Soccer Mom?

Well, it's been a little over a year since things in our lives started to become more crazy than ever and I've only recently started to see a light at the end of the tunnel, to feel a little bit of hope for things to come.

Let me set the scene: We were in the frantic part of the beginning of the school year, where things are typically rushed as we're getting used to our new students, having to catch up on all of the grading, and acclimating to being tired all the time...again.  Except that everyone was especially exhausted because we had just gotten through weeks of helping students and friends gut their houses from the flood that had inundated Baton Rouge.  As part of that, our school schedule was rushed and hectic because we had to fit all the days we missed from the flood into a shorter period of time so we had seven classes when we would normally have six in a day and all breaks were eliminated.  Add to this that my father had started taking a downturn in his prostate cancer treatment and had to be hospitalized after a bad reaction to his chemotherapy.  Did I mention that he and my mom live with us?

It was a time of stress upon stress upon stress.  But we hadn't flooded.  And, while our son, Noah, was a little nutty and never stopped running around and always wore us ragged, he was safe and he was healthy and he loved us and it was all going to be okay, right?

Right?

Apparently not.

Because, while we knew that Noah was a little "extra" in general and at school, and we had been receiving notes home nearly daily about how he had fought against this rule or accidentally injured another child or ran away from that teacher, we didn't expect THE email.  The one suggesting that he had ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) and that we should look into getting him to a behavioral therapist.  This one hurt.  Why couldn't he have a more commonly understood issue rather than the one that is basically a clinical diagnosis of, quite frankly, being an asshole?  My sweet little guy? The one who, when he saw me tearing up, came over to me, patted my face, and said, "Mommy, don't cry." The kid who tried to kiss other people's "boo-boos" to make them better? That kid?

Apparently so.

The more we investigated, though, and over the course of a very eventful year, the more we learned that Noah has, as we call it, "All the D's."  In addition to ODD, he also has SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder) and is mostly a "seeker," ADHD (I'm pretty sure you've heard of this one), and I've even seen some preliminary signs of a little OCD.  He is also speech delayed.  It's been a year of discoveries and dealing with stress and tragedy and it was really bad when my father died and Noah didn't understand why Grandpa wasn't coming home or why we were all sad all the time.  There was the trial and error while we took him to hearing appointments and surgery to get tubes and speech appointments and occupational therapy appointments and had to find coverage for our classes on the fly so we could get him there and ordered him a sensory vest and tried out medications until finally finding one that helped him to focus enough to be able to start catching up developmentally and while we (still!) wait for his new school program that will help provide him the services and training he needs to open and when I always have to explain what's going on with him and how he doesn't have Autism, but that he has a disorder that is frequently linked to Autism and reading all the literature to try to help him and us and I'm writing this as a run-on sentence even as an English teacher to help you understand how tiring all of this is even though my son's issues aren't as bad as they could be.

Whew.

Because I don't want to talk about that stuff anymore.  I want to talk about our win.  Our success.  And the fact that I'm hopeful again that life can be something resembling what is traditionally considered normal.  I want to talk about getting a glimpse of what life as a stereotypical soccer mom could be like.

It was glorious.

We signed Noah up for a YMCA soccer league for 3-4 year-olds that our friend and co-worker was coaching.  He was one of the youngest on the team and had been asked to leave his previous soccer and dance enrichment classes at daycare because he couldn't pay attention and was distracting the other students.  Even with all his therapy and with his ADHD medicine, we knew this had the potential to be disastrous, but we wanted to try to give him a chance to be on a team and to have an activity he might enjoy.  Since he rarely sits still, it would also possibly help him channel that boundless energy.

Week 1, he spent the practice flopping on the ground, running away and the game hiding underneath my chair.  He did, however, like the "Go Lions" chant at the end of the practice and game.

Things slowly improved, especially when Billy banned me from going to practices so that Noah couldn't run to me and hide, but he was still pretty reluctant.  Last week, though, the final one of the season, we made a breakthrough.

The coach had to hold practice an hour later than usual that day because he needed to finish coaching our school's basketball team.  So, to avoid taking Noah home and having him grump about having to go back out to soccer practice, we went out to eat.  This was the first success because his inability to sit still and to listen to us has made us avoid dining out with him at all costs.  It was a risk, I'll admit it.  But I put my trust in his medication and his therapy and our training and took a deep breath and dove in.  We had a lovely meal at a small diner-style fast food chain.  Noah listened to and chatted with us.  He ate most of his meal.  He was wiggly, but sat relatively calmly with us.  I nearly cried.

