A Different Kind of Learner

Today at dinner Victoria and I discussed the delicious fresh, organic lemonade I got at a great price today, 2 for $5.

After I mentioned that we had a second jug waiting for us in the fridge, Victoria said, “So we have a gallon all together.”

I was impressed — I don’t recall discussing volume measures with her, and half-gallon wasn’t printed on the container, so I asked her, “How did you figure that out?”

Victoria: “I used math.” (Duh!)

Me: “Oh, so how big is one container?”

Victoria: “I don’t know. A skinny jug is a pint, but this isn’t a pint. So maybe . . .” (trails off)

Me: “Well how did you know that two make a gallon?”

Victoria: “I read something in a book.”

And that’s all I know. Did she visually combine the two jugs to approximate a milk gallon jug? Did she read the 2 quarts (or 64 oz.) and add that up to a gallon but assume that I could not be asking her such an elementary question?

She’ll never tell.

What does she know? How does she know it? She holds these things close to her, secret agent-like.

We’re going to do some educational assessments this year with Victoria, which may or may not tell us something useful about our child. What I know already is that she is our little engineer, and the tiny guru, and the 7 year old going on 27 — not just to us, but to Sunday School teachers, cashiers, hairdressers, and friends. I know that if she tells me where to find something, 99.8% of the time she is dead on. And when she tells me what she likes about her different friends, she has a depth of understanding that blows my mind.

I don’t think any of that will be on the Woodcock Johnson or the WIAT-II, and I don’t think they take answers that start, “Well, maybe . . . ” Is she smart, or gifted? Probably. But what stands out more strongly is that she really is a different kind of learner, and she’s not giving up the keys to her mind to me or anyone else.

What’s Your Real?

This morning I reviewed and wrote short annotations on essays about the Scottish poet Robert Burns.

It occurred to me that in my mind, Robert Burns is a major cultural figure and phenomenon whose importance and interest far eclipses that of, say, Katy Perry or even World Cup soccer. I suspect that I’m increasingly in the minority there.

What’s interesting to me about this is not that I am culturally more or less knowledgeable than anyone else. Everyone makes their choices, though many people have to make them within a limited sphere, and I’m relativist enough to say that (for the most part) my choices are no “smarter” or “boring” than most others. What’s interesting to me is how we come to decide what is real.

To me, Robert Burns is real. And he has been since I first heard of him in my early teens. Bear Stearns, as my mind organizes information, is little more than a very bad fairy tale. What those people do to make money (mainly moving chits of paper around, so far as I can tell) is not real. The consequences for people outside of that world, sadly, are real, but that world is less real to me than a poem or novel.

So far as I know, I didn’t choose what would be real to me, or I did so at such a young age that I have no recollection of it, and I’m stuck with it regardless. As I watch my life go by, so many things pass through like ghosts, like translucent phantoms in the background whose whispers I hear faintly but not distinctly. Others are full, glorious color, calling to me directly, specifically seeking my attention.

How did this happen? I have the same background as a lot of people who find very different things to be “real,” and who find the things that are most alive to me to be frivolous, even—worse—dead.

And how does this happen for our kids?

Can homeschooling be a place where our kids, especially as they get older, can hear and respond those things that are alive to them and waving frantically for their attention? Or will it be a place where what is real is what I see, and everything else must be thin illusion? And if I want it to be the former, how will I give good guidance?

And I would like to know, what is real and unreal for you?

I’ll Let the Raven Do the Talking

There’s so much I want to talk about!

Which as usual causes me writing paralysis.

So for now, as I try to catch up from a long weekend away, I’ll give you a snippet of dialogue from Terry Pratchett’s Soul Music:

“Look,” said Susan. “I’d just like you to know that I don’t believe any of this. I don’t believe there’s a Death of Rats in a cowl carrying a scythe.”

“He’s standing in front of you.”

“That’s no reason to believe it.”

“I can see you’ve certainly had a proper education,” said the raven sourly.

Things Recently Explained to Me

Victoria is full of interesting statements lately:

– she has 9.5 boyfriends (?!)
– her brain is divided into sections: devilish, “angel-ish,” mechanical, tinkerer, “mud” (that’s the gardening part), and (primarily) sensible, meaning “wise and using good judgment”
– we were discussing her great-grandfather who worked in an auto factory making cars. “That must be why I’m so creative!!” she exclaimed, very excited by the idea.
– she wants her new nickname to be “Aroma Girl.” You can figure that one out yourself.

