Category Archives: Parenting

Something in the way she moves

Yesterday Scarlett and I joined some of her friends from school and their moms at the International Hip Hop Dance Fest in San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts. The performers—10 different groups—were incredible. Even the youngest ones made it look easy, circling hips and popping shoulders, windmilling arms and feet rarely flat on the floor. There were several acts that made me want to stand up and applaud. But, you know.

I get chills watching people who can dance. I’m not a very good dancer. I mean, obviously, people with severely weakened limbs are probably not tearing it up on any dance floor, but what I mean is, even before ALS took my mobility, I wasn’t a very good dancer. It didn’t really matter. I LOVED to dance.

The only times I’ve ever performed in front of an audience were my days on the high school drill team. This meant football game half times and weekend competitions, flying splits, kick lines, and Vaseline teeth (keeps you smiling.) It was fun to practice routines with the team and to compete, even if it did mean wearing the same itchy and uncomfortable nylon uniforms that other girls had been sweating in for twenty years. Read More>

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Birthday Surprises

I turned 36 on Tuesday. It’s not a big birthday or anything, so I spent the morning watching The West Wing and eating peanut butter cups, which—believe it or not—isn’t the way I normally act on a Tuesday.

As it was Election Day, I did take some time out of my busy Netflix-streaming schedule to study the gazillion propositions on the local ballot. That afternoon, my mom and I walked (I use this term very loosely) over to a garage in our neighborhood so I could do my civic duty. They had a low booth for people in wheelchairs, and I mostly ignored my struggling hands as I connected arrows on 7 pages. I love to vote. I love the sticker they give you. I’m totally serious about this.

The night before my birthday, Scarlett was beside herself with excitement. “Your present is a Bandwagon shirt!” she screamed. “IT’S PURPLE!” Bandwagon is the name of the company my sister and her husband run, and this was a great gift because I’m always trying to figure out how I can be more involved in their business without actually doing any work. Wearing the uniform is the perfect solution. Read More>

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Getting Schooled

Rob and I have spent the past month attending elementary school open houses and tours, just like every other parent with a preschool age child in San Francisco. I know there are many, many places in this country where you don’t have to go to numerous open houses; submit your top ten PUBLIC school choices, desperately hoping to get one; or subject your children to “visits” (i.e. interviews) at private schools. I grew up in a town where the school you went to was just the closest to home, and that was all there was to the selection criteria.

But we want to live in this city, and so we play the school game. It’s actually going fine, I did my online research, made a list of schools to see, scheduled the appointments, and showed up. Easy. What I didn’t count on was the reaction I would have during our first tour, when the children were actually there, as children generally are when school is in session.

They roamed the halls in little packs, made noise in their music class, studied quietly at low, colorful tables. And then there were the walls covered with their work: drawings of families, poems entitled Where I Come From, and lists of classroom rules they had all devised together. Read More>

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