So, I was sitting in my car this morning because I needed to move it for the street sweeper, and my phone rang with a number that I didn’t recognize. I think I’m like most people and I don’t answer calls to numbers I don’t know. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message and I’ll call them back. But this morning, the number kept calling me, and didn’t leave a message. I mean, I’m pretty sure it was a spam/bot call and no big deal, yet there is still part of me that gets a little rush of anxiety when a call keeps calling. Like, if they keep calling it must be important. It has to be important if they called three times. This must be the most important call, because they called three times from Miami! But didn’t leave a message. That’s why I don’t answer.
I stayed up and watched the Cowboys play the Eagles. Actually, I watched until the weather delay, and at that point I called it. I was hoping that the Cowboys would win, but I wasn’t totally surprised that they lost. At the breakfast table this morning, the kid had questions about who won the game, which I found rather surprising. Normally, she doesn’t care about the Cowboys or football in general, but she was rather curious about the game, and if I watched it all. Then she wanted to know if I thought the Cowboys would win the Super Bowl, which I told her no, and that the team would be lucky to be above .500 this year. Then she wanted to know if I as going to watch all of their games, which I am. She was confused by this, and wanted to know why I was going to watch them if I thought they were going to lose. Because that’s want a fan of a team does; you suffer along with the team, and hope for next year. I really hoped that there was some important life lesson there that I was passing along, about loyalty, and commitment. But what I she made me feel was that I was about to waste a lot of time over the next couple of Sundays.
Boy, it is not a joke. The day after Labor Day, New York City fills back up with people. Twenty years I have been here, and I keep thinking that this maxim isn’t true. And every year I am amazed how on Labor Day, no one is around, and then the next day, people are everywhere. I really should know better.
The kid started in middle school this year, and I wrote awhile back about how she is adjusting to having more homework. And it’s going okay. We are still working and adjusting to the change.
One of the issues the kid has with doing her homework, is that she gets bored and her mind wanders. A totally normal reaction for a kid to have when it comes to reading about world history, or having to write a paragraph on the three different states of matter. What we are trying is the twenty minutes of work, and five minutes of break time. Back and forth until the home work is done. Seems to be working.
The funny thing that I discovered about myself is that I can’t sit down and work anymore. Good lord do I get distracted easily. Like really easily. See, I have been trying to work on this blog for thirty minutes now, but I keep on thinking of something else I need to do – which I have to go and do so I don’t forget.
Sure, I know that there are some of you out there that would call that procrastinating, and you might be right.
But what I feel myself experiencing is a lack of focus. Like, I sit down and I write a sentence, and then I start to wonder about… well, anything and everything. I kind’a find myself going to Wikipedia and just reading page after page about weird stuff. Or seeing if L.L Bean is selling any sweaters at a discount.
I feel that I have lost the skill of being able to sit down and focus for even twenty minutes.
I could blame my phone, and that would be accurate. Yet, don’t I have to take a little responsibility here? If I have a lack of focus, then I am the one who created this problem, right?
I had a humanities teacher in high school who explained existentialism to my class this way; “We are all free to make choices in our life. Nothing is determined. You can choose to be whoever you want. Being able to choose doesn’t always mean you will be happier.” At least that’s the notes I took in my first journal way back in 1995. I went back to this journal after I finished reading Miriam Toews’ story “Something Has Come to Light,” because not only did the story make me think about choices I’ve made, but also about living with those choices.
To sum this story up, perhaps a bit too simply: A grandmother has written a note/story for her grandchildren about a moment in her life where she should have said yes, but said no to the neighbor boy, Roland. Some years later the boy moves away, but dies, and his parents bury an urn that contain his ashes on their property. Sometime even later, after the parents on the neighboring property pass away and their land is to be sold, the grandmother sneaks onto the property at night, digs up the urn, and reburies it on her property. Every day, the grandmother has passed by the buried urn, and tells Roland she should have said yes. The letter/story ends with the grandmother asking the grandchild to dig up the urn and return it to Roland’s surviving sister, or if that’s too much to ask, leave him, and continue to tell him that grandma made a mistake and should have said yes.
I loved this story. And I loved how this story snuck up on me, how it placed itself in my head, and kept poking at me, telling me to enjoy it more. The language here is simple and to the point, which is what you would expect from a woman that has lived a simple but contented life. The way it was written reminded me of how the Midwestern women in my family spoke – there was a plainness to it, but that didn’t mean that the words didn’t have nuance and revelatory meaning to them. The grandmother is a woman who doesn’t complain, but also is tough and doesn’t put up with much either, yet will never be rude about it.
The story really is about Roland, and the affect he had on her life. Though the two of them weren’t close, according to the grandmother, you can tell that she had a deep appreciation for him. Roland was different from the other people in town. His great sin appears to be that he sat on the front row at concerts, had a gift for the piano as demonstrated with a concert he put on in town and which the grandmother saved a poster from. Then one day Roland rode up to the grandmother and asked if she wanted a ride, which she answered no. A decision she would regret as Roland moved away to England. The town never forgave him for leaving, and I sense that the grandmother never spoke up or out in Roland’s defense, but she lived with that regret. A regret that would possess her to the point that not only did she need to apologize to Roland for the rest of her life, but also to possess Roland for the remainder of her life.
