Nightmares Becomes Reality

Have you ever had those dreams where you forget to show up for class for a big test because you overslept? Or shown up naked and not realized it until everyone was staring at you? That happened to Emma this morning. This year she has taken it upon herself to set her alarm and get up on her own. The past two years she has diligently left a post it on the outside of her door indicating the time she would like to be woken. New year, no post its.

And so this morning, a Saturday morning, I was sleeping in when it occurred to me that I had not heard the rumblings of anyone getting ready for school. I rolled over and realized it was close to 8, but that certainly Em was up and gone. My heart sank when I saw her door closed. I walked over, opened it hoping to see and empty bed, but instead I saw my sleeping beauty. I walked in waked her and her face went white when she realized that not only had she not gotten there early for extra time on her test, but that she was not there at all...and it was AFTER 8...the official start time of her test.

I told her to get ready and I went and made her a quick piece of toast and we got her there as quick as possible. I sent her with a note and not soon after she called me in tears. She was so freaked out about the entire thing. She told me through broken sobs that he was going to let her take it later today when she has a free period. I knew he would, but for a child who never does anything wrong, this was devastating to her. And yet, as I listened to her sob and tell me the story from the other end of the line I realized this was probably a painful, but good lesson for her. Nobody is perfect and that mistakes can be dealt with. She has never even been late to class, never mind being late for a test.

And as I write this I realize just how lucky I really am. At one a.m. this morning I was awakened by the sounds of a bunch of kids outside my window. I knew one of the voices and could not imagine what this 13 year old was doing out on High Street at one in the morning!! I panicked for a minute as I got out of bed and realized his mother was pulling up next to the group. I heard rumblings of the word police and then a male voice telling the kids to get home. My heart went out to that mother. She is in trouble with a capital T. And that is what comes of never setting boundaries for your kid. He runs the show and now the games have changed. I have to call her this morning. I know he is hanging with kids who are trying things, even though Zach assures me that they have "quit" smoking pot...everyone knows they have. I am mortified that they had something to actually "quit" as 8th graders, but I also know when I was growing up that there were kids trying it then. Times have not changed that much, but now I am the mother and it is different in SO many ways!! This is one of my worst nightmares...not knowing where my kid is at one in the morning.

Another mother in the neighborhood called me earlier in the evening to tell me that her son, who is a freshman, had invited a girl over who was "white trash" and that they were alone in their rec room and what should she do? I said she should be happy that her son was breaking out of his shell...but again...how do we let go and not want to make everything right and at the same time allow them to make mistakes that they can and will learn from?

Just thinking....gotta call my neighbor!

Life is Easy....

June 11, 2009 Poetry Project

“Life is hard.”
Is what I have always been taught
And with that lesson comes the awareness that
I must struggle.
That everyone struggles
In the light of the sun and the moon
There are moments of ease, but for the most part
It is about enduring the pain, the suffering and sacrifice.

“It is supposed to be easy” I am told today.
Life…easy? Must be an oxymoron she replies.
Just must be.
Life is not easy…it used to be easier, but with each passing
Moment she wonders…is she making it hard for herself?
Yes, she replies as her mother did and her mother did before that.
Is this what she wants for her daughter? Sacrifice? Suffering? Pain?
No…it is not. And so it is today she tells herself
Today that she shall begin the journey with a new thought
That it is easy. If we give in and accept life, she sees,
That life can be there to be easy, to be enjoyed and not simply endured.
Yes, she said, I like that.
Me too herself replied.

Practice,practice, practice....makes...

I find myself searching for times to take extra trips to the grocery store, to the park or just anywhere because Emma needs to get in 40 hours, yes, that is what I said, 40 hours of driving under her belt before she can even think about going for her license. Now let's think about that...really. That means that essentially she has to drive about 2000 miles...in the next 5 weeks. And that would be at a good clip of a good 65 mph. This new requirement, just doubled from the 20 hours that many of her friends had a hard time getting in. How would we find 40 extra hours in lives?

