February 2010

February 2, 2010


I’m aiming to be an average teacher, when all is said and done. After all, it’s worked for me as a mom. My kids have become decent human beings despite my utter lack of motherly skills. I mean, if you think about it, resilience can only be learned through someone else’s mediocrity, and resilience is a really good thing to have. I, therefore, am willing to be the mediocre grist in that mill.

I remember the first day we brought Eric home from the hospital. He was all of 72 hours old. I’d had, oh, about two hours of experience with young children before he came along. You’d think I would have taken the job more seriously, but here I was, asking Mark’s mom and dad if they’d babysit so that the two of us could catch a burger and a beer. Seriously, I’m telling the truth here. I went out to eat—without my newborn son—the first day I was home from the hospital. Eric’s first evening meal at home was laced with the hoppy essence of microbrew beer! Is it any wonder that it took us three days to figure out that cloth diapers do better when topped by a layer of plastic pants?

And then Allison came along three years later. By then, I should have been cocky and confident, but, instead, I remember being baffled and annoyed by her constant wee-hours wailing. What the @#) did she want, anyway?! When she was close to a year old, that girl was sucking bottles of formula the way Lindsay Lohan sucked margaritas—she was unstoppable. Finally, one day, it occurred to me that Allison should probably start eating solid food. I mean, really. . . wouldn’t you think I’d retain that kind of knowledge, despite the three-year gap?

Yet here they are, two teenagers who, despite being teenagers, seem well adjusted, funny and generally good spirited. They know how to make their own breakfasts and lunches, they do their chores (mostly)--though I do wish my socks were better matched, they navigate their school days without contacting us and I can only assume that they are doing their homework, because no one’s hounding me from school, except Mike Wortmann, who keeps calling to tell us that school begins at 7:45 this week.

I think this “mediocre teacher” gig could turn out to be a real winner, given how it’s worked at home.



February 4, 2010


I spent the first half of my life not reading many books. This is not to say that I didn’t read. I grew up in a newspaperman’s household, after all, which meant that, at least until the Lincoln Journal and the Lincoln Star wed one bouncy June morning, I read or skimmed through three newspapers a day. Even now, I cannot fathom beginning my day without a newspaper. Thank goodness we’ve got a paper carrier to put all other carriers to shame, one for whom 4:30 a.m. is late and snow is nothing.

Still, there is something wonderful about getting lost in a book. Sometimes I feel bad, though, that, aside from Encyclopedia Brown and some Faulkner (a strange duo, indeed), I didn’t begin reading books for pleasure until after college. A half of a lifetime without many stories to get lost in . . . Probably my Catholic training that makes me occasionally feel bad for this fact. But then, I’ve got now and now is filled with great stories bouncing around in my head.

When I finally did start reading books, I went on a long nonfiction jag, bouncing between philosophy and religion to journalistic accounts of people and places I’d never before imagined. Finally, my friend Betsy pulled me into the world of fiction, when she began talking to me about the books they were reading in her A.P. English class. I credit Betsy and Toni Morrison for filling out my reading list.

These days, I can still bounce wildly and happily between fiction and nonfiction. Just this month, I’ve had the pleasure of reading essays from that most foul yet spiritually full Anne Lamott and hometown-proud and most poetic of essayists Ted Kooser. For dessert? A book highly recommended by my friend Pat, The Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger. With threats that she’d have to reconsider everything she thought about me if I didn’t fall in love with this book, I was a bit concerned when, after reading a few pages, I realized it could be a book about baseball, something that I know little about. Ah, how foolish of me! I should know by now that baseball is a metaphor for life or, in this case, a means for telling a great, funny and moving story of a precocious 12-year-old Jewish kid in Brooklyn who fills the voids in his life with people and stories that few of us could imagine. And I have fallen deeply for these characters, eating up the pages too quickly, I’m afraid, for I can see the end from here and I don’t really want it to come.

Isn’t that the best? Not wanting something to end? Not wanting these characters, who now feel so real and so close to me, to walk away and live somewhere else? This is both the pleasure and the pain of getting lost in a really great book. It scrubs me clean only to leave me longing in the end.


February 6, 2010


Best-Laid Plans. . .

