Birthday parties: Two kids down, one to go...

I'm the ridiculous, dorky friend who hangs out with a group of girls who are all mean to her. I bewilderingly keep coming back for more. Except that I'm not; I'm the mom of one of the girls. My almost 12-year-old daughter wrecked me this weekend. She was an ingrate and a bully. Her birthday is Halloween, but she opts for a summer sleepover. (We celebrate her existence for 2 months out of the year rather than just a day.) October is nuts, so I've obliged her, but it's always been fraught. The most successful year, Tim and I had a scheduling snafu. I'd gone through the exhausting, group-text-machinations of picking a date that worked for everyone. Those group texts can be sticky. The hierarchy of the friendships becomes obvious as the date will change to ensure certain girls can be there whereas other's inability to attend won't matter. It turned out that Tim and I couldn't be at the party I'd created, so I left my Goddaughter, Hope to deal with it. That was perfect except for the ensuing week of bad behavior resulting from sleep deprivation and a drastic sugar overdose.

This year Nanny was leaving her beautiful Ocean City, NJ bayside home for 2 weeks in September. Steel picked a Saturday and invited exactly 2 more girls than could fit into our fetid Minivan. When exactly 2 girls couldn't make it, and they were the two girls I've found to be the most contentious; I was feeling blessed. Hurricane Dorian brought cold and rain on Friday, so the sunny, 80-degree Saturday and Sunday felt miraculous. We have entered the "Mom, you know nothing, and you are annoying and embarrassing." phase, so our conversations about the challenge of inviting 2 groups of girls who don't know each other were completely ignored. Steel had 2 friends from her old public school and 4 from the new private school.

I'd warned the girls and their parents that I would be regularly taking their phones from them. I'd learned over the summer that I have to be clear about my screen-time expectations. In August, Steel had 4 friends over to swim in the Wissahickon Creek. While I was making 1 gluten free, 1 vegetarian and 3 normal lunches, 🙄🔫 all 5 girls were on their phones being wretched. 3 would laugh at something and ignore the pleas from the 2 others to see what they were laughing at. All 5 of them were mocking one of their classmate's posts of herself singing in the bathtub.  I was terrified to see multiple posts by this young, gorgeous, vulnerable girl being way-too-sexy on instagram and wondering whether I should tell her parents. I was more traumatized about the "mean girl" stuff and my paralysis to explicitly address it. After multiple "Come on guys; put the phones down," I had to raise my voice and say, "GIVE ME YOUR PHONES NOW!"


Steel lost her phone the morning of her party. Tim had caught her on it in her bed that morning. Phones are not allowed in bedrooms nor are they allowed without asking. Most of her friends played with theirs in the car on the way to the shore; I put on a "Modern Love" and a "Moth Radio Hour" podcast for myself and focused on driving. Steel and her new PC friends were talking about boys and kids at school. I pleaded, "BE NICE; only talk about people you like; don't bother with the ones you don't" I also proposed, "Why don't you talk about something else or explain to the other girls who you are talking about and what they are like, so they can follow???"  I should have gotten an air horn and blown it periodically with no explanation.

Marissa (public school) exclaimed, "I feel so RICH!" when she first surveyed the water from Nanny's deck. Even the posh private school girls were impressed by Nanny's home. All of this glee was lost on me. From the second we walked in the door, I was mentally calculating undoing anything that we did, anxious about leaving the place as we'd found it. I immediately established a "keep track of your towel, hang it up and re-use it" policy. I mentally coronated myself "Towel Nazi." I'd gotten groceries, picked produce from the garden and packed up the minivan for the trip; however, I didn't demand that anyone help me carry the food and the cooler up or help me put anything away. When will I learn to shout, "THERE ISN'T MAID SERVICE HERE!" like my mother in law? I asked Steel to open windows, turn on fans, and sort out the sleeping situations upstairs, but no one listens to that dorky hanger on, do they?

When the parents were dropping their kids off in Philly, trying to model good behavior, I introduced a PC dad to a GWCS mom as "Doug." We talked for a bit, and she said, "Nice to meet you, Doug." to which he responded, "My name is Brad." I was mortified. I mumbled something like, "Oh geez! I'm so sorry. Doug is Grace Tindall's dad!" Maybe I'd met Doug and Brad on the same day? They are both tall, but Doug is black and Brad is not. Would I have gotten those two confused? In the car, this conundrum was driving me almost as crazy as the middle school gossip. I had a revelation when we arrived. As I was serving Doug/Brad's daughter her gluten free mattress innards, (That's what all of that gf food seems like.) I said, "I think I know why I messed up your dad's name!" All the girls turned. Humiliating mom/idiot tagalong then said, "When I was in 3rd grade, I had a crush on a 4th grade boy, and his name was Brad Douglas!" Steel interrupted and scoffed, "MOM! Why are you telling Caroline that you confused HER DAD with a guy you had a crush on????? That's SO EMBARASSING!" I said, "Steel! It's not the crush part it's the Brad/Doug part; it's been driving me crazy!" Steel sneered, "Mom! You're just making it worse!" in her practiced, pretentious, Heathers voice, She also mumbled under her breath, "Actually I'M making it worse." I reddened like the fat kid getting teased about eating her lunch.

