break time over

Just so happens, during this week of riding the solo parental train the parent/teacher meetings are scheduled.  Last night was with Hud’s teacher, a very prim and organized Asian gentlemen whose reputation of educational excellence preceded him from many reliable sources.  I had the chance to meet him briefly on two separate occasions, but last night was my first chance to watch him engage with my pensive son for any extended period of time.  When asked his feelings about his teacher, Hud’s general positive response dipped in apathy was the most we could yank out of him. He brushes off questions about his school life with such speed and annoyance; it is like we are asking him to bare his arm for an impending needle.

So it was a treat to be seated in chairs with tennis ball nubs to keep them from squeaking and listen to this forthright, articulate, young teacher talk to Hudson about his strengths and where he needs improvement.  I had to back away from my natural tendency to chime in about the guiding of my son’s scholastic habits and defer to a man who I know is better trained to deal with both the how and the why Hudson should be focusing on certain learning challenges.  Initiative and collaboration are the two areas where Hud needs to step up, which literally means taking the chance of being wrong and suggesting ideas in a group or to the teacher directly.  Two things that are waning because of Hud’s lack of confidence.

Of course I stepped forward with my whole good to great speech and moving from the middle to the front of the bus metaphors before I was shot down by the steely glare of the teacher who wants Hudson to take these two attributes and place all his focus on moving these two from satisfactory to good, not the seven others from good to excellent.  Smaller focused goals instead of my holistic overwhelming objectives that Hud seems to see as daunting.  Needless to say, I kept my mouth shut until I was asked my opinion with three minutes left in the interview.  I kept it tight and just told him I was happy that he was with a teacher that cared and as parents, the three of us could act as partners to help our Hudson grow and learn.

Tomorrow it’s the interview with Tasman’s teacher.  And teachers are funny animals.

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Tim’s work cubicle was about 10ft by 10ft with a small fichus plant in one corner, a miniature basketball net in another and all three and half walls smeared with office printer pictures of Tatum, the absolute love of his life.  His job at a mid-sized investment management company is pretty boring.  It’s not the job he works for; it’s the not too shabby pay cheque.  His comfort and ability to leave right at 5pm everyday to rush home and see his Tatum is his primary objective.  Everything else is just corporate politics, ticking clocks, middle aged women with ID badges attached to their belt loops and occasional brain numbing tedium.

The various shaped photos at various angles help him get through it all on most days.  It’s her tiny brown ringlets, thin lips, slightly upturned nose and winter sky blue eyes that make elderly women in grocery stores stop and gasp.  She wears overalls and high top Chuck Taylors.  She toots when she sneezes and thinks it’s the funniest thing in the history of funny.  She falls asleep in tucked under Tim’s arm while he watches Seinfeld reruns.  He loves her so much his chest actually throbs.

When Laura showed Tim the little white stick with pink circle (at 3am for some reason) his first thought was not that they were having a baby, but he was having a boy.  The second and third thoughts were the fast forward vignettes of playing catch, or, more aptly, shooting hoops in the driveway at various stages of rim reach-ability.  It was chips and Diet Coke watching the Superbowl, it was wrestling and video game buffoonery.  It was basically permission for Tim to remain an adolescent for at least 20 more years so he could better relate to his son – a pretty sweet deal in his opinion.

But then along came Tatum.

It was about a month into the second trimester when the ultrasound technician asked if they wanted to know the sex of our baby.  Laura was 10 minutes late for the appointment and Tim, looking very financial district in a grey suit and mauve tie, was biting his nails in the medical building waiting room.  He started his new job a month previously and was extremely anxious about being away from the office for any amount of time.  Laura was elbows deep in the renovation of the dining room for the largest (and richest) of her four clients and had been cornered by Judith (in a smart pantsuit) and her contractor (also in a pantsuit) who could not agree on which wall to knock down.  Laura kept trying to break away but Judith was having none of it, displaying militant indifference to the existence of any other problem other than her own.   Finally she let Laura leave after ensuring she was onside with her wall demolition choice.

The frenzy of Laura arriving at the doctor’s office was brief and Tim pushed aside his anger at her tardiness to get back to the wonder of the appointment.   Their technician was a middle aged Asian woman with hair so thin, dark moles poked through the black hair just to say hello.  Her English (engrish?) was tragically halted and broken but she was enthusiastic, with a laugh like a chickadee, so the room quickly moved from harried to full of excitement.

“Would you like to know sex of baby?”  She asked, ultrasound wand goopy and moving all around Laura’s belly, faint heartbeat thumping so quick, so eager.  Tim remembered looking at Laura with every intention of postponing the knowledge of the sex until the birth.  The whole ‘one of life’s rare true surprises’ angle, very much consistent with his romanticizing every nook and cranny of their lives.  Laura, already decorating the room in her mind, of course wanted to know, wanted to avoid the blue/yellow debate, the returning of wrong gender specific onesies.  So before Tim had a chance to whimper out the words, “let’s wait”, Laura looked into the wonderfully goofy buck toothed grin of their Asian technician and asked her if it was a girl.  And the technician just smiled with her eyes, mouth pressed flat, and nodded.  Tim, again pushing away the prick of anger caused by his wife, let it all sink in, the reality sluicing through his veins, blanketing his images of basement foozball fart fests to be replaced by, by what?  Barbies and doilies?  Pink chiffon boas and Laura’s oversized high heels?  He had no idea what to think.

But when Tatum arrived four months later, looking like a mole rat, wiggling in the blood and the gunk and the sweat and the relief, Tim was blown away on how strong and how instant the love for her was, how all his juvenile masculine forecasting was whisked away with the sight of his daughter, her eyes as big as the sun, staring vacantly back at him from under the Burger King like heat lamps.

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