Learning to fly. Learning to let go.

The Roosevelt High School cheerleaders, varsity and jr varsity.
Wish we could all see the fifth stunt group, to our left,
who apparently didn't fit into the frame.
It's fun to see the new girls learn to fly and the veteran girls teaching them.

There's something about this picture I really like.

I think it's all the reaching up. The pushing up. The stretching up. The looking up.

All the upward movement by the base juxtaposes with the flyers, who seem (understandably) rather tentative by comparison. Don't get me wrong, these flyers look awesome, but they're not on their toes like the back bases are. They're not looking upwards, like all their supporters are.

What the flyers are doing is looking out and revving up the audience -- while not letting on to their precarious situation. The flyers are totally dependent on a highly synchronized team to ensure their safe propulsion, trick, and landing.

The team moves perfectly together by counting. In this sport, precision is required otherwise a flyer gets dropped, and possibly seriously hurt. When a flyer falls to the floor, her trust in the base is broken. When trust goes down, the base can't get the flyer back up.

A reliable base who never allows the flyer to get hurt makes for a spectacular show.

I love all the symbolism in that. The teamwork, collaboration, and the idea that when someone succeeds we all do. Blah, blah, idealistic, blah. Imagine my son's hands making the motions of endless yacking, opening and closing his palms like clapping clams.

Girl child with one of her many cheer coaches,
and one of her many cheer awards. We are so very proud of her.

As you may know, I haven't been all that supportive of my daughter's cheerleading passion. I'm still not. But I am trying. This year I believe that great God almighty has taken pity upon this confused mother and made the English teacher the cheer coach. (How's that for grace?) That helps my state of wondering if cheerleading is the subject on which to spend so much time, energy, and money. Bob and I are doing back flips to finance the cheer habit and provide transportation, as girl child is now on three teams.

But what do I know? I'm lucky if I can get through any day without bloodshot, baggy eyes to meet my deadlines du jour. My goals often include recovery from sleeping with the most active subconscious in the world, which is not really sleeping. It's more like resting your brain on a bed of thumb tacks.

So when your kid finds her passion, something she loves to do, something she's good at, something she has access to, something others look to her for leadership -- you should raise yourself upwards and shout THANK YOU! to the heavens and earth. Even if you don't totally understand it. Even if it's not what you had envisioned for your child.

Right?

I'm trying, I really am. But honestly, I'm the most tired cheerleading mother you'll ever meet and I still have a hard time letting go of my preconceived notions of what passions my daughter should keep. You can imagine how giddy I was when my daugther informed me that this year she'll be the principal's assistant every day first period. (Mrs. Danielson and Girlchild kind of hit if off last year when Girlchild recruited the English teacher to be the new cheer coach. The Principal and my kid are thinking yay, a cheer coach. I'm thinking yay, a potential letter of reference for college applications.) My red eyes grew big with joy and all I could say was "I like! I like!" I think she did that intentionally so I'd lay off on my other concerns. It was a brilliant plan that worked perfectly.

Queue my son's clam-clapping hand motions to indicate yacking.

Still, if you want to join me in supporting all these upwardly mobile girls, find me every Friday night starting soon at the Roosevelt High School football games. I'll be the one cringing at the violent body contact on the field and reveling at the beautiful synchronicity on the sidelines. Then promptly going home to bed.

Thank for stopping by my blog. I wish you a wonderful weekend!

With love, T

The possibility of a bicycle booty call

Hello Snake Charmer Friends! Are you out there? Why would you be as I haven't written forever? Gosh, in the good old days of unemployment I was writing everyday. And you were all good enough to humor me and say nice things, or at least not say mean things.

About six months ago I decided to quit writing. I decided writing wasn't good for my mental health as it became yet another problem solving task clogging my brain. I graduated last December after a two-year fury of writing 100 pages for my book (book? what book?) in the nooks and crannies of my time. Right after graduation I pushed forward with 20 more pages and then just stopped. It's an effort to clear my mental clutter.

Some of you saw the picture I posted on facebook (against my better judgement) of my son at six months taking a bath in the kitchen sink among the dirty dishes. He was happy as a clam, pink and pudgy, smiling straight at the camera while sitting the suds. He totally didn't care about the chaos around him. I remember Bob and me feeling so tired that neither one of us could walk 20 feet to the bathroom to prepare his bath. Instead, we finished with supper (probably hot dogs or an equivalent dish), left the dirty dishes, and filled up one kitchen basin with soapy water for the baby. It was like a continuation of the long awaited dinner hour time together, and a procrastination of the much dreaded child bedtime hour.

