Meera is loving kindergarten. Braydon and I are loving watching her development. She is so into it. This week she’s taken a big leap forward in going from trying to write single words, to writing sentences/”stories.” They are always illustrated. Here is the story she wrote after dinner tonight: “Once me and my friends went to the park. The end.”
I snapped this photo with my iPhone tonight after dinner. This is classic Kyle and Owen. They are just hanging out, cracking each other up to no end, just about as happy as any two human beings on the planet could ever possibly be.
Sometimes they almost seem like they are literally overflowing with happiness. It is pretty infectious.
It has been a long couple of days (Kyle is just out of the woods, recovering from Strep Throat, and Braydon and I have been juggling sick-kid duty with our own work — work which is rapidly escalating this time of year). We had somehow managed to pull off a sit-down family dinner (miracle!). Braydon was cleaning up supper, I was giving Meera a bath, and these two clowns were sitting at the table together over after-dinner orange juice pops. I kept hearing them laughing hysterically, so I finally went to check out what was going on. There was nothing going on– just the two of them lost in their own little (apparently super funny) world, talking at a crazy-rapid pace, with their words/sentences/dialogue so truncated (finishing each other’s sentences as only they can), that nobody but them could possibly understand what on earth they were talking about, let alone laughing about.
I stopped for a second, as I took the picture, and was just astounded by the whole scene.
I remember them doing this when they were toddlers — sitting around, after dinner, eating ice cream cones (or something), and just cracking each other up hysterically.
And they do it now.
And I can’t help but just do an imaginative-fast-forward to seeing them doing this over after-dinner-drinks someday not-so-far-in-the-future.
I’ve been thinking about adoption a lot lately, because I always do, but I am reminded even more so of the joy and pain of adoption during November (National Adoption Awareness Month). And I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the twin connection too. Twins are something special. There is just nothing like it. And I’ve been reminded of that a lot lately in tiny little observations I make as I watch Kyle and Owen growing up. The honor and privilege of adopting twins is pretty much absurdly, over-the-top special. Adopting Kyle and Owen was the best thing I ever did with my life. Hands down. They have me on such a wild ride, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Man, oh man, do I ever love these boys. These boys are my heart and soul. They are loud, they are fast, they are in constant motion, they are a non-stop party, they fill up a room with their simple essence and huge personalities and big movements. They are exhausting in their antics and their pushing-of-buttons and we can never let our guard down even for a second. But for as much as they drain us, they fill us right up too — their happiness is contagious, their charm is disarming, their zest for living is incredibly impressive and admirable. I know I’m bias, but I really think they are something off-the-charts-interesting-unique-and-special. I am so ridiculously proud and honored to be their mom. And I just can’t believe our luck in getting to have these two as our sons.
November is National Adoption Awareness Month. There is so much in adoption to be aware of — so much grief and so much challenge and so much trauma. And there is so much joy too. Despite all that Kyle and Owen have been through, and continue to live through, at the core they are pure joy. And that joy lights up my world each and every day. I am the lucky one.
We spent Saturday along the Toms Creek Trail. It was just about the perfect fall family hike. For local peeps who might want to try it out, here’s the info:
Desi Dinner
1 Friday night ~ 3 families ~ 7 crazy kids ~ 4 professors
a whole lot of Shalinee’s amazing food ~ a little bit of henna ~ excessive chaos ~ an extravagant birthday cake
good friends
such a great night!
That was then, this is now!
{on left = Owen, age 4, November 2008 / on right = Owen, age 9, November 2013}
Owen has always loved pomegranates. But I rarely buy them for him because of the mega mess (of highly stainable juice!) that the deseeding process always involved. Then I saw this video. And I immediately had to show it to Owen. And it was a game changer! Pomegranate eating will never be the same again. With just a wooden spoon Owen is in pomegranate heaven — and his entire surroundings are not polka-dotted with pomegranate juice! (Although there is still enough of a mess to require that he eat pomegranates shirtless!)
Check out this video:
http://lifehacker.com/5895852/deseed-a-pomegranate-in-10-seconds-using-a-wooden-spoon
LU Men’s Basketball had their first home game of the season last night. I have a long track record of taking a member of this team (or a few) under my wing during their four years (or more) at Lehigh. I love my student athletes. And some of my favorite students of all time have been from this team (hello Zahir! Marquis! CJ!). They work harder than anyone I know. Their schedules are rigorous beyond belief, the pressure they are under (both athletically and academically) is extreme, and they tend to be just very interesting and charismatic guys with fascinating life histories. Working with these kids is one of my very favorite parts of my job.
