The String Cheese Incident

One day Matt went to pick the children up from school. I explicitly told him to bring cheese. He scoffed. "Don't need it," he told me. "I'm just going to drive, park near school and get them right in the car. They can have a snack at home." You have to let some people make their own mistakes, or they'll never learn. Before I recount for you the story that has become known as The String Cheese Incident (hereinafter The Incident), let me provide a little background information.

1) We live a few blocks from school.

2) It's very difficult to park near school in our high density urban neighborhood during drop off or pick up hours. Which is not usually a problem because #1. On the days I am forced to drive it rarely soothes the children to hear that we are just hopping in the car, as they know the car is likely to be parked further away from school than our house.

3) Matt thinks I enjoy hanging around a school playground for half an hour every afternoon even though I've explained many times that it is absolutely impossible to rush these kids anywhere (ANYWHERE) at 3:00 pm. Impossible. Nothing you do or say makes a bit of difference. Except for the cheese. Try to rush them and they will throw themselves on the ground screaming that you are the worst person on earth. Alex begins to punctuate his sentences with obscenities ("I said I want some food, bitch!") Charlotte's voice escalates until it reaches Sonic Scream. That's with cheese.

One time I arrived without food and when Charlotte demanded to know "what food do you have for me?" I tried throwing my arms wide, smiling and telling her in my sweetest voice "I don't have any food, but I have love!" Her response was the stuff of nightmares. She fixed me with a pointed stare. "I don't want love. I want food." This she declared in an eerie, controlled sort of voice. She then repeated at increasing volume the word "food" some 18,791 times. I literally had to sling her under my arm lengthwise and carry her, kicking and screaming "FOOD" out of the school, while hoping desperately that the other two would follow.



Jude's need for cheese manifests in a quiet, glowering, Overlook Hotel sort of way. Smart enough to know he cannot compete with this cacophony, most likely. But I digress.



I don't remember where I was when I got the text, probably the dentist's office, or other locale equally more enjoyable than the elementary school pick-up yard. The bittersweet feeling is one I won't soon forget. Though I am often right, this fact is rarely acknowledged. Sadly, my satisfaction was diminished by the fairly substantial expense. The way I understand it, Matt attempted to rush the children out of the schoolyard and into his waiting car. (How he managed to find a parking spot, I'll never know but kudos to him on that count at least.) I assume that after the horror show began he managed to wrestle them into his automobile without sustaining injury or triggering a CPS call, but the details are unclear as he cannot yet talk about that part of The Incident. During the short drive to our house the screaming and cursing was almost certainly deafening. 

It was right in front of our house that my husband's lack of perspicacity took a disastrous turn. His mistaken belief that proximity to the house would end the reign of terror led him to shift his attention from the children just long enough to exit the car and walk around to the passenger side. In that moment Jude and Charlotte escaped from the car and began to taunt their sibling from the sidewalk. Alex is a lovely, albeit mercurial child. Without the cheese, he becomes tragically destructive. It isn't his fault. When hangry, he has little control or awareness of his actions, and nobody regrets the consequences more tearfully than he.


I basked in the first sentence of the text for a few moments before the second fully hit me. "the next time i minimize the difficulty of your job, remind me of this day. alex kicked my car window out."  In a fit of cheese deficient insanity, Alex had repeatedly kicked the window which separated him from his tormenting siblings with both feet until it shattered in their faces. Though the scratches were superficial, the memory runs deep; the Incident held valuable lessons for even the smallest of us. As Matt removed his belongings from the car, a sympathetic neighbor lamented the rise in smash and grab auto thefts in the neighborhood and offered his help. "Oh, I wasn't robbed," Matt explained. "My 6 year old kicked out my window having a tantrum." With a distasteful look, the neighbor told him "you need to clean that up," before retreating into the safety of his children-of-the-corn-free home.

listen to the quiet voice

Once, when Jackson was maybe 3, the director of his preschool proclaimed him a genius within his earshot. In the car on the way home he asked me what genius meant, so I explained the concept of exceptional intelligence, creativity and vision. "I don't want to be a genius" he sighed, "I just want to be happy." The irony stuns me.

