The Stephenie Meyer Snark Fest

The criticism I’m seeing online and elsewhere of the Twilight series is getting under my skin. 

My husband and I are both professional writers.  I’m a staff writer for a local newspaper and occasional feature writer for magazines.  Jay is a published novelist.  We share tremendous regard for each other’s work, laced with terror that someone would ask us to switch jobs. 

Really, I live in awe at the job of a novelist.  80,000 words – really??  Fifteen hundred is about my range.  Flash fiction is great fun, but after that I start to either love  my characters too much to kill one of them off, or hate them enough to want to.

On the other hand, I seem to have a knack for getting politicians and the like to say the darnest things …

But even with the driest, least entertaining subjects, I feel like I’m putting my heart and soul into the words.  Endless school board meetings, Eagle Scout projects, museum exhbits – each article is like a little piece of myself out there for thousands of people to see and comment on.

Vampires are like that for Stephenie Meyer.  I’ve read the entire Twilight series, and it’s not bad, especially compared to some of the pot-boiler mysteries, science fiction and (I hesitate to admit) bodice-busting romances filling the bookshelves in our home to overflowing. 

Regardless of whether it’s the next great American novel, or just another set of paperback potboilers, however, what I’m reading online, written by other writers about Meyer’s work, seems more than a little harsh, and a lot more than a little personal.  

Maybe it’s different for novelists than journalists, but I’m fairly thin-skinned about my writing.  I’m always looking to improve; letters to the editor mean at least one person’s reading what I wrote.  I’m lucky though – aside from the occasional irate letter to an editor, or a church lady’s accusation that I made up a word (I did not – sisyphean really is a word!), I don’t encounter a lot of criticism. 

Unlike Meyer, I have yet to see an entire Facebook post, or a column in a major magazine penned by another well-known author, for the sole purpose of trashing my work.

Is what I’m seeing from other writers about her books mean just for the sake of being funny or somehow gaining writer cred?  It’s like middle school come back to haunt us.  Remember the cliques none of us really fit into, but wanted to badly to be part of nevertheless? 

Sure, Ann Rice’s vampires don’t sparkle, nor do Bram Stoker’s or Josh Whedon’s.  And Bella isn’t out staking the bad guys and whipping those pesky Volturi into shape.  But who cares – vampires are all just a pretty story, no matter who wrote them. 

More importantly, each story is Meyer’s art.  No sooner would I publicly laugh at another writer’s book than would I mock something as small as a child’s refrigerator-posted artwork, or as well-known as the statue of David, just because it wasn’t my idea of how the subject should be portrayed. 

So fellow writers, I ask you to think of the support you get for your work from the general public – and probably still do – and what that means to you. 

And to remember 7th grade and the horrors of public ridicule. 

And to remind yourself that as artists, the input we get on our work from others in our field, who know what we go through to produce each page, each brushstroke, each .jpgp file, can sometimes, on our darker days, make the difference between opening up the laptop and trying again. 

Or not.

The Other Mothers

This morning, Jay and the girls surprised me for Mother’s Day with presents, French Toast, and kisses all around (ok, the kisses weren’t a surprise, but still a lovely gift as well). In all the Hallmark hullaballo, though, I wanted to make sure an additional group was recognized today for the gifts they’ve given – the “Other Mothers.”

Parenting doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There are more influences in our daughters’ lives than we can count, both good and bad. This thanks is for the community in our lives that helps us to navigate those influences, and provides both us and our daughters with examples and inspiration in the process.

Not all the Other Mothers have children themselves. Others have grandchildren. And yet others have their own kids pulling at their pant legs, bumping into their coffee cups and moaning “Mommy, I’m bored” at inopportune times.

But as a group, no matter how busy, cranky, or overwhelmed by their own lives they are, they add their voices, their time, and their love to the lives of our children.

Through them, our daughters have learned that relationships are what really matter; that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but intelligence and imagination are where it’s at; that life is about making good choices – and then standing by them; and that no matter where they live or who they live with, love will always be around them.

Everyone from the mother at the playground who remembers to thank Abby for sharing her chalk with her own toddler; the “aunt” who travelled by herself all the way across the country to start a new life and showed Katie by example that women can be adventurers too; and our gay and lesbian friends who show us all that love is where you find it, not where others say you should look.

So on Mother’s Day in particular, I want to take a moment to thank the community that makes raising our children less than predictable, less than ordinary, and even more wonderful than it otherwise would be. This day is for you too.

Thanks, Other Mothers - we couldn’t do it without you!!!

9/11 Lessons …

If there was ever a long-term goal in the minds of the planners of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, strangers being knifed for their religious beliefs, and neighbors screaming at one another in public meetings over perceived cultural sleights couldn’t have been far from hand.

But in fact, that’s where we are.  Nine years after the bombing of New York by a bunch of lunatic religious zealots, it’s our own bad behavior that has us in the news. 

A New York cab driver was stabbed – thankfully not fatally – for answering a stranger’s question that yes, he is Muslim. 

