Back in Action

Dear Dad,

The end of summer was, I’m not going to lie, a little anticlimactic at our house. This whole Mom-is-a-full-time-teacher thing is a whole new world for us. All sorts of things are different. There’s no one to pick up groceries in the middle of the day or make sure the laundry gets put in the dryer right away so that it doesn’t get stinky on hot days sitting in the wash. Calenders are fuller, dinner is later, and the first day of school came after two weeks of getting up and going into school during school hours, only instead of spending the day with me in the library, they actually went to class, which was probably a nice change for them. So it’s been a little bit of a weird week, for all of us. Maybe me most especially.

It’s been a long (long, long) time since I started the first day of school as a teacher. Last year about now I was accidentally signing up for grad school. And for the decade plus before that I was one of the moms dropping kids off with a sigh of mixed relief and anxiety. In fact, the last time I started the school year as a teacher I wasn’t yet a mother. I thought my life was full to the brim then. Little did I know how much crazier it could get.

I didn’t know then that the evenings would be full of extra kids over for dinner and homework and chores and golf lessons and swimming nights and did-anyone-take-out-the-trash/walk-the-dog/remember-to-turn-on-the-crockpot-oh-crap-I-forgot-that-thing-at-school-I-needed-to-do-tonight. (Thank goodness for GoogleDrive) It’s a satisfying kind of busy. I’m tired in that way where your arms feel heavier than normal and your eyes are blurry even with glasses on. But it feels good to be back in the library, to get hugs and notes and hear my favorite question, “Gillian, do you have any ideas for a good book?”

We’re back. School is in. Life is good. And now? A glass of wine and a good night’s sleep.

-Gillian

Back to school and the University blues

Dear Gillian,

Why is it that no matter how much I plan through the summer, I’m never ready for the start of school?

It’s Friday as I write, and the first week of classes just ended at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. I’m sorting through the debris now and trying to decide what I will teach next week.

I know there is no need for concern: I have a Ph.D., 25 years of journalism experience and a big mouth. I could talk for an hour on astrophysics if I had a few PowerPoint slides and a darkened classroom.

Every year, however, I panic that the magic is gone. I’m over the nightmare that I will go to school without my pants on, but I still wonder if anything sane will come out of my mouth as those students stare me down.

Sane I was and gracious the students were – even when the AV equipment followed tradition and broke down. That was actually a great kick start for me because I had to wing it while the technicians tinkered in the background.

The first week of school at a university is a wonderful cacophony of expectations, surprises, posturing and hiding. The parade of new clothes is entertaining – especially the fashion fails that will disappear next week. Hormones rage among the freshmen, who three months ago were high school students but are now living away from home for the first time.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the doctoral students knit their eyebrows, dash head-down from classroom to library and wistfully recall when there actually was a summer break.

And there is me. I always start the term with a bright tie, a snappy dress shirt and a sports coat (even though it is invariably hot). It’s a power play, sure, but the students get the impression I’m a pro and I get to reassure myself that I’ve lived through this before. By next week the jacket will be back on a hanger and the tie will come and go.

Once I get going, I enjoy the first lecture. I scan the arc of chairs for the usual suspects: the big guy in a reversed baseball cap who may doze off, the intense young lady bent to her desk and taking notes on everything (including my jokes), the dazed international student blankly looking at me like I’m speaking gibberish. Which to him, I am.

Some professors speculate that they could give a grade to their students on the first day and it would hold true at the end of the term. I’ve thought of that, but it’s really just an admission of failure. The A student in, A student out is a classroom pleasure. But the students who start totally lost but whom you coach to at least a B is a button-bursting victory. They are the ones who will pop up on your Facebook five years later to thank you. Even if you don’t remember their names.

So my jitters are gone, I have notes for next week in one of these piles and I’ve already had one student I vaguely recognize stop me in the hall to say “hello.” Why did I ever worry about the first day of school? It’s going to be a great semester.

Again.

-- Dad

Small Town Girl

Dear Dad,

Last weekend was, as you know, my 20th High School Reunion. We'll just skip over the unbelievable fact that high school for me was 20 years ago, though -- it tends to remind me that I'm old. But in the midst of the inevitable "So where are you living these days?" and "Where are you working now?" I overheard Will commenting to somebody that while yes, we live in Portland, that I was still a small town girl at heart. Actually, I think what he said was that I had a split personality- part of me loved the city, the rest of me craves a small town.

He's totally right. I appreciate living in a city. I like the access to culture, the choice of shopping and parks and activities, I enjoy the diversity, but I'm really a small town girl. I want to know everybody, I want familiar and cozy and predictable. I loved being a part of village plays and town hall meetings.

In a small town you have to participate. Because unless everyone participates, there aren't enough people to make anything happen. Cities afford a sort of anonymity that makes it too easy to just not participate. Because someone else will organize the festival or the blood drive or the clean up days.
If I could wave a magic wand and create the perfect place for us, it would be a small, vibrant, bikeable village where I could still walk to work and the grocery store and the park but where I knew everybody. My family would all live nearby and, hey, this is a dream town, right? I could easily hop on a train and get to a larger city and several other countries within a few hours. So basically I need to be living in a pre-war, pre-border check English village.

