Eulogy: Sandy Ferguson 1947-2019

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My 11^th grade daughter frequently reminds us that she loves every single one of her teachers this year.  It’s  wonderful to know your child is inspired, loved, and motivated by her teachers.  In turn, she has genuine interest in who they are as people and thinkers.  I, like her, felt that extraordinary connection with my teachers at Coronado High School, and the idea that I could be part of the kind of relationships these giants in my life inspired is why I am an educator today. 

Sandy Ferguson, or “Ferg,” or "Fergie," and yes, we once dedicated the song "Fergalicious" to him at a Homecoming dance late in his career, was my teacher in 9^th and 10^th grade history and then for half of my classes in 12^th grade (for history, ASB, and then, well, I signed up to be his TA too).  I spent half of my school days my senior year with this man who was kind of like my dad at school.   I admired his humor, his expressive eyebrows, his handwriting, his VW bus, the tee shirts whose life he stretched past viable structural integrity, and that he ran on the beach. In turn, I felt smart, funny, capable, challenged, talented, understood, and real around and because of him.

Sandy Ferguson met each person he encountered, adult and child, with humanity first—not with authority, not with superiority, despite his intellectual prowess and vast funds of knowledge. Instead, it was as if he set out to demonstrate that taking mutual respect for granted actually made it happen.  He treated us like adults but understood that it was in our adolescent nature to test boundaries. He figured we’d learn from navigating them in the context of safe and trusting relationships with adults. He gave us independence and freedom as both students and leaders of our peers, saying yes more often than no, but challenging us to figure out if we got it right. A master of mischief himself, he tolerated our incessant pranking (we turned his posters upside down, moved classroom furniture to his office or the hallway--capers made possible by his often late arrival to class).  

He was also the teacher who called my parents in spring of senior year when I’d been accepted to college and was blowing off notes and assignments (after giving me fair warning). His manner of intervention was inspiring you to reflect on your own behavior, as if your choices and their consequences were a discussion you needed most to have with yourself. He taught us about geographical features like drumlins and all the rivers of South America, and then pushed us to think critically about history and politics and brought back former students to talk passionately about what they were learning in college.

Because I came back to Coronado to teach, I had the privilege to be not only Sandy’s student, but his colleague, and then his administrator, both supporting and feeling daily gratitude for his devotion to CHS and district athletics and facilities.  You can imagine how poignant it was when, after Sandy retired and Alzheimer's was affecting his acuity, he would stop by CHS from time to time and implore me to put him to work in any capacity.  I need to be here, he’d plead, I need to work with you all. And we made plans for him to come back and help, but it would be weeks or months before he returned.  And perhaps he might have regretted that it seemed too late for him.   And though his illness robbed our brilliant friend of many productive years, what I’d really like to say to Ferg is, you achieved it all in the time you had with us, and you, my mentor, also achieved Ralph Waldo Emerson’s definition of success:  "To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."

Thank you, Sandy Ferguson. 

13 Ways of Looking at 16

In advance of their daughter's sixteenth birthday, friends of ours asked family members and friends to write her letters including memories, advice, and inspiration.  Here's my contribution (and my favorite is #VII):

Dear Tess,

Wallace Stevens wrote his poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” and it occurs to me that it’s like a little Instagram account (whereas William Carlos Williams’ poem “Red Wheelbarrow” is like one Insta post, and “This is Just to Say,” also by Williams, is more like an apologetic message on a friend’s FB wall—oh hey, we could compare poems to social media moments! But I digress). So here’s a moment in time, your sixteenth birthday, for which we are creating snapshots, reflections, messages on your “wall,” so to speak. I am offering you “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Sixteen.”

So much love,

Fer

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Sixteen

I
Among the people at dinner that night,
The most memorable ideas, references, and insights
Issued from the sixteen-year-old.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a sixteen-year-old
In which resides child, teen, adult.

III
She, sixteen, danced in the sand, arms thrown wildly to wind and sky.
It was one movement in the choreography of her life.

IV
A man and a woman
had one.
A man and a woman and a sixteen-year-old
Are one.

V
They are all evidence of her,
Words, actions, body
And her slept-in bed, clothing, and acquisitions:
The sixteen-year-old’s being
As well as her props.

VI
Music from the turntable filled the room
With sounds like.
The limbs of the sixteen-year-old
Crossed and curled and extended along the couch.
Her mood
Represented in her postures:
Shifting landscape.

VII
O old folks of society,
Why do you imagine hoodlums?
Do you not see how the sixteen-year-old
Walks the world in feet
That become yours?

VIII
I know great minds
And inventions, accomplishments, triumphs, and talents realized over lifetimes;
But I feel, too,
That sixteen-year-olds influence
What I know and believe and love.

IX
When the sixteen-year-old drove out of sight,
It marked one edge
Of the polygon of independence.

X
At the sight of sixteen-year-olds
Delighting in their own company,
Even the most cynical observers
Gaze with longing and approval.

XI
I dreamed I was late to class
And dashing without progress.
Many times, fear grips my slumber,
When I am convinced
I’ve forgotten my chemistry homework
At sixteen.

