If I had one wish....

A guy I teach with is getting ready to move to Kansas or Nebraska, some more Midwestern place, to get his PhD. Because he's leaving, he won't be able to teach this summer.
"Guess I'm looking at manual labor," he said. He went on to express his wish that the more letters behind his name, eventually he will be able to leave manual labor behind. He'll know he has really made it when he can order in pizza and drink good beer with it.
Funny, how such a simple thing could be the sign of success.
Mine used to be books. I thought if I had enough money to go into a bookstore and buy whatever book I wanted then I would know I'd made it. Then I realized, the library fulfills that need for me. I can bike down to the library and fill my basket with more books than I could ever read.
Sometimes I wish I had enough money to buy whatever the kids need for their many sports. Spencer's basketball shoes are too tight. We go buy a new pair without calulating when the season starts, how long they'll have to last, how much his feet will grow.
Tucker's goggles leak and we traipse down to the aquatics store. Maybe we choose a few pair so that he has a backup. Grace's racing swimsuit gets too loose so we send away for the $200 Speedo, the one that can take precious 100ths of seconds off her race time.
Maybe buying the kids all of their high-tech gear for sports would spoil them. Maybe it's for the best that I say, let's wait until... payday, we sell the other house, that big government rebate check we're still waiting for.
When I think about what would satisfy me, lately, I've mostly wished to be comfortable enough to eat out or order in most nights, so I won't have to fire up the grill or my imagination to come up with another dinner!
How about you? What's the one thing that you need to be comfortable?

School Success

My 12-year-old had been in school exactly three months when he dressed that day in a Polo rugby shirt and gray cords. He tried to smooth down his dark hair that sticks up on top and I saw him swallow hard a few times before he headed out the door.
It was supposed to be an honor, this student of the month award. To him, it seemed more like a punishment. Oh, the award was nice. Good behavior, good grades, respect, helpfulness. All of those things were taken into consideration before they chose my youngest to be the sixth grade boy student of the month. And, he admitted, that he likes to get to school early so he can hold the door open for the teachers and students. Little brown noser. So that may be why he was chosen.
The prize for being student of the month is a lunch at a local restaurant. That sounds good. We'd been there a dozen times in the fall to watch OSU football and eat wings. The catch was, the lunch was for the students of the month from each grade,
5th through 12th. One boy and one girl from each grade, plus the principals from the middle school and high school.
He was nervous. Who would he talk to? He didn't know that many students in the 6th grade, much less students from the high school.
That night he came home with his certificate.
"The burger was so big I couldn't get my mouth around it," he said.
"I was the only one who ordered Coke. Everyone else had Sprite."
We have a no caffeine rule in our house, but I told him for this special occasion he could go with the Coke.
He sat at a table with the two fifth graders and an 8th grade boy who is an acquaintance of his brother.
"It was okay," he said.
The principals sat away from the students, on the other side of a partition, peeking their heads over to see if they were behaving.
The impression that remains, Student of the Month is really just Student of the Lunch. Not a big deal, unless you're the youngest kid in a family whose older siblings haven't been chosen as student of the month-- yet.

Pulling on the reins

I did something yesterday that I never imagined myself doing. I walked into a cinemaplex, entered the darkened theater where the movie flashed, and found my 14-year-old son.
"We're going home," I said. And he got up and followed me.
I don't know if I'm really mad at him, but I do know I was manipulated and I'm pretty pissed at the dad who took him.
Saturday was a busy day. I was at a writer's conference all day and my husband was working. The kids were left unsupervised. Well, the youngest spent the day at a friend's house after soccer. So my 14-year-old left a sleepover to walk over to another friend's house. He called -- three times in a row until I answered -- to tell me the change of location. I called him back at lunch time.
"Could I please go see Escape from Guantanamo Bay?" he asked. I'm picturing terrorists and guns and chase scenes.
"It's a comedy."
I asked a passing friend. "You know anything about it?"
Not suitable for a 14-year-old, the friend suggested.
"Make another choice," I told him before I went to eat a grown-up lunch.
Later in the day, my phone rang, vibrating in my pocket. A session was wrapping up and the phone vibrated again before I could escape to the hall to answer it.
"Please, Dylan's dad is going to come with us so we can get in to the r-movie."
The agent I was hoping to catch was coming out the door. I wanted to talk to her.
"Okay." I agreed to the r-rated movie so I could catch the agent.
When I got home, he stopped by for money and my phone rang again, this time it was the mother of one of his friends. "Are you really letting him go, because I'm not letting Dakota."
She read the review from Common Sense.org. Incest? Sexual positions? Excessive drug use?
The father, divorced, was waiting in the car with his son and another boy who was allowed to go. I walked out to the car, barefoot.
"Look, I'm not going to let him go," I said. "I just don't want to deal with all of those issues. Sorry you waited for him."
They started to drive away when the son yelled, "We could see something else."
The boys agreed and my son hopped in the car. In the house again, I looked at the newspaper to see what their other options were. Under PG-13 I saw Prom Night? A slasher film.
I texted the boys. I'll take you to the video store to rent something.
No. We're going to see 88 Minutes, they texted back.
I'd seen previews. Al Pacino. Probably a lot of tense moments, I thought. Wait. That was rated R too.
I looked it up. Violent torture of women. Victims are hung upside down in their underwear.
That was when I decided. Carrie was with me, so I wouldn't humiliate my son alone. We walked in the theater and said, "Our sons are in an R-rated movie without our permission."
They let us sail by like we were Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip.
As we walked out of the theater with our sons, the father came running out after us.
"I'm sorry. I didn't think."
I didn't turn around, I kept walking with my boy towering over me, my hand on his thin back.
When the dad stopped by later, to apologize again, I made amends. "He should have known he wasn't allowed to see that movie and he should have told you." I said to the dad.
"I shouldn't have put a 14-year-old in that position," he said.
Yeah, I wanted to agree with him. You shouldn't have. But you're the divorcee. The fun-time dad.
"Look, any movie that is degrading to women, I'm going to object to."
I wanted to say, you have a daughter too. Don't you get it?
But I didn't.
I'm reconsidering the freedom my 14-year-old has. You can bring your friends here, I told him. For awhile. Let's stick around home. Where I know there are adults who are keeping an eye on things.

Central Ohio Meets Hot Miami

A group of 8th graders travelled by bus from the flatness of central Ohio to the former swampland that is our nation's capital. The boys were herded into the back of the bus and the girls coralled into the front with the chaperones sitting between. They hit all the major monuments, and were stunned into silence at the Holocaust Museum. The week culminated with a dance and dinner cruise along the Potomac. The boys, growing tall and gawky, put on polo shirts and dress pants. The girls donned dresses and skirts, some of them daringly wearing spaghetti straps under a pearl-buttoned sweater. The shoes were a disappointment, but the teacher insisted on flats only, no heels. The girls' hair was slicked straight and many opted for a ponytail. Giggling, they boarded the boat and were surprised to see another group of students -- 8th graders from Miami, Florida.
These students looked different. The girls' dresses were cut low across the chest and high on the leg. They glittered with jewelry and hair ornaments in their wild curls, frizzing in the swampy heat.
When the dancing began, the groups were mingled. These central Ohio kids knew how to dance. They'd been going to dance club for six weeks, stepping and shaking in rhythm to the music and the directions of the dj. But they weren't quite ready for the Miami kids' dancing.
One boy, about 5'4" and with a smooth, innocent face, stood doing his goofy dance, his arms in the air bending back and forth like windshield wipers. His friends love to watch him make up dances. Suddenly, a girl from Miami joined him. Her dance moves were centered a little lower.
"She was just humping him," said one 14-year-old observer.
"What'd he do?" I asked.
"He ran."
And when he told his girlfriend, she laughed.
Another boy, a little taller, his muscles beginning to fill out, his face tan and his smile dazzling, shrugged his shoulders when two girls asked if he wanted to dance.
He knows now that he should have said no. Shouldn't have been so accommodating, but when they began to grind on him, he wasn't the one who went running from the dance floor, it was his girlfriend. She still isn't speaking to him, in spite of pleas and tears.
"Those girls from Miami, they were different from the ones here," my wise 14-year-old observed.
"Compared to them, our girls are prudes," said the boy who sat on the sidelines watching and refusing to dance.
"Well," I said, "let's just call them more modest."
And, as I pulled the car into the garage, I felt pretty good about our move to this small town in central Ohio.

