Cards and Gifts

Written in December 2012

I am sitting in my favorite coffee shop, writing a report, restructuring parts, finding ways to rearrange pieces according to my director’s request, digging for the most eloquent way to convey what I’m thinking about the ten years of programming my close colleague and I have under our belts, what we need to move forward, what we can do.  Digging to first know what I’m thinking in order to express it.  Focusing and writing.

And then my focus is blown. A boy and his nurse have just walked in.  The boy is 9-ish, developmentally delayed, reasonably happy, pushing his own cart with oxygen, tubing and other gear: who knows what his substantial issues are?  He is intellectually engaged by his nurse, treated like a friend by coffee shop employees, conversational with them in turn and well-cared for.

My eyes move from my computer, to find excuses, other things to focus on so I can watch and listen a little.  I gaze past the nurse and boy, and settle on a bright red bike just outside the door, leaning against a parking meter, framed by a grey-blue car on a grey day.

I sit – my mind a blank.  Fixated on all the possible futures that could have been mine, as I am apt to do.  This time they are futures I do not want.  This boy’s possible future.  And his parents’ futures as they function within the parameters they have been dealt.  I am reminded of the incredible perspective and gung-ho attitude of one of my colleagues who has been dealt not one, but two, autistic, twin boys.  There is much to learn from her and how she moves through her world.

What lies in front of her as her sons grow into adulthood, what lies ahead of this boy and his parents as he matures, in front of my in-laws as my autistic nephew matures?  They are dealing in futures I can only glimpse.

In stark contrast, twenty minutes ago I launched my 13-year old daughter across Mass Ave to her dentist appointment.  My colleague with twins does not have time to take a watercolor class for herself.  She cannot tell her sons to cross Mass Ave and check in to their own dentist appointment.  I’ve been dealt damn good cards – I know this.

The boy, cart and nurse walk out the door.  His cart hitches on the doorstep and his nurse gives him encouragement and instruction.  Then they are gone.

The red of the bike and its reflections and sharp angles on the grey day are tearing at me -- pleading to be painted.  I wish I had my good camera.  My painting teacher once asked us – “Why do you paint?”  The answer for most of us is, “Because I have to.”   But there is additional subtext: “Because I have a small gift and I shouldn’t waste it.”

What lives we are given: the cards, the gifts.  The only thing I know for sure is that I must celebrate what I have.  Maybe that’s why I try to cram so many things into my life – because I don’t want to take the amazing cards I’ve been dealt for granted.  

Dilemma

I wrote this in Jan 2010 as a journal entry and just now posted it.  Epilogue to follow...

It’s frightening to realize how much power I have over the interests my children are allowed to develop.  Which passions I choose to nuture or ignore, their total dependence on me for their schedules and therefore how they spend their time.    The decisions I make for them, both consciously and unconsciously, are very much rooted in my life experience: what exposures I did or didn’t have as a child, or what I wanted for myself but didn’t attain. 

From my windowed corner of a ski lodge, I am watching my 10 year-old daughter ski by herself, effortlessly, comfortably and happily.  She has the psychological security of a walkie-talkie communication with me, and familiarity with this mountain.  In the brief glimpses I have as she finishes her run and zooms into the lift-line, she looks graceful and confident, and I am so filled with pride and joy for her that I’m near tears.  That both my son and daughter are skilled, confident skiers is important to me.  It comes from loving the outdoors in winter, loving New England, loving mountains, loving snow and loving a sport I cannot do.  Learning as an adult in my early 40’s has proved difficult, and recently, fraught with peril.  I love skiing but from a safe distance at this point.  However, I am making very sure that my kids will not have my problem and we are a lucky family indeed to ski for 5 weekends a year.

 My current dilemma has little to do with skiing in particular except that skiing is a choice.  Really the dilemma is about what I am not choosing for my daughter.  It’s about riding horses: my experience as a rider and my daughter’s sudden passionate love for horses.  I am frozen like a deer in the headlights of my own conflict and hope that writing will help iron out my confusion.  Of course, this is a dilemma of the affluent.  If the rest of the people in the world had my problem of the moment, this would be a nice world indeed.  Nevertheless, it is my problem and I am searching for clarity.

C was suddenly smitten in 4^th grade.  I had assumed that we were safe.  My irrational and all-consuming worship of horses started well before kindergarten.  Horses were all I drew, daydreamed about, collected.  There were no dolls in my life, only Breyer model horses, eventually well over 100 of them.  My exasperated second grade teacher forbade me from bringing any more model horses for show and tell.  No one in my family knew anything about horses except my grandfather who had grown up on a ranch in Nevada during his childhood, but like us, was well anchored in suburban life just outside of New York City.  My first cousin, Jule, whom I did not really know as child and lived on the other coast, was equally smitten.  Is horse-craziness genetic?  I’ll never know.  At any rate, I did not grow up in a household that encouraged anything horse-related and drove everyone wild with my myopic focus. 

