Month: March 2022

Rhythmic Ryan

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

March 30th, 2022. 

My son turns 14 today, and my mom turns 77 today. 

They are “birthday buddies.” My son arrived about a week earlier than expected — the most incredible gift for our family!

Naturally, today I’m thinking even more about my son. About the young man he’s becoming. Sometimes I look at him and think Who is this almost-as-tall-as-me, hands-bigger-than-mine, deep-voiced teenager? 

Back in fifth grade, my son was given an assignment — Think of an adjective that describes your personality, but it has to start with the same letter as your first name.

He chose “rhythmic.”

Rhythmic Ryan absolutely fits.

We’ve been enjoying the rhythm of books and music since I was pregnant. My husband and I read Goodnight Moon to my growing baby bump. For several years, that was the last book read at bedtime. (We went through several copies over the years.)

During those nights of teething and just-not-going-back-to-sleep-no-matter-what that every parent knows, I danced with Ryan to songs such as “Angel Baby” by Rosie and The Originals and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Valli.

Now, as a fourteen-year-old, it makes me so happy to see music and books continuing to play a huge part of my son’s life. 

Readers, which adjective would you choose to describe your personality? Remember, it has to start with the same letter as your first name. 

It’s a difficult question for me. I automatically think of “Weird.” It’s a word doctors have used (more than once) when speaking to me about my autoimmune disease. (You can click here to read “The Hard Realities I’ve Faced After My Doctor Told Me, ‘You’re Just Weird’.”) 

I’m on the search for a new word. 

But for today, I’m happy to celebrate Rhythmic Ryan and Ageless Anne (my mom).

The Matzah Ball

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

Sometimes you find a book, or a book finds you, and you just want to tell everyone about it. You want to grab the pom-poms you never owned and create a cheer for this book. Then you want to place the book into the hands of readers everywhere. 

That’s how I feel about The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer.

The Matzah Ball is a holiday romance with a twist. It’s a Hanukkah romance, and our main character, Rachel, lives with a chronic illness. Right away I was intrigued, and the book did not disappoint. (Additionally, the author is a Jewish woman living with a chronic illness — myalgic encephalomyelitis.)

I loved getting a glimpse into some of the Jewish traditions I’m less familiar with. I loved seeing Rachel and all the messiness that comes with a chronic illness depicted on the page. And, I loved that this book gave Rachel, and by extension – me as the reader, the happy ending I was hoping for. 

I read a library copy which I tagged with many sticky notes, which means I now need to buy my own copy at my next bookstore visit. 

This week, I’m excited to share just a few of the passages that stood out to me:

“Turning beneath the covers, she blinked and took a careful accounting of how she was feeling. Would it be a good day or a bad day? She could never be certain.
Some mornings she woke up feeling well, only to find herself completely depleted two hours later. Sometimes it was the opposite. She would crash for days at a time, with no ability to do even the most menial tasks. Her disease was constant but fluid. It peaked and ebbed with only one discernible pattern. Everything she did, everything, from writing two pages to carrying the groceries one block to her apartment, came with a kickback.
It was her normal.”

“There was no way to know how long these crashes would last. It could be hours, days, weeks…or even years. The only way to avoid the flare-ups was through a very unscientific method of pacing oneself and rest.
The problem was, of course, that Rachel was awful at pacing herself or resting.
On good days, she pushed even harder. On bad days, she still pushed…usually making herself way worse in the process.”

“She wasn’t ‘out’ about her disease. She wasn’t out about …anything. Sitting in a wheelchair meant accepting you were disabled and dealing with awkward stares from healthy people.
Most of all, and because she had a disease with a name like chronic fatigue syndrome, there was always a fear tucked away inside of her that someone would look at her and say she was doing this for attention. That she really wasn’t that sick. And so, though a wheelchair would certainly make her more mobile and give her a higher quality of life, she often chose to stay home.”

It’s Stressful

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

There’s been a lot going on these last few weeks. And I’m not even talking about the big scary stuff such as the heartbreaking devastation in Ukraine. 

I’m talking about things in my own little corner of the world. 

I had some medical tests done recently. Here’s the thing about that — it’s stressful. It’s stressful knowing you need the tests in the first place, it’s stressful waiting for the tests (because for me, it took several weeks to get the appointment), and then it’s stressful waiting for the results.

I was very glass-is-half-empty about it.

I was sure these tests would not come back with good news.

I tried to explain my reasoning to my therapist. 

For years now, I’ve had many symptoms that aren’t quite “right.” Not red-flag wrong, but enough to cause a doctor to pause and order more tests, just to be sure, just to rule out something else.

