No Other Gods

Okay, I can't resist.

I visited a ladies' Bible study last night. The theme of the 8-week class is "No other gods." Then they passed the calendar around, to remind everyone that there would be no class on Super Bowl Sunday.

Ashes by Kathryn Lasky

I didn't know that my heart had breath until it stopped breathing. I feel like a kid who's just read his first chapter book & is breathless with the exhilaration of the freedom that comes with reading.

That first taste of freedom is quickly drowned by a gluttony of books, & he begins to discover that all books are not written equally. The feel of the wind rushing up under his wings is forgotten as he stares at walls & walls of books with the dour pessimism that can only be embodied by a young reader: I've read everything good. There's nothing left.

I have just been reminded of that feeling, though, & I am long past my first experience with a book. I have beside me Ashes by Kathryn Lasky. It's the library's copy, & I tell myself that it's much cheaper to buy my own than to keep this one, but like my husband and my children, this is a...voice...I cannot part with. Not ever.

Ashes is a young adult historical fiction set in pre-WWII Germany. Within that period, I've read many fiction and non-fiction books; this one is the first that I can think of that is not specifically about the Holocaust. It tells another story of the Nazi tragedy that is haunting because we all know so well what came after.

I enjoy historical fiction, but it almost seems unfair to classify this book: it rises above genre. It's a coming-of-age story, & it's a human story. Post-WWI Germany is just its tumultuous setting, although "just" is hardly an appropriate adjective. When we define something as a "setting," there seems to be the implication that it's distinctly less relevant than plot or characterization. But of course, none of us can really separate the setting of our lives from the plot, & it is often as much our setting as anything that gives us character, makes us who we are. Lasky writes as if she understands this deeply.

It's not due back until the end of January, so I have some time to get to a bookstore. My real concern, of course, is how many copies to buy & how to get them autographed. When I return the book to the library, I'm thinking of returning it with a donation, in honor of my gratitude to a system that stocks such great literature so soon after its publication date (2010). And for being brave enough to share it with me.

I feel as if I have never read a good book before, as if I'd just this week learned to enjoy reading. Actually, based on my previous posts...you might agree.

Ashes is as fun to read as mind-candy & perhaps it is that that makes its beauty all the more stunning. Several times, I had to stop reading—just to breathe. It's not a breathless adventure novel; it's just that its...authenticity...takes you that much by surprise. In retrospect, I don't think I've ever read a truer book, on either side of the library.

Ashes is not a style I've ever been particularly drawn to. It's relatively traditional (with the exception of the preface through chapter 3), but the tightness of the writing & the authenticity of the voice, the texture with which Lasky weaves the story—are all revolutionary in their excellence.

I want to give you examples, but my husband has asked that I don't. He wants to keep the experience pure for himself as he reads, to be as surprised by the skillfulness of the author & the detail of the story as I was. For his sake, I'll at least hold off on examples. But I do have advice for you before you run out to get your own copy:

1. Do not read the dust jacket. It's a good book, so you don't need a preview (although I enjoyed reading the back cover first), & I think the dust jacket gives just a little too much away. Not anything plot-changing, but more fun as a surprise.

2. If you've ever read anything else by Kathryn Lasky, assume nothing about this novel. I read The Night Journey to the kids the week before I read Ashes. Thirty years have passed between the publication of the two books, & it shows. Lasky's skill has developed so incredibly in those intervening years that she is almost unrecognizable from one book to another. Ashes reads as if it were a story she'd been wanting to tell her whole life & finally, she's pulled together the words & the images, & the result is a masterpiece, a life's work.

On Reading

For the last several months, I have disappeared. We’ve gotten most of our schoolwork done, but everything else from cooking to cleaning and sometimes answering the phone, has dropped off my radar.

