Meddling, being honest, and how to keep friendships

Grace was at music camp last week. Choir concert, Grace looked and sounded great, I loved seeing her enjoy herself. Last night she told me that there was some drama during her week away. You know, the kind where the girls all talk late at night in their cabin and one girl confesses her undying love for a boy? And then some of the girls decide to intervene, you know, to help the fledgling lovers out? 'Cause their communication is breaking down? Except that by intervening, the girls make things worse. By the end of the trip, the one girl who was in love asked Grace what she thought of her. Grace was more than blunt. She told her she was being bitchy.

Did I mention that Grace didn't know the girl a week earlier? That she's an incoming freshman?

I told Grace she might not want to be so brutally honest with the girl. And that she shouldn't meddle. I don't know whether Grace is going to take my advice.

The whole story threw me back to my own middle school and high school experiences. (I confess, getting an invite to my 20th high school reunion this week helped the speed of my total recall significantly.) Remember when it was so exciting to be "in the know"? To be the one who was the facilitator? The helper? The one who was just trying to make everyone happy? I do. I seem to also recall stirring up quite a bit on controversy. Which was also exciting.

The point is, being the girl who was meddling oftentimes meant I was the one who caused unpleasant situations to come about. In the midst of my conversation with Grace about the situation, I told her that there are precious few times in which it's worth telling someone what you really think of their romantic inclinations towards another person. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I started challenging my own advice.

Is that true? As an adult, there are so many of my girlfriends who have gone through dating and marriage and divorce and cohabiting and reuniting...and on and on and on and on it goes. Most recently, one of my longest-term friends asked me to meet her boyfriend. Her idea was that I am one of her dearest friends, one of her closest and most intimate friends, and someone whose judgment she trusts. She wanted my opinion on the boyfriend. It's not the first time she's asked. Anyways, the end of the story is that I told her I thought he was great. Was that the truth? I ask you a more relevant question: Does it matter what my opinion of her boyfriend is?

Being honest with a close friend, especially about someone they are involved romantically with, is dangerous stuff. When you're in love, when you're physically close with someone, you really don't want to hear an objective opinion on what someone outside of the relationship thinks of your lover. Sure, you want to hear that your lover is great, fantastic, friendly, kind, smart, clever, funny, generous, thoughtful, or talented. That's the feedback you're looking for -- a confirmation that, in spite of your giggling and silliness and inability to see things objectively, you are being wise and smart and making good choices. But when you're in love, when your heart is spilling over with admiration and adoration of another human being, you don't wanna hear anything negative about him.

So here's my dilemma. When is it safe to be honest with a friend regarding a lover? There are clear times, like if he's abusive or extortive. But what if he's just a jerk? What if you question his ethics? What if he just rubs you the wrong way, over and over and over again? What if you just don't click with him? I find myself weighing the value of what I think is best for a friend versus what is really best for that friend. So what if I don't agree with someone's politics or ethics? Or if I find them a jerk? Does that outweigh a friend's potential for unlimited happiness? Isn't it a bit arrogant of myself to believe that my long lasting friendship with someone is more valuable than someone else's relationship with her?

Of course, there is the other side to this dilemma. Live and let live, que sera, sera, and such. It's so easy to stay out of someone's business. So much easier than speaking your mind and risking the backlash. Then the question of what is more important is between my comfort and a friend's well-being.

Where does the line lay? Is there any way to formulate a rule that works in every situation?

I would love to hear the stories out there. One friend has already given me her sad experience, the moral of the story being, NEVER tell someone what you think of their lover. EVER. And the story really was very, very sad. Another friend, one who was separated from her husband when he was exploring the kinky side of middle age, she just reunited with him after six full years of feuding. They are happy as ever. Unfortunately, I was brutally honest with her and way over-involved in their complications. Now I'm wondering if we'll ever get the intimacy of our friendship back.

I'm just trying to figure out what I should tell Grace, you know? 'Cause like every good parent, this really has nothing to do with me (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say-no-more, say-no-more).

Honest Scrap Award

ONE MONTH AGO, Crys at Modifying Motherhood gave me an award. I thanked her right away and thought, 'thank goodness I have an idea for an upcoming post.' Um, yeah, right. I don't think "upcoming" translates into ONE MONTH LATER. But Crys is a great sort of person, or, rather, I imagine she is face to face since she seems to be a great sort of person as I see her through her writing. So I'm sure she understands that I don't mean any offense by taking ONE WHOLE MONTH to accept this award and pass it on.

Here goes.

Crys gave me the Honest Scrap Award. Sounds nice, eh? I'm supposed to list ten things that you probably didn't know about me. Then I pass the award along. Easy 'nuff. Here is my list:

1. When I was in high school, I was in love with England. I wanted to travel there. I wanted to move there. I thought everything about England was amazing. I knew every single fact about the British royal family and the Beatles that there was to be known.
2. When I was in middle school, around 1984, I thought Michael J. Fox was about the most amazing thing in the entire world. I would have done anything to see him in person. I couldn't imagine that anyone was more fantastic. Then the crush waned. Then about 1998 I told someone how much I liked him as an actor. And that person said, 'yeah, but what has he done lately?' Oh. My. And now? More than ten years later? I respect him and love him even more. He is, in the language that Mrs. G would use, my secret boyfriend.
3. I was a cheerleader in middle school. I would have done anything to be a cheerleader forever and be an 'it' girl. When I tried out in high school I was cut for the squad because I couldn't do a split.
4. I tried yoga for the first time when I was 24. I was really good at it. I apparently am very flexible. I never really did yoga after that. I should.
5. I bite my fingernails. And my toenails.
6. I love Project Runway. I find those designers very talented.
7. I don't understand poetry at all. It's not that I dislike it, I just don't have the ability to understand it.
8. For reasons I cannot explain, I don't like U2. I can't think of any song by the band that I like. I saw them once in concert during their Pop tour and I was bored. And I was completely burned that I had paid so much for the tickets and driven 100 miles to see the concert.
9. In middle school I made up my mind that I was going to go to college at Florida State. There I would major in music and minor in mathematics. I planned on becoming a piano teacher.
10. The only beer I enjoy drinking is Bell's Oberon, only available during the summer.
    

There you go. Now, to the passing onward. I, Heather at Comparative Childhood, do hereby bestow the Honest Scrap Award to:

CDP, aka Aunt Dahlia, at (parenthetical)

Amy at Welcome to Amy's World

Melissa at Buddha Mama

Go visit their blogs! They are very entertaining!

Song suggestions

To all of you smart cookies out there (and there are quite of few of you out there):

I'm suddenly craving a playlist of songs for Stella. Here's the criteria:

1. Lyrics that are appropos to the birth of a new baby, parent-child relationship, etc.
2. The song has to be good, you know what I mean? Not just a song that one person likes a lot, but one that most people agree is a good song.

I'm a music junkie, so chances are that most songs you suggest I'll have somewhere in my files. Don't be shy, don't think it's too obscure or whatever, don't worry about the genre (although, though I'm close to Detroit, that rap grinds on my ears somethin' horrible most of the time...)

Tell me your picks, please! Thanks!

ps - just in case you all are wondering, yes, I create playlists like this for Grace all the time.

How to score a new wardrobe - don't tell Grace

Stella gets to change her clothing every few hours without fail. This is a big no-no for Grace. Why the inequality? Well, Stella has this habit of peeing and pooping all over herself. I really hope that Grace won't go to such drastic measures to score more wardrobe changes during the day.

Grace left for camp today with her high school orchestra. She was cranky when she came into my bedroom to tell me goodbye at 7a. I barely got a hug or a kiss. I'm not sure what was vexing her. I mean, I could take guesses, but I'll hold off on that. She said to me yesterday that she really wished she could take Stella with her to camp. She wasn't serious, but we both told each other that it would be a long week away. I told her it would feel weird for us to have our family together and for her to be gone. She said it would be strange to be away from Stella for so long.

During the same conversation together, she and I and Stella spent time alone. Grace wanted to hold Stella so much, and I was trying to find times when Stella was fed and would take to just being held and played with. We got three chances yesterday. Up until yesterday, Grace's priming on babies has been pretty typical of most people which is to hold babies like big bags of flour and if they fuss, they must need to eat or have a diaper changed. I'm a little different in my approach to babies. Babies are people and when you hold them or care for them, you should treat them like people. So Stella spends a lot of time just laying next to someone and being spoken to or getting to relax on her own terms. So far she's been a pretty good baby, not full of angst without a source, so it helps us be able to let her relax and be close to us. Yesterday when Grace first took Stella, she knew only how to hold her like a bag of flour. She wasn't taking any advice that she could hold her differently and insisted this was the only way. Stella was pitching a fit, crying and yowling. After realizing this wasn't working, Grace insisted that Stella needed to eat and was handing her back to me. I finally told her just to sit down and I would show her what would work better. After an hour passed, she was much more comfortable with Stella and Stella had calmed down completely.

