A New Quilt

 Twelve years ago, I wrote about how an old quilt made me cry as our full and busy home became an empty nest. That quilt was powerfully symbolic. It spoke of my love for the mountains, and of how I shared that love with my children and passed it on to them.

Around that time, my sweet wife started making another quilt for me -- another quilt covered with images of mountains and trees and lakes and sky. Life got in the way, and it took her until today to finish it. This quilt also carries powerful symbolism, but it's not just symbolic of my love for the mountains. It's symbolic of a woman's love and devotion in the face of all obstacles.

I'm a very lucky man, and I know it.

AND THEN, AND THEN:

She had leftover fabric, so she made two pillowcases to match the blanket!

On Giving Away Children in Marriage, Part Two

Chronologically, she is a grown-up.

From a distance, she looks like a grown woman. When she was 12 and 13, she was the tiniest of her friends, and I thought she would remain a little girl forever. Boy, did that change.

Close up, she usually looks like a grown woman. But occasionally the little girl peeks out.

Her accomplishments and achievements to date tag her as a grown woman. The trials and other experiences of her life are those that only a grown woman could deal with.

When she meticulously plans the menu for her wedding reception, and wants shishkebabs (with blue potatoes!), fancy rice pilaf, and green salad with all kinds of weird stuff in it, it's clear that she has grown up. But when she spends weeks mail-ordering her favorite candies, in bulk, for the candy bar at her reception, it's clear that she's still a little girl.

When she poses for pictures after the ceremony, she is definitely a grown woman — until she and friends (or her new husband) mug for the photographer — and then she turns back into a little girl.

When I hold her as we dance to "Dancing with Cinderella," and her white dress swirls around her ankles and gets caught in my shoes, and I look at her carefully done hair and her joyful smile and the sparkle in her eyes, there is no doubt in my mind that she is a grown woman. But when we stop to laugh at my missteps, and when she hugs me at the end of the song and says "I love you, Daddy," she is still my little girl.

She and her fiance/husband don't go on dates; they go on adventures. And when they return from their adventures, they write storybooks and comic books about them.

This college graduate goes on job interview trips by herself, and lands a professional job by herself, in a city 60 miles away. And squeals like a little girl. She frets about apartments, and deposits, and credit ratings, and commute distances. Like a grown-up.

She's 24 years old, a professional, and newly married. But she is still my baby girl, and I will always think of her like this:

Hilary Rosen versus Ann Romney, part three

So, is Hilary Rosen right? Are stay-at-home moms out of touch?

If they're so out of touch, then please tell me: why do all the working moms tell their latchkey kids to go to the home of the stay-at-home mom in their neighborhood if there's any trouble? (Don't tell me I'm making this up. My wife was a stay-at-home mom for over 20 years, and this is exactly how it was.)

Do you think that the stay-at-home moms don't listen carefully to the kids' conversations, while they're driving carpool after school and picking up the children of the working moms?

Do you think that stay-at-home moms do nothing but cook, clean, do laundry, and sit around the house all day, eating bonbons and watching Jerry Springer and Dr. Phil?

I know that many working moms carefully monitor their children's progress at school, correspond regularly with their teachers, and attend parent-teacher conferences. Do you think that the stay-at-home moms don't do that?

I know that working moms worry constantly about their family's finances, about the job situation, and about the national and local economy. Would you suggest, as Hilary Rosen did, that stay-at-home moms don't have those same worries? Or that they don't know as much about those subjects as working moms? Can you give me one valid reason why they wouldn't?


A Luxury or a Choice? Or Both?


Now let's address the side issue that Rosen and her supporters alluded to, that Ann Romney's decision to stay at home was a luxury that not everybody can afford. In one sense, she is right, it is a luxury. But for a married woman, it's also a choice, and it requires giving up a lot - including that second income, everything that second income can buy, and the extra content on her resume. Rosen called the Romneys "people of wealth" and intimated that only "people of wealth" can afford to be stay-at-home moms, and that "people of wealth" are out of touch. And I say she's wrong on both of those intimations.

