Tag: memories

Hiccups #atozchallenge

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When I was a kid, I would get the hiccups something fierce. My hiccups would often last the full day, and while I don’t remember them bothering me too much—other than being a serious annoyance—I think my parents would beg to differ. Once, I remember being on a roof, helping my father while he made some repairs. When my hiccups began, he made me get off the roof for fear I might fall.

My parents’ go-to hiccup cure was always a spoonful of sugar. Every time I had the hiccups, I would choke down that spoonful of dry granules, and every time, I would still have the hiccups.

My most memorable case of hiccups was one time when we were involved in a family activity in the kitchen—I can’t remember whether we were coloring Easter eggs or carving jack-o-lanterns, but it was that type of activity, and it clearly took all of my focus. As was typical for me, I had been suffering with the hiccups for the better part of the day. I had tried the spoonful of sugar cure. Twice.

My mother slipped out of the room unnoticed while I was hard at work on my project. We finished, and when we were in the middle of cleaning up, my father sent me upstairs to get something for him. As I rounded the corner from our living room to our front hall, my mother jumped out and scared me. In fact, she scared me so badly that I started to cry. The one consolation—my hiccups were gone.

Several years later, we had a book of natural remedies on approval through the Readers Digest book club. In that book, there was a cure for hiccups that sounded ridiculous. According to the book, if you took a tall glass of water, placed a spoon in the water, held the handle of the spoon between your teeth as you drank some of the water, you would cure the hiccups. Ha!

It wasn’t long before I was able to put this cure to the test. And it worked! The quickest and easiest cure for the hiccups ever! In the years since finding this cure, it has helped me, my children, and any hiccup-ridden person I come in contact with.

For me, this cure has worked 95% of the time. It’s much easier than choking down sugar, and much safer than being traumatized by your mother!

Expectations #atozchallenge

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When I was in high school, I spent a summer as an exchange student in a far away country on the outer edges of Europe. Before we left the States, we had a two-day orientation to prepare us for our journey, meeting our host families, and immersion a new culture.

There is not much I remember about those two days. I remember eating peanut butter out of a jar because dinner was of the tasteless, institutional variety. Oddly, I remember the omelet I had for breakfast the next day because it consisted of a thin bit of egg and a slice of American cheese. Most importantly, I remember a valuable lesson that I have carried with me since that time.

We were sitting in a circle on the grass. It was a breezy, early summer day, and the sun might have been shining. The leader of our group, who was once an exchange student through the very program we were part of, looked around the circle and offered us his best piece of advice—advice he wished someone had given him.

“Go into this experience without any expectations,” he told us. “If you have expectations, the reality is going to be different. It might be better, but it might be worse. If you enter your host country, meet your host family, try new foods, make new friends, all without expectations, then you are likely to be pleasantly surprised.”

This advice: it has been my go-to in new situations—in all situations, really. If we build things up in our minds to be more than they possibly can be, we are likely to be disappointed. But if we approach situations with no expectations, we might just be pleasantly surprised.

E

Art vs. Science

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There is a story I tell my children about self-advocacy. It is a story from my own high school experience, and though the story is antiquated due to my advancing age (at least in their minds), the story still resonates with them. As it is time to register for classes for the coming academic year, the story has come up once again.

Within the education system, there is a path that each student is expected to follow—the “cookie-cutter” path that allows guidance counselors and teachers to quickly check boxes and sign forms, moving kids through the system with the confidence that they are getting what they need. A student’s expected path depends upon post high school plans. (Because in high school, you know the direction your life will go.) If a student is planning to go to college, s/he is expected to take the “college prep” path. Those with more rigorous college aspirations demand an “honors” or “AP” path while those who are planning to go to trade school or get a job might choose either a standard or vocational path.

Each path comes with expectations for the courses that students should take along the way. And therein lies the problem. It has been my experience that this cookie-cutter approach doesn’t work for all students. It didn’t work for me when I was in high school. But back in my day, it was more difficult to stray.

Before my freshman year of high school, I sat down with my guidance counselor. Back in the day, guidance counselors knew each of their assigned students and did both course planning and college counseling. (What they do now, I have no idea and even less evidence, but that’s a story for another post….) My counselor listed the courses I would take my freshman year.

