Lotsa Laundry

Shakespearean cursing

2012-01-29T21:24:00.000-05:00

We watched Kiss Me Kate this weekend, and Little Guy fell in love with the gangsters. He has been warbling "Brush up your Shakespeare" for days.

Tonight while cleaning out some bookshelves I happened across this gem, which I bought a decade ago when my three eldest were in The Tempest.

It's a flap-book, one of those with each page divided in thirds so you can mix and match the parts. Little Guy has been happily constructing Shakespearean curses for an hour.

All you artless barren-spirited arch-villians, beware! This could be useful on the subway...

Practical tips: Kids and stomach bugs

2012-01-27T09:42:00.001-05:00

There was a time, a decade or so ago, when I idly debated which was worse: having the kids get a stomach bug first (which left Mom exhausted by the time it was her turn) or getting it first (and nursing little ones throughwhile I was staggering toward recovery). Then came the day that six of us had the pukies at the same time. 'Nuff said.

Herewith, at the start of the germ season, and in the midst of our first family tummy bug, I offer my hard-won tips on minimizing the awfulness:

1. Send spouse out for supplies as soon as child #1 blows. If you have more than one child, get twice as much ginger ale or juice or Pedialyte or Gatorade as you think you'll need. Popsicles work to get fluid in, too. Buy pretzels or whatever for afterwards. If no spouse is available, call someone (anyone!) or order delivery. Be obsessive about hydration. Aim for little sips, not gulps, after every urp. Room temp fluids tend to stay down longer than cold.

2. If you have a little one and don't have Tylenol suppositories in the house, get some. They may sit in the cabinet until the expiration date passes, unused, but if you have a child with a fever of 104 who can't keep anything down, you'll be glad to have them.

3. For kids too young to aim for a bowl, retrieve all the receiving blankets and baby towels stashed in the corner of your linen closet and stack them up on the pillow or mattress. Wad up the top blanket/towel when it's soiled, and toss it in a plastic bag (or a bucket with Borax) for the next morning. Voila -- no need to change sheets!

4. Avoid over-the-head jammies. Seriously bad news to get off. Avoid jammies completely if possible; less laundry is better.

5. Braid all long hair, including that of siblings who haven't (yet) gotten sick.

6. Do not let anyone sleep in a top bunk, even if they claim to feel fine. The 2am down-the-wall-on-your-sister experience is to be avoided at all costs. Let sick kids sleep near you so you don't have to dash out of bed at night. We used to keep an old crib mattress under our bed, which we slid out for sick-child use.

7. For kids who are old enough to attempt to reach a bowl, find a really large one. Make sure it has a flat bottom, so it doesn't tip easily. A bucket or anything else an entire head can fit into is great. Keep a box of tissues nearby for wiping yucky mouths.

8. Leave the bathroom light on all night. You don't want to trip while carrying a full bowl. Put dishwashing liquid in the bathroom so you can easily clean the bowl/bucket.

9. Move a giant bottle of Purell next to your sick child so you remember to clean your hands every time you touch him or her. Sometimes disinfecting really does stop the contagion. (Yes, soap is better, but not at 4am on round #13.)

10. Don't look at the clock. And don't count how many times you've gotten up. You don't want to know.

The VIA Survey

2012-01-26T22:33:00.002-05:00

I did the VIA Character Strengths survey today. This is something developed by Martin Seligman (and collaborators) to help identify areas of strength (to build on) and areas of weakness (to build up). It's free to go through, though it takes rather longer than you'd like (probably a full 15 minutes) and you have to supply some basic personal demographics for their database. I didn't pay for the analysis at the end, just got my rankings for the 24 different areas.

I could tell while doing the quiz that my last-place ranking was going to be Appreciation of beauty andexcellence. I'm chewing on why that was so. I certainly value beauty and excellence, but I'm not a rah-rah gusher/enthusiast: I learned how to nod in understated Scandinavian fashion from my dad. I daresay I could voice more appreciation than I do.

My second-lowest area was Zest, enthusiasm, andenergy. I'm guessing this is because at the moment basic survival seems like a very noble goal. I personally think that getting out of bed each morning and making coffee without forgetting to put in water is legitimate reason to rate highly in the energy category. Maybe it's that I'm not very zesty. Go ahead and tell me -- I can take it!

My top three areas were:

1. Honesty, authenticity, andgenuineness

2. Forgiveness and mercy

3. Judgment, criticalthinking, and open-mindedness

I thought that sounded about right, though there were other items I wouldn't have been surprised to see nudge these out. If you take the survey, let me know what ranked where!

PTSG

2012-01-25T17:28:00.000-05:00

Periodically, when I'm grappling with a serious problem (I've had a few lately) someone will say, "I'm sure it will all work out!"

I cock my head a bit, smile, and reply frankly, "Yup... Or not."

I have no doubt that things could work out. I'm equally certain there's no guarantee that they will. Maybe it's age, or maybe it's experience, but I tend not to get as frantic about outcomes as I used to. Why? Because whether things work out or things fall apart, I will do something. If there's a disaster, I'll get up again and start over. People do.

* * * * *

I've been reading Martin Seligman's latest, Flourish. He's the guy who wrote Learned Optimism, which is one of the books I've recommended to at least a hundred people. This new book is about the research on well-being. The part I'm reading is about the program Seligman helped the Army develop to promote strong mental health. He points out that what we all hear about is PTSD, and yet the stats are that a full 85% of people who have been through a traumatic event recover. So he set out to find out what the characteristics are of people who thrive in the wake of difficulty, and what can be done to teach others those skills. He calls it PTSG: Post Traumatic Stress Growth. It's a possibility, you know.

* * * * *

A week or so ago Little Guy and I had a chat. He was distraught about Big Guy'd downward spiral. "I'm afraid he's going to hurt himself," he said, "I'm afraid he's going to die."

I held him close, and was silent for a moment. "That's a scary feeling," I began, then stopped. After a moment I asked, "What would we do if he died?"

Little Guy looked at me with startled eyes, and shook his head with not-knowing. I said, "First we would be very, very sad. And then we would somehow find a way to keep going. And it would be hard, but we would do it because that's the only real option, and because we love each other, and would help each other grow into strong people even though we were hurting inside."

We sat in silence for a bit. Then I added, "We are doing everything we know how to do to help your brother. We are trying our best, you know." He nodded.

Sleep, sweet sleep

2012-01-24T06:42:00.000-05:00

I awoke abruptly yesterday morning when a lovely dream suddenly went bad. I lay in bed shaking, and the alarm went off long before I could get back to sleep. Or rather it clicked as if it would go off; it's been broken for two months now, the victim of one too many child-induced accidents. I priced a new clock when I went Christmas shopping, but opted to buy a noisy alarm for Big Guy, instead. And since that one actually works to rouse him -- a heroic feat, which only cold technology has the patience and perseverance to achieve -- I am content with a faint click to rouse myself.

* * * * *

When I was a kid I read a book in which the main character, an orphan in World War II Europe, had trained himself to wake up at will. If he needed to leave on a spy mission at 4am, he simply told himself to wake up at 3:30. This fascinated me, because I wondered if it was truly possible, and because of the sheer power of mind over body it represented. I've never felt a pressing need to develop this skill myself, but it's nice to imagine it exists.

However, becoming a mother did interesting things to my ability to wake up for hitherto-unfathomable reasons. Who knew it was possible to hear a child tossing and turning several rooms away? Who knew one could wake up at the pitter-pat of feet coming down the hall, knowing which child it was? Who knew one could be so attuned to the sounds of a sleeping child's gurgly tummy that one awakens in time to get a bowl in front of the child's head before the stomach bug does its stuff?

This miraculous ability has diminished as my children have gotten older and are better able to fend for themselves. Nowadays my eyelids flutter open only when someone is standing by my bed saying, for the third time, "My tummy doesn't feel well!"... and instead of getting up I mutter, "Find a bowl." If there's an Independence Day, surely there's an Independence Night as well.

* * * * *

Sleep is a fine thing. Nowadays bad sleep leaves me wondering how I made it through having an infant five times. A night of two of bad sleep for a child leaves me wondering why Andrew never followed through on the idea to invent Flintstone's Kiddy Chloroform. Behavior and self-control tank when sleep is not good.

Over the years we've developed quite an inventory of sleep techniques, ranging from putting on classical music to Jim Weiss story CDs to deep breathing/relaxation exercises. Sometimes none of it works, and I let the sleepless child lie on the floor next to my bed for comfort.

When the children were younger we kept a crib mattress under our bed to pull out for times when someone needed to sleep nearby. It got a lot of use during tummy bug times. It got a lot of use during nightmares. The huge advantage was that the child could lie down and hold my hand, and I didn't have to deal with little knees in my kidneys or with getting out of bed. The mattress is gone now -- no one fits on it any more -- and so if someone wants to be near me they really have to want it, because it means sleeping on the hardwood floor.

* * * * *

The alarm went click at 5:20 this morning and I lay there for a minute, trying to calculate how long I could drowse without falling back into deep sleep. I decided it wasn't worth it. When I got up, Little Guy was standing, confused, at the end of the hall. I hadn't heard him get up. He'd had a bad dream.

I wrapped him in my arms on the sofa, with his Fuzzy Wuzzy wrapped around us. He told me his dream, which had something to do with BeyBlade tops and the veterinarian store. After a bit he said, "I think I'll go back to sleep now". I put him down and started my usual morning routine, ten happy minutes late. There aren't many years left when he'll be small enough to hold that way, and I'm grateful my boy still wants me to do it.

Holding a child at 5:30 a.m.is not the kind of thing one is grateful for -- except in concept -- when the nights are routinely filled with interruptions. It's good to be able to see the bright side of the moon.

2012-01-22T16:12:00.001-05:00

Snuggler was feeling kind of off this morning, probably because Big Guy was "difficult" last night, and then again this morning. It's wearing. She sat down next to me on the sofa and I held her a bit and then whispered, "Should we have a tea party this afternoon?" She perked right up.

So we went into the kitchen and made vanilla cupcakes with almond-cream cheese frosting. We popped up some maple-peanut popcorn, and Dancer graciously gave us permission to use her Chinese teapot and cups. We moved the drop-leaf end table to the center of the living room and got out the German tablecloth. And we had tea. Green tea in the Chinese pot, Keemun black in the everyday teapot.

Eldest, just before she went back to college

When the kids were littler, sometimes I would make up a tea party and we'd pretend we were all adults, and we'd chitchat about our children. Eldest was Mrs. Brown, and her children were similar ages to my own. Dancer was Mrs. Julia, and I believe she had something like 20 children. Snuggler was Mrs. White, and she had three kids. We talked about the difficulties our offspring were having, and what kinds of things helped them, and what we planned to do in the future. I kind of miss those days. And I kind of missed Eldest, who wasn't here to pretend with us.

I'm guessing that Snuggler feels a bit better, because she got on the computer and started working. I thought perhaps she was writing (she does that), but no -- she was making graphic inventions. Like this:

Bubble Tapir, by Snuggler

Four-kid update

2012-01-20T07:07:00.004-05:00

We have medication for Big Guy. Whew! I mean, WHEW! Things were getting pretty hairy, since we'd run out of one kind on Saturday. Even though the half-life on it is quite long he'd come in yesterday afternoon saying, "Mom, I had a bad day at school. I was really irritable and depressed all day."

We still don't have insurance coverage for him, but Andrew dedicated five hours to dealing with that yesterday, and we're coming closer to a resolution. Rah! for Andrew. I mean, RAH!

* * * * *

Snuggler has a part in the ensemble of Kiss Me, Kate! Once a year the children's theater does a big musical for the older kids -- many of whom have been doing shows for a decade -- and this year Snuggler was old enough to audition. That's exciting.

Now that our second semester schedule is beginning to gel (I couldn't sign up for anything else until casting came out, because we're talking 3-4 three-hour rehearsals a week), I can think about taking Snuggler to speech therapy. She has a recalcitrant 'R' sound that is significant enough to limit the kinds of roles she can get. We spent a year working on it to no effect; this is kind of our last shot, since we're expecting that she'll be in school next year and will have limited free time.

* * * * *

Little Guy has joined the Cub Scouts. A friend once commented that 90% of childhood activities up to age 10 are determined by the outfit. I think this is true. This kid loves his uniform.

My brother sent us some money for Christmas, and I opted to spend it on having one super-cool activity for Little Guy in this last semester of homeschooling. So I enrolled him in a robotics class. He'd taken a class with these folks last spring and loved it. But when it came time to go yesterday Little Guy was suddenly paralyzed with anxiety. After a lengthy intervention I figured out that he was afraid that since he was going to be the youngest (the class is for ages 8-12) he'd do badly, or that the older kids would laugh at him. I pointed out that the advantage of being the smallest is that no one expects you to be the best. And we went through the usual "Even if you're scared, you can put your shoes on" and "Even if you're scared, you can walk to the train" kind of thing.

When we arrived and saw the place and it was real, it was do-able. Which is why my core strategy for dealing with a balking child is to say, "It's okay if you're scared. We'll go, and if you get there and it still seems hard you can wait outside until you feel comfortable." Because usually the fear is mixed with curiosity, or interest, or desire-to-go. And unless you can get to the physical place where the child remembers the positive part of the mixed feelings, you don't stand a chance.

When I picked up Little Guy after class he practically flew into my arms with excitement, and yammered on and on and on about the super-cool wind-up robot he had made. Robotics is now the best thing ever.

* * * * *

Dancer's scholarship interview and exam is this afternoon. Pray for her. She really wants to go to this school, and unless funding comes through, she can't.

You screen, I screen...

2012-01-18T12:19:00.001-05:00

When I get up in the morning I make coffee, then sit on a sofa in the living room in the dark for a while. These days I listen to the hiss of the heat coming up, the wind over the river, and the swish of traffic on the highway below. The lights from the bridge twinkle a quarter-mile away.

My laptop sits nearby, two small lights gleaming like snake eyes, enticing me to open it. My rule is that I cannot open it until after I have drunk my coffee. First things first: silence helps my brain settle and gets me focused for the day. If it weren't that 5:30-7:30am is my best working time, I'd avoid turning on the computer entirely until about 11am. Life is just better that way. Or I'm better off that way. Or something.

* * * * *

I'm not an early-adaptor of technology. Back when cell phones were first popular I was on a bus with my kids when one of them asked, "Mommy, why don't you get a cell phone?" I replied, "Because I'm not important enough that anyone needs to reach me all the time." Half the bus turned around to stare. The truth is few of us need cell phones; we've simply grown accustomed to the sense of connectedness and safety they provide. Our tolerance for not-knowing has been stunted: we want to know where people are all the time. We would have made really lousy settlers 150 years ago.

* * * * *

Our family has never had cable TV. We don't have live television, either, since we live in a part of the city with no reception. The no-TV thing is kind of a cultural Grand Canyon between us and many other people. I once wrote a devotional about the effect not-watching TV has on my spiritual life, but it was rejected because the topic was considered too off-putting. The editor feared people would feel criticized if I admitted I don't watch TV.

I don't really care if other people watch TV. But I don't think TV should be a pre-requisite for membership in the "I Live A Normal Life" Club, either. If we're going to celebrate diversity and all that, we can celebrate diversity in TV use, no?

* * * * *

Andrew says that going no-TV was the best parenting decision we ever made. It's certainly the fastest way to reduce the impact of commercialism on kids. Now with computers the way they are, being TV-less is almost a non-event. One can open one's veins to pop culture and become a screen addict using a variety of electronic drugs.

We've seen some erosion in screen control over the past two years; Big Guy bought a DS and Dancer bought an iPod and a Wii. It's harder to enforce that a screen is a screen is a screen when there are so many different kinds in the house. But the biggest impact on screen time comes from having parents who spend more time in front of a screen than not. To a kid, it doesn't always matter if you're doing work or browsing around. You're still focused on a screen instead of him. It makes a difference.

* * * * *

Part of my lack of affection for screens arises from their convenience. While I enjoy convenience as much as anyone else, inconvenience has its benefits: it makes us stop and think. Decades ago I went to a women's college, where I realized that if I wanted a social life that included members of the opposite sex, I had to consider what kind of men I wanted to meet and where they were likely to be. That required an intentionality that I'd never considered before. I couldn't just fall into a relationship with the guy down the hall, because there were none.

When things are massively convenient (think Amazon One-Click) we often act with far less forethought than when we have to do a little more work. When entertainment is readily available, we veer off and indulge ourselves instead of doing something creative. I sometimes wonder what impact large quantities of readily-available screen time will have on the number of kids who take up instruments, or become artists or amazing chefs. It's hard to get in your 10,000 hours of practice if you're spending six hours a day in front of a screen.

From YIKES! to yikes

2012-01-16T23:35:00.000-05:00

I'm in one of those phases where there are 400 ideas floating around in my head at once. This is a relief; I'm emerging from a stretch where my brain turned into left-out Play-Doh, the kind abandoned in a just-moist-enough spot to be of indeterminate color, hard, cracked and moldy.

Most of the atrophy was due to an extraordinary string of hard hits at year-end. The most significant of those was discovering (right after an ER visit) that Big Guy's health insurance had been cancelled. We hadn't been notified by the carrier, and despite logging many hours in phone-tree hell still haven't found out why it happened. Nor have we succeeded in reinstating it. I have Big Guy's case worker on it, as well as a friend who works for a State senator. But no insurance for Big Guy = no psychiatrist = no medication = oh-wow-let's-not-go-there. I can get scripts for meds through a city hospital clinic if I have to (after a half-day in a waiting room), but the cost of filling them is prohibitive. It's a problem.

I'm writing about this as if I handled the news calmly, which I did not. Externally I was reasonably placid, but inside -- wow! -- my feelings resembled an electrified cat. I reached my freak-out capacity the day I had to go up to Big Guy's parent-teacher conferences. I sat on the bus alone and stared out the window at the gray trees, cried a bit, prayed a lot, and decided to assume that things will get figured out and we will get meds within the timeframe that's needed. Whether it actually works out that way or not is almost irrelevant: I stink at panicking, and have to figure out a way to keep hysteria at bay, or else I can't function. Panic makes my mind blurry, and keeps me from meeting my deadlines, and puts static into family relationships. So I'm making a basic assumption that all will be well, putting my worries in a box, and allowing myself to take them out once in a while to play with. It doesn't solve the insurance problem faster, but it at least allows me access to the brain cells that allow me to try to solve it at all.

