Shane and I were sitting at the dinner table one day, when he declared that he had a secret – and that he wasn’t going to tell me what it was.
“I think you should tell me,” I said. And so he did.
It wasn’t something so deeply personal that I thought it should be a secret. But hey, he’s in middle school. And in middle school, secrets are big.
Without thinking, I mentioned Shane’s secret to my parents. It was cute, and I was just sharing its cuteness.
Or so I thought.
A few weeks went by, and I casually mentioned to Shane that I’d told my parents what he’d told me.
“You told them my secret?” he gasped. He blinked his eyes hard as they widened with shock.
“Yeah,” I said. “They would never tell anybody.”
“I can’t believe you told my secret,” Shane said.
And he walked away.
Waves of nausea hit me. I’d hurt Shane. This secret was obviously treasured – and I hadn’t given it the respect, and the care, that it deserved.
Sharing a secret is like breaking a promise. In this house, it just isn’t done.
Family trust matters above all else. We have to be the safe haven, the place where we can be loved and believed, and trusted, no matter what.
And now I’ve given Shane reason not to trust me.
I crawled into the room where he was building a marble track.
“I am so sorry, Shane,” I started. I apologized profusely, with no excuses. I begged his forgiveness, and told him that if he ever trusted me enough to tell me another secret, I promised I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
“Well I think I would tell you another secret,” Shane said. “Because most people, when they tell a secret, they just go around seeing how many more people they can tell. They don’t ever do this” – he pointed at my pathetic self, my sincere apology.
And then he went back to building the marble track. Like most kids, he moved on.
For me, though, I am still hanging onto the shame. Unintentional or not, I did something unthinkable in a child’s world. I took the magical gift he gave me – his own personal secret – and I gave it away. My adult self forgot about the magic, the significance, the trust that was implied when Shane shared something with me. I became just another grown-up.
Worse yet, I became a scoundrel.
And like most scoundrels, I can beat myself mercilessly and continue to be a scoundrel, thanks to the shame I’ve created for myself.
Or I can pick myself up off the floor, stop being a scoundrel, and make sure that it never, ever happens again.
When the first quarter had ended, Dylan’s grades – we thought – were amazingly good: four B’s and three A’s.
So we calculated his grade point average and decided he had a 3.0 – but a 3.7 when we considered his weighted GPA, since he’s taking three honors courses. This also included the two B’s he got in 8th grade for high school level classes.
Then we found out that his geometry grade had dropped from an A to a B because he’d forgotten to turn in the last three homework assignments. So he ended up with five B’s and two A’s.
Still, these are grades for which anyone can be proud. Dylan is rocking high school. And heck, he may actually get into college someday.
But the sudden grade drop in Geometry was a shock to everyone. Dylan had an A for the whole quarter – and then suddenly, POOF!, he neglected to do – or turn in – his work. (I never know which is true.) He was upset – but it is only the first quarter. There is still time.
Best of all, the very next day, he went up to his teacher and, for the first time, he said, “What was due today and what do I need to do for tomorrow?”
I almost cried when he told me. I’d been asking Dylan to do that since he was in sixth grade! I jumped up and gave him a huge hug and kissed his ear, because he is much taller than me and I can’t reach his face without help.
The next day, Dylan didn’t ask that specific question again – but he did talk to his teachers again. Hopefully, the trend will stick. Maybe the grades will go up to a level that actually represents his brilliance.
All he needs to do is turn in his work.
Dylan had a blast being a scarer at Field of Screams. His family, however, stayed home.
Week after week after week, Dylan would disappear at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon, stay out until after midnight, then sleep until noon. The next day, he’d spend three hours knocking around the house, then go out and do it all again.
Our tradition of Friday Family Movie Night – which we originally tried to squeeze in on weeknights – was postponed indefinitely. Daytime activities were shot. The entire season of fall festivals, which had been our favorite family activity for years, was simply ignored. We didn’t even get a pumpkin, let alone carve one. We didn’t even decorate our yard with the two tons of Halloween crap we have.
