Rave On

Buddy Holly's brothers tell a story about the Christmas that Buddy Holly got his first guitar. He had been asking for one for months. And so for Christmas his parents, who were blue collar folks, saved up and bought him a steel guitar. West Texas - steel guitar, not such a leap, really.

"Not this kind of guitar," he reportedly said.

As a parent of a teen I hear that story and I can picture disappointed Buddy rolling his eyes and loosely holding the package he tore open. I can feel his mother and father's disappointment that they had tried so hard to get him something nice that he wanted and he didn't appreciate it.

My own teen shows clear disappointment and criticism in the gifts she gets. Even the ones that she really wants and we got right. When she opened her MP3 player adapter for the car she snorted and said, "I can't believe you didn't give this to me earlier."

What gives me hope about her as a human is when I contrast her great excitement about giving gifts. She knitted scarves for her sisters. She bought things for Bill and myself. She put a lot of effort into wrapping her gifts so they look nice. And when her face lights up and she holds up my gift bag with a graphic of a martini on it and she says, "Isn't this the cutest gift bag ever? You guys got the best gift bags!" I just smile and agree and suppress the urge to roll my lip and say, "Eh. I guess so."

I recently read about how teen brains are different chemically from adult brains. This reassures me that she will not be this way forever, but it does not help me deal with it now. I will take a lesson from Buddy's parents who took it in stride, got him the right guitar, and, well, rave on.

Hi! This is Mary.

"Hi! This is Mary. whisperwhisperwhisperwhisperwhisperwhisper," said the message on the voice mail.

Did she throw up in the hallway or pee her pants? What could have happened at school that would cause Mary to call, leave a strange message on the home answering machine, and then hang up?

I frantically called the school.

"Hi. I just got a message from my Mary and I couldn't understand it. I don't know if something is wrong or what," I said to the school secretary.

"Just a moment," the school secretary said.

"Hi, this is Mary," said a very mature voice. I knew instantly that the school secretary connected me with the school principal whose name is also Mary. I was alarmed becuase I thought it was because the problem was so serious that I had to talk to the principal first.

"Hi, this is Mary's mom. I mean, Mary the student. I got a call from Mary and I don't know what is going on."

"Oh. Mary's not here," said Mary the Principal in a confused voice.

"Where is she?!" I said getting more and more concerned.

"I mean she's not in my office. Let me check to see what is going on."

She put me on hold and then came back on the line.

"Mary's here and fine as far as we know. We're going to connect you to her classroom and you can talk to her."

"Ok," I said feeling confused. And that's when I realized that the school secretary was confused about which Mary had called me and just assumed it was Mary the Principal and not Mary the Student.

"Hi, this is Mary," said my daughter's voice.

"Hi, Mary. It's your mom. I got your message. What is wrong?"

"I forgot my recorder again and Mrs. N made me call you and tell you."

"That's it?!" I said.

"Mmmhm."

"Ok, we'll talk about it later," I said.

Sheesh.

William Shatner Is an Actor?

"This singer does that yelling rap like William Shatner," commented my daughter on her way to school this morning. (We were actually listening to Lifter Puller, but we listened to "Has Been" a lot last year.)

"Yes, he does," I agreed.

"Was William Shatner a movie star or something?"

My brain did one of those inertia things - it's going forward and then something just makes it slam to a stop and it smashes against my skull.

"William Shatner was in a few movies, but he is best known for being on TV," I said slowly.

"What show was he on?" she asked innocently.

"Star Trek." I feel like an American soldier trying to get across a road patrol and they are making sure that I really am American and not a foreign spy.

"What character did he play?"

"Captain Kirk," I say after a pause.

"Oh," she says. And then, "I hope they have something for lunch that I can eat with my sore jaw."

"Me too, hon."

"Bye, mom!" she says as she hops out of the car and runs into the school.

I am left grappling with what feels like a huge issue to me. My daughter thinks of William Shatner as a singer and not Captain Kirk. I feel a bit out of synch with the world. I feel like a parent. I feel old. I also feel a bit like a middle eastern pastry chef. I am making baklava, which is made up of eighty million pieces of phyllo dough and I am separating all the layers and brushing them with butter. Each of these things - Willliam Shatner the singer and William Shatner the TV star are layers of butter in my pastry. I am filling these kids up and hoping for a rich finish.

