Die-lemma
I just had a phone call that despite being number 130 on the waiting list, my daughter has been offered a place in our local Suzuki piano program. On one hand, I'm thrilled--while I grew up being a snob about the "mechanical" quality of Suzuki (and while I'm still a wee bit skeptical of what seem to me to be its exaggerated demands), I've been really impressed by how it allows very young students to play real music, and to develop excellent touch and dynamics very early on (my friend's 6 year old has a much more nuanced style than I ever had). And my daughter has been asking for lessons for almost a year now. And I am in the midst of pretty major repairs on our 100 year old upright piano, that should make it playable and then some. On the other hand, I'm feeling more than frantic about returning to teaching, finishing the impossible article, figuring out what the commute and parent responsibilities are at my daughter's new school, and financing private school, Saturday Chinese and Chinese dance lessons (which will involve 5 different performances throughout the year), and her ongoing ballet classes. I'm already too busy and too broke, and the thought of
two piano lessons each week (one group and one private) plus daily practicing that I have to enforce is more than a little daunting.
Plus, I realize that she is only 5, and that it's not as though her musical ability--if she has any--will evaporate if I choose to wait until she's 7 or even--gasp!--eight before signing her up. By then, I'll have tenure, and my fantasy about post-tenure life is that even though I'll be just as insanely busy, I won't be so perpetually anxious. (Those of you who know my IRL know that's a forlorn hope).
I just read
this article about what sounds like a terrific book. As I've said before, if I still had my husband, I like to think my daughter would be in our local public school, and we would be among those committing to our community and working to improve our neighborhood schools (or, at least, those of the next-closest neighborhood!) And I am trying (not very successfully) to keep my own ego out of my choices for her, knowing at the same time that I want her to appreciate many of the things I appreciate (music, art, reading) as well as the things to which she is already drawn (insects! volcanoes! astronomy! gardening!) It's hard when there is only one of her, and one of me. I want to give her the activities I wanted to have had, and don't have my husband's voice of sanity and restraint. I suspect he'd tell me to wait on the piano lessons. Maybe I should listen to him.
Labels: competitive child-raising, motherhood--the roller coaster, parenting choices
Beijing
How do you spell "ambivalence" in Chinese? As this
article suggests, those of us with children from China have a particular stake in the impending Olympics--and for once, it's not the gymnastics! My daughter is spending the summer in a Chinese program. She's learning songs, counting, writing, basic communication, painting, dance, and a bit of martial arts. She's hanging out with a lot of little girls who look like her, who have families like hers (i.e., white parents, or a single mom), and getting to know some absolutely lovely and loving women who were raised in China. This kind of exposure is something I have always wanted to give her, and I feel lucky to have a great program that is amazingly close to our house! And they serve lunch! (Other mothers will know exactly what I mean when I speak of the tyranny of the home-packed lunchbox).
Logically enough, the program is using the Olympic games to help the kids learn a bit about Chinese culture, both traditional and contemporary. This involves lots of logos, coloring, and 5 odd little
mascot creatures that are sort of the Chinese Olympic equivalent of "Hello, kitty."(China is waaaaaay into capitalism, y'know). All this is fine. My daughter comes home and says, "Ni hao, Mama" (hello) and "xie-xie" (thank you), and announces at various times, apropos of nothing, that it is great to be "Chinese AND American."
At the same time, my in-box is filling up with anti-China propaganda--the U.S. should boycott the games; Bush is chastising China for its human rights violations; progressives want me to sign another petition for Tibet; etc. I am well aware that China is not above reproach. It's environmental and social policies are screwed up--my daughter is living proof of some of that. But I am surprisingly hesitant to criticize my, shall we say, "adoptive" country. Whereas the U.S. has had every opportunity--and the freedom, money, resources--to become a leader in these areas, China has not. And in those circumstances, given the desperate poverty many, many Chinese people still live in, I think we need to approach China's troubling aspects with delicacy, not brute force. Plus, as a country that relishes the death penalty, tolerates indescribable carnage from its guns, and bullies (or worse) sovereign nations in pursuit of our unsustainable (and I don't mean not-eco-friendly; I mean "will destroy the planet" unsustainable) and obscene lifestyle of consumption, I kind think we should be cleaning up our own house before throwing stones at the neighbors.
