street roots
July 6, 2012
Good things can happen when parents are nowhere in sight
amona’s about ready to turn six:
the same age as the star of her
favorite book, Eloise. It’s the tale
of a sophisticated, trouble-making little girl
living on her own with a nanny on the top
floor of New York’s posh Plaza Hotel in the
1950s: Eloise has a pet turtle and an
expensive purebred dog and a palatial room
to herself in the penthouse, enjoys
pretending to be an orphan, attending gala
affairs in the hotel, and harassing the
concierge, etc. Ramona loves when Eloise
annoys the elevator operator by going up
and down and everywhere (“She’s so
naughty!”) and dreams of being like her,
ordering room service excessively, and
saying, “Charge it, please!” while her
wealthy absentee mother globe-trots.
“Mommy, I want you to leave me at a hotel
so I can go to the front desk and skibble up
and down the stairs!”
This scenario is largely unlikely to be
replicated in Ramona’s actual life. What’s a
loving way to tell a 5-year-old, “Fat chance,
darling. You are not the child of a rich,
single mother who lets you run feral, but
rather the child of two un-rich parents who
are pretty busy but prioritize the heck out
of your happiness. Please join us in thinking
that living with us in a beat-up old Portland
house with bad 70s linoleum in the kitchen
is as good as living in a New York penthouse
on your own”
We’re trying to get Ro on board with our
main goals in life: not necessarily getting
wealthy, but being reasonably happy while
doing reasonably interesting things, trying
to do what bit of good we can. Being
married to Marshall and mother to Ramona
have gone along pretty well with those goals
for me, as has teaching English at the
community college level where some of my
students come from traditionally
underserved demographics. I feel good
about what I do, but I’d be lying if I didn’t
confess that part of the attraction to
teaching is summers off and a flexible,
variable schedule that enables extra time
and flexibility so I can be with family a great
deal.
That was the idea, anyway. However, it’s
been seven years, and I have yet to have
summer off.
Regarding flexibility: I have found the
schedule to be flexible indeed; specifically,
it’s flexible like the octopus that so
fascinated Ramona at the Oregon Coast
Aquarium last year - teaching extends its
long, suckery tentacles into every time of
day, every day of the week, as I’m sucked
into the maw of grading, planning, revising
lessons, answering e-mail, etc. And as
Ramona’s gone from toddler to “Seriously,
R
M elissa Favara
teaches E n g lish in
Vancouver a n d lives
a n d writes in North
Portland, where she
parents R am on a, age
5, hosts a bi-monthly
reading series, a n d
counts her husband
a n d her city as the
two great loves o f her
life.
M lR A D O R .
COMMUNITY
Mommy, that’s absurd,” in what feels like
about 20 minutes, I need to block out my
time more strictly if I plan to avoid waking
up at her wedding next week. Define a
boundary, put the laptop away, increase the
time for adventures with Ro.
Which is why I was excited about the
week I planned to take off completely from
work between spring and summer terms
this month — unstructured bliss with Ro!
Berry picking! Fingerpainting! Garage sale-
ing! Leisure and complete focus on one
another!
Ro’s going to be in day camp with
Portland Parks and Recreation the rest of
the summer while I teach, so I was stoked
about a week of just us together in the
interim. All I had to do was complete
grading the 80 or so students under my
charge for spring term during finals week
while sneaking in time to develop my
summer classes — I expected to be able to
finish developing my new Intro to Literature
course and update my two sections of
freshman composition in the moments I’d
find here and there. Ro and I could be
freewheeling together after that — maybe
head downtown and pretend to be Eloise
and stir up trouble at the Governor Hotel!
Which is why my spirit shuddered and
raged and dwindled as obstacles arose:
students who plagiarized and took hours to
document. Failure to click “save” before
closing my new syllabus, costing many more
hours of careful work. An old dental
nightmare’s flare-up equalling two visits to
the periodontist: 90 minutes each.
Cuss. Double cuss. That carefully planned
week of familial bliss? Poof! Monday
morning of what was supposed to be our
week, I called Peninsula Park Community
Center, pleading with a nice lady to let Ro
into day camp this week, too. No dice.
her teacher composed. In it, she did a tap-
dance routine (when did that learning
happen?) and delivered about 15 lines
perfectly — while the storyline was a bit
careworn (girls fall asleep at a slumber party
and awaken in a magical land and need help
from a mermaid, a bat, and the Dream Fairy
“I am showing no availability, M a’am. I
A nd rig h t in front, lead in g th e tap n u m b er,
understand you have to work. May I speak
to my supervisor and call you back?”
Yes. Please do, I say. Sigh. Ramona would
be heartbroken.
“Hello, Ma’am. I can fit your daughter
into Theater Camp this week. Starting at 9
a.m. today. Will that work?”
Half an hour later, I was dropping Ro at
Peninsula Park with a hastily assembled box
lunch, exhorting her to be brave and accept
the loss of our time and try to have fun.
Oddly, she raced into the building ahead of
me, into the room where other kids were
doing their theatrical stretches with nice
Miss Sandy, and she didn’t say goodbye or
look back.
The picture with this week’s column?
That’s Ramona dressed for her end-of-camp
role as the Dream Fairy in the original play
my Ro, who had become someone even
stranger and newer to me in that week. I’d
gotten my new classes ready, too.
The thing about Eloise and Nancy Drew
and Treasure Island and all of those orphan
tales - is that great things can happen when
the parents are away. Growth of a certain
kind, the kind of finding self that can’t
happen when your parents are all over you.
As it turned out, that theater camp was a
half-day, and Ro and I did do some good
Goodwill-hunting and neighborhood walking
and gardening and cuddles over reading. But
we also both got to do our own thing, too.
Maybe that’s what the balance is - holding
each other tightly when we can, but
understanding that sometimes what we
need to do or learn or find happens when
we’re apart.
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to get home again — was it all a dream?), the
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