Susan Senator

For the last few months, usually on Saturdays, Nat has been going out with his Northeastern buddy Julie, and with his friend Scott, and Scott’s buddy Christine. Their travels usually include eating somewhere like California Pizza Kitchen, or Chinese food.

It is a delightful foursome. Julie and Christine enjoy each other’s company, as they oversee Scott and Nat’s interactions with the world at large (usually downtown Boston). Nat and Scott are very comfortable with each other. They have known one another since they were eleven, having first met at the Special Olympics gymnastics team, both of their first SO experience. They have always gone to different schools, but they have similar interests: sports, bowling alleys, hanging out with lovely young women, and fine dining. Oh, and apparently, massage chairs.

It was after 9:30 p.m. I was finished dancing and about to shower, when I realized that Nat was pacing a lot downstairs. This is often his reminder of some aspect of the nighttime ritual that has not yet occurred. I rushed over to the little kitchen, which houses all the food and storage stuff for the kitchen. I pulled down the pillbox, assuming this was next.

There were no Thursday night pills. Pill-cutting is an arduous weekly task around here, and because of all the little pills and the differences in dosages and times of day, it is easy to forget a time slot. I assumed I had forgotten Thursday night, and I muttered this with Nat looking, interested, over my shoulder, while delving into the Friday night pills to pilfer from there. I poured the orange and white tidbits into my hand, but Nat did not get his glass of water.

“You already had your pills!” he shouted.
“What? Oh,” I said, and poured the pills back into Friday, yelling, “Hey, Ned! You already gave him the pills, and didn’t say anything!! I almost gave him another bunch!!” What, was he so involved with his computer? I was poised and ready for a little fight over this.
“But Nat told you,” Ned said calmly.
Nat told me. I was shaking as I considered this, three little words that change everything.

I felt a blog post rumbling around inside me like gas. I am achey and bloated and avoiding. There are so many things I don’t want to face. So I’m eating and eating and trying to stay full, but the thing is, there is a big fat juicy elephant in this dining room. Nat is moving out on July 28.

Big exhalation of air. My fat full belly pushes against my belt buckle, my shoulders hunch and my hands are splayed like giant crabs across my keyboard. Crumbs everywhere, boys scattered all over the house. I want to sleep to get away from my head.

I have been forcing myself to do things with Nat, to keep going, to keep interacting, but I just feel as if I’m behind a wall. Every now and then I just stop him during his insanely quick pacing, and I give him a soft kiss. I stare into those endless Natty eyes and I just keep wanting to cry, cry, cry. How sorry I am that I could not do this myself, that I could not teach him everything he needs to know to get along out there. That stupid world. How I hate it. How I hate my inability to ease his disability.

I don’t want to deal with this. I focus on his IEP goals, spelling out specifically to his teachers what he can work on in the residences. I fill his weekends with social group and trips with his Northeastern U. buddies, chores, and walks with Ned.

But I am not looking at him as much because I feel guilty. He doesn’t know yet. I don’t know how we are going to tell him. We are going to discuss this issue at the IEP meeting next week. We’ll have ideas then. Until then I feel heavy with my gorging and my secrets.

Tuesdays are full and crazy, but I luvs them. Tuesdays are when I have my Baby Bellies, and when I have to make the school newsletter, Lincoln Lines. It is a lot of working getting through both, and there are times when I have wanted to quit, but I am proud of myself for hanging in there.

Today was a good day, albeit busy. In the morning I got an email from a dad at the school who is also a good friend of ours, and he had at item for the newsletter about the Pumpkinfest Golf Tournament. Pumpkinfest is our school’s biggest fundraiser, and it is crazy busy and successful. There is, among many things, a silent auction, and the tournament was one of the prizes to bid on. I was psyched when I got the email about it because now I had my lead story. I told Ned and he said, “You are such a huge dork.”

