Apple pie - a snapshot in words

Tonight I was reading through some of the files in my "writing" folder on the computer.  Since I didn't have a plan for today's blog post, I was looking for inspiration or ideas.  The folder is full of various things I've written: published articles or essays, potential blog posts, opinion pieces written in anger, beginnings of short stories, letters I'll never send, philosophical musings on various topics, word snapshots, etc.

Sometimes I wish I had consistently kept a journal over the years to record the ordinary moments of daily life.  But I didn't.  Yet I do have little word snapshots here and there - in computer documents, in a notebook, in a handmade card, in a blog post.  I appreciate the picture that can be conjured by these words.  One such word snapshot, written about two years ago, was filed in my writing folder under "apple pie."  Since we're entering apple season and since the emotions evoked are ones that I experience more and more in my children's rapidly passing tween and teen years, I'm sharing it today:

I am sitting at the kitchen table with my ten year old daughter and thirteen year old son.  “This apple pie is good,” I say.  We are all three busy devouring it.  “I’m enjoying mine,” answers my son.  He says that so sincerely, so innocently, so happily.  And instantly, I am fighting back unexpected tears.  These are tears perhaps of happiness, but also of sorrow.  And yet this is no occasion to be sad.  We have had a lovely day.  On this sunny and crisp October Wednesday, the three of us made apple pie together.  They did most of the work – mixing up the dough for the crust, peeling the apples, covering them with cinnamon and sugar.  I rolled out the crust, although I probably should have left it to them.  I’m no expert.  Our pie looks overfilled and the crust is lumpy and uneven.  Just like my heart.  And just like my heart, this pie is full of love.  In this pie is the love of a brother and a sister who at times seem to bicker nonstop, but can also be each other’s fiercest friends and most earnest companions.  Who just a bit earlier were laughing hysterically while playing Guess Who? - a very silly board game that we apparently have not outgrown.  Increasingly now, I recognize that these days are more behind us then ahead of us.  Even my daughter is more than halfway to the official adult age of eighteen.  Closer to that, than to my womb.  Still, I fight back the tears and finish my pie.  I am so grateful to have had this moment among many others.  To have spent the afternoon baking pie with my children.  

Those words were written almost two years ago.  My children are now twelve, fifteen and seventeen years old.  I feel these moments ever more increasingly.  We can't stop it or slow it down.  We want them to grow into adulthood - that's the goal.  And yet the sorrow we experience at seeing their childhoods pass so quickly is no less real than the joy and pride we experience at seeing them grow into young adults.

We hold on to each beautiful moment with them, as we also begin to let them go into their own bright and expectant possibilities.  

Forget the experts

With the start of a new school year, I see posts, articles and advertisements about all the activity options for children.  People may lament the cost of all of these "extra-curricular" activities, or the fact that such activities are offered at younger and younger ages, or just the intensity of classes or leagues.  They may talk about pressure to sign up for various activities, about being too busy and over-scheduled, or about finding balance.  The offerings are endless - every kind of sports, scouts, arts, music, nature, academic enrichment, manners/etiquette, cooking, sewing, robotics, programming, and on and on and on.  There's nothing wrong with any of these camps or classes.  But now every type of learning experience or skill acquisition seems to be offered as a commodity.  

This is not just a school-year issue, but a summer issue also.  I'm always astounded when parents tell me about signing up for summer camps starting in January and February.  I understand that camps fill up quickly, and you can miss out if you don't sign up right away - but I simply cannot be thinking about summer camp in the winter, plus it's probably not in the budget anyway.  Certainly, my kids have participated in some summer activities - camps or classes.  Yet the sheer number of experiences offered boggles the mind.  And the idea that summer should be filled with structured activities frankly saddens me.  I wrote about this in the article "Bike Camp: it's better when it's DIY" in Home Education Magazine, May-June 2014.  The article is about a group of families (mine included) who planned, participated in and thoroughly enjoyed our own week-long bike camp two summers in a row.  Here are a few quotes from the article that are specifically about doing things ourselves rather than relegating them to others:

"The problem is the idea that we can't provide some of these experiences for ourselves.  That everything has to be a commodity that is paid for and provided by a so-called expert.  When we realize that we don't need the expert and when we do things ourselves, we are truly empowered."  

"Sometimes we need to gain confidence and trust in ourselves, because we don't think we have the knowledge or experience to meet our children's learning interests or needs.  More often than not, we can create or facilitate the experiences our children want or the experiences we'd like them to have.  And we all - adults and children - gain so much confidence by doing things ourselves."

