Tag Archive for: parenting

Hangin’ in the Kitchen with Lola

I don’t generally post many photos on my blog, but today I have to. You see, on Tuesday, Lola and I had our Second Annual Valentine’s Day Cook-Fest. This is the second year in a row that her mid-winter break from school falls during Valentine’s week, and since Eve and Bubba are stuck in their regular routine, Lola thought it would be cool for us to concoct a feast for them. She is my little chemist, so for her, cooking is fun. So is making a godawful mess in the kitchen.

As soon as we dropped Eve off at her carpool meet-up point, we headed home to start baking. First on tap, the flourless chocolate cake. Lola delighted in using the biggest, sharpest knife we own to shred an enormous block of chocolate. She also loved licking her fingers and swiping them across the counter to pick up rogue bits that had leaped off of the cutting board. Separating eggs is fun, too. Since she used her fingers to filter out the yolks and got to be “all slimy.” Whipping egg whites was harder than she anticipated, so I stepped in to save the day, but she insisted on being the one to fold them in to the mixture at the end.

Once the cake was in the oven, we got to move on to our next dish – gluten-free potstickers. We discovered this recipe last year and it was such a hit that we knew we had to do it again. We also remembered how much work it was, so we bought some rice paper wrappers to make spring rolls with the leftover filling. Mixing dough was a riot – Lola loves to get her hands in there and squish it all together. She had a ball chopping chicken and cabbage and green onions and, later, rolling out the dough and pressing it in the tortilla press.

Then it was time to make the broth for pho. We roasted spices with onion and garlic and ginger under the broiler and put it in the crock pot with broth to steep all day long. The last few photos are of the table Lola set, the noodles and beef just before we poured the boiling broth over the top, Lola rolling a spring roll, and the fabulous flourless chocolate cake.



I already know that next year, Valentine’s Day won’t fall during mid-winter break, but Lola and I have decided to make this a tradition (and Bubba and Eve aren’t complaining – they were looking forward to dinner all day long). Although we made an unholy mess of the kitchen, I don’t remember when I’ve had more fun and I’m already looking forward to next year’s adventures in the kitchen.

More Life Lessons With Lola


One day as Bubba and I were walking and discussing a particularly thorny parenting issue with regard to Eve, I expressed my fervent hope that Lola would be easier on us as a tween. Or that we at least would have learned enough from working with Eve on difficult issues that it would feel easier. Bubba, with his uncanny ability to assess personalities, replied that Lola is who she is.

“I don’t think she’ll get any harder as she grows up. I think what we see in Lola now is simply a smaller version of who she will eventually be. I think she has laid it all out there for us from the beginning.”
He is right. For all of her quirks and overflowing cup of personality, Lola is comfortable in her own skin. She is much like her father in that way – she knows who she is and isn’t apologetic about it. In all honesty, neither of them could be any other way if they wanted to.
A few days later when we returned home after a week at the in-laws’ to discover Lola’s pet hamster wasn’t looking so good, she laid it all out again. The four of us were distressed as we gathered the little one up for a trip to the emergency vet and as we waited for the veterinarian to assess the situation, Lola alternately sat on her own and watched the doctor intently and crawled into my lap to bury her face in my shoulder. At one point, she knew she couldn’t process any more and excused herself from the room to peruse the quiet, dark waiting area with its photos of previous patients and skeletons of exotic pets like snakes and chinchillas. She solemnly ran her finger over the bones and breathed deeply and took her time coming back.
When it became clear that the hamster would have to stay overnight she nodded her head and walked to the car quietly. At home she required some assurance that her baby would be well-cared-for overnight and expressed her sadness that we had been away when she fell ill.
Over the next two days as the hamster got progressively worse, I knew it was time to have a “quality of life” discussion. I wasn’t even sure whether it was appropriate or not for a nine-year-old, but I knew I had to try. Turns out Lola had been thinking about it on her own.
“Mom, if she is hurting, I don’t want her to. If they can help her without hurting her and she can get better for a long time, let’s do that. But if they’re going to do surgery and she will hurt from it as she heals for weeks and then dies a couple weeks later, that’s not a good life.”
After we made the painful decision to let her go, Lola once again clambered up in to my lap (not a simple task given that she stands as high as my shoulders all of a sudden) and cried a little.
“I am so confused. I don’t know how to feel. I’m happy she doesn’t hurt but I’m sad she’s gone. And I’m happy I got to be her Mommy for a year and I know I was a good Mommy and I gave her a good life, but I don’t want her to be gone.”
I was amazed at her ability to articulate her feelings. I was more amazed at her lack of anger or sense of unfairness. Hell, I’m 40 and it felt unfair to me!
I told her I was so sorry she was in pain and that, as her Mommy, I often wished I could give her a life without sadness or emotional upset. That it hurt me to see her unhappy.
She sat up and looked me in the eye, “That’s silly, Mom. I know that seems nice at first, but I wouldn’t want a life that didn’t have upset or sad or angry feelings. That would be like having the sun shine all day long every day – no night, no rain, no snow. How boring!”
Bubba’s right. This little girl has it going on. She has a deep knowledge of her own life and emotions. She feels things deeply – period. No going beyond into ramifications and consequences. She allows herself to feel what she feels and is able to express her emotions without censoring them. She is a one-of-a-kind, our Lola.
It has been two weeks since her baby died and, other than acknowledging that she needed someone else to clean out the cage because it was too painful, Lola has not expressed a desire to move on quickly. She has not asked for a replacement pet. She cries every once in a while and asks to be held while she mourns her hamster. She passes by Eve’s hamster’s cage reverently and offers this little one treats, relishing her role as auntie without jealousy. She is simply feeling what she feels and honoring it. I am in awe of her ability to be exactly who she is without self-criticism or judgment. Thank goodness I have her as one of my teachers.

