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 has caught his attention.

"Yeah," I say.

"No kidding?" he asks, incredulous.

My tongue presses 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 mud and wet leaves, they're pretty useful."

He nods appreciatively.

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

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

Such a swaggering dude.

Mid-Morning Mate (the drink; I can't figure out how to accent the e!)

What have I got in my pockets?
A bean.
A stone.
A broken rubberband.

The clouds sweep cirrus into blue.

My other pocket yields:
a list of building supplies,
a broken dog cookie, and
a nickel.

The compost pile awaits its turning
as I stir goats milk and honey into Mate.

Seasons Change

The mornings are crisper, the trees dance and loose their colorful gowns to the wind. This I have seen before. This I expected.

What I did not expect, but snuck up quietly and as peacefully as a seed breaking ground into the sun, was Sam's request to try out school.

The winds of change sent serendipities spinning wildly about us all as we fell into step with a school 2 miles away that seemed to best represent our values as a family. Indeed, it is called "The Family School," a public charter school created and supported by the collaboration of families and teachers. They compost lunch waste, garden for food, and are planting native habitats to support other wild critters. Parents are encouraged to come to class and/or help out as often as they wish.

I went to school 4 whole days last week. Slowly, I faded my presence from Sam's side as he grew more comfortable. Trinidad launched full force into nine-year-old independence and said that I could come to his class whenever it worked for me, maybe once a week. Both are enjoying making friends and having new responsibilities.

There is so so much I could say about this choice. The needs it meets and does not meet. The bittersweetness of moving out into the world, away from the cozy rhythms of our nest. The excitement of discussing new experiences, people, and ideas.

But just now, I must put my house in order.

Not that clarity is lacking. I am very peaceful in this decision, and the boys seem to be, too. It's all been remarkably easy, even as the transition has been rigorous. I have no expectations, only hopes and gratitude.

After a science lesson, Trinidad told me his thoughts on the bike ride home. I told him mine. "But why does it seem so clear when you explain it?" he asked. "Why didn't my teacher say it that way?"

I stopped the bike. "Do you see that trash can over there?" I asked, pointing to the tall rectangular box.

"Yes," he said.

I walked the bike around to its side. "Now look at it," I said. "Does it look different from here? Would you even know what the front looked like if you'd never seen it before?"

He pondered. "No," he said.

"How about now?" I asked, wheeling our bike to the backside.

"Yeah, all the sides are different," he said.

"That's because we're looking at them from different perspectives," I said. "That's what I offered you: my perspective of the science lesson. Your teacher offered her perspective. How many do you think there are?"

"Lots! Wow, mom. Wow. Wow."

All sides considered, I'd say we're in this exploration together, and that's all I'd ever wish for.

Sunday Brunch

An onion from the garden, sauteed slowly with home-grown thyme, oregano, and garlic. A dash of salt and pepper. Parboiled potatoes of all colors, dug by Trinidad last night at dusk, sliced by Sam, now sizzling in pan. The eggs our chickens have recently begun to lay in and out of the hen house, hidden delinquent in potato beds, collected by two and four year old hands with eyes shining. A renegade kale that popped up in the onion bed is diced and added with feta from a local goat farmer, fresh basil and chopped tomatoes from the garden.

A side of bacon -- not local, but kindly grown. Unfortunately, I haven't found a local bacon I like!

For dessert, a crisp with local peaches, plums from across the street, and blackberries the boys picked with a friend. We'll probably add the indulgence of ice cream to that....

In Order To Find Abundance?

I am making a mess. Yellow plum juice squirts through my fingers and the pits shoot upward and land God-knows-where. Plum slime slides down my kitchen window and across the table. Thick stringy yellow splotches adhere to the "clean" dish rack, the bench and the floor. It looks as though an Irish Wolfhound has projectile vomited in my kitchen.

I am initially appalled at the mess. I had thought this would be "the fun part" of canning today. Now, I look around me and my nose wrinkles. I feel every muscle in my chest contract as I resist the chaostrophy I have created. I have to wonder.

In the backyard, Trinidad is digging a hole. He plans to make it big enough to trap some innocent adult who wanders past. He is covered with dirt to the extent that he appears to be some nationality that he is not. I ask him to sit somewhere other than the couch.

Why is Trinidad's mess liberating, a clearinghouse of structure and order in the name of raw creation? Why does he embrace this expansiveness effortlessly while I cringe to fling pulp in what was a tidy kitchen? Where has my youth gone?

An intimate once told me that he seriously questioned whether abundance was the order of the universe. Our relationship ended much sooner than I'd anticipated, and now I wonder if he's right. There is a certain chaos in abundance -- a running over, perhaps even a lack of awareness. In this moment, I can imagine abundance, remember the feeling of fingerpaint running down the insides of my sleeves in kindergarten, recall sensations in my body back in the day when it did not bear the responsibility of Clean Up Time.

Yep. The feeling's still alive. But now, I am in ebb, quietly stockpiling my energy to prepare dinner and organize the lives and household of a family of 4 or 5 (depending on who's counting themselves aboard at any given point). I turn the tide inward in the face of this mess, drawing it toward me in an effort to localize the chaos so that I do not have to stretch much to stow all in its place before bedtime.

I wonder if the Willow tree does this, too. I wonder if right now, as that majestic tree appears to grow effortlessly in abundance, it actually holds its water carefully, turning silvery leaves away from the sun. I wonder if the wide expanse of its limbs bear introspective cells that order its efforts by design, an invisible and soundless ebb that necessarily keeps the tree rooted in its skyward thrust.

Perhaps abundance is only a portion of the equation. Saying "half" seems too divisive, as if the word could be separated from its opposing force. Perhaps that force is not scarcity, but conservation -- care and awareness of the current life cycle we are offered, the totality of abundance and conservation equaling an ultimate sustainability.

In that view, scarcity is not related to abundance at all. It is a falling out of trust in presence and sustainability over the long-haul, the acrobatics of an ego self-entranced.

Hmmm. Just see what busy minds can create out of a mess....

We Can Work It Out

"Mom, I don't tell a lot of things to M that are really important to me, even though he's my best friend." Trinidad's face was solemn.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Well, when I tell him something really exciting that I did, he usually says he doesn't believe me or that he's done something even better. I just feel really sad about that."

"Is it that you would like to celebrate with him your new accomplishments and share what you're really excited about without him thinking that he or his accomplishment is in any way 'less'?"

"Yeah. It's just really competitive, and so I don't want to talk to him much even though I really like to do things with him."

"I think it goes both ways in being competitive, don't you?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Have you ever thought about telling him what you'd like?"

"Tell him what?"

"That you'd really like to be able to celebrate something special that you did and ask that he only focus on that accomplishment and not share anything he did for a minute?"

"Yeah!"

"Would you really like for both of you to have that kind of time and space for celebration?"

"Yeah! I think I will talk to him," Trinidad said and looked much relieved.

Yesterday, Trin did tell M just that. He told him everything we talked about and Trinidad said they also made an agreement to believe what the other said (or at least not to say they didn't) in addition to making space for celebration.

"And guess what, Mom!" Trinidad shared with a beam. "M said he was just opening his mouth to say the same thing to me when I said it to him!"

"All that about celebration?" I asked.

"Yep. It's important to him, too. And then we spent hours telling each other all the things we'd been saving up and not saying for so long."

Conversations

With Trinidad....

"Oh! That blue jay just caught a snake." Trinidad's face falls, then relaxes into calm. "Well, I guess that soon all the cats in the neighborhood will be over to catch the blue jays, and before you know it we'll have mountain lions coming through the backyard to eat the cats. They do come into town, you know." He's right about this.

"Mmmm," I say. "Two days ago, I saw an enormous hawk take a jay baby out of a nest in the tree across the street in front of M's house. That jay mama threw up such a squawking! The hawk flew it's dinner over to that big tree next door and ate it."