Once again, being a stay-at-home mom is a choice. It's a choice that you can make whether you're rich or poor, college educated or not, and it has nothing to do with being in touch or out of touch with economic reality.

Let's stick with Rosen's "people of wealth" terminology for a minute. Here's what a blog called The XX Factor had to say yesterday, in defense of Hilary Rosen:

"We can also admit that at this point staying home full time with your children is not only a choice but pretty much a luxury of the elite. And almost by definition makes it hard for you to relate to the average woman."


Actually, it sounds like The XX Factor was parroting Hilary Rosen. Proof by repeated assertion.

Contrast that with what The XX Factor had to say about stay-at-home moms two years ago:
"Despite the popular notion that most mothers who don't work outside the home are mostly wealthy elites, stay-at-home moms actually tend to be less educated and poorer than the rest of mothers, as we learned from recent census numbers. Many of these moms, especially younger ones, simply can't find work that pays enough to cover their childcare costs."

Can we say that The XX Factor is two-faced? Or should we say that The XX Factor wants to have it both ways: stay-at-home moms are both "wealthy elites" and "less educated and poorer"? Or should we just take the easy way out and say that The XX Factor is full of crap? (Thanks to the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web Today" for these two excerpts. I'm afraid this link won't work as expected after April 13, 2012.)

(Quick update, April 14: The XX Factor doesn't have just one author. The two comments above, quoted in the WSJ, were from two different authors. But they really do need to get their act together, in order to avoid a mashup like the one above. A third article in The XX Factor takes a more evenhanded look at Rosen vs. Romney and makes some good points.)

Conclusion (such as it is)

Let's face it: it's tough to be a working mom. I've worked with working moms, and I've seen what they have to do to succeed.  But in today's world, even if your husband is a venture capitalist, it's just as tough to be a stay-at-home mom. It's a decision that all women have to face, and deciding either way is tough. Women are lucky if they have a husband who will support them in their decision. They're even luckier if they have a husband who makes enough money that they can choose to be a stay-at-home mom, if they want to.

But don't anybody, ever make the mistake of suggesting that a stay-at-home mom (1) doesn't  work, or (2) is out of touch with the real world, or (3) is, in any way, inferior to a working mom.

For further reading

On my other website is an essay called "Does Your Wife Work?" which looks at this subject from another angle.

Hilary Rosen versus Ann Romney, part two

A national association, composed of women mostly of the Christian faith and of the conservative stripe, the Concerned Women for America (CWA) are not afraid to speak out on issues of national importance that affect women.

Another national association, composed of women of various faiths and mostly of the liberal stripe, the National Organization for Women (NOW) are also not afraid to speak out on issues of national importance that affect women.

CWA's Response

Here's what the CWA had to say, in response to Hilary Rosen's putdown of Ann Romney and stay-at-home moms everywhere. (The original article, "Only 'Real' Women Count", is reprinted here in full, with the permission of CWA.)

Only “Real” Women Count
By Penny Nance


Self-control is a virtue. And I am trying really hard to exert that virtue as much as possible in my response to the complete nonsense spouted by DNC adviser and strategist Hilary Rosen.
In a pathetic effort to discredit Mitt Romney and continue the liberals' recent "war on women" cry, Rosen decided to attack Romney's wife Ann. In an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN, Rosen said, "Guess what, his wife has actually never worked a day in her life."


Of course, she only stayed at home to raise five kids!


As the mother of two, I have to admit that my immediate reaction to hearing this was to have the veins in my forehead almost pop. But after a moment, I had to remember that this type of attitude is nothing new among liberals - especially among those who claim to speak for women.


The reality is that for liberals only "real" women count. You know, those who believe in having a "choice" on abortion and put career first, instead of the "enslavement" of staying at home to raise a family. In essence, those who believe like liberals do are the "real" women; those "others" out there somewhere on a farm are still living in the 1950s.


As the President and Chief Executive Officer of Concerned Women for America (CWA), I represent these "other" women. CWA is the nation's largest public policy women's organization with over half-a-million members around the country, and a lot of them are stay-at-home moms who work - and work hard! - for their families to thrive.


