A Meditation on The Veteran I Love Most of All

My dad joined the Army in 1944. He was drafted into service, but he tried to enlist even before he received his draft notice. He wanted to enlist, I think, because he didn't know what else to do with himself. Options were limited, in those days, especially for a guy with a background like my father's.

My dad grew up in the eye of a storm of dysfunction. His own father was rarely around—and even when he was, he certainly didn't do much to support the large family he'd helped to create. By the time my dad was 15 years old, in 1941, his mother was pregnant again and his father was nowhere to be found. My grandmother died under what were always represented as mysterious circumstances; "some kind of cancer, probably," was what my dad told me when I was younger. They had no money for doctors, and medicine was primitive at best, so it made sense to me that the cause of her death might be more or less unknown. More recently, though, my dad told me that his sister Pat claimed their mother's death was due to a self-induced abortion. It made sense, he said, given the way she died.

I don't know what that means, exactly—and to be honest, I really don't want to know.  But it pains me that my father had to see whatever he saw at the end of his mother's life.

My grandmother died on my dad's 15^th birthday: October 23^rd, 1941. After that, he was on his own. His two older sisters were already gone—one got married, and one just disappeared after saying "None of you will ever see me again." No one did. As the oldest kid left in the house, then, it was my dad's responsibility to make sure his brothers and sisters had shoes for their mother's funeral. Most of them didn't. (In October. In Iowa.) That meant a trip to the welfare office in town, where they all got vouchers that allowed them to purchase shoes at a local store. And after the funeral, they scattered to live with various relatives. Except my dad, and his brother Mike: they were old enough to take care of themselves, apparently. My dad had long since stopped going to school, so he and Mike worked for room and board on various farms. After a few years, my dad enlisted. Going to war must have seemed like a more honorable way to make a living.

In spite of the fact that he served in two wars—World War II and Korea—was shot twice, and still carries a piece of a grenade in his left arm, I don't think my dad has ever regretted his military service. In the Army, he rose through the ranks to Master Sergeant and learned how to be a leader. He taught ROTC for many years, both at the university and high school level. When I was very young, it wasn't uncommon for people who saw him out in public somewhere—like the K-mart parking lot, for instance—to snap to attention and salute. He wasn't in the service anymore, but his ROTC students remembered him. I was always convinced that my dad must be vaguely famous in the military world. I once asked him why he watched the violence of the Vietnam War play out on the evening news, and he said "I'm watching to see if they need me to go back." I fully expected to hear Walter Cronkite speak his name some evening, asking him to report for duty immediately.

A few weeks ago, one of those ROTC students—now an old man himself—wrote my dad a letter. He'd heard that my father's health is failing, and he wrote to thank my dad for being an example of the kind of man he wanted to become. "I am the man I am today because of you," he wrote. I'm not sure my dad remembers his military service, at this point, or even his years of teaching ROTC, but I choose to believe he can understand that he made a difference in the lives of other people.

None of my father's children have chosen lives of military service. My dad never encouraged us to do that. He never discouraged it, either, but I think he worked hard to make sure we had many options. He was strict about all of us getting good grades because he'd seen how limited his own career prospects were, outside the military, by his GED and lack of a college degree. When he met with a job counselor after being discharged from the army, that counselor looked at his file and said "I really don't know what kind of job you're qualified for—we don't have much call for a hired gun out here in the real world."

I didn't hear about that encounter for twenty years after it occurred. When he did tell me about it, my father said "Can you believe someone saying that to me? This was the counselor we were supposed to meet with. He was the person who was supposed to help us veterans find jobs after we'd left the service, and he says something like that."  Those words hurt my father--not only because he was following orders, doing exactly as he'd been told by his superiors, but because in his mind, military service was only honorable. He retired from the service in 1966. In the pre-Vietnam world of his tenure in the army, prior to the general questioning of authority that became part of the fabric of our culture, there was no question in anyone's mind that being a soldier would be a respectable way to make a living. And respectability was, above all things, my father's goal in life. After his first 18 years, respectability was the only thing he believed to be of value. For someone to suggest that his military service had been anything less than honorable was not just hurtful—it was potentially shattering.

He moved on, though, just as he moved on from everything else in his life that might have destroyed him or made him bitter. That kind of grit is part of my father's DNA, and he was always devoted to the idea that everyone is entitled to an opinion--even an opinion that he found personally hurtful. That was part of what he fought for, after all.  "Somebody else's bad attitude is never an excuse for yours," he told me, on more than occasion.  So he found a job on his own, with the postal service, and rose through the ranks again, this time into middle management. He and my mother played bingo at the NCO Club on the nearby National Guard base. Eventually, he started going to meetings at the VFW lodge. He remained proud of his military service, no matter what anyone else wanted to think about it. When I was home for his birthday this year, we took him out to dinner and he wore the Purple Heart baseball cap he wears anytime he leaves the house. We sang Happy Birthday over dessert. Just before we left, another customer walked past our table on his way out of the restaurant and stopped to shake my father's hand. "Happy Birthday, sir. Thank you for your service," he said. My father nodded—a little confused, I think, as to whether this was someone he should recognize—then thanked the man in return.

I thought about my dad yesterday afternoon when I heard a young student on my campus—a member of the reserves, once deployed and now getting the college education my father never received—fulminating to one of my colleagues about, among many other things, the lack of appreciation among college students for veterans like himself. "These people need to be sent to a third world country where you have to fight for your life instead of just living off someone else's effort," he said. "Then maybe they'd shut up with their opinions about this war and just show a little gratitude."

Here's what I would have liked to say to that young man:  My dad didn't fight two wars for the sake of gratitude. He fought for his own sense of self-worth. He fought so that I would have the right to disagree with you about prayer in public schools, the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, and probably a million other things, in spite of the fact that you clearly believe I haven't earned the right to have an opinion. My father is carrying around a piece of shrapnel in his arm precisely so that I do have that right. You characterize that as "living off someone else's effort."  My dad would not.  He would call it a privilege he was proud to provide for both of us, even though he never met you. 

My father and I don't agree on many things, but I know we agree on this point: our rights, as American citizens, are worthy of respect from soldiers and civilians alike. We should never take them for granted, or forget the sacrifices made to provide and protect them.  But the people who go to war to defend those rights have to earn respect, in the same way every other human being does:  not by insisting that it be given to them, and not by presuming they're entitled to it. They earn respect by being respectable people, regardless of what they've had to endure, and by acting respectfully toward others--including and especially those who hold opinions and beliefs they don't share.

Happy Veteran's Day to my dad, and to all the honorable men and women out there who gladly defend our right to disagree.

Thoughts On a Trip to Boise

1.  I got to the airport Thursday morning around 5:15 for a 6:30 flight out of San Antonio.  I didn't expect a big crowd so early on a random weekday morning, but as it happened all three lanes of traffic in front of Terminal 1 were jam-packed.  Once I'd gotten out of the car and Froggered my way to the terminal, I saw the security screening line was already backed up into the ticketing area and wrapped around a corner.  The friendly Airport Amigo that was managing the line assured us it would move quickly, and it did.

When I arrived in Boise, I called my mom to tell her my plane had landed.  Then I waited with about six other people for our luggage to make its rounds on the baggage carousel.  Then I walked out of the terminal, where I found four other people waiting for their rides.  Maybe ten cars drove by while we stood there.  Three of those cars picked up the people waiting with me on the curb.  One, of course, was my mom.

2.  Thursday afternoon, my brother stopped by our parents' house.  He doesn't do this very often; we're still not sure why he happened to drop by that day.  My sister has been staying with our parents several nights a week since my dad's health started to decline, and she came home from work early that day.  So we all ended up sitting around the dining room table, eating Costco pumpkin pie together.  I really can't remember the last time just the five of us sat at that table.

Later, my mom reported that my dad--who doesn't always know who I am, or where he is, or even how old he is these days--said to her, "It sure has been a long time since we had all our kids around the table, hasn't it?"

3. Early Friday morning, I went for a run while it was still pretty cold outside.  I got so excited by the sight of my own breath that I felt a little ridiculous.  My parents live next door to a city park, so I started out with a lap around the walking path that runs along the outside edge.  About halfway through my lap, I ran up on a small bevy of quail.

I'd forgotten all about quail.  They probably exist in some part of the bird sanctuary that is Texas, but not in my suburban neighborhood.  When we lived in Boise, my husband and I rented a small house on a huge lot that was a favorite gathering place of the neighborhood quail--at minimum, there were ten quail in our yard at any given time.  So I was really glad to see these guys.

Quail are skittish, so I expected them to fly off as soon as I came near them.  They didn't, though--not right away.  They took off at a run, first, their top-knots bobbing, and for awhile they just ran along beside me.

4.  I didn't realize how much I love the sound of Canada Geese honking their way south for the winter until I heard a wedge of them overhead later in my run.  I got all teary and stopped running so I could watch them fly off toward the mountains.

