It was the spring of 1990. For the first time in over 20 years, I'd flown back to the city of my birth.
That first night, Prague's beauty seemed painted, like the backdrop of a theater set, like the Grand Canyon the first time I saw it. The eyes could not quite take it in as reality, that spotlighted castle hanging high in the night sky, across the river from the theater cafe where we'd dined with our oldest friends.
It was May, and it was magic. Imagine the glory of Obama's inauguration lasting well into the spring, lilacs scenting whatever air had escaped the acid rain of brown coal-fueled power plants. People laughed often; we saw dozens of friends and relatives, and everyone had a thrilled smile. They were free, and that spring, nothing else mattered.
I returned two years later, thinking to look in that world for a more permanent place for me. Surely East-central Europe could benefit from my experience in business and education.
I let go of the idea within a day of my arrival. It wasn't the people; although they'd lost some of the sparkle of their first spring of freedom, they were hearty in their greetings and generous with their resources.
The public sector, though, was mired in the past. It still took two hours to get train tickets to Vienna, and buying groceries for a steak dinner involved tolerating rudeness and inconvenience inconcievable to this Safeway-trained consumer.
One afternoon I walked through my granparents' old neighborhood, past blocks of houses built before WWII, and noticed the contrast between the fenced front yards, each filled with thousands of flowers carefully planned and manicured, and the ill-repaired, dogshit-strewn sidewalk. I remembered the stories I'd heard of men who left their city-funded jobs at 2 in the afternoon, and the construction material, meant for city buildings, that found its way onto private property. The result of fifty years of forced public funding were people did not regard city or state property as in any way deserving of their ownership.
In the late seventies I spent a year at SUNY Stony Brook, on Long Island. Ducks preened their feathers in the pond across the road. "They wouldn't last a day in Teheran; people would cook them for dinner!" The Iranian students in the next wing of my dorm commented.
Soon after I moved to the Springs, the Gazette ran an admiring story about Rockrimmon residents who had devoted many afternoons to creating a private trail running through and behind their neighborhood. The trail is still there; signs warn nonresidents not to park near any of the trailheads. I wrote a letter, which the paper never published, describing my fury that the reporter called this volunteer work; it seemed to me simply a way for property owners to improve their private way of life.
The point of this rambling is, of course, that everywhere I've been, I've seen citizens shorting the public sector in favor of the private. And that is, as the spectacularly filthy public bathrooms of Prague still tend to show, eternal. But though the homeowners on Cascade have built, and may have to knock down, a wall to hold out against the world around them, none of us can afford the moats the lords of old used to hold out against the rabble that inhabited the shabbier corners of their demesne. Somehow we'll need to figure out how to live as a city again.
The Y was jammed around 5 this afternoon. Perhaps because people were banking exercise against the anticipated chicken-winged sloth of Sunday afternoon, everybody was out running and swimming and lifting and yoga-ing. I looked around the pristine hallways and parking lots, and thought about how we all carefully wipe down machines, how the only rule anybody ever seems to break is the rather unreasonable one against babies in the dressing room. Maybe it's because we all pay for it every month, or because the benefit we get from our membership is so immediate, that we behave so well. As an agnostic verging on atheism, I promise it ain't the 'christian principles' proclaimed on the walls of the place.
Or maybe it's because so many of us know each other. Given that on an average visit, I nod to at least 10 others, it would be embarrassing to get caught not taking care of business. And maybe that's what's wrong with our city - we no longer know each other as we once did, and what we do for the public good, now, we do for strangers. Perhaps Hazlehurst's tongue-in-cheek a few weeks ago was right, and we should just mutually secede into spheres of interest.
Fun to think about, harder to accomplish. I think what we really need is - inspiration. Somebody smart, funny, and competent needs to step up and bully us into behaving in each others' best interest. A Ted Haggard with less questionable principles and a more coherent lifestyle, maybe.
Anybody???
Friday, February 5, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Me and my Wa
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
A meditation on the world’s end, at solstice
Jane Smiley’s The Greenlanders has been a favorite of mine for a long time. It’s a longish tome, a yarn of two families living out their complicated, superstition-and-hunger-driven histories during the final century of that island’s habitation by the descendants of Norse Vikings. In the story, the weather is changing inexorably, and the European settlers adapt as best as they can, trying to maintain their religion, losing little by little all the trappings of their culture; by the last page, the reader knows the end is coming, and soon.
The tired adjective "indomitable" has been used to describe heroines from Scarlett to Emma, but it seems to me it was made for the book’s main character, Margret. She survives misstep after trial after humiliation, as well as the death or disappearance of everyone dear to her, with the dignity and grace that I’ve striven for most of my life.
