Well … it’s home again, home again lickety split.

I got home very late Sunday night (or early Monday morning, depending on your perspective).  The flight touched down at 11:50 p.m.  I didn’t get my bag til about an hour later.  I had visions of one poor little man driving the baggage truck, and doing all the loading and unloading.  It was very slow.  People were getting impatient.  But the bags eventually came up 3 or 5 or 6 at a time.  Then it was off to find my van (where my mother had left it on Saturday when she flew home).  Then drive home to a wiggly reunion with my steadfast dog, Sam.

I realized in the midst of it all that I am seeing daylight now.  I am seeing my way out of the cave.  Smaug is diminishing, and I am recovering.  On Sunday, I navigated two major metropolitan airports, including security, got my baggage, found my vehicle in a somewhat mysterious location, drove home and slept in an empty house … all alone.  A year ago this would have been unthinkable.  Even 3 months ago, this would have caused a panic attack.  But on Sunday, I barely gave it second thought.  I enjoyed my fellow passengers and the inflight movie.  Felt badly for the seatmates of the man two rows back who snored so loudly I could hear him over my iPod (great heavenly day!!).  I walked the distance from baggage claim to parking garage all alone and was alone in the parking garage late at night and felt nary a qualm.  I was safe from the boogey man and all of his minions.  It was heaven.

The next day I was reunited with the LightChildren.  We’ve been have wonderful conversations sharing our adventures with each other.  They had fun with their grandmother (LightMom), who they have assured me was “… not the babysitter from the Black Lagoon or anything.”  I had a difficult time keeping a straight face at that.

So we are getting back into our routines again.  School, exercise, quilting, etc.  LightHusband returns on Thursday.

I’ve been sleeping and resting. LightHusband and I are in Colorado for a short respite from our regular duties. It’s quiet here and beautiful. We’re staying in Estes Park at the gateway to the Rocky Mountains in a bed & breakfast. Our arrival was uneventful on Wednesday; they simply left the door open for us. Thursday morning’s breakfast was anything but uneventful. It was one of the best breakfasts ever. Beginning with fresh strawberries in frothy cream topped by granola, followed by a breakfast burrito hiding hash browns and accompanied by a light piece of blue corn bread. It was scrumptious.

Then we set out on our adventure. We are ostensibly here to scout out Keystone for a conference to be attended by LightHusband and his colleagues next week. So we drove down the Peak to Peak highway through the mountains to Lake Dillon … yes, we drove over Loveland Pass. All with the top down on our silly Mustang Convertible. Here are some photos I took on the drive. Well … one … I’ll post more later when I get LightHusband to sit down and give me some more.

In Lake Dillon we dropped off his dry cleaning for the conference next week and found a place to eat, called The Sunshine Cafe. I had the best grilled cheese sandwich of my life. It was called Jewelry Mine. It deserved the title. Whole wheat breat, cheddar cheese, avocado, tomatoes, and sprouts … accompanied by homemade potato chips. Oh. Mi. Gosh. It was divine. They served us our Fair Trade coffee in travel cups and we were on our way to Sapphire Point Overlook for more photos (to be posted … the mountains are spectacular and the ground squirrels friendly).
We chose to drive “under” Loveland Pass coming back to Estes. It was equally foreboding. We are accustomed to driving under Baltimore Harbor and under the Chesapeake Bay, but driving under the Rocky Mountains felt … well … HEAVY.

Dinner was at the Grubsteak in Estes. LightHusband had the venison ravioli (a signature dish the maitre d’ assured us) and I had the Pacific Rim salad (teriyaki grilled chicken with grilled pineapple and coconut shavings topped with mango vinagrette) quite delicious. Then back to our delightful cottage and a great night’s sleep with no interruptions by cats who want to go out, or sirens or garbage trucks or children or anything really.

The conversations I’ve had with BelleSon over the past week have been lively, interesting and reconnected me with a part of my past that I’d let go of. I thought I was done with it, but apparently not so. It’s been good for my heart and soul to be part of his reconnection to his family and the things that are good in life. He’s made some promises to me about his behaviour with his teachers and his parents. I know for fairly certain that he’ll break them; not out of malice or forethought, but because he forgets; gets caught up in a moment and can’t get out of it (to paraphrase a certain band).

