Won't you be my neighbor?

I took my family out to see the new documentary about Mr Rogers, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"  It's a lovely film.  I think I cried the whole way through it.  There was something good about watching it in a theater and sensing other people getting choked up as well.  My eyes hurt for hours afterward, and I found it very hard to sleep that night because there was so much going through my mind and pulling at my heart.

Mr Rogers was genuinely kind in a way that is far too rare in this world.  We may never see another like him.  There are many people I love and admire and that I have felt lucky to learn from, but Mr Rogers managed to distill the core of what humanity should be centered around more simply than anyone: That we are able to love and be loved.

Special (Babble)

(Mona on the school playground, Oct 30, 2006)

One of the most difficult days I experienced during my husband’s first deployment was on November 1, 2006.  I remember the date because the weather had been fairly pleasant and warm right up through Halloween, but the next morning the temperature dropped dramatically and it was officially cold out.  The reason this was a problem is that Mona, at the time still two years old, would not wear shoes or a coat, and I was only a couple of weeks from giving birth to Quinn.  If I wrestled shoes onto Mona she just kicked them off.  I could not get her into a coat.  I was too pregnant, too exhausted, too stressed, and in too much pain to physically do what needed to be done with Mona to keep her in shoes and a coat.  I was stuck.  I carried her shoes and coat everywhere in the hopes she would come to her senses and ask for them when she got cold, but that never happened.

Every morning when I would take Aden to half-day kindergarten at the public Montessori school I would be caught between a rock and a hard place, because Aden would not walk herself into the building and down to her classroom, which meant Mona had to get out of the car, too.  If I only had to walk Aden across the playground to the building I could have lived with leaving Mona buckled in her car seat, but not if I was going inside the building.  I pleaded with Aden to go alone and she would not.  I pleaded with Mona to at least put on her shoes and she would not.  So I would walk with Mona and Aden into the building and try to figure out what I was supposed to do when it got really cold.  On November 1st when it reached that point, I decided to go to the office after delivering Aden to her classroom to find out if anyone could help me out for just two more weeks until Ian came home for the birth of the baby.


But on my way into the building a woman (I’m assuming a parent otherwise why would she be on the playground?) chastised me for putting Mona in danger by not having her in a coat.  The meanness of her tone startled me and I held out Mona’s coat and said, “Fine, you do it!”  She snapped back that no, I was the parent and I was being irresponsible exposing my child to the cold which was tantamount to abuse and she should report me to Child Protective Services.  By the time I got into the building I was crying uncontrollably.  I didn’t want to be crying but I was so upset and embarrassed and frustrated and at my limit with everything that it was too much.  I cried on and off the entire day.

Now, the upside to that particular story is I met some wonderful people who came to my rescue (including my friend Carol who volunteered to pick Aden up at my house every morning and let her walk into the school with her own daughter, thus solving my dilemma for the rest of the school year), and I learned a valuable lesson about not judging other parents but trying to help when possible.  That woman could have offered to get Mona into the coat and shoes, or at least carried her into the building for me which I couldn’t do while nine months pregnant.  Calling me a bad parent was not helpful to anyone, and to essentially kick a pregnant woman (whose husband was in a war zone) while she’s down was just cruel, no matter how justified she felt.

But that’s not actually what I want to focus on with this post.  I’ve got a whole other piece in the works about judgment and parenting that I will finish tinkering with someday and will put up, but in the meantime I’ve got something else rattling around my brain with a lot of odd tangents to it.  Indulge me while I try to sort some of those thoughts out here.
While I was inside the building that day, trying to pull myself together, I had a talk with an important figure at the school about what solutions there might be to my problem.  I was trying to arrange to have someone meet me at my car in the mornings to help walk Aden to class, or something along those lines.  But this person I was talking to was fixated on the problem of Mona and her shoes.   I got nothing but suggestions for getting Mona into shoes.

Mona is not like anyone I’ve ever known.  At age two she was very much in her own little world.  She didn’t talk much, nothing we said to her seemed to register, she did not exhibit empathy yet, and she was not interested in objects or physical things.  Her favorite toy was her shadow.  She was adorable and brilliant but unpredictable and difficult to manipulate.

The school official didn’t want to hear any of that.  I had to listen to a lecture about sticker charts.  The solution to all my problems with Mona apparently lay in the proper use of sticker charts.  Now, I may not have been able to control my youngest daughter as well as I would have liked, but I still knew her better than anyone else could.  And Mona wouldn’t have noticed a sticker chart if I taped it to her face.  She also would have paid no attention to attempts at reverse psychology or anything resembling logic.  Mona just didn’t want to wear shoes.  I knew the only way to make her do it was to be consistent and force them back on her over and over and over until she realized I was not going to back down on the issue, and I was too pregnant to do that right then.

When I protested and said that the techniques being suggested would not work on Mona, the person got exasperated, eventually saying, “Every parent thinks their child is special.  I’ve seen this work on a thousand children.”  I was not in any emotional state to argue at that point, but I remember thinking very clearly at the time, “Well, every child IS special, and meet child number one-thousand-and-ONE, because you are wrong.”

That line about everyone thinking his or her child is special has stayed with me.  I think about it often.  Every parent should think his or her child is special.  Because every child is special.  And this is an issue I’ve struggled with a little bit, especially when talking with certain people who have differing views from my own.

There is a line in the movie The Incredibles that is central to the point of the film about how “If everyone is special, then nobody is.”  I agree that there needs to be room for people to be extraordinary.  We are not all equal in our abilities or talents or willingness to work.

But I believe that the extraordinary among us with the right encouragement and resources will rise to the top.  I don’t think that just because some people have a specific genius for art or music, etc., the rest of us aren’t worthy to have a go at those things and we benefit from that experience in different ways.  I know artists and musicians who are weary of seeing bad art and hearing inadequate music and wish sometimes others without innate talent would just stop.  I don’t see the mediocre as a threat to the brilliant so it doesn’t bother me particularly, and I accept that the audience for the truly great is sometimes small.  But just because I will never be singer in any official sense does not mean I should never sing.

When I started team teaching violin lessons for clients in music therapy I had to rethink the whole point of playing music.  Normally when I teach the goal is to improve performance on the violin.  I have materials and techniques I use to get students from point A to point B to point C, with the purpose of working toward more complicated music and wider opportunities.  Among the side effects of that kind of training are greater confidence, developing self-discipline, relaxation, and interacting with new people.  In music therapy this is kind of flipped on its head.  The goal is the side effects, and learning to play violin specifically is the vehicle.  So if I happen to have a student who never improves on a technical level because of some obstacle or another, it doesn’t matter.  I see the benefits of playing violin, I just have to think about my part in the equation in a new way.

I have never had a single music therapy student who I did not think benefited from playing violin.  Will any of them go on to great professional careers in music?  Unlikely.  But the same is true of my regular students.  I talk to adults who come in my store all the time who wished they could play violin and somehow think it’s too late to start.  I tell them it’s too late to be a child prodigy, but there is no ‘too late’ for music.  What difference does it make if someone else started younger?  Starting younger did not mean that person went on to do it forever or even be very good.  All that matters is that it brings you joy.  Everyone should be allowed that.  The people who want to put in the exhaustive work of going pro will do so.  They will be exceptional and rightly admired for it.  That doesn’t mean average players have to forgo the fun of making their own music.  So I don’t believe giving everyone a chance to be included somehow negates the exceptional.  It just opens up the possibility for everyone to make it their own.

