July 2015 archive

17
Jul
2015

truth // past

categories: california, commune

“Where is she, where is she?” I wondered silently. She was always doing this. “Why can’t anything in my life be normal?” I murmured inaudibly.

It was half past six. Volleyball practice ended at five. Courtney’s mom had offered to wait with me until my mom arrived. This was a reoccurring predicament. I’d stay after school for something — volleyball, cheerleading, theater, track and field, chorus — anything to not be at home, and then I’d wait for two hours to get picked up. “This is what I get for not taking the bus,” I thought.

“Oh, there she is. There’s my mom,” I said, relieved. This was how it happened. Either someone would wait with me until she arrived or I would lie and tell them that she would be there in a few minutes and I’d wait alone. Ducking behind the payphone whenever a set of headlights came by. I could never decide what was worse — waiting there, terrified and alone in the dark, or having an adult wait with me asking too many questions.

“Oh, good,” she said. I recognized her tone — it reeked of disdain and irritation. “And, who’s the lady with her?” she continued, as though she were asking whether I wanted chocolate or caramel on my ice-cream. Sweet. Innocent-like.

“No one. I mean, that’s just a friend. Of my moms,” I lied.

“Right. And…where’s your dad? Does he ever pick you up? I’ve never seen him. What’s his name?”

“Um, he’s…his name is…I mean, he isn’t here.”

“Oh. I see,” she continued. “And, don’t you have sisters?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Brothers too? How many? Courtney said something about you having a lot of siblings.”

“Um, I don’t know. I mean, sort of.  I gotta go. Bye! Thanks for waiting with me!”

///////

The caravan door slid open, making a high-pitched squeak as it halted half way. I squeezed in, breathless. “Courtney’s mom asked me,” I paused to catch my breath. “about my sisters and brothers again.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. I just said I didn’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? What kind of an answer is that?”

“I don’t know. I just said, like, ‘no’, but then I said, like, ‘sort of.'”

“You can’t say that! You can’t say anything! What are you thinking, goshdangit.”

“I told you she shouldn’t be allowed to do after-school activities,” my mom’s “friend” chimed in. I glared at her.

“Mom, I, I , no one knows anything. She just said she knew I had brothers. It’s okay. She doesn’t…”

“Gosh darn-it-all. You can’t say that stuff. You can’t,” my mom yelled. She was starting to tap her foot. She always tapped her foot, a little three-part pattern, when she was nervous.

“This is why we homeschool. Public schools are trouble. Too many eyes. Too many ears. He says it could be our downfall. Just because your children want to go to school and play sports shouldn’t mean the rest of us have to suffer. Are you listening?” My mom was listening. But, she knew I needed to be in school. She knew I couldn’t stay home like my brothers and sisters. I couldn’t stand to be there for one night, let alone day after day. I joined everything. Anything. I spent weekends at friends houses. Weeknights even. Lord knows what they thought was going on. “You won’t be the favorite forever,” she murmured under her breath. “Then there’ll be hell to pay.”

“No, please. I didn’t…Mom. I just…I don’t know what to…I’m trying to do what you told me to. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Please. Please let me stay in school. Please. I won’t say anything.”

“If they found out we would all be in big trouble. Do you want that? Your dad would go to jail and we would have nowhere to live. Do you want that to happen?” my mom asked.

“No.”

“Okay, then. So, you’ll tell her you were confused. Tell her that you have one sister and two brothers and that’s it. The rest of the kids just live with us. We took them in. Single mothers and their children.”

“Ha!” my mom’s friend interjected.

“We run a church. A non-profit” my mother continued.

“A nompromfi? What’s that?” I asked.

“A NON-profit. A non-profit. Say it out loud.”

“A NON-profit.”

“Good. Okay. So, you’ll tell her that when you see her tomorrow. And, Courtney too. Just tell everyone that. Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay,” I whispered. “Okay, mom. I’ll tell them tomorrow.”

16
Jul
2015

merry, mary & marry

categories: new york, teaching

There was a time in New York City’s history when five-year-olds were not legally required to attend school. We’re not talking about 1950. Kindergarten was not mandatory in New York until 2012. Two thousand twelve! It’s crazy.

As a first grade teacher pre-2012, thems was dark times. Half my kids had gone to Kindergarten and knew the drill. Half were brand new to having a schedule and lining up and, you know, sitting still for extended periods of time.

It was a mad house.

I was teaching up in East Harlem at the time and doing a whole lot of small group, differentiated instruction to meet the myriad needs in my classroom.