A list worth perusing

2012-01-15T21:08:00.000-05:00

Every now and again I pop by EvidenceBasedMummy.com, to see what interesting stuff she's come up with. A recent post contains a great list of character strengths to consider as you raise your kids. It overlaps with some of what I've been reading in Martin Seligman's newest book (Flourish), and provides much food for thought.Kinda snaps you out of the "I just want my kid to be happy" mode in a jiffy!

Making friends in unexpected ways

2012-01-14T23:06:00.003-05:00

I went to Heide's house today to a tea to celebrate her birthday. It's been a longish time since I went anywhere that I knew only the host and hostess, and I had to consciously brush off my social skills and engage people I'd never met.

I am not a gregarious person in new settings. Until I had children I was a closet introvert: I could successfully fake extroversion -- or at least sociability -- but vastly preferred reading books at home. A decade or so of hanging out at playgrounds chit-chatting with other mothers expanded my comfort zone considerably. I suspect that age played a role, too, because I eventually figured out that although most people were naturally more sociable they were also less secure, and that made talking to strangers less intimidating. And so I evolved into a creature approximating an extrovert. (My children will be shocked to learn I was not always like this: they know me only as the mother who knows everyone.)

Nonetheless, when I walked into the room today and saw that a) it was a small group of people, and b) I didn't know any of them, I had a momentary rush of adrenaline. Then I reminded myself that I am who I am, and no new social situation is going to lessen me. And I remembered that since these were Heide's friends I would probably find them interesting. Which I did. One woman, a professor whose specialty is 20th century British literature, felt like an instant old friend. That is a rare occurrence. And a happy one.

* * * * *

In the car on the way back (for my new friend gave me a ride home) I mentioned that our family had met Heide's through her husband Doug. I'd almost forgotten that; people assume that since Little Guy and Heide's Offspring are friends, we must have met on the playground. But back when Eldest was about 10, she and Big Guy were in a children's theater production of The Tempest. Eldest played Caliban, and Big Guy one of the lesser noblemen. After the performance a man came up to me and asked if I was Caliban's mother. I nodded warily; he said he was doing an indie film of the medieval Everyman play, and he would like Eldest to read for a small part in it. Hmmm. Is this a scam?

No, it was for real. Eldest did read for the part and got it, and Big Guy ended up with a part, too. It was on the day they were filming in the park nearby that I met Heide, who was helping Doug out. It's not often you make friends with someone because you happen to meet her during a movie shoot. Or at least it hasn't been a frequent occurrence for me.

(You can see a trailer for Doug's Everyman here; my kids are in the one-second flicker of the first scene, in the foreground to the right as Everyman walks down the road.)

Happiness for Dancer

2012-01-13T20:52:00.001-05:00

Stage one of the high school results came in today, with good news: Dancer was admitted to both of the Catholic high schools to which she'd applied. One came with a nice-size scholarship and an invitation to interview for a 4-year, 2/3 tuition scholarship. The other -- her first choice school, more selective -- came with an invitation to sit for the scholarship exam next week. We need a goodly amount of financial aid, so if you're a praying person, please help us out with a request!

I am glad for Dancer. Proud of her, too. And relieved that we have at least two good choices for high school. The public school placements won't be announced until some time in February, probably after the deposit is due at these schools. Hopefully the scholarships will be sufficient to make a decision on what to do without too much angst.

Holding it together, sometimes

2012-01-12T20:52:00.000-05:00

I went up to Big Guy's school today for parent-teacher conferences. Oh, how I didn't want to go! It meant going to a bus terminal that I never use, finding a bus line I've never ridden, going on a route I'd never traveled, and getting off at a stop I didn't know. I had no idea how much it was going to cost. And once I arrived I was going to have to walk some undetermined distance to get to the school. In the rain. Ugh.

It was one of those things that falls in the category of brushing your teeth: you do it because you have to, not because you want to. I knew that once I'd done it, it would not be a big deal -- it was only the first-timeness that was making me uncomfy. So I chalked it up to experiencing, on a small scale, the kind of anxiety that some of my kids (including Big Guy) experience whenever we do something new.

It really wasn't a big deal. It's easier to get to this school than Big Guy's old school (which required two trains and a taxi). And the teachers were all pleasant, and had good things to say, and they like my son. They think he's a great kid.

Which is good. I mean, it would be nice if some of that light would shine here at home, too. But in a way it's okay if he turns it on for others and leaves us in the dark. At least that means he can hold it together sometimes.

* * * * *

Being able to do things only sometimes is confusing. I've known people to point to sometimes as evidence that if a child only tried harder, he or she would be capable of doing something all the time. That's one possible explanation. There are others. In my experience when a child can do things sometimes and not others, it's often because the child is not yet strong enough to do it consistently. He can do it in some settings and not others, or perhaps on days when he had a lot of sleep the night before, or when he's feeling uncharacteristically confident.

When a child can only do things sometimes, it's usually useful to ask what it was that was different about the times he was successful, to see if we can replicate the circumstances that make success possible.

When a child can only do things sometimes we may need to consider what kind of effort it takes for him to do it. We might have to think in terms of battery hours (how long before he needs to recharge?) or about what prophylactic measures will extend his abilities. These approaches tend to work better than assuming the kid isn't trying hard enough.

Tips for Saving Money on Grocery Shopping

2012-01-09T10:48:00.001-05:00

I made cinnamon swirl bread last night. There were two reasons: I wanted something special for breakfast (today was Eldest's last morning here), and there weren't any ingredients in the house for anything else. It came out well, but I would have been better if I'd thought of starting the dough before 9pm; the last loaf came out of the oven at 12:30 a.m.

It's not economical for me to bake bread, because my family eats twice as much of it as store-bought. I can buy a large loaf of fresh Jewish rye at the kosher bakery around the corner for less than whatever comes pre-packaged at the grocery story, but that goes fast, too. We consume a lot of bread and milk. Most days it seems like we go through a lot of everything. Which is why I am fierce about the food budget.

People ask me how we feed a lot of people on a little budget. I've gotten better at it with time. I don't do coupons, because we don't get any newspapers that carry them, stores here don't accept computer-generated coupons, and I don't buy much in the way of national brands, anyway. There are obvious cost-cutting steps like buying less expensive meats, and making chicken broth each time you have a chicken carcass. Here are some less-obvious tips:

1. Only bring cash to the grocery store. Cash creates an automatic spending limit, and there's no more effective deterrent to impulse buying than the fear that you won't be able to pay for what's in your cart!

2. Set a dollar limit on what you'll spend per pound on produce and meat. I don't buy fruit that's more than $1.69/pound, or meat that's more than $2.99/pound. YMMV (or at least your ceiling prices will), but the concept's good for avoiding spending more than you can afford. On the produce end, it also keeps you focused on buying whatever's in season. We eat a lot of carrots and cabbage in the winter.

3. Plan your meals. This step alone can save you 15% on your grocery bill. I keep a long list, organized by cost (any time/on sale/special occasions), of what my family will eat. In the "any time" category are things like black beans and rice, omelets, latkes with applesauce, pasta with pesto, channa masala, homemade mac 'n' cheese -- mainly starch-based meals (though I cook enough Chinese dishes that we have a number of them in there, too). In the 'on sale' category are entrees that require ground beef or chicken, Italian sausage, pork loin, London Broil. The advantage to the long list is that I can pick up the grocery store circulars, see what's on sale, and plan out the week's meals without having to think too much, and so that we're not constantly eating the same thing.

a) Breakfast is ridiculously inexpensive if you get in the habit of baking. It takes five minutes to toss muffins together, and even less time to scramble eggs. We rarely buy cereal.

b) Lunch can be the most expensive meal of the day if you go the coldcuts route; it's 1/4 the price to make curried chicken salad, and better for you, too. Leftovers, soups, quesadillas, and really simple sandwiches bring down our cost.

c) Snacks: don't buy'em. Drink water, not juice.

4. Reserve a bit of money for buying extra basics when they're on sale. If you bake, buy two pounds of butter or an extra bag of flour when it goes on sale.

5. Reserve $10 of your budget as 'mad money'. If your whole shopping trip is spent resisting temptation, you'll do well for a couple of weeks and then blow your budget because you run out of self-control. Set aside some money for a weekly mini-splurge, or a gee-my-kids-would-like-ice-cream treat, and you can circumvent a good deal of the emotional erosion.

All the stupidly expensive things like detergent, shampoo, sanitary supplies, TP, and trash bags we get at Costco. I have a wonderful friend who has a membership and will pick these up for me, so that I don't even have to consider making impulse purchases!

Love in life

2012-01-07T13:04:00.002-05:00

Eldest heads back to college on Monday, and I have to say I'm sad. I so love having her here. The kids enjoy goofing around and being a whole family. There was one point last week when all five kids were crammed into the love seat together, chattering and laughing, happy to be a clan. I wish I'd taken a picture. The scene stays fixed in my mind, and I would like to give the kids a visual memory of that day so that they remember it, too.

The poignancy of that mental snapshot is that I've spent many hours this week on that same love seat talking to distraught, angry children who are struggling with their feelings about Big Guy. Big Guy's fun when he's fun, but he explodes; he's scary; he's unpredictable. It's hard to avoid the sense that he ruins everything. And lest I fall into the trap of that line of thinking, I remind myself that those difficult, empathetic conversations on the love seat with my battle-scarred children make up (perhaps) some of my best parenting moments.

Funny that it's called a love seat, no? For love is made up of many things besides happiness: empathy, companionship, patience, endurance, understanding, reconciliation, forbearance, and just staggering through.

2012-01-06T07:37:00.000-05:00

Andrew brought me white roses on New Year's Eve. That's the anniversary of our engagement; on the night he proposed he brought white roses, and he's done so in each of the 19 years since then.

It's sweet of him. Unfortunately, I am terribly unromantic. The path to my heart isn't lined with flowers or jewelry or mushy cards. And I'm allergic to decaying plant matter. So each year I nod my thanks, put the roses in a vase, and half-wonder if there's something a wee bit wrong with me for not "feeling the love".

As the days pass and the roses open, I move the vase from this part of the table to that, making room for schoolwork and supper and everyday life. When I sit in the living room writing, my eye falls on the flowers when I glance up. Over the days my mind slowly begins to apprehend that this curious gift my husband brings me once a year -- a gift I know many women yearn for, but I do not -- is somehow symbolic of something. It is as if Andrew is saying I know roses aren't your love language, but they are part of mine, and I love you enough that I am going to 'say' it whether you can hear me or not.

I think about that. After nearly two decades of marriage there's still a lot of mystery about what it means to love and be loved. Knowing that is worth something. Perhaps it's even worth the cost of a half-dozen white roses.

Asking the right questions

2012-01-01T00:02:00.001-05:00

We had some fireworks here on New Years, though not from the usual child. One of my kids blew a gasket, ran out of the apartment in bare feet, and (when I went in search) was nowhere to be found. The child eventually reappeared, only to explode all over again. The child hated me, hated life, hated the world. The child demanded to be left alone, then stomped around yelling at and insulting everyone. The child refused comfort, empathy, and direction. The child had to be escorted to a room, and the door had to be shut. And the child continued to shout unpleasant things for some time.

This child shall remain anonymous, for every child has his or her bad moments. Some have uglier bad moments than others; some you need to worry about and others you don't. This was a pretty extreme incident, and I had a hunch what was going on. You see, Big Guy has been erratic lately. And while there have only been a few incidents where safety was truly an issue, the on-and-off blasts of anger make life feel uncertain. The child who fell apart had been not been feeling safe. Unpredictability in life can lead to strange reactions, most of which you'd rather avoid.

* * * * *

A while back I visited a friend whose older teen has been clinically depressed. I'd never seen the domino effect mental illness has on family life from the outside before. Teen A (the depressed and highly irritable one) snapped harshly and unnecessarily at Teen B; Teen B (wounded, and tired of getting picked on) snarled back with venom. Adult A came down on Teen B; Adult B worked frantically to re-establish peace. In less than a minute the entire family went from having a normal dinner to being in a state of high anxiety and agitation.

Whose fault was it? I think that's the wrong question; the point isn't to find someone to blame, but a way to prevent the situation from arising again. Assigning guilt improves nothing, because even though the instigator knows he shouldn't snap at others he probably isn't capable of behaving differently right now. Child A can be taken to a therapist and started on meds, but those approaches-to-a-solution aren't going to kick in before suppertime rolls around again tomorrow night.

A better question is what kind of firebreak can be constructed to prevent Child A's irritability from spreading. One can talk to the sibling at a calm time, and explain what is going on. One can ask the sibling not to take the irritability personally (good luck with that!), to detach, and choose not to let the nastiness get under his skin. It will work -- a bit. But practicing detachment is difficult even if you're an adult. And there's a fine line between teaching kids not to react to provocation and teaching them to ignore and accept abuse.

* * * * *

It is work to parent a child who is mentally ill. It is just as much work to parent children whose sibling is mentally ill. There are wounds everywhere, all the time. One tries -- hard -- to create oases in each child's life where he or she can thrive, grow, find confidence and peace. But still, there are wounds that sometimes fester and grow out of sight.

On New Year's Eve, while I was empathizing with my melting-down child (once the child was in a state which allowed for communication), the child demanded, "Why do we have to have such big problems?"

I responded, "Honey, everyone has problems. And if they don't have them now, they'll have them some day. Life isn't always easy."

The child responded, angrily, "Yeah, well none of my friends have to call 911 on their brother!"

Huh. Got me there.

And there's no pat answer, is there? Why us? Maybe because we're strong enough -- or can grow to be strong enough. Maybe because Big Guy needed a family that would care. Maybe because this experience can make us into better people. Maybe it's the plain old brokenness of the world, and we drew one of the shorter straws. And maybe it's none (or all) of the above. Maybe asking why me is the wrong question. It doesn't take us anywhere except in circles. And that's not where we want to go.

Maybe the right question is something completely different. Like What kind of person do I want to be in the midst of this difficulty?

Questioning ideals

2011-12-29T15:28:00.002-05:00

My brain is swirling these days. Holidays and visits from parents aside, I have a ridiculous number of deadlines within the next week, and they're all on widely divergent topics. One's a strategic business plan for a new event promoting French food (deadline tonight); the guy I'm working for is momentarily in India, having popped through four other countries in the past week. Another project is a monthly ghostwritten newsletter on faith (due Monday, I choose the topic and write it from scratch); another is a quarterly newsletter on bipolar disorder (due the 6th or thereabouts, and I need a general interest article). I also owe a batch of posts for my other blog. And tomorrow I teach a kids' class in the park on squirrels.

Don't ask how I keep all this straight; I don't. My brain is in a constant state of either chaos or idea triage. While I tried to figure out the time zone of India (so I know when my deadline really is) I prepared for tomorrow. When I get stuck writing about gastronomy I shift to Googling various mental health topics, or pause to read a chapter in one of my Christmas books, or start cooking supper. My mom -- who has come many miles to see us -- sat down on the sofa next to me yesterday afternoon and I had to tell her, as gently as possible, "I'm not really here right now. I'm in my cone of invisibility." It's what I tell the kids when I'm hammering out a piece on deadline. And truly, I'm not there. I'm not accessible.

It's not the ideal set-up, but I'm kinda done with ideal. Or, better said, I'm past the point of thinking that ideal (or even close to it) is a prerequisite for joy, productivity, or peace of mind. Ideal is nice, but it's rarely reality. If I want to live life fully, I've got to do it even in less-than-ideal circumstances.

* * * * *

A couple of months ago I decided I was done with listening to people whine about the weather. Short of a hurricane, tornado, blizzard or life-threatening heat wave, it's not news. We might as well say, "I'm mildly uncomfortable. Are you?" I think we can set the standard for empathy higher than that.

I've sometimes wondered if people who live without air conditioning complain less than those who spend most of their days in temperature-controlled environments. And I've wondered if people are better off learning endurance instead of focusing on their comfort. Certainly there's productivity loss when you're sweating your way through 98 degree weather. But what do we lose if we never endure discomfort?

* * * * *

Homeschoolers are fond of the Little House books. Reading them aloud does make one kind of gape at how much work kids used to do (apparently without complaining) compared to today. I suspect that's because if you were out on the prairie and didn't help weed the vegetable garden your family could die of hunger. There were very real, and very harsh consequences to not doing your share of the work, and not just because Pa would whack you with his belt for disobedience.

In truth, there's very little that I ask my kids to do that has any life urgency to it. I may be obsessed with having the house clean before our Christmas guests arrive, but we all know that no one is going to starve if one of my kids doesn't do his or her job. The worst that will happen is that Mom will be aggrieved (again) that others didn't do their share. It's not the same as the specter of a long winter in a cold cabin only calories away from starvation.

How does one teach children how to cope with the far-less-than-ideal if one lives too close to the ideal?

I thought I saw...

2011-12-27T14:00:00.001-05:00

an eight year old!

I did! I did!

Happy birthday to my little cut-up! We may have to give him a new moniker soon, because he's not really a little guy any more.

Aliens took our star

2011-12-23T21:44:00.002-05:00

Or maybe we just liked this better on top of the tree.

(Snuggler thinks we should arrange lights in a nest below it, like crop circles.)

Merry Christmas. Or Channukah. Or whatever it is that you celebrate.

2011-12-22T08:15:00.002-05:00

Linking to my other blog, Seeds of Devotion, for a Christmas post:

It Shouldn't Be Like This

Enjoy!

Okay, that's weird

2011-12-21T07:26:00.004-05:00

I'm using the new Blogger interface, and it published my new post down below the picture of Dancer. I've figured out why, but... it's still weird. I don't know how to move it up here (or am too lazy to figure it out), so you'll have to scroll down. Sorry!

2011-12-19T07:46:00.000-05:00

Dancer, left, and a friend

Andrew whizzed down from the children's theater with Little Guy and Snuggler after the last performance of their musical, so they all saw Dancer's last show. I watched from the wings. The show was sold out (again), and the audience was great.

It's all over now. The dancers are sad. But they begin choreography for their next performance this afternoon.

Beyond evil and beyond good

2011-12-19T07:08:00.001-05:00

My good friend Liz came to see the kids' musical on Sunday. The show was about the children of Terazin, the Nazis' "model ghetto". I warned her up front that she was likely to need tissues; it's incredibly sad.

Liz, who is Jewish, replied, "I dunno. I've faced all that so many times I don't get worked up too much any more. When I held my first baby in my arms, I thought how magnificent she was -- and then I thought that in another place and time, the Nazis would have thrown her up in the air to use for target practice. Because they did that with babies, you know."

Yes. But I had never connected that atrocity with my own newborn.

