Jonah and I went to a party today, a birthday party just for three or four year old little boys. It was sweet and charming and I was glad to go. Sadie went with Daddy to a gig in Stratton Mt Vt where they got to listen to Harry Potter and talk about stuff the whole ride. Nora played outside most of the day and Molly came home from her adventures in Maine and now is playing with her new toy a shiny yellow laptop.
I am in the zone. I made a commitment to myself this week that I need to take better care of myself, go to bed earlier, eat better and exercise more. There is not surprise in the fact that of course this makes me feel better and the family flow better and life move on in a happy more satisfying way. I am thankful for the willingness to arrive here this week, before New Years Day, before the hype of quitting things and getting it together.
While I was at the party with Jonah today I had the pleasure to be with him and see him in his boyness and his way. He is a shy boy and so it usually takes him a little time to warm up but that is ok and he is a child who does not play all the games, some, like pin the tail on the donkey he will not play because of his vision, but others he will not play because he doesn't want to.
That's ok, I like that about my kids. They are generally friendly and good natured but they won't do something they don't want to.
Sometimes this is tricky. For example, sometimes I would like Sadie to get it in gear and get on my agenda and then unschooling is more challenging. I try and remember that these are moments for her in a whole spectrum of time and space. I try and remember my most independent child and how she is turning out and I couldn't be more impressed and in awe of her these days.

Vision

When I was in the tenth grade I dissected a cow's eyeball. I remember this event very well because my partner was John Daughterty, a boy I had an on and off again love affair with all through high school. The only thing I remember about the eye itself is the way that it looked as it went flying threw the air when he threw it at me during a quarrel. I don't remember anything about the mechanics of vision or the organ itself. I couldn't tell you how we came to, as a group of beings, process all this information that comes through these windows to the world.
When Jonah was diagnosed with severe myopia at age 13 months, I remember the tears falling from my eyes and the way that my daughters looked solemnly at me and the look on Jonah's face of which I came to recognize as his "without glasses" face.
After two years I am still grappling with this. We have a ophthalmologist, who we see regularly. We had early intervention services, and services through Perkins School for the Blind. He is followed by doctors at the Low Vision Clinic at Perkins and now will be receiving help from the Carroll Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. The course of his vision issues has been an interesting one for me on all different levels. I have periods of time where I think that he will be a little boy who needs thick glasses and that will be that and then I have periods of time where I am so worried about him and confused. I am still learning. I know more about the eye today than I ever learned in school. I understand how it works. I understand that Jonah has an elongated eyeball and that his retina has very low pigment and that he is at a higher risk for retina detachment. I understand what that means, that he could just eventually lose pieces of the picture, spots in his world. I understand that myopia tends to get worse with age and that he could lose more of his already preciously small amount of vision and this makes me worried.
I understand all of these things but lately I have been thinking emotionally, spiritually about what they mean to me and how I make sense of them and it makes me quite sad.
Jonah had an IEP meeting last week at the Gloucester Preschool. It is supposed to be one of the best around, especially for special needs children but when Gary and I visited it in the fall, I knew I could not send Jonah there. I knew that Jonah would be a homeschool kid too. We continued through the process however because I do want the help from the Carroll Center and this is the only way I can get it.
So I had to sit through the meeting, all three hours of it. For the most part it was fine. I understand what schools need to do and the way that administrators and teachers think about things like this. What surprised me most were some of the things that the woman from the Carroll Center was reporting. Jonah will not be able to drive a car ever. For some reason this makes me so sad, this loss of independence, this loss of a rite of passage in our country. Jonah is not seeing that well even with his glasses and could possibly benefit from a cane someday.
So I have spent the weekend looking for more information. I checked out the few books that there are on vision impairments. One in particular has been very helpful entitled, "Children with Visual Impairments, a Parents Guide, " by M Cay Holbrook.
Last night we were finishing up our Christmas shopping and I was in a huge Barnes and Nobles. I was searching for a book for Jonah for Christmas that featured a child with glasses. I wasn't looking for Arthur or Magenta gets her new glasses or something like that because Jonah doesn't have typical glasses like those characters. I was looking for a book that captured his experience, his reliance on his other senses, his fear in the dark, his perception of the world. I asked around. The friendly woman brought me over to the Special Needs section where they had a billion books on autism but not one on visual impairment, nothing. They had a book on vision with autistic children but not just plain old vision. The woman told me I should write one. Normally this type of thing would roll right off of me but last night it made me feel incredibly alone. I feel alone in my choice of schooling, and alone with this child who is not blind and yet has a serious condition. I can't go to the schools about it because I don't have any faith in their ability to help and I have lost faith in his ophthalmologist who did not explain his condition enough to me because he was afraid, I am sure of hurting my heart even more.
Jonah is in the bath with Nora, his little buddy. They are playing Santa Claus face with the bubbles in the bath and some game that involves farting in the bath. The kitty is sleeping behind me and Sadie is hanging out with Myrtle. Gary is lugging in all the Christmas stuff and Molly is still sleeping. Two more days until Christmas and my life moves on in all sorts of interesting ways.

Christmas meme thanks to Christa (sodonti)

1. Real tree or artificial? Real and all six of us need to be in the tree place picking out the tree. It's a yearly event.


2. When do you put up the tree? Usually in the first week of Dec

3. When do you take down the tree? Later and later, thanks to Mr Christmas himself, who I married nine years ago.

4.Wrapping paper or gift bags? I hate those gift bags, a total waste and no fun to open. Lots of paper and different kinds.

