There It Is

This is the site of one of my favorite childhood memories.

My family took a vacation every year, and we almost always camped. For a while, we owned a Pontiac Bonneville station wagon (that my parents promptly named The Lemon, and sold before we'd had it for too many years). We took our tent camping; it was canvas, and therefore heavy, but big, roomy and sturdy. You could easily stand in it, and my parents loved to tell the story of the time we slept through a wind storm that knocked down every other tent in the campground. Ours didn't budge.

Still, it was time consuming to take out, put up and break down, so when we owned The Lemon, if we were only staying somewhere for one night, we'd just sleep in the car - me in the front seat, my sister in the second seat, and my parents in the back, with the third seat folded down.

We camped at this spot on the creek when I was eight. We kids spent our time in the water while the parents did the actual work of camping, like making meals on a camp stove.

There were several families there. I don't recall numbers, but there was quite the little crowd.

Most of the other kids climbed halfway or higher on the cliff face, and jumped into the pool underneath. It was the deep spot on the creek. I'm going to guess that it was somewhere in the 10 foot depth right up against the rock, but I can't swear to it. I never went down the creek that far.

I incurred the ridicule of the other kids, and a few adults, by staying directly in the shallows. My big accomplishment was walking all the way across at one spot - the water got to be about rib cage deep for a few steps, and this was a huge, "Look at me!" accomplishment.

Yeah; nobody was impressed.

But there was NO WAY that I was jumping off of the rock into the water. Do you see the height of that cliff?

OK, here's a little scale, for perspective. Here's my van in the parking lot. The creek is just off the frame to the right.

HO -LY COW. You could have put a million dollars in that pool, and I wouldn't have jumped. I'm a wade in the shallows person.

Some adventurous big kids - probably early teens - climbed all the way to the top before jumping. Their parents nixed any repeat of that behavior. Not on grounds that made sense to me, but on the grounds that the water needed to be deeper to jump from that height.

Years later, I asked my mom where this spot was. We'd been through six states on that trip, and I couldn't remember where this campground was. "It wasn't actually a campground," Mom said, "just a little rest area." Any more, I think that they'd shoo away overnight visitors.

We were driving my son to his university when we passed this spot, and I saw it for the first time in almost 40 years. "That's it! That's the place! We camped there!" I became very excited, and insisted on stopping for photos on the drive back home. My family could not understand why, but humored me on the grounds that there's just no accounting for my eccentricities.

It was almost exactly the way I remembered it. The biggest difference was that I remembered the rock being pink, and it's actually a rusty color. In my defense, my clearest memories are of the place at sunset. Everything else almost the same.

The biggest changes were that the willows along the bank were higher, and there's now a chain link fence at the edge of the parking lot, blocking access to the cliff face, except from the water. There used to be a defined path through the willows, leading from the parking lot to the water, but it's closed up without all the foot traffic. I'll bet that someone decided that it was courting humungous lawsuits to "let" kids jump off of it.

The only unpleasant association I have with the place is the mosquitoes. I'm one of those people who smell particularly yummy to mosquitoes. They'll feast on me, even when they're avoiding other people. This was shortly before we learned that taking a daily Vitamin B-1 makes a person smell far less yummy to the little bloodsuckers. (Sincerely, it works.)

Since we were only here for one night, we slept in the car. It got so stuffy that we kids insisted on keeping the window cracked open, even though Mom wanted it closed to keep out the bugs.

Mother knows best. I woke up several times to the distinctive whine of mosquitoes buzzing near my ear. When I woke up in the morning, my mother gasped, wide eyed at my appearance. Mom is a very calm person, not given to any kind of hysterics, so I was alarmed. "What?"

Mom doesn't sugar coat things; she's good with words and can usually find a non-offensive way to say things. Sometimes, though, she just laid it on the line. "Your face looks like raw hamburger!"

Stupid mosquitoes.

Decades later, we encountered no insects. My husband laughed at me as I insisted on wading out in the water again, taking photos. "I wish I had a picture of that," he said.

I, though, now have photographs to go with my memories. I can almost see the kids flinging themselves off of the rock face, laughing.

Ah, childhood.

It's good even in the shallows.

Sam

Everyone remembers their first love. Mine was Sam. He was eight years older than I was, big and a little clumsy and slow. Recent experience had left him empty inside, but he still had a lot to give.

Sam was a 1973 Volkswagen van, painted yellow and white. My dad bought him with a stripped out interior - no seats, not even any carpet - intending to convert him into a camper. I was 15 years old. Dad already owned a pickup truck, and Mom owned a sedan, so when I started driving, I ended up driving the van instead of taking a car that my parents were using.

I was totally prepared to hate the van, and I drove it only under protest. I'd been in love with Volkswagen Beetles since I was a kid, having first loved Herbie the Love Bug, and later, my adored big sister's car. I wanted a white Bug with a blue and green interior; I'd been fantasizing about it for years. I had all of $200 in the bank, and no job, though, so that wasn't happening any time soon.

I resented driving the van. It wasn't cute, it wasn't popular - it was kind of embarrassing. I'd tell everyone, "This is my dad's car."

Then, slowly, the van started to grow on me. Dad got a carpet remnant from somewhere, and we put it over the formerly bare floor. I found a $20 wicker loveseat, a yellow beanbag, and a chair made from an old barrel for seating. This was years before mandatory seat belt laws, so my decor was legal.

