Grateful Friday

I am grateful parent teacher conferences are over.  I don't dislike them, it's just that they are exhausting.  Yesterday I was at the school for over 12 hours and pretty much that entire time I was speaking actual words to people.  I need more blank space in my life than that.

***

I am grateful that I got to have parent teacher conferences.  It was really nice to meet with my students' parents.  They are a good group of people.  All of them were very kind to me and some of them helped shed some light on their students' situations and hopefully I shed a little light as well.

One guy, who has such a charming smile you can't help smile back, turned in a blank math test yesterday with the word YEET on it.  (Third grade attempt at humor.)  He must not have connected the dots that he and his parents were my 4:45.  I slid the test across the desk to them.  His parents were shocked and not at all happy and I just had to smile and say, "I'm sure he can try again tomorrow."

When they walked out of the room they were talking consequences and I just have to hand him the test back today because they did my work for me on that one.

Nice timing (for me--not so much for him).

***

I say it over and over but I am over and over grateful for the people I work with.  We had dinner brought in last night and I sat at the big kids' table (with the sixth grade teachers).  I don't interact with them as often because we have different schedules but it still felt like I was having dinner with friends.

The new principal--who's starting next week--came into my classroom last night and we chatted a little.  He seems really nice and the teachers' collective boots on the ground connections at the school where he used to be are all very positive.

***

I'm grateful for good men.  Brother Cordon in our ward is a tireless champion of scouts.  He has wheeled his wheelchair up to our boys many a Sunday to check in with them and encourage them.  His health has landed him in a care center so he was going to miss the last Eagle court of honor where five of his boys were being honored.

That wasn't OK with Adam.

Adam visited him and downloaded an app on Brother Cordon's phone so Adam could live stream the court of honor to him.  Adam positioned someone with Brother Cordon to be tech support and he took all the equipment to record (along with every conceivable back up, including the huge battery that goes to our lawn mower but can convert to a power source to plug things into).  He was not leaving anything to chance.

Adam sent me this screenshot:

And then after the court of honor, they went to give Brother Cordon their mentor pins.

It makes me teary to think of the impact this one good man has had on these boys.

And I'm also pretty grateful for Adam for recognizing the value of including Brother Cordon in the celebration as much as possible.

The world needs good men and from where I sit, the world has a lot of them.

***

I'm grateful it's the weekend!  I love being able to spend more time with my people.  We have a "business dinner" planned with Mark tonight where we are going to discuss his school schedule for next year.  Wish me luck; we have different opinions.

Inequality

I lamented on my blog that it feels like an unequal partnership and I am not holding up my end of the bargain with Adam.

That night he told me that of course it was an unequal partnership.  He said, "Our marriage has never been about keeping everything equal.  Sometimes one of us does more.  That's why it works."

It made me cry.

***

In the course of an hour I can fluctuate between feeling like I have the best job in the world and I am enriching lives! and making a difference! and I love it! to feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing with these irrational and small and demanding people.  I wonder if I have the patience, stamina, or ability to meet their needs and teach them what they need to know.  Also, I have stuff to do at home so why am I spending so much energy elsewhere?  Also, I really like being home.

It's the same way I can fluctuate between feeling like a fabulous mother with spectacular children to feeling like I have failed in every parenting measure and my whole life's work is kind of a bust.

***

I guess this is what life is all about.  You keep trying.  You keep trying to improve and contribute and work and matter.

And sometimes you don't feel like you are doing any of it right.

I tell myself it's OK, because it never was about an equal partnership.  The Atonement of Jesus Christ keeps making up the difference for when I feel like a mess.

My job is to just keep going.

Yesterday

Braeden texted me this:

And that was just days after I told him that Olivia and I were pinning all our hopes on the fact that our boys will have better grades when they're older because Braeden does....

Emma texted me this:

I texted back...um, what is a paragon of filial piety?

So, my daughter is smarter than I am but that is nothing new to anyone.

Mark sent me on a roller coaster (as is his specific talent) by telling me first thing in the morning that he was out of insulin and forgot to tell me earlier.