5. When do you start Christmas shopping? oh crap..........

6. Who is the hardest person to buy for? My father in law


7. Easiest person to buy for? Nora, Nora loves just about everything we give her.

8. Angel on top of the tree, or star? Gold angel.


9. What is the worst Christmas gift you ever got? Once a friend of Gary's bought us a Jamaican Santa who sang reggae Christmas songs which my children loved so we had to listen to them over and over and over that year, somehow, he disappeared.......


10. What is the best gift you received as a child? A fluorescent 80s outfit with bright orange suspenders and all. I'll never forget how psyched I was to wear it to school.


11. What is your favorite food to eat at Christmas time? Aunt Grace's peanut butter balls, Gary's chili and the morning of Christmas traditional cinnamon buns.

12. What do you want for Christmas this year? Four happy children, one loving husband, health and inner peace. I guess nothing then because I already have those things.

Another day

I had an idea that while Gary was out running errands with Jonah, the girls and I would play board games, a luxury that inevitably Jonah always seems to reek havoc in lately. So, Gary and the little man left on their journey and I pulled out Blokus and Mancala, both favorites of Nora and Sadie and I. In that five minutes time, Nora had pulled out all of the polly pockets and somehow Sadie had dug up an old doll house circa 1995 possibly, and they had built their own game.
Needless to say I didn't interfere and here I am writing, something that I love to do.
Lately our lives have been like this. Sadie continues to travel on her journey of listening to the Harry Potter series over and over again while building things in her room. This week she has moved away from the Kinex and has moved on to the "Dangerous Book for Boys" projects. She tossed the "Daring Book for Girls" and told me that it was too girly and that if she had to do all the things in that book she would rather be a boy. So she is in there making and perfecting the paper airplane. Occasionally she emerges to show us one that does flips in the air or one that dives or something but all in all she is content, her and Myrtle, to hang out in solitude.
I used to worry about my children and socialization. It's funny because I never even think about this anymore. I still worry they are not "learning" enough although I am almost over that hurtle too. I never worry about the social thing anymore.
This worries me a little as I think about it now because I wonder if it is because I genrally think that most of mainstream America is a bunch of nut cases and I, myself, tend to spend way too much time alone. It's a harder life, so I hope I am not instilling this in them. But they are happy and joyful most of the time.
Now that I am not working that much anymore I have a lot of free time which I did not have a few months ago. I find myself waking up in the morning with this sense that I can do anything I was to do that day. We can go to the Museum, which we did on Monday or we can just hang out in our pjs or bake or whatever. Sometimes this is a little much for me, I like to be active and doing things all the time but for the most part I have surprised myself with how much I am ok with this.
This weekend we got a new beautiful piano that was given to us by a friend of Gary's. It is absolutely gorgeous and of course every morning for the last week we have ended up in that room before even eating, playing songs. Sadie has been playing the piano so much lately just by ear and she is an amazing piano player. Gary has taught me some bass and of course Jonah is dancing and playing the guitar or drums. We have learned Rudolph and Jingle Bells and Feliz Navidad and we sound pretty good. These are the things I hope my children will remember about their childhoods and the reason that they don't go to school.
Molly found out that she passed her GED yesterday and is just so happy and thrilled with herself. She scored so high on her reading part that she was considered superior. Part of me wanted to make a copy and send it off to some of her crappier teachers in her life. Part of me felt like crying that I had put her through school as long as I had. Most of me was just happy for her and excited for her future.
Now they are here and they are wanting me to play those games and so it goes.

Christmas Tree Lighting

We went to the Christmas tree lighting today and watched the parade. Now Gary is downstairs making a huge fire and dinner and who knows where that will lead.

Lately I have had so much to write in my blog about that I have not known where to begin. So I guess I will just begin with the beginning of my thoughts. Jonah has pneumonia. You would never know it right now with the racket he is making behind me as he plays with trucks in my bed with his sister. It is really the nights that are the hardest for him, he comes in complaining that we have the heat on too high, or saying "put the fire out" when there is no fire going, fevers high and he is stripping down naked and shivering. I called the doctor today and she had an Xray ordered and low and behold he has pneumonia. I dont even really know what that means other than it sounds really scary and now I have to talk him in to taking medicine twice a day.
Sadie had an appt last week to have four teeth pulled. Once again she handled it true to Sadie style talking about it for weeks, spending inordinate amounts of time upstairs in her room putting together every puzzle she could find and finishing off the Harry Potter series (so much for my theory that she would never get in to Harry Potter). She went in to our crappy dentist's office (more on why he is crappy later) last week with trepidation and misery in her face. It was just she and I. The dentist made no small talk, pulled out the biggest needle I have ever seen and called Sadie a "drama queen" and "foolish" for refusing to let him lay his hands on her. Needless to say once I realized he had no child skills at all and possibly some other mental problems we left there with her four teeth in tact and a referral for an oral surgeon.
Today was the oral surgeon's turn. We spend all week processing that mean dentist and his mean words and how some people take their bad days out on kids and how it was not her fault to be afraid and how I would never let anyone hurt her and all that good stuff. We went in to the oral surgeon's office with some obvious skepticism and prepared to leave if we needed to.
What a difference a little kindness makes. He clearly had children and grandchildren and lots of kid experience. Plus he obviously valued children and Sadie. This was very important to me and to her. We talked about our previous experience and he was so kind to both of us. He told us he would use general anesthesia because clearly Sadie had had a rough experience and the teeth really did need to come out.
I can't tell you what a difference this dentist made to us and to Sadie. Gary still has a hard time going to the ophthalmologist because when he was a kid the ophthalmologist was terribly mean to him and he still suffers. Luckily we have a great ophthalmologist, Dr. Sorkin who everybody in our family adores.
In the middle of all of this craziness is my now 6 year old Nora who celebrated her 6th bday on Sunday with a collection of her closest buddies. She is at a great age right now, asking me how she can help in the midst of sick children and tooth pulling. She rooted right along side me today with Sadie and told me her theory about how the sun hangs there in the sky suspended like that (more on that theory in some other post along the way).
By the way, Dr. Kowalski is crappy doctors name. I need to find a new one.

