The Solution

A cold beer.  That steady hum that only fingers on a keyboard can produce.  Crickets.  Shawn Colvin's "Polaroids".  Looking for the Solution....

*****

I just finished reading the newspaper, and that is definitely not the Solution.  It is really scary to think that of all the people running the show in this world, the two I right now associate with compassion are the new Pope (these days a Pope can sound compassionate simply by saying the Church should not go apeshit over gay marriage) and Ben Bernanke (an unelected Very Rich Man who is immensely disliked by other Very Rich People because he tries to look out, at least a little bit (but a shitload by Wall Street standards), for people who are not Very Rich People).

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It is even hard to think of the beginning of my day right now.  It was so long ago, lost between the twists and turns of Daddy Daycare, teaching fourth grade, and eighty mile per hour winds. 

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Education is a challenging profession right now, for me.  I should just be hitting my stride, only thirty-six, fresh off a two year leave of absence to study my passion, language (isn't it sad that language is my passion?).  I'm full of new knowledge and I love my students.  I love the town I teach in (it's a small town thing--I can't explain it here if you don't get it).  I love my coworkers.

And yet it seems as though the education system is looking for any positive areas and rip them open into the harsh light of our brave new world.  The advice I would give for a new teacher is not to work on methods or improving your knowledge base but to study up on data.  Data is the show, folks. It is the end all, be all of the education system right now.  Why? Because it's all the rage in business.  Business uses data to drive their decision making and since we are just training workers anyway, not citizens, we best be making the kids understand as well that they are being seen through the prism of the output they give us on tests.  And please don't be naïve and say that this is a once-a-year snapshot, not these days.  It is at least a once-a-month deal, and if the test is hard for you, we'll do it more to make sure we get more data from you.  And effective teaching now does not imply good management or the ability to inspire or solid planning or the ability to communicate on many different levels or your knowledge base or even experience or student or parental reviews. An effective teacher is she who can collect, record and process monumental levels of data.

And just to make sure the record records right, I've got nothing against data.  I'm a baseball fan, for Christ's sake.  We're the geekiest ones in the whole goddamn bunch.

*****

The body is such a funny thing.  I spent a little time today but far too much time yesterday worrying about a series of Facebook comment I received from a friend.  You see, a few years ago Sonia went on a trip with her mom and sister and I started this little series in which I essentially presented myself as a moving disaster of a parent, lost without Mommy around to run the show.  It was dumb but it helped pass the time and (some) others seemed to enjoy it.  So I just started doing it whenever Sonia left and never really thought of it as anything else than self-deprecation on a Facekookian scale.  So when my friend reproached me yesterday saying I was kind of being a drama queen and a woman couldn't get away with a "Mommy Daycare" series, I was a little shocked and then the questions began.  If you have anxiety or know someone who does, you know.  Is she right? Am I a drama queen? Am I a show-off? Am I narcissistic?  Am I doing a disservice to feminism? Why the fuck am I writing about how my kids are eating school lunch instead of taking a packed lunch from home?

Well, the point here is not to answer any of those questions.  I never figured out the answer, because I barely thought about it today.  For some reason, my body was totally programmed to worry yesterday, and today it was programmed to battle. I have done, to my knowledge, absolutely nothing different.  I even eat, as one of my coworkers has duly noticed, the exact same lunch every day. There is absolutely no reason that today should have been different from yesterday, or yesterday from today.  But it was.

I am in a perpetual battle, as my fellow anxiety people will recognize, to accept and be thankful for those times when I'm not racing through every option in my head.  Thinking is a great pleasure for me, but it's sometimes the absolute bane of my existence. Definitely, not the Solution.

*****

Most veteran teachers who are being sincere with you will tell you that prep time is not so valuable for academic reasons as it is for psychological ones.  This is not to say that I never get anything done during my prep.  On the contrary, I'm usually pretty busy. I'm making copies, planning, gathering resources, answering emails, etc.  But prep time is MY time.  I am in charge of what I do during that time and I'm not responsible for the kids for forty minutes and neither am I in some meeting that I may or may not find useful. In a profession where you give and give and give, this is a sanctuary. 

