I don't like my Wa messed with.
This is not surprising; none of us like it when someone comes along and tries to alter the structure of our lives, which Tim refers to, a little deprecatingly, as the Wa. Wa actually means, according to Wikipedia, 'harmony, peace, balance' - so he's not that far off.
To live alone successfully, at least for me, it helps to develop habits and schedules. Maybe it's even inevitable. In the morning, I get up, drink something caffeinated, listen to NPR's latest grim assessments while I check for mostly nonexistent, and certainly nonessential, email. On weekends, I toddle out the door with my bike when the temperature finally hits above 40, then clean or perform some other life-maintenance until it's time for the evening's festivities. During the week, I come home from my job to a workout long and strenuous enough to keep thoughts centered on whatever's on the TV screen 'till it's time to soak, read Mellville, and sleep.
Sometimes, of course, one schedule collides with another - Thursday night's rest night because it's when Tim and I have dinner and watch CSI, but once a month Great Books interferes. I have to make myself go.
Most disquieting are the relatively infrequent midweek social events, when I have to force myself not to, at the last minute, cancel a coffee or dinner date that I made, claiming an untenable level of busyness. Part of this is because I'm just uncertain enough of my ability to keep up a conversation that could be described as sparkling; but mostly, I think, it's because I just like my predictable little routine.
And then along comes a Jake weekend. I wake on Saturday morning to Anime aliens' stylized movement on the screen of the computer I can see from my bed, and the crackles from the headphones announcing their upcoming annihilation, and I feel a mild, nagging dread.
This is hard to admit. I love this boy. He was an accidental child, but was wanted and is cherished at a level that would be beyond reason if he wasn't mine. However, his presence means always that I can't just worry about myself. I need to cobble some kind of meals, make sure that he spends some time at least reading, if not with a more productive task. I need to make sure he has clean clothes, and a somewhat neat and organized place to lay his head.
Most of all, I need to ensure a level of entertainment, not an easy trick given the proportion of my income that goes to the child support payment. According to the law, my ex-husband carries all of the expenses of raising this child - that means that everything we do has to be pretty close to free, or expensed on the ever-shrinking credit line.
Then I get up, and we make it through the crepes or scones or cinnamon toast I remember I know how to make for breakfast, and the day lays itself out. I ride or run, and usually take at least one call in the midst of either, appreciating that Jake uses the cell connection for both reassurance and lifeline. Later, his neighborhood friend shows up, and I take them both to the library, the pool, the park or the store. In the summer we roast marshmallows in the chimenera on the patio. Sometimes we hike or cook together, and I remember that none of us were born knowing how to do either.
Jake asks a lot of questions, talks about things that don't always interest me, and likes to make funny noises. My house is tiny and trying to negotiate the kitchen with another person in it can verge on dangerous.
But we laugh, too, and when he isn't here, I drown in the weekend silences and, like Mrs. Robinson, suffer from too many choices.
And when Jake's father picks him up on Sunday night, I invariably require the comfort of a phone call to a friend, or at least a hard run through the neighborhood, to assuage the riptide of loss that floods through me.
The unreliabiliy of noncustodial parents, fathers especially, is a trope well known to TV shows and movies - and for good reason, because it happens. A few years ago I stood at a window next to a student teary because he missed his father, who hadn't called him in weeks, and didn't pick up his son's phone calls. My anger at this man, for hurting his child so, hasn't diminished. But if I'm brutally honest, at some level I almost understand.
The kids that don't live with us are an interruption of the comforting routines we've so laboriously built. They mess with our Wa.
But maybe, my Wa, for one, needs some messing up.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
On Being Goldilocks
“You need to go to a harder school like one of the Seven Sisters. You’d make a perfect Smithie…” my friend Don used to muse.
So I begged my parents, European-born physicians who, with more generosity than I knew, funded my college education.
“Why?" they said. "Tell us one thing you would learn at Smith that you can’t learn at TCU.”
