Braces On, Braces Off

Eldest, before.

Eldest, after.

What comes to mind most? How much I miss his long hair with those fabulous curls. He, of course, does not.


Oh, I miss the thousands of dollars, too. I'm thinking that likely goes without saying.

Degrees of Separation

It didn't happen when, as a kid, I was driven from Nebraska to Massachusetts to Virginia and then from Virginia to Massachusetts every summer until finally on a cross-country trip to take a ship from San Francisco to Hawaii.


The world, my world, was still small, stuffed into a pseudo-wood panel station wagon with four other kids and two parents. And it stayed small. Even though I went to four elementary schools. Even though I lived in nine different homes before I finished high school. Even though I lived surrounded by all of those transitory people. Even though.


It was on the Amtrak rides back "home" to Virginia from college in Jersey that the world exploded. I would look out the train window and pass house after house after house along the tracks. All of them served as home for people I would never know, people who had a sense of being as strong as my own sense of being.


Still, those numbers seemed somewhat tangible. By comparison of my spiraling thoughts today, those numbers seem downright attainable. I could meet all of them. I could.


I said to Pete the other night that Springsteen's 57 Channels seems downright quaint nowadays. We are in information overload. Soon enough, DIRECTV will have to go with four-digit channels rather than three. But it was only just the other day -- as God is my witness -- that I was getting up to turn the channel to one of only four VHF. [WTF is a VHF for FS?]


Forget ever knowing a fraction of the past. I can't even begin to know a fraction of the present. Too many sources of information. I'll never reach this. I'll never read the best books or hear the best songs or meet the most fascinating people. I won't even be able to plod through the worst of it. And I can kiss goodbye any chance of remaining on top of breaking news. [Twitter notwithstanding.]


There is no meaning to this post. If you'd like to find meaning in a blog post, might I suggest you check out one of the other 450 million English-language blogs out there?

VOY, eh

You're looking at the Volunteer of the Year (VOY) at Daughter's middle school. My reaction to that was deep belly laughter and a shaking of my head at the thought of the ousted principal getting one last dig in.


There's a reason I like her, yeah?


Obeying the personalized -- ahem -- letter from the superintendent telling me of my selection and instructing me to contact her secretary to confirm my attendance and make my meal selection, I emailed her the following:


The folks at MIDDLE SCHOOL said they'd confirm my attendance, but I figured I'd best follow SUPERINTENDENT's instructions in her letter.

Yes, I'll be at the Volunteer Luncheon.

I'd like the Asian Chopped Salad, please.

I understand it is BYOB.

Patty

P.S. I am joking about the last item.

I crack me up, yo!


Proving that they are not all humorless over there, the secretary replied almost immediately that, yes, she had been told by the principal that I'd be there and she'd even been told my food selection, and "the BYOB would add a little flavor to the event."

Stupid is as Stupid Does

Item 1:
I was asked to forward this missive to all parents of students in Youngest's fourth grade class. I did so, noting that I was doing so without editorial comment. But my comment would have been something along the lines of, "Here's hoping you all have time to run out and buy costumes by tomorrow!"

Hi Parents - we are very excited to support the first-ever Student Council sponsored "Spring Fling Spirit Day" this Friday May 18. Please help your students show their school spirit by wearing clothing/costume reflecting this year's Chinese New Year theme "Year of the Dragon."   Students who dress up can stop by the Student Council table in the traffic circle at morning drop off for a chance to win free raffle tickets - open up a fortune cookie to see if you're a WINNER!  Thanks for supporting our students and good luck! 

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Item 2:
I receive many missives from all of the schools because I write a feature each week for an online news site that touts the various fundraisers going on at the schools. How's this for great role modeling? This is an auction item for a K-8 school's fundraiser.


Item Description

Do you long for your college days? Wish you could relive them for just one night?
Wear your Alma Mater colors and bring your party attitude, this shin-dig is sureto bring back that Ol' College Spirit!

Complete with all the fixin's from back in the day - better beer, same old munchies.

Reserve your spot at the College Kegger today for only $35 per person.

*   *   *

Item 3:
Was it not obvious to every bank teller in the place as soon as he walked in that this dude was going to rob the place?

*   *   *
Item 4:
This is what the Census Bureau decides to show as an example when touting what can be discovered in the newly released census information from 1940? "Why, I remember when we lived just down the road from 2-7."