Emma has been driving since she turned 15 and a half in January, but with icy conditions, snowstorms and a very busy schedule, her daily drive to school and back was not exactly packing in the hours. 5 to 7 minutes to school and the same coming home. Can I count more time if we find a traffic jam and just sit in it? For each time she drives she has to enter not only the time, but also any "special" skills she worked on at the time. We are getting good at it, lane changes, night driving, parking, merging and well...the list goes on.

What this does force us to do is to be very aware of all of the things a driver does do. And although I am not opposed to this idea of practice, in fact I am very much in favor of it as I have seen Emma become so much more confident behind the wheel each time we get into the car. I can appreciate the state's devotion to practice as the one thing that will make her and any kid a better driver. Thank goodness because they are all going to be on the road with us!

And like anything, I see young drivers behind the wheel all of the time now. It is like when you are pregnant, every thing you see, hear and touch is baby, baby, baby. It even seems as though the commercials on TV change to be sure to include your current situation. But the reality is that that is where my brain is and so I am keenly aware as I sit on my front porch and see the Kenney's van go by, go to wave and then realize that behind the wheel I see long dark hair flowing in the wind as Eliza, one of Em's best friend go flying by. And it stops me for a moment. Soon there will be all of those kids that were just in kindergarten behind the wheel driving, driving driving.

The first day Emma started Driver's Ed, I dropped her off feeling anxious and very nervous. She was sure she would not know anyone and as the crowd assembled outside the driver's ed classroom I flashed back to this same group of kids standing on the playground at Main Street School waiting to be assigned to the right lines as they began their first days at kindergarten. Seeing time pass you by in the form of another human being is quite astounding.

When I look at Emma I see her there...but at other times I see her at 3. Pudgy little hands, a head of wild curly red hair and a mouth that never stopped talking. I can even feel her hand in mine as she would skip beside me on our way into the grocery store. Those same hands, now bigger than mine, are on the steering wheel. The wheel where she needs to spend 40 hours in the next 5 weeks!

And so I go off here...but my point was supposed to be that I am amazed that when it comes to something we do physically, the idea of practice, practice and more practice is the standard practice, but when it comes to intellectual development in our public schools it is all about...not time to practice, we have got to move on to the next thing.

What if that were the case with driver's ed? Sorry kids...no time for you to be behind the wheel because the amount of things we have to cover had doubled, tripled even and so we need to move quickly as you sit in your seats and I throw all of this information at you, but sorry, no time to practice.

What would we have on our hands but a pool of grossly inadequate, inexperienced drivers on our roads...but that doesn't happen because we all know and can see the difference in time spent. Will they still be inexperienced? Hell yea, but much less so than if they had to do this without the practice.

Emma has yet to get on the highway. I remember what that was like for me and I lived up in the sticks off of 89 where there were no other cars on the highway. Here, to get onto 101 or 95 is absolutely going to be a harrowing experience and one that we need to try to do soon, but not until she is ready.

I asked her yesterday on our trip to Staples if she wanted to try getting on 101 and going one exit on the highway to which she responded, sure...but how do I do that? As I started to tell her I could see her knuckles tighten on the steering wheel and her nerves increase. I stopped and asked, for fear of my own life and hers, if maybe she wanted to do it another time. She replied immediately, "yes". She was just not ready. And I can appreciate that and wait. Wait for her to find the confidence she needs to feel she can do it and not be a nervous wreck! And me too!
And I haven't even talked about what it is like to be in the passengers seat, but that is a whole other blog!!