So I’ve reread the book enough to predict most of the dialogue; but I’m thinking about picking it up again, anyway. Because it seems to me that it has another lesson to teach.
This afternoon I listened to a diplomat muse on the climate change talks in Copenhagen, and their final lack of commitment by anyone, to do anything. He blamed this disaster on China’s government. He also considered the humiliation of the President of the United States dealing with some apparachik, instead of an actual member of the Chinese government, who might be able to affect the actions of a country whose agreement to a meaningful behavioral change is crucial to the aversion of global disaster.
I hated this as much as the diplomat, but it made perfect sense to me; it’s what creditors and debtors do. I don’t get to talk directly to anybody remotely in charge of my credit card company, either. The most I can do when they raise my APR to some usurious level is make nasty comments on the customer satisfaction survey they inexplicably send me a few days later.
It was, in the end, like listening to the news of the Filipino volcano, though. There was nothing I could do about the climate talks, or the level of indebtedness of this country to foreign governments and citizens, but take the blame for my share. No, I didn’t vote for George W. Bush and through my actions help bring about his ruinous tax cuts and wars. But I didn’t do all that much to stop them, either. And my own behavior has been just as fiscally irresponsible as that of my country’s, albeit on a smaller scale.
So, like the Greenlanders, I know disaster is coming. Whether we will end up on Cormac McCarthy’s road, or in some less spectacularly awful denouement, we all know that life can’t go on as before. Smiley’s characters adapted by spending entire winters slowly starving huddled in their beds, hoping to hobble out in the increasingly later springs, as the Little Ice Age descended. Who knows what adaptations we will have to make.
In the meantime, the holidays are here. Jake’s DSi, bought on credit of course, is hidden in a drawer, and I have two boys getting ready to spend the evening cutting out sugar cookies and the night giggling in their attic lair. We’ve eaten our spaghetti and meatballs; for breakfast I’ll make them crepes, and I know I’ll wake up to some extraterrestrial war erupting from the Playstation set. I’ll be like the Greenlanders, maintaining tradition and custom in the fortuitously falling snow, whatever disaster may come in the coming years.
Every year I find some excuse to read , to some group of children whose education I’m in charge of, O Henry’s Gift of the Magi. I’ve seen the parodies; I know the story’s a cliché. But my voice still breaks, every time, on the final line. "They are the Magi." Perhaps, as long as we have these kinds of Magi in our midst, we’ll be OK. Perhaps.
The tired adjective "indomitable" has been used to describe heroines from Scarlett to Emma, but it seems to me it was made for the book’s main character, Margret. She survives misstep after trial after humiliation, as well as the death or disappearance of everyone dear to her, with the dignity and grace that I’ve striven for most of my life.
So I’ve reread the book enough to predict most of the dialogue; but I’m thinking about picking it up again, anyway. Because it seems to me that it has another lesson to teach.
This afternoon I listened to a diplomat muse on the climate change talks in Copenhagen, and their final lack of commitment by anyone, to do anything. He blamed this disaster on China’s government. He also considered the humiliation of the President of the United States dealing with some apparachik, instead of an actual member of the Chinese government, who might be able to affect the actions of a country whose agreement to a meaningful behavioral change is crucial to the aversion of global disaster.
I hated this as much as the diplomat, but it made perfect sense to me; it’s what creditors and debtors do. I don’t get to talk directly to anybody remotely in charge of my credit card company, either. The most I can do when they raise my APR to some usurious level is make nasty comments on the customer satisfaction survey they inexplicably send me a few days later.
It was, in the end, like listening to the news of the Filipino volcano, though. There was nothing I could do about the climate talks, or the level of indebtedness of this country to foreign governments and citizens, but take the blame for my share. No, I didn’t vote for George W. Bush and through my actions help bring about his ruinous tax cuts and wars. But I didn’t do all that much to stop them, either. And my own behavior has been just as fiscally irresponsible as that of my country’s, albeit on a smaller scale.
So, like the Greenlanders, I know disaster is coming. Whether we will end up on Cormac McCarthy’s road, or in some less spectacularly awful denouement, we all know that life can’t go on as before. Smiley’s characters adapted by spending entire winters slowly starving huddled in their beds, hoping to hobble out in the increasingly later springs, as the Little Ice Age descended. Who knows what adaptations we will have to make.
In the meantime, the holidays are here. Jake’s DSi, bought on credit of course, is hidden in a drawer, and I have two boys getting ready to spend the evening cutting out sugar cookies and the night giggling in their attic lair. We’ve eaten our spaghetti and meatballs; for breakfast I’ll make them crepes, and I know I’ll wake up to some extraterrestrial war erupting from the Playstation set. I’ll be like the Greenlanders, maintaining tradition and custom in the fortuitously falling snow, whatever disaster may come in the coming years.
