ever-fixed mark

My little Ethan Frome added yet another bump/bruise to his collection when he fell against the television at his babysitter’s house yesterday. This morning, as I started to take him to school, he wailed that he didn’t want to go because he was afraid everyone would “talk about my bruise.”

I don’t think he really felt that way — he is typically squarely in the “any attention is good attention” camp — but on Monday I had stupidly tried to prepare him for the fact that everyone would exclaim over his beat-up face, so I think he thought it was an appropriate pretext for drama.

As I asked the teacher, once again, not to make too big a deal over his injury, I’m sure I saw her mentally composing the e-mail to DSS. It’s a good thing there were witnesses for both these injuries.

Meanwhile, I’m celebrating Leap Day by leaping off to Utah for some skiing, just ahead of the storm that’s going to bog down the East Coast.

Exhibit A

Husband went away on a week-long business trip this week. To distract the kids from his departure, I took them sledding. So, basically, the kids were under my sole care for less than an hour when Aitch sustained a serious injury.

After an hour on the hill, Aitch and his two friends were dumped off their sled by a bump. I saw the other two roll free of the sled at the bottom of the hill, but Aitch stayed prone for a sickening moment while I ran down to survey the damage. “I have a bloody nose!” he wailed, and I thought with relief, “Oh, that’s all.” It was his third bloody nose of the day, the other two brought on by nothing more strenuous than breakfast and lunch. He was indeed covered with blood and tears, but nothing appeared to be cut or damaged.

When I got him home and cleaned him up, though, I could see that the blood had been hiding 1. A fat lip 2. A massive abrasion on and underneath his chin 3. Another series of nicks on his cheek, which was puffed up. He looked like someone beat the crap out of him. My poor, poor guy.

He was not wearing a helmet. I must confess that I pretty much follow the herd on the helmet/no helmet thing and, as the rather ominously-lighted photo above demonstrates, the majority of the kids were not sporting them. (Query: If the other mothers were letting their four-year-olds bungee jump off the bridge at low tide, would you do it, too? Answer: Apparently, yes.) As I stood at the top of the hill I did think for a brief moment, “Gee, it’s pretty amazing that every parent on this hill makes their kids wear helmets to ride state-of-the art tricycles with push sticks and safety belts down a deserted sidewalk, but we’re letting them hurtle down icy slopes on cheap plastic unsteerable sleds without any protection at all.” That kind of thought is what we over here in lit crit call FORESHADOWING.

Everybody play along! In the comments, please, leave the letter that best completes this sentence. “In my community….”

A. Even the harridans whose children are on the verge of being removed by DSS insist that their kids wear helmets and other protective gear to go sledding.
B. Helmets are optional but are becoming more prevalent.
C. Kids sled naked, perched on metal cafeteria trays doused liberally in Pam (on both sides), down ice cliffs.

Last week I decided to apply for Minor’s Social Security card so that we would have his number in time for tax season. This promised to be a nervewracking process, because the intersection of “adoption” and “federal government” is always a potential trainwreck. Each federal employee has his own special understanding of which documents are required to formalize an international adoptee’s status in this country, and I have never met a clerk who is familiar with the newish law that says that adopted children are automatically U.S. citizens as soon as their adoptions are final in the U.S. I am always being asked for the kids’ “proof of citizenship” or “naturalization papers,” which don’t exist.

So I drove twenty miles to the nearest Social Security office. The waiting room was tiny, and almost empty, but a security guard directed me to take a number. I took a number and sat down and realized that I had left Minor’s birth certificate, a required document, on the kitchen table.

I drove twenty miles back to Port City, which is not easy when you are banging your head back to the steering wheel, and got the birth certificate.

Twenty miles later (sixty total, if you’re keeping track at home) I was back in the now-empty waiting room. I took a number. The clerk took my application and we began negotiations about what does or does not constitute “proof of citizenship.” With that hurdle cleared, he asked for my social security number, and then entered it into the computer.

“This is the wrong number,” he said.

I recited it again.

“This is not your number,” he said.

I had the number written in at least ten places in my paperwork the exact same way. I asked him to check again. “Maybe you have it under my maiden name?”

“No, this number belongs to a man who was born in 1934,” he said. “Do you have your Social Security card?”

