Dear Myself,

/ heather pantoga / Leave a comment

During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, I went through some pain.  It was probably PTSD, with all the coverage of sexual assault.  It was pretty bad, but I couldn’t figure out how to write about it-something I desperately wanted to do.   Now, with the senate hearings on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court, and particularly since Dr. Blasey Ford’s story of Brett Kavanaugh’s attempted rape of her in high school, I came up with this.

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Inspired by the Dear Teen Me series, where writers write a letter to themselves as a teen, I thought I’d give it a try, to get me to start writing again.  I call it “Dear Myself.”

Dear Myself,

I have no agenda in writing this to you (I know that makes you think I do).  Just hear me out. It’s going to sound preachy, but it’s me.  I’m you.

You are 17 and broken inside, but you won’t be broken forever.  On the cusp of adulthood, thrust onto you way too early, you can see there is so much uncertainty in the world. And so much cruelty.  It is not your fault. There is nothing you could have done to prevent two men from drugging you and one assaulting you, while the other stood watch.  There is nothing you could have done to make your friends, who were witnesses, protect you, or even stand by you, and support you.

Intellectually, you know all of this, and you will come to believe it.  Your brokenness will serve you well in the future. You will learn to trust your “gut” more than any man’s “rational” opinion.  Because you will be right. You will learn to trust your “gut” more than what the establishment (work, law school, bosses) expects of you.  You will be right.

But, you also have to be gentle with yourself, because “fighting” the powers that be is very tiring and upsetting.  You do not need to convince anyone of who you are or that your positions are right. You are right. It is enough to believe that.  Sometimes a quiet strength is better for you than outspoken fighting.

I know you are scared, and angry.  So am I, and I’m 49. But, having quiet strength isn’t about withholding your opinions, or complaints.  It isn’t about repressing how you feel and trying to live a “happy” life because you have resolved all of your trauma; as a child of an alcoholic or a rape survivor.  Those traumas will be with you forever. I’m sorry, but you will never “get over” them. You can accept yourself though, and you will. You can start now (not in your 40’s like I did).

Though the thought itself scares you, you are not alone.  You never will be. You think you are and you believe it gives you strength to know you are alone, on your own, facing all the demons by yourself.  It doesn’t really. Being alone will make you more broken.

Your strength is in acceptance.  It doesn’t mean that you accept injustice.  It just means you come to recognize yourself, without trying to change yourself for the sake of others. Sometimes you will shout, and protest (for yourself and for others), and it will be good.  And knowing that you will be judged, and demonized, and attacked, allows you to prepare for the unfairness in your life. It will help you keep your resolve as you stand up to injustice; whether it’s personal or global.  You have a right to stand up for yourself. You have a right to express your opinion. No one is gifting that to you, it’s yours. And, you are right.

I can see I’ve already said too much, and you are getting bored with platitudes, probably rolling your eyes.  So, farewell and be well. I believe you will do great things (even if it’s after age 49).

 

Brief musings on taking my kid to boarding school (or on watching her take a journey; or on taking my own journey).

/ heather pantoga / 2 Comments
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Interlochen Campus

It was a rush decision, a true leap of faith, to send Fiona away to Interlochen Arts Academy http://academy.interlochen.org/, a premier boarding high school for young artists, in Interlochen, Michigan.  It is her senior year and we were not expecting to “let her go” so soon.  It was truly the best thing for her (that will appear in a separate post in maybe 6 years).

