Duty Overload

I'm on my fifth straight day of duty. I haven't left the campus since Thursday morning. And by not left the campus, I mean the only times I've left the dorm are to walk the 100 yards to the cafeteria to eat a couple times a day. I'm slightly fried.

What does duty mean? For the most part, it means I sit at a desk in a big room by myself and waste time on the internet feeling guilty for not reading or writing or doing something else that doesn't suck my brain out of my head and deposit it in my ass. The point is to be available to girls - make change for laundry, answer questions about travel over the break, chat with those who want to chat, and periodically do rounds of the building.

So, last night. The four adults in the building had gotten together to plan fun Christmasy/holiday activities for the girls. I bought mini-stockings with gifts for all 37 girls and an ornament for each where I wrote their names. Another person picked out a beautiful, 8-ft tall tree. Another found ginger bread house kits to decorate in a little, healthy, advisor-group competition. The other bought supplies to make adorable, cookie-cutter ornaments to decorate our tree and fill the room with cinnamon smells. We planned to wrap their doors early one morning so they could wake up to red and green. We were excited. We each put time and money into this.

Yesterday, the tree was put up. We found a star and lights. I finished writing the names on each ornament. The mix was made for cinnamon, apple sauce and glue ornament-making. Our dorm meeting was scheduled for its regular Sunday at 7pm. We covered some business. I had to stop a few times to remind them to be quiet and put away their cell phones. Then, I started to talk about the fun activity we had for them tonight... and they just started talking. And kept talking. I sat there staring at them with my best "WHAT THE HELL???" teacher-look. My co-worker asked if she could yell, "For the love of Pete!!" They weren't talking about the activity. It wasn't that they were so excited they couldn't contain themselves. They were just being rude. After five minutes (FIVE MINUTES!!), I said, "Meeting's over. Go clean."

The ones on their phones stood up without even looking up. There were a few surprised faces, but mostly not. Once some of them passed the desk and saw my other co-worker stirring the cinnamon mixture, they were curious and asked what it was. "It's the activity we had planned for you tonight, we were going to make ornaments and decorate the tree. You guys were too busy though, so now you can go clean." I repeated this explanation several times as more girls inquired.

It wasn't my best moment. I felt passive aggressive and mean. I was also really pissed. Disappointed and pissed.

Then I sat with my co-workers and drank mint, hot chocolate and punched out ornaments in the shape of lobsters, moose, the state of Maine, and actual Christmas shapes. The dorm was almost silent as we enjoyed the smell of mint and cinnamon and pine and sat in front of the lit tree, with tiny white lights. We took pictures of the co-worker who'd never had a real tree before as she hung an ornament, took a sip of hot chocolate and stamped moose. It wasn't the evening we'd planned, but turned out okay.

Until I came back to my apartment to get supplies to clean up and Henry stood up in his crib and said, "Poopers, Mommy."

Say My Name, Say My Name

I realized the other day how much I say Henry's name. Not just when he's in trouble, with the shocked stage whisper: "Henry Oscar McCannell." But when I see him first thing in the morning. When it's time to take a nap. When he says, "Mommy?" ("Mama" just disappeared and I already miss it). When I make up songs about him. I say his name so much that when I call him anything else (Honey, Pumpkin Pie, Silly Monkey, etc.) he says, "No, I'm Henry."

But, I guess what brought this to my attention was the realization of how infrequently I hear my own name. And when I do it's rarely when someone is talking to me, but more likely about me. I'll catch Jared on the phone making plans with his family and saying he's going to check with me. The girls call me "Mrs. McCannell" which still doesn't sound like my name, so that doesn't count. Adults don't usually greet each other by name, but the cafeteria is full of "Hi Henry"s when we walk in.

In San Francisco, with my mother and father and brother, it felt like they said my name a lot. In a good way. And each time it was a brief jolt of shock, followed by comfort. Like when it's really sticky hot out and a wisp of wind brushes across your arms and shoulders. Unexpected and lingering. I'm reminded of my mom telling me how older people don't get touched very much. People stop hugging them or holding their hand. My mom used to rub my grandmother's back when she sat next to her. And I try to do this with Henry, holding his feet, kneading his legs and smoothing his hair. Hearing my name from my family is like that. My father, with one arm around my shoulders, saying, "Kelli, it's so good to see you." My mother, pushing my face into her chest and thumping my back, "Kelli, I've missed you." My brother, leaning down from the upstairs of his apartment "Kelli, do you want lemonade?"

When I worked at a movie theater in college, I used to get annoyed at customers who'd use my name. "Hello, uh, Kelli, this popcorn is stale." "Excuse me, Kelli, the theater is too cold." "Hi, Kelli, would you recommend the hot dogs?" But they didn't know me, they didn't count. They didn't get to pretend we are intimate and throw out my name like it's natural. To avoid their stranger-Kelli-usage, I'd wear someone else's nametag and smile when they said the wrong name. It was my little bite of enjoyment.

I've watched enough cop shows to know that using someone's name is a technique in familiarity. Something to make serial killers relate to their victims. A word to keep someone from jumping off a building. What Jason Bourne always wanted to know about himself. And psychology is silly in that way. How applicable it is to everything. We think we are above techniques of name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake. But when people we care about use our words back to us, say our name or put a hand on our arm (in a non-creeper way), it works. We feel paid attention to. Touched.

Advisee Reports

It's time for my advisee reports again. And because five new Norwegian girls arrived, my advisee list is up to ten. They have their homeroom advisors and their international student advisor and their academic advisor and me, their residential advisor. That's a lot of advising. I tell the girls that we are just hoping they like one of us enough to ask questions when they come up.

Every six weeks or so, we send reports home to their parents. We include academic, citizenship and extra-curricular comments. Some of them flow easily, the Brazilian girl who stops by the desk when she comes in from school every day. The prefect who I work with on duty and everyone knows. And sitting behind the duty desk as the girls come home from school tells me a lot. I see who is friends with who. And who immediately signs out to go meet up with her boyfriend, the kid with glasses waiting outside behind a tree until he hears the slam of our front door. I see who had a rotten day of classes by how quickly they ask for the kitchen key and how many bags of microwave popcorn they bring. I see who is in sports, their marroon and white uniforms with the outline of a husky head. I see who is excited by what activities, grabbing nearby dry erase markers to make sure their name is at the top of the list for a Portland Mall trip. I see who must hate the cafeteria food because they'd rather walk every day (sometimes in 30degree weather) to go to the Chinese food restaurant four blocks away.

But even then, there are the ones who slip by. The quiet, hidden girls who whisper past my door on the way to morning meeting and are a blur sneaking home from school. They disappear in classes and blend in the cafeteria. They have friends, giggle with their roommates at night, and sign up for dinner and a movie trips. But they don't seek out adults. At least not me. And when I knock on their doors to chat, their eyes take up half their face like cartoon animals facing a demon.

It is sometimes their personalities that are shy and sometimes their limited English keeps them shadowy. But either way, I have to find something to tell their parents that proves I pay attention to them. One of the other supervisors was writing a report about one of the new girls, and asked me, "Don't you think parents get tired of hearing, 'Your daughter is awesome.'?" I immediately answered no. Any healthy parent relishes hearing how much the world appreciates their child as much as they do. And other parents could take it as compliment meant solely for them and how their child must have gotten all their glowing qualities from their parents.

I email their teachers. I corner them after school. In my head, I include things their parents wouldn't want to know.
"Kitty is a very bright girl. Her teachers are impressed with her college-level writing. I'm so sorry I made her puke in my car that one time."
"Paula's English is impressive, especially for only having study it for the past year. I hope she hasn't learned the word for moth to tell you about that weird infestation of them in her bathroom. It's all cleared up now."
"Louise has an infectious laugh and you made the right decision not letting her spend the weekend in Boston with her older, married, online boyfriend in early September."
"Mary struggles with her English, but with more practice, I know she will improve. That is, if the ghost in her room doesn't suck out her soul."

They may not want to hear those things, but it would sure make it easier on me to include the good stuff.

Adventures in Babysitting

Remember that movie from 1987? While I'm not being chased by mobsters or have had to sing my way out of a blues club (yet), I feel like I could star in the remake.

Here're the adventures since my last blog...

