Ferris Wheels

When I started this blog (yes, it still exists . . . I just haven't had anything to say that I've considered share-worthy), I intended the "vent" portion to be there for me when I was frustrated or simply irritated or needed to grumble. Today "vent" means just saying what I want to say because I can.

So skip back to the parenthetical aside up there: I've decided I rarely have anything share-worthy to say. That's not self-deprecation; it's the nature of human communication. We say a lot more words than we need to in the course of a day, not because those words are vital for us to say or for someone to hear, but because we can.

I've journaled on and off throughout my life, beginning in 6th grade. When I met my husband, I stopped. I just felt that entry after entry of "I'm so happy, he's so great, life is so wonderful" would start to annoy even me.

But not too long after I had my oldest child, I started journaling again--this time for him. And then for my next son, and my daughter, and my last child. I've written about their milestones, their perhaps-only-amusing-to-the-parents stories, how much I love them, how much they drive me crazy even in the midst of that love.

But they're all old enough to keep their own journals now, and they all have kept them at some point and to whatever degree of regularity. So do I keep writing in the ones I started? Will my kids, as adults, care to read about how I felt about them getting their drivers permits, starring in a play, starting middle school, making new friends?

If I'm being honest with myself, the answer is no. For one thing, I'm one of those people who says many more words in a day than is necessary. They've all said to me more than once (or 20 times), "I know, Mom. You've told me that story before." So I picture them reading their journals years down the road, getting to the part where they are now in life, and saying to themselves, "Yep. I've heard this one before too. In fact, I remember it."

And that's kind of where I am today: struggling to know what to do for my kids when they can do for themselves, feeling as if the routine I've found myself in is "yep, I've heard this one before, Mom," trying to figure out how to accept that my usefulness to them has changed--as it should.

I was telling a friend the other night that I've never looked at myself as being a great mom, though I've had great mom moments. I've excelled at my role at times. Other times, I've failed miserably. But it's the role I chose, and as long as my kids can forgive me for screwing up on occasion, I can forgive myself as well and still be incredibly and ridiculously grateful they've let me have this role.

My friend asked if my issue now is that I don't have anything distinctly mine anymore--now that I've had to acknowledge my kids aren't merely extensions of me but have their own wills, their own plans, their own opinions--their own journals. And the answer is yes, absolutely. Any mother will admit she views her kids as "hers," as having sprung from her body alone, without the help of anyone else--not the father, not the grandparents, not anyone else whose dna those children might share. They. Are. Mine. All. Mine.

Until they're not. And the days, months, years following that realization are cloudy days--like Upstate New York in the winter, or our vision blurred by cataracts. I'm waiting for spring. The occasional days of sunshine are promising. But they're not spring.

I heard a poem on NPR this morning that choked me up. It's not meant to be about motherhood, but it is for me. It's by Dunya Mikhail:

"The Shape of the World"

If the world were flat
like a magic carpet,
our sorrow would have a beginning and an end.

If the world were square,
we would lie low in a corner
when the war plays "hide and seek."

If the world were round,
our dreams would take turns on the ferris wheel,
and we would be equal.

It's "our dreams would take turns on the ferris wheel" that got to me.

I know it's time for me to move on from the kind of mom I needed to be when my children were babies and toddlers and on to the kind of mom they need me to be now that they're older. And just like I know spring will eventually make its way here, I know I'll be glad for the ride.

My 16-year-old just texted me to ask me to put money on his lunch account at school. And after I hit "publish" on this post, I'm going to call my mom to see how her cataract surgery went--not because she needs me to call, but because I need to call her. After all, the world is round.

My Childhood Bedroom

My beautiful and creative friend Iuliana is doing a "find your voice" blog-writing challenge. I think I have my voice, but I often lack the blog ideas to back up that voice. So although I may not get around to using all of her prompts, I figure using a few of them might help me get back into the swing of things.

Her first day's prompt was "Describe your childhood bedroom."

Okay.

So, first of all, we moved around a lot when I was growing up. My parents are (my dad was; my mom is) wannabe vagabonds.They moved from upstate New York to Tucson, Arizona, on little more than a whim, and a wish for warmer weather. Then they moved from Tucson (where I was born) to Virginia on the same sort of whim, this time with a desire to live near more trees than cacti and nearer the older pages of American history. Once in Virginia, we stayed put, but moved from house to house to house for various I'm-sure-they-thought-were legitimate reasons. Maybe the "wannabe" part should be deleted.