I took C to a barn once for fun when she was in preschool and popped her up on an ancient gelding.  Her legs were so short that the soles of her feet ended 6 inches before the bottom of my saddle’s flaps.  I led her around in her yellow bicycle helmet and she beamed.  And that was all.  I haven’t sat on a horse since before becoming pregnant with her and had settled happily into total denial of my deep addiction, or so I thought.  And then, just before her 9^th birthday, C asked, “Mom, do you think that someday I could have a horse-back riding lesson?”  I acquiesced, of course.  Little harm and great joy could come from a riding lesson or two.  I found a place nearby which, despite its ramshackle appearance, had reliable school ponies and happy horses turned out on grass paddocks.  I liked the way the older girls rode, the high standards of the head instructor, and the fact that everyone appeared to do their own work around the barn, and were nice to each other and their horses. 

After each lesson, the blazing light in C's eyes was unmistakable.  As was her total focus on committing me to the next lesson and the next.  Later that summer, I was hearing about how talented my daughter was, what a natural athlete she was on a horse, what a hard worker she was, how much they loved having her around and could they enter her in a show?  I said no.  And there were tears.  Too expensive I explained to C (the fee for the pony, for the instructor, fees for entering the classes, the shipping, not to mention the new clothes she would instantly outgrow).  But really, we could have easily afforded that single show.  So then why not?   Think Pandora’s box. 

I had worn my mother down too.  After years of hard lobbying, first riding lessons started in 4^th grade once per week at a local barn. “As long as there is a carpool,” said my mother who was buried alive between my traveling father and two sisters who were then 4 and 5.  The next year, lessons were twice a week.  Then summer riding camp but only for two blissful weeks in late August.  I spent most of each summer lackadaisically participating in the sorts of activities that make middle class children well-rounded and waited for my two weeks of horsey bliss.

During the school year, evening lessons took place in floodlit outdoor rings in the frigid dark.  Ponies, frisky from the cold and bored from endless lessons, would imagine goblins and bolt, and I remember being scared but never so scared I would skip a lesson – they were too precious.  One evening, my instructor gave us a break and walked us on our ponies to the edge of the “main ring,” to watch the big kids ride.  Older girls jumped brightly colored fences and danced their horses effortlessly in and out of the floodlights.  To me their riding was magical, and I remember being consumed by ambitious, driven desire that evening.  To be like them, to ride like them.  

This fall, C has pined for riding lessons but our family schedule was too tight between her 7^th grade brother’s activities, her activities and my work to fit in one weekly commute to the barn.  C is a dancer: it was her first true passion—she has been dancing in her room, in the family room, around the dinner table since she was tiny.  When I send her up to get a sweater or a hairbrush and she doesn’t return I listen for the overhead thump of dancing feet.  Now she attends ballet three times per week and will start her beloved modern dance class as well this January.  Too much.  I meant to make her choose: riding or modern dance.  We can’t do both – too expensive and too much time.  Lo and behold, an email came from the barn offering a short January session of 5 Saturday morning lessons.  I caved and C is ecstatic.   

All the while knowing what I need to tell her.  That I will support her development as a dancer but not as a rider.  In my heart of hearts I know that if offered the larger choice she would instantly opt for an existence with horses over dance.  But while riding feels good and welcoming now, it will not in another year or two when all her peers are leasing or owning horses.  I caved because I know there is no better place on earth for a girl than a dirty, airy barn full of horses.  Am I the peak of hypocrisy because I was the embodiment of that happy girl at the barn?  Or am I the good mother protecting her daughter from the bottomless ache of only being able to touch this world with her fingertips, or the catastrophe of running full-throttle into the cold wall of finite cash flow?  Do I wish my mother had protected me?  Or is it better that I experienced my private school of hard knocks?

“You were so good while you were having your heart torn out.”  My mom looked at me dead-on as she said this in a recent conversation.  By high school I had my own horse and hit that wall brutally hard when our financial world fell apart.  The story is complex for everyone in my family, but the abrupt ending of everything horse-related is what counts in this particular dilemma.

When I look too closely at C's copy of the book, A Very Young Rider (the same author wrote A Very Young Dancer, A Very Young Skater, etc.), I can feel ancient teenage tears lurking under the surface.  I see photos of my horse’s veterinarian, farrier, a judge I worked for, a store where I bought my bridle, and familiar show-ring faces.  The girl who is featured in the book trailered her horse to the barn where I boarded and she and I trained with the same rising star instructor.  In a corner of my mind, my ego rants and raves a very old and hysterical tirade.  “You have NO idea!  I was going to be good, really good – I would have qualified for the National Horse Show…. 

