Industrial Park

Lost

Discarded

Abandoned

Forsaken

Tangled

Broken

Gris-Gris

My blood has begun to feel like molasses. Thick and viscous, it pumps through my body while simultaneously clogging the works. I feel like a human in slow motion with every movement a monumental effort, only to have my body stop mid action.

 I wake in the morning through sheer force of will.


My brain has gone into some sort of hibernation. This is frustrating because I have things to do. Thinking Things. Things I like. My brain has teamed up with my increasingly slowed down body to conspire against me. There is a rebellion in these bones.

I don't care for it.

I sulk. Balefully.

~~~

On Saturday I woke from a weeks worth of increasingly distraught dreams.  Not nightmares, which have the predictability of my archetypal characters, but dreams of loss, anxiety, sadness and tumult. 

Each evening, a new cast of characters - each less expected than the last - would saunter into my unconscious to have their way with me.

I woke, each time,  deep in melancholy.

I have always been a lucid and active dreamer.  This, however, was getting ridiculous. I was becoming wary of sleep. I didn't want to see those people. I didn't want to relive those losses. Rejection, abandonment, loss - over and over and over, every night.  For every step forward, I was being pushed backwards off of a precipice.

Exhaustion will force me into a defensive and reactive position. My sleep must be protected.

With little else than intuition, I decided to make a dream talisman. This decision was made, spontaneously, as I went out for my bike ride.

I had the vaguest idea of what I was looking for, and no bag to carry things in...so I improvised and used my yoga top. A smooth flat , black rock was the first thing that called to me. I knew I needed a red clover, and a small pine cone too.  I wanted a feather from the mother duck I'd watched in the woods this spring, but could find nothing left around where she had nested. A cluster of wild strawberries found contributed a leaf. A silvery spike of grass; a small white flower and some willow - A white yarrow, a sprig of beech. A cluster of juniper berries came last - all shoved down the front of my yoga top.

I ran upstairs so Terrance wouldn't ask why I had a bunch of things in my shirt. He thinks that I cling to sanity in the best of times, so this would have convinced him that I'd booked a seat on the crazy bus.

I found a little purple gauzy bag  and added my treasures. I added some fur from the heavily shedding Coco and Jackson. They were happy to help in exchange for a bit of dried strawberry.

As I placed it at the side of my bed, I only said "Please don't let me have those dreams again. I can't keep reliving that."

For the past two nights, no dreams.

Yet the weight inside my body remains. I am a golem, freezing midstride, equally befuddled and flustered at my inability to move forward.

meditative lull

So, um, Hi.

How is it going? It's been a little while, eh?

But here's the thing: I have conversations with you all the time in my head. Honestly. And because I do that, sometimes I lose track of when I last spoke, or what I've told you.  On the one hand, I suspect I need to speak more often - which is a bizarre thought. I mean, there are times when I can't shut the fuck up, but within the last few years I've grown quieter. More withdrawn into my mental milieu of conversations.

Insanity, perhaps.

~~~

Before summer, my therapist and I discussed my plan. You know, the plan for staying on the path. Idle hands not only makes devils work, but can get Dawn into a whole shitload of trouble.  I must keep a regular sleeping schedule. I must stay busy and productive. I must be forced to interact with humans and not simply live in a dark cave with the rabbits, cat and child.

To this end I've kept the regular sleeping schedule. I rarely sleep beyond 9 a.m. - which is a miracle from whatever deity to which you ascribe.  I wake up and stay awake (Hark!). 

I bought a bike too. I take actual rides on my bike. Every other day for a minimum of 30 minutes. My poor middle aged ass/crotch scream after these rides. They scream: "What in the ever loving fuck do you think you are doing?"

Given my solid 15 year "no exercise" stance, you can see why they may be engaged in protest. 

I go to work and sort our classroom. My intellect is brought to bear on the organization of materials and creations of systems for students to use the materials. As always, I am a builder of systems. It soothes me to know where everything is, to have touched every book in the library. Obsessive? Maybe a little but the sense of order, the sense of fully understanding what we have so I can plan for what we need fulfils some deep internal itch within. 

