Thursday, January 31, 2013

Communal Projects


My first experience living and working communally occurred in 2000, when my husband and I both joined an AmeriCorps program stationed at Inner Harbour Hospital in Douglasville, GA. There were 20 members on our team, and we all lived together in cabins on the wooded 1,200 acre campus of the hospital where we worked.
Most of us were in our early twenties, and this was our first experience working with severely emotionally disturbed children, at least on a professional level.
For me, learning to navigate the boundary differences between these kids and the ones I’d worked with all my life was the most difficult lesson. In my experience, kids needed to be cuddled, hugged, and kissed, but this hospital had a “no touch” policy.
Inner Harbour provided art therapy, drum therapy, wilderness therapy, a ropes course, and equine therapy. Some of our group was specifically attracted to the program because, aside from loving kids, they were also artists, drummers, or had an affinity for nature and horses.
After we spent a few weeks learning about the program, and participating in team-building activities, each member of our team was assigned to work with a specific teacher and a specific group of kids.
I was assigned to the long-term adolescent girls’ classroom. Many of the girls in my class had spent most of their lives moving from foster home, to group home, to psychiatric hospital. Some of them had already lived at Inner Harbour for up to two years.
Whenever a new girl arrived, a large portion of the class had generally encountered her before, elsewhere, within the psychiatric-system-hop. If the girls caught wind, in advance, of someone’s impending arrival, they were certain to clue-in the rest of the class about each of her “issues” as well as the list of anyone she’d (supposedly) “slept with.”
It was daunting, at first, to find my place, as a respected adult, within this new culture… the culture of the long-term-adolescent-girl.
On the day we were matched with our groups, there was a hospital-wide assembly. Our director, Lynn Wilson, described our role, as AmeriCorps members, to the kids and the hospital staff. After that, she announced each of our names along with the group we’d be working with.
After we’d all been “officially placed” we walked with our groups to our classrooms.
I walked beside the teacher of my group (she’d been teaching there for 30 years). The 16 girls in our class walked in single file behind us. They were required to walk single-file every time they changed location, and each time they stepped through a doorway, they were required to number off.
All of a sudden – mid sentence – my teacher stumbled on a pine-cone, rolled her foot, and fell face-first on the cement. When she lifted her head there was way too much blood.
One of the counselors tried to calm the kids and direct them away from the accident scene. The other counselor sat with the teacher and radioed for help.
Separating the kids from their teacher was a difficult task, because more than half of them asserted, quite dramatically, that they would “never leave her side.”
Because I’d, thus far, built absolutely no rapport with these kids, all my requests to “head on over to the classroom” – if acknowledged at all – were met with a brief but very solid, “no.”
Soon, several more counselors arrived. Some of the kids were taken back to “the unit” (their locked-down living quarters). The rest of us were furnished with a fresh counselor who, with a single “git-yer-hiney-in-line” glance, had the girls surrendering, lined-up, and redirected to the classroom in a matter of moments.
We all sat down and the counselor looked at me.
 “You’re AmeriCorps right?”
“Yeah.” I responded.
“So aren’t you like… an assistant teacher or something?”
My stomach dropped as I realized where this was headed.
“Uhhhh… I guess so. Yeah.” I muttered.
“Well, you can basically just take over then… if you want. The girls have rec therapy in an hour and a half, but we haven’t got anything to do ‘till then.”
I seriously almost shit myself.
I said something dorky like… “Ok. Cool. Well, I’ll tell you guys a little about me, and then I want to hear about you!”
They all groaned and rolled their eyes. 
I’m pretty sure my face turned the shade of a Gala apple. Somewhere in the depths of my sub-conscious I filed the statement: “I-am-an-utter-failure-at-teaching-adolescent-girls.”
Thank God, in that hospital, time flew like a hummingbird on crack. We easily spent the whole hour-and-a-half introducing ourselves.
