You may have read or heard about the recent Newsweek article that declared Grand Rapids ‘a dying city’.  The figured since the population of under 18 year olds had decreased at a higher rate than the rest of the country, we’re just waiting for the official time of death.

Since the young set in Grand Rapids is kind of my thing, the Grand Rapids Social Diary asked me for a guest post about this issue.  I’d love for you to go and read it, and let me know what you think.

Is Grand Rapids a dying city?

Today I am breaking a cardinal law of blogging.  Or maybe it’s an ordinal one.  Or maybe it’s just one I made up, I forget sometimes.

I am writing while I’m angry.  At Grand Rapids.

You know that doesn’t happen often.  Here’s the deal.

FIVE YEARS AGO, little A.P. went to a Martin Luther King, Jr. event at the Grand Rapids Public Library.  He was smitten.  Instantly, he had a hero.  When your two year old decides someone like that is their hero – you run with it.

We started celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday.  Naturally, there was cake.  My “in real life” friends will remember that we had a framed picture of A.P.’s hero hanging in our kitchen for several years.

As a family we started collecting books about civil rights leaders.  Rosa Parks. Ruby Bridges.  And we started to learn that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great civil rights leader – but he was much more than that.

He was a good American.  He fought for social justice. For everyone.

King fought, but not with guns.  He believed strongly in non-violence, which was not (and still is not) a popular way to get messages across. Really now.  Today as our country is standing in the middle of two wars and a set of funerals kicked off by one for a a nine year old who was attending a political speech could we not stand to hear a word or two about peace and non-violence?

Last night, I set about to write a lovely post for all of you.  A post about all of the childrens’ events going on to celebrate this great man’s birthday.  MLK day has become a ‘national day of service’, so I was also looking for opportunities where kids could serve.

I found one.

ONE.

To it’s credit, the David D Hunting YMCA is holding a “Martin Luther King Day of Play” Monday, January 17 from 4-6pm at David D. Hunting Branch.  It’s open to the public and free.

I searched this-a-way, and that-a-way. And found nothing.  I hopped on Twitter, and said this:

(The 140 character limit on Twitter precludes eloquence.  You have to get right to the point)

The Grand Rapids Public Library responded:

Taste of Soul is the celebration of African American heritage put on by the Grand Rapids Public Library.  It’s an awesome event, but in my opinion is quite separate from the issues of justice and equality that Martin Luther King, Jr. made his life’s work.

I am grateful to GRCC for their MLK day celebration.  I have been to it before.  In fact once I saw one of my own heroes, Juan Williams, speak there.  But other than the Peace March, none of it is for children.

It’s important enough to be a federal holiday.   Sadly, one that is becoming more and more just a day off and less and less about honoring a great man.

Next year, I hope this is a very different post.  I hope I can report that the Dr. King will be properly celebrated by our community, and that children are welcome.

Until then, please listen to A.P. reading some of “Martin’s Big Words”

This is a picture of a schoolhouse.

It looks very different from the school where I drop my kids off every morning.  It looks simple. And old. And colorful. I can almost see the gratitude in the children waiting to go inside.

This is a picture of a schoolhouse.  In Haiti.

I don’t know if it is the one the artist attended, or wanted to attend, or just created in their mind.  I do know that this artist along with others are supported by a project called Heart of Haiti.

One year ago, 200,000 people died in the earthquake in Haiti.  One million people were displaced.  20 million cubic feet of rubble was created.

Today, most of those people remain displaced and only 5% of that rubble has been cleared.  Frustrated and weary, Hatians want to re-build their country.  This time, with strong foundations.  They want strong buildings; but also to have fundamental strengths like education and economic independence.

Heart of Haiti helps artists earn a living.  Jobs were rare before the earthquake and even more rare now.  Supporting these artists helps to rebuild Haiti.  It gives hope.  And sometimes, the smallest amount of hope is what we need to keep going.  Keep building.  Keep creating.

Purchasing items from the Heart of Haiti shop helps rebuild a broken country.  I invite you to take a look at these beautiful works of art, and to think about the hope that you can give.

I was selected for this very special “CleverHaiti” opportunity by Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity. All opinions are my own.

This week has been a blur.  Meetings, phone calls, emails; I am swimming in spreadsheets.  A conference call preempted my Bible Study (I still feel guilty about that).  I am working on a project that is awesome, but it’s taking a good amount of time and by the middle of the week I was feeling a little disconnected from my kids.  Coincidentally, Wednesday was my birthday and if I have learned one thing in my 40 years it’s this:  that crap can wait. 

