Read Elsewhere: What To Do

Anne Lamott, on Facebook, in response to the senseless violence in a movie theater in Colorado:

All I can think to do is what we've always done. We work towards peace and non-violence. We register voters. We create art and music in the face of madness. We light candles. The praying people pray: Lord have mercy. The meditating people meditate. We create Love and beauty as radical acts. We take care of the poor, and teach people to read and write. 

Antidote

Kicking my own butt at the gym for an hour: treadmill, rowing machine, jump rope, weights.

Lunch at Marie Catrib's with Jemma (yes, of course pudding).

Lucky pedicures and swinging at the playground afterwards to dry our toenails.

Reading a pile of library books in the car while waiting for Annie to come out of school.

New running shoes and lipgloss. 

Inhaling fresh air with next-door neighbors before dinner, and children doing cartwheels madly in the grass. 

Well-behaved, cooperative, happy, and all-around hilarious children.

New Patricia Polacco book at bedtime.

Scoring a last-minute babysitter so I could join some friends to drink (too much) wine, and drinking the first Chardonnay I have ever liked.

This quote from Mary Oliver: 

"Sometimes I need

only to stand

wherever I am

to be blessed." 

This ridiculous video MY FRIEND MADE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QmRUL6f9rs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Sleeping with the window cracked open.

Animated With a Love

It was a magnificent weekend. It was the kind of weekend where you laugh until your sides hurt, revel in the crisp air during a hilly early-morning trail run, listen to little girls play incessantly, find the perfect small things while shopping, have real conversations with well-loved people, and find yourself saying grace around a Thanksgiving table that's full of magically perfect food.

We spent Thursday and Friday up north, where it was warm enough that all the girls could hopscotch their hearts out in the driveway while they burned off their Thanksgiving dinner but cool enough that they warmed themselves around the fire when they came back inside. Watching the four of them together - now swathed in Mimi's scarves, now dancing a polka around the living room, now working on an art project with their blonde heads bowed in concentration - gets me every time.  One our drive home yesterday, Annie lamented that her beloved cousins don't live closer, and I could only agree with her lament.

Jason's grandparents were there this year, too, and though they are not as young as they were when I met them, they still bring a sturdy love with them everywhere they go. They watched the action with smiles on their faces, full of praise and encouragement for us and our lives, full of pride in the "smart, beautiful" little ones who love their custard pie and their Slovak nursery rhymes.

We headed home yesterday, stopping en route to make our traditional pilgrimage to The Corner Bar and Hart's Christmas Tree farm. For the first time we can remember, there wasn't a speck of snow on the ground when we combed the fields for the perfect Frasier Fir. We wandered a bit more this year because of the warmth, and the girls spent all their pent-up energy hopping from tree stump to tree stump and searching for milkweed pods.

Last night, after unpacking the family wagon and dragging the Christmas decorations upstairs and the tree into its stand, we kissed the girls good-bye and went out on the town for a night, first to meet up with my extended family for drinks and then to have sushi with JT, Di, Chris, and Sarah. The six of us took down a huge table of some really beautiful food, and - true to form - Jason ordered something new and absurd, which this time happened to be a roll that came to the table wrapped in foil and lit in fire while we all watched. (It was actually delicious.)

Today was rainy and dreary, and we were all about a fire in the fireplace, hot cocoa, and putting all the decorations on the tree and around the house. Jason took the girls to the pool this afternoon while I did laundry and got groceries for the week, and then our foursome ate dinner in front of the television for our annual viewing of Elf, which is perhaps my very favorite Christmas movie.  Watching Annie and Jemma watch the silly parts is almost as fun for me as watching the movie itself. Almost.

They're in bed now and the fire is dying down. I'm on the couch with the computer, planning the week and making lists, trying to keep track of Christmas gifts and travel plans, and Jason's folding laundry and watching Home Alone. The fridge is full, the clothes are clean, and we're fortified by four full days together. We're feeling (briefly, I'm sure) ready for the holiday season and all the accompanying joy and chaos, appreciative and aware of all the animated life in our life right now.

