When did I become such a cranky old lady, I thought as I looked out at my class.
In all honesty, it wasn't entirely their fault that I was feeling grumpy, although they certainly weren't doing anything to improve my mood. A lack of sleep and feeling like a failure as a writer and as a human being in general had put me in a foul mood. Ever since I had woken up at 5:00 a.m., one thought had repeatedly sounded in my head: I don't want to go to work.
It would have been better if I hadn't.
I had no patience for the tattling and the constant talking that interrupted nearly every sentence I tried to utter. Just let me get through this lesson became my mantra of the day.
"Can we stay in at recess?" I was asked repeatedly.
"Hell, no!" I wanted to cry out. I didn't. Instead I calmly explained that only people who had work to finish could stay in.
I couldn't wait for the day to end, although after the dismissal bell two meetings awaited me; not exactly the perfect ending to my day, but I suppose it fit. Just as I was wrapping up the day and getting ready to hustle my students out the door, I spotted it: a simple goldenrod-colored Post-it clinging to the edge of my desk.
My shoulders slumped and I immediately regretted all my grouchiness of the last few hours.
"Thank you, I needed that. If only it was true," I said as I put my arm around Mia and gave her a squeeze.
"It is true," she said, looking up at me with her eyes shining with trust. "I wouldn't have written it if it wasn't."
Just then I got tackled from behind and two arms wrapped themselves tightly around my waist. Turning around I was greeted with another smiling face. Grouchy or not, I was still loved.
Almost two hours later, when I finally was freed from the staff meeting and heading at a slightly-above-the-speed-limit pace to pick up my son from track practice, I noticed at long last just how beautiful the day was. The pale blue sky spread as far as I could see. The crystal clear air made for majestic views of the line of purple mountains frosted with white on the horizon. Trees burst with pink and white blossoms, and recent rains had painted the vacant lots green. I watched as two large geese ascended from an open field and flew low over the land side by side. And for the first time that day, I took in a deep breath and released all the frustrations I had been carrying with me.
All day I had held onto my own personal rain cloud, obscuring what had been in front of me all along: a beautiful day that held the promise of spring. And the promise of a better tomorrow.
My son's low, muffled laughter from the other side of the bedroom wall.
The scraping of the rake as my husband tends to the battered backyard.
The tinkling of wind chimes dancing with the wind.
The rumble of the washer as it gives the laundry one final spin.
The thundering of cats racing up the hall and down the stairs.
The rustling of clean sheets being put on the bed.
The tick-tick-ticking of the clock marking the passage of time.
And the soft resonating echo of days gone by.
This is the music of home.
Do you have a heart
if you're afraid to share it?
Do you have a soul
if you never bare it?
Do you have friends
if they can't be found?
Do you have identity
if you're lost in the crowd?
Do you have compassion
if you never let it show?
Do you have passion
if you just let it go?
Do you have a life
if you hide behind walls?
Do you have success
if you never risk it all?
Do you have convictions,
if you don't proclaim them to the world?
Do you have a voice
if it's never heard?
I felt guilty as I drove to work Friday morning. Here it was Read Across America Day and all I had planned was a morning of reading. No cute Dr. Seuss hats. No fun activities. No snacks. Hell, I hadn't even looked at Pinterest. All I had planned was a couple of hours of reading. Just reading.
I wasn't sure if it had been laziness, teacher burnout, or the fact that during the week I had report cards, an after-school book club meeting, and several early work departures to pick up my son from track practice that had led to my decidedly uninspiring celebration. Now that the day had arrived, I felt disappointed in myself that I had not gone the extra mile for my class.
I was standing in front of the mailboxes in the office when another teacher walked by with her stepson, who happens to be in my class.
"I love your hair!" I told my student. We were also having Crazy Hair Day to celebrate earning $20 per lap in pledges for our Fun Run the previous day. I think Dr. Seuss would have approved.
"Thanks." He followed her into the staff lounge and I finished signing the award certificates that had been sitting in my mailbox. They had been there since the day before, but I had kept forgetting to bring my certificate-signing pen with me on my journeys to the office, and I hadn't dared to carry them back to my classroom in the torrential rain. No one wants a spotted and warped award.
Walking back into the hallway where I stood, his stepmom said smiling, "He says that this must be your favorite day because you love to read."
I smiled back. "Yes! I am excited."
