bearing blog

Three o'clock on school day #2: a snapshot.

Um, I guess I mean four snapshots.  Because I was going to use the metaphor of a snapshot to describe, er, these snapshots.  Never mind.

 

Kindergarten, still very excited about having math worksheets of her very own:

 

Second grade (reading assignment for the day, an article about animals that live in caves):

 

Sixth grade, discovering the joys of tuning out the world in order to concentrate on the daily journal page (summarizing the plot so far of the book he started reading yesterday):

Perhaps the most advanced of all of us, in some sense:

Next stop:  Doughnuts for snack!  Because you have to numb the pain of the first week just a little bit.

 

First day of school.

That's watercolor, my friends.  It washes off.  But you should have seen his hands and feet.

The first day went surprisingly well -- as it always does, since the newness of it all makes the day at least interesting.  

My daughter loves her new math book -- hopefully not just because it was pink.  

We finished everything in our (admittedly reduced for the first-week ramp-up) schedule by tea time.  I even got to the gym and had a nice long swim at the end of the day.

Consecration bleg.

Would any of my readers like to comment on the class of devotions that are commonly known as the "Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary" or sometimes just the "Total Consecration to Mary?" I am discerning whether to make such a consecration and would be interested in hearing any experiences or insights about the nature of the devotion. I am not really sure I understand it, and though I get the impression that most folks enter into a deeper understanding of it as they go along, I am trying to take seriously the cautionary language l am seeing in some sources about the need for discernment first.

The most well-known form of the consecration under that name is, of course, the method of St. Louis de Montfort; but I have seen a couple of websites and books claiming that this is just one possible method, and that the same consecration can be enacted under one of several other methods, some of them being other well-known Marian devotions. The examples I have seen mentioned are the Sacred Heart devotion of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque; the Brown Scapular; and the Militia of the Immaculata consecration of St. Maximilian Kolbe.

I will maybe write more about my thoughts on this later -- I have read de Montfort's _True Devotion to Mary_ and some twentieth-century writings on the subject by Rev. William G. Most, and the experience has been thought-provoking to say the least -- but I thought first I would solicit comments from readers. Anyone?

Summer camp.

My family and I spent the last week up north at YMCA family camp.

Campfire songs, skits, picnics, counselors, and all that, next to beautiful Burntside Lake just a few miles from the Canadian border, and right on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

The staff -- a few full-timers and a number of young summer counselors, mostly college students who apparently love nothing more than their summer jobs up here, got the crowd fired up every day for some serious relaxing and family fun.  

The young man leading the crowd in song from the stage there -- the stage looks out over the lake and the swimming beach -- is a counselor named Brian.  This is the third year that we've encountered him at camp.  The first year he was there as a high-schooler in a leadership program.  Now he's on staff.  My kids love him.  He was my seven-year-old's age-group counselor.  

There are about two hundred people, maybe, at camp at any one time, all for a full week stretching from Saturday evening to the following Saturday morning.  All of them families, plus the staff and the teens in the leadership program.  Parents, if you'd like to pay for the privilege of knowing your teen is cheerfully cleaning outhouses ("biffies") for a couple of weeks, this is the place.

Over the course of the week it's possible to get to know some of the people fairly well.  I watched my daughter solemnly declare several counselors and leadership teens as her new best friends.  Actually, I watched in amazement as she reached out to what seemed dozens of people.  "I have to go say hi to Sara," she would say at lunch, and dash off.  "I have to go say hi to Joe."  I had no idea she was capable of being so outgoing, or so memorable to others.  It seemed by the end of the week that everyone we passed on the trails knew her name.

That's Joe, one of her age-group counselors.

The children spend 2 1/2 hours in the morning divided up by age, and the rest of the time can mix freely or spend time with their families.  "Age groups" allows the parents some time to reconnect with each other, or a couple of hours of quiet solitude, or a chance to try something too difficult for the children; Mark and I practiced canoeing and kayaking, and went on a few hikes together.  

One of the things that's most precious to me about this week, for my city kids, is the chance to let them roam a little more freely than they can in our neighborhood at home.  The oldest can buy a drink in the coffee shop or play tetherball and volleyball or just wander around, with hardly any worry.  Even the smaller kids can be sent here and there, say, out to the playground while the rest of us linger in the mess hall over coffee.  

I enjoyed being (mostly) unplugged, too.  The cell phone service is pretty spotty, and there's no Internet connection at all.  The staff actively discourages the use of electronic devices where other people can see you, with the exception of e-readers.  I had my iPad, but it was pretty much demoted to a Kindle emulator, and I was too ashamed to bring it outside the cabin.  Mostly used it to read while I was spending a couple of hours in the cabin each afternoon supervising a napping baby and a "resting" five-year-old.

