flying through life with my hair on fire...i am a planet called mom, with four moons in my orbit.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Everything happens all at once


I'm a month into my job and am starting to wonder a bit if this is all there is (short answer, unlikely, but I'm impatient), my marriage is on the rollercoaster big time, and...so many things to juggle and worry about.
Now, add one more. My baby girl has mono.
Mira has been sick since last Tuesday, a bit over a week, now. At first, the diagnosis was strep, mostly based on the fact that Soren also got sick and had a positive strep test. Mira had the same symptoms but was worse than Soren, and her tonsils looked shredded. Our doc didn't want to swab them, and all signs pointed to strep in Mira as well. When the antibiotics didn't help, however, our doctor moved both kids to a new prescription and then ordered bloodwork to see what was going on underneath. Answer: Soren did have strep, and is now fine. Mira may well have had strep too, but her main problem is mono.
In the past week Mira has lost a pound. She went from 53.5 to 52.5 pounds. Mira is 10, and has hovered around the 50 pound mark for about two years. We've been hot on the trail of what is causing her to be so skinny for some time now. Considering that Chiara, at age 6, weighs 47 pounds (and is a head shorter than Mira) and Soren, at age 12 and about an inch or so taller than Mira, weighs 75 pounds...I have a sense that Mira is about 15 pounds underweight, at least.
So, how to get her better and also help her gain weight. The saga will continue....

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Bearings


Since I started working at Desert Academy I've been delighted to be there. Desert is a small, dynamic private middle and high school. The head is a former teacher of mine, from 8th grade. He's long been a friend, and I used to babysit his kids when they were babies. Just a few weeks ago I went out and had drinks with the youngest of the two, who was 6 months when I cared for her. She's now 21 and fabulous.
I feel old.
But I digress.
I assist the admissions director and the finance director in their day to day stuff. Filing, errands, answering phones, researching updated college guides, creating sign up sheets and binders for college counseling, typing letters and minutes...you get the picture.
Of course, I crave more.
Many of the teachers were born in the...1980s. I would guess that none of them recall with much detail the Challenger disaster, nor do they likely have a memory of the hostage crisis. Of course, not all the faculty are 10+ years younger than yours truly but many are...and they are teaching. They are creating, and imparting wisdom to the next generation.
So, I think I want to do this. I think I want to teach. But then...do I? Really? Do I want to track grades and create lesson plans, mark kids tardy and tell blossoming girls to pull their shirts down to meet the tops of their pants? Do I want to remind boys to remove their hats in class, and police homework assignments? Do I want to be assigned to committees and be required to attend prom...as a boring adult?
I am getting to know these kids, slowly. The ones I've met are wonderful, intelligent, inspiring. Some are shifty eyed and uncomfortable in their own skin, yes, but I remember being on the other side of this relationship--feeling some sense of weirdness in the presence of adults. There was always something unsettling about them when I was an adolescent. Adolescence is, after all, a strange limbo. Striving to be independent and grown up while feeling a deep sense of disdain and impatience for all things "independent and grown up." We adults represent all that is suppressed, and since school started on the 21st I've already heard the assertion that we're trying to make them "conform."
Once upon a time I fought the power too. Wore black clothes, dyed my hair black, walked around looking morose. Hated being home, craved being with my friends....
I can't say I did it all but I did a lot. And now, I am in other shoes. Now, people rely on me, and my yearning for independence and wider boundaries has come to fruition. Now, I am the gatekeeper and the task master.
So...do I really want to gate keep other people's rebellious kids?
Perhaps not. I mean, I have a two-year-old and all.
What I crave, then, is this: to create. To inspire. To leave a mark. I could do this through teaching, certainly, or I could stay the course, file the files, write the letters, and answer the phones. Let my day job inform my own creative pursuits.
Assuming I pursue them.

This is rather old news. This has long been my struggle. But at what point will I reach the top of the peak, find that incredible view, step off into the void...and soar?

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Dropping off the planet's face



I know. I know I know. I get a job and suddenly, I vanish. No more updates, no more nada.
C'est moi, and I know this about myself.
I have some sort of fantasy that I will only stop by here to update my Planet when I have something cohesive and essay-like to share. None of this posting my day sort of stuff: I want to achieve finished, polished, insightful essays daily.
But then, my days happen all around me. Every second of waking life a juggling act, balancing smallish needs and medium needs, my own needs, my husband's needs. The need for dishes to be washed and flies to be swatted (and dang but the flies are numerous right now!). For homework to be helped with, for a particular small butt to be wiped and rediapered, always against the will of the vociferous person attached to said butt.
There is dinner to be prepped, eaten, cleaned. A dog to shoo from the kitchen.
There is....

Right now, there is silence. Sleeping. Nobody fighting off siblings or clothing or baths. Nobody screaming and flailing. Nobody asking me for anything.
So I write, and remember how the silence of the early morning before the cacophony was broken by the hoot of an owl out in the darkness. Before my day rolled out beneath my feet, when all was still possibility.
But isn't it always possibility...wrapped up in every moment?

I kiss my smallish son on the cheek. He is quiet, and still. I will lie him in bed now, and ignore the dishes, ignore the laundry. Time to read, and to be.