I walked away, oddly happy that he had noticed that I love to read. I mean, yeah, I don't make any secret of the fact that I love to read. I've probably mentioned it a few hundred times. But I have also mentioned that they need to put their name, number, and date on their papers and there are still quite a few of them that clearly haven't gotten that message. Maybe it was more than just what I said?
Later I watched my students file into class. In their arms and in their bulging backpacks were pillows, blankets, and best friends of the stuffed variety. And books. Lots of books that they were eager to show me. Each student staked out a territory, spreading out their blanket and arranging their pillow just so. As they did this, the room filled to bursting with noise. But it was happy noise. Excited noise.
Nonetheless, I was concerned that the noise would never cease. They are a bunch who love to talk. About anything and everything and all day long. I needn't have worried, though, because I know something else about them. They also love to read. A hush fell over the room as gradually each student got lost in their own book.
As every teacher knows, there are always a million things a teacher could be doing. I could grade papers. I could write lesson plans for next week. I could answer emails. I could do, probably should do, a lot of things. Instead, I picked up a book I had been dying to read and that had just arrived in the Scholastic book order, and I got lost, too.
It ended up being me who broke the silence. I just had to talk to someone about Fish in a Tree. So, I told them to tell someone about the book they were reading, and the room once again erupted into noisy excitement.
"Is that a good book, Mrs. Regan?" asked the boy who knew I love to read.
"It's wonderful. And terrible," I said, and then continued to tell him all about it. I watched his face register the emotions I felt as I read. This was a kid who gets it.
After our break, the students returned to their own little world, created within the pages of their book, and I wondered if their parents knew. Knew that their kids don't just like to play video games. Knew that they don't just like to play sports. Knew how much enjoyment they got from simply spreading out on the classroom floor and reading.
At the end of our celebration there were no complaints, only declarations of "That was fun!" I realized then that my guilt had disappeared the moment they had entered the room. No, I hadn't planned any cute activities. All I had given them was time and room to read. And that had been enough. Just reading.
It was a perfect day for staying home, dressed in comfortable sweats, curled up on the couch drinking a hot cup of tea, and getting lost in a good book.
Perfect, except it was Thursday.
So, instead of my warm, comfy sweats I was dressed in jeans, sweater, and boots. My couch was traded for my car, which I drove through the soaked streets to work with the wipers thumping back and forth in an effort to keep the windshield clear enough for me to see where I was going. The mild pressure I had woken up with in my head had exploded to full-blown headache almost immediately after buckling my seat belt. The ominous, dark clouds that filled the sky confirmed the forecast that called for heavy rain all day. That meant only one thing. . .rainy day recess. My head pounded harder at the thought.
Getting out of the car at work, I realized I had parked in the spot next to the sewer grate. In years past, this had proven to be a big mistake on occasion. I carefully crossed the small river that gurgled toward it and sent up a silent prayer that the grate wouldn't get clogged, resulting in a flood engulfing my car. A cold, biting wind tugged at my hood, threatening to snatch it right off my head. Holding my hood with one gloveless hand while the other clutched my purse, lunch bag, and tote bag (which I noticed belatedly I had not zipped closed), I made my way across campus, avoiding puddles as best as I could with my vision obscured by hair blowing in front of my eyes.
Knowing that it was two hours until the first break of the day, coupled with the fact that I had drunk two cups of coffee and a glass of orange juice for breakfast, I figured it would be a good idea to visit the restroom before the first bell rang. Standing at the sink, I looked at my reflection in the mirror. That old saying, "look what the cat dragged in," instantly flashed into my mind. Yep, I looked like I had been dragged through something. Wind and rain had rearranged my hair in a style only Cousin It could be proud of. Running my fingers through my tangled hair and pushing wayward strands out of my face, I wondered why I had even bothered to style it in the first place. It would only get worse, of course. There would be more trips to the office and to the cafeteria, giving the rain and wind multiple opportunities to work its magic.
Yes, this would have been a great day to stay home.
But I'm glad I didn't. If I had, I would have missed the laughter as I read aloud a chapter of Marty McGuire Has Too Many Pets, and then another chapter after the kids begged for more. I would have missed seeing them come up with some truly descriptive writing after teaching them Roz Linder's "Imagine This" lesson. I would have missed seeing their smiles as I called out their names and cheered them on during the afternoon's Fun Run. I would have missed.
