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For the record, Oscar has one of the world’s most amazing first grade teachers. So amazing, in fact, that I should be writing a blog post about her thanking her for our son’s first grade experience that would be difficult to match and impossible to improve upon.
That said, the typical homework assignments apparently have taken their toll on our boy. Oscar is never one to complain much about homework. Today, however, was the exception. Every week he has “Word Wall Words” to learn from a spelling, definition and writing stand-point. The writing homework has two parts, writing twice and defining for us each word and writing 5 Excellent Sentences. Oscar usually likes the writing piece the most for obvious reasons.
It should be noted that when Oscar is the most upset he hides under his bed cursing the person or the situation that has caused him so much pain. It seems to work for him. Oh. No snow, but he did have a playdate with Max.
Here is what our frustrated boy wrote today:
A: Mom, what do you think I will be when I grow up because I don’t really know.
M: Well, what do you like to do?
A: Eat snacks.
M: Maybe you will become a Chef.
A: What is that?
M: Someone who is a really, really good cook and works in restaurants …
A: No. I wouldn’t want that because then I wouldn’t get anything to eat.
M: What do you mean?
A: Well they have to give the people all the food and then they don’t get any for them.
M: What are other things you like to do?
A: I think I would like to go up into space.
M: Maybe you could become a Mechanical Engineer and go up in the space shuttle and be responsible for the ship and keeping it running right.
A: Yeah. Well we are in space right now.
M: True. So do you want to go into outer space or stay here on earth?
A: I want to go far up into space. I could be an astronaut. I think I would like to float around. We don’t do that here on Earth.
M: No we don’t. Do you remember why we don’t float around on Earth?
A: Gravity. That is why we don’t float around and there is no gravity in space, well space that is not Earth. We need gravity to breathe.
M: Well … not really, but that is an interesting thought.
A: Hey look! (holding up Matzo) This looks like a war ship with holes in it! It would sink if it was a war ship and it had that many holes in it.
M: Yes it does look like a war ship. Good eating.
A: It sure is a nice day outside today. There is a jet plane! Look! I wish I could go on a jet plane.
M: You have been on a jet plane before. Many times.
A: Not one like that.
M: Yes, I bet you have. You were on one for trips to Maui and Seattle and North Carolina …
A: Well not one that small.
M: Yes. I bet that we were a smaller jet for a short trip to Detroit or a layover in Minneapolis.
A: Not one that small. Look at it!
M: Ohhhh …. well I think it looks that small because it is so high in the sky and it looks small to us but it is really quite big.
A: How many bugs to you think there are on Earth?
I remember vividly as a child waking up on Saturday mornings, fixing myself a bowl of Cheerios, and running to the T.V. to watch early morning cartoons. Sometimes my mother and father would be awake, clutching a cup of coffee reading the paper, sometimes not. What was most important was that my pubescent brothers and sister were ALWAYS still asleep. It was my time as an elementary-school-aged child to relish in my ability to wake up before noon. I had the entire house to myself and most importantly the T.V. was all mine. All. Mine. My cartoons of choice? Tom and Jerry, Foghorn Leghorn, Casper the Friendly Ghost, The Jetsons, Road Runner, Yosemite Sam, Yogi Bear, etc. It was inane, funny and a slice of heaven.
As I write this with a glass of wine at the ready and dinner in the oven, I can hear my two boys reveling in what has now become a Friday late-afternoon ritual: Tom and Jerry. They are silent as the cheesy music plays and the zinger sound effects go off and then I hear giggles and comments like, “That has GOT to HURT!!”, “Whoa baby!!”, “Not good thinking, Jerry!” and then more laughter. Or they just bust out with the universally understood, “AHHHHGH!!!” It’s timeless. It’s Tom and Jerry. And it will be points they will score on trivia games for the rest of their life. Cultural enlightenment? Check.
We have gone through a period with our kids where each day they have some pithy comment worth repeating. At least to one another. Alban’s now famous quote, “I love you too much I don’t know what to do about it.” has inspired hundreds of folks on facebook. Listening to our children I have often wondered if W. ever asked Bab’s early in the morning, “What do you call it when flowers get water? Capillary Action!” And I smile and think, “certainly not,” but I know another young mother who may have heard such words out of the mouth of her precocious child.
