Operation Poinsettia

Four years ago, in partnership with a beloved, family friend, our families launched Operation Poinsettia.

We began with one simple mission:   Gift people who bless us in relationship, love and/or service with a holiday poinsettia.

The joy of giving these plants over the years has transformed our hearts, families, relationships, holiday traditions and pictures of what is possible during this season of Love.  I’ve come to consider poinsettias symbols of fellowship.  In a field of red, they stand as ready ambassadors of cheer.  White petals connect us to the innocence of possibilities as pink ones splash a blush of whimsy.  Year after year, as we have placed these plants in the hands of beloved family, cherished friends, respected care providers, and strangers, we have seeded memories, shed tears and harvested treasured stories we celebrate.

Such tales have come to be known to us as Poinsettias Stories.  We call each other to swap vignettes.  Each eager conversation begins the same, “I got a story for you,” without a hello or how do you do, as one decants the precious report of an exchange to another.  This year, we established the guideline that these tales should not be swapped while driving, as more than once, our tears have made it difficult to see the road. We each have our own favorite accounts, of course, and retell them to each other year after year.  As Poinsettia Stories have grown, I’ve been encouraged to record some of them to share with others.  In fact, this was the first year that it occurred to us that Operation Poinsettia has become such a key part of how we prepare our hearts and homes for the holidays that it might be a tradition that extends to the next generation.  As such, we thought it might make sense to archive some of this team’s Poinsettia Stories, so that, maybe, one day our own children can share with their own Poinsettia Stories from their childhoods as they create new ones playing it forward together.

With that intention, I share with you one of my favorite Poinsettia Stories:

Operation Poinsettia, Year 1:  Food Lion, December 8, 2006, 10:38 p.m.:

The giddiness of the evenings adventures had waned in the truck.  Having spent the entire evening delivering plants, our four children, 5 months, 4 years, 6 years, and 8 years-old were well past tired. Though it had been a magical night of giving, even Harry Potter himself could not have enchanted a spell to enthuse the over-tired children nestled safely amid blankets with cookie-crumb mustaches in the SUV.

Our procedure had been the same throughout the evening.  In pairs, or all together, the children would take a plant and card up to a recipient’s door with a parent standing by at the end of the driveway or walk.  It was the first Christmas our children were old enough in heart or feet to fully participate in the joy of giving back to others.  They took to it like elves, eager to jump out of the truck, laughing and leaping up to the doors, monitoring who’s turn it was to ring a bell or carry a poinsettia.  The reception of their unexpected visits was universal.  Doors were swung wide, hugs swooped up our children into warm arms, cookies were passed, and, in many cases, prayers shared and tears shed to carve Thanksgiving anew.  Often those poinsettias were the first vestiges of holiday color to blaze hearths or bless homes.  It was a merry night.

The kids were well spent and past ready to get home as we passed Food Lion.  Over the course of the evening, we had given plants both to people we had known and loved for years, and to those we did not know.  We had one poinsettia left for that night’s service, a big, beautiful, white plant.  As we were were about to drive past the store, I remembered a bagging clerk who I had chatted with often over the year.  He was a big, giant of a man himself.  His consistent personality was a constant source of warmth to me.  Usually when in a grocery store, I was with no less than four children, and often as many as eleven.  This man greeted us time after time with big, kind eyes and a genuine smile.  His eyes always shone with Light, and I sensed his that he was grounded in a Truth larger than his formidable 6’3″, 325 pound frame.  I very much wanted to give this man the last poinsettia.

I called, “Just one last stop,” and the kids who were awake, and even The Husband, my most benevolent driver, answered in a chorus of, “Awwww!”  The Husband pointed out that we could not be certain that the man was even working that night which, of course, was true.  However, as The Husband so often does, he read my eyes with love and said, “One last stop!”

We agreed that given the hour, and the neighborhood, the store closest to our home is known by locals as, “The Sketchy Food Lion,” because it serves a diverse intersection of communities, we agreed that The Husband would drive up next to the storefront windows.  This way, the children could see as I walked in and gave the plant, and I could get in and out quickly if the clerk was not working.

I was happy to see him as I crossed the entrance poinsettia in hand.  The registers are close to the doors, and he looked up as I entered.  He looked and beamed his signature smile at me as crossed the store’s threshold.  There were several clerks at other registers and lines of people waiting to purchase their groceries.  True to his indomitable work ethic, he went back to task, bagging items and sharing a word of cheer with the guest he served.

“Excuse me,” I said as I approached his aisle.  The gentle giant looked down at me.

He lifted his head from the boxes of cereal he was about to bag and gazed at me with huge, brown, teacup eyes and said, “May I help you, Ma’am?”  After a beat, recognition amplified the welcome of his warm regard, “No kids tonight?” he added with concern.