5.  After my run, I headed for the grocery store and found myself caught in a time warp as I drove away from my parents' house, listening to "You Shook Me All Night Long" on the oldies radio station.

6.  At the grocery store, I bought a few things to make marinara sauce--my mom had grown one enormous tomato that must have weighed two pounds on its own, and it was getting a little squishy from having been handled and shown off.  So I offered to make a batch of sauce while she went out to get her hair done.  I used the monster tomato (and six smaller ones), plus some olive oil, onions, garlic, and fresh basil.  When the home health aide came to check up on my dad, she said "Whatever you're making in there smells pretty amazing." I felt more like myself in that moment than I think I ever have in my parents' house.
 
7.  Friday afternoon, I met my friend Steph for coffee.  She asked if it was too cold for me to sit outside while we talked.  It was 70 degrees that afternoon.  "I'm not that much of a wimp," I said. "Well, you never know," she said.  "Last time you were here, it was 65 degrees and you were shivering the whole time."

8.  A chai latte from Lucy's is so, so, so much better than a chai latte from Starbucks.

9.  Saturday morning we went to the open air market downtown.  The artist who creates and sells key chains made from Scrabble tiles didn't have an X tile with a map on the back, to replace the one my son lost since our last trip to Boise, so that was a disappointment.  I wound up buying my kids U. of Idaho t-shirts instead.  They already have Boise State shirts, but only because I was desperate for souvenirs the last time I made a solo trip and the airport gift shops, predictably, sell only the spirit gear for the hometown team.  I cheer for Boise State, but I do it around a lump in my throat.  When people see my kids' shirts and ask if I went to BSU, I always clarify that I'm from Boise, but I went to U of I and later taught at BSU.  Idaho is too small a place for serious rivalries, but I'll never be able to cheer for BSU with a clear conscience.

10.  BSU beat San Jose State in a Saturday evening game. I had to quit watching when the score hit 28-0.  The final score was something like 45-0.

11.  Sunday morning, I woke up before the alarm went off at 5:00--my brain was still on Texas time, as it had been the whole time I was visiting.  My sister drove me to the airport on completely empty roads, and I walked right up to the ticket counter when I got to the airport.  No line, no waiting.  There are bonuses to living in a small town.  I hope I never forget that.

12.  A vanilla latte from Moxie Java is so, so, so much better than a vanilla latte from Starbucks.

I'll Fly Away

I'm heading for Boise tomorrow morning, bright and early.  I wish I enjoyed traveling more than I do, but the fact of the matter is that it makes me very nervous.  I'm not exactly sure why.  I'm not afraid of accidents--I know they can't be predicted or avoided (which is why they're called accidents), so I don't live in fear of them.  I'm not afraid of anything, really, except getting sick in-flight, and that's controllable with medication.

Perhaps what makes me nervous is that travel involves functioning on someone else's schedule.  I'm neurotically punctual, so I can't stand being on a plane that's late.  I really, really hate missing a connecting flight.  When I have a schedule, I want to stick to it.  The logical part of my brains knows it's really no big deal--there's always another flight, or a hotel room with my name on it--but I still can't seem to resist getting stressed out before I talk myself down.  This is the price of being a control freak.  

It's more than just the travel, though.  When we were younger and first married, my husband and I traveled a lot.  We visited lots of big cities, we went to Europe, we took road trips just for the sake of getting out of town--staying home was the last thing on our minds.  These days, though, that's what makes us both happier than anything else.  A nice long afternoon at home, baking bread and reading a book--that's my idea of a perfect day.  My friend Denise told me once that her sons often worry about her spending so much time at home; "Don't you get lonely?  Don't you want to get out of the house and be around people?"  And Denise has to explain, once again, that she did plenty of getting out in another chapter of her life.  It's just not an interesting prospect anymore.

I'm only visiting family, not a foreign country, so I'll have plenty of time for hanging out at home.  My mom's home.  The house where I grew up.  But it always feels like home again after I've been there for awhile.    
 

Homeward Bound

We're having Fall Break at my university next week (for friends in the north, it's like a miniature Spring Break--we get next Thursday and Friday off.)  I'm heading to Boise for the 4-day weekend.  I love the fall in Idaho, so I'm looking forward to having some time among the turning leaves.  Fall is the one thing I really miss here in Texas.  I thought I'd miss winter when we moved here, but not so much.  Turns out you can live a long and happy life without snow.

I'm a little nervous about my trip home, though--partly because my dad's health has been declining pretty steadily for the last few years, and I haven't seen him since this time last year, when we flew to Boise for my niece's wedding.  I'm expecting to be shocked by how much he's aged, and I know that caring for him is taking a toll on my mother as well.  I doubt either of them will look like the people I remember.  Beyond having to face these rather difficult realities, though, I'm always a little nervous about going to Boise.

I know that sounds silly.  How can you be nervous about visiting your home town?  But these are the facts:  I never felt like Boise was where I belonged.  After I left Idaho, I fell in love with the idea of it; while I was living there, I couldn't wait to leave.  I love mountains, and I always feel at home when I'm within visual distance of them.  The smell of pine trees makes me deeply happy in a way few things do.  But being in Boise makes me remember how it felt to be a powerless teenager in a place I just didn't belong, which is a feeling I'd just as soon forget.

It's not that I don't like the place.  On the contrary, I really love my little hometown.  It's just that I don't know how to be there as a grown-up, I guess. 
      

30 Days of Blogging, Day 30: A letter to yourself at 20

We're at the finish line!  Thank you everyone who has read this past month's worth of blogs and told me about it.  I've appreciated knowing that I wasn't just talking to myself for the last 30 days.

Dear 20-year-old Pam,

You've spent most of your life being told that you're smart.  But here's something you need to know:  you really don't know much.  Remember that the next time someone tries to give you some advice--it's possible they know what they're talking about and you, smart one, do not.  Here are the words of advice I hope you'll accept from me.  


1.  Keep a low overhead.  It will be many years before a famous writer says this to you, and by that time it will be way too late to heed this very sensible advice.  So let me just tell you right now:  there are many, many things you can do without.  (That peach silk dress, for example--don't buy it.  You'll never wear it, and you'll feel sick to your stomach every time you see it hanging in your closet.)  Keep in mind that money is freedom.  The more of it you have, the more control you have over your time.       

2.  You don't have to be a prodigy.  It really doesn't matter how quickly you do things; doing them is the point.  Give yourself a break.  It takes time to figure out what you're doing, especially with something like writing, which gets better the longer you do it.  (And seriously, does anyone even remember those writers who were the prodigies of your generation?  Either they're still writing or they're not.  No one remembers when they started.)    

3.  You're fine on your own.  Perhaps it's because you grew up with parents who were joined at the hip; I don' know.  For some reason, you're pretty much convinced that you can't live a long and happy life without a romantic partner.  But here's the thing:  you're going to drive across the country to go to graduate school all by yourself.  Then you're going to figure out how to do graduate-level research and write award-winning papers and short stories. You will do all of this without a partner.  (He'll be along presently.  And trust me, he's more than worth the wait.)  So believe me when I say that you're fine.  In fact, you will come to the conclusion that you're not interested in marriage at all.  And this is when you'll meet the guy who will convince you that, actually, you are.       

4.  Don't be so afraid.  People make mistakes, and most of them don't end in disaster.  They're not always the result of carelessness.  You'll learn, you'll move on--it's part of life.  But being afraid of making mistakes will keep you from doing a lot of things, and being afraid to ask questions will also keep you from learning. You're not supposed to know everything.  Smart people know enough to recognize what they don't know.  In fact, smart people know there's always more to learn.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 29: Something you hope to accomplish

I'd really like to be able to making a living from my writing, at some point in my life.  It doesn't have to be limited to fiction writing; I'd be very happy to get paid for writing my food blog, or any other kind of blog, for that matter.  It would make me very happy not to leave the house when I go to work in the morning.  (That's my borderline agoraphobia showing itself again.)  I love teaching, but that's something I could certainly do part-time if writing were my primary gig. 

Everything I've read suggests that establishing a money-making blog takes at least three years, so this is a long-term goal.  And, of course, I have two children who will need to go to college in the next ten years--so it's very unlikely that I will give up working a full-time job anytime soon.  But if I were able to retire a little early because of my writing income, that would be good enough for me.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 28: Something you have to forgive someone else for

Like the "someone who disappointed you" post, this is stuff I'd rather not think about.  I like to believe that I forgive and forget the past, and generally I think that's true.  I'm not a grudge-holder; that takes way too much energy away from much more important things.  Holding on to anger punishes you, not the person you're angry at.

With that said, I'll admit that there are people I find it difficult to forgive.  One of those is a former professor toward whom I still harbor some hard feelings.  She's very famous, and having her name on my resume has always been an enormous benefit to me--my usual reply, when someone mentions her, is "I was very lucky to have the chance to work with her."  That's true, so I don't mind saying it.  And I know that saying anything negative about her just makes me look bad, because she's accomplished a lot and I can't say the same.  So I just don't say anything about her, most of the time.     

