Another Sleepless Night

As soon as I sit up in bed and start to pull back the blankets, Philip grabs my arm and says, “No.”  I hiss, “The baby’s crying,” but he doesn’t let go.  He just says wearily, “Gina, go back to sleep.”  He tries to pull me down, but I resist. 

“The baby is crying!” I say angrily, but he won’t let go.  “No, Gina, no. Please just go back to sleep,” he whispers again, and he sounds like he’s about to cry.  I’m no longer tired.  I just feel an intense and unforgiving anger that he won’t let me go to the baby.  She needs me.  I hear her cry ratcheting up from a soft whimper to a hiccupping, desperate wail.  I yank my arm out of Philip’s grasp.  “You let me go to my baby!” I demand, and I slide out of the bed before he can grab me again.  The bed creaks behind me as Philip gets up to follow me down the hall.

I don’t turn on the light because it hurts. I fumble for the doorknob and ease myself into her room.  The moonlight is casting a shadow over her crib, but I can hear her sobbing frantically.  Even without seeing her, I know she is waving her arms, begging me to pick her up.  Philip tries once more as I step into the room.  He puts his hand gently on my shoulder and says, “Gina, please, please, come back to bed.”  I shrug him off and hurry to the side of the crib.

Philip gives up as I peer down into the impossible darkness.  She’s crying.  I can hear her.  But no matter how hard I reach, I can’t touch her.  “Amy, where are you?  Amy, come here.  Mama’s here, Amy.  Come here to me,” I call.  I try to keep my voice soft and calm, but I break as I’m speaking.  I wave my hand inside the empty space of the crib, feeling nothing but a freezing cold that crawls up my arm.  “Amy,” I sob, “Please, baby, come here.”

Philip leans against the doorway.  “Gina, I don’t think she can hear you.”

I whirl around and scream, “This is all your fault.  I told you the house was wrong.  I told you I could feel it.  YOU CAN’T FIX THIS, SO LEAVE ME ALONE.”  Philip nods.  “I can’t fix this,” he says tearfully.  Then he shakes his head and walks toward me. “I can’t fix this, and I can’t leave you alone,” he whispers as he clutches me to his chest and grips the side of the empty crib. Together we huddle against the wall of the nursery.  We spend another night listening to our child sob in a place we cannot see or reach.

Entry for Love Bites Blog Hop
 http://www.officemango.com/2014/02/love-bites-blog-hop-2014/
Word count: 462 words

Stoic

As soon as Gloria walks through the door, she is glad that she came. Marie gathers her into her too thin arms, and Gloria can feel the brittle twig fragility of Marie’s ribs as she presses against Gloria’s sleet-drenched coat. They rock together in a long embrace. When Gloria breaks away, her head is spinning, but Marie’s face is already less pinched and weary.

 

Gloria takes a deep breath, the sickly nausea billowing through her so suddenly that she has to drop into the seat that Marie now keeps by the front door. Uncle Maurice is coming down the hallway, his whisky glass half full and his famous holiday sweater tightly stretched across his ever-growing girth. He frowns when he sees Gloria slumping in the chair, her head hanging down as she struggles to deal with the terrible metallic aftertaste in her mouth and a cloying sense of fatigue that feels like it is sucking the marrow from her bones.

“Gloria, isn’t Marie looking good?” He says loudly, and he glares at Gloria’s audacious display of weakness.

Gloria squeezes her eyes shut and steels herself. She looks up and smiles gently at her sister. Marie is wearing a close-fitting cap of cloth roses. Aunt Chloe must have made it for her. Marie’s delicately embroidered dress is clearly the work of Great-Aunt Genevieve, and Marie’s expensive beautiful dancing slippers s surely came from Uncle Angus’s shoe store.  Mama’s carved smoky topaz beads are looped around Marie’s neck. Marie’s face is slowly becoming pinker, her eyes are brightening, and her posture is straightening as she stands with her hand on Gloria’s shoulder.

When Marie turns to confront Uncle Maurice’s inevitable unpleasantness, Gloria feels a thrill of joy to see Marie’s dark blond braid hanging down her back. She reaches out to stroke it, and Marie laughs.