"What? There's a jay nest in M's tree? He thought it was too big to be a bird nest. He thought it was an abandoned squirrel nest!" Trinidad's whole body grows and tenses with the news. "I am so excited! I am going over there right now so we can climb up and take a look at it."

On tree climbing:

Trinidad told me this while we drove through country south of Roseburg. His words floated from the backseat like a meditation rising from the hot Earth, herself. I tried to jot down phrases soonafter, but I doubt I did justice to the poetry of his words in the moment, or the relief and satisfaction that I felt in his safety and meaningful pursuits.

"I know my foot on any tree," he said. "Each tree tells me which branch to grab and which limb to step on. Every tree is challenging in it's own way and every tree is easy in it's own way. The thing that is easiest about one tree is the hardest thing in another. They are individuals and I learn them while I climb. As I move up in the trees, I listen for where to hold and I know that the tree is guiding me in the safest way. Each tree moves differently and I must move with it, as only it moves. It teaches me something new every time. Each time I climb a tree it is like the first time, but we also remember that we know each other."


With Sam....

"I knew that was why the sky is blue," said Sam quietly after we read an in-depth explanation of atmosphere and light on the internet.

"You did? Why didn't you tell me so when I asked?"

"Because I wanted to make you think I was more like a kid. So I didn't get over myself."



~Sometimes, I think that "wide-eyed" is just my natural state.~

Belonging

"I want to go home," says Sam.

"Why?" I ask.

"I don't know. I just do," he says.

We return home, and both boys run to the backyard. The door hangs wide open behind them. With fixed gazes and hips set, they aim and throw rocks at a chosen target east of the pond. Over and over stones are hurled, then the boys run to retrieve them. I no longer watch the game protectively to interrupt if they threaten to pelt each other by mistake.

I stand quietly at the kitchen window. A bowl of blueberries sits on the table beside me with a bag of canning jars that someone mysteriously left on my step. The wind lifts tall willow branches into a dance of light, silvery leaves bending and stretching in the afternoon sun. For a moment, I choose not to think of what's for dinner, or anything else. For a moment, I only feel.

A surge of bittersweet belonging fills me. The boys are rooted here, a sense of place. This grounding feels healthy, coherent, integral. Yet, this land, too, shall pass. They will move on, with or without me. They will come home to me wherever I am, or I will bring this sense of belonging back to them when I come to visit.

Rooted. Countless generations behind me and one at the pond just ahead. The ache fills me. I have been alive lately with what I perceive as the rich reality of my relations. Colorful language, fiery forthrightness, and purposeful independence are the trademarks of my known tribe of origin. I masquerade as a post-modern hippie, but the Kool-Aid and jello that stained my cheeks as a child sitting riverside reveals my backwoods pedigree. I did not eat nutritional yeast until I turned thirty.

Part of me is becoming proud of what I once perceived as a "shadow" in my raising. My compassion stretches into celebration, a fierce devotion to the soul that pulsed in my mother and father's lineage despite poverty, alcoholism, and abuse.

My grandmother tells a story of visiting her grandmother in a hospital after her grandmother had fallen from a ladder picking cherries. The eighty-something woman had broken her neck. "What are you doing here?" she demanded of my grandmother from the hospital bed. "Those cherries are ripe! You get out there and get picking!"

I was raised on wild venison and duck meat, cheap grocery hamburger, corn from the garden, and canned green beans. Food translates to the soul of me. It is who I am. In everything my parents killed, harvested or touched I tasted the generations of hands that bore me into this world. The cans from the food bank, sheepishly accepted, tasted like wounded pride, and that, too, shaped me.

"Where did you get your faith in God?" Seda asked me through the kitchen window last night.

"Adversity, I guess. Funny thing to ask through the window," I said.

There are parts of my roots that the children barely recognize. Parts of Seda's roots as well. Where once I wished to hide what unfurls deep beneath me, I now seek to share openly but gently. Roots are, in their right, sacred. They can be damaged.

The understory is alive in me. Nothing to outrun, outrace, or cast off. It is my path into light.

There, my boys throw rocks under the sun. In our protected wilds, a small city yard consumes them. They belong.

And so do I with them.

Technology Found Me

It finally happened. I went out and bought my first computer of my own volition. I set it up and tinkered with the applications. Then I placed my first call on it to Ben.

The new computer is an iphone. Ben, my honey who brazenly told an acquaintance that he didn't need anything more than his iphone and his girlfriend, finally tempted me into the flock. The recent "upgrade" of the iphone left last years model obsolete, so I rushed out to buy one for less than $100.

I justified it as a homeschooling expense, and it appears to be working. We moved our campus to the coast Friday and Saturday. I had my handy cell (i) phone in case of emergencies. When we arrived and unpacked, Trinidad went straight to the creek to hunt crayfish. Sam and I played cards at creekside, and I turned the iphone onto a recording of Billie Holiday's "Night and Day" that I am learning to sing for Market next month. Over and over, my tiny "transistor radio" played a soft accompaniment to Sam and I giggling and stealing each other's cards. Then Trinidad turned up with crayfish and freshwater clams. "Are these clams edible, Mom? Why don't you Google it?" he asked.

Trinidad knows that I use the internet extensively as a resource. If I want to know which part of the herb to harvest and when, how to kill a chicken humanely (paradoxical phrasing, hm?), or whether to be concerned about the leakage of peach juice in the canning process, I fire up the web.

Now I have it creekside. After procuring reassurance that he had, in fact, caught dinner, we took some pictures (iphone) of the critters as Sam grappled with them fearlessly. We could have emailed the photos to my mom, but I don't have the account set up for it yet. We downloaded (for free) an application that shows us what the constellations are in our night sky by the iphone's location, and if I forget which direction is north (how embarrassing), there is a compass application, too. In the morning, we checked the weather and tides online, then headed to the beach to tidepool. If I need a gas station, there is an application that tells me where I can find one within three miles and the directions to get there. Not that I typically do need gas (my bike is decked out and well-worn), but even hanging close to home is going to be easier with internet support.

Dude. I can even place a call on it.

The only thing I have to hang up is my pride in roughing it.

Where's the hook?

Survival Giving

What is a gift?

I give my heart, my hands, my thought to the comfort and well-being of my family, my community. I take joy in cooking, creating, cleaning, and organizing for myself and others. I most love to give from the place of abundance, not looking behind me at any cost or consequence in the giving.

There have been consequences.

I did not learn to give from abundance. I learned to give from fear. Raised in a family that struggled with domestic violence, I did what I was told. Daily from the age of seven, I completed long lists of chores with bitter determination. I learned the trade of homemaking well, and I am grateful for the efficiency it offers me as a mother.

I am also grateful that I saw early on that giving is a skill in itself. I saw that people welcomed my company because they saw me as "a giver." I have been told I am angelic, kind, and generous in my adulthood. The skill of offering my efforts to others were born in a home where my father threatened and chided me for laziness if I missed a corner in the vacuuming. They are only skills.

I learned to give because it met a need for power. I'm sure I wished to contribute, too, but in all honesty, the need for power resonates just now. I needed power desperately at a time when my voice and my needs were silenced. I clung to power as I watched helplessly while my father pushed and swung at my mother. This power shined so brightly that I could see myself in the dark when no one else could see me.

Giving was a strategy, a means to an end for safety, acceptance, and love. It served me well.

I remember hearing about school shootings when I was a young teenager. As the people around me shook their heads in horror, I could understand why the man in question pulled the trigger. I could understand the disjointed fear and helplessness, and most of all the power behind that cold piece of steel. I felt confused; didn't everyone else know what it was like to be in that place?

I didn't dare say it. I couldn't tell them how I could feel what I imagined he felt, that it made perfect sense to me why and how he could see his action as all-powerful and still meaningless, ultimately inconsequential. So fragile and so loud.

Giving, running, hiding, striking out, and striking back --all can come from such exquisite pain. And now I see that it is not the giving that had its consequences. Any resentment I now harbor is not from having given too much, or even from seeing myself as "forced" to give. My giving is ultimately inconsequential; there has been nothing taken from me or anyone else in its offering. In this sense, giving was a gentle strategy to have settled on.