The lurking impact occasionally reveals itself in a recurring dream: loading my kind, big-hearted horse onto a trailer and watching the door slam, never to know what happened to him.  The dream always takes place trapped inside the sixteen year-old mind’s denial of reality, naïve belief in the good intentions of horse dealers, and adolescent ostrich-like hope of bigger and better horses and competitions which were obviously never going to materialize.  Another darkly comic side-effect is that even today I cannot enter horse show grounds without suddenly needing to squelch involuntary tears.  My good friend K is the only person I dare take with me to watch big riding events.  Ironically, she doesn’t particularly like horses but finds herself invigorated by the teamwork and passion in the cross-country rides and gets a rush out of spectating.  As we turn into the grounds and the tents of the temporary stables come into view, she shoves the kleenex packet at me.  When I’m composed , we hustle to the warm-up ring and have a fabulous time plotting the best strategy to see promising teams over favorite obstacles.

I have been upset in retrospect, from time to time, about the role my parents played in all this.  Or the role they didn’t play. Why weren’t they more involved?  Why didn’t either parent or any relative attend even one show?  No photos, no memories in anyone’s head but mine.  But these are petty, adolescent complaints.  The sport was mine and mine alone.  I rode public transport to the barn, begged rides to shows from other, "helicopter" parents, and took pride in working to afford my bridle, saddle and some lessons.  More importantly, to the obvious question: "how could my parents have had so little insight into the financial ramifications of me horseback riding that they let me climb so high and fall so far," the answer is that they were fighting complex challenges, and they loved me, saw all the good that riding did for me and none of our lives comes complete with a crystal ball.  Even so, my inner teenager has been licking her wounds ever since and my inner helicopter mother is determined, rightly or wrongly, to protect C from the same fate.

There are many large and important lessons I learned from navigating the whole affair.  Certainly I have drawn on those larger life lessons to become who I am now: a largely happy woman immersed in a rich tapestry of family, career and projects that sustain me.  C has no such autonomy: the only way for her to get to any barn is to rely on me, and the riding world is too much my world to be completely her world.  But perhaps in my role as gatekeeper, I am depriving her of those larger lessons.  Or perhaps, the bottom line is really that in my own snobbish way, I simply don't want her to be viewed as "second class" by her horse-owning, horse-showing peers, when actually she would be completely O.K. and would ultimately benefit from the experience.

Someday C will be upset with me for a grave parenting mistake no matter how hard I try to do right by her.  An error in my judgment that will, in retrospect, cause damage and anger and upset her.  Will she ask, “why didn’t my mother let me ride more when she knew how much it meant to me?” “Why did Mom let all of HER unnecessary baggage get in the way of me just wanting to learn to ride a horse?”  After all, which is more painful: to be cut off from your heart’s desire before you can touch it or after you’ve possessed it as yours?

C, who is pink-cheeked in her helmet and done with the icy cold, is getting impatient with me.  She wants her well-deserved cocoa and is spelunking in my bag for cash.  A shrewd observer of my moods, she voices concern about the expression on my face, “Mom, are you O.K.?”  It seems her mother has been taken over by aliens as she types.  I have not told her what I am writing about and am not going to.  Right now, hot cocoa is definitely the only answer, and satisfactory for us both.

What’s good for my life versus how to help the world

I wrote this as a journal entry toward the end of a year as a long-term sub in our local high school.  I wanted to wet my feet teaching again -- I had missed it, and at the end of the year this high school wanted me to stay.  The school is a good one -- my son is there now and enjoying excellent peers, programming and teachers.  Even so, my writing captures the intensity of high school teaching at a particular moment in time, dealing with a particular population of students., Even in "good suburban schools," there are plenty of issues and at this point, far too little funding to deliver on what the public has been led to expect.  There is an enormous gap between the reality of being a classroom teacher in any school and what those of us who don't teach in similar circumstances believe teaching to be like.  That we sometimes can't hang onto good teachers even in suburban schools comes as no surprise to me.  Just recently, a friend -- an excellent teacher who has only been at it for 5 years -- let me know that she is "done."  I am sad for both her and our schools.

5/22/07

No matter what, I’m guilty.  Part and parcel of a hybrid upbringing: Catholic original sin and Protestant work ethic.  No matter what, I will always second guess what I do, while driving myself crazy doing it such that I live up to my self-imposed, unrealistic standards of “good enough,” and concurrently chastising myself for being a slovenly half-committed lazy-ass.   There.  Now that that’s out of the way I can talk about my real and surreal worlds.

I just turned down a very nice 0.5 FTE (that’s half-time for the uninitiated) teaching job at xxx High – minutes from my house -  just as I have gotten my sea-legs and started to think that maybe this teaching/real-life balance is within reach after all.  Of course, there was little “balance” to this year.  Today I caught myself – as I slammed down a salad, logged in attendance, and set up for the class coming in 5 minutes –  and stopped to take a deep breath.  In that quiet moment I could feel how abnormally high my “idling speed” was.  The foot is always on the accelerator even in park.  I am going back to my “cushy University job,” (thank goodness for it) in the “real” world.  As I write part of me sighs with great relief while the other part aches. 

