Make This School Year Great

Here we go again. Another school year is about to start, so it’s a fitting time to ask ourselves how we --parents, teachers, and students -- can make this a great and productive year. Everyone has a stake in the education of the children of this country because these youngsters are our future voters, employees, and employers.

Parents need to realize that their children’s education is ultimately their responsibility, no matter how or where this education is taking place. Even if your children have wonderful, caring teachers, these same educators have many more students that they are also responsible for, so there is only so much time they can devote to each child. It is imperative that parents understand educational milestones and check their children’s progress regularly and frequently. My sister-in-law, a New York public school teacher, said that if a child doesn’t learn to read by third grade, he or she is basically considered a lost cause. This should never happen. Parents need to be aware of what their children should know and when, and if there’s a problem, they need to address it sooner rather than later. Advocate for your child and make yourself known in the school. Be prepared to speak up if there’s a problem, and stay informed by reading communications from the teacher or other school personnel. Check your child’s homework frequently to make sure all is well.

Teachers, especially those in public schools, have a lot of restrictions placed upon them by the federal government, and unfortunately must dedicate a lot of time to bureaucratic matters rather than actually teaching. This is a real problem, and the children of this country are getting short-changed as a result. Great teachers everywhere need to remember their calling, take matters into their own hands as much as is humanly possible, and get back to imparting real knowledge that will actually educate children and make the United States competitive again. They need to spend time every day reading great works of literature, helping their students analyze what has been read. Analytical thinking hasn’t really been a focus of teaching in the public schools for years, which is one of our country’s biggest problems. Teachers are being forced to spend way too much time preparing their students for the next standardized test because successful outcomes means more money. A long-term view is what is needed instead in order for the U.S. to regain its competitive edge.

Finally, students need to internalize the fact that they are in school for their benefit, not anyone else’s. Many young people don’t take their education seriously until sometime in high school when they realize that there’s a relationship between their performance and their future. Those who realize it sooner are at an obvious advantage. As parents and educators, we need to try to get them to understand this. They are not in school for our benefit. It is their future that is on the line. So, if any students are reading this, remember that you won’t ever regret working hard in school. If you don’t work hard, however, you will likely be sorry later, and your path in life may be much more difficult as a result.

Here’s hoping for a great school year for everyone – parents, teacher, and students. Let’s give it our best.

Unconditional Love

Quiet times in my house are rare, so on a summer morning after some have left for work and the others are still asleep, I enjoy being able to think. I know that mothers with big families and/or small children can relate! The other day, though, the silence felt heavy and made me start thinking about my mom. It will be 20 years in December since she died at the too-young age of 64. I still miss her terribly and hope that someday I’ll see her again, but I really have no idea about that.

Thinking about my mom made me think about how much mothers (some – the normal ones, anyway) love their babies. The ones I’m thinking about – like me and the women I know – love their babies before they’re even born, before they’ve even seen them. They love them unconditionally, which means that this same child can (and probably will—maybe more than once) rip his mother’s heart out and although she may be very sad and angry, she will still love him. This parent* – child relationship is the only time humans love this way. This is the only “unconditional” love.

Thinking about unconditional love made me think about abortion and how it’s changed human relationships. If you know me, you know that I am passionately prolife. I cannot understand abortion or the people who support it. It seems obvious to me that it’s the murder of an innocent human being and therefore wrong. I recently read an excellent memoir about prolife activism – Abandoned by Dr. Monica Miller – in which the author explains that abortion is not only murder but the vilest form of rejection. Aborted babies are ripped from their mothers’ wombs – what should be the safest place in the world – and stripped of their humanity, even considered less than human. They are implicitly declared not worthy of inclusion in our human race; they are nothing -- rejected, unloved, unwanted.

Making abortion legal 40 years ago not only didn’t make it rare or safe, but it also permanently altered how we view each other. What was once generally assumed to be a sure and unconditional love – that love between a mother and her baby – is now not unconditional at all. In fact, this love is so conditional  that a mother has the right to not only not love, but to hate to the greatest degree – by arranging for the murder of her own child.

Now, “sacrifice” no longer necessarily means giving up something in order to benefit another. Rather, it’s been twisted in the most evil way. Sacrifice now may not be the mother giving up something in order to love and care for her child, but possibly sacrificing her child so that she doesn’t have to relinquish anything.

It’s hard for me to look at pregnant women and mothers of babies and young children without recalling the statistic that one out of three women will have had an abortion by the age of 45. When I see a young mom or one with a big belly, it makes me wonder…..did she ever have an abortion? And if she did, how then can she really love her other children? What if they find out that their mother aborted their sibling? Will they wonder, “Why not me?”

