Literature and early/mid-century movies always have a special place reserved for the old lady odd couple. Apparently, my great grandma and great aunt were a real version of that for a decade or so. My great grandma was still working, which left my great aunt the role of primary housekeeper. My grandma tells a story of her mother (my great grandmother) coming home from work one evening, and after putting her things away and washing up, sitting down at the table for dinner. Halfway through the meal my great aunt, who had clearly been stewing the whole time, clattered her silverware onto her plate and said in a grand mixture of hurt dignity and sour disdain:
"You've been in this apartment for almost an hour and you haven't even noticed."
It was true, my great grandma hadn't noticed anything. She admitted it.
"The doorknobs," my great aunt declared while throwing down her napkin, "I spent the entire day washing and polishing all the doorknobs, and you didn't even say anything."
The way my grandma tells this story, channeling her mother who told it to her, is hilarious. The story is also rather common. It plays out in dozens of different ways all day long for all of us. We do things and hope that others will validate us. We have expectations of others and feel let down when those expectations aren't met. Leo Buscaglia (whom I LOVE -- I refuse to put it in past-tense although he has passed) wrote and talked a lot about the art of letting go of expectations that we place on others.
Advent Calendars leading up to Christmas are common. For the past three years we have done a "Service Advent Calendar" -- meaning we fill in a blank calendar with different service ideas for each day leading up to Christmas. I know. This blog is making it seem like we are just amazing little service elves... and we tell everybody all about it. The truth is, we do our services during December, then a day for each of the kids' birthdays and other than that we are terrible, myopic people who basically kick people in the shins when we walk past. Seriously.
Anyway, for our service today we decided to maybe save somebody from getting the flu this year. With a canister of disinfectant wipes we started on the top floor and did the doorknobs for each stairwell, the doorknobs on the laundry room door and the elevator buttons for the service elevators and main elevators. Then we moved down through the building floor by floor until we ended up on ours -- 102 doorknobs later. We will do the bottom half of the building next week.
The kids love love love it when we do secret service. Today it was our plan to move throughout the building stealthily. When we passed people in the hall we tried to look inconspicuous and we slowed or quickened our pace to avoid detection. All was well until floor 32.
"Oh, are you guys on this floor now?" Dolt! As we turned a corner a lady I've chatted with in the elevator was silently standing. Waiting. We thought she had gone into her apartment, but she did not. The three of us clearly looked guilty, which heightened the look of curiosity on her face. In a moment of panic I simply said that we had noticed the doorknobs never seemed to get cleaned, so we were doing a bit of cleaning.
Boy were my co-secret service agents ticked. I had to hear about it for another two floors-worth of doorknobs. While their inability to be flexible was irritating, overall I'm glad that they have an interest in doing things without getting credit. There was no, "I wonder if this person is going to thank me" going through their brains after their mission was complete.
Because the circumstances are vastly different, I'm not going to belabor the comparison between the kids' doorknob cleaning and that of their great-great-aunt's, but I will posit that Leo was right: when we do stuff simply to be helpful it frees us in a way that doing stuff with an expectation attached does not.
For the record, I'm totally taking after my great-aunt -- generally as a human, and as the kids' teacher. I'm symbolically clattering my utensils and throwing down my napkin all over the place. I'm going to work on it.
There are some Junior Ranger programs that can be completed at home. The Girl has been working super hard on her Web Ranger, and The Boy completed the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail program -- in fact, he's their newest Junior Ranger -- the patch just came in the mail.
We have gotten our mitts on some spelling programs that we will be hitting hard (it's actually kind of infuriating because I can ask them to spell something, and they can do so correctly, but then they start cranking out stuff like this and it's like: what? It's made me realize that we need to work on editing as much as spelling). BUT, when you list taking a chicken as a necessary item if hiking the Lewis and Clark trail (right after your asthma medication) because they can "lay eggs and eat incects"... well, then my guess is that conventional spelling doesn't play a huge role in your little world.
I read the literature about Lewis and Clark that came along in his packet: 8,000 miles? Three horrible weeks just to maneuver around some waterfalls? 28 months? Rancid food, horrible insects (Holy crap! I seriously just realized as I typed that that my kid is a freaking genius... Now, I get his answer... Chickens really are the answer... fresh eggs... eating the insects... Okay, I feel better about our future now...). Anyway, I went to an interesting discussion last week on note taking and how different types of "note taking" engage different parts of your brain, etc. So, while I was reading the literature out loud to the kiddos they "took notes" -- by drawing what they wanted.
