The difference of a year

There This time last year, I was just coming out of surgery. The morning I went in, I weighed in at 250. This was 30 lbs down from my highest. 

(Before pics are here http://adventureswithgretchen.blogspot.com/2013/11/before-pics.html?m=1 )

Today, I weighed in at 172. 108 down overall and 78 since I had gastric sleeve surgery 

There really aren't good mirrors for selfies in mama's house

Non-scale victories include:

Finishing a 5k

Taking a mountain hike wearing a medium-sized boy

And a fabulous day of roller coasters where I fit in all the seats 

Best of all, I feel like myself. I have my 'infinite, boundless Gretchen energy' back and can do all the things I want to 

And I get to do it while looking fabulous. 

And Now

Dixie seems to be Dixie. She came out of her stay with a few new insights, a desire to be home, a mild appreciation for her mother and a medication that turned her into a zombie.

Although her psychiatrist was on medical leave from surgery, she came into the office to see her. Spent an hour and a half talking to us about medications and options. 

Over the next few days, we weaned her off Abilify. Baby girl was so drugged on it that she'd nod off mid-conversation. Mid-word at times. I asked her to make Charlie a peanut butter sandwich while I was up on a ladder painting and it took her five tries to make a sandwich. Now, she's always been one to distract easily, but this was not because of a shiny object. She simply forgot what to do next and what she was doing in the first place. 

She had no sparkle. There was no Dixie in there. 

By the time she got off of that and upped an existing medication instead, she was just peachy. 

I had already planned a family trip to Corpus Christi, a solo trip to Chicago and church camp for the girls. It's summer. That's how we roll. After a lot of discussion, we decided to keep our plans. Corpus was amazing and fun. I'm in Chicago now. Dixie is at camp. 

And all seems to be well. 

Today

Well, we have running water. That's an improvement. And Dowlan had already taken the day off work, so I wasn't quite as on my own as I could have been.

There are no weekday visiting hours, but she is allowed to call us later tonight. I have talked to the nurse, who got authorization for a medication adjustment. I asked how she was doing and was told she is okay, but lonely. She's the only child there right now and the children are kept apart from the adolescent and adult wards.

I kind of think that's a good thing. She had a week-long in-patient stay there when she was in the first grade and it was a little too fun. She liked the other kids. They played games, watched movies and did crafts during down times. She charmed all the adults during therapy sessions and everyone acted like no one could figure out why this adorable seven-year-old could possibly be there. The psychiatrist told me, upon check-out, that "This was like when your check engine light goes on, so you take your car to the mechanic and they keep it a few days and can't find anything wrong with it."

And, heroically, I did not punch him.

The mom who wrote this article explains quite well the personality of a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder, which is Dixie's primary diagnosis. Dixie's deep need to control everything extends to a need to control how people see her. A great deal of mental energy goes into keeping it all together while at school or whatever public places she spends time at. This expenditure of energy comes at great cost--when she gets home, it all unravels. Three years ago, it wasn't that nothing was wrong. RAD kids are charming, elusive, cunning, controlling and manipulative. She was just on the cusp of not being able to hold it together any longer when they sent her home.

When we checked her in yesterday, I expressed my concerns that last time was so ineffective. They've got a better psychiatrist on staff now and do things quite differently than before. It no longer seems like Camp Mental Health and I'm glad for that. If she can busy herself with making new friends and crafting pillows, she doesn't ever have to actually deal with herself. Group therapy in a group of one will have its drawbacks, but it will do her good to not be able to focus on the problems of others' while ignoring her own.

Amusingly enough, Dowlan and I are employing her her tactics as much as possible while she's there. Our house was originally a 2 bed/1 bath that, somewhere along the way, had a garage attached to it. Somewhere else along the way, they enclosed that garage to make one really big 11'x22' room. Thinking that was a bit silly for the bedroom, Dowlan and I made clever use of the space. We put a dresser and bookshelf back-to-back to divide the room into two sections. The side with the external door and closet became our bedroom and the other side became the childrens' playroom.

