The Unschooling Continues

"Who is the man singing?" I ask.

The boys listen and then each tries to call it first, "Louis Armstrong!"

"Yep," I tell them. "And now, the woman?"

They listen. "Billie Holiday?" asks Trinidad, doubtfully.

"Listen to her voice. Is it Billie?"

"No!" he says definitively. "But I don't know who."

"Ella Fitzgerald," I say. "You haven't heard much of her, but isn't her voice lovely?"

"Wow!" says Sam. "How do they make it so his voice stops and her voice starts like that, so smooth? Do they stand next to each other?"

And so goes the conversation about choices made in recording music, about the lives and personalities of the artists, about history.

We are making cookies together. Both boys can now read and double the recipe with reminders from me about what to look for. Both boys know the terminology around doughs and batters: creaming, folding, mixing, and whipping. They still need some support around turn taking when they are both hot to create.

"Ant treats!" says Trinidad. He is reading the permanent marker I put on our sugar jar long ago.

"Yeah. I like to laugh at things that bother me when I'm tired of being bothered," I said. "I get to laugh a lot more that way." He looks at me and nods, knowingly. I wouldn't mind passing that on.

Trinidad peeks into the oven. "They're still pretty wet," he says. "What makes them wet?" He thinks for a minute. "Oh -- the butter!" He gauges the best time to pull them based on the dryness and slightly brown edges of the outer cookies.

I am still the one to take the baking stones from the oven. Sam leans over the stove top to grab a cookie while I pull the oven door down. "Don't fall in, Hansel," I tell him.

"Hmm-hm! Hanthel!" he says, spewing crumbs through his giggle.

"Yeah, now you get these literary allusions since we've been boning up on our fairy tales," I say.

Sam leans over the cookie press, trying to push out a perfect wreath. The last one got caught in the ring at the bottom. This one, too, sticks. "Oh, come on! What the hell?" he asks, incredulous, as he picks the dough from the metal tool.

I turn away, smirking. He has learned to cuss appropriately. It's the first time I've heard a four-letter word from him in awhile, and the timing, by my own standard, was impeccable. As if echoing my logic, he says it again for good measure under his breath. Then, pleased with his own affect, he laughs and tells me he's going to try a new shaped disc. Better luck with that, maybe.

I am so grateful for our conversations, our learning and growing together. I am honored to see their wheels turning and to be invited into the very gears of their clockwork. I am humble in my joy to be a parent, a mentor, a model, and a companion. So very lucky that they are my boys.

The Web We Weave

I needed a sled, and ours is deep in the pile that I crammed into our tiny storage unit last May. I turned to a neighbor for help. Walking 4 doors up the street bearing bagels rescued from a local baker's dumpster, I presented my dilemma and was aptly rewarded.

On the return, sled in hand, I passed my next door neighbor and another neighbor hoisting either side of a jug of mead on its way to be bottled. This mead contained a good deal of honey from our bees and will grace our Christmas eve table for the next several years. I waved them a hello and stopped off at the neighbor's house across the street to pick up one more sled. A stack of plates and jars were ready for my pickup, too, on their return from transporting soups and baked goods to our "extended family" across the way.

Inhale, exhale.

Another Family School parent who lives nearby became interested in buying goat milk to turn into yoghurt. I called my goat milk connection. She said she'd love the support, but being 70 miles from town, she is unable to supply the milk on her Saturday drop. If only I could come get it on Wednesday, she wished. I'll take the Wednesday milk, I told her, to make my yoghurt from. It will stay fresh for weeks once cultured. My drinking milk I will take from the Friday batch.

The farmer was delighted. She has more financial support now, and even more openings for her Saturday milk list. She's offering me bits of winter squash, chicken feet (for stock) and other bonus goodies to show her appreciation. I am making yoghurt for my new mom-friend, and when I have a sick kid, she picks up the other in her minivan to carpool to school.

I like it.

Gender Inconclusions IV

"Did you hear a knock at the door?" Seda asked when she noticed I had left the dinner table.