“Mama cut it off for me before the treatments began. All my caps have a clip to hold it.” Marie flips up the edge of the cap to reveal a heavy barrette firmly clasping the rough-sheered end of the thick braid. Gloria shakes her head through the horrible sickly haze: she should have known that Marie’s elegantly pencilled eyebrows meant that Marie’s beloved hair was also gone.  

Marie steps forward and places her hand on Uncle Maurice’s chest.  

“Please, would you mind helping me to the kitchen?” she says sweetly. No one denies Marie anything these days. He gives up the scolding he has ready for Gloria and tenderly wraps his arm around Marie’s waist. With a pang, Gloria is reminded of the days when Uncle Maurice would grab each of the sisters by the waist and gallop down the steep hill behind Grandmother Anais’s house. Gloria digs her fingers into her palms to settle herself and repress the thought that such antics would probably crush Marie in her current state. 

The sickness is worse than Gloria had anticipated. It is taking all her will to keep from succumbing to it. She does not want her battle to become the focus of this holiday meal: she has come so that Marie could enjoy this Thanksgiving. The tongue clacking of the family members who abhor Gloria’s “dramatics” is sure to upset her doting, peacemaker sister. Gloria doesn’t know how Marie even made it to the door feeling this way, or how she can miraculously keep going day after day. 

 In every transatlantic phone call that Gloria has made to her family, Mama has remarked repeatedly on Marie’s gracious attitude and good humor throughout surgery after surgery and treatment after treatment. Gloria wishes she had come sooner. She wishes she could stay longer. Sitting in the tiny chair that Daddy set by the doorway to catch Marie if she has to collapse, Gloria now knows the truth without any doubt: Marie is dying. 

Mama slides up and sets her hand on Gloria’s shoulder.

“Honey, really, I know it’s upsetting to see Marie this way. The last time you saw her, she beat you at arm-wrestling,” Mama begins soothingly before the warning, hard tone creeps into her voice, “But I really must ask you to be brave for once. This holiday is very important to all of us. If your sister can keep a merry face, surely you can too. Please don’t turn this into the time that your cousin broke his arm.” 

Gloria stifles the surge of resentment. The pain was so horrible when her cousin Tommy broke his arm. He fractured it in three places when he tried to surf down the hill in Marie’s Radio Flyer wagon.  Gloria was brought to her knees screaming madly as soon as he struck the ground. Tommy sat looking a bit dazed, but he did not whimper or even grimace despite the blood coloring his jacket and the sharp edge of the bone spearing through his torn sleeve. Gloria bit her tongue repeatedly as she writhed on the ground. Uncle Maurice came rushing to her, panic and love distorting his usually cheerful face. He had to sit on her to get her to hold still so that he could check to see if she was hurt. While he was restraining her, Tommy wandered up holding his wounded arm. 

“Uncle Maurice, I think I want my mom,” he said calmly.  

“Good Lord, did the two of you collide or something?” Uncle Maurice blurted. 

Marie ran up to help. “I don’t think anything happened to Gloria,” Marie said in her gentle, understanding way. “Maybe she’s upset because Tommy’s arm looks so awful.” 

By then all the aunts and uncles, Mama, Daddy, Grandma and all the cousins had circled around the scene of the accident. Uncle Maurice relinquished Gloria in disgust and helped Uncle Angus carry Tommy to the station wagon.  Uncle Angus reported that the shock finally wore off and Tommy began screaming before they hit the interstate, but he was still impressed with Tommy’s original bravery. That was one bad break. Gloria’s hysterics continued for a short while after the uncles sped off with her cousin, but her screams abruptly ceased as the car disappeared down the road. 

Tommy’s accident happened fifteen years ago, but there hasn’t a single family gathering since then that someone hasn’t mentioned it. Although she was only seven at the time, Gloria’s cowardly response to Tommy’s injury juxtaposed with his quiet bravery forever branded her as a person who would do anything to keep the family’s attention focused on herself.  People couldn’t help but notice that Gloria always acted like she was the one who was suffering whenever anyone was sick or hurt. It was ridiculous, especially when the one who was truly suffering usually bravely acted like he or she felt no pain whatsoever.  When Aunt Chloe’s water broke at Christmas, she said Gloria’s fits were so distracting that she couldn’t even feel her contractions until Uncle Maurice had her halfway to the hospital. 

