30 years since the hook up

Next month marks 30 years that D and I have been together as a couple. 

Our story started with dental insurance, which is where every romance begins. 

Good lord, I look pale. 

He was finishing his master's degree, and I was wrapping up my bachelor's degree. We had worked for the same company for a bit, seeing each other in the halls or kitchen. I worked part-time as a file clerk, and he worked in the IT department. I thought he was cute---tall, dark, and nerdy. Imagine a young Harold Ramis in Ghostbusters and you've seen D in his late 20s. My co-workers were dying to set us up. 

I think D and I spoke to each other once in the elevator before we "happened" to both go a going-away drinking session for a coworker in accounting who was leaving the company. We all met at a bar, and I spent most of the night chatting with the husband of one of D's coworkers. I'm not sure D said anything to me until we left and walked to our cars. Whatever he said wasn't memorable. 

What was memorable is that two days later, he called me and asked me to go for a walk at a park. I was sitting on my porch reading The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck when my parents told me I had a phone call. (Gawd, just typing that feels ancient---when I didn't have a phone strapped to my hip.)

We met at the dental office parking lot and drove together to the park. We stopped at Ear-X-Tacy, where I refused to let him buy me a Jeff Buckley LP (because then I would owe him something and we weren't having any of that). I remember nothing that we talked about. 

What I do remember is that he asked me out for the following weekend, which is the surefire way to my heart---asking me well in advance to do an activity. I have never liked being treated like a last minute "might as well" by anyone. 

The night of our first "date" date, we went to dinner at the Bristol where D proceeded to not talk much at all. It was awkward, and I remember thinking to myself, "This is probably going nowhere." We then went to see a play called "Angry Housewives," a title I didn't realize was so prescient to what our future would be. I remember when we were leaving, D placed his hand on the middle of my back, whether to keep hold of me in the crowd or steady my way I don't know, but I recall liking the feeling. Still, I didn't know if it made up for the not talking/awkward dinner. 

He drove me home and we took a walk all over the neighborhood in the dark, and like Robert Frost noted, that made all the difference. Something about the darkness allowed D to come out his shell. He told me he watched the film Orlando and enjoyed it, which is the sum total of what I remember us discussing. Oh, and he kissed me before he left. 

Hot and heaviness followed for a year until we got engaged, 29 years ago this month. We married 18 months after that. 

We will soon be having a big to-do of sorts, which I didn't specifically plan for our 30 years of togetherness, but it happens to coincide with it so I'm calling it our "celebration." Of course, it isn't a party---did you not read anything about the quiet dude I hooked myself up with 30 years ago? 

I looked back while composing this to see what else I've written here about marriage, and I've periodically, dating back to our 15th wedding anniversary, written about our relationship, mostly in good terms. It hasn't been all roses, for sure. 

But he's quiet, and I have a hard time being around people who blather on. And he doesn't like sports, which is the other reason he stole my heart besides asking me out for a date a week ahead of time. He's not a messy guy, and he looks good in a beard, and he, more or less, doesn't care what I do. He thinks I'm funny and smart. And I'm assertive enough to politely tell a solicitor we don't want any and goodbye so that D doesn't have to do it when he accidentally is too close to the glass-paneled front door when someone knocks, and he (thinks he) can't really hide. He's still tall and nerdy but now gray all over---still giving off Egon vibes 30 years on. 

May 2, 2025

A belated 21st bday letter (and the last one)

Dear N,

I know you reached the age of majority three years ago, but recently you reached yet another important milestone: 21. 

The only advice I gave to you was not to get so drunk that you got tossed out of Cardinal Stadium (which no longer exists) by the police due to public intoxication, which is what I did very soon after I turned 21. I also suffered a 5-day hangover, an act of stupidity I never, ever repeated. 

The first alcohol you bought as a 21-year-old. 

Over the years, I have tried to instill in you good things, but more importantly, I have tried to model those good things to you in how I live my own life. 

To be kind and compassionate but to also not allow others to manipulate you. 

To be honest but not cruel. 

