Moms On Strike

I recognize how hard moms work and how much goes into the weekly management and administration of raising multiple children, mostly because women can’t wait to tell me how busy they are and how hard they’re working— as if they’re the only ones.  Two friends of mine are unusual in that they don’t begin every conversation with a mandatory update on their childrens’ sports schedules and how much laundry and driving they’re doing.  In fact, you might not even know they had children unless you asked, which is why I appreciate them so.  They will happily answer any questions I might have about child rearing and if a particular child-centric topic comes up they will respond in kind and be more than willing to chat about it, but they have other stories to tell, too—other hobbies and proclivities.  They do not define their very existence solely through the contributions they are making to their childs’ rearing and for that I value them mightily.

I recently learned that these two friends of mine—independent of one another—had gone on mom strike.  These are women who recognize the importance of fostering independence in young children and how crucial it is for a child’s developmental growth to discover and learn to count on the bravery, gumption and creativity in one’s self to problem solve and soldier on.  They are independent women themselves and stay-at-home moms with no hired help.  I decided to interview these two girlfriends recently about their strikes and what precipitated them.

“I was fed up with my family more than usual,” said Liz, leaning into a plate of French fries.  “They just weren’t helping out—at all—and I had reached my limit.”  Liz has three kids ranging in ages from 5 – 11 and her husband is away for work a lot.  “Me, too,” said my other friend, Nancy, “end of my rope.  I’m a single mom and they were really pushing my buttons.  Something had to change.  I realized I was raising my children to be obnoxious and entitled.  I put a note on the fridge that said, ‘Notice: On Strike.  Signed, Mom’.”  Nancy has three teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17.  She said it was this or have herself committed.  We all chuckled.

I asked about their terms as I added more ketchup to what was left of the little mound on the rim of the fry plate.  Liz said, “I gathered the kids together at dinner one night and said that this would be their last supper cooked by Mom for a while.  I would no longer cook, clean, do laundry, help with homework, make their school lunches or remind them what they needed to take to school in the morning.  I was very calm.”  Nancy added, “Same here—very calm.  But I included that they would have to find their own rides to lessons and would have to speak to me using more appreciative language and a respectful tone.”  “Ooooh, I like that,” said Liz, and used a fry to punctuate the word, like.  I asked how long their strikes lasted.  “4 days,” said Liz.  “2 weeks,” said Nancy.  “And what was the upshot?” I asked.  Liz went first.

“Well, the house was disgusting.”  We all laughed and nodded.  “The house smelled, the kids smelled.  I pretty much kept to myself.”  I said, “Like an older European houseguest?”  “Exactly.  It was amazing how much time I had to get other things done.  On day 4 they banded together and started to clean.  They showered and started doing their chores.  They made their own dinners.” “And you just observed?” I asked, fascinated.  “Yup.  One night one of them had a sleeve of Ritz crackers for dinner.  None of them was starving.  There was plenty in the food pantry and the fridge.  They learned to defrost.  The microwave saw a lot of action.”  Nancy piped up, “My kids even went to the market.  They walked into town and carried their groceries back.  They’re older so they cooked their own dinners.  My middle daughter had to find her own rides back and forth to her lessons.  I think that made a big impression on her.”  “I bet,” said Liz, grinning.  We had almost finished the fries but ordered one more round of drinks.  

“And what was it like for you?” I asked.  Nancy said, “Well, the biggest thing for me was that I yelled a lot less.  And they yelled a lot less.  Even though the house was going to hell it was quieter and less stressful emotionally for me.”  “Smellier but lest stressful,” added Liz, smiling.  Nancy nodded as she wiped up the last of the ketchup with the second-to-last fry.  “And the kids started to speak to me in a more respectful tone when they realized that I wouldn’t acknowledge them unless they did.  I think they really got how much I do for them on a daily and weekly basis.  And how capable they are of stepping up and doing for themselves.” 

I asked them if they would recommend going on strike to their friends.  They both said, absolutely.  Nancy said, “It was an amazing week for me.  An incredible lesson in letting go.”  Liz said, “The no-yelling part was really good for me, too.  And I liked watching the kids work together as a team.”  I asked if it changed the family dynamic at all?  “For now,” they both said then laughed.  Nancy said, “Now the threat of a mom strike goes a long way.”  Liz said, “Yup,” and asked for the check.  The last fry remained untouched on the plate. 

The moms haven’t had to go on strike since.

Halloween Thanks

“Halloween decorations are not supposed to be cute, Mom.  They’re supposed to be scary.”  My son was right.  I’d gotten away with the bare minimum of cute for years—taping up his kindergarten paintings of pumpkins along side jolly glow-in-the-dark skeletons.  But now that he was ten, cute would no longer cut it.  “You’re right,” I said.  “I get it.  And we will make an effort to be scarier next year.”  “Next year?!” he said, already resigned, and padded away.  He knew that scary decorations would have to wait, along with pumpkin carving, apparently.  I bought a perfectly serviceable pumpkin but forgot to carve out the time to put down the newspaper and get out the sharp knives.  My costume was an afterthought, too, (a gorilla suit) also serviceable, but without the giddiness of a well thought out pun or creative tour de force like the family who went as the four seasons—spectacular!  Even my son reused an oldie-but-a-goodie costume from a few Halloweens ago.  I knew not to feel guilty about the last minute phoning in of a beloved childhood holiday—no sense in that.  Instead I invoked the Cub scout motto, “Do your best”, which I deploy liberally to myself on various occasions, then carried on with my workload. 

The village parade was lovely and relaxed, thanks in great part to the DJ, Jeremy Moss, who kept the volume at a reasonable bop-to-the-beat but can-still-talk-to-your-friends level as opposed to the ear-splitting, frenzy-inducing, up-to-eleven volume and stress level of years past.  The costumes were fantastic—loved the doll in the box, the fried egg and dominos, the ice cream truck and 50 shades of grey.  I especially love it when parents dress up, too, and that there were two adults dressed as whoopee cushions.  The business owners all seemed game and happy to see the hoards.

