Tomorrow

Dear Ava,

On the night before your first day of kindergarten in August 2005, your parents started a blog. I didn’t really know what a blog was, but I remember sitting down to write my first post that night in the little sunroom off our bedroom in San Francisco as if it were yesterday. I wrote about how we helped prepare you for school and what was on my mind as you set off for such a big adventure. What a milestone in our lives that was!

On this, the night before your last day of senior year in high school, with college on the immediate horizon, this paragraph of that kindergarten eve post brings tears to my eyes:

Everyone asks if we’re nervous or sad about this big change. I can’t speak for Matt, but I’m mostly just excited. I don’t feel nervous at all, and sad? – no. It’s more like nostalgia for me. Amazing how quickly we’ve gotten to this night, and how much Ava has changed in these four-and-three-quarter years. But she couldn’t be more ready for this new adventure, and I feel confident that she’s completely up for it. That much was clear when we watched her bolt up the unfamiliar school stairs in search of the play yard on Friday. So I feel ready, as ready as that backpack and lunchbox and fresh outfit all laid out in her room. Then again, maybe that’s just tonight.

There was so much I knew about who you were at age almost-five, and a great deal I could have guessed at if anyone had asked me what you’d be like as you’re leaving high school and home. But there were a few things I never could’ve known back then.

I knew you had a great sense of humor when you went off to kindergarten, but I didn’t know that you’d be making me fall over laughing just about every day as a high school senior with your dry and very quick wit.

I knew you could chant for a Democratic candidate with the best of them, but I didn’t know you’d be following politics and world events as closely as I am in 2018. Thanks for marching with me this year and for paying attention. I’m sorry you won’t be 18 in time for the midterms.

I knew then that you loved music and that each time I was about to turn up one of my favorite songs you’d call out from the back seat of the car to ask me to turn it up. “I love this one!” you’d crow from your booster seat. But I didn’t know that we’d be touring colleges all over the midwest years later, belting out the Hamilton soundtrack together in the car over and over from Illinois to Minnesota to Iowa. I should’ve known you’d be able to memorize every word, though, you always could do that.

I didn’t know that my little one who avoided writing and drawing at that age would make me hilarious hand-drawn cards every Mother’s Day and birthday year after year, all the way through high school, gifting me a treasure trove of delightful cards to enjoy long after she leaves home.

I knew that you loved animals, particularly dinosaurs, the day you went off to kindergarten, and that you wanted to be a zoologist or paleontologist when you grew up. You slept with a visual animal dictionary under your pillow, after all. But with all the interest in math and computer science during the intervening years, I didn’t know that by the end of your senior year you’d be hoping to study biology – with an eye toward zoology – in college. When you went to the 2-day event for admitted college students this past spring, you told me the best class you sat in on was zoology and that on the day you visited they were learning about dinosaur sex. See? College is going to be awesome, kid.

Just as I felt that night before kindergarten so many years ago – before Pokemon and Bey Blades and our move to Chicago and the changes in our family, the stapled bonus jaguar and summers at our little urban beach on Columbia Ave. and all those other Explore More projects and before the glasses and the braces and then adjusting to the lack of braces and the contacts and the new friends and all the crazy house moves and the Pathfinder and the Magic the Gathering and the Dungeons and Dragons and the college tours and you Rick Rolling me on the Sonos and trips to California and long road trips together and all those big high school kids gathered around the dining room table playing games and eating pizza and dropping f-bombs and all the laughs at the dinner table and the night you managed to get tomato soup all the way onto the wall across the room (we still don’t know how you did it) and a million bedtime hugs and I love yous – I feel exactly the same way about the milestone you have now approached. That is:

I’m mostly just excited. I don’t feel nervous at all, and sad? – no. It’s more like nostalgia for me. Amazing how quickly we’ve gotten to this night, and how much you have changed in these 17-and-a-half years. And also, in hindsight, all the ways you are exactly who you were at 4-and-three-quarters. But now, like then, you couldn’t be more ready for this new adventure, and I feel confident that you are completely, 100%, up for it. Also, looking back at kindergarten eve, it’s great that you make your own lunch and pick out your own clothes, so thanks for that.

