Just Do It

In all the places our family lived before moving to Vermont, we felt that we were part of wonderful, caring communities. There are kind people everywhere, people who take care of each other. But I’ve been especially overwhelmed by the kindness we’ve experienced since coming to Vermont. This past year in particular, throughout my pregnancy and the birth of our fourth child, I never felt alone. Even before Abigail was born, we were the recipients of countless meals, childcare, and transportation for our children. Our list of “People to Take the Kids if Baby Arrives Before Grandparents” ran into the double digits.

I look around our town and I see little acts of goodness everywhere: people volunteering to serve meals to the hungry, moms watching other moms’ children so that they can go to doctor’s appointments, friends generously sharing the bounty of their fields and kitchens. It warms my heart.

It also used to make me feel totally inadequate.

Click here to continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.

Don’t Give Thanks on Thanksgiving!

In a way, it’s unfortunate that Thanksgiving is an official holiday.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the turkey feast with all the trimmings, love the excuse to gather family and friends, love telling my daughters about that first Thanksgiving at Plymouth in 1621 when the English settlers thanked the Native Americans for helping them produce a successful harvest.

But sometimes I think that the act of proclaiming an Official Holiday has the unintended consequence of trivializing the very thing we’re supposed to be celebrating. When we set aside one day in honor of something, most people — because we’re lazy and selfish and busy — tend to feel like we’re off the hook for the other 364 days of the year.

Of course there’s value in holidays, in celebrations. But have you ever thought, for instance, that Valentine’s Day is a little strange? Aren’t we supposed to show love to those we love every day? Why set aside February 14 for that specific purpose? I feel the same way about Mother’s Day. I even wonder whether the birth of Jesus would feel closer to us all year long if we didn’t confine it to December 25.

I suspect the same thing about Thanksgiving.

Click here to continue reading over at On the Willows.

What’s In A Name?

Are you talkin' to ME? — *Are you talkin’ to ME?*

The second you become a parent, whether or not you’re ready, you are forced to become a turbo-charged problem solver. My days are like a never-ending loop of MacGyver episodes (MomGyver?), in which I figure out how to change a diaper in a changing-table-less public restroom; how to simultaneously bathe, feed, and clothe four unattentive children; how to rig up a harness to attach My Little Pony figures to a Fisher Price carriage; how to answer questions like whether ghosts are real.

No problem. But here’s one that, after nearly six years of parenting, I still haven’t figured out: The problem of how my children should address non-family adults.

My husband and I grew up on opposite sides of the country, in families with different cultural backgrounds. Yet we agree that, as children, there was never a question as to how one addressed a grown-up. They were all “Mr./Mrs. [LAST NAME],” with the exception of extremely close family friends, who might ask you to call them “Uncle/Auntie [FIRST NAME]” (and even then, I usually felt uncomfortable doing so).

I’m not saying that was the best system, but it was simple. It was clear. There was no awkward bumbling around with names when introductions were made.

Now, it’s all an awkward, bumbling mash-up. The etiquette for how children should address adults seems to vary by geographical location, age group, and even between different social circles.

In Northern California, where we started having children, things were a bit simpler. At that point, most of our friends with children were roughly our age and attended our church. For some reason, the people who’d had children first tended to be Southern transplants, so they set the culture for naming adults: Children addressed grown-ups as “Mr./Miss [FIRST NAME],” as in “Miss Daisy.” Since that’s what most of our friends did, that’s what we did. At times I felt like a character in The Help, but at least it was simple. It was clear. And it seemed to strike a nice balance: informal without being too casual.

Then we moved to Vermont, and everything got confusing. Here, our friends are all over the place: We have friends from the college, friends from town, friends from church, friends who are our age up through friends who are in their 80s. So, when the Gong Girls blazed into town with their “Mr./Miss [FIRST NAME],” it wasn’t always quite right. Clearly that’s too informal for most New Englanders over age 70. But it also seems a little too formal for some of the friends in our own age group, most of whom introduce adults to their children by their first names. (I don’t necessarily have anything against children calling close family friends by their first names — I personally feel ancient and confused when somebody calls me “Mrs. Gong” — but Erick tends to bristle when a two-year-old saunters up to him and says, “Hey Erick!” “I have 20-year-old students who address me more formally than most toddlers,” he’ll grumble). Then there’s a whole group of people in the 40-60 age range, which I consider a panic-inducing grey area.