I called the pharmacy and reordered and Adam stepped up to the plate and I went to school.

Adam is the MVP on the daily around here.  He stays up late with Mark when Mark's glucose levels are wonky (they had been the night before).  He changes his work schedule around to be here for Mark when things self destruct.  He doesn't get on the roller coaster like I do, he just calmly takes care of things.  I know we are partners in this endeavor but it really feels like he is doing more than his share and I'm very very grateful.

I married well.

As for me, I taught school and then had 13 parent teacher conferences.  It was exhausting on a cellular level but also nice.  I love telling parents that I love their children and I love giving them specific reasons.

I gave one mother something her son had written about how he wanted to be a better helper to his mom because he loved her.

She started crying.

So I guess I can't adopt him which is what I've been hoping for.  He is a terrific kid but I kind of doubt his mom will part with him.

***

The only person in our family I didn't hear from yesterday was Anna but I did show one of my students her picture.  She wanted to see a picture of "your other one."  (Braeden is a hard name apparently.)  I showed her an engagement picture and said, "That's Braeden and that is his wife, Anna."

My student said 1) she's so pretty! and 2) I love her name!

Third grade

For all the exhaustion and dailiness of it, third grade delights me.

One little girl who really struggles with school work but has the biggest heart and most infectious smile you'll ever see, was working on her Chromebook, doing Lexia, which is a reading program.  She likes to come and sit at my desk for moral support so I was watching her peripherally.  She would do the sign of the cross and look heavenward before pressing enter when she was spelling words.

I love the mixed up words they use.  I was playing Go Fish with a small reading group, working on controlled r words.  The kids mostly call it Goldfish.

"Do you have storm?"

"Goldfish."

"Do you have girl?"

"Goldfish."

One of the boys was delighted to come across the word fork.  He said, "Like Fork Knife!"

I think he meant Fortnite.  I prefer fork knife.

Also, a lot of them call their backpacks "pack packs."  The other day it was lightly snowing after school and one girl was stressed about her library books.  She said, "I forgot my pack pack!  What am I going to do?"

I showed her how to put the books inside her coat and hold it closed around them.  She looked at me like I was an inventive genius.

Third graders are such an easy crowd.

They are also incredibly earnest.  One little guy is the English speaker in his family.  Over a series of days he and I were able to set up his mom's parent teacher conference (and I have an interpreter lined up for the meeting).  I would write down information in words he could read and understand to explain to his mom about the conference.  He had me write down every available time so he could see which his mom preferred.  He came back the next day and said, "3:15 on Tuesday."

"3:15 on Tuesday?" I asked.

He solemnly said, "Yes."

And I knew he was right because he's the kind of kid that remembers everything.

Third grade also ties my tongue up sometimes, particularly vocabulary lessons.

Descendants was one of our vocabulary words.  Have you ever tried explaining that to eight year olds?  "So people you're related to?"  "People older than you?"  "People younger than you?"

One student, a wise cracker who is sarcastic and lazy and incredibly, incredibly smart, understood what I was explaining.  He said, "Your offspring!"

"Yes," I said.  "Your offspring."

Another student said, "I have no idea what that means."

I drew a family tree on the board.  "These are my grandparents," I said.  I wrote Harvey and Margaret on the board.  (I didn't want to confuse them by writing my grandma named Thelma.)  I drew 7 lines representing their children.  I pointed to which was my dad.  I said, "This is my dad Mark and he married Coralee."

"Mark!" they exclaimed.  (Because of the whole hero worship of Mark that happens for reasons beyond understanding.)

I drew 6 lines.  "These are their children."

"Which is you?"

I pointed to the second line.  "I married Adam and we have three kids."  I drew three lines.

They said, "Mark."

One of the girls (because the girls are fascinated by her) said, "And Emma."

Another student said, "Don't you have another one too?"

(I considered how much it would disappoint Braeden to know he was an afterthought.  He's used to being the firstborn center of attention.)

I pointed to the family tree and said, "These are all Harvey and Margaret's descendants."

It all seemed to make sense.  They were nodding their heads in understanding.