“What is this? ‘Earth Science’?” I questioned. “And why do I have to take it?”

“You’re college prep,” he informed me, as if I didn’t know. “That’s what college prep students take.”

“Why, exactly, do I have to take this class?” I tried again.

“Because you are college prep, and colleges like to see science courses,” he informed me.

“How many science courses?” I asked.

“At lease two, but definitely biology and chemistry. Physics is good, too.”

“So… where does Earth Science fit into that?” I pressed. “It almost seems that ‘Earth Science’ is not a required course. I’d like to take art instead.”

He stared at me, as if I had just slapped him. “I’m sorry. Did you say ‘art’?”

“Yes. Art. This one right here,” I pointed to Studio Art on the course offerings list.

He began to shuffle the papers on his desk dismissively, as if ignoring me would make me go away. “That’s not the usual course of studies,” he informed me without looking up.

I’m not the usual college prep kid, I wanted to say, but instead, I merely said, “That’s okay. I’ll take biology as a sophomore.”

He studied me intently for another 20 seconds before he signed off on my unusual course of study.

Sophomore year, I took biology, and junior year, I took chemistry. But at the end of junior year, I was back in his office. By now (three years later), he knew who I was and what mattered. To me. “Suzanne,” he greeted me. “What brings you in?”

“Physics,” I stated bluntly, shoving my course selection sheet across his desk. He sighed deeply, his shoulders slouching in defeat.

“Art?” he questioned.

“You got it!” I smiled. He signed off on my senior year course choice without further discussion.

Funny… I got into college without those extra two science credits. I continued my art path through college. To this day, I have no regrets. I seldom use science in the strict, “science” sense, but I have used art all my life.

This week, my daughter texted me a picture from her course of studies booklet. She is contemplating an interdisciplinary course, “Art of Science.” Now that’s a science course I could delve into!

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Writing Space

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Written in response to Writing 101, Day 6: The space to write….

My children were very young when I became a single mother—my youngest was 14 months old—but I have never stopped writing. I have “paused” every now and again when life becomes overwhelming, but I have written, at least a bit, through each stage of their lives. Because I also took on an online teaching position, I became accustomed to working with much distraction.

When the children were young, I would work and write while they played—sometimes in the other room, and sometimes right near me. Often, the children would have their various craft projects or drawings-in-progress splayed across the kitchen table; I would squeeze myself in, claiming a tiny little spot of table real estate, just big enough for my laptop. Crayons, markers, clay, googly eyes and cast-off drawings inched nearer with every movement they made. When they were quietly engaged in their own activities, I could write without a problem. However, I developed tactics to deal with noise and distraction.

On one particularly memorable day, I was sitting at the kitchen table working, and W was sitting across from me, bent over some project or another. He might have been about eight at the time. The other two were in the living room, and they were not being quiet, by any stretch of the imagination. I was working, but to keep my focus, I was dictating to myself as I typed.

I saw W look up from his project, so I watched him as I typed. He looked at me, cocked his head and narrowed his eyes as he studied me, pondering what to say. I stared back without pausing in my typing or my dictating. “Mum, can you type silently?” he asked me.

I raised my eyebrows in question and halted my dictation and hence, my typing. “Do you hear your brother and sister?” As if on cue, one of them squealed, and they both giggled. W nodded. “That is why I can’t type silently.” He held my gaze for a long moment before he sighed and turned back to his work.

Since then, I always try to type silently. But sometimes, when the distractions are just too much to handle, I have to type out loud.

A Single Image

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Going back to Writing 101, Day 4: A story in a single image…

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Image is not mine but from Unsplash.com

When I was in college, I took several photography courses as part of a self-designed minor of study. One weekend during my senior year, I got the idea to go to the top of a mountain and photograph the sunrise. It was October, and around here, you never know whether October will be the back end of summer or the front end of winter. I remember getting up very early and piling on layers of clothing. While the forecast was for seasonal temperatures in the valley, the mountain was a different story. Two shirts, a sweater, winter jacket, hat, gloves… I was prepared.