I couldn’t provide them with that information, but I was right. TCU, with its preening sorority wannabes, was manifestly unsuited to my adolescent persona: short haircut, blue jeans, hiking boots, and no makeup, ever. For my parents, college was Karlova University in the ancient center of Prague; they can be forgiven for not understanding the diversity of cultures that exists in American centers of learning.
Oddly, though, they were right, too. As an intellectually curious student, I turned out to be sort of manna in the desert for the professors at that small party school in north central Texas, and as a result I got to do pretty much anything I wanted. In my sophomore year, in a graduate level psychophysiology class, I autopsied a sheep brain, and drilled into the one of a live rat (yes, it was anesthetized! Though nowadays I would have animal-cruelty objections, anyway) implanting an electrode in its hypothalamus. Twenty-five years later, I heard the professor whose student I’d been, on NPR, discussing how his groundbreaking research with aging mice applied to humans. No, he didn’t even pretend to remember me when I sent him an email..
By twenty, I knew most of the neurotransmitters, and can still draw a pretty decent neuron and explain exactly what, on a cellular level, a term like ‘selective serotonin reuptake inhibotor’ means. Even though my GRE’s stank, after three years as an undergraduate I got into a top-flight phD program on the strength of an enthusiastic letter from my advisor to his old buddy at SUNY Stony Brook.
After which it all came tumbling down, but that’s in another story. My point is, that small place helped me to make an impression on people I would have never even met, in a place like Smith.
Nowadays, I find myself in an oddly similar position – and this time, I far better know its benefits.
Stopped by one of my favorite shops this afternoon, Hooked on Books at Academy and Maizeland. Mary Young, the owner, was in. She and I met decades ago, when I, pregnant with my first child, ducked out of the rain into her store. I told her how much I approved of Mike Merrifield’s choice of her establishment to officially announce his candidacy for county commissioner. Only, I misspoke, and said Matt Mayberry instead.
“Well, with all the political M-M’s in town, maybe Matt should run for something, too,” Mary chuckled.
“I don’t really see Matt as a political animal, the way Merrifield is,’ I said.
One of the shop assistants walked by. “I think Matt is too smart to run for political office, frankly.” He contributed. Mr. Mayberry’s apparently a friend of his family.
As I walked out, I thought about how interesting it is that I, a spectacularly unambitious special education teacher, know, at least on a handshaking level, both of these M-M’s.
Every summer I visit the Pacific Northwest. I ride the ferries, walk the beaches, ache to sail its waters as I did in my twenties. I read the newspapers, both alternative and mainstream, and ponder their level of sophistication, and the insouciant intelligence of the audience to which they speak. The bus I take into town drops me off in front of Bennihana concert hall, and I eye the seriously world-class talent advertised on its walls with a certain level of envy – not that I could afford to go to those performances!
I come back to this city, to my own relief. The Springs has become home not only because of the forested hills and mountains that greet me just outside my door, as I step out for a run or a ride. It’s home because I am sort of its Goldilocks. There are, count them, 5 YMCA’s, but the people at the desk downtown greet me by name. So do, for that matter, the owners of my two favorite cycling shops – and though I aspire to a certain athleticism, I never finish even in the top third of a race. There are two major museums, but I’ve met key people in both of them. The most famous soprano in town teaches in the same building as I do. And so on.
Colorado Springs is large enough to have substantial institutions, yet small enough that a reasonably ordinary person can claim a nodding acquaintance with folks that run at least some of its radio stations, museums, and newspapers. This is what’s kept me here, I think.
Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with that comment about being the biggest fish in a small pond, or was it the biggest man in an Alpine village? Either way, I guess I know exactly what he meant. I’m a pretty small fish – but in this pond, even I get to swim with the bigger ones, and sometimes the swim is kinda fun.
Tonight, I find all this rather appealing. No doubt the feeling will go away during the next local election.
So I begged my parents, European-born physicians who, with more generosity than I knew, funded my college education.