"We are to be animated with a love which embraces all, of every rank and character. A love, which forgets divisions and outward distinctions, that breaks down the old partition walls and seeks a divine spark in every intelligence. Love which longs to redress the existing inequalities of society, which substitutes generous motives for force, which sees nothing degrading in labor but honors all useful occupation, and which everywhere is conscious of just claims and rights of all. Calling upon the mighty to save, not crush, the weak. And a love, which in a word, recognizes the infinite worth of every human spirit." - William A. Channing

Read Elsewhere: Story

"The artistic sensibility in the nation became wholly self-referential - the story of my life is what matters, not the well-crafted and distilled art of memoir, nor the carefully compiled story (and analysis) of the lives (and problems ) of others - but the story of what I am feeling, right now, right this minute.  And so, I became part of the problem, I suppose . . . We have always loved stories, I think, it's just that we, as a nation and perhaps as a human race, recently stopped loving stories about the other; we began to love stories only about ourselves.  We love stories in which we are the protagonists in search of truth.  I do not want to judge this.  But my feeling is that we can cope with the increasing smallness, rapidness, and indifference of our changing, violent world only by seeing ourselves as noble characters caught in the struggle.  We are all, as Turgenev so presciently said over a century ago, either Hamlet or Quixotes, and we must be these kinds of people if we are to endure.

We see ourselves in a struggle of epic, or at least interesting, magnitude, and so we go about documenting it ourselves, not waiting for some future historian, anthropologist, or novelist to find our tale and tell it for us. YouTube, MySpace, blogs - all of these things are ways for us to make ourselves protagonists on a very crowded, violent, and unjust stage." - Dean Bakopoulos, My American Unhappiness


*****

"The story my kids will tell someday depends on me.  I am writing their book, and I want their childhood chapters full of traditions and stories and memories of the comforts of home." - Kelle Hampton

*****

"When our story is told, and it will be told in song and fable and interpretive dance and puppet show, people will weep with joy and, through sobs, say, "Today we have witnessed love.  How can our lives not be bettered by this?" - quote in a friend's back entry.

On Being a Grown-Up

I remember being around sixteen years old, thinking that the next ten years or so would almost completely determine the person I would become, feeling nearly overwhelmed by the Big Decisions I would need to make.  I knew I'd have to choose a college, then choose a major, then choose a career.  I knew I'd probably choose the person with whom I'd be spending the rest of my life, choosing a city in which to live, and choosing whether and when to have children.  Then, I thought, all the Big Decisions would be made, and - voila! - I'd be a grown-up, aka A Person Who Has Made All the Big Decisions.

I've made all those decisions now (and am steadfastly happy with the choices I made) but it turns out, at thirty-three, there are still decisions - some big, some small - and daily I wish that I had become the grown-up who knew how to make them.  I have no problem doing the hard thing when I know that it is right, but I do have a problem when it isn't clear what the right thing is.  I've always known that one of my strengths and weaknesses is that I can argue both sides of an issue, which makes it hard to choose one path and stick to it confidently.  The current crop of Life Your Best Life media (Oprah, Life Lists, a plethora of inspirational websites and magazines) inspires me to, well, craft a life that lives up to its potential, to abhor complacency, to figure out what the problem is and find a way to solve it, to innovate, to raise the bar.  Trouble is, it's hard for me to know when I'm taking that too far.  Shouldn't I at some point just be grateful for the life as it is, or should I constantly be using my energy to improve it?  I CAN ARGUE BOTH SIDES.

We were at the beach today, which is really the only place to be when the dashboard weather looks like so:

and I was having a version of this conversation with a smart friend, who agreed that there is a fine line between wanting your life to be as ideal as possible and being the kind of person who always wants more, more, more.  Then, on the way home in the car - after hours of swimming and beach baseball and juice boxes and Doritos and Pronto Pups and ice cream and just one more Pronto Pup - Annie was complaining about the heat.  The air conditioning was going full blast, though it was taking a little while to cool the car down, and she couldn't stop talking about it.  It was so hot!  It was so uncomfortable!  It was so hot that it required a low-grade whine to emanate from the backseat and mingle with the noise of The Princess and the Frog.  At which point I heard my own voice share this bit of wisdom:

"You have a great, lucky life and you just had a super-fun day.  Now stop finding the one small thing that nobody can help, and just be happy."

Even as it was coming out of my mouth, I knew it was advice I needed to hear myself.  We came home, showered, put exhausted children to bed, and sat on the couch drinking a glass of red wine and talking about the never-ending decisions that are part and parcel of life as a grown-up, and I felt more sure that, no matter what we decide to do about this or that, I will be happy, because life is great and we just had a super-fun day.