I'm beginning to get the handle of this whole thing, I think. I miss my older girl, even though she's only been gone mere hours.

Witches

Have you ever seen Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine? If you haven't, you really should try to do so. At this point, the musical has not only had an original Broadway and original London cast, it's been reprised on Broadway in the early 2000s and toured extensively. Now it's become the ambitious show of choice for high theatre departments to put on. I had the joy of being 16 years old when I saw it the first time, when the Broadway production opened its first tour in Fort Lauderdale at Parker Playhouse. I'm afraid that first exposure spoiled me for anything less. It was perfect, amazing, and unforgettable.

The plot? Take a bunch of tradition fairy tales, give three-dimensional humanity to the characters and then intertwine their stories in a believable way. It's far too well done for me to even begin to summarize here, so I'll stick to the lead role, originally written for Sondheim's female diva and muse of choice, Bernadette Peters. The character? The Witch.

Now I know that through various artistic genres like musical theatre (Wicked!), contemporary fiction (Wicked: The True Story of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire) and children's literature (The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!), we have become accustomed to seeing a traditionally evil character reframed in a different light. The new take on the antagonist is that they are grossly misunderstood by society and in the end are revealed to actually be virtuous and good. Sondheim and Lapine are far more creative and realistic than this. The Witch in Into The Woods is not good. She is not wholesome. She is somewhat misunderstood. But really, she's taking in the world around her and calling it the way she sees it. Her way of coping is brutal honesty and confrontation, whether that's with those seeking her help or with those who have tried to take advantage of her or with her own daughter.

Oh, did I forget to mention that detail? That The Witch has a daughter? Well, yes, yes she does. A daughter she dearly loves and protects. And this is a big part of her identity as a person.

Her daughter, as it turns out, is Rapunzel. You know, the witch who keeps Rapunzel locked away in a tower and won't let her see anyone else? Yeah, that witch is Rapunzel's mother in Into The Woods. I'll leave the rest of the origins of that relationship to those interested in looking into the whole plot of the story. She's keeping her daughter in a tower to protect her from the world. There comes a point where a prince comes to the tower and tried to steal the daughter away. Seeing a potential danger to her daughter, the witch hacks off the daughter's locks, tricks the prince, then knocks him to the ground below after blinding him. The daughter becomes hysterical and starts screaming. These are the lyrics to the dialogue that follows between mother and daughter:

"Stay With Me"

[WITCH]
What did I clearly say?
Children must listen.

[RAPUNZEL]
No, no, please!

[WITCH]
What were you not to do?
Children must see-

[RAPUNZEL]
No!

[WITCH]
And learn.

Why could you not obey?
Children should listen.
What have I been to you?
What would you have me be?
Handsome like a Prince?

Ah, but I am old.
I am ugly.
I embarass you.

[RAPUNZEL]
No!

[WITCH]
You are ashamed of me.

[RAPUNZEL]
No!

[WITCH]
You are ashamed.
You don't understand.

[RAPUNZEL]
It was lonely atop that tower.

[WITCH]
I was not company enough?

[RAPUNZEL]
I am no longer a child. I wish to see the world.

[WITCH]
Don't you know what's out there in the world?
Someone has to shield you from the world.
Stay with me.

Princes wait there in the world, it's true.
Princes, yes, but wolves and humans, too.
Stay at home.
I am home.

Who out there could love you more than I?
What out there that I cannot supply?
Stay with me.

Stay with me,
The world is dark and wild.
Stay a child while you can be a child.
With me.

The song makes me cry. I think it gets to the heart of it. This mother is trying so hard to cope with the best way to raise her child, and her child misunderstands. The mother lashes out and acts out of her own hurt and her own struggles. And she shares these feelings with her daughter. As it turns out, the irony of the story is that The Witch is right. The world IS dark and wild. In a moment of chaos in the kingdom, the prince who has married Rapunzel cheats on her while she is suffering from postpartum depression. She flees to the woods, never to be seen again. Not a good end to the story. It's not entirely clear that the daughter would have been any better off with her mother, who, partially out of her sorrow of watching her daughter suffer and mostly out of disgust at the pervasive evil disguised in the world around her, abandons the kingdom in their moment of need. But I think the person of The Witch as a mother and as a person is far too touching to simply write her off as a selfish quack.

I have, at different points these past few days, felt like The Witch. I have also felt like her daughter. I've spent the last week with my mother in town. Grace has also been here with me. I've been both a mother and a daughter since last Wednesday. It is an understatement to say that it has been confusing and emotional. It brings me right back to the root of why I started this blog: to explore my own childhood in the midst of being a mother and living through my daughter's childhood.

How can a single woman cope with loving her mother and trying to make her comfortable and happy while simultaneously needing to stand up for her own needs and dignity? How can one woman simultaneously love her teenage daughter and try to meet her needs while also feeling so weak and human and incompetent at the same time?

I will cut this short as the day is drawing to a close. My daughter is an amazing young woman. She is able to balance her emotions and respond maturely to difficult situations in a fashion far beyond her years. I am in awe of her.

I'm signing off until tomorrow...

Jacko is dead? Whoa. That came completely out of nowhere.

All I can do now that it's confirmed that Michael Jackson is dead is link here to my post from last fall about him.

Wow. I mean, Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett was one thing; they were both relatively before my time. I was a little kid when these two were in their hey day. But Jacko? Wow. I am floored.

Me, as described by my teenage daughter

A few months ago, a friend of mine on facebook tagged me on a question series for moms. I have grown a little weary of reading these things by other people and I am far too private to consider actually doing them myself. But this one looked like fun. Since Grace went along with the whole thing gleefully, I'm posting it here for fun.

The idea behind this thing is that you ask your child a bunch of questions about you, their mom, and they get to supply the answers unedited. I think the original intent of this thing was to get cutesy answers from preschoolers. You know, like asking how old your mom is or how tall she is? When I got it, I couldn't help but get Grace to answer it. I thought the perspective of a teenager would give the set of questions a new life. I was happy to tag all my friends who also had teenagers in the house. The result was that the early childhood cutesiness and love of mom was warped into something a little twisted, but still full of love for mom. Also, I love that Grace and I did this whole thing through messaging on facebook. Seriously, we never spoke a word about it to each other in person until the text was posted.

I give it to you all for fun. If you want to try it yourself (and haven't done this yet), just ask your kid the questions and write them down exactly how they respond. Grace told me I could put it up on facebook, so long as I did NOT change her answers. Too funny.

Without further ado, here it is as originally published.

-------------------

by Grace, 181 months (heh, heh. I love that I'm still saying how many months old she is)

1. What is something mom always says to you?
"What's your goal Grace?"

2. What makes mom happy?
Chocolate, a happy house

3. What makes mom sad?
bad grades

4. How does your mom make you laugh?
i dunno... i'm just a laughable person XD

5. What was your mom like as a child?
smart... she still is smart

6. How old is your mom?
37

7. How tall is your mom?
5 something

8. What is her favorite thing to do?
read, facebook, be with family and friends

9. What does your mom do when you're not around?
work... the usual

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
being fabulous!!!!!

11. What is your mom really good at?
being a mom!!!!!

12. What is your mom not very good at?
singing

13. What does your mom do for her job?
she's a linguist

14. What is your mom's favorite food?
chocolate!!!!!!

15. What makes you proud of your mom?
she's MY mom

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?
i dunno, i don't think as my mom as a cartoon type.

17. What do you and your mom do together?
watch movies

18. How are you and your mom alike?
we both play musical instruments.

19. How are you and your mom different?
she's heather, i'm grace... enough said

20. How do you know your mom loves you?
she says "I LOVE YOU." it's pretty self-explanatory
(I have to interject here, I wish you could hear her say this. The capital letters and the period are intended to convey a tone of sarcasm, as in, 'duh, what a stupid question!')

21. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?
she likes to travel in general.

