October’s Weekend Delights October 28, 2008

In so many ways October is a mean, mean month for anyone involved in the academic world.  I certainly feel it in my college prof role.  The students’ first papers are due, all the committees decide they must get busy with their work now, annual grant report is due for the grant I direct, and anything related to next year’s plans, also due in some administrator’s office.  To add to this, I always have a mandatory meeting or conference, which usually cost me two Saturdays in family time.  This month was no exception.

 

Oh, but there’s nothing like a real weekend in that month of nature’s golden glories to make me appreciate, well, the weekends that are two full days!  I began the weekend with a long and very companionable evening of book club, getting a nice dose of grown-up female energy before I dove fully into the high energy of my family life.

 

Saturday and Sunday were only nominally packed with the  parents (and Brad) follow the kids around thing, or maybe I was just so glad not to be working that I didn’t care how much running around I had to do. Saturday brought pie baking for John and Sylvia for a choir fundraiser, and canvassing for Barack for me and Allie, followed by a human rights club walk to raise awareness about Ugandan children, which garnered enthusiastic participation from both my daughters.  Brad, meanwhile, was shuffled around to Grandma’s to pie delivery sites, and finally home with Dad.

 

I was thrilled that Allie and her friend got me out the door canvassing, and so proud of my young enthusiasts. I begged off the walk, still recovering from my cold, and took a short but deep nap, until the phone rang and I was off to pick up the budding (exhausted) activists. 

 

In the meantime, Grandma was cooking up her annual Halloween House plans for that same evening—pretty much guaranteeing an excitement and sugar-induced second wind for all the kids.  She straggled, in after several hours of the kids waiting and watching for her car, with what must have been an entire Wal Mart shopping cart full of sugar in the form of frosting, sprinkles, candies and cookies, and a little Styrofoam for good measure and structure.  Even before the sugar rush began the kids were giddy with excitement, the girls each having a friend over for the occasion.

John and I escaped the first tornado-like invasion of the Wal mart bags and setting up of the Styrofoam and sugar structure.  We sat in our bedroom seating area (since we have such an open concept house, it’s the only place to go), drank wine and talked like we hadn’t had a chance to all week.  But eventually we came out and visited with Grandma, my friend and neighbor, and all the goofy kids.

 

The frosting was spread, the cookie gravestones were arranged, and the sprinkles were everywhere by the time John and I decided that we were ready to escape for the rest of the evening, to the treehouse.  It was cold out there, but it was insane in the house.  The girls were dancing, Brad was brandishing a frosting-covered butter knife, intent only on spreading and ingesting more sugar off the blade, but still…we didn’t want to see him and the frosting and the furniture all together.  We realized we did have a place to go to be free of the noise and chaos, and it was time to go there.

 

John packed a cooler and two Reeses peanut butter cups, and also lit candles out in that lovely two-story structure that he’s been laboring over since May.  I piled on the pillows and blankets.  It was a cold night, but we felt kind of free, as we kept close to each other all night to keep in the warmth, and kind of amazed—at least I was—that we were in a whole new structure on our property—and a place with an awesome view!  And here we thought John built it for the kids…It actually has a lot of potential for the members of the family who seem most fond of peace and quiet.

 

My Sunday projects were a pancake and scrambled egg breakfast and Halloween costume shopping day at Goodwill—mercifully brief due to a planned playdate with Brad’s friends.  In the afternoon I caught up with some of family members on the phone, drank tea, tried to read the New York Times, and just enjoyed the hum of activities as the girls caught back up with homework, and Brad and his friends built Legos.  Eventually, there was even more activity and company, as our house became Halloween costume central in the hour or so before dinner.  Hillary and Bill Clinton (Sylvia and her friend) made an appearance, and Brad and his two friends made very cute dressed-up girls, with help from the big sisters.  

 

As the evening wound down, Sylvia very kindly agreed to help Brad clean his room just as a favor, and stayed around while I read aloud from the one of the old Boxcar Children books.  I always thought those things were poorly written, but I was looking for something to hold Brad’s interest during the dreaded Sunday evening room cleaning.  To my surprise, he loved it–even though it’s got nothing in it that’s ironic or cynical or adult, or for that matter even realistic (as Sylvia said, “those kids get along so perfectly it’s creepy.”)  Yes, as a third child, he has been exposed to way more ironic, cynical, and otherwise inappropriate things. (The latest craze around here is re-runs of “The Office.”)

 

Anyway, to my delight, Sylvia stayed for the Boxcar Children story too.  I think the dog show story had her captivated.  I could tell she was forgetting about how much she wanted to be a teenager, and she was remembering all the little kid ways in which she loves dogs, everything about them, every little detail that most people wouldn’t notice.  And for the past two weeks, I’ve noticed, she’s also been making her way into Brad’s room in time for nightly read-aloud of Garfield books, mine and Brad’s laugh-before-going-to-sleep ritual, though Sylvia was the one that introduced us all to Garfield.

