Apparently I Was Wrong
You know, I thought the epic three year old tantrum would be easier to endure from an actual three year old.
Yeah, not so much. Turns out it’s just as irritating when the irrationality is completely age appropriate.
She’s Like The Energizer Bunny. But Louder.
Let’s just say I’m feeling landismom’s pain tonight.
Diva Girl’s always been a wee bit prone to the dramatic side of life, but I swear, the terrible twos had nothing on the awful eights. A three hour, wide ranging tantrum that started with her math homework and ended with me physically carrying her up the ladder to her loft bed.
Or not.
All the Cool Kids (Like Eden and Thordora) Are Doing It
Lets101 - Free Online Dating
Pretty. Hmmm…I suppose so. I mean, I certainly haven’t been severely beaten by the ugly stick or anything. And I do “cute” quite well–embarrassing, actually, given my age. But seriously, is it really going to say “ugly”?
Smart. Well, yes. But again, smart enough to realize that the gateway quiz is unlikely to entice me into joining by telling me I’m a blithering idiot.
Loves to dress up. Actually, I do. Not that you’d know it by my jeans (not of the “mom” variety) and a tee shirt uniform, but I love to dress up. Clothing is costume to me, and I will dress according to the role I’m playing that day. Sadly, the role is all too often “mom of 2,” hence the aformentioned jeans and a tee shirt.
Love to bust. Hunh? I don’t even know what this means. But I’m pretty sure it’s not talking about Bust magazine. Which I do, in fact, love.
Easily bored. What were we talking about again?
Intelligent. Is different that smart how, exactly?
Fussy. No, you can find her here (and thank her for this post, because if it weren’t for NaBloPoMo related writer’s block, I wouldn’t be subjecting us all to this.)
Seldom Shows Emotions. Uh, no. They must have some other capricorn in mind. I’m pretty sure that The Man I Didn’t Marry is choking reading that description of me;I am many things, but non-emotive does not tend to be one of them.
Family Oriented. I live a whole 2 blocks from the house I grew up in. A house where my parents still live. And I can name all of my aunts and uncles and every one of my 50+ cousins on my dad’s side. Plus quite a few of their kids.
Takes Time To Recover When Hurt. Ow. Ow. Owowowowow.
Ow.
Sensitive. Ow. I cry at movies. But if you tell anyone I’ll deny it.
Ow.
Down To Earth. I don’t know about that. I’m rarely practical if there’s an opportunity for a flight of fancy at hand. Unless there’s a crisis. Then I’m pretty good with the down to earth.
Stubborn. oh yeah. That one’s me to a fault. I mean, I’m still here posting, right?
Loves Being In A Long Relationship. Does it count if it’s with myself?
Ow.
Deadlines + Authority Issues = Terrible Writer’s Block.
Actually, it’s more of an ennui. I have things to write about, things I’d like to say, incidents that I think would make interesting and entertaining blog posts, but I just don’t feel like writing them. I mean, I want to write them. But I don’t.
I have a confession to make: I hate NaBloPoMo.
The idea that I have to post is just sucking all the joy out of the experience for me. Before it started, I was posting nearly every day anyway, and doing it gleefully. Since it’s become an obligation, however, I find I’m actually kinda starting to resent this little “write post” screen. I hate getting to the end of the day and feeling like I have to post something. It feels like I’m back in University staring down 4 different essays and a sudden desire to move the furniture around and clean behind the fridge, right down to the fact that it’s November.
Ironically, it’s that university deja vu that’s keeping me going. Back then, I never did play by the rules, and I never completed an assignment in the required amount of time. It’s pathetic, really. I know the mature thing to do would be to cry “uncle.” To throw in the keyboard and go back to posting only when I feel like it. But it also feel like bailing on NaBloPoMo now feels like I’d be giving in to the self fulfilling prophecy of being unable to meet a deadline.
So, I’m soldiering on. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though; let’s just hope the rest of November goes by quickly.
I miss my blog.
Old Home Week
It seems to be one of those weeks when your past and your present overlap, giving you new insights into yourself and your own life in the process. I guess the odds on that are increased when you’re a substitute teacher in the town where you grew up, but it’s still a bit odd to keep running into these people. Tuesday it was a former student; today it’s an old teacher who has me reexamining my perceptions.