Word study was a particularly fun (can you hear the sarcasm?) subject to teach. With a huge array of needs there was absolutely no room for whole-group instruction in this subject area.

Word study is exactly what it sounds like. It includes things like rhyming, word families, pattern recognition, phonetic principles, English language norms (the rules and the rules for breaking those rules), etcetera. It’s considered one of the five necessary components of reading readiness: phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.

I digress.

This was not meant to be a lecture on educational philosophy or a plug for my belief in whole language instruction or a history lesson on New York’s academic realities.

I just wanted to share a funny story.

It’s Saturday morning and I’m home with this giant teacher manual, planning out my groups and marking the pages I need to xerox when I come across what I am absolutely positive is a mistake.

“Honey, come here a sec,” I shout to my boyfriend who is preparing a modest breakfast of coffee and toast. Because we have spent every last bit of our combined income on this glorious one-bedroom in Queens.

“What’s up?” he asks.

“This is so weird. Say these three words for me.”

“Mary, merry and marry. Why?”

“Right,” I counter.

“Huh?”

“I just mean, yeah, you’re right. These words all sound exactly the same. Why would they all be in different categories?”

“What? I have no idea. Maybe it’s a mistake.”

“Must be,” I conclude. And so, I plan accordingly.

Monday rolls around and I’m checking in with my coteacher, explaining the work I’ve done and the curriculum I’ve laid out for my groups.

“Wait?! What is this?” she asks, looking fairly confused.

“Oh, there’s a mistake in the manual,” I explain. “It’s so weird. They put these three words in three different families. Why would they do that? They’re homophones. They should be in the same family.”

Danielle, my coteacher, is roaring with laughter.

“What. Is. So. Funny?” I ask, knowing I’m about to feel like a fool.

Now, Danielle is lovely. She’s an amazing teacher, she’s patient, kind, warm and brilliant. And, from Long Island.

“Those are not homophones, sweetie,” she says. Already I can feel my cheeks turning pink.

She proceeds to say each word aloud to me. I will do my best to convey their phonetic accuracy…

“May-ry, mah-ry, and merry. Subtle. But, totally different words. Like Kerry and Carrie,” she explains.

“What?! Those are different names? No. No!” I shout, exasperated and feeling very aware of my California-ness. “How long has this been going on?” I ask.

“Since forever, love.”

“Hmm. I don’t like it. Not one bit,” I say as I raise one eyebrow. “Just doesn’t feel right, ya know? I mean, this is just wrong. We can’t go around making all these tiny phonetic distinctions. It’s hard enough teaching this shit. Now we gotta convince these kids there are three marys? This is lunacy. I mean, I totally respect regional dialects and all. But, should we really be reinforcing this craziness?”

15
Jul
2015

thirty four is the new eight

categories: new york, teaching

I learn a lot about the world from my students.

Today, I’m taking fashion advice from my third grader. She came in with this backpack. And, I’m pretty sure it’s the coolest backpack ever made and obviously I have to have it.

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She says I can totally pull it off.

 

14
Jul
2015

olfactory receptors

categories: brooklyn, california

Someone woke up this morning and said, “It’s a fine day for a fire.”

Perhaps it’s the rain. Or, the drop from 86 to 81 degrees. I suppose this is chilly for Brooklyn in July.

I can’t imagine why anyone would be lighting their wood-burning stove today. But they did. And, it’s magnificent.

Is it wrong that smoke makes me nostalgic for California? Given the current drought situation it seems macabre to be daydreaming about such things. But, I can’t help it.

My sweatshirt is soaking up the the oak’s insides, the sap sizzling and popping, creating a fountain of bright orange ember. We’re sipping Makers and staring into the sun’s reflection in the moon. Stars. So many stars. And darkness. It’s so damn bright in New York.

I’m roasting marshmallows and drinking bloody beers at 9am. Baking potatoes, canned beans, sausages, whose idea was it to bring the instant coffee? I love you. Waking with the sun. The sensation of heat as a being, an entity, trapped inside your tent, pushing against your ears, squeezing your thighs until your eyes are forced open. The sound of the ocean in the morning. Constant, magnetic, totally, totally scary. I mean, the ocean is gorgeous and hypnotizing and totally terrifying, right? I find the warm sand to be a perfect place to enjoy that majestic beast.

All this in one breath.

Thanks for the smoke, Brooklyn.

13
Jul
2015

actions and reactions // present

categories: brooklyn

Vortex2 Vortex1 Vortex3

Last winter.