Children come into this world knowing everything; it's our job to keep them from forgetting. I am thoroughly convinced all the answers lie within and only they know which path will lead them to happiness, but I have a tough time reconciling this with my parental responsibility. When and how should I nudge my children to work harder at something? How much 'trying' is required before deciding it isn't right for them? How do I help them avoid succumbing to fear or laziness without crossing the line? Is there a way to support and guide my children without undermining their natural wisdom?

The path to parental success seems to wind right through the unholy trinity of praise, criticism and expectation. For my oldest son, the slightest perception of external pressure to achieve immediately provokes a gruesome combination of rebellion and paralysis. The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree. The more my accomplished father celebrated my alleged wealth of natural talent and ability, the more I dreaded inevitably proving him wrong by failing to meet his lofty expectations. Where praise provoked panic, criticism inspired rage. Critical self-talk drove my father to work harder, but directed at me the harsh words merely confirmed my deepest fears: I was the queen of the underachievers. Never has a literary line resonated more intensely than McInerney's claim to membership in "the brotherhood of unfulfilled early promise." That was me. And yet it wasn't. 

Perspective is everything. Many 50 minute hours later I understand that my father wanted only my happiness, but couldn't see any path for me other than his own. This hard won knowledge is the foundation of my parenting philosophy: I do not presume to know better than they who my children are. 

As preschoolers the kids wanted to try everything indiscriminately. I exposed them to as many activities as I could cheerfully transport them to and afford. My twins have tried everything from mural painting to skateboarding while my older kids played lacrosse and studied ballet. It wouldn't occur to me to choose their activities. When they have clearly lost interest, it's a no brainer to stop signing up. The difficulty arises when one of them clearly loves an activity and possesses some talent but doesn't want to continue.

Which brings me back to Jackson, now 11. The kid has a voice that could melt butter. He dances and sings his way through life, lives his life like a Broadway musical. When he told me he wanted to quit the chorus, I paused before pointing out that he loves to sing and has a gift. It's my job as his parent to make sure he doesn't ignore the gifts he has been given, the talents he is surely meant to share with the world. When he countered that he did not want a job as a singer later in life I told him that for all I cared he could sing only in the shower, but he was going to sing, damn it. And in hindsight it was exactly the right decision. He is most happy when singing, and this chorus is the perfect place for him. There is not much pressure to perform, he's appreciated for exactly who he is, and he sings with a group of kids diverse in age, skill, ethnicity and socio-economic background. He is at home and he is thriving. He may have quit and sat around playing video games on his computer all afternoon if I'd let him, which would be ok except that he acknowledges every Monday and Wednesday as he leaves chorus that he's much happier after the hour and a half of singing than he was before.

Other cases are more difficult, because his resistance is not about laziness. At the moment, the tough call involves the guitar. After a miserable attempt to learn the violin through free school lessons, he begged me to let him quit. He hated the violin! The violin was the problem! If only he could play the guitar. So I agreed. He didn't know how to play, so he was going to have to learn. And as Maria advises, the beginning is a very good place to start. We got him a guitar and we found him a teacher. Here's the thing: it's not that he dislikes hard work, he's just particularly anxious when he has to do things that don't come easily to him. He's convinced he's a failure, and that everyone will know. This is something I understand all too well.

One thing the kid does not lack is tenacity. If he'd apply his considerable force of will to learning guitar, he'd be Hendrix by now. But he won't listen to reason and he's sworn he will not play. He swears all kinds of things when the time to practice guitar rolls around. If he is to be believed, upon his 18th birthday he will smash his guitar to pieces and then devote his life to outlawing the playing of guitar upon penalty of death; a modern day musical Burgermeister Meisterburger.
 
I promised myself I would never force my kids to do things they didn't love, much less ones they claimed to hate with a burning passion capable of producing exorcismic rants. Except, when he figures it out, when it all comes together and he's belting out some ballad to the melodic accompaniment of self-created chords, he seems blissful, powerful, triumphant. Playing guitar and singing makes him most, well, him. Should I let him quit?

Sometimes I just don't know what to do. 

Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. 

Sometimes the decisions are not mine to make. 

