Mom, Inc.

From the Podium

A few words from an award-winning mom

By Renee Whitmore

My son, Kevin, just told me I was the meanest mom in the world. I made him ride his bike for 30 minutes before he could come inside, and I told him he could not have Tootsie Rolls and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups before dinner. So, in his defense, I clearly am awful.

I am so honored. Meanest mom in the whole world. Wow. Out of all those other moms, me! Just a small-town girl with big dreams, hiding from my kids in my closet, armed with a box of Dove milk chocolates.

So, I wrote a speech for when I accept my award. I walk up on stage with the best Beyoncé reaction I can gather.

(Waiting for applause to die down.)

Thank you. Thank you. Family. Friends. Please be seated. I am absolutely in shock right now. I am so blessed to be standing in front of you today. I truly wasn’t expecting this. (I try to run my fingers through my hair nonchalantly but can’t get past the tangles of dried chocolate.)

Something like this cannot be accomplished alone. I stand on the shoulders of all the mean parents in the world who do not give in to every whim and demand their children make.

Karen. Debi. Shelly. I feel like you guys should be up here with me. Karen, I saw you stop your daughter from standing up on the slide — so cruel. Debi, you only let your son be in two activities at a time — positively sadistic. Shelly, you didn’t buy your kid a third iced donut when he already had a sprinkled one and a glazed one — what were you thinking?

Of course, this day would have been impossible without my long-suffering campaign manager, Kevin, who I sincerely believe will recover from my many dastardly acts in the fullness of time.

My message for you today is a simple one: If I can do it, so can you. You, too, can be meaner than you ever thought possible. So, join me in a toast. Let’s raise a second cup of coffee:

To all the moms who make their kids play outside.

To all the moms who don’t let their kids eat cookies and popcorn for dinner (lunch maybe).

To all the moms who say no to a third dog or cat.

To all the moms who do not let their kids go to school in the clothes they slept in the night before.

To all the moms who pitched out their kid’s once-favorite toy that they haven’t touched in two years.

To all the moms who enforce a bedtime.

To all the moms who make their kids eat green beans.

To all the moms who say “no.”

To all the moms who recognize the purpose of toothpaste.

To all the moms who teach their kids to clean up their own messes, love others and respect authority.

This is for you.

Hold your head up high and be mean.

You can do it, too!

World’s meanest mom. Wow. These are heady times when anything seems possible. When any ordinary mom can aspire to an achievement like this.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I am honored.

They like me. They really, really like me!

(I make a mad dash back to my closet and my Dove chocolates).  PS

When Renee is not teaching English or being a professional taxi driver for her two boys, she is working on her first book

Mom, Inc.

Aunt Jean

Letters, laps and Chinese food

By Renee Phile

I am . I live in a small, A-frame, wood-paneled house in the mountains of West Virginia. I skip outside the sliding glass door and run down the long, winding driveway to our mailbox. The faded white paint on the side of the box reads “19 Poplar Grove Estates.” The red flag is down, a good sign. I open up the mailbox and peer in. A car advertisement. Several envelopes addressed to my parents, probably bills. And then my hand touches it. It’s nestled under the rest of the mail: a pale green envelope addressed to me. The neat penmanship fills the envelope, and the return name reads “Aunt Jean.” I smile, rip open the envelope, not able to wait another second to read my letter from my pen pal.

She writes about her day and the books she is reading (two by Mary Higgins Clark). She writes about the weather (rainy). She writes how she enjoyed our visit last month, and would we be visiting anytime soon? She signs her letter like she always signs it:

Your Kindred Spirit,

Aunt Jean

**

I am 14. Dad and I drive up north to see Aunt Jean at her home in Martinsburg, West Virginia. We call ourselves the “Aunt Jean Club,” but yesterday we caught wind that there were some other family members, who will remain unnamed, who feel excluded from the club (even though the club is “open”), so we are keeping our club on the DL.

The three of us are sitting on her old beige couch, reading books. I look over at Aunt Jean, and watch her read. She smiles at one page, frowns at the next. Her eyes start to water as she reads, and I look away and focus on my own book.