I do confess to using Mark's iPhone to access this Wikipedia article.   Let's just say there was a pressing need.

As the days wore on, I reflected that spending a week at summer camp -- especially when it's late in the summer, and here and there you can't help but glimpse a reddening maple among the green forest foliage -- really drives home the ephemerality of so much that gives us pleasure.  Perhaps that's a trite observation, but it's true.  The kids form devoted friendships -- and we adults form pleasant camaraderies -- and perhaps we exchange addresses (my kids left with two pen-pal addresses in their pockets), but for the most part we may never see these folks again after the end of the week, and we know it.  It feels odd to enjoy people's company so much under those circumstances.  Yet it's not all that different from many of our longer-lasting friendships.  It's hard to tell in the midst of them which of those will die back if and when our circumstances change.

And of course, the beauty of the woods is all around -- the clear, cold, deep lake, its lush border of trees, the tiny cabins that dot its edge -- Mark thinks they spoil the view, but I'm a city girl, and I love to see the work of human hands (in small doses) even in the middle of the forest -- the three whitetails I saw at 6:30 in the morning on the last day as I walked alone to the shower house -- the variety of colors of pebbles on the lake bottom, the blue  sky, the nighttime wail of the loon.

And of course, we soak it in while we can, but we know all along that it's only for a  short time, and we have to go back to our "real" lives.

My eleven-year-old felt it most strongly.  From the very beginning of the week he was alternately exuberantly happy to be in the woods, and crushed with misery that the experience could only last a week.  He was desperate to spend every possible moment having fun.  He hasn't yet learned that "fun" isn't something that can really be grasped at.  That you have to find it almost accidentally, while you're busy doing something else, or even nothing at all.  You have to let it sneak up on you.

Kind of like the realization that "fun" isn't something to be grasped at.  

I like going to camp for the very last week of summer, right before starting school (and indeed, in about 20 minutes the kids' alarms will go off, and I will feed them breakfast, and we will dive back into math and reading and science).  I like that there is a drive of several hours between our sad departure and our arrival home -- because by the end of the drive we're very glad to get back to our own little house in the city.

And keeping safe, perhaps, a few of the more permanent kind of souvenirs.

Rerun week is over!

Regular blogging will resume later today...  maybe with a few pictures from camp.  Have a great Sunday!

Rerun week, post #9: Your way and my way? No, our way.

I'm rerunning posts this week (school starts MONDAY ack ack ack).   Here's a post from early in our co-schooling days, October 2008.  

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I set down my second cup of coffee and leaned back in my chair, rubbing my eyes.  "Okay.  Write these two things down."  I paused while Hannah turned to a new page in her spiral notebook (past one that read If Hannah finds the broken pieces of the yo-yo on the floor B. will pay her 25 cents, signed B., Witnessed Hannah).  "First.  ONE ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE.  Second.  SINGLE LARGE HOMESCHOOLING FAMILY."

 

We were at a Caribou Coffee in a little strip mall, not far away from Hannah's house, where presumably our husbands were playing chess, cleaning up chili, or turning on a DVD for our total of six children.   

 

We were looking for a new paradigm.

 

Hannah said at one point, "The problem is not that we don't know how to let go of the we-do-it-differently-in-different-families paradigm.  The problem is we haven't taken it past the Naptime Level."  I had to get her to explain that, and she reminded me:

 

When our children were all small and we would excitedly explain to other mothers, weary, isolated at-home mothers, how we had brought more balance and fun and connection to our lives by spending one or two whole days together every single week and sharing our work, the other mothers would listen, sometimes with a longing expression on their faces, and tell us how wonderful it sounded.  "You could do it," we would tell them.  "You could find a friend and just start spending lots of time at each others' houses.  We hardly even knew each other when we started.  You just have to make it happen."

 

And the other mothers would say, "It sounds great.  But it would never work for me, because my baby has to take his nap at one.  We would have to be home for his nap."  End of discussion.

 

We'd always been pretty proud of ourselves that we decided we would forget this whole "gotta be home for naptime" thing.  OK, so our children have a need that we usually meet by going back home, isolating ourselves once again in our own houses?  We won't ignore the need, but we'll find a way to meet it that meets our goal of staying together, of not being isolated.   Babies learn.  Our babies did.  They nap pretty easily in each others' houses. 

 

That was the naptime level.

