The Restless Beast

The house is suddenly silent. After the flurry of I’m-gonna-miss-the bus racing, I’m sitting in silence. It’s not completely silent as the fish tank bubbles in the other room. The cats are playing “horses in the house” again. Their rampaging through the house like Clydesdales is stifling the quietness. I know once they have finished their reign of terror on sparkle balls and each other, it will be all day napping for them, and the din of solitude, which I both love and hate, will be upon me.

My identity, my life, for the past 16 years has been of a mother. I was thrust into this career unwillingly many years ago. I once had a career, I really did. I had a life. That’s what everyone else calls it. I never thought this life would be mine when I was young and idealistic. Roaming the college campus, I always dreamed that I would someday play the part of an executive or have some exciting career. I hoped to marry and have children, but my CAREER would be the focus. I wanted to be successful. I wanted the big house. I wanted it all. Never in my co-ed days would I think that I would spend my days doing doll hair and loving it.

Most times things don’t work out the way you plan them. It didn’t for me, but I don’t have any regrets. I was the product of a bad economy those years ago, and we decided that it would be best for me just to continue staying home with the children, if it was at all possible. It was a decision that would change me forever. I never thought the career for me would be stay-at-home mom--and that I would love it so.

I raised two nice kids in those sixteen years, and I continue to do so. I spent many days in the backyard sandbox and sitting on the swing set. We played Hot Wheels, Barbie, Hi-Ho Cherry-O, and listened to Raffi. I was the master creator of Play-doh animals, architect of Lego restaurants with drive-thrus, and beautician extraordinaire for the American Girls. I made up games to break my boredom. Character bowling was fun. We would collect every McDonaldland toy, set them up in 10 pin formation, and hurl the ball down the hall. Big hit with the kids. They loved it when Winnie the Pooh would go flying!

We didn’t watch much TV then, I always found the kids cranky after too much staring. We would take hour long walks around the block to count barking dogs or squirrels. We would pack lunches and go to the zoo for the day. Summertime was hanging out in the wading pool and winter was building igloos with the snow block maker until I couldn’t straighten my back. We put towels on the floor and played with kitchen utensils in a tub of water. We had play group on Tuesdays with the neighbor kids. I loved Barbie and her hip clothes. I hated Candy Land and the park.

It wasn’t all Donna Reed, mind you. I remember the days of changing clothes three times before 9:00 a.m., and it wasn’t just the kids’. I resented having to give other people’s children attention at the local pool while they sat in the chair with a magazine. I didn’t want to push children on the swings at the park. I was sick of making lunch. If I could make it through January, February, and March, I could make it through anything. Damn, Barbie, and those long, skinny legs. If one more parent tells me how they don’t have to be Room Mom because I “love it” so much…………………….

I reminisce fondly on those years. I love being a mom. I hate that my career is ending. It is ending. Slowly. And I don’t know what to do. They still need me, but not until 3:30 or so. I don’t want them to need me so completely now, as they did when they were younger. There is something weird in that. No, I am the mother bird who raises her young to watch them leave. That is my job. I want them to be young adults and to make their own way in the world. I don’t want them to live with me forever. I want them to go out and experience life they way that they should. But I will miss them.

I search for who I am now. I don’t like this silence of not being needed. I’m not sure of when my job is over completely. When can I go get a “real” job? When do they not need me anymore? What is my identity now? Even the working moms struggle with who I am—“So, what are you doing these days?”Is there anything more pathetic than a stay-at-home mom with no kids at home?

I am confident that my course will present itself when needed. I will wake up one day and know that I won’t have to drive somebody somewhere and then I will have to find something else to fill the day. Frilly part-time jobs will have to go on the wayside and some other adventure will arise. Until then, I wait to be needed.

The ruckus of the two beasts has subsided into sunshine-laden naps and I finally have quiet to reflect. I think of my children and family and realize that I am successful. They’re great kids. They make me laugh and I’m glad that I had those years with them. I’m not sure what having it all is, but I do know that I have a lot—only in a small house.

