Welcome to America. Would you like trains for dinner?

It occurred to me the other day that Sam is possibly, God willing, going to make it through high school without asking if we can host an exchange student. It’s not that I don’t love the idea. I love the idea very much if other people have it.

Courtney asked if we could host an exchange student somewhere in the first half of her high school career. She framed her argument well, and had I been a person who cared what everybody else did, or craved a vicarious cultural experience, I would have been sold right away. But it was her suggestion that it would really help her early French skills to be communicating with our student non-stop for two weeks that made me say “Okay, let’s do it."

Like anyone, I like to believe that if I care enough, am determined enough, put my whole heart into something – aerobics, preparing fish, what have you – I will succeed. I’ve been proven wrong twice: I look like I am running from bees in an aerobics class. When I have finished preparing fish, it looks exactly like it did under the sickly lights at Hannaford. Much as I tried to retain more in college, my foreign language skills end with “Where is the library” in Italian and Spanish, and “How did you sleep last night?” in German. I worried about the language barrier but shrugged it off, and we wound up with Audrey, whose English was not nearly as good as my French.

We got the room ready. We got Audrey’s profile information. I bought a French-English dictionary. I contacted the circle of parents who did this all the time and asked for advice. We picked up Audrey and I gave her a big welcome-to-America hug.

On the way home, I apologized to Audrey for the very bumpy condition of the road.
“Ehhh?” she said.
“Tell her what I said, Courtney.”
“About what?”
“About the bumpy road.”
She said a few things I didn't understand, and gestured.
Audrey shook her head and said several things in Fren-glish.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“I’m not really sure,” Courtney said. She smiled encouragingly at Audrey who smiled back and probably wondered if it was too late to go back to France.

Later that night, Courtney was asked to work extra shifts at the GAP for the next several days. "Go," I said, "We'll do this." 

It's not like it was Aerobics.

I took Audrey food shopping the next day. French-English dictionary in hand I brought her to the meat department where I asked if she would like some of “these potatoes?” She pointed to the correct word in the dictionary and I said, with much gesturing, page turning, and many hopeful facial expressions, "Take whatever you want and put it in the cart,"  which she did.

Thankfully, exchange students have an agenda which I learned to understand, and Audrey was soon among other exchange students, touring the sights, eating the food, learning the language, and gossiping about the host-parents which is probably when Audrey said in French, “Yeah, but I’ll bet your host mother knows the word for steak.”

But this was not aerobics or fish-grilling. Dictionary at the ready, I asked and learned about Audrey’s family, her boyfriend, her upbringing, her hometown and what she wanted to do when she graduated. Courtney was eventually released from the GAP in time to have a conversation with Audrey before she went back to France. When she did leave, she was not relieved but sad. And, okay, we were too. A little.

I have new appreciation for people who bring in exchange students over and over again, and make it a worthwhile experience for the entire family each time. If I were asked, I’d probably allow myself to be talked into it the way I’ll probably give halibut-wrapped-in-foil another shot on the grill. But the senior year is already here and I haven’t heard a peep from Sam. I’m hoping it stays that way, as much as I hope Audrey finally became a veterinarian or vegetarian or valedictorian the way she wanted to.

The last SAT

I do not heart the SAT. It’s making me fight with myself and before it’s over, it will make Sam think bad words about me, even if those words are five years long.

It’s not because I’m tired of nagging Sam to do his SAT homework when he’d rather be at Frankie’s house. It’s not because it’s college application time in general, which is all about timelines and checklists. It’s not because we’re all getting nervous about what hinges on those three little categories: Math, Critical Reading and Writing.

I do not heart the SAT because for all its aim to gauge academic aptitude, it is a test of test-taking, with the power to rule out promising candidates even as it nets the highly qualified. 

Sam’s personal readiness to leave home has been his work in progress for seventeen years and his academic potential has been demonstrated. In five very short years, he'll be up there at the top of College Mountain with a little flag that says  "Thanks Mom and Dad" like his siblings were.  But on October 1, when he takes the last available SAT before the application deadline, he will be like every other bleary-eyed teenager sitting in a big room for four hours, tired, anxious, eventually hungry, pencil hovering over his choices, knowing what's at stake while he tries to recall if he loses or doesn’t lose points for blanks, and what to do if he runs out of time.  There's your test.