Add to this another problem: Despite living in a small town, we know a lot of people who share the same names. For instance, there are about ten Deborahs in our life. So we call some by their last names, and some by their first names with qualifying details — “Miss Deb with the horses,” for instance.

I know you’re probably thinking: Relax, Faith! This doesn’t have to be a problem. Why don’t you just ASK people what they’d LIKE your children to call them? Ah, but I do. I have no qualms about asking someone, minutes after we’ve met, “What would you like my children to call you?” The problem is, most people are just so NICE! They’ll smile and say, “Oh, whatever! It doesn’t matter to me. Anything’s fine.” And then I’m left fishing around for an appropriate form of address, carefully watching my new acquaintance’s face to see if they’re offended: “Fiona, this is Sue. Miss Sue. Mrs. Bridge.”

That’s why I end up having exchanges like the following with my children:

ME: So, Fiona, did Mrs. Jones teach Sunday School today?

FIONA: Who?!?

ME: You know, Mrs. Jones. Miss Deborah.

FIONA: Who?!?

ME: Janie’s mom.

FIONA: Oh. Yeah.

Anyone else having this problem? If so, I say we band together and start a movement to standardize how children should address their elders. I don’t care if it’s first name, last name, or social security number, just as long as it’ll save me this awkward stumbling around for an appropriate title. At the risk of being overly political, maybe we need something like ObamaName (but with a better computer program). Who’s with me?

Channelling the Oyster

October in Vermont this year was stunning: warm, with temperatures hovering around the 70s, and fairly dry. This year we also seem to have hit a sweet spot for taking nature outings with our girls: Our two oldest can hike on their own with a minimum of complaining; our baby can be toted around easily in the carrier. Georgia alternates between running headlong into the nearest puddle (or off of the steepest cliff), and needing to be carried — but one out of four ain’t bad.

So on a warm, sunny October weekend, when the foliage was at its peak, we headed west along Route 125 and crossed the Lake Champlain Bridge for a picnic at New York’s Crown Point Historic Site. Crown Point boasts the ruins of 18th century French and British forts, stunning views across Lake Champlain, and a small strip of beach littered with mussel shells.

Our girls went right for the beach, where they started a frenzied mussel shell collection effort. The goal was to find mussel shells that (1) were “angel wings” (two shells still attached on one side), and (2) contained pearls.

We found plenty of angel wings, but no pearls (freshwater mussels sometimes DO make pearls, but it’s a rare occurrence). The pearl hunt was inspired by a Magic Tree House book we’d recently read (#9, Dolphins at Daybreak, to be exact). These days, the Gong girls are all about the Magic Tree House series, in which Jack and his sister Annie travel through time and space in — you guessed it — a magic tree house. Each book includes facts about nature or history, and in this particular book we’d all learned how oysters make pearls.

I write “we’d all” learned, because although I’m sure at one point in my life I’d been told how pearls are made, I’d forgotten until I found myself reading about it to my girls.

So in case you, like me, haven’t contemplated the pearl-making process in a while, here it is:

Pearls are made when some foreign substance, like a grain of sand, gets in between an oyster’s two shells. In order to avoid irritation, the oyster coats the intruder with layers of a mineral called nacre; as those layers build up, a pearl is formed.

Is that the most awesome thing you’ve ever heard, or what?!? I don’t know why we aren’t using pearl-making as a metaphor for everything. I’ve heard over and over again how “A diamond is a lump of coal that made good under pressure.” But a pearl, a pearl is an irritant that became something beautiful.

I deal with irritants a lot lately, because I now have four girls who are very close in age. As an only child, this sibling thing is uncharted territory for me, so those of you with siblings may understand best when I say that these girls irritate each other all day long. And the darndest thing is, they really love each other; our house is filled with hugs and kisses and “You’re my best friend!” and generally good playing-together skills. Except that every five minutes, they hate each other: something gets grabbed, someone is hit, words like “stupid” start flying around. “I’m my OWN PERSON, Fiona!” Campbell shouts, whenever her big sister gets too bossy. “Campbell, I live in this house, too!” Georgia barks when Campbell pushes her around. “Nobody is LISTENING to ME!” Fiona wails when her sisters don’t toe the line.

