Fun and Games, 2011 Version

This year, my Drafts folder, like my cup, runneth over. It is filled with glimmering tidbits, languishing un-fleshed-out. While one might be tempted to find something poignant to say about this, I am actually too buoyed up by tonight's Wii Family Obstacle Course and Slalom Skiing Showdown to seek out the maudlin or nostalgic.

Instead, then, I treat this like a little treasure-trove, a reminder of all the many good moments of the year.

Two great questions from the past year

His (after some weeks of discussing, in more or less detail, how the baby gets out): "But Mama, How does the baby get IN?"

Hers (standing on her bed and brandishing her dolly):
"Did you know my baby can fly?"
Me: "No, I didn't."
Her: "She can. Watch this." (hurling the baby-doll across the room)

Most pointed "I really ought to organize my life" moment

Inventory of the pocket of my car door, taken in June: preschool Sunscreen Alert form (from the previous year);  pair of neoprene gloves (perfect for shoveling the driveway of snow); cozy ear band (THAT's where it went!); extra socks, size 5T, pink, slightly dirty. 

Best overheard conversation, in serious tones

Friend: ". . . I was going to buy a van with my money because I have like a hundred dollars in my bank account, but then I decided not to because I have more money at home, so I have like a thousand dollars, and I decided to save it because I'm going to buy my own house, and then I don't have to live with my parents and I can do whatever I want, like watch movies any time I want..."

Son: "Yeah, but you have to be at least [pausing to consider] thirty to have your own house..."

Friend: "I know."

Son: "So you can't buy your own house."

Friend: "But I would put it right next to my parents' house, in the backyard."

Son: "Like a playhouse?"

Friend: "No, a real house."

Son: "Well, the police would put you in jail for breaking a law."

Friend: [still vaguely hopeful] "I know. . ."

Son: "So you can't have your own house."

Friend: "I know." [dejected sigh]

Awesome personal revelation

Grocery shopping with children is like parkour without the coolness. The only thing that redeems the exhaustion of climbing walls (or preventing your children from climbing displays) is that sometimes, they will come home from the grocery store and eat goat cheese and like it. And then they will try to learn how to pronounce "chevre" with the French gutteral "r." And then, just as with childbirth, the miracle of the aftermath overshadows the previous grim bits, and you feel convinced you could do that whole thing all over again next week.

(Unlike with childbirth, you actually will do the whole thing over again next week.)

Best proof that "dumb" animals are smarter than we think

Right around Halloween, the new pup (age 10 months) chose to chew up Bicycling Barbie, effectively turning her into Bicycling Zombie Barbie by removing her face but not fully destroying her. Her smiling mouth, chin and most of one cheek lay in one spot on the floor, while her eyes and the rest of her head perched a few feet away. The body looked as though it had never even met a dog. It was a perfectly zombie moment, perfectly timed for the holiday.

And then, around Christmas, though I hadn't managed to take a photo of Zombie Barbie to post online (but I also hadn't managed to throw her away), the dog found the head again and worried at it a little more. I found her hair on the staircase. Just one day after we watched John Wayne in The Searchers--a movie containing truly awful moments of racism against Indians--my dog scalped my daughter's Zombie Barbie.

In summary

2011 was a year of great family hilarity and so much fun that I found less time to write than I would have liked. In recompense, I was a whole lot happier than I had been the year before--which surely seems more than worth it.

Here's hoping you and yours have a 2012 worth celebrating!

Farm Children

The slanting morning sun turns the ginkgo into something more like a blazing candle than a tree. But the  children, oblivious to everything that is not the antique tractor, only notice the tree when its branches interfere with their clamoring play. 

"There are still some plums on that tree over there," their grandfather says.

They do not register the offering--not because they do not hear him, or because they do not like plums, but because the sentence itself does not compute in their Midwestern brains.

I walk over to the tree, laden with the last of the dusty purple fruits. "Do you want a plum?" I call over to my children.

"YES!" my son shouts, leaping off the tractor, then pauses. "Wait. Where?" He looks around, confused.

"Right here," I say, pointing to the tree. "You have to choose the one you want."