And, yes, prep time does occasionally slip into a period of unproductiveness.  So it was today, when a fellow teacher stopped by and we got to talking, and we talked about the last half of our prep period, but we both sort of needed it, you know, and these social bonds are so important to a good working environment. 

Was I a better teacher today because of my prep?  Well, if you've been reading at all, you'll know I wasn't, because I didn't do anything with data.  Still, I felt just that much closer to any Solution that might be out there....

*****

Tonight Orlando had soccer practice.  Yesterday Niko had practice and since I had a bunch of stuff to do and his practice was an hour and a half, I just left him while I did a bunch of other stuff I wanted to get done with Orlando in tow.  I had promised the same to Niko today (although what that boy thought he was missing with trips to Dollar General and Radio Shack, I'll never know) but upon arrival at the soccer fields tonight the clouds were ominous, sort of like a teachers' inservice without data (okay, I'll stop!!).  I told Niko we were gonna stay just in case it started storming.

And my did that storm come.  Niko had been disappointed but that passed in about two minutes and he was off playing Star Wars with a couple buddies and it was one of those prairie storms that you can just see coming in, you could see the lightning getting closer and it got darker and then the lightning was real close and the coach called it and the mom of the week was trying to get the snack out as quickly as possible and WHOOSH the wind just picked up like a mofo and it was raining.  I had sent Orlando to the car and was helping the coach get picked up and got all the cones and I was running to the car and Orlando wasn't in there yet, he was outside and crying, he could barely move because of the wind and I could taste gravel from the parking lot and I got Orlando inside the car and I thought Niko was in there already because I had seen a mother heading for the playground and thought she had gotten him and I screamed "Niko! Donde estas? Donde estas?" but you couldn't hear a fucking thing because the wind was so loud and then I heard more crying and he came out from behind another car, another parent was watching him because he hadn't seen me helping the coach and he ran to me and I got him in the car and closed the door and ran around and got in the driver's seat. And they were both crying, they'd never seen or felt anything like it and I just said, "Todo esta bien, todo esta bien" and eventually they calmed down enough to get their seat belts on and we drove home in the rain, wind and lightning.

*****

I honestly do not know if I'm a good parent or not.  And oddly enough, with all my anxiety, it does not seem to bother me very much.  A stupid Facebook thing--that, I'll worry about.  But I made my peace with God a long time ago that with this whole parenting thing, I'm just doing what I can, and the rest is in His/Her/Its/Their hands.

*****

I know I'm speaking from a place of privilege when I say the storm this afternoon was a big deal for my kids, what with them being seven and five.  But nonetheless, it was, and I promised them on the way home that we'd eat some popcorn and watch some TV and just recover.  I'm letting them sleep in my bed tonight and I even laid down with them while they fell asleep.  And as their breathing slowed but my mind jumped to the blog post I wanted to write, I prayed, not for the last time, to be able to recognize when God presented to me, in all its many parts, the Solution....

Praying for Syria

They seem to think it's simple.

Or maybe it's me.  I spent the day attending soccer games, watching college football, feeding my kids, laying on the couch.  Even got into a discussion about how anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medicine should best be used.

But it's simple.  Bomb Syria or feed Syria.  Love Syria or hate Syria.  Love Obama or hate Obama. Right?

These things, they're out of my hands.  I cannot do anything.  I simply pray. 

You may say that praying is the act of the desperate, those who have no other recourse.

You may say that praying is useless, that it is a sign of weakness.

You may say that praying is a sign of strength, the ultimate recognizance that as humans, we accomplish nothing.

I'd do more if I could, but I can't. I pray because I can.

Besos, Mark

My Last Two Wasted Nights

My last two nights have been pretty much wasted.  Then again, they were kind of the best nights of my life.  You see, Niko started soccer practice last night. 5:30-7:00.  And Orlando started tonight, from 6:00 to 7:00.  As a man, I naturally saw this situation and thought "Okay, I'll take one night, and Sonia will take the other." My wife, on the other hand, saw this situation and naturally said, "Why don't we both go to both practices, since they're the first ones of the season?"