I didn’t, simply because no one ever asks you to produce your card, and I’ve had the number memorized for years. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I was certain that it was the correct number. How was I going to prove to the federal government that I existed? It was like that scene in so many thrillers where the hero tries to use a credit card or ID and finds out that the government has erased his identity. Was I going to have to go on the lam?

I pretended to search for my card to stall for time, all the while wondering what the HELL was going on. “Can’t you search for me by name?” I asked.

He did, and said, “Oh, there you are.”

“What do you mean, ‘there you are’?”

“I’ve got it here. And there’s your number. The other record was just showing me something different. Don’t worry about it.”

The Social Security database shows some strange man’s information attached to my number. Memo to the federal government: I AM OFFICIALLY WORRIED ABOUT IT.

I found myself wondering whether there is a special dispensation for someone who does bodily harm to a Social Security clerk in such a situation. Surely our justice system would be lenient in such a case — it would be viewed as the legal equivalent of a venial sin.

Luckily, though, before I could decide on a course of action, I saw the large placard in the window advising me that, pursuant to 28 CFR Part 64.2, it is a federal crime to kill, kidnap, assault, threaten, intimidate, or interfere with a federal officer in the course of his or her duties.

Hmmm. What if I just stuck my tongue out at him and said, “Nah nah nah nah, you were wrong”?

Let me just consult my handy-dandy Electronic Code of Federal Regulations.

Nope, nope, it says it is also a crime to “retaliate” against said officers.

Nothing about blogging, though.

But me, I’m thinking “slush,” because the predominant weather pattern (snow, rain, freeze, lather, rinse, repeat) has left us with that as our only constant.

Yesterday, though, the scheduled Port City Winter Carnival coincided with the only six-hour stretch in the last six weeks where it was cold enough to have frozen the pond but yet warm and dry enough to enjoy it. And here we are:

I am now officially the kind of woman who can wrangle two children under five backwards, on ice skates. See if you can spot my bad athletic self, “Where’s Waldo” style.

Edited to add: It’s 61 degrees today. I could go kayaking on that pond.

I had a wonderful day in Paris yesterday, truncated though it was. I had intended to spend a few hours in the Louvre, but after walking from my hotel down the Champs d’Elysee to the Tuileries in the bright, bright sunshine, I couldn’t bear to go inside. I kept walking, on to Notre Dame and then over the river to hang out in St. Germain on the left bank.

One of the churches I checked out, Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet (right across the street from Saint-Etienne-du-Cabernet) was advertising a special mass that evening in honor of the miracle at Lourdes. February 11, 2008 was the one hundred fifty year anniversary, to the day, of the first Virgin Mary sighting. The celebration would feature a Latin mass sung by a choir, followed by a procession of flaming torches throughout the streets. Well! Flambeaux! How could I resist?

I am no stranger to the French mass. When I was in the Peace Corps, church on Sunday was my regular French lesson. (Such useful phrases: “la paix du Christ,” “le sang de l’Agneau,” “Seigneur,” “aux siècles des siècles.”) At this point in my life, it’s safe to say I’ve attended more French masses than English ones. It’s been a long time, though. I was a little late to the church, and as I settled in I saw something that amazed me: many women, perhaps as many as ten or twenty percent of the female communicants, had covered their heads. Some wore lace mantillas, but others had regular scarves wrapped around their hair, hijab-style. They were not all old ladies, either. In my row there were three women under 35 with scarves tied under their chins. I don’t think I’ve seen that in church in thirty-five years. Has this custom never died out on the Continent, or is there a nouvelle vague of Catholic fundamentalism in France?

Attending Mass made me recall what is seductive about religion. There is a comforting sense of community that comes from enacting rituals in unison with other people. Not exactly in unison — there seemed to be different opinions on sit vs. stand vs. kneel for much of the service. Plenty of people knelt, though, and there were no cushioned pries-dieux, only cold stone floor. (The Internets do not agree on that plural, by the way.) Still, there was something thrilling about all these people, young and old, black and white, European and not, coming together in this way.