• three more trips to doctors' offices with girls and Henry... good times.
• trying to convince a room full of foreign students that Halloween can be fun and then convince them I'm not insane when I show up as the Count to our Halloween dinner party.
• chaperoning a dinner/movie trip only to find my bus won't start, maintenance is called, of course it starts just fine for him and we're heading home, their faces lit with iPhones and earbud chords like tiny, white braids from their heads, when a boy tells me he left his wallet in the theater.
• emailing parents across the globe to ask them if it's okay for their teenage (15-18) daughter and her boyfriend to spend a week in a hotel in New York (or Boston or Portland etc.) over Thanksgiving break and them telling me, yep, of course, why not.
• putting my years of hair dyeing experience to good practice because my Russian student trusts me more than her English and put her butt-length hair in my plastic-gloved hands to make her a brunette.
• moving the tables and chairs and couches out of the big lounge to get 40 minutes of Just Dance in with a co-worker while the students are still in classes, only to have them come home and find us in the middle of a California Girls routine in old T-shirts and faded yoga pants with sweaty foreheads.
• Henry running out the screen door (in his new Thomas underwear; naked; barefoot; in various stages of disarray) to follow a girl up to her room; into the lounge; down to the kitchen where they feed him sugary treats and Doritos and flavored water and I chase after him and say, "Henry, that's not yours" when I really mean "DON'T EAT MORE CRAPPY FOOD" and they say, "Oh, that's okay, Mrs. McCannell. I gave it to him."
• performing a room search with the Dean of Discipline (not his actual title, but should be) and finding Prada shoes, an Armani Exchange belt, three bottles of Dior cologne, disposable boxers, a large wad of cash and thousands of dollars in eletronic equipment, but only two cigarettes.
• a hurricane (which barely touched us, but still seems worth mentioning)
• a girl (the only one without a roommate) saying she wants to move rooms because she's terrified to live alone even though we let her keep the light on and when I told my boss about it he said, yes, that's where the ghost lives, (which is incidentally right above our bedroom) and then the other woman who's worked at the school forever saying, yes, but they're all nice ghosts.

Whaddaya think - do I get my own sitcom?

Fox Sweaters.

There's a Chinese girl in the dorm who's dating a Chinese boy from another dorm. It's her second boyfriend this year. The first had a reputation. This one wears matching clothes with her. Yes. Matching. Not similar colors. Not similar styles. The EXACT SAME sweater and the EXACT SAME sweat pants. The sweater is pencil-lead gray with the silouette of a white fox wrapped around the bottom left side. Apparently this is common in Asian fashion. No, not fox sweaters. Couples with matching clothing. From Huffpost women:

 

In eastern Asia, where PDA is still a taboo, couples have taken to synchronizing their outfits to display their affection. The trend is so popular that stores are starting to make outfits sold in pairs, and pictures of couples dressed identically have overtaken fashion magazines. When a couple who've been dressing the same break up, the clothes aren't worn again, which, on one hand, kind of sucks, but on the other hand ... POST-BREAKUP SHOPPING SPREE!!!!! We can sort of see the appeal.

While the idea of a couple wearing identical Bermuda shorts might make you want to gag, consider the alternative: couples swapping spit on the subway. Honestly, that's way worse than matching graphic hoodies.

 

With that explanation, this doesn't seem that weird to me. Am I rushing out to buy a matching LLBean outfit for Jared and me? No. But it does seem sort of sweet to see 15-year-old love. They wear them to the cafeteria. He wears his when he comes to visit her at the dorm, two teenagers snuggled as close as they can get in front of me on hard, scratchy dorm couches while he pretends he'd rather be talking to her than playing Super Mario Brothers on our big screen.

 

I just googled that sweater and (!!!!!!!) it's $495. They've been dating for a month. Tops. Sure, we know the odds are great they aren't going to get married. Or maybe even last until winter break. But matching clothing ($500 matching clothing, no less) adds a new level of committment to the relationship. It's a branding of sorts. I don't know that Jared and I could agree every morning on what we would wear. We can't even figure out a Halloween costume!

 

I have so many questions about this trend. Do they text each other in the morning with "fox swtr, gry swt pnts?" Or is it settled the night before? Who picks out the outfits originally? Who buys them? How long does this continue into the relationship? Is it a honeymoon phase type of thing or does it carry over into long term love? Does anyone ever keep the clothing from a past relationship? Is this offensive to the next person they date? Do people ever stay together because their favorite article of clothing happens to match the jerk they are dating? What if one person loses/gains a bunch of weight? Do they force their partner to abandon that piece of clothing?

 

And here's a question. What sort of weird things do Americans do like this?

 

47% Henry.

When I found out I was pregnant with Henry, I was unemployed with no health insurance. The next morning, I called a hotline and within a half hour, I had an appointment at a community clinic the next day and an appointment at the health & human services office to sign up for Medi-Cal later in the week.

My first job out of college was the Outreach Coordinator for the American Red Cross WIC Program. It was my job to not only know the WIC program, but to know all the community partners that provide resources for women and families. Even with this knowledge (I worked there for two years) and the years of nonprofit work after (six more years), I had a roughish time navigating the system.  

After confirming the pregnancy at the clinic, they set me up with appointments: five of them a month. Two with the doctor/nurse. One with the nutritionist. One with the social worker. One with the prenatal counselor. And at each appointment, I waited a least an hour, even when I arrived on time. If I’d had a job, a job that didn’t have healthcare and would require me to go to the clinic, I can’t imagine my employer would have allowed me to leave once a week for two hours for an appointment.

To sign up for Medi-Cal, the original woman on the phone told me the six pieces of paperwork I needed to bring with me to the appointment. Again I waited over an hour in a room filled (FILLED) with people. Lines so long by 8am that some of them wouldn’t be seen that day. I was called to three different windows and then sat behind a scratched desk and handed over the pieces of required paperwork, proof I was desperate. And after an hour in that back room, it was declared that I would most likely (it was still not for sure) receive assistance.

After this was settled and I’d attended a month of appointments, I signed up for the WIC program, returning to the office I once made bulletin boards in and counseled participants. They gave me vouchers for healthy foods and I took them to the grocery store each week. Jared and I studied the list of acceptable and unacceptable types of orange juice and peanut butter and inevitably were told at the cash register that we’d chosen the wrong one. Half of the cashiers were assholes about it and the other half treated us like normal customers.

I’m not trying to complain about what a pain in the ass all this was. I’m still extremely grateful for the help I received during a joyful, but stressful time. I was lucky and had a healthy baby. I had prenatal care, was able to transfer to a birthing center and then the hospital where Henry was born. I’m still “friends” with other women from my birth classes on Facebook. Did I feel entitled to the care? To the resources? No. But on some level, I think those resources are somewhat like insurance. You pay into them, you contribute to society, and when you need them, they are there.

I’m writing about this now because I'm pissed off and scared. Because I’ve been watching the presidential debates and reading all the articles posted on Facebook (okay, not all of them) and hearing the discussion of the candidates. And President Obama repeatedly says they have a “fundamentally different” approach to the job. This, above all other things, summarizes it for me. For a while there, I was part of the 47%. I had my son as one of the 47%. Did I feel entitled to jump through hoops to get help when I really needed it? No. But I was thankful. Do I feel offended when a man who wants to lead our country infers, no, blatantly states to the people he wants to impress the most that half of our country is victims who will never help themselves and want to take advantage of the rest of the country? Yes. And disgusted. Mitt Romney is a mean girl. His presidency will not be about leadership and strength, but about power and suppression.

As anyone who’s ever stepped outside their front door knows all people are imperfect. We bite our nails or snap at people when we’re tired or forget to give the courtesy wave while driving. We can be selfish and unforgiving; short-sighted and unprofessional; or petty and cold. We can even be quiet during a presidential debate or not accomplish everything we set out to during a presidential campaign. But if we can, for the most part, be kind and patient with our words, gather as much information as we can to make prudent decisions, and keep the least of our people on the top of our minds, that’s pretty impressive. That deserves another go. That’s everything I would want my 47% son to be.

Root Canals and Cow Fields

Yesterday I took a girl to the dentist. We'll call her Kitty. She's the second girl in two weeks to have tooth issues. I hadn't spent much time with her before this and I know she struggles with English, so I was a little anxious. The dentist's office was in Hartland, a neighboring town only ten minutes away.

I'm normally very good with directions. Honestly.

The building wasn't marked. I mean, no address, no sign, no nothing. I went past it, turned around, couldn't find it and finally called the office. It was right across the street from where I parked to call them. I was not inspiring confidence in Kitty.

We went inside. The dentist takes some X-rays and then called me back.

"There's a lot happening here," he said, waving his hand in front of the X-rays. Diagnosis: one root canal, one filling and "maybe more." He gave us a referral and a prescription and sent us on our way.