Before I had kids of my own, I devoted a ton of time to my students’ extra-curricular activities. I’d regularly attend their events– athletic events, art openings, poetry readings, theater productions, concerts, performances. I loved doing all of that. But then we adopted Kyle and Owen, and had Meera, and I just could not keep doing all of that; I was needed at home. But over time I came to miss those things I used to do, and I especially missed the deep connections that doing those things forged between my students and me. It means so much to a student to have me show up at their event. It means so much to me to see their face light up when they notice me there. It takes the professor-student connection out of the classroom and it takes it to an entirely new (and extremely enriching and productive) level. Having all of that missing felt like a gaping hole — it had been one of the things that I loved most, and found most gratifying, about my job.
One of the big motivations for me, in deciding to make the move to live on campus, was knowing that by living here I’d be able to start doing a lot more of those things I had been missing. And it has definitely worked out as I imagined it would: I can attend so much now, simply because it is just easy to do it since I’m right here anyway.
And because I drag my kids along with me (trust me, they are not kicking and screaming; they love this stuff!), it means that it isn’t just me showing up to my students’ events now. It is usually me and a bambino (or three). And while it means a lot to my students to see me show up, what really lights up their faces now is when they see Kyle, Owen, or Meera show up. Talk about lighting up a face!
Right now the star of the men’s basketball team, and the team captain, is Mackey McKnight. He’s a senior this year, but I’ve been working with him intensively since his sophomore year. I’ve been very close to many, many students over my past 12 years at Lehigh, but I have never been as close with a student as I am with Mackey. He holds a very special soft spot in my heart and soul and we have about a hundred stories from the past few years to prove it. We have learned a lot from each other. I have gone way above and beyond for this kid (teaching, advising, mentoring, befriending), and he has gone way above and beyond for me (working at his absolute maximum capacity, as often as possible, and really striving to try to reach my very high expectations and demands of him).
Kyle and Owen idolize Mackey (click here for just one of several posts where Mackey is mentioned). And I don’t mind having them idolize him. Because I know, firsthand, that Mackey is worthy of their adoration. He’s a great role model for my boys in that he’s a great basketball player and Lehigh student, he’s tough, scrappy, extremely bright, and driven. Mackey is not perfect, and just like the rest of us he has his flaws (that’s the beauty of it: I know him well enough to know the multidimensionality of him). I’m not going to sugarcoat this; Mackey is complex. But that is what is so great about this dynamic— Kyle and Owen’s love of Mackey isn’t the typical detached-and-from-a-distance-young-fan-adoration-of-a-sports-figure; Kyle and Owen actually know Mackey and they know that I know Mackey. We all know each other well enough to know our strengths and our weaknesses; the glossy images we see of each other on the Lehigh publications and the views we’ve had of each other’s inside-story-not-at-our-best too. Kyle and Owen know that Mackey doesn’t always get A’s when I grade his papers; Mackey knows that I am not always able to keep my act together; I know that all my boys (Kyle, Owen, Mackey, and all the others too) have idiosyncrasies, that I don’t shy away from, and I try not to hide my own idiosyncrasies from them. We all know a much more “real” version of each other than is typically possible for people in our positions. It is a richer, fuller, and more real experience all around. We’re not trying to fool each other.
Kyle and Owen would want to go to the Lehigh basketball games no matter what, but the real draw for them these past couple of years is to cheer for their friend #11 Mackey McKnight. And I know, because he tells me, that for #11, hearing these two little fans cheer for him means so much when he is down there on the court. And then, the next morning, #11 has to face me in class — and deal with me when I get on his case for not having done the reading (or praise him when he somehow pulls off a superb paper). And as for me… well, I have one of the things that I love most about my job back in place — that hole is filled now with the depth and meaning that can only come from knowing, and shaping, my students as multidimensional people (oh, and, bonus!! I get to share all of this with my own kids too!).
So, doing this sort of thing (going to the home opener of LU Men’s Basketball last night), is not as simple as it appears on the surface. There’s a lot to it. And this post barely scrapes the surface of it. There is a rich complexity and a depth to a lot of what we’re doing on campus, and it is meaningful — maybe even powerfully so — maybe even transformatively so — for those involved.
It has been quite a week here at Lehigh. On Wednesday morning we woke up to discover that something horrible had happened that night. Someone had spray painted the “N Word” on, and egged, the Umoja House– a multicultural-themed residence hall at Lehigh. The U House is just a few doors down from the residence hall in which we live, is a sort of second “home” for many of the students we are closest to here, and is a well-known symbol of diversity on Lehigh’s campus.
I knew this week was coming; I knew something like this would happen at some point; it was just a matter of time… but still… there is no way to prepare, there is no way to know when it will hit, and when it hits there is no way to stop it from feeling like being kicked in the gut. We are living on a college campus, in the real world, and bad things happen. The Umoja House incident crystallized a lot of anger, fear, discontent, and frenzied frustration on Lehigh’s campus. It was like throwing a lit spark an already agitated, heated campus. There was no way, in living here, that we could protect Kyle and Owen from this.