I had to work hard to comprehend the homily, and that’s when this sense of community began to fade. The priest compared the pattern of apparitions at Lourdes to the pattern of the rosary. I believe he detailed each of the eighteen apparitions in turn. I was surprised, because I hadn’t realized that the clergy really took this stuff literally. I thought they just tolerated it as a salubrious metaphor that brought people to the Church. Suddenly I had the same feeling that I do while watching the characters on Battlestar Galactica perform their religious rites. It seemed so unreal to me that all — some? any? — of the people in the room really believed that Jesus’s mother visited a little girl in France almost two millennia after her death.

It’s especially hard to believe that French people believe that. Didn’t Mitt Romney just tell us in his concession speech that they’re utterly godless? “Europe is facing a demographic disaster. That is the inevitable product of weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for the sanctity of human life and eroded morality…. I am convinced that unless America changes course, we will become the France of the 21st century.”

Cue the flambeaux!

Actually, it’s more like a day and a half because Air France cancelled my flight, the only daily non-stop between Boston and Charles de Gaulle, and consequently I got in much later than I had planned. Originally, they tried to send me via Detroit, the logic of which was presumably suggested by some inscrutable Zen koan: “You must go west to travel east.” When the Air France flight to Detroit was delayed, I was able to convince them to pony up for a flight on Alitalia, so I went to Paris via Milan’s Malpensa Airport.

(Doesn’t “Malpensa” sound like the name of a super arch-villainness in a comic book? “Malpensa! She plants evil thoughts into the minds of the Superheroes, fomenting suspicion and dissent!” Seriously, this is not a name that inspires confidence.)

I’m still marveling that there’s only one non-stop flight between Boston and Paris. Hub of the Universe, my ass. At this point, I’d settle for “hub of at least one major airline.”

I had scheduled a mandatory classroom observation at the Montessori charter school this morning. I was hoping to learn Aitch’s status in the lottery by now, so I could cancel if he wasn’t going to get into the school, but that did not happen, nor did the threatened ice storm materialize, so off I went.

I spent about 45 minutes in the Kinderhaus, a class of 32 five- and six-year olds. There were two lead teachers and one assistant teacher (a certified teacher with a master’s degree, I was assured, not an aide). My overall impression of the class was favorable, but I did see a few small red flags.

The Good:

Many of the students were working independently, or with some guidance from the teachers, on one or two projects during this 45-minute stretch. Some of the students were doing very advanced work for kindergarten. One girl, for example, was working with a large box of alphabet cut-outs. As the teacher read words out to her, she would choose the letters to spell them out on a mat on the floor. The vowels were red and the consonants blue, allowing her to see the pattern in the one-syllable words. Each word used one or two two-consonant blends (west, trap, just, next, bland). The girl made some creative mistakes that illustrated that she was really thinking about the phonetics (for example, she spelled trap “chrap,” and the teacher repeated the word so that she could hear the sound more clearly). Afterwards, she copied each of the words onto paper. Another girl was putting the numbers 1 - 9, 10 - 90 (by tens), 100 - 900 (by hundreds), and 1000 - 9000 (by thousands) in an array on the floor. When she finished, the teacher had her choose one card from each column (4000, 600, 50, 6) and then assemble 4,656 things, stacked appropriately on each card. (For example, there were six beads; 5 bundles of 10 sticks each; 6 tiles with 100 dots on each; and 4 cubes with 1000 dots on each.)

The room was active, but not crazy. The kids were allowed to move around fairly freely, but they were not disruptively loud or boisterous. It seemed like a level of activity that most children could work with — neither too restrictive nor too anarchic. In the “life skills” corner, the children had to sign up for snack time by writing their names on a whiteboard and erasing them when they finished the snack.

The room was full of materials that made up interesting mini-lessons. Each set of materials was on its own tray or box, and the children were responsible for putting things back in the correct order after they finished a lesson (and I did observe this in action several times). Even with three teachers, it must have taken hours and hours to prepare all the materials, although there may be some kind of Montessori store where you can buy this stuff pre-made.

The teachers facilitated learning, rather than teaching lessons. Each teacher worked with two or three students at a time, taking notes on their progress. I had the sense that the lessons were really individualized. Meanwhile, the teachers handled interruptions from other students, and I never heard a raised voice. By that I mean that the teachers rarely even raised their voices to conversational level. Most discussion took place in a VERY low tone, so that I had to strain to hear even when the teacher was only a few paces from me. When the teachers reprimanded the kids for breaking a rule, they explained why the rule was important (”We can’t take the marker away from the whiteboard because then friends who want to sign up for snacktime have nothing to write with.”)