In the car in the parking lot, I try to translate what just happened. Kitty's eyes were large and her hands almost shaking. She was afraid it would hurt and I told her she'll feel much better afterwards. She asked again and squinched up her face then typed something into her iphone.

"Will they have this?" she asked, showing me her phone. Under some Chinese characters in the Google translator it said: anesthesia.

"Of course!" I almost yelled and told her all about the numbing they will do.

She seemed happy after that so I started the car. It was 10:56am. Feeling chatty, I asked her about if she wanted to go to college and what she wanted to study. We talked about her parents and I felt like I was learning a lot about her. Learning so much, in fact, I wasn't paying attention. There weren't many turns to get there, so I'm not sure how I ended up on the wrong path. New England back roads in Fall look similar. Cows. Fields. Green. Trees. It took me a little while to realize I wasn't on the right road. But I figured if I just drove, I'd see something familiar. I saw a Route 152 sign (the road I drove in on) and took it. Again, it took me awhile to realize I wasn't on the right road. Too long.

"How close are we to school?" Kitty asked.
"Oh.... ten minutes?" I guessed, hoping I wasn't lying too much.

I saw a sign for Cambridge, a city I've only ever heard of as being in Massachusetts and pulled over. At this point, I noticed my gas tank was almost empty. No gas light yet. I pulled out my cell phone to call Jared. No reception. I carry the duty phone for work and tried that. When I told him where I was, from his pause I could tell he had never heard of Cambridge, Maine.

"I'm on 152. Going north, I think."
"Go south," he said.

At this point, Kitty was leaning against the door.
"I feel dizzy," she told me.
I rolled down her window a few inches. Have I already mentioned it was raining?

She leaned her head against the cool glass and silent plops of water started pooling in the armrest. I turned the car around and headed back through the orange and yellow and naked trees. The sloping hills and L turns. It would have been an incredibly, beautiful, scenic, idyllic ride if I didn't have a student in pain over a root canal, feeling dizzy, while it rained (both inside my car and out), on a back road in rural Maine with no cell service while running out of gas.

Forty-five minutes after leaving the dentist's office, I found the road I was supposed to be on. Kitty was half-sleeping, half-clutching her stomach at that point. I noticed her fist was clenched. We hadn't spoken since Cambridge.

"Are you okay?" I asked.
She nodded.

I breathed easier when I drove past the golf course and the tractor store. Through the neighborhood where some friends of ours live and Henry and I found the snapping turtle that one time. I was beyond relieved to drive through Hawthorne Park where they take the little league pictures and saw the Post Office up ahead. But as I turned a corner, maybe two minutes away from home, Kitty said, "Can you stop the car?"

I pulled over right away (right in front of a puddle, of course). She grabbed at the door and I fumbled with those stupid, automatic locks I'm always yelling at Jared about. At first she just leaned her head out and then jumped out all together. Wearing only a thin, white hoodie, Kitty stood in the rain, in the weeds, and puked.

I. Felt. Horrible.
Sooooooooo horrible.

"Sorry," she said when she got back in the car after maybe five minutes.
"No, I'm sorry," I told her.

Minutes later I dropped her off in front of the dorm and she bowed, slightly, as she got out of the car.
"Thank you so much, Mrs. McCannell," she said.
"Sorry again, Kitty!" I said, almost crying.
She shook her head and ran for the door. It was 12:10. I'd made her miss lunch.

And today she had a root canal.

Current City

Had lunch with another new (to me) faculty member today. When I told him where I was from he said, "Oh man, Maine must be a culture shock then?"

I've been asked this a lot. And, while it was shocking for the lady at the bank drive-through to know my son had been to the emergency room without me even knowing her name, the answer is not really. I've been thinking about how Facebook words it: Current City. Because I like thesaurus.com, I looked up "current" (see definition at the end). Present. Now.

I think more and more, like fashions, hobbies, friends, sleeping habits, food tastes and musical preferences, it's good for cities to be different at different times in your life. Would I have liked getting a divorce and trying to date in my late 20s in Pittsfield? Maybe not. But does it suit me now? Yes. Sometimes you need a place to be slower because life is fast no matter where you are. And maybe it takes living in traffic to appreciate long, snaking freeways when you can rarely see more than three cars at a time but you're bookended with thickets of deep green. And the flatline weather with a range of twenty degrees makes sticky sun, chameleon leaves and bare trees feel like something is happening. Time is moving and you can actually mark it.

Life doesn't feel slower here. My days are still filled with meetings and work and Henry and the girls and co-workers and eating and shortened conversations with Jared right before we both fall asleep. But now every day has breakfast, lunch and dinner and I don't have to do the dishes. I can go to the doctor or get my teeth cleaned and not worry about the bills. I can call my father-in-law with less than half an hour notice and drop-off Henry while I run an errand. I can go to Trivia Night on Thursdays at Mainely Brews with my coworkers (our team is named "Yes We Are!" and we won last week!!) and earn points for knowing Bruce Willis's three daughters names: Rumer, Tallulah and Scout.

Is it different? Yes. Do I miss San Diego things? Yes. But this is my current city. My size right now. It fits.

Main Entry:	current [kur-uhnt, kuhr-] Show IPA/ˈkɜrənt, ˈkʌr-/ Show Spelled
Part of Speech:	adjective
Definition:	contemporary; common
Synonyms:	accepted, accustomed, afoot, circulating, common knowledge, customary, cutting-edge, doing, existent, extant, fad, fashionable, general, going around, hot*, in, in circulation, in progress, in the mainstream, in the news, in use, in vogue, instant, leading-edge, mod, modern, now*, on front burner, ongoing, popular, present, present-day, prevailing, prevalent, rampant, regnant, rife, ruling, state-of-the-art, swinging, topical, trendy, up-to-date, widespread
Antonyms:	antiquated, old, old-fashioned, past, uncommon, uncontemporary

Bicycles and Celebrities Dancing

After a month-long story that doesn't need to be told, Henry went on his first bike ride last night. Well, he rode on the back of the bike as I awkwardly peddled and tried not to tip over my toddler. It was dark out and in the low 40s, but he said "WEEEEEE" a lot and was giggling. I didn't get a picture, but here's a cute one of him in his Thomas the Train helmet that he likes to wear even when not strapped to the back of a bike.

 

"Did you like bike riding, Henry?" I asked.

"Yeah, I like it. That fun, Mama," he said.

Afterwards, with slightly frozen hands, we came back inside to get him ready for bed. Then, because it had been a long day and Henry'd taken a long nap, Jared and I sat on the couch (for what we said would be just a few minutes) and Henry dragged around his trains. We flipped through channels, not really knowing the stations yet because the TV, if on, is set to the Super Reader channel. We came upon Dancing with the Stars in the middle of a complicated dance, a woman with her head resting inches off the floor on a man's foot. We watched it for the three-ish minutes it took to finish and when the music stopped and the dancers hugged eachother, we realized Henry was clapping.

"Yaaaaaaay!" he cheered over and over.

"Did you like the dance?" I asked him.

"Yeah, I like it," he said, "So cool. I dance!" And he stood up and spun around a couple times.

I thought of both of these snippets of Henry when I heard on the radio today that children do something 400 times a day that adults only do 15. Any guesses? Scroll down for answer.



































Laugh. Did you get it right? Apparently not, if you're an adult.
We all need a little more "weeee" and "yaaaay" and laughing in our lives.

One Direction

I keep putting off blogging because it's been so long and I feel like I need to write about everything that's happened in between now and when I last wrote. But, this isn't a journal. And not all things are interesting. And, no one wants to read that long of a post. Right?

So fast forward to now. Now when I'm sitting on duty in my dorm's main lounge and four Chinese boys and one girl are coloring in pages of the digestive system and trying to make a music video for a song that starts with chewing and ends with poop and is set to One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful."

The girl is one of my advisees. Let's call her Mabel. She's failing Health class. The teacher, who is also one of the other dorm supervisors, gave them the assignment to write the song. The video is extra credit. A chance for Mabel to not be failing.  This weekend, every time I'd see her, I asked, "How's the video coming? Do you have the song written? How can I help?" She'd smile at me and nod. Then say, "Ehhh, I will work on it." English is Mabel's second language. Most kids learning another language don't have to learn words like masticate, esophagus, or rectal cavity. She's taking it a like a champ.

Yesterday, she came to my door as timid as a deer. I saw her walking up to the screen and it looked like she was going to veer off at the last minute, retreat to the kitchen downstairs. But she knocked, lighter than a knock, more like finger tap.

"How's it coming?" I asked.
"Could you help? Mabel asked.