The conversation reminded me of a conversation I overheard after 9/11, in which someone was terrified because "there are people out there who want us dead just because we're Americans!" The other person responded gently, "Ahhh. Yes. Now you know what it feels like to be a Jew."

I have written here before about our neighbor Freida, who died last September. There is also Rose, a neighbor who is turning 100 this year. A while back she had to go for an MRI, and the metal detector kept going off. The good folks at the MRI center kept asking her if she had any metal on her, a pacemaker, perhaps, or hairpins. No, there was nothing. After a while, Rose's face lit up as she figured out what the problem was. "Oh!" she said, "It's the bullet!"

The bullet? It turned out that when she was young the Nazis had shot her father in front of her. And a fragment of the bullet had spun off and entered her brain. And it was still there, all these years later.

* * * * *

My husband Andrew had a wrenchingly hard time watching the show. Snuggler, who played a teacher in Terazin, is almost an exact replica of his Jewish mother. He is keenly aware that if our children had been born in Europe two or three generations ago, they would have been targeted for extermination. And given the stats -- fewer than 100 of the 12,000 children who entered Terazin survived -- our children would have died. They would have died apart from us, alone beyond alone, more alone than I can begin to imagine.

Real nightmares, the kind that people actually live (and die) through, are beyond our capability to process. We grope our way along, striving to understand, trying to give shape to what we're up against so we can grasp it and expel it. But darkness is not graspable.

It is, however, pierce-able. A pitch-dark sky is made different by a single star. Light, even when it's not as strong as we want it or need it to be, is transforming.

Gerda Weissman Klein, who was featured in an Academy Award-winning documentary about the Holocaust relates, "Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the concentration camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to a friend."

Yes. Imagine that.

Evil isn't the only thing that's incomprehensible. There's incomprehensible love, too. We get to choose which one to focus on. We get to choose which one to emulate. Every day, we get to choose.

The fast life

2011-12-17T10:40:00.002-05:00

Life is moving so quickly that when someone called on Thursday to see if my two youngest could play "some day soon" I literally didn't know. I didn't know if there was a pocket of time between now and Tuesday. I apologized for seeming as if I'd spent the week having a lobotomy, and told my caller to call back on Monday, when I expected a fresh delivery of brain cells.

Here's the backstory: This past Monday my younger kids said goodbye to their friend Seamus, who is moving to California. That night we called 911 because Big Guy was having a very rough night. A good part of this week was spent dealing with the fallout. (How bad was it? Snuggler, age 10, has been sleeping in her closet.)

So on Tuesday we went to a museum, because some days you just need to immerse yourself in beautiful things. We did some math, but other than learning that chess sets originally had elephants instead of knights (and viziers instead of queens), we didn't do much schoolwork. I completed two freelance projects.

Wednesday we attended our homeschool co-op's Christmas party, where the kids caroled on the street and raised $187 for a homeless program. I got my hair cut. Dancer had dress rehearsal.

Thursday Andrew took Big Guy to an intake appointment at the big anxiety/mood clinic; we are getting new doctors. Dancer had a high school interview. I completed the financial aid app for the private school to which she applied and finished a freelance project. Snuggler and Little Guy had their brush-up rehearsal for "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" (performances are today at 3pm and tomorrow at 4pm). Dancer's Nutcracker opened.

Yesterday we had free tickets to "Amahl and the Night Visitors", and Little Guy cracked his forehead on an announcement board at the theater. It bled, but didn't require stitches (by child #5 you know these things at a glance). Dancer went to her history-through-musicals class, and had a performance (remaining performances are tonight and tomorrow at 7pm). I finished a freelance project.

Today Dancer has her callback for the big performing arts high school at the same time as Snuggler and Little Guy have their call for the show. I'll drop her off, then rush uptown in time for the performance, then whiz down to work backstage at Nutcracker. I have a rush freelance project that was supposed to be in my in-box at 8am, but hasn't arrived yet.

A child has informed me that we are supposed to bring something for a cast party tomorrow.

I think I'll bring myself. Or maybe just send my kids.

The lady with the headset

2011-12-14T23:34:00.001-05:00

I arrived to work backstage at Nutcracker tonight, and the woman in charge asked, "Are you comfortable using the headset?"

I replied, "No, but I'm okay with being uncomfortable."

So I got to wear the geeky pack on my waist, and wear the headset with one earphone and a mike, and stand in the wings and converse in a subdued voice with the guy in the lighting and music booth. He told me which scenery was up next, and I cued him when things were ready.

That was cool. I won't go so far as to say that I was cool, because if I do my kids will surely chime in to assure you that I'm not. (I warn them about this around the time they turn ten. "In a couple of years you're going to think that I'm not cool, and I want to tell you up front... I'm not," I confide, in a congenial voice, "There's a reason I'm not cool, and it's because cool is not my god. I actually choose to be the way I am."

But it is nice to feel cool once in a while. Tonight I felt like I'd acquired some secret knowledge, or at least that I looked like I was in the know. Next time I might even wear black.

Between you and me, it wasn't that hard. But don't let the folks in the audience know.

The size of the problem

2011-12-10T08:02:00.000-05:00

I was talking to a dad of two the other day, as he held his crying 2yo in one arm and his newborn in the other. "Ah, you've learned to hold both of them already!" I laughed, recognizing the how on earth am I supposed to manage this? look on his face. He wasn't sure he'd accomplished what I thought he had, and he asked how one does manage two, and I advised, "Oh, there's no right way. Half the trick is not to think about it -- just do it."

The good thing about most I-don't-know-what-to-do parenting crises when your kids are young is that they last a whopping five minutes. Which means you don't really need Calgon to take you away; what you need is a five-minute block of patience, or endurance, or lip-zipping. You need to let that wave of frustration or insecurity wash over you, instead of giving in to the feeling that you're drowning.

There are any number of times in life when we feel we are going under when in reality we're just being smacked in the face with a wave. We're facing a five minute problem. Or an hour-long problem. Or a two-day problem. Or a $100-a-month problem.

Which isn't to say that we have the resources at that moment to manage through the next five minutes or come up with another $100. But figuring out the size of the problem can help keep it in perspective. We can say to ourselves, "Okay, so I can't see a way out of this now, but this is a [length of time] problem. It will pass. It will pass. And I will figure it out."

And usually it does, and we do.

* * * * *

There are other kinds of problems, of course. The other day the mom of a 20-something boy who is off at college wrote to a listserv I'm on, to say she's terrified because her son is deeply depressed. She can't persuade him to go to the psychiatrist. He won't exercise or go out or shower. He doesn't want help, and he definitely doesn't want her help.

Another woman on the list, whose adult daughter had been severely anorexic wrote in reply that when she was terrified about her daughter she told a therapist, "It's my job as her mom to keep her alive!" and the therapist gently replied, "No. When she was little it was your job to keep her alive. She's an adult now. And that's not your job any more. It's hers."

Sometimes it's not in our power to change things we desperately want to change. Sometimes we are relegated to the sidelines to flap our arms helplessly. Much as we'd like to, we cannot climb into the mind of the depressed person and change his thoughts. We cannot make choices for the person prone to rage or alcohol abuse. We cannot force a self-centered person to choose a more thoughtful path. We can present options, make recommendations, pray feverishly, ache terribly, bring the person to professionals who can help. But we cannot be that person and do the things for him or her that are needed.

And here our perception of the size of the problem whacks us upside the head in a different way. For failing (refusing?) to recognize what's outside our control means we don't see that the problem is bigger than we are. We take on more responsibility than is rightly ours. And this causes us to suffer even more.

A single mom of two, whose children both have developmental delays and numerous psych diagnoses, also wrote to the woman of the depressed man. This woman's teenage daughter has had suicidal thoughts daily for over two years. She offered this insight:

Pain x Resistance = Suffering

Wishing fiercely that we didn't have the problems we do, or denying they're as bad as they are, or getting angry that this is happening only multiplies our suffering. The more we fight reality the harder it is. And it's hard enough. Really.

* * * * *

A few weeks ago Big Guy and I were coming home on the train and he flew into a rage. He stomped off down the car with the black scowl that I recognize as the physical marker of his entry into a will-we-need-to-call-911 mood. I let him alone, knowing that anything I said would feed the dragon. There are times when the best thing you can do is step back; doing nothing is better than making matters worse.

Ten minutes later we had to change trains, and Big Guy got off at the other end of the car and strode fiercely out of sight. I reminded myself that technically there was no reason he had to travel with me: he's 15, old enough to get home on his own. But when I arrived at the other platform and glanced around, he wasn't there. For a variety of reasons I decided he was probably somewhere nearby and didn't want me to see him. After a few minutes I spotted him pacing further down the platform.

I waited out of sight, wondering what state of mind Big Guy was in. Was he calming himself down, or had he accelerated into despair? I didn't know. And then it hit me: If he tries to fling himself in front of a train, I cannot stop him. He is bigger than I am. He would take me with him.

I inhaled sharply and let the thought sink in. I felt the overwhelming weight and piercing pain of it. And then I felt the freedom of it, too: It's not up to me. It is not up to me.

For better or worse, the size of the problem was bigger than I could solve. I had to own the part I could own, and let go of the (bigger) part that I could not. And as I grasped this the train came in.

Thankfully, there was no screeching of brakes.

.

Video footage of Dancer's Nutcracker

2011-12-09T08:44:00.000-05:00

She's not in the cast shown in this, but she's doing some of the same choreography:

The Knickerbocker Suite

Fun stuff!

.

I love this TED talk

2011-12-08T09:20:00.000-05:00

Year Two

2011-12-07T21:08:00.000-05:00

Eldest called on Monday night; her laptop died. She's taking two computer science courses (one of which has a huge term project due next week), so this was a bit of a crisis. However, before she called me she'd taken her computer to tech support, found out it was a hard drive problem, learned that everything was covered under warranty, and resigned herself to a computer-less life until Thursday. I commended her on how she'd handled it... and suggested she steel herself for the possibility that the computer might not be up and running on the anticipated schedule. Delays happen. I know.

Then Eldest called last night. Since she'd had to go to the computer lab to do her work she was efficient about it. Browsing through FanFic sites when someone is waiting for a computer isn't cool. And so 9pm rolled around, and she unexpectedly had a whole evening ahead of her. No onerous problem sets to keep her up until midnight. Oy, what to do?! (I should pause to explain that Eldest attends one of the geekiest schools in the nation; everyone has too much work, and if they're not doing p-sets they're squeezing in an extracurricular activity.) My heart sang hallelujahs that calling home to talk to the family qualified as a good way to fill time. Though I did suggest that later perhaps she could do something novel, like read a book.

Year two of having a child in college is a lot easier than year one. It's akin to the second year of parenting: when the raw newness has worn off, you realize that you can actually do what's required with some illusion of competence. You've amassed enough data points that you grin when you fly only half-blind. The relentless letting-go-of-my-child ache is ameliorated by knowing that every string that has been cut is being replaced by new connections that will allow you to relate as adults. And all that is good.

Love that girl. I just love her and love her and love her.

.

A question for you...

2011-12-05T13:53:00.000-05:00

.
.
.
What was the most thought-provoking book or article you read this year?

Not the book you liked the most. The book that made you chew on ideas for a while, or think about life from a different perspective.

.

Nutcracker!

2011-12-04T21:36:00.002-05:00

It's getting to be that time of year. Dancer's Nutcracker is December 15-18. It's a whimsical, one-hour version, with more family-friendly prices than the big one. It's all centered in New York City; the Chinese scene (which she dances in the Friday show) is done like Chinese take-out, while Marzipan (which she's in all days except Friday) is a thoroughly enjoyable scene of pigeons in the park. The choreography is fresh and clever, and the dancers are from the pre-professional division of Dancer's school.

The theater is relatively small, so there are no bad seats. Let me know if you're coming; I'll be backstage most nights except Saturday, when I'm on call for Snuggler and Little Guy's musical in a different part of town.

We're back

2011-12-04T21:25:00.000-05:00

At times, when people ask, "How's the family?" I reply, "On average we're fine... but the distribution on that bell curve is pretty wide!"

Similarly, on average, the trip to see Eldest was fine. For one thing, we actually got there as planned. For another, it was very, very good to see her. The concert was lovely. And we stayed with my good friend Kate, who is one of my favorite people in the world. The challenging parts of the trip were... yes. Yes, there were challenging things. But we made it through and now we're back.

In my absence Andrew taught the younger children a variety of Allan Sherman songs, beginning with Camp Granada and ending with Don't Buy the Liverwurst. My third grader, who labored to memorize the multiplication tables for months, effortlessly mastered the lyrics to a good half-dozen ditties in an hour. Funny how that happens!

Finding composure

2011-12-01T23:35:00.001-05:00

Big Guy and I are supposed to leave tomorrow morning to visit Eldest. Her choir concert is Saturday evening -- they're singing the Faure Requiem -- and since Big Guy has never been up to see Eldest at school, it seemed like a good thing to bring him along.

Tonight I'm not sure if we'll be able to go. Big Guy is working very hard to make it impossible. He has been doing well the past month, better than we've seen him in a long time. Tonight he had a minor disappointment, and he refused to move beyond it. If I told you what caused it, and how many hours of drama ensued, I guarantee you would not believe me. In fact, you would be appalled.

When Big Guy is in the throes of feeling bad, he compulsively wants to feel worse. Unfortunately, he has a compulsive need to make other people miserable, too. And he's very resourceful.

Ina crisis like this I run through my mental checklist: safety first, don't react, breathe deeply, pray silently. It is hard, hard work to let the outrageous provocation slide off for half an hour, an hour, two. I make mental notes on every hard object that could be thrown, every semi-valuable that could be intentionally damaged. I casually find my cell phone in case I need to call 911. I make sure the other children are safe: "Don't feed the monster," I say quietly to Little Guy, "Go into another room and ignore everything he says. Don't respond to anything." (Later, when I see Little Guy curled up in a ball on the sofa, head under a blanket, my heart sinks: he doesn't feel safe. I tell him gently to go sleep in my bed, and he eagerly complies.)

Eventually, some time after 10pm, Big Guy wears out. I am glad; you never know which way things will go. He (or we) could have ended up in the ER.

I sit on the sofa with my head in my hands, praying and thinking and suppressing the fear that we are back where we used to be. Andrew and I talk quietly about what has happened. We agree that we need a new plan, because we cannot allow this to occur again. But we're too worn out to think of one.

I get in my pj's and climb into bed. Little Guy is sleeping peacefully. I inventory my whole day, so that I can keep the past few hours from being my sole memory. I remember that I awakened at 5:30 in a state of surprising hope and optimism. I had cornbread made and laundry in the wash before 8am, we did our homeschooling, and I worked on a piece for which I had an afternoon deadline. I took a break from writing to put up Dancer's hair for ballet (she can do it, but she likes me to do it anyway). I brought the younger ones to play rehearsal, and raced back to finish my writing piece.

I am suddenly intensely grateful for the surge of hope this morning; I am not sure I would have made it through the evening without that buoy. I am glad the laundry is done. I think of all the good things, including seeing six stars over the river this morning, a veritable galaxy in the skyglow.

Before heading to bed I open the door to Big Guy's room. He stirs, so I know he's awake. "Good night," I call quietly, and then take a deep breath and add, "I love you."

Big Guy rolls over. "Good night, Mom. I love you, too."

I let the day close as it began: in the dark, with hope, and no real knowledge of what lies ahead. It's enough.

Adapting to change

2011-11-29T21:16:00.001-05:00

I took Big Guy to the pediatrician yesterday; his body is covered in a fiercely itchy rash. Benadryl and hydrocortisone hardly make a dent, and Big Guy has scratched off sections of skin though his fingernails are always bitten to the quick. We now have a prescription for a steroid that hopefully will help. Big Guy's had weird reactions to steroids in the past. Like, really weird. So we've alerted his school, and are on the que vive.

All of that is just stuff to deal with, not a crisis. Oddly, what feels like a crisis is that this was probably the last time we'll see our pediatrician. One of the casualties of Andrew's job loss has been our health insurance, and though we've gotten State-funded coverage, Dr G doesn't take the new plan. We've been with him for 15 years, and I ache with the loss. Dr. G made me a better mother.

When I told Dr. G that we probably wouldn't see him again he looked stricken. And he told me that if we needed him, he would see us any time, with or without insurance.

* * * * *

A decade ago I fell on the sidewalk and left a coating of knee there, and I have never again pooh-poohed a skinned knee. I am uniformly sympathetic to bitten tongues, and am generally accommodating of hormonal moodiness, too. These are uncomfy things about childhood and adolescence which I remember vividly. And though I daresay my children often feel just as misunderstood as anyone else's, it helps, I hope, that there are some areas in which I can be counted on for empathy.

As I go through the steps needed to reinvent our life and keep us afloat (find decent schools for the kids, look for work, consider the logistics of full-time employment, deal with the grief of giving up the family closeness of homeschooling), I remind myself to hold in mind how difficult change can be. Right now the changes are abstract; eventually they will affect my kids directly in one way or another. I try to make transitions as seamless as possible, but one item on my long-term to-do list is "help kids adapt". I don't know how to do that. Yet.

* * * * *

A neighbor is nearly two weeks overdue with her second child, and anxious. I saw her in the hallway today and told her all the wrong things, then emailed her to say some of the right ones. I have vivid memories of being at that point in my life. I was afraid that somehow I'd ruined my life. How would I ever manage with a second child?

And the things is: you do manage. You sputter and stumble a bit, and then get better at the logistics, and it doesn't take long before you start to grow in ways you never knew it was possible to grow. Your comfort zone grows along with your competence. And you stop worrying about the how can I ever? aspect of life, because you learn to trust that somehow you'll figure out how do what you have to do.

He's ready for his bedtime story

2011-11-29T20:34:00.001-05:00

Chemistry goggles,

bike helmet,

bowler hat,

Nerf gun,

metal detector,
sports coat and

Star Wars jammies.

Not quite sure what this has to do with Tom Sawyer, but hey, he's ready.

Questions, questions

2011-11-27T07:36:00.000-05:00

It's quiet this morning. I got up early, because I'm teaching a class for kids today on how animals in our local park get through winter, and needed to do a bit more thinking.
Why do some birds migrate, and others stay?
Well, what do birds need to stay alive?
What do birds eat?
Are all those things around now?
So which birds can stick around? The ones who eat...
We see geese flying south, but not songbirds (even though they migrate). Why?
How do birds know which way is south?