Go take on the world, my love. The world is a wonderful place with you in it and every new person and place you meet will be made better for knowing you.

Love, Mom

June 5, 2018

Quarantine, Week One-ish: Kid Chess

We have been knee deep in a game of Kid Chess for over a week. The kind of decisions that need to be made in families with shared custody are more complicated in these times. In our household there are a total of four kids. Each pair of siblings has another parent, in another house close by. Three of those kids are in college and one is in high school. One isn’t even a “kid” anymore, as he is now 21. All of them are mature, smart, kind kids whom we adore.

Rob and I have been diligent. I have asthma and this virus could be very bad news for me. We worked from home the minute we were allowed to. We made a couple grocery runs together early on and then ceased going out other than to take walks or short runs staying far from other people within a few blocks of our house, and when we do that we only touch the door knobs of our condo building with a bleach wipe. We are making simple meals. Groceries coming in now are being delivered and then wiped down before going into the kitchen. We are sheltering in place like a couple of badasses.

But the kids! The college kids all attend school out of state – in midwestern states that had fewer early cases than Illinois – and their schools closed residential options to students in stages in favor of remote learning: stages that made total sense in the context of college administrators finding safe places for all of their students to go (oh, the international students!!) without losing access to housing and food, but also stages that allowed domestic students to take their time leaving. Some students who could drive home (or be picked up) and weren’t subject to a flight at a scheduled time felt a certain leisure about their departure. And so the kids in our household made their way home in phases, coming in and out of our bleach-scented quarantine one at a time. If we were trying to keep track of a 14-day quarantine at first, our clock got reset every other day and we gave up.

We decided with our exes to shelter-in-place with one child each, which meant we’d have two kids here. This seemed good for stretching out quarantine supplies. And so in my family we made the decision that Kid C should stay here because he has a dog allergy that hasn’t been tested for a long period of time at his Dad’s house: no brainer. I sent both of my kids, C and D, to their Dad’s for a few days early last week; we wanted them all to have time together before we split the kids up. I was sad when I dropped off Kid D, knowing he’d be hunkered down at his Dad’s for what could be a fairly long time, but we wanted to minimize the coming and going. He stood on the stoop and saluted me earnestly when I left: “Be well, Soldier!”

In the meantime, Kid B came home from college last Tuesday night, along with a friend who was driving across the country to get home, and so of course we had him spend the night as well. Following all the precautions, we welcomed them in (from 6 feet away). I stripped the guest’s bed wearing gloves and bleach wiped the bedroom and bathroom he had used when he left. 48 hours later, Kid B – the only kid staying with us at that point, for those of you daring to keep track at home – learned that someone in his dorm had tested positive, and so all previous plans were scrapped until we could see that he was remaining asymptomatic. This meant that Kid A had won more time at school before we’d go get him. My kids stayed where they were rather than splitting up.

Kid A was due home yesterday – finally, all kids back in Chicago! – but we got a text early in the morning that he’d woken up with signs of illness. And that a close friend had tested positive for the virus and they’d been together last weekend. And so, instead of Kid A coming home yesterday, he is continuing to shelter-in-place in his frat house out of state until further notice. We are thankful that for most people, and certainly most kids his age, COVID-19 will present with very mild symptoms. Since our doctors don’t have enough tests available to them, we may never know if Kid A has the coronavirus at all.  He’s unlikely to get tested unless his symptoms worsen. But we will be very relieved when he is in the clear and can come home.

Once we realized that we had no kids we knew to have been potentially exposed to the virus in the house, I went down and picked up Kid C from his Dad’s last night – getting in my car for the first time in 8 days – and so now three of our kids are settling in for the foreseeable future in their houses.

