Soapbox

When you have children, if you expect them to turn out like little versions of you… you’re doomed to be sorely disappointed, my friend.

You can share with them your love of auto mechanics, but don’t expect them to have any affinity for a wrench. By all means, tell them how scouting enriched your life and gave you self-confidence, but be prepared for their utter indifference to tying knots and lashing together a lean-to. You can hope to pass on your love of books, or the joy of bowling, and even your personal faith… but you can’t expect them to necessarily take up the mantle.

Kids are their own people- sometimes ruthlessly so. Whether it’s from sheer defiance or because, when their own chromosome square-dance took place they didn’t get matched up with the right gene, children often choose to head in a very different direction than their parents. If you try too hard to steer them, they may just end up farther away. If you let them make their own choices and are patient, you may find that, in time, they begin to circle back around towards their roots and find a happy middle ground.

Such is the way, of course, with my children. Oh, I tried my best to raise them right, but it was hit-or-miss. They share most of my basic values, like honesty and giving to others less fortunate, but in one vital way that is dear to my heart, I was wildly unsucessful.

They don’t like my music.

You can’t say I didn’t try. From birth, I surrounded them with the folks songs and old Irish maiming ballads of my own youth. Instead of "The Wheels on the Bus" I taught them "Peace Train". Instead of Sharon, Lois and Bram, I gave them Peter, Paul and Mary. And, of course, the Beatles. Always the Beatles!

Stephen soaked it all up- every kind of music I exposed him to: bluegrass, gospel, motown, folk and swing- he listened to it, and learned it… and now has AC/DC and Led Zepplin on his MP3. The little boy who sat on my knee singing Gordon Lightfoot now prefers Ozzy Osbourne. Still, he sits quietly and listens to whatever I am playing, and occasionally I will see a glimmer. A  few weeks after a trip to Athens when I played for him  Dan Fogleberg’s "The Innocent Age" he was playing the piano and I recognized the tune to "Ghosts".

Katie actually edits what she lets me hear of her musical taste. Some of the pop music she listens to I really like, but I know she is also into hip-hop and even rap. She keeps that on her iPod, and to herself. She is just sure I will hate it. Well, perhaps I might. To each his own, I know. But it’s more what she’s not into that wounds me.

For Christmas, I asked for and received a copy of Dylan’s classic "Blonde on Blonde" on CD. Delighted, I opened it up and put it on while I was in the kitchen preparing Christmas dinner. Katie was at the sink, washing her hands. she cocked her head and listened for a minute, and then raised her eyebrows.

"Man! And you say my music sucks!" she commented, and tossed me the dishtowel.
"Hey!  Some of it does!" I countered, wounded and scandalized.
"Yeah, but I keep it to myself" she said as she went upstairs to put on Freak Boys Down or Arrested Garbage Supply, or whomever she listens to this week.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a smart-alec child!

Columbia, NYU, University of Chicago and Brown.
What do these fine institutions all have in common?

They comprise the list of colleges that my lovely daughter informed me this morning that she would like to attend. The first 3 I know are all on the list because they are in big, cosmopolitan cities that KAtie has visited and enjoyed. She informs me that the small-town idyl of a school like O.U. is not for her- oh no! "Bright lights, Big city" is her dream. At least those three are all in places that are pretty cheap to get to from Columbus, so she can go visit and see if they have anything other than population density to recommend them. But Brown?

Brown university….in Rhode Island… ranked 7th in the Ivy League, tuition alone $33,888, this year. Freakin’ Brown? How does it rate the Katie list? An alumna from her high school is currently on the admissions faculty there and gave a talk about Brown’s hallowed halls for the International Baccalaureate juniors, who I guess are the kids most likely to get in. So now, she’d like to go visit there because "it has this amazing curriculum". And of course, even though it isn’t a big city university, she’ll love it. Who wouldn’t? And the thing is, even with only a 15% admission rate, if she puts her mind to it, this amazing kid just might get in. THEN where would we be?
Mortgaging the house for a second and third time, just as her brother is ready for graduate school. ~sigh~

I think it’s just hitting me that my child is talking about, in a little over a year and a half, not only running off with our entire life’s savings, but going far away to do it! Good thing no one from Stanford has come to her school yet, or the University of Hawaii! And I wonder how I’ll cope.

