One week down

So, School started.

There's the awesomeness: middle school is like a whole different game, not only in terms of the obvious, classes and lockers etc. (they get to read Call of the Wild! and also other things), but also in terms of expectations for parents. It's sort of assumed that we have lives outside our parenting responsibilities, for example. There's an activity bus. If Si stays late to talk to a teacher (they have after school hours, which are called, disappointingly, intramurals) (his favorite part of elementary school was the optional gym class they got before school one a week, also called intramurals), or to run track (ha) or any other scheduled activity, he can just hop on the activity bus. It drops him off a million miles from our house, according to him, but still: hot dog. Even Events are this way. Si is joining the Math League: I got a little tense, reading over the schedule of meets, until I noticed the fine print: they take the bus. And the bus brings them back to the school at 5:30, 5:45. At that point we do need to pick them up, but 5:30 is a time even my we-want-your-shining-faces-in-your-desks-for-8.5-hours-a-day workplace can accommodate.

It's like the independence I've been pushing for since 2005 is finally here.

I guess I'm supposed to feel sad, and I do (always), but not for that.

Are we in the wilderness? The high plains of Colorado? The African Savannah?

Another awesome thing is that M. and I sat down as a team and decided which days I was going to go in to work late so that I could walk Helen to the bus stop, and which days he was going to do this and I would leave early and get back in time to be here for the kids when they get home. We've needed to do this for two years, so it's nice to have it done. No complaining, no scrambling: we just do what needs to be done.

Then there's the not-awesomeness. Si's new independence is accompanied by actions favored by evolution to hasten the separation between parents and children. He argues everything, particularly if it comes out of M's mouth. He bewails things a lot. Yesterday I got a tearstained call at work (I kind of dread getting calls from home): "Dad is abusing his power as Dad." Oh, dear - what's going on? "He says we need to clean off the table AND outside. Because they're a mess. He says he can't sit down. You need to come home right away."

"That actually sounds pretty reasonable, kiddo." More tears.

Sigh. And the homework has had moments of intensity, already, and it's only the second week of school. And my other child: she goes to school. Sometimes I hear about it. I haven't seen or heard a single thing from her teachers, however: not a flier, not a note, nothing. When I ask her what her favorite part of the day is, she says, Art class. A girl after my own heart.

("You get to start intramurals this year, Helen!" Si told her joyfully. When she gave kind of a roll-the-eyes response, he said, "But you've GOT to do intramurals. It's like gym class! Before school! You get to play games!" Still nothing. I finally had to chime in, "When I was in school, I didn't like gym either. In fact, it was my LEAST FAVORITE class." And Si looked at both of us in total bafflement.)

Nope. Botanic Gardens. I suppose one tipoff might be that there is a trace of green in this grass.

Awesome and not awesome: more or less like regular life. I do feel like we've clawed our way to the second level of parenting, though. For better or worse. 

Melancholic

The kids went back to school today and appropriately for my mood it's overcast and fuggy. It used to be the start of the school year was an enlivening time for me - apples, sweaters, sharp pencils and new classes - but the past two or three years it's leaned more toward sober and pensive, with perhaps a big dollop of self pity (on which I am trying to cut back, so bear with me). Today I am definitely feeling sober and pensive, with occasional dips into the black bile. Just dipping the toe, though. Rather than bolt into white-hot rage when, say, some unmemorable lawmaker says something breathtakingly stupid and cruel (That's what unmemorable lawmakers do, I remind myself sternly. It's like painting their drab house pink in the hope that it will stand out from the 90,000 other drab little houses on the market), I just get irritable. Rather than feel weepy and mournful on a morning when my son starts middle school, I just make him an honorary First Cup of Coffee (sweet, and half cream - I'm not sure if these make the habit more pernicious or less), take a picture of his impatient self, and feel, well, rather more wrinkled and middle aged than not as he heads off to the bus stop. And I try strenuously to put out of my mind my unfortunate breakfast reading, which centered on middle school power plays. Augh. I tell myself with rather more bravado than conviction that Si's still too young for all of that. Or too oblivious. And I mean that as a compliment: obliviousness is a powerful social coping tool, one which I have kept sharp and well-polished.

I told him not to smile for this one. He's actually very excited.

Later this very morning, in fact, I bring it into play at the elementary school bus stop, when a gaggle of bus mothers from the neighborhood stand around chatting and their topics are: a) how underestimated their children are at school (our beloved school, which admittedly is bursting to the seams with Exceptional Children); b) how very very awful teacher X is and how both they and their children were thankful that they hadn't gotten teacher X this year (Teacher X was ours last year, and while he was not without flaws, I thought he was sweet and gentle and fine); and c) crazy ex-husbands shacking up with crazier girlfriends.

