Month: August 2011

Promises

By / August 5, 2011 / 2 Comments

The fabric was cut and folded neatly, ready to be sewn. When it was done it would be a fairy dress, floaty and beautiful to match the dreams of a young girl who fell in love with a picture on a pattern in the craft store. Gleek clutched that pattern and begged with big brown eyes. I couldn’t say no. Then we raided our fabric stash at home and found the pieces we needed. All was ready and waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Other sewing bits got piled on top as I occasionally rummaged in my sewing box to make various emergency repairs. Mostly the sewing box resided in the closet with the cut fabric hidden inside. Life marched on. One Halloween passed, then another. The dream dress was mostly forgotten, except every so often when the Gleek would remember and remind me. I would sigh and carefully not promise exactly when the dress would be done. Promises matter. I don’t want to break them. Yet the cut pieces of fabric were like a promise. They were a task incomplete.

Another dress was dreamed of. This time it was mine. I bought an out of date dress and had grand plans to re-make it into something lovely. Stolen minutes went into the measuring and cutting of bright chiffon. Time came to hem and I dusted off my sewing machine. I pulled out my sewing box of supplies. The pieces of that previous dream dress were there. My dress needed to be done within a week. It made sense to work on it first. The project with a deadline takes precedence. Yet my kids so often must be patient when I have a project. They spent the summer at home instead of with lessons and trips because I needed the calendar to be empty. They foraged for their own meals far more often than I want to confess. My kids must wait on me for permission and for most of their dreams. Gleek’s dress had been waiting on me for two years. I put aside my bright chiffon and finished a fairy dress for my daughter to dance in. She looked beautiful.

Howard on the Eve of our 18th Anniversary

By / August 4, 2011 / 4 Comments

Tomorrow is the 18th anniversary of the day I married Howard. This year I’ll be spending the day at the zoo with the kids. Howard will be spending it running a booth at GenCon. This is right in line with our tradition of not planning our lives around anniversary celebrations. The best possible celebration of our marriage is living and working together each day. Also, with all the other exhausting planning that we have to do for summer conventions, neither of us has left over energy for orchestrating an anniversary event. That said, I do try to take at least a minute or two on the anniversary day to look at that guy I married and think about how lucky I am.

There he is. Making me laugh, just as he does almost every day of our lives.
The banana has a story, of course. Howard was standing at the booth next to Tracy Hickman (of Dragonlance). Howard put down the book he was showing to customers and in a signed-too-many-things-today haze, Tracy picked it up and signed it. They joked together that Tracy would probably just auto-sign whatever was in front of him. Howard put it to the test by placing a banana in front of Tracy. So Howard had a Tracy Hickman autographed banana for lunch.

I made a really good decision all those years ago when I held his hand and said “I will.”

Gleek Worries about Her New School

By / August 3, 2011 / 4 Comments

“I don’t want to go to New School. I want to go to Old School!” Gleek sobbed while curled up in my lap. We are three weeks away from the beginning of school, and Gleek’s fears about her new academic program boiled over. She listed all the friends she will miss. She talked of how stressed she feels. “I don’t want to go to school!” she cried. All of the things she was leaving behind were concrete and easily visualized. All of the things ahead were vague, uncertain, and therefore fearful.

I held her tight and let her cry. I did my crying and fretting last Spring when we made the decision to switch her to a new school and into a gifted program. It still feels like the right decision, but Gleek’s fears have a solid basis in reality. The switch is going to be hard. The work will be much more demanding than what she has been doing. Adjustment is going to be difficult. It is possible that four months from now we’ll be shifting and doing something else. I held my crying girl and knew I had the power to solve her fears. I could switch her back to Old School at any time. I won’t do it until we’ve given this plan a solid try. We need the information that attempting this will give us.

What I expect to happen is that Gleek will pull out of this afternoon’s emotional low. She will be fine for the next few weeks. She will be scared and worried on the first day of school. Then things will be new and interesting. Gleek thrives on things that are new and interesting. There will be more tears and worries. I will hold her and listen just as I did today. When the litany of fears begins to repeat I will find a distraction for her, just as I did today.

GenCon and WorldCon

By / August 2, 2011

GenCon will open its doors to the public first thing Thursday morning, but I’m already done with it. My very last responsibility to GenCon was to drop Howard off at the airport this morning. He’s going to have a great time. It will be a fantastic show. I’m sorry I won’t get to visit with our fantastic crew there, but at the moment I’m very glad to get to stay home. I’m done with all the last minute emails and merchandising decisions. Now I can focus my attention on WorldCon which I will be attending. First item on the WorldCon list: Finish my dress. I’m loving working on it and I’ll write up a process post with pictures when it is done. With all the frantic GenCon thoughts out of the way I can look forward to WorldCon with anticipation.

Parenting is sometimes a tangled mess

By / August 1, 2011 / 6 Comments

Inciting Incident:
Gleek was riding her sister’s bike without permission and after dark. She failed to get off the bike until after I had ordered her to do so five different times. I decided that the delay was blatant enough that I needed to not let it slide.

Complicating Issue:
I was not sure what consequence to apply. Gleek was very calm about my frustration and wasn’t acting in a way that interpreted as contrite. In hindsight I can see that she was honestly trying to figure out why she hadn’t listened to me. I declared that a consequence was necessary and decided that step one would be for Gleek to describe out loud to Howard how she failed to listen.

Howard was in the middle of business things and packing. He’d picked up steam and was making a final run at getting it all done. I did not communicate with Howard what I hoped for from Gleek’s recitation. Gleek in her turn was fearful that Howard would yell and be angry with her. She balled up all her emotions and buried them deep, thus her recitation seemed like she did not care about what she had done. Howard reacted to her seeming casual attitude by increasing the severity in his voice until he provoked a reaction.

The Muddle in the Middle:
I began to feel bad for derailing Howard’s packing, for not alerting him to the script, for putting Gleek in a situation where she would cry. Gleek’s buried emotions burst forth and she confessed that she feels scared of lots of things and is embarrassed about it. She also said she doesn’t know why she often doesn’t obey. Howard stepped out a bit to let Gleek and I talk. I flailed around trying not to undermine the parenting statements Howard had made, while still trying to help Gleek feel better. Gleek told how she had been planning to turn herself into an obedient little robot girl. I said I didn’t want one of those.

Sorting it out and finding resolution, sort of:
In the end there was listening and hugging. I fessed up to feeling like I’d handled it wrong. Gleek fessed up that she felt like it was her fault in the first place. Howard said he was sad that Gleek is scared of him scolding her. I felt bad for hauling him into a conflict which was primarily between Gleek and I to begin with. I simultaneously felt like I did exactly right in involving Howard in parenting our daughter. Gleek said that the biggest consequence in the world for her would be if we stopped loving her and talking to her. Howard said that was a consequence which we could never apply because we always love her. No matter what.

In the end we all decided that the whole emotional mess was probably consequence enough for everyone and that it will all look better in the morning.

Thank goodness there are mornings after.