A Child, Lying on the Ground

There is something about teaching that stays with you.  I think it's because teaching is such an intimate thing (sorry, former students...not trying to squick you out.)  You learn so much about your students through the work you assign and the discussions you have in class.  You learn about their families and their hobbies and their hopes and fears.  Watching them come into class, you learn about which girls they think are cute and which boys they are afraid of.  You learn about how they hold their shoulders when they are happy or confused.  You learn which ones have hair-trigger tempers and which ones will cry at national disasters.  It is sometimes a one-way relationship, because they, as children, are too busy trying to figure out how to become an adult to pay attention to the ones trying to help them do so.

If you're an English teacher, as I was, you learn even more as you assign journal entries and you discuss literature, because literature, at its heart, is about the human struggle.  Literature is about good versus evil, almost always, even if it looks like it's about two teenagers in love, or a family trying to own a home, or life in a concentration camp.   You learn details about your students that hurt your heart ("Please don't tell anybody, Mrs. Ray.  He doesn't mean it...") and that make you wonder how they make it into your classroom each day in one piece.  You learn what they feel about the way the world works and why they feel that way.  You learn that even the boy who towers over you, who has been shaving for years, who pushes people into the lockers as he passes, has a soul that is incomplete and needful of so many things to finish it.  You try to pour in as much goodness as you can.  You try to teach stories and poems that give a view of the world that is not as dim as the reality in which they live.  You find stories and poems that they can use as stepping stones out of the tumult of their world.  You love them, most of them.  You try to love them every day, even when they are absolutely unloveable, because they are not finished yet, and you know this by their actions and the words they turn in on crumpled paper.

I taught future (and even current) criminals.  I taught children that frightened me, sometimes, because they were bigger than me or angrier than me.  I taught children that stood over me in rages and called me ugly names, children who ran out of my classroom crying over my policies.  I'm not going to lie and tell you that I adored those children, but at the end of the day, what kept me coming back to the classroom to deal with them is that I had it fixed in my head that they were kids:  incomplete, full of possibility, my responsibility because I had made it through the process and was being paid to help them through it.

I've seen my former students on Crimestoppers reports.  I've seen them on arrest reports and once, to my horror and eternal sadness, I saw one on a news story about a man who was killed in a nearby town.  "He isn't a man, " I thought as I sobbed over the kid who asked me if I liked frogs during a serious discussion about the political ramifications of political and social prejudice.

But he was.  He was a grown man, responsible for his choices and unprotected by his elders who knew he wasn't finished.  He was finished, my former student, in more ways than one.

And that is why, I think, that the Trayvon Martin case hurts me so much.  It isn't that it has highlighted (yet again) how very far away we are from any sort of society in which color of skin is used as an excuse or impetus or cause, even, for discussion.  It isn't that it has highlighted (yet again) the questions of guns and crime and responsibility that our country has never answered suitably for everyone.  It's that a child was killed.  A child was killed by an adult, in a situation in which there was no plausible reason for the killing.

Yesterday, accidentally and to my complete horror, I saw a picture of dead Trayvon.  He was a skinny thing, bless his heart, all long legs and long arms.  He was unquestionably dead, his smooth face and blank eyes empty of everything.   There was no hint that he was a thug, as some people have labeled him.  There was no hint that he was an angel, as some people have labeled him.  All potential that he had, every future Trayvon he could have been, was gone, bled out of him.  What he would have been, what he might have been, what he actually WAS--thug or angel or just a regular teenage weirdo kid--was lost.

In the end, all of that stuff was erased for me by the fact that what I saw in that picture was a child, lying on the ground.

A dead child, lying on the ground.  And in his face, I saw all of the boys I taught as they stumbled toward manhood.  I saw my own boy.

And I wept, once again, for what was lost.

One of Those "I Started Writing Something and It Wound Up Something Else" Posts

*This started out as a funny "Dang, it's hard being poor at the end of January" post and wound up an introspective musing about ending my internet addiction.  Enjoy.  Snort.*

January is a long month any way (sing it with me:  "Thirty days has September..."), but for teachers in our county, it's a reaaaaally long month.  In an effort to help out with Christmas spending, the powers that be pay teachers (and other employees) for December before the Christmas holidays.  Theoretically, this is great:  it loosens up finances for holiday expenses and you don't have to worry about eating whatever you can find out in your yard for New Year's Day brunch.  (I will point out that I actually DID eat something I found out in my yard for New Year's Day brunch.  Yay for mustard green frittatas!)

The problem is that come the end of January, ye old bank account is looking grim.  I know, technically, that this should not be the case.  Technically, we should all have set aside our money for Christmas months earlier and we wouldn't be dealing with this issue now.  Technically, I should be dipping into our winter stores and pulling out the cans of tomato sauce and jars of green beans and running out to the chicken house for some eggs since it's so frickin' warm this winter that my chickens would probably still be laying.  But.  I'm not doing that.

