Ode to Aug 1, Revised for Pandemic

Bring it on.

Bust into my classroom laughing too loudly.  Please come in at a respectable distance, and if you laugh, please keep it to a closed-mouth minimum behind that mask, mister. Bumble down the hallways on the legs you grew over the summer without noticing who you just body-checked.  Walk down the hallway at your allotted time, at a safe distance, and please sanitize your appendages if they touch another person. Allow Sharpied unicorns and fairies to dance over your folders while you experiment with profanity on the bathroom walls. Please vacate the bathroom as quickly as you can, as it is not properly ventilated. Complain to me about your parents, (from a respectable distance, again. I will listen from behind a plexiglass divider, and my eyes are not judging, I promise) and then complain about me at lunch in the classroom in which you will consume food. Just put on your mask prior to complaining.  Forget your pencil again, and again, and again, but don't expect to borrow one--we don't share supplies. Flirt shamelessly in front of me and then blush when I call you on it For the sake of our safety, middle school flirting (i.e. slapping each other) will not be allowed.  Laugh out loud Muffle your laughter behind the mask when someone comments on your outfit, and please sanitize vigorously before you sink in your desk the rest of the day.  Wear Cookie Monster on your T-shirt and "Leave me alone" on your face on the part of your face that is not obscured by your mask.  Wear "Leave me alone" on your face on the part of your face that is not obscured by your mask and please know I wish to receive your hug me when I ask how you are. 

Make me have at least three back-to-school nightmares that portray me as helpless alone, isolated, covered up in a room of a reduced number of my precious thirteen-year-olds. Make me mask my intimidation mourning on the first day of pandemic school while you mask yours.  Make me agonize over a lesson plan only to toss it out and "wing it" ponder what to do when I see question marks in your eyes you're out for two weeks because your sister has a fever. When you're out for the semester because your mom is immunocompromised.  Make me sing with joy and tear my hair out while grading one class set of papers simultaneously managing my virtual and in-person classes.  While grading one paper simultaneously managing my own children's learning and yours.  Make me find the perfect book for you online...the classroom library books are shared supplies, remember? (and then make me have to work to peel you away from it).  Make me wonder if we're connecting I'll know you the whole year if you choose a full-virtual learning option.  Make me cry at least once in front of my colleagues, at least five times at home because more than anything, I want to be surrounded by you, hand you a book, give you a hug, hear you socialize in the hallways and cafeteria, have no barriers between our smiles.  Make me do back flips to keep your attention make you feel ok, and connected, and to maybe still love learning in the suckiest of circumstances, and make my heart glad when you raise your hand we find a way to thrive.  Make me think I know how you learn this all might go down, every last tragic second, and then make me rethink it hopeful.  Make me teach you the best way I know how--no matter how far apart we are--and still not be satisfied be satisfied that we are DOING this, that we will make it, that we will be ok.  Make me learn for you while I yearn for you.

Keep me awake at night.  Keep me alive during the day.  I'm ready. We can do this. Bring it on.

To My Sixteen-Year-Old Self: Embrace Baggage

An old friend recently posted a picture on Facebook, which of course sent me down a rabbit hole of bittersweet nostalgia. I dug out my tub of high school memorabilia, which included an old manila envelope titled "Time Capsule." I remember that students at my high school put together time capsules in honor of the new millennium, and then received them back at their ten year reunions.

Inside the time capsule was a Teen magazine, some pictures from 1999 that had captions written on the backs, a class schedule, some notes on torn-out notebook paper that had clearly been passed in class, and a paper with a series of prompts aimed to help us capture some information that might be fun to look back on in the future--favorite movies, the cost of gas, best friends. On the back of the paper, I wrote a short note to my future self:


"Hey there! This is you from 10 years ago (whoa, that's weird). Anyway, I hope that everything is going well, and that you try to be a kid at every opportunity! Being 16 is fun, so I'm enjoying it to the fullest. You're only 27 once, so enjoy that like you did when you were 16, kay? Have fun!"

