Don't Drown In a Glass of Water!

No te ahogues en un vaso de agua. Don't drown in a glass of water. I start every class I teach with a discussion in Spanish of anything important that might be occurring that day (birthdays, anniversaries, exams in other classes, historic events, athletic competitions), and a saying. No te ahogues en un vaso de agua was Thursday's saying. I've been thinking of it ever since. In class, we talked about how the glass of water is really a stand-in for our problems, and how, like the glass, many of these problems are small. We just can't see that because we are so frantically trying to get out of them. How wonderful (and desperately needed) perspective is, and how hard to gain! The students decided that there are, of course, some truly huge problems that aren't just a glass of water: no tener comida (not having food), no tener una casa (not having a house), no tener ropa (not having clothing), y no tener el amor de familia y amigos (and not having the love of family and friends). Other than that, most things (though not all things, I know) are small potatoes. So when I had to take care of and clean up after a sick child Thursday night and couldn't mark the papers I needed to, I took a deep breath and told myself: No te ahogues en un vaso de agua. When Joseph needed a diaper change and Genevieve refused to put her sneakers on this morning at the exact moment we needed to leave for her soccer game, I felt myself getting a bit frantic. We are always late. Can we ever not be late for something? Why did you just take your ponytail out? Just put on the shoes! But no, I took a deep breath, I listened to Genevieve explain why the shoe needed to be taken off and put on again to fix a little uncomfortable spot by her toes (and then, again, a second time), and I stepped out of the little glass of water. And you know what? It felt good. (For the record, we were truly late --15 minutes. Genevieve's coach gave her a high five when she arrived. It was a lovely game).

My little late soccer player. 

Brothels, Birthday Club, and Cookies

"Spent the day at Daulatdia brothel, population 5000, where Save the Children Australia is providing education and protection services for the children of sex workers." So reads the latest Facebook update from one of the first friends I made my freshman year at Princeton, Liz Pearce. She's now the Education Director in Bangladesh for Save the Children. She's amazing--Nicholas Kristof-esque--and I am so proud to know her. We met in Spanish class (Friday mornings, 9 am!) during fall semester and both lived in ridiculously small doubles that were actually converted singles in Walker Hall. We often went running together late at night, and Liz leant me an outfit to wear to my first job interview, at Bloomberg in New York, when I had nothing professional to wear. She was kind and good back then, too, and always had her act together. You knew she was going to do great things. And she is!

Later that night, while running alone on the treadmill on my back porch after putting the kids to bed (ah, how life changes--no more cool evening runs around Princeton's beautiful campus for me), I was thinking about Liz and her work, and then about my own work, teaching. I have some great students this year: full of enthusiasm, funny, compassionate ... But of course each year there is also the loss of the whole graduating class and all that they brought to the school. Last year we had a senior who, on a whim, created "Birthday Club," the whole point of which was to recognize every single student in the school on his or her birthday. Birthday Club would enter the student's advisory (like a homeroom), sing a song, and give the celebrating student candy. I like to think of all the students whose day was made because of this start to it. Birthdays can be great, but also lonely. Such a simple, sweet idea. Organized kindness.

Finally, this got me thinking about all the lovely acts of unorganized kindness I have been on the receiving end of. One of the kindest things someone ever did for me was bring me cookies and hot chocolate. I had just gone back to work full time, and I had a six-month old and two year old at home. I also had three preparations, including a 9th grade English class I had never taught before. I was hardly sleeping or eating. I honestly prayed for snow every day, even in September, and didn't know how I was ever going to make it through the year. This was where I was one October morning, after a long night, a long commute, and no breakfast (no lunch packed, either), when Sheila Gerson, an aide who had sometimes, in the past, sat in on my Spanish class during her break, showed up at my room with the warm hot chocolate and cookies. "Thought you might like these," she said with a smile. I could have cried. Even now, five years later, I can recall the desperation I was feeling before she showed up, and the gratitude I felt when she did.

So, here's to all those who are bringing much needed love and light to this world. From the truly incredible work of Liz in Bangladesh to the simple kindnesses of my students and colleagues, there are so many good people doing good things. Thank you to you all!

What Motivates

What bestselling author Daniel Pink says in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us makes a lot of sense to me. True motivation, he contends, comes not from rewards or punishment, but from our "deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to better  ourselves and our world" (straight from the book jacket! I read more of the book, but this summed it up nicely, as book jackets tend to do). The introduction describes a 1949 experiment by a psychology professor studying primate behavior in which monkeys were given puzzles to solve. Without any prompting, the monkeys began to focus on solving the puzzles almost immediately, and they were successful. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, too. In other words, the simple gratification of completing a task, or attempting to complete a task, was reward enough. Even more surprisingly, when the monkeys were given rewards for solving the puzzle, their success rate actually decreased. The offering of a reward (food, in the case) served to distract and disrupt them! Interesting ...