---------------

Catching up on some open folders in my inbox

Let's see here, where were we? I left off last Friday saying that we were headed to the DVD premiere party of Twilight at a local bookstore. How was that party, then? Well, it certainly proved to be fodder for photography, though the events scheduled were a bit, ah, how shall we say? Ah yes, lame. A couple of sales girls from the store led the happenings by reading out various trivia questions about the movie to a group of fans about 40 strong. The attendees were mostly teens, some trying to look cool because they were out alone late at the bookstore alone, others trying to look cool despite being there with their parents. There were also a few adults who seemed to know all the right answers to the questions. Not me.

Grace was happy enough. She had $11 dollars, enough to buy exactly nothing. There was an Edward Cullen action figure for $20 -- I don't think so. Maybe that was marketed to the adults who knew all the answers to the trivia questions. What do you do with an Edward Cullen action figure anyway?

Despite the rather flat entertainment, there were some payoffs after about an hour. Grace got a free advertising poster for the motion picture soundtrack, which she promptly posted to her bedroom wall the next morning:


And my husband, a fluent French speaker, found something fun to read:


No, I'm not worried that he's getting ready to pick up women in a language I don't speak. We actually loved reading it because we're nerdy linguists and we love to read about how to make language learning more enticing, especially in the US. The book's called Hide This French Book (Berlitz, retail $9.95) and it's full of all the stuff they never teach in language class but that you really, really need to learn if you intend to survive in somewhere that the language is used. Like how to really order drinks and talk about sex (both actively and passively) and gossip and more. After enjoying it for about 30 minutes, we decided Grace didn't need it for her French studies quite yet and $10 was way too much for this kind of information anyway.

Just before midnight rolled around, when all the other fans lined up to buy their DVDs, we decided to go home, smiling because we knew our copy of the DVD had already shipped and we had paid $15 less than we would have at said local bookstore. I know, it's sad; we're taking the sale away from a local bookstore and giving it to a big warehouse dot-com like Amazon. But $15 is still $15, and we figure local businesses, while we strive to given them our business whenever possible, have to be able to compete while not breaking the pocketbooks of local patrons. Alas.

On to other issues. If you'll recall, a month ago the furnace was acting up. We called and had it repaired. But that really didn't quite address the bigger issue: our bedroom that is freezing cold that we still haven't moved into. As it turned out, the repair that the furnace needed was covered under our home warranty, so the money we saved in that slight inconvenience is now being applied to the purchase and installation of a new furnace. The work was completed yesterday. Thank goodness. Now that winter is over, we may have a furnace that works properly and doesn't cost an arm and a leg to operate. The furnace salesman/installation specialist swears that we'll see our winter power bills drop by 20%. I sure hope so.

A much more enjoyable and superfluous detail that I left open-ended was what Grace would decide as far as cutting her hair. As of Friday night, she was still going with the trusty ponytail, full as it ever was:


By Saturday morning, she was ready. She asked for me to make her an appointment. She said she wanted it short, and could we also have it dyed a dark brown color?

A. Ha. I laughed. Could she have it dyed dark brown. Her hair is dark brown, she just couldn't tell anymore because it's so damaged and bleached out. I assured her that if she cut it short, it would be dark brown.

And so we made the appointment and she excitedly found two pictures online that captured the look she wanted. Pixie cut. Really, really short pixie cut. I wasn't sure she would really go through with it or that she would be happy with it when it was finished. Nonetheless...


...off came half of it in the first snip. The stylist held the fistful of hair in her hand and showed it to Grace. Then Grace took it from her. Her eyes opened like saucers sitting there looking at the massive tresses and feeling the weight in her hand and no longer on her head. And then she smiled and started laughing. She threw the wad to the floor and the stylist went on from there.


You can't tell from the picture, but the toes inside those Converses were wriggling with excitement the whole time.

I gotta say, it looks so cute and so good. We went shopping for about an hour afterward and she just kept saying, I look so mature! I look so stylish! I look so fun!

I guess I'm not such a bad role model for hair care as I thought afterall. And yes, she was relieved to discover that her hair is still dark brown.

Lastly, while downloading pictures off Grace's camera for this post, I found all the other pictures she had taken lately. I wish I could entice you with something spicy, but alas, my daughter appears to be rather well behaved. She did take several pictures of this, though:


It's the Bach Prelude she's in the last stages of working on now. It's getting better and better each day, and bringing joy to my heart each down it springs forth. Kind of like Grace.

Wait 'til Twilight together

TONIGHT, starting at 10p, we are partying 'til midnight at a local bookstore downtown. I should perhaps clarify, we will party at least until midnight. Because it is not until midnight that the DVD of Twilight is officially released for sale.

Despite my previous report of not really being that much into vampire lore, I am thinking it's an innocent enough thing to do. Grace is really, really excited. As is my husband. So there you go. I'm going to be getting a decaf latte in the bookstore coffee shop and reading the Easter issue of Martha Stewart Living while the establishment does its best to spook out all the vampire fans and stoke the fires for high sales. We already advance-ordered the DVD from Amazon for $17.99 instead of succumbing to the powers against our will to delay gratification that will try and persuade us that we should pay upwards to $32.99 at midnight tonight. So we're really going for the hype, not the purchase. Go figure.

I've never done anything like this before. I've never queued for the premiere of a movie or slept outside all night for concert tickets. Yet somehow going to a DVD release party at a bookstore doesn't seem so bad.

Unless the coffee runs out or the barista is pissy. In which case I may get very cranky very quickly.

Saturday night we are all going out together to hear the city symphony orchestra's March concert. Now THAT I'll enjoy.

Thank goodness the two events aren't on the SAME night. That would be awful.

How to get over the hurdles

Sometimes in academia, I feel like I don't fit in. It's not all the time, and it's not a big deal. But it has to do with the typical person who chooses a career in academia and how that is a stark contrast to me.

I was not a valedictorian. I didn't get any special awards when I was a student. I didn't get on the high honor role or earn scholarships to college. I was just an ordinary girl. Most people thought I was smart, and my family told me I should work hard. For the most part, I spent my entire educational career at the bottom of the top. Get it? Yeah, I got into the honors classes, but I was at the bottom of those classes. And I got into the honors program in college, but I dropped out within the first year.

This is not what the typical person in academia is like. They are who you'd expect they would be -- very bright, very successful academically, and very driven. Like all professions, personalities vary. Some people are arrogant, while others are humble. A few are out to prove something, but others are more aptly described as curious knowledge seekers. There are workaholics and people who take their breaks and vacations and weekends without any guilt. But overall, they all succeeded academically.

There is a certain group of people in academia though, not so different from myself, that irk me. It's those that come from a privileged group -- smart, affluent, successful, mentored -- and the belief among these people that all they've achieved is directly related to who they are and their hard work. Let me explain. I went to private school all through grade school and high school. I used to find it so funny when the school publications would go on and on about how much higher the average SAT scores of the student body was than the country average. Really? You charge outrageous prices for tuition and require an entrance exam for admittance, and you thought that the average scores would be, well, average? Of course not. If the school's student body had been a fair cross-section of the county's population, then I could where this would be quite impressive that the scores were so high. But it wasn't a cross-section at all. They did the same thing with percentage of students who were admitted to four-year colleges, got scholarships, etc. I know, it's PR, they have to do it because they have to sell the school to prospective students. But it sets up a deceptive image in the minds of the students there. They start to believe they are better than average, and it's all because they have been pushed harder, they have worked harder, and they just did it better than everyone else out there. Those who didn't do as well as they did just didn't work as hard or weren't as smart.

Vicious, isn't it? No mention of how much harder it would be if you were trying to achieve these academic accolades while also working 20 hours a week to help support your family and living in a less than savory neighborhood. And you hadn't gotten the chance to take private music lessons. Or traveled to Europe when you were 14 with your school chorus. It's easy to see how these students didn't see that their higher achievement over other students didn't exactly boil down to who was brighter and harder-working and more deserving. I sure didn't see it that way.

