Happy Birthday to Timi

This morning in TA I brought out my nesting birthday baskets. The largest contains reusable stickers with themes of kindness and inclusion, the middle basket contains pencils with color, glitter, planets.. and the smallest basket contains Jolly Ranchers and Starburst of various flavors. It’s a 3-2-1. Students can decide what they want three of, what they want two of, and what they only want one of. That element of personal priority I added in after the first year of doing this, and it’s always interesting to see their choices.

“Whose birthday is it today, Ms. Dunbar?”

“Timi’s!” 

Word spread as Timi quickly made his choices, and by the time I emerged from putting the baskets back in their copy room niche, a small crowd of admirers had formed around Timi. They spontaneously began singing “Happy Birthday” to him, in perfect choral harmony. 

Chills ran up and down my spine as they continued with “Is he one? Is he two? Is he three?…” He acknowledged fourteen with a smile and a downward hand motion, at which point his well-wishers began moving slowly back to their seats for the beginning of the morning news show.

“Everyone likes Timi!” I heard one fellow say, emphatically. And it’s true. He is the Every-teen.

Timi was one of only two new-to-TJ students in my TA this school year, and the only one to arrive after the school year started. He was shy and soft-spoken, didn’t know a soul, and got scooped up by a loner who annoyed most of the other students. 

I stood by for the first several weeks as Timi showed grace to this student, accepted his need to be a mentor and friend, but then began to realize that he didn’t want to be best buds with him. The way Timi gradually extricated himself from that web and began sitting at a few other tables on a rotational basis, before settling in with his permanent TA nest, was truly impressive for someone so new to us and seemingly shy. Maturity and grace of this sort, in eighth grade, is not the norm. 

This is a moment that will stick with me and help me forever remember this group of students.

May the Fourth Be With You

May the fourth was definitely with me, and so is May the fifth. 

We are officially 30 (almost 29) days from the end of this school year and each day is a heavy weight right now. This probably has a lot to do with the incessant pollen invading Arlington. But it may also have something to do with every third exchange I’m having with our eighth grade students lately.

They are getting ready to leave us soon, and it’s easier to go if they decide we are annoying. So they do what they can to bait us. We stand strong and firm, without over-reacting, but it’s oh-so-tiring to have a handful of these exchanges every single day.

“Gerson, Mr. Lapin asked you to move to the front row.”

“I don’t want to move there. Can I stay here if I pay attention?”

“Gerson, please do what Mr. Lapin asked you to do.”

“But I can pay attention from here.”

“This is not a negotiation, Gerson. This is a request.”

“Kamila, please fill out the pa….”

“What paper?” (Defensively)

“The one with the sounds at the top of each col…”

“Ohhhh!” (Overly loudly)

“Column. You need to say each…”

“I said I got it. You don’t need to keep telling me.” (With attitude)

“You interrupted me.” 

“YOU interrupted ME!” (Rudely)

“Andrew, please park your iPad.” (Pause)

“Andrew, please park your iPad.” (Pause)

“Andrew. Can you hear what I am asking you to do?” (Calmly)

“Yeah. Geeze.” (Snarly)

“Well… then please do it now!”

How Will I Know?

It’s April 15th and we have 43 days of school left until Summer. How are we already beginning the fourth quarter of the school year?

While I’ve always enjoyed the cycle of school years throughout my life, I’m also wondering if time will slow down a bit in retirement, when I’m not marking its passage by days off, weeklong breaks, grading periods, and due dates. In retirement I imagine one day being very much like another. Not in a Groundhog Day kind of way, but in more of a what-plant-shall-I-grow-today sort of way.

But ask the average retired person how they like retirement and many will say they are busier than ever, or at least busier than they had expected to be. Or they might start listing the various activities they participate in, as if you’d asked them what they do in retirement, rather than who they are in retirement. Yet I’ve noticed that no one ever regrets having retired. 

How does a person know when it’s time to retire? It’s certainly more of a temptation when a spouse has gone out ahead of you, even if they are older. Watching a close colleague slog through the various tasks in preparation for her retirement this Spring is oddly tantalizing. Even when I’m feeling committed to at least one more year in my current position, if not also one more year after that.

When people ask me about retirement plans, and they are beginning to do so now and then, I just say I’m on a year to year basis at this point. As long as my school continues with its strong admin team, solid co-teachers, and the technology is not outpacing me, I’m good to keep going. Even though I wear reading glasses now, and sometimes fear for my safety while rounding corners in our overcrowded hallways.

My cautionary tale is Grandma Kathie’s reflection on her own decision to abruptly retire several years before she’d originally planned to: “We were leaving the theater with our friend group one Sunday afternoon, and I noticed that Burt (her husband) was lagging behind everyone else. I remember thinking to myself that those next three years I’d planned to work could be the best ones we have left together. And you know what? They absolutely were.”

I think maybe that’s how you know.

Babysitting in Bethesda

Yesterday, Molly babysat for seven mostly school-aged children, mostly cousins of each other, during the entire length of a family wedding. The eldest, a 7th grade neighbor boy, has a friend who joined the group because he’s in training to become a babysitter.

