Snapdragons

My mother-in-law Mary Jo and I had one common reference point: Cliff. Her son, my husband.

Even then, we would have disagreed across the board on his welfare. Pick a topic, any topic. We were decidedly different women.

However, I did learn something valuable from her.

She told me once about a lost opportunity with her oldest granddaughter. She'd always planned to take the little girl to a local restaurant known for its afternoon teas. All lace and frills and classical music, she thought it would be fun, a treasured memory.

But she never got around to it and didn't seem to know why. I urged her to follow through, even though the girl was in college at this point. "Take her by surprise," I suggested. "There's still time. She's not too old for your attention."

But she didn't. She chose to carry that regret.

In all fairness, I understand what she didn't say and probably couldn't have accepted anyway. My

mother-in-law lived a paralyzing life of restraint, suspicion, traversing a never-ending trail of domestic sharp edges marked by her husband's edicts and selected Old Testament scriptures for warning signs.

Cliff has always called the situation "walking on eggshells." He would know, having grown up in that house.

So I did my best to avoid taking moments for granted when we brought Maggie home from China. Give her life's lovely details, became my mantra.

One day my mother Betty was in our living room, watching as I sat on the staircase beside Maggie. At 18 months, she wanted to descend on her own. Terrified to hold the rail and walk down, she bravely scooted on her bottom, gripping my hand in hers. It took quite a while.

Carrying her down would have been so much quicker.

But we would have missed so much, too--her squealing giggles, her wiggling confidence when we reached the last step. My mother clapped for her.

"Honey," my mother said, "you're a much better mother than I ever was." I shook my head and reminded her of that beautiful, spotless house. "Dust covers everything in here," I admitted.

"Our house never had to be that clean," she said.

Again, regret. Watching us, step by step, had offered a silent space for perspective on years of lost experiences. But also, a surprising glimpse of me as a mother. I understood, then, she clapped for me as well.

So this summer, as I looked at the blank expanse of our garden, I thought about what to plant and remembered showing Maggie, when she was a toddler, how to make snapdragons "talk" by squeezing the petals at a garden store. She was as enchanted as I had been when my mother, who grew an annual bed of snaps, as she called them, showed me. Sweet alyssum always graced the edges.

Easy as it would have been, I never planted them for Maggie. I was focused on creating some other floral effect.

So this summer I planted snaps and alyssum for Maggie. They weren't as lusciously perfect as my mother's, but at least I didn't stop in my tracks because my collegiate daughter is long past yard playing.

They simply grow for her.

And for Mary Jo and Betty, their regrets buried beneath the summer blossoms.

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Crazy Corn

I'm a Midwestern girl through and through, having lived in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. With all three states side-by-side on the American map, I grew up believing we were the cornfield coastline. Folks in seashore states gazed at the ocean from their lawn chairs, but on my relatives' farms, outdoor seating faced the fields.

We watched corn.

Far more than a scenic landscape, it was an unspoken religious experience, rewarded with abundance in good times if we were lucky. Yet we knew natural catastrophes could destroy those fields at any moment. Every growing season was a test of faith.

Our cupboards held agricultural rosaries of a sort. I inherited my grandmother's dish for baking cornbread shaped like tiny ears of corn. My mother gave me dishes for the sole purpose of eating corn on the cob. I suppose these were our mystical trinkets to encourage the blessings of a golden harvest.

One of my earliest memories, when I was probably three, involved my grandparents' cornfield. I rocked alone in a wooden swing while a rainstorm approached. Advancing black clouds erased the blue sky, as the wind rhythmically lifted and leveled the green rows. Like ocean waves, the shooshing stalks and leaves rustled and crashed before me. When thunder rolled in and lightning cracked overhead, I thought the whole field was coming to get me.

Fear paralyzed me until my grandmother threw open the porch door, holding tightly as the wind tried snatching it from her right hand. "Get yourself in here, Chicken Little!" she called, stretching her other hand toward me. I ran and buried my face in her apron. "There now. Don't fret. Granny's got you," she said.

I was never afraid of stormy cornfields again.

Until yesterday.