“Aunt Jean?” I ask after several minutes. “Have you read that latest book by Mary Higgins Clark? The one about nighttime?”

“Hmmmm . . . ” she says, “I do believe I have.” Her eyes close as she thinks, “But let me check in my notebook . . . yes . . . (as she ruffles through the pages). Yes, I read it two weeks ago. I have it written down right here, and I wrote ‘good’ beside it, so I suppose it was good,” she chuckles.

“I want to read it,” I say.

“You love reading just like I do. You and I are certainly kindred spirits,” she says.

After several hours of reading and lounging on the couch, we heat up a frozen lasagna and play Scrabble. Aunt Jean tells us story after story — about growing up during the Depression, about her two brothers and one sister, about how she worked as a librarian, about her husband who passed away around the time I was born. Dad and I listen, then, out of nowhere — bam! — a 60-point play. Dad and I look at each other, amazed. She was undefeated at Scrabble. She still is.

**

I am 22. Yesterday, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English, and I have no clue what to do with my life. Most of my college friends are heading to the beach to celebrate, but I can’t think of anywhere I would rather be than at Aunt Jean’s house. I drove up here yesterday, right after graduation.

It’s just her and me, and earlier today we went to the Martinsburg Mall to walk laps and eat Chinese food. Aunt Jean said two laps around the mall are 3/4 of a mile, and she would know because that’s where she walks four mornings a week. We have spent the day reading, talking, sipping weak coffee, and of course, playing Scrabble. Lots and lots of Scrabble.

I tell her how I don’t know what to do with my life. All I know is that I love English and writing. “Go with what you love, and the rest will take care of itself,” she says. I do just that.

**

I am already 36 years old. (How did that happen?) It’s April, and I’m thinking about Aunt Jean, because her birthday is in April. She passed away in January 2013, and I miss her, but I don’t feel she’s far away.

I still read all the time. I still write all the time. I practice my Scrabble strategies daily. Now it’s through an app called Words with Friends, but it’s still basically Scrabble. I went with my love for English and writing, and the rest has taken care of itself, just as she said.

I’m organizing my closet, and I find an old shoebox. I open it, and see her neat penmanship stretch across the envelopes. The box is full. I take an envelope out, open it. I read the first few lines, then skip to the last part, my favorite part. There it is: Her cursive letters swirl and swoop to form the words:

Your Kindred Spirit,

Aunt Jean  PS

Renee Phile loves being a teacher, even if it doesn’t show at certain moments.

Mom, Inc.

Notes from the Edge

Too old for the mom club, but with the best of intentions

By Renee Phile

Oh, I had such wonderful intentions.

At 7 years old, I am sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor in Memphis, Tennessee, the sun streaming through the window, writing with my sparkly purple pen on white computer paper stapled into a “book.” I write the book first, and then I go back and illustrate later.

I published masterpieces like:

Anna Chokes on Broccoli

and

The Dog Who Saved a Little Kid Who Was Walking Across the Street without Mommy.

After I published my books, I called my siblings and a few of the neighborhood kids, assigned each one a role, and made them act out the book for my parents. They begrudgingly took their parts as a hero dog or a choking girl, and my parents clapped and smiled and laughed when the play ended.

I was seriously on fire! I wanted nothing more than to be a writer.

Twenty-some years later, nothing has changed. I write every single day, and if I don’t hit at least 1,000 words a day, I start to feel itchy. I carry around my notebook and pen. Writers know what I mean.

Sometimes I sit in random places — Java Bean Plantation, Mean Bean, the emergency waiting room at the hospital (yes, I have gotten a ton of material from that room) — and write what I see.

Sometimes it looks like:

A short, bald man, probably in his ’50s, is lying on his side on the hard blue bench of the ER waiting room, a hospital blanket covering him. He is accompanied by his service dog, a German shepherd. The dog sits quietly on the floor by the man. The man snores, then wakes up, then snores some more. The dog doesn’t move.