Today

This thanksgiving was like most others. For the last five years Gary and I have hosted our families here at our house and so we are able to hang out in our pjs all morning cooking and cleaning and watching the Macys parade on tv. There is an air of specialness in the air, a frozen in time feeling. This year I vowed to video the kids more because I have been thinking a lot lately that time is slipping by and my babies are quickly turning in to not babies anymore so I videoed a lot today. When family got here we feasted and that was wonderful and at the end of the feast my children hung around with family and then things were quiet and when I went to look for them I found Nora upstairs sprawled out on her bedroom floor flipping through the pages of Curious George and Sadie tucked away in her room listening to Harry Potter 4 and doing a puzzle and Jonah quietly sitting in the playroom with his trucks. I love that my children can entertain themselves without tv and without video games and that they know when they need alone time and are not afraid to go take it at their own liberty. I have always been a person that required a lot of alone time and am always feeling guilty for asking for my required allotment, they know just what they need.
My favorite part of today was at the end of the day when the fire was really going and it was dark and it was just the 6 of us left, in our pjs again in the living room and we all started singing together. We sang many Christmas songs and folk songs which got Gary thinking about Alice's Restaurant and so we sang that song for a little bit but we all wanted the real thing so we came up here where I am now, at the computer and listened to two different versions of Alice's Restaurant, one live and one recorded and then we got to talking about the draft and war and littering and four part harmony and folk music and Vietnam. Then we listened to The City of New Orleans which we found out actually wasnt written by Arlo Guthrie and also comes with a great story that you can find at youtube if you are interested and Gary and I talked about growing up in the 70s which somehow got us back to the kids favorite thing to listen to on the computer which is the soundtrack to Grease.
Unschooling............
by the time I am through with Jonah I will get it but on the way I am stumbling through math worries and future concerns and the frameworks of education.
My favorite unschooled moments this week:
1. When Nora asked Gary and I on the way home from Maine whether trucks and trees have middle names.
2. When Jonah sang the alphabet song in entirety at the Thanksgiving table just because he felt like it.
3. When Sadie told me an hour long story about Charlie, an elderly man she visits regularly with Grampa John during their Wed meals on wheels trips.
4. When Nora told Gary to stop talking to her because he was disturbing the story in her head.
5. When Nora asked (in all seriousness) for the ability to fly as number one on her Christmas list.
6. Every wonderful chapter of Harry Potter 7 that Sadie and I read together.
7. Singing together

There are so many things I am grateful for today. Right now I am grateful for the piece of pie I am going to eat right now while watching the Incredibles on tv with the kids.

22 years

I have not seen my middle school friends in these pictures in 22 years. I recently came in to contact with Judy who is taking most of these pictures via Facebook. She surprised me on Sat and brought out my best friend from middle school, Beth and her sister Shari. Words cannot describe how wonderful it was to see them all. I'm tearing up just thinking about it now. I figured out the other day that as a child I moved 13 times! So for me having long term friends was not a big possibility but my friendships during those years in Maine are still sweet and wonderful in my heart.

what you know about me?

Sadie on her way

This morning at 8:50 am I watched as my eight year old boarded her first plane. It has been a long time in the making, this trip to Colorado and New Mexico, one in which I would never have dreamed even a few months ago. My Aunts visited about 8 weeks ago and were talking about the big family get together coming up in November in which my grandfather will be honored for his medical service in Farmington NM where my mom grew up. Sadie heard about it and wanted to go. Sadie talked about nothing but New Mexico for weeks until finally we bought her a ticket to go with my mom and Grampa Johnny. The last four weeks has been such an interesting process to watch and be part of. During some of the last month Sadie behaved just horribly and sulked around the house and/or lashed out at pretty much any member of her family. She actually came to such blows with my mother last week that she stormed out of the house and ran around it 5 times before returning. We talked and talked about what she was going through, she wanted to go, she was scared to fly, she has never been away from Gary and I for more than one night for a sleepover at a friend's house. She spent one solid week in her room where she listened to Harry Potter 3 and 4 and then finally begged me to go out and get 5.............. one week! She locked her door, played with her turtle, drew many pictures which all featured air travel of some sort and put puzzles together, quiet as Myrtle in there thinking muddling it over, working it out.
She crept in to our bed for the last two weeks pretty much nightly, climbing in and placing herself so close to me I thought for sure she was returning to her origins. She asked continuously about airplanes, we looked up different videos of airplanes taking off on YouTube so she could have some sort of perspective in to what it may look like for her.
Last night at Folk Chorale rehearsal she looked to me like someone who had gone through a very deep, very searching journey and emerged out of it more strong and vibrant than ever. She sang loudly and beautifully, more beautifully than she has all session. She played happily and talked about her trip openly and truthfully. She talked the whole way home and the morning and was so grateful and pleased with the purchases that I had made for her at Barnes and Nobles: a new Whimpy kid series book (her favorite) a collection of Calvin and Hobbes and a new set of crayons and a travel journal. She cuddled up with Gary and I right after she brushed her teeth and we all slept together.
This morning she was nervous, but not as nervous as me and not as devastated as my dear husband who spent the entire morning hiding in a tissue box, emerging only to take calls from Sadie. I drove her and her grandparents in to the airport and we hung around until it was time to go through security. I have to admit I was nervous she would not get on. I was kind of planning on having her with me on the way home but she gave me a good solid huge and ran off, not looking back once, and I know because I stood there and waited for a good 10 minutes while she took off her shoes and sent her bag through the check. I waited while the elevator came up and dinged once and then twice and I waved people away. I was waiting to watch her and take her in, so wise in so many ways, so happy.
I feel blessed on so many levels. I feel blessed Sadie does not have to worry about making school work up and can just take off like this in the middle of a school session without assignments and worksheets. She doesn't have a math book with her, she isn't expected to write in her travel journal for my scrutiny and she knows this. She is going to learn so much this week and she is going to experience life and family. She helped Grampa Johnny with his oxygen tank and talked to him about feeling better about having to wear this in public. It was hard for John and Sadie knew this and helped. Sadie is 8 and she has that level of compassion and regard for her grandfather. I feel so blessed that through Sadie's struggles this last month Gary and I knew our daughter well enough to watch in wonder at this whole process, not to judge, not to play interference, not to pathologize, just to watch, love and hold her space sacred. It we had not listened to our instincts and not been as tight as we all are, this month could have taken a much different course and here we are, Sadie has landed in Colorado and is just thrilled to pieces. She talked to Gary and I a bunch of times already and my joy is immeasurable at the person she is becoming.