But I still believe that she didn't need to be as unkind and dismissive as she was.  Once you've had some measure of success, I think you can afford to be a little more gracious to people who are struggling and just getting started.  She said things that honestly made me question whether I should even bother to continue writing.  If she didn't think I was good enough to get published, she might have just let me find that out when I didn't get published.  Instead, she seemed intent on letting me know that my work wasn't even worthy of her attention.

I don't know if I hold a grudge against her, exactly.  I don't think I do.  I don't feel angry when I think about her; I don't feel like she's undeserving of the success she's had.  But I do feel like I'll have to forgive her, eventually, for offering so little of what I expected when I signed up for her workshop, and for having a heart so much less generous than her work suggests.
   

30 Days of Blogging, Day 27: Something you have to forgive yourself for

A couple of weeks ago in Sunday school, I was talking to the Confirmation class about baptism.  We were discussing how you have to live your baptism every day by believing you start with a clean slate, as far as God is concerned.  I pointed out that, once you get to be my age, you have lots of things you need to be forgiven for, but the hardest thing is to forgive yourself. 

I don't think I could single out one thing for which I need to forgive myself.  Generally speaking, I'm still working on offering forgiveness to my 18-to-22-year-old self, who made a lot of dumb decisions that I can hardly bear to think about as an older person.  There are any number of explanations for why this happened, but the bottom line is, I made those choices.  Plenty of people around me were making smarter decisions--I was just too lazy and selfish and generally immature to do the right thing, much of the time.
 
Fortunately, after I'd moved across the country to go to graduate school, I outgrew those traits very quickly.  When you're completely on your own, you learn that being a person others respect is pretty important--you can't expect much from them if they aren't able to expect much from you in return.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 26: Describe Your Dream House

I can't say the house I'm living in right now is my dream house, since it's not situated in the woods and doesn't have a spectacular view.  But I love my house.  I do wish I could make a few substantial improvements, though.

I wish the kitchen looked like this.  Right now I have a tiny galley kitchen, which makes it hard to do anything very complicated.  Also, there's really no room for more than one person in the kitchen at a time.  I'd like to have a kitchen where people can cook together comfortably.   

And I wish I had an outdoor office, like this.  I realize it would have to have a window air conditioner--otherwise, it would be unusable for six months of the year--but I like the idea of being able to leave the house without actually leaving home.   


 And, finally, I wish we had a piano like this in the living room:

I love listening to my husband play the piano.  He doesn't get to do it very often, since we only have a small keyboard right now, but in my dream house there's a baby grand piano where he can play anytime he wants.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 25: A song that makes you think of someone besides your significant other

There's a scene in the remake of The Parent Trap where California Lindsey Lohan has just arrived in London, pretending to be her identical  twin, London Lindsey Lohan.  While she's briefly taking in the major sights of the city, The La's song There She Goes is playing in the background.  My daughter once told me that this song made her think of me--in fact, when she was very little, she told me she couldn't watch The Parent Trap when I was away from home on a trip, because that song made her miss me too much.

So now, of course, whenever I hear that song, I think of her as well. 

30 Days of Blogging, Day 24: Make a Play List for Someone

I'm coming down with a cold and I feel like crap, but I'm certainly not going to punk out on a 30-day challenge when I'm this close to the finish line.  I am going to cheat a little bit, however; instead of explaining each song, I'm just going to say that my husband will know why each of them is on the list.

Is Your Love in Vain, Bob Dylan

Kiss Off, Violent Femmes
Straight up, Paula Abdul
Eternal Flame, The Bangles
The Flame, Cheap Trick
Under the Milky Way, The Church
Back in Your Life, Jonathan Richman
My Baby, Scruffy the Cat

30 Days of Blogging, Day 23: Something you wish you had done

One thing I wish I had done is start running sooner than I did.  I played a lot of sports when I was younger--softball, volleyball, basketball.  When I got to junior high, though, it quickly became apparent that some girls were much more serious about sports than I was.  I'd always just had fun with whatever I was doing.  So I stopped playing sports after volleyball season in 8th grade, and after that I didn't do much of anything physical.  I took the occasional aerobics class in high school and college, but that's about it.  I always had friends who'd run for fitness purposes, but it never occurred to me that I might do this. 

Flash forward about 30 years, more or less.  I've taken my daughter and two other girls from our church to a weekend Advent retreat at a local church camp.  During free time, one of our options is to hike up to the cross that overlooks the campsite.  This is what the girls want to do, and they beg me to come along.  I'm from Idaho; what's in front of me is not a mountain, not even close to a mountain.  It's a hill.  A steep hill, but a hill nonetheless.  So I say fine, we'll do the hike.  When I say this, it does not occur to me that I haven't climbed either a mountain or a hill in a very long time.  Like, 30 years, more or less.

Halfway up the hill--maybe not even halfway, actually--I start to realize that I'm in big trouble.  My legs and shaking and my heart is beating faster than I think it's ever beaten before.  I can just barely breathe.  But there's no way to give up and go back down the hill, because we're hiking in a line.  Also, I don't want to abandon the girls.  So I keep climbing, and I start praying, and I make it to the top of the hill.  This is when I start considering that I might have to tell the counselors who've led us up here that I can't make the climb back down, because my heart is really racing and I really can't breathe.  I have visions of being taken down the hill by EMS people, on a stretcher, wearing an oxygen mask.  I can't do that to these girls, though.  I can't scare them that way.  And I certainly can't have the camp director calling their parents and saying Please come pick up your daughter.  The chaperone from your church was too fat and out of shape to make it through the weekend. 

So I say a very earnest prayer:  God, please get me down off this hill.  I know I'm too young to be this out of shape. But I swear, if you get me down off this mountain, I will change.  I have to be able to get these girls back to their parents.  Please, God, just let me get these girls back home and I'll do better.

And somehow, when it was time to start hiking again, I got down the hill.  I fell once, because my legs were weak and shaky, but I made it back to the campsite.  And when I got back home, later that day, I told my husband what had happened and started looking for a treadmill.  I didn't want to be able to make any excuses--rain, heat, whatever.  I wanted to hold up my end of the bargain, since God had taken care of me when I asked for help.

At first, I could barely walk a mile on the treadmill.  That's how out of shape I was.  It's humiliating to think about this now, but it's true.  Before too long, though, I'd moved up to two miles.  Then, as I was trying to improve my speed, it suddenly occurred to me:  maybe I could run.  I had never, ever thought of myself as a runner, so I really wasn't sure if this was something I could do.  I started off very slowly, holding on to the arm rails of the treadmill while I ran.  When I gained a little confidence, I let go.  Then I kicked up the speed.

Now I love running.  I love the way I feel after a good run, tired but full of energy at the same time.  I love the way deep breathing clears out your brain, and the way an endorphin rush just lifts off the top of your skull.  When I'm in a good routine and running several times a week, I feel really powerful.  Like I could run anywhere.  I'm not competitive about it--I don't run 5ks, and I didn't join the team my university put together for the upcoming Rock-n-Roll half marathon--because I'm hard on myself, generally speaking, and I know I'd start feeling bad about running if I didn't do as well as others.  That's why I don't run with a partner, either.

This is something I do for myself.  And for God, of course.  I just wish I'd started sooner.     

30 Days if Blogging, Day 22: Something you wish you hadn't done

Once you become a parent, I think your list of regrets in life multiplies exponentially.  Every day, it seems, there are choices to be made, and you never know if you're doing the right thing.  You make what you think is the best decision at the time.  But lots of times, you only get one shot--you can't go back and fix what you did, if it turns out you did the wrong thing after all.

When we first moved to Texas, Jordan was starting first grade and Andrew was still in preschool.  He was four years old, so he needed just one more year of day care before he started kindergarten.  I found a center close to our house, checked it out, and made arrangements for Andrew to start spending his days there.

We'd had terrific child care in Columbia, Missouri--it was university-sponsored, led by teachers with college degrees and staffed by students studying to be teachers.  I knew it wasn't likely we'd find anything we loved as much as our previous day care center after we moved.  So when I started having some misgivings about the place I'd chosen, I tried to write them off to an unfair comparison.  I never had any concerns about Andrew being unsafe or in danger, but he obviously wasn't happy.  He's always been a shy kid, so I told myself that of course the transition to an unfamiliar place would be difficult.  He'd adjust. 

But when his feelings about day care didn't improve, I told myself he only had to be at this center for a short while.  Less than a year.  I'd just started a brand new job at my university and I was nervous about proving myself.  I was trying to earn tenure.  Looking for a new day care would have taken me away from work during the day.  I didn't want to make it look as if I couldn't balance being a mother and a professor just when I was at the start of a new career.  I'd worked so hard to get where I was.  I tried to focus on the big picture and keep in mind that I was supporting my family. That without my job, we'd all be much more unhappy than Andrew seemed to be.       