I wasn't exactly a member of the privileged class. Though my parents both graduated from college and my dad made a good living, we didn't exactly come from elite roots, you know? We were raised to work hard. We got piano lessons and such, but my parents didn't treat it like something that we had to do to stay ahead. They encouraged us to work hard and they made opportunities available. But if we said we didn't want to take the lessons or be on the sports team or go on the youth group mission trip, they didn't insist. When my sisters and I applied to college, we didn't really have any legacy to rely upon. My parents and teachers didn't know any big people who would write a letter of recommendation for us to guarantee our entrance into the college of our dreams. We just put our SAT scores and our transcripts into an envelope and mailed them off to colleges hoping we'd get in. And we really believed it came down to who was the best. Little did I know at the time how sorted to situation becomes as to who gets in and who doesn't. Who succeeds, who soars to the top because of who they are and who soars there because they truly are dynamic, this is all a mixed bag. The bottom line is, colleges want to admit students they know can handle the work and that are likely to stick with it to the end. Once that criteria is met, they are fortunate to consider questions of who is likely to bring valor back to the institution. Like it or not, students who are well connected tend to meet these criteria. So if you are not well connected, you have to compete with the rest of everyone who's just trying to look as good as they can on paper and convince a board of admissions that they've got what it takes.

You'd think with as much exposure as I have had to colleges and admissions and all the rest that I would be perfect at looking at my daughter objectively and helping her steer her way through the educational process. She wants to go to college, there's no question about that. But she's not your typical honor roll, eager beaver student. It occurred to me when she was very young that I would need to think outside of the box with this one. She wasn't going to make it to college by playing by the rules. Despite this enlightenment, so to speak, I regret to say I've come at the task in a somewhat naive way. When it comes to Grace's performance in school and her grades, her interaction with teachers, the way she dresses, the activities she's involved in, all of it, I think inside the box. I think, you have to work hard and get good grades. You have to take the right classes and soar above the rest. You have to go, go, go and not stop because it's hard to get where you need to go. And the message she's gotten, loud and clear, is that mom wants good grades and success. If there's not success, mom will probably not be happy.

During the last few days, I was reflecting on my feelings towards people and their success in my own field. I often times find myself listening to someone's tales in academia and tiring of the overabundant evidence of privilege. I think to myself, what have you overcome in your life? What were the challenges put before you? It gets tiring. I sometimes meet undergrads and read their personal statements on scholarship or grad school applications. I'll hit one that cites all the ways their great family, great school, great community, great activities, and great teachers have made them so excited about learning. And I think, that's kind of boring. What did you do other than receive all this greatness? What did you draw on that was inside you that I can see? In the end I think, I want people who are interesting to be at the university. I want the people who have faced a challenge and overcome it. I want my professors to be people who have gone to the other side of the mountain and back.

I'm not tooting my own horn here, because I'm not sure how well I fit this description.

And then suddenly, like a gift from heaven, it occurred to me. I want someone like Grace to succeed at college. She's the kind of person who has faced some real challenges and overcome them. She's failed classes and kept her chin up. She gets a lot of negative feedback, and yet she's never thrown in the towel, never given up on school, never said her effort doesn't matter, nor changed her life plans because she thinks she can't achieve them. She is passionate, and despite everything negative that gets thrown at her, she perseveres. I've said here that I admired her confidence. I've said that I thought she aimed high. But I've never realized that these qualities are exactly the ones that make her the kind of person you want to keep around.

She's faced a diagnosed disability, discrimination, a broken home, tough financial circumstances, the illness of a parent, and move after move after move after move. She's traveled the world, but not the posh world. The third world. And she completely takes in the whole experience and thinks it's normal.

In the end, she looks great to me. I mean, really, it's shocking to me when I think about what her life has thrown at her so far and how much she looks like girls in her school who have lived in the same tree-lined suburb since they were conceived. I realized at the beginning of the swim team season this fall, Grace was the only member of the team who didn't live in an owned home (we were renting an apartment at the time). It doesn't seem like much, but of course when a sport requires practices 5-6 days a week and early morning pick ups and $50 suits that must be replaced every 3 months and year-round training and team fees, it weeds out a lot of the single parents, financially-strapped families, and others. I just use this as an example of how the rich get richer, and if Grace is diligent enough to keep on keeping on despite not having certain privileges, well, hurrah for her!

So that's my great thought of the week. My kid is not someone to worry about in the long run. She's facing challenges and tough challenges they are. But in the end, she is a great person who will triumph. Like everyone, she'll face moments when she feels like she doesn't measure up. She'll have to decide whether to quit or keep going. But so far in her life, she's done pretty well. And who am I to tell her that she can't do something when she believes she can do it?

The Weekly Slug: 14 weeks

My slug hears some things these days. It has been demonstrated that a human fetus is able react to auditory stimuli outside the mother's body at 16 weeks gestation (Shahidullah & Hepper, 1992). If they can react at sounds outside the womb at 16 weeks, it's not too hard to imagine that they can hear the sounds that are going on inside their mother's body before this point. It's not clear from the research how much my slug can hear or with what definition it can hear, but it can hear.

Spectacular, huh? I've started to get used to the idea that this slug is a real person who is with me all the time. I enjoy the idea of having it with me and getting to know it day by day before I get to actually see it face to face. The hearing part is wild, though. I think about everything around me and whether it is a soothing sound or not.

I have been asking myself, would I talk to Grace in the tone I do and in the volume I do if I were holding a baby in my arms? Well, I might if I lost control, but I think we can all agree that it wouldn't be good for the baby for me to nag and yell and scold and go on and on and on the way I do. It's not good for Grace, either. Or me.

Anyone who knows me will tell you, I am a laughing person. Sometimes I do it out of nervousness, other times because I'm naturally gregarious. But whatever the cause, everyone can tell you, I laugh a lot. So my kid is hearing a lot and lot of laughing as he or she is growing inside me.

I realized something about myself this week. I sing to myself a lot. My husband and I were talking about music and pregnancy the other day, saying that any kid of mine will necessarily get a lot of prenatal exposure to music because I love listening to music everywhere I go. But the singing part I didn't realize until this week. I sing every single time I get in the car and drive somewhere. When I have a tune in my head, I hum it. So much so that I have to remember to suppress it when I'm working and there are other people around. It's a strange thing because I don't think of myself as a singer or singing very much or even having a good singing voice. But I guess my kid is getting a good dose of it every day.

Singing, laughing, talking, humming. Yelling. Arguing. Resting in silence. It's a strange thing to try and imagine what it must be like to have this be the primary way one experiences the world. Yet that's about it for months, until birth. Just the sounds coming from your mom and around her while she's pregnant.

Fatherhood part 2: Parenting through time and few words

My dad is a self-described plugger. He has Scotch-Irish roots, from a long line of those who emigrated to the United States during the 18th and 19th century and settled in Appalachia. His clan continued to migrate southwest and settled in Alabama, some a little over the Georgia border, where most of them continued earning their bread and butter through farming, some well into the 20th century. He was raised in a culture that says you work hard and look out for those in your family. You don't turn your back on them, no matter how bad they do you. You may need to take few steps away from one of them for a short while if they seem like they're taking advantage of you. But you don't ever close the door to communication. Always be willing to take another look at your kin and be compassionate in their time of need.

We have three girls in my family. I was the third. I hear that the pregnancy was a hard one. When my mom finally went to the hospital to give birth, she spent all day at the hospital hardly being noticed. She wasn't in active labor, the doctor just told her to go there. Sometime in the late afternoon/early evening, my dad was told there was no way the baby would be born any time soon. He decided to leave and go get something to eat. She never went into active labor until the last minute. Sometime around 6p, my mom called for nurse and said, I'm going to have this baby. I was born at 6:30p, much to the disbelief of the entire staff. (Don't ask; my mom has some amazingly horrific stories to tell about what happens when you can't help but give birth even though you're not fully dilated and the contractions are coming so fast you don't even get a chance to catch your breath, much less control your breathing.) My dad says he got a burger, then went to the library to read and fell asleep. When he woke up around 7p, he went back to the hospital and he found he had a new baby girl. I didn't get named for a week. To this day my sisters tease me and call me "the baby" because indeed, that's what I was introduced to them as.

From my perspective, I was the troublemaker in my family. I spent most of my growing years listening to my mother tell me how, when my sisters were my age, they were so much more x than I was. Fill in "x" with whatever positive character trait you can think of: hard-working, disciplined, obedient, kind, aware of the world around them, Christ-like, conservative, respectful, well-behaved...

Consequently, Heather caused a lot of disruption. Many, many parent-teacher conferences. Sunday School teachers and youth pastors and choir directors were always requesting some kind of intervention. I would try a lot of stuff, like putting together outfits I knew they would never let me wear and sneaking them to a friend's house for a sleepover, someone whose parents I knew would never say anything because they weren't so strict. I listened to music that I knew my parents didn't approve of. A few times they asked my oldest sister to address the issue. She would explain how she made the choice not to listen to some music because of the ungodly messages they contained. I listened, bored, and gave her the chance to talk. And then I continued buying my tapes and records, eventually CDs, and recording what I wanted to when it came on the radio. I bought the single to "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince when I was in 7th grade. The flip side was "Erotic City." The cashier at the record store told me that it was pretty explicit and maybe I should think about not listening to it. Well, that was enough to get me interested.