our non traditional family

Today I had the blessing of having to explain homeschooling to a pretty mainstream bunch of people namely attorneys and mediators at a court house. This is always an interesting thing to me especially when I have encounters like todays in which the curious questioners were surprisingly rather open to my unconventional ideas and since I no longer have the fear of losing custody or suffering consequences where my teenager is involved it left me rather open and honest. The curious minded in this scenario asked the basics like "Do you have to teach all your children?" and "Do you have to do your 'teaching' during the school hours?" and "What about testing?" Pretty standard stuff for the seasoned homeschool mom. I took it with stride and found that the more I talked the more they were able to hear me which was nice and welcoming and not scary.
Recently two friends of mine have lost custody of their young children due primarily to their homeschooling choices which makes me feel incredibly sad and so grateful to be at this stage in the game with Molly.
On the ride home of course I did the standard questioning of myself that occurs after such a conversation. Am I doing the right thing? What are my children learning? What are they missing?
I got home to my three little ones in the yard playing with the neighborhood kids who had a half day. When I got out of the car one of the neighborhood kids said "Look I am just like Sadie today, free to do what I want!" with such glee and happiness on his face, I felt so happy for him for today.
Sadie had spent the morning delivering Meals on Wheels with Grampa John and I had the great opportunity to sit with her in her room for a long time talking about the many people she had met and the many challenges that they were facing including one woman who has pulmonary fibrosis like Grampa John and wears oxygen too. What a blessing that she had this time with him. How beautiful and truly meaningful is her life.
I built a huge elaborate dominoes building with Nora and Jonah and then watched in joy as they knocked it down and then played in their fort in their room and all three of them read a bunch of books. We read this really cool Cartoon History of the Universe one I got from the library on the beginning of our solar system, the big bang and our evolution. The kids loved thinking about this and wondering about it and then we read some of the Little Shakespeare books that I found at the library. Sadie did some math from her little workbook and we practiced Spanish from this new conversational Spanish book I just got and while I did the dishes Sadie and Nora practiced the many things they could say related to food and dinner including Jonah es gordito which means Jonah is chubby")
Sadie is locked up in her room almost done with Harry Potter 5 and I can't wait to start together on number 6 just to have the experience of finishing the series with her!
Molly went to her teen mentoring program and worked on some school work. She hung out with Grampa John for a while and he fixed her up with an awesome Halloween costume of a letter carrier. She looks really cool in it and is excited to spend time in Needham with some friends on Halloween while we take the little ones trick or treating.
Gary is in NYC playing with Sam James for 6 record execs tonight. I have my thoughts and prayers with him and the red guitar. He's an oldie but a goodie:)

A Little Blue Humor author unknown

Dear Red States:

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country,

and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't

aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota,

Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will

be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of

New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We

get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You

get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You

get Ole' Miss. We get 85 % of America's venture capital and

entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to

make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 % lower than the Christian

Coalition's , we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single

moms. Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and

we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need

people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently

willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you

don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish

you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing

to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 % of the

country's fresh water, more than 90 % of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 % of

the nation's fresh fruit, 95 % of America's quality wines, 90 % of all

cheese, 90 % of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all

living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus

Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT. With the Red States, on the other hand, you will

have OA to cope with 88 % of all obese Americans (and their projected health care

costs), 92 % of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 % of the tornadoes, 90 % of the

hurricanes, 99 % of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 % of all

televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University

of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 % of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually

swallowed by a whale, 62 % believe life is sacred unless we're discussing

the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44 % say that evolution is only a

theory, 53 % that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 % of you crazy bastards

believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed

they grow in Mexico.

