@ Home in the World

Summertime and the living is

A bit more difficult for working moms.

School ended two weeks ago the way it began - with two useless half days on a Wednesday and Thursday. Of course that means that Friday there was no school. Piper used a vacation day to cover the Wednesday half day and I swapped my work at home day for the Thursday and took the Friday off.

I really enjoy being there for the last day of school. All the parents and the students in the lower grades hang around to "cheer on" the fifth graders leaving the building for the last time. The school buses are decorated in balloons and streamers and the drivers honk their horns as they pull out. This year I noticed that they put kazoos and other noise makers on every seat and that the kids were contributing to the cacophony on the way out. God bless 'em!

My neighbor and I have a tradition of our own of taking the kids out to lunch on the last day. This year she insisted that we bring two other women along and they insisted that instead of going to Friendly's like we always do, we should go somewhere that served Margaritas. I can't remember the last time I had a drink at lunch time. Maybe never.

Now these two other women have boys in Pumpkin's class, but they also have either older children who can watch the younger ones or husbands who work alternate shifts (a cop, for instance), so even though this idea started out as a kickoff celebration for the kids, the only one that actually brought her kids was me. Add to that I was technically still on the clock at work, so I did not have as many margaritas (1) or as much fun as the other women did. But I could drive home, which proved to be important.

I spent the entire time thinking someone from work might be trying to get in touch with me - just my luck. Hardly anyone ever calls me unless there's an immediate deadline, so I don't know what I was so worried about. I wound up taking a couple of hours out of my Friday vacation day to make up the time I missed as lunch hour turned into three hours. I'm good like that.

Tigger has spent the following weeks at a nearby camp that he loves. I thought about sending Pumpkin to the same place, but ultimately felt that teenagers could not handle the wigged-out nuttiness that is my younger son when he is overtired and overstimulated. Also, a 5-year old drowned in a camp pool in this state last year and that news went straight to the deep, dark place in my heart usually reserved for paranoia about my own health.

Now, why don't I have those same fears for Tigger? The pool is the one place that he has almost always behaved himself. And he's an awesome swimmer. But yeah, I feel guilty about it.

In the meantime, the woman who so bravely babysat for my kids after school has left us.  It was only a matter of time. She has three kids of her own and after years of saying they were going to move to our town, they have pretty much decided to stay put in this housing market. It's not the end of the world. She was fabulous, her kids were around my kids' ages, but she was also doing double duty as a taxi service for my neighbor's kids who decided that it was okay to come hang out at my house when they were done with their homework. I'm more than happy to have to put an end to that practice. Not that they're not nice kids, but there were just too many people in my house when I wasn't there and inevitably the place was trashed when I got home E V E R Y  N I G H T.

P's former pre-school teacher will be taking over, but she can't start right away. So Piper and I have been juggling our schedules to try to make it work. I realize now that we are never going to have a proper vacation this year. Maybe not next year either. The number of days that Piper and I are actually home together with the boys is going to be pretty limited as well.

I wonder if this is the curse of working parenthood, or maybe just parenthood in general - that we never get the chance to feel settled. And then some days, I suppose we feel too settled.

Some days I hardly recognize that this is my life. And then yesterday a co-worker announced that she was pregnant, due in December. For the first time ever, I was irrationally excited for her.

OMG, I want to be this guy!

Seriously, can you imagine having this as an idea, and the guts to put it together?

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

So, how do we handle this?

I think I need some help from the parent universe out there. 

This Saturday morning, I had the first-time experience of going with the rest of the family to T-ball. I wasn't able to go the previous three or four weeks, because there was always something else that needed doing - getting one or the other of the cars serviced, something for work, some other volunteer project in town. Last week the Pumpkin had such a meltdown that he didn't even go to T-ball, but stayed home with me.

I knew from Piper that getting Pumpkin to stay with his group and not run into the woods or on to another playing field was a challenge. For the past several weeks Piper has handled this challenge alone, shuttling between two kids on two different teams, one who did very well at this sort of thing, but needed an audience. The other, who was not really with the program, and already had an audience of the pointing and whispering kind.