“Sir,” I began unexpectedly choked with tears.  I cleared my throat and began again, “Sir, this is for you.”  I handed him the white poinsettia with the innocent hope of a child.

He arced his brow in surprise as a smile painted his face bright like Christmas tree lights.  When he reached down to accept the plant his huge and tender hands dwarfed, I said, “This is for you, Sir, because of the consistency of your heart and service.  Every time I have been in this store and you have been working, you have greeted me with a smile.  You have been kind to my children, and time after time, shared a good word or encouraging nod.  That is a rare and precious thing.  I appreciate your kindness and want you to know how much I recognize your service.”

He looked at me as tears slid down his sweet face and began to open his mouth in response.

Before he could utter a word, the entire store errutped in an ovation of applause and cheers.  Fellow workers called out, “That’s right!”  and “That’s John.”  The manager on duty came over to shake his hand, but clasped his shoulder instead.

This kind, giant of a man had begun to sob.  He choked out through a tear flooded face, “No one’s ever given me a flower before.”

“Merry Christmas, John,” I said.

His eyes shone as he looked down at me, cradling his plant like a newborn.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Thank you, John.” I replied as he walked away, bear arms encircling his white flowers, to take a quick breath.

People continued to clap as I left the store.

When I returned to the truck, tears were on The Husband’s face also.  All the kids were up, faces bright, eyes alight with the joy of what they had seen.

“Wow!” the boy exclaimed as his eyes met my own.

Wow.

The six of us knew with certainty in that moment, from the source of Love itself that has grown deeper over the years, that Operation Poinsettia is a call over our hearts and lives.

Quite simply, we rejoice and dwell in its possibilities.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah!

Email Etiquette Rules for Outraged Parents

A recent rash of semi-hysterical emails that Cc’d all the parents of The Middle Girl’s third grade class prompted my rehearsal of some common sense email etiquette tips for parents.

The trigger email of the series was penned by a well meaning, but emotional Mommy that wanted to understand why her son had become ill three times since October, and thought it might make grand sense if the other parents took their kiddos in for testing whether or not they were symptomatic.  The word “carrier” was used.  Naturally, this prompted enthusiastic responses from both sides of the sick bed.  Parents did not want their own child singled out because they had been ill, while others did not want their child to undergo unnecessary medical procedures.  Each exchange of the series was replied to all.

In all seriousness, before I begin my spoof of the day, Email Etiquette Rules for Outraged Parents, may I sincerely assert that time and research has proved two universal truths about email.  First, it is better to never, ever send an email to any one for any reason when angry.  A cool off period always aids reflection, and flame emails sent cannot be taken back.  There is NO DELETE KEY once that puppy has taken up residence in another account’s doghouse… and then you’re the one in the kennel.  Secondly, it is rarely helpful,  or even advisable to REPLY ALL.  In the vast majority of email communications, your response may be sufficiently rendered directly to the original or most recent sender.  Finally, nothing can understate the fact that EMAIL IS NOT PRIVATE!  Once you send an email, it can be forwarded and/or printed to any party without your knowledge, and certainly without your permission.

That is what happened in this case among The Middle Girl’s class parent community.  Nothing makes genuinely sane and loving people more situationally crazy than the righteous defense of their kids.  You mix the unconditional love of a Mamma Bear protecting her cub with partial information emotionally communicated to twenty other equally fallible parents similarly devoted to the own kids in the same classroom community, and it’s like Kryptonite.  Even Super Man gets the vapors in such a scene.  As a result, good people got mad and hurt.  Reputations were dented and egos were bruised.  It was messy, sad and avoidable.  REPLY ALL is a quick way to SUPER SIZE woe.

So again, I am going to kid soon.  What will follow in Email Etiquette Rules for Outraged Parents is PARODY.  I am sincere, however, when I testify email can be a communication tool that can bite back bigger bitter than a rabid badger.   You know that old woodworker adage, “Measure twice, cut once?”  I think email’s version is “Read twice, send once, and if angry, don’t send at all.”

On a lighter note, time to infuse some levity into this whole scene, so, as promised:

Email Etiquette Rules for Outraged Parents

1. Don’t send anything you don’t want Xeroxed 1000 times and stuck under every windshield of your child’s school parking lot.  (Faculty AND student.)

2. Avoid using REPLY ALL option.  Think about it, do you really want to scream in stereo?  Every email sent to school stakeholders adds or detracts from your family brand at that school.  You don’t want IRREGULAR as your family label!

3. Less is always more when you are angry.  Use as few words as possible.  Avoid profanity.  Profanity never translates in email and you can’t help your kids if you come across like a drunk that tossed too many at your first cousin’s open bar karaoke night .

4. Speaking of imbibing… don’t drink and email.  No good can come of it.  1-95 has signs warning against Intextication on billboards.  You cannot offer good tips to your kid’s school when tipsy.