Everyone has had at least one of those teachers who really stand out–who, for whatever reason, make such an impression that their memory stays with you long after you’ve left your school days behind you. Mr. Stracuzzi was one of these–a quirky looking man with an odd name and an intellect ill suited to highschool kids, he probably would have stood out even without the antics that defined his tenure. I don’t think anyone who had Mr. Stracuzzi for Grade 11 English ever forgot the experience.
When I think back on high school (an exercise I generally try to avoid at all costs), I think of Grade 11 English as “My Lost Year” because I really couldn’t tell you what I learned semester.I remember the class vividly–I remember a brutally boring novel told from the perspective of a bird (I never read it), a seemingly endless epic poem that sucked every bit of excitement out of the story of the Titanic (I read about half of it), and not being aware that Lady Macbeth had died (you do the math)–but I don’t remember actually learning anything. What I do remember is the out of control chaos that was Mr. Stracuzzi’s room. I remember the nervous tick (um, like, you know) that punctuated his speech to such an extent–even when reading aloud–that we used to bet on the number of utterances per class, the game we made out of seeing how long we could keep him going defining a string of words, and, my personal favourite, The All Annoying Noise Band. We weren’t quite as bad as the other class, who used to turn out the lights and mug him for his chalk when he walked in, but we were close.
As you’ve probably guessed, Mr. Stracuzzi was no Mr. Chips. Well, maybe Mr. Chips in the early years would be a better description, since he never had time to grow into a beloved eccentric old teacher; in the year and a half he was at my high school, he earned a solid reputation as the least respected teacher ever. Which is saying something given that our principal was getting arrested for hanging out in public washrooms long before George Michael and Larry Craig made it cool, another English teacher was dating a student, the head of the History Department was having a “clandestine” affair with the Girls Gym teacher that everyone in school knew about, and the French teacher was a flamboyantly gay man long before that became socially acceptable.
When Mr. Stracuzzi was fired over Christmas break in his third semester we all thought that he’d left teaching forever. If we’d thought of him as real person at all, that is, and not as a caricature. He didn’t though; apparently he’s spent the last twenty years as a substitute teacher. As I found out today, when I ran into him in the staffroom of the school where we were both supplying.
I have to confess I was shocked, and not just because I’d never expected to be haunted by this particular ghost from my misspent youth. My first thought was to rather arrogantly wonder, “If he couldn’t hack it as a regular teacher (and I should know), how on earth can he function as a sub?” Colouring that surprise was a sense of embarrassment because, even though I never expected to ever meet Mr. Stracuzzi again, I’ve thought about him more than once since I became a teacher myself. I’ve always regretted the way we treated him; even if the books were awful, even though he completely destroyed Macbeth, we had no right to treat Mr. Stracuzzi with such a total lack of respect, or to steal his dignity at every opportunity.
I could have just kept my head down and pretended that I didn’t know him. I’ve changed a lot since I was 16 and I doubt he would have recognized me. Instead, I gathered up my courage and apologized for my teenage self. It was strange and more than a little bit awkward, dredging up the sins of the past, but in the end I was glad that I’d done it–and not just because confession was good for my Catholic soul.
In stepping out of my caricatured perception of Mr. Stracuzzi, the teacher for whom I’d had neither empathy or respect, I got to meet John, a colleague for whom I have both. Sitting next to him in the staffroom was an incredible eyeopener as I discovered that this man–the butt of so many of our jokes–has a sly wit and a quick sense of humour. It was a bit of a headspin to realize that the man who had so often bored me to tears (and new heights in bad classroom behaviour) was actually interesting. I liked talking to him. In fact, I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to do so again.
Now, that’s something I never would have predicted in a million years–wanting to be in the same room as Mr. Stracuzzi. Maybe he did grow into a slightly quirkier Mr. Chips after all.
Just When You Thought Spam Couldn’t Be More Offensive
“We are a couple in our 30s looking for a baby to call our own. If you know of anyone looking for a home for their child, contact me at…”
I see ads like this from time to time, in the backs of magazines or sometimes in the classifieds section of the campus newspaper. I usually ignore them, save for a fleeting thought of how heartbreaking it must be to be reduced to running an ad in the want ads to complete your family. Today, however, I had not one ounce of sympathy to spare for the woman who wrote these words. I wasn’t indifferent, disinterested, and vaguely saddened when I came across this message; I was shocked, offended, and angry.
