Flash Fiction Project: Piece #3

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece. I'm excited about participating just for the promise that I will, indeed, write something every day. 

Today's image is:


Image courtesy of radcarper on Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link)

My piece: Lucky Bastard

My brother has always been the lucky one. We went to the same schools and earned the same degrees, but who scored the prestigious job right out of college? We played on the same teams as teenagers, him two years ahead of me. I was the one to make all-state, but everyone remembers the homecoming game that he won with a last minute mid-court shot. It was true even when we were little kids and Mom would give us quarters for the gumball machine. My quarter would get stuck and I'd get nothing. His would spin and the machine would spit out an extra prize. 

It's not that I haven't had successes of my own. I own my own company. I won the John Fritz Medal--the bragging rights alone will keep me in jobs until I retire even if I never have another good idea.  I'm the one who got married to the right girl, stayed married and has three amazing kids. But I didn't get here by luck. I earned it. 

Even Max's worst luck is lucky. After his first marriage ended, he took a trip around the world to find himself and ended up in India, out of money and phoning our parents for a plane ride home.  It was the lowest point of his life, he says, even while spinning adventure tales for my daughters after Sunday dinner. On that trip, he saved the life of the millionaire who employs him now. This spring he's going to marry that millionaire's daughter.

So, when we took the fishing trip, I admit to being more than a little competitive. It was ridiculous really, how important it was to win. I wanted to catch the biggest fish, the most fish, to have the best story about the one that got away.  I'm surprised Max could stand to be with me I was such a pain in the ass. 

I was going on about something, bragging probably, when Max fell off the boat on the third day. He didn't resurface for one long second, then two, then three. I jumped in before it could be four. He had gotten tangled in a piece of netting, and was hanging upside down beside the boat, flailing. Lucky for him--I had my knife on my belt. 

When I told him later that he's always been a lucky bastard, he laughed. "You are my luck, Steve," he said. 

"So does that mean that I'm the bastard?" I asked. 

"Guess we'll have to ask Mom."

Flash Fiction Project: Piece #2

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece. I'm excited about participating just for the promise that I will, indeed, write something every day. 

Today's image is: 

Image courtesy of Martin Burns on Flickr Creative Commons. (Attribution Link)

Here's my piece: 

It had been a very good party indeed. Ralph was a little wobbly, so Ted and Dan decided to walk him home. Ted promised to pick him up in the morning and get him back to his car.  

Ralph walked with his head down, watching his feet. He had not dressed for a cold snowy walk and regretted now his shiny shoes with the slick bottoms and the absence of a hat. Even a ballcap like Dan's would at least have kept the snowflakes from obscuring his glasses.  Ted's dorky anorak now seemed much less dorky. Ted wasn't freezing his ass off because his coat actually repelled the moisture.

But Ralph had hoped to make an impression on Jenn, who worked at his office. so, he'd worn the dressy coat an ex-girlfriend had told him made him look like he came from money. Not very warm. Not very practical. But quite nice looking. Of course, he hadn't even been wearing the jacket when he saw Jenn, so he probably could have worn his usual barn coat and been more comfortable now.

Between the alcohol and the snow, Ralph was finding the walk a little too 3-D for his taste. So he trusted to his friends to steer him true and let his thoughts wander back to Jenn. She was very pretty, but not in that untouchable, over the top way.  He hoped she wasn't out of his league. She'd looked lovely in the soft white sweater and grey skirt. He'd told her so and she had smiled. He wondered now if commenting too specifically on the sweater put off a gay vibe. But it seemed too pushy to comment on her body directly. It was so hard to make sure you made the right kind of impression.

 Ted grabbed Ralph's arm at the corner, stopping him from wandering out in front of delivery truck that was taking the corner a little too tightly. They were just across the street from his apartment now. 

Ralph thanked his friends and turned to salute them after he got the door unlocked. He had just closed the door behind him when his cell phone rang.  "Hello? Oh! Hello, Jenn!" 

