LifePundit

It's 50 Degrees and Cloudy, So They Cancelled School

I love South Carolina. Right now it's 50 degrees and cloudy. I just got an e-mail, a text-alert on my cell and an automated voice-call on the land line: School is canceled tomorrow because it might snow.

I do hope that it does. I could use some snow, so long as it doesn't hang around. Snow is best for one day or two. Not the whole winter.

Snow is a reason for a holiday. Outside will smell wonderful -- the air heavy with pine because our poor trees weren't made for snow. The snow will collect on the needles and in the branches and be too heavy for the tree. Snap! Down they'll fall. Which is all fine provided they don't fall on your power lines because then, in your all-electric, not-too-warm-from-the-heat-pump house, you'll be cold and in the dark. And if you live in the country and are on a well, you'll also be thirsty and stinky because your well won't work without electricity and you won't have water.

But sometimes it snows and the power doesn't go out. That, my friends, is a real holiday. A reason to cancel school, stay home with your family, and drink hot chocolate and marvel at the stuff floating down from the sky. Snow. That rarest of weathers.

The Twilight of My Peace

Twilight, the movie, opened last Friday. Lily went with a group of friends to celebrate one of their birthdays. My minister, who is the mother of the birthday girl, took them all. She said she wanted to know what they were watching, and I was glad to delegate that task to her.

I tried listening to Twilight, the book, on my iPod. I'm clearly not the audience. I couldn't finish it. I think it's the equivalent of soft porn for teenagers, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Lily has read every book in the series.

Lily spent the weekend cleaning up her room. She emptied photo frames and put pictures of the "hot" guys from Twilight in them. She even framed her ticket stub.

The walls used to have posters of large cats from the zoo, zebras and horses. One horse poster survived the Twilight purge. The rest of the frames are filled with Twilight-obelia and "hot" guys.

She showed it all to Paul and me. We made sincere grunting noises. They seemed to satisfy her. Later, Paul said, "At least they're hot guys she'll never meet."

Buddy (her horse) stood at the fence when we drove up from school today. Lily asked me to cancel her riding lesson because she had too much homework, and hasn't been riding much lately anyway. That was convenient for her teacher so we canceled.

Buddy was still at the fence when I walked down to the mailbox. I petted his friendly self and wondered if he could compete with a hot vampire. I think both of us shared this sad moment. He cannot.

I hope she'll come back to us soon. Maybe there's room for both hot guys and forgiving horses. That one horse poster remains.

Horses are forever. Vampires are just immortal.

Sick Kids and Field Trips

The bus taking the eighth graders on their much anticipated field trip to Washington, D.C., just left. Lily's not on it. She caught a bad cold on the church retreat over the weekend.

She's a healthy girl who rarely gets sick. But she gets sick every time she goes on a field trip. It's partly a matter of not enough sleep (there's not even eight hours scheduled for sleep on these trips), getting run down and getting exposed to the sick kids on the trip. Because there are always sick kids on the trip.

I agonized all yesterday and last night over whether or not to send Lily. If sh'es just got a cold, she could power through. But what if it's the early stage of something else, and she gets worse?

And whatever it is, who else might catch it?

I was surprised to find myself rationalizing all the reasons that Lily should go anyway. I was surprised because every time she comes home sick from a field trip and tells me that so-and-so was on the trip and was sick from the moment she got on the bus and sneezed on everybody, I feel like calling so-and-so's mama and asking her just what was she thinking to send a sick kid on a trip? It can't have been fun for the kid, and it's sure not fun for the rest of the  now sick kids.

When Lily was in private school she went on a field trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, that was nearly a week long. A doctor's daughter got on the bus sick. And by the end of the field trip, one-quarter of the children were sick. At least one-quarter. And one-quarter of these kids missed the next full week of school. I know this is unusual, but one of the children developed lung-scarring and missed part of the next year of school as well!

Lily is still talking about how awful it was to be sick and to be marched all over Williamsburg. Not the memory we were hoping for.