Social Savoir Faire

My kids have done pretty well adjusting to school after all those years I tortured them with homeschooling. The thing we homeschool moms laugh about is when people ask the "socialization" question. We spent our days driving to sports and crafts and trying to get our friends to take their kids back home rather than leaving them at our house for another day. Socialization is not a problem for homeschoolers. They play with kids of all ages.
And, I'm lucky that, although one of my kids is struggling with test taking, he has mastered the school social stratum. He has had a couple of girlfriends, but he's really more interested in hanging out with his buds, coming home covered in mud from football in the field or basketball on the court. His hands grow weary from Guitar Hero and Play Station.
He came home one day and said some girls made a list of the hottest guys at school and he was number one. He was obviously feeling pretty good about that.
"Who are the girls?" I asked.
"Oh, just some girls. I would never go out with them or anything," he said.
They are on a different rung of the ladder from him. A little lower, just dreaming of the guy on the rung above them.
I'm not sure if I should be bothered by his feeling that some people are beneath him, but am I kind of disturbed to realize that I was one of those girls. I might have made a list. I might have given a secret nickname to the hot guy, but he was never going to look at me.

Friends

The worst thing about sending my kids to school, aside from all of the school things, is that in one fell swoop I lost contact with all of my friends.
When we were homeschooling, hardly a day passed that we didn't get together with friends to play or meet at the rec center or have classes at the library or go on a nature hike/kickball game. The days were filled with laughter and yelling and conversation.
These days, after 8 a.m., my house is mostly quiet. When I'm home, I work in the solitude, shooing the cat off the mantle, turning on another load of a laundry. I don't mind the quiet and sometimes will stretch out on the couch for an afternoon nap. But I do miss my friends, those homeschool moms who helped me brainstorm so many childrearing problems.
And so, I'll think to myself, we should go out for coffee or lunch. But then I remember the problem. That mom still has all those kids at home. She can't just dump them and meet me. I can't invite her and the clutch of kids to my house because my kids aren't here to entertain them. And, I'll have to assume, my homeschooling friends figure I wouldn't want to visit their houses with the passel of kids there. Who would want to leave a quiet house for a house full of kids (to steal a turn of phrase from Seinfeld)?
So, I'll sit here in my quiet house, reminding myself to get my work done while the kids are gone, and hope for more days like the snow day, when I invited some moms of schoolgoers over to play cards and we had pina coladas in the middle of the afternoon.

Blizzard

Somewhere back in my childhood is the memory of being snowed in. I think I can remember my father not going to work because of the snow, but it somehow gets mixed together with my best friend from college being stranded at our house too, so I know that different blizzards have mingled. But I felt that same excitement yesterday when the winter storm warning was changed to a blizzard warning.
As a child, I can remember the weather man's face on the news when he warned that the barometric pressure was dropping. That was a sudden and scary blizzard. The one this weekend was just heavy snow that refused to quit.
I was prepared to hunker down in the house, a nice fire drying off the wet gloves and boots as the kids came in from their sledding forays. I got up at 5 and turned on the TV so I could see the cancellations, confident that the championship swim meet over an hour away would be put off for another day. But when the call didn't come, we piled into the car, leaving at 6:45. The kids busily texted their friends.
"Where r u?" they asked.
Not going, came one response.
Then, "Turning around," from the friends about 20 miles ahead of us. The roads are too bad. And the highway was covered with packed down snow. When we got to a smaller route that didn't have buildings on either side, the blowing snow was piled up, scraping the bottom of our Honda Pilot. We began the route home, calling the swim coach with the bad news.
So today, as the kids arrange sledding dates, there is a vague feeling of missing something. Being stranded in the house with peanut butter cookies and cocoa, card games and a curious kitty isn't as satisfying because we have that left out, nagging feeling, knowing that in an overheated natatorium, the kids' friends are swimming, possibly making their zones' times.
And our kids ask for rides, to a friend's house three blocks away or to the sledding hill. Another is picked up to go to a farther sledding hill. And so the bunker mentality of the blizzard is broken as the kids disperse and my husband stops to get a movie for those of us who won't brave the snow. Okay that's just me. But now I'll always remember the blizzard of 2008 as the year that I watched Italian for Beginners.

Makeover

I love good escapism like anyone else, but as I'm devouring a mommy lit or chick lit book, I find myself dreading the scene when the heroine has a makeover. Suddenly her gray hair is tinted with fabulous highlights. All of her old clothes are replaced with new designer brands that show off the tiny waist she was hiding under her shapeless clothes. And who knew that with a little make up she could accentuate those sparkling green eyes.
Perhaps we're conditioned from our childhood days of Cinderella to believe that the makeover must occur or we're just not worthy of all the good things coming our way. The Prince, after all, is deserving of much more than a date dressed in a Kohls' juniors evening gown, arriving in a rusting Dodge Colt. Even a magic pumpkin will suffice.
But, when I look beneath the superficiality of the makeover scene, I wonder whether this character, usually a mother who has spent her recent years taking care of everyone else, can change inside without the outer metamorphosis. Can she become introspective, realize she has become a person she doesn't know, a person without passion, and then change only within? Suppose she starts taking time for herself rather than devoting all her minutes to the kids. Can't she just curl up in a corner and read novels rather than buying a new wardrobe and going to fabulous parties? Maybe the makeover isn't just a symbol for shaking off the old life. Maybe it's necessary for this character, this woman, to realize her value again.
But the part that really hurts is when they throw out clothes that I know are in my closet. Why can't the heroine ever hold onto those boiled wool clogs and the overalls? Won't she ever have those bloated days again?

Let Me Get This Straight

In the mid 1980s when big hair was on the loose, I finally let my hair down. I was living in Washington D.C. and then Pinellas County, Florida. What chance did I have against the humidity but to let my curly hair do its own thing. So I lived with the curls and became used to getting out of the shower, putting in some hair gel and not thinking about it again.
One of my friends deemed it "romance heroine hair." So I could shake back my curls and pretend to be sexy.
And that worked for me through all of my childbirthing and childrearing years. You know the ones I mean, when instead of putting in contacts, I'd wear glasses so I could nap whenever the kids were napping or watching a movie. When the only make up that got near my face were a few smears of strawberry jam on my cheeks.
This fall, when I had my hair cut, the kind hairdresser offered to blow it dry straight. I'd spent my middle school years trying to straighten it into a page boy, so I knew it would never work, but I let her try it. Something in the world of haircare has definitely changed since my middle school years. My hair was straight and flat. My husband loved it. He bought me a ceramic flat iron for Christmas. I used it once before deciding it was way too much trouble to try again.
Until last week.
That's when I got my hair cut again and the hairdresser straightened it. My husband loved it again, but the comments from friends were the worst.
"Wow, you look 10 years younger," said one.
"You look like one of the kids," another mom said.
"You look really thin," said a third. "I'm not standing by you."
Now, it is not really possible that straightening my hair has taken off years and pounds, is it? The problem is that I'm highly succeptible to other people's opinions.
So, on Saturday morning, before driving to a swim meet, I got up early, showered and blew my hair dry. When is the last time I aimed a hairdryer at my head? Maybe if the temperature was below zero and I had to go out. When my hair was dry, I plugged in the flat iron and painstakingly separated it into small chunks, pulling the scorching ceramic iron along the waves until they fell stick straight. My husband came in and added the finishing curl under at the back.
Three times now I have stood in front of the bathroom mirror, running the flat iron over and over my curls until they're straight.
People keep asking me, "How long does it take?"
I have no idea how long it takes. I don't have time to time how long it takes; I'm busy straightening my hair!
This I do know, it takes 100%, maybe 1000% more time than it used to, because I never did anything to it.
And another thing I'm sure of, now that I'm straightening my hair, curls should be back in style any minute.

