26 / 73

A few summers ago we were visiting my dad and Louise. Quinn and I were in the basement with my dad, in a room that serves as his workshop and their storage space. It is orderly; they’ve worked hard for years to cull the extras from their separate and now joined lives.  As he always does, when he and I are down there together, my dad started to scan the room, looking for things he could hand off to me—things he’s saved for one reason or another. He opened a metal wardrobe that’s been around for a long time. I was doing something else and didn’t pay much attention, until he turned around and held out a green leather bag. “Do you want your mother’s pocketbook?” he asked. 

I was quick to say no, which I do out of habit, but also because I don’t carry a purse, much less a pocketbook. As he was handing it to me, I suggested he offer it to my sister—someone who does carry a purse. I felt no attachment to it—there are other things that were once my mother’s that show up now and then and I tend not to be too sentimental about them. But once her purse was in my hands, I felt its weight. I assumed he had stored other things inside it, so I unzipped it to pull out whatever other items were there. But what I saw inside was the actual contents of her purse—exactly as she had left them well over twenty years ago.

“You never emptied it!” I blurted out, part surprise and part accusation. Suddenly the experience changed. Instead of an easy refusal of stuff I didn’t want, I found myself protecting something that felt sacred—the artifacts of my mother’s daily life, from the last days she was alive. Each item I pulled out overwhelmed me more than the last. Quinn was curious and trying desperately to get her hands on things, but these were not things I wanted her handling. I felt like I was managing an archaeological dig—all the bones very fragile, waiting to be reassembled into the story they would tell.

My dad was surprised too, I think; if not by the unfinished business of her purse, then by the wave of emotion I was experiencing. He lured Quinn away and left me alone with it. In some ways I felt guilty for looking in—my mother was very protective of her pocketbook. We didn’t go into it without her permission, and usually that permission wasn’t given. She’d gladly retrieve a pen or a Kleenex for us, but we didn’t go in on our own. “Hand me my pocketbook,” I can hear her saying, but never an invitation to help ourselves. I felt nervous about what I would find, and worried that she wouldn’t want me to be looking.

At first I pulled things out kind of quickly, but as I started to see what was in there, I realized it was full of stories I wanted to someday tell, and I wanted them to begin as she had left them. I was relieved there were no dirty Kleenexes, and impressed by the orderly nature of it all. This was a pocketbook I could respect. I put things back, carefully, just as I’d found them, zipped it up and carried it upstairs. And then I carried it home to Vermont, and I put it in a trunk, and I started making plans, in earnest, to build my writing cabin.

It is a few years later now and I’m sitting here in my cabin on a cool wet morning in late July. It is the day after what would have been my mother’s seventy-third birthday, and two days after the twenty-sixth anniversary of her death. 

In the top of the bag is a lavender eyeglasses case, with her wire framed reading glasses. They are the same prescription as the ones on my face. Under the glasses there are other things neatly arranged. There is a blue leather wallet with her driver’s license; height 5’3”, the same as me. There are a number of credit cards and barely any cash (one dollar and some change), just like my wallet. There is an inside zipper pouch holding two disintegrating breath mints, a couple of tabs of Tylenol cold medicine, two tabs of Benadryl, an eyebrow pencil, a panty liner, and three lipsticks: Soft Pink Satin, Rose Mauve, and Kiss of Pink. Their powdery smell brings her into the room, along with the memory of my senior prom—my mom following me around the backyard, waving a lipstick at me, begging me to please put some on. In this way, we were not alike. The fact that she carried not one, but three lipsticks in her purse confounds me. 

There are three pens, a pencil, and a half-empty sleeve of Hall’s cough drops, an envelope with medical and insurance papers, and a 1993 monthly calendar book. These last items lead this story in the direction of her cancer, and into the work I can now see that she was doing, in those last months, to keep living, even while she must have known that she would not. And that is a story for another day. 

For her birthday, I’ll tell a different story—the one I can assemble from the last item in her green leather Land’s End pocketbook: it’s a taupe colored faux-leather bi-fold. It opens to two plastic sleeves of wallet-sized photo holders. The sleeve on the right holds her nonessential i.d. and membership cards—the essential ones are housed in her wallet. That she has so many of these cards is a wonder to me. There is a Staples card, the business card of her insurance agent, one from Friedlander’s Jewelry, and Sears, Sunoco, and Shell. There are three video rental cards, from Video Paradise, Video Club, and Lancaster Video, and two Mailboxes Etc Frequent Shippers punchcards. And then, a generic i.d. card, in case it all got lost. 

Generally, when I think of my mother, I think of her as my mother. But looking into her purse I imagine her as a mother, and as a wife, and as the person running a household. Looking at these cards, I try to imagine the conversations we would have now—as two women with shared responsibilities in our lives. So much has changed in twenty-six years, so much of how the work is done. Sears, where she bought everything from sheets, to school clothes, to family portraits, is a relic now; what would she think of Amazon? I imagine she would love the ease of it, though I know she is someone who charmed and enjoyed connecting with actual people, in actual stores. And all those trips to the video rental shops, renting and returning VHS tapes—how she would love Netflix! 

The “frequent shipper” punchcards seem random at first, until I remember that in 1993 I was in my fourth year of college, and my mom sent me the most amazing care packages. The one I remember best was for my twenty-first birthday: it was decorated with pictures of champagne and party hats and balloons cut out of magazines and taped onto the box. Inside there were two plastic champagne flutes and either a couple of single-serve bottles or a half-bottle of champagne—I can’t remember which. I love her subtle message of moderation. I love that she trusted I would have someone to toast with. I love that even though I was turning twenty-one, she still decorated the package for me. She made every occasion a celebration. Stuffed into one of the side pockets of this bifold there were two other mailing addresses, for the two college-aged kids of one of her best friends—clearly she sent them packages too.

