Playing from Memory.

In Granny's garden, Lychett Matravers, England. Summer of 1965.

Some memories from childhood stand out as set pieces, tapestries rich with details, any one of which immediately recalls the original in all its textures.  The aroma of freshly picked mint always returns me to my grandmother’s house, where we spent our summers when I was very young.  The scent is interwoven with memories of soft, pink roses and meatloaf, the drone of the lawn mower and the feel of newly cut grass on bare feet.  Now my children have reached the stretches of their childhood journey that allow them a backwards look, the roads they are traveling will remain within their recall.  Each child’s feeling life marries with the world as they perceive it by their senses so that memories, that which will always be true for them despite any other history, are created.

Many of my strongest, and favorite memories are of family gatherings around various tables.  My phlegmatic self remembers the meals of course, but we also came together to play games like Snakes and Ladders or Tiddlywinks.  I remember the smell of the deck of cards, the worn feel of the pack as I tried to shuffle them in my too small hands.  Every Christmas, a new game tumbled down the chimney; Mastermind and Clue, tournaments began that lasted for days.  My brothers and I also played pencil and paper games, like Hangman and Tic-tac-toe.  But the best times, those most fondly remembered, were when we had grown ups playing with us.  The game ‘counted’ then, the interminable game of Monopoly meant something more because our mother was playing.

Monkey Boy and his friend couldn't care less who wins Mouse Trap. It's all about the construction.

My children are equally keen to play games as a family.  Monkey Boy’s current favorite is Parcheesi but, as he has lost only once in the past six months, it’s hard for the rest of us to drum up much enthusiasm.  The Waldorf philosophy holds that the child does not have the social maturity needed for competitive games or sports until around 5th grade.  For younger children who are still discovering themselves, their attention should be on developing a wide variety of skills and working cooperatively rather than being focused on achieving the winning score or receiving other external judgements of their individual worth.  Many of the games we play at home do have a competitive element but we down play it.  We focus instead, on the fun of playing – exclaiming over good luck and bad, rehashing both the clever and the foolish moves.  Gloating and other forms of poor sportsmanship are not allowed, and this approach works well for us.

There is one whole category of games we won’t play, video games.  For all the flashy graphics, they seem a poor relation to their cardboard cousins.  They have the disadvantage of all screens, requiring you to be sedentary, eyes fixed on the screen with only fingers and thumbs moving.  The Wii-type games are more active but they lack the myriad, subtle experiences that build actual motor skills.  The brain of a child preparing to swing at a ball on the field is processing information from many senses; gauging the speed of the ball and the optimum force with which to meet it, the strength of the breeze, estimating the distance to be run and the time it will take, assessing the traction underfoot.   Also the social information; reading the intents of other players, calculating their abilities, and more.  But the biggest reason video games fail to capture my imagination, is that they lack opportunities for creative thinking.  They encourage problem solving capacities but the rules are pre-programmed, you can’t invent a variation or decide a handicap system that allows players of different skill levels to play together.  The pieces of the game can’t be rearranged into something new and unique.   And honor, a quality seemingly in decline in our modern world, has no place.  Benefit of the doubt can not be freely given any more than it is possible to cheat.  The dice don’t roll onto the floor giving you pause under the table, to wonder if they might be claimed as the double 6 you need.  There is no trying to parse a near miss into a hit by declaring that you were mis-heard and you actually said B3 not D3 so, really, you did sink that battleship.  The chip is in charge and its ruling is there on the screen for all to see, no poker face required.  The opportunity for the child to interact and construct, to learn what is essentially valuable about rules, fairness and honesty is lost.

Scout plays Set for the first time, Mothers' Day, 2011.

There is much to be learned at the games table; good manners and taking turns, patterns in numbers, shapes and words.  All useful things to remember.  But it’s the face time, the rambling conversation and in-jokes, the sense of familial connection that are truly beyond price.  I remember the feeling of playing my own hand, of being happy.  I don’t remember if I won, but I certainly feel as if I did.

Today, we have a new game, we are playing Set.  I would love to hear what you are playing.  Which games have been most important in your life?

