Actual Student Email

"hi. is my assignment late?"

No name, no assignment indicated, no course, no salutation, no anything else but 'hi. is my assignment late.'

The Matron thinks this one speaks for itself.

Ah, Matronly Memories

Tonight, the Matron just so happened to rekindle a correspondence with an old friend; during the course of said rekindled correspondence, the mandatory Holiday Letter was mentioned.

Matronly Memory!

The Matron is sharing the actual, honest to God-Buddha-Oprah-Allah-Universe first-ever holiday letter she penned and subsequently sent to about 200 people. Some of whom still email her and say "Oh, remember that letter?"

Unfortunately, her children are now SO spectacular that even a parody could be misconstrued as undue parental enthusiasm.

Really?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

December 2000

Dear Family & Friends,

It began when I stopped apartment roving and settled in with John and two dogs. Things escalated quickly from there: buying a house, getting married, having children. Now I’ve reached the height of modern domesticity—the traditional holiday form letter. Rules of format, style, and tone threaten to overwhelm: one must present recent career advancements, life milestones, children’s growth and exploits, and well wishes to all. The order of presentation may vary but never the tone, which is of paramount importance. Accomplishments (especially those related to money and children) must remain upbeat, yet moderate—no gloating or bragging allowed. Above all, no complaining or whining! This is holiday cheer, after all. With these guidelines in mind, prepare gentle reader, for my own foray into such festive fare:

First, in the year 2000 it became glaringly apparent that John has no rivals in the real estate business, selling houses right and left with such swiftness, such deft and cunning that his peers were left breathless, clients thrilled, and bank account neatly padded. Modest man that he is, he chalks everything up to luck and Alan Greenspan. I know better, and now, so do you. It’s brilliance. Of course, he had some help. Imagine having a devoted, even doting, Wife capable of preparing gourmet meals in a heartbeat (think crepes and soufflés), ironing shirts to the precise crispness required by a real estate mogul, shining shoes until they glisten, and cheerfully attending to his every whim and demand. Yes, just imagine that. Through it all, John managed to attend to his parenting duties with equal zeal and ardor. Does a man get any better?

John’s household and parenting duties reached a new peak this year, meaning he tucked in the children and did the dishes while yours truly finally plowed through that dissertation to earn a doctorate in English Literature and Feminist Studies. Some misguided souls, prone to dreary realism, may have thought my doctorate a lost cause after nearly a decade in graduate school. It may come as a happy shock to discover that I was incubating! Yes, incubating what certainly may be one of the densest theoretical treatises known to academia; a document that will undoubtedly propel me to the forefront of that fast-paced, dynamic, and slightly dangerous field of English Literature. Watch your covers of Time and Newsweek. Undoubtedly, once literary theory takes it’s rightful place in the universe, I’ll assume mine on those covers. While I wait for the world to right itself, I continue my position as an adjunct faculty member at Metro State University.

Did I mention the children? Here, gentle reader, I find myself at a loss for words, torn between decorum and the brutal reality of their perfection. As the enclosed photo(s) indicate, there are no finer specimens of beauty and exuberance. Stryker is now four, showing potential in too many areas to list. Wait, I’ll try: art, literature, dance, finance,physics, and astronomy. He draws perfect stick figures, scrawls his own name in nearly recognizable form, break-dances through family heirlooms, allocates our cash for only the finest ear-shattering toys, defies gravity, and stays awake late into the night for the sole purpose of plotting new constellations. He may be the next governor of Minnesota, considering his propensity for bold wrestling moves and attention.

At two, Scarlett is all princess, a child so attuned to both fashion and her own sensibilities that she’s shunned pajamas in favor of lace dresses and flowered tights at night! What taste, what style! Like her brother, she too has unusual abilities, including a voice so pure that her rare crying tantrums are a treat—just to hear that mezzo soprano pour through the house, the yard, into the neighbor’s windows! Already pulled in different directions by her multitude of talents, Scarlett is currently torn between a career as a principal ballerina, opera singer, and surgeon—demonstrating various skills in each of these areas throughout our house and on her dolls. John and I only hope we have the wisdom and humility necessary to guide these young protégés into their shining futures.

Throughout the year, we’ve also been busily engaged in a wide variety of ordinary middle-class activities: the children and I have begun attending Sunday meditations at Clouds in the Water Zen Center (even a two year old, especially one as precocious as Scarlett, can say “Buddha”); I continue to practice and teach yoga; John and I both held court at our respective 20 year high school reunions; John has picked up his guitar once again, knowing how the world awaits his music; I’m frantically finishing my next opus, a novel, and already beating back calls from Oprah; Stryker is nearly ready to teach the sign language class he’s taking in preschool; I’ve tossed out my parenting books (given the nature of our children) and am now parenting by astrology and psychic guidance; and finally, I’m available for spell casting and Tarot readings, two other recent interests. My fee is nominal.