So is every child special?  I think yes.  Because I don’t mean it in a dopey silly way that suggests we bow down to children or not expect them to behave, I mean that every person–particularly at the beginning of life when they are still learning to make responsible choices–deserves respect and care.  Every child should have a fair chance to be the unique individual he or she is supposed to be.  Every child should be entitled to decent medical care, good nutrition, education, exposure to the arts, a safe environment, and love.  It’s heartbreaking to me that this isn’t the case for even most of the children in this world.  How different things would be if all children were raised as if we are glad they are here.  I don’t understand people or policies that write children born into bad circumstances off as if they don’t deserve better.

I most often hear people griping about the ‘Everyone is special’ problem when it comes to competition or ceremony.  There are people who whine if kindergarteners get a little graduation, or if everyone receives a ribbon or trophy.  Many people want there to be a winner and a loser I suppose.  I think that’s too narrow.  For one kid maybe being the best at something was easy.  For another, maybe grappling with a learning disability made the same journey much harder.  Who really deserves the praise?  The person who worked or the one who didn’t have to?  I never practiced viola in high school.  I didn’t need to.  The music we performed had to be accessible to strong and weak players alike so it was easy for me, and praise for my part in it didn’t mean much.  However, the classical guitar solo I put together to perform onstage with the orchestra my senior year–THAT was work.  Terrifying, nail-biting, worry-up-to-the-last-minute-will-she-get-through-it-without-falling-apart work.  The praise I got for that was earned and I knew the difference.

The truth is, life is hard for everyone at some point.  There are enough real lessons in success and failure to go around without inventing more.  Why not change the rules to Candy Land so everyone wins?  So what?  I don’t think important character building lessons about being a good sport happen at age three for most people.  No one likes losing, but little kids can’t grasp the big picture in order to take losing well.  So why bother?  My kids hate losing at Chutes and Ladders so we don’t play it.  I remember hating when I lost at Chutes and Ladders as a kid.  It didn’t make me a better person to suffer through that.  Eventually you put things in perspective and now I don’t care if I win at it or not, and my kids will get there too.  The point of playing games together is to have fun.  If finding ways to play together without someone losing makes it more fun, great.

The point of little ceremonies and all those little trophies is to acknowledge everyone on whatever terms are meaningful to them.  There is no way to know whom that will touch.  There are too many kids among us who do not feel special at home.  That ribbon one person sees as a worthless gesture may mean the difference for someone else between feeling school is a good place to be or not.  Between feeling special or not.  Between feeling like they are worth anything or not.

So, back to Mona and her shoes.  When her dad came home on leave from Iraq he simply told her to wear them.  She knew it was pointless to fight him on the concept, so she did it.  No sticker charts.  Just because you have techniques that seem to work universally, you have to leave room for the possibility of the new.  The times I’ve failed my own violin students were all cases where I neglected to take the individual into account and tried to force them into a mold that worked for others.  Seeing what is special in everyone takes imagination.  It can be hard.  But when we don’t make that effort, that’s when life becomes cheap.  When we don’t see everyone as special we write others off too easily, and that’s a mistake.

“Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.”  —Albert Einstein

The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything (Babble)

Happy Birthday to me!  I’m posting this at the end of a very long day, so by the time anyone reads this I’ll be in belated birthday status, but still, yay birthday!
Birthday flowers that Quinn picked out at the grocery store while I was at work today:

I have nice birthdays of the past to reflect upon (coming in 6th at a Rubik’s cube competition on my golden birthday when I turned 14 comes to mind, getting a whole crate of grapefruit from my grandpa once, and parties with long dresses as a little girl when my dad used to conduct an annual poise contest where my friends and I would walk around the house with books on our heads–all good times).  The birthdays when Ian was deployed were the hardest.  But the birthday that taught me the most about perspective was back in college.

Nearly every Sunday during the five years I spent getting my bachelor’s degree at Ohio State, I would enjoy the day with my Grandma in a nearby suburb of Columbus.  She would drive down to the campus and pick me up, and at her home I would do laundry, sometimes practice or study, but most of the time just hang out and play Spite and Malice and enjoy the wonderful dinner she would make.  Grandma used to cook my favorite things and delicious desserts, and even have on hand a bowl of freshly washed grapes or other snack for when I walked in the door.  I was always welcome to bring a friend, and when I met Ian he became a regular guest at Gram’s table on those Sunday afternoons.  Sundays at Gram’s kept me grounded during my college days and they are some of my warmest memories.

One year in Columbus my birthday fell on a Sunday and I was depressed.  I had to work in the morning and it made me grumpy.  I sat behind the art counter at the local campus bookstore getting more irritated than usual at the people who couldn’t seem to read labels on products themselves.  I was bored and feeling unappreciated.  I wanted my birthday to be special.  All we were planning was dinner at Gram’s, but we always ate dinner at Gram’s.  How was that supposed to feel different from any other Sunday?  How was that special?

I remember trudging home through slush after work and feeling sorry for myself.  But as I walked I thought about it, and it hit me:  My regular Sunday was better than the average person’s birthday.  What more could I really ask for?  A home cooked meal made with me in mind, sharing the day with people who love me, fun, maybe a nap, and clean laundry to take home wasn’t enough for me?  The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous I felt that I had spent any time at all feeling anything but grateful.  How obnoxious and stupid.
So I was happy when Grandma picked up Ian and me and I drove us back to her house.

And when I pushed the remote to open the garage door, there was my parents’ car inside.  They had driven down just for the day.  It was my first (and only) ever surprise party!  My mom thought that seemed like a pretty lackluster means of being surprised by spotting their car first, but I assured her there was nothing second rate about it.  I was thrilled.  And then an hour later (because they are usually late to family events) my uncle and his family arrived, and it was like getting round two of a surprise party.

It was a wonderful party and I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I was glad that I had come around to appreciating the day before I realized people had gone to extra trouble.  It’s too easy to become acclimated to good things.  We often think of ourselves as becoming callused to harsh realities, but I think it happens both directions.  When you never go hungry it’s hard to appreciate the miracle of being fed every day.  I have a house, I have a job, I have my husband and kids all together….  Those things are hard to see clearly when you look at them all the time.  We get desensitized to the good as well as the bad, and I try to be mindful of that.

Last night as I was shutting off the lights downstairs to go to bed I hesitated in the kitchen and wondered if I should make myself a cake.  I wound up flipping through a binder of my Grandma’s recipes a came across her rice pudding.  I loved her rice pudding.  It’s complicated to make because it cooks for a long time on the stove, and when it moves to the oven in a casserole dish it rests in a pan of hot water, but it’s full of raisins and nutmeg and it’s delicious.  I stayed up late and made a batch and helped myself to some for breakfast this morning.  I miss my Grandma.

As far as birthdays go, this one was not action packed.  I went to work and rehaired violin bows and straightened bridges and set up a new rental viola.  When I got home Ian had started dinner and he took Aden to her violin lesson while I finished making the food and set the table.  We ate one of those fast meals where we weren’t coordinated enough to have everyone at the table at the same time but that’s okay.  I got to eat with everyone in turns.  I got a couple of nice presents from Ian’s mom, a Valentine made by Quinn presented to me in crumpled paper, and look at these amazing watercolors my mom did of me when I was a baby!

My kids still use that ducky blanket in the first painting, and I own that green lamp now in the second one.  Those were a pretty amazing birthday surprise.  Aden made me a necklace and a beautiful card.  Apparently she also made me a special breakfast a couple of hours after I left for work and was heartbroken that I wasn’t home to eat it.  I told her tonight that I appreciated her thoughtfulness and that one day she would make a great mom.  She looked very proud.

So today wasn’t out of the ordinary.  Not even the gifts, really, because the kids make me things all the time and my mom doesn’t limit her kind presents to special occasions.  Particularly after watching so much shocking footage of the tsunami in Japan over the past couple of days, it’s hard not to treasure the most ordinary of circumstances.  I had a truly average birthday.  I can’t think of anything more special.

