Several weeks ago I was asked to be an adult participant at one of my former middle schools at their Challenge Day. I had dropped by the school a few weeks prior to Challenge Day and was asked if I would like to be a part of it.

“What is it?” I asked the dean of students who presented it to me.

“It’s hard to explain, but your name came up when we were thinking of who we wanted to invite. It was on Oprah. Did you see that episode?”

“I’m not an Oprah watcher.” I admitted. I didn’t get into all that.

“Well, it’s a nationally recognized program where it’s one day when these two trainers come in and train the adults for 30 minutes before the kids show up. It’s got a lot of activities and it’s meant to help deal with the problems and issues kids have. There is tons of energy and group talking time and we’ve been told to provide all the tissues. Look it up online if you want. You’ll find more information there.”

At this point I was mildly scared but also intrigued. How would these kids, strangers to me and I to them, bond over the course of a day and come to trust me enough to tell me their deepest kept secrets? What could this possibly entail?

I’m glad I wore yoga pants and my running shoes that day. I needed them for all the wild, frenzied physical activities. Dancing, playing volleyball, and basically running around to introduce myself to 100 7th graders who thought that all the adults there had consumed a case of energy drinks that morning in order to be this excited. It wasn’t our fault. The group leader who trained us told the group that whenever they mentioned the phrase, “We’re getting ready to play another game!” we were to act as if we won the lottery or found out that we were going to be the special guest on Oprah or as if we were on the tv show “Extreme Makeover” and we had to show the same excitement those families show when they announce for them to Move. That. Truck. We all did it willingly. Jumping, screaming, clapping. Honestly, we looked like crazed lunatics and wouldn’t you know? It worked. They teach us that in order to get really deep with their feelings we first have to take them really high with our energy.

I regret, however, that I wore mascara that day. Because the tears from everyone flowed and dribbled like a raging river that seemed to have an endless supply of rushing water. It was my own fault, though. I mean, they told us that they’d provide the tissues. I should have known that the waterworks of tears would surge forth.

We’re not supposed to talk about what was discussed that day because it is intensely private and we can’t break confidentiality. The kids in my small group opened up immediately during their concentrated 2-minute talk time. No one in the group is supposed to spend that time speaking except the one who has the floor. There was to be no validation of their feelings, no fixing of their problems, and no interrupting. We all held to that rule. Only one girl spent the entire 2 minutes in tears. She never spoke about what it was she could have shared with us and the other adult leader and I simply offered her tissues and knee pats and it’s okays when we could. There were four kids in my group. Matt, the only boy, was incredibly forthcoming during his 2 minutes. He was such a spaz during the earlier activities that it surprised me as to how sensitive and vulnerable he became.

The games were frenetic and intense. We played a game of volleyball with an enormous blow up ball and the kids, split into two teams, had to stay seated the entire game. Adults lined up around the outside and pushed the ball back into play. We got points for catching the ball and holding onto to it if it came to us and that was hard because the ball was incredibly huge. There was a halftime show where the adult teams had to create a “show” to earn points. Since we only had 30 seconds to come up with it we decided to do the Stanky Leg while they played the song for us and it had been a long time since I made a complete fool of myself in front of strangers, but the kids seemed to love it. They laughed at us and snapped their fingers to the beat and even tried to do the Stanky Leg while they were seated. Let me pause here to say that it looked very much like having a seizure while sitting cross-legged on the floor. None of it, truly, was very pretty to watch. Funny, yes. Pretty, no.

Toward the end of the day we did an activity (a game, and yes, we screamed and clapped and jumped up to express our enthusiasm) that was, apparently, something they did in the movie version of the book “Freedom Writers”. The speaker puts a long piece of tape down the middle of the gym floor (have I mentioned that this took place in a hot, stifling, sweaty, stinky gymnasium?) and reads a series of statements. I believe that it is simply called the Line Game. The statements began benignly enough and became more intense as trust amongst the group members increases. By this time of the day, however, there was an incredible amount of faith in the group.

There is no talking during this ‘game’. No laughing and no joking. If the statement that’s read applies to you, then you simply move to the other side and face everyone who hasn’t moved along with you. In order to provide support we were instructed to show love to those who moved to the other side of the line. Whether it was a smile or a nod or even the sign language for “I love you”, we were to just support. When you’re on the non-moving side and you stay where you are because the proclamations don’t apply to you, then you hold up the “I love you” sign. It says it all. I’m here for you. I see you. I got you. I love you.