On the left side of the bi-fold are the photos, my sister Amy’s senior high school picture is on the top. And behind that photo, in the same pocket, are five of Amy’s previous school pictures, a portrait of the two of us when Amy was a baby, and a photo of my mom and dad. The picture of my parents is the only one in which my mom shows up. It looks like it was taken in the basement, each of my parents with an arm around the other, they are young, and healthy, and smiling, and in love. I wonder if Amy took the picture of them?

In the next pocket up, my senior portrait from college faces out and, behind that, two school pictures from high school and, again, a photo of Amy and me—this one from 1979. Next is my cousin Jeff and an amazing black and white picture of my mother’s parents. 

Then there is a picture of my mother’s god-daughter Karen in a tutu and tiara, Karen’s brother Brian, and more pictures of Amy and me. Always they seem to come back to Amy and me. I never doubted my mother’s powerful, wild love for us; there is, and always has been, evidence of it everywhere.

In the topmost pocket of the lefthand sleeve, is a blue perforated “Patient Medical Record Card” from Morton Hospital in Taunton, MA. The patient’s name is Amy Litchfield. There is a patient number and her date of birth, but nothing more than that. At the bottom of the card is a line that reads: “Please keep this card with you at all times.” I have no recollection of why my sister went to the hospital, but I imagine that whatever the reason, it had a strong impact on my mother because she didn’t dare throw away that card. Who knows how long she carried it with her. If it were me, taking Quinn to the hospital, I imagine I would have purged such a card from my own wallet quickly—destroying the evidence, denying the threat. In my mother’s choice, I see my sister, clear as day: vigilant, serious, and determined to do her job as mother well. She was our lion, and she roars through each of us still, but most clearly through my sister.

Finally there is the pocket that holds my dad. It is the only pocket with the seam split open. I imagine it is because she’s pulled them out so many times, or because there are so many in there: five pictures of my dad, all young—at least one from high school, one clearly from the Navy, one from their wedding, and a formal portrait on the top, facing out. He has signed that one, as he signed all of his cards to her for all of the years they were together: All My Love, Dana. I know this about her cards because I read them, always.

Tucked just behind the signed photo of my dad there are two small slips of folded paper. One must be from a high school newspaper; it seems to be from some sort of gossip column: “What’s the story Claire Sylvester and Dana Litchfield? How did you both manage to be out sick with German Measles at the same time last week? We’ll be watching you two!!” The other is on yellow paper, with the heading South Weymouth News: “The bells are ringing!! Not only the Back to School Bells - but - Wedding Bells too!!” It announces one local wedding and then, “Last but not least for our ‘Social Section’ the latest sparkle at South Weymouth is on the third finger left hand of Claire Sylvester. Claire has decided she is not going to be an Old Maid School Marm and accepted (finally) Dana Litchfield’s proposal. Congratulations to a wonderful couple.” 

By the time it was 1993, her engagement to my dad was old news, and still she carried the announcement with her in her purse. My parents were married on July 11, 1970, just before they each turned twenty-four years old. They had been sweethearts since the eleventh grade. My mother was hardly an “old school marm”—and yet reading that announcement illuminates her, and them, for me. I can imagine her excitement, her sense of possibility, her happily ever after. My parents’ marriage always seemed like a fairytale to me—they were always young, they were always in love. I caught them slow dancing in the garage once when I went to take out the trash. I caught them kissing many times. My mother blushed when my dad flirted with her. My father beamed with pride when he spoke of her. Many times, as I’ve struggled through my own relationships in life, I’ve thought back to the romantic ideal that they provided and told myself it couldn’t have been real—only something I imagined—but the contents of my mother’s pocketbook suggest otherwise. 

Her pocketbook is orderly. There are no empty wrappers, no crumpled bits of anything. No extra keys or random refuse. Only things she needed. Only the important things. 

Too Heavy

Two and a half months before her ninth birthday, Quinn is four feet and two inches tall. She weighs sixty-six pounds. Her eyesight is excellent, her hearing is clear. She has no known allergies or illnesses. She eats vegetables, drinks milk, consumes enough protein, and always wears a helmet. She still rides in her booster seat. She gets enough sleep. Her heart beats, her legs are strong, her balance is good. At the end of her yearly check-up the other day, Quinn’s doctor asked her, and me, if we had any questions. Other than expressing concern that she was losing her freckles (including the tiny pink star she was born with on the bridge of her nose), Quinn asked no questions and there were none from me. “Well,” Dr. Parker said, “you are a healthy girl!” Good job, she seemed to say. She smiled and told us she’d see us in a year.

Once we were in the car headed home, I caught Quinn in the rearview mirror. I congratulated her on the good report from the doctor. “Way to go, Buddy,” I said. I thought too of her final report card which we'd also just received: her teacher reported that Quinn met all the benchmarks, in every subject and category, and she “exceeded” them in reading and math. 

“How do you feel about it all? You’ve had a great year!” Instead of the beaming pride I imagined she would feel, Quinn’s eyes filled up. “Am I too heavy?” she asked, as she looked away, embarrassed, and started to cry.

And so, here we are. The end of second grade. My daughter is eight years old. She is healthy, and smart, and funny, and kind, and powerful, and beautiful. And yet.

The doctor had just said she was healthy, I reminded her. Her body is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing, I tried to assure her, but still her worry mounted. I asked her why she would think that she was too heavy, wanting to hear her thoughts, even though I dreaded hearing them. She told me she is heavier than all of her friends. She knew their weights and knew her own. I was stunned by this, and asked why she knew. “Well, one day at recess,” she explained, “we were on the teeter-totter…” 

I imagined the scene: little girls all gathered around, sizing each other up, each taking her turn to step up and be measured against the others, the combinations changing again and again as they narrowed in on who weighted the bar most often. “How much do you weigh?” one of them asked Quinn in exaggerated surprise that day, “you’re so heavy!” 

