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Good Press

Jun 6th, 2010 by

I have been working like a demon for the last week or so to get ready for the Fifth Annual Sudanese Scholars Celebration. I was responsible for drafting talking points for our guest speaker, writing and assembling our programs, and putting together seven graduate tributes/biographies to read during the service.   I wrote about this ceremony last year, for anyone who needs background on what the heck I’m talking about, but this year I was much more intimately involved.

Along the way, I learned the basics of drafting a commencement address, that spell check doesn’t work when your brand new Microsoft Word installation has the default language set on German, and that it’s really, really, very, exceedingly difficult to interview someone over the phone when they (1) have a heavy Dinka accent; (2) are on their cell; and (3) are calling you from an aluminum plant.  Several similar calls really stretched my listening ability to the limit.

Anyway, today I am feeling tired but triumphant. Attendance was smaller than last year, but I think all the graduates felt special, 11 of our 13 graduates were present, and I didn’t massacre anyone’s name. When you consider that one of the names was Ayuen-Arok Deu Deng Abraham and that another graduate has the first name Pajieth, you will perhaps understand what an accomplishment that was!

But best of all, we got a press pick-up. Check us out on the local news.

The first person interviewed, Alier Mareet (The newscaster says “Ma-ret” but it’s “Ma-reet“), graduated #1 in his department at Indiana University Southeast. The second person, Kuol Deng, got a degree in public health at WKU and is already trying to figure out how to fund graduate school. He was offered one paid internship already, but as it was in New York City and paid only after the program was complete, he had to decline.  Meanwhile, his professors at WKU are begging him to come back. Also on screen was our chair and founder, Holly Holland, offering a tribute, board member Jon Henney, standing beside the row of graduates, and Louisville mayoral candidate Hal Heiner, suited and suitably mayoral looking front and center at the proceedings, who very graciously handed out certificates and delivered a heart-felt commencement address. I managed to be out of the frame in every scene, so you’ll have to take my word that I was there.

Among the more inspiring stories this year is the Ngor Deng, the first Sudanese from Louisville to earn a degree and now the proud holder of a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering, and Peter Thiep, who somehow managed to earn an associate’s degree while working full time to support, his mother, sister, and—wait for it— seventeen brothers back in Africa.

I’m extremely happy that our guys get to see themselves on TV and that our scrappy little all-volunteer organization got some respect. We all deserve it.

Posted in Friends, Jessica | No Comments »

Waterloo

Jun 4th, 2010 by

Well, it’s happened. Three and a half years on, and I have at last come across my parenting Waterloo. So many things could have triggered it before now:

  • Colic? Frazzled and one or two bad moments, but I held up OK.
  • A year of interrupted sleep? I was weary, but managed.
  • The restrictions that came with a year of nursing? I actually enjoyed these.
  • Tantrums? T. Berry got me through them with humor pretty much intact.
  • Massively delayed walking? First Steps and patience minimized the worry.
  • Potty training messes (ongoing)? Three plus years of cloth diapers make these no big deal.

So what has driven me to barely controlled fury?

“That’s not fair!”

Who knew that three tiny words could have such a huge impact? Simon unleashed this verbal salvo a few days ago, and my immediate anger caught us both by surprise. He said it in response to something I denied him: a game, treat, or the like. The look I shot back at him, complete with a clenched jaw, blazing eyes, and rigid back, must have said it all. He sat down and pouted in silence, while I walked away to regain my composure.

If I’m totally honest, I wasn’t just angry. I was filled with the sort of gut-level dislike that makes it easy to come down too hard on someone or to respond disproportionately. It was one of the very few times I’ve felt an urge to smack him. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to remove myself from the situation and screw my head back on.

Once the adrenalin quit pumping, I could see the incident through objective eyes, realize Simon is testing his own power and limits, and question whether he even understood what he said. He’s way too young to have the inflated sense of entitlement “That’s not fair” implies, and way too polite to demonstrate such ingratitude. And those were, for sure, the qualities that triggered my wrath.

