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Hello, I’m your child’s teacher!

It’s that time of year again.  There’s a chill in the air, the sun is setting earlier, I’m sneezing from who-knows-what flying around, and we’ve spent two late evenings this week in overheated classrooms with a bunch of other parents who don’t even seem to be trying to resist the urge to distract themselves on their phones while their kids’ teachers are telling them what to expect from the next 10 months.

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It seems a little more straightforward in elementary school.  The teacher (who, by the way, probably hates back-to-school night because odd as it might seem to you, she is a whole lot happier trying to corral a bunch of runny-nosed 7-year-olds into their seats than she is talking to adults whose suit-covered behinds don’t even FIT into those seats), has enough time to show you adorable drawings on the walls, and give you a little show-and-tell about this year’s confusing spelling program, and some sort of diorama your kid will be crying about in a few short months.

You’ll sign up for an individual conference next month, where you can find out if your child is as weird in school as they are at home.

Now, back-to-school night in middle school seems to be an entirely different story.  Given that middle schoolers are a somewhat mysterious brood, prone to periods of silence, followed by periods of intense information-sharing and questioning, it’s possible you know a lot about your middle schooler’s teachers.  Or nothing.

You can expect to be squeezed through crowded hallways of confused, lost parents, looking for the Language Arts room.  The confusion is frequently interrupted by, “Lisa! Over here!!  Oh, my God! I haven’t seen you in so long! How was the beach?”  Followed by, “Excuse me, sorry! Excuse me,” while Lisa prances across the hallway to kiss her friend and they both pull out their phones to see when they can get together for coffee.

This is all happening in the approximately 37 seconds the parents have to get from one class to the next, because if parents were actually given an appropriate amount of time to get around the building, we’d be there until midnight.

You can likely expect to be greeted at the door by a foreign language teacher.  In a foreign language.  This makes me exceedingly uncomfortable.  Our son takes Spanish, and it’s not like I don’t understand when Senora Whats-Her-Nombre shakes my hand and says “hola.” But I’m never sure how to respond.  I’m pretty sure she speaks English, so I could say “Hi,” but given that she’s started the conversation in Spanish, I feel sort of obligated to go along with her and pretend that I’m bilingual.  But I’m afraid that if I say “hola” in return, she’s going to ask me a question or say something I don’t understand in Spanish.  So I just sort of look at her, quickly break eye contact and go sit down.

You can expect that, unless you are an engineer or accountant, your child’s math teacher is going to use a term like “absolute value” or a word like “quadratic” that is going to make you feel afraid enough that you may ask the teacher now if she can tutor YOU, because if your child asks you ANY question about math this year, he is going to find for sure that you’re really not as smart as you like to pretend you are.

When the Phys. Ed. teachers announce that every 7th grader is required to have deodorant in their gym locker, you’re going to think a lot of things.  Like, is there any parent who has never gotten a whiff of their own 7th grader and not figured that out on their own?  Or, please let it not be my kid who needs to be spoken to because he has forgotten to use the deodorant I know he brought in the first week of school.  Or, how is it possible for a teacher to tolerate being in a room full of sweaty 7th graders?

When back-to-school night eventually ends, you hope the sun hasn’t started coming back up again.  Because you still have to get home, get any straggling kids to bed, and start worrying about a math midterm.

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Where’s my walker?

I had a realization in the middle of last night that Dave and I are beginning to settle pretty firmly into middle age.

It wasn’t a dream, or our kids calling us old, or anything like that.  I was awoken around 1:00 a.m. by Dave, asking if we had any Tums.  I sent him to the cabinet where we keep them, asked him for one for myself (apparently, at our age, chili for dinner – even when I make it without beans – is no longer a good idea), and then I got up to go to the bathroom.

The past few nights, we’ve had that awesome cool fall weather at night, and I was oh-so-comfy when I woke up, curled up in my long sleeves and pants.  But once I returned from the bathroom a mere 90 seconds later, I got warm.  I loosened the covers.  Then I got up and changed into a t-shirt.  Then I got hot. Then I got up and changed into shorts.  Then I pulled the covers off.

walker

I think you know what I’m getting at here.

For some reason, I started thinking then about when Dave and I were dating, and we could stay up past midnight.  I didn’t sweat in my jammies, and we didn’t wake up with heartburn. I’m fairly certain we could also tolerate chili.