One thing these conversations have reminded me of is a primary reason I homeschool my children. Some of the reasons he is having trouble in school is because he’s bored. He’s bored because the teachers have been locked in straightjackets are no longer allowed to teach anything but to the SOL tests. The pressure on the teachers to get their classes to measure up to the Virginia State Standards of Learning is incredible. I know teachers in the system and they are bored beyond belief; frustrated that paperwork has come to mean more to the administration in the school system and school boards than the students. Veteran teachers are leaving the system as soon as they possibly can, while the state is making it ever more difficult for young teachers to enter it. It now requires nearly as much education to become an entry level teacher as it does a lawyer without nearly the commensurate pay.

What are the children learning? Are they learning how to learn? No. They are learning factoids. They are learning how to successfully take tests. They are learning to answer questions, but never ask. Never question authority. Never step out of line. Don’t say it in your out loud voice. Just get through.

A classical education is based primarily three stages: grammar (primary), logic (middle), and rhetoric (high). The grammar stage encompasses the years of approximately ages 5 through 10, this is when children want to know what. They learn facts in the manner a sponge absorbs water. Give them facts and lots of them. Learn dates, math facts, historical data, scientific data (age appropriate), read stories, learn to read and spell, learn grammar rules, spelling rules, begin a foreign language (Latin because it’s a root language, but any language is good).

Sometime around 10, though it begins earlier (it’s a process not a breaking point) children begin to want to know why. Why did all these things happen? Why did Queen Elizabeth go after the Spanish Armada? Why did the English want to settle the Americas? Why was Copernicus put in jail? So you spend a lot of time dealing with why questions in the learning process. Taking all of the facts learned in the previous 4 or 5 years and helping the children answer why things happened the way that they did. Or why certain science rules are the way they are. Investigating different theories for why the dinosaurs are extinct, for example.

Then again around 14 or 15 another change occurs and the rhetoric stage begins. This is the stage where children take the what and the why and come up with how. They begin to synchronize the information they have accumulated over the years and put it together in new ways. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes they need a little (ahem) guidance. However, if the teacher is doing his/her job properly the student is making their own conclusions (regardless of the faith or politics of the teacher). The student is learning the valuable skill of being able to assimilate facts and draw their own conclusions without being told what to think by anyone else.

Lest you think this is what is happening in the American public education system, you might think again. It is not and has not been for quite some time. It is becoming a place of zero tolerance, where honors students are expelled for riding in a car with a paintball gun (I know the boy this happened to … it wasn’t his car, he was hitching a ride and it was a paintball gun, off of school property), other students are expelled for taking acetominophin for headaches, where students are suspended for declaring their dislike of a class outside of class time. In high school students who, because of their developmental level, ought to be using the “how” and assimilating their knowledge are still being taught at the “what” level. No wonder they and the teachers are bored.

Ever since the onset of the Industrial Revolution our culture has increasingly engaged in a mindset that items which are made in an efficient, factory atmosphere are better and higher quality than those which are handmade, individuals. Since the Great Depression we have even extended this idea to people. We think that we can factory process people in our schools, in our churches, in our factories, in our large corporations, in our health care systems, and in our farms. But people are glorious individuals, made in the image and likeness of God. They cannot be factory processed. That is the ultimate failure of our educational system. Until we reconcile to that, we will not be able to “fix” it.

I finally get it.  I’m in my mid-40’s and now … finally … I understand.

I understand the impulse that overcomes a person (usually a young man) and causes them to shoot spitballs.

Last evening I went to a “Mandatory Parents Meeting” for all of the parents who will have children on travel teams in our hockey club next season.  LightHusband had to take the LightChildren to their regularly scheduled in-line practice, otherwise he would have had to sit through this nonsense.

In my younger days I might have arrived early to ensure that I knew where the meeting was.  I would have gotten a good seat.  I would have paid attention, even taken a few notes.