Minutes later I was in her room watching a YouTube video of two girls explaining the digestive track to K$sha's "Tik Tok".
"does it have 2 use the scientific words? can it b funny?" I texted the teacher.
Mabel'd written "a song." It was just parts of her notes recopied. She said it went to "What Makes You Beautiful." I told her she needed a chorus.

It took everything (read: EVERYTHING) I had not to take her paper and write it for her. I like writing. I like creative projects. I like pop music. I wanted to write it soooo bad. Instead, I looked down at her gray-with-black-sketches-of-Paris-sites bedspread and said, "This song is about a boy singing to a girl. What if you sang to your body?"

She stared at me.
I gave her a first line. "Baby, you digest my food like nobody else."
She smiled.
"Why do you eat food?" I asked her.
"To get energy." She said after a very long pause and confused look.
"Right!" I almost shouted. "And what does energy and food do?"
Another pause. Another look. "Makes strong?"
"Perfect," I was practically gushing at this point. "How about 'The way you give me energy makes me very strong.'"
Another smile.
"I like it," she whispered.

And now there's a boy singing this song over and over in the dorm lounge. :)

I'm thinking again what great practice this is for me. Squelching my tendencies to take over completely and lead Mabel in one direction. To rewrite her song without asking questions. I know this is my way. I'm already doing it with Henry. When we used to walk to the park and I'd rush him to get there, thinking that was the point of the outing. Pushing him along as he put his tiny, round nose up to petals and blew air out. Telling him to turn around and walk when he pointed out the white and the dark, gray rocks. Looking at my watch when he counted the cars and trucks on the street. Maybe I'm mixing my sayings here:
Stop and smell the roses.
It's the journey not the destination.
Teach a man to fish...
But all of those remove haste. All of them mean thinking of something else, outside myself. All suggest asking different questions. Stopping and consideration.
Because that's what makes us beautiful. ;)

Calling all Super Readers

Henry's started watching a TV show called Super Why. It's a group of characters with special powers: Word Power, Spelling Power, Alphabet Power, Power to Read, and, the viewer with the Power to Help. They solve problems by consulting books, changing fairy tales into lessons. Throughout, they ask questions of the viewer. Henry loves it. He puts his hand in when they join in the beginning. He says his name when they ask: "Henry Oscar CaMannell!" He yells out letters when they ask, "What letter is this?" and he points out "Super letters" when they float onto the screen. He repeats lines and jumps up and down when they solve the problem.

In the mornings I watch him giddy to learn, spinning on his tippy-toes and clapping. "Hip hip horray," he squeals.

Over dinner, I listen to teachers talk about their classes. Some students are failing simply because they don't turn in any work, even when given time in class to complete assignments. Others have special accomodations made for them, to the point of getting to wear headphones in class because it calms them. An 80 (out of 100) is considered honors and teachers assigning 30pages of reading over a weekend are told to go easy on their students. My teacher co-workers, many in their first year of teaching, are giving lots of opportunitites to make up work or ask for help. They're going to their classrooms at 6am and not coming home until 9pm. They're meeting with parents who tell them not to teach about contraception and to make sure their child gets to leave class whenever she feels she needs to emotionally.

In the dorm, I'm an advisor to nine girls and we write quarterly reports to their parents, in lieu of long-distance parent-teacher conferences. I'm asked to include comments on their academic, social and extra-curricular activities. As a parent, I try to think of what I'd want to hear about my child. Anecdotes and little details that would tell me my daughter is being appreciated and cared for. There are girls I know better than others, girls whose reports are easy to write. Others I realize I need to spend more time with, ask questions about why they are missing assignments. How that presentation went in English. Whether or not they like the food in the cafeteria. What they like about their roommate.

Watching Henry, I'm wondering when the giddiness goes away. When do kids lose the hip hip horray? What's the teenage equivalent of super letters? How do teachers transform the Power of Indifference to turning in homework? Oh, maybe more importantly, how do I make sure the tippy-toe spinning never stops?

Wallypops

After two years and one week, Henry stopped breastfeeding. Well, he was stopped. My aforementioned skin-eating bacterial infection prompted some heavy drugs. Apparently prednisone is not so good for toddlers. The doctor said it was necessary for me, but I wondered how that would go over with Henry.

Turns out it was more me. He'd been nursing before his nap so I waited to take the pills until after, but he didn't end up asking to nurse. So, we stopped without fanfare. And when I'd put him sleeping in his bed and came back to the living room, my eyes filled. It felt like the end of an era. Henry asked a couple times for milk in the next couple of days, but when I told him it was all gone, there wasn't much fuss.

Now, we read before bed and rock in his chair. We bought a new Thomas the Train book and visited the library for more. Henry loves the library. I use it as a carrot. When he's lollygagging on other errands I say, "C'mon Henry, we have to get to the library." and he perks right up. They have an awesome kids area downstairs with a puppet theater, little colored chairs, tons of stuffed animals, a bucket chair with a screen he can trap himself in, and, of course, lots of books. Plus, there's usually other kids there and Henry loves watching them.

His next favorite place is the bank drive-through. I took him with Darby through there once and the teller gave us a dog treat and a lollipop (or, in Henry's words, wallypop). He's never forgotten. Yesterday I told him I had to go to the bank and he grabbed his shoes and said, "Wallypop!" even though it had been at least a week since we'd gone.

Henry's made quite a home for himself. He's learned names and when he says them unprompted the recipient melts. He knows how to get to the cafeteria. He likes to help with things. He'll take his clean clothes to his room, put his shoes on (with help), throw things in the trash, pick up his cars and take his dishes to the kitchen. He says, "I'm big, Mama." He speaks in sentences and puts thoughts together. He imitates both of us and apparently I say, "Sure, we can do that." a lot because that's his new favorite answer. He turned two and automatically started asking, "Why?"
"It's quiet time, Henry."
"Why?"
"Because girls are sleeping."
"Why?"
"Because they are tired."
"Why?"
"Because they are busy all day long and need rest."
"Why?"
"Because."

I think it's less about the act of breastfeeding and more about how big my baby is getting. He's a little man with preferences and personality and sayings of his own. He knows when he wants a snack and which books he wants to read and when he's all done with playing trucks. I need to step up my "Why?" answering.

Redrum and Dragon Cakes

It feels like it's been a long time since I wrote. I'd like to say it's because I was busy making Henry the most awesomest dragon cake ever and was busy celebrating his birthday and then breaking in his new trucks, cars and trains. Or because being on duty for 5 days and 4 nights in a row made me develop a slightly skin-eating bacterial infection that I thought was shingles and sent me to bed for 20hours one day and five the next and a trip to the ER. Or because my job has actually required me to go to meetings, schedule & coordinate several activities each week and be responsible for the welfare of 32 girls. All those things are true. But the real reason I haven't written is...

I was reading The Shining.

It's a thick book.

I'd never read Stephen King's fiction before. I've seen lots of the movies. Not cared for most of the horror ones. And, because of the cheeseball quality of most of his made-for-TV movies, subconsciously thought he was a bad writer. Even though his book on writing (cleverly titled On Writing) is my, by far, favorite book on writing (on writing, on writing, on writing - it seemed like I should say it just a few more times in the sentence). I now know this is not the case.

It is so the opposite of true that I stayed up several nights binge-reading because I couldn't stop in places that were so disturbing. Why I chose to read a book about a caretaker (den mother) of a crazy hotel (dorm) in a remote place (remote place) with his wife (husband) and their precocious five (two) year old where strange voices of ghosts (girls) swirl around them pushing them towards insanity, I'm not sure. Well, I sorta am. My coworker recommended it and I wasn't reading anything else. Plus, I'm in Stephen King country.

So, yes, I went a little nuts. Doing rounds at night, turning off the lights of the basement, I heard the sound of a thwumping roque mallet. With our room over the boiler room, I took the regular, creaky noises to mean the inevitable explosion was moments away. When Henry would repeat something I'd thought days ago, but forgot I said out loud, I asked if he had it and if Oscar appeared to him. And last night when I actually went to bed by 9, something I try to do every night and fail at, I stayed up until 11:45 finishing the damn thing just so I could sleep without picturing the dog-costume guy.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great book. Especially after I stopped picturing Shelley Duvall. Sooooo much better than the movie. It felt good to be lost in a book again. It's been a little while since I've carried a book with me on excursions with Henry in case there's a long line somewhere or a weird stop in traffic. It also feels good to be done with The Overlook.

My coworker is pushing The Green Mile next. If you don't hear from me, you'll know why.