For months it seemed like all my teammates were settling into their AmeriCorps roles instantaneously. Like they were just born to teach art, or poetry, or organize talent shows, or take groups on woodland explorations…
I tried all kinds of lessons and activities, and I wouldn’t say that I taught anything badly, but I never could seem to meld with my group.
Until…  
I was trying desperately to get the girls interested in a poem by Sylvia Plath. I’d been sooooo sure I’d discovered something they would relate to! Nope. As I read one of my favorite stanzas, I felt like the dude playing folk songs on his guitar in the corner of a busy restaurant.
Unexpectedly, I got really pissed off. I shut my Sylvia Plath book, looked Janelle in the eye and said, “Will you please quit saying that Shannon has ‘The Clap’? Do you even know what that means? It means Gonorrhea. Do you actually know anything about Gonorrhea? Or do you just like the sound of your voice spouting off that somebody has “the Clap” whenever they step out to use the bathroom?”  
Wait a minute… for the first time in 3 months, all eyes were on me. No side conversation. No eye rolling. No groaning...
“Here’s the deal, girls. Tonight I am going to the library, and tomorrow you are all going to know more about the Clap than you ever wanted to know in your life!”
The silent attention was eerie. I was about to start reading Sylvia Plath again, when a little girl’s voice said… “Will you also get me a book on how milk comes? ‘Cause I think I’ve got milk, and I ain’t never had no baby!”
“Girl… You know you got an infection!” Said a louder voice, from the back of the class.
“Ok.” I said. “I’m gonna get lots of books. We’ll talk about all of this tomorrow. Right now we’re reading Sylvia Plath, so stop talking.”
After that, I could teach pretty much anything… and I did. In the four years I worked at the hospital (two as an AmeriCorps member, and two as a regular teacher) I taught each of the core subjects as well as electives. But every time the vibes got shaky, I reverted to my ol’ faithful: Sex Ed.
During that time, I relied extensively on my AmeriCorps teammates to help me finagle the fine grey line between what was… and what was not… appropriate to discuss in the classroom. My team spent at least an hour, every single morning, discussing our progress in the classroom. During those first six months of teaching, I felt so vulnerable about my position in the classroom; I don’t think I could have accepted help from anyone besides my AmeriCorps “family.”
I know that some people like to keep a vivid separation between “work” and “home,” but I’ve never enjoyed making those distinctions. I love living with my coworkers. At the hospital, I even appreciated sharing laundry facilities with the kids and when I plodded into the cafeteria for breakfast, I was usually happy to see my group, at their designated table, eating grits and sausages.
Keeping my work and my life enmeshed, keeps me from feeling like I’m spending 40 hours of every week “making money.” Instead I’m just doin’ the life thing… and money just shows up. 
Now I’ve got the whole work/life merger completely under wraps… since my job is to hang with my kids and there actually isn’t any money.
But I’m still raising kids in a team.
Instead of wondering whether the classroom is the appropriate venue to perform a ‘rap about the clap’… we talk about whether our 4-year-olds kids are allowed to say ‘freakin’ and, if so, in which context? We try to maintain consistency concerning when they are permitted to tear the couches apart, and we duke-it-out about the pros and cons of screen-time.
My kids are developing relationships that blur the lines between “friend” and “brother”… “housemate” and “aunty.” It’s a little scary, but it’s the life we’ve been visualizing for 16 years.
Occasionally I lament that the kids might be postponing my larger communal pursuits (cottage industry, non-profit, etc.). How are we going to find the time? But, ultimately, they are the communal vision… aren’t they?  
Besides, I think if you can raise kids with somebody… you can pretty much do anything together. I guess you’ve gotta save some things for later.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

The Real World



After college I got a job as a housecleaner.
I briefly entertained a whim about moving straight into my master’s degree, but that was just because I was avoiding my initiation into “The Real World.”
Several influential teachers in my life truly enjoyed flaunting their “Real World” status over my innocent naiveté. That specific phrase, “the real world”… haunted me… for years.
