6th picture

From Sandra Dodd's blog:

Choose the sixth picture from the sixth picture folder on your computer and post it.

Well there it is, a thumbprint of Gary and a banjo.

Pros and Cons

"Of course, a child may not know what he may need to know in ten years (who does?), but he knows, and much better than anyone else, what he wants and needs to know right now, what his mind is ready and hungry for. If we help him, or just allow him, to learn that, he will remember it, use it, build on it. If we try to make him learn something else, that we think is more important, the chances are that he won't learn it, or will learn very little of it, that he will soon forget most of what he learned, and what is worst of all, will before long lose most of his appetite for learning anything."

~John Holt~ Teach Your Own

What I have been thinking about a lot lately is this pros and cons thing. Like on Monday Gary and I started to talk about some of the things that we could be doing if we weren't homeschooling. Like that career I went and did all of that schooling for, like that guitar and recording equipment that gather dust more than not. I think about the conversations that I wish that I could start and linger through and come to completion with. I think about the quiet that I long for like an long lost friend and the noise, the incessant tantrum of drums and growls and chatter that replace this silence.
And then I jump to school.
School may not be great but it could act as some sort of childcare.

And then Gary tells me to come to the Boulevard and drop the bills and the phone and jump in the car with the bikes and scooters and helmets and children and escape to the ocean that we are so blessed to live minutes from.
And so I went and the children rode off and there we were with our conversation that started and lingered and ended.
Our children are like wildflowers growing without abandon all over our messy house. They take over a green patch and then they move on to another part of the house and yard and they have things in their hair and food trailing behind them and muddy feet.
They are planted in my yard and free to roam.
Right now they are all outside, almost dark, helmets on running or riding through our dead end street with the neighborhood kids.
My child is missing his jacket and Nora is not wearing socks and the plate from last week's apples is growing mold on it in the far end of the backyard.
Nora is kicking the soccer ball to Zack and I can hear Sadie practicing the piano. She has chosen to stay in.
I think about the contagious smile that my nine year old daughter held on her face throughout her dance recital last week and the entire Folk Chorale concert on Sunday. She is so beaming with light and love and hope.
The trade off is clear and so I need to remember that this is about my family and in my family we make concessions for each other. Gary tells me to get in the car and I go and the kids want me to come play a game with them and I want to write here and now and they move on and we all give to each other.
Sometimes parenting can be so black and white. Put kids away and meet our needs or put our dreams away and meet their needs.
There is a happy middle ground here in our home.
In a discussion I had with some moms recently I remember that there was much talk about sacrifice and I felt bad because I felt like there are times it is a tremendous sacrifice that I make daily for these children.
I feel like there are times when I worry that my daughter's will feel that they have to do these same things and I want them to feel free to chose. I want them to feel free.
And in the clarity that comes with time I realize that for me it is a sacrifice but it is one that I am entirely ready to make.
And one that becomes second nature to all of us.

Sadie's Swim meet

Scrabble seems like a good idea laying on my bedroom floor on a sunny Sunday or a cloudy Tuesday. Making cupcakes seems like a good idea today, two days before the ghosts come out to gather treats and tricks. Listening to music or watching a movie seemed like a good idea to some of us last night but Nora was tired and she said so and so I downloaded a witchy tale for her from our library and she dozed on and off in a feverish haze all through the night.
When I was a child I had many hours of someone telling me what to do and the places that I needed to be but then I had many hours of no one directing me. It was in this confusion that I was lost. That is why I am here
suggesting that maybe it would be fun to make cupcakes of play music together or maybe it is really a good idea to go up in to your room and build on your own.
Nora has made me a scary tie dye ghost out of an old colorful table cloth and an apple and she has come whizzing through my bedroom now with it in hand in all ghostly earnest.
She wants to know how to tie it up and I tell her my idea and off she goes,
half ghost half fairy, six for only a few more days.
Molly runs in half out of breath, having had her last driving test, no longer fairy but now wanting to fly off on her own.
There are things for me to sign and more for me to do and I am happy to do it.
Jonah is not at my heel and so he must be either in the basement playing music or breaking something somewhere and I am thinking about his squishy baby hands
and even breathing feels alright.