Well, yes. But he doesn’t understand how much fun it is running a tiny media empire. I love amassing school news items from various sources: the main office, the front door notices, the school website, and parents and teachers sending me emails. Most everyone gets stuff to me by my Monday deadline, and by Tuesday afternoon, after the Baby Bellies, I can take an hour or two and lay it all out online. I come up with attention-grabbing headlines; I decide what is front page news and what is stuck in the back; I edit things so that they fit and are clear; and I get Ben to do art for a story or two. Sometimes I use Clip Art, but that stuff is so corny. Ben’s stuff is edgy and powerful, like this one he did for the golf tournament: [if no image, Blogger sucks]

I was in some kind of zone today, because it went well with the Baby Bellies. It has not gone that well much this session; there are 13 girls, plus occasional playdates come along, and I have had a hard time with all the chaos. I talked to a friend who runs an afterschool baking class like mine, and she said that the thing to do is hold them off on the snack as long as possible, and only expect to be able to teach them 30 minutes worth of stuff. The rest of the time is eating and running around.

But more than that stellar advice, there was also my expectations being too high. These are very little girls, for God’s sake. What was I thinking, that they had to learn so much bellydance? It hit me like a clap of thunder today: let them play with the veils, who cares? That’s pretty much all they like, anyway. And who can blame them? They are floating color! Candy on the breeze! Silken rainbows!

But I could not let go entirely. I still made them practice the “fold and hold” (making a pocket around themselves with their veils folded sideways and held in one hand) and camels (S-shaped body waves stepping forward). One of them insisted we call the camel move “Figs,” after her pet dog, whose belly apparently undulates in the same fashion. So then I said that we should do the camels — er, Figs — into the center of the circle when we do our recital piece, instead of the hip-lift-walk that becomes an utter mess when they try to do it.

This was easy to teach, too. You push your lower belly out, leaning back on your heels, then push your upper belly forward, followed by your chest, bringing your foot forward in a stepping motion, then pulling your shoulders back and lower belly forward again. That is how you get the “S” shape.

The girls were very good at the Figs, and the move looked much better in the piece, as I thought it would. I was so happy with their progress that I let them have their donut holes a little early and sat back while they chased each other, all wrapped up in my veils. Two of the youngest fell and got a little hurt, so I said we had to stop running with veils. I could tell that the oldest ones, whom I had kind of yelled at last week, were trying extra hard to listen to me, and I felt moved by their sweetness and it made me feel very loving towards them. And they responded by seeming happier in class than ever. One of them actually started going through my songs and picking out the ones she liked, and getting the others to just dance to them. I figured this was as good as anything else, just getting them interested in World Music, rather than shlocky pop. We only have two classes left, and as long as they practice their fold and hold and their Figs, we should be in good shape. Even with 8 donut holes per BB.

Old friends
Sat on the park bench like book ends.
–Simon and Garfunkel

Appearance is a funny and misleading thing. I visited an old college friend in New York this weekend, because I was giving a talk and I needed a place to stay. This is a guy who was actually so dear to us that he was one of the ushers in our wedding party. He was one of my favorite people in my dorm way back when. Ned’s too. He could imitate Mick Jagger and many others — and so could I — and that was something we used to do often into the late hours of the morning. For my birthday once he rented “Funny Girl,” my favorite movie, and gave a viewing for all of our friends in his dorm room, where he had a VCR (no one owned those back then!) and a large t.v. Another time, he got us all to watch “The Shining,” a movie that had scared the crap out of me the year before (freshman year), and he got me to appreciate it and even laugh at it. Ned and I had so many great times with him.

