Oct
29
It was picture retake day at Riley’s middle school last week, and I was there as the sole volunteer. It was just me and the sweet-natured photographer, who had the unenviable task of not only bringing in and setting up all the bulky equipment, but also posing and photographing each kid, a seemingly endless process which involved finding their information in a computer, dealing with the fact that they invariably did not have the required order form, and taking multiple photos if the flash caused glare on their glasses/they grimaced/they blinked/they took off their hair band but left it looped around their wrist, etc etc etc.
I have to say, this was a very thorough photographer. She really cared how the pictures turned out and her attention to perfection never waned, which was, frankly, both impressive and slightly baffling as the hours went on.
This all would have been manageable with a group of, say, seven kids. But there were SO MANY OF THEM. At least 50 middle schoolers who all needed a redo of the original picture day, either because they had been absent or their parents called bullshit on their refusal to smile — or, as was the case with several heavily-styled girls, they just didn’t like how the first photo had turned out.
The school inexplicably sent all these kids to the gym at once, which was of course a total fucking disaster. I did my best to corral them into a line and leverage my Mom Voice to the worst offenders but what group at this age could possibly be expected to stand there quietly for that long? Entropy quickly descended: somebody had found a roll of bright yellow caution tape on their way to school that morning and pieces were being handed around and tossed wildly in the air. By the time I called for backup the scene was nearing Lord of the Flies status, complete with DO NOT CROSS tribal headbands.
The sense of growing chaos was worsened by a teacher who showed up and was so visibly impatient with the fact that each kid was taking at least 3-5 minutes she was twitching from head to toe with each flash of the bulb. “Well, it is what it is,” I offered weakly with a shrug, in an attempt to help her find her inner zen, and the white-hot burn of her return gaze — like, are you fucking KIDDING me? — reached all the way to the backs of my eyesockets.
Eventually the vast majority of the kids were returned to their classrooms in favor of a system of calling them back in small alphabetical groups and I was left with the much more pleasant job of simply chatting with the remaining kids as they waited in line.
I guess I always thought this age seemed a bit impenetrable, roiling with condescension and rebellion, but every kid I talked with was pretty delightful in their own way. Some were silly, some were gentle, some were clearly a major handful, some were deeply and interestingly weird.
One boy was so tall and strongly-built I couldn’t believe he wasn’t an undercover millennial. I assumed that due to his popular-jock vibe he wouldn’t bother engaging with me, but he was friendly and polite. After boggling at his height for a while, I finally asked him something I was dying to know: “Dude, do you eat, like, INSANE amounts of food?”
“Oh man,” he said, grinning. “After dinner I pretty much just keep eating for about two hours.”
(I knew it. We are never going to be able to retire because groceries.)
The photo process was still well underway when I had to leave — in fact, they’d only reached “A through D” on last names, and I can’t quite imagine how things finally came to any sort of conclusion. Was it midnight, the photographer hollow-eyed and soaking with sweat but dogged in her refusal to compromise on quality? Did that stressed-out teacher finally dig a Xanax out of a long-forgotten purse pocket or was she carried out via stretcher? Is there still, right now, a line of kids shifting from foot to foot and building incremental resentment towards their mothers who just wanted a decent school picture this year for crying out loud?
But mostly I have been marveling at my own misperceptions, and how this age — while obviously tricky and mercurial for all sorts of reasons — is actually pretty damn great.
Although I have to say, they’re best taken in small doses. That pretty much rings true for humans of every age, though.
Oct
26
There is always a reason not to write here, in this beloved, familiar place.
I’ve had a lot of freelance work lately and I worry sometimes that I have a finite amount of words in me each day, that if I spend some of that currency here I won’t have any to spend elsewhere, in the place where I have requirements and deadlines.
(As if my ability to pull words from my head is a drying puddle, when somewhere deep in the most secret part of my heart, muffled by all the negative voices that believe they are keeping me safe from failure, I know it is a burbling well.)
My children are now old enough to that I have to take the same consideration when I write about them as I would anyone else in my life: the world of blogging was never anonymous to begin with, but it would be particularly foolish these days to assume I have the ability to speak candidly with a select audience of my choosing. There are many aspects of parenting these amazing, challenging boys that I would love to talk about in the hopes of advice or support, but I haven’t quite been able to figure out the trick of balancing my own experiences and truth with their privacy.
They’re figuring themselves out, they’re 10 and 13 and and they’re struggling to find their own areas of control. They’re often a roiling embarrassed mass of fear about being different or uncool or attracting undue attention.
I get it. Boy, do I get it.
I would love to write about marriage, about getting older together and having all these years built up in what we have and how so many things have changed or shifted shape. I would love to talk about how we have made it this far through the Trump years despite our political differences, differences which have only widened and become more painful, just like the dark and terrible crack that seems to be running down the center of our country’s heart.
I can’t talk about the marriage thorns and mirror-shards and piles of suffocating baggage because it’s not just about me, so the easy writing — the cathartic angry writing — is off the table. What’s left is the hardest part: the part about love, that part that takes the most skill to illuminate and breathe life into.
But if I can find that love, I can write about that love. If I can love my children, I can write lovingly about our life in a way that honors where they’re at.
If I love writing — and I do, my god, I do — I can believe in my ability to tell the stories I want to tell.
I love this space, this dusty old website that sometimes breaks and gets bazillions of spam comments and hasn’t had a design update in 15 years and feels like a relic amongst all the shiny white-space professional-photo sponsored-influencer platforms that are, like, optimized for devices built in the last decade.
I’ve missed writing here, and there’s really no good reason not to be here more often.
I’ve missed you, too. Hi. Hi, you.
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