just in love with words.

I loved how some of these terms seemed so obvious as to be made up on the spot. Scribbleomania: obsession with scribbling? Really?

Others made me feel smart because I recognized the word parts. Xenomania (inordinate attachment to foreign things) and her sister xenophobia (unreasonable fear of foreign things).

A whole lot of the words were about sex in one way or another. Andromania, Cytheromania, Erotomania, and, of course, Nymphomania.

I'm still fascinated, both by the words and the obsessions they describe. All of our messy little quirks formalized in language. I guess that means I made a good choice in writing. I could wallow in this stuff all day.
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This post is part of the Blogging from A-Z Challenge.

Friday Mom-a-Thon

Friday has gotten complicated around here. 

The Mom is exhausted from a week of mom-ing and teaching and would like to sit on the couch and stare at the fireplace (with or without a fire in it; it doesn't matter--just so no one asks for anything). 

The Teen wants to go out and is full of wonderful excited energy, but she isn't old enough to drive herself yet (and, thank G-d, neither are her friends). 

The Munchkin shouldn't be allowed to stay up past 8:00--it tends to ruin Saturday if she does. 

The Hubby has traffic goblins to fight and often can't get home at any sort of reasonable time, especially not if stops are need to buy stuff (as often happens).

The end result is a singular athletic event we call the Mom-a-thon.

The athlete in this event is not particularly athletic. She is heavier than she'd like to be and dressed in Mom-jeans and a teacher-geek tee-shirt (because we're allowed on Fridays). It's not as stylish as a sleek uni-tard emblazoned with the flag of my country, but we're all better off if I don't wear such things. Really.

The warm-up is a lovely espresso drink from my local market.  This may not seem like the kind of thing an athlete ought to do to warm up for an extended race, but it's surprisingly effective, better than yoga. It's my reward for having survived the work week. There's one particular gal who usually makes it.  She's wonderful. Besides making great coffee, she knows us (the Teen goes with me) and asks about little things we tell her.  I'm sure she doesn't get paid enough for how much better she makes my day. 

If my brain is firing on enough cylinders, I remember to get cash back when I check out. I'll need it for the Teen's Friday night expenses and Saturday morning guitar lesson. If not, it becomes one more thing to handle between 4:00 and 6:00.

Then, the first event starts: The Kiss and Go Lane. The Kiss and Go Lane should probably be called the "Harried Parents Hurl Your Tweens from the Car Lane." It's almost as dangerous as driving in a grocery parking lot right after work.  There are clear patterns the cars are supposed to follow, but they don't. You never know if the person in front of you is going to stop suddenly, turn in a random direction, or fail to stop when they should. The hubby handles the Kiss and Go Lane for the Munchkin. The Teen goes to the same school I teach at, so we're trying to get around the Kiss and Go Lane to get to the teacher parking. Luckily, espresso helps my reflexes.  We survive and even score extra points for landing our favorite parking place: nearest the exit.

Friday at our school is club day. Thanks to the warm-up of a double-shot latte, I am able to pull off thirty minutes of theater games.  Bonus points because the kids seemed sad when we ran out of time.

The third event is broken into three rounds. I'm an elective teacher, which means I teach all three grade levels at my middle school.  My rounds are called "eighth grade," "seventh grade," and "sixth grade."  This is extra challenging because the energy level of the kids goes up across my day in direct inverse to my own energy levels.

There's a dance tonight, the first one of the school year, so my sixth grade students, for whom this is their first ever middle school dance, are practically vibrating when they arrive in my room.  Teaching sixth graders under these conditions is akin to throwing a threadbare saddle with a broken buckle across the back of a rabid rhinoceros and trying to ride it. I live through it, but feel somewhat beaten and bloodied. On the way out, several kids remember to say thank you and wish me a good weekend. I am buoyed.

The fourth event is the after school run-around. This is a juggling act combined with one of those puzzles where you have to get things across the river without letting the lions eat the lambs. I get an assist in that the teen can be left at home unsupervised.  Still, it was five stops between leaving school and arriving at home. Everyone is eating dinner by 6:00, so the judges award me an extra star.

The traffic goblins are winning tonight, so the Munchkin goes with me to deliver the Teen and her friends to the place with the music and the laughter. We stay for a little while, but I have to get her home before she turns into a goblin herself, so back into the car we go. 

