Reputation

My response to http://trailbrazin.blogspot.com/2017/04/prompt-23-behind-closed-doors.html


Inspired when I read Nick Flynn's "You moved me through each room" about his experience being hypnotized and taken back to a childhood home.  It took me back to the first time I was hypnotized as a past life regression exercise.  I found myself exactly as this narrative poem says...the feelings were very real.

Reputation

I stand with my back against the

locked door and stare at my sandal-shod feet.

How did it come to this?

I have been well-loved by this village.

A place I’ve always called home.

I am blessed with good fortune. I am

able to share generously. Some call me

benefactor.

It’s my preferred title. Someone who

wants the best for all.

But now an angry mob is pounding

on this door, demanding answers,

and I’m afraid no answer will be

good enough.

That little peasant man who came for

money, I did not believe him.

He is untrustworthy in my eyes, a drunk;

Everyone knows it.

I made my decision based on that.

I judged him without looking in

the man’s eyes and seeing that

yes, it was true his child needed

medicine, and he had no means.

I just thought of the rumors of why he

did not live in town and how

he had more children than he

could feed, and how he abused his

wife. I didn’t trust him.

I judged.

And now I’m judged, as somehow the

town has rallied around this man.

I underestimated their community.

I had dismissed any thought that

he was one of them.

I thought he was Other.

And I assumed others thought so, too.

And now a child has died

in our little town,

and I’m to blame.

I stand behind this closed door

terrified of losing my standing,

my adulation,

my lofty place in the social hierarchy,

Yet small, how small

I feel right now.

But I cannot stand behind this door forever.

Can I recover?

Can I open this door,

face them all,

and say…

I’m sorry?

hms

5.14.17

Behind Closed Doors

My response to Prompt #23, Behind Closed Doors did not turn out how I thought it would. I didn't end up using the door in the picture--the door that inspired the prompt to begin with. Instead, I ended up using the idea of restored historical homes such as those tucked away in the Dean Park area of downtown Fort Myers--a section of town surrounded by some not-so-desirable neighborhoods. I was also inspired by my students--past and present.

Behind Closed Doors

by Annmarie Ferry

She trudged to school every day, struggling with her beat-up backpack filled with books and binders. She dared not loosen her grip on one of the straps to wipe the beads of sweat that formed on her brow—it took all of her strength to carry that heavy load. 

Her habit was to cut through the historic district with old, unique homes. Homes that rich people renovated to their original charm and character. Homes that rich people meticulously maintained so people could walk or drive through their pristine section of downtown and gawk at the fruits of their labor. 

The thing she loved most about the homes were the front doors.  It seemed to her the home owners had a competition going to see who had the most extravagant, colorful, distinctive barrier to the outside world. Some were rich wood with intricate carvings, painted in bright hues of yellow, blue, red, and orange.  Carefully crafted stained glass inserts adorned others. Some had frosted glass etched with dolphins, manatees, or tropical birds. She thought about her own front door—a scuffed white metal door dented by bullets.  A far cry from the elaborate doors she passed. 

She imagined what life was like behind those doors. Dinners in softly lit dining rooms with fat roasts, steamy, pillowy potatoes, colorful steamed vegetables, salad, bread, and dessert every night. Free falling into  a lush mattress with cold, sateen sheets, a cushiony pillow that smelled like lavender. Waking up to sunlight streaming through clean windows—windows free of bars. Padding down to breakfast with eggs, bacon, buttered toast, and freshly squeezed orange juice with parents who didn’t have to leave at the crack of dawn to go to their menial labor jobs.  Choosing the day’s outfit from a huge walk-in closet full of freshly laundered options. Jumping in a SUV with a new leather smell to be driven to school on time and sweat-free.One day, she told herself, I will have it all like these people. Her daydream was interrupted by a black SUV that came screeching out of a brick-paver driveway. 

She gritted her teeth, hiked up the straps to adjust the weight of her burden, and turned the corner to finish the last leg of her trek. 

_______________________________________________________________________

“Get your stupid ass of out bed NOW!”  she shrieked from the bottom of the polished wood stairs. “I am so fucking sick of having to tell you every goddamn day to wake up.”

The sleepy 10-year-old upstairs rubbed her eyes, sending a searing pain through the right side of her head. 

Crap. How will I explain it this time? 

She tiptoed toward the bathroom, peed, then checked out her reflection in the mirror. Yep. This one was a doozy. Too young for make-up, she knew she had to make up a story for her teachers. One that would keep her mother—and therefore her—out of trouble. She looked out the bathroom window at the teak jungle gym/fort combo and concocted her tale. She hurriedly got cleaned up and dressed—more concerned with how she would make it out of the house without inciting the wrath of her mother than how she looked. She came downstairs to find her mother pouring the pungent clear liquid in her travel mug.  

“Let’s go,” her mother snapped. 

What about breakfast she thought, but she knew better than to say those words out loud.

