On the afternoon of Tim’s third birthday, I had to work, but my mother was happy to take Tim on a special birthday expedition. The two of them went raspberry-picking at a local farm. The preceding day, he’d received a cardboard crown at preschool, and he insisted on wearing it throughout that birthday, including to the farm. My mother regaled me with an account of how the only other berry-pickers that afternoon were a consortium of chefs from upscale Boston restaurants who were on some kind of group tour promoting local agriculture. As my mother told it, they made a big fuss over Tim at every turn throughout the raspberry patch, exclaiming, “Tim, you’re the birthday king!”
I thought of this story yesterday, exactly ten years later, as I waited for Tim to bike home from the bus stop. Buses, middle school, riding a bike, being outside by himself – all of these would have been unimaginable to me the day Tim went raspberry-picking as a 3-year-old, but all are commonplace matters in the life of a 13-year-old.
Contemporary American society doesn’t hold a lot of age-specific rites of passage for kids. In Carlisle, kids can leave campus on their own after dismissal as of fifth grade, and that tends to be a big deal to them; it means they can walk to the general store or the library by themselves or with friends. But after that, for a lot of kids there’s nothing specifically great about turning any particular age until they reach 16 and start learning to drive.
Happily, social media has changed that. By turning 13, Tim was officially old enough to open his own Facebook account, and he’s been looking forward to that for months.
Not every family upholds the 13-year-old rule for Facebook, since it’s essentially done on an honor system, and some parents don’t even know about the rule, as I discovered over the summer when I expressed surprise that a friend let her 12-year-old have a Facebook presence. But I felt pretty strongly about compliance. Partly it was that I believe it sets a good standard to assume rules exist for a reason, but I also liked the fact that here was an age-specific milestone at a time when those can be hard to come by. I was happy for the built-in opportunity to make something special about turning 13 for Tim.
Rick and I went over the ground rules during dinner: he had to friend both of us, so that we could keep an eye on what he was saying on line; and he couldn’t friend anyone who used inappropriate language. After dinner, Tim got to work setting up his account.
As promised, I was the first person he friended; then he found both his grandmothers and some cousins. Since he’s among the oldest of his friends, he didn’t find too many peers on Facebook, but in time he will. For now, he’s enjoying something special and new, granted to him because he reached teenagehood. It’s pleasing to find rites of passage where few exist. So far, Tim is taking it in stride – and joining Facebook was definitely less thrilling to him than other aspects of his birthday this year including his party last weekend in Maine and the apple crisp I made for his birthday dessert – but he’s having fun with it. And I’m happy in the knowledge that turning 13 does indeed come with some special privileges.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
A priority on going biking
There were plenty of reasons for me not to go biking yesterday.
First and foremost, it was a work day for me. All summer, no matter how much fun I was having with the kids or with friends or other family members, the fact that I was putting in a substandard work day gnawed at me. At best, during July and August, I wrote for about three hours a day, compared with the six or more I can log once school is back in session.
So no matter how much fun I was having during summer break, it was always with a sense of comfort in knowing that a return to real life, and full work days, lay in the not-too-distant future.
And as is the case every year, when the school year started anew, nothing could have been more welcome than the opportunity to work from 9 to 3. That’s exactly how I felt a week ago, on the kids’ first day of classes. I turned on my computer five minutes after Holly clambered onto the bus, and I powered through three or four meaty assignments before Tim showed up with his first day of seventh grade behind him, asking about snack options.
But wanting to apply myself to my work was easy a week ago. It was a welcome novelty after the summer, and besides, that day was rainy. The whole first week of school was rainy, in fact. I was delighted to sit at my kitchen table writing for hours on end.
The Tuesday one week after the start of classes was a classic New England late-summer day, though, with a tinge of humidity underlying a warm, sunny morning. “This would be a good day for a bike ride,” I mused to myself as I drove across town after stopping by my parents’ house. “Too bad I can’t take one.”
Except wait. Why couldn’t I?
Well, because I had to file my weekly set of community news briefs. And write a blog entry. And slog along on a ghost-writing project I’m in the thick of.
But those were only the pragmatic reasons. Really, I reasoned with myself, I couldn’t take a bike ride because….well, because it was the middle of a work week in the midst of a busy month; vacation season had just ended; I hadn’t planned ahead to do something special and frivolous (normally if I’m going to divert from my regular workday routine, I plan it weeks if not months in advance); and besides, everyone else was at school or work – my children, my spouse, most of my friends, my sisters, my neighbors – why should I have the privilege of being out on a bike ride?
Because I can, came the answer, crashing over me like a breaking wave. Because I devoted the majority of my limited reading time this summer to Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project,” the gist of which is that each of us has a personal obligation to the universe to find what it is that makes us happiest and try to work that into our lives, regardless of our other necessary responsibilities. And spending time outdoors, preferably doing something physically challenging, on a warm late-summer day is definitely something that makes me happy.
But one thing I’ve learned about being self-employed is that playing hooky is very different now from how it was when I had a corporate employer. Back then, I took the occasional day off from work with a sense of triumph, even glee. “I earned this,” I would think to myself. “My company owes me this pleasure.”
When you’re self-employed, though, the boss always makes you feel guilty for a day off.
Make it a priority, I reminded myself. Do the things that matter most to you.