When the sun went down Thursday and we headed out into the dark night for trick-or-treating—the pinnacle of the day’s litany of holiday themed events—I felt a deep gratitude for those who had picked up my slack.  On nearly every street in town, at the end of practically every walkway, was a magical front stoop.  Folks had put out ghouls and witches, reapers and goblins.  They had strung spider webs across porches and hung ghosts in bushes and trees.  And yes, they had carved exquisitely beautiful pumpkins then lit candles inside them, giving off that irrefutable glow of eerie wonder. 

I was so very grateful for my fellow townspersons who, in creating a magical experience for their own families, had inadvertently given us ours.   I wanted to leave little thank-you notes under every front door mat saying, “Thank you for hauling the bins down from the attic, for setting out the newspaper and stringing up the spider.  Thank you for the orange twinkling lights and the bubbling cauldrons, and for putting speakers in the front windows, like my dad used to do when he played the “Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House”—a Disneyland record put out in 1964 meant to scary the pants off of trick-or-treaters, which never did.

The rain turned to drizzle before leaving us alone, and the temperature was unseasonably balmy.  Parents everywhere wandered from house to house with a bounce in their steps and a breezy air of gratitude for the docile weather and semblance of normalcy that had been absent on recent Halloween’s.  Children ran from porch to porch with blithe abandon, anxious to feel the weight of their loot pulling further down on their arms.  Some parents even offered wine in teeny plastic cups, and cheese and crackers to the grown-ups—brief and appreciated respites from the rush.

 After houses began to run out of candy—one woman finally did after handing out 760 pieces—we ended up with other families at the home of friends.  Six or seven kids spread out their candy on living room footstools and floor rugs and they traded with each other as if it were the NY Stock Exchange.  To them it was, in a way, their candy as precious as any dumb commodity.  Outside us parents sipped wine or beer, enjoyed chairs, and traded stories about the costumes that gave us the biggest chuckles found on the internet and spotted at the parade.

Exhausted, my son and I made our way back up the hill and dragged ourselves past our faceless pumpkin, our cute decorations and into pajamas to get ready for bed.  We brushed out teeth more thoroughly than usual, then spoke our thanks out loud.  We said thank you for the weather and for our awesome little town.  Thank you for trick-or-treating and for fabulously scary house decorations.  Thank you for the hundreds of dollars some folks must have spent on candy and the generosity extended from their hearts to our kids’ grubby little hands.  Then we said thanks for Halloween and our friends, and the folks that make it magic.  Next year we’ll step up, too.

Aftermath

I’ve spent all the summers of my life so far in a little town on the Jersey Shore on what I now know is a barrier island.  My mom’s house is situated half way between the ocean and the bay on a three block wide piece of land.  For forty-something years I’ve felt a seismic shift in my consciousness and physical being when I smell the salt air, and I roll down my windows when I get close to the beach, even in the rain. 

On this recent visit to my summer home town, I was stopped by a National Guardsman in grey fatigues standing next to a matching fatigue-painted Hummer.  He reminded me of Madeline Kahn in High Anxiety when her pantsuit matched her Lincoln Continental.  He asked to see my papers—a copy of a tax document and a letter from my mother saying I had her permission to visit the house.  He checked my ID and waved me on. 

As I drove down familiar streets, nearly every house or business on both sides of the road had an 8-12 foot mountain of refuse on the curb consisted of all the major appliances, couches and cabinetry, rugs and flooring, all the contents from the basement, the insulation, and all the walls from the first floor of the house.  Except for my mom’s house. 

Friends had texted me photos of my mom’s house after the storm—friends who’d siphoned gasoline from one car into the other and braved the ominous smell of broken gas lines to survey the town before the National Guard declared Marshall Law and instilled a curfew to deter looters-- who were stealing by truck in the day and by boat at night.  Before the cacophony of dump trucks and helicopters grew to drown out the gently lapping waves at the beach; before homeowners 10 blocks south of us returned to their houses to find them gone—vanished-- just an empty lot of sand-- my friends let me know that my mom’s house was okay.  A good 7 steps up to the first floor porch, we had cleared the 4-foot flood-line by about 15 inches.

But I still had to see for myself.  The basement and garage would be a shitshow.  So once the gas rationing calmed the frenzied masses, I filled my car with cleaning supplies-- and donations for relief workers-- and headed down.  Mom’s house was fine.  I was overwhelmed with a mixture of gratitude and survivor guilt.  Yes, she would need a new furnace, water heater, electric panel and air-conditioning unit, but we were lucky-- very lucky.  As the town whirled with the buzz of construction workers and generators, I worked all day by myself to empty the basement.  A construction worker named, Bob,-- wearing leather gloves and rubber boots-- swung by to pump out the last 8” of water from the basement.  Around me men were doing similar jobs.  Strong, virile men were hooking up dehumidifier ducts as big as hoola-hoops.  They lifted great gobs of sodden insulation with front loaders while other men hacked at walls and floors with crowbars.  This must have been what it was like when gold mining towns were being built, or Las Vegas.  There was a barn raising feeling to the town now, everyone working at a common goal to get the community back on its feet—and I could sense us sweating together as I peeled off layers of clothing.  But as dusk turned the blue sky pink, an odd thing happened. 

All around me people had lost so much.  Their hearts ached.  They were exhausted and worn.  And yet, as the generators switched off and construction workers removed their gloves, all I could think of was---who can I make out with? 

I was aware of how wrong this was, this feeling of surging desire, but I couldn’t contain it.  “Maybe Construction Bob will make out with me,” I thought, as I ambled over to my car to check my hair in the side view mirror.  I may have been wearing rain pants over my jeans, snow boots and 2fleece tops, but I rocked it.

When his truck pulled up, the sky had darkened to denim blue.  No street lights had power, no cars could be heard and the air was perfectly still.  Curfew was in an hour.  “There’s time,” I thought.  And yet, Construction Bob did not linger long enough to let the post-apocalyptic aphrodisiac grip him and propel him towards me.  He did not seem to share my yearning to connect with someone on a deep, primal level.  He loaded his pump and left.  And with him went the only chance I would have to feel the skin of someone who knows what it’s like-- to be alone together on the outskirts of surreality.  Remote, removed and alive.