Wait. I should probably say from camper to house to house to house, etc. I've likely mentioned this before, but since surely no one has read ALL of my posts, I'm going to repeat myself:

When we moved to Virginia, my dad didn't have a job. Or a house. So for eight weeks, we stayed in a truck camper and a tent at a state park that had a lake. We kids (there were 6 of us at the time; my oldest brother was married and had stayed back in Tucson) thought it was a great vacation, swimming every day, getting those strawberry eclair ice cream bars, and playing Olivia Newton-John on the jukebox at the concession stand.


 A family friend informed us a number of years ago that we were actually homeless. Yep. I guess you could look at it that way, but it takes away some of the charm of that summer.

I never minded all the moving though--probably because I didn't have to do any of the packing. I just recall living in one house and then suddenly another. And another.

But the room I remember the most was the one I had in high school, probably because, come on, remembering something that happened at 14 is a lot easier than remembering something that happened at 4.

It was a basement bedroom, and HGTV would be mortified by it. My brother had the bedroom in the basement that had been finished and lived in before we moved into the house, and my dad then erected a wall in the unfinished portion for me. He put down some remnant carpeting--not tacked down and without padding. He put shelves on the wall so I had something resembling a closet. And then my mom hung a curtain across it. I imagine I had paint on the walls as well, though I don't recall. I at least had a window. I remember that much because I was always sure--yes, even in high school--that I heard something out there.

But what I remember most about the room were the racks I used for my books. My parents let me bring home a few wire spinner racks from the bookstore, and I loaded them up with Stephen King and Piers Anthony paperbacks--my two favorite authors when I was a teen. (The Stephen King fanaticism probably has a little something to do with the noises I was sure I heard outside that window at night.) Tacky? Absolutely. Did I realize it at the time? Kind of. But I also thought they were cool, because who else would have wire spinner racks in their bedroom?

 And do you know how much those wire racks cost now? A lot. As in a lot more than a wooden bookshelf would cost me today. In fact, I bet I was just cool way ahead of my time. Not tacky at all.

Maybe I can talk my husband into putting one or two in our new bedroom. The description of the one I found for sale even called it "classy."

Time Keeps on Slipping . . .

I’m feeling the passage of time pretty keenly today. Not sure why. Could be the lack of sleep over the last couple of months. Could be the fact that my youngest will be 8 years old before too long. And then 9 and 10 and 13 and 15, and before you know it, he’ll be more wrapped up in his music and his girlfriend and his favorite sports teams than in my arms. It’s all as it should be, of course, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the years slipping by. 

Or it could just be the hole in the sleeve of my favorite long-sleeved tee, and the realization that the company doesn’t make this style anymore.

I was at the grocery store this morning, and the woman working the register next to the one where I was checking out my $190 worth that fit into 5 small bags said that her register wasn’t working right. It was telling her the price of an item, but was not ringing the item up. Earlier this morning, a customer had complained, because she was in a hurry and the whole process was slowing her down.

As an editor, I come across sentences like that last one all of the time: a “because” that needs a comma in front of it, which is something I grew up believing was never necessary—commas before “because.” But without the comma, the woman was complaining because she was in a hurry. She wasn’t complaining about how slow the process was.

But, really, I think the woman was complaining because she was in a hurry. It’s one of our biggest complaints, and we take it out on others around us: other drivers, other family members, other customers in line before us. We’re in a hurry to get to wherever we absolutely needed to be 10 minutes ago. 

I commented that the inconvenience of waiting for a cash register glitch to get straightened out is still more convenient than growing your own food or milking your own cows. Thank heavens for grocery stores and broken-down registers and for everyone who does the work before me so I can get on with all the very important work of my own day.

Like figuring out how to replace this shirt of mine. The company may not make this style anymore, but that doesn’t make it out of style. It just makes it more valuable to me. Like patience and time and my 7-year-old hugging me before he gets on the school bus. 

Review of "Dear Bully"

I used to think I was bullied in middle school. 