Small f, Big F

In the back of my address book, I keep small scraps of paper. Written or pictured on these scraps are things that meant something to me at one time—cute pictures, quotes that have personal meaning, small articles from the newspaper that comfort, intrigue, or otherwise inspire me in some fashion. I go through them sometimes, and it always amazes me how they still pertain and I can’t let them go. It’s kind of my Tomb of Tutankhamen that little address book. When I die, someone will go through my bounty at the back of the book, and hopefully, it will lend insight on the person I truly was and what had been going through my heart and mind all of those years.

One of the articles I have saved is one on friendship. It was relevant all those many years ago when I first cut it out, and it still is. I guess my theory on friends and friendship hasn’t changed, and my theory was also shared by at least one person. When pressed for thoughts on friendship, I turn to this article and reflect. I cannot take credit for the theory; I only adopt it as my own, and apply my own requirements. The theory of friendship is explained by capitalization--there are your friends (small f) and then there are your Friends (big F).

Small f friends are those that you see at the PTA meeting or the grocery store. These are neighbors you just wave to as you drive down the street, the moms and dads that you spend a whole baseball season sitting next to, but don’t get together with much for dinner. The girl doing sit-ups next to you at exercise class, the older lady at Weight Watchers, the one person you can actually tolerate at work, and the other car-pool moms--all qualify for a small f. They know you better than the mailman, but not much—they can name your children, know who your husband is, and might even know that you like lemon drop martinis, but they haven’t quite made the jump to Big F. You smile and say “great” when they superficially ask how you are today, they don’t press when you’ve said you had a bad day or that your mother is driving you crazy, and they never call to just chat. These people are more than acquaintances, but they aren’t truly a Friend friend--you know, like a big F.

Big F friends are the treasured, hard-core, been-through-it-all friends. These are usually long term and you can’t imagine life without them. These are much better than family, as they aren’t required to love you—they just do. These friends are the ones who patiently listen to your millionth complaint about your “saintly” husband, who agree your mom is nuts, and remember your birthday even when you don’t want to. They can say you look like crap in that top, or say that you are hot in your new swimsuit, in spite of your bumpy thighs. They know your parents and siblings, and you know theirs. They send presents for your new baby when they’ve just suffered a miscarriage. They will sit for hours watching the ball game with you, because, they like baseball too. They can get mad at you, but still come back for your friendship in the end. These are the hold-your-hair-while-you-get-sick kind of friends. They know your ugliness, but love you just the same.

It’s lovely to have a lot of friends and I cannot imagine everyday life without their presence. They are the warm sunshine on a yucky day. But it is the Big F friends that I’ll take, no matter how few there are.

Bird on Cardstock Under a Plastic Sleeve

He is a watercolor bird, painted on cardstock and temporarily protected by a plastic sleeve. Though a small bird, I think he is an enlargement of a corner in a much larger painting. He is nested in the journal of other artistic endeavors, waiting for his opportunity to soar the skies of dreams.

His blue wings are pulled close to his sides, sitting and waiting for either flight or rest. I don’t think he has decided which yet, but is prepared for both. His face is turned, facing the other pictures on the page, staring in the darkness at lotus flowers, brilliant in color, and wolves howling in the moon’s light. He is not alone in this journal, as all of the photos are waiting, waiting, for something more to come. They wait for someone to open the pages and release them from their flimsy prison, out into the wide world of creative expression.

The tiny bird dreams of the day when he is free to escape his plastic sleeve. He longs to spread those soft downy blue wings, feeling each feather rustling in the wind, the sun warming his face. He wants to fly free, and experience the infinite heights in which those wings can carry him. He wants to look upon the world and all the other birds, and yell “Come with me! It’s beautiful here!” encouraging them to fly with him.