When the academic year ended in May, I took Andrew out of day care as soon as I could and spent that whole summer at home with him and Jordan.  I hoped some time (and a super fun summer with Mom) would just erase that whole awful year from his memory.  While I don't think he suffered any long-term damage, he still says "I hated that place" every time we drive by it.  Clearly, he has not forgotten that experience. 

If I could go back and make a different decision for him now, I would.  Even if it meant ending up at a different university, or in a different career altogether.  I had other options.  I didn't take them.  And I really wish I had. 

30 Days of Blogging, Day 21: A story about your best friend, past or present

I could tell you something about my friend Susan, from high school, or my friend Jayne, from college, but instead I'm going to tell you something about Steph, from grad school.  I met Steph toward the end of her undergraduate career, right after I'd started my M.A. program.  I've always thought she was incredibly cool--she's one of those effortlessly hip people who exist entirely in a world of their own making.  I'm still jealous of her ability to just sit back and let life happen.  Whatever comes up, she deals with it and moves on as if that were always part of the plan.   

Steph grew up in Kansas, which is where I met her, via our mutual friend Bruce.  Later, she moved to Idaho--where I grew up--because both she and her husband were looking for jobs, and the university where I was working always needed adjunct faculty.  About a year after that, I moved away from Idaho again, to work on my Ph.D. in Missouri.  (Steph drove cross-country with me during that move, since I was traveling with an infant.  She was my co-pilot/car nanny, and indispensable in both roles.)  In the meantime, our friend Bruce had moved back home to the southwest, decided on a career in medicine, and gone to med school.  Later, he accepted a job that brought him back to Kansas.

So now Steph lives in my hometown and occasionally checks in on my elderly parents.  I live in the southwest, Bruce's old stomping grounds.  And Bruce lives in northwestern Kansas, near the tiny town where Steph grew up.  Steph tells me that there are days, even now, after 16 years of living in Boise, when she looks at the mountains and thinks "I live in Idaho."  But, no doubt, those moments are followed by her realization that this is exactly as it should be.      
    

30 Days of Blogging, Day 20: A book that meant something to you

I love books--hence the career path I have followed thus far--but I'm not sentimental about them.  There were books I loved as a teenager that I can see as deeply flawed now (pretty much everything by F. Scott Fitzgerald falls into this category, with the exception of The Great Gatsby.)  There are books I didn't like as a young reader that I now love (pretty much everything by Faulkner falls into that category.)  And then there's the occasional book that changed my life.

The Poisonwood Bible is one of those books, for about a billion reasons.  Most important among those reasons is the fact that it made me think of Africa in a completely different way--not as a shape on a map, not as a continent, but as a place where people live.  Reading about the U.S. government's involvement in the murder of Patrice Lumumba made me deeply ashamed; realizing this was a piece of American history that conveniently gets left out of the official story told in textbooks made me furious.  I loved the Price family (except for evil Nathan, of course) and found myself a little horrified to realize that I sympathized with vapid Rachel as often as I did with compassionate Leah.  That's Kingsolver's point, of course--that we're all a little bit selfish and a little bit selfless.  The important thing is to balance those impulses for the greater good.

On top of that, this book contains a moment of genuine surprise that I wasn't at all prepared for.  That's a rare treat, when you've read as many novels as I have.  The Poisonwood Bible restored my faith in the ability of a book to suck me in, surprise me, and make me sad when it was over. 

30 Days of Blogging, Day 19: Your Faith

I was raised Lutheran--by which I mean, I grew up going to a Lutheran church every Sunday.  My father had grown up without any sort of religious training.  My mother didn't know a lot about what it meant to be Lutheran, specifically; she just knew that she'd always gone to a Lutheran church, and she was Confirmed in a Lutheran church, and therefore she kept going to a Lutheran church.

I hated church, as a kid, and hate is not too strong a word.  Our church was in the old part of town and had no youth program to speak of.  Occasionally there would be some spurt of youth-oriented activity, and my mother would insist that I go and hang out with people I didn't know at all.  I went to church because I had to, and when I didn't have to go anymore--when I moved away from home to go to college--I didn't.

Having kids of my own is what changed my mind about all of this.  When you have children, the world starts looking like a much different place, full of potential dangers and injuries.  I didn't want my children to grow up vulnerable to twisted people who might claim to know something about the Bible and the afterlife;  I wanted my kids to have a certain amount of Biblical literacy that they could claim as their own.  And when I started looking at the Bible myself, I realized that I actually believe what the Gospel says.  Like, really believe it.  I realized that social justice and Christianity go hand in hand, in spite of the fact that many people who call themselves Christians work very hard to prove that's not the case.

I go to church now because I believe in what it stands for.  I believe in helping people who need help, which is what Jesus did.  I believe in loving my neighbor, difficult as that is sometimes.  I believe that doing these things is the only way to heal this broken world.  I go to church to remind myself of that.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 18: Your views on a current controversial topic

It's a good day for this topic.  Or, rather, a sad day for this topic.  Yesterday our country missed an opportunity to repeal the shameful Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy that's been in place since 1993.  An overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of repealing this policy--including my dad, who was a 22-year Army veteran, an officer, and a soldier in two wars.  He once said to me "It makes no sense to make people lie when you're asking them to pledge to serve their country with honor.   There's no honor in lying."

Amen, Daddy-o.

And to quote Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 17: Something you're a little OCD about

This one's also pretty easy to answer (although, sad to say, there are many things that fall into this category.)  I'm completely OCD about symmetry and evenness.  A framed photo hung on the wall at even a slight angle will drive me nuts.  If I'm starting a new project, generally I need to start it at the beginning of a week (or month), which is why I was pretty proud of myself for starting a 30-day challenge on September 5th.  The much more likely response would have been to wait until October 1st.  Or perhaps November, which actually has 30 days and wouldn't have one leftover day, like October.

I'm telling you, it's bad.

Whenever I'm painting a room, I can spend untold amounts of time trying to get a straight line at the top of the wall or around the doorjamb.  Even in spots that aren't going to show--if I know there's a blob of paint on the wall, I'm going to scrape it off and work to cover it up.  Trying to texturize the walls in my bathroom was a nightmare because I really wanted the lumpiness to be even across the wall, when of course the point of texturizing is random lumpiness to cover irregularities in the wall surface.

My friend Chris likes to come into my office and move the calendar on the corner of my desk.  It's always positioned at a 45-degree angle from the front edge of the desk, lined up with the right-hand corner.  One day he came in and nearly had a heart attack when he noticed the calendar had been knocked out of position by something I'd put on top of it.  (I'm not a neat freak, so clutter isn't unusual, but generally speaking my clutter is organized in piles.  To recycle.  To deal with.  To file.  Etc.)  After he moves the calendar, he likes to stand there talking to me because he knows I won't move it back until he leaves.  But he also knows I'm barely capable of holding a conversation while my calendar is askew. 

This passes for entertainment at my office.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 16: Something You Definitely Can Live Without.

Easy.

Television.

My husband will laugh when he reads this, because he hates the TV and doesn't like that it's on so much of the time.  I'm used to having the TV on, it's true, but I'm hardly ever watching it.  I've done writing residencies where no TV was available for two weeks, and while the adjustment is a little difficult at first, it's also pleasant.  I like the way quiet sort of takes over your life when there's no TV available.  (When I went to O'Hare Airport after two weeks without television, I almost started crying as the result of overstimulation.  The noise!  The lights!  It was all too much.)

But when you live with children--or, at least, when you live with children in a neighborhood like mine, where not having access to TV would be a pretty big deal--you get used to noise.  Including TV.  When the house is quiet (as it is at this moment), I actually get a little nervous.  Quiet is unnatural.  It's better to have some voices in the background to remind you that everything's fine.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 15: Something You Can't Live Without

I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's nothing I really couldn't live without (aside from the basic requirements--food, air, water, etc.)  I'm a pretty adaptable person and when I have to let go of something, I do it.  I may not like it, and I may not be happy about it, but I do it. 

There are several things that make life much less pleasant when they're out of rotation, though.  First among those is coffee.  With both of my pregnancies, I gave up coffee.  That was absolutely the hardest part about being pregnant.  There's conflicting research about whether pregnant women need to give up caffeine entirely or just cut back, and of course my mother insisted I didn't need to do either--"I drank coffee the whole time I was pregnant with you kids, and you were fine," she said.  You also drank alcohol and lived with a man who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, I could have added.  But the fact that we all dodged various bullets didn't make me feel inclined to follow her example. 

I knew it would be harder for me to limit my coffee drinking than to just give it up altogether, so that's what I did.  Toward the end of my second pregnancy I observed to my friend Denise that when you're pregnant is when you most need to relax with a drink or wake up with a cup of coffee, and you can't do either one.  It's so unfair. 

Healthy children are pretty good compensation for those temporary sacrifices, though.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 14: Your Favorite TV Show

Although the TV is often turned on at my house, I don't watch a lot of it--the television often serves only as background noise.  When I'm writing or working seriously, I need a quiet house.  When I'm just putzing around on the computer, or reading a magazine, the background noise of the TV is there to keep me company.  (Also, I find it very difficult to do only one thing at a time.  If I'm a reading a magazine, I have to be watching TV simultaneously.  And vice-versa.)

