Jan
12
“Guys,” I say, as they stampede by for the thousandth time, shrieking and laughing hysterically, a blur of pinwheeling arms and legs. “Guys. GUYS.”
For a brief moment they stop and I’m reminded of the old Wile E. Coyote cartoons where the action would freeze-frame for a moment and a fake Latin name would flash on the screen—Accelleratii Incredibus—before everything would rev back up, clouds of desert dust and ACME signs and a poonk-poonk-poonk roadrunner raspberry.
Please slow down, I tell them. Someone’s going to get hurt. Stop chasing. Stop screaming. Just be careful, for god’s sake.
Dylan’s got one end of a stick horse and Riley’s got his hand looped around its fake leather bridle on the other end. One of them is pulling the other or they’re pulling each other and the game seems to involve a whiplash effect and pshew pshew cowboy gun noises and what the hell, why are all the sofa cushions strewn around the floor again and oh shit is that lamp about to fall over?
“We just playing,” Riley tells me.
“A tick! Horse,” adds Dylan, not to be outdone.
Then they’re off again, the stick banging into walls, the boys screeching, a whirlwind of chaos and activity. I rub my temples, walk to the drawer with the ibuprofen, and from somewhere down at one end of the house I hear a crash and a delighted, top-volume scream and I yell at no one: “GUYS! STOP IT!”
It goes on and maybe they eventually calm down but more typically it ends in tears, usually Riley, who refuses to take off his socks and thus inevitably slides across the wood floors and smashes into something and starts howling, and instead of soothing him or asking where it hurts I find myself barking SEE I TOLD YOU and WHY DON’T YOU GUYS LISTEN and maybe just for good measure I send them each off for time outs, because my god, my god, the noise, the screaming, jesus christ.
They play together like this every day now, and I’m so happy they like each other’s company. I’m filled to the brim with joy over our two beautiful boys, our rambunctious happy healthy kids.
But oh. Oh, oh, oh. I didn’t know how insane it would be. How it would sometimes drill right into my brain and leave me limp. How one day in the gym locker room I’d find myself watching some Maui tourism commercial that’s nothing but a scene of a nearly deserted beach, waves lapping, the quiet noises of the sea, fifteen seconds or so of this muted soft footage, and my mouth would be hanging right open, my pupils saucer-sized. Yesssssssssss.
Riley comes over to me crying about how Dylan poked him in the eye, Dylan squeaks “HUG! HUG!” with a worried scrunched-up face, Riley reluctantly hugs him, and it all starts up again. I don’t have any idea how four little feet can sound like that, like a giant stampede of prehistoric animals. Crash. Bang. Scream. Pshew pshew.
“I’m a COWBOY! No, I’m a SOLDIER! Mommy I’m the SOLDIER and Dylan is the HORSE! I’m a SKATEBOARD BATMAN!”
“Neigh! NEIIGGH!”
Guys, guys, guys! I say. What Mommy, what Mommy, what Mommy, they say. Oh, I don’t know. Let’s go look at a calendar together, and count the months until spring.
Jan
9
I sat in her office on Friday morning as she peered over the edge of her glasses at my printed-out transcripts, which I had carried in a pristine leather portfolio I haven’t used since my last job interview, eight years ago. She tapped around on a computer while my hands nervously twisted in my lap until I forced them into stillness by locking my fingers together (here is the church, here is the steeple). Whenever she asked a question I responded with pathetic sincerity, eager to impress.
I was hoping for encouragement, a sense of reassurance. Maybe even, if I’m being completely honest, the sense that she was impressed with me in some way. I wanted a hearty go-get-em-tiger speech that would have me leaving the building with a thousand times more confidence than how I had entered—intimidated, unsure, feeling like I didn’t belong in the crowds of sweatpants-clad students who were younger and smarter and unfettered by children and jobs and mortgages.
Instead, she sighed. She was nice enough, but with that single exhale I knew I wasn’t going to be sent on my way with anything other than a headful of roadblocks.
She explained about the Oregon 3-credit classes I took and how they don’t transfer as well as you’d hope for the Washington 5-credit requirements. She pointed out the gaping math-shaped hole in my education and produced a diagram that illustrated how much work I’d have to do just to meet the base requirements for classes like chemistry and biology. She clucked over my grades, and told me that while she couldn’t officially advise me to do so, I might want to consider starting completely over, so as to not drag my GPA baggage along with me.
“The universities ask for your complete transcripts,” she said, “but to be honest, there’s really no way for them to know if you omit this information.”
Ah, I said.
So lie about it, then.
Just start over. Pretend those years didn’t happen. Start with a fresh slate and do it right this time. No one would know. If a shiny new degree is to be earned, it will be utterly untarnished by the failures of the past.
Fuck that.
I’m a very different person than I was fifteen years ago, but that life is a part of me. It’s part of who I am today. Every bad choice I made led me, in some small part, to where I am right this minute. I’m scared and overwhelmed by all the challenges, but I’m excited to learn and I’m by-god willing to put in the hard work to achieve my goals.
Those shitty grades? They’re mine, just like every other embarrassing or shameful facet of my past. I own them. Assuming I even get to that point, I’m not willing to fool some admissions process into accepting me. If I manage to plug away at all these goddamned transfer classes—if I actually find the time and money to get them done, if I actually pass the sorts of classes with descriptions that scare the shit out of me—I will be shouting my story from the motherfucking rooftops.
Goddamnit, I am not going to lie. And it hurt to have it suggested, even as gently as she did.
Thanks, I told her, and I left. When I got in my car, I startled myself by bursting into tears. Ugly sobs of regret and fear, thinking of this impossible hill in front of me. It’s going to take too long, it’s going to cost too much, it’s going to be too hard.
When I got home, I wiped my eyes. Put my papers away. Straightened my desk. Put the brand-new textbook on a shelf, cover up. Introduction to Sociology, one tiny baby step up that hill.
My class starts January 26th.
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