My “Duh” Moment

I’m fairly certain that growing up in the 1970s and 1980s was, for me, the moral equivalent of being sold a mirage in the Sahara. Coming of age in that era of instant-gratification and get-rich-quick schemes and ever-present celebrity news (MTV, anyone?) gave me the impression that life comes in bursts and at any moment I could expect all of my wishes to be granted simultaneously, thereby changing my life forever in a millisecond.

I still sometimes believe that.
Turns out that what actually comes in bursts (at least for me) are the revelations that this is all nonsense.
For so many years I believed that goals were seminal events. That to accomplish one of the milestones I set out to reach would profoundly change the landscape of my life going forward. With a few exceptions, that is total BS. But somehow, I manage to hold on to the exceptions in my mind as reality. Marriage was one of those exceptions, or at least I used to think so. In all honesty, though, Bubba and I lived together, sharing expenses and household duties for nearly a year before we actually had the wedding ceremony. And while the honeymoon rocked, when we returned to our tiny apartment with our two cats and our full-time jobs, except for the part where I had to stand in line forEVER at the DMV to legally change my name on my driver’s license, nothing much changed.
Having babies changed our lives markedly. I’ll give you that one. And graduating high school and college necessitated a drastic shift in the way I spent my days. Beyond those things, though, when I stop to think about it, there aren’t many things I can point to that created dramatic change in my daily life. And even the build-up to graduations and childbirth were gradual, so I can’t really say that any of those things came all at once.
So why is it that when I fantasize about a particular writing project or personal milestone, I expect things to change radically for me? When I finished my first manuscript I felt an enormous sense of accomplishment – the culmination of three years of research and two years of writing and re-writing. But the next morning, I still got up, made breakfast for the girls, had my latte and drove them to school. Even if I had sold the manuscript, my life wouldn’t have become unrecognizably altered.
I have a few friends who successfully published their work in the last year and while I was tremendously pleased for them and a tiny bit jealous, I have to admit that their lives are still essentially the same as they were before. Yes, maybe they are getting more exposure in the literary world. Yes, I suspect they spend some portion of each and every day selling or marketing or talking about their writing. But when it comes down to it, the most basic parts of their lives are still the same – raising children, finding time for self-care (or not), struggling to write new material. So where is that Shangri-La? That, “Oh. My. God. I’m famous. I have ‘arrived.’ I am [fill in the blank]!”
It doesn’t exist. That is truly the exception. If it even happens. Because I suspect that even those folks who become famous overnight or win a trillion dollars in the lottery ultimately revert back to who they really are. If you loved junk food and reality TV before you were elected governor of your state, you might move to the mansion the day of your inauguration, but I won’t give you long before the cupboards are full of cheesy poofs and Oreos and someone has set the DVR to catch “Survivor.”
Much like the lesson I learned from looking back on 2011 with Eve and Lola, I am reminded that it is the daily things we do that add up. Those moments where we are truly ourselves, doing what we do best without pretense or expectation determine the path our lives take.
Call it a “Duh” moment. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t qualify as an “Aha.”