Abortion is murder. It’s a sad and harsh day, but a great day, when people who’ve participated in this atrocity finally acknowledge what they’ve done. While unspeakably difficult, acknowledgement is the critical first step. Thankfully, there is a great, healing Physician who is able and willing to forgive all sins when one truly repents. If this is you, it is my most sincere hope that you will recognize Jesus Christ for who He is – the Messiah. He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” As He said, no one can come to the Father except through Him. He can and will save you and heal your broken heart if you ask. It will take time and support is strongly recommended. Visit http://www.rachelsvineyard.org/ or http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/. If you live in Livingston County, Michigan, there is confidential group and individual support available at Pregnancy Help Clinic http://www.pregnancyhelpclinic.com/

*Normal fathers love unconditionally, too.

Daydreams

I was just doing dishes and thinking about listening to some music on my i-pod. I thought that maybe I would listen to Journey, a favorite from my younger years. I was imagining how listening to an old favorite can, in a way, transport you to that earlier time, and all the images of my childhood surroundings started to come to mind: My bedroom with the receiver, turntable, cassette player and speakers set up on a six-foot long cherry dresser; the wallpaper that I picked out with tiny blue, red and pink flowers which my mother said was almost exactly like the paper covering my nursery walls in the home we left before my fourth birthday; the twin bed with the tall, cherry four-poster and the red and white toile bedspread  from an elegant shop in Petoskey, Michigan.There were also hardwood floors in a medium-oak shade and a beautiful Persian-style rug near the door. In addition, there was a massive walk-in closet, almost unheard of in houses made in the sixties. My room was also well-lit by two large windows on adjacent walls.

In this daydream, I really wanted to see Mom, Dad and my sister, Amy, again, as they were then. I would love to see my Dad when his hair was still mostly pepper, with just a little salt. I would love to see him when he was still strong, vibrant, in the middle of his very successful public relations career, on-call to field problems for his company at any given time. His flashing, dancing blue eyes never missed a trick. I’d love to see Mom’s face again, the way it was then, when the heavy load of troubles she already bore hadn’t yet become her undoing, as in the last few years of her life, when she seemed to have given up hope. My sister – sharp, witty, strange, but not yet labeled as a paranoid schizophrenic. Now, looking back, there were a lot of signs that something was not right with her, even from the beginning. But, during this peek into the past, I am willfully seeing her happy, in kind of an observant way, as though she is just enjoying watching everyone else. As a child, she always watched me and once confessed to a therapist (and later, my mother) that she constantly felt as though she came up short in comparison. At this moment, however, there is just peace and happiness.

If we ever can travel through time, this is where I would go: to my old house in southeastern Michigan, where I grew up, spoiled and catered to by parents who were raised with nothing following the Great Depression and wanted to give us everything. I didn’t appreciate it then, as kids don’t. I would love to be able to summon my young parents, once again, to sit on the black vinyl sofa under the Calder print, a reproduction of a statue that was outside my Dad’s office in downtown Detroit, and watch as Amy and I would “perform” yet another song for them.  I would love another chance to “interview” my Dad as I played a make-believe talk show host named Gladys Bagman and he pretended to be some very interesting celebrity, golf pro, or English gentleman.

I recently attended the Bat Mitzvah of my mom’s first cousin’s daughter, and having some extra time, we drove to the my childhood home since it was only about fifteen minutes from the temple.  My husband waited in the Trailblazer at the end of the drive while I walked up to the front door.  Even after all these years—about 40 – it still says, “Amy & Nancy live here. Yeah!” on the red brick under the house number sign to the right of the door.  I couldn’t believe that it was still there—that someone hadn’t tried to clean it off many years ago.  It made me happy to think that perhaps the people who live there now don’t want to clean it off.  Maybe they like to see it and imagine two little girls and some happy times and laughter that once filled those rooms.  

A Visit to See Amy

I visited my sister, Amy, today for the first time in months. I was a bit over-generous with my belated birthday presents for her since the occasion was almost three months ago and I had missed it. Buying a couple extra things helped assuage my guilt, which was forgotten the minute she joyfully ripped the packages open before I even had a chance to get them out of my car.

My sister turned 50 on May 25 of this year. She’s not quite sure, but she thinks she’s about 16, which is the age her mental illness first became apparent. Perhaps I should say that that’s how old she was when we had to drop everything and try to get her some help.

She lives in a group home in Ortonville, Michigan with about 20 adults who all have some kind of mental problem. They seem pretty peaceful, but maybe that’s because they’re heavily medicated. When I was there today, there were several residents sitting around the t.v. watching something insipid featuring a hairy puppet I didn’t recognize. The show had the look of a cheap Sesame Street knock-off.