Safety from The Storm

David had this crazy idea recently to start telling our kids stories before bed.  As an English teacher I am BIG on reading to our kids and literacy but had not really considered telling stories, even though I love the idea.  David has incredible oral traditions in his family and many nights I have been tempted to capture and put on paper.  But the next best thing and maybe the better thing is to pass them on to our children, so that they know who they are.  Still, I couldn’t help but write mine up as I pondered them and share them with you all.  I hope you enjoy…

https://music.apple.com/us/artist/michael-kelly-blanchard/14813162

 When I was just starting elementary school my mom got a job a secretary for Michael Kelly Blanchard, the musician  He was a folk singer songwriters whose music we adored and my mom was looking for a job with flexible hours, preferably one she could bring Anne to. (Stop now and buy all his songs on iTunes!!! Be prepared to cry.  Winter Babies and She Knows have special meaning to me.)   The plan was for Anne to nap while mom worked.  My mom was a great worker.  She had graduated the top of her class at Katherine Gibbs Secretarial school in NYC.  She was really what we now refer to as “an administrative assistant.”  She did everything but write and sing the songs.  She and my dad even helped produce them if needed.  The Blanchard’s house in Torrington had a loft sort of attic that they had turned into a recording studio.  Mrs. Blanchard was a teacher at my school so either she or my dad would often bring me home, along with her daughter Esther and her son Reuben.  Reuben had bright, flaming red hair and the Blanchards called him, “Copper Top battery boy.” (also a song) No-one at school dared call him that. He was way too cool.  In fact, I barely had the nerve to talk to him at school, despite the fact that our school boasted only a couple hundred kids K-12.  He was just that far above my social station at school.  But at home he was like a brother, a best friend.  He introduced me to Tale Spin followed by Dark-wing Duck.  He knew every word or the McDonald’s Big Mac song.  He would play it on his mini record player that only played plastic records. The player was yellow and red; I think he might have gotten it from a happy meal or as a mail in prize from a cereal company.  The prizes back then were SO much better.   

Anyway, Reuben was super cool and super nice. He was two years ahead of me in school. Esther was amazing too, she was four years older than us and since she was in middle school she rarely had time to watch cartoons.  She mostly had to work on homework when we got back from school. But sometimes on Saturdays like the one when Hurricane Grace hit, she’d take care of all of us, plan something fun.  Hurricane Grace was not the biggest hurricane to visit the east coast, but it became the most notorious. It was pulled into a storm that was never named, and has lived in infamy as the No-Name storm among New Englanders.  To the rest of the world, it is known as “The Perfect Storm.” The storm where a boat full of men was lost at sea never to be found again.  A storm that inspired a book, that inspired a movie that put Gloucester, Massachusetts on the map.  Famous for the tragedies of that very storm.

We had no idea about any of this however, Saturday morning my parents were planning on recording with the Blanchards.  I believe it was the album “Heartguard.”  I loved that album, mostly because of the cover of the Vinyl it was a lock that was shaped like a heart.  A lock that was actually given to me by my godfather.  It was old and rusty but it still worked.

We were not allowed to be anywhere around when they were recording so we had to go out which meant we needed Esther.  She let us play hide and seek in the backyard, and ride bikes up and down the street.  Eventually, we even convinced her to take us to the bakery downtown for cupcakes. The Blanchard’s had an old Coca-Cola machine in the garage.  So old, the sign said a coke was only ten cents.  It didn’t really work anymore so Mrs. Blanchard used it like an icebox or refrigerator and Reuben used it as his piggy bank.  We got enough out for a cupcake or two and started downtown. It had been raining on all morning.  I’d heard on the news driving over that there might be a hurricane but it didn’t seem particularly threatening.  I only remember it was eerily warm and wet all day.  At noon, just before we headed out to the bakery, the fire station siren went off.  It was a town wide bad weather warning.  That happened a lot.  We figured unless we saw lightening we were okay.  

Then the wind started.  It would be still as a lake in the morning and then blast against us like an ocean wave.  The wind was so strong it actually knocked Anne down several times.  In fact, one time in knocked her down and she rolled into the street.  She scraped up her hands and knees and so we headed back to get band aides. 

Our parents were frantic when we got back; Where had we gone? What were we thinking?  Didn’t we know we were in the middle of a hurricane?  Still, once they realized we were alright, we all decided to do the most foolish thing possible and sit on the front porch watching the wind and the rain.  The sky was orange, a strange ominous color like the heat was coming from the wind itself.  The raindrops were huge.  We put on rain coats and played and splashed in the puddles.  They had a radio out on the porch and played music for us to dance interrupted only by storm updates.  When the music played, I turned my head up to the sky and danced and laughed.  I loved the rain I would laugh with it and dance with it.  I would not be afraid.  But soon, the radio was warned everyone the Governor Dukakis and Governor Weiker had both issued a state of emergency.  That meant we had to get inside.  