 

Fast forward five or six years and we have some school-aged kids.  

 

The other mothers now ask us, "So, you co-teach?"  and we say, "Um, no, not really."  They can't imagine why we would be going to such trouble to spend all this time together without seeking the benefits of co-teaching.  

 

Hannah and I don't teach the same way.  Our kids don't learn the same way (a superficial example:  my firstborn does well with a list of stuff to finish each day; hers, all last year, thrived on a schedule of so many minutes studying one subject, so many minutes working on the next, and so on).  We don't teach the same subjects.   We have assumed all along that our differences mean we cannot really integrate our schooling.  When I spent a day at Hannah's, I lugged a big bag of "our school" to her house, unpacked it all, and we did "our school" at the table next to Hannah and Hannah's kids, then packed it all up at the end and carried it back to my van.  When she came to my house, she did the same.  Small wonder that we both have come to store our kids' school stuff in sturdy tote bags hanging on hooks in the schoolroom!  

 

It's exhausting, and it's kind of dumb.  We have to get past the Naptime Level.  OK, fine.  So my son "needs" to learn one way, and her son "needs" to learn another.  So Hannah likes to teach one way, and I like to teach another.  So we plan differently, pace differently, organize differently.  This is not insurmountable.  If we decide we NEED to work together, we can find a way.

 

Toddlers have different nap schedules BECAUSE they are in different families.  They are not in different families because they have different nap schedules.

 

And though we thought we had to do school separately because we approached it so differently -- the truth is that we approach school differently on Tuesdays and Thursdays BECAUSE we have not done it together.  If we set out to work together on those days, we reasoned, we will find a way -- not the way that Hannah's family works -- not the way that my family works -- not some compromise, halfway between -- but the way that our families work when they work together.  

 

We're going to tear out the page that says TWO FAMILIES HOMESCHOOLING AT THE SAME TABLE.  

 

* * *

 

We've made up our minds not to mess with the curriculum for this year; next year, I guess we'll be choosing curricula together.  This year, though, we can take a look at the schedule.  Can the boys do their spelling together? (They can at least administer the daily spelling tests, one to the other, even if they are spelling from different lists.)  Can the boys do math together, one with Saxon, one with Singapore?  (They can at least listen in on each other's lessons.)  Can her second boy and mine learn to read together, even though they're at different levels in the same program? (We tried it yesterday and found a pattern:  my son reads one of his workbook pages, and her son reads one of his; they pass the pencil back and forth to trace their letters on their pages, taking turns.)  

 

Yes, I think we can do this:  we've done it with Naptime, we've done it with Teaching Kids To Get Along, we've done it with Housework, we now have to do it with School On Tuesdays.  It is going to knock us out of our comfort zones, but then... we've been through this before.  Making connections means resisting the culturally programmed impulse that says I have to do it my way and you have to do it your way.  But every time we've figured out an our way, that has turned out to be just as comfortable, and a lot more companionable.  

 

Rerun week, post #8: Convenience and variety.

I'm posting reruns this week.  Today's post is from August 2007.

And before we get into it -- Don't forget about the homeschooling space Flickr pool contest.   Coming up soon!

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DarwinCatholic has a post pointing to a report of an intriguing study.  Convenience foods don't help you get dinner on the table faster -- they help you get more elaborate dinners on the table.

Interesting!  But I want to know what is meant by "prepackaged convenience food."  The article says that convenience foods "tend to be high in preservatives, unhealthy fats and sodium. tend to be high in preservatives, unhealthy fats and sodium."  But then, at the end of the article, a short list of examples from a "convenience" dinner includes "prebagged salad" and "bagged dinner rolls," while a "from scratch" dinner includes "bread."   (The "convenience" dinner also included "macaroni and cheese."  I guess I'm to infer that it came from a box; perhaps the reporter, like one of my mother's amazed co-workers on seeing Mom's lunchtime leftovers, doesn't know there's any other kind?)

I got a copy of the text of the article, which is Beck ME, "Dinner preparation in the modern United States," British Food Journal v.109 n.7 pp.531-547 (2007).  Here Beck defines her terms:

Commercial foods, as the term is used here, are either purchased as ready-to-eat or prepared by the home cook entirely according to package directions.  "Commercial foods" are similar to "convenience foods", formally defined elsewhere as "fully or partially prepared foods in which significant preparation time, culinary skills, or energy inputs have been transferred from the home kitchen to the food processor and distributor" (Capps et al., 1985).   Time saving is not considered in this definition of commercial foods, because time can be measured independently.  Emphasized instead is the lack of independent handling and preparation... Such foods are often highly processed, because increased processing tends to remove the possibility of independent decisions in dish completion.

