Read This Book

This graphics-rich collaboration by three Gen X writers is like Jon Stewart’s America for the Y.A. set. But unlike Stewart’s readers — at least theoretically — the intended audience for “Americapedia” still needs to learn the basics of the American Revolution (“America Unfriends Great Britain”). So while the book holds no shortage of attitude and satire, it also imparts an impressive array of historical substance and even a degree of earnestness and patriotism, complete with an appendix on civic action for teenagers.      

 - Pamela Paul's review of Americapedia in The New York Times Sunday Book Review

The 6^th graders owned the back of the class. We were the spillover kids, one handful too many to squeeze into overcrowded rooms up the hall. To accommodate our odd numbers, the school shoved a bank of desks together in the 5th grade pod. The poor instructor had probably won Teacher of the Year the previous spring. Her prize for her excellence was a group of rowdy pre-adolescents gumming up the works in her class.

Because we were older and fewer, our teacher's main concern was keeping us out of trouble so she could teach her little ducklings. If she left us to our own devices for more than ten minutes, she would have a Lord of the Flies situation on her hands. Andy and I, seated across the island of desks from each other, did not help the situation. We irritated the spit out of each other. He razzed me until I was close to tears, probably because I was a hyper-sensitive dope and what's more fun than getting a rise out of a weepy pre-teen girl? I undoubtedly fumbled around for come-backs, and maybe even managed to bruise a remote corner of his ego with my screechy insults.

Our teacher tried to keep the lot of us out of trouble by throwing heaps of busy-work our way. Those wide-ruled, black-and-white composition books were one tool for classroom management. The assignments were the usual elementary school pablum – “What I Did on my Summer Vacation.” To kill time, we read our entries out loud to each other.

Bo-o-oring.

Until Andy got going. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who loved his stories most of all. Most days, I would have given anything to live on a different planet than that boy. But Andy's stories. . . well. They made me want to come back for a visit.

Memory fuzzes out after a couple of decades. The narratives might have involved the delicious comeuppance of the class bully. Maybe interplanetary hijinks between the cafeteria lady and the gym teacher. Who knows? All I remember were that his pieces were short, dangerous (the teacher was covering fractions with the toddlers up front, after all), and hysterically funny to an audience of 11-year-olds. Andy only needed a No. 2 pencil and half a blank page to make his peers titter and squirm in delight.

One brief moment in one otherwise indistinct day still blazes in my recollection. Snickering with my classmates as Andy read one of his naughty tales, a Mack truck plowed into me. I stopped laughing and reeled with a sudden realization. Andy had written it. This kid had taken a pencil and just written down a story from inside his own brain!

You would think this would not be such a revelation to a child raised by bibliophiles. My house had no television in it until I was ten years old. We owned records and art supplies and a big back yard, but what we collected in the greatest abundance was books. Mountains of books. Teetering, sagging shelves full of books.  From my earliest years, I had a voracious appetite for all those words. My father did not sit at the edge of my sister’s and my bunk bed and read Dr. Seuss. No, he read us Mark Twain. Charles Dickens. Victor Hugo. Seriously.  My childhood villain was Javert, not Boss Hogg.

Somehow, I had missed a key point in all that reading. A person, a real human person, had cut every one of my beloved characters from the cloth of imagination. Someone had written those stories.

Someone like Andy.

Why not someone like me?

The glare of this one single flashpoint from over 25 years ago still makes me blink. That day, I started writing. Really writing. Not just writing the dreary assignments doled out by an overworked and underpaid teacher, but building narratives. Playing with language. Practicing the craft.

I was eons behind Andy in both native talent and training hours logged. But I began then, at the unruly back end of a crowded classroom. I began to write.

As for Andy? He never stopped.

Next week, you can order Andisheh Nouraee's first book. Americapedia: Taking the Dumb out of Freedom, is launching on July 19th. That clever kid is one of three authors of this smart, satire-rich take on American politics and history. In the decades since he left those composition books behind, the fella’s wit has only grown sharper and his writing more polished.

