Ordinary Woman, Extraordinary Life

This story actually does not have a title.  I thought about “The Watchers” or “Girl, Girl, Girl”  but I don’t love either of those.  Feel free to suggest one, if you wish!

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The string in her hand felt alive, like a really skinny worm trying to get away. She gave a tug, gazing up at the bobbing red balloon that hovered a few feet above her.  As she stood on the small plot of grass outside her apartment building on the warm sunny Sunday, she only had eyes for that red balloon.

She heard her mom calling her from somewhere far away, but she was lost.  The balloon was her whole world and she was completely adrift in it. She liked the way it floated there against the friendly blue summer sky.  If she didn’t move, the balloon was as still as a photograph, but it was hard for a five-year-old to stay still for long. When she gave a little quick tug, the balloon twitched and quickly returned to its place. When she looped her arm slowly to one side, the balloon did a ballerina dip before gracefully floating back into place. She tried taking a few baby steps (“Mother, May I?”) and the balloon skipped alongside.  She jumped up and down in place, and the balloon rose and fell, rose and fell in time with her.  A robin flew by, swerving too close, and with a cry of outrage, she jerked the balloon string hard to save its life.

Unseen by the engrossed little girl, an old woman watched silently from her window in the apartment two floors up. The old woman, who now spent most of her time in the window watching the rest of life go by, was as absorbed in the little girl as the girl was in her balloon.  It took her back back back in time to watch the tiny child move this way and that way, like a little bird. She gazed and remembered how once upon a time she was a carefree young woman; a happy, healthy child.  She had grown up in Brooklyn at a time when mother’s apron strings were a literal part of her life instead of the figure of speech they were now. All of her clothes were handmade by her mother, her grandmother and her Aunt May, which is why all of her dresses matched her brother’s short pants.  You could tell who was related to whom in those days, by the patterns on their bottoms and jumpers.  The fun was clean and innocent, she thought, play was just play and everyone helped out without wanting something in return.  We were hardier than these kids today, she mused.  A bloody knee was more likely to result in a spanking for the torn skirt (“That’s what you get for being careless, young lady! Now you can walk around in that ripped skirt and everyone will know how clumsy you are.”) than for a Minnie Mouse band-aid and a mother’s kiss to make it all better.  A single tear slid down the wrinkled cheek unnoticed by the old woman.

That solitary tear was noticed by the old woman’s daughter, who was sitting in her car on the street in front of the apartment building watching her mother watching the little girl.  She had come for her weekly visit to the apartment she had grown up in. It always made her feel like a teenager again coming here, and not in a good way.  The smell of the apartment took years of her life away; and her now very argumentative mother tested her patience in the same way she had done to her mother all those years ago when she was testing her independence. That would have been in the mid-70’s, and her mother’s old-fashioned ways were a huge embarrassment to her.  The fighting had really started when she went off to junior high school and refused to wear the calf-length skirts her mother continued to sew for her. It was bad enough that her two little sisters always had skirts of the same pattern as hers, but the worst part was that everyone else had brand new mini skirts and platform shoes to match.  She used to think if she heard the term “when I was your age…” once more, she would climb out the window to the tree whose branches offered a constant tempting escape, and never come back. A small smile played across the woman’s face as she thought of how that tree had always been waiting there to help her, and how more than once she had actually climbed out onto its sturdy limbs wondering if she should, could really run away and never come back.  God I was so young then, she reflected.  What did I know about anything?

The woman’s daughter was brought out of her reverie by the second round of calling by the little girl’s mother; a shriller, more insistent tone that implied, “losing my patience, little miss. If you don’t get up here right now you might be sorry.”  The sharp note of warning pierced the little girl’s spell and brought the old woman out of her woolgathering all at the same time.  The daughter got out of her car and  locked the door behind her.  She walked into the apartment building, holding the door for the scampering five-year-old and her bumping red globe-friend, and moved up the dingy tiled staircase to her mother’s faded-green apartment door.