XII
Time is flowing.
The sixteen-year-old is thriving.

XIII
She was young and she was old.
She was child and she was adult.
The sixteen-year-old was
Nevertheless always Tess.

All About My Parents

Tootsie goes to a wonderful, loving, nurturing preschool, where relationships, responsibility, play, and imagination are emphasized--the same preschool her big sisters attended seemingly long ago.  

The teachers listen carefully to the little people and the important (hilarious) things they say, often recording them for posterity.  

We were treated to a Parents' Day celebration on Sunday, where we were presented with cards from our kiddos; here's Tootsie's take on her Mom and Dad:    

Some points of confirmation and clarification:

I do work with my friends.

Husband does work at da yacht club.

Husband does NOT enjoy letting the dog out to pee.

Husband and I did not meet at school, though we did attend the same high school.

Husband does like syrup, not usually on meatballs.

We do love our children when they go to school.  Apparently this is a likable trait.

A Message from Middle School

Big Sis is in sixth grade, for just over a week now.  And I've been tempted to post something to the effect of middle school:emotion::Pope:Catholic.  Because, wow.  Maybe it's just, as a BFF calls it, Transition Sickness.  But there's been a lot of turmoil, sobbing, exhaustion, nostalgia for the easier times of childhood, and, as it turns out, reflection.

Tonight, Big Sis busted out a soliloquy that I urged her to write down.  Because she's so right on, and she has managed, through her tiredness and tears, to focus on some big themes.  Her ideas resonated, because just last week I exhorted a group of seniors to think of college:life::wedding:marriage.  College isn't what you've spent 18 years preparing for; it's not the be all, end all.  Life is what you've spent 18 years preparing for, and you're actually living it NOW.

It took me 43 years to figure this stuff out, but Big Sis has some wisdom as a newly minted sixth grader (and I copy her text here with her permission):

OK, Here it goes.  I have just begun middle school, and lately we have been given a few talks.  During each one I am thinking.  We're hearing that middle school is all about preparing, preparing, preparing for life.  But really it's not just preparing.  It's all an experience.  You're not just learning to learn, you're learning for your own good.  You're living RIGHT NOW.  

You can't always be living in the future, because it's like we are only preparing for the life ahead of us, which makes us a big stress case.  Just go with the flow and relax and just think about how you're doing right now.  Because otherwise all you're doing is waiting.  All waiting will do is discourage you.  You're not always preparing if you're having a great experience living in the now.  

Of course it's alright to have your mind set on a certain career.  But think of other things you might enjoy as well.  For example, I love soccer, and would like to pursue my dream, but I can't put all my eggs in one basket.  I also love to read and would love to become an author as well.  

Not every stage in life is preparation for the next stage.  If we act like that, when will it stop?  The problem is, it won't.  We will keep living like this and it will never end.  

So, what I am humbly saying is that we, (especially us kids) need to think about life differently.  School, in particular.  We all need to think of it like an experience.  

Turned All the Way Up to Eleven

Tootsie is on the cusp of turning one year old, on the cusp of walking and talking and ditching the breast and the bottle.  She is on the cusp of beyond babyhood.  I mused on her sweet uncalloused feet last night, respecting how little time of tenderness remains.

This month of her almost-oneness, the month when, a year ago, our lives went topsy turvy, has been emotional.  I can easily recall planning for the upcoming year at work, packing for travel, unpacking at the new house, and enjoying pregnancy.  Summer feels like Boston.  It feels like the hospital.  It feels like uncertainty and anything can happen.  It also feels like family, like love, like hope and excitement.

Tootsie is busy, busy, busy.  We took her on her first airplane ride since coming home from Boston, to Iowa to visit Husband's father.  We spent much of the weekend in the hospice house with family, Tootsie providing distractions and entertainment, cruising from chair to coffee table, babbling and growling and cackling with laughter at her sisters.  Life continues, we all nodded, as the seventeen-year cicadas swarming in the trees outside provided a fervent symphony.

She eats curried chicken salad, apples, diced grapes, and even Baked Lays potato chips (benefit of a trip to Subway with her babysitter) with her sharp little teeth, including new fangs on top.  She loves swimming, soccer balls (gooooooaaaaaaaaallll!), toys with microphones, and rocks.  She sings along.  She makes noises like an elephant.  She loves her baby cousins.

As always, she grins and smiles and laughs far more than she ever complains.  She's been ours for almost a year.  We can hardly remember life without her.

Ten Months, and Tootsie's Tips

Tootsie turned ten months amid a very busy time at home and at school...soccer tournaments, preparations for 5th grade promotion (Big Sis's outfit and event planning...), sister and brother-in-law and baby cousin coming to town, end-of-year awards, campaigning and bond election, and graduation.  Meanwhile, she was busy tackling more developmental stages, as well as remaining her cute and smiley self.  I found myself having a good old cry at the passage of time (my baby growing less babyish inspiring tears on one hand; my spending time elsewhere as she keeps growing on the other).  But I did some healthy reflecting on the nostalgia around our children's inevitable development, and allude to epiphanies below in my graduation speech.