In her telling of this story, Quinn names each of her “friends.” There is one, of course, leading this activity. At the time she was asked this question, how much do you weigh, a question that she didn't feel she could question, Quinn recalls vividly that she weighed fifty-nine pounds. In retelling it, to me, her worry turns to panic. “What am I going to tell people now when they ask me how much I weigh? Now I weigh sixty-six pounds!”

I pulled off the road so I could turn and look at her directly—my amazing daughter, still small enough to ride in a booster seat, in tears over her weight. It is so much sooner than I thought we would have this talk, and though I’ve imagined it since she was a toddler, smiling at herself in the mirror, I haven’t practiced, so I just told her anything I could think of to bolster her—that each person’s weight is made up of all the things that make a body: strong muscles and bones and healthy organs, a big brain…that her body is growing and doing all the things it is supposed to do, and because her body is so strong, she is able to do all the things she loves to do—ski and swim and bike, climb “the climbing tree,” and run the Mad Dash… What I didn’t tell her is that I live in fear of her not loving herself because I’ve watched girls starve themselves for this, and in one case, nearly to death.

Instead I told her that every body is different, and I remind her that since she was young enough to speak, we’ve told her that we don’t comment on how people look, unless we’re telling them they look beautiful. I remind her of this in a probably not-so-subtle attempt to draw her attention to the fact that her “friend” who embarrassed her, and made her doubt herself, wasn’t being very nice. And the closest I get to saying what I really want to say—which is something along the lines of “Why don’t you tell So-and-so to shut the fuck up, mind her own business, and stop building herself up by putting everyone else down”—is this: I can’t tell you who to be friends with, but I hope you’ll choose people who make you feel good about yourself, because friends should lift you up. 

This year I’ve been working to scale back on making suggestions when Quinn has come home upset about a situation with a friend. I’ve started, instead, to just remind her I believe in her, in hopes she’ll believe in herself. “You have all the tools,” I will say, and I mean it. Fortunately some of the tools she has are friends with whom she can be entirely herself, entirely at ease in her own skin, because she is loved, as is, for being exactly who she is.

At the beginning of the school year, Quinn and her classmates painted self portraits, and they did so again at the end of the year. In her first, she sees herself as I saw her then too—serious as she began the new year, waiting to see how it would all unfold. 

And at the end, I see her as she sees herself again: more relaxed, allowing herself a smile.  

On the last day of second grade, Quinn and her classmates moved around their classroom writing notes to each other on their self-portraits—keepsakes of their time together the past two years with Mrs Burns. Next year, they disperse to other classrooms and new classmates. Each of the notes written on Quinn’s card is sweet: you are kind, you are smart, you are helpful, you are caring.  

But one of them stands out: “Your smile makes me happy.” I wish I could surround her with friends like that—people who see her and feel happiness when she is happy. That’s what real friends do.

This year we had a speaker come to our school to talk to the students about self-image, self-esteem, social media, sex. She met with kids and then met with our staff separately, and one of the things she said that has stuck with me is this: “When you have something to say that they need to hear, just keep talking…even if it seems like they aren’t listening, just keep talking because they cannot un-hear what you have said.” Quinn didn’t say much while I talked on the side of the road in our idling car after her doctor’s appointment, but she seemed to be listening. I don’t know if she could sense how urgent it all seemed to me, and I don’t even know if that would’ve been good or bad, but second grade feels too early for this conversation, it feels too heavy. And yet maybe early is key. Maybe we are doing the site work right now, and maybe from here we’ll build the foundation. Maybe if we keep leveling and checking for square, taking our time, working with care and confidence, then eventually we can raise her up—tall, proud, strong. 

I imagine the scene: two girls step up to the teeter-totter. Each takes her seat and grabs the handle. One bends her knees, uses her strength, lifts the other up. There is a pause and then she pushes off, sending herself high. Up and down, constant motion, both are smiling.

Jack

When Jack returned to school this year, he brought with him the news that his mother wasn’t well. She’d been sick all summer—lung cancer, I would later find out—and nothing was certain. She was in treatment, in the hospital, and things weren’t looking hopeful. Jack’s mom’s name was Mary, and she was his greatest support in life.

Jack came to our school during his sophomore year. He was admitted by my predecessor, and he came in with solid ninth grade grades: A’s mostly and nothing below a B. Still, he is quirky—enough so that someone early on would have asked some questions about his learning, poked around the topic as an invitation for Jack, or his parents, to share more about who he is. Whether those questions were ever asked or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that all we’ve had to work with is Jack, as is. 

Jack’s arrival to campus coincided with my predecessor’s departure and my first year as Academic Director, a job that is, it turns out, mostly about helping people solve problems with other people. Jack is one of the people who has posed some challenges to teachers. He is somewhat withdrawn in classes, not particularly organized, not great at meeting deadlines, or following instructions, and when confronted by any of this, or anything else, he is often stubborn, a bit rigid, and defensive in a belligerent kind of way. In his 10th and 11th grade years, I had him in my office on a number of occasions—to discuss a cheating concern, to discuss a project that completely missed the mark of an assignment, and repeatedly to talk about his falling behind enough, and in enough classes, that his training had to be withheld until he caught up. In all of these conversations, one-on-one, I had the opportunity to see what the teachers were dealing with: the rigidity, the dismissiveness, the chronic lying and rationalizing. Still, I also had glimpses of a Jack who wasn’t entirely that way—there was some willingness to talk and take some ownership. 

In those first two years I had a number of conversations with Jack’s parents as well—some over email, or on the phone, and some in person. In those conversations Jack’s father, Rob, always wanted to talk about Jack’s grades and his failure to meet their expectations. I would describe Rob, in all of those conversations, as flabbergasted and a bit volatile. And I will admit that his surprise and frustrated confusion over Jack’s struggles, always left me surprised and confused. It seemed so obvious, to all of us who worked with him, that Jack had some challenges. 