The "I feel rich" girl inadvertently locked herself in one of the bathrooms. I am terrible with mechanical, moving parts, so her ineptitude created a deeper nook in my heart in which she now sits. The locks are confusing, and it's a pocket door. She shouted for a while, but no one heard her. Finally she thought to shriek into the crack under the door, and we rushed over. Tools in hand, I called my mother in law to ask her if this had happened before. The girls were shoving chips and granola bars under the door and into the screen from the deck as if she'd been in there for a week and was faint from hunger. I was worried we'd have to call a locksmith. Steel noticed, looking through the screen, that Marissa hadn't properly unlocked the latch. Marissa turned it at Steel's coaching, and the door slid open.  All of the food they'd brought festered on Nan's newly-polished bathroom floor. I told Steel to clean up Nan's bathroom before they left. It was as if I'd asked her to go do volunteer work at a soup kitchen in lieu of rides on the boardwalk.

I gave Steel $140 for the boardwalk.  I took 3 of the girls' phone numbers and texted them every 40 minutes or so to make sure all 7 girls were together and alive. I cleaned up from the afternoon strawberry/potato chip/ quesadilla/root beer explosion. Unfortunately I "cleaned" by just finishing everything off and then feeling like like a pig. Tim and I are attempting a "detox September;" I should have just had a drink or two. Instead I hung up towels, tidied, read a sad article about Prince in the New Yorker, and made salad for everyone. Steel texted from Caroline's phone, "Hey this is Steel. We are down to our last tickets, and we got 184 tickets. I already had to pay $55 of my own money, so we can't get food here." I responded, "Just head back I'll order pizza for everyone."

Pizza and movie were uneventful although Steel was LIVID that I wouldn't allow soda, cake or popsicles on Nan's couch. It seemed they were all going to pass out by midnight; Everyone was tired. They went upstairs, but none of the sleeping arrangements had been sorted. A drama involving every shred of bedding in the house ensued because the girls wanted to all be in one room rather than using the existing beds in the two rooms. The kind, easy-going girl who never makes a fuss (also the gluten-free, Celiac-inflicted girl who couldn't eat the ice cream cake because it had Oreos in it which made me feel awful) was planning on sleeping on the floor, but all of the blankets had been taken. Steel had no interest in ameliorating this situation, so Caroline came to me. I ended up grabbing a mattress off of the top bunk in the other room, putting it on the floor for her and finding some bedding the vultures hadn't discovered. Caroline's situation went from the worst to the best. Steel started to whine about needing a mattress as well, but her complaint morphed into: "It's WAY too hot up here; we need to go for a midnight swim." Of course it was hot. She'd not put up the shades, opened all the windows, and turned on the fans. She caterwauled down about the fans telling me THEY DIDN'T WORK. I trudged up and flicked the fan switch on.

Nevertheless, in the windowless, fan-less bedding melee, all of them were overheated, so I agreed to the midnight swim. It was beautiful, and I was impressed by their fearlessness. We had discovered in a harrowing, initial swim that Marissa is not a strong swimmer. (I was this close to using my junior lifeguard skills and grabbing her under the chin and swimming her to the dock. It was a good reminder that, frivolity aside, these girls' lives were in my hands) At midnight, she had no qualms about asking for a life jacket and the floatee; her not giving a damn what anyone thinks is so refreshing. All of my towel-economizing plans went out the window. EVERY towel in nan's house was wet and on the floor somewhere. After the swim they were loud, but they were finally all talking together. I went up at 1:30 to tell them it was too late, and they were keeping me up.  They dutifully crashed.

My aunt is an entertaining genius...she's got towels numbered up to 23. "Pick a number and STICK WITH IT!

I woke at 9 still pissed that Steel had been such a lazy ingrate, but she gave me a hug and said with a slight Valley girl intonation, "We're hungry. Can you make sure you sift the pancake mix?" I had made coffee, washed the fruit and was embarking on my gluten free pancake odyssey. "Steel, you can make the rest of the pancakes however you want." (Wow! the lame girl is standing up for herself!) Emboldened, I agreed to drive them to Starbucks, but I did not offer to pay for Starbuck's. (Next time I'll be queuing up Youtube videos about "How to make your own organic frappuccino's at home;" They must exist.) They swam again, and Steel was pissed when "Towel Nazi" reared up and said, "New towels are OFF LIMITS."

I drove them to the shops downtown to get them out of the way of my cleaning up breakfast, linen organizing, towel laundering and floor cleaning. I got a run in, but a shower wasn't in the cards for me. They returned wanting me to take them out to some trendy ice cream place that's also pretending to be performance art. I refused and gave them the rest of the cake and popsicles. I was relieved when Steel begrudgingly agreed we had food and I'd spent enough money already, but asking her to take 2 trips down with recycling and then requiring that she help with lowering the shades and closing the windows was too much. She threw herself onto the couch and bawled at me. At some point she inexplicably hurt her hand and was weeping. Her friends rushed to her aid; I was unsympathetic. She was careless with the shades and broke a vase. To get everyone out of my way, I asked them all to write nan a thank you note and to take their stuff to the car.