It turns out that being able to jam a dozen or so of your teenage friends into the back of a van is handy and fun, when you're a teenager.

My friends found names for the van; the Beatles fans called it The Yellow Submarine. The Who fans called it The Magic Bus. Still, I thought that he - I was sure the van was male - needed a proper, given name.

Every once in a while - about once a year - our drama guild organized a Kidnap Breakfast. We'd designate a few drivers, then phone everyone else's parents to ask that they leave their doors unlocked, or wake up at 3 a.m., so that we could drag their kids out of bed and take them to breakfast in their pajamas.

The van was great for this task, since we could stack people like cord wood. One early morning, my friend Guy and I set out on our assigned route of kidnap victims. Rather, we tried to set out; the van hated cold weather, and it was plenty cold in the small, dark hours of the morning.

After repeated attempts at starting the engine, I decided that we'd have to just sit there until it warmed up a degree or two. Making conversation, I turned to Guy and said, "The van needs a name. What should I call him?"

We were working on the play Wait Until Dark at school, and Guy's character was named Sam. "How about Sam?" he said.

Sam! I knew immediately that we'd found the right name. He was Sam from then on.

I was soon deeply in love with Sam. He was slow, and unwieldy, and he hated cold and the wind - not only did even small gusts blow him sideways on the road, but you could hear the thin sheet metal ripple in high winds. He held up to 15 of my friends at a time. He was perfect for me.

The fastest we ever got him up to was 65 MPH, downhill, with my friend Rich driving. (I have never been a speed demon.) We loved taking him up to Tahoe, but on the steep, mountain roads, he'd slow to a 35 MPH crawl; I'd turn on the hazard lights and wave people past. He did not corner well; the only time anyone ever tipped him up on two wheels, my sister was taking him through a sharp(ish) corner. I no longer found any of his flaws uncool. I loved everything about him.

We once took him backwards through a McDonald's drive through window. We took him to Pyramid Lake, and frequently loaded him up for movie nights. We once drove next to my friends Mike and Scott while they jogged and the rest of us hummed the theme from Rocky through the open sliding door.

Sometimes, my mom would refer to him in feminine pronouns - "Could you park her around back?"

"Mom! He's a Samuel, not a Samantha," I'd say. Mom, though, was sure (as is my husband) that all automobiles are female. Nonsensically, I'd argue, "They can't all be girls!"

For my 18th birthday, my brother in law acid etched comedy/tragedy masks onto his windows, in the bottom left corner of Sam's windshield and both side windows. They were gorgeous.

I further decorated the interior, with a bean bag checkerboard-topped table, an old-time photo taken of a dozen of us at the state fair, a teddy bear rug and cartoons that said things like, "It's a little more than carpooling. We call it van stuffing."

When I started dating my husband, we took Sam to the drive in movie, and watched from the wicker couch, through the open slider. (We froze.) I was pregnant with my second child when my husband and I sold Sam. We needed to - we couldn't afford to install real seats in back, and we couldn't buckle infant car seats into the wicker. Still, I missed him terribly.

I've been thinking a lot about Sam this week. Volkswagen has announced that it will no longer manufacture the VW van after this year's limited edition. I can't believe how blue this makes me. I can't believe that they're only available in Brazil. I can't believe that I can't afford one.

Looking through the auto sales supplement to the paper recently, we found a 1973 yellow and white VW van. "Is it Sam? Can you tell from the photos?" If I had a spare $3000, I would totally buy this impractical used car, whether it's Sam or not.

My son sighed. "Mom, you are such a hippie."

He's not the first person to accuse me of this. In fact, it's such a common occurrence that I developed a stock answer years ago: "If there are sober, monogamous hippies, then you bet I am."

A girl and her van: it's a beautiful thing.

I Want My Mommy

I had a dream with my mom in it recently. I knew that I hadn't seen her for a long time, but I couldn't remember why.

"Where have you been?" I said. "I've missed you!"

She laughed. "Right here," she replied. "Where else would I be?"

When she died ten months ago (not that I'm counting or anything), I thought that I was handling it well. I probably was - who knows? Anyway, I thought that would be as hard as it got.

She passed away just before the holidays, and I had it in my head that if we could just get through those first holidays, those first momentous firsts, we'd be OK. My family has been so amazing, I can't even express it.

Sometimes, what we need varies from person to person. The day after she passed away, my church had a holiday party planned. I knew that my husband and kids were looking forward to it, so I made sure that they went. I just could not handle the thought of all kinds of people extending condolences, so I stayed home. Everybody got what they needed.

I need alone time when I'm stressed or unhappy. I know that some people do not do well alone, and they will spend the time crying and sinking into depression. Not me; I look more like the housecleaning scene in Snow White. I become very efficient, metaphorically whistling while I work. I feel much better and more positive afterward.

I spent the first Mother's Day at home alone, too. My family went to church, but I knew that I just couldn't take it. I stayed home. There was no crying, no wallowing, no depression, but if I had had to expend the energy to deal with other people, on a day all about moms, it would have just crushed me.

I thought that I'd be feeling better as time went on. Isn't that what we hear? Time heals all wounds; misery fades. You learn a new normal.

Instead, I find that it becomes harder to be without my mom the more that time passes. I was so proud of myself in those first weeks. I'm finding that being without your mom for a few days or few weeks is easy. I'd done it before. I've been away from my mom on holidays, on trips, for sometimes months at a time when I lived hundreds of miles away from her.