Dear Child of Mine

You are beautiful and talented and smart and amazing and funny and kind and the world is better for having you in it.

You are right when you say I think those things because I am your mom.  But it's not because I am blinded by my love or exaggerating your worth because you are mine.

My love means I see you with greater clarity, not less.  I have studied you since before you took your first breath.  I have watched you grow and change, and I remember you before you remember yourself.  I care enough to examine you to a degree of detail unmatched by anyone.  I know you, I see you, and I adore you.

I'm sorry the backlash against using the word "special" in our society has robbed you of the chance to rightly own it.  I'm sorry there have been other parents who somehow labeled their children special while equating it with entitlement, and without tempering it with the idea of humility and respect for others.  They have tainted the word and made it unfairly wrong to use earnestly.

But you are special.  And worthy.  And loved.

If I could have anything on this day, it would be for you to see yourself the way I see you.  Then you would know how right you would be to love yourself too.

What Day Is It?

I was checking Facebook this morning before heading out to swim and was reminded it's the birthday of my cousin's daughter.  She's five today, which is exciting, but then I remembered that her birthday is the same day as our wedding anniversary! 

I kind of forgot we even have an anniversary.  I looked at Ian and said, "Hey!  Happy Anniversary!" and he looked surprised and then smiled and said, "Oh yeah!" 

Then we took a moment to do the math and realized it's been 18 years.  We are a whole-legal-to-vote-person-amount of married.  Kind of cool! 

I remember years ago in college my family threw me a surprise birthday party one year, but since I obviously didn't know about it I started the day feeling disappointed that nothing special was happening.  I was just going with Ian to my grandma's house for dinner the way we did every Sunday.  But then I realized that what was an ordinary kind of day for me was better than what many people get for a special occasion, and I had a lot to be happy about on my birthday.  And then, of course, I got to be super extra happy anyway when we pulled up to grandma's and realized everyone had gathered there. 

But I never forgot that genuine sense of contentment and joy that I came to just thinking about how good I have it in my day to day life.  Today's anniversary is like that.  I love my marriage.  I like it just the way it is day to day.  I don't need the super extra happy to enjoy it.  Big gestures and special things can be fun and exciting from time to time, but I wouldn't trade that for how nice my life is in general at its most ordinary. 

My husband spent the day doing all manner of things to keep our household running smoothly and to make our lives better.  I hope I was as helpful to him.  I think we're a good team.  (Even if we're not good at remembering to, you know, check the calendar sometimes.)

When Valentine's Day sneaks up on you (Babble)

I’ve always liked Valentine’s Day, even though it usually meant finding out no one in my class at school could spell my name correctly.  I loved handing out little cards, and when I had time, making them myself.  Valentines are simple and nice and it’s one of those rare times when you can hand anyone you like a note.  During years when I was too swamped with a newborn around the holidays at the end of the year to bother with Christmas cards, I waited until Valentine’s day to send everyone a letter.  My mom always sends us a Valentine’s box with homemade treats and surprising things.  It’s a tradition I hope to keep up with my own kids when they eventually move away.  (Not that they say they are ever moving–according to them they will live with me forever and ever.)

Normally I help the kids make their own cards.  This is Mona last year at the violin store in Valentine production mode:

Usually we start talking about Valentines the week before so if there is anything complicated or unusual about what they want to do I can have some time figure out how to make it work.  Last year Aden made pop-up cards all on her own that were pretty cool.

But this year Valentine’s Day kind of took us by surprise.  I was associating it with next week on my calendar because it falls on a Sunday this year.  Then I realized the kids probably would have their Valentine’s party on Friday.  Then I found out there is no school on Friday–so the Valentines had to be done last night.  This did not fit in with my work schedule at all, so we ended up eating at Target an hour before bedtime and shopping for cards and pencils.

Of course, my kids can’t pick out easy cards that you just sign and are done with.  Aden wanted to continue her pop-up theme, and found something with dogs that you had to punch out and fold and attach to the main card.  Those took her over an hour before she ever got to signing anything.  Mona chose something with a rainforest theme that came with little play tattoos that were too hard to attach to the cards herself.  So we all sat together at the dining room table cranking out cards, and it took us well past bedtime but it was nice.

The biggest surprise to me was Quinn, because we set aside cards for their cousin, and when I gave him one to fill out, he correctly printed her name.  I know he’s been working on writing some numbers and letters, but I’d never seen him try something as complicated as an upper case E or an R and he did them really well for age three.  He will love being able to pass out his own Valentines at school next year.

I will admit that Valentine’s Day is one of the holidays where I miss Ian more than usual.  It’s hard having him so far away, and all his stories when I hear from him make me nervous.  I don’t like picturing him with a gun or in dangerous situations.  He seems fine and it sounds like he’s accomplishing a lot of positive things in Iraq, but not being able to give your main squeeze an actual squeeze on Valentine’s Day is lonely.

So this year I appointed Mona my Valentine’s date.  As the middle child I find she’s the hardest one to make time alone with.  I see Quinn alone all the time, and somehow I get moments alone with Aden, but Mona is always along for the ride with someone and private moments are rare.  I told her I would hire a babysitter for her brother and sister, and the two of us would go out to eat and do something special.  That something special will probably turn into a trip to Home Depot for something we need for the new house, but alone with Mona it will be special.  She’s really excited and keeps asking me, “Am I still going to be your Valentine this year, Mama?”  The only tricky thing is to not make Aden and Quinn feel slighted, so I’m trying to find someone to watch them that will feel more like a play date.  In any case, I’m looking forward to Valentine’s Day, even though it feels like my heart is overseas.

I remember talking to Ian about holidays during the last deployment, and he said they were no different from any other days, which in a war is understandable.  He barely noticed it was Christmas and forgot about Easter and Valentine’s Day and our anniversary.  I get that and it’s fine.  But it’s another way in which our experiences while apart diverge.  For us holidays are among the clearer moments when we know exactly what we’re missing.  We get used to the day to day life without Ian here and we miss him in a general sort of way. 

But when a day is marked and set apart we all look around and notice his absence in a way that doesn’t happen normally.  When I started talking to Aden about what kinds of Valentines she wanted to pass out this year, she got excited about it, and then got very quiet.  “I miss daddy.”  I told her I know, and I did too, and that maybe the box we sent with his Valentines in it would arrive on time.

If it makes his time in Iraq a little better to remember we’re doing Valentine’s things this time of year, then I hope he remembers.  If it makes his time harder, I hope it slips by unnoticed.

Either way, I have a date.  She’s short and missing a couple of teeth, but in lieu of my husband it’s hard to think of a sweeter Valentine to spend my day with.

11 Questions

Sharon Marie over at Finding Vanilla Octopus was kind enough to include me in her Liebster Award list.  It seems to work kind of like a chain letter that connects bloggers and brings awareness to smaller blogs.  To qualify your blog must have fewer than 200 followers, and if nominated by someone (tag! I'm it!) you are supposed to reveal 11 things about yourself, answer 11 questions, and nominate 11 more bloggers (not including the one who nominated you) and pose 11 new questions to them.

I'm game!  I love answering new questions.  I don't have a list of 11 bloggers to nominate since too many of the blogs I follow appear to have large readerships, but I'll do my best.

