writing, mothering, writing about mothering: this woman's work

My first day of school

Aug 272010

It was good. It was long (from 4:30 to 9:15) but it was good. I like both my professors and I’m impressed with the diversity (age, race, background, interests) of my classmates. There is going to be a lot of discussions in the classes and not as much formal writing as I expected. (I still have two more classes I’m taking but one is an orientation class — more about the process of becoming licensed, I think — and one is a seminar so likely not as much formal writing there either.) I’m sure this might not be true of the whole program but at least in these two classes, most of the writing we’ll be doing are overviews of what we’re reading to bring to class in order to discuss them. There are a couple of papers but they’re not research papers and there’s one individual project that the professor didn’t get to explain last night. She gave us a rubric about it but I haven’t really looked at it yet. She said it wouldn’t make sense anyway until she could show us an example and I’m thinking it must be a presentation of some kind because she couldn’t show us ‘cuz the computer was ganked.

On the one hand, I was hoping for more writing. On the other hand, I’m relieved because I have an awful lot of writing to do in the rest of my life. I also like class discussions especially with a group with so many varying points of view. And in our second class we are broken up into teams and I like my other team members even though or because we are all pretty different people.

Other bullet points about class last night:

No one else had an iPad, which I didn’t expect.
In fact, no one else brought any kind of computing device, which I really didn’t expect. I doubt I’ll take many notes for the second class though — it’s mostly discussion.
Both my teachers are funny. They are also working counselors with a lot of experience in counseling. (This wasn’t true at OSU.) This I like.
I dumped my dinner on my lap during break. This is typical of me. Luckily it was just California Rolls so other than a little soy sauce on my skirt, it was ok.
I was not the oldest person in my classes but I was among the older students.
I out-ed myself as a homeschooling mother right away because we had to go around the room in both groups and talk about ourselves. I figured with all of this discussion it’d come out sooner or later so why not just make the leap. One professor expressed sympathy ‘cuz he thought it sounded stressful. The other one asked a lot of questions because she thinks unschooling sounds fascinating.
I have both classes in the same room. Very convenient.
The program is definitely geared to working students and most of my classmates are going part-time and taking advantage of the flexibility. Even though I’m hoping to crank through the program, it’s nice to know that if life interferes that I’ll be able to rethink that strategy. Also speaking of diversity, one of my classmates is a welder, one is a wellness consultant, one is a prison guard and one is a stay-at-home dad. That’s just to give you an idea. Oh and most of my classmates are women. Out of everyone in both classes, only three are guys. That’s not so diverse, I know. That ratio was true at OSU from what I saw, too.

The coursework is definitely going to be interesting. I had a moment’s fleeting sadness about the hard-core academia at OSU that I am missing but then came to my senses because I do have a life and two kids and various jobs and frankly OSU would have stretched me maybe more than I could handle. I doubt I would have come out as a homeschooling mom so quickly at OSU. I doubt that if I had, that it would have been a welcome confession. The learning here is different (not as stringently academic) but no less challenging (because it’s really about working with people who are not like you). If I’m serious about having a counseling career it’s going to be a greater benefit to me to spend time learning how to listen. Also, as far as academics go, some of that is up to me. Like one of our professors said that we need to read the whole book but we really only need to READ five chapters (because we’ll be presenting those five chapters to our group as the weeks go on). But I’m going to READ the whole book. It’s nice to know that people can skim if they need to but me, I’m not going to skim.

I am happy that at least for this semester I can keep up with my freelance stuff. I’ll still need to be careful about what I take on but I have some projects coming up and I won’t be having to get all frantic about fitting them in.

Napping homeschool girl

Homeschooling 10 Responses »

Aug 252010

Every once in awhile Madison just CRASHES. I knew today would be one of those days because she woke up whiny and it just got worse as the day wore on. It culminated with her in tears on the couch because of something she said to someone when she was four that she doesn’t remember but she knows was mean and the guilt — after two years — was finally overwhelming. So first I told her that even the nicest people do mean things sometimes and that she IS one of the nicest people I know and then I tucked her into bed and lay down with her for a few minutes. It’s been an hour and a half and she’s still sleeping.

Today would be her first day of school if she was going to our neighborhood school across the way. Or maybe yesterday would have been, I don’t know because the schools in our district got to choose which of those two days to start and I didn’t bother to get the details. We get a little foot traffic from kids in backpacks in front of our house and sometimes minivans park there if there’s an assembly of some kind.

We hear the school “bell” (it’s really a buzzer) go off, too, and all the kids romping on the playground. It makes for a nice nieghborhood-y feel.

Tomorrow I start school and I was thinking about how a lot of the moms on Facebook/Twitter have been counting down the days/hours/minutes until their kids go and I thought it’d be funny if Noah was doing the same thing about me but no one would get it since pretty much all his friends on Facebook are either kids or homeschooling parents of his friends. I feel like that was a potentially hilarious piece of satire that will never get to be.

