Three weeks in and we need some new spoons...

    
     In the last three weeks, we have been to the library no less than 8 times. In the last three weeks, my two oldest children built a desk out of scrapwood for their younger sister by themselves. In the last three weeks, we picked apples on our break, made a giant color wheel out of magazine scraps under the trees in our yard and learned that mother octopuses take care of their eggs exclusively for six months, and then when those eggs hatch, crawl out of their holes and die.  In the last three weeks, we have rediscovered Bill Nye the science guy, wondered what exactly happened to the Neanderthals and made molecules out of marshmallows and toothpicks. Some of us learned how to spell archaeology, and some of us didn't. One of us even got told to stop checking work with "90's math." (That someone was me.) Two of us had a writing debate in a journal, three of us learned what abstract nouns are, five of us learned a fun rap about the continents that rhymed "Antarctica" with "back to the start-ica." (Thank you, youtube.) In addition to all of these things, one of us got slightly alarmed when we separated out carbon and hydrogen from a spoonful of sugar over a flame wondering if people might think our house was becoming a center of heroine production.
     These last three weeks have been the start of a new adventure in our lives endearingly entitled "homeschooling." So far, I have to say with all honesty, we love it. Since we made the decision, way back in January, so many people have asked why we were choosing this road and I have been hard pressed to answer them succinctly. And here is why...
     Firstly, we have a fantastic public school in our town, one which I have been happy to send my children to for the last five years. Not only were my children doing well academically, but I feel we were supported as a family and whenever we had an issue, it was addressed quickly and thoroughly. We did not choose homeschooling because of opposition to any current teaching standards.  I did not feel pressure to buy my kids the latest clothes or gadgets simply because some of their friends at school had them. I did not pull them out because of a lack of prayer in public schools, opposition to the flag salute or fanatical gym teachers. (Our school has two very lovely ones. )So, why then?
     Pace, time together, a little bit more freedom in our days, and the ability to focus on the amazing world around us as a family. I am looking at this year as a gift, one that we are giving to ourselves to see what we can achieve together. I do not know, yet, what will happen next year or how we will feel at the end of a full year of homeschooling, but I do know this. I will never regret trying something new, stepping back for a while and taking this time as a family. And maybe that, too, is one of the things our children will learn and come to value this year.

Marriage on and off the rocks

     In marriage, we are all geologists. We always know which stones are the heaviest, which are the ones which will shatter the most upon contact, break into a million tiny precedented bitternesses. We stand behind our fortresses, hurling with all our might and wonder at the destruction. Our partner in life and this slow war of attrition, hides down behind their bunker and we throw harder. Or, they come up standing, risking blow after blow to throw their own stones, the ones they know will hurt the most, have the longest history of damage done.

     But what if we could put down those stones? What if, when we empty our pockets and the deepest recesses of our lesser selves, we unburden not only our partner, but lighten our own load. What if we come out from behind our cairns and meet in the middle, leaving behind our past and step toward the future with empty pockets, hearts clean of scar tissue.

    The person on the other side of that bunker is your own personal geologist because they have seen the depths of you; they know the fires in which you were forged, the stuff of which you are made. And they’re still there, standing on the strata of previous battles. They’re still there. And what a beautiful thing to walk away from the carnage, hand in hand and pockets turned inside out with nothing left but hope.

A Day in the Life of Claire: A Biography in Real Time

     Today, as I was yelling up the stairs for my small people, once again, to come down and get bundled up, I started thinking about how my kids see our day from their side, especially our perennially turtle-ish older daughter. She is often wandering in the vastness of her own mind, writing songs and creating little worlds of her own on every available surface of her room. I think it would be absolutely fascinating to read her ongoing biography from an omniscient point of view, to delve deeply and at length into what she is thinking while the rest of our lives happen around her. Because I’m a writer (or trying to be) and no salient point or poignant vignette springs to mind for today, I have given myself license to begin her biography…

                                                  A Day in the Life of Claire; a biography in real time

                                                                      Chapter One

     Claire had a messy room but a very neat dream life. Her bedside table had a setup, (it always did), with folded tissues for beds, empty Altoids boxes for mini-rooms and books for risers, dividers and sometimes even for reading. She had plenty of Scotch tape in her desk, and many glue sticks as well (one never knew when things needed to be connected artificially after all.) She had a habit of shoving many different things under her bed at once and then announcing that it was clean, which it was, to anyone who didn’t bother looking under the long drape of her comforter.

     We find our protagonist on this particularly cold winter day lying on this same comforter, thumb in her mouth and two fingers tracing circles on her earlobe. She was, as usual, supposed to be doing something else. She stared up at the ceiling lost in thought as words floated by her; words like, “get dressed,” and “brush your teeth,” and “What are you doing up there?” Although she could hear these words, she wondered why someone would bother repeating anything so unnecessary. She did, after all, get dressed and brush her teeth every morning, eventually. Slowly, her mind shifted back to the epic story she was writing in her head that would be set to music, much like “Peter and the Wolf.” It didn’t bother our young hero that she did not know either how to write music or how to play any specific instrument yet. These minor inconveniences were easily overcome with some imagination, and that she had in spades.