Yes, it had been a very good party, indeed.

Stretched Thin

So I found out today what my current limit is on single parenting (four days, for the curious).  I found out because there were plans in place to give me two hours to myself. The plans fell through and I fell apart. (I'm not permanently a single mom, BTW; my husband is just sick).

Like lots of Moms, I suffer from feeling pulled at all the time. Any time I get to make my own decisions about (without regard to to others) comes in small increments--seven to thirty minutes on average. Getting those few minutes usually requires organizational gymnastics that should qualify me for the Cirque du Soleil. Like lots of Moms, I contribute to the problem, by having a hard time prioritizing myself and my needs.

And, right now, I'm a little burnt out. I guess that makes sense. I've been in the Mom game for seventeen years. (Yes, I know my oldest is only twelve, but the years with two kids count twice each, and maybe should count for four each). That's longer than most people do anything. Think about it. seventeen years is longer than a lot of marriages last. Seventeen years is longer than a lot of people stick to a job that pays in dollars. In some fields, I'd be up for retirement.

Couple this with my career for money (Ha!) choice: teaching. That means, that on most days, I have somewhere between 130 and 150 people who want my individualized attention. There's just not quite that much of me, so I get stretched thin. When I get stretched thin enough, I puncture easily.

So, that's why I'm eating these cookies now. I'm stretched too thin. I must need to thicken up a little. 

Teaching with One-to-One Laptop Initiative

My school district jumped headfirst into technology this year, purchasing a laptop for every student in grades 6-12.  It's been exciting and frustrating and wonderful and awful. I've finally got a few minutes to jot down some thoughts about implementation:

Exciting and Wonderful!

• No more "I left it" anywhere!  If the document is digital, it's with you. Even better, since the kids all got google accounts, it can't even be saved in a incompatible format or on a different thumb drive, or any of the other millions of excuses I've heard in seventeen years of teaching.
• Differentiation (edu-lingo for making different versions of the work based on the needs of individual students) is so much easier!  I can share different documents with different kids and with them all focused on their individual work, no one even has to know that they're not all doing exactly the same thing. I can provide extra resources to only some students with a couple of quick clicks. It's beautiful.
• Collaboration with my colleagues and among my students has never been easier. We can share our work with each other so easily! It doesn't matter if we're ever available at the same time or not (which is good, because, mostly, we're not)
• We're cutting the digital divide. No more have and have-nots. Every kid has access to the same technology and has a chance to develop facility with the various ways we use technology in adult life for work, networking, organization and play.

Frustrating and Awful!

• There's really been no provision to educate kids about using their computers. It's been a hard uphill battle for kids who aren't particularly tech-savvy. I've got at least five ideas for how to address this . . .but the horse has already left the barn and no one asked the people who might be able to predict trouble areas: the teachers.
• Lots of trouble-shooting that didn't happen in advance and could have. Even problems I directly asked about because I anticipate them were ignored.
• Distract-ability.  I guess I should have, but I didn't anticipate the degree of the problem. Most students are so good about using their computers for schoolwork, but there are those few who think that having a laptop in front of them is a ticket to play games all day.  It's been much harder than I expected to pull their attention out of the individual work stations and into the collective space so we can have those whole-class experiences that are so central to education. It shouldn't be surprising--I know plenty of adults who can't get their noses out of their smartphones for four seconds in a row, and these are kids!

Overall, I'm so glad my district took this step.  It's been a hard semester because of it--it's turned teaching into almost a first-year experience again, with the need to create everything anew to make use of our new tools.  But I anticipate an easier semester next semester and it's already easier to draw on the work I've done past years thanks to google's excellent search functions. 

Now, next time, if only they'd ask us to troubleshoot before the trouble shoots us.

Had we but world enough, and time

How can it already be 5:00? I didn't get done with half of what was on my list for today.  (sigh) That's a normal Saturday, too.

