Nostalgia

Yesterday, the Matron went to the dentist -- and much to everyone's surprise, had an emergency toothectomy (yes she totally made up that word).  One of those molars was practically fermenting!    The ordeal was just that -- an ordeal, but thankfully at the hands of a kind and competent (and funny) dentist.

While tripping on all kinds of pain medication with her mouth wide open, the Matron flashed back to the past -- to an episode that she had truly entirely forgotten.

Freud has a different name for this.

See these children?  This is Stryker on his first day of second grade, successfully marring Scarlett's kindergarten debut.  Note how the daughter desired her hair all pulled up pretty, tidy little navy school uniform for a public school that doesn't require uniforms.   But that look in her eyes?  That is anger.   See that grin on her brother's face?  Joy.   Joy radiating from the suction cup stain on the middle of his forehead.

 He thought it would be fun to tell his new teacher that his parents hit him.  He also thought it entertaining if all  the pictures from this day forward, marking his sister's educational DEBUT were notable largely for his own disfigurement.

And they are.

Setting the stage for a child with PERSONALITY and WILL.  Which brings us back to the dentist and an event for which the Matron has no documentation other than her own previously repressed memories.

Stryker was maybe three and a half when he went for his first official visit to the dentist.  He had a swollen gum, a painful little tooth.  Unfortunately, this child could smell deception.  

He knew the dentist was going to kill him.

 At least that's what the Matron must tell herself to justify what happened when they stepped into the office door.  Friends -- that formerly adorable, precocious, chatty, obedient child CLUNG to the chair in the waiting room.  He flailed and screamed, pulled at furniture and drapes, lunged at desks, and howled as his mother, dental assistant AND DENTIST HIMSELF as the three adults pleaded with that child to step on into the next room.   The Matron took a few swats at him, trying to reel him in.  He was a good dodger.

 The dentist, assistant and the Matron circled around Stryker for hard-core hostage negotiations.  The dentist promised Stryker could turn on the drill.  Why, even drill a tiny bit into his very own hand!   Candy was produced by the Matron and nobody objected.  The assistant showed Stryker pictures of her own children in that chair.  She basically dissembled the examining room, bringing in item by item for Stryker to inspect.

"See, honey?  That's all this little mirror is!"

He remained wrapped around a chair leg, screaming and kicking at anyone who came near him.  He actually snarled.

The waiting room cleared out.  The Matron isn't sure if those other patrons were just hanging around to watch the show, post-appointment, or if the torture was getting to them too.

After ONE HOUR of pleading and promising, and threatening?   Beaten --and quite possibly committed to winning the battle -- they resorted to physical force.  Remember, Stryker had an actual bona fide physical problem!   The Matron now feared an infection was spreading to his brain.

The dentist and the Matron dragged a screaming, biting, kicking, sweating, sobbing Stryker into the exam room.

There!  

Child secured!  In chair, held down by his mother!

But the prisoner escapes!!   With one epic whirl of chaos and destruction, he pushes his mother aside, sweeps instruments off the tray, kicks the dentist, hits the chair and runs screaming and sobbing down the hallway, white bib bobbing from his side until he hit the bathroom and (so smart!) dashed in and locked hte door with three adults hot on his three year-old tail.

Here is the Matron, standing outside the locked door with the dentist and dental assistant.  They are sweating.  The Matron stopped trying not to cry and is now sniffling loudly.

Dentist:  "I'm retiring in two weeks, you know."

Matron:  "Really?  I'm sure after this you're ready."   Weak, but she was trying.

The dentist looked off into the distance, suddenly seeing a vision - far off and dreamy, a world the Matron could not see.  Things looked good there.  He smiled and pulled off his gloves:  "Actually, Mary, I've been a dentist for 35 years."

She waited, expectantly.  This was going to get her son out of the bathroom?

Dentist:  "And in all of those 35 years, I've seen a lot.  Some pretty bad stuff -- and good, of course -- but some really ugly moments.  You know what?  This is the worst.   Your son is the worst patient I have ever encountered.  It's almost unthinkable, how bad he is--as a patient, I mean, not a human being.  This is a little like a circle of Hell, you know?  That's what this is, this child and appointment.  Hell."