Now, I’m beginning to get a sense of what’s important in life.  I arrived at the rink late.  Didn’t have a clue where the meeting was.  Complimented one of LightGirl’s teammates on a hairstyle change and chatted with a few other teammates; giggled too.  Have I mentioned that I like this age?  Gave up on procrastinating and slouched into the meeting late … so late I had to stand against the back wall.  With my (illegal) fastfood diet soda and straw in hand … we’re not supposed to bring food or drink from outside sources into the rink.  I break this rule regularly and with aplomb.  I’m spending several thousand dollars in rink fees for my children play hockey, if I want to bring in the occasional soda, I will.

Thus began what was to be the most. boring. hour of my life.  Hands down.  I have never been in a more boring meeting ever before.  I’ve been in boring meetings before.  But this one took the cake.  I felt bad because HeadCoach had to stand up front looking interested and supportive, but he was clearly bored out of his mind too.  I began to imagine shooting spitballs at him, just to lighten up the meeting … start a war of sorts (a silly one mind you).  My only problem is that my aim is notoriously bad and I probably couldn’t shoot far enough, so I’d hit someone I don’t know … that would be very bad.

You know a meeting is boring and horrible when it causes formerly well-behaved middle aged women to consider shooting spitballs.

At the end the meeting leader (who’s name I do not know) asked for questions, I considered raising my hand and asking, “Are we done now?” or “Did anyone ever tell you not to quit your day job?”  or “Why was this mandatory, we didn’t learn anything?”  but I’m just not that rude … yet.

Today is/was my Grammy Openshaw’s birthday. I loved this day every year. Our birthdays were very closely timed, mine being but a few days away. She died in late April the year she was to have turned 80 … that was a very bad year … it was almost 20 years ago now.

My Lily of the Valley is in full bloom right now right next to my front door and its scent is heavenly. It reminds me of Grammy O every time I go in and out. It is the flower for May girls everywhere.

Grammy was a lady, in every sense of the word. She was tiny (she only ever got to 5’3″), but she filled a room. She ruled my Grampy with a loving hand and he was 6’2″. She let him think he was in charge, but we all knew differently. She drove 1969 Mercury Cougar fastback. She and Grampy bought it brand new and she drove it til the day she died. That was funny, seeing my tiny little grandmother driving a classic sports car. But she did it elegantly.

She taught me to sew, embroider, cook, and type. She could out type an electric typewriter back in the day. I spent hours every vacation laboring over “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” With the onset of computers and keyboards, I am everlastingly grateful.

She took me to church occasionally in an attempt to overcome the wickedness of her daughter (tongue in cheek, LightMom). She was a model for me in many ways of perserverance, love, balance, and keeping ones head in times of crisis.

Happy Birthday, Grammy. I really miss you.

Yesterday, Smaug roared. He didn’t just rumble or growl or roll over a bit. He sat up and roared. It made for a bad morning. I didn’t know where to turn or if I would be able to escape. Fortunately, I had an appointment for a med check with my psychiatrist in the afternoon.

My psychiatrist is truly wonderful. He’s not supposed to listen to me as much as he does, but he does. I told him about Smaug’s roar and how I’ve lost my way and I don’t know quite know who I am anymore. We talked for a while. He had a suggestion. Now I have a doctor’s note to quilt more. To define myself by the things I like to do rather than the things that I hate. But I have permission to have fun. Permission. I stole something from Smaug yesterday and he doesn’t realize it yet. I think I’ll get this one out of the cave too.

BlazingEwe and I were all set to go out to dinner.  The LightChildren and FlamingLambs were at the rink with LightHusband.  BlisteringSh33p has a mysterious fever so he was home in bed.  BlazingEwe got a phonecall from a mutual friend, TexasBlueBelle.  Her teenage son had disobeyed his father and had left their house when he’d been told not to.  Both parents were over an hour away and son has been having a troubling year.  Would we go pick him up?  He considers us his other mothers.  So, off we went on a mission of merciful chastisement.

It proved to be an interesting several hours long conversation.  BelleSon was completely and utterly honest with us.  Oh, he spun a few yarns and gave us a few lines that he thought we’d want to hear (and I will revisit those at another time).  But it was another gem I stole from Smaug’s pile to recover and build a relationship with a teenager last night.  I had forgotten how wonderful those interactions with teens are.  We laughed some and gave him some key things to work on.  He said he’d like to keep meeting with us.  A small miracle happened right in front of my eyes.