How does a plugger deal with a youngest daughter who is like this? My mother lectured and yelled and told me all the ways I wasn't measuring up. But that wasn't my dad's style.

There were times when his patience was pushed to the edge. It came when all three of us girls were completely out of control and my mother was pulling her hair out. He would raise his voice and yell. When that happened, we all knew the worst had happened. You didn't yell back. You quietly went to doing whatever it was that you should have done in the first place. But this was a rare occasion.

For the most part, he parented by spending time with me.

When I was in preschool and he was in town (he was an airline pilot), he would ride my mom's bike that had the kid-carrier on the back to the preschool. When he got there, he would strap me into the carrier and take off towards home. Every day I fell asleep during the ride home and he reached back and cradled my head in his hand and arm until we got home.

When I was in 2nd grade, I went to school on the bus by myself since both of my sisters were in middle school. The bus dropped me off at the front of my neighborhood. Sometimes he would meet me on his bike. I was too old to ride on the back of the bike by then, of course. So he would ride to my bus stop and steady my bike next to him with his free hand as he rode. When I got off the bus, we would put my book bag and my lunch box, sometimes my violin too, into the bike baskets and then we rode home together, each on our own bike.

When I was a bit older and he had an errand to run, he'd ask if I wanted to come along. If I shrugged it off, he'd press a little more and say something like 'it'll do you good. You can take a break from [whatever I happened to be doing at the moment]."

About the time I was starting middle school, he started playing backgammon. He tried playing everyone -- my sisters, my grandfather, my mom -- but no one seemed to want to keep it up. I asked if I could try. Within a few games, I was hooked. We played that game faithfully every day he was home until I left for college. I never found another opponent who was any good; neither did he. Sometimes we would play up to 10 games at a time. When we started he would say, "we will play until Mama calls you to come help her with dinner. When she calls, you have to go straight to the kitchen and help her with what she needs done." Sometimes I would be in big trouble at school for not doing my school work. He would come in and say we could play one or two games, and then straight to the homework. Sometimes my mom would have been fussing at me for days about slacking at something. On those days he would say we could play a few games, but only if we did so especially quietly. If my mother heard the dice falling on the board, she would surely come in and fuss at me about what wasn't yet done.

Through the bike rides and the errands and the backgammon games, he would ask me different things. He would ask me what I saw myself doing as an adult. He would ask about my friends, or what I liked doing most during a day. He would ask me about people I didn't like so much. The point was, I never saw it coming because I thought the point of us being together was just so he'd have company or so we'd both get some enjoyment out of playing a game or something.

Sure, he came down on me when things were bad. If I really messed up badly, he laid out strict rules as to how things should be done in order to get me in order. But in the end, he reminded me that these rules were in place so that I could get back to a balance in life, a way to get to have free time and enjoyment after the work day was done.

I realize now that I learned much more by the calm times I spent with him than any measure of discipline or lecturing he gave me. I am much more the kind of parent who talks too much and doesn't listen. Hopefully I can get past this and start parenting through the time spent in casual conversation, rather than through lecture after lecture.

Joy in Music

If you've ever played a stringed instrument or had a child who did, and that student spent any amount of time at solo festivals or interacting with other strings students, you probably know the prelude from Bach's Suite #1 in G major for unaccompanied cello. In case the name of the short piece isn't ringing a bell, here is a video I found on youtube set to the recording Yo-Yo Ma made about 10 years ago.



I started playing cello when I finished 6th grade. I took lessons during the summer, then I joined the school orchestra in the fall of my 7th grade year. I played for three years and then left the orchestra for other artistic pursuits that had to do with writing, directing, and acting. I never hacked this song. I tried it, but I never got it even close to sounding like a song.

Piano was a different story. I played piano from the time I was 8 years old on. My piano teacher had been giving my older sisters lessons for several years and I was playing around on the piano at home more and more. See, I had learned how to read music at choir practice at church, and my sisters' beginner books were pretty easy to figure out. So I started trying to play piano on my own. My teacher had a policy not to start teaching children until they were 9 or 10. But in my case, she told my mother when I was in 2nd grade to set me up for summer lessons since otherwise I would develop bad habits that she'd only have to undo later. I loved playing piano. I got it. A song wasn't just notes and tempo and a few changes in dynamics. It was an expression of you, a way to communicate without ever using your voice. Once I got the notes down, suddenly I could take a piece and make it mine. It's not like I got everything right, and I have plenty of shortcomings when it comes to playing piano. But I knew what a song was supposed to sound like and when I made it sound the way I wanted, it was like being in heaven.

When I played the cello, I never felt like that. I knew what it was supposed to sound like, I just couldn't make it sound like that. I think after a few years, I gave it up because I just got tired of hearing bad music. My mom will say it's because I didn't practice, which is mostly true, but there was also a part of giving up that had to do with not having joy in the task.

The prelude from Bach's Suite #1 in G major is sort of a test to pass for strings students. It's a complex melody that doesn't come out if you just play the notes. If you don't believe me, watch this:



I mean, kudos to the pianist for mastering a fingering for the piece, but when you hear this after seeing what Yo-Yo Ma does with the exact same composition, you have to admit that this is not exactly an inspiring rendition, right?

Back to the test for strings students. Every single person who would judge a performance of this piece has heard it many, many, many times. They can practically sing it measure by measure in the shower. They've probably played it themselves. It's like Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata -- if you're going to perform it, you'd better get it right, because anyone who knows anything will hear every single mistake you make. The challenge for the student is not just to get the notes right and give it a suitable tempo and dynamics, but also to give the composition a piece of themselves. They want to give a unique rendition. It has to be their own unique expression of the piece, a moment in which the instrument becomes part of themselves and they completely control it in order to bring out the beauty that they hear in their heads before they even pick up the instrument.

This is the time of year when Grace has to audition for several orchestras, scholarships, and competitions on viola. She's usually pretty good at these things, knocking 'em dead. In fact, she usually gets placed in some very high chair in the section, only to get bumped back later because she doesn't practice enough or goofs off during rehearsals. This year she's been struggling with what to choose as a solo piece. It has to be something she can really master, but something that is equally challenging to her and demonstrates the full spectrum of her abilities. She has the music for all six of Bach's suites for unaccompanied cello transposed for viola. A few weeks back I suggested to her, why don't you try the prelude in the first suite?

When she began tackling the piece, she started the way she always does -- just pick up the instrument, play the notes on the page, and stop when you get to a part that is hard. After only a few minutes she realized that the notes were hard, so she put down the bow and started plucking through them. Then a few days later she started bowing through the piece. As far as I know, she's never heard a recording of the song. But there's something in her that recognized the passages that were the key points in the flow, the ones you really want to grab hold of and make powerful. Little by little, the song is sounding more and more like her own.

It is such a joy for me to hear her working through something and making it a personal part of her artistic expression. For me it is such a part of my human experience. To have her go through the same process and understand music is so dear to me.

Taking care of business. Clothing, that is.

Oh, I had some fun last night. I went through all my clothing, sorting them, reorganizing them, and putting them all away in better places. I know what you're thinking. You think I'm being sarcastic. You think I'm trying to be funny. Well, I am neither sarcastic (nor ironic) when I say going through my clothing was fun. Nor have I given up on my lifelong vow of abstinence from trying to be funny. I went through all my clothing, regular and maternity, and I took stock of things.

Since I moved in November, things have been a little, ah, disheveled, shall we say? We spent about one week sleeping in our bedroom only to discover we had a major problem with heating that one room of the house. The rest of the house was livable, but not our bedroom suite. I've not really brought it up here in any substantial way because it just seemed a little whiny, you know? I mean, hey, I just bought a house and everything is great, except one little thing, the temperature in my master suite (yes, suite) is hovering around 55 degrees F at the warmest. It could be the skylights, the vaulted ceiling, the fact that it has outside walls on three sides. Yeah, I can hear your thoughts now. Master suite? Vaulted ceiling? Skylights? She's joking with complaining, right?

Ah, well, yeah. So you can see why I haven't exactly brought it up. I'm not complaining so much as 'splaining, Lucy, ok?

