Miscellaneous thoughts on miscellaneous feelings

Yesterday I took Dancer to a doctor's appointment. It was at a clinic that's only open in the mornings, so she had to miss school. The clinic, of course, was slow. We needed blood work done. Then I discovered I didn't have Dancer's insurance card, which was okay for the clinic but not okay for the lab. As my brain scrambled, I talked out loud, trying to figure out how to come back without having Dancer miss another morning of school. My daughter said, "Mom, calm down!"

I didn't think I was all that agitated, but then self-perception isn't everything. Sometimes what matters is how your kid perceives your level of worry.

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Long ago I gave my kids permission to tell me to stop if I start to rant. They do this. It helps. There are occasions when I get going and have a hard time stopping, but to have a kid comment, reasonably objectively, "Mom, you're ranting!" does tend to put a cork in it.

There are better ways to express frustration and anger than ranting. They're not easy to think of in the moment, but if someone points out what you're doing (and you don't want to be a ranter), you can usually hold it in until you think of a better way to handle your feelings.

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I hate nagging. To my way of thinking, to nag is the same as to take on the role of being someone else's frontal lobe. I don't want that job. I want others to have their own, functional frontal lobes. I am willing to prompt my kids. I am willing to remind them once, maybe twice. I am willing to work with them to help them figure out how to remind themselves. But I get annoyed if I have to nag.

I would buy supplemental frontal lobes if they sold them, like external hard drives. Wouldn't that be awesome?

The effect of fear

I recently read Cheryl Sandberg's book Lean In. I hadn't planned on reading it, because I'm kind of past that stage in my life, but I do have a college senior this year, and I thought it might be useful to her. It's extremely well done. Lots of wisdom, and very little rant.

One line at the end of the first chapter has been ringing in my head. It's taken from the commencement address Sandberg gave at Barnard in 2011. Her closing lines were, "So go home tonight and ask yourselves, "What would I do if I weren't afraid? And then go do it."

She's nailed something. She's nailed how fears, whether big ones or small, impact our lives. I love this. What would I do if I weren't afraid? Afraid that I'd fail, afraid that others would think less of me, afraid that I couldn't follow through, afraid that it's too much for me.

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Some years ago, while our family budget was undergoing yet another downsizing, I realized that I was far more anxious about finances than I'd ever been. I'd nipped and tucked at our expenditures until there was nothing more to nip.

I was feeding my family of seven on $125 a week (at New York prices), I was bartering writing services so my kids could do extracurricular activities, I was working part-time to make ends sort-of meet and I was homeschooling three kids, and Big Guy's vast array of support services made it impossible to move. I couldn't get a full-time job, because my kids were already on emotional tenterhooks due to Big Guy's volatility, and I didn't see how they could manage that big a structural change.

Basically, there seemed to be no way out. And that was before Andrew lost his job.

One day, in exasperation at my rising sense of general panic over not being able to make ends meet, I asked myself, "Okay, so what is it you're really afraid of?" The answer came back, I'm afraid we'll lose our home.

So I asked myself the next question. "And what would you do it you lost the house?"

My reply to myself: I don't know, but obviously I'd do something.

The effect of this on my spirit was astonishing. For I realized that the miasma of fear that I'd been living in had at its core the assumption that there was a cliff involved, a cliff that I and my family would fall off of if some sort of miracle didn't occur. The fact that I didn't know what I would do didn't mean I would do nothing. Of course I would do something. It wouldn't be optimal. It wouldn't be easy. But I'd do it. And that made the whole scenario a whole lot less scary.

Once I stopped being afraid, I was better able to do what I could do.

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I once chatted with a neighborhood dad about his daughter. He confided, "She's got so much energy I'm always afraid she's going to make mistakes and get hurt."

I laughed as I replied, "Oh, you don't have to worry about that! Of course she's going to make mistakes. Of course she'd going to get hurt. She's a kid! The key thing is whether or not she has the skills to recover, and how quickly she can bounce back."

Fear can make us focus on the wrong questions, preventing us from finding the right answers.

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What would I do if I weren't afraid? I'd write a book called Wisdom: Growing into Being a Better Parent and Person.

When I ask myself exactly why I'm afraid, the answer comes back that I'm afraid I'd discover that some of what I believe is insight gained from working through hard things is wrong, or that people would think that I think I'm wise (which I don't).

I'm also afraid that if I get started, another crisis will occur. Because my life kind of goes like that, you know. Except I would guess that if there's another crisis in the wings, it will happen whether I write a book or not.

Am I asking the right questions?

The Event

At the Event, with the wonderful head of the Parks  Department
for northern Manhattan

You may have noticed that I post relatively few pictures on this blog. That's not because I worry about privacy, but because I am photo challenged. My kids are probably the most un-photographed, un-videoed offspring in America. I tend to document life with words. 

The only mirrors in our house are on the medicine cabinets in the bathroom, so I also tend to be surprised when I see what I look like in pictures. I'm not certain if the picture above is a good resemblance or a bad one. But I do like the photo, mainly because I like Jennifer's smile, and I was happy when the shot was taken. As you can see, I'm several years older than when my headshot (in the upper left of the blog) was taken.