I have always claimed to not be a long-term goal setter. Subconsciously—or perhaps, if it were a word and I think it should be, surface-consciously—I’m sure what I’m really doing when I make that claim is covering my butt. These days, that’s no small task, but that’s another story. I think that when I lay claim to not being a planner, I am building in explanations for not accomplishing much. Actually, though, I rock at deadlines, which excite me because they bring with them all of the unexpected problems yet to be solved and the opportunity to solve them on the spot. But if you were to ask me about ten years down the road, I know that I would falter to come up with a specific answer.

When I work with students who already know exactly what they want to be when they grow up, I find that I often have to fight a repulsive response. In my mind, having specific and detailed plans for the future can get in the way of a future that you’d never thought to envision in the first place. Secretly, my hope for these kids who carry with them such specific road maps is that they’ll run into a detour or an intriguing and winding road that doesn’t appear on their shiny mental maps.

Despite my claim to avoiding long-term goals, my life is riddled with “best-laid plans” moments of serendipitous side trips. Take last night, for instance. Hampered by my first cold of the year, which is wending its way lung-ward, I’ve been savoring the thought of an open, cloudy weekend in which I had nothing more to do than scratch myself on the couch—an activity that I have taken to epic heights, or depths, as the case may be. I wanted nothing more than to come home Friday afternoon, get the groceries early and hang out with Mark, suddenly childless because of overnights and school activities. A phone call from Eric, though, changed that. His evening plans changed, we would be a house of three after all.

I figured that Eric, if given the chance, would jump on an evening out with friends. Oddly, when two called to dangle something in front of him, he declined and seemed content to just be home. By the time Mark got home at 7:50, Eric and I were halfway through a Wallace and Gromit video, enjoying something we hadn’t seen since he was a young kid. I figured my time with Eric was about over, so I went upstairs to take a bath.
An hour later, he was still hanging with Mark and me, though, taking us on a visual and aural tour of his favorite songs and guitar licks, laying on our bed with us, telling us stories about school and life and imagined tales not yet put to paper.

I felt as though I were both present and hovering above it all, observing this most plain yet wonderful evening with my 17-year-old son who seemed content to spend it with his gassy, imperfect parents. When Eric finally did wend his way downstairs for some time on the computer, Mark and I looked at each other with the faces of two people who’d just won the lottery, swapping pinches to make sure it had really happened. I think it was the best Friday night I’d had in years. . . and one that I never could have planned for.


February 8, 2010


I used to be a better dreamer. I used to be the kind of dreamer people would flock around, hoping for a midnight tidbit of unbelievable tales. Now it seems my eyes don’t move rapidly enough and I am relegated to the most ordinary images that they hardly qualify as dreams. More like grocery lists or calendar entries made with my eyes closed.

There was a time when my friend Polly, a sleep psychologist, was convinced that I was a lucid dreamer, able to nudge my dreams into more fascinating realms simply by realizing that I was dreaming. I was fascinated by that idea because who wouldn’t want to get in some additional frequent flier miles if they could? And so, I cajoled and encouraged, nudged and nodded off in my attempts to fan the flames of my wild night fires.

I have a small mental file of my most memorable dreams though, more often than not, even moments after waking from a rare technicolor feast, my mind fights mightily to remember even one nougat from the night. Sometimes I think the dreams are constantly playing at Bijou Jane and I simply walk into the theater when I have time, the show halfway through and the plot miles away from my understanding. Other times, they seem tailor made for my particular needs or circumstances. Mostly, though, these days they are like crustless Wonder Bread, not much to talk about and instantly forgettable.

What makes this dream drought even harder to handle is that no one else in my family is lacking for riotous REM moments. Even Hobbes the dog calls out once or twice a night, fear pulsing through his knotted fur as he tries to escape a dragon or a bear or some new hybrid SUV with shaky brakes. And don’t get me started on Eric, whose dreams are something straight out of Timothy Leary’s classroom notes. Every morning, it seems, he’ll tell me about something that I assume is a new video game but that actually is the dream he just wrapped up a few minutes ago. His dreams have it all—Tolkien, I’m sure, is turning in his grave, jealous that such things could take place in the gray matter of someone else’s mind. Allison, too, has vivid dreams, though hers often take place in malls, which makes them feel more like nightmares.

And Mark. . . let’s just say that calm, peaceful men must pack away the testosterone somewhere and I’m thinking sleep is the perfect place to put it. Every month or so, he’ll wake me, unintentionally, with the high-pitched, panting half screams of a woman wearing a pinched girdle. This weird wail gives me the creeps and usually stops the flow of whatever dull list I was compiling in my own pathetic dreams. In the morning, I’ll ask what it was that scared the panties off of him and he’ll say something stunning, like “Oh I dreamed that there was nothing.” Good God! And I married him ON PURPOSE!