 

Sunday night was kind of like the old days (and it seems like mothers always love the old days, don’t we?)  I remembered when both my younger kids fit on my lap and both were mesmerized by the same story.  Sunday night, with all this reading, Sylvia got so comfy by the time the three of us had piled on to Brad’s bed for Garfield time that she wanted to sleep right there in Brad’s bed.  Brad said, in his usual thoughtful, measured way, “Well, we probably won’t get to sleep very fast.  (pause)…But I don’t mind.” He willingly slept on a cushion on the floor. I guess we all wanted to mix up our spaces this weekend. 

 

I could hear Sylvia and Brad talking softly awhile after lights were supposed to be out.  I figured I should separate them for sleep reasons, but it was just too sweet.  I don’t think it will happen very much longer, this business of Sylvia remembering she’s still mostly a little girl and wanting to have a quiet slumber party with her little brother. 

 

That was the bookend to a lovely weekend, set off quite distinctly from my work week, those five days when I miss my kids more and more over the course of October.  I feel sad to part with them in the morning as we all go our separate ways, even though all seven of my days are very, very full.  That’s the similarity between home and work!  But I do savor my weekends, most especially when those gifts of family togetherness seem harder and harder to find.

 

 

 

One More Obama Mama Watching Hope Rise October 20, 2008

Nowadays, in those rare moments I find to fire up my computer for non-work reasons, I feel the urge to reach outward, towards the internet, especially election news, rather than inward, towards the much-neglected inner life of Jodi.  I guess there’s a time and place for everything. 

 

I am excited, sometimes even buoyant, yet agitated as each day sustains the good news about Obama’s place in the polls.  I remember saying a few months ago that as hard as it was to be optimistic given the nastiness out there, the bitter defeats, and my deep knowledge that “power concedes nothing without a struggle” (to quote Frederick Douglass), I felt like this Obama campaign had a feeling of inevitability about it. 

 

And it still does.  It is a beautiful thing to watch rise.  I’m reminded of Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still I Rise” as Obama moves forward with the grace of a swan, the hidden movements of webbed feet pushing underwater, the dark water obscuring but simultaneously representing the repressed weight of history.  Under that water is a history of oppression, our ugly history of racism, but also our history of progressivism, of people coming together to make things better, to define a broader “us.”  All this is articulated by Obama in flawlessly careful and unthreatening tones, persistent, promising cadence, with the unruffled poise of the swan.  We are listening hard and watching intently.

Under the water, the hopes are stirring. Quietly, we are reassured that even as he reaches towards the murky  “center” of American politics,  he is preparing to take care of us, the ones who care about social justice more than our taxes, even as he brings a larger group of people into that conversation, back into those hopes and visions of Americans as citizens, not just consumers.  He reminds us that we can dream, that we don’t have to sit huddled in our houses, afraid of our neighbors, fearing enemies everywhere.

 

I sometimes think about this election as the teeter totter on which our declining empire sits. I try to quell my emotionalism about the whole drama by stepping back as the trained historian that I am.  I think:  either our democracy will be revived, our declining empire, our waning time in the sun of history will breathe fresh air and invite the idealism and hope of another generation, here and abroad, or…it won’t.  In my view, either we’ll vote hope:  Obama, or we’ll vote fear:  McCain. If Obama loses, progressives will need to look harder to see the rise of other people’s ideals, perhaps of the next nation, or group of nations who will offer the world a hopeful vision, who will produce leaders that inspire the world’s next transformation.   If that happens, it will be the end of an era in my own intellectual and political life, the end of a certain form of patriotism I sometimes forgot I had, but perhaps the beginning of a new perspective as a citizen of the world.

 

My 16-year-old daughter also helps me nourish some perspective, she who has spent one night every week for the past month or so volunteering at the Democratic headquarters in our town, calling total strangers, learning to speak up, speak out, listen, and build connections between her generation and the older ones.  She’s optimistic Obama will win.  But I’m also encouraged by our conversations about what might happen if he doesn’t.  I try to encourage her with the knowledge that her environmental commitments and human rights causes can still be taken up; it’s a big world out there.  “I know,” she says, and she smiles.  And I believe she does know.

 

Yet now, it appears possible that the candidate who has inspired me more than any other in my lifetime might actually win!  It’s not just as a citizen (of the nation and the world) that I would rejoice in that victory, but also as a mother.  It’s been wonderful to re-discover my idealism about politics with my kids, to have faith in someone to lead us again, to be able to point to Barack Obama over and over again, even in the midst of the pandering,  late-season election shenanigans, and say, there’s a good man.  I can say honestly that I think he is an amazing man, someone who will bring out the best in anyone who will listen, someone who will help make us as a people who share this particular geographic space and political boundary the best we can be, at least for a while.  I hope his continuing story will continue to be part of our story, for me and my family, for the students I teach, for the history books yet to be written.  I hope and hope, do what I can to push it forward, and like so many others, wait and wait for that November day.