Internet Grapes

The pieces were there all along

Usually I do one or two jigsaw puzzles over winter break, more than that over the summer, and maybe one during spring break. Once in awhile I’ll do one over a long weekend. (I did many during the initial Covid lockdown.) One reason I don’t do them more often is because our house only has one good puzzle-doing surface - the dining room table. And although we don’t all eat together at the dining room table all that often, I like having that as an option, at least. So I don’t do puzzles very often. 

This year I got a puzzle for Christmas, as I often do, but I didn’t make time to put it together before school started. Last Sunday (the day before school started for me & the other teachers, but two days before the students would return) I decided to break my own usual rule, and I started the puzzle that Annabel had given me for Christmas. It’s called “Summer Fun,” and it’s much wider than it is tall, and the picture on it is a beach scene. There are lots of parasails and boats, and there is a lot of sand and sky and water and a boardwalk in the foreground. There are a lot of beach goers of various ages of various sizes and shapes and colors, some bicycles and strollers and food carts and beach umbrellas and dogs and scooters and dune buggies. And more! It’s the kind of puzzle I enjoy doing, because all of the background is so full of little things that you don’t have to spend a lot of time trying piece after piece and piece in one vast unvaried section of the puzzle after you’ve matched all of the pieces that having easily identifiable - although perhaps tiny! - differences. 

It’s now Saturday, and I still have a ways to go before the puzzle will be done, but I’ve made a lot of progress. I’ve hit that point where, whenever I sit down for a few minutes, I see quite a few new matches without even trying. It’s probably the point in the puzzle that I enjoy most, because it gives me what I guess I am looking for when I do puzzles: challenging questions, that require me to struggle enough to feel like I’m exercising my eyes and my mind, but for which there are certain unequivocal correct answers that are extremely gratifying to discover. Sometimes when I’m doing puzzles, I say “bam!” when I snap each piece into place, especially when I’m approaching the end stages of a puzzle. (I’m pretty sure my dad’s the one who started doing this one year when we were doing puzzles during our week at Potato Creek State Park, but the rest of us were quick to pick up on it.) 

I am 51 years old, and I am a fourth year middle school teacher. I was a theatre major in college, then started a masters in theatre program, temped for awhile while I applied to law schools, then attended law school, then worked for 11 years as a lawyer, first at a law firm and then at a title insurance company in their claims department. I had gone to law school basically because I loved being in school and didn’t know what I wanted to do. But I never loved being a lawyer, so when I was laid off in 2009, I actively looked for a new job as a lawyer, but I actively hoped that I would figure out another career that fulfilled me in a way that being a lawyer never had. (I believe that if I’d sought to become a criminal lawyer, the one type of law that really fascinated me, I might have felt differently.) I initially had no idea what that new career might be. I spent time taking family portraits and some time copywriting. I eventually started volunteering at Annabel’s preschool once a week, then started teaching there four days a week. The other teachers were pretty great, and getting to know and work with the kids was amazing, but the pay was extremely low, and I didn’t really get to make many decisions. I wanted something more, but was hesitant to make a move, since I was (am) still drowning in law school student loan debt, and didn’t want to do the wrong thing again. I started subbing for our school district, and got to try out elementary, middle, and high schools. It was so, so hard. But it was also extremely rewarding. After a year of subbing, I decided that I would like to become certified to teach middle school math full-time. After two more years, I received my teaching license, and the next August — over 9 years after I last worked as a lawyer, at the age of 48 — I started teaching in an 8th grade math classroom at a middle school 10 minutes from my house, and I’m still there with no plans to leave. When I talk about my later-in-life career change to people, I often say that being a teacher has been harder than being a lawyer was, because that’s true. It’s also true that while I can’t always say that I like how a particular schoolday went, I love the students, and I truly love that I’m a teacher. I don’t know if I should ever have been a lawyer, but I am 100% certain that becoming a teacher was the right decision. Bam.

The other day I came across a little online quiz that I’d filled out a few years ago. “What’s the first job you remember wanting to do?” was one of the questions. “Teacher,” was my answer. (I chose to go to law school because I didn’t want to leave school.) 

As I was working on my puzzle this morning, I picked up a piece with a small curved bright red spot on it. I had picked it up many times before, comparing it to the picture of the puzzle and to the pieces that I’d already put into place, but time after time, I couldn’t figure out where it went. This morning, though, I picked up the piece and immediately recognized it. I dropped it into its spot, which connected two large parts of completed puzzle to each other. “Bam,” I said to myself quietly, and laughed a little. 

