Again and Again and Again

When I was a kid, my dad was a cop. I would watch him get ready for work and think it normal that his job involved a bullet-proof vest, handcuffs and a gun.  Surely all dads got ready for work like that.  I never thought about my dad’s gun.  It was just part of his uniform, part of his holster, and part of the counter when he sat down for dinner and took it off.  I never thought that cops and guns were a bad thing, but the world, our world, has certainly shown me that cops and guns aren’t always right. 

Any time I hear about a cop killed in the line of duty, I think about my dad.  I can immediately feel what that family is feeling because I can easily remember what it was like to be part of cop’s family and I know. I know how they worry when they come home late, and I know the way your stomach clenches when you hear someone has been hurt.  I have seen one come home and be so shaken up about what he had seen that he couldn’t talk.  I know this life.  I woke up to the news in Dallas and I wept for those families.  For the wives, the husbands, the kids living that life and hearing that news and knowing that their lives are changed now, today and forever.  I watched the news footage of officers racing towards gunshots again and again and I know my dad would have done the same thing.  When one chooses to serve and protect, they serve and protect.

But, not always.  Sometimes cops make mistakes.  Sometimes they don’t have time to think it through or use rational thought and sometimes they shoot and they kill.  And when it happens again and again and again and it is not in one city or one state, but all over America, something is wrong.  Something is terribly, terribly wrong.  And we are watching it and we are clucking our tongues and we are saying smug things like “well, don’t all lives matter?”  And when no one is held accountable for all those deaths, when no one stands up to say “STOP.”, when no one puts themselves in the shoes of those being shot, we are saying again and again and again “you don’t matter.”

As a woman, I know what it is like to face discrimination.  I know harassment and I know the feeling of being dismissed before being heard. I do not, however, know what prejudice feels like. I don’t know bias.  I have never had anyone cross the street when they saw me walking towards them and I have never been kept from a job by the name on my resume.  This does not, and should not, keep me from imagining what that feels like.  How I would feel if I experienced it again and again and again?  If I can put myself in those cop’s families this morning and feel their pain, should I not be doing the same for the families of the two black men shot by police this week?  And if I am not and you are not, who is?  And if black families aren’t feeling sad for the cops who were killed last night, do we have any right to demand that they do? 

I have been listening to the soundtrack from Hamilton again and again and again this summer and it made me feel proud to be American as I listened to the imaginary rap battles the Founding Fathers had.  “Yo, I’m just like my country: young, scrappy and hungry” made me smile to imagine a time America had it together and was going to do great things.  Great ideas, good intentions, however, they stopped short.  They did great things for some people, but not all people.  A nation built on slavery is not truly a free nation.  All men are created equal should have meant that ALL men and women are created equal; not just the rich, the white, the privileged.  We failed then and we are failing now.  I am so damn tired of failing.

I have spent a lifetime being an avoider of icky things.  Present me with conflict and I will present you with my back as I retreat.  I am tired of retreating.  I am tired of being part of a nation of retreaters, of people afraid to feel someone else’s pain, of people subscribing to stereotypes and bias, and of people getting all of their information from buzzfeed and thinking it is fact.  We need empathy and sympathy and dammit, we need to have respect.  We need to get smart about our world and if we don’t know how to get smart about our world, we need to go to a library and have a librarian help us find facts, real facts, to make educated decisions.  But most of all, we need to start seeing ALL people as people.  Not black people, or brown people, or female people.  People.  Perhaps, if we, the people, looked others in the eyes, we would see not their skin or their religious garb or their uniform; rather we would just see their eyes and remember that they are a person too.  We would know they have feelings, we would understand their feelings, we would try to be better, we would try to make changes and would finally, finally, be the land of the free.

The Last One

Initially I sat down to write about the body builderia everyone in my house is currently suffering from.  If you are not aware of body builderia, it is a condition where when one person says “Look at my arms!” and those suffering with body builderia immediately roll up their shirtsleeves and flex for comparison.  All McMahons are terrible about this; even the boy, who in his sloth-like condition should have absolutely no muscle tone as he lifts nothing heavier than the TV remote, yet has the mostly beautifully sculpted arms around.  And while I could easily pump out a solid thousand words more about body builderia, today I find that maybe I should not.

