The House that Built Me: A Musical Review

I’ve taken the literal trip down memory lane before, always alone, usually in my car. But after having some lovely jamba juice with an out-of-town friend, up north, I decided to swing through my old neighborhood, break out the stroller and visit my childhood home.

I strolled. I mused. I reminisced. Potamus slept. He also rubbed his eyes and sweated a bit, since Seattle is still reveling in 70 degree days and the long-sleeve shirt I dressed him in was much too warm. I found the quietness of the neighborhood comforting. There was something familiar about the way the sunshine streamed through the tree-branched of the fir I used to climb as a child, though much else had changed. Neighbors we had have moved on, and I’ve kept in touch via Facebook. The swing-set in the backyard is replaced with a garden and fountains and old-lady type decorations. The color is all wrong, blue instead of beige, but the address, the first numbers I memorized are still the same.

The physical act of standing where I once stood as a child was powerful. My body remembered things my mind hadn’t: the lemonade stand on the corner, the bus-stop mornings with rain dripping off the tree branches, the greenbelt we used to sled on the 1 day we’d be off from school for snow, the way the blackberry bushes overgrew the trails with signs that said “private property, no trespassing.” As I strolled past a house I was suddenly struck with the memory of a woman who hosted Christmas caroling parties, who died of a brain aneurysm, and the tedious hours spent babysitting a Power Ranger fanatic 4 year old.

I snapped pictures and realized just how innocuous a mom-with-stroller was in such a suburban cul-de-sac. Nobody batted an eye or flinched when I peeked over the fence into my old backyard, or questioned me when I snapped a few photos of myself with my house in the background. I looked like I belonged.

And I did belong.

I drove Potamus up the road a little ways to “the train park” as we called it, and pushed him on the swings. He smiled and laughed and so did I.

And all the while I kept thinking of Miranda Lambert’s The House that Built Me

I know they say you can’t go home again
I just had to come back one last time
Ma’am, I know you don’t know me from Adam
But these hand prints on the front steps are mine
Up those stairs in that little back bedroom
Is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar And I bet you didn’t know under that live oak
My favorite dog is buried in the yard

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing
Out here it’s like I’m someone else
I thought that maybe I could find myself
If I could just come in, I swear I’ll leave
Won’t take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me

This I Believe

The thing I am loving about this whole create-your-own curriculum business, is that I get to totally geek out on subjects that I LOVE. Sure I’m frustrated with my afternoon class and their chicken eyes (eyes open, nothing happening behind them), but I am loving that I get to create or modify assignments based on my own interests. What excites me is that I get to browse back through my memories and pick pieces of assignments that I liked as a high schooler, college student or even graduate student!

One of the assignments, based on a college-internship assignment, is forming our own This I Believe essays. This I Believe are personal essays spoken on the radio, and  featured on NPR. These personal essays have been going since the 1950’s and are a combination of famous people and regular joes, and all feature very personal beliefs-based-on-life-experiences. One of my favorites is Be Cool to the Pizza Delivery Dude, which is all about getting outside of ourself and having empathy for others.  I am using these essays to spark conversation and critical thinking about different topics, while introducing the idea of writing their OWN I Believe essay and reading it aloud to class to practice public speaking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part of what I loved about my high school English teacher, was his participation in the assignments that he gave us. He participated in freewrites, read his poems aloud to the class, got us all involved. It is something that I aspire to, and have yet in my hectic pace of trying to just barely get the class going, done. But My goal is to participate with the students, to model life-long learning, and honestly, to inspire myself toward better writing and creativity.

Who knows where these belief statements will go, but here is one that comes to mind:

1) I believe that I am capable of handling disappointments. I haven’t always felt this way, though, living much of my life as a pessimist. This pessimism can be traced back to an early memory, I think I was 4 or 5 and my mother told me, “Don’t get your hopes up.” I can’t remember what exactly the situation was, maybe I wanted ice cream and we were waiting for dad to come home early to get it, but he might be running late, and my mom was trying to prepare me for the inevitable disappointment. Her statement stuck with me, and I shaped so many years after her statement, trying desperately to set low expectations to avoid disappointment at all costs. But now, as an adult, I am capable of handling disappointments. I have coping skills and a large network of friends and family to lean on when times are tough. And I’ve seen enough to know that times will be good again.