"My Head is Like a Magnet"

After 9 years of homeschooling, my daughter started school this year. She's a little more naive than most 16-year-olds and that's why I didn't really believe her when she came home and said people keep throwing things at her head. I mean, she's pretty innocent, but those high school boys are way finished with throwing things at girls to get their attention.
At first it was the hacky-sack boys. During lunch, they play hacky sack in the halls. They did that when I was in college and inevitably, someone walking down the middle of the hall would get hit. She claimed it happened every time. Finally, I gave her some advice that I learned from watching her "Aunt Pat."
When we were reporters in Clearwater, Florida, Pat was terrified of spiders. One practical joker in our office took delight in hiding a rubber spider in places that would startle Pat. She would scream and rave before handing the spider back to Mike, who would hide it again in another place. One day, after finding the spider in her coffee cup, she'd had enough. She took the spider out the front door and stood along the curb, waiting for a break in traffic. Then she threw the spider into the middle of the four-lane street. (Of course, Mike later ran into the street and retrieved the spider, but that's not the lesson I wanted my daughter to learn.)
I told her that the next time they hit her in the head with the hacky sack, she should grab it, run out the front door of the school and throw the hacky sack. (They're allowed to leave school at lunch time.) But before she had a chance to retaliate against the hacky sack boys, other boys began throwing things at her head.
Carrots at a swim meet. Coins and a ping pong ball at lunch. A pencil, part of a pen and a bottle cap during class. "Then he giggled," she told me the other day. "A high school boys giggling is not something you want to hear."
Her friends at school were unbelieving too.
"You're exxagerating," one friend said.
"Watch," my daughter retorted. She stepped into the hall, her friend Lisa right behind her. A hacky sack flew straight for her head.
She glared at the boy.
I think she's becoming famous for her glares, but they don't really serve as a force field to protect her head.

Bah, humbug valentine

Happy Freakin Valentine. I'm in a pissy mood. I know I have no right to be. I have a devoted husband who brought me roses and tulips and took me out to dinner last night. But my mood went bad last night when I heard a Congressman really grilling Roger Clements and his personal trainer. I wanted to scream. Who cares about baseball and steroid use? Why don't you go after the President and Vice President who have lied and tortured and sent our soldiers to fight an unnecessary war? Why don't you go after the oil company presidents, who were allowed to testify in Congress without being under oath? But they put the baseball players under oath. Hmmmm. Who is going to affect my life more?
So, I was pissed. Don't we elect these reps to make our lives better. Baseball and steroids. Who cares?
FOCUS.
So at 7:30 a.m. this morning, still feeling a little disgruntled, I stood in the CVS with my two sons as they looked at boxes of heart-shaped candy, trying to decide which to get for their "girlfriends." Middle-school girlfriends are questionable. They seem to change quickly.
My 11-year-old grabbed a box wrapped in clear red paper and was ready to go. My 14-year-old hemmed and hawed. He was surly. I suggested this then this then this. "No," he replied each time. A woman standing in the row, exchanged a look and a smile with me.
That set him off.
"You just want me to get her candy so you look good to the other moms."
He accused.
"That's it," my brain said. Actually, it said, "What the f***?"
I know my mouth was open and I stared at him.
"Forget it," I said, starting to walk away.
He grabbed a box of candy and joined me at the register as I forked over money for my boys to woo their girlfriends.
My older son hid his candy in his backpack, saying he would give it to her only if she gave him something. My younger son hopped out of the car in front of the school, clutching the red box in his hand and his brother yelled.
"Hide it. Put it away."
He didn't care. He'll probably have a different "girlfriend" in a few days anyway.
As we drove around the corner, just me and my surly son, I remembered that my anger at his behavior rarely has an effect.
"You really hurt my feelings," I told him.
And he apologized as he slipped out of the car, looking around like a spy before he put on the backpack that held the offending red and gold box of Valentine candy that would go to a girl who loved talking to him before they were "dating." Now she barely speaks to him, because that is the code of middle school girls. Once you have them on the hook, you must keep all hopes and dreams secret.

An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton

I sat watching the primary returns last night with my 11-year-old. He had tucked a blanket over his lap and stretched his legs along the couch as we watched CNN.
Mike Huckabee won Arkansas.
"Will he stop the war?" my 11-year-old asked.
"No," I said quietly.
John McCain won Illinois.
"Will he stop the war?" the question came again.
"No, honey," I replied, feeling the weight of the question.
Next Hillary Clinton won Tennessee and New York and Massachusetts.
"Will she stop the war?" he asked.
And I felt unbearably sad. She voted for this unnecessary war. Most recently she supported President Bush's saber-rattling toward Iran. Would she bring home our troops?
"No, I haven't heard her say she'll stop the war."
Barack Obama won Georgia and Illinois.
"Will he stop the war?" my son asked.
"Yes, I think so," I said, the words of his speech "Yes We Can" ringing in my head.
My son was asking the most important question of our day. Stop the war. Bring home the troops who are dying across the ocean for a war that should never have begun.
But he wasn't only worried about them. He was worried about himself, knowing that whoever is elected this year, might be re-elected again in 2012. And that president might get to make the decision whether U.S. troops should be sent to fight. That president might decide to reinstate the draft, scooping up boys who never thought they'd serve in the military and that might include my 11-year-old. The quiet boy with glasses who wouldn't play football a second season because he didn't like hitting people. (His siblings are exempt from this feeling.)
So I'm asking you, Hillary Clinton, if you get the democratic nomination and then win the general election, will you promise? Will you promise to stop the war? Will you promise to bring home our troops? Will you promise that anytime you consider sending our army to fight a war that you will first reflect on -- 'Is this fight worth my daughter's life? Would I be willing to send Chelsea first to battle this war?'
And if the answer is yes, you would give your daughter's life to save the slaughtered Jews in Hitler's Germany, or the Muslims and Albanians who were being exterminated in Kosovo, then send my son too.
But if you think a war would mostly benefit your wallet and the wallet of your friends. Or if you think a war might boost up the U.S. economy or settle an old grudge, and you wouldn't be willing to let Chelsea die for it, then don't send my son or anyone else's child. Promise?

Silent House

The middle of the day and all I can hear in this near silent house is the jingle of the cat's bell as he bats a rubber ball along the wood floor. Being home alone is strange for me. For 15 years, nearly 16, children have been my constant companions. Sometimes a whole houseful, other times just my three. We'd snuggle on the couch and read books in the winter or set up lemonade stands and backyard sprinklers in the summer. We did messy science projects and some unsuccessful art projects with the glitter still on the dining room table as proof.
Until today.
Today is silent.
A silence that began when my youngest walked out the door following an argument about whether he needed to wear a coat today, his first day of school, with the thermometer reaching a balmy 21. I won the coat battle, but didn't get a goodbye kiss. He left the back door open, so I had to walk over and push it closed as he climbed in the car with his father.
10 years of homeschooling have ended like that. A scared and angry sixth grader slamming out the door, wondering whether he'll have to sing by himself in choir class since he's joining in the middle of the year. His brother and sister are old pros at it now, having started school in August. His sister gave the youngest a light up pen on a string that he hung around his neck. His older brother advised him to remove it. "Looks kind of nerdy."
They were nervous for him. "You have to play football during recess. You have to play whatever the boys are playing," his older brother said.
My youngest shrugged. Today, he is still full of that homeschool fallacy -- that people can choose to do what they like and no one will protest or comment. I'm sure that will fade.
I had a meeting this morning so I jumped in the shower when they pulled away. The bathroom door opened a few minutes later and my husband's glasses fogged up as he stuck his head inside the shower curtain.
"So all the kids are at school."
I wondered how many years he had been waiting for this moment. To me, sending all of the kids to school was a slightly painful milestone. To him, an empty, silent house could mean only one thing.