I also knew, that in spite of his inability to say much about it, that T-ball had made an impression on the Pumpkin - he'd drawn himself playing T-ball in two separate "journal entries" in his Kindergarten classroom.

So Saturday morning when we went to play, his team practiced fielding first. He stood in his "stance" out  in the field, knees bent, eyes intent on the batter, chasing after every ball whether it came his way or not, always ending in a pile of kids anxious to retrieve the ball and sometimes remembering to throw to first. He had no patience waiting in line for his turn to bat. When his team returned to the field, he stood out there, this time in left field. Soon it became clear that no balls were being hit anywhere near him, he wandered off to the sidelines, found a tractor to study, and wound up playing catcher for some older kid who was pitching to his plastic bat-wielding, not-quite-two year-old brother. The little guy was hitting far more than you'd expect from a toddler, prompting Pumpkin to say  "That's an awesome baby!"

My efforts to get Pumpkin back out on the field with his teammates were met with "I'm too tired, I'm done playing T-ball. I'm done." Judging by his actions though, what this means is "I'm bored, waiting in line is stupid, I can play the way I want to and not have to follow some stranger/coach who expects me to follow directions."

In this, as in our experience with swimming last fall, I was reminded of Bode Miller, a kid with great skill, but little form, who hated following directions and being a team player. On the one hand, not thrilled with authority myself, I admire this kind of attitude and wish I personally had more of it. On the other hand, since neither child is likely to go into professional sports of any kind, I'm not sure how far this calling of his own shots can be taken.

As much like night and day as my two boys are, I had this exact same problem with Tigger. In any activity but swimming, he was always running to the sidelines to sit with me instead of being with the other kids, waiting for a turn. It made me crazy. All the other 3-4 year olds seemed to be able to follow directions, why not mine? I finally gave up and we quit whatever it was we were trying to do back then. Last fall with soccer, Tigger literally sat in the goal net and rolled around while the other kids played the game.  Finally, during the last game of the season, he blocked a shot from the other team and got an assist toward the end to win the game. Like it all finally clicked for him.

I struggle with my patience in these situations, waffling between wanting to let the boys do it their way and trying to teach a "sticktoitiveness" that all the other kids seem to already have mastered. I don't want to seem like some overbearing sportsparent when I keep urging Pumpkin to get in and play with the rest of the kids. It would be one thing if he were three or four. He's six.

So which is it? Should I be happy that he's recognizing a personal limit and self-regulating? Or should I be concerned that this is fitting into his pattern of doing things on his own schedule and only when he feels like doing it. And if the latter, what do I do about it? How far do I push?

Slappy Shoes!

Who ever said it was okay to wear flip flops in the office?

That has to be the most annoying sound to listen to in your cube. Especially when they walk by your cubical at a high rate of speed. A lot.

Slap, slap, slap, slap.......

Sigh

I figured I'd better tell this story before it's no longer relevant.

The Clintons used to love Boston. When Bill Clinton was president he stayed several times at the hotel adjacent to the office I worked in. That hotel frequently hosted Democratic events; I once narrowly avoided a collision with John Kerry one night on my way home. He was deep in conversation with someone nearly as tall as he is, and I simply wasn't watching where I was going. I looked up at the last minute and moved, and he didn't even see me.

The street was frequently blocked off when Bill Clinton came to town. I woud occasionally join my co-workers out by the crowd control fences to see if I could get a glimpse of the President leaving. One day did catch sight of him waving to the waiting crowd from his limo.

Flash forward several years. The Clinton presidency has ended, 9/11 has happened, and Bush is steadily beating the drum for attacking Iraq. I am at a different company, in a different part of Boston, meeting in a corner conference room with several of our co-workers.

One of us catches sight of a limo pulling up to what is essentially a delivery entrance for the hotel next door. The six of us stop our meeting and go to the windows, since clearly, someone special is  going to get out of that car. It's former President Bill Clinton with a few bodyguards. He steps out, looks our way briefly, says a few words to the maintenence men in the alcove and walks with his party to the interior of the hotel's loading garage.

