The Lightness of Being

That's the phrase that comes into my head--the title of that movie:  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being".  Except that it isn't unbearable.  It's VERY bearable.

I want to write about this before I go to bed tonight so I can capture this feeling, the atmosphere that's in our house this evening.

My husband, a 25-year-veteran of the Indianapolis Public Schools, put in his papers for retirement today.  It wasn't a rash decision.  Or maybe it was.  It's something that's....been there...lurking for the past year or so.

Things have gotten worse and worse in the school system:  tighter and tighter requirements on attendance, documentation, curriculum.  The behavior of the students more unmanageable every year; every year, more and more not a place for a gentle, artistic man who values literacy, art, culture, decency to other human beings.  The school system, not as it was when we started, but as it is now--no place for him.  Dealing with the students, the administration, the impossible expectations, the no-win situations--have made him tense, disillusioned, constantly on edge, cynical, yelling at the kids, the dog; distraught over small things.  Jumping at the slightest sound; he wakens from nightmares of being trapped, in danger, lost, with a lingering sense of hopeless despair.

What to do? What to do?  Still so many financial obligations.

This year, this week, it came to a head.  IPS put out that it would put $20,000 towards a health insurance program to the first 150 eligible applicants to put in papers for retirement.  We talked about it over the weekend, read the paperwork together when it came through on Monday, and decided against it.  A hard decision that left us feeling weighted down and discouraged, so that when I departed from his school after our discussion, I drove around for awhile, just...absorbing the situation, preparing myself, steeling myself, for more of the same.

Then he had an encounter with his principal which belied the writing on the wall.  It was time.  He went down over lunch today and put in his papers.  He was 109 out of the 150.

So now, come what may.  There are part-time hourly jobs in our future, to be sure, penny-saving, cutting back measures on the horizon.  But the lightness of being that envelopes our house tonight is undeniable, almost tangible.  A great weight, an oppressive gloom, years of worries and concerns have been lifted from us.  We are no longer waiting for some nameless administrator to indiscriminately dismiss my husband.  We have acted on our own without waiting for the other shoe to fall.  It's almost as if, here in our 50s and 60s, we're starting over.  The world suddenly seems fresh and new and has opened itself up to us.  What is around the corner?  What is ahead?  Who knows?  But my husband, the one I married, the one I know during the summers, is back.  Chatty, talking, laughing.  I sat on his lap while we watched TV this evening.  The world is our oyster, and come what may, we're in it for the long run, and we're in it together.

Emergency Off

So....my son called my attention to the Emergency Off button located on the wall of the Wendy's restaurant in Huntington, Indiana.

"What do you think it stops?" he asked me.
"I don't know," I said.  We continued to discuss it for several more moments.  What did it stop?  And who pushed it?  Did it stop an order that was about to be mis-made?  Did it stop the cash register drawer from opening?  Did it turn off the lights, the grill, the sign?

We asked the girl who took our order.  "What does that button do?"
"I have no idea," she said.
"But don't you think you SHOULD know?" I asked?  "I mean, what if the manager is off, say, 'getting change for a hundred dollar bill' [which in fact, she was because that's what I had handed the girl, but that's what some doofus at the indoor garage sale decided to use to pay for John's double-cassette deck which was priced at $25....what kind of idiot goes to a garage sale with a hundred dollar bill???] and there's some kind of emergency that might have been prevented by pushing that button, and you don't know what it does?"
"That's a good point," she said.  "I'm going to ask my manager right now."

We sat down with our food and saw the girl asking someone who appeared to be on the cooking staff.  He shrugged his shoulders and turned to ask someone else, who apparently ALSO didn't know.  Soon there were five people standing around discussing the shiny, and attractive button.

Our waitress came out to clean off the tables and I gestured her over to us.   I asked her, "Did you ask your manager?"
"Not yet," she said.
"And now that you've noticed that button, don't you...want to push it?  I mean, there it is, all red and shiny...."
"No," she said, quite adamantly, "but I AM thinking about it...and wondering."

Charlie and I continued to discuss it.  "If only the manager knows what that button does, that could be a problem.  Maybe," he suggested, "it shuts off the ice machine.  Which could be a problem if the manager falls into the ice machine.  Someone would need to push that button immediately to shut off the machine before it starts serving cube-sized pieces of the manager."

We speculated some more and then I thought of something.  "Do you think it shuts down all the garbage mashers in the detention level?"
Charlie added, "Yes.  It shuts them ALL down."
The girl reappeared at our table.  "I asked her," she said.  "It turns off EVERYTHING in case there's a fire or something."  She seemed very proud of herself.
"That's great," I said, "and it's good that you know because now you can push it and be the hero."  She smiled.