This is all a game of calculated risk management with an invisible enemy. For all we know, Rob and I have already been exposed and have given it to every kid who has passed through here: maybe he got it on the Metra before he started working from home, maybe I picked it up from a client or in the waiting room at work, maybe we got it at one of the grocery stores. Maybe one of my kids brought it in from school over a week ago and has passed it on to his Dad’s house as well. It’s so possible that all of our calculated risks at this point are for naught but we can only base decisions on known diagnoses: 1 kid in a dorm – not a friend, no direct contact – tested positive and 1 kid’s close friend – direct contact while asymptomatic – tested positive. Knowing how many undiagnosed cases are out there it seems like folly at times to base decisions on those facts, but we are measuring risk and making decisions around anything we can on a daily basis right now, like everyone else.

My hope for my household and yours: be well and be together as much as it’s safe to be.

14!

Dear Lyle,

Today you turn 14. Some years I am feeling nothing more than disbelief about each of your ages as it ticks by. But this one? It makes perfect sense to me.

My love, at 14 you are everything you’ve always been: quick-witted, insightful, intelligent, independent, and determined. But now you are all of those amazing qualities in a taller version that surprises me at least half the time when you walk into a room. You like to refer to me as “Short stack”, which will only be a joke for another five minutes. Without a doubt, you’ll have surpassed me at this time next year, which will be great on the basketball court.

Your sense of humor is outrageous. At your 8th grade graduation, the teachers shared that you were “hands down” the funniest member of your class, according to your peers. You made Nana and me laugh from one end of Montreal to the other in June with your fake French accent. You’ll start taking French this year in high school and we can’t wait until you can put some words to the accent. You often show up in my room at night when I’m ready for bed, and put on a one-man show until I kick you out so I can go to sleep and need to stop laughing.

Lyle, thank you for bringing us your random improvisation, your determination in the gym and on the court, your humor, and your very sensitive heart. I appreciate your confident independence and ability to get yourself anywhere you want, as I know this will extend into your adult life. This week we’ll be bringing your big brother to college, and the following week you’ll start high school. I can’t wait to see what you do with the new opportunities and space being created all around you in the coming year.

Happy 14th Birthday, Sweetheart.

Love, Mom

 

 

Ten.

Ten is whip-smart. He talks all day, sharing observations about his version of heaven and asking all the questions about divorce that other kids won’t ask and the sale of our house and something that happened five years ago. Ten wonders about and then remembers everything.

Ten loves big roller coasters and karate and his bike. He will swim all day if you let him. Ten will hop on a charter bus in a YMCA parking lot and head off to a new overnight camp out of state, not knowing a blessed soul, and have a great time. Ten wants as many gummy worms on his ice cream as humanly possible.

Ten is a loyal friend, especially if you are a similarly smart, cynical, and -underneath it all- very sensitive boy. Ten has no time for girls. He used to be shy, observed a neighbor this summer. Now he’s just selective.

Ten has a sense of style that’s all his own. This sometimes means a zip-up rainbow tie with a pink polo shirt. And madras shorts. With black high top chucks. All at the same time. Ten dresses with pride but don’t try to take his picture: he won’t have it.

Ten is beyond hilarious, leaving his family in stitches every other time he opens his mouth. Do you ever get tired of being random?, Ten recently asked me as he was falling asleep. No, I really don’t, I told him. Me neither, he replied happily.

Ten insists on bedtime cuddles, skinny little boy arms wrapped tightly around me as he falls asleep at night, usually right after lodging at least one heartfelt complaint about having to move out of his house or navigating parents who are split up or going back to school too soon. And then he wakes up smiling all over again in the morning.

Happy Birthday, Kiddo. Ten is amazing.

Bedtime

At their insistence she climbs nightly into the lower bunk, squeezed in with the younger one and complete insanity ensues. The kind where the high schooler is laughing so hard up above that he snorts several times and the 5th grader is his most outrageously hilarious self, making her cry with laughter. She tries to extract herself when it gets late but is held there by a small arm curled around hers and pleas to stay, promises that they’ll be quiet and go to sleep, and then within seconds a silly phrase and now another round: peals of screaming laughter reminding her of every raucous sleepover party she ever went to as a kid. Except these nights are even better because laughing like this in a bunk bed with her own two boys, there’s no grown-up telling them to stop.

