Black Friday Shopping – the Best Training Grounds

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition, on Fri. 3/30/2012

I’ve never been to a Black Friday Sale the day after Thanksgiving, but I think I know how those shoppers feel.  In lieu of conducting interviews and doing background reading, I’m going to base my understanding of said shoppers’ psychology on myths, legends, and sensationalized media reports.  For a column like this, that’s practically the same as conducting interviews and doing research.

We’ve all read about shoppers stampeding for discount electronics and people emerging from the fray with the last $ 15 DVD player clutched as tightly as if it were the Golden Goose herself.  The victorious shopper might end up wearing the imprint of the less successful bargain shopper’s shoe stamped on their backside, but who cares?  Shopper Superior has got that DVD player at what amounts to a steal, so if a little violence was involved, that’s to be expected.

Of course, you’ve read those stories about those kinds of shoppers.  Admit it.  Reading about someone’s egregious or bizarre behavior usually takes precedence over reading about the advances in medical research, developments in the Middle East Peace Process, or the latest blip in the economy, like watching for vital signs in a patient who has been comatose for years.

Let’s examine the characteristics of these shoppers: They line up at ungodly hours; they tend to pounce on any bargain that isn’t moving; they tend to pounce on any bargain that might be moving, too.  Sometimes, unfortunately, getting to the bargain requires that they step over, or possibly even on, other shoppers who might be slower and less efficient.  They are a little desperate.

As a bona fide substitute teacher for Fauquier County, you can have the experience of being a Black Friday shopper every time you try to land a position.  The system works like this: all the substitutes have access to a website where “jobs” are posted whenever a teacher posts his or her expected absence.  Since this is web-based, it can happen at any time.  Access to this website is restricted to those who have submitted an application, completed the training, had their backgrounds checked and their fingerprints cleared, and submitted transcripts and reference letters.

At last count, there were 770 substitutes for the 898 teachers employed by the school system.  This means that you, along with 769 other people, might be viewing this webpage all at once, waiting for that sole vacancy to be posted.  If you click on the job first, and immediately pounce on the button that says “Accept,” you get to be that teacher’s substitute.  After you accept, you can bother with the minor details of which school, what day, and what time to report.  Also, very helpfully, the teacher’s name, the subjects taught, and any other notes are posted.  According to more heavy-duty research conducted for this column, the average time that elapses between a teacher posting a vacancy and it being nabbed by a substitute is eight minutes.  Eight minutes. 

But that was back in the days of the Pony Express, I believe.  That data was announced in the fall, and it had to have come from last year.  I would love to get updated data, because I have watched that Aesop website off and on, and there has only been one job that sat there longer than three minutes.

Once, when I was young and innocent to the Aesop system, I was looking at the details of a job.  I turned momentarily to ask my husband whether he thought this sounded like a good idea.  By the time I turned my head to click “Accept” the job was gone!

If you are the careful and considerate sort of person who is going to contemplate whether or not you truly feel qualified to serve as a substitute for a language class in which you have neither expertise nor experience, you can forget it.  Someone else will have clobbered the job first.

Most of the times, the “Search for Jobs” page of the website is blank except for a message in red:  All qualifying jobs are currently filled. However, please review this web site periodically for new job listings.

The wording here should be revamped to: “Sorry, Slowpoke, someone else beat you to it again.  Why don’t you keep hitting refresh, and work on improving your hand-eye coordination in the meantime?”

So watching this page is imperative.  It is also vital that you have nothing else to do , like actual work, that could interfere with your latest work of watching this page like a hawk, or like a vulture.  When a job is posted, the whitespace will be filled with glorious data announcing details of the vacancy.  It’s like seeing a shooting star!

At this point, you have five seconds to jump on it.  Let’s hope your fingers and your internet connection are fast.  And woe to you if you have never been a Black Friday shopper.

Vineeta’s “Adventures in Vulture-land”

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on 3/23/12

Last year, I was teaching five different subjects a day.  Now, I am on a self-inflicted sabbatical.