Instead, I'm doing things like trying not to chew my own ears off while Jeffrey whines about having to eat Corn Chex (left over from party mix) agaaaain for breakfast.  (Seriously, Chex boxes are the size of airplane hangars.)  I'm doing things like slinging Rice Krispie (left over from Rice Krispie Treats) boxes at him and yelling, "You want VARIETY?  Have some VARIETY."  I mean, it's great that my kid has a good vocabulary and yeah, yeah, yeah he's a good speller and soooo smart and it's awesome.  Yay.  But wanting more variety at  breakfast?  Really?  BE GLAD YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO EAT, SON.  Don't make me tote out all the starving children in the world.

What?

I can't remember where I was going with this.  The variety threw me off.

Oh, right.  So, we're really not self sufficient or grateful for what we have or capable of entertaining ourselves without spending money.  I mean, if given the opportunity--and by "opportunity," I mean "utter collapse of American civilization to the point of Laura Ingalls Wilder times"--I'm pretty sure we could pull ourselves together and make do, but right now?  Not so much.

Our kids complain about having to eat boxed cereal at the end of the month that's perfectly tasty and healthy for them, other than the fact that it's processed and in a box.

Jeffrey unloaded maybe six pieces of firewood from the back of the truck yesterday and acted like we had chopped his arms off and were dragging him over hot coals and fireant nests.

We live on an acre of land and buy every tomato product we eat.

We look at our weekly eating out as a right we have, not as a treat.

My kids are, right now, sitting in front of the television so I can type peacefully before work.  They could be cleaning their rooms, feeding the dog, or reading a book, but I want them to be quiet.

This is, of course, a recurring theme for me.  My biggest obstacle as a human being isn't lack of compassion or intelligence or loved ones or funds.  My biggest obstacle is lack of follow through.  I make big plans and then they unfortunately sort of shrivel up and die because I don't follow through with them.  This isn't beating myself up:  it's just the truth.

This obstacle has dogged my path (or sat squarely in the middle of my path) my entire life.  Plans to write books, lose weight, plant gardens, yadayadayada litter my timeline.  I don't find it as disheartening as you would think.  At least I've been consistent.

At the same time, it's a little frustrating to think of the way that I would PREFER to live compared to how I live in actuality.  I would PREFER to be on a little farm, writing books in my cozy office and taking clients out to the lavender patch for a photo session until the kids come home from school and we do our chores before sitting down to a home cooked meal that is 3/4 of our hard work.

Now, it's maybe not possible to have that life right now.  My acre is going to have to do until we can afford the little farm.  But there are certainly things I CAN do now.  I can plant a better garden, finally get the dang chickens we've been talking about, sew down that pile of fabric and patterns that's cluttering up my dining room.

It's going to require that I do something that I both dread and look forward to:  I'm going to have to kick my internet habit.  Honestly, I joke about Crackterest, but in the past few days, I've come to realize that I've gone from using the internet as a tool or a way to hang out with my buds to using it like I used to use cigarettes.  It's a time filler and a time waster.  I will literally spend hours sometimes going from Facebook to the Huffington Post to The Pioneer Woman back to Facebook to Pinterest to CNN and then back to the Huffington Post and then maybe a little Twitter.  And then I look up and whoopsidoodle!  The laundry isn't washed and it's time to go get the kids.

It would be kinda funny and "I'm just a housewife sitting around eating bonbons" except that it ISN'T really all that funny and, especially in the winter when I'm prone to the blues anyway, it becomes actually a little bit serious because I feel the blues veering into something more grim and grayish and the constant cycle of internettedness gets a little...damaging-feeling.  Isolating.  Not good at all.

So I'm going partially cold turkey.  Partially because I can't completely disconnect from my computer.  After all, I have photos to edit and blogs to write and a media presence to build and maintain if I want to be successful as a photographer.  Also, visiting with online friends is an important part of the who that I am right now that I'm content with.  But I simply have to wrench myself out of the cycle of surfing that is dragging my down.  I'll be online in the morning before the kidlets wake up and again in the evening after they go to bed, and I might tweet a couple of times during the day, but for now, while I try to get some plans that have become giant rock piles in my path cleared up, that's going to have to be it.

I'll see you around, of course.  Just...not as much.

Gardening in the Post 9/11 World

Yesterday, we spent most of the day outside, removing the old box beds and tilling up the garden and planting broccoli and cauliflower and lettuce and spinach and soybeans and cabbage for the Fall and Winter.  (Yes, I know I'm not supposed to capitalize those words.  Bite me, Grammar Police.  Fall and Winter NEED to be capitalized after this summer.  See what I did there?)

Occasionally, during breaks, I would check on Facebook, where I read (over and over again) about tears and prayers and mourning.  I also read a few posts about how religion caused the attacks on September 11, 2001, and one, inexplicably, about how if you didn't like that America was "one nation under God," you should leave. Sigh.