As he disappears from view, the six people in my conference room let out a collective and audible sigh.

______________

My interpretation of that sigh, was that it was not so much about the man himself, as the times he represented. A time before 9/11, before we were harangued with the phrase "honor and dignity in the White House," a time before real honor and dignity got drowned out in "Yee-Hah!" 

My support for Hillary as a candidate, was based at first, on wanting to see a complete repudiation of what has happened to this country in the last seven years. As I've said, I've admired Hillary for standing up to the Republican mean machine while First Lady and I've admired her for going after something she wanted. All of us women should be that brave.

So now that the primary is essentially over, I'm struggling to warm up to Barack. I marvel at his supporters who seem so head over heels in love with the guy whom I see as just as arrogant and displaying the same sense of entitlement to power as people accused Hillary of.

Not that I'm going to vote for McCain. I admired him once, before the GOP decided that a failed oilman would make a better leader than a war hero. Today, John McCain looks like a bumbling old man either sabre-rattling or yelling "hey you kids, get off my lawn!" It's sad really.

When the running mate thing gets sorted out (and I'm not sure Hillary as VP would be the best thing for the party, the country, or for her), I'll write a bit more about this.

I'm hoping to maybe catch some of that Obama fever, but it hasn't happened yet, and since I try to be a rather clear-eyed political observer, it may not happen at all.

Make it stop!!!

Hmm, what could I possibly be fussing about now?

Indiana Jones and the Plasticrap Universe

The incredibly annoying Kate Capshaw character notwithstanding, the Indiana Jones series has long been one of my guilty pleasures. I was born a few decades too late, because I can immerse myself into his time frame like I had actually lived through it. I love the camp, the impossible stunts, the ridiculous face-melting special effects, the cultural charicatures, the hat (I have one), and well, we won't get into the rest of his accessories. I am a Karen Allen purist and I am thrilled she will be returning for the next movie.

BUT

OMG, the endless advertising for the other three videos, the movie itself, the Burger King contest, licensed character toys! Will it ever end? Seriously, the Indiana Jones theme used to make me goofily (is that a word?) happy, but now it is on every. single. commercial. break. And I want to jump off a cliff.  Tigger is entralled with the Indiana Jones series. Yes, I am aware that he is too young to be watching it, but compared to a lot of other crap out there, this is pretty harmless. Unlike Star Wars, which he loves and I kind of like in a nostalgic sort of way (which means Parts 1-3 interest me not at all), we can really bond over Indiana Jones. If I promise to see it, will you make it go away?

Location Joke

OR

Why I need to stop butting in to other people's water cooler conversations.

GUY ONE: What did you think of Cologne?

GUY TWO: What?

GUY ONE: What did you think of Cologne?

ME: As in Germany?

GUY ONE: As in Bartolo Colon, the new pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.

Maybe you had to be there.

Do over!

This morning I signed the papers accepting the recommendation that Pumpkin repeat Kindergarten. It wasn't easy to hear, but it wasn't a big surprise, either.

I wish that I could come up with some way to describe how I feel other than "disappointment." Not in Pumpkin, or in his teacher or school; I think everyone involved did the very best they could in the situation. It's more that I'm disappointed things didn't work out on the standard path.

I, of all people, should know better.

I know that Pumpkin's sensory issues and language difficulties are quite common for an internationally adopted kid, but what I know is not just about him or about adoption.

I know enough to understand that the "standard path" is kind of a myth, and that every kid develops and progresses differently. I know that this "grade by age" system is the way it's always been done, but it doesn't really work for a lot of kids. I look around at the kids in our church, and our town and school, and the blogs I read, and I see a lot of kids with "issues." Those issues often mean that they need a little extra help or accommodation or understanding from the school systems which are trying not to be one-size-fits-all in spite of our nation's current standardized testing mania. I know that last year our school asked that an extraordinary number of Kindergartners repeat this year and I think I know why.

