With the New Year comes something else if you live in New England…snow days. Or if not actual snow days, the potential for them.
Growing up, most children awaited news of a snow day via the radio. Sometime after seven, they’d hunch around the radio, listening to the long list of alphabetized cancellations, fingers crossed that their school would make the cut. As the daughter of a principal in the town where I attended school, my brothers and I were blessed with hearing the news first, by an early morning phone call when we were still tucked in bed. The ringing phone sometime after five AM was our indication that we could roll over and sleep for another few hours. These days most of us hear about snow days by an automated text or phone call, yet the day and night prior to a snowstorm still prompts the same anticipation and weighing of the pros and cons of a possible day off. In our house, the conversation usually goes something like this: “Looks like school might be cancelled tomorrow.” “That would be great. Except then we’ll have to make up the day in June.” “Yeah, but a day off would be great. Then we’d have a long weekend.” “I know, but it’s only January. We just got back to school. A snow day now would be a waste. Plus it’s too early to start racking up snow days.” “Maybe we’ll have a late start?” “Those are such a pain. They’re so disruptive to the school day.” “Yeah, but you don’t have to make those up.” “I guess. I hope we have a snow day.” “I’d rather save it for February, when we really need it.” When I was a kid, my brothers and I would have a similar conversation with our mother the night before a snowstorm. Our mother’s reaction, to our intense annoyance, would always be the same: “It doesn’t really matter what you hope for. Either we’ll have a snow day or we won’t. We don’t have any control over it.” To which we’d groan, “Moooooom!” She wasn’t playing along with the game, which was more about the anticipation of a possible day off than anything else. However, these days I find her approach comforting. There are so many things I feel I should be in command of—my children, my home, my classroom, the structure and order of my household. When there’s something truly beyond my control, I appreciate the chance to sit back and let nature run its course. Today we had a delay, two extra hours to sleep in, have a lazy breakfast, and play outside. And as I drank my second cup of coffee, leisurely, as opposed to while I race around the house barking orders at my daughters, I thought of my mother and the freedom that comes with not having to be in control, even if just for a morning.
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Ah, the holidays. An occasion to spend too much money, eat till we’ve gained the requisite 5-10 pounds, drink till we swear we never want to see another glass of wine again, and another opportunity for mothers everywhere to beat ourselves up for not being some nonexistent version of perfect.
In my imaginary life my daughters and I decorate cookies, come up with a meaningful volunteering activity, make homemade gifts, and sit blissfully under the Christmas tree sipping hot chocolate while my husband cheerfully decorates the exterior of our house in white lights. In reality, I frantically dump items in my Amazon cart, cringe at the amount of the cart, remove items, only to put them back in again the next night, hoping they’ll arrive in time for Christmas. The only cookies we eat are the ones other people have given us, and we can’t get it together to even hang up an outdoor wreath much less a display of lights. And then there are the gifts and the spending. The night before Christmas I find myself in a panic as I go through my purchases (most of which have remained in the Amazon packaging until now). While I should be sipping mulled wine and relaxing by the fire (again, in my imagination, as we don’t have a fireplace), I instead go through an emotionally exhausting exercise in self-doubt. Did I get my children presents that they’ll love? Did I get each child approximately the same amount? Have I given them too many gifts, unwittingly contributing to them developing into materialistic jerks? Did I forget anyone? The focus inevitably becomes the gift giving, when that wasn’t my intention at all. So much time, energy, preparation, money, and expectation goes into having the perfect holiday, that I find the actual day of the big event to be a letdown. I’m so preoccupied with trying to enjoy the day that I’m barely present for any of it. A little voice inside my head tends to narrate the occasion: See your daughters in their adorable matching dresses lapping up ice cream and pie with greedy abandon? Those two little girls will never be this young again. You cannot recapture this moment, so focus on it, enjoy it, appreciate it, goddamn it! Over Thanksgiving I was blessed to spend four lovely days with extended family, enjoying way too much food, watching our kids run around like sugared up maniacs, and beginning the madness of Christmas shopping. By Sunday evening, all I wanted to do was eat salad, drink tea, and lie on my couch looking at magazines. After several days of socializing, I craved time with my immediate family of four. As mundane as our Sunday evening was, it became special after several days of festivities. I already know that by the time January 1st rolls around, I’ll be relieved that the holidays are over for another year. I will be grateful to hold my little family close, to do such boring things as make dinner, go to the library, take a walk in the woods, try to hit a yoga class, read on the couch, and find a new show on Netflix. I will revel in the mundane. I will not necessarily think, This moment is perfect or I’m fully present and appreciating every second of it. However, in some bone-deep part of my soul, I’ll know that this right here is enough. This right here is all I really need. My gratitude may take shape through a background route, but I’m pretty sure I’ll still land at the destination I was seeking all along. Today was a hard day.