Blogging by Heart

I have had a hard time making peace with the social web.  Don’t all those virtual conversations take time away from real-time, face-to-face conversations?  (My actual  experience  - No, they take time away from sleep!)  Can we ever really make meaningful connections online?  (One of the most authentically lovely weddings I’ve been to in recent years, was of friends who met through EHarmony).  And who cares about all those people tapping out blogs into cyberspace anyway?

Three years ago, my husband’s brother-in-law, Alex – you might call him the spiritual heart of our family, was diagnosed with gastric cancer.  His sister-in-law’s mother-in-law (marry one, you marry ‘em all in this family), suggested he use CarePages to keep everyone updated on what was happening.  As a hospice volunteer, Diane knew of the on-line service which provides those dealing with illness, a private forum for communication.  With friends and family all over the States and in Europe too, this seemed an easy way for Alex to keep us all informed about the tests and treatments he would be having.  Thirty years earlier, at age 17, he had a year of chemo and radiation for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma so he knew the path ahead would be long and convoluted.

Alex was always a natural communicator; warm, funny and honest.  He set up his web log and was soon as butter to freshly popped corn.  His posts rapidly evolved from a diary of hospital visits to being a window on all the joys of his life; food, travel, and Cheri, his “Main Squeeze”.  He regarded the cancer in his posts as the doctors investigated it in his body, seriously and thoroughly, but always with his focus on living.  The number of visitors to his page began to grow; co-workers, friends and family.  Each new post was met with a long list of replies; hopeful, thoughtful, mirthful.

Treatment began and with it the dreadful side effects.  As the chemo pumped into him,  Alex shared his thoughts on the role of challenge in the human realm of a spiritual life.  Surgery to remove the tumor was scheduled for the summer and by then, the Tyree LoveLine had more than 500 subscribers.  Alex and Cheri headed up to Sloan Kettering hospital in New York and we sent our love and prayers along with them.  The post-op news came by blog, and it was heart breaking.  The cancer had proved even more aggressive than expected and had spread beyond his stomach, Alex was in stage four.

In the months that followed, we gathered close as he shared his final journey with us.  He wrote us from Brazil, Tuscany and Cape Cod, about his life and his faith.  He shared meals he could not finish, and the beautiful, hard crystals of truth he mined from the seam of dying.  We also had these conversations when we visited each other but the intimacy of these heartfelt exchanges traveled most often, over the distances of hours and miles, via the LoveLine.  Alex took us to his favorite coffeehouse and introduced us to his friends, to each other.  We became a community, connected by the replies we posted, responding to each other as well as to Alex, with stories and support.  In his 18 year career working in hospice, Alex had been active in end of life issues.  His blog gave him a place to work through his own experiences, to find his way to what he called true healing.  I have similarly found that writing helps me to find the truths I need.

Alex, with my mother-in-law.

When Alex transitioned to the Big Love in February of 2010, we came together to remember him at his church in Delaware.  Many of his online family met each other for the first time, but we were already connected on a deeper level than would have been possible by any other medium.  It is possible to communicate our authentic selves by synthetic means; be it by letter, telephone or a computer.  Love, hope and grief expressed online to another human being still connect us to the Big Love.  I can make peace with that.

Enslaved by pixels.

Monkey Boy and Scout in thrall, 2006.

This is National Screen Free Week, it is also Spring Break.  I have a slew of computer work to do, and Scout has a cold; she’s on the sofa, limp as lettuce on a day old sandwich.  Outside, it’s cold and rainy.  ”Can it be a movie day?” inquires Monkey Boy, ever hopeful.

When the children were born, we followed the American Pediatrician Association’s guidelines and kept the television turned off for the first two years.  Then, as they seemed just fine without it, and as the purple dinosaur made no sense to my Scottish sensibilities, the TV stayed off.  There are plenty of screens in the world though, and Scout and Monkey Boy soon developed a fond appreciation for them all.  Given the chance, they’ll gape at sport, politicos or the slice and dice infomercial at the supermarket.  Even our dentist’s office now has a flat screen that glides along an overhead track to dispense cartoons to the reclined patient.  The excitement of choosing between root beer or cookie dough tooth polish has been eclipsed by the promise of  Dora’s obtuse observations – unless the parent chooses to intervene.

