Play School

Shutting Down This Shop, Opening Another

2010-07-20T16:01:00.000-07:00

I've got a new blog now, Skills For Tomorrow, with a focus on how I'm trying to learn to be more self-sufficient and less of an energy-guzzler. Please join me!

Cheers!

Watering the Seeds of Joy

2010-04-04T19:55:00.000-07:00

Today we celebrated Buddha's birthday at the Zen Center by pouring sweet tea over a statue of the baby Buddha and chanting the Heart Sutra many, many times while everyone got their turn to give Buddha his bath, eventually leaving my kids splayed like limp noodles across my lap, mowed down by the sheer drone of it all. Bridger got to carry the little Buddha statue in to the zendo, and he was very dignified and composed, bowing at the altar without any coaching. "I helped put flowers on the pagoda, too!" he said proudly (meaning the little wooden lattice-work shelter over the Buddha statue).

The guiding teacher, Byakuren Judith Ragir, talked today about watering the seeds of joy, an image I find lovely and helpful at this time of year. She said that there are four allies of joy--generosity, beauty, simplicity, and gratitude--and urged us to watch for the times our minds turn to complaining and whining and to see if we can gently turn our gazes to one of the four allies of joy instead.

I tried it today, walking alongside Cassidy on her trike. She was scooting along very slowly, and Brian and Bridger were already at the park where I wanted to join them. I started getting agitated, thinking about all the fun I was missing with the boys at the park. Then I thought of the four allies of joy, and gratitude seemed to be a good one to try.

There was plenty to be grateful for. My daughter was healthy, getting exercise on her trike, happy alongside me if I could just stop pestering her that we were going to miss playing with Bridger and Dad if we didn't get to the park faster. The day was warm and beautiful, with green things springing out all over the place. I noticed that by walking slowly, I could get a better look at the tiny new leaves on branches, the tulip stems swelling up with flowers. I could notice the brown creeper pecking its way up a trunk, beautifully camouflaged against the rough bark. What was there to be agitated about, for goodness's sake?

The mindfulness practice for our whole Zen Center sangha this month is to water the seeds of joy through just this kind of practice. I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

Mighty Midway Love

2010-03-28T19:41:00.000-07:00

Last night was full of bad dreams--I dreamed that the yard suddenly filled with fierce tigers, baboons, and other dangerous escaped zoo animals while Bridger was playing outside by himself. I dreamed of being unpleasantly surprised by a killer whale while paddling in a skimpy little kayak. I dreamed of walking with the kids on an unfamiliar, seedy street at nightfall and being threatened by scary teenagers with long knives. Terrifying stuff, all in one night.

But the dream that really had me in a cold sweat was the one in which we'd moved to a new house, and I suddenly realized that WE NO LONGER LIVED IN THE MIDWAY. Shudder! Gasp! The horror!

It has taken me nearly fourteen years, almost the whole time I've lived in this neighborhood, to come to this deep and tender love for my 'hood, this sense of fierce rootedness.

Some people I know here have had family in the community for generations. For others of us, though, this neighborhood was not a first-choice neighborhood. It was the compromise we came to when we realized that our first choice was out of reach. It struck me today that this may be part of why so many people who live here work so hard to make this place a good one to live, and why they feel such deep loyalty to the community once they've stayed a while--they want to make this second choice feel like it was really their first choice all along. They want to make the compromise neighborhood more like the neighborhood of their dreams. And of course, they get used to seeing the same smiles on their walks around the neighborhood, the same folks reading the paper at the library, the same families at the kids' concerts at Ginkgo and on the local playgrounds. They begin to mark the seasons by when the apple tree on the corner starts dropping its apples, when the goldenrod in their favorite native wildflower garden starts to bloom, when they can make out the strains of some Eighties hair band playing at the State Fair Grandstand on a balmy September night.

Bordered by Interstate 94 and University Avenue, with Snelling Avenue roaring right through the middle, the Midway is what many Twin Citians consider a drive-through neighborhood. I wonder if that is a part of why the people who live here fight so ferociously for the walkable amenities--like our little library--that we have. Maybe that is why they were practically rioting in the streets when a beloved neighborhood coffee shop changed hands and the new owners didn't have the same community spirit and warmth.

I'd lived in six different states by the time I was twelve, pulled from place to place by my father's rise up the corporate ladder. It wasn't until now, at age forty-one, that I finally began to feel the tug of staying put, even if the neighbors sometimes wake me at 2 AM singing on their front stoops--maybe even because they do.

Here Comes the Sun

2010-03-21T19:33:00.000-07:00

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.

The Season of Flapping Trash Is Almost Upon Us

2010-02-21T19:03:00.000-08:00

I know it's not March yet, but there were things about today that made me think of what March is often like here in Minnesota. It was cold enough to go skiing, and yet the parking lot was full of puddles. As I walked to my car after taking off my skis, I got mud all over my ski boots. Late winter here is an in-between time, a time when the trash that has been trapped under the snow for four or five months starts coming loose and flying around wildly in the wind. It's a time when we can typically expect at least one snowstorm to dump a half-foot or so of wet, heavy, back-breaking-to-shovel, traffic-snarling snow, and yet at the same time, the male cardinals are beginning to sing their "I want to be your boyfriend" song to the lady cardinals.

One of my favorite Minnesota-in-March memories comes from my first year here, after a winter when cold snaps took temperatures down to 30 and 40 below zero. I was taking a walk around Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis on a sunny, warm day. There were still piles of snow all around, and the ice was solid enough to support an ice fisherman hunkered down on an upside-down bucket. At the same time, though, on the lake shore, a row of sunscreen-greased Adonises in Speedos and sunglasses were lounging on their folding beach chairs, right on top of the crusty old snow. It was the kind of sight that made me positively gleeful to live in the Twin Cities.

We've entered the season of Lent, too, and even though I'm no longer a practicing Catholic, I still remember how much I relished giving up chocolate for those forty days before Easter, knowing that the deprivation would make my chocolate Easter bunny taste all the better. Cassidy has decided to give up calling people "dummy," hitting, and pulling hair. So far, she's doing pretty well on that vow, and the house has actually been a much more pleasant place to live.

I noticed that a friend of mine has vowed to spend less time on the Internet for the next two months (a vow posted, appropriately enough, on Facebook). I can't help thinking that it would be a healthy thing for me to take a vow like that, too, at least for Lent. Today in the Zen center, we recited a kid-friendly version of the precepts, the Buddhist guidelines for living an ethical life. One of them was "I will avoid things that cloud my mind. I will keep myself bright and clear." I immediately thought of the computer, my drug of choice these days, the one my mind inevitably veers toward when I'm bored, or full of doubt, or lonely.

If you don't hear from me for a while, you'll know I've decided to take a little break for Lent. I'll be out watching the plastic bags snagged on bare tree branches, the puddles swimming with oily rainbows, the tree buds swelling near to bursting with the secrets they're about to whisper to the world.

Reading, Writing, and the Love of Tintin

2010-02-17T13:26:00.000-08:00

At seven, Bridger is slowly teaching himself to read, mainly through poring over Tintin comic books (thanks to my friend Danna, whose son loves Tintin, too, for bringing the books to my attention, and literacy advocate Jim Trelease of Read-Aloud Handbook fame for validating these books). My dearly beloved but not yet-initiated local librarian scoffed, "I'm not sure those count as books" when I commented on how much Bridger was loving Tintin. But here's what Trelease had to say:

"If you are looking to challenge a child's mind and vocabulary with comics, then I'd choose The Adventures of Tintin. . . If you read the list of favorite read-alouds offered by historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in the New York Times Book Review, you would have found Herge's Tintin between Huckleberry Finn and the Greek myths."

Mind you, there are some heinous racial stereotypes in these comics, but I've tried to put those in historical context as we read and point out the inaccuracies and distortions. The stereotypes have actually provided some good fodder for discussion, and at times Herge even spoofs his own stereotypes from earlier comics, trying to correct earlier wrongs. But I can also imagine there are some parents who just wouldn't even want to introduce those stereotypes into their house. The comics do feature some violence and gunplay, though it's not bloody, is often implied rather than shown, and is no worse than what I devoured by the hour watching cartoons as a kid.

Probably if you are interested but not familiar with the books, you'd want to preview them first and decide for yourself. Tintin in Tibet is a pretty good, unobjectionable starting point--relatively free of violence and stereotypes, and just a rousing rescue yarn full of adventure and heart-warming loyalty. It was even cited positively by the Dalai Lama as one of the West's first glimpses of Tibet in popular culture.

But I'm warning you--once you read one, you will probably want to keep gobbling them up right alongside your child. I've found that my available time to read Tintin out loud to Bridger has not kept up with his interest in the books, so he often just looks at the pictures, and I suspect he is trying to figure out the words as he goes, too.

Concurrent with this frequent poring over of Tintin, Bridger is rapidly reading more and more words in the world around him--from street signs, store windows, the Internet, museum displays, cereal boxes, books I'm reading aloud to him and Cassidy.

I'm thrilled at how much he's learning, reading-wise, in a way that is pleasurable and stress-free for him. I'm trying not to get too antsy about the fact that he has not gotten equally interested in, say, writing his own Tintin-inspired comics, or writing down stories about the Legos creations he's endlessly weaving in his head. He's not even interested in my taking dictation from him, though I'd be thrilled to do it and I offer, though maybe not as often as I should. The most he's done recently in the way of writing is slipping a pictographic note to Cassidy under her door to tell her he was mad at her. It started with the letter "I", then came a lightning bolt, then "U." To underscore the point, he drew a picture of himself, frowning, with an "M" and an arrow pointing to the figure. (I'm guessing the "M" represents "me"?) Vivid, yes. Up to grade level and easily understood by everyone? Well, um, no.

Why doesn't this "behindness" worry me? Well, for starters, I've been inspired by thinkers, from Raymond and Dorothy Moore to Waldorf educators and unschooler Sandra Dodd, who argue that there may actually be educational and developmental benefits for kids who are late readers and writers (not to say that there aren't some wonderful benefits for early readers and writers, too--we just rarely hear about any advantages of late reading in our "earlier is better" culture).

There are actually kids who don't read and write fluently until they are 11 or 12 who become effective writers and avid readers as teenagers and young adults. I've known them, both personally and through the anecdotes of others. In addition to turning out perfectly capable, these kids have also gained the confidence that comes with independently mastering subjects our culture assumes must be taught to children by experts. I personally believe that that kind of self-directed learning is a wonderful preparation for the tasks these kids will have to face later in life, when no one will be giving them step-by-step instructions for how to accomplish their goals.

That's why it doesn't freak me out (well, not that much) that Bridger is "behind" in his writing. I just figure he's working really hard on other things right now, and writing will come when he's ready and sees a real need for it in his life. Granted, there are plenty of kids who don't read and write well when they're young who still have trouble with reading and writing when they're older. Sometimes there are learning problems that need addressing, sometimes it's a lack of opportunity and resources--but I'd speculate that a key difference in how "late" reading and writing play out long-term is how the adults around the child respond. Do they say, "You can't read, and you should be able to by now" to the child, or do they simply say, "You're not reading yet, but when you're ready, you will"? I suspect the difference between those two statements could be life-changing.

Still, I have to admit I will exhale a huge sigh of relief and joy when Bridger does finally start writing, for real. It's ironic, really. Before I had children, I used to teach creative writing to kids, both in public schools and with small groups of homeschoolers. I was often struck by how amazed the teachers and parents were that my classes had inspired reluctant writers--especially the boys--to write. At times I felt pretty dang smug about my ability to work creative miracles. Now, I think I understand how profoundly grateful I will feel when my kids find the mentors who will allow them to discover their own potential in ways that I--for whatever reasons of history, personality, relationship, karma--cannot.

For now, I'm grateful to Tintin for helping Bridger to gradually unlock the mysteries of reading, in his own, Bridger-esque way. And I am trying to trust that given time and lots of different opportunities, writing will click for him, too, in a way I might never expect but that will make me marvel when it happens.

Presidents' Day Weekend on the North Shore

2010-02-16T11:42:00.000-08:00

The last time our family took a winter vacation on Lake Superior was three years ago, and the kids looked like this:

When I look at those old photos, I get a huge pang of nostalgia for those chubby, sweet-faced children. But I have to admit that traveling with their older incarnations was a heck of a lot easier and calmer. No diaper changes in strange bathrooms, no stops to nurse a screaming baby on the roadside. I got in two long cross-country skis for the first time in years, and ample time to sit on the couch staring out at the lake.

I was reminded once again that the best things to do on vacation with kids are usually simple, close by, and free. I think they could have spent the whole trip scrambling around on the rocks near our cabin, throwing chunks of ice in the big lake. When I tried to take my cues from them, I had much more fun than when I got all invested in running around trying to see and do as much as possible while we were up there. It was a delicious time, one I'm so grateful we got to have together at this stage of our lives.

Parallel Play

2010-01-25T10:52:00.000-08:00

We were going to try to meet some friends to go swimming this morning, but it's snowing hard, and Bridger and I are still recovering from colds, so we decided staying home was a better idea. I'm so glad we did.

Inspired by the children's picture book Zooflakes ABC, Cassidy and I spent most of the morning sitting on the living room floor cutting out snowflake patterns. Experimenting with the book, I cut out a lizard zooflake, and then Bridger asked me to try the alligator pattern from the book.

It took me three tries to finally get an alligator zooflake that didn't fall apart when I opened it up. I had to make lots of mistakes, look back at the directions a lot, then look at my mistakes again, to finally figure out what I needed to do.

"That is so my learning pattern!" I realized. I tend to give instructions a cursory read, jump in, make lots of mistakes, then figure out what I need to do from the mistakes. This isn't always the best way to accomplish a task the correct way, obviously, but in this case, the stakes were low, so it worked out. I enjoyed being able to "think out loud" as I did the work and learned what I was doing wrong and right as I went--and because the stakes were so low, I was able to laugh a lot at what I'd messed up.

Meanwhile, Cassidy was cutting out her own designs and coloring them with different color patterns at the new art table we've set up in the dining room. Bridger was busy making a car out of Legos that would be powered across a table by a dropping weight attached to the car with a string, though he definitely got roped into making comments and suggestions on our snowflake designs.

I tried to get Bridger interested in cutting out some snowflakes, too, but he said, "I'd rather just watch you and then maybe I'll try some later." Fair enough, I thought.

I have to admit that when I picture "a good homeschooling family," I often picture parents and children of all ages learning the same subject together, at the same time. In our family, the learning model often seems to adhere more to a parallel play model--a few of us might be doing the same activity together, while others are doing their own thing nearby. I'm learning to try to make the best of that model instead of trying to force my "good homeschooling" model on to my family.

Still, I do want to make sure that our family doesn't fall into what Alison Bechdel described in her wondrous graphic memoir Fun Home: that her family often felt more like an artists' colony than a family, and not necessarily in an all-good way, with each member off, alone, doing their own artistic pursuits (for her, cartooning; her brother, music; her father, home restoration, and so on). In Bechdel's home, family members didn't share in or even notice each other's efforts and pursuits; they were carried on in isolation from each other.

My hope is to strike a balance: plenty of room for individual pursuits and self-expression, with a continued effort to find things we all like to do together, too. As with my alligators, it may take many, many tries before we hang together as well as we hang apart.

Learning How to Learn

2010-01-15T11:53:00.000-08:00

Today the kids and I were talking about how much we'd enjoyed cross-country skiing yesterday, as written about in my previous post.

Cassidy looked at Bridger and asked, "What did you learn from doing that?", which I thought was an amazingly cool question for her to ask, and one I'd like to ask myself more often when I try something new.

"I don't know," Bridger admitted.

"Do you know how I learned to ski?" she asked him with a sly smile.

"How?"

"I watched you do it!" she told him.

Such a small moment, but for me so sweet. I loved that Cassidy shared with Bridger that he had taught her without even knowing he was doing it. I loved that she had made a discovery about how she learns best--that when she was trying something new, it helped her to watch someone else do it first and then try it out for herself. In my opinion, if she can continue to cultivate that kind of self-awareness, it will stand her in such good stead in her life. In any case, hooray that she can see things this way right now!

Support

2010-01-14T13:33:00.000-08:00

Today we went to Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield, MN with a small group of families we see just about every Thursday. It was warm out by recent standards, about 27 degrees, and gray and misty, with a hint of frost on the trees--very beautiful weather.

Bridger and Cassidy tried cross-country skiing for the first time, and they both did great, falling down a fair amount but picking themselves up with aplomb. They really got the rhythm of the skiing much faster than I expected them to. What fun for them to already be doing something I didn't learn until I was in my mid-twenties! At first Cassidy didn't want to ski and just wanted to walk, but after watching Bridger, she decided she wanted to try. I was happy that Bridger felt comfortable enough with one of the other mothers to ski off with her rather than going back with us to the nature center to rent skis for Cass. I was actually glad he was doing his maiden ski voyage with someone else--sometimes it is easier for us both if he learns new, potentially frustrating things with a more neutral person.

He made it two times around a short loop course, and Cassidy did a whole loop on skis, too. I could tell they felt so proud of themselves, and I was thrilled to share a sport with them that I love. "You can do cross-country skiing even when you're a little old lady!" I told Cassidy as she scooted along the track. Nature, time with friends, and a sport you can do for a lifetime--now that's what I call Physical Education.

It sure has taken me a long time to find a group of homeschooling families that both my children and I can feel at home with, so a day like today feels like a real gift. When Bridger was three and Cassidy just a baby, I started out with a homeschooling support group that was a spin-off of a much larger, general homeschooling organization, but our family never really clicked with that group. There were times, when Bridger was clinging to me at the group's park days, refusing to play with the other kids, whining to leave, that I really despaired of finding a community that would work for us. Now I wonder why I was in such a hurry, young as my kids were. I was just so afraid of becoming isolated as a homeschooler.

When Bridger was four, we connected with a group with a more specific focus on mindful parenting, attachment parenting, and nonviolent communication, a group that emphasized playing in natural areas rather than manmade playgrounds, and not only did I immediately enjoy and feel comfortable with the other mothers, but Bridger and Cassidy actually enjoyed many of the other kids in the group. It was easier for Bridger to jump into group play in the woods than on a playground, I realized. It was the most wonderful feeling to finally have found a good fit, and though that group actually imploded pretty soon after we'd joined, some of the members branched off into a new group, so our family was able to keep enjoying their company. Then that group got superbig this summer, to the point of chaos, so a small group of us branched off once again. We're committed to keeping this group small, so we can get to know each other well and really foster a sense of intimacy and security.

I do still go sometimes to a larger homeschooling group that's open to new members and includes many of the people from our old, bigger group--I do think it's important that wide-open, messily huge groups like that are out there, so that new people can get help finding their tribe. But I think there's also a place for a small group of people to decide they want to put more energy into getting to know a few people really well rather than having to put energy into getting to know new people every single week. If I had one bit of homeschooling "advice" to offer when it comes to play groups, I'd say this: trust your gut. If you and your kids aren't having fun, if you aren't able to relax and fearlessly be yourself, don't feel you have to settle. There are so many communities out there. If you keep looking, and really clarify what you are looking for in your own mind, chances are good you'll be able to find it. It may be in the homeschooling community, it may be through volunteering with your kids somewhere, it may be at the role-playing games group your Dungeons and Dragons-loving kid drags you to and where you end up having a blast. Wherever it is, it's out there if you're willing to admit you want it and if you trust that you are deserving of a community where you feel at home.

The four-year-old son of one of the members of our smaller group has just been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and our group has kicked in to offer what support we can. A few days ago, the two older kids went over to another family's house while their brother was still in the hospital recovering from dangerously elevated blood-sugar levels. Yesterday, I dropped off dinner, some flowers, and a box of calming tea varieties for their mother on their front porch, and today I picked up the two older kids so they could join our group ski outing. On Monday, another mother from the group is bringing over dinner for the family. I'm sure this is just the beginning of the support we'll need to offer, and that there will be other challenges for the rest of us, as the years go on, when we'll be the ones getting the casseroles dropped off at our doors. I am so profoundly grateful to get to rely on this group of friends, and to be able to be relied on in turn, and I am in awe at the twisty roads that led us all to each other.

Less

2010-01-05T11:22:00.000-08:00

In The Parent's Tao Te Ching, William Martin writes,

Your children do not need more.
Each day adds more facts,
more gadgets,
more activities,
more desires,
and more confusion
to their lives.

Your task is to subtract.
Each day seek to remove,
to clarify,
To simplify.

I have been taking heart in those words lately, even if it's only to justify my slacker-parenting ways, my lack of hurry when it comes to what my kids are learning. When I see other homeschoolers posting about the many educational opportunities available out there--the websites, the ski lessons, the plays and concerts--when I see the many wonderful things to learn about and do there are in the world, I sometimes feel restless, even anxious, that the kids and I are not doing enough. Martin's words help me see the value in questioning the need to chase after these activities just for the sake of the chase. Sure, if we really feel drawn to learn to ski this winter, I think we should make time for it. But doing it simply to stay busy or check off an item on a list--uh uh.

When I think of the times I felt closest to my parents, it usually wasn't when we were out doing some grand activity. Often, there was a lot of pressure around family vacations and outings--I think we all felt we had to make it fun or we had somehow failed. The times I remember most fondly with my parents were very quiet times: Sitting with my father in our front yard in Southern California watching a sunset and talking about innocuous yet oddly important things, like what our favorite colors were. Talking with my mom at the kitchen table while I had my afterschool snack.

The times I remember feeling most whole as a child had very little to do with elaborate, organized learning activities, either. The memories that come back to me are of rapturously playing in the mud, or drawing for hours on the backs of my father's cast-off business documents, or watching sticks go downstream in the creek behind my house, or gazing at dust motes dancing in the sunlight streaming in through a window. It is so easy for our lives to fill up with busyness. Each time we sign up for a class or drive across town for some elaborate outing, we make less time for the small, seemingly insignificant moments that will actually touch us right down to our souls.

William Martin again:

If each day one minute less
was spent doing something,
And one minute more
was spent being present
in simple pleasures
with your children,
in two months
you would transform your life,
and theirs.
One minute less.

Being Welcoming and Affirming is Always Age-Appropriate

2009-12-23T17:11:00.000-08:00

Walking up a snowy hill today after a group sledding outing, I was talking with an Episcopalian friend about her church, and about why many former Catholics I know can no longer stomach the Catholic Church but find the Episcopal Church a welcoming alternative. Bridger was walking alongside us, listening, and he asked why some people were leaving the Catholic Church. I leaned down and told him the first thing that came into my head on the fly: "Well, historically the Catholic Church has hurt and mistreated a lot of people, like gays and lesbians."

"Oh," said Bridger. Temporarily satisfied with that answer, he moved on to the business of scooping up some snow to eat.

"Do your kids understand about gays and lesbians?" my friend asked me in an undertone.

"Well, I don't know how much they understand, but it's something we talk about. I mean, we have so many gay and lesbian and bi friends and relatives, it can't help but come up. It's just part of life," I told her.