Let me go ahead and say that you should follow your bliss (or sadness, as it were) and mourn or reflect or remember any way you want to and that these next few paragraphs are not in any way telling you that you are wrong for feeling or expressing your feelings any way you want to.  Unless you do something crazy and, like, make a bonfire with a pile of Girl Scout Thin Mints.  I mean, that's just wrong.

That said, it seems to me that if the best that Americans can do is think of 9/11 as a day when it all went wrong, or focus on all of the dead people, or even focus only on the actions of the heroic men and women who died that day being heroes...well...that sort of seems wrong, to me.  (ONLY TO ME.  IF YOU DO ANY OF THE ABOVE, ROCK ON.)  Here's why:

America didn't end that day.   It didn't really even change that much.  I got up the next day and went to work.  Millions of other Americans did, too.  The markets rebounded, the crops came in, the language stayed the same.  We have religious freedom.  We have Facebook and iPods and clean water.  The one thing that did change, maybe, was that for a week or two, we were a united nation.  We understood, for a ridiculously short time, that we were all Americans and--on a global scale--all humans and for Pete's sake, life is damn precious, no matter what nationality or religion you claim.

NOW we've changed drastically.  We are such a changed country right now that I'll admit I'm much more fearful than I ever was on September 11.  But I'm afraid not of foreign men in hijacked airplanes.  I'm afraid of men in snazzy suits who hold gigantic prayer fests while fire fighters in his state buy their own fuel and gear.  I'm afraid of women who want to lower minimum wage to that of our "competition" in third world countries.  I'm afraid of my fellow citizens who go on and on about how repressed they are by our president even as they want to remove anybody who isn't Christian from public office--or, you know, from the country.  Those folks scare the shit out of me, y'all.

So, yesterday, I wasn't watching any memorials or changing my FB picture to an American flag, or scanning in the pictures I took of the Manhattan skyline from the Statue of Liberty while on a show choir trip in high school.  I wasn't finding quotes about freedom or heroism or liberty or justice.  I wasn't crying and/or reminiscing.  I was planting.

Crouched over the dirt, tugging River away from the delicate seedlings or whatever roly poly she was stalking, I made preparations for the winter.  I pulled weeds and tucked seeds into the dry soil, adding a little prayer to every wish.  That's what seeds are, you know.  Wishes for the future.  And as I sweated under the late afternoon sun, I started thinking about the seeds I scattered and the young plants I stuffed into rows.

Autumn crops are all the same here in the south:  strong smelling greens and vibrant roots.  Their seeds are similar:  tiny little spears or earth-colored balls, impossible to find if you lose track over the rows.  They grow in adverse conditions, fighting through the last gasping days of summer to flourish in the cool, wind-tossed Autumn.  They'll keep going, some of them, even in the frigid days of late January and early February, before giving way to sweet peas and potatoes.

It wasn't a difficult metaphor to find, really.  And on a cosmic scale, I'm not sure it IS a metaphor.  We're all little seeds.  We contain within our bodies the capability to grow and change and produce.  We are planted where we are planted for a purpose.  Each of us has a place and responsibility.  We are Something's hope for the future.

But we're more than that.  We aren't just mindless collards squatting in the garden.  We have hearts and minds and souls that we all too often use for hurting our fellow collards people instead of helping the others around us grow to their full potential.

This morning, two woman pretty much attacked my mother on FB for having the audacity to point out that the president read a Bible verse at a memorial service and that perhaps we ought to come together as Americans.  One woman pointed out that Satan quoted Bible verses, too.  ("Satan's in Washington."  Give yourself a high five if you remember Marlena writhing around in her silky pajamas and panty hose.)  The other called my mother "repressive," and unloaded a wad of nastiness on her that brought out the North Georgia hill girl in me.  I was HET UP, y'all.

Because my mama, she is a planter of seeds.  She is Little Mary Sunshine.  She is a laugher and dancer and smiler.  In the face of a year that would CRUSH most folks, she still smiles and encourages and tries, every day, to believe that things are going to be okay.  To be honest, it drives me nuts sometimes.  But in a garden full of pricklies and bitter herbs, she just keeps flourishing and providing sustenance.

And it occurred to me, with dirt under my fingernails and anger in my heart at that stupid woman who was mean to my mama, that we need more folks like my mother.  We need more hope and less bitterness.  More strength and less despair.  More sunshine and less tears.

I'm working in my garden again today:  carrots and beets and turnips and radishes.  I'll be planting things that are less showy, that hide their goodness until it's most needed.  They have their place in the garden, too.

What will YOU plant today?  And, maybe more importantly, how will you grow?