As of yesterday I have personally inspected and catalogued 2,139 books in our resource library. 

~~~

The third prong of the plan was "Be a little bit social." I mean, let's not go crazy, right?  I try to remember to say "Yes" when I want to say "No, thank you" and recede into the quiet safety of my bedroom.  Partly this is the habit of an introvert, but it doesn't always serve me well.

I put this part of the plan into action when I found a knitting group to join. No, I don't knit but I bring my rug hooking and work along side these people who have no affiliation with my job.

I've been attending for about six weeks and I've begun to actively wonder if they will change the date/place without telling me in order to get rid of me. 

Why? Well - remember the "I can offend anyone, usually without intent, in about five minutes" superpower? Yeah. 

Here are some highlights from the last several weeks:

Person announces that they read that jicama is not good for you and is used as a pesticide. Dawn reacts with shock and laughter, while proclaiming that this is ridiculous! She has been eating jicama for 16 years - there is some in her fridge right now!  Person is not amused.

Person tells another Person that she needs to watch the grandson because if babies don't crawl it leads to spine damage. Dawn holds back for about three minutes before blurting out that barring some sort of specific spinal/skeletal issue that LOADS of babies don't crawl. It means NOTHING. Dawn reiterates that she has cared for HUNDREDS of babies. Babies are her "thing" - like really. Persons glare at Dawn.

Person tells another person that doctors feel that babies should have no solid food before the age of One. Dawn can't even try to hold back. "WHAT?!?!?! That's ludicrous!" she proclaims. "What evidence is there for withholding food from six month old infants, barring allergy concerns?" 

Person defiantly says "Obesity!" Dawn gets even more riled, states that people should be more concerned about the quality of food they give babies and less about obesity. Dawn launched into her "We need fat to build synaptic connections" speech. She is glared at again.

Person asks Dawn if Common Core is a plot to inject communism into schools. Dawn begins to laugh - actually laugh and retorts "It's injecting something all right - Capitalism and stupidity." Dawn considers wearing her "Feminist Health Center" t-shirt to next gathering.

Person asks other person if the college in NYC that they visited for Person's daughter had "good security". Person responds that "They had guards at the gate, but that they really hated NYC."

Dawn knows what this is code for, so she slyly mentions that she now loves cities. In fact, she was just in Minneapolis and was thrilled by the city. Her hotel had some odd comments online about the neighborhood not being "safe". Dawn notes that as she is not scared by non-white people she found these comments to be ridiculous. Silence ensues.

Seriously - how long before they give me the slip?

~~~

I've got an instagram account now. Mainly this is so I can upload the pictures from my phone. They are always random - sometimes of me, frequently of the cat and other stuff I wander across during my bike rides or at work. balefulregards. That's me.  I still don't like my phone camera and carry around my nice camera in my purse, but the instagram thing amuses me. 

Self Defensive

Last Fall, Emily and I took a self defense class.

The origins of how we came to be in a room with a handful of other women, learning to punch, kick, shout and fight our way out of a physical attack seems ludicrous in hindsight ( she promised her father that he could pick some exercise activity if she could adopt a cat and he chose THAT), yet there we were.

As an adult woman, I am no stranger to threats or instances of gendered violence. I've had boyfriends push me  and hold me down while angry. I've experienced the not quite consensual but acquiesced to sex because it was just easier than the fight that would follow if you said no. The father and cousins who sexually assaulted me...all men.

I know what it is to walk on a college campus at night with mace in my hand, listening for abrupt movement. I know what it is to wrestle out of the grips of fraternity brothers who followed you to the bathroom and stood, blocking your exit, so they could try to get you back in to their rooms alone. I've made packs with girlfriends in college that we would stick together. No splitting up..because our reasoning was that it was more difficult to rape us if we were in a group.

I've given fake phone numbers to men in bars to get them to leave me alone. I've used the "I have a boyfriend/husband" line when the simple "No, thank you" wasn't enough. I've experienced the aggressive side of rejection, when the man begins calling you a fat dyke who he wouldn't fuck anyway..while you stare dumbly at this burst of hostility and glance around for allies.

And even now, at 44, I know what it is to walk on a college campus again while doing a visual scan of my surroundings while I walk to my car at night.

I know that my experiences are so typical that we rarely mention them, because that is just how it is.

Now I have a 16 year old daughter and my worries for her are changing. As a younger child, I made sure to know the adults surrounding her. I kept my predator antennae well tuned and alert for those who were looking for an unguarded child. I insisted that she wear bike shorts under all her dresses so she didn't need to worry about showing her underwear and I didn't need to worry about individuals who could become aroused by the sight of her underwear.

Yet, at 16, she is moving further out beyond me. This is good and right but...Oh. The things that wait out there, just off the path, where the light is dim?  Fucking terrifies me.


After the first night of class, when we were both hoarse from screaming and our arms were burning with exhaustion she became angry: Why did she need to do this? This was ridiculous and her father was just being overprotective and this was all STUPID!!! Then she said, "Nothing is ever going to happen to me!"

Oh, my sweet protected girl child.

By age 16, I was already sexually active. I had already been sexually assaulted by my father and cousins. I knew far more about life than I should have.