What is left when I reconsider my history of giving is only the pain that birthed the strategy that I trusted to keep me alive. What is left is looking back and into the constancy of fear I was raised with, the eruptions and undercurrents of crisis from within.

Perhaps holding this pain will truly free me to give from my heart.

I am humbled, again, to witness the gift of compassion, no matter how terrifying or cold, that my childhood bestowed upon me.

Give Peace A Chance?

Tragedy struck in our neighborhood on Tuesday. The dog that killed our cat two years ago (when she went into my neighbor's yard) escaped through a mysteriously opened gate at night and killed at least two other cats up the street. One couple rescued their cat at the scene, only to watch it die at the emergency veterinary hospital later that night.

In the morning, both families realized the identity of the dog and its owners. One family is close to the dog's family and felt their own grief magnify, particularly as the other couple, not tight with those on our end of the street, sent their energy into retaliation.

I went out to stand beside my neighbor and the angry couple as I expressed my sadness for us all. The couple turned and walked away, still shouting about civil suits and the wrongness they had witnessed. My neighbor turned to me as tears began to fall.

"I get it. I totally get it," she said. "That's the worst part. I'd be that angry if it were my cat. I just don't know what to do with my dog!"

The angry couple made a call to Animal Regulations and demanded that the dog be "put down." The dogs owners, one of them a twelve year old girl, grieved for the loss of their dog, the neighbors' beloved cats, and their own connection with community.

I offered empathy to myself, my neighbors, and my family. I witnessed all of our varying degrees of compassion and awareness as we coped with the big feelings coming through. Anger expressed in blame and shame found quick reflection with frustration at such "unacceptable" accusations. The work of it rocked us, and it rocks us still.

Here is my point: you can't just "give peace a chance." It's not waiting in the wings to be spoonfed to the right politicians, soldiers, or corporate leaders. I don't think it's even the dominant latent force in the universe that we can just "open ourselves to" when the time is right.

Peace is a commitment to take time to turn inwards when things on the outside fall apart. That commitment is like agreeing to feed a hungry baby, even when you are exhausted or starving. Seeking peace is a radical act of love for ourselves and the universe, and it is the hardest work we have to do. Most importantly, we must learn to recognize the opportunities for peace as they present themselves daily.

I think that our people are confused about peace. We march in rallies and write letters so that those who have the power to make peace can do so on our behalves. We will not get off the hook so easy.

Gandhi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Those words do not represent the beginning of a ripple of change. They represent the ripple itself. If there is peace in the world, it happens at our dinner tables and on our city streets. It happens when we make a commitment to take responsibility for our feelings, to grieve and celebrate fully, without demands on others. It happens when we join hands, even in our pain, to work with what is.

Peace is acceptance. It's not always pretty or even hopeful. Sometimes it can be lonely. But if we find the space and support to nurture acceptance in community, then we can share the pain and lighten our load. We can build bridges and ease our way.

Peace is both power and responsibility.

Show, don't tell.

Building Up and Taking Down

The foundation has been poured. Smooth walls shine silver in the moonlight. My children are reading to each other aloud in their bedroom, and Seda sleeps behind me on the futon here in our living room. She has put in a full day.

The garage is being demolished. Trinidad learned how to pry siding from the exterior with a wrecking bar, pulling every nail. He marveled at the differences between our learning curves, practiced acceptance and perspective, and appreciated the notion of modest goals for beginners. I, myself, considered it my only goal to step through the threshold of the kitchen and into the backyard, a flat bar in my hand. Enough to conquer this insidious fear of building tools. Enough to begin work on the unfamiliar. I was not disappointed.

The last ten days have passed not quickly, but compactly. Each has been marked with the milestones of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Our food has given me a road map, a way of traversing this project within my comfort zone. It has been good. Stew, grilled steaks, tamale pie, garden salads, strawberry milkshakes, tuna sandwiches... Every day we sweat the work of transition, of growing, and every day we celebrate around a table together, many helpings and many hands.

The blessings are spectacular. We have begun a new ritual at the start of our meal. We hold hands and someone says a word (love, community, gratitude, friends, etc.) that the rest of us take it in and then repeat, holding the living energy of that idea. The shared expression has proven to be a touching, connecting, and significant way to begin a meal. Humor has not been avoided. One evening, Trinidad said with great reverence, "Crap." We all repeated it with equal reverence, then laughed. Afterwards, I embraced the notion more fully. Why not pay our respects to that which we find difficult? So much learned and gained in the face of it. Yes, m'Lord, I am grateful.

Everything continues to fall into place effortlessly. The washing machine pipe broke today after I finished washing just about everything we own. The neighborhood children are home and available to play. The weather is cool, dry and beautiful. The entire contents of our garage and laundry room (before the annual declutter) is somehow integrated into the rest of the house or our tiny storage unit. We break bread together as a family and even with friends nightly. Our house is in order and Seda in bed by 10 most nights. As I write, I notice that the boys are now quiet, having put themselves to bed. I can't imagine how it all happens this way. I just show up.

We learn and grow, every one of us, on the job. The children are thrilled to discover construction and demolition. Seda kneels beside them explaining softly the hows and whys of each step. I am in awe of her total trust in their efforts and exploration. Trinidad struck with his sledge so rhythmically while I cooked tonight that I found myself singing to it. Sam cleans up, screws on nuts and washers, and even wields the four pound sledge himself. They spend hours each day engaged in whatever aspects of the work Seda can set them to. And somehow, she finds work for them every time they ask.

Lord, love, universal harmony, I am so grateful to be a part of this weave, so grateful to be amongst such bright souls and tender hearts. Grateful to have the everyday work of loving and growing. Grateful to know this path, if only for a moment. Thank you.

Supernormal

"Mom, I just loved that movie we watched at E's house. I wish Trinidad could watch it."

"To tell you the truth, Sam, I don't want you watching movies over there anymore. I did not like that movie, based on what you told me. [Coarse language, gratuitous violence, objectification of women....] I can understand that you probably have no idea why--"

"Oh, yes I do, Mom. I know why you don't like me to watch it."

"You do? Why?"

"Because they barely ever use words that I don't know."

"Oh."

Extranormal.

**

"This guy looked over the counter at me today, then he looked again, and when I didn't look up -- I was letting him have a good look without interrupting -- he decided that whatever it was, it was okay," Seda told me.

"You have a lot of power, Seda. Just your presence can be discomfiting."

She frowns.

"If you don't like that, stop blogging. That just puts your presence in writing. You've lived more about gender than most of us can imagine."

"Do you like me being abnormal?"

"Your motto before transition was 'Comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable.' You coined it. Careful what you wish for. I love you just the way you are."

Paranormal.

**
"This addition to the house will bring us to a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house with functional shop/storage space. I'm afraid, Seda. It's going to look so 'grown up.' Will we be normal?"

"Um, yeah. Two children, a maddy and mother with boyfriend, 26 (2) chickens, rabbits, and sometimes captive snakes and mice. I think we are not in danger."

Unnormal.

**
"Mom, I learned something valuable from all those movies I watched about people catching snakes!"

I'm sitting in the living room as Trinidad enters with a 2-foot long garter snake on a stick.

"This one bites, and see? I can pick him up safely with a stick. Just like in the movies!"

The snake falls to the floor, opens its jaws and hisses.

"What did you learn?" I ask.

"Woops."

**
Does it ever work like you see in the movies? I saw a bumper sticker today. It said, "Don't believe everything you think."

Maybe we're Supernormal.

Parenting With NVC, Understanding and Care

I have received a question from one of my workshop participants (Parenting From Your Heart with Nonviolent Communication) that they have agreed to allow me to post and answer on the blog. My response is not that of a certified trainer and is, as always, reflective of my own best understanding of NVC. Here is her question:

Without an understanding of child development, how can NVC be helpful?