From all their haggard descriptions, I’d put together the idea that The Real World was cold, heartless, and had nothing to do with school.
After some deep thought, I concluded that if I was ever to receive my own leathery, callused, badge of experience (and those awesome wizened-looking wrinkles around the eyes) I’d have to leap, unabashedly, into The Real World.
The first step was to drop the two graduate level classes I’d signed up for (embroidery and something about Flannery O’Conner). The second step was to find a job. I’d worked childcare jobs since I was 10. That felt too familiar and not Real World-y enough. Thus, I settled upon housecleaning.
On the first day of work, I wore my homemade denim patchwork pants. The other ladies took one glance at my hippified appearance and said, “You plannin’ to mop the floor with those?”
I guess the pants were a little long… and huge around the floor/shoe area. Everyone else wore sweats with elastic around the ankles (cringe).
That evening, at the Salvation Army, I bought some red sweat pants with elastic ankles. The word ‘WINSTON’ was printed, in white letters, down the left leg. Someone probably earned them, originally, by mailing in 150 cigarette bar codes. I despised cigarettes, but somehow imagined that the presence of this brand-name ranked me, within the fashion hierarchy, slightly above the other option which was pastille pink.
Each morning I walked in the frosty dark (It was January) to the bus stop, and rode to the housecleaning office. Once there I was partnered with another housecleaner (one who had a car) and we’d pack up our supplies: brooms, tall dusting puffs, short dusting puffs, a vacuum, various chemicals in spray bottles, about 87 rags, SOS pads (for ovens), green scrubbies (for counters), rubber gloves (for inside toilets), and knee pads (because our boss was philosophically against mops – all floors were done on hands and knees).
The owner of our housecleaning company was named Ina. She was in her early 70’s, and her hands chronically shook. She was not a sweet little old lady. She was a shrewd business woman who charged $18/hour for our services and then paid us each minimum wage… which, in Colorado in 1999, was $5.15.  
We started in Ina’s own home, where she hid money and pistachio shells in hard-to-reach places. She hoped to check our attention to detail and our potential for thievery.  
Once we began cleaning for the general public, the clientele was quite diverse:
There was a 3-story mansion with a basement tanning room (2 tanning beds) and an upstairs play room with a wall-sized TV, a pool table, and a soft-serve bar.
Occasionally we’d leave the mansion and head straight for the apartments to do “an eviction.” Ina was always signing us up for evictions. I’m guessing she charged more for them. 
My worst eviction involved 137 gum wads that had to be scraped off the floor with a metal spatula (thank goodness for those knee pads). There were plastic soda bottles and cans strewn everywhere, many of them sloshing with a mysterious solid/liquid mixture.
I’ll spare you the bathroom specifics. I’ll just say that even my partner, Argy, who sheered sheep with Peruvians as her weekend job and slit goat-throats before dinner… Argy, who had previously been far too hard-core for knee pads and gloves, went back for the elbow-length rubbers after 1 glance at that bathroom.
The turnover in Ina’s small cleaning business was absurd. One might attribute it to the difficulty of the work, but it didn’t help that Ina was an illustrious b----.
When I was hired there were only two women who’d worked there for over a month and one of them (Roberta) had been promoted to part-time office work. That left me and Argy as the only full-time housecleaners. Each time Ina employed a new person she split me and Argy apart. If the new girl had a car, I trained her. If she had no car, she went with Argy.
The new girls never lasted beyond the training period, so… ultimately… Argy and I were always reunited.
Despite our tentative beginnings (Argy’d never hung out with a hippie, and I’d never befriended a 40-year-old, German, agrarian, sheep sheerer) Argy and I basically fell in love.
If it weren’t for our friendship, we’d both have left Ina and Roberta in the dust ages ago. Every time Ina sent me with a new partner, I almost cried. Partly because I missed Argy, and partly because, frankly, the job was scary without her.