5. Write in a clear and non-threatening manner.  You can’t help your kid if you’re in the local lockup or subject to a restraining order.  State your point briefly, clearly and as positively as possible.  See Rule #3.  Less is Always More.

6. Remember that emails may be forwarded without your knowledge or consent.  This is a literal as well as a figurative transfer.  Write email in such a way that the reader will not forward his response all over the head, psyche, grade or freedom of your kid.  If there is any possibility that what you wrote in your email can do more harm to your kid, don’t, for the love of .com, send it!

7. Don’t forward hoaxes.  If you don’t know or cannot prove the assertions of your text, do not transmit them to a stakeholder in your child’s school community.  It just makes you look a little hysterical and a lot ignorant.  Email is not talk radio, people, it’s not anonymously phoning in and getting it all off your chest time, it’s on the record and it has teeth that can bite back.

8. DON”T SHOUT.  In email, writing in all caps is considered shouting.  If you feel the need to hit the all caps key as you compose an email, this is like a Star Trek moment on the bridge, RED ALERT!  This is an email you probably should not send at all, and certainly not without a 12-24 hour cooling off period.

9. By all means, PHONE A FRIEND.  Get a tone check from a spouse or trusted friend.  Make it an accountability partnership.  Promise each other that you are going to act as one another’s SPAM filters.  Make a commitment to each other that you will honestly tell each other if your email makes you sound like a flaming ass.  That’s what friends do!  We tell each other when we’ve got lipstick on our teeth.  No one wants to look like an ass or have red delicious canines.

10. Cool off, cool down and walk away.  Flame emails usually hurt people.  Set a time limit you will honor for all emotional emails, 12 hours-one week.  Abraham Lincoln did this with letters.  He put letters aside in his desk drawer and rarely sent letters that communicated anger or criticism.  His legendary honesty was balanced by judgment.  Remember that it is difficult for people to be on your kid’s side if they are pissed at you as a parent.

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

reality therapy: broken yo-yo

If you missed me… thank you!  I have missed you and this space.

Last week I was at an intensive, immersion conference on Choice Theory, Reality Therapy, and Lead Management.  It had been quite awhile since I was in full participant/student mode and most days began and ended with my scalp vibrating like an electric toothbrush. The days were full, the sessions dense with content, the activities stretched me like taffy at the State Fair and the role plays were better than most movies as they portrayed relational dynamics so central to my core.  The nights were full of reading assignments, homework, and frantically trying to catch up and support what was happening at home.  Of course, The Husband travelled the same week, and the coverage of the children and their many events looked like an Amish Quilt… so many hands and favors were stitched together to pull it off.

I am grateful on every level.  Thanksgiving has come early to this weary heart of mine and I sing Hallelujah with a resonate sincerity that I have missed from my voice.  I am grateful for the many relationships in my life and the people who came forward to pitch in and help me attend the conference.  I am grateful to my kids who juggled in a way we rarely ask of them, and managed to keep their cards moving with both parents gone from the routine and home.  I am grateful to have been able to plug into such an oasis of vital content and adaptable strategies that I could put to immediate use to improve my pictures of quality and bring value to others.  I am grateful to be reminded how much I love study… I love everything about it.  I love the reading, I adore taking notes, I delight in sketching and bringing order to the new information as I integrate it into what I already have discovered, I love the discussions, I love the role plays, I love the questions, I love the challenge, I love the ping of epiphany.  The whole process for me is like an ice cream buffet.  Delicious!

I challenged myself to remain in the moment of each study encounter and press it for all the juice it could pour into my thirsty heart. The activity that prompted some push back from me was a sensory one.  I felt some resistance to the process, and hadn’t needed to create from external prompts in years.

We were instructed to pair off and go for a walk outside.  We were instructed to refrain from any speaking and to attend to our sensory perceptions.  We were asked to identify the sights, sounds, smells, textures and even the taste of the experience.

I was a bit rigid at first.  I walked with a soulful guy whose hair is even longer than mine and felt uncertain about the encounter.  However, it was a vibrant autumnal day, and the breeze kissed with just enough chill to keep me alert to possibilities.  Before long, I fingered rocks and twigs like rosary beads, blew dandelion puffs, and smelled vines.

When we got back to the conference room, we were asked to refrain from speaking and to write down our perceptions.  We were asked to title the piece with the central discovery object of our observation.

Here’s my entry:

broken yo-yo

gather gleaner
and beware the jabberwocky
a brisk chill licks
our faces with harvest breeze
leaves float
in fandango whimsy
oranges polka
brown waltz
yellow yammers across
the azure sky like a seductive tango
the plan above paints
its horizontal cloud
as gossamer as a question mark
where are you going to?
musky leaves
hide moist, bitter onions
that bite the air
like the broken, black stones
of four square
reedy weeds leverage cracks
to unpave blacktop
and target greens
huff and puff huff

The exercise continued as we shared our perceptions and discussed how differently as partners we filtered the same walk experiences.

