Poetry (Summer Stinks!) Friday

My friends, have I mentioned how much I hate summer?

Summer is an Epic Fail

It is hot. The heat makes people sweaty and cranky. And it's like someone stuck a too-bright light-bulb into the sun. Summer is primo migraine season. You will not see me outside without my super-cool prescription sunglasses.

Don't let the smile fool you. The summer light
is slicing painfully across my face like a laser.

And then there are the bugs. I am, basically, mosquito bait.

When I retire, I will be moving to Maine. Mr. Shovan thinks he would prefer Arizona. I queried a friend who resides in that state: Is it true when they say "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." This is frequently how real estate and travel agents extol the virtues of Southwest (dry) heat versus Midatlantic (sticky) heat.

He said, in reply: Do you like the way it feels when you open the oven and all the heat blasts into your face? No.

Today, though, the reason I hate summer has nothing to do with the weather. The reason I hate summer can be summed up in two words: Summer Reading.

My son has summer assignments for three classes: English, Religion and U.S. History. Together, these assignments add up to 570 pages of reading, two five-paragraph essays (for one class), three short essays, a multiple choice test, 20 short-answer questions, and a PowerPoint presentation. Huh?

We are suffering here, people.

Let me backtrack by saying, in case you forgot, that my rising junior is dyslexic. He is a great student, but he thrives on structure. Summer is the opposite of structured.

When did he decide to show me these lovely assignments that would take him all summer to accomplish? This week. When should he have started? February.

All of this work is overwhelming. Thank goodness, I am a licensed education professional. I can organize reading plans and chunk assignments like a drill sergeant when the need arises (as it has, along with the temperature). So, we are doing school in August.

Julia, the younger sister, is not thrilled. She prefers show-tune singing, knitting mommy. She does not respond well to: Drop and give me 20 pages in that math workbook.

But she rolls with it, as many sibs of LD kids learn to do. Sometimes the whole house has to stop and build up the scaffolding needed to support her brother. It's a cyclical part of our lives that I know other parents (and teachers) of LD kids understand.

Even the strongest of us need support from time to time.
http://www.nps.gov/stli/historyculture/places_restoring.htm

My sweet hubby is suffering too. It took me and Robbie all afternoon to figure out some software that enables him to listen to his history textbook (he reads along, highlighter in hand). We got it working 15 minutes before Dad walked in the door.

So, Chinese take-out for dinner and thank goodness I can be a stay home mom when I need to be. Today, I needed to be.

Fortune cookie writing contest!

It's stressful, but I wouldn't change a hair on the kid's head. I have learned so much from the way he learns. Parents of LD kids have to be flexible. We have to have a toolbox ready to go when our guys (and girls) stumble.

Here's the cool news: I've been an advocate for my own twice-exceptional kid and for other parents with 2-e kids for years, but now I'm going to do it AS A JOB! This summer, I've been training to become an Independent Educational Consultant. And the person who is mentoring me -- she specializes in working with LD kids. How perfect is that?!

I won't get into the details of what an IEC is right now. The short version: helping LD students with the college search and application process so they go off to a "good fit" school.

Is there a poem at the end of this rant? Of course there is.

This is from the middle grade novel-in-poems I have been working on for FIVE YEARS. If life with the kiddo calms down, I plan to do one more big revision this summer and then start sending the manuscript out. The latest title for the novel is THE LAST FIFTH GRADE OF EMERSON ELEMENTARY. Here a poem in the voice of one of my Emerson ES fifth graders.

Window

During math, I’m like a dog

that wants to play outside

but no one will open the door.

No matter how many math games

we play in Mr. Keller’s class

I can’t hold still. I get itchy.

I look at trees through the window,

toss something at my friend’s desk.

Want to play? He shakes his head.

I bite my nails, chew erasers,

look out the window. Green grass.

I tap my feet, click my teeth,

dream up stories about dogs

living wild in the woods.

If I concentrate, I can see

yellow eyes in the trees

looking back at me.

Photo by Julia

I've given you a lot to reflect on, friends, fellow parents, and poetry lovers. You may wish to visit Reflections on the Teche for more summer rants, raves and rhymes as we head into the last month of the season. Soon, I'll be saying TGIF (Thank God It's Fall).

UPDATE:

Parents, I thought you might like to see the result of yesterday's madness. Here is our new and improved August calendar.

We have the usual doctor visits and summer parties. What's new? Blue post-its with the day's assignment (for each teen).

"Though this be madness, yet there is method in it." Call me crazy, or anal, or OCD, but now we can see that the summer assignments are do-able and everyone feels a lot better. Phew!

Poetry Friday: An Elegy

On Monday evening, a dear friend's son passed away. He was 15.

I first met Grant, his mother and his sister in the spring of 2002, when they joined our Moms Club playgroup. Grant and my son, Robbie, were going to be in the same kindergarten class that fall.

Kathy and I became friends -- talking about how school was going for the boys. I could sometimes provide her with day to day insights, through Robbie, into life in the classroom. Kathy appreciated these insights because Grant had cerebral palsy and Robbie was (what they call in edu-speak) typically developing.

My son is in the mashed-up  middle row. Grant is in the front row.

"Can you ask Robbie if they went outside today?" Kathy might call and ask. There was mud on her son's jeans and she had no idea how it got there. I will never forget the day she called me, thrilled, because Grant's aide had sent him home with a map. Not a normal map -- this one explained the various, multi-hued stains on Grant's T-shirt. Some came from lunch, some from an art project, some from recess.

Another time, she called me, laughing. At recess, Grant's aide had been approached by a serious little boy. He thought it would be a good idea for the two of them to ride Grant's wheelchair down the slide. That was my vehicle-obsessed son. (I drafted a picture book about this incident. Maybe I'll go back to it some day.)

Due to redistricting, the boys ended up at different schools, but Kathy and I stayed in touch. The kids saw each other for birthday parties, or get togethers, but less and less frequently. When my son was diagnosed with dyslexia, Kathy understood the frustrations of coping with the school system. She helped teach me how to be an advocate.

She also understood the process of letting go of that fantasy kid all of us create during the waiting time of pregnancy or before we take home an adopted child. We all let go of that fantasy at some point, as we parent a real, wonderful child -- a human being -- with all of his strength and weaknesses, all of her needs and wants.

Losing a child is unbearably painful. I am hurting for my friend. It was a gift to have her son in our lives. I had planned to share an elegiac poem by a well-known poet. Instead, I wrote about one memory of Grant.

The Map (firstish draft!)

by Laura Shovan

She emptied her son’s backpack every day

after the bus put up its wheelchair lift and drove away,

after she rolled him up the ramp and through the door.

Once there was a map in his backpack, mirror image

of the pale blue T-shirt she dressed him in that morning,

ironed and clean, now streaked with God-knew what.

The map of his shirt said a black smudge was finger paint

(it was nearing Halloween, his aide wrote,

they were doing spiders), green was grass from recess,

the glowing orange splotch – not a pumpkin –

Miranda “borrowed” a highlighter from the teacher’s pen jar,

drew a lopsided heart on his shoulder. The brown was chocolate

(they told Robbie not to share his MnMs, but…)

When her son died, she thought about the map.

If he had worn a map on the last day, what would she know?

The spider and the grass, the misshapen heart,

chocolate melting on a quiet tongue.

Today's Poetry Friday host is Karissa at the Iris Chronicles.