Today is one of my favorite posts here on Summer Vacation since after many months of thinking how fun it would be to have someone write a guest post and even dropping occasional hints about it to see if anyone would take the bait, I finally have a guest writer who’s taken me up on the offer! Some of you know him very well, but I’m fairly sure that anyone who takes the time to click on the Summer Vacation Facebook links would be familiar enough with my other Facebook activity to recognize his name: Paul Carlson.
Some background context for those of you who only know of him though his unique combination of slightly off-the-wall commentary and particularly insightful perspectives: My cousin Paul is a handful of years older than I am and has lived in or around southern Arizona since I was in college. He stayed with my family for a time when I was in high school after finishing college and looking for employment in the Cities before deciding to go back for some more schooling and pursue the education degree that often seems inevitable for so many in our family. He’s now beginning to explore his options in education administration. (Better him than me, for so many reasons.)
Our shared history is too extensive and sublimely ridiculous to elaborate on here, so suffice it to say that we’re good friends beyond our blood ties. One of the things about 21st century social networking I enjoy the most is how it allows me to stay more connected with the people in my family like him that I don’t get to see as often.
Enough of my prefacing -- take it away, P.
********************
I have known Tom since way before he was a flesh-and-blood 15-year-old who may or may not have meditated on what his inner 3-year-old thought about his latest Matchbox car. We may have even had an argument or two about whose car that really was. We have always been and will always be cousins, and we share many points of connection, including an affinity for music which at times borders on obsession, an appreciation of exquisite descriptive writing, a tendency to embrace our sarcastic side, and some kind of strange metaphysical preoccupation with tacos.
Recently here Tom mentioned the inertia of life, and my mind went into cloisters. I looked up the word so I could be relatively certain that I knew more or less what it meant (the wishy-washy “relatively” and “more or less” were used because with Wikipedia, you can never be too sure, right?). Basically, it boils down to “keeping on doing what you’re doing”. So, inertia accompanied me on my usual 2.77-mile walk, as did my dog and Led Zeppelin, Edvard Grieg, Paul Simon, and a dozen other people. I don’t have any recollection of having taken any actual steps, but I must have, right?
Then, as it is wont to do, my mind took a leap (whether forward, backward, or sideways, who’s to know?) from the concept of inertia to the psychological phenomenon known as the empty nest syndrome. Today I find myself at T minus 104 days to the day the fledglings are scheduled to take wing. The youngest begins his undergraduate studies, and the eldest begins her graduate studies.
It is highly unlikely that I will acquire the syndrome (because I am much closer to the water-runs-off-my-back end of the personality spectrum than the uptight end). Still, I find myself thinking an inordinate amount about what will and what will not change after they are gone, which kind of brings us back full circle. Major changes in one’s lifestyle disrupt inertia like the walls change the path of the racquetball. Here is my Top Six list of things that will change after August 24th:
*I must bid a fond farewell to Robert Downey, Jr., Christian Bale, and Will Smith. (It’s either that or go to the movies by myself)
*I won’t be watching silly YouTube videos, except for the ones that my kids bring to my attention on Facebook.
*I won’t have to worry about getting punched, wrestled to the floor, or unobtrusively shoulder-bumped as I walk through my own house.
*I won’t be eating any more Takis (not that anyone ever forced one down my throat, but....)
*I won’t be joining in a chorus of primal screams whenever “Kashmir,” “United States of Eurasia,” or “Because” comes on the shuffle. It will fall to me alone to do all the testosterony bursts from now on.
*It will be much harder to foment discord between my offspring because one will be 300 miles away and the other will be 1200 miles away. I’d have to do it through a 3-way Skype session or some such.
And as for what will not change:
*Working 50+ hours a week
*English practice and garden/house projects with my wife
*Walking the dog
*NFL and March Madness
I don’t know . . . Maybe I should dig out the sax and try forming a band?
********************
Me again, with just a couple of points I need to respond to:
*I have to admit that at this point I’m a little burned out on tacos for awhile.
*I really liked the phrase “the inertia of life.” Was that me or was that you encapsulating the post? Either way it’s a good line, and at least in my head it’s kind of the thematic subtext to this “posting every day for a month” stretch.
*There is no rule that says you can’t go to movies by yourself. That’s how I do it most of the time. And as sad as it might seem to some people, that’s how I’m currently planning on celebrating my actual birthday.
*Thank you for introducing the word “testosterony” into the blog.
*Takis, Paul? Seriously? Seriously?
Monday, May 13, 2013
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Day 12: Mother's Day
I almost did my student teaching in the district where I work now. I’d been assigned to a fourth grade classroom at one of many elementary schools in the district and had gotten far enough into the process to visit the school and meet my cooperating teacher. A couple of weeks before the assignment was set to begin the college called all of us newbies for a pre-student teaching meeting, during which I first learned we were forbidden from completing our student teaching in a district if we had any relatives employed there. As both my mother and my cousin were.
