Category Archives: Life on life’s terms

Training children like the animals they are

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Kingdom: Animalia

I was reading this book on

Disciplining children,

And it offered this strategy:

Don’t think of your children as

Adults-in-the-making,

Using

Reason and

Logic to

Help them

Understand

Why

They should

Behave in certain ways.

Instead,

Think of them as

Wild animals

To be

Trained.

Huh, I thought.

We are animals after all.

Kingdom: Animalia

Class: Mammalia

Order: Primates

Genus: Homo

Species: Homo sapiens

When my son was born,

I remember studying the

Whorls of the hairs between the small shoulder blades,

And running a finger down the

Knobs of his spine.

“He’s a little animal,

A small creature,” I marveled.

Five years later,

The whorls have faded to blond and the

Spine knobs are usually covered by a t-shirt.

He is starting to be

Civilized.

Which I guess is my job as his

Mother-trainer.

It’s difficult to not rely on

Reason and logic to

Make a case to him.

But it’s true.

When I ask him

Why

He did a certain unacceptable thing,

He shrugs and says,

“I don’t know.”

And I believe him.

I think he really doesn’t yet have the

Self-awareness to

Know why.

Or when I try to create

Golden Rule parallels for him:

“How would you feel if someone

Did [something inconsiderate] to you?”

He just looks blank.

Or when I try to explain the layers of

Reasoning behind why I tell him not to do things:

“Do you see how sharp this knife is

That you just tried to grab?

It could slice into your finger,

We’d have to go to the hospital,

You could get nerve damage,

Maybe lose the use of your finger!”

I’ve lost him after “sharp knife,”

Which is more of a fascination than a

Deterrent anyway.

Best, the book says,

To just say “No,”

Offering no explanation or reason,

And follow with immediate–

Humane–

Consequences.

Time-outs.

Wow, it’s hard.

I have to pretty much

Train myself to shut up

Before I even start to train him.

It’s probably good for both of us.

Spending Memorial Day with the living, avoiding the dying

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I suppose I should have spent

Memorial Day

With my mother,

If Memorial Day is for

Remembering

Those who are

No longer with us.

Then, she would’ve been the

Appropriate one.

If you think of a person as a

Sum of three parts,

As I do:

Mental,

Physical,

Spiritual,

Then at least

One-third of

My mother–

The part centered in her

Atrophied brain–

Is gone forever.

Dead.

So I should’ve gone over there.

Paid homage to the

Memory of her mind,

And helped my father maintain her

Body and

Spirit.

But I didn’t.

I spent Memorial Day with the

Vividly alive:

My husband,

Our children,

And friends.

Swimming,

And lounging around on plastic lawn chairs

In the sun,

The finally hot sun.

I typically make it a point to

Think of the dead

On Memorial Day:

All my grandparents,

An uncle who died at 10 years old,

An aunt and cousin killed in a car accident,

A cousin who drank himself to death.

Some of them I’ve never met.

But this year of all years,

With one of the

Dying

Still available,

I avoided her.

The crispy bones in her back and shoulders

When I pat her in greeting;

The jaw ticking

Ceaselessly back and forth;

The milky eyes watching my nose,

Then my hair,

Then looking past me as I

Talk and smile.

I never want to be there,

With her,

But I’m usually willing to go.

Yesterday,

I wasn’t even willing.

This Memorial Day,

I chose the living.

The kid who watched me do yoga in the park

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A few weeks ago,

I was in the park over my lunch hour

Doing yoga in the sun.

I was in headstand

With my legs pretzeled into lotus.

I was listening to the

Birds chirping,

And enjoying the spring breeze on my stomach

Where my shirt had peeled down,

When I heard a voice:

“Hey, I can do that.”

I curled at the waist,

Lowering my braced legs to the ground,

And looked up.

A teenage boy was kneeling on the

Green pitch next to me.

He put the tip of his head on the pavement

And raised his legs above him,

Basketball shoes tiptoeing against the sky.

“See, I can stand on my head.

I don’t think I could do that leg thing, though,”

He said, his voice as steady as if he were

Standing upright.

“You could if you practiced,” I said,

Moving into my next set of poses.

(I hesitated,

Are we going to chat?

But then I just kept moving.)

Shoulder stand:

Legs and torso slicing up into the sky.

My eyeballs,

Behind my sunglasses,

Rolled left:

The boy was perched on the concrete wall,

Toes brushing the ground.

“Do you mind if I watch?

I’m not invading your privacy am I?”

“No, no, that’s fine,”

I said quickly.

My legs folded down over my face into plow,

The backs of my legs pressed up against the sky.

From between my knees,

I could see him.

His hands were resting on his thighs.

We were silent for about ten minutes.

I moved through my poses.

Breathing as I’ve been taught.

I didn’t forget about him,

But the fact of his presence receded

As if he was backing slowly away.

When I stood up into

Eagle,

Twisting one leg around the other leg,

And one arm around the other arm,

I quick

Checked.

He wasn’t looking at me.

He was looking up at the sky.

