Semester's Worth of Papers

Day 311: Semester's Worth of Papers

I generally try to refrain from bragging about my children. Bragging about your children awakens unpleasant feelings in the listener, ranging from boredom (amongst the childless) to anxiety (for those with children or grandchildren). My swings between anxiety about their well-being and pride in their accomplishments - as frequent and dramatic as weather changes on a San Francisco summer day - make it next to impossible for me to speak a word of praise anyway. By the time the praise is uttered, I've become convinced that one or the other will end up homeless, jobless, or a permanent resident of my basement. Also, they don't like for me to talk about them, positive or negative, brag or worry. It's all just plain embarrassing.

Today, I'm breaking my resolution because - YAY - Sam's junior year winter finals are over, and he did well! I won't go into detail (embarrassing! anxiety-producing!) but I will just mention that he got 101% on his science final, even though there was no extra credit on the exam. I'm even prouder because he was struggling a little bit with the concepts earlier this semester. Perseverance pays off.

The reason this all rates a day for the stuff project is not just the six-inch stack of exams, study sheets, xeroxed articles and worksheets that I threw in the recycling this morning. It's that junior year is such a terrible, awful, stressful, mindboggling year. The pressure cooker of having all your work reviewed and judged by unknown bodies - college admissions offices - adds that modicum of unbearability to all your efforts junior year. And the consequences seem so profound: Harvard versus community college, a career at McDonald's versus a career in a law firm. Of course, it's not really as dramatic as that, but it feels that way. At no other point in your life is all your work put forward for a judgment that will have long-reaching consequences. It's a crazy system, and it's a wonder the kids survive it with as much grace as they do.

So, good riddance junior year winter finals! One more semester of pain and suffering. Then college selection. Then college, a place where education is its own reward. Or so one hopes.

Good job, son.

Dominoes

Day 265: Dominoes
Finished shopping for stocking stuffers and oh what fun. The perfect stocking stuffer:

• Smaller than a breadbox (although I've been known to bend this rule for stacks of used books from the Friends of the Library sale)
• Costs less than $15, or (better still) less than $5, or (superlative) less than $2. The higher the original retail price, the better
• To reduce its environmental impact, is either (1) consumable (food or toiletries) (2) used or (3) made from repurposed materials (like felt mittens of old sweaters or handbags made of old neckties)
• Makes the recipient laugh, or smell it and say "Mmm," or taste it and say "Mmm," or stroke it and say "Mmm"

There should be no fewer than eight and no more than twelve. Sam and Emma Jane should have the exact same number.

I don't clearly remember our stocking rituals in the house I grew up in, but I know I still use the stocking my Auntie Mo made for me when she was 17 years old and I was only six months. It is tiny - only large enough to fit a clementine, a pack of gum and a pair of socks - and my brother's was twice the size. This was always a sore subject for my sister and me with our tiny Christmas stockings, as was the fact that we believed Karl never had to help with the dishes. For this reason, I borrowed Karl's stockings when I made a felt stocking for Rich and another for Jane, years later.

My mother knit large, stretchy Christmas stockings for each of her grandchildren. Emma Jane had the dubious distinction of being the first grandchild, with the result that her Christmas stocking has a very strange and twisted heel, which I wouldn't trade for a million perfectly turned ones.

This box of dominoes was a stocking stuffer for one of the kids many years ago. I don't really know how to play dominoes. We used it as a sort of matching game, where you built a snaking path by taking turns pairing an orphaned end with a matching block from your hand. If you had doubles, you could branch out, creating more options and complexities. We also used them to line up long phalanxes in order to watch the chain reaction when you pushed the first one down. They've been shoved to the back of the bookshelf for a long time.

They are ripe for a white elephant exchange.

Halloween Coloring

Day 222: Halloween Coloring

Sam used to draw the most expressive, comical, appealing faces.
This pumpkin makes me laugh every time I take it out of the box.

I am not one of those mothers who does up the whole house with holiday decorations. I'm more of a just-in-time kind of gal. Which means that I just realized today (Tuesday) that Friday is Halloween. For holiday decorations, the kids have to go to my mom's.

Just recently Sam's English teacher told him he has
talent as a poet. You can see this talent started to
emerge at a young age.

This is the only thing I can actually get rid of.
Nothing original - just colored-in Xerox copies.
Haven't put them up in years.

Nevertheless, I have a whole boxful of holiday stuff that will have to be buried with me in my coffin, because I will never give them up. Never. In the whole big box, I found very, very little that I could bear to part with.

And a whole lot that gives me joy.

Your friendly neighborhood vampire, arriving on time
to suke your blood. Another classic from Emma Jane
that  makes me laugh. Every time.

Skeletons made out of Q-Tips, pumpkins in a patch,
maniacal scarecrows. All keepers.

Kids' Music

Day 220: Kids' Music

The shelves upstairs are still yielding little things from past times. A signed version of Teaching Hippopotami to Fly by the Chenille Sisters. Magic School Bus Dinosaurs (oh, how Sam loved dinosaurs!). I Spy. 