I have managed, on this blog at least, to keep away from the political.  I have heard often enough that you do not discuss politics and baseball at parties, if you want to have a fun time.   So this post will not be telling you who I think you should vote for and it will not be a commercial for anyone, promise.  I want to talk about our political system instead, because even though I have lived in this country my whole life, and I went through years of education on the topic, I still have a lot of questions about it.  In fact I probably have more questions now than ever, since as a mature adult and an unrelenting news-junkie, I read up on stuff like a hungry bear (and those who know me know how I get when I’m hungry).  So here goes, and feel free to educate me privately or publicly if you know any of the answers.

First, when did our government become a sport with soap opera leanings?  Are you on the red team or the blue team?  If you are on one team, you spend your time tearing individual members of the other team apart, in the political, social and personal realms.  You look for ways to humiliate your opponents, and shame them into either backing off or quitting all together.  If you are on one team, you will NEVER agree to anything the other team comes up with, even if you yourself proposed it years ago in your own state, and even if it will solve a lot of problems and you know it. You support members of your own team, even if they suck.  You lie, cheat, deceive, feint, fake, coddle, make empty promises you have no intentions of keeping, coo at babies, anything it takes to persuade the public, who wear their colors proudly on bumper stickers and in often vehement conversations.  You woo constituents like a small company looking for grant money and funding;  your smiles, which don’t rise above your nose and resemble a shark’s grin, are meant to give one message: vote for my team.

Second, when did our politicians stop caring about the humans they supposedly represent?   Our government, I thought, is meant to act like a parent in a family.  Those in charge of laws and the parsing out of money (money we give them, ahem, our money), I thought, are supposed to listen to the needs of the rest of us, and work to meet those needs.  We vote (although many of us don’t- which may be part of the problem.  A topic for another blog post…) to put in the men and women that we think will keep us at the top of their thoughts as they wade in to battle and debate what our government should do.  And yet, a huge percentage of those we put in office wind up spinning their wheels through their terms, and then, donning the cape with their team colors, stomping for our votes for another few years to do…nothing.

Third, when did money become the deciding factor in everything the government does?  Incredible, unbelievable, unfathomable amounts of money are spent enticing politicians to protect industry and union groups and the uber-wealthy.  Honestly, the money that is spent in this endeavor could probably, in one year, get us a good way to fixing our $16,172,090,758,745.71 debt (as of yesterday, according to the National Debt Clock).  When did those lobby groups lose sight of what is important?  I do understand some of where they are coming from, okay?  People in this country have opportunities like in no other country in the world.  However, there are many pockets of places in our country that resemble the Third World, in poverty and lack of jobs and poor housing, etc.  There are economically depressed towns (and whole states) sprinkled throughout this country, that are quite literally dying for some help and are being ignored.   I don’t mean hand-outs kind of help; no one really feels good about taking handouts.  I believe most people want the opportunity to become self-sufficient; the “I can do it myself” attitude that is prevalent in most two-year-olds gets destroyed in these sad locales by the time the kids are ten or twelve.  It’s a vicious cycle and it needs some intervention.  Imagine if we could go in there and help these people find ways to proudly make a buck, and enough to feed their families.  Oy, I’m starting to sound like a John Lennon song.

Someone please help me understand how “the greatest country in the world” got to the point where the stars and stripes hide an ugly underside- the struggling, forgotten masses of dreamers who want, need, and deserve a chance to do well in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.  I am proud to be an American, but I am also ashamed, embarrassed, disgruntled and confused.  And I am here now using my First Amendment right to free speech to announce it to the world.  Anyone who thinks questioning our government is unpatriotic had better read the constitution, and our relatively short history as a country.  Questioning is how we were created, and it is the only way that we will continue to exist as a democracy.  When we people stop thinking, discussing, protesting and making our wants and needs clear, we have truly lost our way.

I’m going to sound like an old fuddy-duddy on this one, but I can’t help it.  As I go through my days, the lack of  politeness and consideration is astounding to me.  Sometimes, I admit with a tinge of shame, it makes me so mad I forget my own manners.  But it is really hard to be nice to people who seem hell-bent on being rude.

