A Handmade Valentine's Day

I am constantly annoyed by how difficult it is these days to find reasonably priced stuff for kids that doesn't have licensed characters or corporate logos stamped all over it.

If my son specifically wants something with a character on it from a movie or show he's particularly fond of, I don't mind letting him have it. For instance, he loves this Wall-E movie poster he got from our local library, and considering that Wall-E was the first film that actually entranced my child with a sensory disorder enough that he was able to sit through the entire movie in a crowded theater with a thundering sound system and an enormous flickering screen without experiencing a Total Sensory Overload Meltdown of Epic Proportions, I was all too happy to frame that scrappy Pixar trash-collector robot and hang him right over my son's bed, Disney logo and all.*

But I really resent the fact that when I'm trying to buy my child, let's say, a pair of shoes, half of the pairs in the boys' section at the shoe store are essentially plastered with ads. I'm happy to let my child enjoy pop culture in moderation, but I don't want my kid to be a walking billboard for mass-produced schlock.

So I am not particularly fond of the chintzy licensed character valentines most kids pass out at school. Yes, I know that a lot of people think Valentine's Day as we know it was essentially invented by Hallmark for the express purpose of selling chintzy cards, but celebrating love on February 14th actually has a storied history dating back to pre-Christian Roman times, when boys used to spend the day going around slapping girls and women they liked with strips of goat hide. (I'm not joking. Read the link.) In medieval times, after the holiday had been named for St. Valentine, lovers used to send one another intricately decorated letters that were sometimes written in code.

People have been celebrating their love for one another, as February's warmer winds thaw the frozen ground, by exchanging handmade notes and gifts for a very long time. And I think the tradition of a handmade Valentine's Day is a much nicer to honor than the more recent tradition of rushing to the 24-hour drugstore the day before the 14th to grab a box of chocolates for the sigOth and a box of printed cartoon ads for the kid to hand out in school.

That's why I had my son handmake the Valentine's Day cards for his preschool class this year. I bought blank cards, a few heart-shaped stamps, and some glittery stickers— all things he could handle easily on his own without much help from me— and let him go wild. They may not be as slick as those mass-produced valentines, but I think they turned out pretty well.



It did take a few hours longer than buying a box of Wall-E valentine cards would have, but he'll remember the fun he had making these, and the pride he took in finishing them, a lot longer than he would have remembered a trip to the store.

*Does anyone besides me find it incredibly ironic, by the way, that in a cross-promotion gambit for a film that is essentially a warning to all humans not to continue destroying the earth with too much cheap mass-produced crap, Disney has produced tons of cheap mass-produced crap? I mean, they passed out plastic digital watches at the premier, for heaven's sake.

Conversations with a Four-Year-Old: The Presidency

CHILD: Maybe when I grow up, I will be President.

MOTHER: Well, maybe you're right. Hey, if you become President when you grow up, can I live with you in the White House?

CHILD: You could watch me on TV.

Mother laughs.

CHILD: You should put that on your blog.

Yes We Did

Tomorrow, the United States will have a new president.

On that chilly day in Illinois in February, 2007, when he officially announced his presidential campaign, Barack Obama looked like such an unlikely candidate. A young man, an African-American man, with a funny name, running for a presidential nomination against a former vice presidential candidate and a former First Lady? No way he could ever get elected, right?

And yet, when I turned off the cynical voices in my head, and listened to my heart, I believed he could. So many people, even then, believed he could.

My belief in Barack Obama's ability to do the once impossible sent me to the Missouri State Democratic Convention as an Obama delegate, where I proudly represented the primary votes of members in my community who also believed he could win.

My belief sent me to the Democratic National Convention with a press pass, where I sat in the stands at Invesco Field with 84,000 other people who also believed that tomorrow's events could come. And it was there that I finally, fully realized just how much the power of the movement to elect Obama lay, not in the man himself, but in the hands, hearts and minds and walking feet of the ordinary people behind it.

That realization kept me focused during my hours as a volunteer Neighborhood Team Leader at my local Obama office.

And whenever I felt my newfound conviction in the ability of ordinary people do to extraordinary things start to waver when faced with the forces of apathy, disillusionment, and stubborn opposition to the forces of change, I would meet an Obama supporter or volunteer whose personal committment so impressed me that I felt compelled to continue believing our work to change our country could succeed.

People like my fellow Neighborhood Team Leader, Sara, who approached canvassing with the same determination she mustered to run marathons; people like a field organizer named Alex, just out of college, working his first "real" job as a community leader, who came in to a struggling neighborhood office in a working class town, and turned into an organized Get-Out-the-Vote machine in a matter of days. People like the man with two prosthetic legs who joined my canvass team, and walked more streets than half of my other canvassers. People like the former die-hard Hillary Clinton supporter who volunteered to take charge of canvassers and voter-protection crews in one of the least-staffed, most challenging neighborhoods in the St. Louis metro on Election Day.

It was these people who really won on November 4th.

And I trust them, all of them, to continue working, in ways large and small, to make the country they love a better place, no matter what happens after tomorrow.

Congratulations to tomorrow's President, Barack Obama, and to all of the ordinary people who paved his way to the White House by being willing to dream an impossible dream.

"Learn to" List: Flintknap, Read Classical Sanskrit, Tango, Make Wine, Play Dulcimer, Knit

I am a deeply curious person, and therefore I am always interested in acquiring new skills. The list of things I'd like to learn how to do is essentially endless, because nearly every time I hear about an interesting and useful skill I've never heard of before (assuming it doesn't somehow involve certain few things I prefer to avoid familiarizing myself intimately with at all costs, such as scorpions, or raw sewage) I find myself wishing I had it.

If I had infinite free time, infinite boldness, and a large chunk of cash, I am certain I'd spend my entire life traveling the globe learning things like how to make artisanal cheese, perform brain surgery, and and swim the English Channel.*

Unfortunately for me, I have limited free time, I am nervous by nature (scratch that brain surgery thing), and I seem to have, ahem, misplaced my money tree.**

These facts together conspire to keep my lengthy "Learn to" List from shrinking.

But here's at least one thing I can cross off:

The first thing I ever knit. It did not unravel. And it actually does something!

* As opposed to what I can do in deep water now, which is essentially take a longer time to drown.
** I did receive an anonymously mailed photo of my money tree festooned in toilet paper garlands and looking rather tipsy, at what was clearly a fairly racy party, with certain Wall Street executives playfully tossing one another into what appeared to be a champagne fountain in the background. I was not amused.

Bag Attitude

A few days ago, I went to a Dierbergs grocery store. It was not my local Dierbergs store. I try to avoid my local Dierbergs store when I can, because my local Dierbergs store, though filled with friendly people, stocks a ridiculously limited selection of bruised and moldy produce.

(My local Schnucks has a terrible produce section too, actually. I am convinced, in fact, that both area chains send their worst produce to my neighborhood on purpose, so as to reserve the shiniest apples and least-green potatoes for their stores in places like Chesterfield and Ladue. But that's a topic for another post.)