Today as I read the news it hit home once again. It makes me smile to know that for at least the next four years I get to hear things like this from my President, “We must build this recovery on a foundation that lasts — on a 21st century infrastructure and a green economy with lower health-care costs that creates millions of new jobs and new industries; on schools that prepare our children to compete and thrive; on businesses that are free to invest in the next big idea or breakthrough discovery.” Instead of things like this, “I’m hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure,” or perhaps even this, “It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas. “ And I am ever more thankful that at this time our President was never heard saying this, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should. I’ve got Greenspan’s book.” Thank god that man is back to his seat in the Senate.
And so with quotes swirling around in my head sometimes late at night I wonder what quotes will my children leave behind? Will Alban, who when asked “Do you think we can come up with a way for you to have fun in school without ending up in the principal’s office?” answers, “No. That’s their problem.” leave behind quotes like this, “I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.” Or if he will leave behind quotes like this, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change we seek.”
Since Alban’s new life plan is to become a scientist who makes great discoveries in space thus prompting the Queen or King of England to Knight him Sir Alban Edward Wellstone Pitz, Knight of the World, I am certain his quotes will be worth reading. And for that I have promised him a real sword and chain mail. When he becomes a Knight, of course.
It used to be that referring to something as “up on a shelf” meant someone I love was checking out another woman’s chest. These days it aptly refers to my emotional state. I can see my emotions but they are high enough that I just can’t quite seem to reach them. I have gone from sheer joy to feeling totally desperate to just moving along ‘normally’ enough in the past three months that I may be qualified to have my own soap opera. Reality TV show would be, well, too real for what I have been experiencing. Or so it seems.
Sheer Joy:
- The Inauguration was sheer joy. A week to bask in the glory of all that is Obama. To fully embrace what I hope to be the golden age of the Democratic Party. To watch Bush fly off in the helicopter made me shed buckets of tears of joy. I cried so much that week that Alban walked out on me at one point mutter, “Oh for dod’s sake!”
- The Inaugural Ball. Outstanding. I could not have done it without the partnership of our dear friends, the Hunters. We DID have a fantastic time. On January 24th we had over 80 people in our home to CELEBRATE and what a celebration it turned out to be. I rode a high that night that will be difficult to match or even come close to for a long, long time.
- I got offered a job. It was quite flattering for me to interview and be offered a position so quickly. I am ready to go back to work. I am ready to have something of my own that is not directly related to a family member’s care. I am ready to dust off the cobwebs in the space once reserved for active brain use and move along.
- Every other Friday I meet with a group of three 3rd Grade girls to discuss The Secret Garden. Sitting and chatting about literary concepts such as pastoral fiction, omniscient voice, and the value of positive thinking has lit me on fire. I love these girls, I love the book and I find myself wondering why I didn’t become a middle school English teacher.
- There have been too many moments of joy in my life with my kids lately to describe. I feel a post of Moments of Sheer Parenting Joy coming along shortly. You will just have to wait. It could be coupled with Sheer Parenting Hell.
Sheer Madness:
- On the morning of January 23rd I received a call from my sister informing me that the tumors found at the base of her tongue, tonsils and in her lymph-node were cancerous. I felt like the world had shifted. It was a sensation that was oddly familiar and oh-so-scary. “Here we go, ” I thought as I told her that this time it was going to be fine. That this time there would be no complications and that this time we would all be celebrating a hellish but successful run at cancer treatment a few months from now. I spent much of Friday and Saturday morning on the phone with my very extensive line of relatives. I put on my game-day face, only told Julie co-host of the Inaugural Ball about the situation, and got ready to have one of the best nights of my life. The next morning I got in a car a drove to MN to be with my sister.
- On January 25th as I drove to MN to be with my mom and my sister my 16-year-old neice moved back to New Hampshire leaving another sister “alone” here in Madison. It has been hard for me to watch the challenging changes my Madison Sister is going through and to accept the decision my niece made to move back home. Divorce is never easy and neither is high school and in my opinion one should never come with the other. On top of that a move 1/2 way across the country needs to be omitted from life’s possibilities when dealing with the other two. I understand both why my niece left and how difficult life has been for my Madison Sister. My heart goes out to both of them.