It shocked me to see some kids and adults moving across the line. Some of the adults I know as colleagues and I had no idea about the things in their lives that set them to become a moving member of “Challenge Day” and cross the line.

Cross the line if you’ve ever experienced the death of a close family member.

Cross the line if you’ve ever been scared in your neighborhood or even in your home.

Cross the line if you’ve ever heard gunshots.

Cross the line if you’ve ever been homeless.

Cross the line if you’ve ever been bullied. Or even if you have bullied someone else.

Cross the line if you’ve ever experienced abuse.

Cross the line if you’ve ever lived with violence.

Constant movement is going on during this ‘game’. Some people go back and forth multiple times and there were moments when my brain registered the thought, “Safety in numbers” as I watched the bravery and vulnerability of these people. Not just these kids. Or these adults. But, these people. There were tears and sometimes when people moved to the other side a friend would put their arm around them or hold their hand. And, of course, there were signs of “I love you” coming across from the other side. What we all learned was that we have more in common that we thought. You have to reveal some things about yourself in order to see that standing next to you is a person you may have bullied or teased or ignored or been mean to for no good reason. You have to admit your experiences and step out there. Everyone might know, when you do that, that you have shameful episodes in your life and that you have encountered pain and suffering. It is a woefully absent practice in empathy and it’s powerful.

Like everyone else, I moved back and forth across the line. There were times when I didn’t move and stood in my place holding up the “I love you” sign to the kids and adults standing across from me.

There was only one statement for which I was the only person who didn’t move. Everyone else moved over the line and stood there facing me, but I couldn’t lie or fake it, nor would I choose to do so. It surprised me somewhat that I stayed there and it’s not as if there is a lot of time to think deeply about my choices for staying right where I was. Two of the adult friends I knew there, Jenni and Sara, were really the only people who knew why I didn’t move. They both cried while looking directly at me just like I did when I previously saw them on the other side. Do you know that look people give you when they are sorry for what you’re going through? They gave me that look. Even Matt, the young boy who met me mere hours before, saw me standing there alone. He wasn’t directly across from me, but he moved to get there and pushed his way to the front so I could see him. When he arrived he firmly planted his feet and forcefully held his hand up in the air.

“I love you,” he said. Jenni and Sara said it, too. Many other people, mostly strangers, said it as well. They said it with a sign and didn’t speak it out loud at all.

Cross the line if you ever got to have a childhood and be a kid.

I couldn’t move from my spot and I couldn’t cross that line. It wasn’t true for me. I’ve been responsible for so long that I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have burdens and liabilities and functions to perform. Someone else always comes first. Things need to be taken care of. I’ve never known a time when there wasn’t something to do. The I’ll take care of it gene is entirely too strong in me. Be the adult and do the right thing permeate my fibers. And it annoys the shit out of me. Nothing can be done to undo it, either.

But it was healing, even if it was just a little bit, to admit it to them. And it’s a little bit more healing to write it here and share it with you.

First, I owe Mallory her birthday post. That poor kid hasn’t even gotten a birthday card from me because I spent all day Saturday moving out of my rental home and moving to my purchased one. I think it’s funny that my youngest asked me, “Mom? Is this our permanent home?” as if to imply we’ve lived in temporary places his whole life. “Uh, yeah, kid. I plan to be here a while.”

Second, I owe a really long post about something I found that belonged to my grandmother because it sort of blew my mind to read what she wrote in an essay in 1968 concerning issues of race. Once I wrap my brain around that I will get to it, but I fear it’ll be an emotional piece of writing for me so I’m going to take my time with it.

Finally, I have to at the very least post the video of me and Ree, The Pioneer Woman, dishing about shoes that we did for the Macy’s Putting It All Together campaign over on the BlogHer site. We named a few of the shoes (all girl names) and discussed the crucial issue of “toe cleavage” so you’ll want to click on the video below. I have to admit, though, that I haven’t watched it all the way through because, like many people, I cringe when I see myself on video. Pictures are fine because I can’t hear my voice (Is that really what I sound like? What the what?) and the first time I tried to watch it I did so with the sound off.

Oh, yeah. And now I owe the mortgage company for the house. But that one was to be expected. Pictures soon!

Really, I’m not one to whine about things. Not entirely openly, that is. But, today is one of those days when I wonder just how everything will get done and what state I’ll be in by the end of it. How much I have to give to my work and my students and my staff is weighing heavily right now because of other things. They just seem too heavy right now.