"Yes!" I called from the living room where I was giving another mom her share of the wholesale pickup I'd received on her behalf earlier that day.

"It's nice to live in community, so much easier, really," I said, returning to the table. "I think of all the little things I have to keep track of as a homemaker -- fermenting the oatmeal for tomorrow's breakfast, stacking the firewood before it rains, picking up our order from Hummingbird Wholesale, handling our loan application at the bank -- all of these time sensitive things to do. But in community, so many of these tasks can be shared or picked up by one another when we simply cannot fit it in. It would be so lonely to make a home in isolation."

"Yeah," said Seda. "And so many people do! No wonder they're unhappy homemakers."

"Mmm," I said. "It's part of our consumer culture -- we buy this and that prepackaged thing, a dishwasher to do our dishes, a washing machine to wash our clothes (I'm not complaining on that one, mind you)...."

"And still, with all these modern conveniences, homemakers now spend more time doing housework than ever before," said Seda.

"Well, they now have bigger houses."

"True! In the fifties, people lived in little houses, like ours, and that was the norm."

"Did you know," I asked the boys, "that when we bought this 750 square foot house, our realtor almost refused to show it to us because it 'wasn't big enough' for our needs. If Maddy and I were still together romantically, it still would be."

"Wow," said Trinidad.

"Yep. We should get some old episodes of 'Leave It To Beaver,'" I said. "That would be a real social studies education."

"Women were expected to vaccuum the floors in high heels and dresses, Trinidad," said Seda. Trinidad's eyes widened. "You know, I wonder if that's why the feminist movement turned their back on homemaking?"

"Oh, Seda, you're right!" I said. "The homemakers in those days switched on television and turned to the bottle to keep them company. So much for sisters sharing resources and power in the world. So much for community and sustainability!"

Can you imagine? A T.V. dinner marauding as ease, so seductive... if bland. All that time to play Bridge! But what about meaningful shared efforts to feed the family, feed the world? The recipes and nourishing wisdom of generations, lost to plastic and paperboard.

And then a generation of young women who looked back and said, "I will not stay home."

Herein lies the epidemic of homelessness.

Down In the Dumps

Our working class neighborhood has banded together in a new kind of sharing. As we all struggle to make ends meet feeding our growing children, resourcefulness and gleaning has risen to a new level: the dumpster.

Behind our favorite bakeries, loaves are regularly dropped into the trash wrapped in paper and plastic. They are the same breads that cost $3-$5 only an hour before. As we stretch to pay mortgages and car/bike repair bills, such tidily discarded food is a blessing. There are now four families on our street alone that regularly dive and share the spoils to stock freezers and pantries.

I have to admit that it took me awhile to wrap my head around the notion of this. Eat food from the dumpster? Is that safe? As I write this, I am reminded of my childhood beliefs about mushrooms. Don't touch them! They're poisonous! Wash your hands! Fortunately, I've taken classes on wild mushroom identification since then and learned what I was missing. (In fact, no mushroom is so poisonous that you can become sick from touching it, or even touching it and putting your hand in your mouth -- unless you've seriously molested the poor mushroom.)

In our world of mass consumption, anything that's turned the corner of premium marketability is suddenly considered worthless and is discarded while people on our streets and in our neighborhoods struggle and starve. Where is our common sense?

What can I make with sour milk? Pancakes, quickbreads, and more. Stale bread is good for stuffing mix, croutons, and bread pudding, or it goes to the chickens if it becomes rock hard. Let us save our planet and our people at once by keeping edibles out of the landfill!

I am also looking to my own habits to discern whether I am truly as frugal as I'd like to be. Yesterday, when I pulled a box off of my beehive to keep the colony warmer this winter, I tossed a chunk of propolis aside. Bees make this golden sticky comb out of tree and bush resins to glue and hermetically seal their hives into antibacterial commercial kitchens.