And so I did. I made myself a sandwich, filled up a water bottle and headed out.
You’re just lucky that you can do this, I told myself. You should still be feeling a little guilty, though, that other people can’t.
I wasn’t feeling guilty, though. I was feeling grateful. And happy. And yes, very fortunate. But also a little bit proud of my sense of focus. I’d made it a priority, and I’d done it.
As my friend Tracey wrote earlier in the day when I said I was contemplating putting work on hold, “Do it. You'll always remember the bike ride. You won't remember that extra hour you spent working.”
It turned out to be two hours of not-working, not one, but that was okay. I returned with inspiration for my blog and renewed energy for another couple of hours of work before the kids got home.
I felt a sense of accomplishment, too. Not the same sense of accomplishment I get when I finish drafting an article. The kind that comes from following my own priorities, no matter how frivolous they may be. Which in this case meant taking the opportunity to savor a magnificent and unique late-summer New England day, despite the awareness that maybe I should have been working.
First and foremost, it was a work day for me. All summer, no matter how much fun I was having with the kids or with friends or other family members, the fact that I was putting in a substandard work day gnawed at me. At best, during July and August, I wrote for about three hours a day, compared with the six or more I can log once school is back in session.
So no matter how much fun I was having during summer break, it was always with a sense of comfort in knowing that a return to real life, and full work days, lay in the not-too-distant future.
And as is the case every year, when the school year started anew, nothing could have been more welcome than the opportunity to work from 9 to 3. That’s exactly how I felt a week ago, on the kids’ first day of classes. I turned on my computer five minutes after Holly clambered onto the bus, and I powered through three or four meaty assignments before Tim showed up with his first day of seventh grade behind him, asking about snack options.
But wanting to apply myself to my work was easy a week ago. It was a welcome novelty after the summer, and besides, that day was rainy. The whole first week of school was rainy, in fact. I was delighted to sit at my kitchen table writing for hours on end.
The Tuesday one week after the start of classes was a classic New England late-summer day, though, with a tinge of humidity underlying a warm, sunny morning. “This would be a good day for a bike ride,” I mused to myself as I drove across town after stopping by my parents’ house. “Too bad I can’t take one.”
Except wait. Why couldn’t I?
Well, because I had to file my weekly set of community news briefs. And write a blog entry. And slog along on a ghost-writing project I’m in the thick of.
But those were only the pragmatic reasons. Really, I reasoned with myself, I couldn’t take a bike ride because….well, because it was the middle of a work week in the midst of a busy month; vacation season had just ended; I hadn’t planned ahead to do something special and frivolous (normally if I’m going to divert from my regular workday routine, I plan it weeks if not months in advance); and besides, everyone else was at school or work – my children, my spouse, most of my friends, my sisters, my neighbors – why should I have the privilege of being out on a bike ride?
Because I can, came the answer, crashing over me like a breaking wave. Because I devoted the majority of my limited reading time this summer to Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project,” the gist of which is that each of us has a personal obligation to the universe to find what it is that makes us happiest and try to work that into our lives, regardless of our other necessary responsibilities. And spending time outdoors, preferably doing something physically challenging, on a warm late-summer day is definitely something that makes me happy.
But one thing I’ve learned about being self-employed is that playing hooky is very different now from how it was when I had a corporate employer. Back then, I took the occasional day off from work with a sense of triumph, even glee. “I earned this,” I would think to myself. “My company owes me this pleasure.”
When you’re self-employed, though, the boss always makes you feel guilty for a day off.
Make it a priority, I reminded myself. Do the things that matter most to you.
And so I did. I made myself a sandwich, filled up a water bottle and headed out.
You’re just lucky that you can do this, I told myself. You should still be feeling a little guilty, though, that other people can’t.
I wasn’t feeling guilty, though. I was feeling grateful. And happy. And yes, very fortunate. But also a little bit proud of my sense of focus. I’d made it a priority, and I’d done it.
As my friend Tracey wrote earlier in the day when I said I was contemplating putting work on hold, “Do it. You'll always remember the bike ride. You won't remember that extra hour you spent working.”
It turned out to be two hours of not-working, not one, but that was okay. I returned with inspiration for my blog and renewed energy for another couple of hours of work before the kids got home.
I felt a sense of accomplishment, too. Not the same sense of accomplishment I get when I finish drafting an article. The kind that comes from following my own priorities, no matter how frivolous they may be. Which in this case meant taking the opportunity to savor a magnificent and unique late-summer New England day, despite the awareness that maybe I should have been working.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Peculiar and hilarious: My weekend with three 12-year-old boys
I used to always end Tim’s birthday parties with a sense of triumph. I survived, the house survived, and the kids had fun, I would tell myself with a rush of relief as each one ended. The farm party; the cupcake-decorating party; the outing to the minor league baseball park; the sleepover party; the miniature golf excursion; the day at the theme park. All were great birthday celebrations as far as Tim was concerned because he had so much fun; all were great from my perspective because, well, they ended with no one getting hurt. And sometimes they were kind of fun for me too. But more often than not, it was just a relief to know I’d pulled it off.
This year I ended Tim’s birthday party not with a sense of triumph but with a minor sense of sadness. It wasn’t that the gathering hadn’t been successful. It was just that for the first time in 12 years of hosting birthday parties for Tim and his peers, I didn’t want to see this one end.