These moms have more positive impact on our culture than any government entity or program could ever dream of having. It is in them that the answers to many of our societal ills lie.


But liberals, especially liberal women who self-proclaim themselves as the "voice" of American women, believe that no one should listen to these other, lesser beings. Isn't that what Miss Rosen's comment really says? "Mitt Romney shouldn't be listening to his wife; she doesn't even work."


Preposterous!


This is why they don't believe these "other" women should be listened to when the "others" say that because of their religious beliefs, they don't want the government forcing them to pay for other women's contraception.


Apparently Rosen's way of making the remarks "better" was to clarify that Romney should not listen to her on "economic" issues. Right, because running a household has nothing to do with economic issues. She wrote on her Twitter account:

When I said [on Anderson Cooper] Ann Romney never worked I meant she never had to care for her kids AND earn a paycheck like MOST American women!

Words cannot describe how sorry I feel for this woman. The most amazing thing about moms is that they do so much without getting a paycheck. I only wish that Rosen and others like her would stop and consider that. Stay-at-home moms are to be considered more, not less.


I stayed at home for several years while my children where young, and I can tell you that there is not a more practical place where Washington could look to discover the tangible impact their theoretical economic proposals have than the American family. A great number of moms run the budget in the house; they pay bills, give to charity, buy groceries, etc.


Talk about energy policy; these women see the effects every day of desperately trying to manage paying almost four dollars a gallon for gas at the pump. They make tough choices so they can live within their families' budget every month, something this administration is clearly unable to do. Stay-at-home moms are also experts in the areas of education, nutrition, and a host of other issues.


Americans would be wise to remember this as they get ready to go the polls and vote. The issue is much bigger than a simple statement. The statement is a representation of a worldview (shared by our president, I might add) that defines women and "women's issues" in an authoritarian way and purposely ignores anything or anyone who would dare challenge their assumptions.


It puzzles me how liberals do not get how important stay-at-home moms are to our nation? Haven't they heard the saying, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world"? And in this case, it swings elections.

The NOW response

Here's what the NOW had to say, in response to Hilary Rosen's putdown of Ann Romney and stay-at-home moms everywhere.

That's right, nothing.


Correction: a reporter for CBS' local affiliate in Washington, DC, chased down the head of NOW and got this statement from her:


Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, told CBSDC that she felt this was a made up controversy.


“I think Rosen’s point was that Ann Romney’s experience was limited,” O’Neill said.


That's not much better than the crickets.

Part three: the stay-at-home decision - is it a luxury, and does it render women out of touch?

Hilary Rosen versus Ann Romney

Hilary Rosen (left), Ann Romney (right). Picture swiped from abcnews.com.

You have, no doubt, heard about the hornet's nest that "Democratic strategist and political commentator" (that's what the newspapers call her) Hilary Rosen stirred up, when she had this to say about Ann Romney on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees show:

With respect to economic issues, I think actually that Mitt Romney is right, that ultimately, women care more about the economic well-being of their families and the like. But there's -- but he doesn't connect on that issue either.

What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying, "Well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues. And when I listen to my wife, that's what I'm hearing."

Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and how do we -- why we worry about their future. 

Yes, she really did say that:  Ann Romney "has actually never worked a day in her life." And I provided the context in the quotation above, so you would know that she meant exactly what she said.

Wow. Hilary Rosen just disenfranchised every single stay-at-home mom in America. Now, I will grant that stay-at-home moms now constitute less than half of the female electorate in this country.  (Let's define a "stay-at-home mom" as a woman who chooses to be a full-time mother and homemaker instead of being a part-time or full-time member of the paid workforce.) But stay-at-home moms haven't been this marginalized since the other famous Democratic Hil(l)ary said, on March 15, 1992, "I suppose I could have stayed at home and baked cookies."

Well, as the son of one stay-at-home mom and the husband of another one, I've been truly pleased to see the reaction Rosen's comment has gotten. High-value Democrats are running over each other in their haste to get away from her. The  president and the first lady have distanced themselves from her, as have national leaders of the Democratic Party and Democratic leaders in Congress. Some of them have even said, "She's not part of the Democratic leadership" - even though she has been called a "Democratic strategist" and, I might add, acted the part in other venues.