For four summers now, we've talked about 'someday building a real wall' with the idea of eventually turning that into Dixie's room. The girls have shared a room for 7.5 years now and we knew that wouldn't last forever. We've decided to go ahead and build that wall.

For one, Melody needs a break. Her space and life are too often disrupted. For two, we need Dixie closer to us at night. Too many of the destructive things she does happen in the middle of the night and we don't hear them from the other end of the house.

For three, I just need something to do. I can't handle the quiet she leaves behind.

Yesterday

was a horrible day.

We woke up the morning after two tornadoes hit our area. At 6:30 a.m, it was light enough to start using the chainsaw to get the tree off the roof and the large branch off the trampoline. Everyone pitched in and moved branches to the brush pile. No serious damage.

So we come in to take showers and there is no water. We don't know why. I call the guys who put the new well in last August. Asked if they could come out on Friday. They seemed more concerned than I did that waiting a day would mean our house would go without water for a day. I told them, "We went three weeks without water last fall and we are going camping this weekend, which is like voluntarily becoming hobos, so a day without water isn't too big of a deal. Besides, Friday is payday and I'm fairly certain you'd like to get paid."  He chuckled and said they'd put us on the schedule.

I drove Charlie to art camp and the damage all over town was shocking. Melody and I were coming home from church during the storm. While stopped at a light, the wind was whipping my van sideways. A few blocks ahead we saw what looked to me like lightning hitting a transformer. The series of white and blue explosions were surreal. If we weren't just a few blocks from home, we would have pulled over and found shelter.

At the beginning the storm, Dowlan went to go pick up a friend who normally walks home from work. His car was hit by a snowcone stand that had become airborne. So I spent part of my day yesterday driving up to his office to get his car and take it to be looked at. On the way, I got pulled over for an expired tag and got a ticket. I ended up sitting in a restaurant for over an hour waiting for the person who was going to 'be there soon' to come look at the car.

I got home and took a nap. It was one of those painful, restless naps where you're never quite unconscious.

Then it was time to pick Charlie up from art camp. Then it was time to take Dixie to see her therapist.

Dixie has been seeing the same therapist for pretty much the duration of the time we've lived here. So not-quite three years. She is pretty widely agreed upon as the best person in town to work with kids who have experienced trauma. In the last couple of sessions, the therapist has told me that she's hitting the limits of her expertise and we need to start looking into new options. These are all at least two hundred miles away.

Dixie's good times have been getting better and better while her bad times get worse and worse. A couple of recent extreme behaviors brought us to the conclusion that, if anything else happened on a similar scale, it was time for more in-patient therapy.

We didn't even make it home.

Guys, I don't know what's ahead for her. She's in in-patient care now. Depending on whether or not they can help her, we may be looking at longer-term residential programs in San Antonio or Austin.

Dowlan's got the day off, since we'd planned to leave for the mountains bright and early this morning. Now, camping and running water are the least of our worries. Hopefully, we will lose our hobo status later this morning. The car can be fixed. The tags and tickets dealt with. Everything else that I worry about in life seems so small now because my little girl isn't home.

The downside of 'charming'

We live in an 83-year-old stone farmhouse that we bought from the great-granddaughter of the man who built it. It has a half acre yard with a barn, fenced-in garden and well house. The floors are gorgeous old hardwoods and there are built-ins in nearly every room. 

It's absolutely charming. 

Except for this one tiny problem: the bathroom (singular)

There is one bathroom. It is 5'X7' and has no bathtub. When we first moved here, the kids were a little too little for showers, so we bought a 'bathtub from the lawn and garden section of Walmart. 

It is still in use. In fact, if we get any more rubber duckies, the whole thing will collapse. 

The other charming part is that this is the view through the glass in the front door of the house. 

See the toilet in that pic?

The only time the single bathroom has ever truly been problematic is that spring break when Dowlan was living and working in another city and Charlie flushed Melody's glasses down the toilet. For four days, we drove or walked the three blocks to a convenience store until my dad could come help me remove the toilet and get them out. 

Black Ninja is lucky, in that all she needs is a litter box. 

