Today marks one month with this practice of writing a once daily piece sparked by one thing each day. Each moment I've written about, though, has unraveled other things. I've been tempted to just go to bed without writing (can I do it tomorrow?) but the date stamp on the blog is too honest for that. That's where the five minute pieces come in. And yet some of those pieces are the ones that have the most in them.
This whole exercise reminds me of the nature photographer Jim Brandenburg's project when, for three months, he took only one picture each day and published them. All the pictures were taken in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and all of them were outstanding by themselves. But taken together and knowing that he had only one chance to snap the shutter closed made the pictures hard to believe. The book came out before the advent of digital photography, but even with film the artist usually takes many pictures and selects the one with the right light, framing, texture, and contrast. The art in this book was a commitment to each moment. There was no decision to be made later. Moment, captured, released. It is the releasing that makes art, art. Without letting it go and seeing what happens -- who will notice, will they care, what are they looking for? -- it remains captured. Not even the artist can see it fully until the work has been sent out into the world for someone else to see. Yet that is the hardest part.
We have a Brandenburg photo in our dining room, a gift from two great friends from college. It is the tip of a wooden canoe gliding into a glass lake that reflects the golden leaves on the banks. It is so still there isn't a ripple. Yet we know that the boat went on and went past the trees, maybe even past the lake on a portage trail. But at this moment, there is only stillness. I don't know if it is from his collection of once-a-day photos, but just seeing it reminds me that there is art to be seen, heard, touched, smelled and tasted in the moments of the day. They aren't all meant to be captured and released, by why not let at least one of them?
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Full Moon
We were standing on a dirt road looking into the night sky. There were crackles coming from fires and the sound of a motorbike far off, but other than that, the night sky held the only lights. This village of a few hundred families scattered between rice fields and trees had yet to get electricity. It took me back to the week I spent with my brother in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area days before leaving for Asia. There we had slipped the canoe into the night waters and drifted into the lake under stars. Now I stood with other college students and some girls from the center where we were staying. One girl, Iritoo, who took Joy for her English name, asked me if I could see the rabbit in the moon. The rabbit? Isn't it a man in the moon? She showed me ears, a tail, a body. I could see nothing but the bulging eyes and mouth of the man. From where we stood in Thailand, the man was cocking his head as if to say, "really, now?" When the rabbit finally came to me, it was like looking at one of those 3-D images from the '80's where at first glance it was a picture of colorful lines and then an airplane or farm scene popped out at you, only to disappear if you looked at it too long. They were a hit at the mall kiosks. Joy got a kick out of my reaction and so named me "Dai", short for "Kradai" or rabbit in Thai. The name stuck. When I returned to teach a few years later, my Thai name remained, Dai.
Tonight the moon is full again, flooding the frigid air with a burst of light. Somewhere across the globe it was studied last night and maybe someone else saw the rabbit for the first time.
Tonight the moon is full again, flooding the frigid air with a burst of light. Somewhere across the globe it was studied last night and maybe someone else saw the rabbit for the first time.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Zion
I just looked at pictures taken at Zion National Park today that featured Rob, Grandma Elwyn, Uncle Marty and Aunt Joan (the photographer). The jagged red rocks are lightly coated with snow and clouds. They reach up with abandon as if the river below them were a world away.
Enter Dietrich, for whom bedtime seems a world away (though not for his parents who see it is nearing 8 pm). He is singing and tapping on the dishwasher (at my knees): "Sunrise on the iceberg, all day long, until the moon comes up, Sunrise on the iceberg, all day long and then night comes and then the moon shows up - a dun dun dun - Sunrise on the iceberg all day all day long boom boom!" He goes on (and is now singing in the bathroom upstairs to Elliott and Ryan): "Airplane full of food, don't know what this was, it's a cardboard plane. An airplane full of food, it's an airplane full of food with nothing in it. Well I don't know why it's an airplane full of food, but I don't know why, Airplane full of food.".
Back to what I was saying about those mountains? Well, how can I top a sunrise all day long and an airplane full of food (is there any food on airplanes anymore?).