Teenage Preview

To get to our room, we have to walk through Henry's. In the beginning, I'd tiptoe to bed and shush Jared, not wanting to wake the baby. Recently, I've started leaning over his crib for a minute before crossing the threshold to bed. In doing this, I've discovered something. He's so big! My little boy looks huge and long and HUGE in his crib. Henry will be two in five days. I'm not sure how this is possible because I still remember rocking in the rocking chair at my grandma's house while the contractions rippled through my big belly. And now I can barely carry my 30+lb boy in my arms.

Henry's birthdays make me miss my parents. Even though last year we had a fun party for him and lots of family and friends came out to celebrate. And I'm sure this year we'll do something relaxed involving a dinosaur/bus/Elmo/gorilla cake and lots of cousins. And Henry will have a great time again and laugh and smear his face with frosting. And he'll be excited about being able to rip wrapping paper and having everyone clap for him. But on that day, I will miss them even more than on others.

I don't think I'm even missing them for him. To him, they are here every day. In photos on the fridge. In memories of visits. In the clothes he wears from Nona. In the rocks he got from Bumpie. They are just outside the door, coming in at any moment. He would be excited to see them, but he also knows them so well that he probably wouldn't be surprised. They are Nona and Bumpie and we talk about them all the time.

I miss them as my parents. Maybe his birthdays remind me that I am their child. Unlike Henry, I know the difference between Mom and Dad within driving distance and not. I know that when they are close, my appreciation of them ebbs and flows, but when we are apart, at times it feels more like an ocean with a tide perpetually out.

And now I have 32 more children in my life. Teenagers, slightly different from my toddler, but not much. And when they ask me for advice or for permission or just talk, my head first goes to, "As a parent..." but I don't say this to them. I just sympathize with their parents at home, worrying from a distance, not able to peak over their cribs at night.  And after especially long/difficult/tiring/frustrating/attitude-filled conversations with teenage girls, I call my parents and I wonder if after we hang up and they head to bed, do they whisper in the Alaska dark about all the long/difficult/tiring/frustrating/attitude-filled conversations they had with me and I imagine all the long/difficult/tiring/frustrating/attitude-filled conversations I will have with Henry. This is good practice, but I still may call in Nona and Bumpie, the big guns, to take on some of those future conversations for me.

Candsassles

I spent yesterday following Henry around a sunny beach while he sat, chest-deep, in low tide while giggling at clumpy wet sand sticking to his hands and attempted to confiscate other children's sand toys from beside carefully built castles. When the tide came in, his cousins and friends attempted to keep the water out. They dug a hole and used the sand to build a squat wall, barracaded by newly-bought boogie boards. One girl laid down in the water and held out her arms against a wave, shouting to her friends, "I can't hold it off!" in desperate panic. They scrambled and shoveled and shouted orders and updates at each other. Henry ran around dumping out their buckets and pushing over the rainbow-colored boards. He fell asleep in the car before it was even out of the parking lot.

Yesterday felt like long, prosey paragraphs, even while it was happening. Today was more like snippets of action.

Today:

• Henry greeted the girls with: "nǐ hǎo" (pronounced knee-how).
• I was quickly trained on how to drive the 14-passenger bus and am now an authorized driver for MCI.
• We organized three trips to Walmart and the students shopped like next week was Armageddon rather than the start of school.
• A girl brought us presents from China and then told me she had bad news for me, following with, "I was so excited to give you these things that I locked my keys in my room."
• A 17-year-old girl asked me why she couldn't go spend the weekend with a 24-year-old boy in Portland. (She wouldn't tell me his actual age, saying it was "a secret" but that's my best guess)
• A girl asked me to switch roommates and I had to explain why we didn't put her with her best friend.
• The godmother of the Brazlian girl scratched Darby's chin through the rip in our screen door, the rip caused by Henry's tiny fingers and big head.
• The cafeteria used their two-day old cookies to make ice cream sandwiches.
• A co-worker and I decided to go to Oliver Garden tomorrow after we drop the kids off at the mall. I'm pretty sure there's still the neverending pasta bowl. Yum.
• Henry learned the word sandcastles, although intially called them candsassles.
• I walked up and down three flights of stairs over fifteen times. Once while carrying a mini-fridge.

Dragonflies

Great Moose Lake (Hartland, ME)

Today was our all-staff training day. I've already gone to three-ish days of residence staff training and wasn't sure what this one was going to be. It ended being a greeting by the headmaster celebrating accomplishments; an introduction of all new staff with a round of a applause for each of us; a discussion on this year's school theme of "kindness" and what that means for our school community; and a trip to a camp on a lake with a barbecue, paddleboats and fun people.

In the morning, after the welcome, I sat at a table with an English teacher, two academic counselors, a Humanities teacher, a member of the maintenance crew, a guy from IT and the new Mandarin teacher (none of whom I knew) and we talked about whether or not we were a kind group of adults and what we would do if we saw/heard students being mean. Then our small groups disbanded and we returned to the big group to meld about our smaller discussions. We talked about the need to model kindness and demonstrate reconciliation. We talked about bullying. We talked about being assertive rather than aggressive; standing up, not rolling over. And throughout this, people threw out funny comments or laughed when someone said something too true. The headmaster talked about his "Courtesy Rage" - the anger that boils when people don't acknowledge doors being held for them and giving the polite hand flip when a driver lets you cross the street or pull out in front of them. "I have that, too!" I told Jared as we walked back the dorm. "I know," he said.

We hopped on a school bus and drove twenty minutes to Hartland where another staff person has a couple camps (translations: any home located on a lake that is not their primary home (can be mansion or cabins - they all = camps)) on a hill of property - see picture above for her view. We ate barbecued chicken, pasta salad, watermelon, hot dogs, potato chips and all that good stuff. We took pictures with our staff (see below). People played horseshoes, volleyball, bacci ball, canoeing, kayaking, swimming and fishing. The headmaster threw the football with a guy from maintenance and an honors teacher. And after I forced Jared to inhale his chicken, we went on the paddleboat.

I rolled up my corduroys, we strapped on the life vests, and pumped our feet until we were beyond the fishermen and swimmers. The water was still and pulled our plastic boat around in drunken circles. We whispered about the morning and looked back at the 100 or so people playing on the shore. "This is our job," I said and Jared smiled at me. A dragonfly buzzed past my cheeks and landed on the skin of Jared's knee, poised in the air to begin peddling again. It's body was about an inch long with wings that would have reached across my hand. It whittled its leg across the other leg, with feelers twitching in the barely wind.

"This has never happened," I whispered. "This is crazy."

Jared moved his knee, pushing in circles as the water gushed under our boat. The dragonfly stayed on him, a sentinel on the tip of his knee. It stayed there for at least three minutes, which is a long time when you are paying attention to stillness. We paddled back and when we were half-way there, another dragonfly landed on my knee.

"Can you believe this??" I almost shouted.
"Henry would love this," Jared said.

So I googled dragonfly when I got home. They have to symbolize something. Everything symbolizes something. On a Pagan/Wicca page, it says: For the AmerIndians, dragonflies are symbols of change, communication from the elemental world and messages of enlightenment and wisdom.

I'll take it.

Jared's Advancement Office Team



My Alumni Hall Team

Cattail snow

On Monday, it was the kind of sticky heat that wakes you up. I would have liked to shower (although why bother with the humidity) and I would have liked to sleep in, but with both of those options off the table I slathered Henry in sunscreen (and me, too) and headed out with Darby with the goal of not being inside. On the way to Manson Park, we stopped by his cousins' house to see if anyone wanted to come with us. We picked up three more kids and a bucket of plastic trucks and tried to the take the shadiest route to the park. The sun was so bright and hot the skin on my feet felt scretched like it was cooking in my flip flops.

I let Henry out of the stroller once we were well into the grassy area and he walked over to Andrew (his only boy cousin, four months older than Henry) and said, "Andrew, hand." For twenty feet or so, they walked hand-in-hand although when I tried to take a picture with my phone, they'd fold into each other or break apart momentarily when one or the other would see a cool leaf or stick so every picture looked like one was about to shove the other or that that had just happened. 

We made our way to the biggest tree in the park. A tree that looks like one from a children’s book – thick, ropey trunk with wide-reaching branches swooping down like an umbrella with mossy grass underneath that probably never feels completely dry. I parked the stroller and sat on the only midly-graffitied metal bench. After ambling trips to the slide, swings and monkey bars, we all returned to the tree. Ava (8) and Noley (5), an honorary cousin, skipped towards the hidden mini-pond to gather cattails, calling them corn dogs. Once they had a few in each hand, they ran back and started pinching them apart, scattering the hairy, feathered dandelion fuzz over a patch in the grass. They said they were making a snow bath for the boys (Andrew and Henry). Meanwhile, Henry and Andrew pushed dump trucks and Elmo racecars and rounded trains through the tufts of grass, grinding soft almost mud into the plastic wheels.