I suspected that taking three 12-year-old boys up to Maine for the weekend just days before Tim turned 13 would work out pretty well, but I didn’t anticipate what a good time I would have. Partly it was great because the mom of one of the other guests came along too, and she and I had lots of time to talk and visit throughout the weekend, but it was also just that the boys were really fun to be with. Peculiar and hilarious at times, but fun.
Peculiar and hilarious in that any mildly interesting thing any of them managed to do – such as climbing a medium-sized tree, eating an order of fried clams or crossing a street backwards – involved not only the activity itself but the necessity of one of the other boys whipping out a cell phone, taking a picture of the endeavor, and then emailing it to ten or fifteen friends. Peculiar and hilarious in that much of the weekend unfolded in tandem with a continuous text-message conversation going back and forth with a group of girls from their class at school who were having a get-together of their own at the same time. Peculiar and hilarious in that when walking down a somewhat busy city street, 12-year-old boys tend to draw upon the rules of bumper cars more than of pedestrians – caroming off of other people as you tear along is fine as long as you don’t actually initiate any head-on crashes.
But really, what will stay in my mind about the weekend isn’t so much the many ways that 12-year-old boys are different from 44-year-old moms – such as when a formal wedding party arrived by boat at the dock adjacent to our balcony and while my friend and I, along with several neighbors who were watching from their own balconies, oohed and aahed over the pretty bride and her elegant dress, the boys expressed disappointment at what a smooth landing the captain of the boat made, even with a photographer standing right in his line of sight, because, of course, it would have been so much cooler if the wedding party had crash-landed at the dock – not any of that is what will stay in my mind as much as how much fun we all had. We took a long walk along the bike path to the beach. We ate mussels and calamari. We visited the ice cream parlor. We went on a 90-minute kayaking excursion on the Harraseeket River. We played badminton.
I wish I could say this birthday must be the beginning of a long string of parties at which I’ll have just as good a time as the kids, but this may have been a one-off. If I could turn back the clock to Friday, I’d do it all again, just because it was so much fun. But of course, I have to move past the weekend and into a new work week, just as the kids do back at school. Thanks to them, though, there are two or three hundred cell-phone photos of our fun now floating through cyber-space, so I can revisit the experience as often as I want.
This year I ended Tim’s birthday party not with a sense of triumph but with a minor sense of sadness. It wasn’t that the gathering hadn’t been successful. It was just that for the first time in 12 years of hosting birthday parties for Tim and his peers, I didn’t want to see this one end.
I suspected that taking three 12-year-old boys up to Maine for the weekend just days before Tim turned 13 would work out pretty well, but I didn’t anticipate what a good time I would have. Partly it was great because the mom of one of the other guests came along too, and she and I had lots of time to talk and visit throughout the weekend, but it was also just that the boys were really fun to be with. Peculiar and hilarious at times, but fun.
Peculiar and hilarious in that any mildly interesting thing any of them managed to do – such as climbing a medium-sized tree, eating an order of fried clams or crossing a street backwards – involved not only the activity itself but the necessity of one of the other boys whipping out a cell phone, taking a picture of the endeavor, and then emailing it to ten or fifteen friends. Peculiar and hilarious in that much of the weekend unfolded in tandem with a continuous text-message conversation going back and forth with a group of girls from their class at school who were having a get-together of their own at the same time. Peculiar and hilarious in that when walking down a somewhat busy city street, 12-year-old boys tend to draw upon the rules of bumper cars more than of pedestrians – caroming off of other people as you tear along is fine as long as you don’t actually initiate any head-on crashes.
But really, what will stay in my mind about the weekend isn’t so much the many ways that 12-year-old boys are different from 44-year-old moms – such as when a formal wedding party arrived by boat at the dock adjacent to our balcony and while my friend and I, along with several neighbors who were watching from their own balconies, oohed and aahed over the pretty bride and her elegant dress, the boys expressed disappointment at what a smooth landing the captain of the boat made, even with a photographer standing right in his line of sight, because, of course, it would have been so much cooler if the wedding party had crash-landed at the dock – not any of that is what will stay in my mind as much as how much fun we all had. We took a long walk along the bike path to the beach. We ate mussels and calamari. We visited the ice cream parlor. We went on a 90-minute kayaking excursion on the Harraseeket River. We played badminton.
I wish I could say this birthday must be the beginning of a long string of parties at which I’ll have just as good a time as the kids, but this may have been a one-off. If I could turn back the clock to Friday, I’d do it all again, just because it was so much fun. But of course, I have to move past the weekend and into a new work week, just as the kids do back at school. Thanks to them, though, there are two or three hundred cell-phone photos of our fun now floating through cyber-space, so I can revisit the experience as often as I want.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Fill in the blanks
The first few questions on the fourth grade parent questionnaire were easy enough to fill out, and those were the only ones we were required to answer. Parents’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, preferred method of contact.
The questions on the reverse side were optional, Holly’s teacher emphasized, but would help her in getting to know each child better. I studied the questions.
“My child is particularly interested in ______.”
I thought about all the ways I could answer that. The TV show “I-Carly.” Finding new and unusual ways to irritate her brother. Who wants to sit with whom on the school bus.