Maybe I’m being punished for the life I lead outside of my covers. Maybe I need more excitement between sunrise and sunset. Maybe I’m 48. I don’t know. I try to be a good sport and say that it doesn’t really matter, but it kind of hurts, knowing everyone else in the house is getting third-tier cable while I’m trying to pick up a fuzzy station on my AM radio. . .


February 10, 2010


When my sister was a teenager, out of both money and ideas when it came to my mom’s birthday, she gave a gift that was both free and quite costly at the same time. Each night before dinner started, my sister would read from a manners book. I can’t remember if it was from Amy Vanderbilt or Emily Post, but I do remember thinking that the book had both the heft and the seriousness of the Bible, without all the bloodshed and begetting of the Old Testament. I recall thinking that, while all of us had to endure the nightly lesson, it was a pretty ingenious gift, as long as no one expected us to do anything with it.

Now that I think about it, manners were pretty important in our household. I’m not sure if my mom was picking on my sister or if my sister just had to fall on a lot of etiquette grenades as the first daughter among three brothers. It’s also possible that I, too, had to endure similar outings into uppity behavior, but have simply relegated those heaps of humiliation to the back closet of my memory (which, by the way, could use some serious spring cleaning). In addition to the nightly readings, I recall my sister going to a class called “White Gloves.” She literally had to wear white gloves to it.

And then there was Guitillion, something both of us suffered through. I don’t even know how to spell “guitillion,” and Google can’t find any relative of the word, that’s how much of a throwback it is. That’s why I’m just assuming that the root of the word is “guilt,” more or less, since the idea of making a bunch of 7th grade boys and girls learn how to dance and then forcing them to put it into practice is an active that simply steams of the stuff. . . As I recall, it took place at a local synagogue, bringing together an unfortunate cross section of Lincoln’s middle-class teens, held together only by their mothers’ common belief that we could move with the best of them, or at least pretend that we could.

Despite what I am now realizing was an intense and active pattern of maternal manners-driven mayhem in my childhood household, I really am grateful for the modicum of manners that makes its way through my mien. Manners really do matter, even in a time when anonymous bloggers with names like The Phillies Suck 83 can say anything on their minds without fear of consequence and when conversations seldom are free of vibrating phones filled with urgent texts uttering: :-e milk is :-x, nw wht? Maybe manners matter all the more because of the times we live in. The notion that we should speak with some civility, that mastication is a private matter, that fingers should be for pointing out the positives rather than for damning someone to highway hell is anything but a trifle one.


February 12, 2010


I used to have higher--if not actually admirable—social goals. I remember spending mental chunks of a Friday imagining the glorious outings and free appetizers that awaited me. Now that I’ve rounded what most certainly must be at least the halfway point of my life, I find myself dreaming about a Friday night on the couch, spent in silence, disrupted only by the occasional catnap when the commercials go a little long.

I have no idea what happened to me. When was the magic of a Friday spent with friends--music pounding and beer flowing--replaced with a Friday filled with dreams of fatty food and a beer supinely taken in on my couch, with a dog at my feet who doesn’t seem to care if I burp out loud or chew with my mouth open?

For longer than I can remember, Friday evenings are my mental-health meccas, happily absent of outings or expectations, of bras or well-made meals. Instead, they are my outlet for fatigue, the bridge between “what must be” and “what doesn’t really need to happen” and I’m fanatically addicted to them. Even if I don’t actually have the appearance of someone who is a fanatic. Or someone who is remotely interested in pursuing admirable goals. Or conscious. . .


February 13, 2010


I’d like to think that, on the brink of Valentine’s Day—a holiday that feels as prefabricated as the Space Food Sticks I bought as a child—it’s simply a coincidence that my thoughts have turned to passion. I just returned from a nice walk with Hobbes the hobo dog, the chill air prickly with the promise of faraway thunderstorms not yet formed and I found myself filled with the passion that spring brings up in me.

I’ve been an excellent sport this most wintry of winters but this week I turned the corner, ready to leave the season behind me, my eyes instead trolling for signs of a future filled with cumulous clouds and crocuses that seemingly sprout overnight just under the dryer vent alongside the driveway. At 3448 Woods Avenue, it is there, under that subtly bleach-scented vent of Vesuvian heat where Spring first gets sprung. It is good to be excited about something again. I can’t wait to fan the flames of my seasonal whirlwind affair with my friend Chuckles, who shares my love of all things tornadic. We can talk about weather the way frat guys can talk about strippers—our faces growing hot with talk of high-pressure systems.