When trick or treating became imminent, Shane said, “Mom, I don’t even feel like it’s Halloween. We didn’t go to any farms or do anything to get ready for it.”
Our plan was to have one huge hurrah after Halloween, during Cox Farms‘ Pumpkin Smashing Weekend. It’s an event filled with world-famous hayrides, giant slides, rope swings into hay pits, baby animals, goat feedings, games, apples, and an animated corn maze called the Cornundrum. And during their final weekend of the year, they catapult pumpkins across a lake and drop 300-pound pumpkins with assistance from a DJ and a giant crane.
Cox Farms really knows how to host a party.
Shane and I were nearly bursting with excitement. I sent him little notes in his lunchbox every day of the week, pictures from the farm, reminding him that it was only a few days away.
He had waited so, so, so long.
So when Field of Screams was finally over, and we could spend a full day at the festivities, we headed out. Just in case, at the last minute, I tossed our raincoats in the car.
After 45 minutes of driving, it started to rain. By the time we got to the farm, it was pouring.
But we only had one day to enjoy fall – and this was it. We paid and went inside, heading straight for the world-famous hayride. There were no actors on the trail, as there usually are, but the driver made it fun regardless. We had an entire hayride to ourselves, and Dylan sprawled in the center of the wet hay. We went through a tunnel – dry for a minute! – then back out.
Then we ran over to the new attraction: a forest filled with goodies around every corner. It was awesome! We all agreed that the new attraction was one of the best they’d ever had.
When we came out of the forest, we headed for the games station – but it was closed. In fact, everything was closed. They wouldn’t even let us into the Cornundrum. They shooed us out of the park and told us to come back next year.
I almost cried. Shane’s face was heartbreaking.
“I wanted to feed the goats,” he whispered.
And that’s when I realized that it was not Dylan, and not the weather, that caused this minor tragedy. It was my failure as a parent.
Next year, Shane and I will go to Cox Farms – twice – whether Dylan is available or not.
Shane went to Dave & Buster’s with my parents, who apparently can handle the blinding lights, deafening noise and overall chaos of the place better than I can.
They wandered amidst the clamor for awhile, when Shane noticed something odd.
“We saw this guy who was doing something with the machines,” he said. “He was wearing all black, and a black hat, And every time he walked away from a machine, all these tickets came out.”
Shane didn’t know what to make of the situation. Tickets are the entire goal of an arcade. The more tickets you collect, the better the prizes you can “buy” at the end of your arcade experience. And this guy, for whatever reason, kept leaving tickets behind.
“So then the guy walked right up to me,” Shane said. “He said, ‘A thousand tickets are about to come out of that machine, and you can have them.’ But I didn’t know what he was doing. Like maybe he was cheating on the machines, and I don’t think it’s fair to take tickets if someone is cheating. So when they came out, I didn’t take them. And later, we noticed that someone else probably took them, because they were gone.”
A thousand tickets! That’s enough for some incredible prizes.
But Shane passed on the tickets because … he wanted to do the right thing.
Then karma intervened. Shane was playing a game where you “spin” something and then stop the spinning by slamming your hand down on a button. When the spinning stops, the electronic wheel registers a number – and that’s the number of tickets you get. Sometimes the number is two.
Shane hit the MONSTER JACKPOT. He ended up with something like 3,000 tickets – way more than he would have had if he’d simply taken the tickets from the guy in the black hat.
And he knew that he deserved them, that he earned them, that even in a game of chance, the odds had been in his favor.
So he reveled in his tickets for awhile, and then bought a ton of stuff at the prize store. He felt happy and fulfilled and proud. But no one was prouder than me, even though I wasn’t there.
My boy chose to do the right thing.
Dylan hopped onto the computer one night, researching something on the internet. My blog popped up.