With the bigwigs at the Event. The senator has the mike.

Someone recently did a study analyzing Tweets throughout the city, and concluded that our park was the happiest place in Manhattan. The saddest place was one of the high-profile high schools. It's not surprising that being outdoors in beautiful surroundings makes people happy, or that toiling in a cement building with a couple thousand stressed teenagers leads to less cheery sentiments.

The park overlooks the Palisades; one of the Rockerfellers
bought the land so that the view could be preserved
and people could see what it looked like when Hudson arrived .

These photos are not, of course, my doing. I don't even know who took them. But I thought you might like to see them, anyway.

Odds and Ends of Homeschooling

The big medieval festival was here over the weekend. The boys collected all their old Schleich knight figurines, set up a blanket in a prime sidewalk location to sell them, and made a fortune. Afterward, Little Guy set out to scour the neighborhood sidewalk sales, and came home triumphant: he bought a microscope for $20. He had to go out to purchase batteries for it, and then spent hours (and hours) looking at various items. Then on Monday he was at it again.

One of the things I love about homeschooling is the irony of saying, "Stop looking at the microscope and come do your school work!"

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Years ago we borrowed a CD from the library of presidential campaign songs. The kids loved it, particularly the songs like, "Get on a Raft with Taft" and "Let's Put Barry in the White House". 

Last year for Snuggler's birthday she received the Library of Congress book of presidential campaign posters. This is prime material for what might be called Coffee Table Homeschooling: you leave it out, and they pore over it.

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Officially, we're learning British history this year. Nonetheless, things like the Keith and Rusty McNeil CDs reappear out of nowhere, and are listened-to in free time. Little Guy recently rediscovered the Civil War set, and he lies on the floor with the songbook, singing along. What I love about this series is that it's easy to listen to, and a fascinating look at the music from both sides of the Civil War. 

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I picked up the scripts for the musical Honk, Jr tonight. Snuggler will be the voracious cat, who tries to eat Ugly, the duckling. Little Guy is Ugly. It's his first lead. 

The kids are in the other room, already running lines. I don't know what curriculum category that falls in (I will probably tuck it into music), because New York regulations don't include requirements for education in the performing arts. 

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Snuggler has a regular job as a mother's helper two afternoons a week. With her first fistful of cash she bought a subscription to Creativity Express, an online art appreciation program. I think this is the third time we've bought this; the kids enjoy it, and it's surprisingly content-rich without being heavy. (If you are a homeschooler, you can purchase it at a substantial discount through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op.) 

The advantage of having this program is that it gives me another thing about which I can say, "Yes, you can do that... after your schoolwork is done." 

On Being a Good Person

The benefit for the park was Tuesday night, and I was duly honored. It was lovely. The weather was gorgeous, the Hudson River glittered in the sunset, the food was excellent. The event was sold out, a fact that made me very happy. I am always ridiculously pleased when people contribute to making the world more beautiful, and our park is indeed, a beautiful place.

The Heather Garden in Fort Tryon Park
Photo from the Fort Tryon Park Trust

To my surprise, both our state senator and soon-to-be city councilman came and stayed for an extended period of time. The senator declared me "an individual worthy of our highest esteem and admiration". The current city councilman's representative said I am "an outstanding individual, one worthy of the esteem of this great city." It's printed up on faux-parchment, so I can gaze upon the words whenever the urge hits. The city proclamation is even framed, with a ribbon and gold-foil seal.

It's moving, but frankly also pretty funny. I mean, how long have you vaguely wanted others to think you are a Good Person? Now I am like the scarecrow from Oz, who thought the problem was that he needed a brain, but found that all he needed was a diploma. I have the documents! It's official! I'm Good! (Heh, heh.)

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On Saturday I'm teaching a class called "What the Dinosaurs Ate in Fort Tryon Park". I taught this class last year on the day Hurricane Sandy arrived. The rain started to fall just as we finished. The trees started to fall 10 hours later.

If you walk through the park today, the only remnants of the hurricane are 100+ tree stumps. The city was a huge mess at the time, but most of Manhattan has long since recovered. Out in Queens they are still rebuilding. I have to remind myself that there are people who will be rebuilding their lives for years. It's easy to forget that, once your own life has moved on.

The impact of disasters varies from person to person. Big Guy has a friend at his therapeutic school whose father was killed on 9/11. When the towers fell, so did her life. She was five at the time. I think sometimes about this girl's mother, who lost her husband and, in some senses, lost part of her daughter. She probably lost some of her own grounding, too. Putting a life back together is far harder than putting up a Freedom Tower.

To my way of thinking, this is part of why we need to build community, build resourcefulness, build each other up every day. We need to be so deeply in the habit of doing and seeing, of caring and contributing, that it's our default setting. We need to give, not because that makes us Good People or because we get thanks or a proclamation, but because we can.