     Much to her dismay and the interruption of her reverie, her mom showed up and insisted on her actually enacting some of the requests that had floated up the stairs to her. After brushing her teeth, she wandered back to her room and proceeded to stand with only undies on for a full five minutes in front of her closet door. Her thumb in her mouth and her head angled to the side so as to be able to get the perfect position for standing ear rub, she contemplated her epic, and then also wondered why the moon had been so bright last night. Questions swam through her mind; “was the moon that bright in China as well last night? Can my friend Hannah see the same moon where she is?” Her questions led her to her bookcase, where she pulled out a book she knew she would need at some point and so had rescued from Goodwill. Still clad only in undies, she sat on the floor of her room reading about the moon, pausing every couple of minutes to suck her thumb and rub her ear, or as she would later learn to call it “philosophizing.”

     She heard irritation in the footsteps on their way up the stairs to her so she quickly put the book back and opened a drawer in an earnest attempt to stick to the schedule, or at least look like she was sticking to the schedule. Her mom walked by and peered in with raised eyebrows for good measure and then wandered off to hurry some other dawdler along. Finally dressed, she headed down the stairs to confront the barely controlled chaos of packing lunches, assembly line style and the inevitable craze that comes with the last five minutes before heading to school.  This world was a loud one, much busier and less contemplative than the one she had just left in the comfort of her own room and mind. Nevertheless, our brave hero forged on, stepping into voluminous snow pants, a jacket, hat and mittens steadily but oh so slowly. The last one of all her siblings to the car, she heard an exasperated sigh from the front seat as she stepped over mountains of backpacks and legs to find a seat.

More to come…

Love under scrutiny

     If you want to see yourself in the harshest possible light, have a three year old and a four year old stare at your face from four inches out. “Your hair is kind of two different colors” (thank you Loreal), “what is that red dot?” (thank you, Irish ancestry), and my favorite, “I think some of your hair is silver too” (thank you to all 36 of my birthdays.)

     The thing that always fills me with wonder in this process is that all that scrutiny doesn’t matter to them. Because in the end, they stick their wet thumbs in their mouths and lay those little faces on my chest contentedly. They make it ever so clear that none of the features that make us different, the ones we sometimes try to hide, matter in the slightest. Kids love because they love. Why? Because that’s what love is. As is so popularly repeated, love is blind. But, love is blind not because differences, peculiarities and irregularities aren’t noticed, but because they are overlooked; kids inherently know that surfaces don’t matter.

     A few weeks ago, when the wonderful news story about the record clearing of nine civil rights protesters (the Friendship Nine) came out, I read it to my kids. At the time, my oldest daughter’s class was discussing Ruby Bridges and Rosa Parks and my older son was learning about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. I thought the modern day news story would connect them to the fallout from slavery and the process our slow redemption has taken us on since the Civil War.  When I got done with the article, one of my daughters asked why, for so long, we thought black people and white people were different. Being born in 1978, and to parents who  raised me to be color blind,  when I am faced with this question, I always have a hard time answering. I talked about the European worldview at the time of colonization as well as differences in culture and economy in a long and meandering way.

     After my diatribe, I was met with blank stares. I realized that no matter how I tried to phrase my answer, it wouldn’t matter. These children were born in the 21^st century and have absolutely no idea how it is possible to hate someone because of anything they can see, nor what it feels like to feel better than someone else by virtue of ancestry. What a blessing this is; what a debt of gratitude we, as a nation, owe to the many people along the way who have made it possible for our children to be open to the world, to be oblivious to any thinking that implies differences on the surface mean anything more underneath. To children, love is blind, and in the end, isn't that the only true kind?

Snapshot cakes: the beauty of birthday baking

   In the last four weeks, I have baked, frosted and decorated ten cakes. Ten. My sugar taste buds are worn down nubs, my hands are still a reddish hue from food dye and I am currently scouring Amazon for a new hand mixer. You see, January and February are birthday season in our house, with three of our five children celebrating within three weeks of each other. A sane person might ask, “if there are only three birthdays, why so many cakes?” The reason is this: we celebrate birthdays in a big way; we have a cake on the actual day of the birthday, a cake for school, a cake for our family party and a cake for the friends’ party. During fits of self-pity when all the spatulas are dirty and I have four different icing colors in front of me, my very practical husband asks “why don’t you just bake one sheet cake and divide it in three?” His suggestion is very reasonable and sounds good at the time: fewer pans, fewer burnt out mixers and a lot less dish soap, but then I remember why I do this every year…