Friends -- here's where you think the Matron might be insulted? Shocked?  Surprised at the breach of professional decorum?  

But here was a man 10 days away from retiring in a private practice he owned.  A wise man, rich with experience.  He was telling it like it was.

Circle of Hell.  Even the Matron couldn't have said it better.

Matron:  "I know.  I'm sorry.   But it makes a nice ending to a storied career?"

Dentist:  "I'm going home now.  Shut the door on your way out."

And he smiled, put down his gloves and walked out the door.

Read All About It

Today, the Matron had the good fortune to encounter a friend she hadn't seen in a while.  Like most of her unexpected encounters, this one happened in the grocery store -- right by broccoli.  Sometimes the veggies vary but the goodwill?  Never.

Matron:   "Anything new and exciting happening in your life?"

Friend:  "Your blog is completely disappointing, as of late.  Absolutely no idea what's going on in your life.  Like hard facts.  Details.  You know -- that blog thing?"

Yes, she knows.

Friend:  "Readers need an update.  Like a news flash . . . or I might have to start calling you to find out what's happening."

This gave the Matron pause.  Call her?  As in, on the telephone?  Concern started its slow creep across her nearly unlined (ha)  forehead..  What if people -- people she would recognize on the street --- started calling to ask her 'what's up?'

Genuine human interaction makes the Matron nervous.  She swears she's a premature birth.  Her spirit was supposed to arrive around 2072 when telepathy replaces talking.

 To that end, the Matron is keeping her neighbors at bay with   . . . . an update of actual bona fide nearly-verifiable and almost reliable facts!

1.  Merrick recently discovered the highly disturbing and unanticipated fact that he is attending Summer Academy, which is exactly what it sounds like:  summer school.  Except it's at a ritzy private school and the parents are forking out big bucks for four weeks of work that they hope will rectify this type of nonlinear computing:

That, friends, is Merrick's approach to 'listing' numbers 54 through 59.   This topsy turvy approach defines all of his academic endeavors.   The Matron wants a littleless topsy and a little more trim and tuck.

 Merrick is also hobbling about on crutches after being sent to school for three days with a 'buck up boy' from his mother.  You know you're guilty of that one?  Please say it's so!  Yours truly took her first good hard look at the leg after Merrick wondered:  "is it okay to crawl at school, Mom?"   Imagine her shock at seeing the swollen, red, bruised log where his lovely ankle bone used to be.  Live and learn.  Next time she'll get Scarlett right on that.

2.  He Who Cannot Be Named (HWCBN) and the Matron recently had at it over the appropriate use and definition of the word 'hegemony.'   Dictionaries were consulted, politics called out.  Tempers flared.    All the while, the Matron's entire interior universe was singing 'my 16 year old son and I are arguing about HEGEMONY.'   Who needs drugs when you can engage in parental combat over ideas?!  And even understand them.   Actually, HWCBN turns 16 in a few short weeks, when he will join the other infants trying to kill her from behind their steering wheels.  Perhaps this is really Darwinism at its best.  On other eldest fronts, the young man is fifth in his graduating class academically; the top three are tied, which in his mother's eyes makes him third.  She should really get on with updating the principal about this mathematical error.  This honor -- second year in a row -- means various school festivities and awards, certificates and all such things occupying the Matronly time.   Beats juvenile detention, though.   Finally, the son is headed to Kentucky then Chicago this summer, where he will spend seven glorious weeks hundreds of miles away from his parents for seven weeks at a two-state debate institute.

Here is the schedule that the Matron encountered when she signed the permission forms (and wrote the check):

8:30:  Breakfast
9:00:  Library
12:00:  Lunch and free time
1:30:  Library
5:00:   Free time
6:00:   Dinner
7:00:    Library or Lab

Again, hear the universe sing:  an offspring of hers is choosing to spend six hours a day in the library all summer.   He also was awarded a national merit-based scholarship AND plays baseball and has his own small computer business.

Pause for a moment and consider:  "this woman is just bragging about her child."

Why yes she is!   This is her job as his mother.

