And then there will be the days when I download the homework for the next week, and see things like a list of weekly vocabulary words including ‘imitiation’ and ’slurped’. When I see that they’re working on ‘fantasy vs. realism’. When I open up the kid’s backpack and find that the teacher has let him bring home 1001 Cool Jokes for his weekly reading because it’s challenging wordplay, rather than forcing him to bring home a different book simply because it’s at grade level even though it won’t push him at all When I get email from the teacher with an update on math, when we get a check in call from her to let us know what few issues there have been, and how she’s handling it. When we realize that her classroom management and redirection is so seamless that Sean doesn’t come home saying he was bad or made poor choices, but is excited that the teacher wants to know his questions and that he gets a special notepad to write them down and special time with her to go over them. When we realize the first words out of his mouth at the end of the school day are not a litany of who got in trouble for what, but rather what they got to do that day. When his face lights up and he tells me his day was better than great, it was perfect.

And as I hug my boy- the happy, excited, in the world and of the world little boy we saw at his old Kindergarten, rather than the anxious and bored kid we saw in first grade- I am filled with gratitude and guilt. Gratitude that he got in, gratitude that this so far is working, gratitude for a teacher who is so attuned to her students. Guilt that not every child in this country has this. Because every single child deserves such care and nourishment for mind, body, and soul.

And we’ve taken steps to become exactly the classist motherfuckers I vowed would not be happening.

Because we are saying a giant FUCK YOU and SCREW YOU GUYS, I’M OUTTA HERE to his elementary school, and I’m looking up ramen recipes. We are no longer dealing with a school where ingrained racism, sexism, and stereotyping is fine. We’re no longer dealing with a school that advocates baggin, taggin, and drugging for any kid who doesn’t fit into their nice suburban box. Despite all our belief in public education, we are pulling Sean out and sending him to the zomg I can’t believe we’re doing this private school, the one that had nerd camp. I saw a light in his eyes and a zeal for learning that we hadn’t seen since his awesome kindergarten.

I cannot WAIT to email the PTO president and tell her we’re out.

“Let’s just try Gigi’s Closette.”

Gigi’s had the advantage of being right next to Hackneys, which meant after another traumatic few hours of trying on dresses- bearing in mind, I owned no dresses, period, I am not a girly girl- I could drown my sorrows in Guinness and mow down a loaf of onion rings. My mother, having grown up on the north shore, knew that Gigi’s was where all the young ladies of certain standing got their white dresses for a certain high school graduation. What mom neglected to tell me hit me full force when we walked in.

Everything in Gigi’s is purple. The carpet is purple. The walls are lilac. The index cards they take your info on are lavendar. The receipts are pale purple with dark purple printing. And Gigi herself does exist, and rocked two tone purple nails, a helmet of ginger hair, a gimlet eye, and enough perkiness to power a mid-sized city. I, in jeans, hiking boots, and a plaid flannel, did not hold out great hope. We were ushered upstairs- downstairs being the province of prom dresses, formal evening wear for beauty competitions, and MOB outfits- to the wedding area. Which is where I discovered that the windows in the dressing rooms had no shades, just dresses pinned up at odd angles, so as construction workers came out onto the big, raised above ground level porch of Hackneys, they could see you in the dressing room cowering behind artfully angled taffeta.

Awesome.

Everything about Gigi’s set my teeth on edge. I did find my dress there- I have no idea how, it magically appeared on a hanger outside my room, and no one had ever seen it before, including Gigi herself- and thus lamentably found myself returning there again and again for fittings. There were two details of the dress we demanded be altered- the stiff netting be taken out of the shoulders so they would not puff up, and the raw silk roses on the base of the back bodice be removed. The seamstress had no problem with our first request, but argued vociferously about the second. You can’t do that! Everyone will be looking at plain back of bodice! In one of those special moments- when you say something regrettable JUST as everyone falls silent so your voice not only carries but echoes resoundingly- I declared,

“I am SO not a roses on the ass kind of woman!!!”

And so the roses were removed. But the seamstress insisted on putting them in the bag with the dress, in case we changed our mind. My mother purloined them. And thus began 13 years of the roses showing up. In the fake bouquet at the rehearsal. On presents at random holidays. The fucking things were omnipresent. Just when I thought surely she’d run out, more would show up. The Lad was accused to returning them TO her. I resigned myself to a lifetime of being plagued by fabric roses at random times.

This week, my mother moved here, selling her house in Chicago and relocating to a place about 20 minutes away. Ever cautious, she mailed a few boxes down in advance- things she didn’t want going on the moving truck, some things for us to keep in our lockbox. She glibly said go ahead and open- there were some Trader Joe’s treats for Sean in there, and we should use her Wii since ours was dying. As I rummaged through them, my hands traced across the box from our wedding invitations. Recalling mom had saved our engraving plates (look, we were old school about some things) in case we ever wanted to frame them as a funky art piece, I pulled out the box to put it away with my cache of wedding stuff. I popped it open to look at the plates, wondering if I had a frame with a thick enough depth to go ahead and hang them now as a surprise for the Lad.