After he left I stood there for a few minutes.  Now I would have no one to make out with.   Then I remembered, I would still have to pass through the National Guard’s checkpoint on my way out of town.  You know what they say-- any port in an aftermath.

No Drinking, Texting, Driving

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I’m grateful every time I see or hear a “No Texting While Driving” public awareness campaign on the radio or television.  I have a friend who puts hers in the glove compartment when she drives.  I usually have mine on the passenger seat-- face down or in my purse-- and make a point to set my GPS before I start driving, occasionally pulling over to the side of the road if I need to make a call or adjustment.  But it’s hard to resist.

The PSAs remind me of the no drinking-and-driving campaigns of my high school years and the no littering campaigns before that.  It’s one of the many subtle, or I should say not so subtle nods to a bygone era that Madmen pays homage to when, for instance, Don Draper shakes out his families’ picnic blanket scattering trash on the park’s lawn before walking away-- or pours his pal a scotch before sending him home in his car.  My parent’s generation used to call them ‘one more for the road’.  We called them ‘roadies’.  Thank goodness the majority of today’s younger generation doesn’t fathom getting behind the wheel intoxicated any more that we would think to toss a bag of litter out the car window.

I was talking to my mother about this the other day when she told me a story.  She was just out of college, in the early 1960s, when she and her merry band of friends decided to take a weekend road trip down south to visit some other friends—a young couple who had just married.  Five of them were going—cars were enormous in those days—and everyone had an assigned job.  A different passenger was in charge of snacks, maps, entertainment, and drinks, etc.  I interrupted Mom’s story, “Was there anything non-alcoholic to drink?”  “No,” she said, “We drank the whole way down.  And sang.  The entertainment person had a list of car games and songs for us to sing.” 

“And the driver drank?” 

“Of course,” she said matter-of-factly.  I cringed.  Mom continued, “but you didn’t ask me what my job was.” 

“What was your job, Mother?”

“Decorations,” she said.  I had to laugh.  We both did.

“I taped up crepe paper all along the top of the car and blew up little balloons…” 

“On the outside of the car?” 

“No,” she said, “the inside.”  I pictured my mom arriving an hour before departure time in order to secure a decorative trim of twisted crepe paper along the upper corners of the car ceiling, small balloons bobbing along, grazing their heads as they sang.

“Good work, Mom,” I said, “and did you sing?”

“Of course.  We all sang the whole way.  In fact, at one point I remember my friend telling the driver to pull over.”

“Because the singing was so bad?’

“No, he said he was too drunk to sing, so he had better drive.”

“Good Lord,” I said, “Did you let him drive?”

“Of course.”  I covered my mouth and shook my head.

“I know,” she said, “We were idiots.  We’re lucky to be alive.”

“I’ll say.  We were idiots, too.  We’re all lucky.”

There must be a million stories out there--serendipitous idiots doing ridiculous things.  Thankfully, designated drivers and community garbage cans are a permanent fixture of our landscape now.  But I think about what else we’re doing now, cluelessly, that will turn out to be completely idiotic.  Certainly, there’s plenty I’m aware of, but what will shock me?  What stories will I recount for my adult son that will leave him agape and shaking his head?  I’ll be glad when texting-while-driving becomes a thing of the past.  I hope they come up with a device that hobbles texting or turns your phone to dust while your car is moving.   Until then, keep your wits about you and be en garde.  There are idiots among us, still.

Lice Lessons

My son asked, “When is lice season?” My friend replied, “It’s always lice season.”  She added, “but fall seems to be a big comeback time for them because everyone’s returning from camp.”  Lice love to camp.  Who doesn’t?  All those little louse-sized kayaks-- I get it.  I reached out to this particular friend because she’s something of an informal local authority.  She’s had the devious little beasts in her home four times and has managed to treat all of her children herself without having to shell out the big bucks to go to Lice Be Gone, the notable lice removal money-maker in Short Hills.  Not that there’s anything wrong with Lice Be Gone.  It would be my first stop, too, if I had that kind of cash burning a hole in my pocket.  They treat shoulder length hair or longer hair for $250 and boys-type short hair for $150/$175-- $30 just to screen or check. 

I asked my friend for a tutorial.  “First of all,” she said, “Rid doesn’t work and it’s got too many chemicals.”  I remembered Rid from my childhood.  Those were the days.  “And the comb must be metal.  I bought mine on the internet.”  Of course you did.  All the best stuff comes from the worldwide inter-web.  “Then you need a cheap white drugstore conditioner or you can buy ‘Lice B Gone’.”  I said, “Also in drugstores?”  “No, the internet but conditioner works just as well.  Glop it on thoroughly and then put on a shower cap for an hour.  Then you take a section of hair and comb it through in all four directions—from the north, south, east and west sides.  Because the louse eggs, or nits, only cling to one edge of the hair.”  Wow.  That’s some ingenious nano-tenacity.  “Then you dip the comb in a cup of rubbing alcohol and wipe it off on a clean white paper towel.  The nits will be visible on the towel, or, floating in the cup.”  Great visual, I thought.

“How long does the comb out take?” I asked.  I was already exhausted from just listening.  “One hour for short and/or thin hair, two hours or more for long or thick hair.  I give the kids an ipad.”  Or, I thought, anything by Dostoyevsky.  “Then you bag up pillows and stuffed animals for 2 weeks—lice need a host to survive-- and wash everything in super hot water and put it in the dryer on high heat for at least 30 minutes, and vacuum whatever the kid was sitting on and the area around it.”  “I hadn’t built this into my schedule,” I said.  “No one ever does,” she said.  This was starting to sound like it should be added to the List of Time-Suck Buzzkills along with fender-benders and root canal.  “And then you basically have to repeat the process 3-4 times until all of the nits are gone.”  “What if you miss one?” I asked, starting to feel itchy.  “Well then they’re not gone, are they?  Do it again.  You can basically kiss your week good-bye.  You’ll never get it back.” 