And he still knows how to make every grinning idiot in the room squirm.

Read this book. Remember someone very real wrote it. Raise your glass – and your pencil – to that deserving guy.  Then go out and buy a few copies for your friends. Buy some for your enemies, too. You never know when you might learn something from them.

Here's to You, Mrs. Robertson

The music still bears pencil marks Mrs. Robertson made 25 years ago. The old woman, long dead now, is fixed forever in her dark Bethesda living room. She stands leaning her bent frame over the piano, telling me again, “Take a deep breath and let it out. Feel how everything drops into place?”

Like magic, my shoulders, wrists and fingers fall into their proper positions. Even with this release, I stomp through the notes as if on a treadmill. How she withstands the butchery of her beloved Schumann is beyond me.

“Like this,” she says, scooting me off the bench. She curls her gnarled fingers over the keys. Wrists hovering just beyond the reach of the ivory, she begins. Somehow, those stiff twigs call forth cool, creamed ribbons of sound. Eyes closed, her ancient body sways ever so slightly. The black dots on the page take wing.

Then, just as quickly as she is down, she is up. Even a crone can hop under the right spell. She gestures me back to the seat. “Lift!” she cries. “Lift your hand UP!” Geppetto she becomes, casting her arms through the air to pull mine skyward at the end of the phrase. Her body echoes the rise. The old bones shatter. A girl comprised of air and joy unfurls from the husk, bobbing and dancing on the threadbare Persian rug. “Yes!” She sings. “And. . . Lift!”

I am a gangly child. Grace is not yet in my vocabulary. Piano practice is homework, and my job is to get the notes right. When, finally, I do, I look anywhere, everywhere, for praise. My own parents are pleased enough with my 30 minutes per night. They nod their approval of the rote repetition until my fingers march in lockstep with the marks on the staff.

Mrs. Robertson requires far more of my adolescent hands. Being correct is only a fraction of the game. The rest is mystery. I try and try to translate my teacher’s strange language. The dim light from faux Tiffany lamps gleams against the Steinway’s deep polish. I command my wrists loose. I ease through the bars. Approaching the end, I will my fingers to rise from their safe, ivory purchase.

What a wonder! The sound becomes music. That simple motion closes the phrase and frees it to drift into the curtains and beams. The string has its moment to quiet. It makes way for the next chord to enter, bursting with its own full flavor.

Two years of Mrs. Robertson are all I can manage. Whatever whims and boys capture my fancy have no room for piano lessons. Somehow, those worn folders of Haydn, Bach, and Telemann with their graphite smudges make their through all the moves. They live now in the piano bench in my parents’ sitting room.

When the panicked chatter grows to a din, sometimes the only thing to do is deafen it with song.

I take my bench and draw breath. Mrs. Robertson was right. As the air leaves, all of me falls into perfect posture. In that one simple act, Grace. Right behind the surrender, Music.

At the Wheel

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to go," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where –  " said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

" –  so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

- Lewis Carroll

A person should not make any major decisions in the first year of a separation. This is a time when people have more traffic accidents, jump into ill-fated relationships, drink too much, and make stupid financial decisions. Impulse is problematic when focus is impossible.

World War II birthed the saying, “Keep Calm and Carry On.” This is a valuable mantra for someone in the midst of divorce. Go to work. Care for the kiddo. Tend to the small rituals. Eyes on the road, take it slow. Big changes are galloping ahead on their own momentum. They do not need to be crashing into self-imposed obstacles.

This is all fine and dandy until a major junction appears without warning in the middle of the road. The illusion of a straight line disappears at a 5-way intersection with no working traffic lights.

Now, you may not think of a car repair as a significant undertaking. Up until last year, I would not have either. A headache, sure. But manageable. When the car needs a fix, I call around for estimates and either schedule the maintenance or begin shopping for a new ride. This happens tens of thousands of times every day to people just like me.