"This is the thing:  when you start to hit twenty-eight or thirty, everything starts to divide, and you can see very clearly two kinds of people:  one one side, people who have used their twenties to learn and grow, to find God and themselves and their deep dreams, people who know what works and what doesn't, who have pushed through to become real live adults.

And then there's the other kind, who are hanging on to college, or to high school even, with all their might.  They've stayed in jobs they hate because they're too scared to get another one.  They've stayed with men or women who are good but not great because they don't want to be lonely.  They mean to find a church, they mean to develop honest, intimate friendships, they mean to stop drinking like life is one big frat party.  But they don't do those things, so they live in kind of an extended adolescence, no closer to adulthood than they were when they graduated college.

Don't be like that.  Don't get stuck.  Move, travel, take a class, take a risk.  Walk away, try something new.  There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither.  This season is about becoming.  Don't lose yourself at happy hour, but don't lose yourself on the corporate latter either.

Stop every once in a while to go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal.  Ask yourself some good questions like, Am I proud of the life I'm living?  What have I tried this month?  What have I learned about God this year?  What parts of my childhood faith am I leaving behind, and what parts am I choosing to keep with me for this leg of the journey?  Do the people I'm spending time with give me life, or make me feel small?  Is there any brokenness in my life that's keeping me from moving forward? . . .

Now is your time.  Become, believe, try.  Walk closely with people you love, and with other people who believe that God is very good and life is a grand adventure.  Don't spend time with people who make you feel like less than you are.  Don't get stuck in the past, and don't try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven't yet earned.  Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life's path."

-Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet

The Fourth of July: Traditions and Innovations

"For instance:  you realize that every summer we do things over and over we did the whole darn summer before?"

"Like what, Doug?"

"Like making dandelion wine, like buying new tennis shoes, like shooting off the first firecracker of the year, like making lemonade, like getting slivers in our feet . . . Every year the same things, same way, no difference.  That's one half of summer, Tom."

"What's the other half?"

"Things we do for the first time ever."

-from Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury

Certain things must happen each year for me to feel that it is truly the 4th of July, including but not limited to:  swimming in Walloon Lake and zooming around on the boat at least once; eating brunch at Bay View Inn and taking cousin-pictures on the croquet lawn after; joining the throngs of red-white-and-blue bedecked parade-goers in Harbor Springs; getting Tom's Mom's cookies and lemonade to add to the picnic lunch we eat down by the water; wading in the always-freezing bay; getting balloons for the girls; sitting on the curb in the hot sun to watch the parade; getting squirted by the fire trucks as they bring up the end of the line of floats; watching the two sets of fireworks explode simultaneously over the bay late at night.  And as it has been in years past, it was again this year.

And then there were the things that we did for the first time ever, like

Annie catching her first fish (a small-mouth bass) and eating it later that same day;

all the little girls (with a little help from the moms) making a dessert that they take turns choosing for the occasion;

spending a long, languid afternoon on the family porch with mojitos, ribs, and grocery-store fireworks while waiting for the big show to start;

taking Annie and Jemma tubing on our last afternoon there and watching as they held on for dear life and bounced around with glee;

letting all the cousins have a sleepover at Mimi's while the brothers and wives stayed in town for the night, eating and drinking our way until some people were blatantly asleep on the couch.

Both halves of this very wonderful holiday weekend = so, so good.

Happiness (Hit Her)

"Happiness, hit her
Like a train on a track
Coming towards her
Stuck, still no turning back"


-Florence + The Machine, Dog Days Are Over


Danced to this rousing anthem in the kitchen yesterday morning with the girls.

Jumped to it, really.

Felt deliriously tired and deliciously aware of the moment:  little girls, pajamas, a summer morning, whole day ahead, followed by a whole weekend of sparklers and fireworks, parades and flag cake, lake and woods, family and food.

It's coming, no turning back, and sometimes it's exactly what I need when I feel depleted by vacuuming the floor or settling a squabble for the 45th time that day:  Happiness, hitting me right in my kitchen.

Boom.