A Florida church is plannng a Burn the Quran Day gathering. 

And the to do over the Muslim community/prayer/gathering/ whatever center being built just a few blocks away from Ground Zero in New York has garnered attention from as far away as the Middle East where, presumably, mothers pray thanks their children weren’t born to one of those kind of loony Christian families …

Somewhere, God is slowly, methodically beating his head against a wall.

I was part of a group gathered to review a book about six months ago.  As a liberal Episcopalian, I view most things that describes themselves as “Christian” – music, literature, schools, whatever – as slightly suspect, tending to have a Fundamentalist/right-wing leaning.  

(I love Anne Lamott, perhaps because she really does seem to be the exception to the rule with her overt “Godiness,” but prickly-funny, all-encompassing hatred of all things George Bush.) 

This work, by Sarah Cunningham, titled Picking Dandelions: A Search for Eden Among Life’s Weeds, was part of a subgroup of “Christian” books, but based on my love of Lamott, and something else, I forget what, I agreed to do it. 

The book was good.  Breezily written, the group of short essays read without that creepy “want to know a secret?” thing I seem to get from a lot of the evangelical Christians around.  Cunningham gets around, working with youth programs here, and volunteering at the 9/11 site there.  Despite my wariness of creeping Fundamentalism, I found myself enjoying her stories.  She provided a clear example of what it means to be part of a community, regardless of religion or nationality.

Life gets busy, though, with 2 kids, 2 dogs, 2 jobs (I’m a regular Noah’s ark of lifestyle choices, wheee!).  I set the book aside, where writing the review took its place on my to-do list along with cleaning out the back closet and teaching the dog to fetch me my wine and the new Jennifer Weiner novel …

Cunningham recently emailed me, however, reminding me of my promise to review her work, and pointing out that 9/11 was fast approaching and that she’d had a couple of blurbs in her book regarding her experiences with same. 

She had volunteered at 9/11, and her recounting of the experience, combined with the news of late,  reminded me of the real lessons I learned from the rubble.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the book:

At the time, though, it seemed like everyone wanted New York to find some small good to tide it over until the city could flourish again. Emergency personnel, of course, worked through the night and through the day and through the next day, logging weeks worth of overtime they’d never be paid for. Department store chains sent their delivery trucks to transport literally tons of bottled water to the disaster site. Cruise ships arrived in the harbor to feed and house volunteers, cell phone companies handed out free phones to relief workers so they could keep in touch with their families, and therapists administered free  counseling and even massages.

A few years after 9/11, on the anniversary of the attack, Jay and I took a bicycle ride to downtown for breakfast and playtime in the park for our daughter.  We shouldn’t have been entirely surprised to find a prayer gathering in the middle of our mostly-white, middle-class, suburban community, presided over by the pastor of the largest community church in town.  Veterans stood with rebellious teenagers alongside bank employees alongside cattle ranchers in the middle of Main Street that  had been closed for the occasion.

Following a salute to the flag and choruses of America the Beautiful that had us all wet-eyed, the pastor offered a prayer.  “Dear God, please protect all Christians from the evil ways of terrorism …” he pled, holding his hands upwards, hoping perhaps for divine guidance.

We quietly left, got on our bicycles and slunk home, feeling faintly sullied by the experience.

On 9/11, nobody was asking the volunteers Cunningham worked alongside if they were Muslim, or Hindu, or Christian, or Jewish, or atheist.  (And hopefully, if they did, someone thwacked them over the head with a shovel before turning back to the task at hand.) 

Instead, groups gathered together, “through the night and through the day and through the next day” … shoveling and digging to save the lives of whoever remained, regardless of those peoples’ faith or culture. 

They – and by their labor all of us - were connected, joined however briefly by nothing but our humanity.  No doubt many volunteers stopped their work occasionally to pray together.  I daresay more than one or two of them faced East to do so, all praying for the same things – safety for their loved ones, and success in rescue efforts.

And like them, on this year’s anniversary of 9/11, our family will no doubt pray.  Hands locked together before diving headfirst into meals and homework assignments and bedtime stories, oh my.  We take a moment and ask – inspired by the downtown pastor – that all people be free from the evils brought by religious intolerance, regardless of their beliefs. 

Whether they’re a woman being lashed in Iran, or a cabbie being stabbed in New York, or a young man being tied to a fence and beaten to death in Wyoming. 

We pray thanks for the food on our table, but more importantly, for the gift of being able to eat it beside the people we love, regardless of their gender, or their nationality, or their religion. 

And for the wisdom to keep that in mind in our own dealings every day with the world around us.

Dear Wells Fargo

Dear Wells Fargo:

So many people preface a breakup with the phrase “it’s not you, it’s me.”

So let me just be clear about why I’m leaving, in case you’re confused.

It’s not me, it’s you.

After twenty-odd years of banking with you, I’m leaving. I’m sad over the breakup, but sure that it’s the right thing to do.