“Learning about other cultures,” I wrote down. Sure. Such as the culture inhabited by the teens on the show “Suite Life on Deck with Zach and Cody,” or, as I like to think of it, “The Love Boat, Junior.”
“My child is great at _________.”
That’s not the kind of statement I ever make. Holly is good at plenty of things, the kinds of things you would expect a nine-year-old to be good at: art projects, making up stories, building sand castles. But I’m just not the type of parent to refer to my child as great at something.
Even though it’s only the third day of school, I already know Holly’s teacher fairly well, because she was Holly’s second-grade teacher two years ago and we run into each other frequently on campus. I know that not only is she an excellent teacher but she’s also an unfailingly well-meaning person tremendously dedicated to her students, and therefore I know her only intention in asking these questions was to get to know her students better. But I couldn’t help feeling irrationally like the questions were a test, to see what kind of parent I was. The boastful kind? The stage-mother kind? A parent quick to promote her child’s talents, or one genuinely concerned about meeting the curricular benchmarks for the mathematics program?
But the hardest question was yet to come: “List the three words that best describe your child.”
I didn’t second-guess myself until after I’d written them down. “Creative. Cheerful. Self-absorbed.”
Wait a minute, my conscience spoke up. Self-absorbed? You’re not supposed to say that about your own kid! It’s so critical! So negative! You’re supposed to have nothing but positive comments, remember? Otherwise along with “My child is great at _________” there would be a question that said “My child is seriously deficient at ________,” and you didn’t see that one, did you?
I looked again at where I’d written “self-absorbed.” I didn’t mean it in a critical way, just an honest one. Holly spends a lot of time thinking about Holly, that’s all. But what nine-year-old doesn’t? Were there actually parents in the class filling in that line with “altruistic”? Wasn’t self-absorption in a girl Holly’s age to some extent just a manifestation of positive self-esteem? She’s a young girl. She’ll spend plenty of time in her life thinking about other people: friends, romantic partners, bosses, clients, spouses, children of her own. Is it so bad that at the age of nine, her primary focus is herself – possibly for the last time?
I believed in my own argument, but I didn’t want to start off the year on the wrong foot, with her teacher thinking I was overly critical. I deleted “self-absorbed” and changed it to “self-confident.” It’s not quite the same, and frankly it’s not quite as close to what I was trying to say.
But that’s all right. It’s the third day of school; Ms. McCabe has the next nine months to get to know the kids and evaluate the parents’ assessments of their own children. Her primary interest is in the make-up of her classroom, not the way parents fill in blanks. I’ll let it go for now. Ms. McCabe has her own challenge ahead, similar to this one but tougher: coming up with adjectives for Holly and every other kid in the class when report card time comes around.
The questions on the reverse side were optional, Holly’s teacher emphasized, but would help her in getting to know each child better. I studied the questions.
“My child is particularly interested in ______.”
I thought about all the ways I could answer that. The TV show “I-Carly.” Finding new and unusual ways to irritate her brother. Who wants to sit with whom on the school bus.
“Learning about other cultures,” I wrote down. Sure. Such as the culture inhabited by the teens on the show “Suite Life on Deck with Zach and Cody,” or, as I like to think of it, “The Love Boat, Junior.”
“My child is great at _________.”
That’s not the kind of statement I ever make. Holly is good at plenty of things, the kinds of things you would expect a nine-year-old to be good at: art projects, making up stories, building sand castles. But I’m just not the type of parent to refer to my child as great at something.
Even though it’s only the third day of school, I already know Holly’s teacher fairly well, because she was Holly’s second-grade teacher two years ago and we run into each other frequently on campus. I know that not only is she an excellent teacher but she’s also an unfailingly well-meaning person tremendously dedicated to her students, and therefore I know her only intention in asking these questions was to get to know her students better. But I couldn’t help feeling irrationally like the questions were a test, to see what kind of parent I was. The boastful kind? The stage-mother kind? A parent quick to promote her child’s talents, or one genuinely concerned about meeting the curricular benchmarks for the mathematics program?
But the hardest question was yet to come: “List the three words that best describe your child.”
I didn’t second-guess myself until after I’d written them down. “Creative. Cheerful. Self-absorbed.”
Wait a minute, my conscience spoke up. Self-absorbed? You’re not supposed to say that about your own kid! It’s so critical! So negative! You’re supposed to have nothing but positive comments, remember? Otherwise along with “My child is great at _________” there would be a question that said “My child is seriously deficient at ________,” and you didn’t see that one, did you?
I looked again at where I’d written “self-absorbed.” I didn’t mean it in a critical way, just an honest one. Holly spends a lot of time thinking about Holly, that’s all. But what nine-year-old doesn’t? Were there actually parents in the class filling in that line with “altruistic”? Wasn’t self-absorption in a girl Holly’s age to some extent just a manifestation of positive self-esteem? She’s a young girl. She’ll spend plenty of time in her life thinking about other people: friends, romantic partners, bosses, clients, spouses, children of her own. Is it so bad that at the age of nine, her primary focus is herself – possibly for the last time?
I believed in my own argument, but I didn’t want to start off the year on the wrong foot, with her teacher thinking I was overly critical. I deleted “self-absorbed” and changed it to “self-confident.” It’s not quite the same, and frankly it’s not quite as close to what I was trying to say.
But that’s all right. It’s the third day of school; Ms. McCabe has the next nine months to get to know the kids and evaluate the parents’ assessments of their own children. Her primary interest is in the make-up of her classroom, not the way parents fill in blanks. I’ll let it go for now. Ms. McCabe has her own challenge ahead, similar to this one but tougher: coming up with adjectives for Holly and every other kid in the class when report card time comes around.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Room for improvement
I admit it: the bus arrived at our stop yesterday morning before we did.
This is absolutely antithetical to how the first day of school is supposed to go, according to my personal code of conduct. I’m appalled that Holly and I were late to the bus on the first day of school. The third grader next door was already boarding as I drove up, and Holly was not ready to hop spryly out of the car and run to the steps of the bus. She was still trying to get her little hands around the three bags of school supplies she needed to bring in for the first day of school.
Speaking of school supplies, let me just state that there is not a single white two-pocket folder with three prongs for sale in any office supply store in Massachusetts. In fact, there appears to not be a single white folder of any number of pockets and prongs for sale in Massachusetts. I know this because I’ve checked them all; it was the only item on Holly’s list of back-to-school requirements that I couldn’t find. I found the black two-pocket three-prong folder, the green one, the orange one, the red one, the purple one, and the jewel-toned paisley one. Okay, I’m making that last item up, but it would not surprise me one bit if that description were to appear on next year’s school supplies list. I’m absolutely fine with the number of binders, reams of paper, boxes of Kleenex and size of ruler on the list, but is it really necessary to have six different colors of folders specified? Wouldn’t it be sufficient to just by six folders?
But all of that happened over the weekend. Yesterday morning, up to about 8:10, I thought we were in fine shape. Tim ate a hearty breakfast and left for the middle school bus on time. Holly ate a smaller breakfast, took a long shower, carefully dressed herself in the outfit she’d selected the night before, combed her hair, brushed her teeth….and then somehow the minutes started to elude us. She felt the need to re-do her pigtails. I wanted to take a photo, and Holly wouldn’t stop making hand gestures that I didn’t want in the picture. (Nothing obscene, just annoying hip-hop gestures that have no place in a first-day-of-school scrapbook.) She had all her school supplies together but had left her summer journal on the kitchen table. The sandals she’d planned to wear wouldn’t do in the unanticipated rain.
All of this cost us only about five minutes, but those five minutes were the difference between waiting for the bus and having the bus wait for us.
This was particularly frustrating since just yesterday, I challenged myself anew to make punctuality a priority in the nascent school year. It’s not that I make this resolution over and over again with futility; every year I improve a little. But over the weekend, two consecutive events caused me to want to redouble my efforts.
On Saturday, I drove up to our friends’ beach house at 1:24, after I told them we’d be there between 1 and 1:30. And on Monday, I sauntered through the door of another friend’s house at exactly 10:00 in the morning, having agreed to meet her for a walk at ten. These are both events I would more typically arrive to a little bit late, but the sense of vindication my timeliness gave me was intoxicating, and I resolved to make this my year of punctuality. (Again.)
If I can maintain a daily running streak successfully for over four years now, I thought to myself, maybe I can do a punctuality streak as well. This weekend makes it two for two; maybe I should see how long I can go without arriving anywhere late.
My neighbor, Carol, who had clearly arrived with her grade-schooler at our bus stop well before the bus was so much as a glimmer on the horizon, could see how embarrassed I was yesterday morning. “Don’t feel bad!” she reassured me. “It’s only the first day of school!”
Yes, I thought to myself, but the first day is the day you should do everything right. The first day is supposed to be the flawless one.
Well, I replied to myself, now you know which area to target for improvement. Carol’s attitude is right: Not “It’s the first day of school!” but “It’s only the first day of school!” You have 179 more just like it to get to the bus on time.
Here’s hoping for a 179-day streak, starting tomorrow.
This is absolutely antithetical to how the first day of school is supposed to go, according to my personal code of conduct. I’m appalled that Holly and I were late to the bus on the first day of school. The third grader next door was already boarding as I drove up, and Holly was not ready to hop spryly out of the car and run to the steps of the bus. She was still trying to get her little hands around the three bags of school supplies she needed to bring in for the first day of school.
Speaking of school supplies, let me just state that there is not a single white two-pocket folder with three prongs for sale in any office supply store in Massachusetts. In fact, there appears to not be a single white folder of any number of pockets and prongs for sale in Massachusetts. I know this because I’ve checked them all; it was the only item on Holly’s list of back-to-school requirements that I couldn’t find. I found the black two-pocket three-prong folder, the green one, the orange one, the red one, the purple one, and the jewel-toned paisley one. Okay, I’m making that last item up, but it would not surprise me one bit if that description were to appear on next year’s school supplies list. I’m absolutely fine with the number of binders, reams of paper, boxes of Kleenex and size of ruler on the list, but is it really necessary to have six different colors of folders specified? Wouldn’t it be sufficient to just by six folders?
But all of that happened over the weekend. Yesterday morning, up to about 8:10, I thought we were in fine shape. Tim ate a hearty breakfast and left for the middle school bus on time. Holly ate a smaller breakfast, took a long shower, carefully dressed herself in the outfit she’d selected the night before, combed her hair, brushed her teeth….and then somehow the minutes started to elude us. She felt the need to re-do her pigtails. I wanted to take a photo, and Holly wouldn’t stop making hand gestures that I didn’t want in the picture. (Nothing obscene, just annoying hip-hop gestures that have no place in a first-day-of-school scrapbook.) She had all her school supplies together but had left her summer journal on the kitchen table. The sandals she’d planned to wear wouldn’t do in the unanticipated rain.
