Before church this morning

Life is not always picture perfect

From Saturday's Briefing:

The past school year has been a huge, mostly happy adjustment in our home.

In August, I began a new career as a fifth-grade teacher, a move that required sacrifices from all three of us in the house. In the year before, I spent most of my free time preparing — taking online classes, reading, writing essays and studying for the state exam.

It was time that I normally would have spent with Cooper and Katie. On some of my most time-crunched days, I would apologize with the promise that the rewards would be worth it — a week off at Thanksgiving, two at Christmas, another at spring break and almost all of summer. And, I would sometimes add, I planned on absolutely loving my job as a teacher.

So far, the plan has worked out beautifully. Mostly.

We’ve already enjoyed those four promised weeks together. Summer’s not far away. And I absolutely love teaching.

No doubt, though, there have been some hiccups along the way.

Those four weeks off throughout the year come at a price. The weeks that I am working are intense— eight, nine or 10 hours at school plus planning and grading at night and on weekends.

That full-time job often collides with my other full-time job as mom and manager of our home. As much as I had hoped to hold on to my usual standards, there’s been some slippage here and there around the house.

Margie the dog desperately needs a haircut.

There are precariously tall piles of paperwork that need to be filed.

It’s clearly Easter season, but there’s still a giant snowflake decorating the kitchen chandelier, and I noticed this week that Christmas cards are still hanging in a small hallway.

Perhaps most telling: Cooper went to school Tuesday wearing a Muppet T-shirt of his own choosing. It wasn’t until late afternoon, after we both were home from school, that I remembered that Tuesday was picture day.

My seventh-grader has never once in all of his years of preschool, elementary school and middle school — until Tuesday — worn a T-shirt on picture day. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Standard attire has always been a collared shirt — even for the spring photos that usually feature goofy poses and fussy backgrounds, the kind of photos we never buy.

Even though I read the reminder emails, I failed to type “picture day” on my Google calendar, thus allowing the whole idea to fall out of my head.

Cooper and I laughed about the Muppet shirt, and, perhaps in an effort to make me feel better about forgetting, he told me that most boys were wearing T-shirts, “Only the girls were dressed up, wearing makeup and stuff.”

He then re-created the goofy pose, made all the more ridiculous by his mocking smile and rolling eyes.

And with that, I let it go.

I long ago gave up the idea of being a “perfect” mom, trading it for the idea of doing my best — not someone else’s idea of best. In the past year, I’ve been refining that idea even more, working toward my best but forgiving myself more easily when I fall short.

That includes taking care of the biggest priorities first, fitting in the rest when I can and letting go of the stuff that doesn’t really matter.

Margie finally has an appointment with the groomer today.

I’ll whittle away at the piles as needed.

Sometime this weekend, we’ll take down the snowflake and Christmas cards and decorate with Easter eggs and rabbits.

And perhaps this time I’ll actually order the spring photos and keep the image as a souvenir of my first year of teaching, the year that I continued to learn to let go — and to laugh more often.

Tyra Damm is a Briefing columnist. Email her at tyradamm@gmail.com.

Before church this (windy) morning

Tournament's reward is the journey

From Saturday's Briefing:

Every Thursday night since September, Katie has been practicing with a small group of third-graders in preparation for the regional Destination Imagination tournament.

They selected their challenge, created a problem and solution, wrote a 15-minute script and whittled it to eight, crafted costumes and props, and rehearsed dialogue and a song over and over and over again.

Last Saturday, the teammates and their adult handlers arrived at the tournament site, as prepared as they’d ever be. They performed an Instant Challenge (impromptu problem), waited two hours, then performed their skits.

In no time flat, they’d reached the end.

Or, as Katie said as she settled into a lounge chair outside the competition room, “You practice and practice for months, and then you perform for a couple of minutes, and it's over.”

It’s an understandable point of view, especially for a goal-oriented 8-year-old (who is the daughter of a goal-oriented 41-year-old).

Sometimes, we’re so focused on the destination that when we’ve finally reached it, we minimize the journey.

We forget that eight minutes of a performance represents new friendships and refined skills of compromise, mistakes and forgiveness. We forget essential lessons on time management and priorities, on sticking to your guns and letting things go.

Looking back at the path is especially important when you’ve reached the destination — and it turns out to be less than you expected.

Katie’s team didn’t earn a medal.

They worked hard, but their final product wasn’t as clever or polished as their competitors.

Not everyone can win first, second or third. When you compete, you take the risk of not being the best in that category on that particular day. But it’s a risk with a guaranteed reward — you might win first, second or third. And if you don’t, well, that’s when you start reviewing the path that got you there.

A couple of years ago, Cooper was starting to feel overwhelmed by the competition around him — Boy Scouts who were eager to reach rank before anyone else, kids at recess who played cutthroat soccer.

Around the same time, I discovered a quote in the Wm. Paul Young novel Cross Roads: “Life was never meant to be about comparing or competing.”

I copied the words on a small piece of paper and left it at his place at the breakfast table. We talked about the quote and its countercultural message. Then the scrap of paper disappeared. I discovered it later, taped to Cooper’s bedroom mirror.

The words are still there.

Cooper is in the middle of his first track and field season. He’s been running long distances — the 2,400 meters and the 1,600. He’s fast but not the fastest.

So far, he hasn’t cracked the top three.

Yet he leaves each meet — each four-hour meet in a mercurial Texas winter — with a huge grin and energy to spare.

On our long, dark walks to the car, Cooper regales us with tales of shenanigans in the infield. He relives the moment he passed another seventh- grader on the track and the split second when a different runner passed him.

Katie asks, “Did you hear me screaming for you when you ran by?”