Walking

Isn't it ironic that since we moved to a small town where I can walk nearly everywhere, I haven't been able to do much walking? Is it self sabotage?
First there was the falling down, stitches in the knees, swollen knobbly knee bones that refused to straighten that kept me off the streets for a couple of months.
Then I was back on my feet, even running a three-mile circuit severals days a week, gazing at the architecture of the 1920s homes, meeting my running buds on Saturdays and gritting out a six-mile route. Until that day when my feet hurt by the end of the day. But I shrugged it off. I'd run six miles, worked the bullpen at a swim meet, herding little children to the blocks, then returned home to stand on our kitchen's tile floor to bake cookies. Of course, my feet should hurt. I gave myself a day off from running. But when I ran again, surprise, my left foot was hurting. It seemed to be a phantom pain that moved around. First it was my heel and the inside of the ankle. Then it moved to the outside of my foot and ankle. I didn't want to go to the doctor until after the new year. New insurance, new medical savings account. So yesterday I went to see the sports medicine doctor. I love those guys because they understand the insanity of runners. They know that the goal is to get back on the road.
A shadow along one of the bones in my foot told him that I was developing a stress fracture. That's basically overuse and old running shoes. He assigned me to three weeks of little walking and no running. In two weeks I get to try the stationary bike. Ooops, that's what I was doing all last week when my foot hurt too much to run. Then at week 3 I can try an elliptical machine before I return to see him. And, finally, before I hit the streets (to run -- no money will change hands) I'm to go to the elite running shoe store and get a pair of new shoes.
What I learned from this experience:
*trying to save money by running in old shoes always comes back to bite you.
*I hate swimming but it's better than not exercising.
*The doctor should have given me a boot/cast as he threatened, because that way my family would take my injury seriously when I ask them to run to the freezer downstairs to get a loaf of bread rather than rolling their eyes at me.
*The only outward sign of my stress fracture is the increasing girth of my thighs.

Escape

I've been thinking about the themes in my novels lately. Whenever people asked, I always blithely said, "Escape. My novels are all about escape."
And, on the surface, that seems true. The two novels I've finished (as yet unpublished) and the one I've started on all have people fleeing their homes. In DEPARTURE, a mother takes her three children and runs away to Europe. In TRAIL MIX, two women leave behind their husbands and teenage children to hike the Appalachian Trail.
So, obviously, escaping from their humdrum lives is the point. But if I look at the end, they return to that life they were escaping from. It's not the life they want to avoid; it's themselves they need to change. So the escape is a search for an opportunity to change, to improve. In TRAIL MIX, my characters have to get over superficial worries and find the beauty in living again. In DEPARTURE, Annie must become a stronger person, find out what she enjoys, before she can be the wife and mother she wants to be.
And thinking about that search for beauty and the true person on the inside, made me think about Christmas and how my family and I probably didn't need any of the presents that made us shriek with joy. Maybe we just needed to stand for a minute in the sun beaming through the window and feel it warm on our face, to realize that we don't have to escape to find beauty.
Merry Christmas.

Perfect Mom?

Suppose a mother took a mid-morning break from grading papers during finals week and toasted an everything bagel. She slathered on creamy swiss cheese and the savory smell filled the kitchen. She could almost taste the crunchy bagel as she tapped the spoon against the side of her tea cup and moved toward the table. Then, her 11-year-old, who'd already eaten a whole bagel on his own, asked if he could share hers. She'd look at the still warm bagel, a golden brown around the edges, the cheese melting just slightly.
"Okay," she'd agree to share.
But when the grimy hand reached for the top of the bagel, the one that was covered with sesame seeds and poppy seeds and salty goodness, she had to put her foot down.
"Not that side."
Perhaps, she's not quite the perfect mother after all.

Deep Breath

I was feeling pretty proud of myself as a parent this weekend as I drove two of my children to a swim meet through the dark morning. The clouds were piled up like mountains and the light was peeking through attempting some sort of midwestern Northern lights show. We left the house a little after 6 a.m. About an hour later, I was standing at one end of the pool with a stopwatch in my hand as Grace swam the 500. That's 20 laps and it is one of her favorite races. She's pretty good at it. Some of the girls from swim team were at the end of the pool turning cards that counted her laps. She was on 13 when she seemed to fall behind the girl next to her. And, as she reached the end of the pool, rather than the smooth flip turn with a glimpse of her legs flashing over her head, she stopped and held onto the side of the pool. I saw her put her hand to her mouth and cough.
She must have gotten choked on the water, was my first thought as I stood there, glancing down at the watch. This was really going to mess us her time. The girls she had been ahead of flipped and headed back to the other end of the pool. Some of the girls were only on lap 11, so if she got going she could still beat some of them, I thought. Our coach knelt down in front of her and was talking to her. Then a white-outfitted offical bent over to talk to her.
The coach made a motion with her hand, calling me down to that end of the pool. I took off the watch, laying it on a chair next to the dad who was timing. "Sorry I can't help you with Nick," I said as I walked away. By the time I got to the end of the pool, Grace was sitting on the bleachers and the coach was glued to her side. Her friends on the other side. I knelt in front of her. Okay, I was still feeling a little annoyed. So she wasn't going to have her best time, she should have finished.
"Do you want the paramedics?" the sheriff's deputy on duty asked.
I felt confused. Why? I looked at the coach.
"Yes," she told him.
Grace seemed pale but she was upright; she was breathing.
"I had to carry her out of the pool. She couldn't support any of her weight," the coach said. "She couldn't breathe."
So the paramedics came and Grace seemed dazed. They said what people who aren't athletes would say, she probably over exerted. But she swims this race almost every week. She was scheduled to swim the 1000 later in the day. This should have been nothing.
We talked about lungs and heart and, as a mom, I began to worry. Those football players who collapse during summer drills. All those kids whose hearts seem healthy until they just stop beating and all the teammates talk about what a kind person the kids was. I was torn between encouraging Grace to try again and wanting to keep her immobilized. When she walked, I held onto her sweater, like that could keep her from falling down.
We saw a sports med doctor on Monday. She ordered a stress test to see if Grace has sports-induced asthma and she'll do an EKG too. Then a friend started talking about whooping cough and the recent outbreak that started with a swim team so we went to see the pediatrician. The pediatrician, not our regular doctor, swam competitively through high school and college.
"Sometimes if your oxygen gets low and your CO2 gets high, you'll start to hyperventilate," she explained.
I practically saw the light bulb over Grace's head. "I'm not dying?" it seemed to ask. And the cold she'd been fighting became nominal. She could be a swimmer again.
And I could take a deep breath and be just a mom again -- not the best or the worst, but a mom.

Civic Duty

"Well, what does your husband think about the gas prices?"
I was stunned into silence. This questions was beyond my grasp in so many ways as I sat on a hard metal chair against the wall of an elementary school. I had been there since 5:30 a.m. when we set up the 3 voting booths and measured 100 feet away from the doors, sticking flags and warning signs into the ground. No one should pass out campaign material past that flag. Then I was obligated to stay in the room with these four other people for the rest of the day, until we packed up the voting machines and turned in the results. I was doing my civic duty by working the polls.
The one guy working with us was probably mid 50s with hair nearly reaching his shoulders and a beard that he let grow long from his chin/neck area. Creepy. And he was the sole republican. (Can Republican and sole/soul go together?) The gas price question was obviously one of those, "do you have a husband?" questions. Ick. The man then lectured me on the fact that if he drove to Springfield - 40 miles away and 40 miles back - he could find gas for $2.50. I'm sorry, who has an extra 80 minutes to drive to fill up the gas tank and save 50 cents per gallon. Time is money, people!
The county had sent out letters to democrats pleading with them to volunteer at the polls. Since the majority of the precincts went democratic during the last election, the republicans could not be in charge of the polling places and they were desperately short of democrats. My husband (who has no strong opinion on gas prices) said he didn't have to work until the evening on election day. Why didn't I go ahead and volunteer to work. (Oh, the reasons I could come up with now!) So I did.
The gas-price guy had worked the polls for years. He came prepared with a cooler full of food, a grocery bag and a 12-pack of Sprite. Yes, 14-hours is a long time to work, but who is going to eat that much food? I'm figuring I need lunch and that's about it. As the day wore on, he walked back and forth with food. Strawberries smothered with sugar. A sandwich (he brought the whole loaf of bread and made the sandwich). A bowl of steaming soup. "And I've got two more cans of this!" Finally, around 6, he walked past with a bowl of ice cream. Ice cream? I'm going to be gone 14 hours and I pack ice cream as a snack? When anyone commented on his food, he would respond: "You don't bring it, you don't eat it."
Not that any of us were after his food. Only one woman, who was on a walker and had to take 15 pills each morning, was wishing for something of his. She needed a Sprite or clear liquid to drink before she could take her pills. The pop machine in the teacher's lounge was broken so she was out of luck. The poll worker guy did not offer to share his 12-pack of Sprite. Instead, he reminded us, "You don't bring it, you don't eat it."
When I went out for lunch, I stopped at a coffee shop for myself and grabbed a San Pellegrino limon drink for the woman waiting at the polls.
She'd had knee replacement surgery in the summer, but it became infected and she had to go back to the hospital to have it scraped before spending a few weeks in a nursing home learning to get around. Now she was up to a walker with tennis balls stuck on the back legs to keep it from scraping. She had long, numerous braids and talked about her kids, ages 21 and 22. Her mouth turned down at the edges and she was missing some front teeth. She thought someday she would like to move someplace warm, like California. I went to get a blanket from the back of my car so she could cover up as the elementary children ran in and out the school doors, letting the cold air in. She didn't mind that the polls weren't busy. She was getting paid to sit and do nothing. At home, she usually spent the day watching TV. Later, as she was talking, she mentioned her age. She was 45. Just a year older than me.
Not many people voted at that precinct on Tuesday. Not even a 20 percent turn out. But I did my civic duty and learned a few lessons about people who are outside my bubble.
Don't look for me to volunteer again, though, come the March primary. I think I'll just drop by with pizza for those other dedicated workers.