Example: one mom wants to explain her needs around materialism to her 4 1/2 year old son and another mom is frustrated because her child wants to jump in puddles instead of walking straight to the parent's desired destination (distracted every 2 minutes)... but child is 2 1/2.

She says that she, "can see how empathy is appropriate [in both situations]. My concern is that I have seen moms NVC-ing children around the mom's needs not being met. I am relieved, refreshed and hopeful being in your class because I see that you are trying to teach about heart connections rather than giving a parent permission to meet their needs at the child's expense. I am concerned that the verbal processing with young ones around mom's or dad's needs not being met puts pressure on the child. I also see the beauty of authentically expressing disappointment, frustration or sadness in front of children. I want to make sure that my children don't feel responsible for my feelings or needs not being met.
For example:
My needs for order may not be realistic for the situation. My need for support shouldn't be placed on the child's shoulders. How does NVC deal with this so the child doesn't feel that responsibility?
I suppose that just being aware that I have a need for order and this is causing my grouchy feeling is a huge step in the right direction. Then being able to talk myself down by giving myself empathy and understanding. Without the NVC tools, some parents may not ever get this much self awareness."

Here is my answer:

I think that this question gets to the heart of the primary challenge we face in living NVC. Children will always bring this work to light faster than any other people in our lives, so the arena of parenting is an excellent one to practice and take note of this in.

I agree that empathy is the foremost support that NVC can offer -- first the parent giving themselves empathy, and, as they find the spaciousness, offering it silently or verbally to their children.

Then we must turn to the zen of NVC to address the next part of the question. You say, "I want to make sure that my children don't feel responsible for my feelings or needs not being met." First, a celebration of that awareness -- hurray! I have companionship with you there! How can we accomplish this?

I believe that the answer lies in our attachment to specific outcome and our ability to make a fast and effective request. Both require a fair degree of skill and will in the practice.

You use the example of your need for order: "It may not be realistic in the situation." What is not realistic? Your need or the strategy you are requesting? I would venture to say that your need is always realistic. You might be very clear about what strategy you think would meet that need (20 maids in 20 hours?), but at a loss as to how it could be met in your current environment where you and your children are the only ones at home. In this moment, grappling with a need that feels greater than what we can see an answer for, our options (as I see them) are:

*Do a Jackal count: Are the howls in our conscious or subconscious thoughts blaming our children for their laziness, messiness, etc.? Do a good listen without trying to change anything and decide how much space to give yourself for empathy before engaging with your kids on the topic accordingly.

*Self-empathy -- feel the pain of your unmet need of order. Anxiety, disappointment, sadness, frustration. How many layers of needs can we tease out? If that need for order were met, then what? A need for spaciousness, self-connection? A need for connection and fun? What are the feelings attached to each?

*Getting empathy in person or by phone from someone other than our children.

*After sitting with it awhile, do we have a broader scope of options to support us and our families in this dilemma? Has there been a shift? Are we experiencing more peace and acceptance? Is there clarity about whether and what we might request from our children or others?

If I am charged with judgment about my child's contribution to the disorderliness of my home and I express myself, even with observation-feeling-need-request about my frustration, it is likely that my child will feel the energy I would (perhaps unconsciously) like to saddle them with in bearing my pain. I don't want to hold it alone. It is easier to shove it off on someone else. The words, the tone, the energy translates.

It can also happen that I am fully owning my feelings and needs and express them accordingly as my child still takes responsibility. First, I must cultivate an acceptance that this could happen despite my best intentions (for a variety of reasons depending on where they are at this moment), and be in choice about whether and how to express.

In the latter case, a lightning-fast and effective request, especially a connective one (e.g. "Can we work together to find a way to meet both of our needs right now?") will be most likely to support the child's empowerment and clarity about what would contribute. You would be requesting them to take some action, not to sit with and potentially take on the nebulous darkness you dispel. They also find themselves supported in choice and invited to engage rather than to play a captive-passive role of receiving energy and information that they don't have the skills or maturity to cope with (particularly from a primary caregiver).

This question is one we would do well to consider deeply and practice daily in all of our dealings. What is the energy we express ourselves from? Is our reaching out a request or demand? What attachments do we have around it? How actively do we pursue acceptance of what is when our awareness of attachment is discovered?

In addition, I believe that we have the responsibility to learn what is developmentally expected in our children so that we are not surprised or bewildered (in addition to our sometime frustration) by the ways that they commonly seek to meet their needs. We can do this most easily by cultivating awareness in community with other children and their parents. Take an informal poll. What are the primary frustrations and delights you see at different phases of development? Caterpillars do not suck nectar from flowers and nor do butterflies eat the leaves.

The opportunity to find gold within us -- full presence and compassion -- is always alive, and the children in our lives put the heat to our making. Where else do we find the depth of care, passion, and responsibility to live in utmost integrity? Where else will we be questioned with such brutal honesty at our points of greatest challenge?

Alchemists, we are, every one.

I appreciate the opportunity to play with your question. I welcome any thoughts or points that require further clarity or discussion and plan to address them as time permits.

A Week of Posts....

I came to understand early on that my work in this remodel, beyond shovels and sledgehammers, is the work of empathy. I am grateful to have received that vision in clarity and calm and now my work is at hand, daily supporting us all in finding our strength and love in this building process.

Last week, the boys and I rented a UHaul pickup that we loaded time and again with lumber from our friend, David, and from the Home Depot. The latter we attacked like the hoodlums that we are, tearing down the aisles at top speed on a Tuesday morning, seeing how much air we could catch with the shopping cart. When we returned the pickup, we spent the afternoon riding the bus home and touring the scenic route just for the fun of it. What a delight to spend a few hours spinning and laughing!

The garden work also took precedence. I loaded 1/2 yard of compost into the back of my Volvo stationwagon and carted it off to the neighbors to plant another corn and bean field. I turned and planted three beds with tomatoes, peppers and green beans. I weeded, watered, and mulched. The winter garden at Ben's place we slashed to the roots to make room for a quick cover crop. Compost piles built, manure moved, the earth rose through my fingertips and grounded me with her energy and insight.

At one point, I felt exhausted and worried considering how much there was to plant and dig within the next two weeks. I needed a day off to rest, I told myself. I had pushed just a bit harder in the digging than I could recover from easily, especially on my moon cycle. But the garage contents would have to be moved and the wall taken down before the concrete poured in two weeks. When would I rest?

These were my thoughts as my hands shook wet laundry and hung it to dry. Now, came the answer. Rest now. I inhaled deeply and smiled. A pair of underwear. Ah, that is all. A sock. Yes. Here is my rest. And so I hung laundry and only hung laundry for fifteen minutes. The last piece went up and my strength and joy restored at once. I am grateful for the lesson.

The weekend before, we dug almost 300 square feet of footing, 18" deep -- nine hours a day at the shovel 'til finished. Seda and I discussed world history with such fervor that the hole swallowed us effortlessly. We have worked side by side for seventeen years now. Our romance has long since crumbled and blown with the wind, but the one mindedness of our partnership stands naked like bedrock between us. When she inched the excavator across a narrow landbridge, I sharply begged her to retreat. Half an hour later, I fell sobbing into her arms for what we've lost and what we've held through this transition. These are old bones.

The boys spent those days and much of the week floating in and out of the building site with friends, carrying lumber, popsicles, and books to read. They run half-wild in the neighborhood, accepting sun screen and food from other mothers hands with trust and appreciation. The last children in at night, they are rooted to their own set of possibilities, independence imminent.

On Saturday, I led an NVC workshop in Portland, gone for the day. At seven o'clock at night, I took in the piles on piles of laundry, miscellaneous toys, clothes, seeds, and projects that had layered themselves in the house as I labored a week outdoors. I asked Trinidad when he could help me clean up. "Well, actually, mom... I had other plans," he told me.

I needed empathy. As the boys played badmitton at the neighbors, I called a friend. My worries poured out about the timing of our project, my desire to live in joy, my needs for efficiency and more than anything, connection and teamwork. In fifteen minutes (hard to take in the chaos of my home), I wound down to the core of what I could see: a week of work I engaged in with almost no interruption from the kids. A week they entertained themselves without screeens, and here was the mess to prove it.