You had my first checking account, when I learned about keeping track of the numbers when I started college in 1984. You were the bank I wrote checks from to pay for my college education, and several years later, for my wedding. Jay and I paid the deductible for our hospital stay out of the account you held for us after we had both of our daughters, and I opened the bank account I started for my writing business with you. And you hold the mortgage to our first – and so far only, home.

Our relationship hasn’t been completely without bumps. Despite having warning in writing from me, you blithely paid checks from my stolen checkbook for over two hundred dollars, before grudgingly returning the money – then taking it back out again, and then returning it again once more.  You happily placed holds on deposited checks, and then pretended to be gracious about refunding “some” of the overdraft charges that resulted from the holds.

But I remained. Time heals wounds, and entropy happens.  I grew used to the website, enjoyed your billpay feature (even when you forgot you’d offered it for free and charged me for it for a year before remembering again), and even grew to recognize the bankers at my local branch by name.

But as with any long-term relationship, one must counter the pros with the cons. And your recent behavior with respect to my credit card account is simply the final straw that breaks our bond.

I opened the credit card I have with you several years ago. You offered it to me on the basis of low, low interest rates, and even lower balance transfer rates. I hadn’t been as careful as my mother always counseled with credit cards, and had run up some balances that were higher than I should have, so your offer came at an opportune time. I took you up on the offer and transfered several balances to you.

Little did I know.

Slowly … but … surely those balances came down … There was still a ways to go, but hope remained on the horizon.

Until recently.

Suddenly things changed. Telephone representatives were no longer as friendly when I called with the occasional question. Interest rates were going up, the balance transfer rate had expired, and would I be interested in paying off the entire balance, by any chance?

The balance continued going down, but … slower …

Things changed again. I lost my job. The car needed more repairs than ever, and daycare costs weren’t going anywhere. I actually missed a payment by about three weeks, before remembering and calling in to pay.

But even so, it was too late. It was within the limits of the law, the phone rep said in a tone that was meant to sound apologetic but came out sounding like something read from a prepared script. We’re losing money on those darned mortgage foreclosures around the country – we have to make it up somewhere, the headlines swore. There’s been a change to your interest rate, the notice read.

And so, despite a twenty-year relationship, multiple accounts, and one mortgage, my rate on a five-figure bank card balance rocketed to 25%. My payments are now almost entirely interest, with a teensy weensy amount going to finance charges, and the rest going to the coffers of the bank that not that long ago was going to the government, pleading a long-standing relationship with customers like me and insisting that it really was credit-worthy, despite what everyone else was saying.

This weekend, on Saturday, I drove with my eldest child to Travis Credit Union. There, a friendly banker named Laura sat down with me to go over paperwork. She and I chatted about our jobs, her dream of being a journalist someday, and my work as a freelance writer.  We talked about her family, my children, and life in general. And all the while, we went over paperwork together to began the sad process of moving my money from you, Wells Fargo.

(Interestingly, Laura had just done the same, moving her money from Wells Fargo to Travis.)

I already have a shiny new ATM card. Checks should be arriving any day now, and I’ll sign up for the billpay feature on their website. My employer will directly deposit my paycheck to the new account.  I’ll be closing out my other Wells Fargo accounts this week, and transferring the balance on that final card I have with you to a different bank as well.

It’s been wild and exciting ride with you, Wells, but our relationship has reached an end. Your behavior has been abusive and disrespectful, and I no longer consider you a friend. 

And besides, I need to set a good example for my children of what should and should not be tolerated. Especially when they become lawmakers some day, and you come knocking again, asking for another small loan to tide you over – just for a little while until you can get back on your feet.

The Prettiest Christmas Tree Ever

“Mommy, look!” says Katie, pulling on my arm as we pass the Union Square store windows just a few weeks before Christmas. 

There, in glorious, side-by-side Technicolor, pose one spectacular Christmas tree after another.  Sparkling, shining, shimmering paeons to holiday excesses, each one carries its own theme. 

PEACOCKS! shrieks one, bedecked with ornaments in shades of blue and green.  Feathers hanging from branches are sprinkled with gold sparkles, and blue lights reflect off the glitter, making for a rainbow of colors. 

Another tree is decorated in reds and golds emblematic of the San Francisco’s Chinatown district.  Little red pagodas compete for space with dolls in kimonos holding parasols (I refrain from pointing out to Katie that kimonos are actually Japanese), who hang from gold loops extending from their heads. 

Yet another is all about afternoon tea, with teapots, lace doilies, cups – is that a silver spoon? – even little ceramic cookies hanging from loops! 

Katie’s eyes are shining in wonder at the sights before her.  “They are pretty, aren’t they?” I smile, and let her lead me by the hand into the store.  There, after about 30 seconds of searching, she makes a beeline for the peacock tree and ever so carefully plucks one bird off a branch.  “Can I have it?  Pretty please?” she begs, bouncing up and down in her shoes, and the peacock’s feathers jiggle slightly with each bounce as well, as if joining in her excitement. 

