Tomorrow

I am grateful that days end – that they start anew.  Lately, I long for endings and for new chapters to begin.  For whoever reads these entries, I have obviously been absent.  I wish that I could say, “ Oh, yeah I’m sorry.  I traveled to this remote area of the world where they don’t have Internet access.  The people in this region are incredibly simple, humble beings, with few luxuries.  But, you know what, they are really happy, and so was I in their presence.”  Nope.  That fantasy never happened.  Instead, my reality looks quite different.

My son is a bleeder.  He bleeds internally, into his muscles and joints.  He can bleed from something, or from nothing at all.  And, you already know from previous posts that his medication does not work.  It has been an extremely difficult two weeks. He bled into a joint, started to heal, and then bled anew.  He ran into seemingly every complication that could arise – fever, IV failure, multiple attempts and missed peripheral access, and just sheer pain. It has been painful for me to watch. 

This life, with complication, any complication at all, requires those that live it to live one day at a time.  I am told that there will be many bad days, and there have been already, but that hope rests in the days to come.  Each day ends, and the potential for a good (or even great) day lives on in tomorrow. 

Grateful #17 - being treated like a person, not a number

Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of banks or going into them to do business.  Today, however, I ran out of checks and needed to get some.  I walked in, and got in line as two other patrons went up to the tellers. The tellers addressed each patron by name and asked them how they were doing before they even reached the counter. I was kind of impressed!  Then, even though I was next in line and probably had to wait all of 5 seconds before it was my turn, a man (presumably a manager) asked me if i wanted any water while I waited.  Even better:  he asked me if i wanted cold or room temperature.  Really?  I mean how much nicer and thoughtful can you be to someone whose money you already have???  And in fact, I did want room temperature!  I went up to my teller, Kavonn, with my rooom-temp water in hand, and I asked him if they had any comment cards.  He looked so concerned, until I explained that I was so impressed by such a positive experience at the bank;  I wanted to tell the higher-ups about how great their employees are at making the patrons feel cared for and attended to.  He said they really didn't have any comment cards, but that it's all about just loving what you do.  Well Kavonn, I love what you do.  And what the people who work at the Wells Fargo in the City of Decatur do.  I am grateful for how I was treated like a person and not a bank account.  In a world where the thought of dealing with banks, credit card companies, and mortgage lenders makes you want to hide, I will gladly step foot into the Wells Fargo in Decatur.

Grateful #16 - musical love at first sight (sound)

Writing about music would result in a book-length endeavor.  This is just one tiny part.

Love at first sight means this: the moment you hear a new song and within the first 5 seconds, it’s like you’ve already spent hours listening to it.  The words, though completely brand new, are all right there in front of you and you can almost sing along.  But you wont.  You need to hear him sing it.   You need to hear how his voice can take those words and stretch them across the distance between you and the speakers.  Right to your ribs.  And then you need to feel the weight of his words fill the spaces in between.  And even though you’ve never heard this song before, you know that you can’t imagine what it would be like if you never heard it again.  You’re relating the words to everything you know, even things you don’t know, because they’re too pretty not to be related to you.  And maybe it’s not the words themselves, but when he says them, the inflection – the tone – something about how they sound when he sings them– you need to be engulfed in them.   

I stumbled across a song and immediately stopped stumbling.  In life.   It grounded me for that moment and I have not been able to stop listening to it all day.  I am grateful for the music that can literally stop me.  And then restart me. 

Today It’s this EP.  Track 4.  (if you've read a former post, you'd know that makes it even better).

Grateful # 15 - people who write first

I could go off on a grateful tirade about how amazing the people in Atlanta are for helping all of the stranded motorists, children, and workers - but I'm sure a million articles have said it better than I could. So instead, I am going to steer clear of the weather. Today, I got over my hatred of talking on the phone, and picked up when my friend called.  I won't say that I am grateful for her (though I am), and I wont say that I'm grateful for having good friends (though I am), and I wont say that I'm grateful for communication that allows two people who live far away to talk (though I am).

What I will say, is that I am grateful for people who write first.  My friend, much like me, is someone who would choose writing before speaking.   It's nice to know that other people's verbal eloquence is as flawed as mine.   It's not that she's unable to formulate intelligent sentences when she talks, but she prefers to write.  I prefer to write.  The reason she and I get along so well is not because we laugh together all the time, have interests that are the same, or even talk to each other all that often - cause none of those are true. The reason she and I get along so well is because as people who write first, we have to think first.  This means that we think ourselves to death sometimes, but that we are very grounded because we have thought through things, analyzed things, and have come up with a million different scenarios for all of those millions of things.  So even though we were talking on the phone, the fact that she can relate to what I'm talking about because she's thought about it and probably written about it, is inexplicably amazing.   I don't have to explain myself (because when I'm talking, I really can't do that very well). She just gets it. Cause she writes first.