Here's the big "step" Tootsie took last month:

And, of course, such strides result in frequent bangs into furniture and bonkings of her head.  She otherwise crawls at warp speed toward the dog food, giggling mischievously en route, or finds tiny objects to put in her mouth to scare the bejeezus out of us.

Instead of the 'ooo' face of wonder she adopted as a tiny baby, she now makes a serious "ohhhhhh" sound and expression when she's truly captivated or curious about something--dogs, animals, and other babies in particular.  She loves her cousins.

Her favorite song is Pharrell's "Happy," which Big Sis sang at her choir concert last month.  Her favorite books are Hug, Hush Little Baby, and On the Night You Were Born (though she was born in the AM).  She likes the Hairy Maclary book, but only until the page with the scary cat, Scarface Claw.  Then she cries.  She doesn't like the Elmo character at Sea World either.

When her sisters ask her questions like, "Do you want to help me with my homework?" she shakes her head vigorously with big grins.  Her vocabulary includes "blah blah blah blah."

She loves to swim and take baths, and we've spent some good times with the cousins in Mammom's swimming pool.

As far as nursing goes, it's like breastfeeding an octopus or wrestler.  And she uses her free hand to pound me on the chest.

But she made an apt subject for my first commencement address as a high school principal.  Here are Tootsie's Tips:

Last summer I was a pregnant new principal who planned to start the school year and then take a little time off when our baby was born in September.  But next thing I knew, I was having my baby early, in the wrong state across the country, and we were in the hospital on your first day of school.  I wound up missing the fall semester of your senior year, and you can go ahead and blame it on the baby, Faera, or as she became known to many, Tootsie.  As school has come to a close, I’ve been thinking about some of the lessons Tootsie taught me this year, and I want to pass them along to you. 

 First, accept life’s vicissitudes.

 There’s a tendency, a normal and natural and wise tendency, to plan out your life.  And I suggest you do.  But this year I’ve had to recognize what parts of life are in and out of my control.  Tootsie has helped me accept that life is messy, unpredictable, scary, and mysterious, but also beautiful and surprising and serendipitous.  You may invest time, work, and hope, only to experience a disappointing outcome.  Practice facing the circumstances before you and renouncing regret for what couldn’t or cannot be.  Tootsie would endorse what your classmate Ines Cruz wrote so aptly in her Identity Project in art:  “I want to fearlessly go, and see what unfolds before me.  If I mess up, I want to know it’s okay; it’s part of the journey, part of the design of my life.” 

 Second:  Embrace the new and unfamiliar

During babies’ first months, every experience, every place is brand new.  I watch Tootsie wake up sometimes and I know she’s thinking where the heck am I now?  Here you sit before us, about to depart the familiar—your daily routine at home and at CHS with the people you know—for an adventure of the unexplored.  You’re going to cry about it sometimes—Tootsie does—but we don’t bail her out every time she wants to eject from a seemingly scary place.  Recognize that this is your mission:  to explore the new, and to exploit the opportunities that adventure brings. From Ines Cruz:  “I need to walk on warm sand, not on hot concrete, under stars, not street lamps, over miles and miles of new places with new people, not standing stagnant in place.” 

Third:  Make the most of where you are:

Tootsie only recently started to crawl.  She has spent most of her short life stuck where we put her—in her carseat, stroller, crib, or front pack.  But from flat on her back or sitting up she finds the world an amazing place and the people around her fascinating.  Ever been stuck in a long line and noticed the adults looking anywhere but at each other?  Babies seek out and gaze right at fellow humans with wonder.  They grin, coo, and engage with anyone who catches their eye, no matter who they are.  You, too, can make the most of where you are, and even make someone’s day, on planes, in traffic, at jury duty, in your dorm with assigned roommates: entertain yourself, enjoy the view, bring your best attitude.  Get to know the person next to you. 

This one is for the parents too:  Accept your own and others’ evolutions

I always wanted a third baby.  I love babies (almost as much as I love teenagers). But a baby is a growing person, and however much we want our babies to stay small and cute and cuddly, they grow and change.  Every day my Tootsie is a newer version of herself.  And so are you.  You haven’t discovered all of your own strengths, skills, and vulnerabilities.  Future experiences and relationships will bring out new facets of your self.  You don’t have to be whom you have always been or expected to be.  By next summer you may have adopted different interests and aspirations, hobbies and habits.  Be prepared to find your high school friends and family members have, too.  Let yourself and others shed dead skin and emerge anew.  Graduates, parents, friends:  pledge to reacquaint yourself with your loved ones in their present. 

 Just a few more tidbits from Tootsie: 

Dance, sing, laugh, or act goofy. Every day.

When you perceive an injustice, holler about it.

And finally, Tootsie has this look she gets on her face when she’s particularly proud of herself.  It’s okay to think you’re hot stuff, especially when you’re making a huge developmental leap.  So, high five, graduates; swagger on down that carpet.  You did it.  Congratulations.

What We See Is What We Have: Near Perfection

Let's begin with a goofy picture of Punk Rock Baby Tootsie.