The mountains...one picture is of Rob by the muscley tree where Ryan and I had our engagement picture taken during a Utah trip with Joan and Marty in 2003. The tree looks just as strong now as it did then. It's lowest branch reaches out before going straight up like it is flexing its bicep to the mountains above. I was reading about famous Wisconsin trees and there is folklore that the trees with abrupt bends in their lower branches were shaped that way by native Americans and settlers to mark a trail. The limbs were pulled down when young and as they grew made an 'L' shape. Rob stands stoically by the tree, though I'm sure the day's hiking had plenty of laughter. Marty struck a "Carol" pose on a rock (did Rob let him get there first?) and I'm sure Joan recounted the hostess, Joy, who pretended there were no tables available. We had been hiking most of the day. It was almost two p.m., no tables, really? Joan somehow got past Joy and found us a table. How we were overJoyed-jokes followed for the rest of the day.
Grandma Elwyn looks especially relaxed in the pictures. When I told my Grandparents I would be making my first trip to the Rockies in the spring of 1994 I remember Grandma's face lighting up. "I just love the Rockies," she'd said. It had never dawned on me that someone who had lived in Wisconsin the whole time I knew her could have a fondness for another place. I brought her back a candle that she still has on a window sill. But tomorrow she comes back to Wisconsin. Her time in the Rockies this year has rejuvenated her and given her a new lease on life. I can imagine it will be hard to leave the desert where flowers are blooming and grass keeps living through the winter. Back here the snow has turned to rocky ice. Yesterday my eyeballs were cold. Not even in Northfield have I experienced that. But maybe Grandma will bring back with her some of the awe of the red cliffs of Zion and some of the tenaciousness of the desert. And soon, or at least in three months, it will be spring.
Enter Dietrich, for whom bedtime seems a world away (though not for his parents who see it is nearing 8 pm). He is singing and tapping on the dishwasher (at my knees): "Sunrise on the iceberg, all day long, until the moon comes up, Sunrise on the iceberg, all day long and then night comes and then the moon shows up - a dun dun dun - Sunrise on the iceberg all day all day long boom boom!" He goes on (and is now singing in the bathroom upstairs to Elliott and Ryan): "Airplane full of food, don't know what this was, it's a cardboard plane. An airplane full of food, it's an airplane full of food with nothing in it. Well I don't know why it's an airplane full of food, but I don't know why, Airplane full of food.".
Back to what I was saying about those mountains? Well, how can I top a sunrise all day long and an airplane full of food (is there any food on airplanes anymore?).
The mountains...one picture is of Rob by the muscley tree where Ryan and I had our engagement picture taken during a Utah trip with Joan and Marty in 2003. The tree looks just as strong now as it did then. It's lowest branch reaches out before going straight up like it is flexing its bicep to the mountains above. I was reading about famous Wisconsin trees and there is folklore that the trees with abrupt bends in their lower branches were shaped that way by native Americans and settlers to mark a trail. The limbs were pulled down when young and as they grew made an 'L' shape. Rob stands stoically by the tree, though I'm sure the day's hiking had plenty of laughter. Marty struck a "Carol" pose on a rock (did Rob let him get there first?) and I'm sure Joan recounted the hostess, Joy, who pretended there were no tables available. We had been hiking most of the day. It was almost two p.m., no tables, really? Joan somehow got past Joy and found us a table. How we were overJoyed-jokes followed for the rest of the day.
Grandma Elwyn looks especially relaxed in the pictures. When I told my Grandparents I would be making my first trip to the Rockies in the spring of 1994 I remember Grandma's face lighting up. "I just love the Rockies," she'd said. It had never dawned on me that someone who had lived in Wisconsin the whole time I knew her could have a fondness for another place. I brought her back a candle that she still has on a window sill. But tomorrow she comes back to Wisconsin. Her time in the Rockies this year has rejuvenated her and given her a new lease on life. I can imagine it will be hard to leave the desert where flowers are blooming and grass keeps living through the winter. Back here the snow has turned to rocky ice. Yesterday my eyeballs were cold. Not even in Northfield have I experienced that. But maybe Grandma will bring back with her some of the awe of the red cliffs of Zion and some of the tenaciousness of the desert. And soon, or at least in three months, it will be spring.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
What time is it?