Still, feeling so angry was humbling. And realizing that I’m going to hear “That’s not fair” for the next 19 years was sobering.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy, Simon says... | 4 Comments »

Playoff Fever

Jun 2nd, 2010 by

Looks like all those super-late bedtimes are paying off. Below is a transcript of an actual conversation in the basement tonight:

Simon: “Let’s shoot some hoops, Mommy.”

I take a shot from the couch and sink it in his toy goal.

Simon: “No, Mommy! Not like that. Slam dunk it!”

Feeling silly, I stuff the ball dramatically in the three-foot goal.

“Great job, Mommy! I’m Rondo. And you’re Kevin Garnett. He’s serious. And Daddy is Paul Pierce!”

I’m really glad he didn’t make me “Big Baby” Davis. Go Celtics!

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy, Simon says... | 1 Comment »

The Gift of Illiteracy

May 30th, 2010 by

Yes, you read that correctly. And bear with me; I’m getting to Simon in this post, but not right away.

So, for some time now I’ve lived with the dread fear that age and motherhood were eating my brain. My recall for names and words was not what it had once been, and I was finding it increasingly hard to focus on and absorb longer pieces of writing. My daily reading included magazine articles, shorter NY Times pieces, email, and political blogs. And Gawker, but I’m not proud of that. And really, at least one of the political blogs was a glorified tabloid.

Then I got laid off. In the two months hence, I can feel my brain returning to me. I still don’t have all the recall I used to, and I assume some of that ability truly is lost to middle-age. But the rest? Back. I’ve read a novel about an Irish country doctor. I’ve read Tracy Kidder’s recent book about a Rwandan refugee. I’m re-reading a travelogue about Greenland. I have simultaneously begun an Edith Wharton novel.

I learned the Yiddish alphabet and how to calculate and read Hebrew dates to decipher family headstones. I’ve researched the original form and meaning of the eight primary surnames in my ancestry. I’ve dipped into academic essays and poetry while watching Simon play with trains. I’ve tried (and failed) to write a sonnet for the heck of it. You get the idea. Basically, I take care of the house in the morning, take care of Simon from noon on (now it’s all day since school is out), and then from nine to midnight I feed my starving, neglected brain.

My first assumption about this shift was that my brain was benefitting from a huge reduction in stress. Freed from the constant stress of plugging away at a dying list, I could channel my energy into something productive.

But I think there may well be more to it. Of late I’ve been reading about the effects of the Internet on long-term memory. The short version of this is that we are quite literally Googling ourselves stupid. The ability to look up anything at any time has not only given us ADD when it comes to longer forms of writing, but also has severely curtailed our ability to transfer information from short-term to long-term memory. What’s the point when you can just look it up again once you forget?

What this reminds me of now that I can think straight is the shift in memory that occurs when societies become literate. Go back to Homer’s era, and story-tellers could recite epics that went on for days. Meanwhile, I worked for hours in high school to memorize the first 18 lines of The Canterbury Tales (I can still recite them, too). Its’ pretty simple: If a people cannot write down foundational tales, it must commit them to memory, and once people can refer to the written text, they lose the motivation or interest in memorization. There are a few exceptions, like devout Muslims who memorize the entire Quran, but generally speaking, literacy is the beginning of memory atrophy.

Meanwhile, I am living with a little person who is interested in stories and loves rhymes, but who cannot read or write. Simon’s approach to literature is fascinating to observe. He will ask me to read him the same book for two weeks straight. It gets so repetitive that I can hardly take it before he’s ready to move on. But at the end of any binge, he’s able to recite the book from start to finish. For the last six months to a year, he’s been working on memorizing the entire text of his favorites: Bear Wants More, Bear Snores On, Kitten’s First Full Moon, Goodnight Moon, various Dr. Seuss titles, Old Hat, New Hat etc. Some he can recite only if the book is open before him. Others he can recite while the book sits closed on the shelf.

