Last Thursday I went to hear Madeline Levine talk about her new book called The Price of Privilege. She writes about an epidemic of depression, anxiety and substance abuse in children in middle to upper class areas, such as Marin.

Since my daughter is only two, I do not have experience raising an adolescent in Marin, but I do have a great deal of experience teaching adolescents.

Looking back on my high school teaching career, a major cause of this burgeoning epidemic is clear: the emphasis on performance rests at the heart of the problem.

With this emphasis on performance, let’s skip right to graduation and forget the process it took everyone, students and teachers alike, to get there.

First of all, the school where I taught in Marin publishes for all to see the colleges and universities the graduating students will attend. While it may be interesting to see all of the different places the students will go, I think this publication sends the wrong message: where you go to college is more important than anything you did to get there, and is the most important aspect of who you are.

Nothing else is published about the students, not a special quote cherished by the student, not the community service the student performed, not any aspect of the student’s personality.

That Timmy is going to Stanford is all we get about him. Teachers are also victims of a performance-based culture at graduation. Students pick a few teachers to walk with them. The rest don’t even have a seat at graduation, let alone a part in the ceremony.

I remember my first graduation experience in Marin, leaning against a tree near the back, barely able to hear what was being said. Even as a confident adult who knew deep down that I was a good teacher and that I should be proud that I put my heart and soul into my job, I felt this overwhelming sense of failure because I was not chosen to walk with them.

This is in stark contrast to a school where I taught in Colorado where even though four-thousand students attended, every single faculty member walked proudly in robes with the students, and we were even reserved front row seating, so that we could see and hear the students we worked so hard to get to this point.

Now if I was feeling this crushed, I can only imagine how insecure adolescents who are struggling to find themselves must feel in a performance heavy culture.

This is not to say that we should protect our kids from all disappointments. They need failures to grow and learn from, but they also need to know that their worth and identity are not dependant on grade point average, college acceptances, and varsity sports teams.

Now I sit here, not as a teacher but as a mother who knows how easy it is to get caught in the tangles of a cultural phenomenon that has the potential to squander creativity, individuality and self worth.

How can I impart to my daughter that achievement is good if coupled with intrinsic motivation? How can I show her that working to our full potential gives us a sense of pride, but that our foibles and eccentricities are what make us human, and therefore able to love and be loved? I do not yet know the answers to my questions and that frightens me a bit. For now, hugs and kisses seem to solve most problems in my two- year old’s life.

By Rebecca Elegant

Labels: adolescents, anxiety, depression, graduation, Madeline Levine, Marin, performance, Rebecca Elegant, The Price of Privilege, upper class

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My seven-years old son asked me recently, “Mom, is war ever good?” We were driving in beautiful Marin, past the emerald green hills and the sparkling blue water of San Francisco Bay.

I paused, and my thoughts raced through my head, searching for just the right words and just the right message. I thought of all the articles and books I ever read as a teacher and as a mother on explaining complicated issues to young children. My brain quickly turned up the information it retained on the warfare philosophy and latest war-related news, complete with visual images seen on TV and computer screens, as well as latest war casualties’ statistics. What could I answer to a seven-year old?

Suddenly, I recalled the familiar voice of my mother telling me stories of her growing up in Russia during and after WWII. It was her voice that made my throat tighten, my heart beating rapidly, my mind still desperately searching for words. I sensed that my answer was not instantly coming, and I said, “Let me think about it, okay?”

A few months ago, when Alex’s questions were getting increasingly complicated, I often found myself short of factual knowledge. Exactly how many miles are there from our planet to the moon? What does an artificial heart look like? For cases like these, I explained to Alex’s dismay that “sometimes Mom does not know everything, and she needs more time to look it up and think about it.”

Soon Alex grew to like that answer, because it often meant that we’d look stuff up together online or in the library. I also learned that it meant that I will definitely be reminded to account for my “thinking time.” As I invoked my “let me think about it” answer deferment, I knew that a few hours later I will be asked that very same question again.

My mother’s voice came to me from my childhood, when my bedtime stories were not about Goldilocks or dinosaurs, like the ones my son hears from me these days. They were my mother’s childhood memories, told in a quiet half-whisper in the darkness of my room in our apartment in the center of Moscow.

She told me of being called the “German bastard” by other children, because her birthday fell on the first day of war for Russia. She also told me about her family living in the church basement for several cold winter months, while their village in the outskirts of Moscow was bombed flat. Speaking slowly and calmly, she’d tell me, “Everyone bombed us, both our planes and the Germans. Bombs and bullets are too stupid to know who to kill and who to spare, they do not pick sides. Everyone who was out of the basement was dead.”

My mom also told me that the reason we didn’t have any family jewelry was because my grandmother exchanged all of her gold rings and earrings for two loafs of crudely baked brown bread to feed her five children, including my then four-year old mom. Even with that, her two seven-years old siblings died of starvation, their emaciated bodies forever etched in my mother’s memories. They were my uncle and aunt I never got to meet.

She told me about my grandfather coming back from war triumphant, angry, addicted to alcohol, and missing a leg. My mother’s stories left me sleeping fitfully, dreaming of black smoke of my mother’s burning village, of planes dropping bombs on women and children, and of the scarred stump of my grandpa’s leg.