The idea of turning everything over to experts or specialists came up in the book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An antidote to the college admissions mania by Frank Bruni.  As I mentioned in my summer reading notes, I'm not really the target audience for this book.  In the book, Bruni writes about the proliferation of independent college consultants.  Apparently, these are people whom parents hire to get their children into elite and Ivy league colleges.  In regard to this phenomenon, Bruni writes:

"Many people seem to believe that there’s no problem, from a belly’s sprawl to a child’s sloth, that isn’t best fixed by throwing money and a specialist at it.  Anything can be delegated.  Everything can be outsourced."

Think personal shoppers, personal trainers and the like.  That's not to say that there aren't situations when it makes sense to hire a personal trainer.  However, the idea of outsourcing more and more parts of life becomes somewhat ridiculous.  My husband even saw a television news story about people who hire someone to teach their children to ride a bike!  

 

This little girl learned how to ride her bike mostly by herself with a little help from daddy.

Before you feel like you have to sign up your children for a class to learn a skill, think about it.  First of all, think about what skills you feel are most important to learn.  And then consider what skills and interests they have.  Don't worry about what other people are doing.  Do what's right for your own family.  With many skills, we can indeed teach ourselves.  There is a wealth of information - at the library, on the internet, with YouTube videos.  In our family, we've taught ourselves many things:  appliance repair, car maintenance, candle-making and other crafts, website design and other computer skills, piano-drum-guitar skills, many cooking and baking techniques, and so much more.  Also, you can always check if a friend or relative has the skills you want to learn and ask them to share their expertise.  We've been able to swap and share skills with friends many times.  As parents, our own example of resourcefulness in learning new things is particularly important.  Hooray for lifelong learning!    

*****

While we certainly would never have considered hiring someone to teach our children to ride a bike, we have benefited from the specialized knowledge of experts many times.  We will be eternally grateful for the surgeon who performed open heart surgery on our two-week old son and saved his life, for example.

I am definitely not against experts, but I don't need them to manage every aspect of my life or teach my children all the skills they need or want to know!

Do mean people suck?

Mean people suck.  We've seen that phrase on t-shirts and bumper stickers.  It's very succinct and can be a comfort when someone's behavior hurts us.  Picture this:  Another driver pulls up super close behind my car, lays on the horn and then gives me the finger as he passes in the other lane, all because he wants to go twenty miles over the speed limit rather than obey the law.  I might think to myself, "Mean people suck."

Mostly we can blow off those situations pretty quickly.  But when we feel someone who is a regular part of our lives - friend, family, acquaintance, co-worker, neighbor - has been mean to us, it's not so easy to deal with.  And we can delude ourselves into believing that the world is against us.  Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors and she captures that sentiment in the following quote from Pride and Prejudice:

There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.      

It might be temporarily comforting to believe, as the character Elizabeth Bennett does in this passage, that most people will disappoint us.  But in the long term, that belief will probably not serve us very well.  If we're always expecting to be dissatisfied with people, then we might be.  Rather than expect disappointment, we might want to give people the benefit of the doubt.  We probably hope they'd do the same for us.  Consider instead the sentiment expressed in this quote that often appears on Facebook:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

It's usually attributed to Plato, but a bit of research shows that to be unlikely.  You can check out the information at Quote Investigator, if you're interested.  But the point of the quote is a good one.  Most likely the guy who flipped me off for driving the speed limit is simply late for work or an appointment and is inappropriately taking his frustration out on me.  But maybe something else is going on in his life.  Maybe he's rushing to the hospital to visit a loved one.  The point is not to excuse anyone's behavior.  But we can't know everything that's going on in a person's life that brought them to the point where they interacted with us in a negative way.  So, it might not be worth it to expend a lot of energy in reacting to it.  It might be better to move on and not let these instances erode our faith in humanity.  Or, in the case of someone who is close to us, it might be best to find out what's really going on rather than make assumptions about his or her behavior.

I know that I’m a much happier person when I look beyond the myriad foibles and imperfections of myself and other humans and see our basic goodness.  We are such a varied and interesting kaleidoscope of people and personalities and possibilities.    

I have also found that service work, particularly directly working with people who are marginalized in our society in some way, is true balm to avoiding feelings of disillusionment toward humanity.  It just feels good to help others.  Plus, we are working alongside other volunteers who are trying to make the world a better place.  Serving others can also give us some needed perspective on our own worries and concerns and help us let go of disappointment and resentment.