That said, though, I wouldn’t trade this phase of my life for a stronger stomach, or a flatter stomach, or a good night’s sleep.  I love my life and my family.  I love that Dave wakes up in the morning and has to walk down the steps with two feet at a time, like a toddler, until he stretches out a little.  I love that I’ve started to stash reading glasses in my purse and on every level of the house, because a little extra light just isn’t cutting it anymore.  I love that three years ago on my birthday, Michael (who’d just turned 5 at the time), said to me, “It’s funny that you’re 43.  You really look 44.”

I love that when we DO wake up in the middle of the night, that Dave’s there to laugh with me about problems that, in the scheme of things, we’re lucky to have.

So, okay, I could kind of do without what’s starting to look like weird wrinkles on my neck, but whatever.

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I’m sorry.

This time of year always gets me thinking about poor decisions I’ve made and how they affect the people around me.  That’s no coincidence – as a Jew, I observe the holiday of Yom Kippur – the day of atonement, where we don’t eat all day, and apologize for our sins.  And I say “observe” rather than ‘celebrate,” because even though it’s technically called a “holiday,” to the outsider, it doesn’t even come close to resembling what they’d consider a holiday.  That is, of course, until the sun goes down and we celebrate not losing consciousness all day by stuffing ourselves full of bagels and lox.

Bagel

Bagel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But I digress.

While some of my fellow Jews are posting blanket apologies on Facebook to those they’ve offended this year, I’d like to be a little more specific about things I’ve done this year that might require an apology:

To my sons: I’m sorry for sending you to school with a sandwich made with deli turkey that only smelled questionable when I made a sandwich for myself hours after you’d already happily gone off to school with yours, which I’d made the night before.

To a random person living somewhere near me:  I’m sorry I left dog poop on your lawn.  I turned my head for a SPLIT second while my dog was pooping, and you see, she weighs only 10 pounds, so her poop isn’t always visible to the naked eye.  Plus she makes a run for it as soon as she’s done.  In my defense, I did search for a good five minutes before giving up.  But I’m still sorry.

To my son’s 7th grade teachers: I’m sorry he’s used all of your tissues (which I know you bring in yourself) this week.  He has a cold, and I sent him in with a pack of his OWN tissues, which he brings home every day.  I guess it’s cooler to blow his nose in the front of the classroom than to pull one tissue out of the dainty little pack with flowers on it.

To my dog: I’m sorry for making you wear a Halloween costume.

To my husband: I’m sorry for insisting that I need to watch the end of a “cliffhanger” episode of Honey Boo-Boo when the Knicks are playing.

I’m hoping for a better year ahead.  Wishing you all the same.

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Hey, you’re special!

My 8-year-old son Michael and I got into an interesting discussion not long ago.  Walking to school, we spotted a cardinal in our neighborhood, among flocks of very ordinary brown birds.

cardinal

And it got us to talking – did that bird have any idea how unusual and special it was?  We were thinking “probably not.”  After all, unlike people, birds don’t have mirrors, so it’s not like he (for some reason, I assumed this bird was a boy) could check himself out and admire his own red feathers, standing out among the hundreds of birds that look nothing like him.

It was actually a little mind-blowing to think about.  After all, this bird was so different, that he caught our eye immediately, and yet he was just going about his business like every other bird, checking the ground for worms and probably hatching some fantastic plan to poop on my car.  He had no idea that just his being different was enough to stop two people in their tracks to stare at him for a while.

As parents, we tell our kids every day how being different makes them special.  Let’s be honest – sometimes, it’s just to make them feel better.  Because the most valued thing to a lot of kids is NOT to be different or special – it’s to fit in and be just like everyone else.

I’m guessing that it’s a lot less complicated to be a bird.  Wouldn’t it be great if no matter how we all looked, and no matter how we acted, we could just go about our day, not even realizing that we were different from all the others around us?

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Just putting it out there….

I was pretty pleased last night when I saw my 12-year-old son Matthew’s Instagram post.  Not because it was a great-looking selfie.  It wasn’t.  And not because he’d said anything particularly brilliant or funny.

He posted a photo of himself, hand on his chin, looking pretty bored on the night before the first day of 7th grade.  It was how he captioned the photo that made me realize that at 12, he’s light years ahead of where I was at that age.  He wrote, ironically:  #ughschool, #thinkimreadybutidontknowifiam, #imtiredandineedsleep.