He and his partner own an apartment in the Dakota, and when he invited me to stay with them, I was very excited. I was also surprised by how intimidated I felt at first! Partly because I am not used to staying with friends without Ned, because it has been decades since I hung out with this friend for so long, but also because of his amazing digs and lifestyle. I am a creature of comfort, I love beautiful things, and I get kind of swept away by fame sometimes, I’ll admit it. And this place! The apartment itself, the square footage, is bigger than my house. Same era as my house, a time of heavy dark woodwork, large spaces, high ceilings, sumptuous fittings everywhere. A shower bigger than my entire bathroom at home. First apartment building on that part of Manhattan. John Lennon lived there. Yoko Ono still does. Central Park, literally across the street, is the view from most rooms.

I was full of excitement and a little dread over all the glamor, but I got back to my old feeling with him, however, within minutes. We walked a little in the park, and then had a fun dinner in Trump International Tower. It was a heady feeling being there, too, in this restaurant where celebrities dine, and where everyone knew my friend. But in the end it was just a good place to eat, very friendly and warm, not at all snobby. Later we walked home in the light rain. Tons of people going places, because it was Saturday night in New York.

I think one of the best moments was waking up, my heavily shuttered enormous window open slightly to the sounds of the rising city on a Sunday, the sun lighting up the trees below; each one seemed to be a different shade of green. I felt like Eloise. My friend was in the kitchen making a pot of coffee and emptying his dishwasher. Sitting with him and talking during my favorite time of day before doing one of my favorite things (give a talk) was just bliss. It is just so bittersweet to reunite with an old, old friend and see what is the same and what is different. I was so happy for him, to see him, to get to know his partner and see how well-matched they were, finishing each others’ sentences, laughing so much, having New York at their feet. But it was, in the end, the same old guy.

When I walked outside to catch a cab, there were tourists photographing the building. I was standing in the front gates with my sunglasses on waiting for the cab and some of the tourists were looking at me. I have to admit I felt kind of like a star at that moment, but little did they know — it was only me, on my way to Queens!

Hey Neddy, you got the love I need
maybe more than enough
Oh darling, darling, darling
Walk a while with me
You got so much, so much…

Over the Hills and Far Away, Led Zep (and me)

That is what I ran to this morning. Thinking about Ned. So special. Golden, commanding, quiet, brilliant. Loyal, true, like a fairy tale prince. I was thinking, how is it that love lasts? Given all the mistakes and human ugliness? I hear so much about how it fades. You merely coexist. For the sake of continuity, for the sake of the kids. For something else. But I feel so, so, so grateful that for us it is not like that. Sometimes I cannot believe the blessings in my life.
(Knock wood).

It is my turn to help him. I want his birthday to be great, fun, exciting, peaceful, whatever he truly wants. I want his Father’s Day to be fantastic, because he is such an amazing father. But those events always coincide, and are also the same days as Nat’s State Games. How do I make each celebration really count for him? How can I make him as filled up with me as I am with him?

Beth, a writer-group friend for many years, sent me this terrific send-up/sum-up of what it’s like to be published…

I don’t know if it’s the terrible tragedy that occurred here, that I wrote about in my last post, or if it is Nat’s imminent move-out, but I feel like I was hit by a ton of bricks. I could not exercise, I could barely meet my good friend for a walk. It is a painfully beautiful day, but I spent about an hour crying. I was thinking about Nat. I am sorry to be so emo about it, but it is just huge to me. This is not about my having doubts. This is about the separation, pure and simple.

It has been a year of looking at little babies and swooning with motherlust. A year of joyful teaching of little girls and getting to know them, pouts and all. A year of watching my Max become a man, full of healthy skepticism, rebelliousness, and contempt for us, his parents. At the same time, he is still my Little, Little, with wide blue eyes and an all-knowing smile.

And I have experienced Benji becoming a more empathic, sweet and thoughtful person. He actually said to me today, “I am happy today.”

So even though I was burdened by my own depression, I could smile in sweet relief at those words, and at all the things going on in my life. I look at Natty, my Natty, my firstborn, and I want him back. I want those days when he was a baby, and I want to enjoy them this time. I want, I want, I want. But I can’t have. I have to work on pushing him out of the nest, I who once dreamt of constructing a nest of iron and ten-foot walls, with nothing but the softest pillows inside…

Okay, okay, I’m letting my ultra-sticky morose meanderings drip all over you all. Please forgive. This is how it’s going to be for awhile, while I step around yet another Big Thing in the path.

