The 5th Grade Table

When my kids were in 4th and 5th grades, I would volunteer at their school for lunch and recess duty.

I worked alongside the two lunch aides and the Physical Education teacher. I helped the kids open their ketchup packets, started their oranges and got lots of napkins for the spills. I also walked around the cafeteria. I was an extra set of eyes.

Then at recess, I walked around again. During quieter times, I might use a variety of non-verbal skills like context and body language to try figure out what the aide and the gym teacher were talking about in Spanish. Then they would apologize and start speaking English again. I told them not to worry about it. I liked it.

I admired the school aide very much. She came to the United States as an eighteen year old, not knowing a word of English. By the time I met her she was fluent, with a very rich vocabulary. She learned by doggedly reading the dictionary every day.

When things got rough, or a kid was seriously out of control, she would send me to get security. I'm a fast runner, particularly when there's some adrenaline on board.

Sometimes specific and pervasive problems would surface. They would cycle in and out. There was one week when the 5th graders were having a behavior problem.

The kids were allowed to talk in polite volumes during lunch. But then when the aide or the gym teacher did the Signal - three claps - they were supposed to quiet down. But the kids kept talking and talking. The cafeteria staff were at their wits end.

Every once in a while, the principal would put in an appearance. This principal was not a yeller. She had a lot of equanimity.  The worst thing she would do or say when she came down there would be to compare the 5th graders unfavorably to the kindergartners. The little kids were apparently excellent at calming down as soon as they heard the Signal.

Then she would go back to the other building. The school was split in two, and her office was several blocks away. That is a very long story.

I could see what she meant. But to me, it was an unfair, like comparing apples and oranges. I don't think that kindergarteners want to converse as much as 5th graders do. 5th graders are getting ready to be adolescents. They have more of a social drive.

The school aides and the gym teacher came up with a plan. They gave the kids assigned seats for lunch. They made sure that best friends and cliques were separated. Normally, the boys still sat with the boys and the girls still sat with the girls. The staff did as much boy - girl alternating as they could. It was imperfect because for whatever reason, the girls always outnumbered the boys at this school.

My daughter and her best friend approached me to say that this new system was unfair. They felt that a grave injustice had been committed against them personally because they always quieted down when they heard the Signal.

This is true. But I told them that they needed to listen to the Lunch Teachers. I was trying to cultivate the idea that not everything could be fair when you are in school. Sometimes you have to go along to get along.

On the first day of the new system, the 5th grade table was very quiet. The kids, bereft of their friends and social ties, were extremely well behaved.  They were quiet even before the Signal. The experiment went so well, that the aides mixed things up socially again the next day.

What they weren't counting on was the adaptability of children. The children would have liked to sit with their friends. If given the choice, they would never be sitting in these seats, next to these people.

But this is where they were sitting. They accepted their lot. If they couldn't sit with their friends, so be it. Once they got over the shock of the first day, they made the best of it.

They spoke indiscriminately to whoever was sitting next to them. On the second day of lunch the table was just as noisy as it was previously because the children became conversationally promiscuous.  They ignored the Signal in favor of their interesting new partner.

It might have been stretching it to think that they made new friends. But they could sit quietly or they could converse with their neighbor. They chose to talk to whoever was sitting there.

It reminded me a lot of this song that I liked in the 1970’s. It went like this: If you can't be with the one you love, then love the one you're with. Of course, the song was about something else. But you get the idea.

He's No Angel

I am a member of what is called the Bereavement Community. The reason is clear: My little boy Jacob died from childhood cancer at the age of two and a half.

I am both firmly a part of the group of people who've lost a child, and a little outside of it. I am outside of it, because unlike many of the other children who have died, Jacob is not an angel.

It is through this network of people that I've discovered that when children die, many of them become angels. People have a special way of talking about when the children died. They like to say that on the day the child died, they earned their angel wings. Everyone who has lost a child has this terrible anniversary of when the child died. If the child became an angel after they died, the anniversary date is called the Angel Date. Sometimes it is called the Angelversary.

You might wonder how I know that Jacob is not an angel. The truth is that I don't know for sure. But this is what I think.

I would be with a bunch of people whose children died and they would be talking about their angels. It got me wondering about Jacob. I would try to imagine him as an angel with all of the other kids. There was something about it that just didn't fit with what I knew about him.

