Can You Teach An Old Dog New Tricks?

In this case, of course, the dog would be me.

Whether or not I am old depends on your perspective, but in dog years I am 259.

And twice a week, for much of the fall, I head to night school. The class is a requirement of my new job.  It’s part of an alternative route to becoming certified to teach in the public schools for those of us who spent our undergrad and graduate years meeting requirements that had nothing to do with the real world.

In my case that was by design; I was studying theatre.

Now I am studying the art of teaching.

It’s been about ten years since I was a student (at NYU’s School of Continuing Education) and even longer since I felt, as I do now, that I am new at something. I am not inexperienced at teaching, but I am to this kind of teaching—the jargon, the acronyms, the trends in philosophy that define this moment in education.

Perhaps it's the nature of the class I am taking but I often ask myself: am I still a good student?

Unlike my experience as a student before, this time around I am a mother. And that means that in a lot of ways I embody the traits of a slacker.

I arrive to class late. I drink out of a mysterious thermos. I reach for my cell phone.

I have my reasons, if not excuses. I'm often late because I'm handing the kids off to a baby sitter. As for the thermos, it was more of a sippy, and that was because my water bottle was lost.  And I needed to use my cell phone to text the sitter to make sure the stove was off.

Yet, somehow, despite all signs to the contrary,  I know I am understanding, absorbing, and learning as well as I ever did.

A study released this past summer, and discussed on the webiste ScienceDaily,  might explain some of that. While it didn’t look at the distractions that come with being a student and mother of two young kids, it did look at the difference between young and old brains when it comes to learning new things. Researchers at the University of Montreal found:

“Funny enough, the young brain is more reactive to negative reinforcement than the older one. When the young participants made a mistake and had to plan and execute a new strategy to get the right answer, various parts of their brains were recruited even before the next task began. However, when the older participants learned that they had made a mistake, these regions were only recruited at the beginning of the next trial, indicating that with age, we decide to make adjustments only when absolutely necessary. It is as though the older brain is more impervious to criticism and more confident than the young brain," stated Dr. Monchi.”

 I don’t think I am as old as the participants recruited for this study, but I feel light-years away from the young college student I once was. Whether it's slacking, or multi-tasking, or juggling, the result is I am an old dog (or thirty-something mother) learning something new. The only way to do that is to have a few tricks of one's own.

 I am not sure how the researchers define mental confidence, but I can say that not understanding something the first time around, or even getting it wrong, does not bother me anymore.  And that's not because I'm a slacker; it's because I am a mother.

A few years ago, the economic downturn prompted an increase in adults going back to school.  About.com had an article with 5 Tips for Going Back to School as an Adult. The one commodity needed to achieve most of these goals is one that can be managed but not created: time.

How Anyone Does It...

One of the most interesting things about reading Lisa Belkin’s Motherlode column a few weeks ago, and Stephen Holden’s review, both in The New York Times and both in one way or the other about the movie, I Don’t Know How She Does it, was their discussion of what’s changed in the ten years since the book was a best seller.

Belkin notes the adaptations the movie has made to be more current, especially with regard to parenting. There are the changes in technology (the instant communication provided by a BlackBerry); the “kinder” portrayal of men (whose roles and desires in the work/family balance have evolved she suggests) and then the new ending –spoiler alert--in which the main character creates a version of having it all that is, arguably, more reflective of 2011.

Stephen Holden’s film review, in contrast, is about how the movie “seems stuck in the past.” The film’s star, Sarah Jessica Parker, in his description, embodies both Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw and the movie’s main character, Kate Reddy, in a case of what he calls “Parkeritis”.

The condition is fatal only to a film, evidently, and means the star brings with her the ethos of an era in which “Ms. Parker was in her early 30’s, and well before Sept. 11, two wars and a major recession dampened American exuberance.”

We are, Holden makes clear, no longer in the glory years.

But, by Belkin’s account, as mothers and wives and women with jobs, perhaps we finally are.

What has happened in the past ten years?

I can’t speak to the book or the movie, but I was interested in hearing the marriage historian Stephanie Coontz interviewed last May. Looking at what she described as longitudinal studies of women, both working and stay-at-home, she says the mommy wars are over.

What really matters is that a woman is doing what she really wants to do, and that her employment is one that is “high quality.” Kids are happier if a mother is happier, and those two standards were seen as protecting a mother from unhappiness or depression.

Over the past five weeks, I’ve moved from stay-at-home mom to full-time working-outside-the-house mom.

My husband takes the kids to school, a seminary student walks our dog, teachers fill our girls’ days with purpose, and a college baby sitter rounds out dinner and bath time on evenings when I take my night class.