And so I leave you with one thought...when is the last time your child was given the opportunity to read as homework. Just read, or write for practice? When was the last time that something was done in the name of practice and not just for a grade. Practice allows us the time we need to get ready for the "big show". It allows for mistakes, mishaps and risk-taking. If everything out kids do is a final end game, then where is the time for the practice? We have lost our way in education more than I can even think about. We have lost our way and sometimes I am not sure we are going to find our way back, but in the end we need to remember and not ever forget that the best measure of making progress is time spent doing something over and over, in different ways, over and over and over. And although I have no idea HOW we are going to find 40 hours of driving time, I do feel good to know that every young child will have that under their belt before driving off into the horizon! Taking into account, that is, that people are cheating on their recording of the hours. And I am sure THAT would never happen! ha ha ha

There was a good ending to this somewhere in my head, but as it turned out to ramble a bit I will just end it here...
Just thinking.....

I Believe...Writing at the Retreat...

Love, Laughter and Leukemia

I believe in the power of change. I believe in going with the flow and embracing flexibility, fear, not knowing and inspiration through the process of change. I believe we cannot wait to do what is best because all we may have is today. I believe in passion and inspiration and impulsivity. I believe in intuition and improvisation as we work each moment to make it matter. I believe we have one life and one life only. This is not a dress rehearsal and so we must strive for every moment to count. I believe in joy, laughter and fun. I believe we can have all of these things as we embrace the process of life that is forever changing whether we like it or not. I believe there is so much in life that we cannot control that we should strive to make the very best of the things that we can! I believe that life is hard, but stories and laughter and connections with others make it worthwhile. And even though I believe all of these things and more, I still have to make an effort to do all of these things myself whether it is in each day, each hour or each moment. I believe we are here not to forget, but to work to always remember how lucky we really are. And that, my dear friends, is not always easy.

January 20, 1997, Emma was diagnosed with leukemia at the tender age of 3 and a half. This was the day I was redefined in ways I would never be able to comprehend. That day I left my class of 5th graders and never returned to the classroom as a full-time teacher. That day I was no longer a “normal” mom attending story hour. Playgrounds and swings were replaced with hospital hallways and medical procedures. Play dates and monkey bars were replaced with visiting hours and IV poles. That day leukemia moved into our lives and refused to leave. It set its big ass right down on the couch, cracked open a beer and settled in for the long haul. You could feel his presence when you walked in the door. He was there and whatever I tried to do I could not get him to leave fast enough. It was out of my control. There were days I never showered, days I thought I could not bear the suffering of my curly red-haired, pudgy handed baby and the absence of my 8 month old Zachary. But I did. I just did.

And after four and half years of living in fear, the unthinkable happened Yes the unthinkable does happen. Emma was 6 months to being declared “cured” when she relapsed. Yes six lousy months away from freedom and we found ourselves again put in the shackles of a diseased life. It was unbearable. Any ground we had made was gone, forgotten, as new protocols, names of chemotherapies, and the new idea of radiation to her head and spine were thrown at me I could not dodge them as I lodged myself into a corner in of a dark room at Mass General hospital and I just cried, rocking myself back and forth, back and forth knowing that I could not, would not be able to do this again. This and more. I could not do it. I knew it. But I did. I had no choice.

And for every platitude that was thrown at me in the name of comfort I can only reply. God DOES give people more than they can handle…trust me…this was too much. I am NOT a better person for having experienced this. I liked myself just fine thank you before this all happened. I am just a different person. We all have shit. It just comes in different forms. What we don’t have is control. It is not in our power. And as much as we want and yearn to think we have control the truth is that we just don’t. What we do have is the power to embrace each moment for what it is. In the same way we must treasure each individual not for who they are and not who we want them to be. We must have our eyes open at all times so that we don’t miss the beauty that resides within the shit.

I can still see my beautiful bald baby sitting in the oversized hospital bed wearing her blue and white silk panda bear pajamas smiling over at me and telling me our new favorite show was on. I would laugh and settle in next to her as we watched those chosen ones run through the aisles of a mock grocery store and try to find items faster than their opponents. The show was as ridiculous as our lives had become, but being with her in that moment was a reality I was comfortable with. I had to accept that I myself could not control the cancer, but I could try to have some control of making it a better journey, to roll with her emotions, to laugh together, cry together, play cards for hours on end, do crafts, read and anything else you can imagine doing. And eventually…very eventually we settled onto the couch and pushed leukemia over and made room for ourselves on that couch too. It was not easy. But we did it.