Mop Dogs, Family Values, and Wanting More OR How My Morning Run Turned Into a Philosophical Awakening

This morning, I headed out for my morning run, determined to make it a good one, since I haven't been able to get one in this week due to a packed schedule and the soul-crushing humidity.   The morning was cool, Frodo was keeping me going as he snuffled out what was obviously some sort of squirrel leopard, and despite the pains brought from lack of exercise this week, everything was right with the world.

As I turned the corner onto the street that's the top of the neighborhood,  the doglet started whining and snuffling louder.  Given that we'd been run up on by a large Rottweiler mix (that turned out to be a big, friendly puppy), I kept running and ignored him.  Then, up ahead, I spotted a mop dog.  You know, the kind of dog you could use to clean your floor if only it came with a stick attached?  (I'm awful.  Whatever.)  Anyway, the mop dog started running toward us, which gave me the chance to note that--much like the Rottie--it wasn't wearing tags.

The dogs greeted each other with stiff legs and little growls and jumps and I tugged on Frodo's leash and told the other dog to go away.  But the mop dog did NOT go away.  It frisked around us and Frodo frisked with it and there was a general jumble of dogs and leashes and me tugging and I turned to tell the mop dog to go home and leave us alone at the same time that Frodo lunged to say the same thing and...I sprained my ankle again.

Crunch.  Snap.  Me on the ground writhing in pain.  

The unfortunate thing is that, you know, instead of being on the library floor within shouting distance of various family members, I was in somebody's front yard.  By the street.  Hanging on to a leash attached to a dog who'd had quite enough of another dog, thank you kindly.  Which, you know, is embarrassing.

I tried to pull my mess together, because the position which felt best was me pressing my head into the grass with my butt up in the air, which...no.  I managed to fall on my side and then lurch up to sitting where I swatted at the damned mop dog and made it run away.  I might have cried a little, but this was mainly because a truck had approached, slowed, and then KEPT GOING while I rolled around clutching my ankle while the dogs wrestled.  

Let me repeat that:  lady on the ground, dogs wrestling, KEPT GOING.

Let me also go ahead and note for you right here that I could hear folks in the houses around me:  TVs, doors closing, et cetera.  I'm willing to suspend disbelief for a moment and say that it's possible, once again--for those of you who don't follow me on Twitter, nobody came when the Rottie came up, either--, that nobody heard me yelling or noticed me wallowing around on a lawn.  I mean, I have a GREAT imagination. After a few moments of clutching and sobbing softly, I realized that nobody was going to help me.  So.  I called my mother-in-law to come and pick me up, because there was no way I could walk all the way back home.  I was maybe a mile from home, but there was a hill and, also, I just didn't want to hobble.  Call me weak.  I can take it.

My mother-in-law said she'd come get me and I somehow managed to pull myself up and start walking, because there was no way I was going to stay there, lying on the ground amongst people who didn't want to help me.  I limped.  I cried a little.  I almost fell over a few times, but I got my ass off that street.  Four cars passed me, and another one when I turned onto another street.  Nobody stopped.

Finally, I saw my mil's car and I burst into tears.  I mean...SOBBING.  I'm not going to say that I'm not a crier.  I cry.  I cry at Alan Jackson songs and Pampers commercials and at the sight of my little girl skipping merrily into the school building on her first day of Pre-K.  However, I rarely cry-cry in front of people.  Few folks have ever seen the snot-laden, tear-quirting, ugly-face-making extravaganza that is Heather Crying.  I think in the almost twenty years my mil has known me, she's seen me cry-cry once before today.

She patted my shoulder and said that she knew I hurt, but that wasn't it.  What was IT was that I had been completely ignored by my fellow human beings.  I was in pain, in need and there was nobody to help me.  What the hell?  I mean, I would have taken just a friendly shout out the window, you know?  I got no shout.

Anyway, I got back home and iced my ankle down and stopped crying and then I got on the interwebs, because what else was I going to do?  And then I came across the story about the Million Mom movement. I'm not going to link to them, because I think they're acting like asshats, but the gist of it is that a bunch of women, backed by the American Family Association, which has been identified as a hate group because they hate Teh Gays, of course, are trying to force Dancing With the Stars to remove Carson Kressly and Chaz Bono from the show because they are Teh Gay.  Or Teh Transgendered.  (They aren't going to force the show to get rid of David Arquette, the cheating husband, or Kristin Whatsernuts, whose show not only lowered the entire nation's IQ, but also featured lots of Teh Unmarried Sex.  And drinking.  And assininity.)

To be clear:  they want somebody removed from a television show, excluded from public view, locked away from the children because they don't, apparently, have AFA sanctioned sex with the opposite sex.  I went on their FB page and found a whole lot of folks talking about forcing the networks only to show Christian-sanctioned shows and how they were changing the world and how maybe if Cher had been a better mother, Chaz would be wearing a skirt and being a mother.  DID YOU HEAR THAT, MOM?  If you'd been a better mother, I'd be wearing a skirt.  Thank GAWD you didn't totally suck and I was able to be a mother because of it.