Except for the age-appropriate narcissism, I love this posse of girls, and I was thrilled that they were all constantly exclaiming that they were having SO MUCH FUN. I've written about risk-averse, no-nonsense Marissa. Marissa was having a blast; she hasn't gotten a lot of "marauding around with a group of friends" time in her life. Her mom personally experienced not one, but 2 school shootings: one in high school, the other in college. Mom understandably errs on over-protective parenting as opposed to my laissez-faire.  Madge is the other GWCS girl. She has a bi-polar, sometimes-off-the-deep-end dad. She often takes care of her younger half siblings, so she's worldly, mature and self-aware. Madge also has a keen sense of social mores and decorum. She and Marissa came back from the Boardwalk a few steps ahead of the rest. Madge exclaimed to me in shock, "It was so AWKWARD; the other girls didn't even speak to us!" By the end of the weekend it was Madge, not Steel, who was the clique-buster. She is responsible for all of the girls' finally connecting. She's effervescent and fun, and I adore her. Penelope is probably the biggest clique-promoter; she's fond of a conspiratorial whisper, but her parent-is-annoyed-better-respond-now radar is top notch. I'd be calling for Steel, and Penelope would hear me and take it on. 'STEEL!!!! YOUR MOTHER IS CALLING YOU!!!!" Penelope is clever, charming, theatrical and writes beautifully. She adores her little brother and speaks of him often which is incredibly endearing. Celiac Caroline is a deer-like dear. She's meek; but she knows what's right and what's wrong; and she rules by example. Her voice is comically high, and she says funny grandmother-type words like "golly!" It's delightful. She is the least likely to stand up for herself, but she has a revered, Buddah-like status with the group. Ava, I know the least, but I found her to be earnest. She is self-absorbed and needing attention, but the way she succeeds in getting it is by telling intimate stories. Her mom had heart disease, and she told us all about it. I think she opened the door for all of the girls to share stories, so I like her. Corinne is the vegetarian hooligan. She's the one (besides Steel) who mutters sarcastic comments under her breath. I don't think she's necessarily directing them towards me, but I enjoy them. She is the most intrepid and devil-may-care of the posse, but she's smart, and she is always a good time. She's earned a special place in my heart because she is so sweet to Toby. She greets her with warmth and hugs both in school and at the house. My favorite memory of Corinne was at their 5th grade graduation. Most girls were teetering around in ridiculous high heels-not Corinne. She's TINY, but she wore knee socks and combat boots and strutted across the stage confronting the very-tall head of the middle school with an aggressive, succinct, Fuhrer-like handshake.

I remember being their age. I was kind. I wonder now whether I was opportunistically kind. Ambitious, I knew then that editor of the yearbook and captain of the teams were elected positions. People who were nice to everyone got elected. It worked; my prep school applications were impressive. I'd heard about "karma" from my hippy 6th grade teacher, and it had made sense to me. (Mr. Williamson also made us listen to the groovy, George Harrison track, "Within you, Without you" for an entire period, and he had us learn Malvina Reynold's "Little Boxes" by heart.)  I sometimes resented being kind and letting the mean girls get their way. (not unlike this weekend) A part of me respects Steel for always watching out for number 1, but another part of me worries because I don't know that path. My mom taught me to be helpful; I need to work on this parenting skill. Tim has it down, but I do not. Eliciting my being helpful, though, can't have been hard. I have manic energy. If I'm not doing something helpful/productive, I'm doing something unproductive like over-eating or over-drinking. I have known this about myself for a long time.

I just came across this comic written right after 9/11 by one of my college friends. The comic ends with the line, "There is nothing better than when you and your friends hate the same people; it's like love" She is right. I'm embarrassed to admit that I love the mirth and intimacy I get with girlfriends while mocking other people. What is it about picking people apart that brings girls/women together? Why am I hard on Steel and her friends about it if I do it too?

The worst part of the weekend is that I've realized that my 3rd grade crush was Brad Dickman not Brad Douglas, so again I don't know why Brad and Doug are in the same place in my brain.

I'm lying. The worst part of the weekend was going to bed on that Sunday night at the reasonable hour of 9:30 and finding myself weeping because I'd allowed my daughter to hurt my feelings. I'd told her calmly before bed that, because of her behavior, this was to be her last big birthday party- even though she's only 12. (JP had them through the age of 13.) She didn't make a fuss. Either she was too tired; or she knows she was despicable to me; or she doesn't actually enjoy being the hostess and won't miss it anyway. Parenting is so fucking hard.

2019 First day of school picture
It is crazy how huge Steel looks. She's got at least 3 inches on her older brother.

Evolving Truth

We visited Penn Charter the morning after the Eagles won the Super Bowl. It was late to be applying to school for 3 kids.  I’d had an epiphany that my manic attempts to improve my kids’ school were not going to make a difference on a timeline that made sense for our family. Perhaps the ebullient atmosphere of the entire city gave PC the advantage over its contender, but I maintain that visiting Fitz in the Choral Room clinched it for me. My beloved Aunt Mimi had passed the week before.  She had been my choir director at Andover and had gone on to head the music department at Exeter.  Fitz is a male replica of my Aunt. His response to John Zurcher’s introduction was, “It beats working.”  As we left our tour, the security guard in the parking lot told us that he’d come out of retirement as a Philly cop to put his daughter through PC and that it was the best place on Earth.  He would fit easily into a family photo of my father in law and his 13 siblings.  That security guard won Tim over.

My son is malleable, so swaying him towards PC was easy, but the girls had preferred the single-sex-school option. That school laid the charm on thick. My girls had magical days when they visited.  A week later they received hand-written thank-you notes signed in multi-colored markers by all of the girls in their respective classes.  There was a photograph on the back of the cards picturing my thrilled daughters arm-in-arm with the 7 of the beaming 2nd and 4th grade girls who had hosted them. Individualized letters from the admissions office listing the strengths of my children and how these will be nurtured and bloom at that school arrived sheathing shiny, stainless steel, logo-ed water bottles.  I mentioned this to John Zurcher on the phone. I could hear his eyes roll as he asked, “Do you need me to send SWAG???”  I didn’t need swag, but I did go to the PC website and gather a list of Quaker virtues that my girls were not displaying to explain in a comprehensive treatise why we’d chosen a Quaker school.  After a summer of whining and spewing exhaustive lists of all of the bad decisions I’d made in my life, my girls had to embrace the Quaker concept of evolving truth: they were going to PC.