Her hair and the shadows of the blanket beneath her head conspire to make it appear she has quite the mohawk.  In fact, she has a surprising amount of corn-silky-soft black hair in a pixie 'do.

Baby had a great night last night.  She had only one apneic episode; she tolerated her feeds well and appears ready for an increase in volume; she began sucking on a binky.

When swaddled and snuggled in for the night, she was so calm and expressive with her eyes (so very cute, our nurse told us), that the nurse beckoned others to come admire her, too.  We're totally biased, of course, but Tootsie is clearly building a dedicated fan club.

Last night's nurse let us know that she was requesting to be part of Tootsie's Team.  I'd forgotten that my sister (and mother of a preemie cousin who is now a healthy five years old) shared that our baby would have a core care team of nurses.  Because we know that she will be in the hospital for at least 21 days to run her courses of antibiotics, they're beginning to assemble Tootsie's Team.  She's taking letters of interest and applications and clearly showing off to win over the pool of qualified potential draftees.  Tootsie's Team and her room will be our home away from home, and we will all become familiar with one another as we collaborate on her care and the nurses train us to take over delicate aspects of protecting a preemie baby.

We were present for a consult and examination by the Occupational Therapist.  She checked reflexes and observed her movements and alertness.  We all noted her rooting behavior, one of the signs she is preparing herself to suckle a bottle or breast.  Her rooting and sucking makes her eligible for daily scoring on a feeding readiness scale, and we will get to present her with an empty breast soon for her to practice licking and tasting.  I'm very excited about this step and motivated to breastfeed, not only for the health and convenience benefits, but because it's a most awesome bonding experience for mother and baby.  I've cherished it each time, and am more determined than ever to breastfeed our last little one.  I'm pumping every three hours around the clock to stimulate my production and generate milk for her feeds.

This afternoon was our Family Meeting.  When I told my brother in the USVI that we had a Family Meeting planned for later in the week, he responded, "Hmmm.  So you and Husband and Tootsie will get together and talk things out...?"  Haha.

The Family Meeting comprised Husband and I, two of her nurses, the social worker, a hospital administrator, a neonatology intern and the neonatology fellow, who ran the meeting.

We expected to discuss growth and development goals, thresholds for stepping down to the Special Care Nursery, and plans for family accommodations after my discharge from the hospital tomorrow.

But the meeting began on a very serious note, with a review of the events around her infection and its severity, and how The Team would continue to address potential ramifications.

Honestly, once we'd gotten through Wednesday and marked two clear blood cultures and Tootsie's promising recovery, The Infection moved to a more distant and less significant part of my hard drive.  But the doctor dragged it right back onto the desktop, reviewing mortality rates and statistics related to defects and brain damage.  Tootsie would have another spinal tap, soon, the doctor reminded us, to rule out lingering bacteria in the meninges and fluid.  And close to the end of her 21-day courses of antibiotics, Tootsie will have an MRI so we could see effects on the brain of the infection, if any.  Statistics are around 50% likeliness that she will have some neurological effects (developmental delays, cerebral palsy, seizure disorder, among other possibilities). While we're fortunate that infection was expected and antibiotics started right away, she still grew cultures from her first lumbar puncture, and we don't know how long she was suffering from infection in utero.

We moved on to discuss her recent notable developments, alertness, and activity levels, and goals for her feeding.  Much more fun topics!  We closed the meeting by talking about my discharge and options for sleeping on the couch in Tootsie's room, temporarily occupying a family dorm room in the hospital, and making use of hospital-provided taxi vouchers to shuttle me to and from my sister's apartment while I am still healing from the c-section.  We toured the dorm rooms (not unlike the closet-bedrooms I slept in in college), and they showed us the microwave and fridge and stash of saltines and peanut butter and jelly packets for parental snacking under duress.

And then we went back to see Toots, who was bright-eyed and adorable as usual, enduring a diaper change and looking, really, quite normal.

It turns out it's hard to look into those eyes and worry.  She's a pretty reassuring bug.

In the conference room, the specter of having a child with neurological challenges felt scary, disappointing, mysterious.  But with our baby in front of us, progressing as a child her gestational age would and should, the fear is unsteady on its feet.  If this little girl, with a tight grip on our fingers and eyes that respond to our voices, has developmental problems, we will certainly learn about them and grow up with them together.  Right now, she's exactly what we signed up for--a baby (and she has already far exceeded our expectations).  No diagnosis or knowledge revealed by testing will change how she presents to us at this moment, and what we see:  a nearly perfect baby human (and a darned cute one at that!).  Of course, not all is as it initially seems sometimes--a mohawk might just be a halo, or a crown, or an illusion.  But the magic of parenting is how your children are immediately yours, no matter what.  Oh how I feel that today.

We're bound to find out lots of things along her way--quite possibly that she's disorganized, impulsive, maybe weepy under duress like her mother, or a little grumpy like her dad.  She may have a thing for numbers and not for spelling.  She could have two left feet.  She might sing off key.  Nevertheless, hers is exactly the model we've fallen in love with and are taking home, and we accept all her features and those which will reveal themselves to us as she gradually reveals herself to the world.