Snowy Traditions

I don't have to look at facebook or instagram to see how much snow there is in Atlanta and how insanity ensued when schools finally dismissed their kids and people started driving home.  It's everywhere on the news and in people's newsfeeds - the snow really did some damage.  People have been stranded on the highway for hours. They're still there.  I hope everyone gets home safely.

In Pennsylvania, where I grew up, people didn't freak out as much about the snow.  Snow didn't cause panic, it was just something that happened - we had Snowmagedons that lasted a week, we had snow days to make up in June, and we all had a sled or two stored in our garages.  I had a big, orange, plastic disc shaped sled that didn't really get used to its capacity because my street was pretty flat.  But I had one and I got in it every time it snowed.   The memory that sticks out to me the most, however, is that every single time it snowed, my mom would make rice krispy treats.  We stood there and watched as she melted the butter, stirred in the marshmallows, and poured in the cereal.  We were mesmerized by it.   She put them in a glass, rectangular pan and then put it in the fridge to set.  When they were ready, we all ate one (two) with a cup of hot chocolate, and eventually, we all went to bed. In the middle of the night, my brother, my dad and I snuck into the kitchen at various times, cut a small piece, ate it, and hoped that no one noticed any more were missing.  When we woke up in the morning, the rice krispy treats were just about gone.  My mom would look at at all of us (especially my dad),  and wonder what was wrong with us? Why did snow make us gorge ourselves on rice krispy treats?  We just all knew this was how we acted when we were snowed in together.  It was kind of an unspoken ritual.  I can't see snow and not think about rice krispy treats.  I am grateful for the way snow reminds me of how families have their traditions.  I hope everyone finds a snowy ritual as delicious as mine. 
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Asking questions differently

So I didn't know how to take a picture of what I'm grateful for, so I decided to draw one.  Drawing, obviously, is not my strong suit. 

I read an article yesterday about this woman who was a stay at home mom with three kids - her husband would come home from work and ask her, "hey, how was your day?"  And she said that she didn't even know how to respond - it was full of so many things, so many emotions - both good and bad - and that her "day" seemed like a lifetime compared to his day - that she ended up thinking it was too much effort, and to hard to explain, so she just said, "fine."  And if you think about it, that does not stimulate any kind of conversation.  It's just a blanket statement from one person to another; nothing is really shared.  For people who love each other, sharing needs to happen.  That's why they're in their marriages, their friendships - because they want to share things together. 

I dont have any kids, but I know (I think) how she feels.  When I have an insanely crazy day, filled with a billion emotions and tiny details that drain me and motivate me at the same time - and someone asks how my day was, I see 78 million still frames of what happened in my day.  I can not even begin to sort them or explain that to someone.  If a picture is worth 1000 words, then I have 78,000,000,000 words to try to fit into a response.  aint gonna happen.  however, the point of the article was to ask questions differently.  For example, if you know that I coach tennis and tennis season just started, you could ask, "What kind of drills are you having the kids do to improve?" Or, "Was it hard to make cuts?"  I can answer those questions and feel like someone is listening.  Someone cares.  Someone is paying attention.  It will not exhaust me to think of an answer, and it will not exhaust you to listen it.  We can can share conversation.

So. I guess what I am saying here is that I am grateful for the idea of asking questions differently.  I am guilty of it, too - but I am going to be conscious of asking people that I care about the kinds of questions that let them know I do, in fact, care about them and listen to them. 

My Son

I took a break from writing for a few days.  I literally felt that I had nothing to be grateful for.  My son suffered a lot this week, and anyone who has a child, let alone a child with a medical issue, knows that seeing that child suffer is just about the worst thing to witness.  I was in a haze all week.  Now that things are beginning to return to normal, snippets of what we endured are returning to mind.

My son was in great pain, cried out in his sleep at night in pain, and had to suffer at the hands of a medical community that doesn’t always know the answers to “fix” him.  Sometimes he asks me to fix him, and I just can’t.  “Mommy, fix me please.”  It’s absolutely heart wrenching to hear these words uttered, without having the ability to perform.

This week he needed to have an IV inserted for his medication, because he just needed it too often for someone to come and administer it.  I learned how to administer the medication through that IV.  When the pain got really bad for him, he would ask me, beg me to give him a “pinch” (what he calls an infusion). 