In sixth grade, an eighth-grade boy on my bus used to threaten to rape me, and the bus driver would just laugh and shake his head. But that boy never touched me. Was it funny? No. Was it bullying? No. It was intimidation and stupid and harassment and even criminal today. But it wasn’t bullying. It wasn’t so persistent and relentless that I couldn’t eat or sleep or function or get through my day without biting my nails to nothing, imagining ways I could hurt him—or myself. I hated him, but I was never afraid of him.

In seventh grade, one group of eighth-grade girls hassled me on an almost daily basis, threatening to beat me up, leaving notes in the locker room about what they were going to do to me. But I never felt alone or ostracized. They never laid a hand on me, never cornered me in the halls. They hated me because the ex-boyfriend of one of their friends liked me. They were taking part in solidarity. I wasn’t a victim so much as a temporary target. It all ended when another eighth-grade girl who was only slightly more intimidating told them to lay off me. They did. The leader of that band sent me a friend request on Facebook last year. I accepted it. She seems to be a perfectly lovely person today, someone I might want to hug if we ever saw each other again. I mean that sincerely. 

By eighth grade, I was pretty clear on who my friends were, who my enemies were, and all the girls in between who had no feeling about me one way or another. High school was more of the same. JG was my arch enemy, though I couldn’t tell you why today. She said hateful things about me, but honestly, I didn’t treat her any better. I could say she started it—and she probably did. But it’s irrelevant now. I simply learned you can’t be friends with everyone. You’ll always rub someone the wrong way, tick them off, make them clench their jaws when you walk into a room. Them letting you and everyone else know exactly how they feel about you doesn’t make them bullies. It just makes them adolescents. 

This last point is one I’ve been trying to make clear to my kids recently, particularly my 12-year-old son, who is definitely an on-the-outskirts kind of kid and always has been. I suspect he always will be. He’s been bullied in the past, and the popular kids won’t be inviting him to hang out any time soon. But he has friends—really good, loyal, I’ve-got-your-back friends. He may not always like school, but he’s not afraid to be there.

I read Dear Bully this weekend. It’s a compilation of 70 YA authors’ personal stories about bullying—when they were either the target/victim or the one doing the bullying. Some of the stories were quite poignant (Laurie Faria Stolarz; I’ve never read her before, but I will now--plus, look at those covers!), but most were instances of authors calling apples oranges.

Having your best friend decide she isn’t your friend anymore? That sucks, but it’s not bullying.

Having the popular kids ostracize and ignore you when you were once part of their crowd? Again: not bullying.

Having a manipulative friend? Not bullying.

Being the subject of rumors? Not bullying.

Lauren Oliver (whom I have read, and I love) addresses this last issue in her chapter, in which she is speaking more to kids than to adult readers like me. She talks briefly about how she wasn’t bullied in high school, but she was the victim of rumors. She goes on to talk about the importance of embracing ambiguity and differentness not just in others, but in ourselves. I agree completely that if a child can accept himself, he won’t seek acceptance from others. How to get from A to B is the difficulty.

I think it’s vital that we not call every hardship between peers bullying, so I appreciate Oliver for making this disclaimer. Because once we do slap one label on all of it, we trivialize what so many children go through on a daily basis—the kids who are afraid to go to school, not just the ones who are uncomfortable there. No amount of self-acceptance can erase fear. No amount of saying, “I like who I am and I won’t change” will stop someone from shoving you against a locker or from kicking you when you’re on the ground after being tripped. And I know bullying extends beyond the physical. The name-calling and the well-planned and well-executed daily attacks can erode what thin wall of protection you’ve managed to build up around your fragile adolescent psyche.

Bullying is the strong preying on the weak and the weakened. So it’s those two groups—the weak and the weakened—that we need to focus on, because they’re the ones who lack the support necessary to get them through the hell years.

Sure, middle school was rough for me. It’s not much better than rough for most people. But to tell a child who feels painfully alone and vulnerable every single day that I understand what she’s going through is the equivalent of me telling someone with lung cancer that I know what they’re going through because I had bronchitis when I was younger.

Is this book worth a read? Some of the chapters are. But others are just reminders of how difficult empathy can be when our experiences provide no basis for comparison with others’.

