A New Start

This was the fastest summer ever. (It was, actually, shorter than usual by a week, but it still sped by at record speed.) 

This is my current state about school starting back up: 

That, friends, is a big blanket of denial. But, tomorrow is the second day for teachers and Wednesday is the first day with students, and my room is probably 80% there but I am feeling 2% ready for some reason. This is the time when I usually start panicking that I have completely forgotten how to teach. I know I haven't, and this is my 16th year full-time in my district and my 18th year teaching (HOW DID THAT HAPPEN!?), so I'm pretty sure it will all be okay. 

I do feel fortunate that I get a fresh start every year, that I can tweak things and reflect and try new stuff with a whole new group each September. 

This summer had a LOT going on: 

• Got my hyaluronic acid injection series in my non-cyborg knee and am thrilled that if I can do it again in the spring, I think I can buy time before my next replacement. 
• A summer of extremes led to the WORST gardening season of my life -- too much sun and heat, then too much heavy rain... I had a root rot container garden. So much of what I planted in the ground died, despite amending soil. It sucked. 
• Spent much of July and August apartment-hunting for my Dad, who unexpectedly (but excitingly for me) is moving here. THAT is going to be major culture shock, going from L.A. to Rochester, NY. For about a zillion reasons. But, he'll be here in about a month, and it will be the first time we've lived in the same state (much less general area) in 34 years, the first time ever as both adults. 
• Had a highly embarrassing and unexpected expense when I somehow backed my car into A PARKED CAR IN MY OWN DRIVEWAY at the start of summer, and so I will be VERY glad to have a paycheck again in a week and a half. (Then I came within about an inch of doing it again when my best friend came to visit. I apparently can't see giant silver vehicles.) I'm still sad I have a dent on the back of my car now.
• Even though it feels like I didn't do NEARLY enough, I still did a fair amount of work for school over the summer. 
• BUT, I also made plenty of time for reading and puzzles, and we finally put together the folding-leaf puzzle table Bryce got me for my birthday (It's actually really meant for a small kitchen/dining area, but it's a puzzle table to me!)
• I read 22 books this summer. My lowest number I've recorded, but this summer I decided I wouldn't shy away from big books, and read several big and/or dense books along with fun brain candy. If only I was good at goodreads and could figure out summer pagecounts!
• I saw my best friend TWICE! (Three times if you count a May visit, which is a record for us!)
• I walked, a LOT. It was so good to be able to do that again. Lots of 3-7 mile walks on rail trails and the Erie Canal trail. 

That's by no means all of it, but it was packed. I think I'm okay with having some structure and routine. (Check in with me at the end of September to see how I feel about that, ha ha.) I may be overwhelmed with paperwork, and feel like I can never catch up, but I am so very lucky to love my job. And, despite that blanket of denial, I am lucky to actually be looking forward to being back in my classroom with a new group of squirrelly 8th graders to love on and learn with. 

A Minor Vacation Miracle

The Bayside Inn -- highly recommend! Lovely hosts and location!

We went to Maine for vacation and family things, and stayed 5 nights in Boothbay Harbor at a charming inn. We'd stayed there in 2021, and due to COVID surging, there was no breakfast served. So, we went to a small cafe with outdoor seating across the street. This year, though, there was breakfast, and as you may know, when you stay in a small inn or a bed-and-breakfast, this can be an interesting time for social interactions with strangers. 

Case in point: We stayed at an inn for our anniversary pre-COVID in our general area, and breakfast was a landmine -- one morning a guest asked if we had kids, and when we said no, it didn't work out, she continued with "but it's not too late! You're still young! (I was 43) and finally I had to say forcefully, "I DON'T HAVE A UTERUS! IT'S REALLY OKAY!" Sigh. 

Back to Maine: We cycled through 5 different couples during our stay, and at NO TIME did ANYONE ask us if we had kids. Or why we didn't have kids. Bryce did offer up with one couple that we live "just us and the cats," but that particular couple was very interested in talking super loudly about themselves, so it didn't result in any conversation down that line. 