I’ve been reading.  I’m an odd bird when it comes to reading.  Although I’d never say so in front of my children, I don’t like to read.  I’m a literature major, for heaven’s sake!  But I like writing more than reading, and I have found that books too often disappoint me.  The writing is weak, or the climax is less than I’d imagined.  No matter what, a book requires tedious hours of sitting still and waiting.  I don’t wait well.  I peek at the last pages, I shake the boxes under the Christmas tree when everyone’s sleeping, and—don’t tell—sometimes I read the Spark Notes or watch the movie.  The disappointment of a bad book is so easily replaced with the thrill of getting away with not reading it.

So now you understand, and most of you have probably stopped reading in disgust.  To make things worse, I’m a classical homeschooler who likes to teach through literature.  I just don’t like to read.  Read-alouds here take anywhere from six weeks to a year.  My oldest two learned to read because they gave up on me sitting down with them.

But wait.  It gets worse.  All of that is just how I feel about fiction, and compared to nonfiction, I adore made-up stories.  My husband is the kind who enjoys the history channel and remembers odd facts about science and gets excited about new dinosaur discoveries and other such dry information.  At least fiction can be made into a good movie.  Nothing can be done to save nonfiction, and while I used to feign interest in such high-browed subjects in polite company, the truth is that I don’t care. Please don’t tell my children.

It’s a good show I pull off, and if you knew me in real life, you’d be laughing, thinking I was lying.  I’m not.

So I’ve spent the last several months feeding my kids frozen pizzas and sandwiches they make themselves because I’ve been busy reading, but the frightening thing here is what I’ve been reading.  Nonfiction.  Stacks of it.  I took a rolly cart full of books with me to Starbucks one day, lest I run out of books.  And to compound my poor husband’s confusion, it’s the worst kind of nonfiction: there are no pictures.  There are over 100 pages in each pictureless book.  The full moon has come and gone, and my rolly cart has been refilled again and again with books that I’m actually reading, ranging from the history of ancient China to the geography of Africa.

Last summer, I realized that I didn’t have a history program for next year.  We would be finishing Story of the World, and I couldn’t find a satisfactory program to use afterward.  Research led to reading which led to research which led to reading, and I’ve been lost in ancient China, dreamed I was a hieroglyph, and marched toward Stonehenge on the winter solstice.  From a handful of kids’ books—they may not have pictures, but I’m still sticking to the juvenile side of the library—I’ve learned more about ancient history than my husband, who actually reads and has a degree in history.

I felt guilty at first, to indulge myself to such a degree in my own meandering pursuit of information.  At first, there were no notes, no product, nothing but soaking my synapses in the information and reveling in the raw knowledge I was amassing, and the guilt was huge.  I’d hurry through grammar and tell the kids to help themselves in the kitchen so I could get back to my own reading.  I let my nine-year-old figure out the laundry while I read.  Dishes were washed on an as-needed basis, but my wise husband invested in paper plates and frozen meals.

Worse, I’ve been incredibly boring to talk to.  My in-laws took the kids for the weekend a few weeks ago, and when my husband wanted to go to a movie, I snuck a book in with us.  Over coffee afterward, I genuinely tried to talk about something other than the Derg, to no avail.

As I’ve been reading, however, my family has been sucked in.  The kids pick up books I’ve finished and read them.  My husband endures my conversations and helps me brainstorm the big picture.  At this point, it may not matter what we use for history next year: we’ve learned ancient history together this year.

And in the end, that is my point.  Even with all of our great insights into education and shiny curricula and nifty manipulatives, we tend to fit education into a kind of a box, in which we as educators present information and our children fill in the blanks.  We break out of this box from time to time, in some subjects more than others, but the box seems to always be there, pulling us back, offering us something easy.

I’ve begun to read, against my nature, and to learn ancient history and geography, even more against my nature, because I had a real-life problem to solve: finding or writing a history curriculum for my kids.  It may not be the most exciting problem to solve, but the problem provides motivation to do the work that needs to be done and a disguise for the least palatable aspects of research.  Like the self-discovery of hands-on exhibits at museums, I gave myself the whole of ancient history to dissect and touch and see.

