Family

Home Scenes

By / November 3, 2012 / 2 Comments

The cat looked up at me and let forth a particularly long and insistent Meow. I followed her as she led me to Kiki’s bed, where Kiki was not sleeping. You see our cat usually sleeps with Kiki, but Kiki is away at a convention with her dad. In her absence our cat has decided that I am the best substitute and I should sleep in Kiki’s bed. That did not happen. I slept quite comfortably in my own bed, in the one room where the cat is not allowed to go. For some reason the cat respects this invisible line in the doorway to my bedroom. She curls up on the carpet just outside my bedroom door and sleeps there. There is going to be a very happy kitty on Monday when my daughter comes home.

***

“I really just want to go with you.” Patch said with his eyebrows furrowed. We were talking about going to see Wreck-It Ralph, a movie that all of my kids want to see. Patch knew the other kids would want to see it, and he felt conflicted for wanting to leave them out, but he really wanted it to be just a special time where he had my full attention. I gave him a hug and told him it was fine. So today Patch and I will go to a movie. Then I’ll probably see the movie again when I take the other kids. I hope I like Wreck-It Ralph.

***

I meant for this morning to be focused with chores and leaf raking. Instead, I’ve slept late and barely begun my work. Perhaps I’ll find high gear later in the day.

Quiet

By / November 2, 2012

My house is quiet. Three kids are at school, the fourth is away at a convention with Howard. Not even Howard is here making tick noises by typing. No feet walk across the floor above my basement office. Miracle of miracles, the phone has not rung once all day. Even the cat has spent the day napping. It is only on days like this one, when I can begin tasks and follow the steps to completion, that I realize how very often I am interrupted. I am interrupted all day long almost every day. Most of the interruptions are short, most of the time I can go right back to what I was doing. Yet there is a profound difference when I can enter deep focus on a project and stay there until it is done or I am to tired to continue.

I surfaced at lunch time and pondered the luxury of being able to decide which task I should pursue next. Not only is my day empty, but I am in a space between urgencies. I have lots of important tasks but the deadlines are not yet imminent. I listened to my quiet house and realized that what I wanted was a short kitchen chat with Howard, one of the cheerful ones where we compare the odd things we read off the internet that morning. The emptiness of the house also made me look ahead to the years which are coming. My house is going to be empty increasingly often.

Of course the afternoon made up for the quietness of the morning. It was full of extra errands occasioned by Gleek forgetting her homework at school and Link forgetting his photo ID when he went to play racket ball. Later I’ll have more quiet, but this time I’ll gain it by departing my house and heading to visit some friends in Salt Lake City while the kids stay at home. The quiet feels good today.

Comparisons

By / November 1, 2012 / 2 Comments

I’ve been working on putting together my family photo book for 2011. This requires me to skim through the blog entries from that year so I can pull snippets of family stuff to put into the book. I found it very interesting that everything before August 2011 felt like it happened long ago. The kids were all needier, younger, less self-sufficient. Once we hit that August, when my two youngest switched schools, when Kiki started hitting her stride with responsibility, when Link started taking control of his homework, that is when it starts feeling like recent history. It really highlights for me all the little shifts we’ve made in our family culture. Each shift was small, but the accumulation makes everything feel very different. I like things now. Kiki is almost ready to fly out on her own, a thing I despaired of in early 2011. Link is daily maturing, making realizations, deciding who he wants to be, and telling me about his thoughts and feelings. We have conversations now, all the time. Real conversations about friends, school, and plans for the future. Gleek manages her own homework so effectively that I barely even know what the assignments are. Patch spent this evening sitting next to me and carefully applying stamps to post cards. “Don’t do any while I’m at school tomorrow. I want to help with all of them.” He said.

Obviously we have our bad days. Yesterday everyone was cranky and inclined to argue with everyone else over little things. But I still like these days better.