Last semester, I was writing three to four scholarly papers per week with references and in-text citations in order to obtain a teaching license. Now, I am only writing this weekly column.  The only references I need to make here are snide ones.

Since I am neither teaching nor doing the onerous research-based writing, you might be wondering what I am doing with all of this extra time.  Sometimes, I wonder that myself.

I now have the Virginia Department of Education’s teaching license in hand, so I am supposed to be job hunting.  This column is my leisure activity, and therefore cannot be counted as real work.

I am preparing to take another Praxis II Exam next month to add to my current endorsements for Middle School Math and Middle School English.  Phase II of the Career Switcher program, which requires “only” three papers a month, additional training and classes, and establishing our own teacher’s website, will kick back in this May.  (It will probably give me a kick in the backside right about then too.)  I’ve been helping with a seminar on electronics that my eldest son is leading at Mountain Vista Governor’s School.  I’ve also served on the Middle School Math Textbook Adoption Committee with middle school teachers and other parents under the County’s Instructional Supervisor for Math, Kim Raines, who is a National Board Certified Teacher with years of experience.

Yes, I still have children, a household, dirty dishes, and mountains of de-junking.  Writing this column and padding my teaching portfolio are all just elaborate schemes to avoid this sort of domestic drudgery.  Fortunately, I have one of those academic, intellectual sorts of husbands who values learning over an immaculate house.  He’s thrilled when I can discuss the latest reading that I’ve done in electronics and doesn’t seem to notice that the house may cave in on us at any moment. 

Once, when he was in his microscopy stage, he came in off the front porch absolutely thrilled.  The two big planters that flank the door had been devoid of any decorative plants for quite some time.  They were filled with stagnant water.  “My gosh, Vin, this is great!” he gushed as he rushed to grab a Petrie dish to collect a sample.  “We’ll probably see some larvae in here.”  He asked me not to disturb the planters.  It’s pretty tough keeping up with such domestic demands, but I try.  Or don’t.  It works – so far.

I have found another way to keep abreast of teaching while avoiding housework: I am now on the substitute teachers’ roster for Fauquier County Schools. 

Years ago, I had been a substitute teacher, but fell off the roster.  Two years of inactivity as a public school substitute while I worked full time in private schools was just enough to do the trick.  You know that saying, “I’ve fallen down and I can’t get up?”  Once you fall off the roster, you have to go through the entire process of registering, attending the day-long training, having your background checked, and getting your fingerprints cleared all over again.

And that’s not a bad thing.  I doubt anyone would complain about those who spend time with our county’s school children being scrutinized as carefully as possible.  Sometimes, even that has not been enough.  No man knows the heart of another.  We can check and be checked as much and as carefully as possible.  And that’s a good thing. 

The screening may not be quite perfect, because guess who might have been in your child’s classroom recently?  Yes, you’re looking at her.

So far, I have subbed at Mountain Vista Governor’s School, Kettle Run High School, Warrenton Middle, and P.B. Smith Elementary School.  It’s a great way to interact with our best and brightest, even if they’re not acting their best and their brightest. 

Sometimes, students confuse the teacher’s day out of the classroom as their day off.  Sometimes, students confuse the substitute for a warm body with a pulse.  I realize that basic physiological functions help qualify me to be in the classroom, but it needs more than that.  Much more.  We are valued and needed professionals, absolutely vital, or so we are told.

Yet being a substitute makes me feel something like a vulture.  It’s not just for the bird’s appealing looks, or its claim to elegance.  It’s the bird’s remarkable ability to polish off leftovers of questionable freshness.  It’s that waiting for something to fall.

I don’t want your child’s teacher to be sick, or have a sick child, or to be hauled in for jury duty, or professional development, necessarily, but that’s how I can get into their classroom. Somebody needs to be out. 

According to the FCPS website, “Fast Facts 2011-2012 School Year,” our schools had 11,205 students enrolled last year, taught by 887 full-time teachers.  Guess how many substitute teachers are on the rosters right now?  770. 