It's becoming harder, because this is the longest I've ever been without my mom. Every day, it's a new record - the longest I've ever been away from my mom. There's no phone calls, no letters, no birthday cards. I actually feel like what I am - an orphan.

My children have lost all of their grandparents now. My oldest two have known all four of their grandparents and one great grandparent, so they've faced the loss of all of them. I've always told them what I truly believe - "They can see us any time they want. We just can't see them." The only grandparent that I ever knew, my grandma, died 5 days before my second child was born. She'd had Alzheimer's, so it was actually a positive thing. We'd been missing her for years already. Now, she wasn't miserable any more. She had been unaware when I got married and had my first child, but now I felt that I could share this birth with her, and she was happy for me.

I feel the same way about my parents and parents in law. I'm truly happy for my mom, who now gets to experience things like the birth of her two newest great grandkids. She'll be there when her oldest grandchild gets married this fall. One of her sons in law and one of her grandsons were recently hospitalized, and I am positive that she was right there. Now she gets to see her oldest great grandson's wrestling matches, and to look in on her daughter and granddaughter's classrooms. She couldn't do any of that during the last years of her life. She was in a lot of pain, and going anywhere was difficult. Now, pain and distance aren't a factor.

My kids never say, "I wish Grandma could see this," or "I wish Grandpa could be here," because we think that they do see, and they are there. They say things like, "I miss her," and, "I wish Grandpa could teach me how to shoot."

Selfishly, sometimes my thought process is all about me. I talk to my mom still, and sometimes I know exactly what she's probably saying back. Still, I can't see or hear her. I miss that. I miss her.

I think that this dream was a reminder of what I already know. Whether you believe that the memory of our loved ones is what makes them live beyond their own lifetime, or whether you're like me and believe that they are literally, sometimes physically, still here with us, in this dream my mother spoke the truth to me.

"I'm right here."

And "here" is wherever I am.

Can I See Your Registration, Please?

My mother set up her estate in such a way that almost everything was effortless and easy. Unfortunately, that makes the things that aren't easy stick out.

After a nine month battle with AT&T, I broke down and contacted the estate lawyer. Last time I had her send an e-mail - an e-mail! - it cost $278, so I'd been trying to avoid that option. She's very good, but she's not inexpensive.

The good news: I can legally ignore any further communication from AT&T or a collection agency, as per her advice. She assures me that "they are barred by law from pursuing a claim," since the "debt" was incurred after Mom's death. Plus, they failed to file a claim with the estate during the legally prescribed time period, so they're out of luck on two counts. So, score one for me. (Or her.)

Now, I get to tackle an agency just as much fun as a huge telecommunications giant; I get to deal with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

We got the notice in the mail that Mom's car registration was coming due. My brother is coming to town soon to take the car back home with him, so I thought that it would be a relatively simple matter of signing over the title.

Here, we hit a snag. I don't know where the title is. I can find electric bills from years ago, but I can't find the title. I'm sure it's filed somewhere that makes sense, but I probably won't find it in the next two weeks.

No problem; a duplicate title only costs $20.

OK, problem. The title is in my dad's name, despite the fact that Mom bought the car after he died.

She left a lot of things in Dad's name. She had always done that, and just signed things as "Mrs. E. R. Smith." It was legal and easy. I, however, cannot sign things as, "Offspring of E.R. Smith."

I have to take a copy of Dad's death certificate to the DMV, to show that Dad is, in fact, dead, and has been for a quarter of a century. Then, I need Mom's death certificate, to show that she, as Dad's surviving spouse and owner of all of their community property, once owned the car, and now is dead. Then, I will need to produce the paperwork naming me as trustee of the estate. Then I should be able to order a duplicate title, which I will then be able to sign over to my brother.

The minimum amount of time that the DMV will need to process this paperwork is six weeks. The registration expires in two weeks. So, I need to renew the current registration. No problem; it's the typical "owned by a little old lady" car. It has extremely limited miles, on a stellar driving record. Plus, there's no lien holder. The registration fee is only $15.

I renew my registration online, so I tried to renew this car that way. Problem; the software won't let me; I am not the car's legal owner. It wants me to set up an account for Dad.

Assuming that the software doesn't choke when I type in a birth date over one hundred years ago, or reject the plate number, since it's one digit shorter than those issued in recent decades (they kept the same plates, swapping from car to car when they replaced a vehicle), I will not create an account for a  deceased man, with the last name of Smith, no less.

The third option is to click, "Check out as a guest," which I tried to do. The computer informs me that (this sounds familiar), "This transaction cannot be completed online." I did it the old fashioned way, through the mail, with a paper check.

Now, we have to wait for the sticker for the plate.

I hope that my brother doesn't get pulled over while driving the car in the meantime. Just to get home from here, he has to drive through portions of three states. I can just imagine the conversation that will ensue if he has to explain to a patrolman why he is driving a car registered to his dead stepfather.

Ah, the joys of a society geared around documentation.

Postscript: one week later
Surprisingly, the DMV visit was relatively quick and painless. It seems that this is not the first time they've had to handle such a thing. I should have remembered the clerk's name so I could send her a cookie bouquet or something.

Off to School We Go

My third child is about to leave home to attend a university several hundred miles away. Naturally, we're simultaneously thrilled and anticipating missing him.

We've done this twice before, as his sisters went away to school, so we know the drill. It's not new. Still, there are differences.