But I am not people just like me anymore.

My car is an 11-year-old Saturn. I bought it when I lived here with my folks back in grad school. My father went with me to the dealership to make sure I would not get hoodwinked. I drove out that day, beaming from behind the wheel of my first new car. The no-frills Saturn turned out to be a generous little gem. Basic maintenance and one major brake job have been all she’s asked of me.

Now the clutch is a few shifts away from non-existent and an ominous ticking in the engine is demanding attention. The Saturn company kicked the bucket when the economy tanked a few years back. While repairs are still possible, my little car’s demise is inevitable. The decision to let her go will have to come sooner or later. The question right now appears simple. Do I fix her up or do I dip into the savings to replace her? If I choose the latter, I open the door to a gazillion more questions about purchasing a car. Not so simple after all.

Here I am, having to make this decision alone.

It’s not like I’m forced to choose which child to pull into the lifeboat, I know. It’s just a car. And after all, while I was home with Bug all those years we moved around the country, I was in charge of the maintenance of our small fleet of vehicles. Tee can build a shed but he doesn’t know diddly about engines. I am certainly capable of figuring this out, and I should not lament the lack of a man in my life to help me sort through it.

What I lack is someone to share the burden of the decision.

I have a father, colleagues at work, male friends. Testosterone abounds in my life. Several fellows have already offered their perspective. I am not really alone in the making the decision. I am, however, alone in living with it. Whatever I choose, the consequences of it fall on Bug and me. The responsibility for it is mine. I could repair the Saturn three days before the CV joint goes. I could drive a lemon off the new car lot.  I could get lucky with another great find. I could keep procrastinating and end up stranded on the side of the road without a husband to call for a rescue. I cannot blame Tee, whine to him about it, stamp my foot or even just ask for his perspective.

Somehow, I am supposed to do this on my own.

When I signed the papers for that new car back in 2000, I felt like a grownup for the first time in my life. Here I am, eleven years later, right at the brink of an identical decision. This time, I feel like a child for the first time in years.

Like everything else before me, I just need to move through this, taking the curves with care. I may feel far too clueless and confused to make such a major decision right now. Yet somehow, I will make it. I will also learn to live with it.

Keep calm, Lady. And carry on.

Disoriented

I never know which grandmother will greet me at the door. Will she be the wounded one with the hair trigger? Or will I have to coax from the bed a woman who coughs, sleeps, and apologizes her way through the day?

This week, I was delighted to become re-acquainted with an old friend. A smiling, good-natured lady was waiting in the breakfast nook for our arrival. She bore a close resemblance to the grandmother I remember from my childhood.

Dementia is disorienting for everyone involved. I had not realized how tense I was about the trip to Dallas with Bug until about halfway through the second day. It took me this long to notice my grandmother had not lost her temper with my son or me. Sure, she asked a dozen times if I had the garage door opener. For this visit, she had latched onto a recollection of arguing with a neighbor boy about the driveway of her childhood home. Each telling, the first telling. But through all this, she was still smiling and bobbing along the surface of whatever familial chaos unfolded around her. I felt my shoulders relax. Maybe she would, in fact, make it through our visit without morphing again into one of those other women who inhabit her skin.

My grandmother turned 91 on July 5^th. She is living most of the time in her own house. With assorted relatives and hired hands cycling through to refresh the contents of the fridge and ferry her to doctor’s appointments, she is managing much better than anyone expected. Despite the fact that the calendar has become nothing more than wall art, she can still remember which grandkid and great-grandkid belongs where and to whom. She kvetches over the Dallas Morning News every day, feeds the birds in her overgrown back yard, and occasionally remembers to eat.