Thoughts on Community and Withdrawal

By / October 29, 2012 / 3 Comments

In years past I’ve written glowing descriptions of our church Halloween carnival. I described how the community of congregation members creates this event for each other and how the creation draws the members of the community together. I’ve loved that aspect of it, just as I’ve loved how trailing a trick or treating child lets me feel part of a larger community of parents. I love these things about Halloween, so the arrival of the carnival last night should have been happy. It was, in a distant sort of way. I felt like it was a generally happy thing, without being made happier because of it. I was at the event, but did not truly engage with it. Certainly not in the way that my kids did. They were decked out in costumes and helping run the games. I did not have a costume, not really. Throwing on Howard’s old lab coat does not qualify as a costume in the same way that Kiki’s autumn elf with pointy ears and leafy skirt did. Kiki spent hours on her costume. I decided ten minutes before departure that I did not want to be completely boring.

The challenge is that I’m currently in a social withdrawal phase. I recognize this as part of my regular emotional cycles. Sometimes I’m reaching out, ready to give energy to the world. Other times I draw inward trying to conserve that energy to myself. Lately I’m pulling in. At some point in the future I’ll reach out and connect again. Paying attention to these cycles is important, because knowing why I’m withdrawing can make a huge difference in making my withdrawal into an effective and temporary retreat rather than into a prolonged period of self-imposed social isolation. Noticing that I’m withdrawing is an important indicator.

My current withdrawal cycle has, in part, been driven by shifts in my extended family. My grandmother’s health has been up and down in the past six months. I’ve often felt worried about her and about my parents who are acting as her primary care givers. All is currently well, Grandma is getting around the house with a walker, which she mostly needs for balance. Yet I worry about them. Several of my siblings have gone through periods of unemployment and financial stress. I’ve spent time sending them prayers, trying to think how I could help, and hosting people in my house as they pass through while on trips or relocating. Mostly there isn’t much I can do to help. I just wish I could, and the wishing takes emotional energy.

The withdrawal is also driven by internal shifts. This past year has taught me much about myself. I’ve found deeply hidden lies which were driving my behavior. I’ve rooted out sources of anxiety. I’ve made lots of progress on building new patterns of thought. Some of that involved figuring out which sorts of events feed my demons of self doubt and which fill my soul. I’m also trying to re-organize my life around writing. This requires that I have empty spaces in my mind and heart for the stories to grow. To create those spaces I need less input, fewer new things to think about.

This school year is being good for my kids, but I can also see how it is a preparatory year. Three of them are shifting and preparing to leap into new things next year. The changes have already begun and I want to savor this space before those changes are complete.

So the withdrawal makes sense. It is logical. I have good reasons for it. And yet…

Today at church during the Relief Society lesson I felt strongly that I should engage, participate in the lesson. I’ve mostly been drifting through church without doing that. In fact there have been weeks when I’ve spent time in the hallways because the meetings felt claustrophobic. It is all part of the withdrawal, I drifted through the Sunday meetings, just as I drifted through the Halloween carnival. But today I raised my hand and said something not particularly brilliant, but it supported the point the teacher was making. Discussion on the topic continued to bounce around the room, and I thought of another thing to say. I raised my hand again. For the first time in months I was not merely a passive member of the congregation, sieving inspiration from the lessons as they washed past me. Instead I was in the middle, speaking, sharing thoughts, helping to shape the lesson. It was powerful. I’d walked into that room idly noting all the familiar women who were there with me–even feeling a little frustrated that I ended up surrounded instead of off to the side where it is easier for me to observe. When I left the meeting, I loved the women, or rather I remembered that I’ve loved all of them for years. Somehow I had lost that connection and I got it back. I felt connected again because I reached out, not because someone reached to me.

Communities work only as their members make them work. You get out of it what you put into it. Often, through some incomprehensible divine formula, you get out more than what you put in. Which leads me to wonder whether withdrawing to recharge is a wise strategy at all. It is certainly the one my instincts would have me choose. When my resources are slim, I should conserve them carefully. Except I then feel like I’m continually having ever lessening amounts which I can conserve. Sometimes a withdrawal fills me up and I’m ready to engage again. Other times pulling inward is itself draining and what I need is to trust that I can continue to feed everyone with what feels like a mere handful of meal and a few drops of oil. I’m afraid to give more. I have so many things to tend already, but I think I need to connect with my communities. I need to be willing to give, particularly when I’m afraid that I’ll run out.