Looking Back on the Year


Since coming back home from my in-laws’ as the holiday season winds down, I’ve been feeling a little down. The stress of packing fourteen people (seven adults and seven children) into a small space for a week with dreary, cold weather and lots of opinions on parenting and cooking and politics and everything in-between has caught up with me. We had a lovely time with these amazing individuals, but after a few days of rubbing up against each other, things get a little chafed and it was time to head for home. For a person like me who tends to be very introspective, the tendency to self-judge and second guess becomes overwhelming. Unfortunately, we came home to a very sick hamster (Lola’s) who was valiantly fighting off a bacterial infection and lost the battle yesterday. We are all very sad to lose this adorable, feisty member of the family and, as grief comes in waves, at any time of the day one of us can be found in tears over her loss.

As the sun rose today and I contemplated the gathering we will have tomorrow to welcome the new year, Bubba recognized my mood and strongly encouraged me to head to yoga. I did, and struggled a bit to stay “on my mat” in mind and body during the 90 minutes, but now, 90 minutes after class, I’m feeling somewhat more centered. I gathered the girls at the kitchen table to review our year a bit and was astonished to discover how quickly we amassed a pretty impressive list of things we have done in the past twelve months. In no particular order, here goes:
Eve: successfully learned to manage her 6th grade schedule
survived (and thrived at) her first sleepaway camp
had her first official babysitting job
cooked an entire dinner for the family (with significant help from Lola)
Turned 12
Broke her first bone
Played on her first basketball team and loved it
Did the dinner dishes for an entire month by herself
Went on her first class camping trip
Learned to sail with her classmates
Lola: started skateboarding lessons
survived (and thrived at) her first sleepaway camp
played her first season of lacrosse (and kicked butt)
did all of the laundry for an entire month by herself
cooked an entire dinner for the family with her sister
started a recycling education project in her classroom
lost her last baby tooth
got braces
Both girls: chicken-sat for the neighbors
went to the San Diego Zoo for the first time
visited Joshua Tree National Park for the first time (me, too!)
took paddleboarding lessons (me, too!)
steered a boat in the Pacific Ocean
saw a stingray off the coast of Maui (me, too!)
learned to play beach volleyball in Santa Barbara
kayaked in Lake Wenatchee
I managed to get published on line in BuddhaChick Magazine, created a relationship with BlogHer that increased my readership, took approximately 60 yoga classes, learned to make good gluten-free baguettes, took my first trip with Bubba away from the kids, turned 40 and saw U2 in concert. Bubba’s company grew, he participated in his first camp singalong, he traveled to some new places and made new friends and became more beloved to each and every one of us.
Looking over the list we managed to put together in a few short minutes began restoring my faith in hope. I had Lola grab a fresh sheet of paper so we could scratch out some predictions for 2012 and we were quickly laughing and fantasizing. I’ve decided to leave both lists out so we can add to them throughout the day as inspiration or memory arises. Maybe it was the yoga. Maybe it was finally settling back in at home. Maybe I’m feeling better because the sadness is running its course. I don’t know, but I am happy that the simple act of looking back on our year for a few moments had such a profound effect on my mood.
I am struck by the notion that most of the things on this list were not earth-shattering. Most of them were not things we specifically set out to do. They were simply things that happened in the course of our lives, moving along through space and time the best way we know how, loving each other and sticking to the values we hold most dear. I hope that a year from now I can look back again and be amazed at the adventures each of us have had, together and individually.
Here’s to 2012 and all it brings.

Life Lessons with Lola


On the way to school yesterday, Lola started complaining about her loose molar. She has one left to lose (yes, she is only nine, but both of my children were precocious about getting and losing teeth) and it is at that hanging-by-a-thread point that is making her nuts.