I do control my children’s screen time.  They need time to create their own world of stories and play in them.  It seems so joyless for kids to reenact formulaic plots devised by adults, simulating the sound effects and synthesized soundtracks, becoming frustrated when Yu-Gi-Oh forgets his moves.  More knowledgable writers than I have written about the impact of television on children; this article from Time reports on learning  consequences, this one is about negative health effects and this one on brain development is by Jane Healy, specialist in learning differences, educational psychologist and author.

Graphic by Danilo Rizzuti, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

But I mostly don’t want my children’s aspirations programmed by the box and the massive advertising budgets that drive it.  Never mind thinking outside the box, I don’t want them to be the box; packaged and sold by Neilson et al.  And if you think I’m over-reacting, that good TV shows seek to be educational rather than vehicles cynically promoting outsized consumerism, check out Dora the Explorer’s web site and see where those educational priorities fit in amongst the flashing ads to buy more and watch more!  My pet peeve about marketing to children aside, television is not what it was when we were kids, consequently parenting isn’t either.

Our family’s TV lives in the office/spare room along with the computer, but the door is seldom closed.  I am in there part of every day writing reports and applications, I blog and shop online.  The only person I write letters to now, lives where the sun don’t shine and computer access is forbidden; for everyone else I e-mail instead.  Little eyes sometimes peer over my elbow as I tap into this grown up world.  They watch the black ant letters crawl neatly across the screen.  I might hope I am modeling a strong work ethic but I suspect the real message is that the compelling world within the screen is more valuable than the entirety in which it sits.  I check my e-mail and Facebook feeds throughout the day, even when there is no good reason to.  I live mostly in denial, convinced that one day pixels will be discovered to be as addictive as nicotine.  Then I’ll get help.

Photo credit: Evgeni Dinev, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

National Screen free week draws to a close.  Outside, it’s still raining; in the office, I still have work to do.  I make the best parenting decision I am capable of today and switch off the computer.  Then I sprawl on the bed with the kids; we watch a DVD of ‘Lassie’.  Peter O’Toole is delicious as an aging aristocrat at the end of his era, and the glorious Scottish scenery does my heart good.

Journey to the Heartland.

I have always loved to travel.  Besides ‘The Cat in the Hat’, my favorite book in first grade was a pictorial French dictionary.  By 17, I had my first passport and was headed for Europe.  It didn’t end well; turns out $30 and a bologna sandwich don’t take you far and I was swiftly deported back to England’s familiar shore.

Traveling through the deserts of northwest Kenya, 1986.

Many other incredible travel opportunities came my way and I made sure to be better prepared for the trips that followed, mostly.  For the past 8 years though, I have been an at-home parent; a 10 minute drive to the beach listening to Raffi has been expedition enough.  Until now, my wanderlust is returning.

I recently went to a parenting conference at the Waldorf School of Cape Cod with keynote speaker Jack Petrash, author and teacher at Washington Waldorf School, MD.  Having raised three children, he also knows where the rubber meets the parenting road.  His talk was titled, ‘Raising healthy children: where do we start, what do we do and how do we do it?’  A lot of ground to cover in 75 minutes but, as a 5 year Waldorf parent, I thought I knew the territory.  Then, he began to describe parenting as a cross country journey through the incredibly beautiful landscapes of America.  A metaphor from the angels!  I climbed right aboard.

In Waldorf terms, the years from birth to seven are about the child’s being arriving in the physical body, the spirit connecting to the earth to work in this world.  As I listen, I am home on the east coast, watching the sunrise.  My children begin to wake up, they crawl then walk, reaching for the world beyond their finger tips.  They follow me, wanting to know what I am doing; they ‘help’ the living daylights out of me!  I see my daughter primly rolling weary eyes at her brother, hear my yelling in her voice – I am not always worthy of  imitation!  Our days in the homeland are local and domestic, we cry over spilt milk and commune with earthworms.

