Changing Hawaii
THE worst part of UH finals week, I remember, wasn't the tests themselves but the time right before, when students crammed and caffeinated themselves into a stupor. Kids’ exams
test their mothers
as well...The ordeal included long hours spent at Hamilton or Sinclair Library hunched over textbooks. Only a yellow text highlighter lent color to our droning, black-and-white existence.
That last dreaded trek to the classroom, on leaden feet, would measure what we'd learned.
After it was over, hee hah! The world seemed glorious. The sky was blue, the leaves bright green and, man, it was good to be alive. Ala Moana Beach, here we come!
When we tossed our tasseled caps into the air on graduation day, it commemorated a thrilling end to our journey: No more tests, baby!
Well, not quite. Fate can be a mean-spirited monster.
Question: What's more stressful than taking exams yourself? Answer: Your kid's taking exams.
This has been the longest week of my 43-year-old existence. Since Memorial Day, the living-room carpet has been strewn with papers, books, index cards, open cans of juice and semi-healthy snacks.
In the midst of this devastation, at ground zero, was my 13-year-old daughter, stooped over her reading material and oblivious to the stressed-out authority figure lurking nearby.
I tried to be quiet, as unobtrusive as possible, but frequently the pensive St. Andrew's Priory eighth-grader would lob some lofty query in my direction -- such as, "What is the basis of nuclear energy?" -- thereby shattering my mask of serenity.
I wanted to rush over, to give her a hug and all of the answers, too. Heck, I wanted to take the darn tests for her myself!
So, it took all of the restraint this mommy could muster to calmly reply, "Look it up, hon," and resume whatever mundane task I was doing (or pretending to do).
Yes, ma'am, I tried to be the picture of nonchalance, but my stomach was so full of knots that not even Popeye the Sailor could undo them. Call it parental angst.
Every so often -- for instance, when she whined rhetorically, "Aww, do I really have to know this stuff? Is it going to help me in my everyday life?" -- a little white lie was in order. "Absolutely," I'd reply.
Reassured, the pupil would return to reviewing Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" or conjugating French verbs or memorizing the population of the Maldives because, by golly, someday this knowledge was going to come in handy. Her mother said it would.
IN the far-off future, my kiddo will appreciate the special reason for all this studying. It will be on the day that she helps her own offspring with homework and agonizes while they cram for exams.
Omigosh. Does that mean another tortuous twist of the familial cycle? Could grandparental angst be even more stressful than parental angst? Will this suffering never end?
Aw, we'll survive, I guess. Just as I was thrilled at the end of my studies, I'm equally ecstatic about the end of my baby's school year -- until summer classes begin, that is.
And then there's high school, her anticipated graduation in 2003, and the graduations of generations to come.
Whoever said life is a constant test wasn't kidding.
Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
DianeChang@aol.com, or by fax at 523-7863.