The Karate Class

My husband has been off of work for the last few weeks, recuperating from knee surgery.  I must confess it's been rather nice since he has taken over many of my normal tasks.  I no longer have to rush around in the morning, trying to get myself and two boys ready and out the door on time.  In the evening, when the clock reads 5:00, I am no longer forced to abandon the piles on my desk and dash to my car to pick up my younger son from after-school care and then head home to cook dinner.

It sounds lovely, doesn't it? But it's come with a price.

I had suspected as much, and my suspicions were confirmed last night.  My husband had the opportunity to go to dinner with a friend, and he asked if I would mind picking up the kids from their karate class.  Not a problem.  I figured I would stay a little later at work, since class didn't end until 6:30, and try to knock off a couple of the million items on my to-do list.

I made it to 5:30.  That's when it hit me. I just didn't want to be there any longer.  I was tired, Spring-Break-can't-get-here-fast-enough tired.  I stayed a few minutes longer to straighten up a few things and to make sure I was ready for the next day.  Then I grabbed my bags, turned off the lights, and walked out the door.

It was early enough that I thought about going home first, but as I neared the turn-off for karate, I steered that direction instead.  Usually, when I take my boys to class, I bring with me papers to grade or a book to read.  Last night, I walked into the building empty-handed.

For 30 minutes, all I did was watch my boys kick, punch, and perform escapes.  And I loved every minute of it!  If felt so freeing and relaxing to do nothing but sit and watch my boys.  It seemed they had grown stronger and more sure of themselves during the weeks I had missed. Jack's kicks seemed steadier and Jared's punches sounded more powerful each time his fist met the pad. I beamed with pride. Really, I think I literally beamed, or at least I wore a goofy smile on my face. I felt so happy to just be there, to be spending time with my children, to be fully in the moment with them.

Yes, it's been nice to have fewer responsibilities.  But it turns out that when those responsibilities involve your children, it's a loss, not a win.

Rubber Duckies

If you work in a school, chances are you have dealt with fund raisers at some point.  Usually, my school ends up having a couple a year.  Recently, our principal decided to put together a fund raiser to raise money for 35 Chromebooks and a cart.  Definitely a good cause as right now we have a student to Chromebook ratio of 3 to 1, and there are times, especially as we get closer to Open House in the spring, that we are all scrambling to use them.  No fights have broken out, but I figure that is just a matter of time.

This particular fund raiser involved selling cookie dough.  Expensive cookie dough.  $17-a-tub cookie dough. The kind that will be delivered frozen and parents will have to come and pick up.  The kind that always gets me worrying about food safety.

To encourage the kids to actually sell the over-priced cookie dough, fabulous prizes were dangled in front of them.  The most enticing turned out to be rubber ducks on lanyards.  For every three orders, the kids received a duck.  These weren't just ordinary yellow ducks, mind you.  No, they were superhero ducks. They were designed to look like Superman, Iron Man, Batman, and others.  Sort of. If no one had told me what they were,  I never would have guessed.  The kids absolutely went crazy for them.

At our staff meeting on Monday, we learned that our quick one-week cookie dough fund raiser had netted us $16,000.  Never underestimate the power of rubber ducks! Yet, somehow I found that troubling.  I began to wonder, what are we teaching our kids when the only way to get them go participate is to bribe them with prizes?  Here we were raising money for computers that they would use, that they love to use, and that benefit their education.  This fund raiser was a chance for them to do something for their school, a chance to feel that they had made a difference.

I can't help but feel we took that away from them.  We told them we didn't think they were willing to contribute to their community.  We told them that you should only participate if there is something in it for you. 

I am sure many will disagree with me.  The ducks were incentives. They simply encouraged the kids to put effort into the cause.  They can feel proud of all the money they raised.

All that is true.  It just seems to me that we are more and more, as a society, conveying the message that the only things worth doing are ones that result in personal gain.  Instead of looking at how actions can benefit others and one's community, we seem to always to be asking, "What's in it for me?"  When we pay our children for good grades, when we offer trinkets for books read and AR tests passed, are we not trivializing the true accomplishment?  Are we not teaching them that the reward is the money or the prize and not the learning? Are we denying them the opportunity to see themselves as contributing members of society and part of a much bigger picture than just themselves?

Maybe I'm overthinking all this.  The kids got ducks and we got Chromebooks. It's a win-win. Right?

To Make Sense of the World

Inspiration can be so elusive at times.

I awoke this morning and raced around in my head to find something to write about. I replayed my day yesterday, starting with the discovery of dead, dried up worms on my classroom floor, followed by an email from my parent volunteer that said she wouldn't be coming in, leaving me with a large stack of papers to copy before my students arrived.  It seemed like a warning that the day ahead was going to be a rough one.  It was Monday, and raining, and the start of the last week before Spring Break, so my expectations were already pretty low.  The teaching part of my day, however, proceeded pretty much like it always does: a few phone calls to interrupt lessons, constant reminders to stay focused, repeating directions until I wanted to scream. (I didn't.)  It was all exceedingly ordinary. Nowhere in the shadows of the day could I find a glimmer of inspiration.