But even with those experiences behind me, I tried to rationalize a way it would be all right to send Lily. Oh, she's probably not contagious. Probably all of them have colds. She'll feel fine by tomorrow and can just rest on the bus. We don't want her to miss anything. And for goodness sakes, we've paid our money which we probably can't get back!

But Lily was so droopy this morning. No fever but not well. I didn't have the heart.

I called the lead teacher to tell her that Lily wouldn't be going. And although I heard disappointment in the teacher's voice, I heard something else: Relief! She said that two other sick girls were going and she was worried about them. They've been sick with something and had been running fevers. I could tell the teacher was concerned that they weren't as well as their mothers thought or claimed.

The group is going to be walking a lot in what we consider cold weather. They're going to be walking all day. That's not how you get over being sick. The lead teacher said that Lily would be miserable, and I'm sure that's true. Unless she suddenly gets well tomorrow. Oh well. That is life.

I'm surprised that the two other sick girls are going. And I'm even more surprised with what mental gyrations I was willing to perform in order to justify sending Lily, too. I was going to use the time alone this week to power through NaNaWriMo.

And I'm glad that the child is in bed, getting better (I hope). That's where she needs to be.

Even though I'm not happy about an Obama administration coming in, I do expect that Washington will still be there later and available for exploration.

The Gay Girl on the Church Retreat

Lily just got back from her first church retreat. She went with 500 middle-schoolers from around the state to a weekend retreat in the mountains. I've been using the time she's been away to write my novel and to date my husband, which has been great.

As usual, I'm not prepared for what happened next. Apparently, Lily feels like she was "hit on" by a lesbian girl at the retreat. (And here I was, worried about her loose with the boys.)

Well, well. What to say? Since I didn't know what to say, I did something even better. I listened. It was an accident that I didn't preach to her....about....something. But since I had no idea what the something was, I listened.

The girl's behavior did sound too friendly and off-putting. She did write messages that were a little over-the-top for an acquaintance of any gender. I don't know if the girl was gay or not, but I do know that my girl was uncomfortable by her approaches and attention.

I hope I said that I was proud of Lily for being polite and steady, but I might have only thought that. I do know that I said I was sorry -- for her and for the other girl. What a toughie for middle-schoolers.

Whatever Lily is going to become is already in process. I could pound on her with a hammer to make her what I want her to be, but I think it would break the hammer. At this point, the best I can do is be a cheerleader for her to make the right choices and to treat people the way she would want to be treated. And pray for everybody.

Churches and denominations are splitting over the issue of homosexuality. Because I know people who chose and experimented with homosexuality for a while only to ditch it when the novelty wore off, I don't think homosexuality should be viewed as a standard life choice. If you chose to be gay, you really ought to straighten yourself out. However, because I know and care about people for whom it was not an option but the way they were created by the same creator who created me, I cannot pass judgment on them. I believe that some people were born gay. Knowing them has enriched and blessed my life.

A few years ago, before they came out with the AIDS' drug cocktails, a gay friend came to tell me that he was HIV-positive. Again, it was a good thing that I didn't know what to say so I shut up and listened. All I could offer was hope and concern. He eventually got around to talking about God and faith, so I invited him to go with me to church as he wasn't a member of any faith community.

He turned me down, saying he wouldn't be welcome there. It took me a while to realize it, but I'm afraid he was very close to right.

Which is the greater sin, to be gay, or to be a congregation that doesn't welcome one of God's children in need?

I don't have the answer to this very divisive and inflammatory issue. I can quote you scripture that's abundantly clear that this is not the preferred lifestyle (can I be euphemistic or what?). Then I can introduce you to people I believe were created a little differently. I do not believe that they chose to be gay anymore than I chose to be short.

The only thing I am sure of is that we're supposed to love them just as Christ does.

Mentioning the Unmentionables

I haven't seen the ads. I didn't know about this problem or this program, but Lily did.  In some parts of Africa, girls can't go to school because they don't have sanitary napkins or tampons. So there's an organization, Goods4Girls, that is providing them with re-usable "kits" to keep them in school. You can donate money or make kits to donate.

This boggles my mind and touches my heart. So much self-consciousness at that age (I assume it's universal). So much depends on being sure you won't "have an accident."