With trepidation, I share my deepest, darkest secret. I confess! My best answer is that I don't have the best answer. Like my father, I want only happiness for my children. Thanks to him I understand that I don't hold the map to their destinations, only the means of teaching them to chart their own paths. My job as a parent is not to decide, not to instruct, just to show them how I do it, then let them take the wheel. Alex tried to explain this to me ages ago with his toddler mantra "I do myself!" but some of us are slow to learn. Allowing them to decide seems risky but right, and with great risk comes great rewards. My heart is full watching my children succeed by waiting patiently, listening to the quiet voice and holding fast to the wisdom they find within themselves.

No one gets remembered for the things they didn't do

I teach sociology online, and I tell my students that my courses are collaborative; the students teach me as much as I teach them. We just have different areas of expertise. I am not a believer in vertical hierarchies when it comes to education, nor in most other areas actually. One of the ways I manifest these ideas as a teacher is by participating in the course as an active learner. When I assign a topic- pages to read, films to watch, concepts to consider- I do the work, too. I take quizzes to make sure they are clear and I facilitate discussion, sometimes contributing my own impressions. Inevitably, my perspective is present in every assignment I create, so I try to take a back seat and allow my students drive through the terrain I've chosen on the paths that most interest them.

Just as we each view the world through our own unique filters, we also display our knowledge most effectively using different methods. In order to account for the wide range of talents in my courses, I give multiple simultaneous assignments on the same topic using different platforms. I have the students read or watch so that they gather information about a topic from an external source. I ask them to discuss this information with other students to gain and revise perspective using an active process. I require them to take a quiz, to reinforce the information they've acquired. When they've done all of this I ask them to take this new knowledge and relate it to their lives in a personal way. I call these assignments journals. The students need not write the journals in any particular format, but they must write them well. That is to say they must apply the material we've been investigating appropriately and in some depth to their own experiences. I find that this assignment creates a powerful understanding and facility with new information. The experience of writing the journal is often transformative. This is why I also write and post my journal each week on the discussion board where my students can read it. It's not common for teachers to share the details of their lives with students, but I've found that posting my journals is an important part of creating a truly collaborative environment.

I am sad to admit that this semester I've fallen behind in my journal writing. My posts are technically voluntary, as I am not taking my class for a grade, but I feel hypocritical asking my students to commit to a greater effort than I, myself, am willing to give. My actions are the model for the work ethic and commitment to the class that I expect them to have. After giving this much thought, I realized I needed to do what I ask of my students: acknowledge my shortcoming, explain my situation honestly, and then make it right. So I wrote them a journal. Here is what I wrote:


Thank you! And, I'm sorry.

Clearly I have not successfully kept my own posts current. For this I am sorry. I mean, I know you can write your journals without reading mine, but I really enjoy connecting with my students and doing the assignments along with you helps nurture this connection. It also gives me insight into the usefulness of my assignments and hopefully provides a clear example for you in case the assignment is difficult for some reason. In any event, I apologize.

And I want to explain.

Several weeks ago, I began writing a post about some culture shock I'd recently experienced. Unexpectedly, this journal assumed a life of its own and I couldn't quite end it. I realized that I was no longer writing my sociology 101 assignment, but something else entirely. I wasn't sure quite what that something was going to be. (Sound familiar to anyone?) Distracted from my teaching work, I began to indulge my desire to write.

And this is why I thank you.

I don't know if any of you have had this experience, but sometimes I find that the right audience, assignment, or set of events creates the perfect environment for creativity to bloom. After mulling it over for a few days, maybe a week or two, I decided to start a blog. The length of the posts felt familiar and not overwhelmingly burdensome given my other responsibilities, and I am constantly relating some event, issue or comment I overhear at the park to larger social issues, ensuring I often have Something To Say. Teaching sociology likely relates to this phenomenon in a chicken versus egg manner. That is, I originally gravitated toward sociology because of my tendencies to analyze culture, language and interaction, but you are the ones who keep me thinking, learning, analyzing and discussing. So I appreciate that you help me see things in new ways and motivate me to write. You gave me an audience, if only in my mind.