I was holding her hand today walking into the grocery store — I had just picked her up from a Spanish-language day camp, and it was just the two of us. Gosh, seven is a great age. Whatever mistakes I’ve made and will keep making, I am so glad for the extra time together we get from homeschooling.

葱油餅 (with leek)

The leek pancakes (more commonly, scallion pancakes, 葱油餅, or cong you bing) are underway. They are at once simple and, in the way of so many kitchen projects with kids, insanely time consuming.

You start with 3 cups of flour then add 1/2 cup of water at a time, until you get a sticky bread-dough consistency, around 1.5-2 cups. Then you add a little more flour. Then a little more water. Then some more flour, then some more, then some more, and hopefully by this point you have allowed your child to own this process completely and you just do what she says whether it makes sense or not.

Then you knead the dough. Then you sing, “I need you to knead me” as if you are the dough. Then you figure out how to sing “I need you to knead me” in Chinese, but it doesn’t sound as good. The dough needs lots of kneading.

The next part is controversial. You break off a small ball. You may think the ball is small enough, but no. It is not. Smaller, mom, smaller. Roll it to standard pancake size, then rub each side with oil. You might start with as much as a teaspoon of oil, but this will quickly get messy, and you’ll see that you’re very nearly out of oil and it’s after 6pm on Memorial Day so you can’t exactly run out for more. That’s just as well, because 1/4 teaspoon really covers the whole thing nicely — see? It’s fine. Then sprinkle on salt. Apparently the Sen Lin Hu way is to use enough salt to drive up stocks for the Morton Salt Company. Try to reason with the pancake maker — that’s way too salty. It’s going to be inedible. Find a happy medium. Rub the salt onto the oil.

Look at those long fingers!

Set the pancake down and add thinly sliced leeks. Assuming you have hours to devote to this project and nothing else to do on the holiday weekend, it is best to place the leek bits very very carefully, one at a time, in a visually pleasing arrangement, pressing them in slightly. Take pleasure in your arrangement, as soon no one will know it existed. Roll up your pancake like a cigar, then squash into a ball, the roll out with a rolling pin again to a flat pancake.

Is she really class of 2017? That shirt is 5 years old at least.

Set on a tray, and repeat. As long as this process takes, it’s still likely that the grillmaster will have gotten involved in a conversation with his band mate about some new song they are working on, and now the grill still isn’t ready after all this time. Cover the pancakes in a damp lint-free dishcloth until it seems plausible that you might eat. Use the time to consider what mixed drinks you could make now that you’re out of beer. Finally, fry them in whatever little bit of oil remains.

Serve with anything you like and a salad of local greens with Annie’s goddess dressing.

Totally gratuitous photo of cute sister and birthday cheesecake, since we don’t have photos of her feast from last night.

Weekend Snapshots, and A Poem for Sunday

We’re having a hot and lovely weekend, mostly — there is some eggshell-treading, after a volatile week. While Victoria spent the afternoon with an old friend, Violet, Eggmaster, and I went for a bike ride. We aren’t far from an on-ramp to the bicycles-only Midtown Greenway, which rolls along next to the railroad tracks, and between two of the lakes, and then onto a little shopping area, where we could stop at Whole Foods and pick up some goodies to bring to old friends’ house for dinner. Violet was ecstatic at the idea of cycling not just to tool around, but to run errands, putting our shopping bag in a milkcrate attached to my bike with bungee cords. My legs are feeling it today, but maybe by the next snowfall I’ll be stronger.

Many pangs of not quite sadness, but nostalgia and something more, as we pulled up in front of our old house to have dinner with our old neighbors. As we parked I felt I could just walk in the front door and be home. When our friends didn’t have enough of something, for a second I thought, “I’ll just run across the street and grab it.” I have not quite fully moved into the new house yet, almost 8 months later—my stuff is there, but not all of me. I like it, but it’s still my vacation home.

Today we went to the big city farmers’ market, instead of the tiny neighborhood one we went to last week. It was hot, and the kids were tired, but we managed some little pleasures. The girls had maple candy “just like Laura Ingalls” (those 4 words are enough to recommend anything to Victoria), and then we saw lovely leeks at reasonable (not supermarket) cost. I nearly passed them by, until Violet promised to make us leek pancakes, as she learned at a short Concordia Chinese overnight a few weeks ago. Tonight, however, Victoria and I have a special menu from her new gardening cook books. We’ve made mint syrup and started the “Strawberry Dream Cream” already — new potatoes, peas, and spinach-egg casserole to follow later tonight.