An Anonymous reader left a comment on a recent post about Brookline, tipping me off to a terrible crime that occurred just a few days ago in town: an autistic 12-year-old girl was apparently raped right in a nearby park by her van driver. You can read the horrible story here.

This man, who was arraigned today, also drove Nat a few years ago! I never thought anything negative about him. And of course he has yet to be proven guilty. That aside, this is every parent’s nightmare, particularly if you have a child who cannot readily communicate. What a horror.

I can only hope and pray that this family can heal, especially the little girl. God only knows what this is like for her.

Every now and then there will be a moment where Max still opens up and shares himself with us. I try so hard to give him his space to let him grow, and sometimes he gives me glimpses of the complex and thoughtful man he is becoming.

Max and his friend A worked for weeks on this claymation film for AP French, where they are studying French African and Middle Eastern countries, and learning about the Muslim influences there. They did a lot of research and were particularly moved by the abuse of women there. He was blown away by the repression in Afghanistan, the high percentage of arranged marriages and also the high number of women who die in childbirth. And I was blown away by Max’s talent and of course, so happy to see what’s going on in his life and mind.

I am working on Nat’s new IEP goals, taking the residential move into account (coming in July).

I can’t bear it!! Don’t tell me it is good for him. I feel like I’m abandoning him!

Don’t remind me of my other two sons. I feel like Sophie, in Sophie’s Choice. Any way I choose, I lose.

Everything I write down for the team to take into account, I feel a pang of , “Will they take good care of him? Will they know what he needs and wants? Will they make sure his bed is the way he likes it (sheets totally untucked, pillow mutchered). Or will they take advantage of him somehow? How will he address his private needs there safely and appropriately? Will they make him stop stimming? Will he like the kids he is in there with? Does he prefer “higher functioning” kids? How horrible is it, to wonder that?? I am horrible.

I feel like I should convert the basement into an apartment, find a great person to live there with him, let him transition slowly to living apart from us. Just like when he was little, I wanted to take him out of school and teach him myself. Keep him from the nasty world. Teach him everything in the safety and warmth of our home, until he was ready. Until I was ready. But Ned told me I was crazy, I couldn’t do it myself. I was too scattered, not a trained teacher. Just a loving mother.

And now, it’s the same. I worry that the rest of the world doesn’t understand him and love him like I do and he will be sad. I can’t stand the thought that he would be sad and no one would know, that they might just think it’s behavior or something to “reduce.”

My trellises arrived just in time for Mother’s Day! Ned put them up on my neighbor’s garage wall to camouflage the ugly cinderblock. I love how it looks. I will probably train some kind of shade-loving vine to grow there, but it is so densely shaded, and the soil is so tightly packed and rocky that it will have to be a shallow-rooted vine, something that sends runners everywhere. Not sure which to choose because I need to be able to contain it and not have it consume the garage.

I spent all day picking out the rest of the plants and then digging holes. I must have been a gopher in a past life, because it gives me so much pleasure to do that. Cutting into thick soil is a bit like slicing a chocolate layer cake; and the sprinkling of cocoa shells I used as mulch got me thinking of chocolate, chocolate, chocolate! So we ate pancakes for dinner, to satisfy my sweet tooth.

I blew it this year in terms of buying Mother’s Day cards on time. But —

Oh, Mommy!! How I love you.

Because of that day you put me in a navy blue velvet party dress and brushed my hair into a bun and said we were going to Old McDonald’s Farm for the day.

For always being so happy to see me that you cry a little bit when we visit.

When you pronounced the air Out West to be so good you’d like to “bottle it.”

For driving all those times with Laura’s doll head hidden on your shoulder and not noticing it.