We had a staff meeting recently about social media, kids, and parents and how everything and anything we say or type or emoji can and will be used against us in the teaching profession.  While I am not teaching yet, I will be and this has started to concern me.  If I type up a blog today with humor and with no ill will about body builderia, will an angry parent somewhere down the line come across this blog and accuse me of being insensitive about eating disorders?  Even though body builderia is entirely made up, will they look at it and say “There!  This is the proof that this woman is insensitive and as such the only reason my child is failing!”  It seems a stretch, but it could happen.  It does happen. I don’t want it to happen to me.

I’ve worked hard to realize my goal of becoming a teacher.  I took the long road to getting here and I am old to be starting a new career.  Well, older anyway.   I think that the goal of teaching is drawing nearer and I keep saying things like “When I am a teacher” or use declarative statements in front of most of the faculty that start “As I will be teaching next year…” and it feels really good.  When I am left in charge of someone’s classroom and I stand up there and explain and talk and teach, I feel like this is where I am supposed to be.  It is almost similar to when I held SG for the first time and knew, quite instantly, that this is what I was meant to do with my life.  This is the work I want to do for the next twenty+ years of my life and I don’t want to feel like I am exposing myself to losing this career because I quickly wrote about something I found amusing at the time. 

I love this blog. I love to write about what is going on in our lives, our things that I think stink or things in our life that stink. I love to reread the ones I wrote three years ago and sigh about what a sad-sack Sally I was.  I love the feedback that I get from you after I blog.  Being a middle child, I need that constant validation.  I love to write, I love to take all of my words and throw them down in a way I think is pleasing to read about.  However, as much as I’d secretly wished my blog would be picked up by Huffington Post or that I would be offered an editorial spot in the Austin American Statesman, neither thing has happened.  This blog might be a happy maker, but it is not a money maker.  So again, teaching wins as they will actually pay me to teach.  A little bit anyway.

So I guess what I am doing here today is retiring from Rebecca Who Always Spoke Loudly.  My words will always be a huge part of me, but I don’t want them to be the undoing of me.  I don’t want to continue writing it in a censored, watered-down, parentally approved version of me either, because that would be an undoing of me as well.  All or nothing, all or nothing.  However, I do know that I will continue to write because it is part of me.  It gives me joy to write, it gives me my sanity back when I write and it gives me peace when I look back and reread the old stuff and see how far we have come.  I will just choose a more private venue.  Maybe this will even force me to send Christmas cards and not assume everyone is reading my blog and knows all about our life.  Maybe I’ll enter writing contests, although I do not like to be limited in the amount of words I am supposed to write in.  Perhaps I will put more thought into what I am writing and somehow put a whole book together.  Maybe I will take the adventures of my first year of teaching and publish it under a pen name and make a million dollars and then let you all know that it was me!  It could actually happen.  Or, much like the sports world, I might announce this retirement only to come back again and again.  I am not one hundred percent sure.  All I know is that I truly want to be a teacher and I am going to focus on that for now.  Rebecca, who always spoke loudly, is going to continue to be shushed in the library, continue to use all of her words and most importantly, Rebecca, who always spoke loudly, is going to teach.

See?!  It says teacher right on it!

All the Nice Words

As you know, I am usually a very big proponent for words.  I think in words, understand in words and talk in words, a lot.  I like to use big words and fill up time and space with words and sprinkle my words liberally on others.  When you use words this much, you tend to forget how impactful they can be.  How quickly a word can eviscerate or invalidate or how a list of words can enumerate or penetrate and pierce through your soul.  Words are powerful stuff and I often forget this.  I am not talking about somebody’s written words, although they can be powerful too.  I am talking about the words that come out of our mouth in a huff, in a jest, or in a rush.  Words tumbling out, landing on top of each other in a jagged pile, pulling our heart and our tears with them.  Those words are ick.

As I have both wounded and been wounded by these ick words this week, I have started to rethink how I use my words.  Perhaps I should be more judicious with my words.  Perhaps not everything needs to be spoken aloud or kneaded and rolled into a doughy, wordy mess.  Or maybe I could just use my words nicely.  Take all of those things that I might think but don’t say (yes, I actually do think things and not always say them) and say them.  That would be okay too and I could consider it my Valentine’s gift to the world and by doing so take the yucky-schmaltzy-overhyped-ick out of Valentine’s Day as well.  Two icks, one stone!