Fortunately, boring just wasn't part of the Blanchard's vocabulary.  Reuben would play along as Anne and I would reenact The Star Wars Episodes IV, V and VI with Mrs. Blanchard’s trivets (see below...so galactic).  Then, we would all gather around, even the adults and we would play board games and laugh until our sides ached.  Our two favorites not even when the power went out.  Mrs. Blanchard would get out the old school Narnia board games and we would fight like cats and dogs to be the valiant mouse Reapacheep.  Next, we’d move on to Encore where we had to ban Mr. Blanchard for using his own songs, especially those still in progress.  Finally, when the power went out, we would sing old folk songs and the parents would take turns reading out loud until we fell asleep.  And while we slept the storm passes.  That is what I remember about the Blanchard’s house.  Thought the tumultuous years of growing up they were a safe haven my sister and I could always count on and not many people have that.  

The Wildling

       Confession time: I watch Game of Thrones... obsessively and.... yes there is gratuitous violence, nudity, incest and other atrocities that shall not be named. Still, something about it fascinates me and makes me think in new ways about life, death and power.  I think often of something a coworker mentioned once long ago, in the first season, "No one is sacred, anyone can die."  The mortality and the sinfulness of both the most lovable and hatable characters reminds me ironically enough of a scripture, "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."  No one deserves that wretched Iron Throne (although I have my theories) and all have lied, betrayed, killed, stolen or worse.  Westeros and Essos may be fantasy but "All good fantasy has a solid base in reality."*.  So, I got to thinking....

    If I was really and truly a character from Game of Thrones who would I be? I began to take stock in a deeper way, considering all aspects of my life, not just who is my “spirit animal" (Tyrion Lannister according to Buzzfeed) or who I wish I would be (Ygritte, if you must know).  And who I came up with would be one of my last choices...

Being a mother rules out most of the women I most identify with in a fantastical sense:
I am no cold blooded Arya, no cynical Sansa, nor beautifully manipulative Margaery Tyrell. I am no single-mindedly brash Brianne of Tarth. I only wish I could be the multilingual Missandei.
 But though I have a career and grew up dreaming of being a fighter, there are other things that define me and nothing more than the children I have borne and the way I love them.
So, I look at the mother figures I might resemble if I lived in the land of Fire and Ice:


Daenerys Targaryen- Mother of Dragons….but I feel like she is really more of a dog mom.  Her love is deep and real but her children’s needs are slightly different than most mom’s experience.

Cersei Lannister- God forbid- She is the original helicopter indulgent parent.  She would totally blame a teacher for her child’s teacher for a B+ rather than be okay with it or think maybe her child needs a good hard spanking.

Olenna Tyrell- Too old and rich- She’s a force to be reckoned with and I love that.  However, I just don’t think I have a murderer deep inside of me.  But… all bets are off if one day I have grandkids and one of them is betrothed to a known sociopath.

Caitlin Stark- In a way the one who started it all- Still, she is northern, strong, loves her sister and devoted to her husband, all things I find to be integral to how I would like to define myself. But her encouragement of Arya to fit in and her rejection of Jon Snow just feels wrong. Never-mind, the way she keeps her waist length hair pristine and waltzes around in beautiful gowns.  I'm just not noble or proper enough.

So, that leaves Gilly…The Wildling, Samwell Tarly rescues. She and I are more alike than simply our shared English curse of poor dental hygiene.  She is a survivor. Her manners may be terrible, and her awkwardness abounds.  She knows nothing about being a mother except making sure her son survives.  I complain way more than she ever would but as a character I share her feelings of shame or embarrassment in a world I don’t full belong to. I also share her amazement not only that someone could love me and does, but that someone is a man who noble, wise and brave. And perhaps it is this other worldliness not magic or power but simple lessons you can only learn in the school of hard knocks that will make her a major player.  She knows there really is a battle between good and evil. She has first hand experience of the terrifying rituals of the Night King. She has faith and she has love.  I guess the more I think about it, the more I flatter myself with the comparison.

* I am not in any way encouraging or condoning watching graphic content.  It simply was a catalyst that got me thinking more about my real life, about who I really am.  I hope it gets you thinking too.  What matters most?  Beneath the obvious who values what you value? 