And my crazy hair that was blown beyond bad hair day status? No one even mentioned it.
He had been waiting for this day for months.
"You know what we're going to do for your birthday?" my 15-year-old son would randomly ask his younger brother. "We're celebrating it at the DMV!"
Of course, there was no real reason for us to do that. Jared actually turned 15 1/2, the magic number for getting his driver's permit, the day before Jack's birthday. But I guess the combination of excitement over getting his permit and the ever-present desire to torture his brother created an opportunity just too good to pass up.
Fortunately for Jack, his brother is a bit of a procrastinator, so by the time he got around to scheduling his appointment at the DMV, the first available was February 28, a whole 28 days past his birthday. Jared was disappointed that he would have to wait, but I on the other hand sighed in relief, grateful to put this next step in his evolution into adult off for a few more weeks.
The time went quickly, and before we knew it, we were a week away from The Big Day.
"You should start studying for the test," I told him one day, driving him back from track practice.
"I already am," he informed me. "I've taken a couple of practice tests on the app."
Of course there's an app.
In my mind, I had been envisioning the old paper booklet that I had had to pick up from the DMV office and study by reading it over and over. Everything was done electronically now; it stood to reason that the DMV would have joined the modern age as well. My age was definitely showing.
As The Big Day got closer, an action plan was put in place. Jared's dad took the day off, so he would pick up Jared from school and drive him to his 1:30 appointment. He asked his dad to pick him up at 12:20, so I'm pretty sure there were secret lunch plans, involving pizza no doubt, that I was not privy to. Then, if all went according to plan, by the end of the day, my child would officially be able to learn how to drive a car.
Yikes.
"Jared, make sure you have everything you need for your appointment tomorrow," I reminded him the night before.
And thus began Parent Fail #15,749.
It should have been an easy thing. Gather up the necessary documents: proof of driver's ed, social security card, and birth certificate. Easy peasy. The form certifying that he had completed an approved driver's ed course had been hanging on the side of the fridge ever since he got it, several months before. I knew where his social security card was, and his birth certificate would be in the file with all the birth certificates. What could go wrong?
"Mom, where are my social security card and birth certificate?" he asked.
"You social security card is in the tray in the computer armoire in the game room and your birth certificate is in a file." He went off to search for them as I continued to make large California-shaped sugar cookies in the kitchen. (Just another one of those weird things teachers do.)
A few minutes later he returned to the kitchen and declared, "I can't find them."
"You looked in the file tray in the armoire?" I asked. In my house, I am known as The Finder of Lost Things. This is not because I am particularly talented, mind you, but because the rest of the household is notoriously bad at finding things that are usually right in front of them.
"Yes, and it's not there."
Great. If it wasn't there, I had no idea where it was. To make matters more complicated, we had recently torn out the built-in desk unit that we had had for years, and many of our files were still in boxes, waiting for us to find the time and energy to organize them and find them a new home.
What followed was an hours-long search by Jared, my husband, and me. We went through files, even ones that would make absolutely no sense for the missing documents to be in, and we went through them again. I was amazed at the things I did find, things that I had absolutely no use for. The two documents we did need, however, remained MIA.
"I found my social security card!" Jared proclaimed in the middle of our search.
"Where?" I asked, relieved that at least we had found one of the missing documents.
"In the desk thing in the game room," he said.
I cocked my head and looked at him, giving him The Eye.
"Did you find it in the file tray?" I asked calmly after staring at him in silence for a few moments.
"Yeah."
"You mean, where I told you to look in the first place?"
"Yeah. I didn't look through all the papers the first time," he replied.
Because there was still a birth certificate to be found, I didn't waste any time on useless lectures about looking through things thoroughly. We continued to cover ground we had already covered while racking our brains to think of where else it could be.
It was getting late and the mystery had still not been solved. I wasn't willing to give up, though. Even though I was hesitant to see him take his place in the driver's seat of a real car, I knew how much this meant to him. And even though he handled it with grace, telling me to go to bed, I knew he must be crushed. To come so close and to have his dream snatched away, all because his parents hadn't been organized enough to be able to lay their hands on his birth certificate when he needed it. I retreated to my bedroom weighed down with the burden of knowing I had let my son down.
