THE SUMMER OF '03

I saw him for the first time in a long time the other day. He stopped by for a few minutes. We laughed and joked and just for a moment it felt like old times. But it didn't last long. I could tell he was thinking of her; the latest in his succession of women; I even know her name--it's Martha, a good friend who lives in the neighborhood. He always has them lined up like that --one right after another. Sometimes he even juggles two or three at a time. He's very organized that way plus he has Oscar and Alberto to help him with the heavy lifting.

I'm talking about my contractor of course, what did you think I meant!

Yes, my contractor, Michael. He stopped by to look at a leak in my bathroom ceiling. He's the guy who added on two baths, a sunroom and an expanded kitchen for us in the summer of '03. We saw each other every day back then, that golden summer, huddled over grout samples, discussing the placement of outlets and waste water pipes. Those were heady days.


I remember running into my friend Carrie in the grocery store during that time. "How's the construction going?" she asked me.

"Great!" I said, "I love my contractor."

"Oh that's good," she said, "That makes such a difference."

"No, I mean, I LOVE my contractor."

She nodded knowingly. "That's very common. Like falling for your shrink or your doctor. They're the perfect man. They do anything you tell them to."

"I know!" I said, relieved that I was not the only one. "And he knows what I want."

"Totally!" she said.

Oh yes my friend, Michael knows what a woman wants. He should--he's been pleasing them for years. He knows we want lockers for the kids' stuff, double-hung closets, and a counter to fold our laundry. Those are just the little things he remembers. He knows about the big stuff too like making sure the workers are there on time every day and having them clean up after themselves.


Yes, we spent a glorious summer together as he knocked out walls and built my dream house. And then one day when an autumn wind blew through, and the counters finally arrived, he finished installing the garbage disposal, hooked his thumbs in his tool belt, cocked his head and declared the job to be done. And he walked out of my life for good. (Except for last year when he came and redid the basement.)

It was good to see him the other day but I could tell his mind wasn't on my leaky ceiling. No, it was on Martha's drywalling that was going up that day. I could see that. It's okay. I know, that's just how it goes. Right now it's all about Martha and that's how it should be.

I saw Martha at a neighborhood party Saturday. I couldn't help but ask her how it was going.

"It's great. It's like having a second husband!" she enthused. "When he comes in every morning I call out, 'Hi honey!'"

Damn her! I never thought to call him honey. Maybe if I did he'd still be here, fixing that leak in my ceiling. Adding shelves to the laundry room. Re-doing the old bathroom that's causing the leak.

My only consolation is that this won't last. No, my dear Martha, when the counters go in and the garbage disposal is all hooked up he'll do the same to you that he did to me. He'll move on. Who knows where. Maybe an addition in Highland Park. Could be a teardown in Arlington Heights. But make no mistake, a man like Michael is always looking for the next job, moving forward, moving on. And then you'll be just like me and the rest of the women he's left behind--just another former client.

But take heart, you'll always have the summer of '09 --and that fabulous double-hung walk-in closet. No one can take that away from you.

CASSEROLES CURE CANCER

The first lasagna came the first night I got home from the hospital. Jeff and I were switching off between the hospital with Lilly and being home with the other two kids and it was my night home. The doorbell rang and it was my neighbor Bill. He looked ashen and held a lasagna in his hands. "I'm sorry to bother you but Marjorie and I wanted you to have this. You can freeze it if you need to." Behind him I could see my next door neighbor Sue looking disapproving. It was her job to keep the crowds away and manage the meals. Bill had slipped by her and she wasn't happy about it. I smiled and waved her off.

Under Sue's expert management, the meals came twice a week. There would have been more if we had wanted between the nursery school, the elementary school, and our church we were inundated. At one point, I ran into a friend in the grocery store. "I tried to get on your meal list but it's easier to sign up for the Titan swim classes," she said, referring to a popular class that you have to camp out for to get your kid into.

The truth is I had plenty of time to cook. We only went to the hospital for chemo once a week and the rest of the week looked (though it did not feel) fairly normal. I kidded Jean the social worker at Children's Memorial. "It's like people think casseroles can cure cancer,"

She laughed and then said, "People want to help. Let them." And so I did.

And it was good. These women, having made countless meals for each other as each child was born were expert at putting together a fabulous, nutritious, kid-friendly meal with a bottle of wine thrown in for mom and dad. But it was more than that, much more than that. Their meals were prayers in action; a ritualistic offering; quite simply they were love you could eat.

I've been remembering those days lately because I've been called on to make a few meals for church members. Young and old, facing illness and too much time in a hospital. I am so very grateful for the chance to make these meals. To give back just a little to the universe that fed us so well seven years ago. To deliver a prayer in a casserole dish.

I always said that science cured Lilly and prayer got us through it.

And the casseroles certainly helped.

PURE MICHIGAN

Stuffed raccoons for sale in an ice cream store

in a place called Michigan. Pure Michigan.

There are still places that can slow the world down just long enough for us to catch our breath. Reconnect with what really matters at one of over 11,000 crystal clear Michigan lakes, thousands of rivers and streams, and more freshwater coastline than any other state in the country. Find out what pure feels like on your Michigan vacation.

Have you heard these radio advertisements extolling the virtues of my home-state, Michigan? Here in Chicago we are bombarded by them. The narrarator sounds like George Clooney and he describes a near-Nirvana that you can find in Michigan. Sometimes I wonder what the hell he's talking about. His Michigan is magical, mystical, and full of wondrous beauty. My Michigan is full of wondrous beauty but after that, not so much. I have to believe he has never set foot in the state. For one thing, he pronounces the town I was born in as Yip-silanti, when it is really pronounced Ip-silanti. For another thing, he almost never mentions the stuff I think of when I look back fondly at the state I grew up in and still visit frequently.

So here, with apologies to my friends and family who still live in Michigan, is a more realistic advertisement for Michigan.

Cue the background music:

There's a place just 90 minutes from here where fancy cars give way to beat-up Ford trucks with charming bumper stickers that say clever things like "Gun control is holding it with two hands." A place where old cars are never sold or disposed of but are merely set up on blocks in the front yard for the neighbors to admire. Where you can keep your haute cuisine and just enjoy a coney dog.

In this magical place, everyone wears a University of Michigan or Michigan State sweatshirt even if they never set foot in a college classroom. Yes, school team loyalty is a passion sprung up no doubt in the absence of any decent professional team in a place called Michigan.

In Michigan there is a special time called hunting season which is so revered that auto factories simply shut down on the first day of deer season. In a place called Michigan, you can take the animal you shot, stuff it and hang it on the wall and it is considered fashionable decor.

Yes, in Michigan, pure Michigan, every major event is celebrated by opening the garage door, putting the lawn chairs out, and renting a keg from a place called a "party store". And at every graduation or birthday party in the garage, your uncle is sure to have snuck venison into the sloppy joes and then say proudly, "Bet you didn't even know that was deer meat, did ya city girl?"

In Michigan, pure Michigan, when you ask someone where they're from they don't need a map, they simply hold up their left hand and show you. And if you drew a line from the base of your pinkie to the base of your pointer (that would be Muskegon to Bay City) anything above the line is a wonderful place called "Up North."

Up North is a wonderful place full of bars where men wear baseball caps with the names of farm equipment manufacturers on them and women who should not, wear tube tops. And in the winter at these magical Up North bars, the height of fashion is to wear your unzipped half-hanging down snowmobile suit.

Up North is where everyone you know has a cottage (never a lakehouse or a cabin) and you are always welcome there where you can be sure to play Euchre and drink beer while it rains the entire weekend.

Yes, there's a magical place and it's waiting just for you, a short drive from here.

It's Pure Michigan.

THE BUDDHIST TAKES A TAXI

The Zen Mountain Monastery




Last month Atticus took his journey to the Catskills to attend a Buddhist retreat. This seemed like a totally reasonable excursion last February when he first asked if he could go on a retreat in France. No, I told him, France is a nice place to go for croissants and sidewalk cafes and to get treated rudely but it is not where you go for a Buddhist retreat. You should go to Bali or Thailand or something. But since that is a little far and a lot out of our budget you should find something in the states.


Which he did. In the Catskill mountains a few hours outside of Manhattan. But how will you get there? I asked. No biggie he assured me. I will fly into NYC and take a bus out. There's one that goes directly to the monastery, I can do this alone. Okay. Sounds reasonable and the retreat itself was very inexpensive. Turns out they don't charge you much to come sit and meditate for a few hours and eat vegetarian food and do chores in the hot sun. Not a lot of people signing up for that kind of thing I guess.


