People Will Be Able To....

Expectation is something with which I have always struggled.  I don't mean I don't like meeting expectations; it's more that I hate the idea of "expecting" -- wanting something to happen or not happen, and then being either let down or excited by the results.  It's way too frightening.  I lived in complete panic for good portions of my pregnancy waiting for results and likelihoods and odds-- and even jubilation after good results never makes me say, 'Well that worrying wasn't that bad.'

At work, we talk all the time about the future.  We write our objectives for each class period on the board, according to the acronym SWBAT: "Students will be able to."  By the end of the period, students will be able to write an effective paraphrase or analyze a piece of literary criticism or emulate an author's style or whatever.  And we've asked admin, what if the kids CAN'T do what we set out?  What if they don't meet the expectation?  The answer is that it's okay, but the next day we've got to find a way to remediate so that students will be able to do the thing, whatever it is. 

It makes expectation sound so simple: if at first you don't succeed, try another route.  Then it'll get done.

But the classroom-- and its trials and tribulations isn't-- real life.  Expectations can let us down mightily in our "real lives," and there's usually not much you can do.  I've been hearing lots of bad news about folks lately, and in most cases, it's all surprise: nothing that could have been projected with a clever acronym and then remedied later.   Life tosses out so many curve balls that the expectation of how a ball will speed into the air is often irrelevant.

I think about cooking when I ponder expectation.  I'm not one of those people who uses my oven for sweater storage, but I am also not a gourmand: I am somewhere hazy in the middle.  I like cooking (most times), but if a planned dish is a little bit cutting- edge for me, I am a recipe follower through- and- through.  I rely on someone on allrecipes.com to tell me how to accomplish a task and basically assure me I won't eff it up.  And from there, I still CAN screw it up.  But with some guidance, I am more likely to get the meal I want. Sometimes I taste the finished product and it's awesome; other times, I am thinking, "This isn't how I pictured it.  Harumph."

And in the kitchen of the world, I fall short when I don't have the crutch of a recipe: a handy stat or set of odds or given assurance that something will go well or poorly.  And really, even the set of odds indicates zero.  And so as a result, I start to rely on silly things like superstition, fear, and the "power" of jinxing.  I marvel at people who can write things on Facebook like, "What a day to be alive!  I love my job and my hubby!"  That statement seems so ballsy to me.  It would be the all- time life- irony for something horrible to happen to that person and someone else would say, "Wow-- so ironic-- she was JUST saying how well things are going."  I never, therefore, let myself recognize how good things are.  The fear of the ironic outcome is far too petrifying.

It's superstitious thinking in its worst form.  But I can't seem to get away from using it.  Just when I feel I might be too comfortable or pleased with something, I know I am sure to be knocked on my ass.  Thus, a protective mechanism is never to fully embrace things.

You're probably thinking, "That's a shizzy way to live, you nutbag."  And I can recognize that I deserve the title.  But I have woven myself quite a web of weird anxious comfort by thinking this way.  By relying on the knowledge that things will probably start to suck soon.  I read a book called Change Your Brain, Change Your Life once, and the author called upon his readership to think only positive thoughts at all times.  When I shut the book, I vowed to change my thought- patterns.  But I've never been successful. 

So lately, with all this unthinkable, unexpected, unprepared for news, a teacher being killed in a school bathroom among it, I have to keep wondering about expectation and how often we can really rely on it.  The expectation is, surely, not that THAT will ever happen.  But it can.  And it does.  And in a much less grand- scheme- important news story, nobody expected the Red Sox to go from worst to first.  And nobody expected a group of well- respected girls in our school to do something horrific.  And nobody expected the weather to be so warm and nice today.  Down and up, sideways, the news goes everywhere.  And expectation never really matters.

We try to control things, and sometimes we can.  But most often we can't.  It always seems that at the most unplanned for moments, the most shocking things occur-- be they wonderful or gruesome.  It's a good thing there's no acronym for life: nothing saying, People Will Be Able To.... Because we never know what we can do until we get to a moment, a second, a milli- second.  I have to remember that while I can cook with a recipe, I can't know if my oven will break, but I also can't know if my basil will taste way better than Jenny Smith's from the website.

