Monthly Archives: February 2012

How He Understands It

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Sometimes my son says stuff we’re not expecting.

Because it’s not even the subject on hand.

Or ever going to be the subject.

Like, “hey, Sis… I know you’re going to be a mom…and…

“And lay eggs.”

My daughter only chews her sandwich.

My son clarifies.  ”I mean,” he gestures, ” lay people.”

My daughter bites. “What kind of people?”

And it hits him.  ”Sissies.  And daddies!” he exclaims.

At which time–with minor snickering–the subject is settled.

And two kids finish lunch all the wiser.

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Just As Long as You Tuck, Tuck Me In

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My son stood in our doorway and spoke into the dark.  ”Remember, Mom?” he admonished. “You said you were going to tuck me in.”

It was 5:02 a.m.

I’d last heard this reminder at 3:48 a.m.  And before that 3:10 a.m.  And before that, sometime between one and two.

I flung the covers that hadn’t even warmed and straggled after my son–my son who’d whispered a sixth time into the same doorway of the same night what he’d thought I’d forgotten.

Only I hadn’t.

At each request I had tucked his growing body back into bed. I’d curled the blue blankets under his toes.  I’d wrapped his shoulders like presents.  And I’d left a tired kiss in his hair.

But he hadn’t remembered.

I wobbled down the stairs this morning to the tune of an old friend.  Stand By Me.  And then I added a couple verses of my own.

When the night has come

And my room is dark

And my night light is the only light I see

No I won’t be afraid, no I won’t be afraid

Just as long as you tuck, tuck me in.

And mommy, mommy, tuck me in, oh now tuck me in

tuck me in, tuck me in

If my room that I look around

Should scare me to death

And the shadows on the wall jump around

I might cry, I might cry, yes I might shed a tear

Because I need you to tuck, tuck me in.

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A Card in the Mail

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Since there’s something about a card in the mail…A thank you card with a hand-written address… An old-fashioned, I-sat-down-and-wrote-this-after-I-found-a-pen-that-worked-and-after-I-thought-of-something-to-say-and-after-I-looked-up-your-address-since-the-one-I-have-for-you-is-six-years-old-and-you-don’t-live-there-anymore-and-after-I-emptied-a-drawer-where-I-knew-a-stamp-had-to-be-and-after-I-got-the-thing-to-the-car-and-after-I-turned-right-into-the-post-office-instead-of-heading-straight-home…

since there’s something about a card in the mail, I wanted our daughter to be able to put her “thanks” into words.

And not just into an e-mail.

Or a text.

Or a “hey, I meant to tell ya…” at the end of a phone call.  Though these things are nice.  And sometimes more practical.  And grandmas and grandpas aren’t picky or holding their breath.

But into a card, a thing she had to write herself.

A thing that from beginning to end took over an hour…

And a couple of tries.  And eventually included a picture.

A thing my mother-in-law will read and save and read again.

Because there’s something about a thank you card from a grandchild.

In the mail.

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President’s Day

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I don’t know what you did to celebrate President’s Day…

but after we dumped every last oat from our homemade granola straight from the oven onto the kitchen floor and I spent ten minutes breathing like a dragon, well…then we partied like it was 1863.

Two hours later, without meaning to, we found Abe’s profile under the dining room table.

Then at eight p.m. when my son clinked his ziploc baggy of coins on the table, we figured we’d find out for sure with whose faces we’d been buying groceries.

At nine p.m. we realized that the dog hadn’t moved from his current position for eight hours except to shift his ears, it was still raining, and we hadn’t left the house.

Here’s to one heckuva holiday!

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Train a Child in the Way He Should Go

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I could not identify any of the disruptors by name, and about now, I doubt by sight I’d be any better.

I only know that as I was concluding my public speaking class on Friday to a group of homeschooled high school kids in the choir room of Bethany Baptist, the next period’s homeschooled choir kids sprang through the door and announced my class was over.

“The bell’s rung. You guys need to leave,” someone shouted.

Someone else tripped over a chair; a few laughed and more milled through the door joking at a volume reserved for a touchdown or a soccer goal.

My own voice raised as I gave final speech instructions. It rose again when I realized no one heard me.

As my class shuffled out the door, I wondered if I hadn’t experienced more respect as a teacher in the years I taught in the public schools.

But I caught myself.

Because really, there are good kids everywhere.

And the problems that surface are often kids reflecting what they’ve learned at home and on TV, from movies and from other kids as misguided as themselves.  Kids mirror their relationship with their parents.

To whatever degree that is.

I spoke with the choir teacher who was equally disappointed.  She’d e-mail the parents, she said.

And she must have.

Beginning on Saturday morning, notes from parents crossed my computer.  Parents were mortified.  Embarrassed.  Was it their child?  Would I please contact them by phone or by e-mail.

And I realized that for all the fair or unfair comparisons between public ed and homeschooling that there really was a difference in  the two.

It lay in parental response.  In this single experience, no homeschooling parent condoned his kid’s behavior.  No one questioned my ability as a teacher with an f-bomb.  No one sought a meeting with the “superintendent.”