And so this story that has been written. This story that defined me for so long, for so many years, it not my story any longer… It is a part of my history. It has been written. It is done. And so we move forward to the next story that is unwritten and the one after that knowing that we are all going to die. It is just a fact and looking death square in the blue eyes of my Emma I know this to be true. So we might as well laugh, create new stories, cry, go with the flow, take risks, be free, love, live and try to accept what life has to offer…if even for just a moment.

Heinemann Retreat Rocked!!

I love good conversation. There is just no way around it. I love the feeling of being in a think tank where everyone in the room is attempting to think outside of the box. Their thinking pushes my thinking to places it would not normally go. It is like being on the tennis court with someone who is better than me. It ups my game. It allows me to smash that ball with great ease and accuracy...hitting the sweet spot that keeps me wanting to play more and more. And I don't even play that much, but I do know that feeling of getting the ball to do something extraordinary.

So, when I spent the past two days with people from all over the country who do what I do, I found myself invigorated, inspired and moved beyond words. In a job where I am always the one in the place of leading, always the one in charge of inspiration and encouragement, it was SO refreshing to be with others who work to do the same thing. The difference was that instead of feeling drained like I often do after my group meetings as of late, I was completely energized. I fed off their thinking, their energy and willingness to take risks. Yes, it is the risk taking that was contagious in this group. I believe this is why they all are where they are. It is that willingness to just jump and try things without knowing just what might happen one way or another. It is a quality I admire. It is the way I strive to live my life.

We are all as different as they come, but what we had in common was a sense of spirit that we want and need to do what is right for kids. We have a bigger picture in mind of what it could and would be like in education if we all had the common goal of working towards upping the games of each of our children and not just upping the test scores. We get it and will spend, I suspect, the rest of our lives working with others to help them see, to inspire them to take risks, to work for the betterment of our educational system until we just can't do it anymore.

I feel so lucky to have stumbled upon this group, but then again, I am certain it is not luck. We are all just where we were meant to be. We share a common theme, a common vision that does not even need to be defined because we just know. We know that although our work often feels as though it falls flat, that what we are doing is SO important that we cannot and will not ever stop.

And so I can end this academic year with a great shot in the arm, thankful for the leadership of Vicki and Ellin and the rest of the Heinemann gang who not only "see" the future for what it can be, but also have the great intuition to know the power of a group of people who want to work together. This is what change, real change is all about and I am honored to be a part of the process.

Drive and Live!!

Phew! I just finished reading my last post and can you say glooooooomy? Any of you who are New Englanders tried and true understand that late winter, early spring state of mind. It is as though we are suspended between seasons and just when you get a small taste of sunshine and springtime the cold temperatures return and sweep through your body like the dampness of death, chilling your bones to the core. There is no getting warm from this kind of damp cold. There just isn't. Your body has made the transition to warm and that is all it longs for. Anything else just will NOT do! There is not going back!
And so I have not written because of that state of mind where I have not felt terribly inspired and when I have I have tried to pour it into some of my other writing projects.
But then you have days like yesterday. The sun was shining, everything was lush and green from all the rain, every bud was bursting to make it's way into the world and I woke with a sense of energy I have not felt in quite sometime. I knew I had to do something, but all of the things I "should" do just were not cutting it! I did not want to work! NO kind of work, be it home or school at all! I wanted to have FUN!
And so I suggested to my sister via facebook im'ing that she come down. Within moments she was off the computer and on the road in her jeep to come and take me rooftop down to the beach! Fun! Yes, sheer fun was what I was in search of after finishing one of my classes on Thursday, Friday HAD to be about fun! And it was. We walked and talked and drove and ate out under the sunshine on the water! It was THE perfect day! And I am so thankful that spontaneous is her second middle name...after the middle name of fun of course!!!!
Ahhh....

