Behaving Like Adults by Gretchen Anthony

Author:Gretchen Anthony
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Park Row Books
Published: 2018-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Christmas 1996

Dearest loved ones, far and near—

Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners!

I hope this letter finds you surrounded by family and friends, steeped in the joy so abundantly offered us each holiday season.

We all send reports of good health and interesting work this year. Our dear Ed, of course, remains tucked away in his laboratory. His research into common bowel disorders is now showing great promise and he believes the team is within sprinting distance of a breakthrough. I hope to have bountiful news to share in next year’s letter.

Lovely little Cerise is hardly little anymore (though she’ll always be a petite speck of a thing, tiny feet and all (oh, how I envy her!)). Her 9th birthday just passed us by, leaving this awestruck mother to wonder, where did the time go?

Unfortunately for us, third grade has been an exercise in perseverance. The biggest obstacle is not the work, but keeping Cerise challenged—I can’t tell you the number of phone calls I am forced to exchange with her teacher each week (a well-intended but past-her-prime warhorse). I can say with certainty that no other mother faces such unnecessary schoolmarm commentary with unnerving regularity.

“Cerise is letting other children copy her work.”

“Cerise corrected my spelling in front of the whole class.”

“Cerise brought a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in for silent reading time.”

Obviously, anyone with eyes can see that the child is not disruptive, but bored! (Though where she found a copy of that book, I’ve yet to discover.) She’s already tested out of her grade level in math and reading. So until this school of ours learns to create an environment in which her industrious brain is fully engaged, our little Cerise will find ways to do it herself.

On the bright side, I continue to keep myself busy while Ed and Cerise are out of the house. This fall I had the good fortune to sit on the Parent Advisory Committee for the Minneapolis Public School Board of Education—an enlightening experience, to say the least. You can’t imagine the complaints parents raise! Therefore, as an Advisory Parent, let me remind those of you reading this humble letter that it is not the school’s job to make sure your son enjoys his homework (it is called “work,” after all) or that your daughter be allowed to skip first period due to her late-evening dance class. I, for one, refuse to grant permission for lazy parenting, and said as much to my committee colleagues, freely and often. (Oh, how I could go on about this! But I will refrain, for fear it would kill your Christmas spirit.)

All of this cheerful banter, however, is but a screen to mask the devastating sadness we feel at the passing of my father, Thomas Odenbach, two weeks ago. One minute he was asking my mother for tuna salad on toast, the next minute he was gone. The Lord’s hand was swift and decisive and the doctors told us there was nothing they could have done.

Needless to say, not a day goes by that I don’t mourn his loss.

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