Yesterday, I managed to *not* drive by a 'Free Kittens' sign. Charlie looked each kitten carefully in the eyes and declared her 'the cutest one'

He also declared her a 'he' and is relentless on the subject. (I have hysterical tales about gender identification I need to get up here, stat)

The kitteh-of-questionable-gender-identity is seven weeks old and also quite charming. She is a fan of small spaces that involve perching. 

My friend Janet says that there are two types of kittehs: tree cats and bush cats. Ninja is mos def a tree cat. In fact,

On the way home from picking her out, she hid so successfully in the van that it took 45 minutes to find her. (Since my van was extraordinarily clean at the time, this was rather surprising. A week ago, you could have lost an NFL linebacker in there.)

In the process of hunting for her, Charlie stated, "When I named the kitty, I did not know it would really *be* a ninja."

Later that day, Charlie, Ninja and I walked to pick the girls up from volleyball/tennis camp. About half a block away, Dixie spotted her and broke into a run. 

Melody, upon returning home, declared that she needed to spend time with the other two kittehs of the household. "I think it's important that, when the new thing comes, that the old thing isn't forgotten and knows that it is still loved."

Considering we've pulled the 'Oooh, look! A new sibling!' trick on her twice now, I can see how she'd be sensitive to that particular need. 

I guess I should go rescue that not from those ducks now. 

After Pics

I promised afterpics here. We actually finished it mid-April, but I'm a lazy blogger. 

And figured progress pics would be needed. Here are my 'before' pics, from 54 lbs ago.

I'm now down to the size I was briefly in college, but haven't really been since high school. I feel great and am even running in a 5K later this month. This is about six months out from my 'before' pics and about five months post-surgery. We'll see what I look like in another 5-6 months!

Grounded

Charlie, upon learning that Dixie used his Darth Vader marker to color her toenails, issued the following punishment.

"Daddy, you have to ground her from everything, except eating or drinking, for the rest of her life. Unless I tell her to," he declares.

Dixie begins gasping and gestures to her mouth. Dowlan, after half a minute, figures it out and asks if Dixie can breathe.

"Yes," he says. Relieved, she lets out her air.

"What about going to school?"  She's hopeful about this one.

"You're grounded from NOT going to school, from NOT cleaning, and from NOT doing what mommy says and from doing anything else, unless I give you permission."

I need to take a page from his book when it comes to the thoroughness of punishments.

Autism talk

This morning is our town's Autism Walk. We didn't put together Team Charlie because we were supposed to be camping with the Cub Scouts. Due to a series of unfortunate events surrounding, primarily, my inability to be organized with paperwork and registration, we are now doing laundry instead of walking OR camping.

Eh.

Instead, we had some spontaneous Autism Talk instead of an Autism Walk. Charlie brought up the subject like this:

C: I am one of the smartest people in the world.
G: I agree. You are one of the top seven billion minds on the planet.
C: That number is too big. God is the smartest person on the planet, then people with autism come next.

After Charlie left the room, the girls were talking about how they have the best little brother possible.

In the last year, he has figured out that he has autism. We never sat down and told him, but he picked up on the idea somewhere. I asked him what he thought it meant and his logic was something like this:

C: I am awesome. And I have autism. So autism must be another word for awesome.

He's also made comments like, "I have trouble controlling my anger, because I have autism. It means it is hard for me to not explode and be really mad."

Earlier in the year, his teacher had the 2nd graders write an autobiography. His went something like this:

I was born. I really don't remember much after that. When I was three, I learned to talk. I have autism. Now I am seven, and I am writing my autobiography.

Bathroom Talk

Charlie just came out of the bathroom announcing, "Download complete."

Apparently, it's toilet humor day. We have a new dual-flush toilet with two buttons. they symbols are one water drop for a lower-volume flush and two buttons for the higher-volume flush.

Melody just ran out of the bathroom, looking worried. "Mom, I just pushed the one-drop button for a two-drop load."

"Did everything go down?"

She nodded.

"Then don't worry about it."

Sigh of relief. Back to her Legos.

Charlie Theology

Charlie is on a mission to get baptized, "Before I turn to the evil side."

