3 posts tagged “childhood”
the scene:
i'm sitting at my childhood desk, but where the "seating" spot is, there's an ancient TV. instead, my macbook is off to the left, where i need to open the cabinet door in order to sit properly. my knees are inside the cabinet, resting against the shelves full of old photo albums and other items from my youth. beside me sits a mug of a makeshift chai tea latte - brewed chai tea from a bag, a big spoonful of non-dairy vanilla creamer, and half a splenda. is it too much information to mention that these items (well, maybe not the splenda) were purchased when i last lived here, over two years ago? thankfully, they're items that really can't go bad, no matter the expiration date.
our friends' dog is occasionally pacing around the living room, barking lightly at the sound of the neighbors coming home. we're watching him for the week. he's a strange dog, very calm and slightly stupid. well, no. he's just not quite sure how to act like a real dog. my mother came home the other day to find him sitting in the doorway with the "i'm in trouble, aren't i?" look and trash strewn all around the kitchen. she said she had to restrain herself from busting out laughing, as he's never done that before. he's almost six, and a wheaton terrier - the 'blondes' of the dog universe.
this end of the house has been quiet all day, with my brother working all morning. now, he's waiting to hear back from his friend to find out when they're going out to the movies. i never understood this, going to the movies with a friend you haven't seen in a long time. wouldn't you want to go somewhere where you can talk and catch up? alas, the difference between me and my brother.
the rest of the house is quiet, too . . . my dad's been at work all day, and my mom is hiding in her office. or sleeping on the couch. if ever i don't hear her, she's in one of those two places. i feel like she's working, as she was earlier. also, her office is the warmest room in the house - she's got a space heater that's incredible. the room has no heat to start with, as it was part of the garage originally. with both mom and dad working one of their many jobs from home, they both needed office space. one of the first projects my dad completed on this house, so many years ago, was building that office.
speaking of heat, my room is the coldest in the house. long ago, we had digital thermometers - one outside, one in my room, and one in the kitchen - to keep track of the drafts. my room in the winter would average around 50 degrees or so. i'd say we're at about that now, maybe colder. i can feel the draft wafting towards me from the walls - yes, you can feel the wind and cold through the walls, not the windows - over the little heater i have. right now, i'm making about 30 mistakes a minute typing. well, maybe not that many. but way more than i should, since my fingers are getting colder and colder . . . more tea time.
it's really not that good. just warm.
***
no matter how cold or how quiet it gets, this place will always be home.
***
two years have passed since i lived in this room. my walls still have a few remains of the life i once knew - a printout of my favorite photo from high school, a strangely lit - yet quite dramatic - print of an old musician friend, a keychain and a piece of pottery hanging in the same place since i was about seven from my bestest friend in the entire universe (official title), and most embarrassingly, the bits and pieces of song lyrics and quotes i ingeniously wrote on the back of my door in sharpie with key words missing, as they were taped on in magazine cut-out letters. the letters are long gone, but i still remember what the quotes were in their entirety.
"Sometimes the best way to figure out who you are is to get to the place where you don't have to be anyone else." - anonymous
"Hope is home and the heart is free." - Enya
"I'm still the angel to a girl who hates to sin." - Tori Amos
"Dear g-d, help me find myself." - me
words from a darker time. and oddly enough, the time was only as dark as i wanted it to be. in reality, i had lots going for me. a loving boyfriend. fantastic friends. fun classes. theatre. singing. marching band. cheerleading. acceptance to every college i applied. somewhere in there, the messages got lost. and thus, i felt the need to express my darkness through the back of my door, where no one else would see.
***
on this thanksgiving, i am thankful for so many things in my life.
i'm thankful that i was able to emerge from that darkness and get to that place where i didn't need to be anything but myself. and for being able to look back on that time and see all the amazing things that i got to experience.
i'm thankful for this cold room, and for the wash of memories that comes over me every time i enter it after being away for so long. relishing in my first kiss. picking out the hideous wallpaper. writing numerous songs. hours and hours and hours of procrastination. practicing cheers with my pom-poms over and over, just because i couldn't believe i was actually a cheerleader and i wanted to be the best. (i wasn't, but that's another story for another day.) contemplating being alone for the first time after an intense relationship. hiding in my bed for the last time during my month of unemployment, right before the phone call about my interview with exhale. making my 148 pact with diane. teaching myself how to sing by mimicking my CD's and tapes of The Little Mermaid and Les Miserablés (the London cast, of course.) looking out my window at night, hoping and wishing and praying in the moonlight that everything will turn out just fine in the end.
i'm thankful for the life i've built for myself, considering the tumultuous times. and i'm thankful for my hard work paying off and landing me at such a fun and challenging and educational job, working for such inspiring people. and i'm thankful for the ability to take a chance and put my talents on the line for all to see and judge, and for them taking a chance on me, enabling me to sing the most beautiful of music and share in the most beautiful of moments. and i'm thankful for all the new and wonderful friends i've found through these endeavors, friends with the same passions as myself. and, i'm thankful that these friends are more like enduring family and less just fleeting moments of happiness.