For one thing, in spite of his short life, Jacob was a fully nuanced person. Jacob had stellar qualities. His ability to socialize with everyone, his smile, his sense of empathy and humor, his love of books, dancing and music and his bravery are all things I like to remember. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Jacob could be very willful and stubborn, liked to hurl books and toys, and was right on track when it came to challenging toddler behaviors. I like to remember this too.

That doesn't mean he couldn't seem angelic. He could. When Jacob was asleep, he seemed angelic to me. At all other times, no.

Although it seems like most people's children became angels when they died, there are many who didn't.

I've been talking about the bereavement community like it is this one big group of people. This is not the case. It's made up of different cogs, like a wheel. The different groups can be separate and also overlap.

Through an intricate set of circumstances I found myself spending a lot of time with women of orthodox Jewish faith who had lost children. I loved spending time with my friends from this community. As it turns out, none of the observant women's children were angels. That is because as a rule, they don't believe in angels at all. Some of the women believed that their children were now studying Torah with Hashem.

This was an interesting concept to me and an easier one to picture. It was comforting to think of God or a God-like presence teaching Jacob scholarly things and taking care of him. I imagined Jacob making mischief and a benign and fatherly rabbinical person gently re-directing him. I also imagined Jacob to be one of the youngest kids there, because of how old he was when he died. The idea didn't stick, but it was more plausible than the angels.

I'm an excellent listener at support groups.  But sometimes I say something that might get me into a little bit of hot water with other people. Like the time that I said how much I hate Childhood Cancer Awareness month. Now I am sharing that Jacob is not an angel. And also, that Jacob is not studying the Torah.

If your child passed away, the first thing I want to say is that I am very sorry. That is a horrible loss and every such loss is like a universe onto itself. If the child who died is now an angel, that sounds absolutely beautiful. The child will not be lonely because there are so many angels. The child being an angel will be something you can share with lots of other folks.

When I say that Jacob is not an angel, I am not questioning that your child has angel wings. The way I'd describe it is of one of difference. It's a little like when two moms are together and one of their children died from cancer after an illness and the other died suddenly and less expectedly. You have a lot in common in spite of this major difference.

This is how I feel about your kid being an angel and my kid not. It's a difference. That's all.

It is also possible that the reason that Jacob is not an angel is that my definition is too narrow to include him. You may have a very different angel in mind when talking about your angel. It may be that I am too literal, trying to picture Jacob flying around, like a valentine card illustration.

Jacob did not earn any angel wings. He did earn the never-ending love of his dad and I and lots of other people too. He accomplished this by being himself. When he died, he remained Jacob. Just Jacob.

Jacob doesn't have an Angel Date. He has the anniversary of when he died. I realize that is quite a mouthful. It might not sound nice. But little by little, I'm learning to live with it.

The Lady Who Works At Noah's School

There is this really nice lady who works at Noah's school. She always greets me the same way. Hi Noah's Mom! She says with a huge smile. One thing I like about this lady is that she oozes  enthusiasm. I find this quality rather contagious.

I don't mind being called Noah's Mom. I'm cool with it. It's a little like being the parent to a celebrity. I imagine that Beyoncé's mom, Mrs. Knowles, might feel the way I do about it.

One day, I came into the school to sign Noah in and give her a note. He was late for school because the two of us were touring a high school. If you have an 8th grader in NYC, chances are you will be doing a lot of this between October and December. It's an understood thing.

The night before, the lady and I saw each other at Parent Teacher conferences. She was in charge of the sign up sheets to see the 8th grade teachers. This is not as easy as you might think. While most parents are relaxed about the time, a few are not. People can get very disgruntled about two things while waiting. One is about their position on the sign up sheet. Another is how long the other parents are taking talking to teachers.

It was easy for Jeremy and me to remain cheerful at Parent Teacher conferences. Noah is a stellar student.

The lady congratulated me about Noah being on the Principal's Honor Roll.  She also complimented me about Noah's behavior and overall demeanor. This makes me very happy as a parent. You want to think you are raising a nice boy.

The lady went on to say that she hopes I realize that God has been very good to me. He has blessed me many times over with Noah. Not everyone has blessings like this.

This gave me a brief pause. I don't know what I think about God. I'm not going to focus on what I believe or don't here. Let's just say that this is not a commonality between the lady and myself at this juncture.