In reaction against my own experiences, I have sheltered her. I have tended and guarded and watched on her behalf. My vigilance has never ceased. Within her declaration that nothing would ever happen to her,  I worried that my vigilance had been unwise. She could not see the wolf in the woods.

Not that evening, but later, I explained that we hoped that nothing would happen to her....but it could. It could because she is female and women (and children) are the prey of the human world. I explained that she believed that she knew her friends and that she would never be in a situation where she would need to defend herself....but she might. I tried to explain that the line between being safe and not safe is gossamer thin.

I tried to explain that the world in which she is entering is one in which she has to be watchful because of her sex and on behalf of her sex.  I do this while trying to not color her world view with apocryphal tales, but rather with caution and realism.

I do this and feel the inner anger of a mother of a young woman who has to poison this well in order to save her from pain.

One Month Later

I think about the blog. I think about all of you out there. It's just that sometimes I get so distracted, or sad, or exhausted, or lonely to do anything but think it in my head.

The winter malaise has continued. While I continue to love my job and (almost) feel like I have a rhythm of anticipation in regards to the ebbs and flows of the semester, I am lonely here.

I don't make friends easily. Coupled with my occasional need to ferret myself away like a nocturnal animal, this makes finding friends difficult. I am also now at stasis with my job...Busy, but not drowning. This has meant that I can poke my head up and look around my environment in a long term way.

While I like my little city, I am starting to feel wildly out of place. This is ironic, since I lived in New Hampshire for 14 years and the places aren't really dissimilar.

However, I've changed. My years in Montreal allowed me to soak up something...different. While I was hardly a fashion plate there, my quirk "worked". I started to look like someone who lived in Montreal.

Here I am more noticeable, regardless of my eclectic choices of apparel. Someone said to me "You are SO City!" which I found odd because I'd never considered myself to be a "city" person.

I am the Doubtful Guest, writ large on my landscape

A strange exotic bird that people regard - not balefully really - but with a mixture of confusion and interest.




It just gets lonely.

******

My dancing partner and I did not win the "Dancing with the..." competition. One professor ( who won) is rumored to have offered his classes extra credit to show up and vote for him.  I was irritated by this, although I suppose it is the way the game is played.  My idealism does not serve me well in matters such as these.

I thought we did beautifully, though. We had waltz which is HARD, ya'll, HARD. I got my partner to agree to dance to the theme from Spirited Away, which tickled me beyond measure.  Then, I got him to agree to humor me in my costume choice: A corset over a lace shirt, with black skirt and peacock feather tail. I also got to wear a tiny hat.

Let's be honest, I will do just about anything to dress up and parade around. Including spending 8 hours a week in dance rehearsal.

I'm sad that it is over. Although time consuming I found that I like to dance. I'm also not too bad at it.

I know you're dying to see it...So Ok. Here it is.

Spring Brake

While Spring break has come and gone at my school, Spring is being temperamental and avoidant. I nearly cried to see the snow again this morning. I am a strong woman and don't generally complain about weather during the season in which it is expected, but I am being worn thin by this never-ending cold.

I have bought daffodils for my office to console me.

******

Right before break, I was nominated by a student to take part in a "Dancing with the UWL Stars" event.  It would be professors paired with members of the Competitive Ballroom Dancing team. I'm not a dancer, but I was tickled to be nominated. It seems that in under two years I've gained a reputation as a professor who may be willing to take part in a dancing competition.

I was a hairs breadth from saying "no, thanks" when I stopped myself.  Did I have the extra time? No, not really .....But......Ah, hell. Why not?! 

This is how I found myself practicing three days over Spring Break with my very patient and kind partner. Our dance style is Swing and I am willing if not always coordinated or graceful. 

Our first competition is Thursday night, so we have two more practices until we perform. I was glad for Swing because I  already have the wardrobe for it. My dance heels came Monday afternoon and I was able to practice in the heels during Monday night's rehearsal. It's one thing to walk all day in heels, it is quite another to do a very fast triple step swing dance in heels during which you are spun one direction than another while remembering to do something with your arms AND smile.

The one move we hadn't nailed down was a "finishing move" ( stop giggling. No, really, stop because then I start to giggle...).

The first suggested moved involved my leaping up and making some kind of shelf with my knees on one of his legs then being thrown forward and down. 

Um, No.  I put the kibosh on that move right away. Know thy limits.

The second move was one in which I throw myself backwards, kick one leg up to be held in his hand while he spins up around. 

We tried that move ONCE. While it was reported by the other dancers that it "looked good", they also told me that I needed to look happy and not horrified/terrified.  I could not promise that.