    A birthday honors more than the day these beautiful people came into our lives; it also acknowledges the moments that have passed along the way and the stage each child is in right at this moment, in this time. When Maeve, on her third birthday, asks for a mermaid princess cake, it is because she spends her time wearing plastic heels, tutus and any kind of outfit with tulle. She is at the stage when I know she is coming by the click-click of heels on the hardwood and the certainty that she has changed, yet again, right before a meal which will inevitably end up on the front of whatever dress is the current choice. Ryan, my six year old, asked for a blessedly simple blue heart cake for our family party. Ryan is all heart; he wears it on his sleeve for the world to see, following every rule and trying his sweet best to make everyone happy. That cake was, to me, who he is and I know I will remember his blue eyes looking up at me in their gentle way every time I look at pictures of him blowing out his candles. Claire, my oldest daughter, wanted a white tiger cake. With fondant, sticky hands and a whole lot of artistic license, I was able to give her an approximation of the animal with one eye who shares her pillow with her every night. She has researched white tigers and has come up with so many ways she thinks might help get them off the endangered list. My girl is on the verge; her heart is coming through and the capacity that she has to do good in the world is emerging. Her tiger cake reminds me that while she might be encountering the world on a grander scale, she also needs to hold something close at night, keeping it, and herself, safe.

    In the end, I make all those cakes because they mean more to me than a symbol of my kids’ latest craze. They are, to me, a snapshot of their lives, marking time as it gains momentum year by year. Looking back on the train cakes, the castle cakes, and the shark cakes, I am reminded of things they have played with, have loved and, in the end, have let go for something new. I am filled with gratitude at knowing these amazing children intimately enough to have a front row seat on their journey, gratitude that another year has passed in which we are all here, all smiling and singing as their wishes blow away off into the world.

Migraine lessons

     I stood, bleary eyed, leaning against the kitchen doorjamb yesterday evening watching an amazing spectacle unfold before me…My children were making dinner. Now, this was not their idea, nor was it a teaching moment with me hovering over them, gauging their progress in doubling a recipe. Instead, their cooking extravaganza was necessitated by an intense migraine and a mom’s inability to move far without blinding pain. Despite that pain, I couldn’t believe how smoothly everything was going on the far side of our kitchen counter.

     My eight year old daughter was cutting pears and adding them to an ever growing bowl, my five year old son was making salads and crumbling goat cheese on top of each one, and my four and three year old daughters were patiently waiting at the table. That being said, I will admit that my ten  year old son was playing his tablet and only occasionally looking up to offer helpful suggestions like, “Don’t cut yourself,” “that’s enough cheese,” and “whoa, maybe I should take over” (without any intention of actually doing so.) Still, I couldn’t believe these latent abilities. I hadn’t even suggested what to make, only that there was lots of food in the fridge. The cooperation and the skills they were demonstrating would have been amazing enough on their own but then, to top it all off, they all told me to go back to the couch; that they had everything under control.

     As I lay there, I started to wonder how many more amazing things my kids could do if I just stepped back a little. I’ve seen them fly by me on ski slopes, I’ve seen them give away a precious piece of cookie because the dog stole someone else’s and I’ve heard them explain geology in more depth than I could but when it comes to the herculean tasks of making dinner and unloading and loading the dishwasher I’ve clearly never really pulled back on the reins enough for them to show me what they can do. They seemed, for those ten minutes, to work flawlessly as a team with no official leader. It was both a gift and a trifle terrifying to watch them function so beautifully without me.

     This realization that they can function so well shouldn’t be, but is, a surprise to a mom like me. A mom who can’t help but silently mouth the words to songs when my children are in concerts, a mom whose hands continually float up towards the fabric on the sewing machine  while my daughter is making a doll blanket, a mom who stands two feet behind them while they add ingredients to make sure we will have actual pancakes. I think, from now on, I will keep my mouth closed, I will leave the room while my daughter sews or my son cooks and I will return every few minutes to watch and be amazed, a grateful spectator instead of a nervous participant.

Winter exhalation

Right now, it is snowing; the early flakes of the coming blizzard that will blanket the world and slow it down, if only for a few hours or a day. I look forward to this siege, this wrapping up of the world in a tight blanket, one which encapsulates all things cozy. Wet socks on cold feet that need warming up by the fire, hot chocolate with leftover Christmas candy canes stuck in at an angle, pajama pants in the middle of the afternoon after changing from sweaty shoveling clothes. There is nothing like a snowstorm to make your world feel smaller, your to do list inescapably shorter, the outside calmer, the air more still, crisp cold and bright. School is cancelled, children will file in and out all day, asking me to join in another snowball fight, to find a lost glove and to make another round of hot chocolate to warm up their souls. It is such a luxury; this weather, the chance to slow down, breathe the air and watch nature remind us that we are not in charge, we never were and anything else is an illusion, so we might as well wrap up and enjoy the show.