Y'all.  Listen.  I know they aren't connected in any way at all, but for some reason, my inconsiderate neighbors and the asshatty mothers against Teh Gay dancers on television coalesced into one thing and now I am just STEWING.

I mean, honestly, are these women such distant, crappy mothers that they are relying on television to ensure that the family values they uphold are taught?  Are they such controlling people that they want to ensure that their family values are the ones taught to my kids?  Do they possess such low muscle tone that they can't turn off the damn television if a non-AFA-sanctioned show comes on?

But even more than that, I'm just pissed that people can't be humans.  You know what?  We aren't born Pagans.  Or Christians.  Or atheists.  We aren't born liberals or conservatives, or Democrats or libertarians or TV watchers.  We're born human.  And we're so busy trying to prove that we're MORE something besides human--we're more wealthy or more busy or more religious or more smart or more hip or more whatEVER that we let our fellow beings lie on the street in pain.  We want to force our fellow human beings to be out of the public eye and hidden from view if they don't match our ideals of how they can best be MORE.  We choose, in trying to be more, to be less.

How is that even possible?

I don't know what the answer is.  I know that my ankle isn't as bad as it was the last time around.  I know that it wasn't a life or death situation that left me hobbling down the street.  I know that Carson Kressley will still be gay whether he's allowed to show his face on television or not.  Chaz Bono will still be a dude even if he can't put on a glitter-spangled  tuxedo.

What I don't know is if my children will grow up in a world in which humanity takes precedence over being or having more.   Given today, I'm leaning toward not so much.

Pardon me while I go ice my ankle and my soul.

Standard NotHannah Catch-Up List: Volume Nine Bajillion and One

Helloooo!  I'm totally not apologizing for not posting in so long, because I was busy getting my Spring Break planning and then my Spring Break having ON, people.  The fams and I went all the way from the foothills to the mountains to the flatlands to the beach and I am rested and restored and inspired and sated with crab until June.

Seriously, we had a fanTAStic time and I had just enough time with the kidlets and just enough time with the hubs and just enough time with MYSELF that I feel like all of the bits and pieces of me that were pulled too tight or worn thin or fitting oddly around the edges are all smoothed and polished and clean again.  Yay!

Along the way, I listened to and watched and discovered and read some really cool and amazing and inspiring things and...I wanna tell you about them, mkay?  Mkay.

1. R.E.M.'s new album, Collapse Into Now ~  I've been an R.E.M. fan for going on twenty years now.  I've danced like a crazy person to their songs, and written short stories with them playing in the background, and cried at the first notes of them when my heart was broken.  This album sounds, to my ears, like all of their albums fed into a blender, whizzed together, and poured out as something new and golden.  The jangling guitar-driven beats are straight from Life's Rich Pageant and the mandolins remind me of Out of Time. The song "Oh My Heart" slays me, especially when Stipe's voice soars plaintively like in days of old.  Er...you know, like, fifteen years ago.  It's definitely an album made by men who have been doing this rock star thing for a long time, and who are contemplating legacy and purpose.  I love it.  Luff it.  Looooveee it.
2. The Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv ~ If there was a theme to our Spring Break, it was the reinforcement of the idea that we needed to spend more time together outside as a family.  I'd heard about this book in the past and when Will and I spotted it at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island, we snapped it up.  I've only read a few chapters into it, but already I'm feeling more and more supported in my idea that being inside all the time is HURTING my kidlets.  I'm looking forward to the sections that discuss the concept of being in nature as a means of treating ADHD.  Not necessarily a cheery, upbeat tome, but an important one, I think.
3. Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee ~ It must be said that when Will announced that we would be going here for two days during our vacation, I was less than thrilled, particularly when he nixed the idea of going to the Smoky Mountains National Park for a hike--or even Cades Cove.  I did not want to spend two whole days hanging out in theme parks getting slimed by strange kids.  There.  I said it.  However, with the help of some sweet cousins, we were able to rent a cabin and score tickets to area attractions at VERY reasonable (read:  cheapola) rates and so we were set.  First, we went to Magiquest, which...y'all.  I think I have told you of my love of Dungeons and Dragons as a tween and the fact that, even now, I am drawn to fantasy literature, right?  Right.  So let me tell you that when we peedoodled up to the faux-castle facade of this place and picked out our own interactive wands...well, the fantasy geek in me might have squealed a little.  We had a great time running around solving puzzles and tapping things with our wands.  Jeffrey was in hawg heaven and perfected his wand-flourish lunge.  Here's a picture of him solving something or other:

I know it's blurry and vague, but I promise you that this was the only time he stopped long enough for me to snap a picture.   We also went to Wonderworks, which I'll spare you the details of.  Jeffrey loved it with a passion that burns, but there wasn't a lot for River to do, besides lie on a bed of nails.  Which was cool, but, you know...weird at best and, at worst, maybe a little sordid.  The highlight of the festivities (besides visiting with my sweet cousins, who are some of the best people I know) was our trip into Gatlinburg to visit the Ripley's aquarium.  We love a good aquarium and this one was GREAT.  Also, it wasn't very crowded, which made us happy.  There are so many pictures I could share, but I'll give you these because otherwise, this will be the longest blog post in history:

The last morning of our short stay, we went into G'burg for some doughnuts at The Donut Friar.  I lived in the area for a year when I was a child and although one of the houses I lived in has actually been torn down and the whole city is completely different, this shop remains and the doughnuts are still as good as I remember.  What a great time we had...

4.  Garden and Gun magazine ~ Have I mentioned my love for this magazine?  I adore it, and for the past few months I've lived without it because it was one of the things that we had to trim from the budget.  It's like the New Yorker for Southerners:  you can read about hunting, cooking, artists in the South, regional travel destinations.  It's printed on lovely, thick paper and almost always features something that I love.  I missed out a couple of months ago on The Avett Brothers, but I picked up this month's copy before Will and I headed to St. Simon's Island for our get away and was treated to a story about Gregg Allman, one about a potter in Mississippi whose works grace my library and kitchen, and a recipe for something called bacon crackers, which is a piece of bacon wrapped around a club cracker, can I get an AMEN?  Oh, and there was an article about Shelby Foote!  Love.  (Also?  Will totally just subscribed to two years of it--yay for tax refunds!)

5.  O Magazine's April issue ~  Listen, a lot can be said about the ridiculousness of Oprah Winfrey's magazine and even, in some cases, Oprah herself.  I mean, I have snorted LOUDLY at the pricey jewelry and shoes and makeup applicators I've seen grace those pages.  However, this month's issue features POETRY in a large way and that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.  There is an interview with Mary Oliver, a Pulitzer prize-winning, fiercely joyfully-living and writing woman whose words I'd only given a passing glance to before. There are snippets from Maya Angelou and W.S. Merwin and thoughts on what poetry is from Margaret Atwood and Bono and Ashton Kutcher.  There is also a list of important works of poetry and I am tickled to say that not ONLY do I own many of them, the Rumi translation by one of my creative writing professors from UGA (that would be Coleman Barks) is on the list.  Hee. Given that this is National Poetry Month, I say "Huzzah."  HUZZAH, I say.  You can poopoo Oprah all you want for her lavish giving and huge personality and Tom Cruise bouncing like a mongoose on speed all over her couch, but the Truth is that the woman has brought the written word to housewives and couch potatoes all over this country and I'd like to give her a big fat hug for that.  (Do I need to tell you that Mary Oliver mentions in the interview how humans are losing touch with Nature and what an awful thing this is?  Note to self:  write a letter to Mother Nature thanking her for the gigantic nudge.)

6.  The Driftwood Beach on Jekyll Island ~  Listen, y'all.  Jekyll Island ain't got much.  It's got some big fancy houses that a bunch of rich folks in the early 1900s built and called cottages, and that's pretty much it.  No glistening white beaches; the beaches here are brown and flat and unstirred by the waves that churn up shells and sharks teeth farther south.  There aren't many restaurants and there's a convention center and...um...yeah.  Jekyll has always felt stale to me.  Sort of...."Hunh...well, THAT was a horrifying suspension bridge to cross for a lot of nothing."  But a few weeks ago, I came across some pictures taken by somebody at a driftwood beach on Jekyll, and they were gorgeous and I thought, you know, maybe it was something we could check out while we were there.

Y'all.  I can't really describe the power of this place.  Basically, the water and wind and time have ripped up and tossed around huge old live oak trees, driving them into the sand and turning them into sculptures that are feminine and stark and...wow.  Just that.

This one was my favorite:

Seriously, I couldn't get enough of her. I couldn't stop myself from whispering to her, leaning against her. I could have spent HOURS trying to find new angles from which to film her. Sighhhhh. I luff her.

7.  Also, I love this guy:

Seriously, how can you NOT love a pirate, looking at forty?

8.  SPRING!!  ~  As long as I focus on overlooking the fact that awful storms are approaching from the west, I can be giddy with the feeling of sinking my fingers into the dirt, watching River hug an azalea bush, listening to Jeffrey laugh as he flies a kite in the pasture behind our house.  A few weeks ago, I was going to take down the Winter wreath of roses and rosemary that had hung on our front door since December.  I was planning a Spring lavender and egg extravaganza, but when I opened the door, a flash of red swooped away from me.  Turns out, a pair of house finches decided that my wreath would make a perfect house site.