I love the chance to be around people who are excited about something. When choosing where to spend my money, I seek out those people who most love the things they do for a paycheck. I miss Jason, at the Washington Street Russ’s, who managed their video store 10 years ago. He was insanely passionate about his job and all those animated stories cradled within the cheap cardboard boxes on the racks. I happily listened to him rave about the latest films or an obscure one that’d evaded the radar of local critics. He always said my name, an odd treat, considering I’ve had that name all my life. And yet, it can be such a pleasure to hear someone call us by name.

That’s how I feel about Ideal Grocery. Like the Cheers bar of T.V fame, I can walk into Ideal and have a “Norm” moment in almost any aisle. I love giving that store my money because it is filled with employees who are passionate about what they do. Granted, there are the occasional days when I’d rather not run into Jim, especially in Aisle 9, where the jokes are at home among the rolls of Charmin and Cottonelle, but it’s a small price to pay to go where the people are happy.

This world is a better world because of the Chucks and Jasons and Jims that are in it. They are good storytellers, honorable keepers of the craft, whatever the craft may be. And I will seek them out just as I seek out the signs of a season yet to come, with passion and hope and joy.



February 15, 2010


I run my tongue along my teeth, reminded of how the cavities in my mouth have been filled throughout my lifetime. There’s still a silver filling or two, reminiscent of my childhood when we really didn’t know any better. A few of those silver fillings, though, have been replaced, jarred loose by deep crevasses breaking down the once invincible materials. Those that have given up their precious metal have done so in great, heaving fashion, calving pointy sheets of enamal into the pulpy seas of my mouth. There is the roughness of a composite filling, holding nothing over the elegant smoothness of pauper’s gold, painted delicately onto two of my teeth.

And so, today, I think about cavities, both oral and intellectual. . .

Without intending to, I’ve picked up three books in a row that are set against the backdrop of World War II. Each has nudged its own story from that backdrop, told from different lands and perspectives. And each has taught me something new about war-time living. Like the silver and composite and gold that reveal small histories in my mouth, the stories I take in help fill in the cavities of my mind.

There is so much that I can never know, firsthand, about this world. It delights me to think that I can blindly grab a book, drawn to it like moth to flame by nothing more substantive than a font or a layout, a catchy drawing or title, only to find out that it is actually filled with precious gold, stunning stories and loveable people tumbling from its pages like water down a mountain stream.

I love that my hand has been drawn to three very different stories about World War II. Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe it simply was time that I knew something about this war. Whatever the reason, this war, which covered much of the earth like the long, shadowy fingers of an eclipse, has become personal to me, filled not with statistics but rather with people I truly care about. I carry their stories with me now, thinking not of the names of great battles but rather of Lev and Kolya, two very different Russians thrown together for the seemingly impossible task of finding a dozen eggs in the midst of unimaginable violence and devastation. I think of Joey and Charlie, a precocious Jewish teen and the up-and-coming baseball player he harangues for hope and love. I think of Harrison, whose wayward life weaves through the streets of Mexico, intertwined with Diego, Frida and Leon Trotsky, as he tries to chronicle his life so that he will not forget it.

This war is alive in me now. And yet, the stories have not made it easier for me to understand. Only more complicated and human. I understand, now, the compromises and courage, the hunger and hatred. These stories that have wrapped themselves around my heart and filled up the cavities in my mind have muddied the waters of a paper-thin history inside me. They have made it harder to ignore, more powerful, more personal. They have brought to life something that was not even a memory inside of me. They have made me fuller, my life richer.

That is the power of a well-told story, to fill up the cavities and make us whole again.


February 17, 2010


Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading all these war novels. Maybe it’s because I take “O” Street to and from work each morning, driving by the eerie remains of what once was the Villager Motel. Whatever it is, I was thinking about architectural skeletons on my way home from work today.

For the past several months, demolition crews have been picking away at the huge complex that once housed hundreds of rooms, a restaurant, a banquet hall, a pool where Mark and his friends often swam when growing up. All of it tumbling down in surreal slow motion. Each day I drive by, there’s an involuntary intake of air, a sharp gasp and I feel as though I’m driving by a fatal traffic accident, my eyes darting from one pile of twisted remains to the next, looking for signs of life. Or death. Or what once was.