So here are 11 somewhat random things about myself that some of you know and some of you don't:

When Friendship Isn't Friendly (Babble)

I have big problems with stereotypes in general, and gender stereotypes in particular.  But every once in awhile I find myself face to face with one that is apt.  I’m currently struggling with one that applies to my oldest daughter, and probably many girls her age.
In broad terms, boys and girls navigate social relationships at school differently.  There can be a lot of overlap, and the basic stereotypes currently don’t apply to my younger kids, but they do to Aden.  Boys’ friendships have their own complexities, but seem to be somewhat loose.  There is greater opportunity among boys for joining in most play.  They can be less selective and more forgiving.  Girls’ friendships, however, can be like emotional minefields.

I was never what anyone might consider a popular girl.  Far from it.  I had friends in grade school whom I still keep up with on Facebook today, and a few of those stuck by me through the Jr High low point of my existence.  Then I met Gabby on the last day of school and life was forever better.  That’s not hyperbole.  I understand the courage and joy having a best friend provides, and I don’t take that lightly.  Interacting with family and knowing how to socialize with others outside it can be very different things, and as much as I owe my family for a great deal of who I am, credit for my being able to translate that to the larger world goes to Gabby.  She taught me what real friendship looks like and there are few things more precious to me.


So I understand the need that girls have to bond with someone, to want to be two friends against the world.  The intimacy of your own private language of inside jokes, of passing notes and sharing secrets, of laughing until your sides hurt, and feeling special and safe and chosen because you can lay claim to a best friend and that person can lay claim to you.  I get it.  But there can be a dark side to that, too, and it involves excluding others.  Having been on both sides of that divide I can relate to either.

Aden, by comparison, seems to be a popular girl, as far as such a thing applies in 4th grade.  She has never lacked for friends.  She makes new friends easily wherever she goes.  She certainly has her shy moments and times when social events don’t go the way she would like, but for the most part I watch the way she draws in her peers with engaging small talk in a manner that I was not capable of at her age.

This year she is in a new classroom, and for the first time has most of her friends in one place, not scattered throughout the school.  Individually she still gets along fine with just about everyone, new friends and old.  But there is something about girls and being inclusive beyond pairing off that is difficult.  It’s not instinctive for many girls to let people in, even people they like in a different setting.  There have been hurt feelings this year, and talk of nosiness and snubbing and people feeling left out.  Friendship has gotten trickier.

A couple of weeks ago Aden and I were walking together across the park to pick up treats from the bakery for our book club meeting, and we talked about this a little.  We actually started off talking about why there is fighting in the world.  We talked about different reasons countries and groups of people go to war.  We agreed it was sad.  Then we started talking about school and her friends and some of the problems she’s run into this year.  I listened as she told one side of a story, and I told her what I imagined the other side might be.  She had trouble understanding why leaving certain friends out of particular games on the playground might hurt their feelings.  She wants to have special things with different people and doesn’t see why they should mix.

I told her that sometimes our instincts don’t lead us in a good direction.  That I understood why it was so tempting to pair up with a single friend and purposely leave another out.  But just because we may be pulled one direction doesn’t mean it’s the one that does us the most good or is even all that much fun.  I told her when in doubt it is always better to include people, to pull people in, to expand the game to let more friends play.  I explained that it was a lot like what we talked about at the beginning of our walk, about nations fighting.  Human beings seem to have a natural inclination toward war, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do better.  We tend to do what gives us an immediate sense of safety and belonging, and that’s natural.  But natural is not always synonymous with right or healthy or desirable.  Both the great curse and salvation of ourselves as a species is we can choose.  I want her to choose better.  I want her to be a good friend to many, not an exclusive few.

I’ve talked about this a little bit with the mothers of the other girls involved.  The dynamics are complicated by past histories and differences in age and just the way people change over time, but we would like our girls to still all get along and continue to play happily.

So here’s the question:  Is this the kind of thing where I should be stepping back or stepping in?  Do I withhold my opinion, or give Aden advice?  Do we leave them to make mistakes that cause hurt feelings because those experiences are their own, or do we as mothers attempt to guide them toward something better?  Maybe we can create situations that teach our girls how to function in groups of three, not just two.

I suspect in the end it’s unrealistic to think we can save them from the pain that changes in friendships can cause, but I don’t think it’s crazy to at least try.  I’m glad I’m able to talk with the mothers of the other girls to help fill in the blanks of Aden’s stories, and be able to report back to her that, yes indeed, when she turned her back on so and so, that girl’s feelings really were hurt.  Aden cried when she realized how some of her actions had been interpreted by people she cares about.  It’s hard to pick a better path when you can’t see where you are stepping.  I would like to think with enough information and tools my daughter could defy the stereotype of this particular phase.  But it really may just be something girls do.

Eulogy for Grandma (Babble)

I don’t know if I have the right words to express just how much I loved and admired my grandma.  I suspect I don’t, but I owe it to her to try to find them.  I’ve been thinking about what I want to say at her memorial service planned for early December.  If I had to give a eulogy today, this is the one I would give:


Grandma loved babies.  She told me she always had, as long as she could remember.  When I had my first baby, she came out to Milwaukee alone. It was just over a month after the comotion of the holidays when everyone had come out to see Aden right after her birth.  Grandma came out then, too, but the visit in February was special and quiet and private.  We got to spend hours just looking at the baby and admiring all the cute things new babies do.  One of those evenings, sitting in the dining room watching Aden smile and wiggle her hands in the air, we got to talking about our thoughts on life and death in general.  Grandma was always interesting to talk to, and I could talk to her about anything.  I asked her what her thoughts were on dying one day; if it scared her or if she thought there was an afterlife.  Her response was the best one I’ve ever heard on the subject.  She said, “Well, I think about all the amazing people who came before me who accomplished so many impressive things, and how they have died, and I think to myself, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.”

My grandma was amazing.  When she was born women still didn’t have the right to vote, but she loved school and earned a college degree.  She had so many interesting stories about working in adoption and I used to beg her to write some of them down.  She never did, but I remember the ones she told me, and maybe I will find ways to write them down.
There isn’t a day of living in Milwaukee that I don’t think of her.  Sometimes I pass the house she was born in, on the corner of Locust and Cramer.  I live on the side of town where my grandpa grew up and I imagine myself and my children retracing his footsteps when we walk by his high school.  My grandma’s stories of her early life and meeting my grandpa take on new life for me now that I live in their old town.  One of her favorite stories was about how she got to know my grandfather because he would walk her to her bus stop after class because it was on his way home.  My husband is a map and transit connoisseur, and he told me he would never tell my grandma this, but he figured out that grandma’s bus stop was nowhere near grandpa’s way home.  He was merely going out of his way to be near her.

I know a lot of stories about grandma, how when her kids were at school sometimes she and a neighbor would occasionally wile away an entire afternoon playing Scrabble and feel they were being quite wicked.  Or about when she and her friend Florence would visit a place known only as “Lake Twelve.”  Or how she used to help her mother do the laundry which was a full two day project every week, and that in the winter they would hang the wash in the attic where it would freeze solid and they would spend the second day ironing it all dry.  I once asked her if there was any particular modern convenience she’d seen invented over her lifetime that was especially important and without hesitation she said, ‘The washer and dryer.”

There are so many interesting stories about her as a child and a student and a young married woman and mother, but my own experience with her was as a grandmother.  And she was the best grandmother possible.  When I was little we would visit my grandparents in Columbus for Christmas and Easter and it was always special.  Grandma kept a beautiful home and it was always welcoming.  She cooked us wonderful meals, and whenever there were homemade treats on the counter and we’d ask if we could have one she would always say, “That’s what they’re there for!”  She was the kind of grandma that made you feel secure and safe and loved.