So not only do you have to be a vulture, you have to be a quick vulture – or a well-liked vulture – one who is specifically requested.  More next week.

How do I get in on the Active Adult Community scene?

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition's insert on "Mature Lifestyles" 3/16/12

I’m wondering how and when I can get in on the “Active Adult” scene.  I’m curious about what goes on behind those fenced, manicured communities.  Are they keeping something in, or keeping the rest of us out? 

Haven’t you seen those billboards that advertise “Communities for the Active Adult?”  These little enclaves are restricted to those who are 55 and older.  Why, I wonder?  What do these communities do that is so special?  Are their backyard barbeques superior to the ones in neighborhoods populated by younger, less experienced chefs?  Are they saucier, more mellow, or do they use aged beef?  Is the loudest noise these residents want to hear going to be that of themselves snoring? 

Or is it just the opposite?  Are these people being wild and they don’t want anyone else to know it?  Now I’m thinking of “adult” in the context of those sickening, pasty yellow billboards that are plastered all up and down I-95.  They serve as much to pollute the mind as they do to promote their products.  Or maybe it is a tamer kind of wildness, where the residents are biking and skating around their neighborhoods without protective gear so as not to be poor role models?  (You know how impressionable those silly 54-year-olds can be.) 

And what happens when one spouse is significantly younger than the other?  Is the couple’s qualifying age determined by averaging, or by the younger partner?  Some of the more severe cases of May-December couples may wind up being disqualified.  

I guess the assumption here is that couples of the 55+ age group are not going to be bringing along a bunch of ragtag, crusty-nosed, children.  Because that can take the active right out of the adult.  I suppose these communities are for empty-nesters.  Disqualified, again. 

Mostly, these communities are meant for Baby Boomers.   “Baby Boomer” refers to the generation of people born between 1946 and 1964.  Technically, I have missed being a Boomer by two years.  Two years too late - as in I was born in 1966, not 1944, Smart Aleck. 

I have almost a decade before entering this esteemed phase of mature adulthood, but even in 2021, I doubt I will qualify.  It’s not the “adult” part that I will have a problem with.  I can sit through a war documentary as well as any other adult counterpart, and only doze off once or twice.  It’s the active part that will be problematic, of course. 

What does it mean to be an active adult?  You can clip coupons faster than your arthritic counterparts?  Does it mean you can zip into a handicapped parking spot before your neighbor, with her faulty eyesight and even faultier driving, sees it?

Of course, these are exaggerations.  If you look at a modern “mature” adult, you will probably see someone who is more fit than you, and more engaged in intellectual and community events than you were even aware of.  They just don’t make grandmas and grandpas with all those telltale signs of knitting needles and graying hairs the way they used to. 

Besides, at 55, you aren’t exactly a senior, unless there’s a discount involved.  If there’s a discount, we all want to be seniors.  We don’t even mind being entry-level seniors then - sort of a junior-senior.   Unfortunately, these discounts seem to be applied only to products with a senior stigma.  These would be medical products that are so embarrassing that you don’t want to confess to using them.  These are only advertised on channels being watched by aging adult males, well past bedtime: namely, The History Channel at 8 p.m. onwards.  Every ailment and dysfunction known to man, and mostly to man, gets good air time here.

That’s the tragic thing about aging: It’s so hard on you, physically and mentally.  Right when you have the experience and wisdom to handle it all, your equipment chooses not to cooperate.  It begins to deteriorate in an indiscriminate and merciless manner.  Sure, we all know there’s really only one alternative to the advancement of our years and the wear and tear on our systems, unless that secret, anti-aging product, for which you just received a coupon in the mail, really works.

I am still curious about the goings-on in these active adult communities.  I am planning to check one of these out some day.  Until then, I guess, I will have to be satisfied to live in a non-active, immature community.  It’s called “my house.”  Here’s one place where I am doubly qualified to be.

Jack Sprat and the Mrs.