“Why?" they said. "Tell us one thing you would learn at Smith that you can’t learn at TCU.”
I couldn’t provide them with that information, but I was right. TCU, with its preening sorority wannabes, was manifestly unsuited to my adolescent persona: short haircut, blue jeans, hiking boots, and no makeup, ever. For my parents, college was Karlova University in the ancient center of Prague; they can be forgiven for not understanding the diversity of cultures that exists in American centers of learning.
Oddly, though, they were right, too. As an intellectually curious student, I turned out to be sort of manna in the desert for the professors at that small party school in north central Texas, and as a result I got to do pretty much anything I wanted. In my sophomore year, in a graduate level psychophysiology class, I autopsied a sheep brain, and drilled into the one of a live rat (yes, it was anesthetized! Though nowadays I would have animal-cruelty objections, anyway) implanting an electrode in its hypothalamus. Twenty-five years later, I heard the professor whose student I’d been, on NPR, discussing how his groundbreaking research with aging mice applied to humans. No, he didn’t even pretend to remember me when I sent him an email..
By twenty, I knew most of the neurotransmitters, and can still draw a pretty decent neuron and explain exactly what, on a cellular level, a term like ‘selective serotonin reuptake inhibotor’ means. Even though my GRE’s stank, after three years as an undergraduate I got into a top-flight phD program on the strength of an enthusiastic letter from my advisor to his old buddy at SUNY Stony Brook.
After which it all came tumbling down, but that’s in another story. My point is, that small place helped me to make an impression on people I would have never even met, in a place like Smith.
Nowadays, I find myself in an oddly similar position – and this time, I far better know its benefits.
Stopped by one of my favorite shops this afternoon, Hooked on Books at Academy and Maizeland. Mary Young, the owner, was in. She and I met decades ago, when I, pregnant with my first child, ducked out of the rain into her store. I told her how much I approved of Mike Merrifield’s choice of her establishment to officially announce his candidacy for county commissioner. Only, I misspoke, and said Matt Mayberry instead.
“Well, with all the political M-M’s in town, maybe Matt should run for something, too,” Mary chuckled.
“I don’t really see Matt as a political animal, the way Merrifield is,’ I said.
One of the shop assistants walked by. “I think Matt is too smart to run for political office, frankly.” He contributed. Mr. Mayberry’s apparently a friend of his family.
As I walked out, I thought about how interesting it is that I, a spectacularly unambitious special education teacher, know, at least on a handshaking level, both of these M-M’s.
Every summer I visit the Pacific Northwest. I ride the ferries, walk the beaches, ache to sail its waters as I did in my twenties. I read the newspapers, both alternative and mainstream, and ponder their level of sophistication, and the insouciant intelligence of the audience to which they speak. The bus I take into town drops me off in front of Bennihana concert hall, and I eye the seriously world-class talent advertised on its walls with a certain level of envy – not that I could afford to go to those performances!
I come back to this city, to my own relief. The Springs has become home not only because of the forested hills and mountains that greet me just outside my door, as I step out for a run or a ride. It’s home because I am sort of its Goldilocks. There are, count them, 5 YMCA’s, but the people at the desk downtown greet me by name. So do, for that matter, the owners of my two favorite cycling shops – and though I aspire to a certain athleticism, I never finish even in the top third of a race. There are two major museums, but I’ve met key people in both of them. The most famous soprano in town teaches in the same building as I do. And so on.
Colorado Springs is large enough to have substantial institutions, yet small enough that a reasonably ordinary person can claim a nodding acquaintance with folks that run at least some of its radio stations, museums, and newspapers. This is what’s kept me here, I think.
Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with that comment about being the biggest fish in a small pond, or was it the biggest man in an Alpine village? Either way, I guess I know exactly what he meant. I’m a pretty small fish – but in this pond, even I get to swim with the bigger ones, and sometimes the swim is kinda fun.