I stopped to buy corn at a roadside stand on my way home from town. The farmer and I spoke pleasantly about crops and weather. Nice as you please, he placed perfect ears in a bag, mentioning he'd never seen me before. My explanation of our recent move from St. Paul, Minnesota, must have triggered a link in his brain to the perils of big cities because his kind demeanor disappeared.

He quit making eye contact, stepped away, and began speaking of our nation's decline. His voice grew increasingly louder as he waved his arms and rattled on about drugs and Muslim men with six wives each whose sole purpose for sneaking into the United States was to brainwash their children into killing Christians until no white people would have enough power to set things right again.

American citizens would have no food or shelter or medical care because the Muslims would seize it all.

I glanced at the cornfield behind him, fearing an ugly wind was about to bend those stalks and their taunting leaves at me. But the sun was shining on the motionless rows of corn, corn waiting for me to collect my courage. When he paused to breathe from his tirade, I took a chance.

His thundering hatred wasn't going to get me.

I said something he never could have seen coming.

I told him my husband had retired from a school with many Muslim families who were nothing like he described. I said my daughter had Muslim friends who were delightful, considerate, and studious. He turned deathly silent. I was certain he'd never known a Muslim or anyone who had actually encountered one. He struggled to fit my truth into his red-hot paradigm. 

I paid him, wished him well, and walked toward my car. Unfortunately he stepped in front of me, winding himself back up in a rant about abortion. I was momentarily frozen, wondering how to escape his menacing rhetoric.

Then I remembered my grandmother holding the door in the storm, calling me in to safety. She couldn't help me now. I had to save myself, and all I had was corn--the only thing he and I had in common.

I held up my bag and said, "In this heat, I need to get this refrigerated so I don't lose the goodness."

This was a man who would have argued bitterly about any reasonable thing I said.

But not about corn.

He stepped aside to let me pass.

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Finding a Flashlight

I know what you're thinking.

My last post spotlighted the flaw in Maggie's first grade language arts program and her teacher who  couldn't/wouldn't/didn't care to offer options.

So how did Cliff and I turn things around? 

It took years.

There's rarely a quick fix where children are concerned.

We knew being turned off to reading would be a major stumbling block for the rest of her life unless we helped her overcome it.

We had to re-connect her to the book magic she'd once known.

So on Saturdays, Cliff let her wander the branch library shelves without regard to reading levels. That's how she learned to approach the school library, discovering more titles about similar subjects. She went through a rock phase, repeatedly bringing home the same three books for months. She started a rock collection on our carport ledge. We never drilled her on geologic terms. We never organized the piles.

They were hers to experience however she chose.

We asked her to write thank you notes when she received gifts. Even though her spelling was occasionally vague, people were often so charmed that they wrote back to her. She discovered writing linked her to a reciprocal happiness.

She helped me write grocery lists. When she couldn't imagine how to spell something, I encouraged her to draw a picture of the word. Perched in the shopping cart seat, she read the list out loud to me and marked off items as we found them.

When getting ready for school became a daily scramble, Cliff suggested she design a morning checklist. He attached them to a Hello Kitty clipboard kept at her bedside. She loved tracking her activities, right down to waving goodbye to me.

Every. Single. Night. we read to her.

When I began writing Sweet Moon Baby, I often held her on my lap at the computer. By watching me write, she learned the value of words and punctuation. We read the pages out loud together, discussing the choices. She saw and heard  how reading and writing happen. We congratulated ourselves for every improvement to the tale.

One of Maggie's favorite TV shows was Scooby Doo. From writing with me, she understood a story needed a problem and a solution. These shows had a definite plot line she could follow, noting how the characters interacted to catch the villain through ensuing hijinx.

So by golly, we wrote our own episodes. Maggie brainstormed mysteries, usually centered around a favorite thing that could go missing. We rummaged through closets to gather props and costumes. Rehearsals happened in our kitchen because its open floor plan provided space for our Siberian husky, who played Scooby, to run with us from clue to clue. Cliff was the appreciative audience for our hijinx. (I was always Velma, by the way.)

But at school, she remained mired in weekly soul-crushing reading assessments, making literature a force-fed academic operation.