He dreams at drinking cool water from ponds and streams, and finding nourishment from the fields of flowers. He may stop at a feeder to two to take advantage of kind souls that welcome feathered friends. The other birds that stop there will welcome him to join their flock, banding together in their fight for survival--there is safety in numbers they say. They hope for a small puddle in which to hop about, flapping their wings, tossing droplets of water on their backs to wash away the day’s grime. It is a joyful experience, but also necessary to keep the oil of their wings clean and primed for soaring.

As much as he longs for the spring and summer, he also dreads the winter and the cold that comes with it, the deep snow when food is scarce, and hawks that prey upon he and his friends. Cover is limited in winter, and the only hope is to find an evergreen, full and thick, to protect him from freezing winds. It is the winter that he is most vulnerable, you see, and he may find himself wanting to give up. His only comforting thought is the memory of the warm sun, and it will keep him alive in the most bitter of winters. And spring will come again he knows.

I stare at the little bird on cardstock in the plastic sleeve, and know that we share the same dreams. I smile at him and silently wish him luck. He is a beautiful bird, full of life and hope. I hope he finds his warm sunshine, his wings, and his ability to soar.

Minnie Lee

I woke up last night, unable to sleep, thinking about all the things in the world that aren’t so important when it is daylight. I hate it when I do that because everything at 3:00 am is so much more depressing than it would be at 8:00 or 9:00 am. I lay there a long time, tossing and turning, mulling the fact that my writing and pockets were nearing empty this week. Damn recession. What can I blame the writing on? That’s when Minnie Lee came to visit.

I met Minnie when my son was in kindergarten. She was a scrawny thing, dressed in hand-me-downs that had seen better days, and her hair was full of braids and mismatched barrettes. She didn’t stand out as being less fortunate because, god knows, there were probably 5 more in the class that had it as bad as she did. They were clean for the most part, spiffed up for the first days of class in whatever good clothes they owned. You didn’t notice the details when you walked in, they were all excited to start school and a new adventure. It took a few times of visiting to realize how bad off some of these kids were.

There are some things in this world that should not be, like murder or rape or incest. Children growing up in poverty has to be one of the worst and Minnie Lee was my introduction to that heartbreak. These kids were raised in a poverty stricken neighborhood that fed into our school district and I never knew how bad these kids had it until I saw it for myself when I would volunteer in the class. They had coats that did not fit. There were no hats on their heads or gloves on their hands on the most freezing of days. They ate whatever the lunch lady served—there were no finicky eaters amongst this bunch. They didn’t have shoes that fit or pants that reached the ground. One little girl shared with me the bite marks on her finger tips that she said came from “the rats”. It broke my heart, but these were things I could not fix. I could only give them love and attention for the time that I was there, and pray that their lives would get better.

Minnie stood out among the crowd only because she fought her situation. At five, she knew she was different, and she didn’t like it. She wanted attention, and because she didn’t know how to get it, she acted out. She poked girls in the washroom line, wiggled during story time, sang at the top of her lungs in music. She wouldn’t sit in her chair. She wouldn’t share crayons. Minnie’s name was constantly being yelled, and she would smile a silly grin as if she was just awarded Student of the Week. Bad attention for Minnie was better than no attention at all. Fortunately, Mrs. Applegate was a veteran and understood her need. Minnie was given a lot of positive attention as well, but she was never as proud as when she misbehaved.

Time went on and it was a common sight to see Minnie out in the hall or visiting the principal’s office. She had a permanent spot in the chair outside the office door and she sat there proud as the Queen of England when she was there. I would stop and chat with her, ask her what she was doing, but she had no shame, no remorse. This was still better than what she had at home. No yelling, stern lectures or cajoling could convince Minnie that this was no way to get through school. She was so determined in her quest for attention, so strong willed, that most of the staff had pretty much given up on her. They wrote her off by the end of kindergarten.