I imagine what he is doing in the ER. I think about the dog and the man’s relationship. I wonder what happened before this hour in the ER, and what will happen after. I wonder . . . I wonder . . . I wonder . . .

Or, maybe:

I am sitting at my favorite coffee shop in Moore County, Java Bean Plantation, sipping my peppermint latte and watching the mom club at the table next to me. There are three of them. They look like they just walked out of a yoga class, hair pulled up, jacket over their yoga tops, latte in hand, kids, probably around the ages of 3 or 4, playing with iPads by their feet on the floor. They laugh and giggle about something that I can’t hear, and I wonder what it is. One says her husband is deployed. The other two look at her with concern, ask if there is anything they can do to help. One kid, a girl, decides she wants to put together a puzzle, and reaches for one from her mom’s bag. The other two kids decide puzzles trump iPads and I smile at that.

I wonder how long they have been in their mom club. I wonder if they would let me in, even though my kids are older. I wonder . . . I wonder . . . I wonder . . .

My boys, David, 15, and Kevin, 10, are among my very favorite topics with subjects like, “Why must you wait until hours before your band concert to tell me that you need black dress pants and black shoes?” and, “You announced what to your teacher? Really?” Nothing is off limits, except what he said to his teacher. That’s too awful.

On the way home from school, Kevin asked me if I had been practicing the “Dab.” As I understand it, the Dab, is a type of dance move where a person drops his or her head into the bent crook of a slanted, upwardly angled arm, while raising the opposite arm out straight in a parallel direction.” (Google said that.)

I have tried to Dab, I really have, but my progress hasn’t been good enough for Kevin.

“Uh . . . Mom, you’re going to need to practice more. I don’t get it. I taught you how to do it a hundred times, and you still can’t do it right.”

So, I write. And I Dab. And I wonder . . . I wonder . . .  PS

Renee Phile loves being a teacher, even if it doesn’t show at certain moments.

Mom, Inc.

A Running Dialogue

Keeping a list, checking it twice

By Renee Phile

“I hurt my foot, and I don’t think I can sit through church,” he said on a rainy Sunday morning about 10 a.m. We needed to leave at 10:15 to get there on time, which we almost never do.

“You’re fine. Get dressed. And don’t wear the same clothes you slept in,” I said, reinforcing the obvious just to be on the safe side.

He groaned. “My foot hurts like really bad! I know you think I’m faking, but I’m not. Honest, I’m not. I can’t make it through church with this.”

“Be ready in 15 minutes.”

Yes, this took place. Yes, he went to church. Yes, his foot is fine. No, we didn’t make it on time.

With two boys under my own feet, life is always in motion. Trips to school, to wrestling practice, to the grocery store, to youth group, to band practice, to galaxies far, far away. Sometimes as I’m dozing off at night and I think about what I did that day, all that comes to mind is a whirlwind. It goes by so fast that I decided to lasso the cyclone. In an effort to preserve the moments I have with these two, I write down the things they say. Here is a small sample from 10-year-old Kevin:

“I am a wizard at Battleship, and you are . . . just a starter, Mommy. You need some major tips.” (He beat me 7-1.)

“I have been waiting an hour and only have an inch of macaroni!”

(Ruby Tuesdays. Sunday afternoon. The wait was short but the portion didn’t fulfill his macaroni dreams.)

“I need to get my Halloween costume ready.” (It’s June.)

“Can we eat macaroni every night?” (He asks this before I go to the grocery store. Every week.)

“I don’t get why my sweet potato counts as dessert! That’s not fair!” (Hey, I tried.)

“If it was thundering while we were having Halloween, I would look even creepier.” (Again, it was June).

“I’m kind of glad I didn’t wait until I was 12 to jump off the diving board.” (When he was 7, I told him we weren’t leaving the pool until he jumped off the diving board. Three years later I’m some kind of savant.)

“I will take care of you when you get old. David probably won’t, so I will.” (Thank you, Kevin. By the way, can we put that in writing? Just sign here.)