On one of their visits to campus, Rob met with Jack’s chemistry teacher to gather materials from her class so that he could teach Jack what he hadn’t yet learned, on vacation when he would be at home. At the same time, Mary met with me; I had the easier job. I don’t remember what time of year it was, but I do remember it was a beautiful day and Mary and I sat outside in the gazebo next to my office. I want to say it was spring, and a Saturday. I was struck by her obvious love and caring concern for her son. Still, she shared her husband’s surprise that Jack was struggling, and seemed to have no idea why that would be. We discussed openly some of the challenges he’d had—the lapses in honesty, the rigidity, the refusal to ask for or accept help. Mary’s approach was a softer one—not the belligerent determination to set things right, once and for all, that her husband seemed to express, but instead a desire to understand Jack and help him understand the world. 

What I saw was a mother’s love, to be sure, but it was also her own compassionate spirit. I know this because, while we were talking, a young and impatient Quinn was darting in and out of the gazebo interrupting our conversation. If I had been in Mary’s shoes, there to discuss my own child’s difficulties in a school far away from my home, and someone’s bratty kid was interrupting my fifteen minute window, I would have been annoyed. Instead, Mary lit up each time Quinn showed up. She engaged her in conversation and smiled at her antics. She was apologetic for taking me away from Quinn. In that experience, and in many moments after, I recall thinking how lucky Jack was to have Mary as his mom—someone with patience and understanding and such genuine kindness. 

On another occasion, Sam, Quinn and I walked into the pizza place down the hill from school and were seated at a table near Jack and Mary who had come for a visit. They didn’t notice us come in, rapt as they were in their own conversation. I remember Mary’s beaming smile as she listened to her son on the other side of her table. I remember her leaning forward, toward him, her arms resting in front of her. I remember thinking how much she must have missed him. And thinking again how lucky Jack was to have her as his mom… someone who took clear joy in being with him, who could understand him and encourage him, even if no one else would. Mary is someone who would love him, unconditionally, and help him navigate the world.

And those are the things I thought about when we learned, at the beginning of the year, that Mary was likely dying. Of all the people in his life, why her? I couldn’t imagine Jack existing in this world without her. 

Every day this fall was touch and go. Jack came to school in August, but his mind and heart were at home. When it was time to leave for Chile, a million miles away, his parents decided he should go—to stay with his peers, keep busy with school and skiing, try to live as normally as possible. But as soon as his two day journey to Chile was complete, Mary took a turn in the hospital and Jack’s dad called school and asked for help getting him home to Ontario. With no time in between trips, Jack made the long journey home by himself. He stayed home through October, but as November approached, they again made the decision to have him return to school, and to go with the group to train in Colorado. He had effectively missed the first quarter of school, and although his teachers were highly skeptical that he’d done any work while away, Jack told us he had, and that he was going to be able to get caught up. 

I wasn’t confident that Jack would be able to recover academically, but I was certainly willing to let him try. When I was in his shoes, away at school while my mother was at home dying, I couldn’t have cared any less about my school work. And I remember the ways that my teachers’ reactions to that fact impacted me. I had some professors who seemed to think they knew what was best for me and told me what they thought I should do, and others who asked for my input. I remember the gratitude I felt for those few people who offered me the opportunity for some little shred of control, by letting me make some decisions for myself. My Russian Literature teacher was one example; he was entirely understanding when I wanted to read something other than The Cancer Ward, an assigned text for the class. And while Jack was at school, and his mother was dying at home, in spite of it being my job to focus on the integrity of the academic program, I really didn’t care much about his school work either. Whether he had done his work or not didn’t matter to me—all that mattered to me was his safe passage through each day. And given that Jack is a kid who doesn’t appear to confide in anyone, other than his mom, and is a kid who doesn’t ask for help, I didn’t feel safe assuming that was a given.

It was after the November trip to Colorado, when Jack was back on campus, that I started feeling a sense of urgency about his daily health. One day in mid-December I learned he hadn’t shown up to his morning classes. I went directly to his dorm and knocked on his door. My knock woke him up but only barely. When I told him it was me, and he told me to come in, I found him still in bed. He couldn’t fully open his eyes yet, and he told me he didn’t feel well—he couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but he just didn’t feel right. I encouraged him to get up, try to drink some water, see if he felt better getting some fresh air outside of his stale dorm room. A few days later, just before Christmas, while Jack was on the hill at training, his dad called school to say that Mary had died that morning. By the time Jack’s training session ended, his plane ticket was purchased, his ride to the airport arranged, his dorm parents and teachers informed. Jack’s coach, one of the few adults he seemed to trust, told him the news. He had a few minutes alone in his room and then he was whisked away to the airport for what would, inevitably, be the worst Christmas of his life.

In the months of winter that followed, Jack and I spent more time together. I got updates from his teachers weekly, and weekly I formed plans with him for how to get caught up. In spite of his initial reluctance at my suggestion, I convinced him to drop the Calculus class that was, by then, so far gone. And we put his fall electrical engineering class on the back burner as well. That left Physics, Mechanical Engineering and English to get through, and I was determined that he would get through them so as not to have the whole year be a complete loss. I knew I, and he, had to have something to show for the time and investment, and with graduation looming, he needed those credits. I was terrified, I will admit, of what his father’s reaction would be if we missed the mark. But more than that, I kept thinking of Mary. It is, of course, a parent’s greatest worry—to be separated too soon from your child. If it is me who goes too soon, I worry about who will care for Quinn, and who will help her navigate life. In the months after Mary’s death I had a mounting sense of purpose. Without his mom, I worried Jack had no one to help him navigate the work he had to do. And, whether Jack wanted my help or not, I was determined to help him get through the academic hurdles of the year—it was the one small thing I could do, for her.