Tonight, I find all this rather appealing. No doubt the feeling will go away during the next local election.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
On Being Liked
He's the most beautiful child I've ever seen. Thick, long lashes, a round face with a perfectly formed nose and full lips, a sculpted hairline bordering his short, thick cut. He isn't very tall, but that's not enough to explain why, at the fall dance, I kept finding him in corners of the darkened gym, alone. With his looks, he should be fending the girls off, juggling middle-school kisses and stayover invitations.
But he admitted, to the social worker, that people don't like him. His language arts teacher says that he can get a class 'going' with his sarcastic comments, but he roams the halls alone. The other teachers just turn their eyes heavenward and shrug. 'He hasn't got a clue' is the most charitable comment.
With me, he's been pure hell. We started out testing, generally a situation in which kids behave themselves - it's a hassle, but the better everyone cooperates, the faster they're out of there. So even the kids that like to chat, sit quietly, listen raptly to the instructions, do their writing and math and reading for the 3 or 4 minute intervals, and smile when it's time to leave.
This kid couldn't stop making noise, and when I reminded him he needed to give others a chance to concentrate, turned nose skyward and tapped his chin with a forefinger, face a strict-teacher mask that would be hilarious if it weren't so irritating, and disruptive.
Disruptive to the soul.
It turned out that he needed a lot of help. Turned out he'd had problematic behaviors everywhere he'd gone. I wanted to keep him, along with another needy kid, in the upper-level English class he'd been placed in by mistake. My thinking was, they'll have sterling role models, and I'll be there if they need me. Worked great for the other kid, who looks at me with his own set of soulful eyes and THANKS me for my help.
Not his kid. He scrunches down over his work, trying to keep me from seeing his scrawl. He tells me to go away. When pushed, he tells me he doesn't like me - just like that - and I back off to save him from self-embarrassment.
Today I couldn't let it go. There was a substitute, and his scrawl was illegible but, even so, clearly not adhering to the specifications his teacher had left behind. Four or five times I suggested, as gently as I could, the changes he needed to make.
Finally I said, 'let's go to the resource room.'
'No,' he responded. And 'you can't make me!'
'Resource room or the office,' I said.
'Oooooooohhhhh, I'm sooo scared now!' he trilled and smiled. But came along anyway.
It didn't help.
This is a sample of the conversation in the resource room:
Me: So, you need to read this one more time, and figure out the main idea, and write it down.
Him: That's what I did!
Me: No, sweetie, you didn't. You need to follow the format Ms. G left, and you didn't do that.
Him: I don't know how to do it. You pulled me so I didn't get a chance to listen to her explain!
Me: You were there during the entire explanation. I didn't pull you until you were supposed to work on your own.
Him: I didn't hear it.
Me: Here's what you do..
Him: Go away! I don't like you!
Me: Sweetie, I don't care whether you like me or not. It isn't my job to make me like you. It's my job to make sure you understand the work and get it done.
Him: Well, you can't, because I want you to go away! I don't like you!
And more of the same from that angelic face twisted in hatred, and pain, and anger. People, coworkers and parents, going in and out of the room.
My colleague is a behavior specialist. 'Any ideas you have, I'm all ears..' I said.
The kid's got me over a barrel though. Somewhere he's figured out that even when we teachers say, 'I don't care if you like me,' we do, desperately. After all, the half hour before lunch, when the kids in my language class and I talked about expressions like 'at the drop of a hat,' and my morning class, when I (thanks Jake!) familiarized the kids with the concept of evaluation by discussing Pokemon Sapphire at Game Stop, were by far the best moments of my day.
My work day, that is. The best moment of the whole day may have been when I pushed with my whole self into the pedals of my bike, straining up the big Garden of the Gods hill in the darkening afternoon.
It doesn't matter if my bike likes me.
But he admitted, to the social worker, that people don't like him. His language arts teacher says that he can get a class 'going' with his sarcastic comments, but he roams the halls alone. The other teachers just turn their eyes heavenward and shrug. 'He hasn't got a clue' is the most charitable comment.