Last week I was given some interview questions to be featured on a site focusing on women’s health. It’s a government run site and one of the people who works there asked about my own health and how to stay healthy amidst the depression and anxiety in my life, whether it’s mine or my family’s. I remember thinking, “Hmm. They must have been reading very carefully to pick up on that since I don’t make it the focus of what I write about.” and then, “God, I just want to scream from the rooftops about how hard it is to handle it all.”

Right now the biggest thing I’m grappling with is how to purchase a house without the benefit of the equity in the home I still own. It’s tied up legally and there’s no getting at it to help with the down payment so I’m scraping (no, literally, scraping, it together and holding onto every extra dime I can find) it up and doing it unconventionally. That doesn’t even factor in how to get moved with all the stuff my mom has accumulated over the years. Most of the stuff in this house I live in right now doesn’t belong to me because I left it all behind in the home I shared with my husband. And holy shitballs, I have so much stuff to replace. No working vaccuum, no lawn mower, not enough towels or garbage cans or storage boxes. The suckage of this predicament is wearing me down. Every day it’s something new. “Can you get us this paperwork?” or “You know you have to pay a full year of homeowner’s insurance before we can give you this home loan, right?”

There are a few good things, though. A few things that happened to make this process smoother. For instance, the day I needed to give the owner a check for earnest money I actually had it. A panel I’ve been on for over a year that promised $1,000 to me for services showed up in the mail just the day before. “How much do I have to give you for earnest money?” I naively asked. “It’s usually $1,000.” she replied. It made my heart leap that for once, FOR ONCE, I had just what I needed in that moment.

The bad things are outweighing it, though. My mother is very sick and we spent the better part of Mother’s Day in the ER. She was scared and I had to make a decision to take her. In that early afternoon moment, she could not make it herself.

But the good! The good is that I found a house where she can have her own bedroom and her own bathroom. That’s a comfort. Knowing I can work hard, scraping together what I need to be able to give her some solace and peace and a home. It’s that very thing I have to hold onto right now as opposed to screaming that IT’S MY TURN FOR SOMETHING GOOD. That’s a selfish thought. I hate it about myself.

Big stuff. It’s all weighing on me. I have to have some peace about it soon and make it through. I really really want it to be my turn.

Sometimes, when things come out of my son’s mouth I am a little surprised. The normal teenage stuff doesn’t shock me. I hear that stuff all day long at work. He’s fifteen and he’s very good at it. He can’t help himself. Most of what he talks about anyway are things like Naruto and why Hungarian goulash is the Devil’s handiwork, but occasionally he throws me for a loop. Morgan caught me watching MTV’s “Teen Mom” series tonight and asked, “Why are you watching the depravity of the downfall of teen moms who refuse to listen to their parents?” At first, I thought, “How on earth did he just utter that fabulous sentence?” and “Dude! He totally used depravity the correct way! How does he know that word!?” and finally my brain said, “Stop saying dude and totally. You sound like a depraved teenager.”

The best part about being young is being able to be random and spontaneous and the joy of being completely irresponsible. I have no idea what that’s all about.

This inspirational quote came from my friend, Becky, when I finished post-grad work.

I’m not fond of watching reality television at all and when I do it’s because Mallory tells me that something is so unbelievably ridiculous that I should watch it because it bears no resemblance at all to real life. I’ve also never been keen on watching movies that are so close to my own experiences because they hurt too much. The last thing I want to do is watch the very things I’m going through or things I’ve struggled through so I keep them at bay.

And here’s the thing about the show Teen Mom: it’s got to be really hard for those girls, but when I see them all glossed up I just don’t want to watch it anymore because none of my teen parenthood was glossed up. It was messy and dirty and we were poor. Of all the Nothing I see those girls have, my Nothing was much worse. I don’t even like to admit this but at times we were even homeless and had to stay with friends. During that time, I had no desire to watch an After School Special on teens who had sex and then considered abortion, adoption, or raising a baby, or Mary Stuart Masterson in Immediate Family, or Molly Ringwald in For Keeps. Years later, I had difficulty even watching Juno. Eventually, I watched them and they were not much better than the reality of actually raising a child by myself.

I know I was stupid back then. I’m not going to gloss over that. But when I watch these girls I wonder if they know we can see them. That we can watch them primp in the mirror while getting ready to go out (and have their mothers babysit while they throw infantile tantrums about how they wanna have fun!) (Does Cyndi Lauper know she’s being quoted so often of late?) and talk about how hard it is to be a mom when they’d much prefer hanging out with friends. They know this right? That we can see them?