Anyway, this was not my neighborhood Downscale Dierbergs for the Hoi Polloi, but a fancy schmancy We Have Non-Wilty Onions sort of Dierbergs store out in West County.

Outside this store, plastered neatly to the glass between the automatic doors, there is a little sign that reads: DID YOU REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR REUSABLE BAGS? On this sign is a picture of the Dierbergs brand resuable grocery bags that are available for purchase for one dollar apiece inside the store.

When I first noticed it, several weeks ago, I thought this was a kind and clever little sign. My husband and I always remember to bring our reusable shopping bags in to the grocery store now that carrying them has become a habit, but in our early days of using them, we would often forget and leave them in the car.

It's the sort of thing that makes you think that the Dierbergs grocery chain might really be taking this whole reusable bag trend seriously. And why shouldn't they? I mean, not only are reusable shopping bags vastly better for the environment than either the paper or plastic disposable kind, but they also save stores money.

Well, tell that to the checkers and baggers at Fancy Dierbergs.

I've already become accustomed to dramatic sighs and rolled eyes from disaffected checkers when I respond to "Paper or plastic?" with "Neither, thanks! I brought my own."

And baggers! Well. Nearly every time I pull the reusable bags out of the cart, it's like I'm telling a world-class pianist to play a concerto on my son's toy xylophone, or asking a master architect to design a house for me with crayons. I'd swear the slight once caused a particularly affronted bagger to put a bunch of bananas in with two cans of tomato sauce on purpose.

And the last time I went to Fancy Dierbergs was the worst time there so far. Not only did the checker roll her eyes and sigh when my husband cheerfully replied, "Neither!" Not only did the bagger look askance at us, and then cast a rather wicked glare toward our bananas before dolefully shaking out the first of our eco-friendly bags.

No, this was not the end of our punishment for showing off as environmental goody two-shoes. Once the checker finished scanning our groceries, she completely, purposefully ignored the pile of still-unused resusable bags that the bagger had not filled yet, and put all of the rest of our groceries in disposable plastic bags, leaving half our reusables empty on the counter.

Lest my gentle reader think this anti-eco-bag attitude is unique to the workers at one local grocery chain, only two days later, when we were at that Target of St. Louis Targets, The Mecca-Target — Target of South City — where, incidentally, they also sell their own brand of reusable shopping bags — our checker, upon realizing that we had brought reusable bags, refused to bag our items entirely, and demanded that my husband bag them himself.

Seriously, people. Is it that hard to put things in a slightly different kind of bag? Of a sort your own store sells in a deliberate attempt to get more people to use them?

Clearly some sort of campaign is needed to get cashiers and baggers outside of Trader Joe's and Whole Paycheck on track with this whole saving-the-planet-and-your-store's-bottom-line business.

I imagine the surest way to fix this problem is to make reusable shopping bags so entirely commonplace, so totally unremarkable, that not even the surliest teen temp store employee would bat an eye upon seeing a customer pull them out. If everyone starts using reusables, then checkers and baggers everywhere will be forced to stop silently accusing me of being a pain-in-the-ass hippie with their eyes when I whip my eco-totes out at the register.

Therefore, I am issuing this public call: if you haven't jumped on the reusable grocery bag bandwagon yet, I urge you, for my sake, please, to purchase a set immediately and use them on your very next shopping trip.

The ego you could help save may well be mine.

(But the planet you will help save will be your own. )

Conversations with a Four-Year-Old: Bedtime

MOTHER: Okay, time to go to sleep. Can I give you a big hug before I go?

CHILD: Okay!

CHILD leaps out of bed, runs behind mother, and throws his arms around her back.

CHILD: I'll give you a monkey hug!

MOTHER: Okay, okay little monkey. That was a nice hug. Now it's time for all the cute little monkeys in the world to go to bed.

CHILD: No, it's not time for me to go to bed. I'm a nocturnal monkey.

MOTHER: Oh, well, nocturnal monkey, it just happens to be daytime! So it is time for you to go to bed!

CHILD: It's not daytime. There's just a lot of lights on in my room.

MOTHER: Well, all that light must be making you sleepy, right, nocturnal monkey?

CHILD: No. I'm a nocturnal and diurnal monkey.

MOTHER: When do you sleep, then?

CHILD: Um . . . I only sleep at . . . dusk.

Conversations with a Four-Year-Old: From Picky Eater to Cheese Snob

MOTHER: I'm about to get started making lunch. What would you like to have for lunch today?

CHILD: I want a grilled cheese sandwich please.

MOTHER: Okay. One grilled cheese sandwich coming up!

CHILD: I want Havarti cheese on it.

MOTHER: Okay . . .

CHILD: Havarti not Cheddar or American. And I want a slice of Swiss cheese on the side. Not on the sandwich.

MOTHER: Okay, I'll put Havarti cheese on the sandwich.

CHILD: And a slice of Swiss cheese on the side. Cold.

The Most Beautiful Christmas Tree Ever

So, I was having a Twitter conversation with Gregg and Rebecca earlier today about Christmas trees. Gregg seems to be under the impression that the Christmas tree he just finished decorating tonight in his house is the Most Beautiful Christmas Tree Ever. I hated to tell him he was wrong. Then Rebecca informed me that her favorite Christmas tree, was, in fact, the Most Beautiful Ever. Well, you decide!

That year, my sister and I were living with our mother in a small rented house in a grittier part of the suburbs. My parents had divorced years earlier. My mother had gone back to school, to earn her degree. My father was not making child support payments.

One evening after dinner, several weeks before Christmas, my mother told my sister and me she had something important to talk to us about.

"I don't think we'll be able to have a tree this year. But we'll still have Christmas, and presents. If it's between a tree and presents, I'd rather be able to buy you presents. You'd rather have presents than a tree, right?" She didn't look us in the eyes when she said it.

"But, it's not Christmas without a tree," I said. "Can't we just cut one down somewhere? In a forest or something?"

"That's against the law, if it's not your land," my mother said.

"Santa will bring us a tree," my little sister chimed. "If we ask for one, he'll bring it." Her eyes shone with the confidence of a true believer. I was two years older. Disillusioned. But how could anyone with a beating heart stand to disappoint such hope?

"I'll get us a tree," I said, suddenly convinced it was possible.

"Do you have money hidden somewhere I don't know about?" My mother joked.

"No. But I'll get a tree anyway. I'll find a way." I straightened my shoulders under the weight of this new responsibility. Tree Bringer. Saver of Christmas. Why not? After all, I was nearly ten.

That night I lay awake in my bed, trying to think of a plan. Could I find a tree to cut down someplace, after all? Someplace where it wasn't illegal? My mother would almost certainly be angry that I'd done it. And I wasn't sure where I would get an axe.

I'd heard that sometimes tree lots would give away their leftover scraggly trees on Christmas Eve. Maybe we could convince one to give us one. But that didn't seem like the best plan— leaving it all 'till the last minute. What if I couldn't find a generous lot owner in time?