He and his sister come running, wide-eyed. The small tree, purposefully kept to a height that makes plucking fruit a simple task, offers a wealth of choices to children who have never seen a plum that wasn't stacked in a grocery store display. It takes them a fraction of a second to choose their first plum, but many additional minutes to inspect a dozen more to ensure they have made the right choice before they actually do the picking. We wash off the dust at the outdoor spout, and bite deep into the pale, golden flesh. Tree-ripened to perfection. My son smiles and rolls his eyes in that peculiar way he has to indicate bliss.

Clutching their sticky, half-eaten treasures, the children climb to the top of another piece of once-useful farm equipment. As they munch plums, they look out over the land their father's family farmed for decades.

Three rows of gnarled peach trees mark the limit of their growing. Across the dirt road--in what used to be acres of grape vines tethered to their wires every summer by a boy who remembers the itchy sensation of rising allergies as he worked--the land is leased. The new farmer's tidy rows of baby clementine trees are encased in the high-tech drip irrigation system that has replaced the old irrigation ditch that once doubled as a children's swimming-hole on especially hot days.

My children are not nostalgic for these things. They simply marvel at the plums. "Can we have more?" they want to know.

"Of course," I tell them. I point out the limits of the family property--the rows of peaches on the south side, good for playing under now that the fruit is over, the dirt road the house faces, the bare track where the yard ends on the north side. "You can have anything you like from any of these trees. You don't have to ask permission. You can just pick what you want to eat -- only be sure to wash it first because it's very dusty." I point out the pear tree too. Tossing plum pits on the ground, we walk towards the backyard and spot a pomegranate tree. Pomegranates! So ripe they are literally bursting on the branches.

For an hour, my son sits diligently picking seeds out of the pomegranate, his fingers and face slowly turning crimson. "They look like red teeth," my daughter observes, poking at the fruit. She doesn't care for it too much, so I lead her to the two rows of grape vines that mark the back edge of the yard. Her grandfather has promised there should still be some good grapes back there, "though I didn't take very good care of them this year."

We have to walk past the small vegetable garden--hot peppers, eggplants, tomatoes--all neatly laid out in raised boxes, on our way to the grapes. (You cannot keep a farmer from farming, even when he's retired.) Next we stumble through a confusion of squash vines, hidden from view by the clipped hedge that borders the small lawn. Finally, we reach the grapes--towering, mountainous vines creating perfect hiding spots or forts. "Where are the grapes?" my daughter wants to know. "Look closely," I tell her. And then she spots them. The bunches are few and far between this late in the season, but the grapes, a dusky red, are still firm. She chooses two clusters and carries her treasures back to the spigot to wash them.

We have offered everything we picked to the grandparents, though they smiled and politely declined. "I don't eat much fruit," their grandfather says from his patio recliner. Again, my children seem not to understand. Surrounded by all of this, how can you do anything but gorge yourself on the ripe wonder?

And so they do, eating so much fruit that even the boy who is always hungry is too full to eat lunch.

Later that afternoon, our daughter looks around and says to her father, "This was a good farm." She pauses. "Wasn't it, daddy?"

"Yes," he says to her, "it was a good farm."

Things We Were Very Sure We Knew--But We Really Didn't Know at All--Back When We Were Teenagers

(This is an easy list to start, though it may in fact be impossible to end.)

• How to drive on the highway.
• What "flabby" thighs looked like. On us.
• All the words to that one song that Adam could play so great on his guitar and we all loved to sing softly late at night when we were supposed to be home already but we just had to stay out a few minutes longer and sing that one song, you know the one that goes...
• How much curl was the right amount of curl to make our hair as perfect as possible. 

Senior yearbook photo, circa 1987

• Also: bangs, the value and proportion of.
• Heartbreak.
• That we would always, all our whole lives, be able to finish at midnight, with the help of just one laughing friend, a box of a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts--so hot and fresh that they dissolved into little puddles of happiness on our tongues.
• That we were artists.
• That no one would ever fall in love with us.
• Fashion. More specifically: that your father's size extra-large, shell pink button down looked great on all of us (who were about size 5 back when that meant something). That earrings should be worn in threes, but none of the three should match. That multiple pairs of socks, of different colors, layered over one another and topped by shoes that channeled 1920s football boots looked good on anyone.
• That the most boring thing in the world is dusting. (It turns out to be lying silent and stone still in your toddler's narrow bed at 8pm, uncomfortably pregnant, highly conscious of the fact that you have papers to grade and that if you make the slightest move to leave his room until he is completely asleep, this whole process will have to start all over. Closely followed by starting to grade those papers at 9pm.)
• That the best place to read is in a tree.
• That only babies and old people take baths.
• That doing chores to loud music first thing on Saturday morning is a hardship.