Today I started using my nice words with my son.  He does not get many nice words from me in the morning, but to be fair it also shouldn’t take eighteen minutes to eat one piece of toast.  When he came downstairs wearing the same pair of shorts he has worn the last two days, I did not tell him he can’t wear those shorts one more day.  Instead I told him how nicely his shorts went with the shirt he put on and that he looked handsome.  He beamed and ate his toast in a mere twelve minutes.  Fueled by this small success, I committed to bringing my nice words with me to work.  I packed them right alongside my leftovers for lunch and my water bottle and they fit there perfectly.  When I called a kid by name to come over and sign in, he was surprised I knew his name and said it was so nice that I knew it and used it.  Even names can be nice! 

I feel like I am on a roll now and can singlehandedly combat the carnage of mean words, impulsive words and the hyperbole of canned romance for this upcoming Hallmark holiday.  I am going to say every nice word I can think!  I am going to not say the mean words I think! I am going to think before I speak!  I am going to change the world!  Join me in using nice words!  (And yes, I do think nice words can still be peppered with salty language).  Let’s dissolve the blah of February by using our best words – the ones we usually save for Sundays, or holidays or first dates.  Take them out, brush them off and throw them into a conversation.  Watch someone’s face light up when you use your nice words on them.  Relieve the blah of winter or the drudgery of a long work week by filling your colleagues’ ears with nice words rather than the usual complaints.  I have already told one of mine that she is tenacious and powerful and I usually just ask her to stop singing.  Finally, when the silliness of Valentine’s Day overpowers your resolve to say nice words and all the words you are thinking start with either “stupid” or “lame” and you know this will shatter the heart of someone who still believes in cupids, fill your mouth with chocolate instead.  They get to keep their cupids and you get to eat chocolate while thinking mean words you won’t say and everyone is happy, but mostly you because you are eating chocolate.

By the handful.

Bye Week

We watched all the football this past weekend and as a result I find that I keep thinking about this week’s bye week. We know who is going to the SuperBowl and those athletes get a week off to rest, to recover and to recuperate. I have decided that this is a brilliant idea and that I need a bye week as well: a bye week from parenting.  I need time to rest, recover and recuperate so that I can start again fresh and be ready to be awesome in this next round of parenting.

The boy turns twelve today and I was okay about that until we started talking about how he was the skinniest baby in the world when he was born.  Maizy sent us some pictures she found of him when he was about three and they just killed us:  soft, yellow hair, no glasses and that huge space where his two front teeth were knocked out. These pictures are so super sweet, however it is the look of pure joy on his face that grabs my heart and smacks it.  There has not been a lot of joy on his face this year.  Middle school can suck the joy out of even the happiest kid in record time.   I look at those pictures and barely remember the tiny kid he was and only see the big kid he is now and it makes me a little sad, a little wistful and hoping I enjoyed him then and trying to find ways to enjoy him now.  

Maizy graduates in about four months and if that isn’t crazy enough, she has also decided she is moving to California pretty much the second she graduates.  I don’t think I have really given it a lot of thought other than I think she is taking the hard road and we talked about that, but she is 18 and she knows what she wants to do.  Bill gets teary every time it comes up and as I write this, I realize I am sad too.  This girl and I have gone head to head and toe to toe and taught each other a lot about ourselves and what makes a family.  She is a terrible slob, mostly non-committal when I ask her to do something and slightly self-absorbed, but she is also as funny as hell and integral to who we are as a family.  Damn, now I am really sad.

SG, normally my rock, my stalwart child and my kindest soul, killed me with her words yesterday.  Her words reached into my chest cavity and pulled out my still-beating heart which she then held in her hands and utterly destroyed with her tone.  The look on her face and the hate in her eyes then finished it off by tearing it to shreds.  I know this is timely, I know it was bound to happen, I know I have been lucky on what a good girl she has been, I know.  But it still hurts!  And even though Bill stepped in as the heavy and made her stop, made her see it from my side, even though she apologized later, it still hurts.  I forgive her and I see she feels bad, but I need some time to regenerate my crushed and shattered heart.

Just one of the looks I have received this week.