So we said okay but when he went to sign up he found out he had to be 18 or older to attend. We made a few inquiries to find out if they would make an exception. He was interviewed over the phone for about a half hour by a senior monastic (who no doubt wanted to make sure this kid knew what he was getting in to) and then he was declared fit to attend. So now, I thought, he's good to go.


But as the date to attend the retreat grew closer I began to second guess my decision to allow my 15-year-old to fly into LaGuardia, take a taxi to the Port Authority and find a bus into the Catskills. He's no stranger to travel, he's comfortable in major cities, but after all, he is only 15. So I came up with an alternate plan. Together we would fly into Albany. From there I would rent a car and drive him into the mountains and make sure I liked the looks of the place. After that I would abandon him--I mean leave him there--and he would take a bus back to the Albany airport and fly home alone when he was finished. I chose Albany because it seemed a lot more negotiable than LaGuardia and was about the same distance as NYC to the monastery.


Anyhoo, that is what we did and it all went very smoothly on the way there. Oh sure, the people at the monastery did look at me kind of funny when they asked where I would be staying during the retreat and I said I was hightailing it back to Chicago. But other than that it went fine. And he stayed and had wonderful time despite the fact that he had forgotten to pack bug spray, shampoo, and soap. After five days it was time to get himself home.


He had to catch two buses to get to the airport. I had warned him that if he missed the second bus he was kind of screwed because if he waited for the next bus he would miss his flight and I really did not have a plan B for him. I gave him a wad of cash and told him he'd just have to wing it if that happened. Of course, that is what happened.


He got on the first bus just fine but unfortunately, it was late which caused him to miss the second bus. So there he was in Kingston NY about an hour from his final destination. Did I mention he was in the Catskills? It's a bit, umm, rustic and remote there. But, he took matters into his own capable Buddhist hands. He went out front and looked for a cab. He found one being driven by an old Indian man with a turban and a long beard and asked if he would take him to Albany airport.


"I take you anywhere you want to go,"the cabbie said.


"How much?" Atticus asked. (He had $150 in cash and was praying it would be less than that.)


The cabbie sized him and correctly guessed he was a rather desperate kid whose parents would be anxious to see again and quickly said, "$115."


"Hold on," Atticus said and texted me if that price was okay.


While I am a big enough idiot to leave my kid in the Catskills, I am not a big enough idiot to try to negotiate the price of a cab ride from the only cabbie in Kingston by cell phone so I texted back, "Hell yes and remember to tip him."

Atticus got in the cab which he described as a beat up very old Lincoln. The driver's window did not go down so the cabbie had to open the door to pay tolls. The passenger window did not go up but luckily it was a nice day.

As they pulled away from the curb the cabbie picked up his CB and spoke to the dispatcher. "Don't bother me. I busy for the next two hours."

"Where you going? Got a hot date?" the dispatcher asked.


"Yeah, that's it."


"No really, where are you going?"


"Albany airport."

"Sweet! How much you charging for that?"

Now--even a 15 year old Buddhist can tell he just got scammed but he only chuckled, grateful to have a ride.

The cabbie did not miss a beat and replied, "You know, the usual we charge for going to Albany airport, $115."

"Oh right," the dispatcher said finally catching on. "The usual. Good job!"

The rest of the ride was uneventul. The cabbie was cheerful and talkative and offered to buy him lunch, which he declined since he was anxious to get to the airport.

Atticus arrived in Albany safe and sound and on time. Unfortunately the plane was delayed three hours due to bad weather in Chicago which means he could have safely caught the next bus but of course he had no way of knowing that was going to happen.


Besides, if he had grabbed the next bus he would not have this memorable story and as any good Buddhist can tell you, it isn't about getting there the most efficient way, it's all about the journey.

BIRTH ORDER

Are these two related?

Due to a complete lack of planning and foresight on my part, I have two children who are just a year apart in school. The oldest, I'll call him Atticus (because that's his name) started his Sophomore year today while his younger sister, Grace, started her Freshman year. These two children of mine, born a mere 19 months apart are as different as two people can possibly be.

They say (you know, they) that birth order influences our personalities perhaps more than any other thing and these two kids exemplify that. Given they were born so close in age, to the same parents, and raised in the same house, and attend the same schools, it is incredible they can be this different but I know from talking to other moms that this is quite the norm, not the exception.

Having two kids so different but living basically the same life can be somewhat discombobulating to me. Nowhere is this more apparent than their school experience. It's like they're going to two completely different schools in different towns or maybe different countries. But no, it's just the way they approach it that's different. Here are a few examples:

School supply shopping:

Atticus takes the crumpled list out of his pocket, scans it with his eye and says, "Let's see, I don't really need this, I can get this later, HA they never really use that, umm, okay I need a few spiral notebooks." We are out of Staples in ten minutes.

Grace pulls the supply list out of her folder marked "Supply List" and with the pen she has chosen for this project begins with the first item on the list. When she cannot find the exact brand and color the school suggests she grows very agitated. It takes me some time to convince her that it will be okay and only when I promise to go to other office supply stores does she move on to the next item on her list. She chooses pocket folders and sprial notebooks with girly designs that match. They have to match. She carefully checks each item off the list. In order. We cannot leave Staples until she is done. This takes over an hour.

School clothes: Grace had the first day of school outfit picked out last week and a secondary first day of school outfit picked out for Freshman orientation. She took photos of them and sent them to her friends so they could all vote on them. She modeled them for Lilly who pretended to care. She has been back to school shopping three times and still claims she needs "more tops".

Atticus has a dozen plain t-shirts (his only fashion rule is no logos, no ads), three pairs of cargo pants, and three pairs of jeans. He had them left over from last year, they still fit so he's good to go. Now, you are thinking, "Well of course--he's a boy." But really his indifference to clothing goes beyond this normal boy thing. He really, really doesn't care. He once grabbed the jeans that I had mistakenly put on top of the pile of clothing in his room, put them on, and did not notice they were his sister's. It was not until fourth period when one of his frenemies pointed out ever so helpfully, "Dude, you're wearing girl pants" that he even realized it. He looked down, shrugged, and said, "So what." He was in the seventh grade, not exactly an age when most of us are able to shrug off wearing our sister's pants. But there you have it. He is after all, the Buddhist among us.

Study habits: Grace comes home from school, gets herself a healthy snack, goes to the kitchen table and starts her homework. She works until it is all done. Then she does homework for stuff due later in the week. Then she studies for tests that will be given in a few weeks. She stops for dinner. Then she studies some more. She gets all A's.

Atticus comes home and gets a snack, tells me he has no homework, goes to the computer and does not get off until bed time. He does not get all A's.

I did not even know they gave out homework in Middle School until Grace got there and had the exact same teachers as Atticus.

Freshman orientation: Grace goes to any and all orientations that are offered. This despite the fact that her big brother tells her that most of them are repetitious and you will get all the information you need several times over. She finds her locker and practices opening and closing it. She memorizes where it is relative to her class. She makes sure she has her schedule with her at all times. She considers writing it in Sharpie on her hand in case she loses it.

Last year Atticus skips the first of the two orientations they offer. He is not worried. He passes on using the locker they have assigned him "It's too far from my classes, I'll just carry everything" Umm, winter coat? No worries, he just won't wear one. On the first day of his Freshman year in High School he arrives and realizes he does not have his schedule. (At this point, I apologize for the nightmare you are sure to have tonight just thinking about that, I know I've had several and so has Grace over the past year) Did this bother Atticus? Not so much. He just shrugged, found someone he knew was in his first period and said, "Hey what room do we meet in?" and got through the day like that.

Today those two loves of my life will come home after having both had their first day of school. Grace will tell me lots of stories about the first day, share some of the horrors like broken back-pack straps and lost IDs. She will talk about the different teachers and what she had in the cafeteria. When she's done she will make herself a fruit smoothie and start on her homework.

Atticus will come in, answer my question with a "It was great" grab a cookie and go to the computer. Strangely, he will not have any homework.

The oldest child and the second child. They inhabit two completely different worlds. I'm always grateful to be a part of both.

FIRST DAY OF FIRST GRADE

It's been five years since I wrote this. To all the moms saying goodbye to first-graders and college freshman in particular--here's to you!



My youngest started first grade today and all week long everyone I run into says, “What will you do with your free time now?” A lot of people ask this in jest, knowing full well there isn’t much you can do with the few hours when all the kids are out of the house at once. Others ask in earnest knowing that a world of possibilities has just opened up.