Finally I told her how I used to hide when my mother, who wanted me to be more athletic, sent me outside to play. I'd slip out with a novel and a snack and hide in the backseat of our garaged car to read. Maggie thought it was funny but a great idea. So I placed Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn Dixie in the back of our SUV in the carport. I told her I couldn't read it because I was afraid the dog might die. She volunteered to find out for me. I supplied pillows and snacks. I sent out a flashlight because evenings were coming early. She loved spending hours in her fort with a book she came to love with all her heart. She eagerly delivered plot reports at dinner until she finished. At the end, she proudly assured me the dog didn't die, adding, "Read it. You'll like it, Mom."

Even better news? She took more novels to her backseat reading fort.

When we moved to Minnesota, where DiCamillo lives, Maggie and I attended her author events. Our daughter experienced the real person who wrote the novel that turned a corner for her. Far more than a charming story, it carried her to a new level of confidence. Her world bloomed.

She's been reading ever since.

In short, Cliff and I removed the drudgery of skill and drill language arts programs where only ONE acceptable way is allowed. 

Sometimes schools and teachers get it wrong. They funnel everyone through the system, insisting perfect scores on multiple-choice tests are the ultimate goal of reading.  If you're lucky enough to have a round child who fails to fit their square hole, consider yourself blessed.

Try and try again to support that young heart.

Point toward the magic that defies the A or B or C response.

Because a child's dynamic future is greater than any of the above.

Find a flashlight.

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Fill-in-the-Blank Education

I haven't taught in more than twenty years, but I think about classrooms all the time. I've decided there are two ways to teach.

Focus on the answers.

Or focus on the students.

Either way earns the same paycheck.

I once worked with an English teacher who was a fascinating person but gave mind-numbing tests and assignments. She bragged about her multi-paged exams that were a snap to grade. They read, as one colleague joked: The ____ of the ____ is the ____.

"Does that tell you if they really understand Shakespeare?" I asked her.

She shrugged and said, "At least they've read it." But I knew many of them hadn't. Secretly they read Cliffs Notes to grasp the plot points for daily quizzes. Then, prior to the test, they memorized all her classroom pronouncements: "The three themes in Hamlet are...."

No muss no fuss.

I saw the effects of breezy teaching on Maggie when she entered first grade and brought home the Power Book, announcing it was her nightly homework and had to be done at a desk with a lamp.  Faithfully she set up shop at my grandparents' hundred-year-old radio stand upon arrival from school each day. Every page had an illustrated three-sentence story with three follow-up questions to be written precisely like the sentences. It went something like this:

Jenny likes apples.
Jenny climbs the apple tree.
Jenny picks four apples.

What does Jenny like?
What does Jenny climb?
How many apples does Jenny pick?

By Thanksgiving, she'd stacked up perfect scores but complained about the monotony of these stories, pointing out they weren't really stories at all. Keep in mind, this was a girl who, at three years old, pointed to punctuation marks on the page of the picture book I was reading to her and asked, "What are these things?" One night when she was five, she interrupted my reading aloud and flipped several pages back and forth, asking, "Wouldn't it better if this picture came before that one?" She was absolutely right. She also liked creating different endings to her favorite books.

"She has the stuff of an English major," I told Cliff early on.

So we were devastated that her classroom language arts program was an annoying grind that overlooked any sense of independent thinking or imagination. Because of his administrative role at the school, he suggested I speak with the teacher about our concerns and a possible approach to re-engage her mind.

I met with the teacher and proposed that Maggie write her own scenario with an illustration and questions. I assured him she was capable of writing more than three sentences. He stared at me and said that would be inappropriate because it wasn't the point of the program. There would be no way to assess her work because she couldn't be adequately compared to her classmates. "How would we determine her reading level?" he asked.

I recently asked Maggie what she remembered about the Power Book. She said, "It was the first time I understood why people hate school."

So there you have it.

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Thomas Edison Returns Home

I heard the sirens in the town square on June 7th, signaling the parade was beginning for Thomas Edison.

The bronze replica of him holding a light bulb, that is.