I never spent a night in that motel. Never even snuck into its pool. Yeah, I’d gone to a few workshops there and once ate a meal in the adjacent restaurant. I remember that meal because of the roach that skittered across our table onto the wall, bussing out table with the swift efficiency of a real pro. It’s true, then, that I have very few memories of this place specifically and yet it is part of my history, if only as a clunky, semi exotic backdrop to it. It is so eerie to drive by the wall-less rooms now, seeing daylight pour in, the remains exposed and cold. Often, when I drive by I wonder if this is what it would look like to live in Kabul or Bazra or Port Au Prince. These scars are shocking, hard to absorb, and sometimes I fiddle with the radio dial as I’m driving by, just so I won’t have to see it, to wonder.

I have other architectural skeletons in my closet, ones that leave me with that same odd feeling, the leftover remnants of a time gone by. I was a teacher at East High when they began dismantling East Hills Country Club, my childhood home away from home. Each summer, it was East Hills that raised me, fed me, entertained me. It was East Hills where my hair was stripped white, my skin flecked brown, my fake falls perfected. Truth be told, there came a time when I quit asking my parents to join the pool, confident that the history shared between its chlorinated waters and me was enough to justify my presence there. I still have dreams of walking up to the gate, signing in my name and finding a place for my towel, certain that such confidence would not be compared to the member list.

It broke my heart to watch this plantation structure collapse, its white pillars piled up like broken sticks. One day after school, as I was driving by, I could see that the fence that cradled the pool area was starting to be dissembled and I knew that my turquoise oasis would soon be history. I pulled into the lot, an adult with childhood memories fuzzying her logic. No crews were there that day, their giant dream crushers resting idle. I pulled up close to the fence, my heart pounding as my mind bridged past and present, images flashing like fireworks. . . safety breaks in the trees, a game of horse on the basketball court, pork tenderloins and frozen Snickers Bars at the concession stand. I was compelled by these memories to wedge open the gate. I was propelled by these memories to the side of the pool, near the diving board where I’d perfected a one-and-a-half flip with two twists. Without a thought, I reached down and chipped away some pieces of that bluebird cement once filled with chlorinated glory. I popped three or four pieces of my childhood into my pocket and left. It is a memory layered upon memories, one I can tap with the swiftness of a child trying to knock loose the sparks from two rocks.

About ten years ago, my East Hills friend Laurie Humbles lay unconscious in the hospital, dying from cancer. Before going to the hospital to wish her well on her next journey, I felt compelled to find something to bring her. I knew she may not even be awake, and yet I wanted to leave her something that said I was there. That said she was there. That’s when I remembered the blue pieces of the pool. I opened my drawer, rubbing my fingers along the wedges, finding just the right one. All of her family was at the hospital, waiting for the inevitable. When I got off the elevator, there were hugs and smiles, tears and conversation. I decided to show them what I’d brought for Laurie, pulling out the cement piece from my pocket. I didn’t even need to tell them where it had come from. They knew immediately, chattering like chickens with a fox just outside. This architectural skeleton had offered them a bit of respite from the death that awaited them, allowing them to once again stretch out on the lounge chairs, feeling the sun warm their bodies as the sounds of kids splashing and laughing filled the air.

It was, I believe, the finest gift I’d ever given anyone.


February 19, 2010


Teaching is a noisy, disruptive business. After two days of Parent-Teacher conferences this week, I’m hungry for some uninterrupted silence. It’s not that I don’t like talking to the parents—I really do. I think it’s important for them to hear why they should go home and love their children rather than strangle them. I also think it’s good for me to say the words to them so that I don’t strangle their children either.

Three hours of sitting on a folding chair in a gymnasium filled with meandering adults frantically reviewing their alphabet skills, though, has its downsides. When I was driving home Tuesday night, I felt like a schizophrenic trying to shake all the voices from my skull. For someone who usually has no trouble filling the air with idiotic babbling, I had had my fill of conversations. That’s when I realized that, throughout a typical day of teaching, my ears are assaulted with thousands of pieces of conversations, wafting through the fart-riddled air of a high school.

A part of me dreams of a new kind of tinnitus, one in which, instead of hearing the pitch of a note no longer accessible to me, I would hear…silence, which also is inaccessible to me. It is at once a reasonable and luxurious dream I have.