This Thanksgiving is the first holiday meal that Gloria has attended in five years. She decided when Uncle Angus nearly severed his thumb with the new electric turkey carver that she would leave them to feel their own damn pain in the future.  She merely turned pale and clutched her thumb under the tablecloth that time, but everyone looked sharply to her after Uncle Angus held up his spurting hand and looked at it with detached bewilderment.  

She wonders now if she shouldn’t have had a thicker skin: all that lost time with her sister is weighing heavily on her today. It is bad enough that Marie is dying: Gloria feels terrible that she has let her sister feel all the pain of this death up until today. After all , it is Marie who always comforted her, Marie who always brushed back her hair and rocked her while the family clucked at Gloria’s outrageous antics. Marie understood. Whenever Mama glared at Gloria with a disapproving frown and Aunt Geniveve carefully avoided looking at Gloria at all and Uncle Maurice muttered condemnations under his breath and the cousins took up the condemning attitude of the adults, Marie was there. She would take Gloria’s sharp longing for love and replace it with a mellow, golden sense of peace.  Marie was the one who loved Gloria for who she truly was. 

Hunched in the small, pretty chair like a wounded creature, Gloria shrugs off Mama’s hand.

“I will be fine. Go spend time with Marie. She’s having a really great day. Don’t waste it worrying about me making scenes. I may just go lie down out of sight in Grandma’s bed until my jet lag is under control,” Gloria gasps. 

“I’m going to do that, Gloria. I haven’t seen you in almost two years, but dammit, I haven’t heard Marie laugh like that in months. I really wish you would learn to tough it out.  If you had been here for the things your sister has suffered in the past year. . .it’s probably just as well that you weren’t. That sister of yours has more dignity than you’ll ever have.” Mama gags back a sob and pushes away from Gloria. Gloria watches her go into the bathroom and reemerge a few moments later with a becalmed, dry face. 

The dizziness and the growing need to vomit are so strong that Gloria is afraid she won’t make it out of sight in time. She drags herself up the stairs and curls up on the floor of Grandma’s master bathroom. Through the heating vent she can hear Marie chatting happily. The relatives are joking gently with her, using long-ago abandoned pet names, urging her to eat, eat, eat. They marvel at her strength. Their voices ring with renewed hope because her face seems healthier than it has in months.   

Gloria will not let them hear her vomit. That it is her holiday resolution. She cannot hold in Marie’s pain and enjoy Marie’s health at the same time. She cannot even stay and bear Marie’s burden for the next few months. It is too much, to hear them draw close to the vents and sneer about her infamous weakness and selfish need for attention. In the hallway and out of Marie’s earshot, their whispers drift up to Gloria. 

“Really, it probably would have been better if she hadn’t come,” comes Aunt Chloe’s soft voice, and Gloria tries to focus on the nausea instead of remembering how this aunt once sang lullabies to her about bears dancing on the moon. 

“I don’t know how that girl turned into such an abomination; it’s like she’s from another family,” Uncle Maurice responds.  The last time he spoke tenderly to Gloria was the day that Tommy broke his arm. 

Later, Mama and Grandma speak in angry murmurs. 

“I can’t believe that even now she’s doing this.” 

“The child has no goddamn shame in her at all.” 

“Jetlag my ass.” 

“I know.  At least she still has both her ovaries.” 

 “I’m so mad I don’t even want to set eyes on her.” 

Curled on the bathroom floor, Gloria tightens her resolve and whispers again and again, “I will be stoic. I will be stoic.”  

In the dining room below, the family gazes with loving eyes on Marie’s rosy face and shining eyes. They cheer with joy when Marie courageously summons the energy for a brief jig with Uncle Angus. They have decided they won’t let Gloria ruin this precious time.  Tonight they have one goal: to be stoic in the face of this heartbreaking loss that is ruthlessly creeping upon them. They aren’t going to let any sniveling brats take that away from them. 