Because, as you well know, this is inevitable. One of the trickier parts of being a seven year old boy, really, that impending slide towards darkness.

There is one problem, though. "I am just a little guy and the baptizin' water is deep and I would drown before I got finished."

His solution? To drink 2 nutrition/protein shakes a day so he can grow quickly, before it is too late.

***

So today, in the McDonald's drive-thru, Charlie is offended by the offering of Spiderman toys for boys and instead opts for the Paul Frank designed little journal that is pink and purple and decorated with a sock monkey.

Charlie had decided earlier in the day that he needs a scrapbook for the pictures he draws of pigs and had made a rough attempt at stapling some pages together after school. The timing of receiving this treasure could not have been more perfect. After much analysis of Paul Frank's inexplicable penchant for sock monkey art, that he did indeed got paid for making it and that his name emblazoned upon it is a sign of designership and not ownership, Charlie determines that the notebook will work for his scrapbook and declares that he will write in it in pen so that it can last forever and be an ancient treasure.

"Yes, Charlie," I agree. "It will be an ancient treasure someday."

"Someday? What day?"

"Some day in the future, a thousand years from now, it will be an ancient treasure. But it has to be 'ancient' before it can be an 'ancient treasure'."

"So, what day will that be?" he demands.

"Um, March 9th, 2114."

Don't mock my math here. I'm driving and tired.

"Twenty-ONE fourteen? Shouldn't that be, errr, twenty-fourteen?"

"Yeah, but it will be a thousand years in the future. March 9, 2014 has already happened." I realize my error. "Wait, make that 3014. There was a place value error there."

Charlie starts to talk about what a cherished document his ancient treasure will be and his voice begins to break with sadness. "Even the sock monkey is sad about this."

None of us can figure out why Charlie is sad, until Dixie finally touches upon the idea that Charlie will not be able to take it to heaven with him ("There is not enough overlap," he explains) and this makes him sad.

Dixie offers, "If you die before me, I'll make sure to put it in the box with your body."

Charlie declares to me, "I'm probably going to die not long after you die, because there will be no one to remind me to go to the store for food and so I probably won't live very long after you."

After a few minutes spent vowing to make sure that all the people who know Charlie know that this sacred and future ancient document need to go to heaven with him, he realizes that his body doesn't go to heaven just his soul.

He makes us promise to tape it to his soul when he dies.

Melody starts to comment that this could take a lot of tape and perhaps also get messy, so I shoot her the look of death.

"We are taping it to his soul when he dies," I insist. "Don't give him any more ideas. Just tape."

Proposal Story

I was asked yesterday how he proposed an realized I'd never put the story here:

I came home from work with a horrible sinus headache and fell asleep on the couch. He came over after work and looked disappointed that we weren't going out. I took a second dose of meds and told him to give me an hour. I napped it off and got ready.

We shared a meal at Red Lobster. Then, we went to a tiny Austin coffee shop so far off the beaten path that you have to drive down the railroad tracks to get there. There is no street. We got drinks and sat on the floor because the 20 seats in the place were all full. There was an 8-piece musical group playing and they took up about 20% of the seating area. The eclectic music featured both a trombone and a theremin. 

Then we walked down the train tracks to the historical outdoor plaza that is beautifully restored. Fountains and vines on archways and a gazebos. I sang a couple of arias and we danced to the music in our heads. I sang a couple of John Denver songs. But it was cold--November--and I needed to go back in. 

We were on our way back and I got to the line "I'll love you more than anybody can" and he dropped on one knee. "Gretchen, I love you more than anybody in the world. Will you marry me? Will you be my wife?"

I jumped and squealed and clapped and said YES!! and he said, "Okay, wait right here!"

I stood there, awkwardly, while he ran back to the car to get the ring (which was in with the gun) and ran back, dropped to his knee and said the same word again. "Gretchen, I love you more than anybody in the world. Will you marry me? Will you be my wife?"

My answer had not changed, so he put the 1920s white gold and diamond ring on my finger and I kissed him a lot! We walked back and announced to the crowd that we were engaged. 

