Twenty Ten

Although 2009 was a relatively good year to my family, I don’t recall a year in recent memory that so many people were happy to see draw to a close. I lost two members of my extended family this year–a cousin and an aunt–who were very important to me. Both were some of the last ties to my own parents, the last two people who knew my late mother as a child and a teenager, some of the last who knew me as a baby. On the positive side, I made some great new friends this year. We have shared many ups and downs together, mainly as supporters of our children in marching band and color guard, but also as part of what we consider to be a band “family.”

It is so strange to think that it is 2010, the year that my daughter will graduate from high school. It is a year that seemed so far away not so very long ago. There is a gift-wrapped box stashed in my bedroom closet. It is a “time capsule” that my daughter made with her first-grade classmates 11 years ago. Mrs. Sheridan, her first-grade teacher, instructed us parents to keep the box sealed until our children’s graduation in 2010. She might as well have said to keep it until the year 3,000. It seemed like a ridiculously far-off date. Yet here it is, and we will open that box–to find what? I have no idea!–in just a few short months.

The year 2009 brought so much growth for my kids. There was my daughter’s first trip to the winter color guard nationals in Dayton, Ohio, where her ensemble took 11th place in the country.

My son’s experience in theater continued to grow, helped along by his acceptance into a local performing arts high school program, and culminating in an impressive performance in their fall musical.

As usual, marching band took up much of our time and emotion this year, beginning with the Inaugural Parade in Washington, DC in January and ending with a rousing performance at Championships in November. It seemed like everything conspired against our beloved band this season, including the weather. But all of our kids rose to the occasion and proved that they don’t need a championship banner to know that they are winners.

So here’s to 2010! Remembering loved ones who are with us no longer and thankful for new friends and new opportunities, we turn the page on a new decade!

Yes I Can?

Can you play the flute? Can you play another wind instrument? Can you play it while you walk? How about while you run? Can you play it while remembering 90 pages of drill and where you must be at every moment of a ten-minute show? Can you do that and keep in mind where you must be in relation to 130 other people? Can you do it under the glare of spotlights? In front of a screaming crowd? How about with a judge standing in front of you evaluating your every move? Could you keep moving and playing even if this judge was standing in your way? How about if there were people throwing mock rifles right in front of or behind you?  What if it there was pouring rain? What if there was ice on the field? What if you lost part of your uniform—say, a plume or a shoe? Could you keep going? Suppose you slipped and fell. Could you get up without missing a beat, remember where you were and where you need to be now? If you can answer “yes” to all of these questions, then you’re ready to be in a marching band. In short, you are perhaps ready to begin to attempt to do this.

If you have not seen a high school marching band since the 1970s, you have not seen a high school marching band. I know. I performed with a band as a majorette (“baton twirler”) in my younger days. Trust me. This is a whole different ballgame, so to speak. Football halftime shows are no longer the main event for high school bands. Football games are merely another opportunity to practice for the real goal—competition.  And trust me again. The competition is fierce! Don’t believe me? Check this out.

So next time you hear someone look down on “band geeks” and say that marching band isn’t really as challenging as a sport, see if they can answer “yes” to any of the questions listed above—let alone all of them!

Beautiful Music

Speaking of marching band, I chaperoned my kids’ high school marching band to their competition in New Jersey last weekend. It was a cold, dreary day and we were sure we would be stuck in the pouring rain at some point. Lucky for us, the forecast was wrong and the wet weather never arrived.

After our band performs, the students assemble on the perimeter of the field in what is known as a “retreat block.” Although this is my fourth season with a child in band, I didn’t know until recently that, prior to getting into their block, the kids in our band arrange their instruments on the ground in whimsical patterns. Each section places their instruments and helmets in an array that changes from week to week.  Here are some photos:

Flutes

OK, so the fluties were not quite so creative. This week. Here’s what they did a couple of weeks ago:

 

How about the clarinets?

 

 

And last, but certainly not least, the alto saxes:

There’s something about this practice that I find utterly charming. It shows that even as they compete in a very rigorous and disciplined band program, our kids are still KIDS. It shows that each section is a cohesive group. It shows that they care about their instruments. It shows they have fun even when they are under the greatest pressure. Maybe that’s a lesson for us all.

 

Can you hear me now?

Yikes, it’s been a long time and no posts from me. Can’t really point to a reason, just have not been “moved” to write lately. I have a few ideas bouncing around that may eventually turn into a blog post. Meanwhile, I did have a letter and a short press release published in our local newspaper. So there is that. I’ve also been way too involved in the emotional ups and downs of my kids’ marching band season and our upcoming town elections. Maybe I just need to sit down and write about whatever is on my mind once a day, or at least once a week.

So for now, if I may quote the Governor of the great state of California….”I’ll be baahhck!”