“Can I please go to Grandma Jean’s house? I know she misses me. Can we have a huge Nerf gun war?” (Undoubtedly, the part she misses the most.)

And here are a few of my counteroffers:

“Your foot’s fine. You don’t even limp unless you think someone is watching you.” (Sunday, theater of the absurd.)

“Quit reading your Lego directions in church.” (Whose kid is this?)

“Stop taking selfies in church.” (Oh yes, he did.)

“No, you can’t use your fork after you dropped it on the floor.” (Temporarily thwarted in his attempt to devour an inch of macaroni.)

“You don’t need to figure out your Halloween costume right this minute.” (Did I mention it was June?)

“So, what do I do, Admiral?” (Let’s face it, I need Battleship help.)

“No, you cannot wear that shirt and those pants today. You wore them the last two days.” (Some things cannot be stressed enough.)

“Grandma Jean is a pacifist.” (Nerfwise.)

So, there you go. I never know what will come out of his mouth, and to be honest, I usually never know what will come out of mine either. PS

Renee Phile loves being a teacher, even if it doesn’t show at certain moments.

Mom, Inc.

The Truck Guy

And Marlena’s two cents

By Renee Phile

She dragged the mop over the sticky floor while I stood behind the register in my Chick-fil-A uniform — chicken breading smeared on my black pants. I was 17 years old, a senior in high school, working on nights and weekends to earn money to pay for my car insurance, gas, clothes, makeup, caramel lattes, you know, teenage girl essentials. 

Her bleached blonde hair, coarse as a scouring pad, was pulled back in a tight ponytail. Her face was tanned but weathered. A spray bottle hung from her left pocket. As she mopped she sprayed the tables and wiped them with a dirty towel. 

After my last customer walked away with his chargrilled sandwich, no pickle, I greeted her from behind the counter. “Hi, Marlena!”

“Hi, honey!” She beamed. 

“How are you?”

“I’ll be great once the truck guy gets here. It’s Thursday.” 

“Our truck guy?” 

“Yes, girl. Have you seen him?” 

I laughed. The truck guy was a hit among the single (and not single) women up and down the food court. He appeared every Thursday, armed with chicken breasts, waffle fries, cheesecake and other Chick-fil-A essentials. One of our employees would help him unload the truck and put everything into our freezer. Sometimes it was me. His green eyes sparkled every time he said, “Here, let me help you with that box.” 

“Marlena, I thought you had a husband.”

“Wes? Yeah. But he ain’t worth much. Doesn’t hurt to look, does it, honey?” She winked. 

I laughed and thought of my boyfriend and how awful things were. I was 17, he was 18, and had just gone away to college. It was a four-hour drive that might as well have been forever. 

“Can I get a No. 1 with Coke and extra Polynesian sauce?” said the red-haired woman. A cross between a rat and dog poked its head out of her purse. “And an extra fry for Scrappy,” she said. Scrappy. Yes, he was. 

I punched her order into the register. Marlena was straightening chairs in the lobby, hanging around so she wouldn’t miss the truck guy. 

The customer and her rat dog walked off. “Marlena,” I said, “my boyfriend just moved away. Should I break up with him?” 

She frowned, her eyes squinted a little. 

“Honey, do you love him?” 

“I don’t know. We’ve been together since I was 14.” A millennium in teenage years. 

“If you don’t even know if you love him, and you’ve been together that long, I’d get rid of him. That’s what I did to my first husband. My second and third one, too.” 

“First, second and third? Marlena, how many times have you been married?” 

She picked a crumb off the table, dropped it on the floor and swept it up. “Well . . . ”

“How many?” 

“Nine.” When the word escaped from her mouth, she looked like she wanted to stick it right back in there. 

“Are you kidding me? You don’t look that old!” 

“I’m telling you, Honey, when I get tired of them, I toss them. Life’s too short.” 

Right then the truck guy walked up to the counter with his paperwork, and Marlena’s eyes lit up while she patted her hair down.