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on 3/9/12

Do you remember Jack Sprat and his wife?  No, they haven’t been in the news for espionage or for embezzling funds or for blatant infidelity.  These are the characters from the old nursery rhyme.  Surely, you remember Jack Sprat, the man who could eat no fat?  Remember his wife?  How could you?  She didn’t even get a name.  I suppose we are supposed to be satisfied with calling her Mrs. Jack Sprat.  Regardless of her appellation, we do get the picture that she was the rounder one because she simply could eat no lean.

To me, it’s an ideal relationship.  The Sprats could go out to dinner, and after the Mrs. had wedged herself into the booth, and Mr. Sprat had planted his knobby knees under the other side of the booth, they could order just one meal.  He would guzzle down the water and chomp on a few ice chips while the Mrs. went to work on the creamy mashed potatoes and the slab of beef.  I’m sure she would need a milkshake, and if you’re going to splurge on a milkshake, why would you deny yourself the whipped topping and that single Maraschino cherry?  Jack is going to indulge in none of that.

What about the blooming onion with the sauce?  It has its basis in a vegetable.  Forget that. Jack might have to settle for only a whiff of that calorie-laden decadence, and even that might be too much for him.  The aroma alone would probably bowl him over.  He would probably just eat the green beans, even though that would seem somewhat cannibalistic.  If the man has any fat on him, it’s going to be in the form of his wallet. 

When the dessert rolls around, she might let him have a bit of the fruit filling from her pie – if he behaves himself and doesn’t make rude comments regarding her calorie intake.

I feel something like that couple.  My husband possesses much better will power than I do.  If he decides he will or won’t do something, you may as well throw in the towel.  You might feel like throwing the towel at him, but he is fairly firm in his convictions. 

He has a very strict dietary regimen.  Lots of tomatoes and fish – oatmeal and green tea, almonds and walnuts, blueberries, and spinach salads, and the occasional sugar-free cookie.  I, on the other hand, will everything else.  By choice.

The other day, our nine-year-old daughter complained that he hadn’t even tasted the birthday cake that she had dutifully made for her brother, even though she had removed the frosting from his tiny portion.  (I might have helped save the planet by making sure the frosting did not go to waste.)

When I conveyed his latest affront, he decided to be a good sport and made a big show of eating that one morsel of cake.  One.  It put the biggest smile on our little girl, because Betty Crocker isn’t always a piece of cake, you know.  It takes so little to make some people happy.  For a smile like that, I could have eaten the whole cake.  In fact, I might have…in small portions, of course.

So, what is the secret to the happy marriage of Jack and his nameless wife with the shameless eating habits?  We’re never told if Mrs. Sprat is a marathon runner.  You never know.  At least she might have been assigned a number for us to remember her by.  From the illustrations that accompany these rhymes, though, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that she was not.

You may recall that my wedding and engagement rings had to be cut off of my finger in the summer, just a few months before our 25^th anniversary.  That was because the 25 extra pounds I have added over the years had decided to aggregate right around that ring finger.

My husband, however, has lost 45 pounds over the last year.  A couple of months ago, as he was changing a filter in the car (at night), his wedding band slipped right off and went clinking into the abyss.  It hasn’t turned up anywhere in the car, and we still haven’t found it in the driveway or the grass. 

So, as a result, 25 years into our marriage, neither of us has our original wedding band on.  It’s a good thing I don’t believe in omens.

In the meantime, if someone wants to lend me a metal detector, don’t be shy. Mrs. Sprat will be happy to take you on a tour of the driveway.

Happy Birthday, “Surge”!

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on Fri. March 2, 2012

Our three boys’ birthdays fall in the space of one month.  They will soon be 7, 14, and 17.   The youngest was born on February 28^th in Ohio in 2005, just five months before we moved here.  He is finally forty pounds.  Here is one child who is happy to be in a booster seat because it’s a promotion from that car seat.  Happy Birthday, Nathaniel!

The two older boys were born in Northern California.  The middle son will be fourteen on March 31^st.  Happy Birthday, Niles!