Eve used to love having wiggly teeth. She would push them back and forth, back and forth with her tongue and her finger, working it and working it to see just how precariously she could get it to cling before it fell out. She delighted in disgusting friends and family by pushing the tooth until it was perpendicular to the others in her mouth.
Lola was terrified of losing teeth. And I didn’t help. Her first tooth began coming loose when she was five and in Kindergarten. Every day she would complain that it bugged her to eat with it like that and at bedtime she would cry in fear that it would come free in her sleep and she would swallow it or choke on it. Day by day it got more and more loose but she was afraid to touch it or let anyone else touch it for fear that it would rip violently from her mouth and she would bleed to death. Despite Eve’s repeated efforts to calm her by telling her it didn’t hurt to lose a tooth and my lectures about it being totally normal, Lola became increasingly hysterical as the days wore on.
One afternoon as I passed by the playground where Lola was having recess with her class (I worked in the office at the Montessori school), Lola ran to the chain-link fence and called to me. When I walked over to her, she burst in to tears and told me she was so worried about losing this tooth. I was frustrated and, frankly, done hearing about this damn tooth, so I asked her to open up and show me. As soon as she opened her mouth to its widest point I reached my thumb and index finger through the fence and into her mouth, grabbed the tooth and pulled it out. [It was only holding on by a thread, trust me, it didn’t even bleed.] She jerked away from the fence, her eyes wide in horror and I presented the tooth to her.
“Here you go. Now you don’t have to worry about it anymore, honey.”
I know it was mean. But, honestly, after all of the drama we’d had for over a week about this damn thing, I was ready to show her that it wasn’t such a big deal after all.
She never let me see a wiggly tooth again unless we were separated by a wide table or an entire room. I can’t say that I blame her.
So fast forward four years and I’m terribly relieved she only has one more to lose. I asked her if she still feels as frightened now when she loses a tooth as she did back then.
“Not really, but you have to admit, Mom, the way you talk about it is pretty scary.”
Huh? Turns out she’s right. To a kid, “losing” something is always bad. Losing your favorite toy. Losing your mittens at school. Losing your TV privileges. And so when we say to a kid that they are going to lose a tooth, it doesn’t sound natural. It sounds scary.
“You’re right, Lola! I never thought about that. How else could we say it?”
“I don’t know, Mom. Telling a kid their tooth is going to fall out isn’t much better. Nobody wants to have some part of their body ‘fall out.'”
She’s right. And, ironically enough, by the time you are able to truly understand that losing a tooth is an exception to the rule that losing things is bad, losing a tooth actually would be a bad thing.
So here’s to Lola’s last baby tooth “leaving the nest.”

Lola’s Holiday Heartbreak (and Recovery)


Let me start by saying that Lola, my nine-year-old, has a heart of gold. A heart the size of Texas that is solid gold. She is very emotionally sensitive and idealistic and sometimes this means her heart gets broken. It’s hard to watch. It is even harder to watch when I know it’s my fault (or Bubba’s – in this case, it was Bubba’s fault).

Lola has always believed in Santa Claus. Even after discovering that her older cousins and her older sister thought it was all a hoax, Lola maintained that they were crazy. From time to time she would come to me and ask how to counter their arguments (or taunting), and I could see that she so desperately wanted to believe in Santa that I would help her out. And maybe I was setting her up. But there is something magical about the notion that there exists someone out there in the world who loves you just because you are a kid. Someone that doesn’t have to love you (they aren’t your family, after all), but who, once a year, acknowledges the mystery and wonder that is you and surprises you with some of your heart’s desires. Just because. And when you put it in that context, who wouldn’t want to believe in that?
Bubba and I played our part – wrapping gifts from Santa in special wrapping paper that didn’t match our family gifts and using our left hands to write out the names in case the kids scrutinized the handwriting. We even colluded with our extended family to share wrapping paper and buy the same kinds of treats for the stockings when we were planning on sharing Christmas morning with them. I will admit that we indulged a bit in the coercion of “Santa is watching” for the last few weeks before the holidays, but it was mostly joking. Or so I thought. But it’s tricky to know how kids interpret things unless they talk about it. Or write to Santa.
Lola’s letter to St. Nick last year went something like this:
“Dear Santa,
I do not think I deserve any presents this year. I’ve tried to be nice this year. But I
can’t do it. But if you think I deserve it, I want a Zune.
Love, Lola
P.S. Never quit your job.”
I started out chuckling when I read this letter, but quickly got a lump in my throat. Poor dear. Bubba was also charmed by the note and decided that we ought to keep this letter indefinitely. Even if we never showed it to her, it was a priceless keepsake. So it remained tucked in his desk, safely inside the envelope addressed by Lola herself, until Lola discovered it this July.
Catastrophe.
I never would have imagined how betrayed she would feel. She was mortified, both because she felt duped by her own parents (and stupid in the face of her cousins’ teasing the last two years), and because of the implication. No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.
Bubba and I felt horrible. She cried for a long time and my only consolation was that it was the middle of summer and Santa’s demise wasn’t associated with Christmas.
Fast forward to December and I began wondering how she would handle the notion as the holiday approached. When I picked her up from school last Wednesday and inquired about her day, she told me her teachers had asked her to write a Christmas story to share with the younger kids in class. (Lola attends a mixed-age Montessori school and her classroom has kids in grades 1-4. She is the oldest.)
“So I wrote this story about this kid who asked for a toy boat and a scooter from Santa Claus and, since her parents didn’t believe in Santa, they bought the things for her. But when Christmas morning came, the little girl got two boats and two scooters. The parents got into a fight later because they each accused the other one of buying the gifts but it turns out Santa did it. They still didn’t believe it, but their daughter decided to give one boat and one scooter to the homeless shelter and she felt great. The next year, the same thing happened and the girl got two of what she asked for and gave half away. The next year, the parents both stayed up to spy on each other and catch the other one in the act, but they caught Santa instead. They were surprised and talked about not getting the little girl something from then on, but finally decided she had so much fun giving away half of her presents that they would just keep doing it. And Santa was happy, too.”
Huh. I think she’s recovered the spirit of the holiday. Something tells me she’ll be just fine. Santa lives on in Lola’s spirit, believe it or not.