The move that we settled on was a kick ( by me) over him, then I crouch and he kicks over me. He spins around and reaches behind, between his legs and pulls me through his legs, throws me forward/up...and I fall backwards with my arms out and one leg kicked up.

I'll pause while you catch your breath from laughing.

I'm sore, but pleased. It's fun, this swing dancing, and I've been inspired to sign up for lindy hop lessons. I asked Terrance and to my utter shock, he's agreed. I told him if he refused I would canvas all my male colleagues for a dance partner. I would have, too. 

So think of me on Thursday night at 6:30 when my kind and patient partner and I are doing our Swing dance. Emily will be video taping this extravaganza for her father who will be in NYC.  Many of my students will be in attendance and my work colleagues will be cheering me on. 

I plan a well deserved martini post performance.

Spoiler! - No, I can't.

This Friday I had an appointment with my wax professional.

I like her well enough - she's no Rosa and not even Polly, but hey, I'm in Wisconsin. I'm just happy to find someone who is willing to do a Brazilian wax.

Your relationship with someone who does your wax should be...friendly.  I mean, you know. She is staring at your crotch, ripping out hair and you are chatting it up. It's not a time to invite controversy.

Unless you are me.

The comment was tossed off innocently. She is kind of a "everything natural is good" person, and I can live with that to a point. At some point the conversation turned to accepting the decisions of other people as their right and how we should respect those rights when she let the "My sister doesn't vaccinate her kids and people are so judgmental of her decision!" statement slip.

I lay on the table, considering my options. I blinked twice, hard. I considered letting it go. Seriously. I am naked from the waist down. She is one of the only people to offer this service in my immediate area. She is currently smearing very hot wax on my nether regions.

Deep breath. Don't do it, Dawn. Let it go.

Yeah. I can't.

I began to describe the hot zones that surround measles outbreaks, and the consequences of everyone who enters those hot zones for 24 hours Post exposure. I talk about elderly people, pregnant women and babies too young to be immunized.  I talk about what happens to them when they catch measles.

I move on to congenital rubella syndrome and what happens to pregnant women who are exposed to rubella. I discuss babies either spontaneously aborted, or born with significant brain damage and - if they survive birth - are often blind and require lifelong care.

I then describe the effects of chicken pox on children who use inhaled steroids for asthma.

I talk about the whooping cough outbreak in our local schools and in the dorms of the university.

I talk about how science has completely debunked any link between autism and vaccines and that, frankly, I feel strongly that children who don't have vaccines shouldn't be allowed in public school because they endanger all of the other people in the school, particularly the children who need herd immunity because of allergies to vaccinations or other factors which mean they can't be vaccinated.


There I am, laying half naked on the table alienating the person who has the hot wax in her hand.

I don't know what it is in my character that simply doesn't allow me to stay silent. It is not always a helpful trait, and often gets me in more trouble than is needed. Yet, there it is.

Can I stay quiet?

No, I can't.

Agents of change

A few weeks ago I assigned a webinar being hosted by NAEYC as an assignment for my students in my Administration of early childhood programs classes. The topic of the webinar was leadership and I thought it was a timely way to start moving into the overall topic of what it means to lead a program.

Yes, we get to budgeting and staffing patterns, but fundamentally I view this as an advocacy course. I take them through how parents apply for child care assistance, how child care and ECE is funded in the United States, quality rating scales and accreditation. It is sort of an odd course for them, not tied to how to teach precisely, but more about the external world that surround ECE. Important, but not terribly "thrilling".

I assigned some questions to which I wanted them to respond after listening to the webinar. I read their responses this weekend and wanted to talk a little about them in class today.

In one question I asked:

When describing the respect that is afforded Early Childhood teachers, Dr. Washington noted:

“If you are at a cocktail party and people find out you work with young children they go to find someone more interesting.”

Have you experienced this? Why do you think that ECE is thought of as “uninteresting”?

Most responded that they hadn't yet had this experience. On one hand, I was glad. One the other, I knew it was coming. I can't tell you how many times I've watched people glaze over when I talk about what I "do". This started when I was in college and announced my major, stating that I wanted to teach Kindergarten. My stepfather was crestfallen. "But! You have one of the most brilliant minds for literature I've ever seen! You want to just teach colors?! ABC's?!?!"

Yes. I knew, even at age 20, that ECE needed brilliant people. My oppositional nature prepared me to take the hit of professional disrespect, professional denigration and come back swinging with research, facts, and basic child development. 

Imagine when I later announced that I wanted to work with infants.  I think my parents could feel my expensive University of Vermont education burning.

So, there are my students today. It's been snowing since 7 a.m. and the majority have been in their field classrooms from 7:30 until noon. They come snow covered and red cheeked into my classroom. I ask them if they think all professors are paid the same wage. They nod yes. They assume that PhD = same degree = same pay rate.