One night this week, in the middle of the night, I had to wake him up to give him a “pinch.”  As I placed his half limp, slumbering body on his rocking chair, unwrapped the bandage dressing and accessed his IV, he looked down at his arm, then look at me and said, “Mommy, you do magic.”  I cried. 

This child is my whole heart.  This child is so incredibly strong.  And, in recalling that moment, I realized that I am grateful for something.  I am grateful for my child’s strength and for his ability to just be a child, full of wonderment, despite his suffering.

A guest writer's response to what they are grateful for: this little nuget

Growing up, I always imagined I’d become a mother, but after a few rounds of heartbreak and years of liberal arts education and activism and, well, just general participation in the world human beings are currently dominating, I decided that we already have more than enough people. I also realized that I kind of don’t get kids. Unless they’re mini-adults, I don’t have much to say to them. Also, playing is exhausting and kind of boring. I was never a child. Not really.

Along with this realization, as is my style, there was also a lot of intellectualization and rationalization for my stance, which I oddly felt I had to justify to anyone with whom I shared my lack of desire for children. As a feminist, part of my writing off motherhood was based on a) feeling too much pressure to be a mom merely because I am female-bodied, b) stress from all the mythology surrounding “mothering instincts” and “good parenting,” and c) stark awareness of the mothering wars (cloth diapers vs. disposable diapers, attachment parenting vs. letting them cry it out, stay-at-home vs. working moms, home birth vs. hospital birth, vaccinations vs. no vaccinations, and on and on and on). As a queer woman, it was an odd sort of relief to decide that kids weren’t for me because I felt heartbroken knowing that the (selfish) desire to see my love with my same-sex-but-not-necessarily-same-gender partners embodied in the world through procreation would never ever ever be realized.

Recently, however, at the age of 33, I fell in love with one of my best friends – a boy. Well, a man, but a sweet boy too. Maybe it was some type of counterintuitive biological imperative, or maybe it was looking at all my friends’ (adorable) babies on Facebook, or maybe my body and mind realizing a new possible future, my urge to have a child – one that would grow and come forth from within my body – grew suddenly, hard and fast. I began to fear that my eggs were dried up, that my extended 20-something behavior and total lack of life plan was going to interfere with me ever having a child while it was still physically possible. For a year, I stressed and obsessed but my partner and I remained safe and careful to prevent a pregnancy for which we are in no way ready.

But now:

a miraculous  mistake, a trendy 30-something oops-baby. I am in my 7^th week of a pregnancy that isn’t apparently considered risky even though I’ll be 34 when s/he is born. Everything in there looks healthy and normal. Yesterday we watched a heart flutter at 127 BPM on a small black and white screen, a heart that didn’t exist 7 weeks ago.

Even though I’m still getting used to looking like a straight person in public and even though we’re in serious financial peril and this was seriously not what was “supposed to happen,” I am grateful for this Little Nugget and the Universe’s decision in the form of a gift, because existence is miraculous and my body is mammalian and magical, and I never was good at making decisions and we’re never ready for anything, not really. And also because there are so many incredible people who try and try and would give anything for the Universe to let this be the kind of accident they have today.

Grateful #14 - Team Sports

This is the girls tennis team at tryouts today.  One of my senior captains is leading them in circuit training conditioning and as I was watching this, I thought about the difference between how people succeed in school versus how people succeed in team sports.  What I love about coaching is that I get to see this difference every day.  In the classroom, the smartest kid has it rough.  They are the object of intense eye rolling (perhaps envy), and often times, the smartest kid is not very popular among their peers.  The kid who doesn't do well in class is also not picked first; his or her peers find them to be lazy or stupid.  I see this happen all the time. 

On the court, it's very much the opposite.  The kid who does well is loved; he or she is helping the team.  His efforts are not mocked, her skill is not the the butt of jokes.  Peers flock to the him.  They celebrate their teammate's successes and talk about how amazing he or she is to their friends. 

The most fascinating difference between the classroom and the court is that instead of that label of lazy or stupid, the kid who is not very good at a sport is encouraged and helped by his or her peers. 
The other senior captain ran with the girl who was in last place to make sure she didn't come in all by herself.  No one would erase correct answers and put the wrongs ones on a test out of comradery for his or her peers in the classroom.  That just doesn't happen.

Team sports bring out the supportive, empathetic, kindness in kids at times, and I am grateful that I get to witness it. 

grateful #13 - wonderful people

I just noticed, 13 hours later, that i am wearing two different socks.  I didn't notice when they were in my boots all day, and I didn't notice when I put on my tennis shoes to go to practice at 4:00.  I just noticed at 8pm when I finally. sat. down.