He, like most kids his age, is hard at work flexing the memory muscle, and I’m inspired by it. So inspired that I’ve given up most of my blogs and largely abandoned Facebook. I can’t—nor do I want to—go back to being illiterate. But with just a little discipline, I can dedicate more of my time to the type of reading that makes me smarter, not dumber.

For more on the effects of the Internet on memory, see Nicholas Carr at:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_nicholas_carr/all/1

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy | 1 Comment »

Old Soul

May 26th, 2010 by

It has to be one of the oldest clichés in the book, this notion that some young people have old souls. When applied to a preschooler, it’s a marker of something even worse than hoary sentimentality; it’s the type of cheap humor you find in movies starring celebrities on their way down or in any number of television commercials when cherubic children spout of knowing, adult lines.

And yet, every so often a rollicking conversation fueled by preschool logic and perspective screeches to a halt at a red-light of adult understanding. The effect can be funny or unnerving; often both at the same time.

As potty training has progressed, I’ve used the term “big boy” a lot. “Simon, do you want to wear big-boy underwear today?” I’ll ask. Or “Simon, I love it when you put on your own pants. You’re getting to be such a big boy!” Perhaps counter-intuitively, the more I discuss what a big boy Simon is getting to be, the more I’m reminded of how young he is today.

But then, on the same day I spent an uncharacteristic amount of time surveying the ravages of time in a mirror (When did that blood vessel break in my face? Where did that spider vein come from? Man my temples are gray…), Simon seemed to confront his own mortality.

“I don’t want to be a big boy, Mommy. I don’t want to get older. I want to be new.”

He seemed so sincere, that I couldn’t even laugh. All I could muster was a weak, “Oh honey, you are new. You are new, and growing, and learning every day. It’s marvelous.”

Then last night, lying side by side in his bed, he slew me again. We began with our nightly discussion of Simon’s day.

“Tell me about what I did today, Mommy.”

[I recite a whole bunch of daily, boring stuff] “And then, who did you play with on the playground?

“Baron.  I said I was Superman. But I wasn’t Superman; Baron was Superman.”

“Then who were you?

“I was Batman. But I don’t like superheroes. [This after much discussion of the same and a fairly decent Iron Man imitation he’s picked up from Baron.]

“You don’t?

“No. I like cars and trains and buses and planes and helicopters.

True that. How young he seemed then. How innocent and, well, new.

“And then it was nap-time. But I didn’t take a nap. Sometimes when it’s time to sleep, I just can’t stop thinking. I just lie in my bed and think and think and think and don’t sleep.”

I know the feeling, honey! But I had hoped that he was too young for this affliction. I just hope and hope and hope that he was thinking and thinking and thinking about Batman, Superman, chasing Baron, and things that go zoom and NOT the fact that he won’t always be new.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy, Simon says... | 2 Comments »

A Fine Balance

May 24th, 2010 by

So how does a sensitive 31/2-year-old boy handle interpersonal conflict?

I’ve been wondering about this for ages. Actually, no. I’ve been worrying about this for ages. Many times I’ve seen a much younger child grab something from Simon only to look on as my stunned son stood frozen in place and cried.

As many times I’ve not been exactly sure how to coach him. I’ve heard other parents exhort him to “grab it back!” or “not let him/her get away with that,” but to my mind these parents have confused normative behavior with desired behavior. Which is to say, while I think grabbing is to be expected among toddlers and preschoolers, I don’t think it should be encouraged.

Recently, Simon had a play-date with a dear friend (and daughter of dear friends of mine) who is much more outgoing and assertive than Simon is. She, and I’ll call her Rebecca here, is a happy, spirited force to be reckoned with. As often happens, there were some disputes over toys. Simon has one toy in particular he has a hard time sharing, and Rebecca is fast to grab this toy (and others), and slow to give it up.

I intervened as necessary to facilitate turn taking. Using very neutral tones, I explained to Simon that he had to share all his toys, or a toy went out of play. Hoarding in front of company is not an option. And I told Rebecca that she had to give Simon turns and could not push, grab, or interfere with a toy (i.e. kicking the pedals of a trike while Simon was on it) to get her turn faster.