I had two weeks to prepare for her departure.  The physical and mental tasks involved were mundane but fun; like preparing to go away to college, the first time in the dorms.  I think I’m pretty attuned to my emotions but even so, I was not prepared for the iron weight of saying “goodbye.”

img_2058Some lessons I learned ( because there were many I probably have not uncovered yet) the weekend Lizzy (younger sister) and I dropped Fiona off at Interlochen (Opening weekend):

  1. No matter how hard parenting a teenager is, and how painful it can be, my love for my teens (kids – whatever age), will ALWAYS overshadow that pain and difficulty.  Saying goodbye is intense and heavy and wonderful when it’s right.
  2. The more siblings argue, the stronger the bond.  (I don’t actually have any proof of this but I’d like to think that the sibling bond I’ve witnessed, in my own kids and in my own relationships, is stronger than any).
  3. You can go further, and better, with your community (Thank you my friends and family!).  And your continued journey (or Pilgrimage) will always be better when you include your people and open yourself up to your community.
  4. “Pilgrimage” is a good word.  It takes on many meanings: like a quest, or a personal journey; or a literal journey; or a discovery of new lands.
  5. Eating balanced meals every day is good.  Actually, it can change your life.  Not eating balanced meals can make you very sad.
  6. I apologize in advance for this next lesson but it has to be said:  Michigan drivers are obnoxious, but also serious about adhering to highway etiquette (i.e. left lane for passing only); Indiana drivers may very well be very lovely people, but they don’t know bunk about the “rules of the road;” Wisconsin drivers are both of these bad things.  Illinois.  I can’t.
  7. Mostly, I learned that seeing your child in the right place is wonderful and warms your heart.  It isn’t because of me or her father that she’s there.  It is not an outside force.  It’s her own self that got her where she is and what will make her experiences (of course with the community and family holding her up should she stumble).  Being a proud parent is the best.

Thank you Interlochen for showing me my own personal pilgrimage.  

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Lizzy at Interlochen campus

For a glimpse into Interlochen and that special opening weekend, here is an archived webcast of the Opening Convocation. One of my favorites was the talk given by Nicola Conraths Lange, Director of Comparative Arts, on “What to bring and what to leave behind” (towards the middle of program).

http://www.interlochen.org/media/archived-webcast-interlochen-arts-academy-2016-2017-opening-convocation-9-3-16

Waiting out the Winter

/ Alyce Abbe / Leave a comment

I savored every grey day, every dark dinner, and black morning. I would meet the thin cold air with acceptance.  When the sun would peek out in the afternoon, and I would see Clare running out of school and into my arms, time would freeze for moments.  The longer it took for time to pass, the farther away Clare’s surgery was from her and me.   I wanted the monochromatic, dry. long, grey, dark winter to stretch, and stand still.  I wanted every morning snuggles and conversation with our early riser.

It’s been eight months since Clare’s heart surgery.  She was five then, now she’s six.  When I run into people, in my profession, or parents at Clare’s school, they ask after her.  She’s grown several inches since her heart was repaired through open-heart surgery and she is healthy as can be.  She was listening to our hearts the other day with the stethoscope and remarked how different her heart sounded.  She had a special heart beat, a whoosh, it was.  She had had that since birth. In those days, those winter weeks before her surgery, I often thought about her heart sound.  Would she change after her heart was repaired and sounded so different?  Would she lose something of her personality?  What happens to a person’s essence when there is an invasion, even if it is a necessary and potentially life-saving one?

I had been putting Clare to bed almost every night in the weeks preceding the surgery, instead of the usual taking turns with my husband.  She had just turned a corner with reading and was compelled to join in the Dr. Suess books I read.  I could have read with her forever.  I would hear her drifting off, with blankie in her arms, making nursing sounds with her mouth, even though she stopped nursing when she was just 9 months old.  Once asleep, every night, my mind would go to that place where I did not want to let her go.  I couldn’t let her grow up, I couldn’t let the days pass to get closer to the day of surgery.  I didn’t want that moments of pure peace to end.

When Clare was  3 or 4, there was  span of time where the prospect of growing up frightened her.  She would cry and cry, saying “I don’t want to grow up.”  Of course, that freaked us out, knowing about her heart and hoping it wasn’t an  omen.  So when we learned she would have to have open-heart surgery, it was our unspoken fear, that somehow Clare knew something no one else did.  She has always had a knowing and magical way about her.  She had a wonderful imaginary friend, “Mena Zena,” who appeared behind the kitchen door one day.  Mena Zena was around a lot, just hanging out with Clare.  I got used to that.  One day, near age 5, Mena Zena moved away and Clare talked about her less and less.  Despite letting go of Mena Zena, Clare’s knowing way didn’t diminish.