I like boxes.  I like a list of objectives beside my jar of play-doh, or too often I find myself mashing the dough wondering what the point is.  On the other hand, a problem to solve is as exciting to me as a blank sheet of paper.  It’s like putting a door in the box, so that my imagination can take over, rescuing me, and with that imagination, I can free others, too.

Last night, we spent the evening fighting over raw meat and animal bones in order to survive the Stone Age, and suddenly the monumental nature of Stonehenge and the Sphinx and the terra cotta army has the power to bring us to our knees.  Instead of a sidebar in a history textbook, we see these things for what they are: time spent on something other than survival.  And we marvel at what it is to be human, to work day in and day out at the mundane while our spirits yearn for so much more.

On Losing a Child

I'm sitting here tonight with a fever, & I've spent the afternoon throwing up, but I'm not sick: I'm heart broken.

A fellow writer at HOTM lost a child this week. She's a lady I've never met, never spoken with online, whose last name I don't even know, & she lost a child. There are virtual hugs and a group effort to process the tragedy. Women have come together to tell their own stories of near losses, so that others can hold their babies close and be ever vigilant, & I can't breathe.

We should bolt our bookshelves down & cover our outlets & put child-proof locks on windows and doors and medicine. There are hundreds of ways to protect our children, & yet these stories still come, and the tragedy still strikes, & I can't breathe.

We put the L-brackets for the bookshelves on the to-do list, & most of them get clamped down. But we forget the one in the bedroom, or we have to move one to fix an outlet. The smoke detector won't stop buzzing, & there's not a fire, & we forget after pulling it out of the wall in the middle of the night. A stray grocery bag gets left in a far corner of the kitchen or gets swept into the hallway.

Most of the time, nothing happens. Occasionally, we have a near-miss. And then there are the other times, the times that seem only theoretical & unreal until someone is holding a phone with a 911 operator on the other end.

I can't forget that it is Christmas. I can't stop thinking about the pain of a family burying a child, of the dreams and images that will be with them the rest of their lives. I imagine losing one of mine, & then I imagine watching the siblings grieve, & the weeping starts again, & I can't breathe. I imagine these children grown up, when the pain has dulled, & I know that a stocking will still hang on the mantle for their little brother. I know that they'll think of his absence on their wedding days.

It's Christmas. I know that his presents have already been bought. They will stay in the back of the closet for years to come, & every time his mother goes to get dressed, she'll feel her knees buckle under her with the weight of the pain. My hands shake to think of it, & the weeping begins again, & I can't breathe.

I hear the encouraging words we're supposed to say to each other, the words that we all know do not really comfort the bereaved: our children are gifts, on loan from God. They're not ours. Our time with them may be brief. We must love them while we can--

And all I feel is angry. All I feel is this bone-wracking ache for this child & his mother. I don't want to live in a world where children can be lost. And there are so many opportunities to lose them.

I have a two-year-old & a three-year-old, & they were napping when I read Dana's story. I was glad that I'd have time to start breathing again before they came crying for snacks & a hundred other things that plague their days. I also wanted to tear their bedroom doors open & pull them to me, to make sure they were alright. But when they got up, they would not be held. One sucked his thumb while the other demanded food "for her heart." They cried to go potty & cried for the light on & cried that they could do it themselves but needed help, & there was no time for me to cry any more.

I took them to church & sat in the parking lot & cried, though.

Then we came home, & I watched numbly as my husband put them to bed. Every syllable they mispronounce breaks my heart for the mother who has lost her baby's song, & I weep, & I know I have to start breathing again. My head aches, & I can't eat or think, & my babies are all safely tucked into bed, & I feel like I'm violating the very core of motherhood by stealing someone else's grief, but I can't help it. My throat is closing, & any effort to forget feels like betrayal, like admitting defeat. If only I can keep my mind on this little boy, then maybe it's not true, maybe he will live. If only I can hold up the universe with my thoughts, maybe the other children whose mamas have loved them will live, too. And my only stray thoughts are of the other children I've known who've been lost too soon, & I can't breathe, & it's too hot in here.