The way you love my kids.

Because you are so pretty, and always were, that I named my favorite doll after you.

Because you never wear any makeup, even at age 68!

For saying, “So, transfer!” when I was miserable at Trinity, my first college — and so I did. You made it seem possible.

Because of the intense, sensory-filled way that you nurture and nourish your loved ones: with food, music, stories, sweet-smelling hugs, laughter, and even anger that is brief and just.

Because you are the sweetest person I know.

I love you, Mom! Happy Mother’s Day!!

I am so thrilled with how the front yard garden is going. Yesterday I planted all the stuff I’d bought the day before at Mahoney’s, my favorite garden store and provided them with water using the best hose reel not just on the roots but also on their leaves. Mahoney’s in Brighton (a neighborhood of Boston) is for urban gardeners. It is almost a boutique, but it is just big enough that it has small yards of shrubs, another one for interesting planters, and another one for veggies and herbs, with a large barn full of indoor kind of stuff, as well as the main parking lot area of perennials, the garden’s royalty; and annuals, the garden’s ladies-in-waiting. Mahoney’s used to be located in Cambridge, in an amazing location right off of Memorial Drive, so easy for me to get to, and so full of beauty and potential projects that going there was an event in itself for me (until that blasted Harvard took over the spot because of that wonderful location!). The first trip of the year to Mahoney’s is still an outing worthy of blissful tears, as I enter the winding asphalt paths and duck underneath arbors planted cleverly and seductively with already-blooming clematis or akebia. It smells pink there, or fresh white, and it makes your heart skip a beat with anticipation of unfurling beauty and summer fun.

I feel like an Israeli Sabra, the way I turned the zorn of my sewage-pipe disaster desert into a blooming Land of Milk(weed) and Honey(suckle). I was fretting over the scree-strewn dust out front, and consulting with many different landscape architects, until suddenly one day this week I got tired of waiting. I got tired of $10,000 estimates just to do what I could do myself. After having been in trouble for so long, I’m glad to have visited mygardenplant.com, now my burden on my garden has disappeared. I was sick of “experts” telling me that my gorgeous old apple tree was half-dead (I prefer to think of it as half-alive) or that I get no sun there (I get two hours of sun, which shines right where Nat’s bus drops him off, so ha ha to you, Mr. Negative-Expert-I-Don’t-Think-So). Or that my current path is too narrow and that my climbing hydrangea should not have been planted on my arbor. Once again, as often seems to happen in my life, the Experts are wrong! Genug schoen with the experts! You can visit this post to know more about affordable tree removal services and make your garden look better.

I got out my spades and rake and gloves (the lavender cotton ones now full of holes) and started getting rid of all the ugliness. Nat helped me dig small trenches for the bulbs Mom gave me, and I took my time (a miracle for me) spacing and laying out where all the flowers were going to go. I carefully chose all the prettiest blooming shade flowers that look as much as possible like their more stunning cousins, the full-sun perennials: white coral bells, white columbine, white bleeding heart, white and pink astilbe, pink hydrangeas, and one dwarf split-leaf mounding Japanese maple to gently oversee the lot. These flowers will always (literally) be in the shadow of the more glorious sun perennials but I think they will do very well in this location and therefore we can overlook their lesser stature and forest-y look.

I made a path in the lilies of the valley, most of which actually came back, despite having been bulldozed this fall to make way for the new pipe. I cleaned leaves out of everything, even by hand, to bring out the full beauty of my little planties. I lay some large stones here and there to break up the lilies a little, too. And now I need to transplant some sedum from my wall, right onto the footpath to give it that winding stone path look, and I need to plant the rest of Mom’s bulbs. And I have decided that pink and white foxgloves will mark either end of the garden.