They revel late into the night. When morning comes, Gloria drags herself into Marie’s room and plants a soft kiss on her sister’s peaceful brow before she goes out to meet her taxi.  As Gloria is carried away, Marie is awakened by the now familiar agony. Gloria is not relieved to feel her sister’s pain ebb from her body. She wishes she were braver, but she takes a small comfort that at least Marie will not have to suffer the sharp pain that follows Gloria wherever she goes: the pain of no longer being a beloved in a family that once treasured her.  If she could have back that love, Gloria would be willing to eat the pain of every last one of them for the rest of eternity.

Ashes

 

 

 

 

Sitting in the part of the couch that you wore bare before you died, I wonder what would happen if I ate your ashes. 
 

 “Really, Sarah! How that mind of yours thinks!”  

See, already, even without eating your ashes, even without pressing my lips to your once-was-flesh, I feel closer to you. Just thinking it brings you nearer. 

So tell me, if I am what I eat, as you used to say while you stirred the lemon and the honey into my tea, if I am what I eat, will I become you? The sweet and the tart, so mixed together that the tongue can’t help but love both at once. Will I become that if I eat your ashes? 

“Those ashes aren’t me.” 

Of course. Of course. That’s why it was good to burn your body. It was good to take your calluses that you gained from digging holes for the tulip bulbs, your hair that you damaged just to be a redhead, your teeth that sat so straight and true without the aid of dentistry, yes, it was good to take those last trace elements of you and toast them up just like the pot roast I scorched when I made the family dinner for the first time. 

“You ruined that baking pan. God himself couldn’t get it clean.” 

Do you believe in God now? 

“Dammit. I told you, I always believed in God. It’s his goodness that I had difficulty in having faith in.” 

Hmm. Faith. I had faith in you. That’s about it, you know. That was all that I had. You were my one woman religion.  And now, I can’t tell if I’m remembering you or remembering who I thought you were. Will you be totally disgusted if I turn you into a false idol? 

“I can’t follow the silliness you talk sometimes. Eating ashes and making idols. You read too many fairytales and baked your brain sitting up in that window seat.” 

Weren’t you baking alongside me? Of course, you’re the one who’s really baked now. And all I have are ashes. 

“Ashes of roses. That was this purpley color that was popular when I was a girl.  I made a dress out of it. Sewed it all by hand just to prove to myself that I could.” 

Was that word association or just an attempt to get me to change the subject? 

“Both. Quit being such a smarty-pants.” 

Oh hush. We both know that you love it when I’m a smarty-pants. 

“That’s what you think.” 

You never encouraged me to think otherwise. Besides, I always could see right through you. 

“Not really. You never did figure out where I hid your Christmas presents.” 

Fourth shoebox. The one meant for boots. I’m really good at re-wrapping things.  

“See, you always had to ruin everything for yourself, now didn’t you?”

Yes, but I don’t see how that applies here. 

“You couldn’t just let yourself be surprised. You always had to poke and pry and mangle everything with your curiosity.” 

Did you just say that I mangled everything with my curiosity?  

“Yes.” 

And you aren’t going to explain that at all? 

“Don’t eat my ashes. That’s disrespectful.” 

I miss you. 

“That’s life. It’s not always roses and hummingbirds and tripping through the daisies.” 

Oh God, shut up! Do you really think I still need lessons on how fair life isn’t? 

“No, honey. I wish you did, but you don’t. So be a good girl. And find a decent place for my ashes before your imagination gets the best of you. Nothing is going to bring me back, sweetheart. I’m gone.” 

If you’re so gone, why the hell won’t you stop talking to me? 

“Because I always was cantankerous like that, don’t you remember?” 

I remember. Good God in heaven above with gravy on his plate and a side of pan-fried potatoes, I remember how cantankerous you were. 

“That’s my good girl.” 

Don’t eat your ashes? 

“Don’t eat my ashes.” 

Can I keep smelling your old perfume bottle? 

“Guess I still have to choose my battles with you, don’t I?” 

I won’t eat your ashes. Be happy about that. 

“You’ve got to be the only child in the world who makes her mother bargain for that.” 

Just because I love you so, Momma, just because I loved you so. Now let me go to sleep. 

“That figures. You won’t let me rest, but I’m supposed to let you sleep.” 

Guess I’m just selfish. You’re dead anyway, so what are you griping about? 

“I just like to gripe. I’ve earned the privilege.” 