Finally, my apologies, dear reader, for this letter’s brevity, for the way limitations of time and form required such brief descriptions of our children, for my strict adherence to moderation, for the plodding tone and humility you’ve found here. Despite this letter’s shortcomings, I find myself strangely buoyed by another domestic duty well done, and by my ability to remain attentive to, and respectful of, the exact tenor of tradition.

Season’s Greetings.

Tidings of Joy ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫

Tonight

In the car on the way home from school, Merrick is full of death -- real for him for the first time. Death orbits his household, his clear joy-lit life marked by a new uncertainty, a far off recognition that there is something about which he must be concerned. Someday.

Merrick: "Mom? Some people believe that when you die you'we bown again in a new life."

Matron: "True. That's what Buddhists believe. That the spirit lives forever and just changes forms. We're all part of each other and everything."

Merrick: "I don't believe in that. I'm me. I wish I could know I get a new life, but I don't."

Matron: "That's okay, honey. Nobody knows exactly what death holds because nobody has been been there."

Merrick: "You know the good thing about getting a second life would be?"

Matron: "What?"

Merrick: "I wouldn't wemembew you, or Stwykew, or Scawlett ow Dad. If I don't wemembew that I lost you, I can't be sad."

Here, the Matron cannot speak.

Merrick: "But let's pwomise. The big kind."

Matron: "Okay. Promise."

Merrick: "If we get anothew life, we will know each other."

Matron: "Promise. I'll give you a signal. Like a special smile."

Merrick: "Pewfect. Because I'll know that."

And they both smiled.

Firefly life. Eternity unfolds in us daily and then, we are gone. No, she is not yet mourning her friend. Brittled by pain -- but still holding life's sheen. Hang on darling. The world is with you tonight. Especially Merrick.

Yes! Yes! Says She Who Means No

Readers. Wait, no. Friends. Sisters-- in Crisis and Anxiety. Ever find yourself in a similar situation?

Fellow Parent at Child's School: "Would you be able to help chaperone the museum trip?"

slight pause * opportunity to galvanize myriad reasons why not

Fellow Parent: "Because we're really short and I'm running out of options."

Matron: "Of course I can help with that!"

Or at work . . . .

Not Supervisor but Superior: "We really could use someone with your expertise and skills on this committee."

Matron: "Well . . . if you put it that way . . . sure."

The encounter can also be indirect. A sign up sheet! Stealth volunteer coercion! Sign up for cookies, potluck, volunteer opportunity, donate to gift pool, bring a neighbor a meal, shovel the elderly's sidewalks in January, pledge for the cancer walk, buy stale cookies from a child.

No one is there to force thy hand. No. Instead, thy hand moves on its own!

Yes, yes, yes! Sign her up!

Nearly nine months ago, the Matron experienced Complete Psychological Collapse. She didn't blog about this because, well, breakdowns (unless you're Heather Armstrong) are sort of un-bloggable. Ordinary. She's of the opinion that every single life on the planet can be summarized and assessed in terms of its collapses and repairs.

Among the many things that renewed the Matron was her willingness to learn a new language.

No.

She also learned a key characteristic of that word.

Just because it is a short word, 'no' does not need accompanying information. No stands on its own. It is self-sufficient! This linguistic lesson was nothing short of miraculous for the Matron.

No. It's not only enough, sometimes it's perfect.

But the staggering data that the Matron has collected? ! She is astounded -- astounded -- by what she is sometimes asked to do. Now that some of these requests are bundled tight in the "No" pile, she has a better view of them.

Let's just examine a couple. Two, because they're so eye-opening, from a distance.

Recently, the volunteer coordinator of an organization for which the Matron volunteers A LOT called the Matron (she gives money too which shouldn't matter in this equation but does to her anyway). Not unusual, but instead of asking the Matron to volunteer for the organization, the coordinator asked yours truly to volunteer for HER personally. Would the Matron meet with the coordinator's husband, whom the Matron had never met -- for a couple of hours -- to help him 'through the hump' of a long overdue college paper. These people are in their fifties.

Coordinator: "and he just needs a couple of hours. A morning maybe to get over the hump of that overdue paper."

Matron: "How overdue?"

Coordinator: "Three years."

Matron: "What kind of hump?"

Coordinator: "He hasn't started."

No! No! No! said the Matron.