So I ended the day with 2 pearls in my pocket, two miracles that I do not deserve.  But I will keep these.  Somehow I will get out of the cave with these.

We had an interesting conversation over dinner this evening. LightHusband is reading The Places In Between, by Rory Stewart. We picked it up last summer. I was going to read it, but haven’t gotten around to it, so he’s reading it. Here’s the description on the back cover:

In January 2002 Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan–surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. By day he passed through mountain covered in nine feet of snow, hamlets burned and emptied by the Taliban, and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers’ floors, shared their meals, and listened to their stories of the recent and ancient past. Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers. He was also adopted by an unexpected companion–a retired fighting mastiff he named Babur in honor of Afghanistan’s first Mughal emperor, in whose footsteps the pair was following.

Through these encounters–by turns touching, confounding, surprising, and funny–Stewart makes tangible the forces of traidition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map’s countless places in between.

Stewart walked across Asia; Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey of 6000 miles … according to the wiki on him. This book chronicles his journey through Afghanistan. He walked. This might not sound amazing. But he walked through places that have remained unchanged since Genghis Khan burned them out in the early Middle Ages. These are places that really haven’t made it onto GoogleMaps. Holiday Inn has not set up for business out there (to say the least). He was at the mercy of the hospitality of each local village that he came upon.

Fortunately for Stewart the practice of hospitality is considered a religious duty for Muslims. It is not one of the Five Pillars of Islam, but it’s the next step down. However, every once in a while the head man needed to be convinced that Mr. Stewart was indeed worthy of his hospitality:

After a cool reception, despite a letter of introduction, Babur is banished to the deepest cellar on a straw bed and Rory returned to the mosque to speak once again with Haji Nasir, who is exceedingly tight-lipped.

I reentered the mosque and took off my iced and soaking socks. Haji Nasir watched. He did not suggest I dry them on the stove; he did not offer tea. I clearly needed to persuade him I was worth speaking to. We were eleven days’ walk from Kamenj and had just reached a village that had not heard of Haji Mohsin Khan, so I dropped him from my introductory speech.

“I have walked here from Chaghcharan,” I said. “On the first night I stayed with Commandant Maududi in Baghdad, on the second with Abdul Rauf Ghafuri in Daulatyar, on the third with Bushire Khan in Sang-i-zard, and last night with the nephew of Mir Ali Hussein Beg in Katlish. They have treated me very well.”

Then I took out my notebook and showed him the pictures I had drawn of these men.

He looked at the pictures and said, “You can stay here tonight and someone will bring you some tea.” Then he walked into the inner room of the mosque to pray. (p. 209)

LightHusband went on to describe how Stewart had to remember the genealogy each night of who he had stayed with to establish his credentials for each village. Often he had teenage boys who would take him through the mountain passes. But they did not want money, they wanted to be sure that he told the story of the great honor they had done. They wanted credit. We talked some about that. About honor and credit in that culture.

LightBoy wondered where honor and credit are in our culture. The only place we could think of was in plastic cards. We find places to stay based on our plastic cards. And honor is based on how much money is backing up those plastic cards. Are we really more advanced?

I grew up in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Vermont. Here’s a photo of the house and surrounding grounds that I spent the 5 years from 1st through 5th grades in. Granted this photo was taken in about 1900 and though the LightChildren think I’m ancient, I’m not quite that old … yet.

Now the Belchers (handily indicated by the red dot) were an elderly couple who lived down the road from us. Aunt Jo(sephine) and Uncle Greg. I used to visit them every Thursday afternoon for tea. They were originally from Canada and very delightful. They taught me many skills. How to make the cross bars on peanutbutter cookies. How to tell the difference between “like” and “as” and when to use which. How to play cribbage. And most importantly how to beep the letter “R” in Morse code. R being Uncle Greg’s first initial. I used to walk down to their house after school and Uncle Greg would bring me home on his way to the post office to pick up the mail.