And then suddenly I was struck by the fact that the puzzle piece had been there the entire time, and that in fact I had looked at it over and over, but it wasn’t until I recognized it that I could fit it into place, and this felt like a very Wizard of Oz type life lesson. (“You’ve always had the power, my dear. You just had to learn it for yourself.”)

How many pieces are still there right now, sitting in front of me, waiting for me to recognize them? Is it possible to help my kids? — Or my students? — to find the pieces earlier? More easily? How many pieces are lost to me forever, never to be put in place? Have I been particularly bad at recognizing the pieces of my life puzzle, or are some pieces just hard to find no matter who you are? Would someone else have recognized the connections between the pieces earlier? Could I have done better if I’d changed something? Listened to my inner self earlier? Trusted myself more? Spent more time thinking and wondering and less time doing the next thing?

THE PIECES WERE THERE ALL ALONG. I just had to recognize them for myself.

 

It is almost noon on a quiet rainy Saturday, three days before it will have been half a century since my birth, and as I take the puppy out to pee for the tenth time today, I find myself thinking about the world half a century ago, and my parents, half a century ago, and my children, half a century from now. In my head, I jump back and forth between the three times - what did my parents expect for me? From me? Have I done anything to make a difference? In another fifty years, will I be remembered? For what? 

I think a lot about my life and what it means or doesn't mean. I think a lot about when I might die, and how if I die now it will no longer be a tragedy in the way it would have been if I had died 40 years ago (she wasn’t even 10 years old!), or 20 years ago (she graduated from law school 2 years before; so much was still ahead of her), or maybe even 10 years ago (she leaves behind a husband and two young daughters, ages 6 and 2). I think, often, about how long it took me to begin this teaching career that seems to suit me, and how I feel robbed of this new chance, with my second year of teaching cut short by the coronavirus, and this third year turning me into an "essential worker" who isn't supposed to mind going back to school. After all, I have known that there was a chance I would die defending my students against a school shooter, so how is this different? Except of course it is. 

 

WHATEVER YOU NEED AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS

Dear Katie, 

Is it appropriate for you to know how much it hurts me when you won't look me in the eye? When you won't tell me what you are thinking or how you are feeling? When you won't tell me how I can help you? 

How about when I give you a hug because I think it might make you feel better? I stand while some seconds pass, squeezing you - but gently! not too tight! - and I feel so much love course through me. I try to use sheer force of will to make my love find its way deep into your heart. I think to myself that if I just hold on tight enough or rub your back just right, that you will feel my love reach you, and I hope that after enough seconds pass, you will speak or cry or wrap your arms around me. 

Instead, you stand there, limp, as if you are only allowing me to hug you because you think that if you do I will leave you alone afterward, until the force of your uncaring (which may not be uncaring at all, but which feel like it is) reaches deep down into me, and I start to cry, and I move away from you. I try to hide from you that I'm as upset as I am, but I think you know. I am a terrible, horrible, no good poker face. I think maybe there is a part of you, deep down, that not only knows how much I am hurt, but that takes some pride from not allowing yourself to be moved by my grief. If I break down, you can feel stronger. 

I know that you are strong. 

I realize, each time this happens, that I have fallen for the oldest trick in the book, despite having been warned about it since you were born and maybe even before that: I keep thinking we are friends. There are so many signs, pointing the way to friendship!

We like so many of the same books and movies and tv shows and music, and we share new discoveries with each other. We can talk for hours, or just sit and binge watch tv together, and some of my very best giggle fits have been with you. We have so many inside jokes, and sometimes I know what you are thinking just from a single glance my way. On other days, at other times, you give some of the best hugs I've gotten, and we often come to each other for comfort, and to share stories we think will make the other laugh or cry. You come to me for advice, and sometimes I ask for your advice, too. I love you and admire you and in so many ways, I want to be more like you, or I want to commiserate with you over the things we do that we wish we didn't, or the ways we felt that we wish we didn't. 

But we are not friends, not really, not yet. If a friend looked at me the way you look at me on a day like today; if a friend refused to speak to me about how she was feeling; if a friend said that I could give her a hug and then stood, limp as a doll, while I did...if those things happened between me and a friend, then probably we would not be friends anymore, or at least our friendship would be lessened or damaged. I know that since I am your mother, and not your friend, my job is to take whatever you can dish out (and maybe even to recognize that in the grand scheme of things, what you are dishing out is not the worst meal I've ever had, not by a long shot), and to love you and forgive you and be here for you when you decide to emerge from the frozen, angry version of yourself that is in charge right now. I do love you, and I will always forgive you. I am here for you when you want me, and I will always be here.