It was fascinating and ever applicable to how differently people in the same house or community can experience the same encounter differently.

The lesson was especially timely for my family.

And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

What is the right age

to talk to my daughter about rape?

This visceral question posed by a sincere, blogging mother in, “What is the Right Age To Talk to My Daughter About Rape?” blocks an airway quicker and more completely than a too hastily chewed chunk of steak.  Her most accurate, chilling and speak-for-themselves-statistics about violence against young girls furthers the gasping need for an emotional Heimlich maneuver.

This gestalt of revulsion, however sincere, is not enough to protect our daughters unless we leverage the valuable information Lisen provides and communicate with our daughters.

I have three daughters, 10, 8 and 5.  Would I prefer to chat with them about Because of Winn Dixie, or plot delicious excuses to creatively infuse a recipe with Scharffen Berger Bittersweet Baking Chunks than discuss rape?  Absolutely.  Nothing hard about that math.

However, I’d rather prompt some uncomfortable conversations than hold any one of their hands in an Emergency Room as a physician completes a rape kit.

And that’s what it boils down to… the deferral of denial… that this tragic offense can happen to me or mine. It’s the real life version of the willing suspension of disbelief in reverse.  Instead of the maintenance of the happily ever after story line, we must acknowledge that rape isn’t something that only happens to other women or other people’s children.

It’s what a Mamma must be willing to acknowledge if she wants to protect her kids.

In most families, I expect it wouldn’t be starting a discussion from whole cloth either.  Parents have been teaching their kids about Stranger Danger for generations now.  I can’t be the only Mamma that’s been asked what might bad strangers do.  However vague the language, most of us have already seeded the idea that there are people out there that might want to do children harm.  This assertion is reinforced by our pediatrician.  Every time she does an annual exam on one of the kids, when the time comes to check his/her “private place,” she will state, “You know that no one should touch you here except Mom or Dad or a doctor.”

After every physical for years,  I add to the doctor’s statement, “You know that no one should touch you there except Mamma or Papa, or a doctor with Mamma or Papa’s permission.”

I have already begun to talk to my son and daughters about rape.  We need to talk to our boys too as the sad reality is, they can also be victimized.  In our family, we talk about how they are in charge of their bodies. We teach them that they own the permission of who can and cannot touch them, hug them, or offer them physical attention. Recently, one of my daughters expressed discomfort about an extended family member hugging her when she didn’t want to be hugged and holding her hand when she wanted to let go.  We discussed as a family that this was good practice for us all to consider how to tell a person verbally and nonverbally that we don’t want to be touched. As a shockingly high incidence of rape occurs by an assailant known or related to the victim, this kind of preparation is fundamental.

What is the right age to talk to our children about rape?  I think we begin to indirectly talk to them about rape, the threat of rape and abduction as early as preschool. For that age group, it is age appropriate to employ other language like Stranger Danger and personal safety.  Shocking as it is to assert, however, I believe that children should learn about the threat of date rape and rape before Middle School.

That said, I also assert children should be educated in STDs, birth control, drugs and tobacco, and the warning signs of suicide before Middle School.  I expect this list to outrage some… and I accept that.  However, children can’t make informed personal decisions without information to balance and make them critical of their feeling.  Middle School is a completely inward, ego centric, identity defining time in an individual’s architecture.  Without a map to help create context to their roller coaster reactions, tweens and teens can make big mistakes.  Worse yet, the mistakes they make can promote them relationally, sexually, or legally into adult situations that they do not have the life skills, maturity or experience base to bear.

We need to fortify our children with appropriate, timely, factual information so that they don’t get ensnared in the shadows and dragged away.

We also need to pray a fortification of protection and wisdom around their precious hearts, bodies, minds and relationships.

Speak the truth, row, pray.  Pray, row, speak the truth…

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Latent Adolescence

Like my recent bout with vertigo, my son’s full immersion into the transformation of adolescence has spun the balance of many family dynamics.

The Husband and I sprint to shift our parenting to meet the needs of this new kind of man-child. The Boy calls for respect and space as we maintain new parental roles that are more like consultants than coaches. His experiences are profound, uneven and difficult for us to fully understand. As such, we try to listen more and speak less. Last night, however, he returned home clearly disheartened. He shared his perceptions about some of the experiences that he had encountered during his day and felt discouraged in his evaluation of his progress.

As an outside observer, I of course perceived many of the situations much more positively, and from a different and pro-The Boy perspective. I challenged him to consider that the thoughts he chose to dwell upon were like fireflies in a net. I suggested to him that with practice, he could light up his thoughts and dwell upon other things. For example, instead of the identification of the social interactions or moments of the day that made him feel uncomfortable, he could consider those things from his day that he felt good about, was pleased by or had done well. I told him that I knew it was not as simple as that, but that I believed with practice he could dwell on possibilities.

