Happy New Year!

Last week was exhausting.

In a good way.

I’ve been a teacher for thirty-three years and for the seventeen years prior to being a teacher, I was a student, so my years don’t start on January 1st, they start in the middle of August, and therefore, last week was the beginning of a new year.

New beginnings make me think about past beginnings, so I was thinking about the past few beginnings and thinking this year’s beginning is the best one in a very long time. It's also not the new beginning that I expected a few short months ago.

If you’ve been following along, you know the last couple of years have been fraught with drama and despair and just in general not being sure about anything at all. The only thing I was sure of was that I wanted something entirely different. Kind of. Maybe not entirely.

I still wanted to be in love, but I wanted to be in love with someone else - someone who accepts that all the complications in my life make me who I am and loves me anyway.

I still wanted to be a teacher, but I wanted to teach somewhere else - somewhere where what I do is appreciated and I have colleagues with whom I can collaborate.

I still wanted to be a parent, but…    

You’re thinking I wanted to be the parent of someone else’s children - right?

Oh, come on. Really? 

No. 

I just wanted my children to be okay and my stress level to decrease just a tad where they are concerned. 

This year has started off with a new job - one that actually has benefits.

This year has started off with my kids being more okay than they’ve been in a long time.

And most importantly, I’m starting this year off in love with someone who knows that the job and kids are part of who I am and he’s okay with that and he loves me anyway.

So this week I started a new year. 

With a new attitude.

And sleep deprivation.

I’ll catch up eventually. 

Or not.

Whatever. 

Sleep is overrated. 

Enjoying life when it’s good is better. 

You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert

The Boys of Summer

I spent a lot of time reading tweets this week and not so much time posting or responding. It was a week full of difficult news. Robin Williams' death hit me like a ton of bricks and I’m still getting weepy every time I see a tribute or video or even just his picture.

Wednesday night I watched, via Twitter, the frightening live feed of police attacking peaceful protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.

I read about refugees and children in horrible circumstances all over the world. 

Every day there’s a story about violence on the streets of Chicago. 

But then… I read about these boys of summer. Twelve and thirteen year old boys from the south side of Chicago who are doing something spectacular. 

They’re playing baseball. 

They’re playing baseball with heart and soul and amazing talent and it’s gotten them to the Little League World Series in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania and more than that, it’s gotten Chicago up on its feet, cheering them on.

I wasn’t at the huge outdoor viewing party at Jackie Robinson Field on Sunday made possible by the city along with the Chicago White Sox. I watched the game on ESPN in my living room, but I felt like I was part of the crowd anyway. Everyone, even out here in the suburbs, is talking about these boys with the same pride and enthusiasm they’d have for any of Chicago’s pro sports teams. 

Cubs fans are ready to sign Pierce Jones up now. He went four for four, hitting three home runs and a triple in their opener then talked to the press with a brilliant smile and the poise of a seasoned pro.

The next game for Jackie Robinson West, representing the Great Lakes region, is on Sunday. Want to restore your faith in humanity? Watch these kids play ball. 

You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert

Getting Over It

So while my um..  level 7* was away on a musical tour of the northeast the last two weeks, I had some extra time to think about things and what I thought about was how much I really love him. Just knowing he was more than forty miles away made my heart hurt.

Bear with me. This is not going to be a completely lovelorn sappy post. Promise.

I also had time to do a few things I don’t do as often as I’d like. 

Things like writing, and practicing the guitar. Not things like cleaning bathrooms or dusting. God forbid.

So what I wrote was a song about how being apart made me realize how much I loved him. 

Songs aren’t much use on paper though, and the problem, you see, is that I’m a horrible singer. “No,” you say, “you do just fine.” Well….  I don’t do just fine. I have two degrees in music and I know a bad singer when I hear one and I hear one when I hear me. Too bad I can’t just play the guitar (at which I don’t suck) and pass out the lyrics to the audience to read to themselves.

Level 7 and I go out to open mics on a regular basis where he champions great folk music and also sings lots of lovely original songs. He’s written a few with me in mind and I’ll tell you there is nothing more touching than having your love on stage singing a song he wrote for you. 

Seems like I could do the same for him but it terrifies me. So I sing the song in my living room where nobody hears my awful voice.

Also, while he was gone, I had extra time to spend with my kids. It’s summer, you know, and they wanted to go to the big water park. 

Side note: I’ve had a rather stressful year and put on some weight that I’m not terribly happy about. 

Going to the water park with them meant I would be walking around in a swimsuit all day amidst untold numbers of people in bright sunshine. 

Terrifying.

But I did it.

I spent the day with my kids and we had a blast. We went on a ride that was like being flushed down a giant toilet. 

Awesome. 