“Why do lice want to live on us?” I asked.  She said, “I don’t care enough about them to want to know.”  According to the CDC website, they suck our blood-- life’s tiniest vampires—to the tune of 6-12 million infestations a year.  I said, “Does this combing out time with your 3 kids yield a close family bonding experience?”  “I’m usually drinking and swearing while I’m combing out, but, sure.”  “That’s your zen approach?”  I asked.  She said, “The first time I got them I cried.”  I said, “You yourself got lice?”  “Yup.”  I reached up and scratched my head then quickly regretted it.  One of the moms of a kid who attended my son’s backyard birthday party called the day after with news.  Apparently her child had caught lice from another friend at a sleepover the night before.  Fabulous, I thought, then emailed all the parents of my son’s party guests. 

I asked my friend, “What’s the biggest mistake people make about treating lice?”  She glowered.  “Not telling other people.  YOU MUST TELL.  You can’t be embarrassed.  You’ve got to tell all the parents of the kids your kid has been in contact with for at least a week.  And you have to keep treating it.  One treatment isn’t going to do it.  YOU MUST KEEP TREATING until you find nothing.  There’s a policy in schools where if you treat the kids only once they can return, but I think there should be a ‘No Nits’ policy.”  “You’re hard core,” I said.  She looked at me with comic skepticism.  “Have you had lice in your home?” she said.  I answered, “Not since I was a kid.”  “Your son hasn’t had lice, yet?”  “No.”  “Well, consider yourself lucky.  For now.”  She shook her head and smiled in a just-you-wait way.  I said, “I’ve heard that lice like clean hair and we only shampoo twice a week in our house.”  “That’s why?”  “No, we just naturally tend towards filthiness.  We’re like the French.”  She laughed and said, “Excellent.”

It was time to wrap up my tutorial.  She told me that I would have to wait and see a few days if my son got lice from the birthday party kid.  In the meantime I should use some sort of naturally scented spray deterrent I could buy at Whole Foods, but if a louse made it onto his head or mine, it only needed to lay one egg.  I told her I understood.  As I was leaving, I asked, “Is there anything worse than lice?”  “Yeah,” she said, “bedbugs.”  We both shuddered.  Enough said.

The Parent Calendar

Happy New Year!  At least that’s what my friend proposes and I think it’s a grand idea.  Why shouldn’t the new year begin on September 1st?  This month is brimming with newness, while January 1^st seems little more than an arbitrary Hallmark holiday invented by champagne promoters and limousine services.  I get that the Greeks in their spooky wisdom dreamt up the calendar that we use today working off the Roman, Julian and Gregorian calendars’ tweaks.  I’m sure the calendar nerds of their time were inspired by the lunar phases and possibly nudged by the farming seasons and certainly not Dick Clark’s whims nor a concern for keeping the sequin trade alive.  But ours is not the only calendar out there—the Hebrew, Hindu, Burmese and Buddhists all have their own calendars, to name just a few.  So I’m proposing another calendar, one that begins on the first day that all your children go back to school: The Parent Calendar.

The new year of The Parent Calendar begins the moment that your last child rounds a corner and is out of sight after the bell rings.  Each drop-off mom and dad in North America throws up a handful of biodegradable confetti in the very spot where they stand although some parents drop to their knees, weeping.  A rolling cavalcade of cheering and whooping can be heard throughout the land between 8:10am and 9:15am in every time zone while the FCC commandeers all radio stations and has them play “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” by Dinah Washington.  All leaf blowers are duly hobbled for the day so that stay-at-home parents may go directly home and take a nap and drink carts roll up and down the aisles of all the major commuter trains and busses where free margaritas and mimosas are passed out to all the working parents, courtesy of the board of education.

This celebratory mood of levity and relief following the Parents’ New Year doesn’t last long, however.  Almost immediately The Parent Calendar begins to buckle under the oppressive weight of The Sports Calendar.  With new classes and teachers, the new year ushers in familiar homework struggles and age-old battles over daily electronics usage.  Autumn leaves will soon obscure the last remnants of confetti absorbed into the damp, muddy ground, and leaf blowers will ruin all potential opportunities for peaceful work-from-home days. 

But, buck up, parents.  You still have a good week of New Year’s celebration ahead of you.  The weather is cool and crisp and there are no science projects due for at least a month.  This is The Parent Calendar’s golden time: after the humidity has left the air for good and before you have to switch your family over to fall clothes; after the mosquitoes have all died or flown south for the winter and before you have to worry about ordering holiday cards; after the pool closes—sadly—but before the first frost.  It’s a new year, parents.  Make it a happy one.

Family Camp

I’d never been to camp until last week.  I was a town pool/Jersey Shore kid in the summer, so, to me, camp was a vague compendium of friends’ September stories and the coming-of-age angst and hijinx of movies like “Dirty Dancing” and “Meatballs.”  I had a spotty knowledge of something called color wars and understood the desperation for care packages but that was about it.  There seemed to be an awful lot of sneaky behavior that took place at camp, and many firsts—cigarettes, kisses, shaved legs-- but I had to take it all with a grain of salt.  Who knew what really went on?  These tales were legend, but my imagination only went so far.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the town pool and the Jersey Shore, but it was time to mix things up a bit, show my son a variety of the panoply of summertime options that our great nation has to offer.  Last year I heard my California cousin talking about something called “family camp.”  Apparently she, her husband, and three kids all went to sleep-away camp together and had a blast.  So in June, I Googled “family camp New England” and found three options.  Of course they were booked back in January, but I cold-called them all and asked to be put on a wait list in case anyone cancelled last minute.  Someone did.