The worst is when I don’t hear anything at all; that’s when I find two sisters locked in a silent death-grapple — a wrist grabbed here, a fistful of hair there — each determined to annihilate the other in order to get that My LIttle Pony (or doll, or piece of paper).

Just because you’re family doesn’t mean that you don’t irritate the heck out of each other. I’d reckon that unless your family was in some serious denial, then you know that it’s usually those in our family, the people who are closest to us, who are capable of irritating us the most. Like a grain of sand in an oyster, we can’t really get away from them. They’re between our shells, literally under our skin.

But an oyster handles that irritant not by scratching at it until it gets infected, not by trying to spit it out, not by ignoring it, but by covering it again and again with a beautiful, durable, shiny substance. The irritant doesn’t go away, but it’s transformed into something that’s not irritating anymore — something smooth and lovely.

This may be stretching it a little, but I think we can all channel oysters in how we handle the people who drive us nuts (they don’t even have to be family members). Only, instead of nacre, we can cover irritating people or their irritating behavior with love.

For instance, after 11 years of marriage Erick occasionally does things that irritate me. If I approach him about these things from a position of love — as opposed to frustration, anger, or even just passive-aggressive sighing — he’s much more open to hearing me. Even then, I’ll never be able to change every single thing about Erick that irritates me, but that’s where more love comes in: Without those things that drive me crazy, Erick wouldn’t be Erick. And I figure that, if suddenly Erick wasn’t around anymore, the things that irritated me the most (the water glasses left out, the cabinets left open, the socks on the floor) would be the very things I’d miss the most.

Similarly, whenever one of our daughters is driving me bonkers with whiny, fussy, defiant behavior, I’m learning that she’s the one who needs the love poured on. She may be acting about as lovable as an angry wasp, but if I grab her in a hug and act like I love her (whether or not I actually feel that way), it usually snaps the irritation out of both of us more quickly than if I yell or lecture or ignore.

The next time I feel that itch of irritation under my skin, I’ll try to act like an oyster; instead of scratching, I’ll coat it with some love. If I can get my daughters to do the same for their sisters, then we’ll be in business!

Open Doors

The forecast calls for rain today in our part of Vermont, which is causing some consternation among our daughters. Whether or not we get to trick-or-treat outdoors, we’ll be in costume and eating candy. The theme this year is apparently “wings;” the Gong girls will be dressed as a ladybug, a pegasus, a bumblebee, and a chicken. Here’s a little reflection I published last Halloween in The Addison Independent. Happy Halloween!

It’s Halloween again, the holiday our daughters have been anticipating for the past nine months.

Halloween is generally acknowledged to be a “fun” holiday — nothing too deep involved, a brief diversion — particularly if you have children under the age of 10. But it’s come under attack in recent decades, what with its pagan origins and rampant sugar-consumption. At the very best, it’s meaningless entertainment for children; at the worst, it’s something evil to which an alternative distraction must be found.

Last Halloween, we took our three daughters trick-or-treating, with the rest of Addison County, along Middlebury’s South Street and into Chipman Park. This was the first time our two-year-old had been trick-or-treating outside of a stroller, and in her mind it was a race to the finish. It was like somebody wound her up and let her go: The minute her feet hit the sidewalk, she barreled ahead of the rest of us, sparkly shoes and Cinderella dress blurring in the twilight. It took her a while to grasp that we had to stop at each house for the ultimate goal: candy. When we got to the first house and managed to head her off toward the door, she burst right through the open door, past the baffled teenager holding the candy bowl, into the living room, where she finally skidded to a stop and looked around with confusion. Where was that candy?

My daughter’s faux pas, her lack of understanding that Halloween etiquette requires stopping at each open door, got me thinking about a deeper meaning to Halloween, apart from the costumes and the candy and the pagan undertones. The really remarkable thing about Halloween, it seems to me, is that it’s a night when we open our doors.