“There he is!” she mouthed to me. I smiled and knew right then and there that all advice wasn’t created equal.  PS

Renee Phile loves being a teacher, even if it doesn’t show at certain moments.

Mom, Inc.

Snack Time

It’s worth all the trouble

By Renee Phile

They’re all watching me. I can’t move. I have to sit here until they don’t notice me anymore. I have to look casual, disinterested. The older boy plays his game; the younger one whines. If they would just stop looking at me, stop talking to me, I could get to it. I stand up, yawn for effect, and creep to the door of the bedroom.

“Bailey, no!” Mom says. My nails on the wood floor. Might as well be a car alarm. I lie down beside the door. Patience. It will have to wait. But I can’t wait! What if it’s gone by the time I get there? Libby will get it — that blasted cat. The worst day of my life was when they brought her home. She’s ridiculous and thinks she owns the place.

They stop paying attention. It was only a matter of time. I stand up. No one notices. Mom is cooking dinner (it smells good; I wonder if I will get a bite). Dad is working on his computer.

I tiptoe inside the doorway. Damn nails. “Bailey girl! What are you doing? Bailey!” The younger boy plops himself right down on me. It’s annoying, but being the patient Rottweiler that I am, I endure it.

“Kevin, get off her,” Mom says. Thank you, Mom. Kevin saunters off and I put my head down. I’ll try again in five minutes. Maybe four. Maybe three. The dinner smells so good, and Dad is still working on his computer, and the other boy is still playing his game, talking loudly in his headset to someone as he sits in front of the TV.

I stand up. No sudden moves. No one notices. Good. I inch inside the bedroom. No one sees me. Yeeeeessss! There she sits, like the queen she thinks she is — on the bed. I’m not allowed on the bed. She stares at me, and I think she is going to hiss at me, but she just stares. I stare back and inch forward, stop, inch some more until I get to the bathroom door.

“Where’s Bailey?” I hear Dad say. Oh no. They’re looking for me. I’m through the door. I’m in. There it is: Libby’s food. She never eats much of it anyway. I like to think she leaves it for me. Wait, she hates me. Either way, it’s mine.

Someone is moving in the kitchen.

“Is she outside?” Mom asks.

“I don’t think so,” I hear Dad say.

I gobble up all the food I can, not even taking a breath, like one of those pie eating contests. There it is. The bottom of the bowl. I scamper out, food still in my mouth, and lay down on the bedroom floor as nonchalant as you please. Been there for hours. The cat looks at me in disgust, and Dad comes into the room.

“Bailey? Did you eat the cat food?” How does he always, and I mean always, know? I look up at him with my eyes, but keep my head down. I don’t want him to smell the hairball formula on my breath. He walks past me and looks into the bathroom at the empty cat bowl.

“Come on. You know you’re in trouble,” he says, and I know, because, honestly, this has happened before. But, I don’t care that I have to sit in my crate for an hour. Solitary. I stand up and head to my crate while Dad follows. It’s all worth it, you see, as I lick my lips and glare at Libby, who looks at me with that strange smile.  PS

Renee Phile loves being a teacher, even if it doesn’t show at certain moments.

Mom, Inc.

Not Picture Perfect

A night at Camp Alternative Universe

By Renee Phile

The four of us pulled into the campground, welcomed by an eerie feeling. The accommodating pictures on the website — the luscious green woods and the thriving campfires — seemed to have been replaced by broken down 1940s campers, scattered trash, clotheslines sagging under the weight of laundry from the Cretaceous Period, a meteor shower of stray cats darting from site to site and, of course, No Trespassing signs.

“This can’t be right,” I said to Jesse, who nodded.

“Should we check in? Or just leave?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“This place is weird,” David, 14, piped up from the back seat. “What’s up with all the cats?”

“Let’s just drive around and see if it gets any better,” Jesse, the optimist, said.

As we drove deeper into Camp Backwater, we saw travel trailers, pop-ups, and live-in year-round campers scattered about. Paint peeled from the small houses sitting between them. A cat streaked in front of our car and disappeared.

