Monthly Archives: September 2016

Game of Thrones Syndrome

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So here we are, the first day back at school. It’s a BIG day; one of my kids is in junior high now, and the other is finishing his last year at our much-loved elementary school.

Or maybe

The kids are more like this:

But for the most part, all is roses and happiness and only slight disappointment over the assignation of option classes that were not overly desired.

For the most part, it does feel good to be back into the swing of things. I am not generally a huge fan of fall, mostly because I love summer, and because fall in this part of the world is a brief interlude before the long, long winter sets in.

Speaking of which, my husband and I watched the Netflix series The Get Down, which deals with kids in the Bronx in the 1970s. If you are a fan of hip-hop, rap, or disco music, I highly recommend this series. I am a fan of all three genres, and so I really enjoyed it.

Well, I mostly enjoyed it. A lot of the time I kept saying to my husband that I thought something awful was going to happen. Was their apartment building going to burn down? Was someone going to get shot on the subway? Was everyone going to meet the end in the most tragic way possible? I kept worrying and worrying as I watched the show, in an awkward, unsettled way. My husband was feeling the same way, and when the series ended on a happy note, I couldn’t figure out why I was stressed out watching a cheerful television series in which the young people are not the problem, they are the solution.

It is what my husband and I have dubbed “Game of Thrones Syndrome.”

Watching Game of Thrones has conditioned me to expect the absolute worst outcome in everything. Sure, that girl is singing beautifully, but someone is probably going to cut all their throats like in the Red Wedding. That kid who has the bootlegged tape of another MC? He’s probably going to have his penis cut off and mailed to his loved ones. Those two are romantically involved? Someone is probably going to poison one of them and then put the other secretly on a boat, floating down the Hudson River.

Anyway, I’m determined to enjoy fall – even if it is so very brief and is only a harbinger of WINTER IS COMING – and so this morning I dug out my tall boots, my scarves, and my long black flowy sweaters. I am eagerly anticipating the return of the Macintosh apples, and crunchy leaves and blue skies, but you can keep your pumpkin spiced anything. Blergh. That stuff is nasty.

The lotus blooms in mud, or something.

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The long weekend is here, and then the kids start back at school on Tuesday. I seem to have reached a grizzled, jaded stage of motherhood where the cheerful articles about back to school and lunch making and activities make me smile ruefully. I mean, I was there once. At one point I was weighing the difference between having the kids go to a community school or a charter one, I was looking into the differences between traditional learning programs and Montessori. I spent countless hours wondering about the learning opportunities at the various preschools available to me and I even found myself on a frigid February morning in the parking lot hours before registration started, so that I could get the time slot I wanted. And now I just find myself impotently enraged about the 65 minute difference in start times between the boys’ schools, because damn, that is going to be inconvenient.

In other words, I’m shaking my liver-spotted fist, pulling on my sweatshirt that has baskets of flowers embroidered on it, and telling those damn kids to get off my lawn and stop playing that loud music. The next step is accusing the nurses of stealing my non-existent money, while wearing polyester pull-on pants that belong to someone else.

God bless you people, looking up school lunch ideas on Pinterest, and skewering tiny pieces of sandwiches with bamboo sticks, and making happy faces and cheese cut-outs with cookie cutters. I missed my window of opportunity to do such things; at this point in my life I am at peace with the fact that this is something I was never meant to do, and also I think my junior high student would possibly die of embarrassment if he opened his lunch to a sushi-rice sculpture in the shape of Chewbacca.

Remember the old days when we would eat lunch at school, and it would be a bologna sandwich, an apple, a juice box, and a cookie? Our mothers certainly didn’t spend any time wondering if that was “too boring” or “not varied enough.” Eat it or go hungry seemed to be the motto of the Eighties, and honestly, it’s not a bad motto. Hell, my kids have come home for lunch practically every day of their school lives, and they have eaten peanut butter bagels for each and every one of those days, so I’m not really concerned about them “being bored” with their lunches. Come to think of it, I eat the same exact lunch every day of the week, so maybe it’s a genetic thing. Maybe we are just a very boring people. I am okay with that.

A few days ago, I took the boys and some friends to the swimming pool – along with, apparently, the rest of the city – and the kids spent the entire time not being anywhere near me. They literally checked in only to retrieve their money for the snack bar, then wandered as far away as possible to eat said snacks. I’m not complaining, mind you. It was a nice opportunity to read a book on a beautiful day, and I had some sympathetic smiles for the moms who were more in demand than I was, rushing around on the deck and in the pool.

We had a lovely dinner, several weeks ago, with some old friends. My friend and I were reminiscing about us both being pregnant, at a fancy dinner downtown with my old boss and an older colleague. They had lovely houses, older children, and went on wonderful vacations, whereas we younger people were just starting out, in small apartments and un-renovated older houses. My friend (HI VALERIE) said, and I agreed wholeheartedly, “But I wasn’t unhappy then, in our little apartment. I guess it’s just all about being happy where you are.” That stuck with me, and it occurs to me that it is the key. Being happy where you are. Or, perhaps, blooming where you are planted.

And so I was thinking about this, as my “Facebook memories” keep showing me adorable photos of my kids in coordinating golf shirts for the first day of school, with their backpacks that are huge and round faces. Everything’s changing, but I’m happy where I am. I hope you are too.