He is a kind lad, and didn’t tell me what he thought of the idea. However clumsy my attempts to make him feel better, he still trusts that I am trying to help. He offered a hug and shuffled off to bed.

After the day that I have had, I imagine that had he told me what he thought, he would have said it was a load of human fertilizer.

I am one of the “grown-ups” who live in my house, and I had a day that was uneven and profoundly difficult for me to understand. As if the vertigo flipped my insecurity switch to high, every time I left our home I felt like a giant and idiotic loser. In an almost paranoid fashion, I stressed out that people were unhappy with me, didn’t want to associate with me, and/or thought I was crazy. I felt small and unimportant. I felt useless and alone. I began to build a case about how I am not as good as other moms and how every other woman who has ever crowned a head does it better and with more joy and less stretch marks than I muster. As I began to convince myself that I was less than those around me, my self-loathing escaped like a ravenous beast too long starved by self-control. It wanted to eat! It wanted to chew my confidence! It wanted to drink my hope like warm blood.

I had to quiet the beast. I had to assure it that everything was okay. I had to promise that I no longer needed its brutal protection. I struggled with my own thoughts to make it stand-down.

“Stand down,” I told it, “it’s my watch now.”

All the while its insidious rant echoed in my own head like a grenade, I thought about the casual challenge I so piously tossed to The Boy last night. “Capture other thoughts,” I told him. “Dwell on other things.” “If you don’t like the song, change the station.”

I spent the better part of my afternoon and evening trying myself to capture other thoughts, dwell on other things, and change my own damn song! Supposedly I know how to do it, and have a good work history. I confess, even as I type, about the best I have mustered is that I know that I can create a shift in my focus. I haven’t entirely turned the corner on how I’m telling myself the story of my day.

There’s a line from an old hymn that sings, “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble.”

I tremble for The Boy tonight. Not in fear, I shake in epiphany. If the best that I can metacognitvely achieve in a long afternoon is to identify that I need to shift my attitude (without success), how daunting must it be to The Boy to be flooded by the tsunami Adolescence? How feeble must it seem to him to be counseled about changing his tape?

Man! I not only remember how much it sometimes hurt to be a teen, I experienced full-blown, latent adolescence today.

I need to dwell on how real and large not only his experience is, but his inexperience in dealing with such new thoughts, hormones and uncertainties.

My success today amid my cluttered, internal dialog was that it did not come out of my mouth or show in my behaviors (I hope…!). My neurotic station sings upon the stage of my own choppy mind.

I pray that the next time The Boy’s song hits the air, or manifests through his behavior, that I will be more genuinely sympathetic.

I pray the next time we share that kind of space that I will be able to better honor his experience as he so valorously does the noble work of building up the kind of man he will become.

It’s his watch now.

And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Quiet Rage, part iv

The iconic Hallelujah breaker of violence against women is considered in another woman.
Michelle’s story remains incomplete.
I continue to dwell upon her Hallelujah vacuum that risks entropy.
Thus, a fourth window into Michelle’s life.
( For the first pieces of the story, see: Quiet Rage, part i , Quiet Rage, part ii, and Quiet Rage, part iii)

And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

_quiet rage, part iv_

Michelle was no stranger to feeling flat. She’d spent the better part of her adolescence leveled and two-dimensional on the 4-D stage of dysfunction that played out in her parents’ divorces and remarriages. It wasn’t the first time she collapsed onto herself.

She remembered well the first time. It happened on the day after her thirteenth birthday.

“Given this most recent cluster fuck occurred on my birthday,” she mused somewhat bitterly as she stiffly shifted her covers, “I gotta wonder if my birthdays are cursed.”

You didn’t need to be a lawyer to prove that she’d been the second accident of parents married too young. Their ore hasty marriage in a rural, Catholic church barely kept her brother from being born a bastard, but, like an heir apparent prince, he was one entitled son-of-a-bitch.

Michelle actually deeply respected her only brother, Eli. They were as different from each other in affect and space as the sunrise and the sunset. She often thought that the fourteen months that separated them were much like the number of hours between the changing of guard of the sun to the moon. Only son, Eli was easy going and warm. Michelle had always admired his easy laid-back nature, such a contrast to her own vibrant intensity. More water repellent than a duck on a pond, she wondered how her life could have been different if she were more like her brother. Her parents had posed this question to her so often since her 13th birthday that it was as reflexive of her to ask it of herself as was the mole that perched high on her left cheek bone like a sparrow was an aspect of how the mirror reflected the portrait of her face.