I have some ideas. I’m going to start exercising again. I’m going to write more. I’m going to finish my novel. Some of my friends will go back to work with the help of sitters and nannies. Others will fill up the time doing more around the house, taking part-time jobs, or volunteering even more of their time to the schools. It is strange but as a stay-at-home mom if you do your job really well you are rewarded by having your job taken away from you little by little. Today I was demoted to part-time. It’s not a huge chunk of time; 9:00 to 2:30 due to staggered start times among my three children, but nevertheless it’s a much bigger chunk of time than I’ve had in eleven years.

It’s not a total shock of course. The free-time comes quite gradually really, from the crazed frenzied days of breast-feeding and diaper-changing to the slightly less frantic days of potty-training and pre-school schedules to the relative calm of kindergarten and early elementary days. But some parts of it are not so gradual. Like today, the first day of school. It’s a wrenching change in my life. My youngest is the best of my three children at expressing herself. This makes parenting her sometimes easier and sometimes much more challenging. Last night, she sat in my lap as I read “The Kissing Hand” and as I struggled to get through that tear-jerker she interrupted me to say, “Mama, I am not ready for first grade.” “What do you mean?” I asked prepared to give her a pep-talk, to remind her that her best friend is in her class, she has the same bus route as last year, and she can already read chapter books. “I’m not ready to be away from you for so many hours,” she said simply. This stopped me dead in my tracks because the truth is I’m not really ready to be away from her for so many hours either. I mean maybe more than the 2 ½ hours of a kindergarten day but I really don’t need her to be gone from me more than seven hours which is what it turns out to be with the bus ride to and from school. Can’t they have a four hour day in first grade while we all adjust? My eyes filled with tears but I turned my head so she could not see. I forced a cheerful answer, “But honey, you were gone that many hours just yesterday with Margaret when you went to her house and then to the movies and you didn’t mind that.” “But I can’t be away from you that many hours every day,” she countered.

Now I began to cry in earnest, thankful that children seldom look their moms in the eye and as I sat with her in my lap trying to compose myself and most unhelpfully I remembered a Dave Barry column in which he drives his son Rob to Kindergarten for the first time and as they sit in the car outside the school, saying goodbye, Rob asks, “Daddy, how long do I have to do this?” and he can’t bring himself to answer, but he thinks, “Forever and ever.” I remember crying when I read that column and I didn’t even have children then. I shook my head trying to get the image of Rob and Dave Barry out of my head and to distract myself I tried to figure out how old Rob must be now. He’s probably in college or older, and not nearly as close to his father as he was when he was five. That was no help so I lifted Lilly off my lap and told her I’d be right back. I went into the bathroom and closed the door and sobbed into a bathroom towel. I was thinking of all the other mothers in my town, in my state, and probably in the world doing the same thing; crying into a bathroom towel because who else can you cry to? If only we had some acceptable way to share our collective grief maybe it would help but parenthood demands we act cheerful and even relieved when our little ones begin to leave the nest. For the most part we are relieved. But we are grieving too.

So please remember that when you see us looking a little dazed at the bus stop in the morning or a little anxious for the bus in the afternoon. Do not be deceived by our breezy answers to your question, “What will you do with your day now that the kids are all in school?” Because we’re not really sure ourselves. Oh we have lots of ideas; but we are afraid that any them will pale in comparison to the wondrous job we are leaving behind, the privilege of caring for a little one 24/7.

SUMMER HOLIDAYS

As most of you know, the last Saturday before school starts is the major North American holiday, known as "Molly-day the Holiday" (which is rather tricky to say as the words rhyme but not really--I think that is called assonance which I only know from that movie, Educating Rita. That was a good movie wasn't it?)

Anyhoo, if you don't know about this holiday,which was invented last year by Lilly and Grace, it is a day in which we spend the entire day celebrating our dog, Molly. You arise early and give her a special breakfast (the wet food she hardly ever has). Then you pull her back to bed and let her sleep in with you. Later you will take her to the park. In the wagon since she is the only dog in Glenview who really, really will not take a walk.

In the afternoon you might dress her up. Maybe in that dog Flamenco dress Aunt Beth helped you make (that's what she's wearing above). Then around 3:00 your friends with dogs come over with their dogs and you all run around the back yard and have a bona fide play date. After that, you will all come in the house (with gates placed strategically so mom won't lose her mind) and enjoy the dog cake you made out of kibble and peanut butter and the human cake Grace baked for the people guests.

In the evening you snuggle on the couch and watch (what else?) "Benji" and "Air Bud" and Molly's favorite, Animal Planet. And finally, you will go to bed where Molly will sleep right next to you. Oh, yes, well, she does that every night but tonight you will both be really tired from all the festivities of Molly-day the Holiday and your sleep will be especially delicious.

I hope you enjoy whatever it is your family does to celebrate this big day and remember, life is much too short to confine yourself to only the holidays on the calendar.

THE PARAPHRASING SINGER

See you in September
see you when the summer's through
here we are saying goodbye at the station
summer vacation is taking you awaaaayyyyy

I am singing to the (really) oldies station at the top of my lungs. Lilly asks, "Is this a really old song?"
"Yes it is. Why do you ask?"
"Because you actually know the words to it."

Oh dear. Am I that bad? Yes, yes I am . The thing is, if it is an old song (from my childhood) I have it stuck in my head for all eternity. If it is a somewhat old song (from high school and college) I can remember most of the words. Anything more "recent" and by that I mean in the past 2 and half decades, and all bets are off.

But I always remember what the song is about. I remember the gist of a line if not the actual words. Which is why you will often here me singing something like this:

Billy Jean is not my lover
I am not really the father
I had sex with her but check my DNA
You have to believe what I say

The kids either roar with laughter or cover their ears. They don't get it. They hear a song once or twice and remember every word. In the actual order in which it comes! This astounds me. As Atticus once said, "Mom, you know all the words to the songs, you just don't know where they go." EXACTLY! And shouldn't I get credit for that?

Of course they don't get it. They have freakishly plastic brains that recall everything. I noticed this the other day when Lilly was singing along to the theme song of a show called The Big Bang Theory. She has only heard this song when the show is on and we have only watched it, maybe, ten times. Here you can listen to this song and imagine for a second how long it would take you to memorize the words well enough to sing along.

Music is stored in our brains in a weird way isn't it? I can't remember my children's names in the proper order ("Grace! Atticus! Lilly! Molly! Oh christ, whatever your name is, get in here and pick up your shoes!") but the other day I remembered that show "Room 222" and could instantly hum the theme song. It has no lyrics but I'm sure I would rememember them if it did just as I know all the words to the "Here Comes the Brides" (the bluest skies you'll ever see in Seattle) and that ridiculous Bobby Sherman song, Julie, Julie, Julie. Geez what a waste of brain cells.

Anyhoo, I leave you all with that thought today--at what point did you stop learning lyrics to songs just by being exposed to them? Hopefully it was somewhere further down the line than it was for me as I do not remember much past the disco age.

Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
Cause it took so long to bake it....

aaagghhhh

MORE of WHAT PASSES FOR CONVERSATION AROUND HERE

Nice shirt. Could be pajamas too.

Summer School

This spring Atticus(15) asked us if he could take a summer school class. That's what the kids do around here--not so often to make up a bad grade but to get a class out of the way and have some breathing room during the school year. We were opposed to the idea. "You're only young once, why do you want to spoil it with school?" we asked him."Think of all that down time you're giving up." But he was not to be dissuaded.

"Please, Mom and Dad, let me take chemistry," he actually begged. At last we relented amd I signed him up for two summer semesters. Having allowed him to take this class (and paid for it) we wanted to impress upon him that he needed to take it seriously and get a decent grade. But we did not want to say "You must get an 'A'" or anything that definitive because as any parent knows you only cause trouble for yourself if you go around making such quantifiable demands. So Jeff tried a casual approach.

"You know, if you're going to take that class we want you to apply yourself."

"Yeah, I know," Atticus grunted.

"So you should, you know, stay out of the 'C-hood'," Jeff said and warming to his clever use of language pushed on, "And kind of shoot for at least the 'B-ville'," and now thinking he was handling this just right, "And really, we'd like you to keep it in the 'A-ness'."

At which point he had to stop talking because all three kids and I were laughing so hard he couldn't continue.

My T-shirt

So I like to wear my Obama t-shirt as a pajama top. It has his head and shoulders and the words "Obama 2008" on it. Because it is my pajama top, I do not wear undergarments with it.

One morning, as I sat in my Obama pajama top reading the New York Times, Lilly came in and got herself a bowl of cereal. After several minutes of silence she looked up at me and in a pretty spot-on imitation of our president said, "Look, umm, I'm just saying, if you are going to wear that and your breasts are resting on my shoulders, umm, you should at least think about wearing a bra and bring those things up to my ears."

