Squeezed

With pride, my 17-year-old daughter announced yesterday that she had topped the $1,000 mark in her savings account. She picked up a lot of dog doo to get there.

She was hired in May to do odd jobs at a local kennel. She loves animals and was excited about the job.

She soon came home with tales of the exotic breeds she encountered, and of blow drying poodles, feeding adorable puppies and gently shampooing a dog with tumors. One day she shampooed a three-legged dog. Another day she dyed a poodle pink. And another day she met a man who keeps raccoons.

It was an interesting, physically tiring job. She hated picking up dog doo, but she did what her boss told her to do.

When she considered looking for another job (because of the dog doo), her dad and I urged her to stick with the job she had. She had made a commitment to her employer, and if she stuck with the job all summer she might be able to save $1,000 to go toward college, we told her.

It was tough for her when she saw her friends get jobs in clothing stores, where they could dress up for work and be around other teens. She envied them their employee discounts on trendy clothes, but I told her the danger of working in a clothing store is that you tend to spend your paycheck there.

She stuck it out at the kennel through the dog days of her summer, and she’s the richer for it.

I came home after work last night and found my 15-year-old daughter sprawled on the coach, her eyes glazed from a daylong marathon of watching television.

"You look like you’re ready to start school," I told her.

Most of the summer she was busy. She volunteered 85 hours working with children at a YMCA day camp. She traveled to New York City with a group of teens from our church and spent a week at a Latin American culture camp in the Twin Cities. She also spent time with friends — going to the movies or just hanging out.

The last of her structured activities ended a couple of weeks ago. Since then, life has been dull for her.

School starts tomorrow for her and her older sister. She was eager to stop by school today to stock her locker with notebooks and pens and pencils. She and her locker partner planned to meet there and organize their locker space.

She would never admit it, but I sense she is eager to start school.

She’s starting a new and much bigger school, and it’s natural for her to be apprehensive. But I bet she’ll like it and will do well.

It will be a lot more fun than lounging on the couch.

If you want to get a parent’s attention, give compliments about his or her kids.

At a recent high school grad party, my husband and I stopped by to chat with the graduate’s dad. We told him how much we enjoy having his son at our house – how he’s polite and funny and a good friend to our daughter. We told him he raised a great son. The look of pleasure on that dad’s face was priceless.

The next day, I ran into the mom of another recent graduate. I told her how fun it has been to see her daughter grow into such an amazing young woman (who soon will be heading off to an Ivy League college).

Then the mom got my attention. She had been a chaperone on a couple of group trips my older daughter had gone on. She told me that whenever my daughter sees her, no matter who my daughter is with, my daughter runs over and gives her a hello hug.

"It means the world to me," she said, adding that my daughter has a big heart.

My younger daughter recently received an open invitation from the mother of one of her friends. The mom said my daughter is welcome to stay over there as much as she wants this summer because she enjoys having her around.

Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in the day-to-day struggles with our children that we don’t see them clearly. We worry about our kids fighting with each other or not doing their homework or household chores, while others may see them as polite, funny and caring.

Parenting can be tough sometimes. Do parents a favor and say something nice about their kids.

As I get my dad’s townhouse ready to sell, I’ve been dealing with a lot of stuff.

You can tell a lot about a person by the stuff they leave behind.

My dad used to spend winters in Arizona and summers at his townhouse in the Twin Cities. When his health took a dive four years ago, I sold his Arizona house and he lived year-round in Minnesota.

He downsized considerably then, so he didn’t have a lot of extraneous stuff when he died. But he never downsized his collection of photos and slides.

I spent three six-hour stints recently going through 44 photo albums and more than 2,000 slides. My brother and sister had marked photos they wanted, and I separated those from the rest to make copies. I took out all the photos (many were in crummy old albums that were destroying the photos) and filed them by date. I packaged up the slides to deal with later.

There were photos of my dad as a teenager dressed in a zoot suit in the 1930s, one of him smoking a cigar in France after he survived the D-Day invasion and one of Bing Crosby performing for the troops somewhere in Europe during World War II.

But mostly there were pictures of family gatherings — at holidays, picnics and  skating parties — and numerous photos of my relatives gathered around my grandparents’ dining room table.

His family was what mattered most to my dad, and I have a mountain of photos and slides to prove it.

Forgive me if I brag a little.

My daughter got a "D" in her Algebra II class and I couldn’t be happier. That’s because she passed the class.

She’s a bright girl with many talents. Math isn’t one of them.

Her struggles with math started to show up in middle school. She spent one summer getting extensive tutoring to strengthen her math skills. It wasn’t much fun for her, but I rewarded her with fancy drinks at Starbucks before or after tutoring sessions.

She managed to make it through Algebra I in ninth grade with the help of a terrific teacher, but when she hit Geometry in 10^th grade, we once again turned to outside tutoring for help and she passed the class with a "C."

Algebra II started off pretty rocky for her last fall so I found a private math tutor for her. Her tutor was a local college student who is passionate about math. About three times a week she and Amy would meet at a local coffee shop and study math together.

When it comes time for my daughter to apply to colleges later this year, her transcript will show she has completed the three math classes recommended for college admission. Some college admissions folks might question her low grades in math, but hopefully they’ll overlook them because of the many "A’s" and "B’s" she has earned in other classes.

Up through the last day of school, she was trying her hardest. She couldn’t finish her math final in the allotted hour and a half, so she got the teacher’s permission to come in later in the day and spend another two hours on it.

I’m very proud of her for all her hard work. In my eyes, she deserves an "A-plus" for determination.

"I’m not like a regular mom. I’m a cool mom."

A few years ago my daughters and I heard Amy Poehler utter that line in the movie "Mean Girls." Her character dressed like a teen, had breast implants and was embarrassing in her efforts to buddy up to her teenage daughter and friends.