Every year I find some excuse to read , to some group of children whose education I’m in charge of, O Henry’s Gift of the Magi. I’ve seen the parodies; I know the story’s a cliché. But my voice still breaks, every time, on the final line. "They are the Magi." Perhaps, as long as we have these kinds of Magi in our midst, we’ll be OK. Perhaps.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Solstice Chaos
I sighed and cursed as I turned another plastic storage box over with one hand, training a flashlight on my task with the other.
What did I think I was doing? It was seven pm on Friday, December 18, and I was just starting my Christmas decorating.
Jake and I had already been to Lowe's. We found the perfect tree almost immediately - a Charlie Brown tree, I christened it immediately. A foot-long spike top like a tuft of hair wrapped around a knitting needle, and underneath a fat ball of impenetrable branches that, despite the late day, still retained some green. On sale for half price! Such a deal! On the way out, I remembered that I needed a stand too, and the store was out. Oh well - I used to have a stand before my recent years with a plastic tree -it's gotta be somewhere..
So now I was out in the storage building in my back yard, hoping that if a Black Widow had taken up residence, it was too sleepy for my search to wake it. I'd told Jake that I had a ton of plans for our 11 days together - this wasn't one of them. So far I'd found the box of ornaments, and the one filled with lights, including the half-broken bulbs from twenty years ago that I really ought to just trash. But no stand.
Well, we had a tree, and it had to go into water tonight if it wasn't to turn into brown needles before Christmas Eve. We'd have to buy one.
King Soopers didn't have one, nor did Ace. We finally found a stand at Walgreens, paid twice as much for it as for the tree, and headed home.
I hacked at the bottom of the tree for some 15 minutes before I uncovered a fresh surface to expose to water. Jake heard none of it, busy on the computer, till, furious, I struggled the tree through the front door, yelling at him about his lack of help. He held the tree while I turned the screws on the stand, then ran to get water, and I realized I'd been patently unfair. I'd given him no direction - why did I expect him to be helpful?
At this point the comic part of the evening began. Once the tree was situated in the spot I'd planned for it, there was no way for Jake to get past it to his room. Perhaps it would fit in the bed-dining room? Nope, the stand fell right off the low shelf I set it on. I carried the ficus plant, stem drooping, to another window, and moved its stand further away from its window. There. It's a squeeze, but the tree fits. I set the trunk to something close to vertical, watered it, tightened the screws as far as they would go. It'll have to do.
The house, though, wouldn't. It was amazing how much of a mess we'd made in just two hours. Jake's bag, his trumpet, my quilting, my lunchbag and bookbag, the books and toys I'd moved to make room for the tree, the outerwear we'd both discarded randomly - and over it all a thin film of potting soil from the displaced ficus. I have a house whose downstairs covers fewer than 600 square feet. My mother once said, accurately, that it's so small that one pair of shoes out of place makes it look messy. Right now, it looked hopeless.
Jake got into his bath and I started picking up. I wondered, why did I wait with decorating? Yes, there'd been that very cold week when moving away from the heat source seemed too much effort for any purpose. And daily workouts and frequent school-related training sessions don't leave much time for stringing lights and buying trees - or tree stands.
I'd rationalized, made myself think that it was because I wanted Jake to have the pleasure of preparation for Christmas, not just the big event. There will only be the two of us, and gift-giving will be limited - so if the holiday is to mean anything, the decorating will have to be part of it, I told myself. And there's some merit to that - except that Jake has never shown much interest or joy in that whole light - stringing thing. He likes the finished product, but if it happened magically while he slept, that would be fine with him.
No, the reason why I didn't decorate ahead of time is the same as the reason why I don't go up to his room when Jake's not here. I built that room from scratch, and it's not a masterpiece, but an enormous effort and some considerable part of my credit-card balance went into that space, and you'd think I'd take pride in it and want to spend time there. Instead, I perform the bare minimum maintenance and otherwise seem to pretend it's not there.
No, I'm not some monstrous Susan Smith type who wants to pretend that her children don't exist. My boys are my greatest pride I'm their biggest fan, just as they are mine. My Seattle marathon medal didn't mean a tenth as much to me as the letter Jake wrote me while I was running it. But somehow I've dealt with the fact that sometimes I'm his mom, and sometimes I'm a single woman with nothing more important to do, of an evening, than running 5 miles, by dividing my life into neat portions. There's the life with Jake and the life without Jake, and the two rarely, if ever, involve the same activities, same friends, or even the same spaces.