But I was particularly lucky to have the chance to get to know grandma better while I was in college.  I wanted to go away to school, but I also wanted to be near home.  By going to Ohio State I was able to be out on my own, but having grandma nearby was like still having a familiar home when I needed it.  I started school nearly two years after grandpa died, and gram and I were able to be there for each other.  She would pick me up from campus nearly every Sunday.  I could do things for her like set the VCR or help with things in the yard, and she taught me how to do laundry without making the washer hop across the basement.  She looked forward to cooking me a real meal once a week and I looked forward to eating it.  She let me bring my friends.  She was the first member of my family to get to know Ian.  Grandma came to nearly every performance I gave while I was at Ohio State, and when I graduated she gave me a box of all the programs from everything I’d played in for the past five years.

When I found myself home more because of pregnancy and babies I got into a habit of calling grandma at least once a day.  She was wonderful to chat with, and was the perfect person with whom to share baby updates because she never found them boring.  She would tell me what was going on in her neighborhood or we’d talk about the news or books or movies.  And when Ian was deployed, grandma was the only person I knew who truly understood what it was like to be pregnant and caring for children in Milwaukee while fearing for a husband at war.  She would listen to me cry and say, “I know, Kor.”  And she really did.

My grandma was smart and kind and made the world better for those around her.  She was the best listener I ever knew.  And she loved me, and I never doubted that she was proud of me.  When I read her some of my earliest fiction she beamed at me and said, “Oh Kory, you are a writer–A real writer.”  And because she said it I believed it could be true.
These past few years have been so difficult.  It’s been heartbreaking to watch grandma slowly fade to a shadow of the person I knew.   There were glimpses of her now and then when I would visit, but the truth is I began mourning the loss of my grandma awhile ago.  That doesn’t make this final goodbye any easier.  There is no way to accept that my grandma is not in my world anymore and have it be anything but profoundly, crushingly sad.  But maybe grandma is finally with her husband again.  Or maybe she has simply been released from the pain of an existence she had degenerated into that I know she wouldn’t have wanted.  Either way I hope death meant relief for my grandma.  And in those moments when I contemplate my own mortality, I can think to myself, “If it was good enough for her, it’s good enough for me.”

I love you, grandma.  And I miss you.

(Last photo of me and my grandma when I visited her at the end of August)

Aden's Homework (Babble)

Aden is in third grade.  She attends a public Montessori school fewer than two miles from our home.  In Montessori education you keep the same teacher for three years and the classrooms are mixed age, so Aden has had the same teacher since first grade.  Montessori isn’t generally big on homework unless the individual child needs it or there is a special project due.  Aden usually has a little homework aimed at strengthening certain reading or math skills, and every day either her dad or I am supposed to read her school diary and correct any spelling or grammar problems.

(This is not Aden doing homework, this is her trying to dig fossils out of a fossil-digging block her grandparents gave her, but it’s the same place she does do her homework, and it’s the closest thing I have to her looking studious.)


Aden’s school diary cracks me up.  Her cursive is good, her spelling is improving.  The content is usually bland because she’s just trying to get it done.  The first line is nearly always “I did my D.O.L.” which I think in Montessori-ese is ‘Daily Oral Language’ but I don’t know what that means, and if it’s not part of lunch or recess or gym it’s unlikely Aden will ever tell me.  Sometimes Aden gets bored with conventional writing and turns it into a code.  There will be a key off to the side with colored blobs to represent words such and “I” and “the” and then the diary entry looks like a row of Christmas lights strung together with verbs and nouns.  It’s harder to proofread, but very pretty.  Aden writes about group lessons or special classes, once in awhile about fun things she does with other students, but nothing particularly interesting.  No, the good stuff is all in the margins.

In the margins Aden draws.  She’s a good artist with an eye for colors and patterns I’ve come to trust.  I used to get in trouble for drawing in the margins of my work when I was a kid, but individual expression is encouraged in Montessori school, so as long as she finishes the writing part of the assignment she can add as many drawings as she likes.  In first and most of second grade it was all narwhals.  We saw a narwhal tusk in the unicorn tapestry room at the Cloisters on a visit to New York a couple of years ago, and Aden was really taken with it.  I don’t think there was another child anywhere who cranked out as many narwhal drawings in that span of time.  But the narwhals have faded from the margins this year and been replaced by drawings of little girls battling dragons with swords and other fantastical scenes.

If she doesn’t get around to showing us her diary to sign, sometimes she attempts forgery.  She’s getting better at that, too, but she still hasn’t figured out I never sign anything outside of personal notes with ‘Kory,’ so the teacher usually circles the suspect signature as a sign that it’s not going to fly.  I was pretty good at forging my parents’ signatures when I was younger.  The first time Aden signs my name in a way that passes muster I will be strangely proud.

Aden is a procrastinator, which is a trait that has my DNA all over it so I try to sympathize when she drags her feet, but it can make getting her to finish her homework frustrating at times.  However, she had homework this week that was very interesting and she did it right away.  Her dad mentioned it, because at violin lessons he’d run into another child from Aden’s class who was working on the same thing and having a little trouble.  I asked Aden about it over dinner, and the way she described it was she had a drawing of a person, and she was supposed to name five qulities you could notice about that person that would make you think he or she would make a good friend, three external and two internal.  Of course when I asked her what she listed it was two whole hours later so she didn’t remember, but she invited me to read the finished assignment when I had the chance.

As far as homework goes, I found it fascinating.  I thought about it for a moment and admitted to Aden that I don’t know what I would write if the same assignment were given to me.  In theory we shouldn’t judge people by what we see on the surface, but in reality we do it all the time.  We have to.  We don’t have time to do in depth interviews with everyone we come in contact with in an average day just to decide where to sit or stand on the bus or at the bank.  If I’m walking alone at night and I’m nervous I am less likely to cross the street to avoid a man in a suit than someone in grubbier clothes because I can’t imagine a mugger in a suit.  (I can, but it’s silly looking.)

But to choose a friend?  What external cues would I find important?  I suppose if someone were carrying objects I could relate to, like an instrument case or a really nice block plane, that would be a person I’d be more likely to start a conversation with.  Someone handing out cupcakes is someone I want to be near.  I’d be intimidated by a person dressed really well since that’s beyond me.  I would probably avoid anyone staggering around with a bloody knife or holding protest signs I disagreed with.  I do tend to talk with other people with small children because I suppose I feel a kinship there. 

How much would I discriminate based race or gender?  I would hope not much.  One of the few things I find disgraceful about Milwaukee is how segregated it is, and when I first moved here I remember striking up a conversation with a man fishing in a river near my apartment and he looked startled.  He was an older African-American man and I was genuinely interested in his experience fishing in the city, but he smiled at me and said, “You aren’t from here, are you?”  He told me white people from Milwaukee never thought to say ‘hello’ to him.  I hope living here hasn’t changed me in that way.  I don’t think so, but we are often poor judges of ourselves so I’m not sure.

Jewelry?  T-shirt slogans?  Shoes?  Matching gloves?  Two tickets to that thing I love?  I really don’t know what I would put down.  For the internal qualities, I would go with humor and kindness.  That’s easy.  If you are a caring person and you can make me laugh you might not be able to get rid of me.

When I asked Aden again what she wrote down she thought really hard and said for external qualities she included a nice smile, and maybe a cute animal on his or her T-shirt.  She said she would not want to be friends with a bully, and maybe someone like that would have blood on his or her clothes.  For internal qualities she said someone who is nice and made you feel included.

I think that’s what she said.  It’s hard for me to remember at this point because we’re gearing up for snow-mageddon-aclypse-a-rama or whatever ultra hypey language the news is putting onto this storm.  As long as we don’t have to go anywhere in it, it’s just sledding and hot cocoa weather to us.   I hope everyone else out there in the path of the snow stays warm and safe.

