Culture Shock

Prior to spending a year abroad in a foreign country, I was taken to a hotel in that country's capitol city for two weeks for intensive language training. Along with grammar and vocabulary lessons, we were prepped on how to handle culture shock.

Culture shock, according to the U.S. State Department, has several phases. Not everyone will go through all of the stages, or go through them at the same pace, but it is very likely that someone living abroad will be fascinated by the new culture at first. He or she will be eager to try new tastes and new experiences.

Later, usually after three months or so, a person can get caught in a stage of comparing his home culture with the new culture. The visitor notices that certain situations are "better" or "more comfortable" in one culture or the other. Home sickness usually sets in at this point and some people sink into a temporary depression.

A person immersed in a new culture eventually moves into an "acceptance" phase. In this phase the new culture isn't better or worse than the home culture, but rather "different." The visitor/immigrant finds a way to reconcile the old and the new.

I am assuredly caught in the "comparison" stage of culture shock with regards to Christmas in the U.S. Understandably, not every family/town/state celebrates in the same way, so my experience here is most definitely a "local phenomena" instead of a national occurrence.

I've always been open to change, but this year I'm especially uncomfortable...

1. The holiday menu is pizza and wings. At another home, our meal is served on paper plates.

I can appreciate the spirit of "making it easy on everyone" but I LOVE the special menu items at Christmas! I appreciate the unique dishes that family members bring. I love to see the special plates and glasses that come out once a year, and to hear the stories behind the traditions. What are we teaching our children we we serve them fast food for a holiday?

2. Boys' girlfriends were invited without parental consent. Call me "Old Fashioned" but I think it's proper to ask parents before inviting the girlfriends of minors.

3. I keep hearing "It's all about getting together." Christmas, in my mind, is a religious holiday. The intent is to recognize and celebrate, publicly, Jesus' arrival. It IS NOT about treating each other horribly during the year and then tolerating one another for an afternoon.

My dear husband keeps reminding me..."nothing will feel normal." His advice: "you can't change things."

If the State Department is correct, I'll eventually move on to the acceptance phase.

Origin Unknown

For some strange reason, I monologue as I drive to work in the morning. I tell (myself) about my home town, my family of origin, my elementary school days, my college years, and more, as if I were dictating my autobiography.

This morning I found myself talking (to myself) about the family safe deposit box. Folded inside, I'm told, are my biological father's adoption papers, the secret to his birthplace and family of origin.

My uncle, second husband to my aunt who is now deceased, may be the only person who knows if the mythological box even exists. I was told about it as I grew up and my grandparents promised that one day I would receive the key. They are now gone, and my uncle communicates with me, on average, once every three years (after I write him a kind reminder asking if he'd mind if I fetched the family heirlooms I was promised from his house. "Oh, I'll bring them to you some day," is his routine reply).

I sometimes wonder about my father's parents, who would have been my grandparents. I've been told that they came from Germany in the early 1940s to the state of Tennessee, but there was never any certainty about their ethnic origin.

I certainly feel German, having an affinity for German food and drink beyond any other cuisine.

I imagine that I look German too. I have German skin, that, as I age, develops the typical tags and dark spots I see on older German women.

My oldest son, without any pushing or prodding, has grown into a German Engineer...a German composer-astrophysicist type.

Perhaps it's this child's status as a senior in high school that has me "summarizing" in this way. These are also his (distant) origins.

Chain Store Children

A topic that has been on my mind lately has to do with State and Federal Education Mandates. My children, especially the younger two, go to school in an era that promotes uniformity. Schools favor the "measurable results" provided by standardized exam.

As a teacher, I realize that a student with "out of the box" thinking and behavior can test my already fragile nerves. I tend to teach to the middle and create evaluations that are manageable to grade. Still, I can imagine a world where students create cool projects, following their own interests and strengths, to show mastery of a subject rather than filling in rows of bubbles with a #2 pencil.

Yesterday was parent-teacher conference night. I knew, going in, that I was going to hear that W hadn't been walking the straight classroom line. He has trouble, even at home, walking a straight line from the shower back to his underwear drawer.