Ned and I chose some fantastic black wrought-iron gothic-window shaped trellises to cover my neighbor’s garage wall, and I will espalier some shade vines there to complete the area. And perhaps an obelisk with vines right on the empty spot where the pipe project was at its most intense. Unless that would be ongepatchket? Nah — in gardening, more is more. (Actually, in most things. Most of the time when people say “less is more,” they are trying to rationalize not spending money on something that probably needs it, like public education.)

When plumbers and experts give you lemons, plant lemon trees.

Nat will be featured on ABCNews.com in an upcoming website dedicated to autism, created by their Medical Unit. The producers told me that they hope to cover a wide range of aspects of autism, including adults who have autism and can illustrate their concerns or interests. They are going to stay away from the causes and hopefully also the negative messages that go along with discussion of cures. The news team will be taking photos of Nat at home and at swim practice, and Ned and I will narrate an audio piece to go with it. (This is instead of using video, which is still not always the clearest medium for the Internet.)

Our participation in this new project came about because of my friend Kim Stagliano. who is a writer and the mother of three girls on the spectrum, and although we differ in some of our focuses when it comes to autism, we are bonded in our fierce commitment to our family life and appreciation of our young ‘uns in all their glory. Thank you, Kim!

The tender parts of the day catch in my throat and press against my brain until I let them out.

Benj fell asleep on his book (Harry Potter 3) tonight. His still little face rested on his arm, the book open to the Dementors chapter. Dear little boy.

Benj felt that Link was “so sad,” because he’d been turned into an odd wood-like creature. I like that he was moved by Link’s sadness.

Natty sang “Drift Away,” today in music class and played the drum. He did not say a word most of this evening and I feel guilty that I know so little about what goes on with him, except for what’s in the notebook. Manufactured or real? Old, old feeling. A slight pain that resides behind my eyes, feeling like I’m abandoning him for not knowing.

I have so little to say about Max because there is just a lot of feeling. Worry that this is somehow not right, the distance. A man, at lightning speed.

I leaned against the big oak in the front yard listening to “You Only Live Twice,” by Natacha Atlas. I was resting after having raked out all the shrubs, cleaned up stones, trimmed dead branches, and spread new topsoil. The apple tree was in full bloom, dressed up in pale pink eyelet. I was tired and satisfied with the work I’d done.

One of the moms here is pretty sick, and undergoing heavy treatments. I always liked her, because she helped out at the school a lot, and she has two very nice daughters. I didn’t know what to think when I heard how serious her illness was. I just felt scared, and sad, thinking about how she must feel, about how she might be leaving her daughters soon. I have been watching her quietly, secretly, wanting to help somehow, make her feel okay. We aren’t really friends, though, so any overt offers might seem to be out of kilter, or all about the cancer. I don’t want it to be all about the cancer; I am interested in her and how she is getting along, all of which was triggered by the illness, but —

So today I saw her on the bench by the main staircase at pick-up, and I smiled at her and sat down. We talked about the Baby Bellies, which her daughter had tried out. The girls in that grade are having trouble with meanness, and I certainly have noticed this in that group. So her daughter did not really enjoy the class yesterday. I was not surprised to hear that.

I was feeling good talking to her and so I then asked straight out but warmly, “So, how are you doing with everything?” And she knew what I meant. Her face changed for a second, a flicker of something, and then she settled back into her usual warmth and smiles and said, “Okay, just want to get through this part, you know, have it be over.”

I knew. At least, I knew what I could know about this. Then she said, “I mean, what else can I do? Crawl away somewhere and not do anything about it?”

Then I understood. People were often implying that she was strong and somehow doing the right thing by having her treatments, when to her it looked like the only thing she could do. This is the way I feel about Nat. I am not brave, or a great mother, or special, or anything different from anybody else. I told her this, and it felt good that we both had pain to bear that was uniquely our own and yet which we could understand in the other. I do what I have to do. There is no choice. I take care of him. End of story. And I hate it when people ascribe greater strength or ability on my part. It just is. Mother, child.