Here, There, Everywhere

Another weekend, another round of throwing a suitcase into a moving vehicle and schlepping our children to a new location.  Without exactly meaning to, we've gone ahead and scheduled ourselves major weekend plans every weekend but one for all of February and March, and if the packing/unpacking routine is getting a little stale, the perks far outweigh the nuisances.  For one thing, I literally cannot believe that today's date is March 7, and I know that spring - true spring, daffodils-poking-up, absolutely no snow in sight - is going to be here in a flash.  For another thing, we've been able to spend some really quality time with just our little family of four and with some of our other favorite people.

This weekend's lucky location was Petoskey, where we were scheduled to do absolutely nothing.  And that's what we did.  We crashed my accommodating brother-and sister-in-law's (completely renovated, head-to-toe gorgeous Victorian) house for the first time since they've moved in.  From pancakes in the morning until bedtime at night, four little blonde girls ran from room to room, squealing with delight and not needing serious adult intervention at all.  Jason and Trevor played a ton of guitar, Lisa and I walked to the bookstore and bakery in town, and we bundled up to go ice-skating as our big outing of the day on Saturday.  We were able to watch my niece's adorable Highland dance recital and break into spontaneous family polka circle (complete with confused basset hound), and I count that as the weekend's culture and exercise component.

Late Saturday night, I sat up reading Claire Dederer's new book, Poser, while Jason and Trevor had a few brotherly beers at The Noggin Room.  In a book about yoga and competitive mothering and making a living as a writer, I came across this quote, which seemed just right:

"In my experience, cousinship is the perfect human relationship:  Like siblings, cousins will be with you forever, no question; unlike siblings, cousins adore each other and forgive each other always, no question."

Read Elsewhere: Being Alive

from We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver:  

I have theorized that you can locate most people on a spectrum of the crudest sort and that it may be their position on this scale with which their every other attribute correlates:  exactly how much they like being here, just being alive.

from Seth Godin's blog:

All you've got - all any of us have - are the memories and expectations and changes we've left with others.

The concrete impact of our lives and our work is the mark you make on other people. It might be a product you make or the way you look someone in the eye. It might be a powerful experience you have on a trip with your dad, or the way you keep a promise.

The experiences you create are the moments that define you. We'll miss you when you're gone, because we will always remember the mark you made on us.

Read Elsewhere: Charity and Flexibility at Christmas

“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition — and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.” - Stephen Colbert




"The moral of the story is this...If you want it, work hard to create it, but leave cushion for the unexpected and embrace everything outside of that "perfect" vision as good and meaningful parts of your story you would have never had the opportunity to know had you stuck to the script. Ad lib, go with it, swim with the current. In the end, what you will have created, albeit a Christmas memory or life's final script...it will be good." - Kelle Hampton

Read Elsewhere: Boundaries

From Gwyneth Paltrow's weekly newsletter, GOOP:

“As a woman who was raised in a society where it is implied that women should be agreeable and amenable, where speaking up for yourself can label you 'difficult', I personally have found it difficult to do that very thing. Why is it important to have personal boundaries and make sure they are not crossed? More importantly, how can we keep them while coming off strong and not strident?”

Read Elsewhere: The Power of Detail

From Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg:

"Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical.  We live and die, age beautifully or full of wrinkles.  We wake in the morning, buy yellow cheese, and hope we have enough money to pay for it.  At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.  We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.  This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand.  We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived.  Let it be known, the earth passed before us.  Our details are important."

Fridays

"Trapped mainly by wanting things to be exactly as they are, only better." - Brian Andreas

By Thursday evenings, my tank is on empty. Jason walks in the door and the week's injustices pile up to meet him: a playdate gone wrong, Jemma throwing her shoes, Annie's post-school meltdown, the noise, the laundry, always the laundry. He props me up the best he can and we get the kids to bed, then cook a late dinner together and fall on the couch, exhausted, to split a bottle of wine and eat slender asparagus.

But Fridays are sort of my day - at least they are supposed to be, when there are no staff meetings or houseguests or weekend trips or doctor's appointments or special school events. We bundle Annie off to school in the morning, and then I say a breezy good-bye to Jason and Jemma, who are usually playing a good game of Memory or packing up to run errands.