Social Media and Our Tween


We have rules when it comes to technology. Unfortunately, sometimes just knowing that leads to a bit of complacency on our part (the parents, I mean). And other times, even those limits aren’t enough to spare us some lessons.

Let me just say that we have two daughters, ages 9 and 12. We have one computer that lives in the kitchen where I spend most of my time, at least when the girls are home. There are parental controls on the computer, but they honestly aren’t clever enough to let the girls use certain sites that are perfectly safe, so from time to time I let them use my logon so they can get around the really dorky restrictions. But only when I’m in the kitchen.

Both girls have their own iTouch devices with a free texting app. Lola, my 9 year old, doesn’t have any other friends who have the ability to text, so she’s pretty much out of luck but it doesn’t seem to bother her. She’d rather play iPhyzzle or Angry Birds, anyway. Eve, the 12 year old, texts her friends all the time and knows that either Bubba or I will perform surprise spot-checks to read text messages on a whim. Neither of the girls is allowed to have their iTouch upstairs without express permission since we have wi-fi at home and these devices can let them surf the ‘net. At night, the iTouches live in the “technology box” on the kitchen counter.

So, yeah, I feel fairly secure.
Until now.

Yesterday I had to run downtown to get the dog from the groomer. Both girls had just arrived home from school and Lola was changing for basketball practice. I decided to leave the girls at home to have a snack while I went out to get the dog – I would be gone for 20 minutes, maximum. The rules were this: no screen time (TV, computer, iTouch), no sweets. I was fairly certain that if either of those rules was violated, one of the girls would rat the other one out. As I was opening the garage door, Eve called out, “Mom, can I just check my email really quick? D was supposed to email me about the assignment we’re working on.”

I gave her permission to check her email. But only that. Again, Lola would take immense pleasure in throwing Eve under the bus if she strayed.

So imagine my surprise when, two hours later, Bubba calls and tells me that Eve has joined some social networking site. HUH? When? How?

It turns out that, while checking her email, Eve discovered a message from one of her school friends inviting her to join this group where they can all socialize. Seeing the email addresses of several other classmates, Eve clicks on the link to this site. She swears she didn’t go so far as to sign up, but somehow as soon as she enters the site, her entire email contact list is snagged by this site and emails go out to everyone she knows, telling them she has just joined this site (Zorpia.com) and would they like to, too?

Bubba and I have some questions about whether or not Eve signed up for the site, but that’s not the point. The point for us is that Eve didn’t really understand the implications of what she was doing. Bubba sat with her and showed her around the site, pointing out the advertisements for “Find Hot Local Singles” and “Work from Home” scams. He explained that there are many of these kinds of sites around who use you for your email contact list and are not safe places for kids to build profiles.