No more cross country trips with books on tape played over and over, or the same videotape played over and over, or the Chenille Sisters played over and over. I can still recite the book The White Cat from memory ("You are nothing but a white...cat") and sing all the words to "A You're Adorable," and speak the lines along with James Cromwell in Babe ("That'll do, pig"). The kids listen to their own music now, with headphones. off in the zone.

It doesn't seem long ago that they were toddling along on unsteady feet, with diaper-fat butts and chubby little ankles and shorts that went below their knees, or reaching up to ride the Razor scooter set at the lowest height, or stopping at the street corner because they weren't allowed to cross on their own, or climbing the tree between our house and Barbara's house next door to put letters in the wooden box they'd stowed up in the branches.

I'm guessing that I'll have grandchildren in fewer years than it's been since we last listened to the Magic School Bus. Should I keep these things for them?

Sam, Rich and I spent some time this afternoon filling our street-side compost container with leaves, as we've done every Sunday for several weeks. It's a pleasant task, with the sun shining, the crisp yellow leaves clean and sweet-smelling, and the autumn light soft and clear like champagne bubbles. We spent about 45 minutes at it, and then Sam went back to his homework and NFL game, up in our finished attic, as he has does every week when we are finished with our leaf-clearing chore.

Later, I saw a young mother in her front yard with two pre-school aged kids, raking fallen leaves into piles. Not long ago, we'd rake our own leaves into giant piles, not wasting them in the composter but turning them into an afternoon's entertainment. We'd fling ourselves into the leaf piles, over and over, laughing, throwing leaves into the air so they'd glint in the sun, getting covered from head to foot with crisp little pieces.

Soon enough, winter will be here.

Plastic Chairs

Day 80: Plastic Chairs

My poor father-in-law was sitting in this chair yesterday when it
collapsed in the middle of the party. Luckily, he wasn't injured.
I promised my father I would get rid of all of these chairs today.
They are 15 years old, but I thought they were in good shape. My bad.

I now know what it feels like to be completely, utterly, overwhelmingly surprised. Yesterday was Emma's (and her friend Francesca's) graduation party at our house. It was a day of cleaning, organizing, preparing food, running errands, fielding text messages and phone calls, moving furniture, washing glasses, wiping counters, arranging flowers, weeding the cracks in the sidewalks. What if no one comes? What if we run out of food? What if we run out of ice? What if we run out of chairs? What if the teenagers sneak beer? What should we do about the dog? The peeling paint on the front porch? The flowers already fading in the vases? Should we park the cars in the driveway or on the street? 

I can't help it. I'm a worrier.

So when Rich came back from Ali Baba's with a car full of catered food and asked me to help unload it, I was annoyed. Sam was helping unload. Jane was helping unload. I was busy folding towels. Hanging curtains (yes, that's right, hanging curtains). Hiding stuff in drawers. Sweeping the floor. But he insisted.

OMG! Sarah was waiting for me on the front porch! OMG! My oldest, closest friend, the keeper of my memories, whom I met on the first day of high school, whom I've traveled with, lived with, commiserated with, talked with, yelled at, laughed at, laughed with, cried with for decades since. I never thought I'd see her here, in Ann Arbor, on my own front porch. OMG! Tears flowed, and it was a half an hour before my heart rate slowed down.

Which is probably why, three hours later, with the party in full swing, I didn't even recognize Miranda, my other closest beloved friend. (Yes, I have more than one closest friend. I do.) It was just too much to take in. And then they were both here for the party, with my best Ann Arbor friends, all together, here, in my house, with my in-laws, my siblings, my parents, my husband, my children and my best friends. And Rich arranged all this! For me! For my birthday! And he invited them and they came! OMG!

Balls

Day 74: Balls
I've made a resolution to say "yes" every time Sam asks me to play Pig. Pig is a one-on-one shooting game. Often I don't feel like playing, because I'm focused on the garden, or I'm tired from a long day of work, or I'm in the middle of a game of solitaire, or I've already walked the dog plus ridden my bike twelve miles that day. But I never regret saying "yes" to a game of Pig with Sam.

It's a little like Calvinball, except all the kooky rules are designed to let me stay in the game a little longer. So:

(1) I get to defend against Sam, but he doesn't get to defend against me

(2) There are no fouls, so I get to pull his shirt, grab his arms, kick at the ball, and push him aside

(3) I get to use a broom to try to keep his shots from going in the basket

(4) When I'm on defense (and sometimes when I'm on offense) I get 5-6 attempts for every one of his

(5) When the score is P-I-G to nothing, I get 5-6 Hail Mary's, which means if I get a shot from a particular spot in the driveway, I get to go back to P-I.

The game makes me laugh so hard my ribs hurt. Sometimes I even "win."

Sam wants to save his balls to give to his own child someday,
but skimming off three deflated duplicates will still leave plenty.