Republicans have taken her comment for the free gift it is, and still haven't stopped capitalizing on it.

Perhaps the most interesting thing so far has been Wolf Blitzer scolding her, on the air,  demanding that she apologize to Ann Romney, and scolding her again for her lame non-apology.

(Her apology? She said to Wolf, "Oh, well I sent out an apology this afternoon." First, she insulted this high-profile lady in a high-profile way, and then she either emailed or Tweeted her an apology, twenty-four hours after she made the insult,and now she expects that to be good enough. In this way, Hilary Rosen demonstrates her total lack of class. A handwritten apology, with an original, handwritten signature, in a hand-addressed envelope, either delivered by hand or by express mail: that's what this situation calls for. Maybe even a bouquet of balloons or flowers. But not an email message. That shows no class at all.)

(Update: It turns out she did issue a statement to the press, apologizing to the world in general for her "poor choice of words." In other words, she meant what she said, but she wished she had said it differently. Um, that doesn't count. What we were all waiting for was something like this: "Dear Ms. Romney. I was wrong. I'm truly sorry. To prove it, I'm going to stop talking in public for a while.")

(She tried it again on Blitzer's show:  "I'm sorry if that offended you."  Did you catch the weasel word? "IF." And she wasn't really sorry. What she said was: "If you're thin-skinned, then I apologize for that flaw in your personality." That's not an apology. )

She keeps trying to talk her way out of the situation, but with every word she says, she digs herself deeper and deeper into the pit she dug for herself. The best thing Hilary Rosen could do right now is give Ann Romney a sincere, public apology and then SHUT UP.


Stay tuned for part two: what two national women's organizations have to say about it.


Postscript: This is totally off-topic, but after I wrote that last sentence, I got to thinking. Maybe Rush Limbaugh should have done the same thing, in his recent situation: issue a sincere, public apology and then shut up.

Family matters most

Zyzmog Galactic Headquarters is an eclectic blog. There's a bit of everything in here. Here's something that hasn't shown up in this blog yet: an intensely personal note.

This is what matters most to me. (Click here for a bigger picture)

I treasure the knowledge I've acquired over the years. I like knowing stuff, not for its own sake, but to use it to do something. (My kids say I should use it to win at "Jeopardy.") Like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, I have two impressive diplomas, but most of the knowledge I've acquired comes from way beyond those diplomas. I'd like to think that somewhere in the middle of that knowledge, I also acquired some wisdom. I'd like to think that, but some days I'm not so sure.

More important to me than my knowledge, are all the experiences I've had over the years: where I've gone, what I've done, and what I've seen. I got to work for HP back when it was a good company. I've written video games. I've written a book. I've been on TV. I've written music, played music, and directed a choir. I've watched a ballet in La Scala, and an opera in the Bolshoi. I've stood on the top of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City, and the Duomo in Milan. I've gone water skiing on the South China Sea. I've climbed the Green Mountains, the Applachian Mountains, the Rocky Mountains and the Alps. I've stood on a top of a mountain illuminated by nothing but starlight, and looked at the Milky Way against the night sky. I've seen the Northern Lights dance across the Canadian night skies, and I've been to St. Petersburg during White Nights.

More important than my experiences and accomplishments, are all the great people I've gotten to meet in my life, and the hundreds — no, thousands — of people I count as my friends. These friendships stretch along a continuum from the mutual respect and camaraderie that springs from a single meeting, to the kind that take up a good chunk of a lifetime, deepened and enriched by the quiet, unspoken love that true friends share. My life is especially rich because of the friends I have known.

I'm especially fortunate because those friendships include hundreds of former students and at least a dozen sort-of-adopted children.

Most important of all, even more important than friends, is family. When it comes to family, I am a very lucky man. Define family however you want, and I'm still a lucky man.  [Edit Edit Edit Give up] I have rewritten this paragraph three times, trying to put it into words, and the words don't work. But when I think of the love that we share, the things we have done for each other, and the things that we would do for each other, my heart fills up to overflowing. In my religious tradition, we believe that families last forever. I look at my family, and it makes me excited about forever.