One of the worst places for this self-centered behavior is the local grocery store.  Honestly, I don’t know how the employees deal with it.  The customers are pushy, rude and badgering.  They bash their carts into me and into my cart and look right through me while doing it.  I teach my kindergarteners that even if it is an accident when you whack somebody, you can apologize.  The way some of these people act, I think they really believe that no one else matters, and that the rest of the human race is just so much decoration around them, to be treated with disdain.  They remind me of the people I wrote about in my blog post on road rage.

Is it difficult to be aware of others, and lend a helping hand without even being asked? Not in my world.  I hold the door for the person behind me, whether it is a man, woman or child.  I offer to get something off of a high shelf at the store that someone is having difficulty reaching.  I say “good morning”  “thank you”  and “good bye” to the bus driver, the store clerks, the garbage men, the ticket-takers, whatever.  They are human beings too.  Best story I heard recently: a NYC public bus driver picking up students at a local college refuses to move until everyone says a word to him.  He apparently reamed out the busload of mostly-young people, saying “shame on you all for getting on my bus and not acknowledging me.”  Go, bus driver!  This is the guy who will get you there safely and on time.  Yes, he is getting paid and it’s his job. So what?  It doesn’t cost me a dime to say something nice to him. 

I even try, really really hard to be polite to the annoying and usually-poorly timed telemarketers that call my house.  This one is an admitted challenge, but I do try.  Little-known fact: once long ago, there was a pair of starving college students who did anything to earn money, and one of them spent an eight-hour shift as a telemarketer.  The horrifyingly rude comments made by the recipients upset that young man so much he could not sleep that night and quit the next day.  A little empathy can go a long way to helping one be considerate!

I make my kinders thank our door-holders as we walk past, each one of them by name.   When I see the “door-holders” from other classes being ignored by their classmates (and their teachers),  it looks like bullying to me. I even see the occasional tongue stuck out at the classmate holding the door.  What is that??  When I teach older students, we practice the hearty handshake with greeting and eye-contact on a daily basis, as well as the thank you to the class helpers.  Never too young to learn social niceties.

A smile and a kind word makes the world a better place.  Children need to be taught this directly, and have it reinforced consistently and constantly.  But adults apparently need reminders as well.  I find that when I am at my most stressed out, I sometimes forget my manners.  But then someone will acknowledge me with an “excuse me” or a “thank you”, and it pulls me back and grounds me.  Just because I am having a bad day, doesn’t give me an excuse to be rude.  When this happens, it actually brightens my attitude and my day.  As I get older, I notice more and more how people interact.  And, although I don’t want to turn into my mother who scolds people on the street regularly for any perceived infraction of her personal code, I do sometimes want to say, “would it kill you to say ‘excuse me’?”  When I see a very polite young person with a parent, I always comment about it to the parent so that they both know I have noticed and appreciate it.  That is the way the world should be.  Thanks for reading!

I write for fun and I write to entertain myself.  I’m so lucky that the internet allows me to share with a small (but loyal) audience, since getting published these days is next to impossible.  I write mostly short stories when I am not blogging.  They are fictional, but they are certainly based on my own life experiences; some very closely and others not so much.  Here is one I wrote about dealing with the birth of my twins.  Although they came along at the perfect time in my life, motherhood was still a huge personal challenge; maybe the first time I thought I had overstepped my bounds and was involved in something I was never meant to do.   I was 26, pregnant and finishing a Master’s Degree (my due date was also my walking date), published for the first time and in my seventh year of teaching.  We had been married for eight years.  The pregnancy was a bit tough- two babies growing in my body was draining and it is only because I was in amazing shape (I had been a body building fanatic for the five years prior) that I was able to deal.  The twins were born almost five weeks prematurely; although they weighed a healthy five pounds each, they still needed to be nursed every hour around the clock.  Because they did not hold up their heads enough to nurse together for almost two months, I wound up nursing one, nursing the other and sleeping one hour.  I will only say that sleep deprivation at this level is an ugly thing.  Here is the story:

            If one more person makes one more comment, I’ll scream.  The young woman pushed the twin baby stroller through the grocery store with a hassled, hurried look.  She was feeling exhausted and pissy, as only a new mother can, and she hoped she was putting out a “Do Not Disturb” vibe.  As she reached out to grab a box of pasta, an elderly lady stopped in front of the stroller, bent over and began cooing at the four-week-old infants.