I can be lackadaisical about things like “welcome e-mails” and summer reading lists.  I got whipped into shape by Heather Kaplan, my “welcome ambassador. “ She laid down the law.  After multiple attempts to reach me, she relayed 5 major points from a rest stop on her vacation:

1. The fancy dress day comes fast, and your son will NEED A BELT.
2. Get gym clothes
3. Get your school supplies; the lists had already gone out
4. Get a locker lock from the school; don’t get a lock at Home Depot; your kid will forget his/her combination. 
5. Sync your phone up with the PC calendar.

I’ve thanked Heather in my head multiple times this year for number 5, and who knew it’d be that hard to find a belt for an 82-lb 7th grader? All of the parents I met at summer and fall meet and greets reacted to my blithe announcement that I was moving 3 kids to PC in September with reactions of perplexed surprise or gasps of horror and disbelief.  In hindsight, maybe it was rash to move all three, but I’d do it again.

My first flagrant PC-parenting fail came with my 7th grader before the school year even started.  He’s not an athlete, so he opted to do cross country as his fall sport.  Projecting my independent school athletics experiences onto PC and worrying about JP’s love of inertia and the ensuing effect on his cross country career, I forced him to run 2 miles with me 3 mornings a week during the month of August in preparation for the season. He wept after the first 250 yards, but I kept on him. By the time he was ready to start at PC he’d had enough running.  He quit cross country before he’d even started. (Well done, mom 🙄) He did co-ed water polo instead and loved it, so all is well that ends well.  I’d expected to see a token girl playing with a group of guys.  Instead I saw two, colossal female twins schooling any boy that crossed her path. JP announced with reverence that they “break the sound barrier” when they shoot the ball. I was pleased to see them break gender barriers as well.

I had chosen PC for its academics and its music department.  I’d not noticed that it is actually a super-sporty school.  The first “intramurals” day was a nightmare for JP.  He was put in the goal, let in countless goals, and was completely demoralized.  I was stung when one of my college friends suggested that I (a jock) felt comfortable at PC and wanted my kids there because it would have been perfect for me-not because it was perfect for them. I turned into a WRECK about having made the switch to PC.  By week 2,  I was convinced that JP was being bullied.  There was some sort of skirmish over a specific lunch table that often rendered JP eating alone.  Academically, he’d gleaned that if his math class was called, “advanced math,” then that meant there was a non-advanced option, and he was doing his best to achieve a demotion. I was also flummoxed that he was expected to attend sports but his free ride home would not be an option as he’d miss the bus every day.  However, he was not eligible for a free Septa pass.  (On principal, I marched my case to the school district and got him a Septa pass. I didn’t like the idea that kids who don’t have parents with the freedom to pick them up might miss out on things at. PC.  I still don’t, but I understand that PC’s hands are tied on this one.  A previous, manic-probably not unlike myself, PC mom worked to get the school a hazardous designation that forced the district to provide the yellow school buses, so now the school cannot give out Septa passes) In any event, I was terrified that I’d made a terrible mistake and that PC was class-blind and only good super-motivated jocks.

About a month into the school year, the 7th grade goes on a camping trip.  JP was put in a cabin with some of the feuding lunchroom posse.  It rained most of the week.  They had the "cool counsellor," so they stayed up late and played poker all week.  Upon his return, I anxiously asked, “Were those guys in your cabin jerks?”  He responded “Yes!” My heart sank.  “Mom! I’m a jerk too.  All middle school boys are jerks!”  He actually said the words, “Mom, I misjudged those guys.”  He has since told me on multiple occasions that there is NO BULLYING at PC.  He is a tiny, unathletic, hearing-impaired, theater guy with pink hair; if he’s not getting bullied, I actually believe that no one is.  (He has also managed to get a “hiking in the Wissahickon” option with his artsy friends on Intramurals day. 🤓 )

I wept (with joy) multiple times at the MS Back to School night. My mom taught at a private school so my brother and I could go there for free.  Many of the PC teachers reminded me of the incredible teachers I was lucky enough to have.  Sr. Calvo had them listening to Spanish pop music and playing games involving super-heroes. Learning the culture is what makes the drudgery of memorizing the new, foreign words manageable.  (I can still sing Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose” by heart because my effusive 7th grade French teacher insisted that we all learn it and eschew our pubescent self-consciousness to sing it out loud like drunks.)  It was clear to me after my 20 minutes of geography with Ms. Bateman that by Christmas JP would have a better handle on the nations/cultures in our world than I do.  (That’s not saying much, but still…) It blew my mind that the QUADs class was using a visual/conceptual art project to explain this year’s “evolving truth” idea. Mr. Skelly reminded us of the accessibility of the story of Romeo and Juliet in his brief, hilarious synopsis; it’s a perfect example of the explosive impulsivity that we are dealing with on a daily basis as we parent our 13 year olds.  The 20 minutes of math reminded me of the creativity involved in solving complex math problems and the satisfaction one can get from that process.  I’d forgotten.  It was such a pleasure to see a young, engaging female science teacher.  Perhaps her charisma will keep our girls from abandoning their interest in science as is still so common in teenage girls.  I have since attended a middle school morning assembly and was once again, blown away by the dearth of eye-rolling and the love, support and humor that these kids experience in middle school. 