HALLELUJAH! 

Is it because now we're older? Or is it because people like talking about their own kids and don't think to ask if you don't volunteer information about your (nonexistent) kids? Were we just lucky? 

IT DOESN'T MATTER. It was glorious. Maybe, just maybe, this could be the new normal! 

And now, some gratuitous Maine pictures: 

Last day, soaking up Ocean Point

Lobster Cove

Bryce tidepooling at Ocean Point (low tide)

The gardens everywhere were gorgeous

Somehow, it wasn't even 70 but I was SO SWEATY

Ocean Point with Tropical Storm Ernesto high tide waves

Muscongus Bay in the fog

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

It's funny how time changes you as a reader. This is a book that, had I brought it on vacation even 5 years ago, I would have DEFINITELY thrown across the room and then put on indefinite pause within the first 25 pages. The description sounded fascinating -- a woman has left her tattered life behind and flown from Missouri to Rhode Island to a fancy hotel she has always wanted to go to but couldn't afford, because she has decided to end her life. But wait! That sounds terrible! The premise is actually that she checks in at the hotel, and finds out through an administrative error she is the only person in the entire hotel who is not a part of a big, fancy, Wedding Week for a very Bridezilla bride (and groom). She gets absorbed into the wedding shenanigans and... well, read the book. 

It sounds dire. But it was actually laugh-out-loud funny as much as it was a completely accurate and wrenching depiction of the loss and grief when your life falls spectacularly apart and you don't know how to "do life" now that your life is upside down. 

I was so angry, though, at the immediate infertility subplot (that actually turned out to be central to the book, no "sub" about it), that I went to the description in Book of the Month, and felt like an idiot because when you scrolled down a bit further than I had, it clearly has a content warning for "infertility, depictions of attempted suicide, descriptions of miscarriage, divorce." I felt less mad after that, and once I really got into the book, I forgave it entirely. 

This book is INCREDIBLE. [What follows are not actually spoilers, if you can believe it...] I absolutely loved Phoebe, the main character who has lost absolutely everything -- she's done 5 IVF cycles, she got pregnant with her last embryo only to miscarry at 10 weeks, she has an academic career as an adjunct professor of 19th century literature that's stalled out, her husband has left her, and she's lost her beloved cat. 

The descriptions of doing IVF and failing at it (or IVF failing you, to be kinder) are SPOT ON. 

A couple notable IVF quotes (chosen for no spoiler-ism): 

"Maybe I just need to accept that my life is a Russian novel. ... I just mean, a story can be beautiful not because of the way it ends. But because of the way it's written." [I love that SO MUCH.]

"For years she had been thinking about was what she should put in her body to make it a super womb, and she was tired of it. Fuck my body, she thought, but did not say it." [Relate, relate, relate... I had major fuckit-itis when we were done, too]

A couple notable funny quotes (chosen for no spoiler-ism): 

"Everyone at the gallery walks around like, Oh, my, look at this white canvas. Look at what this painter has done with all this white space. He has chosen not to paint it! He has defied the conventions of painting by not actually painting! Isn't that bold? Doesn't that make you want to pay thousands of dollars for it? And some people are like, Yes, yes, it does, actually." 

"...and then she goes off about how I might want to think twice about marrying an older man in waste management like she did."  "I thought Gary was a doctor?" "My father owned landfills. Gary is a gastroenterologist. Totally different jobs, but my mother is just like, Like I said, they're both in waste management. Two men, on a mission to help the country deal with their shit." 

Funny AND IVF related: 

"Technically, they're called retrievals. But they should be called Egg-stractions, right? I mean, come on. It's just sitting right there." 