My friend shared some of the struggle within her church over what being "open and affirming" means, and how far it should go. Some congregants question whether they should be openly affirming homosexuality in front of the children. Is it age-appropriate? Will it confuse the kids?

Here's what I believe, and what I told my friend today.

What I believe is that kids need to hear open and affirming messages about sexuality, hetero and homo, much earlier than we may realize. In the memoirs of writers like Paul Monette, Mark Doty, and my old teachers Barrie Jean Borich and Elizabeth J. Andrew, in the stories of my GLBT loved ones, I hear how our culture's pained, uncomfortable silences around sexual "difference" cause so much hurt and confusion. We shouldn't shove sexual subjects in kids' faces, obviously, or willfully expose them to images or words that are way too mature for them to handle. But I think there is a way to tactfully, appropriately set a tone of acceptance very early--before children start to form negative stereotypes about others or to draw conclusions about themselves that they're too embarrassed or afraid to talk about with their grown-ups.

The first time a friend of mine had "the talk" with her young daughter, she explained about sexual feelings, "Most of the time, men feel those kinds of feelings for women, and women feel those kinds of feelings for men. But sometimes men feel that way toward men, and women feel those feelings for other women, and that's OK and normal, too."

Nothing especially explicit. Nothing inappropriate for the curious five-year-old her daughter was.

Her daughter beamed. "Mom," she said, "you're the greatest."

It's never too early for that kind of conversation, as far as I'm concerned. It's the kind of message that I think could provide a girl who wonders why she's more crushed out on the girl next door than the boy a huge measure of reassurance and relief--a message that could help her get on with the business of fearlessly being herself. It's the kind of message that might help a kid stop and think before he calls a buddy "faggot" as an insult. What my friend said is just the right thing to say, no more, no less, and I think the more churches that get in the business of saying it, loud, often, and with great joy, the better.

In the car on the way home, Bridger, Cass, and I talked a little more about what my friend and I had been discussing on our way up the hill. I talked about how some religions have taught that it's bad to be gay, even though homosexuality is just a part of people that they're born with, like their skin tone, their eye color, their hair texture, their voice. I talked about how those sorts of teachings have led to people losing their jobs because they're gay, not being able to bring their loved ones home to family gatherings, just plain not being able to tell the truth about who they are.

There are people I know and love--and many others I don't know, of course--who live in a state of legal, civil, and cultural uncertainty and ambiguity when it comes to their families. They do not have the safety nets and rights that straight people take for granted. There are people who have been married for decades even if the state of Minnesota does not legally recognize those unions as marriage.

What's indecent isn't talking about homosexuality in church. Heavens, no. It's that people like me do so little about an injustice we can see so clearly right in front of us.

Time to Take It Easy on Documenting My Family's Every Move

2009-12-11T16:34:00.000-08:00

Well, there's nothing like staying up too late writing blog posts that highlight my more gentle, kindly parenting moments to turn me into an under-rested grump by the end of the week. Makes me feel a wee bit fraudulent.

But today was mostly another good one. We went to a paper snowflake-making crafting day at a friend's house with about a half-dozen other families, and it was wild, good fun. Topped off with stone soup for lunch, brimming with vegetables and beans and noodles we'd all contributed, it was the kind of day that makes me feel a lot less lonely and a hell of a lot more connected. What a great group of women--so thoughtful, honest, and funny. I feel amazed at my good fortune to count them as my friends. The kids had a blast making snowflakes and jumping around like monkeys in the basement play room while I snatched at bits of adult conversation where I could grab them amidst the happy chaos.

Tonight, though, it's early to bed so there's a whole lot less tired mom eye-rolling, door-slamming, and teeth-gritting around here tomorrow. Because after all, tomorrow is my birthday, and dang it, I'm going to have fun.

What Do You DO All Day?

2009-12-10T10:33:00.001-08:00

9:15 am Wake up later than I like to, with the kids cuddled up to me in my bed, Brian already off to work. I had insomnia last night, so I must have needed the sleep, I figure. Glad I have a lifestyle that allows me extra sleep when I need it, but I suspect sleeping late could throw off the whole day's rhythm if I let it. I decide I'll try to approach it as an opportunity for what Ann Lahrson-Fisher calls "joyful disruption" in her book Fundamentals of Homeschooling. Discover a wet spot on Cass's side of my bed. Wake everybody up and get vinegar on the wet spot to neutralize the pee smell.

9:30 B. tries to look at one of Cassidy's First Ladies library books. She protests that that book is HERS. After a fair amount of tussling, we negotiate and decide to look at the book together. Read about the first dozen or so first ladies while munching dry cereal in Cassidy's (dry) bed.

10:00 Breakfast. Bridger gives Cassidy a Lego alien villain he's made and a small gold bar to go with it as an early Christmas and late birthday present.

10:15 Bridger and Cass play a story with Legos figures while I drink my coffee and prepare materials for a paper Santa Lucia crown Cassidy wants to make.

11:45 Play Stratego with B. while simultaneously helping Cass glue together pieces of her Santa Lucia crown. Work to stay relaxed about doing very different tasks at once and try to help B. stay relaxed and patient when I have to take frequent breaks from the game to glue and cut.

12:15 Came from behind and beat B. at Stratego in a surprise upset, just when he thought he had it made. He is crushed and swears he'll never play a game of any kind with me ever again. I feel intensely glad I just started re-reading Naomi Aldort's Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves to fortify myself for my mom's upcoming visit, and consequently I don't feel AS strong a desire as usual to give Bridger a big unwanted pep talk about the value of losing as a learning experience--a sentiment I show a distinct inability to apply easily or painlessly in my own life. "I'll never be in such a good position again!" B. laments. "I had the most powerful person on the board and I should have been able to wipe you out." I can understand why he's crying. None of us wants to think we can get beaten like that, just when we believe we're guaranteed to win.

12:30 Leave Bridger in his room to grieve a little more in private. Play the game Hullabaloo with Cassidy in our sunny attic, just cleaned up yesterday by me. Feel a rush of gratitude for this sunny, open space with its view into the top branches of our boulevard ash tree. Feel another rush of gratitude when Bridger joins us in the game and even smiles and laughs.

12: 45 A finger-food lunch upstairs while the three of us try to play Earthopoly together. It's too nice up here to break the momentum to come down for lunch. The Earthopoly game goes surprisingly well, with Cass tracking with the gist of it with a lot of help from Bridger and me. Bridger plays banker to free me up to coach Cass.

2:00 Quiet time--so to speak. Bridger retreats to his room to listen to a book-on-CD for an hour or so. While I clean the living room, our top clutter zone, Cassidy pretends I'm Cinderella and she's a stepsister ordering me around while I sweep. Then, once I go to the ball, she says, "Now I want to be Cinderella," and I become a stepsister. At times I feel myself getting edgy and thinking longingly of what it would be like to clean house without a constant stream-of-consciousness monologue from Cass. Then I imagine how I'll probably look back nostalgically on this very kind of moment. Then Bridger comes down and things shift again.

3:00 Kids messing around with watching home videos of our family on the computer. I get a call from a fellow library advocate and neighbor, one of the people I respect most in the world. We strategize a little about the library, and she asks how I'm doing after a presentation I made to the library board, which I wrote about here. I decompress about my regrets about the presentation and the things I think I've learned from my missteps. She listens thoughtfully, then says slowly and with great care, "I think sometimes our egos get in our way at the very places we could have great power." I take what she says two ways: one, that my egotistic pleasure in having a soapbox about the library issue and fancying myself a "community leader" can get in the way of me seeing the truth and being as effective as I could be in serving the library, which I think is absolutely true; and two, that my insecurity and fixation on my own mistakes can block me from fully accessing my power to create, construct, and connect.

I feel as if a warm, slow-burning fire has been lit in my chest. I feel healed and at the same time challenged to get over myself and get to work.

3:30 Not wanting to slow down the big cleaning momentum I had going earlier (and because we're going to a friend's house tomorrow morning, making it impossible to do our usual Friday morning DVD routine), I ask the kids if they'd like to watch their movie o' the week today instead of tomorrow. Uh, duh. Of course they say yes. I pop some popcorn and they settle in with some Curious George. I hear lots of laughter as I clean, then finally run out of steam and join them for the last half-hour or so. Good stuff about metamorphosis, deductive reasoning, seeds, and genuinely endearing and funny. I'm impressed.

5:15 The witching hour. Bridger asks Cassidy where the gold Lego bar he gave her this morning is. She doesn't know. He wails and cries and moans and tells her he'll never trust her with anything important ever again. I almost succeed in refraining from lecturing him, but not quite--I do have to get in a little mini-lecture. "It's a little piece of plastic, and you didn't tell her, 'Make sure you keep track of this Lego at all times.' Next time you give someone something, make sure you are clear about what your expectations about the gift are and let them know, too." Uh-huh. Are most adults even capable of this kind of clarity around gift-giving? I'm sure as hell not.

Bridger and Cassidy work together to try to find the gold piece, a missing pair of Lego handcuffs, and a green laser. I start getting ready for dinner.

5:45 Bridger sets the table, belting out "I Will Work With Joy," a song I've been known to warble through chores, from the book Seven Times the Sun. One verse goes, "Persistence and pride, creation unfolds,/As I work hard to reach my goals." Bridger sings it, "As I work hard to reach Mom's goals." I have to laugh at how damn perceptive he is.

Then Bridger starts chanting, "Cassidy is on the fork side of me, Cassidy is on the fork side of me," his mnemonic device for remembering silverware placement. "That's mean!" Cassidy howls, apparently thinking he's making fun of her somehow. Bridger continues to sing the offending song. Cassidy continues to howl. Finally, I ask him, "If Cass was singing a song that really got on your nerves, and you asked her to stop, what would you want her to do?" He stops singing, and task done, darts into the living room without answering. At least not directly.

6:00 We sit down for an early dinner before Bri gets home, because I have a meeting tonight. The kids are chatty and silly and loud. Brian walks in the back door to the kitchen just as we're tucking into our lentil burgers and sweet potato fries. He sits down and does a mock (?) shell-shocked look at me across the table at the level of noise and incoherence at the table.

6:15 Finished with dinner, Bridger and Cass go in the living room and start fighting over the one blanket on the couch. "I'm cold!" "But I'm colder!" I suggest they go get another blanket from upstairs or figure out a deal for how to share it, then walk away, which is very hard for me to do. I always worry they'll come to blows. The next time I peek in, they're snuggling under the blanket together on the living room floor, laughing.

6:30 I walk to a meeting at our neighborhood library and sit around a table with eight awesome women, including the neighbor I talked to on the phone earlier who helped me so much. We laugh, kid around about our fundraising goals (we'd like to start with a country spa retreat for us, then go from there to make the world a better place). We dream about how to help our library stay open. This is my nerdy idea of a pretty dang good time.

8:30 I get home. The kids are in their jammies, having a bedtime snack at the kitchen table. Cassidy tells me, "I took a bath, and Daddy read Richard Scarry to me."

"What heaven!" I say. "Being read to in the bathtub!"

Cass agreed. "I have a lucky life," she agreed.

9ish The kids and I read part of a beautiful picture book by Diane Stanley about Michelangelo, then Brian tells them a "lights-out story" in the dark. Brian leaves, and I go in for the ceremonial bedtime cuddling in Cassidy's bed before they fall asleep together there. We say our modified, Zen-flavored version of St. Francis's "Instrument of Peace" prayer. One of the lines is "May I seek to understand, even more than I seek to be understood." Bridger mutters under his breath, "May I seek to understand, even more than I seek to annoy."

Here's my prayer, silently offered up as my children drift into sleep: May our luck hold a little longer. Or, may we learn to keep finding joy, even when an attack we didn't see coming takes us by surprise, just when we thought we were home free.

A Few of The Things We're Learning These Days

2009-12-09T20:28:00.000-08:00

Well, the above moment surely warmed my heart and assuaged some of my Waldorf guilt, a malady beautifully described by fellow blogger Patricia Zaballos. Bridger wanted to make an ornament for our Christmas tree, and even though we were running late for an errand and I knew it was going to take us a good half-hour to get on the winter gear, how could I resist his sudden desire to be crafty, a desire he almost never evidences? I showed him how to make one of these nifty felted wool wreaths, and he went to town, his first-ever sewing experience. You could have knocked me over.

His creative pursuits usually skew more towards the Lego end of things. He took a Lego Dragsters and Monster Trucks class at the Science Museum with his dad last weekend and built some very cool vehicles and learned some physics along the way. And then when he came home, he immediately sat down and built. . . more things with Legos.

He's also teaching himself to read, slowly but surely. He started with a series of "Now I'm Reading" books that were very basic, but lately he's been picking out whole sentences in his Lego Club magazine and in picture books I'm reading to the kids. It's so fun to see his excitement and pride when the puzzle pieces come together to form a coherent, meaningful whole. He also finally whipped my butt good at Stratego, a board game we found at a thrift store that I'd beaten him at over and over again, to his great annoyance and frustration. Today he had me cornered so beautifully my heart was literally racing--and I don't think I could possibly have enjoyed a victory of my own more than I enjoyed his.

The other fun development is his increasing mathematical confidence. The other night after he'd gone to bed, I was taking a nice candle-lit bath. He knocked on the door, came in, and asked, "Does 150 X 20 equal 3000?" I had to think about it for a minute--it's hard for me to do equations like that without a pencil and paper--but I realized that, yes, 150 X 20 did equal 3000.

"How did you figure that out?" I asked him.

"Well, I know that 100 X 20=2000, and 50 X 20=1000, so I just put them together," he said.

I love that he is lying awake at night, doing math equations in his head, learning to juggle numbers in his own unique but effective way.

Cassidy learned to finger-knit this week (another strike against my own Waldorf guilt!) and sewed a felted ornament, too. Inspired by Ed Emberley's great drawing books, she and I have been working on a giant picture of a made-up faraway land, complete with a skeleton who wants to marry a serving maid, a circus wagon, a swirling storm, and a purple castle.

She is also showing a serious bent toward women's studies ("Are there any girls in this book?" and "Why aren't there more women?" are her constant questions), and is becoming an avid letter writer, with a lot of help from me as she learns to form the letters and numbers. Her interest in writing letters started after she wrote a lot of thank-you notes after her birthday and got back truly enthusiastic responses from her grandma and her aunt. Then, a few weeks ago, her interest in correspondence and feminism came together when she noticed that the author of the Magic Treehouse books almost always has the main characters, Jack and Annie, go back in time to help male historical figures, not women. So she decided to write a letter to Mary Pope Osborne, the author, asking her to please include more female historical figures. Wouldn't it be cool if she actually got a reply? If the writer actually wrote about some kick-ass historical women?

She's currently gotten interested in First Ladies, who not only had great wardrobes but also have some pretty compelling stories. Right now her favorite is Dolley Madison, who was so beloved for her kindness and generous personality that she actually got away with dipping snuff and wearing outlandish turbans bedecked with ostrich feathers. During the War of 1812, Dolley saved a famous portrait of George Washington and important government papers right before the British burned the President's Mansion--and right after the 100 soldiers assigned to guard the presidential residence had fled in terror.

After a steady diet of Barbie as Mariposa, I am happy to be reading about this kind of heroine, let me tell you.

So that's just a little of what we're learning right now. We putter through our days seemingly doing very little, yet when I write all this down, I'm reassured to see how much the kids and I are learning together.

Our Hybrid Holidays

2009-12-08T12:27:00.001-08:00

It's snowing here today, we've had Christmas songs by Tony Bennett and Aretha Franklin and Sinatra on heavy rotation, and the tree's up, hung with ornaments that bring back so many memories--the striped stocking a childhood friend gave me 33 years ago (!); the craft foam dove and the jingle bells cut from old egg cartons from our next-door neighbors; the paper gingerbread men Bridger made at ECFE when he was three; the finger-knit garlands I learned to make last year after many, many failed tries. A good Christmas tree tells all kinds of stories, about where you've been, the people you've known, and how you've changed.

We practice a rather spotty, hit-and-miss Buddhist-Christian-pagan fusion spirituality around here, so putting up the Christmas tree coincides with the week-long celebration of Rohatsu, Buddha's enlightenment. Inspired by Katharine Krueger, the dynamically wonderful director of children's practice at our Zen center, we made a little scene of Buddha meditating under the bodhi tree at our house, with a clay Buddha sitting on a Lego meditation cushion, attended by Lego figures standing in for Svasti and Sujata, children who helped the Buddha while he sat under the bodhi tree by bringing him milk porridge to eat and grass for a soft place to sit.

Every day this week, the kids and I brought milk to the little Buddha figure, as the girl Sujata is said to have done (except for the morning or two we forgot--sorry, hungry little Buddha!). We talked about how people here in St. Paul and all around the world were sitting weeklong silent meditation retreats in Buddha's honor. One day we enacted the legend of the demonic Mara trying to sway the Buddha from his concentration. Cassidy draped herself in silk scarves and danced in front of the Buddha to try to distract him with her beauty, like the dancing girls Mara conjured up. Bridger built Lego cannons and fired them at the Buddha. And I pulled out the most powerful weapon of all--shame. "You think you can understand the truth? What an arrogant fool you are! You might as well give up! You'll never succeed!" But Buddha kept sitting.

Today, December 8, is traditionally celebrated as the day the Buddha became enlightened. He touched the earth with one hand and declared that together with all beings, he had found the truth and was free. That's the part I love--all of us are included.

The legend is that the Buddha's first "sermon" was to the children who had helped him and their friends, and what he taught was how to eat a tangerine mindfully. You can find a nice version of the story here. After telling a much-abbreviated version of this story, the kids and I got out a Satsuma mandarin, peeled it, divided it up, and ate our slices together in silence, an activity they've already been introduced to at the Zen center. We tried to pay attention to the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the look and feel of the mandarin. We noticed that we were much more aware of the weight and shape of the fruit on our tongue than we normally are. Usually we immediately bite the fruit, chew it up, and swallow before we've really even tasted what's in our mouths (a metaphor for how I often live my life, I have to say). Bridger, who isn't usually a fan of oranges, said he actually liked the orange when he ate it that way.

I am trying, this holiday season, to remember to slow down, do less, buy less, and find opportunities to express love in small but meaningful ways. To take time to show Cassidy how to use a big embroidery needle to sew together felt squares for a fabric wreath instead of trolling for one more gift we don't need online. To bake my traditional "so-you've-had-a-baby" veggie lasagne for a neighbor who's just had her third child. To stop myself before I give the kids "a horrible lecture" when I'm displeased with them, as Bridger put it yesterday, and find a way to communicate with more kindness and less criticism.

My father died when I was twelve, and for many years after his death, Christmas was a really hard time of year for me and my mom and sister. It didn't help that my birthday falls on December 12, so close to Christmas and finals week in school that I often felt deprived and gypped.

It's actually only in the last few years, spurred by my kids, that I'm finding joy and abundance in this time of year. I'm coming around to the idea that lighting candles and stringing up Christmas lights at this dark time is one of the oldest and most beautiful of human gestures.

Lately the kids have been asking for more stories about my father. I tell them about how he used to answer the door like Lurch on the Addams Family, intoning "You rang?" I tell them about how he once dreamed a burglar was climbing in his bedroom window and knocked himself out cold against the wall charging the intruder in his mind. I tell them about how he liked to click his heels in parking lots, how he cried when we had to give away our crazy cocker spaniel Honey when I was four.

"It's too bad your father never knew about Bridger and me," Cassidy said to me this morning.

I agreed. But maybe, I told her, he did know about them. After all, it's a big mystery what happens to us after we die. No one really knows for sure.

"Maybe God whispered about us in your dad's ear, and he saw an angel who looked like me," Cassidy said.

It's moments like this that make me so grateful, I could just about levitate.

Mistakes, Part 2

2009-11-21T08:43:00.000-08:00

If you talk with me for very long, I will probably find a way to work my neighborhood library, the Hamline Midway Branch in St. Paul, into the conversation. As my friend Danna once explained to another friend who didn't know the extent of my library love, "She's totally obsessed with the Hamline Midway Library." I think she meant that affectionately.

If you've been reading this blog all along, you know that early this year, our mayor proposed closing our 80-year-old neighborhood branch in response to the city's budget crunch. Along with many of my neighbors, I found myself compelled to get involved in fighting for the library. The good part is that all the community effort led to the library being spared, at least for 2010--but the work of preserving the library is really just beginning.

A few days ago, I was part of a presentation to the library board, which is actually just the city council with a different name. We were reporting on a task force that met this summer to try to find partnerships that might help the city save or make money on the library. My part of the presentation was to try to give the community side of things. If you have ever tried to speak for "your community," you know this is a rather hard thing to do. And ever since my presentation, I have been agonizing about the things I didn't say, the things I said that I wished I hadn't, and on and on and on. As my fellow neighborhood activist Julie GebbenGreen kindly told me, "It's scary to tell the truth to people in power. We really have to overcome a lot of 'how dare you speak like that to your betters' voices inside of us." I think it's important to remember that. It's part of what makes it hard for ordinary people to get and stay involved in politics.

What I regret most about my library presentation is that I said that the crux of the problem this year was that our leaders didn't appear to be listening to us and that they met our heartfelt concerns with sound bites. That's true, but what I wish I'd focused on more was this: when you close a library that's been in a neighborhood for generations, the damage you do will far outweigh any cost savings. I think I thought I didn't have to say that, that it's obvious. But it's important enough to bear repeating. I wish I would have spent more of my very limited time telling stories that show how people depend on having a walkable library. I wish I would have told them about the woman I met this year who had a stroke after her daughter's premature birth. Her husband lost a lot of hours of work caring for her and their daughter, and money was tight. She told me that being able to walk to the library (she couldn't drive after her stroke) was a crucial lifeline for her as she recovered from her stroke. She learned to read again reading library books to her daughter. That's the kind of story I wish I would have spent my time on, and it twists my guts up that I didn't. What a missed opportunity to connect people's stories to our leaders! But I didn't remember her story until after I'd done my talk.

I also wish I'd done a better job of acknowledging that many of the city council members I was talking to were really supportive of our community. I think I ended up venting some of my rage at the mayor at the wrong people, and I regret that. All those times I told my old writing students how important audience awareness is--and still I forgot once I was standing at that podium in the big intimidating council chambers.

I wrote follow-up notes to the city council members saying I wish I'd acknowledged their help and support more in my talk. The only response I've gotten so far, other than from my own councilman, was from our sole female councilmember.

She finished her email, "Ah, women. We are always thinking about the one tiny little thing we forgot (completely unintentionally) and ignoring all the other great things we got done." Those words from an experienced woman leader were absolute balm for my soul. And again, it's a good reminder of why it might be even more challenging for women to get involved in public life and stay at it for the long haul: we are so damn good at picking ourselves apart, the burnout potential is extremely high.

"Try again. Fail better." Those were playwright Samuel Beckett's writing instructions. Zen master Dogen called Zen practice "one continuous mistake." As I move out of my safe, private home life into public life, I'm making mistakes all the time. I hope to learn how to learn from them, fail better next time, and not agonize so much about it all in the meantime.