The saleslady is harried, but takes a moment to carefully wrap the glass bird in tissue, deposits it into a little bag with ribbon handles and a Christmas tree on the front.  “Happy holidays,” she says, handing Katie the package, and I smile over my shoulder as we leave, eager to get back to home and hearth.

At home, waiting in the living room, is our family’s Christmas tree.  Jay has strung the lights, and with 4-year old Abigail’s help, begun decorating the tree.  Half the size – and price – of the store’s versions, it nevertheless fills the room with the colors and smells of Christmas.   

Our version isn’t color coordinated.  Glass ornaments vye for space with construction paper chains.  Five year old candy canes still wrapped in their cellophane hang from branches, kept company by the large gold globe my sister gave us when we first married.  “Jay and Denisen,” it reads, “August 10, 1996.”  A ceramic teddy bear in a Santa cap, holding a big “K” for “Katie,” shares the space on the branch beside Abby’s  wreath made of spray-painted pasta, painstakingly made in pre-school classes over the last several weeks. 

Katie, who was exhausted when we boarded the train towards home 45 minutes earlier, is now just awake enough to sigh in pleasure as she takes it in. 

Having heard our approach, Jay carefully helps Katie off with her red holiday coat, and then unwraps the peacock from its insulation.  Even Abigail, wired on Christmas cheer and cookies, stops her hopping around the room to stare at its beauty. 

Katie takes the ornament, holding it so carefully in her 9-year old hands.  She searches for a moment, then just the right place and carefully it to a branch. 

And once again, as with every year, we stand together and admire the prettiest Christmas tree ever.

Rushing around …

As a mom with a Type-A personality, I sometimes work on a different level of “rush” than my husband and two children.

In the past, I’ve filled our schedule on the weekends to bursting, and we all then race to get it done before the weekend ends and its time go go back to work and school.

Nine o’clock tumbling classes for one child, 10:30 ballet for another. Twenty minutes to get home, lunch on the table, one child’s playdate at the park at 2, another birthday party invitation at 3 across town. Grocery shopping, forty-five minutes to work on an article, then the World’s Fastest Shower before giving the babysitter instructions as we race out the door for a “relaxing” date night, calling in a pizza order for the sitter and girls on the way to our restaurant.

Typical.

But recently I’ve begun to learn to take a breath. This rushed, often pressure-cooked style isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Nine year old Katie is my mindfulness teacher.

“Katie, let’s move, we’re late for tumbling,” I bark, rushing past her bedroom, where she’s standing in front of her bed, debating between the blue sparkly leotard or the pink and black stars version.

“In a minute, Mom,” she calls back. I stop and take a breath, feeling my heart beating in time with my rushed pace slow for a moment as well.

“Hop, hop, hop, quick like bunny!” I urge on another day, clapping my hands on each “hop” for emphasis. “We’re going to be late for Chelsea’s birthday party!”

Katie carefully fastens a bow on the present, ensuring that none of the Disney princesses decorating the paper have their faces obscured by the silvery ribbon.

“In a minute, Mom,” she says before getting it just right. I notice as I wait that she’s wrapped the whole thing herself, without asking for so much as the tape be found or the scissors be passed.

But even an old mom can learn new tricks.

“Katherine, if we’re late for church, I’m holding your DS hostage for the rest of the week,” I start to threaten as she fiddles with barrettes and smells the perfume bottles pushed haphazardly to one side on my dresser … one … by … one …

I catch myself halfway into her name, though.  Something instead makes me watch her suddenly longer limbs and newfound interest in the contents of my vanity, the carefulness with which she lifts each bottle, the little smile on her face as she plays with grown-up pleasures.

“Katherine –“

She jumps, startled, and turns to see me. “What?” she barks back at me, a trace of teenage rebelliousness already evident in her tone.

Four year old Abby dances into the room, interrupting. “Come on, Mommy – we’re late!” she says, her little girl’s voice sounding urgent.

I smile, take a breath.  “In a minute, sweetheart.” Katie squirms as I plant a kiss on her head. Then taking her and Abby’s hands in mine, I allow Katie to lead us all – at a walk – out the front door and into the day.

Getting our priorities straight – the case of Roman Polanski and the 13 year old girl

I’ve been reading the media reports of Roman Polanski’s recent arrest in Switzerland on charges of raping a 13-year old girl. 

Here’s what the French culture and communications minister had to say about the arrest, as reported by CNN:

“He expressed solidarity with Polanski’s family and said “he wants to remind everyone that Roman Polanski benefits from great general esteem” and has “exceptional artistic creation and human qualities.”"

Gosh, that was nice.