Therefore, I need a bye week. I need a week where my children are cryogenically frozen and where I can rest and recover from them.  I need a week to pause and think about what it is I am trying to teach them and how I can best do that while letting them make their own mistakes.  I need a little time to reflect in how little they once were and how big they are now and how much bigger they are going to get.  Bill and I need some time to regroup and focus on us.  Just one week off to look at all the parenting we’ve done and gear up for all that we still have to do.  I’d love to hit the rest of this parenting thing refreshed and repaired.

I know that I won’t get that bye and I won’t get that rest and I am jealous of professional athletes and a little weary of myself.  But weary or not, we push on.  I will keep trying to pull the boy out of the cocoon of “cool” he tries to layer himself in and celebrate when I see actual joy come across his face again.  I will admonish, lecture and preach about all the things Maizy needs to think about before she goes but I hope that I listen, encourage and laugh with her as well.  And as for SG, she and I are going to have more of those major disagreements but I will try hard to remember that I am the adult.  Or at the very least, learn to guard my heart.

Let's Get Sh*t Done

When I was in high school, I wrote a scathing article in the school newspaper detailing the disparity in which boys’ sports and girls’ sports were treated.  This was in the early 90’s and I was a product of a mother who did not burn her bra in the 70’s but was highly influenced by the push for women’s equality of that era.  The main complaints I had as an athlete was that the sports teams I was on had substandard uniforms, equipment and fields.  I don’t think I had ever heard of Title IX; I just knew it wasn’t fair that boys’ teams got new uniforms and we were wearing hand-me-down boys’ uniforms.  I don’t think I need to explain why a uniform designed for a 13 year old male basketball player might not be the best fit for a 17 year old female field hockey player.  I experienced quite the notoriety when the article was published because I was quite passionate about the inequality and voiced it.  (go figure) Girls told me great job and boys, especially football boys, threatened to hurt me because I may have mentioned their losing season in the article more than once.  This article even struck a nerve with teachers; again, female teachers were basically fist bumping me while I received a lot of stony faces from my male teachers.  I struck a nerve, but then I graduated and moved on and the inequality of boys’ sports vs. girls’ sports didn’t seem an issue I needed to press anymore.  I was very busy not playing any sports for the first time in four years and gaining an excessive amount of weight as college freshman are prone to do. 

I didn’t think about girls’ sports much until this past year when my own girl started playing on sports teams at her middle school.  I looked at the new uniforms she was given along with warm ups, sweats and athletic bag and thought about how things had really changed.  I was happy for her that in this era, not only are girls’ sports teams endured, but that they are expected and encouraged and funded.  My girl however, still spoke often and passionately, about how the boys’ teams were treated better or didn’t have to work as hard.  I told her I was sorry to say, but even today, her female coaches and her female teammates would always have to work harder.  This is, unfortunately, life as a woman.  Forty-four years after Title IX, these girls and coaches still have to work harder, play harder and be more than their male counterparts and women everywhere are still working harder, trying harder and still being paid less than their male counterparts. 

Anyway, soap box speech over, yesterday I was just reminded again how incredibly important sports are for teenage girls.  I’ve watched my girl over the past year go from awkward and clumsy to an athlete.  I have watched her run, climb, lift, throw and shoot.  I have watched her win, lose, try and fail.  I have watched her play her heart out and I have watched her dig deep when she needed to.  I have encouraged her and watched her encourage others.  But yesterday, yesterday, she did something that gives me goose bumps to think about.  Her basketball team was losing very, very badly.  They were outmanned, outplayed and outshot.  They were frustrated, they were learning as they went and they were struggling.  My girl did not get to play much, which I still don’t understand, but the last time she was in, she was on it.  She was here and there, she was defending, she was getting her arms up and in there and tangling up and she was giving it absolutely everything she had.  The look on her face during her last play had me desperately wishing I had a great camera or could draw.  Her face was red with exertion, hairs around her face just everywhere as they slipped out of her ponytail, her jaw was set, her shoulders back, but it was her eyes set like steel and determination that just killed me.  The look on her face simply said “Let’s get shit done.” 

I guess I had that face too.  Plus mouthguard and bad uniform.