Once Ava and Noley’d created enough of a ground cover, they invited the boys over.
“Come take a bath,” they coaxed them. “C’mon, Henry. C’mon Andrew,” they trilled. Andrew did not fall for this. He sidestepped to the other side of the tree, peaking around from behind the trunk. Henry was intrigued and went to them, dropping the yellow and green trucks from his hands.

“Snow!” he cried like he’d played in it before, and he reached his hands out to grab the fluff. He stood in front of them while they blew cattail snow in his hair and face, blinking his eyes fast when a feather caught in his eyelashes. Andrew inched closer, but wanted nothing to do with the “snow.” Henry sat in it. Then laid down. He had it up his back and in his shorts. Andrew, watching from behind the tree, shook his head at Henry being silly. Ava was giggling and Noley was enjoying being one of the big kids for a change. Henry was laughing his chortling Henry laugh that makes people in restaurants turn and smile. Watching him having the purest form of fun with the white light of the sun heating the grass outside of the tree’s shade, I kept thinking, this is why we moved here.

The Girls

My first group of dorm students arrived today. There are five so far. All of them are from China and range in age from 15 - 19. Most of them have American names they've chosen for themselves which sound nothing like their Chinese names and make me feel guilty for being relieved to be able to pronounce them. There are two more coming in the middle of the night.

The first girl, Ellie*, came around 11am with her brother, who's also an MCI student. She is full of questions, knocking softly on my screen door seven times already:
"Where do I get water?"
"Where do I wash my clothes?"
"Do you have caesars?" My mind went to the pizza and the salad and the palace before finally landing on the cutting instrument.

By the time the second, Lily, arrived, Ellie was chomping at the bit to talk with someone her own age. She was in Lily's room before I could call to introduce her. Lily is much quieter, with cheetah print wedges and a denim dress and thick-rimmed black glasses. I can tell I will wish I could dress like her.

Susie came with her aunt and uncle, backing their SUV up to the front door. Her uncle politely, but protectively, asked lots of questions and programmed my phone number (the duty phone number) into his phone. They wanted to know if they could buy Susie a mini-fridge for her room and her aunt translated how to use a washing machine, explaining Susie has never been away from home and will need a lot of help from me.

Donna and Nancy came together right before dinner, befriending each other on the bus from the airport. They are the youngest, 15 and 16, respectively. When I told them the bus was leaving for Walmart in five minutes, they jumped up and started running their fingers through their hair.

I'm amazed by these girls already. I can't imagine going to high school in another country.

Before I sat down to write this, I dug a stack of CDs from my still unpacked suitcase, discovering several from my junior year (college) in Florence. Before I left that year, I had my brother burn two discs for me (it used to be a lot harder to do :)). They became infamously known as CD1 and CD2 and for years after - I'm realizing now it's been 12 years since I lived in Italy!!! - any one of those songs could transport me to my pensione room above Piazza Santa Maria Novella. My roommate and I (and several others) had the playlists memorized. There is Bjork, Britney Spears, Ani DiFranco, BBMak, Counting Crows, Phil Collins, U2, Fiona Apple, Squeeze, REM, Tom Petty, Trisha Yearwood, Rusted Root and others.

This is the music I listened to when I rode trains to visit cities with museums whose art I was studying. This is the music I listend to when I wrote papers on college-ruled sheets in trains coming back from those cities, wearing the same sweater and pants I'd worn all weekend. This is music I listened to in my strange, hotel-dorm bed with its royal blue down comforter underneath my collage of American things and people on the corkboard over my bed. This is the music I listened to when all I wanted to do was call my mother to fly to Florence and take me home. This is the music I listened to when I dragged bags of clothes to the Lavanderias and drank a glass of wine from the bar across the street while my denim skirt and t-shirts dried.

I try to put myself back there - excited, nervous, terrified, giddy, confused, sad - when the girls come to ask questions. I think Ellie with her questions will be a leader in the group, clarifying and translating for her more timid friends. I try to listen to what they are really asking for and answer those questions, too, so they don't have to ask. I tell them over and over to come to me any time. I'll listen to their music and I'll know these songs that may seem like just stuff on the radio will be future, transformative, 3-minute explosions of memories.

*I changed their names yet again. :)

This is your Brain on TheraFlu

It still feels temporary. Like a weird visit where we've rented this place. Jared's summer work hours are shorter and he walks to and from work and home for lunch. The unpacking stalled when the entire lot of us got sick. Instead of unpacking, I spent last week holding my 30lb boy while he cried and ached and wasn't able to tell me exactly why (ear infection).

And on Friday night, on the cusp of my sickness, I went to see the ballerinas dance Cinderella. Their faces were young, their sets were hand-painted panels in jewel-toned greens and reds and blues, their legs were athletic and strong, and their music stopped. Right at the beginning of Act 2. When everyone is dancing their way from the Prince's Ball. And they, literally, didn't miss a beat. They kept dancing the scene - without music. When the curtains swung shut and the Russian choreographer came to the stage, he said, "You wait. We fix. One minute." A boom box and speakers were brought from behind the curtains and the CD decided to skip and speed up and slow down with no notice - they kept dancing. It was impressive.

At the end of the play, the smiles were wide and foreheads shiney with sweat. They seemed please with their Opening Night but also that it was over. For some, they wouldn't perform the next night. They'd finished, with incident, and it still went well.

I'd like to think I kept as much poise as the ballerinas this week. That I didn't sit down on my stage and cry with my own runny nose and aching body. That I didn't plop Henry and me in front of the TV yesterday for a couple hours of PBS programming while Mommy massaged her own head and tried to figure out how to get a shower in. That I didn't go to back to bed immediately after putting Henry in his crib for a nap and lay there and feel sorry for myself and wish I could zonk out on Nyquil.

But I did those things and lots more that were probably worse. And then, because I was already feeling low, I questioned my parenting abilities several more thousand times than a normal given week. But maybe I can count those sick days as rehearsals rather than performances. And this next month, when I start work tomorrow and when the girls come later, I'll put my makeup on and tie my ballet shoes around my ankles and lift up on point and pray the music doesn't stop.

Happy Noises

There are ballerinas living in the dorm right now. The Bossov Ballet Theatre runs out of MCI and they are preparing for their Cinderella performance this weekend. While carrying in our boxes, we met the Executive Director of the program, a retired colonel, who named composers and choreograhers and flitted a hand through the stuffy, dorm air like he was conducting. He told us the girls could be boisterous and that although it might get a little loud, it's all "happy noises."

First, the girls discovered Darby. He sat in the shady, green-like-Girl-Scout-uniforms grass outside  while Jared, a friend and Grampie carted boxes and furniture. Every time I'd look for Darby, there would be a small harem of long-haired girls in tiny shorts gushing over him. He leaned his head into their hands, basking in the glory. Even when I locked him inside, they saw him through the screen sighing, "Ohhhh, puuupppppy." And Darby, pretending to be bashful, would rise slowly from his pose of the child position and stretch into a downward dog, yawning. The girls would squeal and he'd amble to the screen to be adored up close.

Yesterday, as I washed our new silverware and colanders and Jared assembled bedside lamps, the girls watched Chicago in the main room. One girl said, "You haven't seen Chicago???" to another and they rewound and replayed "He Had it Comin'" several times. Boys in sweat pants and graphic T-shirts walked by our window occasionally and, minutes later, the girls giggled.

This morning, Henry and I watched the girls race to practice with high buns, black leotards and pale skin-colored tights. They scurried like cartoon mice. Henry yelled "HI!" out the windows, but they couldn't see him through the screen though they turned around, scanning the windows, waving absently to the high, unfamiliar voice. They look like they are nine to eleven years old, but they are probably closer to fifteen or sixteen. They walk with more confidence than I had at their age, no matter what age that is, and their thin, wraparound sweaters are tied with lazy, casual knots in the smalls of their backs.

I don't know how many, if any, of them will stay for the year. The ballet program is ongoing, but this is just summer camp. I wonder if my dorm of girls will be like them, flitty and smiling. Happy noises. But these girls are committed to something. It is fun (hopefully) and they chose to come here (hopefully). My girls, who'll arrive throughout August, will be high schoolers who'll want to sleep in, visit instead of do homework and clomp around the building. They'll fight over washing machines and which movie to watch on the big TV. They may still like my dog, but may not like me. They'll sometimes be sullen and, a moment later, laughing with friends. Some days they will hate their clothes and their body and nearly everything about themselves. Others they will be proud of a grade or like the way a pair of pants falls on their body, but not say a word about either.