The biggest difference is that he's been homeschooled since the sixth grade. "Are you more excited about Alex than you were with Lana and me?" my middle daughter asked. No, not more excited; I do feel a bit more proud of myself, though, because his education has more to do with me. All I provided for his sisters was their genes.

OK, that's not true; I'm exaggerating. We provided good genes, a home filled with books, educational trips, parents who loved learning, a place and time for homework, perspective, incentive ("If your grades slip, you'll have to quit your job. School comes first."), and an environment that helped them succeed. Still, most of the responsibility rested on them, then on the school. We could help, but you know those studies that say that kids spend an average of ten minutes a day with their families? We had those days.

When they were young, they had dance classes, gymnastics classes, drawing classes, Scouts and church activities on various week nights. Thank goodness, they were not in all those activities at once, but it still meant 2 or 3 weeknights, on average, spent somewhere besides home. When they were in high school, especially their last two years, their schedules looked like this: 6:45 a.m. - early morning religion classes; 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. - school; 2:30 - 5:00 p.m. - band practice; 6 to 10 p.m. - job; 10:30 p.m. - bedtime. Add to that band performances at games and competitions, other extracurricular activities, time spent with friends and church youth group, and on many, many days, we'd see them just long enough to say, "Get up," and, "Go to bed." If there were large educational deficiencies, we could do little to remedy them except cut back on their work hours or extracurricular activities - and everyone knows that the standard advice on getting into the college of your choice strongly advises extracurricular activities, so cutting those too drastically would make for both unhappy teens and diminished educational opportunities. (Ironic, isn't it? You can't cut back in order to focus on education, because your educational opportunities will suffer.)

(Both, by the way, were honor students, both took AP courses. Both got into their first choice college.)

We've gotten used to having my son, and our youngest daughter, with us all the time. They, too, have had classes (fencing, dance, karate), Scouts, church activities and more. We've spent an average of one day a week, and sometimes two, at homeschool co-ops, where they're in classes taught by someone besides us for up to three hours. Even with all of that, we still see them for hours every day. This last year has been a big adjustment, since my son's been working an average of 30 hours a week.

And, of course, we're legally (and otherwise) responsible for making sure he has a chance to learn everything he needs to know. I don't have to teach it to him personally, but I have to make sure that he has a chance to learn it. That's a change from when my older kids just signed up for whatever their school offered.

I never worried too much about whether he'd be able to go to college after being homeschooled. (My husband worried a bit, but that's because it's what he does. I Worry, Therefore I Am.) There are so many avenues available. Many schools accept a homeschool diploma the same way they do a public or private school diploma. Dual enrollment, or enrolling at the community college during high school (ours accepts students 16 and older), the GED, placement exams, Credit By Exam/Advanced Placement exams and more are available for schools that don't accept a homeschool diploma.

There are so many schools, and so many ways to go to school; there are few wrong ways to become educated. One of the very few ways that I consider wrong is the need to go into massive amounts of debt so that you'll have a particular school name on your diploma. Sometimes debt is unavoidable - my second daughter needed student loans - but I think it's a bad idea in general to take on loans while in your teens or 20s that you won't have paid off until your 50s.

I loved recently reading a piece of common sense advice from a father to his daughter. She was a sweet, earnest girl wanting very much to do the right thing, and she asked her father how she'd know which college God wanted her to attend. His down to Earth response? "God doesn't want you to be an idiot, so go somewhere you'll learn." Bingo. That nails it.

Plus, my son had an A list (only two schools, but I browbeat him into adding a third), a B list and a C list of schools to apply to. His fallback, "if all else fails" plan was to stay home and go to the local community college and then transfer to the local university; that's the A list plan for many kids. It's a good one. Still, I wanted my son to have the experience he wanted. He wanted to go away to school. Plus, both of his sisters went to their A list schools.

Other people, it seemed, worried about my son's choices, and chances, a lot. Many of them would express general worries about homeschooling, then temper their expressed worries by saying something like, "Oh, I'm not worried about YOU and YOUR kid, just OTHER homeschooled kids," as if that wasn't irritating. (Obviously) I'm only responsible for my kid. The world in general doesn't answer to me.

Even my son, who asked us to do this for four years before everything aligned and it worked for our family, occasionally argued with my choices.

In his 5th grade public school classes, they'd had the kids in the advanced group doing "beginning algebra." When we started sixth grade, he naturally wanted to skip any review and go full steam ahead. I think that a lot of current assembly line, run-it-past-the-kids-pass-an-exam-on-it-and-move-on instruction doesn't let the instruction sink into their long term memory. Sometimes I'll use a common term like "adverb" around kids in honors classes (or adults who passed them), and they'll be baffled and unsure of what it means. I've watched too many teens in honors programs - mine included - insist that they can't calculate how much, say, a 20% discount is on an item. My 16 year old daughter, who was in honors trigonometry at the time, insisted through tears that she couldn't do simple multiplication without a calculator. I was not going to teach with those methods.

When he couldn't tell me what simple terms like numerator, denominator or divisor meant, I told my son that we were going back to the basics until they were rock solid. He was furious, and sure that he'd be tragically behind other kids his age. (This was also his dad's biggest worry. Math is not my strong suit, and I'm upfront about this. He occasionally worried that I was not up to teaching it.) I did not want to hear about what tests he'd passed; I wanted to know what he could do. An education only works if it's functional, accessible knowledge. Plus, terms like "beginning algebra" are fairly meaningless. The first time a small child is presented with, "2 + _ = 4," that's algebra. It's solving for the unknown using a given formula.