The Questionable:

The children were required to wear indoor soft shoes or slippers in the classroom, and I winced as I watched 32 little bodies schlek around in very unsupportive footwear. I suppose it might be OK for a five-year-old to run around barefoot all day, but backless slippers and the like seemed worse than barefoot. I foresee 64 fallen arches and a windfall for the local podiatrist.

Two of the three teachers were absolute stonefaces. The third teacher smiled at the kids while interacting with them and while praising them, like a typical kindergarten teacher. The other two were completely stoic. At one point, a bunch of girls gathered around the assistant teacher while she kneeled to investigate the case of the missing marker. One girl, standing behind the teacher, threw her arms around her in a hug. The teacher said, “No thank you” and removed the girl’s arms from around her neck. I almost cried. I suppose when there are 32 kids in the room, you can’t encourage a close relationship with one or two, but surely there was a kinder way to do this than a cold, “No thank you”? Later on, the same little girl asked another teacher if she could go to the nurse, and she said, “I was up coughing all night and I’m tired and now I have a runny nose,” and the teacher looked at her and said, “Get a tissue and we’ll see how you feel later.” A little bit of sympathy might have helped that little girl get through the day. Certainly you would extend that to any adult in your office who wasn’t feeling well.

While most of the kids were working intently, not all of them were. I noticed one girl and two boys who had a hard time choosing something to do. The first boy caught my eye because I knew him; he’s one of the few Asian kids in town with Asian parents. When I came in he was working within the orbit of one of the teachers, but soon wandered away to roam around the room. After about 10 minutes the teacher came to collect him again, and they worked on their task for a few minutes, but when she was called away, he immediately rolled over and stared at the ceiling. He roamed around for five more minutes, then started working on a water conservation activity in another corner of the room. He had been absorbed in that for a ten-minute stretch when I left. I felt oddly relieved to see him settle down to an activity.

Another little girl was very vocal and social, more interested in visiting than working. At one point the teacher pulled her aside and said, “Remember that every day we write down what you do here to show your parents. If you don’t do any work then we have to tell them that.” “I know,” the girl said, “but I’m really hungry.” “I just want to make sure you know you’re responsible for that,” the teacher said. Then the girl walked away, and the teacher didn’t follow up. I thought that a five-year-old might need some more direction than that.

Another little boy walked around the room for the 35 minutes. He didn’t work on any lessons or play with toys. He seemed a bit nervous, biting his hand and twisting his clothes. A teacher did notice him after about 15 minutes and said, “It’s time for you to go do math.” He walked to the math area and interrupted two boys working there, then continued wandering around. Finally, he sat down to a snack.

I don’t want the negatives to overwhelm the positives here. Teaching is hard, and those teachers must be doing an amazing job to have a room full of five-year-olds mostly on-task and doing productive work. The observation confirmed something I was taught in grad school, though: you need to use a plurality of teaching methods to reach every kid in the classroom. Montessori allows for a plurality of Montessori methods, but it obviously doesn’t allow the teachers to break through and use some non-Montessori methods that a minority of the kids might need.

Of course, those kids — or different ones — could languish in traditional schools, too.

Anyway, it’s a moot point because when the mail came this afternoon, Aitch had gotten the dreaded thin envelope. He is #67 on the wait list, which means that if a nuclear holocaust takes down the whole 2008 - 2009 kindergarten class, and then it fills up again with the wait list and then a terrible pandemic carries off all THOSE children, and then it fills up again, and then and a few kids move out of the district, THEN he will be able to join the class. In other words, I’m not counting on it.

So this evening I trudged off to the kindergarten registration at the local public school, situated at the unappetizing intersection of Milk and Lime streets. I signed one piece of paper authorizing the school nurse to give my child potassium iodide if there is indeed a nuclear holocaust, and another paper saying that I would pay $3300 tuition for the full-day kindergarten program and some unspecified amount, probably $250, if I want him to ride the bus, because we live within 2 miles of the school. (Since when did public schools charge tuition? Still, it’s a fraction of what preschool costs.)

There was one kindergarten teacher at the meeting. She looked huggable.