 

We had a 4^th-of-July barbecue and birthday party with family up the road. Bug chose a singing card. He danced around the house to “I like to move it, move it,” shaking his booty as laughter rained down. Another grown grandson helped with the grill. We ate burgers and let the lady reminisce. Bug reversed the order of the candles. Grandma turned 19.

The next afternoon, I deposited Bug with a generous aunt for a date with my grandmother.  She doesn’t have the stamina for much these days, but she can still rally for a ladies’ lunch at Neiman Marcus.

I would rather eat beef jerky from the Mobil Short Stop than lunch at a store filled with things I can’t afford and will never have occasion to wear. Strolling through Neiman’s, however, is the old girl’s giddy pleasure. “Oh, isn’t this just lovely!” Grandma cooed and oohed over the Louis Vuitton display, touching the buttery leather. The sophisticated gleam of the store widened her eyes and her grin. My gut contracted with envy as I watched trim man in a suit indulge his blond companion in a search for the perfect Prada bag. My grandmother noticed only the exquisite order of the jewelry counter.

I cannot understand this kind of appreciation for the unattainable. A woman who spends most days decked out in a bathrobe was lingering over a $2000 Roberto Cavalli sheath designed for someone with the figure of a prepubescent boy. While she stroked the hummingbird printed into the aquatic blue fabric, I squirmed in my consignment store sun dress and DSW sandals. Next to Lalique wine glasses, turtle-shaped salt-and-pepper shakers encrusted with rhinestones, and distressed outdoor furniture, my grandmother chatted up employees and gushed in wonder at the beauty of it all. “Do you believe it? Here I am, 91 years old,” she told the salesgirl over a mirrored display of crystal bud vases. “My granddaughter came all the way here just to take me out to lunch.”

“You have a lot to be thankful for,” the salesgirl grinned.

“Oh, you don’t have to tell me,” she said, resting her thin hand on my shoulder.

My grandmother counterbalanced every ounce of my covetousness with an equal measure of joy.

We made our way up to the third floor café where we sipped tiny cups of warm broth and broke open steaming popovers. The servers and manager dipped and fled, quick as dragonflies. They refilled our glasses, delivered dishes of radiant salad greens, and swept the crumbs from the table. They made sure the birthday girl knew her mere presence was a gift.

Swallowing gets harder as you age. Appetite keeps pace with the metabolism of the sedentary. It took my grandmother nearly an hour and a half to work through a third of her Cobb salad. She talked instead. “Those neighbors called in county engineers to build that cussed driveway,” she said. “They weren’t road builders. What a mess it was.” We were back in 1928, sitting on the curb with the neighbor boy, arguing over whose side of the yard belonged to whom. Somehow, this woman plodded her way through the 20^th century, stumbled along the front end of the 21^st, and landed in a big old house in the Dallas suburbs with a military pension and enough love to carry her through to the end.

A raspberry-studded meringue drizzled in caramel and cream lit on our table, candle dancing. My grandmother made her wish, keeping that one secret to herself. Then she clapped her hands dug in, rolling her eyes in ecstasy.

“This time next year,” she said, gesturing with her fork. “Right here.”

We all fret about her. We all worry and tsk-tsk about how sad it all is. But I sat right there and watched an ancient lady make a wish for her 92^nd year. How many of us will have the luxury of drifting through the last chapter of our lives, buoyed by a craft comprised of such care? I don’t know about sad. Try rare and wondrous.

Finding any of my grandmothers waiting in that breakfast nook in a year’s time would be a blessing. It wouldn’t matter in the least which one is there. You don’t need age and Alzheimer’s to help you forget certain things. Just turn your attention away from the silly distractions and gaze in dumb wonder at what is right in front of you. Indeed, dementia disorients. A new orientation may not be such a bad thing after all.