Because I coach the tennis team, and because tryouts started today, my routine - my life - just got different.  and more.   This is my 13th year of coaching and teaching, but I'm telling you right now, my mind and my body are never prepared for that first week of change.  I love my job - both teaching and coaching, but I cannot fathom being a teacher, a coach and anything else.  If i had children, they would probably still be at school waiting to be picked up or walking around not fed or dressed properly.  I can't even dress myself properly, obviously (see picture above).  But I am grateful for the people around me who remind me that it does get easier, I do figure out how to juggle teaching, coaching, and 27 other things, and that I can ask for help if I need it. Some of them even tell me that I'm good at it.  I may not have matching socks, but I have thoughtful friends and lovely people that care about me. 

grateful #12 - sharing my streets with MLK Jr.

This is Atlanta.  This is Atlanta on MLK Jr's birthday.  And this is my version of what a black and white photo of a skyline in Atlanta looks like on MLK's birthday. 

 Though I am a northerner at heart, I have lived in the south for 13 years; I won't try grits, but I definitely use y'all. There are over 900 streets nation-wide named after MLK Jr.  Of those 900, the ones in Atlanta are not only honoring his legacy, they are shouting with pride that they were his streets, the same streets encircling his childhood home, the same streets near his church where he preached.   

Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter." I know there were countless service projects and various memorials, parades and services honoring MLK today - and that was not silent.  That was loud.  And that was very much alive and very much matters.  Whatever it is that matters to you - shout, paint, scream, sing - be loud about it. 

Grateful #11 - My generation

My generation - not just the blanket GenX, but specifically the very, very end of Gen X/beginning of Gen Y, is the most unique generation.  I had the experience of growing up without a cell phone, high speed internet, and many of the every day technologies that have become common place in our world.  However, as I entered college, I was transitioned into living on my own as well as the powers of the world wide web.  When I graduated, I bought my first cell phone.  This gave me and my peers a very different outlook on life.  We never had to text our parents about where we were and who we were with; they just trusted that we would come home and we would be safe.  And we did.  And we were.  mostly.  But because child and parent couldn't stay in constant contact, we had to rely on our spoken word to one another.  While kids today have access to every tiny technology they can think of, they don't have the patience or knowledge about how to use them.  Because they've been bombareded by so many different things always buzzing around them, they can't sit still long enough to actually navigate through the countless articles or apps in front of them.  They simply move on to the next thing.  My little pocket of a generation had to sit and navigate through microfiche, dictionaries, and encyclopedias long before we were able to google anything, so we have endurance.  And because we were introduced to this technology at just the right age - somewhere in our late teens, early 20's, we were still young enough to learn fast and learn well.  We remember what it's like to have to write notes by hand, resourceful enough to know how to find those notes on-line, and disciplined enough to follow through.  I got a new cell phone today - the amount of technology in that phone is almost ridiculous.  I will spend hours figuring out every button, every app, every setting -whereas the generation below me would skip over the things they couldn't figure out in 8 seconds and the generation above me would not concern itself with that new fangled technology.  So today, I am grateful to be a tiny part of a generation that happened to grow up at just the right time. 

Grateful #10 - Bowling Shoes

I can not deny that I love shoes.  I buy them as often as I can; I just love the way shoes can make an outfit.   We judge people based on the shoes they put on their feet; it's just something we do as a society.  It may not be conscious, but we all do it. 
If you go to a bowling alley, you walk in wearing your own shoes.  Sometimes they are expensive, fancy shoes.  Sometimes they are boots, flip flops, high heels, sneakers, or the latest pair of trendy shoes - whatever you are trying to put out there, whatever message you are trying to convey, you walk in the door with it.   But.  Once you go inside and throw on a pair of bowling shoes, everyone is putting out the same exact message.  All of a sudden, wealth, social status, personality - they all become invisible; the tacky two-tone shades of the 1970's cover over any judgements we can make about each other. 
You know how you can go somewhere - a store, a show, a restaurant - and strangers generally don't smile at each other or talk unless they have to?  Well tonight, when I was bowling, I noticed that when I looked at a stranger as he bowled next to me, he smiled.  How can you not smile when you're all wearing silly bowling shoes?   I am grateful for bowling shoes - they keep everyone on even ground. 