It's another busy weekend.  And I really do want to do most of what's in it. But I wish I had an assistant or a maid to iron out all the details so I could just show up and enjoy. How do people without a partner do this?

Item #1: Watch my older daughter play soccer.  Easy enough, right? Preparation: wash uniform & stinky shin guards and shoes; choose, shop and gather team snack; an hour in the car (repeat weekly). Once, I'm there though, I get to sit and talk to other moms about how great our kids are. That's a fair trade.

Item #2: Hosting a playdate for the younger daughter.  Preparation: cleaning up her room, so there's room to play in it; pumping up the balls and bike tires which have gotten flat; planning, shopping, and preparing little girl pleasing foods; making logistical arrangements with the friend's mom. This one stays pretty intense:  managing disagreements, ensuring cleanup of each activity before we move on, taking care of boo-boos, etc. Surprisingly, though, I sat for almost 30 minutes during today's playdate!

Item #3: Going to the movies with the husband. Preparation: finding time to shower and make myself presentable, arranging for babysitting, finding the checkbook so I can pay the babysitter (one of two things I still do by check), emptying that big purse I only carry when going to movies or other events where I have contraband to sneak in, getting movie tickets (it's a movie festival thing, requires a little more plan ahead). If I can just there, all I really have to fight is my own tired-ness.  Luckily, they have coffee!

Item #4: Hosting my writing group.  Preparation: Cleaning house to the point of feeling okay about letting friends enter, preparing food for eight, reading the pieces up for critique and preparing thoughtful commentary, making a plan to keep the family happy enough without me for 4 hours, calming my nerves (it's my work on the chopping block this week).  Luckily, this is a group of busy women . . . they very politely never notice the parts of cleaning I didn't find time for.

Item #5: Gaming.  This is the closest I get to "just show up and enjoy it"  . . .because the hubby is the GM.  Of course, that means I'll need to get the children out of his hair long enough for him to prep. Hmmmm . . .

First world problems for sure, worrying about logistics for my very busy leisure life. I'm a very lucky lady, to get to do all these awesome things with all these awesome people.

Letter to Grandma Liz

Dear Grandma Liz,

Nice trick, dying on your eighty-eighth birthday.  A nice symmetry to that.  And the two eights, like infinity symbols. Very cool. I’ll have to remember that when my time comes.

I kind of wish you could have taken the very end more slowly, and let my mother arrive at the hospital. She was at my house, where she’d been helping take care of my kids, your great-granddaughters, in the week before Kindergarten started up full time for the youngest. She was at the airport, two hours from your side, when she got the news. That was hard.

When it’s time, it’s time, I guess.  I wouldn’t have wanted you to suffer, but Mom would have liked to have held your hand and heard your voice one last time.

She’s staying really busy right now, sorting your belongings and papers, making sure the money and legal details are in place. She’s really pretty amazing.  You’d be proud of her, I think. She’s stubborn like you.  And like you, she’s fiercely proud and doesn’t want to let us help her.  (We’re making her let us help, though).

I miss you, Grandma. I’m glad I got to see you so recently, even if you were kind of angry at the world that day. I can definitely understand being angry. I think I’d be angry, too. Getting old sucks.

There’s all the things you didn’t do yet and it was becoming clear that you were running out of time. Your body wouldn’t do all the things you wanted it to do. And there’s all the things you knew we were going to do that you wouldn’t like. That feeling of not being in control of the things you wanted to be in control of. As you thought back on your life in those last weeks, I hope you thought about the happy things, too, and not just the slights you felt you had received.

I was at your house today, helping sort things and clean up, making it into the space it will next be.  You wouldn’t like the changes we made. We got rid of your gray rug.  We took the pictures off the walls (we’re planning to scan the old ones for all to share and let your children take the ones that apply to them).  We took down about half of the draperies and let the sunshine into your front living room.  I think it looks pretty good!