I like that she is an athlete. I like that she is learning teamwork, perseverance and endurance. I love that she is learning at age 14 to set her game face and her mind to “let’s get shit done.”  This, this is what she is going to need to be successful, to be heard and to be everything she is meant to be.  This is why sports are so damn important during girls’ teenage years.  This is why we need to sign them up, this is why they have to try different things and this is why we sit on those benches and bleachers and run around town taking them where they need to be.  I am thrilled my daughter is 14 and learning how to get shit done and not 24.  Or 34 or older.  I am so thrilled I have goose bumps as I write it and picture that face, that feral, ferocious face once more.

So we need to keep pushing for true equality in spending and funding for sports.  We need to talk about female athletes with the same reverence we use when talking about male athletes.  We need to be present, be encouraging and be LOUD as we cheer them on.  These girls are learning how to be strong, to be there for each other and they are learning how to get shit done.  And if their faces look anything like my daughter’s, they are going to change the world.

Say You Want a Resolution

Here it is, January 2^nd, and I have already broken two of the three New Year’s Resolutions I set for myself.  I normally do not make resolutions because I know me.  I know that I take things that could be possible and give them a ridiculous time frame to get done and when they don’t get done in that time frame, I throw my hands up in the air, retreat into the fetal position and self-medicate with handfuls of chocolate.  This year, I got caught up in the hype.  New Year, New You?  Yes, why not me!  New Year, New Beginnings?  I could start something fresh or new!  Out with the old, in with the new?  Yes! I cleared out one whole drawer in the kitchen after I read that.  I don’t know, too much daytime TV or too many exclamation point headlines, something spoke to the slacker in me and said “join this”.  So I did.  I quickly decided I would lose weight, be a better friend and this will be the year I become a teacher.

Let’s look at number 1: lose weight.  I normally do not believe in losing weight because I gain and lose the same three pounds every few days and if my jeans fit, then so be it.  Not this year.  This year I was going to lose real weight, measureable weight and glow in the satisfaction of it.  Sadly, this goal lasted until lunchtime on New Year’s Day.  Bill made homemade mac and cheese.  Kraft in the blue box I could have passed up but not homemade mac and cheese.  It was delicious and I ate myself into a cheesecarb coma.  I am not proud to say that when I woke from my couch nap, I went straight to the kitchen in a low blood sugar zombie trance and ate the remaining ten cold noodles out of the congealed cheese at the bottom of the pan.  Go ahead and judge me, you can’t be thinking any worse of me than I was while I kept shoving those cold, yet tasty, noodles in my mouth.  Knowing that this is my life and I am weak, I gave up on lose weight and changed it to “make healthy choices.”  This morning I ate quinoa with banana and walnut for breakfast.  This erases the shame of the cold noodle eating from the day before.

Goal number two was to be a better friend.  I have friends, I love my friends, but as of late, I feel as though I am terrible friend.  We don’t get together often, I forget what they tell me and all I offer is words.  Well-rested after two weeks off of work, I thought I will be a better friend and make time to actually see my friends before I don’t have any friends.  Today I started thinking about school and work firing back up and I know I am not going to be that good friend.  I socialize all day at work, wait, what I mean is my job is very social.  My kids talk an awful lot when I get home and I guess I am all talked out at the end of the day or even sometimes on the weekend.  If anyone would like to get together and take up some quiet pursuits like yoga or knitting or hiking without talking, call me.  Especially if it involves comfy pants!   Until then friends, I am sorry I don’t make book club or parties or neighborhood events, but if you need emailed words, I’m there.

New Year’s resolution number three is to be a teacher.  That one I am not compromising on.  Since that is really more of a life goal or a career path, I think I just stuck it in with the resolutions to keep the fire burning. However, I don’t need New Year’s to make me remember I want to teach because I think about teaching all the time.  This is going to happen, stay tuned.

I feel amused that I was such a lemming and followed the resolution crowd right over the cliff. We all know better than that.  If something in your life really needs to be changed, it shouldn’t matter if it is January 1^st or June 23^rd; you should change because you are ready, not because the rest of the world is proclaiming you should do it now.  