I'm glad to have a week to settle in before work starts. Although I am looking forward to the girls' arrival. They will come from China and Japan and Russia and other places, maybe feeling strange and different and weird. What I wish I could tell them, what I wish I knew then, is that everyone feels a little foreign and out of place. But I wouldn't have believed it then either.

So You Think You Can Move

Despite the fact Jared and the truck o'our things left yesterday, the house still looks full. And despite the fact that the house still looks full, I'm watching So You Think You Can Dance and blogging. I should be sorting through stuff. Or at the very least throwing it all away. Or I could just throw the word "should" away. When I feel the overwhelming panic of forgetting something crucial or not getting it all done, I push my breath through my mouth and shoulders and tell myself On Tuesday I will get on a plane and take with me what I take with me. And all will be okay.

Tomorrow morning my brother and I are going to Carmax to get their quote on my beloved Yaris. I honestly love that car. I've never been attached to a car before. But the Yaris and I have had five solid years together. Road trips to Santa Barbara, Yuma and Libby, Montana. It's the first car I picked out and bought on my own. I've moved so many times with it's deceptively spacious hatchback. And I'm months away from paying it off. BUT... we don't need two cars. And a two-door car doesn't work too well as the only car of a family with a car seat. I looked into shipping it: $1200. A friend offered to drive it: 3,300 miles and $500ish in gas. And then it's there and what then? I've researched Kelly Blue Book and I could get $9k for it... if I want to go through the selling of it. That could pay for our move and much more. Should I? What about? What if? Then what? But? On Tuesday I will get on a plane and take with me what I take with me. And all will be okay.

I also feel oddly calm. Maybe the repetition of the mantra is actually working. Or maybe I'll be forced to have the passenger next to me on the plane hold my energy-that-never-stops son while I sob all the way to Atlanta. It could go either way. Henry's presence often requires emotions that I don't necessarily have at the time. Patience when I want to sleep. Joy when I want to cry. Energy when I want to be watching TV. Regardless, Jared will meet us at the little Portland airport and Henry will say "Hi Pop" and all will be okay.

Waiting for Bumpy

I’m sitting in the cell phone lot at the airport waiting for the text from my father to tell me his new, non-malfunctioning plane has landed. And I will take him home to see his grandson who, outside of Skype, he hasn’t seen since late December. They will spend the weekend reuniting while Jared and I pack. Because we haven’t started packing at all. And the truck comes on Tuesday. And leaves the next day with however much stuff we’ve squeezed in there, packed or not. And it will drive across the country with 95% of our things until we follow by car and plane within the week. And the overwhelmingness I feel is overwhelming.

But before all that, right now, I’m waiting for a text. I’m feeling the sun beat on my right arm and listening to planes land. I’m trying to ignore the shaved head, tattooed white guy in the black Jeep next to me who sporadically sits up from his reclined seat and stares at me. I’m texting my friend who suggests I talk loudly about Bumpy coming because it could sound like a gangsta name if you didn’t know it’s Henry’s nickname for his grandpa. And the man is out of his car now, standing on the charcoaly, so-hot-it’s-soft pavement to put his shirt on, sit on his front bumper and smoke a cigarette.

I hear cellphones ringing and beeping around me and cars pull out of the parking lot to pick up their people. In a week and a half, I’ll be on a plane with Henry. Even though he’s flown a lot for an almost two-year-old, I’ve never flown with him alone. I’ve never changed his diaper on a plane or in an airport. I’ve never managed luggage and him. These are the things I get caught up in. These are the thoughts that twist behind my ears.

Not the fact that we’re leaving. That once that plane lands, I will live in Maine. And I won’t work at San Diego Writers, Ink and I won’t work at Words Alive and I won’t live in the home that I moved into (for the first time) when I was 13. And I’m not sure how to live inside being incredibly excited to live somewhere, but in denial about getting there. That being there means not being here. That unpacking means packing. That arriving means departing. The opposites existing together, at the same time.

So I will pick up my dad.

And I will pack the house.

And I will have our “we got married and we’re moving to Maine party.”
And I will find somewhere for our cat to live.
And I will sell my car (maybe).
And then I will get on a plane.
And then I will live in Maine.

Boxes.

Yesterday I hosted my last Brown Bag at San Diego Writers, Ink. My first prompt was “Boxes” and here’s what I wrote:

I’ve left my parents’ house over five times and each time boxes stayed behind. Inside, my 8^th grade yearbook where the boy I thought I had a crush on wrote a message in thick sharpie on the front cover which, at the time, I thought meant he liked me and now I see that he liked himself. The medical information book my grandmother gave me for one of my teen birthdays that I used to look up photos of rashes and walk my symptoms through bubbled-diagnostic charts. Boxes of accumulated T-shirts, Splash Mountain pictures at Disneyland, letters from high school pen pal, old purple and flowered journals, awards from the library for summer reading programs. Boxes of Christmas ornaments, smashed bows and stained tree skirts.

And this time, when I move, whoever lives in the house won’t keep my boxes. They have to go with me to Maine or to the dump. I’ve pushed past some of my sentimentality (paying $356/foot of truck space encourages sparse, nomadic tendencies), but I don’t know what my son will want of my childhood.

Behind my license in my wallet, I carried around a tiny headshot of my mother at age 12 with barely red hair and a sailor suit, freckles like pollen on her pink face. I read and reread her middle-school journals and held onto her embroidered hippie jackets.

As a boy, will my son be as fascinated with his mother’s boxes? Will he want to see the menu I created for “Wolfgang Huck’s” as part of my Junior year English class project on Huck Finn. Will the unbound scrapbook I made from my first two years of college and the album from my third in Florence be interesting to my boy who’s currently infatuated with bugs, lizards and trucks?

I’m tempted to call my brother and ask what he liked to know about Mom. My husband, a sensitive father and mild-hoarder like me, says of course Henry will want all these trinkets of Mama. And of course he’ll study them and pick some to display in his room. The boxes I need to leave behind hang on me more than those I need to pack.

Dear Mr. King

Saturday night we hosted Scary Movie Night. SMN started when a couple friends and I were talking about how our friends don’t like watching scary movies. We bonded over the desire to be terrified. Since then, usually once a month, one of five couples hosts a theme night. We’ve eaten fava beans and cianti with Hannibal Lecter, pea soup with Reagan and New England boiled dinner in the Dead Zone. We rallied the troops together for our last SMN. And because Jared makes crispy, greasy, excellent fried chicken and gooey, saltine-topped, homemade macaroni and cheese so we opted for a Southern theme this time. For the movie, I’d never seen Deliverance and from what I’d hear it sounded full of heebie jeebies. Apparently, says Blockbuster, it is an action film that few in the group wanted to watch.

This worked out well because when you aren’t going to see a good group of friends for a long while, you don’t need to watch legendary, banjo-strumming, back-country attack scenes on your last night.

Instead, we ate chicken and biscuits and coleslaw and mac & cheese and corn and salad (the non-Southern kind with cranberries and no mayonnaise) with strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert. And they toasted our new adventures with mix-matched glasses of champagne and sparkling strawberry lemonade. We balanced our paper plates on our laps and talked about what we are going to do in Maine. Then we watched Henry and his 4-yr-old friend, Lily, build towers of cardboard blocks (well, she did the building and Henry did the knocking over) while the adults restrained from giving architectural advice. We chatted about the news of the dingo, reviews of the Rufus Wrainright concert and, towards the end while everyone was gathering their things, plans for the next SMN. When the next host asked if anyone had seen the newest Sherlock movie, I realized I didn’t get a vote. I told them they were all required to come to Maine once a year so we could host still. “Yeah right,” they said and laughed. I joked that I would invite Stephen King and we’d watch one of his movies in his honor. They looked a little more serious at that and said they’d fly for him.

 I’m going to write him a letter.

Boxes for Air

Driving to work on Tuesday, I saw a PACE passenger shuttle like the ones that used to pick my Uncle Michael up for doctors’ appointments and health stuff on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The shuttle sighting was a reminder of all the things I won’t see in Maine that make me think of my grandmother and uncle, who lived together their last decades and died within days of each other over two years ago. It’s a time that feels like it didn’t happen because Henry was barely a bump and I barely remember not being Henry’s Mom. Not because life started with him or I was incomplete without him, but more that I haven’t slept much in the last two years and my memory is suffering.