My nine-year-old likes to take his pillow & blanket down from his bed & sleep on the floor beside his two-year-old brother. The older boy hates to sleep on the floor, so this is especially sweet. I hear him at night sometimes singing to the little one, long after bedtime, & I smile & try to hold these memories in my heart.

Tonight as I walked past, I thought I heard the older one singing, but then I heard the younger one, too, & I realized they were talking & playing, so I went in to sternly put them back to bed.

When I walked in, the little one said, "The crickets are singin to me, Mama!"

"Did John tell you that?"

"Yes," he said, sticking his thumb back in his mouth after a big grin.

I lay down between them, & the three of us listened to "the cricket & frog songs" for a while. There in that silence, in the softness of their ears and their breathing and soggy thumbs and awkward limbs, I felt it—the pieces of my heart, willing to heal. As I ran my hands over the soft baby hair and the coarser big kid hair, knowing that I could lose them at any time, knowing that life is so fragile & uncertain & that all my love & all my mental gymnastics cannot keep my children safe, I was comforted by their wide eyes & warm breathing.

This is now. It's all I can hold, & if tragedy strikes, it's all I will have. I must embrace the now.

It's hard on those nights to stand up, turn around, & walk away. You sense the loss. Even if we sidestep fate & see our children grow up, this night cannot be captured, & once we turn out the lights & close the doors, it is a memory. How do we ever walk away? But we do. We must.

And the only weapon we have against regret is to embrace the now, to be fully there, in the moment with the delicious sounds of temper tantrums & the awful smell of life & the rosy cheeks & scrapes & joys & sorrows they bring us.

The little one brought home a present from his teacher at church. He held it all the way home, calling it a "party" with a "Christmas" on top—the bow. We told him to put it under the tree, & he ran enthusiastically to do so, but when his feet hit the carpet, something in him stopped, & he looked at his "party." He tore just a little piece of the paper away & looked at the tree. I saw his feet wiggle, as if they really wanted to go & obey, but he looked at the "party" again, & peeled away another tiny piece of paper, watching it float to the ground.

He unwrapped the whole party, which turned out to be a puzzle, which to a two-year-old is just another party waiting to be unwrapped.

I watched those little pieces of paper float to the ground with him tonight. I didn't stop his fiendish entrancement with the mystery. I let him be my mystery, & I watched as a tiny piece of something separating us floated to the ground so that for a moment, I could see the party through his eyes, the wonder of it, the mystery that overpowers like the last twenty pages of a great book you can't put down. I reveled in his discovery like I was watching an old home movie of something I can no longer touch, & I rejoiced in being able to reach through the film of grief that enveloped me to touch him.

Oh my heavy heart. If only all this weeping meant that another's pain were softened, but there is no sense to any of it. Only hurting, & now the only balm.

Ode to Blanky

Oh Blanky!

You the most wonderful Blanky in the world!

--Guest post by 2yo

My Midwife's Arms

There's a picture of my midwife weighing one of my babies that has been on my mind lately. Actually, I think we have the same picture from each birth. She's holding a stork-shaped sling as high over her head as she can—I'm not sure she's 5' tall—& you can barely see her face behind the bag.

There's a baby in the bag, & she's weighing it. No easy task, since my children have averaged 9lb at birth. All you can see of the baby is little toes sticking out of the weighing-sack. All you can see of my midwife is her arms holding up the sling.

It's her arms that I've been thinking about. She's a tiny lady with a lovely figure, a warm British accent, & happy, happy curls. She calls me "Obrey" with a long O instead of "Aubrey," & she's held every one of my children in her arms.

In these pictures, you really notice those arms, disproportionately large, surprisingly strong. The strength in those two arms stood out to me suddenly, & for the first time, I thought about the work of her job.

I love these photos. I love those arms.

The Canyon & the River

I recently got an email from a reader, & I wanted to go ahead & address it here, for everybody. So first the email:

"I just read your article in TOS and I really liked it...liked how you were honest about the things you learned, but not always being able to embrace them. I think too often we don't want others to see our weak spots, so we gloss over them and hope no one notices. Thanks for being transparent and through that, giving encouragement to so many, especially me!