Showing up for Snow Days

        I have mixed feelings about snow days.  I love that I don’t have to scramble out of bed in the morning, push aside the piles of books that cover every surface of my house and pack unvarying unhealthy lunches that my kids won’t like. I don’t have to rush and brush my teeth before I wake the kids up because I might not have the chance once they are up and I am herding them out the door like cats to a bath.  Instead, I look out my window at the drifts of pristine white snow. Not yet concerned with the weight of aforementioned snow or what to do with aforementioned kids.

  The concerns become very real as I "sense" a tiny person standing next to my bed just staring at me with round blue eyes reaching out until her small hand touches the blanket and tugs at it insistently. This would totally freak me out if it wasn't how my kids woke me up every day. 

Suddenly, the whole day stretches out, unstructured before me. What may sound blissful to those free spirits like my husband immediately causes my throat tighten and my heart constrict. 

        No structure means everything is in play, more balls than I can possibly juggle. I immediately begin to fuel my arsenal to combat: boredom, complaining, bickering, breaking things, need for exercise, and worst of all, meals and snacks.  And that is just what I’m preparing for on a behavioral level.  I also have to think through the possible pitfalls of emotions; mine and theirs… panic, anger, frustration, and disappointment all seem more potent on unstructured days.  

So here is what we did.  I didn’t really plan it.  After almost 9 years it is starting to dawn on me that anything I plan will be thrown off and anything I think I've figured out will change drastically in 6 months when they all go through new phases of growing up.

   1. I left breakfast to David and since he'd already prepared eggs and bacon Saturday and Sunday, we decided to use this as an opportunity to teach the kids to be self-sufficient and fend for themselves. Fortunately we had plenty of time for the five to ten spills that inevitably ensued. After breakfast, I strongly encourage getting dressed which one of my children resists more strongly than the others (hint: it’s NOT the one who has somehow procured a Disney princess outfit for every day of the week. Even though we wear uniforms to school and buy almost everything second hand.) 

2. Next, I worked on tiring them out…chores and shoveling.  Everyone has to go outside.  My Disney Princess does NOT like this rule.  She is constantly trying to relocate to Florida or California, both of which put her near  her three favorite things: Disney, the beach and grandparents and away from the cold, heavy lifting and unflattering hand-me down boots. 

3. I always decide to have school anyway because I am a teacher. I am also the daughter of a zealous teacher.  Fortunately, I have the perspective to see how good for me it was.  So, we all spend 30 min to an hour working on things we are learning.  For my four year old that is still the alphabet.  The six year old challenges herself to identify her first sight words. And my darling dyslexic high year old sets his face like flint to the Orton-Gillingham workbooks. I do my best to be satisfied with 5 minutes of focus and 45 of emotional meltdowns and fighting because apparently I missed the memo that the whole point of snow days is NO SCHOOL and everyone is a little hangry.

4. So we have lunch.  Again with the all important fending for themselves.

5. Now it depends on timing but we throw on a TV show or perhaps like today if they are being undeniably well behaved I read aloud. Finally, nap time and screen time. The only real requirement for these two hours are that it is quiet.  

The rest of the day is somewhat of a blur because it is not very unlike a school day. Today the girls made an art gallery which my son promptly sabotaged.  We watched a Barbie movie and got pizza.  David made a fire and I set the vacuum on fire trying to tidy up the debris from the logs and accidentally sucking up a spark that had flown out of the fireplace.  

Everyone is now in bed. We survived the dust fueled inferno, the fighting and the noise.  They ate and slept and read.  Still, one of the hardest things about being a parent is that there is no real metric.  No daily check in to see how I fared on the cosmic parenting scale.  So, before I climb over the stacks of books next to my bed I remind myself of a Woody Allen quote I once pinned, “80% of success is showing up.”  

       

Why I didn't run away

       In 1992 there was a Fleet bank halfway between my best friend’s house and my own.  At least, we gauged it as halfway in our 7 year mind. Having driven it now as an adult I’d gauge it at closer to 20/80 my house being 80% of the distance.  My house was farther from everything. We lived an hour from the school my dad worked at and thus at least 15 miles from even our nearest friends.  

After a hard week of second grade mileage was of little import to us. We were suppose to meet at this bank at midnight on a Wednesday.  That way, our parents wouldn’t notice we were gone until at least 5 or 6am.  We both felt we had plenty of reason to run away. Her parents were strict, mine were stricter.  We were never allowed as many sleepovers as we wanted.  We were, to quote The Little Mermaid, “bright young women, stuck a swimming ready to stand!”

There was no definite plan of where we’d go after the bank.  The bank was a key part of the plan because I knew my grandmother had a savings account in my name there.  I not yet learned, that the term “banker’s hours” did not in fact mean any old time of the day, especially midnight and more especially before ATMs were invented.  There were other things we had not considered such as eating, beyond perhaps bringing Dunkaroos as snacks. Not to mention, our total oblivion to the issues of safety, legality and just plain exhaustion.