I hate to complain about the elements right after thinking about what Sacajawea, the 16-year old, went through with that new baby... BUT, it was really cold today. Our physical education came down to us throwing a football around in the gym (Me to Judd the Red Chicken: "Never throw a ball at somebody's head." The Girl to me: "That's kind of funny, since you just hit me in the head... like two minutes ago... really hard..." Me to The Girl: "That was different. You should have caught it."). And then this:
Why, yes. Yes, those are castors for garbage cans. And yes, those castors are probably kicking up a nice little breeze full of shed skin and hair right into their faces... See, that's a gift from the public school system: once your kids have shared pencils and held hands with kids that have arrived via NYC public transportation, some things don't seem quite so gross... You know, statistically speaking, being as only one person died on the Lewis and Clark expedition, taking NYC public transportation is probably more hazardous. I'm just saying. Maybe we need to carry a chicken around...
Finally, my summer of smutty reading paid off. Pre-driving/being old enough to get a real job I spent the bulk of my summers babysitting. One such gig sired a particularly -- shall we say: steamy -- summer...
The kid was spoiled and the mom said that it was a-okay for her to spend her days watching Nickelodeon if that's what she wanted to do.
"Feel free to read any of these while you're sitting around," the mom said -- kicking a cardboard box. (Thereafter referred to as: the box of sin.)
Now, we aren't talking 50 shades of anything... not even like 10 shades of anything... Just a bunch of ridiculous "historic" romances (that, for the record, made the days go fast).
One of the books was The Key to Rebecca -- about espionage and the use of codes during WWII.
The other day after knitting, our favorite teacher asked if we had read the articles that had been in The Times about the carrier pigeon from WWII whose remains had been found in a chimney -- with a code still attached to his wee skeleton leg! Everything about this was so up the kids' respective alleys. We've read I-don't-know-how-much about the carrier pigeons, about the medals given to animals during the war (we even visited the memorial that's in London), etc. I mean -- the combination of animals (birds even!) with war history -- is right up there with peanut butter and chocolate.
She told us that there are two articles -- there had to be a followup because the code cannot be decrypted -- they think it might be one of those used during the war that required having a "key." And HERE is where my thorough background knowledge on such keys kicked in. If you're wondering what it feels like to tout yourself as an expert based on knowledge gained from a romance novel, I can tell you: kind of awesome. Kind of in the same way that the mom in So I Married an Axe Murderer is awesome when she refers to The Weekly World News as "the paper." That's a fact.
So today we read the two articles (here and here) -- from an actual paper -- and while the kiddos wrote up little summaries I used the BFG to create a code and write a note to them. They had to work together to figure out how to crack the code, and then I explained (because remember -- I'm an expert) how it was only possible because they knew the exact book -- the exact edition of the book -- to use.
Goes to show: no knowledge gained is ever wasted.
I'm sitting here in front of the screen yawning repeatedly even though it's considerably earlier than when I usually spew forth the daily post. Various trite sounding phrases appear in this white box and then I delete them because I am suspicious of them. I'm going to hand it over to the reader to come up with an opening phrase that works -- the theme we are working with is simple: sometimes something seems disappointing, but it can actually turn out for the best.
About a month ago I received an email from Judd the Red Chicken's friend's mom asking me if The Boy could come and celebrate her son's birthday. I felt that it would be nice for The Boy to support this friend and support this friendship, and so even though the day/time conflicted with some other obligations I handed the decision over to my kid. He chose to not shirk our pre-existing commitments. This wasn't the easiest decision, and to be honest, I wasn't even sure if it was the "right" decision.
Judd the Red Chicken came up with an alternative idea. Might we ask if his friend could miss a day of school to do our family tradition of a birthday day of service? Another idea was to ask if we could take him to Ellen's Stardust Diner. The Boy went there once with a friend of his and loved it. We know somebody (coincidentally, the very somebody who first taught us about the day of service idea) who sings there, so we thought maybe we could have a special performance gifted to our friend...
