flat tire, blue sky
my Saturday summer break
(till summer school ends)
goslings with goslings
we cycle through challenges
and beat the rain home
My Brother’s Bar waits
with a perfect patio
and Arnold Palmers
REI repairs
what’s left of my human faith
ride home: tires full
the creek overflows
not enough to stop my girl
(daredevil like me)
now, patio time
lighter rain than what we’ve had
such is life, weather
my morning prayer call:
please end these flooding puddles
water can destroy
our house ruined thrice
our hope so oft washed away
ponds where there was lawn
but look at the view
the first-world rainy view
to make my request
after the drenched walk
to a surprise bonus check
to start my summer
it’s like He listened
by midday? pools and blue skies
walking can save souls
we make home visits to welcome freshmen
who haven’t set foot in our school.
on the drive we discuss gentrification,
how these kids are coming across town
to our school because they think it’s better
(but it’s so much better than the remnants
of gangs that linger in their northwest ‘hood,
in the high school that hasn’t caught up
with the white money-chasers)
inside the first house, a blond bombshell
(shy as a country field mouse) lets us into
her gutted bungalow, replete with
granite counters all around, tells us she chooses us
because the people at our school were nicer
than the pompous competitor next to City Park
we make our way back to the south side
and step into a mansion built
on top of one of Denver’s many scrapes,
with oriental rugs leading from
hallway to music room to never-ending kitchen,
with a nice mother and a moody teenage boy
who grunts responses to questions
(because manners can’t be bought)
and then, within the same zip code of
block after block of mansions that
have all but stomped out the middle class,
we pull up to our last stop:
The Red Pine Motel,
settled along Broadway
between a bar and a pot shop.
in a tiny apartment without a table,
a man stands eating a bowl of soup,
his hand half broken and bandaged,
his pony tail tied at the nape of his neck,
his high-heeled wife potty training
her three-year-old in the adjacent room.
“you can come and look, do your check,
do what you need to do.”
we exchange glances.
do they they think we’re the cops?
are they used to this?
my colleague reassures him that this is a friendly visit,
that we have papers and t-shirts
and hope for a better tomorrow
(God save us all)
we sit on the bench-like singular piece of furniture
in the kitchen/living/dining room,
(no more than 100 square feet)
with a miniature gas stove and not a single
speck of a counter, granite or otherwise
the boy is running late
and both parents engage in disgruntled talk
when he arrives,
and they plain as day tell us what he’s like
and he plain as day answers.
they use words like imaginative.
engaging.
photographic memory.
and the little girl sports her
oversized South Future Rebel t-shirt,
and the uncle waits outside and begs
to have a t-shirt too,
so proud are they of sending their boy
on the one mile
(the one million mile)
walk between their dwelling and
the grandiose Italian architecture
that will be his high school,
where he will walk past
block after block of mansions
in the same zip code
through the disappearing middle class
into the institution
that will grant him a future
or place him right back
into the thin line of poverty
that hovers over our city.
and this is what it’s like to be a teacher
in today’s world.
summer-teasing sky
in the midst of finals week
beckons this field trip
free lawn movie night
we can pretend school’s out
just four days early
sunny skies return
for a barbecue birthday
mimosas and love
perfect city walk
through the perfect Denver ‘hood
gold gardens galore
kids with grandparents
treasuring these small moments
till the rain returns
younger girls’ voices
marred by oldest’s attitude
they just want to sing
i just want to hear
all their tiny voices sing
like when they were tots
concert on the green
plagued by rain, adolescence,
unforgiving looks
at home, peace returns
Daddy’s voice sings poetry
as he says goodnight
the oldest studies
in her hole of happiness
escapes into books
my voice escapes me
don’t know how to talk to her
no voice of reason
will she hear my voice
when in my dreams, she listens?
gives voice to my joy?
we all have choices
to hear the ‘tude or the song
listen… sweet voices!
no way to see her
as the crazy little girl
now so close to teen
i’d rewind our lives
to bring back those soft moments
without dirty looks
alas, i chose this
and still love her–so fiercely–
love can’t be rewound
another battle
is it the rain, the music?
or just being twelve?
preteen mood swings break
my relationship with my
once-sweet little girl
i try to stay calm
bring forth my yoga breathing
my inner smile
but rain keeps beating
stinging our faces with tears
will i lose this war?