I Don’t Know How She, or for that matter anyone does it.

Right now, it takes a team.

In Holden’s review of  I Don’t Know How She Does it, he criticized Parker for bringing too much of her former character and spirit to her current role. It’s probably a fair critique for him to make of an actor.

But I felt bad for the person, mother, and working woman behind the critique.

Throughout our transformations, we, unlike a Hollywood actress, don’t have to completely reinvent ourselves, or pretend that whatever we’ve been doing for the past ten years (staying at home, working outside of it) never happened.

Maybe that, in keeping with Belkin’s more optimistic view of the way things are now, is another good thing about being a parent in 2011.

Engagement

Diamonds are forever but the little prongs that hold them into place are far less eternal. Two of mine gave out about a month ago, breaking off cleanly from the side of my engagement ring and taking with them the half-moon diamond that had hugged the exalted sapphire to their side. I would have searched my car, my house, and every blade of grass between the two had I not known, in my gut, where the diamond most likely was: the isle of Manhattan.  We’d just returned from a weekend in the city, an urban haystack for the most expensive needle I could have lost.

I am not sentimental about objects but as I’ve tried to get this little diamond replaced, I’ve had to face the fact that it had symbolic meaning.

My husband, Tom, pulled that diamond, and the ring of which it was a part, out of his pocket on September 15, 2001. 

Five nights before, on September 10, I had been finishing up work on a story during my stint at CBS NEWS/48 Hours. I was in Florida and needed to get back to New York City but my plane in Tallahassee had mechanical problems. A call to Tom and I got a pep talk.

I flew on to Atlanta.

The next flight, if I could get on it, would get me into New York late that night. I was tired and superstitious, and considered staying in Atlanta and catching a flight early the next morning.

Tom convinced me to get home as soon as I could.

I remember several details about that flight home to New York on September 10, 2011. An unusual bomb-detecting wand at security in Florida, the cockpit door the pilots had left open until we were practically taking off, and the raucous, intoxicated atmosphere on what felt like a party-plane that I rode from Atlanta into Newark in the darkness of night.

And I remember a feeling of relief when I finally saw Tom and his shoebox apartment, and the little fish in his aquarium we’d just given names to.

 The next morning I took a cab across town to my apartment and dropped off my bags. I needed to go downtown to my old voting precinct to vote in the mayoral primary.

I don’t know if it was the obligation I felt to get to work on time, or the lessening of pressure I felt to fulfill my civic duty that came with the distraction of falling in love, as I’d been doing that summer, but I never hopped the train downtown to vote that morning.

At 8:46 am, I was in an office building at West 57^th instead of somewhere south of Canal Street.

The next weekend we’d intended to head to Washington, DC to see my folks.

We stayed in New York instead. And, somehow, on that Saturday, September 15, made our way past suits of armor and tapestries and up to the top of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After days of feeling the erosion of everything that was knowable, Tom took me to a place that was a reminder of what was enduring.

The atmosphere in New York was still heavy with a grieving, mystified uncertainty.  But Tom took out the ring and asked me to marry him, with a sense of calm, that was then, as it is now, unshakable.  

So, my little diamond, the rebel who has broken free from the trio of stones that have sat together for the past decade, it seems you have returned to Manhattan.

You’re a silly thing to miss, especially on a day like today. But, for me, and perhaps other husbands and wives who've felt stronger because of the love, glimmering or internal, that their spouse has given them, you’re a good thing to remember.

Stirred But Not Shaken

The garbage truck that made a special Saturday pick up in advance of Labor Day only made it half way down my street; it was apparently  too full or overtaxed to finish the job. House after house had stacked the curb with black bags and torn up, water drenched carpet, warped furniture and other objects from basements that had seen too much of Hurricane Irene.

We lost power at 2:59am last Sunday morning, a fact announced quite loudly by my six year old who seemed kinesthetically in tune with the weekend’s storm, and marked by a stove clock that stopped ticking when the power failed.

August had come in like a lion and out like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Thunderstorms, an earthquake, and finally a hurricane. The last, of course, being less of a surprise thanks to meteorologists who were following its path.

But waiting for Irene to arrive felt a bit like closing your eyes and asking for a punch. Who knew when or where or how intense it would be when it finally came?

I prepared by going to the store three times, each time somehow forgetting the essential characteristic of nonperishable food, particularly what the prefix “non” suggests. I am accustomed to snow storms when having a gallon of milk on hand is a boon, not one more thing that inevitably gets poured down the drain.

I shouldn’t cry over spilled milk.