I do have one question. You mentioned that one of your children would not easily succeed in a classroom because she "...is fiercely independent but has a gentle side when her independence is met with understanding." Can you tell me a little about what that looks like where the rubber meets the road? I have a child like that and sometimes the constant struggles just wear me down, so I don't always respond to him in the right way. What ways have you found to meet your daughter’s independence with understanding?"

First of all, my daughter. She reminds me of Norah Jones. She's got long, long black hair w/ red highlights that show up only in a certain light. She's got big, deep brown eyes, & even before she was born, I imagined her standing on a cliff in Ireland, overlooking the ocean, with an electric guitar slung over her back, black curls waving in the wind.

And that's exactly who she is. A fierce, woman-warrior who does everything w/ 110% of herself. Once when I told her I could eat her up, her dark eyes flashed with fury like a storm on the ocean that's come out of nowhere. "Good mamas don't eat their children," she said. She was two.

From almost the time she was born, my baby cried. Constantly. Once she figured out how to scream, she screamed. She climbed into the trash can & the toilet; she climbed her big siblings' loft beds. Most people didn't know it, though, because she is also incredibly outgoing & has a smile that fills up her whole marshmallow face (when she decides to use it).

Since she could talk, she's been my child who will march up to strangers on the playground & say, "My Mama won't push me in the swing. Will you?" And worse, she'll ask some men, "Are YOU my Daddy?" (It's a game she plays, from the book, Are You My Mother?, but I'm always afraid it will sound...much worse than that!)

Most people have at least one kid who has the independent streak. We laugh when we say that & we groan, but I believe there may be more going on with my daughter. In the past year, I've begun to read about sensory disorders, allergies, and other symptoms of the child who's a shade more "off" than simply "independent."

Now that you understand to a degree what I'm talking about, you should also know my parenting background. Before getting married (at 19), I thought A LOT about parenting philosophies. I have no idea why. I thought about homeschooling a lot, too. It was like a scientific experiment for me—I wanted to see if my ideas of parenting & education could produce the "perfect" children.

In thinking about parenting, though, I leaned VERY conservative. My mother attended a Growing Kids God's Way conference; compared to Bill Gothard, who had previously been a strong influence in our lives, GKGW was a breath of fresh air. The approach to parenting outlined in this course & in the companion Baby Wise were so much more logical than anything I'd heard before.

Bear with me. I know this is controversial. I did not know that at the time.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I went to visit my mother, & I occupied some of the time that I was there with reading her copy of GKGW, specifically the section on spanking, something I had always thought that any decent parent would do, something I thought qualified as criminal negligence NOT to do. (Remember kids tend to be very concrete, black & white, & up to this point, I'd really still been a kid.)

While I was pregnant, though, something in me started to nag a little. It wasn't that I believed in spanking any less, but...I really wanted to see a good argument for it in print. My brain works well that way.

The chapter on spanking was extremely disconcerting for me, though. The author took on a very condescending tone, offered no logical support of the practice, & continued to deride anyone who failed to spank their children. This made me question the practice further, greatly upsetting some of my family, who retorted, "Not everyone can be an English major like you!" Another logical fallacy that left me questioning the logic of spanking.

The baby came, despite my lack of confidence about spanking or not spanking, immunizing or not immunizing, etc. I did what most mothers do: I fed my baby, rocked him, cared for him in the best way that I could. Although I had been philosophically staunch about many things, I've always been more middle-of-the-road in practice, & age has softened my philosophies with experience.

My oldest has a mild personality, very reasonable. The spanking issue was one my husband and I went back and forth on, & we settled on reserving it for emergency situations, to get a child's attention. Unbuckling his carseat while we're driving, running out in the street—spankings. Everything else, we wanted to try to deal with differently.