SISTER BUDDIES

Sister buddies' latest project.

"I have a boy and a girl," my dental hygenist sighed last week, taking a break from cleaning my teeth. "I wanted another girl so my daughter could have a sister too, but it didn't happen. Everyone should have a sister."

Indeed. Everyone should have a sister and the best kind of sister is a sister buddy.

I am lucky, I have a sister and we are close but I am a little sad to say that we were not that close as children. We just couldn't have been because we are 8 years apart. By the time I even have any memories of her she was leaving home for college. She has memories of me but they are more about how she helped take care of me. We weren't really sister buddies.

I know what a sister buddy looks like though because I have two who live with me. Lilly(11) and Grace (14) have always been close. At one point they slept together so often we just pushed both beds into one bedroom that they shared for years. This ended when Grace hit puberty (as it should) and I worried a bit that their tight friendship would come undone. Lilly, always one to notice and speak aloud what is going on told me frequently, "Grace is no fun now that she's a teenager. She just wants to do teenaged stuff and she never plays horsie anymore."

But over the past year or so they have compromised and adjusted and found a new sisterly way to be. In this way, Grace keeps one foot in childhood while Lilly dips a toe into teen-hood.

For example,they have a standing Friday night nail date in which they choose a movie on DVR-- usually a Disney tweener flick (this is a compromise in itself because Grace would rather watch a chick flick and Lilly would rather watch a dog movie so they split the difference) and spread out the forty or fifty bottles of nail polish that Grace has collected. While Grace carefully does her own fingernails, Lilly, out of solidarity, haphazardly does her own toenails. Then Grace bakes cupcakes for them both. It's an evening that has something for everyone.

Last week while Jeff and I went to the AWESOME Billy Joel and Elton John concert, the girls stayed home. "What did you girls do last night?" I asked Lilly the next morning.

"Grace put on a fashion show for me for two hours. She tried on every thing in her closet."

"Really?" I know this is not Lilly's idea of fun.

"Yes. She told me if I played fashion show last night, she'd come with me to the bunny shelter tonight."

Ahhh. Another wise compromise.

Like all couples they have their roles. Grace is the mommy: she cooks and bakes for Lilly and generally cares for her (Lilly accidentally calls her mom fairly frequently). Lilly is the entertainer: she comes up with elaborate plans and tells jokes and sings silly songs for Grace (her specialty is meowing opera songs and spot on accents). Together they like to devise and execute elaborate home improvement plans.

Yesterday I found a list on the table with the following words: Herbal Garden, Butter Nut Wood, Lilac Rose. "Grace, what does this mean?" I asked.

"Those are the paint colors we need to paint a mural in Lilly's room. We looked them up online. But first we're going to repaint the walls."

And off they marched. Under Grace's direction they gathered up the painting supplies and some leftover paint and turned Lilly's room from pink to blue. They assumed their roles: Grace directed the project and did most of the painting (she's no stranger to painter's tape) and Lilly entertained her while she sort of painted. At one point I walked past the room and heard Lilly doing her ghetto-talk. "Yo, G! You my dawg. This room is da schizzle."

While Jeff and Atticus and I went to stroll around the Glenview Art Fair, the girls finished up their paint job and cleaned the rollers. We found them on the couch relaxing after their hard day over an episode of "i-Carly"

Today we'll all go to Home Depot and buy more paint so they can complete the mural Grace has designed. It will be, as Lilly explains, "A mural of a meadow so Suzy Q. (our rabbit) can feel like she's outdoors."

I will not be asked to help (except to buy the paint) and that is okay, because this is a sister-buddies-only project.

Everyone should have a sister.

JEFF'S SONG

This is Jeff performing the song he wrote for me for our anniversary. I got him a nice card.

SCREEN TIME

Maybe we do have a problem.
(I borrowed this photo from this blog, alas, it is not my own work)

Yesterday I noticed a thoughtful post on Facebook by my friend Amy B. who is looking for software that would limit the time her children spend on the computer. Now that's a great idea, I thought, having failed miserably at prying my teenaged son away from his virtual life so I went to the website someone suggested and checked out some software. It sounded great and even gave this suggestion for how it might limit the time: "For example you might want to set up a schedule like this --Monday–Friday 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm, with 15 minutes allowed for their favorite game, 15 minutes to chat and 90 minutes for homework."

After a half hour or so when I could stop laughing doubled over I went downstairs to the computer to find my son to read that line to him. We weren't sure which was funnier--the notion that he could limit his game time to 15 minutes or the pie-in-the-sky dream that he would ever spend 90 minutes on his homework (with or without the computer). He was so amused he even lifted his hands off the keyboard and made eye contact with me. "Fifteen minutes on my game? What the fuh?" and then we started laughing again.

I am reminded of the time I bought new carpeting for the family room when the kids were 5, 4, and 1. "Now," the salesman cautioned me, "You know you should vacuum once per week for every person in the household." I set the baby down, separated the two toddlers, wiped vomit off my shoulder, handed the baby a cracker, and then said to the 5-year-old. "Quick, you do the math, how many times a week would I be vacuuming?" He's a smart kid (or was before all the computer time) so he answered quickly, "Five times, Mommy."

I wasn't trying to be rude when I laughed at the carpet salesman. He looked slightly offended when we all roared at the notion of mommy vacuuming five times a week. Even the one-year-old chortled as she ground her cracker into the floor-room sample of our future carpet.

So allow me to laugh when I read the suggested computer limits for my son. Because really, if there is one thing I've failed at as a parent, (no wait there are many, many things I've failed at including getting my kids to eat fruits and vegetables as anything more than a condiment, and having them make their beds ever, and well, now I'm starting to depress myself) it is in the area of limiting screen time.

Make no mistake, I tried and I tried. And then I failed. But when I was still trying and we used to do that "TV Turn-off" week I was one of the few moms that actually included ALL screens. We went to the library. We played games, we rode bikes to the park all that week. Fat lot of good that did.

And I did move the computer into the kitchen as the experts suggest. That's helpful. I now can see the back of my kid's head at all times and view the ridiculous medieval war graphics on the game he's playing. I suppose this is a little like Mrs. Dahmer saying, "Well it's not that bad; I saw Jeffrey stacking up bodies in the back yard. What kind of mother do you think I am?"

When you learn about dog-training you learn that it is almost impossible to get a dog to stop a bad behavior unless you distract him with the job of a good behavior. Which is why you will see me, from time to time, tell my computer-addicted kid to come empty the dishwasher or take the trash out or help his sister with her math. He always does this cheerfully and willingly--most likely because he is aware that it is the price he pays for being on the computer for hours on end--and he would be right.

So for now that's where we are on this issue. I think I will pass on the monitoring software because 1) I would actually have to have him install it and 2) I would then set it on such ridiculous levels "No games after midnight or before 9 am" that it might automatically dial a family services line and report me.

As for Amy, I wish you nothing but the best and if you find some software that trains me to be a better parent too, just send me the link.

GIMME SHELTER

Suzy Q: Our shelter bunny

Every six months or so for the past three years, Lilly (11) pulls out the phone book, opens it to the Yellow Pages section of Animal Shelters and begins her calls. "Yes, I was wondering how old you have to be to volunteer at your shelter?" she asks politely. In between rejections (you have to be 16) she comments to Grace (14) "They don't get it. They think we just want to go and cuddle the kittens." "Well don't we?" Grace asks.

No. That is not what Lilly wants to do. She wants to play with the friendless, wash the dirty, clip the long-nailed, clean the dirty cage, sweep the poo, scrub the grungy food dishes. In short, she has a calling and it is to care for shelter animals. But no one gets that. They just think she's another kid who wants to pet a puppy.

That is until we met Toni. Toni runs Red Door Shelter a rabbit sanctuary in Chicago. This wonderful place rescues the homeless and unwanted bunnies (think of the Easter pet that turns out to be more work than someone thought). It was to this shelter that Lilly dragged me about a year ago for "rabbit spa day" a fund-raising event where crazy bunny people get together to have their rabbits groomed and photographed and oh yeah, maybe take another homeless bunny home (which is how we got Suzy Q). Thanks to that event, adoption, and subsequent emails, Toni caught on pretty quickly that Lilly was not your average "can I come play with the bunnies" kid. Which is why she so very, very graciously said yes when I asked if she would make an exception to the age requirement and allow Lilly to volunteer.

