Here Comes the Sun

Six years ago I took this photo of Bridger exulting in his first real glimpse of crocuses. This week, the crocuses came up again, and we marveled at how they closed their petals up tight when it got cold, then opened again when the temperature warmed.

These days we're on kind of an Anglophile kick around here. We started with Peter Pan, a very interesting read with a fascinating narrator who seems on the surface to detest his child characters for their beastly cockiness and inconsiderate behavior, but whom you can tell is actually reveling in their ability to be "gay and innocent and heartless" enough to fly.

After reading Peter Pan three times in a row, we read The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, another big hit, and now we're several chapters into The Secret Garden, a wonderful book to read in spring, and interesting because it features a protagonist who starts out unsympathetic and who blossoms through the course of the book into a truly compassionate, vibrantly alive young girl. I'm absolutely loving it, and the kids seem to be enjoying it, too. (It's also reminding me of the grand literary tradition of British orphans fending their way through a cruel world to find their true place, from Dickens and Charlotte Bronte right on up through James and the Giant Peach and Harry Potter.)

It's a time of growth, and not just for the crocuses and daffodils. Cassidy has been overcoming her longtime, near-paralyzing fear of dogs. If she sees cute dogs in public that are small and appear unlikely to bark, lick, or jump on her, she wants to go pet them. We've taken to scoping out prospective dog friends--does that one move fast, or slow? Is it straining at the leash, or just barely chugging along? It's been amazing to see her start to kick this phobia of hers, and we're learning a lot about the varieties of dog behavior and temperament, too.

Bridger is reading with more and more ease, volunteering to help out around the house, and showing a lot of generosity and kindness toward his sister lately, as well.

Brian is enjoying taking a martial arts class at the wonderful martial arts school that Bridger used to attend, Kuk Sool Won of St. Paul, and he's planning to compete in the Midwest Kuk Sool Won tournament in St. Louis in April.

As for me, I'm coming out of a depression that's been dogging me off and on since late January. The sunshine and warmer weather helped a lot. So did talking with friends, making the effort to meditate regularly, and getting out and taking more walks. I also decided to work with an unschooling-friendly life coach to clarify some questions that have been dogging me: How do I take better care of myself while being more present for my family? How do I fit my own creative dreams and goals into my life with my children? And how can I become, as the life coach put it, more rooted in my homeschooling choices--flexible enough to bend when needed, but stable at the same time?

In Dr. Dolittle, I actually found an unlikely hero to inspire me at this juncture in our lives. At one point on their sea voyage, an experienced but annoying stowaway sailor is warning that Dr. Dolittle is doing everything wrong and they're surely all going to die if they follow Dr. Dolittle's lead. Dr. Dolittle is steering toward land to put the stowaway off the boat at the next port.

The book's narrator, a young boy who's been taken on as Dr. Dolittle's assistant, has a conversation with the parrot Polynesia about all the hubbub:

"Do you really think," I interrupted, "that it is safe for the Doctor to cross the Atlantic without any regular seaman on his ship?"

You see, it had upset me quite a good deal to find out all the things we had been doing were wrong, and I was beginning to wonder what might happen if we ran into a storm. . . But Polynesia merely tossed her head scornfully.

"Oh, bless you, my boy," said she, "you're always safe with John Dolittle. Remember that. . . Of course it is perfectly true that the Doctor does do everything wrong. But with him it doesn't matter. Mark my words, if you travel with John Dolittle, you always get there, as you heard him say. . . Sometimes the ship is upside down when you get there, and sometimes it's right way up. But you get there just the same."

So here we go, bobbing along in our upside-down boat, heading for an unseen shore we can't even really imagine.