I allowed myself a treat too, a wonderful variegated leafy plant. I have no idea what it is, and Eggmaster had to ask the seller how much sun it needs. I’ve also made arrangements that he’ll water it. I am a black thumb — I cannot touch this plant, but I can still enjoy it.

I am reading lots and lots — Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies, Jack Kornfield’s A Path With Heart, Kathleen Norris’s Acedia and Me. I just love her — who knows what she is like in real life, but when I read her I think, “Ah, we’re just alike. She understands me perfectly. We’re walking a common path, and she is just enough ahead of me to shed a little light.”

She’s also a great finder of quotations. Here’s a nice one for the seekers among us:

Most people come to the Church by means the Church does not allow, else there would be no need their getting to her at all . . . The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner, which creates much misunderstanding among the smug. — Flannery O’Connor

This is a poem from Lynn Park quoted in A Path with Heart. I can find no links to it, or the poet, anywhere, so here is the whole lovely thing:

Take the time to pray—
it is the sweet oil that eases the hinge into the garden
so the doorway can swing open easily.
You can always go there.

Consider yourself blessed.
These stones that break your bones
will build the altar of your love.

Your home is the garden.
Carry its odor, hidden in you, into the city.
Suddenly your enemies will buy seed packets
and fall to their knees to plant flowers
in the dirt by the road.
They’ll call you Friend
and honor your passing among them.
When asked, “Who was that?” they will say,
“Oh, that one has been beloved by us
since before time began.”
This from people who would have trampled over you
to maintain their advantage.

Give everything away except your garden,
Your worry, your fear, your small-mindedness.
Your garden can never be taken from you.

I Am Reading Your Blog

No really.

The thing is I usually read it at night on my iPod feed reader before bed. True, it’s almost impossible to click through and comment, but now at least you know that I’m all tucked up in my cozy blankets thinking of you in happy ways.

No really.

But I’m going to try to be better and start reading you on my computer, I promise. You’ll see.

Slowly Rounding the Corner

. . . or not.

I don’t know. I know that I feel like I’m trying to wake up after sleeping in too long, and too late. Except that there is never a too late.

Right?

There is a Kris Delmhorst version of this Rumi poem that I love. It is so like me — too silly, too serious, too many instruments playing at once, a little rough around the edges. I love it when a song seems to mirror you, not just in words but more importantly in sounds.

These words aren’t all in the poem, but I’m trying to remember them in the mornings, especially the third line:

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

So I ignore the call of my office and go do something else. Anything else. As yet, I don’t know what I want to do, but I’ve made space for it all the same.

We are also all working on presence. For whatever reason, the girls seem to have a huge need to have me right there, as often as possible, or they lose their way. It’s as if we’re all a little unmoored and adrift, and somehow — well, obviously — it falls to me to bring us back. And you may say, well of course you are, you’re the mother. To which I can only say, having a responsibility hardly qualifies me to fulfill it.

But I do. It’s my new project.

We do yoga together, Victoria and I knit together, and I sit next to Violet at times when my presence seems totally unnecessary but is apparently essential.

I’ve also picked up a new book, Acedia and Me, by Kathleen Norris, whom — rightly or wrongly — I often identify with strongly. No need to read a lot into my choice of books — I’ve had this one on the list for years and finally noticed it at the bookstore. It’s the kind of book I used to read all the time and then, suddenly, stopped.

Now I’m starting again.

Lots of starting planned around here.

Happy Camper

Arggghhh! I can’t even start this post!

This is me: 100 different thoughts going in 100 different directions, which all adds up to

paralysis.

You would think this would make me a compassionate mother to a child who acts exactly the same way. I am flattered by the way you overestimate me.

Neither mother nor oldest child is comfortable right now — both of us seem at an uncomfortable ebb in our passions, restless without something to wrestle with. I am always looking for signs of light and life to carry me through to the next day.

Today it was this:

Violet went on an overnight field trip at a local outpost of Concordia Language Villages. She had a great time, though when I asked her if she learned anything she bluntly said no — the other campers were almost all total beginners. When I asked her if she enjoyed speaking Chinese, she said she mostly spoke Chinese with the counselors. She said she was really looking forward to her regular 2-week camp, when she can be with more Chinese speakers.