At the center of it all stands my sweet wife. I have been in love with this girl for almost 40 years. She is the real reason for everything I do. All I have ever wanted to do is make her happy and successful, and to see her smile and laugh, and to feel her love and approval in return. So far, I think I'm doing okay: she hasn't kicked me out of the house yet.

The two of us, at 18 years old (Click here for a bigger picture)

The two of us, today (Click here for a bigger picture)

There's a lot in this world that you can chose from, to define yourself and to give meaning to your life. But when you strip away all of the nonessential stuff, the one thing that remains is family. Family lasts forever. And family matters most.

On Giving Away Children in Marriage

I have five children. Three of them are now married.

The first marriage was that of my second child, my first daughter. She married rather young by today's standards. She married a great guy, and we had a reception in a large pavilion on his parents' acreage, in the foothills of the Rockies, and as the sun went down the pavilion glowed with the light of thousands of white Christmas lights. I am told that I danced with my daughter once during the night, but I don't remember that. I do remember that I ran around being a gracious host and enjoying the company of friends and family, and not eating or drinking much. At the end of the night, after the bride and groom had driven away and our helpers were starting to clean up, I sat down at a table all by myself in the semi-dark and quietly worked my way through one piece of chocolate cake.

People have told me that that was one of the saddest things they have ever seen. I believe them. She had been gone less than an hour, and my heart already hurt from missing her.

The second marriage was that of my oldest son, who had endured six miserable years and deserved some happiness. His bride had endured a miserable life and she deserved some happiness, too. Her family either couldn't afford or wouldn't pay for the reception, so we put it on ourselves and paid for the entire thing. I did the gracious host thing again, as did my sweet wife, my son and his bride. At the end of the night, after they left in a stretch limousine filled with pizza and root beer, and our helpers were starting to clean up, I took my sweet wife on the dance floor. The sound system was already packed up and put away. We slow-danced for a long time to the music in our minds, glad to have each other to cling to.

The third marriage, ironically, was once again that of my oldest son. The story is too long to tell here, but his first shot at "happily ever after" was neither "happily" nor "ever after," but after a couple of years he met another girl. He and she were both doing okay financially, so they put on their own party, on the shores of Pensacola Bay. We were their guests, for the most part, and they had a fun time hosting their families and their friends as we celebrated "happily ever after" again. I did my part by looking good in a tux and toasting the bride and groom with "scomps." I can't remember what we did after their party, but I think it involved more partying with family and relatives. We didn't have to clean up anything.

And that takes us to this weekend, when my third child, my middle daughter, married the love of her life, at age 28. As I watched her work the room on Saturday night, I admired the gracious and confident woman that she is. I broke down during the daddy-daughter dance, stopped dancing and just hugged her, whispering words of love in her ear and getting my tears in her hair. But we were surrounded with good friends and good family from Wednesday through Sunday. With the festivities came a distinct euphoria that I was not aware of until this morning, when I finally came down from it. I had been feeling great all weekend long, like everything was right in the world. This morning, on my way to work, I felt a heavy sadness. It was so bad that I had to stop at Dazbog Coffee to pick up a cup of comfort food: their amazing hot chocolate with a double shot of cinnamon, and cream on the top.

We have two more to go: one, our fourth child and youngest daughter in less than three months, and number five, our youngest son. He's off the market for two years, and I won't try to predict what happens after that.

(Parenthetical note: We have dozens of adopted children. One of them is a girl who became as close to us as one of our real daughters. In fact, she came this close to becoming a daughter-in-law. That got short-circuited, though, as she met the real love of her life. Her love for us, and our place in her life, were made clear when she invited us to participate in all of her wedding festivities alongside her real parents. I won't pretend to be equal to her real father, who is a close friend of mine, but I will admit to having felt the same strange emotions that I have felt as I have given my other children away.)