With Argy, I could handle anything:  My finger caught in a rat trap… A two-foot neon green dildo chillin’ on Ina’s bedside table… Tween-aged siblings left ‘home alone’ to duke-it-out on the living-room floor… Me and Argy HAD that shit!
But I could not handle any of it with a random, probably-won’t-show-up-tomorrow, tweaking co-pilot, who chain smoked and compulsively poked through a rhododendron hedge in the front yard while I cleand the whole house.
On one such experience my partner locked her keys in the car. I’d just finished cleaning and I was wrangling an industrial Kenmore vacuum off the porch when she accosted our suburban cul-de-sac with a stream of obscenities.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“The car’s locked and the damn keys are still in the ignition.”
“That sucks” I said. Secretly, I was relieved. I soooooo didn’t want to get back into an enclosed, moving vehicle with that lady.
“I’ll call Ina” I said.  “She’ll send Roberta to pick us up.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She said. “Just give me 30 seconds,”  
Those 30 seconds marked the shining climax of my housecleaning career:
Susan (that was her name) walked over to a neatly landscaped cactus garden and lifted a cranium-sized boulder from its ornamental post amidst a bed of pebbled lava-rock.  As I gazed from the porch, still supporting the Kenmore, Susan began bounding toward her car. She raised the boulder over her head as she ran. It was a clumsy motion, one that must have effected more exhaustion than momentum, but that didn’t seem to matter. The rock was freaking heavy. When she smashed it against the back window of her car, it did the job just fine. The rock toppled into the back seat, along with all the broken glass.
“There!” She said, brushing her hands over her puffy maroon coat. After a triumphant glance in my direction, she crawled through the broken window, into the driver’s seat, and gripped the keys dangling in the ignition.
“Ready?” she asked me.
“No.” I said. “I’m gonna call Argy. She’s already cleaning in this area. I’m going to ride with her.”
Susan shrugged and drove away.
That afternoon I told Ina that I’d never work with anyone besides Argy, ever again. I told her I’d quit on-the-spot if she tried to give me another partner. Argy said the same thing.
Ina was incensed, but was forced to agree.
After that I cleaned houses for 3 more months. During those months, I opened at least 3-doors-a-day onto vastly diverse renditions of “The Real World.” In retrospect, the varied phases of my own life have felt similarly diverse.
From my current position, I think I’ve lived in “The Real World” all along… school or no school, job or no job… the only difference is that I’ve finally grown some of those wizened-looking eye wrinkles.
What an accomplishment!
I hope I won’t use them to scare little children.


Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Superhero Undies


Within some friend-groups, I’m considered “the stickler” regarding movie choices and amount of screen time. I’m the one folks peer at, with tentative sidelong glances, when the kids ask to watch a show.
Conversely, Ash attends a Waldorf school. According to the Waldorf philosophy, the children should not be subjected to ANY screen time. EVER. Some of Ash’s classmates (according to the teacher) have, literally, never seen a screen. Within that crowd, perhaps, I’m an active corruptor of innocence. 
When it comes to screen time, Ash is passionate. His attraction to the screen started at about 1 ½ with an obsession for The Muppet Show.
 Some people say that Ash’s zeal for the screen is accentuated by my revulsion for it. I can (sort of) buy that. I’ve got plenty of experience in the wanting-what-you-can’t-have department.
Over the last 6-months I’ve loosened my grip, here-and-there, with the screen-time limitation. There are 3 reasons for this:  
1.       Because I’m experimenting to see if Ash’s passion for the screen might dwindle with less restriction.
2.       Because lots of my friends who watched loads of television, as kids, have grown to become critical, independent thinkers who read books and watch very little TV.
3.       Because I’m freaking tired, and TV makes life easier.
So, here’s an unexpected development: Ash’s inundation to an expanded TV culture has kicked-off The Super Hero Complex.