No. I smile and shake my head.  A professor in the College of Business makes double what I do. We started the same year.

They are stunned. STUNNED. "With a PhD?!? Same as you?". Yep. Same as me. In fact, my alma mater of McGill is probably a higher ranked program than the ones from which they graduated. (McGill is generally ranked between 18 and 21 in the world)

"What does this tell you about the value placed on our profession?"

They are silent. 

They know they will never be wealthy. I've told them the 50% attrition rate of teachers in the first 5 year statistic over and over. I am not looking to inveigle them or hide the truth of what they are facing.  Yet this cold hard fact silences them. Two PhD's. Same university. Vast pay differences.

I move to another question:

A major theme in Dr. Washington’s talk was that we must be the change agents within our profession.  We must take control of our own standards and assessments in order to build the system we want, rather than complain about the one we have inherited.

Do you view yourself as an agent of change? How so?

Now, about half of them answered Yes. They did feel they could be or were agents of change. The other half expressed doubt. They had to do what their cooperative teacher wanted in order to make him/her happy. They had to deliver the canned, standardized curriculum because it was what the district wanted. They wanted to be employed when they graduated, so they were already preparing themselves to conform to ideas they knew, based on research, to be ineffective teaching methods. 

We spend four years teaching them to be creative curriculum creators and they give up as soon as they are handed a "manual" and told to read off the page.

"Listen", I said. "Every one of you is an agent of change. Now sure, you can't kick down the door and change everything the first day...but you can defend what you know to be right - based on what you know about child development. You can ask Why - over and over - just like you are a three year old. Why are we doing this? Why are we changing this? Is this really what is best?

Use research. It is here for you. Arm yourself with best practice. 

Teach parents what to expect. Help them be advocates for their children. 

Don't be afraid to say "no, thanks" to a job that isn't right for you. Sometimes you get fired. I did. I got canned as Director - partly because I was soft hearted and rotten with money, but also because I wanted my staff to earn more, and get better benefits and I wouldn't cram 24 kids into a classroom with 2 teachers. I valued quality over quantity. After I was done crying for two weeks because I was sure I had tanked my career at age 32 and was a failure, I found another job. You'll fail, but it doesn't mean game over.  

YOU are the gatekeepers. Each of you. You stand between children who want to love to learn and this insanity surrounding us - knowing full well that we will never be paid as we deserve and will most likely be blamed for things that are out of our control. 

Be subversive. Be smarter than stupid laws or mandates. Get in the system and maneuver through it. We change systems from the inside. We prove to individual people - parents, other teachers and administrators - that a play based curriculum delivers far better results than 1st graders filling in worksheets. 

I need you to believe that you are agents of change because I believe you can be. The day you truly  believe you have no power as a teacher, that you are a cog in the machine? You need to leave that job. You deserve better than that. Those children deserve better than that."

And then I started the next part of class. 

Fun with Eyeshadow

We all realize that I am just a 4 year old with toys, right?

Curiosity and Creation

Prompted by my friend Maija who, after reading the Arts and Crap post said:

"Tell me what to Do with her!?" ( meaning her 20 month old daughter)

Here are some things that I saw work pretty successfully with Younger kids (Toddlers and up):

First off, I don't do food as art material. I know, I know. Some of you are shaking your heads in horror.

"But Pudding Paint, Dawn!"

Nope. I feel strongly that food is food, and is not art material. Particularly when we are attempting to also socialize table manners and how we expect them to behave during meals, the message "Don't play with your food" gets mixed and convoluted when we are encouraging children to play with food - sometimes - but not others.

This means no beans or rice in the sensory table, no macaroni stringing, no whip cream painting.

It incredibly privileged to treat food as art material and I just won't do it.

Art materials are made to be non-toxic. For myself, I would prefer to spend more money on reputable brands for things such as paint, markers or crayons to be sure that the standards are being adhered to, in terms of non-toxicity.  There are other things you can get on the cheap, but I am somewhat a traditionalist when it comes to what brand paint/markers/crayons I purchase.

This means if you toddler eats a spoonful of paint, they aren't going to die. You might have some curious diapers for a couple of days, but no lasting harm. Same with Crayons - I used to warn families when their child had decided to snack on crayons that they may see the results at home, depending on digestive speed.

Crayons:

Don't be afraid to limit choices - a child doesn't need 96 colour choices of crayons at once.  Starting with Red, Yellow and Blue is fine. Switch them up every once in awhile. By the age of 4, you'll see them starting to differentiate more distinctly and choosing shades of colour, but at the beginning they don't need the full palate.