Reading that made me want to retroactively knock on my sixteen-year-old self's bedroom door, offer her something chocolate, a huge hug, and a talk about how you can't fool your future self into believing that sixteen was all fun and games. At sixteen, you can fool yourself, though. You can tell yourself that sixteen is the pinnacle of life, or that it's the worst Hell you could ever possibly experience. Either way, you'd be wrong. I fooled myself into the former. It was too hard to peel back the layers of reality and stare my baggage in the face.

So I'm writing myself back, systematically addressing the bits of information I decided to supply for my future self at sixteen. I'm doing it as a Back-to-the-Futureish way of soothing my past to fully appreciate the life I have at thirty-four.


Dear Sixteen-Year-Old Me,

Instant Messenger is going to die. I'm sorry. You'll still use your original password occasionally because no one's guessed it yet, so why not? Also your brain has shrunk and unfortunately in certain networks, you have to come up with 180 unique passwords before you can recycle one. So you stick with what you know when you can.

No one asks a/s/l anymore. People are lying when they answer it anyway. Stay out of chat rooms, in general.

Mark McGwire is a sham. The Cubs will win the World Series eventually. The future is a scary place.

People will carry computers in their pockets in the future. They'll use them for everything from making phone calls to watching TV ("binge" watching a show for multiple hours is, like, socially acceptable) to organizing a protest to taking pictures of their genitals and sending them to other people. Thank God every single day that you do not have this device, and won't until your frontal lobe is fully developed.

Press "save" right away on that Chem paper in Microsoft Word. Save early, save often.

Try not to sweat it that you won't get your license until seventeen. It gives you a whole year to not accidentally back into someone's Saab, have to knock on their door to tell them, and pay them a few Dierberg's bakery paychecks' worth of cash to replace their damaged headlight. You don't have to tell your dad. I won't either.

Good on you for not getting drunk at this age. But, stop being an asshole to friends who do. They're figuring things out, and probably the best thing you can do to protect these friendships is to get off your high (that is, sober) horse. They're good people.

Your body is beautiful. It will continue to change as you age, and trust me, you love your sixteen year old body. Wear the bikini! You'll work really hard in the future to love your body at all of its various stages.

Take some time to get to know people of other races and cultures. There's a lot you don't know.

Ask Grandma how she felt parenting newborn babies, boys, sensitive kids, smart kids, rebels. Ask her if she ever felt anxious. Ask her to share some of her writing with you. Ask her, write it down, keep it sacred. She'll be gone this year.

Log on to AOL and do some initial learning about anxiety and depression. Ask someone to help you with it, and don't feel like that means there's something wrong with you. You don't know it yet, but you don't have to be viewing the world the way you do right now.

Right now, you think that your worth has something to do with who likes you and who doesn't, which boys are looking at you, or calling you, or wanting to take you to a dance. Rejection hurts. Yes, that one boy really does like that girl more than you. It will happen many more times. It's an ego bruise, for sure. But that's all--you're still loved by many more important people. You're enough, even without a boy attached to you. You have some girls in your life right now who will work tirelessly to help you understand your worth well into your thirties and beyond. Put your focus there--on that friendship with people who love you. It's gold.


But since there's no way I'll be able to completely turn you away from boys, that guy you're going on dates with? Literally the least significant romantic interest of the whole lineup. He's going to be a tiny, microscopic blip in the scheme of your life. He's going to be a jackass, and then there will be a few other jackasses after that, and then some genuinely good guys who don't fit, and then your husband. But don't necessarily go avoiding the jackasses and ill-fitters. They are a perfect road map along which you will mold and define what you're looking for in an ideal partner. And you will end up with your ideal partner. Right now, as you write this letter to me, your future husband is living less than two miles away from you. You already know him, actually. Don't get excited--it's not time yet.


Divorce sucks, and there's no easy way to navigate blending two families together. I'm going to do you a favor right now: This is not your fault. You are a child. You're trying to sort through some feelings that just don't go away on their own, nor are you able to view your family life through an objective lens. Do not allow yourself to believe for one more second that you are the reason your family is in turmoil.  Be patient with you, and be patient with the family. It will get much, much better in the future. Just don't carry this burden alone. Everyone in your house is hurting.