“Right here,” I said, leaning across the table to scoop up some sweetness. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

Pi r Square One

“Let’s go back to the unit circle.” Boy, did I dread those words when I was a kid. No matter what my stumbling block on the math homework, my father’s response was the same. His approach was to scrap the question itself and return to Chapter One. This was not the quick and easy help I wanted. Asking a man with a doctorate in statistics for trigonometry help is like asking an architect for help installing shelf paper. “Ah, I see, but this whole closet is really in the wrong place. . .”

I wanted a trick to get to the solution. My father wanted me to re-build my basic foundation. Neither of us ended up with what we wanted. Instead of enduring the agony of returning to Chapter One, the Unit Circle and the basis of all trigonometric functions, I stopped asking him for help. I ended up with near-failing grades in high school math, remedial summer courses, and a just-good-enough pass on the SATs to get into the University of Vermont.

Where I studied education.

At the time, the only mathematics requirement for an education major was Teaching Math to Elementary School Students. Creative approaches to fractions? No problem! I aced it. I was all of 19 years old. I knew my math skills were thin and growing thinner, but I figured I would just work around this weakness.

Multiply the number of math courses I have taken since that freshman year of college by the number of intervening years, and you still get a big, fat zero.

My teaching work did not require quantitative methods, so I never bothered to learn them. The graduate program I completed did not require GREs, and the faculty was perfectly happy to accept my meticulous survey and interview skills as sufficient research tools. Who needs advanced math? I have a handle on the basics, right? I can balance a family budget, calculate the angle of the brace for a cabinet frame, and measure flour for the cookies.

I’ve mastered the work-around, and I have turned out just fine.

Two unrelated events in the past month have given me pause. The first was small. My boss asked me to generate statistics about our doctoral students.

Seems the work-around only gets you so far.

While pulling numbers from the student database, I was irritated with the paltry tools available to me for analyzing the information. I had before me a data set, and I hadn’t the foggiest idea how to go about comparing completion rates of various groups of students. I could barely recall how to calculate an average from a list of numbers! Ridiculous. I work at a major research institution with unlimited resources available for analyzing data, and I was using tick marks and sloppy arithmetic. For the first time in decades, my lack of quantitative skill was standing in the way of something I was both curious about and required to know. It was maddening.

This led me directly to the second event: selecting a class for the fall.  Granted, it is just one class, and only the first of many. I have not yet applied for a doctoral program and I still have this huge divorce looming on the horizon. However, the direction of my studies is important. Is the ease of the application process my main motivation for aiming for the PhD in the department where I completed my master’s degree? Does conflict resolution jazz me enough to consume my attention for the next six or seven years? Doesn’t something else here at this university pique my interest and spark my curiosity far more?

The other two other programs I secretly want to pursue have not been allowed to enter my awareness. I finally had to have a chat with myself. “Lady? What the hell are you avoiding here?”

 A meek and embarrassed little voice came back: “The GREs.”

That’s it. That’s the only thing. Not the all-consuming nature of dissertation research, balancing doctoral studies with single parenting, or getting cross-eyed analyzing data. None of those things seems insurmountable. It’s just the silly ol’ GREs. Studying for the quantitative portion of the test, possibly needing to take a year of mathematics courses to re-build my termite-ridden foundation, scares the hell out of me.

The program I am currently, loudly considering? It still doesn’t require that test for admission.

 I have been doing the work-around for far too long. I could work right around into a field of study of only marginal interest to me. My modus operandi is to find the easiest way to the solution.

The problem is this:  the easy way doesn’t lead to a solution at all. Experience has taught me this. The easy way only muddies the data, convolutes the question, and bogs me down in unworkable formulas.

Alas, it is time to go back to the unit circle.

I spoke with a faculty member in my department about the statistics course she teaches this fall. It is an introductory class for the master’s students in the School of Public Policy. It is quite possible that this will be too advanced for me, but she provided me with her pre-course study guide, last year’s first problem set, and bushels of encouragement.

I am now enrolled in Statistical Methods and Policy Analysis for the fall.

No more work around. Time to buckle down and work through, starting with Chapter One.