The new gym has a small basket on the reception desk in which people can drop their keys as they enter, presumably so they won’t lose them in the locker room or on the workout floor. I always take advantage of this amenity, but there is always a moment of weirdness as I put my keychain into the basket. I half-expect some ugly weightlifting dude to interrupt the kick-boxing class to tell me that I have to go home with him, because he picked my keys.

It’s been awhile since I last took kick-boxing, and I forgot how much fun it is to PUNCH! and KICK! The petite little thing who leads the class is especially encouraging, shouting things like, “Do you know what that knee is for? To SMASH SOMEONE’S HEAD! Smash it!” Years ago, when I first started kick-boxing, I had a particularly awful boss who was on the imaginary receiving end of my blows. Now there is no one in my life I hate that much, although I wouldn’t mind wiping that smirk off Mitt Romney’s face.

Every girl should be taught to land a solid punch. It’s very empowering. As a result of this class, I really believe I could administer a severe beating, as long as there were an appropriately rhythmic dance music remix playing within earshot.

This week, the school district holds its kindergarten registration for the fall. Coincidentally, the lottery for the public Montessori charter school is held tomorrow so, when the rest of the country finds out who its likely Republican and Democratic nominees will be, I will definitely know, one way or another, where Aitch will be matriculating in the upcoming school year.

Going in, I was 100% certain I would want Aitch to attend the charter school; after all, the only thing better than a Montessori school is a FREE Montessori school, right? Then I began to harbor some doubts. Nine years seems like a long stretch for All Montessori, All the Time. I had attended an enrichment program in elementary school that was Montessori-like (no lectures, no grades, child-directed learning, etc.) I got a lot out of it, but while directing my own learning I had managed to sidestep all the math and science content that was presented over three years. So I attended a school tour and a few information sessions.

My fears about the educational process were mostly allayed. It seemed like a wonderful environment for the kids. The Montessori method seemed sound enough; like any pedagogical method, it depends largely on the ability of the teacher. But I was a little put off by the tone of the information sessions. The teachers, parents, even the students were annoyingly self-congratulatory, giving the impression of having drunk deeply of the school Kool-Aid. I could understand if it they were just doing it to sell the school, but the wait list is TWICE as big as the enrollment limit. To those of us out there in the peanut gallery, it sounded like, “Aren’t we great? Wouldn’t it be so great if you joined us? Oops…that’s right…you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Enjoy the public school!”

And that was my second problem with the presentations. Almost everyone who praised the Montessori method did it by contrasting it, unfavorably, with the way they allegedly do it in public school. “It’s not like public school, where the kids are sitting at desks all day long…where the teachers are talking at the kids all day…where the kids are rewarded for competing, instead of working cooperatively…where there are no multi-age classrooms…where they just drill the kids all day without applying anything.” As a former public-school teacher, I found this galling. I taught sixth grade, and I never chained up the kids and forced them to diagram sentences for hours on end. We did plenty of interdisciplinary units, cooperative learning, and independent study. Hell, we did plenty of that when I was a public school student back in the dark ages. Again, it seemed kind of mean-spirited on the part of the school representatives, and I wondered if I could hack that environment for the next decade.

Of course, in the end it’s what is best for the boys, not for me. I think that if Aitch’s name is drawn for one of the twenty-odd kindergarten slots tomorrow, I will send him there, but either way, I am going to suggest to the public school supernintendo that he conduct information sessions to present some up-to-date information about the methodologies that the elementary teachers use. After all, they are competing with the charter and private schools now.

I love Super Bowl Sunday, particularly those few occasions (like today) when a local team is in the game. A hush falls over the land that, typically, attends only days of solemn religious observance. It’s a great day to eat out at a nice restaurant, see a movie, or take a plane trip, because the crowds are elsewhere.

But we are not safe from mommy drive-bys even on this, the holiest of days.

This morning I was reprimanded by a woman because. . . wait for it. . . my DOG was not wearing a coat.

It was about forty-five degrees above zero outside, and not at all windy, just to give you some context.

She said, “Did you know that when it gets below fifty-five degrees, these single-coat breeds need to have a coat on?”

She was polite about it, so I responded in kind: “Fifty-five? No, I didn’t know that.”

But really, I was thinking, “Fifty-five? Honey, when it gets that warm it’s a good day if I have coats on the kids, let alone the damn dog.”