Most colleges – the ones who require high six or seven hundreds to begin with – claim to factor in, but not rely too heavily on SAT scores, though I imagine the pile of marginal candidates awaiting a “closer look” is pretty impressive. And many smart, qualified teenagers score well on the SAT, go to wonderful colleges, and become productive human beings. I raised three of them. But an ambitious quest has evolved among parents of college-bound teenagers to “crack the SAT code.” On coffee tables and kitchen counters throughout the land sits the three-inch Princeton Review which boasts from the cover: practice questions and explanations in every chapter!

I was never the parent who believed in prepping for the test, other than to make our kids take it a couple of times. Now I am the parent who has hired a tutor, is making her teenager use words like “Perspicacious” in a sentence, and is asking “have you signed up for word-of-the-day yet?” I am the parent I used to judge in not very understanding terms for their vicarious, or, that which is experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another, ambition. So, now, on top of everything else, my personal integrity will not take calls from my parental motives, even though they used to talk all the time and wear each other’s clothes.

Oh, if we could have type-appropriate versions of the SAT– aligned with the “person” category into which the test taker fits. Maybe name the SAT after famous humanitarians and billionaire philanthropists the way burgers are named after famous actors in diners: The Bill Gates SAT, the Warren Buffett ACT. For the ones who don’t have memories like vaults, but possess savvy and personality that are in the high seven hundreds, we could have the Ferris Bueller SAT.

Will he crack the code? Sure, he will. But I can’t shake the cognitive dissonance, or, an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously when I realize how I view, yet have bought into, the process of SAT prep.

So I do not heart the SAT, and I will be happy to see October 1 come and go. I will no longer start every sentence with “did you get a chance to,” and I will sit my personal integrity down in the same room as my parental motives, tell them to use their “I” statements and remember, during conflict, how they felt about each other when they first met.

Peace of mind on demand

Oh, when all I worried about was making sure my children had nice friends, good grades, great health, solid self-esteem and regular dental appointments.

Done, done, done, done and done.

It strikes me that as parents of (young) adult children, our worry doesn’t cease, but only takes new forms between 1:50 and 3:05 a.m.

What if this one or that one doesn’t get the job he/she really wants? What if that one over there doesn’t get into the college he’s fallen in love with? What if the one with everything going her way gets mugged walking to the T? What if, what if, what if. Worry is worse than a bad song that lodges itself in your head, like “You’re the Inspiration” by Chicago.

So I call Jane about some of these. I call Christine about others. I talk to my mother about most of them. In few cases do I talk to my children directly. And why? Because for so long we absorbed their worries like giant parent-sponges and reassured them that fear is a feeling, not information. Now that they are their own sponges, it would be wrong to ask them to absorb ours. But sometimes the advice we get – about our children, or other things – doesn’t quite hit the target.

Then we must become our own counsel. Here’s how. Sit yourself in an imaginary chair across from yourself (don’t do this at work or in the kitchen when everyone’s around). Listen to yourself tell the story of your worry. It is important to take the time you need to hear yourself out and not leave the self-counsel unfinished (unless of course, your brother sends you a hilarious text or FedEx arrives with a box that says Pottery Barn in the upper left corner).

When you’ve heard the whole thing, you will be surprised at the simple truths that emerge from the snarl of circular thinking. When you get to the point of wanting to offer advice, you’re on the way to a better night’s sleep.

It works. If you’re basically happy and optimistic, it is like wearing shoes on the wrong feet to be at odds with life. A little imagination, and you can produce a new view of your tangled thoughts and bring yourself closer to your own counsel. And because you can carry your new therapist around with you day and night, it’s peace of mind on demand!

If it doesn’t work, you can always go to http://www.potterybarn.com/, where they now have free shipping on all pillows.

Peacekeepers and face-punchers

I am going to say a thing or two about confrontation. Not only because I love and consider communication an art form, but because I will finally be able to use the word “heretofore.” Watch for it.

Hello. My name is Susan and I am a confrontationalist.
Hello, Susan. 

Here is my story. I never wanted to be a confrontationalist, in fact I wasn’t particularly good at it. I just wanted like hell to never be passive-aggressive like that man down there by the door, a couple of paragraphs from now.

