Some of the things I’ve done wrong raising this boy:

Occasionally I played video games with him instead of doing the dishes.

Once in a while, we had ice cream sundaes for dinner.

We racked up large library fines together.

We read entirely too many comic books.

I told him that parents get a Halloween candy “tithe”.

I didn’t let him beat me at tic-tac-toe. Or hangman.


I was going to write something sentimental here, but I find I’m too close to some emotional edge. I keep veering away from heartbroken tears. It’s not the fact that he’s grown up and is about to leave. All parents everywhere know that day comes. It means we've done our job. It’s all the missed opportunities, the real mistakes, the blunders and wrong turns. On the eve of graduation, those hammer at my soul relentlessly. I should have done this. I should have done that.

So I iron his gown for tomorrow (“cool iron only, Mom!”) and know that I’ve honestly done the best I could possibly do – and wish with all my heart that I could do it over again.

I’m like a little kid, sitting in the middle of small piles of toys and shiny things. These are the things I can’t conceive of leaving behind. I’ll skip the descriptions of socks, blue jeans, and tee-shirts. Two zip-lock bags of pens, different kinds for different moods. My favorite books. Stationery Em gave me for my birthday – with orders to use it to write to her. One of my carved elephants. A teeny baggie filled with cicada wings. Baby pictures of my children. Older pictures of them, too.

Not everyone recognizes that a magpie’s piles are full of treasure.

My haircut girl, Linda, is on vacation this week. I hope she’s having a nice time, but, honestly, she’s messed things up for me greatly. It takes someone like me (i.e., a slightly neurotic and self-conscious person with very stubborn hair) a long long time to find the right person to work with her hair. Linda is very soothing. She is far more beautiful than I thought I’d ever tolerate in a haircut girl – thin, exotic, great hair. She has a German Shepherd, which her husband and son like, but she wants a cat. She is the only person I know who’s gone off and gotten married using one of those marriage packages. “Bahamas Cruise and Wedding Package”. She loved it. I like Linda. I’m comfortable with her, and she does my hair the way I like it. (People probably think I chop at it randomly myself to get this tousled effect, but no, I pay a lot of money to have someone else do it for me.)

But Linda decided to go away this week. She recommends Trish for her clients. Okay, I can deal with Trish. I don’t know her very well, but I can deal with her. No cause for panic. Until Trish foolishly decides to get sick this week!

Now I’m not even sure I can get a haircut at all. No, no, says the receptionist, Sharon is available today. Can you come in at 3:30?

Sharon. I have nothing against Sharon, of course. In fact, she was one of the hairdressers I used when I first went to the salon when I was deciding which hairdresser suited me. (I’m sure she doesn’t remember this, but I feel slightly awkward about her now, as though I rejected her.) But I have to get a haircut before going out of town. So Sharon it is.

We talk about the end of the school year and, of course, Reagan. She’s very moved by all the coverage of the memorial services. She finds the people who show up in shorts and sandals very disrespectful. A lot of the men aren’t taking off their hats, either. We decide that they don’t mean as much disrespect as it may seem.

Then she starts talking about her dad’s funeral. She says she understands a lot of what Nancy is going through – how it is out of her hands. It is the nation’s grief, not Nancy’s. That’s how it was for her dad’s funeral. She and her mom just went along with the plans. She talks about the military doing things a specific way. Two things are clear in her story: her dad was someone important and she wants me to ask who he was.

I feel terrible about this. I didn’t ask. Three or four times she left pauses, places for me to ask for information, for details. Space for me to say “wow”. I just went along with the conversation, almost as if I already knew. Would it have killed me to just give her this? Yes, it was a slightly manipulative conversational tactic on her part, but I could have let her have a few minutes of attention. I could have let her brag a little bit about her father. I should have.

I start out with these grand lists when I plan trips. Projects to do before leaving. “Complete landscaping backyard.” (Well, one can’t leave for a trip when the backyard is incompletely landscaped. What if the neighbors had to go back there to rescue a wounded bird or something? How embarrassing.) “Put all eight letter bingos on index cards, with extensions and anagrams.”