This was a book that when it was over, I was sad not to exist with the people in it anymore. The characters were amazing. AND, the book was very satisfying. It didn't have a trite ending. It didn't make me mad at the end at all. I loved the message of it. I loved that it was serious content matter, but also seriously funny. Laugh-out-loud funny, disturb Bryce while he's reading a very serious math book kind of laughing. (On that note, I had a very embarrassing moment at breakfast in the inn we're at in Maine where we walked in to get coffee with our books, and a lady said, "that's some serious summer vacation reading material," and like a total dingdong I held up The Wedding People and said, "oh yes, this one?" and she looked confused and said, "ummm no, THAT one" pointing at Bryce's book, which is, sigh, this one:)

Clearly, obviously, the more "serious" book

Really, I loved everything about The Wedding People, except for the brief moment when I felt sneak-attacked and then realized I just hadn't read all the information given when I picked it. And then I loved it more for how it handled all the things infertility, loss, and involuntary childlessness.

You Don't Need Kids To Have Silly Fun

I have thought for years that Bryce and I sort of became our own children. We decided it was important to keep traditions like hiding Easter baskets, fun Halloween activities, building a campground in our backyard woodsy area, and things that we would have enjoyed with our kids, had that worked out. Why not have fun with ourselves?  Sometimes, this looks like...pranks. 

This is a red mylar balloon. 

It was given to me in MAY attached to a tote bag of goodies for Teacher Appreciation Day, from a student and her family. Does it look sad and a bit worse for wear? That's because it is a nearly THREE MONTH OLD BALLOON. 

Did you see that there is no string? Bryce did that. But cut slowly, over time, like a demented serial killer. 

He started by weighting the string with a paperclip, so that the balloon would not fly straight up to the ceiling, but instead float about like a creepy disembodied head ominously declaring TODAY IS YOUR DAY. It scared the cats. It startled me, all the time. 

It started sinking. I was like, "oh good, we can slit the mylar and put the thing to rest." 

Oh no, living with a scientist is truly an experience. 

He removed the paperclip. Then he started cutting sections off the ribbon, so that it would maintain what I think he explained as "neutral buoyancy." It continued stalking about the house. You never knew where it would end up -- floating down from upstairs, turning corners into the bedroom while you're innocently folding laundry -- and eventually, drifting into my guest/craft/puzzle room where I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, looked up to see BalloonHead sneaking into the room, shrieked, and then IT GOT CAUGHT IN THE CEILING FAN, which made a sound like machine gun fire (to someone who's never actually heard real-life machine gun fire). I screamed Bryce's full name, and then remembered he was in an important meeting in his office. Whoops. 

Why would I blame the wandering balloon on Bryce? BECAUSE HE KEPT HIDING IT WHERE IT WOULD SCARE ME. He put it in the damn REFRIGERATOR the other day. If I fall asleep on the couch, a delightful summertime luxury, he would try to set it up so it was floating over my head. So, even though he hadn't sent it up to scare me while puzzling, it makes total sense to blame him. 

Now the balloon has no string/ribbon. It skulks about, grazing the floor (and continuing to scare the cats). It somehow still makes its way on the stairs to other locations. It greeted me at the door from the garage today. And, apparently, I can't throw it out until it is truly beyond resuscitation. 

This is like a) a game you would play to torment your children, b) a weird dad joke kind of situation (it's totally something my dad would have done when I was growing up), c) a strange science experiment, and d) as much as it startles me, hilarious fun. 

I will actually be sad when the scary red balloon finally meets its end. 

Missed the Mark

Obviously, JD Vance is an idiot for his "Democrats are childless cat ladies" comments (among other reasons). This is the same guy who thinks that childless people shouldn't get the right to vote but parents should be able to vote: extra for each child they have. It is patently RIDICULOUS to say that people without children have no stake (or "direct stake" to quote more accurately) in the future. I want a better future for all, not just for the child I (didn't) bring into the world. Lots of people feel the same. 