Left and went to HEB to buy a bottle of wine. He grabbed a small bouquet of sad carnations from the black bucket by the checkout stand. Checked out two minutes before alcohol sales were done for the night. Went back to my apartment and called our parents. Fell back asleep on the couch after a third dose of sinus meds. 

Next project!

So, this is an awkward space in my living  room. 

Made all the more awkward because the heater does not work. 

I got these chairs at a garage sale for $10 each. 

And it has worked for us. When I have a friend over for coffee, that is often where we end up. 

But now, it is time for the heater to go. We will expand the hole and build in a bookshelf. 

More pics to come. 

Christmas Eve

Ten years ago tonight I was nine months pregnant. I was sore and miserable, waddling and tired. It was my first Christmas to not be at my parents' house and the house seemed so empty with only Dowlan and I (and my belly). 

It was the only year of all twelve I attended my church in Austin that I was there for candlelight service. As I stood there, holding my candle and trying to get enough air into my body to sing, I had a thought: at least I don't have to go anywhere on a donkey.

Ever ridden a donkey? It's almost exactly nothing like riding a horse. Their backs aren't wide and flat--they poke up in the middle like the roof of a house with a bony ridge that is unforgiving on your nethers with every jostle. As they gift their weight with every step, you get shifted too. 

At nine months pregnant, my nethers and I could barely handle a car ride across town. I can only imagine what it would have been like to go with no road, no gps, no tilting seat, no hotel reserved, no Sonic drink and no idea why God chose your unmarried teenaged self to give birth to the savior of the world. 

Tonight I sang at the front of a different church in a different city. It's been seven years since I was last nine months pregnant. My husband and friend dealt with overstimulated boy, hardcore cool girl and grumpy girl from the pews while I tried to not cough into the microphone. As we sang the words, "Baby Jesus, don't cry," I heard all the sweet babies in the audience crying and their mamas shushing and calming them. 

I wanted to reassure them that baby Jesus made a whole heap of racket in that stinky, drafty barn and that their baby was just fine. Just like I wanted someone to reassure me that my baby boy was just fine as he shouted out his own (unique) answers in the children's sermon and then, with gusto, circumnavigated the children singing their songs. 

I'm pretty sure that if anyone at our church has ever wondered, "Hm, now I wonder why Gretchen looks tired all the time?" that they now have their answer. Because the truth is that I am exhausted. Preparing for Christmas and surgery and travel in the same week is whelming and, on top of that, we stepped up the gift schedule by a day and I simply was not finished with the quilt I was making Dixie. After staying up quite late last night finishing and late tonight Santa-ing, I still have to pack my self for the hospital and my children for trips to see all the grandmas this week. And I am tired and sore and exhausted. 

But. 

No donkey. I don't have to go anywhere on a donkey. 

And, suddenly, the glass is more than half full. 

It's a disease, I tell you

So we got all my sewing stuff out of the playroom and this meant that the playroom had to be organized. 

This is the corner where all my sewing stuff was. All those white cabinets were along this wall:

Dixie is glad to have a gymnastics space. 

And I'm glad to have it all clean. Anyone who has seen this room before is in awe. Not done, yet.  Really looking forward to finishing off all this:

I didn't know that was a part

"You elbowed me in the PopTart."

~Melody Anne

Shrine to Temple

After another day's work;

That's the storage side. The missing drawer is having it's face re-glued. 

Here are my cutting and sewing tables. They're different heights for comfort. 

Look! See that window?

Here's what I have left to put away. Not bad, considering. 

I have also learned that Buddy Temple and I attended the same college, The University of Texas. He and his wife, a former educator and Member of the UT Board of Regents, currently reside in Lufkin, TX. He lost the May primary to Mark White, who went on to unseat incumbent Bill Clements. Buddy got 402,693 (30.54%) of the primary vote and declined a runoff primary. This was the end of his political career. 

Mark White, incidentally, was a one-termer who was not reelected due to overly conservative policies, a weak economy and poor connection with minority voters. My brother remembers him only as the 'stupid governor who banned recess' thereby making elementary school a miserable six years, two years longer than White held his gubernatorial throne. White also publicly opposed Texas A&M leaving the Big XII for the SEC, a move I refer to as 'taking our toys and leaving the playground and ruining Thanksgiving for all of The Great State of Texas for years to come.'