Withdrawing is good. Reaching out is good. Giving is good. Conserving is good. It feels like a test where all the answers are based upon context and interpretation. The best I can do is to muddle my way through trying out the different options as they seem called for.

All I Can Do

By / October 25, 2012 / 2 Comments

…for we know that it is by grace we are saved, after all we can do.
2 Nephi 25:23

I always trip over that “after all we can do” part of the verse. I believe it too thoroughly, trying to make the job of giving grace and blessings easy for God, as if He is more likely to grant them that way. In fact, I try my very hardest to put God out of work by doing all the work myself.

Then I hit a place like this week, where the things I want most are out of my control. Howard is in the midst of plotting the climax of the current Schlock storyline. He’s gathering all the threads of story to pull them together into a satisfying conclusion and there are threads everywhere. I know he can do this, he is brilliant with this, but the only help I can provide is to listen when he needs to talk plot and to read the occasional script.

Howard is also working hard on a yet-to-be-announced prose project. I’m excited that he gets to do this project. I love that he is getting to write a story for which he does not have to draw pictures. It lets Howard grow in new ways and that is good. But growth is not easy and I can’t write the words for him.

Then there is the calendar project. We need the calendar to launch our holiday season and pay for Christmas. It will get done in plenty of time. Howard is already half done with the line art and a third done with the coloring. Again, there is nothing I can do except support Howard’s efforts.
And pray.
Because when I run out of things to do, I have to acknowledge how much of my life is beyond my control. I turn to deity and pray for Howard’s good health, that the hand pain will stay away, that he’ll be inspired with the story bits he needs, that he’ll have a run of good work days, that he won’t feel too stressed or depressed or frustrated.

I read the scripture again and it feels very odd that all I can do is support and pray. I want something else, something active. I want my writing to be part of the solution, right now it adds an additional time burden without providing anything measurable in terms of payment. I want to be filling store orders, shipping merchandise to excited customers, but the orders ebb and flow. We’re currently in a lull before the holiday rush. Our next big merchandise push will be for the calendar, which is not yet ready.

I’ve done all I can do, now I need to exercise faith. Faith in Howard, who has always come through. Faith in God, who has already–repeatedly–informed me that everything is going to be fine. I know it is going to be fine, I just want to get to the part where it already is. I want to have things to do again, work which obviously helps to support our family financially. I wish I could carry more of the financial burden; Howard has been over burdened with work for years. Instead I must wait patiently in this one area of my life and focus my doing on the parenting, household, writing, and gardening parts of my life. It is not as though I lack for things to do, I’m just antsy like a child who has many things but wants something else. I must learn to wait and trust. That is all I can do.

Enter the Stray Rooster

By / October 22, 2012 / 1 Comment

Chickens were not on the schedule for today. Not anywhere, but roosters have their own ideas about how things should go. I saw him from the corner of my eye as I headed into the house with Gleek and Link.
“That’s a chicken.” I exclaimed without thinking.
I immediately had the full attention of both kids, particularly Gleek.

Sometime in the past year or so it has become fashionable for people in our neighborhood to keep chickens. There are half a dozen neighbors who have little coops and gather their own eggs. Gleek knows them all and sometimes visits the chickens. She has even earned the name Chicken Whisperer because she can catch the uncatchable hen and convince it to sit still while she pets it. So our first thought was to catch this interloper. He had different ideas.

He dodged and dove while Gleek tried to corner him. I went into the house and began calling all the known chicken owners. Their answers were the same: No it was not one of theirs, but was this the same chicken my next door neighbor had been calling about yesterday? Yes it is. I’d determined that if we managed to catch the bird, we would have no one to give it to. Obviously the best course of action was to not catch it and hope that it would go back home on its own. I was trying to explain this to Gleek when she succeeded in catching it.