Mistakes

2009-11-12T13:31:00.000-08:00

A few days ago Bridger was doing some equations in a math workbook. We're not doing math in a systematic, now-we're-going-to-sit-down-and-do-math way, but he had expressed interest in doing more math, so I'd picked the book up for him, along with a preschool math book for Cass which she tore through with relish.

Bridger realized he'd made a mistake on one of the equations, and because he was using crayon, he couldn't obliterate the offending error.

"That's it. I've ruined the whole page. I might as well rip it out and throw it in the trash," he said.

When he is so hard on himself about mistakes, it's hard for me to stay calm and relaxed, in part because I can so relate to that kind of either-or, all-or-nothing, it's-either-perfect-or-it's-shit thinking. I can see from my own experience that life is so much easier and more productive, so much more fun, when I can see mistakes as a natural part of any learning process, any life experience, really. I wish I could wave a magic wand and give him the perspective on mistakes I'm beginning to have at 40 so that he doesn't have to suffer through mistakes so much.

But deep down, I'm realizing that he's going to have to come to his own reckoning with imperfection. All I can do is hold him as compassionately as possible through his struggles and successes and try to remember to model healthy ways of dealing with mistakes (I am, after all, the woman who said the other day, "I feel like a dummy" when I realized I'd made a scheduling mistake that was going to inconvenience another person. And I said it in earshot of Bridger. Oops.).

When Bridger was feeling frustrated about the math book, I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "You know, the whole point of doing equations in a math book like you're doing is that it gives you opportunities to make mistakes, and that's how you can learn. If you don't ever try them, you don't get the chances to make mistakes."

He didn't have any "A-ha!" moment that freed him from perfectionism forevermore. At least, I don't know if he did. As I once remarked to him, he and Cassidy are sort of like icebergs for me--I see only a small fraction of who they are, and so much of who they are is a hidden mystery. He did close the book without ripping out the page and throwing it in the trash, though.

It struck me later that if there's any gift our homeschooling choice offers our kids, it's that attitude, or at least my heartfelt attempt at that attitude: that mistakes can be opportunities for learning and growth. At school, I suspect, many good teachers try to welcome mistakes, but the pressure to see mistakes as road blocks to learning, as obstacles to be gotten around, as faults to be corrected, is systemically so great. The pressure to correct mistakes within a certain time frame makes it hard, too, to relax when mistakes come up.

I don't think homeschooling is perfect. I can't offer my kids a foreign-language immersion experience, or state-of-the-art science and art materials, or daily contact with lots of other children from a variety of backgrounds, or a feeling of being part of a school community. What I can offer is lots of reassurances, repeated over many years, that mistakes are not something we have to fear, but something we can learn, if we let ourselves, to welcome.

Oldies

2009-10-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

When you have the flu like I've had the last few days and are trying to sleep in spite of aches and chills, it's not exactly welcome to have a tape loop of Judy Garland singing, "Clang, clang, clang, went the trolley, ding, ding, ding went the bell" running through your head. But that's what I get for watching "Meet Me in St. Louis" with the kids twice in one week.

I have loved old movies since I was a little girl, so it's been absolute heaven for me to share old movies with my kids. So far we've watched "Singin' in the Rain," "The Sound of Music," Charles Chaplin's "The Gold Rush" and "The Circus." Oh, and don't let me forget the 1930s, Errol Flynn version of "The Adventures of Robin Hood." I did have to repeatedly identify which guy was which in that one, as they all had mustaches and British accents, bad guys and good alike.

These movies give rise to so much discussion and in some cases further investigation. Who knew, for instance, that it used to be a Halloween custom for trick-or-treaters to throw flour in their neighbors' faces when they answered the door? I didn't, until we saw that ritual enacted in "Meet Me in St. Louis" and felt compelled by the weirdness of it to find out more.

To help the kids understand "The Sound of Music," I had to talk a little about who Nazis were and what a swastika was and why Captain von Trapp was so upset when someone hung a Nazi flag on his house (though I kept my explanations simple and focused more on the Nazis taking over countries--I didn't feel ready to go into the Holocaust yet). We also learned more about the actual story of the von Trapps and found out some interesting contrasts with the movie: in real life, Captain von Trapp was somewhat tempted by the offer to command a submarine for the Germany Navy, but eventually decided he couldn't stomach supporting the Nazi cause, even if it meant getting to play with a really cool toy. We learned that in real life, if the von Trapps had tried to cross the mountains on foot, they would have ended up in the back yard of Hitler's country retreat.

I've also been fascinated to see how Bridger picks up on visual elements in the movies. In "The Circus," when Chaplin first meets the aerialist who captures his heart, her father has just pushed her through a circus tent covered with a pattern of stars. When Chaplin's character helps her up, she's still clutching a torn star. At the end of the movie, the aerialist has married a handsome high-wire walker and the circus has pulled up stakes and taken off for the next town. Chaplin is sitting on an old crate in the dust when he spots a torn paper star and picks it up. "That's his last trace of his love!" Bridger remarked. At first I didn't understand the connection he was making until he reminded me of the star in that early scene.

On the down side, some old movies do have sexist, racist, or homophobic stereotypes that need to be talked about, but even that's an opportunity. In "Meet Me in St. Louis," the Judy Garland character and her little sister sing a jokey song about "a maid of royal blood but dusky shade." I made sure to talk with the kids about how that kind of song wouldn't be included in a movie now, and why, and why people at the time thought a song like that was OK. There are occasionally moments that upset the kids--like the way a father slapped around his daughter in Chaplin's "The Circus. We talk about those moments, too, and get to share in a safe way how we feel about that kind of violence. But for the most part I've found old movies a safe haven from kids' entertainment that's either insultingly innocuous and dumbed-down on one hand or amped-up, sarcastic, and mean-spirited on the other.

For ideas about good old movies to watch with children, I've found Ty Burr's The Best Old Movies for Families: A Guide to Watching Together a great resource.

It's Ba-ack!

2009-10-14T19:54:00.000-07:00

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
-Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

I am calling on some pretty heavy hitters to justify why I am resurrecting this blog after killing it so decisively, uh, only seventeen days ago. But Emerson and Whitman have always been beloved spiritual uncles to me, as they understandably are to so many people. Tonight, their famously bad-ass words gave me the permission I needed when I thought, you know, I think I DO want to keep posting on my blog after all! I still have work to do to keep my Internet use under control, so that'll be a bit of a challenge. I also still need to figure out a way to make sure my essay-writing stays my number one writing priority. But I think the challenges are worth it to me, and here's why.

What I realized tonight is that this blog is the easiest way I know for me to preserve moments from my life with my children that I really do want to remember. I don't seem motivated to record memories in a hand-written journal the way I used to when they were babies and toddlers--perhaps I've changed too much, grown impatient with the slow speed of handwriting and the difficulty of retrieving memories quickly from piles of notebooks. But I do seem willing to commit moments that stand out to me to a blog.

In the last few days, my kids have said things I really don't want to forget. All of these utterances, perhaps not coincidentally, are related to bodily functions--my kids are 3 and 6, after all, and they live with a fairly uninhibited pair of parents. If gross-out humor isn't really your thing, you may just want to stop right here. Otherwise, brace yourself and proceed on.

Story Number One:
A few days ago I was showing the kids a cool, layperson-friendly version of the periodic table that my husband had found online. I was talking about the noble gases when Cassidy piped up, "Noble gases? Is that what royal people toot?"

Her pun-loving physicist daddy was so proud.

Story Number Two:

The kids like me to tell them stories about when I was a kid. "Eight!" they say, or "Twelve!" or "Three!" and I come up with something I remember from whatever age they've asked for. I've told them so many memories at this point that I really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel sometimes to come up with something new. Tonight, I told them about a boy in my third-grade class who used to collect his boogers in little piles on a paper towel on his desk.

Cassidy responded thoughtfully, "When I pick my nose, I just wipe the snot on my clothes, and then a fairy takes it away. She's brown, and she's not very fancy."

And last but not least, Story Number Three:

At bedtime tonight, we were talking about what it means to "let go," because we say a bedtime prayer that ends "It is only in letting go that we find real peace." To try to explain what I personally mean by "let go," I told the kids about Byron Katie, creator of The Work and seemingly one of the most enlightened beings around right now. According to my understanding of Byron Katie's ideas, "letting go" means accepting and loving exactly what's happening, no matter what. It doesn't necessarily mean passivity; think of Gandhi, Thich Nhat Hanh, or Mother Teresa, working to make the world better while accepting their utter lack of control.

Bridger was especially riveted to hear the way Byron Katie experienced some truly terrifying situations: a possible cancer diagnosis, near-blindness, and an encounter with a gunman intent on taking her life. In each case, she faced what was happening with curiosity, fearless openness, and love for her life and the people in it--even the gunman. (At least that's how she tells it, and I happen to believe her.)

I told the kids about how Katie says, "I'm a lover of reality. When I argue with what is, I lose, but only 100% of the time."

"But what is 'reality'?" Bridger asked.

"'Reality' is what's actually happening, not just what we wish was happening," I told him.

He was quiet for a while, and then he said gleefully, "I'm reality!"

Yes, I agreed, you are definitely reality. But now, I said, it's time to get ready to sleep so you can stay healthy and well-rested.

"The floor is reality," I heard Bridger muttering beside me in the bed. "The universe is reality. The floor is reality. The bed is reality. The window is reality."

"Yep. Good night, sweetie," I said, patting him, wondering why I'd gotten a conversation this big going at bedtime in the first place, grateful at the same time that we'd had the conversation at all.

"A TOILET PLUNGER is reality!" he declared. And then, he was silent. He had said what needed to be said, and he was now ready to accept the reality that it really was bedtime.

"I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me
is a miracle."
-Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

Over and Out

2009-09-27T21:04:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine asked me today what I'd decided to do about this blog, since I'd said back in July that I would make a decision about it by the end of August.

Well. As I've mentioned previously on this blog, I have trouble finishing things (hence, my annoying-to-my-husband habit of keeping our cupboard shelves well-stocked with cracker boxes containing one or two stale crackers and keeping our fridge rattling with nearly empty salad dressing bottles and jam jars). And clearly, I have had some trouble finishing off this blog and admitting that I don't want to do it any more. But I don't. I have really enjoyed writing the posts. But being as addicted to external validation as I am and keeping a blog just didn't go together well. I didn't need yet another reason for checking the Internet to see if I still exist. I continue to find it challenging enough just remembering to check in with my own flesh-and-blood, real-time existence every once in a while.

Thanks to everyone who ever stopped by to read this blog, to people who commented, and to the fabulous bloggers whose work I've discovered this past year. I am happy to have shared the past year with all of you, and to have had the pleasure and honor of hearing some of your stories, too.

Takin' A Breather

2009-07-18T12:16:00.001-07:00

I'm going to put this blog on hiatus at least until the end of the summer, and possibly stop doing it all together or change it a bit--as in, making it less about me and more of a true family collaboration, with more posts from my kids and husband (it is, after all, subtitled "Adventures in Family Learning.") I've so enjoyed and appreciated the give-and-take with people who have commented here and with other bloggers whose work I've gotten to know in the last few months of exploring the blogosphere. It has meant so much to me and been a huge source of encouragement and connection.

But.

My yard is so full of weeds I feel too embarrassed to have a bunch of awesome women from the neighborhood over for wine and beer around the firepit.

My husband all too often goes to bed by himself while I prowl around online so late that I'm tired and grouchy the next day.

I'm way behind on returning calls and letters to old friends and my own mom--yet I seem to find time for blog posts. Seems like a discrepancy that needs correcting.

The thought, "I wonder if anyone has commented yet on my last post?" has taken on depressingly compulsive dimensions.

My book project needs attention. When it comes to writing ideas, I find myself devoting more of my mental space to blog posts than I am to book revision. Something's gotta give.

I made a vow to start meditating every day again. Has it happened yet? Nope.

I've realized I really like the blog-type form as I've been doing it--taking small, everyday moments and trying to pull out larger meaning from them--and I'd like to find a way to do it in a less ephemeral, nebulous form, like finding a place to have a regular column with a set deadline. I'm thinking that way, I could "compartmentalize" it a little more rather than having it take over my brain so much on a day to day basis, the way blogging seems to do.

And finally--when I thought about stopping the blog, I felt a sense of relief and possibility.

That's reason enough, wouldn't you say?

This is not to say that I'm not going to miss doing it, and miss the miniature "conversations" it has sparked with you.

I'll check in at the end of August and let you know how the blog hiatus has gone, then take it from there.

Unusually Rich Days

2009-07-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

The last few days of being back from our trip have felt so good--a chance to reconnect with the kids and our home and our lives here in St. Paul. And the kids and I have been doing so many lovely things together, mostly either at home or in the neighborhood. There are many, many days when I feel awash in self-doubt and uncertainty about unschooling the kids. Days like the ones we've had lately, when it's so clear how much they're learning and so beautiful to see the way they're learning through play and living, are the kinds of days that keep me going.

Yesterday we started off by reading some Greek myths in Cassidy's bed right after we woke up. The kids have really been enjoying D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths, a book I've been holding on to for a while, waiting for the right time to introduce it, and the right time appears to be now. I'd warmed 'em up by telling an oral version of the Persephone story as a bedtime story, and then I pulled out the book to show them the pictures for that story.

After breakfast, we made little miniature clay mountain scenes, with tiny lakes, rivers, snowcapped ranges, waterfalls. At first Bridger didn't want to do it, but pretty soon he drifted over, checked out what we were up to, and said, "Oh, I'll do one, too." It was a lovely way to remember some of what we'd seen in Montana and shape our memories with our hands in a small, kid-scaled way.

We played at home for a while, then took a late-morning bike ride to lovely Newell Park. The hills and trees there made a perfectly fine Sherwood Forest for us to play Robin Hood until we were ready for lunch. On the way home, we stopped to admire our neighbors' gardens and identify some of the vegetables and flowers we saw growing. We spent the afternoon acting out a story with craft stick puppets and paper dinosaurs. In the evening Bridger went to martial arts, and I attended a task force meeting to help save our neighborhood library from closing, so we even got a little time out in the neighborhood with other people--a really nice balance.

Today, more Greek myths in the morning, then we picked up where we left off with the craft stick puppet/dinosaur story. The story even involved some spontaneous, kid-initiated math (i.e., calculating how many steaks each carnivorous dinosaur needed to be fed so they wouldn't eat the human characters).

At lunch, Cass mentioned her current aspiration to be a ballerina/speech therapist when she grows up. I said there would probably be a lot of work available for a speech therapist in the future. We ended up talking about the rise in autism and some of the theories about what causes it, which led to talking about Temple Grandin and her innovations in how cattle are treated, discoveries made possible in part by her autism and the unique insights it gave her into animals.

"So maybe having autism isn't necessarily all a problem," Bridger pointed out.

Bridger listened to a "Hank the Cow Dog" book on CD while Cassidy and I hauled out the wooden train set for the first time in a long time and played trains, which morphed into "bad giant" when Cassidy decided to play a bad giant kidnapping trains. When Bridger finished his CD, he joined in and brought "Lego Pest Controllers" on to the scene to shoot her with a goodness missile that made her into a fairy who loved art instead of a bad giant. He went on to build three different pest controller vehicles along with various unusual pests. For instance, one vehicle used special saws to surgically alter a rampaging lion into a docile kitty cat; another captured yetis and hauled them to zoos.

Meanwhile, Cassidy's good fairy was set up at an easel happily painting picture after picture.

Finally, to top things off, when we went to Target this afternoon, Bridger had two small but exhilarating reading breakthroughs: He sounded out the word "large" in "Large Grade A Eggs" on a carton (though he said it "larg-eh," spurring a little reminder about silent "e"). Then, in the checkout line, he pointed out the princess in the Starbuck logo to Cassidy, knowing how much she loves princesses. Then he asked, "Does that say 'coffee'?"

I was kind of flabbergasted. We don't frequent Starbucks, so I don't think he has associations with the logo--I guess maybe he inferred the name based on context, but hey, isn't that how a lot of reading works?

"How did you figure that out?" I asked him as I loaded bags in our cart.

"Well, I know that "c-o-f" says 'cof,' and 'e-e' says "ee," so I know 'c-o-f-f-e-e' spells 'coffee'!"

It reminded me of how I felt the day he was sitting at the kitchen table, a chubby baby of 10 months or so, when he pointed at the whirling ceiling fan and said, "Fa, fa, fa" with a big, sassy grin.

When things are going well for us, it's easy to look back at the tougher times, the times when not much learning seemed to be happening, and say, well of course--that was just the fallow period that makes growth possible. That was the period of disequilibrium that always seems to come before a time of grace and ease. It's a lot harder to remember that when I'm in the middle of a hard slog of days. That's part of why I wrote all this down today--to help me remember, and to help me appreciate, and to help me relax.

Perhaps some day I'll even get to the point of not evaluating times in our lives so much as good or bad, hard or easy--when I'll simply attend to what's happening with a greater, more open-hearted curiosity and fewer value judgments. We'll see!

Spawning Wrigglers

2009-07-14T19:12:00.000-07:00

Some of our friends are currently raising monarch butterflies from egg to caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly; others are raising tadpoles. Us? We're spawning mosquito larvae.

We'd often warned Bridger about leaving standing water in some of the big buckets in our back yard and told him that mosquitoes might lay eggs in it. I wasn't really sure I believed they actually would, but it was a good parents' cautionary tale. Apparently, he left some water in a big bucket while we were in Montana. When we got back, Brian and Bridger noticed that there were some wiggly little creatures using the water for a swimming hole. They put one under our microscope, and lo and behold, we realized we had spawned our very own mosquito larvae!

I was both fascinated and repelled when I got a good look at the critters, both under magnification and with the naked eye. When we looked them up online, we found out that mosquito larvae are commonly called wigglers or wrigglers, and I could see why, watching them scootch around their makeshift pond, with their hindquarters wagging back and forth to make little L shapes as they moved. (If I'm remembering correctly, they weren't much bigger than the L right here on this post.)

I thought we should get rid of most of them, but scoop out a few for further observation--we probably would have mosquito pupae within a few days! Oh the joy! But Brian opted to up-end the whole bucket on the lawn, thus ending our wriggler-spawning adventure. We did learn some interesting things from the whole experience, like the fact that only female mosquitoes suck blood; males sip nectar from flowers. It may have been some comfort to Cassidy to know that the many Montana mosquitoes who left her with red welts all over her body were girls just like her, though then again, maybe not.

I have to admit it was seriously gratifying to have one of my parental prognostications come so vividly, accurately true. Gratifying, too, to find out that leaving stagnant water out in the yard could lead to such a memorable learning experience.

The Big Issues

2009-07-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

A friend commented on my last post that I was lucky to have a child who says "Wow" to nature. I agree that I am lucky. However, I must add a slight codicil (I think that's the right word).

This week Bridger and I were debating about whether we should camp on the way home or take the lazier, more expensive way and stay at motels.

"Well, motels are nice because you sleep better in a real bed," Bridger said, using an argument he's heard me spout out before. "And there's not so much packing and unpacking from the van that way, so it's faster." (That's Brian's gripe about camping on road trips.)

"But when you camp, you get to spend more time in nature," I said.

"I hate nature!" Bridger said. "I LOVE plastic!"

He elaborated a bit: "Matchbox Pop-Up Play Sets and Legos are made of plastic, so that's why I love it."

This made me laugh, but it also gave me even more motivation to try to get that boy out into nature a bit more.

A few days ago, the kids and I rode bikes out to the town cemetery. I find the Conrad graveyard wonderfully, festively Day of the Dead-ish, and I thought Bridger and Cass would appreciate it, too. Many of the gravestones are carved with images that represent important things in the dead person's life: a sheaf of wheat, cattle, mountains, tractors, RVs, a blackboard with the ABCs written on it and a desk with an apple, and in one woman's case, a steamin' cup o' joe.

One boy who'd died in high school had a grave that had turned into a sort of ofrenda, with rifle cartridges, an unopened can of Mountain Dew, a "Stay Alive, Don't Drink and Drive" key chain, a pair of aviator sunglasses, and laminated photos of the boy himself posing shirtless and in his football jersey.

Just as I expected, the kids loved speculating about the people buried there and what their stories were. They loved the colorful pinwheels and artificial flowers on almost every grave.

"When I die, will you decorate my grave with lots of flowers?" Cassidy asked me.

The thought of it left me breathless.

"Sweetie," I said, "I hope I'll be gone long before you have a grave."

I explained that most of the time, children outlived their parents, so she'd probably end up decorating my grave, but likely not for a long, long time.

"But if you die, I won't have a mother!" Cassidy declared.

I felt my heart catch--as my husband put it later, she found it easier to conceive of herself being in a grave than she did conceiving of having no mother. Another way of putting it: she found it as hard to conceive of living on this earth without me as I find it to conceive of living on earth without her.

"Yeah, but by the time Mom dies, you'll be an adult so you won't need a mother so much," Bridger explained to her.

I indeed do hope that I live long enough to ferry my kids safely into adulthood, but I don't take that possibility for granted. My father died accidentally and suddenly when he was only 33 and I was twelve years old, so I've seen that parents can die young, and that children can die long before their mothers and fathers die. It is a sobering thought, and one that I try to use as a kind of steadying ballast. No guarantees, right?

A few weeks ago, sitting at the picnic table in our back yard with Cassidy, I looked at her and thought, if my dad hadn't died when he had, I wouldn't have had the life that led me to the family I have now. Gazing at Cass, the thought flashed through my mind--before guilt or propriety could stop it--well, it's a fair trade.

I think my Dad would understand, and be glad, that I am able to feel that way.

Montana Update

2009-07-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

After Fairmont Hot Springs, we camped at Holland Lake, a beautiful little spot nestled up against the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area in the Seeley-Swan Valley. When the kids and I walked down to the lake and took in the view of mountains and a waterfall, I started to cry. "Happy tears!" I explained. Happy tears, indeed. I'll try to post photos soon. Cass and I hiked to the waterfall and we all got thoroughly nibbled by mosquitoes. A wedding reception at a nearby lodge provided a soundtrack of Stevie Wonder and Sly and the Family Stone covers for a few hours, but it didn't really detract from the overall experience--and Cassidy and I actually got a glimpse of the bride and her retinue of bridesmaids. Fancy heaven for Cass!

From there, we drove up to Glacier. I'd told Brian I wouldn't be satisfied with just driving through and stopping at overlooks, but that's what we ended up doing--we just ran out of time for more on this trip. And I ended up feeling fine about it. It was definitely better than not going at all, even if it was far less satisfying than being able to get out and hike and soak up the smaller sights you can't see from the car--the glacier lilies and Indian paintbrush along a trail, a hoary marmot sunning itself on a rock. When we first arrived at the West Glacier entry gate (after waiting in a line of cars for 25 minutes, something I'd never experienced at Glacier), Bridger said, "You said this place was so pretty. But it doesn't look any more beautiful than places we've already been."