I popped into A.P.’s class, completely unannounced.  I forget sometimes how fortunate we are to have a school where this behavior is completely, totally OK.  His teacher asked if I wanted to work on a ‘big project’.  It couldn’t be any more consuming than the one I had left at home, so I said I’d be glad to.

And as it turned out, I was glad to.  The kids have a field trip to a retirement home next week, when they will perform a song and dance number about Turkeys and Pilgrims. 

There is a lot of gobbling involved.

My ‘big project’ was to make turkey hats. Now, not everyone gets a turkey hat – only kids who raised their hands when the teacher asked for volunteers to be turkeys earlier in the week.  Naturally, A.P. raised his hand and so did a few other kids.  Everyone else was too cool for this turkey business.

I took the turkeys out in the hall and sat at a table with scrap paper, glue sticks, a stapler, and scissors.  Upon A.P.’s request, I went back into the classroom to retrieve some ‘googly eyes’.  After all, what kind of turkey hat doesn’t have googly eyes?

I believe very strongly in letting kids create art (or in this case, turkey hats) the way they see things.  Some kids had perfectly shaped feathers, with a perfect pattern of colors.  Some kids had crazy assemblies of construction paper that looked more like the turkey had been involved in a horrible accident.  Since the teacher couldn’t see what I was doing, I let them go to town.

I should say here that I am almost always removed from this type of project fairly promptly.  And with good reason.  For example, maybe someone read a study that showed that there is some literacy awareness that comes with cutting feathers.  Or some may feel that rolling up the paper to make a turkey with an afro is just not educational. 

I didn’t care.  I was unsupervised and the hats were wild. 

Then… it was time for recess.  I was fully prepared to be asked to come back another day and make proper turkey hats upon being found out.  But when the rest of the class paraded by – they all wanted to make turkey hats (and consequently, be turkeys at the retirement home).

A.P.’s teacher asked me to come back next week - but not to fix anything.  She asked me if I’d be willing to work with all the kids wanting to convert to turkey-ism due to the cool hats.  Of course I said yes.  And this time, not even an important conference call could stop me.

Last year, we weren’t prepared for the flu.  It came anyway.  It came, and it lingered.  My kids had never been so sick, and I hope it doesn’t happen again.

But if it does – I’m ready.  I’m doing a few things differently.  First, I’m stocking up on supplies beforehand instead of scrambling around like crazy once it hits.  I have been confused by the messages we parents have gotten over the past few years about children’s cold remedies.  I bought some anyway, but I’m going to double check EVERYTHING with the nurse line at the pediatrician’s office.

I’m not going to be in a rush to send my kids back to school.  I’m going to be conservative in deciding when they are ‘better’.  So they miss another day of school – it’s better than missing another week because of a relapse.  I’m not working this year, so keeping them out of school doesn’t mean paying for daycare I’m not using or having a tiny paycheck anymore.

We had a real problem with vomiting last year during our flu episode.  It’s hard for a body to heal when it’s dehydrated.  I bought a bottle of Pedialyte, but only used a little of it and ended up wasting the rest.  I’m happy this year that they have started making ‘singles’, which are about the size of a juice box.  Like the other cold and flu remedies, I’m definitely going to ask my pediatrician first (and you should too!), but I think they’ll be OK.

You guys know my opinions are my own.  You also know that I bring you things I think will help you out – and I didn’t know about these Pedialyte Singles until recently.  I am happy to be part of spreading the word, and making sick kids feel even a little bit better.  I was compensated for my time by Collective Bias.  If you’d like to stock up on Pedialyte Singles too, here is a store locator(I went to CVS because I had a few ExtraCare Bucks burning a hole in my pocket).

And because cold and flu supplies aren’t cheap – I have a coupon for you too.  They were just under $6.00 for a four pack, before the coupon.  It’s a Bricks coupon; you can print it twice.

I hope this isn’t an issue for any of us.  But if it is, I want to be ready.  What are you doing to get ready for the cold and flu season? Anything I missed?

The self-doubt that lurks around the corner from every decision I make hasn’t bothered showing up for most of my ”parenting biggies”.  I knew I wanted to have my babies in big hospitals with specialists hanging around.  I knew I wanted to immunize my kids.  I knew I wanted to breastfeed them, cloth diaper them, and feed them eggs and peanuts and honey before they were a year old.

