A Patchwork Life

So remember when I blogged about the big NYC trip we had planned, when we were going to see the Rockettes?

The Blizzard of 2009 intervened instead, and I’ve spent the past few days in the house with the girls, which is especially sucky because my husband and my in-laws went ahead Friday morning. So I’ve been flying solo here, shoveling snow, while he’s been going to a Broadway show and watching snowball fights in Times Square. Not exactly the way I wanted to start my winter break.

Bah, humbug.

If you’re my Facebook friend, you know I’ve been huffing and pouting all weekend, which wasn’t that attractive then, I’m sure, so I won’t repeat it here. And we did meet our new neighbor, who has a girl just the same age as mine, and they came over Saturday afternoon for spaghetti and snowballs, and then today my girls went to her house and had a lovely time. “How can you meet someone and feel like they are such a good friend of yours in just one or two days?” Sophie wondered this evening, and so that is definitely a bonus of the weekend. And we watched Home Alone and A Charlie Brown Christmas and Wizard of Oz, and when I was alone at night, I watched Love, Actually and may have sniffled a little, to myself. And I did some online shopping for the girls, and was grateful for our furnace, which we replaced last year and has performed like a champ. I’ll be thrilled to see my husband tomorrow, but honestly, I think we made the best of a disappointing situation.

Apart from being cranky and disappointed, I’m starting to think about the year– not quite ready for resolutions yet, but tentatively moving towards that reflective time of year. December has been a mixture of frustration and chaos, so I need to find a way to resolve those feelings so that I can start to see the bigger picture of the year and gain some perspective.

But right now, that seems so much easier said than done.

I’ve got a wicked head cold, the kind that starts with a single sneeze, followed by another sneeze an hour or so later, followed by five or six wet sneezes in a row, and then all of a sudden your nose is red and chapped around the edges and you’ve got a little pile of used tissues near you everywhere you go.

I’ve also been having chills all day, as I juggled emails, students, all kinds of last-minute details before tomorrow’s half-day, which finishes the calendar year for us. Then I read a horrifying story in the local newspaper that included a name that rang a decade-old bell, and I had shivers of a different kind.

Ten years ago when I was in college, there was a woman majoring in the same field who was in a lot of my classes. She was a distinctive student: older (though younger than I thought), definitely a mom, the kind of older student who spoke up in every single discussion, but rarely in a way that moved the discussion forward productively. If I sound like I’m trying to be diplomatic, it’s because I am, because when I was a student, my friends and I inwardly groaned whenever we saw her enter the room on the first day of classes. She had a long ponytail streaked with gray and the kind of frame that is best described as skinny or scrawny, not slender or lithe or even slim, and she often wore sweatsuits and smelled a bit like cigarette smoke.

In my senior year, I served as a teaching assistant as part of my department’s honors program, and in a passing conversation, I mentioned her to the professor I was assisting, who told me briefly that she had a complicated life and that what was she was trying to do educationally was actually very brave and difficult. I can’t say I had a sudden epiphany of empathy, but I’ve clearly never forgotten her, and when I taught at the community college, I met more and more students that reminded me of her.

Today, her eighteen-year-old son stood in a courtroom and pled guilty to stabbing her to death in their apartment this spring. The last name was unusual enough to ring a bell for me, and I emailed that same professor and asked her if it was the same woman, and she confirmed that it was.

Clearly, the son is disturbed, and the brief description of the family history in the article is probably only the tip of the dysfunctional iceberg. I would not pretend to have known or understood her, like some of the professors we shared who I know are mourning her in truly authentic ways. But all the same, I have shivers, I feel haunted.

Rest in peace, Beth Skiratko.

The tree is up and decorated, after a few near-misses, one new tree stand, and one incident of me leaping forward as the tree crashed over Sophie’s head. The Christmas cookies are baked, though have not been distributed, and I keep forgetting to send in checks for teacher gifts. We have a fun family trip to New York City planned, to see the Rockettes do their Christmas thing, and that’s going to be our big family present this year. My mother saw her first movie in the Radio City theater, when her grandmother took her, and this year, she’s thrilled to be taking my girls, and we’re all excited to join them. There are decorations hung, and so far, for at least one more year, the girls still believe in Santa.