Quite frankly, I didn't think that the mom would be able to agree to either idea -- schedules are difficult, and school is important... But she was very supportive and said that we could do BOTH. The day set was December 4th.
Today was already going to be a glorious day for our son even if it had been a bitter 2 degrees -- the fact that it is December and got up to 61 agreeable degrees was proof that we live in a solar system that is cosmically aligned and sometimes, on some days, it feels like it.
After our newly-nine-year old friend arrived we were off to get supplies.
"Does it feel weird to be missing school right now?" I asked in the elevator.
"Yes," he said, "but in a really good way."
Let the service begin:
He passed out balloons to kids. A bit tricky because, as he pointed out, "there aren't too many kids like us playing hooky." Most children passing were too little, in strollers, so they were repeatedly turned down when they ran up and asked the mom/nanny if it was okay to give her kid a balloon. Finally some magic happened. There was a mom walking with a charming little sun-glass-clad munchkin and when the kids went up and explained that they were doing service and wanted to give her daughter a balloon she was crazy-kind about it. She made the kids feel so good about themselves and had her girlie give us each a hug.
The other great balloon moment was with a family -- two kids with a grandma is what it seemed like. The grandma didn't speak English, so she didn't understand at first, but when we were able to communicate that these kids wanted to give these balloons to these kids everybody broke out in enormous smiles. There were smiles and nods and clapping hands fluttering all around.
Next up was getting a healthy lunch for a homeless person. Initially, this went down kind of weird. Walking on Broadway my son was carrying the bag of food, and when he saw a homeless person he got so excited he ran up and handed it to the man. At this point two things happened: a) Judd the Red Chicken felt badly because he had kind of usurped his friend's service project, and b) the homeless man held up a finger and told The Boy to wait while he inspected the bag. He proceeded to pinch the rolls and poke at the bananas. Apparently it was acceptable -- but we were all kind of stunned. Fortunately, at this strange moment the boy's friend pulled us all back into the spirit of the day by addressing the boy's concern, and in so doing did his first act of spontaneous service -- he demonstrated what it is to be a friend. "Don't feel bad," he said to my boy, "you didn't do anything wrong. You were helping me. We are doing this together."
Flowers. This passing stuff out business is not for the weak hearted. You will get ten people that shake their heads and say no before you get a taker. But when you get a taker -- a gracious, grateful taker -- it makes it all worth while. Before we hit the jackpot we did meet some very kind ladies. Two of them thought that they should pay for the flowers, and the kids radiated dignity as they turned down the money in the name of service. And then our golden moment. We stood on the corner with our friend holding the last flower, and we were just about to cross the street when Judd the Red Chicken turned to his friend and said, nodding towards a lady slowly making her way across the street, "It's for her." We stepped back, let the lady gain the curb, and the kids descended.
"Wait," she said, "Are you saying that you bought this flower with the purpose of finding somebody to give it to, and you are giving it to me?"
"No. I didn't buy it. My friend's mom did."
"Well," she said with gorgeous dramatic effect, "That makes me feel very special that you chose me."
Our new friend chatted with us for a bit. She was off to physical therapy and then grocery shopping, but she was happy to take her flower along. She wanted to hear all about the day of service, our sabbatical year, how our friend was allowed a day off school... We found out that she had been a teacher for many years, and then a principal. She said in a very principal-like way -- in a way that in fact rivaled the Great Wizard of Oz:
"Our paths are probably never going to cross again, but remember this: your action has touched my heart. I think that you are extraordinary children with remarkable parents who are teaching you important things. I think that you [to our friend] are a special boy, and you are doing a beautiful thing on your birthday. May I have a hug?"
"We are all doing it together," he answered sweetly.
"And I would very much like a group hug." And she hugged all three kids in the same big squeeze. Take that anybody who has ever said that New Yorkers are cold. Within an hour my kids got two hugs from strangers... except they didn't feel like strangers by the time the hugs came. My eyes were so teared up I almost herded the kids into the street against the light.
We went home and made some pizza and the kids drew pictures to give to somebody. The Boy gave his to me, and thanked me for letting his friend come for the entire day. The friend drew a picture for The Boy and thanked him for coming up with this idea, "I'm glad you couldn't come to my party -- this has been one of my favorite days. It's made me feel really good."
