Put me in coach
Teachers in the streets, big boys in each other's arms
Quick newsy things! I did two exciting things since we last spoke (well three, cause I finally put a Tile tracker on my keys and it is shaving hours off of my daily hot-mess routine).
My “anti-parenting advice parenting advice” column, Good Enough Parent, launched on Romper! Send me all of your burning parenting questions at goodenoughparentcolumn@gmail.com, and I will circumnavigate around them while poking holes in the parenting-advice industry! I promise it’ll be a blast.
I published my first piece in The Cut, about moms choosing liberation over obliteration. If you need some last-minute Mother’s Day ideas, I would not look here! Also my tremendous friend made this piece a playlist, which I think is cooler than a Pulitzer. You can listen to it too here!
The last week has been a lesson in predictable disorder. No two days have been the same. But every morning I wake up and prepare myself for the same two, completely unruly experiences — another morning of picketing with Oakland teachers while I die a small death inside about the fact that school is not at all happening, and another day of ride-or-die, six-hours-deep playoffs basketball.
Though I love it when my team (*which translates to, in this order: 1) The Boston Celtics, 2) The Golden State Warriors, 3) Any Team That Has Been Scrappy or Whose Win Would Prolong Basket-tainment) wins, as soon as it happens, I switch over to feeling a deep pang for the losers. What softens this, of course, is the best part of any high-stakes sports event, the part where the cutthroat enemies of the past 48-minutes-plus-fouls suddenly become tender comrades, the part where grown men (usually) begin embracing, sometimes for so long you almost want to look away to give them privacy, and whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears.
On the court, Draymond Green is what we euphemistically refer to around our children as an “instigator.” Many would say he’s a flagrant asshole. If my team* is playing him, which they did in the Finals last year, I can’t fucking stand him. But no one gives better post-game love-fest than Draymond, who can be seen, after the Warriors ousted the hard-fighting Kings in Game 7 of round one, looking like he’s carefully explaining to former foe De’Aaron Fox why Fox’s three-month-old son, Reign, is already exceptionally bright and talented, and promising to contribute a large sum to his education fund.
Kyrie Irving is also top ten most-hated NBA players. He is unreliable, inflammatory, and perhaps anti-semitic, though I think it’s even weirder and more complicated than that. But no one loves to snuggle up post-game as much as him. Here Kyrie is hugging everyone who will hug him, including the then mired-in-controversy Ja Morant, after a regular season win. After a game in the surreal NBA “bubble” (remember those hologram fan faces zoomed onto the fake crowd???), video of Kyrie’s obvious heartbreak after NBA security kept him from getting some skin-to-skin from Bam Adebayo (he did get to trade jerseys with him, another insanely adorable thing NBA-player do) almost broke the internet.
And here you have my one true love (all the haters can eat a poisoned PB&J and take a nap on a bed of nails) Russell Westbrook, who almost pulled a miracle out of his butthole for the Clippers in round one but was still eliminated by the Suns, giving Suns’ kinda-cutie Devin Booker a warm back-and-forth and smiling like a fucking prom queen.
Based on my expert deduction, here’s is the transcript of their talk:
Russ: “Did you call that healer I referred you to?”
Book: “Yeah she told me I would die young but happy!”
Russ: “Haha you’re gonna be okay little guy. You coming to book club next week?”
Book: “Does a bear shit in the woods?”
Russ: “Cool see you Tuesday.”
Meanwhile, the Oakland teacher’s strike stretches into its second week. My seven-year-old longs for school and his teacher, my unprocessed pandemic-era grief and trauma from parenting through devastating loss is getting all stirred up, and two very well-organized groups of grown-ups, the teacher’s union and the school district, are at odds.
We’ve gone to the picket line pretty much every day. The teachers, ever creative, have come up with themes. There was a talent show where the Kindergarten teacher’s cat, Mr. Pickles, sat on command, and one of the special education teachers did a stand-up routine about unions (“What do you do when your nose goes on strike? Picket!”). We bring food. We chant. We do the cupid shuffle. Well, attempt to. It is sweet and beautiful and very, very hard. Sometimes you ask someone how they are doing, a teacher or a parent, and they start to tear up. I taught teachers during the pandemic, and they went through absolute hell. They too have PTSD.
For the first few days, the kids ate all the donuts and couldn’t believe their luck at having nothing to do. Now, they ask each night if they can go back to school the next day, and are prone to unprovoked emotional outbursts.
The other night, snuggling in bed, my son filled out some pages of my Moon Journal, because he’s a lovable weirdo like that. Who is the you of now??? the prompt asked.