2. Actual Student Email

Dear Dr. Matron,

You were my favorite professor at College XX. Now that I've graduated and am in University YY, I'm wondering if you would mind editing a few of my papers? It's been recommended to me that I find someone to edit and thought you would be perfect! The first two are due on Monday so I would need the editing done by Friday since I have to work this weekend. I think you'll enjoy my papers!

Readers, Friends, Sisters: the Matron actually received a longer version of this EXACT EMAIL from a former student TODAY. She is only capable of capitalization here. Because she mostly wanted to scream.

"Enjoy my papers?"

No, no, no!

The gift of the "No" pile is not in rejection, per se. It is the instruction that the "No" offers. Because if she didn't say 'no,' she would be helping the husband over his hump and editing those student papers. She would be organizing a fifteenth technology training for colleagues who had the opportunity to take the first fourteen she offered. Instead of watching her son's school choir concert, she would be ushering other parents to their pleasant seats or monitoring infants somewhere else.

Is this a uniquely female characteristic? In an essay, Joyce Carol Oates says that she can't understand why women drink at the well of masochism. Self-sacrifice and denial. The Matron can't speak for you, dear reader, but the Matron will acknowledge that she is familiar with that well.

The final beautiful quality of "no"?

Sometimes it frees up the "yes" in search of dream and desire. Yes.

Reflection on a Sunday

Defining Demographics of the Matron's Household

Control Freaks Living in the Moment

Matron John

He Who Cannot Be Named

(HWCBN) Merrick (aka Meatloaf Head)

Scarlett (Diva)

Above would be the blueprint of the Matronly life.

Yours truly doesn't wake in the morning and wonder what the day will offer: what bounty, what trial, what unexpected surprise? No.

She wakes to the tune of the Master List. The goals! The tasks! The small pleasures! Everything tucked up tight into a timeline and made Reality just because she wrote it down and said it should be so.

Have a conversation with the Matron? A need, desire, query? Why that's easy because the Matron KNOWS WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO SAY. And if you don't say it as she anticipates, she'll pretend you did anyway so it just doesn't matter.

So the Matron has the world by its tail, tucked in and ordered. Welcome to it.

The only problem is . . . so do Scarlett and HWCBN.

Let's just say that when you have three taut, immovable parallel universes spinning in a single family home there is bound to be collisions.

Here goes the Matron running her ship. Here comes Scarlett steering hers. HWCBN navigates down the middle. Take any topic! It's fun! Really -- it's very, very exciting when any everything in the universe is subject to consternation and contention.

What's for dinner?
Who's running for city council?

Why can't the Green Party ever win.

Time for laundry.

Satan's Familiar needs a hefty cloven hoof clipping

Time to vacuum

Where's the pizza cutter?

"Mom, why is your shirt untucked?"

"I like my fork slightly to the right of my plate and not the left."

"This cup has a little smudge on it."

"Where's my yellow shirt? That's the only one I'm wearing on Mondays."

"Can we move the shade up a quarter inch?"

"There's a thin film of grease on this piece of chicken. Who made it?"

"Is this a new kind of water? From the faucet? It tastes funny."

Matron to John: "This is making me crazy! Why can't they be more like me?"

John: "You said that on purpose, right?"

Matron: "What do you mean? Of course I said it on 'purpose.' Of my own volition."

John: "I mean, you crafted the sentence for ridicule, right?"

Matron: "Hmmm."

John: "Because they are exactly like you."

So three in the household barrel through each day Agenda and Idea writ large, battling for command of the universe. All of the universes, that is.

While the other two?

Living life from their psychological hammocks. Well, well outside of Matronly Control.

(Un) Grateful

Yours truly woke up: off.

Not on the wrong side of the bed. No, she was all cozy in her proper little corner, Satan's Familiar at her feet and Merrick (He Who Climbs Into the Parental Bed at 5 AM Daily) at her side.

Mind you, these three bodies were on 1/8th of the king-size bed. John somehow requires the rest.

She digresses. The message? The poor path was established early on. The Matron was grumpy.

The outfit she had carefully mapped out the night before? Entirely untenable in the daylight. Ugh. After some closet ransacking, just ONE skirt and shirt out of a closet of dozens would do. Clothes didn't fit, purse was wrong, earrings blah-blah. It was like PMS without the actual time in the cycle.

Still.

She felt smug with her eventual wardrobe success. There's nothing liking looking good when you don't feel good. It's a narcotic. Until she was walking into her classroom and noticed the Grand Canyon-size hole in her purple wool tights, a convenient inch above her knee and well below her skirt. No amount of tight scrunching would do.

And one of her braids had come out.

The Matron spent quite some mental energy on Mood Arrangement. She reached into her little Self Help Toolbox for the big guns: gratitude practice, living in the moment, calming breath, guerrilla meditation.