I smiled. It is my joy to contribute back to them this way. I picked up the house in short order and hugged both of my sweaty children as they came in with the moon. They thanked me profusely as they do daily for all of my work. I heartfully thanked them for their efforts. This is the path I set out to find. Deep gratitude to the universe for keeping my footfalls true.

The next day, a dear friend and her family came to help us move the garage and take down the wall. The work was slow to get rolling. We were not completely prepared, and this fact shifted many outcomes. I found myself not resisting at all, but easily moving to give Ben empathy for the fact that he, too, had come to help in a short window and now had no time left. The empathy wound around to other frustrations and mournings as I witnessed it calmly, making space for us all to grow, individually and in relationship. He sighed over and over, melting into the carseat as I hung off the car window, feet planted in the street.

This is my work, I thought. This is what I'm here for. I felt so grateful to have found the strength to ask for empathy myself the night before, to have grounded myself in compassion, that I might offer it to others. The time it all took felt meaningless as the space opened wide for all possibilities.

There is a hole in the wall now. Seda swung the sledgehammer like she meant it, and the concrete shook. Eight kids from the neighborhood took front row seats with lollipops and shouted commentary over the fence to others. I cut a bouquet to send home with our friends who brought food, hands, and hearts to this work. My intentions for the day -- fun and connection -- manifested.

I am so grateful to be present here at the foundation.

Food For Love

Our table is set with the infinite efforts of a universe alive. Can we ever fully appreciate the food that sustains us? Dishes, plates and four sleepy people encircle sauteed apples with vanilla honey yoghurt and cornbread. It is a moment of transformation, every element awake in its reckoning.

May we reflect the wisdom of our food.

Precious honey has been taken from the hive, our bees work tireless in life and death humming to the flower's center. Veiled in white, I pledged my efforts to their keeping while the harvest thick and golden sweet poured from the comb between my gloved fingers. I promise not take an ounce more than they will eat, and their hive is in my care.

The yoghurt has cultured on my counter, slowly stiffening to a tart and creamy white. This milk has traveled in the hands of a farmer that I know, across our broad county, from a goat who offered herself in trade for her keeping. Whether this exchange is fair is a question I hope we all ponder for as long as we enjoy her efforts.

Corn has been harvested from the plot across the street. The earth there had baked with spotty lawn for a decade until I mulched and planted it with broken heart and wildly open mind. I taste the moment now and then, transformed to gritty sweetness. This corn came willingly in the stewardship of my family and community. I have lifted it from the stalk, dried and ground it for our bread. This meal is an offering from the earth in our care. Will our efforts to sustain her be equal to the gifts she has bestowed?

Apples grew willynilly wild upon the neighbor's tree. Trinidad and I brought crates early on a Saturday morning in August, dew still on the grass. I stretched tall on a ladder with the picker balanced precariously in hand filling box after box. Trinidad got bored, sat in the gutter eating downed fruit and wished to go home. An autumn afternoon saw every apple cut and frozen to stillness, poised for transformation.

With reverence do we complete the circle, only as we see it. With reverence do I share the stories hidden in the flesh, the skin, the germ and bran of all we eat.

This food is for love.

Am I Bored?

So. Tonight I decided to teach the dog to clean up. She was already running around with Lincoln Logs between her teeth anyway, and I thought in that miserlyteacherly way: I can shape that.

Thank goodness for dogs. Who else could I feed processed food to, command, and occassionally lay a guilt trip on (after, for example, she consumed an entire plate of pancakes)? I have to crack the halo on something.

I told her to "take it." She picked up the Lincoln Log and spit it out. "Good dog!" I said and gave her a kibble. We did this over and over so she learned to hold it in her mouth until I said "okay!" -- up to 3 seconds. Then I tried to chain the next step and get her to drop it in the bucket. I always like to think she's some kind of dog genius and I rush the steps. Why do I do that?

She learned to drop it whenever and wherever she wanted. But, like a child, she was very generous and gave me another try.

I retaught what I'd untaught, and now the dog is very full of kibble. I told her how smart she is. (Though what am I?) Even though she did mistake my finger for the 2 notched log once. Have you seen the size of a terrier's teeth? I'd remove the bandaid to show you, but my finger might fall off.

She pointed out that she would like more kibble by gnawing rather fiercely on the leftover logs. What kind of hobby is this, for a stay-at-home mom? What have I come to?

I think there's progress. She can hold it and chew it up and spit it out. Wait, what was the original behavior I was trying to shape?

Yeah, well. I'm not done. I'm much faster at cleaning up the Lincoln Logs now before she gets to them. Call me crazy, but still I aim to have a clean house ... and a fat dog.

Mothers Day and a Remodel

Happy Mothers Day to each of you who daily shepherds souls upon this plane!

Seda and I celebrated the day together as my sweetheart dove into a mysterious plot with the boys about Mother's day breakfast. They put up a feast: cinnamon bagels with peanut butter, salsa, chocolate sauce and apples. This delicacy is designed to be piled one upon the other and eaten. Seda ate two. I enjoyed one and found them to taste just as interestingly as they sound. The boys made us cards, too, and Sam continued wishing us a Happy Mother's Day until he fell into bed.

I took Seda up to the tree house and we did a 30 minute meditation together about mothering which was very sweet for us both. In the middle of it, one of our beehives decided to swarm. I guess it heard the importance of birthing and abundance in the air. We decided to forego our walk in the park for the adventure of donning bee gear and attempting a capture.

Just as we got the bees in a box, a neighbor came to tell us that another swarm had showed up three doors down. At that point, the boys forgot to stay inside as we'd told them to and Sam got stung. He was shocked and scared because he'd forgotten the bees would be feeling irritated. We treated it, then walked to the neighbors to see a lovely swarm balling on a tree limb, completely accessible.

We tried to locate another bee person who would like it, and just at that time, the bees we'd put into our box vacated, so we caught the new swarm ourselves. This whole procedure took a couple of hours, but we ended up with 10-15,00 gorgeous bees and a queen that we were able to gift to a friend who is just getting started.

It is a gift to us to give. This friend, David, is backing us in a very big plan we are now embarking on: a remodel! We have decided that the living room (futon) is no longer a decent bedroom for Seda, and she has designed a bedroom/office/laundry (w/composting toilet and sink) wing that will sit where the strawberry beds are now. David has tipped the scales in making this possible by offering many scavenged materials and his time and expertise in foundation work.

I can hardly believe we're going to do it. I'm terrified -- what if I don't have what it takes? The energy, the patience, the strength? If I don't, I guess it takes a lot longer to complete. Maybe they fire me as mother, lover, and project support. Not likely, now that I ponder it.

My hopes? I envision that this experience brings us all closer as a family. I see us learning how to better support each other physically, emotionally, and in our learning as we all push our comfort zone in every way. I see us sharing a meaningful adventure, and being aware and awake to it's value and repercussions. I see us all learning new skills (especially me and the boys) and becoming more physically fit. I see us giving and receiving in our community on new levels as we seek help in all phases. (Let me know if you'd like to be on the list!) I envision a beautiful new home that meets our growing needs as a family.

Wow. Celebrations and new challenges to embark upon. I am grateful for the rich tapestry of my life before me.

I am a lucky mom.

Musings On A People Struggling To Survive

I have a new theory to try out.

I decided last week that if 80% of my life was lived in the root rhythms our species has held for thousands of years then I would be living rather than surviving. Up to 20% is often variable due to the particularities of cultures, natural "disasters" or other unexpected upheaval. In these variables, our needs for predictability (among others) are not met. When our needs for predictability are not met, our needs for trust are not met. Ultimately, I define the need for trust loosely as the belief that I will maintain the ability to stay fully present regardless of my circumstances. When I lose my footing in this foundational need, I am likely to move into the realm of scarcity and fear.

