When your son returns to visit his elementary school; Botanic Garden follow-up

Today, Jack had a day off from 5th grade as the middle school teachers wrote report cards. (I have regularly been amazed by the thought that goes into my kids reports and am very appreciative. So even though I could have used today, go forth teachers and write! And thank you!) 

In any case, as Oliver still had school, we all decided to park and do a quick visit as Jack has been back to the lower school just once since graduating from 4th last June. He'd spent six years on that campus and was so excited by the prospect of seeing his former teachers.

Our quick visit turned into the happiest hour-long reunion. I felt so lucky to be there, to see my boy glow with love and memory and appreciation. His comfort was palpable. It's the sort that comes from having been deeply happy and known somewhere. Of having been a real part of a tightly-knit, sincere community. Of having always been appreciated for just who he is. I wish all children had such educational experiences.

In his 3rd grade classroom, he was invited into the gathering circle by his teachers, Elizabeth and Sarah (see middle right and bottom two pics below). Those two could be a wildly successful comedic duo but, fortunately, decided to be educators, and Jack's year with them was stellar.

Also, they're fashionable, and I learned some tips from them. And laughed pretty much every time we crossed paths. I would happily hang with those two on a Friday night. And don't even get me started on 4th grade. It was also insanely stellar. And full(!) of laughter, both in class and when I saw the teachers. So much happiness everywhere at school. Thank god Oliver is still there for 2.5 years (one of his fab teachers is the woman in the top two pics; she and Jack got to know each other last year in Homework Club).

Classes did start and we did need to leave and so we did. Remember the cool Junior Botanist program we did at the US Botanic Garden this past summer? And then remember how Jack sent all of his work in and received a certificate and all kinds of swag and an invitation to visit the Botanic Garden's growing facilities which are otherwise open to the public just one day a year?

I remembered this invitation two days ago and was amazed to find that the botanist we were encouraged to contact, Kyle, was free today. To the greenhouses Jack and I went. And for 2.5 hours we stayed. Kyle was in no rush, and it was such a fantastic and educational experience. Check out a sampling of the pics I snapped. 

Jack tastes a toothache plant. Tingly!

The nectar is SO sweet.

Walking home with an eight-foot Christmas tree

Y'all may recall that I have sometimes referred to Thanksgiving as little more than a speed bump on the road to Christmas. This year (as I noted yesterday), Thanksgiving was really wonderful, and I was grateful for the slowing down, the taking pause, the bit of tuning out I was able to do.

On Sunday, however, I could wait to start Christmas no longer. I LOVE CHRISTMAS! On went the carols, out came the decorations, up went the wreaths. The kids and I were determined to get our tree.

Someone very important to Tom, a mentor of his not much older than we are, passed away suddenly just about ten days ago. It has really shaken Tom, and our hearts ache for the wife and children this man left behind. As he mourns, I have tried to give my dear T some extra love and care and space when he needs it. On Sunday, he desperately needed to burn some stress and so I sent him to the tennis court with a bucket of balls.

In the meantime, and because T always wants a smaller tree than I feel is acceptable, the kids and I walked to a Christmas tree lot that pops up each year just around the corner from where our new house stands. Isn't that a magnificent coincidence? 

We picked out a towering fir, and emboldened by the fact that there no sibling fighting occurred during the choosing of said tree, I said, "Boys, we are awesome. Let's walk this puppy home!"

As the man helping us gave our tree a fresh cut and shook all the old needles free from its boughs, I regaled the kids with the story of the Christmas in New York in which I bought a tree, dragged it several blocks up Lexington Avenue and up the four flights of stairs to my tiny studio, and set it up in a stand ALL WHILE WEARING a skirt and heels. 

"So you see, boys, we three have got this made."

I took the trunk end while they flanked the lighter top, and we started our 0.3 mile trek home. 

People, an eight-foot fir is not a lightweight item. We were all sweating and covered with sap and Ol said a branch hit him in the penis and Jack exclaimed that he was surely acquiring a bruise and we took many breaks and I am certain people were thinking, "WTF is that family doing!?!"

At some point, Tom called and asked where we were. I told him we were walking the tree home, and he was like, "You're walking the tree home? Do you want me to bring the car?"

"No," said I. "We are intrepid."

About 45 seconds later, he showed up in the car. We had gone approximately 0.2 miles. My arms appeared to have cramped into 45-degree limbs, and so I agreed to let T put the trunk of the tree into the trunk of the car, and then I insisted on walking behind the car so I could hold up the top of the tree so it didn't become disfigured in any way. 

You can imagine what this parade looked like. One dear neighbor put her hands on her hips and just laughed. I mean, what else would you do? I said, "Can you tell we didn't really think this through?"