“This is nothing, and I mean nothing, like the website said it was,” I said. “And it’s not cheap either.”

Though the primitive amenities of the state park down the road now seemed like Shangri-La compared to Camp Irregular Heartbeat, we decided to check in and make an adventure of it. Maybe I could jumpstart a murder mystery.

The lady at the desk, with grey eyes peeking out behind wiry glasses, seemed nice enough until she delivered the worst news David, and his 10-year-old brother, Kevin, could ever possibly hear, “No Wi-Fi for your devices.”

As we cleaned up the trash left from the previous occupants of our campsite, a large, yurt-shaped man shuffled over, shoeless, dressed only in his boxer shorts and what looked like the T-shirt Sonny Corleone was wearing at the tollbooth.

“Hi! I’m Chris! Welcome to the suburbs! Don’t mind the cats. They’re mine. I’ve lived here for over a year. If you need anything, let me know.” Like what? A bell?

A teenager, who seemed to have already dipped heavily into the catnip, sped by on a bike and exclaimed, “I’m too blessed to be stressed! What about you?”

“Might want to stay away from him,” Jesse muttered to the boys as he put a spike in the ground to pitch the tent.

A couple with a small child and a baby pulled their SUV into the site next to us. The baby crawled around in the dirt, while the dad burned through gigabytes of data on his smartphone, Googling “campgrounds near me.” They left in seven minutes.

I decided to walk to the bathhouse. The sanitation grade was “C” for cruddy, and a blue leatherette front seat from a car sat in the middle of the floor, seatbelts dangling. A cat was curled up on top. As I was in the bathroom stall, the cat came in and nuzzled my legs. “Oh, this isn’t weird at all,” I said to the cat which meowed loudly.

That night our fire wouldn’t start. Jesse could make cement blocks burn, so if he can’t get a fire to start, there’s a problem. He dumped an entire bottle of lighter fluid onto the wood. It would flare for a few seconds, then go straight to tiny puffs of smoke. He marched down to the camp store and asked for a refund on the $10 pile of wood. That didn’t burn, either.

Our “neighbors,” led by Chris, drank late into the night, singing the lyrics they could remember to the country songs they thought they knew while the cats meowed in harmony. Shadows passed by our tent every few minutes and Kevin said, “Mom, can I sleep with you?”

In the morning I said a thank you prayer that we all survived. Then we went to a Walmart across the road and bought a board game called “Stuff Happens.” In it each player rates cards from 1-100 on tragic things that might happen to you. It could be as simple as “Lose a Toenail” or as serious as “Lose an Eye.” The other players guess the rating of each card and if you are close, you get the card. The person with the most cards at the end is the winner.  I looked through the cards to see if “Stay at a Creepy Campground Infested with Cats” was one of the options.

It was 87.  PS

Renee Phile loves being a teacher, even if it doesn’t show at certain moments.