Meera is still young enough to have a lot go right over her head. We chose not to tell her about it. She still seems too young to grasp any of it with meaning, and we were concerned it would simply scare her. So, we have kept her from knowing about it.
Kyle and Owen, however, are a different story. Nothing gets past them and they are wise — and socially savvy — well beyond their years. Many students who they are close with were deeply impacted, emotional, and overwhelmed. We knew that Kyle and Owen were going to find out what was going on, and we wanted them to hear it from us first.
I sat them down after school on Wednesday, and told them. I gave them the facts as straight-forwardly as possible: “Last night something horrible happened. Someone threw eggs at the Umoja House. And they also painted, in red paint, the word ‘Nigger.’ It is a terrible, awful thing.” Kyle’s immediate response: “It is a racist thing.” “That’s right,” I said.
Their first concern was their own safety. I knew that would be where they went first with it, and I was prepared for it. “Nobody was physically attacked, nobody was injured. This is violence and hatred, but not of physical violence.” They wanted to know if anything was broken or if there was burglary. “No, only hearts were broken. And no, there was no burglary.” “Good,” they said. “Where were the LUPD?” they wanted to know, “Did they see it happen?” “No,” I said, “but they are working hard to find the people who did it.” “This isn’t going to happen to Sayre B, right? We are safe, right?” I assured them, as best I could, and with some trepidation, that yes, we are safe. “But,” I said, “I don’t want to keep this from you. I want to be honest with you. I want you to know that this happened.”
Owen said that if he had been in the Umoja House when it happened, and if he had seen the people doing it, he would have yelled at them: “If you’re gonna throw eggs at me, cook ’em so I can eat ’em!!” The boys laughed and laughed at that. Owen said that the next thing he would have done was gone outside with his “two swords” (from his Halloween knight costume), and “scare them away.”
Kyle wanted to express his opinion. He was outraged about it. “It is white people who did this. Obviously.” He wanted a response from me: “Yes,” I said, “I agree, it is very probably white people who did this.” “It is racists,” he said. “Yes,” I said, “it is racist. Racism exists. There is no getting around it.”
They wanted to be assured that justice would be served– that the people who did it would get in trouble. They wanted to know that if students were caught, they would be expelled. I assured them. And they wanted to know what was being done to help the students in the Umoja House. I told them that about how that morning, while they were in school, Mommy and Papi had gone out to get bagels and cream cheese for the Umoja House kids, and that we had dropped them off with a note. They were very happy about that. And I told them that the whole campus was upset all day, and that a protest rally was being planned for that night. I told them I wanted them to go to the rally with me. And they jumped at the chance.
I wanted them to see that while there are, indeed, some bad people in this world who do the wrong things, there are also many, many good people in this world who do the right things. I wanted them to see that while there are still young people who feel entitled to express their hatred and racism in the most horrific ways, there are also masses of young people who want to support values of equity and justice, who want to uplift victims of oppression, and who want to change the world to be a better place. I wanted Kyle and Owen to know that as young black boys, there are many, many people — of all races, religions, and orientations — who are in their corner and who have got their back. I wanted Kyle and Owen to see people they know and love stand up to fight — in a peaceful and intelligent way — against racism.
So, we went to the rally on campus that night. And they saw it all.
As the crowd was forming, Kyle and Owen could see the numbers (over 1,600 people) and feel the electricity running through the crowd.
They saw many, many students they know and with whom they are close. They gave, and got, lots of hugs. But they knew it was serious, and they took it seriously, and I was proud of how they handled themselves. This photo (below) — of K & O with our friend Ralph — is just profound for me. It sums up the entire experience of that night. Ralph is a Haitian-American student I’ve had in two semesters worth of classes, and is an organizer of the movement on campus that coordinated the rally and a million other things to spear-head social justice on this campus in recent months. This picture brings tears to my eyes each and every time I see it. Complex tears, for my boys, and for Ralph, and for all the others in their positions. A picture tells a thousand words.
When the rally got started Kyle and Owen saw some of their favorite students up on the stage, leading the crowd, in articulating protest. I was so proud of my students for showing my boys how to do this, and do this well.
And Kyle and Owen saw and heard so much that night. Things I wish they never would need to hear. But things that, unfortunately, they do need to hear. Keeping it from them only serves as a disservice to them. And if they need to know — which they do — then, I believe, there couldn’t be a better way.
So, we walked together through that day, and that rally, and through this week. Kyle and Owen learned so much from this experience– as did we all. And they are learning so much from living here– as are we all.
Thank you to Christa Neu, Lehigh Photographer, for all of the photos in this post.
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