With me, he's been pure hell. We started out testing, generally a situation in which kids behave themselves - it's a hassle, but the better everyone cooperates, the faster they're out of there. So even the kids that like to chat, sit quietly, listen raptly to the instructions, do their writing and math and reading for the 3 or 4 minute intervals, and smile when it's time to leave.
This kid couldn't stop making noise, and when I reminded him he needed to give others a chance to concentrate, turned nose skyward and tapped his chin with a forefinger, face a strict-teacher mask that would be hilarious if it weren't so irritating, and disruptive.
Disruptive to the soul.
It turned out that he needed a lot of help. Turned out he'd had problematic behaviors everywhere he'd gone. I wanted to keep him, along with another needy kid, in the upper-level English class he'd been placed in by mistake. My thinking was, they'll have sterling role models, and I'll be there if they need me. Worked great for the other kid, who looks at me with his own set of soulful eyes and THANKS me for my help.
Not his kid. He scrunches down over his work, trying to keep me from seeing his scrawl. He tells me to go away. When pushed, he tells me he doesn't like me - just like that - and I back off to save him from self-embarrassment.
Today I couldn't let it go. There was a substitute, and his scrawl was illegible but, even so, clearly not adhering to the specifications his teacher had left behind. Four or five times I suggested, as gently as I could, the changes he needed to make.
Finally I said, 'let's go to the resource room.'
'No,' he responded. And 'you can't make me!'
'Resource room or the office,' I said.
'Oooooooohhhhh, I'm sooo scared now!' he trilled and smiled. But came along anyway.
It didn't help.
This is a sample of the conversation in the resource room:
Me: So, you need to read this one more time, and figure out the main idea, and write it down.
Him: That's what I did!
Me: No, sweetie, you didn't. You need to follow the format Ms. G left, and you didn't do that.
Him: I don't know how to do it. You pulled me so I didn't get a chance to listen to her explain!
Me: You were there during the entire explanation. I didn't pull you until you were supposed to work on your own.
Him: I didn't hear it.
Me: Here's what you do..
Him: Go away! I don't like you!
Me: Sweetie, I don't care whether you like me or not. It isn't my job to make me like you. It's my job to make sure you understand the work and get it done.
Him: Well, you can't, because I want you to go away! I don't like you!
And more of the same from that angelic face twisted in hatred, and pain, and anger. People, coworkers and parents, going in and out of the room.
My colleague is a behavior specialist. 'Any ideas you have, I'm all ears..' I said.
The kid's got me over a barrel though. Somewhere he's figured out that even when we teachers say, 'I don't care if you like me,' we do, desperately. After all, the half hour before lunch, when the kids in my language class and I talked about expressions like 'at the drop of a hat,' and my morning class, when I (thanks Jake!) familiarized the kids with the concept of evaluation by discussing Pokemon Sapphire at Game Stop, were by far the best moments of my day.
My work day, that is. The best moment of the whole day may have been when I pushed with my whole self into the pedals of my bike, straining up the big Garden of the Gods hill in the darkening afternoon.
It doesn't matter if my bike likes me.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Bonnie Raitt Thoughts
In my building, the English as a second language department and special education share an office, which is also the space we have available for small groups. Today, between completing the quarterly reports that are yet another piece of special education paperwork, I listened in on one of those small groups.
Jessica, the educational assistant for ELL, an extraordinarily competent, cultured woman, showed three kids, Vietnamese, Peruvian and Mexican, pictures of clothing, and taught them the English words for dress, buttons, hat, pants, and so forth.
The scene provoked an old memory, and I asked to share a story with the students.
"When we came to this country," I began, Jessica translating after each phrase into Spanish, "I knew no English at all. We started out living with my aunt and uncle, and my two younger cousins. My sister and I unpacked that night, and as we took things out of our suitcase, we showed each to the girls. I picked up a nightgown. 'Cute,' one of my cousins said - and so, for a while, I thought 'cute' was the English word for 'nightgown!'"