Could I get a job cutting down weeds or clearing snow somewhere in the neighborhood that would earn enough money to buy a tree? I didn't think I could make enough money in time. I didn't know my neighbors very well yet— we'd only just recently moved into the neighborhood— but my grandmother had once paid me 50 cents for a whole afternoon of weeding in her garden, and a family friend once had paid me a dollar to rake a whole yard. Minimum wage didn't apply to kids doing odd jobs for family and neighbors. But I'd need at least twenty dollars to buy a Christmas tree.

Perhaps I could find someone who was giving away trees to worthy families, and write an essay convincing them to give us one. I was good at writing essays to win things. I'd won several certificates in school. Though, I'd never been able to win my mother roses on Mother's Day in the Mother's Day essay contest. That was a black mark on my record, to be sure. What if I failed again this time?

The next morning, as I brushed my teeth and dressed to the sounds of our little radio, the answer materialized right before my ears. The local radio station I had tuned to was having a contest. Every couple of days, at a random time, I heard a deejay explain, the station would ask listeners to call in. The tenth caller each time would win a Christmas tree.

On the way in to school, before my mother could turn on her usual station, I grabbed the dial and twisted it. "We can't listen to NPR," I said. "I have to listen to Y-98. They're having a contest to win a Christmas tree, and I'm going to win it."

"How could you possibly call in to a radio station from a moving car?" My mother rolled her eyes. "Do you expect me to pull over somewhere and find you a payphone?" She turned the dial back to NPR.

"But I might miss some rules to the contest!" I said. "I'n not sure I heard everything right when they talked about it this morning. I was brushing my teeth during part of it."

"Jaelithe," my mother said, quite serious now, "You are almost certainly not going to win a radio contest. Even if you happen to be listening at the right time, when the deejay asks people to call, every time you try to call in, the line will be busy, because hundreds of other people who were listening will be calling in, too. Even if you do get through, it will be nearly impossible for you to be the tenth caller. I don't want you to get your hopes up over something that is nearly impossible."

"I will win it, if I try hard enough," I replied, and sat in stony silence during the rest of the short ride to school, scowling at Bob Edwards's polished NPR voice.

Every afternoon, the minute I came home from school, I turned on the radio and listened for call-in instructions for the contest. I kept the radio on while I ate, while I did my chores, while I did my homework. Every morning, I woke up early, before the rest of my family, and turned on the radio, keeping the volume as low as possible so as not to wake my mother, who often stayed up late studying and writing papers for class, and would be very annoyed if I ever woke her up early.

Watching me listen to the radio intently day and night, my mother frequently sighed and rolled her eyes. But she didn't ask me to turn it off.

Twice I heard an announcer ask listeners to call in for the contest, and leapt to the phone to dial the number which I had carefully memorized, but only got a busy signal, over and over again as I hung up the phone and pushed redial.

I was not discouraged. I would win that tree. It was necessary. I was the Tree Bringer.

Finally, one morning, before dawn, as the rest of the household slept, I heard the deejay announce another call-in. I scrambled to the kitchen as quickly as I could, and snatched the phone. I called the number.

The phone rang.

This was it.

I stretched the phone cord as far as it would reach, and knocked on my mother's bedroom door. "Mom!" I hissed. "Wake up! I'm on the phone for the contest! It's ringing! They might answer any second!" I knew that as a minor child, I could not actually give the radio station my own information as a contest winner. It would have to be my mother.

"What time is it?" my mother groaned. "Go back to bed!"

"But Mom, the contest! The tree!"

"Will you stop with the contest already? The contest! I'm going back to sleep!"

Painfully discouraged, I went back into the kitchen. I couldn't believe the phone had been ringing so long. It seemed like I'd been on the line for an eternity. Had I called the wrong number? Was the station already on the phone with the winner? Why wasn't anyone answering? Then,

"Hello! You're our tenth caller!"

I had done it.

Despite my days-held fervent belief that I would win the contest, I still somehow managed to be stunned.

My mother was still in her room.

"Hello? Caller?"

I had to come up with a new plan.

"Hello?"

"Hi! Hi there! Sorry. Bad connection. I'm the tenth caller? I can't believe it! This is great! Did I win the tree?" I tried to make my voice sound as adult as possible.

"Yes! You've won the tree! Please turn your radio off."

"Oh!"

I shut off the radio.

"So, what's your name?"

It was working! They believed me!

"I'm Diana," I said. It was my mother's name.

They asked for more information. My phone number. My address. I gave it flawlessly. They really thought I was a grown up! I had really won the tree! Without anyone's help! This was fantastic!

"So, Diana, we just need one more thing for you for tax purposes. What's your social security number?"

What was my what?

I certainly didn't know my mother's social security number.

"Uh, just a minute. Can you, uh, please hang on a minute? Someone is asking me something," I lied, and set the phone gently on the kitchen counter, and ran full tilt into my mother's room.

"Momwakeupwakeup OH WAKE UP NOW! It's an EMERGENCY I'vewonthecontestwiththetree the tree the tree I'VE WON THE TREE and because YOU WOULDN'T WAKE UP well you see I sort of pretended to be you and and I gave your name and everything and they thought I WAS you but now now now they want your social security number and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE NUMBER IS!"

How my mother deciphered this message in time while still being half-asleep, I will never know.

She picked up the phone in her room, and motioned to me to hang up the phone in the kitchen and shut the door.

When she came out, she said, "I had to tell them the truth, that it wasn't really me on the phone at first. You aren't so good at lying, you know."

"Oh," I said.

"But, I told them I'd given you permission to call on my behalf because you were really excited about it. They thought you were cute. They said we could still have the tree."

"Oh!" I said.

My mother drove to the station to pick up the prize. It wasn't a real live tree, like I thought it would be. It was a gift certificate to buy a tree from a local lot. I was disappointed, but my mother said, "It's better this way. We get to pick which one we want. Anyway, where on earth would they keep a bunch of Christmas trees at a radio station?"

The gift certificate was for $50. My mother told me that was more than she'd ever spent on a tree in her entire life.

We bought a fir tree.

It was the first time we had ever bought a fir tree, with long, slender, flexible needles that looked so much fancier than the stubby, pitchy ones on a spruce.

The moment it entered our house, the tree filled our house with a scent that smelled to me of winter, and mountains, and greenness, and richness, and clean things.

The branches were so lush with healthy, green needles you couldn't see the trunk. The tree was as perfectly conical and symmetrical as any I'd ever seen in a painting on a Christmas card. It barely fit through our front door. It seemed to take up half our shabby living room. The top brushed the ceiling. We didn't have enough lights or ornaments in our shoddy supply of Christmas decorations to even begin cover it. But it needed none of them.

It was the most beautiful Christmas tree I'd ever seen.

"Santa Claus works in mysterious ways," my sister said.

Do you have a story to tell about your Perfect Christmas Tree? Write a post about it before Christmas Day, email me the link or leave it in the comments, and I'll paste it here. It seems that Gregg, Rebecca and I have sort of accidentally started a holiday meme. Well, heck. It's December.