The first day of volunteering was last Wednesday. All the way to the shelter Lilly was saying under her breath, "Oh yeah, Heartland Shelter, I'm too young? Oh really, too young you say!? Well aren't you sorry now." She was so excited she nearly binkied (that's rabbit talk for jumping with joy) out of the car as we pulled up to the shelter. I left her there in Toni's capable hands agreeing to return in four hours.

And it was there I found her four hours later, covered in rabbit fur and ecstatically happy about her new job. All the way home she told me about the rabbits she met and played with. About their (often sad) histories but their (almost always) happy endings. There was one bunny in particular she was taken with. Avery.

Avery, she explained, has been there for three years. No one wants to adopt him because he cannot be neutered. He has a heart condition and if they put him under for the surgery he most likely would not survive. So he stays there but not many of the volunteers want to play with him because un-neutered male rabbits have, ahem, some hygiene issues.

"Oh Mom," she gushed, "Avery is so great! I went in his pen and he binkied, then he sprayed to mark his territory, then he pooped all over, and then he humped my leg. I just love him! He's so full of life!"

From the backseat her big brother offered this advice, "Don't go falling for every guy who humps your leg."

Lilly ignored this and began in earnest on another story about two rabbits who were saved from Afghanistan. Seriously.

I know, I've said it before, but I have to say it again, there is no joy like the joy of watching your child find his or her bliss and by God Lilly has found it at Red Door Shelter. Here, at this magical place, she can finally spend time with her beloved buns AND the like-minded, dedicated people who care about them as much as she does. And since I am not so inclined to spend time with rabbits I am mighty grateful there is such a place that welcomes her.

So here's to Toni and her shelter and if my small tale moves you maybe you would consider a small donation to Red Door to thank those who take care of God's smallest creatures --like Lilly and homeless bunnies.

REPORT FROM AMSTERDAM

Excuse me ladies, do you know the way to the Swiss Hotel?


Today's post is an email I got this morning from Jeff:

We are in Amsterdam. We had quite the travel day yesterday. It took us 4 hours to get here from Brussels by train and I'm pretty sure you can do it in less. I don't know if we screwed up or if it is what it was. Hmmm? The train we were supposed to get on did not arrive as planned. In the meantime, they flashed another train on the sign and a few minutes later a train arrived. Now we have a problem. Is the train that pulled up our train or a different train? We got on and the conductor stamped our tickets so I figured all is well. We arrived in Antwerp (as our train was supposed to) but only after stopping in every small town between Brussels and Antwerp. This is the part that makes me think it could have been the wrong train. When the train stopped in Antwerp everyone got off except me and grace because our train is going to Amsterdam you see. Funny not a single person on the train except for me and Grace were going to Amsterdam because everyone got off. After twenty minutes of waiting Grace asks the obvious question in only a way that Grace can. Daddy? Why is there no one here and why is the train stopped? I guess this is my hint to go and check it out which I do. It turns out the next train to Amsterdam is two levels below ours and leaves in 25 minutes. So we lost about an hour. This train too stopped many times before we got off.

The walk from the train station to our home the Swiss Hotel is five minutes from the train station but that is only if you know where you are going which we don't. So we start off - the streets are madness - people, bikes, dogs, trams, buses, bums, potheads, AC-DC fans (yes they are in town and the place is abuzz). So Grace is a good sport and just follows 2 feet behind me. Where ever I go, so does she. I think in my head, I just want to get someplace where I won't be trampled and there is a little calm so that I can consult my map. It turns out that is Glenview, not Amsterdam. So I check out the map and we are a little off, so we adjust. We walk through narrow streets with coffee houses and the smell of pot everywhere. Poor Grace I think to myself. The place looks like a shit hole with the lowest of the lows assembled to do nothing more except sit with each other and drink and smoke weed. Almost everyone I see looks like they have not bathed or changed their cloths since they arrived, which could have been some time in 2008. We finally leave that street to go down a quieter and cleaner street and with much fewer people. I breathe a little sigh of relief until I see the girls standing in the windows. Yes, we are in the red light district. But it is clean and it is quiet and no one bothers us. We find our street and finally arrive at the Swiss Hotel in the heart of things but just far enough a way to not feel dangerous.

We got settled and went right out. We had a nice Italian dinner and we ate outside and just had the best time watching the people and the world go by. At least that is my recollection. Grace is a good sport. She does not complain. She tells me when she wants something, but she is satisfied to go to this place or that place or another place if that is where we go. We made The Ann Frank House our destination and we had a lovely tour. Very moving as you probably remember. We walked back to our home and had ice cream along the way. We got back about 9:30. I took off my shoes and laid on the bed and Grace, God Bless her asks if we are going to go out again or should she put on her pajamas. We decide to make this an early night and I turned out my lights around 10 pm.

IT'S ALL RELATIVE

A while back I was chatting with my parents in my kitchen about a family event. We were trying to remember when it took place. Finally, I said, "I think it wasn't that long ago. Maybe two years." My parents nodded. Lilly, who had been playing with her plastic horses and eavesdropping looked up in horror.

"Not too long ago? Two years!?"

"Well, that does seem like a long time when you're only 11 but when you're older it seems like a short time, like maybe a few months feels to you," I tried to explain. "Isn't that how it is for you, Grandpa?"

"No," my father replied, "Two years is more like a long afternoon for me."

Indeed. If we are to believe Einstein (and why wouldn't we?) time is relative. And so Lilly's two years represent nearly 20% of her life and a mere 2.5% of my father's life.

As anyone over the age of 12 knows, time accelerates as you get older until one day you are 49 and you say things like, "I saw him not so long ago at the 20th class reunion," and realize that was more than a decade ago.

My father called me on my birthday this year and said, "Well, this is a big one for you!"

"No," I reminded him, "I'm 49, next year will be the big one."

"Right, I know. But that's just around the corner."

eek

These time/age games can be fun and alarming to play. Let's look at the year 1994. You remember that year pretty clearly, right? It was 15 years ago but that's not so long--True Lies was at the movies and Bill Clinton was our president and Sheryl Crow sang, "All I wanna do". Hardly ancient history, right? Compare that to what was going on 15 years before the year you were born. Go ahead, I'll wait while you do the math. Wait, how can that be? I was born in 1960 so fifteen years before that --World War II was ending. WHAT? Wasn't World War II like in the 1800's or something?

Nothing makes you feel that time flying past you faster than having kids. In a blink they are babies, toddlers, preschoolers. Now it's even faster; junior high, homecoming, learning to drive. I feel like the ride that is parenthood has sped up from a jaunty merry-go-round to a zero-gravity space ship in which your cheeks fly back as the rocket takes off.

If only I had some meaningful interpretation of today's ramblings but I really have not much more to offer than the obvious. Life is short. It gets shorter every second.

So enjoy this summer day and enjoy Joni Mitchell as she sings the best song ever about time passing.

SHOPPING GENE

Hollister: is it a store or is it a bar?


Grace is a girly girl. I am not. Me having a girly girl is a little like the ex-hippie Keatons having the neo-conservative Alex. It is a funny fit. She likes perfume and makeup and shopping and her bathroom is completely full of bottles of mysterious girl stuff. She does her nails every Friday night and has (at last count) 35 bottles of nail polish.

I on the other hand wash my hair with whatever brand of shampoo is on sale. I do not like perfume and only wear makeup because without it you would not know I had a mouth or eyes. I do not like chocolate or high heels and I hate the show Sex and the City. I am in charge of the remote. (I may be a dude). Oh, and I really really hate to shop for clothing.

But Grace is a real girl and she looooves to shop. For her 14th birthday she requested no gifts but that the money we would have spent on gifts go toward a shopping spree. She knows I not only dislike shopping but I am incapable of shopping for ANYTHING for more than one hour. At that point I simply stop where I am, put down anything I'm holding and say, "I'm finished," and leave the store.

Which is why she was going to have her shopping spree with her friend Lauren who likes to shop. But alas, they were unable to work out the logistics and Grace was anxious to get to the mall so she had to go with me. I told her we could go for as long as she wanted as long as I had frequent breaks.

Off to Woodfield Mall we went. Okay, I have to say that shopping for clothing for teenaged girls has changed just a bit since I used to go to Livonia Mall with Jenny Stabenau and shop at Marianne's.

First of all there are these uber-hip trendy stores with blasting loud music that sounds like a soundtrack for a migraine. And they have sprayed nauseatingly stinky perfume around to create an atmosphere. And worst of all for an old person like me, in one of them called Hollister (a brand name some girls like to wear on their asses with their Uggs) it is DARK! I mean dark like a bar. When we stumbled into that store the greeter who was dressed like a pole dancer approached us to tell us about the specials. I asked her for a cosmo. She pretended she didn't hear me and told us the shorts were buy one get one free. I peered into the darkness. Where are the shorts? Grace showed me the shelf where they were, lit by a tiny bulb like the one over your stove. I held a pair up. "Oh look Grace, isn't this cute? They have shorts for toddlers here too!" She rolled her eyes.