My eldest son, who is the third child, has his birthday on March 4^th.  Happy Birthday, Sergio!  I can’t believe you’re 17. 

There were times that I thought he might not survive childhood.  Sometimes, frankly, I thought I wouldn’t survive him.  He was chronically sick, tortured by an eczema that prevented him from sleeping through the night, and besieged by so many food allergies that he could only eat what I made at home, from scratch.  Have you tasted my cooking?  As if he wasn’t tortured enough.

I know how fortunate we are – we have anesthesia and antibiotics and public sanitation.  We have relatively easy transportation and ridiculously easy communication.  We can expect our children to survive infancy.  We live in a vastly wealthy nation compared to most of the inhabitants of earth.  We have access to plentiful and safe food, and we usually have clean water.  (I hope this doesn’t raise any blood pressures in Bealeton.)  We live in a time and place where our dangers tend to be the hurried pace of life or the excess of things – food, pleasure, possessions, and leisure time. 

But there are always the challenges.  People who have not lived with a two-year-old human being sometimes don’t understand how unreasonable these cute little people can be.  The theory of getting them to do what you want, when you want, is very simple - until you try to put it into practice.  This varies with each child, adult, your combined moods, and temperaments.  Other factors may include the ambient air pressure, which side of the bed you happened to roll out of, and whether or not you are wearing “angry” colors.

When our two eldest daughters were two and four years old, my brother, who was doing his medical residency rotations, came to stay with us in Northern California.  He brought with him my very sweet sister-in-law, a perennially cheerful person, and their two sons, ages four and three at the time.  Our household expanded to eight people, with half of them being preschoolers.

Those five or six weeks were a joyous time.  It flew by.  After a few days together, however, I thought to myself that my sister-in-law didn’t quite understand child discipline.  Those boys were out of control, I thought.  Poor thing.

Then, I had a boy of my own.

Not just any boy, either.  He was Sergio.  Much of his infancy is a blur of projectile vomit and his screaming whenever I tried to set him down.  There was crying to, but I soon learned to control my emotions.  I used to load him into a backpack carrier just so I could vacuum the house.

(It would be years later when I finally acquiesced and let my husband talk me into having a cleaning service help us out.  There should be no question as to who is the smarter one.  What was I trying to prove, exactly?  That I could do it all, save money, and become neurotic whenever sticky hands approached a glass door I had just cleaned?)

My Sergio might have been a difficult baby, but he was also exceptionally (and redeemingly) cute.  I might be biased, but on a tour through Yosemite National Park once, a woman cooed over him and asked repeatedly if she could take him with her.  There is a fine line between flattering and frightening someone.  By the end of the ride, I was scared.

Sergio became a difficult little boy, perhaps because he saw and valued things differently.  His younger years were filled with what, to me, were weird obsessions.  I developed coping mechanisms.  I allowed him to ride in his car seat while holding an electric weed whacker just so we could get places.  I took him to church with a thirty-foot extension cord coiled into a big diaper bag.

By the time he was three, my parenting skills had not just deteriorated: They were gone.   Leaving the grocery store, a bagger who once escorted me could not understand why I insisted on pushing the cart.  Every time she tried to commandeer the cart, Sergio, buckled in the cart, had a shrieking fit.  She gave up and let me push.  She bounced along beside me and said, “You know, my younger brother was just like that.  They finally put him on lithium.”  She eyed my boy and leaned over and whispered, “Have you looked into lithium?”

Sergio is now taller than me (not difficult), weighs more than me (a little more difficult), and is a young man I am proud to claim.  The past seventeen years have been quite a ride!  Even without the lithium.

Happy Birthday, "Surge"!