Clare never had any fear about having surgery.  She asked more questions as the day approached.  She wanted more details, and we gave them as she asked.  The thing is, she only asked for what she was capable of hearing.  This is Clare.  She knows.  We tried so hard not to pass along our fear.  I would cry quietly every night listening to her breathe, but I would wake up every morning smiling to see her.

On March 1, we woke up and every one said “Rabbit” except for Clare and I.  We forgot.  She looked so sad when she realized and fought back tears.  I wanted to cry,  I really needed good luck this month.  But then I dreamed of us on a train, her little hand in mine, and we stood at the doorway when it stopped.  We wouldn’t get off.  We were resting there, just staying in one place.  We were not scared, we were thinking.  Clare was coming to me in my dream.  She was telling me she would stand with me.  And I was standing with her.  She was giving me strength.  Was she telling me not to be afraid?

It’s still hard to think about the feelings I had preceding her surgery. I was introspective, sad, scared yet so happy and so grateful to have someone like Clare in my life.  I felt so lucky, my heart ached.  Every day for two weeks before the surgery, and eventually after, we would walk to the park and have a snack on the bench.  We would look at the lagoon, sun starting to warm the ice.  Clare said, “the lagoon, when the light shines on it, is like a mirror that’s always clean.” I did not know what would happen.  I didn’t know if she would live. In her way, her voice, her hand, her heart, Clare told me it would be okay.  On one of those walks, we sat on the bench.  The park was quiet and the air still.  Clare put her finger across her lips and said “shhh,” she closed her eyes and took a deep breath saying “I’m listening to my heart.”

School is a shark

/ Alyce Abbe / Leave a comment

I felt slightly melancholy dropping my kids off at school this morning.  My 3rd grader, Robert, dragging his feet, walked slowly, adjusting his backpack as he approached the regular crowd of kids chattering away as they squeezed into the front doors.  It was a bright, soft spring morning, with birds chirping and Robert was being consumed by kids rushing over concrete towards the tall brick structure they call school.  I almost lost sight of him as I pulled the car away for other parents to let their kids out. On the radio was V.V. Brown’s “Shark in the Water,” which I’m sure in reality does not relate to this situation at all.

But, it seemed Robert was surrounded by sharks at school:  curriculum constraints, teachers and their old ways (name on the board if you drop a pencil; copy the dictionary if you talk in class); endless worksheets, boring days filled up by lessons consisting of students reading from a textbook; not real interactive classroom time or fun projects.  For some reason, these mindless worksheets-and I think most parents of kids this age know what I’m talking about-weigh more heavily on Robert than his sister.  But actually, now that I think about it, Mae never had those mindless worksheets.  She and Robert both attended a Montessori school until she was entering fourth grade.  In Montessori, they generally did not have the worksheets.   By the time she was in the “regular” school, she surpassed her peers in language arts and math and somehow managed to get a pass on all the worksheets too.  Robert was not so lucky.  Although he too surpassed his peers in both reading and math, he was expected to do the worksheets and endless busy work that is often so difficult for boys.

Why is that? Why is it that at every school Robert has attended (there have been 3 in his short life); we have felt that he has not been understood or been treated unfairly?  Well, the simple answer of course is that he hasn’t been understood and he has been treated unfairly.  Why was he prohibited from reading books that were challenging for him when the same teacher had allowed his older sister to read challenging books (or books she wasn’t even capable of really reading at the time) only two years earlier? She held preconceptions about boys and girls, that’s why. Education these days is intolerant of boys and the drop out rate for boys is only increasing as a result.  From an early age, boys are told to sit still.  School is designed for children to sit at attention for long periods of time, which for many girls, is perfectly fine.  But it hurts boys.  They need to work their large motor muscles at a young age, when girls are moving on to fine motor skills.