I remember being thirteen years old fuzzily at best.  I was in eighth grade, and hadn’t had my ears pierced yet because I was afraid it’d hurt.  My boyfriend, John Cochrane, had just convinced me to kiss him in the middle of one of the bench areas of Oakridge Mall, and it was gross.  Middle school was the scourge of my existence – socially awkward, I didn’t have a lot of friends and hung out in the library, reading Ray Bradbury novels.  I went to one or two school dances, where I joined my fellow misfits leaning up against the walls of the school gym while the cool kids slow danced in the middle of the room.  From there we watched Loni A dance so gracefully in her dress with spaghetti straps and a big fabric rose at the hip, before she scandalized us all by getting caught necking with a kid from the local high school behind a portable classroom. 

Unlike Polanski’s crowd, quaaludes weren’t a big part of my existence.

I realize I had a radically different life than the then-13 year old starlet, who was apparently dropped off by her mother at a party and photo shoot in the hopes that she’d meet some movers and shakers to advance her budding film career. 

But what Polanski did was so wrong as to be universally unforgiveable, transcending social classes and artistic merit.  

Some of our society’s ideals are non-negotiable.  One of those is that 13 year olds are still children, regardless of how they behave, how they dress, or what their parents think is an appropriate situation to leave their children in without supervision.

Another is that when a woman says no, it means no.

All the attention the Polanski case is now getting seems to miss the point.  Sure, he’s incredibly talented.  It was a bummer that, he had to miss out on being personally handed his Oscar statuette in 2003, and his new movie is now sort of on hold while the charges are pending.  And I agree the judge who handled the initial rape charges sounds like he was a head case in his own right.

But even Polanski acknowledged that thirty years ago, he raped a child.  She said no, and he persisted.  She said no again, and he gave her a pill to calm her down.  She asked to leave, and he refused.  As the mother of two daughters, my skin crawls just typing these words. 

Today, when Roman Polanski is described in articles, the first words tend to be “celebrated director,” “Oscar-winning film maker,” and, my personal favorite, “cultural icon.”

Let’s try this angle instead:

“Roman Polanski was recently re-arrested after fleeing charges of raping a child.  Polanski also directed …” instead of the other way around. 

Because after all – which aspect of his life is more important for us as a society to learn from?

Public versus private – hard choices

I raced out of the house at rocket speed this morning.  Passing by, I gave 8-year old Katie a quick kiss, and without even eliciting the usual promise to “be good and learn lots,” grabbed my coffee cup and took off, a mom on a mission. 

Arriving in the front door of my office not long after, I barely paused to greet co-workers, but made a beeline for the computer, where I emailed Katie’s teacher, my fingers eliciting a staccato song that echoed the urgency of my message.

“We’d appreciate it if you’d join us in reassuring Katie that the world is not going to end,” I typed, “solar flares, ancient Mayan calendars, and bored 9-year olds notwithstanding.  Please write back and let us know as well how it went today.”

Katie had heard a rumor at school the previous Friday about the world ending in the year 2012 – December 21^st, to be specific.  The subsequent weekend was spent reassuring our especially imaginative child that the world was not likely to end any time soon. 

Yes, I’d said, patiently (I hoped), pointing to the pictures on NASA’s website, “solar flares are very common.  No, the Mayans had no special insight regarding the life span of a mid-sized yellow star.  Of course we’d know in advance and be prepared for same if it ever did happen.

That Saturday night, I had struggled to keep my own eyes open and my voice calm after the usual story-song-kiss bedtime routine.  No, I repeated, the world wasn’t going to explode; no, there wasn’t going to be a gigantic solar flare that would incinerate us all, please, just try and snooze a little …

The teacher’s response to my email that Monday morning both reassured and gave me additional cause for worry.

“I talked to Katie this morning to help address her fears,” she said, her tone of voice every bit as crisp as you’d expect from a woman tasked with keeping twenty-five third graders in check on a daily basis.  “We looked up promises in the Bible about how Jesus is coming back one day to create a new heaven and a new earth (since this one is so polluted).  … We decided that the Mayans don’t know, and since they worshipped false gods they don’t know anything anyways.”

I didn’t write back.

We feel stuck between a rock and a hard place in regards to our children’s education.  Liberal Democrats, we volunteered in the latest election, pasting Obama-Biden bumper stickers on our car and No on Prop H8te signs in the front windows of our house, while our blue-collar Republican neighbors rolled their eyes as they walked by, and politely excluded us from their weekly combined bonfires and get out the vote sessions of their own.

And yet, due to the abysmal state of California’s public schools, we join so many others of our brethren in sending our children to be educated by the very people we worked so hard to vote out of office. 

You know the ones – they preach on Sunday television about God’s enduring love for all Christians (nevermind the Hindus, Jews and Mayans …).  And evolution, in their eyes, is just a myth made up by the liberal elite media to further their own godless causes.

It’s amazing what having kids does to one’s outlook.

When it came to be time for Katie to start school, we looked to the public school just 3 blocks from our house with high hopes. 

My plans to see the kindergarten before signing Katie up gave me my first taste of public school bureaucracy.

“I’d like to arrange a visit to the class,” I said cheerily into the phone to a Mrs. Someone in the school’s office.