Okay. Good night. 

“Leave my ashes alone.” 

I said that I would already. God, don’t ride me. 

“Just making sure that we’re clear on that.  I swear, I’ll rile your belly like a water moccasin caught in a sack if you do.” 

Thanks for that, Mom. Thanks a lot for that. 

“My pleasure.” 

I’m sure it is. You’re cackling right now, aren’t you? That’s just so damn funny to you. “Riling my belly like a water moccasin.” Did you make that up, or did that come straight off the Ozarks and through your lips? 

“Well, you can take a gal out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the gal.” 

Man, then maybe you could have gone a little easier on the whole “this is a salad fork” and “we don’t stir our tea with the sugar shell” thing. You know, since I was already doomed by genetics. 

“Couldn’t let you take the easy way out, now could I?” 

What!? There’s an easy way? You never told me there was an easy way. Where the hell is this “easy way” thing? You knew about an easy way and never told me? That’s not very motherly of you, I have to say. 

“Eh. Somedays you didn’t make me feel like being so motherly.” 

So what should I do with these ashes? You wouldn’t tell me when you were alive, and now I don’t know what to do. 

“And the most logical thing you could come up with was to eat them?” 

See, you do at least know how to mellow the country in the gal. Don’t talk college professory to me. You’re just sidestepping me again. Don’t you know what you want?

”I never got what I want, so how could I know it?” 

I gave you what I had to give, Momma. That’s all I could do. 

“Don’t be sensitive. I didn’t want you, but I loved you anyway.” 

So maybe all those things you wanted weren’t what you wanted after all. 

“That’s more of your fairytale talk. Figure out what to do with my ashes. I’m dead. I’m not going to complain.” 

That’s so funny, Momma. You not complaining. Oh, sorry, am I speaking disrespectfully to the dead?  

“What else is new? You are the most disrespectful child I’ve ever seen.” 

I respected you. 

“Not really, but you can tell yourself that if it makes you feel better.” 

Nice, Momma. Didn’t you teach me something about not hitting below the belt? 

“That was so your brothers had some hopes for the future.” 

Your ashes! God, you  are still talking circles upon circles upon circles. I can’t eat them, so what do I do with them? 

“Is it such a burden to hold onto them?” 

Uh oh.  Are you about to launch into the “these frail old bones” speech about how no one should be burdened with you? I mean, didn’t we settle that one? I did the best that I could.

“Then hold onto my ashes. Be patient. Someday the right thing will come to you.” 

Please don’t quote The Good Earth now. Please don’t do it. 

“What? No, that quoting thing is what you do, not me. But what’s wrong with The Good Earth? I swear, that college just about ruined everything simple and decent for you.” 

You’re right. You’re always right. 

“Now you’re just placating me to get the old lady to shut up. I can see through that.” 

Yup. I am. 

“Fine. I can think of some others who might actually appreciate the wisdom of their elders.” 

They won’t for long. Man, you still can talk a blue streak, can’t you? 

Can’t you? 

Okay. I won’t eat your ashes. I do miss you though. I really, really do.

Muse

 

 

I take my brush and dip it in the clear water, and the color bleeds from the bristles like a storm cloud dangling a dozen tornado fingers. I watch the water change color and try not to think about that damn song. You’re going from bar to bar playing it. I’m sure it seeps sympathy for you into your audience like the indigo seeps from my brush. “He’s so sensitive,” your chords whisper to them.

When the storm clouds push down on the landscape, what the land is becomes irrelevant. There is nothing but all-consuming tornado then. When the paint gives color to the water, the water becomes the color. The color does not become the water.

Sometimes your friends will stop me in the store or on the street. “You really hurt him,” they’ll scold. “Have you heard that song he wrote about you? You didn’t even explain why you left him. You just disappeared.”

When I loved you, I was always the land swept away by the storms of your creativity. You were never the water, bleeding out the colors I loaded on my brush. It took me years to realize I was nothing but muse to you.

Next to my garbage basket but never in it is my box of evidence. Only I can read the contents. There is the apology card that is ripped up and taped back together for the night you threw my easel through the window. You got a whole album out of your manufactured regret for that. The now desiccated daisies you picked on your way back from the tantrum produced by my demand for time alone to paint transformed into the sweetest, most lilting melody I’ve ever heard. My half-finished sketch of you playing your guitar uncrumpled in your imagination and became your most requested ballad.

