Monthly Archives: March 2016

Patrick, Schmatrick

  Sure, you can celebrate today drinking green beer and singing “Danny Boy” and eating soda bread. IF YOU’RE LAME. But the cool kids spent the morning learning about ancient Egypt from a bunch of fairly adorable first graders. Best parts: 

  • The use of plastic garbage bags for linen tunics
  • Ninja grave robbers in King Tut’s tomb (no, really)
  • The poor kid squashed into a cardboard box to be the Sphinx
  • The incredibly awesome ancient Egyptian version of “Uptown Funk” that ended the performance (sample lyric: “E-gypt. Is so hot. Egypt is so hot.”)
  • Sylvia being inducted into the 100 book club

I fucking treasure elementary school showcases, I tell you what. And bless those teachers for finding the wherewithal to guide seething hordes of 6 and 7 year olds in such a creative endeavor. God knows I couldn’t do it. 

Lost: One Pair Perspectacles, Slightly Used

FullSizeRenderDo you all read Glennon Doyle Melton, the woman behind Momastery? I bet a lot of you do. She’s pretty awesome, not least for being almost the only self-proclaimed christian writer I’ve read who has never, ever, I mean not once, come across as sanctimonious or preachy. That takes some skill, especially for readers like me who have an over-sensitive sancti-meter. Anyway, Glennon (we’re on a first name basis, in my mind) coined the term “perspectacles” to talk about the importance of being able to see your life with new eyes sometimes, to remember all that you have to be grateful for and not feel coerced into keeping up with any crazy external standard for your life or your body. This post explains it well. It’s a handy concept to invoke when I’m feeling pissy for no good reason (or, more often, when my kids are revealing their sense of entitlement to their horrified leftist mama). As a tryna-be Buddhist, perspectacles fit well into the precept of looking for the best in people and situations, and practicing gratitude. Good things to practice, for sure.

This month, however, I seem to have misplaced my perspectacles. I feel all oscar-the-grouchy about everything. Granted, there has been some shit happening the last two weeks that is worth grumping about, including but not limited to: the flu, the other kind of flu, Chad’s grandma almost dying, my kid getting sexually harrassed at school, and a dear friend getting diagnosed with breast cancer. I mean, no one in their right MIND would be grateful for any of that stuff. But the point of perspectacles isn’t to cover up or gloss over the shit; it’s to put it in PERSPECTIVE, as in: I no longer have any kind of flu, Chad’s grandma didn’t die, my kid handled herself like a rockstar, and my friend caught it early and will, we hope, have a good prognosis. And I can WRITE all that, and SAY it to myself, but it just isn’t working. Like, my brain is all, “But HEY: you got into GRAD SCHOOL!! With FUNDING!! In the SOUTH!!! Holy validation!!” and my heart is like, “Fuck you. David Bowie is STILL DEAD. FOR ALWAYS,” and my brain goes, “But you’re getting to go to the UK this summer!! For two weeks! Without your kids!! Don’t be a brat!” and my heart says, “I KNOW I’M A BRAT SHUT UP. Everyone is yelling all the time and I’m sick of this election season and I’m worried about money and I’m not getting to my to-do list and I won’t be ready for the move aaaaaahhhhh,” and my brain gets fed up and is like, “FINE. God, you’re such a Debbie Downer. Go read some Y.A. fiction or something, if you’re going to act like a twelve-year-old all the time,” and my heart yells, “DON’T YOU DISS Y.A. FICTION IT’S SOME OF THE BEST WRITING HAPPENING RIGHT NOW AND ANYWAY GENRES ARE AN ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCT,” and then my brain and heart storm off into opposite corners in a huff and I immerse myself in a John Green novel which is lovely but I’m still grumpy.

I dunno. Probably I need to meditate or something, but also probably sometimes you just need to be grumpy for no good reason and let that happen. I’ve always hated it when I’m having a public meltdown (Facebook counts as public, right?) and some well-intentioned soul reminds me that things could be worse and there are starving children in China or something. I mean, has that ever helped ANYONE? Like, I still feel crabby but now I also feel SUPER GUILTY about it. Good job! So I’m trying to be kind to myself, while also looking like hell for those perspectacles because I do not wish to be an entitled, blind-to-my-own-privilege asshole. BALANCE.

In summation, I am grumpy, for no good reason. But I wanted to end this post on a more positive note, and I remembered a thing I’d posted on Facebook earlier this year that I’d been meaning to blog for posterity, but I couldn’t remember when I’d posted it so I just searched Facebook for “Elise Robinson peanuts sex.” Which is maybe the most awesome string of search terms I’ve ever personally used. Also, and I’m not sure how I feel about this, the search came up with two results, and only one of them was mine. I haven’t even looked at the other one because I don’t know if I can handle it right now. Anyway, here’s the post, from September 2015:

Oh, lawsy, I wish I had a video recording of the conversation I just had with the girls in the car. Highlights include:

– Eleanor advising Sylvia to get married to a boy instead of a girl if she wants to have babies, because if she marries a girl she’ll have to “get shots” to have a baby

– Sylvie asking me how you have babies with a boy and thinking I said”peanuts” instead of “penis”

– me uttering the phrase “NEVER PUT PEANUTS IN YOUR VAGINA”

– Ellie wondering how you have sex and guessing that you “just walk up to someone and ask them”

– Sylvie deciding she just wants to adopt

Never put peanuts in your vagina, y’all. You can take that to the bank.

The Next Time

Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from the social worker at the girls’ school. This didn’t set off any alarm bells; when you have a kid with an IEP (which we do, for Eleanor and her language disorder), sometimes you get calls from the social worker to schedule or follow up on meetings. I assumed this was one of those calls.

It was not. I don't need to be saved. I can do that myself!

“I’m calling to let you know that Eleanor and another female student experienced some behavior from some boys that was making them uncomfortable,” the social worker said.

“Oh?” I said, small red-alert lights flashing in my mental peripheral vision.

“Yes, Eleanor was uncomfortable talking about it. She was embarrassed, but she was able to write it down in enough detail that we could question the boys, and they admitted the behavior.”

“What … what exactly happened?”

“It sounds like the boys were whispering things in the girls ears and making thrusting motions at the girls.”

“Oh, no.” Sinking feeling. “That’s not good.”

“Well, Eleanor was very helpful and we have encouraged her to tell an adult right away the next time something like this happens.”

“Um, how many times has this BEEN happening?!”

“There was apparently one incident last week in music class, and then again this week. We have called all the parents involved. Eleanor was very helpful.”

I got off the phone in a daze, sent off a text titled “MOTHERFUCKER” to Chad, who was out of town on business, and promptly burst into tears. Because she’s NINE. And they are already talking about  THE NEXT TIME. And of course they are, because of course there will be a next time. Of course there will be a next time that she is made uncomfortable, or worse, just by virtue of her precious, beautiful, female body.

You know it’s coming, as the mother of a daughter. I mean, as a parent of any kid, you know the time will come when your kid encounters prejudice or bias or just plain-old assholery from the world, and you won’t be there to kick the assholes back to where they came from. But especially as a mother of daughters, you know that some – maybe even most – of that ugliness will be related somehow to her femaleness, and to the seriously fucked up sexual attitudes we’ve developed in this culture. Maybe I should have been ready for it earlier, only you can’t ever be ready for it. You cannot be ready for the punch to the gut that reminds you that no, you can’t protect your daughters from it. They’re going to have to run the gauntlet themselves, just like you did.

So I managed to calm down before I went to pick the girls up from their after school program, wondering if Eleanor would want to talk about it or if she would be too embarrassed, running through all the various worst-case scenarios that my anxiety-driven demons could come up with. (Would she be permanently scarred? Unable to make eye contact? Wearing a huge scarlet A on her chest?)(Note: anxiety-driven demons are usually way, way off base. Also apparently they read too much Nathaniel Hawthorne.)

Eleanor was her usual buoyant self, chattering with her friends, forgetting her shoes, excited to see me. Anxiety levels decreasing. As we’re getting in the car, I say “I hear you had kind of a tough day today.”

“Oh, the social worker called you?”

“Yeah,” I say, like it was totally no big deal and we’re discussing the weather or something. “What happened with those boys?”

“Oh, mom, they were being totally inappropriate and saying REALLY inappropriate things and it was making me super uncomfortable. They were doing it to all the girls. Like sex stuff and penises and what boys do and making noises (she made uh-uh groans and thrusting motions while a piece of my soul slowly died), and it was gross.”

“Yuck. That sounds SUPER gross. That is not ok for those boys to do that. So who spoke up about it?”

Eleanor gave a little half grin. “I did.”

I high-fived her and told her I was so proud of her, and that she did exactly what she was supposed to do. And we talked about how sexual harassment feeds on silence and that lots of girls don’t tell people about it because they feel embarrassed and like they did something wrong or they might get in trouble, but how it’s NEVER your fault if someone makes you feel uncomfortable, and it’s not tattling to tell grown-ups about that stuff. And she said it was really weird to be in a room with three grownups (the principal, the vice-principal and the social worker) and just one kid (her) and how they kept telling her it was a “safe space” but it was totally embarrassing to talk about so finally she just wrote it down. And I told her again that the social worker had said how helpful it was that Eleanor was able to do that, and again how proud I was of her and that she did exactly the right thing.

And we went to get dinner and talk about other things, like the upcoming caucus, and weekend plans, and normal life stuff. And I came out of the evening an odd mixture of sad, angry, proud and hopeful. But like, 45% sad, 60% angry, 75% proud, and 32% hopeful. 212% feelings. THIS IS WHAT IT’S LIKE IN HERE, PEOPLE.

Hug your babies. Raise your boys to respect. Raise your girls to speak up. Hope for a better tomorrow. Cry for the hard today. Love wins.

(This post was written with Eleanor’s permission.)