SUMMER!
For weeks I’ve been looking forward to the end of the school year and now that it’s finally arrived…I’m counting the days until the next school year. 😉 Okay, not really, because I truly do love having the kids home and having the flexibility to go and do. However… the past week has been a BIG adjustment for all of us. Now is a great time to reflect on the school year, though, and here are a few of the things I learned in May:
1. Sometimes you have to take a break from your own philosophy, even if you’re committed to it for the long haul.
Mr. Andi and I have always prepared our kids for the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. It’s tough, because when your kids are constantly swimming upstream, you just want to make things easier for them, but we’ve stayed the course and it seems to have worked well. I still believe that our philosophy is solid, but in this season I’ve realized that it’s time to let that go for a little while. I won’t elaborate other than to say that middle school is hard, y’all.
2. I dislike a lot of books, which showed me something significant about myself.
I think my book club members secretly hate me because I don’t usually start the book club pick until three or four days before our meeting and I never love any of the books – I actively dislike many of them, in fact. But that doesn’t keep me from reading more – even if I hate a book, I’m not satisfied to just dislike it. I have to analyze WHY I hate it. I’ve realized that’s probably why I’ve never finished writing my own book – I would analyze its faults forever. As much as I love writing, I’ve discovered my real talent lies in editing.
3. Boot camp workouts are better with a friend and a sunset over the water.
Last week, I went with my friend Shelton to “Sunset Boot Camp” – $5 per session for a boot camp style workout just before sunset in the park that overlooks the bay. Normally I avoid group boot camp workouts like the plague, but Shelton friend-shamed me into it and I ended up loving it (well, maybe I didn’t love it, but I liked it well enough to say I’d go back). We laughed and sweated and then texted each other about how sore we were the next day. It was great.
4. I was shocked by people’s capacity for self-righteous judgment of a stranger.
By now, everyone’s heard about the gorilla who was shot at the Cincinnati Zoo (if you haven’t, Google it). The reaction in some quarters disturbed me. I’m not surprised that people have questioned how well the boy’s mother was watching him, because looking for an explanation is what people do when something bad happens. If you can point to Something and say to yourself That wouldn’t happen to me because I wouldn’t X, it makes you feel more in control of your own life.
But it’s gone a lot farther than that. People have started a petition asking child protective services to investigate the child’s home because they are sure the child must be neglected (as I type this on Wednesday, the petition has over 465,000 signatures). By the time you read this, well over half a million people may have signed it.
5. The widely acclaimed novel Me Before You is a sugarcoating of suicide by a disabled man.
I’d heard how great this book is (but not what it’s about) and almost bought it a couple of months ago. Fortunately, I didn’t. As my friend Emily said in her eloquent post on the movie last week, when Robin Williams committed suicide it was a tragedy, but when a depressed quadriplegic does it in a novel (and recently released major motion picture), it’s love. Really? We’re supposed to gush over a movie that suggests a disabled man is better off dead, even though he has a wonderful woman who loves him? No, thanks.
6. Our school system has virtual school for eighth graders.
The high school program has been around for a few years, but they’ve added eighth grade this year. Kids do most of their work at home, take proctored exams at the virtual school site, and are able to participate in extracurriculars, including sports. If band is included, we may sign Sarah Kate up for it this year. It would allow her to take an additional elective, like creative writing, and skip P.E. I know it seems counterintuitive, since she needs regular exercise, but mainstream P.E. doesn’t do her much good because she just walks around most days. Being able to work out at home during the day rather than late in the evening after everything else is done would be a great option.
The gorilla thing. I’m horrified by the way people talk about it. As I said to a friend, I don’t have kids, but I know kids, and if you think this couldn’t happen to just about any parent, you are mistaken. Kids are tiny balls of energy with no fear and possibly a deathwish. Their job is to get into as much trouble as possible and a parent’s job is to do their best to keep them alive and healthy. Happy is good too, but alive and healthy is key. What I find HORRIFYING is that people have apparently gone looking into this family and dug up a bunch of stuff on the father, who wasn’t even there at the time (I think I read he was at work). Apparently, he has a bit of a criminal history, but has cleaned up his life. HOW IS ANY OF THAT RELEVANT? From all accounts, he’s a good husband and father, and he wasn’t even there that day. Who cares what he did in his past? (Unless he taught kids how to climb into gorilla enclosures – that might be relevant.)
I’ve read a few things from various zookeepers who say that yes, what happened was tragic, but the steps taken were exactly what needed to happen, and hopefully this leads to a conversation about even better barriers to allow for observation but not entrance into the enclosures. As actual experts, I trust their opinions.
And thank you for linking your friend’s post on FB a few weeks back. I had seen the book at the library and considered picking it up the next time I was in, but upon hearing the subject matter, I immediately took it off the list.
