Ode to Kuk Sool Won of St. Paul

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

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

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

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?

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"

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.