Instead of brushing across metal, my fingers brushed across plastic and silk. There, spilling out of a ziplock, was the rest (I hope) of her stash of floral shame. I dug hurriedly through the larger box to see if there were any more, then ran my ill-gotten booty to a safe spot and buried it.

Come winter, when we’re off wind and heat advisories, I am burning the fuckers.

At the library
“Sigh. They just don’t value Vikings enough. Who cares about Egyptians, why do they get 3 shelves and Vikings get like half of one?”

At the store in the checkout line
“I can’t believe you made me pick just one cheese. That’s like making me pick just one sleepy toy.”

At the farmer’s market
“Mom did you get me popcorn?” (answer negatory, sack of sugar snap peas handed over) “YAY! I can eat peas until I EXPLODE!”

All of this because we decided to, in essence, give him a couple of weeks off. This year, unlike years past, we made the conscious decision to not schedule Sean for something every week. I sensed, long before we got the end of year packet- full of perfects on tests and assessments; dire, wretched notes on whizzed-through worksheets and condemnations of his energy level; and worst of all, a weekly writing journal where on a prompt about what’s been hard for him at school a self-written screed about his ‘focus’ full of the jargon his teacher used, the self-abnegation pouring off the pencil-smudged page in rivulets- that the boy needed a break.

That first Monday morning he blinked at me.
What do you mean we don’t have to go anywhere?
There’s no school and you don’t have camp, sweetie.
I don’t have camp.
Nope.
For how long?
Two weeks. And then you have more weeks off here and there through the summer.
He blinked at me some more. What am I supposed to do, then?
I’ll give you a list every morning of anything you need to do beyond your regular chores. Other than that, whatever you want. You can read, you can play legos, you can play bakugan, you can watch dvds, you can watch things on the Tivo, you can play on the computer or the wii, you can go in the backyard and play, whatever.
Whatever? I can do what I want?
Yup.

He could not believe his good fortune.

As I watch him bound around the house and play, listen to his polite words come out in full force and the sullen sadness that had started to settle over him slip away, witness him rivet on books and devour them like cheese or a pile of popcorn, I cannot believe my good fortune, either.

And though it probably cost me some serious points, I will admit I loled at that. I then explained the humor to you- we both love math, you called me your angle, tee hee hee- and you raced off downstairs guffawing to tell Dad. But as a metaphor, it’s apt. I have to balance protecting you in the sharpness of my embrace and parental boundaries, an acute angle hemming you in and away from things you are not ready for yet. As you grow, the sweep widens, and it’s my job to reveal, bit by bit, more of the world, more freedom, more room to stretch and breathe.

You are 7 now, and acute gives way to obtuse, more and more. Yesterday you asked to play on the playground right next to the farmer’s market, visible from any stand but far enough away I’d have to drop everything and run to get to you should anything happen. And you are 7, so I said yes, and your face lit up like I had personally hung the moon for you. You don’t realize it little man who’s not little but rather medium, but less and less will you feel the physical penning of the acute, and more and more the world will be thrown open past 90 degrees. But in your experimentation and actions, I think we have successfully instilled in you: you can always come back to us. We will always draw in and cradle you in a tight, acute embrace should you ever need it, and when you are ready to be brave again, throw open our arms so wide it’s reflex, and help you be in and of the world.

Happy Birthday, little-not-little-medium man, and thank you for my mother’s day.

My mother, 6 weeks widowed and with a daughter who was merrily driving the Dan Ryan and Kennedy Expressways up from Hyde Park to the northern burbs of Chicago every weekend, freakpuddled. Big league. A woman not easily prone to hysteria, she called me in a blubbering panic and ordered me to come up there and car shop. NOW. Mindful of cost, I test drove a variety of tiny shitboxes- the lowest end mazdas, fords, whatever. Mom kept veoting them. It was only when we were at the volvo dealer that she calmed down. The salesman airily informed us you could roll the damn thing 17 times, get out, and do your grocery shopping. Mom, sitting in the back seat, looked up from the arm-rest storage compartment she’d just popped open and inquired in dulcet tones, “Oh, so this is to keep a clean pair of pants in, then?”

This is how I came to own Hildegarde. Or Hilde, or Hildy-gardy, or whatever. Black, with a grey interior, she got wicked hot in summer. The first time I had a sense what a tank we had was when we were sitting in a gas station, waiting to turn out into traffic, and there was an accident right in front of us. A car made an illegal left against traffic on a 45 mph road and got t-boned, the force of it spinning that car into us. The headlight windshield wiper of Hilde destroyed the rear quarterpanel and, for good measure, hooked onto the gas cap door and ripped it off. Hilde was barely scritched.

Hilde saw me through 15 years. Though engagement and marriage, through leaving one career and gaining another. Though road trips out east for weddings and up to Canada for the trip of a lifetime. It was through her rear window I saw my beloved home city recede into the distance, it was in her I carried around a baby, a toddler, a pre-schooler. Hilde, I am certain, saved my life when I was in the wretched accident before Sean turned two.