At first I thought, “It’s a huge district. Nobody’s going to care. They have close to thirty elementary schools. That rule has to be in place for small rural districts with one elementary school or something like that. Nobody’s going to make any connections between us.” But since I was the same compulsive little rule follower back then that I still am now, I brought it to the attention of some professor, who replied with a wide-eyed stare and what I can only assume was a significant blood pressure spike. Long story short -- a different student had just dropped from the program and the spot at Snail Lake I took opened up and the rest is history.
But after I was hired in the district myself, it didn’t take more than a few months for me to learn my assumptions had been misguided. For the next several years I wouldn’t walk into any kind of district meeting, staff development session, or major event without encountering someone who knew my mother.
My last name isn’t terribly common. It’d be a different story if you traveled to Ireland, but over here there just aren’t a lot of us running around. In fact I learned in the past year that since all the male cousins on my father’s side have only fathered daughters, the pressure is really on me to carry on the family name... well, history will have to decide how that eventually works out. But if there are only two people with the same name in a school district of over three thousand teachers, and one of those people is close to thirty years older than the other, people start connecting the dots.
A lot of people knew we were mother and son when I started subbing since 80% of the jobs I got were at her school, not so coincidentally. But even after I got my first classroom (her school secretary pulled her out of a workshop week meeting so I could give her the news), I started to see just how widely networked she was. It was always nice to hear about these connections because it gave me a familiar anchor in a district so large that it may or may not cover the same square mileage as Rhode Island. I did eventually reach something of a tipping point where it seemed like people were starting to know me as an individual, but often that only lasted until somehow the dots were connected again.
And I never minded this. My mother was the biggest influence I had in not just becoming a teacher but also in evolving into the teacher I am now, and I’ve never been anything but proud to claim that. I knew well how loving and kind and patient she was as a mother -- trust me, I put that last descriptor to the test more than once -- but only when we began to share colleagues did I come to fully appreciate how widely respected she was for those same qualities that made her the mother she’s always been. Whenever someone made the connection between us -- whether it was a student, or an instructional coach, or a union officer, or a teacher, or a paraprofessional, or a principal, or a parent, or an associate superintendent -- whatever memories about her came up as they spoke to me were reflected on their faces with genuine respect and affection. It always gave me a reminder of how broad of a legacy and a standard I had to strive for.
It’s taken the better part of twenty years to reach the point where there are more people who hear my name and identify me as someone other than Tina’s son, but it’s really only happening because the generation ahead of me that knew her so well has been going through successive rounds of retirements in recent years. But you know what? It still happens anyway. Just a couple of months ago I was walking in the hallway to pick up my mail after lunch when a woman I didn’t know stopped me. She was in the building that day to complete some testing with one of my students and wanted to confirm the scheduling that had been set up in advance was still going to work. After we quickly settled that it would, she brought up that she’d known a woman at a different school with my name and wondered if we were related. I told her we were. And as she began telling me her Tina story, she smiled.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! Thanks for setting the bar so high. I love you!
At first I thought, “It’s a huge district. Nobody’s going to care. They have close to thirty elementary schools. That rule has to be in place for small rural districts with one elementary school or something like that. Nobody’s going to make any connections between us.” But since I was the same compulsive little rule follower back then that I still am now, I brought it to the attention of some professor, who replied with a wide-eyed stare and what I can only assume was a significant blood pressure spike. Long story short -- a different student had just dropped from the program and the spot at Snail Lake I took opened up and the rest is history.
But after I was hired in the district myself, it didn’t take more than a few months for me to learn my assumptions had been misguided. For the next several years I wouldn’t walk into any kind of district meeting, staff development session, or major event without encountering someone who knew my mother.
My last name isn’t terribly common. It’d be a different story if you traveled to Ireland, but over here there just aren’t a lot of us running around. In fact I learned in the past year that since all the male cousins on my father’s side have only fathered daughters, the pressure is really on me to carry on the family name... well, history will have to decide how that eventually works out. But if there are only two people with the same name in a school district of over three thousand teachers, and one of those people is close to thirty years older than the other, people start connecting the dots.
A lot of people knew we were mother and son when I started subbing since 80% of the jobs I got were at her school, not so coincidentally. But even after I got my first classroom (her school secretary pulled her out of a workshop week meeting so I could give her the news), I started to see just how widely networked she was. It was always nice to hear about these connections because it gave me a familiar anchor in a district so large that it may or may not cover the same square mileage as Rhode Island. I did eventually reach something of a tipping point where it seemed like people were starting to know me as an individual, but often that only lasted until somehow the dots were connected again.