A young writer in residence - or, the handwriting on the wall

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on February 24, 2012


Recently, I learned that we have a budding writer in our home.  You may think, generously, “Oh, it’s in the blood.”  Or perhaps you saw the article that mentioned my eldest son winning the annual speech contest held by the generous Rotary Club of Warrenton.  Maybe you remember my children’s poetry when this paper ran the Kids’ Page or that my eldest daughter won the “Why I Love Warrenton” contest in the student category years ago in The Warrenton Lifestyle Magazine. Perhaps you heard my daughters give their speeches at their respective graduation ceremonies from Fauquier High School in 2008 and in 2010, or my middle son’s speech before becoming President of Warrenton Middle School’s student council.

That traditional kind of writing is not what I’m talking about.  My new writer in residence has found a far more interesting medium.  You know how some things are revealed to you only when you see the handwriting on the wall?  That’s what I’m talking about.  Literally.

Last weekend, because we are a super fun loving and partying sort of family, my husband worked with me on assembling some electronics.  That’s to help me keep in touch with my “inner engineer.”

Last weekend also being an extra-long weekend, we decided to do some fun things, such as have the children remove wall marks with that amazing Mr. Clean Eraser.  This sort of household activity can be lots of fun, especially if you don’t frequently overdose your children on things popularly construed to be fun, like going to the movies or to parties.

Hopefully, you know I am writing tongue-in-cheek.  Of course, we enjoyed the glorious sunshine at Rady Park on Saturday.  We brought in lunch and considered driving to the movies, but chose to watch one at home, where everyone could snuggle or lounge as necessary.  My husband worked on projects with each of the children too.

That’s when the handwriting on the wall came to me as clearly as if it had been written on the wall.  It was, actually.  Naturally, everyone denied doing it.  No matter.  Lately, my mothering has degenerated to tyranny.  It’s not “innocent until proven guilty” around here.  They’re all guilty.  I know it.  I live with them, remember?

The writer at large had written in teeny, tiny letters.  One phrase, on a bathroom door said, “God bless America, my home sweet home.”  My discovery coincided with President’s Day Weekend.  I should be proud.  All of this was compressed to a size that could easily be hidden by an adult thumb.  Does this mean I keep my children under my thumb, or that I suppress patriotic writing?  Not at all.

This may surprise you, but we have loads of paper in the house.  We have whiteboards and computers too.  We even have grains of rice, if someone insists on specializing in tiny writing.  Any of these are acceptable places for writing, but apparently, they are just not as appealing as the walls and the doors. 

In another “inconspicuous” spot behind yet another bathroom door, there is a “Hello, is anybody home?” penciled there.  This one, I learned from the young writer, was inspired and done years ago after watching “Beauty and the Beast.”  At least for that one, I got a confession.

For the patriotic musing, I simply chose the most likely suspect – someone with a track record for wall-writing, someone with a similar handwriting, someone who had attended a school where this song was sung every morning just after the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag.  That’s the candidate who gets my vote. They can have a taste of democracy when they leave home.  Hopefully, their new home will have more accommodating walls.

It reminds me of a school day years ago, when only the two youngest were at home with me.  I heard alarms of, “Mom!  Mom!  The Baby is writing on the wall!”  I dashed upstairs.  (I weighed less then.)  I had a habit of referring to the youngest child as “The Baby” even when that child was toddling about and speaking.  Everybody’s had a turn at being The Baby.

I saw that, indeed, The Baby had made a huge swirling scribble, right on the bedroom wall.  I shouted at The Baby to arrest any further artistic impulses he might have.  I turned to thank the older child for alerting me.  There she stood, with pencil in guilty hand, and an entire mural on the wall ahead of her.  There was a little house, the straight line for the garden and a few flowers popping up.  The picture was complete with that charmingly childish sun shining its warm and loving rays straight down onto the scene.

I shouted that child’s name out, in full, as written on the birth certificate.  “You said The Baby was writing on the wall, but you were doing it too!” 

She shrugged her helpless little shoulders and widened her innocent, four-year-old eyes.  “Well, The Baby was writing on the wall!  Then, I had to do it too.”

There is no longer a baby in this house.  The writer, however, apparently still lurks among us.

Could you help bring a little “magic” to the our area?

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on February 17, 2012

Kesem.  It means magic.  For the children who attend Camp Kesem, they need miracles more than magic.
 