Corn Syrup Conundrum

When I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I resolved to change our family's eating habits. I tried to buy fruits and vegetables in season from the local farmer's market and what I found out was, my family was eating a lot fewer fruits and vegetables.
So now I buy the boxes of clementines that have been shipped across the Atlantic from South Africa, increasing my carbon foot print with each gallon of fuel the container ship uses to bring my little oranges to the United States.
One thing I have tried to stick with is eliminating high fructose corn syrup from our diet. HFCS is genetically modified to create an easily-transported sweetener that is added to nearly everything. What's wrong with it? According to an article by Linda Joyce Forristal, CCP, MTA, from "In the Kitchen with Mother Linda The Murky World of High-Fructose Corn Syrup," male rats that were fed high fructose diets didn't reach adulthood and had health conditions like high cholesterol, anemia and delayed testicular development. The females didn't have it as bad but couldn't bear live young.
"...all fructose must be metabolized in the liver," Forristal quotes USDA researcher Dr. Meira Fields. "The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic."
Okay, I know my kids aren't rats, but I'm looking forward to grandchildren some day, so I want to avoid that lack of testicular development and the ability to bear children. It's just like that book The Children of Men by P.D. James.
But buying food without high fructose corn syrup seems nearly impossible. They hide that in everything. My first surprise was bread. Who'd have thought bread needed high fructose corn syrup? The only loaves I can find at my regular shopping stops are Archer Farms at Target and organic bread at Kroger.
I took my kids off their once weekly soda allotment and instead buy Jones cream soda made from cane sugar. Candy doesn't have a lot of high fructose corn syrup, but just about any baked good is going to have it. Forget bagels. They are off our list forever. English muffins. Little Debbies. All gone.
Spencer asked for fries and steak for his birthday dinner so I was searching for ketchup. Guess what was in it? I found a bottle of organic ketchup and went with that. But then Grace had requested apple sauce and I was out of luck at the local Kroger.
I was kvetching to my friends that I couldn't find any applesauce without high fructose corn syrup.
My friend Laura looked at me in astonishment, "Why would you buy apple sauce? Why wouldn't you just make it from scratch? Cook up some apples and add some sugar."
Keep in mind, this is a friend who admittedly hasn't cooked dinner for her family in weeks.
"Well, geez, Laura. Why would you go buy bananas when you could plant a tree and have perfectly good bananas within years?" I replied. A little stung.
So, this morning I made an apple coffee cake and I'll go to Wild Oats later today to look for organic apple sauce, but I am not going to feel guilty that I don't make it more than once a season from scratch.


Find the Forristal article at http://www.westonaprice.org/motherlinda/cornsyrup.html
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts,
the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Fall 2001

Rest in Peace

I don’t know why people insist on open-casket funerals. All it proves to me is that the person so obviously isn’t there any more. They don’t even physically resemble themselves.
I was thinking that this weekend when I stood behind a 94-year-old woman who was saying goodbye to her 92-year-old sister in a brushed metal coffin. The 94-year-old is the last of her siblings left and as she looked at my mother-in-law’s face, she probably saw a very different woman than I did, a very different woman than my husband did. She saw a tiny girl who stole her toys and a teenager who flirted with her dates. She saw a woman who became a nurse and a mother, a woman who worked constantly as they had all been taught by their Italian immigrant mother.
My husband and his siblings saw a woman who gave them the best she could. They were always clean and well fed. She may not have laughed with them as often as she should have. She may not have swung her toddlers into the air, watching their shoes fly off. She may not have settled onto the couch with a child’s head resting on her shoulder while they laughed at the television. But didn’t she also teach them that those are things they should cherish? By her omission and the times she cried from loneliness, wasn’t she teaching them that these are things to include in life?
When she died last week, my husband was out of town. She’d been sick a few weeks earlier and pulled out of it. She might again, the doctor said. But she didn’t. And I urged him not to feel guilty about missing the final moment. It isn’t about that last moment and who is there to claim it. It’s about adding up all of those moments before and relishing them.

Straight Hair Secrets

Well, I had a straight hair for the weekend and I am quite perturbed that women with straight hair have been hiding the truth from me. I thought this was a sisterhood. Here's what I learned. With straight hair, I can wake up in the morning and my hair looks exactly the same as it did the day before. No strange waves sticking up in the back or clumps of hair leaning to one side or the other. With straight hair, I can ride in the convertible, see the shadow of my hair blowing in straight lines all around my head like I'm incredibly frightened, and when the car stops, my hair looks exactly the same as it did before I climbed in.
I suppose modern technology should be given credit for my weekend of straight hair. It started with a trip to the "salon," which for me is a long narrow shop with six chairs and way too many pictures of Keith Richards. As Grace the hairdresser was beginning to dry my hair, she said, "The usual?" The usual for me is letting it dry naturally. I do as little to my hair as possible. After a shower I add hair gel (confixor by Aveda) and don't think about it again unless I pass a mirror.
"Are there any alternatives?" I asked Grace. "Sure, we could straighten it."
Those words are familiar. I went through years trying to tame my curly hair into a smooth pageboy or even a Dorothy Hamil wedge. After college, I gave up and accepted my curls. The humidity in Washington, D.C. and Florida made straightening an impossibility anyway.
So imagine my surprise when Grace the hairdresser pulled out a ceramic hair straightener and my hair not only went straight, but felt baby fine. This is not my beautiful hair, I wanted to exclaim feeling like David Bowie. But it was. My children and most everyone I know felt the same. People I knew walked right past without recognizing me. Apparently, I look totally different with straight hair. Some people said I looked younger. I thought the lines around my eyes were more apparent because I didn't have all of that hair distracting from them.
And when I got up Saturday morning, my looked exactly the same. So I skipped my morning shower and ran screaming when my daughter called me into the humid bathroom. My husband, who flew in late Friday night, commented that he could run his fingers through my hair without getting stuck in tangles. On Sunday morning, my hair still looked great. Not a sign of curl and none of the greasiness that people with normal straight hair get. I avoided getting it wet again. Eventually, I had to shower and my hair has popped back into curls, a little shorter than I would have liked, but I know that if I want it longer and sophisticated, all I have to do is buy one of those ceramic straightener thingees and spend about an hour every morning fixing my hair...