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And here’s why I loved it.  He wasn’t pretending to be, literally, too cool for school.  Matthew was born one of those kids who can be who he really is, and say what’s actually on his mind.  It took me until my 30s to understand that the way we truly connect with other people is to say what we’re really feeling.  Somehow at 12, he finds it okay to tell people what he’s thinking – “I’m really not sure if I’m ready for another year of this.”  At that age, I was probably crying behind closed doors at home, and pretending to the world that it was all good, even if it wasn’t.

It’s much less stressful, I realize as an adult, not to pretend to be something I’m not.  When I tell friends that yes, I have nights where I crawl into bed, pretty disgusted with myself about how I’ve parented my children that day, they often respond with a wide-eyed “Me too!”  But it’s also a chance for us to remind ourselves that the next day, we crawl out of bed, apologize to our kids, and try our hardest to be a better version of what we were the day before.

None of us are on this journey alone.  We have chances every day to grab hands with the person next to us, and take them along for the ride.

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Help!

I’m very organized. But unfortunately, not in the traditional sense. Or in the visual sense.

I know where everything is, and I almost never lose anything. But unfortunately for the people who live with me, I maintain what I refer to as my “visual to-do list.” Which is another word for “piles of papers and other assorted stuff on the kitchen island.” Which isn’t a good thing.

clutter

And with the advent of shows like Hoarders, I really fear that it’s a slippery slope for that pile of papers to devolve into a rotting feline corpse (if you’ve ever seen any of these shows, you’ll know precisely what I mean.)

I’ve tried lots of things – baskets, folders, drawers.  My husband thinks that I can solve the problem by putting our lovely fruit bowl on the island, rather than the kitchen counter.  I guess his logic is that the beauty of the bowl and the fruit will dazzle me, so that I’ll say to myself “Wow, this fruit looks so pretty! I shouldn’t take away from its loveliness by piling papers anywhere near it! Allow me to take the time to find the perfect spot for this field trip permission slip!”

Except that unfortunately, I’m smarter than that.  Or messier.  Not sure which.

I’ve recently considered hiring a professional organizer.  Not the kind that’s going to help me put my shirts on nice, velvety color-coordinated hangers, or show me the proper way to store tupperware.  I’ve got that covered.

But I could use a little help figuring out where to keep those stinking permission sips.

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Finally!

We’ve belonged to our town pool for about 10 years.  We got a membership when Matthew was a toddler, and have renewed it every year, sometimes just because if you let your membership lapse, you’re required to get into a line at some ungodly hour of the morning on a day in April, without any guarantee that there will even be space available.

And after all these years, I realized today, that it took THIS long for the pool membership to pay off in terms of having any relaxation benefits for me.  With my kids at 8 and 12, they now have both the maturity and swim skills that I can turn my head and have a conversation for a few minutes without fearing that they will drown, or being distracted by “Mommy? Look at this! Mommy?! I have to go to the bathroom! I’m hungry! I’m cold!”  Now they can take themselves to the bathroom, let me know when their lips start turning blue, and saying no to the snack bar no longer puts me on the business end of an embarrassing tantrum.

pool

I put in a lot of years in the pool’s kiddie section (or what we all now call the pee-pee pool), praying that my kid would never be the one who shut it down by taking a dump in a foot of overchlorinated water.  I’ve scooped other people’s kids out of the water, pulled floating Hello Kitty bandaids out of my kids’ plastic buckets, and spent hours worrying that my kids would come down with some vile disease by swallowing pool water.

I now have two kids who can swim.  Lots of their friends belong to the pool, so if they haven’t brought a friend with them, there’s a good chance they’re going to find someone to hang out with.

Now if only there was someone to bring me a nice cocktail.

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Just let it go.

Last night, we took the boys and some friends to a professional soccer game.  There was lots of traffic trying to park, so Dave dropped me with all the boys by the stadium  and went to park the car (MY car, incidentally, which is larger than his, and takes some getting used to).  We went into the game, and shortly after that, Dave called to tell me he’d backed into a spot in the garage, and in the process, hit a concrete panel that was sticking out, and shattered the back windshield.

It was an accident.  I get it – accidents happen, and as long as I knew Dave was okay, and he’d had a garage employee help him put some plastic over the back and fill out some paperwork, it wasn’t that big a deal.

To me, anyway.

Dave met us in the stadium.  We looked on our phones and made an appointment to have someone meet me with the car and fix the windshield this week.  So, the broken windshield was covered, and we’d made arrangements to have it fixed.  Problem solved.