It all had happened yesterday, a mere blink, a pathetic, staggering breath ago that Michelle was barely thirteen, just a day plus twelve. Since then, even then, she’d always maintained in retrospect, that she should have known something was awry. Michelle never got what she asked for as birthday gifts. True, she opened approximations, clearance substitutions, and filler crap she could have cared less about, but this was the first time that she not only opened gifts that were exactly what she wanted, but received everything that she had asked for that year.

Like the harbinger it was, the next day seared upon her heart to never, ever hope to enjoy too much for herself. She was not worth it, and if she got it, Michelle certainly knew by now, it would never last.

Stood Up!

I took The Boy on a date today.

The Husband and I decided we wanted to interject more whimsy into our family routine.  Our calendar has many blocked and iterative events dictated by outside organizations like school hours, assigned homework, sports practices, lessons, games and tournaments, music lessons and performances, as well as church and community events.  Though we are in almost constant motion, we realized there’s sometimes more march than joy in our steps.

Our parental plan was a simple one.  When they were least expectant, we would bombard them with the unexpected.

As such, this morning, I enjoyed an iBed breakfast while The Husband took a sleepy-eyed crew to Spudnuts.  For the uninitiated, Spudnut donuts are made with potato flour.  A moist, sweet delight, they blissfully surrender a happy, glazed melt down the eager throat of each blitzed-out consumer.  Spudnut donuts are more than donuts, they are holy confections with a sense of history in our small town.  The Husband took happy kids to school who were thrilled to further anticipate an early dismissal at noon.

Unbeknownst to The Boy, I had made arrangements for all the other children to be playdate engaged so that I could surprise him with a lunch invitation.  To his credit, he was more than amiable, even before he learned Five Guys and a trip to Barnes & Noble were on the itinerary.

Lunch was pleasant.  Nothing lubricates adolescent conversation like hot grease and ketchup.  Conversation was easy and blessedly without an agenda.  The Boys shocks me these days as he has so experienced such dramatic physical changes in the past couple of months.   Even his face has taken on the angles of a man’s chisel, complete with <gasp> a discernable mustache.  However, as he greedily slurped his root beer, I could almost see the little boy I remembered hiding just behind his red straw.  It was fun.

Tight tummied, we made the short drive to Barnes & Noble.  In a gesture I mistook for chivalry, The Boy preceeded me to the door excitedly telling me, “Look!” as he opened the door for us.  He opened the door and stepped in so quickly that the door literally closed in my face.  What I mistook as excitement over a book display or café novely was actually his joy to find one of his best buds in the store.  As it happened, his buddy was there alone waiting for his mother, and really appreciated the company.

Again, to The Boy’s credit, he apologized to me before he ditched me cold for his friend.  He said, “I know we are on a date, and I didn’t think it would end this way, but, well, we can finish our date later and…. I gotta go!”

I assured The Boy that I understood and went to the café to sketch a couple of ideas I had from the night before.  When it was time for me to go, The Boy’s friend was still solo, so I allowed my son to stay so that his friend would have a buddy.  The Boy used his Barnes & Noble gift card to buy his friend a drink (that he had promised to treat me with) at the café.  I don’t know he could have looked more pleased with himself if he had used a Visa to buy concert tickets.

When I returned for him, his friend’s mom was there to pick up her son.  A spontaneous overnight invitation was extended to The Boy, “We’d love to have him,” the mom agreed,  grateful that her son had company while he waited for her return.

Once again, The Boy pulled me aside to apologize our date had been interrupted, but he really, really wanted to go.

Sometimes math is really simple.  I had one really thrilled boy who was happy with the outcome of a date with his mamma.  He enjoyed the food, the perks and an unexpected surprise ending.  His joy was sincere and contagious and equaled a successful maternal mission.

I got stood up in the middle, but it was one of the best dates of my entire life.

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah!

Parent Advocate

Please.

Please, please.

Please, God.

Oh, God!  Please!

(Read Maternal Coat to find out why I’m praying.)

I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

The efficacy of this treatment plan would soon be tested, as the results of The Oldest Girl’s heart cath were not good.  When the cardiologist returned to our room, he confirmed that she did have coarctation of the aorta, and that surgery would be required.  He explained that her blockage was so severe that the red blood cells were literally lining up one at a time to pass through it.  Because of the severity of her condition, he told us that emergency surgery would have to be performed that night.  Even though the events of the preceding days had prepared me for this eventuality, the impact of his announcement hit me like a hard punch in the solar plexus.  It took me to the mat and simultaneously stripped me of my title as The Oldest Girl’s primary care giver as swiftly as it demoted me to a helpless bystander.  There was nothing I could do for her.  I could not protect her from this, I could not take her place, and I couldn’t even stand by her side as she went through it.  The resident who consented us for her surgery was painfully clear, anything could happen and there were no guarantees.  The walk with The Oldest Girl down to the OR was the longest mile I have ever traveled.  At its end, I had to pass The Oldest Girl off like a baton to a stranger in surgical scrubs.

