Excavating for a Mine
“Be here now.” It was an expression I had heard a friend and teacher Ralph use with his students, and one I tried to live by. I used it often with Eliot. When he obsessed on something that had nothing to do with the task at hand I said, “Be here now, buddy." I didn’t explain what it meant, though.
Once when he said he was sorry for having hit someone, I said, “’Sorry’ doesn’t mean much. You are responsible for your behavior. Actions speak louder than words.” A few weeks later he targeted the object of his affection. Belle was an aide to his friend Aaron and worked at Kid Quest, the after-school program where Eliot spent a great deal of time, more so after I pulled him out of public school. I would say Belle was Eliot's first love. He’d had crushes and obsessions before, but this one hung on. He thought about her and wanted to ask her on a date, but when he actually saw her he put his head down and walked past her blushing.
“Can I give her a hug?” he asked when we were alone.
I said, “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you have special feelings for her. And she’s older, so you can only be friends.”
One day on a Kid Quest hike he hit her. We discussed it afterward, many times, and a week later when he brought it up he said, “Words speak louder than words,” (getting it half right). Then he looked at me and said, “Be here now.”
There were a number of people who had helped me and Blue with Eliot, but one of the most indispensable was his third grade teacher Robin. She had introduced Eliot to the visual reading program called Edmark. Through repetition and a series of visual exercises, it combined words into sentences with enough contrast to embed the words into the reader’s memory. For the first time Eliot had begun reading sentences. But Eliot’s fourth and fifth grade teachers tried to teach him phonics, which had never worked. I finally got hold of the Edmark software, and in the winter of his sixth grade year when he was home with me full time, I started him again on Edmark. Within days he was reading sentences, and within a week he was reading stories.
He rolled his eyes at the inane Edmark voice, but he hung in there. At the end of every lesson the voice said, "Great! You did it! You're ready to move on!” (i.e.to the next lesson.) When we were done with our work one day, Eliot burst out of his chair and told the Edmark voice, "I'm moving on!" As in, I'm outa here.
Whether Edmark was drawing out what had always been there, or whether some parts were finally coming together, a mysterious transformation was taking place in Eliot's brain. The Now in the "Be Here" was ever exciting, and Eliot was as enthusiastic about Christmas as he had been about Halloween.
He wanted to put up the Christmas lights the day after Thanksgiving. He was worse than Walgreen’s. In Bed, Bath, and Beyond, he asked if we could buy the gaudy reindeer chips-and-dip plate. He lugged a huge boom box (On Sale!) into the cart. I guess the boom box was part of the Beyond.
But when I sagged at the prospect of Eliot at home full time, I found myself in early December pulling out the Christmas lights to lift my spirits.
Carly was not immune to the celebration either, although at her age Christmas was less exciting and New Year’s Eve intriguing. It wasn't drunken parties she was after, though; she simply pledged to stay up until midnight. Blue and I went to bed as usual sometime after nine, and woke at midnight to the sounds of fireworks and the door to the backyard slamming. Carly had run into the yard with her bongo drums, which she beat on to accompany the pops and booms of another year gone.
Carly's drum teacher gave her Jimmy Hendrix and Cream cd’s, and every week she came home excited about a new beat he had taught her. But her obsession at fourteen was surfing. She wanted to go every day. Some days I had to beg off just to do laundry.
Her screen-saver, the door of her bedroom, the background on her MySpace were covered with pictures of Hawaii. She could tell you all about the salty white-blond boys her age who had joined the pro-circuit. She even took up the ukelele.
On a dark rainy night in January I drove Carly to her first ukelele lesson. Her classmates were all people my age dressed for winter. Not a Hawaiian shirt in sight, although the instructor, “the Uke Lady,” was Hawaiian. As Carly said later, “It’s not very Wahine, just a bunch of people in scarves.”
Carly brought her ukelele when we drove up to Tahoe to ski at the end of January, and we had a concert in the car. Eliot had the coconut banjo his grandmother Sushi had brought him from from Tahiti, which he called his ukelele. He mostly strummed that, but he took his harmonica out once in a while and puffed out a chord.
Carly played the songs she had learned in her class. Her voice, sweet and unpolished, squeaked a bit on the high notes:
“In a cavern, in a canyon,
excaVAting for a mine
dwelt a miner forty-niner
and his daughter Clementine.”
Hawaiian immigrants had worked and died in the mines of the Sierra foothills during the Gold Rush, and undoubtedly sang their stories and songs round many a campfire. Likewise, the song list for Carly's class was a mix of Hawaiian and Mainland.
In “The Saints Go Marching In” she paused on a note change:
“Oh Lord, I want
to be in that -- NUmber.”
Of course the squeaks and pauses made the concert all the sweeter.
It snowed four of the five days we were in the mountains. Two of the days the temperature was in the low twenties, and we floated over fresh powder. This did not bode well for Eliot, who skiied the one day the sun came out. He was genuinely scared, and the weather didn’t help. But there was no turning back. The road up I80 in winter was part of his life now. As his mom, I was more at peace in the mountains than anywhere. It was the one place I even came close to a glimpse of our place in the universe.