But--here's my NEW question.  If it shuts off everything, does it also shut off the sprinklers?  The phones?  The alarm system?  It seems that there may be holes in this plan somewhere....

We also decided that an 'Emergency Off' button would be a perfect topic for the play we had just seen "Everthing I Need to Know About Life, I Learned in Kindergarten".  LIFE should have an 'emergency off' button, we decided.  And someone should wax poetic about it for another skit for that play....

In the meantime, I'll be checking the Wendy's in this area to see if they, too, have 'Emergency Off' buttons.  Emergency Off.  What a concept.

My New Year's Resolutions

I've been thinking through some New Year's Resolutions in my head.  I don't need to quit smoking or drinking.  I probably should lose weight and exercise, but in 30 years of resolving to climb such mountains, I have yet to succeed.  My New Year's Resolutions will have to do with connecting with people instead.

1)  My Parents.
My mom turns 75 this year.  My dad is, I think, 77.  I resolve to spend more time with them over the coming year.  Drive up and see them, at least once a season:  spring, summer, fall, winter.  It can be during the week or over the weekend.  It's only two hours away and it's shameful how infrequently I see them when there's only that much space between us.  I WILL do this.  In fact, I'm thinking of maybe packing up Mom and driving her down to Cary (North Carolina) to visit with Debbie over Spring Break.

2)  My Friends.
I'm slowly coming to the realization that I don't have friends, I really just have 'people I work on projects with'. I hadn't really felt that way about the people around me, but it's become increasingly apparent that that's how everyone seems to feel about ME.  I don't get invited to stuff--to dinners, movies, shows, parties even--although I'm thought of when someone needs a costume, I'm just not...remembered...when it comes to doing stuff socially, I guess. I had thought that I was sort of the lynch pin of all of us--the connecting person who introduced this person/family to that person/family--that when we got together to do something, we ALL got together to do something, but apparently that was a figment of my own self-importance.  I resolve to try to connect to people on a social level, rather than just on a working-together level.



3)  My House.
My house is...busy.  Cluttered.  Too many projects going on in it all at once.  I'm surrounded by people who keep perfect homes and mine is....not.  I never have people over because my house is never clean.  I resolve to keep a cleaner house, a more 'inviting' house, so that when I want to have people over,  people don't automatically say, "Um, let's have it at MY house..." and so that it's not a major task to clean up.  Maybe this will help me with Resolution #2, also.  That WHEN I get invited somewhere, I can actually return the invitation in a timely manner.

2012.  Not feeling very happy and positive about this year yet and that's really not like me.  Lots of stress around here, and tension.  I worry that things are going to come to a head soon, that the other foot with drop and that things will come crashing down.  My hope, however, is that from the inevitable ashes will come the phoenix.  Here's hoping that the new year brings something soon...something good.

House of Stress

It is Friday afternoon, phasing into evening.
I have just brought my oldest child home for Christmas.  He is stressed.  To the point of tears and then some.  College is more than he thought it was going to be. As I hear some of the details....the missteps, the errors in judgment, the uncertainty about 'how things work', the lack of initiative, of work ethic, of understanding of what needs to be done, of how to divide and conquer, I mask my face and try to stay distanced, above it.  After all, I did my best as a parent, as a model of 'I can', and 'do it now', and 'do MORE than what's expected'.  Where these lessons went, I don't know, but adding parental disappointment, anger, thoughts of 'I told you so' into the mix will not solve this issue.  He certainly doesn't lack in intelligence, but he lacks....something....and I don't know how to give it to him, teach it to him, grow it in him.  I try to hide the anxiety *I* feel.  It sounds like an academic disaster story, and I dread seeing the grades.  There is literally nothing I can do now except stay calm, try to offer the right advice, the right amount of advice.  Help him dissect the problem and take steps to solve it.  I simply cannot take ownership of this because there is little I can do.  It is on him now.  But he is clearly stressed.  And miserable.  What next?  What next?  And how to help?

