Shutting Down This Shop, Opening Another

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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!

"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"