Talk and Die

Not even sure what I am going to write about today...I only know that there is something inside of me yearning to get out! Perhaps it is about the fact that that woman..can't ever remember her name, died on the bunny slopes from something called talk and die syndrome.. Reminding me that life is fleeting and that just two weeks before that I fell on my head skiing. I fell on my head, but I was wearing a helmet for the first time in my life. Was this my warning?

Perhaps it is about the fact that someone from one of my classes told me the other day that I remind them of that new judge on idol, Cara who could talk her way out of a hole and that that woman drives me so crazy that I fast forward her constantly...could I really be THAT annoying? Phu-leese...If I am anything like her in my classes then somebody needs to shut me up!!

Or maybe it is just about the fact that everyone I know around me is trying desperately to figure out life. There are so many of us, among the trenches who are fighting and working and struggling to keep marriages alive, others who have given up and are just there in the background and others who have found the strength to leave the fight and live on their own...no matter what the case, there does not seem to be anyone out there who is revelling and thriving in their relationships and for me this is...sad.

And for those who have left the battle, they find themselves faced with yet, another battle, the one that may even be more near and dear to my heart and that is the battle of the role of parent. I am the first to admit that if I had a life to live that was just my life I would be making some very different choices...but the bottom line is that I really don't feel as though this life is mine and only mine. That singular life of mine was altered forever the day I had my first baby.But no matter where you go, the same language is used...isn't it better to live a happy life than one that is sub par? Aren't you modelling this behavior of staying in an unhappy relationship to your children? Happy parents make happy children and while this all makes perfect sense cognitively...it does not make up for the total loss of family that a child loses in the process.

I saw this show on Oprah, yes Oprah the other day. This Mom was happily married and she even said, "in love" with her husband, but there was something inside of her that was just not right. To make a long story short...she is a lesbian and she never knew it. Today she seems to shine with happiness from within and is committed to yes, another woman. And although her daughters seem cool with all of this and had even teased their Mom about being gay before she even knew it, the pain on the mother's face when she saw her daughters talk about losing their family was evident. It is an either or situation. Both of her daughters were overweight and appeared to be happy on the outside, but still mourned that terrible loss and could not even talk about it without tearing up.

Can any of us do this to our children? And yet, people do it all the time. My kids have friends whose parents are both divorced and together and they all seem very well adjusted...there is always another way to look at all of this.And is it more than that? As I watch the stories unfold around me I can only wonder how each will write it's own ending and in the end...will it really matter? We are all ultimately searching for something that we can no longer fill with busyness and young children. We can no longer hide among the hidden for we have exposed ourselves and there is no going back.

Or is there? Is there any way to "go back". No, I can tell you from first hand experience that there is NO going back. There is only forward and with that forward we must bring our past with us...like it or not it is now a part of who we are.

And so people will go out and have affairs, people will stay in and only dream of another life and others will live with the uncertainty of what their spouses are "really" up to and allow their distrust to rule their lives. But living with distrust must be better than living alone...right?

And then I wonder about our physical location. Here in New England we are so much more rigid...less fluid to consider and less open to discuss things honestly and openly. I felt myself closing up slowly as I made the flight from Sedona to here. Back here to real life where we have to struggle each day to get out of bed to face yet another grey day here in paradise. Struggle to maintain the perfect image of family...and yet how many of us are doing just that...pretending?? And then there are the days where one gets through and feels a bit, if even a tiny bit content that their parenting went well or that they were there when their kids needed us and everything seems to come clearly into focus. This is where I am meant to be and there is no question...until the next moment when that question and so many others enter your consciousness and nags at you...life is short and one never knows just when it may be your turn to talk and die.