Of course there were gorgeous young girls with flat abs in bikinis and tan men with chiseled six-packs, but there were a lot of older moms and dads like me who have possibly reached the I-don’t-care-what-people-think phase of their lives. Some looked better than me and some looked worse and they were just there to have fun with their kids and I quit caring about what I looked like.  

So that's what I thought about last night when I got behind the microphone and sang the song I wrote. It started off pretty awful, but I think it got slightly better, and really there was only one person in the audience whose opinion mattered. 

Hope he liked it.

*See previous blog post: Relationship Status

You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert

Another Child Lost

Today one of my colleagues shared that one of her students, a bright fifteen year old boy, had succumbed to his illness. At fifteen, the pain of depression was more than he could endure and he took his own life.

Depression is real and it is excruciating, not only for the patient, but for the family and friends as well and all too often it is fatal.

A doctor cannot do an MRI or CAT-scan and diagnose the illness. Medications are a crap-shoot and it’s a long and difficult process to find out what works. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps, but it is hard work and in the meantime, the patient often loses hope.

My almost fifteen year old daughter has major depressive and generalized anxiety disorder. On the outside, she looks healthy and beautiful and it’s difficult for anyone who sees her to understand that on the inside she is using every coping skill she knows just to get through the day. Her father and I live with the constant fear that she, too, will succumb to her illness. We do everything we can to help her fight, hoping that one day the combination of medication and therapy will lessen the symptoms.

Too often, mental illness is surrounded by stigma. If that fifteen year old boy had been diagnosed with cancer, he would have been supported, cheered on, encouraged to fight, but people with depression hide their pain. They put on a mask to go out into the world and we don’t know who they are. 

A person suffering with depression cannot ‘cheer up’ or ‘snap out of it.’ You cannot tell a person with anxiety to ‘relax.’ 

What can we do? 

We can be aware. We can ask and we can make it okay to talk about depression. We can be supportive.

Suicide is preventable. 

Awareness is everything. Understanding is essential. 

For more information, please visit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention at AFSP.org

Relationship Status

As of this writing, I am fifty-two years old. The man with whom I am in love is sixty-five. We have grown children. He has grandchildren. We currently maintain separate residences since I still have two teenagers at home. We are a couple.

Groucho Marx with imaginary cigar voice-over: “A couple of whats, I don’t know.”

According to the dictionary definition, he is my ‘boyfriend,’ but we struggle somewhat with introducing each other to our respective friends and acquaintances because saying “this is my boyfriend/girlfriend,” sounds juvenile to our aging sensibilities.

“Lady-friend” is icky and makes me sound decrepit. I don’t like that either and furthermore, there is no male equivalent. 

“Man-friend?” No. 

"Gentleman-friend?" Ewww.   NO.

My honey. My sweetheart. My love-bunny....   would you introduce anyone like that? I don't think so.

Not that I’m about to post our relationship status on Facebook (reference earlier ‘juvenile’ statement), but these are the levels of involvement Facebook offers: 

We are, by legal definition, single. We are in a relationship with one another. I am divorced. He is widowed. It IS complicated. None of these descriptors are helpful. 

I would like to propose the following levels of in-a-relationship status:

1) We are dating.

2) We are dating exclusively.

3) We are dating exclusively and have professed love for one another.

4) We have introduced each other to our families. 

5) We feel comfortable riding in the car for long distances without maintaining artificial conversation.

6) We have toothbrushes and other various toiletries in each other’s bathrooms.

7) We don’t die of embarrassment if we fart in each other’s presence. 

8) We have clothing in each other’s closets.

9) We have vaguely discussed future plans for a more permanent commitment without actually committing to said plans.
   9.5) We are each other's emergency contacts.

10) We’re making plans to move in together and have discussed finances.

11) We live together.

12) We are engaged. (This is my fiancé(e).)

13) We are married. (This is my husband/wife.) Interesting that this is number 13 on the list, isn’t it?

If this were to become a universal adopted and accepted list, we could introduce each other this way: 

“I'd like you to meet my level seven.”

So I'm putting this out there and we'll see if it catches on.

Until then, I guess he’ll just be my boyfriend unless someone has a better suggestion.

UPDATE 11/7/2014:
I have added a level 9.5: We are each other's emergency contacts. 
We are currently at level 9.5 in case anyone's keeping track of the progress. 

You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert

Rhubarb Cake

You may be surprised to learn that I haven't always been so cultured and refined and steeped in suburban social sophistication as I am today.

In 1985 I taught in a tiny little school in rural north central Illinois.

In 1985. Wow. It doesn't seem that long ago.



In this school there were one hundred and nine children in grades kindergarten through eighth. Most of their parents were farmers - dairy farmers. The kids rarely left town because living with cows that need to be milked twice a day doesn't allow for much time away from home.



As you might imagine, neighbors there are knit together pretty tight.  People depend on one another. Joys and sorrows are felt deeply by the entire community.

And people are remembered long after they're gone.