Ultimately I am grateful that this happened, if only so that we could refine our guidelines for the girls.
First of all, if you go to a site that asks for your entire birthdate, month/day/year, that’s a red flag.
If, upon determining that you are a minor, it doesn’t tell you to get parental permission, that’s a red flag. (The Terms of Service for this particular site says in teeny tiny letters that you have to be 16 to sign up, but even after Eve’s birth year was entered, it didn’t flag this or disable her account – hmmmm.)
If part of the registration process asks you what your sexual orientation is, that’s a red flag.
If the site offers, as part of its main objectives, matches or dates or connections with people you don’t already know, that’s a red flag.
Before you join any site for any reason, check with Mom and Dad.

Thank goodness this site actually did SPAM all of Eve’s contacts, or Bubba and I might not have discovered what was going on. It’s questionable whether Eve would have actually had the opportunity to use this site anyway, given that the computer is in the kitchen, but I wonder how many of Eve’s classmates have successfully created profiles on this site and opened themselves up to predators of all kinds.

My Anti-Multitasking Experiment


Thank goodness for AJ Jacobs. This is a man who knows how to write for attention-defunct brains. His chapters are short and concise and sprinkled throughout with humor (to keep my monkey mind on task), and I can sit down to read one and complete it in a relatively short time, limiting the amount of interruptions, both external (“Mom! I need my jeans!”) and internal (I probably ought to throw that load of laundry in pretty soon.)

He does all of this, in many cases backed up by research that he explains in a simple, digestible way.
When I was reading My Life as an Experiment on my recent vacation, I was struck by one chapter in particular where Jacobs spends thirty days avoiding multitasking. Like most of us in Western societies with access to a multitude of technological toys and the perception that we need to be PRODUCTIVE above all else, he noticed that he had become increasingly unable to do anything with his full attention. I could give you examples, but I suspect many of you are lowering your heads right now under the weight of your own realizations. He did some digging and discovered that there is more than one research study showing that multitasking is, in all reality, much less efficient and more time consuming than simply doing one thing at a time. It also tends to split our attention to the point where we don’t produce quality work like we would if we were single-minded. Over time, multitasking erodes our cognitive abilities to the point where our attention spans become pathetic little fleas, jumping from one side of the dog’s rump to the other to find a tasty meal. Yikes!
I thoroughly enjoyed the chapter describing Jacobs’ attempts to eliminate multitasking in his own life and decided to try it on my own. Disclaimer: I decided this while on vacation – away from home without the normal tasks of cooking meals, keeping house, driving kids to and from school and other activities, etc. I suspect it wouldn’t have seemed nearly as possible an undertaking if I hadn’t been lying near the pool in the sunshine when I decided this…
Upon arriving home, I began. For ten days I resisted efforts to empty the dishwasher while making my latte, check Facebook or email while writing a blog post or a book review, help Lola rehearse her lines for an upcoming play while folding laundry and watching the Oregon Ducks play football. It was hard. Really hard.
But I learned some valuable things.
1. When I multitask, I often start 57 things and only ever finish about 20 of them in a day. I have this frantic perception that if I don’t at least start something RIGHT NOW that I’ll forget I wanted to do it and it will be lost to the ether. When I explore that notion, I realize that if I forget I wanted to do it, it probably wasn’t all that valuable a task in the first place and, it doesn’t much matter that I started it if I don’t ever finish the damn thing.
2. The more balls I have in the air, the more I have to worry about one dropping. It turns out that only doing one thing at a time is really calming. When I’m writing a book review and force myself to trust that All of Those Other Tasks Who Shall Not Be Named will wait, some part of my brain is given permission to shut down and rest for a bit. And that book review or blog post or letter to a teacher gets written much more quickly.
3. When I practice not multitasking with people (typing an email while I’m on the phone with my mother, playing a board game with Lola while helping Eve with homework, etc), they feel good. I can honestly say that, while it was terrifically challenging, using this tactic with Eve on her most recent homework project contributed to our ultimate success in completing it.
It occurred to me yesterday that multitasking is overkill. When I think about it, our bodies are already working really hard on several fronts simultaneously – pumping blood, creating white blood cells to knock off that cold virus we picked up from our kids, taking in visual information and processing it, moving our bodies through space, breathing, the list goes on… To ask them to do more than that is cruel and unusual punishment.
My single-mindedness has fallen off a bit of late. Old habits die hard, I guess, and Bubba has been out of town a lot lately. But when I recall the feeling of utter calm that came over me when I asked myself to do only one thing at a time, I am motivated to continue striving to get better at it.