Off we went to YMCA family camp on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.  Wow, was it beautiful!  60 or so cabins dotted the edge of the lake so that everyone had a view of either the sunset or moonrise.  Ours was teensy—just big enough for 2 twin beds and a small night table between us.  Our amenities totaled 1 lamp, 1 fan, a broom and 2 blankets each—plus all the spiders you could successfully ignore.  The windows opened easily and the screens had no holes; the cross-breeze was cool and lovely.  The lodge and dining hall buildings were large, shingled, wooden affairs with high, beamed ceilings and long, wide porches with ample tables and chairs.  Footpaths crisscrossed the tree-shaded grounds connecting every possible camp game you can imagine from shuffleboard to air hockey and all the leisure and competitive ball sports in between.  The tiny store sold requisite ice cream, swag and candy bars and loaned out ping-pong balls and board games.  None of the courts were closed for repair and all the games had all the parts.

For meals, campers were assigned to a table for the week—like a cruise—and took turns picking up platters of family style camp food and taking each other’s dirty dishes up to the window.  The salad bar was varied and could augment any craving for greens beyond the typical parade of carbs.  We got to know the other families at our table, who had been coming to this family camp on the same week every year for 41, 37 and 16 years respectively.  We learned that after the first year, a family is grandfathered in if they choose to return and might have the same cabin, year after year until they die, at which point it’s offered to their kids.  The older gentleman next to me pointed to a thirtyish mom with three young kids and told me that he’s known her since she was an infant—for one week a year, for her whole life. 

After dinner on the first night, my son and I signed up at the big board for some tournaments: backgammon, chess and mother-son bocce, ping-pong and shuffleboard.  There were others, but we were going to ease into things.  There was also a talent show sign-up on Thursday night.  My son took off to join a gaggle of other pre-tweens lining up for foursquare and I headed to the craft shop.  Just behind the outdoor lending library, a one-room building stood—the front facing wall completely made of windows.  Inside were 6 long, wide tables, loads of little stools, and on the walls every conceivable color of bead, gimp, paint, dye, kind of leather, metal, pliers, hammers, brushes, chisels-- all the craft supplies you could imagine.  I’d died and gone to heaven.

I learned that in the mornings, after breakfast, the kids would be heading off to “program” where they would be swept away by peppy counselors to do camp stuff with other kids their age until lunch time when they joined their parents again.  They might swim or kayak, water ski or canoe, tie-dye, play tennis or hike.  It was at that time that parents took a yoga class or did boot camp, and when the craft shop was blissfully quiet.  I made a beeline for the soldering tools and leather stamps, where time flew by for me until the lunch bell rang and I ran back to meet my son. 

The afternoons were free to do as much or as little as you wanted and after dinner the counselors organized games of capture the flag and softball, movie nights and dances.  By Tuesday I met a violinist, clarinetist and guitar player who had brought their musical instruments.  We rehearsed a few times then performed a song as a seasoned quartet for Thursday night’s show, which by then had a robust line up of annual favorites—hams one and all.  Some of the tournaments fell apart-- which was fine with me—and my son won the chess after beating out only two others.  We watched the end of the week triathlons, cheering on our new friends, and then packed up our cabin and swept. 

Our week of camp was as exciting as it was relaxing.  The sound of the lake lapping just feet from my pillow has followed me home and lulls me to sleep.  I know that my son’s experience was not the same as being away from one’s parents, but he may still do that someday.  And I know that as a parent at camp with my kid, I missed the “real camp” boat and that it’s nothing like what my friends remember.  But now I have camp memories, too, of dirty hair and bug juice.  I think we’ll go back.  And back.

A Mine of Our Own

As if things haven’t been interesting enough around here lately, a friend of mine was at the beach at around 4pm the other day when his friend saw something in the ocean just a few feet past the break.  He thought it might be a big lump of tar.  My friend said he would wade in to check it out.  The waves were only a foot deep at the break and he could easily see down through the water.

“I thought perhaps it was a round dark metal umbrella stand,” he said.

 This wouldn’t be so unusual now that we’re living in post-Sandy times-- all manner of household items are washing up on shore towns’ beachfronts-- but something struck my friend as odd. 

“When I got closer I knew immediately it was a contact mine.  It looked just like a classic German mine, from WWII-- like when you play Mine Sweep on a computer.  One of the horns was missing and was just showing the receiver.  I’d never seen a real one up close before.”

I was incredulous.  Why on earth did my friend look at a round umbrella stand and think German mine from WWII?  I knew that some guys tend to have all sorts of military flotsam in their heads—weapons and planes maybe-- but really, this all seemed highly unlikely.

“How was it that you knew it was a mine?”  I asked.

He said, “Oh, I worked in Anti-Submarine Warfare at GE for 4 years after college.”

No way.  What are the chances?

It took some time for my friend to convince the 19-year-old lifeguard to try to convince the head of the beach association to convince local law enforcement to wade into 2 feet of water and check it out.  Who was really going to believe that there was a WWII mine up at the beach?  The police in turn sought out the services of a local scuba diver who waded into about 5 feet of water—by now it was high tide—to take underwater photos to, presumably, email them to some WWII mine expert who eventually said, “Yup, sure is.” 

By 7pm my mother and son and I ventured up to the beach to watch 3 cops and the diver stand near the water’s edge.  They had closed the beach to visitors, so we sat in a neighbor’s yard for a while then went home.  The next morning we learned that they would be detonating the mine at 11am, which would be high tide—better to buffer possible shrapnel.  By now there were 10 cops, 4 police cars, 2 army issue SUVs, a fire truck and 2 helicopters hovering above.  Oh, and a Chanel 12 news van circling for parking.  Law enforcement closed the street to cars and pedestrians for 5 blocks north and south of the beach and blocked traffic off the main highway.  Then they evacuated all the houses on the beach and across the street, reminding homeowners to open their windows before they left so they wouldn’t shatter from the blast.

The mine was apparently wrapped in an explosive called C4 and then bagged in some fashion for containment.  My friend explained that it’s called Detcord and it burns at 4000 feet per second.  “Why do you know that?” I said.  He just giggled and said, “Because I just do.”  My mother, two friends and I rode our bikes to just past the blockade and stood with evacuated restore-the-shore construction workers.  No one knew what to expect.  I texted my friend, who was at work.  He texted that they usually sound a horn before a blast.  Someone behind me counted down the minutes and just before the top of the hour, we heard a faint ringing in the distance like a school bell.  I pointed my camera in the general direction and pressed record. 