I like this kind of work, because it pushes me to think like a kid, and to break info down into questions which get kids thinking.

There are other kinds of things I don't like thinking through so much:
Why is this child this upset?
What would help him most?
Is what's best for the short term the same as for the long term?
What can I do that will make things better? Worse?
Am I solving the problem for the child, or helping the child solve the problem?
He's not hearing what I'm saying. What's another way of saying it?

Do you sometimes wish you could press the MUTE button in your brain?

The annual cookie project

2011-11-25T10:05:00.000-05:00

I'm writing up the email to my neighborhood announcing this year's cookie project, and thought I'd link to last year's post about it, in the event you want to set up something similar in your part of the world:

The Awesome Cookie Project.

Easy. Helpful. Fun.

Thanksgiving thoughts

2011-11-22T08:29:00.000-05:00

I have a blog post scheduled for tomorrow over at Seeds of Devotion about being thankful for bacon. Ironically, over the weekend (I wrote the post a week ago) a chef in our building gave us several pounds of pre-cooked bacon. It's probably the equivalent of 15 pounds of raw meat. So now we have bacon in abundance.

* * * * *

It's gray and drippy this morning. I've noticed the weather lately, because we have to walk the dog. I've also noticed how odd it is that, in an era when we are almost completely protected from the elements, complaints about the weather pepper the conversation as much as they do. Perhaps our idea of hardship has been reduced to a scale that ranges from comfort to inconvenience. You'd think we'd simply be thankful for warm homes and good coats and umbrellas, but getting more doesn't seem to make us thankful at all. We adjust our expectations instead of our level of gratitude.

* * * * *

I went down to Trader Joe's yesterday to do some of my Thanksgiving Dinner shopping. On the way back, a young woman (maybe mid-20s) offered me her seat on the train. I demurred and stood, rather stunned at the thought that I've aged enough that people think I need to sit down. Then I laughed: life is good when people are thoughtful enough to offer you a seat on the subway. Regardless of the reason.

* * * * *

I noticed a sign at a clothing store near Trader Joe's about a Black Friday sale that starts at 4am.

Really? People do that? Wow.

For the record, I'm thankful for online shopping.

* * * * *

There is no toilet paper in the house this morning. I am not thankful for this, but I do realize it's a first-world problem which I have the financial resources to remedy. Which is better: to focus on the annoyance, or put it in perspective?

I'm beginning to think paying too much attention to minor woes causes us to lose the emotional muscle we need to deal with bigger things. We focus our energy on finger exercises, and hence when we come to the times in life when we have to lift weights it feels impossible.

Some of us look at the glass as half empty, others as half full. But even a half-empty glass has water in it. Just sayin'.

Silence

2011-11-20T22:42:00.000-05:00

It is interesting what happens when you go into a situation with listening as your goal. A lot changes.

We arrived on Friday afternoon, after a train ride up the river.

I moved into my little room. Very simple, mildly frumpy, yet comfortable.

I went down to dinner, and met the other women on the retreat. Most were substantially older than me, and at first I thought I didn't fit in. Then I realized that was a ridiculous thought: how can one not fit in at a weekend focused on prayer and silence?

After dinner we went down to the meeting room for evening prayer. It was our main gathering place; we met four times a day (all optional) for prayer and for "conferences" designed to give us food for thought and meditation. This is what it looks like during the day:

(Well, except it's not crooked.) I spent a lot of time sitting in a chair gazing out at the pine trees, thinking. I was quite struck by how different the world looked when it was framed by window panes than when one was out in the real thing. Here are my favorite trees, from outdoors:

I spent a ridiculous amount of time pondering how the needles all drooped down, and how the only part of the branches that pointed upward was the portion with new growth.

I went for walks in the woods. I spend time alone in the tiny chapel.

(There was a church, too. Two, actually. They were open but I didn't go there, because the chapel was more convenient.)

I didn't even try to pray until halfway through Saturday. It took that long for my heart to become silent.

Other than prayer with the group, I didn't really talk out loud until today at lunch. I'd rotated between tables at meals, then today learned the names of some of the woman with whom I'd shared my silence. I liked them.

I probably won't see them again, ever. Unless I go on the same retreat next year.

I did text Dancer early Saturday morning, before her audition for the big performing arts high school. She got herself up and out the door and to the audition alone. She texted me later to say she got a call-back. That was good.

I called home briefly last night, to ameliorate the missing-ness of the kids.

And I arrived home this evening, in time to take Little Guy up to his play rehearsal. Andrew was bringing Snuggler there from her post-soccer game pizza party. So we met up and walked the mile home together. By the time we arrived Dancer was home from Nutcracker rehearsal.

I admired the soccer trophies. I heard all the stories about the dog's adventures. I made people take showers. And now they're all in bed, and it's silent here.

Retreat!

2011-11-17T21:08:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I am going on retreat. Two and a half days of silence.

Imagine it.

I imagined it for fifteen years before I actually went, and then it was only because Dancer's godmother made a reservation for me a year in advance. I didn't go last year, and am looking forward to it, desperately. If you've got prayer requests and send me an email before noon on Friday, I'll bring'em along.

I'll be bringing paper and pencil and not much else.

See you on Monday.

A walk in Times Square

2011-11-16T07:38:00.000-05:00

My wonderful friend Magpie took me out to dinner on Monday. It was in a real restaurant, and frankly I hadn't eaten anything of that quality in a very long time. What was even more delicious was spending a couple of hours with someone I've known for over half my life. There is comfort in conversation with friends with whom you don't have to reveal history, because they are part of it.

Afterwards, I walked across town to get to my train. The weather was balmy, and I strolled along 42nd Street past the main library, past the Zamboni clearing the ice in Bryant Park, past someone dressed as Grover of Sesame Street who asked, in a clipped Pakistani accent, "Want to take a picture with me?"

The streets were Monday-night-off barren, but busy by any other city's standard. I walked by Madame Tussaud's, and wondered if she would recognize any of the (wax) people in her window; in America, in Times Square, history extends back a mere decade or two. Ripley's Believe It or Not was next, with its mechanical bearded lady. A street artist sketched a young couple, making a nice-looking picture that would cause each of them to wonder, Do I really look like that? (No you do not.) Then came the suburban multiplex movie theaters and chain restaurants that fit in only by dint of the accretion of neon.

I thought back to my childhood, when coming to a Broadway show meant parking in the very-iffy Hell's Kitchen and navigating one's way pseudo-graciously around streetwalkers. Back then the flashing lights illuminated dark corners, and after the show one was shocked to see little kids playing on stoops at 11pm as their families hung out and drank beer. One wondered about the people living there, then. Now the neon is a zoning requirement and there are upscale apartments and fancy food stores in the surrounding areas. You no longer feel you are walking through the set of West Side Story. Though I suppose you could still get mugged, if you weren't paying attention.

The Battle of Fort Washington

2011-11-13T19:01:00.000-05:00

The year when Big Guy was five it was the 225th anniversary of the Battle for New York. Our neighborhood happens to be right where the worst defeat of the Continental Army took place in 1776. And because every other major battle site was having a re-enactment, and because my son was utterly passionate about history, I did what is, in retrospect, perhaps the most over-the-top thing I've ever done: I decided we should have a commemorative event here, too.

The Americans advance, but are ultimately defeated

Mind you, I was seven months pregnant with my fourth child when I decided this was a good idea. And I'd never organized any kind of event before. Ever. And by the time the day rolled around we'd gone through 9/11, and I had a newborn. But I'd figured out some craft activities and commandeered some costumes and found myself a re-enactor or two and learned how to get park permits and even got a band to lead us in a neighborhood parade. And my son wore a tricorn hat made of cardstock, and breeches made of cut-off khakis (we cut a slit up the outer seam and then laced up the pant legs using shoelaces) and carried his musket proudly as he marched up the street.

There's a small campsite to explore, to see how soldiers lived

A decade later, the Commemoration of the Battle of Fort Washington has long since been taken over by the Parks Department as an annual event. It now features a blacksmith, a regiment of re-enactors (representing both the British and American sides), a lecture by a historian, activities for kids, and an actress dressed as Margaret Corbin who leads tours and explains how she became the first woman injured in battle in the Revolutionary War.

My only remaining responsibility is to run the hat-making table. Today we went through 40 sheets of 22"x28" posterboard. Some kids wore their hats over bike helmets, yarmulkes, or do-rags. Little Guy ran around in an outfit that included a red Chinese vest, a cape, a rucksack and a tricorn, narrowly avoiding (numerous times) whacking people in the face with his rifle.

The city buses always slow down to see what's going on

The British won the battle, as they do every year. On the day of the real fight, 235 years ago, nearly 3,000 soldiers were captured, along with the bulk of the American army's artillary and munitions. Because New York City (which only occupied the bottom part of Manhattan) had been burned after the American retreat, there were not enough jails to hold the captives. Most were consigned to the notorious prison ships stationed in the harbor, and only about 800 survived the hideous conditions there. Fortunately, we chose not to re-enact that particular portion of the story.

A newly-minted teenager

2011-11-11T16:16:00.000-05:00

It's Dancer's birthday today, and now I have more teens than non-teens. This morning she opened a Facebook account; this afternoon she had a salon cut and got her ears pierced. Then it was off to ballet, with a batch of Death By Chocolate cookies to share with her friends.

Happy 13th Birthday, Dancer. I love you!

Love That Dog

2011-11-10T07:09:00.000-05:00

A boy and his dog, with Dancer taking pix

I ran into a friend last night, the dad of one of Dancer's friends, whom I haven't seen in perhaps six months. I was heading out to buy milk and eggs around the corner; he was parking his car in front of the school across the street. We chatted on the sidewalk, updating each other on our lives. I mentioned the recent acquisition of Amsterdam, and my friend gaped and said, "Really?" I could see him doing the mental math: another large body in the apartment, more food, extra responsibilities. On the surface it's insane. Then I mentioned how much Big Guy loves dogs, and how therapeutic having one is for him. Light dawned, as the full mental math problem became clear: all those negatives are more than outweighed by the positives.

You may recall that last year when Big Guy was at the residence he had a problem with falling asleep in school. I'd tried to institute a Big Cookie test to get a read on the nature of the problem: was it physical? emotional? possible to overcome with great effort? Unfortunately, too many elements were out of my control at the time to do a good job of it. But when Big Guy moved home in September, we made a deal: if he put in good effort at school and stayed awake in his classes, at Christmas he would get a dog.

Yeah, I know it's not Christmas. But Big Guy is doing his share, and I wanted to start the adoption process early, because I knew it most rescue operations require a home visit and reference checks and applications. And most of them are run by a handful of volunteers, who have limited time to get around to doing all that needs to be done. Plus, given the preponderance of pit bulls in the shelters here -- a breed not on my list of possibilities for adoption, since wannabe drug dealers get them in order to look cool, then give them up -- I figured it might be some time before a gentle, therapy dog-type dog would pop up.

So I started early. I asked on our local parent listserv (pop: 1200+) for referrals to quality rescue groups, and one of the responses I got was to a place where I distantly knew someone on staff. That group had just gotten Amsterdam, and I knew at a glance that he was the dog for us. What I didn't know was that the long-ago connection with the staff person would translate into overnight approval. And so we went to meet Amsterdam on Friday, and brought him home Saturday.

As I write, at 7am, Big Guy is out taking his dog for a walk. I can't count how many times he's said to me this week, "Mom, he's a really good dog." To which I reply, "He's a great dog." And he is.

There is something wonderful about having someone who's happy to see you every time you walk in the door. There's joy in starting the day getting whacked by a wagging tail. I know the dog walking will get harder to do when it rains or snows. But for right now, life is good. Very good.

Deadlines, deadlines

2011-11-08T18:08:00.000-05:00

My triple witching hour of weekly/monthly/quarterly deadlines has passed, and yesterday I felt remarkably free. There was bandwidth for new ideas and for getting Little Guy to write with punctuation (and without cApitAl letTerS in the middle of words). Relieved, I took Amsterdam for a walk in the crisp fall air, and felt as if all was right with the world. It sure is nice to see the good things that are hidden from my heart when I'm stressed or sick; it's not that they don't exist when I'm preoccupied, just that I don't see them.

And then the phone rang last night, and it turned out that the biggest piece I'd turned in was for the wrong month. Oy! It wasn't possible to tweak what I had, either. And so I had 24 hours to come up with an entirely new piece on a different topic, 1200 words long, with at least 10 quotes and a handful of anecdotes. Polished.

As I staggered to my computer an email came in, ALL IN CAPS, alerting me to the need to invoice something within 24 hours or I wouldn't get paid. Now it's not hard to write up an invoice, is it? So I started to do that, hoping my brain cells would kick into gear while I was typing.

Then I discovered that the invoice had to include specifics about each of the six programs in a winter nature program for kids that I'm going to do. Erp! Hmmmm. I hadn't planned those out yet because, well, y'know, the first one doesn't take place for another three weeks.

By the time I'd designed the programs and hammered out the invoice, my brain was so fried I needed a synapse infusion. None was forthcoming, so I went to bed. Got up this a.m. and started grinding out the big piece. It felt like traveling cross-country by pushing a car.

But now it's done, or at least done enough to be in the review phase, and I am heading out to a book reading about Catherine the Great. I don't know much about ole' Cath, but I do know the author, and that's good. I'm taking Big Guy and a friend's child.

Revisions will await me upon my return. I'm hopeful that hearing about Catherine will stimulate activity in at least a few brain cells, and perhaps even re-awaken my desire to write. If I don't fall asleep while I'm there, that is. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Introducing...Amsterdam

2011-11-05T22:24:00.000-04:00

The latest addition to our family. He's half-lab, half-golden. Ten months old, about 50 pounds, pretty mellow but very affectionate. And housebroken!

Catching my breath

2011-11-02T22:09:00.000-04:00

I've been having trouble breathing the past two nights. Albuterol helps, though it wears off at 3:30am, and I awaken, gasping, from dreams of boa constrictors or being trapped under wreckage. I get up, cough fitfully for a while, find the inhaler, fix myself a hot water bottle to lie on, and eventually drowse off until the alarm rings at 5:30.

I'm not sure if lack of sleep is swiss-cheesing my brain, or if it's that I've hit the wall on how much I can handle at once. There are school searches for three kids, doctor searches for Big Guy, falling-in ceilings that lead to breathing trouble, stressed out children, an unemployed husband, bills, homeschooling and overlapping deadlines when I'm sick. And a few other things I don't write about here.

I've learned to be resilient, but I'm actually not invincible. Every now and again I find myself in a situation where I need to put on my own oxygen mask first. Got there today, for sure. Had to breathe deep (as deep as my sticky lungs would let me) and pray to be filled with peace.

There are times like that. Times when the very best thing you can do for the world is to breathe deeply and slowly and be very, very still for five whole minutes.

You can bring a lot of oxygen into your life in five focused minutes. Try it.
.

Smile!

2011-10-31T18:48:00.000-04:00

Little Guy, the paramecium

(Yes, he can identify the innards: contractile vacuole, macronucleus micronucleus)

Snuggler, the tourist

Dancer, grapes

Birthday!

2011-10-29T12:49:00.000-04:00

Snow outside our window. No river in sight.

Big news! I remembered my husband's birthday today. Even Mother Nature thought this was remarkable, and made sure it was a year to remember. (What's weird is that the leaves are still on the trees; I can't remember seeing snow on a fully-clad oak before.)

Little Guy's soccer game was cancelled. The college game his league was supposed to attend this evening is presumably postponed. That means I have time to bake a dessert or make dinner or something. I'm thinking peanut butter pie would be good.

Message inside: Shady Oaks has a place for you!

The kids (or at least most of them) managed to get birthday cards made in advance. Last night Snuggler commented, "The problem with having older parents is that they're going to die sooner than everybody else's." Might be, might not. That didn't stop her from ragging on her dad with her birthday message. (The note at the bottom reads: "Black and white to soothe old eyes." Handwriting isn't her forte.)

Big Guy went off this morning, for the second time, to his class on the history of protest music at the historical society. This is huge: prying him out of the house for the first class took epic energy, though (as with all labor pains) I immediately forgot the agony once I held the joy of seeing he was actually there. Big Guy hasn't done any activity for years, because the anxiety of doing something new has been too great. I know better than to hope that going twice is the start of a new trend line. But I'm very thankful that for today his world was able to be a little bigger. And I sent him with a little money, so he and his dad could have a celebratory birthday lunch.

Pipe dreams

2011-10-28T16:44:00.000-04:00

The plumber has found the problem in our bathroom! It wasn't the drain from the apartment above. It wasn't a pipe that leaked only when the stars aligned badly and two apartments emptied their tubs at the same time. After weeks of trying to decipher the problem, we finally figured out that the problem occurred in the pipe where water flowed in, not where it flowed out. It turns out that the "shower body" upstairs was cracked.

This is such a metaphor for life. How often do we assume that pipes are pipes, and forget to distinguish that input is different than output?

* * * * *

When Andrew and I got married my father-in-law came to live with us. If there's one thing that can be said for starting out married life accompanied by an 84-year old with dementia, it's that the later adjustment to having babies feels relatively uncomplicated. There were days Dad thought I was his wife. There were times he thought I was the intruder from a TV show, and stood next to the door ready to bash me on the head when I came home from work. He occasionally showed up in our room at 2am, demanding breakfast, impervious to arguments about how dark it was outside.

But what was most baffling was that I could tell Dad to take the chicken out of the freezer at noon, leave him a note reminding him, and even have him read the note aloud -- and he still wouldn't do it. It took a long while (and the book The 36-Hour Day ) for me to grasp that the part of the brain that hears and the part of the brain that reads and even the part of the brain that speaks isn't necessarily the part of the brain that stores information. Life got a lot less frustrating when I realized that what to me seemed like all one brain process was actually a sequence of processes, and that the transfer of information from ears to memory, or reading to memory, could in fact fail to happen. Different pipes.

* * * * *

This morning I was working with Little Guy on persuasive writing. He tends to panic when he has to do something new, so I stopped to parse the situation. Saying, "I can't write!" could mean all kinds of things.Was he just being obstreperous? Did the problem lie in transferring thoughts to paper? Or was it in the idea generation itself?

I eliminated the written output portion of the lesson so we could focus on nailing down the thought process.

Tell me some reasons I should give you a bigger allowance. "I could buy stuff." Hmmm.

Tell me why we should get a dog. "It would help calm Big Guy, and I would have something to play with when you are working." Better.

Finally I hit on a topic Little Guy could articulate: Why should our building allow kids under the age of 10 to play in the courtyard without an adult present? Whew! He had a lot to say about that.