The real challenge, though, was going to be soccer practice.  When we arrived, there were only two other players present and we were waiting on the coach.  Without any coaxing from the parents, the three kids started playing chase with each other.  They were giggling and running and pretending to growl at each other and it was like they had been friends for ages.  The parents joined in as much as we could without having the boundless energy of three and four-year-olds.  It was amazing to see Noah so carefree and happy and interacting with other kids and, dare I say it, "normal."  It's one of the first times I really felt like I was experiencing what the majority of parents must experience on a daily basis.  He still had some difficulty listening and following the directions during practice, but he PARTICIPATED.  With one Noah-style caveat: every time he made a goal, he ran over to us, pulled up his shirt, and asked for a raspberry on his belly.  He would giggle uncontrollably for a second or two after this and then run back to play.  We happily complied at this motivation because at least he was joining in.  A raspberry on his belly is a small price to pay.

The next day, though, that was the best part.  It was pretty chilly for Baton Rouge - in the 40s - and everyone was dressed up in sweatshirts and hats.  We couldn't find Noah's jersey, so we put him in a dark colored sweatshirt with Batman on the front and a hood that's really too small for the shirt and definitely too small for Noah's rather large head.  When he toddled around, he looked like a caricature of himself, but in reverse, since his head looked really tiny compared to his body.  We were missing our star player and, when the game started, we only had four players available and Noah was one of them.  I asked him, "Are you ready to play?"

And here's the best part, he said, "Yeah."  Enthusiastically.  And ran on the field!

Whaaaaaaaat?

The kid played for about half of the game total.  And, while he didn't contribute much to the score and tended to hover at a distance from the pack, he was listening to his coach and he was trying to join in.  He even, unintentionally, stopped the ball on defense a couple of times.  I can work with that.  

   

I'm not one for trophy culture, but, when the coach gave each team member a soccer ball medal with the dates of the season on it, Noah beamed from ear to ear and I felt like he had really earned that thing.  I felt like WE had earned that medal.  And that made it all worth it.

Later, he did an excellent job of playing and interacting with his teammates at the coach's daughter's birthday party at a nearby park.  It was a red-letter day and I was so proud of him.  He's even been talking about soccer and we might let him play again in the spring.  

So why the title of this particular post?  Because I had never wanted to be a soccer mom.  I never wanted to fall into the traditional stereotype of the mother who drove her kids from activity to activity in a minivan and pushed them to do things that they didn't want to do and hauled folding chairs and snacks and tied cleats and washed jerseys.  But, now that I've had a taste of it?  A glimpse of "normal" and even "stereotypical" after all of the fighting and struggling for something resembling normal?  I'll take it.  I'll wear that soccer mom mantle.  I'll cheer on the sidelines.  Hell, I'll buy a pair of mom jeans if it means that my little guy is having fun and getting a chance to feel "normal" for a change.   So....Go Lions!

#metoo

Recently, I've been attempting to get back to my writing roots.  I have been journaling more and brainstorming ideas for short stories, plays, children's books, and an ergodic/multimedia/interactive novel that's been sitting in the back of my brain for ages.  I've been having trouble getting any of those projects off the ground.  However, a couple times in the last few weeks, I've mentioned an experience or a perspective and someone will say, "You should blog about that."  In fact, three separate people in different realms of my life have said something similar.  I thought I'd return to blogging by recounting a silly little poem I dashed off the other day as a sort of marker of my jumping down the rabbit hole of writing again.  Yet, I never got the motivation to type it up and post it.

The #metoo hashtag is different.  That lit a fire under me to actually get on here to say something.  And, be forewarned, I have a lot to say.

At first, I toyed with the idea of just letting the #metoo thing go by.  I thought I could scroll through my Facebook stream liking or loving and supporting other people's posts and stay on the periphery.  

Until I saw how many of my female friends and family members posted it.

Until I saw how many of my former students posted it.

Until I saw other people, like me, who also felt like their experiences "weren't that bad" or "weren't that important" thinking they shouldn't bother to post and did anyway.

Until I saw other people talk about how this needs to stop, no matter how "minor" the sexual harassment they experienced was.

Because it needs to stop.

I don't want this to be a part of my culture anymore.  I don't want my students to experience it anymore, no matter how "minor."  I don't want my son to grow up in a world where he has to stand up for his female friends and classmates and coworkers in the face of sexual harassment.  I don't want to contribute to perpetuating that a sexist culture is the norm simply by not speaking up.

So....#metoo.

Assault has never really been on the list, but harassment definitely has.  Cat-calling, obviously, because you can't escape that as a woman. Being a 6'1" target doesn't help things, which is ironic considering how frequently the phrase "shawty" has been used in the catcalls themselves.  (Although, apparently, it does prevent me from being a target for rape and assault because it would "make too much of a scene."  That's according to my high school self-defense instructor.)

There was the time when I was celebrating my birthday at an amusement park with friends - I think I was 13 - and the much older teenager in line behind me decided to grab my butt.

There was the time when my eleven-year-old friend and I were hanging out with some boys of roughly the same age at a water park and they thought pressing their crotches to our back ends would be a good idea.  For them, maybe.