I repeat the line to my kids once in awhile to get a laugh. Occasionally we talk about what it means to be a cool mom. Sometimes they’ll tell me about a friend’s cool mom who has a belly button piercing and wears mini skirts.

To look at me, no one would accuse me of being cool. I have no body piercings or tattoos and I’ve never had plastic surgery. My fashion style is casual to the point of frumpy. I’m more likely to shop the L.L. Bean catalog than Abercrombie & Fitch.

But I think coolness has nothing to do with things like that. A youth worker in a church taught me that lesson a few years ago. She was in her 50s and was overweight and in poor health. She told me that connecting with kids has nothing to do with how old you are or how you look. It has to do with listening to kids and caring about them.

I saw from the way the young people she worked with respected and loved her that she practiced what she preached.

I try to practice my version of being a cool mom. I try to make my kids’ friends feel welcome in our home, but I don’t try to hang out with them. Most of the time I let my kids choose the radio station we listen to in the car (although I switch the channel if I hear raunchy rap). I don’t sing along to the radio if they have friends in the car. Even when I’m tired, I try to be open to driving my kids to the mall or a friend’s house.

I care if my kids get their homework done or if they stay out too late. When they make mistakes, I try to remember that’s part of being human — especially when you’re young.

Most of all, I try to listen and care because those are the coolest qualities a mom can have.

It’s not only kids who count down the days until school is out. I do, too.

I’m a big believer in education, but by this time of the school year I’m ready for a break. I bet most teachers and students are, too.

Summer will bring a different schedule. There will be busy days of making sure my kids get to their jobs or volunteer duties, requests to drive my younger daughter to her friends’ homes or the movies or the mall, packing for trips and camp.

But it’s a different kind of busy. I’ll be able to sleep in until 7 a.m. on weekdays because I won’t have to rush in the morning to drive one of my kids to school. There will be no nights of homework and (my kids will appreciate this) no nagging about schoolwork. We can stay up late and watch a movie on a weeknight or go for a stroll on the Lakewalk or go out for ice cream.

In 17 days, our lives will switch to summer mode. I can hardly wait.

I look forward to my younger daughter’s high school band concerts. She has an amazing band director who challenges the students to play complex and exciting music.

I dropped her off early Thursday night to get changed into her new band uniform. Shortly before the concert, I strolled into her school to find a seat in the auditorium. While walking down the hall, I was met by my tearful daughter holding her hand in pain. She and two concerned friends were in search of ice for her swollen hand.

She and some other students apparently were playing around in the hallway when someone inadvertently bent her thumb all the way back. She couldn’t use her hand and was unable to play the flute, so she had to sit out the concert.

In a scene from the movie "Zorba the Greek," the carefree Zorba is asked if he has ever been married. He says he had a wife, house, kids – "the full catastrophe." He appreciated the full spectrum of life and how it not only is made up of happy moments, but of sorrows and the occasional calamity.

That’s the way it is when you have kids. You start the evening happily going to a school concert and you wind up with your child in an emergency room for a couple of hours getting an exam, x-rays and a thumb splint.

I remember when my husband and I were being interviewed by social workers before we adopted each of our two daughters. We told them we wanted the full experience of parenting. We certainly are getting it, emergency room visits and all.

For the most part, we take the bumps along the road in stride. We know plenty of people who have it much worse then we do. They have children who take drugs, or have attempted suicide, or who have terrible illnesses.

In comparison, a sore thumb is a pretty minor catastrophe.

My daughter and her date at prom.

My older daughter went to her first prom on Saturday night.

There was a flurry of preparations over the last few weeks. I helped her shop for the dress and find sparkly silver high-heeled shoes. I made alterations to her dress. She ordered orchids for her corsage and her date’s boutonniere. She made arrangements to have one friend do her hair and another do her nails.

She and her date and three other couples met to go to dinner before the prom at the Top of the Harbor at the Radisson in Duluth. Several of us parents — two of whom are professional photographers — met them in the lobby to take pictures.

They posed as couples and as groups, smiling patiently as their parents oohed and ahhed and took pictures. The girls were like flowers at the peak of their bloom. The guys looked suave and handsome in their tuxes.

The morning after the prom, my daughter showed me photos she and her friends had posted online from the prom. The girls’ dresses were as bright as Skittles.

My daughter in all her finery reminded me of when she was a little girl and loved to play a game called Pretty, Pretty Princess. Every time you won a point, you got to don another piece of gaudy jewelry. There were rings and bracelets and clip-on earrings and even a crown. Then, as now, she was attracted to bright, shiny objects.

When I looked at photos of her and her friends all dressed up, it seemed as if just for a night, they all got to be pretty, pretty princesses.

"Are you going to the Cities this weekend?" my younger daughter asked earlier this week.

"No. I’m staying home," I said.

"Yeah!" she said.

My daughter has asked that question nearly every weekend over the last four years, and about three weekends out of every month, the answer was, yes, I’m going to the Cities to take care of Grandpa.

When my kids complained, I explained that Grandpa needed help and when someone needs help you give it.

It was a tough four years driving back and forth, trying not to fall asleep at the wheel. I would pack up bills and mail to deal with when I went to the Cities and while my father cruised through TV channels with his remote control on Saturday evenings, I would sit near him paying bills and doing other paperwork. I would buy him groceries and run errands, then drive back to Duluth and buy another set of groceries and run errands for my family. I rarely had any free time on the weekends and would come to work exhausted on Mondays.

I lived in a constant state of triage, doing only things that needed to be done. I gave up things such as going to church on Sunday mornings, volunteering and having a clean house.

I miss my father now that he’s gone, but I don’t miss living in a constant state of exhaustion. It’s good to be home again.