Now that baby is 13-years-old, and metaphorically those dishes are still in the sink. A kid grows up no matter how distracted you are from mothering. You wish you could make more money, work less hours, travel to new places, get a full night's sleep, take dance lessons, read more books, look better, be cooler, and whatnot. Wishes are endless. Meanwhile all your kid does is grow up and grow away.

I can't remember the last time my boy smiled like he did in that picture with him in the kitchen sink. Wait, yes I can. Just last month he smiled. Bob and I have figured out the secret to get a teenage boy to smile. While bike riding we pull just ahead of him and then coordinate one, two, three to give him a synchronized booty call, lifting our behinds from the bike seat and wiggling to the glory of our son. Yes, a parental booty call in unison will make my 13-year-old smile big, just like in that sudsy picture of long ago. I'm pretty sure it's a smile of disgust, but we'll take it. I offer this parenting advise as a free gift to the world.

Unemployment hasn't been my personal issue for over three years now, so I don't know why I keep referring to it. (First paragraph, approximately four topics ago, in case this post is confusing to follow.) I guess it's just one of those deep-as-the-ocean experiences that you never forget. It all ended so badly, like a long overdue break-up with a horrible boyfriend. But the good thing about unemployment is it opens the door to a whole new group of friends who know exactly what you're talking about, unlike the people who secretly believe it will never happen to them. Shout out to all my friends who have ever lost a job! Love you!

Actually, the truth is I am writing and I'm writing a lot, in my new position of gainful employment. So I guess you could say I'm a professional writer. That's cool. I'll take that. It's not my own creative writing, but these are minor details. That will come when it's time. (I'm working on my capacity for zen wisdom.)

A couple months ago I was able to whittle out an essay from those lastly written pages from my poor little book project. A generous friend helped me edit it so I could submit it to a literary journal. I said it before and I'll say it again: I don't care if it gets rejected, which it probably will; it's a miracle that it got submitted at all.

The problem with not writing is that it has the opposite effect that I'm aiming for. I wish to clear my mental clutter so I quit writing, yet writing is the exact thing that clears my mental clutter. Kind of like a chicken and egg thing. Makes sense? Of course not, my thinking is cluttered.

For now, I've got a kid going to sailing camp, a kid who can cook, a kid who is learning archery, a kid who makes me laugh, a kid who is amazing with kids, a kid who wants to do international relations (ahem, I didn't influence that), a kid full of possibility, and a kid packed with opportunity. The incredible thing is this: these kids generally like me. Not a bad deal for a mother who has spent most of her mothering years feeling pretty much overworked, overbooked, and overwhelmed.

By now you, if you've made it this far in the post (thank you!), you are probably wishing I'd stick to my new policy of not writing. Still, I thank you for coming over to the Charmer blog and I wish you a lovely weekend full of possibility.

With love, T

Phantom of the amoeba-stick-man

"Mom, my teacher sugar coated her way of telling me my art project was bad."

This was 7th grade Boychild's way of informing me that he didn't get a very good grade on his art project, which was apparently a bunch of sticks that he picked up from the yard somehow made into a marionette. It was a group project, he said.

"Yeah, she said we needed 'more color' and 'more imagination' and whatever," Boychild said, rolling his eyes, emphasizing the teacher's words with a dull sarcastic tongue twist.

It reminded me of the time Boychild, while in kindergarden, brought home a daily amoeba-stick-man drawing. Pencil on lined spiral paper. A black circle with stubby short black hairs jutting out all around, with a somber stick face, black stick arms and legs projecting out from the head/amoeba. There was no neck nor torso. He brought one of these home every day of kindergarden. Boychild's four-year-old black and white number two lead pencil creativity. Other kindergardeners were coloring wild, flaming rainbows and ponies with a crayola 72 pack. Boychild drew black and white amoeba-stick-people. (I plan to make a collage of those amoeba-people to hang on the wall but haven't gotten around to it yet.)

Wait a minute, I know what this 7th grade art project is all about.

"Did you make a puppet version of your kindergarden amoeba-stick-man?" I asked with furrowed eyes, in my firm mother-knows-best tone. I may be stressed, tired, and brain drained, but I will not tolerate a 7th grade version of the amoeba-stick-man. This mother demands more.

"No, mom, I didn't," boychild said. "It had a neck and we used color...aqua!"

On the dark early mornings when Boychild had picked up sticks in the yard before bumbling into the back seat of the car so I could drive him to school, I told him I needed to see this art project when he was done. One morning, when the art project had been close to finished, we had driven about five miles to school, late as usual, when Boychild realized that he forgot his finishing touches -- two shoe boxes -- at home. We turned around, I think it was icy streets that day, returned home for the shoe boxes, and Boychild was about 45 minutes late to school. I played mind games with myself that missing my own breakfast and being late for my own job wasn't a big deal.