Almost seven feet tall and weighing 900 pounds, he rode on a flatbed truck behind an escort of police, sheriff, and fire department vehicles. In the small village of Milan, it was a big deal in the middle of the day. Families showed up. Couples walked over with their dogs. I stood at the edge and eavesdropped about the years required to gain a place for Edison in the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall. To represent Ohio, he had to win the vote over the Wright Brothers, Olympian Jesse Owens, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

A pretty good group of rivals, if you ask me. Go Ohio.

The parade stopped at the house where he was born in 1847. The story goes that Edison had a life long appreciation of Milan, where he lived until he was seven years old. I could well imagine how many petitions, phone calls and meetings were required to gain recognition for our hometown boy. As folks lined up to have their pictures taken with the statue, none of that sticky red tape mattered anymore.  

The statue's champion seems to have been another native son, Don Gfell, who stood on the truck and acknowledged all the local patrons who contributed to the cause. I don't know Don, but he owns Sights and Sounds of Edison, an antique shop specializing in all things, well, Edison. His brother Tom, who I do know, speaks proudly of Don's lifelong appreciation of the famous man.

Every valuable effort takes someone to believe, to convince, to persist. In fact, Edison himself said: Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

When the last picture was taken, the parade moved on to the Milan Public Library where the statue will summer until heading to Washington.

Because parades are panoramic events, it would have been easy to miss the charming moment I spotted in all the hoopla.

As the truck turned the corner, Don swayed. Reaching up to balance himself, his hand rested over Edison's.

There it was.

Just two Milan boys, side by side, headed down Front Street together. I couldn't resist smiling. For both of them.

Edison also said: What you are will show in what you do. 

You don't have to be an acclaimed inventor to accomplish something great.  

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Seven out of Ten

Sometimes you can see trouble coming.

You've got seconds to make a decision that will haunt you forever, no matter which way it goes.

It happened to me last spring.

I was taking Maggie to a friend's house in Woodbury, and we had to travel I-94 across St. Paul in Friday rush-hour traffic. Ahead of me a mother duck and her babies were crossing the road.

A bumper-to-bumper line of cars raced to my left. Braking suddenly would surely create a crash behind me. If I veered right, I'd hit the gravel shoulder and likely fly down the embankment into a ditch. I began to cry. Maggie grabbed my arm, whispering, "Mom, you don't have a choice."

People could have been critically injured if I dodged the ducks. People could have died. So I didn't swerve.

I'm forever sorry for what happened to those ducks.

When I told the story to a therapist friend, she said sometimes a bad thing had to happen to avoid something even worse from happening. She reminded me that animals died every spring in Minnesota as they crossed roads from one pond to the next.

With all my heart, I've tried to make amends. If you've read my posts about the snowy owl who visited our property once we moved to Ohio, you'll understand that I imagined he was my sign from the natural world that I'd been forgiven. The spirits of all creatures great and small recognized my plight that day on I-94 and accepted my apology.

As Maggie would say, "There always has to be a story with you, Mom, even if there is none."

As Cliff would say, "Karen, random stuff just happens. It doesn't mean anything." 

I have never accepted this.

That's why I got excited this spring when our next-door neighbor Kathy told me a duck had built a nest under her patio evergreen. Believing it was another chance for my redemption, I avoided that side of the house when I walked Maria. I made Cliff whisper when we were in the driveway. I checked periodically with Kathy, who stopped using the door near the nest, to see if she was a grandmother yet.

I imagined I'd soon see a line of ducklings waddling down the street to the creek. I guess I thought I'd be their crossing guard. I must have envisioned a rainbow cresting over our houses with unicorns circling Kathy and me in appreciation for our goodness and mercy.

Instead, the ducks vanished one night.

Kathy told me that, by the looks of it, seven eggs had hatched according to plan. Crestfallen, I asked questions, wanting an easy answer, skirting the reality that had probably occurred.

I didn't get the cute parade I'd wanted. They didn't pose for me, all sweet feet and fuzz. I didn't get to post their photo on Facebook and write a storybook final chapter on my blog to eradicate last spring's duckling tragedy.

That mother duck next door made peace with what she got and marched her offspring to the water. Seven babies were good odds. She needed to get on with raising them. And if something harder had occurred, she cut her losses and moved away until next spring--without dwelling on what she couldn't control.