I think I understand now that these days like today are what people meant when you were born and they said that parenthood would "never get any easier." They forgot, I still believe, how all-encompassing it is to take care of a newborn, how you can go for hours without being able to have one literal anxiety-free minute to yourself, and how scary it is to care for a precious human who can't give you enough signals to let you know what they need, whether what's happening is life-threatening or just mildly irritating. In so many, many ways, parenting gets easier. You can clothe and dress and feed yourself, and walk where you want to go, and tell me where it hurts. And you never ever comforted me when you were a baby, but now, on many days, you do. You are so close to being my friend. 

When people said it never gets any easier, I now believe that they were coming from a place like the place I am in today, where I have no idea what to do or say to you to make it any easier. When you were a newborn, your needs were mostly limited to four things: food, a diaper change, sleep, or to be held. You were a pretty easy baby - no health issues, no colic, no developmental challenges, and it was easy for me to feel like a good mom. When you were upset, it didn't take that long to cycle through those four things, or to narrow it down and then try each of the possibilities, but now! Now there when it comes to what you need, there are infinite possibilities, and not only do I not have time to cycle through them all, but there is also a very good chance that what you need is something I can't give you. I'm sure that a lot of the time, what you need is amorphous and undefinable and complicated and layered, and even if it's something I can give you, there is no way I can give it to you right now, because it would take hours or days or weeks or months to do what needs to be done to satisfy that need. (Is the need stability? Trust in unconditional love? Forging your own independence?) It is so much harder to feel like a good mom now, at least for me. It is even harder to feel certain that I am making the right decisions with respect to you and Annabel. There is so little that is black & white, and so much that is gray. 

I'm sorry that so often, I don't know what to do or what to say. I'm sorry that I get my feelings hurt when you feel how you feel. I'm sorry that I take it personally when you don't want to be hugged, and I'm sorry that I make you feel like you have to accept my hug even when you don't want it. I wish I could be stronger for you, or more compassionate, or more restrained, or more sweet, or more of WHATEVER YOU NEED AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS. But I wish I did. I am trying, even if it feels like I'm not.

You have asked me, more than once in the past few years, if I have written more of these "Dear Katie" letters, and tell you that I haven't written one in a long time. You say that I should write one again, and I have a feeling that a letter like this isn't what you mean, but here is what I have for you today. Maybe someday you can read it and find that it gives you an extra boost of compassion for your own child. Or for a friend. Or for me. 

(And Annabel, my dear sweet Annabel, if your needs are getting lost in the shuffle of the angst between the other three of us, I am so sorry. I love you so very much, too.)

Love, Momma 

Just because we don't know when this will end doesn't mean that it won't.

April 5, 2020

There are a lot of days, when, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, I feel that I am measuring out my life in coffee spoons. Wake up when I wake up, check the time, try to go back to sleep if it's before 6:30, go ahead and get up if it's after that, get out of bed and put on my robe and my slippers while grabbing my phone & my water bottle & my Apple watch, come downstairs, turn up the heat, let out the dog, start the coffee, put out the dog's food and then let her back in, go to the bathroom, wash my face, tidy up the kitchen while I wait for the coffee to be ready, pour some coffee, sit down and drink some coffee while I read about the world or watch videos or read a book or work on my puzzle or play Candy Crush on my phone. Suddenly it is later, and Geoff is getting up, and we talk. Later still, the girls start moving around, and at some point they actually come downstairs. Most of the time, we are not eating together - or rather, Annabel and I might eat breakfast together, and Katie and Annabel might eat lunch together, and Geoff and Annabel and I might eat dinner together, and then later Katie gets something for herself. We all get up and different times and get hungry at different times, and supposedly last week was "spring break" anyway, so we didn't wake people up, and we didn't make people go to bed, and NOW WHAT, is what I feel a hundred times a day. I make lists and charts so that I can look back and see that yes, I did do something today, perhaps even something of value to me or someone else, and so now if I want to sit and read or watch a show or listen to music, it's ok, I haven't done nothing today, I did these things, see them on my list? I did those things. 