“I did not say I hated computer class!” he yelled. “I never said I hated computer science! This is a lie! Not the truth! You’ve broadcast something for the whole world to see that just isn’t true!”
I was in the other room. He just kept bellowing about truth, and the media, and how I’d “lied!” to the public about what he actually said.
So I thought about it.
And perhaps Dylan did not say he hated his computer class. Maybe he said something else. Maybe he said, “I can’t stand my computer class!” or “I really don’t like my computer class.” I suppose he could have used those words.
But the way I remember it, he said he “hated” computer class.
I often think about Angela’s Ashes, which is maybe my favorite book of all time. The writing was so superb, and the details so compelling, that I devoured ‘Tis almost immediately afterward.
At the time, in spite of being a mom to two toddlers, I was taking a fiction writing course at the local writing center. One day, I asked the teacher about Angela’s Ashes author, Frank McCourt.
“How can he possibly remember all those details?” I asked, genuinely confused. “There are pages and pages of dialogue from his childhood! Does he have a photographic memory? Or is he just guessing?”
The writing teacher laughed. “I think he takes some liberties with the exact words,” she said. “It’s called ‘creative nonfiction.'”
So the next writing class I took was called “Creative Nonfiction.” And since that time, I have done the best I can, reporting as accurately as possible.
Perhaps Dylan did not say he “hated” his computer science class. Perhaps, no matter how I remember it, those weren’t his exact words.
And it no longer matters. Today, he loves the class.
I sent an email to Dylan’s computer teacher.
I am trying to back off. I really am trying. But I felt so awful about Dylan disliking his class – and watching his grade plummet – that I sent a quick note:
“Dylan is struggling mightily in computer science class. He refuses to ask for help, so if you could just wander by and make sure he knows what he’s doing, it might help get him back on track.”
The next day, Dylan came home from school practically gleeful.
“Mom!” he squealed. “I suddenly totally got it and then I coded a whole website in one day!”
I swear, he was almost dancing. The light bulb was on and shining brightly in his brain. Thanks to something called Google Classroom, he even pulled up his work on the computer and showed me what he’d done.
I emailed the teacher again – of course – to thank him for checking in with my son. The email I got back from the teacher was rather unexpected, though:
“To be honest, Dylan was doing some things that may have put him behind a little in class (caught him playing video games a few times) and I think when I sat him down and walked him through an assignment a little bit…he found it wasn’t as difficult as he first thought.“
Hm. Video games.
I think when Dylan falls behind, he tends to kick himself a bit too hard, and maybe give up a bit too quickly. I think playing video games was his way of saying, I don’t know what I’m doing, so why even try?
This is a dangerous mindset that I recognize only too well from my own youth.
But now, hopefully, he’s on the right path again. Best of all, he’s really enjoying computers now!
And also, I’ve threatened to take away large chunks of time from his at-home video game time if he’s ever caught again playing video games in class.
Most interesting, though, is that both Dylan’s teacher and Dylan believe that the light bulb went off without any assistance – that Dylan discovered what he was doing, all on his own.
Which tells me, again, that I should really just stay out of it.
So I went to Target.
Target always costs me more money and time than I expect, but I love it. I got Halloween cookies, detergent, six bottles of hand soap, four giant bottles of shampoo (save $5 when you buy four!) and two bonus undershirts in my jumbo pack of youth classic white crew necks.
In my travels, I got behind a woman on her cell phone. She was pushing slowly and talking loudly:
“You are totally freaking out right now! Don’t freak out. This is totally not what I thought you would do. You have no reason to do this! You can’t say that. Seriously, no! Stop freaking out!”
She turned left into the clothing section as I was trying to pass her.
“Sorry,” I mumbled meekly as she rolled her eyes at me, as if I were causing her angst.
In the checkout line, I was third in line behind a different woman on her cell phone. She was buying, among other things, organic cookies. She seemed to have no idea that there were any other humans within earshot:
“No, he has to deal with it! He’s never going to get anyone’s respect unless he deals. I mean, he’s got to raise those kids, you know? And it’s his problem. He’s the one who wanted a divorce, and now he has to live with it. I know! So if he doesn’t start taking some responsibility, he’s going to end up in worse shape than he is right now!”