Once caught, he was a well behaved bird. He held still in her arms, and when she sat down with him in her lap, he even dozed off to sleep. She decided his name was Harry. I again tried to explain to Gleek that we should just let him go. We had no cage for him, no food, no way to keep him safe. Gleek argued the case for pet chicken, but then asked if she could at least show it to her friend. So she carried the bird into our back yard. This was when Gleek remembered our walnut tree. It turns out that roosters like to eat walnuts quite a lot. Gleek had the rooster eating out of her hand. This was when our cat wandered up to see what was going on.

These animals are not likely to be friends.

I brought the cat into the house, not entirely sure who I was keeping safe from whom. Gleek finally released her hold on the rooster, but apparently being caught, petted, and fed convinced his little brain that Gleek was the source of all things good in the world. He followed her all over the yard. We all thought this was funny, and it was, particularly when Gleek when running across the yard and he ran-flapped to keep up. But then Gleek came inside and the rooster was convinced he should get to come in too.

He pecked at the door, jumped at the nearby windows, and kept trying his hardest to find a way inside. Fortunately it was dusk and we convinced him to roost by covering all the windows. Even without him pecking at the door, he was still a major distraction at homework time. The kids kept wanting to go peek at the chicken.

I will admit that a small part of me imagined Gleek with a devoted rooster friend in our backyard. The realities are more complicated than that pretty picture. The weather is getting colder. One chicken alone would not fare well against hard freezes. We have no pen nor safe place for him to roost. Also, the more he got used to our yard, the more he seemed to feel that he could peck at Gleek if she did something he didn’t like. Then there is the probability of crowing. Roosters are not really suburban neighborhood friendly. The argument which really convinced the kids that the rooster had to go was when we pointed out that he and our cat are likely to fight, and he is plenty big enough to seriously injure our cat. I don’t care how pretty the rooster is, we love our cat more.

Fortunately a friend with a large flock (far from our neighborhood) has offered to take this rooster and give him a new home. (Hurray for social media as a problem solving tool.) We’ve decided this is a happier option. Hopefully he will enjoy being the rooster for a flock of hens. The friend took him away in a box. This is happy. One evening full of rooster adventures is quite enough for me.

A Promise to My Son

By / October 18, 2012 / 2 Comments

Last night I looked Link in the eyes and, with every ounce of intensity I could muster, I promised him “I know it is hard now, but it will get better.” He believed me. Even in the middle of feeling like his life was impossible and his challenges were insurmountable, even though he is fifteen and has begun to make value choices independent from mine, even though I’ve sometimes failed him–in that moment he believed me. It helped that I spoke truth.

I’d been listening to him for thirty minutes as he described the difficulties and emotions he faced. I tried not to speak too much, because it is a failing of mine to try to give him words to describe his experiences. I love words. I love wrapping them around concepts and experiences. For most of his life my son has not loved words and he was happy to let me provide them when he did not have them. But now he needs his own words, not mine. He needs to wrestle and struggle to give his own shapes to his thoughts. He needs to cry out in frustration until he manages to discover the words which fit his feelings. I must bite my tongue and not try to fix that struggle, because the struggle is what he needs. In so many ways my son is like the hatchling who must push and work his way out of the shell, because the effort to escape will give that chick the strength to survive everything else that comes later. I can already see the end of this struggle. I can see how far Link has come and how close he is to being free from the shell. He spent thirty minutes talking to me about his feelings, this would have been an impossible feat for him just six months ago. So when I told him it would get better, I knew that it was true. And he believed me.

Within an hour, better had already arrived. I didn’t know it would arrive so quickly, but I’m glad it did. I also know that more struggle is ahead, because he is not done with this process. Watching a chick struggle to hatch–without helping–is hard. So I do the equivalent of making sure that the egg and chick are in a safe place, a warm place. I speak encouragement. I prepare the food and other necessities that the chick will need which the egg did not. I do everything I can to make this easier, except pull off the shell. Then I wait, and occasionally I look into Link’s eyes and promise him that his struggles are temporary. It gets better.