I go to yoga, unroll my mat, take one hour to pay attention to my breath and my muscles. My yoga teacher says things like "sparkle upwards!" during cobra pose and I actually love it. She talks about the pace of life, the value of breath, the strength of self. I run errands alone, the car quiet. I schedule interviews, banish e-mails to the trash, write in coffee shops, make phone calls. The crazy of the week falls away and I feel myself coming to center again, welcoming back a mental sharpness and emotional calm that gets chipped away Monday through Thursday in the noise and the rushing and the chasing of children.

I always plan to be away for most of the day; I always find myself back at home sooner than I had planned. Because once I've reclaimed that space in my brain - in my life - I am ready to plunge back in, so much more grateful for the ordinaryness that I am blessed with, ready to take little girls to the pool, make them pizza, and read Corduroy in my bed while their damp, round heads and big, round eyes follow my every move. For that moment, I am present again, able to appreciate things exactly as they are.

Annie drew a picture of me yesterday. In it, I am lying in a bed, sleeping, and little bubbles lead from my head off to the side, where a larger bubble encloses pictures of flowers and food. "It's you, Mama, wearing your flower shirt and your striped pink jammie pants, dreaming of growing things and cooking." My sweet Annie, my little artist, yes. I am dreaming of Fridays, too, of time and space away from you, and of coming back.

"The point of a life, any life, is to figure out what you are good at, and what makes you happy, and, if you are very fortunate, spend your life doing those things." - Ayelet Waldman

Read Elsewhere

I have often described the frustration of trying to get the girls to do very simple things as "trying to herd kittens" and have recently noticed myself actually boxing out my own children, middle-school-basketball-style, in the kitchen as I try to get them out the door (shuffling feet back and forth, "No! Once you have your boots on, don't walk around the rest of the house! We're going out the door!"). But leave it to my favorite blogger, Linda at All and Sundry, to explain it even better. I have re-read this about 17 times now, and it's not getting any less funny to me, so, here:

Everyone knows children’s brains are formed of large chunks of Silly Putty and clouds of easily-distracted bees, but man, sometimes I can’t believe the effort it takes just to get someone to carry out ONE directive. I feel like a deranged border collie, nipping and nagging at the heels of my kids in order to herd them towards the thing I’ve asked them to do: “Brush (yap!) your (bark bark!) teeth! Walk to the bathroom (yip!) NOW, and pick UP your toothbrush (nip nip) and—PUT DOWN THE TOY, and (yap!) GO BRUSH YOUR—WHY ARE YOU SITTING THERE AAARRGGGH (bark bark bark *overwhelmed piddle*)”

America America

I recently finished America America, by Ethan Canin, and it was a marvelous read. I have a library copy, but that didn't stop me from dog-earing the pages that contained passages that I knew I'd want to copy out later. The ones related to parenting, of course, stood out the most. The last one is my favorite.

What you aren't prepared for is the way children change your past, too. That's the thing. Everyone knows they change your future, but to see them in their innocence - in their cribs and then on their bicycles and then in their cars, at their soccer games and then their recitals and soon enough at their graduations and their weddings - to see them through all of that is to know that everything you have ever done, every act you've ever had a part in, has another meaning as well, and that it is both greater and more terrible than the one you knew. Not just the meaning it had for you but the one it had for someone's child, as well. That's what came back to me now, more than anything else. The unavoidable truth of that. That all one-s deed - those of honor and those of duplicity and those of veniality and those of ruin - that all one's deeds live doubly.

"You know," he said. "You raise your kid the way you know. You take what your folks did, you try to add what you think of as your own corrections - things that hurt you, injustices, all that kind of thing - and you try to bring these blessed objects into the world so it doesn't do them any more harm than it has to. At least not too early, anyway. And then one day you realize that they're not all that different - I don't know - they're not all that different from some wild animals you could have just found out there in the woods. And you have about as much influece over them as you would over animals. One's fierce, maybe. One's calm. . . . One's always got his eye on the horizon. . . . Then one day you realize how silly you've been. There's nothing you can do but let them all go. All you can do from your end is pray."

(She) is like her mother. Devoted. Fierce. Willful. There is an unexpected trustworthiness in such a character, though. When she was growing up, (she) was the one who embarrassed us at dinner parties. . . . and at nine, a normally well-mannered age for girls, she still had no compunction about saying in her tin-soldier's voice, "I don't like you" to anyone blithe enough to fake affection toward her. She's always seen right through that one. As a father, I have to say, I take some comfort in it. And of course I know where it comes from, too. It's the thing that most scared me about her own mother from the time I first knew her - that same abiding and prickly truthfulness.