Say Cheese

Today I took a reprieve from helping my daughter with her college applications to take on another “fun” task: organizing family photos. I have boxes of photos that have been weighing heavily on my mind. I’m not referring to the two or three years’ worth of recent family photos I have yet to print and dump place lovingly into albums with wonderful little captions. No, these are dozens–nay, hundreds–of photos I inherited after my parents passed away. These photos span oh, I don’t know, fifty or sixty years, give or take a few.

What is most fascinating and most daunting about these photos is their very jumbled state. Old photographs from Europe in the 1930s mingle with photos from Philadelphia in the 1950s and faded Polaroids from the 1970s. Photos of my mother as an almost unrecognizable (to me) young woman in her early 20s are juxtaposed with her more familiar, older self as she approached her 80s. The hodgepodge of photos–all carelessly tossed into boxes at some point before I became their guardian–is like a metaphor of my mother’s confused mental state in her final years. To sort through them is to be reminded of how far her cognitive abilities had unraveled before her passing.

I have managed to sort the photos into three broad categories for now: those taken before I was born, those taken after I was born, and my personal favorite category, “Who are these people?” All of the ones in the last group are of distant relatives or long-lost friends of my mother’s. These young people, for the most part elegantly dressed and coiffed in styles that were fashionable in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s, are completely unknown to me. Yet they were important enough to my mother for her to hold onto to their photographs for 60 years, so who am I to discard them now?

There is another, ridiculous aspect to sorting through these memories. It is utterly astonishing to me how one family can take so many bad photos. For example, my parents apparently considered it a good idea to take most photos of me from a distance of at least 100 feet. “Look! It’s a giant lawn with lots of tall bushes. And what is that I see in the distance? Why, I think it looks like a little girl!”

Perhaps they decided to take photos from great distances because when they did take them up close, invariably the person’s head did not make it into the photo. A picture of my cousin’s wedding? Lovely–except you can only see the bride and groom from the chin down.

Cemeteries were another of their favorite subjects. Photos of tombstones. Photos of funerals. I’m sure there’s a photo of a body in a casket in there somewhere. Eww.

My personal favorite are the photos where one person has been cut out. No, not cropped. I mean someone actually took a pair of scissors and cut themselves out of the photo because they didn’t like the way they looked. This was typically done by my father, who just about anyone would agree was a good-looking man. He certainly was good-looking enough that he did not need to remove himself from our family photos in such an aggressive manner.

So it is safe to say that I literally have my work cut out for me. There’s no telling how long it will take to fashion this into some sort of organized display. I was thinking of going chronologically, but I now realize there are so many other possibilities: funeral photos, headless photos, defaced photos. The mind reels!

Wait and Hurry Up

I have been remiss in keeping up with my blogging. It’s not because I don’t have time. I do have time, however I have been spending too much of that time fretting about all of the things that need to get done, but over which I have very little control.

It can all be summed up in two words: senior year. This is my daughter’s senior year of high school. Yes, those long, seemingly endless years of back-to-school nights, driving her to and from school, supervising homework, and making those emergency runs to Staples for project supplies will soon be drawing to a close. I’m sure the college years will provide new challenges, frustrations, and memories. However, I foolishly thought that senior year would be a time to sit back, reflect on where we’ve been, look forward hopefully to the new horizons about to unfold, yada, yada, yada. Not even close!

By September, my knickers were already in a world-class knot. Senior photos? Done! But not as easily as one might expect. This required trips to 3 different malls for the perfect top–not even an outfit, just a top because all anyone will see will be her head and shoulders. Did I mention that one of those malls was on the other side of the country? So, two photo sessions (including one re-take because after all, why would we go with the first set of photos?), followed by two 20-mile round trips to order said photos, needed to take place before I could say “Done!”

No sooner did I finish with the photos, then I stumbled quite accidentally upon the information that we need to order her graduation cap and gown within the next week. Seriously? I didn’t think one would need to order a couture gown for the red carpet at the Oscars nine months in advance. This better be some cap and gown!

Next up–the yearbook “baby ad”, because who wants to be the only family who didn’t design & pay for a personalized ad for their child’s senior yearbook including an adorable baby photo and a special, creative, tear-jerking, message that she will treasure always? When is this due? Yup, today.

“OK, fine, so what’s the big deal,” you ask? Well, there are also college applications which need to be completed and filed. My daughter has to write the killer college essay or “personal statement” which will cause admissions officers everywhere to stop dead in their tracks and weep tears of joy that she has deigned to apply to their college.

There are teacher recommendations to secure, SATs to prepare for, and lest we forget–there is a very heavy academic course load to keep up with. And I won’t even get into the pressure & time commitment of her being in marching band.