I’m totally cool with this. In fact, this infatuation leads to all sorts of physical activity. There’s tons of leaping and bounding accompanied by complicated spin-kicks. A pair of four-year-old boys can actually keep this up for hours!  As long as I keep out of the line-of-fire, it’s great.
The hard part is that, in order to get completely into character, the kids require Superhero underwear.
Who could have guessed that, of all the possible Superhero accessories, underwear would be of-the-essence? Capes are a nice addition, but not crucial. Red or blue leggings could generate some short-lived excitement, but jeans are totally fine… as long as they’re topped off by a pair of Spiderman undies. Sometimes, if they’re feeling especially exuberant, the kids will layer 2, 3, or even 4 pair at once.   
Until this Friday, I’d never bought Ash a television-endorsed item of clothing. I don’t like to support that industry, and I don’t want my kid to serve as a walking advertisement. Besides, I’ve hardly needed to buy clothes for my kids at all. I’ve been blessed with more hand-me-downs than I can efficiently process.
Until recently Ash was satisfied with his hand-me-down underwear printed with snow men, rocket ships, soccer balls, and constellations. Then, suddenly, on a random Tuesday, the puppy-paw print undies just weren’t gonna tow the line.
For months I fought the good fight. I told Ash he had enough undies, we didn’t need to buy more.
Two weeks ago, I found him organizing his underwear. He put it all into a laundry basket, leaving only 3 pair in his actual undie-bin. He asked me to get the masking tape and label the bin “Ash’s underwear.”
“Ash, I don’t think that anyone else at the Heart and Spoon is going to mistake your underwear for theirs.”
“PLEASE!” He begged me.
I shrugged and went for the tape and a sharpie. Before I adhered the requested label, I investigated his organization. The only undies remaining in the bin were Spiderman undies… obviously stolen from his best friend, Grant.
“Whoa buddy” I said. “I’ve got your number on this one… You want me to write ‘Ash’s undies’ because these undies are STOLEN. When Grant comes over and sees his undies in your underwear bin, you’re going to point to this label and claim that they are YOURS.”
Ash looked down and smiled… just a little.
“You’ve got to give these undies back, Ash.”
“NO!” He looked heartbroken.
“You can borrow them for a little while but – in the end – they’re going back to Grant’s house.”
Two days later, Grant’s mom caught Ash trying to sneak out the front door of her house with the entire contents of Grant’s underwear drawer packed under his shirt.
The next day I totally sold out. I took Ash to Target. Not only did I let him pick out a 7-pack of Spiderman underwear, I also consented to two pairs of Angry Birds pajamas, and a Spiderman Sheet and pillow case set. I didn’t even argue when Maggie B peeped-in about Hello Kitty sheets for the bottom bunk.  I just tossed them in the cart.
It might seem as though I’m rewarding Ash’s thievery… but, in my mind, I just quit fighting a losing battle.
I don’t like that my kid’s passions are (on some level) dictated by big businesses and the media. But if he’s gonna love this stuff, it’s time for me to stop scowling, glaring, eye-rolling, and otherwise insinuating that there’s something shameful about his reverence for a Marvel superhero.
 I’ve resolved to buckle down and actually watch a Spiderman episode with him, so that we can discuss things like positive Superhero qualities and, basically, just find something new to bond over.
Heck… maybe the next time you see me, I’ll be kickin’ it in some Wonder Woman drawers.


Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Hereditary Lessons


As a kid I spent a lot of time at-odds with my dad. This is because we are very similar human beings. We are both meticulous perfectionists who spin-out on irrelevant details… frequently losing sight of the original goal.
Dad would totally cringe at that description. He’d say, “the details are the whole point!” and scoff at me for calling them irrelevant.
Obviously, I agree with him or I wouldn’t be a writer. On the other hand, a person has to leave the details behind – occasionally – in favor of accomplishing a goal.
Throughout both middle school and high school, dad and I frequently scrutinized my homework into the wee hours.