I’ve read a lot about the education and development of boys, including “Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys” by Michael Thompson and Peg Tyre’s “The Trouble with Boys.”  Both books have enlightened me and somewhat depressed me too.   While we have an educational system that allows girls to thrive and leaves boys way behind, it’s what we have.  We as parents have to constantly advocate, for all of our children, but especially our boys.  My biggest fear is that Robert’s self confidence, innocence, and love of learning will be sucked out of him by preconceptions, assumptions and direct degradation by the school system.  He tells me now that he likes doing dictionary because he learns new words, but I know he’d rather be running around.  Robert doesn’t speak up for himself when he gets blamed unfairly, and he doesn’t explain his digressions to teachers.  Maybe it’s because when he has done so in the past, it has made little difference.  Or maybe it’s because “school” has taught him that the explanation really doesn’t matter.  The context and nuance of a situation cannot be understood in a public system where a teacher has too many worksheets to correct and test scores to worry about, along with his or her job, thanks to No Child Left Behind legislation.

It’s not all doom and gloom with school though. His school is pretty cool, they go on a lot of field trips to downtown museums, plays, and musical performances.  The kids also have quite a bit of extracurricular options, including guitar and chess club.  Unfortunately, these great things about the school might be overshadowed by the drudgery of the day as I’ve explained it, as Robert has explained it.

The best solution, as I’ve said we have come up with so far is to always be your child’s advocate.  Always listen to your child, especially when he’s not talking.  This means enduring the worksheets with him, as maddening as it is, and educating him yourself, in a way he responds to, including lots of playing.  I’m not exactly enthusiastic about museums but the joy our son gets out of those visits is immeasurable.  That is enough for me.   It isn’t easy, especially when money and time are scarce, but a walk in the park, a bike ride, working on a puzzle or playing a board game will erase all the worries about school work and grades.  And the look on his face when he’s playing and learning compared to the look on his face this morning makes it easier.  So while I was sad today, watching Robert, I feel better for him, knowing we are on his team.  I must never forget, he must never forget, we are on his team.

Ramona’s Lessons in Parenthood

/ Alyce Abbe / 3 Comments

When I was a young child, I read a lot.  I loved to escape to the dumbwaiter with “Harriet the Spy,”  a book I re-read over and over.  And I understood Ramona, because I think I, too was a pest.   I spent summer afternoons and countless evenings reading, with my mother or by myself.  I remember being in school, anxious to leave to get back to whatever book captivated me at that time.  Saturday afternoons spent at the Public Library are precious memories.  I affectionately remember the smell of the library, old books, and the crinkly plastic covers on the books to protect them.

When in high school, however, I took little pleasure in reading.  It seemed so much of my reading was forced on me.  I might now enjoy great British or American authors but in school, it was stilted and boring.  I remember dreading American Authors class and “The Red Badge of Courage,”  by Stephen Crane, described as one of the most influential books in American literature; a book my 8 year old son might grow to love.  But at the time, that and “The Scarlett Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, were simply dreadful.  Which, by the way is interesting because I think “The Scarlett Letter” is one of the most intriguing books about Puritanism and the psychology of sin. Somehow, I don’t think it was quite presented to me that way in high school.  I think my dislike of literature grew because of the way I was expected to learn about these works.  It was not for the enjoyment at all. Continue reading →

Cosmic Messages

/ Alyce Abbe / Leave a comment

In late October 2009, my husband, Will, and I were told that Clare, our 5 year old required open-heart surgery to correct a congenital heart defect.  We found this out two days after I found out I was pregnant.  I was very afraid this was some cosmic message.  Frankly, was this new baby replacing Clare?  It was difficult to steer away from that thinking, though as a dear friend told me, “It doesn’t work that way.”