He gets distracted. He daydreams. He isn't a big fan of 100 math problems in one helping or writing out spelling words for practice.

But he loves theater, writing, costumes, drama, and music. He is the proverbial "square peg, round hole."

Do we really want a world full of cookie-cutter children who become cookie-cutter adults? As adults, they might be more employable, easier to predict, or better suited to enjoy living in high rises.

My fear is that we squash out the "Robbert Rodriguezes" of the next generation, the creative, sometimes bizarre individuals of the world. I hope that, as an educator, I can thrive somewhere between Common Core Standards and a sincere appreciation for uniqueness and nonconformity.

Early Exclusive Decision

I got a letter in the mail. The opening paragraph read, "Congratulations! You are the parent of a District Five Section 12.A Area-all-State Orchestra Participant." (Try saying that five times fast). I'm also the parent of an All-State Choir Participant of the same district and section, a Wendy's Heisman Athlete Award Nominee, and a DAR Young Citizen Award Nominee.

This is all new territory, this land of Senior Teas and Senior Award Ceremonies.

Our oldest son just submitted his "exclusive early decision" application to his #1 choice college. Being savvy, he applied to two other schools before he hit the submit button on the exclusive early decision. Some colleges have offered to waive his application fee so he has applied and applied..."Why not?!"

He submitted his NCAA application and football recruitment questionnaire at the very last minute. He wants to play football in college...and then he doesn't.

I was annoyed when this almost-eighteen-year old spent the day at our pastor's house when he should have been working on his #1 college choice application essay. It took all of my strength to step back from personally editing his essays when I thought they could be more well organized.

He spent the entire past weekend performing in the pit orchestra for a show. Then he topped it off with a late-night cast party. I thought he should have been resting and doing homework.

We're on the prowl for scholarships. And he just added started piano lessons to his schedule (great, another recital).

I keep telling myself that every parent of a teenager-athlete-musician heading to college is going through something similar...the tension that exists during the child's "getting ready to blast off" stage of life.

I'm hungry for some good advice from a wise parent who has lived through this stage. At the minimum, I could really use some stress relief.

Let Go and Let God

It was more than two weeks ago when I started to meditate on violence and aggression. It was, I believe, the story of a teacher's body found in the woods and the arrest of a teenage student for the crime that brought this topic to the forefront. It could also have been my body's reaction to the news of The Kenya Mall Terrorist Attack.

I had this nagging, creeping sense that the level of violence in the world, in my world, had ramped up. Indeed, the newspapers have reported an 11% increase in the rate of violent crimes across our nation. Analysts agree that what was a downward trend, is now surely an incline.

And then, last week Monday, a good friend's body was found in a cornfield with a gunshot hole in his head (this is the newspaper's tasteful description of the homicide. I've been imagining that a shot taken at close range to the head might leave more than a hole). He was a good, good man - executive director of a charity, head of a foundation, father and husband.

There is an atmosphere of violence at my own workplace: intolerance, cursing, and threats.

As a mom, highly-sensitive, empathic type, it's very, very difficult for me to tune out these highly charged situations. I'm finding that I'm making silly mistakes in my work and I even have trouble with word-finding in conversations ("bilingual brain in a pressure cooker").

One of the insults being thrown around is the word "moron." I hate this word, and the others that fall into the category of disrespect toward individuals with disabilities like "retard" and "idiot." I don't use them, and I hate it when others use them in my presence.

On top of all of this, we were waiting for the birth of a family member, a little girl who, the doctors said, would most definitely be born with Down's Syndrome. Mom went to the hospital twice over the weekend, only to be sent home again to re-arrange care and meals for the other 4 children at home.

Baby arrived Monday night - beautiful, perfect, and healthy.

Isn't that evidence enough for me to "Let Go and Let God?"

How The Saga Ends

I didn't really understand football until I became a Football Mom. Not just the game itself, which many women claim to "not understand" but rather the harsh reality that is the career of a student athlete.

Since I didn't grow up in a household with a football player, I'd never seen boys burned and dehydrated by 5-hour mid-day practices in 95 degree heat under the sun. Who are subjected to the same treatment for two weeks running. Injuries, food and sleep deprivation, playing in the extreme cold of Western NY in November and December...