One of the main reasons I don't watch a lot of TV is that so much of what's on now is just disgusting.  It's vulgar and childish and just generally more offensive than anything else.  When I do have the TV on, I'll watch reruns of older shows (like Seinfeld) or something on Food Network.  The only current television I watch with any regularity is Mad Men--I do love me some tormented bad boy, as long as the torment is genuine and not self-serving--and, now that it's back, Parenthood.  I like that the family on this show seems real.  The adult children bicker with each other and carry grudges, like siblings (even grown siblings) tend to do; the younger children have real issues to deal with, not just the usual high school drama; and the couples are fighting over real problems, like whose job should take priority when family decisions have to be made.

I don't know if I could choose between those two, or which one I'd choose if I had to.      

30 Days of Blogging, Day 13: Your Favorite Band or Artist

I love music.  I was one of those teenage girls who felt like Top 40 radio was speaking about her directly.  When MTV made the scene--first as a half-hour TV show, when I was in junior high, and later as the All Music, All The Time channel it became--it completely changed my life.  I spent ridiculous amounts of time sitting around, watching videos and listening to music.

I have a very clear memory of the first time I saw the video of R.E.M. singing "So. Central Rain."  I loved that song.  I loved Michael Stipe's voice.  I loved Michael Stipe's hair.  And when I heard that song, I knew I was hearing something I'd never heard before.

R.E.M. has always felt that way to me. Hearing  "Cuyahoga" and "Fall on Me" for the first time felt very similar to that first encounter with "So. Central Rain."  I'm less crazy about their more recent stuff, but I realize bands and artists need to evolve.  Nobody wants to sing the exact same song over and over for thirty years. So I'll just keep listening to the old stuff and reliving the revelations of my youth.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 12: An old photo and a story

Some of you may have already seen his photo (if you're my Facebook friend.)  This was taken while my family still lived in a rental house in Boise, so I can't be more than five years old--we moved into the house where my parents still live just after my 5th birthday.

I really think I remember having this picture taken, because I remember striking that pose very purposefully.  I felt quite sassy in my cowgirl garb, and I wanted to let that be known--and, apparently, that was okay, or at least for as long as it took to capture this picture.

I'm not sure what I thought the poodle purse added to this ensemble.  (The knee socks and saddle shoes were, no doubt, my mom's contribution.)

30 Days of Blogging, Day 11: A photo that makes you sad

I belong to a Facebook group, Pawsitively Texas, that works to find homes for animals who are in danger of being put to sleep at area shelters.  The guy at left, Scott, was one of the dogs on their rescue list several weeks ago.  I see pictures of adorable, needy cats and dogs every day via this group, but something about Scott's picture just broke my heart.  His eyes looked so sad.  He reminded me of our dog, Hailey, when we found her at a local shelter.  Even my son, who was six years old at the time, asked me "Why is her face so sad?"  I told him she was sad because she needed a family, and that's why we needed to adopt her.  She's been a much-loved member of our clan ever since that day.

I knew we couldn't adopt Scott, but I kept checking back to see if someone had adopted him.  He did find a foster home, so at least he was safe from immediate danger.  Then I read that he'd tested positive for heartworm disease, and I figured his fate had been sealed.  In its advanced stages--as it is in Scott's case--heartworm is an expensive disease to treat, and a HW+ dog requires special care.  I couldn't imagine someone would adopt a dog, even one as beautiful as this guy, knowing he came with that kind of baggage.

But guess what?  Someone did.  Some beautiful soul looked at Scott's picture, saw the same sad face, and did something about it without regard to the cost or care Scott will involve.  His name is Chance now, which seems completely fitting to me. I swear he's smiling in this picture.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 10: A picture that makes you happy

This is a picture of my mom and dad that I took several years ago, before my dad's health started declining.  We were having lunch at a barbecue restaurant in Boise.  I was on sabbatical that October and visiting home so I could attend his 80th birthday party that weekend.

My dad is not the type of guy to stick out his tongue when you take his picture.  He was a drill sergeant in the Army.  He was a serious bad-ass and a very strict father. But for some reason, he decided to stick out his tongue that day. And he managed to do it at the very last minute, without me seeing what he'd done.

When I reviewed the picture on my camera, I just started laughing.  "Did you actually stick out your tongue?" I asked him.

He was laughing too hard to answer.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 9: A Piece of Art or Sculpture That You Really Like

I'm going to cheat on this one and talk about both a piece of art and a piece of sculpture because I can't choose between the two.  Not that I'm saying sculpture isn't art.  I didn't write the prompt, people, I'm just responding to it.

This is the "Bird Girl" statue created by Sylvia Shaw Judson, a member of the Shaw family that owned what is now the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois.  I've done two writing residencies at Ragdale, and both times I was overwhelmed by the spirit of creativity that just sort of oozes out of the walls in that place.  This statue, the last time I was there, sat in front of the newly renovated Barn House.  In the photo at left, "Bird Girl" is situated somewhere in Savannah, Georgia--she rose to fame on the cover of John Berendt's Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil.  I couldn't find a photo of her at Ragdale that showed this level of detail, though.  "Bird Girl" is typical of all Sylvia's sculptures, many of which are on the Ragdale grounds--they're very simple and incredibly beautiful.  You can see more of Ragdale (and Sylvia's sculptures) in this blog post.

You've probably seen this painting before.  It's Un Dimanche Après-Midi à lÎle de la Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, on display at the Chicago Art Institute.   My husband and I went to Chicago to visit a friend not long after we were married, and that was the first time I saw this paiting in person.  It's enormous.  I didn't grow up going to museums, so I hadn't seen a lot of art--and honestly, it had never occurred to me that paintings came in different sizes.  I figured they were all just, you know, painting-size.  I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's true. 

Then, right after I finished my MFA, my husband and I went to Paris to visit our friend Michael.  He was in the Foreign Service and living in Paris at the time, so we had a free place to hang out while we explored Europe with the assistance of our much-more-worldly friend. We saw an exhibit of Seurat paintings while we were there, including the studies he did while composing La Grande Jatte (though not the painting itself--the CAI doesn't loan it out anymore, apparently, after it was almost destroyed by a fire at another museum.)  There were sketches of all the characters in this painting in different poses, and that's when it occurred to me that artists didn't just start at one end of the canvas and paint their way across, or start in the middle and head for the edges.  Again, I know that sounds crazy, but it's true.  We bought a poster of this painting at the end of our museum visit.  It's framed now, hanging in my living room, and it's the only souvenir we brought back from that trip to Paris.  (We were young and broke.  The poster was cheap.  The framing, done years later, was not.)

Later during that trip, we happened across the Seurat family tomb in the Pere Lachaise cemetary--completely by accident, but it seemed kind of fitting, after seeing the exhibit.  I stuck some flowers through the grate on the front of the tomb, and I still remember that as one of the most important things I did while I was in Paris.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 8: Reasons Why You Love Your Significant Other

Well, this is a nice change of pace after yesterday's disappointment-fest.  This is a list that could go on indefinitely, but here are a few reasons:

1.  Because I knew, ten minutes into our first conversation, that he was the person I was supposed to be with for the rest of my life.  I could even tell you what he said that brought about this revelation, but then I'd have to relate the whole conversation for that sentence to make sense. 

2.  Because he has a wicked sense of humor that very few people know about.  He's very quiet, but when he speaks up, he's hilarious.

3.  Because he'll always do the right thing, even when it's not the easy thing.

4.  Because he goes out of his way to be nice.  Last weekend we went to IHOP for breakfast after church, and when he saw a woman approaching the front door carrying a baby in a carrier, he jumped up and opened the door for her.  He wasn't the person closest to the door, but he didn't wait to see if one of those people was going to help out.

5.  Because he's a really good dad, available and supportive but not a doormat or a cash machine, like so many fathers are.   

6.  Because he genuinely wants me to succeed at whatever I do, and he takes pride in my success rather than feeling threatened or diminished by it.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 7: Someone from the past who disappointed you

I really don't like thinking about things like this.  I'm big on moving ahead and leaving the past in the past, where it belongs.  But, okay.  In the spirit of completing the list.

There was a guy I knew in graduate school.  I can't say we dated, exactly, but we hung out together constantly.  When we weren't hanging out, we were talking on the phone.  We had one of those relationships that makes you sit around and think "What is this, exactly?  What are we doing?"  The answer to that question seemed to change on a pretty regular basis, and in retrospect I think that was intentional.   

We had a lot of things in common.  I really wanted that relationship to work--I liked who I was when I was with him, and I liked the way he saw me (or, at least, the way I thought he did.)  But toward the end of that relationship, whatever it was, he played a very cruel joke that left me feeling humiliated.  I don't know if he intended for me to feel that way, but I'm not sure how he could have anticipated a different outcome.  THen again, maybe that in itself says something about him.