I parent by instinct.  If I had different kids or a different husband I would make different decisions.  When the pediatrician told me A.P. was at a high risk for autism, I lied and said he actually was talking – but just felt a little shy at the doctor’s office. 

He wasn’t.  We didn’t hear a single spoken word for almost a year after that, but we taught him sign language and figured; eh, it counts as talking, right? 

But when Maybelle was diagnosed as Failure to Thrive, I let them perform every awful medical test on her the pediatrician could come up with.

Both of them ended up fine.

It’s not so much that I’m confident in my decisions.  It’s more that I know I’m doing the best I can.  I mean, really doing the best I can.  I research and think and pray about all of this.  Then, I pull the trigger and don’t look back.

Until now.

We started looking for elementary schools when A.P. was three.  Three! We looked at our neighborhood school, private schools, Christian schools, Catholic schools (in Grand Rapids they are referred to as two different things…) and charter schools.  Homeschooling was not an option.

I understand why people make different decisions than I do.  They have different belief systems, more or less money than we do, better neighborhood schools, or a fear of letting their kids go out into the world without them.* 

Then, we started first grade.

Oh dear God.  Everything changed.

Everything.

I wondered how to best serve my family when they were not actually with me.  That question was promptly answered with a few calls from the teacher.  OK and the principal. 

As it turns out, my son is… A BOY.  Imagine! Someone pushes him and he pushes back.  Hard.  I know his thought process:  “Make the situation stop, so I can go back to playing soccer”.

Except it’s 2010, not 1980 and if you push back harder than you were pushed it’s now called “bullying”.  It’s clearly outlined in the Contract or the Promise.  All of the Guidelines and Procedures (they aren’t rules anymore) are right there for you. The kid who pushed him in the first place? He was savvy enough to say that he was “just playing”.  They bought it.

I know.

Nothing major has happened, either on the playground or discipline-wise.  Just warnings. No, wait.  It’s 2010.  Corrective Action Plans.

A.P. is killing it academically.   He’s actually smarter than I realized.  I spend a lot of time in his class (at this school that is not out of the norm.)  He gets so engrossed in what he’s doing that he misses the teacher telling them it’s time for reading, or math, or art, or whatever is next.

I try and send him mental messages.  “Bubbie.  Stop writing.  Put your stuff away.  Go over to your cubbie and get your books.”  But he doesn’t hear me.  He doesn’t hear anything, except what he is doing.  And then eventually, the teacher saying his name.  Sharply.

She is amazing.  She loves him, I can tell.  She works with who he is; his personality and his budding leadership tendencies (another thing I totally missed).  But she has rules procedures, and they need to be followed.

I get it.  It’s how the world works.  It’s why I didn’t homeschool.  I could probably wrangle the book learnin’, but how would I teach them How The World And It’s Stupid Rules work from my living room? They have to be in it. They have to be punished for dumb, unfair things, and disciplined for wanting to finish a task before they move on to something else.

The world is stupid.

And now I get homeschooling.  I get it.  It’s not about being afraid of letting go.  It’s letting them be who they are.  One of two children, not one of 26.  I’m not going to do it, because I still believe that school is the best place to learn about stupid rules.  And how to behave on the playground (don’t push back, either ignore it or be a sissy and tell on them).

But clearly, I am struggling with this.  And totally recanting my former thoughts.  And watching that damn self doubt, creep around the corner.

I am eating my words.

Well, literally, I am eating popcorn.  But figuratively? I have a mouthful of my own words.  Too full to taste that A.P. is really smart, and I missed that.  Or that he’s a leader and I missed that too.  Or that both of my kids love their teachers, and are in an excellent school, and that it is perfectly acceptable for me to go anytime any of us wants or needs me to. 

Or every time I go school I see kids that I’ve known nearly their whole lives, and even though the idea of ‘neighborhood’ doesn’t exist the way it did when I was growing up; this is my kids’ neighborhood.

And it’s a good one.

*That’s called ‘foreshadowing’.

The other day, it occurred to me that in BigBinder’s three years of existence I have covered some resources that might be worth repeating.  I thought that maybe I could spend the next few weeks being really lazy.  Change a few words around here and there, and it’s like turning in a paper I wrote a few years ago for a class I’m taking now.