Here (no names will be mentioned) certain family members of both genders cannot be seen purchasing feminine products unless they are purchased with a quantity of other items. And come to think of it, I never bought a box of tampons without also needing a pack of gum or something to go with it. You know. In case the check-out clerk was noticing. We've got what we need in abundance and take it for granted to such an extent that we're embarrassed to buy it.

I'm not saying you should fall down on your knees in praise and jubilation when you're picking up unmentionables at the Piggly Wiggly. Assuming you still need them. But either way, some kind of gratitude is in order.

I recently wrote an article for a medical school about their students' experiences in global medicine. I interviewed umpteen students, far more than I needed. And no matter how I tried, I couldn't forget their disturbing stories. They made me want to go to medical school and save the world. Most of them planned to save the world when they finished their training. God bless them!

One young doctor needed to amputate a man's foot (a farmer who had a tractor accident) and there were no tools in his rural village that she could use for amputation. Not even a saw or a hatchet. They collected money to send him to a hospital in a bigger town. The hospital sent him back because they were full. The infection continued to spread, and when the young doctor left, he still hadn't been helped. I don't want to think about it.

Another group of young doctors was in another country when a young mother gave birth and started hemorrhaging. She needed transfusions, but there was no blood. The young doctors quickly typed themselves, and found enough matches among their group to donate enough to save her. The doctor who told me this story said it was such a strange experience to give blood, then to carry it to the patient. The patient recovered.

The stories went on and on. Stories about not having the right drugs, the right tools, the things we take for granted. Stories about children abandoned because they were imperfect. Stories about people sick from lack of food and clean water. My heart was burdened and I was and am in awe of these generous, young healers.

So much need in the world. Clean food and water, medical care and freedom are higher on my list than "reusable kits," but I think it would be a good mother-daughter project to make some and donate them.

I need to be a lot more grateful.

Do You Have to Lie to Get Your Child in a Good School?

Sending Lily to the single-gender middle school was the best thing we ever did. So was switching churches to one where she felt more comfortable (can you have two best things you ever did?). Alas, her middle school only goes through eighth grade, so we've got to find a good high school to send her to next year.

Then we have to figure out a way to get her in.

The single-gender middle school she's attending is in another school district, Richland District 2. A good school district, run by professional, fair-minded people. They are very upfront about how somebody from outside of their district can get a child into the school of their choice. We had to:

1. Buy property in that district (we bought an empty lot from parents whose daughter was finishing up the single-gender program and returning to District 1);
2. Apply for the magnet single-gender program and be accepted;
3. Pay tuition every year. This year's tuition was $4,000. Yes, we pay tuition to go to public school. Don't that beat all?

We could stay in that district, keep paying tuition, and get her into a good high school by getting her in a good magnet program. But the schools keep getting farther and farther away from where we live. And why should we pay tuition and drive two hours a day (30 minutes there and 30 minutes back in the morning, same trip in the afternoon) when there are good high schools in the district we live in?

Trouble is, we aren't zoned for the good high schools. And District 1 is not run by fair-minded, professional people. The school we are zoned for is better known for the gangs it breeds and the occasional football player who goes on to be a star in college or beyond. A neighbor's daughter went there. If you asked her how school was, she would burst into tears. Her parents wouldn't allow her to talk about it. They moved to Florida.

Lily is not going to that school we are zoned for. Period. It is a failing school and not safe either.

But here's the thing. How do I get her into one of our district's two good high schools?

On April 15, I will need to go to the district office and plead my case to get her transferred to a decent school. I understand I need to treat this day like a rock concert where the tickets are quickly sold out, waiting in the darkness of the early morning, standing in a line with other hopeful, stressed parents for the district office to open and the bureaucrats to begin their bureaucratting.

Based on the experiences of my friends, this is a nearly useless exercise. One woman had all of her paperwork for the transfer typed up, notarized and included back-up documents. When she got to the front of the line, the bureaucrat dismissed her, saying her paperwork wasn't right! The person behind my friend had no paperwork at all. The bureaucrat filled it out for her and accepted it.