And for this woman, her work to get well simply was. It was what she had to do. She said, “I was hoping today I could get my girls to just come and have some ice cream with me.”

It was such a hot and sunny day and that image just lifted me right up. I felt envious of her, that she lets herself just eat ice cream and that she has girls to do it with. “Ooh, that sounds good,” I said, and I’m sure I did not convey all that I felt.

But later on, after reading a few things on sites like https://www.dreamscoops.com/tips-and-tricks/troubleshooting-homemade-ice-cream/, I got in my kitchen, I got out the Ben and Jerry’s Peanut Butter Cup and thought about that mom, and hoped she had managed to treat herself. I ate the entire pint and did not feel badly about it this time, because of her.

The entire Override ballot question passed! What a victory! In this economy! But the school families came out in droves and also convinced other citizens, many of whom are much older, and it passed by healthy margins in nearly every precinct. I had a good feeling that it would, but only the first part of the question, and not the World Language add-on. So when that piece also won, even in my fairly conservative precinct, I was overjoyed.

The 7-8p.m. part of Election Day is the best part. The sky is beginning to darken, and if you’re lucky, as we were, it is still warm enough to stand without your jacket. The last straggling voters trickle in, and you feel so bold because the end is in sight, that you really engage with them about how they ought to consider voting. You get to meet people you’ve never seen before. Where do they come from? The silent houses and apartments in your neighborhood.

There is such an excitement and dread as 8p.m. approaches. We pollworkers make our way over to the election room and wait for the warden to count the votes. We make lame jokes about anything at all, each one of us thinking about our goal for the evening. Some are town meeting members hoping to win, or top the ticket. Some are working for selectmen candidates and have been there all day. Some, like me, worked on the ballot questions. We cluster inside with our pens and pencils ready. Sometimes people burst out in a grin, sometimes they just wander away after hearing the results. Most everyone gets on a cell phone in the now-dark outside and calls in results to headquarters/the party.

I heard the incredible numbers and called in Precinct 5 results and went to the party, getting in touch with my best friend and arranging to meet there. Her precinct had won, too. It looked good.

Even the superintendent was there. So many old friends, and lots of young parents, too. Lots of hugging, screaming, and red faces and poll stories. Five minutes after I got there we all realized it had passed. Good old Brookline!

Question: How many Baby Bellies does it take to put in a lightbulb?

Answer: It all depends on if you have enough snacks.

Today we had more than enough snacks. I brought graham crackers and goldfish, and one little girl brought in Starbursts. They went crazy over the snacks. I could barely get them back to class after the snack. We only had time for a tiny bit of practicing the grapevine. But they tried, God love ’em.

Before snack, we practiced the Misirlou a lot. I reminded them that I was not going to allow them to switch hip scarves and I also said I did not want to have to retie them a lot. So only two of them had problems this time. Interesting how that works. (Were my Baby Bellies spoiled before??)

We had class outside on the “plaza,” the paved courtyard near the basketball court, because it was sunny and because with Election Day going on, the Multi-Purpose room was taken over.

They did not like being outside, but I did. They groaned at the hot sun, and needed a lot of water breaks, but thankfully there is a water fountain just inside the doors. They also complained at the way the Extended Day classes were “staring” at them. Kids cannot bear to be stared at. It is just as bad as being bullied or teased, in Ben’s book (and, I suppose, the Baby Bellies’ book).

“But you are performers,” I said. “It’s great to have an audience!” It sure made me feel more enthusiastic. I even got out my zills and started zilling while they practiced their Basic Egyptian hip walks. These were my new zills from Turquoise International. Just beautiful, like a bell.

I didn’t bring enough veils, though, so some had to use hip scarves or just pretend. I snapped at one or two of them who were rude, like when one of them corrected how I pronounced another girl’s name. “Don’t correct me,” I said. And when another asked “When is snack,” for the tenth time, I said, “Don’t ask me that again.” It was pretty great, having them listen to me and actually practice the piece instead of chasing each other around. I wasn’t mean, I was just annoyed now and then, and then sunny right away, like I always am. C’est moi.