This morning another note came.  It was marked “apology.”  It began…

Hello Mrs. Munson,

This is the “tall blond kid” from choir…

By the end of the note, my lips had risen in a smile.  These things take guts.  They take responsibility, too.

Sometimes they take involved parents.

And sometimes…

Sometimes a lifetime of prayer.

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A Certain Type of Teacher

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To say I helped–even a fraction–in my son’s preschool class on Wednesday would be a stretch.

My mother-in-law helped in my stead.

I bumbled in on crutches.  At which time I was shown to a black plastic chair where I hovered like a lump with one leg unbent mentally begging no child to come close.  Not even my own.

As the controlled chaos began, I watched to see what constituted as learning. One kid was already clothed in a doctor’s lab coat–her patient in a coma on the floor. Another had a stethoscope and was making rounds listening for everyone’s heart beat on their forehead.  Two were taking lunch orders in aprons and making cloth quesadillas.  A handful were pounding real nails in real wood with real hammers with safety goggles on sideways or around their neck.  And one was making a real pizza at our pizza station.  The room was ringing…

And I mean ringing.

I took a breath for Miss Cindy whose own turquoise sweater was being pulled together and rebuttoned by a little girl who stood near asking a question.  I flinched as two hands encircled Miss Cindy’s mouth like a small megaphone.

In four minutes I confirmed what I already suspected: it takes a certain type to teach preschool, a certain type to love a bundle of kids who still can’t tie their own shoes; a certain type to ahh over squiggles and heap praise for a patient hand in the air.

I shook my head.  I was not the certain type.

And yet I yearned for the Miss Cindys and the Miss Zaydas to know how valuable they are, how far-reaching their love is.

For without them, I would not have a son saying reverently at home, “I LOVE preschool!”

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20 Things I Like About My Brother

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20 Things I Like About My Brother.

It was an assignment.  Given after ten p.m.  To our daughter sitting on the stairs with a sharpened pencil…our daughter who needed a moment to remember…

how good it is to have a brother.

It started as a moment of courage when our son announced his arrangements for sleeping in his own room.  Alone.  He fixed his bed.  Got in.  Agreed that the night light in the bathroom was bright enough.  Closed his eyes.

And then opened ‘em.  He had a better idea.

Which was when he pulled all his blankets from his bed and crept again to his sister’s floor.  The floor he’s curled up on for the last ten months, the floor that feels like home, the floor that makes him safe.

But in the ten minutes her brother was gone, our daughter had all but rearranged the furniture.  She’d closed the chapter on room sharing.  She’d moved on.  To freedom.

Which may explain the size of her complaint.  But certainly didn’t excuse it.

And so crouching on the stairs with a yellow pencil beside a daddy who loves her, a daddy who cares more about her heart and her character than a full night of rest, she began her list.

20 Things I Like About My Brother.

1. company

2. fun

3. love

4. share

5. time together

6. pictures

7. help

8. laughs

9. somone to hug

10. Christmas fun

11. giving gifts

12. waching fireworks

13. making forts

14. clean up help

15. celabrating birthdays

16. memorys

17. baby pictures

18. picking out things

19. preschool progects

20. giving me gifts

When she climbed into bed at eleven, it was to the soft breathing of her brother in a lump on the floor, the brother she remembered she loved.

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Everything for a Reason

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The epiphany is this: I don’t want to live in IF-Land.  I don’t even want to visit very often.

There’s no peace there.

Just more ifs.

If I had slept in this morning instead of driving in the dark to play basketball at an hour that no longer resonates with my brain, in shoes I had to wipe the dust off, with men who were former colleagues and men who were former students, then…

then I wouldn’t have crumpled with the ball in mid-jump-stop on the left wing with my knee buckled somewhere beneath me after first shifting unnaturally right and then left.

Nope.

I’d still be sleeping.

But if I wasn’t clinging to a pair of crutches, gimping around the house like a one-legged rabbit and rubbing my arm pits raw, I wouldn’t have known how capable my seven year old was at preparing eggs from first crack to the salt and pepper on the plate.

I wouldn’t have known that playing UNO Attack at the table works just as well as the floor.

I wouldn’t have known I could trust my daughter to walk her brother from the parking lot in to preschool–alone…I wouldn’t have known that’d he’d let her.  I wouldn’t have known she would tap his teacher on the shoulder and explain that he needed help handing out his valentines.  I wouldn’t have known…

But I know now.

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The Collaboration

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Because we’re still learning restaurant manners, we divide the booth and conquer.  One kid slides in by the window; one adult clamps in beside.  One kid, one adult.

And I suppose it works out okay, if we don’t count the kid wiping his hands first on his own pants and then on mine.

Today, though, both kids sprang into the same side of the booth.   Their heads hovered at plate level and they shared the same behind indentation.  Our daughter cradled her arm around her brother’s shoulder and leaned her lips to his ear.  He reciprocated, and we watched the triangle of the two of them huddled like a teenage couple.

They giggled in whispers.  They gestured with their free hands.

Then with a satisfied announcement, they bounced apart.  ”We’ve decided that’d we’d like our own bean burritos,” my daughter said.

And our son nodded.  ”Yep,” he said. “We’re starving.”

And so it was…bean burritos for the pair.

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