My friend is white. The bureaucrat and the person she helped were black. My friend called the district supervisor that afternoon. She said, "I think my problem is that I'm the wrong color." The supervisor did not like this at all.

Unfortunately, another white friend had a similar experience and came away saying that she, too, had been the victim of racism.

These are the things that happen and we whisper among ourselves, afraid that in our charges of racism we will be called racists.

I'm calling around, talking to other parents and teachers, trying to figure out how to get my daughter into a school where the challenges will be academic, not challenges for survival, and where she can get into a good college. I want her peers to be college bound, not bound to drop out before graduation. So far, the advice has been that I have to play the game. That means I have to lie.

Some people "borrow" addresses of relatives and friends who live in the right school zone. Some sublet rooms or pay people to use their addresses. And they teach their children to lie about where they live so they won't be thrown out of school.

There's another route. If I can find a course that is offered at one of the good schools that is not offered at the gangsta high school we're zoned for, we can get Lily in on that. So far, all I've found is Russian. I think you need a burning desire to learn Russian in order to succeed at Russian, so I'm still looking. I'd hate to do that to her. She loves French.

The district bureaucrats know that people do this, so they don't make the course roster easily accessible. I'm trying to get a listing of what the two good high schools and the one bad high school offer so I can compare. I did find the comprehensive roster for the whole district, and I have to say, it was disturbing. They had a special section on students who are going from the eighth grade to the ninth grade. They call these students "raising ninth graders." This error is repeated everywhere. They call themselves educators. It's rising. I guess I should be grateful that they're not planning on razing them.

What a world.

But I'm Too Tired to Take You to Church!

In spite of the fact that our (new) church's youth program is mostly centered on playing with a rubber chicken, Lily has grown to love it. She's so happy to go every Sunday night. It's a wondrous and wonderful thing.

The church is a long way from where we live. It's so far that when I take her I stay in town, killing the two hours by running errands or sometimes even sitting in the car rather than driving back home and turning back around to get her.  But that's why we joined this church -- good, deep-thinking theology and a great youth program. It sure does kill Sunday night, though.

So I was unprepared when Lily found out that there were also youth activities on Wednesday night. She wants to go to church then, too. I drive so much on Wednesdays already -- the last thing I want to do is drive back into town.

Tonight she said, "Mom, we need to leave at 5:00 to get me to church in time."

"WHAT?"

"I thought you said I could go to church on Wednesday nights," she said imploringly.

I was so tired. I couldn't get back in that car. Here my child was, begging me to go to church. A Christian parent's dream. So what did I say?

"Can I take you next week -- or some other time?" Please, God, don't make me drive this child to church I prayed, then apologized to God but it was a heartfelt prayer.

What was I doing? What was I thinking? If my daughter wants to go to church, what kind of mother won't take her? "I'll take you," I conceded. "Of course I'll take you to church."

Then Paul called and wanted to know what I was doing. And he VOLUNTEERED to take her.

Sometimes, even the most unlikely and craziest prayers get answered.

Showing Our Bosoms

One of the great things about single-gender education is that the teachers can say things in class that they wouldn't say in mixed company.

For instance, Lily's English teacher announced to the class on the first day of school that everywhere she looks she sees bosoms. (It's true. Are there any TV announcers, characters on "24," "Lost" or Fox News that don't show cleavage? Providing they're female, of course....) Even Hillary has followed, uh, suit.

Lily's teacher said, "Girls, I do not want to see your bosoms. Do not show your bosoms in here."

And the girls went fetal. Mrs. B. was doing it again -- saying the un-sayable.

Bless you, Mrs. B.

How is it that when Lily and I go shopping, the shirt that looks fine in the store sneaks down when Lily puts it on later? I suspect that Lily pulls it up a little higher in the store when Mom is deciding whether or not to buy.... Fortunately, Lily has Mrs. B. every day, and Lily doesn't want her bosoms discussed.

That's not the only end of a girl that Mrs. B. has a problem with. One day Crystal dropped her pencil. When she leaned over to pick it up, Mrs. B and the class got an eyeful of butt cleavage. Mrs. B. was appalled and said so.

"Crystal, fix you pants. Don't you know that Crack Kills?"