High school teaching (I can’t speak for any other kind) is so impossibly intense it’s indescribable.  You are on-stage most of the day, racing in between classes and constantly communicating to kids with the utmost care.   H.S. teachers have to deliver nuanced responses in constant split-second interactions with students.  This takes a lot of practice to read between the lines and respond accordingly in real time.   And teens do not generally bestow benefit of the doubt on the adults in their world.  They’re not supposed to.  It’s exhausting.  The teaching I’ve been doing this year is intense in a gritty, watching-every-move, who-is-about-to explode-and-how-can-I-diffuse-distract-and-refocus, survive-the-class-period, trying-to-maintain-momentum-in-a-direction sort of way.  I feel sad that a new physics teacher this year, who is talented and whom I like a lot is not coming back next year.  And perhaps never teaching again.  He never stood a chance when the department saddled him with 4 classes like mine.  I knew already exactly what I was getting into and even so this was an incredibly difficult year. 

When I was younger and kid-free, teaching was the center of my universe.  It had to be.  Without at doubt I feel I am at my most competent when I am part of a high school.  Am I a productive-enough member of society when I’m not teaching?  Should I care?   I do care whether I should or not.   Is it O.K. to have some time to exercise and not be bananas all-the-while not be living up to a perceived calling?  Am I an indulgent lazy-ass?

What did they need today?  The AM class.  Rs needed someone to sit him down and make him do his homework right then and there.  “I have frees the last three blocks today – I’ll do it then.”  Both of us knew these words were hollow.  His year average is at a 61%.  If he fails biology he’ll have to triple up on science – an impossible feat senior year.  If he doesn’t graduate next year, Metco will be done with him and he will be back in the Boston Public School system for a repeat of senior year.  Not a good scenario for an extremely bright, wonderfully likeable and terribly unmotivated kid.  Br needed the same sit-down-and-do-your-homework-now treatment, though he’s further up in the 60’s and likely to at least pass the year.  I should have sat down with Vl, gone over her hot and defiant outburst last Thursday, the reason that I wrote her up, given her the hearing that she craves but doesn’t deserve - that would enable us to end the year without a struggle. 

N, Al, Lr, Js and Jy needed a real conversation about evolution and the film we saw rather than a mind-numbing fill-in-the-blank notesheet.  They are so good, smart and completely ignored.  P needed someone to make sure he did write everything down, the homework assignment, the simple notes.  Take out your pen P.  Take out your notes.  Where is your homework?  Why didn’t you do it?  Can you get it in my mailbox by the end of the day?  Are you writing down what I am saying now on your notebook paper?  Pick up the pen and write this down.  The email circle between his SPED liason and teachers says this potentially brilliant kid is falling apart yet again.  He has been out for counseling sessions.  Something’s going on at home again. 

Ct needed someone to tell her to hang in there – that she can do one more unit if she doesn’t have a defeatist attitude and stays engaged.  Ct, stop text messaging your friends under the desk and pay attention.  Her father constantly puts her down.  She is so low about herself and I love her to pieces.  Where was Ab?  Probably somewhere smoking a cigarette and pondering life’s more interesting questions because he is interested in the world and able to ponder but isn’t interested in working much.  No matter – he won’t lose any ground.  Dv was on the ball and not terribly emotionally needy today thank goodness, as was Js.  Dv was not stressed, Js was not confused.  K is in a rehab center and L is home with her baby.  Both are supposedly trying to keep up with the classwork from where they are with very little help from me.  Sn was her O.K, space-cadet self, not trying hard but not missing too much.   Of course, we missed 2/3 of class yesterday due to class officer speeches, Thursday we lose time because of the MCAS schedule and Friday we miss time because of the awards ceremony.

Zoo class came in the PM.  I cut them so much slack…the need was in the air.  A discombobulated schedule – they were all over the place as usual when they walked in.  I gave them time to air their grievances with the world as I leisurely passed out papers and checked in with each student to see whether they’d done their homework.  Use this opportunity to make personal contact with each kid – something that often helps to settle them.  Pg came in late with that look – “I don’t care because I’m in front of everybody.” “I don’t care because that’s my best defense.”  “I don’t care even though I know you care about me, I didn’t do the work you are cutting me all sorts of slack for and I need to be able to hate you if I don’t pass.”  I won’t go through the needs of everyone here.  It’s endless.  Ab was a complete pain in the neck.  I nailed Br with the ultimate – the write-up for an admin detention – when his cellphone went off.  I was in the middle of class and he remained defiant.  He stormed out of early.  Everyone was cowed into submission.  Not a good way to end the day.  All he needed to do was apologize and put away the darned phone.

