Friday, December 11, 2015

We're Doing it Wrong


My husband and I are mediocre parents. We’ve got two kids, ages 1 ½ and 3 ½, and, though we’re trying to be very conscientious about this child-rearing thing, those little guys keep reminding us that we’re not very good at it.

   For example, my oldest kid, whom I’ll call Rabbit, is sometimes super mean to his little brother, whom I’ll call Little Bear. My husband and I aren’t completely ignorant people—we’ve read Siblings Without Rivalry, and a small mountain of other parenting books, and we’ve applied Love Languages  and Love and Logic, along with a decade-and-a-half apiece of teacher training on classroom management and motivating children without conflict, but Rabbit still picks on Little Bear.

   Here’s the real problem: karma.

For ten kidless years, DH and I taught middle school, all the while quietly judging parents on how well they’re managing the parenting gig and formulating our own ideas of what kinds of parents we’ll be. Parents who take the kids to exotic locations for year-long exchanges. Parents whose kids are well-adapted to adult company, who speak multiple languages and behave well in restaurants. We saw our kids as engineers, astronauts, computer programmers, and certainly honor students; and our kids may very well turn out to be those things, but right now they’re busy reminding us that they’re running this show a bit more than we’d like.

The thing is, nothing makes me more aware of how clueless I am as when my kid’s teachers, who are usually pleased with Rabbit, tell me he didn’t behave in class. My face warms, and I break out in a sweat, and I ask the teacher—who doesn’t have kids of her own—if she has any ideas of what I should do. “Just talk to him about it,” she says.

And I do. And I defer action until after dinner, when I’ve had time to think. And my husband and I talk about it and decide to take away a special toy. Rabbit cries and says he’ll do better, and we promise to return the toy when we receive a positive report.

And we still feel very mediocre.

And the kidless teachers probably shake their heads in the staff lounge.

And we muddle our way through parenthood for another day, just like everybody else we used to judge.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Fiction Fest

I'm sticking this on my page because, I mean, read it. A Fiction Fest in Denver? I'm in!

On Trying to Write

You know what's super-difficult? Putting my writing where other people can see it.

It's a necessary evil, though, because that's the whole point. I mean, I suppose I could just scribble to my heart's content until the day I die and never actually show it to anyone, and I'm sure it would be very cathartic, but it also seems excessively timid. 

It just so happens that I came across a couple of poems I had hastily-scribbled almost ten years ago, when I was evidently feeling pretty unsure about writing. This anxiety and self-doubt has been around a little while then, I guess.

So yeah, good or bad, I'm just gonna chuck one out there. And then I'm going to go eat some gummy bears.

Open Minded
So open, I'm sure nothing's inside
Just capacious, inaccessible vacancy.

Someone locked the door.

My pen leaves streaks of illegibility
On the lined page
Cross it out. Start again.
A few more letters
Those look awkward.
Cross them out. Turn the page.

I just can't write today.


8/3/06