It makes me want to list all the things it is: waiting for food stamps to come in the mail, hoping your checks clear when you pay the bills, staying in on weekends, telling your child that she can’t have another doll, cutting your own hair, not attending birthday parties because you’d have to buy presents, being looked down upon, clipping coupons obsessively, siting on the floor because you don’t have a couch, dumpster diving for furniture, using dull steak knives, keeping fans running because the A/C costs too much, and in a really big way just simply doing without.

All the things it’s not: needs that get immediately fulfilled, free babysitters, time to reflect and think about all the choices and decisions that get made, looking into the camera and succinctly describing your feelings, excessive time in the mirror doing your hair (say hello to the ponytail and stick with it because there’s no way you’re getting a free moment to run a brush through that rat’s nest), friends who still come around to visit and forgive you easily because you can no longer go out and have fun, and then, of course, the fadeout music. There definitely is no fadeout music.

Depravity, if you will, just doesn’t have a theme song.

This past week more than a few friends have reached out to me to ask how I feel about this new show on the CW called “Life Unexpected” and the last time this happened was when “Juno” came out. It is strange how I am the poster child in my circle for getting a measurement of whether or not movies or television shows are realistic in their portrayal of young girls placing babies for adoption. My assessment of “Juno” was that, while I enjoyed the tone of the movie, I was a little surprised by her witty, rapid-fire quips enough to be wary of a teenager using the language Juno uses. It just felt a bit too affected for me. My days are spent with teenagers. Over a thousand of them. Many of them have a sharp tongue, but none in that manner nor are they as cynical. Lots of them are very grown up and have bigger decisions on their plates than they deserve, but they don’t deal with it as caustically or as flippantly as Juno did.

That’s neither here nor there. I’m not a movie critic by any stretch of the imagination.

All I have are my own experiences and no one could possibly guide me through them no matter how badly I wanted them to when Maddie came back into my life. Who can tell me how to think through this? Can anyone please let me know what my next steps will be? Could someone please explain my feelings to me?

My friends helped, but they were as lost as I was on these important matters. It was best if they just threw up their hands and said, “I dunno, Kelly. Do your best.” and then hugged me. It was just about all I was allowing myself to take from them.

“Life Unexpected” is glossy and I don’t for one minute get how two brown eyed parents had a blue eyed child. But I had two red-haired children, so who am I to talk about the probability of an offspring’s genotype? Hell, I can’t even fill out a Punnett square correctly anymore. It’s also because Lux (the daughter of the two ridiculously attractive parents) has ridiculously perfect skin and NO TEENAGER HAS PERFECT SKIN. I’ve seen them up close. You can’t fool me. Her character is super cute and her hair is super cute and her clothes, as poor as she’s supposed to be, are super cute. But she’s a 19-year old actress trying to capture what a 15-year old girl might feel when happening upon her real parents in an effort to be an emancipated minor. It’s not that that’s not a remarkable event, but her reaction doesn’t seem very believable. (If you want to see Britt Robertson in a remarkable movie, then check her out in “Dan In Real Life” instead.)

It’s also not very believable that she would meet these beautiful, fun, successful parents and not want to be with them right away. Wouldn’t that fantasy come first in her mind? Or does she just not want to believe it? Either way, when she fights it I can’t find a way to suspend my disbelief even though I’m not supposed to do that with a drama. There’s an English Lit. degree on my wall to prove that I should know better.

Even though I’ve come to expect the unexpected (or rather, not expect anything at all) it just isn’t always so shiny and pretty. Just when I think that I have my emotions under control I will lose it. Just when I get used to having a long distance relationship with Maddie I find myself missing her or the Might Have Beens. Just when I start talking about my kids I find that there are details that I have to leave out about her and only tell about the other three that I have raised simply because I don’t know all the particulars.

I guess I’m saying that it’s not like that. There’s a twinge here and there of doing it wrong, of explaining to someone else why I have changed the number of daughters I claim, and of still missing out on her life. She’s ready to graduate college and go off with her fabulous life with ridiculously perfect skin and her amazing boyfriend (or so I hear, but Facebook is just NOT to be trusted with all those incidentals).

There are new situations and everything is, as to be expected, changing.  With those changes come new feelings. How the hell will I even begin to start navigating these new waters?

Remarkably. That’s how. This journey with my children is nothing if not remarkable no matter how badly I think I’m screwing it up.