"Just wait," I told him. "I'll stop talking it up and let you draw your own conclusions."

I was quietly overjoyed when I heard him breathe an awed, "Wow," once we got up high into the mountains on Going to the Sun Road. At the Logan Pass Visitor Center, he got a huge kick out of slipping and sliding on patches of snow and getting glimpses of pikas, rare little rodents acclimated to high alpine meadows who make a cute squeaking noise as they poke in and out of their hidey-holes. He snapped photos like mad of the mountains, waterfalls, and I don't know what all else.

Before we had kids, Brian and I used to go on motorcycle trips to Glacier with a good friend of ours just about every summer (I was on the back of Bri's bike--I learned to ride in a weekend course but decided I wasn't aggressive enough to be a good biker--I'd be the one who'd jump off my bike screaming when I should have had the guts to accelerate). Our memories of Glacier are full of road dust and the smell of hot leather jackets and chaps and clothes we wore until they were crusty because we could only carry so many clothes on the motorcycle side bags, of singing and keeping up a steady chatter of dumb jokes while we hiked so we'd scare away any bears in the vicinity, of downing cold bottles of Moose Drool beer after days of hiking that left us weary and sore but deeply, profoundly happy.

A friend of mine wondered if Glacier would seem different to me after seven years away--diminished, perhaps--with global warming melting the glaciers into oblivion. Signs at the park did warn that the glaciers would likely be gone by 2020. "So the kids will be teenagers then," Brian commented. Certainly there were many threats there that I didn't even notice--invasive animal and plant species crowding out the natives, I'm sure. I did notice some differences: notably, there were vast swathes of trees scorched by forest fire on the east side of the park and more brown, dry trees in the midst of the green valleys and mountainsides. The park was definitely more crowded than I remembered, too. But the waterfalls and rivers fed by the mountain snowcaps and glaciers were still flowing and churning, at least for now. The mountains themselves were still there.

Now we're at my mother and father-in-law's place in Conrad, a small ranch and farm town on the plains, just east of the Rocky Mountain Front. Well, here come the kids from the basement, where they've been playing that the bed where Brian and I have been sleeping is a boat, the mattress on the floor is the ocean, and the blankets are sharks--that is when they're not pretending to be secret agents. On this vacation, they have really discovered each other as playmates, and after playing the mediator role between them for the last three-plus years, I couldn't be happier about that.

From Fairmont Hot Springs Near Butte, MT

2009-07-01T16:53:00.000-07:00

We're at the Fairmont Hot Springs Resort, a place we last visited almost two years ago for my mother-in-law's 80th birthday celebration. Our original plan was to be in Glacier Park by now, but after two long days of driving across North Dakota and Eastern Montana, we were all ready for a break from the car. We planned on stopping here for only one night last night, but as soon as we got into the heated-by-thermal-springs pool, with its backdrop of mountains and its canopy of cloudless blue Montana sky, well, I felt rather motivated to stay a spell. So we signed on for a second night.

It's been fun to mark the ways the kids have grown since our last visit. Cassidy can touch the bottom in the shallow end now, where before I had to hold her in the pool the whole time. Bridger was wearing a life jacket last time, but now he swims and dives and cannonballs all over the place. They're also playing together and enjoying each other so much more than they were two years ago.

A few other memorable (to me, at least) moments of the trip so far:

-Driving through North Dakota, I perkily suggested playing the "Categories" game--one person picks a category, like Billboards or Semi-Trucks, and then counts out loud every time they see something in that category. The other players try to guess their category. I chose "Pick-Up Trucks." And then several long, loaded minutes went by on that flat plains highway. No vehicles from either direction. No billboards. No buildings. Just grass, grass, and more wind-blown grass. The kids basically declared "This game totally sucks" in their three-year-old and six-year-old ways, and the van exploded into a chaos of backseat bickering when they realized their only hope for entertainment was to pick on one another. Brian thought it was hilarious that I'd thought there would be enough different categories of anything on a North Dakota interstate. I admitted defeat and resigned my position as van entertainment director and took the driver's seat for the rest of the day.

-Bridger, Cass, and I came up with a pool game in which Cassidy was a catfish, Bridger was her friend the killer whale, and I was a shark trying to eat Cassidy's kittenfish. At one point Cassidy described to Brian her predatory kittenfish's favorite dessert: "Raspberry pie with human teeth, a baby calf, and chocolate ice cream on top."

Tomorrow we head to Glacier National Park for one night of camping before we go to my in-laws' place to spend 4th of July with them. It'll be our first time at Glacier with the kids, and I wish we could stay longer, but between camping with friends in Minnesota last weekend and trying to get to Conrad for the 4th, there just wasn't much time left. I hope to be grateful for the time I get in Glacier rather than greedy for more, trusting that there will be longer visits in our future. It almost seems silly to subject us all to several more hours of driving for only a few hours in Glacier. But I think once I'm there I'll remember why I feel so determined to get back there, even for just a day.

Shakespeare in the Park

2009-06-21T15:56:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling pretty down on city living lately. I think it started with my trip to my mom's through some of the prettiest river road scenery Iowa, Missouri, and Minnesota have to offer. While I was at my mom's place, I was struck by how quiet her street was, and how freely the kids could wander without worrying about being hit by a speeding car--a real concern on our street here in St. Paul.

My yearning for quiet continued as the neighbors next door got more and more raucous (though things have calmed down for now since one of the neighbors was ushered out by three of St. Paul's Finest, as I wrote about in a previous post). My yearning for security sharpened as my kids and I walked to the corner store the other day to get milk and candy, and fumes of pot smoke wafted out of a car parked in front of the store, right near where Bridger was locking up his bike.

My reading material lately has not exactly inspired calm or peace of mind. First, I was reading a book called Distracted, which posited that our reliance on electronic media was going to lead to another dark age. Then I read the new book about Columbine. And because I wasn't depressed and jittery enough after that, I picked the book Beautiful Boy off the library shelf, a heart-rending memoir by the father of a young man addicted to crystal meth.

"It's terrifying," I told my husband.

"Then why are you reading it?" he asked.

"Because," I said. "I want to know the parameters of how bad things can get. I want to know if there's anything I can do to help prevent that kind of thing now."

Then some friends of ours sent me a link with pictures of the house they just bought in rural Wisconsin, after years of hard work and struggle and living in a teeny rental place with their young daughters. I looked at the photos, the picture windows framing forest in every direction, the big deck, the garden. I sighed. I was happy for them. Overjoyed, even. But I also felt a deep, jealous yearning. I want that, too, I thought. But for now and probably a long time to come, we are very much anchored here--in this old 1912 Late Victorian four-square, this neighborhood.

Today, though, something shifted for me. A weight lifted. The kids and I went to Newell Park, a lovely neighborhood park with a shady canopy of mature oak trees, to see a free outdoor performance of The Tempest (Brian opted to stay home, enjoy the silence, and read the paper on the couch). We'd gotten ready ahead of time by reading a picture book version of the play by Bruce Coville, so the kids were familiar enough with the story to identify the characters milling around before the show. I'd told them that if the actors were good enough, they'd be able to understand the emotions and action of the play by the body language and facial expressions, even if the language wasn't always familiar.

I expected they'd watch a scene or two and then start whining to go to the playground. Uh-uh. They sat there entranced the whole hour-and-a-half (it was a skillfullly abridged version of the play). Cassidy was so riveted, when I told her I needed to go to the bathroom and asked if she wanted to go with me, she said no, that she'd stay on the blanket with Bridger and keep watching. This is the girl who often howls if I go from one floor of the house to another without taking her with me.

But after all, what's not to like for a kid? You have a dancing, singing monster, an enchanted island, a magician with a fancy purple cape, an airy spirit painted the colors of the sky, guys wielding swords, a beautiful and noble young girl falling in love with a prince. After all our fairy tale-spinning, the world of The Tempest was utterly familiar ground to them.

Up at the park building, a big multigenerational party was in full swing. Picnickers hung out at shady tables. A group of kids and adults was playing pick-up softball at the park diamond, a few dozen yards away from the Shakespeare performance. Suddenly, living in the city wasn't feeling so bad. It had its rewards, just as living in the woods would have its own set of rewards.

Near the very end of the play came Miranda's famous speech, delivered upon seeing a group of men other than her father for the first time in her adult life (she's been stranded on an island with her magician father and assorted spirits since she was two).

"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't!"

Her father tersely replies, "'Tis new to thee."

I got tears in my eyes--such a lovely, perfect distillation of innocence and experience, wonder and gimlet-eyed realism--and deeply, darkly funny as delivered by the actors.

When I told my husband about it later, he said, "I can imagine saying exactly the same kind of thing to Cassidy when she's a teenager."

Four hundred years ago, a man in England wrote a play. A group of people performed it in a shady natural amphitheater of oaks and grass today, in a land still referred to in Europe as the New World when the playwright was alive. It's still new in many ways, this world of ours. New and old, both--fresh and weary, all at once. Today my children got their first taste of Shakespeare, the best possible experience I could have imagined for them, and my heart feels lighter and more grateful than it has in weeks.

There are a few more performances of The Tempest left in the Twin Cities if you're interested. You can find a schedule here.

Honest Scrap

2009-06-11T21:42:00.000-07:00

Kate Hopper, the writer, teacher, and community builder behind the blog Mother Words: Mothers Who Write, recently tagged this blog with an Honest Scrap Award--ironically, right as I was beginning to question if I should even keep doing a blog. (Insert Homer Simpson-style headsmack here--Dope!) All it took was that li'l' bit of acknowledgement, and the blogging bug has bitten me anew.

The Honest Scrap Award is a sort of blogging chain letter that lets bloggers recognize blogs they find brilliant in content or design. (Thank you so much, Kate, for the kind acknowledgment.) Kate also awarded another blog I'd already found through Mother Words, Lynne Marie Wanamaker's Mind Body Mama, and two others, The Blue Suitcase and Maggie World, that I was happy to discover, as well).

I hereby bestow the Honest Scrap Award on the three blogs that I turn to most often for inspiration, provocation, insight, and electronic companionship:

Unschooling is Dreamy

A friend of mine's funny, energizing chronicle of her family's unschooling life, including one son obsessed with rockets and the Wicked Witch of the West, and a younger son with a penchant for impish destruction and mayhem.

Just Enough, and Nothing More

An exhaustive, beautifully organized compendium of parenting and homeschooling information--not so much a blog as a treasure chest, in my opinion.

Wonder Farm

Patricia Zaballos's blog chronicles her family's pursuit of creativity, which takes a wonderful variety of forms, from her daughter's miniature Indian kitchen diorama to Patricia's year-long study of excellent personal essayists. I found her blog via her dead-on "Waldorf guilt" posts, and I've been hooked ever since.

Wear your Honest Scrap with pride, ladies, and do share the love!

I am supposed to list ten honest things about myself as part of the whole Honest Scrap protocol. If you are one of the bloggers listed above, feel free to skip this step if it doesn't appeal to you. It did appeal to me, however, so here goes:

1. I actually really do like being forty, and like my friend Katrina, I think my friends look more beautiful as they get older, not less, because, as Katrina put it, you can see more of their lives in their faces now.

2. I tend to think that the secret to happiness is the right schedule.

3. I had an obsessive crush on Heath Ledger's Joker character last summer, at the height of The Dark Knight hype.

4. As a kid, I forced my friends to act in basement theatrical versions of the books I'd read recently, and I always gave myself the leading role, because after all, I was the one who'd read the book. Jane Eyre and Gone With the Wind were two long-running productions. When I told my friends about the plot of Wuthering Heights, two of my ensemble's players rolled their eyes at each other and asked snarkily, "I wonder who's going to play Cathy?"

5. I am utterly fixated on the idea of self-improvement, perhaps to the exclusion of actual peace and happiness.

6. I'm good at beginning things, but I have a hard time finishing things. My husband laughs (when he's not cringing) at the way I put jars of jelly that have the faintest smear of jelly back in the fridge for someone else to finish off, or how I'll leave a box of crackers with one cracker in it on the shelf for months. Endings make me deeply uneasy.

7. I dream of living deep in the woods in northern Minnesota, Oregon, or Montana when I am an old lady. I would love to be doing that right now, actually, but can't because A) My husband and I have sunk way too much money into this house to try to move now, B) I could never in a million years "stage" this house for buyers without completely losing my mind at this point in my life, and C) I would miss the friends I have here too much and all the things I've grown used to here in St. Paul.

8. I set out as a mother determined to be more patient and understanding than my mother was with me, but I think I am actually more consistently crabby than she was.

9. I am very good at noticing what my children are interested in and finding them more information and resources to explore those interests. I'm also extremely generous when it comes to playing make-believe games and stories with them, though not as generous as they'd probably like me to be.

10. It has been over seven years since my husband and I have gone out on a nighttime, stay-out-dancing-til-the-bars close kind of date, or even a go-see-a-movie-in-a-theater-that-isn't-a-matinee date. The last time my husband and I went on a date, we took a walk along the Mississippi, had lunch, then spent the last half-hour or so of our date at the LIBRARY. That's the kind of unrepentant dorks WE are.

All right, that's enough honesty for one post. Over and out.

Current Interests

2009-06-10T20:44:00.000-07:00

A short post for a change--I just wanted an excuse to share some photos, basically. Cassidy has been pretty interested in pregnancy and birth ever since we participated in a Blessingway for a pregnant friend of ours a few weeks ago. If you're not familiar with that ceremony, it's a celebration for a woman about to give birth, a chance to revel in community support and her own strength, as opposed to the standard baby shower, which as I understand it celebrates a woman's ability to accumulate a lot of crap from Babies R Us. The first time I attended a Blessingway, I thought, I hope Cass gets to have one of these some day, and I hope that she and I will have the kind of relationship that she'll want me to be there with her if she does.

At the Blessingway, we all tossed a ball of red yarn back and forth across the circle until we were all woven together in a giant web, and then we snipped off the yarn to make bracelets for ourselves, bracelets we wore until we heard our friend had had her baby, a tradition Cassidy found fascinating and one that kept our friend very much in our minds and hearts.

The day Cass found out our friend's baby had been born, she put a balloon under her dress and enacted her own "baby's" birth again and again. Again, I found myself thinking about my daughter as a potential future mother. And what I thought was, please let me be the kind of mother she would want to have with her when she gives birth. But if she doesn't want me there for her own good reasons, let me understand and give her room to have the birth she wants to have.

As for Bridger, well, he is just all about taking photos of Legos scenes lately, as I've alluded to. We've been having really fun conversations about the emotional impact of close-ups, when long shots are most effective, and so on. He's always been very observant and visually oriented, noticing details and patterns in picture books and movies that sail right past me; for instance, after we watched Charlie Chaplin's "The Circus," he picked out that the tattered bit of star from a circus tent that Chaplin is holding at the very end of the film, after the circus has picked up and left him behind, is the same star that was featured earlier in the movie when he first met the girl he loved and lost. I was flabbergasted that he'd picked up on that and remembered it.

It is fascinating to me to see the ways Bridger's visual and storytelling orientation are expressing themselves right now, and to watch his joy and concentration as he sets up his intricate, endlessly unspooling stories all over the house.

Overwhelming, or Just a Good Challenge?

2009-06-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

I knew I wanted to marry my husband Brian the day I misread a plane itinerary and we missed our flight home from Thanksgiving with his family, the first major holiday he and I spent together. I burst into tears when I realized what had happened. My husband paused, thought things over, and said calmly, "I've always wondered what would happen if I missed a flight. Now I'll get to find out."

This man, I thought, would be good to have around in a crisis. This one's a keeper.

It strikes me that one of the main things I would love for my children (and myself) to learn is that setbacks and obstacles are simply part of life, part of the waves we have to surf, part of the weather we have to dress for. Obstacles and setbacks and mistakes are not something we have to rail against and tear our hair out about and wildly beat our breasts over or expend gobs of energy regretting. They are simply a condition of learning and being human and being part of a world that is imperfect and uncontrollable. And as my husband says, the only way to avoid making mistakes is to do nothing, and that would be a mistake. I have such a hard time remembering that, though, I sometimes wonder how I'll ever be able to convey to my kids that making a mistake really doesn't mean you're a big worthless screw-up--it just means you're trying something difficult or that there's something additional you need to learn or do in order to succeed.

I thought about all that last week when something happened that I didn't expect. I had organized an information table for our neighborhood library at a local festival. I'd arranged to pick up the table we were going to borrow for the event the morning of the festival. "If I'm not there, I'll leave it on the side of the house for you," the woman had told me.

Brian was out of town, so I had to haul the kids along to the festival along with the chairs, the informational pamphlets, the postcards to the mayor, and all the other assorted info table swag. I stopped to pick up the table. No one home. No table anywhere to be found outside the house. I had no phone number for the table's owner. I got back in the car and started talking out loud, trying to figure out what my Plan B was. I decided to stop by two other neighbors' houses who'd also offered tables, but neither was home.

By this time, I was starting to get a little weepy and self-pitying. I tried to stay calm, knowing that this was an opportunity to model a productive response to a setback for the kids. I tried to be honest about my frustrations: "She probably just spaced it out. But this is why it's important for people to follow through on something they commit to doing, because when they don't, it can cause trouble for the people who were relying on them." I let them hear me think out loud about how to solve the problem: "Well, I guess I'll just go home and get our card table for now, and I'll stop by her house later on when I get a chance to see if I can get the bigger table from her."

I am not going to pretend that there weren't a few "shit, shit, shits," muttered darkly under my breath in the midst of all my more reasonable utterances. But in the end, it all worked out. We made do for a while with a much-too-small table and eventually were able to borrow a bigger one from another non-profit group at the festival. My kids got to see that things can indeed work out even when there's a glitch or two in the original plan. My next aspiration is to learn to greet setbacks with actual joy! Like, oh, goodie, I get to practice my problem-solving skills. Or, oh, won't this be interesting to see how this plays out? Perhaps when I'm 80 or so, I'll get there. . .

Years ago, I remember talking to a friend's husband who was opening his own recording studio in Uptown Minneapolis. He was in his early twenties, and he'd inherited his start-up capital due to a tragic circumstance: both his parents had died. Knowing he wanted to start a band and run a recording studio, he'd quit college and instead rented an apartment down in New Orleans, all by myself, so he could be alone to study up independently on sound engineering and equipment and write a lot of good songs to get his band off on the right foot. He chose New Orleans, he said, because he could be alone and therefore not distracted by his social life at home, but when he wanted a social atmosphere, it would be easy to find. The rich musical inspiration didn't hurt, either.

Now, after his self-imposed course of study, he was building a recording studio, all by himself. Things were still in a state of chaos when I was talking to him. He pointed to various areas of the construction site and explained where he'd put the recording booth, where he'd put the mixing board, and so on.

"It seems so overwhelming!" I said, seeing all the obstacles between him and completion.

He looked genuinely surprised. "Nah," he said with a relaxed shrug. "It's just a really great challenge."

That was 1995. He is now a successful recording engineer and musician, making his living doing what he likes, facing setbacks with a cool confidence in his own ability to figure things out--at least as far as I can tell.

So is my life overwhelming, or is it just a really good challenge? How I answer that question really shapes the whole process, don't you think?

Slow Learner

2009-06-07T14:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Top 3 Things I Loved About Today

2009-05-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

#3 Thing I Loved: I got to pull garlic mustard for an hour at Crosby Farm Park, uninterrupted, by myself. You know you're hard up for uninterrupted time to do something when weed-pulling becomes bliss simply because you get to do it straight through for a whole hour without having to stop. Confession: In some ways I actually love being hard up for time in this way. It fosters much more joy and appreciation than having too much time all to myself.

#2 Thing I Loved: I actually think I've finished revising Part 1 of my book, at least for now (I expect ripple effect changes in all the book's sections as I move forward with revision), and I'm actually ready to move in to working on Part 2. My goal was to finish work on Part 1 by May 20, so yahoo for coming pretty darn close to that deadline. Today I also realized definitively that I want to use a non-chronological narrative because I noticed how much the energy in the book picked up as I started to describe Bridger as a verbal toddler and young child rather than just as a baby making my life miserable with his sleeplessness and incessant nursing. I want to make sure to weave in scenes of my kids as older children alongside the baby stuff. I hadn't known that I wanted to do that until today, and the discovery was exciting.

And number 1:

I was lecturing Cass a bit about something this morning, I can't remember what. She started to put her hands over her ears, but then she looked up at me instead, dropped her hands, and said, "Mama, I don't like you talking, but I love you."

Ah, my fabulous little girl. Thank you for that.

What, Me Worry?

2009-05-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

I have so much stored up I wanted to talk about from our trip, and Brian's outside with the kids, so I thought I'd grab a moment to write a second post today about visiting my mom.

While I was getting ready for the trip and worrying so much about how the kids would behave around my mom and what she would think of my parenting, it struck me that if I could sum up my one main problem with my mom, it would be, "She worries too much." As a kid, I felt that somehow she thought I was never going to turn out right, that I wasn't going to be able to "function in the real world," to quote one of her oft-used phrases, in part because she worried about me so damn much. Once I had children, she worried about them and how I was raising them: I was going to smoosh Bridger when we slept with him as a baby; I was making him too dependent on me because I carried him so much; I was going to tire myself out by giving so much to my kids (well, she was right on that last one, but all her worrying didn't actually prevent it from happening).

I think my mother genuinely believes that worry is a measure of love; that of course a mother worries about her children. But I have a worry of my own: I believe when we mothers worry so much about our kids, we are sending them all sorts of messages, nonverbal and verbal, that don't help our kids to see themselves as capable and that don't help them learn to trust that things will usually work out all right in the end--or that they have what it takes to cope when things don't work out. We also end up inadvertently insinuating ourselves in their heads as an undermining, fretful voice of doubt rather than an uplifting vote of confidence.

I've been thinking about the idea of worry a lot in part because of a post about worry from one of my favorite bloggers, Tammy Takahashi. She was writing about homeschooling, but I think what she has to say applies to anyone.

"Worried you aren't doing enough?" she writes. "You're giving up your power. By worrying whether you are doing enough, you are saying, 'I'm powerless to control this thing.'. . . If you want back your power, don't worry about things, think about them."

There are all sorts of things I worry about in our homeschooling. I worry that we don't get enough exercise and time outdoors, for instance. I worry when Bridger is so hard on himself when he makes a mistake. I worry that I'm not getting Cassidy together for one-on-one playdates with other little girls her age as much as she might like, and that I'm not giving her enough chances to do the crafty, artsy things I think she enjoys. But when I shift to thinking instead of worrying, I stop going into defeatist mode and start looking for small steps I can take to help my children. I stop fretting about failing and measuring up and tune in instead to what might actually work for us, right now, as we are.