Peace out,

Blue States

Oprah on Tuesday

It is Tues afternoon and my children have been outside playing all afternoon in the drizzly rain. I cleaned the house, prepared for dinner, got Sadie's swim bag ready for swim team and did some paper work for work and then I was left there wondering what to do with myself. So I turned on Oprah. Initially I forgot which channel she is on and then I wondered whether possibly she was still on the air, in fact I wondered whether she was still alive at all! What am I going to do with myself when these kids do get older and more independent, who am I anyhow? Oprah, the couch, a bowl of raspberries, do other people actually do this as a regular kind of thing?
I have to admit, I cannot just blame my children, it is inherent in me that I be busy. I have been busy since birth. I have been redecorating my bedroom since I could walk and learning new things as much as possible. I had a list of things to do in Kindergarten and I have about 800 different renditions of "What I Want to be When I Grow Up."
Molly came home from her college courses and told me that her psych professor reminded her of me and it got her thinking that I should teach a class and I actually entertained the idea, in fact I even made some phone calls to steer myself in that direction.
I guess once you have three jobs, what's a fourth?

The Backstrom boys

socialization problems

homeschoolers are always getting a bad rap for not being socialized enough, yeah right! Here is our Friday when we spent four hours at the park, some of which were school hours playing with friends and getting some rays on this glorious Indian Summer.
Sadie told me she couldn't believe how lucky she was to be able to play as much as she does with her friends after another day at the park today with friends.
Playing with friends, isn't that really what life is all about?

Timeless

Timeless

My time with you is less than the time spent in a sea of green grass

And floating waves

Diving under

I am swallowed by the flow of the everlasting

The ever timeless

Ness

Of us

One time I met you when we were much younger

And you and I were children

Babies really

Sweetly nursing each other back to health

I’m submerged and drowning

And there you are again

Using all of your strength

Against the stream

Of water

Of time

Of reality

And I said

What is it anyway?

What is it that look that you put on your ever changing

Clown face?

The face that I dream of

The face that I see

When I don’t see anything

Don’t believe in anything.

At the bottom of the ocean lay

Sparkling darkness

And shimmering light

You and I might

Die there

And yet we live here

Again and again.

The Colors of the Sky

I love the colors of the sky
It really is just grand
If they weren't there I would be so sad.

I love the colors
because they are so colorful
when they move along.

When the sun is setting
and it is very dark
the colors come out to say goodnight to everyone.

Do you like the colors?

Sadie Backstrom age 8

Busy

We are busy these days. I accepted a per dium position today with Hospice of the North Shore which I am so excited about but at the same time I will be staying with most of my clients in my current job and working the emergency rooms once in awhile. We are busy.
Gary has been getting offer after offer and will be playing in NYC again in a couple of weeks. He is moving his teaching day from Needham to Gloucester on Mondays and recruiting new students. He is playing weddings every weekend this fall and trying to learn all the Spanish music for the Family Folk Chorale including a 7 minute song he is singing alone all in Spanish. He is busy.
Sadie has started her ecology class on Mondays and continues to do swimming, gymnastics, drama choir and Family Folk Chorale. We are reading a really intense book for her book group. She has taken it upon herself to get out all of her Top Secret books on the different countries and reread them and is drawing and creating art like I have never seen her do before. She is busy.
Molly and I are going away the weekend of the 7th of November to look at colleges and to spend the weekend together in Western Mass. She is taking her courses and ending her job at the Y while she picks up volunteer work at Wellspring. She is taking a Boxing class and has recommitted herself to cooking healthier. She is busy.
Nora and Jonah play on, they are building all sorts of fun things in their play room and singing and drawing and reading and destroying my house. They have a language all their own that they speak when they are in their beds at night to each other. They are each others best friend and they call each other that when asked. They are truly busy learning so much every day.
We got a new kitty cat named Harry and so we have all taken to fixing up a spot for him and loving him and getting up at night to care for him. Sadie has made him her little baby and rocks him to sleep at night. Really sweet.
I am weighing the opportunity which arose last week to run the Boston Marathon for The Perkins School for the Blind which has given our family so much. I am still on the fence although I think it would be great for me to do as well as would be helpful to be that physically fit if I am going to be this busy!!!

Gary played with Assembly of Dust on Thursday and Friday, fun times, heres a picture.

sisters

Clean House

Normally I am working today but for reasons I will not go into I am here for several hours this afternoon on a Wed afternoon. Most Weds I work this crazy all day and night shift and come home to what seems like a motionless house, clean dishes, folded laundry and schoolwork all spread out of the table for me to see, drawings left out of Nora's and a pot of something left on the oven.
Yeah, my husband is the man.
Today I had to come home mid day and there lay every toy I think we own all spread out through our playroom. Toys I hadn't even realized that we still owned were there in some sort of a homemade town. Blocks and legos created the structures and all sorts of figures were used as people. It was a truly fun scene......... but far from clean.
The upstairs featured a similar situation and I sighed a loud sigh resigned to exist in this way for how much longer??
When we moved in to this new house I got white carpets for my bedroom. We were going to have a bedroom I told my husband, one all to ourselves where only adult things would be featured and having the white carpet would drill the point home.......
WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING!?
Our room is a toy room filled with everything from headless Barbie to siren screaming fire truck. Every kids book is of course in our room because that is where my children always end up reading in our bed because, well frankly Gary and I have the best bed in the house.
And the carpet........... (insert wild laughter here)
Well it's not white anymore, more like a dull gray with dribbles from nightly drinking of both children's concoctions and I am sure a few adult beverages as well.
Someday I will have a fancy house. My house will have oak thick paneled wood flooring and beautifully painted bedrooms with plants that stay alive and smudge free windows.
I will have curtains that actually match and stay on their rods for more than a week at a time. I will have a yard that is not filled with toys and riding apparatuses. And it will be quiet............
And then I will remember these days and long for them back and be willing to trade it all for my peanut butter bandit son who smudged his hands and face all on my brand new Chicos jacket that cost $88 today. Why I was wearing a Chicos jacket that cost $88...........well that is a story for another day.