She grabbed her Kate Spade backpack and dutifully followed her mother to the SUV. She climbed in the back and barely got buckled before her mother threw it into reverse, narrowly missing a classmate of hers—the poor girl from the other side of town who carried a ripped up brown backpack and always came to school smelling like old shoes. She slunk down in her seat. Why did her mom have to drive like such a maniac?

___________________________________________________________________ 

As the students entered, the teacher brought their attention to the writing prompt on the Smartboard screen: Describe a typical day behind the closed doors at your home.  

The students groaned, most because they simply hated writing. But, the girls loathed the task  for entirely different reasons. One because of the embarrassment of poverty; the other ashamed of the abuse she felt was her fault.

Oddly enough, both girls began their responses in the same manner:A typical day behind closed doors at my home starts with a delicious breakfast with bacon, eggs, orange juice, and a kiss on the forehead from my parents…

____________

____________

Not Just Another Know-it-all

A loose interpretation/response to Prompt #23: Behind Closed Doors


You never know what goes on behind closed doors...

I have a fairly simple life. I grew up with two (divorced) loving parents. My needs were mostly met, through some financially prosperous years and strenuous penny-pinching years, and everything in between. I was never abused or neglected, and I've been lucky my life's circumstances haven't included any extreme trauma or catastrophe. The skeletons in my closet are really nothing to write about. So that's it, right? No trauma, no drama?

One of my writing buddies once asked why women need to compare themselves to each other, measure their experiences against some random scale of right or wrong, like there is a hierarchy of human experience. I've kept this thought since she asked it years ago. She's right. Everyone's experiences are what they are, and it is unnecessary to compare to each other for any reason except to relate the human experience.

So what does all this have to do with Behind Closed Doors?

I've been suffering a bit in silence over the past three or four months. Not silent behind closed doors, but silent to the outside world. It is not a catastrophic, life or death suffering, but a parental worry-about-my-child-rearing kind of worry. I have written quite a bit over the years about my son and his school experiences, from great teachers to shitty grades. I've argued for less standardization and more creative learning. I've suggested grades don't matter and students need more interaction with the natural world. I've advocated for teaching the heart as much as the mind, and for more writing and more writing and more writing.

I have tried to integrate my mom consciousness and my teacher consciousness and use them to guide my decision making in the classroom and in my home. I convinced myself at times that decisions I was unsure about were really the best, either by writing about it or talking with my husband. But I have doubted fewer decisions more than the one big one I have doubted in these recent months.

When my son was in middle school and we started to see him struggle in school, despite his incredible intelligence, life started to get rough in our home. We made some decisions about the type of learner he was/is, the quality of life in our home, and the contradiction between what we believed about education and what was being provided for him at the time in public school. To summarize, we accepted these things:

• Our son is not an average kid- in so many ways. What is an average kid anyway?
• Our son is an interactive learner, needs to enjoy interacting with his teacher and peers.
• Our son has difficulty completing school-like tasks if he doesn't find value in them, including but not limited to homework.
• Our son was a good standardized test-taker, in all subjects (I'll let you decide what that means).
• Our son, in many classes, came in knowing before he even got there (conceptually), much of what was being taught.
• Our son was (and still is) a real-world learner. He will read, watch videos, and track down any information he needs in order to learn about something he wants to learn about, and he will teach himself. I have learned the term Learn-it-all as opposed to Know-it-all.
• Our son did not not respond to traditional parenting punishments and rewards, like grounding and taking things away, or rewards as bribes. These methods did little to affect his behavior, especially related to school.
• Our son seemed to respond best to natural consequences.
• Our son showed strong signs of responsibility in other areas of his life.
• Our son was growing into a kind, respectful human being.

So what did we do with all of this understanding? We decided we would not ground him; we would not complete homework for him; we would not reward him for good grades and punish him for bad grades; we would not hound him about his school work but would offer help when he asked or implied he needed it and give encouraging reminders about the importance of responsibility, and doing what it takes to get into college.

I know friends and some family probably thought we weren't doing enough. How could we be okay with mediocre (sometimes worse) grades when we knew our son was capable of so much more? I was accused more than once of lowering my expectations for my son. I listened to people talk about their kids' grades with pride, or threatening to punish their kids for horrible report cards. I listened to parents in my son's various extracurricular activities tell the coaches and leaders they were pulling their kids out because of bad report cards. And what did I do? Not much. At least that's what it looked like from the outside.

But here's what happened behind closed doors...

My husband and I made the decision our son would live life on his terms and learn to deal with the natural consequences. We had more talks with each other and with him individually and as a pair, than I could begin to count. We decided and believed grades were not much more than a student's ability to please their teachers and "do school." We knew our son was learning, whether it showed on his report cards or not. We realized early our son was a confident nonconformist, and yes that comes with risks, but the benefits far outweigh the costs. Understand, we knew from what we had seen so far in the way of intelligence and behavior, our son would have a bright future, no matter the path he took. We saw signs we were doing something right as parents and we tried to find strength and comfort in that. So we took a peaceful approach in our house. We levied a few important things (like a driver's license) against some high stakes situations. But overall, we rationalized, supported, and guided our son without imposing much in the way of external negative or positive consequences.