And I never minded this. My mother was the biggest influence I had in not just becoming a teacher but also in evolving into the teacher I am now, and I’ve never been anything but proud to claim that. I knew well how loving and kind and patient she was as a mother -- trust me, I put that last descriptor to the test more than once -- but only when we began to share colleagues did I come to fully appreciate how widely respected she was for those same qualities that made her the mother she’s always been. Whenever someone made the connection between us -- whether it was a student, or an instructional coach, or a union officer, or a teacher, or a paraprofessional, or a principal, or a parent, or an associate superintendent -- whatever memories about her came up as they spoke to me were reflected on their faces with genuine respect and affection. It always gave me a reminder of how broad of a legacy and a standard I had to strive for.
It’s taken the better part of twenty years to reach the point where there are more people who hear my name and identify me as someone other than Tina’s son, but it’s really only happening because the generation ahead of me that knew her so well has been going through successive rounds of retirements in recent years. But you know what? It still happens anyway. Just a couple of months ago I was walking in the hallway to pick up my mail after lunch when a woman I didn’t know stopped me. She was in the building that day to complete some testing with one of my students and wanted to confirm the scheduling that had been set up in advance was still going to work. After we quickly settled that it would, she brought up that she’d known a woman at a different school with my name and wondered if we were related. I told her we were. And as she began telling me her Tina story, she smiled.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! Thanks for setting the bar so high. I love you!
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Day 11: The Three-Decade Differential
I turn forty-five in a couple of weeks. Most years my birthday is
something I have a hard time caring much about. I don’t mind getting
older at all; The way I figure it, every year I get older is a year my
sister Erin didn’t get to have. Our family birthday celebrations are low
key, usually on a weekend before or after the actual day depending on
when everyone’s schedules come together. There will be dinner, a few
presents, usually a cake, and that’s about the extent of it. If news of
my birthday is discovered by students somehow, there are a few who will
make cards or do other little things to celebrate it -- the year I
turned forty some of my girls "borrowed" my masking tape so they could
make giant tape-letters of my last name on their backs and walk around
like that, jumping into the correct order throughout the day to show off
their spelling skills on demand.
I’ve mentioned my inner fifteen-year-old occasionally here. The first time I realized I even had an inner fifteen-year-old was sometime in my thirties. I’d been living in my old townhouse a few years and decided the anemic artificial Christmas tree I’d been using just wasn’t getting the job done anymore. Since I don’t make a lot of decisions without first thinking about them from eight different directions, I had spent a few weeks thinking about exactly what kind of tree I’d want. One day while shopping at Target I wandered past the holiday decorations and saw something that had been brand new at the time: An L.E.D. Christmas tree, plugged in and lit up with a rainbow of colors lazily swirling after each other through the boughs. Part of me found it mesmerizing, part of me was a little embarrassed to be mesmerized. I finally decided to buy one, figuring that even if I wasn’t completely sold on the idea in that moment, I really owed that tree to the younger version of myself who would have been so pumped to know things like that were going to exist in his future that he would have started stashing away money at fifteen years old to make sure he could afford to buy one when the time came.
Now, acknowledging that I have a fifteen-year-old self doesn’t necessarily mean that I actively cater to his wants and needs. But there are certain things about the life I have that he’d be pretty okay with. A few examples:
*Knowing he would have a home office with a widescreen computer on the desktop, and that he only had to spin his chair ninety degrees to be sitting behind an electronic drum set would have had him seeking out people to high-five.
*He doesn’t have to scrimp and save his allowance to buy new cartridges for the Atari, but can buy a new XBox game if it’s just a weekend afternoon and he’s kind of bored.
*He doesn’t have to make mix tapes for his cheap generic Walkman, and has an embarrassing amount of music he can listen to pretty much anytime and anywhere. He can store thousands of songs on the phone in his pocket, for crying out loud.
*Which brings up another point: If he had any idea smartphones were coming... wow....
*He might not be thrilled to learn that about 30% of what’s left of his hair is gray, but it would be easier to accept it once he pieced together that he still had any hair at all past the age of thirty.
*He’d love going to movies pretty much any time he wanted. Living within six miles of close to forty movie screens would have been an embarrassment of riches after a childhood of being trapped halfway between the Elk Cinema and the Anoka Theater, each of which only showed one movie at a time and didn’t always switch them out very frequently.
*He’d be able to eat bacon whenever he wanted. That wouldn’t make it a good idea and it certainly isn’t the way things ended up happening, but he’d be very glad to know the option was always available.
*He’d be relieved to know that 80% of his adult life would see him dressing pretty much the same way he was back then. If someone removed the t-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans and shorts from his adult wardrobe, he’d have to do laundry a lot more frequently.