A few days later, I found that Mama and Daddy House Finch had been busy:

And when we got home today, we discovered this:

Oh,  sweet little fuzzyheads.  You remind me that there is so much hope and newness and fragility in our world, and so much safety and warmth to be found in a cozy house filled with love.

It's a Love Fest, y'all. 

Consider yourself hugged.

Adventure Parenting

The other day, I was hiding from my children using the restroom and I picked up the Michael Chabon book Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son.  I got the book for Will for Christmas, mainly because I wasn't able to find the Terry Kay book I had coveted, andWill had put it in the bathroom because he's trying to read Tropic of Cancer in the library (his comment:  "I'm looking forward to getting back to The Dark Tower--by Stephen King--really soon."  Apparently, he's sick of reading jarring descriptions of vaginas that go on for three pages.  The descriptions, not the vaginas.  Although given that it's Henry Miller, the vaginas probably DO go on for three pages.  Why is Blogger's spell check telling me "vaginas" is spelled incorrectly?  Ohhh.  I'm supposed to put "vaginae." Weird.  ) ANYWAY, he wanted to read the Chabon book and so he put it in the bathroom and I picked it up.  The latter chapters are about relationships and such, but the first chapters are about parenting; how scary it is and hard and challenging, et cetera.  It's funny stuff, but it's also painfully honest (this is one of those Truth books I'm so fond of) and Chabon is brilliant in his observations.

Among them:  we are raising a generation of wussy, unimaginative kids.

He doesn't put it that way, of course.  Mahgawd, the man won a Pulitzer.  But he makes the point that our children don't play in the streets (or even the yard) anymore and with the loss of that freedom, they are losing their imaginations, their waistlines, and their innovation.

This gave me pause.  As a child, I didn't play in the street.  We lived on a (barely) paved road frequented by combines and rednecks driving 9,000 miles an hour, so the thought of us playing in the street made my mother pass out cold.  My brothers and I did, however, play outside.  Every day after school until dark, all day long in the summer time, we were outside.  We ran through the pastures, we built forts in the strip of trees behind Daddy's garden, we imagined ourselves a veritable fleet of ships, rockets, race cars, and motorcycles that were actually clumps of crepe myrtles, bicycles, swing sets and random barrels brought home by my father.  We jumped hay bales.  We made mud pies.  We waded in creeks and played basketball or soccer in the yard. 

We got dirty.  We got hot or cold.  My mother provided us with wet paper towels, drinks, extra toboggans, and the firm abjuration not to come inside unless we were bleeding.  Sometimes, we brought books or coloring stuff outside and read or colored under the trees in the front yard.  We played with our cousins or each other when we were at home.

When we visited friends who lived in town, we rode bikes or skated down the sidewalks.  We played football or had pine cones wars, running through drainage ditches and other people's yards heedlessly. 

We LIVED.  I mean, not only did we not keel over from the outsideness of it all, we actually had lives outside of the confines of our home.  We had personalities not shaped solely by the extracurricular activities watched over so carefully by our parents or teachers.  We read stuff and then we acted it out.  We were not afraid of everything.  We weren't nervous.  We were fearless, laughing, dirty, scratched up, imaginative little people.

And on the days when it rained?  We were STILL fearless, laughing, dirty imaginative little people.  We read to each other.  We made shadow puppets on the wall.  We built insanely complicated clubhouses out of sheets and pillows and chairs.  We baked cookies, wrote and starred in plays, colored in a vast array of coloring books.  Sure, we watched some TV.  We played some video games.  But they were rarely the center of our day.  We made our own fun and if our parents gave us parameters, they were loose and designed to prevent serious bodily harm. 

We lived.  We lived hard, my friends.

My kids?  Not so much. 

Oh, it pains me to say that.  It pains me to reveal that my kids have spent their lives inside, mindlessly watching television or playing games completely laid out for them by the careful marketing strategies of toy companies and fast food restaurants.  The earth mama in me shudders at the fact that my kids don't know the changing of the seasons in their blood because they don't know the seasons change except for the increase in allergy medicines or the special programming around holidays.  It saddens me that the back yard is the only yard my children know, that their entire universe is a half acre that is hidden from the street by a fence. 

Y'all, that is just wrong.

We live in one of the safest neighborhoods in Perrydise and I won't let my kids go out by themselves in the front yard.  Because, gods forbid, they might get kidnapped or bitten by a brown widow or stung by a wasp.  I'm not making light of those things.  What if my children DID get kidnapped or bitten or stung?  What if I lived the rest of my own life mourning the loss of my child because I didn't protect him or her?  This is an awful, terrible, soul-crushing thing to think about.  But...

What if they don't get kidnapped?  What if they don't get bitten or stung?  What if they spend their entire lives with me on one half acre (or on very carefully controlled jaunts into "wildernesses") and grow up to be frightened, unimaginative, fat adults with no capability of entertaining themselves or imagining a better world for themselves?

I'm totally serious.