I tossed it aside. "What am I doing?" I thought. Propolis is medicine, and when carefully processed, it's worth a pretty American penny. Can I afford not to learn how? I came inside with the bees work and sat down at the computer to Google "propolis preparation." I discovered that I can turn it into a powder with ease (freeze and grind), and from this form I can blend it with a variety of carriers to make oral or topical medicines for my family.

God grant me the eyes to see where I waste and easily harvest the bounty we discard.

Hopefully the kids will have it easier. They are already delighted by our gleaning in its many forms. Picking up hazelnuts on the orchard floor after the harvesting machines had been through, they proudly announced their "jackpots." Tromping through the woods with friends, they wavered between sharing and hoarding as they stumbled upon golden patches of Chanterelles. These are big ticket finds, in more ways than one.

And they know quality. Bread is edible three days old or straight out of the oven. The latter is a rarer find, to be sure. When we pulled a bag of seeded baguettes out of the dumpster last Friday, Trinidad squeezed the soft end of one and said, "Wow!"

"Mmmm!" Sam smiled broadly. "Fresh from the dumpster!"

Gender Inconclusions III

I opened my hex pocket tool and searched for the correct size. "Hmm," I said and studiously began dismanteling the bunk bed/desk/dresser combo that I'd just purchased used for my boys. The former owner, a three year old girl, stood behind me shyly chewing on a lock of long brown hair.

"Where's the man?" she asked quietly. The question appeared to be posed hypothetically, and perhaps that is the best way to answer it.

Why did she ask so quietly? Why did she ask at all?

What could I say? "The man? She's home building our new addition." Or, "Why would I need a man?" Or, "Yeah, really, that's what I'd like to know!" There's room for all of the above.

What has feminism offered us but an opportunity to pack our bags fuller? Now, in addition to snack foods, water, a first aid kit, and wallet, I also carry two extensive hand-held tool collections. I am a cross between a Home Ec teacher and a Maintenance Manager. I need a backpack just for my keychain!

About a month ago, I began to seriously question the value of this. I would like to say for the record that I always wanted to be competent enough to service every one of my possessions. I like the self-sustaining independence of this working knowledge, and (for better and for worse) there is a certain amount of pride connected with this integrity.

When my auto mechanic began to explain the whyfors of my astronomical repair bill due to the location of the glow plugs, I told him that I understood perfectly, having changed them once myself, under the guidance of my father. He was rather taken aback and wondered whether I planned to have a sex change, too.

Hmmm. House of mirrors, isn't it? We are opposed to defining genders by their roles because those definitions are only one story and limit the depth of our humanity in one another's eyes. At the same time, traditional cultural roles contribute to ease in the distribution of labor, and, being a rather buff woman myself, I must say that they also make sense to a certain degree in terms of brute strength needed for particular tasks.

Put a round peg in the round hole.

Sure, there are a million exceptions on both sides of the gender line, if you can find such a line to begin with. But what if we just relaxed a bit about our desires to do or not do the tasks typically allotted to (or resisted by) our apparent genders? What if we take that moment where we might question our appearances and instead celebrate what we can and are naturally drawn to do?

I don't think I can put my stamp on a movement that is for or against the labors we find ourselves intrinsically motivated to do.

I certainly don't want to put anyone out of their work of choice. If you're skilled, sure you can work on my car, build my fence, load my truck, or bake my bread. If you're not or would rather not, I'm content to do it, or learn to do it, myself.

There's this business of opening doors...what do I teach my sons? I have seen women turn a scathing look to the gentleman who held the door for her. She can do it herself! The assumption that women find painful is that the door is being held because they cannot even open a door for themselves.

Hmmm. Might I offer a different perspective? Perhaps we could see the opening of doors as something that we ALL could do to support the ease and well-being of one another. When a door is opened for me (holding this viewpoint), my needs for consideration are met. Women certainly hold the doors for others, but most often children and the elderly.

Ladies, do you ever have a moment when you wish that someone would do for you as you have done for so many others in a day? I wonder why we decline the opportunity to receive.