I could go on with some more examples, but I’d think this is enough to make that point that my life as it is today is something that would win the approval of many fifteen-year-olds. The thing of it is though, my inner fifteen-year-old would now be close to turning thirty. And since even that dopey kid was too introspective for his own good, he’d be at an age where he’d start wondering whether or not things were all going in the right direction, or if maybe there had been points along the way where he had just let the inertia of living catch up with him in such small incremental steps that he wouldn’t notice until it was almost on top of him.
To be clear, I’m not complaining about how dissatisfying my life is. I know full well how fortunate I am with the life I have and how blessed I am to share it with the people who populate it. But this coming week is my sister Erin’s birthday; my least favorite day of the year, but that's a different story. The last time we were able to celebrate Erin's birthday with her was nine years ago. I don’t know if there’s much about my life that’s changed in that time. It occurs to me that if she were still alive today, I think she’d recognize a lot of my 2013 life as the same collections of habits, routines, and preferences that defined it was before she got sick.
Which also has me thinking a lot these days: If this is all true, maybe there should be an expiration date on getting away with living like this. Maybe thirty years spent at fifteen is long enough. Maybe there's a point when it’s time to take proactive steps to outpace that inertia....
I’ve mentioned my inner fifteen-year-old occasionally here. The first time I realized I even had an inner fifteen-year-old was sometime in my thirties. I’d been living in my old townhouse a few years and decided the anemic artificial Christmas tree I’d been using just wasn’t getting the job done anymore. Since I don’t make a lot of decisions without first thinking about them from eight different directions, I had spent a few weeks thinking about exactly what kind of tree I’d want. One day while shopping at Target I wandered past the holiday decorations and saw something that had been brand new at the time: An L.E.D. Christmas tree, plugged in and lit up with a rainbow of colors lazily swirling after each other through the boughs. Part of me found it mesmerizing, part of me was a little embarrassed to be mesmerized. I finally decided to buy one, figuring that even if I wasn’t completely sold on the idea in that moment, I really owed that tree to the younger version of myself who would have been so pumped to know things like that were going to exist in his future that he would have started stashing away money at fifteen years old to make sure he could afford to buy one when the time came.
Now, acknowledging that I have a fifteen-year-old self doesn’t necessarily mean that I actively cater to his wants and needs. But there are certain things about the life I have that he’d be pretty okay with. A few examples:
*Knowing he would have a home office with a widescreen computer on the desktop, and that he only had to spin his chair ninety degrees to be sitting behind an electronic drum set would have had him seeking out people to high-five.
*He doesn’t have to scrimp and save his allowance to buy new cartridges for the Atari, but can buy a new XBox game if it’s just a weekend afternoon and he’s kind of bored.
*He doesn’t have to make mix tapes for his cheap generic Walkman, and has an embarrassing amount of music he can listen to pretty much anytime and anywhere. He can store thousands of songs on the phone in his pocket, for crying out loud.
*Which brings up another point: If he had any idea smartphones were coming... wow....
*He might not be thrilled to learn that about 30% of what’s left of his hair is gray, but it would be easier to accept it once he pieced together that he still had any hair at all past the age of thirty.
*He’d love going to movies pretty much any time he wanted. Living within six miles of close to forty movie screens would have been an embarrassment of riches after a childhood of being trapped halfway between the Elk Cinema and the Anoka Theater, each of which only showed one movie at a time and didn’t always switch them out very frequently.
*He’d be able to eat bacon whenever he wanted. That wouldn’t make it a good idea and it certainly isn’t the way things ended up happening, but he’d be very glad to know the option was always available.
*He’d be relieved to know that 80% of his adult life would see him dressing pretty much the same way he was back then. If someone removed the t-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans and shorts from his adult wardrobe, he’d have to do laundry a lot more frequently.
I could go on with some more examples, but I’d think this is enough to make that point that my life as it is today is something that would win the approval of many fifteen-year-olds. The thing of it is though, my inner fifteen-year-old would now be close to turning thirty. And since even that dopey kid was too introspective for his own good, he’d be at an age where he’d start wondering whether or not things were all going in the right direction, or if maybe there had been points along the way where he had just let the inertia of living catch up with him in such small incremental steps that he wouldn’t notice until it was almost on top of him.
To be clear, I’m not complaining about how dissatisfying my life is. I know full well how fortunate I am with the life I have and how blessed I am to share it with the people who populate it. But this coming week is my sister Erin’s birthday; my least favorite day of the year, but that's a different story. The last time we were able to celebrate Erin's birthday with her was nine years ago. I don’t know if there’s much about my life that’s changed in that time. It occurs to me that if she were still alive today, I think she’d recognize a lot of my 2013 life as the same collections of habits, routines, and preferences that defined it was before she got sick.
Which also has me thinking a lot these days: If this is all true, maybe there should be an expiration date on getting away with living like this. Maybe thirty years spent at fifteen is long enough. Maybe there's a point when it’s time to take proactive steps to outpace that inertia....
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