What’s so different about this ad? It was posted on a single mothers message board. Because of course a place where single moms gather to support each other as they raise their children alone is absolutely the best place to look for a new baby of your very own. Obviously, there must be a bunch to spare there, right?
This offends me on about 17 different levels. What’s most offensive about it though is that it’s not trying to be offensive. I’m sure that the woman who posted this is incredibly sincere and very probably a perfectly nice woman, albeit one with absolutely no sense of tact, common sense, or boundaries. Frankly, I find the whole idea that she thought it was appropriate or acceptable to solicit an adoption on a single mom messageboard mindboggling. How does one assume that invading an area meant for your diametrical opposite and then expecting them to not only welcome your presence but change their lifestyle to the benefit of yours is a good idea? It’s like going to a group of elimination communication devotees, offering them free diaper service, and expecting them to be genuinely enthusiastic about your offer.
There’s that same underlying assumption that we’re doing it all wrong. Coupled, of course, with the ever popular implication that we’re all a bunch of loose sluts. That we’ve gotten ourselves knocked up and now we’re looking for a way out of our troubles. It implies that our babies are disposable, that they’re a problem to be taken care of and she’s got the solution: Single moms have unwanted babies, infertile couples want babies, clearly it’s a win-win situation. It seems to say that single motherhood is a state to be avoided, and that we should be looking at alternatives to that state, even if that means not being mothers to our children at all. Of course, everyone would be so much better off this way–the baby would have two married parents, the married couple would finally be well on their way to nuclear status, and us? Well, we could go get on with our lives, of course, unencumbered by those pesky children that we didn’t really want anyway.
I realize that that seems like a fairly harsh judgment of a seemingly innocuous message, but there’s also context to consider here. This message not only appeared on a single mother’s messageboard, it appeared in response to this:
“I know that it has been done before and definately can be done and I know that it will NOT be easy by any means. Im just so afraid that I won’t be able to do it, that I’ll be miserable and lonely and depressed. Any feedback or similar stories or just anything would be a great help. I don’t know what to do.”
So, in response to a young woman seeking support and reassurance, this person offered to take her baby off her hands. If that’s not mercenary, I don’t know what is. Not to mention how insulting it is to every single mom who responded to this girl with support and encouragement.
I can’t even imagine the pain of infertility (no, seriously, I can’t. I mean, if I could, I certainly wouldn’t be writing this blog now would I?). It must be awful to so desperately want a child, and yet be denied that wish. And I would imagine that women like me, women who refuse to play by the rules, to things the “right” way, must seem like insult to injury. But that does not give women like this one the right to insult us, to use our safe place as a baby market, to negate everything about us in her quest to change this essential fact about herself.
We deal with those judgments every day. The questions about our “baby daddies,” the raised eyebrows when we confess our marital status–or, more specifically, our lack thereof–the assumptions that our lives must just be so. hard. without a husband to help us, that this can’t possibly be our choice…We don’t deserve to have that type of attitude, and the utter negation of our lifestyles that such a bald offer of adoption implies, brought to the place where we gather to seek support and share our stories with other women who “get it” any more than infertile women deserve to have their support networks tarnished by tactless questions about their family planning or an invaded by an army of single moms eager to hear about effective methods of birth control.
I…I mean SHE…had better get an A on this.
There are few homework assignments that inspire as much excitement in kids as The Collage. After all, what’s not to love about ripping up magazines and then gluing the resulting scraps of paper to something? That’s not homework; around here, that’s a rainy Saturday afternoon! So it’s no wonder that Diva Girl bounced off the bus this afternoon, filled with enthusiasm for her project.
At first, it seemed like a pretty straightforward affair: Create a monochromatic collage. I was even charmed by the colour Diva Girl had chosen to work with: Orange. Sure, it probably wasn’t the most common or popular colour palette in the magazines lying around the house, but I was sure we’d come up with enough pictures to fill the 8.5X11 piece of cardboard she’d been given.