Valentine's Day on the road

I'm spending Valentine's Day surrounded by love: the love of a sister, a son, and two nieces. It's an awesome kind of love that washes over me from four different directions, not all at once, but like ocean waves that break on the shore and then recede.

But the one person that I really love, the most important person in my life, my reason for living, is 450 miles away. My son and I are on a college-tour road trip, and we're spending the three-day weekend that includes both President's Day and Valentine's Day in a city that far from home. Oh, we're having fun, I won't deny it. But ... well, Valentine's Day this year is a bust, and it's my fault.

We spent last week surrounded by love, too. My oldest son and daughter-in-law brought their six-week-old daughter out to meet us, and we had fun with them all week long. My sweet wife and I got to give them several nights of peaceful slumber that they haven't gotten since our granddaughter was born. When she cried at night, one of us would take her and pace the floor, rock her and comfort her, so that her parents could sleep. I loved it. I enjoyed the private time I got to spend with her, grandfather bonding with granddaughter and nobody else getting in the way.

But between early-morning seminary, her teaching job, my engineering job, and everything else that was going on, neither of us made any preparations for Valentine's Day apart. My youngest son and I left on Friday morning on our road trip. My oldest son took his two sweet girls back home on Saturday, leaving grandma alone at home.

Well, she's enjoying the time alone. She's getting caught up on her backlog of things to be done, and she's sleeping in and taking care of a head cold that she got from one of her students. But there's not a Valentine's Day card hidden under her pillow, or a love note inserted in the want ads, or something chocolate-y wrapped in red or pink foil, tucked into her underwear drawer. The only gift I've given her to mark this holiday is the gift of solitude.

I have no doubt that she's enjoying her gift more than she would enjoy a goofy card or (maybe) chocolate. She's a very practical person. And I recently arrived at the realization that a man's romantic gestures are often intended more to ease the man's guilt or boost his ego, than to woo the woman in the man's life. And I'm the one having fun on a road trip, so I should be happy. But I still miss her. I wish I could sit beside her and hold her hand while we watch the Olympics together or something.

Your mama is sooooo cool...

This is a reprint of a letter I sent to my children last week.

Hi kids,

I'm going to take some time out from news this week and tell you how much I admire my sweet wife.

We had lived for 22 years in a one-income family, where Dad worked and Mom stayed home and raised the kids. (See http://www.raydepew.com/mothers_day.html ) When I got laid off in 2003, Valerie decided she needed to go out and find a job. She didn't want to, and I would have preferred to get another job myself. But we knew that would take a while, and engineering jobs were scarce, so she took her college degree and went out to find a job.

Nobody would hire her as a teacher at first, so she took a job as a para (that's "paraeducator", basically a babysitter for the NCLB kids) in the Poudre School District, and kept looking for a teaching job while working as a para. Her persistence paid off when she got hired to replace the Consumer and Family Studies (C&FS) teacher at Erwin Middle School.

The previous teacher was just coasting, waiting until it was time to retire, so the C&FS program was rather a mess. Valerie put her organizing skills to work cleaning up the program and turning it into something useful. She had to overcome a lot of inertia from the 7th and 8th graders, who had been there with the old teacher and were expecting the class to be an easy A like it had been. She turned it back into a serious class, where the kids were expected to earn their grades and to learn stuff. (Imagine, having to learn stuff at school. The very nerve of the teacher!)

The school had been given several thousand dollars and a mandate to use that money to install a new computer-based C&FS learning program. The money was supposed to pay for 8 computers, the software and the supplies, but not for training. Valerie insisted to the district administrators that the computers et cetera would be worthless if the teacher wasn't trained (and that they were short-sighted and a few other choice words for not being willing to spend $2500 on training after they had spent ten$ of thousand$ on the rest of the project), and she kept saying that to whoever would listen, until the district finally paid for her to spend a week in Michigan at a training class.

Then she came back to Colorado and supervised the installation and startup of the system -- the first one in all the school districts along the Front Range. She worked hand-in-hand with the vendor's tech support staff to resolve the startup problems that she encountered in the system's first year of operation, and became the "go-to girl" for the district and for neighboring districts, as people would call her about problems with installation, startup, and curriculum.