And yet, it was not any of these things that kept me from running away.  Yes, when the night approached I was scared, a little of the dark, a little of finding my way across two towns but most importantly I was terrified by the prospect of never seeing my family again.  

In my egocentric child mind I had imagined how sorry they would be that I was gone.  How much they would miss all my help. But the truth was, I would have been so sorry if I had set even one foot out the door.  

I tried to put it into words for my best friend when we sheepishly saw each other at school the next day was, “You know we always have plenty of time for adventures somewhere else, what if something exciting happens right here and we miss it.” 

She nodded slowly, “Yeah, we can try again next year or over the summer if we want to.”  And eventually we did leave home, but no matter how hard things got over the next ten years, and I’m sorry to say we faced many tragedies far greater than those of second grade, we never ran away and we did have many epic adventures. 

Nuclear Power: Based on a true story

         When the Unit 2 reactor on Three Mile Island (TMI-2) began to meltdown just before 4 am o Wednesday, March 28th, 1979 the NRC called my dad.  Admittedly, it was not the biggest mistake made that day but it was pretty indicative of the type of day the US government was having.  My dad worked at a local Christian school and painted houses on the side.  He had been clean for over five years but he wasn’t that far removed from protesting National Disasters rather than containing them.  

His father, however, for whom he was named, Joseph Robert Dietrich was nuclear physicist.  This surprises a lot of people. I kind of forget sometimes.  I guess it’s a big deal.  I used to imagine him as a hero, meeting at some secret location that had been secured by an Indian Jones like character discussing how millions of lives could be saved without dropping “the bomb.”  But even after he died and I stood in the coolness of my grandmother’s basement reading a letter from Albert Einstein to Doc, my grandfather, I knew that more lives had been lost by his attempts to harness atomic energy in a safe way than he could ever make peace with.  It haunted him, I think, the lives his genius had taken, drove him to drink, to hide deep within himself, to be a well dressed distinguished rambling man.  Eventually, he paid his debt for selling his soul to science sacrificing his revolting body to experimentation and study.  The still might not have a cure for ALS but thanks to my grandfather they know at least a hundred more ways not to cure it.  I think his friend Al would approve of that. 

I was born shortly after he died.  I was not a cute baby, no-one pretended that I was.  My godfather’s best description was “lumpy.”  Some people tried to say they saw my grandmother in me.  Mostly because we both had horrendous eyesight and our most prominent feature was always our coke bottle glasses. But I had head full of brains and that was power.  I didn’t have a way with numbers, just with words.  Reading surprised me by being so much harder than talking.  Talking has always been a breeze, it’s stopping that is hard.  One of my student’s insightfully commented that, “ words just fell out of [my] mouth.”  It’s true, my brain works so much faster than my common sense can keep up.  I need a neurological version of the bumper sticker “Don’t drive faster than your guardian angel can fly.”  Something like, “Don’t talk faster than you can process your own words and their possible effects.” 

It wasn’t just talking that came easily, I remembered the details of every day.  I found about the same time as my first panic attack that replaying the day in details was an effective way to ward off insomnia.  It was also a survival technique as my parents only had one rule: Obey.  And so listening and remembering was of vital importance to avoid the spankings that accompanied disobedience.  Quoting my mom to herself was the most surefire way to avoid punishment. (Don't worry I am getting full payback now that I'm a mom.)

I also learned the sort of facts that impress people.  I didn’t mind studying.  I studied the things that people I felt people who were smart knew.  So, I studied Doc’s work. I clearly remember standing in my grandmother’s basement, stuccoed inside and out.  The air was thick with Virginia humidity.  I had the door open to look out over the James river meandering past as I helped my dad clear out Doc’s things.  I was convinced we’d find a secret cabinet or trap door in his desk.  There were a good amount of classified documents but nothing top level. Still, I’m fairly certain I was the first 5 year old proponent of nuclear power.  I knew the fatal flaw in my argument was how to dispose safely of the Uranium but that was before we even knew were were tearing a hole in our own sky.  People were reckless but not ballsy enough to welcome a power source that also had fueled the greatest act of mass destruction to date.  It was understandable.  I am still contemplating the energy problem, over 30 years later.  

         Doc may not have given the world the power source he felt it needed but he empowered me to learn everything I could about this beautiful messy world.  And yes, he messed up a lot.  He hurt so many people, millions he never knew and  a handful who'd spent a lifetime loving him.  So, I learned that from him too...as Mr. Browne puts it in the fantastic book , "When given the choice between being right and being kind.  Choose kind." -RJ Palacio