Trip Report, Part 1

2009-05-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

On the way down to my mom's place in Southern Illinois, we stopped at Lincoln's tomb in Springfield. The monument is just right--not too showy or ornate, as suits a humble fellow such as Lincoln, but dignified, as befits his accomplishments. I was talking to a tour guide about reading "Team of Rivals" and how much more love and respect I felt for Lincoln now. He asked where I was from, and when I told him Minnesota, he pointed out that there was marble from Mankato, MN in the monument. I was touched--he really wanted to find a way to let me feel connected. In front of the monument there's a bronze bust of Lincoln based on his Mt. Rushmore head, and my mom told me afterwards that it's customary to rub his nose for good luck. Wish I would have known. He would have loved that custom, I think.

At my mom's place, I'd say the big highlight for the kids was going to the Bonifest, the annual beginning of summer carnival at my old church, St. Boniface. There were lots of inflatable bouncy things to play on, Grandma generously kept buying tickets, and Bridger and Cass totally wore themselves out--that night was the first time they both slept through the night since, oh, I don't know, Cass's birth three-and-a-half years ago. We also got to see my sister's ex-boyfriend's cover band play at the fest, and Cassidy busted some seriously funky moves to "867-5309" and that old Steve Miller song about being a joker, a smoker, and a midnight toker. It was fun to be at the Bonifest as a mother, watching the teenagers roam around looking for their crush objects, remembering being in their shoes.

I'd said in my last post that I was hoping to connect more with my son Bridger while we were traveling, and some really nice things did happen with him while we were at my mom's house.

One day he got frustrated because my mom had brought out a wooden 3-D airplane puzzle for Bridger to put together and it turned out to be very confusing and hard to do, especially because it was late afternoon, not the best time concentration-wise for Bridger.

Bridger declared the puzzle impossible and stomped off in a huff to find me--I was hiding in my mom's study looking something up on her computer.

"We should just throw that dumb thing in the trash!" he declared.

I paused. I think he expected me to say something along the lines of "We can't throw the puzzle in the trash." But instead I said, "Wouldn't you rather have a flamethrower? It's wood, isn't it? So you could really get rid of it if you burned it."

I treasure the look he got on his face--of wonder-filled surprise and relief.

"Or an incinerator," he said. "Or a laser gun."

In the end, we decided to just put the puzzle away in case another grandchild wanted to do it, and Bridger was able to let go of his frustration pretty easily.

Another day, Bridger bumped his head on a table trying to get away from my mom kissing him on the neck. He got very upset and was crying and yelling up a storm. I took him in the spare room and held him. He started yelling, "Let's leave Grandma's house and never come back!"

I could imagine how hurt my mom might feel about those words. But I could also sympathize with Bridger. So I didn't silence him with talk about how Grandma might feel about him yelling that (albeit in another room). I tried to do active listening--to say "You really don't want to be here. It's hard to be away from home" and so on. Eventually he got up and went outside to sit in the van, still insisting calmly but firmly that we were going home now and never coming back. I asked him if he'd take a bike ride with me instead, and he said, "Why not?", his new phrase for "Yes." I walked beside him while he pedalled. I didn't talk much--unusual for me--or try to draw him out more. I tried to let the silence, the time outside, the exercise and just being together, be enough. And it was. He stopped talking about wanting to leave. He seemed to feel better, and he ended up having a very good visit with his grandma and my stepdad Steve.

In the past, I have gotten really rattled and self-conscious when Bridger gets frustrated or emotional around my mom. This time, I just didn't feel as self-conscious. I felt more trust that Bridger is finding his way, and that it's good that he still expresses strong emotion when he feels it. He hasn't learned the self-destructive habit of silencing his strong reactions to please other people, but at the same time he is learning to modulate his responses so that he doesn't hurt others with his anger. What more could I ask for from a six-year-old boy? From this particular six-year-old boy?

I also viewed my mom's responses in a different light. Before, when she frowned and wouldn't look me in the eye when the kids got upset, I assumed her response was disapproval and judgment. More and more, I suspect she's just distressed to see me and the kids having a hard time and afraid of saying the wrong thing. I can be very prickly with her when she responds to the kids or me in what I think is the "wrong" way. So I found myself trying not to assume so much about what she was thinking, realizing that deep down I really didn't know. That helped me feel calmer around her.

As I mentioned in my last post, right before we left on our trip, I talked to Scott Noelle, a parenting coach that many of you might know about. We talked about my trouble with knowing what I genuinely feel and believe, without it being all mixed up with what I think I'm supposed to feel and believe. This last week, I really worked on checking in with myself more to ask "What do I actually feel right now?" instead of going down the road of "What do I think my mom is feeling about this, and how do I feel about myself as a result?"

It's probably going to take me a lifetime to unlearn the habit of stifling my own intuition to suit other people. I am hoping that if I can learn to listen to my own children without so much judgment, without jumping so often to impose my point-of-view, that they will have an easier time than I do answering the question, "What do I truly believe?" And if that isn't possible, given their own particular combinations of upbringing, temperament, genetics, and experience, well, I hope that if nothing else I can be a positive, encouraging voice in their heads as they sort things out.

Tomorrow We Hit the Road

2009-05-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

I have been such a mess getting ready for this road trip to visit my mom. I think I really started to spin out on Mother's Day. That was the day Bridger had a complete hissy fit after I told him he needed to wash his black, grimy feet before he went to bed. He screamed at me and slapped my upper thigh--while I was on the phone with my mother. I was mortified. I started seeing my children's and my every move through the worst possible hypothetical judgments I could plant in my mother's head--and she hadn't even said a word. It was all in my imagination, and it was driving me nuts.

Things finally got so bad that I did something sort of cheesy and embarrassing but ultimately helpful. I called a parenting coach! (Yes, Scott Noelle, in case you're wondering. Who else would a gal like me call?) I needed to talk to someone completely outside the situation, and it did the trick--I feel ready to roll. I am excited to drive down the river road, a landscape that always inspires me. I'm excited to visit the Maple City Candy Company in Monmouth, IL and try another slice of their banana cream pie with meringue a good two inches high. I'm looking forward to seeing my mother and practicing some of the deep listening I've been talking about in some of my recent posts. I'm looking forward to spending more time with my dear son, who I think is struggling lately, though I'm not sure exactly with what.

And I'm excited to ride bikes with my kids through my hometown, Edwardsville, IL, to check out the farmer's market there, to have a coffee at the artsy local coffee shop on Main Street. I used to think Edwardsville was such a boring place. Now I go back and think, "What a nice place this would be to raise kids." Funny how that works.

"Traveling mercies," a neighbor of mine signed off on the phone tonight after she heard about our road trip. She's a political activist and minister, prone to ending conversations with phrases like "Peace to you," but somehow she never makes it sound sanctimonious. It always feels to me the way it feels when a good massage therapist lays her hands on you, firmly and thoughtfully and with great attentiveness, at the end of a massage.

"Traveling mercies" to me and my family, indeed. I'll try to post and let you know how it's all going.

The Canary Sings

2009-05-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, my daughter asked me, "Mama, why are you so mean lately?" I crouched down to look her in the eyes and asked what I'd been doing that felt mean. "You don't play with us very much," she told me.

You know the old saying about the canary in the coal mine? That, I thought, was a canary singing if I ever heard one. A canary breathing in too many toxic fumes of busyness and anxiety.

What's been happening? Well, we're getting ready to travel to my mom's house for one thing, and road trips always throw me into a state of anxiety, even though I love them once I'm on the road. I get very nervous about the disruption in our routine and distracted by all the preparations and last-minute things to take care of.

I also think I've been feeling more doubtful than usual about our unschooly, playful approach to learning--probably in part because I often feel self-conscious about how the kids and I are learning when I'm around my mom, and I've started to anticipate that clutched-up, nervous feeling. When the kids seem especially demanding and needy, I tend to get stuck in a rut of self-doubt. If only I'd taken a more Waldorfy approach early on and encouraged them not to rely on me so much as a playmate! I agonize. If only we took a more structured, scheduled approach, I wouldn't get so distracted by my own to-dos that I forget to spend intentional, thoughtful time with my kids!

As you can imagine, none of this mental hand-wringing does much good for my kids or me.

To stop feeling quite so distracted and consequently, "mean," as Cassidy put it, I decided to cut way back on my email and Internet use this last week so I could focus more on the kids and on the flow of our life. Instead of running to the computer every time I thought of someone else I needed to contact or something I wanted to look up, I wrote down a reminder note, and then I sat down--just once, right after lunch, and did all the to-dos in one batch while the kids had their quiet time.

It made an amazing difference. Throughout the day, I did feel pulled, like an alcoholic thinking of a stash of booze, toward that computer. But I tried to just notice the thought and move on.

I also tried the same technique of noting things down on paper when I had a negative, critical thought about one or both of the kids or my own parenting. Then, at the end of the day, I examined those thoughts using Byron Katie's "The Work" method of inquiry, asking if the thoughts were really true, looking at how I felt when I believed those thoughts, and so on. Very helpful, and the kids were spared my unnecessary and unkind critical rants that way.

Yesterday we went in the back yard to read some books, and Bridger decided he wanted to build a cozy reading shelter within our wooden play structure. He got some tape, fun noodles and a tablecloth to make a canopy underneath the roof of the play structure. I contributed some rubber bands and bungee cords when the tape didn't hold. We got underneath and it felt very sheltered and cozy. But it was missing something. I went inside and got some soft sleeping bags, pillows, and some snacks and water.

I spread the bags out and Bridger climbed in, snuggled down, and declared, "This is too nice to be true! It must be a dream!" And then we read in our little shelter and munched crackers and raisins. We cuddled. We lay down and felt the breeze and smelled the new pink blossoms on the trees.

My aim? More afternoons like that. Fewer afternoons so consumed by emails and to-dos that I forget what I really want my life to be about.

Garlic Mustard Pledge to Pull Kick-Off=Big Fun

2009-05-06T19:55:00.000-07:00

Tonight I attended a volunteer event to kick off the Friends of the Mississippi River's Pledge to Pull effort for the month of May. The group is working to empower regular folks to pull garlic mustard at Crosby Farm Park, a wooded river park and major migratory bird stopover in St. Paul.

Garlic mustard, for those of you not in the know (and I was one of you up until last year), is an invasive, non-native species of leafy green flowering plant originally brought over by European settlers for food. In its normal range, garlic mustard plays a valuable role. But here in St. Paul, deer won't eat it, our local butterfly caterpillars won't eat it, and it doesn't play nicely with the native plants.

The nice thing about garlic mustard, though, is that it's easy to identify and pick, and it's edible. Karen Solas, the river stewardship coordinator who ran tonight's event, even brought recipes--garlic mustard salsa anyone? Tossed salad with smoked salmon, French sorrel, and garlic mustard? I'm hoping to try some of these recipes. Next time I pull garlic mustard (I'm committed to 6 more hours this month), I'll take a small container to bring some home. I just knew Brian would roll his eyes if I brought home a trash bag of weeds and tried to pass it off as a viable gustatory option.

Tonight's event was so lovely. Two families from our homeschooling/unschooling group were there, including Monique, a super-volunteer for the river who's only three weeks or so away from giving birth to her second child, and Jenni, who took breaks to nurse her five-month-old on the river bank while her husband watched their older two kids. It was wonderful to work while the kids climbed on logs, threw rocks in the Mississippi, explored a cave, and even did a little weed-pulling, too, all the while noisily, happily chatting and laughing away. Our homeschooling group has been meeting regularly at Crosby Farm Park this spring, so it felt good to take care of the park a bit in return.

While I pulled, I got in a little friendly conversation, both with the folks I knew and the ones I didn't, but I found that much of the time I just wanted to work quietly, focusing on one plant at a time, one small patch of woods, noticing the variation in size of the plants, length of roots, stage of flowering. All around me was the contented hum of nature-loving Minnesotans, finally getting their hands in the dirt and seeing green leaves again after the long winter.

As the event ended, the sky was turning gorgeous shades of pink, and the setting sun lit the trees across the river gold. We carried away many bags of garlic mustard and left much more still waiting to be pulled.

I once heard a Jewish saying that has really stuck with me over the years: "You can't do everything. But that doesn't mean you can do nothing." There are many times when I feel overwhelmed by the impossibility of the world turning out to be a good place for my children. Other times, like tonight, I feel that no matter what happens, it is always worthwhile to get down in the dirt with other people and help make room for good things to grow.

For more about the Friends of the Mississippi River and its activities, you can go to

http://www.fmr.org/

Cool Things My Kids and I Have Learned From the Brothers Grimm

2009-05-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

As I've written about previously, we have a nightly ritual of telling a story from Grimms or another source of old tales in bed after the lights are out. Lately I've really been appreciating the stories that Walt Disney never made into paeans to female passivity. Stories like "The Prince and the Princess," in which a kind-hearted, magical princess saves her beloved from death and capture six different times and wins his hand in marriage only after making her way in the world as a miller's assistant. Or Hans Christian Andersen's "Wild Swans," in which a young woman endures hardship with courage and perseverance in order to free her eleven brothers from a curse.

And there are also wonderful male heroes, too, like the basket-maker's apprentice in the story "The Three Wishes" who gives up his three fairy-granted wishes to make other people happy and healthy--and then he ends up getting the three things he would have wished for anyway, just not in the way he expected.

I've noticed a few common lessons and themes in many of the stories:

1. If a character is introduced who is derided by his family and the other townsfolk as a blockhead, he will be the one to perform heroic deeds, marry the princess, and some day rule the kingdom wisely and well.

2. A wish made with other people's welfare in mind usually turns out much, much better than a wish made thinking only of one's self.

3. What looks like bad luck often turns to good luck.

4. What looks like good luck often turns to bad luck.

5. Happiness requires venturing into the unknown, enduring crushing setbacks and obstacles, and taking enormous risks.

The other day at the kitchen table, Cassidy stated that she wanted to be a princess when she grew up. She, Bridger, and I started brainstorming the best ways for her to become a fairy-tale princess. She could fall into a magical coma; she could disguise herself as a humble servant but be on the look-out for a fairy godmother.

"But the main way to become a princess," Bridger pointed out, "is to be enchanting at a ball."

I spent so many years of my life thinking if only a guy loved me, my life would begin. Then, later, I thought my life hadn't really begun, or at least wasn't a real "adult" life, because I hadn't accomplished the things I thought I should have accomplished.

My hope for Cassidy? That she recognizes her own sovereignty from the very beginning, without waiting for anyone to hand power to her, without waiting for some outside marker to tell her "Now you've arrived."

"The Road of Excess Leads to the Palace of Wisdom"-William Blake

2009-04-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

This morning we were reading a spring issue of Click, a really nice theme-oriented kids' magazine for 3-6 year-olds. There was a craft suggestion for making leaf rubbings. Always on the look-out for a craft that won't necessitate expensive trips to several different art and craft stores to gather supplies that will then end up furry with dust on our supply shelf, I said, hey, that'd be fun, except there aren't any leaves on the trees yet.

Bridger said, "I'll go look for some leaves!", went outside, and came back in with a beautiful flower from our Norway maple. Intrigued, we found photos online that someone had taken over a two-week period in April and May of a Norway maple tree's flower opening up into new leaves. It helped us identify the baby leaves on our own sample and understand the tree's leafing cycle much better than I'd ever understood it before. Here's the URL for that if you're interested:

http://www.lookoutnow.com/animal/n_maple.htm

At this point, the kids and I were still just exploring and appreciating. I wasn't thinking "educational activity" yet or "scientific method." We were simply seeing something small and beautiful that we'd never noticed before, and that was enough.

I got excited and said, hey, let's go look at the early flowers and leaves on other trees and see what we find. I plucked off the long, dangly flower from the neighbor's birch tree and more flowers from the maple, feeling a little apologetic toward the leaves that wouldn't get a chance to grow and soak up sunlight for the tree.

I labeled my specimens with a date and put them in plastic bags, thinking we could collect a few samples over the next few days and watch how they changed. By this time, Bridger and Cass had moved on to swinging off the various ropes and swings we have hanging off the maple tree.

We decided to head to the park. Bridger hopped on his bike and I pushed Cass in her stroller.

As I walked, I noticed all the different variations on flowers, leaves, and seeds that were emerging. It was wonderfully eye-opening and exciting. I chattered on, pointing out how one tree we passed had flowers that were very similar to a birch, and yet the bark was different.

"Maybe they're related in some way," I speculated.

"I'm riding away from you now!" Bridger declared.

"Am I talking too much?" I called after him teasingly.

"Yes!" he called back. But nicely, very nicely.

I really think it wasn't so much that it was too much information, or that he wasn't interested on some level. I just think he had noticed that I was no longer pointing things out solely out of interest or delight but with an ulterior motive: to satisfy my desire to at least occasionally do something that qualifies as an academic subject. Underneath my apparent joy and curiosity, there was a whiff of anxiety and striving and goal-orientation that felt, well, icky. Bridger had the good instincts to put as many sidewalk squares between him and that icky feeling as he possibly could. Bully for him, I say.

There's a homeschooler named Tammy Takahashi out in California who has a blog titled "Just Enough and Nothing More." I still have trouble sometimes stopping at the "Just Enough." But I guess, as the poet William Blake put it, you never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.

Hosan

2009-04-26T17:02:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty annoyingly goal-oriented when it comes to weekends, to the point where Brian and I actually have a family meeting on Friday nights to decide what tasks we want to get to during the next two days. There's just so much to be done if I'm going to feel like a worthwhile human being: I want to spend quality time together as a family, exercise, maybe squeeze in a few hours of writing, because after all Brian is home to watch the kids. On top of that, I think we ought to get much more done than we usually do when it comes to household and yard chores. Oh, and if the kids don't get outside and play, I start to feel guilty about Nature Deficit Disorder, so of course they must be marched outdoors at some point. To make things even more fun on weekends, I often find myself giving Brian the hairy eyeball if I don't think he's acting like a good dad should act (i.e., he's hanging out on the couch with his laptop instead of romping on the floor with the kids).

Yesterday, on Saturday, we did a lot of things I feel we are supposed to do to make for a good weekend: all four of us walked to the library (outdoor time! family fun time!) and then to a park to play for a while. I did yard work and even got in some writing. And yet I often felt rather joyless and pressured, in part because Cassidy was extremely emotional and needy, which made it hard to stick to my goals in the ways I had hoped to.

As it turned out, I think she was getting sick. Today she had a low-grade fever and was very low-energy. After lunch she climbed into my lap and Brian said quietly, "I think she's going to fall asleep." He suggested I take her up to the comfy chair in my writing room and hold her while she snoozed, since that was the best chance she probably had of getting in a much-needed nap. He told me he'd bring up the book I'm reading and a cup of tea.

I held my warm, sweet daughter in my lap and for the first time in I don't know how long, I didn't leap to use a child's nap as an opportunity to go get something done. I read and drank tea in the middle of the afternoon and listened to the rain and looked down at my girl's beautiful, flushed face.

After she woke up, she and I went down and found her brother working happily on a Lego scene and her dad on the couch with his computer. I could have thought about all the things that weren't happening: the chores not done, the exercise and time outdoors getting neglected, the one-on-one fatherly interaction Brian should have been having with Bridger. But instead I just felt peace and contentment. My boys were clearly having the day they wanted to have at that moment, even if it wasn't the day I would have chosen for them.

Later, while Brian read to the kids, I made a Tunisian pepper and potato couscous dish that I hadn't made in years--too many steps, too complicated. I relished the beauty of the red, yellow, and green pepper simmering in a tomato sauce, relished the smells of garlic and onion. I wanted to call my sister and a very dear friend of mine whom I often call when I'm having a hard time because I wanted to call for once when I was feeling happy and calm. I wanted to simply listen to them, to soak up their voices and catch up on their lives without my listening being clouded by my own troubles.

In Zen monasteries, days off from the normal monastic routine are called "hosan." They're a sort of Zen sabbath, a day of rest. Today it struck me that I (and maybe my whole family) would benefit from fewer goals on the weekend, fewer agendas, and a whole lot more hosan.

Clearing the Table

2009-04-22T10:43:00.000-07:00

In my ongoing quest to peacefully involve the kids in helping, one thing I decided to do was to ask that they stick around and help clear the table after meals rather than peeling off as soon as the meal is done (or sometimes before Brian and I are even done).

This has gone surprisingly well in the week or so since we got started. Cassidy loves opening and closing the fridge and finding the right places for the milk and the salad dressing. Bridger has been very helpful about putting dishes in the dishwasher--not just his, but any that need putting away. It really wasn't hard at all to start doing it, either--I just talked to the kids about how stressed out I was a week or so ago, and I said that clearing the table together was one small change that I thought would help me feel calmer. And they understood that. They seem so grown-up and capable to me as we all bustle around the kitchen together. I hope that they feel their own competence growing, too.

Why did I think this was important? I think it's a good idea for us all to get used to the idea of working together to finish a job, and to think not just in terms of "how little can I do before I take off?" but to stick with a task until it's completed. It's just good life practice, and a practice I'm still working on at 40.

I also think I have emphasized the kids' needs and preferences so much that I haven't always made enough room for my own. By saying, hey, I really would like your help so I'm not left with a mound of dishes to clear and wash, I'm sending a larger message about how I want our family to work.

I've also been trying to clear my table, metaphorically speaking, in other ways. Last week I sat down and looked at the 100s of pages I have generated on my mess of a book draft and took notes on what I actually have. I made a month-by-month plan for how to work my way through revising this shaggy monster, so now I just have to do it.

To stay on top of that effort, one way I need to clear my table is to spend less time sending emails, posting on this blog, and trolling the Internet. I still plan on posting here, but it will probably only be a couple of times a week. But if you've been reading, please do keep coming! It has been nice for me to know that there are a few folks out there, reading what I have to say.

Deep Listening and Council Practice

2009-04-19T19:58:00.001-07:00

At Clouds in Water Zen Center's Sunday service today, the head priest Sosan Flynn did something different and interesting. She had us divide up into small groups of about four or five people, with some groups including middle-school students from the center's youth program. We used a modified version of Council Practice, something the Clouds community has been working with for a few years now.

Sitting in a circle, we passed around a talking piece--in this case, a smooth rock--and first checked in with our names and one word about how we were feeling. Then we responded one at a time, as briefly but honestly as we could, to a few questions from the middle-school group: how do you tell people you are a Buddhist? Can you tell about a time when your outward actions didn't quite synchronize with your inner intentions, or a time when your outward actions did mesh with your inner intentions, and what was that like?

The ground rules were simple:

When you have the talking piece, you get to talk.

Everyone else's job at that moment is to listen from the heart, without thinking about how they want to respond. The listeners trust that when the talking piece gets to them, they'll know the right thing to say, without rehearsing it in their heads beforehand.

It was fascinating to me to notice the times when I did start to jump ahead as I listened and think about what I wanted to say. I had to make a conscious choice to in a sense empty myself to make space for the other person's words. I had to stop thinking so much about how their words might connect with my experience and instead focus my energy on trying to see what the other person's words meant to them, and what their experiences were about for them, apart from any connection to me.

At the beginning of the Council Circle, the word I used to describe myself was "Restless." By the end of it, when we checked out with a another word to sum up our state of mind, my word was "Relaxed."