But – this just in from the file of things my children learned twenty or thirty years before I did: Confrontation and communication are not the same thing, like Lancome day and night moisturizer (which yes they are, save your money). They are as similar as birds and plants.

If confrontation leads to communication – a mutual understanding of one another – it’s only a nice accident because confrontation says “you’re a jackass and here’s why.” Communication says “we’re both jackasses – let’s get past it” and ends with – a mutual understanding of one another. One who wishes only to confront should just write an email and not wait for a response. I’ve done that. It solves nothing, and can leave wrinkles in a relationship too deep for even Lancome to fix. Better to take your gripe into the shower where the acoustics are good, you can say what you want, and it won't make you wince five or six years later.

For good reason, there is someone with whom I have clashed and with whom I should probably communicate soon. I’m frustrated, not angry – angry happens when there is a threat to my person or to my family’s collective person. And though I am less frustrated-not angry than I was, if I were not frustrated-not angry, I would communicate with my confrontee now. If I were not frustrated-not angry, I would remember that this is a person I basically like and just let it blow over. (In my thirties and sometimes in my forties I would have confronted my confrontee while I was angry-not frustrated and be apologizing by now).

Instead, I’ve decided to let time take the wheel.

While I’ve been thinking things over, I’ve noticed that I rather like this pre-communication state in which I can envision an outcome because I haven’t sabotaged it yet. And we all know it’s better than the post-communication state when one has decided not to communicate at all, because one “hates confrontation,” and so resolves to peck the whole world to death. You know this guy?

Unfortunately, the person with whom I wish to communicate is usually, to some degree, angry-not frustrated, which is part of the reason we need to talk. When the time comes, I, a peacekeeper, will be interested in – a mutual understanding of one another - while my confrontee, a face-puncher, will be interested in unfurling a scroll of heretofore unexpressed complaints. Somewhere on my confrontee’s person is probably a notebook with a page that says "Susan" at the top.

In the meantime, I’ve been considering the way my children communicate; how they are able to accept their own part in a conflict without accepting all the blame for it. That’s a fine line, but they know where it is and how to walk it. It’s a line worth seeking, even if you have to travel a bit to find it.

So a little more time will pass, and then if frustration-not-anger, hasn’t given way to acceptance-not-avoidance, I will invite my confrontee to clear the air. I will have it on record in my mind that I was more interested in reaching agreement than hearing the sound of my own words, which heretofore have already softened with time.


Update 9/30/11:  Found the line, had the talk, gained and became a better friend, and kept my face.  

Mummying

In 1986, when I became a new mother and had few “skills” but ideals and assumptions that numbered in the hundreds, I took an approach to raising children that I take today when a gigantic project awaits: think of an outcome, and work backwards. More than anything I wanted to raise children who would trust themselves in the future as much as they trusted me in the beginning. To that end, I told them often, and usually in the wake of a particularly bad parenting moment, “I’m no better at this than you are.”

These years later, I love my children for countless reasons, but here is a big one: They took me at my word when I told them they were better experts on themselves than I was. They are still that way, experts all.

It isn’t that my parenting has been hands-off – I’ve had my face-offs against the bad teacher here, the bad coach there, the bad parent of a bad kid elsewhere, but only when my protective instincts have taken over and sent my judgement out for an ice cream. For the most part, my young adult children have developed and followed their own user manuals, with only editing suggestions from me and my husband.

Now, as three of the four draft budgets and prepare to pay rent and car insurance and cell phone bills on their own, and the fourth closes in on his last SAT exam, I am in full awe of how naturally it comes to them to be honest, courageous, kind, industrious people, and, as I knew all along, how little help they needed from anyone else to be those things.

Thank you Courtney, Drew, Jacqueline and Sam, for making it as easy as breathing to adore you.

I love you all. And oh, not just for this.

Theft - squared

Almost twelve years ago, my husband gave me a diamond solitaire necklace for Christmas that took my breath away. Simple and sparkling, it was the most elegant piece of jewelry I’d ever owned, much less found in my stocking on Christmas morning. Judging from his face while he waited for me to open the gift, he'd had the idea for awhile. When I forget that love is not about always knowing what to give,  but with all your heart, giving what you can, I remember that face. 