But it was clear that we need to spend some remedial time developing thinking-up-ideas skills before we attempt to transfer that flow of ideas onto paper. There are different pipes feeding into writing. You can't produce if you can't generate the raw material.

* * * * *

I think there are two pipes at work in a meaningful life: input and outflow. Often we miss important shifts in our emotional and spiritual composition because we fill ourselves up, then feel as if we've done something. We mistake the full-belly feeling of consumption for the full-heart satisfaction of production.

Feeling full isn't the same as having a full life.

Input. Output. Different pipes. If things aren't working right and you're only looking at one kind of pipe to find the leak (or clog), try looking at the other kind.

Doing things just because you can

2011-10-27T08:04:00.000-04:00

My StatCounter shot off into the stratosphere yesterday, at a rate of 350 page loads in a matter of minutes from a single user, which I suspect is not humanly possible. After the blog hit 6,000 page loads for the afternoon I posted an inquiry on the Google Help board. Within an hour someone I don't know, and will almost certainly never meet, wrote to me saying the share buttons were broken. He provided instructions on how to turn them off until the problem was fixed.

This made my day. Someone, somewhere took time to be helpful, just because. Just because... he could. Just because... it was a good thing to do. Just because. I love that.

* * * * *

This past summer when Eldest was home we were chatting one day, and I related to her how I got involved in various volunteer activities. I'm always amazed to realize how little kids know about the backstory of what adults do: how we ended up in various situations, the thought process (or lack thereof) that got us there, what effort it took. This is my fault, because I forget to talk about these things.

Back in my single days, when I was a Director of Marketing for a Very Large Insurance Company and an up-and-coming ambitious young exec, I went to an open house for volunteering. It was an excellent event, one which I've always meant to replicate but have never got around to doing. One local organization in my neighborhood invited all the nearby non-profits who needed volunteers to come over one night, and also invited anyone in the community who was thinking about getting involved in some kind of volunteer work. Many matches were made.

Not long later, my phone rang at work and it was a woman who wanted to meet me for lunch to talk about having me join the board of the local mental health clinic. (The mental health clinic had been the sponsor of the volunteer fair.) I explained, somewhat embarrassed, that I knew nothing about mental illness or mental health. My experience was limited to inadvertent encounters with homeless people on the subway who'd forgotten to take their meds.

That didn't bother her. Somehow she convinced me to meet her anyway, and over sandwiches she persuaded me to join the board for a trial period.

It was not a high-powered group. The Board was a mishmash of people, some of whom were clients of the clinic, some of whom were family members. I felt rather out of place. But within a couple of months it was obvious I was needed: I was the only person there with the skill set to do certain kinds of tasks that needed to be done. Things like political strategy and fundraising fell in my bailiwick. It wasn't that I felt a need to do these things. It wasn't that I wanted to do them. It wasn't even that I knew how to do them. But I was the one person there who could do them. So, I did.

I could go on about where that led me, but the destination isn't the point. The model for my volunteer work has been pretty much the same my whole adult: I just sort of found myself in a place where it was obvious that I was the right person for the job.

* * * * *

The advantage of finding myself in situations where I can do what's needed is that there's little ego involved. In my heart of hearts I know that I don't know what I'm doing. The only difference between me and others who don't know what they're doing is a) I have different skill sets to tap (I can give testimony at a public hearing, or write persuasive letters to officials), and b) I'm okay with doing things that are uncomfortable for me.

At various points in my adult life I have been the buildings manager of a church that had had a big fire, the head of a "Friends of ____ Park" committee, the organizer of an event commemorating a Revolutionary War battle, the head of the research committee at my daughter's high school, and a facilitator of neighborhood events. There are seasons when I've done a lot of volunteer work, and seasons when I've done almost nothing. After Little Guy was born I withdrew from heading up an organization, and the group died. That was okay; I can only do what I can do, and it's not my job to save the world. But it is my job to contribute to it.

* * * * *

The great blessing of doing things because you can rather than because you're burning with motivation is that there's little ego involved. That frees up a huge amount of energy. Life gets simpler when we're not trying to force the universe to rotate around ourselves.

One of the most important things I learned in high school (perhaps one of the only things I learned) was the Ptolomaic explanation of the universe. Way back in the second century they were trying to figure out why the sun and moon and planets appeared to move at differing speeds. Astronomers came up with a complex explanation that involved something called epicycles. These cycles within cycles could, more or less, explain the observations of how the sky moved around the earth.

The real explanation, of course, is much simpler: planets revolve around the sun, not Earth (or a point somewhere near it).

We put a lot of epicycles in our lives, because we assume that everything revolves around us. The simpler, more elegant explanation is that it doesn't.

Turnaround

2011-10-24T18:56:00.000-04:00

It was a cold and croupy night; the coughs came in torrents -- except at occasional intervals, when they were checked by snuffles which rattled through sinus and chest (for it was in bed that our family lay), barking germs through the house, and fiercely agitating brochii and bronchioli as lungs struggled to stay functional.

When day broke, so did the bathroom ceiling (again). A stream of water poured in rivulets through the just-repaired wallboard, pooling behind paint, diverting itself in a myriad of directions until, following the irresistible forces of inhuman nature, it found its release by the steam riser. Plunk! Plunk! Plunk! The drops fell in succession, gathering force, spraying forth in Pollockian array across medicine cabinet and tile, rivulets of rust and dust forming a legend on the wall, the palmistry of which only the building manager will be able to decipher.

I ate hot pumpkin bread and drank tea. No coffee, for the milk was tepid, a victim of a refrigerator door cruelly left ajar through the cough-filled night.

Children were roused and fed and dressed. We sang a hymn, recited a Psalm. The sun flickered brightly on the changing leaves of trees on the other side of the river. As one child instructed another in a writing lesson, I hammered out the last lines of an almost-overdue freelance assignment. The phone rang, then rang again, and again. There was good news, and unhappy news, and just-so news, and a few remaining spaces on my overcrowded date book filled in.

Math was completed, papers written, one wrist was sprained, many tissues sniffled into, a lifesize Origami Yoda was made from butcher paper, scooters were ridden, fresh pumpkin seeds were baked and munched. Homemade matzoh ball soup is on the stove for supper.

In the end, it was only the teary bathroom wall that cried. The rest of us chose to find joy where we could.

Developing Coping Skills in Kids

2011-10-23T18:46:00.000-04:00

One reason I write a lot about the need to help kids develop coping skills is that I have several who are less than naturally able in that department. I have a few who are anxious, some who are inflexible, one who panics, and several hard-wired pessimists with automatically veer into downward-spiralling thought patterns. Challenging that negativity is... work.

When I find myself inwardly grumbling about how exhausting that is, I do a little mental drill:

WORK... JOB... WORK... JOB

Duh -- the two are related! It's my job to parent my kids. Sometimes it's work. Sometimes it's a lot of work. Enough already -- onward.

* * * * *

I've been thinking more about that talk on characteristics of successful employees, and the importance of letting kids fall. Why is it so hard for us to let them do that?

It could be that we're too tied up in ourselves: if my kid falls, I'm a failure.

It could be that we're too focused on what our children will think of us: if my kid falls, he'll think I wasn't there for him.

Or there's this: not everyone who goes into a sink-or-swim situation ends up on the surface. Some kids sink. Will mine?

And yet... there's a huge difference between being a mama whale nudging my calf to the surface so he can breathe while he's learning to swim and being a child's full-time personal flotation device so he never has to learn to swim.

There are many steps between providing too much support and none at all. It's helpful to remember that.

Making things happen

2011-10-22T16:12:00.000-04:00

I took Snuggler down to the pre-Harvest Festival party last night. She and a friend are running one of the events today. They needed to pick up their much-coveted t-shirts (the only way to get one is to be a volunteer), and were supposed to attend a face-painting lesson. The lesson turned out to be a super-cool, super-professional thing. I had trouble prying Snuggler away from it.

Snuggler putting her new skills to work

I stood around, feeling rather old. It was an observation, not an existential crisis: all the moms running this year's Harvest Festival have kids who are preschoolers. I don't know many of them. I was happy to stand there and feel out of place, for this is the generation of moms who took the baton and ran with it after the first group of Harvest Festival coordinators (myself included) moved on.

Over a thousand cupcakes were decorated today

Here is what I love about the Harvest Festival: its insistence on being a grass-roots event. There's no corporate sponsor, no government organization that does most of the work. There are neighbors who work together to make a great event. There's no 'them' to blame if you're unhappy with something. If you think the line for face-painting is too long, you can fix that problem by being a face painter next year. If you have a great idea for a new activity, you are empowered to make it happen. And no matter how busy your life, there's a way you can help. Even if the only thing you can do all year is bake a dozen cupcakes to donate for the cupcake-decorating table, you're needed.

Little Guy (left) in the sack races

In recent years the Harvest Festival has drawn over 700 people, and more than a hundred volunteers make the day happen. That's a very cool thing in the big city. We build community. We make it happen. Or... we don't.

.

Factors in Success: One Insider's View

2011-10-19T14:23:00.002-04:00

A bigwig came to talk to the moms at our homeschool co-op today. He's head of the Human Resources department at a Very Large Bank (and also the husband of one of the moms in our group). He spoke to us about what makes for a successful employee at the Very Large Bank.

When this Very Large Bank looks to hire, it considers three factors:

1. Ability. This is broken down in to two components: intellectual abilities/skills and "emotional intelligence". The latter is more important nowadays, because knowing how to deal with ambiguity and failure and difficulty is something today's helicopter-parented children really don't know how to do well.

2. Engagement. Are they intellectually and emotionally engaged in the job/business?

3. Aspiration. Do they want to succeed?

One of the questions asked was whether the speaker thought emotional intelligence was more a matter of nature or nurture. He thought it was about 30% nature (hard-wiring), and the rest was nurture.

But the more he spoke, the more apparent it became that what he meant by nurture wasn't parental nurturing, but having lived in an environment where you'd been allowed to experience significant difficulty, and had developed the ability to bounce back. For, as he said, "Businesses have crises and hard times and occasionally failed projects. And we don't want employees failing for the first time on our watch."

He said that he can choose from hundreds of Ivy-League MBA grads, but increasingly his favorite candidates are those who a) have been in the military or b) have done some sort of out-of-the-comfort-zone work, whether that's the Peace Corps or a two-year Mormon mission, or even a gap year in college. Because there are things you learn when you're 'out there' that you don't learn any other way. There are obstacles to overcome, and there is character to forge, and resilience to build.

Food for thought.

High school daze

2011-10-17T22:14:00.000-04:00

We're going through the high school search process for Dancer, which means allocating most of this month to open houses. You see, our city has about 700 high schools. You can quickly reduce that to a more reasonable pool by using a 5-question screening quiz:

1) Can you get there?
2) Is there a metal detector at the door or are there posters warning you not to wear gang colors?
3) Is the graduation rate greater than 50%?
4) Do those who graduate go on to college?
5) Is your child even remotely interested in the subjects they teach?

Because Dancer is Dancer, we also look at when school gets out, how far it is to a train, and how long it takes the train to get to ballet.

After you've done all your searching and screening, you're allowed to rank up to 12 schools. The schools then look at various data (report cards, test scores, attendance records, essays), and rank you. Then a big computer plays matchmaker between the four hundred million trillion adolescents pining for the same 20 schools and the 700 schools that have expressed interest in the same 20 students.

At the end of the print run you are given ONE high school assignment. Or, occasionally, nothing.

On a separate track there is a group of "specialized" high schools, for which the admissions criteria boil down to how you do on The Big Test. This test (which is taken by, I kid you not, 28,000 eighth graders) will be given at the end of this month. Students who take the test get to rank all the specialized schools, too. If you score well enough you get into ONE of them. Maybe. There are about 4,000 seats available.

So if you go through both processes you might have a choice of two places to go to school.

Then, of course, there are private schools and church-related schools. In general those are out of reach for us, money-wise, but there is financial aid. Maybe. Those schools require different tests and different applications and interviews and forms and whatnot. Count that as track #3. If you're up for it.

I suspect the whole procedure is a plot designed to make us think the folks at the Board of Ed are smarter than we are, because they understand this and we don't. But don't be intimidated, for brilliance requires a degree of elegance, and that's an unknown quality in this process. Other words come to mind: convoluted, archaic, labyrinthine, tortuous. You can toss these words around a bit and perhaps improve your child's SAT score. It will give you something to do while you wait in the 5-block line to get into the open house for the school with 100 openings.

After all this, one hopes someone, somewhere learns something. Maybe even the kids.

Morning

2011-10-15T08:25:00.000-04:00

Little Guy was up early today because of a stuffy nose. I was having my morning quiet time, and invited him to snuggle up. "I like to get up and just listen," I whispered to him, "Even when I was a young adult and lived by myself and there was no one there to make noise, I got up early and made a cup of coffee and listened to all the sounds I couldn't hear the rest of the day. Practicing listening helps."

He smiled up at me and snuggled closer; he'd learned something new about his mama.

So we sat together and listened. He whispered, "I can hear your heart."

Yes, he could.

Brothers

2011-10-10T20:01:00.000-04:00

My boys are playing together tonight. The narrative arc tends toward the violent and the absurd, but perhaps what's most absurd is that they're playing with... bells.

These are my grandmother's antique brass bells, shaped like figurines. I played with them as a child. Fortunately, they are practically indestructible. Tonight one of those girl-shaped bells is Prunella, and another is a governess. The plot has involved bombs and explosions, a crashing elevator, confused identities, mobsters and a couple of murders. You know, normal boy stuff.

It's good when brothers play together in peace.

Healthy sadness

2011-10-09T10:26:00.000-04:00

I told Little Guy that his buddy Seamus is moving to California. My seven year old cried most of the evening. He'd calm down for a bit and then I'd find him curled in a ball on the floor somewhere, sobbing silently. And then he'd cry loudly all over again.

Our family likes Seamus a lot. He's Snuggler's age (she cried, too) and lives downstairs, and is homeschooled, and plays soccer. Seamus has more energy than half a dozen kids put together. He's the one who teamed up with mine to make the casino in the lobby. The one who took my kids to mini-golf. The one who calls to ask if Snuggler and Little Guy can come down to the basement, where they play for hours. We are going to miss him badly.

Last night as I alternately comforted Little Guy and let him find his own solace I thought about how helpful it is, parenting-wise, to be in a situation where I could not fix things. It forced me to set aside all my make-it-better impulses and let my son face sadness and come through it.

That instinct to shield our kids from pain... well, it's not always right. Sometimes the real issue is that we are pained by seeing them suffer. Or we don't like feeling helpless.

And yet loss is a reality of life. The world isn't always going to be pretty and comfortable for our kids. We're not going to be there to buffer the bad news every time. So while it's sensible to leave out the gory details of death or the nasty bits about divorce, it's not necessary (or even healthy) to see ourselves as responsible for shielding our kids from ever experiencing sadness.

We're not going to make our children better able to cope with the future by protecting them from every pain of the present. But since it's hard to gauge when to intervene and when to abstain, lately I've been asking myself, How long will it take them to rebound? If the answer is a day or a week, I let them hurt. And I comfort them.

The Jets in Egypt

2011-10-08T09:07:00.000-04:00

My kids watched West Side Story the other day. They seem to have absorbed the lyrics instantly.

This morning they have the stuffed animals out, and are acting out the show with the Bears vs. the Cats. There are some hysterical scenes (e.g., the song sung to Maria the cat: "A bear that kills, cannot love/a bear that kills has no heart... one of your own kind, stick to your own kind.") What slayed me, though, was when they had to unwrap the stuffed animal slated to be Bernardo from a coating of toilet paper. Turns out that while they were mummifying knock-off Barbies yesterday they got carried away, and mummified some other toys as well.

"That's okay," Little Guy said, finding the obscure connection between studying Egypt and watching West Side Story, "We can just mummify Bernardo again after he dies."

What we did in school today

2011-10-06T19:01:00.000-04:00

My two youngest are taking a construction class this fall. Next week they're going to start framing a playhouse, but the first two sessions were centered on acquiring basic skills with hammer and saw. Today they made robots. My kids made alien robots. Then they came home and made a space center for them.

They did do their writing assignments and phonics on the train. But I forgot, when I signed them up for this class, to allocate a shelf (or room?) to hold finished projects. Though maybe that's what the playhouse is for. But no, we're not bringing that home.

Practice makes progress

2011-10-04T20:41:00.000-04:00

I went to Little Guy's soccer game on Saturday. I went to Snuggler's game on Sunday. It's tempting, while standing on the sidelines, to compare my kids to the ones who are hungry to win, who run harder and work more intensely than the others. Boy is that a fast way to becoming an unhappy parent!

I was not unhappy. I remembered to compare my kids to themselves. And it made me smile.

A year ago Little Guy stood morosely in the middle of the field, kicking the grass, mad that no one gave him a turn. This year he is running after the ball, occasionally even intersecting with it. He doesn't mind losing nearly as much, because he's playing hard enough to appreciate the game itself. He complains of sore leg muscles afterwards.

Snuggler, too, has improved. She's not afraid of the ball now, and doesn't do the polite girl thing any more of waiting for someone else to have their kick. She runs instead of lopes. She has built up her stamina. She works at keeping her eye on the ball and thinking strategically.

Neither child is a natural athlete. But the more they put into the game, they more they're getting out of it. Which makes me glad that I didn't give into my gut inclination to run screaming from the soccer field each time Little Guy had a meltdown last year. I guess the 'practice makes progress' motto applies to moms, too. I practiced being more quietly determined than I really felt. And -- compared to myself a year ago -- I think I've made progress.

Tongue-lashing vs. tongue-holding

2011-10-03T18:34:00.000-04:00

I got really annoyed at Little Guy this morning. He wasn't doing his schoolwork -- lots of dawdling, with a fair dose of red-herring "I'm hungry" excuses -- and I had a deadline this afternoon, and hence no time to coddle or cajole. One thing that pushes my buttons big time is when I'm doing my job and someone else isn't doing his, so I end up having to do more work.

But one problem with yelling at kids is that, as Dancer so aptly pointed out, "They don't hear what you're saying. They just think you don't like them."

Well, yeah. It stinks. It stinks because as a mom you're frustrated and, hey, you have a right to be frustrated. But kids don't get that when they are little. So you're stuck in that place where there's not much you can do to make things better, with a lot of things you can do that make them worse. Trust me: a sad, scared seven year old is not an improvement over a dawdling seven year old. It would be better to hold my tongue.