I win when I don’t need the box, when I feel my own pain louder than I can feel yours. For you, a muse cannot also be a creator. Your muse is an echo chamber that amplifies your passion. She is a pocket of air that is siphoned up to move the notes into place. She is the water, not the color.

Does it matter that I left you? I am still your muse. You and your fans are still demanding that I hear your pain. You are still insisting on coloring me with your emotions. You didn’t have enough sympathy to notice when I left myself. It does not surprise me that you are bewildered that I left you.

Garage Sale of the Gods

The yard sign read, “Garage Sale of the Gods”.  Gordon leapt from the car and grabbed an orb which was clearly the sad remnant of taxidermy experimentation.

“Look at this eyeball!” he said.  “Maybe it’s Odin’s left eye or the eye of Sauron!”  I tried to deflate his excitement by saying, “Maybe it’s Thor’s favorite marble encased in the finest Spanish cordovan,” but Gordon kept blathering ridiculous possibilities. “It could be the grey sisters’ eye! It’s definitely an eye!”

Gordon’s shouting wouldn’t stop until I got the price of Gordon’s potential treasure, so I asked the crocodile-headed man in the garage, “What is this and what are you asking for it?”  He answered, “That’s Cerebus’s testicle.” Gordon dropped his find and made a fatuous and ill-mannered display of using his hand sanitizer.

“But it looks like an eye,” I said.  “It is,” crocodile-man answered. “Hellhounds need to see what is behind them and what is in front of them. It was a bad idea to neuter Cerebus, although anything you cut off him grows back.  After Heracles snuck up on him, Hades decided against vitiating Cerebus’ abilities in the future, so that item is a one of a kind treasure.”

Prompt: http://www.jeffreyhollar.com/p/monday-mixer.html

200 words
 

The Art of Christmas Giving

 

Up until I was thirteen, Christmas was an amazing time of the year.  My brothers and I helped my mother clean house, bake cookies, and decorate.  Christmas carols played non-stop, and my mother sang along in her uneven voice that always cracked on the high notes.  In the doorway to the kitchen, a red velvet bell was hung. The bell was special, because in a time of hardship and poverty, one of the older children had scraped up enough money to give it to my mother for Christmas.   It was tradition to pull the clapper as you walked under it, and it would play a music box version of Silent Night.  To me, it was the embodiment of Christmas giving: a small, thoughtful sacrifice that her son used to say to my mother, “I see you.  I love you.  I think about how to make you happy.”

Christmas broke for me the year I turned thirteen.  It was 1983, and the recession was hitting my family hard.  Several members of my family were either unemployed or underemployed, so it was decreed that we would stop exchanging presents with the extended family and only exchange presents within households. You might think that I was upset because I would be getting fewer gifts that year, but that wasn’t my problem at all.  My sadness came from the realization that many members of the family resented having to go through the effort of giving outside their households.  Before that time, I had thought of the family as one cohesive unit, albeit a scattered unit.  I thought of us as a puzzle that came together to make a complete picture at special times of the year.  It didn’t wound me to realize that people didn’t have the resources to buy gifts for each other.  It wounded me to realize that gift giving in general was seen as an exchange of money instead of an exchange of heart.  I became aware that when my brothers and sisters shopped for Christmas, they did not uphold the value that my mother tried to instill in us all.  They did not look for ways to say, “I see you. I love you.  I think about how to make you happy.”

When I was very small, there were times when I received gifts that made no sense to me, and my mother would say, “It’s the thought that counts.”  I had faith in that idea: it was the thought that counted.  It was the thought in my mother’s handmade gifts that made me love them.  It was knowing that she took the time to see me, to love me, and to try to make me happy that made me hold on to those gifts for decades.  The year I turned thirteen, I was excited because I was finally old enough to take part in that tradition and to look for ways to say to my family members, “I see you.  I love you.  I think about how to make you happy.”  And that was the year that my brothers and sisters openly complained about what a hassle it was to give gifts to one another.

