are you there, dog? It's me, kerensa

I preface this by saying I am the daughter of a teacher, and stepdaughter of another. I am the next door neighbor to three teachers. I am the friend to many teachers. I have 5 children in the public school system. Over the last several weeks, I have read the internet posts, the Facebook comments, the political diatribes and nonsense being spewed on Fox News, and very few stories have hit me quite like this one. It is true that my mother got holidays and summers off. However, to supplement her very low income, she often taught summer school, volunteered to head extra curriculars, and mentored her graduated students well after their tassles had been turned. We did not live a particularly lavish lifestyle, but it was one filled with the same gifts she shared with her students. We visited museums, trekked through the woods to find and sample fiddleheads, and when an opportunity to educate us arose, she took it. Years later, I would take notice of how many of her students still chose to k...

I am about to utter something I never could have foreseen myself saying. I am thankful to my parents for being pretty broke when I was a kid. When I observe the entitled children around me (my own included, unfortunately), I am surprised at their lack of life skills. Growing up on a mountain, I learned to fend for myself. When it snowed, we shoveled, we built forts, we sledded, we skied, we skated. My children ask for hot chocolate. Without daring to go outside. When we used to lose power, we read by candlelight, and pulled blankets up to the coal stove ( because we had run out of oil). My children ask if the DS is charged, and why our TV does not have battery backup. I pass by girls on the side of the road, with their overpriced SUVs sporting a flat, and I am concerned about the fact that she has not been taught to change tires, change spark plugs, change oil,as I was. I hope her beautiful SUV does not break down on her in a bad section of town at night. When I was young, I split logs...

"I don't know how you do it", they say in a half-admiringly, half-dismissive way, and I wave them off, not out of rudeness but out of a sense of confusion. While many things in my life are far from easy, the things that make people say this phrase are among the easier. So I feel, when I hear this, that I must be missing something. If I were doing all the things I should be doing, would I still be able to accomplish these obviously extraneous tasks? If by making elaborate cupcakes, I am forgetting to clean the disposal, or by spending time with the PTA, am I forgetting to clean behind the stove? I am absurdly guilty on both counts, among many others. I am both envious and curious of those women upon whose floors you may eat, or whose curtains are freshly laundered, and beds always made. I forget the tiny things and they grow. I have long expired salad dressings in my fridge, and an old doctor bill I have forgotten to pay on my desk. My van is a veritable explosion of forbi...

I am packing up their things, preparing for remodeling and switching of rooms. Some things are easily thrown in a bag for donation, garbage... the random McDonalds' toys, plastic and tacky and resplendent in their blatant gare, Walmart brand button ups, in 1997's plaid, the errant pieces to a puzzle long since solved and tossed. But then I come upon the treasures, the pieces I never even began to fantasize about in 3rd grade, when the dreams of babies began to creep into my mind. The American girl Bitty Baby, rife with accessories, and outfits, lace and pastels. The Eric Carle slippers, shaped like one Hungry Caterpillar, the tiny porcelain teat set, meant for a budding princess, but wasted on a wild three year old boy with sticky, lustful fingers. I touch each of these things, remembering birthdays and Christmases past, when paper was frantically torn, and voices enthusiastically embraced each piece. I think of pigtails and Thomas the Train pjs, and bold lights on a tree cling...

It is dusk, and a faint sliver moon is awakening in a clear sky. In the distance, children are hunting fireflies, and embarking on the start of summer vacation as only children can do. Sounds of balls hurtling through air that is sparked with possibility, echo across the ball field. I am on the precipice of 16, the future not yet etched into my skin, invincibility in my every breath.When he stands up to bat, tiny hairs on my arms stand up, and a sport that was once not even a thought in my mind, is suddenly all that exists in the moment. He has baseball arms, and baseball arms seem like home. He looks up in the stands, and his mother waves, thinking he is looking at her, but I know that it is I he seeks. When the ball connects with the bat, the sound fills the space of the world. Nearly two decades later, the smell of the cut grass at the field is enough to erase the minivan, the extra pounds from numerous pregnancies, the laugh lines, the mortgage and the knot of stress that rests i...

Those of us who have a loved one who suffers from depression, we know the color gray. We know how easily a day can go from technicolor to gray in a single phone call, a downcast look, a sigh. We know that the only other helplessness that is even slightly akin to this, is that which we feel when our children are sick. We think that if we could only make the right meal, say the right thing, plan the right event. We think if we could only smile that much wider, it would become infectious, and all would be all right. We tell ourselves that this too shall pass, but it passes like molasses, and we wait. Brave faces galore in public, nothing can be as it seems. How is your sister, your husband, your uncle, your friend they ask innocently. And you feel your face crack into a thousand pieces as you smile brightly and declare them to be fine. You hear the click of the wheels on the grocery cart as you walk away, and the only way you know how to keep walking without falling, is to align your step...

We take it for granted. At some point, between the ages of 10 and 15, we get our first periods, and for those of who avidly read Judy Blume, we begin counting down to that day from an early age. When it arrives, we quickly come to the conclusion that the nickname "the curse" was aptly given, and begin to wonder disdainfully if Margaret (of the Are You There God fame) was a little out of her mind for her eager anticipation. Our mothers either alert the media with fanfare about their babies becoming women, or they are like my mother, who simply said "there's some stuff in the cabinet." I prefer Claire Huxtable's approach, taking Rudy for a carriage ride in the city, allowing her to play hooky, and if I were only a little more liberal, would appreciate the symbolism of the sip of red wine discussed in How to Make an American Quilt. As we get older, we learn to swim while we have it, how to dodge messy situations, and how to buy tampons without furiously blushin...