I don't really know. Well over a month ago my cell phone stopped working. It's not that I don't miss having it, I just haven't missed it enough to either drive to Janesville, the nearest T-mobile store front, or order one from the internet. I am on here enough (almost a month of daily writing, some drivel, many random pieces) but have yet to order a new phone. I try to remember to wear a watch, especially on days we are going on the bus, but I rarely do. So I am often the one wondering what time it is. Today, though, Dietrich wanted to know how you know what time it is when there aren't any numbers? He saw a clock at Target with hands that pointed to slashes around a circle. There were no numbers. So we started with making clocks using cardboard and brads, the brads being the highlight of the whole activity. Elliott made a paper CD of all the songs he could think of that deal with time or numbers. Then we found the "o'clock's" of their day: wake up at 7, go to swimming at 9, make dinner at 5, go to sleep at 8.
When the boys were babies I longed for a clocked schedule but by 5 months accepted that it wasn't going to happen and even if it did for a day or two -- nap at 8:30, nurse at 10, nap at 1, walk at 3, bed by 8, what success! -- it was short lived. The only clockwork times that seemed to stick were wake at 3, wake again at 5! I began to think about it life with two babies more like a dance than a work schedule. I tossed the books that suggested anything other than routine would drive us all crazy. The dance of our days had great rhythm, some days, and other times was awkward and searching for a beat. I was always exhausted, but at least I was tired in a way I could live with and not measuring up to somebody else's schedule. Amazingly, they eventually did find more or less a pattern, to the point that one afternoon when they woke early from a nap and we were at the grocery store at 2 in the afternoon, I felt like I was skipping school. The day is so bright! And where are all the other babies? Right, asleep.
Since the new year began another time has taken hold of me. The boys are going to 5 this year, that magical age that Carl Schurz, in my hometown of Watertown, Wisconsin in the late 1800's, decided kids could begin going to school. The idea wasn't his, of course, it was brought from Germany. I've visited the First Kindergarten many times. It was the one attraction, besides the golf course, that we would show to our house guests. I had the tour down after a year, and would ask questions to get the guides to tell the information I already knew from other guides. The kindergarten was a small building with a door, a stove, and space for about 6 kids and a teacher to fit comfortably. The wax mannequins posing in the school are holding hands in a circle (or at least they were in the 80's when we frequented the museum). They are singing a German song.
Fast forward a hundred years or so and kids in our neighborhood are going to a school with 375 kids between Kindergarten and second grade. They wake at 6 to catch a bus at 7 and to return home at 3. Five-year-olds. Why do I feel I am the only one who finds this outrageous? The boys have learned their world from the comfort of their home (and the library, the museums, the zoos, the trains, buses, their relatives houses, their friends houses, their church, the grocery store, the hiking trails, parks, beaches, lakes) for the past 4 years. Why does this age signal a sudden shift to learning in an environment made up entirely of their peers and one adult for half of their waking day? Whose time is it, anyway?
When the boys were babies I longed for a clocked schedule but by 5 months accepted that it wasn't going to happen and even if it did for a day or two -- nap at 8:30, nurse at 10, nap at 1, walk at 3, bed by 8, what success! -- it was short lived. The only clockwork times that seemed to stick were wake at 3, wake again at 5! I began to think about it life with two babies more like a dance than a work schedule. I tossed the books that suggested anything other than routine would drive us all crazy. The dance of our days had great rhythm, some days, and other times was awkward and searching for a beat. I was always exhausted, but at least I was tired in a way I could live with and not measuring up to somebody else's schedule. Amazingly, they eventually did find more or less a pattern, to the point that one afternoon when they woke early from a nap and we were at the grocery store at 2 in the afternoon, I felt like I was skipping school. The day is so bright! And where are all the other babies? Right, asleep.
Since the new year began another time has taken hold of me. The boys are going to 5 this year, that magical age that Carl Schurz, in my hometown of Watertown, Wisconsin in the late 1800's, decided kids could begin going to school. The idea wasn't his, of course, it was brought from Germany. I've visited the First Kindergarten many times. It was the one attraction, besides the golf course, that we would show to our house guests. I had the tour down after a year, and would ask questions to get the guides to tell the information I already knew from other guides. The kindergarten was a small building with a door, a stove, and space for about 6 kids and a teacher to fit comfortably. The wax mannequins posing in the school are holding hands in a circle (or at least they were in the 80's when we frequented the museum). They are singing a German song.