John Lennon Was Friends With the Beatles

Once we were driving down the road listening to the radio and a program was on about the Beatles and the announcer talked about how Paul McCartney wrote the song "Hey, Jude" for John Lennon's son, whose parents were getting divorced.

"That was nice of the Beatles to do this song for him," Anna said.

"Yes," I said, kind of distracted.

"How did the Beatles know John Lennon's son?"

"Well, he was John Lennon's son," I said. And at this point I was a little confused.

"So was John Lennon like a friend of theirs?"

"Of whose?"

"Of the Beatles?"

"Honey, John Lennon WAS a Beatle."

"Oh," Anna said.

And she just kind of filed it away while I tried to figure out how in the world I had a 12 year old who knew exactly who John Lennon was and who the Beatles were but had no idea that John Lennon was actually a member of the Beatles.

Bill's daughter Claire once expressed surprise to learn that John Lennon was a musician and song writer. She's a big Yoko Ono fan. "Her husband was a musician too?" she asked me once.

I am not kidding you that I could fill a book about listening to music with kids.

Present the Colors

The December Pack Meeting is insane. December is when we have a family pizza party at the school cafeteria and they award prizes for popcorn sales. Our Pack sold $17,000 in popcorn. (!!!!) The boys got little prizes depending on how much popcorn they sold - tents, compasses, lanterns, pocket knives and even archery sets. I saw two of those go out as prizes.

And on top of all that craziness we also had the annual gift of a BLOCK! OF! WOOD! The boys started chanting as soon as they see the bag come out with the piles of blocks of wood. The Pinewood Derby is in three weeks. The boys were literally pounding the table with their fists chanting, "BLOCK OF WOOD!" The den leaders laughed and passed them out.

The Pack Leader held up two fingers in the Boy Scout salute and the boys fell silent.

"Den 2 will you retire the colors?" the Pack Leader asked.

Frank's Den circled the flags at the front of the room, and with their Den Leader's help they got the flags out of their bases. Frank, wearing a freshly pressed blue shirt carried the American flag. The kid, who was moments ago pounding the table, was solemn as he walked through the room with his den around him. The other boys stood quietly with their fingers up in a Boy Scout salute as the flag passed by. The room was so quiet that as the boys passed I could hear the gentle jangle of their achievement beads hanging off their wolf badges.

After they put the flags away there was an eruption of noise as the boys got ready for the final activity of the night - throwing plates of whipped cream at the den leaders. It was a reward for their popcorn sale efforts. Frank had one pie dough dollar and he waited in line (although he jumped up and down while yelling - he did stay in place in line) to chuck it at poor Dan standing in front of a tarp in a rain jacket.

What the Boy Scouts do well is let the boys be boys. There are rules that cannot be broken and the boys seem to know what those are. The Boy Scout salute is the best magic I have ever seen. It works because the leaders have authority. There are no threats or discipline. The boys are allowed to be crazy and rowdy within limits. They are given responsibility (the color guard) and rewards and good times. It is a good model for parenting, I think.

Say, Say Oh Playmate

When I had babies I had a group of friends who also had babies. We were friends because we were mothers. We would talk about breastfeeding and sleeping and food. We joked about our lives before our babies. We invested ourselves fully in our small children.

As my children became more self sufficient and didn't rely on me for every need of theirs, I branched out in my interests. I joined a book club that is made up of women ages 30-65. I took up belly dancing and joined a dance troupe of women from 20-60. My friends are single, married, divorced, with kids, without kids, with grandkids even. We relate as friends and not just as moms. As children get older it gets harder to relate to other parents just because your kids are the same age. We are thrown together at music events and sporting events and we all have 7 year olds or 12 year olds in common. But by the time kids get to that age parents are more comfortable with parenting - they aren't looking for input and support usually. And kids develop different personalities that may make their own previous friendships less important to those children.