To my surprise, Jack was willing to accept my help, and he had his own determination to get through the year, even if he struggled with execution. In the beginning, I saw my role as helping him identify and organize a few tangible goals for the week ahead. I imagined that was the main thing he needed—to be pointed in the right direction and told where to begin. He left my office, again and again, with a clear plan and good intentions. And again and again I learned from teachers that the targets weren’t met. No problem; we’d start again. And over the course of the many restarts we had, when I was willing to begin again, without judgment or disappointment—just as a matter of course—Jack began to trust me more and I began to understand him better.

In my three years, so far, in my role at school, I have worried a lot about whether my colleagues, or the students and their parents, will take me seriously as the director of an academic program. I’ve worried about whether or not I have the intellectual or academic credentials necessary to be credible and effective, or whether I’m a staunch enough defender of academic “rigor”—a favorite term of my predecessor and one that for some reason gets under my skin. I still don’t know if I have enough of those qualities. What I do know is that I have always been someone who stands up for the underdog—I have always been a staunch defender of those in need of defending. So this year, when I would learn that Jack didn’t show up for class, I would just go and wake him up. I slept for a year after my mom died. I had a job, which I went to, and I had friends I occasionally saw, but mostly I slept—in every free moment. I remember it like it was yesterday, even though it was twenty-six years ago. When Jack didn’t make it to a meeting we’d set, I would go and find him. And when I set up meetings for him with his teachers, and he didn’t show, I expected them to do the same. And, when they didn’t, I would. Any frustrations I had this spring were not with Jack—they were with the adults working with him who seemed to think he should be able, on his own, to do all the things they laid out for him to do—with no regard to how trivial or potentially meaningless they may have seemed to him. And of course all of those people are people who have loved ones to go home to at the end of the day, when Jack was going “home” to his dorm room alone.

On more than one occasion, Jack offered me apologies for falling behind. “I don’t mean to,” he told me, with sincere regret, “I just have such a hard time focussing.” And on each occasion I assured him it didn’t matter—and to me it honestly didn’t. Also on more than one occasion, Jack lied to me about work that was supposedly done but, in reality, wasn’t. I know he didn’t want to lie to me, he thanked me all the time for helping him, and he agreed to anything I asked of him—including working in my office first period every single day during his senior spring. And yet, I came to understand that he either didn’t see any alternatives to lying, or that he did so automatically out of long established habits. One day, late in the spring, when Jack said, “Oh, I must’ve just sent the wrong file! I have the paper done,” I finally, but gently, pressed him. I asked him to tell me the truth, just so we could make a plan, and I promised him that no matter his answer I wouldn’t be mad. Jack is much taller than I am. He is a big, strong guy. He’s eighteen years old. He paused, looked at me cautiously and asked, “You promise?” As a person in the world without my mother, even at forty-seven years old, I feel that way sometimes still—vulnerable, like little a kid.

I came to understand that Jack wouldn’t get anything done in his room, where there was no pressure to stay on track, so I suggested he work in my office and he agreed it was necessary. And I learned that he often had trouble figuring out where or how to begin his work, but if Jack had someone help him get started, he could take off and get the thing done. For his Film Studies homework, a class I once taught, this was pretty easy. I’d read the assignment and ask him his plan of attack. In that process, it would be clear which aspects of the assignment he didn’t understand. We’d find the answers together and then he’d be ready to go. A short paper that he had been struggling to complete for a week was done in an hour. With my back turned to him, as I worked on my own work, I listened in awe at the speed of his fingers on his keyboard. 

In physics and engineering I was markedly less helpful, but even there, as I looked at assignments with him, I could see he would get lost in the details. I started to see assignments as I imagined he did, and I rewrote some to make the sequencing of the work more clear. One night I stayed late to help him get a physics test made up. He was up against a firm deadline—he had to complete two tests before leaving the next day for a ski race and trip home, and this was one of them. He worked for an hour and finally emerged from his study room looking frustrated and exhausted. He asked me if he could finish it the next morning, but once he’d seen the test, I couldn’t let him do that. I told him to leave his phone with me and take a break, to step outside into the winter night and get some fresh air to wake himself up. 

As soon as he was gone, I started googling the terms from the problem he was stuck on. I never took a physics class and, even if I had, there’s no way I would’ve remembered it. I was searching for information that would help me ask him the right questions—questions that might jog his memory and point him in the right direction, without giving anything away. Just as I was starting to gain some ground, Jack burst back in through the door. “I have an idea!” he announced. “I don’t know how you’ll feel about this, but the thing is, I know this material, and if you were my teacher, you’d be able to ask me a question or something that would get me going, you know?” He was nervous, trying not to offend me, and I couldn’t help smile that we were having the same idea. “There are these videos from class, maybe you could watch one and that would help you help me…?” We logged into his class page and he pointed me toward the video files his teacher made, and then he left me alone in a study room while I tried to learn the physics he was trying to do. Fortunately, the content of that one question was addressed early in the video and I knew just the question to ask that would help him correct his mistake. He had it done in a matter of minutes and we were both so pumped. He figured out the problem and finished the test.

He had one more to complete the next morning. We agreed he would wake up early to review and then come to my office midmorning to take the test. I left campus that night feeling great confidence, but by morning I remembered what mornings were often like for Jack—he had a hard time waking up. Driving to work I started to panic—if he didn’t wake up on time, he wouldn’t get the test done, and he had to…I couldn’t let him leave without it being done, and I couldn’t not let him leave either. I called the campus phone from my car to ask the staff member on duty if he’d shown up for breakfast. He hadn’t. I asked her to go and wake him up in his dorm. I stopped at the gas station to buy him an egg sandwich and some juice and drove straight to his dorm. When I knocked on his door it was clear he’d fallen back to sleep. “Jack,” I said, “it’s me. I brought you some breakfast. I’m leaving it outside your door. I need you to get up, and review for that test. Okay?” I tried to sound confident. He tried to assure me he was too. I walked away, conscious of his privacy and conscious as well that time was ticking away. Thirty minutes later I sent him an email: Jack, are you up? I got no reply. Ten more minutes and I wrote another: I need you to tell me what was in the bag I left outside your door. In a minute I had a reply: "Breakfast sandwich and juice. Thank you.”