Then one boy raised his hand and said, "So when did it begin?  Who were the first people?"

Um.

I said, "Well, people who are Christians believe that Adam and Eve were the first people.  Then there are people who have other ideas."  I'm 99% sure they are all on board with Adam and Eve plus I really didn't want to get into a whole discussion about creation vs. evolution.

Besides we had other vocabulary words to cover.

Another vocabulary word was pioneers.

I talked about pioneers in medicine and technology and talked about the crossed-the-plains kind of pioneers.  (Living in Utah, where we have Pioneer Day, I didn't think this would be a hard concept but it seemed to be.)

I explained that pioneers were people that had gone before.  I almost said that pioneers were the first ones to go West, but then I saw them and about half of them are not white and it seemed like a disservice to tell them the pioneers were the first people to go West when there were actually people already there.

I walked over to the map and showed them the size of the United States before the westward expansion.  I assured them the land was still there (we've gone down that path before), but most Americans lived in the East.

I explained, explained, explained.

Sometimes vocabulary time takes way longer than I expect it to take.

Weekending

I think Adam and I are at a go-to-weddings stage of life.  Our friends' kids and my young women from when I was serving there are getting married.

We went to a wedding both last weekend and this weekend.  Last weekend was Lisa and Gary's son, Davis's wedding.  Lisa and Gary were our friends in Connecticut and Davis was one of Braeden's first friends.  Also, Lisa and Gary are the type of friends you can see only a few times in the last 20 years and still have lots to talk about.

This weekend was the wedding of one of "my girls."  I also haven't seen her for a few years.  Her life has taken her down different paths but we still hugged and she enthusiastically told me about her job and son and she beamed at both of us when she introduced me to her new husband.

When Lisa and I were talking a week ago, we were talking about being Young Women presidents.  (She is one right now and she loves it.)  I told her I hadn't loved it.  I said that I had realized sometimes we have callings because we are great at the job and have a lot to offer and sometimes we have callings because we need to learn things.  I was definitely in the latter category when I had my fish out of water stint as YW president.  Still.  When I see some of those girls, we love each other.  They saw past my faltering and we learned from each other.

Adam and I also went to the Hale Theater on Saturday.  Emma got us tickets to the matinee show of The Man With the Pointed Toes.  We both enjoyed it and critiqued the ending while driving home.  We think the same about many things and sometimes I wonder if we are turning into the same person.

Then, we stopped at Walmart on the way home from the theater.  Standing in line, Adam was trying to guess which candy bar I would choose out of each row of candy bars.  He was wrong most of the time.

Mystery is still alive in this marriage.

Saturday night in a rare and wonderful turn of events, we were home and Mark was home and we built some of our Lego set from Christmas that has been sadly neglected.

Adam and Mark said we could watch the PBS version of Les Miserables while we built and I said that I was going to watch it 6 times in a few weeks so I needed to not watch Les Miserables.  Mark went to the basement first to start building and when we went down, he was singing along to Les Mis music.  Adam said, "We need to find different music."

We've got to keep a lid on Les Mis or yours truly will go crazy.

(And you know Mark had a perfect alternative playlist queued up.)

We finished up the Lego set.  My job is sorting (and I worked on some parent teacher conference prep while I waited for them to catch up to my sorting).  Adam and Mark are the builders.

The little details are delightful.  Look at that parking meter!

Mark brought the whole thing upstairs and set it up on the counter to show "the kids" which is what we collectively call Braeden and Anna and Emma and Desi.  (Although this week Desi stayed home to sleep which I 100% supported.  Even the Energizer Bunny needs sleep occasionally.)

The top floor above the diner has a recording studio so Mark rummaged through his other Lego bins and created The Million Dollar Quartet:

Jerry Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis and Johnny Cash

Emma showed the others her pictures from Rise of the Resistance and they were appropriately awed. I think telling her brothers about it was half the fun for Emma because she knew how much they would love it.