And I agree, because I know it to be true for myself. I like being rewarded (and hate being punished) as much as the next girl, but I know that what really motivates me is something deeper, something truer.

Genevieve, exploring the floodwaters after Hurricane Irene. She didn't want to come but we promised her a bowl of Pirate's Booty and a movie when she got back. She came. 

So, where did I go wrong with my own kids? How do I know I've gone wrong, you say? Perhaps it was the fact that I "motivated" the girls to walk to the library with me to get this book with a lollipop, or that I overheard Grace saying to 8-month-old Joseph the other day: "Say mama or I won't give you this Cheerio!" (he didn't say Mama). I routinely threaten the girls that if they do not get in their pajamas and brush their teeth with a little more urgency that I will not stay in their room a moment after lights out, and maybe,  on a really bad day, I once hinted that if they didn't start helping around the house more I would have to leave and go live with Nana and Poppa Ty. Movies, shows,  computer time, and sweets are rewards. Praise, too. Lack of the above, and timeouts, are the punishments. And I'm not about to get rid of all of this. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to survive. But ... but .... I want to keep Daniel Pink's ideas about intrinsic motivation close as I try my best to shepherd Grace, Genevieve, and Joseph into lives that are ultimately rich and satisfying, and as I begin the new school year with high school students who are conditioned to work for the A but who may or may not enjoy coming to school and learning. Because doing something for the sheer joy of doing it--as baby Joseph still does--is ultimately the best way to go.

Sea Glass and Love

Anthony and me, in New Orleans, January 2010. The last time we took a trip just the two of us!

It’s the last day of July, that firework, watermelon, sparkler-infused month that marks the true beginning of summer, and I am thinking about sea glass and love. Love because July is the month of anniversaries in my family. Anthony and I celebrated nine years of marriage on July 20^th, and my parents celebrated 40 years together just four days later, on the 24^th. Sea glass because I’ve been at the beach a fair amount this summer, and on my last trip I saw a basket of sea glass in Andy’s, the Barnegat Light store that sells sea shells, tourist trinkets, and old-school glass Coca-cola bottles. I take the girls there after every time we climb the Barnegat lighthouse. The sea glass intrigued me. I remember looking for sea glass on the beach as a child, but you don’t see it much anymore.

This year on my anniversary I watched my wedding video, something I haven’t done in several years.  So much has changed. People we loved, dancing and smiling on the video, are no longer here. My grandmother. Anthony’s mom. Everyone is younger, some noticeably so.  And, I think, we had no idea what we were doing, getting married. Or little idea. We were young. We were in love (and had been since we were sixteen), and we just wanted to be together. We hadn’t even begun to imagine what losing someone we loved would look like, or what it would feel like to hear a child call us “Mom” or “Dad” as she stretched her chubby little arms up, wanting to be held (and then, much later, to have that same child tell us, “Mom, Dad, stop fighting!”). Even more so, we had no idea about how the mundane could wear away at love.  That things like leaving wet towels on the bedroom floor (me) or dirty dishes on the kitchen counter (Anthony) could matter.  That love was not impervious to the bills, the car payments, the old and new jealousies, the anxieties about the future, private and shared. We had no idea that, yes, of course, these things would shape our love. But here we are.  We know now. So how does it feel?

Some sea glass, I’ve read, comes from the champagne bottles broken to christen a boat, and I like this idea. First, the celebration. Then, the broken chards. Finally, years later, the sea glass. Softened and smoothed by decades underwater, sea glass is beautiful precisely because it has been tumbled in the deep, led by currents to far-off beaches (or close, perhaps). In a lovely little article I found in the Washington Post archives--Look What the Tide Brought In, by Jura Koncius, Thursday, August 11, 2005—I read that authentic sea glass is now quite a treasure. Lots of boaters use plastic now instead of glass, and even those who do use glass aren’t so quick to throw it overboard (a good thing, I suppose!). And once glass is on the ocean? It takes 10 years for a sliver of glass to show significant etching, and 20-30 years for it to be completely polished and rounded. The process cannot be faked.

This is how it feels. Sea glass and love. 

Being nice

There're finally not bickering. Asleep, and snuggling, as they do every night, the injustices and insults of the day come to rest. They can be sisters in the best sense, taking comfort in the simple presence of the other. Today was a bit worse for bickering than other days because we were suffering the aftermath of Grace's amazing day yesterday. Yesterday, my sister took Grace, for a late birthday present, to Sahara Sam's, an indoor water park that, in Grace's words, was "AWESOME!" Genevieve stayed home with me and the baby. She was quiet as Grace described the park. And though I thought our game of Zingo (squeezed in between feeding the baby and putting in a load of laundry) was pretty fun, I'm aware that it was no Sahara Sam's. Still, there was no bickering yesterday because Grace was so, so nice to her sister, and to all of us. Yesterday, Grace was practically glowing with how awesome her life was. She shared, she complimented, and she didn't tattle, not even once. Today, not so. But I forgive her, not because she is my child, but because she is a child, and that's what children do. That's what I do, too, for that matter. How easy it is to be pleasant and loving when everything is going our way. How very, very hard when it's not.