“He’ll be my assistant,” Molly stated confidently. 

The carload bound for Bethesda assembled across the street at 2:30pm. It consisted of the father, Pete, Evan, Evan’s friend, and six year old Flora who is counting down to her seventh birthday in several days. No doubt her birthday party will be next weekend’s big event!

“Have fun with your cousins,” I said, as Flora waved to me. Then added, “Take good care of Molly!” Flora giggled and smiled. Molly was out of earshot as she had dashed back into our house to grab Uno Attack. 

One pair of cousins is staying at an airbnb in Alcova Heights, the next neighborhood over from us. The other pair of cousins had travelled from Sweden to be here, and must be the ones staying at the airbnb in Bethesda. Three-year-old August was one of those cousins.

“He’s bound to be jet-lagged,” Molly had said, hopefully, when listing the group members to me earlier in the afternoon. The decision to have the cousins located in the Bethesda residence had everything to do with it being two blocks from the wedding venue, “in case of any meltdowns,“ she had added.

Things went more smoothly than one might have imagined, despite Molly’s guarded apprehension about young August. Shortly after 10:00pm, Molly’s victory text appeared on my phone.

“Pete just took off. I’m coming back in a little while with Kate because August (3yo) is anxious about his parents getting back to the airbnb, and he’s attached himself to me.”

It appears my daughter is not only a cat whisperer, but she’s also an august handler of small children when she needs to be.

Wild Kingdom

Surfaces bursting with potted plants line the far side of my enclosed front porch. Three wide open days lie ahead of me. Time to plant many of them, beginning with the wild ginger, the May apples, and the Virginia ragwort.

This year I also have a box full of 18’ high gate panels to build in some rabbit protection around my natives. So far I have not seen any rabbit damage to my woodland phlox or for that matter, anything else. This is puzzling given that we have oodles of rabbits in the neighborhood, but I have a couple of ideas about why they might be keeping their distance from us this Spring.

Several weeks ago, early in the morning, Molly saw an opossum scurrying from the back yard towards the side of the house where our raised beds reside. A week or so later Brian saw the same activity, also very early one morning. Both were convinced that what they saw was a great big opossum. A huge monster of an opossum, in fact. 

We came to believe that perhaps she was pregnant, and no one has seen her since. But the hole leading into the crawl space is where we believe she lives and perhaps is nesting. Research suggests that an opossum eats small mammals which could include mice, perhaps chipmunks, and can be a threat to newborn bunnies as well, 

Foxes have also been sighted in the neighborhood this Spring, so perhaps we are cycling away from rabbits for now. I welcome each and every fox, including their nocturnal screams while mating, until my tender natives grow tall and tough.

Sunshine Tag

On afternoons when I arrive home from school and relax in my favorite sun-drenched chair for a cup of freshly brewed coffee, two alert adolescent cats sit expectantly on the sofa arm nearby, or on the floor near my sock feet. They are waiting for their new favorite game.

When I pick up my phone, the sunlight reflects off of the glass and onto the wall behind me or the ceiling above my right shoulder. To them it’s Laser Tag, but instead of dodging the light, they attempt to catch it! Repeatedly. Forever amazed that it cannot be contained in their marshmallow paws.

Sometimes I angle my phone and create figure eight patterns on the floor that they pursue relentlessly. Or maybe I’ll hide the light inside one of the Swiss cheese holes of their carpet tower. I tire of these shenanigans long before they do. 

Their little brains desperately need the hunt, but this particular hunt does not bring them much success. So we end up playing some Stick Feather until all the jumping wears them out, at which point they flop into a sun spot on the carpet to snooze, with their conquered prey nearby. 

Changing the Narrative

This evening while at dinner with a couple of old friends on the occasion of the husband’s 66th birthday, the conversation turned to what our adult children are doing now. 

“Why doesn’t she sub at Arlington Tech? It’s so close to home,” he asked.

“Couldn’t he do some volunteering if he’s not looking for a job?” she wondered.

At first, I felt uncomfortable, knowing that these two friends are all about going and doing. In stark contrast to this, both our daughter and our son are at points in their lives where simply being is a shared joy for them. 

For the first time since they were toddler and baby together, neither one of them is in school, and we are giving them time to find their own paths.Time to breathe. And they are both happy! Not stressed, not anxious, not worried about what comes next - at least not outwardly so. 

There is no tension between us and them, especially since they willingly help out in little ways here and there around the house. It’s a joy to be with them at this moment in their lives, on the precipice of young adulthood.

As I tried to explain this to our friends, I could see the confusion cloud their faces, especially her face.

“How will he learn to assert his initiative if we are always planning his next move?” I asked. “He’s been much happier, more conversational and very present with us. And he no longer disappears into his room for hours at a time.”

Sometimes I do wonder if we are wise in this way of thinking, or simply becoming lazy and negligent in our parenting as we age. Is doing the enemy of being? Or is it the other way around? Time will tell. But also, what’s the rush?