“So adorable! How old are they? Boys or girls or one of each? Are they good babies? You are a lucky young lady!” As the elderly woman glanced up, the young mother tried quickly to put on a more social face. She did have manners after all, but her patience was thin. “Yes they are wonderful, thank you, girls, four weeks old,” she responded in a practiced manner. The older woman began a conversation, but the young mother cut her off with a barely-polite “excuse me, please, but it’s almost their naptime,” and she slid the stroller around and past as the elderly woman said, “Good luck with them, dear.”

Something in the woman’s voice hit a raw nerve. Now hot tears came to her eyes and she blinked them away hard. None of this was in the baby books. She was the first of her friends to have babies so they were not much help. All she really wanted was a strong, dark cup of coffee and some quiet time. But as she was still nursing the twins, there was neither coffee nor quiet time in her future.

She answered the next several comments (“You barely look old enough to have babies.” “Awww, I always wanted twins!” “God bless you and the children.”) with mumbled thanks and un-uttered responses (“I’m 26 but I feel 70”; “You can have them-I don’t really mean that”; “Thank you, I can use all the help I can get.”)  It was with relief that she realized she was done shopping, and she pushed the now-bulging stroller toward the checkout counter.

She had almost made it when a middle-aged couple stepped right in front of the stroller.  She stopped abruptly to avoid ramming into them. They both bent over and made the usual noises.

    Do babies really respond to that anyway?, she thought. That wasn’t in the books either. She was about to make a rude, fed-up comment when the woman-half of the couple looked up and into her face. “This brings back such memories,” she said. The young mother swallowed her original response and mustered the absolutely bottom-of-the-barrel socially-acceptable interaction she had left and responded, “Oh, you had twins too?” immediately mentally kicking herself for asking an actual question that might require conversation.

“Actually,” the man-half of the couple smiled warmly at her and took up the conversation as if he and his wife were interchangeable, “we had three sets of twins.  In six years.”

The young mother could not have been more stunned if they had said they had octuplets.  All she could do was repeat, “THREE sets of twins in SIX years?” Then, “and you are still happily married?  To each other?? How did you do it? Oh my God, I can’t imagine that. I’m just exhausted all the time with just these two. How old are they now? Did you nurse all those babies? How many boys and how many girls? How did you survive that?”

“It gets easier after a while,” the woman answered. “Hang in there, honey,” said the man, as his wife slid her arm through his and they walked away.

All the young mother could do for a moment was stare after them, paralyzed. Her harried, crazy days and nights flashed through her mind, and she finally thought to herself: if they can do that, then I certainly can do this. Her knitted brow relaxed, and the stress lines around her eyes and mouth smoothed out a bit.  Then she smiled- a genuine, actual, warm smile for the first time in forever; and pushed the stroller into an open check-out lane, and began to unload her groceries onto the moving conveyor belt.

It’s 3:00 in the afternoon on an overcast Saturday, we have been working at and on the house all day, and I’m now sitting down and enjoying an afternoon cup of coffee.  When my kids read this, they will think, “oh boy, she really is turning into Grandma.”  If my mother does not get her shot of java around three in the afternoon, well, you don’t really want to be around her.  Don’t worry kids, I’m not like that at all.  I prefer mine at noon.  That being said, this blog post is dedicated to, and sings the praises of, Juan Valdez ’s favorite beverage.

I have been drinking coffee since I was five years old.  Every morning, along with my sugary cereal, I was given a mug of café con leche: one part brewed Colombian coffee, one part milk, one part sugar.  Way to jazz me up for the half mile walk to school, ma.  Ever since then, the smell and taste of coffee and even the sound of a percolator brewing make me feel warm inside.  The first sip feels like coming home.   The last sip, the draining of the mug, is a bit sad.  Unfortunately for me, I am very sensitive to the caffeine and cannot drink coffee all day and all night the way some lucky people can.  So I have to savor each sip because I know I will have to wait until morning for more.  There are worse things,  I’m aware; I just wish I could enjoy this pleasure 24/7.  I’m greedy that way.