Attack of the Cranky

By / October 17, 2012

It is not news to me that crankiness is contagious, people can give it to each other. Given the quantity of cranky that has filled this house in the past few days, one would think that we’d somehow acquired a particularly infectious strain. Except, when I look closely at all the different flavors of cranky they all seem to have spontaneous origination within the host. Link had a headache and homework he didn’t want to do. Also he was hungry, because hunger is nigh constant when one is fifteen. Kiki was cranky because she was tired and it was nearly bedtime when she learned that the following day was an A schedule day. She had prepared for a B schedule day. Gleek was cranky because we didn’t have a book she wanted, the cat would not consent to being a snuggle toy, and life in general is angry making without any other reason when one is a pre-teen. Patch was cranky because he didn’t pass his math test and he got his third black eye for the year by crashing into a friend on a trampoline. Howard was cranky from deadline stress and just because some days are that way. My case of cranky was definitely made worse by all of the above, but probably originated in a creeping feeling that there was something important I was failing to do properly.

We did not all explode into crankiness simultaneously. Instead it has been as if our house were built where the river of grouchy meets the sea of irritability. The tides ebbed and flowed creating eddies, rip tides, periods of calmness, and the occasional spectacular rogue wave. The good news is that we are all at least somewhat self-aware human beings and thus able to recognize that we are not being entirely reasonable. the most recent and amusing example of this was Patch stomping his feet and crying because Gleek, who had already finished her homework, got to watch Mythbusters, while he had to complete his work first.
“But I’ll miss some of it!” Patch wailed.
I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. (I recommend that all prospective parents learn the eyebrow trick, it is so very useful. Also you get to feel like Spock.)
“And the show will completely evaporate off of Netflix while Gleek watches so that it is gone forever?” I asked.
Patch half scowled and half smiled at me. Then he pulled the corners of his mouth down into a faux sad face.
“Yes.” he sighed. “It will be gone forever.”
Then he stopped complaining and completed his work in record time.

The cranky comes and goes, but it feels like the storm surge is settling out. Hopefully we’ll have calmer waters soon. Until then we try our best to not spread the cranky around.

Catch Up Day

By / October 15, 2012

I was staring down the barrel of Monday after taking three days off of work to venture into the realm of visiting relatives and college campuses. The four days prior to that I was functioning at minimal levels due to a head cold. Stuff had piled up and Monday was the day to get it all done. The only way I could possibly do it all was to deploy lists and minions–five lists, four minions. I wrote a list for each child and left the lists on the counter. My list resided in my google tasks window. At 7 am the work began.

I wish I could take credit for training my kids right, but I can’t. The truth of the matter is that each of them made choices this morning. I made the lists, but they could easily have chosen to rebel or get distracted. Instead my kids decided to own those lists, to claim them and dispatch them as quickly as possible. By noon the house was cleaner and all the critical kid tasks were complete. (Except for Patch’s science fair project which required my participation and thus was the one item on his list which remains incomplete here at bedtime.) I grant you that we have carefully practiced doing chores. We’ve created system after system for tracking chores, assigning chores, rewarding work done, and applying consequences for incomplete work. Each system was built out of the functioning bits of prior systems that had fallen apart. There is definitely a refining process as we figure out what works and what doesn’t for each child at each stage of life. Mostly though, the kids have realized that they have power to make our lives better, that when they do work life is happier, that if they don’t things feel chaotic. Some of this learning is the result of me being too tired and stressed to save them from from the consequences. My kids are good workers because I built a structure and then got out of the way. This let their innate awesomeness have room to grow.

My list of things also shrank by leaps and bounds through the morning. The largest of these things was that I needed to be online to help answer questions and troubleshoot during the opening of registration for the Writing Excuses Workshop and Retreat which will take place next summer. It is an event I’m really excited to be part of, but which I’ve not been mentioning online because there was only so much space and it seemed important to let those who follow the Writing Excuses blog have the first chance to register. They wasted no time at all. The event was sold out within ten minutes. Mary and I were online for an hour more just to double check everything and iron out a couple of minor behind-the-scenes organizational issues. So next June I’ll be headed back to Chattanooga for another writing retreat. Only this time I’ll have Howard with me and I’ll probably get to do some teaching. I’m looking forward to it.