A loud explosion sent a line of water a hundred feet into the air.  “Woah,” we all said in unison then chuckled because one friend missed the shot because she was looking down at her camera and another was texting.  Oh, well.  Carry on.  We shared one more laugh with friendly strangers on a warm sunny day then disbursed to go back to what we were doing.

“The mine didn’t blow up,” my friend said, “I knew it was probably waterlogged.  Plus, the detonators were corroded off.  It would have been a huge explosion if it had blown up.  500 or 600 pounds of TNT.  Trust me, you would have known.”  Then he giggled again.

The AP reported that a deepsea diver found the mine.  We got a big laugh out of that in town, picturing a deepsea diver in 2 feet of water up at the beach, standing in full regalia at the water’s edge among all the boogie boards and bathing suits, pointing down towards his flippered feet. 

A few days later I asked my friend what he thought of being so close to a piece of history.  “I didn’t think it was that big a deal,” he said.  “But didn’t you think it was wild that we could be going along one minute in 2013 and then, blammo, face-to-face with 1942 the next?”  “Na,” he said, “It’s just another day in the life.”  70 years eclipsed in a moment’s glance at the ocean and to my friend it’s all business as usual.  My mom agreed with him.

Well, I thought it was cool and it gave me pause to consider the good grace of the men in subs who didn’t bump into it all those years ago.  My dad would have been blown away, so to speak.  He was fascinated with WWII.  This Fourth of July, when the fireworks explode and I hear the line, “bombs bursting in air”, I’ll think of the mine that didn’t go off up at the beach.  And the deepsea diver who didn’t find it.

Restoring the Shore

I took my son and some friends and their kids to Jenkinson’s Amusement Park in Point Pleasant, NJ, a few weeks ago.  I cautioned everyone that we may only find the arcades open but, to my delight, I was wrong.  The whole boardwalk was up and running at full steam.  The roller coaster, bumper cars and endlessly looping Himalayan were all ready to rock.  The swings took my son and his friend high into the air as they sat in those little seats, gripping the chains that held them up.  They giggled as they flew in circles over a ring of flip-flops waiting patiently on the ground below them.  Toddlers and tykes were mesmerized by the docile boat and fire engine rides while excited tweens squealed over the upside down rides I still harbor leftover anxiety from, so many years later.

My son was most concerned about the water pistol games but they were up and running, too.  For 3 bucks he and his friend and I-- because you need at least 3 people to play-- aimed into our clowns’ mouths, pulled the trigger with steely determination and watched streams of water blow up our balloons.  The boys had made a pact going in that they would pick out a ball on the lowest prize shelf so that they could share it for the rest of the weekend, and when one of them won, they did. 

So, life was good on the boardwalk that day.  The wooden planks we had walked on for generations were replaced with some sort of recycled resin-type material that would reduce splinter angst for generations to come.  The arcades were humming, the hot oil was frying and my girlfriend and I celebrated the gorgeous weather and our Jersey shore weekend with a freshly made Belgian waffle topped with two scoops of ice cream.  Just for us moms.

Yesterday I had a different sort of day at the Jersey Shore when I drove down to check on my aunt’s house in Mantoloking,.  That’s the small town situated on 3 blocks of Barrier Island between the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat Bay.  Most folks would like to think of Mantoloking as solely a bastion for wealthy folks’ spacious vacation homes, but that’s not the whole picture.  My aunt’s home is small by anyone’s terms.  A tiny bungalow, the only reason she has a living room is because my grandfather enclosed the one-car garage 40 years ago.  It’s cozy, lovely and it’s her primary residence—and it took on 4 feet of water after Sandy.             

A friend of my aunt’s owned a grand behemoth of a turn-of-the-century shore house.  The surge wave that breached the dunes took the first floor out from under the 2^nd and 3^rd and left them on the ground like a magician’s tablecloth trick.  Other neighbors came back to check on their houses only to fine that they were gone—wiped off the map.  Of the 521 homes in town, over 200 were destroyed or disappeared.  All of them were damaged.  Some were inherited, yes, and some were fancy, but everyone had worked hard to maintain them—some for generations.  To say that a wealthy person’s loss is negligible would be like telling a parent who lost a child, “At least you still have other kids.”  Loss is loss—unique and valid to everyone who suffers.  Mantoloking still has a way to go.

Some of the aged retired folks in town have had no other recourse than to walk away, their houses still split in half, roofs and walls torn off by the wind.  Piles of rubble still dot the landscape like war photos and eerie plots of sand provide new and unexpected views to landscapes no one ever expected to see-- monuments to the storm.  Most homeowners have been rendered catatonic by the decisions they face— keep or sell, tear it down or fix it up, raise it 6, 8, now 11 feet above sea level or take the risk and leave it be.   What to do?  My aunt still doesn’t know.

But it’s come along way, believe it or not.  One of the streets I turned down became an inlet the night of the storm, connecting ocean to bay and taking several homes with it.  Friends had had to row a boat across to check on their houses after the storm, but it was filled in now, good as new.  I drove past an older woman standing in her yard, her damaged house sagging behind her, wearing work gloves.  She was stone-still, staring ahead just feet from the road.  When she caught my eye, I said, “Hang in there.”  I didn’t know what else to say.

The town is coming back, slowly but surely, like other towns up and down the New York and New Jersey coast.  Townspeople, working together with FEMA, have done an amazing job re-securing basic utilities, moving the sand back to the sea, and keeping morale high and information flowing.   The beaches are open and still beautiful, the fries are still greasy, and the boardwalks’ betting wheels are spinning just for you.  Boutiques, surf shops and cafes are open.  Mini-golf is waiting.  The shore is being restored.  Get down there. 

The Reluctant Gardener

            If you had asked me when I was twelve-- or twenty-seven-- that I would end up aching to garden I would have said you were nuts.  Whenever I saw my mom bent over in the yard pulling weeds I thought it looked like the most abysmal waste of time.  It seemed monotonous and boring and I couldn’t imagine anything worse on a temperate spring day than being outside in the fresh air, listening to the birds and mucking about in the dirt.  Lame-o. 