Every year I ask the kids if they feel left out when they know other people are going to school and every year they say no. They say no while sitting in their jammies knowing their schooled peers are already at their desks so it’s likely not a fair context for the question. I did ask Noah once on the last day of school when there was a huge fair out on the playground field with bouncy houses and a DJ and he said, “But see how happy they are that they get to LEAVE?”

Listen, there are downsides to homeschooling mainly for me but the kids are awfully happy about it.

Ambivalence: A Vocabulary Lesson

The Story of My Life 19 Responses »

Aug 242010

Claudia commented on the last post about ambivalence and what a hard thing it is to understand let alone live with. And it was making me think about how maybe I knew that word but I didn’t know that word until I was seventeen. Like a lot of voracious teen readers, my vocabulary was impressive but sometimes off. There were words I could define but couldn’t pronounce (still are) and words I knew in context but not out in the natural world, like ambivalent.

I was seventeen and in love. I was madly in love. This was after Joaquin (who I’ve written about plenty) and this was the guy who I thought could maybe wrench Joaquin free from my heart and save me from myself (because I wasn’t yet in therapy so I didn’t know that the only person who could do those two things was ME).

This guy, I know facts about him but not much else. I never really knew him because I was too busy being in love with my idea of him. We were both writers and he was actually good and thought I was good so that was something. He was quite a bit older than I was (6.5 years, which is a lot when you’re 17), had a real job with a desk and everything as well as his own apartment. Me, I was living with my mom; I still had a curfew when we first started dating.

Anyway, to my mind he was brilliant and romantically tortured and way better read than I was. He was also the lived out results of my Electra complex seeing as how he was short and stocky like my dad (although blond where my dad is dark) and charmingly bitter yet personable, also like my dad. I’ve written this before because it’s the most telling — his favorite author was Edgar Rice Burroughs and he had a first edition Hemingway while my dad has a huge collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs first editions and I have since inherited his beloved and beautifully tacky collection of cheap paperback Hemingway novels from back when you could buy them at a dime store.

Ok so it’s embarrassing to admit but basically I fell in love with my dad. What can I say — I hadn’t had therapy yet!!!*

So I was in love, like stupid in love, like head over heels in love. I was an insufferable infatuated 17-year old (actually I was 16 when we first started dating but he broke up with me for awhile and then we got back together). While the target of my overwhelming affection was screwed up enough to fall in love with a depressed and barely post-pubescent woman, he was on the edge of getting healthy enough to realize that this was altogether a Bad Idea, which is how I learned the word “ambivalent.” He would frequently tell me that he was ambivalent about loving me.

Sadly, there is nothing more exciting for a teenager with a Daddy-complex who is still two years away from getting a good counselor than to hear that the great romance of her life (or at least the second great romance of her life) is in jeopardy. So I did what any love-sick girl would do; I doubled my efforts. Did I say I was infatuated? Please. Obsessed? I was twelve stages past obsessed. Naturally I was doomed for a broken heart.

By acknowledging my own culpability in the inevitable demise of our relationship I don’t mean to let this guy totally off the hook because — hello — the guy was dating some years below his peer group. Also before he broke up with me for the second time, he arranged for us to drive several states over for a trip and it was only some years afterward that I realized that if I hadn’t had my tidy little Datsun 310 (or if he’d had his own vehicle) that we would’ve broken up an awful lot earlier. That is to say that not only was he contributing to the delinquency of a minor, he was also using her for her car.

Anyway. Ambivalent. So he kept telling me that he felt ambivalent about loving me and I finally said, “What does that mean?” And he said, “It means that I both want to love you and don’t want to love you.” Like it was a choice while any (in)sane teenage girl could have told him that LOVE was something the universe fated when it signed my beloved’s name upon my heart and so set the stars in motion for us to love each other forever and ever amen until we died still clasped in an embrace that no man (or that slutty girl who is always eying you when we go out dancing, don’t TELL ME that you don’t see her!) could put asunder.

Listen, at that time I would have thought the new Eminem/Rhianna duet was romantic. I was screwed up, people.

Then one day I rode my bike to his house and he was sitting on the front stoop and he announced that he was no longer in love with me. And I rode my little self home, shakily I am sure, and that was the end of it. Except for my continued semi-obsessive, semi-annual phone calls.

He moved in with an older woman a year or so later (and eventually married her) and I met Brett (and eventually married him).

And that, my dearest blog friends, is how I learned what ambivalent meant.

* This ex of mine is now a successful sci fi author and his first book was basically an homage to Tarzan. His recent series is one that I’m positive my dad would LOVE so maybe I should give it to him for Christmas but this somehow seems a little icky, eh?

Temporarily losing my religion

Judaism, Parenting 13 Responses »

Aug 232010

We’re not doing religious school with the kids this year and it’s the right decision but I’m sad about it. Both the kids are on board but both (well, Noah — Madison is reflecting sadness back at us but she’s pretty neutral) are sad about it, too.