By the time my kids were finishing up their lists I was barely half way through mine, and I was losing steam. I always assign myself more things to do than can be reasonably done in the allotted time. This is because some days I really can get it all done. Most days I just can’t. Also I have to put every random task I think of on the list or I will lose track of them. I often put things on lists for next week or even next month so that I can forget about them today. Somehow the afternoon turned into a slog for just about everyone. Then we all had to wade through patches of cranky in the evening. Yet here we are at bedtime with most of the things done. I do feel caught up, like tomorrow can be a normal day instead of a sprint. That will be nice. We need a steady pace for a while.

A Visit to Fremont Indian State Park

By / October 14, 2012 / 4 Comments

“I just want to go home.” Kiki said as we drove away from my sister’s house. Link concurred. I sympathized, but Fremont Indian state Park was right on the road back to our house. It seemed a shame not to stop and see the carvings made by humans hundreds or thousands of years ago.
“We’ll only stay a little bit. Besides if we go straight home we’ll get there at the same time as the football game traffic.” Gleek and Patch were excited by the possibility of Native American things. So we stopped.

Court of Ceremonies Trail 1/2 mile the little sign said. We’d already wandered through the exhibit room, climbed on the pit house play structure, and listened to recordings. We decided to wander along the paved path to look at rock carvings up close. It was a good choice, the marks which looked like scrawls and graffiti from a distance resolved into a more deliberate art when we got up close. Curated exhibits are useful and informative, but outside in the sun and air we could think our own thoughts and draw our own conclusions about the things we saw–one of which was this little sign. The name Court of Ceremonies was intriguing enough to draw us off of the paved walkway and up a dirt path. We trekked in search of a place that was special or sacred. As we trekked, we saw that every flat surface reachable by human hands was marked.

I wondered what those long ago people thought as they scraped pictures into the rocks. Were the artists people who sneaked off to draw because of an inner need? Were they ridiculed by their community or revered? Were the markings sacred with ceremonial importance or were they like graffiti–an impermanent human being trying to leave something in the world to say “I was here”? If I’d made us all sit for the 15 minute video, I probably would have had answers to those questions. Instead we only had speculations as we walked.

The trail split and the little sign said nothing about Court of Ceremonies, just informing us that one way was back toward the museum along a Hidden Secrets trail. We’d already climbed out of the canyon. I pictured the court of ceremonies as a place circled by walls with drawings etched into them. The path we were on did not seem likely to take us to such a place. So we turned our feet back toward the museum. We all were still aware of the two hour drive necessary to take us home. None of us wanted to exhaust ourselves with a long hike. Link in particular was glad to be headed back. He ran ahead on the trail until we could see him in the distance waving his arms and jumping. He’d found something. As I drew closer, the kids appeared to be running in circles. They were following the trails of a spiral.

There was no sign to explain this spiral or its purpose. It was far too exposed to the elements to have existed since the Native American peoples lived there. Possibly it had been restored and maintained by people who came later, such as the museum staff. We all walked the spiral. I photographed the kids in the center. Then they spiraled back out and we continued on our way, having decided to call the place Court of Ceremonies.

Sometimes having interesting questions can be as satisfying as answers.

A trick of cloud cover and daylight made the clump of yellow trees in the valley below us radiant in comparison with the surrounding landscape.

Most of the natural plants more or less ignored the fall weather, but these trees declared it. I only saw them near the man-made highway. In other areas entire hillsides were orange and yellow. It was lovely, even in pouring rain.

The kids were quiet on the drive home. They had thoughts to think and video games to play. I looked at the spare and open countryside as I drove us home. Utah is very different than the forest I visited in Tennessee. I loved the forest, but I love Utah too. There is beauty in desert landscapes where all the plants and animals have to make the most of limited resources rather than fighting over abundance. I remember the little canyon wren we saw on our hike. It jumped along the cliff face and then vanished into crevices of rock. It was perfectly at home in a place that is difficult to turn into a living space.

Back at my house, I’m realizing how much more I could do to make it a lovely place, even when my resources feel limited. The Fremont Indians scraped beauty into rock and dug their homes out of the ground. Surely I can manage to sweep more often in my centrally-heated house. I can take time to decorate and mend. I’ve already turned my house into a place that is good to come home to. I can work to make it even better.