This free, weeklong overnight camp is run by college student volunteers every summer and serves children ages six to thirteen.  It is a chance for children to share the joys of childhood and remember to laugh and celebrate youth.  And it is a chance for them to forget.

The children who attend Camp Kesem are identified by oncologists, hospice caregivers, and grief counselors.  They share more than youth and a week of fun. They all bear the devastating mark of cancer.  The one thing that unites the children of Camp Kesem is the thing that scars them: They each have a parent who is or who was diagnosed with cancer.

I don’t want to be ugly or dark in today’s column.  You may tell me that, genetically, this is unavoidable for me, regardless of my topic.  But I think you know what I mean.  Cancer pervades us.  Sometimes it invades us or those whom we love most dearly.

Nearly 12 million people in the United States were diagnosed with, or already living with, cancer in January of 2008.  The American Cancer Society’s website defines this as cancer prevalence, which is different from cancer incidence.  The “incidence” of cancer is the new diagnoses each year.   This year, statisticians expect 1,638,910 new cases of cancer in the US.

For the children whose world is unraveled by learning their parent, their pillar, has cancer, this is likely the only incidence that matters in their world.  Mom is sick, or maybe Dad is sick - very, very sick.  There is an upheaval of priorities.  Their childhoods, their homes, and their routines – everything changes.

I was in the ninth grade when we found out that my mom had cancer of the larynx.  When I reflect now, I marvel at my parents’ fortitude.  She was only forty years old when her persistent, inexplicable cough was finally given a name and a root cause.  She had never smoked.  I can still remember my Latin teacher whispering to another teacher that my mom had cancer.  That was the first time I comprehended the gravity of cancer.

My mom is now 72 years old.  That’s not to say she hasn’t had her challenges; I think her medical charts outweigh her.  But she has survived.  Her vocal cord was removed and left her with a raspy voice and a series of tracheostomies that required suction to keep her airway clear.  She cannot raise her voice, and often claps to get our attention.  But those are minor. 

The thing that saddens me is that she lost her ability to sing.  My mother loved to sing.  Don’t tell anyone, but so do I.  Like me, she was never particularly good at it, either.  But, oh, she loved to sing.  While cooking or doing housework, she would sing the plaintive love songs of the old Hindi black and white films.  That simple joy was taken with the vocal cord.

I have only heard her wistfully mention this once.  She has seen her children graduate, marry, and have children of their own.  She has seen grandchildren graduate too.  These joys she would not be denied.  She has lived and thrived and survived.

But all are not so fortunate.  And for some who linger, the pain is excruciating and overwhelming.  For those of us who are not oncologists or research scientists, the most we can do is to pray and hope and offer comfort and support.

Many choose to assist research efforts by fundraising, and we can take heart in the advances in earlier detection as well as new treatment methods. 

But those are for the patient.  Camp Kesem serves those children who stand on the periphery of cancer, watching their parents’ lives be overtaken and swallowed up by cancer.

Begun over a decade ago at Stanford University by four college students, Camp Kesem served 37 campers in the year 2000.  “Kesem” means magic in Hebrew.  In the last decade, Camp Kesem has spread to 37 chapters in 22 states.  In 2011, nearly 1,500 campers had a chance to forget their worries and just be children.  They were served by almost one thousand student leaders on campuses across the nation.  While these college students serve, they learn to lead.  The purpose of Camp Kesem is really two-fold.

In our area, the University of Virginia, the University of Richmond, and George Washington University already offer camps.  Last year, my eldest daughter at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore helped to bring one to their campus as well.  This August, JHU students will host their first Camp Kesem.  It will serve children in Maryland, greater DC, and Virginia. 

While the camp is free and the student labor is too, there are real expenses involved with such an enterprise.  The students need to raise about $ 20,000 to run the camp.  If you are inclined to help in this endeavor, please visit www.campkesem.org/jhu to learn more or donate, and specify JHU on the form. 

Thank you so much.