5/24/07

So, I was “mean” to them today.  I could feel their vibe on their way out, “Man, she was a BITCH today…,”  Just my last class – “zoo class.”  I just didn’t have the patience for the enormous physicality of 15 17-year-old boys, 3 flirtatious or troubled girls, the ensuing chatter and constant put-downs.  The harshness of the world which comes out of their mouths toward each other still floors me 9 months later.  It is never directed to me purposefully.  But I feel engulfed by it.  It takes so much energy round them up from their entry and maintain their attention.  To not be sidetracked by A’s outbursts.  (If he were a normal kid I would have kicked him out about once a week at this rate.  But his level of “good behavior” is a very low bar with his profound mental challenges and lack of any moral compass.   His “good” behavior is someone else’s terrible behavior.  At least he does his homework everyday.  The inappropriateness of his verbal blurts and noises remind me of Tourette’s but his are to gain attention from his classmates and therefore different.)

I got their attention today by reminding them that they had witnessed my having a “short fuse” the other day with Br and that today was no exception.  That I was unwilling and unable to spend my time after school overseeing my own detention and therefore, any detention would be administrative and unfun.  They were quiet while watching the film.  Some had good questions, I know, but I could not allow any interruption of the quiet momentum.  An educational conversation would have quickly devolved into random chatter and posturing, and I just didn’t have the energy or patience to constantly herd them back into line today.  I had asked them to take notes on a highly structured worksheet but few wrote anything at all.  The film went too fast for some of them.  Tomorrow we’ll go back over it piece by piece. I would love some decent discussion.  They will all be good people in the end.  Just right now they are incredibly large, loud, immature and disinterested.

My stomach will be in knots tomorrow because I really do need to corral zoo-class and force them to listen and learn some content.  Tomorrow we meet for the last 3 blocks on Friday in 95 deg heat with no air-conditioning.  I’ll turn on the fan and resort to the overhead again.  The overhead projector is like a narcotic.  I write down notes at their speed while reading the notes aloud and elaborating.  Everyone settles down and copies diligently.  The room is dark.  I am bathed in the lamp’s glow.  I do not have my back to them.  I realized the other day, as I used the board – something I rarely do with these classes – is that the board forces me to turn my back to them.  And I am behind the barrier of the lab table.  These two physical realities of the space put miles between us.  As soon as I’m at the board, it’s as though I’m not there at all.  The overhead is so mundane, so old-school, so effective.  Powerpoints don’t work.  They are pretty to look at and induce quiet but everyone becomes so much more passive with the powerpoint.  As though they expect the knowledge to seep into their brain without any reading, thinking or writing.  The overhead forces them to write real notes.  Forces them to look at me.  Forces eye contact.  Old-fashioned and effective.  If I could just get them to hang onto these notes long enough to study for a quiz then I’d really have done something!

When viewing films, I pull up a stool to one of the tables in the back of the class with my remote.  Make myself at home amongst them.  The students who are more likely to be subversive are back there but they suddenly turn to me with curiosity about the film.  They whisper questions to me that wouldn’t occur to them in the larger group because they’re so busy being on stage.  I answer some quietly and then try to direct them back to the film so they don’t miss so much that they are lost. 

Good discussions do happen but they are more likely when I do not feel like I am trying to keep a cork in a shaken bottle.  To craft that atmosphere of reasonable calm and focus with this group is very difficult indeed.  To succeed, we need the correct barometric pressure in addition to the perfect amount of “sit down and behave” balanced with “trust me and discuss this with me.”  It is best when Ab is either absent or quiet for some reason.  It is best when Pg and Br are not sullen about their lives.  It is best when I can find a way to kindly keep M (with his straight A average and Asperger’s) in check and answer his 10,000 inventive, relevant but off-topic questions later.  Thank goodness for him – his classmates show kindness to him when they won’t to anyone else.  They begrudgingly allow him to help them understand the material when he approaches them in his socially clueless and incredibly intelligent way.  M is the good side of inclusion and he is an absolute asset.  Unfortunately, I’m seeing more of the bad side.

What are we doing in schools?  This is not education.  This is passing the time.  I am a highly trained babysitter checking topics off a list even though about a third of these students fail any given test.  My students in zoo-class and I have experienced moments of education in occasional good group discussions, but almost all of it has been in small groups or one-on-one.  When I am one-on-one I can connect with them and bypass their grandstanding with each other.  But as I connect one-on-one with a student the rest of the class gradually spirals into oblivion if I have not structured heavy and, for some, punitive, busywork. 

I sat and proctored extra time in MCAS today.  Another T, W and Thursday completely disrupted by this crazy testing scheme.  Students missing hours of class and direction and momentum in a subject even when they’re not the ones being tested.  Teachers needing to proctor and proctor.   Couldn’t I be online trying to locate and structure good activities that will engage my students?  Couldn’t I be futzing with a potential lab protocol? Couldn’t I be cleaning the beakers in my sink?  This is completely ridiculous.