It doesn't take many years of fatherhood to think you finally understand your own parents, and I've long since arrived at that point with mine. And like most everyone else, I've grown more grateful for the things they gave me and more respectful of what must have been admirable courage as they watched me go - in my case, to a life utterly different from their own. And as I've watched our own girls move away now, too - first to sleepovers, then to summer camps, then to college and boyfriends, then to jobs and husbands - as I've watched them one by one walk their own ways, I can only hope that they too arrive at this same juncture, that they too come to see us for what we've always tried to do for them, even if it's not always what we've succeeded at. Maybe this is nothing but vanity. But I wonder how we've fared with them. I wonder which of our idle words have wounded them and which, years later and a thousand miles away, have buoyed them; which of our hopes have lifted them over the daunting obstacles in their lives and which have pressed back against their own ideas of themselves. I think I know my children, know all three of them, yet I'm certain from my own childhood that of course I don't.

Love is a Mix Tape

My two favorite quotes from the memoir "Love is a Mix Tape" by Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield:

I suddenly realized how much being a husband was about fear: fear of not being able to keep somebody safe, of not being able to protect somebody from all the bad stuff you want to protect them from. Knowing they have more tears in them than you will be able to keep them from crying. I realized that she had seen me fail, and that she was the person I was going to be failing in front of for the rest of my life. It was just a little failure, but it promised bigger failures to come. Additional ones, anyway. But that's who your wife is, the person you fail in front of. Love is so confusing, there's no peace of mind.

(I think it works even better, somehow, when you substitute "parent" for "husband" and "child" for "wife.")

Human benevolence is totally unfair. We don't live in a kind or generous world, yet we are kind and generous. We know the universe is out to burn us, and it gets us all the way it got her, but we don't burn each other, not always. We are kind people in an unkind world, to paraphrase Wallace Stevens. How do you pretend you don't know about it, after you see it? How do you go back to acting like you don't need it? How do you even the score and walk off a free man? You can't.

And now on to Mrs. Dalloway, which is a little more challenging as the bedtime reading goes . . .

One Minute at a Time

Barbara Kingsolver writes, in a letter to her teenage daughter, "When I was pregnant with you, I read every book I could find on how to handle all things from diaper rash to warning lectures on sexually transmitted diseases. I became so appalled by the size of the task that I put my hands on my belly and thought, Oh Lord, can we just back up? But the minute you were born I looked at your hungry, squinched little face and got it: We do this thing one minute at a time. We'll never have to handle diaper rash and the sex lecture in the same day. My most important work will change from year to year, and I'll have time to figure it out. At first I was just Milk Central, then tiptoe walking coach and tea-party referee. Eventually I began to see that the common denominator, especially as mother of a girl child, was to protect and value every part of your personality and will, even when it differed from mine."

Since May, I've been spending at least part of every day - sometimes minutes, sometime literally hours - fretting, researching, talking, asking, wondering What To Do about Annie's school situation next year. I had a gut feeling, and then I had other people's opinions. They were in direct opposition. Eventually, after months of more fretting, researching, talking, asking, and wondering, I went with the expert opinion and requested young fives. About a week later, that choice was revealed to no longer exist for us.

Not usually one to rock the boat, I wanted to be sure that we explored every possible avenue. I wrote a letter to the superintendent. It went like this:

Dear Dr. S.,

I am writing to ask for your assistance in placing my daughter, Annie, in L. Elementary’s Young Fives program for the 2009-2010 school year.

When I submitted Annie’s paperwork this spring, my husband and I were still unsure if she should be in kindergarten or Y5’s this fall, as her birthday is September 11 and her pre-school teachers had not given a strong recommendation either way. I filled out the social/emotional questionnaire, and, when I turned it in, specifically asked whether someone would be following up with me before the formal placement was made. I was told that I would be called.

In the meantime, I did some more research, and we decided that we preferred Y5’s for Annie, a preference I would have shared during that phone call. No call ever came; instead, we received Annie’s placement in morning kindergarten at L in the mail in June.