Then I got bored with the idea of just trying to sneak old posts by passing as new ones, and instead spent an evening pawing through three years of BigBinder (it’s a wonder I have anything left to talk about) and looking for things that just might help you guys out. 

If you look up at the top of the page, the “Resource Guide for Grand Rapids Parents” page is new.  And it’s for you.  I’ll be adding more as I come across or remember moments of resourceful brilliance from the past three years.  Enjoy it!

Someone pretending they are something they are not. 

That was the prompt.  From my bloggers’ writing group for this post, but also the “get off your butt and do it” prompt for a project – an entirely new blog.  I chewed on the prompt for days.  Picked it up, turned it over, set it down. Picked it up again, squinted, set it down again. 

I’ve known I had to launch this new blog for a while now.  And when I say known, I mean known.  God has talked to me exactly four times in my life, which I look at one of two ways depending on how pouty I feel.  On a grateful day, I think of how lucky I am.  People wait for God to talk to them their whole lives, and never hear Him.  On a day I’m being a baby, I think that once every decade is not exactly a relationship, and isn’t a relationship with me what God wants? That’s what all the books say anyway.

So I am clearly not a prophet.

But I can tell you what God wants; for me anyway.  He wants me to tell you a story about someone who was pretending they were something they were not.  Someone who pretended they were just like everybody else, until they got married, and with that came deep love but also scrutiny, and they couldn’t pretend anymore.

When I saw that writing prompt, I was tempted to tell you about a situation that happened recently when I really wanted to yell, “Liar liar pants on fire!” at someone, but instead I just nodded and listened (and kept a close eye on their pants) because it was so ridiculous, it was funny.  It would have been great writing material.

Or I wanted to tell you about myself; times that I have pretended I was more than I was, or less than I was, or just something different than I was. 

But that’s not what, as Eve (WALL•E; not ‘Adam and’) would say, my “directive”.

It’s so hard, because it’s not someone we can laugh at. It’s not me.  It’s my husband.  And he has ADD. 

He and I talked about this new blog and what people would think.  About him.  About me.  About us. 

It wasn’t a long conversation.  Very soon into it, he said, “Most wives wouldn’t put up with what you put up with. Or even know how to deal with it.  I mean yeah.  It will be embarrassing for me.  But what if we save someone’s marriage?”

I am the writer, and he is the one who is willing to be the main character in a real life drama, because he is kind.  And generous. And willing to be embarrassed for someone else’s sake because the stakes are that big. 

I tried to get out of it.  I searched for a novena (a Catholic prayer) for wives whose husbands have ADD. When I couldn’t find a novena I went to the big chain Christian bookstores because let’s face it; there is a Christianized version of everything in those stores.  When I couldn’t find anything there, I looked online and found nothing.  Words from Christian writers about how to deal with ADD if your child has it, yes.  But not your husband.  

God has remained very quiet about this ADD in a marriage business.  I asked Him to lead me to something like a Christian Wive’s Guide to ADD and for the fourth time in my life, He talked to me.

You do it.

My hands are sweaty just typing that because 1) I am not sure how I am supposed to quote God in a blog post and 2) it freaked me out.  I got all Moses on him and was like, “Oh! I, um, er, I think you meant someone else.  If you could just, like, magically make a book appear on my doorstep, I will read it and follow every word.  Promise!”

No. YOU.

“Someone who was pretending they were something they were not” was the prompt.  Here is the response:  My Family Has Add.

This post is, among many things, part of a writers group I belong to.  Nothing like jumping in head first.

My daughter’s fifth birthday is next week.  Like me, she will have a watery disaster commemorated on her birthday every year until time dims the experience of it. Or until someone writes a song about it. I share my birthday with the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald; a freighter that sank in Lake Superior on my fifth birthday.  A year later, Gordon Lightfoot wrote a hit song about the biggest shipping disaster ever on the Great Lakes; which is played (in Michigan, anyway) every year, over and over, on my birthday.

My daughter shares her birthday with Hurricane Katrina, and because of that I have very little first-hand understanding of what the media frenzy was like.  I had, after all, just spent the day prior having a baby. I’ve watched it since, but it isn’t the same.  I know how it turns out. 

When my daughter was six months old, my husband was laid off from his job in construction.  My uncle was laid off from the same company a few years later.  Shortly after that, my sister was laid off from her job in manufacturing.  And that’s just one family.  That story was repeated over, and over, and over.  For years. 

