Someone's Drinking the Kool-Aid

Big Sis just appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, arms outstretched to touch the doorjambs, to ask me, while I was on the phone with my BFF:

"Mom, who is our king?"

"Our king? We don't have a king."

"Yes we do, Mom. Who is our king?"

"We don't have a king in America."

"Yes we do, MOM. Who is our king?"

"We don't have a king in America! We don't. We have a president."

"We do have a king, Mom. What is his name?"

"Okay, fine. We have a king. His name is King Elmo the Great."

She looked at me, dropped her arms, and left the room. I resumed my adult conversation on the phone.

A few minutes later I hear, in that endlessly repetitive, robotic, patented way only children can beckon their parents:

"MOM. MOM. MOM. MOM. MOM. MOM..."

(Sighing, and holding the phone against my chest) "Whhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?"

"GOD IS OUR KING, MOM! GOD IS OUR KING. GOD. IS. OUR. KING."

And here I was thinking I was going to have to explain that our world is not a Disney Princess one, with kings and castles and sleeping beauties. Or that England has kings and the U.S. has presidents.

But no. My daughter, enrolled in a Christian Pre-School, was quizzing me.

And by the Transitive Property of Equality, I appear to have proclaimed King Elmo the Great as My God.

She Just Says No To Drugs, Adamantly

So far today we've given our almost-five-year-old daughter her various prescriptions by hiding pills and disguising oral suspensions in:

1. peanut butter
2. applesauce
3. a grilled cheese sandwich
3. strawberries and whipped cream
4. Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream

I'm not proud to admit that this morning featured me crying on the phone with the nurse after threatening to take our daughter in for shots and/or an IV hook-up when she refused to swallow anything but chewable Tylenol tablets. And learning that dropping her back off at the hospital Was Not An Option.

Seems like Everyone Else knows how to get bitter pills down their kids' gullets. And we have no real excuse, especially since this is the same child acclimated to a daily prophylactic dose of amoxicillin since she was three. And we are generally not in the habit of letting our kids Be In Charge of Their Well-Being.

But, she would tell you, these are new meds we're forcing her to take. And, well, you also have to know our daughter: It's not the taste of the medicine, per se, it's the IDEA of it. A "spoonful of sugar" or chocolate sauce (thank you, friends) will not work if she knows medication is in there.

We resorted to pinning her down and prying her jaw open (and then holding it closed--AGAIN, NOT PROUD), but her uncanny ability to spit out and spray every last molecule of drug-containing liquid is why she took two baths yesterday and my sheets are in the wash.

Hence, the evolution in the list of masquerading menus above. Peanut butter and applesauce represent her suspecting that the pill is in that spoonful, but okay, she'll try it. That approach wore off by noon. I stuck the crumbled mid-day pill in her sandwich--and she was none the wiser. Yes.

Alas, the pre-dinner Cherry-Tylenol-with-Codeine Soaked Strawberries and Cream lasted about three bites before being deemed "spicy."

But Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream? A perfect foil for the crushed nighttime dose of Ditripan. She'll be having that for breakfast, unless she's already on to us by tomorrow A.M.

The Drug Wars in our house are perhaps a welcome distraction from her whimpers of pain, her rocking on all fours and begging us to please do something to make this better NOW Mommy and Daddy.

Ummm...how about drugs, kiddo? *Sigh*

But I have the luxury of knowing this too shall pass--and quickly, relatively speaking. My respect, admiration, and empathy for parents and children with chronic, debilitating illnesses in whose lives daily yucky medicine and pain are givens.

Bilateral Ureteral Reimplantation

Not as bad as it sounds, it turns out.

Our four-year-old handled surgery like a champ. Of all the aspects of her hospital stay and the requisite intrusions on her personal space, only the oral doses of Tylenol with Codeine warranted dramatic protests (which only made her prescription more attractive to me).

It always comes down to the medicine. Even though she is watching Mary Poppins At This Very Moment, she is not amused by my reminders that a Spoonful of Sugar (or M&M's) Makes the Medicine Go Down. In fact, I predict some Medicine Throwdowns in our near future, since we came home with three different kinds.

Me: Look, this one is raspberry flavored.
Her: How do you know, Mom?
Me: It says it, right here. It tastes like raspberries. You love raspberries.
Her: (wrinkling her nose, looking skeptical) How do you know it actually tastes like raspberries? Why don't YOU TRY IT, MOM?

A Rocking Ride, But We're Still Rolling

Sunday.

It's a beautiful day outside: the very best kind of weather, sunny but breezy, warm but not hot. The cousins are over and the kids are playing like cousins, with familiarity, ease, sweetness. No other friendships are quite like it.

It's been a wonderful day and it's only late afternoon (and I am vowing to ward off the Sunday Night Blues).

I woke up early and drove to a spot on the marathon course to cheer on my friend in her first marathon. As I watched for her I was reminded how uplifting it is to cheer for strangers who have the guts to run 26.2 miles. My friend was glowing and gleeful after mile 11 and I jumped in for a few miles, then ran back to my car along a pretty quiet, spectator-free stretch of the course, continuing to shout encouragements while heading in the opposite direction.

It's hard for me to believe I ever ran a marathon myself, because I was Very Glad to find my car after five miles.