Don't you sometimes wish you could do that cartoon ghost thing, and have a shadow of yourself (the Good Mommy) float off to help your kid while you get other things done?

Book club thoughts

2011-10-02T09:15:00.000-04:00

Eight times a year my almost-13-year old and I go to a mother-daughter book club. This month’s read was the classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The girls all loved it. The moms did, too. Like the other mothers, I was struck by two things: how different the book was than I remembered, and how fiercely determined and resilient Katie, the main character’s mom, is. Katie isn’t focused on giving her kids a good life in the present – that’s not in her power -- but on giving them the skills they need to survive and thrive through all of life.

Me, I tend to want my kids to be comfortable: physically and emotionally and spiritually. And so I was thinking last night, If convenience and comfort were plucked from my life, how would we fare?

Are my kids scrappy enough to survive? Survive morally?
Is my gut-level determination strong enough to hunker down and do what needs to be done? Or would I flounder in worry and fear and anger?
Do we have the emotional wherewithal to stay focused on building toward something better, instead of wallowing in the losses or disappointments of the present?
Is there a wide enough range of adult personalities in my kids’ lives that they are drawing on the strengths (and learning from the weaknesses) of people besides me?
Can my children still find beauty and poetry in life when things are grim?

I’m fond of saying that a lot depends on how Mom reacts. This is true not only when a kid is scared or bleeding, but of other kinds of crises, including a mother's own struggles. I hold in my mind the image of Katie-the-mom, recently widowed, scrubbing floors in the building next door at 5am so that she can get some of her work done while her older children are home to watch the newborn before they head out to school.

How does Mom react when she faces her own despair? Her own anger? Her own disappointment?

And what do our kids learn from that?

Good stuff.

Oh, and for anyone interested in forming a mother-daughter book club, I highly recommend the book Deconstructing Penguins.

2011-09-27T21:38:00.001-04:00

You may recall that I've been staggering along with my laptop, which was suffering from having a cracked case even before its coffee catastrophe. The lid frame eventually broke off, such that I had two separate pieces of laptop, held together by two thin wires. The top couldn't be propped up at all -- it lay flat on the table. And then last night, in a poltergeist moment, my cup of coffee which was on the other end of the sofa fell over without provocation and spilled over two full cushions and onto the $10.59 replacement keyboard I'd jerry-rigged onto the limping laptop.

I looked at it. I mopped up the mess with a towel. I tested the keyboard.

It was broken.

The thought of buying a new laptop so that I could meet my month-end deadlines left me speechless.So I sat, fish-like, in the sea that poured from my eyes, and let the salt water pour over the wounds of bad luck and bad timing.

Today, after an entire morning and afternoon of going without writing, I went and bought a laptop. The salesman asked me what I was looking for. I replied, "My needs are pretty simple. I'm a writer. I need a box -- preferably lightweight and rather small -- in which to carry around my words. And I'd like it to be pretty indestructible."

I came home with this. With the service protection plan. And I am happy. Poorer, but happy. It works! And now, so can I.

Good Things

2011-09-23T08:39:00.000-04:00

The Starved for Attention exhibit on malnutrition to which I took Snuggler and Little Guy yesterday, after (coincidentally) a very large lunch of West African food with my friend Monica. Scroll down on the web site and you can watch several compelling videos.
I noticed this morning -- at the last minute -- that I'd pulled out a bag of frozen peas instead of blueberries to put in the muffins.
The building manager is coming today to look at the hole in our bathroom ceiling. It turns out the plumber replaced the wrong pipe. We know this because the other pipe is still leaking. Fortunately the leak falls directly into our bathroom sink.
Part of soccer (practice today, or one of the games this weekend) might get rained out. Free time! Or at least conflict-free time; I was double-booked both Saturday and Sunday.

Things fall apart

2011-09-22T07:46:00.002-04:00

I haven't had enough sleep lately, and I've had a cold, and we've had a lot to do. And then there are kids going through rough spots and a husband who is unemployed and depressed and there are worries about budget and health care coverage and such.Toss in a touch of PMS and yesterday -- not surprisingly -- was one of those rare times when life threatened to overwhelm me.

I took the kids down to our homeschool co-op for the first day of classes. I headed up to the co-op moms' meeting, where there were a dozen or so wonderful friends I hadn't seen all summer. And I thought I was going to cry. You know how it is when you're feeling fragile and find yourself in a situation where people would gladly offer a shoulder to cry on, but you're feeling too sad to fall apart because if you did you'd have to talk? That's where I was.

There are days when articulating anything is more work than it's worth. So I was as sociable as I could manage (which involved a lot of joking, because laughing is so close to crying), and pre-empted inquiries into my life by asking how others were doing. And then periodically I zoned off into the sad space that surged up within me. People either didn't notice, or were gracious enough to realize that I'd talk when I was ready. I love those ladies.

After co-op was over the kids wanted to head down to the playground with everyone else. Sigh. Okay. More social time. I briefly considered going for a walk to be alone, but talked to two moms about high school applications (it's an ordeal here in the city). I talked to another about her mother-in-law, who is showing signs of short-term memory loss (my father-in-law suffered from dementia, and lived with us the first year we were married). Sometimes the best thing to do when you're feeling low is to help someone else. It gives you something constructive to focus on.

We got home at about 3:45. The clean laundry was still sorted in piles on the living room floor, waiting for kids to fold it. There was no milk in the house, so I couldn't have coffee. We had plenty of veggies but no protein to make for supper.

I headed out to the grocery store. When I returned ten minutes later, Andrew was pacing in the building lobby, talking on his cell phone. That was weird; we don't leave the little kids alone with Big Guy. Andrew covered the mouthpiece and said, "The bathroom ceiling fell down."

Even *my* kids don't make this big a mess!

Oh. Of course. There'd been a water stain and we'd had the building manager come look at it and they were going to replace the 1933-era drain pipe in the upstairs apartment. Which they'd apparently done that day. But in the banging to loosen the plaster upstairs they'd apparently loosened the plaster in our ceiling (it's the real stuff, with sheetrock on the outer layer) and it came down with a roar.

I went upstairs and looked. It wasn't the whole ceiling, but it was a big enough hole to climb into, if one had a pressing need to explore the inner structure of an apartment building. The rubble fill the sink and covered the floor around it. I could see the shiny new brass drain pipe. It looked happy up there. My own sentiments were less glittering. They were so much less cheerful that Andrew suggested perhaps it might be better for me to go out and pick up Dancer (who has four hours of dance on Wednesdays, and gets out late) than to stay home with the other kids.

The hole eventually grew...

That was a good idea. By the time I got home the building super had been up and cleaned up the rubble. The hole still gaped, and Little Guy needed Benadryl because the mildew in the joists made him cough. The kids brushed their teeth in the other bathroom (I spent $16 on new toothbrushes, since all of ours had been buried in ancient plaster) and went to bed.

But the day was over. I'd made it through. And life hadn't fallen apart, except for the ceiling.

Some days, if you set the bar low enough, it's possible to succeed.

And today is a new day. I hope no ceilings fall down. I don't think they will. And if they do I won't be here to see or hear it, because the kids start their construction class today, where they will learn how to frame a playhouse. It strikes me that this is a skill that could come in handy around here. Because building and rebuilding are part of life.

Onward.

Big Guy update

2011-09-19T08:53:00.000-04:00

Big Guy goes through periods (sometimes for an hour, sometimes an hour a couple times a day, sometimes not at all) when he has intense feelings. Things that might make someone else a bit cranky feel catastrophic to him. What (to me) is a twinge of disappointment is like heat on a raw nerve for my son. And like someone in extreme pain, he is too lost in the feeling to articulate anything. Embarrassment, regret, annoyance, and fear all trigger his fight-or-flight reflex. He becomes a vortex of emotion, sucking everyone around him into his reaction.

It is labor to get Big Guy out of the house, but he needs exercise and conversation and new experiences. We plan outings for him which he agrees to, and then he utterly refuses to go. He has been unhappy lately that his younger siblings have activities (soccer, birthday parties, play dates) when he feels like spending time with them. Then when they come home they are tired, and don't necessarily want to do what he wants to do. He is too anxious to try activities where he might make friends with similar interests. He finds kids his own age scary.

Big Guy has no things he likes so much that they can be used as either carrot or stick. When he starts to blow, sometimes he responds to a firm, assertive voice. Sometimes that makes him angrier. Sometimes he responds to statements like "You seem upset"; other times that makes him more upset. When he is in the midst of a wave of feelings, reason is ineffective. It's... challenging.

It is important to know when to back off. I have planted a red flag in my head that waves whenever we hit the point that anything I do only causes things to escalate. For it's a fact of parenting -- anyone's parenting -- that even when Mom can't make things better, she can always make them worse.

I do not always see that red flag waving, but I have gotten better at it with time.

Big Guy is big. He is 180+ pounds of 15-year old. I am not afraid of him, though I know he will hurt me if he is angry enough. And so life here is a constant measuring act, gauging where he is with his feelings, trying to provide trust and support while keeping people safe.

* * * * *

How does one teach a young child to stand up for himself/herself in the presence of someone like Big Guy? It's a question the professionals can't answer. They can't tell me how an adult can consistently manage Big Guy's meltdowns effectively, either.

Little Guy has been showing OCD-like symptoms this weekend. I told him it's probably his body's response to anxiety. That helped; it is hard, when you are seven, to understand that weird feelings in your body are signs of stress.

* * * * *

I know that Big Guy is struggling right now because he has to hold himself together at school. New situations are hard on anyone, and they are especially hard for my son. He has new teachers, new classmates, new subjects, a new routine, a new school, a new social worker. Soon he will have a new psychiatrist.

It is 'safer' to fall apart at home, where he knows people love him, than it is to fall apart at school. Safer for him, anyway.

* * * * *

Andrew asked last night, before we fell asleep, "Do you ever think about what will happen longer term?" Yes, I do. I think about possibilities and probabilities, and then I go back to today. Today is the day I can do something about. Today is the day I have been given to love my child. So I'm going to try to do that.

Temptation

2011-09-17T13:04:00.001-04:00

I am a lousy consumer. Oh, I covet books and I wish I could buy a new laptop or send Little Guy to the fabulous robotics class, but years of extreme medical bills and generic belt-tightening have reduced my desires to pretty simple things. I would love, for example, to have a $200 a week food budget.

And then, every now and again, I find myself hit from behind by a desire so incredibly strong that it leaves me stunned. And it's usually something off-beat and ridiculous. Like this make papyrus at home kit. I mean, how cool is that? (I found it while searching for "make Egyptian boat", which is next on Little Guy's wish list.)

Ok, so I'm a bit on the nerdy side. As soon as I saw the word papyrus I remembered the hippo exhibit in the natural history museum (which has papyrus plants growing alongside a model Nile) and the gift shop at the art museum (which sells individual sheets of papyrus to color). I scratched my brain trying to recall whether or not there are live papyrus plants in the greenhouse at the botanical garden, but couldn't remember.

Yeah, this is the kind of heady stuff that fills my brain, along with the lyrics to the Gilligan's Island theme song. It's why I can't remember anyone's name any more. I know where to buy moccasin-making kits and reasonably priced replicas of Rev War clothing. I can find esoteric ingredients for recipes from any culture or time period. Just don't ask me to go shoe shopping or enter a department store.

At any rate, I've already found one friend who's interested in splitting the cost of the papyrus-making kit. If you want to join in, let me know.

The Filter Bubble

2011-09-16T07:49:00.004-04:00

I'm reading an excellent book right now called The Filter Bubble, by Eli Pariser. It's about why, if you and I enter the same search term into Google, we end up with different results.

What's riveting is how the 'personalization' of the web can be both helpful and harmful. Heaven knows that with the amount of information available out there we need to reduce things to a semi-manageable flow. But search engines and commercial web sites adjust results so they reflect what we've clicked on before. If you buy classical music, iTunes isn't going to show you acid rock on your front page (unless, perhaps, other people who buy Beethoven have an inexplicable preference for it). If you frequent news articles that have a liberal bias, you're never going to even see most articles that discuss things from a conservative point of view.

It's convenient to narrow the world somehow, but on the web we're not always even aware that it's happening. We may end up living in a universe of our preferences, rather than living in the real world.

Filtering on the basis of our likes means we lose access to diverse opinions, which erodes our motivation to reconcile different perspectives or even engage them. (How many "Can you believe those [right wing/left wing] morons said this" posts have you seen lately on Facebook?)

We lose an understanding of where the other side is coming from. In essence, we surround ourselves with the virtual equivalent of yes-men.

We also lose exposure to the randomness of life, to serendipity. That dramatically decreases the amount of discrepancies our brains have to grapple with -- and learning is a matter of trying to fill in gaps between what we understand and what we don't. It has an impact on creativity. Why? Because while search engines answer the questions we have, they don't necessarily push us to think of the questions we don't know to ask.

I'm not saying (and the book isn't, either) that the web is bad, or that it's wrong to have easy access to answers. We do need to be aware of how that kind of focus changes us, though.

Definitely a book worth reading.

Learning about Egypt

2011-09-14T18:17:00.000-04:00

We're doing ancient history this year, and have started with Egypt. The topic of how one irrigates the fields in a country with no rain was right up my intrepid inventor's alley. Hence Little Guy's been on a shaduf-building spree the past few days.

As we walked up to the library on Monday he collected sticks in the park for building a working shaduf. We discussed whether the counterweight should be greater than, less than, or equal two the weight of the water in the bucket.Then there was the question of where the fulcrum should be. And whether or not one lashes the lever to the crossbar; the idea is to scoop up the water, pivot the lever, and pour out the water on higher ground. That's hard to do if the lever has to stay in one spot.

When we got home, Little Guy got out his K'Nex and made a model. "What should I use for the bucket, Mom?" he asked. I shrugged, and said what I usually say: he'd figure it out. Not surprisingly, he did.

Yesterday we mixed up some plaster of paris as a base for the shaduf made of sticks. We've bought an aluminum tray in which to place the finished model; Little Guy wants to put soil over everything and plant grass, so he has something to actually irrigate.Who knows? It might work.

2011-09-13T08:58:00.000-04:00

Public school started last week, and over the weekend I checked in on friends whose kids started in new schools. Some kids had great experiences, some had bumpy ones. I wrote to one friend, "I knew she'd come home with a smile! She's the adventurous type!"

After sending off the note I thought, I don't have any adventurous types.

I have a mathy type and a couple of anxious ones and an artist and a gregarious dancer. I have a writer and a poetry-lover and a singer and an inventor and several dramatic personalities. I have introverts and extroverts, pessimists and occasional optimists, impatient and persevering kids, a naturally generous one and one who gets jealous easily. I have one with a mood disorder and one with ADD and possibly a dyslexic. But I don't have any children who thrive on adventure and crave thrills.

I'm not complaining. It's kind of humbling how many kinds of kids I don't have: no one's chronically ill or disabled, mellow and laid-back, flighty, a Queen Bee, a jock, a daydreamer, type-A, a psychopath (whew!), drop-dead beautiful or handsome, craftily manipulative, or a natural networker.

All of which tells me two things:

1. My life isn't as complicated as it could be, and
2. There are a lot of moms out there whose challenges I don't fully appreciate.

.

Books for teens

2011-09-10T09:12:00.000-04:00

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know I have rather eclectic taste in reading material. I tend to like anything that stretches my brain into new ways of thinking. Right now I'm enjoying Stumbling on Happiness, which I began after watching Dan Gilbert's fabulous TED video on how bad we are at knowing what will bring us happiness. And as it occurred to me that Eldest would enjoy this book, it occurred to me that over the years I have fed her a large number of books that have helped (I hope) to broaden her understanding of the world.

Hence a partial list of good books for teens, in no particular order.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard - Incredibly helpful stuff that will shift the way you think about how to approach problems.

How to Lie with Statistics - because people do.

The Numerati - or any other book on data mining. A current issue that also paints a picture of why it's worthwhile, career-wise, to be adept at math.

The Design of Everyday Things - This book changed my life. The surface topic is how and why certain objects are easier to use than others, but at heart it's about communication. Why do we push doors labelled PULL? Is there an intuitive way to communicate which switch on the stove lights which burner? Very thought-provoking.

Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World - incredibly inspirational story of a man who has truly made a difference.

Made You Look: How Advertising Works and Why You Should Know - or any other similar book that raises awareness of how the media manipulates us.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story - a great book about creating the plot in your life.

A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative - a classic. Substitute another problem-solving/creativity book if you want (Edward de Bono has a bunch), but make sure there's one on your list.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success - the Carol Dweck manifesto, based on all her research about how what we think affects how much we grow and succeed. The classic Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life (Seligman) is also worth reading.

Non-Designer's Design Book - a friendly introduction to the basics of layout and typeface use. Since everyone ends up designing something at some time, this is both interesting and useful.

Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't - a Christian perspective, but I'm sure that if you're looking for a secular one, there's a similar book.

On Writing the College Application Essay - a tedious title for a truly excellent book. Written by a former admissions officer, this has probably the best example of how to edit that I've ever seen in a book. Read it at the beginning of junior year.

The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World - a rather uneven book, but worth reading. The author ended up founding the Acumen Fund, a microfinance group that helps people in third-world nations.

If you've got more ideas (or comments on these), speak up!

Normal thankfulness

2011-09-07T12:02:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was Big Guy's first day at his new school. It apparently went pretty well. No overwhelming work, and he had a sense that he'd learn things he didn't already know.

Am I relieved? Yes,every mother who gets too many phone calls from school is relieved when there's no bad news. And no, because the fact that the phone doesn't ring today says very little about next week. And maybe, since he's started out on the right foot. I'm pretty good at covering the whole spectrum of responses at once.

Yet it occurs to me that what I'm not good at is appreciating that a normal day is a gift. I detour readily around thankfulness onto the This is the way things are supposed to be! road. And while it's true that life ought to be peaceful and smooth and bump-free, it isn't. (There are reasons for that. Some of them even have to do with me.)

Why do I think the default condition of life is that it should be pleasant? Is it because I think of myself as a more-or-less good person? I could be a good person starving in the Horn of Africa, or a good person living in a war zone. I could be a good person whose farm was destroyed in the hurricane, or a good person whose child was killed by a drunk driver, or whose child or spouse or parent has a debilitating disease. Good entitles me to a clean heart and a clear conscience, a vision of who I hope to become and an awareness of where I fall short. Being a good person contributes to making the world more like it ought to be. It doesn't exempt me from heartache or hardship.It doesn't even exempt me from continual heartache or hardship.