 3.  These are not Scarlett's vocal cords but they do the trick.

Those little bumps, right above the v at the bottom?  Nodules.  Scarlett has been in a play, movie or commercial continuously since she was just 8 years old.  In retrospect, the Matron can trace the moment the vocal cord problems began, during a particularly spectacularly busy run as first Ramona Quimby and then Annie.   Wonderful roles, all, but nobody told this stage mother that the voice needed a rest.  The Matron is a big believer in rest, but her parenting book defined that as copious days off from school, nothing more.

Under strict doctor's orders -- really, a world-class voice specialist, thank goodness -- Scarlett has been cut from the stage until September.   In the interim, she is allowed to speak only in her new healing 'airy' voice, visits the physician for rehabilitation and generally tries to keep talking to a minimum.

And the daughter?  Much to the Matron's oceanic relief, she is happy.  Happy because now she knows that the problem isn't her singing voice stripped away, but a wound that needs to heal.  She is already plotting her glorious return to the stage when she starts HIGH SCHOOL (sob, sob, sob!!) at the St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists in September.

That's right - it's like all Glee all the time.  Fame.  Rent without drugs (mostly -- but that's another blog post).

The Matron sees these teenagers roaming around downtown St. Paul, where their campus is.  Classes require dance studios, orchestra pits and stages so the students roam from artistic venue to artistic venue for 'class.'  They lunch at coffee shops and hang out in the park.

Guess who cannot wait for this much freedom.

4.  The Matron herself?   Continuing her reign as Online Teaching Goddess, she is teaching literature and Gender Studies at her computer over the summer.   By fall, her very own individual professional "Writer" web site should be up and running, thanks to some astounding generosity of spirit on the part of another overly busy mama.    Mostly, though, she continues to use the word 'contemplative' to describe her life situation.  Her friend and neighbor is still on the long pull toward death.  Every morning, the Matron wakes up and her second or third thought is:  "what nice thing can I do for xx today?"  And she does it.   But the life that is fading is one of the brightest, most beautiful the Matron has ever encountered.  An artist's life -- the kind of woman who would see the perfect photo -- a hawk devouring the captured squirrel, the monk on a street corner, a child caught just so -- and abandon her schedule to fulfill the purpose of a single photo.  She was-- is -- that exact same way about people, too.  What the Matron loves most about dear friend is that she immediately skipped over small talk to the heart of the matter --and was always led by her own.   In the face of suffering and injustice, the Matron has taken to a serious meditation practice.  It helps.

5.  John turns 50 tomorrow, Saturday May 19th.    Mostly he wants someone to compliment him on his unparalleled talents with a vacuum, and his youthful hot appearance.  The Matron will assert that the latter is, without question, true.

In this Sort of Mood

The Five-Day Rain
by Denise Levertov

The washing hanging from the lemon tree
in the rain
and the grass long and coarse.

Sequence broken, tension
of sunlight broken.
So light a rain

fine shreds
pending above the rigid leaves.

Wear scarlet! Tear the green lemons 
off the tree! I don't want
to forget who I am, what has burned in me
and hang limp and clean, an empty dress ---


The Matron so loves the images, the suspension, the lust for lemons so urgent that one must reach while they are still green, not ready. No waiting! 

Here's the day we've been given. Blaze and shine.

Actual Student

The Matron has been in full-throttle engagement with Actual Students, of all sort.  Beware:  she of seamless prose and and pithy-punch lines has none tonight.  This blog post is largely a flare in the night to readers: "over here, over here!"   Still here.

So . . . for those unschooled in the ways of, well, schooling, here's a snapshot of the Community College Finals Week Experience.

• It's okay to watch the TV show.  Pretty much sums it up.

• Student who wrote 2000 word rough draft of final paper emails to say she's been 'sick' so final version isn't 'best work.'  She turns in a 309 word 'paper' (assignment calls for 2600).   The Matron wonders what happened to the rest of that text?  Dog ate the keyboard?

• Four days after final papers are due, email appears from wayward student who has turned in only 1/4 of assigned word throughout the entire semester:  "Hey Mary am i missing some stuff or what?  lets meet up to fgure it out."  This is not the Matron's spelling of 'figure.' 