I am not particularly political. I am far less educated about history and politics than many of my family members and colleagues. However, when I woke up this morning and heard the news, I felt a deep sadness. Throughout the day I encountered others, kids and adults alike, who felt the same sense of disappointment, fear, and shock. I live in a place where many of the people share the same political and social views, a bubble perhaps, so many were stunned by last night’s events. And maybe we shouldn’t have been. Maybe this shock signifies the disconnect between left and right, red and blue. Today was a hard day. I watched colleagues and friends struggle with their own grief, all the while trying to remain professional and help our students and own children feel safe, regardless of political opinion, in a way that doesn’t denigrate, belittle, or fuel hatred. Today was a hard day. I listened to people profess fury, disgust, and fear. I watched people question the fundamental values of this country and the direction we are heading. Today was a hard day. However, I choose hope. I choose to believe that there is a way forward. I choose to believe that love and family are stronger than fear and hate. I choose to believe that this is not the end, but a stop in the road, a time for us to pause and think about how to move on from here, a necessary if unwanted chance for us to look at what divides and unites us. Many would argue that this is simplistic and naïve. It is. And yet I don’t see an alternative. Today was a hard day, but I believe tomorrow will be a little better. I choose to believe we can heal, we can learn, we can grow. I choose hope. My three year old is slowly killing me. It’s an incremental effort, day by day, with her pulling back just enough when she knows she’s really close to getting the job done.
It started sometime over the summer. In the midst of family travel and transitioning from her crib to a bed, she began to wake earlier and earlier. As of now, I believe the record is 3:45 AM. These days, it’s usually sometime between four and five, though she’s also taken to appearing in our bedroom in the middle of the night, unbidden, a chubby apparition waiting to be tucked back in. Have you been up before five AM recently? If yes, then I’m sorry. If no, let me tell you what it’s like. It’s dark. Middle-of-the-night dark. The lights are off in all the other houses, and the world is quiet and peaceful. Even the dog is out cold. Apparently my daughter has no such internal clock. Nearly eight years into this parenting game, I’m a seasoned early riser and used to the middle of the night wake-up call. It just seems that recently my three year-old has taken it to the next level with renewed vigor. It also happens to have come around the same time as she’s learned all the ways to unleash mayhem in our household. Whoever coined the term the “terrible twos” had obviously never met a three year-old. This age does not bring out my best parenting skills. Too often I’m cranky, short-tempered, and quick to yell. I’ve never been a morning person, and as far as I’m concerned, four-thirty isn’t morning. These aren’t my daughter’s finest moments either. And yet I know this is a stage. Within a few months or a year (God help us all), this too will fade into the blurry repository of memory. I will vaguely remember that she used to get up early or visit me in the middle of the night and that she left a wake of chaos behind her during the daytime hours. Soon enough (too soon), she won’t want me to tuck her in at all. Before long I’ll be yelling at her to get out of bed so she’s not late to school. And it’s only a matter of time before everything I do annoys her. All parents have heard it: The days are long, but the years are short. I try to remind myself of this when I hear her toddling footsteps on the stairs at three, when I know I’ll be unable to fall back to sleep, and I’ll be dragging all day. I try to summon my patience and my own mother, who rarely yelled (at least in my memory—isn’t memory a tricky beast?). I take her sticky hand in my mine, or pick her up in the black night. Her head rests on my shoulder, her soft hair draped along my neck. I carry her in the darkness back to bed where I tuck her in with her baby doll and favorite purple bear. The truth is, she just wants me, no matter the hour or inconvenience. And the years are short. In September, the Island shrinks. For two whole months, it’s possible to get lost 0n Martha’s Vineyard, as it teems with tourists and day-trippers. Traffic grinds to a halt, your favorite coffee shop has a line out the door, and it’s not even worth trying to get to the grocery store. Surely there’s a box of mac and cheese in the closet somewhere.