As the hours went by, I waited to see if Simon would ever stand his ground. And then, at snack-time, he finally did. Rebecca was flicking water from her straw on Simon and his snack, and Simon didn’t appreciate the game.

No, Rebecca, No! You stop it and DON’T. DO. IT. AGAIN!

This may not sound like much, but understand that he was being quite loud and forceful and was waving his left index finger  just inches from her face. This was clearly Simon drawing a line in the sand.

He may have made his point too well as Rebecca, who thought this a fun game and had her feelings hurt, began to cry. Her crying begat tears in Simon, as he can’t bear to see anyone upset. So there they sat, friends wrapping up a play-date with mutual hurt feelings and tears.

This seemed to me to be a teachable moment. I told Rebecca that Simon didn’t mean to scare/upset her, that he just didn’t like having water thrown on his lunch and clothes. Was she OK? Sort of. Could I give her a hug? Yes. She was now not crying, but also not willing to look at Simon.

Then I went to work on Simon. “You didn’t like Rebecca’s game, I understand. And you told her to stop, which is great. But sometimes when you are loud and forceful, you hurt other children’s feelings. So even though you were right to tell her to stop, you should say you are sorry for yelling they way you did.”

Would Rebecca apologize for flicking water? Yes. Would Simon apologize for yelling? After a time, yes.

So then we chatted a bit about how friends can get upset with each other, and that the important thing is to tell each other when you don’t like something and then apologize and forgive if apologies or forgiveness are needed.  By the end of the date, each sought to make it right using the same tools they had used to cause the fight. Simon, the verbal offender, told Rebecca she was a good friend. And Rebecca, who had been physical, gave Simon a hug and a kiss.

It was a small victory in parenting. It is also, I suspect, a skirmish I will look back at from Simon’s later childhood, when things will not resolve so easily, with a heaping dose of nostalgia.

Posted in Friends, Jessica, Little Boy | No Comments »

Like Mother, Like Daugher

May 21st, 2010 by

The summer I was eleven, my mother took me to visit Highland Middle School so I could familiarize myself with the building before starting school. We were greeted by an office worker who looked at my mother carefully and asked, “Are you Hanna Rita Wolfson?”

My mom would have just turned 42 when this happened, making it 30 years since she had been “Hanna” and 22 years since she had been a Wolfson. I was stunned.  “How in the world,” I asked myself, “could anyone be recognized after so many years? That’s crazy!”

I’m smiling as I remember this conversation from 29 years ago because today, entering KIP to pick up Simon after school, a man making a delivery took a good long look at me and asked,

“Excuse me, are you Jessica? And did you go to Johnson Middle School?”

I was nearly speechless. Because, in fact, I attended Johnson beginning in August of 1982… nearly 28 years ago. How could anyone be recognized after so many years? That’s crazy!

Posted in Family, Jessica | 1 Comment »

Ploughboy’s Lunch

May 21st, 2010 by

For two days in a row, Simon has had a very specific lunch request:

  • cheese slices. At least one of his (American), and at least one of “Mommy’s” (sharp white cheddar)
  • crackers, but not with soft cheese spread on them. Plain, please, with the cheese on the side.
  • sliced apple

As I looked at his plate, something about it seemed awfully familiar. And then I realized that barring the Branston pickle, Simon has just requested the preschool version of a ploughman’s lunch.

I’m amused that he ordered this quintessential English pub lunch. I’m even more amused that he seems to have inherited his love for the ploughman’s lunch from me, his French/Moldovan/Lithuanian/Belarussian mother, and not the parent bearing the quintessential English surname “Whitworth”.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy | No Comments »

The Empath

May 19th, 2010 by

I have always appreciated Simon’s sensitivity, as I have always assumed it is a marker of a kind and gentle person.

From the beginning, I’ve had to be very careful in how I talk to Simon and especially in how I discipline him. A few times I got really worked up over something, yelled at him, and then watched him collapse into a sobbing heap. It wasn’t productive at all, because you can’t have a teachable moment with a hysterical child, and by the time equilibrium was restored, the moment was gone.