A certain proportion of our lives cycling through the predictable feeds us sustainably even as the occasional disturbance of the earth at our roots brings needed bursts of fertility and growth. I liken this directly to my garden. When I dig, the oxygen and loosening of the soil for new roots offers a fresh supply of energy to seedlings. When I employ this strategy over and over, the herds of microorganisms which hold the soil together nutritionally become exhausted as they replenish and reorganize themselves over and over. Soil constantly worked loses fertility over the long haul.

In this way, I have watched the nouveau strike our culture at alarming rates. We travel faster and farther from our places of origin and our current homes. Our apparent ease in this is taken at great cost to our planet. If you would like a realpolitik example, try pushing your automobile around the block. How much energy does it take? Imagine a hundred horses (or more!) stomping and sweating to lug you in your finery to the store. As I drive my car once every week or so, I ponder it. Ouch.

We absorb change in other ways, too. Our food is processed beyond recognition. Our time is spent behind screens, keeping up in various ways with the sensibilities of our culture. We feel overwhelmed with how much there is to learn, to know. Most of us do not live in community or extended families anymore.

Some rhythmic variables (up to 20%, I think) would not be shared across all peoples. Nomads move their place (in human scale travel) but stay with their people. Others with a sense of place sometimes shift in people. Each of these challenges can be absorbed without living in a state of constant crisus (surviving) if there are not so many that the barrel overturns.

So here's the fun part: what is in the 80 list and what in the 20 as I make my way in the world?

I'm just beginning to figure it out, so I expect the lists on this post to grow over the weeks. Here are my initial musings:

Human Scale Sustainable Rhythms, 80% (goal):
*bike or walk to my destination (contact with earth in travel, human scale)
*live in a small house (clutter collecting deterrent) and smaller footprint
*awareness of energy usage in heating (I now am wood heated and in connection with that intimately as I prepare fuel for winter)
*eating food that I prepare or harvest
*doing my own laundry, dishes, housekeeping (natural daily rhythms)
*building long term relationships with people, plants, and animals, thus
*remaining in place or cycling through the same places over time
*working with the earth to grow my food
*sharing food, tools, children, space


Out of Sync (ultimately) 20%:
*typing this to me and you on the computer
*using electricity
*traveling by car, airplane
*living apart from my family of origin
*being in debt (still, ergh)
*eating out
*using the phone ("Poison!" calls Trinidad.)
*eating food that does not originate from my locale
*not being in touch with the make of my clothing



Please keep in mind that the "out of sync" is not necessarily "bad" or even something I want to change. Obviously the choice to engage in this list nourishes me in some way or I would not do it. Nevertheless, spending more than 20% of my life energy here is exhausting and mentally/spiritually debilitating in a chronic sense. My efforts to name it here are intended to meet my needs for awareness and understanding.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

I Didn't Mean To Say It

"Mom was saying 'sh#*!" a lot when we checked the bees yesterday," Trinidad told Sam as we ate lunch together. Sam giggled and looked at me disbelieving. He and I have been discussing the potential consequences of swearing.

"Yeah," said Trinidad, who had been suited up and manning the smoker beside me the day before. "We took apart the boxes and she said 'Sh$*! Baby bees!' [these, white and undeveloped, exposed to the sun above the frame] then we looked some more and she said, 'Sh&$! There's the queen. Sh%^! Sh@#! We can't squish the queen!'"

Sam rolled his eyes at me and giggled again.

"I guess," I said (humbly, mind you) "that there is a secret place in your Mama where the sh%* is stored, and in certain extreme situations, the door just flies open and it all comes out."

Trinidad's broad grin showed his half-chewed lunch. Sam fell off the picnic table bench laughing.

"Now, Mom," Trinidad reasoned,"the time you almost skidded our car off the icy road and you were saying 'Da^%!' and 'Sh*^!' I could understand, because it was a life-or-death situation."

"I did say the Lords Prayer afterward and forgave my father [the earthly one] for all that I held against him. I did do that."

"Well, yes," said Trinidad, "But the beehive wasn't that bad, was it?"

"30,000 bees lost and 25 pounds of surplus honey, all gone with us responsible. I'd call that bad."

He thought a moment. "Sh&#," he said.

What's It Worth?

"Sam, would you like to help me with the weeding?"

"Well...would you pay me?"

"Mmmm -- yes. Even though I don't get paid."

"That's alright, Mama. You can pay me, and I'll give you half."

Offloading Surplus

Here's a follow-up to the "Don't Like My Peaches" post.

I'm thinking about surplus. In particular, I'm thinking about trees dropping apples by the pound onto hard concrete, seniors who have time and no money, kale plants lushly bolting into seed while their gardeners show up nine-to-five at their paid workplaces. All this care, these resources, the synergistic kindness of Gaia in our stewardship, dissipating into the environment without meeting needs.

A request, in NVC, is the point at which an action is begged. It is where the rubber meets the road and food hard won is placed in the hands of the hungry. Expression without it is a chorus of feelings and needs, authentic and courageous, but spoken without the effect of meeting needs.

We all have our peaches. On my tree, there is time to spend. Time for laundry, dishes, cooking, reading to children, weeding and planting. Those who are nourished by my efforts land here. And I have needs unmet as well. Wouldn't I like more time to really focus and play with my children, time to nurture myself? How will I find it?

Surplus. I have enough peaches to share, but I need some beans. When my peaches are ripe and easy to collect, I pick and I eat, I can and I freeze, I jam and I bake. After this effort has been made, a hole in the fabric can become apparent.

Too many peaches. The way our culture is currently set up, we operate in isolation. Each of us goes to the grocery store to support our little islands of family with the food we need. Sometimes we don't even look out the back door at what Gaia has to offer. At a potluck last week, I noticed we were low on greens and offered to go pick some wild cress and dandelion. Spring is bountiful in so many ways.

What do we do with our excess peaches? If we habitually stumble into our cars, go to work and shop with eyes to our own needs alone, the peaches will go to the bugs. It ain't a bad thing to feed the worms, but given the amount of damage we do to our natural world in order to feed ourselves out of grocery bags, I'll say we could be more efficient.

Here is a request, a call to action. You consider your surplus, and I'll consider mine. Those resources we stockpile without using are a liability to ourselves as energetic clutter and to the world as we pay cash to consume new materials. I propose that we learn to see our lettuces before they bolt and share them, care for the children that show up and work themselves into the fray, feed the neighboring elderly when we cook too much for ourselves. I propose that we even assert ourselves in helping each other to recognize our talents, abilities, and resources to share. I invite you to educate me!

This shift requires awareness first and then a willingness to share. If it is truly surplus that we witness on our shelves, then it can be parted with painlessly, particularly if cumulative losses are greater if it is not used. Consider: if I pull the flowering kale from my garden and feed you effortlessly, then you may do the same, catching me by surprise to meet my needs later. At times, we are asked to give what is not surplus, and we want to be generous (integrity) and to see others' needs met. A graceful decline is all the easier (and often better received) in view of what we routinely give with ease! My offering is a bank deposit with no strings attached.

I do not give in this way with the expectation of a gift in return. I do give in this way as a strategy to meet my needs for sustainability. To give and to give and to give... the natural cycle of life cannot be broken. I will receive.

But I am in choice about what I will give. I give my best to those who want it, and it will be my surplus. Will you join me?

Best Kid Stuff For Creation and Play

I just ran across a list I composed a couple of years ago and decided to post it. What follows is my own "Best of" list regarding what children most enjoy occupying themselves with. Early on, it became apparent that most toys go obsolete within minutes or hours, and still we (as a society) throw our money at them, stare at them gathering dust, and then send them to the landfills. We don't need much to fully enjoy our development, and this list happily serves ages 1-100.

Here it is:
boxes (add tape for hours more fun)
balls
natural fiber scarves
blocks
marbles and marble mazes
dolls
paper, pens, crayons, colored pencils, paints and brushes
clay (as in the kind that dries -- I run from modeling clay)
bird seed in a large flat bucket (my favorite gift for the 3 and under crowd)
vehicles

Short list, huh? Countless variations, but my experience has pointed to keeping it simple. Please post a comment to add your own favorites. Hope it's helpful for an upcoming birthday party!