So we've been sleeping in one of the other bedrooms since, venturing into our bedroom only when absolutely necessary. Those days in December and January when the actual temperature outside was negative degrees at the high were dreadful. I'd go in there to retrieve clothing and it was like I took them directly out of the freezer.

By the calendar, I got pregnant about 10 days after moving out of our bedroom (that is, the bedroom that it still feels weird to call my bedroom since I have slept in some hotel rooms for longer durations). Since then my arrangement of clothing and my choice of apparel each day has been less than satisfactory.

Well, I'm being modest. I've been living in the midst of fashion catastrophe.

Two things conspired to create this situation. First, I had my clothing in one room I hated to go into and I got ready in another one. Second, I started having a hard time fitting into my clothing. If I wasn't a fashion emergency before moving into this house, now I really was. For the last 3-4 weeks, I chose what to wear every day by choosing between what was piled up next to my bed that didn't smell too bad. And was comfortable. And sort of matched. Like I said, catastrophe.

Now that I'm days away from the second trimester, it seems like we need to get on with really moving in, yes?

Yesterday there was a thaw (about 45 degree high with high winds and lots of rain), so I decided to get on it. I took the space heater into the bedroom, turned the ceiling fan on high, ran the heater in the attached bathroom, and then waited an hour. Then I returned and turned on some music. (During those brief first 10 days in the house, I had set up my iDock, the only sound system I own, in the bedroom. This was the first time I got to use it since I moved three months ago.) Once the music was going, I set to the task of taking out all my clothing and laying it out on the bed. I put the dirty clothes in the bin. I folded the sweaters. I put all the maternity clothing together, old and new. I sorted through my t-shirts, tons of them, and decided whether they were nice enough to where to work, nice enough to work out in, or really clothing I should only wear when painting walls. When it was all done, I had a much better organization of non-maternity clothes, and a nice collection of maternity clothes to choose from each day to wear.

It's amazing what a little organization can do to ease your mind.

Some guys are coming to install insulation in the attic, ceiling and walls of the bedroom today. In the next couple weeks we'll hopefully get a new furnace installed as well. Then we'll bravely move back to the bedroom without fear of freezing overnight. I'm starting to imagine what the bedroom will feel like once there is a third person there sleeping with us. Suddenly I really feel like this not just another house I live in; this is my home.

I hate this

I am a little angry. I'm frustrated. I'm disappointed.

Grace lied to me, and in a big way. It's not the first time she's done it; I doubt it will be the last. But I'm really disappointed.

About four weeks ago, Grace had 13 outstanding assignments to do in algebra. There were missing assignments in other classes, but algebra was the one that really kicked her butt. She stopped doing homework in the last term, failing partially because she didn't do the last 10 homework assignments. But once the term is over, you're off the hook. Not so with this term. 13 missing assignments still out there.

When I met with Grace and her administrators/teachers at school four weeks ago, we all brainstormed on a way for her to just get the work done that she didn't want to do. The point is, she had to figure out a way to get herself to do it, not a way for us to get her to do it. Yes, we would monitor the process to make sure it was working for her, but she needed to do it. So Grace made a master list of all the missing assignments, then put a column to check off when the assignment was done, and another one to check off when the assignment was turned in. She also made a different chart for herself to use every day at school to keep track of her daily assignments, whether she completed them, and whether she turned them in. In short, she came up with a system where she could check every minute of the day whether she was on track. Every week, she turns the charts in to her guidance counselor. She said she'd show me the charts at the end of every day.

Throughout these weeks, she's reluctantly showed me the charts. She really doesn't use them during the day. I would check her grades online, and the missing assignments (most of them) remained. Yeah, she got better and kept up with the daily assignments, but the missing assignments seemed to persist. The information on her charts often wouldn't jive with what was online.

--------------------

Me: "Did you do these math assignments, Grace?"
Grace: "Yes, I did them this weekend."
Me: "Did you turn them in?"
Grace: "Oh, I was waiting until they were all finished to turn them in."
Me: "No, turn them in now.

A following day:

Me: "Grace, did you turn in those math assignments you completed?"
Grace: "Huh, what? Which assignments?"
Me: "The assignments that you told me that you completed that still show as missing on your grades online."
Grace: "Oh, um, no, I didn't turn them in today because we got really busy."
Me: "Turn them in tomorrow."

A subsequent day:

Me: "Grace, remember those assignments you did that you never turned in? They're still showing as missing on the online grade site."
Grace: "Oh, I forgot them in my locker and I didn't get a chance to turn them in."
Me: "Grace, turn them in. Tomorrow."

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If you have ever had a teenager of your own, I'm sure you can imagine that there have not been only three discrete clean conversations like this, but rather more like 10-15, or 20, in which she gets mad because I'm using a tone of voice that isn't nice, and I get mad because she's not making sense and not clueing in to the big picture. She's also less than respectful during these conversations. I was at the end of my rope by midweek last week. She swore the 13 missing assignments were all completed, but that five were still in her locker because she kept forgetting to bring them to class, and the rest had just not been graded. I told her to resolve the situation by the next day OR ELSE.

The "or else"? She didn't get to be in the talent show on Friday night. See, she auditioned for the talent show without asking permission. And she spent an entire day after school at a rehearsal, a day when she was supposed to go to the math help center until work gets under control. She spent a lunch hour on another day, a lunch hour that she was supposed to meet with her math teacher, in the library printing out the lyrics to the song she was singing in the talent show. Despite this distraction, my "or else" seemed to do the trick -- when she came home on Thursday and told me yes, she had turned in the assignments, and all was well in the world of algebra.

We all went to the talent show on Friday night. It was ok. I won't say it was great, but it also wasn't bad. She came home, gathered her things to go to her father's house for the three-day weekend, and bid me adieu.

Then I got the email from her math teacher. Grace is missing ten assignments. Ten. Not one, not two. Not even four or five. Ten. In a bit more than three weeks, she had completed three missing assignments and turned them in. And the worst part? She went through an amazing amount of work to deceive not only me, but a huge number of other people, into believing this wasn't the case. She turned in those charts to her guidance counselor, see, so that he can also see whether her system is working. So he's got in writing her verification that she did this work. And turned it in. Only she didn't.

I called her on the phone at her dad's house on Saturday. I told her she'd better get those ten assignments done this weekend. And I told her to tell her father exactly what was going on. The result? She came home last night with two assignments done and lots of excuses, I-thought-I-turned-it-ins, I-forgot-to-turn-it-ins, and it's-in-my-lockers.

There are many levels on which this drives me crazy.

• Grace knows she's lost her permission to audition for plays at all this year. Her colleagues in theatre are doing all the cool stuff that kids get to do, like work up special bits and compete at states, do special performances, etc. But she's not getting to do it because she needs to concentrate on her core subjects before doing extra stuff. She's also lost permission to go to performing arts camp this summer. Whatever. Despite all this, she's still not getting her act together and just doing the work.
• She lied to me. Instead of just doing the work and turning it in, getting the monkey off her back so to speak, she went through great efforts to make it look like she had done the work when she didn't. What is the point?
• Grace demonstrated a poor level of priority-setting. It never occurred to her that since she was so much behind where she needed to be, and since she had lied to everyone about it, maybe she shouldn't do the talent show. Yet she chose to do it, and waste another entire week without doing the missing work, some of which is over two months late now.
• If she doesn't do the homework, then it is difficult to assess whether she's having difficulty taking tests independently. I explained this to her, I explained to overwhelming importance of getting caught up. Yet still, no change in her actions.
• Her stepdad and I have been working overtime to encourage her to nip this thing in the bud. We've said that we believe in her; we've told her that we're helping her through a process of ending school as a nightmare and the beginning of it being something she "gets;" we've done tons of monitoring to make sure she has time and space and resources to get her work done. Yet still, on "getting the work done," we're seeing little change in her attitude.
  

My resolution? Summer school. It's unlikely she's pass algebra at this point unless she has a complete change of heart, but she has the option of summer school. But since she's only needing this because she chose not to do the work when given the opportunity, I'm going to let her pay the $250 tuition, and I'm going to make sure that the summer school term is during the time she spends with her father this summer. If she doesn't have the money in time to pay for tuition, or she doesn't pass the class during summer school, she'll just repeat 9th grade.

Yeah, I'm in that mode of "let the kid learn life the hard way." It happens every school year about this time, so I just feel like I'm right on schedule.

I would LOVE to know if this will ever stop. I would LOVE to know how to get the kid to change her ways, insomuch as her ways are pretty destructive to her ability to get past this stage of life and education she hates so much.