After two minutes of Hollister I declared I could not take it and made her leave. We found another store called Aeropostle. That one was much better. Well lit. Not so loud. But it was weird because there were guys everywhere. Not guys who have been dragged to shop with their girlfriends but guys (presumably straight) shopping for themselves! Yes, half the store was for girls and the other half for guys. And then there were guys working there! Oh my how the world has changed. A young man asked if we needed help finding a size. Thank God Jeff wasn't there because I know he would have insisted that he had to hand over his man-card right then and there.

Yes things have changed since I went shopping as a teen. Of course that was so long ago we used to just go down to the general store and order us some new clothes from the Sears catalog. No, seriously, it was so long ago that girls shopped in girl stores and guys, well they didn't shop. I don't know how they got clothing at all come to think of it because I never saw them in stores.

Now there are just as many guys as girls shopping. And recession? What recession? Apparently in the teen market there is none. We actually had to wait in line to try on clothing at every store then WAIT IN A LONGER LINE TO BUY THE CLOTHING! At least the clothing is cheap. Here's to a global market.

Anyway, all in all I have to declare the shopping spree a success. Grace got a ton of clothing, I was able to be a supportive shopping buddy for over three and half hours which is like a world record for me.

And I only needed one root-beer break.

CRUSHES

Beyonce, my current girl crush

I am a fan of a good-old-fashioned full-on crush. I think my first crushes were in the fifth grade (Peter Duel from "Alias Smith and Jones" and Larry Brown from school)and by high school I had two or three at a time. I would walk clear around the building if I had to just to get a glimpse of my crush between classes. Sometimes they were boys I knew and actually spoke to. Sometimes they were upper classmen who did not know I existed. I had so many crushes that at the 30th reunion last summer I would have to say the only man in the room I had not had a crush on at some point was the bartender (though he was a handsome devil).

Then there were the "girl-crushes". I'm so glad there's a term for this now because when I was young, back in the good old homo-phobic days, this was not something you voiced. Usually I had girl crushes on girls who were sort of famous in my hometown, say the homecoming queen or the girl who always had the lead in the play. Girl crushes are non-sexual--you just can't stop looking at and admiring these people. Like Princess Di. That crush lasted a good decade.

I mentioned this once to my friend K. who knew exactly what I was talking about. She had had an enormous crush on a girl from her hometown who was a high school actress and performer. At the time, K. was still in junior high and after seeing this girl once, she was smitten. She would beg her parents to take her to any performance the girl was in and record them with her little portable tape-recorder.The fervor of a junior high crush is a powerful thing.

All these years later I have to say I still get crushes. I felt one coming on as I watched the high scool musical this spring starring JS (I won't print his name here on the off-chance that he should Google himself (older readers that's not what you think it is) and find out an old lady has a crush on him because that would make him physically ill) (You know this way of speaking with parentheses inside parentheses is exactly how my Dutch friend Laurent speaks; you can almost see the parentheses when he talks).

Anyhoo, about my new crush on JS, star of high school productions...I have to clarify, I do not have a crush on him in a MaryKay Latourneau way, it's in a "I remember what it was like to be 17 and have a crush like this" way.I asked Grace the other day which was more disturbing, my crush on Beyonce or the one I have on JS. She just giggled because like everyone else in town, she has a crush on JS too.

Of course I also have a crush on Barack Obama. Well, who doesn't? And Michelle. In fact this crush has manifested itself into a game I play with Lilly (who has a girl crush on Malia) in which we pretend the Obamas are our friends. "Mr. and Mrs. Obama are coming over to play euchre on Saturday? Do you and Malia want to have a sleep over?" I'll say. "Oh is he back from Egypt already?" Lilly will answer. Then she'll say, "Yeah I'd like to have a sleepover. I'll ask Malia at lunch tomorrow!" (in our little fantasy they go to school together too--hey why not, it's our fantasy). Is that wrong? Do you think some poor Secret Service agent has to read all the blog posts out there to find out which of us has a crush and which of is is actually a threat? God I hope not.

Crushes are healthy. You should not try to deny them even if you are happily married. Of course, they are like a little spark which is a good thing as long as you do not fan it into a flame. You should not hold dry tinder next to them and flirt shamelessly with them. Nor, (if I may carry this metaphor too far) should you throw gasoline on them and share your crush with the crushee. No. That is a bad idea. But if you try to repress a crush by denying to yourself that it exists it will eventually come out in an unhealthy way and the top of your head may explode or if you're a Baptist minister you will run away with the church organist (geez it was just a crush, you weren't supposed to do that!).

So today, go ahead and admit to yourself you have a little crush on the girl who makes your latte or the guy who rides the train or Zac Efron or Taylor Swift (two more of my crushes by the way). It's healthy.

Just don't tell them about it. That's creepy.

TEENAGED BOYS: DELIGHTFUL

Atticus on the left. Bob Ross on the right.

When I was pregnant with my first child (Atticus) I remember seeing babies and toddlers and thinking, "Awwww, I can't wait to have one of those!" One time I saw a teenaged boy ambling through the mall and I thought, "Wait! I DO NOT want one of THOSE!"

So I am glad to report that now that I have one of THOSE in my house it is really quite delightful.

Teenaged boys are straight forward and tell you what they're thinking. They are hilariously funny and celebrate the absurd. Though they may not put a lot of thought into your birthday present, they are sweet and still wipe tears away from their little sisters' cheeks. And they can program the phone/tv/dvr or fix any technological problem you might have. As I type this he's installing a new cooling system on the PC downstairs. Whatever that means.

My teenaged boy is quirky (go figure) in addition to all those other things. He sees auras. He mentioned this quite casually once a few years back. "My music teacher has orange light around her." He is curious about everything and as an avid fan of the history channel knows something about almost everything. Lately, he's been bringing me up to speed on the whole North Korea Kim Dong Il thing. But he's just as likely to launch into a discussion on medieval weapons (do you know the difference between a cudgel and a shilaleagh?) or the likelihood that Nostradamas's predictions are accurate.

He is a "serial-interest-taker". He has an interest, he learns all he can about it, he often saves up and buys one, then he moves on. Accordion, ocarina, Rubiks Cube, tarot cards, and yo-yos come to mind. He dedicates hours of time on the internet learning about these things and teaching himself how to use them with YouTube.

Unfortunately, he seldom (no wait, NEVER) brings this passion, curiosity, and devotion to his schoolwork.

Which is why he was getting bad grades this spring and we were moved to ground him from his computer games and from his beloved stage crew (another of his passions--as a Freshman he has been given light and sound board duties normally reserved for Seniors). With all this free time we had hoped he would apply some of it to his homework.

But alas, he has squandered his extra time on the latest of his serial intersts: painting. Yes, he used his free time and hard-earned money, to passionately pursue this. He saw the now-deceased Bob Ross on PBS. (In case you do not know who this is, I will explain, he is an extremely odd, charismatic guy who teaches people to paint on TV). Bob Ross believed anyone can paint. Atticus believes that too. So while he was supposed to be spending this spring raising his math grade he's been standing next to the computer (he downloaded the show) paintbrush in hand, following Bob's direction.

So if you have a baby boy and are not so sure about the whole teenager thing, don't worry. It will be great. He will have his own interests and passions even if he doesn't have good grades. And like all children, if you let him, he will show you a world you did not know exists.

And if you're lucky, you might get some new paintings for the living room.

8th GRADE GRADUATION

Yesterday Grace delivered a speech she wrote at the eighth grade awards ceremony. Since I have writer's block this week I am going to publish her speech which allows me to take a break from my own writing AND brag on my kid. It's a two-fer! I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!
Attea, by the way, is the name of Grace's school.


The Alphabet of Attea
by Grace Ludwig



Attea is like the alphabet. Many letters, or people in Attea’s case, make up a whole. Each one is different, and contributes in their own way. Some people, and some letters, speak out often, and others only shine once in a while. A few choose to make their appearance only when brought together with another person or letter, and others want to be left alone. Attea is an alphabet in its own way.