It’s hard having kids in two widely different age ranges because our synagogue building is very small and so they stagger the classes. It means our Sundays are basically eaten up by taking kids and dropping them off. Last year it was from 8:30 to 1:30 (with an exchange of kids in the middle) but this year Noah would start going at about 3pm so we would have a four hour window in the middle of the day but that would be it.

So that’s part of it.

The other part of it is that being a member of the temple and sending both kids to religious school is really expensive and we don’t have it right now. We could get financial aid but it’s a process and we’re kind of overwhelmed with process right now (my school; Brett’s temp job, which is requiring a whole lot of bureaucratic hoop jumping to get on there permanently). Also maybe we are late for applying, I don’t know. Brett kept putting it off because he hates having to ask for it.

Brett and I talked about it over the weekend and we know that this school year will be busier than ever because I’ll be in school. And our Saturdays are already getting booked because of kid activities and now Madison’s soccer practice is on Friday evenings. (Argh.) (Plus side to soccer — we requested she be on the team coached by one of the dads in our local transracial adoption support group so Madison will be one of several black kids with white parents AND the coach is a really nice, laid back guy so she is VERY EXCITED. Obviously this totally outweighs the awkward practice time. Go Stingrays!)

Now for Noah, anything he does past bar mitzvah is gravy. About half his friends won’t be going but two of his favorites probably are so he’s sad about that. He also says that if he misses one year, he doesn’t want to drop back in next year. So for him, he’s feeling like this is the end of his religious education. (I am hoping that he doesn’t feel that way next year.) When we told him we’d still go to temple events — most particularly the Purim carnival — he was somewhat mollified. But religious school has been part of his life for eight years now and he values it and this is a real loss for him. What made him WANT to not go (because we presented the option and then gave them a choice and listened to them discuss it with themselves) is that if we don’t do religious school this frees up time (and money) to take some weekends away.

And that is the final part of this.

We used to take minivacations. We’d leave just for a weekend and stay overnight someplace quiet and come back refreshed. I want to take that tradition back up so that when school is hectic, we can get away. When we used to do them Brett would romp the kids (well, kid — we’ve only had one of these trips since Madison arrived) and I’d stay back wherever to work. The state park lodges are ideal for this. They have great big open areas with fireplaces and tables for working. There isn’t wifi, which is good if you need to focus (you can pay for it if you really feel like you need it). There are also pools and hiking trails and there’s a decent restaurant on site so you can park your car and forget about it. The scenery is always pretty. So we’d like to do that once in awhile.

This all sounds good and sensible and reasonable but just like religious school has been part of Noah’s life for eight years, it’s been part of my life, too, and I’m grieving it as well.

Noah and I talked about it at length last night and in a continued testimony to sharing feelings, once Noah felt ok to talk about how sad he was to leave, he was able to make a definitive decision about leaving. He just wanted to be reassured that he could choose to NOT go and still be able to talk about missing it. You know, he wants to be able to make a decision without us throwing it back up in his face if he gets gloomy about it. And don’t we all want room to be ambivalent? I certainly feel ambivalent. I definitely WANTED to take a break this year until the kids both agreed to it and then I got sad, too.

We’ve decided that we’ll try to take a day trip very soon in order to cement our decision and celebrate it.

High anxiety

Grad School 15 Responses »

Aug 202010

Mel Brooks in High Anxiety -- this is how I feel RIGHT NOW

Did you know I start school next week? I do! I start grad school! I’m freaking out!

I didn’t know I was freaking out and then I realized I was when I heard my teeth grinding.

How in the heck am I going to do all of it??? Will I have enough time and headspace to:

Be with my kids all day (you know, with the homeschool thing)
Get my work done (the work I’m keeping)
Get Support for Special Needs done
Get grades that won’t make me ashamed

People, I am a little nervous. I am a lot nervous.

Things that will help:

Julia has been very kind about trying to get SforSN stuff squared away so that I won’t feel as overwhelmed and arranging a regular Monday editorial phone conference
My mom has offered to help with the kids (but she’ll be helping my sister for awhile because my sister’s car died and she’ll need a hand with kid transport.)
(Oh shoot that reminds me of another anxiety: Just having one car. There are some tricky evenings coming up. Ack! Wait, back to the helpful list)
It will be cooler soon. It’s hard to feel hopeful when it’s too hot to move (and it’s not as hot as it has been, mind you)
Brett will be knocking back his weekend hours soon (he’s down to one weekend day and may go down to none, I hope)
I only have actual classes two nights a week
School is going to be FUN!!!!!!
I closed out all but one client and this one client really only calls on me every couple of weeks and he never calls me with emergencies so there’s always time to do stuff and he knows I’m going to grad school and I love this client because he is so nice and always says please and thank you and PAYS ME WHEN HE SAYS HE WILL (I love him so much)

I will just have to be freaked out for a little bit.

But you want to hear something funny? Sure you do! I got a letter from the book store addressed to THE PARENTS OF DAWN FRIEDMAN

So I sent it to my mother. Let her deal with it! Ha!