I was at school the very first week of first grade and I was in charge of sharpening the kids’ pencils from their supply boxes. Every desk was lined up neatly and their colorful name tags taped to the top of their desk. Each child had their supply box on the top corner of their desk, ready for the tasks ahead. They were full of brand new pencils and pristine erasers. There were shiny new scissors, a new box of crayons, glues sticks and rulers ready for eager hands. What potential lie in that small box on everyone’s desk. Everyone except Minnie Lee.

Minnie had no box. She showed up for the first day of school with a Ziploc bag of broken crayons and a couple of chewed up pencils with the erasers worn off. I don’t remember if she had a glue stick, but I do remember that Mrs. Durbin had given her an empty Kleenex box to put her collection in. When I came to her desk, my heart sank. How do you start the school year with the lame remnants of last year? How can you be creative with broken crayons that you have to strip the paper off to reach any color? How do you learn math and not have an eraser? There is such hope and excitement in new school supplies. Do you remember how excited it was to shop for them as a kid?! A new year, a new pencil, a new start. This poor kid was just continuing her already pathetic start.

I went home and shared my finding with a good friend, and we both cried. How can hope be snuffed out in someone so young? How do we stand by and not help? And how far do you help? We couldn’t solve Minnie’s poverty problem, but we could give her a fresh start in school. Maybe a fresh start will give her a fresh attitude. We put together supplies from our overstock at home, and found an extra box to put them in. My friend painted Minnie’s name on the top in rainbow colors, the kind that first grade girls love so much. I stopped at the school when the kids were at lunch and replaced her sad little box with the new one. Mrs. Durbin knew who did it, but I don’t think Minnie ever did, and that wasn’t important. What was important is that little girl felt special for one tiny moment in her life. I only imagine her face when she came back from lunch.

Minnie never changed. She struggled with her lessons. She wore clothes that were too small for her. She paraded a worn polyester nightgown with Cinderella’s picture faded on the front for her Halloween costume that year. She sat on her thrown by the front office far too often. Things weren’t going to change anytime soon for Minnie and that broke my heart. I wanted to grab that kid, throw her into a warm tub of overflowing bubbles and dress her in the finest dress. I wanted her to wear party shoes and paint her fingernails. I wanted to braid her hair and put in matching barrettes. I wanted to fill her tummy with good food and sweet candies. I wanted her life to be different. I wanted. I wanted.

Minnie’s family moved late in the year and I never saw her again. I was hopeful for her until I learned that her young parents were having yet more marital problems and mom took the eight kids to live with family in Ford Heights. Ford Heights is a community in despair after Ford closed the plant there, hence devastating their economy. Minnie went from the frying pan into the fire. My heart sank. What will become of Minnie? I couldn’t even begin to think of what she was experiencing and I couldn’t help her.

So, in the dark, I dream of Minnie. What became of her? Is she in school? Does she eat well? I hope she isn’t on drugs. Why do I think the answers to these questions are as depressing at 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. as they are at 3:00 a.m.? Minnie Lee haunts me.

Driving with Mr. Allen

God bless Mr. Allen. Mr. Allen—man of cool nerves, calm disposition, and quiet demeanor. Well, in the car anyway. I have no idea what the man was like personally.

Mr. Allen was my driver’s education teacher when I was a sophomore in high school. I have always fondly reminisced on the fun we had while completing the required hours motoring around the city, but I never really gave any thought to that front passenger seat until recently. I have a 15 year-old that just got his driver’s permit. God help us. God help me.

You hear the horror stories and see the panicky looks on parent’s faces when they talk of driver’s permits, but I never imagined how truly scary it is to have a teen driver in your home, more or less your car. There are parenting experiences that we share in order to just plain survive—childbirth, teething, sleeping through the night, potty training, and first days of school. You think you are over with all of that and you have mastered this parenting thing, when, out of the blue, Driver’s Ed hits. This is a whole new world of teaching and learning with your child. And it is SCARY. It is a white knuckle, grab-hold-of-the-door-handle, press-on-the-imaginary-brake kind of scary. And it involves speed, which adds to the scariness, and even a measly 20 miles per hour seems too fast. I know why the state wants the parents to teach their kids to drive, because you couldn’t pay a stranger enough money to do this job.