February 21, 2010


There are these magical moments when life just fills me up in a quiet, wonderful way. Typically, there are no signals to tell me that peace is heading my way. It just happens. Usually, nature or music nudges these times forward, but not always. Sometimes, the contentment is just there. Like today.

It’s odd that contentment came my way today, considering that I had a church board meeting in the morning, followed by a four-hour Soup Supper obligation, also at the church, later in the afternoon and evening. I usually have an aversion to being busy, but today I was at peace with the fact. Lucky for me, too, because I think that this sense of peace let me really enjoy both the meeting and the supper.

It is a fine group of women who gathers for the board meeting once a month. They are funny, talented, diverse (in “Lincoln” terms, at least) and soulful. Some have been friends of mine for a long time while others are new to my sphere. I do like them all, though, and enjoy the rare opportunity to talk with them about things both heady and light. Sitting by long-time bud Suzanne, I felt comfortable moving between silly “hi-fives” to chewing on fresh interpretations of the “you are the salt of the world—don’t lose your flavor” story of New Testament fame. I was never a fan of that story until Suzanne retold it in a way that made it a story worth retelling rather than one to cringe from. Where I’d always thought it meant that God was going to spike my blood pressure if I lost my flavor, so to speak, Suzanne said it was just a way of God telling us to keep it real. I can do “keep it real.”

We kept it real at the soup supper, too. Almost 75 folks walked through the doors for some free food and conversation. Being inept at decorating—and in charge of the supper—I kept it simple and real, asking board members to bring favorite books to use as table decorations and talking points. I also got to utilize age-old card-catalog cards, which we had at each table so that folks could jot down a new title they wanted to read. Admission to the supper was steep—a children’s book that would end up in the hands of a Lincoln High teen parent and his/her child. I had fun scanning the room, watching young and old people, many of whom hadn’t known each other until they sat down, enjoying each other’s company. There were familiar faces—Jill and Allison, Molly and Cindy, the Hertzler clan. . .

But really, the soul scrubbing of the night came when Kim and Abby Coleman spoke about their leap of faith called Indigo Bridge Books. For 20 minutes, they recounted the circuitous route they took to becoming business owners so that they could do the real work of taking care of others. Yes, the place sells books. But really, that’s almost like a front to their real business of making connections. They also sponsor a day care, offer Spanish book talks, give away food, share their space, talk with community groups, connect with local artists, . . . the list is almost endless as they try to “keep it real” themselves, living out a faith that may have once existed on paper but is now as much a part of them as is their flesh and blood.

Everyone in that room left as better, more inspired people because of them. I know I feel washed clean and ready to “keep it real” in my everyday life.

February 22, 2010


The phone is not supposed to ring during certain portions of our lives. Those calls that break that sacred rule tend not to be good ones.

I was awakened by a phone call at 4:11 this morning.

No tragedy this time, though. Rather, a stuffed-up mother in law letting us know that, despite her cold, the knee surgery is still on and she could use a lift to meet her 5 a.m. check-in time.

And still I could not wander back to sleep, thrown off by the shrill ring that dumped adrenaline everywhere.

Most tragedy—and magic—makes its disruptive debut against a backdrop of the ordinary. My head swirls with images of those disruptions in my daily order, beginning with the phone calls. . .

There was the middle-of-the-night phone call from a drunk in the pokey, mistakenly wasting her dime on a stranger. I still wonder about her occasionally, thinking that our lives crossed paths, however briefly, when she most needed a friend and I could not provide her with one.

My brother’s death, New York time, was blurred by the haze of a late-night call. I was deep asleep as I mumbled a “thank you”—well mannered even in the midst of death and dreaming—for the information.

I will never forget my magically bizarre, third-party phone moment, though I sometimes wonder if it ever really happened. I experienced it through my Pioneer stereo speakers, which had picked up a conversation while I was turning the tuner knob between radio stations. I still don’t know why I did this, but when I heard the voices, I leaned into one of my speakers and uttered “HELLO!” They immediately stopped talking, mid conversation, and answered back. My very own call-in show!

I missed the phone call announcing my dad’s death, but sensed that disruption as soon as I returned from my walk, my neighbor fidgeting in a chair, trying to explain why she—not Mark--was sitting with young son Eric.

Many of the magical disruptions of my daily routine have featured animals. There was the Sunday-morning car ride to First-Plymouth, where we followed the lead of a dumbfounded deer as it made its way down D Street. Or the uncanny appearance of six Tom turkeys in my mom’s backyard. . .on Thanksgiving! Mark and I were titillated by the teetering opposum, dangling just about our heads as we soaked in the hot tub. Then there was the skittering squirrel that scampered across Allison’s fingers as she clung to the fence for a peak at something better.