My 5th grader was going to be the toughest nut for PC to crack.  She was the most livid that we’d ignored her desire to go to another school.  She was prepared to hate PC to spite me and to prove me wrong.  I’d been asked what would be a good fit for her in a teacher.  I’d responded that a male would be best, so Steel wouldn’t spend most of her energy mentally styling the teacher and giving her a makeover rather than listening to her.  She’d also had a few female teachers in the past that seemed to be closer to BFF’s than teachers; it had been fine, but I was hoping for something different at PC.  She not only got a male teacher; She got a male teacher with a CHINCHILLA.  That ball of fur whipped the spite right out of her.  Steel had felt a lot of “mean girl” stuff during her two days visiting PC.  It was one of the things that had put her off of the school.  The confidence and self-possession that the six new 5th grade girls displayed at the “new 5th grader orientation” assuaged a lot of my fears.  These girls were going to shake things up if they indeed, needed shaking.  I will never know whether the admissions office actively pursued a posse of powerhouse females for that grade, but considering how thoughtful PC is about things, it would not surprise me.

Steel was excited about her first PC writing assignment.  She was going to write about Marlee.  Marlee was her friend who had succumbed to brain cancer on a snow day in the middle of Steel’s 4th grade year.  Steel and her classmates had watched Marlee’s year-long demise.  It was excruciating as a parent to know the probable outcome of Marlee’s rare cancer and to listen to my daughter and her friends’ insistence that, “Marlee was strong, and she was going to fight.”  I hoped that Steel’s enthusiasm to write about Marlee meant that she was processing her death in a healthy way.  She was, but Steel broke down in the middle of a writing class and had to go to “the feelings teacher.”  I’m a potter.  I’d answered the ensuing phone call with dirty hands and a little trepidation.  Doesn’t everyone panic when they see “Penn Charter” on the caller ID?  Ms. Redick explained what had happened.  I was relieved that no one had died and was calmly discussing the situation when she asked me, “How are YOU handling Marlee’s death?”  No one had asked.  I unraveled into a gelatinous pile of parent.  We can be such myopic assessors a child’s strengths upon which to capitalize and weaknesses to surmount. PC embraces my children as individuals but also as members of families and a larger community.  Her question was so refreshing and kind.

The fifth grade at PC (now moving into 6th) is an impressive group of kids.  They are very theatrical; the poetry showcase demonstrated this so well.  It was a great show from the poetry to the beat percussion to the all-black attire and berets. I will probably remember some of those poems when I watch those kids graduate in 7 years.  I’ve volunteered on open house days, and those 5th graders proved to be knowledgable, confident tour guides as well.  With powerful, dramatic personalities comes dramatic situations.  I’ve been impressed with how the 5th grade team handles things.  More important, Steel has been impressed.  She admires the thoughtful and inclusive approaches of her teachers when kids have been profane, challenging or provocative.  The community of the 5th grade parents at PC is strong.  I’ve had candid conversations about some sticky issues.  Yes, there has been some inappropriate flying-off-the-handle to defend a child, but open, problem-solving conversations have been more common.  

My favorite part of Steel’s fifth grade experience is that she’s been challenged.  I know that comparing kids to each other and even thinking in terms of competition is a no-no, but my fifth grade girl is a competitive person; she comes by it honestly.  There is a specific boy who she feels bests her at almost everything.  She rages about it at home.  She was cursing this boy for his math, writing, social studies and athletic skills.  My youngest daughter was jumping on the bandwagon to attack this accomplished kid.  Toby said, “Is he kind of a jerk, too???”  To which Steel replied, “NO!  That’s what’s even MORE annoying!!!!  He’s one of the nicest kids I’ve ever met!”

My third child entered the 3rd grade last September.  When we received the name of her teacher, I did a search for her on Facebook.  She’s a tall Sagittarius who took and posted a TON of pictures at the flower show.  Basically Toby was going to have a version of her own mother as a 3rd grade teacher. That seemed fine with me. Will’s mom, Cindy was my first 3rd grade PC mom interaction.  Will had been a new kid in the 2nd grade.  When he heard that a boy named Toby was going to be coming in 3rd grade, he’d said to his mom, “I’m going to be so nice to Toby.  I know what it’s like to be a new kid.”  The first thing he said to his mom after his first day of school was, “Mom!  Toby is NOT A BOY!!!!!”  Nevertheless, Will has had my little girl’s back.  That incident and others have made me so happy we chose the co-ed option.  I want my kids to have good friends of both sexes before the craziness of hormones kicks in.  

We had our first parent-teacher conference with Ms. Hopkins, and she did prove to be a very similar person to me.  Sagittarius people often say the wrong thing in the name of honesty.  She told us that she’d retired from Green Street Friends School after 22 years, but that she’d been working at PC for 3 on year-long contracts that she’d renewed.  This was definitely going to be her LAST YEAR, though. That is not the thing a teacher should say to new parents who are stressing about paying for school.  The wonderful, energetic 3rd grade teacher at their old school flashed through my brain.  We could have had her for free, and now we were paying dearly for someone who has just told us she’s done with teaching??????  Fast forward to our next conference when Ms. Hopkins told us that she’s had such a thrilling time with Toby’s class; she can’t possibly stop teaching.  What does a woman who has been teaching for 25 years have? (Duh! EXPERIENCE.)  Besides the fact that Ms. Hopkins “makes fractions fun” she has created a motley family out of that group of 15 kids.  Toby says they have jokes that are WHOLE CLASS jokes: all of them laugh together about the same thing.  Not only did she create community; she also embraced their individuality.  The wax museum project is such a highlight of 3rd grade at PC.  Toby was Sacajawea as was another girl.  Each Sacajawea gave a completely different presentation.  My daughter could not have cared less about Sacajawea’s guiding the explorers out west. She latched onto the fact that Sacajawea was forced to marry and have children at such a young age. Toby was allowed by all of her teachers and librarians to pursue what interested her about her subject.  This seems like an insignificant no-brainer, but it’s not.  It’s the basis of a progressive education, and it works to keep kids motivated and engaged.