There was the time I was sitting with my husband before we were married at a restaurant and the man a few tables over - also on a date - chose to make lewd gestures in my direction when his date and mine weren't looking.  Luckily, we were done eating and I asked to leave so as not to make a scene.  I told my husband (fiancee at the time), much later, which was good, because he probably would have started an argument.  

There was the time, when I was nineteen, that I was working as a hostess at a chain restaurant and was propositioned nearly every day by men all north of 40.  My favorite was the guy in his fifties who gave me his card and offered a free helicopter-flying lesson.  Thanks, but no thanks.

There was the time in college that my friends and I went to Mardi Gras and, as per the tourist culture there, I was repeatedly asked to flash men for beads.  Fed up, I yelled, "Hell, no" at one of them and got some beads from the woman on the balcony above him as a reward.

There was the time, a few weeks ago, when Billy and I ran into male seniors we've both taught near a local movie theater that they all went out of their way to say hello to "Dr. P." but neglected to acknowledge my presence.  Billy, not willing to let them leave our school without learning the importance of respecting the women in their lives, or women in general, schooled them on how inappropriate their reactions were.

None of these overt moments of harassment, though, compares to two situations I've experienced that involve the cultural tendency, in general, of treating women as being inferior to men.  Because it is the two moments that I'm about to describe to you that made me feel like a lesser person.  You see, in the previous examples I provided, I never felt powerless.  I never questioned my worth.  I moved on and didn't really give them a second thought.  These two shook me to my core.

One all comes down to a simple off-handed comment.  I was in grad school at the time, but working as an admin for a local publisher, who my husband has nicknamed "Professor Tiddly Winks," who owned a series of storefronts.  I worked most directly with the woman who ran the storefronts - a cafe, gallery, art lesson studio, and bookshop - but he would come in from time to time.  I figured I might be able to get a job learning editing from him on the side, but that never transpired.  My husband, however, did manage to grab a free-lancing job editing a book for the company.  I was turning in his edits one day and Tiddly Winks started up a conversation about my goals after grad school.  At the time, I thought I had wanted to continue on to the Ph.D. and we talked about what types of schools I would prefer to work at. 

"But, of course, if it's a spousal hire, you'll end up having to move where your husband decides to go, so it doesn't really matter."

Yep.  He said it.  To my face.  Like it was nothing.  I should note that, at this point, Billy had only finished his master's degree and had not yet started applying for Ph.D. programs.  But, according to this guy, we would have to go wherever Billy got us a job.  And I wouldn't matter.  And he was right.  Much of academia is structured that way.  It doesn't mean the rest of us have to continue to buy into that mindset anymore, though.

Oh, and, for the record, both Billy and I earned our current jobs on our own, but we came onto the school's radar because of my teaching experience, not Billy's Ph.D. (which he didn't have yet).  Take that, Professor Tiddly Winks.

I'm still getting over the other one that also occurred during grad school.  You see, my high school English teacher had an affair with a student several years after I had graduated.  This was a man who I not only idolized but who also had encouraged me to pursue my English degree because of all the support and effusive compliments - and challenges - he had provided to make me a better writer.  I was shocked, hurt, and appalled.  And I no longer trusted my instincts about people.  I had modeled much of my now successful teaching style on his!  Though I wrote a letter to the editor in support of the school during this awful time, I didn't know what I thought about the whole thing.  Was it all a lie?  Did he just compliment me because that's what he did with all his students?  The weird thing is that I even found out he had a "type."  I didn't fit the mold, so maybe his reassurances were genuine and not based on some perverted sexual attraction to me?  I kept trying to justify all of it somehow.  

I eventually ended up having his same job at my alma mater.  

That's when the dreams started.  For some reason, in them, he was still allowed to be at the school and his sole purpose there was to taunt me at how I would never be as good at his job as he was.  This statement was usually followed by his hearty laughter, at which point I would wake up.  Every time I was stressed or questioning my methods or abilities, he would pop into my nightmares again.  Slowly, with a few more years of experience and a few more successful graduates under my belt, he receded into the background until, during one stressful portion of the semester, he showed up again to haunt my dreams.

"You'll never be as good of a teacher as I was."

And I punched him right in the jaw.  I haven't had the dream since.  Something else helped.  As part of taking his former job, I had access to his files.  I read my college letter of recommendation from him.  It's good.  It's damn good.  And so am I.  And even with the fog of his relationship with a student, and possibly others, tainting everything, it doesn't change my abilities.  I keep that letter as a talisman to remind myself to be the person I always thought I had the capability of being.  

And that means I need to be a role-model for my students.  I need to make sure that this type of thing doesn't happen to them.  I need to talk about it and write about it and speak up about it so that we no longer normalize this sexist treatment, harassment, and, yes, assault on the women and men in our society who are having their power taken away from them by people who don't deserve to be in power.

So, yes, #metoo.