My 14-year-old gets off the bus.  I'm in the car, reading the paper and have just read an e-mail on my phone from his resource teaching documenting heightened anxiety these last couple days.  He gets in the car with me and says he wants to talk to me privately.  He is stressed, tired of school, does he have to go these last four days?  He hates swimming.  It's so cold and the gym teacher makes him write a paper about swimming every time he doesn't bring his swimming stuff and every time he gets in the pool.  There's a special needs girl in most of his classes whose behavior grates on his nerves and his sensibilities.  He hates how she treats the teachers, her inappropriate and disturbing behavior, her outbursts.  The principal and the gym teacher came in to talk to him and told him he was a smart boy and that made him cry--not in a positive way, but in a guilt-ridden way, as if a 'smart boy' should want to swim, want to fall in step with the masses around him, should should be tolerant of aberrant behavior even when it interrupts the educational process.  He speaks slowly, often losing his train of thought without prompting.  Feigned?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I have a weekend to watch him.  And will consider paying an observatory visit to school on Monday, which may include pulling him out before swimming. 

And now here is my husband home from school.  He, too, has four days left of the chaos they call urban education.  He is an artist, a poet, a writer, and he just received poor marks as a disciplinarian on his annual evaluation.  Since I quit my job as the same, he is the sole supporter of our family and thus, he can't quit.  He lives his employed life in his own private hell of ghetto children who scorn his values and disrespect him beyond what any human soul should have to endure.  He tries to maintain a teaching atmosphere in a sea of jeering, mocking faces that could care less about education or what my gentle husband might have to share with them.  At night, he talks in his sleep, twitches and starts.  School and stress dreams.  By day, he is tense, short with us all, and it's not good, not good.  We have debts and he has years left ahead of him before he can depart.  Will he make it?  Will he make it with his health intact?

I walk carefully through this minefield, my own stresses on hold for now, praying for strength, patience, the right words to keep everyone going.  Strong for us all.  Hold on, everyone.  Just hold on.  There are vacation days ahead.  Retirement looms.  A chance to start over is coming.  Keep the faith, keep walking, and......walk towards the light.

If I Think of You, Does That Mean I Miss You?

Yes, still.  And these are the times.


1)  When I'm over-tired.
2)  When I have to go to Wal-Mart after rehearsal.
3)  When I listen to "Wicked" or "Fiddler".
4)  When I read something particularly hilarious in 'The Onion'.
5)  During newbie auditions for KidsPlay.
6)  When I'm in the Gallery.
7)   Driving east on 300N.
8)  When I stop for a giga...although I don't buy Fudge Rounds anymore....


Yep.  All these times.  Momentary reverberations of a vague regret.  And then, like a dizzy spell, it passes.

Beloved Wife and Mother

Watching "Curb Your Enthusiasm" at the breakfast table.  The episode takes place at a funeral for Larry's wife's aunt, where they discover that no one has written an obituary.  Naturally, it falls to Larry and they decide on 'beloved wife and mother'. 
I turn to John and say, "Now THERE'S a phrase I DON'T want in my obituary.  'Beloved wife and mother'!!"
Ben asks, "Why?"
I say, "Beloved wife and mother?  Is that what you think of when you think of me?  Beloved wife and mother??"
Ben pauses for a moment, and then quietly says, "Awesome wife and mother..."  And then, after another moment...  "Or epic."

And there you go.



The continuing adventures of a mom and son rediscovering each other in the absence  of the oldest...

The Hotspring of Sorrow

I'm having a visit from 'grief' today.  One of my KidsPlayers, a high school girl now...her best friend's dad died in a motorcycle accident last night.  The friend, a young man, just graduated from high school in May.  The dad, apparently braked hard for something...a deer...?  No one knows what.  Hit a tree and died.  Just very sad....another chapter in the from-the-beginning of time-long-story of "Why?  Isn't life hard enough?  WHY?" 




I'm a firm believer in the 'everything happens for a reason' principle, but sometimes...it doesn't lead ANYWHERE.  Like now.  Or...it will be years before it leads somewhere.  In the meantime...grief for those left behind.  Drowning in it, choking in it.  Dying from it or wishing they could.

I don't even know the kid, really.  But I know my KidsPlayer girl and she loves this kid like a brother--and now he'll be irrevocably changed by this horrible tragedy.  His life from this point on, will be tainted by this too-soon passing.  All roads traveled, all milestones will be be marked by this one horrible turn of events, this hand of cards he's been dealt.  So sad. 

So tragic.

And from just under the surface, bubbling up, seemingly out of nowhere, come all the sadnesses.  I'm sure you know the ones of which I speak.  The ones that lie dormant most of the time, in scrapbooks and memory boxes.  The snowglobe dusty on the shelf, the stuffed bear in the trunk, the teacup in the cupboard.  People gone too soon, events that forever changed us all.

Anyway.  It's a sad day here in Greenfield....

And I'm thinking of you and yours...ours....everyone's.  And praying with clenched hands for the strength to understand.