A is for awesome. If I could describe Attea in one word, I would choose awesome. Attea is awesome for many reasons, all of which you will hear within the rest of the alphabet.
B is for boring. Yes, occasionally the learning part of school can get a bit boring.
C is for choir, band, and orchestra. I know not every student participated in these activities, but I can name many occasions when my friends and I laughed at Mrs. Reatherford pretending to be mad at us, or Ms. Monastaro’s juicy stories.
D is for drama. And I don’t mean in just Mr. Luongo’s class. I’m talkin’ boys asking girls out, break ups and makeups, friend fights and more, all of which you can find in the halls of Attea.
E is for education. After all, to get an education is the reason we go to school in the first place!
F is for friends. I cannot even begin to name all the amazing friends I have met and had great times with at Attea.
G is for gym class. I would be the first to tell you I’m terrible at sports, so that’s obviously not the reason I enjoyed gym class. What I enjoyed most was the laughs over missed baskets and un-caught baseballs.
H is for the hall way. I’m sure everyone has had some funny, strange, or even awkward moments in the hallway, and I’m positive these moments will continue throughout our years in high school.
I is for immature. Really? 8th graders are immature? You ask. But yes in fact, all 8th graders are immature. No matter how grown up or mature they seem to adults, every 13 or 14 year old has those funny thoughts in their head when a teacher says we need to complete our duties.
J is for the jokes and laughs that are always about the same thing but never get old.
K is for knowledge. The knowledge our teachers have is incredible, and we take advantage of it. Throughout my middle school years I have learned that not everyone knows as much as our teachers and they’re only trying to share what they know with us.
L is for lunch. I will never forget the cafeteria and how we were all so convinced in 5th grade lunch would be so much more fun. It turns out; lunch was almost the exact same experience. It was very enjoyable, and will most likely be a similar experience next year.
M is for magnificent. Magnificent would be the second word I would use to describe Attea and all of the memories I have had here.
N is for new. In 6th grade, everything at Attea was new, to all of us. But now it is not so new, and we’re all ready for new experiences and a new environment.
O is for Officer Smith. I will always remember Officer Smith, and the big kid he was on the inside even if he wasn’t so much on the outside!
P is for potato chowder, which Mr. Woell enthusiastically presented to us during the announcements every week.
Q is for quick change. And not just changing into our gym clothes, but also adapting to our new schedule, lockers, teachers, and more.
R is for recess which included short but sweet moments with my best friends, usually taking place in the sun or woodchips.
S is for socializing. Students at Attea have wasted a large amount of time socializing. But school isn’t just a place for learning; it’s also a place to make friendships that could last for the same amount of time that you know your multiplication facts-forever.
T is for all the teachers I have had at Attea, which have taught me new skills and valuable lessons.
U is for unable to get enough sleep. If there is one thing I would go back and change, it would be to skip those late night Facebook chats and get a few extra minutes of sleep.
V is for victorious. All of us have conquered the battle of middle school, and are ready for a new challenge.
W is for hard work which, as 8th graders, we all deserve a little credit for, but instead we will gladly take the satisfaction of a good grade or score.
X is for x(ex)periences. The experiences I’ve had with everyone I’ve met at Attea have been good and bad, but I know through these experiences, I’ve been changed for the better.
Y is for the youth that will never grow out of us. I believe that every person over the age of 14 still has an 8th grade part of them on the inside
Z is for zero moments of unhappiness. We all have those days when you wake up feel like its going to be a bad day, but members of the Attea alphabet always help each other to feel excellent by 3 o’clock.

Attea is an alphabet. Teachers make up the most important letters, or the vowels, and students are like the consonants. Each letter is important and without it, the alphabet wouldn’t be complete. But most importantly, Attea is like an alphabet, each letter is unique.

BIRTHDAY PARTIES

BIRTHDAY PARTIES
Do you remember when birthday parties were small family events with a homemade cake? And maybe, every few years you might have a party for kids in your class and they would come over and you’d play “drop the clothespin in the milk bottle” (because all milk came in bottles then, not just the expensive organic kind) and you might play “musical chairs,” and then you’d open presents and have cake and ice cream and then your friends walked home and they wouldn’t have dreamed of expecting anything more at the end of the party. Do you remember that? You do? You must be really old.

Because now-a-days birthday parties are big big big events! First of all you must have one each and every year. No, it does not matter if you have three or six or ten kids you must plan and execute a full-on blow-out for each and every one of your offspring from the time they turn one (perhaps the silliest birthday party of all) until the last one is out of the house (which hopefully is before the current average age of 30 because you will feel pretty silly when your kid is 28 and you still have to send out dinosaur invitations.)


And the party must, never, never, never be held at your home! No, goodness no. Unless you hire a clown or a magician or a pony to ride on, then the “house- party” (yes the genre has a name) is acceptable.
You must also spend a lot of money on theme invitations and decorations and the required matching “goody-bag.” What the hell is a goody-bag, you might ask? It is the bag of goodies you give each of the guests when they come to your party because of course it is not enough for a child to go bowling or play putt-putt with his or her friends and eat pizza and later ice-cream and cake. No. Who would show up for that lame-o experience if there wasn’t a goody-bag to close the deal?
The goody-bag is a bag stuffed with crap you paid too much for such as erasers and pencils and little cheap yo-yos that last for just one yo, and plastic rings that no one would ever wear. When your children come home with the goody-bag they will paw through it for the candy, insist you keep the rest of the junk because it is “cool” and then never, ever, ever play with the stuff again. If you are like most moms I know, you will keep it around and then secretly throw it away along with 90% of their precious art projects that the teachers send home at the end of the year bound up in a fancy portfolio that a volunteer art mom got stuck making. Oops, getting off track again.
So that’s what birthday parties look like now. Over the years my kids have been to parties at bowling alleys, skating rinks, and pools. They have made hideous pottery items and gone on guided nature walks and gone to the movies. Now that they are older I expected this nonsense to trail off but it hasn’t. At 14 and 15 a lot of their friends are still hosting bowling or skating parties.
I confess that to some extent I have been a part of this ridiculous nonsense. We have indeed hosted parties that were held at bowling alleys and inflatable bouncy places. We have also bought goody-bags and stuffed them with junk. It’s not that I didn’t want to stop the madness, I did. One year I tried to give them all a book instead of a goody-bag but most of them looked at me and blinked like I was clinically insane. One child kept trying to hand the book back as if I’d made a mistake. The brat (there’s always one at a birthday party) actually asked where his goody-bag was. Another time, in a real rebellious moment, I decided there would be no goody-bags but kept that decision to myself. When my family asked where the goody-bags were at about 20 minutes before the first guest was scheduled to arrive, they all were so mortified (my husband included) that we ended up running around the house, filling brown paper-lunch bags with old pencils and erasers and any other trinket we could put our hands on. I’m sure the kid who got my tape-measure was delighted to have something so useful.
We have, I’m happy to report, had better luck with my equally crazy idea to host “house-parties”. The girls come up with their own theme and then run with it making the invitations and the decorations by hand. Then they invent theme-related activities. That’s how they ended up dressed like mice and playing “cat and mouse and cheese” one year. It was lovely and I even heard one of the little girls as she was picked up by her mother say, “Next year, I want a house-party!”
Her mother nodded and agreed, no doubt remembering the “house-parties” of her youth and wondering who the heck you hire to help you cater such an unusual event.

FACEBOOK: GO AHEAD TRY IT

Sometimes I find myself defending Facebook to those who haven't tried it. Invariably these people tell me it's a waste of time and they don't care if their friend is making baked chicken and rice pilaf for dinner. I understand their sentiments; I felt the same way a year ago. But that was before I joined the 70 billion other people on Facebook.

My Facebook habit started like most habits do. I 'only' signed up because I was trying to find a particular person, Wendy, who had been in Spain with me in the early 80's. I was hoping to organize a reunion for the seven or eight of us who shared that seminal time. The reunion never came to pass but I did find Wendy who now lives in Mexico married to the very boy she was dating all those years ago. I was delighted to reconnect with her if only in this little way.

As soon as I signed up I felt the heady rush of popularity as 'friend requests' poured in. All these people I know want to be my friend? Little old me? Of course now I realize that Facebook is set up so cleverly that people might be asking you to be their friend almost by accident. It combs email addresses and school affiliated lists to show you names of people you might know and might want to friend. Then, if you just twitch your finger near the enter button it shoots invitations out to them all.

But I didn't know that. I was flattered to be asked to be a friend. Yes! I will be your friend, I responded and so I jumped in. I didn't want to get "hooked" on Facebook of course, so I set up a policy for myself, 'I will only friend people on Facebook if they ask me first.' This is a little like saying, 'I will only eat the folded potato chips' to limit calories. It is a false and useless control system.