Review of "Storm" by Brigid Kemmerer

Growing up in the 80s, I didn’t have access to “young adult” as a genre, let alone entire bookstore sections dedicated to teen readers. No, I had to rely on Stephen King and Piers Anthony to get me through my middle- and high-school years. 

So I feel I have a lot of catching up to do now that YA isn’t just available, but is so popular even we adults don’t have to be ashamed to be seen carrying around books (and book covers!) obviously geared toward our 14-year-old selves. 

I’ll spare you my extended reviews of the Twilight series (addictive like jelly beans but less nutritional) and of the Hunger Games trilogy (rich like a Cadbury Crème Egg but by the end, you feel like you’ve been eating the same piece of candy for 3 books, and the conclusion upsets your stomach a little) and of every other of the dozens and dozens of YA books I’ve read over the past several years, so many of them formulaic: A girl falls for a boy only to find out he’s a bad boy/fairy/vampire/angel, but along the way she discovers she’s a fairy/vampire/angel, and she’s sure she can turn the bad boy/fairy/vampire/angel into a good boy/fairy/vampire/angel, if only time doesn’t run out for them first. Oh. And only if the other boy/fairy/vampire/angel doesn’t prove to be too tempting to resist. 

I’m not trashing these YAs. Formulas are formulas—and not misguided mathematics—because they work. Just like clichés are clichés because they’re true, and little black dresses really do serve multiple purposes.

That being said, however, I love with an all-my-heart kind of love young-adult novels that break from “tradition.”  And here’s what it takes for me to find that kind of love (call it another formula if you like):

1.       An authentic voice. And I don’t mean an authentic YA voice. I mean an authentic teen voice. I mean the voice teens actually use and not the one teen characters use. 

2.       A plot outside of the romance. Yes, love stories are wonderful and have their place in literature. But “Romeo and Juliet” was done right the first time. Let’s move on and raise the stakes a little. Let’s have a storyline that would still be a great book even if the main characters weren’t falling in love.

3.       Good pacing. The reader shouldn’t be sweating or sleeping by the end of the story. A little heart-racing action is great. But just like the rest of us, the characters need to have time to breathe, have a snack, and then get back out there for the next round.

4.       Characters worth caring about. I watched “Contagion” the other night. This movie has an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, and I don’t understand why. I didn’t care about any of the characters. Gwyneth Paltrow dies five minutes in, and flashbacks surrounding her don’t make her sympathetic. Matt Damon’s total minutes onscreen are well acted, but we know all along he and his daughter will be just fine, so I’m just supposed to mourn with him for his cheating wife?  The purpose of the film was to scare us. I get that. And, yes, the idea of a virus wiping out 25% of the people it infect is frightening, but it was frightening before Kate Winslet got sick and before Jude Law got angry. I want to feel involved with the people that make up the story, not just the story. 

5.       Believability. I know fairies and vampires and brooding teen angels don’t exist. But I’m willing to believe in them for 300+ pages if the author believes in them. I’m willing to believe in them if the world the author has created is so real and vivid and downright tangible that I find myself thinking, “I get it now! Of course!”

A book that has all five of these qualifications is rare, which is why I love with an all-my-heart kind of love Brigid Kemmerer’s Storm.

1.       Book reviewer Brodie on Eleusinian Mysteries said it best: “Is Brigid Kemmerer really a teenage boy in disguise? 5 times over? The dialogue and mannerisms and the way they express themselves... she nails it!” 

2.       My 15-year-old son read this as well. When he first picked it up, he rolled his eyes at the cover. But he’d finished the book two days later. He said he didn’t even notice the romance because he was caught up in the story. Now, I promise you there’s puh-lenty of romance in this book: four hot brothers who each control an element, and then an equally hot new and mysterious stranger comes to town, and soon all five of them are thrown off their game by Becca, the main character. It’s a story about controlling your own life. It’s about finding and defining yourself. It’s about SO much more than who hooks up with whom. 

3.       When the pacing is too fast in a book, you don’t get to know the characters well enough. You feel rushed. Too slow, and you wonder when Godot is going to show up. “Storm” takes you along for a buckle-up sort of ride, but it doesn’t give you whiplash along the way. 