I noticed ripple effects throughout the day. When I took a walk with a good friend, I caught myself leaping ahead to make some point about me instead of taking the time to delve deeper into what she was saying, ask her questions, or just stay with her ideas for a while longer. I didn't always catch myself until I was in the middle of doing it. But even noticing that gave me a new sense of all that I'm missing out on by approaching conversations this way. I found myself approaching my friend with a new curiosity as I realized all the ways I could learn more about her and hear her more deeply if I would just. . . slow. . . down.

After I got home, Brian was tired and grumpy after a challenging afternoon with the kids while I was away. He was getting pretty nitpicky and exasperated with me about the way I was doing things in the kitchen while we made supper together. For instance, he asked, "Why didn't you just put it ALL in?" after I left a trace of quinoa in the storage jar instead of going ahead and cooking it all. I have a habit of leaving just the tiniest trace of food in containers and then not using it up, leading to annoying clutter in the refrigerator and cupboard. This is so ME--I hate endings and goodbyes, I guess. I've never been much good at finishing what I start, although I'm getting better at it in my middle age.

Often when Brian gets nitpicky with me about one of my annoying habits, I get defensive and irritable and hurt, and I lash out. But tonight, I just laughed. I put my arms around him and said honestly, "It must get so annoying for you, these little food foibles of mine." And I meant it. I wasn't trying to humor him. I understood that my habits were annoying him, and for once, I didn't feel judgmental toward him for being annoyed. At the same time, and this was key, I didn't feel judgmental toward myself for being so annoying, either. I saw us both for who we were, irritating the hell out of one another, and at that moment it was OK.

"Thank you," my husband mumbled to me after we stopped hugging.

I would really love to find a way to keep cultivating the practice of deep listening that I got a small taste of today at the Zen center. It feels like an essential practice for so many aspects of life--parenting, working with City Hall (notice I didn't say fighting), being a wife, a friend, a daughter, a writer.

I feel so excited and grateful for the communities I am a part of and all that they're inviting me to learn.

Just This! Just This!

2009-04-15T14:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I was outside in the front yard with my daughter. She was flying a little paper kite on a string, her curly hair bouncing around her, her bare, muscular legs pumping as she ran. I thought about raking the garden out from under its bed of leaves. But then a line from my dear spiritual uncle Walt Whitman came to mind: "I loafe and invite my soule, I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass." I stayed put on the warm grass and watched my daughter, and doing that, I realized how rare that kind of ease and focus is for me these days. So often, I'm trying to do several things at once, glancing at my children out of the corner of my eye while I attend to some other task.

Of course it's important for me to do some of the other work I want to do: to write, to work for our neighborhood, to care for our house and yard. But I want to remember to just be with the kids more often. I want to strive more consciously to take both a big view and a little view, all at once: to keep in mind the big view of supporting my relationship with my child and modeling gentleness and kindness--even when we're running late to get to an appointment and my daughter suddenly decides to get verrrry particular about what shoes she wants to wear and how I should put them on. And I want to take a small view when that's more appropriate--to focus in on one girl running across the grass in the sunshine, instead of letting her be crowded out by a flock of noisy abstract concerns.

On that note, here's more poetry from another spiritual uncle, Ryokan, an 18th-century Japanese monk and hermit:

First days of spring--blue sky, bright sun.

Everything is gradually becoming fresh and green.

Carrying my bowl, I walk slowly to the village.

The children, surprised to see me,

Joyfully crowd about, bringing

My begging trip to an end at the temple gate.

I place my bowl on top of a white rock and

Hang my sack from the branch of a tree.

Here we play with the wild grasses and throw a ball.

For a time, I play catch while the children sing;

Then it is my turn.

Playing like this, here and there, I have forgotten the time.

Passers-by point and laugh at me, asking,

"What is the reason for such foolishness?"

No answer I give, only a deep bow;

Even if I replied, they would not understand.

Look around! Just this! Just this!

With a Little Help from My Friend. . .

2009-04-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

I was feeling pretty low the last few days, for many reasons, chief among them the latest developments in the library fight.

A small group of us wrote an op-ed for the paper about the library issue. The library director and the library media relations rep emailed the day it appeared and said they appreciated our passion but that one sentence in the piece contained inaccuracies that they felt must be corrected. They followed up with a conference call with the director and the media rep, which I conducted to the best of my ability while my children periodically bellowed in the background.

I felt many emotions: embarrassment about the inaccuracy (which, though minor in the grand scheme of the issue, was preventable and foreseeable); anger at the library for only responding to us when they wanted to publicly correct us and not responding to our larger concerns; fear that we might have done more harm than good and shot our group's credibility by making a mistake.

There's a reason they say you can't fight city hall. It's not easy for citizen activists to pull an effective effort together on short notice and on our own time. This doesn't mean I'm giving up. It just means I'm feeling pretty bruised.

It remains to be seen what's going to happen. It's been four days and the library still hasn't published any kind of correction or counterpoint op-ed. They did email back and say that our city councilmember, the deputy mayor, and the library director have a meeting set to start hammering out a community process for determining the library's future. So that's progress, though the effort to get that going was happening before our op-ed appeared.

I'd like to write more about how I felt about making a public mistake when the stakes feel so high. Not tonight, but later--either here, or in an essay, or both.

Since the whole thing broke, I've been spending way too much time up late stewing about it all, reading about other library closure issues in other cities (Philadelphia's facing 11 library closures in their system of 57, for instance, and the strategies and justifications the mayor there is using are remarkably like the ones our mayor is using). I am beginning to see a pattern in my own city and cities across the country--the current lousy economy is being used as an excuse to steal our public commons from us, the places like rec centers and libraries where we connect as neighbors and citizens. These are places that have been with us through generations of troubles--why can't our leaders find the will to keep them open now? The library I'm fighting for opened during the Great Depression, for God's sake.

Today I was feeling so hopeless and down, so out of energy for the kids. I called another mama friend of mine and just asked straight-out for support and encouragement. I know that like me, she struggles with being the kind of mother she wants to be.

She reminded me of the obvious stuff that's so easy to overlook--that getting enough sleep and exercise and maybe an hour a week to go sit in a coffee shop and write in my journal would probably make a remarkable difference. We laughed. We commiserated. I walked away feeling ready to try again with my kids. And for that I am so grateful.

More Equitable Chore Sharing--A First Dispatch from the Front

2009-04-10T09:20:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I started setting the table for dinner before we headed out to martial arts. I was feeling a little stressed about getting us out the door on time, and Bridger noticed. He offered, "Can I help you set the table?" Cassidy got very upset and said, "No, no, only I do it, I do it!" and started yanking off the silverware he'd set down so she could re-do the job.

One challenge, I'm realizing, in getting the kids to share chores more equitably will be to reassure Cass that her place as a good helper is not being usurped if Bridger helps, too. When Cass helps me, I've often thanked her for helping and told her how much I enjoy working with her, and at times, she's commented, "Bridger doesn't help." I've tried to point out ways he does help, while acknowledging that she often does help more readily and volunteer more. I'm realizing that Cass may have started defining herself as The Helpful One and drawing a sense of worth and security from that, so I can see why it might have been threatening for her when Bridger pitched in spontaneously.

I think it is very easy for kids (and parents) to fall into defining children by how they are different from their siblings, making it hard for kids to break out of set roles (i.e, one's the pretty one, one's the smart one; one kid's the good kid, the other the troublemaker). I think it's also easy for kids to start defining their lovability by how well they fill gaps they think their siblings can't or don't fill--as in the child who takes on the role of being a parent's support person and confidante, or the child who tries to be extra-good, stifling their own spirit, to make up for a "naughty" sibling.

I want my kids to know that they can both be whatever they want, no matter what their sibling does or doesn't do. They can BOTH be athletic, BOTH be thoughtful and smart, BOTH be attractive, BOTH be sensitive, BOTH be strong, BOTH get angry or sad, BOTH be imperfect, and BOTH be lovable, each in their own ways--beyond comparison.

The Power of Play

2009-04-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

Today my husband emailed me an article from the Wall Street Journal with the comment, "Sounds a lot like what has gone on at home since Bridger could talk." The article, titled "Playing Nice: Teachers Learn to Help Kids Behave in School," focuses on a preschool teacher in Portland, OR who has improved kids' behavior by adapting a play-oriented curriculum. At the beginning of each day, the kids choose a pretend-play scenario, like "Barber Shop," from pictures of play ideas posted on the wall, then each chooses a role. "Then," the reporter writes, "they have to act out the roles for 45 minutes, with children helping each other stick to their roles." The idea is to strengthen "executive function" thinking--the ability to control impulses and integrate new information.

Well. I don't have any doubt that the kids are gaining wonderful things from this kind of play. But the level of control of the play seems a bit much--for instance, the reporter noted that if a kid has chosen to play "the baby" in a scenario, but then shifts into a different role midway through, the other kids will "help" the "baby" play the role he/she originally set out to play.

I can see and value the intention behind this--helping kids learn to follow through on a plan, for instance, and helping them play by agreed-upon rules. But for me, part of the joy of play is how it morphs as you go--and how playmates have to make subtle or not-so-subtle adjustments as individual people make new discoveries or decide they want the story to charge off someplace new. I think kids can develop self-control, initiative, and "executive function" without being forced to stick to a prescribed play role for 45 minutes. I also suspect less-controlled imaginative play is a truer reflection of children's actual concerns and dreams. But I guess that kind of play wouldn't be as guaranteed to serve a set, predetermined learning outcome. I know it's also got to be harder to manage that sort of play in a larger group setting.

Around our house, we call pretend play "doing stories," and my husband is right--that has been going on since my son could talk. It started with a set of three toy construction workers, dubbed "Struction Guy," "Struction Gal," and "Struction Beard" by my son. The basic storyline was that one of the 'struction workers got hurt on the job. "Oops! I fall down!" was a refrain I heard hundreds of times. Sometimes they played hooky from the jobsite and did something Bridger and I had recently done, like going raspberry-picking.

We moved on to doing car stories with Matchbox cars and train stories with wooden Thomas trains. We created art car parades with Legos and acted out countless stories of knights and pirates with dress-up clothes.

For most of my son's toddler and preschool years, that was ALL he wanted to do: hours and hours a day of "doing stories." With me--never by himself. It's funny, because aside from a little drawing and writing stories, that was pretty much all I wanted to do as a kid, too. But with Bridger, I often got numbingly bored by the repetitive storylines and found myself wishing, jeez, couldn't we go paint, or do a nice craft, or play a board game every once in a while, just to break things up a little bit? But no. We could not.

As much as I sometimes resisted being pulled into Bridger's make-believe world, I often found out fascinating, wonderful things by playing with him. My son doesn't talk much about his feelings. But when I'd been getting upset with him a lot a few years back, he created a storyline about Lego brothers and sisters who built a beautiful Lego castle out in a forest so they could live away from their parents--because "Their mom and dad yell at them too much." Bridger loved having me act out having the parents drive past the castle and speculate about the master builders who must have created the castle--he loved the parents being too dense to recognize their children's talent and skill. OK, I thought. Points duly noted.

Other times, I was able to find out what questions he was working on, without him having to articulate those questions in words. For a while, he loved to play "The Car Who Doesn't Know Anything." I was a very foolish, innocent car who came into a big city full of more knowledgeable cars, and I had to be shown around and have everything explained to me. This helped me put myself in his shoes and realize how much he wanted to be able to be the authority sometimes. Another time, he went through a spell of wanting me to be a less-fancy Matchbox car who was jealous of the faster, prettier hot-rod Matchboxes. Playing this, I guessed he was working on questions about competition and his own value in relationship to others. Very interesting stuff, and, when I let myself forget about wanting to, say, check my email or sweep the floor, we sometimes really got into a beautiful zone together.

After so many years of wishing Bridger would "do stories" more by himself and not always want me to do them with him, my son seems to have weaned himself to mostly "doing stories" on his own or with other kids. He likes to play castle sometimes with his sister and me, but for the most part I'm becoming more of an onlooker to his imaginary world. He invites me to see the Lego space battle tableaus he's set up on the living room floor, but doesn't ask me to act out the battles with him. And that's fine with me. My challenge now is to remember to come over and look with a smile and genuine interest, even when he yells out, "Come look!" when I'm in the middle of making dinner.

Now it's my daughter who wants me to "do stories" with her, and again, I'm fascinated by what my children work on as they play. Today in the back yard, Cassidy started out wanting to pretend we were characters from "The Boxcar Children" books. But then she decided she wanted to be a ballerina, and I would be a bad knight who wanted to capture her and put her in a dungeon. I'm fascinated by how she is processing the messages from fairy tales, toy catalogs, and even comics (she was utterly enthralled with a Prince Valiant comic strip that showed pretty maidens being carried off by hairy half man-half beasts).

I loved what we did together with the victimized ballerina-in-the-dungeon scenario. Together, we wove a story in which the ballerina escaped and stowed away on a pirate ship (our backyard wooden play structure). The pirates loved her dancing and made her their Pirate Princess and leader. They sailed all over the world, to Italy, Australia, and Antarctica. Everywhere, the Bad Knight turned up and had to be defeated with the help of various allies and stratagems. So Cassidy got to both work out her fascination with and her fear of being victimized, and at the same time, she got to be strong, powerful, and free. I could never in a million years have come up with such a rich learning experience for her on my own. It had to come from her.

What if Cass had been in that Portland classroom, and her classmates had told her, no, you can't switch to being a ballerina, you said you were going to be Violet from "The Boxcar Children"? What if the scenario she wanted to play wasn't one of the choices listed on the wall? What if the teacher had steered Cass away from pretending to be a victim in a dungeon because of the teacher's discomfort with Cassidy choosing such an un-PC role?

I wonder. I wonder.

For more on the power and value of free play, I love the articles "Looking Back Over Twenty Years" by Alison McKee and "And They Played All Day" by Naomi Aldort, which you can find at http://www.alisonmckee.com/articles.html#general and http://www.naomialdort.com/articles.html. You have to scroll down a bit to get to these particular articles. Sorry these aren't direct links--I haven't figured out how to post links yet. I'll work on it.

Keep on playing, and please share your own stories, too!

Chores

2009-04-06T10:29:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm back on house cleaning.

My daughter loves to help me out around the house. She and I make her bed and my bed every morning. She helps me cook. She sorts silverware into the right compartments in the drawer. She loves to swish the toilet brush around in the toilet. She sprays off windows. I've never really tried to enforce chores with her--I've taken more of a "Let's do this together!" approach, and she seems to respond to it really well. I think she just also has a really strong desire for order in her surroundings.

My son really resists when we ask him to help. He can be incredibly hard-working and helpful when it's his choice to help and the work seems interesting to him--like at our harvest days out at the community supported farm, he works as hard as any grown-up picking and cleaning veggies and loading bags.

A part of me would love to just trust that given time, encouragement, and lots of modeling from us, he will learn to be more helpful, in the same way that I trust that he will learn everything else he needs to learn without being forced or manipulated in to it.

But a part of me just doesn't quite buy the wait-and-see approach, I think because of my own experiences as a kid and young adult.

When I was a child, my house seemed to get clean by magic while I was away at school. Clean clothes appeared neatly folded in my drawers and hung in my closet. My bed was made when I got home. The house was always pristine and picked up. That was my mom, of course--no magic there.

My dad died when I was twelve, and suddenly, shockingly, my mom was a widow, a single mom, and sole breadwinner for our family at 33. She needed more help from us, but we hadn't built up the habits of helping. We just didn't notice when dirty dishes were strewn all over the house, our rooms were carpeted with dirty clothes, and our bathroom was a disaster. Or if we noticed, I guess we were still expecting a little cleaning magic to come in and take care of it all for us. We were young teenagers, interested in watching MTV for hours to wait for a Duran Duran video to come on--not cleaning our rooms. I don't want to make excuses for our lack of helpfulness. I just want to note that by the time I was twelve, it was very difficult for me to switch into a helpful mode.

My mom often got horribly angry with us, and I can understand why. I can't even imagine the stress she was under those years. Her anger usually made me do better for a little while, but I always eventually slacked off again, once my fear and shame had worn off.

After I left home, I continued to be a slob, and it sometimes made life more challenging for my roommates and embarrassing for me. At college, my roommate put up a Post-It note to remind me to wash my towel when it got smelly. A housemate had a dream about strangling me in the bathtub because I never cleaned it and she always ended up doing it.

When Bridger was about three, I went through a phase of trying to use rewards and punishments to encourage him to pick up his toys--this was before I really started to finally kick my own addiction to our society's reward/punishment parenting paradigm. If he helped clean up, he could watch a half-hour of a video. If he didn't, I, uh, bitched at him and threatened him with no video until he did help. No wonder he resists it when I ask him to help out, all these years later.

Eventually I came to my senses. I realized that I was creating a situation that wasn't good for our relationship and probably would lay the foundation for him to resent and resist housework. I ran across Sandra Dodd's ideas about an unschooling approach to chores, and they radically shifted my perceptions: http://www.sandradodd.com/chores/

Since Cassidy's birth, the little bit of Waldorf theory I've read has really reinforced what my heart tells me is true: it's a wonderful thing if families can start early with involving children in being helpful, and if it can be a pleasurable, easy-to-remember routine--just part of the day.

These days, I'm working on finding ways to involve Bridger more in the chores while being true to my non-violent, non-coercive parenting values--because I think it would be good for him, good for our family, good for me. I also don't think it's a good idea to let the girl-child do all the work. It just doesn't quite ring true to how I want us to live our lives and be in the world.

I'll keep you posted on how it all goes. . .

Abraham Lincoln, Unschooler and Attachment Parent?

2009-04-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

For me, one of the great joys of homeschooling so far has been being infected by the interests of the children learning around me. Unschooling author Mary Griffith calls this "viral learning," a phrase I love. I know viral learning happens in families that don't homeschool, too--the difference, perhaps, is that I spend more weekday hours hearing all about children's interests, for better and for worse.

One of the learning bugs that infected me came from our friend Madeline, who's nine years old. Last summer she was obsessed with presidents. Her conversation was peppered with presidential facts, and whenever possible, she tried to steer the kids in our play group into pretending to be various First Families. She learned how to subtract four-digit numbers so she could figure out how old presidents were when they died by looking at their birth and death dates. With the presidential campaign going on at the same time, it was hard not to be sucked into her enthusiasm.

After a family trip through Theodore Roosevelt National Park, I plunged into reading everything I could find about Theodore Roosevelt. Next came FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. I found myself moved both by how ahead of their times these leaders were and humbled and instructed by the ways they were limited and blinded by the times in which they lived. As my friend Katrina put it, seeing their blind spots was a good way to reflect on my own.

Now I'm reading two books about Lincoln: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin and a chapter book for kids called Lincoln and His Boys by Rosemary Wells.

What has been striking me is how very self-educated he was--I'd forgotten that he only had about nine months of formal schooling. While his lawyer and politician peers were studying at prestigious prep schools and colleges, he was stealing peeks at Aesop's Fables between plowing rows in a field. While other would-be lawyers studied under the mentorship of established lawyers, he studied to become a lawyer on his own. Even after he'd become a lawyer and was well into his forties, he was still an avid learner of all sorts of subjects. After trying cases all day, he'd stay up late trying to work out ancient geometry problems. After watching East Coast lawyers in action for the first time, he went home determined to study harder: "For any rough-and-tumble case (and a pretty good one, too), I am enough for any man we have out in that country; but these college-trained men are coming West. . . Soon they will be in Illinois. . . and when they appear, I will be ready."

Often, I notice, writers about Lincoln marvel that he was able to accomplish so much when he didn't have the advantages of schooling. I have to wonder if it was his self-schooling that helped him see possibilities that other leaders of his time didn't see. I wonder if it was self-schooling that gave him the confidence to master new subjects as he needed to--to become, for instance, a more masterful military strategizer than most of his generals.

The other thing that strikes me--and moves me--about Lincoln is what a devoted father he was. In his gentleness and acceptance of his children, he was definitely way ahead of his time. When his sons broke into Cabinet meetings and hauled him off to play, he often laughingly went along with them, to the consternation of his Cabinet members, who thought children should be seen and not heard. His wife recalled him saying, "It is my pleasure that my children are free--happy and unrestrained by paternal tyranny. Love is the chain whereby to lock a child to its parent."

As slightly disturbing as the "love as chain" metaphor is, I can't help but see that Lincoln was basically expressing what attachment parenting advocates say now: that connection to our children is more important than enforcing blind obedience.

Way to go, Lincoln. You rocked in even more ways than I knew. And thanks to Madeline for infecting me with presidential history fever.

Noticing Joy

2009-04-04T18:30:00.000-07:00

My friend D. P. of the blog Unschooling is Dreamy (see sidebar) referred me to a post entitled "Snapshots" from the SouleMama blog (see sidebar again). In it, Amanda Soule writes

"This blog. . . is one of the ways in which I remind myself of the joys, the beauty, and the blessings around me each and every day. Writing here helps me remember. And it helps me to see and look for those things, people, and moments which do bring me joy."

In another post, Soule writes about how her young sons have begun reading her blog, and how they enjoy searching the archives for stories about their younger selves. I can imagine the blog being a pleasurable read for them, given their mom's joyful, appreciative approach.

That got me to thinking about what I write about on my blog and in my essays. One of my big interests, I think, is to document the times when a moment of challenge opens up into a moment of beauty, or of greater closeness with someone I love, or of clarity, even if that clarity is very fleeting. I want to be honest about my own struggles as a mother without revealing too much of my children's private lives. I think it's often very hard to figure out where the "too much" line is, and of course it will probably keep shifting as they get older. Ideally, though, I'd like them to be able to read my writing about them without wincing.

After reading Amanda Soule's post, I've found myself trying to be more conscious of the beauty in my life. Not to be too Pollyanna-ish, but I've been noticing how it only takes a slight shift in perspective to turn something frustrating into something that's actually kind of lovely. Like, I can choose to find it annoying that my daughter insists on accompanying me from room to room and up and down the stairs (often holding my hand)--or I can feel incredibly grateful to have her company and find it sweet and endearing that she wants to be with me. I can feel discouraged and overwhelmed by the pile of laundry on my bed waiting to be sorted, or I can savor the way my life is enmeshed with the lives of three other wonderful people as I fold each pair of size 3 pink pants, each size 6 T-shirt emblazoned with a truck or car, each Lands End button-down shirt and pair of black Levis.

This week I was at a meeting with some other library advocates who have been fighting to save our little old library. We were drafting an op-ed that we hope to publish in the St. Paul newspaper as a pre-emptive measure before the upcoming city budget hearing, and we were shaking our heads over how enamored the current city government seems to be with fancy, sleek new libraries over decades-old, dearly beloved ones like ours. One of my comadres in the fight laughed, "We like our library BECAUSE it's dorky and funky!"

Tonight, I'm feeling such a deep, deep love for my own dorky, funky life.