This four-day week felt interminable, beginning with my post-long-weekend Questioning of Career Path (and Family Sacrifice) and ending with some Sense of Satisfaction that My Work is Meaningful. In between, students disappointed us by disrespecting staff members and defying authority; we responded by cancelling a popular student activity; then, after further consideration of the wide net we were casting, we reinstated the activity and soldiered on.

It goes without saying that while we were asking ourselves what is important/what is right/what is fair?, others were asking us what the hell are you doing/are you flipping crazy/do you want the entire community to hate you? Which felt Not Very Good. Not to mention that altering the course of our decisions midstream came with its own risks and criticism.

It turns out you hardly ever know exactly what you're doing so you do the best you can and try to get it as right as you can and as close to being about what you believe in and care about as you can.

It never feels completely good to make tough decisions, particularly in the public eye. I've learned that the only consolation is if you feel pretty okay inside yourself about the whole thing, as that may be all you have to sustain you.

We do care about kids, which became more evident to us if not to others, and at the end of the week, I care about a Whole Lot of Them a Whole Lot MORE, which is pretty cool.

Hence a sense of accomplishment for endurance of something tough, which might not be that far off from how my marathoner friend is feeling today: exhausted, in some pain, proud of herself, and very very glad the hardest part (of this event, anyway!) is over.

Today, Encapsulated in Quotations

"A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards." --Karl Kraus

"It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, that we make our irrevocable decisions." --Marcel Proust

"A wise man changes his mind, a fool never will." --Spanish proverb

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This is What Free Speech Looks Like

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to stumble upon one of our 12th graders presenting to a class of beginning art students about his influences and the artists that inspire him.

Needless to say, I walked out of the classroom awed by this student whom I had taught back when I was an English teacher and he was a 9th grader. How far he had come: from gangly, awkward, and still figuring himself out to self-assured, wise, and very, very cool. His peers sat rapt as he wandered the alleys of "Street Art" with them.

Street Art, he explained, is a part of its environment as well as a commentary on it; is political; is rebellious... is inspiring, subversive, provocative, often illegal and impermanent and meant to challenge the messaging we are subject to, especially subconsciously.

He introduced us to French portraitist/stencil artist C215 (will you please graffiti my house?) and Banksy, a reigning king of Street Art in the UK. My favorite of his murals depicts children pledging allegiance to a plastic Tesco shopping bag hoisted up a flagpole. Banksy is also famous for "vandalizing" reproduced classical paintings, which are then hung in museums until they are inevitably noticed and taken down. Here's a "Banksied" Monet, altered with the addition of contemporary images...

Banksy also coined the term "brandalism," and in his book Wall and Piece, defends the public's right to subvert advertising, pointing out that corporations "rearrange (our) world to put themselves in front of (us)" without our permission. We don't have the option, for example, to decide whether or not to look at billboards and signage, which surround us in the public domain.

Banksy's form of activism reminds me of another sneaky, ingenious way to make commentary on consumerism, "shopdropping" or "droplifting." Shopdroppers, rather than "lifting" products from retailers, leave items in stores. Sometimes the act is to subvert labeling, to promote artists or musicians, or to observe people trying to buy products not endorsed by the stores on whose shelves they are found. Artist Packard Jennings, for example, made his own "anarchist" Action Figures and put them in Target and Wal-Mart stores, where people actually attempted to purchase them.

I also remembered reading in the newspaper about a local woman who proclaimed herself the "Knitting Ninja." Her modus operandi is wrapping "polewarmers" around street sign posts. An article about her work and that of other public artists (as well as how corporations are beginning to--surprise!--capitalize on this phenomenon) can be found here.

My former student's lecture to beginning art classes was part of preparing them for an open-ended project in which their work is meant to communicate with their audience somehow (not necessarily politically).

My creative writing students used to do a "community writing" project. The aim was to share their writing in some form--through signs, emails, slips of paper left somewhere, etc.--and then to document their writing, the venue in which they posted or performed it, and the reaction(s). I recall a student offering to read her poem to complete strangers at a local park, another sending her writing anonymously to random students in various classes, and others who taped their compositions to benches at bus stops, sign posts, and bulletin boards. The project was often in conjunction with the "Directions for Living" assignment, so the writings, while often provocative, were usually uplifting.

The last year I assigned the project one particular student had placed her simple, inspiring words on stop signs in her neighborhood. Because the student left a hint that the posting was in conjunction with a school assignment, I was tracked down by an elderly woman who encountered one of the student's poems. Her husband had recently died, she shared, and she was out walking her dog that night, considering her options and feeling bereft. She happened to read the teen's thoughts on a street sign pole, and felt the words were meant for her that day. On the phone she credited my student for saving her life.

That's a far cry from my first experience with "street art" or "public writing." In the sixth grade I was curiously moved to write anonymous "thank you for being my friend" notes to several peers (I had moved to town only the year before and perhaps finally felt accepted?). I think I anticipated the message would be considered corny and was therefore too chicken to take credit, but I truly wanted these girls to know I appreciated them. I surreptitiously slid the hand-written (cursive, loosely disguised) notes into my friends' lockers.

Oh, the Drama that ensued. It wasn't that I left some 6th grade girls out; I was pretty thorough in my coverage. It was the mystery that surrounded Who Had Done It. The investigation (and accusations!) superseded any positive result meant to be gleaned from the gesture.

But I am not discouraged from continuing mild forms of street art when the spirit moves me. The mother of budding, bold public artists, may I recommend Window Markers or Sidewalk Paint as accessible, impermanent media for expression?