It was still dark as my car crested the mountain and pulled into the small parking lot near the lodge. There was no sign of other people, though a couple of cars sat empty in the lot. The lodge was dark. I turned off my headlights and got out of the car. Stars blinked in the night, but the sky was just taking on a faint grey cast. I picked my way over the rocks to find myself a perch at the top of the eastern slope. I sat in silence; the only sound was the cold wind which swiped at the top of the mountain as if to blow it clean. I shivered, and I remember wondering if I would make it to daylight without breaking down and seeking shelter my heated car.

It didn’t get warmer, but slowly, the sky brightened. The first rays of morning sunlight winked over the distant horizon, and a layer of white fog blanketed the valley. The mountains, in varying shades of blue-grey, touched the sky tainted pink with the promise of a new day. In time, the color faded to a pale blue.

That morning, as I sat on the rock and watch the landscape change from night to day, I realized that there are some things that we truly must experience. I could take pictures to show to family and friends, but being on that mountain, exposed to the elements and taking in the splendor of the scenery as the day dawned was a moment that is meant to be captured by the eye and the brain and the senses, by being present and in the moment. It was a moment that created an image that will forever remain in the accessible archives of my brain.

Abundance

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Posted in response to Writing 101 Day : One word inspiration.

A few years back, when I was young and athletic and fit, I would go out for a run to find inspiration for writing. I used running as a way to move through moments (and sometimes hours) of writer’s block. I found running to be a particularly effective way to generate new stories and to deal with ideas that wouldn’t flow.

Yesterday, I happened upon an article on running and what runners think about while they are running. It was based on a study in which ten long distance runners were wired with microphones during their runs, and they were asked to narrate their thought processes.

Ha! I thought. Wouldn’t that have been a fun study to be part of? Then I reconsidered when I realized that had I been chosen as a subject, I probably would have been sent to the loony bin before the study was over. As a creative person, my mind can string some strange thoughts together, like beads on a necklace that will attract some inquisitive remarks, but will never be the sort of thing that’s in style.

In some instances, there is no doubt that my thought process was similar to that of the subjects—Come on! You can do it! Keep going—just a little farther…. But in other ways, I would have to say my ‘train of running thoughts’ strayed far from the beaten path.

While my feet were pounding out the rhythm of my run, my head was spinning tales from the things I saw by the side of the road, the events of my day, thoughts halted before spoken, and the struggles my head was working through. My running mind tended to weave these things together in ways that might be considered unconventional.

One day when I was running, I noticed a discarded ATM receipt along the side of the road. At first, I didn’t think anything of it, other than the fact that people really should properly discard their trash. Not far away, I passed a discarded Styrofoam coffee cup. Probably the same person, I thought. Took some money out of the bank and bought a cup of coffee on the way home. I kept running.

Down the road a bit was the most unusual piece of the puzzle; a pair of men’s black dress pants was strewn along the roadway. And now it seemed that the person had not only withdrawn some money from the bank, he had withdrawn all of his money from the bank. He bought a cup of coffee, and while he pondered his situation, he decided to quit his job and create a new life, one that was less restrictive and didn’t have the office trappings. No more business attire for him!

Oh my! I can just imagine what those researchers would have thought had they been listening to me narrate these thoughts while I was running. But a great story was hatching. And running was always a means to access abundant inspiration.

May you always have an abundance of inspiration to fuel your journey.

Campus Hauntings

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“What time do we have to leave tomorrow?” I asked C on the evening before a college open house. He was in the living room, but I was working on dinner in the kitchen.

“Wait, what did you say?” was his response.

“I asked you what time we have to leave in the morning.”

“Oh, phew! I thought you asked me what time I am leaving.”

“You can go by yourself it you want,” I responded, testing the waters, completely not expecting that he would be okay with that.

“I don’t know where I’m going, and you’re the one who asks all the questions,” came his logical retort. And really, he’s right; I would not send him on a college visit alone—I have too many questions.

Because I work at a college and have spent my adult life—my entire life, really—in education, I have lots of questions. And because I work at a college, I know that I am more likely to get a candid answer from the tour guides than from the people who are paid to deliver the institution’s canned marketing message. Yes, I am one of those parents.