And so I am struck by this irony: for all the times I've cried, I need a break! I still do not appreciate the respites when they happen. I take 'normal' days as entitlements rather than as answers to prayer.

Do you think that's normal?

A tale of many very wet tomatoes

2011-09-06T23:59:00.000-04:00

Tuesday is our CSA day, the day fresh fruits and veggies arrive from upstate. A neighbor and I split a share, and I get a full share in exchange for being a manager for eight shifts. Yesterday another neighbor asked if I could pick up her share for her today, since she had a medical test and is very pregnant, and of course I said yes. Because it is good to be able to help people when they need it.

It was raining when I left home at 4pm with my aging granny wagon. I steered it up the street to the park where our CSA delivery is, golf umbrella held awkwardly in the other hand to keep me dry. The truck with the delivery was stuck in traffic somewhere. I settled in to wait. It poured and poured. At about 4:45 a man who had been standing around anxiously asked, "If I can't come back, do I lose my share?" Well, yes, you do. Seeing that he was stuck -- he had to go teach a piano lesson -- I offered to bring his share to my house, so he could pick it up later. I had the granny cart, and it really didn't make all that much difference to me to get one more share.

It rained some more, and some more, and some more. Finally, around 5:15 or so, the truck arrived. Everyone helped unload it. There were five kinds of tomatoes, which seemed a bit excessive, so we had to make a second aisle of produce. But then people could select their tomatoes from that aisle while waiting for others to finish getting their vegetables. And by then there were a *lot* of people waiting around.

And it rained even more. I'd put my umbrella down somewhere during the unloading, and was completely drenched. And then by the time the bins were set up it was time for the second shift to start, so I stayed to help get them started. Because when it rains, that's what you do, no? You help others out.

Eventually I started collecting the items for the four shares I was picking up.
20 ears of corn
4 red onions
8 yellow onions
12 peppers
4 celery, 4 lettuces, 4 bunches of chard, 4 bunches of basil
8 yellow paste tomatoes
16 red paste tomatoes
8 'mixed' tomatoes
100 small yellow tomatoes
28 juliet tomatoes

Oh -- and fruit and eggs, too.

Almost everything fit into my family-of-seven size granny cart. There were a few things sticking out of the top, and I had a bag over my shoulder. I found my umbrella and started to leave, but then --oops! -- the cart hit a bad bump and fell over. Crash. Out rolled the tomatoes, smush went the lettuce. My shin stung, and the granny cart wobbled. Nothing was too bad, though, and I figured my family could eat the damaged goods.

So I packed everything back in. I tried to leave a second time. I pushed the cart carefully over the curb, and promptly stepped in four inches of water. The cart veered crazily, axle all but gone, and another rib of the umbrella snapped. But no cars whizzed by to splash me, and I was quite pleased with myself for making an entire block's worth of progress before abandoning the umbrella into a trash can.

With two hands free I was able to wrestle the granny cart down the street, past cars chassis-deep in water from the rain. I arrived home, soaked to the skin, and sorted through the produce.

I was missing a dozen peaches and half a dozen eggs.

And so I headed back out into the rain, back up to the park, to retrieve them. Because if you're going to do other people a favor, it's not good to forget their peaches and eggs. I smiled a soggy smile on the way. They'd increased the tomato and corn share in my absence, realizing they had way too much on hand. So I took home more of each.

When I got back I changed my pants, wryly hoping they would not dry at their new fit-a-basketball-player length. I was so wet that I didn't even notice that my sweater was damp until an hour later. The kids clamored for supper, I tossed something on the stove, and the phone rang. It was the piano teacher, wanting to know if he could stop by. Of course.

And so the man came by. I handed him his bags and bags and bags. And then I handed him his fresh-cut flowers, still glistening with rain. "No, we'd like you to have those," he said, "In thanks for helping out."

My granny cart is dead, my shin is bruised, my clothes will take a week to dry, and we ate dinner at nearly 8pm. But I am stupidly happy. It's not even the flowers. But the flowers make me happy, too.

Moving forward

2011-09-05T22:29:00.001-04:00

It's back-to-school week in our neck of the woods, and we'll be starting... um... soon. While I figure out the logistics of that, I'm mindful that the changes in schedule in the first week of September cause lots of kids (not just mine) to get cranky.

We've already had some major changes this weekend, of course. Eldest has been safely deposited in her dorm, and Big Guy arrived home this afternoon with bags full of belongings, mostly books and dirty clothes. I spent much of the afternoon making an attempt to re-establish order.

Later the kids complained (can you imagine?!?) that I was being negative about their football league of stuffed animals. They divvied the toys up into teams, cut up old socks to make mini-jerseys, left the scissors and scraps on the floor, and then started a round-robin that covered the entire living room. Scads of Playmobil figures watched from the sidelines. I had a few thoughts about the mess, which I shared with my offspring. They thought they'd heard that particular speech before. I keep thinking I could make a fortune if I recorded all the classic parenting rants on a CD, so that moms could hand their kids the disk and say, "Track Seven. Twice." It would certainly save us all some breath.

Ah, well. Ye Olde Choice of "You can put it away. or I'll take it away" made relatively fast work of the disaster.

Onward.

Tomorrow Big Guy starts at his new school. We've promised that if he is responsible about schoolwork and chores and how he handles his feelings, he will get a dog for Christmas. One of the things on my to-do list is to make that promise into a specific contract, so that we all have the same expectations.

Takin' it one thing at a time (sorta)

2011-09-01T17:25:00.000-04:00

Today:         +one boy, - one dog, + 2 deadlines, + 1 math camp, + 1 choir concert
Tomorrow:   - one boy, + 1 math camp, + 1 deadline, + 1 ballet performance
Sat:              - 3 girls (1 to college, 2 to sleepovers)
Sun:             +4 girls (2 returning from sleepovers, 2 coming for a sleepover)
Mon:            -2 girls (going home from sleepover) + 1 boy (moving home)
Tues:            can't process that far in advance

Math and girls: How we got there.

2011-08-29T16:39:00.001-04:00

Today is the first day of Eldest's math camp. I'm a fly on the wall, doing odds and ends like getting a trash bag for the paper scraps from cut-n-fold polyhedra, or providing a drink of water when I can hear Eldest's voice starting to go.

Right now they're learning about game theory using Skittles. I don't know half of what Eldest is talking about, but I'm used to that; I've been superfluous to her math education since she was ten.

I had some correspondence recently with a reporter from Newsweek who is writing an article about how to encourage girls in STEM subjects (science, math, etc.). Eldest didn't want to do an interview; she had enough of fame as "the brilliant one" in high school, and is happy being an anonymous brain at her brainy college.But this is what I told the reporter:

We did lots of things to nurture Eldest's innate passion for math -- online courses like eIMACS and EPGY, programs from Art of Problem Solving, a local math circle -- but in retrospect there are two things that worked particularly well.

The first was that we always drew a distinction between computational skill and conceptual ability. Kids can grasp many higher-level concepts long before they master the ability to actually do the number crunching. And since schools take forever to get past basic number operations, many bright kids get bored with math before they ever get to the good stuff. It's possible to provide brain food separately. There are fine books to have around the house: picture books by Greg Tang, the classic Math for Smarty Pants by Marilyn Burns, The Number Devil by Hans Enzensberger, The Ten Things All Future Mathematicians and Scientists Must Know (But are Rarely Taught), How to Lie with Statistics and so on. (For even higher-level math, browse the resources here.)

The second, and most important thing we did was to get Eldest a "math friend". When Eldest was nine we hired Alison, a high school junior and math afficionado, to come over one afternoon a week. My instructions to Alison were that I didn't care what topics they covered, I just wanted her to nurture Eldest's love of mathematics.

Alison taught Eldest to do calculations in different bases, and they did cool Fibonacci stuff, and even some baby calculus. It was awesome. Alison was thrilled to earn $10 an hour (minimum wage back then was about half that), I was thrilled to get a young woman to mentor my child at a reasonable rate, and Eldest was thrilled to have the complete attention of a big girl who shared her passion. Win-win-win.

Alison came every week, and then twice a week in the summer. When she went off to college, she came home and taught Eldest whatever she'd learned that semester: symbolic logic, topology, and things I'd never heard of. She discovered there was a market for doing 'cool math' and started her own tutoring business. After graduation she went on to teach math in a private school.

When I first broached the idea of doing a math camp for girls this summer, Eldest said doubtfully, "Do you really think anyone would come?" Well, yes. With all the focus on standardized tests these days, it's the fun, hands-on, make-ya-think math that has evaporated from schools. And middle school is exactly when it's important for girls to get some reinforcement that it's cool to like math.

I only have one mathy child, so my experience in nurturing a math passion is based on n=1. (My other kids are quite competent, but do not have the blazing passion for math that Eldest has had since she was little.) YMMV, and feel free to ask questions.

Stemming the storm of information

2011-08-28T13:44:00.000-04:00

My crockpot baked beans are not as good today as usual. I could blame Irene (the storm), but the truth is I forgot to cook the beans after soaking them. I forgot to cut the amount of brown sugar, too. Or maybe I put in too much; I don't really measure.

My husband, after 48 hours of listening to the radio and checking Twitter feeds, has finally reached his saturation point for hurricane coverage.He and I are different species when it comes to news. He wants every last detail. If I listened to the details I'd forget to cook the beans before baking them. And since I can do that without pummeling my brain with hurricane-force information, I only want the news that helps me function.

I want to know, for example, if we're supposed to evacuate. And whether our power station is located in a flood zone. And when the trains will be running again. If I get a gust of curiosity I can motion to my husband to remove his earbuds and ask, "What's the news on the latest raindrop?" He'll tell me; I don't have to go online to look it up. He's handy that way.

But generally speaking, I think it's more helpful to know that the 98-year old lady on the second floor's home aide can't make it in, and that the pharmacy has sold out of D batteries. It's useful to know that the line at the market runs out the door, and that the ATM is still functional.

I can't do much about the wind speed three states away. Except, of course, use my time in the long line at the store to pelt heaven with prayers for others.

Obstacles

2011-08-26T23:07:00.000-04:00

I am supposed to lead a program for kids tomorrow (before the hurricane hits) on what plants are in our park that were around in the time of the dinosaurs. My printer is not cooperating. It is old and cranky. It is making me feel old and cranky, too. Or maybe that's just my latest excuse; I've aged out of pregnancy-crankiness, sleep deprivation-crankiness, kids-with-tantrums crankiness, and many other fine modes of rationalization.

Whatever, I'm feeling ornery. I don't feel inclined to talk myself out of it, either. Maybe if I go kick the printer I will feel better.

Maybe that's not a good idea. Maybe I'll just write about wanting to go kick the printer.

Maybe it will start to rain early and the program will be cancelled.

Maybe I'll turn off the printer, and it will work again.

Or duh! -- I almost forgot! -- I'm a mother. I know how to pivot, to adapt, to come up with another solution.

How about coming up with a Plan B that doesn't involve printing?

Heh heh. It's smart, it's tricky, and it just might work!

Changes, both good and bad (or maybe neither)

2011-08-25T22:54:00.000-04:00

Big Guy will be moving home on September 5. He starts his new school on the 6th. Since I bring Eldest back to college on the 3rd, next week will be filled with transition.

How do I feel? Ambivalent almost sums it up, though it doesn't capture the hyperventilation-suppressing aspect of handling so much change at once. I am going to miss Eldest terribly. I will be glad to have my son home. Much of the freedom of this year will be lost, though, because he cannot be left unsupervised. Dancer asked to have two friends sleep over in September, and I had to tell her no, that can only happen before Big Guy returns. I don't know what life will be like later on. He might be fine, he might not.

I stave off worry by reminding myself that fearing the future impedes my ability to arrive there whole. For it's a fact that while life may bring good things or bad, worry never brings anything good.

Yesterday I watched an excellent (but old) TED talk about how abysmally we fail to predict what will make us happy. In some weird way I find this tremendously comforting. If I know I stink at knowing what will bring me happiness, it frees me up to find joy in what I'm given. I don't need to always get my way, don't need to follow my desires maniacally. I'm free to adapt, free to find whatever there is to treasure in each day.

Of earthquakes and mini-golf

2011-08-23T23:17:00.000-04:00

No, I didn't feel the earthquake. If my legs were shaky, it was because Hopstop told me that the fastest way between Playground A (where the kids met up with one friend) and Playground B (where they were slated to play mini-golf with another friend) was to walk. So we walked. It was nice. For the first mile. Even part of the second mile was okay. We were walking along the river, so the scenery was pleasant.

Somewhere about eight blocks north of our destination we noticed large numbers of business people milling about, rather aimlessly, on the sidewalk. It seemed like an odd time of year for a company picnic. But we went on (since we were late, on account of walking so far) and as we walked we passed lots of people on cell phones, all of whom seemed to use the word earthquake in their conversations. That was odd.

When we finally got to Playground B, our friends said, "Hey, did you hear about the earthquake? They evacuated a whole pile of buildings." Hmmmm. Maybe that's why there was no food at the company picnic. And here I thought the caterer was late!

Tonight Facebook was abuzz with descriptions of which emergency people thought they were experiencing (heart attack, seizure, stroke). There were also wistful confessions from those of us who somehow missed the not-so-big event.

In the midst of the chatter a memory rose to the surface, the memory of the stories I heard after 9/11. Everyone -- everyone -- had a story back then. And we all told our stories over and over, because we were alive to tell them. And each person we told them to was alive, and that was close to a miracle.

It struck me, back then, that people who lived in New York through 9/11 had a huge coping advantage over people in the rest of the country: we heard hundreds of survival stories. And somehow, perhaps, that helped us to process the other stories that were too-close and too-hard to bear.

Today's earthquake added a bit of frisson to an otherwise normal Tuesday. Memorable for the novelty, perhaps, or for the confusion and adrenaline rush.

My guess is that Little Guy will not remember this day as My First Earthquake, but because he got a hole-in-one at mini-golf. He's still a bit stunned, in that way one gets when good fortune arrives without any effort or preparation on your part. In later life (perhaps after decades of failing to get another hole-in-one) he will marvel at how he didn't really grasp the enormity of this stroke of luck.

We never really do grasp the enormity of how fortunate we are, do we?

Getting ready for (home)school

2011-08-21T15:51:00.001-04:00

It occurred to me on Friday that I need to submit my annual homeschooling plans this week.

Then it occurred to me that to do that I need to come up with some plans. I might even need to order some books.

I knew there was something I didn't like about August.

In truth, homeschool planning has been on my back burner for a while. But you know how life is: sometimes those back burners stretch out to the horizon, and pots bubble away into infinity.It takes a deadline to pull something to the front. It's one reason I like deadlines; they keep my life moving.

This year I need to prepare Dancer for the more rigorous work of high school. So after I resolved to front-burner the homeschooling plans, I retrieved a syllabus I'd lent out to someone years ago. That looked good, so for 8th grade Dancer will be doing Greek literature and history: Herodotus and Homer and Sophocles and Plato. In translation, of course. The younger two will do a survey of ancient history. We can overlap with art history.

The drawback to this brilliant idea is that I have to get organized in order to do it. And I'll have to stay organized to stay on top of it.

Now isn't that a bummer!

I am not a micromanager. Detailed schedules and complex lesson plans give me the willies. I believe kids should be self-taught learners, so in my dreams I hand them their books and say, "Get through this stuff by June. Come to me with questions or if you need field trips or art supplies."

Alas, I can't do that. So I take a scheduling approach that I suspect has some vague connection to the farming approach of my Swedish forebears, who plowed around the immovable rocks in their fields. I plunk the time boulders into our calendar -- co-op on Wednesdays, construction class on Thursday, art on Friday, and soccer on the weekend -- and then focus on how to make the academics work.

The school work follows the same approach: Big stuff first, smaller stuff second, little stuff last.The only real question is what falls in which category.

But that's always the real question, isn't it?

Lessons learned from IEP meetings

2011-08-18T09:36:00.000-04:00

I went to Big Guy's follow-up IEP meeting last week. An IEP is the legal document that outlines what services and accommodations have to be provided to a child with special needs. (If you have a special needs child, visit the Wrightslaw web site. It is great for learning how to advocate for your child.)

Big Guy has had an IEP since he was in 5th grade. Since he will be switching schools in September it needed to be modified. We'd already done the big meeting; this one was to confirm tweaks needed for the new school. I seriously considered doing it by conference call instead of riding the train for an hour to wait for 30 minutes for a 30-minute meeting.

But I went. And as I was scanning the final document (which hadn't been provided to me in advance) I noticed that two major accommodations had been omitted. I'd been told that only X and Y would change, and here E and T -- critical things -- had vanished. Nothing said, nothing explained, just gone.

So I pulled out my draft copy, smiled as gentle a smile as I could muster and said, "For some reason E and T didn't make it onto the final draft. Should we write them in by hand, or does it have to be re-typed?" And the woman from the special ed committee looked momentarily flustered, but said we could write them in by hand.

I wouldn't have known those items were missing if I hadn't been there, or if I hadn't practically memorized the draft. Whew.

* * * * *

If you ever go to an IEP meeting, you need to be prepared to have superhuman patience and unflappable good will. It is good to bring a notepad. If you're asking for anything major, it is good to bring a man. (Balk if you wish, but even a silent male changes the group dynamic. Having a dad-figure in the room keeps them from discounting the case by assuming the child has an over-emotional mother.) You can bring someone else as an advocate, too.

If you ever go to an IEP meeting, read everything. Take your time. Did I say you need patience? Yes, you need it so that when you point out that the text calls for a one-to-one aide for your child for safety reasons but the service isn't actually listed, you do not commit a crime when someone says, dismissively, "Oh, but that takes a lot of paperwork to put in place!"

Because you have planned to be patient you can nod and say, "Yes, paperwork is annoying! But this is needed for safety, so it's certainly worthwhile filling out the forms. Because none of us here would ever want to look back and say, 'If only I'd done that paperwork, this child might still be alive today!'"

And then when the person counters with, "Oh, it's really a ton of paperwork!" you can nod sympathetically and say, "Sometimes the important things take time."

* * * * *

If you get upset while fighting for services for your child, it helps to remember that you also get upset about deficit budgets and runaway school board expenses. The people who are saying no have a two-part job: they are trying to get kids the services they need and keep costs manageable. This may conflict with your desire to provide your child with the best services possible.