Then there’s the packing list itself. Shampoo (including brand and fluid ounces). First aid kit including suture kit. All the shoes I’ve ever worn. Number of books to bring: number of days x 3. The packing list grows to pages and pages.

Up until about two days before the trip, I continue to methodically gather these items and work on the projects. Then panic strikes. I realize that the backyard progress so far is a pile of broken slate and three barberry bushes which should have been planted in May. The suture kit is really my mending kit, which is missing all the buttons from when Em made puppets out of the winter socks.

It is at this point that I face the pile and realize: there is no hope. The list is a sham and an illusion. If the emperor did have clothes, they certainly wouldn’t be packed in time to leave town.

Then I start flinging things into suitcases.

Funktionslust. It is the pleasure in doing what one does best. A dancer. A singer. A cheetah. A painter. There is a pleasure in the doing. It is a significant pleasure, and it is not just the pleasure of a job done or the admiration of an audience. It is a joy that begins when the pianist limbers up his fingers in an empty house.

I love the word itself. It looks made up, for one thing. It looks more than vaguely vulgar. I play with the sound, the meaning, the origins. I have fun with the word. For words – words are my funktionslust. Spoken words: conversations and jokes and stories and arguments. Written words: essays and stories, letters and conversations, and now electronic conversations. Word games: Scrabble of course. Boggle. My brain feels so alive when I play games. The pathways are open, wide open, all channels blazing and blaring. It is a fierce joy.

Last night, I went to scrabble club for the first time in a couple of weeks. I did not have time for club. I kept hoping Aaron would tell me he had to study for finals or something, but he was anxious to go. And honestly, it was a chance to touch base with him before leaving for weeks. (Nothing like a commute for some good mother-son time.) So off we went.

Twelve people were there. (Ordinarily there are at least double that number.) One rusty expert, the rest novices or low intermediates. I wandered around, looking at the boards of the games in progress. Saw a couple of beautiful plays and some terrible plays. Eventually another player showed up and Aaron was paired up with her, and then a couple of the earlier games were finishing up, and I was put into the rotation. Okay, I admit, I had a bad attitude. I was thinking “oh, great, I won’t get any good practice in before nationals; there’s hardly any competition here.” But I’m trying to be a grownup, a good human and all, and so I joined in. From the first rack, I could feel the joy. The funktionslust. The anticipation triggered by a blank score sheet and the clock at 25 minutes. The sheer fun of taking a rackful of consonants and finding a 40 point double-double through a couple of vowels. I love playing. It makes me happy. I came home so revved up I couldn't sleep for hours.

What are we born to do? That’s part of the journey for all of us, figuring that out. I’m wired to write. I’m built to hike. I love to play.

More on the driving front: I’ve been a foolish foolish woman, flaunting the zeroes as I’ve been doing. So the fates have slapped me. A couple of hours ago, Daniel managed to take down two of our cars in one accident. He backed out of the garage, somehow locked the car he was driving into the side of the convertible in the driveway, and the two cars engaged in some kind of duel to the death. The convertible lost, but it was close. So I now own two reasonably expensive nearly-mortally-wounded automobiles. I think that puts the tally at 0 tickets and 1 accident, but it may count as 2 accidents.

He looked so stricken afterwards, as if thinking: wait, wait, pause, let’s reset this game, I got off to a bad start! We both stood in the driveway silently for a while, then made a couple of jovial attempts at jokes. Neither of us ate lunch.

More on the countdown. Finals are in full swing. Trails of last minute projects run upstairs, through the storage rooms, veer spatteringly into the bathroom, and end at the front door. (Finish the projects over the weekend? Haha!)