"Oh when the saints
Go marching in,
Oh when the saints go marching in,
Oh Lord I want to be in that -- Number,
Oh when the saints go marching in."
Once when he said he was sorry for having hit someone, I said, “’Sorry’ doesn’t mean much. You are responsible for your behavior. Actions speak louder than words.” A few weeks later he targeted the object of his affection. Belle was an aide to his friend Aaron and worked at Kid Quest, the after-school program where Eliot spent a great deal of time, more so after I pulled him out of public school. I would say Belle was Eliot's first love. He’d had crushes and obsessions before, but this one hung on. He thought about her and wanted to ask her on a date, but when he actually saw her he put his head down and walked past her blushing.
“Can I give her a hug?” he asked when we were alone.
I said, “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you have special feelings for her. And she’s older, so you can only be friends.”
One day on a Kid Quest hike he hit her. We discussed it afterward, many times, and a week later when he brought it up he said, “Words speak louder than words,” (getting it half right). Then he looked at me and said, “Be here now.”
There were a number of people who had helped me and Blue with Eliot, but one of the most indispensable was his third grade teacher Robin. She had introduced Eliot to the visual reading program called Edmark. Through repetition and a series of visual exercises, it combined words into sentences with enough contrast to embed the words into the reader’s memory. For the first time Eliot had begun reading sentences. But Eliot’s fourth and fifth grade teachers tried to teach him phonics, which had never worked. I finally got hold of the Edmark software, and in the winter of his sixth grade year when he was home with me full time, I started him again on Edmark. Within days he was reading sentences, and within a week he was reading stories.
He rolled his eyes at the inane Edmark voice, but he hung in there. At the end of every lesson the voice said, "Great! You did it! You're ready to move on!” (i.e.to the next lesson.) When we were done with our work one day, Eliot burst out of his chair and told the Edmark voice, "I'm moving on!" As in, I'm outa here.
Whether Edmark was drawing out what had always been there, or whether some parts were finally coming together, a mysterious transformation was taking place in Eliot's brain. The Now in the "Be Here" was ever exciting, and Eliot was as enthusiastic about Christmas as he had been about Halloween.
He wanted to put up the Christmas lights the day after Thanksgiving. He was worse than Walgreen’s. In Bed, Bath, and Beyond, he asked if we could buy the gaudy reindeer chips-and-dip plate. He lugged a huge boom box (On Sale!) into the cart. I guess the boom box was part of the Beyond.
But when I sagged at the prospect of Eliot at home full time, I found myself in early December pulling out the Christmas lights to lift my spirits.
Carly was not immune to the celebration either, although at her age Christmas was less exciting and New Year’s Eve intriguing. It wasn't drunken parties she was after, though; she simply pledged to stay up until midnight. Blue and I went to bed as usual sometime after nine, and woke at midnight to the sounds of fireworks and the door to the backyard slamming. Carly had run into the yard with her bongo drums, which she beat on to accompany the pops and booms of another year gone.
Carly's drum teacher gave her Jimmy Hendrix and Cream cd’s, and every week she came home excited about a new beat he had taught her. But her obsession at fourteen was surfing. She wanted to go every day. Some days I had to beg off just to do laundry.
Her screen-saver, the door of her bedroom, the background on her MySpace were covered with pictures of Hawaii. She could tell you all about the salty white-blond boys her age who had joined the pro-circuit. She even took up the ukelele.
On a dark rainy night in January I drove Carly to her first ukelele lesson. Her classmates were all people my age dressed for winter. Not a Hawaiian shirt in sight, although the instructor, “the Uke Lady,” was Hawaiian. As Carly said later, “It’s not very Wahine, just a bunch of people in scarves.”
Carly brought her ukelele when we drove up to Tahoe to ski at the end of January, and we had a concert in the car. Eliot had the coconut banjo his grandmother Sushi had brought him from from Tahiti, which he called his ukelele. He mostly strummed that, but he took his harmonica out once in a while and puffed out a chord.
Carly played the songs she had learned in her class. Her voice, sweet and unpolished, squeaked a bit on the high notes:
“In a cavern, in a canyon,
excaVAting for a mine
dwelt a miner forty-niner
and his daughter Clementine.”
Hawaiian immigrants had worked and died in the mines of the Sierra foothills during the Gold Rush, and undoubtedly sang their stories and songs round many a campfire. Likewise, the song list for Carly's class was a mix of Hawaiian and Mainland.
In “The Saints Go Marching In” she paused on a note change:
“Oh Lord, I want
to be in that -- NUmber.”
Of course the squeaks and pauses made the concert all the sweeter.
It snowed four of the five days we were in the mountains. Two of the days the temperature was in the low twenties, and we floated over fresh powder. This did not bode well for Eliot, who skiied the one day the sun came out. He was genuinely scared, and the weather didn’t help. But there was no turning back. The road up I80 in winter was part of his life now. As his mom, I was more at peace in the mountains than anywhere. It was the one place I even came close to a glimpse of our place in the universe.
"Oh when the saints
Go marching in,
Oh when the saints go marching in,
Oh Lord I want to be in that -- Number,
Oh when the saints go marching in."
posted by Victoria Tatum at 11:39 AM
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