We were somehow spared what others were not. Perhaps having our roof leak and then our basement doused with water from a sewer line failure three weeks ago fulfilled part of our quotient of August angst.

We know some who still don’t have power; we’ve read about a local man who died by being swept into a sewer from rushing water and a rescue worker killed after an attempted recovery of a stranded vehicle. We see others, perhaps half of our neighbors, who after getting a foot or two of water in their basements are throwing out water-logged memories. Daily commutes have been detoured; trains to New York suspended.  And, then there was the tree we saw stretching its way across Main Street, holding on by its deep roots lest it finish its fall into the house it had looked out on for probably the last hundred years.

We spent our 36 hours without power listening to a battery operated radio, reading books by windows, paying bills by candle light, and trying, in vain, to explain why the nightlight in my three year old’s bedroom would not be working.  I fell asleep wishing I’d had a shower, but happy to hear the sound of voices outside the window, neighbors chatting on porches instead of isolated in front of their TV’s.

When the power came back, I retrieved a voice message from our water company warning that power to the treatment plant was still down so we were to limit our use to only essential needs. Seeing someone’s sprinkler system shooting water onto an already drenched lawn a few hours later, I had to think our pre-programmed gadgets had not gotten the message.

But we humans had. By natural disaster standards, we had gotten off easy. But experiencing the fringe effects of an earthquake and hurricane within the same week has been a reminder that we live on a planet not only a street.

There is sedimentary evidence of hurricane action in New Jersey from the year 1278, and, it turns out my region has not only had small earthquakes before, we had one earlier this summer, according to a story in my local paper.

 No one seemed to notice.

 I think the past few weeks have stirred us to a new understanding.

Pop Culture Osmosis or How My 6 Year Old Heard About Justin Bieber

Distinguished readers, colleagues, mom and dad. Thank you for joining me today as I present my research on the theory of pop culture osmosis, also referred to as, How My 6 Year Old Heard About Justin Bieber. In the interest of clarity I'd like to note that although it’s reported that many two to four year olds say Justin Beaver, it is the same Bieber about whom we speak, and who shall henceforth be referred to as JB.


First, I’d like to establish the fact that at no time did my husband or I speak about JB in our house, play his music, or put his autobiography, First Step 2 Forever on request for interlibrary loan.

A simple hacking into my iTunes library will prove that my pop culture literacy blossomed with Natalie Merchant’s debut solo album and pretty much stayed there. While my husband’s musical tastes are more expansive, he has informed me that he’d rather listen to Selena Gomez.

It is possible that our six year old turned on the television without our knowledge and accessed a channel featuring JB but we highly doubt it; certainly her three year old sister would have tattled.

We therefore conclude that it is due to external contact, i.e. association with peers who do know about JB, that our daughter was exposed and now indoctrinated in the adoration of JB. Symptoms of this exposure reached a feverish peak last Thursday, August 18 while eating a plain bagel with cream cheese, when she said, “Mom do you know who Justin Bieber is? He sings Dynamite. And I want an iPod.” (*We've been informed that JB doesn't actually sing this song, but as long as she and her friends think he does that fact is irrelevant.)

What is noteworthy, however, is the hierarchy of the transmission which starts, we believe, in households with tweens or teens.

To be influential, these tweens or teens must have younger siblings with whom they love to spend time or detest. In either case, the younger sibling will dote upon the oldest and assume his or her musical taste.

This younger sibling is then sent to play with his or her peer group and brings with him or her knowledge (accurate or not) of the life and culture of the older age-set. This youth may even be an early adaptor of gadgetry, given an iPod, for example, so he will not break an older sibling’s or worse, learn how to use it more adeptly in front of them.

This younger, culturally advanced sibling is a transmitter of fads and knowledge and gains status as the gatekeeper of what’s to come. No doubt this trend explains our own youngest daughter’s playground talk during which she’s been known to trash-talk "Sesame Street" in favor of her sister’s preference, "The Electric Company."

We believe the JB exposure was gradual, but that our six year old finally connected JB to a piece of music and the versatility of an iPod to play such music ad nauseum when she was tossed into a mixed aged pottery class because of the astonishingly poor judgment and discretion of her naive and foolish mother, me.

Not only were there multi-aged siblings in attendance, there was a tween, and perhaps a teen, creating the perfect storm of access, interest, and very bad odds for the instructor.

After four days, knowledge of JB eased into the susceptible membrane of our six year old’s pop culture knowledge base as naturally as water into an area of higher solute concentration.

As with many things, we have been told that exposure breeds inoculation, and that within a year or two our six year old will fight off JB in favor of something more shocking. We can only hope. At present, the obsession is so complete that music not even sung by JB is now being attributed to him despite intervention.