"I Hate the Way You Breathe"

(Image: Edwin Forrest as King Lear)

I've started several posts lately and have deleted them all. I don't know if I still have regular readers left, but for those of you who know my situation, my father turned 96 in August. We celebrated with a home-made cake, but there's getting to be less and less to celebrate.

On this blog I've tried to write only good things, or funny things, about other people, which has sometimes resulted in my whitewashing certain people. But I have to confess that my situation with my father and Non-Saintly Brother is moving from being in "King Lear" to being on the Jerry Springer Show.  That's more than you need to know and all that I will tell.

So, I'm launching a new category to get away from it all: Teenagers!

Each day I offend teenage sensibilities. I find my offenses quite funny, and hope you will, too. But before I start relating my abundant sins, I'm going to tell a friend's story.

This friend, whom I'll call Becky because that's her name, had a teenage son who found her quite distressing. In particular, he hated the way she sang in the car while driving him places.

"Mom, would you please quit singing?" he demanded. So she did.

"Mom! Quit humming!" So she did.

They went along, driving in silence, when suddenly he complained again, this time in total exasperation. "Mom! I HATE the way you breathe."

So far, my breathing has not come under criticism. But here are the things I've done wrong today:

1. Was not funny when I thought I was;
2. Called the dog "Waggles" (not his name);
3. Issued small but apparently extremely offensive burp;
4. Have hair that sticks up in the back (I was fresh from the beauty shop and paid extra for that little touch);
5. Am going out to dinner with friends and leaving Paul to cook pork chops on the grill;
6. Let the horses graze in the side yard without supervision (it's fenced).

But I got revenge. I dropped her off at  her second piano lesson this week and she's been there for hours. Lily has to play at a reception for the philharmonic's new conductor on Saturday, and in preparation the teacher is going to keep Lily at her lesson today until Lily achieves perfection.

Piano teachers: the best revenge on teenage daughters.

School Starts Right as the Money Runs Out

School started yesterday with an abrupt change in schedule that I'm sure we'll all be accustomed to by Easter break. Lily gets up too early for good sense and gets fully dressed in a calculated casual indifferent sort of way -- a look that says -- I really don't care what I look like but you should see all the clothes I tried on that didn't make the cut this morning. Makeup so carefully applied as to look unmade up (Thank God!), hair blown dry to look like it dried naturally. And jeans. Always jeans. ($10 jeans from Target -- am I lucky or what?)

Anyway, she does all this in time to come down by 5:30 a.m. to wake us up by playing Reveille on the piano, then collapses on our bed because she's exhausted. (We are currently in discussions about doing the math for what time you need to go to bed in order to get eight hours of sleep before getting up at 5:00. She is never tired at night.) All I have to do is get my gym clothes on, my teeth brushed and yes, I do make her lunch just because I like to.

She's the punctual alien, the person in our family who is determined not only to be on time (not my best thing), but also to be there early. So, if she wants to be on time that badly, I take her, work out on the way home and can be at my computer at work by 9:00 -- clean, exercised, fed, horses fed, even some procrastination thrown in. It's a good thing. Except for the part where I see her running out of steam....

I miss her. It was fun to work at home and have this wonderful, interesting person at home with me. But she needed to go back to school. I was running out of money buying school supplies. No clothes. Just supplies and things to put the supplies in.

Tell me, why does an eighth grader need a $100 calculator? And how long do any of us believe she can keep up with it? Shall we take bets?

Maybe it will help her do the math on what time to go to bed in order to get enough sleep....

And how did she talk me into a Vera Bradley purse? She has to carry a purse at all times because she needs to have her Epi-Pen in case she gets exposed to nuts and goes into anaphylactic shock. I used to buy purses for her at Target and hand them to her when I got home. Now she wants to pick out her purse, and I have to admit, I don't want anybody else picking out my purse so I cooperate.

So after we looked at every purse ever made, I caved and went to the Vera Bradley store. How can those things cost so much? But I got her one, and even a couple of things to go with it. I asked her if this purchase would make her happy forever, and she said yes. Happy Forever.

So there you go. We're all Happy Forever. And very, very sleepy.