That wasn't gonna happen.

***** 

Sonia decided that, whatever the case, she wanted to see each boy's first practice.  I quickly switched to offense on Wednesday and asked Orlando, "Hey buddy, do you want to go watch Niko practice on the hot field, or stay at home in the cool air?" Remarkably (if you know Orlando you'll understand why it's remarkable) he said, "Well, it's kind of hot, so I'll stay home." Done deal! We all got home and I got Niko his pregame meal--bread and butter, grapes, a glass of milk.  I got started on some laundry and listened to NPR and ignored Orlando's repeated attempts to watch NetFFFFLLLLix.  Sonia got home around 5:20 and rushed out with Niko to the soccer fields.

I made Orlando a quesadilla and read the newspaper and switched around laundry while he ate.  He finished eating and asked again to watch NetFFFFLLLix.  I said, "Maybe in a while."  Then a funny thing happened.  I was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper and he was playing with his toy cars and I just rolled off and into him, just on a whim.  He said "Papi!" but then I sort of pushed him and we started laughing.  Then I pretended I was going to eat his belly and he squealed and tried to escape and said "What are we playing, Papi?"

I almost stopped then.  That kind of made me sad.  My five year old son was so surprised I was playing he couldn't just roll with it, he needed to know what it was.  But I just said "We're just playing, bud. I'm gonna eat your belly" and he squealed and escaped.  He picked up a rubber sword somebody gave to him at some point and came at me with it.  We sort of invented this game where I could block the sword with my hands or my feet, but if he got me anywhere else it hurt me.  He killed me several times but was always ready to revive me with a kiss (I told him they had to do it like they do in "Snow White").  At one point I died maybe the sixth or seventh or eighth time and he was wheezing and I said "Are we done?" and he said "One more time, Papi, One more time."

*****

No such subtleties were required tonight.  Once again I picked up the boys from school and I asked Niko what he was going to do during Orlando's practice.  "Orlando got to stay home with Papi last night," he said.  "I'm going to tonight."

The same routine.  Pasta and hot dogs for Orlando, Niko worked on his homework.  Sonia got home and ran off with Orlando.  I finished laundry last night (I use the word "finished" quite loosely, probably as only a man can) so I made a salad for Sonia and I and then when Niko finished his homework I took a picture of it and got him his supper.  It's amazing the difference, two years and a whole different personality.  Niko and I watched Seinfeld and he laughed almost as hard as I did and continually asked about the characters ("Does George has a drivers' license?" "Why are they driving to another airport?" (Bonus points if you know which episode we watched!)). 

But deep down in that seven year old heart, that boy had but one desire, voiced with the same passion that Orlando has for NetFFFFLLLix: he wanted to play his old man in NCAA Football on the PS3.  I hemmed and hawed but he finally had me cornered. Niko always plays as Alabama. (See, once he was just KILLING his brother in football, so I had Orlando be Alabama and Niko be New Mexico State.  It's sort of like Brazil playing Qatar in soccer).  I took Auburn--nothing like a good rivalry, right?  When Sonia got home with Orlando, we were going into the fourth quarter, just four points separating us, and Orlando, much to his mother's chagrin, rejected being read a book and chose to watch the game, to the point where we actually had to pause the game when he went to the restroom.

Auburn came out on top, 26-24.  And I'll be damned, that Niko is growing up.  Not one tear.  A good sportsmanlike handshake, and off to bed they went.  He's growing up, that little bastard.

*****

Just before Orlando laid down in his bed, he asked me, "Papi, when are we gonna play that game again?"  And I said, "What game?"  And he said, "You know, that one where I have the sword and you can block it with your hands and feet and when you die, I give you a kiss and we keep fighting."  And I said, "Another day.  I promise, buddy, another day."

May God help me keep my promises.

Besos, Mark