For my fan

Dear grandma,

I write this post to you knowing full well that it will arrive in your mailbox a few weeks from now. Your daughter, a.k.a. my mom, will have literally cut and pasted it onto sheets of paper and sent it via snail mail (that's the kind with a stamp on it) across state lines. Why? In order to appease my fan.

Yes, grandma, this is a great big thank-you for your encouragement. You sent me a handwritten note recently. May I quote it for all to see? I thought so.

"I wish my mother could read your writings. She would be even more thrilled than I, or (your mother) or (your father.)"

Here's my favorite:

"The little incidents are better than those I read in the Reno paper!!" (original emphasis.)

I'm glad to know that there are people out there ::sniff:: whose days are brightened by what I have to say.

But here's a little secret for you, grandma. You, who supported your pilot husband during World War II, and afterward, through polio and 43 years of teaching. You, who raised two children. You, who celebrated so many of my birthdays and Christmases with me that I cannot count. You, who attended my high school basketball games and my wedding. You're still alive and kicking and still use my favorite adjective: peachy.

You may be my fan, but I am most definitely yours.

The Guilt

I have the guilt. The guilt that all parents feel when they have too many school projects lying around the house. Seriously. For those of you who do not have children, I'll describe it for you: mountains of paper, in every nook and cranny, on every level surface that can hold something. It's viral. It's intimidating.

I know that teachers want us to see that our child is doing something during the day. That they are making progress. I get that. But when you consider how much they are sending home, you really wonder about their motivation. Multiply those projects by 25 students, and it becomes clear. In the words of the late, great comedian Mitch Hedberg, it's like they're sending home the projects and saying, "Here, YOU throw this away."

I made a colossal school-project mistake recently. It was my choice of garbage bag that did me in. I had discreetly tucked my 7-year-old's schoolwork into the bottom of the kitchen trash bag and covered it with various and sundry kitchen cast-offs. What I did not consider was the only-slightly opaque nature of the white Costco trash bags that we use. On trash day, my son spotted the covertly disposed schoolwork and threw a fit. He apparently was quite attached to his math work of weeks gone by and did not want to see it go. After his much weeping and wailing and my refusal to go dumpster diving, I wrested the bag to the curb. Thank goodness he's got a short memory.

I once heard of a great idea from a parenting magazine/public service t.v. spot/Dalai Lama or somewhere. The idea is to place your child's beloved work into a gigantic envelope and mail it off to a poor, unsuspecting grandparent. It's like telling your child that his deceased Rover has gone to live at Happy Farm with all the other doggies. The child is appeased and thrilled to know that his work is in a better place.

But what of the inhabitants of that "better place?" Do these poor grandparents really know what has hit them? A manifestation of love in a deluge of paper. Actually, it's more like me saying across 3,000 miles, "Here, YOU throw this away!"