Soon, we join Meadowbrook Waldorf School and set off down a gently meandering lane, stopping often to splash in puddles.  We watch the seasons wheel through the fields; brown, green, gold and white by turn.  Our stride lengthens as the narrow road opens out beyond the trees, our gaze lengthening too.  We take in whole forests, hills and lakes; beginning to gain a sense of the wider world.  Monkey Boy is about to turn seven; we’ve reached the Mississippi.  Scout, explorer from the first, has already settled into the new, flatter landscape on the other side.  She is rolling through the heartlands and delighting in her extended family of friends, with her class teacher and I on either flank.

I work alone more often now.  My children are busy, deep in their imaginations exploring their inner worlds even as they look outwards.  Now they want to know what I feel, how those feelings shape my life here in the heartland.   I will start making some detours on my own, find new substance for my work and theirs.  We are approaching the Missouri, the 9 year change where, I hear, the landscape changes again.  This is the trip of a lifetime.  We’ve learned to rub along together, worked out some Rules of the Road.  I love my traveling companions.

The Rockies of adolescence are over the horizon, and the deserts of teen-dom are beyond my imagination.   I am taking along Jack Petrash’s book, ‘Navigating the Terrain of Childhood’ as a travel guide.

Ours is a Benign Dictatorship

A while back, we had a sleepover with another family whose children are of similar ages to mine.  In the morning my friend was watching us start the day as he had a last shot of coffee before tackling his own brood.

My children ate their breakfast and cleared their dishes, washed, dressed then went to make their beds, all with occasional direction from me or their dad.  At length, my friend remarked, “They’re so obedient!”  It’s the way he said it; as though it was too good to be true.

The comment stuck with me, it made me feel uneasy.  Was my home a fascist regime where dissenters expected to be ‘disappeared’ into an endless time out?  Or worse, to suffer ‘the consequence that has no name’?  You know the one; for parents it’s the Holy Grail that guarantees immediate and absolute submission, the key that unlocks the door between the parent’s will and that of their misguided child, if only we were able to find it.  For children it is a mythic dark force, an unfinished sentence that might begin with, “when your father gets home…”.

But we really don’t use consequences much so I took a look at our family rule book.  It definitely has many directives; if you take it out, put it away; if you get up early, be quiet, feed the cat and let him out.  But none of these are really rules – no-one has to be quiet when they wake up early on a holiday, I feed the cat when the kids are busy and, Lord knows, I pick up 70% of the stuff any of us get out on any given day around here!  When I really thought about it, it turns out that we have only four rules:

• Be kind; to all living things, including yourself.
• Be truthful; with everyone, including yourself.
• Be respectful; of your elders, of your environment, of what you do not understand, of potential dangers.
• Be the best self that you can be now.

That morning wasn’t about obedience for anyone in my family, it was about rhythm.  The shape of our day is generally predictable and our expectations are consistent so we follow our habits, using reminders to stay on track.  Obedience would be if Monkey Boy would stop poking his sister under the table before being told through clenched teeth, for the sixth time in one meal!  Still working on that.

Promise.

A lacy blanket of spring snow drifted onto my deck this week, settling on this mother and child sculpture.  My husband and I found the piece on our honeymoon back in 2001, in a vast sculpture garden at Victoria Falls,  Zimbabwe.  Its title is ‘Nurturing’ and, with dreams of children in that 9/11 time, we bought it and had it shipped to America via back street deals with black market dollars; trusting to the angels that it would ever arrive.

The carving is from the Shona people and began its present life as a rough boulder of Serpentine stone. The artist who found it spent weeks and months meditating over it, studying his dreams for clues to who lived inside this silent rock. As he chipped and smoothed away the rock cocoon, he prayed for guidance that he might reveal the soul within without damage; give birth to the being seeking life in this world.

Nearly 10 years later, here we are chipping away at our parenting tasks, hoping to allow the souls within to reveal themselves without damage.  We weigh our dreams against our abilities and regret the blows of our ill-timed remarks and poorly informed decisions.  The financial considerations are still tricky and safe delivery is by no means assured but, so far, the angels seem to be standing by us – our children are happy, healthy and full of promise.