In conclusion, while JB adoration may be a passing fad, we believe pop culture osmosis is here to stay.

On a side note, if anyone does have a copy of First Step 2 Forever, I have a friend who says she’d like to read it.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons, posted by Daniel Ogren.

PS: Readers might remember the story I did on Danielle Gletow, the founder of One Simple Wish, an organization that grants wishes, or requests, to children in foster care. This September 24 at 6pm One Simple Wish is holding an evening to honor foster children and celebrate supporters who've helped them grant over 1,600 wishes. Local folks who might want to attend this night at the Trenton War Memorial can find more information about A Night of 1000 Wishes by clicking here.

Postcards From the Edge

The number of emails a person can handle a day is said to be about fifty, according to a  2010 survey commission by an email provider Intermedia.


Last week, as we headed west from New Jersey on a two day drive to Fontana Village, North Carolina, I handled close to zero.

That was because the only network I had deep in the Smoky Mountains was one formed by the relatives we’d traveled so far to see; Verizon’s web of connectivity was lost somewhere in the North Carolina dust.

To be without Internet and cell reception for four to five days is no heroic accomplishment, but it is different, at least for me. There was one spot in the Village that had Wi-Fi and cell reception and I asked to go there one time especially. “I just need to call the guy who’s building our fence,” I told my husband, “to remind him he can’t reach us.”

The irony did not escape me, nor did the fact that even if the builder could reach us, what good I’d be to him hundreds of miles away should he hit a pipe or knock a tree into our house was questionable.

Still, this was my first lesson in disconnecting: I felt an obligation to explain my absence.

The other thing I learned was that when a phone’s primary purpose is rendered ineffective, it’s ancillary ones seem less urgent. The result: I didn’t tote the phone around to take pictures, and now, looking back, I have memories, but few photographs.

If I didn’t miss email, or too much of Facebook and the Internet, there was one moment when having the ability to use cell phones felt like a security blanket we’d forgotten to pack. I missed it when we dropped our kids off at my parent’s cabin and went five minutes down the mountain to a little recreation center to watch a black and white documentary on the building of the local dam.

How, I wondered, would my mom reach us if she needed to?

Ah, yes, a landline. I seemed to remember those....

How quickly older forms of communication seem ancient. I thought of the box I was given a few months after my grandmother’s death, a Mi Choice Chocolates from Bunte of Chicago.  Inside were about a hundred postcards once belonging to her mother, my great-grandmother Ceil.

I’d hoped to follow a love story, or get a glimpse into the saga of her family’s life reading the postcards. What I learned was that these notes, at least in her circle, were the text messages of our world. And I don't mean the kind that make headlines and bring down political careers.

No, these were more like post-it notes, or quick little voice mails. Just enough to say, days after the fact, that “we’d made it home,” or invite someone to “come on down” for a visit.

According to a website on postcard history, the cards I have from 1909 to 1915 represent some of the advancements in the peak of postcard communication.

Souvenir Postal Cards entered the scene in the late 1890’s, but the novel  “divided back” post card with a special section for an address as well as personal note arrived in 1907. And it’s these that fill most of my great-grandmother’s collection. She was born at the turn of the century, meaning that just as the teens of today turn to their G4, Ceil turned to her fancy cards.

Postmark December 30, 1909


We received yours and tell mama to write and give me her address, for she says you have moved. From Mr. & Mrs. Jackson

Postmark June 30, 1914


Dear Cecilia,


We got home safe and hope you got home safe too. Best Regards to All. From Edwin Miller

Postmark January 15, 1915


Dear Cousin Celie,


Received your letter but I’m sorry to say that we are going to Stella’s Birthday party Sat. with Irma. Sun. afternoon to Fort Thomas to her aunts. If I am home next Sat. will let you know and you can come down Fri. after school and then we will go to town Saturday afternoon. With love from Elsie. Tell your Ma and Pa to come down.

I can image how excited my fifteen year old great-grandmother would have been to get a note from her cousin and that she probably sat down to write her back later that day, sending her communication the fastest way she could, then checking the mail every day to see if there was news.

While she undoubtedly wished her messages could be conveyed even more swiftly, now it seems we have to take ourselves deep into the mountains or swim against a broadband of access to slow it down just a bit.

Then again, maybe I'll buy some 29 cent stamps and start writing postcards.

Video, featuring a few of my great-grandmother's postcards.

This Week...

This week I am on vacation, which means the title of this post should actually be 'Next Week', because that is when I will return with a new Lunch Box Mom post. After 97 consecutive weeks it's both hard and easy to take a week off. Back again with a new post on August 14th.