———————————-

After I was done,

And rolling up my mat,

We chatted.

He had just moved up from

Chicago

To live with his mom.

He was a senior.

He played football,

And wanted to be a

Car engineer.

He was going to go to the

U.

He thought I should put

My son

In football

If he couldn’t sit still in class.

That’s what his mom did.

We walked

Sort of together

Back toward the road.

Me toward work,

Him toward his alternative high school.

“See ya,” I said as we walked in different directions.

A few other times,

I went back to that park over the lunch hour,

And he was there every time,

And every time,

He would come and

Talk to me

Or sit by me

As I moved through my yoga poses.

One day,

I started going to a different park.

The origins of my mom cave

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For the first year we lived in this house

The room at the top of the stairs

Was a dump space.

I wouldn’t even say “storage”

Because that implies some

Deliberation and

Method.

One day,

The kids discovered it,

And started nesting in there like

Wild voles

Among the piles of clothes and

Boxes of junk.

They would stash

Food under their t-shirts and

Close themselves in the windowless space

To snack and

Conspire in the

Pitch blackness,

Until one of them yelled they had been

Stepped on.

We would open the door,

And they would blink at us

And the offended party would pick his way

Through the clutter,

Crying,

To the door,

And then everyone was kicked out for the day.

I came up with the idea of making it a sort of

Indoor tree house

For the kids.

I cleaned it out

(Crumpled pop cans,

Deflated bags of chips,

Empty Gogurt wrappers folded gutter-shaped,

Stray bits of candy rolling around —

It was a bandits’ lair I commandeered that day).

I laid down a patch of carpet,

And lugged all the toys up the stairs,

And organized them on shelves.

When I presented it to the kids the next day,

They were dismayed:

“But we liked it the way it was!”

It never really took off.

Every few weeks,

I would open the door and turn on the light,

And see that the toys were strewn about differently,

Or the Christmas lights I had strung up were falling down,

Or a bed pillow was left in the middle of the floor.

But I never saw them playing in there —

It was as if elves stole in at night and

Messed the room up.

So one day,

I grabbed it.

And now it’s mine.

A wedding day poem for my husband

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May 7, 2011

You.
You are hard to shop for on my budget.
The things you want:
A shimmering brass saxophone with tender keys,
A sterling Macbook with an i7 processor,
A smartphone with a face so smooth it slides into your blazer pocket like a sheen of ice.

Someday,
Maybe,
Baby.

For now, though,
This little love poem will have to do.
I know you don’t mind,
Not really.
Half a foot beneath that smirk is a
Heart as delicate
As a Sunday morning egg
Wobbling toward the edge
Of the counter top.
(I am good at catching up
Eggs with my
Long fingers
And warming them in my palm.)

Remember when you and I
Were at that restaurant on Valentine’s Day
Talking over tealights,
And you said something about
Pets
And I couldn’t stop laughing?
You do that all the time.
You say things—
You’re not trying to be funny.

You look at me with wide eyes as I laugh,
And then you start to chuckle along.
Pets.
I’m chuckling just thinking of it.

And remember when we were watching a funny movie
On the laptop in bed one night,
And I was laughing,
And you were watching me and smiling,
And I said, “What?”
And you said,
“I just like to listen to you laugh.”

And how you buried your face in my neck when I told you
I fell in love with you

Watching you
Across the room
Talking to friends,
And your face unfurled into a smile.

And babe,
It’s so innocent.
We’re childlike when
We say these things to one another.
We,
Who have lived enough to
Crawl before walking,
To decide,
And to march forward,
On and on,
Past exhaustion
Before lying down
In surrender.
We’re here today in a
Precious,
Delicate state.
It must be a miracle.
I could go on for pages,
But I want to marry you.

Weather on my May 7 wedding: A task to delegate

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None of my damn business

It occurs to me

That I could delegate

The weather

On my wedding day.

It’s just too much,

With five days to go,

Amidst printing programs and

Last-minute shopping,

To think of

Changing the weather patterns,

Too.

Erecting colossal fans in the atmosphere

To blow rain clouds or

Cold fronts away.

Building an immense clear dome

Over the whole Twin Cities metro area

To repel rain and wind but

Let the sunshine in.

Launching a new sun into the sky that would

Hover under any cloud cover,

And would be tethered to the spire atop the

IDS Center so it could never roam

Too far from the Twin Cities.

I just don’t have time.

I must have help.

But who to ask?

Who is up to the task?

Oh good god.

I don’t want to ask

Him.

He’s so unpredictable.

He’ll use this as a

Teachable moment about

Acceptance.

Pleas for mercy after a pitiless winter,

Cries of unfairness at flurries in May,

Don’t help.

All I can do is buy a scarf

In my wedding colors

And get my rain coat dry-cleaned.

Fine,

God.

Whatever.

You can have the

Weather-task.

You’ll do it anyway.

All I have to say is:

Thank you for the saying about

Rain on your wedding day

Meaning you’ll be rich.

It is some consolation.

12 days to wedding: Distractible

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Less than two weeks to the wedding.

