punchdrunkmom

In which the dog ate my will to make the boy do his homework

Last year, Kai’s teacher told the kindergarten parents that the kids had optional homework. This was presented as an “opportunity” offered by the school so the kids could get a little extra instruction in math and reading. We were given a URL and a password and urged to log on to the sites with our kids. The teachers could track our progress. This was something that we were supposed to do to enrich our child’s education and reinforce what he or she was learning in the classroom blah blah yadda yadda.

I would like to tell you that I did it, that I arranged a special time each day for Kai and me to sit down at the computer and read or do math problems, that while we were at it, he shared about his day at school, that we practiced taking turns and saying his “L” words, that we drank hot cocoa and giggled together and talked and the nature of the Universe.

But that would be a lie. I did not, not one time, not ever did I even attempt to do this extra work with Kai.

I think his teacher was surprised with me, because if there’s one word you might use to describe my relationship with Kai and school, it’s “involved.” I’m always around. I sent no fewer than 15 e-mails during the first week of school alone.

But I can’t quite bring myself to care about homework. I can’t. I just can’t bring myself to corral a boy (with ADHD, no less!) to sit back down at a table for yet another half hour of lessons, of nagging him over and over to just finish up already, counting off in the system I use to signal to him that I need him to pay attention to me: Kai do your homework 1. Kai do your homework 2. Kai do your—thanks, pal. Good job.

Monica pressed me on the “optional homework” when she saw I hadn’t logged on to the web site at all. I don’t remember what I said to her, but it was along the lines of, “What, I don’t do enough for him?”

Which is why, I’m super depressed about what came home in Kai’s backpack last week: homework. The non-optional kind.

Oh, my god, you guys. Kill me now.

:::

Kai is expected to do about 30 minutes of homework each day. I don’t know when we’ll do this. In the car on the way home from speech therapy? Before dinner when I let him have some iPad time as a reward for holding it together all day? After the bath when I’m ready to be off the clock?

None of those options sound good to me, and, frankly, I resent that the school has seen fit to add to my responsibilities, because make no mistake, it’s my job to make sure this homework thing happens.

At the parent education night I went to, Kai’s new teacher told us what was expected of the students vis a vis homework.

I raised my hand.

“I would like to ask a question of the group,” I said. “I’m new to the whole homework thing—does anyone have any tips for making it go smoothly?”

One mom pounced.

“Consistency,” she said, slapping the back of one hand into the palm of the other. She had a fiery, intense look about her as she began to explain her system of dry-erase boards and personal responsibility.

My mouth went a little dry.

Another mom suggested that I put Kai in a room with minimal distractions.

I nodded politely, but for Kai, the most distracting thing is his own brain.

Another mom suggested I break out the stemware.

Duh.

The rest of the parents looked at me with what bordered on pity, but I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps, they felt sorry for Kai that I hadn’t made him do his optional homework last year and had thereby ruined his future. Or maybe it was because I had not yet resigned myself to my fate.

The next day, Kai came home with a sheet of words he was supposed to practice.

“What’s this?” I asked him. “Are you supposed to work on these tonight?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “Those words are too tricky for me. Those are for YOU to work on.”

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“But I’m not in first grade,” I said.

“You’re great at reading, though,” Kai replied, and absconded to the other room to watch Dora with Ryan.

I found out later that Kai was supposed to memorize those words and that he would be assessed on the following Monday.

“The day of the field trip?” I asked the teacher.

She frowned, clearly having forgotten that the kids would be at the planetarium. “Oh yeah,” she said. “Well, maybe we’ll be able to do it before we go.”

“Well then we’ll work on these over the weekend,” I assured her, because I supposed that was the appropriate thing to say.

I doubted very much the assessment would happen, but I dutifully hauled the words with us on a weekend trip to Portland. I brought them out of Kai’s backpack after the flight attendant made us turn off the iPads for takeoff, but I couldn’t get Kai to care about them.

I couldn’t really blame him.

After all, I was having a tough time caring about them, too.

I put the sheet back in his backpack, pulling out a book we could read together instead and, when we reached 10,000 feet, I let him turn his iPad back on.

I vowed we’d work on the words the next day.

I’d like to tell you that we did exactly that.

But it would be a lie.

Notes on a move: A story in three acts

Hey, what's up how's it going ohmygod.

I am typing this from my new living room, surrounded by columns of boxes full of God knows what-all—books and china and knitting supplies and Legos and trivets and knickknacks and tax records and grill tools and mittens and stuffed animals and pictures and whatthefuuuuuuuuck am I ever going to do with all of this stuff?

The furniture looks pretty good here, though, at least the things that was Scott's mom's. Her mid-century sensibility mashes nicely with the ultra-contemporary thing we have going on with the house. The same cannot be said for all the stuff from Ikea, however. Those items look like cheap crap wherever you go.

:::

Act I: In which I’m flattered, but only in as much as I want you to be careful handling my TV

The moving company sent over four guys. Two of them looked like they belonged on Tony Soprano's crew. They were older, sporting a physical condition didn'te scream "lifting heavy objects" so much as "enjoying a box of cannolis." Though they didn’t inspire confidence at first, those two guys were fine—professional, not much for chitchat or lollygagging.