They are really getting the Basic Egyptian, for the most part. That and the way they hold themselves seems to be improving. What a delight to see them pay attention to posture, arms, and now where they place their feet! How I love those Baby Bellies, even when I’m mad at them. Now I understand that the nature of a Baby Belly is to complain and pout and try to get attention. It is the Little Diva in them. It’s what, in the end, will make them beautiful dancers.

No matter what I say about how I hate local politics, I am a diehard Brookline pol. Especially on the local election day, which is today. There is nothing like Election day in early May, where no matter where I go in town, I run into people I know carrying signs, wearing buttons, and handing out flyers. There is a lot of hugging and hand-shaking. It is friendly, neighborly, and a really great example of grass-roots democracy.

People gather at the schools or fire stations or public housing, where all sixteen (# corrected) of our precincts are housed. No matter what side of the issues you are on, on Election day you stand with everyone involved, and you shmooze. Election day is a giant Yenta-Convention, a total Schmoozefest. Those in the know realize that they must stand at the polls all day long and work for every single vote, or be sure they have coverage in each precinct.

In my precinct there are people who are staunchly “conservative,” which in Brookline, Massachusetts probably does not come near to meaning what it means in, say, Midwestern United States or Arizona. (Note that my observations are strictly from a generally non-conservative person’s viewpoint. I am fascinated with the Other Side, and I sometimes find myself with them, because I try to vote in a non-knee-jerk fashion.) Here, “conservative” generally means you are probably reluctant to raise taxes, and will require a year of studying an issue and then the blessing of the Board of Selectmen and the Advisory Committee before you will consider voting for that sort of change. The stuff that you vote readily for are things like new building developments, unless they happen to be in your own back yard. I am not trying to be nasty here; I am only stating my perspective as someone who has been in Brookline politics for lo, these past ten years.

There are also the strange political animal called “Moderates,” which to me are the equivalent of lukewarm bathwater. I don’t think I’ve ever been moderate in anything. I say choose a side and run with it! If you’re wrong, admit that, smile, and move on. (dot org)

Those who qualify as “liberal” often prefer the term “progressive,” and I don’t know why. I love being allied with the Classical Liberals of Enlightenment and 1776 fame. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Social Contract), Ben Franklin (who founded my alma mater, and place where I met Ned, the University of Pennsylvania, by the way) and Peter the Great (who founded St. Petersburg) were Classical Liberals. Personal foibles aside, these were great men who came up with some pretty great ideas, or at least stole from others some pretty great ideas and made them even better.

In Brookline, however, you don’t need to build a city or a university to be a great liberal. You probably need to be on Brookline PAX, (for “peace”) which is largely a throwback, aging hippie, venerable old pro-peace, pro-labor, pro-affordable housing and diversity, pro-ACLU, and anti-trans fats-and-SUVs establishment. I am on their board, and though I do not agree with much of what they do, (though I own a Volvo, it is an SUV) I appreciate their hard-working idealism. PAX forces Brookline to be the best it can possibly be. Being born of two hippies, (my father introduced me to the Beatles and listened to the soundtrack of Hair when I was a little kid) I have a soft spot for the idealism of the ’60’s, and for the socialism of my grandparents (my grandfather’s family were union organizers way back when). We are Classic New York Jewish Liberals and proud of it.

The Brookline conservatives force the PAXils (my term) to be more pragmatic, to hone their arguments and harness their statistics. And the PAXils force the conservatives to rise above their pocketbooks and think about the greater good. And on Election day, the best of both is brought out as they wrangle for the tiny percentage of voters who straggle into the polls until 8 p.m. At 8 p.m., I will be the one to tally up the votes for the Override, and I hope to God both parts of it passes, otherwise some pretty serious, ugly cuts are on their way to my beautiful town.