What I find captivating about this story is that it isn’t necessarily a romantic bond between the grandmother and Roland. Though I think there is a tinge about, like a frosting, but it’s not the driving motivation. What I believe the story is telling me is that the grandmother is mourning the exact moment where her life could have gone in a different direction. That she could have been, or done, something different. But, and this is most important, she does not regret her life. I say this because the start of the story, the grandmother explains that she keeps all the pictures of her grandchildren in a photo album next to her bed; how she looks at them, most nights. This is the act of a woman appreciating the life she lived, and what her and her husband created in this world.
What I find Miriam Toews is asking me with “Something Has Come to Light” is can it be possible to love the life you led, but also mourn the moment when it could have gone in a different direction? Can you love a person who could have been your agent of change, while also not wanting to change? Can a paradox like this exist in a contented person?
Perhaps. Perhaps the grandmother never wanted to let go of that chance encounter, to say she was sorry to the one person who wasn’t like anyone else she ever knew. Ultimately, the grandmother made her choice, and she learned to live with it, and with regret at the same time.
So, the kid has started middle school, and new things have been thrown at her from her school, and on the whole, she has handled all of these changes admirably.
With the exception of homework.
Now, I am NOT here to say that her school has given her too much work, or any of that stuff. No, I believe that her school is rolling out homework at a respectable pace.
It’s just that the kid doesn’t like doing homework, because she’d rather be talking to her friends, or playing online games. You know…
And this isn’t like the first time that the kid has had homework. Even in her elementary school, she was required to read for thirty minutes a night, and do a page of math problems. If things were very hectic, she might also have a little science homework as well. Tops, all of this work would take her an hour. Most nights, she was done in forty minutes, and with only a minor amount of grumbling. Middle school homework takes about an hour.
As we have been dealing with this new found disgust of homework, it reminded me of when she first got “homework” back in second grade. It was like five math problems that she could do at home, and she was excited to take care of it first thing after school. I get, because I remember doing the same thing at her age.
For me, not that I 100% remember what my “homework” was, let’s say math, but it was the fact that I felt like I was older, doing ready studying, really learning. Home work was that thing my older brothers had to do, and it must be a good thing because they were smarter than me, so homework made you smarter. And I wanted to be smarter. What I do remember concretely was the feeling of accomplishment for completing whatever that homework was, and also how my brothers told me I shouldn’t be excited to get homework because it was like a punishment.
Clearly things changed, and I also remember the awful years in junior high, with so much homework, and feeling like it was looming over my life. I don’t remember that feeling in high school, though I know there was an enormous amount of homework. College was college, and studying and homework was just part of the deal – no point in complaining about it, but, again, it never felt soul crushing like junior high.
Either way, life has come full circle, and the kid hates the amount of homework she has; no matter the size of work. I guess this is a lesson she has to learn – get your work done so you can do the stuff you want to do.
So, I’ve been doing this stay-at-home-dad thing for the past five years, and I keep thinking that when school starts back up for the kid, I will instantly fall right back into my reading/writing routine. I can excuse the first year, because it was the first year and I didn’t know any better. But the past four… Yeah, I know better, but I still won’t believe it.
The issue that I have is a very basic human issue; I get knocked out of my pattern, and it is difficult to restart the healthy habits that I had.
See, From January to June, we have a solid work/school schedule for everyone in the house. It’s a routine that we all can get behind and live within. And then Summer Vacation comes, and it blows everything up, and we’re all floundering, and waking up at different times every day. It’s just a wonder chaos, but its chaos compared for the first half of the year. I don’t accomplish a whole lot over Summer, but it is summer, and with a kid around, things do get lazy.
Then the school year starts up, with the new routine, and schedule. There are clearly some kinks in the system as we get rolling, but the schedule works itself out, and we all fall into place, right?
No, because the old habit got broken, and we have to reestablish a new habit. And that takes time. As it does every year. Every year it is the same thing; gotta work at getting back into the groove.
But I keep thinking that “this year will be different.” That this year I will fall right back into doing all the stuff I want and need to do. There’s this huge stack of books I need to read, and I think that I will get right to it… but the reality is that at first I have to work at it – force myself to sit down and start reading. And then there all these emails of stories and flash pieces that I need to respond to… but again, I have to force myself to just set aside fifteen minutes to just get started. And don’t get started on the other creative writing projects that I have – some of which are stuck in the nightmare land of “Unfinished Outline.”
I do know how this ends. It ends with the new habit being established. The work is completed. That feeling of accomplishment returns. It just takes a little effort every day. And sometimes I have to write a pep talk blog post to get me back to work.