And I will try to make it right.

I'm going to post some of my writing here, pieces that relate to our coursework. I haven't made the blog public yet, so you are part of my very limited test audience. I hope it will be helpful and possibly enjoyable, and that you'll let me know what you think. 

And then, go start your own blog!


It's easy, really, and you've already got a bunch of good material in your journals. If you do, make sure to share it with me. Send me a link to your blog, and I'll send you a link to mine!

take a sad song and make it better

Not long ago I chaperoned a half day hike for my son's second grade class. To pass the time (and distract from the fatigue) I offered to tell him and his best buddy a tale of my childhood. The boys grew quiet, eyes shining with expectation. I heard Jude whisper gleefully to Joselino "she tells the BEST stories!" 
  
To be honest, the week after this field trip was one of the worst I've had in years. It was awful for Jude, as well. I still can't think about it without fighting back tears. I would never advocate denial, but I've found that feelings and events seem to expand in proportion to the attention I give them. Once I acknowledge my part in a problematic situation and make the necessary amends, I need to move on in order to prevent negativity from defining my life and my story. As a parent, I am the filter of my children's memories, at least for now. If it's true that my stories are good ones, the value must lie in the details I choose to tell the tales.  

Years from now Jude and I will not recall the incredible weight of his backpack, the way Sophia cried when he accidentally knocked her over, or that (disgusting!) avocado on his sandwich. Nor will we dwell on our feelings of betrayal in the week that followed. Instead the things I write about, the photographs I take, the details that make it into each re-telling of the tale will shape our memories. This trip will forever be about hiking with Joselino while discussing MLK Jr., warding off zombies, and my teenage allergy attack that occurred while the rest of the family was away (wheezing + panic + steroids, oh my!) When he remembers this day, he will see the beautiful, impossibly tall trees and feel the wind whipping through his hair as he sprints for the finish line of the relay race.

My life overflows with joy, tragedy, and everything in between. I have hard drives full of photographs, but I rarely write the stories. And that's a shame, since words add a completely different texture and mood; they can illustrate, contextualize, transport us Ratatouille-style to a long forgotten experience woven into the very fabric of our beings. Because I know this so well, untold scraps of paper are stuffed into forgotten drawers, inscribed with hastily scrawled phrases- bubba grills, mowlawner, "oh man, this is a real bad crime scene!" I will never know how many of these moments have been forgotten. I do know that I'm no longer willing to miss the opportunity to preserve the best parts of the tales for future generations of hikers, eagerly anticipating that magical glimpse into their parents' history.  
This one's for you, Jude.

if you can't be a good example then you'll just have to be a horrible warning

This week I did not write much. But on Monday I almost made it through the day without breaking down and crying. It was really close. Moments before Matt walked in the door Charlotte dropped her plate of spaghetti, splattering red sauce over the half of our kitchen that is my work space. I had just cleaned the wreckage of Jude's tea, spilled on the library book and homework strewn table when I noticed Alex scratching his head. My lice paranoia immediately shifted into high gear, provoking a crawly sensation across my own scalp. It all became too much. 

Once the tears began there was no way to stop them. Matt walked in, assessed the situation, shook his head in disgust and asked the kids why they had once again broken his wife. Sobbing my way up the stairs, I retreated with my laptop to the room I refer to as "the hotel" in which children are welcome only by invitation. I watched the debate while following the Giants game, monitoring twitter and the shouting and fireworks outside my aerie balcony. Just as I began to feel human, the kids crept in one by one to curl up at my feet, nestle under my arm and listen to Mitt and Barack duke it out.

I tried to start a blog two years ago, but knew I'd never be able to write consistently with three year old twins at home and three classes to teach. Re-reading that first attempt the other day, then again aloud to Matt, I remarked that things seemed different two years later. He thought they were pretty much the same. After the debate ended and the kids went to their own rooms I had a chance to reflect: how have things really changed in the past two years? 