“Of course,” she replied, sounding so perky and helpful I was already on my way to being charmed.  “We have an open house about a month after school starts for all the parents.”

“No, I want to visit the school before we enroll Katie.  You know, to see the classroom, check out how it all works.”

It was like I’d asked her to sell me a vial of crack.  Her tone cooled. “We don’t allow non-parents into the classrooms,” she said.

“But all the other schools we’re visiting have prospective parent tours,” I argued.

“We’re not all the other schools.  We don’t allow non-parents into the classrooms.”

Around and around I went, finally escalating my request – did it really seem so strange? – to the District level.  After leaving a message with the Superintendent’s secretary, I finally got a call back from the school’s principal. 

“I understand you wanted a class visit,” she said, sounding like a child who’d been ordered to recite “I’m sorry,” after some household sin.  “Let me make you an appointment to come by.”

The kindergarten class I visited a day or two later was less a loving introduction to academia, however, than an exercise in crowd management.

With 36 children to oversee, the young teacher could have taught a lesson to riot police.  Most demonstrators, for instance, don’t bite their seatmates, or have to be escorted to a bathroom every ten minutes.  Nevermind beginning reading and creating refrigerator-worthy art – just getting through the day safely with all students – and the teacher – accounted for was a Good Thing.

Trying not to show my horror, I visited the school’s on site day care next.  There, I stood beside the director, and we watched as an aide chastised a young African-American girl to “clean up the mess,” ignoring the sobbing child’s insistence that it wasn’t “her” mess, but “someone else’s.” 

The director began to ignore the scene, then noticed my noticing of it before stepping in to solve the conflict and sending the girl off to play without so much as a word of comfort or a hug. 

I left shaking with a combination of rage at the child’s torment, and terror at what awaited our children there.

I wasn’t the only parent with concerns.  According to the National Education Association, the pay rate of California’s teachers is highest in the nation.  But it’s for good reason – California teachers also have the highest staff-to-student average in the nation.  No surprise, then, that our state schools’ test scores are less than stellar.

And so we elected to send our daughter, along with the 500,000 other California children whose parents eschew the public – and free – option, to private school.

We learned on entering the private school arena that there are two variations.

There are several beautiful secular private schools near our home. 

We visited and were handed brochures.  Printed in full color on heavy paper, they showed children learning the art of Japanese brushstroke painting, playing chess, and posing during that year’s class trip to Washington D.C.  Unfortunately, with the brochures came the tuition schedule.  We skulked back to our seven year old Saturn, hidden between a Hummer and a shiny new BMW SUV, clutching the paperwork and searching our minds for any elderly (and wealthy) maiden aunts we’d let slip our minds.

And then there were the others.  Tabernacle Christian School.  North Creek Christian School.  Walnut Creek Christian Academy.  St. Francis Catholic School.  Ygnacio Valley Christian School.  Calvalry Christian Academy.  Kings Christian School. 

The brochures were less shiny, and the administrators who toured us around didn’t wear pearls.  But most offered art, music, drama, computers, and in many cases, a foreign language starting in first grade, all at reasonable, church-subsidized prices.

Dressed and pressed, with Katie having been forsworn to her very best behavior, we began to attend potential parent meetings.  There, fresh-faced and smiling pastors met with us and other hopefuls to explain their school’s philosophies.

At one, small comic books lined a shelf in the front lobby.  I worked to keep my face expressionless as I read about Satan’s cookie (communion wafers).  Another instructed that Christians had better be nice to the Jews, because after all, look what happened to Hitler and the Pharoah.  One more warned ominously that Allah had no son.

At another, where Latin classes and school-funded soccer teams competed for the childrens’ time, the church’s pastor met with us.  Young and approachable, he listened while we asked our carefully phrased questions, trying to measure whether the next time Katie saw our Jewish friends she’d be asking if they’d invited Jesus into their hearts. 

“We teach from the pulpit.  It’s all God’s word,” he said, smiling beautifically.

We fled.

Nevertheless, after another visit to the public schools (“Oh my god, I didn’t believe you before,” said Jay after his own tour), another meeting with a private school director (“We have families from all faiths, all walks of life,” the director assured us in a British accent that reminded me more of a loving nanny than Mussolini), we made our decision and enrolled Katie in one of the Christian schools.

When I was a kid, I was actively bored by art, physical education and library science classes.  Sadistic phys ed coaches alternated having us play games of dodge ball (never a good thing in the eyes of a 7th grade nerd), dropping us into a swimming pool in 60 degree weather (it was here I learned from a helpful classmate to plead “the curse” – I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant other than that I shouldn’t swim), or having us run torturous laps upon laps upon laps around the school’s track. 

Now in 3rd grade, Katie’s least favorite subject is Spanish.  She runs torturous laps around a track, egged on by a coach she has learned the word “pathological” to describe.  And once a week her entire class of twenty-three 8-year olds troops upstairs to the lab to learn about proper use and programming of computers.

Each night when she comes home, after we say grace over dinner for the chance to eat it with people we love, we carefully screen Katie for what went on in school today. 

One day I found a flyer excitedly announcing a visit by the Creation Museum (they were going to explain that dinosaurs co-existed with cavemen – helpful for plowing fields, felling trees, apparently – and that the earth had in fact come into existence 6,000 years ago over the course of one week).  I pulled Katie out for an “important family function,” and took her to the Lawrence Hall of Science, where I watched her play in a giant model of a genome. 

We try to find a Passover Seder to attend each year, and we explain to Katie why we fight so hard on behalf of our gay friends for their right to marry and why other people think they shouldn’t be allowed that right.

We know there are others like us at the school.  I chatted with another mom recently about a run-in I’d had with the school’s director over how they were addressing the question of evolution versus intelligent design versus creationism. 

“We teach the Bible literally,” the director had stated flatly in response to my noting that a book titled “The Great Lie of Evolution,” might be too strongly worded for the 1-3 grade set. 

“Not the whole thing,” I shot back, in one of my less than diplomatic moments.  “I’m sure for instance, washing one’s underwear with a rock by the side of the river isn’t in there, nor is to not sleep with your brother’s slave.” 

The mom rolled her eyes before getting into her Prius, the one with the Obama-Biden bumper sticker, and zipping out of the school’s parking lot.

Someday, Katie will have a quality education, courtesy of this school.  We can only hope that’ll help her as she follows in our footsteps, searching for just the right community to help raise her own children. 

Assuming, that is, the world doesn’t end in 2012.

The doorway to our hearts

The doorway into the heart of our household doesn’t have a door.  Instead, the entrance sits wide, welcoming everyone who comes with open arms. 

The dining room/childrens’ study/workroom/family conference center is the place where we all congregate and, not coincidentally, where everything seems to happen. 

Here is where our children Katie and Abigail come home from school, and we arrive after long days at work.  Purses are dropped, backpacks haphazardly tossed around the large oak table in the center of the room as we congregate.  “How was school, honey?”  “Fine.”  “What’d you do?”  “Nothing.”  “Honey, you can’t believe what Steve said today at my office.”  “Again!?  He’s a lunatic.  Cousin Jeanne called, by the way.  What’s for dinner?”

The table sits in its oaken glory in the middle of our ugly linoleum floor.  Not that you can tell it’s wood (actually veneer).  Instead, the surface is  covered in Wells Fargo mortgage coupons and Nordstrom bills, 3^rd grade spelling lists (neighbor, skateboard, appreciate), Ziploc baggies full of crayons, and enough Hello Kitty hair bands and barrettes in varying shades of pink, fuscia and orchid to coif a band of brightly dressed gypsies.  “Are your shoes on?” I call in the mornings, chasing one child around the table with a hairbrush while the other rolls her eyes and gobbles a bowl of Rice Krispies. “What color are your socks?”

For months after we bought the house, I hunted for the perfect table for this room.  Something strong enough to stand up under the weight of the detritus of our lives, but pretty enough to, when cleared off, hold our newly-gifted wedding china and flower vases when needed.  Something old, but not too antiquey, something large enough to hide the linoleum that even then, thirteen years ago I hated (though not so much that we’ve replaced it – yet), but not so large that we couldn’t move around it.  Finally, rushing out of the house, late as usual for some event or another, I found the perfect candidate two houses up at a neighbor’s garage sale. 

“Are we in tonight?” Jay asks, pouring me a cup of milk and sugar with a little coffee added, then nuking it to reheat the milk, as I race by, still trying to ponytail first one child, then the next.  “No, remember,” I shoot back, waving at the dry-erase calendar that lives on the side of the nearby refrigerator that faces the room.  “It’s wine with Sherry tonight.”

Underneath and throughout the table, the chairs that are pushed in at odd angles.  On one lives Bad Cat Fred.  The 16 year old cat alternates snoozing on the stained pink cushions, or batting at the nose of the overly-inquisitive golden retriever not-buddy who insists on interrupting her rest.   Someday, the dog is convinced, Fred will play.  Someday, Fred swears, hissing her rebuttal, I’m gonna get that dog good.

Family meals happen in this room.  The four of us join wiggly little fingers to insistent adult grasps and give thanks for the “food and the chance to eat it with people we love.”  Animals wander in and out, bump into chairs, push through too small distances to rest pathetically begging faces (nevermind the overlarge body behind same) in the laps of hapless diners. 

We throw parties in our home for friends, neighbors, family.  Regardless of decorations and little, not-really-randomly placed bowls of treats to entice guests to wander, everyone seems to congregate in this room, exchanging stories, gossip and (when enough wine has been consumed), astonishingly dirty jokes. 

To get anywhere in the rest of the house, we pass this room, wave at family members and whichever friends have stopped by for the ubiquitous glass of wine.  The liquid, whether golden or blood red in color always boasts a full bouquet of gossip and neighborliness. 

Through this doorway is where our major family decisions are made.  One of us sits at the table, one in the adjacent kitchen.  Clattering pots and dishes, the cat’s persistent howling almost but not quite drown out our gnashing of teeth and crashing mental gears.  Public versus private, 15 versus 30 year mortgages, Erika’s birthday versus a date night with a movie. 

Here, with the blue and pink roses wallpaper providing a constant backdrop for later pictures, is where family events happen.  Baptismal luncheons, birthday parties, annual gatherings of the tribes, all dressed in pastel finery and hats, polite smiles in place, in the name of a holiday involving gigantic hams and brightly colored eggs (found later cleverly hidden down heating vents).  Here, cousins and uncles who otherwise roll their eyes and tell funny joke about one another (haha – isn’t she a treasure!) embrace and swear, “We really shouldn’t let so much time go by!” before excusing themselves to find another glass of chardonnay.

Here, in front of the antique wooden buffet from England with the crack running down its top and carved rosebuds on the doors, is where family battles occur.  Katie, dangerously close to teenagerhood turns bright red, her blue eyes glassy with tears, before stomping from room in a fury over whether her opinions count, to SLAM the door to her bedroom down the hall. 

Once, in a fury, I threw a full sugar bowl across the room, watched it sail majestically, spilling its contents like so much fairy glitter into the linoleum.  The thing hit the countertop with a crash, gravity bringing any fairy-like metaphors to an abrupt halt (though a fairy cleaning crew would have helped after then for the cleanup – nothing is worse for a furious snit than having to clean up ones own evidence).  Furies and snits come and go like miniature hurricanes, and it is in the same room that make up kisses are exchanged.  “I love you mommy,” promises Katie, clinging to my arm.  “Do you still love me?” I worry, as Jay rolls his eyes, and we pick up sugar bowl shards together.

Here, beyond this doorway, kisses are exchanged, hugs are given, wine and laughter flow.

There is no door or barrier to entry to this room.  This is the heart of our family – all are welcomed.

I love Saturdays …

Saturdays are supposed to be the day when with the workweek over, you get a chance to rest, maybe read a book, have a glass of wine, sun yourself. Who came up with that idea, anyways? Sort of like the adult version of summer vacation, so that the transition from going to school, with its odd holidays and loooong summers, to work where vacation and sick days are parceled out like bowls of porridge to orphans in some Charles Dickens tome. “More – she wants MORE!” roars the HR rep to his buddies when we call, asking for just one extra day because our kid is sick/the dog has to have its annual flea dip/the house hasn’t been vacuumed since – well, ever, and a housecleaner is coming and god forbid they should actually see how we really live/ – or my personal favorite, I need to catch up on writing assignments (usual HR translation for that is “food poisoning,” but that’s a different essay).

I can hear in my end of the phone the uprorious laughter of the other human resources personnel in the background, while I speculate over which one of their mothers allowed him to reach adulthood with a laugh that sounded like the sound a hyena would make as it chokes to death on the carcass of something dead …

So, where was I? Oh, right. Saturdays. For our family, Saturdays are, at least in theory that’s a little closer to reality than the above, a chance to reconnect with our children, our house, our pets. Both Jay and I have full time day jobs that get us out of the house in the mornings around 8 a.m., pulling children along behind us. I take Katie, who’s 8, to school on the way to the train station. We pull into the closest parking space to the front door, and I leap out, calling, “C’mon honey – don’t forget your backpack, lunch, homework – are your shoes STILL untied? Come on sweetie, darling, cupcake, I’m late, quick like bunny, hop hop hop!” Katie, who’s the slow, careful, deliberate one, begins to unstrap her seatbelt, looks around to make sure she’s not forgetting something, then opens her own car door while I do the late-mommy dance around the car (sort of like a rain dance or, our family favorite, the where’s the bathroom boogie) until she gets out. Kisses are exchanged, and I don’t see the child I dreamt, fantasized about having, and love more than I love anything else, for another ten hours.

Jay’s morning is the same way, but with the added bonus of a game of “what animal am I thinking of” – Abby’s reigning favorite, thrown in for kicks. (“What color am I?” being one of the giveaway questions, as the common-est answer is orange and black striped and our word of the week is “carnivore.”)

We return home at 6 with exhausted children, to do homework, wolf dinner, take baths, and fall into bed, only to wake up the next morning and do it all again – wheee!

So Saturday mornings we wake up and hit the ground running. There’s a lot to be done to keep those family bonds strong. Tumbling and gymnastics, birthday parties and playdates, baseball games and book reports crowd the time. Occasional date nights happen Saturday nights (though last Saturday night stood out when I had too much tequila and decked my friend’s grabby husband, but that’s yet another different essay -and I had truly good cause, paraphrased in the question, “Are yours real?” and then subsequent testing of same …)

Still and all. Saturdays are when we remember why we work the ten hour days during the week. They’re so that we can work just as hard as we do then, but doing what we love with those we love.