Interlochen Memories - Old and New

The music drifts on the breeze, from under the great awning.

The experience:  magical and familiar all at once.

The flags flutter, the sun glows and reflects on the water,

And I sit, and listen, tearing up.  Why?

 

When I peek, I see my son – my growing-too-big-for-his-mother baby –
Onstage with 200 other musicians.
It amazes me that he is part of something so beautiful,
Something I also participated in, taking pride in what could be accomplished,
And I remember:

 

Music on the breeze, white dresses and red scarves flowing in the wind,

Rooftop dances, Sunday evening concerts,

Morning swims in a chilly lake, Evening sunsets with campfires.

Friends – lyrical dancers and crazy, zany cabin mates –

Hanging out in the cabin, hanging out on main campus – laughter!

Trumpet calls – morning and night – standing on tennis courts in pajamas, calling me home.

 

For it is home.  How?  Twenty-five weeks of my life and this is home?

Yes.  I dream of it, I remember it, I visit it in my mind when life gets hectic,

When life gets rough.
And now, my son gets to experience it.  I see him smile, I see him glow with happiness,
I see him with new friends, and old, sharing this magical experience,
And he is happy, as I was, as I am.

 Oh, sound the call…

Anxiety

It's August, a month I dread every year.  It means that I have a month left of the happiest time of the year.  Everything comes to an end on August 31^st, which means one thing:  change.  If there is something I really hate, it's CHANGE!!!  Change causes me to have extreme anxiety, and anxiety is a lot of work.  By the end of the month, it will take everything I've got not to have complete melt-down panic attacks.

Change #1:  the season and its weather – I love warmth and heat.  Here in the northern United States, it seems like we have ten months a year of cold, and two of warmth.  Right now the sun shines bright and powerful, the trees and grass are green, the flowers bloom, the bugs and birds are prolific, and the lakes even warm up to the point where they're not painful to get into and swim around.  Yet…already the leaves are beginning to look old, wilted, and some are even turning brown.  The birds are singing less, getting ready to prepare for winter, building up body weight for journeys, building winter environments for those that stay.  I've had to replant my planters with late-summer, early fall plants, and the nights are cooler, making the lakes cold, too.  All signs of change.

Change #2:  my home life.  Right now I get to pretend that I'm a stay-at-home mom and spend my days with my children.  When they were little, we spent all day together:  kiddie pools, popsicles, bike rides, trips to the zoos and museums.  Now that they're older (pre-teen and full-blown teen), we're not together quite as much (hanging with mom all day is just not cool!), yet we're still together quite a bit.  At the end of the month, full-time mom job will be over as we all head back to school, and then the crazy schedule will commence.  Don't get me wrong, summer has had its moment of crazy:  between baseball, 4-H, summer bands, Fine Arts camp, and now high school band camp, life has been busy.  But we've also been able to squeeze in trips to the pools and lakes, bike rides, shopping trips, and picnics.  Back-to-school seems to mean an end to the fun stuff.

Change #3:  back to work.  Let me clarify – I LOVE my job!  I'm a teacher and I love planning, curriculum, creation of activities that will hopefully help my students be creative, explore, have fun, and learn.  Yet, it also causes me complete anxiety.  A whole new batch of student names to learn (I'm notoriously bad with names); a whole new batch of teenagers judging my every move; new demands from administrators, adding on to the old demands (they never seem to go away anymore, they just keep building on); time constraints:  how do I take new, rigorous curriculum meant for 90-minute blocks, and integrate it with current required writing programs, project based learning, and technology – all within 55 minutes; and of course, papers:  papers, papers, and more papers.  Always the bazillion papers to grade, which means trying to balance being a teacher, mom, and wife, every evening and weekend for ten months a year. 