Grateful #9 - The special education department

We had our department photo taken today for the yearbook.  I made the pic black and white on purpose - give it the old yearbook photo feel.  At first glance, we look like your average special education department.  (Insert your jokes here... something about an oxymoron, or something else clever and funny).  What you can't see is that every single one of these people truly cares about kids.  What makes being a special education teacher different than being a general education teacher is that the very nature of our job is to work in small group settings and one-on-one.  Because of this, we get to know our students very well.  We develop strong bonds with our students; they congregate in our classrooms between classes, during their other classes, at lunch, and in the hall - looking for us so they can just talk, joke, or ask us for help. 
Every single one of the people in this photo have helped kids learn more than just what the Ottoman Empire did, more than how to edit a paper for run-on sentences, and more than how to multiply polynomial equations.  They have helped kids find jobs, listened to their stories and struggles, given them food to eat for breakfast, encouraged and supported them as they came out to their families, took them on college visits, and countless other things that the math teacher, the English department, and the PE teacher know nothing about.  Every single person in this photo not only supports our students more than the parameters of the job description entail, but they also support each other.  I am grateful for my co-workers because on top of all of those wonderful things you can't see in this photo, you also can't see that right before this, we were laughing about who has the best butt and who wishes he had the best butt.  These people are incredible.  And I am incredibly grateful for being part of their team.

Grateful #8 - A balloon

Yesterday, a student came into my classroom and gave me a pink balloon.  I’m not sure why.  It sort of just sat under my desk until this morning, when  I picked it up and put it on the bookcase to clear some space for the billions of things I had going on in and around my desk. 

A student who usually eats lunch in my room walked over, picked up the balloon and started tapping it up in the air.  My gut instinct, despite being mid-bite of my sandwich, was to get up and hit the balloon back to her.   And then it began. 

A senior in high school and my 34-year-old self were magically transformed into our former 10 year-old selves.   It felt like all I had to do in my life – my only focus, my only goal, was to hit that balloon back to her successfully without letting it hit the ground.  And then all she had to do was hit it back to me.  And repeat.  If we could do this, we would be the champions of the world.  For 3 solid minutes we did this, making sure it didn’t hit the ground; this is the unspoken rule of playing balloon.  If I held up a mirror right then, I think it would reflect only smile.  In that 3 minutes, we were literally free; all of the things that previously were racing through our heads - our worries, our fears, our responsibilities – they all went away, and for those precious moments, we were untouchable.

I am grateful for that balloon and for being able to go back to what it feels like to be weightless. 

Perspective

It's all about perspective.

Today was a bad, bad day. I had a lot to do, with no time to get it done.

I messed something up, professionally (it's been fixed), I didn't take care of myself, my son was a slight horror and the day (and its disappointments) was (were) seemingly two steps ahead of me, glaring back at me, waiting for me to fall into line.

Well, that never happened. I never quite got into my groove.

So, I was exhausted, my back/neck was aching, and my son just would not give me a break.

And then, everything just sort of shut off.

The work day was officially over, my son went to sleep, the cleaning was tackled, and the house was still.

I ran the tub, poured in the Epsom salt, climbed in and soaked.

I'm grateful for the "reboot" and for the chance to recognize that things are really not that bad.

Now, tomorrow is yet another day, but when I'm here, soaking in this nice, relaxing bath (yup, right now), it's easy to see things from another perspective.

My toddler was tired and needed to reconnect with me. I was distracted and still trying to come up with effective systems for working from home.

There are different ways to analyze things. Different perspectives can become apparent when you're not enraged, frazzled, frustrated, tired, <insert any applicable adjective>.

Plus it's easier to sort it all out in your head while pampering yourself.

[All you foot fetish folks out there, enjoy the pic.]

White Lies

I am grateful for the ability to tell a white lie.  Those small untruths have become my savior.  I know I probably shouldn’t get too comfortable telling them now, because in the near future my son will be able to figure it all out and I’ll come out looking like a sham.  But for now, they tame the incessant questions and the ever-loved "toddler tantrum."

Tonight my son refused to eat the dinner I had spent at least an hour putting together.  “Nope.  No way, José.”  How do I even respond to that?

I had no energy to try and convince him to eat it.  So, I bravely asked him what he WANTED to eat from the refrigerator. This is where I got a little crafty.  If I had asked, “what do you want to eat?” the response would have surely been “COOKIES!”  Thankfully, cookies don’t reside in the refrigerator. 

His response was, “I want hummus.”  Awesome.  I have that.  But then he chimes in with “without the garlic.”  Damn.  So close.  I bought the wrong hummus at the store this week.  I have only the hummus with the garlic and this kid is too observant, well beyond his two and a half years.

What could I do?  He had caught me.  He had called me out.

So, I asked him, “Would you like HUMMUS <ahem> beans?”

“No.  No beans.”

“Not BEANS.  HUMMUS beans!” 

“Oh!!! Alright.”

And so, garbanzo beans were on the menu tonight – with a side of bananas. J