Selfishly, too, I worry that the fragile relationship between the U.S. and China will continue to decrease international adoptions there, and will resign even more thousands and thousands of children to bleak lives in orphanages--or worse. Those orphans are likely to be undereducated and, perhaps worse, undersocialized, so that when they age out of the system, they are incapable of meaningful relationships, productive work, or, I fear, happiness. So even when I wish the Chinese wouldn't hurt their own people just to "save face," I still wish our politicians--especially our idiot lame-duck president--would shut up. I don't want the Olympics to be an excuse to bash China, or to confirm our own anxieties about how the U.S. is still "the greatest" by denigrating their efforts at improving. I don't want my daughter's newfound pride in her heritage to be met with hostility, jingoism, and scorn.
Yes, China's human rights abuses need to be addressed (umm...can you say, "Gitmo"?) But let's not embarrass them right now, or try to bully them, just because we can. For my daughter's sake.
Labels: international relations, motherhood--the roller coaster
Bad, bad Mama
My daughter has a large stuffed penguin she got from her Auntie. The penguin is conveniently transgendered (some days he's a he; other days, he's a she). She loves him/her to distraction. "Penguiny" rides in the car with us (buckled into "hir" own seat, no less), and last week was taken to the local farmer's market in "hir" own pink plastic stroller (impressively, my daughter dealt with the annoyances of the stroller--wheels that jiggle erratically, a tendency to fold without warning and dump its occupant into the street, dirtying "hir" feathers and treacherously tripping "hir" pusher--without a murmur of complaint).
Like her sparkly red shoes, which generated lots of questions about Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, Penguiny attracts the attention of strangers, nearly all of whom ask, "Has she seen 'Happy Feet'?"
Well.
Today, on our outing to replace the ballet and tap shoes she outgrew in less than 6 months, I decided to pick up "Happy Feet" for us to watch together. One of our weekend rituals is to make homemade pizza with lots of veggies and to eat it together watching a special show. And my question is this: Had any of those well-intentioned folks ever
seen the damn movie?
My sister used to make me laugh by referring to the "therapy journal" she was keeping for her daughter, in which she recorded everything she did that might usefully become fodder for her daughter's future therapist. You know, "And, when I was a child, my mother used to ...." "Mmmm hmmmm....And how did that make you feel?" [My sister still makes me laugh, btw; I just haven't heard about the therapy journal for a while. But I'm off topic again. Such is life.]
Well, the "Happy Feet" experience is one for the therapy journal, big time. First she cried because the egg rolled away from the Papa. Then she cried when the egg was slow to hatch. Then when the baby penguin couldn't find his mama. Again when the flock of evil birds tormented Mumble and threatened to eat him. And when he fell down into an ice cave. And when he was menaced by a huge, saber-toothed
seal (is this zoologically accurate?), and kidnapped by the same gang of foul-mouthed fowl and dropped from a great height--at which point, after making sure he was still alive, we turned it off.
WTF?? I was worried that she'd be upset by his ostracism; it hadn't occurred to me that I was unleashing some sort of "National Geographic: Nature Red in Tooth and Claw" upon her. It took two helpings of jello and a Thomas the Tank Engine video to restore her to some semblance of emotional balance.
We'll try watching the film together again....When she's 30.
Labels: motherhood--the roller coaster
Entropy
"A measure of the disorder that exists in a system." Amen. I think that within a system, entropy increases over time, and that it has to do with the amount of energy unable to be utilized for productive purposes--but this is deliberately a humanistic and not scientific interpretation of what is, of course, a scientific concept.
I'm trying to embrace entropy as the condition of my life, but it doesn't come naturally to me. I realize my attempts at imposing order, structure, and routine are futile, but they're what I have! At the same time, my basement fills up at a truly frightening pace with discarded furniture, baby toys, and unwanted clothes--I'd need to be going to a donation center once a week to keep up. My daughter generates piles of drawings, mounds of clay...um...creations, and clusters of "flowers" to wilt in their vases. My winter clothes haven't yet been unpacked, and my summer clothes await unpacking. Every room has in it piles of projects unfinished, bills unpaid, letters unanswered, photos unfiled, memorabilia unsorted. My closet is a mess, my collection of bags and totes makes it impossible to close my bedroom door, and I have way, way, way too many books! And yes, I am extraordinarily lucky to be able to afford the excess that is killing me, and, yes, I need to stop buying ANYTHING until I have the energy to do some serious clearing out.
Update: We spent a week in Mexico with family and got some great cousin-time, a couple fabulous meals, and all the shrimp and avocados we could ingest. My daughter spent about 90% of her time in the water--either in the hotel pool or bouncing in the warm waves (as a child of the cold northern climes, she found the concept of warm, undertow-free ocean water delightful!) I spent a lot of time hiding under hats, wraps, beach umbrellas, and overhangs, but still managed to sunburn the tops of my feet. Since our kids come in nearly exact 18-month intervals, they can be counted on to play together well in pairs, if not always in 3s: my daughter loves to be a "big girl" with her older cousin, and to frolic like a slippery seal with her younger boy cousin.