I wrote a story about this guy many years later (of course). It ended up being more non-fiction than fiction, though I did change the ending.  Most of the people I know who've read that story seems to understand, without being told, that they're reading about a real person and not some figment of my imagination.  Every one of them has said something like "You're lucky you found out who he really was."  I suppose they're right, but I didn't feel lucky to know it then and I don't feel lucky now.  Just sad, even all these years later.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 6: Someone From the Past that You'd Like to Get in Touch With

This is a pretty hard one, actually.  There are many people I've lost touch with over the years; some of them have tracked me down on Facebook, and one of them wrote me an actual letter after reading my novel.  I'm always glad to hear from people I used to know, but I'm taking this topic to mean "someone you might actually consider reaching out to yourself."  That's a much more difficult question.  (See my Day 2 post if you need an explanation as to why this might be.)

Probably, though, the answer would be my friend Susan from high school.  We became very good friends very quickly at the beginning of our senior year; I was never a person with a big friend network, and Susan was really the first "best friend" I'd ever had.  After high school, we went to the same college but joined different sororities--so of course we made different friends and didn't see each other as much.  We also developed different priorities, and after awhile we just didn't understand each other very well.  I moved off campus and became a vegetarian.  She got more and more enmeshed in sorority life.  It got to be difficult to spend much time together at all.

I don't know if Susan and I would have much in common these days, but I'd be interested in finding out.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 5: The Best Thing in Your Life Right Now

Easy question today.  My little family has always been the best thing in my life. 

At first, it was just me and The Hubs.  For six years we just had fun together, going to movies and trying out restaurants and taking road trips whenever we wanted to hit the road.  The early part of our marriage was one giant adventure. 

Then our daughter was born--she hated riding in the car until she was old enough to sit in a forward-facing car seat, but after that she was a terrific traveler.  She spent most of her time around adults because we took her with us wherever we went.  By the time she was two, I was telling people that having a toddler was just like having a little roommate.  That's the kind of kid she was.

Our son was a surprise addition to the family, a wonderful surprise.  He was the easiest baby ever born--all he did was eat and sleep and smile and snuggle up with me.  When he got a little older, giving him a hug and kiss at bedtime was the best part of my day.  He was the very best hugger. 

I always knew I wanted to be a mom, but I didn't know how much I'd enjoy being part of my family.  There's really nothing I'd rather do than hang out with these people, and knowing I get to come home to them makes even the hardest days easier to get through.
  

30 Days of Blogging, Day 4: A List of 20 Favorite Things

In no particular order:
 
1.  Coffee
2.  Making bread
3.  October
4.  Red wine--in particular, Middle Sister Rebel Red
5.  Tulips 
6.  Polish on my toenails, never on my fingernails
7.  My Microplane lemon zester
8.  Planet Hollywood's white chocolate bread pudding
9.  A chai latte on a rainy day
10. Taking a run when it's chilly but sunny outside
11. Yoga pants
12. Softlips Vanilla 
13. The smell of pine trees (Not fake pine scent.  Ick.)
14. Cadbury Mini Eggs (Not the creme eggs.  Ick.)
15. Long walks in quiet places
16. NPR
17. Lemons, lemons, lemons
18. Salmon
19. Barbecue
20. Staying home on a rainy day

30 Days of Blogging, Day 3: You Favorite Quote

"Only the hand that erases can write the true thing."  ~ Meister Eckhart

I love this quote for many reasons.  First, it's about writing--or, specifically, it's about revision.  This is a quote that debunks the importance of the first draft.  Lots of young writers want to believe that their first draft is the "truest" draft, the closest thing to what was really on their minds when they were writing.  I know this because I used to be one of those writers.  Over time, though, you learn that revision is where you figure out what you actually meant.  As I tell my students, "You have to make the clay before you can do anything with it."

I also love this quote because it's about learning to live with integrity.  You can't understand the story of your life unless you're willing to re-write some chapters when new information arises and new wisdom surfaces with age and experience.  You can't believe the same things throughout your entire lifetime if you're learning and growing.  "I was raised to believe . . . " is one of my least favorite phrases.  I was raised to believe many things that I don't believe anymore, and I don't believe those things because my experience of life has proven them to be untrue.  If you're going to live with integrity, you have to be open to doubting the people you love and erasing pieces of their influence.  That's never an easy thing to do, but it's a necessary part of living in the truth.                       

30 Days of Blogging, Day 2: Something you dislike about yourself

I don't like the fact that I'm so shy.  I'm not even sure if that's the right word for it at my age--I'm not comfortable talking to people I don't know well.  Is that shyness?  I can do it, thanks to my sorority training, but I really don't enjoy it.  Maybe that's just the sign of an introverted nature--I'm energized by time spent alone, not time spent with others.  I'm perfectly happy hanging out by myself, and I'm happiest when I'm at home with my family.

Whenever I'm asked to attend some social event, my immediate response is to say "Oh, sorry, I can't."  Even when that occasion involves people I know well, that's my first reaction--I have to make myself pause for a moment and actually consider the possibility.  This has a tendency to make people think I'm standoffish and conceited, but I don't think I'm either of those things.  Just borderline agoraphobic.  

30 Days of Blogging, Day 1: Something You Like About Yourself

I'm glad this project begins on a positive note--with a metaphorical pat on the back, so to speak. 

I have a hard time thinking of things I like about myself because, as the child of Midwestern parents, I was raised to be unfailingly humble and self-deprecating.  My usual response to a compliment is, "You're so kind.  Thanks.  But I wish . . ."  And from there I go on to explain what was wrong with whatever had been complimented.   Secretly, though?  (Not so secretly now, I realize.)  I like that I'm able to reach people with the things I write.  Whenever I publish an article in The Chronicle, I love getting email from other professors who tell me I've expressed something they too have been feeling.  After my novel was published, getting email from readers who were moved by that story meant a lot to me.  When my colleagues read my work and tell me they enjoyed it, I feel like our personal relationship changes--like we know something new about each other.

Putting your writing out into the world is a scary thing, but getting positive feedback makes it worth the risk.

30 Days of Blogging

As some of you know, I've been busily posting on my other blog and, in the process, ignoring this one entirely.  I've been feeling regretful about that lately  because I started this blog with good intentions: to give myself regular writing practice, and to make myself think about something beyond the daily details of my life.  These are still things that matter to me, though I haven't been making them a priority.

So.  With that in mind, I'm going to embark on a project:  30 Days of Blogging.  I saw that my niece was doing this on her blog, and when I did a quick Google search I found many different lists of daily blog topics for a 30-Day challenge.  I've picked the topics that seem most relevant to me and I'll be responding to one a day for the next month.  I'm going to try to keep my responses brief, so the project will stay manageable.

Does it bother me that I'm beginning a month-long project 5 days into the current month?  Yes, it does.  Very much.  (More on this when we get to Day 17 of the challenge.)  But I don't want to wait until October to get this started.  I hope you'll check in daily and read my responses to each of these prompts.  Better yet, why not blog along with me?  30 days of writing practice never hurt anyone.


Day 01 → Something you like about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you dislike about yourself.
Day 03 → Your favorite quote and why it's your favorite.
Day 04 → A list of 20 favorite things.
Day 05 → What’s the best thing in your life right now?
Day 06 → Someone from the past you'd like to get in touch with.
Day 07 → Someone from the past who disappointed you.
Day 08 → The reasons why you love your significant other or best friend.
Day 09 → A piece of art or sculpture that you really like.
Day 10 → A photo that makes you happy.
Day 11 → A photo that makes you sad.
Day 12 → An old photo of you (taken at least 10 years ago) and a story to go with it.
Day 13 → Your favorite song, band or artist.
Day 14 → Your favorite TV show, past or present.
Day 15 → Something you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Something you definitely can live without.
Day 17 → Something you're a little neurotic/irrational/OCD about.
Day 18 → Your views on a current controversial topic.
Day 19 → Your faith, or your political views in general.
Day 20 → A book that really meant something to you.
Day 21 → A story about your best friend, past or present.
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done.
Day 24 → Make a playlist for someone, and explain why you chose all the songs.
Day 25 → A song that makes you think of someone besides your significant other.
Day 26 → Describe your dream house.  Post pictures, if you want.
Day 27 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 28 → Something you have to forgive someone else for.
Day 29 → Something you still hope to accomplish in your lifetime.
Day 30 → Write a letter to yourself at 20. Offer some advice based on what you've learned in life.

Reinvention

My sister and niece came for a visit last week. I love having family around, and I often wish we lived a little closer to my sister and parents-but when she was here, my sister said "I know you like having some distance between us," and that caught me off guard. I had to stop and think for a moment about whether I actually like living away from my extended family or if that's just a function of the way my life has worked out.