            Now I’m like a cranky addict if I don’t get to my garden.  With each passing day that my weeds—yes, they’re mine, though not affectionately called so-- get shelved in favor of more pressing duties, the low grade nagging turns into a deep yearning.  I actually want to get out there.  I want to put on my sloppy painting clothes, knot my hair under a straw hat and head out to where no one knows I’m coming and but every body knows my name.  In my garden, no one talks, especially the flowers.  They have no personalities or names, no wants or needs except for moisture and sun.  They’re like beautiful models in clothing catalogues, there to momentarily raise the aesthetic level of my world but make no demands on my psyche. 

            Sometimes I, however, talk to them.  It’s a very one-sided relationship that I allow because I saw a PBS special once in the late eighties that said that plants do better if they’re talked to and who am I to refute science?  They were wearing white lab coats, so it must be true.  Now I praise the climbers for continuing along as I trained them and I admonish the sedge for coming back even though I’ve made it absolutely transparent that I want nothing more to do with it.  Like a tenacious romantic-comedy Hollywood boyfriend that I’ve broken up with repeatedly, Sedge keeps coming back, like it or not, uninvited to laze about and make no worthwhile contribution of any import to my life.  More trouble that he’s worth, yes, but at least he doesn’t speak.   He can’t criticize me for the clover all over, the strawberry plant that’s gone wild, or the honeysuckle that’s out for world domination.

            I head out to the backyard with quiet resignation in my heart and a bounce in my step.  I spend hours pulling up the weeds and yanking out my demons.  Gardening as a meditation on patience, growth and acceptance.  It feels good to get dirty, to envision my yard’s future in its lush richness and nestle annuals into their new homes.  No wonder my mom was always gardening.  It got her away from the children where she could retreat into her mind and thoughts of calmer weekends and people who actually appreciated what she cooked for dinner and told her so to her face. 

            Recently, I pointed to a flower along the side of the road and asked my mom for its name.  “Heck if I know,” was her answer.  I said, “I thought you knew the names of all the flowers.”  “Goodness, no,” she said, “I know the names of like six things and that’s about it.  Could never remember the rest.”  “But I thought you were such a big gardener.”  “No, not really,” she said, “Your father did most of the gardening.  I mostly weeded.  But I found it pretty boring to be honest.”  This was news to me.  “You did?  I thought you couldn’t wait to get out there, get your hands dirty, enjoy the meditative calmness of repetitive, you know, weed-pulling.”  Mom took another drag on her cigarette and said, “I would have rather been reading.”  I smirked.  “One of your trashy murder-mysteries?”  I said.  She nodded.  I thought about this for a moment.  All this time I thought she was such a gardener, but in actuality, she was a reluctant gardener.  “Oh,” was all I said.  Then, “If you weren’t so crazy about it, how come you didn’t make us help you?  It would have gone so much faster and we would have kept you company.”  “Because when we were kids, your father and I had so many chores on the weekends that we decided we wanted you to have more fun than we did, so we let you run around the neighborhood and play with your friends.”  “Oh,” I said.  Then, I added, “Thanks.”  She put out her cigarette and said, “You’re welcome.”

            Today, my son gets home from school in an hour.  I would love to have him help me in the garden.  It’d be a great education for him and such a nice mother/son bonding experience for us.  He can yank and dig and get as dirty as he pleases and I can teach him the names of all the plants and flowers I’ve learned—boasting many more than six and still counting.  We can talk about color and composition and he can help me decide where to put the annuals.  Not to mention, I’d love to have the company.  My son would much rather be reading. 

           

           

The New Old Math

            Math and I are formidable foes and I have written about our rocky relationship before.  But there’s a new twist to the story of late-- one I think you’ll enjoy.  For those of you who’ve been following along, I’m in graduate school to get a masters degree in teaching elementary education.  I mention it because the class I took this semester was in how to teach young children math with Cognitively Guided Instruction or intuitively—in other words: letting the child solve the problem the way he or she instinctively wants to.  “Intuitively?!” you exclaim.  Yes, you heard right.  The entire gist of the class and the bedrock of the two textbooks we worked from was this: allow kids to arrive at the answer the way in which their brains naturally get them there.  “What!?!” I hear you blathering, “but that’s the opposite of how I learned math as a child!  I spent hours learning logarithms that made no sense and buckled under the weight of wrote memorization drills.  I remember fear, anxiety and being told I was doing it wrong as if it were only yesterday.”  I know, pal.  You and me both.  Calm, down, you’re sweating a little.  Are you okay?

            The idea is that children show up the first day of kindergarten with a robust brain full of informal or intuitive knowledge of mathematics—just ask any four year old what to do with one cookie when his sister is sitting next to him in the back seat of the car.  Break it in half.  That’s intuitive problem solving.  That’s math.  Over the years, addition, subtraction and multiplication become organic extensions of what little kids already know, and they know a lot.  Then, with any luck, your young child will get a teacher who has been taught that creating a positive attitude about math is not only important but germane to her bright future.  No more fear—a lot less shame.

            Imagine a teacher who is actually paying attention to how your child is thinking not just what he’s thinking.  Imagine a classroom where as much time is spent discussing wrong answers to fraction problems as correct answers.  Imagine a pedagogic ethos wherein children are not only taught to learn from their mistakes but actually come to understand mathematical concepts by exploring mistakes, locating the exact spot where her brain jogged left when it should have jogged right, then letting the child enjoy the excitement of an ‘aha!’ moment, where she notices what she did wrong herself.  That’s right, folks, in this math utopia, the teacher doesn’t publically tell her her answer is wrong, the student locates the problem-- perhaps in concert with a peer partner or group-- then fixes it.  Together.  I know.  It sounds crazy to me, too.  But it’s amazing.  And it works. 

