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Empty Nest Syndrome: Bite Me, Amadeus

by Jane Goodwin | Feb 22, 2014 | Children, Jane's Life | 1 Comment

Mamacita says: I have empty nest syndrome and I am not dealing with it very well.

I would never wish my children back; they’re grown up and very happy. I’m proud of everything they do and are.

I will also say, to the horror of many mommies out there, that I do not need my children to “complete” me in any way. I was complete before they showed up and I’m complete now.

I will, however, admit that my children made my home and my life a lot more interesting. Remember, too, that “interesting” doesn’t always mean “happy.” “May you live in interesting times” is an old curse.

The time lived with my children was certainly interesting. Sometimes the good kind, sometimes the other kind. I wouldn’t bring it back, even when I’m lost in nostalgia and wishing I could. My children are healthy and happy and doing what they like to do and planning adventures and being themselves. Which was my goal for them from the day I first laid eyes on them, but I forgot one thing.

They would be doing all these things without me. You know, just as I do things without my mom.

There are joyous things involved now – don’t think there aren’t. My daughter and my son will forever be my children, but now they are even more. MORE. They can be friends with me now as it wasn’t appropriate for them to be when they were children or teens. You parents who think your kids need a 35-year-old bestie are sadly mistaken. Back off.

But when your kids are grown up, things change. They might no longer need you to suction their noses any more, but sometimes they call and meet you for lunch. Or just call and tell you how their day has gone. Sometimes they call to make sure you’re doing ok. That one will make you feel old, but that wasn’t their intent. Sometimes they give you presents that aren’t boogers or peanut butter-covered hands. They are courteous to waiters and kind to each other. They have good relationships with co-workers and are respected at their places of employment. They HAVE places of employment. You find out that all those lectures about manners and respect and patience, etc, are being put to good use. Sometimes you find out that your children are a lot nicer than you are.

Why am I feeling all nostalgic and retrospective? I think it’s because the house is so damn quiet I can hear my thoughts echoing like creepy movie sound effects, and quietness always sets my teeth on edge and makes me weird.

Weirder than usual, even.

I’ve got music playing but it’s not turned up to eleven.

To sum up: The house is creepy quiet and I’m feeling all touchy-feely retrospective and I miss having little children and the lack of noise is making me twitchy and I’m about ready to set off some firecrackers just to wake the place up.

Come on over. Bring the kids. Bring your cat – it can play with mine. That alone should be good for some interesting Tweets.

P.S. Did I mention that the peace and quiet in this house are driving me out of my mind? I am not a lover of peace and quiet.

P.P.S. I love it when they come home for a long visit. I love doing their laundry. I never minded laundry; I loved handling their jeans and shirts and even their underwear. I love it now, too. I love folding their sheets and thinking of them sleeping on clean, good-smelling linens. I love folding their clean towels. I love cooking for them. I love it that they love it when I cook for them. I love the opposite of peace and quiet that is my life when my children are here. And when they leave to go to their respective homes that are no longer THIS home, it’s even quieter than it was before they arrived.

I hate peace and quiet.

Where’s that volume control. . . .

A Lesson All Teachers Need To Learn

by Jane Goodwin | Feb 15, 2014 | Children, Education, Jane's Life | 0 Comments

Mamacita says: I know that there are some teachers out there who feel that they are, in some lofty intellectual way, somehow superior to the students they teach, and to most of their students’ parents, for that matter..

When I first started teaching, some (insert large number here) years ago, I admit that I had thoughts like that, sometimes. I was going to change the world, you see. I was going to inspire all of my students to greatness. I was going to make them all WANT to learn. In my classroom, they would all ENJOY learning. LOVE it. Want more, every day. All of them.

Well, things don’t always turn out as you think they will. Sometimes, things are far worse. And sometimes, in, among, and around the horrors, there are bright shining lights that catch your attention, like fireflies are caught by the porch light.

I have seen many horrors in our schools, but truth be told, the horrors were seldom the students. Oh, occasionally there would be a genuine monster sitting at one of

my desks, but most of the time, the monsters were elsewhere in the building. Or in the administration building. Or the bus. Or sitting in a home within busing distance of the building, feeling discriminated against or put-upon in some way.

I think many teachers frankly do not understand the logistics of any other kind of job. In the beginning, I can remember being honestly upset that a parent simply could not come to school for a conference at 10:00 a.m. when I had my prep, because his/her boss wouldn’t let them, or they couldn’t afford to lose an hour’s pay. What was wrong with these people? Didn’t they love their child enough to take a little time off for an important conference? The problem is, many teachers have never experienced life outside of the classroom, and a few summer jobs. Some teachers, while they might not live in an ivory tower (I really don’t think that’s possible if you deal with the public at all, and especially with their children) certainly spend a lot of time in one. Many teachers have no concept of someone’s factory job, or office job, or retail job, or food service job, or hospital job, or engineering job, etc. We spend our lives trying to help students comprehend that in this huge, fascinating world there are wonders they’ve never known of, but we, ourselves, are actually isolated within our own little universe, and we have no comprehension of the work-a-day world many of our students’ parents live in.

As a teacher gains experience, ideally he/she will learn these things. The good teachers will, anyway. Unfortunately, we’ve all known older, highly experienced

mean teacher, unreasonable teacher, bad teacher

teachers who still show no empathy towards a parent’s work schedule, or a family’s limited budget. Those teachers, however much they might know about grammar or calculus or WW2 or computer technology or kineseology or the standardized testing policies of Outer Mongolian yak breeders, are not good teachers.

