ever-fixed mark

Aitch has a folder in his backpack that, traveling between school and home, serves as a kind of drop box for communications between his teacher and us. Every afternoon when he comes home I take out the flyers, worksheets, and order forms, and then I load it back up with all the completed paperwork and tchotchkes that Aitch needs to return to school.

These are the kinds of things I have to deal with on a weekly basis:

• Lunch order form and money envelope
• School photo order form (I was soooo tempted just to throw it away. I mean, back in the day school pictures were a big deal, but that was before we had digital cameras, Photoshop, and 10 cent prints. What skill or materials could the school photographer possibly contribute that would be worth a $95 package?)
• Book order form
• Demand for $5 for a project to paint t-shirts in conjunction with a book they are reading (not phrased as optional; what do people do if it doesn’t fit into their budget?)
• Reminder that library books are due on Friday
• Homework worksheet (practice writing child’s name five times; child is also required to put his name at the top of the page and “sign” at the bottom)
• Request to re-do worksheet that child got wrong in class (coloring circles blue, squares red, and triangles green; he colored them all different colors)
• Request for a “small object” starting with the letter A for “letter of the week.”
• Reminder to send in the ingredient lists for all food child eats at school for snack
• Catalogue and order forms for PTO fund-raiser (I threw it in the trash and wrote them a personal check; I will volunteer, donate, or tithe, but I will NOT push gift wrap on unsuspecting friends and neighbors)
• Request to nominate PTO officers (this precipitated a round of calls among mothers begging, “Please don’t nominate me”)

This daily scavenger hunt is quickly becoming a part-time job for me, albeit one that costs, rather than pays. In the past two weeks I’ve put at least a hundred bucks in that damn folder.

A few days ago, Aitch and I had the following conversation:

Me: Aitch, the election is coming up soon. Do you know who’s running for President?

Aitch: John McCain.

Me: That’s right. Who else?

Aitch: Barack Obama.

Me: Whom do you think will win?

Aitch: Barack Obama.

Me: Why Obama?

Aitch: Because he’s the fastest.

At the time, I thought it was just one of those adorable, kids-say-the-darndest-things non sequiturs.

Three days later, though, I was driving down the highway remembering that conversation when the lightbulb went off:

Race. Win. Faster!

It was a sequitur, after all.

Question 1: Math. You have two children, a full-time job, and a 40-mile commute. When, where, and how far do you run? Factor the following into your answer: A. Waxing and waning of available daylight at your longitude/latitude B. Temperature, windspeed, and relative humidity C. Duration of your commute relative to the time you leave.

Question 2: Short essay. Evaluate the impact of your run on A. Your prospects for advancement at work B. Your children C. Your spouse D. Your sanity E. Your hairstyle.

I keep shifting around my run in the hopes that I’ll hit on some combination of time and place that makes it all suddenly seem easy. That hasn’t happened yet, but I did try something new this morning: I drove to work in my running clothes and ran in the city before work.

The advantage to this approach is that I drive when traffic is light and run when the sky is light (as opposed to running at home in the morning, which leaves it the other way around).

The main disadvantage to this approach is that I have to pack quite a bit of gear to get me presentable for work post-run. I am terrified that I’ll forget something important and emerge from the shower only to find I’m missing a left shoe, or (worse) a bra.

I have lived in Massachusetts for eight years, which means I’m now coming up on the third presidential election since moving here.

Here in Port City, around election time, there’s always a bit of an awkward moment during social gatherings when someone brings up the subject of politics. Eventually, everyone lets on that they’re on the same page, politically speaking, and then we move on to talk happily about murdering babies, requiring kindergarteners to recite the Gay Agenda instead of the Pledge of Allegiance, and inviting the Muslims (all of whom are terrorists) to attack us repeatedly without fear of reprisal. You know, as we liberals are wont.

So I was curious…what about those of you who live in areas that are NOT so politically homogeneous, where blood runs both red and blue? Do you avoid political discussions altogether in mixed company? Do book club meetings and playgroups degenerate into political brawls? Something in between? Discuss.

Every day when Aitch comes home from school, I ask him, “What did you do today? What did you learn? Tell me about the kids in your class.” I’m very eager to learn how he’s spending his days. Unfortunately, I’m treated to nothing so comprehensive as a narrative. Instead, he releases little tidbits of information in staccato bursts.

What I’ve learned:

Item: The teaching assistant is named “Mrs. Potkettle.”

What?

You know, “Potkettle.” Like when you have to take a horse to the doctor.

What?!

Item: In gym class, they have learned a little butt-shaking dance where they get down and shout, “Education!” Then the teacher yells, “Wishloobeckya” and they have to run to the other end of the room.

What?

Item: Aitch sits at the peanut-free table with a boy from his class and some other peanut-allergic kids. I can only imagine that they will form a tight-knit social group and grow up to intermarry and produce a race of super-allergic, bubble-dwelling children.