*****

Caveats
1.  I'm not excusing bad behavior.  There are times we need to address someone's behavior and request an apology.  There are times when we need to own up to our bad behavior and apologize.  There are times when we need to discontinue a relationship because of a person's consistently bad treatment of us.
2.  Some behavior is truly evil and cannot be excused in anyway.  

My top three accessories for middle age

People who know me will know that this list has little chance of containing any actual fashion accessories.  For those who don’t know me, be warned – do not look for belts, purses or jewelry on this particular list.

My top three accessories for middle age

1)  Progressive lenses & multi-focal contacts

I can see far…I can see near…I’m…I’m…superwoman!  Seriously, this is great stuff.  I love my bifocals!  They are actually progressive lenses, so they don’t have a line running through the middle.  I can read a sign across the room and ALSO read the fine print on a package.  All this without multiple corrective eyewear or asking one my children to read the fine print for me.  I also have multi-focal contact lenses.  I don’t love them quite as much as the glasses, because I lose a bit of clarity on the distance while gaining the advantage of seeing close-up.  Still, they’re pretty awesome too. 

Rocking the bifocals up close & personal

2)  Night guard

You might be surprised how many people use a night guard.  When I mentioned it to other people, I found out that many women I know have one of these.  People use a night guard if they clench or grind their teeth at night.  I’m a clencher myself.  A night guard can also prevent you from chewing the inside of your cheek at night.  Yes, I’ve done that too.  A night guard is similar to a mouth guard that athletes use to protect their teeth.  My dentist created molds of my upper and lower teeth and then of my bite (teeth alignment), so that it’s custom made for my mouth.  I have to admit that I clenched (apparently) a crack into my first night guard.  It was a thinner, more flexible one.  My dentist ordered me a new one, which is basically the more durable industrial strength night guard.  She also recommends that I try meditation.  But my night guard helps, and I sleep better when I use it.  Plus it has completely eliminated the jaw clicking and popping problem that I had. 

3)  Hair color in a box

I am very low maintenance when it comes to personal care.  I don’t really wear make-up or jewelry, except for my wedding ring.  I’m also not particularly interested in fashion.  It’s not that I’m philosophically opposed to those things.  I often admire other people’s jewelry and stylish clothing.  With my tendency toward minimalism, I’m just not interested in it for myself.  It’s no secret, however, that I color my hair.  Gray strands started appearing in my early to mid-30s.  Now in my mid-40s, I’m not really sure what color my hair is anymore.  It’s mostly gray.  Someday I will just let it be.  For now - every couple of months, I spend some time in the bathroom with a couple of boxes of Nice 'n Easy and make my hair not gray.  

I usually mix these two colors and swear under my breath as I'm applying it, but it's not too difficult.

A serious & silly Labor Day reflection on my work history

In honor of Labor Day, I though I'd try to list all the paid jobs I've had over the years, since I started helping with my older siblings' paper routes at the age of eleven.  As I listed these, I thought of something I wrote for Home Education Magazine last year in the essay Arm Farts, Life and Death.  It's not available online, so I can't share it with you.  Here I'll quote two parts about employment:

Our paid employment may also relate to our identity, or we may primarily identify as unschoolers.  We live in a culture in which identity is very much tied up with career or job status.  When you meet someone new, often the first question is, "What do you do?"  What do I do!?  Lots! - I think to myself.  I sleep, eat, love, learn, run, read, write, hike, cook, clean, manage a household, keep the calendar, take care of various needs of husband, children, and pets.  I'm a mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, cousin, unschooler, church member, writer, thinker, dreamer.  I don't really say all that of course, because the questioner only wants to know what I do for paid work. 

The flexibility of taking short-term and/or part-time jobs has been a good fit for me as an unschooling mom.  It has given me the opportunity to contribute to my family's income as needed and in ways that don't take way away from our family life.