The Back Deck

Where there’s enough for everyone

By Renee Phile

The green, grassy yard is a triangular shape, lots of plants: basil, rosemary, pansies, and other flowers that look cool, but I don’t know their names. Bird feeders — the whimsical ones — are scattered in the yard. The hoi polloi squirrels eat peanuts from kitchen pans on picnic tables. The birds chirp, the highway beside the house roars softly, the wind tingles against my skin. It’s a cool September morning in Nags Head, and I can smell the ocean. My best friend’s grandma reminds me of my own. Delicate but not breakable. I’m sitting right beside her on the back deck. Just the two of us. I hear a buzz. A bee. Then a hummingbird. I see trees full of birds I can’t identify any more than I know the flowers. I hear a car honk. A door shut. She is reading her devotional book, The Upper Room, and I remember my Gram reading the same book. She reads her Bible at the same time, the books balanced in her lap. Flips pages in her Bible. Points her finger along the page like a palm reader tracing the heart line. Reads. Flips more pages. Reads. Rubs her worn, delicate hands together. Flips more pages. Reads. Rubs her wrist. Peers down at a verse. Reads it to herself. The words almost loud enough for someone to hear. Sips her coffee. I sip my own and continue to write in a notebook. A blue jay hops close to me. She looks up. Throws it a peanut. “Uh, oh,” she says as another one swoops down, snatches it, and flies into a tree. She throws a second peanut for the first blue jay, the one that got pushed to the back of the line, but the one in the tree flies down again, and there is a little scuffle. Bird stuff. “There’s enough for everyone!” she laughs. I laugh too.  “This house was built in 1990, and we bought it in 1998,” she explains. I nod. “We have been here ever since.” I nod. She tells me about the house. Two stories. She tells me about her children. Two live close by, they can smell the ocean. One lives on the other side of the world.  She tells me about her husband, who passed away this year. He was a wonderful man. She lays her hand flat on the page of the book. There are doves on the roof of the house, looking like a conference is taking place. Bird stuff. I wonder what they are talking about up there. “The blackbirds eat up everything!” she says as she throws a peanut to a squirrel. It hops up to the deck and devours the nut. She reads, and I write. I breathe in the ocean air. I never want to lose this. Instead I will store it away and come back to it whenever I need it. The blue jay swoops down again, greedy.  PS

Renee Phile loves being a teacher, even if it doesn’t show at certain moments.

Head of the Class

Waiting for something to click

By Renee Phile

I teach commas and stuff. Even through the summer. Some of my students are high-schoolers. Some are grandmas. More are in-between. Nothing thrills me more than a classroom of students who are ready — or not — to hear about where the semicolon goes or where it absolutely doesn’t belong. Nothing thrills me more than when a student asks, “Ms. Phile, could you look at this paragraph? Does it flow?” or “Hey, Ms. Phile, look at this sign I saw at the gas station. It’s missing an apostrophe. If I had a Sharpie I would have corrected it.”

Then there’s that point in the semester when all the papers, projects and tests need grading. Final exams are pending, grades are due. Everyone is exhausted and irritable, and I begin to wonder why the hell I started teaching in the first place. I spend every waking moment — at my son’s baseball games, waiting for a table at restaurants, sitting in meetings, at the stoplight — grading papers. Emails flood my inbox:

“Ms. Phile, can I have an extension on the paper?” (No way. You have known about the due date for six weeks.)

“Ms. Phile, sorry I won’t be in class today. My pigs got loose.” (True story.)

“Ms. Phile, I can’t come to class today or the rest of the week because my grandmother died.” (Hmmmm . . . that’s the third time she’s passed away. Obviously a very, very serious illness.)

“Ms. Phile, I know I haven’t done much this semester, but can I get extra credit?” (You can’t get extra credit when you didn’t get regular credit.)

“Ms. Phile, I know I didn’t turn in the past four papers, but can I turn them in still? I promise I did them.” (I can’t even reply to this one.)

“Ms. Phile, we have a beach house rented that week.” (Can I come and bring the boys?)

And my favorite how-to-endear-yourself-to-the-teacher, cringe-worthy question:

“Ms. Phile, sorry I missed class yesterday. Did I miss anything important?” (Ouch.)

At this point in the semester I’m thinking I may go back to school for something else, maybe carpentry or piano tuning or snake charming. But, the truth is the magical moments when a student lights up and “gets it” make my job amazing. The moment when a student’s writing improves; the moment when a student overcomes the fear of talking in front of others; the moment when I notice students teaching each other. Those moments keep me from getting a basket and a flute.

Let me invite you into my summer class: Research papers, which they have been working on for six weeks, are due tonight by 11:55 p.m. I walk into a room of talkative students and one, who I will call Matt, pipes up from the back row:

“Ms. Phile, what will it take for you to extend the due date until tomorrow? Money? Doughnuts? Reese’s cups? I know how you love Reese’s cups.”

“Matt, you’ve known the due date for six weeks. It’s in stone.”

An older student in the front row, who probably finished his research paper two weeks ago, rolls his eyes and mumbles under his breath, “I don’t envy your job.”

My 11 years of teaching flashed through my brain — whirlwinds, valleys, mountains, mostly mountains.