I’ve not raised four perfect children. Heck, I’ve not even raised one-half of an organized child. They are busy and happy, and they operate under the motto that if one pile of papers is tolerable, five or six must be downright desirable. They love to learn, but this is not always reflected in their grades. They don’t always get along with one another. (Opinionated and stubborn are not just basenji traits.) These kids have strong feelings about everything from politics to video games, and sometimes they clash. They are good humans, though. In a long-ago speech I heard (at church maybe?), the speaker’s general point was that many parents try to raise their children to be happy, while many others try to raise them to be successful, and although these are fine goals, what about raising them to be good? I had two babies at the time. I didn’t know what was ahead. But I liked the concept. I still do. Raise them to work hard, yes. Try hard to keep the home filled with peace and happiness, yes. But worry more about compassion, mercy, kindness, justice, gentleness – where else will they learn these?

Too bad they don’t have a “mercy” category on the report card.

My third story for Odyssey is not going well. After ten or twelve false starts, I have a reasonably coherent plot and an opening paragraph that doesn’t tempt me to toss the keyboard out the window. I’d call the main character wooden, but that would imply a degree of solidity that certainly he does not possess. So a lot of work left there. I think what I need to do is let the story jell for a day or two more and let my brain pick at it and figure out what is going wrong. Of course, I only have a few more days left before I leave. Panic panic!

In driving news, we’re still at 0 accidents and 0 tickets. As far as I know. The results are a little skewed, though, as Daniel still has only driven once. Aaron continues to fabricate reasons to drive. As I’m lugging in groceries, he says: “forget anything? Need me to go back to the store for you?” Having an eager errand-runner around is coming in handy this week.

Why do we like Snape so much?

Why do we grin in the dark theater when he first comes on the screen?

Of course we like the others… the perpetually surprised Ron, the gorgeous and brilliant Hermione, kindly Dumbledore, kindly Mrs. Weasley, kindly… well, there sure are a lot of kindly grownups. Maybe that’s part of it. I mean, we were all children, we all dealt with lots of grownups, and honestly, how many of them were really kindly? They fed us; they made sure we didn’t get struck by buses. Not all of them liked us, though. Some of them pretended, and we were fooled for a little while. Maybe a kindergarten teacher with a sweet face and tiny hands and a gruff voice that only came out when things got “out of hand”. A shocking surprise to a five-year-old. Or a beautiful and distant aunt who gave gifts but couldn’t bear dirt and noise… and we didn’t know that before we leapt into her lap happily, covered in mud. Some grownups were scary.

Some never tried to seem sweet. Our 11th grade English teacher gave a long speech that began “I am not a popular teacher.” And she wasn’t. We didn’t like her much.

So much of our childhood was about figuring out what the grownups were about. Who seemed nice? Who loved us? Who was Good? And then we further figured out that the ones that were nice weren’t necessarily the ones who loved us, and the ones that loved us weren’t necessarily Good, and all sorts of variations in the mix.

So when cranky Snape comes on screen, maybe we remember some of that. Maybe we remember the day we realized that the 11th grade English teacher was the best teacher we ever had. Does it make her any nicer? Nah. Does it make us like her more? Maybe. We do know enough about Snape to know that he’s probably a good guy. A Good Guy. (Rowling may throw us a curve later, but that’s our interpretation for now.) So we see him through many lenses: his cruelty towards Harry and the gang, our memories of our own cruel teachers, our knowledge that crabby does not equal evil, our sense that he is a solid human.

We really like Snape.

The closer it gets to June 14, the more apparent it becomes: I’m insane. I’m outfitting this place like a bunker. Extra bottled water, because you never know what might happen to the water supply. Not just stocking the first aid kits… creating new ones. Batteries everywhere. Should I buy yet another fire extinguisher? I bought an extra can opener. The upstairs linen closet has no room for linens; four jumbo packs of Scott tissue take up every spare inch. (You know how many rolls to a jumbo pack? Twenty. Number of days I’ll be away? Forty-two. Apparently I think they’ll use nearly two rolls a day.) I have posted every phone number I can think of on every level of the house.

“Okay, we’ve tried Aunt Emily, the church, Grandma, 911, and Pizza Hut; no one is answering… oh, thank goodness, Mom left us the number for my old fifth grade teacher! Try that one!”