            If children learn early math concepts they way that makes most sense to them—by counting on fingers, drawing pictures, talking out loud, or moving legos, pretzels or ‘manipulatives’ around in groups on a desk or rug, they’re more likely to get it.  And if they can help each other and arrive at the answer by reasonable group discourse, (the way adults do in many, many career fields) then maybe the harsh competitiveness of math will be removed long enough for your child to actually feel free to fail and therefore learn.  And don’t worry-- if you think they’ll be counting on their fingers forever, they won’t be.  It’ll take too much time and they’ll become impatient and eventually a classmate will show them how to skip-count by tens or multiply instead of add and they’ll happily jump on that bandwagon.  Who wouldn’t?  It’s our nature to embrace the shortcut-- to evolve and improve. 

            Once the basics are embedded, children are encouraged to see oncoming new math strategies as compatible layers to an involved and fascinating game-- the way they learn the rules for Pokemon trading card duels or professional baseball line-up strategies.  They’re much more likely to remember the algorithms—those slippery rules and strategies-- because they’ll make sense.  If children can approach an algebra problem the way they approach a video game, with curiosity, gumption and the resolve to keep going until they find the gold coins or the trap door or the answer for what x stands for—just imagine!  Imagine not feeling shame when you get the answer wrong, or not comparing yourself to the kid who always seems to know what’s going on when you don’t.  I know, easier said than done.  If only. 

            But it’s going to get better because more and more teachers are going to allow your child’s mind to follow its own path to the answers.  Math will become more like building a snow fort with your friends.  I’ll do it my way and you do it your way and we’ll all meet in the middle.  And if there’s a weak spot, we’ll find it together, and work through to improve it, with persistence and resolve-- as a team of learners.  As a mighty force for mathematics good. 

(Author’s note: Download: “The Kindergarten Files” on iTunes for shining examples of this exciting revolution in learning or read Thomas P. Carpenter et al.’s “Children’s Mathematics: Cognitively Guided Instruction, 1999)

Winter's Last Quiet

It’s odd to be writing an essay about spring when it’s 33 degrees outside.  I feel like I do when I have a miserable hacking cough and I can’t recall ever not coughing.  I honestly get to the point in week five where I cannot remember a point in time when I didn’t cough my way through the day and wake myself up coughing at night.  I acclimate to my new reality as Lifetime Cougher and accept my fate.  I even embrace the shreds of tissues bulging my pockets and the skateboard ramp’s worth of pillows on my bed as part of my life forever.  And then, miraculously, my cough goes away.  I say ‘my cough’ because by this time it has become a part of me, and though I try not to let it define me, it does.  Then eventually, I reach a moment in time when I can’t remember coughing.

At this point in the year, I can’t remember not being cold.  And cranky, and sure, okay, maybe just a teensy bit depressed.  And yet, I am hopeful-- but cautiously hopeful.  Like when I’m waiting for the dream job offer to come through.  It’s almost as if I don’t really believe it could happen to me.  I mean, spring is for the lucky ones, isn’t it?  Like slender ankles and personal chefs-- it’s for people more fortunate than I.  Or maybe I don’t want to believe spring will come so that I won’t be disappointed if it doesn’t arrive this year.  I suppose it could happen.  We could be bypassed.  Winter practically bypassed us last year; maybe it’s spring’s turn.

All of this makes me slightly miffed at the flowers poking through their crusty earthen shell when I should be over the moon.  “Look at you, Snowdrops,” I sneer at them as I walk through the icy slush up my driveway.  “You ninnies,” I say.  I can still see my breath.  “And you, crocuses, don’t be so daft.  You are way too soon, my friends.”  It’s as if they’ve arrived too early for a party that was cancelled.  I feel bad for them but am also wondering why they didn’t double check the evite before heading out the door.  And yet, they know a thing or two about a thing or two.  The flowers and forsythia have intel we can only dream about.  They know, without an iota of doubt, that spring is coming.  They are hopelessly optimistic and so I have no choice but to respect them.  Deeply.  I take back my slanderous jibes.  I beg their petals’ forgiveness.  Then, I relax a little.  Spring is coming, like the mail and grey hair.  I can bank on it, so I do, and this frees me up to enjoy the last vestiges of winter for it’s most glorious attribute: quiet. 

Spring, with all its allusions to rebirth, will bring with it the screaming wails of leaf blowers.  The dulcet tones of distant planes and falling snow will be replaced with the near-constant whinny of bands of roving landscapers, hired by homeowners who are—for the most part—not home to receive this daily aural barrage to the senses.  Napping children, stay-at-home moms and work-from-home-ers will be assaulted by this relentless grating, wondering how they inadvertently landed in houses purchased on the center median of a thousand lap Nascar race.  Then, when you can’t remember a time when there weren’t leaf blowers boring into your soul daily, they will stop.  And be replaced by lawn mowers and air conditioners. 

The near-constant throbbing grind of air conditioning units will blanket the bird’s song and the wind’s caress like a local oil refinery might, and follow us like inescapable tinnitus throughout our October days, when even the cool 65 degree night breezes won’t give them pause.  This seemingly final crescendo of leaf blowers and air conditioners will follow us right up until the end of November, when quiet will re-emerge once again.  Late autumn yards with gorgeous Japanese maples and oaks will preside over the naked, leaf-less lawns of Texas, bereft of the vestiges of why some of us chose the North East and not the desert in the first place.  It’s then that I’ll finally take out the earplugs that I’ve been wearing for seven months during the day and through out the night.  I’ll open my windows for a week or two before doing so would be like throwing heating oil money out the window.  By then, of course, the cicadas will have headed to Miami along with the blue jays, and the leaves will no longer be around for rustling. 

I get why people use landscapers’ leaf-blowers instead of raking, I suppose, and I turn on my own air conditioner at times.  I’m being a cranky hypocrite because winter has lasted so darn long this year and I’m just so ready for it to be over.  But, I will force myself to cherish its last few days.  I will strive to live in the present and enjoy the budding roses, the slow shedding of down coats and the calming effects of tranquility.  Because soon, before I know it, I will have forgotten what it sounds like.  I will have forgotten the exquisite peace of quiet.