Mountain Mama

What we teach, what they learn

One day last week, Paul was late at school and I put the girls to bed. Barrett was in that snuggly pre-sleep daze but Owen was feeling talkative. I suggested that we each tell three good things that happened to us that day.

Owen liked this idea and immediately launched into her three things: Emma at school said they could be friends again after previously snubbing her; she got to help me make dinner; and Samantha (the babysitter) gave her an Easter basket with a purple bunny.

She asked for my three good things.

I told her how a student had told me I was a good teacher.

Owen was so excited about this she sat straight up in bed and gushed, "That's not just good, that's awesome!"

I felt as big as the world.

"I wish you could be my teacher," she said, plopping back against the pillows.

"Oh I teach grown-ups, sweetie. I'm not sure I would know how to teach a classroom of kids."

She thought about this. Then, "There is something that Miss C-- does that you would be really good at."

"What is that?"

She answered sincerely, earnestly: "She yells at the class when we're all acting up."

Phhhhfffttttt went my inflated ego.

Then this weekend my mom related another conversation that made me feel some better.

Saturday I was at a workshop so Mom and Paul took the kids to the park. While Paul pushed Barrett on the swings, Mom helped Owen learn to roller skate.

"See," Mom told her, "I'm teaching you how to ride a bike and roller skate and have adventures. Mommy and Daddy are teaching you how to do art and read and write. And---"

Owen interrupted her to say, again sincerely and earnestly, "Mommy and Daddy are teaching me how to be a good parent."

Good and bad, what we think we're teaching and what our children learn are often not the same at all.

Last year at this time...

I was taking photos of blooming trees. Receiving bouquets of daffodils.

This year the buds are just now starting to appear, the jonquils barely popped.

Last year at this time...

I was making summer plans, had signed Owen up for summer camp.

This year we have a beach house booked for early August with friends; I just scheduled Owen's summer camp last night; and the rest of the summer, well, I have no clue what it holds and have no current designs on it.

Last year at this time...

we already had some barefoot days.

This year not so much.

Last year at this time...

I had seeds started. Sunflowers and kohlrabi.

This year we didn't get the garden space cleaned up and tilled until just this weekend,

in time for a round of freezing temps, flurries, and sleet.

2010 certainly has its own mind.

But hey, at least the peepers know it's spring.

Wordless Wednesday:: The return of tree-climbing season

Wordless Wednesday Poladroid Style

Thanks to Courtney for turning me on to Poladroid!

 

Spring is coming

It really is.

I so needed that.

Imagination and Curiosity

A couple of weeks ago, an ordinary Saturday. I am reading in the living room chair. Owen props herself on the arm of the chair next to me, a fresh pad of drawing paper on her knees.

"I want to draw something. Tell me what to draw," she says.

"Draw something from your imagination," I tell her.

Exasperated, she rolls her eyes. "But that's hard."

"Why is that hard? You're very creative."

"There's so much in my imagination, it's hard to choose just one thing!"

Eventually she draws a monster with six eyes, six strands of hair, six smiles, and six necks. She calls him "Six of Everything". He has one nose, though.

Tonight, walking home from dinner at my dad's. The sky is clear, the stars are out.

Owen looks up. "I am so interested in the stars. I'm curious about space," she says. "Tomorrow I want to write a book about that."

She reminds me of a story we heard on NPR about an Iranian women who fulfilled a life's dream to travel into space and wrote a book about her experience. We were in the car when we heard it. I didn't know she was listening.

"I have so much curiosity it bubbles up to my brain and comes right out," Owen says.

When we get home, before she can put her pajamas on, she has to write her title page: Space/My Curiosity of Space of the Stars to (sic). (She asks us how to spell the words she doesn't know.)

"See," she tells me,"I'm like that lady. She had curiosity about space and she went there and then she wrote a book about it. I have curiosity about space and I'm writing a book about it."

Indeed, my girl, curiosity and imagination will take you far.

Wordless Wednesday

Frozen

It's true that the longer you put off or avoid a task, the harder it is to return to it. Not that I think of this blog as a burden, but truthfully, this semester is kicking my butt and the blog has fallen to the lower rungs of my priority list. After my family and grading and class prep and my health and sleep. Even those items have--each in their turn--suffered my divided attention.

For example, I was sick for a solid two weeks. Chest cold, congestion, turning over into what I thought was (and what Paul actually went to the doctor and had diagnosed for him as) strep. Then for me when the strep symptoms finally passed, the chest congestion lingered, triggering daily asthma attacks the likes of which I have not had since I was a child.

And sleep. For the last few years of teaching I have been able to do at least some of my work at night, after the girls go to bed. While it's not my most alert time, it was the time I had and I used it to my advantage. Not this semester. This semester I have been forced by illness and exhaustion into bed most nights by 9:30, and many nights even earlier. Sometimes I just go to bed when the girls do.

But I am feeling better now. Healthier, at least. Still very overloaded, still exhausted, but no longer sick. I think the sleep helps. The occasional snow day at home doesn't hurt.

I still can't guarantee that I will be back in a more regular way to this blog. In fact, my posting will probably remain sporadic for the next few weeks. For all those other priorities still remain.

But also because when I do have pockets of time this semester, I've found myself struggling for words and fighting my demons of not-good-enough and who-do-you-think-you-are. So I fight them the only way I know how: by avoiding them.

Doing something else: Cooking. Reading. Yes, Facebooking. Watching a movie with my sweetie. Sitting with my girls. Giving a party for my baby. Going about my ordinary life. Without words for it, maybe, but with gratitude and love.

Be my friend, then, and bear with me, please? Spring is coming. I can feel it somewhere under this frozen ground.

PS I will have a Wordless Wednesday for you tomorrow, and, hopefully, be able to resume at least that every week.