What disturbs me most about the feminist movement in general is that we guard ourselves against giving or receiving based on feminist laws that may not be our own. In writing this, I find that I'm afraid to express myself so transparently because I am somehow "not knowledgeable enough" to debate a movement that has shaped my experience of growing into a woman. I now offer my respects to those who have formed the debate and still modestly disagree enough to carve my own path. I cannot speak to any particular branch or publication that I might rail for or against. I can only speak to my impressions from the realpolitik of living with this engendered confusion.

My impression of the feminist movement is that it is full of "shoulds." We should do this, and we shouldn't do that. Hence, my three-year-old voyeur asked quietly where the man was. She knew that she "shouldn't" ask the question (by what law she knew not, though surely I broach it now), but I imagine that something in her was profoundly curious about why I chose not to seek such support.

Can we just do what we feel moved to do and talk about that when the urge arises?

Ask out loud.

Gender Inconclusions II

"How can you be a woman?" I asked, five years ago. It tortured me to pain him. I had spent nearly fourteen years encouraging him in his every pursuit. The deep and lengthy peace of our marriage rested on a foundation of mutual respect for one another's autonomy. But this was too much.

"I can't explain it," he told me. I hated it when his eyes got so big. I did not know him.

His hands opened rigidly, helplessly groping the air as he shook his head. Those hands, so large, strong, and capable. They once reached for mine, tentative and longing in our early days of courtship. They cradled our infant sons, and a finger protected their first steps. They built our homes and fences, caught and carried me over and over.

"What is a woman, then?" I asked, angrily.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "I just know I am one."

I laid in bed in the dark, working this out for myself. A woman served. But a man served also, in his way. A woman stretched beyond stretching, beyond even herself to be sure all needs were held. She was more malleable and capable of squeezing through impossibly small spaces, only to show herself full-scale on the other side. An octopus.

"It's not possible for you to be a woman," I told him in the morning. "If you were, you could live with this and not make any outward changes. You could just be who you are on the inside, to hold our family together. For us."

Even as I said it, I knew the poison of my words. How could I tell him how to live? To put me and the children first? How could I make these demands and be a woman, myself?

But if I didn't insist on his place, then who would I be? The former wife of . . . someone. How could I be, or have been, a wife if my husband was a woman? What was a wife? I sat down heavily on a heap of laundry waiting to be folded. Underwear I did not recognize glared back at me. "Who are you?" they asked. "Who have you been? Who will you be?"

I am white, defined by black edges, I said. I am a wife because I have a husband. I am mortal because there is death, staring me down like every iron grey hair that meets me in the mirror. I am a woman because I have grown quietly into that identity, filling its container as others have defined the edges.

"Walk like a lady, not a logger," said my mother. Growing up, I baked, I cleaned, and I took care of my younger sister. Our father laid on the couch watching television and entering contests by mail. Tough luck.

"You cannot be a woman," I told her, "because you have not been raised like one. Not only have you not been properly conditioned for this gender role, but you have no identity formed around the resistance to it. Does that make sense?"

"Yes, it does," he said, tired. I was winning. I hated the feeling of triumph as much as it filled me with hope. "I don't know what to tell you. I just can't go on as I have been," he said. "I am not a man."

All of those classes in college, the gender studies, the literary theory -- they only suggested the map of this treacherous territory I found myself lost in.

No man's land.

Gender Inconclusions I

I am pumping along rhythmically, biking uphill. A young man without a helmet bicycles to catch up.

"Are those studded tires?" he asks. The grinding of metal on asphalt caught his attention.

"Yeah," I say.

"No kidding?" he asks, incredulous.

My tongue is pressed against the inside of my upper molars, chin thrust slightly outwards as I nod. I have seen my father in this posture talk to his trucker buddies. "Yeh," I say. "In this mud and wet leaves, they're pretty useful."

He nods appreciatively.

"And, with the loads I carry, nothing else is gonna' give me quite that purchase."

The young man peers across at my knowing confidence, swollen pride, and smiles faintly in reverence. I am such a guy, I think.

Such a swaggering dude.