His answer is always yes. (How could he miss it?)

I ask, “Did you have fun?”

His answer is always yes.

He doesn’t let his time on a 1-mile run define him. He doesn’t view a single race as the end.

Each race is simply a step in a long path. To where? Who knows. For now he’s content to enjoy the journey.

Tyra Damm is a Briefing columnist. Email her at tyradamm@gmail.com.

Kathryn the poet

The Frisco Public Library is sponsoring a poetry contest that we keep forgetting about. The entries are due tomorrow.

The weather is crummy so we're "stuck" inside. (I'm actually pleased to have an afternoon at home.) 

Katie is in extreme I-must-create-something-right-now mode. That forced me to I remember the contest, so I suggested that she write a poem or two.

She wrote five in about 30 minutes. 

"I want to use 'Kathryn' instead of 'Katie' because it sounds more professional."

Hail

By Kathryn Damm

In bed I lie

Fire crackles near

Cocoa at my side

Everlasting white

***

Owls

By Kathryn Damm

Hoot

Black and white

In the night

Hoot

Hoot

Green glowing eyes

Nocturnal spies

Hoot

Hoot

Swiftly they fly

Then perch on a tree nearby

Hoot

***

Baseball

By Kathryn Damm

Fans chant

Players pant

One to one

Homerun!

***

Movie

By Kathryn Damm

Lights dim

Screen bright

Popcorn small

Lots of light

***

Spring

By Kathryn Damm

Birds sweetly sing

Eggs make a tiny crack

Mother birds proud of chicks

Happy spring!

Before church this morning

Celebrity status

We don't watch a lot of television around here. Or listen to commercial radio.

We're movie fans, but as a family we're still in G and PG mode for the most part. 

Because of all this, Cooper struggled some with an assignment tonight. His Spanish teacher asked all students to bring in photos of six celebrities.

He couldn't really think of any. I could have suggested some, but tomorrow he has to describe these people, using the Spanish language, and my random assemblage of celebrities would do him no good.

Here are the six he decided on. Truly, one of the geekiest celebrity lists around (said with the most loving tone possible and full agreement from Coop).

The Beatles

Bill Gates

Bill Nye the Science Guy

Rick Riordan

Mr. Bean

Martin Luther King Jr.

Before church this morning

Buried under a happy avalance of activities

From today's Briefing:

This is one of those weeks in which almost every child activity collides.

We’ve got a track meet back-to-back with a band concert.

We’ve got a Girl Scout outing and a Boy Scout dinner.

We’ve got eight Destination Imagination meetings between two children, both of whom will perform at the regional tournament next weekend.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, they will read, finish worksheets and study for tests.

All I’ve got to do is get everyone where they need to be at the right time. And make sure that the correct paraphernalia is packed in the car. And figure out how to fit in dinner around so many activities.

I’m inclined to grumble about it. Until I do some math.

Five years from now Cooper will be completing his senior year of high school. Six years from now he’ll be in college, and the collision of his academic life and extracurricular life won’t really be my concern.

The three of us have less than six years to eat dinners together every night — at least every night that isn’t interrupted by social, academic or athletic obligations.

Less than six years of comparing and aligning daily calendars. Only six more guaranteed identical spring breaks.

All those years of tough stages — the toddling years, the potty-training years, the adjust-to-following- rules-at-school years — seemed to move in slow motion. Yet now those moments seem painfully fleeting, and I wonder if I truly enjoyed them the way I should have, even though at the time I reminded myself to slow down and enjoy the moment.

So now I’m taking deep breaths instead of uttering complaints. I’m embracing the collisions instead of fighting them. And we’re trying to revel in the pauses.

When there’s a break in the schedule, we don’t let it lie. We seize it and walk to the park, grateful for sunshine and warmth after a long winter. We claim comfy spots in the family room and watch ice skaters from Sochi or episodes of Gilligan’s Island.

We talk about what happened during the day. About third-grade freeze tag and seventh-grade practical jokes. About lines of symmetry and the structure of cells.

In the middle of all that commotion, I try to remember to soak in details about life with an 8-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy. The songs they hum without thinking (“Do You Want to Build a Snowman” and “Lean On Me”). The way their backpacks seem to explode within 15 seconds of walking in the door. The reliable request, almost always in unison and almost always half an hour before dinner, “Can I have a snack?”

I’m working on remembering now because I know that in six years, this house will be much quieter, with just me and Katie. And four years after that, just me.

I don’t want to wake up one day in 2024, surrounded by quiet and stillness and a little less clutter, and regret these days. I don’t want to think to myself, “Those were the good old days, and you complained through half of them.”

This week, and perhaps every week for the next five years, I’m arming myself with an extra daily dose of caffeine, some shortcut meals and a positive attitude. I want to remember these moments — these busy, hectic, vivacious moments — with joy free from remorse.

Tyra Damm is a Briefing columnist. Email her at tyradamm@gmail.com.

Cousins

An essay by Katie, corrected only for spelling:

Far far away live a family in McKinney, Texas. They live together and I love them. My cousins live there. Being with my cousins is one of the best things I can imagine!

I rarely see my crazy but kind cousins. I love to go to exciting places like the State Capitol building. We go to Austin, Texas, every year with them. I love having sleepovers with Molli and Brooke. I could be with them all day and play, watch movies, and hug. We always have fun together.

My cousins are always kind and there for me. They make me feel a lot better! We always play fun games that are exciting. They are the best cousins they can be.

I can't wait to see my cousins again! Who knows what we'll do? We'll definitely have fun! That's how amazing it is to be with my cousins!

Katie and her cousins (and Cooper, too!)