For the last year, we’ve been living in my parents’ house, down the street from the house my grandparents owned for fortyish years. The house I went to after school during elementary and high school, to wait with my grandparents until my parents came home. My grandfather and I would watch the Golden Girls and my grandmother would take my money after beating me at gin rummy. There used to be a deck in the backyard that overlooked the canyon and freeway. My six-grade science project on water quality based on the proximity to pollution consisted of glasses of water in their backyard, inside and front yard that I would take drops of and look at under a telescope and then draw the squiggly blotches of “pollution.” The highlight for me was decorating the 3-fold foam board with cut-out semi-trucks. This is the house where my uncle hung out in the back TV room and shouted the answer to final Jeopardy down the hall to whoever was watching in the front living room. This was the house that always had chocolate in jars and orange juice and white albacore tuna. This was the house I lived in when Henry was born. Where I went into labor in my mother’s rocking chair in that front living room while watching a Hugh Grant movie.

This is the house I walk past every night with my husband and my son on our way to the park. And half of my childhood is looming there behind the windows that never have lights in them anymore. And that’s just my grandparent’s house! There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of my childhood lurking around San Diego, like ashy remnants from fires. My high school of white buildings on a cliff over the freeway. My grade school next to church with tolling bells. The park where I learned to ride my bike and performed an innocent dance to a mildly inappropriate Whitney Houston song at a party for my father’s 35^th birthday. The hill where I used my heels on pavement to stop my Big Wheel from crashing. The mountain I spent over a decade of holiday weekends camping at. The El Torito where we went after I graduated high school and I wore my first little black dress and felt pretty without my braces. The house on the canyon where I spent Thursday nights for almost five years huddled with other writers who told me when I wasn’t funny and when I was trying too hard with my words. The bar on Clairemont Mesa Blvd. where I took the stand-up comedy class with the friend who started out as a grumpy girl with a frantic dog. The balcony of the apartment where my husband proposed and we watched a family of raccoons shimmy out of a bush and down the sidewalk to the carport. The movie theater where I worked when Run Lola Run came out and I took pictures with co-workers who weren’t really friends, except that we were all wearing red wigs. The hospital where I was born and 30 years minus a month and three weeks later my son was born. The zoo where we go several times a week and it seems like there is always a baby giraffe.

And I’m realizing that living in Maine means NOT living in San Diego. People have asked if I know that it snows there and if I like lobster. But they don’t know to ask if I know that my grandmother has never been there. There is nothing of her there except what I bring. Except what I can remember or fit in our five designated feet of ABF moving truck. Except what I write down about her and send to my mom in sporadic emails that I can picture her reading in her Southeastern Alaska Island office with the Klawock River lapping out her window. And my grandmother passes like a wind between us. Something only we can feel in the windy ways that mothers and daughters feel things. Because all of my memories I can rethink or write down or forget, but to hold on to my grandmother feels like air in my fingers. And I don’t know how to get air in the moving truck.

Booking the Truck

We’ve given ourselves the assignment of filling up our trash can for the next five weeks until we move across the country. This seemed easy when we set the goal, but twenty minutes ago the trash was empty with trash day tomorrow and it being 9:57pm at night. We aren’t allowed to eat our triple-chocolate Ghirardelli brownies or watch the newest episode of Glee Project until the can is full.

Under the sink in the hall bathroom, I find six free-with-purchase-Clinique bags with smears of brown eyeliner and blurs of eye shadow, sparkly like cement, bruising the bottom of each bag. There were backs of earrings and travel size shampoos. Baggies of Q-tips, their ends pulled and swabby. In one bag, a patent leather black one with a mirror in the top, there’s a wad of cards and papers. Unfolding it, I find my first driver’s license, my driver’s ed certificate, four outdated Kaiser cards, three bank cards from incarnations of my bank that don’t exist anymore, a phone card from before my parent’s area code changed, a movie ticket stub from Napoleon Dynamite, and a dollar bill from my grandfather where he’d underlined In God We Trust and written Jesus Loves You in his squat, all caps, font. I’m amazed not only by my apparent hoarder tendencies, but by the grouping of these items. That seemingly at one point they felt connected to me, whether in their perceived importance or maybe there was some other commonality I’ve since forgotten. Once I gather all the half-empty lotion bottles, hand soap refills and cheap shampoo, I dump them in the trash bag and head outside. 

In the garage, my husband is sorting through a large plastic storage tub. He’s found his version of a stack of cards showing me his last Maine driver’s license that expired over seven years ago and a handful of hemp necklaces held together with a karabiner. He puts them in the garage sale pile pointing out the details of the glass beads, saying people will recognize quality handiwork.  He tells me I should be proud of him for purging so much. Purging is our big word these days. I see half of the tub is cleared and the other half with recently re-packaged boxes and stuff. Getting rid of half won’t cut it, but this is just our first round. It feels like American Idol. We’re just doing auditions at this point and all the decent singers are put through. Once the truck is in our driveway in a month, let’s hope America’s voting will be more decisive.

We finally ordered (scheduled) the moving truck yesterday. After a lot of hemming and hawing about what would be the best method to get a bunch of stuff across the country in the cheapest way possible. In the end, I posted the question on Facebook and we went with the suggestions. I called ABF movers, the 18-wheelers who section off their trucks for cross-country moving people and you only pay for what you use. On the phone, I talked to Ronald who had a southern accent, even saying y’ll several times. I explained what we were looking for and he asked some questions. $3,300 minimum for five feet of truck space. Based on their online estimated-space-your-stuff-will-take-up calculator, we’ll need seven. $356 per additional foot, Ronald told me. I started thinking more of what we can leave. After the phone call, although the price makes me feel slightly nauseous, I felt a bit more settled because at least we have a truck, a method to move, and a date. It will come on July 10 and leave on the 11^th. Jared will leave by the 12^th, driving his car with Darby as his passenger. I will fly with Henry on the 16^th or 17^th and we’ll all meet in Maine. This is a plan. It feels secure. Settled.

When we were walking that night around the park with Henry wrapped in his pale-blue and brown, paw-print blanket and Darby running across the grass chasing rabbits, Jared said, “What if we only take what we can fit in our two cars?”

There is an appeal to this idea. Starting over completely. Not charging $4,452 to our credit cards. Not having to Tetris in all our stuff into 5-7 feet of truck. But simultaneously, this did not feel secure. This does not feel settled. Not that a cross-country move from San Diego to small-town central Maine is supposed to be a cinch, but we had a plan. We made a reservation.

This new idea made me angry. I noticed the dog was nowhere in sight and I yelled for him to come.

“Dabby! Come!” Henry’s little voice shouted from the stroller, slurred through his pacifier.  

“Henry, don’t yell at Darby,” I chided, stomping across the grass, listening for Darby’s tags. “Darby!” I yelled again, being the model parent that I am. When Darby does not show up after my shouting and Henry’s shouting, I decided we will go home and leave him there. Because it was completely Darby’s fault that I was angry. Totally.

On the walk home (Darby caught up with us half-way, by the way) and for the majority of the next 24 hours, I pictured our two small cars and what we could fit in them. I imagined Henry’s room in the apartment we are moving to, subtracting his crib and carved, wooden, goose lamp. And while I could wrap my head around not having his thick, red wood, converts to a toddler bed crib, or leaving our less than two years old mattress set, I couldn’t let go of the wooden rocking chair my mother got when my brother was born. The rocking chair I’ve spent what feels like days in since Henry was born. In fact, where I spent hours of labor before he was born. One of the only pictures of me big-pregnant is the day he was born as I rocked in the chair. The chair my father bought in Washington and refinished for my pregnant mother, both of them thousands of miles away from their families, having their first child. And now, thousands of miles away from my parents and Jared’s parents, we’ve both rocked with our first child. His feet push through the rungs of the arms now, and he can climb into it to play trucks, but it’s still where I nurse him to sleep. The solid back sloping up with swirls in the wood like half-carved petals. I cannot picture a home without this.

On the next night, earlier tonight, when we went for our walk I tell Jared I’ve thought about it. Considered the allure of taking only the content of two tiny cars and driving across the country with our almost 2-year-old. But I can’t do it. There are a few items that won’t fit and I struggle to make a picture of a home without them. He’s surprised I considered it. I’m pretty sure he thought, based on my reaction, there was no budging.

So, with our plan planned again, we circled the park. The dog stayed in sight. The world was better.

Until I got home and looked under the sink and realized our American Idol moving was just beginning and we’re going to have to go through several rounds of eliminating weirdoes/weird crap before we can make it to Hollywood/Pittsfield.