But I decided to go with the thread of discussion she started anyway. Building on what the other person has said comes naturally to me. That is why I believe myself to be an excellent conversationalist.

So I tell the lady that indeed God has been extremely good to me. Noah is a true gift in every way. However, I chose that moment to also share that I believe that God really owes me one after what he put me through earlier. I told her that I felt that God owed me many more blessings after what happened with my son Jacob.

My oldest died from childhood cancer, I told her. He would be almost seventeen now.

Naturally, the lady was surprised. I was satisfied that she knew that I haven't been leading an exclusively charmed life.

Have you read the book of Job? She asks. I tell her no, and she tells me the Lord gives and also takes away. I then decide to get poetic. The Lord giveth and the lord taketh away, I say. I tell her about the man who worked at the hospital where Jacob was treated. He had lost a child many years earlier. He said this a lot.

I go on to tell her that because of what happened to Jacob, I never take my surviving children for granted. I am thankful for them every day. I feel I have a higher calling with them.

She asked me about Hannah. I told her that she is a 9th grader at Frank Sinatra School of the Arts. Praise Jesus! She said. I nodded. I have to admit, I started getting into it. Like I said earlier, there is something pleasantly contagious about the lady.

I see that we understand one another very well, she said as I was leaving, and gave me a little hug.

I saw her again soon after that. Noah was late again because of a high school tour. Is he applying to Harvard yet? She asked me. He's got to get into high school first, I joked.

Is he ambitious? She asked. Indeed he is. Right now he's saying he wants to be a software engineer. Her eyes got very wide. Praise Jesus! Thank God for Noah becoming a software engineer. What would we do without our computers?

Now that is something we really have in common. Thank you Jesus for Noah. And my iMac, my iPad and my iPhone, I added.

As I left I could still hear her praising Jesus. I also heard the words software engineer banded about. At Christmas time I left her a little treat. I signed the card from Noah's Mom.

The Moment That Changed Everything

 

I was on my way to school to pick up Noah. It was October. There was a crispness about the air and a little spring in my step. Noah was in 6th grade at a new school. I could hardly believe his good fortune. His good fortune was rapidly becoming my good fortune.

This school was bringing out the best in Noah. The people there had what it took. I'd always had a village for Noah, but now that village resided mostly at school. I could step back. The people at this school were amazing. And Noah was amazing.

As I crossed the street, I saw that some leaves from some neighborhood trees blew down to the pavement during a morning rain. They were flattened and splayed on the shiny wet road. It looked like a mosaic or collage.

I went about my afternoon of collecting Noah from school and getting ready for a PTA meeting. I thought about the leaves I'd seen earlier.

Noah and Hannah were in good hands and I left for the meeting.  On the way, I purposely passed the leaves on the road. They still looked good. And now, on top of the beautiful overlapping leaves, there was an afternoon glow bathing the wet pavement. On impulse, I took out my new iPhone and took a photograph.

That was the moment that changed everything.

In my previous life, I'd been a professional still life photographer. For 15 years, I lit, arranged, propped, styled, conceptualized. The process of making one photograph took hours. There was something exquisite about that kind of detail.

Then I stopped. For nine years, I did not pick up a camera except to take an occasional picture of my children. It wasn't sad. My focus was on other things.

But the eyes, the brain and the heart remembered. There's no forgetting this stuff. It got saved to my hard drive.

I was living on a graph. One line was my old life. Another line was my current existence. When I took the picture of the leaves, the two lines converged.

I didn't start doing still life work. I didn't go back to not photographing. I did something else.

The iPhone camera became my equipment of choice. It has limitations. Every camera does. The secret is knowing the particular personality of the device and using it accordingly.

This photography takes place in the space between. It weaves its way into the ten-minute walk from the subway to my apartment, the waiting room, the grocery store.

Things have gone from working from scratch to orchestrating nothing. I'm less busy and more aware. Where once was embellishment there is now recognition.

The last few years have taught me to think on my feet.  I work fast now, with reflexes quickened by life experience. The crises absorbed and averted were my teachers.

Photography is inexpensive these days. I become prolific. I shoot, I delete. The cream rises to the top. It always does.

A month after that first photograph I was stopped in my tracks by a thought.  I was living the life of an artist. It happened quickly. I was breathless.

Reading this is like listening to Rachmaninoff. In this case, the truth is baroque and romantic. If it sounds a little over the top to you, imagine what it's like being me.