To stand up for yourself but more importantly stand up for others who may not have the wherewithal to voice something themselves.

To never stop learning but to not allow information to steal your time or joy.

To listen to your inner voice but also learn from the mistakes and wisdom of others.

When I had you, I had a completely bonkers idea of what a mom should be for a child. In my 21 years of parenting, I have chilled out a lot, mostly because I have realized that I am mostly a guide and never a creator. Your life is not, never has been, and never will be, a reflection of my life; nor is my life a reflection on yours. We are both two individuals doing the best we can and hopefully making each other a little better during the journey. 

Several years ago, you told me that you want to have children and give them the kind of childhood you had. You want to stay home with them, and if that is what you want, I hope you are able to make it happen. But I admit a little piece of me thought, "Don't you want more for youself?"

And I felt conflicted by being both honored that you have such good memories of your childhood that you want to do exactly as I did and also somewhat saddened that you don't want more. I hated that I had this little sliver of internal discord. I have thought about it a lot over the years and come to this conclusion:

The best thing I will ever do with my life, and of which I am most proud, is raising three decent humans. 

But when I think of the other things I have done, and will do, I don't know that I jump down to 2 or 3 or 4. I think I jump in terms of decimal points.

Because at 1.1 would be teaching and playing a role in other young people's lives. You know I still, at age 51, have a relationship with my own middle school teacher, Mrs. S, and I suspect with social media, I will be in some kind of contact with my own former students when they are 51. There is something wondrous about being a part of someone's life, watching them spiral out into the world, and knowing that you played a tiny part in that formation. 

At 1.2 I might put establishing a writing career. And 1.3 is managing to sustain a long-term relationship with your dad. And none of those things have anything to do with me being a mother or a stay-at-home mother for the years that I was. 

Suffice it to say, you will figure things out in your own life, and you will struggle with the choices you make and the things life throws at you. But you will continue learning, whether it be from raising your own children, or from watching me live my life. My parents are 82 and 86, and even though they have loads of experience, each new day brings them new things they've never experienced, such as having a first granddaughter who is now 21. I am still learning from my parents and will until they are gone (and likely beyond). 

So, of course, I'm not wiping my hands of you and saying "You're on your own, kid!" But it is nice to be able to step back and watch you live the way you wish. 

With you turning 21, it is also time for these letters to you to end. I went back through these birthday posts, thinking I had written them your entire life, but I could only find them dating back to when you were seven, which is when I think I finally came out a little bit from my motherhood fog. When you were seven, your brothers were four and two, and I came up for a little air. If you have your own children, you will understand this. 

You will always be my favorite girl, 

Momma

What is "real" learning?

I actually began writing this post back in December and left it partially written because it felt like a bit of a Pandora's box post---one that would open, go everywhere, make a mess and leave me to try to contain it in the limited time I have to write. 

But this morning, my husband shared an article in our local paper about the computer program the school district uses for credit recovery. The article made the program look like a bad idea, and that isn't an incorrect assessment. What it is is an incomplete assessment. So when I came here to write about something else entirely, I thought perhaps I should finish this post up.  

Let me begin by saying that this year G is taking an online physics class using the computer program mentioned in the newspaper article and that doesn't make me happy at all as a concened parent who knows her son will be attending college. If his school doesn't have a physics teacher to teach physics, though, what option does he have to take this class? As I often say, "We don't live in a perfect world, so the options we have aren't perfect." 

Photo by Samuel Bourke on Unsplash

Two days a week for the past several years, I have worked in a high school with students who have failed classes. Some of them are just behind by one or two classes, while others are behind by 8-10 classes. They are given the opportunity to catch up by doing computer classes using the newspaper-mentioned program and being a part of credit recovery, in which they have one or more class periods per day to work on these computer classes.

In order to graduate high school in the state, a student must have a minimum of 22 completed credits (not just attempted; they have to have passed the class with a D or higher). But over the course of a high school career, assuming students take and pass 7 classes a day and each class earns them .5 credits, they will graduate with 28 credits. Potentially, a student could fail six classes, not make up any of them, and still graduate from high school. Of course, the classes that make up these required 22 credits can't all be PE. There are requirements within those 22, such as 4 English classes, 4 math classes, etc. 