For a while I coasted by with that, only visiting Facebook if someone spoke to me directly (these messages come in to your email). Then I saw Richard B.'s name on someone else's friend list and I broke my first rule. Richard! I loved Richard! He was an old high school/band buddy who I'd completely lost touch with and I would love to know where he was and what he was up to. I friended him.

Now the floodgates were open. What happened to that woman whose wedding we went to in the eighties but had abruptly stopped getting Christmas cards from in the 90s? Want to know? Friend her! I started dreaming about people from my past. The neighbors we lived next door to for only one year in 1968. What were their names? There were seven kids and I played with Annette and my brother played with Ricky. Wonder what they're doing now? Look for them on Facebook! And Patti H. I was her BFF for one month in 1977 when we traveled to Spain with the Spanish club. She was from Pittsburgh; I from Detroit but we were pen pals for years. Whatever happened to her? Facebook her!

And so, like so many other people I am a bit of a fan of Facebook. After making fun of social media like the old cranky person I am, I am now a convert. I am not alone. According to Facebook the majority of their users are over 50 and that does not surprise me a bit. How else can you accumulate several dozen friends over the years unless you've lived several decades? And it is great for keeping in touch with all those people with whom you once had relationships in your storied past--from a co-worker at your first job to the kid you back-packed through Europe with--maybe you don't keep in touch by mail or phone but that doesn't mean they are forgotten.

That's the great thing about Facebook--just like email keeps us in touch in ways we would never have thought possible (my 10-year-old emails her 94-year-old Great Grandma) so does Facebook.

So yes, you nay-sayers, it is a bit of a time waster but I do indeed want to know that Wendy had fabulous salsa last week and Cher is thankful for the sunny day and Barb made a memorial rock garden for her sister this weekend.

In this tiny way I get to stay connected to all the people who were ever dear to me on a weekly basis not just through the dreary custom of Christmas cards (oh holiday letters, that's an entirely different blog). And in a world that moves ever faster I find that immensely comforting.

By the way, in case you were wondering, I'm making baked chicken and rice pilaf for dinner.

ELIZABETH EDWARDS: LESSONS IN RATIONALIZATION

An anonymous reader suggested I comment on Elizabeth Edwards so I've been letting her rattle around (Elizabeth, not the reader) in my head for the weekend to see what I can come up with.

The truth is, I am so dumbfounded, stupefied, horrified, saddened, and mystified by the whole book and tour that I cannot form any really insightful or quippy thing to say about her. She reminds me of that girl in college who dated an asshole but felt compelled to tell us constantly just how great he was despite all evidence to the contrary. No, really, when you guys aren't around he's soooo wonderful. Really. We didn't buy it then, Elizabeth, and we sure ain't buyin it now.

What is her point of all this? It can't be to get rich off her book because she knows she will not live long enough to spend that money. Is it to make sure her kids have enough money? I doubt that--surely between the two of them there's a considerable estate. Is it for fame? No, I don't think so really--I mean that can't be important when you are on your way out.

The only thing I can think of is that she wants to die in peace knowing that her decision to stay with "the cad" (as Dennis Miller so aptly called him) was the right thing to do. And because she surely knows that is not the case, she needs to really, really convince herself that it is by writing an entire book about it and hopefully convincing the rest of the world that it's a really, really good idea to live with a man who would betray you in your darkest hour with a horrible, horrible woman.

Make no mistake here: while I think that Reillo woman (what the hell is her name? I don't want to add one more hit on Google looking her up) is indeed the lowest of the low home-wrecking, predators but her crime is dwarfed by John's crime of infidelity. To quote Laura San Giacomo's character in Sex, Lies and Videotape when asked she can betray her sister by sleeping with her sister's husband, "Hey, I'm not the one who stood up in front of God and everyone and promised to be faithful to her." (going on memory here, I think that's how it went)

But John did. So this twist on the whole thing in which Elizabeth portrays her husband as a sort of dupe to a cunning woman's wiles is disingenuos at best and pathological denial at worst.

Above all, I object to the spectacle for two reasons: 1) she is passing the whole thing off as a lesson in "resilience" when it appears to actually be a lesson in "rationalization" or maybe "denial" and worse 2) she is doing this in public at the expense of her young children. This is as unforgivable as the affair itself.

So, I don't really have much new to say about this topic, but the fact is, neither did Elizabeth but that didn't stop her from writing an entire book about it.

The only thing I can hope for is that it brings her some peace at the end of her life though if it does it comes at an exorbitant price--the future peace of her children.

AWARD SEASON

everyone's a winner!

The month of May in Glenview (and in many school districts I suspect) means lots and lots of award ceremonies for all our brilliant and talented children. Of course, in a world where kids can't even attend a birthday party without getting a custom-made T-shirt, we would not expect them to finish up their school year without making sure each and every one of the little darlings is given an award, a plaque, a certificate and a big round of applause just for being you!

This means that as a parent you will get a letter or a phone call from the school inviting you to attend an award ceremony because your son or daughter has received an award for some great scholastic or athletic achievement at school.

At least that's what you think the first time you get one of those letters or calls. You get the video camera fired up and see if you can talk a grandparent or spouse or a younger sibling into going with you for the big event.

Imagine your disappointment (not to mention your mother's irritation) when you get there and find out the award is for "Good Effort In French" which is an award given to just about any kid who attended the class on a semi-regular basis. Heh heh you smile apologetically at your mom for keeping her from her pilates class as your brilliant progeny traipses across the multi-purpose room along with a dozen or so other slackers while Mademoiselle Jones hands him a "special certificate" she just printed out on her computer and says with a big smile, "Tres bien!"

I am only exaggerating a little here. To be fair, they also give out awards to children who really deserve the recognition for the nearly herculean efforts they put into the school year and the extra-curricular activities. The problem is that when you are invited to attend an award ceremony you have NO idea if your kid is going to get a real award or a bogus award. So you go, and since you've been duped before you don't make a big deal about it or even tell your spouse because you don't want him to take time off to watch your kid get an award for being above average in social studies. And THAT will be the time your kid actually wins the school award for all-around kid greatness that goes to only one kid and the newspaper will be there and they'll want a picture of your entire family and they'll wonder how such a great kid could come from such an apathetic family.

Well, that has never happened to me but it nearly happened to my friend Kelly who, a few years back, sent her husband off to work with reassurances that their son TJ would be getting some meaningless award only to find out that he was about to set a school record for receiving the most (real) awards. Thank goodness for cell-phones. We fondly remember that event as the "TJ Mihelic Awards Ceremony" around here.

Of course it helps if you can crack the code. Last year I was going to the meaningless award ceremony (You're only invited to this one if your kid is going to win several meaningless awards, I have at least figured that much out by now) only to see the parents of the superstars leaving the building. "Hey, where are you all going?" I asked naively. TJ's mom explained gently, "Oh,they have the school-wide awards first. They just finished up," she said, trying to hide behind her back the stash of gold medals and award statues her son had just won. She's a modest woman.

WTF? They have the real awards first then break up into classes for the meaningless awards and I didn't even KNOW that?

All of this came back to me yesterday when I got a letter inviting me to the Science Awards Ceremony at the High School. This is the first year I have someone in high school so now I have to try to decode the ceremony system there too. I was quite suspect of the invitation. For one thing Atticus is barely carrying a B+ in that class. Can they really award that? Maybe he found a cure for a disease or something. So I asked him about it when he got home.

"Oh that. It's nothing. I think the teacher has to give out a certain number of awards and our class is so lame he had to choose me. I wouldn't come unless you're incredibly bored."

"So you knew you were getting it?"

"Yeah. The teacher had me address the envelope to you."

Wow. That is an honor. Here, send this letter to your mom so she'll know we're giving you this prestigious award.

So I'm proposing an award system code that is just for the parents. The invitation to the award ceremony could have a three-tier code system like our oh-so-helpful homeland security threat system:

Code Blue: This is a perfunctory award given to your kid because he or she has not physically harmed anyone in this class and did show up, fully dressed almost every day of the school year. Come if you can squeeze it in between the grocery trip and the bill-paying.

Code Yellow: This is an actual award only the top 15% of the class will be given. Nifty certificates with their names printed on them will be given! You may want to attend this and even make an attempt to photograph the event on your cell-phone.

Code Orange (also known as the TJ Mihelic code): This is a REAL award. Your son or daughter not only got all A's but also headed up a project to implement an easy-to-use recycling system for the cafeteria that involves the help of the special needs kids AND led the basketball team to a state-wide victory (Judy, you will never see a Code Orange so just don't worry about it.)Bring your family and your camera and your video camera with tripod.

Happy awards season. I hope your children get many awards, real and otherwise!