i'm thankful for the strange inspiration, driving down I-95 that beautiful March day, that maybe what i needed wasn't just a new job, but a new location. and i'm thankful for the timing, as it could not have been better. i'm even thankful for my ex-boyfriend - if it weren't for dating him the second time and realizing we *really* didn't work, i wouldn't have gotten over him, and i wouldn't have been so brave and sure of myself as to even consider a big move.
i'm thankful for my brother. and i'm thankful for his job. and his move. and his house being only ten minutes away from me. and i'm thankful that he's starting to like Washington and Virginia. (i'll be even more thankful once he starts to make more friends and branch out a bit. but all in due time.) and most importantly, for the chances we do get to spend time and talk, becoming better friends than we ever have been.
i'm thankful for my mother. and i'm thankful that i am turning into a clone of her. and for all the times she was hard on me, and for all the times she listened to my stories and just smiled along. and for inspiring me to finally get my act together and use my skills to their highest potential. and for being the amazing, strong, and loving mom that she has grown to be.
i'm thankful for my father. and i'm thankful for his quiet and simple nature, as i think my mom would explode without him. and for his sense of humor, and love, and enjoyment of even the littlest of things. and for working so damn hard for so many years and still remaining a positive and jolly man, all while being a supportive and doting dad.
i'm thankful for my grandmother, too. at eighty-two years old, she hasn't changed a bit since i can remember, and i'm thankful that she realized how much she had left to live for after my grandfather passed away. he'd be so proud of her now. i'm thankful every single day for her health and mind, and i'm thankful that she knows the love of her children, grandchildren, and even her great-grandson. and i'm thankful that we have had the chance to grow older with her and know her love, too.
out of everything i could possibly be thankful for . . .
i'm thankful for life.
i just sat here for well over an hour and poured this story out, which started out as a comment on my [awesome and apparently inspiring] former boss's blog. i realized after about four lines that this was going to open a can of worms more suited for my own blog than someone else's.
i suggest taking the time to read the blog behind the link below to understand the topic at hand. as an overview, it talks about the difference between a fixed-mindset and a growth-mindset in children when it comes to intelligence and learning. a fixed-mindset would say, "i've been told i'm smart. success should come naturally to me. if i work hard and don't do well, i should avoid doing this again." a growth-mindset would say, "i've worked hard, and now i've learned something new. working hard brings success, so i'm going to keep working hard and try new things to continue doing well."
can you guess which one i was?
***
i wish someone had written this information on the effects that intelligence and forms of praise have on education and given it to me on my first day of school in fourth grade. although i'm rather happy with the way i've turned out, knowing this could have eradicated years of good education wasted.
at some point in third grade, our school system gave us a standardized test to see if we qualified for the "honors program," an advanced program for kids who demonstrated a higher level for learning than the 'regular' kids. apparently, i did well [i have no recollection of this test] and my parents, excited to have a 'smart' kid, put me in the program.
this program took us out of our regular class for half a day, traveling from one school to another, separating us from our former peers. essentially, the accelerated track had us skip whatever was learned in fourth grade and put us in the fifth grade books - completely assuming that we were 'smart' enough to either already know or put two and two together about what we were missing.
at first, i loved this program. as a child who didn't have many friends in her original class because A. she was the 'replacement' redhead [a topic for another time] and B. she could read on a sixth grade level in first, it sounded like a safe haven. everyone around me could do so much more than our other classmates, and it was inspiring. i wanted to be just as good as the best kids in the class . . . but it wasn't long before i realized i had to work twice as hard as them to keep up.
math has never been a strong point for me, and in this program, we skipped a key lesson - how to add in our heads. to this day, i still count on my fingers; or, more discretely, i count imaginary dots on the sides of the number on the page. so, as a recently pegged "official smart kid," i lost my faith in myself when i realized i couldn't even complete the timed math problem sheets we were required to do every week, let alone work on par to my classmates.
but i was told i was smart! my parents believed in my inherent intelligence and placed me in this program, where i was supposed to do great things! i felt like i should be able to be top of the class . . . yet here i was, failing.
failing was unacceptable.
i studied, and studied, and studied, and still, i struggled. after my classmates moved on from addition and subtraction to multiplication and division, and i was still attempting to complete [for the first time] the addition time sheets, i'd come home and cry out of resentment. i hated math. HATED MATH.
somewhere, in my little mind, i decided that since i hated math, i didn't care about math. and if i didn't care about math, then i didn't need to try so hard at it. there were so many other things i was good at! why should i do something that's just going to cause me to fail and make my parents mad?