Escapes

My husband called last night from his vacation, oops, I mean work conference. He was standing at the top of the St. Petersburg Pier and I could hear the wind whistling across his phone. He'd had two beers and was feeling romantic as the balmy breeze buffeted him.
I was immediately expected to match his cuddly mood as I sat at my hallway desk helping to cut and paste the table of contents for my daughter's government report, worth 20 percent of her grade. My back was already aching from sitting in the straight-backed chair for a good part of the day while I graded 25 compositions.
I'm afraid I didn't jump to that romantic, reminiscent mood my husband was hoping for. He was talking about walking along the bay. The smell of the air on those nights when the wind blew just right, rustling the palm fronds. I was barely giving him the "hmmmm" response because I was concentrating on the correct page number for each constitutional cartoon.
My 11-year-old stumbled into the hallway, a tissue stuffed into his red, chapped nose wanting to know if I'd watch Dancing with the Stars. When he saw the already distracted look, he retreated to the television in the basement.
My husband gave up with a sigh. "We should come here sometime, just the two of us," he said. I tried to picture him in the darkening night walking back toward his hotel, the gulls swooping from above and screeching. Then I realized that the evening was getting dark and my middle son wasn't back from the football game yet. My husband had lost my attention again.
"I love you," I managed to call. "Have a good time."
And I wasn't picturing a time when the two of us could escape there together, instead, I was wondering when I might escape to a "conference" and have evenings to drink atop the St. Petersburg Pier and imagine my husband at home, juggling kids and homework.

The Hidden Cost of ChiRunning

I just want to reiterate the value of exercise before I start totaling up the cost of exercising, and I'm not talking about the cute running shorts or the expensive shoes. Today, in my second trip back to the doctor in a week, I handed over my credit card for my $20 co-pay.
"$10" the Russian-born receptionist asked, as if she hoped to make it less painful. Maybe she felt guilty that I paid $20 on Monday and all the doctor did was tut over my knee and tell me to come back.
In some distant month, I can see myself practicing ChiRunning as I glide along the street, barely breathing hard. For now, I'm entering the bills on my Quicken, unable to run for another week yet.
ChiRunning class taught by impeccable instructor -- $125
ChiRunning book and metronome to keep me in beat -- $ 55
Emergency Room co-pay at 6 a.m. -- $ 75
Co-pay for first visit to have stitches removed -- $ 20
Co-pay for second visit to have stitches removed -- $ 20
Lost hour and a half of work in the writing center
while I had the stitches removed -- $30
Session with psychologists to lament the fact that
I can't run and must find other ways to deal with
my stress -- $120
Extra large bandages, epsom salts, mochas to ease
the pain, extra gas because I'm driving instead
of walking -- $??
New running shoes to replace the bloodied ones -- $90

In spite of the finances, the thing I feel badly about is that Grace fell on the same day as she was riding her bike to school. I was sitting with my stitched knee propped up when she came home with large bandaids on her ankle and knee. She hadn't ridden home in disgrace, dripping blood and crying. She had simply gone to the school nurse and gotten taped up. She didn't, or couldn't, make a big deal about it, because I had trumped her with my stitches. I was proud that she was more concerned about someone else (me) than her own injuries. She's really growing up. And it gave me pause, briefly, to wonder what it would be like to have a self-centered mother who frequently grabs the limelight with her own complaints.
Of course, I shouldn't overlook the benefits I've reaped from this episode. I haven't done laundry for two and a half weeks because the washing machine is in the basement.
As my fall becomes a bad memory, I will be left with only a Great Britain shaped scar.
Photo: http://creditcardlovers.com/

The Not So Good Day

Two awful things happened to me today. Well, one awful thing and one kind of bad happenstance. But the combination led to me sitting on an exit ramp at 8:05 a.m. putting on my panties.
Adding to my panic, was the fact that the Honors English class I'm teaching had begun five minutes earlier. Maybe not begun, since I wasn't there, but had been scheduled to begin.
So I was running late for class and I had to get dressed on my way to class. I peeled off my gray wicking shirt and left the compressing running bra on. I pulled a sleeveless, navy linen dress, which nearly covered the bra, over my head during a break in traffic. When the exit ramp light turned red again, I slammed the car into park and pulled off my running shorts and shoes. That's when I put on the panties and threw the edge of my dress over them as the light changed and I passed the nice policeman who let me turn left in front of the oncoming traffic.
I was running late for this, the second day of class, because I had been at the emergency room since 6 a.m. You've gotta get up pretty early in the morning to make it to the emergency room by 6 a.m. And when I walked, well limped, into the ER, the triage nurse actually laughed.
I think it all started on Sunday though. That's when, in spite of a bad cold, I went to a ChiRunning class taught by an old friend. ChiRunning mixes the methods of Tai Chi with running. It leads to a smooth, injury free run. I'm pretty good at running. I ran the Columbus Marathon a few years ago. I did 16 miles one Saturday last month just on a whim. I'm left handed, so I have a tendency to be clumsy when I walk or cut things with sharp knives. For some reason, I've always felt coordinated when I run. I don't stumble or fall off the edge of the trail.
On Sunday, I was feeling pretty good about my ChiRunning abilities while a friend who had accompanied me was not so thrilled. She complained and pouted that she couldn't get it. I could tell I was going to be good at it. We were taught the proper stance, proper posture, tucked in pelvis and tilted forward torso. The idea, once in the right stance, is to lean slightly forward and let gravity do the running for you. I bought the book. And the metronome to keep me running on the right beat.
This morning, I did the stretches in my darkened kitchen with the cat trying to grab my hair when I hung upside down to loosen my joints. Then I ventured outside where an outdoor cat stood blocking my way as I practiced my running technique up and down the back sidewalk.
Finally, I was ready for the road. I aligned myself again and ran down the smooth concrete alley. I reached the road and turned right. I hadn't run since we moved here, nearly a week and a half ago. I was trying a new route. I stopped after a block to realign myself. Keeping the right posture is really important to chi running. The roads were empty (luckily) because I felt kind of silly stopping and using my hands to reposition myself. The next time I had to do it, I moved to the sidewalk under a tree so I wouldn't be so out in the open. Then I started again, leaning slightly forward. Step, step, splat. An edge of the sidewalk stuck up a few inches above the others and it caught my left toe, propelling me forward.
Falling down is such a surprise as an adult. I never expect it to happen. It seems there should always be some way to recover before the actual sidewalks meets my knee, hip, elbow and hands. The chi running lean gave me the extra momentum I needed to do a full sprawl on the sidewalk. I pushed myself up and looked down at my left knee for only a minute. Skinned, I convinced myself and turned around to walk home. Limp home. It hurt and I would go in the dark house and wash it off, but I wouldn't look at it until I got home. Walking, walking. Don't think about it. Then I saw the drip on my shoe. My running shoes weren't clean, but they were white, now dotted with red.
So the cat greeted me when I walked in the house and I found a washcloth and wet it before looking at the coagulated blood on my knee cap and the runnier stuff that had soaked my sock. I pushed open the bedroom door and said to my sleeping husband, "I fell down."
"What?" he asked.
"I fell running. I'm sorry. I'm just like a little kid." But I didn't sob. Do I get points for that?
He pulled on a pair of shorts and knelt on the white tile floor in front of me.
"Oh," he said.
"Butterfly bandage?" I asked.
"You're going to need stitched," he said.
And that's why I was in the emergency room at 6 a.m. and the triage nurse laughed when he saw my bloody knee and said "Running or biking?" The car valet guy didn't laugh but asked, "Are you okay?" I shouldn't have been snobby and said, "That's why I'm here."
So that was the bad happenstance that led to stitches in my knee and x-rays that turned out okay. But the really awful thing was during the questioning in triage. Keep in mind that I had gotten out of bed, put on running clothes, washed my face and brushed my teeth. Maybe I was not looking glamorous, but the triage nurse sent me into a depression when he asked the question that is the antithesis of being carded for alcohol. For the first time ever, I was asked: "Are you still having periods?"