Clearly I’m worried that these children won’t last five minutes without me.

The pad of paper by my bedside is now a bona fide tool for self-analysis.

First, the character sketch. I’m not sure if I dreamed him, but when I woke about 2 am, there was this merry little boy, maybe nine years old, just begging to be put down on paper so that the world wouldn’t lose him forever. Or at least so the author wouldn’t. So I jotted some notes. In fact, while I was jotting, I gradually woke more and more and ended up filling the whole four-by-six page. Rather pedestrian imagery… flashing black eyes, dark dark hair, a little bit too long, unbrushed, stone under his bare feet. But more kept fleshing out. It was an underground scene, rows of cells, prison cells, and the boy was running along and peering into the various cells. No one was paying him any attention at all. In fact, as I wrote, I decided this was important. I made him a little more hyperactive. An attention-seeker. He wouldn’t walk from cell to cell, I decided; he’d bound up and down the stone hallway. He’d stop, he’d hold the bars, he’d try to get the attention of the people within. He’d bounce. He’d say something nonsensical, maybe.

Under those notes, I wrote: “chitter butt”. That seemed fun and funky, a thing a little boy might say, kind of tauntingly even. The rhythm might catch him up in it. Chitter butt chitter butt. Jumping up and down, holding the bars of the cell. Chitter butt!

Okay, I jotted down a few more thoughts. Who knows where this boy might eventually end up. He might end up being a girl. He might just disappear into a dusty shoebox on an index card. But he was a fun little character.

I went back to sleep.

Now the analysis. Here I am at my computer this morning. I keep a list of words next to the keyboard, words I run across while I’m playing Jumbletime (an anagram solving game), new words or tricky ones, words I notice in my studies. Words I see when I watch people play on ISC (the Internet Scrabble Club). This is something I do a lot. Watch folks play scrabble. I try to analyze their plays, guess what they might decide to do, puzzle out their racks. I watch far far more than I play. If either of the people playing is a friend of mine, I have even been known to comment or, god forbid, heckle. On ISC, players can also match wits against computer opponents who range in “ability” from novice to satan. The top ones can be beaten, yes, but they are often frustratingly tough. They always find the best play. So sometimes when I’m watching a buddy play one of these satanic computer players, I refrain from heckling. “Cheater bot,” I say sympathetically. “Cheater bot.”

Er. Let me get this straight. I watch from the outside and I say “cheater bot”?

Are all of my characters… me?

So many countdowns continue. Finals begin today, the last stretch before that child/man finishes school. The stack of books/clothes/towels/buckets/pens/flashcards grows bigger as I keep packing for Odyssey. My to-do lists are still entirely unmanageable – but they are down to two. Two pages.

I’m not good at countdowns. I get tense and teary. This is the last week of school. This is the last time I’ll have to clomp downstairs, refraining from morning grumpiness, and say: “Hey, you planning to go to school today? The bus leaves in 12 minutes!” (Actually, I have five more chances to say that.) Last things bug me. I’m positive that next Monday morning I will even be sad when the little rat puppy wakes me for the “last time” (meaning until I get her back in six weeks).

Good things just should not have to end.

When I was very young, it was a great treat to go to a real swimming pool, the kind at the YMCA, and swim for 50 minute sessions. I spent the whole 50 minutes dreading the end of the session. I couldn’t enjoy it at all. I fear that tendency is still inside me. I start worrying about saying goodbye almost as soon as I say hello. I am so afraid that I will miss the wonderful parts of the next few days and the summer with Daniel in my dread of his leaving, that I’ll focus on the end of the summer instead of today.

Right, get a grip, says the rational part of me. Daniel is a success. He’s moving on to the triumphs and happiness (and responsibilities and credit card payments) of adulthood. He may even find the love of his life soon. For me, Odyssey will be terrific, probably life-changing. Rat puppy will go off to her show ring and glory. The house will survive for six weeks. The rational part of me has a somewhat nagging whiny voice.

The rational part of me is kind, though. It’s okay for me to be sad, it says. About serious things and silly things.