He wrote (edited for clarity):
Pokemon
Zelda
Snuggling with mom
Playing with dad
Pickit
Someone complained in passing at a rally downtown about how much we pay basketball players, when teachers make so little. It’s an odd comparison, though of course you could argue that our country cares more about professional sports than public education, which is undoubtedly wack. But really, the players aren’t paid enough. Neither are the teachers. They could get a 100% raise and still not be making competitive salaries. This is not a joke. I would maybe go back into schools for a 100% raise from what I was making when I left, which would be, like $150,000 a year.
I am always for teachers. And there’s a lot of confusion and, it seems, intentional misdirection in the media around the strike. It’s hard to know who is not telling the truth, or telling a version of the truth that they really believe is the whole truth, but simply cannot be. It seems impossibly complicated, and also unecessarily so. Everyone knows why a bunch of smart adults cannot simply sit in a room and creatively problem-solve towards a common goal, understanding one another’s constraints. And yet, it seems rather dumb not to.
At a kid’s birthday party this weekend, you could feel the anxiety in the air. We talked about the chaos. One mom said “yeah, that’s why I left the district.” Parents have so many reasons, some dubious, others very real, for the choices they make for their kids. But, also, the comment irked me. This is inconvenient. It is painful, even. But it’s the struggle, and the struggle is real. I want my kid to be in school, but what is a “normal” time anyway? Safety, love, those things are non-negotiables. But a bit of discomfort to see how movements form, to watch the people you admire stand up for you, sometimes while doing the cupid shuffle? That. I want that.
We have marched, and earned our donuts (well, my five-year-old is kind of riding my coattails for them). But it’s too ugly, it’s been too long. I want it to be over.
I took my son and my neighbor’s daughter to the “solidarity school” today, where kids who need childcare play pick-up ball and abandon half-finished friendship bracelets and eat granola bars under the watchful eyes of underpaid (but actually volunteering now) paraprofessionals. We talked about how being out of school is bad, but people coming together to create spaces like this is good. These two children have lived across a fence from one another their whole lives. In the pandemic, they played in the driveway in their six-feet-apart chalk circles. They used a red-cup telephone to talk to one another. They watched each other blow out birthday candles on cakes we weren’t sure it was safe for them to have a slice of. They found comfort in the smallest, humblest, pleasures. It was sad. This is also sad.
Someone on Twitter wrote that the playoffs are competitive this year but these players don’t seem like they’re having fun. It’s true, last night’s Celtics win over the 76ers did not really feel to anyone like a victory. But the struggle IS fun. Falling back on to the floor of your living room, your children flopping on top of you, while you scream, first in joy because your team made a buzzer-beating, game-winning shot, and then in anguish, because it turned out it didn’t beat the buzzer after all, is FUN. Marching till your legs are tired, screaming “Get up! Get down! Oakland is a union town!” is a bizarre kind of fun. Love and community are fun, and sometimes the pain makes the relief greater. Maybe there’s a version of fun that does not mean ease, or lightness. Maybe what I’m describing is actually just collective action.
I have been imagining the moment when this is all over. Well, my fantasy of it. I want the part where everyone wraps their arms around each other and says “That was just a game. This is real.” This being fighting for children, for safe and equitable communities. For public schools. I don’t want to villainize folks who live in a society that doesn’t value them, whether they are at the top making those sweet district admin salaries (still not close to a mid-level Google job) or $15 an hour. I want to lock arms, be in the huddle. I want to hear the superintendent tell a young teacher, “I was like you once. I respect your hustle.” But until then, we live to strike another day (this is day 7 without school).
And on Sunday, whether it’s my team or the other guys who advance to the next round, and even though part of me wants to bury myself under my covers, refuse to watch, I know there are going to be some quality hugs. I want to be there for it. All of it.
Also, this:
Other people’s writing has also been keeping me alive lately. I can’t believe that in this shit world so many people are just phenomenal writers and keep making stuff for us to read. It is so generous. I don’t know how to make an Instagram Reel so this feels like the best place to tell you about:
Courtney Martin’s sweet tale of traveling with her daughter to the birthplace of her identity, in Afar Magazine.
Angela Garbes’s tender eulogy for a friend and meditation on sobriety.
John Saward’s exquisite meditation on Westbrook and greatness in Katie Heindl’s Basketball Feelings.
Elizabeth Angell’s obit for pioneering mom-blogger Heather Armstrong.
What are you reading lately?? Gimme gimme gimme!
Did I take three (3) full days to finally read this because I knew it would be so fully and completely up my alley that I wanted to savor it like a neverending sweaty hug from Russell Westbrook III? Yes.
I’m reading Anna Sale’s Let’s Talk About Hard Things and really enjoying it. As always, hilarious and moving post ✌🏼