Unfortunate things happen. Even in fairy tales, giants kill, princesses lie, children vanish.

No matter how much I might want it to be true, ducks do not wear blue bonnets and toddle around for my amusement.

They do not, in fact, consider me at all.

Good for them.

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Definitional Distress

Words, definitions in particular, have gotten me in trouble for as long as I can remember.

My earliest language mishap began with organized religion, kicking off an uneasy relationship that continues to this day, although I excelled in some areas of church life.

As a child, I loved winning glow-in-the-dark crosses for memorizing scripture. (I had no idea what the words meant; I was just a trinket pack rat.) When white gloves were vanishing from women's fashions, I kept wearing mine to church. (Congregants called my mother to compliment my stylistic values; I simply loved anything that smacked of costuming.)  

But when I refused to buckle under the brimstone, as a six-year-old, the die was cast. When religion turned into a true-false test, instead of a multiple choice exam, I learned what it meant to stand alone.   

This all happened when we moved to Middletown, Ohio. Carla, the girl my age who lived across the street, attended the Crawford Street Church of God. It was two blocks away, and we walked to Sunday school together. My dad was raised Methodist. My mother grew up in a country church that was more church than any particular denomination. I'm sure they couldn't see much harm in a little girl going to a nearby church with a new friend. 

I was a model participant at first. Teachers loved putting me on stage to recite the Books of the Bible from memory. With my curly hair and patent leather perfection, I was no doubt adorable.

Until it went bad.

Sunday school always began with an assembly in the children's wing. We sat in miniature pews while the minister delivered a brief sermon usually based on a biblical story. We sang a song, my favorite being Zaccheus Was a Wee Little Man, and we dropped our coins into the offering basket.

One morning, the pastor spoke on the evils of smoking and drinking, habits of the Devil. People who participated in these acts were sinners who needed help. They were dangerous and would lead us down the road to damnation. He asked us to file forward and sign an oath to never smoke or drink. This would keep us safe because the Devil couldn't get in our hearts.

Row by row, the little lambs signed up.

Not me.

I refused.

My teacher whispered a plea; I shook my head.

One by one, the room emptied until I was alone with the minister, who asked why I wouldn't sign.

My eyes filled with tears as I explained that my parents smoked and drank sometimes. (Remember it was the 1950s--the height of sophisticated evening cocktails and cigarettes.) I didn't think they were bad people.

Nor were they dangerous.

People under the influence of the Devil wouldn't serve as scout leaders. They wouldn't volunteer at the school. They wouldn't plant geraniums. They wouldn't give me a birthday cake with pink roses. They wouldn't spend every other weekend driving to Illinois to care for their aging parents.

I didn't want to smoke or drink myself, but I wouldn't sign a paper that defined my parents as evil.

To his credit, he said he understood, that I didn't have to sign, and that I could go on to class. Of course, I'll never know what he really thought. Was he amazed that a little girl resisted his belief system? Was he able to see the potential damage of pitting a child against her parents? Was he convinced that my family was in league with the Devil and sent to test him?

I remember my Sunday school teacher had nothing to say to me for a long time after that.

I could stop here, but I'm inclined to point out this was the beginning of my forays into oppositional defining.

As a high school teacher, the last faculty meeting I attended ended with a list of student names written on the board. We were asked if this was "the kind of element" we should have in our school. I knew some of those kids well. They were edgy types, the kind who would give you an unexpected opinion that set off a firestorm of discussion in class, not necessarily a negative thing. I suspect most of them were smokers and drinkers, too, but that never struck me as outrageous behavior for teenagers. Were they dealers? Thieves? I didn't know, and no one told us that during the meeting.

The ones I knew on that list were not bad people. As far as I could tell, they did not represent an element aligned with the Devil. They were just smart teenagers who knew how to get under the skin of adults who required adherence to a prescribed standard.

I couldn't embrace this simmering definition of a new order. I wouldn't speak against these kids.

If we were marching against this list now, what would be the next Element of the Day?

I thought it over for several months. The implications were enormous, not that I hadn't been considering my career options for a while anyway.

I resigned that summer.

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