It's such an exciting prospect, that we're only on day four of this unfolding saga, the discovery of our new family member.  It's worthy of a daily celebration.

Cheers!

A Plug for Monsters University

The Cousins from the USVI are visiting and there's been days of nonstop fun and sleepovers and what we needed yesterday was to have them together, but more like Together, the Quiet Calm Version.  So we went to the movies. 

Monsters University didn't make crack me up as much as I expected, but there were some important plot points I appreciated (I'm overlooking the fact that few of the main characters were female and those few weren't well developed and fairly stereotypical) and which defied the usual "happy ending" pattern of the feel-good children's story/movie.

(Spoiler alert!)

The movie revolves around a competition our underdog Monsters team has to win to both maintain their college admissions and earn some elusive respect.  Along the way, there's emphasis on teamwork, on the value of hard work, and on seeing past first impressions and society's definition of cool.  But when cheating is employed as a strategy to clinch the title, and our protagonists endure the dire consequences, I kept expecting the powers that be to change their minds and restore our heroes' hopeful futures.  Because that's what happens--actually pretty often--in real life, in what's often justifiably characterized as a Second Chance.

But you know what?  There was no such reprieve for our main Monsters.  The end of the movie shows them dusting themselves off, heading off to the workforce they hoped to enter at the top of the heap, and working their way up the ladder incrementally from the mailroom to custodial staff to cafeteria servers...and finally, to the positions they always dreamed of.  There are hints that they've distinguished themselves along the way by putting their humble hearts, souls, and personalities into their work to reach their goals.

Accept due consequences.  Take accountability.  Don't dwell or pity yourself.  Don't give up.  Find another way; work hard; prove yourself.

I deem those rad messages for our youth (and maybe good reminders for all of us adults, too, when we're feeling entitled). 

The House We Left Behind: a Photo Essay

When we chose our first home, a 900-odd-square-foot bungalow, it was after viewing dozens of dwellings in our neighborhood known for its small historic craftsman and mission-style houses.  It was the flow of our house and its expansive yard that distinguished it from the others we viewed. 

I always knew it was the backyard that would deter us from moving (but also from expanding our house), and the yard that we would miss most. 

So I wasn't surprised, on one of our last afternoons in our bungalow, to find Big Sis weeping in our fairy-enchanted garden.

I'm going to miss the birds, she cried.  We won't have this backyard at the new house, and Amani can't roll around in the grass...

I hugged her.  Let's take pictures, I suggested.  Show me what you want to remember. 

There's the ornamental pear tree that was blighted when we bought the house.  We were advised to remove it, but we carefully and gradually trimmed it instead.  Ten years later, it finally bloomed white in season, like all its pear-tree friends down the block.  We hung swings and fairy houses from it, and nasturtium beds blossomed in its shade.

There's the garden Husband carefully tended, and the artichokes we harvested each summer and the compost bin that prompted volunteer pepper and tomato plants.  The raised bed is an upcycled wood frame from the fluorescent light box that dominated our small kitchen's ceiling. 

There's Big Sis's blackberries.  Not a prolific vine, but it blossomed and berried each year, and it's one of the plants she was saddest to leave behind. 

There's Husband's cactus and succulent section of the garden, where many of the plantings were cuttings from our dear friend Eric's amazing property. 

There's our prolific lemon tree, which grew too many lemons for us to use, and even for the girls to make into lemonade at the spur of the moment.  We'd pick them and line them up on the low wall between our and our neighbors' yard, where they could be plucked by our friends for their use.  Many a fairy concoction featured a lemon-juice base. 

 

 

There's the min-rose climbing vines we planted and let grow wild.  They were at their blooming best as we packed.  

When we built a fence along our new side patio seven years ago, we strategically planted two jasmine plants along it.  I loved waking and coming home to its warm perfume in early spring, and when we flung open the french doors the scent would permeate the house.  I vowed to plant some at our new home...

One of the joys of teaching children about plants and gardening is identifying edible varieties all around.  We had some naturally sprouting nasturtium in the yard when we bought our home, and we spread the seeds around the various beds over the years.  The girls were fond of grabbing flowers to munch on whenever they wandered outside. 

Our yard also had snowbushes, heavenly bamboo, agapanthus, bromeliad, a dwarf pomegranate, giant birds of paradise, silver-leafed Dusty Miller, sage, lavender, Mexican heather, and geraniums. 

As Big Sis directed my photography and Little Sis conducted a video tour of our garden, Amani the dog dug her last hole:

But we're growing accustomed to our new home and its flora.  There is abundant nasturtium in the canyon, bougainvillea we don't have to trim lining the canyon and our property, hydrangea about to burst, and jacarandas flanking the deck.  Our friend Eric, whose fig tree and succulents we willed to the new owner of our old home, came by my office with a surprise:  a blackberry bush harvested from cuttings on his own property. 

And the fairies are on call already (making me sigh with relief that we're in the process moving in mentally, now...):

 

Wrestling with Worries

Right before bed, Big Sis summoned me for a private conference.  "I've been worrying," she shared.  We hopped onto my bed together, as is our custom when she needs to talk. 