She thoroughly enjoyed the other kids anyway. Another girl rode home with us — as a side note, she told us about how her attention span had shortened in school, because after the first few sentences from the teacher she would tune out, as everything afterwards was repetition. She wasn’t very happy about it. Anyway . . .

During the hour-long ride, the girls discovered that they both loved Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and spent most of the trip quoting the book together and laughing hysterically. For so many reasons it was an absolute joy to listen to. Violet also shared her new love of the Beatles — “I only really like the Revolver album; all the best songs are on that one” — and played some of her dad’s music for her friend as well.

Awake, alive, alert, present, open, joyful — it’s so hard to be all of those things all at once, at any age, at any time, with anyone. In this house of intensity, red zones, anxiety — not to mention hormones! — I don’t get to see them together as often as I’d like.

But when I do it’s like a little peek behind the veil, or a flash of the lighthouse beacon in the fog: “Ah, there it is. That’s where we’re headed. Stay the course.”

Recommitting

It’s been four years since we started homeschooling. Four years and a few months ago we started down an exciting path of learning about homeschooling, learning about educational theories, learning about types of giftedness. We had the usual issues of dealing with skeptics, figuring out what the change would mean for our family life, but that was more an adventure than a chore.

Eventually, the excitement wore off. That was a good thing, really. Homeschooling wasn’t a battle we had to fight or even a wheel we needed to reinvent. It was just what we did, like eating three meals a day — some great meals, some bad ones, a lot of unmemorable ones.

The honeymoon ended, but we were happy with the mundane reality of doing whatever the day called for. It was a nice break from feeling like salmon swimming upstream.

Then, somehow, happy everyday-ness started to feel like a rut. In addition, after four years of homeschooling it became clear that wonderful as homeschooling is, it’s hardly a panacea. Children still hit puberty. Intense children are still intense. Intense parents are still intense. I developed a lot of sympathy for the teachers who didn’t know what to do with my kids — neither do I. Nor do the kids — it’s lovely for people who can manage their intensity and whatever else life hands them with minimal support or guidance, but that’s never been me or my husband, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s not my kids either.

So I’ve been considering school. School, where someone could deal with the intensity for a while. School, where someone else could create structure. School, where my kids couldn’t be fighting with each other over nothing!

It didn’t take long to realize that for lots of reasons traditional school wouldn’t be happening for Violet. It’s Just. Not. A Fit. It’s not a giftedness thing so much as, well, a lot of other things that are really her business.

But for Victoria I thought it might be a great idea. If nothing else she would have the opportunity to make friends without a domineering older sister around. Yeah, yeah, it’s great that homeschooled kids can be in mixed-age groups and be great friends with siblings, but now that we’ve done that for a while it’s clear that not all children benefit in the same way from that situation. And someone else could try giving her instructions and see if she listens to them!

But once we started discussing school as a real possibility, I could see the potential problems — vacations were just the beginning! We struggle to deal with the asynchrony of her interests and abilities in a homeschool setting — her handwriting and math skills are not anywhere near the level of her science interests. Would she be getting the foreign language education she wants and we want for her? She gets frustrated with the noise and roughhousing of the kids at our homeschool co-ops — wouldn’t school be more of the same, for more hours of more days? And she just plain doesn’t like most kids her age. Where her sister has always been eager to act like a younger, crazier child, Victoria really doesn’t enjoy it. She wants to go sit and talk somewhere quiet, or “enjoy nature.”

I’m not saying school would be a *bad* place for her, but I can’t see how upending our current family style to accommodate school would offer enough benefits to be worth the effort. It wouldn’t seem to address any of the issues that are making life tough for her, and us.

The thing about being a salmon swimming upstream rather than a lazy sunbather floating contentedly down the river is that it requires intention. When the struggle ends, the mindful intention can slip away eventually as well, and when you find yourself with a punctured innertube in rocky rapids, it’s much easier to freak out than it is to find that mindful intention again.

So I’m recommitting, bringing myself back to that beginning place of learning, shaking things up, paying close attention because new things are happening. It’s a lot of work, a lot more work than it was four years ago, to haul my mind back to what’s happening right now. As far as I can tell, however, it’s probably more pleasant work than the terrible grind of the alternatives.