"We're going to have to get another copy," I told my husband, who lay in bed with his iPad in hand. "I wonder how long it takes."
He didn't respond, but I noticed that he was now busy typing into his iPad.
"Are you looking it up?" I asked.
"Yeah. The office is on Hazel. It says it takes about 20 minutes," he told me.
"So you can go in the morning and get it? Jared can still take his test?" Relief washed over me. The crisis had been averted.
Later the next day I received the text I had been waiting for: "He passed!" My son was on his way to becoming a driver.
Now that I think about it, I'm not sure I can honestly count what happened as a bona fide parent fail since we were able to fix the problem before it became a catastrophe. Maybe we're still holding steady at #15,748.
I read yesterday morning that perfect parenting is a myth. In our house, that's a given. But when I look at my son, and the grace with which he handled our almost-disaster, never once complaining or casting blame, I have to wonder if what I consider to be my failures have somehow played a role in shaping him into the smart, confident, and understanding young man he is becoming.
If that's the case, then maybe, just maybe, my failures are not true failures after all.
June 22, 2017
I like the early hours of morning best, when the sun has just risen, gently urging the land awake as it steadily makes its way across the pale blue sky. Every tree, every bush, every body of water both great and small, seem more subdued, as though each is still wiping the sleep from its eyes. Even the air itself is still and calm.
The only sound in camp this morning is the cranky calling of unidentified birds from high up in the towering pines. Perhaps they are scolding the sun for awakening them from sweet dreams. If any human in the surrounding camp sites is up, they are moving undetectably through their morning preparations, regarding the birth of the new day with the reverence it deserves.
Camping has been - for lack of a better word - an experience. My body is covered with bites (so much for bug spray!) and my hair is way beyond what one could call a bad hair day. I have had to overcome my innate squeamishness to shower in a public shower that costs $1.25 for five minutes of surprisingly hot water and to wash my dishes on a picnic table under trees that leave a fine dusting of yellow pollen on everything below them. The curtains I had spent so much time making to pretty-up our old used pop-up tent trailer detached from what I had thought was a clever solution to hanging them on the track, meaning I'll be going back to the drawing board when I get home. The handle broke off the door and we discovered big gaps between the canvas walls and the metal frame, problems that will need to be fixed before our next outing. Yes, our first camping trip in many years and the inaugural trip with our new-old tent trailer has certainly been an experience.
I have loved every minute of it.
Okay, maybe I haven't loved the bug bites, but there have been plenty of positives to outweigh the negatives. My video-game addicted son has spent the last three days surrounded by nature and real life, not a sorry pixelated facsimile. He has hiked and fished and held lengthy conversations with his parents. He's discovered the simple pleasure of making s'mores around a campfire. The public shower has been an adventure for him, prompting him to voluntarily shower when I would have had to coerce him at home. Even though he resisted reading a book, declaring that he doesn't like books in the summer (what??), I see by his bookmark that he is three-quarters of the way through the book I handed him yesterday.
Surrounded by beauty and miles from electronics and the pressures and demands of our jobs, we have reconnected as a family. Everything we do, we do together. (Well, not the shower part; that would be weird.) Hiking up steep, dusty trails, we encourage each other to keep going and congratulate each other on our success, all the while marveling at the spectacular scenery we would have missed had we not exerted the effort and pushed past our comfort zone. At night we gather around the table in our little home-away-from-home to play a game of Qwirkle (which I always lose) and sing out "Six point bonus!" when the first person lays down their last tile. When darkness has settled in for the night and we have trudged to and from the bathroom to brush our teeth, together, we lay in our bunks with our flashlights and books and read until the exhaustion of the day catches up to us.
The sun has now risen high enough to peak through the tree branches outside my window. Today will be our last day here in the woods. Tomorrow will be a repeat of Monday but in reverse, and will end with us back home in the suburbs amidst the clutter and noise and chaos of real life. Electronics will pull my son away. The pressure of jobs and commitments and responsibilities will march in like a dictator taking control of our lives once again.
But that is tomorrow.
Today the sun is gently waking up the land that calls to me to come explore. It demands nothing of me but that I enjoy and respect and experience that sense of wonder that comes from witnessing the breathtaking beauty of nature. I will immerse myself in that beauty and hope that I can carry a piece of it back with me, a piece that will remind me, when the pressures of the world start closing in, what life is really all about.