The Packets

One of the lovely things about my dad was he collected packets of articles for people he cared about.  He lived to file articles.  There are still dozens of large boxes of them to sort through since he died, and it will be a long term project to go through the raw feed of material he meant to separate out into particular piles, but I have in my possession about fifteen packets just for me and my family.

From the time I left for college to about a year or so before he died, my dad assembled collections of articles for me in big yellow envelopes.  He did that for my brothers.  He did that for other friends and family as relevant articles presented themselves.  If you expressed an interest in a topic around him you might get a file of papers in the mail.  It was his obsession to clip and save from printed material, and in its distilled form the packets were personal filing masterpieces.  I don't know anyone who got one who didn't feel special for receiving it.

If he really deeply loved you, though, you got a lot of packets.  And my dad deeply loved me.

Black Friday Makes Me Blue

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays.  I am fortunate enough to come from a loving family where I feel safe and provided for, and am equally fortunate to be able to pass that along to my children.  Food, family, conversation, togetherness, and a chance to relax long enough to appreciate the things that matter in our lives....for me this has always been what Thanksgiving is about.

There is something special about a national holiday that is secular, inclusive to all Americans, and at its core about gratitude.  Taking stock of what we are grateful for in our lives is an important act that not enough of us do regularly.  I am thankful for so very much.

I probably have nothing new to add to the general discussion about Black Friday.  I'm sure it's all been said by now.  I know retailers depend on holiday sales to get themselves 'in the black' and that in this economy in particular getting more people spending helps the larger picture.  I despise the latest push to move that spending spree onto Thanksgiving Day itself.  There is a lack of respect for something I find sacred there that saddens me.  But I can't make other people use their holiday they way I would.  Maybe for someone else it's an improvement to get away from their home and into a crowded store on Thanksgiving.  I'm just glad that's not me.

I suppose the thing that bothers me is how much shopping has become part of the American identity. 

Three Divided By One-On-One (Babble)

I am glad I have siblings.  My brothers are a connection to my past and to areas of the world beyond my own reach.  I love them more than I can say, but I remember as a child the sense of competition that comes with having siblings.  Many times it was nice to have the attention of my parents diverted by my brothers, and the house was lively and interesting with the children outnumbering the adults. 

But I also remember how complicated things could get the more individuals had to be added into any equation, in terms of sleeping arrangements away from home, what we could eat or how many could fit in the car, etc.  The logistics of living with multiple children is a whole special skill set.  One of the biggest challenges I remember was to eke out time with a parent alone, to not feel overlooked, to feel loved and special apart from the ever present group.

Now I’m experiencing the same issue from the point of view of the parent, and it isn’t any easier.  Lately the need for my undivided attention has led to bruised feelings and frustration.  I’m not sure what to do.  What I need is more time and I don’t know where to find it.

When my husband was deployed my kids had me all the time.  Now that Ian is home and in the role of the stay at home parent, I’m back at work and my kids miss me.  It doesn’t help that recently I’ve had to take a few trips to Michigan without them, which also means more time away from them when I come back because I need to catch up on the work I missed while I was gone.  On a typical school day I don’t see my kids until I get home from work a little after 5:00.  There is dinner, violin practice, reading time, midnight snuggle.…  That’s a lot to cram into not a lot of time before they are all supposed to be in bed with the lights out by 8:00, and they all want time with me alone.


When I’m helping Mona with violin practice she loves that it’s just the two of us, but more often than not Quinn will discover I’m sitting with an unoccupied lap and join us.  This gets on Mona’s nerves, even if all Quinn wants to do is sit there.  Sometimes I tell her to relax, and sometimes I encourage Quinn to wait in the other room.  Either way, someone is unhappy.  When it’s Aden’s turn to practice, Mona then wants to cuddle with me, forgetting completely how annoyed she was moments before when she was the one trying to practice sans siblings.

Sibling interference is complicated enough in our house that we have to have the girls actual violin lessons (with the same teacher) on different days, even though this is inconvenient for us.  The stress put on Mona to do a lesson before or after her sister made her harder to teach.  Now that she has violin on her own day she’s enjoying it much more and improving faster, so it’s worth the effort, but that doesn’t make it less annoying as far as our schedules go.  My children are different when you get them one-on-one instead of as a set, and the violin lessons are one way we are mindful of that.

To help my kids with their reading skills we’ve been reading together in the living room every evening before bed.  Each child reads something to me, and then I read something to each of them.  Mona and I are making our way through the ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ books, and Aden and I are almost done with ‘Little House on the Prairie.’  Mona doesn’t want anyone else around when I read to her because she sees it as her time.  She glares at anyone else who tries to sit down on the couch, too.  Aden won’t read aloud in front of her siblings for some reason, even though she’s reading things they would enjoy.  What should be a nice time for us all together taking turns reading can get contentious.  If I play it just right I can get us all under one blanket and we can read as a group, but often I end up sending some children away so we can read one-on-one, and again, someone is always unhappy.

I get time alone with Quinn probably more often than anyone because he’s only in school for half the day.  Sometimes Ian will bring him to the violin store when I’m working, and on the alternate days when the store is closed I’ll spend the afternoon with him at home when I can.  Aden manages to carve out time with me for help with homework or playing heart and soul on the keyboard.  She also has moments when she needs a hug or a cry and she’ll corner me on the couch and keep me there alone for as long as she can. 

The person most in need of one-on-one time for awhile was Mona, and she’s found ways to solve that herself.  Sometimes she’ll come with me to work for an entire Saturday (even though it’s boring for her, really) just to get me alone.  She also invented midnight snuggle.  She cuddles up and reviews her day and asks me questions and gives me hugs and Eskimo kisses.  It’s lovely. 

But Quinn has been worming his way into it whenever he can.  It bugs Mona to no end that her brother wants to be in the bed too during midnight snuggle time, but I just focus my attention on her and tell her it doesn’t matter, and then I make it up to Quinn later.

Recently I got a note from Aden that she put in my room one morning letting me know that being excluded from midnight snuggle made her sad.  (The note was complete with an illustration of her weeping, just in case I missed the point.)  I talked with her about it, and she said she can hear us talking and giggling from her bed and she feels left out.
It’s hard making time for each girl’s violin practice, and for individual reading, and I can’t do midnight snuggle with each child or we really would be up until midnight to do it.  I told Aden I was really sorry, but that I have three kids, and sometimes that means doing things with one that leaves the others out.  I reminded her of the pottery classes we did together, and how many times we’ve been able to do things just the two of us because she’s the oldest.  I told her she can’t begrudge Mona or Quinn for wanting times like that, too.  She says she understands, but she still doesn’t like it.

It’s not that my kids don’t get along.  For the amount of time they spend together I’m shocked they get along so well, frankly.  But it’s like I’m some rare commodity that throws everything out of balance, and there is only so much we can cram into those couple of evening hours.  We can’t split up the time by doling out some of the reading or violin or midnight snuggle to their dad because that’s not what they want.  They love their dad, but he’s more available in general, and they don’t seek him out for the same activities.  Sometimes everything has been going fine until I get home and then unhappiness and mild chaos ensue.  So every evening I hope for the best and wish for extra time to spend with each of my children.

The irony is when they are old enough to stay up later and we could have a little more time they probably won’t be interested anymore.  And I’ll wonder why I ever thought spending time with my kids was considered a problem.

Production

I am making a point to get work done in my home shop every day, and three violins are now rolling!  It's exciting, and I'm so much happier when I get to build.  I feel productive and inspired.  (And also tired since I'm up working until midnight in order to make it happen, but that's just the way that goes.  The time has to come from somewhere.)

The main thing I'm focusing on is an Amati model I'm doing on commission.  It's a new model for me, and it's fun working with new lines and shapes and thinking ahead about what the player might like.