Then came the catch. There’s always a catch. The pictures in the collage needed to represent “natural sources and stuff.” So, given her colour scheme, Diva Girl was essentially planning an homage to orange juice. Possibly with a nod to the carrot, and maybe even the pumpkin, if I happened to have any fall magazines lying around. Not that she realized that, of course. Wrapped up in the excitement that comes from actually being allowed to rip up the magazines, she attacked the project with abandon. Given that most of her supply were out of date fashion magazines (heaven forbid she sacrifice her beloved Chickadees to the project), she was actually doing pretty well. If you ignored that pesky “natural source and stuff” stipulation, that is.
Somehow I don’t think jumpsuits and swoopy capeythingies really fit the teacher’s definition of “natural source.” Although I suppose you could make the argument that cotton and wool would reasonably fall into that category. Which I actually did when it came to a pair of panties with a giant orange flower on the front. Flowers are epitome of nature, after all. And the leather purse totally falls into the category of “and stuff,” right? Using my rather loose definition of the assignment criteria–aided and abetted by my fourth grader’s fuzzy memory and failure to bring home an instruction sheet–we finally ended up with a fairly respectable pile of orange bits to glue to her sheet.
This is where the assignment got tough for me. I could see all of the pieces we’d assembled, how in helping her look for pictures I’d carefully guided her to a mix of different hues and textures within her required colour and how, with a little effort I could create a distinctive and visually stimulating masterpiece from these bits of glossy paper. It’s so easy to hover over a project like this. To, despite your best intentions, focus on the end product and take over the entire process in order to make sure it ends up being “perfect.”
So, maybe Diva Girl’s collage does look a bit better than it would have had I not been the one wielding the glue stick, but I don’t think it looks too much better. For the most part I managed to restrain myself and stick to sticking things where she told me to. And in doing so, I got a rather pleasant surprise: While the gluestick mastery required to meet her vision definitely was definitely beyond Diva Girl’s skill, she did, in fact, have a vision. I’d been expecting random bits of paper glued all over the page, and instead was presented with a fairly sophisticated collage along with a lecture about focal points and the importance of overlapping. Given her obvious understanding of the concepts in play and how frustrating I was finding it to stick those little bits down exactly right, I feel absolutely no remorse over doing this part for her. I just wasn’t up for that kind of meltdown tonight and if the price of avoiding it was gluey fingers and the stifling of my own creative vision, it was one I was willing to pay, especially since I got to learn something important in the process: My kid really doesn’t need me to get that “A” for her; she can manage it just fine all on her own.
A Textbook Student
One of the few mementos I have from the year I taught sixth grade is a collage that was made for me by one of my students. Long after the other bits and pieces of that year–the boxes of junior novels, the human body and solar system kits, the posters and the endless parade of apple themed geegaws and mugs–were packed away in my dad’s workshop, that frame still sits in a place of honour on my desk. In fact, I’m looking at it as I type this and thinking about the little girl–now 16 years old and soon to be a mother herself–who made it for me.
I’ll let you in on a pretty open secret here: Teachers tend to like some students more than others. We do try to be fair and to treat every child with dignity and respect, but the simple fact is that we’re human, and sometimes, we connect with kids on a deeper level and sometimes we don’t. So yeah, in bald terms, teachers have favourite students.
What makes a kid a favourite varies from teacher to teacher. For some, it’s the well behaved students, the leaders, and the brains. Not me though. I mean, I like having those kids in my class–they certainly make things easier–but they just don’t seem to have the same impact on me as the…shall we say less than perfect kids do. The ones who sit in the back row, plotting new and interesting ways to wreak havoc in the classroom, the ones who will never get an “A” but who will work harder than any other kid in the class to get that “C,” the troubled and the troublemakers, these are my kind of kids; these are the ones who will stay in my heart long after they’ve left my classroom.
“Kayla” was one of these students–one of the ones whose tough, “I don’t care” exterior protected a scared, vulnerable little girl who just wanted to be valued for who she was. I’d like to say it was a shock when I heard through the grapevine that she was pregnant, but it wasn’t. In fact, if I were being completely honest, it probably would have been more of a surprise if I’d learned that she’d managed to graduate from high school without a baby on her hip. I’m not casting aspersions on her character by saying that. I don’t think she’s a slut or a tramp. In fact, I think she’s a very sweet girl. But she’s also a textbook teen mom.