*   *   *
Item 5:
You just never know when you need to accessorize the perfect wedding dress with the perfect cell phone.

What a Dishonor

Along with other PTA Reflections local winners, Daughter has been invited to a school board meeting Tuesday for special recognition. At dinner the other night, I suggested it would be hilarious if she went to the meeting wearing a spaghetti-strap top, short shorts and flip flops. This attire is, of course, in direct violation of the dress code for school. But she wouldn't be going to school, would she?


Heh.


Pete did me one better, and suggested that she instead wear that T-shirt we gave all students at her now-shuttered school at the end of the year. That's the one that says, "They closed my middle school and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."


Heh. Heh.


She was all over that. In fact, she even created her own design on a T-shirt along the lines of how her old school was the best and the new one sucks.


Heh. Heh. Heh.


The gist of her dance and the accompanying write-up notes, "Diversity means everyone. I dance for everyone. And no matter how hard your life is, like mine is at my new middle school, everyone can break through."


I don't know what she'll wear Tuesday night. I've explained to her how those people might take great offense if she politicizes it by what she wears. I also told her they'll believe she's just doing what I want or that I'm using her as a pawn.


She has no time for any of those people. In her mind, they ruined 8th grade not only for her but for all of her former classmates as well, and they did it for no reason other than they could.


So I don't know what she'll wear Tuesday night on the outside. But on the inside, I know she'll be wearing sadness and disappointment.


It's been a long year for her. Those people think it's been over for a very long time. Daughter and I know it's still going on.

Keep Moving Forward

It's hard to keep moving forward after a post like the last one. How do you segue? How does the inanity happening all around me get thrown up after something like that?


I have gone every morning to school, early, to try to find her. He has dropped the children off. Ever hopeful at pick-up yesterday, it was him again. Parked, as he often is, in a handicapped space. No, he is not physically disabled. By the time he arrived yesterday and claimed that spot, it was too late to reach the police to call to report him. I think I shall call in advance tomorrow, pointing out how it is a consistent occurrence.


Consider this my moving forward post.


Because whenever there is something horrific near me, I have had the supreme good luck to be able to just move forward. Dead husband? That's the client. Chronic illness? That's the co-worker. Domestic violence? That's all those other seemingly normal people.


I move forward. I shake off guilt. I am such first world.

An Inkling of an Understanding

It doesn't really make sense to me, these rolling waves of domestic violence touching people I know. First, I discovered a few weeks ago that someone I (formerly) greatly admire was arrested for it. And then, yesterday, I read of the clearly tortured father of a classmate of Daughter's who took his estranged wife hostage and threatened to kill himself. But the final wave came yesterday afternoon, brought even frighteningly more to the forefront when such an act of violence against a wife and children was witnessed by someone very close to me.


I had already been dwelling in the past given the morning's report on the classmate's dad taking his wife prisoner and finally surrendering after close to six hours.


I remember so clearly fearing that my dad would go off the deep end and kill my mom. Worse than that -- yeah, worse, selfish me -- was the very real fear I had as a teenager that he would one day kill me as well. I remember.


Here I sit, then, feeling relieved that this one father had the presence of mind to make sure his kids were not a witness to his hostage-taking. And feeling so afraid for that other family still out there. To react so violently against your wife and son in a public place, where anyone could -- and someone did -- witness it makes me feel that, however well they might have managed to hide their dirty little secret before, they won't be able to hide it much longer.


What do you do? It so clearly isn't the first time it's happened. No one who observes the father on the soccer sidelines can doubt he is a brute. But a brute who beats up women and kids? Is that so clear to the other parents? Do the parents who engage in conversation with him suspect he's a wife beater? If they do, how can they talk to him? What power does he wield over them that makes them complicit or, if I am to be generous, submissive? How can anyone sit idly by?


We can't, can we? Do we say, "It's her choice. She has to stop it"? Do we say that about the beating of children? If we say nothing and do nothing and try nothing, we are complicit. We share his shame and their shame.


My fears of my dad coming to kill my mother and me were amplified when my own classmate's father managed to kill his ex-wife and then hang himself in jail. I wonder if her fears of what's next are amplified given what just happened in this same small town. I wonder if her boys' fears are. Maybe she'll do it for them now, if not for herself.


Maybe, just maybe, now that there's a witness, she can see a way out. We can be your way out. We all can be.