I was really curious about Boychild's art project and what exactly it looked like, how much thought and effort really went into it. But, evidently, somehow the project busted up, according to Boychild. "It broke," he said. It would be impossible for me to see the finished art project, the alleged amoeba-stick-man in 3D.

And then the news about the art teacher's "sugar coated" way of saying that it was a terrible art project. Flatly denied by Boychild.

So, since I'll never see the art project with my own eyes, who should I believe? Boychild or teacher? What do you do with a boychild who doesn't give it all in art, even though he says he does give it his all? Or maybe he really does give it all. Or maybe he just doesn't like art. Or maybe he doesn't like anything.

How is a human mother expected to exert this level of wisdom?

With love, T

Something about nothing

Thanks to the power of ice and redosing (two advil every five hours is what my pharmacist otherwise known as me has prescribed) I am here live and alive, ready and eager to blog to all of you, gloriously unchanged for two days in my galabea (fancy word for my Egyptian pajamas that, yes, I do occasionally wear in public).

I'm practicing writing really long sentences after a marathon of reading essays by the amazing David Foster Wallace (RIP), who wrote 100 pages about taking a cruise. One hundred pages about an experience mostly spent on the inside of his minuscule cabin because of his self-proclaimed agoraphobia. It's a fabulous essay and so is the one about the Illinois State Fair, which I mentioned in my last blog. I've never read anything before whereby the author starts out by outright insulting his editors and getting away with it. But they are not gratuitous insults, they are truthful ones. And the editors put up with it (although I notice they got edited out) but still, they paid him and gave him more jobs. Of course he was a brilliant writer, so that definitely helps in the getting away with it department. (Note to my current and potential editors: I promise that I am well aware that I could never get away with insulting my editors in my copy, nor would I ever want to. Code: please give me more paying work.)

So, this is what you do when you are flat on your back in bed. Besides looking out the window at the leaves and trees and noticing how one of the tree branches looks just like a descending snake, a head like that character on the Jungle Book movie. I would attempt to draw it, but it's hard to draw when you are flat on your back. I could appreciate why Frida Kahlo had a mirror attached to her ceiling, and then painted all sorts of weird things about her perceived and real body deformities, her having to be flat on her back for weeks and months at a time.

When you are flat on your back all your addictive NPR listening habits become heightened. I am now an expert on the Libyan revolution, the East Coast earthquake, and that former IMF guy who was able to forge a consensual relationship with a chamber maid in a mere nine-minutes. (Evidently, he was known for his charm.) Listening to NPR is awesome when you are flat on your back and staring at the ceiling or at the tree branch snake outside the window (or in the car or at work or cooking dinner).

It's hard not to get depressed when you are flat on your back. It takes me approximately three hours to transition from "hey, it's so nice to be still" to "oh my god, they'll have to check me into a nursing home soon." You start thinking about the sick, the invalid, the sad, the lonely. You realize just how close you are to all those things.

And it all started with a simple fluffing of the hair. All I meant to do was bend over (bad idea) and fluff up my newly washed, sprayed, and curled hair to look the freshest I could look on the way to work. And, zing, an electrical charge goes up the back, and the hair-fluffer falls to her knees staring close at the crumbs on the floor and that's about it. I think we'll be going back to the flattening iron -- no fluffing involved. Back to the no-nonsense look.

When you are flat on your back you think about all the things that you've been wanting to do like washing the dishes, scrubbing the floor, cleaning out the boy's bedroom from top to bottom and front to back, getting out the press release, updating the website, making extra keys, driving the kids around to endless hours of activities--all the glorious living that you miss so much.

Me and my galabea gotta go. And we thank you so much for coming by and send our apologies if there's anything we did to convey that this blog post had anything substantial to say.

With love, T (et al)

Livin On a Prayer

I'm trying out this new blogable music feature that I learned from Jeni from Campus, who I really should write to because I lifted it off her blog without even telling her. It goes with my new category "Charmer Insomniatic." You know, what you do when you can't sleep. One thing you can do is watch the biography of Jon Bon Jovi and be very thankful that you were awake during that program.

Listen free by clicking the top of the left bar.

Jeni blogs about Livin on a Prayer much better than me which makes sense because she's the true music buff who politely thinks I am quaint because I still believe that the Dave Matthews Band is the best band ever. Anywho, it was very nice to see two sisters from Luther Seminary on the official campus blog writing roster -- Jeni and Margaret. I notice that Margaret has blogged on my beautiful ex-sanctuary, the Luther Seminary Community Garden.

Next category: how to attempt to be a productive mother.

Cheers! T