I hope you understand that none of that was a lack of respect for you.  I think you’ll be happy to know that your old house is going to be home to two young couples in our family as well as to your youngest son.  I’m happy that it’ll still be lived in by people I love. Letting your old house become something different makes it less sad, makes it possible to be there without wanting to cry.

We all really do want to cry. Some of us are holding it in. Some of us don’t hide it as well.  

Looking around at all your pictures today made me both happy and sad. How much you loved us all really showed. After all, you wanted images of all of us around you all the time. So much so that you couldn’t really see the walls at your house for all the smiling faces framed on them. You found something to be proud of each one of us for, and the evidence was everywhere.

Mostly, I liked finding the pictures of you. You as a teenager, taller than the other girls in your class picture, your head ducked down. I had a feeling you got caught about to laugh.

You as a young not-yet-married woman with flowers in your hair, and lipstick on. I imagine the lipstick was red, even though the picture was black and white and I couldn’t really tell.  

You with two babies on your lap, one of them my mother. Already they were pulling in two different directions, my mother and her oldest brother, and you were trying to hold them both at the same time.

You with the big sombrero on. You were so beautiful, and glamorous.  

The ones where you started to look like the Grandma I remember from childhood, your dark-framed glasses and dyed red hair, more orange than your natural red had been, before you decided to let it go white. I liked the one from someone’s wedding where your hair was a big Jackie-O type helmet all around your head.  You were grinning. You must have approved of the match.

And that one of you and me and Mom sitting at Grandma Lena’s grave and eating fried chicken.  That was such a good day.  One of the first ones when I felt like a grownup, included with the other grownups, all three of us missing your mother together.

It was a pretty amazing life, Grandma. I know you sometimes lamented the timing of your birth. That you wished you could’ve had a career like me or my sister and had more independence.  You should know though, that your belief is us is why we can.  We wouldn’t be the women we are if you weren’t the woman you were.

We were lucky to have you.

Enjoy heaven, Grandma. Try not to raise too much hell up there.

Love,
-Samantha

Some Guy I used to Know: Seeing the Ex

I got my daughter back on Friday.  That meant I had to see the ex. Strange how that was still stressful.

It's been eight years since we divorced, and I've never had any doubts that divorce was the right decision for me (and, so far as I know, for him).  It wasn't one of those cases where one spouse clung to the relationship and the other wanted out. It was decisively over. We've both moved, remarried, and started new families.  It's good.

But I still invested way too much energy into worrying about how my house looked and how I looked. Three days before he comes to town is probably too late to get the hardwood floors redone and lose the last twenty pounds of baby weight anyway. It shouldn't matter to me at this point.

Maybe it's just competition? Do I need to one-up him?

Or is it revenge? Like the Talmud teaches, "Live well. It is the best revenge."

Could it be just the strangeness of the situation? We've only seen each other in person three times since our split, all three in connection with getting M to her seasonal visitations.

We're good exes.  We communicate well about our shared daughter's needs and visitation setups via email and phone.  We plan for her future together without rancor. He is utterly reliable for the agreed upon support and not pushy or invasive about the day to day runnings of our lives.

I felt lousy the day they arrived. I had a medical procedure two days before (which shouldn't have left me feeling badly as long as it did). So, in the end, my house was clean, but not sparkling. I looked okay for a sick woman, but not the picture of health and wealth. I didn't even feel well enough to dress nicely. Soft pants and my favorite zombie teeshirt.

During his actual visit (a very brief tour of the house--he'd never seen it and M really wanted him to see her room and home), I felt very little.  I noticed the physical ways he had changed and remembered some things that I don't particularly like about him, but I didn't become awash in angst or have a flash of nostalgia for the friend he once was.

It was rather like having the mom of one of M's friends come by. I care that my house looks well-kept so that they will think well of my family, but I only know this person through M. I have no personal investment.

Maybe he really is now just some guy I used to know.