You may remember it as the polar vortex. The winter to end all winters. The winter that made me question whether or not I could continue to be a New Yorker, even after fifteen winters here.

I had a 6 month old at home. So, aside from all the new parent anxieties and hangups that come with the territory, I was also struggling through a horrendously frigid season with a brand new baby in a brand new apartment.

We stumbled upon the dream apartment through friends of friends when I was 7 1/2 months pregnant and decided to seize the magical, anomalous, Brooklyn real estate moment despite the obvious complications.

We’re talking exposed brick, high tin ceilings, giant windows, skylights, wooden floors, a balcony. Let me repeat. A balcony! A BALCONY. As in, viable outdoor space. Enough space for a BBQ, an herb garden, a large tomato plant and a few habaneros. I mean, the place was dreamy. That should have been our first tip off. Who gets to live in this apartment?

Well, we moved in. Because, how do you say no to that apartment? Even though, I was meggo preggo, even though we couldn’t really afford it, even though we loved our previous apartment and even though we weren’t really sure if we should stay in New York with a baby. Even though.

That winter we had no heat.

December passed and we were mostly out of town. Florida and California welcomed us with their temperate winter climates. January was filled with confused phone calls and repairmen who never came and hours and hours and days and days of waiting. We gave our landlord the benefit of the doubt time and time again. We assumed the best and tried to be patient.

February was all angry phone calls and pleas for help. A full month of exasperation and outrage on my end. I sat in my daughter’s tiny, closet-sized bedroom with a space heater running all day and all night long. We played in there, we ate in there, we lived in that room.

In late February we had a few days with no power. Which meant absolutely no heat. She slept in our bed with us. And, two months of sleep training went out the door.

By early March the mean temperature was 37 degrees. And, I was filled with disgust. I gave my slumlord an ultimatum. Get us heat or we call the city. You have one week.

Two weeks later and two weeks prior to the end of our one-year lease, he served us eviction papers. The city had come and written him up and we were out.

Now, had I been single and unencumbered and fearless…well, that would have been a different story. But, fighting the man who controls your heat and water when you have a baby just doesn’t feel smart or safe.

So, we found a place in two days, boxed up everything we owned and moved seven blocks north. Into a charming little duplex with sweet neighbors and a landlord who offered to put us up in a hotel when our shower didn’t work for 12 hours.

There are no exposed bricks with flaky white mold, no high ceilinged rooms to heat, no balcony filled with mosquitos and squirrels and no leaking tin roofs at 2am.

So, here we are.

13
Jul
2015

actions and reactions // past

categories: california, family

If we wanted to go to school we had to catch the bus from the end of our dirt road. Half a mile in each direction. Northern California gets hot. Dry and hot. The grasses are brown before easter and the water holes dry up before it’s warm enough to swim. Ranches are sparse. Lots of open land for livestock. There are huge, beautiful, aging oak trees dripping with mistletoe to provide the occasional respite but the earth is parched and the air is dry.

It was the beginning of June and the last week of school. The end of fourth grade for me and the end of third grade for my brother. The bus skittered across the gravel and came to a stop.

“Bye,” I shouted to my friends. My brother was running up the aisle.

“Don’t jump, goddamnit. I am sick of warning you,” The driver yelled after my brother, who had taken all three steps in one fell swoop and was already out of earshot.

“Stop it-uhhhhh!” I said upon catching up to him. Because that’s what you say to your little brother when you’re tired and cranky and older than him and he is creating a cloud of dust all around you.

“You stop,” he countered.

“I’m not even doing anything. Gawwwwwd,” I said.

With one particularly well-aimed kick, he overturned a large stone. Curled underneath was a baby sharp-tailed snake. Not more than six inches. Red, thin, fast but harmless.

“Watch out,” I screamed, pushing my little brother aside. I stomped once. It was quick and well aimed. The snake was sliced in half, both sections writhing helplessly. The red blood oozed slowly out of it’s body, creating two thick, dark muddy patches in the white dust.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Devastated and embarrassed. I loved snakes. We spent every summer hunting gophers, racers and garters.

He was quiet. We stood there, staring at the dying reptile as tears streamed down my face.

When the snake stopped moving, my brother silently retrieved the round, grey stone and placed it over its still body.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

We walked silently the rest of the way home. No more kicking of rocks, or rolling of eyes.

“It’s okay,” he said when we were finally home. “you didn’t mean to. You were just scared.”

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