One School Year

Dear Baxter & Lyle,

September 2012 to June 2013 — 9 months — one school year. So much change. Your lives at home have changed dramatically and you look so very different. But here you are, laughing and being ridiculous together just as you’ve always done.

Love you boys, and I’m so proud of how beautifully you are growing up. Keep being ridiculous together.

xo,

Mom

Homeschooling

His head was already on the dining room table in defeat. He was crying over the chicken I’d served for dinner. Because Why wasn’t it hot dogs?? But when he picked himself back up toward the end of the meal and looked at me again, there was a completely different question on Lyle’s mind: Why won’t you just homeschool me?

When I am being my best Mom self, you know, when I have time to sit there with my kid and my glass of wine and fantasize right along with him, it’s well worth doing. I remember sitting with this same child 5 years ago, him crying on the floor before preschool because he wanted to stay home with me (anyone notice a theme here?), dreaming up how we would spend the day if we were together. In the end we wrote “Watch Backyardigans” on a piece of paper and posted it right by the door so we’d remember immediately after school that we were going to do that together, and then he wiped his eyes and headed out the door for school.

And so, rather than dismissing this new request by saying, Oh, don’t be silly, you love school! or But what about all your great friends? (or even There’s no way in hell I could afford to quit my job! or, what would’ve been the worst dream killer of all, We aren’t even together all five school days!) I let him spin this thought out tonight as far as he wanted, saying, Wouldn’t that be great? I wonder what it would look like if I homeschooled you? He had a lot of great ideas, so I used another one of my favorite parenting strategies, and told him we’d better write them all down because they were so important. When we do this, we don’t just jot them down on scrap paper; I make sure we get a legal pad from my home office. It’s official that way. You wouldn’t believe how happy it makes kids when we take their ideas seriously enough to write them on a legal pad.  He wanted to write them himself and he immediately brightened.

He created one column for the benefits of a homeschool life and one column filled with his brainstormed ideas about how we’d spend our days. I loved this process because it gave me a window into what he was craving: mainly, homeschool would be quieter. He wouldn’t have to rush in the morning and neither would I. There would be no fire drills and he could avoid his least favorite classes, choir and Spanish. What I heard was that the chaos and noise of school is feeling like too much right now, and so I verbalized that and empathized with him. He’s hoping we could have a Minecraft class every day and take a lot of field trips. He wants to do art with me daily, and have the freedom to take a bathroom break any old time. And he’s dying to study topics of his choosing. Who can blame him for any of those wishes?

He decided to type up his list and I agreed that would be a good idea. When he was finished, I suggested he put an asterisk next to the things that were most important to him, but instead he made smiley faces next to those – there was a smiley face by each line when he was done.

On his own, he brought up the challenge of income for me. He thought maybe we could homeschool on MWF and I could work T/Th and weekends. He’d come along to my office when I had to work and play games on his iPod Touch all day (how generous of him!). I simply told him it was a pretty big decision to homeschool and change my work around, and we were only having the first conversation about it. He was satisfied with this and went off to read in bed, relaxed because he’d gotten to share all that was on his mind and knew he’d been heard.

*********

I don’t expect to homeschool Lyle. It’s true that I was originally planning to be a teacher before speech pathology called my name, and it’s also true that many times when the boys were younger I marveled at their quick minds and interest in everything I told them, and thought, Wow, would it ever be cool to be this kid’s teacher! Lyle’s ideas about how we would spend our days are also appealing to me, minus the Minecraft class. But the reality is, I love my career. When I stayed home with the boys for periods of time over the years, it didn’t feel like a good fit for me. I also have a belief that my income is important because it is currently paying for many critical things. And so I have never seriously considered homeschooling them.