The reality is that being married to an urban designer does not go hand in hand with rural village living. And, as I realized after a few hours back in my small home town, the politics of small town life can seem close-minded to me after years in big and small cities (not to mentions wildly liberal New England villages). And so my solution is to live in the parts of cities that feel village-like.

 Neighborhoods that are dense and well defined, where almost everything you need on a daily basis is within a few minutes bike ride or walk, or in a stretch a quick drive. in Dublin it was Rathgar, in New York it was Morningside Heights, in Portland its Hawthorne, an identity beyond the city. A homemade village. I love Portland precisely because living in the part of town that we do is as close to small town life as you can get in a city, so it satisfies both sides of that split personality of mine.

            -- Gillian

Small town life in the heartland of America

Dear Gillian,

Garrison Keeler would have been proud. Prairie Home, MO, has everything Lake Woebegone has only in dreams.

Saturday, Mom and I took a winding ride to the 100th annual Prairie Home Fair – an event unlike most of us have seen for decades. It’s not one of those cows, pigs and jelly jars fairs.

This is community celebration of games, songs and good times. And it is all the better for what it doesn’t have.

Like mobile phones. The grandstand was full and there were the requisite number of bored teenagers. But not a one was texting, not one was playing a game. And none of the adults were checking email. Their eyes were on the arena.

We arrived just as the kids bicycle races were hitting their mark. About 75 kids from 5 to 12 raced by the handful around four orange cones on a bare-dirt lot. First peddler to make two circuits ahead of the crowd could coast over to a wooden shed and collect $5, cash.

A few more things were notably missing: Bicycle helmets, clinging parents, knee pads – and lawyers. When kids spun out at that tricky first turn, they rubbed their knees got back on their bikes and peddled like crazy.

But one of those wipe-outs left me a spectacular memory. Two 12-year-old boys who were obviously friends jockeyed for the pole (or cone) on their small-wheeled bikes. Inevitably, one tumbled and tumbled hard. He got up, but spilled at yet another corner.

His friend coasted to the booth for his five $1 bills. But as he walked away, he stuffed the bills into his fallen friend’s pocket.

Ain’t that America?

                            -- Dad

My Own Personal Superhero

Dear Dad,

You probably don't know this, but when I was little, I thought you were magic.

Ok. It's not terribly surprising. I had, as you know, what might be termed an "overactive" imagination. I was sure there was something that lived behind the woodpile in the basement that would jump out and grab my ankles if I had to go down the stairs in the dark. I thought that Lucille Ball was actually Grandma Diane, and that everyone else had just forgotten to mention that to me. And I knew, just knew that you had magical powers.

I suppose lots of kids think their parents are in some way, magical (mom could definitely see through the back of her head, for instance) but this was different. This went beyond the preschool belief that the coin dad pulled out from behind my ear really came from my ear.  This was not blind belief that my father could solve any problem. You could, of course. But there was more. Because you, dad were not far off from Superman.

Not only could you do amazing things like ride you bike with no hands and fix broken toys and find my missing, precious, blanket when it went missing. There were several indicators at your work that you were, in fact, a superhero.

For example, the fat, waxy pencils that magically sharpened themselves when you pulled on the string that protruded off the side, causing layers of....something that was not wood...fall away to reveal bright red or deep black lead. Or there were the machines that turned a full sized, pasted up version of the newspaper into a tiny metal version of the newspaper which were then turned, somehow, into the newspaper. You could type on a typewriter with a cat balanced on your shoulders. I had seen the photo! And the line tape, although not really magical, was really cool. I'm not sure if you ever noticed, but I plastered the underside of your desk with it every time I spent visited you at the paper.

And then there was the magic portal. A tiny round room into which people (sometimes you!) walked, sliding the door shut behind them and then they were gone! It was better than a magician's trick to see you evaporate into the darkroom, especially before I knew it was just a light block to keep the photos from being exposed during processing. Although even after I realized what was beyond the magic door, I still thought you had superhero like powers. After all. YOU COULD TURN A PIECE OF WHITE PAPER INTO A PHOTOGRAPH DAD! No matter how hard I tried, I could never replicate the spell in the sink of my toy kitchen. (That is how, you might recall, I almost torched the house, trying to recreate the powers of the darkroom by draping Strawberry Shortcake's red dress over the bare bulb in my closet. The red light, after all, might have been the missing ingredient to make the spell work.)

There came a point, inevitably, when I realized that these mysterious and wondrous things were standard newspaper procedures. That the door revolved, developers and negatives were responsible for photographs and those awesome peel-away marking pencils were, well they were still pretty awesome, but not magic.