I am also admittedly anal about how I take my coffee.  I really prefer to make it myself at home. That way it is perfect.  I cannot tell you how many times I have had to ask the Dunkin’ Donuts people to remake a cup of coffee.  I’m not sure why “dark and with a tiny bit of sugar” is so hard to do.  I know a lot of people are picky about how they take their coffee, and have trouble at DD or Starbucks.  Some of us get so frustrated, we even throw the mistakes in disgust at the plate glass window as we drive away (ahem, you know who you are).   I think most of us coffee drinkers just want to enjoy our java juice when we want it, the way we want it.  Is that asking too much?

Coffee is enjoyed in most parts of the world, but some places just do it better.  In New York, you can walk into any deli and order a cuppa regular or a cuppa joe and it will be just the way you like it.  In Colombia, and also in my uncle’s kitchen, the percolator brews a full-bodied, eminently satisfying liquid warmth.  I love Jamaica’s Blue Mountain brand too; its tasty but low-caffeine coffee  is one I can drink all day with no problems.  Greek (and Turkish) coffee is a tiny nip of hi-test heaven, followed by the reading of the grinds.  And there is little as fabulous as a café au lait in the late morning in Paris to go with your steaming croissant. 

Don’t get me wrong…I love tea too.  I could, and maybe will, write a blog post about herbal pleasures.  Green tea for cold afternoons, chamomile tea for hurting tummies and dream-filled sleep, the choices for tea are endless and growing by the year with new options from around the world.  It’s wonderful.  But right now, I’m savoring the last drop of today’s caffeine fix and feeling the love.  Mmmmmm.

And pay the consequences…today I’m on a roll about parenting, due to some pretty extraordinary examples of how not to do it that I find myself witnessing on a daily basis.  I know each of us is different, and that each family unit is different too.  I can’t help feeling though, that there are some very basic basics about what is right in rearing a child.   I’m talking about health and safety, for starters.  Things that seem common sensicle, if you get my meaning…at least to me.

First and foremost, a child needs nutrition and rest.  That means eating healthy foods with a few treats thrown in- a habit that would certainly put paid to our obesity issue.  Also, at our house, bed times were consistent pretty much right through middle school:  10-12 hours of sleep every night.  It gave us a routine that allowed hubby and me some private time as an added benefit.  Woe to the person who called me on the phone between six and 7:30 p.m.- that was dinner, bath, story time, prayers and last hugs.  Every  night.  Woe to the child who called for me after that up until morning- there had better be blood and guts involved.  That routine was sacred.  From the time our children were eating solid food, hubby and I spent the time to make everything fresh and from scratch.  Sunday nights our kitchen became an assembly line as we prepared veggies, fruit, and meats, and placed them in small freezable bags or ice cube trays.  This made the week’s meals super easy.  Our babies came into their eating time at the period where glass was found in Gerber’s food jars, and the Beechnut Apple Juice was found to be colored sugar water.  We didn’t trust anyone with our babies’ health.  Admittedly, I was over the top about keeping the kids away from junk food.  Even our birthday parties were all healthy with a bit of junk on the side. It’s cheaper and easier to feed the kids well; they also get used to whatever hits their pallets first.  If the child is weaned on McDonald’s, she or he will not be as naturally drawn to or accepting of healthier alternatives.

In school, I’m a tyrant for this as well, and have had several arguments with parents about class celebrations.  One parent insisted the children would never eat the fruit salad I asked for while other classes were gnawing on cookies and candy.  She was astonished to watch the children devour and fight over orange slices and carrot sticks.  A lot of it is in presentation.  The photo below shows a St. Patrick’s Day celebration in my kinder class last year.  At the end, there was nothing left on the platter.  When a parent sends in cupcakes for a birthday snack, I serve it to the children fifteen minutes before dismissal.  The parents can deal with that sugar rush; not me.