While we are touring colleges, the other parents are asking about the safety of the campus. They ask where to find the Health Center. They ask how freshman roommates are selected. I am the parent asking about the advising program, the student retention rate, the weekend activities, the students’ ability to start clubs and programs. I ask if students can rent textbooks at the bookstore… and how many students try to get by without acquiring textbooks. I ask how many RAs per floor, what their toughest job is, and which dorm is the “party dorm.”

And so on a beautiful New England fall day, we are walking around the campus of a small liberal arts college. Our tour guides are both hockey players, and it is clear from the jovial banter that they get along well. There are only three families in our small tour group, and it seems there is not an athlete among the prospective students. Once we get through the athletic facilities—the first stop on the tour, of course—we are outside for a walk to the academic building. We pass a graveyard. The tombstones are leaning, blackened with moss and pitted by hundreds of harsh winters. It is clear that this is a landmark cemetery, one that has had no new residents in a very long time.

The hockey players fail to acknowledge the landmark, but C and I discuss what a great setting this would be for a creative writing class. Our tour guides pick up on the cue and tell us that art classes sometimes visit the small graveyard.

We stop in a building to see both the largest and smallest classrooms on campus, and we discuss the academics. As we leave the building, we are led across the street. Small white clapboard houses, some obviously original New England architecture, line the side of the road, and my mind wanders back to the cemetery.

“So I have a question,” I venture, and the hockey players’ heads turn in unison. “With these older buildings, the cemetery, I just have to ask….” Out of the corner of my eye, I see my son take a step, broadening the distance between us. He knows what is coming. “Do you have any buildings on campus that are haunted?” There is a slight pause and one parent snickers. “Or buildings that are rumored to be haunted.” As we all know, rumors of ghosts are circulated on every campus, whether true or merely to scare the freshmen.

The tour guides snicker and joke about things they have done to each other. And then one of them tells a story about finding his room full of leaves when the screen was intact and his door was locked. But in general, it seems the answer is negative. Or maybe these two young men haven’t heard the rumors….

My son actually finds it somewhat amusing that I ask. And he knows this is just the beginning. I still have two more children with whom to visit colleges. By the time I’m done, I should have some great information for Ghost Hunters!

Shared adventure

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I sent my children out on a mission. Armed with my camera, and all the colors of the fall season for inspiration, they went for a walk around the neighborhood so my daughter could take pictures for my son’s yearbook photo.

This plan is one that has was hatched over the summer, when I decided to save some money by not hiring a professional photographer to take C’s senior pictures. We discussed it in August, but C wanted to wait until the trees turned and the colors were bright. And he kept putting it off, claiming that his sister was never ready. J, meanwhile, claimed that C just had to say the word. It was not a promising start to the project, and I found myself second-guessing my decision.

As often happens, we procrastinated down to the wire. The pictures were due this week, and we had to factor activity schedules with days of “picture perfect” weather. And so it was Wednesday, leaving us very little time for a retake, should it be necessary.

After school, texts flew as plans came together, friends were contacted, and last minute details were taken care of. I let the kids figure out the logistics, the process, the timing. I gave them their mission, and I stepped out of the picture.

When I entered the house later that day, three kids were in the living room, laughing and chatting as they viewed the pictures on the computer. Click, click, giggle. Click, click, “Oh! Flag that!” Click, “Stop! Go back!” They flip through the photos, one by one. All of them. All 248 of them.

248 photos! (In my day, that would have been 10+ rolls of film; countless hours in the darkroom….) My daughter had catalogued the entire excursion in a photographic essay, of sorts, documenting the journey from our front door to the top of the street, and back again. Buried in among all of these photographs were the three choice moments when they stopped to focus on the mission I gave them—the sit-and-pose pictures. In total, we had seven photos in the running for the yearbook. But we had countless others that had captured a moment, a journey, a memory.

I sent my children out on a mission, but they came back armed with memories of an adventure. Sometimes, I am amazed at what happens when I remove myself from the picture. Mission (more than) accomplished!