She talked non-stop. She went on and on and on. As she took her receipt, the cashier tried desperately to tell the woman about a survey she could take.
“My name is at the bottom of the receipt!” the cashier said cheerily. The woman never stopped talking, not for one second. Finally, she checked out.
I stepped up to the register, my phone still safely in my pocket, where it had been for the entire trip.
The cashier and I had an actual face-to-face conversation. We discussed dipping different things in chocolate, which all sounded delicious. The cashier suggested that cheese dipping was also good – but not for cereals, or oatmeal.
“Oh, and not for pancakes!” I agreed. “Breakfast foods should not be dipped in cheese.”
“But they do work with chocolate!” she said.
I had a lot of stuff, so we had plenty of time to talk.
Meanwhile, the woman behind me, who had a large supply of 100-calorie pretzel packs, was fuming on her cell phone.
“This is just not going to fly. I will be there on Friday and everything had better be done by then. No, you tell him that there are no more excuses! It’s been way too long already!”
Then she rudely hung up, and dove right back into the phone with her face, checking messages. She never looked up at the cashier, even as she pushed her cart forward.
I guess this is nothing new in our techno-world, but it seems sad to me that no one can be bothered to get off the phone long enough to smile at, or chat with, the cashier – or anyone else in the store.
Or the world.
Even at Target, and even when you’re not paying attention to your surroundings, there are real, live people everywhere.
“Oh by the way, I hate my computer class,” Dylan said after school one day. “I have no idea what I’m doing in there.”
Computer class. This is the first class of the IBCP program. This is the class for which I clawed and gnashed and struggled and fought the administration. This is the introductory class, the base for all future computer classes.
This is the class Dylan begged to take. “I’d much rather take computers,” he’d said.
But he started the class late – since there was no computer science IBCP pathway until two weeks after school started. So he has no basic understanding of what coding can accomplish.
“We just put like parentheses and underscores and words and stuff, and I have no idea why we are doing it,” Dylan said.
He doesn’t know that those lines of code can create a game or a story or a picture. They can make things happen on your screen, or in another room, or on another continent. They can invent something spectacularly new, or re-invent something dull and lifeless to add new life. Those lines of code can create fun and beauty and order and chaos. Those lines of code are instructions for … well, for the whole world.
But all he sees are lines on a screen. He doesn’t know yet what they mean.
He went through something similar in engineering, though. He wanted to be an engineer, so he took introductory engineering classes in middle school. He wanted to build things that could fly, drive, swim; he wanted to make things move.
But he didn’t want to map out his ideas on a piece of paper. He didn’t want to draw a design first, or do measurements. He just wanted to take raw material and create.
And now he wants to create on the computer – but he doesn’t want to learn how to do it. He doesn’t want to stop and take the time and find out how to create.
He has no patience for details. And yet, he has a mind like Einstein. Except Einstein had the patience to – if nothing else – teach himself how to create.
Einstein never did well in school. But I can’t help but wonder if Einstein would have dropped out of computer coding class.
With Homecoming-type festivities in full swing, both boys are experiencing new types of “Spirit Week” at school.
For Shane, middle school “spirit” is, sadly, nothing like elementary school spirit. In elementary school, kids trip over themselves trying to out-spirit the other kids. They adore spirit week.
In middle school, something … shifts.
The kids become suddenly way too cool to dress up – but the concepts are so tempting that a lot of the sixth graders still give it a valiant effort.
Pajama Day is always popular. School spirit is popular, too. And this week, Shane gets to wear his Halloween costume all day (without the mask – NO MASKS! is the rule.)
But Shane’s school has a new theme this year: “Dress Like Your Favorite Teacher Day.”
Hm.