On being a non-morning person…

I am determined to not let the brilliance of a 3 day weekend, every week, be overshadowed by the ridiculously early morning and commute to work the other 4 days. As I rise, before the sun, I am comforted by the fact that rest of the city is right along with me…blurry eyed, stumbling to put dress socks on and comb our hair into a reasonably professional look, and waiting (im)patiently at the nearest drive-through coffee stand to get caffeine coursing through our veins. I am NOT a morning person, that is, I do not actually like to get up in the mornings (though my body hasn’t let me sleep past 7:30 for at least 3 months). I wake up at 6 am and am out the door by 7 to make it to the college on time.

While I hate getting up, I do actually find that once I am awake and tasked with things to do, I am very productive. In one of my first jobs, I used to come in early, work until about 2 and THEN take a lunch, because after I’ve eaten, the hours tick by s…l….oooooo….w…..l….y. Like stabbing-myself-in-my-eyes slow. In fact, this tendency to want to escape the afternoon slowness had me “yelled at” on day 5 of my job as I was caught “sneaking out” early. I wasn’t sneaking out, I had arrived 30 minutes early and had worked through lunch, but didn’t have permission (didn’t ask, didn’t think I needed to, the last 3 jobs haven’t required that for flex time), which left me almost in tears…but I handled it professionally and have moved on from there.

One of the hardest parts of mornings, though, is leaving sweet Potamus and Boof in bed slumbering, while I creep about eating my peanut butter toast and digging through a dark closet for something reasonable to wear. They look so sweet together, and while I now these days are limited, as Boof will hopefully get a job soon, it does make me twinge ever-so-slightly with jealousy of the thought of them sleeping in indefinitely and lounging about the house. (In reality, though, Potamus is up by 7 and doesn’t nap until mid-day and Boof has to hold him for 3 hours because he won’t ‘go down’ for a nap, and both are covered in Cheerios and yogurt and all the thing that make less jealous of the whole morning arrangement).

My morning class is overwhelmingly the best, engaged and participatory with amazing insight. My afternoon class, when the caffeine and enthusiasm is wearing off, is…less-so. It is smaller, more masculine, and I’m having a difficult time deciding if I should compare them to the morning class or roll with what they give me and go from there. They just seem so…apathetic, and doing a song & dance to convince them to discuss things isn’t really my style. I’m looking at it as a new challenge.

I’m Sensitive: A Musical Review

Oh Jewel, where have you been in the past few years? We need more of these songs:

I was thinking that I might fly today
Just to disprove all the things you say
It doesn’t take a talent to be mean
Your words can crush things that are unseen
So please be careful with me, I’m sensitive
And I’d like to stay that way.
You always tell me that is impossible
To be respected and be a girl
Why’s it gotta be so complicated?
Why you gotta tell me if I’m hated?
So please be careful with me, I’m sensitive
And I’d like to stay that way.
I was thinking that it might do some good
If we robbed the cynics and took all their food
That way what they believe will have taken place
And we’ll give it to anybody who has some faith
So please be careful with me, I’m sensitive
And I’d like to stay that way.
I have this theory that if we’re told we’re bad
Then that’s the only idea we’ll ever have
But maybe if we are surrounded in beauty
Someday we will become what we see
‘Cause anyone can start a conflict
It’s harder yet to disregard it
I’d rather see the world from another angle
We are everyday angels
Be careful with me ’cause I’d like to stay that way

When listening to this, my mind splits in two, like those picture-in-picture TV’s, and I see myself as a little girl. A shy girl, with anxiety and depression, who felt things deeply and lived in an almost dream-land. A little girl who tried valiantly to hold onto imagination and tenderness, but was misunderstood and hardened to overcompensate for the overactive conscience and empathy. It’s easy to read Highly Sensitive People information now and see myself in the descriptions. It’s easy to understand that empathy can be used, harnessed even, for a life of work in social services, but as a kid I was sensitive and it was trampled on.