• Student in online course explains her paper is not in because she just had a baby, then her apartment was robbed and all baby items and college textbooks -- stolen!   Hmmmm . . . sniffs the Matron.  Too far-fetched not to be true.  So she excuses the new mama (she thinks).  Guess who the Matron just happens to see on the local news that night?  You guessed it.  Poor victimized new -mama student pointing to the spot where her MISSING COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS used to be!  

• God-Buddha-Allah-Oprah-Universe help her.   She read a 10 page paper ON male circumsicion.  That's right.  Circumsicion instead of circumcision -- for 10 agonizing pages:  circumsize, circumsized, circumsicion.  The entire paper topic spelled wrong.   Remember that whole thing about something too far-fetched NOT to be true?  Yup.

• For readers not already immersed in techno-education lingo?  There are online classes and not online classes.  The latter are:  seated courses, on-the-ground courses, on-campus courses, traditional courses.  Nobody can seem to decide on Official Name.  So the Matron is now calling these her "real life classes."  

• Student sends in long email asking for extension because her grandfather dies.  Kind Matron!  Matron asks only for a copy of the obituary and then, groovy, excuses ahoy.  Student admits that her grandfather did NOT die and there is no obituary.  Her boyfriend's grandfather died and she can send that one.  Matron (God bless her) says okay.  Student admits that boyfriend's grandfather didn't die but boyfriend's FRIEND's grandfather died and they were helping with the funeral -- a lot. 

• Matron is asked to do independent study of sorts affording student academic credit for life experience, a task for which she will be compensated.  She finds out that dollar amount for her valuable hours of personalized assessment and instruction:  $75.  Total.

• When not grading papers these past few days, the Matron takes small breaks by reading about employment opportunities outside of education.  See previous entry.

• Student turns in paper in which not one single line is not plagiarized from the most obvious sources possible, a feat affirmed by the nifty anti-plagiarism software the Matron informs all of her students that she is USING.   When confronted, student replies that she forgot about that software and there, is her mistake.  

That pretty much sums up Tuesday.

Tech Week

Ah, tech week.

Now, the Matron has never before experienced the dreaded all-intensive tech week herself.  She has lived it only through her daughter, who has pretty much lived onstage since she was seven.

In fact, yours truly is an accidental tech week participant.  She began in a very round-about way by volunteering to READ with third-graders in Merrick's Montessori classroom.  See Merrick, above, as definition of Absolute Perfection.

Those little gung-ho readers--squiggly and animated --  soon proclaimed themselves beyond The Junior Great Books.  Why, they could write a better story!  Why!  They could write a play!   Imagination unleashed they envisioned a wicked witch, active volcano, magic golden stone, and talking animals.  

What could the Matron do but turn those tales into a play?  She wrote a script, assigned roles, secured costumes and parental consent.  Publicist, producer, director, playwright, she secured space with the school and won the principal's approval.

This Wednesday, In The Land of Between makes its world premier.  Parents are coming.  Video cameras will be out.  Cookies are made.  The kindergarten classes will stream into the school atrium and settle in.

The Matron, whose original volunteer responsibilities originated as 45 minutes a WEEK will be up to her slender elbows in talking animals and an active volcano (she's not even going to tell you how she made that trick!) for HOURS this week until the grand event.

However, the play has led Matron to a new great love of her life. In addition to her very own Elmer the Talking Mouse (Merrick!), there's the Narrator.  Narrator is the teeniest, tiniest third-grade girl ever, a wisp with wire-rim glasses and scraggly shoulder length hair.  

Narrator knows every line in the play.  Narrator knows where every scrap of paper should land and she'll tell you.  But sweetly, for Narrator is NOT a tyrant but quite simply a 45 year old organized woman waiting to be emerge.  Why, Narrator could be (but is not) the Matron.  Narrator chews on her pencil and watches the entire play with concern and sympathy.  She fusses over other children's costumes, vacuums when the set is cleaned up and produced programs she typed herself at home.

Narrator is "just more comfortable with a clipboard."   Her own words.