Rebecca's Perfect Tree Story

Kim's Perfect Tree Story

What? You Didn't Think I'd Quit, Did You?

It's just been me being inconstant, unsure of myself, and generally prone to fits of introversion, ennui and melodramatic melancholy again. I'm feeling bloggier now. Carry on.

Battleground

Today is the last day before the U.S. presidential election.

Election officials in Missouri have witnessed record new voter registration, and record turnout during the primaries. They are predicting record turnout at the polls tomorrow. Many of those voting tomorrow will be voting for the first time.

Lines will be long. Confusion — about polling place locations, about ID requirements — will be common.

The polls are tied here in Missouri. The outcome in Missouri tomorrow will depend entirely on how many citizens choose to, and are allowed to, exercise their constitutional right to vote.

If you care about your candidate — if you care about democracy — if you have even an hour to spare — don't just vote tomorrow. Volunteer.

Take an elderly or disabled neighbor to the polls. Walk through your neighborhood reminding people that the polls close at 7 p.m.

Bring food and water to people in long lines.

HELP.

If you're interested in helping the Obama campaign's efforts to make sure every registered voter gets the chance to vote in St. Louis County tomorrow, email me at stateofdiscontentATgmail.com. I need you.

Michelle Obama Guest Posted on MOMocrats

She did! For serious! Looky here:

Michelle Obama wants you to register to vote.

Missouri's deadline to register in order to be eligible to vote in this year's presidential election is October 8th.

Are you registered to vote under your current name at your current address? Are you currently listed on the rolls as an active voter?

Even if you currently think you are registered, you may not be. If you haven't voted in the last two local elections, your registration may have been listed as inactive.

If you're not sure whether your current voter registration is up to date, please contact your local Board of Elections to check before you miss the registration deadline.

St. Louis County Board of Elections

St. Louis City Board of Elections

Kansas City Board of Elections

Jackson County Board of Elections

InterPLAY St. Louis

I'll be moderating a panel on search engine optimization and traffic building for bloggers tonight at InterPLAY St. Louis in the University City Loop. Speaking on my panel will be two local SEO experts, Will Hanke and Ellen Gooch. The panel begins at 5 p.m. tonight, and will be held at Screenz on Delmar.

I would be ever so pleased if you could join me.

We'll be discussing the basics of SEO, explaining why bloggers need to care about SEO, giving tips on easy ways to optimize your own site, and teaching ways to protect yourself from content thieves who want to use your work to make ad revenue.

Tomorrow I'll also be speaking on panels about internet ethics and netroots politics. A list of panels is available here.

Ike Isn't Finished Yet

Flooding from Ike:




This is not Texas.




This is not Louisiana.



This is Florissant, Missouri, just north of St. Louis.




This is two miles from my house.

September 12th

It was just as well that my morning class had been canceled; no one seemed to be paying much attention in their classes that day. In fact many students and a few professors had taken the day off, some, to participate in the campus blood drive; others, I imagine, were in shock.

I myself had felt it best to go to school. At that time, I was living on the 13th floor of a high rise apartment building in the heart of a major U.S. city. No one knew, on September 12th, whether there were plans to attack other buildings. The university campus felt safer than home.

At a loss for what to do with myself over the next few hours until my next class, I wandered toward the student center. I had a vague notion I might try to give blood. Back then I had very low blood pressure and I was also terrified of needles, so I was one of those people who passed out cold nearly every time I had my blood drawn. But being Type O, so I was always being asked to give blood. I resolved to do it this time.

It seemed the thing to do, that day. It seemed the only thing most people could think of to do.

I'd seen so many flags on my trip in to school that morning. Flags on houses. Flags on t-shirts. Flags taped up in gas station windows, and draped over restaurant awnings, and flapping from the antennas of cars. For the first time in my life I felt guilty for not owning any patriotic clothing. Normally I wasn't into that sort of thing. I thought people who wore flags all of the time were posers. I wore a lot of black, myself. I was twenty.

As soon as I got to the student center, I could tell the line for the blood drive was much too long for me to join. I'd never make to to my next class in time if I waited in it. I felt simultaneously guilty and relieved. It would have been sort of embarrassing to faint in front of so many people. But still. But still. I decided I would try to come back later, after class.

I wandered around the student center, looking for someone I knew, someone to talk to about something mind-numbingly ordinary, like today's menu at the cafeteria, so I could push from my mind endlessly looping miniature television images of people jumping purposefully to their deaths to escape the pain of flames.

I didn't see anyone I knew. So I wandered in circles, and tried not to think of burning people, and worried. And I didn't just worry about my high rise apartment.

I worried about my old high school friend Fahd, an American Muslim whose parents were immigrants. He had taken me to the prom senior year; I was the first girl he'd ever danced with. I worried about my friend Ayesha, whose mother had once smiled as she told me the children in her pediatric practice called her Mother Mary because she wore a scarf over her hair.

I worried about my Hindi teacher, an Indian Muslim woman with pale skin who loved to argue in a friendly way with the Hindu girls in my class over which religion had done more to advance feminism in India, Hinduism or Islam. I worried about my friend Hamenaz, a visiting college student from Iran, who liked to read Rumi's poetry with me.

Where were these friends of mine today? Were they safe? Were people harassing them? I had heard already that some mosques had received threats. I had heard that people who looked "Arab" were being racially profiled by the authorities, stopped by angry crowds on the street.

As I wandered in circles through the student center, trying to clear my head, a young woman standing behind a table reached out and took my arm without a word. I didn't know her.

I looked up at the sign above the table. It said Muslim Student Association.

"Here," she said. "Please take one."

Her eyes were earnest, searching. She pressed this into my hand:




The table was full of pins. How had they made these so quickly? Someone must have stayed up all night.

"We want peace," she said.

"I know. I know you do. I know." I meant it. It was all I could say.

I pinned PEACE to my backpack, and walked slowly off to class.

I keep the pin near my writing desk, now. I look at it almost every day. It helps me to remember that so many of us in this world wanted peace, on September 12th.

Big Boy

Today I took you to your first day of part-time preschool.


You were nervous before we went. You asked me if the teacher would get mad at you if you couldn't do some of the same things the other children there could. You asked me what would happen if you didn't make any friends.

The teacher will be nice, I said. She'll understand that you're young, and you're still learning things. No one will care that you can't do some things that most of the other kids in your class can do, because there are so many other things you can do better than most kids your age can. Everyone has different strengths. You're good at some things and not so good at others, just like everyone else.

And of course you'll make friends.

The truth you'll know one day, all too soon, is that I didn't know these things— that your teacher would be understanding when you had problems, that the children in school would not tease you for being different, that you would make new friends— for sure. My certainty was a lie. I'm sorry.

But my hope was true.

When we got to your classroom, you ran right in, without even hugging me goodbye.



And when you came home, you came bursting with stories of a kind, understanding teacher, and new friends.

Good job, Big Boy.

Happy first day of school.

Back from the Democratic National Convention

So, do you want to know what it's really like to be a blogger at the DNC?

Well, I certainly saw some inspiring speeches.

