Summer Solstice; Sixty-Six Weeks In

All By Myself, No More

As of Tuesday this week, the boys will be finished their final exams and this very strange school year will be in the rearview mirror. I am always pretty Landslide-y in June – another year gone, children get older, I’m getting older too – and even though it was been a very weird year, I am really feeling it. In fact, I might be feeling it more since these are my kids’ HIGH SCHOOL YEARS, they should be enjoying them to the fullest, and they are, but the “fullest” has different meanings during a global pandemic. Also, this time next year, my oldest will be 18 and have graduated, which fills me with ALL KINDS of feelings, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Speaking of my oldest and the high school experience, he mentioned that he met a girl at school, and she’s really funny and nice. He was talking about her quite a bit, and so I said in that Teasing Mom Voice we all have, Oooohhh, is she CUTE? He replied yes, with a smile, and then stopped. “I mean, I think so. I haven’t actually seen her whole face.”

So there’s that.

The final exams this year, like last year, were “non-jeopardy,” meaning that they can boost final marks, but they cannot lower them. Both of my boys were going into their finals with high marks, so you can imagine the level of motivation around here, knowing that no matter what happened on the exam, their transcript marks would remain high. I was trying to encourage them to give it their all, it’s good practice for the future, and who knows, maybe your mark will go up a percentage point or two, but you know what, I give up.

So the boys are home and my husband has been back working from home and will be for the next while, and my quiet house is quiet no more; we are back to Everybody Is Home All The Time.

What An Age We Live In

Fun fact about high school teachers: they have fewer in-class hours than teachers in younger grades, and so to satisfy that part of their union contract, the school institutes mandatory tutorials during the exam break, which was last week and this week. Final exams are taken in the mornings, each day a different subject, and then in the afternoon are these mandatory tutorials. The tutorials are mandatory even after the final exam in that subject has been written, and in classes in which there was no final exam, such as phys ed. It was widely acknowledged BY THE TEACHERS that no actual work would be done in class, no new learning, and one teacher even shook his head “no” as he told the students that tutorials were mandatory. I told the boys that of course they didn’t have to waste their time going to the tutorials, unless they needed extra help, just study at home – insofar as “studying” was required – and found out later that they were in the minority in their friend group. Almost all of their of their friends were forced by their parents to go. Oh well. I’m not a regular mom, I’m a cool mom.

I might not have been so cool had I known I would be inundated with messages from the school about their truancy. The very first day of exams, after one son had written his science final and the other spent several hours at home studying for math, my phone pinged with PowerSchool notifications that the boys were marked unexcused for their afternoon classes. Including, for my younger son, gym. Then both my husband and I received emails from the school and I even got a PHONE CALL on my landline to inform me of their absence. This continued throughout exam break and honestly, I understand that it is part of the job and attendance is important for optimal learning outcomes but my god.

I do genuinely believe that there is merit in forcing oneself to perform arbitrary functions, even when those arbitrary functions are ridiculous and meaningless, because we live in a society and occasionally such things are required of us. For example, sanitizing your hands upon entering a store in the mall, even though you JUST sanitized your hands three minutes ago upon entering a different store and have touched nothing since. It’s important to model good behaviour and signal your citizenship in society, even to the detriment of your skin and possibly your microbiome.

However. It’s June. The boys have been really, really great for this whole school year. They have been engaged in their classes, even when bouncing between online and in-class learning, they have not missed a single class, they have kept their marks higher than I could have even hoped for. I am going to stand by my possibly shoddy parenting decision and in any case, the tutorials are – I hope – wrapping up this week, which will cut down on the truancy notifications I receive. Also, I am really glad this technology did not exist when I was in high school.

The Same Nicole You Know And Love, Now With Superpowers

On Saturday I got my second Covid vaccine shot, and my superpowers are officially activated. If a certain section of the anti-vax people are correct, I am now magnetic, and will possibly be dead in two years! Well, I had a good run.

I am so grateful to be vaccinated, I am so grateful for all the hard-working people who have made this happen, and I am really hoping that we will never walk this path again. Mostly I am just looking forward to being my normal huggy self, without feeling like we are all vectors of disease.