I've already started waking up early.  Half of June and all of July, I get a peaceful eight hours of sleep per night.  Around August 1^st, this usually drops to seven, and by mid-August, I'm down to six hours.  I wake up with my mind whirling, trying to make sure I don't lose track of something.  (By the way, I'm bad-mom and already dropped the ball on what has to be done for my high-schooler to try out for the soccer team when he gets back from band camp.)  And all of this worrying really stems from one desire:  life to be happy and healthy for my whole family.  Will we all come out of this unscathed?  Will my children grow up and remember wonderful years with their mom, family, and friends, or will I be absent from their memory pictures?

Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety…

I Blew It!

Today I was reminded of a conundrum I face living here in a progressive, liberal community that offers many free services: homelessness.  At every exit in the area stands a person or two, signs facing oncoming traffic. 

"Veteran.  Homeless. Please Help." 

"Down and Out.  Homeless.  Anything Will Help."

My favorite, "Single Mother with Cancer.  Please Help." (Please tell me you hear my sarcasm.)

I sit in my car, with my cell phone, bags of groceries, and I feel guilty.  Have I given in to this guilt?  Sure!  I even gave one guy $20.00 to go buy food; then I watched him pocket it and stand there to beg some more.

The local authorities have put out the word:  there are many who beg on the corners of this city who are not homeless.  In fact, they've made such a business out of begging that they have apartments, paid for by Joe Public.  We do have a huge homeless population, but there are services available all over the place:  from free beds, to free food, to plain old shelter from a cold or rainy day.  Many groups are dedicated to offering free employment training and services, healthcare, and steps off the street.  Many who are homeless are chronically so, mostly because they do not want to be confined.  They don't want to be put inside, trapped by society and by their own minds.  They face issues such as drugs, manic depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia that compound the problem of homelessness. 

So I ignore my guilt, keep my hands on the wheel, and avert my eyes.

And then today…

Coming out of church, a beautiful service focusing on planting seeds of faith in humanity, a man stands at the gate, sign in hand:  "Homeless.  Anything Will Help.  God Bless."

And I feel anger.  How dare he?  How dare he come here to beg, when I donate at this same place with groceries, goods, and money to help local groups that can help him?  How dare he throw in my face that these organizations don't solve the problem?  How dare he make me feel guilt for my comfortable life?  "Uncool," I say to my child next to me, "He should go to the center down the road where they can help him without him putting young children at risk."  And part of me feels this is justified.  Not only is this a church, but it's a school, and in today's world we have to be ultra-vigilant about who is near our children.  But the other part of me knows how wrong I am.

How dare I?  How dare I ignore him?  Why don't I take the time to get to know his story?  Why don't I stop and talk to him?  He is a human being?  Maybe if I met him down the road I could buy him a meal.  Maybe if I knew his story, I could help him find some real help. 

I missed the lesson of the day: plant the seeds and allow them to grow.  Instead, I stunted the growth.  I showed my son the wrong lesson.  I had the chance to teach him compassion and caring, and I blew it.  (At least I realized it soon enough to tell him I blew it, and explain why.)

Since I can't go back, I only hope that another person was better than I today.  I hope that next time I step up and become a better member of my community – my human community.

What a Wonderful, Crazy Life!

I've always wanted to write a great novel.  The idea of creating intriguing characters, heart-wrenching conflict, something everyone would be clambering for…what could be better than that?  And yet, I'm so inadequate.  You start writing, and your brain goes numb.  How many times have I started a story, only to quit as I got to the dialogue?  A billion.  Ok: two.  I know there's a story in here somewhere; it's just accessing it that's the problem.  So how do I do this?  Maybe I start by writing about myself.

I'm a mid-40's, white female.  Married, two boys:  one is fourteen and just entering the true teenager mode.  You know, something like this:

Me:  How was your day?
Him: Blurg.
Me:  What?
Him:  Fine!  (You have to imagine the annoyed tone along with the extreme attitude.)
Me:  What was the best part of your day?  Tell me something you enjoyed.
Him:  I don't know! (Silently telling me to shut the hell up and leave him alone.)