The force has awakened in Emma (see what I did there?) and she is interested in Star Wars.  Since she got up at 4:00 AM for Star Wars, I guess she has skin in the game.  She and her roommate Fiona have been practicing light saber moves with Fiona's new light saber.  They pulled out some light sabers from our mostly broken collection.  Emma was excited to show off her skills for her brothers.  They showed off their moves, spinning light sabers and sparring like they've been doing it since they were preschoolers.  (Mark absolutely has.)  Emma said, "Oh,"  followed by, "Oh."

Then she enlisted their help to teach her.  She lamented her wasted youth.  "I should have been doing this when I was six!"

All the clashing and crashing of plastic tubes brought me right back to a time period I don't miss too much of broken furniture and threats (by me) to not break things.

When Emma wants to learn something, she wants to learn something and Adam and I finally had to shut down the lessons because Braeden and Anna wanted to go home and they had all ridden together.

I like weekends.

Grateful Friday

I'm grateful for the way my students rallied around one of their own when she lost a prized "squishy."  I didn't know squishies were a thing but they are.  She lost hers and she was in the depths of despair as only an 8 year old girl can be.  I offered a reward and one of the students found it the next morning before school on the playground.  There was SO much rejoicing.  The student with the lost squishy is late almost every day and the students were keeping a sharp lookout for her because they were so excited to tell her the good news about the found toy.  It was heartwarming and a brilliant example of how we should treat each other in life.

I'm grateful that I have my sisters to talk to on the phone.  They make me feel heard and seen and in a million little ways assure me that I'm not alone.  We are raising our children together which is a huge comfort.  I always go away from talking to them refreshed and feeling like I can do some more of whatever it is I need to do.

I'm grateful every morning that I have a fireplace in my room that I can switch on at 5:45.  It makes January mornings more approachable.  I can't imagine what my ancestors who had to chop and carry firewood and actually, you know, build a fire would think of me flipping that switch.  If I could talk to them, I would tell them that I am not taking it for granted.  I marvel at the luxury every cold morning.

I'm grateful for how kind everyone is to me at school.  I'm surrounded by these adults that compliment me and cheer me on and understand me and this work we've undertaken that is sometimes super thankless.

Every once in awhile it isn't thankless and I'm grateful for that.  One of my really hard students said yesterday that he was "glad to have such a kind teacher."

Even though we are at odds many times a day, I'm grateful he still likes me.  I like him too.

I'm grateful for Adam.  He's my person.  Always and forever.

Mark

Sometimes I feel like there is this contest going on as to which of our kids can worry me the most.  (Granted, I have a high capacity for worry, but still.)  They give me a run for my money with just health alone and then when you sprinkle in the other occasional nonsense....

Mark usually wins though.

Especially lately.

It would help and I would worry less if I didn't just love him so very much.  He's sweet to his core and knows any song from the last four decades and can just fix things.

Yesterday one of my students was sporting a brand new necklace that she loved that was "a late Christmas present."  She caught it on something and it self destructed and the clasp broke into pieces.  She was devastated.  It was my second student crying jag of the morning.  I gathered up the pieces in a ziploc bag and told her I would take it home and try to fix it.  I put it back together using needle nose pliers but I was missing a link for the lobster clasp to go into.  I have some little wire rings but they were all too big.  The chain was tiny.  I looked in the garage but we don't really have a stockpile of stuff like that.  My dad does, but in Nevada.  I was rifling through our ultimate junk drawer in the green desk in our kitchen and lamenting, "What am I going to tell her?  I want to fix her necklace!"

I turned around and Mark was seated at the kitchen table.  He'd found a little S shaped wire and using the needle nose pliers and his excellent dexterity, he had fixed the necklace!  I said, "Sometimes you remind me so much of my dad!"

My students are going to relish the fact that Mark fixed the necklace.  They beg me for stories about Mark.  I don't know why he captures their imagination so much.  Yesterday we had a new vocabulary word:  appreciate.  Since I know they love Mark stories, I said, "I appreciate when Mark takes out the garbage," as an example.

I have them draw pictures of our vocabulary words to lock them in their brains.  Two of the boys drew stick figure Mark taking out the garbage with a stick figure me smiling.

I appreciate when Mark fixes unicorn necklaces.  I appreciate that he's my boy.