I won't deny that I really like the way my immediate family operates as an autonomous little unit. Because Mike and I never had our parents, aunts or uncles to lean on, our four-person family team has pretty stable borders. We enjoy each others' company a lot, and my kids get along with each other really well, for the most part. People routinely comment on the fact that they're so good together--when they were younger, they walked home from school holding hands every day. (My daughter took her Big Sister role very seriously.) In fact, when someone recently gave my daughter a mini-lecture about how much she'd miss her annoying little brother if he weren't around, she came to me later and said "She obviously doesn't know me very well if she thinks I need to hear that." I had to agree.

I also won't deny that I love living in Texas. If you'd told me, ten years ago, that this is where my family was going to end up, I would not have been happy. Texas was never on my list of Places I Hope To Live Someday. I have a very clear memory of seeing the ad for the job I now have and thinking "Come on, it's a church-affiliated school in Texas. Are you really that desperate for a new job?" Because the answer to that question was a firm "Yes, I am," I went ahead and applied for the job, thinking of it as a last resort. When I got a job offer--my only offer that year, as it happened--I accepted. And I'm glad I did, because I would have missed out on many wonderful friends, students and experiences if I'd let my preconceptions about Texas get in the way.

And, finally, I have to admit that I like the way my kids have grown up, which is very far removed from the way I grew up. Because Mike and I have always worked at universities, our kids spend a lot of time around people who grew up in lots of different parts of the country (and, in some cases, different countries altogether.) These are educated people who have intelligent conversations with each other, people who travel often and view all kinds of a diversity as a strength rather than a threat. They're great role models for my children. We did more traveling when the kids were small and easily portable than we do now, but they're still great travelers. They know their way around an airport. I didn't set foot on an airplane until I was 17 years old. Partly that was because my parents didn't have a lot of money to spend on family vacations; partly that was because my parents didn't see travel as something we needed to experience. My dad spent 22 years in the Army, and my mom followed him around for 14 of those years--I imagine they'd had their fill of travel by the time they had children. I imagine they thought we could travel on our own, when we were older, if we wanted to.

Still, I didn't choose to leave my family in Idaho because of anything they did or didn't do. I left because I never felt like Idaho was where I belonged. As a teenager, whenever I was sick of my parents and angry at the world, I'd drive up to the airport and sit at one of the gates and imagine I was about the leave for wherever that plane was headed. (This was in the 1980's, when anyone who wanted to could walk through the metal detectors and sit at the gate.) I'm still not exactly sure why I felt that way about the place, and I still get nostalgic for Boise every now and then; it's not as if I shook the dust of my hometown off my feet when I headed out.

But when I go back to visit, as I've said before, I often find myself feeling claustrophobic. I always thought that had to do with the landscape, with the fact that Boise is situated in a valley, and I still believe that's true--but I understand now that it also has something to do with absent possibilities. When I left Idaho for graduate school, I had to become a different person. The role I played in my family wasn't relevant anymore; I had to figure out what role I wanted to play in the new networks I was creating. And, of course, I had to create those networks--professional contacts, yes, but also friends. I had to find people I could talk with before class started; I had to figure out which of those people I could count on to help me out in a pinch; I had to decide who I was willing to help, and who asked for too much time and energy in exchange for friendship. This wasn't an easy thing to do, since I'm not social by nature. But once I'd done it the first time, I knew I could do it again. Moving on to new places wasn't the least bit scary after that. It was an opportunity for reinventing my life, something I actually looked forward to.

In Boise, I always knew who I was--within my family and my hometown, among the people who'd known me since I was in kindergarten and the people who knew me only in high school. The place has changed a lot since I lived there, but the old Boise is always in the back of my mind--I see the absence of the old places every time I look at something new. So I have to believe that, no matter what I did while I was living in Boise, I would continue to be the person people used to know, at least in some small part of their minds.

But when I moved away, I became who I wanted to be. The girl from Idaho, who'd rather drive in snow than rain. The girl who used to sing all the time, but doesn't anymore. The girl who hadn't seen lightning bugs until she moved to Kansas. Who hates butterflies. Who never played sports and was never anything like athletic but discovered, at age 41, that she loves to run.

I love the life I'm living now precisely because it let me leave my old self, and the people who knew her, behind--and I didn't do that because I wanted to hide anything, or even escape anything or anyone. I just wanted to be who I chose to be. I don't know who I would have become if I'd stayed in Boise, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be who I am now, because there's little room for reinventing yourself in a town where people insist they already know what they need to know about you.

Thoughts on a Long Marriage

This has been a really awful semester, for a number of reasons: difficult students, budget cuts and the attendant layoffs at my husband's university, crazy over-packed schedules for kids and parents alike--and now, today, the sudden death of my husband's dear colleague. If this weren't the last week of the term, I might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

It's funny, though, that difficult periods like this function primarily to make me grateful for my family. I come home from a terrible day on campus--and there's my husband, reminding me of all the ways in which I'm fabulous. Last week, my daughter had a really terrible day--and I watched with great pride as her little brother worked to cheer her up. We're a team, me and my family. We take care of each other without being asked to do so. We enjoy each others' company.

I sometimes marvel at the fact that I've been lucky enough to wind up living with this group of people. And then I have to remind myself that family doesn't happen by accident: we are who we because my husband Mike and I worked hard to make it this way. Even before our kids were born, family was the priority. I turned down the first full-time job I was offered after I'd earned my MFA because taking it would have meant living two hours away from Mike for at least a year. Two hours might not seem like a great distance--many married couples live with much more distance between them, and that's certainly not uncommon in the academic world--but I wasn't willing to make that sacrifice. Many people thought I was nuts, given the state of the academic job market, but I really didn't care. I wanted to live with my husband, my family, more than I wanted to be a professor.

That turned out to be one of the smartest decisions we've ever made, over the course of our marriage. We've often talked about how our lives could have changed directions if we'd made a different choice at that moment; none of the outcomes we've imagined are good ones. Sometimes I think that the main reason Mike and I ended up getting married is that we're both supremely practical people. We don't do what other people think is best for us; we do what we know is best for us. These things are often at odds with each other, it seems, but we rarely worry about that. Sometimes we actually take pleasure in doing what others find crazy. But we never do the crazy thing for its own sake.

For instance: we'd been good friends for a few months, but we had dated, officially, for just a few weeks before Mike moved in with me. We got engaged shortly after that, and we married six months later. Essentially, we went from getting to know each other to getting married in less than a year. No one thought this was a good idea--no one except Mike and I. We didn't get married so quickly in order to shock anyone: we were genuinely excited to get married, be married, and stay married. We knew we'd found the person we wanted to do that with, so waiting didn't make any sense.

Though it did make sense, we decided, to put off having kids. We both wanted children; we had no doubts about that. But we enjoyed hanging out with each other, living a grown-up life. My sister had three children, and we saw how our lives would change once our own were born. So we waited six years, until we were tired of seeing movies and trying new restaurants and traveling, all the things that couples without children can do. Many people had told us that waiting so long, getting settled in the life of a childless couple, would make it harder to adjust to having a baby in the house. Still, our adjustment to parenthood was no more (or less) difficult than any of our friends', as far as I could tell. And once we got over the initial shock, we loved being parents--because that was a choice we'd made together.

It hasn't all been wedded bliss, of course. Mike and I have been very poor--we once had exactly $7 with which to buy groceries for the last week of the month. We've lived in a cruddy basement apartment with fungus growing on the walls. We've had sick kids and no health insurance. All those moments in our life were difficult, but at every point on the time line of our marriage we were doing what we thought was best. Going to grad school in Columbia meant moving away from the support network of our extended family; it meant ignoring people who told us we were neglecting our children by putting them in day care; it meant believing the time we spent as a family in the evening was worth the time we lost in building friendships with other grad students and connections with faculty members who might help us out professionally. None of those things were easy, but we worked through them because we believed they'd pay off. We believed that together.

I went into my marriage expecting nothing in particular, except to be married to Mike for the rest of my life. I didn't expect that we'd end up in a particular income bracket, in a particular sort of house, or even in a particular state. I'm not sure either of us expected to have everything we have now. We just signed on for the ride, wherever it took us.

The anniversary of our first date, May 5th, is coming up next week. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked "How can you remember that?" Well, it was Cinco de Mayo. That helps. But it was also the very first time I remember thinking "This is exactly who I've always wanted to be." I was sitting beside Mike on a picnic bench at that moment, snuggled up to him against the chill of a late spring evening. I was in love. I was feeling optimistic. I was absolutely happy. And still, even after all these years, that's who I am--and exactly who I want to be.

This Is Why I Teach

I've had a pretty rough spring semester this year. The difficulty began almost immediately: I had a very smart but very lazy student in two of my classes, a student who didn't like to come to class and couldn't seem to get there on time under any circumstances--and who didn't understand why this was a problem for me. This students is of the "I'm paying for these classes; I shouldn't have to show up unless I want to" variety. My only response to that, usually, is a quick point to the syllabus, which makes it very clear that we have different attitudes on the question of attendance.