Cooking

 So, I’ve been reading Alice Waters’ cookbook The Art of Simple Food recently. I imagine I read it the way some people read romance novels, for escape and novelty. The cookbook was a Christmas gift for my husband, Anthony, a few years ago, but as he is an excellent cook, he has little need for it. His cooking is both a blessing and a curse—mostly a blessing, but a curse in the sense that it has blunted the development of my own culinary skills to the point that I consider heating up some Bell&Evans chicken nuggets and McCains smiley fries an accomplishment. Ah, but Alice Waters! As a former literature major, I appreciate the poetry of her writing. Even the lists are lovely. Consider the list “Other Butters,” in the chapter on ”Four Essential Sauces”: parley butter, anchovy butter, black pepper butter, sage butter, basil butter, chipotle butter, nastorium butter. Or perhaps the list of spring and summer lettuces (in “Salads”) reads better: Rocket (arugula), Green oak Leaf, Red oak leaf, mache, red salad bowl, lollo rosso, buttercrunch, tom thumb, little gem, romaine. Reading this gives me such pleasure, though I can’t even begin to imagine what lollo rosso lettuce is—nor nastorium butter, for that matter! Still, I like to imagine a life in which I make chocolate tartlets from organic chocolate and braised anything. It could happen! Tonight, actually, inspired by the fact that Joseph, at 7 months, is supposed to start sampling real food, I decided to make Alice Waters’ recipe for Italian meatballs. My sister was coming over with her three kids and cooking for her was less intimidating than cooking for my husband or any one of his very talented siblings. I used the grass fed beef and the day old country-style bread, as well as milk from a local farm that Whole Foods sells in glass containers, just like the old days. I grated the onion and chopped the garlic, added cheese and parley and egg and oregano. I baked the meatballs in the oven and then added them to the sauce (tomatoes, garlic, onion, olive oil) for extra flavor. I served everything over fresh linguine. And guess what? It was good! I enjoyed myself too. So I’m not sure what happens now.  Cooking: it could be just a crush, it could be true love, but only time will tell.  As Alice Waters suggests: “Taste as you go. Keep tasting and keep practicing and discovering.” Okay!

Post-meatballs.

The Cure for Grouchy Kids (and Me)

Picking raspberries at Mood's Farm, Mullica Hill

Go outside! Get some exercise! I used to hate it when my mom said this in response to my complaints of boredom, or anger, or tiredness, or any other ailment. Still, when I found myself with three grouchy kids yesterday morning, there were my mom's words, the only possible answer to a teething baby and pinching, whining big sisters. We went for a nature "scavenger hunt" first, walking down to the river and collecting acorns, bark, leaves, a rock. This helped some but as it lasted only 20 minutes we needed another adventure. Grace mentioned picking blueberries; Genevieve said that she didn't like blueberries ("They're disgusting"), and so we decided on raspberries at Mood's Farm in Mullica Hill. We hit unexpected traffic on the way, the baby cried, and the girls bickered to the point that I had to make the dreaded threat ("If I hear whining one more time, I am turning this car around"), but eventually we made it to our exit off Route 55. In the fields lining the road grew corn, lettuce, and blueberries, of course. As we got close to Mood's Farm and its trademark orange windmill, peach trees took over the fields. The baby was quiet--he had fallen asleep--and the girls excitedly commented on the landscape rather than poking and prodding one another. At Mood's, they weighed our containers, gave us a picking permit, and told us how to get to the raspberries. Though the market was crowded, we were the only ones in the  raspberry field, as most had opted for the easier to pick blueberries. The raspberries, we soon discovered, were difficult to find and needed to be just the right color and size so that they didn't fall apart at our touch. But there was something deeply satisfying about working to find just the right berry and hearing  the soft plunk it made when we dropped it in our container.

After about an hour, when Joseph seemed to tire of the Baby Bjorn and Genevieve certainly tired of the heat, we headed back to the market, where we bought nectarines, peaches, and freshly made apple cider donuts in addition to our raspberries. Everyone was feeling much better, myself included, showing me, once again, that my mom may not have been right about everything, but she was right about a whole lot of things. Go outside! Get some exercise! included.

Joseph in the car afterwards. He had napped and eaten and was a happy boy, finally.