Most of the teachers just dress like people. They wear casual clothes, but not sloppy. And Shane’s favorite teacher is a woman.
“Should we email your English teacher and ask what she’s wearing on Wednesday?” I asked Shane, only half joking.
“I don’t think that day is a good idea,” he said. “If you dress like your favorite teacher, it will make all your other teachers feel bad.”
Somehow I never thought of that. Shane’s heart is always in the right place.
For Dylan, high school “spirit” is substantially less spirited than it was in middle school. Monday was Costume Day – and he had no idea if he should dress up, or not. So he shoved a cape and hat into his backpack and carried it around with him all day.
“Some of the kids really dressed up!” he exclaimed at the end of the day. “But most people just wore, like, superhero shirts and stuff.”
So now we know.
We got an email that mentioned the class with the most spirit getting some kind of reward. The email said that the freshman class always loses.
So I was surprised when Dylan said, “I think the freshmen dressed up more than any of the other classes this week.”
I wonder if this is because of the email threatening that freshmen would lose.
Either way, school spirit may not be what it was in elementary school – but it still exists.
gymWhen Dylan was two, and I was pregnant with Shane, we took a Fun Fit class. This gymnasium-based class involved a lot of running and jumping, and was perfect for my active toddler. Being rather fat, I didn’t do a lot of jumping – but wanted to make sure Dylan’s year was perfect.
I called it Dylan’s “last year,” because it was the last year I would spend with only Dylan. Soon, I thought, I would have another baby – and my attention would be divided. This concerned me – to say the least – and I was constantly aware of the fact that I would soon “abandon” Dylan.
One of the moms at Fun Fit had two children – one who was jumping around wildly with the other kids, and one who was brand new and mostly asleep in the covered stroller by the door. But one day, right in the middle of some serious toddler jumping, that covered baby woke up.
I watched the mom race toward the baby, cooing and soothing as best she could amidst the squeals and thumps of the class. Then I turned to look at her two-year-old son, in the midst of the chaos, still jumping and laughing.
Suddenly, while everyone else was still going strong, that little boy stopped. His eyes widened and he his face got very grim.
“Mom?” he called quietly – then louder. “Mom? Mom! MOM! MOMMY!” He had no idea where she’d gone, and was starting to shriek.
I glanced at the mom, soothing the baby 50 feet away. I glanced back at the child, still utterly panic-stricken.
And I started to cry.
I won’t be there when Dylan calls, I thought. When he needs me, I won’t be there!
I thought of that little boy often, of the mom soothing the infant while he panicked. Mere moments later, of course, everything was fine. But I was not fine. I remained hyper-vigilant that I would never do that to my first-born, who needed me as much as my newborn would – and did.
Then Shane came along and I had to tell Dylan to stop yanking the baby’s arm, stop sitting on the baby’s head – stuff like that. I had to quiet Dylan so that Shane could sleep – although it rarely worked, so Shane learned to sleep amidst chaos. And I showed Dylan how to help me teach Shane, as he grew.
“This is your sippy cup, Shane,” little Dylan would say. “And this is how you drink!” And Dylan would shove that sippy cup right into Shane’s shocked face.
And of course, there were moments that I had to tend to the baby when Dylan also needed me.
But mostly, the baby tended to himself. The older Shane got, the less he needed me. He was dressing himself at two. He was showering by himself at four. And he was getting himself entirely ready for school – and bed – by the age of 10.
I never neglected Dylan. In fact, if anything, I neglected Shane.
Dylan still demands – and gets – more than his share of attention.
“Dylan gets more blogs than me,” Shane will say, counting – always counting. Then, in gleeful discovery, he’ll say, “Oh here’s one about me!”
I think of this when I sit down to write.
I think of how worried I was, how tearful, that I wouldn’t be there for Dylan. Now I worry that I haven’t been there enough for Shane.
I think about the two boys being best friends now.
And I think about how beautifully Shane has developed – probably because I allowed him to grow.