Fast forward a hundred years or so and kids in our neighborhood are going to a school with 375 kids between Kindergarten and second grade. They wake at 6 to catch a bus at 7 and to return home at 3. Five-year-olds. Why do I feel I am the only one who finds this outrageous? The boys have learned their world from the comfort of their home (and the library, the museums, the zoos, the trains, buses, their relatives houses, their friends houses, their church, the grocery store, the hiking trails, parks, beaches, lakes) for the past 4 years. Why does this age signal a sudden shift to learning in an environment made up entirely of their peers and one adult for half of their waking day? Whose time is it, anyway?
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Mid-winter speech time
Having a hard time even thinking much less writing after listening to the State of the Union tonight. I remember clicking around the channels as a kid looking for some station that wasn't covering the speech but every one was tuned into the President, whatever he had to say. I never could follow it, but had little choice but to watch it -- or go to bed early. This week I was looking forward to it and made sure the boys were in bed well before 8. I wanted to hear something -- anything -- other than the bantering that has been covered in the news. And I was not disappointed. President Obama encouraged, chided, joked, recalled, and looked forward all in the space of (about) an hour. My favorite was the chiding, of course, but I think the point that will stick with me was that government was not elected to do nothing (or wait, was that still chiding?). Hopefully that will be the time-out that congress needs to get working...together.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The Bulletin
Every few months or so I will try it again: a google or amazon or library search for a book (new or just new to me) that brings together the day to day of parenting and the life long journey of following Christ. It seems the term "Christian" sends the search engines to books on how to calm anger (which I could definitely use); why it is good to sing God's praises in the midst of chaos (oh yes, could use more of that, too); steps to being a "better" wife (whatever that means, I could probably stand a touch-up there, too); and ways to make your authority understood by your children (isn't there just an injection for that?). Using "spiritual" as the limiting key word before "parenting" yields broader topics: raising spiritual champions; books on winning the spiritual battle for women, parents (au pairs?); and books on putting the humane back in humanity. To be sure, a thoughtful group of parents can get discussion going from just about any of these, but few have truly encouraged me to parent any differently.
A welcomed exception is The Quotidian Mysteries: Liturgy, Laundry and Women's "Work" by Kathleen Norris. It is a tiny paperback that is mostly a talk she gave at a conference and took just days to read (about the attention span for me). She didn't tell me how or even why, but somehow made me see the reality of our daily lives for the holy territory that it is. The daily tasks of our life are...our life. We wouldn't be anything if it weren't for them. I have long lost the sense that there is a destination to strive towards and rather to enjoy the journey, but I get caught up in the pull towards getting it over with. There is always this afternoon, tonight, next week, next year to think about. And the more independent my children become, the more space my mind has to be taken up by these Screwtape letters tendencies. Norris' book helped bring me back to earth, where God is and where God sent us to be, at least for now.
Today as I was taking the boys to swimming lessons and listening to Justin Roberts (hey hippopotamus! Could you do that dance, could you do it for us now?) I of course began thinking about the Apostle's Creed. What if I threw my two cents into the Christian parenting search engine? The boys and I have been reading the Apostle's Creed at breakfast, bits at a time, and finding Bible stories that bring it to life. We did a collage of colored paper one day after reading the creation story -- the boys picked out colors that reminded them of each creative act and glued them together. My favorite is the Penguin Dietrich made who spends time on both sea and land, making it the perfect creature for day 4. I'm not sure what I would say, or how I would get past the first few lines of the creed (that is as far as we are), but if I'm hungry for books that are rooted in Christian worship tradition, maybe someone else is, too? The chapters could simply follow a traditional order of worship. The subheading: what's in the bulletin?
A welcomed exception is The Quotidian Mysteries: Liturgy, Laundry and Women's "Work" by Kathleen Norris. It is a tiny paperback that is mostly a talk she gave at a conference and took just days to read (about the attention span for me). She didn't tell me how or even why, but somehow made me see the reality of our daily lives for the holy territory that it is. The daily tasks of our life are...our life. We wouldn't be anything if it weren't for them. I have long lost the sense that there is a destination to strive towards and rather to enjoy the journey, but I get caught up in the pull towards getting it over with. There is always this afternoon, tonight, next week, next year to think about. And the more independent my children become, the more space my mind has to be taken up by these Screwtape letters tendencies. Norris' book helped bring me back to earth, where God is and where God sent us to be, at least for now.