Small blessings and being a "good-enough" mother after all

This fall my son, in his very first week of high school, did an end-o over the handle bars of his bike as he sped toward a soccer game and landed in the ER of Children's Hospital.  I received a call from a good samaritan and met T in the emergency room.  He was lying on the gurney, being a trooper and trying to be funny while in pain, with an immobilized arm and in -- a full-on neck/spine brace.  Heart-stopping.  Even though I realized it was likely precautionary, the next few hours spent on analyzing his vertebrae had me on pins and needles.  When he was diagnosed with only a broken wrist, I was grateful to be low on the totem pole of catastrophes, and happily spent a long, long time waiting in that ER.

Fast forward four weeks, through all the processing of my son's angst about not being able to play freshman soccer after making the team, and not being able to engage two-handed in his beloved outlet: playing the drums.  Through strategizing with teachers in a new school about the lack of his writing hand with a courseload of all honors classes.  And through the fact that suddenly, my 9th grader was home unstructured in the afternoon far too often because I was working -- having already arranged my fall schedule to pick him up from soccer practice -- and soccer practice no longer existed.  All of this is over and done with and we're fine.

Today, as we waited in the Children's Hospital cast room for our doctor to appear and check T's arm, I made friends with a little girl dressed in pink with a pacifier in her mouth, I'm guessing of 2 or 3 years old, lying next to me on a gurney.  Her parents were very young too.  She was on her back in a cast that covered one entire leg and half of the other leg and extended up to her waist -- a "spica" cast for a femur break I believe.  This sort of cast has an opening so that a diaper can be deployed on the outside with some extra disposable padding within.  The cast had been cut open for the impending check-up.

When the ortho visited her, they drew the curtain and the little girl screamed and screamed.  Not because her leg hurt, but because her parents had failed to clean her up -- for how long I do not know.  I could hear the doctor talking quietly but with urgency about how sitting in all that pee and poop had damaged her skin and that she wasn't screaming from the pain of her break as much pain from the "maceration" of her skin -- in other words, the pain of her neglect.  It was obvious from the tension, and facial expressions of doctors and nurses that they were very upset.  And I was very upset.  The technician who was re-casting Todd's arm finally met my eyes with a long look that spoke silent volumes for both of us.

What do you do?  What can anyone do with parents who are that young or ignorant or helpless or stressed or uncaring?   What are their issues that they allowed this to happen to their daughter?

My old save-this-child teacher instinct was aflame.  Someone -- please -- parachute in and teach these parents how to care for their little girl.  File a CHINS, file a 51A.  I'm sure the nurses and doctors were going to use the existing support systems as best they could.  But what would be enough?

So instead of turning into a superhero who would swoop down and make everything perfect for this little girl, I took my well cared-for son home and have been staring at my bounty of resources all afternoon and being thankful.  And freaked out.  And sad.

"Oh, you're THAT kind of mother..." Overuse injuries, a daughter's dancing and parenting

My 12 year-old daughter has been a passionate and capable dancer since she was tiny.  Three years ago, for reasons of convenience and because it was the right thing to do for her, we enrolled her in the dance school of a ballet company of national repute.  It’s a fabulous place, the teachers are superb and now the school is her second happy home complete with a social group of girls who are extremely hard working, excellent and passionate dancers just like her. 

Second home because – she’s there a lot. Like gymnastics, ice-skating and similar endeavors, doing ballet well requires an accumulation of sheer hours early in life.  This year, in 6^th grade, my daughter’s dance classes are 4 days for a total of 8.5 hours a week, next year will be 5 days a week and in 8^th grade, if all goes according to plan, 6 days a week.  Rehearsal time for the occasional performance is added on top.  My daughter is in heaven.

While in heaven, she has developed tendonitis in both ankles this spring.  Fortunately, the company/school, being what it is, has its very own coordinator within Children’s Hospital’s Sports Medicine department and relationships with dance-knowledgeable orthos and PTs.  She has gotten excellent care and guidance from all fronts and has been told that muscle imbalances caused by growth spurts are at the bottom of her issues. She has total clarity about what she’s doing and why, and is tackling her personal strengthening and stretching regime with daily, determined vengeance.  As a inspirational friend has put it, she “believes.”

I, on the other had, am suffering from cognitive dissonance:  I have a TWELVE YEAR OLD with an athletic OVERUSE injury who needs PT.  It’s what we all read about these days and say, “tsk, tsk,” (myself included).  But I am the mother who is enabling my daughter to do this.  All I can do for this moment is help her ice, take her shopping for shoes and orthotics that fit, sit back and watch her stretch, and talk her away from the edge of meltdown when she becomes angry that she can’t make her stretching feel exactly the way it felt when the dance PT showed her the first time.