My musical husband recently was flown out to NYC to perform in front of some big shot in the "industry." This was all very exciting for our house, Daddy had to get up at 4 in the morning and take the early flight and get driven around all day and play fancy guitars and all that cool stuff. But then he came home and well you know, settled back in to life here with us. He played his local gigs and goofed off with the Folk Chorale and Jonah downstairs in the basement and we all went about life.
That was last month and today he got another call. They are going to have him to NYC again and play a show at the Knitting Factory and so off he will go again.
Being married to a musician means a lot of different things to me. It means never being bored and always having a house full of music. It means having songs written about me and taking pictures of our lives together through lyrics that he has written. It means waking up at 3 am to this man playing "Sunshine of My Life" next to our bed. It means being able to request pretty much any song out there at any time and having it played right there in our kitchen for me, for us.
It also means late nights and waking up at 4am wondering if he is dead on the road. It means sharing him with the rest of the world and being really ok with myself and who I am at all times. It means really busy schedules, many weekend nights alone and not a lot of money. It means having to deal with the inevitable frustration and despair that comes hand in hand with loving someone who has been given such an amazing gift.
It also means deferring. This means that in my mind no matter what happens I have made this commitment to him and if he gets a call that there is a possible break for him I will succumb and our lives will revolve around this dream. It is difficult at times but in doing this I am always reminded in a visceral kind of way what my love for him is all about. If I asked him to stop he would but I won't and I can't because I really want him to always play the guitar because he really loves to do this and if I took that away from him it would be like taking a paint brush away from Picasso or taking Jonah's guitar away from him.

Starting Again

Jonah is in the bath in the other room and I can hear him from here. He is in the tiny bath with his two sisters playing with a bath full of toys while I type away. They are playing these games with these toys that I consider crap and if I had the choice would throw away in the blink of an eye. They however make worlds out of these toys and create scenarios all their own with the legless Barbie and the various mismatched legos and blocks and the caps from various Dora the Explorer bubble bath bottles that we just had to buy for a ridiculous price because it had a gigantic Dora head on it. Jonah is singing a song to himself in the bath about going to school. I am not sure why he is singing this song or where he has gotten this idea but there he is in the bath singing away, "I'm on my way to school, time to go to school, here I am at school." Of course Nora and Sadie are oblivious about this, in their own worlds dreaming big dreams.
Jonah works things out through his play in such a cool way. He is terrified of the dryer and washing machine and so in his play he features these machines prominently all the time. Today at the park he played washing machine and insisted that I be the dryer with all the appropriate sounds. He asks if there will be a watching machine at pretty much any location that we go to.
I am listening to this band "The Ryan Montbleau Band which I have been listening to a lot lately. Ryan is a guy that used to come out and see Gary all the time at places like the Paradise and Harpers Ferry. He used to come out with these little CDs that he had made himself on his computer or something and ask us all to take one. He loved to come out and see Gary play and he was just the cutest kid. So he grew up a lot and started this great band and they are amazing and really popular now which is so cool for him. Gary sat in with him at a festival this weekend and it was really sweet.
I feel like right now in my life at my age or at this point I am going through some sort of metamorphosis and in order to fully get wherever it is that I am headed I come to conflict a lot with the people I love. I have always been kind of a placid character always averting conflict and needing to please everyone and I am walking away from that but it's unsettling and frankly, it's isolating. I'm not sure where it is taking me and I am not sure how I got here.

Here among this wooden life and the stacks of unending paper,
People are starting to scare me and my insides are feeling safer
Than the outside world and the people I no longer comprehend.
I've been thinking about starting over
I've been thinking about starting again.
Starting again.

It's another adventure for the massive understanding,
Only time to think about the towns that we are passing.
We could read the signs and feel the blood in our bones,
And anywhere our hearts are beating we could call our home,
And we could start again.
We could start again.

We could throw it all away and laugh into the light of a new dawn.
Laughing at anything, we could grow new eyes and sing new songs.
And we don't ever have to keep it on the inside,
Once we get in the car and drive.
Starting again.

Divorce and other ramblings .................

We found out this week that two really good friends of ours will be splitting up, divorce is inevitable. Gary and I talked and talked about this reality, realizing that in our small wedding four of our closest married couple friends have divorced in that short nine year span. Our friend LJ not only divorced his wife but then went on to kill himself shortly after.
Things like this make me so confused about life and all sorts of things. I begin to wonder does this happen to everyone and am I just living in some sort of illusion that will inevitably be shattered when I realize that my own life was not what I had thought to begin with. I am still stuck to Gary like glue. I still feel the same way I did when I was a little kid, 21 years old, when I see him or hear his voice or watch him play the guitar. My whole world is completely and utterly wrapped up in him and his being. I can't imagine walking away.
And yet people do.
For whatever reason, people get up and walk away from the whole thing.
I think of this couple in particular a lot lately. I remember their wedding like it was yesterday. It was the same fall that the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, the same season Gary and I decided to try for a son and I am almost sure that we conceived that son at their wedding. Another life, some more happiness for us, but not for them.
That makes me sad.
The world moves on here at our house. The kids are in a really good space and it feels like almost blissful here lately. Sadie is so interested in all sorts of things these days and we talk and talk for hours about so many neat things like friendship and God and death and family. She is so interested in learning new things and so excited about some of the classes I have enrolled her in. On Saturdays we have this really busy day where Jonah has a dance class at 9 and then the girls are both taking gymnastics at 103o and then we eat lunch together and Sadie swims for the swim team. I worried that this would be too much but my kids really love this type of day and I realize that I compare myself to other people too much. My family is different and all their own and we are definitely people who like to be out and about. Jonah talked and talked about his dance class and the girls were just thrilled with all the things that they learned today. Sadie loves the swim team and is so incredibly athletically talented. It is such a joy to watch her striving for something and then just full out laughing when she gets it.
Fall is here and with it I have been thinking a lot about my career and my future. I interviewed this week for a position at Hospice of the North Shore and that was really exciting for me to dream about. John is in my thoughts a lot these days as I think about the possibility of working with the terminally ill for a living. Fortunately John is doing very well these days. There are still those days though where I can hear him in the other house coughing and I wonder what is really going on in his body. It's such a blessing to have him here with us for all this time. He and my mother will be going camping again next week and I am just filled with hope for John and wonder and this process that we go through, life death, happiness grief, marriage divorce, endings and beginnings and then endings again.......