What They Said....

No names named, here are some gems from kids in my world this week:

Advertising spy services,
"I'm a Spy. You can tell because of my [cowboy] boots and... all this stuff [sunglasses]. My shirt says 'Sketchers,' but it's really a spy shirt -- see? It says 'S.' Spy."

Describing a younger sibling,
"He was excited about 'dickers' which was his word for 'stickers,' and then he came over with respiratory napkins stuck all over him...."
(That is what those napkins are about, isn't it? A reminder to breathe deeply?)


My six-year old told me after babysitting a four-year old (mother's helper):
"I told him I could read him a book and he said, 'What? No, you can't read books. Only adults can do that.' [Me: What did you tell him?] I said, 'Well, actually, anyone can read if they practice.'"

The Insurance Agent

Seda and I sit looking across a broad wooden desk at our insurance agent who keeps her eyes on the form she is filling out in our stead as a request for a new life insurance policy. Every frank question she poses requires an answer of inscrutable honesty.

"Have you, in the last six years, seen a doctor or psychologist?" she asks Seda.

"Well, yes, both," Seda answers.

"For...?"

"Yes, Seda, what's it on the books for?" I ask.

"Depression, I think. Yes, that was it. Then the doctor for hormone therapy," she says.

The agent scribbles this jargon quickly, looking relieved.

"Will they take you off the 'preferred' rates for having gender dysphoria?" I ask.

"I don't think so. I don't know," she says. The agent declines comment. "It was never an official diagnosis, and the gender psych I see in Portland is on a cash-only basis -- no paper trail."

"They probably won't even notice," I tell her. "Unless they look at that little box that's now checked 'female.' Then they'll probably wonder. The name change, you know. But, hey, no formal diagnosis. It's an at-home transition. Something in your Wheaties."

Our agent cannot suppress a giggle, but keeps her eyes on the paperwork, unsure about our relationship and her role in supporting us.

"Come to think of it," I add, "it must have been the Fruit Loops. I thought I warned you about those." Seda and I laugh out loud.

"Have you been advised to have an operation?" comes the question from behind the desk.

"Yes," says Seda demurely. Then she turns to me. "Is that the right answer?"

"NO," I tell her.

"Oh," she says, and folds her hands in her lap. "Well, the Association of -- but, then, 'No,' I've not been personally advised by a doctor to have an operation."

She'll have one, of course. And by the time that policy is up, the physical exam itself could not argue with that little box marked "female."

Not that it would matter if they did. She is who she is, though certainly not the man I married.

"Are you -- will you... stay married?" the agent asks uncertainly.

"It looks good on paper, doesn't it?" I say.

"That's about the extent of it," says Seda.

"For as long as we share children and a sense of humor, perhaps."

The ancient Chinese blessing-in-a-curse: May you live in interesting times.

For The Birds

If the blog has been quiet lately, the house has not.

Two weeks ago we purchased twenty-seven chicks in several breeds (New Hampshire Red, Rhode Island Red, Plymouth Barred Rock, Americauna, Jersey Black Giant, Golden Laced Wyandott, Buff Orpington) from a local feed store. If I planned to heat and tend to four chicks, a flock could not take many more resources, I reckoned. A half dozen will be our laying hens, a half-dozen hens we'll sell, and the roosters will go to pot.

Most of my friends said, "Oh, baby chicks! How fun." I wondered.

We brought said chicks home and quickly discovered that they needed more space than what we'd planned for. We collected refrigerator boxes, duct tape, masking tape, kitchen shears and a half dozen kids who appeared to have smelled our recent additions and then turned up "coincidentally."

Picture the building party that ensued while children cuddled stacked chicks and offered them a view from the living room windows. Imagine the Chick Hotel that emerged, two-story in parts complete with ladders and arched doorways. I can only imagine the effort myself. I think we adults were hiding in the kitchen where it was safe.

On the first nights, we kept the heat lamp on as instructed. Seda, who sleeps on the futon in the living room, found herself sleeping in the henhouse. The girls (okay, so it's hopeful) stayed up all night to party. Goodness knows what they found to talk about. Seda never slept.

On the third night, I switched beds with Seda, turned off the heat lamp, and stoked a fire in the wood stove until temperatures soared. I was up every couple of hours to check the babies and add wood. It's now two weeks later, our wood pile has much diminished, and I've given up chasing them all back onto the heating pad in their designated sleeping quarters.

For all that, they are cute. At the moment, awkward and partly feathered, the bulk of them sleep with necks laid long and faces flat against the newspaper. One young rooster already knows his place and never appears to sleep, but keeps vigil with a half-bald head and wary eye over the downy brood. I admit I am charmed. His work ethic surpasses my own.

What have I learned? I know now that I will not ever again set out to create an orphanage for chicks. They came into the world too early, and our sun cannot sustain them motherless. Determined, they peck at pictures of asparagus from the Safeway ads in their bedding and "dust bath" against smoothe cardboard. I cannot feed them a natural diet such as they would be offered in the chicken yard with a mother hen, and have instead substituted granular chick starter with some dried nettles. I've just started adding fresh greens.

I did not purchase medicated chick starter, because I did not want them to take in medicine for ailments they did not feel. And yet, this medication could mitigate the unnatural season and environment that I have contributed to. Their manure is on newspapers. Do I want this on my compost pile? Urban recycling with agri-waste -- garbage and gold. How can I integrate myself more gracefully into the cosmopolitan permaculture? What is fair to my babies now?

I pick up each, stroke and speak to them gently as I change their papers three times a day. I offer my attention as much as I can amidst the drumming, keyboards and wrestling of my own lively brood. I focus my care to their well-being and open my heart to the sadness that is mine in having perpetuated such an unnatural, though conventional, method of raising up chicks. "What can I do for you now?" I ask.

I can promise you this: next time, it will be different. Next year, I'm calling up Rent-a-Rooster and pollinating my homebound hens right here so they can lay, sit, and deliver what they are called to bring forth. I will let you, my then-grown flock, warm and feed them through the summer that they may be ready to lay the following spring.

My footprint is never small enough. What was I thinking? I am not a hen.

Learning the Musette, by Sam

One day, my Mom asked me if I wanted to learn the Musette, and I said, "okay!" So we sat down at the piano, and my mom taught me how. Then I was playing it. I was usually hitting the wrong keys. Then I got it right, and my mom asked me if I wanted to learn the next part, and I said, "okay!"

Then, when it was my next music lesson, my music teacher, Ben, taught me the first part of the Musette. And he also taught me the third part of Bartok.

"Don't Like My Peaches...

...don't shake my tree!" Sweet song.

I'm only just grasping the significance of that line.

Why is it that some relationships are so effortless and others so taxing? Sometimes the answers are easy to discern, other times near impossible.

"Would you be willing to bring in some firewood?" I ask Trinidad.

"Ugh!" he says. "No, I don't really want to."

"But would you do it because it would lighten the load of all I am working on to keep order in the house right now and because you might enjoy a fire tomorrow morning?"

"Ergh. Mom, I'm right in the middle of organizing my Pokemon. Maybe later."

My energy bleeds from me in exchanges like this. So much more ease in doing it myself. A month of mourning around how our culture is set up so that parents do not have easy support around routine tasks foundational to a family's health and well-being.

But, wouldn't it be nice if what I asked Trinidad to do was actually a joy for him to contribute? Not just something he liked to do, but something he liked to do especially because I enjoyed it, too?

I enjoy doing housework and cooking (to a point), particularly if my efforts are seen and appreciated. How can I discover and request the work that is most joyful for others to offer me? What do I enjoy receiving from Trinidad that he likes also to give?

There is a list forming in my mind. I find hope there.

I am also grateful to stumble on this question, because it seems to be at the heart of all functional working relationships, be they parent-child, employee-employer, or the work of lovers. If the mutual giving is intrinsically motivated, then there is no energy expended in the giving. It is sheer joy.