Following Rules

Before my kids started school, after nine years running things my way, my husband made me promise not to "piss anybody off" at the school -- at least until the kids started.
Well, today was their first day, so I guess that limitation is gone. I'm not a rule follower. I'm not certain when that happened. When I was a kid, I was a perfect student, got straight As. Now I look at rules with a jaundiced eye. What is the point of that rule, I wonder. My kids have already run into a few that are making me crazy.
Grace was in tears when she got in the car. "If I don't have my algebra book covered by tomorrow I'll get detention."
Okay. I can understand the rule to put covers on textbooks, but really, this is punishing the student if her parents don't get to the store that evening. This rule is made to teach what?
Here's one direct from the sheet: "Two (2) hall passes will be given to take care of any personal business each quarter. Any passes not used will equal extra credit! Any passes above 2 will result in a detention."
Okay, so if I'm interpreting this rule correctly,those with large bladders get extra credit. Girls, you need to schedule your periods to come only twice during each quarter. Imagine the girl who is unlucky enough for it to fall the first, fifth and ninth weeks of that quarter. I can see her squirming in the wooden chair, debating, "Is it worth a detention to staunch the flow of blood?"
Hmmmm. It's all coming back to me why I became a rule breaker.

First Day of School

Today, my son and daughter went off to their first day of school. Yes,there were tears, but it wasn't quite the way I'd always envisioned it -- my daughter in a smocked dress with patent leather shoes, my son with his caramel-colored hair slicked back and a button-down shirt. Instead, my daughter wore navy crocs with one strap missing and jean shorts tight to the knees. My son had on a gray Hollister shirt and baggy shorts that my husband kept trying to hike up even as Spencer sauntered out the door. And their first day will not require cutting or pasting. They are off to high school and middle school after years of homeschooling.
I shouldn't have had that celebratory espresso because my stomach was already in knots and now it is in jumpy knots. We left the house in plenty of time, with only a small tussle over the car keys now that Grace has her temporary driver's license. But the school buses were out in full force, stopping with their blinking red lights as the minutes ticked off the clock. I stopped in front of the middle school, in the middle of the road and said goodbye to Spencer -- no kisses, no photos. Just him with a bulky black backpack and the mandatory two boxes of tissues to give to his home room teacher.
I pulled up in front of the high school at 7:59. Homeroom started at 8 a.m. With a deep breath, Grace slid out of the front seat. She wasn't about to run. She pulled the strap of her messenger bag over her head and walked to the side door. She'd have no time to stop at her locker. I pulled away feeling like a failure as a school mom.
My youngest climbed into the front seat beside me and proclaimed it was time for Caribou Coffee. He was delaying school, choosing to stay home at least another year.
When we arrived home, my husband was getting ready to leave for work. "I put my name on my lunch bag," he said proudly, displaying the brown paper bag.
Like a brick in the gut, I realized, "Spencer forgot his lunch."
Of course, that was probably the first of hundreds of times my kids will forget something at home. But I hated that it happened on the first day.
My husband dropped it by the school on his way to work, and I could imagine Spencer realizing halfway through a class that he was without his lunch, or a teeny bopper office worker walking to the classroom and calling out: "This is for Spencer. He forgot to bring his lunch today." Or, the worst scenario of all, an announement over the PA system for Spencer to come to the office.
I watch the clock tick, imagining them going to American History or algebra or Honors English.
And I remind myself that the only thing that could make me a worse school mother would be forgetting to pick them up this afternoon.

INADEQUACIES

I consider myself a fairly confident woman. I have a master's degree. I've worked for 20 years, homeschooled three kids, written two novels.
Sometimes, the little things can throw me back to that insecure 13-year-old again. I've been teaching college for two years and last week I received notice that the lead teacher will be coming to observe my class. This is a totally normal, once-a-year occurrence. I've just dodged the observation for the past two years through luck.
I know the students leaving my class become better writers, so why am I so nervous about this? Why do I feel like the wizard about to have the curtain pulled back? I'm preparing powerpoint presentations, scripting my class, trying to plan for every contingency. I want to impress her with my teaching skills and I'm afraid she'll find me a fraud.
This is the second vulnerable incident in as many weeks. I finished a non-fiction book proposal and sent it off. I know it is a great book idea, but having never written a book proposal, I was filled with trepidation as the e-mail left my desktop. These people are professionals, for god's sake. They'll probably just laugh at my amateurish marketing plan.
Maybe this fear of being laughed at or found lacking is a throwback from my adolescent years. But aren't I the one constantly telling my own adolescents that if they don't take a chance, they'll never accomplish anything.
Photo:http://www.razewv.com/stuff/digitalgear.aspx

Time Alone

Today I spent about five and a half blissful hours alone.
The only other thing moving in the house was the cat.
Now for most mothers, this is probably not a big deal, but for a homeschooling mom, this is fabulous. I managed to send my three children to the same day camp. For five days they will be catching the shuttle at a rec center and heading up to the Scioto River for sailing camp before I return to get them at the rec center.
My 11-year-old is making noises about not going back. He didn't like it. He had a stomachache. Too bad. He's going.
I have a lot of work to do while the kids are gone, but I have those restful moments too where I sit in front of the computer and listen to Stephanie Miller's radio program or sit down to a roast beef sandwich with a book spread out beside me.
I'm going to make the most of this week of sailing camp, whether the kids enjoy it or not.

Peaceful Passing

Sometime between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m., our dog Rosie died.
She'd been a three-legged dog for about four months, getting used to negotiating stairs on three legs and licking her shaved hindquarters faithfully until the hair grew back. Amputating her leg was supposed to save her life, but the cancer had spread to her lungs, so she began coughing and started refusing all but the most delectable food tidbits. Yesterday, she turned up her nose at a hot dog and wouldn't take any medicine. Her last week was spent mostly lying under the porch swing as the flowers in the backyard waved gently in the breeze and the finches alighted on the bird feeder. She would lift her dry nose to feel the air wafting past and wag her tail at the approach of her family.
In spite of our coaxing, last night she wouldn't come in the house. While the kids and I went to the book store to retrieve the latest Harry Potter book, my husband sat on the ground beside her and she burrowed her nose into his lap, perking up her ears at his voice. He thought she had weeks to go. I thought otherwise. I watched how she wouldn't make eye contact with my daugher when we returned home. Grace sat with Rosie in the dark until friends arrived, taking Grace to an all night reading party.
I asked Rosie again if she didn't want to come in the house. She lapped at the water Grace had placed beside her and settled her nose on her tan paws. The clock read 1 a.m.
At 6 a.m. I wrenched myself from my bed. I was meeting friends for a run. Our black and white cat raced ahead of me down the stairs, anticipating his breakfast. I poured the dry food into his bowl and stepped to the sliding glass doors. Rosie lay on her side in the grass, her paws folded in front of her, no longer breathing.
I am sad she died, but I appreciate the way she lived and how she spent those last weeks of her life. I could learn a lot from her.

Community College Students Get No Respect

I'm fairly new to the college teaching arena. I jumped into the English classroom two years ago. I've been slogging away in the class, enjoying the interactions with the students, but I haven't seen too much of other teachers until this quarter.
This quarter, I'm tutoring in the Writing Center, so three of us are generally in there, sharing stories when students don't show up for appointments. I'm also taking an adjunct faculty workshop and that gives me even more time to listen to community college professors. Maybe I'm naive, but it shocks me how little the teachers respect their students.
One math teacher kept going on about how the college's real problem is getting students to even show up. I finally jumped in and said, in the students' defense, that was not a problem I'd seen. But I began to wonder if her students weren't showing because she expected so little of them. Her feelings of contempt must bleed through into her teaching. Why should they attend her classes?
Not many of these students come straight from a suburban high school to community college. Most of them have children. Some of them come from tough neighborhoods and their essays are filled with stories of alcoholic parents, cousins in prison and guns at parties.
They have clawed their way into college, even a community college, and they dream of coming out the other end with an associate's degree in landscaping or nursing. They work full-time jobs and juggle childcare and search out extra help for their essays, hoping to be a good example to the little eyes that watch them from home.
As an English professor, I spend a number of hours marking the rough drafts my students turn in, and that is the latest debate I've had with the other English professors. One claimed, "We don't get paid enough to grade rough drafts."
Well, really, who ever gets paid enough? That's not the reason we do this, though. I mean, we do it for the money, but every teacher who puts in extra hours in her job knows that the end isn't about the money. It's about the student.
I understand the point some teachers make, saying the students will only correct the mistakes that I mark. So I will start weaning them off their reliance on me, by correcting grammar through the first few paragraphs and pointing out the issues they need to work on. But I can't ever feel that "I don't make enough money to..." do whatever the students need to become better writers.
Sure, some of the students are slackers. They leave in the middle of class or only show up when an essay is due. Some of them will drift away from class, forgetting to drop, and end up failing. But for the ones who come everytime, who work hard, I'll pull out my pen and keep marking their essays.