Tomorrow we begin a new variation on our new normal - spring break is over, and for an hour each weekday I now have to be available to my students for a scheduled "office hour," and it is insane how constrained I feel, knowing that I have a specific place I have to be for one hour every week day, considering that I haven't had anywhere I had to be, ever, for almost three weeks now. I miss my students, and I will be excited to get to see them (if I get to see them) or exchange emails with them or even just know that they are reading or responding to my messages to them. 

May 15, 2020

The secret, it appears - and this is not really a surprise - is to stay busy. A rainy day filled with baking and cooking and sewing and talking and a strawberry margarita at the end of the day, when the sun is starting to peek out from behind the dark clouds that spawned a thunderstorm earlier in the day - is a day when things feel okay. It's almost like a Friday on a long-anticipated three day weekend after weeks of too-busy, when I am doing exactly what I want to do with my free time, instead of like day 60-something in a long line of days that are too much the same to feel normal. Today I drank coffee and attended a (Zoom) staff meeting and helped my daughter with a school assignment and finished a dress I was sewing for her. I made cookies from a recipe I've been eyeing for several days, and had a (Zoom) chat with a student, and made a video to share with students. I made a Hello Fresh dinner while listening to music and singing along and sometimes dancing in the kitchen, and watched the rain come down. Right now the sky is bright and it looks like the kind of sky that has a rainbow hiding in it somewhere. I haven't found the rainbow yet, but that doesn't mean it's not there. 

I have found myself thinking, lately, about how our generation hasn't had to live through a time period like this, when how we live each day is constricted by a dangerous, unusual situation that we can't predict the end of. We have been lucky. Surely the people who lived through WWII experienced something in some ways similar - not knowing when or if they would be able to resume "normal" life. Just because we don't know when this will end doesn't mean that it won't. 

 

 

I have time

I see people sharing stories of the pandemic with specific information about what day they're on (Day 13: I have not been in a car in a week and a half...), but I don't know how to number how far into this we are. I could start with the day after March 13, the last day that school was open, which was the last day I was actually teaching students, and the last day Katie & Annabel were at school. That would make today Day 19. But that weekend Katie's boyfriend came over, and our local friends came over for coffee (we didn't hug, but we sat at our dining room table together), and Katie's best friend came over, and Annabel had a sleepover at her best friend's house, and we had a church service on Sunday morning. If we started counting after that weekend was over, then today is Day 17. But the school employees had to keep coming in to the schools for 3 week days after the kids were gone, so if we started counting after that, then it's Day 14. But the day after that, I went to the Red Cross to give blood, and that night Geoff and I went into the church to meet with 4 other people to record services for the next two Sundays, so maybe it's only Day 13. It doesn't really matter, but I keep wanting to give each day a number, I think maybe because knowing how far exactly how far into this we are will give me some clarity about how much more we have to go. 

My lack of ability to designate a specific day fits in well with the mood of all of this, or at least with my mood about all of this: I don't know anything for sure. I don't know how long we'll spend 99% of our time at home, I don't know what we'll do to fill the days, I don't know who will be the first person I know to get officially diagnosed with COVID-19, I don't know who will be the first person I know to die from it, I don't know whether any of the four of us have actually already had the virus, I don't know when I will get to teach students again in a classroom, I don't know whether Geoff and I will get to go to take our scheduled trip to Prague this June (although I assume we won't), I don't know if the people I love will be ok, I don't know when I will get to hug anyone other than these three people I live with (my parents! my brother! my niece, my nephews, my in-laws, my friends!) again, I don't know when life will get back to normal or if it will ever get back to normal at all, or if whatever new normal we get to will bear much resemblance to the old normal. 

I do know how lucky I am. I am not working, but I am still getting paid. Geoff is working from home, and he is still getting paid. We have power and technology and streaming services and plenty of food. We have each other - there are three people that I do get to see every single day, and they are three of my very most favorite people in the whole world. I am lucky that I enjoy plenty of things that I can enjoy right here at home - jigsaw puzzles and crossword puzzles and books and magazines and movies and tv shows and music and occasional board games. 

I wish the weather were nicer. I wish I knew when I could go eat at my favorite restaurants again (I wish I knew if my favorite restaurants will still be in business when they're allowed to re-open for dining). I wish I knew more. I wish we didn't have a president who seems to care about no one but himself and who makes decisions that actively damage the country and the people in it. 

Katie, who is now 16 years old, has asked me if I am still writing, and I have said that I haven't. She says that I should. Here's another way I'm lucky: I have time, now, to do that.