Tag: tweens

Posted in Insight, Teens

Existential Mothering

Posted on by Kelly (and the Buck)

If a mother gets her hair cut & colored, and no one notices, does she exist?

Kelly Salasin

Yesterday I arrived home with my annual birthday cut & color and no one said a word.  Over dinner, I complained that I didn’t exist.

“I noticed,” said my youngest son, “I just thought…” and he made a disgusting face.  His idea of a mother is a stationary object that remains the same.

“I like it.  I noticed it right away,” said my husband. “I just didn’t think it was a good time to say anything.“

I had berated him when he arrived home from work– an hour late– without our youngest who he had forgotten to pick up from school.

“I can’t tell the difference,” my oldest said, and then quickly modified his response when I dramatically explained that my hair had been shoulder length that morning and was now close to my chin!

“Well, you just look really good tonight,” he said, “but until you told me, I didn’t know what it was.”

He then added that if I wanted him to “notice” my hair, that I should go to a chop shop, like Super Cuts, where there would be no mistake that my “look” had been altered.

I left the dinner table to  marvel at my new haircut in the bathroom mirror– by myself.

Posted in School, Takes a Village

The Poetic Soul of the Tween

Posted on by Kelly (and the Buck)

dedicated to Ann Gengarelly, Poetry Teacher Extraordinaire

Having two children, five years apart, enables me to witness the wheel of time in motion.  From my 7 year old’s absolute exuberance for life with, “Hey Mom, there’s MY POETRY teacher!” to my 12 year old’s developmentally aligned after-school moans when poetry day comes around again, “I haaaate poetry!”

But this Saturday I find my pre-teen running to the office for scrap paper to write down a haiku that has popped into his mind-

bottom of the ninth
a high fly ball to left field
the players walk off

Feeling uncertain about whether he’s gotten the syllables right, he digs up the book he received for Christmas entitled, “Baseball Haiku,” only to discover that the authors have used all different forms. Frustrated by this freedoom of expression, he turns to “The Mother Dictionary” (so proclaimed by his sixth grade teacher) and settles for its authoritative definition before scribbling another:

a high fly to left
left fielder shields his eyes
the ball disappears

This sudden poetic urge has interrupted his preparations for a friend’s birthday party so my husband suggests “poetry” as a gift.  Skepticism moves in like clouds across my son’s face and then is transformed into lighted purpose as he dashes off for more paper.

Harry Potter haiku is born along with other reflections of shared moments between friends like, “Walking into walls.”  He laughs at this syllabic inside joke, pleased that we don’t understand its meaning.

This is all hush, hush, of course.  If he knew that I was celebrating his poetic spirit, he would immediately extinguish it.  And yet, I would be remiss if I didn’t (covertly) let his poetry teacher know that her work lives on– even in dubious, scoffing pre-adolescent minds.


Kelly Salasin, 2008

To read more about the extraordinary work of Poetry Teacher, Ann Gengarelly, click here.