"I'm worried about bombs and poison gases, Mom.  I mean, what if something like what happened in Boston happens here?  How do you know it won't?  We're learning about the chemicals in water and I'm thinking about how our water could be poisoned, and I can't get it all out of my mind..."  Her anxieties issued from her in a gush. 

I don't know it won't happen here, sweetheart.  I can't promise you it won't.  But I can reassure you that kindnesses in our world are more likely than terrible things.  And while we live every day with the knowledge that accidents happen and sicknesses happen and pain is part of our experience, births also happen, and celebrations, and beauty and wonderfulness are all around us. 

A few more trips from her bedroom for reassurance followed, until we finally sent her back to bed with an assignment to think of a baby girl's name for each letter of the alphabet. 

We're all worried these days, aren't we, though we each feel it and wear it and express it in different ways?  Our daughter, prone to apprehensions and anxious wonderings, was bound to come to us with Boston-inspired concerns and questions.  She devoured a copy of The Hunger Games over spring break, a book I'd hoped she would wait to read, with its poisonous berries and...everything else.  Being displaced right now, between old house and new and on an extended vacation at Mammom's and Bampa's house, provides another source of instability.

I watch my own reactions to news and personal circumstances closely.  Pregnancy--even simply embarking on the journey of parenthood by attempting to conceive or adopt--means stepping onto a landscape of uncertainty and unknowns, new frontiers of hope and worry.  I mark the hurdles:  heartbeat on ultrasound, first trimester completed, negative screening results.  But there's no point of earned complacency in parenthood and life, only comfort in acknowledging the risks and joys associated with vulnerability. 

Disasters and tragedies aren't required to provoke our anxieties--all we need is a convenient temporal basket for our worries.  Moving, and a new house, have been ripe fodder for my over-active imagination at 3:00 AM.  I pictured the deck on our house as higher than it really is, the hillside steeper, with guests tumbling into the canyon in the event of a collapse.  Upstairs windows might be easy for children to fall from.  The canyon could be a nesting ground for rattlesnakes.  Would our house be easy to burglarize?

And then I remembered this week we'd momentarily forgotten to be afraid of North Korea.

So much randomness and unpredictability inspires the desire for us to exert controls on identifiable and accessible areas in our daily lives.  I could put locks on the windows, install an alarm system, forbid the kids from exploring the canyon.  But the worries would only reinvent themselves, seep through cracks in the door frames like poison gases.  There aren't enough sandbags to guard against uncertainty.  And somewhere along the bucket brigade we stop living how we truly want to, with chin up and eyes on the birds twittering on the fence, on the sunset, on the horizon.

So we hold hands, snuggle on the bed, reassure, and resolve.

We're working on managing our fears and anxieties over here.  How about you?  How have worries surfaced?  How do you balance caution with embracing wonder and vulnerability?

P.S.  a shout-out to Jewel, whose song "Hands" made it into the iPod shuffle on my jog this morning, with timely lyrics:

"If I could tell the world just one thing

It would be that we're all OK

And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful

And useless in times like these

I won't be made useless

I won't be idle with despair..."

February Was Morning Sickness Month

I found out I was pregnant after I'd already poured myself a glass of wine.

I'd spent a chilly Friday night supervising a high school soccer game and was looking forward to a glass of red and some time on the couch with my husband.  My period was due today, I recalled as I drove up the hill to our neighborhood, thinking that just to be safe, I could grab both a pregnancy test and wine at the drugstore.

So confident was I that I couldn't be pregnant, I poured myself a glass of Cabernet before I headed to the bathroom.

The wine, and my relatively simpler life, went down the drain that night, January 11.

Of course, I didn't feel immediately pregnant.  I felt, instead, alternately disbelieving, giddy, panicky, hopeful, selfish, unprepared, worried, old, young, wary, nervous, excited, embarrassed, irresponsible, defensive, strong, determined, gleeful and guilty: conflicted.

I was 41, soon to be 42.  I'd recently had a miscarriage.  Only a week earlier, I'd half-purged the house of baby and toddler gear, ready to accept that we wouldn't have a third.  Our house was small. Money wasn't growing on our big tree in the front yard.  Husband didn't see this coming, now.  No one would, I thought, though having another child was a not-so-secret long indulgent wish of mine.

The risks, all of them, and the potential of raising our little girls' hopes (one of whom had asked for a baby for her birthday) and having them ultimately dashed them made keeping this pregnancy secret paramount.

Meanwhile, I began feeling tired.  And then, hungry.  And then... blergggggghhhhhhhhaaaaggggghhhhhh.

Flu season had struck at school with a vengeance, so I fit right in, though I resisted curling up on the nurse's office cot and going home. I groaned through weeks of what felt like the flu and also like the world's longest hangover, bearing all the same characteristics, including internal wails of why oh why did I do this to myself?  I never threw up, at least outside my mouth.  But I entered many classrooms and meetings with an escape plan in mind.  I conjured images of pregnant women around the globe, sicker than I felt, plowing fields and chasing toddlers.  So I rallied.  