Labor Day

Today is Labor Day and as with most holidays of this nature one of us was working, this time it was Gary. It felt like an everyday and that was sort of ok with me until the neighbors went off to the beach and I started to feel yukky, fevery and tired then I began to wonder about what I was missing. All around me today people were headed to the beach and headed to something fun and cool and me and the kids were stuck hanging around the house. Jonah ran a fever which lead me to think less that I have Lyme Disease and more that he and I have a virus, we slept together for three hours while Molly listened for the girls and the girls watched an enormous amount of TV.
This is all ok, right?
I hate TV. I hate the thought of TV and my children sitting in front of the TV even once in a while and then I hate that I hate it that much........
ugh, I can't win!
So the next door neighbors are back and it is almost 7 and the kids are all outside playing like crazy. In two days they will go back to school and although I am relieved for the peace, there is another thing that the world is doing and we are not. The idea of picking out a cute outfit and getting new notebooks and having that first week is somehow appealing to me today. Definitely not appealing enough to actually go through with it all but you know kind of appealing.
Sadie just got off the phone with her friend Sophie. They talked about some of the homeschool kids that they know that will be going to school this year and when I asked her if she thought about it she looked at me bewildered.
She told me that this new friend that she made from down the road told her she was the luckiest person in the whole world, in the whole world. When she asked him why he told her because she lived in a place like a fairies house and because she never had to go to school.
I did buy them all some new outfits and some new notebooks but my kids don't really care about those things, they are way too busy playing.

JONAH!

Sometimes lately Jonah drives me crazy. Like today for instance, he and the girls and I were walking along the boulevard and he thought it would be a good idea to run toward traffic. When I chased him down and got to him he told me he was not my friend.
Not my friend!
Luckily God made him so beautiful and perfect in every other way. I cant help but forgive him, I cant help but cherish these last few moments of babyhood as I watch his fat feet fade to big boy toes and his chubby cheeks thin out. As I watch his baby language turn in to statements and facts and I grapple with my last child growing up. As he begged to be carried for that last long stretch of the boulevard today I made it a growing mantra to love this moment as it could be the last time he really wants me to do this. In Buddhism challenging people are always seen as opportunities to learn and I have Jonah to thank for many lessons. He has taught me tremendous patience and compassion and forced me to wake up to the present moment. I am so grateful.

I found our camera that apparently we had lost in our move but I had failed to even notice it was gone! Here are some pictures off of it from two years ago! Wow, how fast time goes by.....

Perspective

Life is so mysterious and unpredictable. One moment the road can be moving along without a hitch and the next there is a storm of unforeseen events all lined up like Jonah's little dominoes ready to tip over one at a time. Yesterday I woke up with a ton of energy and tackled the day. I exercised with vigor and finished my list and created more lists to complete. I balanced my check book and thought about upcoming expenses and then moved on away from the worry.
Today I woke up with a sense of dread. The sky was dark and the weather was shaky and the birthday party we were planning to go to fell through. On another day this would have been a wonderful opportunity but today it was a stuck in the house feeling, Gary walking out the door early for the whole day and night looking back at the five of us wondering what to do.
It wasn't a disastrous day. This is really my point. I guess I imagined it would be a disaster with my mood in the morning and the overall feeling in the house. Sadie and I had a moment to have a really good talk about some of the struggles that she had recently with friends and I mean we got some really deep seated issues out on to the forefront. Jonah and I snuggled and played a lot, we read some books and he went to bed relatively easy for me. Nora was a little wild today but it wasn't like a disaster, just not the day I had planned in my head.
One of my favorite quotes is by John Lennon and it goes "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." It is from the song "Beautiful Boy" and I always loved this quote. That's the way life is.
I had been counting on a lot of extra money over this week by taking a bunch of shifts with Emergency Services. Last night I was the only clinician on call and I didn't get called out once. Today I am on call from 5-12 and I showered and was ready to go out at 5 but I haven't gotten called and it is close to 10.
This is the way life moves. In my Buddhist group we use the phrase "the stormy seas of samsara" to talk about life here on earth and I feel like seeing things from this angle is surprisingly refreshing. It is what it is and as the mystery unfolds so does my perspective on my life, the life of my children and humankind.