Toby’s dad, an architect, and I are trying to squelch the architect gene in our children. (Being an architect is a BRUTAL way to make a living.) PC is not doing us any favors in this architect redirection project. The desire to design and build keeps popping up in Toby, and she was paired with a daughter of TWO architects to design a playground in science out of (among other things) toilet paper rolls. “Motivated and engaged” are understatements;Toby was beside herself in Mr. Ford and Mr. Wade’s science class.  Unfortunately this gene also manifests in a predilection for nice homes and nice stuff.  Toby returned from her first PC playdate literally weeping.  “Why is her home so NICE?  Why is our home so DUMPY?”  Toby enlisted her sister in a group attack against Daddy with these queries.  He responded, “Well, you’re right, what are you guys going to do about it?” They organized kitchen drawers, scoured, and put out flowers. I returned home to a completely different kitchen.  It was fabulous.  This did not stop me from taking advantage of the PC outreach project that weekend.  We helped move homeless families from one church to another.  At the end of that project I asked the girls pointedly how their rooms in our dumpy house looked to them now.

We have some battles ahead.  Obviously screens are going to be a constant worry no matter where they go to school unless we Waldorf it.  Our son will always have trouble ignoring the temptation to ignore his teachers and surf the internet.  The privilege problem will be recurring.  I went to a PC mom pot luck that was far nicer than my own wedding.  There was valet parking, incredible flowers and gorgeous cocktails. I will never be able to match that, but it was lovely and kind.  In the face of this, my plea to the parents of the kids invited to my son’s birthday party was that they lower the bar set by the unbelievably generous Bar/Bat Mitzvah parties.  My daughter is now asking for brand name clothing.  When I asked for that sort of thing, my mom told me that of course she’d let me wear Ralph Lauren’s clothing…as soon as he called up and offered to pay me to be a billboard for him.  I have responded similarly to my fashionista and have gone further to say not only do I not want her to be a free advertisement for Brandy Melville, but also I don’t want her to be a walking endorsement for those vacuous values, in general.  (She is responding, as I did, by becoming an avid 2nd-hand shopper.)

The only upsetting thing about my love of PC is knowing every kid doesn’t have access to something like it.  I wholeheartedly believe that it isn’t the bells and whistles.  Yes, having two kids in the phenomenal all-school musical at the top notch Kurtz Center for Performing Arts was a treat.  Yes I loved hearing my daughter gush about the satisfaction she felt hitting a field hockey ball squarely as she walked off of the gorgeous fields. Yes PC teachers have their attentions divided by 15 rather than 30, but the crux of the experience is not these things.  It is the community as a whole: students, parents, teachers, administration that creates this thoughtful, supportive and magical environment.  We were a part of the first two PC bike trains.  The organizers reached out to me because I show up for everything sweaty with a helmet on.  My three kids and I met the train of PC cyclists a block from our house and picked up other families on the way.  Now my kids understand why/how I commute by bike.  I am a potter.  I was able to teach a summer camp at PC using old wheels that have been sitting in the Middle School basement.  I had the support of Middle School teachers and the PC summer camps administration to get it going. Everyone from the Upper School Art department to the security guards to the to the maintenance guys who sorted out my electrical issues was inviting and helpful.  It was empowering to share clay with eight screen-obsessed kids and have them fall in love as I did.  The big-picture environment at PC made it easy to propose and do something new.  Education is the only thing that will arm us against the lies and propaganda surrounding climate-change, globalism and race that are so pervasive these days.  I chose PC because it has the most socio-economic diversity of any of the Philly private schools.  My hope is that our well-educated kids can figure out a way to bring this environment to every kid in our country.  

New School

It just shouldn't be that hard to get 3 kids to look at a camera. Now that Steel has her posse of fashionistas, they've all told her that the earrings she wore on the first day of school were "hideous."

I was going to helicopter in and tell JP's advisor that I thought he might be being bullied at Penn Charter.  In reality, JP is adjusting just fine, and I'm starting to wonder whether HE is instigating issues with "the jocks." He likes to see himself as a the main character in a "Diary of a Wimpy kid"-esque film.  In his kind, patient way; Tim told me to back off, and he was right.  Tim has handled this move to a private school much better than I have.  

Instead of running to the school, I wrote the following soliloquy from the point of view of my comedic son and e-mailed it to him one day.  I think it was therapeutic for both of us