For those who are interested, as per current recommendations I received the Pfizer vaccine, as a follow-up from my Astra Zenica. In terms of side effects, I was extremely tired and sleepy afterwards. I mean, I took a NAP on Saturday afternoon, which never happens, and then I went to bed at 8 and slept until 6:30. I wasn’t my usual peppy self the next day, but I was perfectly functional; this morning I have a bit of a sore arm and nothing else to report.

The Long March To Winter

Today is Summer Solstice! The great thing about getting up at four-something in the morning at this time of year is that I can still see the sunrise and by the time I start my yoga practice, it’s fully light outside. The sun sets at ten o’clock, and did you guys know there is a ten o’clock at night? I never see the sunset, is what I’m saying.

I knew a guy who would say on Summer Solstice that every day is getting shorter until we are back to winter again, and sir, that is a true statement but can we just enjoy the moment? I think about it every Summer Solstice. Well, we’ve started the Long March to Winter again! It cracks me up every time.

It’s been warm enough that I open the windows in the morning, to cool the house down and to listen to the birdsong as I practice yoga. There are magpies nesting in the neighbour’s tree, which means that there will be long stretches of musical chirping punctuated by the staccato cadence of magpies screaming. It’s quite unsettling, not unlike listening to classical piano music with sections of hard-core Eminem, complete with fake gunfire and many, many f-bombs. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy both classical piano music and hard-core Eminem, just not at the same time.

Outfit of the Week

Speaking of summer! We have had some really lovely weather and so I’m pulling out all my favourite lighter pieces that I have had for many years but don’t wear out because, let’s face it, summer is fleeting and these pieces do not get to see the light of day very often.

This is a teaching outfit; my teaching days are going to be non-existent this summer, sadly. Today is my last registered class at the community centre, to be continued in the fall, and my other class is on pause for the summer, and I’m unsure when that will continue. So a teaching outfit to celebrate the last teaching day for a few months! Pastels are usually a no-go for me, but I like myself in blue, and I like the darker blue tank underneath. My favourite mala goes perfectly with this outfit, and one of the best things about summer? No socks!

Pandemic Reading

Revival Season. This follows a young girl whose father is a revivalist evangelical preacher; during Revival Season the family travels around the southern US so he can save souls and heal people. The girl witnesses her father commit an act of violence, which has massive repercussions for the family and for her own faith. At the same time, she discovers she has healing powers. I enjoyed this book – didn’t LOVE it, but I enjoyed it – and it is written in present day, which is important. I have since discovered that the idea that women are inferior and subservient to men is still widely accepted in the evangelical community TODAY, which is disturbing, and is a major theme in this book.

Truths I Never Told You. Ugh, this book was NOT for me. It was my own fault, right on the cover the author is compared to two well-known authors whose writing I do not care for. I found the first-person narrative to be so overwrought, the dialogue stilted, the plot super-contrived. One of my pet peeves about writing that supposedly takes place in the past is the application of today’s views on yesterday’s beliefs. It feels very unrealistic to me, as did the journal entries that are used as a literary device to advance the plot – usually I like that device, but these journal entries were SO ridiculously over the top with drama. Anyway, not for me.

American Dirt. I was about a third of the way through this book when my friend Nicole (HI NICOLE) alerted me to some troublesome controversy with regards to the author. It didn’t totally colour my reading experience, but it was certainly in the back of my mind while reading. Honestly, I don’t know what to think: the morality of writing a work of fiction about a culture and experience that is not the author’s is really beyond the scope of my blog. The author discusses her hesitations about writing the book in the afterword, and does mention that her own husband was an undocumented immigrant, hence her interest in Central American migrants.

Anyway, controversy and debate notwithstanding, this book is excellent. While I don’t think anyone who supported the 45th president and his anti-migrant views would read this and change their minds, I think this book humanizes the migrant experience. This incredible book sheds light on the horrors of the migrant experience, shows how desperation leads people to grasp at any chance, no matter how dangerous, to seek a new life. It is breathtaking, and heartbreaking, tragic and hopeful.

Happy Summer Solstice, friends! May you enjoy our ever-shortening days this week! xo