The other screen is the view of my sweetly sensitive son, who reacts strongly to tone of voice, and who loves snuggling on both mama and dadda’s lap. There may be a day where he has to harden himself against portions of the world, but it is my wish, my intention, to surround him in beauty, to tell him how good he is, to remind him that he is an amazing human being, and to do my best to not crush his sense of self.

Godspeed: A Musical Review

In high school I had the pleasure of seeing The Dixie Chicks open at The Gorge for Tim McGraw. My dad was in radio, and he got us tickets that summer, where we sat in 100 degree sun on folding metal chairs feeling hoity toity (and sweltering) compared to the minions up on the grassy free-for-all seating. While we were there for Tim, I was blown away by The Dixie Chicks and have loved them ever since. One summer, at camp, we did a skit to “Earl’s Gotta Die,” which I still laugh about with my friend to this day. So driving down the road, listening to that aforementioned burned CD, I was startled to find a Dixie Chick song that I hadn’t heard before: Godspeed, another song that made me cry, with the lyrics that cut right through all of my warrior walls:

Dragon tales and the “water is wide”
Pirate’s sail and lost boys fly
Fish bite moonbeams every night
And I love you

Godspeed, little man
Sweet dreams, little man
Oh my love will fly to you each night on angels wings
Godspeed
Sweet dreams

The rocket racer’s all tuckered out
Superman’s in pajamas on the couch
Goodnight moon, will find the mouse
And I love you

Godspeed, little man
Sweet dreams, little man
Oh my love will fly to you each night on angels wings
Godspeed
Sweet dreams

God bless mommy and match box cars
God bless dad and thanks for the stars
God hears “Amen,” wherever we are
And I love you

Godspeed, little man
Sweet dreams, little man
Oh my love will fly to you each night on angels wings
Godspeed
Godspeed
Godspeed
Sweet dreams

The imagery takes me forward twenty something years, imaging myself dancing with Potamus at his wedding. I’m somehow both a young mother and an old mother at the same time, both recognizing the sweetness of the moment now, where I breathe in his fading baby smell as he sleeps, and aching for the stillness of his brand-newborn days. I project myself into the future, twenty, thirty, years, with maybe a bigger pouchy stomach, but an even more tender heart from the millions of moments of mother-love that will change me. And I imagine it just being Boof and I in the house again, Scummy the dog long dead, Potamus grown with a partner of his own, maybe children or dogs or neither, and I miss this moment, the one I’m in right now.

Godspeed little Potamus.
Sweet dreams little Potamus.

 

I Love You Sweet Baby: A Musical Review

Since becoming a mother, I’ve let so many of my walls come down. In years past I would fight off feelings of sentimentality that might result in tears, but now I find myself rushing headlong into sappy moments. Now that I have been consistently commuting in the mornings, I have been trying to find alternatives to the lame morning shows full of prank calls and celebrity gossip. My favorite news station doesn’t have its morning show on until 9, well after I’ve already arrived at my office, so I’ve begun to dig through some music and came across a CD that a graduate-school friend burned me for my baby shower. The first track:  Kimya Dawson’s I love You Sweet baby, which promptly made me burst into tears and smear my freshly applied mascara. Here are the lyrics:

“I Love You Sweet Baby”

The first thing in our list of things to do
Is to wake up right next to you
Second thing that we have planned
Is to kiss both of your handsThird thing that we’ll do today
Is look you in the eye and say
I love you sweet baby, I love you sweet baby
I love you more than anythingThen we’re gonna change you
Then we’re gonna feed you
Then we’re both play peek-a-boo
Then we’re gonna read to you

Then you have more milk and have some water
And we’ll smile at you and tell you we’re so glad that you’re our daughter
Then you’ll fall asleep on daddy’s lap
We’ll watch MacGyver while you take a nap

When you wake up we have more plans
Say good morning baby and kiss your hands
Then you’re gonna make a pee
In your little green potty

