Month: October 2018

In Disguise

Posted on by Wendy Kennar
Halloween 2008 – Dressed as “Fancy Nancy”

I think Halloween is popular for a number of reasons.  The candy, of course.  But beyond that, Halloween gives us permission to put on costumes and disguises.  To try out new identities, with the safety of knowing it’s temporary.

For some, these costumes, these disguises are a natural extension of who they usually are.  For others, these costumes are a complete departure from their more usual personality.   

For my ten-year-old son, it’s a bit of both.  Over the years, he has celebrated Halloween by dressing up as a firefighter, Michael Jackson, a skeleton, and a magician, to name just a few of his costumes.

As for me, when I was teaching, costumes were primarily about ease and which ones required the least amount of preparation.  Over the years, I was a chef, a golfer, and a baseball player.  One year, my best friend and I dressed as “Fancy Nancy” of the Fancy Nancy books written by Jane O’Connor (which admittedly took a lot more prep, but was one of my favorites!). 

Now though, I feel as if I am always in disguise as I navigate my days as an “undercover disabled woman.” 

In case you missed it from a few months back, you can click here to be re-directed to The Mighty to read my personal essay, “My Life as an Undercover Disabled Woman.”

 

 

My Son Is An Only Child

Posted on by Wendy Kennar
Our Beautiful Family

It happened again.

A couple of weeks ago, while at the checkout line, the friendly Ralphs cashier told me I needed to have at least one more child.

She said this in front of my son.

This time around, the cashier is someone we chat with each time we see her.  She is warm and friendly with my son.  She comments on how tall he’s gotten and asks how he’s doing in school.  

But this was crossing the line.

While she scanned my groceries and I bagged them, I tried my usual answer.  “We’re blessed with Ryan.”

But she didn’t let it go.  “You need to give him a brother or a sister.  You never know what could happen to you or your husband.  You don’t want to leave him alone.”

I felt a physical reaction, as if I had been punched in the stomach.  I know this.  It is one of my great fears.

As we loaded our groceries into the car, I spoke to my son about this conversation.  “I really like it when we see Dora, but I really didn’t like what she said to us today,” I told Ryan.

I continued.  “You know each family makes their own decisions about children.  How many to have, or if they’ll have any at all.  And each family’s decision is right for them.  Our decision is right for us.  Daddy and I feel so lucky that our family is the way it is.”

“I know,” Ryan said.

But like I began this post, this isn’t the first time a supermarket cashier has commented on our one-child family status.  And even though I’ve dealt with this before, it doesn’t get any easier.

Click here to be re-directed to RoleReboot.org  to read my personal essay, “When A Stranger Told Me I Needed To Have a Second Child.”

 

Mommy Has a ‘Boo-Boo Leg’

Posted on by Wendy Kennar
My curious son and I, on the observation area of the Santa Barbara Courthouse. June 2018 (I climbed all the stairs!)

“What does the doctor do with all the blood after they check it?”

My son once asked me that question.  It took me by surprise and caught me off guard, because it was something I had never considered.  

It’s not the only good question Ryan has asked me over the years.  There have been so many I wrote a personal essay about them.  And I’m proud to say that “Mommy Has a ‘Boo-Boo Leg’: Talking to My Son About My Autoimmune Disease” is now a non-fiction finalist in the Pen 2 Paper Disability-Focused Creative Writing Contest.

Click here to read my essay, and this year, readers may vote for their “audience favorite.” (You must have a free Submittable account to vote).  

Thank you in advance for reading and spreading the word!

 

A Tribute to Teachers

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

 

Though I left my teaching career five years ago, there are still many aspects of teaching I really miss.  There’s a special sort of magic that happens when you connect with a child, and that’s why I still enjoy reading about teachers who love teaching.

Recently I read Phillip Done’s memoir Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind – Thoughts on Teacherhood, and I’d like to share with you some of the passages that stood out for me.

“What exactly is a teacher anyway?  A lot of different things.  Teachers are like puppeteers.  We keep the show in motion.  When we help children discover abilities that they don’t know they have, we are like talent scouts.  When we herd kids off the play structure at the end of recess, we are like shepherds.  Teachers are like farmers.  We sow the seeds – not too close together or they’ll talk too much.  We check on them every day and monitor their progress.  We think about our crop all the time.  When we see growth – we get excited.”

“Teachers are word warriors.  All day long we explain, correct, examine, define, recite, check, decipher, sound out, spell, clap, sing, clarify, write, and act out words.  We teach spelling words and history words and science words and geography words.  We teach describing words and compound words.  We teach synonyms and antonyms and homonyms, too.”

“Teachers try everything short of back handsprings to get their students to quiet down and pay attention.  We flick off the lights, clap patterns, hold up fingers and wait, change the level of our voices, count up to three, count down from five, set timers, brush wind chimes, shake shakers, bribe kids with free play, and seat the boys next to the girls.”

“I was in Teacher Mode.  It turns on automatically whenever children are near and goes into overdrive when it senses busy streets, mud, gum, or bloody noses.”

“Of course nothing has changed like technology.  A bug was something you brought in from recess to show the teacher.  A desktop was something you scraped dried Elmer’s glue off with your teacher scissors.  Hard drives were on Monday mornings.  Viruses kept you home from school.  And cursors were sent to the principal’s office.”

Now it’s your turn, dear readers.  Feel free to share any school memories or teacher anecdotes of your own in the comments section below.

This Is Marriage

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

Joyce Maynard’s memoir, The Best of Us, is heavy.  Physically heavy at over 400 pages.  Emotionally heavy in its subject matter.  From the back cover:  “In 2011, when she was in her late fifties, beloved author and journalist Joyce Maynard met her soulmate.  Then, just after their one-year wedding anniversary, Jim was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  As they battled his illness together, she discovered for the first time what it really meant to be a true partner and to have one.”

The book was beautiful, and raw, and powerful, and honest.  It touched me and moved me so much so that after I had to return my copy to the public library, I went out and bought my own.  

This week, I’d like to share with you just a few of the passages I tagged while reading:

“I look back now on that day as one of the moments I discovered a small but significant truth about marriage: that it is in the act of surrendering the old, familiar patterns and all the things a person believes to be immutable that she may discover a new kind of beauty.  Something better even than her old way.”

“Not all at once, but gradually, over the months, another revelation came to me: None of that other stuff, much as I’d loved it, was what made a marriage.  Not restaurant dinners or romantic vacations.  Not walks on the beach or visits to the wine country in the Boxster.  Not oysters and martinis or moonlight over the Bay Bridge.  This was marriage.”

“But the larger truth is, I am here.  This is not the experience I wanted, but as with every other experience in my life, I do not intend to sit this one out, or to pretend for one moment that it isn’t happening.  This is my life, and at the end of the day, I don’t want to miss a minute of it.”