But I missed John Legend. Damn it.

On the bright side, I did not get caught in a riot like my friends did.

This guy from MySpace and MSNBC called me a MILFocrat in an interview. He did. I swear. If only he would actually post the video I could show you.

I did NOT get interviewed by Katie Couric. I found out from MOMocrat Debbie, who had found out from Jane from Firedoglake, who had found out from somebody else at The Big Tent that Katie Couric was, in fact, looking for, ahem, "The Mommybloggers," aka the MOMocrats, on Monday. Trouble is, we did not hear that she was looking for us until Tuesday.

You should have told me, Katie. I was right next to you on Monday night at the Pepsi Center.

I did see many excellent hats.




I'm not finished talking about the convention yet! So much happened that I didn't have time to write about it all while I was there. Coming soon on MOMocrats, my thoughts on:

The Mom Who Made 9,000 Obama Pins

Peta Pigs, Pot Proponents and Code Pink

Lunch with Hillary Clinton

Howard Dean's Message to Democratic Youth

An Interview with a Missouri Delegate

First Americans at the Convention

A DNC '08 Postcard for Stephen Colbert

Hey, Stephen:



That's my husband eating a real Denver omelette while actually in Denver.

I have so many stories to tell about my trip. But I'm crazy busy writing for MOMocrats. Here are some highlights:

On our way to Denver, one of our tires blew out on the highway in rural Kansas outside a small town called Hays. It was Saturday evening at around 6:30. We do not have a full-sized spare.

As we were frantically trying to get some totally clueless people at our insurance company to give us a number for a tow company (they oh-so-helpfully offered a number to a tow company on the opposite side of the state), a Kansas state trooper stopped to help us. He pulled out a power ratchet and helped us put the donut on in half the time it might have taken us otherwise. His intervention got us to the only open tire store, the local Walmart Tire Center, just before they closed.

The Walmart people actually installed a new tire in less than an hour, and they did it correctly. (I attribute this miraculous moment of good service to the fact that this was a rural Walmart. You may not know this if you have never been to one, but rural Walmarts are usually actually staffed by competent people. So, thanks to the incredibly kind people of Hays for getting some city folk to Denver.

(Except for YOU, not-so-closet white supremacist dude. over at the next table at the pancake house we stopped at there for dinner. Upon noticing our Obama pins, you started talking to your companion accidentally-on-purpose-too-loudly about how "I know there are some people in the KKK who are not gonna let this happen, not that I want them to do anything of course, but you know that they will." Guess what, dude? You're not fooling anyone. Everyone knows you're a racist jerk. Dumbass.)

In Denver we are staying with an AWESOME hostess, Renee, who is a fan of the MOMocrats. Not only did this woman open her beautiful Craftsman home to a strange family she had never met in person, but she also stayed up until two in the morning to let us in after we were exceedingly delayed by the exploding tire incident. She has been granted permanent honorary MOMocrat status.

I have now run into Donna Brazile (as in, walked within a foot of her) five times. Yet none of those times have I been able to actually speak to her.

I was forced to decide on Wednesday between having lunch with Howard Dean, and having lunch with Hillary Clinton. (I chose Clinton.)

Isaac fell down a flight of concrete stairs right before the Clinton lunch, and really banged up his ear. The top of his ear immediately turned blue and swelled up to double it's size. I almost didn't go to the lunch, but John insisted he would take care of Isaac. The whole time I was at the lunch, I was worried about my son. Because of this, I didn't actually talk to Hillary Clinton at all.

When I saw Isaac after the lunch was over, the swelling was down and his ear barely looked scraped.

I went to the First Americans Caucus meeting today. I am fairly certain I was the only press person there not employed by a Native American advocacy group. This is not because the press do not go to caucus meetings. When I was at a Youth Caucus meeting earlier, there were tons of press there.

This pissed me off.

I am going to blog the hell out of that First Americans Caucus meeting on MOMocrats. Count on it.

Tomorrow I am going to see Barack Obama's speech at Invesco Field. I have no idea what to wear.

If You're Wondering Where I Am . . .

I'm losing my mind planning my trip to Denver.

Hope to be back soon, with reports from the Democratic National Convention!

Conversations with a Four-Year-Old: The Circle of Life

CHILD: Mommy, are we meat?

MOTHER: What did you say?

CHILD: I said, are we meat?

MOTHER: Did you just ask if we were meat?

CHILD: Yes.

MOTHER: Do you mean, meat, like, for eating?

CHILD: Yeah.

MOTHER: Why would you ask that?

CHILD: Well, lions and tigers eat people sometimes, right?

MOTHER: Well, lions and tigers don't usually eat people. They usually eat zebras or antelopes or something.

CHILD: But they also eat people sometimes.

MOTHER: Well, yes, sometimes.

CHILD: So, are we meat?

MOTHER: Well, if you want to put it that way, yes. We're meat.

CHILD: So what is meat made of, exactly?

MOTHER: Meat is muscles. You know, those things that are attached to your bones, under your skin, that make your body move? Muscles? Well, animals have muscles too. And that's what people eat when they eat meat. It's animal muscles.

MOTHER: (VO, internal monologue) Please don't let him swear off chicken nuggets please don't let him swear off chicken nuggets God I know I'm a vegetarian but this kid is so damned picky if he swears off chicken nuggets I have no idea what I will feed him at restaurants PLEASE DON'T BE A HIPPIE LIKE MOM TODAY, OKAY, KID?!?!

CHILD: Animals have muscles? COOL!

Images of Breastfeeding Before the Taboo

August is Breastfeeding Awareness Month, and I've been inspired by Catherine of Her Bad Mother's recent post about receiving disapproving looks while nursing her infant son in public to pull together several early 20th century images of women breastfeeding here in North America, before the rise of formula feeding largely pushed nursing mothers out of the public eye for two generations.

The seed of this project was actually planted in my mind several months ago, when I read an article about this famous photo:


Most everyone has seen this iconic image, taken by photographer Dorothea Lange during the Great Depression as part of her work for the federal Farm Security Administration. The woman in the photo, Florence Owens Thompson, stranded by a broken-down car she was using to travel between towns looking for work, cradles her infant while two of her older children cling to her. This photograph is featured in practically every elementary school U.S. History course in the country.

But it wasn't until I'd viewed the entire series of photos taken by Dorothea Lange that day that I realized the Migrant Mother's shirt is unbuttoned.


When I saw that Lange's series included three photos of Thompson nursing her baby, it occurred to me: Not only was Thompson nursing in public, in full view of her older children and fellow campers at the site, without a blanket over her baby's head or any sort of cover, but this activity was so ordinary to her that she was willing to let a perfect stranger take her photo while she fed her baby.

Nursing in public was so normal at the time that Dorothea Lange had no qualms about asking a nursing mother she'd never met before whether she could take her photo.

And such images were so acceptable at the time that Lange turned them right in to her government employer, and they were included in the federal archives without comment.