I understand and respect that everyone's choices are different in this regard.  I admire the successful and rewarding careers of many friends and family members.  And I do realize that people with full-time careers also have to manage households and families.  But since this was a personal essay in a publication for homeschoolers, I was talking about the choices that worked for my family in that context. Certainly, each choice has its own advantages and disadvantages.  For our part, relying primarily on one income has meant being very conscious about our spending and practicing frugality.  In my post Open windows, silver linings, lemonade & rolling with the changes, I wrote about my recent search for part-time work.  There were some disappointments, but ultimately I found a good fit.  If you have a nontraditional work background like me, you need to find employers willing to sit down with you and find out about your skills.  An online application process is not going to pick up on that.  As for that nontraditional work history of mine...what follows is what I can remember.  Each job is followed by a six-word description or commentary.  I'm slightly enamored of the six-word constraint ever since I used it for book reviews a few months ago.

babysitting:  Changing diapers before I knew how.
paper route:  The neighborhood routes - my family's dynasty.
server & dishwasher at nursing home:  First "real" job at sixteen years.
county park employee:  Teenage girls essentially run lakeside marina. (seriously)
jewelry sales at Summerfest:  I am not good at sales.  (again, seriously)
pizza-maker:  First college job - second semester freshman.
night manager (security) at dorms:  Teenage kids essentially run college dorm.
admissions office at university:  I can't remember...maybe administrative tasks?
resident assistant:  Free room and board = good gig.
library at university - I can't remember...data entry maybe?
fair housing investigator:  Young adults investigate housing discrimination complaints.
karaoke host at bars:  I did this and sang too.  (seriously, in public)
security/visitors assistant at museum:  Temporary gig while figuring things out.
administrative assistant:  Still trying to figure things out.
bookseller:  I guess I can sell books.
paraprofessional educational assistant:  Figured out - education is my field.
fifth grade teacher:  My classroom is my main domain.
(Somewhere in here is where I gave birth to three kids in the space of about five years.)
in-home childcare/babysitter:  Add more kids to the mix.
telephone customer service at home:  That was interesting - look away now.
clerk at public library:  I love books and library people.
writer/editor of Powerpoint presentations:  A good home-based, short-term contract gig.  
tutor at high school:  Short-term and eye-opening experience tutoring teens.
freelance writer:  Published a few articles and essays.
outreach specialist for nonprofit organization:  My awesome, interesting new part-time job.

That's it.  I'm curious what might be added to the list in the future.

Have you had any interesting or unusual jobs?  I'd love to hear from you.

Happy Labor Day!

*****

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Minimalist Mary says, "These boots were made for walking..."

June through August reading notes

Since I started blogging, I have tried to post my reading notes periodically.  A few months ago, I had a lot of fun writing my reading notes in the format of six-word reviews or descriptions.  See that post here.  By the way, that was inspired by the Six-Word Memoir project, which has been around for several years.  This time, I'm not going to restrict myself to six words.  I will keep my notes fairly short, however.

 

Bossypants by Tina Fey
This was a light read and very funny.  I enjoyed Tina Fey's anecdotes from her childhood, from her early days of trying to break into comedy, and - of course - from her career in the entertainment business working on Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock.

Life Drawing by Robin Black
I love Robin Black's writing!  A few years ago, I read her short story collection If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This.  Short stories aren't necessarily my favorite genre, but Black's collection really impressed, moved and entertained me.  I was glad when I saw that she had published a novel.  Life Drawing is mostly the story of a marriage.  It's more character than plot-driven, although it ends in a somewhat unexpected way.

Boxers (Boxers & Saints, #1) by Gene Luen Yang
Saints (Boxers & Saints, #2) by Gene Luen Yang
Gene Luen Yang is a graphic novelist and author of the outstanding American Born Chinese.  These two graphic novels recount, with parallel stories told from different perspectives, the Boxer Rebellion.  I have to admit that I knew next-to-nothing about this period of Chinese history, and I learned a lot from reading these two volumes.  If you enjoy looking at historical events through graphic novels (as in Persepolis, for example), you'll want to read these.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organising
by Marie Kondo
When I finished reading this book, I posted a fairly long blurb on Facebook.  I'll repost that here:

Just finished reading The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up: the Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo, a bestseller that’s been getting a lot of buzz lately. In the spirit of my recent blog post with six-word book descriptions/reviews, here’s one for this book: “Author clearly does not have children.” smile emoticon On the other hand, I could also say: “Good motivator – get rid of more.” So although I likely won’t start folding my socks in any particular way, nor will I begin speaking regularly to inanimate objects (other than coaxing along aging cars & appliances), I do agree with the message that most of us have way too much stuff. Even Minimalist Mary & family. And I heartily concur with the author's assertion that significantly reducing our belongings (rather than trying to find new & creative ways to organize them), will ultimately give us more time to spend on the pursuits, passions & projects that mean the most to us.

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck
This was structurally quite different, and I found it a bit confusing to keep track of the characters since the main characters are not named.  As the description on Goodreads says:

The End of Days, by acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, consists essentially of five books, each leading to a different death of an unnamed woman protagonist. "How could it all have gone differently?" the narrator asks in the intermezzos between. 