We cling to the ordinary, comforted by its commonness, lulled into believing it is both possible and logical to assume that things will remain the same, even if “the same” isn’t all that great. We would risk it all, even greatness, just to maintain that sense of sameness. And then, along comes life, its pinprick disruptions reminding us that there really are things that go bump in the night. And we find ourselves, alert and on edge, at 4:11 a.m., reminded once again that we are very much alive.


February 24, 2010


Allison came home from school today with An Announcement. I was required to go upstairs to her room for the details. And so, amid the pajama bottoms, sweat jackets and single socks that were catnapping on the floor, she told me she had tried out for a solo in chorus this morning. Frankly, whether or not she gets the solo is a moot point. What matters most to me is that she threw her name in the hat, that she risked a little fear and failure for the sake of something new.

Alas, my school days have been filled with oodles of auditions this past week. Both the Newspaper and Yearbook staffs are interviewing kids who’d like to be a part of those groups next year. It’s amazing what the sight of a generally well-behaved circle of peers can do to an otherwise confident person when she walks through the door. I’ve watched fear spread up the necks of more than one student this week, their blotched faces ratting out the doubt swimming inside of them. These are the times when my uterus aches, when the mama bear nudges itself awake long enough to throw my imaginary arms around these kids, letting them know that they are brave and good and can you please tell us how we can make the newspaper better?

It’s one of the best and also most painful gifts of being a parent and teacher, nudging kids into new territory, lying to them just long enough that they trust themselves to walk through the door and give it a go. I know that failure and fear are almost certain for some of these kids, and yet I also know that these experiences will enrich their lives, that they will become more fully human, which, after all, is a pain-filled, emotional rollercoaster ride of an existence as it is. There is something exhilarating about risking it, about putting it on the line, about opening Door Number Three even though we don’t know what’s behind it.

Usually, in my own life, when I’ve tossed my name into the hat, I’ve tried to use humor to temper the inevitable fall. When I was in 8th grade, I tried out for a solo in the Junior High Spring Concert. My insurance policy? Sing Kermit the Frog’s “It’s Not That Easy Being Green.” By taking a song that wasn’t a love song, or even a song that anyone had ever heard on the radio, by choosing a song made famous by an amphibian, I had built a wobbly fence around my heart, protecting it with cheap laughs and the lack of commitment that would have been required had I chosen something more challenging and real. Yet, I made the cut. Go figure! So, with the magical backdrop of my friend Carla’s tinkling piano keys (I, too, was tinkling, now that I think about it), I acted like I was a lounge act—again, building up my guard against failure, assuring myself that I didn’t even have to be good at that point, because, obviously, it was a joke—and sang my slinky song to an auditorium of peers. I had a heck of a good time, but I’m not sure if I really risked much that night.

I think we have to sing a solo every so often. I think we need to walk blind into a group of our peers and answer their questions, keggling all the while so the pee won’t leak out. I think it should be mandatory to publicly put it on the line and say “Hey, I’m out here and I’m going to give this thing a whirl, if that’s all right with all of you.”


February 25, 2010


Why is it that seemingly every workshop I attend, every speaker I sit in front of, every article I’m required to read features someone who is at once both exceptional and a bit hateful? This week, I read an article by a woman who, singlehandedly, had done more in one day in her school library than I could possibly get accomplished in ten years. I liked the suggestions she'd made but noticed that every example she used to explain those ideas included something from her own experience. It ended up feeling a bit like an assault. Just once, I’d like to attend a workshop or pick up a story from a professional journal in which an average person is featured because she had a pretty good day and then went home at 5 for some Cheetos and a little “Jeopardy.”

The more I think about it, the more I think that ordinary people doing pretty good work are actually more inspiring than extraordinary people doing the seemingly impossible. Honestly, what good does it do to ask me to read about someone who apparently has found more hours in the day than I have? What good is it to me to listen to someone who is well known because of her ability to do it all? All I end up doing after one of these experiences is going home to once again put on my hair shirt of shame, lashing myself with a really long Cherry Twizzler, wondering why I can’t be better or more efficient or published or . . . whatever it is that I’m not that great at.