Being me, I have read and researched everything I can find about girls, tendonitis, ballet, etc.  And being me, I have allowed myself copious wallowing in the distinct possibility that I’m a bad mother because I’ve enable my daughter to “over-specialize too young,” and that perhaps I have ruined her for life.  However, when I momentarily paused my research and wallowing, I came across a helpful quote in a ballet book belonging to my daughter (Inside the Wings: Behind the Scenes at the New York City Ballet).  The author, a company dancer, says, “Injuries teach dancers about their bodies.  Dancers learn their weak spots, their Achilles’ heels, and they learn to stay on top of them.  Also, injuries force dancers to reevaluate their technique and correct mistakes in their training.  I always felt I improved more when I was injured than when I was performing every night of the season.”

Huh.  Is that what my knees did and currently my calves are doing to me as I try to get ready for two triathlons this summer?  Are they are teaching me how to be a better athlete and better at training myself?  I suppose there could be a silver lining to this cloud:  that if my daughter tackles her tendonitis and succeeds, she will know her body better than I ever did, and more importantly, will have faced a part of her body as an adversary and become friends with it again – by learning to how to treat it carefully and kindly.  Which means ultimately she’ll be way ahead of many of us.  I hope.  I think. 

Standing at that fork in the road again

I am standing at that fork in the road again.  A very familiar fork, but not exactly the same nor as agonizing as the first one seemed long ago.  Even so, I am standing, frozen:  I don’t want this moment to pass.

I am wallowing in the memory of real competency in a job I that stimulated me.  The obsession and long hours required.   The need for real caffeine.  The excitement and crackle in the air at a nationally renowned public television institution packed with creative types and educators committed to doing something good.  My delight in telling people what I did for work.  The sense that I was using my education and my passion to contribute to something of real value to society.  I can taste it again.

What I’m conveniently not remembering was how incredibly strung out I was.  How badly I ate.  How S and I almost broke up because he wasn’t sure he wanted to propose marriage to such a miserable stress-case.  How I eventually decided that I no longer wanted to be controlled by unpredictable road trips, ratings and crazy producers, that I wanted to have a direct impact on people – teens to be precise.

Then, the delight in being a graduate student getting my Masters of Education.  And after that first painful year on the ground as a new teacher, the solid and immutable sense that I had arrived at what I was truly good at and obviously meant to do: teach science to kids.

Five years later, my wonderful son, T, came along and with him, that fork that confronts many new mothers.  Lucky mothers, like me, who have choices.  Full-time teaching was not going to work for us, but part-time teaching, to my surprise, was not working well either.  Confronting the choices presented by the fork made me cry – a lot.  I chose T and bawled in my department chair’s office as I told him I was leaving.  Although I delighted in being T's mommy, and eventually C's mommy too, I mourned my loss of classroom teaching career and sometimes still do.  My former television colleagues are producers and executive producers, my former teaching colleagues are now principals of high schools. 

What am I?  Twelve years later, I am an active, involved, and typically over-committed mother of two who appreciates her position in a university environment, her excellent boss and colleagues, and enjoys using her skills while still having tremendous schedule flexibility.  Who absolutely delights in being around her middle school children.  Who is greatly satisfied by the home she has created, her relationship with her husband, and her growing competency at taking care of herself while taking care of others too.  I am a lucky, lucky woman.

But that fork in the road has returned with all those old emotions.  I didn’t expect it now – who would?  Right now, when I am experiencing some job instability, the position of a lifetime has shown up.  The job description points to me – they want ME – and I could be exactly the professional I’d always envisioned I would be.  Using my potential, my education, my skills.  Being a force for the envisioned greater good.

Just for the heck of it and expecting nothing, I wrote to them.

“To whom it may concern:

I read with great interest the listing for Senior Project Director in Educational Outreach for [High Profile PBS Show] and would like to explore whether I would be a good candidate for this position.  I am currently the Program Coordinator for Life Sciences Outreach at [Excellent] University, am a science educator with broad classroom experience, develop educational media, and long ago was an Associate Producer with the [Excellent Local TV Production Company] for [High Profile PBS Show#2] and then with [your High Profile PBS Show above] for [Amazing PBS Series]…”

I didn’t actually think they’d contact me.  No way. 

An email arrived:

Hello SLJ,

I received your resume and would like to invite you to come to [Amazing PBS Station] and interview with me here at [Amazing PBS Station].

Are you available on Friday, May 28th at 9:00am?

I wrote back:

I'd be happy to come in.  Friday, May 28th at 9A is fine for me.  Is there parking on XX Street or should I look for a spot on the street somewhere?

I'm looking forward to meeting you.

Best,

SLJ

The interview went well.  I had some weak areas in my background and but was direct when I had no clue.  The position was exciting, political, challenging, a little scary and the science educational part was right up my alley.  I knew some of the characters involved.  Being inside these offices again was familiar and stimulating.  Echoes of my former self. 

