The Stench of Mom
How two positive turns of events helped salvage a senior year of High School
College application season is thankfully almost complete. Suffice to say my high achieving, but blasé, kid took his procrastinating up a notch during the pandemic. Who can blame him, just hearing the wretched scratchy choir practice on Zoom every day for a year was enough to make me want to gauge my eyes out from two rooms away. I have helped kids at Lowell High School —a magnet school San Francisco, much in the news these days —with their college essays for more than seven years, and I looked forward to helping my own kid for the second time.
A friend calls it the ‘stench of mom,’ my husband calls me ‘Nagatha,’ but seriously all I want is for my children to thrive emotionally, intellectually, physically, academically and spiritually. Ok, so thriving may be a stretch these days, but at least I’d like them to put forth effort and hopefully discover success is often based on attention and said effort — well, at least most of the time. My friend, a pediatrician stipulated that the concept of the ‘stench of mom’ is thoroughly developmentally appropriate, if not painful for those of us that have birthed or raised and shepherded these beings. So after requesting essay drafts in October, I amped up my urgency, given my own confluence of two very large work projects around Thanksgiving. The drama — worthy of indie movie cinematographer — culminated one Sunday evening directly following a gigantic event I produced, and whilst planning for a business trip the next day, on top of a deadline for four stories for a newly launched magazine for which I am a contributing editor. I kid you not, at 10pm the day before the UC apps were due, my son sent me his first drafts… shockingly, they were really good, but needed some work. With multiple google doc windows open as I toggled between my own stories and his (like Lucy and Ethel with the chocolate conveyor belt) we got it done; it was not the peak parenting moment I had envisioned. I made some notes and suggestions, he reworked them, eventually I just relinquished my desire, if not to oversee, at least to be in the loop… so be it. The apps were complete — I may have cursed and cried, I cannot remember — and then of course the websites crashed and the stark reality of how much it costs just to apply in this godforsaken system, hit home.
So as the arduous and nonsensical college app season winds to a close, and I am unsure how it will all unfold, I am choosing to focus on the positives. First — after 9 years of casually and then repeatedly more urgently suggesting, I tried to get my two boys excited about ceramics at their High School — some kind of victory has transpired. Maybe it’s because it is so tactile and rewarding, or maybe because I have always loved throwing and sculpting in clay and then using my vases, cups and bowls year after year, or maybe because it is such an antidote to the ‘in your head’ academic slog. I just couldn’t help myself, I wanted them to try it. If they didn’t like it, fine, but I just desperately wanted them to —not only —experience the joy of clay, but to take advantage of the opportunity. In my perfect world, kids would have access to not only art, but music and sports as well… seems in California High Schools, these ‘VAPA’s’ (Visual and Performing Arts) options are meted out, a well known casualty of our dysfunctional tax and budget system. At least at my kid’s school, which has robust alumni support and money for many AP’s and unusual classes, the requirement is just one year of arts and only two of PE. He got accidentally placed in the Zoom choir class last year — which was miserable for him — and he seemed married to the idea of only needing one art credit. This, after being a kid who had loved studying and creating art; way to drum out the joy of art learning SFUSD. This has driven me crazy, particularly since my kids had excellent and copious options for art, music, theater and electives K-8, at an independent school. How a reputable and rigorous school (now succumbing to misplaced social justice attempts to make it not test in) can only require one year of art, when the kids are pushed hard academically, is beyond me, but I digress. Neither kid seemed as excited by the idea of ceramics as I started my campaign. Truth be told, I had suggested robotics, guitar, mural classes, the newspaper, photography, set design, seriously anything that involved something other than grinding studies… to no avail. This has been one of the more challenging aspects for me as a parent. Both my husband and I would self define as ‘artsy’ and I guess our boys have worked hard to not be that… I get it. My older son even found his college freshman dorm in the same building on the UCSC campus that housed a glorious ceramics studio, set amongst the redwoods. Alas he did not take advantage of it. You bet I tried. BUT… in an11th hour turn of events, my HS senior returned home one day to announce that he had — in fact — signed up for ceramics (mostly because his friends did) and he loved it. He looked forward to it daily and has been an engaged and prolific potter this year so far.
So as we hurtle towards the Holidays, nothing has made me happier than seeing the fruits of his clay labor, including a few cups, a vase, a textured objet that rattles, a pangolin animal sculpture that weighs about 10 lbs and a mini amanita muscaria mushroom with a little frog on top. I nearly wept when I saw the latter; another casual but relentless suggestion of a nice inspiration, should he choose to take the assignment. Add to that, the second small victory; a stellar Saturday job at the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market, one day a week job that not only gives him agency and cash, camaraderie and knowledge about the produce business, but also the motivation to self regulate and so much more. I had made a lot of suggestions about coffee shops and bakeries, but this he found on his own through a friend, and it’s spectacular as low wage jobs go. This all followed a dismal pandemic curtailment of his love affair with soccer, which has now seemingly altered his DNA. Once an athletic kid — who was on the Varsity soccer team that won All City in San Francisco, days before lockdown — he seems to have a totally different set of goals and interests since March of 2020. Who knows if this would have happened without Covid, but as a parent I am trying to let him blossom and shine in his own way, while still subtly — or not so subtly — pushing my own hopes and dreams for him, ok, my agenda. So, both the clay connection and the job seem like positive developments. I can only hope the college application process will have an inspiring effect on his future. I am sure glad I only have two kids, if for nothing else, not to have to go through this hellacious hamster wheel, expensive, soul crushing process we call college applications again. I would be dishonest if I said I don’t care where he winds up going to school, (and I know we are lucky to even consider that an option given all the hardship and inequity of now), but I am just struggling to hang on to some hope of the future for my kids, while working hard to metabolize all that has been lost for so many these last few years. I’m grappling, as a mom, with how life trajectory, as we knew it, is no longer the same species as pre-pandemic. I do hope we can figure out some new paradigm for our education system, including the outrageous student cost and loan system, but in the meanwhile I am going to enjoy some tea in the cup my son crafted, and tuck into a clementine he brought home from his job, and hope that this time next year I will be eagerly awaiting the return of my college kid.