So I watch myself, and I watch others, too. I can still remember a day before Simon turned one when my mom was at the house and we began to have a heated political discussion. Now mind you, we agreed with each other. But in the grand Goldstein tradition, we jointly railed against a third party, each dumping gasoline on a joint indignant fire. At some point I stopped to draw breath, looked up, and saw Simon. His eyes were like saucers, his lip was trembling, and tears were forming. He thought something was wrong, and he was having a hard time managing his stress.

For about two and a half years, I’ve known the rules. No yelling about politics. Try to muffle screams of pain when you stub a toe, bash your head, or smack an elbow. And most importantly, I can raise my voice a bit or be stern, but both must occur in moderation and they must never happen at the same time. Gentleness is the order of the day.

In the last few weeks, Simon’s ability to read and talk about emotions has grown more sophisticated, further complicating the rules of engagement. I first noticed this at the grocery a few weeks back. I got irritated with Matt for something I can’t even remember any more and took on a snappish, dismissive tone. (It was admittedly not my best moment.) Suddenly, Simon began peppering me with questions:

“Are you mad? Why are you cross with Daddy? Are you angry, Mommy?”

He sounded curious and concerned in equal measures.

A few days later, I was trying to remember something and moved my mouth over to the side of my face in a gesture that looks much like irritation. I wasn’t upset at all, but it looked that way to Simon and he was moved to inquire about my mental state.

“Are you OK, Mommy? Are you cross? Are you happy?”

At the pediatrician’s office at the beginning of the month, the sound of crying babies launched a discussion about babies and fear.

“Why is that baby crying? Is he upset? Is he OK? Is he scared? Is the baby ok, Mama?”

Two weeks ago, God as my witness, we were on the porch blowing bubbles when a car pulled over across the street from us so that, with the windows down, the man and woman inside could have an out-of-control, screaming fight. Simon looked dazed by the whole thing, and I scrambled to get him inside on false pretences before he could get too worked up.

TJ, nee Kitty Friend, was the inspiration for a new line of inquiry into happiness. “Is Kitty Friend happy?” Simon asked Grandma and Papaw on a recent visit. “Mommy, are you happy?” I get asked many times each day.

As Simon is my first and only, I don’t know if this is textbook or not. What I do know is that it can be exhausting. I mean, there you are trying to rush a kid to the potty, negotiate how much TV can be watched, cook dinner, and do a load of laundry—possibly all at the same time!—while simultaneously looking happy enough to ward off a therapy session with a three-year-old.

Then again, I’m not sure if I noticed or cared if my parents were happy when I was three, so Simon, honey, yes, I’m happy. In large part because you care enough to ask.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy, Simon says... | 1 Comment »

It’s All in the Timing

May 16th, 2010 by

Simon had his first out-of-control, screaming hissy fit on Halloween, 2006.

He held up his head for the first time on Thanksgiving, 2006.

He took his first unassisted steps on Father’s Day, 2007.

He called his grandmother “Grandma” for the first time on Christmas Eve, 2008.

He climbed into his car seat for the first time on Mother’s Day, 2009.

Ever aware of the importance of timing, Simon finally told us he had to pee and went on his own on Mother’s Day Eve, 2010. He repeated the feat on Mother’s Day, and in the week hence, he has eagerly announced he has to go, and then gone, as often as he can get his poor bladder to comply. In fact, I think the only times he’s gone in his pull-up are during or in the early waking stages from sleep or when he’s been far from home. There are M&Ms on the line.

We’re not yet going directly in the potty at home, though he is going in the urinals at school. And we’re not yet ready to tackle poop. But we have clearly crossed a threshold from which there is—I hope!—no going back.

Better than the candy Matt bought me. Better than the flowers Simon made me in school. The uric cup now sitting on the back of the toilet is, indeed, the sweetest gift of Mother’s Day 2010.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy | No Comments »

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