However, I was very disappointed in the Washington Post's response to those comments as directed at Kamala Harris (gift link). 

It was a great opportunity for people to assert that yes, not having children (biological or not) is NOT A DISQUALIFYING CHARACTERISTIC. That your qualifications and stake in the future have nothing to do with the (in)activities of your womb. 

But, instead, it seemed the chorus became BUT SHE'S A STEPMOM! SHE'S MOMALA! which sure  made me feel like the message was "OH GOD NO, she's NOT one of those SAD childless women, she HAS KIDS she's helped to raise! She's really ONE OF US!"

This is not to besmirch the importance of step-parents at all, they are absolutely important. I have at least one. My sister is one. It's a hard and rewarding role. 

It just felt like a missed opportunity to fight the pronatalist status quo and point out that not having children doesn't make you an oblivious, selfish, uninvested stain on humanity. 

Sigh.

Pronatalism and Schools

Oh, school district meetings that make you feel distinctly othered...

We had a leadership meeting today, and it was about different strategic initiatives: changing start times, building usage (our 9th grade building is closing and merging with the grades 10-11 high school in two years), fiscal responsibility, future planning. 

Part of future planning is the looming specter of continued declining enrollment. It's been a conversation for a while, but the most recent comparison was that enrollment in the 2014-2015 school year was about 6,042 students, and projections for this coming year are 5,081 with it dropping further in projected years out to 28-29 to about 4,835. Sorry for the dry number talk, but what it basically means is, we are going to have continued cutting of things since we won't have as many students to staff for. 

This led to the weirdest brainstorming conversation ever. Basically, the community where I teach is an aging community -- the largest demographic age is 55 and up, and new housing that's being built trends more towards condos and retirement/downsizing opportunities. So, the vast majority of people voting (or not voting) on school budget stuff don't have kids in the schools anymore. And, apparently, when you don't have kids in the school anymore, there's no reason to care about funding.

Literally everything about today was done with the assumption that "we are all parents" and "we all know the struggles of parenthood." And then people started calling out things like "get the old people out!" and "we need more young people who are going to have families!" There was also talk about how all these 3-4 bedroom homes that used to have 2-4 kids in them are now either a) older people without kids in school who aren't moving out because their adult children want the family home to stay as is, or b) young people without kids who have the audacity to buy homes with multiple bedrooms and not procreate immediately (or at all). 

Okay, quick check on messaging: a) old people bad, b) families good, c) if you don't have kids, you shouldn't take up valuable real estate that could house potential customers I mean students, d) how do we attract the breeders? MORE CHILDREN! WE NEED MORE CHILDREN! 

We were supposed to make a newsprint visual of headlines to talk about how these initiatives could be received if they all go swimmingly. I half ironically said we should make one "Blessed be the fruit." I think I found that more appropriate than anyone else at my table. Oddly, it did not make it to the final product.

The whole morning felt like a total example of "as a mother" or "as a father," but really only thinking from your personal point of view. Like when it came to matters of transportation, participation in sports/clubs, and equity, people were like, "well, I drive my kid to practice..." and I was like, "Yep -- YOU drive YOUR KID to practice -- but there are so many families that don't have that option easily." Everyone's first frame of reference is a mirror of their own experience. 

I have paid school taxes for most of my adult life, and I have never had a child in the system. I pay because it's mandatory, but it's also because it's good for humanity, for the future generations, and for home values. A community that values its schools and libraries is important to me. It doesn't matter whether I have kids or not, it benefits EVERYONE to have a solid education system. I don't teach where I live, so I truly have no skin in the game. And the community where I teach is one where it used to be 75% of staff also lived there, and it was said today with some chagrin that now it's only about 52%. But these meetings always read like it's assumed that we all live in the community as well. 

It's super uncomfortable. 