This blank sheet of paper is delicious.

I love to plunge into the page.

The thrill.

But,

I haven’t been doing it.

I’ve let these practices slide away:

The writing,

The nightly inventory.

I’m still doing yoga–

Too vain to let that go–

And I’ve been remembering to pray.

Even if it’s after I’ve stood up from bed,

Am cleaving my contacts onto my eyeballs,

And twinges of discontentment–

The weather,

The laundry,

The job–

Poke my gut.

Then I’m back to bed,

Kneel on the mattress,

Pull the duvet over my shoulders

And finally pray.

Even yoga is distracted.

I put my iPhone on my mat to

Read my Daily Reflection during

Sun salutations,

And I’m light and bouncy on the words.

They don’t take.

I’m making lists in my mind:

Linens.

Flowers.

Lighting.

Programs.

Today, though,

I’m up and writing.

Normal feels good.

One more normal week before

Wedding week starts.

I have a lot to do.

Hello, have we met before?: A night with my old journals

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I was paging through my old journals

The other night.

1987 (13 years old)

To the present.

A couple times I chuckled

A couple times I cringed:

The obsessions and

Vapid concerns of the

Teenage or early-20s

Me.

Declarations of love to

High school boyfriends;

Gut-twisting fears of

Friends turning on me.

And booze running through like a

Narrow, toxic river.

Who was that person?

That girl-woman

Flailing forward–

I did move forward despite the booze–

Functional, they call it.

I suppose I’m the same person,

Really.

Leaner and more

Focused.

Quieter in my neuroses,

Or more deliberate about sharing them

(Like starting a blog!)

Not quite as naive about

Love–

Although I still surprise myself.

And the booze river?

Dried up.

The river bed still cutting through,

Permanent and available;

A tender scar.

150th anniversary of Civil War; Also anniversary of first marriage

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Photo: civilwarhome.com

April 12.

In the throes of planning my

Second wedding.

I saw a headline about the

150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War,

Which reminded me:

Seven years ago,

Destination wedding in London.

Giggling,

Drunk,

In a London pub,

Over the fact that I was getting married on the

Date the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter.

Now,

With three weeks to go before I marry Joe,

It irritates me that I would be writing about my

First wedding.

The implication being that I’m somehow

Not over it.

(Although when you have kids together,

You never talk about “being over it.”

You just figure out how to

Get along day-by-day.)

In planning this wedding,

Joe and I both say it occasionally:

“At my first wedding…”

At first I cringed when I said it,

Or smiled apologetically at Joe,

Who was smiling apologetically at me.

Then it just became a joke.

The apologetic smile turned into a smirk.

We’re weathered.

We’ve lived.

We’re vintage.

Bought once new and discarded,

Only to turn up as a

Find

On the rack

By someone who

Gets

The little details:

The fine stitching,

The unusual buttons.

When you have kids together,

These exes will

Always

Be

Around.

Sometimes you wish they would

Go away.

(Or in a moment of face-twisting anger and fear,

Worse.)

But they

Never will.

Interactions with my ex are

Calm and even

Friendly

Now.

Still,

I can hope that April 12 someday signifies the

Start of the Civil War only,

Which it was long before

Me and my

Dramatics

Came along.

Call from school

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I got a call yesterday.

My son’s kindergarten teacher.

I, who work in an office with adults,

Always have to adjust to the elementary school rhythm

On calls from school.

They always start rushed,

As if I’m dropping into the middle of a conversation.

Ever since he got back from spring break,

My son has been acting up:

Not doing his work,

Not keeping his hands to himself.

He’d been doing so well,

Making so much progress.

What happened?

“Maybe it’s his dad

Leaving,” I say.

“Yeah, I was thinking about that,” his teacher says.

My son’s dad had come for spring break.

The two of them had had so much fun:

Going on a train trip to Washington DC.

My son still talking about

George Washington,

The Washington Monument,

Washington DC.

And now,

He was throwing dice across the room,

And sitting in front of a blank piece of paper

Refusing to write.

“After all the progress we’ve made,

I just don’t want to go backward,” his teacher says.

In my office,

My cell phone pressed against my hot face,

I promised to talk to my son,

And his teacher promised to keep me informed,

And we hung up,

A little team rooting for my son.

On the bike ride home,

Swerving through construction on University Avenue,

Dodging potholes and

Tented sidewalk slabs,

I was thinking of how we would

Not be going to McDonald’s playland,

As promised.

There would be consequences.

So I got home,

And there he was at the dining room table,

Flicking the longish hair out of his eyes.

He crumpled a styrofoam cup in his hand,

And I

Sat down across from him,

And we talked.

Because that’s all I can do.

I can’t go back.

I can’t heal his wounds

Or prescribe his experience.

His father is his father

And that father lives in another country.

And I’m his mom,

And I’m here.

And that’s both his gift and his trial.

I can only guide, my

Hand between his butterfly shoulder blades,

Sometimes light,

Sometimes heavy.

Here are some tools to put in your

Thomas the Train backpack, Buddy.

You’re on your way.

I love you.