When we get around to consistently doing what we can because we can, I suspect we'll stop wanting others to think we're Good People... because our hearts will be focused on good itself. Which is, really, far more interesting than the adulation of people around us.

Homeschool 2013-14

Eldest began her senior year of college last week, and Dancer started her sophomore year of high school.

Tomorrow is the first day of Big Guy's senior year of high school. We finally decided -- late last week -- that we'll homeschool Snuggler for 7th grade. We'd already planned on having Little Guy at home, so tomorrow will be the first day of school for them as well. I may be up late tonight figuring out exactly what that means.

Snuggler will be doing Medieval British Lit, starting with Beowulf. It will be a stretch, but for her it's better to go deep, slowing down to whatever pace works, than to trot along reading books without layers. In theory it's a semester-long course; if it takes a year, that's okay.

She's already started her Thinkwell for math, and she and Little Guy will both do the One Year Adventure Novel. (Yeah, I know: neither of them is in high school. But if I can get Little Guy to write anything, it will be progress. And one of the oddities of teaching kids is that sometimes -- not always, but sometimes -- setting the bar high gets them over smaller hurdles they think they can't jump. More on that another time.)

I've signed her up for Caveman Chemistry at the homeschool co-op, which we'll supplement with Conceptual Chemistry at home (because we already own the book). We'll also be working through Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking with the help of the MIT Open Courseware syllabus.

She'll also do a class at the historical society that teaches American history through musicals. First up: 1776, along with artifacts and actual documents of the time. Add soccer, a big role in the children's theater musical, being a mother's helper twice a week, and a regular service project, and that's about it for now.

Little Guy will be doing Singapore Math 5, although I realized today that I don't have the workbook. He's going to be on a FIRST Lego League team (robotics), play soccer, and he scored the lead in the children's theater musical (he's Ugly -- the duckling -- in Honk, Jr.) Science will be cells, writing will be endless, though I'm hoping the OT will help with graphomotor skills. We'll split apart the conceptual side (via dictation and, if needed, Dragon Naturally Speaking) from the physical process of composition.

We're doing British history, thanks to Little Guy's obsession with Horrible Histories (you can see samples on YouTube; it's kind of Monty Python meets history). He thinks we should take a field trip to England this spring. I told him I'm up for it, as long as he pays.

It's a plan. Or, as I explained to someone the other day, it's the plan we're starting with. It will be revised as we go along. A lot. Frequently. Because, you know, we're learning. And that requires change, and flexibility, and searching out opportunities for growth.




 

Thoughts on feeling that you can't make ends meet

There is nothing quite like cleaning a kid's room to re-realized how not-poor you are. I was thinking about it this way:

On the left side of the scale let's put all the things you want for your kids, as well as the desires (for them and for you) that you think of as needs.

On the right pile let's put all the waste: the carelessly broken, unused, good-for-a-week, and no-longer-of-interest toys and games; the leftovers that went bad in the fridge and the food thrown out partly eaten; the collection of single earrings mourning their mates; the clothing that is perfectly good but languishes unliked and unworn in dresser drawers.

It puts some perspective on all those desires, doesn't it? Because all that stuff you're throwing out was once, in some way, desired.

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I tell my kids they have the right to feel poor on the first day they don't get to eat.

I don't expect them to buy it completely, of course. We all feel poor when others have things we can't afford. We feel poor when we have to work hard at making ends meet. We feel poor when we have to make hard sacrifices and trade-offs. We feel poor when we can't replace things we're used to having, and when we can no longer afford to do things we used to be able to do.

Whether feeling poor is the same as being poor is a different issue. The yardstick doesn't begin with where we are and end with where we want to be. The yardstick begins with poverty we can't imagine, and ends with wealth we wouldn't enjoy. How much of it we see is up to us.

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A dozen years ago I met someone who managed to scratch three meals out of one chicken for her family of four. I knew how to get two meals for my then-family of five, but was baffled by the third. "Soup," she told me, "I never buy chicken without making soup."

It had never occurred to me to make soup from the scraps. At first it seemed like a ridiculous amount of extra work. But like most things, it doesn't take that much work once you make it part of your routine. It's like baking muffins: less expensive than cereal, better for you, and five minutes to mix up and toss in the oven. Simple. Sometimes we're poorer because we lack the insight to see how much more we can do with what we have.

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One reason we sometimes feel we don't have enough for our needs is because as soon as we have resources our minds revert to thinking about what we want, instead.

It also think that, aside from being incredibly bad at distinguishing our own needs from wants, we confuse others' needs with what we want for them. This is true when it comes to our kids, and particularly true when it comes to things that we think will make them happy, smart, engaged, interesting or better able to capitalize on their innate abilities.

I hit this wall every year, when I try to reconcile our homeschooling activities with our budget. It is hard to see what would be beneficial but isn't possible. Eventually, every year, I shrug. I can't do everything I think would be beneficial, because that's not one of my options. Instead I do what I can with what I have, and trust that somehow that will grow into what it needs to be.