One of the reasons we chose homeschooling was the ability to tailor it to our kids as individuals. The more "standardized" instruction becomes, the less effective it is, in my opinion.

I have four children. Two of them are relentless perfectionists, much harder on themselves than necessary (or than anyone else will ever be). Two will always take the path of least resistance, and have to be kept strictly accountable for making any progress at all. Naturally, I have to handle these kids differently.

In general, I'm pretty laid back as an instructor. When I used to teach theater classes, we'd play some sort of game, or do something that the kids loved but that they assumed was just goofing off, and then I'd tell them the skill they'd just mastered. My youngest child is all about fun, and my son's way too hard on himself, so I deliberately kept things casual.

Sometimes, my son would accuse me of being too casual. I usually just "grade" their stuff as, "OK," or, "Do it over," so there's not a lot of letter grades. For his official transcript, the one that I anticipated every college needing, I had to do letter grades (and justify them). I coach the local homeschool speech and debate team; we compete against teams from public and private schools. He happened to look over my shoulder during his junior year when I entered an A for speech and debate. He was aghast. "I didn't trophy once! I don't deserve an A!" Competitions are on average every month during the school year, and although he made finals all but twice, and came in 4th several times, he had not trophied (3rd place and up). He would have grudgingly given himself a C, "or maybe a B-."

I dragged out my official coaching manual, given to me by the national organization. It gives a grading scale based on the points kids earn at competition. He was far, far above the amount of points required for an A. He was deeply surprised. "I do not ever hand you an A because I'm your mommy," I told him.

It is worth noting that during his senior year, he brought home 5 trophies and qualified for the national tournament in two events. You can only represent your district at Nationals in one event (which he did).

When he signed up for the ACT exam, the exam preferred by his A list schools, I deliberately downplayed it. "It's no big deal. Plus, you can take it as many times as you want, and they throw out all but the highest score." We didn't get any practice books, but he did do the official ACT online practice, just because taking standardized tests is a skill unto itself, and I wanted the format to be familiar. Had he been his sister, there would have been lectures about how important it was, and how she needed to do her best, but he's a different person. I was very, very casual about it. The last thing he needed was to tie himself in knots.

His math was his lowest score, but - whoops - that was because we sent him in without a calculator. His scores were still right in the target range, and exceeded what he'd need for his B list schools. His lowest score was what his highest ranked B list school wanted as a composite score. But he wanted to take it again, and we totally understood. Armed with a calculator this time, his math score improved by 4 points, now putting him in the ACT's "college ready" range, and in the range for his A list schools. (Take that, naysayers!)

His highest score, science, was in the 30s. No big surprise to us - we know him - but a friend actually said to us, "But I thought that religious people didn't like science." Sigh.

In the fall of his senior year, we hit a small snag. One of his A list university choices required all homeschooled students to have a GED; actually, the state the school was in required it. By then he'd taken the ACT, which, in my opinion, should be enough info for any school, but hey, you jump through whatever hoops you have to.

Again, I downplayed it as no big deal. "It'll be kinda like the ACTs, only less difficult."

Here, though, it got a bit hairier. Our local laws required him, as a minor, to take a GED pre-test before he could take the GED. After the superintendent of schools himself reviewed the scores, he'd let us know if Alex had permission to take the GED. This is because they want to guarantee that minors, who are factored into state and federal numbers, don't show up as drop outs or failures. So of course, the first thing GED candidates have to do is drop out of school. I'm not kidding. If you are enrolled in a public, private, charter or online high school, you have to drop out to take the GED, or even the practice GED.

Not that it affected my homeschooled student, but let's think about that for a second. Let's say that you know you're cutting it close, and may not graduate. You want a diploma, but between work, home and your family situation, it might not happen. Instead of letting you stay in school while you take the GED as a safety net, the law requires you to drop out to even consider it as an option. Really? Does this seem like a good idea to anyone?

When I talked to people, though, many of them defended this policy. "You want kids to stay in school. You don't want them to take the GED. You want them to graduate." My state has one of the worst graduation rates in the country, and my county has one of the worst graduation rates in the state. How could it possibly get any worse? How could we want to make any viable alternative harder? Newspaper accounts like these are our "success" stories: "The Washoe County School District's 2010 graduation rate increased to 63 percent after languishing in the 56 percent range. (Reno Gazette Journal, September 14, 2010)"

That year, 2010, my state ranked 51 in graduation rates, behind every other state and the District of Columbia.

This year, again, there are thousands of kids entering 12th grade who will not graduate even if they pass all of this year's classes. I mean, can anyone give me a reason that they should drop out to even consider the GED? Why shouldn't they have a safety net while they're in school? Would we rather they get an alternative diploma, or none at all?

A reason besides making the numbers look good, I mean. I consider this preoccupation with documentation to the federal and state government, under threat of losing funding, accreditation or jobs, to be equivalent to "cooking the books." But that's a conversation for another day. Back to my kid.

We had one month before the preferred application deadline to set up the pre-test, get it scored, get the official letter letting him take the GED, take the GED, get the scores back, and get them to the university. We took the first available slots for everything. The next pre-test was in 4 days. He had a cold, but we didn't care. We took the spot.