Accommodations are different than services. Accommodations don't cost anything, so they're easier to add to an IEP. They include things like extra time for tests, providing homework assignments online, reduced homework, having a place/person to go to cool down, etc. If your child has a diagnosis of anxiety or ADHD or a physical problem you can get a 504, without going through the IEP circus.

If the school system needs to pay for services (OT, PT, an aide, assistive technology, a specialized classroom or school), then you need an IEP. A 504 is not a legal document, and some teachers may not comply with accommodations that they find inconvenient. Again,

Some won't comply with an IEP, either, but it's the law. The Wrightslaw site has a terrific section on how to write effective letters, and how to document things appropriately so that you get better results. If you read only one page on the site, read this one.

She is sixteen, going on seventeen...

2011-08-16T20:15:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow my firstborn will turn seventeen. In honor of that momentous occasion, I'm posting a piece reprinted from Daily Guideposts: Your First Year of Motherhood. For this girl of mine still makes my heart sing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Month One, Day Nine

Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang, "He is good; His love endures forever" -- II Chronicles 5:13

I sent my husband out this morning to buy sanitary pads. I gave him detailed instructions: brand, size, price. Eager to help in any way he can (he's still feeling guilty about my long labor; the other day he threatened to walk up to complete strangers to demand, "Do you realize what you did to your mother?"), my dear Andrew went off to execute a task that I, as a woman, still find mildly embarrassing.

He came back a while later, breathless, and tossed me the bag. "I did it, but I was so flustered I left my wallet in the store!" he called as he left again. Fortunately the checkout girl had seen the wallet and set it aside. She returned it, suppressing a smirk.

Our marriage ceremony included no vows promising to do mortifying things for your spouse, but having a baby sure pushes the envelope. Seeing Andrew in this giddy state is kind of fun. He glows. He holds Elizabeth just so, fearful of breaking her. The tenderness with which he looks at her is divine. He startles as easily as the baby does, the Moro reflex of fatherhood kicking in each time he has to do something new.

I laugh with delight at this view of my husband, just as I chuckle at the ridiculousness of God's grace in giving me such a phenomenally dependent and delicious baby. Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I want to sing, Your life has changed everything! God knew His world wouldn't be complete without you! It's true, of course. The thanks that bubbles up is too big for my soul to contain, a sure sign that it's meant to be offered to Someone Whose heart is bigger.

Ah, dear Father! How good you are! How good you are!

© 2011 by Guideposts

Defining the problem differently

2011-08-15T13:37:00.000-04:00

Andrew came up with the poor man's solution to my laptop problem: a $10.49 keyboard. Elegant, it ain't. But it works. How you define a problem often makes a difference in the solution you end up with.

"Ack! I need a new laptop!" is different than "My laptop's keyboard is dead".

"Which preschool can I afford?" is different than "How can I provide my three year old with an appropriate amount of socialization?"

"How can I get this child to stop?!" is different than "Why is he acting this way?"

"I can't take it!" is different from "How can I deal with this?"

And so on. It's easy to mis-define problems. But when we don't define them accurately, we don't resolve them definitively.

Though I'd gladly buy a new laptop, if I could.

Of worms and origami

2011-08-13T09:10:00.000-04:00

I'm leading a program about earthworms today. It's a hands-on thing, designed for kids ages 4-6. Yesterday Little Guy and I went to a bait shop near Chinatown (couldn't find one closer) so I'd have some fat wrigglers for the kids to look at this morning. On the way home we stopped at a Chinese grocery store that had a stationary section, and found some origami paper. Little Guy has been borrowing origami books from the library at a rapid pace, and using whatever paper he can find. He folded critters all the way home on the train.

Last night Little Guy asked if he could come along to the worm class. Of course! Then he gets up this morning, confirms the time of the class, and pulls out the origami book.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"I'm going to make a bunch of birds, so they can eat the worms!"

Of course. This is the kid who learned to read by perusing Calvin & Hobbes...

How you know what your kids are reading

2011-08-12T10:03:00.000-04:00

I gave Little Guy a haircut this morning. He was surprisingly amenable to the idea. As I began to snip he said, "Don't throw away that hair!"

Somewhat suspicious, I asked, "Why?"

"Because I want it for my feet! I'm going to glue it to my feet an be a hobbit!"

Hearing ourselves, from the outside

2011-08-11T19:38:00.000-04:00

Many years ago I was wasting time with Eldest and Big Guy in a toy shop in a ritzy part of town. They were little, at the age when a visit to a pet shop was on a par with a trip to the zoo. I never let on that you could actually buy things there, and they never quite knew.

A well-dressed, not-quite anorexic, perfectly complexioned mother came in with her preschooler. She needed to buy a birthday present for a five year old. "No more than $40," she told the saleswoman. then called to her son, "Henry, you can look around while I'm busy, but you can only get one thing."

The little boy wandered around the shop, much as my children were doing. Henry's mom yakked with the shop lady, and periodically called over to him, "Just one thing, Henry." I could tell she was determined to set limits. I wondered why she hadn't set the limit at zero, but figured maybe rich people could afford to think differently. Her shoes cost more than my annual gift-buying budget.

When the woman was done she came over to Henry and said, in an I'm-a-good-mom voice, "So did you decide what you want?"

Henry ignored her. He was busy exploring the shop. He didn't want to buy something and go, he wanted to stay and play.

The mother, assuming her son's disregard arose from a desire for too many things, grew irritated. "What do you want?" she asked, "Do you want the bubble set? Do you want a ball? The knight? I told you that you can have only one toy."

I watched the scene unfold in fascination. Henry played, and played deaf. His mom's increasingly shrill words echoed like a voice in a cartoon dream, "What do you want?...want...want?"

And I thought, How odd. She thinks she's teaching him limits, but what she's saying is that when you go in a store you're supposed to want something.

Arguing with the voices (or thoughts) in your head

2011-08-10T07:51:00.001-04:00

The other day the New York Times had a riveting article about a man with schizophrenia who keeps his condition under control by figuring out which are the real voices and which are the heard ones, and talking back to the latter. It's endless work: day in and day out, he has to be alert and perceptive and resourceful and determined. He can't decide that life shouldn't be this hard -- it is this hard. He can't stomp off in a pout, or blame the stress of his job. This is the way things are, and if he wants to live a life of any quality, he has to talk himself out of things "others" want to talk him into.

Go read it.Most of us don't hear voices, but we all hear our own, negative thoughts.Some days they grind us down, and often they talk us into (temporary) paralysis. It's completely possible to talk back to those thoughts. They aren't always right. They aren't always honest. They almost always limit what we can do. But we're the ones who let them do that. Fight back.

Rain

2011-08-09T21:33:00.002-04:00

I was the shift manager for our CSA this afternoon. I walked up to the site and the sky started spitting. By the time I got there it was raining. And by the time the truck arrived with fresh vegetables, there was a downpour. It lasted two hours.

And it was a great afternoon. Volunteers showed up in droves to help out. The situation was so absurd -- we were drenched in a matter of minutes -- that we moved straight past being annoyed into enjoying ourselves. Unload a truckload of containers? No problem. Figure out how to store cardboard boxes is the rain? We're on it. Help the people who are desperately trying to hold an umbrella and put three large handfuls of green beans into a bag, while steering a stroller? We're there.

By the time the second shift showed up my crew had raisin fingers and was beginning to shiver. At which point the sun broke through, the rain stopped, and we went home.My pants were so weighed-down with water I looked like a middle-aged hip-hop artist wheeling my granny cart of corn and squash and chard up the street. But I was happy.

Sometimes, even when you're an adult, rain can do that for you.

Musings

2011-08-07T09:14:00.000-04:00

I've been feeling mediocre lately. It's annoying. I ask myself, Why do you need to feel you're something special? And I have two answers.

1. Ummm, I don't.
2. Because I am the only me there is.

Funny how those seemingly contradictory answers are both true. I don't have to become anyone special because I'm already the only Julia in all of space or time made to be me. I don't have to prove anything, bedazzle anyone, create impressions, have people think X or Y or Z about me. I just have to fully inhabit the life I have been given, filling it with integrity and openness and love.

Which is a lot to ask, really.

If all I had to do was write a bestselling book, I could be successful (or not) at that task. But to be a full person is a goal of a different order of magnitude.

* * * *

Many years ago I went to a church service that was done with solemnity and honor, and in its quiet dignity was soul-stirring. Afterwards I said something to the pastor about how it was a shame more people didn't show up. He replied, gently, "If we're doing something for God, the size of the congregation only matters to Him."

* * * *

My friend Susy, a mom of five, said, "I think most moms have a kid age-range that they do really well. For me, it's preschoolers. I understand them and enjoy them and do well with them. Teenagers, not so much. I do my best, but I don't excel the way I do with little ones."

Some things in life -- and some stages of parenting -- come easily to us. Others don't. It's okay either way.

Sometimes the point isn't to be excellent, but to grow.

Growth is not always comfortable. It doesn't always feel like growth.

.

In which all is not lost

2011-08-04T09:03:00.000-04:00

I had a deadline Monday. It was for a monthly direct-mail letter that I write, one that requires considerable thought and research. I'd started on it last week, but Big Guy's mental health misadventures put a damper on my productivity.

Early Monday morning I wrote an email to my editor, saying I might not get the piece in until the next morning. And as soon as I hit Send, my brain turned to oatmeal. Lumpy oatmeal. I could not think, could not write.

The day slugged along, as I waited for news from the hospital. I offered to take my two youngest to a playground, but they preferred to bicker indoors. I lay down for a while. I got up. I tried to read, but since I'd just finished a fabulous book (Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche) nothing seemed interesting.

The hospital still hadn't called with an update; I might as well cattle-prod myself into productivity.I went and got a tall glass of iced coffee, and sat down to work. I opened my laptop. My glass toppled over: on myself, on the sofa, on the computer.

I love the smell of coffee, though not enough to have a java-scented sofa. Fortunately, our living room furniture is upholstered in brown paisley (I have five kids; we don't do unpatterned anything), and I was wearing black pants. Whatever stains there were blended in with all the other stains. And Febreeze is my friend. A towel and a change of clothing, and we were fine.

The laptop, not so much. It went aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa and then it went zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz and then it shut down. Black screen, no response. Couldn't even re-boot. I wanted to go aaaaaaaaaaaaa and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, and bang my head on the arm of the coffee-soaked sofa, but I refrained. When you have oatmeal brain, even emotions move slowly. My despair blurped to the surface in lethargic bubbles.

Andrew came in and managed to get the computer running again long enough for me to move everything into Dropbox that I didn't already save there. So all was not lost.

By now the laptop was done with aaaaaaaaaaaaa and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. In fact, it seemed to have finished with those letters permanently. It worked just fine except for A, Z, S and D.

My password contains the letter D.

I stared stupidly at the laptop. How does a writer write without a or s or d? I closed the lid. Perhaps, like the sofa, the computer would dry out and be fine.

I took a shower, washing the last of the coffee smell off my body. I knew I was going to have to get up at 4am to finish my assignment on the kids' clunky school computer. Before I went to bed I turned the clunker on. I logged on to webmail, where I found a newly-delivered email from my editor. It said, "I'm on vacation this week. I'll look forward to seeing the piece when I return home on Sunday."

All is not lost. But the laptop is dead.

.

Using your head

2011-08-03T15:33:00.001-04:00

There is a story in my family about a time when my mother and my father were supposed to meet up at the Howard Johnson's at a particular rest stop in, I think, Connecticut. My father arrived in his car, and waited. My mother arrived in her car, and waited. And after a very long and worrisome time had passed, it finally dawned on my dad that perhaps there'd been a mistake. He checked, and lo and behold, there were two rest stops in that particular town, one at the north end and one at the south, both with Howard Johnson's restaurants!

Yesterday Andrew and I were supposed to meet up prior to going to the hospital. He was bringing Little Guy and Snuggler, whom we were going to drop off at Dancer's godmother's house before heading to our meeting. On the way there, Andrew lost his cell phone. He eventually found it deep inside his bag (where Little Guy had deposited it) when I called and he heard it ringing.

When I picked up the kids after the meeting they were abuzz with the news that Daddy thought he lost his phone. They'd been worried we wouldn't meet up. "Oh, Daddy would have figured out how some other way to get in touch with me," I reassured them.

They looked doubtful. "How could he do that?" Snuggler challenged. I thought about it for a moment, bemused.

"I bet he would have walked you over to Ms. Dober's house and used her phone to call me on my cell," I told them.

Snuggler was miffed. "He didn't think of that!" she protested.

I laughed. "Well no, not right away," I told her, "Some solutions take time to think up. Some solutions take time."

When better is different from well

2011-08-02T22:05:00.001-04:00

Big Guy will be released from the hospital tomorrow and return to his residence. The doctors feel he has stabilized. We asked about changing his meds, but were told that when he is older he will master the art of self control.

Do I believe that waiting is the best we can do? Do we have a choice? Do we have enough time before he is legally an adult to take that approach? This is not the hospital's problem; he is no longer a danger to himself or others, and so their job is done. Ours remains.

Helping siblings of kids in a mental health crisis

2011-08-01T16:57:00.000-04:00

A lot of the crisis management that goes on when Big Guy is doing poorly has to do with keeping the rest of the family safe and calm. A good therapist will occasionally inquire how you, the parent, are holding up. But no one ever talks about how to help siblings cope.And it's a huge issue.

I know most of you don't have this situation. But there are bits and pieces in this that might help, I think, with everyday life.

1. Minimize the amount of trauma kids witness. Violent meltdowns aren't good for other kids to see, especially when they involve danger. The other kids get understandably anxious, which means they want your attention, which divides your focus, which is very frustrating. Not to mention kids can learn behaviors you don't want them imitating. And they could get hurt. After a lot of near-misses, we sat the other kids down at a calm moment, and explained to them that when Big Guy was falling apart we needed to be able to devote 100% of our attention to helping him -- and we couldn't do that if we weren't sure they were safe. After that, whenever he blew we'd turn to the others and say, firmly but calmly, "I need you to go in the other room until he is safe again." Once they learned to remove themselves, life became less complicated.

2. Make time to help your other kids process their feelings. This seems impossible, especially when you are running on empty. But there has to be a time when your 'normal' kids get 100% of your attention, too. This is closely connected to the next item...

3. Know what makes your kids feel loved. Another seeming no-brainer, but when you're stressed your brain isn't clear. I often tell moms who are expecting a second child to write down in advance all the things that make their first child's eyes glow with joy. Because then when you're exhausted you look at the list and laugh at your brain-deadness, saying, Oh my, yes! A bubble bath! I can give her a bubble bath! It's a simple, do-able thing that you were too stressed to think of, and it gets you a lot of mileage because it shows your child that of course you know the specific things she enjoys. (More about this here.) If you have a child who moves in and out of crisis, it helps to have a list for each of your other children. Eventually you'll incorporate it into your long-term memory. Most of the time.

4. Reinforce a we'll-get-through-it attitude. Kids need to know that real life isn't just a matter of making uncomfortable stuff go away. We work through problems -- and it's work, and it doesn't always happen at the pace we want, and we don't always get the results we want. It's not fun. But one thing about families is that we work through things together. Parents have to take the lead here. If your head is screaming I can't take this! I can't do this! you have to breathe deeply and talk yourself down. Have to. Little people are counting on you.

5. Keep life as normal as possible. Do all the regular things you can, and supplement with fun stuff. It's totally okay to call people and say, "One of my kids is in the hospital. Can I mooch a playdate sometime in the next few days?" Keep the chores moving, because simple things like laundry and cleaning the bathroom give us a tiny bit of control over our lives. And try to have dinner at a regular time, even if it's not the regular time.

6. Tell your kids how you feel about the fact they have to go through this. It stinks. If you could snap your fingers and make their sibling normal again, you would. If you could make things like they used to be, you'd do it in a heartbeat. But if we don't always get to choose the situations we have to live through, we do get to choose what kind of people we want to be. And we, in our family, want to be people who grow stronger and braver and more faithful. The situation stinks, but we're going to do what we need to do to make it as good as it can be.

7. Remind kids of other people they know who have siblings with problems. Undoubtedly you will know a family with a child with severe health issues, or developmental problems, or accident-related injuries. Just knowing that other families are hurting and adapting and coping can help.

8. Breathe, hold it together as best you can, and cry when you're alone. I am convinced that one of the reasons God made the day 24 hours long is so that mothers have 2am for sobbing. Make sure you take a couple of close friends into your confidence. You'll be surprised how many people have siblings of their own who had major problems.

Or, if you don't know anyone to talk to, write to me at LotsaLaundry1@gmail.com . It's hard to go through this stuff alone.

Taking small steps to overcome fear

2011-07-31T21:50:00.000-04:00

The past two nights Snuggler has had nightmares about something bad happening to Big Guy. On Friday she was up three times, distraught, and finally fell asleep in the armchair in our room. Last night she had a complicated and scary dream in which Big Guy was so badly depressed that he had to have surgery and Electro-shock therapy to try to pull him out of it. This morning she awoke unhappy and very fussy. And certain she couldn't go to church.

We went through several rounds of "what are you afraid of?" and then several rounds of "no matter how you're feeling, you need to treat others with respect". Andrew snuggled her for a long while, then I had a turn. She "couldn't" go to church, she said. So I had her do a couple of minutes of deep breathing exercises, and then I told her that as long as there wasn't a bear outside her door, she could let her feet take her where her fears wouldn't let her go. I told her to go get dressed.

"But I can't go to church!" she wailed.
"We're not going to worry about that," I reminded her, as gently as I could, "We're going to focus on doing just one easy thing: getting dressed."

So she went to get dressed, and she was successful at that.

When she came back I told her the next one thing she was going to do was to brush her hair. She was able to do that, too.

Then she started to lighten up a bit -- getting moving will do that for you -- and began reading something. So I said, "Here's what we'll do. We'll walk over to church and give it a try. If it doesn't work, then I'll take you out."

She agreed to that plan. So we walked to church and gave it a try. And she was fine.

(whew)

Ladybugs in my fridge

2011-07-30T08:59:00.000-04:00

I'm up early this morning, stapling together paper plates. I'm slated to teach three classes about ladybugs in the park this weekend, and the closing craft is making paper plate puppets.

Before I leave for the classes I need to transfer a couple hundred ladybugs (who are sleeping in my fridge) into a separate container. Last time I did this I wasn't fast enough, the ladybugs woke up, and my family complained about insects crawling out of the toaster. Life is full of hazards.

Cool factoid of the day: ladybugs have yellow blood. When they play dead to fool predators, they can ooze some of the blood down their legs to make their act seem more realistic.