None of this would be an enormous issue if not for the fact that the student was scheduled to graduate in May. Note the use of past tense there: was scheduled. Not anymore. As you might imagine, many people are unhappy about this. So I've been dealing with associate provosts and provosts and parents for the last month, trying to explain why I don't think it's unreasonable to expect students to show up for class, and why I drop students from my classes if they don't attend. In this particular case, I've been explaining how I warned and warned and warned the student what was going to happen, and how those warnings were flagrantly ignored. People on campus have supported me; people in the student's family are, as you might imagine, not my biggest fans at this moment.

If I taught courses in another discipline, I might feel differently about the question of whether it's important to come to class. Perhaps it's possible to read the biology textbook on your own and get from it what you need to pass; I don't know. I don't teach biology, so I wouldn't presume to say what is or is not possible. What I do know is that, in my classes, I'm not teaching the contents of a book. When you take a test in one of my classes, I'm not asking you what happened and to whom (or, not only that--obviously, you need to know those things.) I'm asking you to work through specific questions about the text using specific tools. Theories. Techniques. You'd have to be in class to get those tools, and to learn how to use them.

But even if that weren't the case--let's consider, for a moment, the possibility that I only tested my students on the content of a text. If you read the text on your own and understood it, maybe you wouldn't need to come to class. But what it you only thought you understood it? (I can't tell you how many times students have completely missed an author's social commentary or sarcasm.) What if you missed a symbolic motif? What if you understood the text through the lens of your own contemporary experience, but not as a representation of its own time period--then did you really understand the book?

But let's say you understood it just fine on your own. What if the only people who came to class were those who didn't understand the text, or didn't read it? What, exactly, would be the purpose of a class meeting with that group of people? Other than providing time to read, I don't know what I could possibly do with them. You can't discuss a book with people who haven't read it carefully. Students who get the reading are essential to a good classroom discussion.

Juxtaposed with this student is another--an excellent student who's been facing some very serious health problems since mid-February. In spite of the fact that this student is struggling with mobility issues and barely able to move around independently--and in spite of the fact that she commutes half an hour each way to campus--there hasn't been a day when she's arrived late for class. For that matter, she's missed only one day this semester. And that was before her health problems began, when she had to take care of a completely unrelated medical procedure. This student values her education so much that even when I tell her it's okay to take it easy, she refuses to do that. She wants to receive everything I have to give.

Students like that are why I teach. Because they make me realize that what I have to offer is of value--such great value, apparently, that some of them are willing to put their own pain aside in order to receive it. Students like that make me a better teacher.

Many years ago, in graduate school, one of my professors told the story of a student who'd gone through some financial struggles and become homeless for awhile--a student who'd done his reading under streetlights and slept under bridges, but still never missed a day of class. "He made me a better teacher," my professor said, "because I wanted to be worthy of the sacrifices he was making for his education. And now, every day, I remind myself: teach for the students who are sleeping under bridges to be here."

It's hard to keep this in mind when you're faced with a student who's throwing away the privilege of a college education. But I thank the student who helped me keep my balance this semester--the one who compelled me to follow her example and do my very best work every day, who kept me humble and, above all, counting my blessings.

Loving The Difference

I had a great day with my family today--the sun is finally shining again, so we headed out to the zoo and surrounding park. Part of the reason for this trip was to take pictures my son needs for his next science project, and part of the reason was to spend some time together as a family, which we don't get to do often enough these days.

My daughter is fifteen. She has a pretty terrific boyfriend, and he's easily become part of the family. We even added him to our zoo membership, so he could come with us whenever we head across town. Today, though, he couldn't go. I was a little pleased with this, since it meant my daughter would actually be interacting with us for a change, but I knew we were also running the risk of dealing with Surly Girl all day.

I adore my daughter. She's smart and beautiful and friendly and practical, all the things you'd want your daughter to be. From the time she was a tiny girl, with a head full of Shirley Temple curls and a 100-watt smile, she just drew people to her. Complete strangers would stop us on the street or in an airport and strike up a conversation with a two-year-old. Once, when we were in Memphis--Jordan was not quite three at the time--an elderly woman walking slowly past us on the sidewalk stopped and openly stared at my daughter. "My gracious," she said. "You really are a little angel." Then she asked if it would be all right to touch my daughter's hair. Jordan was used to the attention, so she didn't mind. I said it was fine. The woman fingered Jordan's curls, then smiled and thanked us both before she went on her way.

I'm pretty shameless in my admiration of Jordan. And while I know I'm supposed to feel this way--she's my kid, after all--I know many people who feel the same way about her without being compelled to. It's hard not to like her, honestly. (Well, except for the few girls at school who seem to hate her precisely because of best qualities. Those people, I tell her, aren't worth being concerned about, and most of the time she believes this.)

I know my daughter is aware of how much I like her, in addition to loving her. But I think that's what makes it really difficult for her not to boss her little brother around--all the things I've always praised in her are qualities her brother doesn't possess. In addition to the age difference between them--which always seems to make the older kid feel entitled to direct the younger one--Andrew is different from his sister in just about every way. He's shy and introverted around people other than his family, not at all social. His teachers are always alarmed by the fact that he doesn't talk to other people in class, or not unless they speak to him first, and I have to reassure them that he talks all the time at home. He has ADHD, the inattentive variety, which makes it hard for him to focus at school. He takes medication that makes this a little easier, and now that we have an IEP in place, guaranteeing some extra follow-up from his teachers, his grades have improved to the point that he isn't failing any of his classes--but A's are rare for him. B's are an accomplishment, and C's are the goal. Still, he's in Advanced Placement classes and his teachers often say that he's obviously very bright. He just can't express that in the ways they would like.

Although he doesn't have an official diagnosis, I've done enough research to understand that my son also has Asperger Syndrome (which was recently placed under the autism spectrum.) He doesn't seek out friendships, doesn't understand body language or social cues, and takes figurative language very literally--when he was little, I learned to be very careful about saying things like "My head is going to explode if you keep making that noise," because he really believed that would happen. He develops an intense interest in odd subjects (when he was little, he was obsessed with decoding circle/slash signs; these days, he can tell you anything you might want to know about hurricanes) and really needs to stick with a routine. He gets very upset when his life is off schedule, when he can't watch his favorite TV programs at the appointed time.

I adore my son, too. He has a well-developed sense of humor, which he expresses in the comic strip he's been drawing for several years now, and he's very smart--he just isn't able to demonstrate that at school. He's much more like his dad and I than his sister is. We're shy and introverted too; neither of us has a large friend network, and that doesn't bother us. For the most part, it doesn't seem to bother Andrew either. Once in awhile he talks about wishing he had some friends, and that's when my heart breaks for him, but more often he talks about being glad he doesn't have to deal with the kind of drama Jordan deals with on a regular basis.

Today the two of them were getting along pretty well, as they often do. But I couldn't help notice that Jordan spends a lot of time telling Andrew what to do, and he rarely ever questions what she says--he just does it. I might have just written this off to sibling behavior if not for the fact that, earlier this week, Andrew showed me a paper he'd written about Jordan for his English class. The assignment was to write about an important person in your life, and Andrew wrote about how he looks up to Jordan because she's so good at everything. A general theme of the essay was "She's better than me at everything." (Except at video games, where he acknowledged an ability to beat her occasionally.)

I know Andrew hears us telling Jordan "Good job" pretty often. I know he hears her telling us that she earned a First Division rating in band, or an A on the Spanish test that everyone else failed. It wouldn't be fair to her if we acted like these things don't matter, because they do. She deserves to be proud of her accomplishments. She works hard for what she gets--she practices her flute for competitions, studies for exams. I point this out to Andrew whenever he complains that she gets everything she wants.

So today I started wondering how I can let Andrew know that we love him because he's different from Jordan, not in spite of that fact. I've learned so much from being his mother. I've learned enormous patience; I've learned to swallow my pride and ask for help when I can't solve a problem myself, which is really hard for me; I've learned that, sometimes, problems can be addressed but not solved. I've also learned that, sometimes, a C is reason enough to celebrate. That's not an easy lesson to learn when you're a person who always did well in school--a person who earned a Ph.D. because school was the only place you ever felt you really fit in.

Watching Andrew struggle has made me a better professor, too, because I've learned there are many reasons why students don't do well in class, and some of those reasons aren't entirely under the student's control. I've learned that giving those students a break often makes them feel worse, not better. It makes them feel like you don't have faith in their ability to do what you've asked everyone else to do.

Earlier today I was reading a friend's blog. Her son was recently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but she's encouraged that he might improve in the long run because he wasn't a "weird" kid--he didn't, for instance, talk to himself or obsess over odd hobbies and subjects. Reading that stopped me cold, because Andrew is that "weird" kid. He always has been. I know schizophrenia affects young men more often than women, and mental illness runs in our family, on both sides. So, once again, the odds are against him.

But I'm determined to love that boy in every way I know how--supporting him, giving him a push now and then, expecting nothing less from him than I do from his sister. I expect him to do his very best, no matter where that leads him. And I'm determined to teach my daughter how to love her brother this way, too--for who he is, not who she thinks he should be.