Even though I really wanted to stay under the warm covers a little longer, I made myself get out of bed when the alarm went off.  After making my cup of coffee, I sat down to peruse Facebook before settling down to the business of writing.  There in my news feed was a post by Kate DiCamillo in which she shared an email exchange between her and Rebecca Stead.  Their conversation focused on shared interests in books and on their personal writing processes. (You can read their exchange here.)

One line in the very beginning jumped out at me.  Kate DiCamillo, responding to a question about where the impulse to write comes from, wrote, "it is a *need* to tell a story, to make sense of the world through story."

"To make sense of the world through story." What a wonderful way to explain why writers write! That is, I believe, what drives me to write.  That need to explore the world through words in hopes of gaining a greater understanding. Posing questions and forming hypotheses to make sense of the truly nonsensical. During some of the more difficult times in my life, I have found that writing was the one thing that helped me make it through.  

But the need to "make sense of the world through story" is also what stops me from writing at times. Too often I sit down and start writing, only to abandon the piece when I discover I have no idea where I am going.  Instead of reaching some profound conclusion, I find myself mired in questions and incomplete cogitations. If I don't have the answers, how can I make sense of the world? If I can't make sense of the world, what's the point in writing, then? Realizing I don't have any answers, no incredible insights to add to the situation, I stop dead in my tracks and walk away.

I wonder, though, if maybe you don't always need to know where you are going. Both Kate DiCamillo and Rebecca Stead revealed in their conversation that neither one of them are planners, carefully outlining their stories before they begin.  Instead, Kate Di Camillo states that "writing is the only place i have learned to be patient. and it is also the only place i have learned to not to try and control things."  

I know there will be many days ahead when inspiration will run dry or I will question my ability to put my thoughts into words. There will be numerous occasions when I will think that I simply cannot make sense of the world. I will try to remember on those occasions that sometimes wandering aimlessly leads to exciting places. And sometimes, just the wandering itself is enough, no grand destinations needed.

And, it would appear, sometimes that glimmer of inspiration sparkles just when you were sure there was none to be found.

The Role of Mother

"You should write a book or something.  The imagery is real!" my son exclaimed after reading my blog yesterday.

I thought that was quite the compliment, coming from a 13 year old boy. While I was proud that he knew what imagery was, and more than a little flattered that he thought his mom's writing was good, I couldn't help but notice the astonishment in his voice.  Was it really so difficult to believe that I could write?

I'm not taking it personally.  I am, after all, his mother.  Truth be told, I think we all have a rather distorted vision of our mothers.  Or at least an incomplete picture of who she is.  My son may know things about me - what I do, things I like - and he may have heard some of the stories from my past, but to him I am simply Mom, the one who fulfills a particular role in his life.  Nothing more and nothing less. And I am perfectly fine with that.

I think things get more complicated, however, as you get older and roles begin to change.  My 84 year old mother recently moved into an assisted living facility ten minutes from my home and two and a half hours from hers.  While my brother, sisters, and I (and to a certain degree, my mother) all believed it was for the best, I can't imagine just how difficult it must be for her to make such an abrupt change to her life.  How do you give up everything you've known for the past six decades? What effect could that possibly have on your own sense of self?

The other day she told me that she had told herself that she wouldn't complain, but we had to expect there would be days when she would be depressed. While I get that, I have to fight the urge to try to make everything okay for her. Perhaps it's my own mothering instincts kicking in, wanting those I love to always be happy, even while I recognize the futility of that desire. When I was a kid I remember seeing my mother upset, but I don't think I ever really questioned what was upsetting her.  That didn't seem to be my job.  It was her job to take care of me. It was her job to understand me, not the other way around. Like me with my own sons, I suspect she was perfectly fine with the role, too.  It's a role she has played for over 60 years, and one she has played well.

And she continues to play it.

Which probably explains more accurately than any other explanation I could offer how she ended up in an assisted living facility.  There, she has people to take care of her.  People who are not her children.  People who did not grow up being taken care of by her.  She is there, not because her children don't love her, but because we do.  We love our mother, and this way, that is who she remains. Our caretaker. The strong and wise one who will listen to our problems and offer words of comfort or sage advice. 

Our roles remain intact.

I hope that my mother finds a measure of comfort in knowing that a core part of who she is remains even when so much of her life has changed.  As we all sat around my kitchen table last night for what has become our routine Sunday night dinner, I felt what a blessing this change is, for my children and me at least. My children get to spend more time with their beloved grandmother, and I get the opportunity to get to know my mother, the woman she is outside that role, a little bit better.