“I don’t know why not. You should,” I said.  PS

Renee Phile loves being a teacher, even if it doesn’t show at certain moments.

Mom, Inc.

Sunnybird

And everything she left behind

By Renee Phile

I woke up thinking about her, and I’m not sure why. Facebook told me today is her birthday, so maybe that’s why. Or maybe it’s because my son had his best friend over last night, and as I watched all the non-verbal communication — their inside jokes, looks, smirks, eye rolls — I couldn’t help but think about Serenity. She was my best friend in fourth grade and the grades after that, and although her name is Serenity, she preferred to be called Sunny for short, so I called her Sunnybird. We met in fourth grade on Mercer Christian Academy’s basketball team. Neither of us was really into it, but we kind of tried. Serenity was home-schooled and there was a chance she was going to join me at MCA the next year, and every day I would call her house to get the status.

“Hello?” her mom answered.

“Is Serenity there?”

“Just a minute. (Pause.) Serenity?”

(Phone going through hands, some stumbling around.)

“Hi, Renee!”

“Are you coming to MCA next year?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“OK. Talk to you later!” I would immediately hang up.

During one of the many sleepovers we had, she told me that she wished I had talked longer on the phone — that it hurt her feelings when I ended our conversations so abruptly. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I tried to explain. “I just had a question and needed an answer.”

She did end up going to MCA for fifth grade. Our teacher was Mr. Smith, an older, soft-spoken gentleman who always wore a different belt buckle and played basketball with us during recess. That year I stayed up one night reading and writing a report about Florence Nightingale. It was the first documented all-nighter of my school career.

Serenity sat in the desk behind me. She ate saltine crackers and cheese during class and passed me notes, folded into unique designs. The designs were way fancier than the words, and it was fun to spend five minutes opening a note to see her splashy cursive: “Hi! Want to swing instead of playing ball today?”

I spent lots of nights and days at her three-story house right off the main street in downtown Princeton, West Virginia. On Saturdays we had to clean her bathroom and vacuum before we could do anything fun. Fun meant walking the mile or so to Jason’s Market to buy Carmelo bars, cotton candy gum, Cow Tails, and peach Nehis. We left the market and walked to the cemetery down the road and made up stories about the names on the gravestones while we chomped on our gum and blew big bubbles. Once we saw a black-haired man sitting cross-legged on one of those above-ground graves. (I didn’t know they were called mausoleums.) We watched him for a few minutes, turning him into a serial killer in our imaginations, and then trudged back to her house. When we turned around, we saw him walking after us. We began running, turning down random streets, but he was still there. He was behind us, running just as hard as we were. We flew into her front door and slammed it hard behind us, sure we were seconds from being kidnapped and killed by the guy with black hair who sat on a grave in the cemetery. We told and retold the story for years, each time adding a new, dramatic detail. He had a knife. He snarled. We nearly died that day.

Once Sunnybird was snowed in at my house for a week. Or maybe her parents had gone out of town and it just happened to be snowing. I can’t remember. She decided to leave her folded notes for my parents all over the house, to thank them for letting her stay. Some in cabinets, some in bookshelves, some behind the TV. Each one was specific: “Thank you for letting me use your toilet.” Or, “Thank you for letting me eat your peanut butter.” We saved the ones we could find. There may be some still hidden in that house in the mountains of West Virginia.

We were pretty innocent creatures, trying to figure out life and love and other stuff, and I felt safe when I was with her. She moved to Oklahoma when we were in high school and I felt like I had lost a body part. We sent letters back and forth and she still folded them into fancy designs before she plopped them in the envelope. There were no cell phones, so if we wanted to call each other, we could only talk a few minutes because it was long distance and long distance costs money.

We lost touch over the years, but I see her sometimes on Facebook, and I’m back at the cemetery in fifth grade with a Carmelo bar and a peach Nehi, being chased by someone with black hair until I am safe again.  PS

Renee Phile loves being a mom, even if it doesn’t show at certain moments.