The stuff we were (mostly) right about?

• Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine. (It is gross. However, we don't have to drink it.)
• That whatever you have to face, if you have at least one true friend to see you through, things will be fine on the other side. (Or, at least, finer than they were without that friend along for the ride.)
• Leggings. (!)
• That writing an outline before writing the paper is a stupid waste of time (because how are you supposed to know what your ideas are going to turn out to be until you've written the paper?)
• That homemade macaroni-and-cheese is the best comfort food ever.

What goes on your lists?

Cozy Food

There's a real bite in the air and frost on the grass every morning. In my book, that means it's time to start baking things, stewing things and making soup. In the last week, I've used a pound of butter in various breads, pies and crumbles. I've made a savory beef-and-mushroom pie, drunk good red wine and, tonight, concocted a soup that even the seven-year-old ate with relish. In case you need an easy soup that is satisfying (and that contains nothing they will pick around or moan about), I highly recommend the following.

Hearty Vegetable Soup with Cod

Combine the following ingredients in a stock pot. Bring to a boil, and then let simmer for approximately 20 minutes, or until potatoes and carrots are soft.

2 quarts water
2 Tbsp. good chicken bouillon
1 chopped onion
5-6 small red, russet, or gold potatoes (a combination is nice), chopped
3 small carrots, chopped
1 handful fresh spinach
4 cloves garlic
1/2 a yellow bell pepper, chopped bite-size
1/2 a red bell pepper, chopped bite-size
1 T. grated asiago or parmesan cheese

Season soup with the following, and then puree thoroughly with immersion blender until the mixture is very smooth.

1 tsp. thyme
good pinch salt
fresh ground black pepper

Adjust seasoning to taste. Then add to the pot:

1 pound cod, cut into bite-size pieces

Turn heat off, and leave pot covered, while you sautee the following in a small amount of olive oil, just until the peas are cooked, making sure to leave everything nice and crisp.

1/2 a yellow bell pepper, chopped bite-size
1/2 a red bell pepper, chopped bite-size
2 cups sugar snap peas (or other pea pods; or 1 cup shelled peas)

Check to make sure cod is cooked through. Then dump veggies into soup, and serve.

The soup broth becomes lovely and creamy with the potatoes for a base, and the richness of so many different vegetable flavors is delicious. It was a very nice contrast to the thick bites of cod and few crisp floating veggies.

The beautiful thing about this recipe is that as long as you make sure you have a good mixture of veggies simmering to make the broth nice and rich, you can vary what you choose to puree versus leave whole, depending on what the pickiest in your family will/won't eat in soup. I don't think any kind of peas in pods will puree nicely, so if your household won't eat pea pods, I'd recommend using shelled peas. Also, you could easily substitute shrimp, scallops, or some other firm fish for cod, as well as use other veggies that you like.

All you have to do is procure a crusty loaf to serve alongside, and delicious fall dinner is ready in almost no time.

Dual Citizens?

Daily, with diligence if not enthusiasm, my children pledge allegiance to the Republic of Witchistan.

Mind you, they also pledge allegiance to the United States of America.

They do not seem to be bothered by--or even really to notice--the potential conflict of pledging allegiance to two nations simultaneously.

I would say that perhaps they've reconciled this in their own minds thanks to the whole "one nation, under God" bit. But I'm pretty sure that they haven't thought this through that thoroughly.

Or even really at all.

While it's funny to hear a five-year-old solemnly repeating this pledge over and over in your bed in the dark of the early morning (where "funny" = a better way to wake up than being poked in the ribs by the tiny-but-extraordinarily-pokey toes of the same five-year-old), it also makes you stop and think.

Actually, it made her stop and think. "What's justice?" she asked me this morning. I explained it meant fairness. "Oh," she said, murmuring her way through another rendition, "...with liverty and justice for all."

"Do you know what liBerty is?" I asked, emphasizing the B, so as to help remind her that we weren't talking about internal organs here.

"No," she replied, not really concerned at all.