Sixteen clearly feels like a party, based on your advice to your future self to enjoy my late twenties like I enjoyed sixteen. But I remember the truth. You spent hundreds of minutes waiting to the tune of squeaky alien noises while your dial-up internet connected, and you waited with equal agonizing patience for your next opportunity to escape the parts of life that didn't make sense. You were on a quest that necessarily included mistakes and lessons learned the hard way. Learn to embrace the baggage, because it's what you carry that makes you beautiful. Luckily the burden you carry will change over time--sometimes it'll shrink to fit in the palm of your hand, and other times, it'll threaten to smash you like a pancake. Don't feel sad that you have it. Don't ignore it.

The point is, you will find the people that will carry it with you. I know, because I can say confidently that at thirty-four, it gets better.

;-) (sideways winking smiley face),
Future You

Post-Baby Body Zen

“Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”   -Victor Frankl

Another mama friend and I were pushing our strollers through the Japanese garden at the Botanical Garden. We wondered out loud about the things we fear as parents--sleepless nights, public, inconsolable meltdowns, any number of perceived maternal failures--and how we could possibly be more "zen" in our parenting. I mean, isn't "zen" allowing things to be without attaching emotion or response to them? Meaning, all things in the universe are just there. They have no inherent meaning until we attach meaning to them.  Example, in verse:

Look there. The clock says 1:32 a.m.

The baby is wailing.

I reinsert the pacifier.

Silence.

Retreat to bed.

Pull up covers.

Close eyes.

The baby is wailing.

Look there. The clock says 1:37 a.m.

Emotional response? What emotional response? There's no reason I should be emotional at this moment!!

The wise old Gavin Rossdale of the most distinguished Bush was correct when he musically philosophized (in his super-attractive gravelly voice), "Everything zen/ I don't think so." (As an aside, he also said in the same song, "I don't believe that Elvis is dead." This discredits him a bit, but no matter.) The point is, it is ridiculously hard to experience life with your own flesh and blood and not be deeply, inarguably emotionally responsive. Baby wakes for the fifth time tonight, you watch the numbers on the clock tick by, your internal clock says sleepytime, your external clock (ahem, baby) says wake time, and you start fearing the moment you actually have to get up for the day armed with fewer and fewer minutes of rest. Popular emotional responses to this are exasperated tapping of your partner resulting in a harshly whispered argument, tearful rocking of a tearful baby, oft-uttered curse word(s), or the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Anguish!

It seems like babyhood inspires a big ol' stress monster to wander into your sleep-deprived noggin and take up residence for the next couple of decades. I find it easy to commiserate with other mamas about frustrating baby situations. I can coach myself, especially with the help of some girlfriends and Riesling, in responding more healthily to an external factor, such as my children's behavior. However, what if my most stressful parenting issue has very little to do with my kids at all? The stress monster and I have engaged in many-a sword fight, but no battle inspires as many wounds as the one that takes place in front of the mirror postpartum.

Here are things that produce an emotional trigger in me: ripply stretch marks swirling around my abdomen. A belly button that went from being surprised [o] to being sad [(]. Skin hanging limply over the elastic waistband of my shorts. A size number that's bigger than what I already decided was too big. Creases or dimples in once-smooth surfaces. The term "baby weight." Weight numbers. Tugging on clothes that used to fit. Full body photos. Full body photos from 20 lbs ago. Other hot moms.These are things that cause a big, fat stress response in me.

I wonder what it would be like to live one whole day and not care about these things. To be zen about it. I wonder if I would believe myself if I said, "These things are simply these things. I don't have to be ______ (sad, angry, ashamed--fill in emotion word here) about them." Because it's true. But, I bring ALL the feels (but, like, mostly the bad ones) to the mirror every day. Probably every day since I was about ten years old, actually. How does one dig oneself out of a body-shaming hole one dug oneself? How does one become zen about one's lumps and bumps?