In the beginning, I was very excited and began to grow rather quickly, making it difficult to hide this new fact.  I was happily self-conscious.  Clare’s surgery was scheduled for some four months away, which, at the time, seemed an eternity.  I would be nearly six months pregnant at the time.  I had a lot of stress come my way after finding out about my pregnancy, and Clare. Continue reading →

Money lessons

/ Alyce Abbe / Leave a comment

moneylessonsFinancial stress is the absolute worst for families.  Right around the time that my husband and I found out that our five-year old daughter, Clare, would have to have open-heart surgery to correct a congenital heart defect (a medical determination we hoped we wouldn’t receive and did not thoroughly expect), we started experiencing some serious financial strain. Despite having a full work load, I had had no income for over 4 months and the economy was in turmoil.  I heard stories weekly of friends, and friends of friends who seemed “well-off” losing their homes. Continue reading →

Everybody knows you’re guilty

/ Alyce Abbe / 1 Comment

When my son, Robert, was 7, we were all sitting at the dining room table for dinner.  We may have been talking about our days, including mine as a criminal defense lawyer.  He said “here’s a police officer,”  and with an index finger pointed right at me, looking straight in my eyes he said “Everybody knows you’re guilty!”  at which we all laughed.  I mean, it was hilarious.  And the kid now has a strong sense of justice.

So, a year and a half after Robert’s imitation of a police officer, after seeing, on the back of his homework his bubble lettering reading “Latin Kings are awesome” or something like that, my heart sank a little. Continue reading →

The police at school

/ Alyce Abbe / Leave a comment

Yesterday, I picked up my children after school.  They attend a public school, an urban school with a gifted & talented program.  I love their school.  And it is a very urban school, and I mean that in the best sense.  It resides near downtown, which allows for them to take walking field trips, to plays, concerts and museums.  As with any other public school, there are all types of students.  Some might have issues at home-poverty, violence or absentee parents. Some students are more privileged and their parents choose to keep them in the public schools. Honestly, if our kids did not get accepted to this school, they might not attend the public schools.  We’ve seen a few first hand and it’s tough.

There’s a girl Mae has mentioned, I’ll call her “Jane.”  Jane  was in Mae’s class last year. Mae has talked about how she likes her, she’s a great writer and funny.  At the same time, Jane has been in some fights at school-behavior that Mae had not been exposed to before attending her school.  But despite this, Mae was never afraid of Jane. This year, Jane has had a hard time, by Mae’s accounts (my assessment though).  Mae has always shown consideration when talking about Jane and always, always mentions how nice she is.  It was recently that Mae informed me that Jane was no longer at their school, after some incident.  I’m not sure what the set-up is, but Jane rides the bus with the students from their school still.  I think, until yesterday. Continue reading →

Kids who drive me crazy

/ Alyce Abbe / Leave a comment

There are many.  It used to be maddening but now I realize that kids are weird creatures and when they are your own, you mostly deal with the imperfections and enjoy the great moments that they give you.  When my 8 year old son is driving me nuts (like most of the time lately) I might think about when he and his older sister were playing with a castle and figures when he was three and she, five.  They had devised a battle of some kind.  Suddenly, Robert said “Look out!  Here come the lawyers!”  I still don’t know if that was a good thing, or a bad thing, the lawyers.  It was a funny thing, indeed.  As parents we have so many of those bits; some will be most boring to others, some will be gems.  So when MY kids drive me crazy, I might think like that; or lately the H and I are trying to remember that they are kids and our expectations might be unrealistic (like when we’re thinking “why are you so immature?”  about an 8 year old boy).

As for others kids, I find that I can get annoyed, especially if I know the parent and dislike their parenting style, or even disagree with it.  I know it isn’t fair to be annoyed with the kid herself, but at some point the responsibility of the kid’s personality does get divided between parent/child, right?  What I’m thinking is applying some new techniques I have in dealing with uncomfortable situations, people I have nothing in common with, or people who are making me angry:  try to place myself outside of myself, outside of my angry ego and accept what is in front of me, from a place that connects me with this situation or people.  Husband gave me this advice and he articulated it much better.  I can do that, it is much kinder and of course, children deserve kindness, well, everyone does.  And well, all children have their own “Here come the lawyers!” moments.