As for me, 2016 will see me continue as me.  I will work and be a mom and be the loudest mom at all the sporting events.  I will write, I will read, I will learn new things and insert myself into any teaching opportunities that come up.  I will try and I will succeed and I will also try things and fail.  I will inch along, I will race along and hopefully end up ahead and not behind. I will laugh, I will cry and I will say bad words at both opportune and inopportune times.  I will make healthy choices and I will fight my coworkers for more than my share of the queso.  I will value myself, I will value the friends who stand by me even though I am a terrible friend and I will love my family with all of my heart.  And I will, this year, at some point, be hired as a teacher.  The things I have listed are not resolutions, they are just my life.  They were my life in 2015 and they will be a part of my life in 2016.  It makes me happy to read them and it makes me smile to know I get to keep doing these things.  My hope is that the things you list make you happy as well.  Happy New Year!

We Are Family

Road trips seem to be very Dickensian in their nature: they are both the very best and very worst of times.  People always comment that we are so brave or fun-seeking or crazy because we drive places all the time, but the simple truth is that it is a lot cheaper than flying.  We are not looking for road warrior status; we are just looking to save a couple of hundred dollars.  Sure, I’d like to get to Chicago in two hours instead of 18.5, but I would also like to eat when I am old and maybe send my kids to college.  Maybe. 

I will start with the worst of times because our ride home was heinous and it has taken me two days being back at home to be willing to talk about it.  The ride home is always the worst because your body and brain remember just how long it took to get here and they start protesting before you even get in the car.  It’s going to be long and uncomfortable and you and everyone in the car with you knows it.  We are tired of music, tired of podcasts, tired of road noise and tired of each other.  We are driving way too many miles in one day to try and not have to drive way too many miles over two days.  No restaurants look good and would it kill the state of Missouri to have more than two Starbucks in it?  The heaviness of sitting and only sitting for so long weighs on you and it becomes harder and harder to unfurl from your car position when you stop even though you are desperately longing to move, to stretch, to bend, and straighten.  You eat Chex Mix by the handful in a desperate attempt to curb your bathroom breaks because every minute stopped is a minute you are not moving ahead.  This works well but also gives you swollen ankles and all you can think of is how desperately tight your socks feel.  The boredom is so prevalent: the same dead winter landscape in each state, the same reminders to put your shoes on as the car glides to a stop at the gas station, the same thoughts buzzing around and around your head, the same nothingness.  We are in limbo.  The ride home is most definitely the very worst of times.

This trip home from Chicago had all of the weariness listed above as well as hellacious rain and terrible driving conditions.  I am not going to complain about it one bit because we were fortunate to have a good vehicle, fortunate that Bill is an excellent driver and fortunate to have missed the freezing, flooding and tornados.  It was intense.  It was crazy-scary and at one point I had to move to the back and move SG to the front because the incessant rain on the windshield was making me tense.  Then in the back, I had to talk myself down the crazy tree because it was so much smaller back there and the rain still would not let up.  It was not a pitter patter of rain; it was a constant, incessant deluge. 

So why do we do it and is it worth it?  It is always worth it because we get to where we want to go.  We see our family and watch our kids with their cousins and think it is totally worth it.  We explore new cities and take pictures in front of cool things and the time in the car disappears.  We stay at a relative’s house and live their life for a few days and know them better.  We have fun, we stay up late, we visit local haunts and we eat all the food.  After a day or two at our destination, we don’t remember being in the car at all.

And, every now and then, I take a good picture!

The ride to our destination is so often the very best of times for us.  We are all excited about going on our trip and have saved up new music, new things to entertain us and new things to talk about.  We flood the car with our words and our laughter.  We sing along, loudly, to all the songs.  We complement each other on our range or remark how we didn’t know that the other person even knew that song.  (Bill McMahon knows all the songs.  All the songs) We pass snacks back and forth that are purchased for road trips only and everyone smiles and savors them.  We are no longer four people leading four different lives that intersect; we are four people with one common goal.  We are less interested in all the things that make us “us” and more interested in what we are going to do as a “we” over the next few days.  We shed the weight of our lives as we click off the miles and we laugh more, we talk more and we enjoy each other more.  We like the closeness the car brings and we talk more openly and honestly and we listen more clearly than we ever do at home.  There are fewer distractions in the car and sometimes as a family, you need that.  We remember that we are a family, that we love each other, that we are living our lives together and not just along-side one another.  We are a family.  That is worth all the miles down the road and back again.