I’m dealing well with the separation from Stephen, even though I still go sit in his room once in a while. When I close my eyes I still can see the bright dinosaurs that no longer frolic on the walls and the toybox full of beanie baby spiders and bats that is in the basement now. I miss the smiling, gentle, tow-headed boy who used to live there, but I’m very fond of the deep-voiced, dark haired man who occasionally comes to stay and eat my peanut butter and jelly. I rarely hear from him while he’s away, but at least I can see him any time I want to drive to Athens and stand on a street corner with free food. I know he’ll turn up eventually.
But now Katie is making plans to cut herself entirely free and soar away… and I’m not ready for it. I thought letting go of my firstborn would prepare me for losing my baby… Not even close, turns out.
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So I’ve got this kid…
…and tomorrow morning, bright and early, she leaves on yet another school trip abroad- this time to Italy and Greece. Ok, first of all, the only trips people in my school went on (you know- "back in the day") was to Washington DC for 2 whirlwind days. Ted and I put off our 20th anniversary trip to Scotland indefinitely so we could pay for college…and apparently, for her trip to Italy and Greece. Well, you want your kids to have things you never did, right?

The child, to her credit, has earned half the money for the trip herself this time. That’s a LOT of lawns mowed, children babysat and dogs walked. Let me clarify that: she earned half of the cost of the ticket. The cost of the trip keeps mounting!
First there are the clothes. I would not have expected her to need that many new clothes, since she has a closet bursting with perfectly respectable clothes, but such is NOT the case. We recently were informed that the kids are not allowed to wear jeans at all except on the planes. It seems they don’t want them to look "too American".
Now this makes no sense to me, since I expect half of Europe to be in jeans, and I don’t think American-ness is a thing you can disguise in a chattering group of 50 kids, all commenting that the Vatican is, like, really awesome, you know? But there you have it: only skirts or "slacks" for girls. Katie is NOT the slacks type, and skirts are cooler anyway, so I suggested that she let me make her a few knit skirts- something that won’t get terribly wrinkled. I have a whole store of fabrics and patterns to choose from, but no- she is not the knit skirt type either, she informed me.
So we went shopping.

Katie now has several nice cotton skirts that will be so wrinkled that she will look like she just crawled out of bed in them by the time she gets off the bus in the morning, but she says she doesn’t care. Oh, but she decided she needed slacks too, after all.
So we went shopping.
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Some thing just don’t bear too much thinking about.

A week or two ago a couple about my age came to my counter and said they had several things they wanted to have framed. The first were 2 posters, and as I took measurements and discussed designs with them I noticed that the woman seemed distracted and restless in a way that spoke to me of distress. I kind of dialed down my usual chatty nature in response to whatever was upsetting her.

When we came to the third item to be framed she pulled out several pieces of paper and explained that she wanted them in a 3-opening collage frame. As I laid them out to get measurements I saw that they were pages from a program from a memorial service for someone who had died. I asked no questions as I saw the bleak expression in her eyes. Let’s get through this fast, I thought  and let them get on their way. As I began estimating mat widths and entering numbers in the computer the woman suddenly said, "That was my boy!"

I looked up, mouth agape. She was standing rigid, one hand over her mouth as if the words had simply lept out of her of their own volition. I heard her husband say gently, tiredly, "Honey…" as if concerned that she was bothering me with her pain. "Oh, Lord!" was all I could whisper, and suddenly I leaned across the counter. This total stranger and I embraced fiercely and each sobbed on the other’s shoulder, mother to mother.
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So I’ve got this kid…and yeah, she’s a big girl now.

Katie has always liked to sing. Well, it would be unnatural if she didn’t. The day we brought her home from the hospital, her father disappeared with her as I was downstairs with the happy (loud) family that had congregated to welcome her. When I went in search of them I found he had laid her on our bed and was singing for her: "Kathy’s Song" by Paul Simon. Quietly, sweetly, he was wooing his daughter to the sound of his voice and to the love of music, and she was hooked.

When she was in 7th grade she had a solo in the school play. She refused to let me even hear her practice, let alone help her. All those voice lessons I had were of no interest to her. "Go away, Mom!" Of course it turned out she didn’t need my help. After an assortment of children croaked and shrieked their way through their songs, the spotlight at last hit my daughter and she turned to the darkened auditorium and in a clear, sweet treble voice sang her song, beautifully on pitch and audible to the back row. I nearly cried.

In high school she was acepted into the Chorale, which is huge. Huge amount of work and responsibility, a huge support network and a huge opportunity. 2 weeks ago they performed a selection of sacred, gosple and old spiritual music at St. Paul’s AME church and brought the house down…or up, in the case of several gosple songs that had the audience on their feet clapping. My personal favorites were the sacred music. Ted and I met in Ohio University singers performing much the same type of music only on a bigger scale, and I miss it. I didn’t realize how much I miss it until I saw my daughter standing on stage, her voice joining with so many others to form this beautiful sound that reached up to heaven and into the heart. I started to cry, wishing I was part of a group like that again and so very glad that she has the chance to be herself. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.
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