It’s so rare that we open our doors to each other, even to those we know and love. Usually, when passing our neighbors’ houses, we see closed doors, few signs of life. But on Halloween, when the colder weather is beginning to drive us further behind closed doors, we open our doors not just to those we know and love, but to total strangers. Not only that, but we give them treats and receive very little in exchange. Sure, the occasional cute kid or clever costume make us smile, but having been on the candy-giving end, I know that often the best one can expect is a mumbled “Thanks.” Still, we keep the treats coming. It’s so seldom that we practice this kind of grace in life.

And for those who are on the receiving end, it’s not just about the candy. Each open door on Halloween offers a chance for connection, with neighbors we know and neighbors we don’t. Through every doorway, we see snippets of lives a lot like ours, with pictures on the walls and the smells of food in the oven and over-stimulated children running wild. Sometimes there’s a party going on inside. Sometimes it’s quiet save for the television. Two years ago, trick-or-treating in Northern California during Game 4 of the last World Series in which the San Francisco Giants were playing, each house we visited provided us with score updates. In a world of closed doors and computer screens, the open doors of Halloween allow us to reconnect with our community, our humanity.

Of course, the doors will open wider and the grace will be given even more freely during the holidays that follow Halloween. But from now on, I’m going to consider the open doors of Halloween as the official start of the holiday season.

– See more at: http://www.addisonindependent.com/201210faith-vermont-halloweens-open-doors#sthash.enFEdU2b.dpuf

The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Smartphones.

You know those people who seem to always have a finger on the pulse of the times? I am not one of those people.

I’m always a little behind when it comes to what’s going on in the world, be it geopolitical events, entertainment news, or new technology. This is probably due to a combination of living in rural Vermont, not having a television, and parenting four small children.

So it might not be factually accurate to say that this is The Year of Social Media Backlash; I’ll stick with saying that this is the year I noticed a lot of social media backlash.

A sampling of some things that made me take notice: Last May, the commencement speaker at the college where my husband teaches was the brilliant author Jonathan Safran Foer. He devoted his commencement address — later excerpted on the New York Times Op-Ed page — to a critique of modern communication technologies. Then there was comedian Louis C.K.’s viral rant against smartphones on Conan O’Brien’s television show. Even the popular Momastery blog got in on the action, with a post lambasting the comparisons engendered by social media.

For my own opinion, click here to continue reading over at On the Willows.

Things We Don’t Like to Talk About

The October 14 print issue of this newspaper featured the headline, “Transitional apartments offered in Vergennes,” about a shelter that’s helping the homeless to become independent. Directly beneath it was a story about the Charter House Coalition’s Community Supper. The sidebar directed readers to articles about local weddings, and a rubber ducky race fundraiser for Mt. Abraham High School’s fall musical.

At the very bottom of the front page, below the fold, under an enormous photo of a tractor crossing a field amidst glorious fall foliage, was the headline that many of us were really thinking about that week: “Mt. Abe rocked by student suicide.”

Click here to continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent.

My Way

Last month, I went to the dentist for my semi-annual cleaning and check-up. I always feel a little smug about going to the dentist, because I have great teeth. I’m not bragging, that’s just the truth. Much to my disappointment back in middle school when everybody else was getting braces, I never needed any orthodontia. I also take good care of my teeth. Not as good as Erick, who is a total tooth nerd (he brings his toothbrush to work with him, and the first thing he does when he gets home at night is rush upstairs and use his water pick), but I brush at least twice a day, floss every night, and visit the dentist twice a year. In my entire life, I’ve only had two cavities, both of which were of the minor, “we’ll just fill it before it becomes a problem” variety. So visiting the dentist is usually an ego boost for me, because everybody makes a big deal about what great teeth I have.

This time, I had six cavities.

You read that right: SIX CAVITIES.

I don’t even know how it’s possible to get six cavities in the six months since I last saw the dentist. I didn’t slack off during those six months: I used a Sonicare electric toothbrush daily and continued to floss every night before bed. Yet somehow I ended up with SIX cavities. I’m now a cautionary tale for dental health in our house. “Brush your teeth,” Erick tells the girls, “You don’t want to end up like your mother with SIX CAVITIES!”

