Lunch Notes

"Lunch hour is the loneliest hour of the day."

-- Charlie Brown

Lunch note 8-20-14

"At our school, the older you get, the stupider your lunch period."

-- Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me

School sucks.

For my son Leo, the sucking started today.

It's true, school can fill a kid with lots of good things. But we all know it can also force feed him a shitload of total ass-crap.

That's where lunch notes come in.

I pack Leo's lunch every day.

On many of those days, I tuck a small note in along with his sandwiches, chips and applesauce.

The food is how I try to feed him what he needs to keep going physically. But the notes are how I try to feed him a little shot of encouragement, or humor, or understanding, or nonsense, or whatever kind of boost he might be hungry for that day.

In the middle of a long hard day packed with information, and peer pressure, and cliques, and competition, and grades, and questions, and hormones, and overheated classrooms and uncomfortable desks, a lunch note reminds a kid that someone outside the building is thinking about him and loves him.

The lunch note is a tiny thing, but it's a very good thing. On some school days it might be the only good thing that happens to a kid.

You can't eat them, and I don't think they're on Mrs. Obama's healthier school lunch agenda.

But they should be.

If you ask me, little lunch notes should be a required part of every kid's daily diet.

They're soul food.

The Kids Are Alright

"But the places that used to fit me cannot hold the things I've learned."

-- Sara Groves, "Painting Pictures of Egypt"

Sam's Radio Flyer 8-18-14

"Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths,

but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands."

-- Anne Frank

Saturday -- after spending the summer at home -- my oldest child moved his belongings into his very first, very own, apartment. 

He'll have the whole place to himself.

No roommates.

No rules.

He'll call his own shots.

He'll buy his own groceries.

He'll cook his own meals.

He'll make his own mistakes.

He'll be his own man.

He's so damn ready to fly this fucking coop -- this place that surrounds him with reminders of his childhood.

I'm not one of those "while you're living in my house you'll follow my rules" kind of parents. I only put the hammer down when one of my kids, or someone else, might get hurt.

Otherwise, I'm about the most permissive parent on the planet.

Still, after his freshman year taste of freedom and independence, this place, this house, this environment, is no longer "home" for him.

And it's not because he doesn't like it here. It's not because he doesn't like us. We get along swimmingly and have had a great, fun summer together.

He's simply outgrown this place -- like a bloom that has unfurled and can no longer reconfigure its petals back into the tight wrappings of the bud it once was.

What's that quote from Anais Nin? "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

And that's perfectly alright.

It's exactly as it should be.

It's good and right and the whole point of raising a child in the first place.

It's the natural progression of the growth of a young man who is ready to leave the mainland and set sail into the choppy expanse of his own adventure, his own story, his own life.

I'll stay behind and be a white flag on the shore so he can find his way back if and when he needs to.

I'll be a lantern in the lighthouse to illuminate the coastline.

I'll be ballast in his hull to help steady his ship in stormy seas.

I'll be a gentle breeze to fill his sails.

I just hope I'll never, ever be an anchor.

Making Sock Puppets With Cute Kids

"I like the things puppets allow you to do."

-- Julie Taymor

Sophia and her sock puppets Larry and Sally 3-31-14

"Children are more willing to learn when they are having fun,

and puppets are a gateway to opening up the mind and

inviting knowledge in."

--Christie Belfiore, 

"Puppets Talk, Children Listen: 

How Puppets are Effective Teaching Aids for Kids," 

TEACH Magazine

Guido, my sock puppet 3-31-14

I'm bending the rules a teensy bit and borrowing a good thing from my weekend for today. But it was a thing too good to pass up.

I brought sock-puppet supplies to a family gathering in my childhood home over the weekend. I have a cute little niece, Sophia, and two cute nephews, Marco and Matteo, and I thought it might be fun. And it was. We all spent part of the afternoon gluing eyes and ears and everything else onto fabric socks.  My super-big-kid Leo even joined his younger cousins and built a puppet of his own.

It was interesting how each puppet had a distinct personality that reflected the essence of the imagination of its maker. We all had a blast building our puppets. Sophia, however, was the only one who got to have fun playing with her puppets. It turns out that the littlest kid was the smartest puppet maker of us all.

While the rest of us tried to outdo and out-clever one another with how elaborate or outlandish we could make our puppets, while the rest of us glued on more and more accessories and discussed the hilarious puppet show we were going to stage later on, while my nephews competed for who-go-which hat, or lips, or mustache or who had the glue last, Sophia kept things simple and quiet.

As a result, Sophia's puppets were the only ones that dried fast enough to be played with. By the end of the day, while the rest of us were still waiting for the glue to dry, Sophia was having a ball with her imagination and her adorable new sock puppets "Larry" and "Sally." With just eyes and teeth and a single foam flower, Larry and Sally were loaded with personality. Sophia proved that elaborate does not equal artistic, that less is often more.

The puppet show never happened. Sad face.

My puppet wasn't fully dry until the next day (I had to re-glue some parts that fell off.) I made a little purse-snatching, wrench-wielding thug puppet named "Guido." 

I like my puppet, but what I'd have really liked was the chance to play with it, with Sophia.

But hey, I learned an important lesson from this wise, quiet little artist. 

Everyone talks about how much kids can learn from puppets. Maybe we should discuss how much we can learn from the kids who make the puppets. That'd be a good thing.