And the necklace was outstanding, or, as my sister put it a few years ago, “kick-ass.”

Always, I knew where it was. But stupid, trusting me, did I take special pains to lock up this piece when cleaners or repair people came through the house? No, I did not. Is there a reason? No there is not, except with all my heart, I've always believed that unless they rob strangers for a living, few people have it in them to go into the personal things of someone they know, rummage through, examine something so valuable, and then pocket it like a quarter they found in the parking lot at Hannaford. And even if they do steal for a living, I've always believed people would rather not.

Stupid, trusting me – squared.

Worse than discovering the diamond was missing last Saturday, was the feeling of dread that it would never be found. When I discovered yesterday that other pieces were missing as well, I knew none of them would be. And yet, even as my brain was running downstairs to tell my heart what had happened, where was I?  In the bedroom closet, opening every suitcase, purse, and dust-covered shoebox thinking I'd placed the items out of view, but more than that, hoping I would no longer have to suspect anyone of anything.

It takes forever for people like me to understand we've been robbed. We're so used to believing we get what we deserve, that intuition, the first responder in such a situation, has to punch our guiding beliefs in the face to make it clear. After a while, I realized the worst possibility was the likely one. The jewelry wasn’t lost, or vacuumed up, or left in a hotel room. I had not dropped the pieces down a vent, left them in the car, or done some other careless thing. Everything had been stolen. 

It’s bad that whoever did this had likely been allowed into my home by me. It’s bad that they explored places where they knew they didn’t belong in order to find the necklace. It’s bad that because I will never know who did it, I suspect everyone. Worse is the lingering feeling that I should have known better, and would have, if I had managed over the years to become a little more jaded.

I'm getting used to it. I've stopped looking under the kitchen appliances, and inside the pockets of clothing I haven't worn in five years.  But theft, however large or small, leaves a stain. It has far-reaching effects which yield other effects until eventually, you’re not only suspicious, but prejudiced, and not just cautious, but fearful.

I’ll keep a light on for the return of my trusting nature while I consider the best way to lock up my valuables. In the meantime, I’m realizing that it feels smarter to be a more suspicious person.

But not happier. Stupid and trusting was happier. 

.

What with the Economy

Every so often, I find myself on a field trip, where I can observe the business of strangers without being obvious. I heart these times because it's how I meet my characters and it's why I am never, ever, bored.

My favorite: long lines. Because oh, the things you can see while not reaching the places you’re trying to go. And, “what with the economy,” that little sentence fragment which is now the explanation for everything, I’ve noticed two things about customers and customer service. The first is that, with the exception of all things Verizon, customer service has improved everywhere. The second is that because we’re a coveted bunch now, customer behavior has worsened right along with it. It’s not pretty to see what happens to people when they think they deserve to be tolerated, even when they’re being a (bad word here).

And do I have an example? Of course I do, because this is the What-You-Missed-While-You-Were-Texting-Behind-Me-In-Line blog. You're welcome.

I braved the snow last week to go out for my lunch. I stood in line at a deli holding my Sandwich Special! with chips, soda and cookie for 5.95. I was fourth and it was taking forever, what with the economy, and, lottery tickets for sale at the check-outs. The man in front of me told the cashier to add up his order again because she did it wrong. While she checked her math, and three more people joined the line, he waited, annoyed, and asked why there was a difference in price for a chef salad over one with chicken or tuna or whatever. This pricing system was flawed, he pointed out, because it meant she had to remember the price when it would be easier to have one sticker for all salads.

“Right?” he said.
“I guess,” she said.

She gave him his total which was no different from the first, while the owner of the deli looked over at the line and frowned. When it was my turn, she sighed, and punched in the order. She told me the amount and I told her she was wrong and would she please add it up again. It took a second, but then she looked at me and laughed out loud.

Maybe the guy in front of me just lost his job as a person in charge of adding things up, and hasn’t figured out a more appropriate outlet for his anger. Or maybe the person behind the counter is grateful enough to be employed that she has figured out an appropriate response to a (bad word here).

What with the economy, both could be true.

So if you yourself have been a (bad word here) go anywhere (but Verizon) at quarter past twelve in the afternoon and stand in line. You’ll get your chance to make up for it.