- On February 21st I sat on my sister’s bed listening to her Chemo Oncologist tell her that the lump in her breast was cancer. Rare? Unheard of. “If this is estrogen sensitive breast cancer we will give you drugs to put you in menopause, treat your head and neck cancer, and then you will have a mastectomy and chemo for your breast cancer. This will be a mean chunk of time we will take from you but you need to remember that you have two treatable and curable cancers.” Treatable and curable. Two cancers. Treatable and curable. Hard to say. Hard to accept.
- On February 23rd we found out that the breast cancer is estrogen sensitive. We all felt like we should go out and celebrate. No need to post-pone the treatment for her head and neck cancer and they could stop the growth of the breast cancer. One small victory.
- On February 24th I sat with my sister-in-law as my sister received her first radiation and chemo treatment. I saw the pain wash over my sister-in-law as she explained to the nurse that 20 months ago her husband died of colon cancer. I saw the pain and panic enter into my sister’s eyes. I felt the need to just melt into the chair and never return.”This is just not happening,” I thought. But our journey has begun and as they say, “When you find yourself in Hell, KEEP GOING!” So we are moving forward, and we are supporting, loving, laughing, and living for the moment.
Standard Living:
- Most days I can conjure up a sense of having a ‘normal’ day. But I would be lying if I said it happens often. Like during the three years of treatment my brother Linn went through for colon cancer, moments go by when I do not think of my sister, but a day? Never. It pulls me in different directions but always brings me to what is most important. And, I have happily discovered, it has nothing to do with laundry.
- My sister and I talk almost every day. She has had a fantastic two weeks after a rough first week start to her treatment plan. She is strong, vibrant, hopeful and realistic. She is my sister, after all. And we hope to visit her soon.
- I postponed my re-entry into the traditional work force and I have been enjoying my time here at home more than ever. I realize that what I do as a ’stay-at-home’ is valuable but I also realize that I have quite a sweet ‘job’. It has given me a new appreciation for what I do and a new-found-again ability to manage my time wisely.
- I have started adding formal yoga to my workout regimen. I am excited to take my mat into a class once again. I have also reinstated a daily-ish meditatioin and I signed up for a weekend retreat with Sharon Salzberg. When presented with a very flexible work schedule, make the most of it!
Joyful, challenging or mundane, life really does just keep going whether or not you feel tall enough to reach the shelf …
Wednesday night I was laying in bed with Alban and had the following conversation:
M: You need to try to close your eyes and fall asleep.
A: Mama, my brain tells me that I should not go to sleep. It is too boring.
M: Well, I hate to disagree with your brain but you need to go to sleep even if it is boring.
A: Mama, my brain tells me lots of things.
M: Yes? Like what?
A: Well, like it tells me not to go to sleep. It tells me to do things like take a plane away from Oscar even if Oscar doesn’t want me to take the plane away from him.
M: Do you take the plane away from Oscar even though you know you shouldn’t?
A: Yes! I do because my brain tells me to do it.
M: Yes, well, maybe you should tell you brain to be quiet.
A: I DO!! But my brain does not listen to me!
Dualism would have us believe that our existence is proven by our ability to think. Mindfulness Meditation teaches that we are not what we think. Parenting once again takes me from the abstract to the concrete to the abstract: clearly it is no longer Descartes versus Thich Nhat Hahn but the voices inside my child’s head telling him to do naughty things that require action and mindful attention.
Maybe I can tell it to be quiet. If that works it would be the first time it listened to me.
This morning, in order to avoid the screaming and crying surrounding teeth brushing , I said to Alban “I am going to set the timer and if you can brush your teeth and come down before the timer goes off, then I will give you a trinket.” Trinkets are usually things that my husband finds in his junk drawer and lets the kids choose from. For some reason this is a big deal and trinkets have become quite the hot commodity at our house.
This is what I got in response from Alban (imagine in a 4-year-old voice which involves dropping r’s):
“You don’t have any trinkets. You are not a trinket person, so why would you say that you would give me a trinket. You are not a trinket person. But if you think you have a trinket then you can give me a trinket. But I don’t want you to set the timer for one minute. I need more time. I want it to be ten. Ten minutes. And you can’t set the timer until I get to the bathroom and I call down and tell you that I have started to brush my teeth. Do you have my trinket now? Can I see it? I don’t want to brush my teeth before I see it. I need to know. Because you are not a trinket person. Do I have to put my toothbrush away? How long do I get for that? I want ten on the the timer. Not one or two or three, but I need ten. Don’t start my time until I get up there to brush my teeth. I will tell you when I am ready for you to start the timer. If you don’t have my trinket you need to look for one now. I want to choose. I need more than one to choose from, mom. So don’t start the timer on ten until I get up to the bathroom and start brushing my teeth. I will tell you when I am ready. O.k. I am going up the steps now but don’t start the timer. I am not in the bathroom yet. I don’t want you to put it on ten until I tell you that you can start the timer. OK!! YOU CAN PUT IT ON TEN …. “
I won’t go into what he had to say about the two trinkets from which I let him choose. He ended up with both.