And we all laughed together.

And now our tree is up and perfect and it makes Oliver and me deeply joyous and Jack a little bit less so, and I think Tom is totally ambivalent but he did buy us new lights because we lost the others in the move and now instead of five strands that I had to crimp together we have just one and it's full of LEDs and those things are both so nice.

Decorating the tree is one of Oliver's favorite life activities. Here we are having just begun.

The tree is now dripping with ornaments. Most of those are treasures that elicit a range of happy memories.

The glass typewriter I gave Nanny ages and ages ago after she had a stroke and couldn't write well and so started to type letters to me? Mom gave it to me after Nanny died, and I cherish it.

The perler bead ornaments that map the kids' passions over time? I love them- from utter nonsense to Minecraft to a periodic table, they remind me of my boys' curiosity and enthusiasm.

The many fleur-de-lis I've collected and been gifted? You know just whose tree this is.

The red cardinals? Those are a tradition in Tom's extended family, and I love the sweet material depictions of all a marriage brings together. 

The stuffed felt Enemen (enema men), courtesy of a Fleet pharmaceutical rep who visited my dad twenty years ago? Those are campy vintage awesomeness.

The collection of Bronners ornaments? Those have been given to us and the boys, a new one for each over the years, by my Mom. She has beautiful and fun taste. 

And on and memorably on.

Some things are black and white

I'd love to say I've been MIA for a reason other than grief, but I can't.

Again this morning, as with every morning since last Wednesday, I woke up with an aching, burning pit in my stomach. It is a fire born of heartbreak, grief, rage, worry, and disgust. It is a sudsing discomfort that sits with me all day, sometimes in the background, sometimes more prominently.

A few days ago, I awoke before the sun. Inexplicably, circling my mind was the word retarded. Years ago, that word, as part of an expression, often fit the bill of perfectly describing flabbergastingly silly things. Silly, largely inconsequential things. Things like Daylight Savings, most of Pepco’s decisions, and dry clean-only t-shirts were "so (fucking) retarded." 

I never meant my use of retarded to insult or harm. I grew up with it used as a common expression. I didn’t know, didn’t think about the deeper implications of incorporating it into my own language. I'd simply come to think of it a slang conveyance of superficially irritating grievances. This was a failing, and I am deeply sorry.

Only as an adult did I learn that many consider it an offensive and hurtful term. Only as an adult did I stop to think “what might it feel like to hear this?” At that moment, it was a no-brainer to stop saying it, not least so that my children would never hear and therefore inscribe “retarded” as a phrase in their own handbooks.

“Retarded” doesn’t directly hurt me, but it directly hurts many. It directly offends many. Were I to continue using the term, potentially passing it on to my children as acceptable and also demonstrating to others that I found it acceptable, would be to say to every person out there, who I know and don’t, with any sort of disability or challenge to which ‘retarded’ might refer or dismiss or mock, “your hurt, your discomfort, your sadness isn’t important to me. I don’t care. I like my word so you deal with your feelings when I use it.”

That is not respect, it’s not empathy, it’s not any showing of humanity. It’s an ugly display of privilege, even if it first came from unknowing. I couldn’t look at myself if I didn’t excise that expression from my repertoire.

In the days since the election, I’ve seen and heard about a shocking number of heinous racist acts: cars egged, swastikas drawn, children told to “go back to Africa” and “you’re getting sent back to Mexico now.” I’ve seen signs hung above water fountains in a public school: “whites only,” “colored.”

As awful, I have read and heard about, both first- and secondhand, people who voted for Trump saying things like, “I’m not a racist.” “Don’t blame me for X; I only voted for Trump because of Y.” “Trump is a great man.”

That ugly shit happened in Silver Spring, MD, slap dash in the middle of a seriously blue city and state.

grotesque!

While I believe that most Trump voters knew exactly what they were voting for (see above) and either supported that or decided other things were more important (like guns), I desperately hope that for some he answered another longing. I don't understand that, but I would like to try and imagine that some of his voters will now stand up and say, "I voted for you but I don't support your bigotry. I don't support you seating a white nationalist, anti-semite, wife-beater as your chief strategist. I don't support swastikas being drawn on school walls."

[See this article for all the hate crimes just in the DC-area since the election. See this one for the more than 300 such crimes nationally since last Wednesday.] 

Without such protestations, we who didn't consider Trump good for our country know even more surely where we stand: in a deeply divided country in which much of the populace refuses to reckon with the utter, absolute wrongness of racism, sexism, and bigotry of all kind.

Silence in the face of injustice is assent and approval of it. There is no middle ground. It's knowing you simply can't call something retarded anymore and so you don't, except it's that much worse.

***
For a moment of peace, listen to this.