“Any questions?” she asked.  I mentioned that my main concern was how to make this job mesh with my family given that I had been part-time for so long.  Her very to-the-point answer, “This job is full-time every day, all day.”  There was some travel too.  I knew that.  I just needed to hear it out loud.  Someone like me in a job like that, equals far, far more than a mundane 40 hours a week.  I am no clock puncher.

As I walked to the parking lot, I felt the helium balloon of my ambition deflate.

What the job description does not include is the rich family and personal life I currently value.  It does not describe the afternoon sun hitting the banks of the river while searching for scallop shells with C.  It does not describe watching T slice down the end of a ski run in search of hot cocoa.  It does not describe a lazy glass of Prosecco with my husband, long conversations in the car discussing life’s social bumps with my son or daughter, the ebb and flow of connection with my friends, church and community, my thrill at nailing a watercolor painting, my great relief in being able to go to the gym when I need to or work at home whenever someone is sick.  It cannot capture how much I look forward to my kids’ vacations from school. This job would shatter all of that and turn our lives upside down.  I love being with my children and my husband.  As it is, I limit hiring babysitters these days: I never want a nanny.  My children are not going to hang around forever – everyone tells me that.

I didn’t expect to be called back …I don’t know why, I just didn’t.  I guess I figured that my real loyalties were too transparent. 

A staff member left me a voicemail calling me back for another, longer interview.

Hi SLJ,

Thank you for your voicemail, I’m glad that Thursday the 17th fits with your schedule. When you arrive at XX Street, please ask for me at the front desk and I’ll meet you. You will be meeting with members of the [High Profile PBS Show] team and the Educational Outreach team starting @ 10 and aiming to go around 12:30-12:45.

In the meantime, could you please email me a copy of your resume?

Thank you and please let me know if you have any questions.

It’s such torment.  I want to go in for the interview to prolong the suspense of disbelief.  I want to meet people, to experience the atmosphere again, to see what they’re creating, working on.  My good friend encourages me to put on my poker face and go to make contacts.  It doesn’t feel right.  I already know my decision.

But I like experiencing the potential.  Am I a particle or a wave?  Is Schrodinger’s cat dead or alive?  Don’t look in the box.  Savor the imagined career momentum.  Feel competent, potentially important, highly desired.  Imagine the cocktail conversation.  Feel as though I could actually pull off being two completely different people at once.  Feel as though I could do that job well and still be everything I am now.

I really don’t want to send this email.

My husband and I sat down this weekend and took a careful look at what it would mean if I were to take the Senior Project Director position for Educational Outreach in the event it was offered to me.  We came to the conclusion that, in all likelihood, the demands of this job will probably be too much for our family to absorb right now. 

I agonized about writing this email because I would be thrilled to return to [PBS Station] in this capacity: this job is exactly what I want to do.  However, this position is arriving several years too soon for me.  In light of the fact that I am scheduled to return to [PBS Station] on Thursday, I want to make sure I do not waste anyone’s time and I imagine you have other excellent candidates.

In the event you think it useful that I meet the Outreach staff for future reference, I would be delighted to come in on Thursday.  If not, I completely understand and we should cancel my appointment.  I hope that you keep me in mind for other possibilities in the future be they short or long-term.  I have done some freelance work, enjoy thinking about science education, and would be thrilled to return to [PBS Station].

Thank you for your time.  It was delightful to meet you and learn about all of [PBS Station]’s excellent initiatives.  Hopefully you and I will cross paths again in the near future.

Best regards,

SLJ

I’ll hit “Send,” now. 

I just hit send.  And I’m sad.  Off it goes and I want to bring it back before it hits her computer.  Can I unsend?  To what end?  The supposed fork in the road was all a mirage anyway. 

Now I will go to bed, get up early and work out, make sure everyone eats breakfast

and gets where they need to go, spend 6 packed and productive hours at work, arrive home along with the school bus, spend the afternoon connecting with my kids and doing the ten thousand things that are needed of me.  S will arrive home from a trip, maybe in time to cook dinner together, and we’ll share a glass or two of wine.  Then he’ll read this, feel sad and be supportive of my decision -- as he always is -- and I’ll feel better.

Hi SLJ,

I'm sorry to hear that you are removing yourself from consideration.  

However, as a mom who also works at a job outside the home I  

appreciate the demands and the delicate balance each family must work very  

hard to maintain.

I too enjoyed meeting you and will keep you in mind for other  

positions.

Follow-up on "Grass-fed"

To follow up on the "grass-fed" question. Any meat product that displays the logo of the "American Grassfed Association" comes from an animal that's led a pretty nice, natural life. I'm going to start looking for logo.... Check out their standards and their logo at:

http://www.americangrassfed.org/pdf/AGA%20Grassfed%20Standards_%20Final.pdf