My favorite moments are when his friends are in the car.  Then the conversations sound something like this:

Me:  How was the dance?
Him: Fine.
Me:  Did you dance with anyone?
Him: No.
Friend:  Yes, you did.  I saw you, but I won't tell with who.
Me:  There's candy in it for you Friend, if you tell…
Friend:  Oh!  Well, then there was Jennifer, and Lily, and Amber, and…ow! (That would be my son punching Friend in the arm.)

Communication:  it's our strong-point.

I also have a pre-teen.  He's twelve, and the exact opposite of the teenager.  He'll not only tell me everything, he never stops talking.

Me:  How was your day?

Him:  Did you know that there are 150 ways to eat a Cheeto?  First, you can pop the whole thing 
in your mouth (demonstrates), then you can just bite off tiny bites (demonstrates), then you can scrape it with your teeth (demonstrates), then I think licking your fingers should count (demonstrates), you can also dip them in vanilla ice cream, that's my favorite…

Me:  Awesome.  But how was your day?  What did you do?
Him:  Recess.

My first child tells me nothing, and the second one, well, let's face it, he tells me nothing, too.

I'm married.  We've been married for eighteen years, and now the challenge is how to keep things "fresh."  Frankly, I think I'm perfectly content.  I've got everything I ever wanted:  a husband, kids, a nice home in a great town; but I think my husband is bored.  This is the danger zone, right?  It's that mid-life time you hear about filled with affairs, sports cars, plastic surgery…

He did grow his hair long for a couple of years.  I wondered at the time if this was evidence of a mid-life crisis, but I think he was just trying to keep things "fresh."  He donated the hair and looks like my handsome husband once again…thank goodness!

I'm a teacher.  Insanely enough, I decided I wanted to be a High School English Teacher.  When I went into it, this meant:  Changing People's Lives through Literature!  The reality is, it means papers beyond papers, morning, noon, and night, evenings, and weekends.  It means teenagers who roll their eyes at me.  It means twelfth graders whose essence from March through May oozes with:  "How dare you expect me to show up and do something?!!?  I'm a senior, woman!"  I'm fond of saying, "You could throw them a naked beer party and they would resent you for asking them to show up."

This past year I taught freshmen and juniors.  For you non-education types, this means, 9^th grade and 11^th grade English.  My 9^th graders bounce in for 1^st Hour English every day, full of energy and smiles.  It's amazing how much has happened between yesterday and today, and they want to share it all!  I hear about their difficult math test, the trip they had to make to the hospital the night before to visit a sick uncle, how stupid boys are, and then my favorite:  one will bounce up and say something like, "Did you know that penguins don't fly?" 

Then my second and third hours completed my morning.  These were 11^th graders, and while Beowulf wasn't their favorite thing to worry about, they gave it a shot.  They listened attentively, participated in discussions, had cool ideas of how those crazy Anglo-Saxons connected to their world…overall, juniors in the morning are very enjoyable.  And that's where it ends.  After lunch, they roll in surly, tired, and unenthused.  What do you mean we have to write an essay?!!?  Don't you know that we've already put all of our energy into our morning classes?  What do you mean we have to read a book?  In English?  You're crazy, lady!

I even had a brawl break out in the middle of my room this year.  I'm in the middle of doing a Required Activity for State Mandated Testing, and two of my darlings decide that they're bored enough they'd rather have a fist-fight than be there.  Hey, it means a week off, right?

Good times, those afternoon juniors.  So when they told me that I'm being shifted to all 9^th graders next year, my response?  Bring it on!!!

So there's definitely some ammunition for story, here, right?  But I have to put it aside for a while as my twelve-year-old just stumbled down the stairs, glared at me as he calmly took his laundry to the laundry bin, and then glared at me as he stalked back by on his way to the bathroom.  He finally wandered over to me and stood there glaring, until I was convinced that it was my fault that there is dirty laundry and biological needs in this world…until he broke out into a metal-mouth grin that melts my heart.  Kids!!!

"Did you know that Michael and I have a favorite handshake?  Here, let me show you.  Put out your hands, then I walk toward you with my hands out, we bump and I bump away, then we do it again, and again, and again…"

Love!