I still struggle terribly between 3 and 7 pm, that magical time of day when everyone's resources are most depleted and the bulk of the care taking is yet to be done. I might cry a little less often, but it happens with regularity. I behave badly toward my children and am forced to apologize with appalling frequency, but take comfort in the fact that I own my mistakes and attempt reparation.  So I suppose Matt's right that the circumstances which often transform my life into a twisted game of whack-a-mole are substantially the same. As usual, it's only my perception that has changed. Discovering that lonely old blog post was strangely comforting. It reminded me that everyone struggles. That I'm doing fine. That time passes and life changes and the best thing I can do is put away my judgment and fears and show up for the experience. 

My post from December 9th, 2010:

It's not just me, is it?

Recently, I've become alarmed by my worsening condition.  Why am I experiencing a revival of my old mantra "you're not like other people, you can't handle life"?  I am not right sized; I am the worst at everything.  And so I have begun to wonder, is it me?  Is it time for a flex account vacation?  And just when the answer to those queries seemed a resounding yes, little voices of commiseration began to find their way to me.

There was my friend who is always patient, kind, reasonable and thoughtful, who told me how she had discovered that her single (extraordinarily well-behaved, at least from my point of view) child had created a yellow marker masterpiece on the ceiling of her new (to her) car.  She described becoming angry, enraged, completely unreasonable, demanding her almost six year old daughter explain why she would act like a two year old.  Amidst all of the blaming and shaming and bad temper she slammed her way through dinner and banged her way toward her child's bedtime.  When her husband inquired as to her well being she announced that she was "fine."  And when he pressed her she broke down and cried.  For two hours.  Well, that sounds like most days in my house.  Times four.  

Another parent at the school who'd arrived from England a few years before asked me how it was going and upon seeing my overwhelmed face assured me that everyone, simply everyone falls apart after moving house.  She described the adrenaline rush that accompanied her throughout the packing, the house search, the school search, the unpacking, the arranging and the creating of "home".  And the subsequent crash once all of the former had been accomplished.  Sounded just about right.

And finally, there was the phone conversation with my erstwhile writing partner  living with her two not particularly mellow boys across the country.  During our fifteen minute conversation I was interrupted a mere 17,359 times by my twin three year olds who were fighting, screaming, throwing things, kicking, refusing to share, crying, calling me names and generally wreaking havoc.  

"Oh my God," breathed my friend.  
"All day, every day," I replied with a quavering voice.  
(It is an annoying side-effect of my fragility that whenever anyone shows me the slightest kindness I am overcome by the desire to burst into tears.)  
"How do you do it?" my friend asked in awe, and I thought: yes, exactly.  How do I do it?

Not gracefully, as people are likely to tell me.  Not with peace, love and understanding as I wish that I could.  But without drugs, at least.  (Though another well-meaning friend did take me aside at the playground the other day and suggest in all earnestness that smoking some pot at the end of the day would do me a world of good.) Without the copious amount of alcohol that sometimes seems necessary.  Without inflicting bodily harm upon my children and without, as much as possible, inflicting emotional harm. When I inevitably fall short I remind the kids of one of my favorite sayings: if you can't be a good example then you'll just have to be a horrible warning. I am their walking talking object lesson.

Upon reflection, the mere fact that I get out of bed every morning and try, try, try to be kind to these unreasonable, self-centered and highly emotional creatures each day is a testament to my sanity and fortitude.  Someday this will be easier.  Until then it is imperative that I remember who I am and how tremendously difficult this life is to negotiate, particularly for someone like me: unreasonable, self-centered and highly emotional.  Most importantly I need reminders that it's not just me.  The stories of my friends and other parents mean more to me than years of therapy.  Apparently everyone is overwhelmed by the things I face in quadruplicate every day.  Contrary to my fears, it turns out I may be doing a better than mediocre job of hanging in there.  At the very least, I am not the very worst.  I'm writing this to maintain my sanity, but I'm posting it to pay forward the gift of shared experience.

looking back, seeing far, landing right where we are

I'm sitting in the kitchen on a perfect gray San Francisco morning. I knit while my daughter draws. We both sing along to the new Fiona Apple record. It suddenly strikes me that I relate to these morose lyrics detailing the paradox of loving someone in whose shadow you feel lost.

 I'm resigned to sail on through, in the wake of tales of you

 I root for you, I love you, you you you you... 