We are drifting, literally, down the street to nowhere, trying to get in the required hours for his license, when I realize what a saint Mr. Allen was. He was a school guidance counselor making some extra summer bucks the hard way, by teaching Driver’s Ed, and he was my assigned teacher. He would come by in the car with the “Student Driver” sign on the top to pick me up, and we would be head off to pick up my driving buddy, luckily my best friend, Cheryl. We would cruise the ‘hood for the next 2 or 3 hours, channeling our inner compasses while Mr. Allen must have been saying his Hail Mary’s silently. Mr. Allen took us everywhere, all the while teaching us things about driving, that to this day, I still remember.

We started with the side streets of our hometowns. We would cruise by our friend’s houses to see who was outside. We passed Mr. Allen’s house to wave and visit with his neighbors. We casually went by the current crush’s place, just in case we could sneak a peek at what he was doing. As we gathered more bravado and speed, we headed out onto busy streets and more exciting venues. We gunned it onto crowded main arteries, panicked as we turned onto the cloverleaf onto the dreaded highway, and clung tightly to the wheel as we sailed at what seemed like unimaginable speed. We flew by the Dairy Queen where loads of teens stood in line outside to consume ice cream and the latest gossip. We even laid on the horn as we passed, which was the thing to do, making everyone in line turn to see who was honking. We drove through McDonald drive-thrus, parked uphill with curbs, and parked downhill with no curbs. We did 3-point turns and used hand signals. We passed on the left and learned to parallel park. He taught us to read road signs and actually plan how we were going to get somewhere. And there were times when I actually knew what direction we were heading because he taught me the secret—look at the street signs.

Mr. Allen rocked. He not only taught us to drive, but he did it without flinching. At the time, I didn’t think twice about Mr. Allen, I only thought he was the coolest driving teacher because he took us fun places, with the radio on. He was the only adult that got “cruisin’ the hood”. Now, when I look back, I imagine his serene face, his calm voice and gentle direction. I think of my own reactions to my teenage driver, and I am in awe. He didn’t once yell in fear. He didn’t grab the handle in panic. He didn’t scream “You’re drifting into the curb!” or “Brake! Brake! Brake!”. I don’t remember him wide-eyed with terror or rubbing his head in frustration. He didn’t lecture us about both hands on the wheel or gunning it at stop lights. The man was the Dalai Lama of Driver’s Education--he was both peaceful and profound. He had driving inner peace.

Maybe he didn’t have as much at stake as I do. I mean, this is my car and my kid. If he ruined the school car, they would get another and chalk it up as collateral. If he ruined a kid--well, that probably didn’t happen. I hope not.

Maybe he was numb from all of the years that he taught kids to drive. Do you ever overcome total fear of dying? Can you ignore the fact that we are faced with oncoming curbs and potholes the size of New York? When do you stop telling them to either push the gas or the brake? Maybe that’s why my mother is a backseat driver—she was shell-shocked from her days of teaching my brother and me to drive and she still thinks she’s in the battle.

I am silently cursing Rod Blagojevich and Jesse White for increasing the amount of required hours driving with your parents in order to get your driver’s license. I fully understand the whole safety thing and as a parent, I am glad that they have instilled a great plan, but Blagojevich’s kids are still little. Wait until he has to sit in the car with Crash Bandicoot at the wheel and you watch his beady eyes turn into saucers of fear. Those 100 required hours are LONG hours, Rod--long and scary. And they take years off your life.

I still show fear when my son drives. I don’t yell, but my insides are. I keep my hand on the door handle, but turn it so as to not show my white knuckles. I try not to criticize, but gently guide him down the road to his license. An hour is my limit, as my body is tense with terror and my mind is exhausted from driving on the passenger side. I let him turn on the radio; I think it helps us both calm our nerves. I use a lot of fake smiles and encouraging words, but still, I am no Mr. Allen.