In fact, it wasn't the last time Lange would photograph a nursing mother for the FSA:



Indeed, during the 1930s, the United States government, much like today, was very much in the business of promoting breastfeeding. Take this beautiful Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project poster:



The Library of Congress online catalog contains many wonderful examples of even earlier photographs depicting nursing mothers. In this 1910 photograph, a woman nurses her infant out in the open while hulling berries with her older children:



And the mother in this photograph, taken by photographer F. Holland Day in 1906, chose to have her portrait made as she nursed her baby:

Salad Days

"I'm surrounded by plants! It's like a whole family of plants, and this is their house. And I'm in the living room."

"I can't reach the beans at the top."

"I will pick the green beans, but you can eat them, Mommy."

"You don't want to try even just one? But you planted these bean plants, kid. The plant grew the green beans for you."

"No, I don't want to try one. Nope."

"Daddy can eat the green beans with holes in them."

Shameless Plug Alert: Top Ten Reasons to Enter the MOMocrats Raffle

10.) It's a cheap thrill. Only $6 for two tickets.

9.) You might win something cool.

8.) You'll earn good blogging karma for helping out some fellow bloggers.

7.) You're my friend and you know I'd enter your fundraising raffle if you had one.

6.) Did I mention it's cheap? $3 per ticket? That's less than a gallon of gas! That's less than a gallon of milk!

Heck, in a month or two, I'm pretty sure that will be less than an apple.

5.) You want to support Powerful Blogger Ladies.

4.) This is only the second year that the Democratic National Convention has admitted bloggers as press. We at MOMocrats.com want to prove to the DNCC that bloggers play a vital role in the public discourse, and deserve seats in the press box. To that end we want to send as many MOMocrats bloggers, and cover as many convention events, as possible. But to do that, we'll need your help with travel and lodging expenses.

3.) We want to bring the convention experience straight to your monitor, with fresh, first-person accounts of events as they happen. Liveblogging. Interactive chats. Live podcasts. Video interviews. We want our readers to feel like they're right there with us in Denver. But to do that, we'll need your help to purchase some new equipment: wireless cards that will allow us to blog from anywhere. Video cameras. Voice recorders. Etc.

2.) Of the 124 blogs offered official credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention, MOMocrats is the only credentialed blog specifically focused on engaging more mothers in the political process. Sure, we'll be asking the politicians we meet there about issues that affect everyone, and are big in the news, like the environment and the economy (see #6). But we'll also be asking the politicians we meet there about education. We will be asking about child product safety. We will be asking them about child safety on the internet. We will be asking them about family leave, and discrimination against mothers in the workplace, and health care for children with special needs.

Will CNN be asking all of those questions? Will NBC? Will Fox?

1.) If you help get us to Denver (or event if you don't), we'll help take your specific questions and concerns to some of our government's top movers and shakers. If there's something you've been wanting to ask Claire McCaskill, or Nancy Pelosi, or Howard Dean, send us an email or drop us a comment. We'll pay attention.




Visit the MOMocrats.com Help a Mama Swag-o-Rama if you'd like to purchase a raffle ticket.

Vote Today in the Missouri Primary

"I don't know who the candidates are," you say?

Now you do.

"I don't know where my polling place is," you say?

Now you do.

Now quitcher whinin' and vote.

Team Midwestern Mommy

Updated Update: Lisa got more testing done. The results say her initial diagnosis was wrong: it's NOT cancer! She is still very sick, and may eventually need surgery. For a full update on her condition from Lisa herself, check here.

Clearly the buttons worked ;) So you can take them down now! But please continue to offer Lisa your support, as she still likely has a rough recovery ahead.


Update: Lisa's had a second opinion from a doctor who said the mass in her abdomen may not be cancerous. But we still don't know for sure. She's awaiting more testing. I'll keep you posted.

I've made this button in support of Lisa from Midwestern Mommy, who has just been diagnosed with cancer:




Lisa is a mother, and a wife, and a sister, and a daughter, and an excellent writer, and a great friend, and a good person. She has helped many people, including me, get through dark days. In fact, the very first time she visited my blog, she commented, twice, on this post, to reassure me, after my son was first diagnosed with a sensory disorder, that everything was going to be all right, and she knew it, because her son had struggled with sensory issues too. She offered to talk to me, a complete stranger at the time, over the phone. And then she gave me an entire page's worth of kind and useful advice.

Because she's just that kind of awesome.

Please feel free to copy this button and put it up on your site to support Lisa. I'd appreciate it if you'd link the button back to this post, so other people can read about Lisa, copy the button, and go visit her site.

Then remind all of your readers to click through to Midwestern Mommy, and leave a kind comment or send an email showing support.

Here are some other posts in support of Lisa:

Mamalogues: With a little help from her friends

Little Bald Doctors: One of Us

Slacker-Moms-R-Us: Midwestern Mommy Needs Support of the Blogosphere

RebeccaGhost: Love and Support

A Bun's Life: Midwestern Mommy Needs Our Love and Support

Parachuting Without a Net: Prayer Request

Little Miss Sassy: Damn the C Word

IzzyMom: A Friend is in Need

Dawn's Diversions: Prayer for a Lady We Don't Know

It's All for the Best: My Heart is Breaking

The Karianna Spectrum: Woe is Not Me

Mamma Loves: Friends

Green Eyed Momster: One of Those Days

My Second Journal: Prayer - Good Wishes Request PLEASE

Stop Screaming I'm Driving: And Now

Stolen Moments: Lisa

Charming and Delightful: Send Some Bloggy Love

Sugared Harpy: OMG

Life's Little Adventures: (almost) Wordless Wednesday

One Dad's Life: Please Show "motherofbun" Your Support

WOBL in Training: Lisa

Chicky Chicky Baby: I May Be a Heathen, But I Know When Someone Needs My Prayers

Go Visit Lisa at Midwestern Mommy

Go there right now and offer her some support. She's just been diagnosed with cancer.

(And she's Twittering from her hospital bed. Because she is hard core.)

I have met Lisa in person and she is one of the nicest people around. No one ever deserves cancer. But Lisa especially doesn't.

On BlogHer: Part Two

BlogHer needs to be two weeks long. I am so serious.

While I was at BlogHer, I wasn't just playing. I was working, for two sites: MOMocrats.com and Predictify.com. For MOMocrats, I was attending political blogging panels, helping to craft a position paper on health care to be sent to the Democratic Party for review in creating this year's party platform, meeting with other political bloggers who are planning to cover the Democratic National Convention to talk about potential cooperation, networking with other political bloggers and bloggers who are interested in politics, etc.

For Predictfy, I was coming up with a series of questions directly inspired by BlogHer events and panels I attended. (In case you'd like to go and make a prediction, I asked two questions about Twitter, one about the national debt, one about government-sponsored universal preschool, one about Clinton supporters voting for McCain, one about blogs at the Republican National Convention, and two about the Veepstakes.)

So I was busy while I was there. Like, super, crazy busy. I brought home a stack of business cards as thick as a Bible (which incidentally I am still going through, so if I haven't gotten back to you yet, do not despair— I'll get to you).