Aden and her maple

Aden and I also started working on her violin together.  She's making a Strad model, and I told her she can do as much or as little of the work as she likes.  I'm fine with just making the whole thing, but I'm glad she wants her own hands in it.  She picked out all her wood and I'm walking her through the process step by baby step.  Currently she's still planing her blocks, which makes your hands sore if you're not used to it, so there are many breaks.

I decided it would be helpful to Aden if I had an instrument going alongside hers that I could use for demonstration, so I'm also making a Lee model that I intend to use as my next competition instrument when the VSA meets in fall of 2016.

Aden's and the competition violin are moving along at a slow pace, but that's fine.  My real energy is going into the Amati model and that's coming together very well.  Want to see?

The Cottage (Babble)

I decided we needed to get away.  Mid-September is an odd time to travel and I’m not normally one to pull the kids out of school for couple of days, but sometimes building memories is more important than consistency.  The days left with Ian at home are numbered.  If we used them all up locked in our normal routine we would forget them.  Our normal life is wonderful, but the days blur together.  For the kids in particular to remember anything from this time we needed to go.

Luckily, we had the perfect place available.  My grandparents built a cottage in Michigan back when I was in 5th grade.  It’s been a Mecca for our family ever since, with different uncles and cousins and friends developing their own traditions there, and on rare and special occasions we’ve overlapped our visits.  We had a family reunion at the cottage for my grandmother’s 80th birthday over a decade ago.  We had our Y2K New Year’s Eve bash there.  It’s where Ian and I spent our honeymoon.

(Aden at the cottage, ready to hit the woods last spring with binoculars and tutu.)

The nicest thing about the cottage is that it feels like home without being home.  It’s comfortable and full of possibilities, but there is nothing pressing beyond figuring out what to have for lunch or dinner.  When I’m in my own house there is always something to organize or clean or finish.  At the cottage you can gather what you need to go out in the canoe, or not, and either option is fine.  There is not much to get stressed about.  At home when the kids don’t put their shoes away it becomes an issue, but at the cottage it doesn’t matter.  You can read a book all day and it’s fine.  There’s more space to just breathe and enjoy being together without the distractions of having a purpose.  Being together is purpose enough at the cottage.  There is a shelf filled with boardgames from the 70’s and 80’s, and playing cards or Monopoly is raised to a whole new level when there is technically nothing else to do.

The house has one of the best designs I’ve ever seen.  It’s not really very big, but it contains everything you need very cleverly, and it feels spacious.  There is a big main room with a ceiling that slants up both stories, and it’s the room where everything happens.  It has the dining area on one end with a fireplace in the middle and a couch and TV at the other end.  There is a kitchen that isn’t closed off from anything, a bathroom, a bedroom. and a utility closet.  Up the spiral staircase is another bathroom and two small bedrooms.  If you’re not in your bedroom, you’re out with the family, and there is enough space in the big room that more than one activity can be going on without getting in each other’s way.  You can cram a ton of people in that cottage if you bring sleeping bags.  For several years we’ve met my friend Alit and her family up there each summer, and the ten of us fit quite happily. 

For this trip we splurged and took the ferry from Milwaukee to Muskegon.  Driving around the lake and dealing with Chicago traffic is frustrating, so for a last little family trip avoiding that problem seemed worth the expense.  The ferry is literally only a couple of miles from our house on the Milwaukee side, and the cottage is just over an hour’s drive away from the lake on the other.  It was a wonderful vacation.  We lounged around, took walks and spotted deer, played in the water, made s'mores on the grill….  We even invited some friends and their kids up from Grand Rapids and had great evening playing Trivial Pursuit while the kids played games of their own.  An excellent trip all around.

I don’t recall any trips to the cottage that weren’t fun, unless you count the time my brother Arno had to have his appendix out.  My other brother and I still managed to have a good time playing outside all day while mom and grandpa took turns sleeping after alternate trips to the hospital.  So maybe Arno and mom can’t claim an unbroken streak of fun at the cottage, but for the rest of the family it’s been a consistently special place.

The sad thing is this particular trip may have been our last.  I hope not, but there has been talk since last year of the cottage being sold to help pay for grandma’s care in the nursing home.  I know it would make grandma sad to have the cottage leave our family, but there is something poetic about one last investment of grandpa’s helping her out yet again.  I understand it, but it pains me to let one more thing go.  It was hard losing my grandpa back when I was in high school.  It’s hard to slowly be losing my grandma.  I still can’t believe my grandpa never got to meet my husband or my kids.  He would have loved them. 

But by sharing the cottage with my kids and seeing them retrace some of my own steps up the staircase or into the woods it’s like having their lives overlap somehow with other people and times I’ve loved.  I look around the cottage and I get to have my grandparents back a little.  They did all the staining of all the woodwork themselves.  My grandpa built the bookcase that holds the record player Aden was so delighted with this weekend.  I got to feed my kids breakfast on my grandma’s dishes.  My grandma used to spend every June up at the cottage, and her things are still there.  Everyone who visits the cottage now is still just borrowing it, so even though she will likely never go there again, it’s still set up as her second house.  Her nightgown is hanging in the closet.  Her picture of grandpa still smiles at us from atop the dresser.

I’m bad at giving up things I care about.  When I was in Ohio in August I drove by my grandma’s old house when I was out by myself because I wanted to see it again.  I shouldn’t have done that, because it hurt not to be able to go inside.  It hurt just knowing that the inside wasn’t the same anymore.  I can’t imagine how painful it will likely be one day to look at my parents’ house that way.  The remarkable thing about the cottage is that it’s like having a spare childhood home.  I don’t want to let it go, but I’m one generation removed from having any meaningful say in the matter.

There is an almost ritual-like way of closing up the cottage when we go.  It starts with stripping the beds the minute everyone is up on the last day, and getting the sheets in the wash first thing.  As the laundry proceeds to the load of towels, I make the beds upstairs, folding hospital corners the way my grandma likes.  I close windows and draw curtains, and shut the door to each room as I finish it.  By the time we get to cleaning up the first floor it’s time to kick all the kids out of the house so I can vacuum.

The last thing I did this time was scrub the dining table.  I noticed as I was wrapping up the vacuum cleaner cord that there were a few syrup spots left that I’d missed the first time.  I leaned down low so the light would be right for seeing the dark spots on the dark pine table top, and I realized there were writing imprints all over the table.  Decades of Scrabble scores and Boggle words, childish scrawls and daunting looking math equations….  At the corner nearest the kitchen was one clear sentence that read, “I miss you Arno!”  I wondered if it was left over from a card maybe Barrett or I made that spring vacation when he had appendicitis, or if someone else was visiting the cottage on a different occasion and just wished Arno were there to share it.

It struck me at that moment that I missed Arno too.  I miss lots of things.

Eclipse 2024

The best part for me about writing this blog is having some sort of record of things our family did, and how I felt at the time. For this month's post I decided to write about the eclipse, which sent me back into my archives to read about the last one we went to see seven years ago. We missed the totality, but had a great road trip, and we discussed the possibility of getting together again to see the next solar eclipse way off in the future in the year 2024.

We could barely imagine that day when Quinn would be 17 instead of 10. We didn't have any idea where Aden or Mona might be. We hoped to stay with my Uncle John and Aunt Charlotte in Ohio, but who knew what life would be like in seven years?

Eclipse 2017

Eclipse 2024

 

As it turns out, life is good in 2024! And everything about this eclipse trip was better. Ian is retired from the Army, so was able to join us this time, even though he had to follow a day behind us in a second car so he could still make an event in The Dells. Aden flew in from college. John and Charlotte moved to a new house in town that was set up with visitors like us in mind. My mom was able to join us, too, along with a pair of Charlotte's friends and their adorable dog Kirby, who became fast friends with Domino. They had a good time at the dog park together.