Offer different textures of paper, or place things which will give texture under the paper. When they draw, they will notice that there is something changing the way they are able to pull the crayon across the paper. Do rubbings of bark, or other textured surfaces outside.

Paint:

Limit choice again. Change texture of paint by adding different things - water, dish soap, sand. Offer objects as brushes: Q-tips, pine branches, sticks, dandelions, forks, small squares of sponges - whatever catches your fancy ( and theirs)

Food Colouring:

We often placed small medicine cups of coloured water next to absorbent material ( like coffee filters or paper towels) and either used eyedroppers to drop single drops of the water or something soft like a Q-tip to draw/paint. This makes soft pastel colours and emphasizes blending, as the water soaks through the paper.

Toddlers, being toddlers, want to stick hands in things. They want to taste. They want to feel. One of the more insane "projects" I've observed involved asking one year old to paint with toothbrushes and NOT stick the toothbrush and their mouth. The teachers spent the whole time telling children to not put the toothbrush in their mouth. Finally, with a child who simply wouldn't stop sticking the toothbrush in his mouth? They popped his binky in his mouth.

So now the child is told (via body language and adult choice) "I don't want to hear you - here, let's plug you up" all while asking a child to NOT DO the very thing he/she knows a toothbrush is used for: sticking in your mouth.

Talk about a pointless experience for a young child. Or rather, an experience which reinforces "Adults are crazy and I shouldn't listen to them."