And then, like September herself waved a magic wand, the Island is transformed. It’s possible to get a reservation at your favorite restaurant at seven. The private beaches no longer require resident passes. You can pop out to the store to get milk, find a parking spot, and be home in a half hour. There’s room to breathe. Yet despite what is gained, something is lost, too. Anonymity. While this might not mean much to someone born and raised on the Island or in any other small town, for those of us from cities or larger places, there is something powerful about not being known. I grew up in the Boston area, and my high school had nearly two thousand students. I remember seeing my science teacher one afternoon in the parking lot of the eye doctor and wondering, What the hell is she doing here? I grew up with parents who were teachers, so it’s not like I thought she actually lived at school, but seeing her with her daughter in tow on a weekend crossed some boundary, like she’d stepped into my bedroom uninvited. Forget six degrees of separation. Martha’s Vineyard in the winter is three degrees of separation. If you’re a teacher, more like two degrees. Your doctor? Also a parent in your school. That guy working out on the elliptical machine next to you? Your mechanic. The woman in the grocery store filling her cart? She checked out your library books yesterday. Oh, and you used to teach her kids. While this drove me crazy when I first moved here, I’ve come to appreciate it over the years. Living on the Island is kind of like college, when you’d go to the dining hall and see the faces of people that you knew. Some of them you actually knew and others you just recognized. The girl from your Shakespeare class over there by the frozen yogurt machine. The guy getting second helpings of meatloaf—he was in your nutrition class. And the two girls in the corner—they lived on your floor freshman year. So though I’ll miss being able to hide in the corner of a coffee shop with my book and laptop and not bump into anyone I know, I’m glad to live in a place where the connections between people are abundant and varied; where I’m greeted by name a dozen times a day, on the street, the library or the gym. I’m grateful to live in a place where this thing we call community is a vibrating living being rather than an abstract noun. And really, the line out the door for that coffee place was ridiculous, and I never would have found a table alone anyway. I hate social media.
I love social media. I hate that I love social media. Can you tell I feel conflicted? Until recently I’ve been a casual Facebook user, posting mostly family pictures and observing the lives of “friends” I’m not really friends with in real life. It’s strange to know the dinner choices of people I went to high school with, even stranger to know about their cross-country move, their child’s peanut allergy, or their newborn niece when we haven’t laid eyes on each other in twenty years. Until this summer Facebook and I were casual friends—I was always happy to see her, but I’d be fine if we went a few days without talking. Recently though, I’ve been feeling the addictive pull of it, the itch in my fingers to scroll through whatever happens to be in my feed this particular instant. This summer I’ve spent a lot of time using social media as a writer (exhibit A: this blog). I’ve “liked” the Facebook author pages of many writers I enjoy, both as a way to pay it forward and to see how other writers use social media. I just reactivated my Instagram account (I think I have two followers so far—follow me, please! Then I’ll have to actually post: https://www.instagram.com/emilycavanaghauthor/) and while I’m pretty comfortable with Facebook, Instagram is new territory. Now I’m not only lurking in the lives of former friends and acquaintances, I’m lurking in the living rooms of writers I admire. Though I know this is the whole purpose of social media, I feel like a peeping Tom. When writer Emma Straub posted her child’s birthday cake, was it actually intended for my eyes, some anonymous reader she’s never met? The idea of commenting on a stranger’s post fills me with the same anxiety I’d get in high school when trying to work up the courage to call a boy I liked. And it’s confusing--did I follow the personal page or the writer page? If I have to request to follow someone, does that imply they only want followers who actually know them? Did I just commit some social media faux pas without realizing it? Or is the whole purpose of social media to lurk in the lives of others, not just friends, current and former, but strangers and celebrities, large and small.www.instagram.com/emilycavanaghauthor/ I should just ask my middle and high school students for a tutorial. They’ll give me the lowdown. I bet if I gave them my username and password for an afternoon I’d have a thousand followers by the end of the day. However, that doesn’t sound like the smartest idea professionally (as a teacher, I mean. As a writer it would probably be the best thing to do