But I lacked oomph. 

And I could smell your breath, and your perfume, or lack thereof.  Also your socks.  

Nothing sounded good.  And then everything sounded tempting until I put in my mouth or smelled it. I ate to fill my stomach with a feeling other than nausea.  I craved sandwiches.  I craved sleep.  I spent most afternoons and evenings lying in bed, feeling like a terrible mother and wife.  The girls grew used to me doing little.  We read books together in bed, but I hardly wanted to play.  Husband patiently tolerated and tended to me, tempering his excitement and unspoken anxiety.  

I became a boring and absent and unavailable friend.  I really did want to meet you for that beer! But.  And I'm pretty sure I was in bed by 7:30 that night.

I felt duplicitous and sneaky as I engaged in conversations with others, including my sister-in-law, about their pregnancies.  "Nope, nothing new or big going on in my life," I fibbed to unsuspecting and remote friends and family members.  I kept Big and Little Sis in mind, figuring I'd ask for forgiveness and understanding later.  

But here we are now at 12 weeks, with some assurance that a healthy little bean is sprouting inside me.  And my growing belly (why yes, I have had a big lunch!  A foot-long sub, in fact!) is ready for its debut.  We have some very excited big sisters and new landscapes ahead. 

Yeehaw!

Happy Birthday, Bugaloo!

My little one is seven.  Seven!  Seven just doesn't sound so...little, anymore.  She's growing up, my baby.

What's gratifying about her, though, is how mature as she is, she maintains a childlike wonder and love of things playful, sweet, and simple.

"Play with me, Mama," she pleads, when she's not strapping dolls to her chest with scarves and walking them about the house in a stroller.  She pulls out board games, packs of cards, and puzzles.  She begs to accompany me on jogs around the neighborhood.  She loves biking and monkey bars and playground swings. 

Her big sister's closest companion (when they're not at loggerheads), she's known for her patience, kindness, and unflagging attention to younger children, doting on babies and toddlers.  She has a palpable maternal instinct; I imagine her teaching preschool someday.  She wants a baby for her birthday. 

She covets snuggles and begs for bedtime songs.  She leaves us heartfelt notes and drawings declaring her love, slipped in my iPad cover and taped to our bedroom furniture.  She's generous with toys and gifts, always saving one for her sister when she's not around. 

She's not easily hurt, but when wounded, it's deep and she expresses herself passionately.  She's blacks and whites, cheerful sunshine and periodic storms of stubborn stomping, tears, and yelling. 

Her father calls her "Little Miss Change Her Mind." 

No one can make her serious sister laugh like her Little Sis, goofy to the core.  Her silly expressions date back to toddlerhood, and she adds crazy voices and accents and dorky dance moves for entertainment and our occasional eye rolls. 

She makes our lives lighter and brighter, our little Harry Joe.  Welcome to seven, sweetheart!

 

Gag Me (with your salmon, Mom)

Our approach to expectations for daughters' dinner eating comprises two thresholds:  eat most and you can be excused from the table; eat all and you can have something to eat later (usually fruit, sometimes "dessert").  Our daughters have a choice, then:  If they're hungry enough for something later, they can probably pack away the extra bites now.  If they don't feel like finishing a meal they consider less than spectacular, they're done eating for the evening (and they won't starve before tomorrow, we remind them).  Most nights they eat dinner with little fuss, despite various misadventures of yesteryear (here and the ultimate, here).  Last night, not so much.

The girls love my mom's salmon, which she marinates in a vidalia onion dressing and prepares often. For a dinner party on Saturday night, I used her protocol for cooking salmon (encased in a foil packet and baked 20 minutes at 375 degrees) but used a soy-ginger glaze instead.  Daughters didn't dig it.

So I warned them last night that dinner would be leftover salmon, and endured their moans.  At the table, they ate rice and kale chips and poked at their fish.  We languished at dinner, finally drawing exit lines on their plates.  Big Sis drenched her salmon in peanut sauce and mixed it with rice.  Little Sis gagged on a bite, her eyes bugging out so it made us laugh at loud.  They remained relatively cheery despite the torture.  There were no tears, thankfully; the tears generally reserved for insidious onions (Little Sis) and egregious green peppers (Big Sis). 

"Tell them about the time you guys threw food out the window," I urged Husband.  He related the legendary tale of Sauerkraut Night, when he and his four siblings tried everything including pouring sugar on their cabbage to choke it down.  But a more sinister plot unfolded, and when Grandpa Bob left the room, someone led the charge to throw the sauerkraut out the window, where it lay on the ground beside the trashcans, exactly where Grandpa Bob found it the next morning, and...well, consequences.

I had a boyfriend whose mom outed him for surreptitiously hiding food in the drawers built into their dining room table.  It wasn't until a mysterious foul odor permeated the dining room that an investigation was launched and his grisly stash discovered. 