I was able to get some scroll carving done at the kitchen counter, and a friend of mine (and his sister) were even able to drive out and meet us the day before the eclipse to pick up (for delivery in Washington DC) the violins I will have on display in the upcoming Celebrating Women Luthiers exhibit.

 

We were treated to wonderful food in my uncle and aunt's home. Their house has a nice little courtyard, and we had perfect viewing in their back yard. The weather was beautiful. We saw cousins and played games and had a great time. So as just a family trip the whole event was a big success.

 

The remarkable thing about the eclipse itself, is that it really is something you have to experience. Photos and videos are interesting, and people can try and describe it, but none of it matches what it actually felt like.

It was brighter for longer than I expected. Even when more than half of the sun was covered, there wasn't any perceivable change in the light. If you couldn't see it with the special glasses, you wouldn't know it was happening. Then in the last couple of minutes the light got very strange. It was like evening light in terms of brightness, but the shadows were all wrong. Evening light comes with long shadows, and these shadows were all short. It reminded me of old movies where they wanted it to look like nighttime, but they had to film in the day and use some sort of filter. That doesn't look like real night, and this didn't either.

We felt the temperature drop. I think the birds got quiet, but I don't remember for sure. I know they seemed noisy when it was over. We saw a planet or a star appear. The street lights came on. We could look straight up at the sun, and when we put our glasses back on we could see a small red dot peeking out past one edge of the moon.

Aden pointed out during totality that it was like sunset on every part of the horizon. That was wild. We all spun around and took in how weird that was. And when totality passed, Ian directed us toward the shadow moving along its path like a storm going through without any real clouds. That was fascinating.

We listened to the neighborhood cheer. We marveled at how fast four minutes can go. The eclipse was like nothing else I've ever witnessed. We're already planning to gather for the next one in twenty years.

I had a rehearsal the following evening, so I got up early to make it back to Milwaukee in time. Mona and I went together, with the thought being Ian and Quinn could take their time and give Domino another chance to play at the dog park. But it turned out without me there, she didn't want to be there, so they all headed home. Mona and I joked during a couple of traffic jams that maybe the other car would beat us, but then they did. By a good half hour or more! But Mona and I did stop in Lima Ohio to capture this very special sign, with probably the worst kerning we've ever seen, so it all balanced out.

So there are natural wonders, and things that just make you wonder. (And laugh.)

The eclipse reminded me of how few things we appreciate in a specific place and time nowadays. We're used to seeing most things on our own schedules, and finding ways to visit people and places remotely. Watching the moon pass in front of the sun from the vantage point of my own speck of a body in the midst of our solar system was exciting and humbling and beautiful. I hope I'm around to do it again with people I love next time it happens.

Fancy (Babble)

I am not a fancy person.  I like certain things to be nice and I appreciate attractive surroundings, but when it comes to my own appearance I have a limited range of sartorial choices that make me comfortable.  I’m a jeans and t-shirt kind of person.  I like to have pockets, I like my wrists unencumbered by cuffs or bracelets, I like things that are simple, and I like clothes that don’t inhibit the activities I enjoy like building violins, baking, or getting on the floor to play a game with my kids.

When I try to wear decent clothes I’m self-conscious.  I keep checking and double checking everything if the way the clothes rest on my body doesn’t feel familiar.  I’ve tried to accessorize with a pretty scarf or shawl but I keep moving it or pulling at it or shifting it around and it’s not worth the distraction.

I don’t iron or dry clean.  I don’t wear makeup.  I don’t even have pierced ears.
I admire people who look put together.  I find fashion interesting, and I have opinions and preferences, but most of it stops before it reaches my own personal self.  I’m not elegant.  To pull that off you have to make it seem effortless, or at least natural, and that’s just not me.


Luckily, being a self-employed adult in charge of my own itinerary, I make lifestyle choices where jeans and a t-shirt works most of the time.  I only really need to dress up to play concerts, so I have a collection of black clothes that are comfortable to perform in and look nice enough on stage.

But every once in awhile something comes up and I realize what a hopeless shambles my wardrobe really is.  Between changes in my weight and my indifference to clothes shopping there is nothing decent in my closet if I need to look nice.

And this weekend I’m accompanying Ian to a military ball.  Ha.

Not that anyone there will care how I look as long as I make some vague effort to appear respectable, but I’d like to feel pretty.  I’d like to make Ian proud as he wears his dress blues with his medals pinned on his chest.  I’d like to have one, decent, dare I say elegant, dress to wear.

I imagine shopping for clothes if you have a body that fits into things could be fun.  But I am too big on top for most of what’s out there, and there are few things more demoralizing than trying on one thing after another that won’t zip or that makes your butt look bad or your legs too weird or your whole body just seem wrong.  I spent an entire morning with a patient friend trying on dresses at the mall and by the end of it I felt as if all my efforts to lose weight have been pointless and I should just eat cheesecake, wear sweatpants, and never look in the mirror again.

The last time I needed a fancy dress at a time when nothing fit was for a cousin’s wedding several years ago.  I had just had a miscarriage and I was supposed to play solo viola for the ceremony.  (I was still bleeding during the event, and Aden and Mona were flower girls, and that whole day was a dizzying cacophony of emotions for me.)  I actually wound up sewing myself something a few days before the wedding.  I didn’t use a pattern, I just found some pretty material and made it up.  I have no idea if it looked okay, but I was not in a mental state to completely care.  (I hope I looked okay.  If I’m feeling brave later I may dig through a photo album and see.)

I don’t have the time or energy to try that this time.  I’m at the mercy of what stores have to offer.  My fall back plan will be something from the ever present collection of black things.

Speaking of concert wear, this past weekend my girls had a violin recital.  They did beautifully.  I was nervous for Mona after last year, but she simply got up in front of the room, cranked out Ode To Joy the best she’d ever done it, and smiled sweetly as she took her seat again.  Aden did a lovely job as well, and Quinn was about as good as you could ask a five year old to be at an hour long violin recital.  It was a really good day.

The only hitch was about half an hour before we were supposed to leave and I told Mona it was time to put on something nice.  She balked.

Both of my girls were big into fancy dresses when they were little.  They wore Easter and Christmas dresses all year round, always looking as if it were picture day as they set off for school.  A few years ago Aden started gravitating away from dresses, but still has a few for special occasions, and she had no trouble finding a nice one for the recital.
But not Mona.  Mona had on leggings and a long sleeved shirt and wanted to know why it wasn’t good enough.

I explained that the clothes you choose to wear say something as clearly as if you were holding a sign.  A police uniform means something different from painting clothes means something different from a wedding gown.  I told her by dressing nicely for the recital it was a way of acknowledging all the hard work everyone had done to prepare for it by showing it was special.  If she dressed like it was any other day, it was like saying the recital wasn’t important.  She needed to wear something fancy.

She fussed and she fumed, but she understood my explanation.  She started digging through her closet.  The main thing we discovered is that Mona has grown since the last time she had to wear something dressy, and nothing zipped or buttoned.  She looked stricken as one outfit after another was set aside for Goodwill, but eventually we found something new that had been a gift from a friend but not worn yet, and it was perfect.  Mona looked pleased despite herself.  It was a nice dress, comfortable, with pretty colors.  I let her wear it right over her regular outfit so underneath she would just feel like herself.
As I knelt down on the floor behind her, carefully doing up the buttons, Mona said to me quietly, “I don’t like to be fancy.”

You and me both, sweetheart.  You and me both.