So what’s a mother to do? Aside from wondering why all of this yearbook nonsense couldn’t wait until, say, December, after these kids have had a chance to finish their college applications? Why, sit around, fretting, biting one’s nails, hoping nothing is slipping through the cracks, playing mindless computer games to try to ward off the anxiety.

Oh—and stock up on the Kleenex for all of those “lasts” that will occur throughout the year. At the last back-to-school night, my daughter’s homeroom teacher told us that she will especially miss our kids since she has had them for all four years of high school.

“It will be very hard for me when I lead them onto that field for graduation,” she said.

Another mom spoke up, looking at yet another graduation-related form we were being asked to fill out. She asked, “Why must you remind me every day that my daughter is about to leave me?”

Why, indeed.

Bon Appetit!

I attended a wonderful luncheon a couple of weeks ago with three women who happen to be as rabidly devoted to our local high school marching band as I am. We are all “band moms” (although one is technically a “guard mom”, as in “color guard”). Unless you have been in a marching band recently or have a child in one, you would have no way of knowing how fiercely competitive an activity it is. I won’t go into all of the details of marching band here, except to say that the intensity of the experience leads to strong bonds not only among the high schoolers who participate, but often among their parents as well.

So we gathered at one mom’s house to watch videos of past performances and enjoy a scrumptious lunch. Our hostess decided to attempt Julia Child’s recipe for Quiche Lorraine. Apparently it was more difficult than she had anticipated. The crust required two attempts before she produced one she could work with, and she wasn’t sure at all that the darned thing would ever be thoroughly cooked. This was fine with the rest of us, because another guest had brought orange juice and champagne for Mimosas which we happily sipped as we waited for the quiche to bake. The quiche, by the way, turned out to be absolutely heavenly–without a doubt the most delicious quiche I have ever eaten. Kudos to the cook (and to Julia)!

A fruit salad and a green salad with pears, cranberries, and pecans rounded out the meal. My contribution involved chocolate espresso pots de creme and whipped cream, which I must confess–in all modesty–received rave reviews. (Although my own two kids turned their noses up at the servings I saved for them. They insisted that they tasted like “alcohol”, even though they were completely free of any alcohol or liqueur. Fine! More for me next time.)

We balanced our plates on our laps and ate as we oohed and aahed over the videos of our band and color guard. Our band’s first show of the season looked stunning on our hostess’ giant TV screen. It was almost better than seeing it live!

What a great way to spend an afternoon. Who says stay-at-home moms don’t have any fun?

The Good Earth

I’m not much of a gardener. In fact, there are few things I enjoy less than digging, planting, weeding, and all of the other tasks associated with a lovely garden. The only problem with that is that I enjoy having a lovely garden. And since we’re not about to pay someone to do the dirty work for us, the task is usually left up to me.

I don’t grow a lot of things, and I have learned to focus on plants that, once planted, more or less take care of themselves. I have a wonderful (to me, at least) herb garden, most of which reappears year after year. These “friends”, who are among the first harbingers of spring in my yard, include chives, two or three varieties of sage, oregano, and my personal favorite, tarragon. I usually supplement these herbs with annual plantings of rosemary, Italian parsley, and basil.

My main purpose for growing these herbs is not any love of gardening but rather my love of cooking. There is no greater luxury than stepping outside the door to snip some fresh herbs to stuff inside a chicken about to be roasted, or to toss into a special sauce. (OK, maybe there are some greater luxuries, but I’m not going to enjoy those any time soon!)

My garden also consists of morning glories because they provide a lush display of foliage and blooms all summer as a reward for planting a few seeds in the ground in May. I really lucked out this year, because apparently some seeds from last year’s plants sowed themselves, and I’ve had tons of morning glories for zero effort. Mwahaha! You can see some of these in my profile photo.

As to vegetables, I grow cucumbers and tomatoes. Did you know that cucumbers can grow almost as big as watermelons? Well, I exaggerate, but they get pretty darn big when you forget to pick them, although they aren’t much good at that point. One cucumber plant will provide enough output to make you and all of your neighbors very sick and tired of cucumbers for a very long time.

I don’t think I’ll try growing tomatoes again. Despite the fact that my two paltry plants were placed in front of my house, along a sidewalk, perched on a wall about four feet high…well, suffice it to say that we had a problem with deer and it was not pretty. I think we got a total of two tomatoes and a summer’s worth of aggravation.

For all this, I spend very little time in the garden. I go out and plant maybe one morning during the summer, water every now and then, weed even less often, and that’s it. My garden is a hopeless hodgepodge of plants growing all over each other. My darling hubby calls it an “English garden.” I think I’ll keep him.

Hello again

After my first tentative foray into blogging using a different platform, I’ve decided to make the switch to WordPress. My first few posts will be re-posts from that other site. But they were so incisive, so thought-provoking so, well, GOOD, that they are definitely worth another go! Um, yeah. That’s right!