It wasn’t only Dad’s fault. We were both born with black holes of abstraction funneling off our shoulders, like the devil and the angel combined, in a raging tornado of thought-chaos.
We’d attempt things like Chemistry and Algebra. I’d ask questions obsessively, never feeling like I understood. He was perpetually inclined to teach me “the fundamentals,” sometimes beginning with a history lesson of “such-n-such-mathematician”, or “so-n-so-famous-scientist”.  I’d try to redirect him toward the examples in my textbook. He never felt they were adequate. He’d go downstairs and pull old, dusty, college textbooks off the metal bookshelf in his office, and it was all over from there. I cried. He smoked cigarettes.  In the end, of course, I’d get an A.  
Even after moving away from home, with Dad completly subtracted from the homework scenario, I continued to tackle most assignments with equally grueling and time consuming methods.
About three years ago, my dad started sending out TPODs. TPOD is our family acronym for Tranquil Picture Of the Day.
Dad began this daily ritual when I was 6 months pregnant with Maggie B. During that time I had to have breast surgery because of a mysterious lump. Dad thought I might be freaking out (which I was), so he sent me – through email – a daily “tranquil picture” which he found by perusing the internet.
Three years later, he still sends me a picture every-single-day, but now – upon request – his audience has expanded to include my brother, my sister, my sister-in-law, my mom, and my uncle Van. 
The TPOD has become a sweet way for my family, which has spread all across the US, to connect over something on a daily basis.
It’s kinda like the song that Fievel sings in “An American Tale”
Even though I know how very far apart we are… it helps to know we’re sleeping underneath the same bright star
Yes, it’s despicably cheesy, but I like knowing that everyone in my family spends at least 30 seconds, every day, looking at the same picture.
Sometimes there are lengthy periods during which no one comments on a picture, and other times the conversations get pretty involved.
The TPOD for January 1st pictured a little boy heading off to his first day of school. (You get the theme? First day?)
Both my sister and I responded with something like… “That makes me want to cry.”
My dad responded… “What the heck is wrong with you two? I thought this picture was about exciting new beginnings?”
This led my family to romp into a conversation about school…. and whether or not Kindergarten is an “exciting new beginning” or a “distressing introduction into a big, ugly, F-d up world”.
My dad said says, “this kid is gonna be successful and have a great life.” 
Ellen and I think he’s about to get his sweet little sack lunch stolen.
Sometimes Dad’s TPOD depicts a beautiful place or a close-up of someone’s face. Sometimes it’s artistic; other times its cut from an advertisement. He’s sent us cartoon characters, Jazz musicians, and a poodle chasing a ball. A few days ago it was a zoomed-in photograph of a vacuum cleaner part.
I can only recall 2 events, in the last three years, when my dad did not send his daily TPOD. That was when he and my mom were camping out of internet range. In both of those instances, as soon as he returned to a service area, he re-established his TPOD routine. He also sent us make-up TPODS to account for the days that he missed. My dad’s just kinda intense like that.
When I started blogging, it was primarily as a way to practice one of my most difficult life lessons: to stick to the basics, not spin out to abstraction, and to make accomplishable goals for myself.  I am learning to sacrifice some of the “quality” in my head in order to “actualize” my ideas.
With two children, innumerable relationships, dinner, bills, and laundry all running rampant between my big plans and their actualization… it’s tempting to fold up my projects and stick them on the top shelf of the garage. But quality means nothing if it isn’t carried to fruition.
 A blog is a small task that I can complete, start-to-finish, at regular intervals. That is the perfect practice for me.
I think my dad has a similar attraction to the TPOD: A simple way to connect with his family on a daily basis. As always, in this lifetime, we are pursuing a parallel life-lesson.
Aside from having an interesting photograph to look at every day, his TPODs remind me that consistency-in-practice is really the most important thing.
Knowing that the sacrifice of perfection-for-actualization is hard for him too, I give my blog a final read through, shrug my shoulders, and hit send.