When we told people, some of them started to fret. "What will you do if he doesn't pass?" "They've really tightened up the exam. It's so much harder than it used to be." "After this many years out of school, I don't know if I'd be able to pass." I threatened any Negative Nellies - you will NOT say stuff like that in front of my kid! Good gravy! When my daughter and I went to the bookstore for something, I was glad that my son was at work, so he didn't see the entire shelving unit devoted to GED prep. I didn't want him thinking that it was a big deal.

I had no worries at all. I'm pretty sure that a few people wondered if I really understood the situation.

There are 5 sections of the test. "The math was so easy that I thought at first that they were kidding. I wondered if it was trick questions," he said. He got perfect scores on two sections, science and math. His scores were almost as good in the other three sections. There were hand written notes saying, "Wow!" and "Congratulations!"

Still, the superintendent himself had to review the marks. There is apparently no other entity, or computer program, available to say, "Yup, those scores are passing," or, "Nope, those scores are failing." We waited for the official letter, so we could sign him up for the real test. When we got it, we took the first available testing spot. My son was the youngest person in his testing room, and he got the highest score in the room, hundreds of points over the necessary "passing" mark. The university marked the scores as received two days before the application deadline. Success!

"So, he's done now, right?" his older sister asked. No, I told her. It's only October. We have an entire school year of stuff planned. I have a unit on Shakespearean tragedies planned, a research paper that he needs to write, a debate season to compete in. "I can't believe that you're making him get a diploma AND a diploma!" she said. Yes, I am, I assured her. His homeschool diploma has credits equivalent to (actually, surpassing) the requirements for our county's honors diploma. As far as we're concerned, that's his "real" diploma. The other one is just to satisfy the government, and anyone who worries that his home instruction "didn't keep up" to a public school education.

So, I feel that I can gloat a little more than I could with his sisters. I taught that kid. I coached that competitor. Yeah, it's still all about him, but I get a bit more reflected glory this time. I'm enjoying it; so sue me.

When he got the first acceptance letter from an A list school, we tossed out all the other brochures and applications. Whether the other two schools accepted him or not, the mission was accomplished. He was going where he wanted to go. I was so giddy that I bought him a school hoodie the day he accepted the offer.

 He refused both the GED ceremony to which the county adult education office (repeatedly) invited him, and any of the homeschool ceremonies he could have had. I signed his diploma, stuck a gold seal on it, and dropped it in the Rubbermaid tub where his memorabilia goes. He grudgingly let us take cap and gown photos. He's not big on ceremony.

Now, he's packing silverware, dishes and a crock pot for his apartment. He has a schedule, a roommate, a start date. He's a university student. Just like we did with his sisters, we'll go there for Move-In Day and parent orientation. Then, we'll drive away and leave him on his own.

I think he's ready.

Like every parent, I hope that I'm ready.

Sailing the Seven Seas - Or At Least One

Did you ever wonder what it might have been like to sail with Columbus, to head out to sea with most people telling you that you'll sail off the edge of the earth or be eaten by monsters, but your own conviction tells you that you'll find a new route to known lands? Or what it would be like sail an outrigger canoe between Pacific islands with only the stars to guide you? Have you imagined what it must have been like for so many of our ancestors to leave the place of their birth, and board a ship to a new land, with no reason to believe that they'd ever return to the place of their birth? Or wondered what it would have been like to travel during the era of grand ocean liners, when the rich and famous sailed across oceans on ships with fine dining rooms and waiters in tuxedos?

Of course, I've wondered all those things. I wonder about them for all the usual reasons, and I wonder if I would have ever had the courage to attempt such a thing because water terrifies me. Crossing the American continent with a handcart sounds easier to me than sailing off across the sea.

As my family spent two weeks on a transatlantic ship recently, I told my son that I hoped that I'd gain a tiny bit of insight into what it had been like for travelers and explorers of centuries past.

His reply was succinct and characteristic. "Yeah, Mom. With the buffet and the pool, now you really understand Columbus."

Smart aleck.

On the one hand, he's completely right. We took our trip for entertainment. We knew exactly where we were going, and kept a schedule. Our ship bears little resemblance to most ships of years past, especially wooden sailing ships. We were well fed, comfortably housed, clean and climate controlled. Still, the most important consideration for me was not the vessel, the destination or the schedule; it was putting my life in the hands of the open ocean. It has swallowed so many of our ancestors, and so many ships - how could I trust it not to swallow ours? Even if it kept us alive, what guarantee did I have that it wouldn't keep us sick and/or terrified, the entire way?

I like guarantees. I will never, ever be a gambler.

The hardest part of the entire trip, for me, was making up my mind to go. It took me months to get to the point that I was OK with going - because, if I went, I had to be prepared for the worst case scenario. I had to have an actual, concrete plan for what I would do, and how I would feel, if I drowned in a shipwreck, or if it was nothing but storms all the way across. I have to be prepared.

I'm actually very good in a crisis - I become very calm, very efficient and very articulate - but I hate having things sprung on me with no warning, even good things. I must prepare.

How did people do it in years past, I wondered. How did they face the uncertainty? I have the luxury of living in a day when losses at sea are rare, and nowhere on the planet is uncharted. How did anyone ever look out at the ocean and say, "I'm not sure what's out there, but I'm going to go find out"? How did anyone decide to make any sea voyage when "lost at sea" was a common cause of death, and architectural features were named things like "widow's walk," because so many were used by actual widows? I don't think I could do it.

Even when I was on the other side of the ocean, standing at Europa Point, having had a safe crossing, I looked back out to the Atlantic and wondered how they did it. It seemed too scary.