Another hour later, a clean and sweet smelling Munchkin is tucked into bed, only half an hour late. Half points, since bedtime was missed. We'll find out tomorrow how bad that is.  The Hubby has defeated the traffic goblins at last and is left at home to watch over sleeping Munchkin while I go back to the place with the music and the laughter to retrieve the Teen.

I like the place they have chosen tonight. It has wi-fi, coffee, and live music, but I can sit far enough away from it that I can still hear myself think. I write while I wait for hugs goodbye. I try not to get the heebie-jeebies (or at least not let them show externally), when the Boyfriend kisses the Teen goodnight.

On the way home, in the quiet of the car. The Teen thanks me. She says she feels lucky to have a mom who will go to this kind of trouble for her. Some of her others friends aren't so fortunate. That folks is game-set-match. Mom won this Friday Mom-a-Thon. And there are seven days to prepare for the next one!

Not Restful, But Joyful

I don't remember my first trip to the beach. I know that my parents took me to Myrtle Beach and Virginia Beach sometime in my later childhood. I've seen the pictures. If we went before that, when I was little, I don't remember it.

About one of those trips, all I really remember is being grossed out because there were millions of grasshoppers everywhere and you had to negotiate among them to get to the sea. Then I was grossed out by jellyfish and seaweed. I think my sister got stung by a man'o'war and I got sunburnt.  I didn't like sand in my shoes, nor the feel of my feet on hot sand or shards of seashells. Of course, I was of the age of not liking things. I wonder if I had any fun. 

But, as an adult, I've grown to love the sea in my own quiet way. I don't surf. I don't even really like to swim.  I don't like crowds or heat or too much sun. In many ways, I seem ill suited to time on the beach.

But I could sit and look and listen to the sea for hours. I could walk for miles along the shore without noticing the distance. 

I love the beach in the morning, when it's quiet and crowds are not yet around, when all you see are a few local people who just nod your direction and leave you be.

I love the beach in the evening, when the heat and crowds are gone, but the sunlight still sparkles in the surf.

I love the beach at night, when it is just a sound in the darkness and the boundaries of earth and sea and sky blend into one encompassing feeling.

I spent the first ten years or so of my adult life living by the sea in Kodiak, then Nome, Alaska.  I would go to the shore to think. It was easy to find space to think because Kodiak and Nome are not huge tourist destinations. I remember pulling up to a favorite spot and finding two other people there, so getting back into my truck and driving a few miles further down for a spot I could have to myself.

The white noise and motion of the waves soothes me at a basic, maybe even cellular level.  I leave feeling clean and fresh, like my troubles and shortcomings have been washed away. It's hard to hold onto stress or anger or anxiety in the face of so much open water. The ocean is a place for quiet contemplation for me. For solitude.

So, when my sister proposed a beach trip for all of us (her family, mine, and the grandparents), I both wanted and didn't want to go. It's a very different thing, being at the seashore with kids and family in tow. It can be more wearing than restful. In the end, though, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I'm so glad I went along!

My six year old daughter couldn't remember the beach. We live about three hours inland. She's been a few times, maybe three or four, in her life, but since that last trip was two years ago, she didn't remember it. After all, two years is a third of her life. If you asked her about the beach, she'd talk about wanting to go to the beach house where we had Captain Crunch. Apparently, being allowed to eat sugary cereal was what remained etched on her psyche from that trip.

My six year old is also a bundle of energy. I didn't see my potential beach time with her as restful. I was worried I wasn't up to it. And I was right. It wasn't restful. What it was though, was joyful.

One of the joys of spending time in the company of children is the infectiousness of their enthusiasm. What they feel, they feel wholeheartedly and express without reservation. When N saw the ocean for the first time, I saw the wonder of it in her face and looked at it with new wonder myself.  Even M, my teenager, who is at a more difficult to impress age, was drawn in. We all ran laughing straight to the shoreline anxious to feel the water on our feet.

Usually, I'm not one to play. I love to do things with my children, but have short patience for "let's pretend." I'm also sedentary by nature. I have to fight to make myself do physical things. But N had all of us running and jumping in the waves, calling out to the birds, stomping on sea foam left behind. For her, it was physical joy.  She ran. She jumped. She splashed. She squealed. She danced. She spun.