And a happy Thanksgiving Day to you all, even though we didn't get to beat the Aggies. 

Barn renovations

Our 82 year old farmhouse has a 30+ year old 25x20 barn in the back. It's divided into a front work section and a back storage section.  We don't know exactly what year it was built, but I do know that Buddy Temple lost his bid for Texas governor in 1982.  

This is pertinent, as his campaign signs were used as drywall. 

Is what the back section looked like last summer. 

It contains things that either don't fit in our house or don't fit us anymore. 

Or things we simply did not care enough to deal with. 

At the moment, it now looks like this:

Big brother, daddy and all. 

By the end of the weekend, it should have a window there and a real door here. 

Because we will be throwing in shelving, work tables, an A/C unit and all my sewing and craft things. 

Woo hoo!

Before pics

I'm already about 20 lbs down, but I don't really have any pics I can dig up, so here are my before pics. 

We don't really have a big mirror in our house, I figured I'd take advantage of the motel bathroom mirror while Dowlan grabs the cart. 

We are at WhoFest and our geeky selves are in heaven. 

But I digress. According to the doctor's scale, this is me at 253 lbs. My Wii Fit Balance Board, the only scale in my house currently working, says I am 261. 

Surgery got pushed back until right after Christmas. I'm relieved--it's going to take fewer sick days and make for better holidays this way 

Plan B

For quite awhile, Charlie has been on a distinct career path: he will be a firefighter and save cats from trees so he can take them home to Dixie for her to love. He will marry a Pizza Girl, so that he has  both a wife and all the  pizza he could want.  Once he has done the kitten saving thing for awhile, he will be A President (always A, never The. I keep wondering how many there will be at the same time as him.) and, when he is done with being A President, he will go to work at Burger King, as he might be tired of pizza by then and BK and Wendy's have the best chocolate milk of all the restaurants, but Wendy's doesn't have a playground. He might want to play.

He recently expanded on this plan. See, when he is A President, everyone will like him, because who could not like A President? He looked rather troubled when I told him a lot of people don't like the president, but did not let this slow him down. He added, 'When I am A President, they will put my picture on the $900 bill and then I will get to keep all those because they have my picture on them and I will use them to buy the expensive Lego sets.'

Which was a great plan, until he realized that he is 28 years from being old enough to  run for president and that year might not even be an election year.

So he worked on plan B

He was entering my music class  the other day when he asked me, "Mom, could you make me a pick axe?"

"Sure, Charlie. I'll get right on that. What's it for?" I asked with only a precursory attention.

"I am going to dig a mind in our backyard and get gold and then use that gold to get rich and then buy the really expensive Lego sets," he explains.

"Gold mining. Got it."

Undaunted by the need of the other 44 of us  in the room to begin music class, he begins  providing specs for the project. "The handle needs to be wood and tha other part metal and I need you to make me a second one in case the first one breaks while I'm in da mind," he spells out.

"We can't start a gold mine until after music class," I assert and (wrongly) assume it was dropped. On the way home from school that day, I got more details about his mining venture. 

"One problem, Charlie. There's no gold in our backyard, even if you dig really deeply."

Thinking. "Oh. Someday, can we take a vacation to a place where there is gold and dig a mind and then get rich and buy the 'spensive Lego sets?"

"We will need the landowner's permission, first."

Well, today Charlie was anguished and anxious. "You haven't started my pick axe yet, mom."

"Charlie, honey, remember  how there's no gold in our backyard? And, even if  there was, a mine  isn't a good place for a small human child," I break it to him gently. It is often hard to remember that you are a small human child. 

"I will not use the dynamite or the TNT. I will only use the pick axe. A pick axe cannot explode," he argues.

"Even without explosions, a mineshaft  is not a structurally safe tunnel and it could collapse," I reply. 

Dixie pipes  up, "In the Hunger Games, Katniss' dad dies in a mine collapse."

I add, "Yes, and we would be so sad if our sweet boy died in a mining accident."