"It means freedom," I said. "So, 'with liBerty and justice for all' means the country is supposed to have freedom and fairness for everyone."

She seemed unimpressed. Or at least, uninspired. I suppose it is difficult, at age five, growing up in a comfortable house and going to a good school where all the kids have their own desks and plenty of paper and the ones whose home breakfasts are scant or non-existent have a supplement from the school, to imagine a world in which freedom and fairness are NOT inalienable rights.

All the more reason, in my mind, for the teachers who are dutifully drumming this pledge into my kids' heads to do something to explain it to them. To give them a mini history lesson once a week. To explain why this pledge was written, why the flag is an important symbol.

At the very least, to explain to them that they do not, in fact, live in the Republic of Witchistan.

On Homework

Partway through the year in Mrs. Zawarski's first-grade class, I was already a pretty good reader. And I was bored. A lot. When we did worksheets,  we sat quietly at our desks until everyone was done. I was usually among the first to finish, and so I spent a lot of time just sitting at my desk. Quietly. Doing not much of anything that I can recall.

...Thankfully, once I entered second grade, I was allowed to check out books from the library--and after that, I was never bored because I always had a book tucked into my desk. But that was still a year away...

At one point, I tore a little scrap of paper from the corner of something, and penciled a tiny note. "Please give me some homework," it read. I stood up, and silently delivered it to the teacher while other children were still finishing their worksheets.

Mrs. Zawarski looked at the note, smiled at me, and said, "We don't have homework in first grade." And then she dismissed me by looking away. There was nothing I could say in response to her definitive claim, and so I wandered back to my seat. That was that.

Fast forward thirty-plus years.

I have a kindergartner of my own.

Last week, this was her homework:

• 1 short, repetitive book to read aloud daily
• 2 handwriting pages
• a non-fiction book I was supposed to read aloud to her, and to which she is supposed to record her response in a journal
• 2 math pages done in class, to complete and/or correct the incorrect problems
• a set of number-recognition flash cards to quiz on (preferably daily)
• a set of sight-word flash cards to quiz on (preferably daily)
• "sharing" items to bring in, that start with the letter of the week
• an activities sheet to check off, indicating how many activities she did this week that start with the letter F

She is five. Let me repeat: in kindergarten.

Actually, broken down over the course of a week, this is probably half-an-hour to forty-five minutes of work each day. That doesn't seem like much, I realize. And I am not complaining, exactly.

But I am wondering: is it better (i.e. more productive for her? more likely to result in her learning these concepts) for her to do this rote work or for me to read her three books every night before bed? Because since kindergarten started, we're lucky if there's one book before lights-out any more.

Is it more useful for her to drill numbers or to bake with me and count scoops of flour, measure, pour, and begin learning the basis of fractions as we do all these things? Because we don't have time for baking during the week now that we have this homework to do.

I'm sure we're not the only family in the school whose kids like to rake leaves and jump in them, bike around the cul-de-sac with their friends, take the dog for walks, dig in the garden, paint pictures, have a dance party in the kitchen, or play board games while eating popcorn.

But between the after-school care a few days a week, and the ONE day per week (I made sure all the activities were centralized this year) that we go to ballet, soccer and skating (not everyone does every activity), it's not possible both to do homework and to play on the same day after school. Really.

And I'm not quite sure that missing out on playing is a very good idea. Isn't it through play that we learn to invent stories? We build narratives about what our dolls are doing in the doll house. We create back-stories for the pictures we paint. We invent relationships between our puppets, our lego guys, ourselves ("You be the puppy, and I'll be the owner -- [tossing a ball] FETCH!") Through play with others, we learn to share, to compromise, to negotiate. Through play on our own, we learn to be self-sufficient, imaginative, capable of feeling happy in our selves.

Through play, we flex our muscles and our minds.

There is something I fear we are losing through all this homework. I'm sure my daughter will be a good reader by the time she enters first grade. But I also want her to be a happy child, a creative spirit, able to entertain herself, willing to try new activities, able to invent activities to fill the stretches of time that inevitably crop up in our lives. Stretches that used be every single Monday-Friday afternoon from 3-6pm, and every weekend, and all summer, but now are shrinking to the point where they feel like precious stolen moments rather than daily life.