I look at the world we live in, with all of the technological advances and advancing waistlines, with role-playing games that let us be muscle-bound and fight dragons while we munch corn chips on the couch, and wonder if we aren't being set up.  Or turning into a certain Pixar movie featuring a musical-loving robot.  I'm worried.

And I'm doing something about it.  I'm starting to practice Adventure Parenting. 

It's awful.  It's scary.  It makes me feel, sometimes, like a bad parent, which I understand is insane.  But in the freetime my kids have, I am setting my jaw and shoving them out the door. 

"Go play," I say. 

The whining starts.  "It's hot."  "It's cold."  "I'm tired."  "I'm bored." 

"Go play," I say, handing out drinks and sweaters. 

And they do.  They jump on the trampoline (my GAWD, they're going to break their necks), they crawl on the play fort (there are BROWN WIDOWS in the corners), they fight their way into the azalea patch that they call a cave (COPPERHEADS!!!.)  They argue and fall down and they run with sticks and the dog jumps on them and they wig out because something buzzes by their heads.  They play.

I stand inside looking out the window, freaking out a little less every day.

In the grocery store, I let River walk beside me.  I let her run to go look at a toy display.  She carries soda bottles for me.  She drops soda bottles on me.  I cringe and tell her to try again, which often leads to her collapsing on the linoleum and wailing that she caaaaannnnn'''''ttttt doooooo ittttt.  In fact, right now, she's complaining because she can't reach the box of drinks on the table.  I could get up.  I could get the drink for her or tell her to climb on a chair, but I'm not going to. 

Because here's the other thing:  my kids can't problem-solve.  They can't figure things out on their own.  If they are thirsty, they can't look for the drinks themselves or pour themselves glasses of milk.  They can't open up bags of chips.  They can't clean up spills, because we do every fricking thing for them.  We schedule their days to the minute and make sure that they are occupied every single minute.  We open bags, tie shoes, mop spills, wear ourselves out making sure they are safe and comfortable and taken care of.

Part of this is understandable, I guess.  My boy is an Aspie and for the past four years, we've learned that he needs to be occupied, scheduled, informed.  But we've allowed this to mean that he has no free time, no time to figure stuff out for himself, no need to think outside of the electronic boxes he loves.  And, unfortunately, we've allowed this to mean that his sister, who is as neurotypical as they come, is also occupied, scheduled, and informed.  We've allowed it to mean that instead of risking a meltdown, we clean up messes ourselves.  Or give in to demands for TV or video games--even from the kid without scientific reasons for meltdowns.

My kids could change the world with their brains and their personalities, but we have parented them right into a situation in which they might not change anything. 

Hence the Adventure Parenting.  Hence the fact that I just told River to go into her closet and get her clothes for the day.  Hence the fact that after Jeffrey comes home from school and after his homework, he'll go outside for a while before retreating to the digital world that we allow him to escape to.  His sister will go with him and they'll play together.

Here's a side-effect of Adventure Parenting:  my children are interacting.  Now, listen.  They love each other because they're siblings.  But there's an almost-five year age difference between them, never mind the developmental quirks that Jeffrey has.  We haven't really encouraged them to play together, because it seemed ridiculous to do so.  They like snuggling in front of the TV together, or sitting and painting together, but they have never really played together.  Now they do.  Sure, River leads the games with an iron fist:  her naturally more fertile imagination casts her as the boss a little too much for Jeffrey's taste.  And, sure, sometimes Jeffrey gets heartily sick of all of the outsidedness and acts like an ass.  But, for the most part, my kids (and their relationship) are thriving on being forced to play together.

The other night, Will came up to me as I was washing dishes while the kids jumped on the trampoline.  Hands stuffed in his pockets, he said, "I don't know what to do with myself.  They don't really need me out there." 

I looked at him.  "Well, we could always, you know...talk." 

What a revelation:  the idea that we could have a conversation not squeezed in between taekwondo and bedtime and breakfast.  The concept that we didn't have to worry and manage and fix and placate every waking minute of every single day.  The thought that our kids might be able to occupy themselves and wind up OKAY--and so might we.  CRAZINESS.

River is brushing her teeth right now.  Well, actually, she is dragging a chair into the bathroom to brush her teeth.  She has to use the chair because the other day, I forced her to realize that she could use the stepstool to get up on the trampoline all by herself.  The smile on her face as she jumped all by herself, flinging herself away from the earth and my grasping hands...it was like sunshine.  She was transcendent.  I stood in the doorway and kicked myself for denying her that for so long. 

When she's finished brushing her teeth, we'll go outside, where I'll straighten the yard and garden up and she'll help me until she gets bored and goes off to dig a hole or climb a tree or some other adventurous thing that will make me cringe and waver. 

Understand, I'll be cringing because my daughter chose to dress herself in this today: 

Ahem. 

Anybody else wanna have an adventure?