This week in preview

This week is going to be a doozie. I'm a little overwhelmed by the schedule.

This morning I have an appointment with the obstetrician. Regularly scheduled monthly appointment. Maybe I'll get some information about weight loss/gain. More than likely I'll get information I already have that doesn't seem to be helpful (i.e., eat in small quantities regularly, make sure you when you eat you are getting the right kinds of food, and get plenty of rest and don't be stressed out).

Then Grace's birthday is Wednesday. As usual, I waited until the last minute to go shopping for any gift for her. So last Saturday (yes, on Valentine's Day) I finally went out and bought her a new case for her viola and some tall brown boots. I also bought her a birthday card. I should probably try and come up with some kind of a cake and a special dinner that night that she will like. I don't want to make a big cake though, because there's still leftover Coca-Cola cake and because she's having a party for friends later this week (see below).

On Thursday night, there is a huge concert where all the city middle school and high school orchestras perform on one night. HUGE deal. Grace's orchestra is rehearsing after school at the high school on Wednesday, early Thursday morning at the auditorium, and then the concert begins Thursday night at 7p. I, of course, volunteered to help transport cellos from the high school to the auditorium on Thursday morning.

Friday is the big finale, with more going on than I can keep track of. At 8a, I have an appointment at perinatal assessment for counseling and for an ultrasound. This is for them to assess my risk of giving birth to a child with a genetic disorder (like Down's Syndrome) and then to counsel me after I get the results. This will take at least two hours. (Yes, I'm nervous about this, and in fact I'm putting off telling anyone in my family I am pregnant until after this appointment.) Then, I have a meeting at Grace's school with her, her assistant principal, her guidance counselor, and whoever else seems like a good person to have attend, to talk about her progress in the last four weeks. The meeting is scheduled at 10a, but clearly that will need to be pushed back. Hopefully they can accommodate my schedule. THEN, at 5:30p, three of Grace's girlfriends are coming over for a birthday sleepover. Grace agreed to a scaled down party where we have pizza and pop and cake at the house, then they get to watch movie or something on tv and do other good sleepover stuff. But that means I have to plan for it.

So sometime this week I need to get myself over to Sam's Club to buy some of those huge pizzas that are good tasting while also cheap. And I need to figure out when I have time to make a birthday cake for Grace's party. And for her birthday on Wednesday night for our family.

Did I mention that I work fulltime?

I am not looking forward to this week.

a little rain

When I was a girl growing up in South Florida, we got a lot of rain storms. Since this was always the case, I didn't realize they were out of the ordinary rain storms, storms that would cause most people to panic a little. I just grew up thinking that a rain storm always involved big, heavy torrents of water, gusts of wind, and brilliant flashes of lightning followed by loud claps of thunder.

Rain storms didn't scare me or bum me out. It just meant a day to stay inside. The rain was always the fiercest during the summer, and during the summer we had nothing but free days on our hands. If we woke up and knew there would be rain, the open day of possibilities suddenly became more adventurous. We'd watch tv (as long as the power didn't go out) or play board games or cards. My sister and I loved playing Barbies on rainy days. (Barbies is a post topic I have been holding off on, because my sisters and I were a little obsessed with the whole enterprise as kids.) Rainy days were the best. We had battery-powered radios that we weren't supposed to use unless there was a hurricane, but if the power went out on a rainy day, wasn't that a good enough reason to pull them out? And listen to our favorite Top 40 hits on WHYI, Y-100 at 100.7 on your FM dial?

You could write letters to all your friends and relatives. You could makes crafts and paint pictures. You could read a book that had been stored away in the back of your closet forever and suddenly the rainy day stuck inside gave you the curiousity to open it up and find out what it was about.

Rainy days were the days you got to dress down, sit under a blanket and laugh at funny jokes and silliness so hard your sides hurt. Rainy days were when you sat at the typewriter and wrote a story off the top of your head. Rainy days were the days when you pulled out a tape recorder and made up pretend radio shows and interviews and then played them over and over until you couldn't forget the dialogue.

The rain has been falling all day here in Michigan. It's a huge break from the freezing temperatures and large amounts of snow we've gotten through this winter so far. Despite the warm swell, people are complaining because it's rainy, foggy, windy, and overcast. What kind of a switch is that? People are saying it's like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

But I'm saying, bring it on! The wind just picked up and I can hear the rain beating harder against the window. It's supposed to go on like this all night. I can't think of something more wonderful.

Auditions for the spring musical. And other things too.

I've reached a difficult point with parenting. At the start of Grace's 8th grade year, we made decision that Grace would not be able to audition for the school play or participate in any way if she was not on honor roll. She didn't make honor roll (big shock). As it turned out, on the promise that good grades would follow, we allowed her to audition and she was in the play. Her grades continued to be abysmal all year. She was supposed to get a good grade in US History to be able to go on the end of the 8th grade trip to Washington DC. But in the end, we let her go and she finished the year with less than a C average in US History. We had to start making payments for the trip in October and I couldn't see the point in losing the money for nothing. When we were talking the other night at dinner, Grace couldn't name a US president other than those she had been alive through the presidency of (only two), Lincoln and Washington. You can see she missed a lot in that class.

She also wasn't doing so well in orchestra, either. She wasn't practicing. But she really wanted to go to music camp. She auditioned and got a scholarship, and we prepaid her fees, so in the end she got to go. This was despite the fact that she had to take a remedial math course during the summer that conflicted with the camp. She got special permission from the teacher of the summer course that if she had an A average by the time she had to leave for camp, she could go. So she went.

All in all, it wasn't a banner year academically or behavior-wise, and she got to do everything she wanted to do anyway. I have to defend myself a little, though; it's not like we threw the whole year out the window. Since her grades weren't great, we told her that in addition to her school work she needed to do some volunteer activity at least 4 hours a month and participate in a sport for every term. She did that, even though she really didn't want to.

In the end, I don't think we as a family really worked together as a team to help Grace do the best she could at school.

We decided to take things a little more seriously this year. We began the year and told her she couldn't audition for a play until we saw two consecutive grade reports where she had all As and Bs. She can do that; it's not below her abilities. And we told her that if she had difficulty in school to come to us and ask for help.

Well.

She didn't get As and Bs, as we all know. But she didn't come for help either. She sort of just checked out of the subjects she was having trouble with, then she started just not doing schoolwork anymore, and by the time I checked on it, she was really in trouble academically.

The theatre department puts on 4 productions a year. Two have already passed. And next week are auditions for the annual school musical, a production that involves every arts program in the school. There were orchestra auditions for pit orchestra. There are theatre auditions for acting parts. There are singing auditions for chorus and other vocal parts. It goes on and on.

In truth, I found out the real truth of what was going on at school because Grace asked me if she could audition. I told her no, not unless I could see some proof that her grades were pulling up. 5 school days passed...and Grace kept making excuses for why she couldn't bring home the grades. It was then that I knew something really bad was going on.

So. Grace is not allowed to audition for the annual musical.

Moving on: summer camp. Grace really would like to go to the arts camp she went to last summer and do not only orchestra, but also audition to do an additional session of theatre. It's not a cheap camp. And logistically it would be difficult to do this summer (read: Mom will be in her last trimester of pregnancy God-willing).

But...she's not really doing what she's supposed to do in orchestra. She's not practicing. And she's sitting last chair in the combined orchestra (read: worst in her instrument in the whole school) because she's not done her coursework and performance tests on time.

The early registration for camp that would mean hundreds of dollars cheaper registration is due this Friday.

Here are my current thoughts on the decisions that are at hand immediately. I know that a lot of Grace's poor performance at school has to do with untreated ADD, a situation that is currently being worked on. So it's not like it's reasonable to have expected her to achieve the kind of academic success we asked. Still, she didn't tell me she was having trouble. We clearly communicated what the consequences would be if her grades weren't good, and instead of coming to us for help when she had trouble, she decided to hide it. She sort of checked out of school, hoping that if she ignored those bad and missing assignments that they would go away.

I begged her to go to the guidance counselor at her high school before the school year started and ask for help. But she refused. She said she didn't need any help. When the first progress report came home poorly, we made an agreement that if the grades and the comments didn't improve by the time report cards came out, she'd go talk to the guidance counselor. The grades and comments didn't improve, and she didn't go to the guidance office to ask for help. So I went to her school two days before Christmas break and I talked at length with the guidance counselor, all the while begging Grace to just work with me on the situation. In the meantime, her grades were flat-lining and she wasn't doing homework hardly at all. That I didn't find out until Grace asked me about auditions for the annual musical a month later.