Since toddlers ( and all children) are so kinesthetic, the process of creating is where the joy is found.

~~~~~

Last semester, I had a difficult class. It wasn't the personalities - I liked all of the students a great deal - it was their group unwillingness to create. They didn't play.

The question I kept coming back to? When did they stop playing? When did it become so preferable for them to be told what to do? When did the desire to create, to explore, to test what happens become...unpleasant?

I am prepping for a new semester and am hopeful that I can lead this new group to a different understanding of art and the delight that comes with curiosity.  I hope so, because their discovery is what fuels me to keep chipping away at the monolith of sameness so many of them survived.

Fiasco

The rundown of an academic calendar is always a sight to behold. Students are exhausted, Professors are exhausted and both want to be done with each other - at least temporarily - yet there is always one more assignment, one more narrative to complete.

Without fail, my colleagues and I ask ourselves "Why do we require this assignment?" when faced with stacks of grading, of reading and responding to portfolio's, of editing and revision.

I've staggered over the finish line of this term, particularly exhausted, having felt all term as if I am three steps behind myself. My organization has been mediocre, at best, and I have struggled in finding my groove in any of my classes.

Last week was the end of exams. I pulled the exam times on Saturday (!) and at 7:45 a.m. on Tuesday.
Terrance was heading to NYC for his week of meetings and this left me with surly teen, crazed feline and very baleful rabbits.

After dropping Terrance off at the airport at 9:30a.m. on Monday, I drove home and hopped into the shower. After performing my ablutions, I stepped out to find the phones of the house blowing up. Texts! Ringing! Beeping!

I grab my phone to find 4 texts from Terrance. I'd been in the shower for 12 minutes. He was frantic:

"Where are you?"
"I've left my computer!"
"My plane boards in 15 minutes"
"Where are you!!!!"

I begin throwing clothes back onto my moist self. I text: "I'm on my way. I was in the shower."

I get dressed and out of the house in under 2 minutes with his computer and charger in hand. I hand it off to Terrance and race back home. Did I mention it is 8 degrees outside?

Later that day, I get the mail and find in it a letter that agitates me mightily.

I am upset. I get in the house where Emily is agitating for me to take her out to dinner. Um, No. You'll eat these hamburgers that you need to watch. It is the simplest of cooking tasks - Watch this and make sure they don't burn.

I go upstairs to call Terrance because I am losing my shit.  Just as the call connects us, the fire alarm goes off.

We don't have a normal fire alarm in this house. We have one that yells in an annoying humanesque female voice "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!" while blaring an incredibly annoying siren.  They go off in a zone formation meaning that they only get louder.

Terrance is yelling on the phone, Emily is screaming downstairs and I am trying to coordinate both of the humans to whom I am legally bound to both calm them down AND get the fvcking siren to turn OFF.

I finally hang up the phone and wave enough towels in the direction of the fire alarms to silence them. Rabbits are now thumping loudly, angered by the noise. Emily is eating her hamburgers and I walk back into the bedroom to calm the rabbits and look something up on the internet.

It was at this moment that Emily barrels up the stairs shrieking "SOMETHING IS HITTING THE BACK DOOR, SOMETHING BIG, AND IT IS FREAKING ME OUT!"

I look, incredulously, at the flapping child before me. At 15, she is almost as tall as me. The idea that some thump has sent her screaming in my direction is unbelievable. I yell, unkindly, that she needs to get some god d@mn ovarian fortitude and get down there and figure it OUT.

She continues to flap and scream. I go down ( she is my shadow behind me) and walk toward the sliding glass door when the THUMP happens. Emily shrieks "THATS THE NOISE!!"

I walk over and grab the blinds and pull them back to find the cat. The never been outdoors before cat who is now Throwing himself, repeatedly at the glass. He is in 3 inches of snow. He looks terrified.  THUMP! He hits again while I scrabble to get the security stick out of place and get the door open.

He tumbles inside looking traumatized. I realize he must have snuck out behind me when I walked over to the mailboxes to get the mail.

When everyone is finally in bed and Micha, the cat, is now attached to the hip of every human he sees I ponder my "No drinking during the week" stance.

Considering I have an exam to give at 7:45 the following morning, I mentally tick on off in the "Owe you one" column and try to go to sleep.

The Dawn Show

Every little thing

On Friday the 8th, I was walking to the third TedX rehearsal when I finally picked up my voicemail.

Now, I am lousy with phones. I don't love them and will ignore mine for ages. I don't stare at it with intention nor play games on it. It is a phone. It lives in my purse.

The whole week had been a clusterfvck. On Monday, instead of taking my antidepressant in the morning I took my sleeping pill.  This found me falling asleep at my desk minutes before I was supposed to be in class. I clumsily made apologies in a pitiful, spacey way and absconded back to my bed to sleep for six hours.

On Thursday, I had my yearly physical including mammogram. I got flu shots, blood drawn, and every orifice examined.

It was a long day. On Tuesday's and Thursday's I teach until 6 p.m. With the night coming earlier, it can feel as if I'd been awake for a million years by the time I get home and prep for the following day.

Friday was faculty meeting day and rehearsal 3 of 4.

The phone rang during the faculty meeting. I apologized, startled at the unexpected disruption. I forgot about the call entirely until I was walking across campus to the building in which the rehearsal was being held.

I retrieved my voicemail. It was the hospital calling because they'd seen something on the mammogram and wanted me back in to do a second scan.

It was a strange sensation. I simultaneously felt a wave of panic and fear, coupled with my rational brain shhh'ing the fear.  I knew the stats about callbacks for mammograms. I don't have a familial history of breast cancer.  I'd never had nightmares about having cancer. Of all my fears - and they are many - this was not one that had rented space in my brain.

My breasts and I have had a 30 year love affair. They have always been a part of my body that I have adored. I've never wished them smaller or larger. I fed a human from them for close onto two years.  I have shared them with lovers. They have never been my enemy.

The fleeting idea that my body had betrayed me was the panic. I live so frequently in my brain that the realization that body has much say in most day to day functions can startle me. This is silly, I know, and I work at staying connected and in balance.

Yet, the niggling small voice remained. The voice of "Ah. You knew it would happen eventually. You just didn't expect this" curled around my brainstem.