Six is so many cavities, I couldn’t even have them filled all at once. Instead, I had to make two separate appointments, each of which was longer than an entire episode of “Today with Kathie Lee and Hoda.” But as much as I’d usually consider laying in a dentist’s chair watching “Kathie Lee and Hoda” a mini-vacation, I couldn’t hear Kathie Lee OR Hoda because I had a drill vibrating in my head. That, and my dentist tends to hum the entire time he’s working. When I finally made out what he was humming, it turned out to be “My Way.” Which seems like it must have some significance.

When this ordeal was over, I asked my dentist (out of the side of my mouth that still had sensation) how I could have possibly ended up with six cavities. He dismissed all of my theories (pregnancy, non-fluoridated water, UFOs), and said it probably boiled down to this: I’ve been pregnant so much that they haven’t been able to take dental X-rays for over a year, which is how they ultimately found the cavities. Also: AGE.

Yes, age. Despite all of my efforts, my dental health is crumbling because I am getting old.

That’s not a bid for flattery, it’s a statement of fact: I am actually getting old. Last month, I turned 38.

[exhale]

I am 38. That’s very hard for me to admit. I never expected to be embarrassed about my age, but somewhere after 30 I started hiding how old I was. I don’t include my birth year on anything unless required, never volunteer which birthday I’m celebrating. I’m sharing the truth now because I believe in honesty, and because I need to get over this. I try to be confident in who I am as an example for my daughters, and that includes throwing off my vanity about age.

Now, 38 may not exactly qualify as OLD; not unless you’re ready to start calling Angelina Jolie old (Yup, me and Ang, hanging out at the shuffleboard court). But it is objectively middle aged. It’s very, very close to 40, which is a big number.

I’ve hidden my age because I don’t feel 38. I’m not quite sure what it means to “feel 38,” but I suppose I expected to be a little further along by now; to be “together,” to have a better grasp on who I am and where I’m going. And I’m afraid that if I share my age with others, they’ll be disappointed when they find out how confused and insecure I still am.

I remember sitting in my childhood bedroom as a 17-year-old, listening to Stevie Nicks sing “Landslide” on the radio, and feeling time start to speed up. Before too long, I thought, I’ll be where the person in this song is, and I’ll really KNOW what she’s singing about. That was half a lifetime ago; I just heard “Landslide” again, and I feel exactly NO different from that 17-year-old.

Time makes you bolder, children get older, I’m getting older, too.

I think this new year of my life is about accepting my real age, and accepting my real age involves embracing this truth: You can be good and take all the precautions in the world, but everything’s going to break down anyway.

That applies to my teeth, obviously. Also to my body as a whole; barring a major act of God, Abigail will be our last child. That’s not only because four children is a lot (although it is!), but also because this pregnancy was rough on me; my body has let me know that I’m done. And this year, suddenly friends my age are getting sick, really sick. They’re too young, and I’m praying that they all make it through. But it’s a fact that illness and infirmity are going to strike more of our friends — and us, too — in the years ahead.

This might seem depressing. I won’t deny that there are things that make me sad about being 38: knowing that I won’t have another baby, knowing that I’ll start losing family and friends, knowing that I’ll probably log more hours in the dentist’s chair. Then again, there are things that stink about any age; I wouldn’t want to return to the self-centered anxiety of my 20s, for instance.

So I’m choosing to embrace middle age as a new normal: to accept the limitations of aging, and to continue to grab the joys that are always present at every stage of life. That’s what I’ll be trying to do this year, and in the years to come.

I may even be humming “My Way” as I go.

Remembering to Breathe

I wish you could sit with me on the couch in our sunroom, looking out at the woods. That way I wouldn’t have to use words to describe what I see: the tapestry of leaves, most still the dark green of late summer, but with patches of early fall color bursting out — new colors appearing each morning. The golden afternoon sunlight that filters down between the trees, making the ground look like the ocean floor every time the wind blows. The shadows moving over the rocks.

I live with this view every day, but of course it’s only occasionally that I see it. Today was one of those moments, with two girls napping upstairs and two girls running errands in town with their father. I sat on the couch for twenty minutes of uninterrupted quiet. It was so quiet, and so still; the only action was what was happening between the leaves and the wind. Do you know how rare that is, in this house?