Port City Supernintendo, I implore you — can’t we make the whole school peanut-free so my kid can sit with his more genetically-advantaged peers at lunch? Let’s give Darwin’s Law a chance to work.

And…that’s all I’ve got. I guess I’ll have to wait for the parent-teacher conference to get the real scoop.

This morning, as I was completing my run, I was forced to go around three cars (lights on, engines running) parked in the bike lane in a no-parking zone. About ten feet down the street was a clump of parents and children waiting for the bus.

Thought #1: Who DRIVES to the bus stop? (Note: this is not a rural area where someone would have to walk two miles from his or her farm to R.R.#3 or similar.)

Thought #2: If you’re willing to take the trouble of driving two tenths of a mile to the bus stop, why not travel the extra 1.2 miles and drop your kid off at school?

Thought #3: Even if you’re so lazy that you would only drive two blocks and no farther, couldn’t you park about 20 yards down the street from the bus stop in one of the many spots that are open on 7:00 a.m. and WALK THE REST OF THE WAY?

Husband and I bought a digital camera right before Aitch arrived. It was state-of-the-art at the time, but now it’s not, and the battery doesn’t hold a charge. We rarely use it, nor do we have plans to replace it. Husband doesn’t see the point of lugging around an extra device for pictures and prefers to use his iPhone when the mood strikes. I’ve switched to film, largely black-and-white film that I can process myself at low cost.

A few weeks ago, Husband and I split up the boys for the day. Husband and Minor took the dog on a walk around the pond; Aitch and I went to the beach. We each took our cameras. Husband was able to e-mail me the following happy snap before either of us had returned home.

Several weeks later, when I finally got around to developing my film, I was able to produce this record of my day with Aitch:

It’s a good thing we have the iPhone, because if it were solely up to me, the pictorial record of our lives would look like the Addams Family Photo Album.

I know that this isn’t a great shot, but I wanted to post it as a record of my first experiment with infrared film. Underwhelmed? Yeah, me too. Infrared typically produces dramatic effects, turning foliage white and skies dark blue. Sometimes this looks kind of gimmicky, but I’ve seen some infrared beach photographs that had dramatic dark skies and otherworldly lighting on the subject, and I wanted to give that a try. Googling around just now, I discovered that I should have been using a filter along with the infrared film. Next time, I will take care to read the WHOLE internet before venturing out with my camera.

Another fun fact I learned from Wikipedia: Paul Simon changed the words to “Kodachrome” from “Everything looks worse in black and white” to “Everything looks better in black and white” for his Central Park concert. That was bugging me, because I knew I had heard both versions, but couldn’t figure out why there would be a “better” lyric, because it doesn’t make sense within the context of the song.

Today was Aitch’s first day of school. I wasn’t the only parent in the schoolyard wiping away a tear as I waved good-bye to my great big boy, off on his own for the first—

Oh, right. That was someone else. Our school had a “soft open” today—no, nothing like a cold open; more like “Orientation Part Trois.” Parents and kids attended for an hour (again), visited the classroom (again), met the teacher (again), and went home. Tomorrow, the kids attend solo for two hours, and so on extending the actual in-class time via a complex Fibonacci sequence until they finally hit a full day of kindergarten around Thanksgiving.

I suppose there are kindergarteners out there who might benefit from the dip-the-toe approach to school immersion. My Aitch is not one of them. He reacted much as he did during his last two orientation experiences: he expressed his anxiety about the situation by behaving very badly, something he would probably have been too intimidated to do if I were not there. (I know, wishful thinking, but in four years of preschool we’ve only had one negative report about his behavior, even during periods when he was throwing tantrums at home every day.)

We had a tussle over a lollipop that the teacher had given him in his “goody bag” (at 9:30 a.m.! Why is she handing out candy first thing in the morning?). I said he couldn’t eat it; he put it, wrapped, in his mouth. I told him he could no longer hold it; he bit into it. I tried to take it away from him, and he hauled off and hit me.

I didn’t know what to do. At home that would call for a serious time-out accompanied by a harsh admonishment, neither of which I wanted to perform in that setting. At this point we were about 45 minutes into the 1-hour orientation, and we had done everything we needed to do (including filling out forms that asked which “person or person’s” were authorized to pick up the child— GOD is it too much to ask that teachers pluralize correctly? They have college degrees, don’t they, and are supposed to be qualified to teach that stuff?!) , so I just marched him out of there.

When we got home, Aitch got that serious time-out and we canceled the beach outing we were planning. Instead, he had the pleasure of attending me at the RMV and then at a car inspection. I’m still aghast that he hit me on the first day of school, and I’m seriously wondering if it’s too late to hold him back another year, but I suspect he will be fine once school starts for real. I am a bit concerned now that we’ve accompanied him to school on three separate occasions, and tomorrow when we actually have to leave him behind, he’s going to freak.

What a crappy day.

Apropos of nothing…did anyone else watch the convention coverage on PBS last night? The look on Gwen Ifill’s face when they cut to her after Sarah Palin’s speech was priceless. It’s going to be an interesting season.