Narrator to Matron:  "Mary this production is a disaster.  Could you bring papaya lozenges next time?  I'm getting a nervous stomach."

Narrator to Matron:  "Mary, did you notice that you forgot a comma on page 3 and 8?  There are also four typos, labelled for correction, and a sentence fragment on page 6.  Did you ever take typing classes?"

Narrator to Matron:  "Mary this play is a metaphor, right?  About moving onto another phase in life and maybe even death -- like the Old Man?"

Oh how the Matron loves Narrator.  Her little right hand man!  

Narrator will grow up someday and never ever attend the Matron's college.  No.  She will be at Harvard or MIT majoring in poetry and neuroscience.

Elmer the Talking Mouse, on the other hand, will be lucky to find his way out of a field.   His most frequently uttered line is "OH THAT'S RIGHT" and it is not even in the script.  It is what he says that -- with a look of delighted stupor on his face--when Narrator reminds him of:  what he's supposed to do, where he is supposed to stand, what he should say and where his mouse tail is.

Matron to Narrator, fondly:  "Maybe somebody made a mistake at the hospital.   Have you ever heard about the 'babies switched at birth' problem?  It's real, you know."

Narrator taking in Elmer who is trying to climb the volcano with a rubber chicken in his hand.  "But he's SUPER CUTE, Mary."

Yes, two smart cookies, felled by one hapless, adorable someday-man.

Wish her luck!   Especially with the volcano which shoots rubber chickens and wrapped gum.

What Women Want

Ah, Sigmund.

That man has a long shadow; the question now haunts politicians.  It appears that Democrats and Republicans are battling for the all-important female vote.  Of course, like women weren't important before but  . . .

The Matron is enjoying this show, all these men declaring their political and personal devotion to the women--particularly the mothers-- of America, and strutting out their own women folk as evidence.   The Matron particularly loved when Ann Romney forgot to take the silver spoon out of her mouth before mentioning her lean years of living off stock.  It's okay, Ann.  Everyone talks with their mouth full from time to time.

Of course there's all the hoopla about working mothers.  All human beings who have a brain and a mother already know that all mothers work.  Some just have two or three jobs, and one pays currency that can be banked and exchanged; the other pays currency that fuels the 3 am feedings or the grim visit to a principal's office or  . . . well, the very minute you may be reading this.

It occurs to the Matron to ask, as she often does:  "how did this question come to be?"  Why is the conversation regarding women framed in terms of who works more?  Which woman is more valuable, which suffers the most, which do we worship, which has cultural freight.  

Really.  Is this the debate that women would have started?   No, the Matron thinks that women, were we to be framing the cultural conversation about women (because we're not), we wouldn't be asking somewhat pointless, unanswerable questions but making demands.

What do women want?

A world in which no woman aspires to be a human Barbie and if she did, she wouldn't be such a super big hit.

Equity in public restrooms.  Can't some architect or city planner or whatever just add a few toilets?  Is that really so difficult?

Less rape.  Wait -- we're dreaming!  NO RAPE.

A world in which this would be met with global outrage.  Instead, nobody's paying attention.

To not continue, in every culture and country of the world, to shoulder a significantly larger portion of household responsibilities related to children, cleaning, cooking, shopping, laundry.  Every culture and country.   Regardless of other employment status.

Reproductive responsibilities--from birth control to child care --  to be equally shared between men and women, and the understanding that 'reproduction' is not only a female function.

Widespread celebration of hair, wherever it grows.

 The word 'strident' removed from the English language.

The phrase 'those extra ten pounds' to follow 'strident' into history's dim corners.  Let's add the ability to self-assess how one's ass looks without actually looking at said behind . . . or another woman's.

How about a world in which our daughters marvel at the incomprehensible idea that women once died from illegal abortions, couldn't vote, were paid less for the same work as men, and understood sexual harassment to be-- in some form subtle or not -- simply part of the terrain.  


Wait.

A problem arises as the Matron types.  She realizes that this is a futile endeavor.  You see, she always writes for the nice swift ending -- a snazzy line or a soft spot, just to really bring it all home for the reader.  

But this list -- what women want?  No pithy ending in sight.