As for me, my most inocuous strategy was hiding food (mainly mushrooms, universally detested by me and my siblings) in my napkin, and then offering to clear the table so that I could safely discard the evidence.  I also didn't see the point of water chestnuts, a featured ingredient in my mother's stir fry, so one time when assisting her in putting away groceries, I took the opportunity to hide the can of water chestnuts waaaaaaaaaaaaay in the back of a cupboard less traveled by. 

I still find water chestnuts pointless and yucky.

Then there was the one time my mother was making me a sandwich, and I (rudely, she recalls) exhorted, "No sprouts on my sandwich!"  She responded by adding a clump.  I sulkily took my sandwich outside and tried ditching the sprouts, which our dog hopefully picked up and then, thinking better, deposited in the side yard, where my suspicious mom found them.  She helpfully rinsed them off and made me eat them.  I'm so polite about my sandwich orders now, and I like me some sprouts. 

But my favorite fable of family food follies (and foibles) features my little brother, who passionately hated black olives.  We were either having taco salad or enchilada casserole--something customarily including the pitted perpetrators--and he was served the family's traditional "no thank you" portion. He refused to eat those olives, and there was a subsequent standoff.  He couldn't leave the table unless he shoveled them down. 

"I'll throw up if I eat them," he threatened my parents. The sibling crew rolled eyes.  We'd tried that tactic before.

"Eat your olives," Dad answered.

We watched as he gagged down the black offenders.  And then, he vomited.  All over his plate and the table.  His siblings stared with wide eyes and dropped jaws and a new profound respect for the littlest bro.  Our parents were vanquished.  Brother: 1; Olives and Parents:  0.  It was a momentous event, never to be repeated. 

What's your best family food fight story?

The Kindness Jar

Something I'm working on, call it a New Year's resolution if you must, is being more careful with my language.  I don't mean cutting down on cussing, which is what I wish Pink would do, so I can play her CD in the car without raised eyebrows from the backseat while my finger hastily jabs the 'next track button' (On the other hand, I wouldn't want to be responsible for muting red-hot Pink down to a powdery rose).

What I'm paying more attention to is how what I say has the power to give and to take away.  To be generous and to diminish.  It can be a subtle distinction, with language.  So I'm watching the words I use.

I'm pretty sure it's part of the worldwide Rules on Resolutions that you are not supposed to give other people resolutions, but right about now I'd like nothing more than for my daughters to resolve to be kind and gentle with each other with their language.

Big Sis knows how to diminish the triumph of Little Sis's latest discovery or accomplishment with a "Well, that's easy," or "I've done that before...like a million times."  Little Sis, in turn, has perfected The Ignore, particularly when her sister is asking her a question, and employs mocking under duress.

I'm the referee who gnashes her teeth not only because solutions to their inter-sibling nastiness seem elusive, but it's become so routine that the strife is almost annoyingly boring.

I don't like it.  I try to "let them work it out," but have trouble standing by and not intervening when there's meanness.  We've taken away TV time, computer time, desserts, iPods.  We've instructed, pleaded, modeled, cajoled, hissed, demanded, and reminded.  To little avail.

When my own negativity about negativity threatens to suck us into a vortex of punishments and discontent, I usually find myself coming up for air and perspective.  Last Sunday, when I'd had it, I grabbed a glass jar formerly filled with holiday treats and plopped it on the counter. 

"This," I announced to the family, "is The Kindness Jar."  I pointed to a pen and some post-its.  "Your job is to notice and write down when someone has been kind to you.  It's not a contest to see who has the most slips of paper in the jar about their own kindness; I want to see how much kindness you observe around you.  We'll open it up in a week and celebrate some goodness."

The girls got busy in no time, looking for opportunities to scurry to the kitchen and scribble an anecdote.  While squabbling persisted to a certain extent, the girls paid extra attention to their interactions.  We had more harmonious evenings, and just knowing that family member over there might be writing about your act of benevolence encouraged more of the same.

Little Sis in particular was anxious to open the jar, but we made her wait a week.  On Sunday night, after celebrating Husband's birthday party with seafood and a trip to a restaurant of fancy desserts, we put on our jammies and opened the jar.  We each took and read a paper in turn. 

"Little Sis said I look nice"
"On a very cold night Big Sis gave Little Sis her jacket"
"Big Sis is tocking to me nicely"
"Little Sis was very encouraging when Big Sis was frustrated playing piano"
"My dad made me and my sister a reely good breftist"
"Little Sis shared her apple with me"

There was interest in counting who had committed the most kindnesses during the week.  But I reminded the girls that the goals were to both be kind and take note of kindness.  So we counted how many papers each daughter put in the jar.  They both wrote ten.  Perfect. 

Big Sis dashed off to write one more:  "I love my family," and we went to bed a little warmer and fuzzier. 

The debut of our Kindness Jar coincided with this week's national Great Kindness Challenge, in which the girls' elementary school participated, so they had the opportunity to spread their benevolent acts outward. 

Meanwhile, I lay in bed in last night listening to the girls mutually irritating one another and threatened to nix their screen time for tomorrow from down the hall.  *Sigh*

The Kindness Jar:  not a global solution, of course, but a reminder to focus on the positive.  We'll keep on trying.