Yes, this is the Real World (even I have to smirk at our limited scope), and somebody has to clean the toilet if we don't want the smell to knock us out while we brush our teeth. So someone does the duty, maybe willing but not wanting. Okay. Some energy expended. But if the person who did the job now receives with grace the gift that others wish to give, that energy is restored. We strike a balance not in blanket giving and receiving, but by doing so with tender awareness of each others Work in the world, that we may grow and harvest in community with beauty, ease and fun.

If we do not want to take the time to imagine or get to know each others passions and how they might align with our own needs, then our world loses its human scale. We are reduced to lists that are accomplished with a sense of "have to," and we drag our feet resentfully through what could be a ritual of caring.

With this in mind, we also choose our communities. "Change the dynamic or change the person," a friend wisely suggested. Exchanging my children is not an option (with gratitude that I've never seriously thought of trying), so my determination to uncover and enjoy the gifts that I can authentically receive from them as a contribution is all the more pressing.

The commitments I have to friends and lovers is now defined by only that -- what is my level of conscious determination in finding a way that we can both be in our joy? How can the vast majority of giving and receiving between us be effortless and fun? Why did we choose each other in the first place? Has there been some shift? Are our needs still met in the balance of this relationship? Do I, in fact, have good cause to keep shaking the tree?

This effort is not about a commitment to people. It represents a commitment to love.

Out Standing In Their Fields

From six-year-old Sam (who reads at about fifth grade level):
"Mama, when I grow up and die, do you think I'll be canonized in... 2099 ... to be the Saint of Reading?"

From eight-year-old Trinidad:
"Your brain gets as big as what you're doing. I want mine to be bigger than a video game."

Tired

We went to the snow last weekend and shared a cabin with three other families. Trinidad rode his sled in all ways (even "snowboarding" over jumps, hands-free standing) from the crack of dawn until after dark. He barely came in to eat. During daylight hours, he did not enjoy the distraction of a mama asking questions. After that time, he was too exhausted to speak intelligibly and mostly snarled and made faces.

I got tired of being responded to in monosyllables at high decibles. I grew weary of his intense frown at every turn, eyebrows furrowed and silver eyes glaring up from half-closed lids.

"My sweet little Sith," I thought, with sinking heart. I don't like having such a thought about my child. Craving connection, I told him over and over how much I did not want to be spoken to in that tone of voice, at that decible, with those words.

And still, it continued. I gave myself a lot of empathy.

The weekend we had much looked forward to met some needs while others withered tragically. I longed for fun and connection with Trinidad. I had a talk with him between scowls. I offered empathy around his needs for focus and fun, and these conversations brought us both some understanding and relief. I also shared the intensity of my sadness, the unmet needs, and my worries that if we couldn't find ways to connect, I couldn't imagine investing so much in a trip like this in the future.

He heard that. He tried to turn around, but it was hard. He was exhausted in every way, even struggling to sleep. I saw these needs drastically unmet for him and again questioned the resources plunged into a trip that left so much wanting.

On the ride home, we talked about what we liked and did not like about the adventure. I only referred briefly to what we had talked about earlier, imagining that he would be tired of discussing it (we had a few ten to fifteen minute meta-conversations about it). Instead, he opened the topic again.

"Yeah, I remember -- we might not be able to go again," he said.

"Well, it's not about that, honey," I told him. "I don't want my frustration to be connected to whether or not we go again. I just feel so sad when we struggle to relate so much over a weekend. I do not like being spoken to and responded to in those ways [we were both clear which]. I would like to be spoken to with the same care and tone that I speak to you in. I want that mutuality. It's part of a respect that I want for both of us. In a trip like this, the challenge is more apparent because you're tired, and I'm more sensitive because we're in a group."

I really wanted to own this last part. "I feel embarrassed when you shout 'You hid my boots!' and make this face [scowl], because I want to be clear with myself and others that I care about the words I use and want to be spoken to with. I'd like to have discussions where we both take responsibility for our feelings and needs."

"Mom, I wonder if it's something else, too," he said. "I wonder if you'd really like it if we were communicating that way because you'd like other people to see how good you are at being a mom."

Well, I had some judgment come up about myself for a moment and gave myself empathy -- do I want people to value me so that I can value myself based on the pretty package of "good communication?"

"I'd really like for you to be authentic," I said. "I want you to say what's real for you, but take responsibility for it by saying how you feel and what you need rather than blaming me. I want to connect and to hear what's alive, even if I don't like it."

"No, mom," Trinidad said. "What I mean is that when other people come around, sometimes I'd like to show them how good I am at something -- like shooting a hoop or doing a magic trick."

"Wow," I said, and I meant it. "You mean that I'd like to show them a representative sample of what I do all day -- the connection we usually share?"

"Yeah," he said. "Is that it?"

I felt such relief when I fully heard this empathy guess. Why wouldn't I want to share this work that is vitally important to me with my community in the most distilled way I could -- by example? Why wouldn't I be disappointed if the snapshot of time we shared together was filled with a radical display of unmet needs rather than our usual rich dance of connection, challenge, and reconnection? It's not about wanting to be a "model NVC Mom" for the sake of "doing it right." That did not resonate, anyway, even though I had some confusion and worry that there could be something there. I value the acceptance that I generally feel about showing up as we are en famile. Instead, what Trin shed light on for me is a need for celebration and empathy; I am in awe at the depth and quality of connection (regardless of difficulty) that I experience in my day-to-day, and I'd like us all to be seen for that.

What Trin put his finger on was Murphy's Law itself: the minute someone is watching, the ball misses its mark. Over and over. Some hours, some days, some weekends, the Law prevails, and I tear my hair in frustration. I mourn.

And then, when I pick up the pieces and find unlikely support in the seeming source of my struggle, I remember that there are so many phases in this metamorphosis. So many forms that both of us will take, so much room for growing and finding our places with each other.

I am grateful that Trinidad offered his heart, his ear, his words of wisdom at a time when we both bottomed out. I am grateful for the connection I treasure, the clarity and the hope.

And still, I'm tired.

Time Crunch For The Unschooled

"I have been trying," said Trinidad, "to work brushing my hair into my schedule these days. It's been hard. I've been busy."

Urban Farm Mother Says....

1. If you stay inside long enough in the winter, you may forget that the bathroom sink is not the best place for children (or anyone) to wash muddy rocks.

2. If you have made the above mistake, you might look at your toothbrush carefully before using it the next time.

3. Children do not always remove their gloppy boots at the entrance, despite their best intentions. This fact could be viewed as an inexpensive personal growth workshop in the art of lettting go.

4. While living large on small city acreage is to be commended, hanging the white clothes within six feet of the manure pile that awaits transport to the garden is not advisable -- it happens.

5. If you have made the above error, you may be consoled to know that whatever streaks are now visible on whatever whites you dare to own will only be recognizable in origin to you -- the fact of the matter is that "white" clothes (amidst children under 10) are only "dirty" when they stink.

6. Beating the dirt out of rugs is a charming way to connect with your ancestors and tidy your home. Don't wear lipgloss to do it.

7. When children dig, they find tools you did not know exist to do it.

8. When children hit the water table while digging, this is a marvelous discovery and opportunity for a lesson in earth science.

9. When children hit the clay layer just below the water table, your deck and floors will pay the price. But you will discover the charm of authentic clay booties on everyone -- even the dog.

10. It is shocking what a mother will let slide as a "nutritious lunch" when she is trying to gain a little more time in the garden. This moment-of-abandon acts as a balance for all of the fresh, crisp greens she has been unsuccessfully encouraging her children to eat. Surely if sinning in the mind is still a sin, intending to feed your children local, healthy food is worth something....

11. Despite the hard-core belief of fantastic young imaginations, plywood alone is not an adequate surfboard for a pond in winter.

12. It is very rare that only one child at a time falls into a muddy pond. This is a moment of intense cooperation that you are not likely to celebrate.