To me, anyway.

I’m going to chalk up what happened next to the difference in our gender.  Or the fact that Dave is the one who shattered the windshield and felt like he needed to do something about it.

He continued to hem and haw to figure out what we should do, which to me seemed silly to me, because as far as I was concerned, we HAD done what we should do.   Dave tried to figure out how we could cover up the windshield better (which, okay, is probably a good idea, since it might rain later).  Made sure I’d gotten the model year of my car correct (um, yup).  Called the windshield repair company back to confirm.  Thinks that maybe we should back my car into our garage tonight, in case it rains.  Which could be a good idea, except that we have a one-car garage that its overrun with about a thousand basketballs, bikes, and other miscellaneous outside crap.  So we’d have to leave the garage open, and I think there’s a fair chance we could do some more damage to the car trying to back it into a 1950s garage that wasn’t really designed for a 2000s SUV.  And this morning, I awoke to a plethora of notes about what we need to do.

Automobile windshield displaying "spiderw...

Automobile windshield displaying “spiderweb” cracking typical of laminated safety glass. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I guess what I’m really trying to do here is to get Dave to just put this aside and enjoy the rest of what this summer, seems like one in a series of very short weekends.  I’m ready to move on, knowing that we’ve taken steps to fix the problem.  So, I’ll get back to you, friends …. not sure if today will be a relaxing summer Sunday, or a day to fix a problem that in my mind is on its way to being fixed.  But at the end of the day, I’ll still be glad to have spent the day with my problem-fixing husband.

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It’s our little secret.

I just mowed the lawn.  Don’t tell anyone.

Not only do I not mind mowing the lawn, but I kind of like it.  Our lawn takes about 45 minutes, so it’s kind of a workout.  I work up a little sweat, get to be outside, and when I’m done, I am pretty pleased with myself.  I find the neat green rows to be very satisfying.

I don’t usually mow our lawn.  Dave does, but he’s out of town.  He tells me it’s for work, but he’s in Lake Tahoe over a weekend, so I’m just a little skeptical.

Lawn

Lawn (Photo credit: Moyan_Brenn)

And today, the lawn mower ran out of gas, and we didn’t have any left in the gas can.  I did play the girl card a little bit at the gas station when I asked for help filling it up (but keep in mind, we live in New Jersey, where we have good pizza but the law says we can’t touch the gas pump).

There was something empowering about doing something I don’t usually do and that’s often stereotypically reserved for men to handle.

But on the other hand, I feel a little weird about it, because we live in a town where a good percentage of the residents hire a landscaper to mow their lawns.  We don’t, because it’s a task Dave kind of enjoys.  But sadly, I often wonder if people judge us for mowing our own lawn.

I realize how ridiculous that sounds. I wish I didn’t feel that way, and I like to chalk it up to whatever small scraps of adolescent insecurity remain in my more or less fully-developed adult self.  I think that most of us have certain things that we still worry that people are judging us for, whether that be our intelligence, our looks, or the choices we make.

As we get older, I think a lot of that stuff fades, and we realize that if who we are is okay with us, then it’ll be okay for the people who matter, and anyone who doesn’t like us this way shouldn’t be someone who matters to us.

So there, I said it.  I mowed the lawn this morning.  Judge away.

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We’ll stay put, thanks.

My husband Dave and I have an expression that we use – “we are not a nomadic people.”  It basically means this – with the exception of college (and for Dave, a one-year post-college internship in a city several hours away), both of us have always lived within a 50-mile radius of the towns where we grew up.

I’m not saying that’s a good thing.  Or a bad thing.  But for us, the thought of moving somewhere that’s really different from our suburban New York reality, is for now, something that just doesn’t appeal to us, and thankfully, we’re both on the same page.

That’s not to say we don’t want to experience other things.  We’re not exactly world travelers, but we’ve both traveled to most of the states in our own country, and to a handful of other countries.

United States

United States (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of my friends moves every few years – usually to a different country.  Since her parents have moved from where she grew up, and many of her friends are in the same line of work and move just as frequently, she’s said that our family is the one constant in her life – that she can always come visit us when she’s in the country, and know how to find our house, and where everything is in it.

I’m sure that some people would find that pretty boring, but there’s something about the fact that this friend can come here once every few years and still find her way to make her own coffee in the morning, that makes me happy.

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