Surviving the Storm

Last night brought a storm like the ones that were promised when talk began about El Nino months ago.  Wind whipped around the house, howling as it tossed our two large redwood trees back and forth in a frenzied dance. Pounding rain assaulted our windows, at times sounding like a fire hose had been turned on them.

Somehow my husband, children, and I managed to fall asleep to the sound of this wicked battle being waged outside our home.  When we awoke this morning, we found the world bathed in calm.  Pale sunlight seeped between the gray clouds that still lingered, cautioning us that another battle could be on its way.  Puddles of water littered the yard, reminders of last night's assault.  Other than that, everything appeared once again as it always had.  Everything was still.

Looking out our bedroom window, my eyes immediately were drawn to the two redwood trees by the back fence.  I had worried last night that one, or both, would come down during the violent dance forced upon them by the wind. I feared that they had been weakened by the last four years of drought and that the buckets of rain that had fallen in such a short amount of time had deprived them of firm ground in which to stand.  But there they stood. Tall. Upright. Proud.  They stood as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred just hours before.

I suppose nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.  Wild storms are a part of nature and are to be expected. Rain is going to fall.  Winds are going to howl and lash at everything in their path.  Storms come. 

But they also go. 

When the next storm comes - and come it will - I will think of those trees, relentlessly battered by wind and rain.  I will picture them standing still and strong in the morning light.  And I will hold on, firm in the knowledge that this storm too will pass.  

Renewal

Quiet, slow-moving mornings.

Warm, little bodies pressed up against me.

Hands that reach for mine.


Pinks and  yellows and oranges scattered across newly green landscapes.

Gentle winds blowing through swaying tree tops.

Deep blue waves rushing to soothe the shore.


Brilliant red and orange sunsets.

Full moons and crescent moons standing watch in the night.

Stars that dance and sing.


Warm, soft blankets and crackling fires.

Dark burgeoning clouds full of winter warnings.

Wild pounding rain raging against my window.


Mournful train whistles off in the distance.

Snow-capped mountains rising high above green valley floors.

Dirt paths winding aimlessly through space and time.


Moments that stop me in my tracks and fill my heart with wonder.

Toothpaste: The Tie That Binds

One of my favorite movies is When Harry Met Sally.  I'm a sucker for romantic comedies and that movie is one of the best.  I think my favorite part, though, is the interviews with couples about how they fell in love. (Did you know those were all true stories? I just read that Rob Reiner interviewed couples to prepare for the movie and hired actors to recreate those interviews.) I can imagine my husband Dan and I as an old couple telling the story of how we met at the grocery store and how our love story began with a conversation about Drano and clogged drains. Not very romantic perhaps, but true.  And if they should then ask what the secret to a long marriage is, I know just what I'd say.

Toothpaste on toothbrushes. 

Yes, I know, that doesn't sound very romantic either.  It probably sounds downright strange, so let me explain.  One night many years ago, one of us went to brush our teeth, and when we put toothpaste on our toothbrush, we also put toothpaste on the other's.  I am certain it was Dan who started this.  It doesn't really sound like something I would do, and he is the one after all who, on our first date, took the wrapper off my straw and put the straw in my drink. (Incidentally, it was this act which led to my accepting a second date!) 

This year we will celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary, and every night whoever gets to the bathroom first puts toothpaste on both toothbrushes.  I'm not going to lie.  There have been more than a few nights over the years when I have been so angry that I had other thoughts about what Dan could do with that tube of toothpaste.  I am sure he's had many nights when he had similar ideas.  Yet, we still manage to summon up the strength or the decency or whatever it is we need to squeeze out a little extra paste for our partner. Sure, it may come out a little globbier than usual.  We may even slam to the toothbrush down on the counter.

But we do it.

It doesn't sound like much.  It certainly doesn't sound like the secret to a long, happy marriage. If you look a little deeper, though, beyond the superficial act, then that is where I believe you will find the secret.  It isn't about toothpaste at all.  It is about commitment.  It is about going through the motions on days when even that seems like too much.  It's believing that the past is also your future. It's knowing that marriage is about more than just temporary moments.

I can only imagine how I felt the first time Dan performed this simple act of kindness. I believe that by continuing to perform this act night after night, we honor and build on that feeling.  We honor each other and the marriage we have created together.  It is always said that it's the little things that count the most. It is a little thing, but it means much more.  So much more, in fact, I have honestly had the thought that I would know my marriage was over the night one of us neglected to do it.

I guess in a way it is fitting that a relationship that began at a grocery store is symbolized by toothpaste. And I am certain that there are many other facets of our relationship that make it an enduring one.  We have had our ups and downs and our zig-zags and wild whirling around.  But at the end of the day, we know just how it will all end up.

With toothpaste on toothbrushes.  Together.