i didn’t get a photo
of that bright face looking out from the crowd
of the circle of middle school spur-of-the-moment dancers
jamming to a Middle Eastern tune
with their white black brown faces
and her Latin American dress spinning out from under
a tunnel of happiness
there is no way
no possible way
my phone could have captured
the enraptured joy of that moment
of the confidence instilled back into my
fifth-grade-turned-sour timid child
who has found her place
in the oft-militaristic
ever-loving ever-respectful
intensity of love
that is this school
and when i see those
bright twelve-year-old eyes
shining back at me
because she knows i know
(to pain and back, we’ve been)
it is that moment of parenthood
that reminder of why we are parents
why we bring them into this world
and spend our Saturday nights inside a school
eating foods from around the world
listening to the intricate threads that sew together our humanity
why we love
why we live
why we still hope
for a better tomorrow
We’ve tried everything on you, our guinea pig. First I read Babywise, aka Harsh Parenting 101. You were on a schedule for nursing. I would hold you in my arms and rock you, your mouth opening and closing like a fish, your whimpers getting increasingly impatient, until the time allotted had passed and the book said I could give you milk. For the first six weeks of your life, it was a battle between you and me… and I “won.” You were sleeping through the night, just like the book said, at six weeks old. I could leave you in your room, on the floor, in your crib or playpen, with a few small toys, from the day you were interested in them until you were nearly two. You would play, entertaining yourself, because “boredom develops creativity.”
By the time your sister came along, I didn’t even consider this style of parenting. She nursed when she wanted to, relentlessly, all night long, for almost a year. For her first six weeks, you tried to climb into my lap every time I nursed her during the day, and I would push you away or go into another room. I had to be hard on you, I told myself, because your behavior would be the model that they would follow.
I was a different parent with you, my first, than I would ever be with her, or with the baby sister who came two years later.
I am a different parent with you, my first, than I am with them.
I expect more from you because you have to set the precedent. I test theories out on you. Naughty step? She’s not too young. (Months later, still unable to sit still for more than a few seconds, I would grab you up from your dash, place you right back on the step, and start the timer all over again. Battle two. Isabella: 1. Mama: 0.) Bilingual charter school? Let’s try it! Even if the kindergarten teacher doesn’t actually speak Spanish, the kids are running around the hallways like banshees, and the second grade teacher gets fired for poor classroom management at the end of a year where you got in trouble enough times to make me think you might have ADHD (the survey from the doctor sat on the floor of my car for months until I realized it was not you… it was the environment).
And now, the dreaded age. Middle school. A year ago, we were right back where we started in kindergarten, hemming and hawing about the best choice for you. My guinea pig, my eldest daughter just wanted to walk three blocks to the mediocre neighborhood school. I wouldn’t listen. I wanted to set a precedent, a level of expectations that your sisters could shadow. So the militaristic charter school it was, where you learn to never forget your pencil, to charge your computer, or not to speak one word in the hallway, for fear of an hour-long detention after school.
So it is no wonder, after a lifetime of me making decisions for you, that when you don’t get what you want, you pester and beg. You tease your sisters, mock their kindness, flaunt your gifts in front of them to incite jealousy. You pitch fits, ignore our instructions, storm out of the room, throw folded laundry down the basement steps, and slam your bedroom door. You stay up all night playing on your phone, begrudgingly tread through specified activities the next day, and have teary-eyed breakdowns over which seat you’ll sit in in the new car, over who lost your colored pencils, over what we’re having for dinner. You tell lies to avoid your parents’ wrath.
You remind me every day how much I’ve failed you. How Harsh Parenting 101 will never work. How you need hugs and hand holds, not criticisms and impossible expectations. How your sisters will never have the same parents, because they are not the first born. We are softer around the edges with them, our patience worn thin, our will weakened after all the battles with you.
These are the words I don’t hold out to you on my blog. I don’t watch tears well up in your eyes at the kindness of my poem for you, acting like parenting is all about coos and cuteness. I keep them here for the world to see and for me to remember:
1. You are not a guinea pig.
2. I am not a scientist.
3. Parenting is hard.
4. Despite everything, I love you more than anything. Till my heart bursts. Till I lose my mind and you have to fight your way back to it. All the way to the moon… and back.
5. Let’s get in a spaceship and make our way to the moon. And back.
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