She’s got the single mom, the absent dad, the lower economic class and the poor school performance working against her–a combination that any social scientist (or teacher) can tell you spells trouble for teen girls looking for a place to fit in and meaning in their lives. When single motherhood is your norm, when you don’t have a particularly good baseline for romantic relationships, when you’ve got some serious rejection issues going on, when you don’t see much future beyond maybe making it to head cashier at the local Walmart, early motherhood doesn’t really seem like such a big deal. It can even seem glamourous or attractive–a way to declare your independence, an opportunity to make a new life for yourself, a chance at unconditional love…It’s not hard to see the allure.
I tell myself not to worry, that for all their superificial similarities–single moms, absent dads, poverty–The Ladies and Kayla are very different girls living very different lives, but I can’t help but wonder, when confronted with this living statistic, what the future holds for them. Will the differences–growing up with a single mother by choice, rather than circumstance, in an environment where paternal rejection is an abstract concept rather than a visceral reality, in a home where education and literacy are the norm–be enough to combat the stereotype? Will my daughters have enough in their lives that they won’t feel the need to have a baby to fill some hole, to make them feel whole?
I certainly hope so. Not because I don’t approve of Kayla’s choices, or feel that she’s disappointed anyone in having this baby. But I remember how alone I felt. How unprepared. And occasionally, how resentful of this new lifestyle that was so far removed from what my friends were doing–and I’d already had a chance to grow up and live a selfish life at that point. Mostly, I remember how hard it was to be on my own as a new mother at 26. I can’t even imagine how much harder it would be to negotiate that path at 16 but I do know it’s a life I wouldn’t wish for anyone’s daughter, let alone my own.
Who knew that the cure for tween angst was as simple as a strange bed?
It’s amazing the changes a night away from home can work on a child.
When Diva Girl left on Saturday it was only because my extreme patience and indulgence allowed her to pack up her brand new satin jammies inside her princess sleeping bag and head off into the great unknown. After a particularly tweenerific week week of obnoxious behaviour, she was lucky I let her out of her room at all, let alone to go to a party. Normally I wouldn’t have; I would have yanked that privilege faster than she could make a snotty remark. But I really didn’t want to do that this time, and not just because in doing so I would have been punishing myself at least as much as I was punishing her.
It may be making excuses for her, but I think a lot of last week’s drama and bad behaviour were brought about by nerves. She really, really wanted to go on this sleepover, but I think she was also really, really nervous about the idea of sleeping away from home with a bunch of people she didn’t really know. And, because she’s eight years old and Diva Girl, that ambivalence came through as attitude. So, in spite of her behaviour unbecoming of a sleepover (or really anything other than bread and water), I let her go.
By about the third phonecall home I was pretty confident that I’d been right on all counts. She did want to be there and she was having a blast, but she was also utterly overwhelmed by this new experience. Each time she called I tried to walk that line between understanding and encouragement. I didn’t want her to catch hold of my anxiety and feel like there was something she should be nervous about, but I didn’t want to dismiss her own anxiety, either. It was a tightrope walk made all the more complicated by the fact that, without a car, we were doing it without a net.
If she’d really needed me to I’d have brought her home, but quite honestly, there are few things I can think of that would be more inconvenient. I mean, I’m sure that that particular call sucks under any circumstances but when the midnight rescue involves getting the whole family dressed and into a cab, it’s just a whole new layer of suck. In the end, she probably slept better than I did, which is reassuring.
It was also reassuring when The Mom informed me that Diva Girl was quite possibly the best behaved girl there–the one who crashed out at 10 pm, oblivious to the threats and giggles that kept the other girls up well into the wee hours of the night. It’s always nice when you send your kid out into the world, hoping that they will be the person you know they can be, rather than the person you fear they will be, and they deliver on that promise. When I picked her up on Sunday morning, the nightmare Diva Girl of Saturday had been replaced by the charming, likeable Sabrina, and I couldn’t have been more pleased.
The spontaneous bear hug she greeted me with was repeated several times throughout the day, and there were also quite a few unprompted declarations of “you’re the best mommy ever!” and “I love you, Mommy!” It can’t last, of course, but I’ll admit that I’m enjoying it while it does. And wondering how soon I can send her on another sleepover, if this is what happens.
Oh, and on a related note, my evil plan seems to be working. The birthday girl received 3 Webkinz in addition to the one the one Diva Girl gave her. Bwa ha ha ha!
Lest We Forget
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae (1872-1918)