I sat there thinking about how, almost exactly one year ago, I learned that I was pregnant with our fourth child. And how I spent that year wishing to be where I was right now: When I’m through the first trimester….When the baby is born….When Erick gets back from Africa….When the oldest girls start school again…. It was a crazy, crazy year, a year I felt had to be endured, gotten through, in order to reach a place of — what? Peace, I suppose. A place where I could sit on the couch in quiet, and breathe deeply, and think to myself, Well, we got through that, and it’s all okay now. No more babies, no more puppies, half of the kids in school. From here on out, it’s just smooth sailing.

I probably don’t have to tell you that “smooth sailing” is not what I was feeling on the couch.

I’m gradually coming to accept what I already know to be true: that there IS no final peace in this life, no point at which you’ve gotten through everything there is to be gotten through, no smooth seas from here to the horizon. I don’t exactly understand why that is. Why are we allowed so few moments of unadulterated joy? It seems like even the happiest moments are marred by troubles, like a gorgeous cake with a fly stuck in the buttercream frosting. Maybe there’s a law of spiritual gravity: there always has to be some bitter mixed with the sweet, or we’d just float away with the joy of it all.

So, for all the challenges of the past year, and for all the joys that have been given to our family, I’m still firmly tethered to the ground. Down here there are postpartum hormones to contend with, and daily screaming sister fights under our roof, and friends and family in pain, and permission forms to sign, and contractors to call.

I sat there on the couch mourning the peace and joy that I’d assumed the universe owed me.

Then I remembered to breathe.

About a decade ago, I started taking yoga. And what really made an impact on me after my very first yoga class was the feeling that I’d never actually breathed before. I mean, of course I’d breathed, because I’d been alive. But yoga made me pay attention to the action of breathing: taking in as much air as I could and then releasing it fully, and continuing this mindful breathing while moving through various poses. The contrast between yogic breathing and my everyday, utilitarian breathing was dramatic. I realized that I’d lived most of my life holding my breath, stomach clenched with stress, taking in only the minimum amount of air needed to sustain life.

It’s impossible to feel stressed or rushed if you breathe the way they teach you in yoga class. If I could REALLY BREATHE like this for the rest of my life, everything would be okay, I thought.

Of course, I don’t breathe like that for most of my life, but every once in a while I remember. Sitting on the couch was one of those times.

So I sat, and I breathed, and I looked at the leaves and the sunlight, and for that one moment, in the middle of life’s drudgery and heartbreak, I felt grateful just to be alive: to be breathing, to be witnessing the dappled beauty of those woods. It wasn’t the ultimate peace I’d expected a year ago: In another few minutes the girls would wake from their naps and start bashing each other over the heads with My Little Ponies, the dog would bark hysterically at a passing car, and I still had to have six cavities filled the next week (SIX cavities! More on that later….).

I suppose we never get to stop enduring; life rarely awards us the long stretches of unadulterated joy that we think we deserve. But there are these moments when we remember to breathe — like spaces in the forest where the sun breaks through.

The War on Fruit Chews

We’re almost a month into Fiona and Campbell’s school year, and the update is: it’s been the BEST back-to-school experience in our family’s history. This year, there was no Second Day trauma; everything went as smoothly as we’d hoped and prayed for (Please don’t hate me; I know I’m lucky and it’s probably just this year. But of all years, with a new baby at home, I’m grateful that the universe decided to kick an easy transition our way!)

I was never particularly concerned about Campbell. To start with, Campbell barely notices where she is as long as there are toy animals to play with. Also, she was returning to the same preschool she attended last year, for the same three days a week.

But Fiona started Kindergarten at our town’s public elementary school. That seemed like a BIG DEAL: new school, new teachers, new kids, new routine, and riding the school bus home. She loves all of it.

And we — Erick and I — love it, too. Whenever someone asks us how Kindergarten is going, we respond in unison, “We LOVE Kindergarten!!” I realize that they’re probably asking how Fiona likes Kindergarten, but whatever. As far as I’m concerned, Kindergarten is the best invention on the planet, and I don’t know why nobody told us earlier.