And I was so busy I only got to talk to some people I really, really love to read and had never met before, like you and you, and you for, like, five minutes. And I also only got to talk to some people I haven't really read much, but discovered at BlogHer I clearly need to be reading, for like, five minutes. And some people I have met before but really, desperately wanted to speak with again got the same five-minutes-from-Jaelithe treatment. Which, you know? Kind of sucked.

I barely got three hours total in crowded company with my girl Deb, who begged and pleaded and schemed for months trying to get me to go to BlogHer, who was the person who finally convinced me I should go, damn the consequences, and who was instrumental (along with the other MOMocrats) in getting me there.

I managed to spend about an hour and a half talking to Christina but it was pretty clear to me we actually needed to talk for five days.

And I did fit in some World Domination brainstorming, and a nice discussion about shoes, with a woman who really ought to be elected Queen of the World, because, seriously? If she were, the trains would run on time, and we'd all be given our inalienable human rights back.

The person I got to spend the most time with was my roommate, who took me to visit awesome folks in Oakland, helped me figure out how the heck to ride BART, taught me the history of the yo-yo in the United States, and also regaled me with incredible stories of her brief, accidental encounters with a very famous Hollywood actor I shall not name. Dude. Best. Roommate. Ever.

Anyway, my point is, next year, BlogHer needs to be two weeks long. And somehow magically cheap enough that I could actually afford to attend for two weeks. And also someone needs to make all of BlogHer a national holiday, so no one actually has to take off of work to be there. Because that is the only way I'll have time to go to fantastic panels with wonderful speakers, and witness amazing life-altering community keynote presentations, and also pretend I'm not really stalking my favorite famous bloggers, and hang out with every single one of my friends. And also get swag. And meet Sesame Street muppets.

(Oh, and also, next year? All high school drama needs to be checked at the door. Else I'll be forced to whip out The Mom Voice. And I am a master at The Mom Voice. Kthanxbye.)

(P.S. If I left you out of this post, it was so NOT INTENTIONAL. See above entire post for why my brain was frazzled. Thanks.)

On BlogHer: Part One

The Community Keynote: Twenty-one women and one man, bloggers all (and therefore I imagine mostly introverts and probably mildly terrified) took the stage in front of hundreds of people to read some of the funniest, most revealing and most poignant pieces of writing I have ever encountered.

It reminded me that so many bloggers really are writers. Good writers. Many of the writers on that stage were absolutely as good as any I have seen on a printed page.

But even more than that, it reminded me how incredibly powerful what we do really is. Seeing women stand up on stage and talk about things like mental illness, body image struggles, pregnancy loss and suicide, and then seeing those women receive standing ovations from a supportive crowd, made me more aware than I have ever been that blogging matters. That even what I write here, in a little backwater corner of the vast and varied internet, matters.

Never before in the course of human history have so many ordinary people, particularly, so many ordinary women, been so empowered to share their life experiences through the written word. And it seems to me that, as more voices are amplified and preserved by this extraordinary medium, more people who are yet afraid to speak are discovering that someone else has already told, or is already telling, a story that echoes their own.

On the day when I wrote my very first post here, I was feeling so incredibly lonely. My first and only son, whom I loved more than anyone I had ever met in my life, was slowly starving himself. I didn't know why. I'd taken him to a dozen different doctors, and none of them seemed to know why, either. I felt like a terrible parent. I felt like a failure. Whenever I was around the few other parents of young children I knew in person, I was a terrible person to talk to, and I knew it. All I could think about was the fact that I was failing at the absolute most basic responsibility a mother has: to nourish her child. And so all I could talk about was failure. Failure to thrive. Not my son's failure, I thought. Mine.

No one I spoke with, none of the doctors, not even my own husband seemed to understand at the time how I felt about this failure. How it had not only taken over my thoughts, but possessed my soul.

I wrote about it because I had to. The words were already in my head unbidden and desperately needed a place to go.

I put the words where others might find them because leaving them in journal under my bed or in a file somewhere on my computer seemed almost like leaving them in my head. And I needed them out. I needed the possibility that someone else might read them.

But I didn't really expect anyone to.

And yet, here I am, years later, and several of those who read those first words are still here, reading these words, today.

(Thanks, by the way.)

On one of my darkest days, I shouted my sorrow into what seemed like an empty room.

But there were echoes.

I've been there, too.

I understand.

I can't understand what you're going through, but I'm a mom, too, and I do understand your love, so I still want to help.

It saved me.

There have been plenty of days, since then, when I've forgotten that, a little. When I've questioned the point of my spending all of this time writing here, in this particular forum, not gaining fame, not getting paid.

You see I sometimes think that maybe I don't need you all quite as much as I used to. My son's health is better. My life is better. I'm a more confident parent now.

But the keynote snapped me back to that first post. And suddenly I realized that not only did I still need you all as much as I always have needed you, even before I knew I needed you, but also, some people out there right now might still need me.

I'm not just telling my story. You're not just telling your story. We're telling our story. The more voices, the better.

I don't think I'll ever forget that again.

Conversations with a Four-Year-Old: Bees

CHILD flutters one hand near MOTHER'S face.

CHILD : Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Bizzzzzzz. BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

MOTHER: Is that a bee?

CHILD: BUZZZZZ!

MOTHER: Oh, my goodness. Is this a nice bee or a scary bee?

CHILD: It's a nice bee.

MOTHER: Oh, that's good. So I don't have to be scared? Does it give kisses instead of stinging people?

CHILD rolls eyes.

CHILD: No. It doesn't give kisses. It pollinates flowers.

MOTHER: Oh.

CHILD: It just visited one flower, and now it's going to visit another flower. And now that flower will be pollinated. And then it grows other plants.

MOTHER: Right.

I'm Going to BlogHer

And I just wanted to mention that I would not have been able to go this year, for the first time ever, if some of my fellow MOMocrats hadn't chipped in toward my flight.

Thanks, friends. You surpass awesome.

While I'm at BlogHer, I'll be making predictions on behalf of Predictify.com which is a totally cool site you should really check out, and I'm not just saying that because they paid my registration fee. Really, it's fun. Look for me under username MOMocratJaelithe.

And also I'll be looking for potential speakers ans sponsors for Inter:PLAY STL on behalf of the St. Louis Bloggers Guild. And I'll be brunching with the Silicon Valley Moms. And possibly stalking some people. Probably mostly Bossy.

Those Parents

Those parents. You know the ones. The ones with the kid who is red-in-the-face screaming and thrashing and flat-out refusing to do what the adults around him are telling him to do. You think to yourself, that child is out of control— he is making a scene— he's upsetting the playgroup or disrupting the class or tormenting everyone in the store with a high-pitched keen— why don't those parents of his do something about it?

As a parent yourself, hey, you understand that every kid has a bad day now and again. But these parents, they don't seem to be disciplining the kid at all. In fact, instead of telling him in a stern voice that this behavior is unacceptable, they're cajoling him. They're pleading with him. Some of your fellow witnesses to this scene are rolling their eyes or shooting disapproving glares or maybe offering scornful, unsolicited advice.