I was wondering if canned single ingredients, like tomatoes or tuna, counted as convenience/commercial food.   It turns out that they are:

The following items were not considered to be commercial ingredients for the purposes of this analysis:  spices, seasonings, or marinades; dairy products...; dried pasta; ready-made tortillas...; and frozen edamame (soybeans) in their pods.  Commercial items include prepared meats such as hot dogs and pepperoni as well as vegetarian versions... They also include purchased tomato or alfredo sauces, rice in flavored rice mixes and pre-measured boil-in bags (but not non-instant rice purchased loose in larger quantities), and frozen or canned vegetables (which are processed to the extent that they may be simply heated and served, without washing, trimming, or adding other ingredients).

What's with the amnesty for the frozen edamame?  Is it because they have pods?  Every restaurant that I know of serves it up in the pods as a finger food, kind of like shell-your-own-peanuts.   And what about the tortillas?  Sliced sandwich bread doesn't count as non-commercial [I presume -- you would think they would mention it], but tortillas are OK? 

Here's a fascinating paragraph from the journal article:

Families in our study often served extra dishes to please individual family members who did not like the rest of the meal.  In their study of Italian-American families, Goode et al. (1984, p. 199) noted, "The way of handling the strong likes and dislikes of non-influential family members is to make them supplementary dishes or serve them leftovers" and argue that it is "a distinctly modern American pattern."  Other researchers have found that such accommodations to individual tastes are an accepted part of meal preparation in Italy, although they are often considered frustrating or annoying in the USA (Ochs et al., 1996).   Some parents in this study approached such requests with flat refusal or open resentment while acquiescing.

I was amused by the Goode et al. quote -- "non-influential family members?"  Is that just code for "little kids?"  If so, how non-influential could they be if they got the cook to make something special just for them?  Anyway, since one of the points of the study is that people who don't use prepared food make simpler dinners with less dishes, a corollary here seems to be that if you make food from scratch you're less likely to make sure that picky Junior gets peanut butter AGAIN while the rest of the family eats moussaka.

 

Rerun week, post #7: How to stop navel-gazing.

I'm posting reruns this week.   Today's post is from October 2007.

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Every once in a while I have to step outside myself and take a critical look at how I'm feeling about this stay-at-home-mom thing.   It's a checkup, an "Are you still okay with this?  Haven't snapped yet?"   So far the answer is "Fine, thanks, no regrets, can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing."  I keep checking because intellectually I still find it a bit hard to believe that I can really be content in this life -- two dozen years of jobs = exciting, motherhood = stifling conditioning dies hard.   When I first found myself at home, which happened before my PhD diploma even arrived in the mail, I must have asked myself every day or two.  The need to peek is getting less and less frequent as the months and now years (a bit more than 3) go by.  Maybe every two or three months now.  I guess I'm very slowly getting over myself.

One part of this examination is the question -- Why am I content?  This is an interesting question because the answer keeps changing.  It seemed at first to be because I was getting a badly needed break from working so damn hard, like I was on vacation with my kids.  After a few months of that, the answer seemed to change; now I was content because I recognized that my chosen field didn't suit me, nor I it; it was good to be at home, where I could get my head together and figure out what I was really going to do with my life.   A few more years in and it is finally sinking in that this is what I am doing with my life.  Whether it's what I should be doing is kind of irrelevant; every morning I wake up and I do a certain set of things, and what they make me is a parent at home, a homemaker, a homeschooler.

Not someone on vacation (though many days still feel that way) and not someone taking time off from real life.  This is my real life.  Sometimes I like to imagine that I can go back in time and find myself when I was a senior in high school and tell her what lies in store.  I have some bad news and some good news.  Well, actually, most of it is really good news, but it's not going to sound good from where you're sitting, Little Miss Excellent SAT Scores.  Heh.

So I guess the question why am I content is even more interesting than before, to me anyway, because the answer used to be because this bizarre situation I find myself in is not really my real life, and since then I've realized that I was wrong, it's a permanent condition.  I don't have to answer it, it's wonderful enough that I am content, but I still keep holding this curiosity that is Erin-at-home-at-peace up to the light and squinting at it, looking for the flaw. 