Get this: Kindergarten takes my child all day long, five days a week! And they return her to me filled with newly acquired knowledge! Just the other day, Fiona asked me to play school with her; she was the teacher, I was the student. And out of nowhere, she writes on the board: 17-0=17. My jaw dropped. Yes, ma’am, that’s MY daughter doing double-digit subtraction! Where’d she learn it? Not from me — from Kindergarten!!

The thing about Kindergarten is that I feel much more distant from the classroom than I did when Fiona was in preschool. I had to drop her off and pick her up from preschool, so I was in her classroom twice a day. I’d exchange greetings with her teacher and hear immediately if anything notable had happened.

Now that Fiona’s in Kindergarten, Erick drops her off on his way to work in the morning (it’s on his way, in the opposite direction from the preschool where I drop Campbell), and she takes the bus home in the afternoon. Fiona does a decent job of reporting on her day, and her teacher sends home a weekly newsletter, but that’s all I have to go on.

In the middle of second week of school, Fiona came home and announced, “I can’t have fruit chews in my lunch anymore.”

I’ve written before about fruit chews: small packets officially labeled “Fruit Flavored Snacks,” known to most non-Gong children as “gummies.” I’m not quite sure how fruit chews became a staple of my children’s diet, since I never ate them as a child and wouldn’t have purchased them on my own. I’m guessing they were introduced to our girls by friends, or even (gasp!) grandparents. I feel vaguely shameful about giving my children daily fruit chew snacks, since I’m aware that they’re probably bad for the teeth and have little nutritional value. But I’ve continued to buy them because my daughters have to eat something, and I figure that if you can’t eat a little junk when you’re a kid, when can you???

I was baffled by this anti-fruit chew edict that Fiona had proclaimed, but far be it from me to show disrespect to her teachers. Instead, I remained calm and mature, and asked, “Okay…why can’t you have fruit chews in your lunch?”

“Because,” she said, “the teachers want us to have nutritious food in our lunches, and fruit chews are just a little bit of fruit juice and mostly colored sugar.”

BAM!

Okay, so it’s quite possible that I’m not getting the full story from my five-year-old. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that she’d misunderstood something and given me information that was slightly off. I’m choosing to believe that’s the case here, because…

WHY, out of all the nutritionally-challenged lunchbox options, would the teachers choose to pick on fruit chews??? Certainly they’ve seen worse, right?

In a good faith effort to determine how bad fruit chews really are, I took a closer look at the box. Right there on the front, it said: “Made with Real Fruit Juice*”

That’s right: an asterisk. Uh-oh.

But that asterisk just leads to a statement that these snacks are made from fruit juice concentrate, and aren’t supposed to replace actual fruit in the diet. Well, duh!

So here’s the skinny: Fruit chews are mostly artificial colors and sugars, including corn starch. But they’re also only 80 calories, and they provide 20% of the recommended daily value of Vitamin C.

That’s not great, but it’s not terrible. In a lineup of snack foods, fruit chews strike me as fairly innocuous. Which begs the question: If you ban fruit chews, where do you draw the line? What about fruit chews’ flat cousin, the Fruit Roll-Up? Potato chips and Fritos? Cheez-Its and Goldfish? What about those “Pizza Fridays” in the school cafeteria? What about a cookie for dessert? (Fiona tells me that baked desserts are okay, but not chocolate bars — another fine line, it seems).

But let’s assume the teachers are okay with their morally ambiguous food restrictions: WHY wouldn’t they draft a letter to the parents informing us of what’s on the banned list? I never received any written instructions as to what I could or couldn’t pack in Fiona’s lunch. Which leaves me, now, in the anxiety-prone position of having to second-guess whether the lunches I pack meet some unknown nutritional standard.

Do I seem overly defensive here?!?!

I suppose I am. In truth, I’m embarrassed that Fiona’s teachers have seen my shame and refused to look away.

That, in a nutshell, is probably the biggest challenge for parents entering this new world of school: We’re sending out our most precious things — these little beings in whom we’ve invested so much of ourselves — into a larger world where they’ll be judged according to standards that are not always clear or fair. And we have no control over it.

If we don’t watch ourselves, we may end up getting defensive over silly things like fruit chews.