4.       Brigid is a female. We’ve met. And she’s not a teenager, even if she is a good bit younger than I am. But she has created five male characters that are different and infuriating and sweet and arrogant and off-putting and insecure and stubborn and naïve and not always likable. But I still love every one of them because they make sense. As for Becca, she’s strong without being abrasive. She has weaknesses, but they’re what make her real and relatable. She’s not an action hero dressed in black leather with a whip at her side and enough lip gloss to polish the Statue of Liberty. She’s a normal girl who’s faced some really rough times and has learned to confront and deal with them. I cared about her. I cared about all of the characters. It’s impossible not to.

5.       Vampires, fairies and brooding teen angels don’t exist. Like I said: I know that. But I’m pretty sure Elementals who can control earth, air, fire, and water do. Brigid says so, she believes so, and I believe her.

Storm comes out on April 24. Spark (book 2) comes out in the fall. This series is refreshing and brilliant and exciting, and Brigid Kemmerer is an author well worth keeping an eye on for the foreseeable future.

Schooling

Back in September, my 12-year-old, a seventh grader, came home after a rough evening with a friend—an evening during which his friend’s mother criticized him for cheering too loudly at an event and for covering his head with his hoodie because he was cold, and during which his friend literally pointed and laughed at him while her mother’s head was turned. 

Taken alone, the evening might not have been such a bad experience for him. But if followed on the heels of a not so great first two weeks of school during which time some older boys had been targeting my son in the locker room. (I’ll save my post on middle-school gym classes for another time.) He hadn’t mentioned any of the school troubles to me because he wanted to handle the situation himself . . . or simply hope each day it would go away. Lunch wasn’t much better for him. Kids he’d been friends with for the past few years couldn’t gather up the nerve to defend him against another crew of eighth graders intent on hassling him. So he found himself more or less on his own at a new school, trying to navigate his way around all the social mazes that simply left him, well, a little lost.

And even these issues might have been more bearable if they, too, hadn’t followed on the heels of a tough few months at the end of sixth grade. During those months, the pack of popular boys—and several girls desperate for their approval— had turned against him. But he remained strong through that time, and at the end of the year, when each sixth grader was asked to write what they’d learned in elementary school, he wrote, “I learned that I like who I am, and nothing anyone else says or does can change that.”

But come September, his first month of junior high, everything had just piled on him to the point where he, as we euphemistically put it when other parents ask about our decision to pull him from school, “needed a break.”  

So we gave it to him. He’s been taking math and French at school, coming home afterward, learning a bit of science, social studies, and English with me, and then going back for afterschool activities: theater and chorus. He’s also been going three early mornings a week for concert band and jazz band. It’s been a busy few months, not without their own set of challenges as we’ve worked together to figure out this homeschooling thing, and it’s been immensely rewarding for me personally. I’ve loved our time together. I’ve loved the bond we’ve forged. I’ve loved learning with him. I’ve loved his company. I’ve loved seeing him in new lights and gaining a whole new appreciation for the person he is and the person I know he’s going to be one day.

But we’ve also—my husband, son, and I—decided it’s time for him to go back to school full time. He’s made some really great friends through his extracurricular activities. They love him. They “get” him. They let him be the goofy, nerdy, hyper, random, loud kid he is. He has a girlfriend. He has the support system he lacked just a few months ago. And, I have to add, he has two principals who really do care about their students. They’ll be paying attention.

Sending him back, however, has been in many ways a harder decision than pulling him in the first place. I’ve straddled this line between wanting to protect him from the world and wanting him to be strong enough to face it. And he is strong enough. But if I don’t “let” him go back, how is he going to believe that himself? He’s faced a lot of challenges—physical and social—in his 12 years, and he’s gotten through them more or less intact. He does like who he is. He knows his family loves him. More important, he knows we like him. I don’t for a minute think it’s going to be all smooth sailing for him when he shows up at school full time after the Christmas holiday, but I do think this break has done him a lot of good. It’s done us both a lot of good. I’ve learned about a lot more than the U.S. Constitution and Isaac Newton and manatees and Napoleon. 

When I started writing this post, I wanted to talk about bullying in general. I wanted to talk about the accountability of parents, not just of kids. And I will next time.

But my focus has strayed to the reminder that we need to believe in our children so they can believe in themselves. We need to, yes, nudge them from the nest so they can try their wings. But that doesn’t mean we can’t now and then spread our own wings just a bit so we can wrap them around our kids, even if only for a little while, before we let them go again. I’ll miss having him at home much more than he’ll miss being here. 