Jack made it to my office on time. He took the test. He thanked me. He made it home for his race and spring break after that. Winter had been a marathon—it was emotional and, for me, every interaction felt so high stakes. Every day I worried about him. Every day I thought about his mother and the worry she must have felt on her way out of this life. Every day I thought about the lost kid I was when my mother was dying. Helping Jack was like helping my former self. My motivations became selfish in this way.

After the break, the end was in sight and many other things were going on at school that took my attention. I checked in with Jack still, but the daily worry had lessened a bit. On Mother’s Day, I wasn’t thinking about Jack but instead was thinking about my own mom and about myself and Quinn. In the afternoon I saw an email from school—they were looking for someone to pick Jack up at the train station at nine o’clock in Waterbury. I hit reply and offered—the train station is close by and remembering that this was Jack’s first Mother’s Day without his mom, I wanted to be there for him. I was determined to be upbeat when I arrived, but my heart was aching for him.

When the train arrived, I watched as people got off until I saw Jack. He was looking fresh and happy. He had only a small backpack. “Hey Jack,” I waved, trying to seem casual, “where have you been?” He got in the car and we started toward school. “Oh, well, I was in Massachusetts. I just ran a half marathon,” he said, as if it was very run of the mill. 

In the course of our drive I learned the whole story. The day before, anticipating Mother’s Day, he was looking around on the internet for something he could do. He found a Mother’s Day Half Marathon in western Mass that was a fundraiser for a local organization that supports cancer patients and their caregivers. He figured out where it was, figured out how to get there, figured out where to stay, asked at school if he could go, got permission from his dad. He took a cab to the train station and got on a train leaving Vermont at 8pm. He arrived in North Hampton in the late evening, and took another cab to the bed & breakfast he had called in advance. They were closed by the time he arrived, but the cooks were still cleaning the kitchen so they called the owner and got him checked in. In the morning he walked to a diner for breakfast before the race, but the diner was closed. He was worried about being late so he walked four miles to the start of the race, grabbed some fruit and bagel chunks from the finishers’ tent, and with that he started his first ever half marathon, having already walked four miles just to get there. 

He was at the back of the pack to start, but he kept pushing his way toward the front. His goal, he told me, was to come in under 2 hrs, and to never stop running. He finished, I would learn later, in 1 hr 52 min. He was 96th out of 400 or so runners. When the race ended, he changed into dry clothes—it had been raining all morning. He had time to kill before his train back to VT. He watched as other runners finished, standing the whole time so his dry clothes wouldn’t get wet. He watched the spectators mostly disperse toward the tail end of the race, but he had nothing else to do, so he cheered in the final racers. He took a shuttle to North Hampton. Went to a burger place, enjoyed exploring the town. Eventually, he got on his train. 

My conversation with Jack on the way back to school was outrageous. Every question he answered led me to more questions. I couldn’t believe what he had done—some days he can’t get himself out of bed, but on that first Mother’s Day, he got himself to a place he’d never been, without any help, and done something incredible he’d never done. I was so energized by his story, and at the same time he was increasingly desperate to lie down. He hadn’t eaten since midday. I told him he was going to be sore the next day, and he said, with a laugh, “Oh. I’m incredibly sore right now!” We cracked up again and again. I bought him a bag of ice, for his legs, at the gas station, and he grabbed some pizza before I dropped him off, as close to his dorm as I could drive my car. 

When I looked up the race online the next day, I noticed Jack hadn’t shown up on the fundraiser’s page. I asked him about it and he told me that because he just paid his entry fee on arrival, he missed that boat. I emailed the race organizer and told her Jack’s story. She agreed to set up a fundraising page for him and said it would still be open for a week. Jack liked the idea of putting it out there, just in case anyone was interested. So, he set it up, wrote about why he had run the race, about how his mother loved to run and she ran every day. He welcomed contributions, thanked anyone who would be reading it, and then he forgot about it. Surreptitiously I sent the link to the staff at school and told them the short version of what Jack had done on his own. It was the story of a Jack that most of us had never known. The donations, of course, started pouring in. I asked Jack, a couple of days later, if he had checked his page. “What page?” he asked. By the time it was done, Jack succeeded in being the #1 fundraiser for event—for this year and in the history of the race. The race organizers asked if they could share his story and Jack was honored to help them write it. They couldn’t believe he hadn’t trained and couldn’t believe he’d never run that distance before. They’ve invited him to come back and run the event for free anytime he wants and, if he does, I have no doubt he’ll be treated like a celebrity.

There were only three weeks of school after the Mother’s Day race and Jack spent his remaining mornings in my office completing work, and his afternoons and evenings doing what all the other seniors were doing—enjoying time with his friends, reflecting on their years together, getting ready for graduation. He went on the senior trip, he asked an amazing girl to the prom and she said yes, and at graduation he stood up in front of everyone, as did each of his classmates, and he gave his graduation speech. He was wearing his mother’s identification badge from her job in the respiratory unit at the hospital where she had worked. He told us all he was carrying her with him. And in his speech, in his quirky and understated way, he said, “As some of you may know, I ran a half marathon this year…” and at that the audience erupted into cheering and applause. “This year,” he went on to say, “has been the worst year and the best year of my life…”

Working with Jack this spring reminded me that in working with students, teachers have to study them. We have to slow down and pay attention to the details, we have to ask questions and work to understand what they are trying to communicate. Jack’s capacity as a student is, of course, so much greater than what sometimes appears on the surface. His moments of struggle were not about him being lazy or stubborn, even though it may have looked that way on quick glance. And that is the work—to go beyond the quick glance. We have to figure out about the students what the mothers already know—we have to be willing to lean across the table, with genuine interest, and listen.