I don't do it for very long, though, and each time less.  Eventually some perspective intrudes.  I should be embarrassed to be so self-absorbed.  The world is full of people who have dull, or difficult, or physically exhausting, or hateful, or painful, or treacherous jobs because they have to.  My "job" (whatever some may think) is not any of those things, at least no more than life must be once in a while.  All I need to remember:  How it would be to want to stay home with my kids and be unable to.   It's a swift kick in the butt that makes me especially thankful I'm where I am.

 

Rerun week, post #6: If you can take a trick, take it.

Rerunning old posts this week so I can get ready for school.  Today's post is from July 2007.

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I played euchre in college.  Euchre is a four-person partnered card game, I started to write, trying to briefly summarize the rules, but now I'm giving up -- here is the Wikipedia article if you need to know more.   It's one of those games that comes in endless variations.   Did I play Ace-no-face?  No thank you.  Screw-the-dealer?  Absolutely.   Nell-O?  Only in Kentucky.

In euchre, as in many card games, there's a certain etiquette, passed down in lore from player to player.  In central Ohio, for example, one emits a moo when one achieves nine points.  Message: I'm in the barn!  The most serious breach of etiquette -- not including rule violations such as reneging -- is summed up in the maxim Never trump your partner's ace.   Another piece of advice is Count on your partner to take one trick.

The bit of advice I remember most is If you can take a trick, take it.  (Wikipedia, helpfully, has anarticle about tricks.)  It's an important piece of advice for a beginner who might otherwise try to hold on to the "good" cards or who might be intimidated into leaning on the partner a bit too much.  The idea is simple:  When play comes around to you, and you see that you can play a high enough card -- here, in this hand, this trick, right now -- play it.  You might want to consider your move carefully -- Don't, because you're holding up the game.  You might hope you'll look smart and strategic if you hold onto your good card and "throw off" now (play a low card that won't take this trick), saving the good card until the perfect time.  Don't -- that time might not come, and you're not going to look so smart when everyone finds out that you could have taken a trick and didn't.  You might think that your partner will enjoy playing his high card here.   Don't yield to him yet (unless you're thinking of trumping his ace, of course) -- remember, your partner is counting on you to take at least one.

I find that If you can take a trick, take it is a pretty good rule of thumb for housekeeping, and indeed for life in general.   It's not so overwhelming as a plan to win the whole game, or even a hand of the game (five tricks in a hand, three to ten hands in a game).   A trick is a tiny little victory.  Tricks add up to hands,  and hands add up to a win, so these tiny little victories matter.  On each one -- and you rarely know while you're in it -- the whole game might turn.   At the same time, though, when you see you can't take one, you let it go.    Just let it go.  Maybe your partner can play the card that'll take it, but if not -- it's only one trick.

So if I'm passing through the kitchen on my way to the stairs and there's my husband's shoes on the floor and I could take two steps out of my way to grab 'em and take 'em up to the closet with me -- or I might not -- if I can take a trick, take it.  My partner can count on me for this one.  Up they go. 

Or if there's a mess on the floor under the baby's high chair, and I have a few minutes, but I'm thinkingLater on I'll be scrubbing the whole floor so why bother cleaning that up now? -- I remember that I don't really know if I'm going to have that time, I don't know if I will win the whole hand, but I can take this trick. 

Or if I happen to be in the bathroom and it occurs to me that while I'm in here I could get a wipe from under the sink and quickly get the worst of the spots off the floor -- that realization, plus the brief seconds of extra time I could use for it, is the "high enough card" to take that trick.  No point saving it for later; when the trump cards come out it'll be worthless.  If I can take a trick, take it.  Twenty seconds later I leave the bathroom a little bit cleaner than it was.

Or if I happen to be in a friend's bathroom, for that matter, if she has company, and I notice that her kids have left a little present smeared on the side of the toilet.  No, she would not expect me to clean it up.  I could go out and tell her quietly, "Hey, your toilet needs attention before your guests see it."  But the container of antibacterial wipes is just sitting there where I can see it.  So is some soap to wash my hands with.   You've heard the answer to But who is my neighbor?  Well, who is my partner in this game, hm?  Anybody who can count on me to take a trick, right?  Twenty seconds later I leave her bathroom a little bit cleaner than it was.

I find myself applying it to housecleaning because those particular opportunities for tiny victories are the ones I'm both likely to encounter and likely to let slip by.  But everyone's jobs, everyone's relationships, everyone's game has these little decisions.  Sooner or later play comes around to you, and you have a certain set of cards, and you have to decide whether to throw off.  If you think too hard you're holding up the game -- that's why we have the rules of thumb.  If you can take a trick, take it.

What kind of tricks can you take today?

 

Reminder.

Don't forget about the homeschooling space Flickr pool contest.