Also very excited. And maybe got a up a mite too early.

Ai yi yi. It reminded me why usually I say a polite hello and bust obliviously on home.

On the brink

Last week, we had nine boys with guns over to celebrate eleven years of this guy:

Even at this age, Si's favorite thing to do was throw things.

It was a fitting tribute. Equally fitting is that his job for the next eleven years is to pick fluorescent airsoft ammo out of the lawn and garden. He was game for the first day, and stoked that he'd managed to trick Helen into helping (two minutes in, however, she quit - "I didn't know that this was going to be boring!" and he's been miserable, but committed, ever since).

On Monday, he starts middle school, the first step toward his much-anticipated adulthood. He regularly points out all the things that are proof of his ready-to-be-independent status: he can cook for himself (smoothies and chocolate milk), he is too old for a babysitter (cough not cough), he can earn money to pay for his own entertainment and consumables (from us, though. I'm still hoping he adds an external revenue stream to his earnings sometime soon.)

Character traits: goofy

I could go on about his usual personality markers: baseball, math, games, the newish interest in (fake) guns. The way he is at heart a bookish kid who, through baseball and games, has positioned himself squarely among the jocks. The way he is basically shy and respectful but has an unexpected flair for performance. How when M., reading out loud from a magazine, said "Having confidence and asking questions are not being rude," Si jumped up with a light of revelation in his eyes and said, "That's good to know! I'm always worried about seeming rude."

But with a sense of responsibility. And of beleaguered oppression.

In the past few months he has discovered radio and developed the regulation eleven-year-old taste for mass-produced music. While I am sorry that Beethoven is no longer in the hizzouse, and I am probably approaching my lifetime limit for 97.5 The Party, it's fun that he can take charge of this aspect of himself. It's gone along with some more inspiring acts of independence, too: he decided, in response to seeing his baseball friends buckle down and train, that he needs to improve his running speed. All month we've been going to the middle school track after dinner and running speed intervals and endurance work: this is probably the first time he's taken initiative in self-improvement, and it's good to see. As the kids and I drove home from the track last night, with them dangling their arms recklessly from the open windows and party music blaring, it felt like the new normal: life with big kids.

Not afraid to take a break.

It felt pretty good.

The Last Days of July

1. Last week we drove across Kansas twice and I spent the whole time coveting the 4-foot high sandstone fence posts of Post Rock Country. Normally I do not understand statements like "85% of people would steal from you if they could" (really? I'm one of the 15%? I'm embarrassed to even look at other people's family photos on display when I'm dogsitting for them), but perhaps it is because other people do not have the right stuff. Apparently I am perfectly capable of starting to plot ways to sneak off with post rocks. (Step #1: have enough room in the car.)

2. I also spent some time trying to figure out how to trick my family into spending our next vacation visiting the Tallgrass Prairie National Scrap and the El Cuartelejo ruins in southwestern Kansas. And Bent's Old Fort. I have been trying to convince everybody that they want to drive five hours into flatland Colorado to visit a national historic site for approximately 5 years, though, so. Maybe this will be my year.

3. City Museum in St Louis? Is possibly the coolest place ever. Look for me to be futilely buying bags of quikrete in the hopes that some morning I will wake up able to create elaborate serpentine treefish out of concrete.

4. Frogs. My kids don't have enough frogs in their lives.

This creek, this action: the best time of my Ohio summers

5. Places we've watched the Olympics this week: my parents' TV in Ohio; nailed-down TV in the Super8 motel in Lawrence, Kansas and that was SO NOT a bedbug I saw; internet-accessed highlights on the iPad on I70; home. Home home home.

Seven Days of Refusing to Be Photographed

6. Other activities of note: badmitton; volleyball (uggghh); croquet (this activity caused the most sibling strife. That and the mysterious Nanner No Tagback game that somehow involves Penske trucks and yellow cars and screaming); listening to Alice in Wonderland in the car; tick checks; geocaching; making dinner with my mom; reading; napping (napping!); running through the woods; life list wildlife sightings (kit fox; live possum; screech owl in the wild) (that last one was a wildlife hearing - click the recording in the link).

Croquet also caused grandparental and parental strife. We were all too MEAN.

Other than the drive across Kansas AND Missouri AND Illinois AND Indiana, the only drawbacks to the trip were the inadequate drive-day-to-vacation-day ratio, not enough time with my sister, cross-trail spiderwebs while running, excessive heat, and the sense that this may be the last time we ever get to do this with everything okay.

But everything is still gathered on the precarious knife edge of okay. So for now we can continue.