Then we’re gonna eat our lunch
Mash apricots for you to munch
Then you’re gonna nurse again
Then we’re gonna call our friends

Then we’ll dump out all your toys
Singin’, dancing, make some noise
Then we’re gonna take a walk
Down the street to the park

We’ll play on the see-saw, play on the slide
You’ll get tired and rub your eyes
Then we’ll go home for more nursing and sleeping
Bouncing and nursing and waking and peeing
Crawling and bouncing and dancing and hitting
Nursing and peeing and kisses and seeing

You’re an amazing human being
You’re an amazing human being
You’re an amazing human being
You’re an amazing human being

Then we’ll all cuddle in our bed
You’ll nurse to sleep, we’ll kiss your head
Good night sweet baby, I love you sweet baby
I love you more than anything
Good night sweet baby, I love you sweet baby
I love you more than anything

The first thing in our list of things to do
Is to wake up right next to you
Second thing that we have planned
Is to kiss both of your hands

Third thing that we’ll do today
Is look you in the eye and say
I love you sweet baby, I love you sweet baby
I love you more than anything

I love you sweet baby, I love you sweet baby
I love you more than anything
I love you sweet baby, I love you sweet baby
I love you more than anything

I love that this song references nursing, that it recognizes and names the fact that babies/toddlers/preschoolers/little kids/children/teenagers are all amazing human being

, and ends with the lyrics “I love you more than anything.” . Potamus isn’t amazing because he DOES something special, he is an amazing human being just for being him.

First Week, Fall Quarter

Whew, what a whirlwind the last two weeks have been! I am happy to report that I have successfully completed my first week of teaching at a local community-turned 4 year- college!

In a quick turn of events, I was hired, gave my notice at my crisis-counseling job, and transitioned into this position that allows me the freedom and flexibility to be both a worker and a mother. I spend four days a week at the college, two of the days as an instructor and the other two as an advisor for 16-20 year old students who have dropped out of high school. The mix of kids is delightful. There’s the run of the mill “thug life” kids that bounced from school to school because of expulsions, suspensions, and pop-off attitudes. There are the little-house-on-the-prairie homeschool types, who wouldn’t dream of who have clearly excelled academically to a degree, but the somewhat intellectual arrogance has left them socially awkward and blowing out of regular high school. There are mothers, felons, medically fragile, procrastinators, and class clowns.

Regardless of the reasons behind dropping out, they are welcome here in our program, a 4 quarter structured program (much like a very scaffolded running start) where they are introduced to college and supported as they attempt to get an AA degree, or a transfer degree, or even a certificate in an area of focus. And I get the newbies, the ones who are first stepping into a college classroom and hoping to be changed.

Okay, that’s actually optimistic and lofty. Many of my kids are simply hoping to not fail again. And many of those intellectually arrogant are actually just trying to “jump through the hoop” of my class in order to gain access to their 2nd quarter where they can take an English class, and their 3rd quarter where they can “take the fun classes” (actual quote by a student today, as she pushed her glasses back up her nose).

My curriculum is intangible in so many ways. These students have been taught subjects, but in my class, I hope to give them the experience of learning about themselves in a different way. Because that’s what I learned in college…I learned to think outside of the black/white paradigm and analyze poetry and give my opinion on things without stuttering or wavering in discussion. Of course I will teach things like study skills and learning styles, but I hope they gain a sense of community at the end of it all.

My college self, the one who thought about being an English teacher,  but didn’t have the confidence to really finish that degree, is now standing in front of a college class, with unbridled freedom in planning and executing the teaching objectives. Want to watch an episode of Dirty Jobs to illustrate Career Development? No problem! Want to give “This I Believe” speech/essay assignment? Go for it! Want to design group work or have free-writes or listen to music lyrics? All acceptable.

And the best part, perhaps, is coming home at the end of the night, happily tired with enough emotional energy to drop to the rug and play with Potamus for a few hours until bedtime. While I’m not getting much sleep at night, thanks to full-on reverse cycling and Potamus nursing at least every 2 hours (if not more), I am happy. So happy.  But like a quietly contented happy.