But when Lyle and I were discussing this tonight I’m sure he believed I was open to the idea because, in fact, I was. My interest in his thoughts about it were sincere and I let myself imagine it along with him. If there is one thing I’ve learned in the last couple of years, it’s the importance of being fully open to new ideas, to turn off the I can’t voice and just listen. I could never have made the big decisions I’ve made in the past year without that openness. Could I be divorced? Could I be a single mom? Could I live in an apartment in another neighborhood? Where do I want to live? Chicago? Evanston? Our own condo? Should I go work for someone else? Should I reorganize my own practice to make it work better? What would each of those paths look and feel like? I fully explored every option, quite often going down multiple imagined paths simultaneously with complete openness, until I finally chose certain ones. Which is, I believe, how I ultimately landed in a new life and work situation that feels very, very right to me.

My guess is, Lyle will bring up homeschooling on occasion. We’ll revisit his list, probably add to it a few times, and I’ll watch and see if he continues to feel so strongly about this once we transition into summer and leave behind the extra end-of-the-year chaos that has been especially tough for the two of us this past week. Chances are, he will find quite a few good reasons to go back to school in the fall, and will be happy to have come to that decision on his own. But if he doesn’t, I will continue to imagine it along with him and perhaps we’ll eventually find ourselves on some totally different path we’d never have expected in a million years. To me that would mean we’re living an amazing, full life.

26 Acts of Kindness

Yesterday was the last day of school here in Chicago before the winter break. In lieu of a cheesy holiday movie on that last interminable day of school, my seventh grader’s teacher made the decision to show the kids a video about Ann Curry’s 26 Acts of Kindness campaign, created to honor the 26 children and adults who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT one week before. My son and his friends were very aware of the tragedy in Newtown, pulling together the following Monday to wear blue in honor of those killed, and talking about it quite a bit. The kids were inspired to go out and engage in 26 Acts of Kindness themselves and then come back to share what they’ve been doing in person and on their class’ private educational social media site. The students have been posting their acts of kindness this weekend, and they’re quite uplifting.

My son came home with the idea to bake cookies for 26 people and deliver them around the city this weekend; his 8-year old brother jumped into the idea with both feet and they were off and running. I can’t express enough what a joy it was for us as a family to do this together and I believe that it is especially important for school children to feel that they are helping in some positive way during a time that is so sad and scary for them. I am very grateful for the teacher’s idea to share this with the kids; it’s a perfect example of ways teachers impact our children for life. I can point to specific ways my teachers positively influenced my thoughts and actions as I grew up and now I see the same thing happening for my kids.

For me, the heart and energy I saw the boys pour into this project, and their interactions with strangers around our neighborhood, was all the gift I needed this Christmas. Below are photos of our adventure as the four of us worked together to make this happen today. Here is our story (click on any picture to see it enlarged):

Each of the boys made 13 cards to attach to their plates of cookies…

We all worked hard making a huge batch of sugar cookies while listening to music DJ’d by the 7th grader.

Here we have the requisite Gangnam Style dance interlude while one batch was baking…

Next, the kids assembled 26 plates of cookies, covered them in plastic wrap, and attached their notes to the top of them. They each carried a bag of 13 plates out into the neighborhood.

Starting with our mail carrier, the boys approached every person they passed in our neighborhood, asking if they’d like some free homemade cookies. We walked the couple blocks to our local El stop and gave them out to people coming and going from the train, including a failed attempt to give some to the CTA worker inside. We all had our favorite recipients; mine was probably the runner who jogged the rest of the way home carrying his plate of homemade cookies. He gave each of the boys a high-five, exclaiming to each of them in turn, “You my man!” 

Our New Year’s resolution is to think of more random acts of kindness all year long. Happy Holidays to you all!

(For more information about this campaign, here’s a video about it; you can also find plenty of inspiring ideas by searching the #26Acts and #20Acts hashtags on Twitter!) 

The Old One-Two

I love it when my kids hit me with the “old one-two”. Lyle appears with this funny little drawing of an “up and down” man, and Baxter looks at it over my shoulder and comments seriously, “He’s probably bipolar.”

Look Who’s Blogging!

Six years ago I started my first blog on the eve of Baxter’s first day of kindergarten. Now a mature sixth grader, worldly in the ways of school, he has started a blog of his own. Try and keep up with it if you dare: not only does my tween post frequently, but he changes its template and design at least once a day.