It was interesting to read about the characters' experiences throughout the different parts of European history, from the Hapsburg Empire to the height of the Soviet Union, but I had to work pretty hard to stick with this novel.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
I am going to sound like the uninformed parent who takes her four year old to Into the Woods because it's a Disney movie, but then is angry at the movie because it's not actually appropriate for a four year old.  We should try to know what we're getting into when we go to a movie or pick up a book.  I wanted an entertaining medieval mystery (as in the Cadfael mysteries), but I didn't realize this book was so full of Latin and church history.  Still a pretty good mystery, though!

  


Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania 
by Frank Bruni
I spotted this title on the new nonfiction shelves at the library and was intrigued.  My son just started his senior year of high school, and we're navigating the college application process now.  We are not the target audience for this book as neither we nor our son have been looking at or hoping for Ivy League or other elite schools.  Still, it was refreshing and reassuring to read this.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I was fascinated by the story of this novel's main character Ifemelu, told in the present and the past, about her life in Nigeria and in America.  Along with Ifemelu's story, the plot traverses Nigerian history and politics, the experience of Nigerians and other Africans living in America (and Europe), and the broader topics of race and racism.  I recommend this and plan to read Adichie's other novels too.  Her TED talk is also very good:  The Danger of a Single Story.    

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
This was, by far, my favorite read of the summer.  The story and characters really drew me in.  The bulk of the novel takes place in the aftermath of a terrible flu that wipes out the majority of the world's population, although there are some flashbacks to the characters' lives before the flu.  Much of the story focuses on a group of survivors called the Traveling Symphony, who travel around the Great Lakes area performing musical concerts and Shakespeare.  This is a beautifully-written novel, and I highly recommend it!

*****

What about you?  What was your favorite summer read?

Sharpened pencils and fresh notebooks

I haven't blogged for almost two months, have journaled only sporadically and have not worked on any other writing projects, except for those that relate to my paid work.  Recently, I saw a #30PostsHathSept blog challenge on writer Lisa Rivero's website.  It's just the thing I need to recommit to my writing and blogging, both of which have been sadly neglected in recent months.  A blog challenge also provides some accountability, which is a topic I've written about before.  The #30PostsHathSept blog challenge is about committing to publish 20-30 blog posts in September.  I'm aiming for 20 posts in September starting with this one!  

It's timely to have a challenge like this coincide with the start of the new school year.  What I love about back-to-school is the promise of new beginnings, pencils sharpened to a perfect point and fresh notebooks with empty pages begging to be filled.  In my writing life, the new beginning is this blog challenge.  The pencils sharpened to a perfect point are my commitment and willpower.  And the fresh notebooks with empty pages are the twenty posts to be written this month.  Perhaps not the most original metaphors, but they'll do.  

I can't think of an apt metaphor for vulnerability, but it's an important theme for writers and for anyone who puts their work or their ideas or themselves out in the world for others to see.  I've written about vulnerability before.  And the theme of vulnerability has popped up a few times for me in the past several days.  Last week, someone completely misrepresented my words and actions.  It felt like an attack on my character, and I felt very vulnerable.  I wrote about the experience in my journal to work through my feelings.  Writing therapy works!  Then I happened to hear the song Breathe (2am) by Anna Nalick while driving.  The lyrics really spoke to me about writing, vulnerability and - yes - just breathing (something I sometimes forget to do!):

2 am and I'm still awake, writing a song 

If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me,

Threatening the life it belongs to

And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd

Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud

And I know that you'll use them, however you want to     

Then this past Wednesday, Lisa Rivero (whose blog challenge I'm joining) wrote about vulnerability in her post The Courage of Getting Back Up.  I love what she wrote:

Blogging—especially regular blogging —is a good way to practice vulnerability. Even if you don’t blog about personal topics, the habit of “showing up” and “being seen” (or being read) when you have no control over your readers is a form of creative courage.

Lastly, in anticipation of our twentieth wedding anniversary - which was also on Wednesday - a mini-essay formed in my brain.  It wasn't quite a blog post.  It also wasn't quite the sort of thing most people say on anniversaries.  But it felt so real.  With my husband's consent - because it's about both of us, of course - I posted the words on FB along with a wedding photo.  I felt vulnerable, but I also felt so glad I put my words out there because those words resonated with many of my friends.  

So...here's to new beginnings, creative courage & vulnerability!  

*****

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