9 mos

Potamus is surviving the 10 hour days while mama is gone. He still refuses all things milk related during the day, but has smacked on guacamole, tomatoes, mummums, cheerios, bananas and tortilla chips. And he drinks water out of the shower-head (which says something about my overactive letdown, eh?) We are up every 2 hours all night, but I am making it work, surviving, and enjoying my new job!

Reflections on 16 months of crisis counseling

I have witnessed a lot in the past 16 months of crisis counseling, and as I sit on my last day, having discharged my last client last night, I feel so much hope in my move forward. But there is also this lingering sense of  heaviness from all that I have witnessed…

I accepted the job, as a Crisis Intervention Specialist, working with youth 3-18 and their families in King County, 24 hours after I learned I was pregnant. So my first 9 months on the job I was pregnant and the 2nd half of the job I was a new mom. While I have been employed there for 16 months, if you take out the maternity leave in the middle, I’ve solidly worked there for 1 year. But 1 year feels like an eternity. There are things I have seen, and witnessed, and felt that are hard to put into words, hard to describe to people who haven’t been there.

Like, how do you explain the feeling of arriving at an apartment, to find a 250 lb naked teenage developmentally delayed (can’t speak or understand language)  girl from a foreign country sitting on the stairs and realizing that she is the client. Naked. And what goes through my mind is, “my schooling did not prepare me for this.” To be body slammed and try to explain to the family through an interpreter how the mental health system works here in America.

How do I explain the smell of a pre-adolescent who hasn’t showered or changed clothes for the past 3 months because she sees a bloody axe wielding woman in the bathtub. How do I explain the condemend house infested with fleas with the family living in the basement? Or the 13 year old who was pregnant and kicked out of her house by her aunt, who said it’d be fine if she just went to live in a shelter. Or the 5 year old who put his mom in a choke-hold while she drives down the freeway. Or the meth-coke-crack-oxy-marijuana-alcohol abusing 15 year old trying to stay sober in a family of addicts.

Or what about the 12 year old prostiting herself because she heard her birthmother did drugs and was on the street and she hoped that maybe she would meet her out there, somewhere, sometime.

I have seen so much, and yet, what I have seen doesn’t compare to how much my family’s have seen. And I am leaving this position changed, in a way that is hard to put into words. Not much scared me before, but now there is very little that I am really afraid of in reaction or relation to teens or their families.

 

Four Years Ago? 11 Years ago?

I keep hearing repub-types saying things like “where were you four years ago?” in an assumptive attempt to sway votes toward the Ryan/Romney camp. But it got me thinking, reminiscing, on where I actually WAS four years ago…where I am today…and the implications of my answer might not make those repub-types as happy if it means I’m going to vote for this trend to stay the same.

Now don’t get me wrong, as a privileged white woman of middle class origins, I know that many many people in America have not been as fortunate as me in the last four years. But here is where I was four years ago:

September 2008
Boof and I  are three months away from our wedding date. I am taking 10 graduate credits, in full last-minute-wedding-planning mode, and working part-time as a substitue teacher. I lived in a little one bedroom apartment that had been infested with tiny little flies after the basement/crawl-space that had been flooded when a sewage holding tank backed up and overflowed.

In the four years since, I have gotten married, lived in a sweet 2 bedroom apartment (with no fly infestation), gotten a dog, received my Masters of Arts in Education, Community Counseling with a 4.0 GPA and honors, gotten pregnant, bought a house for a good price and in a good neighborhood, had a healthy/happy baby, become a licensed counselor, and had three progressively better paying jobs in my field of interest.

Whoa, that’s a huge list of amazing things that have happened in the past 4 years! And if that’s because Obama has been president, well, then I can’t really complain about his leadership.

And with this being the anniversary of September 11, 2001 it got me thinking. Where were YOU four years ago? But also…where were you ELEVEN years ago? It’s amazing for me to look back on such a tragic day and see how beautiful my life has become.