I called (principal) to discuss the placement. P was incredibly warm and gracious when we connected via phone. She explained that the process had been streamlined this year, apologized for the lack of communication, and encouraged me to consider the kindergarten placement. We agreed that I would take some time to think about it, follow up with her pre-school teacher again to get her opinion, and let P know our decision. P indicated that I could call her any time before the class lists came out in late August to switch her to Y5’s, and at no time was there any suggestion that this placement would be anywhere other than at L Elementary. In fact, she indicated that if the placement (either way) appeared inappropriate a few weeks or months into the school year, we could move her – an option that would obviously be a last resort, but one that was comforting to me as a first-time parent in the district.

In early August, I e-mailed P and left her a voicemail message saying that, after more thought, we remained most comfortable with our initial decision to place Annie in Young Fives. P called me the following week to tell me that, because of a miscommunication and some district-wide changes in procedure this year, there were no remaining Y5 spots at L Elementary and that Annie’s options were to retain the kindergarten placement at Lakeside or to switch to Y5’s at school B in the afternoons.

My husband and I would strongly prefer that Annie be able to participate in Young Fives at L Elementary, her home school. This has been a very difficult decision for us, and we don’t believe that starting her at one school, then switching to another a year from now would be in her best interest. Already, the great majority of her pre-school friends and neighbors will be entering kindergarten; we would hate to compound the sense of separation by having her at a different school and then having to re-acclimate to another group of children and a new environment next fall.

I realize that the L Elementary Young Fives class is technically full, and, as a former educator, I support the goal of small class size. I also hope that, in the interest of doing what is best for our daughter and because of the miscommunications that have accompanied this placement, an exception can be made in these circumstances to allow Annie to attend L Young Fives this fall.

We chose to move to (city) specifically because of its reputation for excellence in education and we very much look forward to investing our time and energy in making it a wonderful environment for our children to learn and grow. Dr. P has been nothing short of wonderful in all our interactions and we are heartened to know that our daughter will be in such a caring environment.

Thank you in advance for your careful consideration of this matter.

This letter resulted in a phone conversation with Dr. S., who was kind and understanding, but unwilling to change the placement. So, as of this morning, Annie will officially be entering kindergarten this fall.

I remember saying several times over the course of this process, "I wish someone would just make this decision for me." And now, someone has. I have always been someone who is able to see all sides of an issue, and while I like to think this is a good trait, it makes me one of the worst decision-makers I know. I have spent hours lying awake at 2:00 a.m., extrapolating the trajectory of each scenario out five, ten, twenty years, and imagining all sorts of consequences to either placement. I have cried - more than once - because this is perhaps the first time I've had to make a big decision about What To Do for one of my children and sincerely not known the "right" answer. (Annie, if you are ever tempted to accuse me of "not caring" or "not loving you," please tally up the sheer number of hours I have spent on this one issue alone and, you know, maybe take me out to lunch or something. And woe to you if you, someday, give birth to a child born during a month of less-than-obvious school placement, which it is traditional for women in our family to do, as you are the fourth generation first-born girl with a fall birthday. Who, by the way, have all gone to school "young," all prospered there, and all shown a propensity for languages, so keep this in mind when choosing your college major.)

We are cautiously optimistic. I was talking with some friends last night. One woman, who doesn't know Annie, asked, "Is she precocious?" I nodded affirmatively. "She'll be fine." I look at Annie, at all she can do, at how well she advocates for herself, at how insatiably curious she is, at how determined she can be, and I think she will.

I think about my gut feeling and about the fact that the only times I can remember going against it resulted in 1. Our moving to and buying a house in South Haven (which we put on the market and decided to leave less than a year later), and 2. Spelling Jemma's name with a "J" rather than a "G," which is another thing I still question sometimes in those middle-of-the-night insomnia fests.

I think about how, though this process, I have learned to advocate more for my kids, something I have to push myself to do, because it's not in my nature to question authority or to have those awkward, uncomfortable conversations. I am not the type of person who calls the school principal or who writes to the superintendent, but I found that, when my child's best interest was at stake, I didn't much care about being labeled as a pain in the ass. I've been inspired, in part, by my friend Heather, who just had to go through a few scary months of medical issues with her baby girl and who modeled the kind of intelligent, reasoned advocacy to which I am still aspiring.