Second, and very high up on the list is discipline.  Children need boundaries and routines.  They feel safe knowing that the boundaries are there, and it means that the adults care enough to keep them safe.   They act like they hate you for it, they even tell you that they hate you for it; but they depend on us to make sure they are taken care of.  This is why they act out constantly- they are testing the limits to make sure they are there, much the same way my dog tests the electric fence everyday.  If the battery is dead because I abdicated my responsibility to keep it working, the dog will run away and possibly get hurt or eat something deadly.  My fault. When parents try to befriend their kids, they fail them.  When they choose rationalizing discussions over consequences, they fail them.  When they treat their kids like adults with the same thought processes, they fail them.  Be the adult- teach your children right from wrong; teach them that the universe does not revolve around them; teach them the golden rule.  What kind of adult do you want them to be?  Parents should start there and work backwards to make decisions on disciplining their kids.

Finally, let the kids develop, with guidance and love, into the adults they are meant to become.  I’ve had many parents dread the idea that their sons might be gay.  I’ve had many who asked, when the child was in first grade, whether I thought he or she was Ivy League material.  Our world needs an infinite number of different people to fill all of our collective needs.  The artist is as important as the business owner, and the teacher is certainly as important as the lawyer or the doctor.

Love your children, guide them, teach them to be positive and kind, and help them find their way.  You won’t always be there for them- you are doing them a favor when you teach them independence and interdependence, passion and motivation, generosity and social skills.  You are doing the rest of us a favor as well.

…Yes it is. We look at recent history in decades, and each decade seems to have a completely separate character.  Roaring 20’s; Depression in the 30’s;  World War II in the 40’s; Cold War in the 50’s; Hippies and Free Love and the Vietnam War, and sex, drugs and rock-n-roll of the 60’s; the 70’s disco years; the 80’s (‘nuff said);  the explosion of technology and the information superhighway in the 90’s leading to panic for Y2K; and the beginning of the 21^st Century: the aught years.  It’s interesting and funny how this has evolved, and the effects of each decade on our public and private psyches are also fascinating.

My parents were born in the 30’s but are considered children of the World War II era. The way they lived or are living their adult lives can be directly tied to their early life experiences as Holocaust survivors and refugees.  My dad, who passed away quite a few years ago, never really recovered from his traumatic time in a prison camp.  He spent his life dependent on his mother, our matriarch Oma.  He may have tried his best to be father and husband; his methods were probably based on his idea of what a man should be like, considering that his father and all of his uncles died in the camps when he was a child.  But he struggled, and we struggled as a result. My mother was raised to marry a wealthy Jewish man (her mother spent lots of time matchmaking from the time my mom was 15), but ran away to the states and reconnected with my father.  It took her years to shake the oppressive yoke of being a woman of those times.  She went from being subservient to her mother to being subservient to her husband.  Eventually she broke free, and has since been making up for lost time with a vengeance.

The fifties brought us the beginnings of rock and roll- breakout rebels like Chuck Berry and Elvis, among many, many others; as well as the birth and rise of modern Jazz and Blues. The musical Grease is a great period piece that clearly demonstrates the beginnings of the dissent among the young with the status quo.   The Cold War brought us air raid drills in our elementary schools, and the McArthy area during which many Americans were suspected and accused of communism.  “Better dead than Red” was the banner cry then. 

The sixties have quite a reputation now.  As time evolves, the nostalgic views of those times have dramatically changed.  What we all thought was a romantic, free love, wonderfully unique American spirit now can be viewed in many different ways.  Some say that the protests ended the war and changed America and Americans forever- and maybe the world too.  Others say the government itself infused the drugs into the poor neighborhoods in order to control the poor masses and keep them from rising up economically.  Some also claim that the hippies were nothing more than dirty drug addicts that had no effect on anything but their own lives, leading to the “me” generation.   As with anything, it is likely to be a combination of a number of these theories.  It is interesting how time changes perception.