I have no idea. I guess as a woman, my appearance has always been integral to my identity and ultimately my perception of how lovable I am. Family members always called me "cute," until that day in fifth grade when my grandpa told me I had "fat arms." And then when I went through puberty one summer, I shed what was referred to as my "baby fat" and my dance teacher couldn't stop talking about how good I looked and that she didn't even recognize me. And then boys were obsessed with boobs in junior high, ergo so were all the girls (to stuff or not to stuff?). Some boy at camp said I had "nice tits" (by the way, I had "no tits" at the time). On and on and on, until in college and beyond, social media became both the instigator and antithesis of loving your own shape. Just below a post catering to the trends in body positivity will be someone's selfie that they spent at least five minutes perfecting--head tilted just so, slightly downward angle, right eyebrow slightly raised, lips slightly pouted, hand on hip, one leg slightly in front of the other. Photography tricks. I know this because I've done it. I cover up not-beautiful feelings with carefully controlled beauty. However, controlling how pregnancy impacts your body is damn near impossible. A body out of control breeds stress when below the surface, feeling unattractive means feeling unloved.

So, is it possible to let go of beliefs that have been anchored in my brain for most of my life? Can I really be zen about my postpartum physical self? Someone more experienced in zen philosophy might suggest I start with allowing my body to just be my body, allowing changes in my body to just be changes without emotional meaning tagging along. My body has changed because it grew three babies. My body will change again. A stretch mark is a stretch mark. Size is what it is. My body is my body. Can I make these statements and avoid mind math that states size + shape + weight = self-worth? The route to changing my emotional response is by changing my thought process, I think. Instead of "I can't button these jeans, so I'll be ugly the rest of my life," maybe I can say this: "I can't button these jeans because I just had an eight pound baby (high five, vagina!*)"

(*Don't high five your vagina.)

It would take the most concentrated, deliberate effort to catch myself in the space between stimulus and response, between mirror and horror, to nudge myself along a different path. One that's more zen and less self-deprecating. To simply let my body be, and to be free to determine a new response that is less emotional either way (which means not forcing myself to respond with a positive emotion either). I'm certain I could, if I really dedicated myself, acknowledge my body and all that it's been through without immediately determining it's not good enough. It might take some naked yoga and a lot of practice maybe. (Ok, scratch the naked yoga. Totally not ready for that. Yet.) Say it: my body is just my body. Repeat. Zen.

So let's say I become an almighty body zen master. That's all well and good, but what's most disturbing to me is that looking back, almost as far back as I remember, I've been dissatisfied with my body. Body image became this treacherous mountain before me that the world taught me to conjure out of thin air. I mean, my five month old doesn't have body issues as far as I can tell. My eight year old, on the other hand, might already have some body image associations that I may or may not have accidentally reinforced when giving my seal of approval (or disapproval) on her outfit choices, for example. I mean, I try hard to emanate body positivity to her. I really do. I resist in every way possible sharing with her how self-conscious I am about my body. I don't talk with her about losing weight. I also try not to comment on her body, even with potential compliments ("You're so skinny! muscular! physically beautiful!"). I want to avoid at all costs my daughter thinking that how she looks physically is key to her success. If my body is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, then I can't afford to just be zen about my body. I have to focus on being zen about my children's bodies, too, because before I know it, I've taught them how to struggle.

I need the world to be zen about the female body, honestly. I would like to see less emphasis on physical beauty, in general, which includes campaigns in which women of all shapes and sizes are featured in their underwear so that we can all feel "okay" about our imperfect bodies. I can appreciate the insinuation that models are not Every Woman and we should celebrate this. However, we don't project a similar physical image of men on TV or in magazines so that they feel more secure. Why do we have to emphasize what the female body looks like at all? Let's make our bodies not a thing. Let's allow every woman the freedom to decide what she'll do with the space between her reflection and her heart. We'll have to work hard together to do that, to be zen mamas. But I think we're up for the challenge. We have to be, for all of us.