They look weak and ridiculous, not at all in charge, those parents, and you conclude instantly that the reason this kid is acting out like this today is because his parents must not ever take a proper stand against this kind of behavior. And maybe you pat yourself on the back, just a little, because you know you're far from perfect, but, hey, at least you're pretty certain that you're better at this kid-raising gig than them. Those parents.

I know I've done it before. Felt a little smug.

But among the lucky consequences of being the mother of a child with a developmental disorder, I must count the fact that perspective whacks me in the face quite regularly.

You see, at Isaac's first swim class a few weeks ago, my husband and I looked a heck of a lot like Those Parents.

Our child, who is the darling of his music class teacher for his eagerness to share instruments with other children, and is beloved by the librarians at our local library for his ability to sit quietly during storytime. Our child who knows how to stay seated at restaurants, remembers to refrain from talking in a movie theater, and has never once broken a single item in a retail store.

That child?

Was the screaming-kicking-clawing-not-listening-trying-to-run-away-
to-Australia-child-who-must-be-possessed-by-demons at his first week of swim class.

And we were the pleading parents on the receiving end of other parents' dirty looks.

You see, children with sensory disorders don't always do well in enormous, cold, chlorine-scented pools surrounded by thirty strange kids who are squealing, laughing, kicking and splashing each other with water.

And child who is two years behind his age group in gross motor skills because of the balance issues caused by his sensory disorder can become very confused and disoriented when he suddenly feels like he weighs much less than he ordinarily does on land.

So Isaac was terrified of swim class.

It's very important to me that my son learn to swim. Knowing how to swim could save his life someday.

It's also very important to me to instill in him the belief that his sensory disorder should not hold him back from doing what other kids do. I often say to him, "If something is hard for you, that just means you have to work harder."

But as his mother, I feel his fear like a knife in my chest. It pains me to see him struggle so much harder at something that comes so easily for so many other children. And my heart aches all the more as I catch glimpses, here and there, of a dawning awareness on his part that he is different.

So on that first day of class, when he clawed his way up my chest like a cat in a bath when first I put him in the pool, I put him right back in. When he cried, I said, "I'm sorry, but you have to keep trying for a little while longer. You're staying in." When he got angry and screamed at me like I was trying to kill him cold blood, I stood firm.

He was out of control. He was making a scene. And both of his parents were sitting there at the edge of the pool, holding his hand. Coddling him. I could feel the disapproving glares of other parents, strangers, on my back. They were waiting for me to shout at him, put him in time-out— do something, anything, to quiet him. To put him in his place.

But damned if I was going to make him feel like he was doing something wrong when I knew he was trying harder than any other kid there.

----

Since the first few classes, he calmed down a lot. It helped that after the second class, his indifferent first teacher was replaced by a calm, gentle girl I'll call Lexi, obviously sent to us by some pitying Angel of Swimmers. All of sixteen years old and yet somehow as patient as a glacier. He still won't dunk his head under the water. All the other kids in his class are jumping off the diving board into the lifeguards' arms now, and he's still learning to blow bubbles.

But he smiles when he gets in the pool now. And that's a start.

Interview with Margaret Donnelly

Just wanted to give anyone who might be interested a heads up that I recently interviewed Margaret Donnelly, the first woman ever to run for Missouri Attorney General, over at MOMocrats. And today I also brought up the subject of politics over at The St. Louis Bloggers Guild.

(*Ducks*)

Local readers, I have a question for you: which Missouri (or Iowan, Kansan, Nebraskan, or Illinoisan) politician would you like me to stalk interview next?

(Local politicians who may be reading this, if you'd like me to interview you, please feel free to chime in. Except for you, Shamed Dogan. I don't interview people I went to high school with.)

(It's for the greater good that I don't. Really.)

Hoping in Circles

This makes me want to bang my head against a wall.

Kids who need help, kids like mine, kids like Karianna's, kids with OFFICIALLY DIAGNOSED medical issues that make it harder for them to learn in traditional schools, are falling through the cracks RIGHT NOW because of this kind of Byzantine bureaucratic nonsense. Educators who know kids will need help to succeed in the classroom are forced to turn children away knowing they need services, or lie about the kids' conditions to get them the help they need.

In the long run, refusing to provide early intervention to children who need it costs public schools— and taxpayers— more money than it would to provide services to every child with a serious motor skills, adaptive skills or social skills delay.

Because small children who have motor delays have trouble mastering skills like paper cutting, and writing. Small children who have adaptive delays have trouble unzipping their jackets, putting their things away in their lockers, or going to the bathroom by themselves. Small children who have social skills delays fail to understand directions, or get into arguments with other children and teachers. Small children facing these challenges who are not receiving any help in learning how to deal with such challenges can find a school environment baffling and frustrating.

And small children who find school baffling and frustrating because they are not getting any treatment for a disorder that is totally beyond their control often turn into pre-teens and teens who HATE school and skip it, or who test below grade level even though they have average or even above intelligence, or who behave disruptively and prevent other kids from learning. When a district refuses to pay for early intervention for a child who needs early intervention, a decade later that district often ends up paying for anti-truancy programs or tutoring programs or increased security at schools.

I seriously doubt Karianna's son Cat will wind up being a truant or a troublemaker. I doubt any such thing will happen with my own son, Isaac, either. Because both of these kids have mothers fighting tooth and nail to help them become successful learners by whatever means necessary, even if that help has to come from outside of the school system. But not every child has parents who have the time or resources to secure other services.

Health insurance companies often refuse to pay for occupational therapy, physical therapy, or psychiatric therapy for children with autism spectrum disorders or sensory integration problems, and if insurance companies do pay for these services, they often severely restrict the number of visits a child can have during a year.

Because of the reluctance of health insurance companies to pay for such services, many occupational therapists and physical therapists and development experts who specialize in working with children cannot find steady full-time employment anywhere EXCEPT within the public school system. So even if one has insurance that would pay for such services, it can be very difficult to find a qualified therapist with an opening.

I spent six months searching for a specialist who could treat Isaac. I spend hours each month hacking through red tape to get my insurance company to authorize and reauthorize and rereauthorize his treatment, and the only reason I don't spend DAYS each month doing this is because our family doctor goes out of his way to make a lot of the calls for me. And I consider myself lucky to be able to spend hours arguing with a balky insurance company, because families of kids with developmental disorders often find themselves much worse off.

I understand that public schools are nearly always strapped for cash and makng compromises. But investing in a little extra help early on for kids who need it is actually a proven way to economize in the long run.

So why aren't more schools doing it for more children?

First Fruits

Tomatoes, meet your new friend, Basil.



I gave one of these first two tomatoes to my next door neighbor. Who promptly ate it whole, in front of me.

Anticipation

Anticipation

Aspirations

Disappointment

(Alternate Title: Death to All Sunflower-Eating Rabbits. Except They Are So Fuzzy and Cute. Why Are Ruthless Engines of Destruction Fuzzy and Cute?)






Anticipation