The seventies were a time of disenchantment and disenfranchisement.  The teens then, myself being one of them, were disgusted by everyone and everything around them.  We grew to be independent in a way that no one before and maybe since has done.  We depended on no one but ourselves and nothing but our wits.  We took nothing for granted, expected little and focused on getting what we wanted and needed.  Disco, with its gaudy, ridiculous fashion and its cocaine addiction, fueled the wild dance of our coming-up; rivaled by some killer rock-n-roll.  It was a loud, crazy, out of control time to be an adolescent, especially in the cities.  My husband in Iowa City had similar experiences to mine in NYC.

The eighties in all honesty were just a mess.  New York City was in economic ruins, hard drugs killed many spirits, the music was embarrassing; many young people felt at dead ends.  Politically, the US was in the hole in every way.  It took Bill Clinton in the late 80’s to begin pulling us up and out.  The best thing about the eighties was the birth of my amazing babies!

The 90’s were better- a time of economic and political confidence and some new tunes.  Although the housing prices were borderline insane and the construction industry tanked to the point where my husband was more stay-at-home dad than general contractor, it was still an improvement.

The turn-over to the 21^st century brought us fresh horrors such as September 11, 2001; the illegal and ill-conceived Iraqi War; a near depression and other world-wide insanities.  Yet it also brought new hope of new beginnings.  We are truly in the middle of the Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times.   I wonder what will be written about my life era in the history tablets (not books, they won’t exist)  in another hundred years…

You never stop learning.  You can’t help it.  You can fight it- try to go through a day without thinking or solving a problem and thereby building your mental repetoire.  Not possible, unless maybe you stay drunk or stoned for twenty-four hours. But even if you do that, you will have some brilliant insights.  Too bad you won’t remember them the next day. 

Kids begin trying to make sense of the world around them from the moment they are born.  Natural problem-solvers, thinkers, dependent on others but working towards independence, driven to satisfy needs and wants; they are born to learn.  It is one of the most unfortunate realities that the first time most kids meet nonsense, it is in school.  What a sin. 

How does learning occur?  The easy answer is that it is different for everyone.  The challenge, as a teacher, is that it is different for everyone.  Learning is often chaotic and messy, although for some it is linear and neat.  I love the ah-ha moments when they happen for kids, and being the one to help them happen makes me very happy.  We all learn new information by building on what we already know.  It’s called, in pedagogical terms, scaffolding and schema, and it simply means that it is way easier to truly understand something on a deeper level and retain it in long term memory if it makes sense and has somewhere in your brain’s filing cabinet to hang.  That being said, life experiences and social community are the two most important things that help learning develop.

For me the most fascinating part of my job is helping children develop as readers.  Sometimes it just seems like magic- how do these squiggly, seemingly random lines (if you don’t think the lines are random, try learning to read hebrew, arabic or chinese) come together to make sense?  How do we wrap our brains around the fact that 26 letters can represent over 50 different sounds (depending on where in the English speaking world you live)?  How do we come to understand homophones (see/sea, their/ they’re/there) and homographs. How do you pronounce the word “present?”  What if I wrote, “Today I will present my thesis on learning?” Cool huh?  How about this:

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghi t pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

The brain is so damned cool.  My Master’s degree is in an area of learning called psycholinguistics, which has to do with how the brain learns to read.  There are as many schools of thoughts about this as there are people.  Each has a theory that has been proven by statistics.  But Statistics 101 teaches that every theory can be proven, so there you go. I stand by my  own theory that we don’t even know what we don’t know about how people learn to read.  As a teacher and a parent, the best I can do is expose kids to the written form of language alongside the verbal form in as many ways as humanly possible and then watch to see what sticks and how it stuck.  I provide experiences revolving around the idea of “learning language, learning through language and learning about language,” and I act as a guide and coach. Constant assessment via observation, along with my growing bag of tricks from doing this for thirty years, help me help my young learners. 