I generally view my kids as idiots. Not that I don’t feel that one day they may grow up and be very happy, successful and possibly quite intelligent members of society, but right now they are kids and I have the upper hand on them smarts-wise, so I think of them as idiots. Maybe this is more a comment on my selfesteem than their intelligence, but that is for the couch not the blog.
However, every once in a while they surprise me with a burst of intelligence: they might listen and actually do what I asked of them the first time around; or they may regurgitate a piece of fairly complex information with skill and ease; or they may ask a question of great value and actually show they listened to the answer by replying with a great thought or question. But generally they are running around the house singing, “I like to move it move it!” or saying things to one another such as, “What if you had to go see a doctor about your butt-hole??” or making up the most nerve grating sound effects for anything and everything which includes misplacing sound effects meant for the bathroom and applying them in the kitchen. Or they are just in general being annoying.
Last night while on the couch with Alban watching WALL-E (fantastic movie, by the way), he had one of the above mentioned moments where I get a glimpse into their intellectual future. During the scene in which there was a moment of life altering realization for the ship’s captain when he proclaimed “I want to LIVE not SURVIVE!” Alban asked, “What does survive mean?” I was really into this movie so I absentmindedly replied, “It means to live.” Alban thought for a moment and replied, “NO IT DOESN’T!! IT MEANS THE OPPOSITE!! IT MEANS TO DIE!!” I just stared at him in disbelief. What had I done to deserve this outburst? He gathered himself together, and said, “Mom, the captain just said ‘I would rather live than survive’ so it has to be the opposite.”
Soon, very soon, they will pass me by and leave me in the intellectual dust. I guess I should start treating them better while they are the idiots so I have a fighting chance.
This post is for my friend, Brian, who says this woman reminds him of me … in a good way.
Every year my husband Ian and I have a brief battle with Christmas and what it means for our family. We are not Christian, we don’t belong to any type of church or religious organization, and we are too old to truly believe in Santa. To complicate the matter further we have a menorah and several dreidels in our home even though we are not Jewish because our children have gone and go to an amazing Jewish preschool. I was raised Catholic and Santa came to my home every Christmas Eve after midnight mass. My husband’s family led a similar religion-less life much like our own now. They spent time with family and friends on Christmas Eve which became a tradition that would go on today if they had not left Carbondale. But for us, for this family we still are trying to figure out what Christmas means?
We started to try to define it as Family Time by attempting to tone down our family’s conspicuous consumption on December 25th. To do that we decided to adopt our friends’ gift giving plan for Christmas. It works great for them as they are Catholic and do not have any of the above mentioned Holiday Angst. Their plan is simple: three presents for each child. If three presents were good enough for Jesus then three presents are just fine for their children. Of course they have not mentioned the value of the gifts given the Christ Child, but their kids are smart and they will figure it out in time. So two years ago we sat Oscar down to explain the above mentioned plan. He sat. He thought. Then he looked right at me and said, “Who the hell is Jesus?”
Right. And that begs the question, So what the hell is Christmas? I guess for us for now it is all about magic. Santa is magic, you know. How else would he get all those presents to all those kids? And even magic has its answers, right? Copperfield, Penn & Teller, David Blaine all have their secrets and they all have answers to the age old question, “How did you do that?” they just choose not to answer. However, this brings about yet another one of the worries that Ian and I have: once the Santa Magic has been uncovered will we get the question of, “Why did you do that?” “Well … on nights you didn’t want to go to bed for a brief moment in time we had the upper hand?” or “In desperate times you use desperate measures?” or how about this “Magic doesn’t happen all on its own, it always has a helping hand.”
So maybe that is what our Christmas is about, at least for now: Magic. The belief in something unbelievable. The joy of being with family. The wonder of knowing that every year someone will bring you a treasure no matter what. The delight in knowing that for a flicker in time my children believe in something much, much larger than life.