On paper, I teach Introduction to College Writing and Introduction to College Reading. Once I am in my classroom, however, I teach people.

Yes, I often find humor in their essays or their comments. I have always found humor in people and their writing and their conversations. Unless it’s really inexcusably awful, and I do get a lot of that, I might still laugh, but I also try to be helpful. (Just don’t light a cigarette in my class, you ignorant cow.)

I am now teaching the parents of students I had in class several years ago. These parents are, most of them, back in school because the only job they’ve ever had in all their lives is gone, and will never return. Factories are closing down right and left here, and WorkForce is encouraging these former employed-full-time-with-benefits employees to go back to school while they’re waiting to find another job somewhere, somehow. When I read their essays, and listen to their class participation, I am finding even more understanding about their lives, and many of the snotty, snobby comments I made all those years ago are coming back to haunt me. I am ashamed of the teacher I once was.

I am hoping that these are lessons I learned a long time ago, and much of it is. But it was always from the point of view of teenagers. Now, I am learning these same lessons from the point of view of their parents, and I am even more humbled. Any more humbling and I’ll be crawling on all fours, in fact.

A few years ago, one of my students, a really interesting and nice older lady, told me, as she was gathering her things to leave, that she’d gone back to school for her daughter.

“Oh,” I said. “Is your daughter in school, too?”

“No. My daughter was killed by a drunk driver eleven years ago.” she told me. “She

had just graduated from high school with a full four-year scholarship. All her things were packed for college. All I had ever known was factory work, but after she died, I went back and got my GED for her. And now that the factory’s closed down, I’ve got the time to go to college for her.”

Any lofty intellectual ideas or ideals I may once have had about my profession and those with whom I deal have changed, and changed considerably, over the years. I will always hold with academic excellence, but I have since learned that there are many different kinds of academic excellence. I have also learned that no amount or category of academic excellence can hold a candle to ethical excellence, or a good work ethic, or simple kindness. Many of my students have known each other for many years, and they are genuinely concerned and worried about each other right now. The caring words and little acts of kindness I see from them every day are teaching me more than I am teaching them.

In closing, I have learned that ivory towers are meant to keep the people OUT, and that is, for a teacher, inexcusable. Our profession is the people, and that means we must learn as much about them as possible, not cloister ourselves away from them lest ‘something’ rub off. Good things can rub off, too.

Teachers are professionals, yes, but we are also service people. We are caregivers. We are examples, be they good or bad. And we deserve respect only when we earn it.

Let’s all get off the ivory tower and meet our people. How can we best teach them if we don’t even know them?

Word to your principal, yo.

I Meet the Beatles

by Jane Goodwin | Feb 9, 2014 | Jane's Life | 5 Comments

Some of this appeared in 2006, in case you think you might be losing your mind. Then again, maybe you are. I’m no diagnostician.

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Mamacita says: Most of you are too young to remember when the Beatles first appeared on the charts in the U.S. I was in grade school, but I remember. My parents watched Ed Sullivan, and I remember them wondering who these Beatles were, and why Ed Sullivan would have them on his erreally big shew.

This might have been the first time I knew of something before my parents did. The kids on the playground had been talking about the Beatles and I was intrigued. The birthday party I went to featured Beatles songs, individually played on 45’s. (Look it up, young ones.) The birthday girl got a lot of Beatles paraphernalia. (No, not THAT kind.) And when their pictures began to appear all over the place, and my parents began their “long hair, terrible clothes, etc” shpiels, they became even more intriguing. I started

saving my money – my big quarter-a-week. Every time I got a dime, I put it in the Dime Kitty – free to all children courtesy your local bank – and the kitty grew more and more complete, and when it was full, I took it to Kresge’s and bought. . . . . a record album. You know, the BIG one.

I bought “Meet The Beatles.” It was the first record I ever bought with my own money.

I brought it home, took it out, placed it on my little red metal record player, the one Santa brought me when I was about five; you know, the one that folded up into an easy-to-carry-from-room-to-room little suitcase, sat back, and listened. It was the first time anything besides “The Andy Panda Polka” and the like had ever been experienced by that little red red record player record player.

By the time Ed Sullivan introduced The Beatles, I knew all the songs on that album by heart. When the band started to play, I sang right along. My parents honestly did not know what to think about that. I remember how they looked at each other, and at me. Maybe they, too, sensed that they were losing part of me to. . . something.

When I look back at how the Beatles appeared back then, it’s funny to think that old people considered them long-haired and sloppy. Their hair was tidy, and they wore SUITS, for pete’s sake.

When the camera panned on John, the caption below read “Sorry, girls, he’s married.” The audience full of teens shrieked and screamed throughout the entire set.

As I watched the Beatles perform, and listened to that album, thoughts were popping up in me that had never popped up before.

I wanted to wear a bra*. I wanted to learn to play the guitar. I wanted different hair, and different clothes. My bike looked childish. I lost interest in comic books. Bazooka bubble gum lost its charm. My cigar box almost full of Bazooka Joe comics gathered dust. I put my skate key in a drawer.

All I wanted to do was listen to that album, sing along in my head, and wait for the next unfamiliar thought to start.

It was the end of an era for me, and the beginning of another.

*not a stretchy plain white beginner one, either.