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: who has a better job than me??  I have much more to say on this, but it will wait for another day…

That is a direct quote from the plumber just minutes ago, who left us for the weekend with an unconnected plumbing pipe to the hot water heater, possibly on purpose, according to my husband.  My response: “There are worse things, but it wasn’t fun.” I wanted to add, “gee thanks a lot,” but I held my tongue.  I will admit that it reminded me unpleasantly of the garden apartment I grew up in, where the 1930’s boiler was patched together for almost forty years, and didn’t appreciate it.  No heat and cold water for days and weeks as a kid in a New York winter; now that was harsh. 

That all being said, we are now comfortably esconsed in our new home, making it our own with little touches, and working out the bugs.  The phone company is here trying to get us a dialtone, the carpenters are putting door knobs and handrails where they belong, and I am still busy with the busy-ness of unpacking.  We are getting it all done in time for my cousin’s wedding next week, when our daughters will visit the new homestead. 

Our first night in the new digs, our friends/neighbors from the “old” house came and sat outside on the patio and enjoyed delivered Greek food.  We chatted the evening away, and made lots of plans. On our second night, we had a lovely Jewish New Year’s dinner on Sunday night with mom and her famous matzah ball soup.  Yes, kids, she brought each of you a container, and it is in the freezer waiting.  We made a fire outside in the firepit and watched the Milky Way float overhead.  Mom said she felt like she was on vacation.  The dog and cats are adjusting well enough.   Hubby and I sleep a deep, exhausted sleep and wake to the birds calling.  So far, so good. 

I am looking forward the watching the leaves in the yard change and fall.  I am looking forward to snowfalls, and holiday meals, and gatherings with friends and family. I am looking towards the new commute to work on Wednesday morning, and am sure I will need to remind my car to go to the new house after work a couple of times.  The timing of everything was fortuitous:  the deal  for this house fell in our laps, the tenants rented the other house in five seconds, the move came on a four-day weekend and went very smoothly.  All the kids came home at different points over the summer and saw the house “before” ; and will come home to see the fun changes.  Now that the transition is all but over, I feel a sense of being able to refocus my energies on the other parts of life, which although not neglected, took a mental back seat for sure.  Onward!

It’s finally here.  We have been living with ceiling-high piles of boxes since mid-August, not 100% sure of the exact date of the move; but now it’s here.  The truck will arrive in just three hours, load up seventeen years worth of stuff, and then toil two miles across town to place it in the new abode.  It’s bittersweet.

We moved our children four times before we settled into the house they would call home most of their lives.  We hauled them across the country, moved twice within New York City, found our first suburban place, and then made our way a bit further north to our lovely little adopted hometown.  Our house was the place.  All the local kids came here once the Middle School gatherings began.  Extra mouths to feed at the table almost every night of the week; at least a dozen extra on the weekends.  Our kids took their prom photos on the front lawn, camped out in tents in the backyard, played rollerhockey on the top of the cul-de-sac. They and their friends, given free reign of the basement playroom, completely destroyed it with their, ahem, delightful antics; to the point where, when they were gone to college, we had to rip the room down to the 2×4’s to make it livable again.  Our dog and one of our cats came in as babies and leave here in geriatric mode- the dog will have to be carried in order to make it into the car for the ride over. Fond memories.

But it’s time to move on.  BC (“Before Children”), we flipped houses pretty often.  This house we have been living in is the fourth place we have bought and remodeled.  Flipping houses has gotten us to where we are today, and now it is time to begin again.  Opportunity knocked, and we opened the door and gave it an icy, refreshing drink.  Our new home will take time to fit right.  It will certainly feel strange for a little while; but, as we have always done, we will make it ours: cozy, welcoming, warm, loving.  Then we’ll probably flip again…who knows where the next five or ten years will take us?  For now, it’s so exciting to be back in the game that I am only looking forward.  I will miss a couple of people on the block (you know who you are-we never built that tunnel between our houses that we always talked about! xxoo) but I am only two miles away.   It’s a nice walk or bike ride over and we will make it often, I am sure.

So I am chugging my coffee, throwing last minute items into miscellaneous boxes, and waiting to hear the rumble of the moving truck come up the street.   Goodbye and hello!