Teenagers are incredible people and they all go through their own metamorphosis. And still, each victorious arrival is amazing, and sometimes even breathtaking. At the graduation party later that night, I stood off to the side of the dance floor during karaoke with some other faculty—Jack’s teachers and coaches among them—and we watched as Jack took the mic and whirled around with his classmate Sophie, belting out the lyrics to their song: “I’m coming out of my cage and I’ve been feeling just fine!...Destiny is calling me, open up my eager eyes, cause I'm Mr. Brightside!” All the kids knew the song and were jumping up and down with the beat, screaming along with their friends. We old people were all amazed, and laughing, and I was crying, because what else could I do? What a privilege it is to watch people emerge, as their big colorful wings unfurl.

Racer Ready

When Quinn was a baby our colleagues at school started imagining the day when Quinn would join the ski club. They started telling us how great it would be, and how much she, and we, would love it. When she was in preschool, they started telling us, “you have to sign her up for the club!” 

As is often true, those who have gone through life before you have an uncontrollable desire to preview, for you, what’s ahead. To tell you the absolutes of your future, and in so doing leave you to feel that your process as a first-time parent, isn’t really a unique process at all, but rather a following of other people’s leads. I tend to think of myself as a nonconformist, at least a little bit, even at my “mature” age. And certainly I know that I react against being told what to do—no matter how immature that may be. I like to make my own choices, and I always have. And “clubs”—either literal or metaphoric—have never been my thing.

For all these reasons, I have never been sure that Quinn would, as predicted, join “the club.”

There is irony, of course, in the fact that Sam and I have both made our living from working at the academy for the past sixteen years. Irony as well in the fact that I have, long since, come to fully believe in the values and the mission of our school, and to admire the expertise and the care of the ski coaches I have worked with for so many years. Among them are many people who have coached or competed at the national and World Cup level. There are champions and Olympians and heroes among them. And yet, in spite of now being the point person in the academic program to sell our school to prospective families every year, when I have imagined it for Quinn, I haven’t been sold. 

One of the stories I tell prospective families is the story of our graduation tradition. For as long as the school has been graduating students (forty-five years now), the graduation ceremony has been the same: every graduate gives a speech. This remains true even in years when we graduate over thirty students. Every single one earns her and his spot at the lectern. And inevitably, the predominant theme, year after year, is gratitude for the opportunities students have had to build meaningful friendships with each other, and with the faculty, and a sense of appreciation for the ways those relationships helped them through the many highs and lows of their high school and ski racing experience. “Skiing is just a metaphor,” our long time Head of School would say, again and again, and graduation is the place where I am reminded each year of what it is a metaphor for: hard work, taking risks, the importance of setbacks, the value of commitment and perseverance, the gift of being challenged. I could go on.

Who wouldn’t want this for their kid? And how could I not want it for Quinn, when I clearly see the value it has for other people’s kids? And how can I sell people this bill of goods if I’m not willing to buy it myself? 

Graduation isn’t every day…it’s one day, at the end of a long road. And on that road our students face some formidable challenges. Mostly I picture the crutches—many, many sets of crutches, and bandages, and braces, and stitches, and bruises—of the flesh, and of the ego, and worse yet, of the heart. “Be careful” is one of the phrases that comes most often out of my mouth with Quinn. I try to stop myself, and sometimes I succeed, but still it sneaks out. And being careful is the antithesis of ski racing, the opposite of what ski racing requires. Ski racing requires you to be comfortable taking risk. And while risk taking is something I used to be good at, that changed a lot when I went from being “Kerry” to being “Quinn’s mom.” As Quinn’s mom, it is my biological imperative to steer her (and me) away from risk—it is a hard wired aspect of my job as mother, and when I do a job, I do the job. 

And all that said, just as I see the idea of being able to make my own choices as a sacred right, I believe it to be Quinn’s right as well. I have always felt a desire, even a responsibility, to honor Quinn’s right to make choices, or, at the very least, to protect her future ability to choose things for herself.

This fall, as the ski club sign up deadline approached, again, I found I was more conflicted than in years past as I tried to dismiss it. Quinn is nearing the age when, if she is not soon involved in the sport, she will lose the ability to later jump into it and experience any success. Insanely, if she were to ever want to go to our school in high school, she would need to be working her way toward that opportunity now, in the second grade. 

At the end of the last ski season, Quinn was still small enough that Sam and I would help her onto the fast-approaching chair lift as it swung around to scoop us up. And for the duration of each seemingly interminable chairlift ride, as Sam gazed around at the scenery, I would hold onto her, pinning her to the seat and to my side, waiting anxiously for the ride to end. As the beginning of this ski season approached, I was sick at the thought of Quinn being at the mountain without us. I had a hard enough time letting her go with her dad, nevermind going with some kid “coach” who wasn’t going to pay attention. 

And yet as sick as I felt at the notion of Quinn being fifty feet in the air in slippery snow pants, I also felt sick when I imagined having a conversation with her as a middle school aged Quinn, trying to explain to her how I let my own fears get in the way of her being able to make a choice for herself. Quinn has grown up on our school campus. She is at home there. For every day of her life she has been welcomed there and treated with care and kindness by our colleagues and our students. I imagined her reaching the age when she could finally be there on her own, if she chose to, and being told it wasn’t available to her. I knew this was a conversation that I never wanted to have.

We had asked Quinn in year’s past if she wanted to try the ski club, and each time she said no. It’s possible I willed her to answer that way, and it’s possible she had no interest. In all other things Quinn has signed up to do—soccer, gymnastics, swimming lessons, camps—we have had to coax her in, and promise to let her quit if she would at least give it a try. Fortunately, whenever she’s tried things, she’s later admitted that she’s had fun and was glad we made her do it. This year, when we asked Quinn if she wanted to try the ski club, she thought about it briefly and then said yes. I was surprised when it didn’t require any coaxing. She asked plenty of questions about it, but she seemed, from the beginning, fairly determined to give it a try. It reminded me of a day last year, when Quinn was in first grade and we were driving to school, she said something along the lines of “When I go to GMVS…” At the time, I told her it wasn’t certain that she would go to GMVS. I told her that all the kids who go to GMVS are ski racers. Her response was quick: “Well I don’t have to be a ski racer,” she said. It was half statement, and half question, and it seems she filed the answer away.