All of this cost us only about five minutes, but those five minutes were the difference between waiting for the bus and having the bus wait for us.
This was particularly frustrating since just yesterday, I challenged myself anew to make punctuality a priority in the nascent school year. It’s not that I make this resolution over and over again with futility; every year I improve a little. But over the weekend, two consecutive events caused me to want to redouble my efforts.
On Saturday, I drove up to our friends’ beach house at 1:24, after I told them we’d be there between 1 and 1:30. And on Monday, I sauntered through the door of another friend’s house at exactly 10:00 in the morning, having agreed to meet her for a walk at ten. These are both events I would more typically arrive to a little bit late, but the sense of vindication my timeliness gave me was intoxicating, and I resolved to make this my year of punctuality. (Again.)
If I can maintain a daily running streak successfully for over four years now, I thought to myself, maybe I can do a punctuality streak as well. This weekend makes it two for two; maybe I should see how long I can go without arriving anywhere late.
My neighbor, Carol, who had clearly arrived with her grade-schooler at our bus stop well before the bus was so much as a glimmer on the horizon, could see how embarrassed I was yesterday morning. “Don’t feel bad!” she reassured me. “It’s only the first day of school!”
Yes, I thought to myself, but the first day is the day you should do everything right. The first day is supposed to be the flawless one.
Well, I replied to myself, now you know which area to target for improvement. Carol’s attitude is right: Not “It’s the first day of school!” but “It’s only the first day of school!” You have 179 more just like it to get to the bus on time.
Here’s hoping for a 179-day streak, starting tomorrow.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Summer 2011 retrospective
It’s Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer and the incontrovertible end of vacation. School starts tomorrow morning; time to close out summer of 2011.
Somehow I didn’t expect to enjoy this summer as much as I did. For one thing, I was concerned that it was front-loaded: my big trip to Colorado happened at the end of June, before the kids were even done with school yet. Arriving home still days before July began, I was sure it would be all downhill from there.
But it wasn’t. Lots more good things happened, though none were perhaps as intellectually or artistically inspiring as the five days at the Aspen Summer Words writers’ conference. Still, the summer had all kinds of unexpected highlights. I won’t soon forget the Old Home Day pet contest, in which Holly answered questions about Belle and won a gift certificate for a free ice cream cone. Or the crawfish boil at the home of friends, at which tiny crawfish tried to escape their fate by scrabbling across the patio just inches from the cauldron into which they were about to be dropped. Or the afternoon my friend Jane invited us over for a swim; I told the kids we could go at three and stay for just an hour, but at six o’clock Jane ordered pizzas and by sunset we were still sitting out by the pool, gabbing and drinking cocktails.
Work went on, as it must; I spent weekday mornings on the screen porch drafting articles and conducting phone interviews. It’s among the best office views I’ve ever had, facing into a thick grove of oak trees that border the state park. Often I could hear voices drift through the woods as hikers made their way along the park trails. “Internship in Costa Rica….” Floated over one day. “…accept one more dinner invitation” another.
I tried jet-skiing for the first time, on Lake Chatauqua in western New York during our late August travels. While I’m glad to be able to say I’ve tried it, jet-skiing is definitely not something I’m in any hurry to repeat. As I see it, enjoying the outdoors should ideally involve either contemplative silence or some degree of physical exertion, or both, as well as a lot less fuel output than jet-skiing allows.
We had a handful of beach days: Crane’s Beach in early July, the air hot and still and the water icy cold; Goose Rocks Beach in Kennebunkport a week later, where in the course of three hours I caught up on the past year in my friend Courtney’s life while the kids jumped in the waves; Moody Beach in Wells, Maine, where my friend Renee and I power-walked for almost two hours along the shoreline; Higgins Beach in Scarborough earlier this weekend, where Tim and Holly and their friends built an enormous heap out of seaweed while my friend Nicole and I got completely caught up on the goings-on of each other’s summers.
We saw my older sister and her family for the first time in a year; they had spent the previous twelve months in Germany, and it was wonderful to catch up with all of them over several meals and drop-in visits during their two weeks in Carlisle. I met up for a lunch date with my friend Tracey, whom I hadn’t seen in nineteen years. Facebook brought us back in touch and her trip to Boston from Los Angeles gave us the chance for a get-together, and it was fascinating to hear what the past two decades had held for her.
For sports, the summer included boating, walking, biking, swimming and of course running. There were summer meals, outdoor concerts, baseball games, bonfires with s’mores. There was a heat wave with temperatures spiking well over one hundred, and a hurricane that turned out to be picturesque but not particularly scary.
The kids say they’re not ready to go back to school. While I don’t feel fully ready to transition into fall mode, I’m starting to feel a little bit ready for the seasons to change. Yesterday morning, for the first time all summer, I woke up and greeted the thought of my morning run with something decidedly less than enthusiasm. The humidity has started to be a real impediment to me when running, and I wasn’t looking forward to another draggy slog through the warm damp air. I went anyway, but just for two miles rather than the four or five that a Sunday morning usually merits.