So, three weeks from yesterday, we'll walk our brave little kindergartener down the street to the place that will be her school for the next six years. (Or seven, because my feeling is, if kindergarten doesn't go well this year, we'll just do it again next year.) I can't even imagine all the things she's going to learn, all the experiences she's going to have, all the ways she's going to grow and change. When I think about it, I get a little knot in the pit of my stomach, especially knowing that I'm not going to BE THERE right next to her every moment of every day. But I am trying to take it, as Barbara Kingsolver said, "one minute at a time." I am trying to value her personality and her will, let go a little more, do less protecting and more trusting, marvel at her abilities, be worthy of her.

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michaelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.
 -Pablo Casals

Rewarding Good Behavior

The girls have been mostly good lately, Jemma's daily morning tantrums about Not Wearing a Ponytail and Not Getting Dressed notwithstanding. Today, Jason and I both had things we wanted to get done, so we split up the day and each took half to do fun things with the girls while the other parent had "alone" time.

This morning, Jason took them out for breakfast, then ran a couple errands, then hit a new park, then brought them to the gym to play. I ran the lake with Sarah, showered, lazed around drinking coffee and reading The Hour I First Believed, got a pedicure, did some laundry, and ordered Jemma's new Big Girl Bedding (not that we are in ANY hurry to move her out of her crib), which I've been meaning to do for some time.

This afternoon, while Jason got a few projects of his own accomplished, I brought the girls to the pool. When we pulled up, I was confused: fountains off, lifeguards not in chairs, pool completely empty of people, gate closed. I did a mental tally - it's Friday afternoon, it's hazy-but-sunny (no rain, no lightening), it's 80 degrees . . . So I stopped the car and ran over to yell to a lifeguard who was straightening empty chairs. Yep, they're open.

So we tromped in (via the other entrance) and proceeded to be the only people in the entire pool for 45 minutes until, finally, one other family showed up. It was amazing; normally, there are 50 million kids bashing against you and splashing and yelling. Today, just Annie, wearing her goggles and diving down to retrieve rings on the bottom, and Jemma, crawling and jumping and throwing a ball in the shallow end. I sat on the edge, they yelled, "Mom! Watch this!" a hundred thousand times. I guess I'm entering the "Mom, watch!" phase of life, which I'll take over the "Mom, hold my hand and be one inch from me at all times so I don't drown" phase.

I read this recently (on www.sanemoms.com) and thought it was good enough to share:

If you’re debating a day trip or an outing with your kids, or keeping them up late, or doing something spontaneous and out-of-the-ordinary with your spouse: do it! The best memories rarely come from the most meticulously planned events. They come from that late-night-firefly-catching ramble or last-minute trip to the beach. It’s never practical, rational, or well thought out. It’s just plain a good thing to do. Find something absurd to do this week, grab your kids, a friend, or your kids friends, and do it!

And off to "the cottage" we go tomorrow morning, fingers crossed for sunshine and happy memories in spite of the absurdity of another weekend on the road.

p.s. - New post up at Bodies in Motivation!

Wonderful People

Clickety-clicking around the internet late last night, I somehow stumbled across a fantastic quote.  It reminded me of something I've been making the effort to say to my kids every single day ever since reading it in The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan.  "Annie/Jemma, you are a great, great kid and I am lucky to be your mom."  And I mean it.  This is similar, and I could hardly love it more:

"You do not have to make your children
into wonderful people.
You only have to remind them 
that they are wonderful people.
If you do this consistently
from the day they are born
they will believe it easily.

You cannot force your will 
upon other human beings.
You cannot hurry children
along the road to maturity.
And the only step necessary 
on their long journey of life,
is the next small one."

May Sunshine

A good, sunny day.  Easy-peasy ten-mile run, lunch with girlfriends, a pedicure, time with the family.  Now we're packing for the inaugural spring trip to the "cottage" (cue creepy Tina Fey/Tracey Morgan 30-Rock laughter here):  old beach towels, camera, sunglasses, bedding, movies, running shoes for a run by the lake.  I'm looking forward to the adventure and vowing to pay more attention to the details.  A quote I came across that reminds me why I bother to write it all down:

Learn to write about the ordinary. Give homage to old coffee cups, sparrows, city buses, thin ham sandwiches. Make a list of everything ordinary you can think of. Keep adding to it. Promise yourself, before you leave the earth, to mention everything on your list at least once in a poem, short story, newspaper article.
Nathalie Goldberg