For years now, those tests have all come back fine, or at least, okay-enough. But as I told my therapist, I feel like there are only so many “get out of jail free” cards a person gets. I felt I must have used up my limit by now.

There’s the other part of me that feels as if I’m waiting to be further punished. As if some higher force is looking down at me thinking, “Ha. You’re talking about pain in your leg. You’re saying it’s harder to sit, to stand, to walk, to drive. You think this is bad now. I’ll show you bad.”

But then a friend of mine gave me another way to look at it. 

She told me that the higher power up there figures I have enough going on. This higher power knows I’m dealing with crap (aka pain and the complications that come with chronic pain) every day. So they’re not going to give me something else to deal with. My plate is already full.  

My friend used a few curse words in our conversation that I will leave out of this blog, but she made me laugh, and helped me see things in an entirely different way. 

It’s true. I am dealing with “crap” every single day. Some degree of pain. There are medications to take. Medications to try. Appointments, consultations, labs, scans. Heat, ice. Rest, exercise. It doesn’t stop.

And in case you were wondering, my tests came back with good news. 

Where the Light Enters

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

I admit. I didn’t walk into the bookstore looking for First Lady Dr. Jill Biden’s book. I was vaguely aware of it, but it wasn’t at the top of my ever-growing want-to-read list.

Yet, turns out I couldn’t resist the buy 2 get 1 display. And Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself  was one of the books I purchased that day as part of that sale. And even after buying the book, it didn’t sit on my shelf for months before I picked it up. I felt there was something about this memoir. And I was right. 

This week, I’d like to share some of the passages that touched me:

“Every scene on those walls, every role I’ve played, has taught me so much about what family means. I’ve learned — and am still learning — about the bonds that make up a family. Few of us would reduce those bonds, that gravitational force, to something as simplistic as blood. Families are born, created, discovered, and forged. They unfold in elegantly ordered generational branches. They are woven together with messy heartstrings of desire and despair, friendship and friction, grace and gratitude.”

“I realized early on that teaching was more than a job for me. It goes much deeper than that; being a teacher is not what I do but who I am.”

“There’s always a part of you that wants to step into your children’s lives and make the right decisions for them — pick them up when they stray and put them on the safest, easiest path, just as we did when they were small. But the tragedy of being a good parent is that the better you are at your job, the less you will be allowed to swoop in and protect the people you love most in the world. You have no choice but to trust that they’ll do their best and hope that fate will be kind.”

“Over the years, I’ve heard so many people talk about teachers in a way that doesn’t reflect the reality of teaching that I know at all. They think it’s a job for people without ambitions, that teaching doesn’t take a lot of skill, and that teachers have short hours and summers off. I’ve taught in a lot of different environments, but one thing is always the same: teaching is rewarding, but it’s a tremendous challenge, too.”

“There’s something profoundly optimistic about teaching. We are taking the best of what humans have to give — lifetimes of knowledge, wisdom, craft, and art — and handing it over to the next generation, with the hope that they will continue to build, continue to make our world better. It’s a conversation with our past and future selves at once, a way of saying, Look what we’ve done! Now what will you do with it?”

“So why do we do it? We do it for that spark in a student’s eye when an idea falls into place. We do it for the moment when a student realizes she’s capable of more than she’d thought. For the chance to hold a student’s hand as she begins to explore this wild, incredible world through books and equations and historical accounts. We do it because we love it.”

Forever a Role Model

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

It’s Women’s History Month, which has got me thinking about women I grew up admiring. 

One of my earliest “famous” role models was Sally Ride. Famous, as in I could find a listing for her in our World Book Encyclopedia. (And I say “famous,” because in terms of role models, I looked up to my mom.)

From the time I was in fourth grade until the time I was a senior in high school, I wanted to be an astronaut. No one told me I couldn’t. After all, I was smart. I was good in math and science. And, Sally Ride had done it first. Other women had followed. There was no reason I couldn’t. 

I admired Sally Ride so much, and tried to learn as much as I could about her. I remember saving up my money to purchase To Space and Back, a book Ms. Ride wrote with Susan Okie. 

My goals and career dreams changed. But my admiration for Sally Ride never did. Inside the copy of To Space and Back, I have a ticket stub from 2005. A ticket stub that allowed me entry to hear Sally Ride speak at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, when it was held on the UCLA campus. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve read this book. I used to bring it into my classroom, and share it with my students. My son and I have read it together. But for quite a while now, it has sat on a bookshelf (along with other space-themed books).

And that’s the power of role models – and books. They stay with you, and keep a special place in your heart. 

By the way, in case you missed it, you can click here to read my blog post from November 2020 about my autographed picture of Sally Ride. 

Readers, I’d love to know. Who is a woman you admire? A woman you consider a role model? Let me know in the comments section.