6th Grade Homework = Migraine + Connection

As I sit here writing this, I have a splitting headache that has so far not responded to twice the recommended dose of Advil and I am sporting a grin a mile wide. Yes, you read that right.

I am sporting a grin a mile wide after a Sunday night marathon homework session with Eve. No, she didn’t save all of it for the last minute – just the most complex stuff. And normally, despite the fact that the subject was Science and that is generally my forte, I would have asked Bubba to step in for me, but he is out of town for the next few days, so I was it. Whether we liked it or not.
Eve and I have always had a bit of difficulty doing homework together. I generally chalk it up to the fact that we are two peas in a pod. Twins separated by three decades. Ex-act-ly a-like. Eve starts out with a chip on her shoulder if she is forced to ask me for help with anything. She is fiercely independent, a perfectionist, a control freak and stubborn. She quickly gets defensive and degenerates into high-pitched squeals of indignance if I don’t understand precisely what she needs from me on the first explanation. God forbid I ask to see the directions or her notes from class. Bubba? He can joke with her, sit for hours and puzzle over something, or just tell her to suck it up and dig in and she smiles sweetly and follows his lead. It used to drive me nuts. Until I remembered how I felt about my mother when I was Eve’s age. Until I read The Four Agreements and learned how to not take it personally.
So Eve and I, we are a bit gunshy about doing homework together. But tonight there was no choice. Bubba was away and this assignment is due tomorrow morning. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried. But I swore not to let it show.
As Eve began explaining the assignment to me, my inner self let out a colossal groan. She was supposed to draw 3-dimensional schematics for an invention she would craft using pulleys, gears or levers.
Permit me to digress for a moment. There are a few things that I absolutely cannot do. Things I used to struggle with but eventually came to terms with the fact that I am incapable of doing. Things I have “traded” in my own mind for other things that I am oddly accomplished at. Fortunately, I have managed to structure my life in order that I don’t have to do any of these things. They are (in no particular order):
1. Tying a knot in a balloon. I don’t care what you say – you cannot teach me to do it. Been there, tried that, can’t do it. Won’t even try anymore. Not important.
2. Iron an oxford style shirt. You know, with the collar and buttons and plackets and all that. Again, no interest. Tried a million times.
3. Visualize things in three dimensions in my mind. Nope, can’t do it. Took Organic Chemistry in college and had to purchase a set of Tinker Toys in order to put the molecules together and draw them on paper. My brain simply will not wrap around imagining things in 3-D when they are described to me or rendered in 2-D on paper. I can’t manage it. At some point my brain simply shuts down during the process of trying.
And now here, I had to help Eve visualize her invention in 3-D and draw it to scale in each of its different perspectives so that her teacher could fully understand it and so that Eve can build it out of foam core according to those drawings.
Hold.
The.
Phone.
I will confess that at one point I had to go get a toilet paper roll and some ribbon to use as props so I could “see” it.
I will also say that about 20 minutes in, Eve was flat on the floor in my closet sobbing and squealing like a pregnant potbellied pig, certain that we couldn’t do this.
Normally this is the point where I call Bubba in.
Instead, I dug deep, stayed calm and came at it from another angle.
Somehow, I managed to get her back on track and she responded.
Somehow, when we thought we were done and checked the assignment sheet only to discover that we needed two more drawings, of the individual components to scale, I was able to remind her of how far we had come and help her see that the finish line wasn’t that far off.
Somehow, I found myself having fun.
As I played cheerleader from across the kitchen where I was putting dinner together and reminding Lola to tuck her completed homework away in her backpack, I suddenly realized I was enjoying this. Far from feeling frantic and unmoored, I was the picture of calm, pureeing ingredients for soup in the food processor while reminding Eve of the scale and fixing her compass when the lead fell out. No yelling. No reprimands. No whining about “too much homework” or “this is too hard.” We were working it out. We had managed to get past the defensiveness and blaming, the intractable positions in our opposite corners, and get it done.
At one point it seemed that all was lost. There was one more component of the project that seemed insurmountable at dinnertime on a Sunday night. And then it happened. I thought outside the box. I lived up to the nickname some of my former co-workers gave me one day: “Queen of the Workaround.” Not cheating. Not even a shortcut. But a way to stick our tongues out at that brick wall, turn on our heels and walk right around the damn thing without even breaking a sweat.
As Eve finished packing her now completed homework away I told her how proud I was that she stuck it out and finished. She walked over to me, wrapped her arms around me and gave me the most genuine hug I’ve had from her since she was a toddler. Resting her head on my heart, she snuggled in tight and murmured, “I love you. Thank you, Mom.”
So, yeah. I’m grinning like a fool. Headache and all.