But, when it comes to declining enrollment, it seemed certain realities are being ignored: 

- more people are choosing not to have kids (many young millennials are making this choice for reasons below)

- more people, if they choose to have kids, are having fewer

- more people are facing infertility and so having fewer or no kids due to factors outside their control

- it is expensive to have kids, and it is expensive to buy a house. To do both is prohibitive for A LOT of people

- our community used to be (and sort of still is) a very insular, Catholic community -- large families were a hallmark of the community. But large families are not the norm anymore, and I don't see that changing due to expenses and concerns about climate, among other reasons. 

It makes sense that schools are family-centric. We need children and families, because no students = no schools. But we also need to acknowledge that not everyone who works in schools is a parent, and the community members who are not currently rearing the next generation have value. And a voice. It feels like erasure when it's assumed everyone has the same experience. 

Another Podcast About IVF

I've been listening to This Podcast Will Kill You for a little while, and I really enjoy it. I mean, I have to be careful because I pretty much convinced myself that I had MS, lupus, and Parkinson's through listening, but I have also learned about menopause, migraine, asthma, arsenic, skin cancer, lightning, thalidomide, endometriosis, alcohol, and Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells (sounds like a band but it's not). It's a little risky if you hear symptoms and immediately think OMG I'M DEFINITELY DYING. I have been focusing more on the episodes that either a) are things I already know I have or b) aren't things I think I could develop.

I love it because it's two women, both epidemiologists and disease ecologists, and they discuss the topic from multiple perspectives -- history, biological, technological, and first-hand accounts. So much centers on how women and people of color have been done dirty by the medical establishment, particularly the research arm, and how misconceptions have either been debunked or persist in various aspects of women's health. Also, each episode gets a specialty cocktail, the Quarantini, and they also have an alcohol-free Placebo-rita. Which is fun. 

The most recent two episodes and the episode coming this week, though, focus on...IVF. I debated listening to it. Listening to the NYT podcast The Retrievals was both informative/validating but also brought up a lot of feelings. Sad feelings. A bubbling up of my grief magma. I'm glad I did it, but it was at a cost. This, though, promised to be well-researched and peppered with first-hand accounts. 

It's really good. 

And what I love best is that the first-hand accounts are a mix of people who ended up with babies, and...not. And a lot about the complex emotional toll of IVF, and the wide, WIDE range of experiences. It was FASCINATING to hear what goes in to success rate data (was it fresh? frozen? success per retrieval? success per person?) and how the actual numbers are closer to 25%, which is a lot lower than what's typically touted. I'd nab it exactly but the transcript for the second episode isn't up yet. You can hear the hosts realizing the complexity and the impact of IVF throughout the episodes. 

One first-hand account was self-described as an "IVF Long-Hauler." I've never heard that term, but I guess that's what I would have been considered. She listed off all the cycles that they did, and how having insurance made a difference because they have funds to try gestational carrier as they've exhausted the ability to do transfers (in all the ways you can exhaust -- physically, emotionally...). She said they'd reached their "Heartbreak Threshold" for that part of their journey. I do love that term, "Heartbreak Threshold." I remember someone quoting from the play "The Miracle Worker" to me -- "How many times are you going to let them break your heart? Oh, countless." I think it was less inspirational than cautionary, but it stuck with me. (Even though persistence in that case wins out eventually, and it decidedly did not for me.)

I love that there is such a variety of voices, and that those that didn't end with a baby make sure to state that WE EXIST. 

I plan to listen to the third episode, which will focus on the industry and current technologies. I really hope they talk about the influence of it becoming an industry and the ways people are vulnerable to claims and "extras." The hosts are doing a great job so far, so I can't imagine they won't touch on the seedy underbelly. 

So, take a listen, or just feel good knowing that there's another place where the stories of people who didn't find success in IVF are a part of the mix, just as much as those who left with a baby. I'd be interested to know what you think about it.

Note: There is one IVF evangelical person who talks about their "miracle baby" ad nauseum that sort of made me want to stab things, but most of the firsthand accounts aren't like that.