Month: February 2010

Swallowing Our Sadness

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After two gloriously quiet hours,
they are ready for the flourless cake
that this time (after multiple envious complaints)
I have made just for them.

They emerge from the family room
after watching The Velveteen Rabbit,
tears streaming down their
reddened-with-sadness cheeks.

“What’s the matter, don’t you want cake?”
Daddy asks, his voice dripping with confusion.
“The movie was so sad.” Sobs erupt
from their throats and trap any more anxious words.

“Really? What’s it about?” he asks, never having seen it.
As I begin to describe the rabbit becoming Real
(Isabella chimes in about the high fever)
their tears find their way into my own eyes.

I look at the three pained faces of my girls
who for the first time have been touched to tears
by a movie, and I wonder if I’m crying because of
the story or because they’re now old enough to understand it.

Either way, as I slice up the cake
that they take tiny bites of and abandon,
swallowing their sadness with delectability,
I am not able to swallow my own sadness.

Before I have even had a chance to stop time,
I have a houseful of growing-up girls
who reminded me today how precious
every bite of cake, every rite of passage, can be.

Ten Random Thoughts

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1. Though I thought I really had earned that 99-cent bag of Cheetos after my eight-mile run, I decided, as always, that it’s better to share it with my girls. Everything is.
2. Libraries are the best places I know. From browsing through the online catalog and reserving books and CDs to their wide variety of audio books and DVDs, I can think of few places where our tax money is better spent. It’s a shame more people don’t think like me.
3. A frugalista’s version of a car wash is to squeegee all the windows at the gas station. It’s not like we need to see out of the doors or the hood, so why do those need to be cleaned? Ever?
4. Having a handful of kids’ DVDs can make the weekend much more relaxing.
5. Why didn’t I think five years sooner to give the girls a bath BEFORE dinner? That way they’re mostly ready for bed before we even eat and their hair dries on its own. Duh.
6. Having second-degree-burned myself as a child (resulting in plastic surgery and permanent scarring), now when I make a quick burn mistake I have catlike reflexes, rushing to the sink and running my hand in ice-cold water, preventing another scar. Or, everything happens for a reason.
7. iTunes and iPods are the greatest modern inventions. In ten minutes I made the perfect playlist for running with an iPod that fits in my tiny yoga-pants pocket. Remember the days of mixed tapes and Walkmans?
8. Always go for the sale items. Today I saved 30%. Tomorrow I’ll have money to pay my bills. So simple.
9. Cheap wine (my favorite is Barefoot) tastes as good as expensive wine if you share it with someone you love.
10. The only thing I remember from that Life’s Little Instructions book my mom gave me when I graduated high school: “Marry the right person. It will determine 90% of your happiness in life.” Almost twelve years later, I must concur.

Recipe for a Red-Letter Day

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It’s simple, really:
you mix together two kind deeds,
a pinch of humor,
a measured amount of patience,
and bake.

The temperature
can range between
fifty-five and seventy,
but we’ll just say, “room”
because you’ll need it.

Out of the oven
they will pop like kernels
unable to contain themselves,
crouching down
in whispered excitement,
trying not to disrupt your day.

And in the same glorious moment
that they pass the thanks
and share how they paid it forward,
you will take a taste
of your recipe.

It will linger on your tongue
and tingle its way down your throat,
skipping over
your digestive tract
and resting
in the center of your heart.

Top Ten Reasons Why Co-Teaching is Best for ELLs

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1. Pulling them out of their classes makes them feel dumb. They are isolated from their peers and they are made to feel that they have disabilities.
2. They benefit from interactions with native-English-speaking peers. If they are in sheltered ELD classes all day, they have little time for this benefit, and copy each other’s linguistic errors.
3. Every classroom would run more efficiently with two certified teachers in the room to help all students. So the ELLs are not the only students who benefit.
4. Content-area teachers need more support on sheltered instruction techniques. How is any administrator or ELD teacher supposed to support them without being able to regularly participate in their classrooms?
5. The ELD teacher becomes more familiar with the curricula that the ELLs struggle with, therefore is better able to assist them with assignments and make appropriate testing modifications.
6. Speaking of testing modifications, when the ELD teacher is in the content area classroom with the ELLs, s/he can pull the ELLs out to read tests aloud to them, one of the most effective accommodations of all, and one that ELLs rarely benefit from receiving because there is just one classroom teacher and thirty students to watch.
7. The ELD teacher can work with the classroom teacher in parallel teaching scenarios, each working with small groups and focusing on different skills. This benefits lower-level students, such as special education students and ELLs, as well as higher-level students who rarely have the benefit of being challenged.
8. All teachers become more effective when they regularly observe and work with other teachers who may or may not have different approaches and teaching styles. Since teachers are rarely given opportunities to view their colleagues’ styles, co-teaching helps each of the co-teachers improve his/her skills and gain new ideas.
9. ELLs are confronted with a more challenging curriculum from day one. While at first they will be behind their native-English peers, in the long run this will benefit their education because they will not be pulled into a sheltered class with only other ELLs that is often dumbed down. This way, when they exit out of the ELL program, they don’t feel that they are grade levels behind their peers.
10. ELLs will be ETERNALLY grateful to actually have help from their ELL teacher in their content classes where they would otherwise be swimming upstream. This helps build rapport and trust that will last years.

Runaway

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Red-and-white-striped shirted
Teddy bear in hand
(his name later became Todd),
I threw an outfit into a bag
and stomped out of the house,
walking up the hill to the only
place I knew to go—
the elementary school.

With my bull horns
shining, I didn’t even look back
until I heard the rumbling
of the rusty blue Datsun
and my mother’s
screaming-banshee voice
telling me to get inside.