Today as I was taking the boys to swimming lessons and listening to Justin Roberts (hey hippopotamus! Could you do that dance, could you do it for us now?) I of course began thinking about the Apostle's Creed. What if I threw my two cents into the Christian parenting search engine? The boys and I have been reading the Apostle's Creed at breakfast, bits at a time, and finding Bible stories that bring it to life. We did a collage of colored paper one day after reading the creation story -- the boys picked out colors that reminded them of each creative act and glued them together. My favorite is the Penguin Dietrich made who spends time on both sea and land, making it the perfect creature for day 4. I'm not sure what I would say, or how I would get past the first few lines of the creed (that is as far as we are), but if I'm hungry for books that are rooted in Christian worship tradition, maybe someone else is, too? The chapters could simply follow a traditional order of worship. The subheading: what's in the bulletin?
Monday, January 25, 2010
Red light, Green light
We brought the old red baby jogger out of storage last week. The sidewalks were too free of snow to pull the boys in a sled but not free enough to get out the their bikes. We were short on the time and patience that it takes to let them walk without some kind of vehicle, and I refused to drive a half mile. Ryan was off of work, so he pushed nearly 80 pounds of children to art class. They easily resumed the jogger zone-out, which is strikingly similar to the CTA trance. We were there in 10 minutes.
This week we did the same routine except on the way home I pushed a jogger full of art and called out "Red light ... Green light!" as they ran ahead. The red lights were spaced just far enough apart that they didn't notice it was mostly up hill. About a block into it, Dietrich became an emergency vehicle, donned imaginary lights and was no longer subject to red, green, or yellow. Elliott kept up the game, but slowed after a few steps into each green light. Then he did laps -- way ahead, then back to the jogger and me, then behind us and way ahead again. Dietrich needed a bigger vehicle, so he took on the jogger, though still not being tall enough to see over the top, it crunched into the snow banks. He finally gave up on that and held the leash on the handle which is about the poorest way to steer a jogger. "Maybe you can push this and I'll go ahead, yeah, that's okay!" he called as he caught up to Elliott.
I kept calling out green, red and yellow lights even though the rules had long demised. The air had returned to its winter claim on my face, but my hands were in warm gloves and feet in brand new smartwools. The boys kept running, stopping and starting again as noted by the sound of clompy boots on the sidewalk ahead of me. I often say it is my job to "wear them out" so that they sleep well at night. But it is also my delight to see their bodies in motion. I marvel that they not only run, but run and laugh and find snow to pick up and read a bumper sticker on a parked car and devise a vehicle to pretend to be all at the same time. Their constant motion can be excruciating when trying to get dressed and teeth brushed and boots on and jackets and where is your hat? and please stop moving! But when it is on an unhurried walk home it brings me back to why I am with them and who I am and whose I am, too.
This week we did the same routine except on the way home I pushed a jogger full of art and called out "Red light ... Green light!" as they ran ahead. The red lights were spaced just far enough apart that they didn't notice it was mostly up hill. About a block into it, Dietrich became an emergency vehicle, donned imaginary lights and was no longer subject to red, green, or yellow. Elliott kept up the game, but slowed after a few steps into each green light. Then he did laps -- way ahead, then back to the jogger and me, then behind us and way ahead again. Dietrich needed a bigger vehicle, so he took on the jogger, though still not being tall enough to see over the top, it crunched into the snow banks. He finally gave up on that and held the leash on the handle which is about the poorest way to steer a jogger. "Maybe you can push this and I'll go ahead, yeah, that's okay!" he called as he caught up to Elliott.
I kept calling out green, red and yellow lights even though the rules had long demised. The air had returned to its winter claim on my face, but my hands were in warm gloves and feet in brand new smartwools. The boys kept running, stopping and starting again as noted by the sound of clompy boots on the sidewalk ahead of me. I often say it is my job to "wear them out" so that they sleep well at night. But it is also my delight to see their bodies in motion. I marvel that they not only run, but run and laugh and find snow to pick up and read a bumper sticker on a parked car and devise a vehicle to pretend to be all at the same time. Their constant motion can be excruciating when trying to get dressed and teeth brushed and boots on and jackets and where is your hat? and please stop moving! But when it is on an unhurried walk home it brings me back to why I am with them and who I am and whose I am, too.
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