As an adult, I try to carry on my mother’s tradition.  I try to think about what I can give at Christmas that has meaning and value beyond being the best buy for the best money.  I think about when I was ten, and my older sister gave me a beautiful red dress with velvet trim and giant golden roses.  I loved that dress and wore it for years, squeezing into it long after I had outgrown it.   I still have it in a box.  I used to take it out occasionally and think about what a wonderful thing it was that my sister knew that was the perfect dress for me.  I was in my thirties when I got the full story of the dress.  As she grew older and less careful with her tongue, my mother would sometimes reveal the understory of my memories.  When she saw that I had kept the rose dress, she sighed and said, “I bought three dresses for you that Christmas, but your sister was sad because she didn’t have money to buy you a gift. I let her choose one to give you.  I was a little upset that she chose the prettiest one, but such is life.”  I have to admit it hurt when my mother told me that.  For years, I had held on to the dress because it was the nicest, most thoughtful gift my sister had ever given me.  It took me a few years to piece together the real gift I had been given, that my mother understood that I needed my sister to say, “I see you. I love you.  I think about ways to make you happy,” and so that was what my mother gave me for Christmas.

Christmas is a hard time for me.  Every year I try to think about what will most tell my loved ones that I see them, I love them, and I think about ways to make them happy. It is not about the most expensive gift or the most rare gift or the greatest number of gifts.  It is about giving something that comes from the heart.  In my sons’ lives, it is their grandfather who is the master at giving the boys the truest gifts.  Ever since they were born, he has made them a Christmas ornament that symbolizes that year of their life.  When the boys were smaller, these ornaments were not very challenging for him.  He got to spend a lot of time with them, and their interests tended to be intense and easily expressed.  He crafted a tiny red broom for the year my older son carried a dollar store plastic broom everywhere he went.  He made an intricate rabbit popping out of a magician’s hat for the year my younger son wanted to be Greg Wiggle.  As the years go by, the ornaments are less connected to the boys’ lives.  They don’t spend as much time with their grandparents, and their dreams are more complicated and difficult to embody in a simple ornament.  Their grandfather has taken to making tiny picture frames as ornaments with a nod to milestones like middle school graduation instead of the highly personalized ornaments of the past.  It doesn’t matter.  Every year, my sons spread out their ornaments on the floor before putting them on the tree, and together, the collection clearly says, “I see you. I love you. I think about how to make you happy.”

This is what truly should be at the heart of not just Christmas giving, but all giving.  Whether you are giving to a stranger who asks you for a dollar to get a meal or you are making something for the greatest love of your life, the greatest gift is not just what you give, but how you give.  If you give expensive things out of obligation with a tinge of resentment, you are not giving.  You are simply following form.  To give meaningfully, you must give thoughtfully.  You must take the time to say, “I see you.  I love you.  I think about how to make you happy.”

The Real Boogeyman in the Schools

 

Every day I am deluged with discussions about education and how to make it effective.  I know many people who are absolutely enraged at the public schools and how they treat kids.  Almost all of these people have some kind of solution, running the gambit from advocating for extremely rigid institutional models with set curriculums and standardized goals to homeschooling and unschooling.  I think there are merits to all of these systems, so I don’t see any one as the ultimate threat or the magic pill.  Rather than seeing any one ideology as the solution or the ruination of education, I tend to think that the real problem is absolutism.  So many educators, politicians, and parents want to believe that their ideas about education are the only worthwhile ones.  For the most part, I see this as the real problem with education in the United States.

In the 1990s, I spent a few years as a teacher in a daycare that was working to get NAEYC accreditation. At the time, NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) was the Grand Poobah in charge of regulating wisdom regarding in the education of preschoolers.  I suppose you could say they were the champions of Special Snowflake ideology.  In the infant room, we were no longer allowed to give the kids coloring book pictures to color in, because kids should not have their creativity stunted by result-oriented artwork.  All artwork was to focus on the process.  We completely purged hundreds of carefully collected templates and coloring sheets from our cabinets.  All projects that even suggested some kind of “teacher input” were stripped from the room.  Did it matter that some of the kids preferred to do result-oriented artwork? No.  The assumption was that kids who wanted coloring pages needed to be freed from inappropriate conditioning. 