So my 7th grade entry into Penn Charter was a little rocky.  First of all, there's the JP/PJ issue; both of us are new kids.  I'm JP. I'm an 80lb not-super-coordinated 7th grader who would rather sculpt with polymer clay or play video games than pretty much anything else.  PJ is a big, handsome athletic 7th grader.  He's been a water polo goalie for 4 years.  How is that possible?  Kids play water polo when they are in 3rd grade????  It turns out Penn Charter is a super jocky school. People have been confusing JP and PJ.  Everyone thinks that I'm PJ.  I think I get it.  JP is a pretty common, acceptable acronym.  PJ is short for pajamas, and I'm, well, short for EVERYTHING.  Pajamas is kind of a "little kid" word.  I don't know of too many adults who wear pajamas.  My parents don't.  I actually wish they would, but that's another story.  I used to have this great pair of Lightening McQueen pajamas; I wore the hell out of those.  I'll bet they'd still fit me now.  Anyway perhaps my classmates look and me and think "pajamas." which makes them think that I'm PJ and he's JP.
At Penn Charter there's this thing called "intramurals."   It's everyone's favorite day because we get out of the classroom and run around doing sports all day.  It's my idea of hell.  So they put ME in the soccer goal.  I lost count after I let in 5 goals. It was demoralizing.  Memo to my fellow 7th graders: On our next "intramurals" day.  Put PJ in the goal and ask JP to do something like fill the water bottles. I'll crush that.
I wonder what PJ stands for.  Is it Patrick?  Why doesn't he just go by Patrick?  My uncle Pat was my favorite when I was a kid because I was obsessed with backhoes, and he drove one.  I actually was put to sleep every night for a few years by my parents singing this song they wrote about my Uncle Pat.  "Uncle Pat gets in the backhoe.  He gets in the backhoe and he turns it on, and he digs digs digs; he digs in the backhoe.  He digs digs digs till the sun is gone."  I can't believe the second line is "and he turns it on."  Couldn't they have come up with something better than that?  One Direction did get away with the line, "The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed," so the bar is low.  Maybe PJ is short for one of those incomprehensible names like "Poppasquash."  Now I'm feeling sorry for PJ.  Those kind of names only really work when you're in your 80's and you've just published a memoir about your conversations with Winston Churchill.  My little sister came home on one of the first days at Penn Charter.  She said, "Guys, there's a kid named Ridgeway in my class!"  Ridgeway sounds like a posh neighborhood in San Diego or a company that makes high end skis.
Poppasquash is actually an island off the coast of Rhode Island where my grandfather summered when he was a little kid.  He, too, was an 80-lb 7th grader.  Maybe there's hope for me. 

Meanwhile, Steel did not want to go to Penn Charter.  She preferred the school that separated the sexes.  She can barely tolerate boys.  We ran into one of her new classmates at the orthodontist.  I could tell he recognized her immediately when he walked in.  I whispered to her that a kid recognized her and was he in her class?  She said, I know he goes to Penn Charter, but I don't think he's in my grade.  There are only 14 kids in her CLASS, and he's one of them.  Boys just don't exist for her.  She was telling me how she hopes that she has a future boyfriend who comes out to her as gay.  Then she can "just be his beard for years and it will be so fun and perfect!"  She was not impressed by the girls at Penn Charter when she visited.  She thought they were mean.  The crazy thing is that she was right to detect some social issues. I'd heard of a mean girl from a few of the girl moms I'd talked to, but when the woman of 3 boys in front of whose home the bus stops said something, I knew it was a problem.  Those boys are the most stoic kids I've ever met.  When my kids wept and wailed for 10 minutes about the lack of air conditioning on the bus, her kids said nothing. On the fancy dress day, they walked out of their house, and it was a living, breathing page from a Land's End catalogue.  Both parents are doctors; all three boys are good looking, good students, polite and athletic, so hearing that one of them burst into tears at the thought of having this girl in his class shocked the hell out of me almost as much as the moment of intimacy required for the mother to divulge that to me.  

Perhaps our previous school had avoided petty mean girl stuff because they had bigger fish to fry. One of Steel's close friends succumbed to DIPG on a snow day in the middle of her 4th grade year.  The only thing I can say about Marlee's death is that I was so glad that I'd impulsively told my kids over the summer that she was probably not going to make it.  Her chances were 1 in 100, and she'd gone on a clinical trial over the summer, and it started out somewhat promising, and it had ended abysmally.  I had the impression that everyone was telling the kids: Marlee is strong. Marlee is a fighter. Marlee is going to beat it.  I didn't want my kids shocked at the outcome.  Moreover I didn't want them to think every time they hear the words, "he/she is strong; he/she is a fighter" that the person was destined to die.  Marlee's odds were terrible; that's not the case for everyone who gets sick. (Although a 39-year-old mother of one of JP's friends had died 3 months before Marlee had, so the Roxborough track record for conquering cancer has not been one of happy endings.)

I had a tough time at Marlee's funeral.  Steel and her friends were inconsolable.  They were also egging each other onto new heights of their histrionic, cinematic impression of what grieving should be.  It felt insincere, overly-dramatic and disruptive.  I, however, was not going to be that mother who shushes her grieving 10 year old at a funeral.  I held her close.  I told her and her friends to come to the studio after the service.  I wasn't going to make them return to school like that.  After a trip to Dunkin' Donuts, the three of them were gleeful little banshees.  I felt played.  The mom who had taken the girls to the viewing, the previous evening, had the same feeling about their weeping and wailing.  She said to me that they didn't know how to grieve, but acting the part was probably helping them process in some way.  That mom is 14 years younger than I am but far wiser.

Seeing the 3 different reactions to Marlee's death was heart-wrenching.  Toby with her hyper-rational mind went straight to question mode.  How old was she?  How could she be nine and die? Where is she now? Steel went straight down the rabbit hole.  "I hate life; it shouldn't have been Marlee."  Jack Peter looked at his weeping sisters and said, "Can we host DandD tomorrow?"  Steel went berserk.  "How can you ask about DandD NOW?"  JP fell apart and whimpered, "I just want to think about something fun!" 

My reaction? I probably went more deeply into whichever escapism method I normally choose: alcohol, gardening or compulsive crafting.  I still find myself bursting into tears over it on my bike ride to work or at some other baffling moment.  

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

My mom had us read Macbeth in her 9th grade English class.  Everyone had to memorize that quote.  I wouldn't call it uplifting, but chanting it as I pedaled helped in some way. Marlee's death is an incomprehensible vacuum looming around the periphery of all of our lives.  