I don’t recall what the
original argument was over,
just that she had
raised her voice one
too many times that day,
and my six-year-old patience
had come to a bitter end.

At dinner that night,
she tried to hug me
and sternly whispered in my ear,
“Don’t you ever do that again,”
but her arms were stiff boards,
her skin was as cold as the wind on my walk,
her voice was icy glass,
and I knew it wouldn’t be the last time.

Capt(ive)

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we are a captive audience
and you are trying to explain
the word captivating to them
as if it’s only a positive experience

but I know the root: capt
which means caught
and that’s how I am
in this back seat
behind the back row

unable to speak the definition
aloud to you
though even to myself
I can’t say why
(I can’t say why I
want to disappear)

the students listen to your
explanation and you,
being their teacher,
have convinced them
of its truth, its beauteous
seduction of words.

in a way, I know you are right:
we are all captivated by
the words from your mouth,
the quiet classroom you maintain,
the definitions you provide.

what I mean to say
(though I won’t)
is that (I) we are caught here,
our own words captured
(same root)
somewhere inside our souls,
waiting to be released.

Decisions, Decisions

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What can I capture from today?

The angry parent email
with threat to principal and
superintendent, all over a book
she shouldn’t have read
(for surely she didn’t understand
its genuine meaning)?

The morose groans of CSAP prep
and note-taking
that I put my students through
year after year
(yet do they listen)?

Or

The perfect rectangle of dough
rolled and ready to fill
with a mix of scallions, dill,
butter, garlic, and parsley
(everything already chopped)
laid out by my husband’s hands?

The well-behaved seven-year-old
daughter who carried in posters,
collected pennies for tastes,
sat listening to every presentation
and (for once)
asked permission before every request?

The gutak herb fritters
and sour cream, cider vinegar,
lemon-pepper sauce
that filled everyone’s faces
with smiles and everyone’s
stomachs with thanks?

The choice,
just like my fretful decision to bake,
my too-young-to-be-married decision to marry,
my too-early-for-grandkids decision to have them anyway,
is obvious.

Invest This!

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Sometimes I wonder if financial planners are out of touch with reality. Because I have read so many articles in magazines, online, heard it on the news—the best ways to invest, to save money, to cut back. Now I know they’re educated, I know they’ve been trained in what to say, and most of them have a good deal of experience, but I’m sick of reading the same old things.

The one that bothers me the most is: put money into savings first, and then pay off debts. That makes no sense to me. Why should we let debts add up, along with their ugly interest rates, and not eliminate them as quickly as possible? The same thing applies to their advice about mortgages (the biggest debt of all, right?). They always say to save money in Roth IRAs, 401Ks, or other retirement accounts, and then save six months’ salary, before paying extra on the mortgage.

I get the retirement thing, I do. I realize how important that savings is, and how quickly it will disappear having seen many of my grandparents’ generation foot the exorbitant bills in assisted living homes. What I don’t understand is how the average family has enough money to sock away six months’ worth of living expenses. Really?

For us, that’s $3100 a month. We can barely pay our bills after I have money set aside for retirement, let alone SAVE money. And I mean it. We don’t have many debts other than our mortgage. Every year at this time we’ve piled up some debt on our credit card that we must use the tax return to pay off. The rest of our tax return goes into savings, but it quickly depletes in the ensuing months. Can we live a little, just a little, please?

I have figured this out time and again. It would take us, saving every remaining penny from our tax return, more than six years to save six months’ worth of living expenses. That is absurd. Are we supposed to stay locked at home, never take our kids swimming or roller-skating or on the inexpensive family-visit road trips our family takes, just to have this little safety net?

What makes more sense to me, and what I have seen both sets of grandparents and my parents do, is to pay extra on the mortgage. We may not be able to pay that much (only $50 for us right now), but I bet it will add up. The previous generations of my family may not have been highly educated financial planners, but they all paid their mortgages off early and reaped exemplary rewards from this: early retirement for one set, selling one house and paying cash for another for the other two sets. Doesn’t that make more sense than socking all your money away? Your home is the most accessible investment of all.

It’s not that I spend all my time reading financial advice from people I usually don’t agree with. But as a one-income family in a world of doubles, I’m a “frugalista” who’s always looking for another way to pinch pennies. The way I see it, I’ll stick with what I know we can afford, and what I have seen firsthand success with, rather than “investing” in the advice of strangers who seem to have no idea how anyone could actually live on what we live on. (Side note: the one time a financial planner did come to our house, he about shit his pants, after driving up in his Mercedes, when we told him we had no car payments. Is this really the person I need to be listening to?)

Dear Mother

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Dear Mother,

I know you think
that being a Girl Scout
troop leader means
I can be nothing less
than a perfect role model.

But underneath every
perfectly polite
member of society
lie the cusses,
frustration,
and brutal honesty
that you hate
for me to share.

Can I have a place
to fully expose
myself
without worrying about
what you think

considering

you never could take
the time away from your
(true love) work to be
MY
Girl Scout troop leader,
but rather,
were a cussing, raging,
violent mother
behind closed doors?

Love,
Daughter

P.S.: Thank you
for taking the time
to see me for who
I really am
and, alas,
relentlessly criticizing me.

Heart

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out on her sleeve,
plain as day on her face
she wears her heart
torn into bits
that spatter him with
the love she craves

but oblivion blinds him
from what he can’t understand
(she can’t understand)
and the salty droplets
mix with the blood
(the love?)
so that she can’t wash it away

his obsession preoccupies
the heart that he should hand over
and though she tries
to bait her hook
with the right words,
he doesn’t bite
(oh but he bites)

and she pines,
pieces sliding down her cheeks,
sleeve shredded,
for him to
spread open his lids,
catch her wounded words,
and restore her heart.