Slow Learner

So much is changing lately.  Spring is turning to summer (though you wouldn't know it, with our temperatures in the 40s and 50s this weekend, it feels downright autumnal).  We have all sorts of new neighbors in the four-plex next door, one of whom was escorted out of the building today by three St. Paul police officers while carrying his worldly possessions in a garbage bag. 

I have to say it was a little unnerving for me to arrive home from a four-year-old friend's birthday party to three squad cars next door.  Cassidy didn't even seem to really notice--she was too busy making sure her pink balloon from the party didn't blow away--but Bridger was very curious and wanted to know if we could find out why the police were there.   After the police were gone, I talked to a few neighbors and they said it appeared to be a domestic situation and probable eviction of a boyfriend who'd been staying with a woman who lives in the building.  In any case, I sincerely hope that all involved will be safe.  All I know for sure is that warmer weather has brought louder parties next door, louder, sometimes angry voices in the fourplex's back yard, and new challenges to my feelings of security in my home.  I'm trying to work on staying in the present without letting fears run away with me, and trying to find little ways to connect with the people on the other side of the chain-link fence. 

For me, the biggest change lately is that our beloved homeschooling play group looks as if it might be breaking off into some smaller splinter groups.  It's probably a healthy development, but it leaves me feeling up in the air and a little scared about what our routine is going to look like and which friends we might not see as frequently and easily.  For the last two years, we've met most Tuesdays and it's been amazingly idyllic as far as I'm concerned.  But the group has experienced a rapid spike in growth this spring, and for my family and a few others, it's just gotten too big and crazy to be fun any more.  I'm hopeful that we can all handle the changes in a way that leaves friendships intact.

Another change is that I'm going to be serving on a task force to look for ways to keep our neighborhood library open.  The city wants the library to "partner" with an unnamed non-profit to reduce costs and/or bring in revenue.  I just want to make sure that partnership doesn't equal "we turn the library into a non-profit organization's office space and you can come pick up books you've reserved online at a little kiosk."  Uh-uh.  That ain't gonna fly.  I'm nervous about getting involved in the political process in a way I never have before, but excited to learn from the experience and hopefully strengthen my ability to stay clear about what I think is right while listening to others' opinions.

As far as the kids are concerned, play continues begetting learning around here.  Bridger's obsessed with Power Miners Legos and setting up sequential scenes with them, a sort of stop-motion animation without the animation.  He really enjoys taking pictures of his scenes, too, leading him to learn all sorts of things about close-ups, background, foreground, angles of shots, and so on.  My husband Brian got a slew of kids' books about mining from the library, so he and Bridger have been reading together about the gold rush and the working conditions of 19th-century British miners and learning intriguing new words like "gangue," (pronounced "gang," it means the sludge and mud surrounding the desired mineral you're mining for).  Who knows where it will all lead?

Cassidy is looking forward to starting a preschool music and movement class at a new Celtic cultural center in our neighborhood.  It'll feature Irish music and some Irish-dance style steps.  She's been bouncy since she was tiny--as a baby, she got around not so much by crawling but by bouncing from place to place on her rear end, and as a toddler, she didn't walk, she hopped.  Everywhere.  She still hops and bounces so much that she already has the calves of an athlete, firm, meaty little wedges like the ones you see on hard-core bicycling enthusiasts.  I think Irish dance might just be the dance for her.

So, as I said--many changes.  I keep trying to remember something a mama friend of mine said last week.  We were talking about how much longer it takes to get things done and how much you have to resign yourself to slowing down after you have kids.

"I have to slow down three times as much as I think I do just to be able to listen to them," she said with a laugh.

Her words have been reinforced for me all the more by a book I'm reading now called Distracted:  The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, by Maggie Jackson.  Like the title, the book's a little melodramatic at times, but her central premise rings true to me:  that we are so busy juggling multiple tasks, connecting with multiple people via the Internet, and racing around at breakneck pace, we are losing our capacity for extended reflection and concentration.  She tells the story of a psychology professor who helped a chronic overeater overcome his addiction to drive-thru food.  The professor simply asked the man to pull over to the side of the road to eat, instead of eating while he drove.  My God, this food tastes awful, the man realized.  I imagine him shaking his head and laughing.  I imagine him throwing his crappy foil-wrapped burger out the window.  I imagine the combination of sadness and liberation he must have felt, and I feel a kind of release, too.

How many times am I just like that man, scarfing down the moments of my life without really tasting them, rushing to get to the next moment?  It's only when I slow down that I notice the ways that my life tastes awful, and the ways it tastes really, really sweet.