Hints of the Past

Today is one of those blah days when I should be working on 100 things, but I need to write.  I don't think I can even touch a few of the topics that have been swirling in my brain, so I am going to write about something totally different: nostalgia.

Since we had Mabel, I have been trying to make our house as "natural" as I can: organic soaps and shower products, natural detergents and cleaning supplies, and as much organic food as is feasible given the price and availability.  I don't microwave plastic or use canned food anymore, and we try to minimize our consumption of frozen food laden with preservatives.  I am by no means a total organic convert, and I eat plenty of junk food.  Every now and then I break my own rules, and I don't let the effort to be more green invade our comfort level (certain things just taste gross if all- natural, and certain products are just not useful).  But I do what I can in an effort to be a little more healthy now that we have the little one.

While I feel good about these choices we make (I say "we" because, surprisingly, for the most part, J is now on board, despite some grousing and questioning in the beginning.  He subsequently read an article about pesticides and changed his tune.  I still can't get him on natural bath products, but he's good with all else), I sometimes just long for stuff fraught with phthalates and other supposedly- hazardous chemicals. Or I miss a time when nobody worried about them.


My favorite nostalgic smell is that of Dial soap-- the orange bar, specifically.  This soap is my childhood at the Cape-- at my grandmother's previous house, where she lived by herself for many years and we would visit all the time.  A few summers, I would go for weeks at a time, and my cousin R would fly in from Colorado to join.  We'd spend our days working on our tans at the beach and then choreographing dance routines to Salt n Pepa tunes in the basement.  The prior house owners had a big pool table in the basement, and my grandmother never had it removed.  Sometimes R and I would sleep on it, and sometimes we would actually play pool.  Every day, a post- beach shower was made complete by a bar of Dial orange.  I didn't think much of it back in 1992, but now when I smell it (my ObGyn's office uses it), I am overcome by a nostalgia so overwhelming that I'm not sure whether to smile or cry. Such innocence, such naivete is associated with those years-- and the breaking of said innocence too-- I smoked my first cigarette and drank my first booze (a wine cooler) with my cousin during one of those summers.

Another one is the scent of Junior Mints.  I am immediately in my other grandmother's car-- a silver Ford Taurus, with her offering me some of the candies.  She would sit at the end of our driveway and wait for me to get off the elementary school bus, and then take me on a voyage doing errands at the bank in Westwood or at the Roche Brothers.  We'd end up at her house where my mom would pick me up.  Nana had a plaid seat cover for the driver's spot, as she couldn't see high enough I guess as she aged, and when I smell Junior Mints, I think of that seat cover and the fun trips in which she would always secure for me a few good bank lollipops.

And my own scents (I mean ones I have purchased, not that I have given off :)) bring me places too.  Bath and Body Works "Moonlight Path" plants me in the summer apartment I shared with my good friend C in Providence during the summer before our senior year of college.  We both loved the scent, so we bought the lotion and the perfume and would share.  I don't think I've worn it since then (maybe just here and there).  But upon detecting it on someone else, I see myself in our dilapidated, cheap apartment or at a shift at the restaurant where we both worked.  I had the the whole world ahead of me back then and had no idea.

We have a "no fragrance" rule in school this year due to common student allergies.  Between that and my own non- use of chemical stuff, I rarely get whiffs of smells that deliver me to great places.  Places and times when I was either content or too naive to know I wasn't.  I wonder what sorts of stuff will make Mabel feel nostalgic.  Though I didn't record them all here, I've got lots of other smells in my nostalgia arsenal: brownies are my mom on Sunday nights; Tide laundry is the across- the- street- neighbors; coffee is my 5th- grade teacher Mrs. Gorman.  It's funny how our bodies take in these scents, memorize them, and relate them.  Pretty cool given we don't know we are doing it.

I hope I can create some ways that Mabel can, as she gets older, transport herself back in time via nostalgia.  This traveling through time is of such comfort, despite the fact that it reminds me the times are gone.