The work that Tigger is doing in first grade is astonishing. He's had a small amount of homework four nights a week for the better part of this year. He's had a couple of larger projects including a multi-step autobiographical project that culminated in a grade-wide play, and his first (small-scale) research paper. Tigger's in a multi-age class that combines first and second grades, but a research paper?  Wow!

Smart as he is, there's no way that Pumpkin could handle that kind of pressure. This is the school system's way of ensuring that Pumpkin can handle the work and the social interactions without expensive special education services. This is their way of keeping him from getting lost in the system.  I think I'm okay with that.

In my life, I have encountered an extraordinary number of youngest brothers who have lost their way in life - my brother, my uncle, my husband's uncle, the youngest brothers of several friends. Some found their way back, others did not. I have no idea what sends these guys to the edge, when their older siblings did not have the same struggles, but I've seen it enough to worry about it. I'll never know if this is the thing that helps keep Pumpkin from getting lost, but it's worth a try to me.

Yeah, I'm cool

A local radio station is advertising a New Kids on the Block reunion concert as a Mother's Day treat.

I'm flabbergasted.

Do you mean to tell me that the annoying teeny boppers who were so crazy about NKOTB are old enough to be mothers?  What does that make me? Jeez. I've always been an old fogey in my head. Now I really am one.

There are some lucky people in this world who saw bands at a small club or other venue before the band got big on the national stage. Bands like U2, REM, Talking Heads, cool stuff. Of course, for me, that band was New Kids on the Block.

I went to the first ever Boston Music Awards at the Wang Center and the New Kids were introduced there. They were really really young, in matching track suits doing their little synchronous dances. I had been hoping to see Aerosmith, which had been featured in the ads for the event. The Wang Center is a theatre where the Boston Ballet performed for years and many of the honorees came out into the lobby during the intermission. I was hoping the Steven Tyler would be among them, but sadly, Aerosmith was off on an island somewhere filming a video for "Rag Doll."

Instead I got Donnie Wahlberg in a track suit.

But I got to hear "The Right Stuff" before you did.

Nyah!

My Russia

"Mama, will you draw my Russia?" asks the Pumpkin.

He and his father are the real artists in the family, but he insists and so I take the crayon and do my best attempt at something resembling St. Basil's or St. Petersburg's Church of the Spilled Blood. My attempts are always too asymmetrical, the onion domes too disturbingly phallic. But Pumpkin doesn't really know this, and is pleased.

His teacher told me a story of an international chamber music quartet that came to visit the school and play for the students. The musicians were from everywhere from Wyoming to Japan and they played music of all different cultures. When they announced a piece from Russia, Pumpkin once again said "My Russia!" and sat up with a smile. A boy from another classroom turned and said to him "I'm from Russia too." The two boys listened to the piece with rapt attention, happy to have connected with their heritage, and each other, in some small way.

It's hard to know what he remembers. He will often repeat the phrase "I was a baby in Russia," but the truth is that he didn't come to us until he was three years old. I think he knows more than he can really communicate.

Russia remains important to him, but he has crossed a threshhold. He no longer wants to be addressed by his Russian nickname. "I'm not __________, " he will say. "I'm __________!" The songs he sings now are all in English.

For both boys, Russia is a place of fancy buildings and stories. Most of their memories are wrapped up in the photos they've seen a million times. But a place you have lived in inevitably touches you and lives on inside of you ever after. Russia is a multi-dimensional study in contrasts; opulence and dilapidation; opportunity and struggle;  democracy and dictatorship. It is the coldness of the climate, and the gruffness of the people, broken open by the warm smile the director gives you when you say "Da. Yes, I will take this child, about whom I know so little, and make him my own. He will have a home with us."

Like their birthplace, the boys have struggled with transitions, clinging to the old, while trying to find their places in the new. Their challenges have brought me to the breaking point more than a few times. But more and more these days I can look at their little heads bent over their "work," or talk with their teachers about the difficulty they are having and the support they are getting, or watch the sheer joy they express when visiting with their grandparents, and I can think  --

Thank God they're here.

__________________________________

This week we mark five years with Tigger and three years with Pumpkin as part of our family. We celebrate the growth of both the children and the adults in the family.