In Which A Bad Parenting Moment Leads My Daughter to a Moment of Startling Clarity and Wisdom

2009-04-01T10:57:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I was getting a little grumpy about the number of times my daughter Cassidy went off in a corner to hide that she was pooping in her pants, then resisted my attempts to clean her up afterwards. She reiterated her oft-stated position: she thinks four is about the right age to learn to poop in the potty. I groused, "Well, you know, a lot of kids your age actually do learn to poop in the potty. So don't feel like you have to wait until you're four. You could get started learning any time now, as far as I'm concerned."

"But Mama," she said calmly, "Cassidy is Cassidy. So I have to do it this way."

Well, I'll be damned, I thought.

I hunkered down to look her right in those gorgeous hazel eyes of hers, put my hands on her shoulders, and said, "Cassidy, you are so right. I hope you always remember that what works for somebody else might not work for you."

I don't blame her for hiding when she poops in her pants. She knows she's likely to get a lecture when I find out what she's done. I just have to--breathe, now, Carrie--let go of rushing this whole potty learning business and trust that some day, she will indeed learn. Not the Carrie way, but the Cassidy Way.

Ode to Kuk Sool Won of St. Paul

2009-03-30T20:12:00.001-07:00

My son is lucky enough to take martial arts classes twice a week at Kuk Sool Won of St. Paul, a very family-oriented martial arts school right here in the Midway neighborhood. It's amazing how much he's learned in the year and a half since he started. He looks so grown-up and serious in his black uniform and white belt, standing at attention in the line-up of kids, bowing and saying, "Yes, sir!" to his teacher. It is a very different culture than our home culture. I'm glad that he is experiencing it. I trust these teachers. I trust what they are offering their students.

Tonight in class, the kids were independently practicing the forms, a series of prescribed movements that are the basis of this style of martial arts. They were supposed to do the forms as best as they could remember them without watching another student or teacher perform them. At times, one of the young students would get stuck--they made a mistake, or they forgot what they were doing, and suddenly, they'd stop and stand there with a deer-in-the-headlights sort of expression, not sure what to do next. Usually a teacher would jump in and help them get going again.

Afterwards, the head teacher asked the class, "What should you do if you make a mistake?"

"Start over," one boy volunteered.

"No," said the teacher. "You keep going. You keep going. And what if you forget or get stuck? What do you do then?"

None of the kids responded.

"You ask for help," said their teacher. "That's what we're here for. That's why we keep practicing--so eventually you won't make that mistake any more."

Such a simple exchange, but I found it so moving. I'm so glad my son is getting these messages early from strong, compassionate teachers. You can keep going after you make a mistake. You can ask for help. You just have to keep practicing.

It reminds me a little of a story I read once about a famous modern-dance choreographer--I can't remember which one now. Maybe Martha Graham? One of her dancers fell flat on her butt during a rehearsal and sat there with a stunned expression on her face, not moving, not getting up. The choreographer swooped over to the dancer and exhorted her, "Don't stop now! Make it into something beautiful!"

One More Cleaning Analogy and Then I'll Stop

2009-03-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

I was walking home yesterday after a few hours of writing at a coffee shop while my husband Brian watched the kids. Instead of feeling satisfied and grateful that I got to write, I was feeling restless and unsatisfied about what I didn't get done.

My restlessness reminded me of something I used to appreciate at the Zen retreats that I used to attend. At the retreats, there was always a daily period of mindful work, called samu ryo. It lasted for about an hour, if I remember right--maybe less. Everyone pitched in to sweep, dust, clean bathrooms, and so on. Five minutes before the end of the period, a loud knock on a han, a flat slab of wood used as a kind of ceremonial drum, signaled that it was time to start wrapping up your task and putting your tools away. Another knock on the han signaled it was time to come back to your meditation cushion. Even if you weren't finished with your chore, you stopped at that point. You moved on.

I loved that. I loved that you did as much as you could, as attentively as possible, and that was enough. What you had gotten done was of value, it was a step toward a cleaner, more organized Zen center, even if you hadn't done EVERYTHING.

I would like to work toward taking that approach to my own work. I would like to work toward appreciating what my family and I actually manage to do, who we actually are, instead of letting my fantasies about what we should be able to do and be get in the way quite so much.

Making Connections

2009-03-27T19:46:00.001-07:00

Yesterday my daughter and I were acting out a Grimms story called "The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs." (I must say there are few things that help me feel more like a legitimate, not-so-slacking homeschooler than acting out a fairy tale with the kids. The old teacher in me gets all fluttery when one of the kids suggests it--oh thank God! We're actually going to do something that could be classified as educational!) Near the beginning of the story, a king puts a peasant baby boy in a wooden chest and throws the chest in a river so the boy can't grow up to fulfill a prophecy that he's going to marry the king's daughter.

My son was playing nearby and half-listening as we acted out putting the baby in the chest.

"Sort of like Perseus," he chimed in.

"Oh?" I said. "Did Perseus get put in a chest?" I couldn't remember.

"Yeah," my son said. "Don't you remember? He was the one who killed Medusa."

My curiosity was piqued. I grabbed a book of Greek myths that was conveniently nearby and looked up Perseus. It all started to come back to me as I read. Yep, there it was. Perseus's mother Danae being impregnated by Zeus in the form of a shower of gold. Perseus and his mother Danae getting locked in a trunk and thrown in the ocean by Perseus's grandfather, who feared a prophecy that his grandson would someday kill him.

"Dang," I said, looking up at my son in wonder. "You've got a really good memory! What a cool connection!" It must be lovely, I thought, to have such a nice, absorbent brain that still retains information.

Today we went to the Minnesota History Center, which has become our habitual Friday afternoon outing lately. It's been nice going there so frequently because things are really starting to come together and make some sense. Today, for instance, Charles Lindbergh kept coming up. First, there's a model of the type of airplane Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic hanging prominently in the atrium. Charles Lindbergh is also featured in a short film about aviation and space exploration that we've watched several times now. There's a bust of him and a photo of "The Spirit of St. Louis" airplane in the MN 150 exhibit of 150 Minnesota people, places, and things that have changed the world. And then, while we were playing the MN 150 electronic quiz game, Lindbergh came up again in a question: "What body of water did Charles Lindbergh cross in his famous solo flight?" We were able to use what we'd just seen in the museum to answer that it was the Atlantic.

Another time, we used something we'd learned earlier to answer a different quiz question. We'd looked at a map that showed patterns of glaciation in Minnesota over the last 10,000 years. A question in the quiz asked what had created the rich black soil that covers much of Minnesota, or something along those lines. Glaciers was one of the possible answers--in fact, the only one that made sense of the four. So once again, we got to put a few different pieces of information together to come up with the right answer. I could just feel the new neurons percolating away in our brains.

I have to say--moments like these make me feel positively effervescent.

One Room at a Time

2009-03-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

After lunch, we usually have about an hour of quiet time when the kids go to their rooms and listen to books on CD while I either write or clean house.

Today right after lunch, my daughter picked up my son's "Dragonology" book and pulled out an imaginary note in dragon runes. She started pretending to read it in a funny made-up language and said it was a note from Kaia, a friendly dragon from the Kingdom of Summer who wanted us to visit.

I laughed at her inventiveness. I enjoyed her thoroughly and played along for a good long while. But inside I was feeling antsy because what I really wanted was not to go visit Kaia in the Kingdom of Summer. I wanted the kids to go have their dang quiet time so I could write this post and then clean up the living room.

It really kind of amazes me. Once upon a time I loved playing imaginary games, both as a kid and before I had children, as a grown-up hanging out with other people's children. I detested and avoided housecleaning. In fact, I remember feeling sorry for my mother when I was a teenager because she spent most of her weekends cleaning house, and she actually expressed a sense of enjoyment about getting the house organized. I thought I would never have a life so dull that housecleaning would be one of my main pleasures.

Now, the thought of having a few uninterrupted hours to clean house fills me with a near-sexual longing. I'm telling you, it literally makes my mouth water. My, my, how things change.

I really was a terrible slob, and I still have it in me to be one again. But in the past year or so, I've started a cleaning routine that has been so helpful and grounding for me, and I think also for the kids and my husband. Monday I give the kitchen and dining room their dose of TLC. Tuesday I write during the kids' quiet time. Wednesday and Thursday is the living room. It's sort of a "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush" rhythm: "This is the way we do the laundry, do the laundry, do the laundry. This is the way we do the laundry, all on a Friday morning." It's not always easy getting started, but again, I just try to break it down into one discrete task at a time: now I'll pick up all the Yoga Pretzel cards and put them in the box. Now I'll gather up the doll house furniture and put it back in the doll house. And gradually the room gets done, usually faster than I thought it would be.

The room I've just cleaned usually gets wrecked again almost immediately, and believe me, no one is going to mistake me for a guru of cleanliness and organization. My little routine is simply all that stands between me and sinking into trash-house levels of chaos, frankly. Taking things one room at a time, the same day every week, helps me actually do the cleaning; otherwise, housework feels too overwhelming and I just let it slide.

Lately, as I've been clearing the household clutter that has piled up over the last month while I was working on saving our neighborhood library, I've been thinking about my own mental clutter, too, as I posted a few days ago. Usually, the thoughts that pull me away from just being present and attentive in the moment fall into a few major categories:

1. Feeling distracted by the desire to do housework (i.e., playing on floor with a kid, I notice how much the floor needs sweeping)

2. Feeling distracted by thoughts of creative projects I'd like to be working on

3. Feeling distracted by loneliness and desire for adult companionship (i.e. checking my email approximately 3405 times a day)

4. Feeling distracted by my own aversion to what's going on (i.e., thinking "I can't stand this!" when a child is getting grouchy)

5. Feeling distracted by my own attachment to what I think should or shouldn't be happening (i.e., Believing that just because it's quiet time and I'm ready for an uninterrupted break, my children's needs really ought to shut off for an hour or so and I should not be called upstairs repeatedly to adjust CD volumes, bring cut-up apples, open change purse clasps, help with multiple potty trips, and so on).

OK, so what does this have to do with my "one room at a time" cleaning routine? When I think about trying to be mindful, attentive, and in the moment all the time, it feels impossible. But if I think of being mindful as possible in my next interaction, the next words I say to my child, the next time I touch my child, it feels a little more do-able.

One room at a time, one moment at a time. That's really all we ever have, you know? And what we do with those moments is what we'll look back on and call our life.

Well, the girl child is done with quiet time already. She's on my lap playing with handfuls of change while I type. Let's see if I can get her involved somehow while I work on the living room. Who knows? Maybe Kaia the Friendly Dragon could fly over from the Kingdom of Summer and help us out.

What Saves You?

2009-03-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

Today I was plagued by a huge amount of mental clutter, a near-constant yammering of inner voices telling me how my life ought to be different and all the ways I was screwing up.

This morning the kids and I were very crabby with each other. I found my thoughts cluttered with "ifs" and comparisons to other, more capable mothers. If the kids were in school, maybe we wouldn't get so sick of each other. . . If I was better at establishing a strong daily and weekly rhythm like some of the Waldorf homeschoolers I know, maybe the kids and I wouldn't fight so much. . . If I was a stronger, better person, I wouldn't get so easily annoyed. . . Rather than responding to what was happening with attentiveness and compassion, I was madly pacing around in my head, completely disconnected from my children, not to mention my own heart and common sense.

This is not fun, nor is it helpful. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to work on recognizing when I start to go down that road. Just noticing, pure and simple. Sometimes that's all it takes--just that quiet act of mercifully noticing, "You're doing it again, sweetheart. What's up with that?"

In her poem "In Response to the Evangelist Door-Knocking Who Asked: What Saves You?", St. Paul poet Margaret Hasse begins,

Dusk doesn't, dawn does.

Morning splendor,

over and over and over again.

Newspapers don't, with their harpy

human interest stories.

But ah, coffee with milk in a plain white mug. . .

What saved me today?

Having my daughter say, "Let's go play some songs on your guitar" when we were all getting crabby and mean. Strumming and singing "Rain, rain go away" with my girl as the raindrops drummed down outside and my son played with his Matchbox cars nearby.

While I cooked dinner, hearing my children's uproarious laughter from the living room as their dad read a book out loud, ad libbing silly jokes, doing goofy voices, hamming it up as only he can.

Overhearing my husband listen respectfully as my son compared the various merits of different Lego kits in the new catalog he got in the mail today.

Cooking a favorite omelet from a battered, stained vegetarian cookbook my mom bought for me when I was a sophomore in college and I swore off meat. Remembering how she bought a copy of the Moosewood Cookbook for her own kitchen shelf, so she'd have an idea of what to make for me when I came home.

Calling my mom tonight to thank her for buying those cookbooks, all those years ago. Hearing the surprise in her voice.

Just now, meditating in my bedroom, listening to the rain beat against the windows. Years ago, I rented a little house in Arkansas with a roof so leaky, my bedroom was strewn with bowls and pans and still rain puddled all over the wood floors. Sitting on my cushion tonight, recognizing the pleasure of a roof that doesn't leak and walls that hold out the cold--that was what saved me.

So. What saves you?

"The Only Guarantee We Have is What's Happening Right Now"

2009-03-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

The quote above is from a talk I attended this morning at Clouds in Water Zen Center in Lowertown St. Paul, given by Sosan Theresa Flynn, the temple priest there. I was so grateful to be reminded once again of the importance of staying present and grateful, too, for Clouds in Water, my spiritual community for almost ten years now.

Sosan read a quote from the Metta Sutra urging a practitioner to be "unburdened by duties, frugal in habits." Sosan interpreted "unburdened by duties" to mean not that you have no duties, but that you aren't weighed down by your responsibilities. You hold them lightly and spaciously, without clutching too tightly to results. And "frugal in habits" means keeping your life simple, not cluttering your days with too many activities or too many things.

I've felt a real surge of restless distractability lately, the clutter of too much to do and think about, so it was good to hear this talk today. I'm trying to zero in on what's really important to me and make time for those priorities, while leaving plenty of space for the rest and quiet that has been so lacking in my life lately.

It has been a restorative weekend. Yesterday I had a daytime date with my husband. The weather was ideal, and we took a long hike along the Mississippi, went out for lunch and ice cream, and still had time to browse at the library kid-free. Yes, we are total geeks.

Today I went to the Y by myself and swam laps until I was good and tired, and then the family joined me there and we swam together for a good hour, then went out for pizza at a sweet little neighborhood joint with games and kids' books to help pass the time. It was a day to be grateful for.

I feel ready to get back into the library fight again after a week of catching my breath. I feel ready to get back to work on that suck-ass book manuscript I'm aiming to finish this year (Do know that I actually want the book to be good and am working my booty off to do my best on it. Calling it "suck-ass" is my way of giving myself permission to finally finish it even though it's not perfect. Maybe that's obvious, but I wanted to explain just in case).

Tonight I Forgot

2009-03-20T20:03:00.000-07:00

At bedtime, I usually tell a story to the kids after we turn the lights out. Sometimes I make the stories up myself as I go, and then the stories are fairly lame. Other times, I tell the kids a story from the Grimms or some other wonderful source of stories handed down for hundreds of years, and then the stories are much, much better and more fun for me to tell.

As an antidote to the pretty, passive princesses my daughter has grown enamored of, I've tried to dig out some good, strong heroines from the old stories. One of our greatest hits in this vein is a Russian story called "Vasilisa the Wise," about a clever, generous, athletic young woman who dresses up as a Tartar emissary in order to trick a king and save her imprisoned brother. A fabulous and highly recommended story--it can be found in an anthology called "The Best of Girls to the Rescue" edited by Bruce Lansky. Another goodie is one called "Tatterhood," which you can find in the wonderful parenting book "Everyday Blessings" by Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Anyway. About tonight and what I forgot. Lately, we've been getting to bed later and later--I don't know if it's daylight savings time still throwing us off or what--and I've been grouchy and tired by the time the lights are out. The kids have often been objecting to whatever story I say I want to tell: "No! That one's too scary!" or "No, I want a new story, not one you already told," and so on. Or one kid wants one story, and another's arguing for another. Tonight, I wanted to tell a new story called "The Blue Bottle." My daughter and son wanted "The King's Son Goes Bear Hunting." To make a long story short, I tried to tell "The King's Son Goes Bear Hunting," but after a few sentences in an angry monotone, I said, "You know what? I just can't tell a story tonight. I'm too tired and mad, and I don't want to try to tell a story when I'm mad."

My son cried, he was so disappointed. I started going off on an eloquent guilt trip about how hard it is to tell a story when it's this late and we've spent so much energy arguing about what story to tell, blah blah blah. I felt so irritated, so ready to just go be by myself with a good book and maybe a glass of wine.

"I'm sorry you're feeling bad, Mama," my son said quietly and stroked my arm.

Eventually I calmed down, and I ended up snuggling with the kids until my daughter fell asleep and my son was almost asleep. I spooned up against him and put my arm around him, and I was struck by how long he's growing, how his baby fat has melted away and left this lean, stringy-muscled young boy. Beside me on the futon, he started twitching and shifting, the way you do when you're just about to drift off, and I thought, how many more years will he let me lie like this with him as he falls asleep, so close, so intimate?

It's such a strange, poignant thing--usually when you fall in love, you hope the person you love will stick around. But as a parent, what you're hoping for is that you raise your child to be strong enough so that they will leave.

If all goes well, my children are going to leave. Why can't I remember this more often? Why can't I cherish them more while they are here and stop letting the little irritants get in the way?

As a wise woman named Katharine once said to me years ago when I was feeling especially stressed out about life with small children, "Time for some self-care, woman."

Well, it's the weekend, and my husband and I have a babysitter lined up so we can go on a date tomorrow, so that's good. Here's hoping I make time for some self-care, too--maybe a lap swim at the Y, a long walk by myself, time to write uninterrupted. Something to fill my cup again, so I can remember not to forget.

3 1/2, Part 2: The Artificial Smile

2009-03-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I wrote about my recent challenges with my 3 1/2 daughter's desire to control me. Today, I'm thinking about the ramifications of how I deal with those challenges.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, but the kids weren't enthused about playing outside. I was feeling restless and stir-crazy, and then my daughter started getting freaky and shrieky under the dining room table after I didn't understand right away that she needed help washing off some paintbrushes.

I said loudly, "That's it! I have GOT to get outside. I can't take this any more" or something to that effect.

My daughter immediately stopped crying and said, "I'll go with you!" in an anxious voice. She went and got her coat and pasted on her "Look, see, I'm happy now" fake smile complete with ingratiating eye crinkles.

I feel so awful when I see her snap out of her emotions that way--not because she's ready, but out of what looks to me like a fear of displeasing me. I think of the cold way my grandmother probably reacted to my very emotional mom when she was a curly-haired little three-year-old, and how now, in her sixties, my mom still gets so mad at herself when she loses control of her emotions. I think of how a mere displeased arch of my mom's eyebrow made me scramble to shape up and get back in her good graces. I think of the words from her that scared me most: "I'm very disappointed in you," and how hard I worked to be a good girl, even when it meant not being true to myself.

I don't want to pass down my family's heritage of repressing emotions to please other people. Today, I'm trying to figure out a big question: how can I remember to take care of myself so that I don't expect my daughter to do it for me? How can I be strong enough to help her cope with her big 3 1/2-year-old emotions instead of telling her "I can't handle this"?

How I Became an Unschooler

2009-03-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

Now that my son is six, the question of where he goes to school often comes up when I'm meeting another mother for the first time. Most of the time, people are very supportive when they hear that we're homeschooling, but they often declare flatly, "Personally, I could NEVER do that!" I imagine that they think that homeschooling my kids requires great personal sacrifice, and that I spend my nights researching curricula and preparing lesson plans, my days badgering my children into doing their schoolwork at the kitchen table.

If only they knew what a lazy homeschooler I am. While hardier parents are getting their kids out of bed and helping them get groomed, dressed, and fed before heading to school at ungodly early hours of the morning, I'm often lolling around with the kids reading Magic Tree House books before heading downstairs for a leisurely pancake breakfast. See? Lazy.

A few years ago, I never would have expected to be taking such a lackadaisical approach. I first heard the word "unschooling" years before I had children and years before I ever dreamed of homeschooling. I was teaching creative writing to a small group of preteen and teenaged homeschoolers. Before I met the group, I'd expected to feel sorry for the poor, sheltered little hothouse flowers. I'd ended up amazed by how confident, mature, and connected these kids were.

One day I heard some of them use the word "unschooling" to describe their families' approach. No set curriculum, no formal schedule, no prescribed timetable for when kids needed to master a subject: the kids simply pursued their passions and interests in as much depth as they wished.

I was scandalized. Is that allowed? I thought. How could kids possibly learn what they needed to know if allowed to do whatever they wanted?

I watched my students closely and had to acknowledge that most of them were stronger writers and critical thinkers than many college students I'd taught. They were learning all sorts of things just by living interesting lives out in the real world, freed from the constraints of school. Gradually, I began to accept unschooling a little more--but only as a clever trick by parents, a Trojan horse for sneaking learning past unsuspecting kids' city gates.

Jump ahead to a winter afternoon a few years later. My husband and I had decided to homeschool, and I was still laboring under the anxiety that a good homeschooling mom ought to be able to entice her children into doing wholesome, structured educational activities. My son was three, my daughter a baby. It was Dr. Seuss's birthday, and I'd decided that we should make cat-in-the-hat style hats out of paper bags and construction paper to "celebrate. "

My son balked, loudly and vociferously. I lashed out at him, disappointed and hurt that all my preparations had ended up in a fight. Was this, I thought, what homeschooling was going to be like at our house? If so, I didn't think I could do it.

Eventually, I started to relax. Instead of planning activities that I thought my children should be doing, I learned to put my energy into doing things with them that we all actually seemed to enjoy. I stopped worrying so much about what they might miss out on and began appreciating all the ways they were growing. I started noticing their ways of learning.

My son tends to absorb information through being read to and playing games, but he resists workbooks, crafts, or any sort of performing on cue to show what he knows. What he likes to do is go off on his own and figure out for himself how to use what he's been learning; many of his breakthroughs happen when I'm busy doing something else. Once, for instance, after a period of a few weeks when we'd been reading a lot of picture books about math and playing a lot of dice games together, he came running outside to the back yard where I was playing with my daughter. He waved a piece of paper at me and yelled joyfully, "Look at these equations I made!" He'd written simple equations like 1 + 2=3, 2 + 2=4 and so on. All correct.

"How did you learn to do that?" I asked him. I'd never sat down and formally taught him how to add or even to write equations that way, though he'd seen the symbols and numbers in books and sung numerous counting songs over the years.

He shrugged. "I figured it out from playing dice," he said. Since then, he's expanded on that beginning, learning all the major math operations from playing Monopoly and adding up his allowance to save up for Lego kits. When he does equations in his head, he reminds me of a monkey swinging effortlessly from branch to branch, rejoicing in sheer mental motion.