I hadn’t heard that about the father but knowing all the rest of it, I’m not surprised. It’s a sad commentary on our society that people value the life of a gorilla over that of a child. And one thing I didn’t mention above is that all of these “armchair zoologists” who are critical of the decision don’t seem to realize that it probably pained them tremendously to have to shoot this animal that had been raised there from birth. They would not have done it without good reason.
I TOTALLY agree re: gorilla. I mean, gosh, a kid can run away so quickly……and I totally agree, the hit piece in the Mirror was ridiculous. The dad is making something of his life now, why in the world would we bring in his past? That’s CRAZY!!!!!!!
I get so angry when I read the things these people say. Accidents happen.
Thanks for the share, lady!
A number of my friends shared it after they saw it on my page, and a few more have sent me messages (Megan above left a comment) about the book. I’m so glad you wrote it because I had heard of the book but had no idea what it was about until I read your post.
And I wasn’t even going to write anything, that’s what’s funny. I thought everyone knew what it was about and would act accordingly. But Mary Lenaburg posted a photo on instagram and so many people said they didn’t know what the movie was about, so I felt moved to write it during the first period of a Game 7 Hockey game. 🙂 Glad I did!
You seemed to have learned a lot last month! I agree with the whole Gorilla story… gah?! So wrong on so many levels (and I’m not even talking about shooting or not shooting!) I tend to love books but just recently found the freedom to NOT FINISH it if I don’t love it! Wow… all those years of pressing through anyway… you can’t imagine the time I have now to do other things –like read books I actually love! 😉 And Middle School years and Virtual school for 8th grade… oh man – what a brilliant option! (And thanks for the spoiler on that movie… seriously! I saw the previews and so I knew it would be sad… but I was thinking Nicholas Sparks cheesy/sad… not suicide. You just saved me about $10!
Re: the movie…I thought the same thing about the movie before Emily linked to me in her post – I’m grateful to her for giving me a heads up. I researched it further after that, and found that it was even WORSE than I thought!
Re: abandoning a book…I had NEVER done that until this year. I abandoned a WW1 history book that had been a terrible slog for me for months, then just this weekend I abandoned “All My Puny Sorrows” (coincidentally, it’s another novel indirectly in support of assisted suicide). I made it to 56% on my Kindle and then googled spoilers because I didn’t like the way it was going. I have NEVER abandoned books before and Mr. Andi is very proud of me. 🙂 It helped that I started keeping a reading journal and a list of books I want to read – knowing I have 45 books I need to get to, I don’t want to waste my time on something I don’t want to finish!
The gorilla thing has really touched a nerve with me, but I haven’t publicly addressed it because quite frankly, it’s TOO CLOSE. Austin and Reece were runners when they were little. Reece was especially bad, or perhaps because I had 2 other children by the time she came around that it was more complicated. Two specific inceidents that come to mind occurred when they were about the same age as the child at the zoo. The first was Austin – we were at the mall in a shoe store and my friend asked me to check the toes of the shoes to see if they fit her little girl. I bent down, touched each toe, and when I stood up – he was gone. He was found in another store on the 2nd floor. The second was Reece at the Museum of Natural History. This was post-autism diagnosis so I was much more careful, right? I let go of her hand to push the “up” button for the elevator and when I reached back down she was GONE. She was found on the 2nd floor of the building (we had been on the bottom floor).
I could go on and on… like the time that Austin (that same magical age of 3) wandered away at playgroup at the park, with all those moms standing around and ended up at the river. He was found by another mom who relayed that she found him on the rocks throwing rocks into the river. A runner and his dog had stopped to watch him – actually the dog wouldn’t move on until Austin was out of the water, but the man was afraid to talk to Austin or try to approach him for fear he was move and slip into the water. There are water rescues out of that part of the river ALL the time.
Or there is the time at an All-Star tournament when a friend offered to watch Reece so I could go to the bathroom (porta potty) alone. I told her that you MUST keep a hand on Reece at all times, because she wanders. The mom and her husband agreed and said they understood. When I returned, she was gone. “She was just here a second ago!”
There but for the grace of God go I.
YES.
I didn’t emphasize my personal experience in the post, but I know it could have been me – that it’s more likely to be me than most other moms. Nathan doesn’t just wander, he sneaks away when he thinks no one is watching, and occasionally he succeeds, even with me. My neighbor saw him heading up the middle of the main road in and out of our subdivision just a few days ago. She started chasing him and he ran from her, grinning the whole way, while I sprinted in my barefeet toward him, watching the front entrance (which is something of a blind turn) and screaming, praying to God that no one would choose that moment to pull into the subdivision and run him over.
Better movie? The Intouchables. Sub-titled from French (unless you speak French like me 🙂
SO.GOOD. Similar theme but WAAAAAAAAAY better ending.
Never heard of it! Thanks for the tip!