Shit. Am I in a codependent relationship with my children?

I'm not sure what it says about me that I resent my own children for stealing the spotlight, for sucking up all the air in the room and leaving none for me, but I am sure that it's how I sometimes feel.

A few years ago I went to see a friend after the birth of her son. We sat in her living room, cooing over the baby with her mother, who was visiting. At some point I revealed my shameful fear that I might one day envy my child's perfect skin, gravity defying body and limitless future, rife with possibility. My friend's mother immediately insisted she had never (not once!) felt this way, then proceeded to regard me with distaste. Needless to say, this did little to convince me my apprehension was unique. I believe even the most virtuous of parents sometimes experience the secret desire for a freaky Friday. I wish I could say those fears never materialized, but if I'm being honest, not one bouncy booty escapes a wistfully nostalgic glance now and then.

 
I've made my peace I'm dead I'm done
I watched you live to have my fun

I am less susceptible to the bitterness Fiona describes when I develop my own talents in addition to helping my kids develop theirs. Whenever I lament some missed opportunity to pursue interests ranging from music to med school, Matt interrupts my self-pity with the observation: well, you're not dead yet. Suddenly my own path seems longer and more promising. Besides, youth didn't seem to do Fiona much good in Texas.

I am most powerfully immune to resentment when I remember that I'm looking back at fourth grade through the lens of hard won perspective. At the time, I had none and it was no day at the beach. If I somehow managed a do-over, I would be no less confused as the boy down the street hurls dog food at me riding my bike past his driveway on the way home from school, no less oblivious to the fact that 9 year old boys have no idea how to say "I like you" to 9 year old girls.  I'd still run to my room heartsick and wonder why he hated me. Turning thirty, I was grateful to have survived my twenties. In my forties I know who I am, and my skin fits like my favorite Pilcro stet slims. Would I go back and do it again without knowing what I now do? Not a chance, man. Not a chance.

I've found that insight doesn't come without its own collection of scars. While ripping hair from my bikini line, a waxing lady once recommended that I laser off a few stretch marks, birthday gifts from my four children who possess the immaculate skin of youth. My reaction was immediate and intense. As much as I complain about the physical effects of growing older, it turns out I don't really want to erase the record left by time. At least not all of it. Nobody is more surprised than I am by this appreciation of my scars. They tell my story, make me unique, provide the road map that sometimes helps me avoid revisiting painful paths. In their own way, they are beautiful.

Acceptance is unfortunately not my permanent address, but my children's experiences often motivate my satisfaction with the current state of my body, my story. I find reminders while comforting them after a particularly tough day at school, talking them down off the ledge of frustration with challenging homework, or helping to dispel angst over burgeoning feelings for some kid at school. Every once in a while, a well placed lyric does the trick (even if I have to re-write it a little.)

I root for me, I love me, me me me me...

if at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you

I should really have a frequent buyer punch card at the ER. Last night I spent another in a long line of memorable evenings in that bastion of universal healthcare. Fortunately this was Charlotte's first trip, and so the topic of CPS was not broached. I fear the next time Jude needs stitches I'll be sewing on the kitchen table to avoid his relocation to a safer family. Charlotte and I arrived at the cleanest and least busy ER in San Francisco around 5 pm on a Friday and settled in for what I knew would be a long night.

Forget what you may have heard about education; the ER is the great equalizer. An older woman, whose clothing and bags of possessions led me to believe she was homeless, arrived by ambulance as a trauma case.  An SFFD trainee whose finger had been smashed in some sort of work related accident sat to our right. A very well dressed older woman with an infection that would not subside after her escalator fall accompanied by her equally elegant looking husband sat to our left. At one point, a blind man with a cane came in requesting follow-up care after he'd been mugged and stitched up Frankenstein style at SF General the day before. His list of symptoms ranged from vomiting to dizziness to insomnia. I suspected he might be casting a wide net in the hopes of acquiring a place to stay that night, and was grateful that for us the ER was an inconvenient pit stop rather than a comparative mecca of comfort. We were a motley crew of people who would not otherwise mix, bound in a strange kinship by our emergent need for care.