Even men who loved the sea knew that she can turn on you in an instant, that she's merciless when angry. Then there were the maps marked, "Here, there be monsters." Forget about the water itself; underneath it were creatures who could, and did, swallow humans without blinking an eye.

As much as I'm a lifelong Star Trek fan, I used to think the same thing while watching the TV show - how did they head out INTO SPACE, knowing that they were surrounded by something that would kill them in an instant? Icy cold, zero atmosphere space is more frightening, and more deadly, than water. Much as I wanted to be a crew member on the Starship Enterprise, I wasn't sure that I could do it.

So, before we left for our 14 days at sea, I spent time imagining; how would it look, sound and feel to be caught in a storm? To have to board the lifeboats? I planned what I would say and do. People who don't prepare, I think, are the ones who degenerate into a**es and begin shoving and screaming. I got to the point that I could say, "Well, if we go down, it's been a good life, and the last thing I did was let my kid choose the graduation gift that he wanted." You have no idea how difficult it was to make peace with the idea of drowning.

Ironically, thinking about airplanes and spaceships made me feel better. I'm not afraid of air travel, and I thought about how hard it is to keep a plane in the air, relative to keeping a ship (or anything else) afloat. The Titanic had gone down "quickly," in "only" 2 1/2 hours; no airplane could fall for 2 1/2 hours. A small, slow water leak would give us days of safety, but any breach in the hull of an airplane at cruising altitude can be catastrophic. I thought about all those battle sequences in every Star Trek episode and movie - the ship herself, and most of her crew, survived. Even when things were bad, you just had to live through the moment, then the next and the next. Bite sized goals are good.

Sometimes, my family made it more difficult to be calm. My husband read, OUT LOUD, a review that someone had written about their voyage from Florida to Ireland. "We encountered 29 foot waves that lasted for days. The captain ordered us all to stay indoors and off the decks."

"Why would you read something like that to me? Do you want me to stay home? Because I will! Just say the word!" He could not understand why I was so shrill. I wonder sometimes if my loved ones have actually met me.

I hardly slept the night before we left. I nearly flew home halfway to our embarkation point. I walked onto the ship in tears. Sailing out of Galveston and away from land was tough - I watched the land get farther and farther away and thought, "Well, here we go. Too late to back out now."

As the sun went down that first night, all I could hear in my head was the voice of the elderly Rose in the movie "Titanic" saying, "That was the last time the Titanic ever saw daylight."

When I told my son, he said, "Why would you even think that?" Well, welcome to my brain.

On the other hand, I had to practice, and I got very good at, living in the moment. I like to plan, I like to reminisce. I'm not very good at being in the moment. I had to learn to shut off the parts of my brain that wanted to play footage of sunken ships, sinking ships, trapped humans, waves, disaster... if I let it run, for even a minute, it would undermine weeks of work. So, I had to forcibly turn off the projector, as it were, every time it wanted to start up. I also had to enjoy every moment while it was happening - "Right now, I am safe. Right now, my kids are safe. Right now, we're having fun. Right now, life is pretty good."

And it was good. The sea was calm, and the ship was full of delightful things to do. I wasn't seasick at all, and I'm prone to motion sickness. My family was having a great time. I was having a great time.

I knew on the first morning aboard that I'd be OK. My son's alarm, on his phone, was set to something that sounded like an air raid siren from WW II. It was still set to go off at o'dark thirty, in another time zone, so that we could make it to the airport. It went off in the early hours of the morning, and I woke up sure that it was the ship's emergency signal. I started calmly running through the list in my head - put on warm clothes, get life vests from closet, head to Deck 4 - before he shut it off and I realized that it was the phone. It says something about how calm I was that I was able to fall immediately back to sleep.

There were still a few things that I worried about. I'd been afraid that waking up in the dark, in our inside cabin, would undo me, with the combination of dark and the feel of the waves. It didn't - it didn't bother me at all. Score one for me.

We spent three days in the Gulf of Mexico, and the water was calm. I worried about heading out into the Atlantic, though. Two places on the ship showed a "you are here" video screen, with a satellite view of our route and a little yellow arrow indicating our current position. The photo, of course, showed the different shades of water, indicating depth. After a stop in the Bahamas, we headed almost immediately over a defined line where sheltered, turquoise water turned into open, almost black water. Crossing that line made me very nervous. As we sailed away from our Bahamas stop, a storm was brewing - dark clouds rolled in, wind blew and rain began to fall.

Worse, you could sense the difference in the water almost instantly. After four days on the ship, it was now creaking. I know, of course, that the creaking is actually good; the ship had to react to water the way that buildings and bridges react to wind. There has to be give. Still, it was slightly unnerving.

The waves got bigger immediately. My husband and son seemed surprised by this. "I'm amazed. Do you know how much energy it takes to cause that? You'd think it would be flat."

No! No! I wouldn't think that it would be flat! It's the freakin' Atlantic Ocean! Had they never read any history, never seen any movies? Did they have no idea at all what the reputation of this ocean was? Did they think that it was only dangerous centuries ago, but it had somehow magically calmed down now that we technically savvy modern humans occupied the planet, that our "advances" somehow tamed the planet itself? Of course the waves were bigger! Of course it was stormy! How could they possibly have imagined that it would be otherwise? I said as much, and more; they looked at me as though I was some kind of experiment gone wrong.