Maybe in the fall, my enthusiasm for longer running routes will return. I know once school begins, I’ll be excited about all the new beginnings that September holds. But today is the last day of summer, even if not officially, and I’m still thinking about what a great summer it turned out to be.
Somehow I didn’t expect to enjoy this summer as much as I did. For one thing, I was concerned that it was front-loaded: my big trip to Colorado happened at the end of June, before the kids were even done with school yet. Arriving home still days before July began, I was sure it would be all downhill from there.
But it wasn’t. Lots more good things happened, though none were perhaps as intellectually or artistically inspiring as the five days at the Aspen Summer Words writers’ conference. Still, the summer had all kinds of unexpected highlights. I won’t soon forget the Old Home Day pet contest, in which Holly answered questions about Belle and won a gift certificate for a free ice cream cone. Or the crawfish boil at the home of friends, at which tiny crawfish tried to escape their fate by scrabbling across the patio just inches from the cauldron into which they were about to be dropped. Or the afternoon my friend Jane invited us over for a swim; I told the kids we could go at three and stay for just an hour, but at six o’clock Jane ordered pizzas and by sunset we were still sitting out by the pool, gabbing and drinking cocktails.
Work went on, as it must; I spent weekday mornings on the screen porch drafting articles and conducting phone interviews. It’s among the best office views I’ve ever had, facing into a thick grove of oak trees that border the state park. Often I could hear voices drift through the woods as hikers made their way along the park trails. “Internship in Costa Rica….” Floated over one day. “…accept one more dinner invitation” another.
I tried jet-skiing for the first time, on Lake Chatauqua in western New York during our late August travels. While I’m glad to be able to say I’ve tried it, jet-skiing is definitely not something I’m in any hurry to repeat. As I see it, enjoying the outdoors should ideally involve either contemplative silence or some degree of physical exertion, or both, as well as a lot less fuel output than jet-skiing allows.
We had a handful of beach days: Crane’s Beach in early July, the air hot and still and the water icy cold; Goose Rocks Beach in Kennebunkport a week later, where in the course of three hours I caught up on the past year in my friend Courtney’s life while the kids jumped in the waves; Moody Beach in Wells, Maine, where my friend Renee and I power-walked for almost two hours along the shoreline; Higgins Beach in Scarborough earlier this weekend, where Tim and Holly and their friends built an enormous heap out of seaweed while my friend Nicole and I got completely caught up on the goings-on of each other’s summers.
We saw my older sister and her family for the first time in a year; they had spent the previous twelve months in Germany, and it was wonderful to catch up with all of them over several meals and drop-in visits during their two weeks in Carlisle. I met up for a lunch date with my friend Tracey, whom I hadn’t seen in nineteen years. Facebook brought us back in touch and her trip to Boston from Los Angeles gave us the chance for a get-together, and it was fascinating to hear what the past two decades had held for her.
For sports, the summer included boating, walking, biking, swimming and of course running. There were summer meals, outdoor concerts, baseball games, bonfires with s’mores. There was a heat wave with temperatures spiking well over one hundred, and a hurricane that turned out to be picturesque but not particularly scary.
The kids say they’re not ready to go back to school. While I don’t feel fully ready to transition into fall mode, I’m starting to feel a little bit ready for the seasons to change. Yesterday morning, for the first time all summer, I woke up and greeted the thought of my morning run with something decidedly less than enthusiasm. The humidity has started to be a real impediment to me when running, and I wasn’t looking forward to another draggy slog through the warm damp air. I went anyway, but just for two miles rather than the four or five that a Sunday morning usually merits.
Maybe in the fall, my enthusiasm for longer running routes will return. I know once school begins, I’ll be excited about all the new beginnings that September holds. But today is the last day of summer, even if not officially, and I’m still thinking about what a great summer it turned out to be.
Friday, September 2, 2011
This will be the year
Like the Red Sox fans who surround me, I’m perpetually telling myself: Maybe this will be the year.
Only for me, that sentiment reverberates through the air not on Opening Day at Fenway Park but on the eve of the first day of school.
This will be it, I tell myself. I’ve had seven years of training in How to Make the School Year Run Perfectly. This will be the year it all comes together.
This will be the year that everyone gets up on time and leaves the house punctually. In fact, so smoothly will our morning routine run that dishes will be washed and crumbs wiped up by the time the door closes behind us. No returning after my morning run to a kitchen-ful of breakfast clean-up: this year I’ll figure out how to get it all done at the same time the kids are preparing to catch the bus.
This will be the year the kids remember to sort their backpacks not just once a semester or even once a week but every day. They’ll come home and remove paperwork, lunch detritus, unwanted snacks, notes from friends, and (in Holly’s case) pet rocks, leaves, twigs and flowers accrued throughout the day.
This will be the year we all remember to get to bed on time every night.
This will be the year I make good on my resolution not to pester anyone about homework. Tim has already proved to us that he can be trusted to keep up with his work: we stopped reminding him last year, and his quarterly report cards made it clear he was holding up his end of the bargain. Now it’s time to make the same pact with Holly. She’ll do her work or she’ll learn the embarrassment of going into class empty-handed. I’ll save myself the daily lecture. We’ll all benefit.