So after Jake took his bath and ate his grapefruit as I read Tolkien, and brushed his teeth and got tucked in, I started sorting through the mess. And gradually, the irritation of the chaos ceded to some level of contentment. After all, what did I have to do that was more important, or interesting, or meaningful, than making a nest, even if a temporary nest, for my boy and me, at Christmas?
What did I think I was doing? It was seven pm on Friday, December 18, and I was just starting my Christmas decorating.
Jake and I had already been to Lowe's. We found the perfect tree almost immediately - a Charlie Brown tree, I christened it immediately. A foot-long spike top like a tuft of hair wrapped around a knitting needle, and underneath a fat ball of impenetrable branches that, despite the late day, still retained some green. On sale for half price! Such a deal! On the way out, I remembered that I needed a stand too, and the store was out. Oh well - I used to have a stand before my recent years with a plastic tree -it's gotta be somewhere..
So now I was out in the storage building in my back yard, hoping that if a Black Widow had taken up residence, it was too sleepy for my search to wake it. I'd told Jake that I had a ton of plans for our 11 days together - this wasn't one of them. So far I'd found the box of ornaments, and the one filled with lights, including the half-broken bulbs from twenty years ago that I really ought to just trash. But no stand.
Well, we had a tree, and it had to go into water tonight if it wasn't to turn into brown needles before Christmas Eve. We'd have to buy one.
King Soopers didn't have one, nor did Ace. We finally found a stand at Walgreens, paid twice as much for it as for the tree, and headed home.
I hacked at the bottom of the tree for some 15 minutes before I uncovered a fresh surface to expose to water. Jake heard none of it, busy on the computer, till, furious, I struggled the tree through the front door, yelling at him about his lack of help. He held the tree while I turned the screws on the stand, then ran to get water, and I realized I'd been patently unfair. I'd given him no direction - why did I expect him to be helpful?
At this point the comic part of the evening began. Once the tree was situated in the spot I'd planned for it, there was no way for Jake to get past it to his room. Perhaps it would fit in the bed-dining room? Nope, the stand fell right off the low shelf I set it on. I carried the ficus plant, stem drooping, to another window, and moved its stand further away from its window. There. It's a squeeze, but the tree fits. I set the trunk to something close to vertical, watered it, tightened the screws as far as they would go. It'll have to do.
The house, though, wouldn't. It was amazing how much of a mess we'd made in just two hours. Jake's bag, his trumpet, my quilting, my lunchbag and bookbag, the books and toys I'd moved to make room for the tree, the outerwear we'd both discarded randomly - and over it all a thin film of potting soil from the displaced ficus. I have a house whose downstairs covers fewer than 600 square feet. My mother once said, accurately, that it's so small that one pair of shoes out of place makes it look messy. Right now, it looked hopeless.
Jake got into his bath and I started picking up. I wondered, why did I wait with decorating? Yes, there'd been that very cold week when moving away from the heat source seemed too much effort for any purpose. And daily workouts and frequent school-related training sessions don't leave much time for stringing lights and buying trees - or tree stands.
I'd rationalized, made myself think that it was because I wanted Jake to have the pleasure of preparation for Christmas, not just the big event. There will only be the two of us, and gift-giving will be limited - so if the holiday is to mean anything, the decorating will have to be part of it, I told myself. And there's some merit to that - except that Jake has never shown much interest or joy in that whole light - stringing thing. He likes the finished product, but if it happened magically while he slept, that would be fine with him.
No, the reason why I didn't decorate ahead of time is the same as the reason why I don't go up to his room when Jake's not here. I built that room from scratch, and it's not a masterpiece, but an enormous effort and some considerable part of my credit-card balance went into that space, and you'd think I'd take pride in it and want to spend time there. Instead, I perform the bare minimum maintenance and otherwise seem to pretend it's not there.
No, I'm not some monstrous Susan Smith type who wants to pretend that her children don't exist. My boys are my greatest pride I'm their biggest fan, just as they are mine. My Seattle marathon medal didn't mean a tenth as much to me as the letter Jake wrote me while I was running it. But somehow I've dealt with the fact that sometimes I'm his mom, and sometimes I'm a single woman with nothing more important to do, of an evening, than running 5 miles, by dividing my life into neat portions. There's the life with Jake and the life without Jake, and the two rarely, if ever, involve the same activities, same friends, or even the same spaces.
So after Jake took his bath and ate his grapefruit as I read Tolkien, and brushed his teeth and got tucked in, I started sorting through the mess. And gradually, the irritation of the chaos ceded to some level of contentment. After all, what did I have to do that was more important, or interesting, or meaningful, than making a nest, even if a temporary nest, for my boy and me, at Christmas?
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