Overachievers, by their very nature, draw attention to themselves, which, in turn, shines the floodlights on all the rest of us as we cower behind the curtain, hoping no one notices us. To me, they don’t seem to be super human so much as just plain creepy or ill. And the really immature part of me (which takes up a fair amount of my territory, by the way) secretly hopes that these people come home to an empty house and stand over the sink eating soup from a can each night. Really, what harm would it do me if they turned out to be terrific, balanced, charity-giving people who had lots of friends and two tiers of cable?

I think everyone appreciates a great idea from someone else, something that brings clarity or order to our lives. And I always appreciate the person who will gather up good ideas from a variety of sources--that's a job well done, in my book. It’s the people who can’t shut up with their own great ideas that get me down. It’s as though they think they’ve already figured out my weaknesses without even talking to me and have decided what it is that would shine up my schtick, kick up my performance a notch or two, make me a better fill-in-the-blank.

I remember when I found some cling wrap that actually would cling to a bowl. I thought that was fantastic! It changed my life in a small yet measurable way, plus it came in really cool colors. I feel the same about Google Docs and fleece blankets and gas-starter fireplaces. I have a richer, more interesting, fuzzier and warmer life because of these things. Had they all come from the same source, though, I doubt I would have embraced them so freely. I suspect that they would have lost a bit of their shine for me and I would have shunned them for no better reason than the fact that they all came to me through the same blowhard, whom I would secretly hope might eat a bad tin of tuna on a long, lonely stretch of highway.

Really, I think I could use some help, just as long as it doesn't all come from one person. . .


February 27, 2010


For some reason, if I dream about my childhood home, my dreams only focus on the backyard. Maybe that’s because so many memorable things happened there--like the family car rolling past the carport, down the hill, through the back fence and into the yard of our backdoor neighbors, or the time when I was chased by a bug-eyed alien in the super-8 feature hit "Creature from Planet Zero." Our backyard also was ground zero when I caught a ground squirrel as it tried to escape up our downspout, holding it high over my head until its tail snapped off and he was free again. Sadly, more than once, the back step was where I sat with mayonaisse in my hair and a plastic bag tied around my skull, my mom's version of a salon treatment for chlorinated hair. I smelled like tuna sandwiches for days after those treatments. My backyard hair adventures extended to my brother Mike, too, who put my hair in a ponytail and cut it below the rubber band, giving me the perfect shag. The Raglin backyard was the scene of more than just crimes against hair, though. It was there that I found a bag of money, tucked into the trees along the back line, the loot from a recent robbery at the neighborhood liquor store.

Now that I think of it, someone probably should have contacted the authorities, based solely upon the things that regularly took place in the Raglin backyard.

Many of the dreams I still have about my childhood take place next door at the Johnsons. Deep in REM sleep, I can’t count how many times I have swung from the knotty rope that hung from the Johnson's most excellent fort or wandered through their backyard, checking on Fritz, the bad-breathed beagle, or snuck up their deck to take a peek inside their home.

Today, I got to return to the scene of so many crimes. Fritz long buried in the garden and the fort nothing but a sawdust memory, I again was at the Johnson's house, this time very much awake and paying extra attention to the details. I'm delighted to say that my dreams have shown a rather amazing knack for delivering mostly accurate details. Yes, the furniture and wall colors have changed, but the layout of the place rings true with my dreams. And so, I smiled, fingering a sliver of fancy cheese and licking the sauce off my fork, as I let my mind wander, trying to remember where exactly in their living room our chameleons made their escape. I dawdled in their warm kitchen, that long-ago mecca of most excellent snacks and the once-in-a-lifetime indoor snowball fight with Mrs. Johnson, of all people. Even though I really liked the snappy, new color of their front door, though, I didn't spend much time near it, flashing back to the day when, as a bored 12 year old, I spent about 35 minutes doing nothing but ringing their doorbell, until, to my horror, Mr. Johnson answered it in his skivvies.

I didn’t make it downstairs either—hard to come up with an excuse to head down there during a baby shower when everything I could possibly need was on the first floor. Still, my eyes fell on the doorknob, though, as I resisted the urge to fling open that door and slide on my bum all the way down the stairs. Maybe it’s better I didn’t see the basement, for the reality of their backyard—such a vivid place of both my childhood and my dreams—bears little resemblance to the magical playground of my youth. No fort, no goat, no chickens, no doghouse…still a really nice backyard, of course, but not the one I’d come over to see. I’ll forgive the Johnsons that. After all, it is their house and I’m working with really old material.