One morning in 1985, our school custodian, Lavaughn, brought in some rhubarb cake made from an old family recipe. Seems he'd had a bumper crop of rhubarb that spring and he wanted to share.

Now rhubarb tastes pretty horrible if you just chew on it raw, but if you add enough sugar, it's fairly tolerable and that cake was one of the most tolerable desserts I've ever eaten. I asked Lavaughn for the recipe and he scribbled it out on an index card, which I still have in my recipe box.

I made some this morning and I thought about Lavaughn, who is long gone.  Here's the recipe:


Three cups of diced rhubarb.










Stir in a half cup of sugar and let the mixture rest.

Cream together a stick of butter and a cup and a half of sugar.









Beat in an egg.










Add one and a half teaspoons vanilla.










Stir together two cups of flour,
a dash of salt,
a teaspoon of baking soda
two teaspoons cinnamon

Add those combined dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/egg mixture alternately with a cup of buttermilk.

 


Stir in the rhubarb/sugar mixture along with any liquid that formed while it was resting.









Pour the entire mixture into an oiled 13 X 9 pan and bake at 350 degrees for an hour or until the top is toasty brown and springs back just a bit to the touch.










Serve warm - it's best with vanilla ice cream or some freshly whipped cream.





I'm going to have mine out on the patio with a glass of Gewirtztraminer (reference more recent air of culture and sophistication) and I'll be remembering long-gone Lavaughn.

You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert

World's Best Dad!

I’m seeing all kinds of wonderful posts about fathers today in preparation for Father’s Day tomorrow and it’s causing a lot of mixed feelings and I thought I’d share those feelings with you.

My father’s kind of an asshole, actually. I mean… my childhood was fine I guess but I don’t recall my dad being a big part of it even though he lived in the same house. He worked hard at keeping a roof over our head and when he got home at five or if it was the weekend, he deserved to have a glass of scotch and be left alone.

Anyway, it’s the night before Father’s Day and I’m sitting here tonight thinking that I should’ve at least sent him a card, but I’m terrible at thinking ahead that way, so I was trying to think of a nice last minute thing I could do…  I could write a poem. I could create a website full of pictures of my kids and me for him to look at since he rarely sees us and I’m not sure he’d recognize us on the street. I could order him an online gift certificate for golf stuff because I’m pretty sure he cares more about golf more than he cares about people….

I don’t have enough time to do the photo website. Once again, that would have required time and energy spent well before the day of paternal celebration. An online gift certificate is cold and impersonal and while he may be cold and impersonal, I’m not. 

So… back to the poem thing. I was trying to think of something nice to say about my dad. It wasn’t easy. The last 30 years have been trying at best. I had to go back farther than that.

I thought it might be helpful if I made a list of things for which I could thank my dad, then I could work those things into a poem. So here’s the list I made:

Dad took me to my first major league baseball game. 

       I don’t remember this as time spent with dad… just that he took me. It didn’t matter. I was in a dream-like trance from the moment I heard the first crack of a bat hitting a ball. I learned to love baseball.

Dad took me to my first guitar lesson.

      He dropped me off at age 7 at the music store and left me alone with an 18 year old boy who looked like Jesus and reeked of marijuana. I ended up majoring in guitar in college.

Dad taught me how to clean a toilet and weed flower-beds.

      This was necessary in order for him to never have to do either of those chores again but I still know how to clean a toilet thoroughly if I should ever have the desire to do so. I learned valuable life skills.

Dad would, once in a while, take my sister and brother and me to the Dairy Queen.

      This was his method of escaping arguments with my mother. When I was old enough, I got my first job at that Dairy Queen and was well on my way to becoming self-sufficient.

Dad once nicked another parked car when he opened his driver's side door. He left a note on the windshield of the other car with his contact information. He showed me the letter the owner of the other car wrote him to thank him for his honesty.
      He didn't miss an opportunity to let me know what a good person he was. I learned to take responsibility for my actions.

Dad taught me the proper way to pour beer in a glass so there was just the right amount of foam.

      He was training me to be a waitress for his parties and to be a good wife. Hmmm… That’s about it on that one.

Dad took the family to Door County, Wisconsin every year for vacation.

      I wandered around Fish Creek with my brother and sister and have no idea where my mom and dad were most of the time. I learned how to ask strangers for directions and find my way home. 

Dad told me I could marry more money in a half an hour than I could make in a lifetime.

      In other words, I should not look for someone who loves me, but someone who could take me off my dad’s hands. I learned that what I should look for in a man is someone who is, in many ways, the polar opposite of my father. I may just have found him…. finally.

So now I’m looking over the list and thinking that my dad is not really going to see things the way I do and if I wrote a poem for him he wouldn’t really appreciate it, so I guess I’ll just call him and tell him Happy Father’s Day and tell him I love him.

You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert