Smell My Feet

October 30, 2009 By 3 Comments

All Hallows

by Louise Glück

Even now this landscape is assembling.

The hills darken. The oxen

sleep in their blue yoke,

the fields having been

picked clean, the sheaves

bound evenly and piled at the roadside

among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness

of harvest or pestilence.

And the wife leaning out the window

with her hand extended, as in payment,

and the seeds

distinct, gold, calling

Come here

Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

Saturday is Halloween. It’s also the first day of the Well Read Hostess Holiday and Celebration Ultramarathon.

We kick it off on Saturday with trick-or-treating, and the festivities just keep coming until a birthday celebration for the girl child in January. Fun? yes. Lots of quality family and friend time? Yes. Great memories in the making? Yes. Daunting to look at from this end of the racecourse? Yes.

I teach young high school students, most of whom are as excited about Halloween as my young elementary school children are. Halloween seems to be the last “kid” holiday that they are willing to give up. Thanksgiving is no longer about dressing up like Pilgrims or Indians and and having a these days entirely nut and dairy free feast in the school cafeteria. The magic of Christmas has been replaced by the thrill of getting the new ipod or the new Uggs. Birthdays aren’t about cupcakes in school and having your class sing to you during snack time; instead they represent one step closer to a driver’s license and one year nearer to having to worry about getting into college.

But Halloween has no strings attached. These normally jaded and toocoolforschool young adolescents are surprisingly unsheepish about their desire to dress up and get candy from their neighbors, despite the fact that during the rest of the year, they spend insane amounts of energy and time trying to seem older and more sophisticated than their 14 years.

Many of them figured out today that The Great Pumpkin that they have seen on the lawn of a house in their hometown every year was constructed and put there by TWGH. They beg me to get him to raise it up again this year. Sorry honey, but would you mind…

The 14 going on 28 girls who pick at their salads at lunchtime accept a handful of mini chocolate bars gleefully and gratefully.

Boys use my dry erase markers to draw elaborate skeletons and bats on the whiteboard as they wait for the lesson to begin.

Kids pass notes to each other about who has a blond wig to borrow and who will be in what neighborhood at what time and do you know if that one particular he or she will be there???

Friday afternoons before school vacations or big dances or even weekends promising snow are tough as a teacher. Teenagers bounce off the walls with literature and the writing process absolutely dead last on their minds. Today, however, they are excited, but they have forgotten about being too over it all and crank out their work joyfully. The anticipation of this particular holiday, anyway, allowing them to be the best kind of kid: enthusiastic, spirited, youthful, and willing to trust the adult in their midst.

Their souls have crept out of the trees, at least until their mythology unit test on Monday.

Filed Under: Mama Like, What I Know About Your Teenager That You Don't

So Werth It – Fewer Word Wednesday

October 28, 2009 By 3 Comments

Smokin’

I’m not usually a fan of cigars, but the right guy could get me to change my tune.

Our home decor these days is a little schizophrenic. Part of the house is All Halloween All the Time:

The other half of the house, something else altogether. More of a Take Me Out To The Ballgame kind of vibe.

Because a week of pre-Halloween class parties and candy binging is insufficient, I had to go full tilt gonzo ballgame cuisine…and the Dippin’ Dots didn’t even make it into the picture.

To all you Yankee fans: if we win tonight it’s because we are better than you. If we lose tonight it’s because we are strategically lulling you into a false sense of complacency until we spank you in the next three.

Thus endeth the smacktalk.

Filed Under: Mama Like, Parent of the Year, WRH

Despite Our Best Efforts…

October 28, 2009 By 16 Comments

As we walked into the school, the same one he and I both attended for high school now repurposed into kindergarten and elementary, TWGH looked at me and said, “Back when we were in junior high school and used to talk about what it would be like to be older and married, did you ever imagine that we’d be going to parent-teacher conferences together?” At least I think that’s what he said, maybe it was more along the lines of, “When was the last time you brushed your hair, because, DAMN.” I jest. I jest. At least two days.

In case you decide that this is almost nauseatingly sweet and twee, I’ll also tell you that as we approached my daughter’s teacher, who was standing outside the classroom waiting to greet us, he leaned closer to me and said, “You realize, don’t you, that you are dressed like a dominatrix?”

And I sort of was. Not intentionally, although it would be nice if I had intended something in terms of what I had on today other than a) it was clean b) it matched hard to go wrong when it’s all black and c) it fit. I was wearing a black dress that comes a bit above the knee, black tights notice a theme here? and black high boots. These boots, in fact:

Not too exciting. Except for one thing: they zip up the back with an exposed steel zipper and they are hot.

Inarguably, objectively, hot.

I’m not usually allowed to talk at parent-teacher conferences because I get all twitchy and I wave my hands around a lot and I have a hard time keeping my real feelings from being broadcast across my face, but I did OK today. Girl Child is doing great, funny, engaged and engaging, loves to learn, lots of stuff that makes me very proud to be her mommy and grateful that my utter and complete neglect, relative to the work I did with her older brother, and the fact that I only nursed her for 3/4 of the time I nursed him didn’t completely twerk her cognitive development. Whatever. I’m not here to brag about my kid although, seriously, she’s incredible.

Of course, I’m pretty sure that her kindergarten teacher is right this second telling her family about how lucky this student of hers is to be thriving, let alone normal, given the fact that her mother turns up for a conference dressed like she’s got a pair of cuffs in her purse.

And that teacher doesn’t even know that the child’s father and I spent 20 minutes this evening staging a photo shoot for one of the stuffed animals after we’d found it covered in blood stains from the mouth of the teething puppy.

Now, get on your knees and lick my boots.

Or, at the very least, grout my backsplash.

Filed Under: Home is Where the Mess Is, Keeping it Real, Parent of the Year