Telling the children

I first noticed the news early Thursday when I checked my email before waking the kids - Yahoo had two stories on it, which seemed excessive, but (I processed slowly), yes, this actually did seem kind of a big deal. Biggish. I still didn't think about telling the kids until M. called from Canada, to make sure we were all right  and for reassurance, to touch base, the way people do in the wake of something awful.

"Why'd dad call?" Helen asked, sensing a shift in tone right away. It was a perfect segue. I bailed.

"Just to let us know when he'll be home," I said. "Dinnertime tomorrow, yay!"

I thought again about telling them as I drove to camp, except that it didn't seem quite right - oh bytheway here's this totally disturbing thing that will freak you the freak out, have a good day at camp & don't forget sunscreen, love ya, bye! - so I didn't.

I admit also that I couldn't figure out the right tone. Matter-of-fact is my default mode, and it would work in this situation, except just the fact of giving an event attention in the bright sunshiny morning before heading off to camp elevates the telling from matter-of-fact to Big News in Hushed Tones, which is the parental conversational mode I find most difficult.

So I bailed, which, I realized immediately afterward, meant that they were thus going to find out from other kids or their grandma. Normal Big Events this would be fine/ unavoidable, but I was belatedly understanding that this might not be a Normal Big Event.

Si heard about it in camp - he's doing a middle school basketball camp where the coaches pride themselves in showing impressionable preteens the right path to manhood, and they took it upon themselves to bring it up and have a group discussion and probably do some prayer, which I appreciate, even though that's not the thing we do at our house.

Helen's camp didn't bring it up. She first heard about it when she and Si turned on the TV at grandma's, looking for cartoons, and stumbled immediately into Hour Nine of the Live Coverage. It didn't maybe help that grandma wanted to keep watching, like just fifteen minutes - it was on every channel!  "Helen was very upset," she reported later. Uh, you think?

So: parenting fail. I think she'll be fine - yes, she screamed when someone selling Dish TV knocked on the door after dinner, and at bedtime she didn't want to be farther than arm's length from me - but such jumpiness is normal, and would have happened however she'd found out. This thing is seriously disturbing, after all. I don't think I'm going to be blithely entering a movie theater anytime soon, and I wouldn't be surprised if seven-year-olds around the entire Denver metro area were a skittish about movie going for months.

Still. I skim over the articles like "Theater shooting aftermath: Tips for Helping Children Cope" and mostly what I think is, this doesn't apply to us. Even though actually, this time, it kind of does. I get irascible when the Grandma calls at 9:30 at night to remind me that what the networks are saying is to remind kids that this is an isolated incident, very rare, and that it's still safe to go to movies, "So be sure to tell her that." (Appreciate the thought, but I'll come up with own language for reassurance, thanks.) I hug the kids and ask how they're feeling ("Fine," says my noncommunicator, manfully. "I'm skeeeered," says the other, maaaybe playing up the dramatic excitement of the situation and the chance to sleep on mama's floor just a smidgen.) I remind them that they're safe, even if they are sleeping on mama's floor and not in mama's bed. I limit news coverage to None. We read extra chapters in Ramona, where things like this don't happen.

In the end, I don't worry so much about what I can control, or even the big obvious things that I can't. I'm going to lose more sleep fretting over the sadness of the people killed than fretting that something like this could happen to us, for example.

No, I worry about what I still have trouble with: the fact that other people are going to interrupt my reaction and my kids' reaction to what's going on and bring their own brand of tragedy processing to the table. Some people are going to be process-by-talking-about-it (Hellooo, MIL!). Some are going to be process-by-dismissing-it (Helloo, FIL!). Some people are going to be process-by-trying-to-control-the-narrative, which is what upsets me the most. It's like that time in kindergarten when my best friend kept telling me these horror stories - child crushed to death by a circus elephant, school bus overtaken by bees - and then insisting that they were not only true but local. Every time I talked to her I got more upsetting news about The Way The World Is, even though we were living in the same world. It took me until high school to learn how to avoid people like this, and even now I have trouble processing when someone I work with or do kid things with has a really opposite opinion of how the world operates.

But for now this isn't the issue, I don't think. For now it's fine to stick with my small-but-sturdy toolbox of coping mechanisms - listening, avoiding, and remembering that things are mostly good most of the time - and to let the kids who need it sleep on the floor.

Practice

M. and I had a taste of the empty nest this past week, and this is what it was like:

1. Tuesday: salad for dinner, and no one wept, argued, or fell off the dining room bench in despair.
2. Wednesday: dinner at India Castle, ditto Tuesday, plus no one sulked because we didn't eat at Noodles or a place with baseball on the bar TV. Also, because we were so happy and relaxed, or because we were new, or because we did not have two complaining leprechauns with us, we got complimentary dessert AND complimentary brandy. I've never even HEARD of complimentary brandy, outside of circumstances involving waiter-caused dry cleaning bills.
3. Cheese and bread for dinner, plus we got to watch Parks & Rec and I could hear all the jokes.