This story began with a boy in fourth grade who wanted to play football. I remember the sign-ups at a local restaurant in February, birth certificate in hand, and the first information session at the park in June (hotdogs and sodas provided by The American Legion).

He was required to lose almost twenty pounds, because in those days boys within the same age range had to weigh in under a certain limit. He wasn't overweight, but he was taller and more muscular than any boy his age (as a baby he was always in the 97th percentile or above). His dad put him on a dry wheat toast and egg white breakfast, light Hot Pocket lunch, salad or cereal for dinner regimen for two months.

He was sometimes so hungry he cried. I ached when I heard him suffering from growing pains at night. I hated the way his coaches spoke to him, with threats and shouts. I hated the way that spectators talked about the players. I tolerated the laundry.

The boys he played with over the last ten years were good kids. Many came from broken homes and "underprivileged" circumstances. One player now lives with his grandmother who is very, very sick.

They don't drink, that I know of, and many of them maintain grades in the 90s or better. I've watched our own boy, for years, working on homework into the wee hours of the morning. He would sleep for a little while, and then wake up in time to attend "early gym" at 7 a.m. (this week he has been waking up earlier to take care of animals for a neighbor).

Over the years there were memorable games and not so memorable games. This year they added in many more hours of time lifting weights and other "state of the art" training techniques. It seemed to pay off. Their record was good enough, by Friday (the last home game), to be in the running for the playoffs.

Two years ago the team lost a teammate to leukemia (the same year our son was injured at the summer's first lineman camp. He walked to his best friend's funeral on crutches). Nicholas was a good athlete and an amazing, funny, friendly, intelligent person. At Friday night's game the boys taped up with orange duct tape in Nick's memory. It would have been his senior year and his last home game too.

For senior night cheerleaders and football players walk the field with their parents through a line of underclassmen. There are handshakes and flowers. One mother, M.I.A. for months, made an appearance for the event.

Our team seemed a bit "emotional," gloomy even. They played hard, and they were largely evenly matched with the rival team.

We could have lost the game with a five point spread and still made the playoffs. The coaches planned, in that case, to move our younger son up from JV for the playoff games (we've never seen them play together on the same team even though they are only two years apart in age).

It was a close game but we lost 31 to 38. One could blame bad calls by the refs in the other team's favor but that road goes nowhere. Our boys lost the game, and their playoff hopes.

The last three minutes of time on the scoreboard clock seemed, to me, a bit surreal. It wasn't about the score or even about the game. It was my son's last three minutes of football on his home turf. Ever.

HIgh School Rivalry

It's one of the longest running rivalries in the country, a series started in 1920 between the Purple Eagles and the Mustangs.

We live in the home of the Purple Eagles (during home games, when a touchdown is scored, the announcer calls out " and the eagle has landed!" Corny and endearing at the same time).

Last weekend our team eeked out a narrow win over a school located in a a well-to-do suburb of a nearby big city (one of the more "entitled" players made a death threat against my son. Can you believe that?! Let me talk to his mama). Instead of celebrating their win during the bus ride home, the boys begain to plot their strategy against the Mustangs, this weekend's game.

When I was little, I would arrive at the family cottages, break open the car door, and run across the driveways chanting "Purple is #1!" A great uncle, a retiree who didn't even live in either school district, would yell back "Go Mustangs!" It was summer, not fall. I was 9 or 10.

I didn't even understand football then (I'm not sure I understand it now) but I loved the friendly competition and the good-humored jabs. I miss those days.

I understand now that my boys suffer aches and pains at the expense of football. They sacrifice to do their homework late into the night after practicing and lifting into the late afternoon. We go four months without family dinners while we run, and run, and run to and from school.

The skin on one boy's knee is so beat up it oozes. Their arms and shins are covered with bruises. They are very, very tired.

They represent their school, our town, and a tradition held for almost 100 years.

It's the oldest boy's last home game. They will recognize seniors and their parents.

I think it would be great fun if the whole town really did come to watch and support the team. That's what Wikipedia says happens. Wikipedia. Wrong again.