Except that there’s always the nagging worry for me that she won’t get her homework done. After all, she hasn’t yet finished her birthday thankyou notes – four weeks after her birthday. Maybe I’ll pester just a little.
This will be the year I make the absolute most of my work time, too. As soon as I get back from my morning run, I’ll start writing, and I won’t stop until it’s time to meet the elementary bus. That’s more than six hours of focused, uninterrupted work. I should have a remarkably productive fall.
Well, uninterrupted: that’s the catch. That means no scheduling meetings or appointments or coffee dates or errands during work hours. But it’s fine. This is the year I realize that I’ll just have to find other times to get all of those peripheral responsibilities tended to: work time is for work, and I’m going to break the habit of letting it get adulterated with other duties.
But having said that, this will also be the year I find more time to walk in the woods. The trails of the state park beckon from just beyond the edge of our yard, and in the six months we’ve lived here, I have yet to learn more of the trails system than the one that leads to the ice cream stand at park headquarters. Well, that’s the only route that interests the kids; fair enough. But with them back at school, the dog and I are resolved to start exploring more of the trails. True, I just said I was going to work an uninterrupted six-hour work day Monday through Friday. But a half-hour walk in the woods now and then surely will only serve to fuel my creativity.
And in the interest of fueling that creativity, this will be the year I redouble my efforts to read more Thoreau. At the beginning of the summer, I bought a beautiful new volume called “The Quotable Thoreau,” clearly meant for people like me who need the Cliff Notes version of the great naturalist’s work. So far, I’ve dusted the book several times, but have yet to actually read it. With the kids back at school, this will be the year.
I know we’ll succeed in all of these resolutions because we’ll be so well-nourished. You see, this will also be the year I succeed in putting a three- or four-course meal on the table at the same time every evening, featuring a well-balanced menu of proteins, vegetables and starches, with just the right amount of leftovers (and continuing appeal) to pack up for the next day’s lunches.
This will be the year. Just like the Red Sox fans who surround me, I can hope, despite all evidence to the contrary. It could happen. And either way, I’ll keep trying.
Only for me, that sentiment reverberates through the air not on Opening Day at Fenway Park but on the eve of the first day of school.
This will be it, I tell myself. I’ve had seven years of training in How to Make the School Year Run Perfectly. This will be the year it all comes together.
This will be the year that everyone gets up on time and leaves the house punctually. In fact, so smoothly will our morning routine run that dishes will be washed and crumbs wiped up by the time the door closes behind us. No returning after my morning run to a kitchen-ful of breakfast clean-up: this year I’ll figure out how to get it all done at the same time the kids are preparing to catch the bus.
This will be the year the kids remember to sort their backpacks not just once a semester or even once a week but every day. They’ll come home and remove paperwork, lunch detritus, unwanted snacks, notes from friends, and (in Holly’s case) pet rocks, leaves, twigs and flowers accrued throughout the day.
This will be the year we all remember to get to bed on time every night.
This will be the year I make good on my resolution not to pester anyone about homework. Tim has already proved to us that he can be trusted to keep up with his work: we stopped reminding him last year, and his quarterly report cards made it clear he was holding up his end of the bargain. Now it’s time to make the same pact with Holly. She’ll do her work or she’ll learn the embarrassment of going into class empty-handed. I’ll save myself the daily lecture. We’ll all benefit.
Except that there’s always the nagging worry for me that she won’t get her homework done. After all, she hasn’t yet finished her birthday thankyou notes – four weeks after her birthday. Maybe I’ll pester just a little.
This will be the year I make the absolute most of my work time, too. As soon as I get back from my morning run, I’ll start writing, and I won’t stop until it’s time to meet the elementary bus. That’s more than six hours of focused, uninterrupted work. I should have a remarkably productive fall.
Well, uninterrupted: that’s the catch. That means no scheduling meetings or appointments or coffee dates or errands during work hours. But it’s fine. This is the year I realize that I’ll just have to find other times to get all of those peripheral responsibilities tended to: work time is for work, and I’m going to break the habit of letting it get adulterated with other duties.
But having said that, this will also be the year I find more time to walk in the woods. The trails of the state park beckon from just beyond the edge of our yard, and in the six months we’ve lived here, I have yet to learn more of the trails system than the one that leads to the ice cream stand at park headquarters. Well, that’s the only route that interests the kids; fair enough. But with them back at school, the dog and I are resolved to start exploring more of the trails. True, I just said I was going to work an uninterrupted six-hour work day Monday through Friday. But a half-hour walk in the woods now and then surely will only serve to fuel my creativity.
And in the interest of fueling that creativity, this will be the year I redouble my efforts to read more Thoreau. At the beginning of the summer, I bought a beautiful new volume called “The Quotable Thoreau,” clearly meant for people like me who need the Cliff Notes version of the great naturalist’s work. So far, I’ve dusted the book several times, but have yet to actually read it. With the kids back at school, this will be the year.
I know we’ll succeed in all of these resolutions because we’ll be so well-nourished. You see, this will also be the year I succeed in putting a three- or four-course meal on the table at the same time every evening, featuring a well-balanced menu of proteins, vegetables and starches, with just the right amount of leftovers (and continuing appeal) to pack up for the next day’s lunches.
This will be the year. Just like the Red Sox fans who surround me, I can hope, despite all evidence to the contrary. It could happen. And either way, I’ll keep trying.
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