And I am certain she saved my life, and Sean’s, and A’s last night. We were en route home from dinner doin 65 on a highway, at an overpass, when I heard a noise, and no sooner had I asked A what in the sam hell that was and she’d said, “I think it’s a belt?” when suddenly I had nothing, save for one hell of a great deal of smoke ballooning from the car. No steering. No a/c, not that I cared. The alternator light was on, the crankshaft was gronking, the dashboard was lit up like a christmas tree with warning lights, and for all the world it looked like my car was on fire. I am eternally grateful to the engineering of Volvo that I managed to not only safety get us off a damn highway, but off an exit ramp and into a parking lot and not merrily tumbled down an embankment. It turns out part of the a/c froze up (as in stopped turning), which in turn caused the serpentine belt to stop moving properly, shred, catch fire, and be spectacular, and then once THAT was gone there was ass all operating the alternator, crank shaft, steering, etc. I throw out mad, mad props to A, for the kind use of her AAA card and generally being a hero of the revolution, and to the neighbor who happened by and insisted on waiting with us for the tow, following the tow to the garage, and getting us all home.

So today, after determining what had happened, came the inevitable decision. We had been talking (in hushed tones, so Hilde wouldn’t overhear) that it was time to plan for replacing my car, so we had done our homework though this was way the hell more abrupt than we intended. Fortunately, our friend at the dealership knows what a rockstar car an 850 with low mileage is, and he’s a badass at fixing cars, and so he can fix it for himself way cheaper than we could get anyone to fix it for us. He bought it outright from me, will get it towed from the garage, and will be fixing her up and handing her over to his (very responsible, he assures me) 18 year old daughter to take to college. I ran over to the garage to empty Hilde out, and as I sat in her for one last time I whispered to her, thanking her for taking such good care of me, and the Lad and me, and most importantly Sean when he came along. I told her she was the best car I could have wanted, and patted her dash and splashed tears all over her steering wheel. And then I left her there, not knowing at that point that she WAS going to such a good home, and felt like puking.

I have a brand new volvo in the garage tonight, a fact which I am still by turns queasy, squeeful, and shocked by, and I have to name her. The Lad helpfully texted me links to wikipedia entries about valkyr, which is the nomenclature in our house for our car names. He’s not here, he’s away on business, adding a whole level of complexity and agida to the past 24 hours (the poor man was burning up the phone lines this morning, trying to organize stuff while I had Sean at his poorly timed Tae Kwon Do belt test). She is smaller than Hilde, and silver, so he’s advocating for Mist, the valkyr of, well, mists. But somehow, that just doesn’t feel quite right. It makes sense, but she is a badass. Hildr means battle, Hilde was my battle-maiden. It seems meet and proper that my new girl pay homage to her departed big sister, and mindful of her shiny silverness, Brynhildr might work. Bright battle.

I shall have to think about it. But if she’s even half the car Hilde was, she’s meritorious of the name.

So Sean has a hunger which cannot be slaked. It is unending. Just when I think he’s had enough, he asks for more. It is mind-boggling. It is astonishing. And it is capricious. What sufficed one day is disdained as boring and babyish all of a sudden.

Sean has become a Reader. With such a capital R. We go nowhere without a book in hand. We have a stack in the car. Stacks litter the house. I’m not entirely sure how many books he has ‘in process’ right now. His teacher has amped up the challenge for the kids and now their weekly reading homework is a ‘more challenging, difficult book which they will need parental help with over the course of the next week’. She assigned him a Cam Jansen mystery.

He finished it in 15 minutes. I didn’t believe he could have actually read it. Quizzing revealed he, in fact, had and could rattle off plot, character names, details, and the like. (although it also forced me to explain ‘conspiracy’ and ‘accessory during and after the fact’ to explain why even though the one guy hadn’t actually physically taken the diamonds by assisting in the robbery he was just as in the wrong and did, in fact, count as one of the robbers. Thank you, Dick Wolf. I may or may not have been gruff like Sam Waterston when I explained it to the kid).

He is not quite ready for Harry Potter, or Roald Dahl- we tried a page of each, with the ‘5 words you don’t know’ rule, but my god, at this clip he’ll be there this summer. He adores Amulet, Flight Explorer, Artemis Fowl the graphic novels, Magic Tree House, mysteries in all forms. Does anyone have any good book suggestions?

Bonus points if they include a rhino.

(Reminder! Sean has asked for donations to Save the Rhino and the World Wildlife Foundation for his birthday. Of course, he’s also asked ‘for a stack of books as tall as me’ and ‘legos!’ and ‘an armload of uglidolls’ but hey. I’m thrilled he’s not asking for toy guns and stuff. Little does he know we are adopting the rhino at the zoo for him. If only we could sponsor the wood outdoor rocking chair overlooking the rhino area that he likes to park in for ages.)

“Mom, I want to go to a new church!” Sean declared as we sat at a stoplight.
“What? Why?!”
“I want to go to that one!” And he pointed at the giant billboard for ‘Infallible Word Church’.
“Um….why?”
“If everyone who goes there is in Infallible on the server, then everyone in the church has taken down Arthas and has the Kingslayer achievement! That church must have the best gear EVER!”
“…..”
“What mom?”