And I played along.

No it wasn't restful, but it was definitely restorative. It can be good for a quiet soul to remember how to make a joyful noise. I'm fortunate to have my girls to remind me of that.

This Girl is a Woman Now, or How to Hold on Loosely (But Not Let Go)

It seemed to happen overnight, sometime this past school year, during seventh grade.

It's not that I hadn't foreseen this.  Daughters grow. They become women.  I had seen the signs year by year. I would walk into her bedroom to look on her sleeping face at night. Sometimes it was the face she had worn as an infant still, but, increasingly, I could see her woman's face forming beneath the surface, a shifting of bones and sinews, a remaking.

Still it came as a shock when it happened. She blossomed. Not just her body, but her mind and spirit. 

She's beautiful, of course, in that way that only a girl new to womanhood can be.  Not quite in a woman's proportions yet, with girlish shoulders, but womanish hips.  Her legs seem incredibly long, like a baby giraffe's, and entirely out of bounds with the rest of her. There's a charming awkwardness to the way she stands. It seems impossible that she could move her limbs evenly, yet she is a graceful machine in motion, tearing up the basketball court or the soccer field, head and shoulders taller than the other girls.

She's independent, too. Sure in her own abilities. Creative. Always making something. She's in that in-between world, standing in the center of the seesaw between girl and woman, rocking back and forth, trying to balance new privileges and new responsibilities. It's terrifying and wonderful to watch. I'm proud of who she is becoming and my role in that. I'm more frightened than I have ever been in her whole life.

It's a new world of mothering.  I have to pursue her when once she would have come seeking me. I have to ask to see her art when once she would have pulled me by the hand to get me to come see.  I make appointments to ensure we spend time together. I learn about the oddest things so that I can hold up my end of the conversation.

I make sure I'm the one to drive her where she wants to go, just for the little moments when she rhapsodizes about the song on the radio, or analyzes her relationships, lets me in on what is worrying her.  Time in the car is vital. When I can't look into her face, when I have to keep my eyes on the road, she'll reveal her heart to me in a way that she won't do across the dinner table.

Friendships are so important right now.  As is time alone.  But she still needs us, even when she pushes us away. Parenting is a balancing act at every stage, but this one feels more precarious, like an over-reaction or failure to respond on my part will tip the seesaw permanently, letting her slide away from me.

Like always I need to protect her, but now, more than ever,  I have to protect her from herself. I have to let her hate me sometimes. I have to be mean. As her parents, we have to give her room to develop confidence by making her own decisions without letting her walk into a situation that will have life-long consequences.

I try really hard not to linger too long over news stories (Facebook bullying, sexting, pedophiles stalking Instagram, Steubenville). It can be paralyzing.  I can't worry about all the things that could possibly happen to her. Instead, I try to make sure she has the skills to watch out for herself.  Without frightening her unnecessarily with "what-ifs," I try to guide her thinking, to show her how to watch out for herself and her friends, to make smart decisions, to take measured risks.

So, if when you next see me, you notice that I suddenly look older, it's not your imagination. My hair has grayed. I might have an ulcer. My girl is a woman now (and she has a boyfriend).

Mayday! It's May

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Ah, spring.  The season of hormones and drama in middle school. Just in time for end of year testing, too.

My sixth graders are weepy. Sometimes they don't even know why. My seventh graders are wired or angry. They don't know why either. The eighth graders are either so sleepy they seem inert, or so excited about moving on to high school that they can't contain themselves.  Sometimes both at the same time. They can't tell me why.

They're all doing all of this for the first time. They have no idea what's going on. It's confusing. It's wild.  I've been here for years, watching, and even I don't understand this energy, this strange movement in the middle school symphony we call May. 

Couple this with where teachers are at this time of year--stretched thin, burnt out, worn out, exhausted, stressed out, frustrated, frazzled.  It can be a very difficult combination.  Tempers flare easily in May.  Even though it has rained a lot, you should assume the kindling is dry and tread very lightly in this forest.  The slightest spark and we've got a conflagration on our hands.

Maybe it's not a coincidence that May Day when written as one word (mayday!mayday!) is a cry for help.