Over time, I have begun to trust that unschooling might be a very fine way for my particular children and me to learn together. I've stopped seeing unschooling as a stealth vehicle for sneaking knowledge into kids' brains and started seeing it instead as an opportunity to expand my own definition of how learning happens. I see it as a chance to give my children time: time to figure out how they learn best; time to explore the subjects that light their intellectual fires; time not to feel rushed into learning a skill before they're ready; time to play without feeling that their play has to lead anywhere particular just yet.

3 1/2

2009-03-16T07:09:00.000-07:00

My daughter is coming up on 3 1/2 years old, and lately I've been remembering what a hard age that can be. For both my kids, there seems to be a tremendous struggle at that age to cope with their own lack of control and to figure out what they actually can control.

For my daughter at 3 1/2, it's extremely important to do everything before I do. "I want to beat you down the stairs!" she shrieks if I try to walk down the steps before she does. "I want to brush my teeth before you! I want to wash my hands first!" If I space out and put on my jacket before I help her get hers on, she wants me to take my jacket off and do everything over again so that she's the first one suited up for the outdoors.

For a while, to avoid trouble, I was going along with the "do-overs." But lately I've stopped. I do try to go ahead and let her do things first if I remember, but I'll be darned if I'm going to go all the way back to the top of the steps so we can "do over" going downstairs. It's only going to backfire on all of us if I pretend to have patience I don't really have and then lose my temper about something else later on.

When this kind of controlling stuff happened with my son, right around the same age, I was absolutely panic-stricken, sure that it was something I'd done that was going to screw him up for LIFE. I pored over endless parenting manuals. I tried Positive Discipline. I tried Unconditional Parenting. I tried Nonviolent Communication. I think I even briefly contemplated 1-2-3 Magic, which if you know me, is so completely, utterly not me as a parent.

With my daughter, I'm really aware this time that this is probably developmental and not something I need to panic about. That doesn't mean that I don't sometimes have a wee bit of an urge to kick her down the stairs she's so hellbent on getting down before me.

I'd never act on that urge, of course. I feel guilty and a little scared even admitting to such a hideous thought about this girl whom I love so much. But I know when I've heard other mothers admit to their own horrible thoughts, my response to them hasn't been outrage or judgment, but profound relief that I'm not the only one who feels that way sometimes.

Mississippi Bluffs on a Saturday Afternoon

2009-03-15T08:17:00.001-07:00

Yesterday the kids and I hiked around near the Mississippi River, both on the Minneapolis side and the St. Paul side. On the St. Paul side, near where Summit Avenue meets Mississippi River Blvd., my son was hoping to climb down on the limestone bluffs overlooking the river, a usual highlight of our river visits. But it was too icy and muddy, and my daughter kept slipping in her pink kitty rainboots and fell down and scraped her knee. Climbing down on the bluffs with them by myself was just not a safe option yesterday.

My son was so disappointed. He snarled, "Well, we'd better stay on the bluffs for 14 HOURS the next time we come here, or YOU'RE not going to live to see another sunset!"

"You're threatening me with death?" I asked. This was a new level of confrontation for us, never before reached in his six-and-a-half years on Earth.

We sat back to back on a stone bench for a while, silent, while my daughter played a game of her own invention that involved running around trees and chanting an unintelligible song.

Finally, I said, "It sounds like you're feeling really frustrated and helpless and disappointed. It's hard when you have an idea in mind about what you want to have happen, and it doesn't turn out, or when you want something and you can't have it. I think it's probably the hardest feeling humans have. I know I still struggle with it a lot when that happens to me. I think that's why I became a Buddhist."

"Really?" my son turned toward me on the bench.

We talked a little about what the Buddha said--that suffering arises when we cling to wanting things to be a certain way. I mentioned that even some very experienced Zen students and priests I knew struggled when things didn't go their way, and he seemed surprised by that.

I felt a new peace in him, a temporary sense of release. And later, my husband and I joked with him about his threat.

"You know," my husband pointed out, "I think it would have been much more ominous if he'd said you wouldn't live to see another sunrise. Because then you'd be nervous about whether you should go to sleep, or what might happen while you're asleep."

Is It True?

2009-03-14T07:15:00.000-07:00

In "The Work," an extremely useful method of personal inquiry created by a woman named Byron Katie, you're invited to take a belief you have that's causing you distress and then ask questions about that belief.

The questions are (and I'm paraphrasing here with the words I usually use):

1. Is it true?

2. Can I absolutely know it's true?

3. How do I feel when I believe that thought?

4. Who would I be without the thought?

And then you "turn it around"--check to see if other, nearly opposite statements are equally true.

I've been thinking lately that I need to do "The Work" on my beliefs about the mayor in this whole library debate. One of my big beliefs that has been causing me intense unhappiness is "He's not listening to us."

So is it true? Can I know that for sure? Well, um, no.

How do I feel when I believe it? Helpless, angry, frustrated, hateful.

Who would I be without the thought? I wouldn't worry quite so much about whether he's listening. I'd think about what I can still do, what actions I can take, whether he listens or not.

And then the turnarounds? Maybe he is listening but honestly thinks closing the library is the best option for the city. He's listening but keeping the library open doesn't serve his agenda in some way.

Am I listening to him when he says the library may be able to stay open, but it has to change dramatically for the city to keep funding it.

No. I don't like that answer, so I don't listen. I bounce his ideas back at him without considering them--just like I accuse him of doing to us.

This doesn't mean I'm going to give up on keeping the library open as a library. But it opens up a possibility for communicating that feels better to me. One of the women involved in this effort, a minister with three kids, has said her challenge has been to figure out how to fight for the library while being true to her deeper intention to "stay in relationship with others and see their humanity." I agree with her that's the real goal, and the only one that has a hope of creating real change. But it has been so hard for me to remember and put into action.

Yesterday the kids and I had a good, busy day. We took the bus to my daughter's speech therapy because the car was in the shop. Then we went to the Minnesota History Center, one of our favorite museums. We walked up the hill to the St. Paul Cathedral and wandered inside, marveling at the stained glass and the big statues of saints. "It's so fancy!" my daughter said. I felt great love for my city and its history and felt a deep sense of how vulnerable it all is in our current money-starved, contentious state of being. Then we took the 21 A and the 84 buses home.

I love that my kids already have had so much experience with public transit, not just here in St. Paul but also in San Francisco, Chicago, and St. Louis as well. When I first started traveling on my own as a young woman, I remember public transit seemed really intimidating because I'd never used it as a kid. I'm hoping that my kids will move through their future adventures with a little more ease because we've started them early riding city trains and buses.

What We've Been Reading Lately

2009-03-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

The kids and I have been reading a book called Shackleton's Stowaway by Victoria McKernan. It's actually aimed at Grades 5-9, but we are all enjoying it very much. It's a fictionalized but very well-researched account of Sir Ernest Shackleton's doomed expedition to Antarctica in 1914-1916, told from the point-of-view of Perce Blackborow, a young man who stowed away on the Endurance and ended up losing toes to frostbite. The men's tremendous courage and camaraderie and Shackleton's compassionate leadership are so inspiring. I remember reading in another book about the Endurance that the worse things got, the more of an effort the men made to be courteous and kind, because those human decencies were all they had left to keep them from going crazy.

When I can, I've been reading a book called Opa Nobody by Sonya Huber, a writer I saw speak at the AWP conference in Chicago about a month ago. She was on a wonderful panel about writing as parents and the ethical dilemmas of using our children as subjects.

Opa Nobody documents Huber's attempt to understand and re-create her anti-Nazi activist grandfather while also trying to understand her own strong pull toward activism. It's been a very absorbing and thought-provoking read. I'd post a photo of that book's cover, too, but for some reason I'm having technical difficulties with that, so I'll just give you a link to her website: www.sonyahuber.com

In the Star Tribune Tonight

2009-03-10T21:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to a newspaper story about tonight's rally and meeting at the library with a nice representative photo of part of the group.

http://www.startribune.com/local/41066307.html

The mayor and the library director said they'll give us until the end of the year before they close the library, and in that time we'll have conversations about "alternative service models" for the library, which to the library director and mayor seems to mean renting the building to a non-profit agency. So there is still much work to be done. But at least we may not have such horrible time pressure hanging over us to save the library NOW.

I'll need to figure out how much more energy I can expend on this and find a way to compartmentalize the library work so it doesn't keep taking over my brain and my life. Not only am I supposed to be homeschooling my kids and paying them at least some attention, but I also set a goal at the beginning of the year to finally finish a suck-ass draft of the memoir manuscript I've been tinkering with for lo on to 5 years now.

I am such a perfectionist and have such a hard time letting go of my work and making it public. That's part of why this whole library effort has been a good push out of my comfort zone. I'm making public statements all over the place without benefit of scrupulous editing and proofreading. And it's not as bad or scary as I thought it would be. It actually makes things happen when people take the risk of doing something, even when it's imperfect. If we hadn't fought the way we had, we might not have earned our library a possible stay of execution.

I wish I could say with certainty that a year from now I'll still be walking down the street to the library every Thursday afternoon and hauling away a little red wagonload of books with the kids. But times being what they are, I'll take what incremental progess I can make.

The Latest on the Library

2009-03-09T20:13:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while because I've been very busy and kind of discouraged. Well, very discouraged.

A group of us met last week with the mayor. He mouthed the same sound-bites he had before and refused to even consider alternatives to closing the library. He didn't listen to the 7-year-old Girl Scout who came with us carrying the petition she'd taken to every class at her elementary school. He didn't listen to the senior citizen and librarian of 37 years who'd actually called and talked to officials in other cities where our alternative plan had been tried and proved successful.

It was then that we realized that he had his mind made up. Telling him we loved and needed our library and giving him good reasons to keep it open weren't enough.

That night I dreamed that my husband was having an affair with his ex-wife. I couldn't figure out where that dream had come from and then it hit me the next day--I felt a deep sense of disillusionment, even betrayal. I guess I've been very sheltered, but I genuinely believed if I tried hard enough and presented good evidence, my elected leader would listen. Maybe not do exactly what I asked, but at least listen. But he didn't even do that.

After sinking into a funk for a few days, we recovered a little, and now we are planning a rally outside the library tomorrow, to be held right before the mayor and library director arrive to meet with the community. We're going to be contacting city council members individually, as they might be our last hope. I'll let you know how it all goes.

By the way, if you have tried in the past to post a comment on this blog and not been able to, I think now you should be able to do it. I fiddled around with the configuration of the blog or whatever and think anyone should be able to comment now. So please do if anyone is out there! And if you try and can't comment, let me know at my email address, carriepomeroy@tcq.net.

Also, please note the new links to blogs I like by wonderful mama writers.

Thinking About Time

2009-03-01T20:33:00.000-08:00

After saving up seven weeks of his allowance to buy a Lego Coast Guard Helicopter and Rescue Raft kit, my son has gotten very interested in saving up for Lego kits. Right now he has his eye on a $150 jobbie, and he's counting down, day by day, how long it will take him to save up for it: he has 209 days to go. I have a feeling he may eventually scale back and go for something more quickly attainable. We'll see.

Of course it's fascinating to me to see how much math he's learning through this interest, how much he's learning about how we measure time in hours and days and weeks and months. He's learning how to comparison-shop, going online to check out what other Lego enthusiasts have to say about different models.

But I do find myself feeling a little sad as I see him start projecting forward in time like this. I can see him wishing the days would pass quickly to get him to his future goal, and I think of how much of my life I've spent thinking the good part was the part just ahead of me. I just had to get through high school, or college, or grad school; I just had to get through this last hour of school before the end of the day; I just had to get through this last week of school to get to summer vacation, and so on.

I'm aware now that this is a path to suffering and mindlessness, but I still do a fair amount of thinking about what's next instead of being attentive to what's happening right now.

Today, I'm renewing my own vow to live more in the present, even if I can't stop my son from hurtling forward into his future.

Everything is Alive

2009-02-28T20:09:00.000-08:00

I went to a town hall meeting with state legislators Ellen Anderson, Alice Hausman (a big heroine of mine!), and John Lesch to hear more talk about the budget crisis and throw in my two cents because I seem to have officially become the library harpy who pops up at every opportunity and shrieks about the library.

I heard stories from so many heartbroken people dealing with problems that seem much more pressing than my desire to keep being able to walk to my neighborhood library. I heard people who work with the severely disabled and people who volunteer with families who've lost loved ones to murder and people who work to try to prevent child abuse and spousal abuse. I heard a woman weeping about how changes in "deadbeat dad" laws are basically ruining her and her children's lives. I heard a man advocate that we should legalize marijuana so the state can legally tax growers and sellers of cannabis, thereby solving the budget problem. I heard a man who was angry at all the people in the room advocating for higher taxes on the rich because he was afraid it would drive away businesses and jeopardize his daughter's future. I heard about Iron Range residents who worry about the environmental impact of new mining up there but are afraid to speak up about it because people need the mining jobs so badly. I heard a lesbian woman speak of living as a second-class citizen. I heard about the evil and irresponsible ways our governor has played accounting tricks with state funds to hide the fact that he's been steadily selling out our future just so he can make the claim he's never raised our taxes.

Everything seems so fragile right now, so fraught with peril. I still want the library to stay open, and I'm still going to fight for it, because I think there are a lot of people who need the library and because for me it will truly feel as if the heart's been torn out of the neighborhood if it closes. I am just trying hard to remember something I heard Alice Hausman say years ago when I was with a small group of parents speaking up for early childhood education funding. "You have to try very hard not to pit one small interest against each other," she said, "to say that my cause is more important than your cause. What we have to try to do is figure out a way to lift everyone up, together."

I am also trying very hard to remember to spend time with the kids. I played Monopoly with my son this evening and really enjoyed that, read to my daughter, made homemade pizzas with them, scratched both their warm, soft backs before they fell asleep. I have been neglecting them so much. But when I look at that list, I don't feel quite so bad.

"You know why I move things around so much, Mom?" my son asked me the other day. "Like, if I pass a big chunk of ice, I can't just let it sit, I have to pick it up and throw it?"

"Yes," I said. "Why?"

"Because I think everything is alive, and I want to help it move around," he said.

Of course. Everything is alive, and it wants to move around. And we are all just getting moved around, tossed this way and that, landing new places, crashing into each other, figuring it out as we go.

Activism and Ambivalence

2009-02-27T20:12:00.000-08:00

So our sweet little neighborhood library is still on the chopping block, but our determined band of activists is making a dent. At the mayor's town hall meeting a few nights ago, there were so many of us, the mayor went from talking about "having to make tough choices, like closing a library" at the start of the night to saying, "No one's talking about shuttering the library. We're talking about finding creative partnerships to keep it open" by the end of the meeting.

We've gotten lots of news coverage and now we have a meeting with the mayor scheduled at city hall AND a larger community meeting at the library with the mayor and the library director.

Today I spoke at a press conference at our grand, imposing State Capitol with three mayors, fire fighters, and police officers to publicize the impact of state budget cuts that penalize cities unfairly rather than spreading the misery of our current economy around a little more evenly. I had my 3-year-old daughter with me, at the press conference organizers' request and also because she said she wanted to stay with me.

It was exhilarating to have a voice in the larger debate and to do it as a mother, with my daughter along. So often, mothers' voices just don't get heard in the halls of power. As a mother, though, at times I felt uncomfortable, even a little sick at heart, at the ways my daughter and I were being used as political props and my own participation in that process. The first time we encountered a reporter in the Capitol rotunda and she tried to interview me with the camera rolling, my daughter got so scared of the big microphone and the lights, she got hysterical, and I had to tell the reporter, sorry, this isn't going to work and gave up. I started to feel a little frustrated about my daughter's unwillingness to cooperate, but I pulled myself together and we went down to the cafeteria and had a nice snack and a talk.

I told her I really needed to be able to talk at the press conference to try to save our library, and I needed to do it without her screaming or squirming or trying to run away. I told her if the cameras were too scary, I could drop her off to play with a friend of ours who was already watching my son, but my daughter said no--she didn't want to be with their cat Nonie. I am not proud of it, but I worked the fear-of-Nonie angle a little to leverage some cooperation out of her. I was, I hate to say, terrified of the prospect of trying to speak to a bunch of people in suits with cameras on and having my daughter make me look like a bad mother. I also genuinely wanted my chance to make the case that our neighborhood really needs our library to stay open.

In the end, she did fine at the press conference. She scored all sorts of swag from strapping men in uniforms and suits--a miniature police badge, a Junior Crimefighter sticker, and a lapel pin from the mayor of Wadena, Minnesota. At one point she got a little restless while one of the mayors was talking (we were all standing up in front as a unified group), so I sat her down between my feet with a Where's Waldo book. I was both happy and a little horrified when a cameraman aimed a camera right in her face while she paged through the book. I knew this was a great image to publicize the plight of our library and the value of kids loving to read. But it was my daughter I was turning into a poster child without her really giving me permission to do that, and I felt conflicted about it.

So. I'm finding that as a mother, as I put myself out there to stand up for what I believe, I need to also figure out what role I want my children to play in that--if any. It's so tempting to get them involved--I love the idea of being a family of activists and showing them early in life how to speak up for change. And they're just so darn photogenic, it makes it really attractive to use them to get attention for my cause. But if I'm going to be honest with myself, I really don't know if it's the right way to treat these little people I love so much.

Fighting to Save a Neighborhood Library

2009-02-20T19:45:00.000-08:00

We got home from Chicago and found out that our beloved neighborhood library is endangered with closing due to city budget cuts. Ever since, my kids have been hearing a whole lot of "I'll be there in just a second" while I'm frantically writing letters to the editor, organizing letter-writing parties, and searching out other folks working to save the library. Next week, I'll be attending a lot of community town hall meetings about the budget. Library supporters are planning on wearing red shirts to stand out as a unified group with a strong message.

I'm very new to this kind of grassroots organizing, and I've already learned a lot in just a few days. Here are a few of the things that have struck me so far:

1. You have to go ahead and take the risk of making mistakes and doing something imperfectly to start moving your agenda forward. I'm already kicking myself for the things I should have said in a letter to the editor that just got published today, but I comfort myself with the wonderful title the editors gave the letter: "Neighborhood needs its library." That's the kind of publicity we need to get the discussion heading in the direction we want. By putting myself out there with my clumsy, imperfect action steps, I've met many helpful people I wouldn't have otherwise met and alerted people to the situation who wouldn't otherwise have heard about it or known how to get involved.

2. You have to be willing to admit you're a beginner and soak up knowledge from others who've been around the activist block a time or two, even if they're less than tactful. I talked today with an experienced neighborhood activist who bluntly labeled my ideas "minor league" and "too little" and encouraged me to think bigger: instead of dropping off letters with an aide to the mayor, gather enough supporters to charter a bus to a public budget hearing. Now we're talking, I thought excitedly, even if I was a little embarrassed to be called on my "minor league" approach.

3. Think outside the usual suspects in terms of who can help your cause. It struck me that closing the library could have a very negative impact on neighborhood housing values and property tax revenues. I called a local realtor to get her take on things, and she gave me lots of wonderful, persuasive new talking points I wouldn't have thought of. She seemed surprised to be contacted and urged to get involved, but she also seemed open to getting pulled in to our efforts. If nothing else, she expanded my thinking in helpful new ways, and she may mention the library to a few people who wouldn't have known about it otherwise.

4. You may have to leave the house to make sure you pay attention to your kids. I've been so distracted with email-sending and phone calls, the house is now a complete mess. The kids and I had to go to the Children's Museum today so I could focus on crawling through a giant model of an anthill tunnel with them instead of hovering in front of my computer or cleaning up the Legos scattered across the living room floor.

5. You have to make sure to make time to rest and breathe if you want to show your kids that getting involved in your community can be a joy, not a stressful burden that makes you grumpy. Enough said.

Homeward on the Empire Builder

2009-02-16T17:22:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in the Amtrak lounge car with my son and daughter yesterday, coming back from a writers' conference in Chicago. My daughter was making tiny green pizzas and hot dogs out of Play-Doh. My son was putting together a jet plane with Legos. Several times, one of the Lego parts fell under our booth and sent me and my son scrambling to retrieve them.

When my son reached Step 8 in the instructions, he couldn't find the two parts he needed in the pile of Legos, and he lost it. "They're gone forever!" he moaned, tears running down his face. He crawled under the table again. "I'm NEVER going to be dumb enough to try to put together Legos on the train. NEVER!"

I stayed in my seat this time. I just didn't have it in me to get under there again. We had an eight-hour ride ahead of us. I needed to pace myself. My daughter continued to happily shape her green fairy-sized food.

Then my son resurfaced. His face was still red and blotchy with tears. He looked again at the pile of Legos. He looked at the plane he was trying to assemble.

"Oh," he muttered. "The parts are already on the plane. I already did Step 8. That's kind of annoying." And then he calmly set to work with Step 9. Problem solved. I refrained from sermonizing about how there hadn't been any need to get upset in the first place, blah blah blah.

It wasn't until afterward that I realized what a wonderfully unusual moment this was for me. If I'd reacted the way I often do to his getting upset, I would have been frantic with anxiety, my head fluttering with thoughts about how I wished what was happening wasn't happening. I would have been worrying about what the other people in the lounge car were thinking about me and my weeping son. I would have been wishing that my son wasn't so upset, that he could shrug off disappointment more easily. I would have been casting around for ideas about how to distract him. And I would have been berating myself for bringing a toy with 52 tiny parts on the train in the first place.

But I wasn't thinking any of those things. I was thinking, "Well, this sucks that he might have lost the pieces he needed. I wonder how he'll handle it. I'll wait and see if he seems to need help before I jump in and try to fix things for him." I didn't try to wish the moment away. I believed my son could handle what was happening.

Years ago, before I had kids, when I used to attend Zen meditation retreats, I remember feeling absolutely miserable during one retreat. My leg kept falling asleep, I was hot, I couldn't settle down and stay with my breath, and I was sick of staring at a white wall for hours on end. I wanted to be able to get up and move around. I wanted to drink a beer. I wanted to watch a big dumb Hollywood movie with flashy special effects.

And then it struck me that it wasn't that there was anything all that horrible about what was happening to me at that moment. It wasn't that bad, just sitting still and resting on my meditation cushion. Compared to many human experiences, it was actually sort of pleasant, really. What made it horrible was how much I wanted what was happening to be different. What was horrible was fighting reality.

I'm finally, every once in a while, starting to be able to put this flash of realization into practice with my kids.

We had a good trip home on the Empire Builder, all in all. My son did get sick from too much travel food and threw up in an old bread bag, but he was a trooper through it all, taking it easy, letting his dad care for him. My daughter and I hung out in the snack car, and I overheard a conversation at the next table between a long-haired, bearded old man and another, middle-aged man wearing a black yarmulke. They were talking about a time an intruder broke into the younger man's house. He held a gun aimed at the intruder and was prepared to shoot when the cops arrived, saving him from having to make that decision.

"It wasn't your time to end that guy's life," the bearded man said with a smile. "The cops were your guardian angels."

"And his," the man who'd held the gun smiled back.

I rode through the dark with my daughter beside me, smiling too, glad, at least for the moment, to be part of the mystery of it all.