To the park. Yes, they played, but they also did more than a smattering of service:
They picked up quite a bit of rain-soaked, soggy trash.
They left important reminders and words of encouragement on the paths (one by the friend was: "You'll get married someday" -- I can think of quite a few people who might appreciate that message; one by The Boy was: "Run 3 miles to burn off sugar" -- an important reminder indeed).
They stood at the playground gate and opened and closed it for caregivers pushing strollers.
As the afternoon waned the time was at hand to cap off the day with a sundae at Ellen's Stardust Diner. It needs to be mentioned that at the time of departure it was looking like our singing-waiter friend might not be working today after all. There was a schedule conflict, he broke his toe, he got stuck at court (for riding his bike on the sidewalk while delivering homemade cookies to somebody) -- a bunch of random roadblocks had popped up -- but after sending him guilt/pressure-laden text after guilt/pressure-laden text all we could do was cross our fingers... And once again, everything aligned...
...if you call the Rainman/Urkel/Buster Poindexter rendition of Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" -- complete with female waitstaff doing the Alicia Keys part -- cosmic alignment. Which we all did -- clearly. It was brilliant -- in a very liberal use of the word kind of way. I've never seen my kid's friend laugh so hard (note: my kid kept eating his sundae while this crazy performance was happening in the five inches behind his seat???). After this introduction to in-your-face-theatre, for the rest of the time the kids were totally into the songs being sung, and were thrilled when the performers came up to our table (surely at the suggestion of our friend). Some people have connections that help them sink 10 million dollar deals, tonight I'm pretty content with our connection at a tourist-trap diner -- not sure anything could have made us much happier.
With the pictures I snapped The Boy is going to create a photo book to gift to his friend, so he can always remember his day of service, and more importantly, remember what the day of service is symbolic of: the world is better because he was born.
So to go back to my first paragraph -- that's why I'm worn out. And that's also why I'm more inclined to let others come up with the material. Letting the kid come up with a plan served us very well today.
Most validating conversation that I've had about homeschooling? It happened this weekend at a baby shower.
To set the stage: three women around me 1. A mom with a kid at a progressive public school here in the city that works hard to create a positive social/emotional environment, but has a reputation for being academically mediocre 2. An incredibly gracious woman who works for the DOE who kept an understanding and open-minded smile on her face throughout the conversation and 3. One of the most articulate, sharp women I've met -- she heads up a not for profit in DC. We were all balancing plates of brunchy food on our laps.
It all started when I asked the mom what she thought of the school her child is at. As she outlined some of her concerns, I slighted the DOE. At this point I didn't know that the gal to my left worked for the DOE. I love moments like that. This started us on a path where I pointed out some of my concerns about the public school system: space/over-crowding issues being murderous; money usage being slippery (this was connected to charter school issues); and from a misguided attempt to create accountability, school funding/teacher advancement (or job security) being based on test scores, thus creating a disproportionate amount of emphasis being placed on tests, ergo creating a stale, even damaging environment. I wrote that smart-alec entry the other night about "gifted" kids when I was feeling particularly cranky, and it's been bugging me because it's wrong... If I had let my idea bake a bit further I might have pinpointed my gripe to being not that "gifted" kids are bored, but that they seem to have unfairly swiped the monopoly on that excuse. Everybody is bored at public school. Bored, but stressed. And that is a suck-tastic place to be.
I can track my most inspiring school moments to creative strategies that my teachers were allowed to try out. Instead of the bulk of our time being machine-like precision and memorizing formulas/key words we explored ideas and units as a class community, and that sense of adventure helped us feel like everybody belonged, and most of the time it motivated us (hard to quantify, I know). If an idea sparked something the lesson plan was left behind and we ripped out huge rolls of paper and started creating, or the teacher set his lesson plans down, perched on his desk and engaged in an authentic conversation until it ran its course. We were like Wendy, John, and Michael; Bilbo and the dwarves; Ron, Hermione, Harry, and the rest of the Hogwarts students; August and John Will; James and the enormous insects; kids of the Mysterious Benedict society; Dorothy, the Scarecrow, et. al... (Note: fiction's place in school, in fact authentic library time/time to explore literature, is dwindling, dwindling... though once all the homework is done every night, the kids are given the prescription to "read for 20 minutes -- books at your level only, please!").