Honestly, I liked many of the elements of NAEYC’s program.  I had no problem with allowing for a focus on freeform art and giving the kids more options instead of constantly trying to get a room full of children ages 4 months to 15 months to produce snowman ornaments to decorate the room.  I loved the emphasis on cultural diversity and the standards for classroom equipment that focused on the developmental needs of the age groups.  What I disliked was the absolutism of the program: the idea that anything that didn’t fit within in their philosophical goals was automatically deemed inappropriate. 

There is a value in coloring in images and doing result-oriented work.  While no infant should be forced to engage in any project, the attitude that these kinds of projects have no benefit for any infant ignores the fact that many infants like these kinds of projects and do benefit from them.  As an education professional and a parent, I’ve encountered this kind of absolutism over and over again: an insistence that a particular method is the best way to intellectually empower children while ignoring the reality that no way is the best way for every child.

While I was a daycare teacher, I repeatedly saw a scenario that I vowed not to repeat as a parent.  Bluntly put, there are many small children who do not do well in daycare settings. Unfortunately, there’s a horrible stigma attached to having a child who doesn’t belong in daycare.  That and the fact that most schools try to keep their classrooms at maximum capacity means that few parents are told that daycare is not a productive environment for their child. 

Two children in particular still stand out in my mind even though it’s been almost twenty years since I’ve been their teacher.  One was a child who was absolutely terrified to be “abandoned” at the daycare.  The child literally shrieked and cried non-stop for two months straight the entire time she was in the classroom.  Most children stop a few minutes after their parents leave.  This child never did.  Nothing could distract her.  Nothing could comfort her.  She wasn’t just angry or upset.  She was paralyzed with fear.  The only time she was quiet was when she had screamed herself to sleep.  Typically a child adjusts to being in daycare within a few days.  She never did.  The day her mother gave up and decided to keep her home, I cried with relief mostly because I felt I was participating in the torture of the child merely by being the person who had to hold her flailing body while her mother walked out every day.

The second child was aggressive.  There are lots of children under the age of five who are not good at playing nice.  When they mostly engage with adult caregivers who can stop them from doing too much harm, they can gradually be guided to develop self-control and find more acceptable ways of expressing and/or entertaining themselves.  When they are in a group setting with two adults and seven to eleven other small children, they become a real physical threat.  This is not their fault.  They’re not consciously deciding to inflict pain and suffering on all around them.  They simply have not developed enough emotionally or intellectually to be able to stop themselves.

 One little boy in particular was so constant and so intense in his attacks that we sat down to document his behavior in an effort to get the administration and the parents to recognize that we were not exaggerating his behavior.  In a half an hour, we counted 60 acts of aggression.  He would grab a toy from one child, hit another child over the head with the toy, throw the toy into a third child’s face and then run and belly flop onto a fourth child all in one minute’s time.  Our choices were to assign one teacher the full time task of keeping him from attacking the other children (not a completely feasible option when there were nine other potty training children in the classroom who needed care as well) or accept that he was going to occasionally hurt another child.  The third option, asking his parents to withdraw him from the program, was not something the administration was willing to support.  Eventually he ended up dislocating another child’s arm when he moved up to the Twos.  In the meantime, it was abundantly clear that not only did he terrorize the other children, but he wasn’t happy or thriving in the daycare environment himself.  The program didn’t have the resources to guide his aggression: instead, it inadvertently helped accentuate his aggressive tendencies and provided him with endless opportunity to exhibit this behavior.  No behavior modification strategies we used had any effect on him.  The truth was that he needed to be in an environment where he had plenty of focused attention and less access to people who were smaller than him and unable to defend themselves or ward off his attacks.

Although the daycare stated that they treated each child like a special snowflake, the ideology manifested itself as something just as rigid as “every child must follow these rules”.  Ideologies strip away the ability of teachers to look at the individual needs of their students and sometimes admit things like “I am not the right teacher for this child”, “This school does not have the resources to deal with this child” OR “This method is a completely inappropriate tool for this child”.  Whether the idea is that every child is a special snowflake or that every child is a mental soldier in training, the ideology is allowed to override the teacher and convert education from a means of enlightenment to a brutal trap that almost everyone complains about.