Yesterday, a friend came home from school with Son. They played football in the yard while Daughter painted. They came in and set up the iPod (volume: loud) to make a dance party in the kitchen. The friend saw Daughter painting at the kitchen table and wanted to paint too. So they all painted, while bobbing up and down to the music in their chairs. They took my challenge to create whole paintings using nothing but dots, which led us to look up examples of pointillism online.

It was an impulsive, active, completely delightful afternoon. They might have learned something in the process. But more importantly, they had such a good time that it was almost a shock when dinner-time was suddenly upon us.

I want days like that to be de rigeur. But I fear they will be the glittering highlights, the random special moments we manage to tuck between the trudging days of flashcards, like occasional brave stars shining through on a cloudy night.

Presumably, the homework only gets to be more intense as the grades progress. How to manage it while still enabling the kind of creative, open-ended free time I think is so important for children's development will surely grow to be a bigger conundrum. Any tips you have would be gratefully appreciated.

Balance

 "Stupid dog," I mutter under my breath. The shrill-barking beagle, the one who will not stay off the furniture, is still in his crate downstairs. He cannot hear my invective, though certainly we can hear his baying. And it is only day two of dog-sitting.

"What did you say?" my son asks.

"Oh, nothing," I reply, vaguely too ashamed to have to repeat my frustration in a louder, clearer voice.

"Because I thought you said he was a stupid dog," my son adds, snuggling deeper under the comforter in the chill of the fall morning. "He's not really a stupid dog," he says, speaking slowly, as if feeling his way into his idea, "it's probably really hard to stay in a place where all the rules are completely the opposite of the rules where you normally live."

He is seven, this sage of mine.

I hug him close, affirming how deeply correct he is. "Yes," I say. "I need to have more patience with him. You are absolutely right."

I can hardly believe that here, with his head pressed into the hollow of my shoulder, his feet are approaching my own. How many more of these pre-dawn conversations do I have left? How many months before he sleeps through this precious half-hour, this sliver of our day in which we can talk freely about his interests, his fears, his triumphs, the difficulties he faces at school? In which we can listen to, and really hear, each other?

I wrap my arms around his sinewy child self, breathing deeply the smell of his hair, where still lingers the scent of the baby he used to be. How quickly will this child, who has his own ideas now about how his hair should be cut, outgrow wanting to talk to his mama first thing in the morning?

This fall, he suddenly seems to me to be poised on the edge of older-child-hood. Recently, he is shy of telling me he loves me too as he walks out the door to meet the school bus, though he is also still child enough to look me full in the face, smiling, and tell me he won't tell me he loves me because that laughing defiance is our code for the start of a tickle retaliation. He is wise--wiser than I am sometimes about matters that require patience and empathy, as he innocently reminds me on this chill fall morning. And he is silly--silly enough to squabble with his sister about who gets which bowl of berries at snack time.

I marvel at the balance he maintains. Effortlessly standing on the mid-line between work and play, between the sunshine of sudden full-face smiles and the brooding moodiness of an older child, between observations whose insight stuns me and pouting petulance over having to eat the meat he has been served at dinner.

He is balanced. To perfection. Precisely in the spot between six-years-old and eight-years-old.

In my own efforts at balance, I have neglected this blog for the past four months. I have poured myself into exciting projects and unexpected opportunities that work has given me. I have read, and written, and thought, and read some more. In between that, I have been ice skating with my daughter, reading with my son, walking our new dog, laughing with my husband. I have helped a dear friend move away, and I have made a new friend in one who similarly felt the giant hole our Chicago-bound-girlfriend left behind. I have striven for a balance between work and play.

And while I have made great strides (yes, I can do a half-lutz! I am learning a scratch spin! my four-volume edited collection is nearly done! my daughter has started kindergarten! my son has started playing a new sport! my husband and I have had several real date nights!), I have missed writing here. And I have missed you, my online community. I've been reading your words, feeling somewhat bereft of my own. I have been keeping up with your lives as best I can, feeling my way towards that balance of living my own and not losing a sense of yours.

And so, I am back. I hope more regularly, though probably not every day. I need this kind of creative outlet. I need to write. And I need this sense of community.

Here I am then, trying to take a page from my son's book. Perfectly inhabiting his age, his present, his life, he is a better role model than many others I might identify right now. Balanced, almost effortlessly.

It feels a worthy goal, in this instance, to try to emulate a child.