Sometimes we did. Sometimes we didn't. We did ok, I think, but I was never able to regain my youthful confidence that spanking was really great. Our second child came, & she was more compliant than the first, actually applying all of her sibling rivalry toward being better behaved than her brother. Our children were scary, they were so good. We still hadn't resolved our feelings about spanking, but it was not a crisis. We were well-able to train our children with or without spankings, we felt, & we understood both sides of the argument.

Then our 3rd child came. She's the one who is so fundamentally different. Very early on, I came to the conclusion that we could not spank this child. The fierceness of her soul is almost indescribable. Even now, I'm imagining flint, honed down into a spear, & that's my baby. She told me once, with that snap in her eyes, that "the cat has sin." The cat had scratched her, & she wasn't just sad or angry. She had a calculated scale for the injustice of the world.

I told my husband that I'm afraid that if we get in her way, she will see us as the enemy, & we will be the object of her calculated scales, her fierce desire for justice. She is a rock, a flint spear, a cliff, & she has the determination and fortitude to accomplish anything.

I began when she was one to work beside her instead of opposite her—the easier approach to parenting I had taken with my first two—thinking of myself like water & her like a canyon. I could not shape her into the person she needed to become with anything less than dynamite, & dynamite would crush the spirit that made her great. I would lose my relationship with her, & I knew that a relationship with one like this could be fragile. I believe that once it is secured, though, it is secure, because her loyalty is as fierce as her judgment; her joy as fierce as her anger. Water, in a canyon, is intricately part of the landscape, gently carving out beauty in an almost symbiotic relationship.

Lovely, you say, but what does that even mean?

I try to avoid anger with this daughter. (Not that I don't with the others, but I saw an even greater need for it with her, & this extra effort has overflowed into making me a better mother for the others as well. At least, I hope!) I try not to yell. I try to understand. All things that I have always done, but making a greater effort to set aside my point of view and understand hers.

I have always taken a child who is crying for a cookie, asked him to calm down, asked him to use his words, repeated his words back to him, & then explained why the answer is no. (If the answer is no.) I have found that repeating a child's words BACK to them helps them to know you understand what they're saying—a very big deal for toddlers who really aren't always sure that they're being understood.

This one needs longer listening, more stretch to the imagination. More patience. Her mood swings can be crazy, especially when she's tired, but despite that, she needs less sleep. I fought that with my oldest; with this one, I have accepted her quirky hours better. She still naps, but she naps because I've explained the logic of it to her:

You have a Cranky Monster that lives inside you. You've also got robots inside you to tie him up, but they can only work when you're sleeping (white blood cells, for the scientifically-minded). When your Cranky Monster breaks free, he makes you cry & gets you in trouble... By then, she's put herself to bed (a miracle), grinning, because she has the power to defeat the "Cranky Monster."

I let her wear mismatched clothes. I let her choose her pink shoes or her gray ones. And when she gets uncontrollable, when days go by w/out an ounce of obedience, I stop. I pull her up in my lap, & I read her a story. I tell her all the reasons I love her. I tell her what she has done well. I work to pour myself into her, literally.

I rely more on redirection than I did with the others. I work to remind myself how tender she is, even when it's not immediately obvious. Really, it's this last point that I was trying to get at in the article quoted at the beginning. This little one needs to be cared for by someone who has something invested in her future, or she will wear the caretaker down to nothing, & the result would likely be spirit-crushing for her. She can take people being angry with her, but it feeds the rock. I'm the opposite: I'm overly-sensitive, & other people's disappointment & anger just crushes me. I've come to believe that this daughter, in being a polar opposite, is actually the same as me. She can take disappointment, but...I don't know how to say it. It gets converted into negative energy.

And it's like magic. Today she saw me washing dishes, & she pulled up a stool, got out a dishcloth, & began drying. She offered her little brother one of the trains she was playing with when he cried, & she went on to explain to him, "These are God's toys. But He shares them with us. God is Love."

My little mountain is slowly, gently becoming a beautiful canyon, but I'm no longer certain whether I am the river or the rock, because I'm becoming so much more beautiful by her presence in my life as well.

Note: My kids are 9, 7, 3, & 2 at the time of this post.