In lieu of more about Toby, I'm putting an extra picture of her with Ava in...

Toby also wanted to go to the single-sex school, but one of her best friends was in her grade at Penn Charter.  Before visiting that other school, she'd longed to "go to Penn Charter with Ava." Whenever she complained I'd just remind her of that.  So Toby gets 2 lines of this blog, and the others get 200.  The 3rd kid really does get the shaft.

 Thank God they have Nanny around to get them new haircuts and new clothes.  If it were up to me, I'd be cutting their hair on the deck, and they'd be rummaging through hand-me-down bags for something to wear.  

Kensington got too cool

God I loved that bathroom.  I'll miss it!  Check out the reflection of the view; you could see the whole city from the shower.

Kensington was a dump when I moved there in 2004.  I’d regularly find human poop on my stoop. The police were using my roof to surveil drug deals-just like on The Wire.  After the birth of JP, my husband got arrested for attacking a pimp on the street with nunchaku.  Instead of crack, I can now get a kale smoothie anywhere within a 1/4 mile radius.  The pimps/prostitutes have been replaced by Millennials who smell like sandalwood.  Clearly it’s time for me to go.  

Honestly I’m a cranky, sweaty mom after a day of potting and cycling the 14-mile commute.  I’m also terrible at being a landlord, and I hate it. I’ve never been OK with charging people to live in my filthy, old, gorgeous building, probably because I don’t physically do anything for the money.  I also made a bad decision when I got my kiln back in 2005, so I’m getting a new, fancy kiln with my new space. My brother in law bought the building from me. To illustrate my failure as a landlord, he raised the rent of my tenant upstairs by 14% and took away his parking place. I just don’t have that in me unless I’m pre-menstrual.  

I know I’m not supposed to admit that, but my menstrual cycle was my bargaining chip in my real estate negotiations with my brother in law.  He’s a professional haggler.  I’m not kidding.  He works in the marijuana industry making deals.  The guy who hired him wanted him because he’d experienced Mike on the opposite side of the negotiating table and wanted him on his side.  My mother in law and I both thought it unwise for me to sell my building to Mike.  However, Mike lives in the Bay Area; he is the only one of the brothers who isn’t part of the family business in Philly. He’s always wanted to partner with his brothers on something. The brothers are developing the factory floor portion of the building.  I owned the office/locker room portion and 1/7 of the factory floor.  The boys (spearheaded by my husband, Tim) wanted a neighbor to their development that they could control; Mike had the added incentive of needing to complete his 1031 exchange to escape a major tax bill on a sale he made in California.

That flower mural has been painted over by the unbelievably annoying Philadelphia anti-graffiti group.  In the process they've painted over my tenant's lock twice leaving her unable to get into her apartment. 

🙄🔫

In week one of the negotiations Mike was physically here and drunk.  Of course he was; he was hanging out with his brothers 3000 miles away from his wife and daughters.  We had a casual conversation about the sale.  He mentioned some improvements that needed to happen before he’d commit, and I told him that it was going to be an “as is” situation.  A couple weeks later Tim came into my studio while I was in my happy place, glazing.  He told me I needed to separate the units from a zoning perspective before the sale. I told him that I was selling the building because I didn’t want to run or pay for any construction projects.  I went back to glazing, and he wandered back into his office muttering that I didn’t understand how these things work, and I was going to need to make some compromises.  Finally Tim showed me an e-mail from Mike referring to me as “The Seller.”  There was a list of things that “The Seller” was going to do in order to make the sale go through.  I responded that “The Seller” wasn’t going to do a Goddamn thing, and if “The Buyer” didn’t want the building, that was fine with “The Seller.”  Tim threw up his hands and said, “You need to call Mike.”  I did call Mike.  My palms were sweating, and my heart was racing, but I re-iterated what The Seller was prepared to do, and he….APOLOGIZED!  I went to bed feeling bad but satisfied for having stuck to my guns.  When it comes to money I usually default to my dad’s advice when I was a kid: “De-ah (Dear) If you’re evah (ever) at a restaurant and people ah (are) bickering ovah (over) the bill, JUST PAY IT!  You don’t want to have to listen to that crap!”  With Mike I’d neither haggled nor picked up the tab.  I got my period the next morning.

So Mike bought the office/residential portion of my building.  The factory part I will sell to my husband and his partners for $1.  They are building me a beautiful studio 3 blocks from my home that they will sell to me for $1.  Let’s hope all of this happens without a divorce and a major family feud.  My new studio is nowhere near finished.  I just got the permits for the kiln room which means I just ordered the kiln, and it will take 3-6 months. We’ve already had a situation with one of the neighbors, and the guy upstairs, my new tenant, isn’t going to be eligible for his subsidized housing for a while. Yes, I know I said I didn’t want to be a landlord, but I’m hoping to make that apartment so nice that I don’t feel bad about taking money for it, and my best case scenario is that my dad moves into it.  Here’s another illustration of my failure as a landlord: after 1.5 months of no rent, I called the tenant of my new building.  He complained to me about stress and poverty, and I told him I was going to give him a SASE, and he could just pay what he felt he could comfortably pay.  The upshot: his rent has gone from $600/month to $250/month because he’s given me $500 for two months so far. All of this is to say I’m going to be writing a lot with my free time to justify not cleaning my house.

old photo of prolific me...I'll get back to it; I promise.

I'm going to miss that massive space as well, but I'm not cool enough to live there anymore.

My new place is the one in the middle. It definitely needs a makeover, but so do I.