From the Mouths of Men

Regular readers know that the Matron suffers from a serious psychological 'condition':  Incurable Clutter Brain Suck.   She of this delicate condition resides in a house with a MAN, a teenage MAN-in-the-making, a teenage girl, a nine-year old boy, two dogs and a hamster.   These creatures do not share her affliction.  Indeed, they aggravate it.

Can she ask:  who do you think, during those exhausting years of early childhood when children outgrew clothes every ten seconds, sorted and cleaned and organized every drawer?  Who has spent hours gutting bedrooms once or a twice a year, switching out toys broken or discarded, the  chewed up shoes, the outgrown clothing, digging under beds, in each drawer crevice, shaking out rugs and overhauling closets, washing walls and swiping windows, scraping the gum and scouring the stale food found in the far corners?  Dusted and stacked the music, the books, the shoes, the sports gear, clothing, school supplies and holiday decor?

Got the picture?

Last weekend, when He Who Cannot Be Named (HWCBN) vacated his bedroom for a weekend away, John decided to clean it!  This made the Matron happy.  Very.

Matron:  "Great!"

John:  "No -- I mean really CLEAN the room.  While he's gone.  Like sort all the drawers, organize stuff, wash the walls, vacuum under the bed."

He went on at some length, explaining 'cleaning' to the Matron.  Then looked at her expectantly.

Matron:  "Great!"

That man spent two days up to his adorable elbows in HWCBN's muck -- a cesspool that, outside the rudimentary teenage swipe, had not been tidied, dusted or otherwise cleaned in over a year.  He sorted clothing, washed windows, stacked and dusted CDs.  He went through every single inch of that bedroom.  It was beautiful.

Accompanied by . . . .

"Wow.  Can you believe how dirty this?  Come here -- look at this layer of dust!"
"Mary, this is the dirtiest room the house has ever had."
"Oh my God.   Did you know he had a glass of milk on that dresser?  How long?"
"I think the plant can't be saved."
"But really, this is the worst room anyone has ever cleaned."
"No -- just look.  Nothing has ever been this bad."
"Oh my GOD.  There are spiders!"
"No really -- this is the worst it's ever been.  Nobody has ever cleaned a room this bad."

In the three weeks leading up to this edifying discourse, the Matron had gutted the basement laundry room, cleaned and organized three large closets (including washing walls), and by herself moved semi-permanent radiator fixtures in order to effectively vacuum and mop behind radiators in the three rooms she cleaned from head to toe -- on top of the regular stuff.

Matron:  " I wouldn't say the WORST.  No, I definitely wouldn't say it was the WORST I've ever seen.  Bad, yes.  But not the worst."

And so the games began.

Now, the Matron knew what her husband -- beloved, even -- wanted to hear:  yes, YOU are cleaning the worst room ever in the history of this house and probably the history of Humanity and this should totally get two million views on youtube.

She could not say it.

But she did nod and smile for the next 48 hours as John provided evidence and verbal documentation of his every move:  each speck of dust, that little corner, the pile of discarded clothes.

John:  "Look at this!  Can you believe it?  This is the worst .  I mean, can't you see that this is the worst room ever?"

The Matron smiled and nodded until, not long before the Humanity's Worst Room was restored, she found herself on her belly, mopping underneath a bed.  She was just finishing dusting, sweeping and mopping the three bedrooms, bathroom and hallway on the second floor.   All done without explanatory narrative.

Mopping under the bed was messy!  The Matron sneezed just as John was walking by.  Probably looking for his Super Hero Cleaning Cape.

John:  "Bless you!"

Matron:  "It's so dusty under here.  Just what my dust mite allergy needs."

And that man paused on the gleaming freshly washed wooden floors, espresso in hand, to gaze upon his wife on her belly mopping under the bed and said, as God-Buddha-Allah-Oprah-Universe is her witness:

"You're lucky that you didn't have to do Stryker's room."

Lucky.

The Matron found herself uncharacteristically speechless.   Lucky was not the first word that came to her mind later.

But -- the worst room in the history of households is now in order.  That Super Hero Cleaning Cape?  Clogging certain airways.