The obvious question is of course, “Why don’t you move?”.  Someone may have had to experience at least some amount of marital hardship to understand the answer, which is, “I know it’s not good now, and getting out would make sense to a lot of people.  But I have hope”.  Hope that it will get better.  Hope, and faith, and love. 

And I do love it here.  I write, day after day, year after year, about just how much I love it here.  And I have hope that my work gives others faith in our state.  In each other.

Has the bleeding stopped? We don’t know. We know we have to do things differently, so we started thinking about what we can do for ourselves. 

We gathered people together to decorate and celebrate our space.  We asked the city if we could raise chickens in our backyards.  We decided that the judging of good art was best left to the public, and created the biggest art prize in the country.  We reduced our water consumption, built more bike lanes, and became the most sustainable city of it’s size in the entire country.

All of that. In two years.

Not long after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this year, my family took a trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  I don’t exaggerate when I say that I was stunned by the natural beauty; but also by a place so untouched even the cities felt inherently safe.  It felt like what I think 1950 felt like, based entirely on sitcoms from that era. No fear; not from bravery but from lack of danger.

I kept picturing what an oil spill would be like on our Great Lakes.  What would be lost.  And although the Upper Peninsula and it’s beauty are very, very old – it was the same sadness I’ve had when I think of someone dying young.  All of the memories and experiences never realized.  What if an oil spill happens here? What if my kids don’t remember what it looked like before?

I took lots of pictures, and went back to feeling safe. 

And then, six weeks later, it happened.

A pipeline broke.  It leaked oil into the Kalamazoo River, which empties into Lake Michigan.  Then it was our wildlife being washed in Dawn Dish Detergent.  Our wetlands being destroyed.  Our air that stunk. 

Some states like to be snuggled by mountains.  We like to be snuggled by lakes.  Big lakes. Bigger than you think.  They are freshwater oceans, and they are dangerous and beautiful and shocking to people who see them for the first time and had the audacity to think they knew what a big lake was prior to meeting the Great ones.

They are ours, in sickness and in health. 

And so, we stay.

This post was submitted to the ”Hope Remains Five Years Later” carnival at Story Bleed.

This is a hard post to write.  I’ve had to put some distance between having the experience, and sharing it. Not so much to ‘process’ it; although for sure there was some of that. More because I burst into tears every time I thought about it.  

During our recent trip to Maryland, we took a day trip to Shanksville, Pennsylvania. You might remember that name, vaguely, because it is where Flight 93 went down on 9-11.  It’s the flight that the passengers took back from the terrorists, and knowing that although they would lose their lives, they hoped it would save so many others. It’s the single victory – the one win we needed so badly that day.

There isn’t much there. Not yet anyway.  A big memorial and interpretive center is being built in time for the ten year anniversary.  There are construction vehicles everywhere, but mostly it’s just an open field with a gravel parking lot, a tiny shack with some pamphlets, and memorials sent by people everywhere.  There is also a short program presented by a Park Ranger, using a simple three ring binder and page-protectors to keep the pictures from getting dusty.

I remember hearing on the news that the terrorists chose flights they knew would be fairly empty, thinking they would be easier to control.  The Park Ranger said that there were only 40 people on Flight 93 that day; 33 passengers and 7 crew members. She gave a brief biography of some of them, including an Emergency Medical Technician named Lauren Grandcolas, and mentioned that fortunately, no children had died.

Except that’s not quite true.

Lauren Grandcolas was three months pregnant with her first child.  When I was three months pregnant with my first child, had he died, I most certaintly would have considered that a death.  In fact, I have an ultrasound picture of him at that age because there were some scary complications. The kind where the doctor tells you to go home and wait; because it’s either going to be OK or it isn’t; but there isn’t anything he can do. 

The Park Ranger said based on the trajectory of the flight as it fell from the sky, had it crashed three seconds earlier it would have landed directly on a school.  In fact, it was the only school in that town.  It housed Kindergarden through 12th grade.  An entire generation for this small town would have died that day.  But they didn’t. 

And although the history books will say that “no children died” – and I am profoundly grateful that no other children were on board and the school was spared – it’s important for me to say that one child died on Flight 93. That baby’s mom, Lauren Grandcolas, knew that they were both going to die. 

So little baby, I dedicate this post to you.  I can’t get you out of my head.  Maybe you just needed some credit.  Maybe you just needed to be counted. So now, the world knows.  Rest in peace.