Then there was Enrique. He wasn't a lollygagger, either, but he did flirt shamelessly with me every time he walked by. This wouldn't have been a problem except that a.) it got old because b.) he was so spectacularly bad at it. He used lines that ranged from the obvious: "If I lift something heavy, would you smile?" to the vaguely desperate: "When we're done, can I see your guitars?" to the downright perplexing: "You're very symmetrical."

And then there was Frenchie. Oh, Frenchie. Did you know that he's named Frenchie because his parents ran out of names by the time they got to him? He's married to a woman with ADD who doesn't like to cook, but appreciates his cooking, which he likes to do—jambalaya and ribs, mostly. Here's her picture. Her name's Antionette. Their apartment is furnished with things he can't believe anyone would throw away, namely his 1991 commemorative Bulls Championship rug with Michael Jordan's face worked right into it, his white leather armchair with metal grommets, his mirror-plated floor lamp with the gold accents. He was homeless for a while, but now he moves, is a certified mover, so he can move with United or Bekins where he could make upwards of $15 an hour, but he likes this company because they're not as fussy as a United or Bekins, who insist you wrap every single thing that comes out of the house, even if it's one tiny teacup. His mother was involved in politics and his father worked for Bally's gaming building the cabinets for video games. Frenchie's oldest son is 31. He's got another one, and his wife has two kids, the youngest of which is 27. They were married last year. It was the first marriage for both of them, even though Frenchie is 57. Last year, his foot got crushed by a safe. He was helping to carry it down a staircase when it broke loose from its moorings and rolled down the stairs. Frenchie asked Jesus what to do, and Jesus advised him to get out of the way, which Frenchie did except for his foot. Jesus, Frenchie told me, doesn't care if you pray before or after a safe is bearing down on you, so you'd best beat the safe down the stairs and pray when it's all over. Also there's a dog that the moving company has named Molly. She's white with brown spots, a herding dog, whereby she is bred to get in front of the cows or sheep and keep them going in the right direction. She's argentinian by blood, an argentinian dogo, to be precise, and she could probably take my dog in a fight.

I learned all of these things not in passing, but as Frenchie would seek me out, telling me long stories while standing stock still, holding boxes I was paying the moving company a whopping $120 an hour to carry.

"Frenchie," Enrique would say, "There you are. What are you doing? Let's go."

And Frenchie would mosey along.

"So." Enrique would ask after Frenchie was gone. "Do you, like, do yoga?"

:::

Act II: In which, in my distractedness and exhaustion, I forget how young my children really are

Monica took the kids after school the day of the big move, bringing them over after taking them to her son's soccer game and feeding them McDonalds. I offered her a tour and a glass of wine. Ryan wanted to go out in the yard, so I let her, closing the door behind her and ushering Monica around the various rooms.

I heard Ryan call for me but didn't think anything of it, until her cries took on a kind of urgency, and I ran downstairs to find her in tears on the deck off the kitchen.

I threw open the door.

"Honey, what's wrong?" I asked.

"Look," she said, pointing to a puddle on the wood.

"Did you have an accident?" I asked.

"Yes," she sobbed. "I scared of the dark."

I felt terrible, realizing that I left a child that's never been outside alone, outside. Alone. I didn't show her how to get in or tell her where I was going. I don't know if she peed because she was scared or peed because she couldn't get inside the house, but it didn’t really matter and I scooped her up and held her wet little body against me and told her that I was so, so sorry.

Both of the kids have had a little trouble adjusting to the extra space. They look for me in illogical places. I found Kai wandering around the basement, singing out a forlorn, "Mooooommeeeee," after I'd called to him to come to the kitchen. Ryan woke me up at 3 am on that first night. She'd gotten out of bed to come sleep with me, only to get completely lost, winding up in the kitchen, which I suppose is a more likely a spot to find me than the basement, but still off by a mile. She was calling out to me frantically, "Mommy? Where are you?!"

Still, despite more than a few parenting fails, I did manage to get them to school on time the next day, wearing (mostly) clean clothes, lunches in back packs. Kai had saved me the trouble of making him breakfast.

He'd found a bag of marshmallows and ate some in the car.

:::

Act III: In which we find unexpected joy, which really is the best kind, and realize that we are home

The second night, I heard a noise from upstairs, a chair-scraping sound and assumed it was Ed upstairs, a sound as familiar as any to me. He's been my upstairs neighbor for seven years.

And then it occurred to me that we don't live in a condo any more. Ed was in an entirely different building from the one I currently occupied. Whatever sounds I was hearing were generated by my own family.

"Kai?" I called up. "What are you doing up there?"

There was a long pause. "Nothing," he said, finally.

And I ran up the stairs to see.

Later, as I was tucking him in, he looked toward the window.

"What's that sound?" he asked.

I'd opened his window to let the fresh air in, something I'd never been able to do before. His bedroom at our old place was on the garden level, otherwise known as the basement. I'm not nervous living in the city, but I'm not reckless, either. No matter how nice it is outside, an open window on the ground floor invites rapists and murderers into your home. I don't think I ever once opened the window in his room.

I stood still and heard what he was hearing, a dribble-drop-rustle-splat. It sounded so beautiful to me.

I pulled the blanket up around his shoulders.

"Buddy," I said, "that's the rain."