Until she started preparing her Women's Studies lecture with its statistics on female life expectancy and childbirth rates. Let's just sum up the day's lesson: live in one of many African and Asian countries and you have approximately 6.8 children and die at 43.

Ah, but the Matron was not to be deterred by reality! She recalled a theory that the psyche follows the face. Smile, and if the world doesn't smile with you, at least your mood will improve. Alas, smiling while reporting said statistics to Women Studies students is bad pedagogy. Instead of feeling better, everybody (including the Matron) was just confused.

But the Matron was determined to be in a good mood. Goddamn it.

Pushing through to the positive is exhausting but yours truly persevered. Not to be beaten, rise up, think happy -- even as Utter Futility made itself clear, she continued. Red lights, dropped purse, forgotten lunch, lost keys? Be in the moment, Matron : -).

Sitting through a loooooong middle-school choir concert (but Scarlett had an amazing solo!! certainly everyone else loved it too?) and later tedious parent meeting about a mishandled school crisis ? Radiate loving kindness. Good practice opportunity, right?!

But.

Wiped out from all that feigned happiness, she was trudging toward her house when. .. . really: she was attacked by a dog.

This was not Toto on a rampage, folks, but an enormous German Shepherd breaking free from a semi-shut door to maul the intruder (this would be the Matron) on HIS sidewalk. Maul, he did. The Matron oversize dense wool sweater saved her but not her shirt underneath, which was ripped to shreds --oh, and the bleeding bruised meatball bites on her arm.

The Matron? NOT HAPPY.

Sometimes you just get to be pissed off. And she realized that's just where she belongs, in the bleeping moment. Throwing off that serenity mask felt wonderful.

And the canine menace next door? Work in progress . . . rabies vaccine documentation en route (supposedly up to date) and big promises of more secure home fortress. Animal Control has been queried (they're useless). The Matron's arm is bandaged and soaked in antibiotics. She sees the doctor tomorrow. Still. As far as she's concerned, the Devil Lives Next Door.

Next to Merrick. And yes, she's in a Bad Mood.

Stage Mother

Stage Mother has taken quite the hiatus. She believes it is time to indulge in the Diva. For a brief history of Time (meaning Scarlett's entire childhood), settle in and start here.

Scarlett has been busy.

She returned to her favorite theatre, Youth Performance Company -- the best thing going for young actors in Minnesota (maybe the U.S.) -- when they reprised this stellar show, with Scarlett in it.

The show was about bullying. The actors who perform it? All about love.

Love, community service, social justice through art, incredible theatre, = Youth Performance Company. It's like Buddha-God-Oprah-Allah-Universe spread the Magic Carpet and Scarlett strolled right on it.

Over the holiday season, Scarlett returned as the little match girl in The Match Girl's Gift. The show -- and the diva -- earned a nice review. Plus, another amazing group of people.

But forget nice. Scarlett's favorite roles appear to involve illness, trauma (Scarlett played young Clara), and onstage death.

The Matron's brother was coincidentally in St. Paul during The Match Girl's run. Naturally, he and Grandma Mary took in the show. Despite-- or perhaps because of -- Scarlett's dramatic collapse toward death, Grandma fell asleep. Twice.

Matron's Brother afterward: "How can you stand to see her suffer onstage like that?"

Matron: "That's nothing. You should see her at home with a head cold."

This fall, the family discovered that one of their own could shake and shimmy. Loves to dance on national TV.

One guess how the Matron's only daughter spent this very evening? At rehearsal for this upcoming show, followed by seeing a friend's play --as an audience member.

Weekly Conversation in the Matronly Home

Scarlett: "Here's the list of plays I need to see this week."

Matron: "Is there some kind of natural selection we can fall back on? Like budgeting?"

Scarlett: "But my friends are in these!"

John: "Is there a single play in the Twin Cities that doesn't have one of your friends in it?"

Scarlett: "Actually, no."

Ah, the wild thrills and prestige of Stage Mothering. These perks take place behind the wheel of a minivan and are: listening to All Things Considered on NPR, coffee and cookie while driving, slowing down when being tail-gated and fielding frantic calls from children left behind at home.

Merrick: "Is dinnew befowe ow aftew weheawsal tonight?"

Don't hate her for her glamorous life. It's actually very exciting to map out the daily driving. What ramp is closed?!! Who will cut her off!? Where is the traffic lighter! The Matron could probably mobilize and move a small army with her well-honed transportation skills.

But Scarlett? Ah, she's moving the world -- and her own beautiful, independent spirit. The Matron is happy to provide the ride. For the time being.