Done.

Middle school continued to be rough, but things got better in high school. In a district with school choice, our son found the perfect school to attend. It was the first Microsoft Certified High School in the country, and it would provide just the kind of coursework and faculty he needed to keep interested and motivated. In four years, I never had to fight him to go to school. Waking up early wasn't always easy, but it was never about not wanting to go to school. And learning? Holy moly, he has learned so much about computers and technology, about people, about life. He's learned a lot in the content areas too. Most of his teachers have been outstanding teachers and really good people.

So he's a shoe-in for a great college, maybe even a scholarship, right? Wrong. His grades don't tell the whole story. He took advanced classed for three years, with a combination of A's through C's, maybe even a D or two. His drive to have a great report card never developed. So unlike his mother. I wanted straight A's and I was pretty close most of the time. Nope. Not him, and he doesn't even care. Most of the time, I didn't either. As I said, when talking with him, it was clear to my husband and me, our son was learning. 

Then junior year and the college entrance exams came. He took the ACT and got mediocre scores (plenty to meet minimum requirements), and took the SAT and did even better. His scores weren't off the charts, but well above average. I asked him if he'd like to take a prep course to try and get his scores up. This was a privilege my parents couldn't afford when I was his age. He wasn't interested. (You can read about my opinion of the whole college entrance exam process in an old blog post). 

Senior year came, and decided to take it a little easy and dropped IB. He put off applying to colleges for awhile. I was okay with it, because with the lighter load, I was hopeful his grades would improve. I wanted the first semester to get processed to boost his GPA a bit before applying. We waited (I say we, but I took almost no part in the application process. He did it alone.) until Christmas break and then the application was off. That's right. I said application, no "s." He sent off an application to one school- the only school he was really interested in attending. Winter turned to spring and before you know it, we sat down for dinner in a restaurant one night and he got an email from the school. Thanks but no thanks. It was rough, but he got over it pretty quickly. Now what?  A last minute application for the local university which he admitted was fine, he just would have liked to go a little further from home.

Now we're waiting. Decision day came and went at school. He had his last final exam yesterday and had awards last night. He picks up his cap and gown on Monday, and graduates a week from Saturday. And... we still don't know if he got into college.  

So behind the door to this home, is a mom who wonders if she did it right. Did this mom, this educator, fall down on the job of raising her son with the right attitude about school? I've been hard on myself. Admittedly, I've wondered what other people think about me, about my son. They all tell me how smart he is, how great of a kid he is, how bright his future is. And then I feel like they look at me and think what happened? Why didn't you do better? It's hard to admit, but it's a bit difficult seeing and hearing everyone else brag about where their kids got into school and what they're doing next year. I hate that I care and I remind myself it's about my son's happiness and success, not me winning parental bragging rights. I've done a number on myself. I think I'm more nervous about waiting for his acceptance letter (which I hope and feel pretty confident about, but I'm still not sure) than he is. It is occupying so much of my mental energy. 

Then, last night at the Academy Awards (that's what they call awards night for Academy of Technology Excellence at his school), Kimberly Friedman from Microsoft was the guest speaker. She spoke about the enormous number of jobs in the world for the technology field. She cautioned the kids, instead of being a know-it-all to be a learn-it-all. To keep up, you can never stop learning. She talked about the need for more girls and women in the field. She talked about the minds of students just like my son. And at the reception that followed, I said to him, I want to meet her. I want to talk to her about girls, and technology, and PACE. And my son, my go-getter, risk-taker, beautifully frenzy-minded son, took my hand and said,

"Let's go." And he took me over to her and he said, "You should talk to her. Do it."And I asked the tech teacher to introduce me to her and she did. And for about 10-15 minutes, my son and I talked with the Director of Southeast Education for Microsoft. Come to find out, she had been in a panel at the All About Girls Summit in Orlando (a PACE organized event), and just had a phone call with my boss earlier in the week. She is a huge supporter of PACE, and is helping us get partnered with technology resources for our girls! 

We chatted about that for a few minutes, and then she engaged my son. And they talked about all he learned and what he wants to do and all the skills she said he had based on his experience at Dunbar High. She complimented the strength of his handshake and was blown away by the level of conversation they had about things he has been following in development at Microsoft. She told us she believes in college and said it's a great route, but it wasn't necessary in their field. She asked him what kind of work he thought about doing in the field and she gave him advice. Then she told him she expects a LinkedIn connection with him tomorrow. She invited, practically demanded, he connect to her. Can you imagine? A top executive at Microsoft wants to link in with my son. She told all the kids to link in with her. She knows who her future employees will be!

And I thought, my son is the reason I went up to her. He is assertive and articulate and energetic. He is brilliant! And last night I went on to LinkedIn and connected with Kimberly. I sent her a brief message thanking her and reminding her who I was. I got this back this morning:

And witnessing their interaction last night and receiving this message this morning are helping me to realize I did ok. I sent this to my husband and he responded, "You know, she's right." And though we still await the college acceptance letter, and I know that will be the ultimate sense of relief, it's feeling a little better today behind this door.