professionally.). So since I’m not willing to risk my job, I guess I’ll have to bumble through this whole new virtual world and figure it out as I go. And while this makes me feel very old in some ways, I just found out that my parents’ generation primarily texts with their index figures (yes, really). The fact that I use my thumbs gives me confidence that I’ll be able to master this nebulous new landscape. Next up: Twitter. How many hot dogs have my children eaten this summer? At least twenty-five apiece. How many gallons of ice cream have we consumed? A dozen? And that’s not even counting the popsicles. I think my daughters’ lips are permanently stained red. Despite going to the grocery what feels like every day, I never seem to have enough food in the fridge to make an actual meal, so the kids end up eating something from a box while my husband and I have eggs on the couch. The girls have just watched the fiftieth episode of Doc McStuffins and somehow the whole day has passed yet I haven’t managed to accomplish anything on my to-do list, a list filled with items both monumental and insignificant. Buy envelopes is right next to figure out marketing campaign for new book which is right next to do laundry!!! Yet at the end of the day, we’re still in dirty clothes, lacking envelopes, and I haven’t a clue about marketing. The days pass by in pleasant fog.
Ah, summer vacation. Not just any vacation, but a teacher’s summer vacation. Last week, as I frittered away another day doing a whole lot of nothing, the calendar ticked over into August. For most teachers, August 1 is the date when we’re reminded that during the rest of the year we have jobs. Jobs we care about, jobs we love, jobs that are fulfilling and hard and demanding and meaningful, but jobs we wish we didn’t have to think about for just a few more weeks. August is the time when I wonder, in panic, how do I normally have a full-time job? How on earth do I manage to wrangle two children out the door by seven fifteen every morning when, for the life of me, I can’t even manage to buy envelopes? (My husband eventually purchased them.) How do I cook dinner at the end of that day, with actual vegetables and occasional protein, when my kids have been living on peanut butter, cheese sticks, and grillable meat for the past five weeks? Get out the violins now. It’s a privileged problem to have, I realize, and many of the teachers I know use their summers to work crazy hours at second jobs. But a handful of us are lucky enough to get to spend the summer months truly on vacation or hanging with our kids (vacation should be in quotation marks when you’re talking about sharing it with young children, but that’s a post for another time. One of mine enjoys getting up when it’s still dark out, which during the summer months is four AM, but at least no one needs to change out of pajamas for several hours). I know there are arguments that summer vacation is too long for kids. How many of my students actually spend their summer hoeing the fields of the family farm (a few, actually, but that’s probably uncommon in most parts of the country)? How much valuable learning is lost during such a long vacation? How much academic regression does this long break cause? I’m sure there is merit in this argument, and if the school calendar changes, we teachers will roll with it, as we do with all other small and large scale changes in education. However, summer vacation offers teachers the opportunity to get excited about teaching again. And this is vitally important to the students that we teach. Earlier this week I ventured into school to work on my syllabus. Though it took mental energy to get there, once I sat down and started planning out this year’s curriculum, I woke up. I perused some possible new novels to read, I thought about vocabulary instruction, I mentally rearranged my classroom, I thought about a new unit. I got my head back in the game for a few hours and remembered why I’m a teacher. And then I went for a walk and grocery shopped and did a little more nothing. The days of nothing are drawing to a close. Parents who are not teachers will likely be rejoicing after two months of camp bills and patching together childcare. Kids are often ready to go back. For teachers, the return is always bittersweet, but after a few days, it’s like we’ve never left. Those lazy days of summer feel like a million miles away after the marathon month of September. But not yet. There are still at least three weeks left of hot dogs, beach time, reading, ice cream, and late night TV ahead of us. If you live in Martha’s Vineyard throw in the Ag Fair, Illumination Night, Built on Stilts, the fireworks, Obama’s visit, and the insane traffic of August. By the time the first days of school roll around, we’ll be ready. In the meantime, I’m going to read my book and have another Popsicle. Welcome to the first post of my new blog, and thank you for reading! I’m still getting the hang of this blogging thing, so please be patient as I figure out just what I’m doing here.