Content on Halloween

Taking care of myself has never come easy. And yet not taking care of myself has never been an option either. Some of the beautiful mothers that I know do such an amazing job being self less and devoted in constant measure to their cubs. Some mothers that I know take it all in stride with such grace.
I've asked for such grace.
I've bargained for this blessing late at night as I question some parenting decision that I made or some parenting decision I did not make, could not face.
Other moms I know make this beautiful transition back to their careers and they get on the train and they go, and they don't look back and they are content in their decisions to embark on this mission.
I am looking for content.
I looked for it yesterday in Salem. I looked for it on the train ride in and I looked for it as we all climbed off the train in to the craziness that is Halloween Salem. I know it wasn't the best place to find content but it seems plausible
or it did at the time.
And so let's face it. What was intended to be a fun day trip turned quickly in to a miserable grouchy should have hid under the covers kind of day and now looking back on it all in my pajamas at 6pm the day after, somewhere in going through my pictures, listening to my music, there is was
not really hidden
just kind of lurking underneath age
layers of skin
and some gray hair.
Content.
And I realize as I reflect on arguing with Gary in the cemetery in Salem with people all around us, I realize as I told all of them we are now leaving Salem if you cannot stop blowing raspberries on strange passerbyers and looked on to their scowls and crankiness that that is all part of the equation.
Later Sadie and I trailed behind and talked among the grown adults who stank of alcohol and had face paint dripping from their faces, and Sadie told me that she thought maybe I was still sick and I thought she may be right.
As it turns out she was. I am sick with the flu
and I was a jerk yesterday
because sometimes I am a jerk.
Sadie told me sometimes she is one too and I aplogized for being one and then we laughed, all of us, the whole train ride home.
Content is noticing a thought float through my head such as "maybe I should go back to work full time" or "I want to go to work full time" or "I am never going to be able to cook anything more than a hot dog" or "there is something inherently wrong with me" and watching it float away into the space of humanity.
Noticing all of the crazy ghouls in Salem and all of the desperate people in the Emergency room at night and my small vunerable children and recognizing the lessons that there are in all of these events and that this is how life evolves and moves so beautifully and so brutally real.

Awe

I'm having one of those weeks where I am watching my children become the people that they are supposed to be right before my eyes and I am completely in awe.

Molly's birthday

Today was Molly's birthday. She turned 17 today. A few days ago I took Jonah to a park that Molly and I used to frequent when she was between the ages of 2 and 4 and there I was with my youngest child running wildly through the slides and swings thinking, "Is this Molly..... or is this Jonah?"
Time is such a funny thing. Just when I think I am ready for it to fly by I am taken aback, punched in the stomach and losing my breath thinking about her and how quickly it all went by.
She wanted us to take her out to eat and so we did. She wanted us to take her out along and I understand what she is trying to say to us and so we did. Having all these little siblings cant always be easy and so we were together, the three of us, just like it had been for many years prior to baby #2 as we called Sadie.
Of course things being the way they are around our house currently we couldn't just take Molly in to the city and have our way. First we had to stop for our first appointment at Dana Farber. We all joked and played on the way up and looked around at bald heads and weak bodies and thought about how silly it was that we were there because after all Gary has a curable kind of cancer and there will not be any bald heads in our house any time soon. In the lobby I sat feeling sad for all of these other people that have to go through Cancer while we are all done with that now, thank you, just a precaution.
The nurses and the clinicians and just about everyone was so kind to us at DF that it almost brought tears to my eyes. They were not worried about time, they were not doubtful of us and our intentions and wisdom as carriers of our own bodies. It felt loving and wonderful and spiritual.
The doctor was a tall handsome man with a kind face and a broad and welcoming smile who sat with us for two hours and would have stayed with us all afternoon if we kept asking questions.
He told us that Gary has a 25% chance of chemotherapy and a 75 % of monitoring heavily and waiting and seeing. We will find this out next week after the CAT Scan comes back and I know that whatever happens I trust this doctor and I know that he cares about me and my husband. I haven't felt that about a doctor for a really long time.
We went out to a nice little Irish restaurant and took funny pictures of each other and laughed and ate. It's fun to be with Molly because she is like an adult now and we have fun conversations and I am almost ready to launch her.
Maybe she will want to go back to that park with me.
Maybe I will blink my eyes and find myself there in years to come with her little child wishing for a return to something as sweet as the first flowers in spring and the longest day of the year.