As in all of life, I find that my instinct to shield Emily from my internal tumult snaps me out of my hazy monologue. She must sense no disturbance, at least not prematurely. There is no place for that worry in her life and my role - as her adult anchor - is to clear all of that shit from her shores. Being 15 is more than enough on her plate, thank you very much Life.

I stand outside of the building on campus and make the call. I am given an appt. for the first thing on Tuesday. I fight the screamy voice in my head that wants to shriek "GET IT OUT OF ME! WHAT EVER YOU SAW, GET IT OUT."

I tell Terrance, who is a hypochondriac on the very best of days. Now I manage his panic and fear while maintaining my umbrella over Emily.

Yet and Still, there is a Ted event to get through Tuesday evening. There are rehearsals and I am not yet pleased with my story. I do what I always do. I focus, with laser intensity, and push the callback from my brain. "Not yet", I whisper to it, "Not yet."

On Tuesday morning, they show me the scans where the solid looking lump is circled in several scans.

"Oh", I murmur. "I can see why you wanted me to come back. I would have been concerned about that too."

The radiology tech is a truly lovely woman. She explains that she is going to try to flatten the hell out of the spot and see if she can't get the lump to disappear in the new scans. If she can't, then I go to ultrasound.

We work as a team. I hold still and tolerate as much as I can while the machine makes my ample bosom as thin as possible.  For all my internal fears and blockades, physical pain is something that I can bear like a workhorse.  I stay silent, smiling, and tell the tech to do whatever she needs to do to get good pictures.

Your mind goes to odd places in moments like this. I command any lump to flatten. Not for me, but for Emily. It's too soon for her to lose a mother. She needs my base for a couple more years before she will be ready to fly off on her own.

I don't fear death, but I will not abandon my child. Abandonment is my fear. The breasts that fed her will not take me from her. I will not allow it.

The kind tech smiles at me. "I don't see anything, Dawn. I think it was tissue that we flattened out, but I am going to have the doctor look too. He may want more pictures or the ultrasound, but let me go and speak with him."

When the doctor gives me the "all clear", I dress and head back out to the waiting room where men flutter like fall leaves, aimless and uncertain.

Later that night, after my Ted talk, I tell Emily what has happened. I reassure her that I am perfectly fine and she has nothing to fear. Her brow wrinkles as her comprehension touches on the edge of the void which I have concealed from her.

I kiss her forehead. 

Haunted

It must be the time of year.

The wind.

The early twilight.

I see three years ago peeping at me from corners and turn on more lights to drive the shadows from my space.

I read my old Constantine comics, reveling in glorious pointlessness until something looms up and smacks me back to earth.

I am robbed of pleasure while I move to keep one step ahead of my ghosts.

That is my primary task these days, staying one step ahead of the memories waiting to pull me back to them.

I want to ask my therapist "When will I stop being haunted?" but I am sure she would think me crazier then we both know I am.

I consider building a bonfire and throwing scraps of reminiscence into the flames.  I will chant secret words and rebuild walls of protection.

The winter will be long and I have no extra anima to spare.

Whorish Ravens redux

Whorish Ravens is up again.

For your viewing pleasure.

Halloween Horror

Circa October 2007 from Gimlet Eye

I must be honest, I occasionally love the questions of the week here at ClubMom. They give me something to chew on...something to think about in relation to my own child, my own family.

This is this weeks question:

What is a great Halloween idea you want to share with other moms?

Well. To understand my answer, you must understand something about my kid.

Masks terrify her. Moving things ( like automated statues) scare the holy bejesus out of her. Anything that moves suddenly or unexpectedly can send her into a shrieking puddle of child who is scaling up my leg in order to get to the top of my head.

We finally talked her into the "Rainforest Cafe"...last year, and even then, we requested a spot where she could observe from a safe distance. Those toys that talk when you walk by them? Emily RUNS down toy aisles to get away from them. Tickle me Elmo wasn't so cute to my kid. To her, he represented an obvious threat to her well being and should be avoided at all costs.

So, Halloween? It's a hard celebration for her.  In New Hampshire, we would walk by each house and Emily would observe it for several minutes before deciding whether or not to approach the door. Anything too overtly scary, houses with sound effects, or other "fake people" on porches are resolutely passed over. For her, it is not the amount of candy she gets, but the "approachability" factor.

Last year, she consented to go to one house which had passed the initial "roadside scan". I walked up with her and stood to the side as she knocked and sweetly sang, "Trick or Treat!" The resident offered her the bowl from which to choose her candy. She reached out to choose......and the bowl apparently had some kind of hand which popped out of the bowl when it sensed movement.

My kid leaped back about 20 feet, scrambling backward in an attempt to get off the porch and over to me. I glared at the homeowner. Did he not realize how hard I have worked to get her to even walk up onto porches by herself? And now, he springs the "Scary hand popping out of the candy bowl"  bullshit on her?  Dear Lord, dude.  You just set me back two years.

The homeowner was puzzled. I am sure that 99% of kids laughed and thought that this was funny, and scary. Here was now before him a Little Kim Possible, sobbing on her mothers leg. He held out the candy to me... "Take some for her. I'm really sorry." He was lucky I didn't punch him in the face.

Now, I know some families go all out for Halloween. They love the play between the real and unreal. The pageantry of dressing up and being scared, while knowing that you are safe.

But for my kid? Don't leap out at her. Don't offer her candy in bowls that grab her hand. Don't wear a scary mask to the door. Whatever makes up her hard wiring has made her really sensitive to these things. Call it a Jungian collective unconscious issue, a sensory integration issue, or my weird parenting. 

So my advice/idea? Know that what is fun for one child is not fun for another. The line between fun and scary can be painfully close for younger children. That just because YOU know it isn't real, doesn't mean that the child will see it that was as well.

Oh, and here is a tidbit of extra from my years of working in Early Childhood. Keep a second bowl of candy (not mixed with the other stuff that you want to eat...Like the Reese's peanut butter cups...not that I know anything about this) that is nut free. This way you can ask if kids have allergies when they come to the door. Parents will appreciate the effort, and the kids will allergies won't have to throw away all of their candy.

Beans and Applesauce

When Emily was small and would pester me about what was for dinner, I would eventually tell her "Beans and Applesauce" to get her to stop asking for her preferred meal choices.