The students who end up in credit recovery are a mixed bag. Some of them went to elementary school with my sons and struggled with school in their earliest years. They are socially fine, but intellectually low. There are aspects of high school study they just don't understand because of the way their brains are made. 

I worked with a student last year, and I tried without success to explain Vertical Angles Theorem to her because she had failed geometry. When one method I tried didn't work, I tried a different way. It was utterly exasperating for both of us. This student worked hard and really did try, but geometry simply wasn't something she understood. 

I remember taking geometry in high school and not understanding it, or feeling like I didn't. I passed the class, probably with an A because I was grade conscious obsessive, but I only now, at age 51 and having worked for the past almost four years with students in credit recovery feel like I have a better understanding of Geometry I. Now Geometry II, with inscribed circles and other kinds of nonsense....not so much. 

Some of the students in credit recovery have horrible attendance, and that is the reason they fail classes. A student turned up the other day who had missed 80 days of school. He simply cannot make that up. As a general rule, schools don't have enough space to keep putting kids who miss school into classes semester and semester. They will age out before they actually graduate. 

Some of the students in credit recovery are ELL (English language learners). I have numerous students who I have to communicate with using Google Translate. I am a good teacher, but I cannot explain geometry using Google Translate without it taking exorbitant amounts of time away from other students who I need to assist. So I'm left with "Do I help 6+ English-fluent students with 12 of their classes or 1 ELL student with 1 class?" 

Some of the students in credit recovery have zero motivation. They might be poor readers, and that may impact their motivation, but some of them do not care. That doesn't mean they will always not care. Some of them are just really immature. Some of them lack motivation because they are foster kids, neglected kids. Some of them are in the early stages of drug addiction that they will pursue with greater ferocity once they are out of their parents' homes. Some of them have untreated ADHD or depression or anxiety and self-medicate with drugs. 

None of them, one on one, is a bad kid. 

I know that what I do is a band-aid for a diagnosis of partially severed arm. 

But we do not live in a perfect world, do we?

Classroom teachers lament credit recovery, and I can't blame them. But I also know that many of the same teachers have repeatedly high numbers of failures who end up in credit recovery, and one has to ask why. Is there anything that could be done differently within those classrooms and among those teachers to help keep students from needing credit recovery to begin with?

Some teachers lament credit recovery on principle; they don't actually teach most of the kids who end up in credit recovery, but they have an opinion anyway (which is fine; everyone is entitled to theirs). Often, these are the same teachers who think it is unfair for schools to give so much attention to at-risk students. What they fail to recognize is how unfair it is that so many of the kids who do well in school come from upper middle class, secure families to begin with. I tell my children regularly that they have a responsibility to do well because they have been given so much that they haven't actually earned. Their grandparents and parents have laid a foundation that they are benefitting from.

Some teachers say, "What does a diploma even mean if they aren't really learning anything?" and I think the follow-up questions to this are things like: "What is real learning?" Does an "A" or a "B" mean a kid has learned something that they are going to retain? Does an "A" really mean a child has mastered the concept?"

We often have nostalgia for times past, as if the same problems that plague us today aren't mostly identical to the ones from decades ago.  You cannot tell me that there weren't kids in high school in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s who somehow earned diplomas who didn't do jack. (I often suspect that these are the same people who regularly comment on social media about how crappy the district is and how easy it is to be smarter than a fifth grader.) 

If real learning was measured by someone's ability to explain it to another person, would any of us pass high school, either in the past when we actually graduated or now? 

I am a cog in the machine and cannot make any change to the system, but I strive to make the miniscule changes I can in whatever way I can the two days a week that I work with credit recovery students. 

Yes, the students I work with use the computer program, but I explain the FOIL method of multiplying binomials, and I give them hints about multiple choice questions (watch out for "all" and "never"), and I explain Punnett squares and I try to use the face-time I have with them to teach them something because I know, probably better than anyone, how much more and better could be done.