Charlie thinks about this. "I guess if I am dead, I cannot play with Legos. I will have to think of another way to get money for tha 'spensive Lego sets. Mom, you can stop working on the pickaxe now."

Logical statement for the day: dead miners need no Legos. 

The Torch is Passed

This is a post I’ve been putting off writing for about a year now.

It’s strange finding myself to be an Actual Grown Up. As an AGU, I’m expected to do all sorts of things and know all sorts of things. In one of her Little House books, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about how her ma—about how she just KNEW how to handle every situation. Someday, I hope my children are impressed by my competence.  I think I’m pretty good at a lot of things and am useful in most crises—my track record at handling adversity is not too shabby.

I take no credit for any of this. God has placed amazing people in my life who have paved the way for me. Another favorite author of mine, Lois McMaster Bujold, had a character who reflected on people who do great things. The gist is that if the people who do those great things are ordinary, flawed people and I am an ordinary, flawed person, then I have no reasonable inhibitions keeping me from also doing great things.

When I look at the people in my family who have come before me, I see a lot of great things.

In my job as a music teacher, a lot of competence in the field of being an AGU is required. Like many people, the skills I learned that enabled me to be good at my job were not learned in pursuit of my college education. Unlike most people, many of my job skills were learned in elementary school or in afterschool classes.  I have to know how to sing, dance, play instruments, act, run sound equipment, make costumes, build sets, paint backdrops and manage props in addition to knowing theory, music history, world history and cultures, math and music, science and music, art and music--it's a crazy range of skills involved. I think it’s why I’m insistent that my children learn piano, dance and theatre—to me, it is simply part of being a well-rounded, educated person.

Three of my great teachers passed away in 2012. It left me feeling that the torch was left in my hands. Mrs. Kasinger, Mrs. Ricks and Ms. Pender were no longer around to teach the next generations of actors, singers, musicians—it’s my job now. While I joke that I am paid by the Great State of Texas to sing The Itsy Bitsy Spider and dance the Hokey Pokey, there’s a lot more to what I do. And if I don’t do it, no one else will. As the campus music specialist for a Title One school, I’m the only music education many of these students will get. Upper- and middle-class children will have violin lessons and ballet recitals. They will go to a children’s museum on vacation and go see a play with their family on a weekend. When they enter upper grades, they will be encouraged by their families to learn an instrument or sing in chorus at school or at church. They will spend a summer at theatre camp.

For most of the 500 kids who revolve through my door on any given day, I’m it and I’m it for six years. It’s daunting, knowing that I’m likely the only person who will ever play Beethoven for them and put an instrument in their hands. When I get them on the risers on the cafetorium stage once a year, that’s the only chance they may have to show an audience what they are capable of. Since people fear public speaking more than death, I think it is a life skill to have them know that they have a voice that is valuable in the world. If they speak, someone will listen. If they perform, someone will applaud. As an individual and as a group, they have a light to shine in the world.

Mrs. Ricks taught me how to stand up and speak. In the after-school theatre program she ran from her living room, she taught me about projecting, cues, costumes, stage right and all things dramatic. She taught me how to dig down deep and find what I didn’t know was there. In the plays we presented on the library stage, I learned how to be someone else for a little while and, in doing so, how to be a little better at being me.

Mrs. Kasinger was my beloved and adored elementary music teacher. While I may be the only student who went through her classroom who still uses riser choreography, I'm not the only one who sees the world through different eyes because of how she taught us to see it. I still use the games we played with my students. I remember her patience and creativity, as well as her smile.

Martha Pender was more than my voice teacher. I learned to swim in her back yard years before I learned to sing in her studio. She spent many holidays with our family and left me the gift that keeps on giving—two beastly cats who can’t die soon enough. Her words echo in my head from time to time.

No college music education class could compare to what they taught me. I can only hope that what I teach to my students can compare—that I teach them to love and enjoy as well as act and play and sing. That I teach them to be the person they are as well as the character they are pretending to be. That, when they become AGUs, they can do great things, too.

It is my hope that I help them find their voice in this world. I am so thankful these women helped me find mine.