I don’t remember a lot about what I did while we waited.  I know I prayed, paced, yelled at my husband at least once, and frantically cleaned the room we had to depart in our transfer to Pediatric Intensive Care.  Each moment that passed further eroded my calm like acid rain.  My breasts ached and leaked, spilling their tears of grief for our absent girl.

Tears of relief were the next shed when The Oldest Girl’s cardiologist returned to our room to inform us that her surgery was a success and that she had come through it strong.  The next fragile 24 hours would determine if her victory remained unchallenged by complications.  The Oldest Girl never looked more frail or beautiful to me than she did when I was finally reunited with her in PICU.  She looked as vulnerable as a sparrow lost in the rain.  Tubes instead of raindrops fell from almost every part of her.  Her full head of dark brown hair was her only unmolested spot.  It had been freshly washed.  I could still smell the sweet scent of the Baby Phisoderm.  I gratefully drank in that healthy, familiar smell as I stroked her clean hair, and kissed her with my mama’s voice to assure her I was by her side once more.

I have joyfully remained at that same post since that day.  The most bitter of cups has passed; The Oldest Girl has recovered.  Hallelujah!  The experience stripped me of my rank as well as the regulation maternal coat issued to each mother after delivery of the placenta.  I am a civilian lost in a world without order.  Children die of cancer in this land. McDonalds playlands become killing fields and my daughter may need additional surgical intervention if her repair does not grow with her.  I have to learn how to accept these atrocities and still get myself and my family out of bed each morning.  I have to gracefully balance this reality with the Cheerios, apple juice, Gogurt and graham crackers that I serve them every day.  It’s my job.  I am The Mama and I have work to do.

Mama is my elegant and simple title.  What I did not learn during two natural childbirths where I crowned two perfect heads and delivered two babies of rainbow-dimming beauty, I learned through my daughter’s experience at a teaching hospital.  It was her salvation and my watershed.  No matter how much of a little girl I still sometimes feel, I am a mother now.  I imagine every mother must have her own moment of maternal epiphany when she realizes in startling Technicolor how her life has been transformed by becoming a mother.  For some moms it’s the first time their child raises her arms to initiate a hug.  For others, it’s when she screams, “Push higher, Mommy!” from a swing at the park.  A fortunate few experience it from the first moment their newborn paints their stomachs with birth gunk.  For me, it was when I dismissed a doctor from my daughter’s hospital room.  That order was not issued from my evil twin as I first had suspected.  She was not my doppelganger; she was The Mama in me, my best self.

That was the moment I learned that no matter how many other people were in the room trying to help The Oldest Girl, I was her mother.  I learned that parental advocacy is essential in a teaching hospital whose dual purpose is to treat and to educate.  This is not a Dateline exclusive report.  The Oldest Girl’s hospitalization was a success.  We are the fortunate beneficiaries of doctors of exceptional skill and dedication.  The very doctors that saved her received their training in teaching hospitals similar to the one in which she was admitted.  Her rescue and recovery endorse the merit of that training.  I am grateful for it.  I am also aware, however, that its momentum was more than I was comfortable with at times.  Clinically speaking, The Oldest Girl’s case had a positive outcome, but there were glitches.  At least two of these were significant enough to have had serious implications.  In both of these instances, I would not have known to intervene had I not actively followed her care.  I learned that important information is contained in a child’s medical chart that may not be directly shared with parents.  Parents should know they have the choice to read it.  I learned that attendings are not necessarily the ones who perform treatment procedures, including surgery.  Interns and residents are trained how to perform them on patients under the supervision of attendings unless otherwise restricted by a patient or family.  Parents need to decide if they are willing to have someone practice on their children.  I was not.  I learned that a family medical treatment plan is necessary to insure a family’s wishes are honored in the event the family member cannot be present.  Parents can contact hospital patient representatives to get information about how to create such plans for their children.  I learned that a serious hospitalization of a small child is a stress without a comparable metaphor.  Everything about the experience robs parents of control.  It also thrusts them into a strange culture without a map.  I learned that there are advocacy steps a parent can take to mitigate some of the daily pressures of the teaching hospital world and help to guide their journey.  Experience taught me that taking them was not only worth the risk, but rich with reward.  I actively helped The Oldest Girl recover.  I’m The Mama who brought our “Ladybug” home.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah!

For-Real Parent-Teacher Conference Guidelines

It is Parent-Teacher conference season, that time of year that professional educators and the parents of their students come together to celebrate accomplishments, identify goals and articulate plans.  There is so much positive spin on the intent of these sit-downs that it could have its own press cycle.