(The rat puppy, Curie, is actually a gorgeous little creature. Her real name is Dark Skies Cherry Bomb, and she’s the descendant of many champions. One of my favorite things about “owning” a basenji is the great amount of information out there about the various lines and recent history of the breed. The African Stock Project, which was an effort to increase the genetic diversity in the breed by importing stock from, well, Africa, is very well documented and fascinating. Curie’s father is also a champion lure courser, and his daughter seems to have his speed and agility. Basenjis are stubborn and opinionated. She fits in well in this house.)

What am I supposed to do? This situation comes up infrequently but often enough to make me feel like a failure. One child does something. Okay, it is not a good thing. Let’s say it’s five dollars missing. Stolen, we presume. Worse, it’s taken from a sibling. So we have this situation. One angry-eyed teenager, convinced that Nothing Will Be Done about his missing money, and three innocent-looking siblings, all managing to look very very sympathetic about their sibling’s plight.

Unless someone confesses, it is unlikely that I will track down the guilty party. I don’t have surveillance footage or exploding ink pellets (or whatever the current technology is). I refuse to play that old elementary school teacher game: “okay, we’ll just all be grounded until the guilty person admits what they did.” I will not punish the innocent. And yet I still have the angry-eyed boy, waiting for his justice. Waiting for his five dollars, actually.

This time, I can solve at least one problem. I take him aside, “reimburse” him for his loss.

“What, you’re not going to do anything about him?” This is the worst part of the problem. He assumes that one particular sibling is the guilty party. On the face of it, it really isn’t an illogical thought. That child has had some struggles with impulse control over the years. Luckily I have answers (and I still have my fingers on the five-dollar bill, which forces angry-eyed boy to listen.) We don’t judge someone, in this family, on their past. We don’t judge them on their tendencies. Today is a new day. We trust. We go on.

Angry-eyed boy settles down. Turns out he had a long day at school. He’s more tired than angry.

I’m pretty tired myself.

Context

The Ginger Ale Games are over. (I won.)

I woke this morning in a cold panic. I didn’t have enough time to get everything done before Odyssey as it was; how can I recover from losing an entire day? So I made a couple of phone calls, canceled two days of work I’d agreed to do – and suddenly I’m a day ahead!

Several things on my to-do list are fairly sedentary tasks, so I managed to pick away at those yesterday. One important task: transfer some of my story ideas from my idea file (okay, file is a very optimistic name for a shoebox of index cards) to an idea document so that I don’t have to lug every single scrap of paper I own to this workshop. I found myself mystified by some of these so-called ideas. Some are full paragraphs. One has a sketch, a map, and a diagram – and I have no idea what any of those represent. One card reads: “you never know when you might find a dead body in a restroom stall.” Well, wise words, I’m sure. Another reads: “lack of acetylcholine makes it difficult to filter out irrelevant sounds and other sensory distractions.” Okay, at least that makes a little sense. It’s not a story, by any means, but it makes sense. So much of this is based on my thinking at the time. Context is crucial. I suppose it would be fun to develop a character who cautiously pushed open restroom stall doors, just in case a dead body sprawled on the other side (in fact my mind is busily picking at the idea right now) … but what was I thinking when I wrote that card? It’s as foggy to me as “Mist” was the other day. Context. That’s what I need.

Forgive me, but there really isn’t much to do in the middle of the night when one has a desperate case of the flu (or food poisoning?), which is why I turned on the television. That ridiculous show “The Nanny” is on several times, I’m sorry to say. ESPN has semi-interesting things, including profiles of professional video game players (who insisted every 30 seconds that playing video games is a sport.) Paraphrased: “I train for this eight hours a day, just like any other athlete.” Local cable channels have great hearings about zoning: “So we decided to go with the gray cedar shingle…” Very serious, very nicely dressed. I admired the participants.

I found myself playing little games. Take one sip of ginger ale. Will the next sip (every 10 minutes, of course) occur before the next commercial break? It was almost exciting.