I came home, caught my breath (barely), did laundry (some), and headed off to scenic east coast city for a short week of research. It's one of my favorite cities, the weather was surprisingly good, I found a couple of things that help to give my research direction (or clarify what I was already doing in new ways), and I caught up with a friend from grad-school.
And I compromised my democratic and environmental principles and put my daughter in the private school, to which I have to drive her. I considered all of the elements my smart and thoughtful commenters left for me, as well as a few others, but in the end, my decision came down to these:
1. I am more likely to regret NOT trying this school than to regret having tried it, even if I end up pulling her out next year or the year following.
2. The testing mania is destroying our public schools, even at the levels that are not subject to the testing itself. The public schools fall short, in my estimation, in science and math--two key areas in which I have little aptitude or enthusiasm. And while I can "make up" for deficiencies in music, art, and reading, I am less able, and less inclined, to supplement the "sciences." At the same time, my daughter has a real enthusiasm for these subjects--one I want to nurture and enhance. I can do this better, I am betting (although of course I won't know until I see how it's working out), by finding a school with a strong program, than by my own half-hearted attempts. Maybe that makes me a bad mother, but I don't want to spend every Saturday devising science projects.
3. The public schools have a 24:1 ratio in their kindergartens. Even with parent helpers, possible part-time aides, student volunteers, etc., that's a LOT of planning, prep, and focus-time for any one teacher. The private school has 2 full-time teachers for 21-22 students--11:1. If everything else were equal, this would still mean twice the interactions between my daughter and her teachers.
4. I have a strong education bias. I can realize in the abstract that there are equally important, non-academic and even non-"intellectual" qualities, and I want her to develop those fully (creativity, kindness, resilience, physicality). But education is a big, big thing in my life, and like pretty much every parent, my own values drive my parenting. I was bored, unchallenged, and lazy in school. She's not me, and her school is not my school. But even so, I want to challenge her, feed her interests, and help her develop more. I'm willing to make some compromises (demographics, commute, elitism), at least
at this point to make those other things happen. My decisions will change, no doubt, as she develops and is more able to make her own preferences known. Racial identity may be more important to her in 2 years, or 3, or 8. Riding her bike to school may become a big deal. I may want to be around less affluent, pushy, or granola-esque parents. We'll try this for a year, and then we'll reevaluate. I don't think it makes much difference whether she starts public school in kindergarten or 1st grade.
5. Her tuition is about what I have been paying for her Montessori/childcare. If I take a break from that expense, I know myself--I'll find other ways to use that money (some of you might think that would be a
good thing; I can't disagree), and going back to it would be even harder.
Yes, I have second thoughts. Sheryl Cashin's
powerful indictment of racial separationism haunts me. The knowledge that I am the kind of parent who is currently
needed in our district--to advocate for sanity in the face of the testing frenzy, to commit to the very notion of public education in an era that seems content to discard it--eats away at me. Driving her to school when we could walk to a closer school (or bike) feels, to be blunt, immoral. Soon those voices may come to dominate my thinking. If so, I'll change my mind.
And so it goes.
Labels: education today, ethical dilemmas, motherhood--the roller coaster
Head games
The weather here is bloody, bloody awful. Cold, windy, and fiercely wet. This morning, I loaded the dog into the car for his trip to the doggie daycare (don't ask; it's the one thing that tires him out, and gives me a reprieve). As I slammed the tailgate shut, I realized that my lovely daughter had not, as she usually does, climbed up into her car seat.
Instead, she was standing at the corner of the house, under the one place where the water runs freely down the eaves, unrestricted by gutters. Her hood was up, so that the water cascaded down onto her the top of her head, and then splattered
all over her.
"Look, Mama!" She cried. "I'm playing with my friend Drippy! I can only play with him when it's raining; he goes away on sunny days!"
Indeed.
Labels: motherhood--the roller coaster
Signs o' the Times
My daughter, upon being told it is dinner time [
imperiously]: "I do not wish it so!"
My daughter, making deviled eggs this weekend; "Mama, I love you." [pause] [
with identical inflection] "Mama, I love these eggs."
My daughter, sitting on the floor putting on her socks and shoes before school: "Mama, I feel left out at school. Sad and left out."
Labels: motherhood--the roller coaster