Curriculum Night


… at Eve’s middle school. Those words are enough to strike fear (or frustration or boredom or eye-rolling) into most adults I know. One friend, confiding to me that she wasn’t going to her daughter’s Curriculum Night, explained that it is essentially an open house where the parents travel from room to room, following the path that their child takes during the day. Not much time for in-depth conversations with teachers or parents of other students. Not all that illuminating.

So why did I bend over backwards to go? Because Eve’s school is different than any other school I’ve ever encountered. For examples of how, you can read this which has two other examples embedded within it. Suffice it to say that I LOVE THIS SCHOOL. So I was interested in what this year would look like for Eve and I moved Heaven and Earth to make sure I could get there.
And while I fully expected a happy ending, I still managed to be surprised at the depth of the presentation. Eve’s 6th grade team has got it together! They have designed a curriculum that is integrated across all subjects (yes, music, art, physical education, math, humanities and science included) and speaks to the developmental phase that these girls are in right now. They have taken into account the brain research that shows how 11 and 12 year old girls’ brains work, what they are interested in (themselves, mostly), and how best to engage them in the learning process. Each of these instructors stood up and talked about how excited they are about what they are charged with teaching to the girls this year and how important it is that each and every one of the students feels connected and supported and empowered within this community.
Now I understand that cynics’ eyes are rolling at this point. Rhetoric. I’ll believe it when I see it. But let me tell you that I do believe it. Because I’ve seen it. Last Thursday, the entire class embarked on a camping trip that was designed for team building. The girls did a ROPES course, rock climbed, and challenged each other and themselves physically, emotionally and mentally, sharing information about their hopes and fears for this school year. Last year, the 5th graders in Eve’s class did similar exercises and came together so solidly as a group that when spring basketball signups rolled around, despite the fact that only two of the girls in the class had ever played basketball before, nearly the entire class went out for the team. Despite the fact that they looked more like the Harlem Globetrotters after a couple of bottles of tequila out there on the court, nobody worried about looking silly. They were simply a group of girls having fun playing together. As. A. Team. Let me repeat that: 5th-grade girls not worried about other girls making fun of them for looking silly. Because they trusted each other.
This school year is designed to be all about the girls. Because they are all about themselves right now. The first third of the year is spent exploring how they got to this point. In Art, they are looking at aboriginal art, basic techniques and building blocks. The Humanities teacher has them reading the book “Nation” by Terry Pratchett in an effort to get them to understand society-building. The Music teacher is exploring rhythm and the Science teacher has them building simple machines out of Lego blocks. The Math teacher is making sure everyone has basic skills in mathematical operations and the PE teacher is helping them tell their own stories, physically and verbally. How did I get here? To this point?
The second third of the year asks “Who am I?” Again, each teacher has his or her own way of exploring that question with the girls. For example, the girls will be sketching self-portraits in Art and breaking down the human body into operational systems (digestion, circulation, etc.) in Science.
The last portion of their studies focuses on development. Where are we going from here? They will all work together toward the end of the year for their final culmination ceremony which is a three day bike ride and camping trip on a nearby island. They will push themselves farther emotionally and physically than they ever thought they could, all while using simple machines (bicycles), examining this tribe they have created over the past nine months, and feeling supported.
I caught up with one new parent on our way out last night and she turned to me and exclaimed, “The teachers are all so dynamic! So different from my middle school experience. I wish I could go back to school like this!” I couldn’t agree more. I wish every child had the opportunity to be a part of an educational experience like this. I love that Eve’s school supports a diverse array of families through scholarships and opens up to kids who wouldn’t otherwise get this opportunity, but it still isn’t enough. Until we as a society begin demanding this kind of thoughtful, deliberate approach to education, involving the teachers in curriculum creation that excites them and empowers them and giving them the flexibility to utilize things like brain research and outside-the-box thinking, most kids won’t ever experience this kind of education. I feel pretty damn lucky that Eve and Lola will and I can only hope that they will find a way to work toward making sure more kids get it, too.