thus started the downward spiral. anytime a subject became too hard, where studying twice as much as my classmates wouldn't produce the same grade, i gave up. i lost interest. i stopped caring.
once i stopped caring, i realized i could slip by on a decent grade by doing minimal work. i took on the mantra that i was "the dumb kid in the smart kid's class." after all, there has to be someone at the bottom, right?
looking back, my mom knew exactly what was happening. she told me, later on in life, that she was the same way as a kid. if a subject wasn't interesting, she didn't care, and she would put in only enough effort to pass. maybe, at the time, she didn't know how to solve the problem because she realized we were exactly the same. or maybe, she thought if she came down hard on me, i'd fix my ways and get back on track. either way, i vividly remember nights of yelling and crying about homework that i just didn't want to do because it was HARD. but if i was so 'smart,' then why was it so hard? i didn't want to fail, and i felt like if i put in the effort and still failed, then i was worse than a failure - i wasn't smart anymore. i couldn't bear the thought of not being my mom's smart child anymore.
moving from elementary to junior high and then to senior high school didn't change a thing. every year, i'd excel in certain classes, and falter miserably in others. my art and english classes were highlights, with math trailing in the wind. i did relatively well in history, but i didn't care about it. all those dates - numbers - to remember made my head spin, and i became aware immediately that everything we studied was driven by war [another topic for another time]. science would vary as well, with biology stronger than chemistry or physics.
do we see the correlation here? anything needing math skills or revolving around numbers got pushed to the end of my priority list, with the constant creative points being number one. when i put effort into my writing or art, i found success, and all i wanted was to finally be GOOD at something. i cared about these creative outlets more than i had cared about any subject in my ten years as a student, and it was liberating. i felt like finally, i'm smart, just like they said so long ago.
i could have gone to a big, great college. i had enough AP credits and had taken a year and a half of remedial math study at the end of high school to make up for the deficit in my education. i had extra curricular activities, and i placed relatively well on my SAT's and SAT2's. instead, i opted for a small, average college. it wasn't where the spectacular kids went . . . but there, i felt like i could finally put in effort and achieve success.
a funny thing happened when i went to college. after about three miserable weeks of being a biology major, i had an epiphany when my teacher spoke the words "organic chemistry" in reference to what courses were required next.
i said to myself, "i don't want to take organic chemistry. i don't HAVE to take organic chemistry! i pick my own classes here, and i'm [via my grandparents, thank you] paying for it. i should take all classes i WANT to take, classes that make me happy! classes where i can work hard and actually do well!"
from that day on, even my math classes seemed so much brighter. i knew that once i was done with that class, i never HAD to take a math class again. i could take literature and writing and languages, and eventually, design and photography and painting and sculpture and yes - even art history!
and, from that day on, i realized that i WAS smart - just in a different way than my former classmates. while they're now doctors and lawyers and perpetual students, i'm a creative mind. i'm an artist.
i can take the hundreds of thousands of words floating around in my brain and turn them into stories. i can take the millions of notes humming through my bones and turn them into songs. i can see fleeting moments in life and capture them as memories for all time. i can stand among just a few to a few thousand people and sing my heart out, illustrating melodies written by amazing composers, from songs committed to memory to ones i'm reading for the first time.
***
sometimes i wonder what would have happened if i hadn't been placed in that program. if i hadn't been overwhelmed in the challenge, or if i had been told my efforts were more important than the end result. if i hadn't needed to live up to expectations of excellence, and been encouraged to excel on my own.
although the journey was hard, and not one i'd like to live over again, i feel like i was given a second chance to succeed with college.
thank goodness i opened my eyes to see the wealth of knowledge available to me.
and thank goodness for the ability to see what happens when passion and creativity come together.
quite amazing, isn't it?
Who is your favorite Muppet? Why?
QotD submitted by knitwitology.vox.com.
day two of QotD. i'm liking this feature so far.
so. my favorite muppet. i think i've got too many to pick one, so i'll list the top 5, in no particular order.
- rizzo the rat. love the butter-pat iceskating on the
grill in NYC. part of the reason i won't eat at establishments like
that. also because their rats don't talk. what's the fun in having
rats if they don't talk?
- the sweedish chef. nothing like a non-english speaking muppet trying to shove a dancing lobster into a pot of boiling water. what will the muppets think of next?
- beaker. another non-verbal muppet, only he seems to be invincible. every explosion left him singed, but still muttering "meep meeeeeeeeep."
- snuffalupagus. i know, he's not *really* a muppet, but he was most certainly in the christmas special, and that qualifies him. he's so big and gray, and well, snuffy! what's not to love?
- last, but in no way least, animal. from imdb.com,
[at the beginning of the movie during the play, Animal chases a young lady up a seating aisle]
Animal: WOMAN! WOMAN! WOMAN! WOMAN!
[he turns around and looks at the audience]
Animal: WOMAN! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
/QotD