Not So Dark Harry Potter

Last night, I dressed all in black, not because I live in New York (I don't) but because I was Belatrix LeStrange at a Harry Potter party. After helping my kids gather their costumes, I didn't have the energy to do much more than slip on black clothes with a black felt cape over it, knowing my naturally frizzy hair and pale skin could fill in the rest of the role.
I was in it for the long run. The party started at 7 and the movie began at midnight. Usually, my husband does the midnight movies. He has seen all of the Harry Potter movies as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean flicks. My job is to come home with my youngest son and we are snoozing by 10 p.m.
Yesterday, my 11-year-old decided he was ready for the midnight movie. There I was, yawning in the theater seat at 11:30. I was a little apprehensive on his behalf, having heard the rumors about the darkness of this movie, following the teen wizard angst Harry Potter showed in the book.
Yet, I stayed awake for the entire movie and thought it was great. Rather than being overly dark, scary and violent, I was inspired by the moments of love, friendship and light-heartedness.
Everyone who has read the book, knows that at the end, Voldemort tries to inhabit Harry's body, but he can't stay because Harry feels love and hope. So during this scene, which could have been fairly gruesome, Harry is flashing back to all of the love he felt throughout his life and throughout the movie. Flashes of Harry, Ron and Hermione sharing a grin after Harry's first kiss. The joy of the students as they created patronus spells and watched the animal shapes gallop around the room. Harry's parents grinning at him from a picture frame. Harry's godfather embracing him in a bear hug.
In the end, I found the movie much more hopeful than hopeless.
Today, my children slept until almost noon, recovering from the late night. But as my 11-year-old climbed in my lap today, proud of his late night, I could still see the faint lightning-shaped scar on his forehead.

Running is a lot like childbirth. After a too short time, we forget the pain involved and decide it might be fun to try again.
Since I started running with my group again on Saturday mornings, I've been adding up the miles each week. Now I'm going between 25 and 30 miles per week. Today's run was 10 miles and I'm in pain.
No, it's not my feet or my leg muscles. My butt is rubbed raw from my running shorts. I guess I forgot that feeling from a piece of material that rubs back and forth, back and forth for 100 minutes. Sometimes after a run, before I know that I've chafed, I'll hop in the shower. Once the water hits the tender spot, I shriek in pain. Often the chafing is from the running bra, just under my breasts.
Today wasn't a good run, although last Saturday, my nine miles was invigorating. I dragged today and stopped to walk for a minute. One of my friends, Pam, slowed down, waiting for me to catch up. I felt guilty that she was running alone, so I had to start jogging again.
So, now that I'm feeling raw and wounded, when I get up in the mornings and my ankles and knees are stiff as I come down two sets of stairs, I have to wonder again why I'm doing this. Sure, overall the running is healthy. It puts me in a better mood when I jog down to the park and do a few laps, coming home sweaty and salty. The main thing that keeps me going back to the running group at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, is my friends. We run and talk for miles and soon it will be hours. We have conversations about interesting books and rebellious children. We cheer each other on with new jobs and different endeavors. And no children interrupt us. We never have to run put in the laundry or load the dishwasher in the middle of a great idea. For the miles that we pound on the trail, we can talk and analyze and laugh to our heart's content.
So, I guess I'll keep slogging those miles, but on the next long run, I'll remember to cover my tender areas with body glide to prevent chafing.

WEBPAGE!

I know, I'm probably the last person in the United States to get a website, but I'm very excited about it.

I've been working with the guy who created it to perfect it. The home page was a little blah, so I decided to use paintings as the buttons. It made me realize how little I know about art. I was doing image searches with things like "artist who throws paint" which was Jackson Pollock, of course, I just couldn't remember his name. I never did find the name of the artist who uses dots.

Magritte was an easy choice. I love his clearer than life painting. Hopper was another artist I wanted to use. I was leaning toward a painting of his that shows a woman sitting in front of a table with a cup of coffee for "About Me." But she looked so depressed. I didn't want everyone to think I'm that sad. So instead I went with a Seurat. I think it's a Sunday picnic painting that looks a little formal for my life. I did use a Hopper painting for the "Home" button. It shows a woman looking anxiously, maybe anticipating something fabulous, out of a gorgeous bay window. We're buying a new house in the next month or so. Maybe I'll have a window like that as I peer out the window, waiting for the perfect offer to come from a publisher.

Stop by my webpage and look around. Hopefully, all the changes will be made today.

Good Dog

We have lived in this house for six years now and my dog still stands at the wrong side of the door waiting to get out. Like a misbehaving toddler from the 1950s, she stands with her nose in the corner. I have to scooch her back as I open the door at the other side and herd her around to that side, avoiding snowflakes and blasts of cold air that are gaining ground in this bizarre spring.
The dog was a bribe to the kids, brought by Santa the year we moved from Michigan, leaving behind a tight group of friends and godparents. In this friendless city, my husband drove to a farm and picked a chestnut brown puppy with floppy ears. She slept in an oversized dog kennel under the Christmas tree that night with a big red bow around her neck. The next morning she never left my 6-year-old daughter’s arms. My daughter named her Rosie, because she thought that brown fur had a reddish tint to it.
Rosie is eight years old now and mostly my thoughts of her have to do with vacuuming up dog hair and picking up dog doo in the backyard. She barks if anyone has the audacity to walk along the street in front of our house and she remains at the bottom of the pack, even under the paw of the kitten we got last summer.
My daughter Grace was certain she could turn this mutt into a show dog. She set up obstacle courses and ran her through them, along balance beams and through tunnels. Grace tried making her a sled dog, attaching the wagon to her ample sides and having her pull small children through the streets. Grace’s last efforts were teaching the dog to be a jumping dog. Grace would pull molded plastic chairs into the center of the backyard and place a long hockey stick across the seats. With pockets full of treats and a long leash, she would jump the stick, her newly elongated legs flying through the air. Rosie would follow sometimes, her belly barely grazing the stick. Other times she would simply stop, nearly pulling Grace’s arm out of socket as the leash jerked to a stop.
This fall, Rosie started limping. We probably waited a month before we took her to the vet, thinking it might go away. The vet diagnosed an old knee injury that was probably getting arthritis. He gave her a cortisone shot and sent us home. We went back two more times for pain medicine as her limp became worse. In March, the knee was so swollen and she was in obvious pain. This time, the doctor did an x-ray. He called me and my now 15-year-old daughter back to look at the x-ray.
A bone tumor.
Where her femur should have been straight and white, the bones seemed to wander off into their own curling paths.
Grace held it together until we returned to the examining room. She sat down, refusing to look at the dog. Tears streamed down Grace’s face as I petted the dog’s soft fur around her ears and neck.
“She doesn’t know why your sad, Grace,” I said.
My husband and I took her to the Veterinarian Oncologist and our very sensible friends refrained from laughing at us. But after two hours listening to the doctor explain chemotherapy treatments and the cost of amputation, we walked out having decided to make Rosie’s life as comfortable as possible. With all of the treatments, they could predict a 10- to 16-month life expectancy. She had already beaten the odds. A dog with this type of bone tumor normally only lives five months. Rosie had been diagnosed six months previously.
So, now I think about the dog much more. I give her medicine every morning and evening. I let her sleep on the living room rug rather than in her kennel. I feed her treats and trip over her chew bones. I’m careful when I open the door to let her out, trying not to brush her sore leg and leaning way into the spring snow to avoid hitting her with the screen door.
She has been the best bribe I ever gave my children.