"I don't hear about Uta much anymore," I commented recently.

"Oh, she plays mostly with Jennifer now. I play with Catherine and Abby the most. Uta and I are still friends, just not friend friends," she explained.

We lose our control over our children's social life. I watch as mothers who are friends try to force their children who are the same age to also be friends. Four year olds may be happy to play with other four year olds, but eight year olds have opinions about who they want to play with.

I sat in the back of the gym at the Fourth Grade Orchestra Concert last night. I saw the usual cast of parent characters and was unsurprised by who got their extra early to get a front row seat, who thought the concert was Friday night and not Thursday night, who greeted me and who did not. My son played with his friends who had older siblings in the orchestra. My older daughter sought out other older siblings to say hello to and noted the absence of a few who "had better things to do."

Last year I was pretty sure that I should have been a rocket scientist when I grew up. This year I am pretty sure that I should be a sociologist.

I have a need to try and capture feelings or scenes. It's why I write.

Last night I went up to the attic to tuck my daughter into her four poster bed. I turned off the lamp and then sat on the edge of her bed talking to her for a minute. She was cozied in under the blanket and comforter with her cat at her side and an open book. Her reading lamp clamps to the bed frame and shone over her shoulder. The cold weather is more noticible in the attic, but she has an electric blanket and a cat, and she likes the privacy of the attic.

"Can I finish my chapter?" she asked, just as she asks every night.

"Yes. Turn out your reading light when you're done."

She nodded. She is a beautiful child - thick wavy red hair on the pillow, creamy white skin with freckles across her nose, a smile that looks as if she is happy, but also smirking, which suggests an intelligence that doesn't always go with such beauty. I kissed her on the forehead and went back downstairs.

As I went down the stairs I felt an overwhleming desire to remember this moment in this child and this house and I knew that I would write about it this morning and that I would be unable to truly capture the moment. Because reading words and listening to music and looking at art are all experiences, but they are not the exact experience that the artist tries to capture and preserve. But we're all compelled to do it. I remember looking at the parents videotaping their child walking into kindergarten and laughing to myself that by recording the moment they were trying to preserve that feeling that kids give you - that your throat is trying to come out of your mouth and you love this little being so much that you don't even know who you are anymore.

So yeah. I felt that way last night when I said good night to my Mary.

Eating the Christmas List

Someone once advised me to make a list of all the things that I needed to do for the holidays - shopping, baking, decorating, cleaning - and then fold the list up into a little square, pour myself a glass of milk, sit down and eat the Christmas List.

"We drove by your house, Mr. Thomas, but you didn't have any decorations up," one of my dad's students said to him.

"Well, we have a wreath on our door," my dad said.

"Yeah, but that's it."

I want Chrsitmas to be small and meaningful and I struggle with that every year. I am a simple Christmas Wreath and not a pile of lights.

All Aboard for Treasure Island

Jim and his mother just opened the captain's chest, took the rolled oil papers and bag of coins and escaped the Inn. The blind man's cane is tapping in the fog.

I tucked my son in and kissed his head.

"What do you think the papers are?" I asked.

"I don't know." His eyes, I am not exaggerating, are huge. He loves this story.

I have very different feelings for my youngest child. He is my youngest and a boy and that makes him very speical. And despite that he gets ignored the easiest. He is very easy going and feeds himself when he's hungry and puts himself to bed when he is tired. I have to make a conscious effort to spend time alone with him on things that interest him.

We read together every night. His sisters prefer to read by themselves now. He and I sit in his bed and it is our time alone together. He actually cried when we read about Laura and Mary riding away from the little cabin in Wisconson. He laughed at Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Treasure Island was his selection this time and we are both loving it.

The oiled papers of the Captain are of course the map. And I feel as if I can literally see the lines in his brain forming as he thinks about the story. His brain is making its own map as we read the story.

"Who did the Captain warn Jim about?" I ask him every night.

"The one legged man."

And when the one legged man shows up in the story? The child's brain is going to go crazy. I am convinced that a love and understanding of literature is the most important thing you can give a child. It's a map to Treasure Island, if you will.