It didn't change the fact, however, that you still had superhero-like qualities. That you still DO have superhero qualities. I mean, you should listen to your grandson tell other people about the GIGANTIC fish his poppa can catch or how you once rode in a car with that guy who made chili and fast engines and he drove so fast that your face nearly peeled off (except it didn't, because, duh, even Carroll Shelby couldn't peel the face off a superhero. By the way, did you tell him that story? Because he tells it to EVERYONE).

So Happy Father's Day, Super-Dad (aka Super-Poppa) Not everyone get's to have a superhero for a dad. We all love you so much, me most of all.

                                                                  -Gillian

Father's Day thanks

Dear Gillian,

The Hallmark people got Fathers Day all wrong. Instead of getting gifts, I should be sending thank you cards to you and your brother.

Garrett, me and Dad

Women enjoy a physical and intractable bond with their children, something of which all men are secretly jealous. We instead must cultivate our connection with that squirming little bundle of life.

But you make it easy. I earned my “Dad” the first time you looked up and smiled as I held you in my arms. I’m forever blessed that neither you nor Garrett ever stopped smiling. Thanks to you, happy Fathers Day to me!

Biology being what it is, I’m not only a father but also a son. So I’ve puzzled through the Fathers Day gift from both sides. Mothers Day gifts were always easy – something pretty, something clutzy I made myself or just flowers. Hugs, kisses and joyful tears guaranteed.

But what to get Dad?

If flowers are the default for Mothers Day, tools are the norm for Fathers Day. But you’ve seen Dad’s shop. Buying another tool for him was something like buying another reindeer for Santa.

Not that he minded. An extra screwdriver or pair of pliers can always find home on the workbench. He was a Dad, after all. The real present was the smile and gleam in his children’s eye.

Some of the best presents you and Garrett gave me were the little trinkets you made yourself. And I actually love getting ties. My favorites are the two you made for me with handprints of your own children. Grandkid chic. Those ties also marked my graduation from mere “father” to “grandfather.”

Son-to-father-to-grandfather. Some men never make it or don’t appreciate it if they do. But I find it wondrous. My dad’s genes became my genes, then yours and Garrett’s genes, the Briton and Evie’s genes. Garrett is next in line to move up from sonhood.

Fathers Day reminds me that I have a responsibility to the future and a legacy no one can take away. I see my dad now only in photos and the Bentley nose. But I feel him in the things I do and the words I say. Sometimes it is the way I stand or the way I walk. The Father of All Fathers Day gifts is catching those same mannerism in you, Garrett or even Evie or Briton.

So thanks, Gillian. You made my (Fathers) Day.

--Dad

Gardening: or, My Favorite Bedtime Reading

Dear Dad,

It wasn’t until I was almost an adult that I realized not everyone had John Seymour’s The Complete Book of Sufficiency read to them as a bedtime story. It came as kind of a shock when I realized my error. Other children didn’t daydream with their father’s about how to turn a 1-acre plot of land into enough food to feed a family of four? (or better yet, a five acre plot, because then, as you know, you can grow enough food to also feed your cow instead of having to buy in hay. Or resort to having a goat for your milk-producing needs). Really? They just read Narnia? I mean, we read Narnia and loved it. But how did other kids learn how to double-dig a garden bed?

I was fascinated by that big brown book, which always seemed to be hanging around our house. I’m still fascinated by it. I keep my copy on the coffee table. You know, just in case I want to re-read for the hundredth time his witty commentary on the lost art of basket making, or how his kids ate all of his home grown poppy seeds hoping (unsuccessfully) to get a buzz off of them.

Or if I have a pig butchering emergency. It could happen.

I can close my eyes and see the charts about when to start growing what, which only apply if you live in his particular part of England but which I still look at every spring. I can picture the pages about weaving a skep for keeping bees and the different layouts of garden beds for maximum food production.

That book has led me down the crazy path many-a-time. And I’m sure it

Gardening: Thankfully, there is no cure for the Green Plague

Dear Gillian,

It would be overly polite to call the place where my father grew up a “dirt farm.” Dirt, yes. Farm, no. It was more of a divot in the vast forest of northern Idaho with enough bare ground that you could coax cabbage, potatoes and other hearty vegetables through the brief mountain summer.

The 10 Bentley kids did the vegetable coaxing at the end of hoe handles, but only because my notoriously stern grandfather had and used a bigger stick. There was no way in the world he was going pay good money for undistilled consumables.

Dad, then, had a hard time seeing gardening as a hobby. It was a chore that put food on the table. He planted gardens during the leanest times of my boyhood, but treated them a small farms that would ease the grocery budget. He even tried to introduce us to a frost-fighting, north country favorite – Swiss chard. My brother and I drew the line there. We would hoe the weeds, but not eat something with the culinary appeal of pond scum. Or kale.

But when I was in about seventh grade, I caught the Green Plague. I was a voracious reader who became fascinated by stories of farm life, huge vegetables and loan between your toes. Dad thought I had gone mad when tilled and planted a plot near the house. I’m sure he chuckled, however, while I was learning that pulling weeds and