The ski club kicks off with a series of dryland training workouts in the fall, as they wait for the mountain to open. The workouts take place at our school, where Quinn feels as if she is master of the domain. This helped her, on the first weekend, with her first-time jitters. What also helped was the fact that every one of the coaches knew her, even if she didn’t know them. They were our colleagues and our current and former students. Upon arrival she had the gift of being treated as a “native,” even though Sam and I both see ourselves, and therefore Quinn by extension, as outsiders to this sport that was never our own. She took note as one coach told another who she was: Sam and Kerry’s kid. She took comfort in knowing where the bathrooms, and water fountains, and mats and rings and balls were, and knowing too that she could point these things out to others. Quinn has always imagined an air of authority for herself, and the whole scene suited her. She loved everything about "dry landing." And, eventually, when she came home and told me who her coaches were, that suited me. 

Quinn’s primary coach, week after week, was Sarah McHugh…the same Sarah McHugh who was my advisee, and who knit Quinn a blanket, along with another advisee, Susan, while they were training in Chile at the same time that Quinn was being born. Sarah, who has since gone on to graduate from college and become an elementary school teacher. Sarah who, I knew without doubt, would make sure Quinn got onto the chairlift.

The first Saturday of skiing was a depressing one for me. I felt sad to see her head off to spend the day with other people, just as we each have to do all week. For the past eight years, I have enjoyed our lazy winter weekend mornings, watching cartoons (Quinn) and drinking coffee (us). We rush out the door all week, and I hated the idea of rushing out the door on the weekends too. I was cranky and sad that first Saturday. But on the second Saturday, I went to a yoga class. And then I went grocery shopping. And I had time to do some things around the house. The second Saturday wasn’t so bad and, in fact, it was kind of nice. Just when I finished doing things I wanted and needed to do, Quinn came home—excited to see me, excited about her day of skiing with her friends, and eager to tell me all about it. 

And so it went every Saturday and Sunday for the rest of this winter: out the door by 8:30, skiing from 9am-2pm, home around 3pm. In all these weeks Quinn took only 2 single days off—each time to go to birthday parties. She went to training when she was tired, when she was sick, and when the weather completely sucked. And she added days on school vacations when, miraculously, the club coaches offered extra training. One day, over Christmas vacation, when it was pouring rain on bullet-proof ice, and the start of training was delayed, and Quinn was in her new Christmas pjs watching cartoons and feeling sick with a cold, I told her she could stay home—that in fact she should stay home to rest (i.e.: be with me because I was missing her). “No way, Mom. I want to go to club!” Quinn has always been a heel-dragger in the mornings, she still is every school day, and yet this winter, every weekend, she got herself dressed and out the door. On this December morning when she insisted on going, in spite of my repeated encouragements to stay home, I drove her to the mountain, and I stood watching in disbelief as she clomped up the hill, with her skis already on, to catch up with her friends on the t-bar.

Within a couple of weekends of skiing with her group, Quinn was a different skier entirely. Her confidence was undeniable and her whole demeanor had been transformed. She was quick to pick up the habits of the other kids—leaning casually on her poles, and clicking out of her bindings in quick alternating steps. When she trained or raced in gates, her vertical posture set her apart from the more experienced skiers, but when she skied with me, she was the one with skills. One Saturday, when I met her to take a few runs after training ended, she was eager to take me into “Semi-Tough Woods,” but I stopped her. “I don’t do woods,” I told her, so she said okay and turned down a different trail—a trail with moguls. “I don’t do moguls,” I yelled down to her, but she was gone, weaving effortlessly between the mounds. She stopped at the bottom and turned to watch me. “You’re doing great, Mom!” she yelled up the hill, and I was mortified by the realization that she has already, at age 8, left me behind.

Still, what I can’t deny is that the ski club has been utterly incredible for Quinn. The kid who always wants me or Sam to go with her wherever she goes, now goes all over the mountain on her own. The same cautious kid who has refused to buy school lunch for three years running, is now asking for money so she can walk from the clubhouse to the ski lodge with her buddies, buy chicken tenders and maybe some Starbursts. She is negotiating the crowds, the lines, the transactions, and the change she knows she needs to bring me. She has gained so much confidence, independence, pride, strength of body and will, and so many new friends that I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude every time I think about “the club.” 

All of these gains make the risks, for now, worth it. Every single weekend since the end of October has been dedicated, in our house, to ski racing, and yet ski racing, as I’ve been told for years, has so little to do with it. Our Alpine Director at school described Quinn as having a “fine-tuned sense of self-preservation.” That was his positive spin on the fact that she is, for now, still slow. It is a description that I appreciate, given that I’m still getting used to this new sport she’s chosen for herself. 

The two highlights of Quinn’s first year of racing had nothing to do with racing, which strikes me as just right. The first was winning the “Best Crash” award on the mogul trail with her group, with the bag of Starbursts she was given as a prize. And the second was winning the medal at the Club Championship race for “Second Place” in the costume contest, where she was dressed, appropriately, as a Starburst--a costume she imagined and her crafty dad managed to make real.

In a year or two or three, Quinn might decide ski racing is not for her, and it will be fine with me if she does. I don't care about the ski racing, and I don't care about whether she's ever any good at it. I do care about the metaphor--the hard work, facing the challenges, and learning to pick herself up after her "yard sales" in life. Most of all, I care about her right to choose her own path. What an amazing thing it is to watch your daughter become her own person—ready or not.

With sincere gratitude to our GMVS family, for helping Quinn on her way.