We’ve been talking about other questions of faith and belief around my house recently. The girls have talked to their friends and are starting to think about who celebrates what holiday, and who believes in God and who doesn’t. We have always told them that there are many different ways to believe, and we’ve taken them to Hanukkah celebrations, played Christmas music, read them Greek myths and pagan poetry, talked to them about evolution and monks and priests and nuns. But they won’t grow up as members of any particular church, and so we’re kind of charting our own path.

Tonight, I took out a Children’s Bible that my grandparents gave me twenty-two years ago, when I was nine, and read about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, Isaac, and the Tower of Babel. My girls listened with wide eyes and asked me questions about forgiveness and cruelty and love and creation, and I tried to answer them as honestly as I could. Then we read a little Buddhist fable about a golden bird and I kissed them good night.

I have no idea what they will end up believing, but I always want them to believe in the power and richness of language and stories, and the beauty and importance of love and peace, and so I’ll read to them, and talk to them, and try and keep my mind and heart open, so that they can too.

No, not the wonderful story by ZZ Packer, but instead, the actual troop of giggly girls I’ve been spending some time with yesterday and today.

Yesterday was the annual Mayor’s Christmas Parade, and our troop proudly marched about two miles, carrying a felt banner, shaking jingle bells, wearing reindeer antlers and occasionally singing “Jingle Bells” or “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. Sophie and I were banner-holders for the entire route, and Lucy hung out with her Brownie buddies and tossed candy to the waiting crowds. Earlier Sunday morning, I really wanted to bail– after a four-hour delay due to snow in Baltimore, my Saturday evening flight got in around 10:30 PM, and I slept for twelve hours and woke up Sunday morning still feeling exhausted. But I had already told the girls about it, and it seemed like such an unqualified good thing to do, and so we went, after some hastily arranged carpooling with another family. And it was good– the sunshine, the crowds, the crisp chill air, the faces of the children scrambling for candy and the Brownies thrilled to toss it out, the adults waiting along the route to feel some holiday cheer and clap and wave at Sophie, who grinned the entire time and felt so proud of herself for carrying that banner and doing such a good job.

Then today, I led the Brownies in earning their Write Away Try-It badge by interviewing each other, telling a group story, and writing a friendly letter. I showed up with worksheets and organizers and lined paper with snowflakes and snowmen and a little knot of anxiety in my belly, which I always have when showing up to help with my kids’ classes. Though I am a teacher, the younger kids are a whole ‘nother ballgame. Today, like the parade, however, worked out just fine. Their hilarious little stories were full of zombie Harry Potter characters and killer chipmunks and squids named Monkey, and their interviews were equally honest and riotous. Some of the kids were twitchy and restless and others were unintentionally droll and all of them were touching and endearing, even the kid who kept earning my “stern teacher” voice, which is getting surprisingly effective.

I’m pretty tired now and I’ve got a stack of neglected grading, but I’m truly, truly glad to have spent these days with my girls and their fellow Brownies.

I kept thinking I would have time to write a lovely post about my lovely Thanksgiving trip to wonderful Anderson Cottage bed and breakfast in beautiful Bath County, Virginia, which is 89% forest and 100% amazing. I was going to write about the chamber music concert we attended before a delicious gourmet Thanksgiving dinner, the concert where my two girls were enthralled, and where Lucy spent the entire span of Schubert conducting with her hands and Sophie whispered her thoughts on the emotions in each movement of the Schumann.

But then we came back, and the house was messy, and the laundry needed doing, and the grading was overwhelming, and now I’m the night before my Denver trip and haven’t packed! So you’ll have to imagine it for yourselves, and stop by Bath County if you ever get the chance, why don’t you?

I hope you enjoyed your holiday as much as I did, and I promise I will try and have some more substantial posts when I get back!