That night was the hardest one so far. I knew that if I had to get into the lifeboats in that weather, especially in the dark, I would not handle it gracefully. At best, I would vomit and whimper. At worst, I would have a heart attack before I was ever loaded into the lifeboat. Still, there were no panic attacks, no tears, and I slept well. That was huge.

I'd also worried about the midpoint on the journey. Being dead center of the ocean, hours away from any help, sounded scary. The day came and went without me experiencing any anxiety at all. Wow, I thought. I got this!

Most of the time, the weather was gorgeous. Even the cruise director remarked, night after night, "Can you believe this weather? This isn't a typical Atlantic crossing." ("Your mother is so watching out for you!" my husband said. Thanks, Mom!)

We had one day of bad weather, so bad that the crew had to empty the pools, and the captain announced over the loudspeaker, "The ship is in no danger."

This is what it looked like before they drained the pools.

By then, day 10, I was rock solid. The only thing that annoyed me was the seasickness. I had to spend most of the day on deck, in the fresh air, and I felt it the exact moment the wind started to calm down. Even sliding back and forth on the bed while I was falling asleep didn't bother me.

By the time we had to leave the ship, I missed it terribly. We're already wondering when we can take another cruise. My husband keeps talking about taking another transatlantic cruise, going in the opposite direction this time, so that we gain an hour every time we cross a time zone. I do worry that, if we did it again, there would be more bad weather. I don't know how I feel about that possibility.

Do I understand those ancestors and explorers better now? Maybe a little. (Even though I had the buffet and the pool.)

I do know that I'm very proud of myself. I took on the fear, and I stared it down.

And I had a great time doing it.

Just Listen

I owe Leonardo DeCaprio thanks.

During the worst time of my life, I watched very little TV, and fewer movies. I just couldn't handle the emotional overload. I'd been an actor and stage technician since I was in junior high school, but I was currently doing no theater; I didn't even go to see my friends in their shows.

My husband tried to interest me in things. When our church asked for performers for our yearly Christmas program, he was chirpy and upbeat. "That sounds just like you!" he said.

"No. It doesn't. It sounds like someone I used to be. I'm not even sure if I'd recognize her if I met her."

Sometimes people don't know what to do, because I'm calm and articulate when they expect me to be weepy and incoherent. They don't understand how I process pain, and wonder how upset I could be if I'm still functional. They miss the point. The best description I can give is being on autopilot. I will keep functioning just fine, but there's no feeling behind it.

One day my husband called me into the living room and pointed out something on TV. He seemed excited, but a glance at the screen made my toes curl. It was an inner city scene, lots of graffiti, barbed wire and trash strewn lots. I do not react well to such circumstances when I'm at my best, and I could not imagine how anything that happened in such a place would be anything that I would want to see in my current state of mind. Every one of my nerves was rubbed raw.

"What makes you think that I would want to watch..."

He interrupted. "Listen!"

"I don't want to see..."

He was insistent. "Don't look. Listen."

Annoyed, I closed my eyes, only so I could do whatever I needed to do to get the TV turned off. Slowly, something penetrated.

The words.

Those words.

I knew those words, every one of them, by heart. I knew what was coming next, what had gone before - every syllable.

When you're in a show, you know the scenes that you're in best, naturally. You may sit through readings or rehearsals of the scenes you're not in, but they're not carved as deeply into your memory as your own scenes. During actual performances, when you're offstage you're most likely in the dressing room or "green room," the equivalent of an employee lounge. You might be joking, playing cards or chatting. You might be changing, doing your hair or using the restroom.

When you're in the booth, though, running the lights or sound, or stage managing and sitting on the headset calling cues, you see every moment of every performance. You hang on every word, because your job depends on responding correctly at the proper time.

Years before, I had been the light board operator for a production of Romeo and Juliet. I watched weeks of rehearsals, and then two performances a day for weeks. I knew every word of the show, every inflection, every pause. I was hearing them now.

I opened my eyes and stared at the screen. I watched Leonardo DiCaprio and John Leguizamo say the familiar words, in a very unfamiliar place. I like both of the actors, and I love the words (although this play is not one of my favorites). Could I handle the urban decay, the violence, the senselessness, the deaths?

I have seen Shakespeare performed by purists, who insist on period costumes and sets. I've seen his work updated in a variety of ways, including as a Wild West show. I've heard it in the original iambic pentameter and in modern English. I had never seen it like this, though - the original words in a modern setting, one that looked like Los Angeles or another familiar California setting.

It was director Baz Luhrmann's "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet." I hadn't seen it in theaters, and it was then probably four years or so old. Truth be told, I'd avoided it. I'm always afraid that filmmakers will screw up the classics, and using a plus sign instead of the word "and" didn't thrill me. (I blame Prince; he started the whole business of substituting "4" for "for" and "U" for "you" in the 1980s, decades before texting. It still annoys me. And I don't text.)

I decided to watch for just a few minutes, to see how they'd handle things like the references to swords (answer: make it a brand name). I kept watching; how would Claire Danes interpret Juliet? Danes is an amazing actor, just luminous. I kept watching, and kept watching. I watched the entire movie. Moreover, I enjoyed it. That doesn't sound like much, but it was huge. It was the first time I had voluntarily chosen to sit through a movie in over a year. To have not only sat through it but also enjoyed it was a huge milestone.

So: thanks, Leo, John, Claire, Baz. I almost - almost - remembered what "normal" felt like. It was an indicator that, yes, things actually would get better.