Fear or discernment

I got an email today from the principal of my kids' elementary school. Actually, the email went out to all the parents. It was a "stranger danger" email--advising (aka warning) parents about an "incident" after school today that involved a man who looked "like Santa Claus" giving a coin to a child and then getting in the passenger seat of a car and driving away. The parents and child were alarmed, and the administration felt we should all be aware of what had happened.

My reaction wasn't alarm. It was sadness that this is where we are: suspecting every kindness that comes our way, suspecting every kindness that comes our children's way, and having to base our every action on the assumption that people have ulterior motives for every good deed they do.

My mom has a picture of me eating ice cream while sitting on our kitchen counter. I'm two, and I'm looking straight at the camera, my face covered in chocolate. Standing next to me is a large man, and he's looking down at me, smiling, proud, as if I were his own child. His name was John, and he was a good friend of my father's. And my mother tells me John adored me and would spoil me with candy and ice cream and whatever else it took to keep my attention for a moment or two. I don't have any memories at all of this man, but judging by his expression in that photo, I'm sure he did adore me.


When I wasn't much older than I was in that photo, my mother headed out to do laundry with my grandmother, leaving me in my father's care. When she got home, I was gone. Panicked, she and my father began running around the house and yard to look for me, when there I appeared, walking hand in hand with a young man as we headed toward them. A pick-up truck followed close behind, crawling along slowly as I led the way home. I'd apparently wandered off and had ended up on a rickety old bridge, much like the bridge in the well-known painting of two children with an angel watching over them.




The young man explained to my parents that he and his father had tried to get me to climb into the cab of the truck so they could take me back to wherever I'd come from, but I'd refused. So the young man had no choice but to get out, take my hand, and help me find my way back.

When I was about seven, my family lived next to an elderly couple, the Harveys. I'd often go over to their house, and they'd give me ribbon candy and let me play with their yellow lab, Ginger. Mrs. Harvey died before Mr. Harvey did, and still I'd go visit, and still he'd have that bowl of ribbon candy ready for me.

I do my best to teach my kids about "stranger danger." But I don't want to teach them to be afraid. I want to teach them to be discerning, to follow their gut instinct, their heart, the Spirit--whatever you want to label that little voice telling you, "This is a bad one" or "This is a good one." I want them to be discerning in all things and in all relationships. My nine-year-old daughter trusts everyone. She loves all of her teachers. She loves all of the kids in her class. She doesn't see the bad in anyone, and sometimes she really, really should. But this is how she's always been; it's how she was born. I've had a lot of talks with her lately about the importance of understanding that just because someone likes you doesn't mean they're likable. I certainly don't want to teach her to hate or to go through life with a wall up around her, but I do want her to learn to make good choices in her friendships and to gain better judgment . . . and then use it well.

A customer used to come into my parents' bookstore years ago who took a liking to me that made my mother very uncomfortable. He was a minister--an older man though by no means elderly--and he'd wait to talk to me until my parents weren't around. He offered "private counseling sessions" if I ever felt I needed them, and he brought me lunch on occasion. I was quite happy at the time, doing just fine, and every time we spoke, he tried to make me believe I wasn't as happy as I thought I was. This wasn't about religion. He never brought up God or faith once. I was polite. I turned down all of those offers for private counseling sessions. And then he abruptly stopped coming in. I found out much later that my mother had told him to stay away from me and to stay out of their store. She told him she didn't trust him, and that if he ever came near me again, she'd sic my father after him.

I was 22.

As a mother of four and as a daughter of a very protective mother, I get wanting to protect your kids from all the baddies out there. And there are a lot of them. But we should no sooner be teaching our children to fear every stranger than we should be teaching them to trust every man with a gentle voice who offers private counseling.

Discernment. Everything else is just fear. A gift in its own right, but not what should guide us or them.

I got a follow-up email not too long after the initial one, by the way. The matter was resolved after the police department determined this wasn't a "stranger danger" situation after all. There are bad people out there, and I ache for every parent whose child has ever been a victim of one. But there are good people out there too, and maybe our kids need to be aware of them as well.