Much maligned, I find that the doctors and nurses in the ER are usually far superior to many I've encountered in civilized offices. Having learned to relate to all walks of life, they seem a kinder, more compassionate group. Many doctors specialize once they begin their careers and lose touch with developments in other fields of medicine, but not those who labor in the grab bag of afflictions. During any given shift one might be called upon to treat a gunshot wound, diagnose a heart murmur or stitch the laceration incurred by a little girl who fell from her bar stool while eating at Pig + Pie. In addition to possessing the skill to treat these varied maladies, ER docs must also deal with frightened people's anxieties, irate people who have waited hours to be seen, and disoriented patients plucked from daily life and thrown spontaneously into the emergency room subculture, all the while prioritizing by severity of injury. How's that for magical medical multi-tasking?

Last night I was presented with the gift of time unencumbered by any expectation or ability to accomplish work. I used it wisely. My daughter and I were together for hours without television, computer or siblings to distract us. We analyzed a bizarre coffee table book of photographs left behind by some previous patient we chose to believe had been cured and released. The aspiring tome created a collective snapshot of life in post-9/11 America for the stated purpose of edifying future generations, a pictorial time capsule of sorts. It's not often that a parent has the opportunity, complete with photographic illustration, to explain wide-ranging topics from botox to the devastation left by tornadoes in one sitting. After perusing the book, we brushed up on our Spanish by eavesdropping on the family behind curtain number three. We laughed, we cried, we braided each others' hair. We hypothesized possible causes for the strange screaming emitted from behind the trauma patient's curtain and applauded the doctor who graciously accepted the gift of the shirt literally taken off a patient's husband's back. The lemonade we created from the lemons handed to us on the floor of that hipster food joint in the Mission was oh so sweet.

In addition to mother-daughter bonding time, the ER bestowed another gem: the chance to reconsider Mitt Romney's revelation that universal health care already exists in the form of the Emergency Room. Initially I was incensed by his idea that those without insurance or resources should be relegated to the infamous and largely avoided ER. Though there is good to be found in emergency rooms, I can't quite imagine them being my primary source of healthcare. Seeking treatment in the ER is terribly time consuming, exorbitantly expensive and exposes one to the dangers of unidentified diseases and potential gunshot wound revenge seekers. I explained to Charlotte that we might be spending our entire evening in the ER to get two stitches requiring, in the end, a mere 20 minutes of our time because emergencies are unplanned, thus treatment cannot be effectively scheduled.  Additionally, while the ER is venue of last resort for insured patients and the wealthy, it is often the only option for the medically underprivileged masses. By the time an uninsured person makes it to the ER, many complications preventable by regular health maintenance have likely occurred, necessitating more costly and time consuming intervention with less probability of success.

Yet upon closer examination there is a nugget of genius to be mined from this proposal, surely unintended by Mitt. We need health care professionals with the multidimensional medical and relational training earned in the ER, care givers who can treat the whole health of a patient in a time and cost effective manner. I'm no doctor, despite the many hours I've logged watching McDreamy, McSteamy, and their far steamier predecessors Kovac and Pratt. Yet even I can think of three ways this might be accomplished off the top of my head. First, require all doctors to return periodically to an ER rotation as Continuing Medical Education. Second, compensate ER service appropriately given the stress of the job and the almost encyclopedic knowledge necessary to successfully diagnose and treat the wide range of maladies presented in this setting. Third, remedy the issue of long wait times in the ER while simultaneously reducing the amount and severity of actual illness by providing those with non-emergent problems effective care sources other than the ER. In other words, back to you, Obamacare.


This same reasoning applies to other unappreciated and undervalued jobs. The two examples that immediately come to mind are parenting and public school teaching, though I'm sure there are more. The world would run more smoothly and with more compassion if everyone were required to take a rotation in the ER of life, prioritizing and solving the widely varied problems of dependent, irate and often anxious people while simultaneously managing the workflow of an institution. Furthermore, those institutions would be more productive if the parents and teachers who labor in them were given the respect, support and compensation they deserve.

Paid for by The Committee to Elect Somebody's Mother and Somebody's Teacher