Sometimes Valerie would come home and tell me about a computer networking problem she had solved, and she would be using computer jargon that I never expected to hear coming out of her mouth. I would sit there with my mouth hanging open as she rattled off techno-buzzwords, not realizing what she was doing. She became so good at computers and networks that someone at the school asked her if she wanted to take over part of the computer tech's job, when the computer tech was badly injured in an accident. (She declined. She doesn't think she's that good.)

Her first year at Erwin, she observed that the cooking options in the classroom were limited by the length of time of the class. Some kids had expressed a desire to cook things that took longer, so she started a cooking club, which would meet after school one day a week to do some of these more advanced recipes. Wildcat Cuisine is now in its fourth year, and has grown from 12-16 members to 40 members. An article (with photos!) was published in an alternative local paper. She has gotten offers of assistance from a state dietician (with an office at CSU), Applebee's, and other local businesses. And the benefits of the club go beyond just trying the fancier recipes. For the first time, some of those kids have something they're good at, something they can be proud of, and a positive group of peers, where they feel like they belong. Other kids have impressed their parents with their culinary skills, and a few have even taken over mealtime at their homes.

In Colorado, after three years of teaching, you become tenured. The state is serious about those "three years." The third year doesn't expire until the first day of school in your fourth year. So on the first day of school this year, Valerie walked into the building and became a tenured teacher. But I knew she was "in" last year. She is a fixture of the school, as far as both students and teachers are concerned. Kids come to her for advice. Teachers seek out her opinion, either confidentially or in meetings and group discussions. Her classes, though not the easy A, are very popular.

She has a reputation as a straight shooter. One day in October, during passing period, one of her students came into class fuming with anger, because the art teacher had written her up for a rather flagrant dress code violation. It was something like a too-short skirt, or spaghetti straps, or something like this. The girl's friends were also upset, and they all wanted to know why the dress code was such a big deal. Valerie could tell that they weren't in a mood to learn about the food pyramid or anything else that day. So she set aside her planned lesson and spent the whole time talking with the kids about immodest clothing and so on. Valerie got very frank with the kids, and by the time she was done, they understood everything about dress codes, immodest clothing and so on. Word got around during passing period, and her next class wanted to have the same lesson, so she obliged them. No other teacher or administrator had ever laid it on the line like that.

And she's earning a reputation as a straight shooter among the parents, too. She doesn't take any crap from them. When a student is a slacker and the parent tries to excuse the kid's behavior or blame it on someone else (especially on Mom or another teacher), Valerie finds out VERY quickly what the real story is, and then tells the parent exactly what's going on and what they, not she, need to do about it. She's still training the parents, but word will eventually get around that she can't be deceived or bullied.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, two things happened. First, Valerie realized that she'd be a lot better set up for her (future) retirement if she could get further up the wage curve, and second, she realized that a lot of her students have trouble learning because they cannot read. So she decided to get a Master's degree in literacy and reading, and morph from a C&FS teacher to a reading/literacy coach. You kids probably don't remember how hard I had to work to get that MSEE degree from Stanford when we lived in Corvallis -- but if you do, then Valerie's working just that hard on her degree. She's acquiring quite a reputation with her professors at UNC, and I wouldn't be surprised if she ends up with a published paper out of at least one of her classes.

What makes all of this even more impressive is that she started teaching at age 47, and many of her colleagues (and UNC classmates) are Jason's or Kellie's age, or even younger. She went to a conference with one of them (Cinnamon Garner) and told her, "I hope you don't feel like you're hanging around with your mother." Her colleague replied, "No, I think of you more as my fun-to-hang-around-with aunt."

She is looking forward to graduating from UNC so she can have more time to devote to being a mom, a mother-in-law, and a grandma. (I think Chris and I are looking forward to that, too.) You know, in 2003 she could have gotten a job as a waitress instead. But then none of this would have happened. She's too modest to acknowledge "greatness" in any of this, and she doesn't take praise very well. She's blown me off every time I've tried to tell her what I've told you. But she really is a great lady.

--

Love

Dad