The kids were, actually, rather unimpressed by my story - but I don't tell stories all that well, in any language, so that wasn't surprising.
Jessica asked, "So how old were you then?"
"Same age as these guys are," I replied. "That's why I told them about it.."
"You see," Jessica told the kids, "Ms. Syrovy came over when she was just your age. And now she's very successful!"
I was about to argue with her about that, but decided to let it go.
Later, though, I thought about my immediate "what, me successful?" reaction.
Jessica wasn't the first to give me that label. Tim keeps telling me that I'm one of the most successful people he knows. How's that, I always want to ask. I live in a glorified miner's shack with no central heating. I barely make it through to the end of the month, and yet I rarely buy a new book or piece of clothing, or pay for a meal out. I failed at remaining married, or at remarrying. Even my athletic endeavors could not be described as particularly successful - people tell me, when I note that I finished a race, last in my age group, 'well, at least you're out there doing it,' not realizing, I think, the implication of failure in that comment.
But, but. I am, actually, out there doing it. I have a job that I don't ever completely hate, and that even inspires me at times. I publish a scribbling here and there, producing unreasonable joy and self-pride, though no cash . My sons seem at least adequately happy. I have friends, and even some romance going on. And I did lose those 65 lbs or so, and so far haven't begun gaining it back.
Bonnie Raitt sings, in one of my favorite, rollicking tunes:
now what, what, (i dont know, can you tell me what)
what is success?
is it do your own thing?
or to join the rest
and if you truly believe it, and try over and over again
living in hopes
that someday you'll be in with the winners
By that measure, perhaps, Tim and Jessica are right. I'm successful. Even though I hate to admit it.
Jessica, the educational assistant for ELL, an extraordinarily competent, cultured woman, showed three kids, Vietnamese, Peruvian and Mexican, pictures of clothing, and taught them the English words for dress, buttons, hat, pants, and so forth.
The scene provoked an old memory, and I asked to share a story with the students.
"When we came to this country," I began, Jessica translating after each phrase into Spanish, "I knew no English at all. We started out living with my aunt and uncle, and my two younger cousins. My sister and I unpacked that night, and as we took things out of our suitcase, we showed each to the girls. I picked up a nightgown. 'Cute,' one of my cousins said - and so, for a while, I thought 'cute' was the English word for 'nightgown!'"
The kids were, actually, rather unimpressed by my story - but I don't tell stories all that well, in any language, so that wasn't surprising.
Jessica asked, "So how old were you then?"
"Same age as these guys are," I replied. "That's why I told them about it.."
"You see," Jessica told the kids, "Ms. Syrovy came over when she was just your age. And now she's very successful!"
I was about to argue with her about that, but decided to let it go.
Later, though, I thought about my immediate "what, me successful?" reaction.
Jessica wasn't the first to give me that label. Tim keeps telling me that I'm one of the most successful people he knows. How's that, I always want to ask. I live in a glorified miner's shack with no central heating. I barely make it through to the end of the month, and yet I rarely buy a new book or piece of clothing, or pay for a meal out. I failed at remaining married, or at remarrying. Even my athletic endeavors could not be described as particularly successful - people tell me, when I note that I finished a race, last in my age group, 'well, at least you're out there doing it,' not realizing, I think, the implication of failure in that comment.
But, but. I am, actually, out there doing it. I have a job that I don't ever completely hate, and that even inspires me at times. I publish a scribbling here and there, producing unreasonable joy and self-pride, though no cash . My sons seem at least adequately happy. I have friends, and even some romance going on. And I did lose those 65 lbs or so, and so far haven't begun gaining it back.
Bonnie Raitt sings, in one of my favorite, rollicking tunes:
now what, what, (i dont know, can you tell me what)
what is success?
is it do your own thing?
or to join the rest
and if you truly believe it, and try over and over again
living in hopes
that someday you'll be in with the winners
By that measure, perhaps, Tim and Jessica are right. I'm successful. Even though I hate to admit it.
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