Growing up during the Cold War, I was plagued with the anxiety of a seemingly imminent war threat from the United States. After learning of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in school, I grilled my much older brother with questions: “What exactly happens when a nuclear bomb explodes? Why do Americans want to start a nuclear war with us? How long will it take me to die if the bomb hits my school?”

An aspiring young scientist, he was all too happy to provide me with gruesome details. For my third grade art contest, I drew a picture of a big, black bomb with two thick red lines crossing it off and a white dove with an olive branch flying in the background. I did not win any prize.

As I got older, things gradually changed. The Cold War ended when I was a teenager, and America became our far away capitalist model to emulate. I moved to California to go to college, and my son was born here, in a comfortable hospital room overlooking the mountains of Marin County. In the beauty of emerald green hills and in our peaceful if hectic everyday life, my mother’s bedtime stories, my nightmares and my brother’s graphic modern warfare explanations began to slowly fade away. Only occasional glimpses of TV news about the war in Iraq kept them from completely disappearing from the back of my mind. My son’s question brought it all flooding back.

Sometimes, your mind does strange things, and it does not recall memories in the exact way it recorded them. A mother now, I suddenly see my son in the black smoke of a burning village. I see him in the dying, starving child in the basement and in burned bodies of nuclear bomb survivors. I imagine his face in place of a uniformed picture of a fallen American soldier in Iraq.

Is war ever good? It was such a short question. I could have given him a long, complicated, well-researched answer complete with statistics and examples. As a teacher, I could have possibly found the way to word it in a child-appropriate way. Instead, when we got home that day and he surely remembered to ask me again, I quietly sat him on my lap, hugged him tight, and simply said, “No.”

By Svetlana Nikitina

Labels: fighting war, Grandma, Marin, Moscow, Olive Branch, Russia, San Francisco Bay Area, Svetlana Nikitina, war casualties, WW11

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I arrived just as the dance recital was beginning. I looked around for a friend whose daughter goes to middle school with my stepson, Jay.

I took a seat and saw somebody waving at me from the front row. It wasn’t my friend. It was my stepson’s mother, Nancy.

I slowly waved back. We’ve had an uneasy alliance over the years so I was uncertain how to react.

I mouthed, “Is there a seat there?”

She shook her head, no. I pointed to the empty chair next to me and waved her over. When she sat next to me, I thought, now what?

What followed is what usually does in uncomfortable situations – dreadful silence, punctuated by a few long, and some short, smiles in between.

Slowly, words explained what remained unspoken. We talked about Jay’s improving school grades. I told her what a wonderful brother he is to my daughter, Mimi. Nancy told me she had quit her job and was trying to figure out what to do with her life. I told her I was still doing my writing.

Then the music started as the sixth, seventh and eight-grade classes each took turns dancing to big band, salsa and disco music. Jay channeled his outer John Travolta circa 1970-something.

I mentioned to Nancy that I was signing Jay up for Hawaiian paddling this summer, which would help him get into shape for high school.

“And the meets are every Saturday so we would love if you and your boyfriend would come, too. I think it would make Jay really happy if we were all there together for him, kinda as a family.”

Nancy said they would like to, as Turn the Beat Around blared from the speakers.

In many ways, I think we did.

I had to phone my husband as I walked to the car.

“Honey, guess what? Your current wife just sat next to your ex-wife as we watched your son dance.”

It was a Marin Moment.

By Dawn Yun

Labels: By Dawn Yun, Marin, stepmother

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There comes a time in every woman’s life when you realize that you’re considered older by the general populace.

Perhaps it’s being referred to as “ma’am” more often than the youthful “miss.” Or having your children wonder what those “stripes” are on your forehead. You may realize that your dentist isn’t discussing clean gums and plaque build-up so much as preserving your teeth and anticipated root canals. Yet, I still kind of hope that I’ll be carded at BevMo, as unrealistic as that might seem to other shoppers with good vision. And I kind of believe it, too, crazy as that might seem.

I don’t feel old. I assume it is earned experience in dressing that prevents me from prancing out like a mini-clad socialite and not matronly modesty. I can still run a hair faster than my oldest child and hoist two wiggly kids about in a ruckus game of monster. No knee-hi stockings or Geritol tablets for me! I eat an organic diet and avoid preservatives. Age is an attitude, right?

Right?

I find myself at the cosmetic counter of the local department store in need of a new lipstick (since my pinky can no longer pull out the residue of my favorite color). After a few minutes of waiting, the sales attendants finish their chat about hair color and depart to actually help customers like me, thereby interrupting my thought about the lack of manners nowadays and how when I was their age I would have never…

While the sales attendant hunts through drawers of cosmetics, I comment about the witty packaging for scented lotions, muted eye shadows and face masks. When time permits, I’ll return to try out fun new colors and see about that honey scrub.

Transaction completed, she hands me my plastic bag of lipstick and then offers, “I added a couple samples of firming solution for you to try.

“Wha?” Is she kidding me? Firming? I need firming? What have I done to her? I merely came to pick up a simple lipstick and I’m leaving with a “you’re saggy!” send-off?

I hear myself respond “are you serious?” which she apparently takes as a nod to her generosity.

So there is it.

I’ve been called out by a Macy’s sales attendant. I am not the firm-skinned, strong YOUNG mother I think I am. To her, to whom I could have given birth at 16, I truly wish many forehead “stripes” and knee-hi stockings.

By Maija Threlkeld

Labels: Maija Threlkeld, Marin

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