Anyway, when it's an adventure you have a role and an innate understanding that the PROCESS is as valuable as the goal, so you are motivated to keep moving forward through all the obstacles -- be they giant spiders, or books that are a level beyond your current ability, or dyslexia -- because if you are moving forward you're still earning the process part... even when the goal part feels kind of unattainable. And you fail, but because you keep moving forward you also have small successes... and sometimes they can't be quantified. And sometimes they can, and should. And at the end of your adventure you realize that the kid who doesn't read as well as the next kid was the most polite and encouraging, and the kid who bombs every spelling test is the most clever with strategy -- and all of these attributes are valuable. All of them. Let me write that again: ALL of them. If kids are at school, or about school for most of their waking hours shouldn't kindness and integrity and compassion and cleverness and sense of humor and pizzazz and ingenuity factor in somewhere? We can say it does, but when the bulk of the day is standardized for the sole purpose of a number on a spreadsheet it's just a long march forward -- not an adventure. Kids know what we value by how much time we give to it.
And our leaders. Our leaders... They weren't bored and stressed. They weren't regulated into keeping the marchers in line and moving forward toward the horizon. They were treated like LEADERS, and they were passionate. And we felt it. The teachers now are having to work so blasted hard to fit in their passions and creativity while also jumping through hoops. If we want stellar teachers, why don't we pay them more and give them better benefits, so the basic theory of supply and demand (because so many bright people will want that pay-off) will enable us to choose the best of the best. Now somebody is going to mention the union component -- how hard it is to rid a school of a slovenly teacher... I know. It's a mess. There aren't easy answers. I'm not trying to imply that there are easy answers. But because I am a product of those brilliant schools, I believe that we can, and should keep moving forward to find some answers...
I'm really not positing that the system in it's entirety is equivalent to the meat grinder from The Wall. There are talented, inventive, sensitive people working to make a difference. Teachers who are figuring out how to fulfill all the requirements while still creating thriving little villages of learners. Smarter people than I are trying to address the need to create a balance of accountability and consistency while also empowering teachers so they can inspire our kids. I know this. This gives me hope, and so, while I didn't ramble on at the baby shower like I just did here for those last three paragraphs, I did say:
"Hopefully, the pendulum is about to swing back again. The system will more or less right itself..."
And that is when the brilliant not for profit woman came into play. Apparently, she is very concerned with the way things are going, and she doesn't feel like the arc is finished with its treacherous curvature. And won't be in time to help our children. She thinks people need to step up and fight for a change. She even suggested that by homeschooling this year I was one of those stepper-uppers. She said that by choosing to withdraw from one of the basic tenets of society I demonstrated my belief that the system is egregiously flawed.
We talked about how there are many that are dissatisfied, but because of time, resources, etc. they don't have an option to show their extreme dissatisfaction. Like any good leader, she talked about the need for an ongoing dialogue -- between those who choose homeschooling, and those who choose private, and those who are involved in public school. In short, there needs to be thoughtful, inclusive, creative education reform.
It was then that I mentioned those great teachers that I had. And guess what? I wasn't blowing nostalgic smoke, she had the same experience! And guess what? She had that experience in an affluent neighborhood... and mine, ummm... wasn't. This is huge. So much of the excuses for the problems in the school system are blamed on the differences between the two ends of the economic spectrum... And yet, we saw a glimmer: we were speaking the same language though we had come from very different backgrounds. Maybe there really can be equitable answers that service the entire spectrum. Maybe there are basic truths that can, when not suffocated by politics or special-interests, be freed.
Maybe I'm a stepper-upper.
At a baby shower, where the atmosphere is charged with hope and excitement for the future, I was inspired. Maybe there are answers -- the creative kind that spark further adventures, not the standardized kind -- and maybe our little pull away from the grid has helped the movement toward those answers.
...There is a life about to start... la-tah-da-da-da-da-da-dah (Do you hear the people sing?)
Our family is excited for Les Mis to open... Can you see me standing on the barricade waving my tattered flag? (Ha. Those of you who know me well, perhaps even remember me as a clumsy cheerleader, just saw me topple off the barricade after hitting myself in the head with the flag pole...)