So here's what my current thinking is. She won't be able to audition for the annual musical next week, and it's unlikely she will be able to bring her grades up in time to audition for the last play of the year. And there's no way I can justify spending the time and money on performing arts camp given what little effort she's putting into the arts (some of them) at this point. I know she would love to do these things. I know she would adore the whole experience. I believe that she would grow.

Ugh.

I also know that I have to stick to my word and make her realize that her academics matter. You cannot become a successful Broadway actress if you don't know about your country or don't know how to do high school math or have the discipline to practice an instrument you are good at or don't remember to turn in your assignments for theatre class. Or if all of the above are true about you. At this point I think I have to insist that the academics come first. She has gotten to participate in plays and camp and all sorts of trips throughout middle school, and I'm not sure any of it helped in the end. I hope what really will help at this point is to stick to the plan.

So, no play auditions. And no arts camp. Just a year of hard work and creativity at home. That's all.

Philadelphia

Last Friday afternoon, Grace came home right after school and our chore for the afternoon before her father came to pick her up for the weekend was to pack up the Christmas decorations that had all made it to the den. I was, quite frankly, feeling like shee-ite, lounged on one of love seats in front of the tv. Since I wasn't helping with the packing at all, which was NOT part of the deal, Grace agreed to pack away the ornaments as long as she got to snack too (a big no-no in the den). While we were packing, we watched the film Philadelphia on tv. She'd never seen it before, and I thought she might like it since it was nominated for several Oscars and won two. We tuned in when Denzel Washington is examining one of his witnesses, a black woman who worked at the law firm being sued. This is the start of the court case. During the scene where Tom Hanks character and his partner are hosting a gay costume party and Denzel's Washington's character and his wife attend, Grace perked up and started paying attention.

This sequence of two or three scenes is perhaps the most moving bits of the film. I think the scene that Tom Hanks is listening to and translating "La mamma morta" from the opera Andrea Chénier was what was shown at the Academy Awards when they were announcing the nominees for the award of best actor. It is one of those scenes that I watch, and then without even realizing it is happening, the events of the scene hit me emotionally so deeply that I cannot help but begin crying.

Grace and I watched the scene together. Many times I encourage her to take in things like this to try and understand how one piece of art (the song in the opera) is used to enhance another piece of art (the plot of the film) and give it a deeper meaning. As we watched it, she asked what it meant, and I said that my best guess was that love is something that brings us such joy, but because true love is so precious, it often bring us deep pain. We talked about the way in which the narrative of the opera -- a daughter lamenting the death of her mother -- was being related to the the narrative of the film -- a gay man lamenting his own impending death in light of all that he loved about life. It brought to light that someone who was gay was not different from others. The emotions that we feel as humans are universal and transcend race, creed, national identity, age, and gender, as well as sexual preference.

The scene ends on an awkward note. The lighting returns to normal and we see Denzel Washington in solemn silence, unsure of how to react. He shuffles his papers together and while putting them into his briefcase explains that it's late and they should call it a night.

Grace asked me, "why is he so nervous?"

Wow. 16 years have passed since this movie was released. She watched the previous 15 minutes of the film: the oddity of Denzel Washington and his character's wife attending a gay party; the physical distance exercised between the two main characters; the way in which Denzel Washington bluntly told Tom Hanks that he was raised to think of gays as freaks and that he still thinks that way. Yet through all of this, she couldn't put herself back into a world in which being gay was dangerous. Just the idea that the film was made, released, watched, and awarded, was of enormous controversy outside of Hollywood. But Grace didn't live through this. She lived in a world post-Philadelphia. She was born a mere month before Tom Hanks received his Academy Awards for the role of Andrew Beckett. Her world is one where Ellen Degeneres came out on her sitcom and then went on to host the Academy Awards herself. A world where it is ok to be openly gay, even if you were a teen heart throb in a boy band.

Grace truly couldn't figure out why a professional attorney would be so uncomfortable in the situation of merely talking to a gay man. In 16 years, the world has changed so much that not only did she not find the scenario one that would be odd, she couldn't even figure out why it would be odd for anyone.

The world has changed. I know there is still a far way to go. But it is encouraging to me to see that my daughter really doesn't even have a knowledge of some of the "truths" my generation was raised to believe.

An upper

Exactly two weeks ago today Grace and I visited with her pediatrician. The next morning she started taking a medicine for ADD to see if it would help reduce her tendency to be distracted at school and also help her focus in the classroom. Before this, I had spent a lot of time wondering, worrying, and pining away at whether it was a good thing to use medication to treat ADD.

When I was an undergraduate studying psychology, one of my professors was discussing in an upper-level seminar the ability of children to pay attention and how this skill develops. He explained that the ability to pay attention is not an on-off switch, where you either have it or not, but rather a gradient spectrum where everyone lies somewhere along a continuum. As most traits, this trait falls into a standard distribution and some people fall into the outer tails, either being hyper-attentive or having a distinct lacking in the ability to pay attention. He asked the rhetorical question, "does that make people in the tails disordered?" Then he answered his rhetorical question, "I don't think so, but if someone gave my child a medication and told me it would help them do better in school, I'd be tempted to let them take it even though I didn't think anything was wrong with them."

Wow. I remember thinking, I guess medicine for ADD is a drug then! Like steroids or something! Just performance enhancing drugs for the mind!

I thought, if this professor I trust doesn't think ADD/ADHD is a real disorder, then I wouldn't drug my kid just because a school said she wasn't quite like everyone else!

Oh, I really wish I had skipped class that day. Or been less of a thinker in classes. Or doubted the authority of that professor. Or something else.

So, back to Grace. Two weeks later. The side effects are minimal. She says she's not very hungry midday, and that's about it. Otherwise, she's fine. But the question is, is it doing her any good?

Grace knows what she's taking the medicine for. She knows what it's supposed to help with. And sure enough, she reports she feels more calm and that she's able to concentrate and focus in class better. I keep thinking, placebo effect. As far as school goes, Grace and I didn't make a big proclamation at her school of her beginning the medication. We just said in a meeting that there had been a diagnosis and that her pediatrician had prescribed a low dosage of a stimulant.

Two days ago I sent an email to Grace's teachers asking them about parent-teacher conferences the next night. I assumed that there was nothing more that we needed to meet about, but I wanted to make sure before I skipped the event altogether. (Afterall, I have been known to skip these things as the school year progresses because at some point the teachers' vexation with Grace boils over the top and oozes on to me, and I would just as soon not listen to that if I'm not required to.)

I didn't expect much back in terms of replies except for a couple, no-don't-worry-about-its or maybe one thank-you-for-your-concern-I-am-still-having-problems-with-Grace-but-you-already-know-about-that-and-I-doubt-it-will-improve. Instead, I got some interesting replies.

From Grace's orchestra conductor:

"I wanted to let you know that I have seen huge improvements with Grace and orchestra over the last few weeks. She seems more focused and has been playing a lot more. She has been aware of where we are starting and has improved on her testing as well. For instance this week she scored a 95 on her playing test and was able to play it at the appropriate speed. I just heard Grace try to redo her performance test and I have sent her back to the practice room to continue to improve. She gets better each time I hear her. I have also told her that if her stand partner is distracting her she may move her chair and her stand someplace else so that she can be successful. I just wanted to touch base with her and let you know that I have noticed more focus and concentration out of Grace this week and last."

From her theatre teacher/coach:

"I would love to share with you an observation I made yesterday in class. The students are working on 3 person scenes to receive extra credit (and to help students who have scored poorly on the written exams). Grace and her group asked me to look at what they were doing and I was amazed at how quickly Grace had memorized her lines! Not only her lines but the energy, commitment and emotion all of the girls used in the scene was evident."

This was volunteered to me in email. All I asked was whether they would like Grace and I to attend parent-teacher conferences tonight. I didn't ask about her progress or if they noticed any difference; I didn't ask any leading question. I didn't fish for this information. The teachers just volunteered it.

I forwarded the messages to Grace and both my husband and I congratulated her on doing such hard work and putting good effort in at school. I'm not sure if it was just that magic turning point in Grace's life or if the medicine helped. Or if the pill had a placebo effect on her and that helped her reach the magic turning point. Or if we're witnessing dramatic improvement that may wane. But wherever the truth lies, it is really good to hear positive news from Grace's teachers. I suppose she must feel the same way.