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(all images provided by the creative eye of J)

Past and Future

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This post is in response to Writing 101, Day 7: Start with a quote.

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”     –Dr. Seuss

Right now in my house, we are navigating senior year of high school. The first senior year. The oldest child. As we move through the daily life of classes and activities, we are also evaluating colleges, considering futures, contemplating resumes and jobs. We are looking outward and forward, to what lies ahead.

Each morning, my son walks out of the house, gets into the car, and drives off to school. As he walks away from me, I can clearly see his two year old self walking down the hall, his toddler feet struggling to hold onto my adult running shoes. The memory of the clop-clop of the shoes hitting the floor and his exaggerated walk as he tries not to trip on the massive shoes makes me chuckle.

I look out the window and see his face through the car windshield as he settles into the driver seat, puts the car in reverse, turns and backs out of the parking space. It is the same face I watched in my rear-view mirror on the boy strapped into the car seat, the five-point harness securely holding him just above the shoulders. Because he is the oldest, at this tender age, he still had the monopoly on my attention. In the mirror, I could see his curiosity and wonder; he would ask a million questions; and he expressed concern that the cars coming toward us might be just a bit too close for his comfort.

I stand and watch as he drives away, and I am thinking about all of the times that he left me behind. When I took him to preschool for the very first time, I stayed with him until he was ready, his warm hand in mine for reassurance. And he finally let go and joined new friends in their play. At four, he rode in a red plastic wagon around the halls of the outpatient surgery center at the hospital before his tonsilectomy. But when they pulled him through the double doors, and I could not accompany him, his face reflected a fear and anxiety that reflected my own and planted a tight knot in my gut.

To him, his daily life is the same as all the other years. Nothing is unusual or different; this year in high school is simply his last year. His reminiscences are not as deep and far-reaching as mine. He is focused on the future. He is thinking about where he will go, what he will become, and when he will see the friends he leaves behind. I am thinking about the future and the man he is becoming, but I am also thinking about this boy as my baby, my toddler, the little boy who was constantly collecting “treasures” that I would have to empty out of his pockets before doing the laundry.

As his childhood transitions to young adulthood, I look back on the many years I have spent raising him—and all of my children. I know that I am blessed to have had this time, and the memories make me smile.

Writing

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This post was written in response to the Writing 101, Day 1 prompt: I write because….

I write because I grew up in a small town where fitting in was not my forte. I was artistic and academic, borderline hyperactive (before that was a diagnosis) and just about the opposite of athletic. I created “treasures” from items that were tossed aside, and I was overflowing with sass. The combination was one that didn’t work well for a kid navigating the waters of small town school life. At first, the fact that I didn’t fit in mattered to me. But after a while—and too many reminders that my sharp edges and rounded corners didn’t match everyone else’s—I accepted my lot in life.

I write because in kindergarten, a light went on when I learned to squeeze meaning from the squiggly lines that formed words on a page. A door was opened to new adventures and new worlds where I could easily lose myself. The public library and local bookstore became my refuge, and I hid behind the mask of a voracious reader.

I write because sometimes, when I felt lost and alone, reading was not enough. I would take out a notebook, usually in the late hours of the day when dusk turned to darkness. At first, I wrote fiction and poetry, depending on my mood. I would craft stories, churning out page after page, simply to see how much I could write and to watch the page curl under the weight of my words.

I write because as I ventured from adolescence into adulthood, my ideas and my identity were fluid and changing. I wrote my feelings and my dreams into stories as I worked to make sense of the world and my place within it. I wrote stories of realistic fiction with characters who might have been my friends.

I write because when I divorced, I needed a way to pull myself out of the all-consuming black hole that is emotional abuse. Suddenly, I was the character, and the world was my own. There were many soul-searching journal entries. Many nights of listening to the rain outside my window while my thoughts and my words spilled onto the page.

I write because once I freed myself from the abuse and regained my confidence, not writing was no longer an option. Through my journey, I had evolved into a writer. I had discovered a home in creative non-fiction. I discovered that writing my story helps me to live a better life.

I write because I never did find the place where I fit in. But fitting in is over-rated. Writing is a journey that fits perfectly with who I am.