Naturally, we all hope for the best during these meetings.   Parents go in with their edited questions neatly written on legal pads, or filed on desk tops.  The teachers enter with their grade books, course hand-outs and classroom calendars.  No one’s looking for a fight, but due diligence has been done, and done well, by all stake holders.  Game on, baby…

The scope and sequence of conferences change as a student progresses deeper into his/her academic career.   Naturally, the tone and content of a meeting about a kindergartener is different from that of a seventh grade, super hormonal, adolescent.  In the former, happy tears are often shed among the educational team.  In the later, however, wails of lament, shame and/or accusation often divide the stakeholders.

As such,  and until Valium is in the public water supply, the following guidelines might help educational teams as they prepare for this season’s round of Parent-Teacher conferences:

Before the conference:

• Schedule conferences so that another adult can attend with you.  A spouse, best friend, mentor or grandparent will hear and remember different pieces of information than you might not register.  Additionally, having a witness to confront or restrain you often assures you will not do or say anything too painfully stupid, embarrassing, or intense.

• Pack a sense of humor.  You’ll need one.

• Before meeting with the teacher, please review with the person who will attend the meeting with you all the times your child has been grounded, lost technology privileges or sentenced to family-community-service since the last marking period.  Remember that what happened in your home may well be different than what your child asserts at school.  It’s not paranoid if someone has really told his/her teachers you’re clinically bi-polar.

• Assess what you think your child’s grade should be at the time of the conference based on papers and assignments that you’ve actually seen.  Understand this may well be off the mark.  Expect omissions, backpack consumption, lost articles, and forgotten items.

• Consider the questions you will ask during the conference prior to going to the meeting.  Connect with your child to determine if there are any confessions s/he wishes to make before the meeting.  Offer a two-for-one deal on all infractions done by your child at the school s/he has not yet vetted with you in hopes you won’t enter the meeting totally clueless.

• Be ready to probe how the teacher’s classroom makes space for your child to demonstrate his strengths.  Assess if there are vending machines, video games and cell phone chargers easily assessable to his/her workspace.

• Investigate if your child has difficulty in certain subjects, for example, selective listening, hygiene, workspace organization, mood swings and communication with adults.

• Distinguish between the conference and the confessional.  Offer no life stories, personal narratives, nostalgic memoirs, tearful pleas, or begging for mercy.

• Be certain to ask about the thing your kid cares about most.  How are his/her friendships going?  Is he getting along with teachers?  How are his relationships?

On conference day

• Show up on time.

• Shut up and listen.  You talk enough at home.

• No crying.

• Ask teacher what s/he wants you to do differently at home.

• Shut up and listen.  You talk enough at home.

• Work cooperatively to put a plan in place if one is required.

• Shut up and listen.  You talk enough at home.

• Schedule follow-up conference if necessary.

• No crying.

• Leave on time.

After the conference

• Celebrate positive comments and insights from teacher with your child.

• If you made a plan with the teacher, introduce it positively to your kid and implement it right away.

• Let your kid know that you wish to work with him/her and his/her school so that s/he can do his best work.

• Update teacher on progress you see at home.

• Write a note or email of thanks to the teacher for his/her time.

It is painfully difficult for parents not to take their children personally.  This makes Parent-Teacher conferences rife with possibilities for conflict.  However, if you live with an adolescent, you really must safeguard your conflict energy for use at home.  All kidding aside, the conference might be the place you are reaffirmed in the conviction that you are not crazy, and your kid is actually, pimples and hormones aside, a really great, growing, thriving, individuating individual.

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Kindergarten Genisis

I was grateful to hear a message about beginning well from Genisis.  The celebrant gave an example from his family, his son went to Kindergarten and won the Student of the Week Award.  This pastor said there is something inherent in us that celebrates beginnings, and beginning well.

As such, I have thought much about Genesis this week, and beginning well.

Naturally, I was delighted  to receive the following email from my kindergartner’s teacher:  “Thought you’d enjoy knowing that Ms. Head of School read [The Baby’s] poem/scarecrow project today over the intercom during morning time.  It was adorable and [The Baby] just beamed with pride!!  She brings me such JOY!!!”

I know you must read it now, so here is her song:

I could while away the homework,
Conferring with my mamma,
Consulting with [Ms Teacher].
And my head I’d be scratchin’
While my thoughts were busy hatchin’
If I only had [School Name] brain.

I’d unravel every riddle
For any boy or girl
In trouble or in pain
With the thoughts I’d be thinkin’
I could be anothet [Head Master’s Last Name]
If I only had a [School Name] brain.

Oh I could tell you why
The Big Room’s lots of fun,
I could think of things I’d never thunk before
And then I’d sit, and read some more.

I would not be just a nothin’
My head all full of stuffin’
My heart all full of pain
I would love and be Christian
Life would be my living mission
If I only had a [School Name] brain.

The Baby

Fractured from, “If I Only had a Brain,” The Wizard of Oz, Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg

We love to begin well!  The Baby did…

And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!