I also got to work in the garden until dark two days and went for a run on another. Also, while I did not waste time cleaning, what little straightening I did stayed that way, in its straightened state, for multiple days. Weird. I didn't know that could happen.

I also got a little weepy by Thursday anytime I read a story involving a parent and a child. Not even sad stories. Just any stories. I started crying as I drove home from work listening to Blood, Bones and Butter (mm mm good) and she talked about her work in a kids' camp in the Adirondacks. Crying! Honestly.

But the good news is the leprechauns come home from South Dakota today, and I am sure within three minutes I will be longing for these past three days with an intensity that will make my teeth hurt.

Relief trucks on way

We've officially reached that moment in summer when I stop believing that fall will ever come, or snow, or cool weather, and it will be hot, gray and grim until forever. This would be depressing except that my inner response seems to be, oh well, better keep working, then - which is kind of a relief, to just give up on the idea of reaching for the stars, or blissfully idyllic autumn runs, or homegrown ripe apples, and just put my head down and do what needs to be done.

So it's kind of hard to believe that the high tomorrow is supposed to be 75. I hope it doesn't lead to a sense of wild imbalance or unsustainable hope.

One thing that has been a backdoor relief for some of us - for me, mostly - is that the crackling dry city combined with all these fires has led to a complete and total moratorium on home fireworks (and a near-moratorium on commercial displays). Silas got weepy about it - "I just don't want to have a fourth of July without fireworks," he said, sobbing, and my heart broke a little, because we *could* have dragged ourselves downtown, in the traffic on a work night, to the lacrosse game at Mile High Stadium, where there would be fireworks, except that we cruelly opted for sensible. Meeeean, is what we are. Especially since I felt nothing but triumph in my heart about getting to opt out of the "highly illegal vs. but it's so fun" debate this year.

Anyhow. It kind of comes back to something I've been thinking about a lot this summer - I wrote about it on the Get Born blog, but imperfectly - this disconnect between what we want for our kids and what they themselves want. One of the commenters on that post made the excellent point that one of hard things about parenting is finding out that "children are people--real, flawed, normal people." When they're beautiful babies who have everything yet to learn, it's easy to think they can be anything; then they start growing up and it turns out that they actually have no desire to chase the gold ring, or the brass ring, or however the saying goes. Silas is never going to be an aggressive competitor, the one who gets down the mountain the fastest, or who stays at the gym the longest, or who cranks out the most perfect score on the most important test - and this should not be a surprise, since neither are his parents. He's going to be someone who gets pretty close, since he is smart, and he does have kind of a talent for throwing a ball - and he'll like being that close, and maybe even feel that he's entitled to be there, since he's smart, everyone says so - but then when it comes to consolidating his gains and closing in for the gold, he'll abstain, and go off to play his iPod touch instead. Just like me, only for me it's a good book and an afternoon spent puttering around the yard.

The difference seems to be that I feel like my lack of ambition is a calculated choice, and is furthermore sustainable, as in it's paid for by a job. Whereas one could argue that I and all the other parents who urge their kids to improve their freestyle stroke or practice reading for one hour a day or work on their endurance are deeply insecure about their children's ability to become functioning adults.

Or maybe it's that we want our kids to become a certain kind of functioning adult - I would be so very depressed if Si chose to support his video game lifestyle by becoming the manager of a Chick Fil-A, for example, even though the salary he'd most likely pull down is not much different from M's salary as a professor.

I ought to point out that I would also be disappointed if he chose to support his video game lifestyle by becoming an investment banker. It would be a different kind of disappointment, however. One mixed with pride and bafflement (you do what, again, son? invest in...banks?)

I get confused, though, about how much of that choice is my business. I assume, I think, that Silas would find that managing a Chick Fil-A as depressing as I do, and I am trying to steer him toward a path that avoids it. But what if he would actually like managing a fast food joint? (shudder) It's no berth on a major league baseball team, sure, but I think we need to agree that there's going to be some kind of Plan B for that dream. What if his satisfactory Plan B is different from my idea of a satisfactory Plan B? What then? How do I parent that? I have no earthly idea.

If anything, I feel like I'm steering him toward the investment banker option. He's good at math, and I know enough about schoolish things to encourage him in this pursuit and encourage him in improving his math scores and math savvy - mostly by taking advantage of various school and community math-burnishing options. But where do these lead? What if they lead toward investment banking? I don't even know. I just cheer on the sidelines and push him in the community-sanctioned directions and I'm not even sure what the community is sanctioning.

You know what I mean? Parenting is the blind leading the blind, man. And then getting crabby when the follower doesn't end up where we wanted him to go.