Learning

I went for a long walk with a wonderful homeschooling friend of mine who has three teenagers and is, in my book, a wonderful mother. She is kind of like a mentor to me because her children are all older than mine and she has walked the homeschooling path for all those years so her wisdom is extremely valuable to me. We went for a walk in the woods in Gloucester and I had Jonah in carriage and Sadie on bike. We were there because of my concern over Sadie who would be technically going in to 3rd grade this year. I have been so worried that she is not learning enough and that we are not doing enough for her. I have wondered for some time now whether we will not be able to go the "unschooling" way and that I will need to buy a curriculum this year. So I have spent the summer looking at different curriculums including Calvert and Sonlight and Abeka. Last night amidst a glass of wine I almost broke down and bought the Calvert one but I figured I would pay a visit to my friend first.
So we walked and as I was asking her about advantages and disadvantages and what 3rd graders need to know and what we should do all year long Sadie and Jonah played poosticks in the storm drains, noticing all of the bugs and snakes in the drains and talking about different types of wildlife that could reside in such a place. Sadie ran off at one point to discover a toad in the woods and brought it promptly to show Jonah. Sadie and Jonah played by the pond and Sadie found a mysterious thing in the water that turned out to be bait and hooked it to a stick and rigged one up for Jonah and they played fishing for several minutes all the while I am hemming and hawing about how little they are learning and what I am going to do with our days this year. Sadie told my friend all about her summer camp in the woods and pointed out all the birch trees and the different types of butterflies we saw. She talked about the American Eel she had discovered at camp and went hunting for snakes. She threw rocks in the water and saved a few that she would like to take home and identify.
When we got home, Sadie wanted to go to my Buddhist meditation group. She pleaded and begged to come with me. Saturday I had taken her to an adult yoga class because she promised to do yoga and be still and respectful and she was! She loves yoga. She asked me if she meditates everyday for weeks can I bring her then?
At the end of my day I am still a little worried about next year. What if we get caught up again in my own self doubt. Another good friend of mine in my Dharma group who also has teens that have always been homeschooled offered to bring me the Oak Meadow third grade curriculum. Maybe we will try that.
Today I learned a lot.

I went to see the homeopath that Jonah had such luck with a few weeks ago. I went again as a skeptic, reluctant to believe in any of this hocus pocus stuff, while still benefiting from Jonah's happier disposition thanks to Medorrhinum. I went because of some of my own issues, including incessant worrying, insomnia and a sense that I always have to be perfect all the time. He was so nice to me. Again, it was like it was worth it to just go and spend time with him. I feel like he truly knows me. He gave me a remedy called argentum nitricum and with no exageration that evening I felt better, calmer, happier. Weird.
So life has been moving on for the last two weeks. I feel this overriding sense of calm that goes really deep inside myself and those around me are benefiting wildly.
Two days ago I broke out in hives all over my sternum and chest, up and around my throat. I felt horrible, tired and hot. I took everything I could think of just so I could manage working through the itchiness and heat. I took Benedryl and Clariton and got all of these different rubs. It helped a little bit. I had no idea where they all came from. I thought and thought about what I had eaten and where I had been but nothing new. I was confused. Finally Gary told me that I should call the homeopath and so I did. He told me that he thought this was normal and that it was my body's way of releasing the emotional stuff inside of myself as I was letting go physically of all of that worry and anxiety and control.
So weird.
He also told me it would be a better idea if I did not try and suppress all of this physical activity with drugs, that I had to actually go through it all and feel it. Ugh, that sucks! So here I sit, itchy and tired and so amazed by the power of our physical selves. I think a lot lately about what I do in my work and how backwards western teachings are about so many mind body things. I feel changed and new.

Sadie at age 8

Sadie turned eight on the fourth of July. She is at an in between age. She has been really cranky and angsty lately and so I gave her some extra space with a new bedroom. Sadie goes in to her bedroom on the early side and writes in her diary now and she does things like read books and play with her dolls, the same dolls that had been strewn through the house for the last several years that I lovingly put together and created a space for in her room. She has Kit and Kaya and Elizabeth and they are with her in to the evenings now. She is at an age where she waits for her older sister to come home as if royalty is arriving and when she sees the look of disappointment and dissatisfaction on her sister's face she is quick to put the same look on her face, so quick to be a teenager, still can be found in my bed at night time telling me to sing her a lullaby. Molly thinks I am coddling her. That makes me sad. Sadie is at an age where she begged and pleaded for earrings and we talked about the pros and cons, the pain and responsibility and then she when she told me she was ready, firmly, strongly, we traveled to the mall to get the earrings and she backed out in the final hour whining and complaining that it was going to be too painful and when they had wrapped up the earrings that we had to buy anyways and I was asking Nora if she would like to get her ears pierced while we were there she turned back and had the lady pierce them anyways, despite her fear. Sadie is at an age when all the ten and up girls that hang out in our group of homeschoolers are around she is so cool and all that and whatever and then just like that when she has only little Hayley from next door who is 4 years old she can be found out there playing dirt with her and reading Clifford books again. Sadie got an MP3 player from my dad today in the mail, late for her birthday. She got it and I thought, "Damn, now I have to go in to that world." My father, the king of not knowing what to buy has introduced an MP3 player in to my 8 year olds world. She has been mad about it all night, not mad like angry, mad like insanely happy. She waited at the door to tell Molly who of course shrugged her off and couldn't care less and bragged to Nora all night. She made me hook it up which I am currently doing and I spent hours downloading songs for my 8 year old to listen to. I had fun doing this which of course was surprising to me. I downloaded tons of songs by her father which of course was a pleasure to do but then I downloaded some of my favorites too. I downloaded some Family Folk Chorale songs and some Cat Stevens songs and Grateful Dead and the Beatles. While I was doing this Sadie was watching Thomas the Tank Engine with her 5 year old sister laughing and talking about all of the trials and tribulations of that train Thomas.