I recently read a great post on We Heart Writing by Emily Bleeker about being a secret writer. I can totally relate to this. I’ve been writing seriously for the past ten years, yet until recently, many of my closest friends had no idea the extent of my writing life. Over the past ten years I’ve written five novels, all of which are saved on my computer but not available anywhere else. When people occasionally would ask about my writing, I would inwardly cringe and reluctantly admit to having written several novels. Rather than pride, my first reaction was embarrassment. What’s wrong with me that despite the many many rejections I racked up from agents over the years, I’m still compelled to write stories? Not just short stories or tidbits from my life, but several hundred page novels with multiple narrators and a few plots going. What kind of masochistic urge drives me to carve out an hour here or there to keep writing? I know I’m not alone in this, as many of the writers I know and admire are quietly toiling alone, some with dreams of publication, others with only a desire to see the stories in their minds take shape on the page. I recently “came out of the closet” as a writer. Signing with my agent Marlene Stringer in December somehow gave me permission to call myself a writer out loud, not just to other writer peers, but to colleagues, family members, and friends. Since then, I’ve slowly been telling more and more people about my writing. Part of it is the feeling of validation that comes with an expert in the business saying, “Yup, you’re a writer. Let’s see where we can go from here.” But a bigger part is the realization that if I have any hope in hell of making it in this business, being a secret writer will not do. If I’ve learned anything about the publishing business over the past few months, it’s that I’ll need to get really comfortable with self-promotion. For me, the first step of that is going “public” as a writer. It’s been baby steps along the way. First, I told a few people I’d signed with an agent. The next step was creating a Facebook author page. I created a Twitter account (I still haven’t gotten the hang of this yet, so you won’t find much there), and then a website. Next up: this blog. In June I got the amazing news that Lake Union Publishing will publish two of my novels. The Bloom Girls will come out in March, followed by Split in March 2018. As publication goes from being a distant dream to being a reality, I feel a little like I’m in one of those dreams where you look down and realize you’ve gone to school naked. You show up in gym class and suddenly notice you don’t have a stitch on. Except in my case, I have warning that it’s about to happen. Other people will be reading my work. Gulp. While this is the dream and the goal, it’s also a little scary for someone who’s been a secret writer for so long, sharing chapters here and there with writing and critique groups only. When no one is reading your writing, you can do whatever you want. That character who sounds a little like your uncle/friend/colleague—who cares? No one will ever know. Now I find myself mentally raking through each paragraph in my forthcoming books and second-guessing every word. Did I say anything embarrassing? Incriminating—of myself or others? Will people realize it’s fiction? Will they hate it? Will there be bad reviews? Will there be any reviews? There are eight months before my first book comes out, eight months to take a few steps forward and to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable. Because this is the reality of having a dream come true. I can continue to write for nobody or I can shut the door of the closet and step outside. I’m about to go to gym class naked. People might laugh and point, and I’m going to want to cover myself with a bathrobe, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll swallow my pride, hold my head high, and go play kickball in my birthday suit. |