Part Of The Plot

Do you remember my Story Teller?

I knocked on her door a few months ago when I drove through my old neighborhood.  I hadn't been back in over 15 years, but the street and the houses looked just as I remembered them.  We were on our way to a wedding, my husband and I, when I suddenly had an urge to make a detour through the small town I grew up in.  As we drove down my old street and past my Story Teller's house, I saw her through the window.  She was in the kitchen, wearing an apron and stirring something in a big pot on the stove.

When I knocked on the door, she put her hand to her mouth in surprise, as one does when there is an unexpected guest in a cocktail dress at the door at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.  Her house smelled familiar, like soup and garden herbs.  The walls were covered in the same framed pieces of angular modern art and the shelves with abstract sculptures that I always thought odd as a child. 

We sat in her living room and small talked for a few minutes.  I promised to stay longer next time, and to give her fair warning (although I've always like the abruptness of a drop-in visit).

It was nostalgically comforting, after all these years, to know that my Story Teller was there, right where I left her.


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My five year old is having some bumpy kind of days this summer.  He is surrounded by older boys, his brother's friends rather that his own.  He is often left out of games, or forced to play the role of "It" or "Monkey" and is stuck in the middle for the duration of the game. He is told he is too little.  His legs are smaller, his hands less nimble.   

He watches as his brother climbs into a friend's car, and waves as they drive away.  I tell him that we will do something special, just the two of us.  He nods, trying not to let the tears escape from his eyes, but he doesn't want me as a playmate, not today anyway.  He needs something more to fill these long summer days.


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Send it to her! they urged.  What a gift!  they said.  Okay, okay, I agreed.  And with a big, courageous click of a mouse, I sent my Story Teller her story.
 
Hours later, my phone rang, and when I saw her name on the display, my heart jumped just a tiny bit.

We chatted and caught up for a few minutes, and thanked each other for the stories.
 
Later that day, she wrote me.

I always had a special  love  for those charming  days when we shared the story rock and  traveled together to all those fun places.  Sorry I brought only healthy snacks.... would do it again...but I would get some good junk  food to go with it!

The bird still flies...any time you need a ride ...just call him....

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We don't fully realize how lucky we are until years later when we are old enough, maybe with children of our own, to appreciate the people and plots of our past. 

And we certainly don't realize that not everyone has a person in their life who makes them the center of the story, whether it be on a rock in the woods or on a page in an email.  

But everybody should, don't you think?

Suburban Graffiti

You know that you are slip-sliding out of control through the bottomless pit of the summer boredom abyss when you start making your own paint.

Yes, paint.

We all have our breaking points, and mine came last week, at the end of an activity-free week. Poor summer planning on my part, but, honestly?, it's exhausting fulfilling the role of summer recreational director in Boy Town.  And the pay sucks, too.

There's only so much homework and reading one can do before one's children start to get restless and begin to peck at each other like mad chickens cooped up in their suburban nest.

Oh, yes, I know, there is The List (such a great idea at the time) to refer to in times of mid-July desperation,  but we've made our way through it at an alarming rate.   So little to do, so much time.

Desperate times call for proverbial desperate measures.

So I followed my friend Holly's lead and found a dusty, old box of cornstarch and leftover Easter egg dyes, and got all crafty.

The boys-enberries?

They were down with some driveway graffiti, yo.

Here's what you need to deface your own driveway or sidewalks:

1/4 cup of cornstarch
1/4 cup of water
food coloring

Mix cornstarch and water together and add several drops of food coloring.
As the paint dries it will brighten up, and can be washed away easily with water (or rain).

Yep, I Make Them Do Homework During Summer Vacation

The summer between my third and fourth grade years, I managed to forget my multiplication tables.  All of them.  An entire grade of math vanished in the span of two sun drenched months. My mind was wiped clean, or maybe water logged from too many somersaults in the lake that summer.

I was a walking, talking poster child for the case against Summer Vacation.   Despite plowing through everything Beverly Cleary that summer, I still managed to lose some grade school brain power.  Math wasn't my strongest subject to begin with, so it was no wonder that I simply forgot all about it when allowed eight glorious weeks without it.  After all, I had better things to do with my pre-pubescent time.  Things like recording Casey Kasem's top 40 on my portable tape recorder.  Or pining hopefully for a pair of Dr. Scholl's clogs.  Or even coasting through our 1960s built neighborhood on my second hand Schwinn.

Multiplication tables were blissfully absent from my summer vacation.

Their absence wasn't noticed until I arrived back in the classroom that fall and found out that I wasn't the only one who suffered from summer learning loss. There were others just like me.  Other dazed and confused fourth graders who, during the first few weeks of school, stared, panic-stricken, at the blank multiplication worksheets put in front of us.   That year I was as close as any nine year old could be to developing a stress-induced ulcer.  And so began my life-long loathing of Math.


Because I am the kind of parent who frequently, but (mostly) subconsciously, tends to transfer my own childhood anxieties onto my children, I am enforcing a summer homework regime here in Boy Town.  I don't want them to fear math like I did (do).  Also, good math skills are key to mastering cribbage, an old card game that is a family core competency around here.

The boys?  Are not happy.

I take that back.  One boy is not happy.

The Five Year Old is tickled with giddy pre-Kindergarten giddiness every time he opens his workbook.  But really, what's not to like about dot-to-dots and farm animal mazes?

The Second Grader (soon to be Third Grader) is pretty miserable at just the notion of entertaining the idea of throwing around the thought of picking up a pencil.   He's too busy reading.

I am not above resorting to a little bribery now and then,  and so, if the only way to get him to complete his work is to offer a dangling carrot (or video game) at the other end, then so be it.

And since elementary school academics have been accelerated by a full year since I was in school, The Second Grader is, you guessed it, practicing his multiplication tables this summer.

He'll thank me later.  I'm sure of it.


Because I'm nosy interested, what about you?  Do you make your kids practice what they've learned over the summer or do you put down the pens and pencils for two months?