Now, if you also look carefully at the photo, you will see that facing “my house,” and a little to the left is a somewhat large-ish brick house with two chimneys. I’m not certain what that building was used for at the time this photo was taken. But by the time we lived here it had become a museum called the Kent Tavern Museum. The building had originally been built as a home and “… from 1837 to 1846 was a stagecoach stop on the road from Montpelier to Canada.” Since we were only about 15 miles from Montpelier, this tells you something about the length of time it took to get to Canada in those days.

So it was a museum with artifacts from its glory days as a tavern. My mother was the curator. This sounds far more grand than it was. She loves history as much as I and this wonderful old building was lying fallow. So she rounded up some of the elderly ladies in town to get it open a few hours a week. The best part (as far as I was concerned) was the gift store and the fudge! That was a magical fudge recipe that I have never been able to duplicate. It was all volunteer to the best of my knowledge and the old ladies in town gave of their time and their institutional knowledge of town history to run it.

I knew every single one of those ladies by first and last name. But I would get ferocious looks if I dared use their first names. They had earned the title Mrs. So and So and I’d best use it. Even my mother called them Mrs. So and So. They were wonderful farmers wives who knew the seasons (all five) and when they weren’t helping their husbands, they were helping their daughters. They taught me a little about sewing, knitting, crocheting, tatting, drawing and whatever else they’d brought to keep their hands busy. You see, I had free run of the place when it was open as long as I didn’t bother the visitors and stayed out of the way. And those old ladies were a magnet to me. They had stories to tell. And I might get a piece of fudge.

Now if you look further around to the left at the pond and go around the pond to the left you’ll a sawmill. That’s Robinson’s mill and it’s still there. It was there when I was a child too. We used to go and play in it. Gingerly, because it was a kind of creepy place and floor boards were a bit rotten. But there’s an open area next to the mill that’s used a couple of times a year for town potlucks and cookouts (that’s what we call barbeques up north). We roast corn on the cob in it’s husks. Several people bring homemade baked beans. There are lots of hamburgers and hotdogs. When we lived in the house marked “my house,” we could just walk. But people of all ages came to the cook outs. Almost all of the adults knew all of the children’s names. At the very least they knew who they belonged to. Even if we’d wanted to, my brothers and I couldn’t get into very much trouble. My brothers tried pretty hard too. But someone always knew what we were up to almost before we thought about it.

I know that when you get a “certain” age you begin to immortalize your upbringing. So, yeah, maybe there’s a little of that going on here. And, believe me, I know about the down side of growing up in small town New England. It can be ingrown, inbred, insular and just as horrid as any ivory tower. But my vision for a healthy church looks like these vignettes from my childhood. There are old people who are interested in young people. There are young people who are interested in old people. There are people from all generations who pause and have time for each other; to listen to each other’s stories, to value one another for the gifts they bring. To understand that some people bring baked beans and some people just bring chips. And all of the grownups look out for all of the kids in a community because they know them and love them. The children, by the same token, know that they are known and loved by all the grown ups. The boundaries on the community are porous enough that people can come and go without regret or animosity. There is healthy respect for all embraced by all. That this healthy church will have many generations where all people will be welcome and all stories will be heard and the journey will include good food along the way.

Not so long ago, or so it seems, LightHusband and I had the privilege of being introduced to a man who was the new youth pastor at our now CLB. He had just arrived in town with his wife and (then) baby daughter. His daughter is now 16. We’ve had the privilege of knowing him for all of our children’s lives. We also had the unmitigated privilege of serving under him for many years while he was youth pastor at our old church. He continues to be a spiritual mentor in my life and he works with LightHusband in the job that keeps his body and soul together. He does a lot of other things too for fun and profit.

He started blogging not terribly long ago. His blog is well worth adding to your feed reader and taking a regular gander at. I call him Peregrine Man, it has nothing to do with the falcon and everything to do with the journey. His blog is called Peregrinatio in honor of the travels that the Celts undertook in search of God’s heart.

I found his post yesterday fascinating and endearing. I came in the house to read it after a long heart-to-heart with LightGirl about sex. It had come up innocently enough in the ways of a 13 year old. She asked a question about STD’s and AIDS, “What are they, Mom?” I learned a long time ago to answer those sorts of questions straight up and just the questions, without adding in anything that they have not asked. Let the child control the conversation and see where it goes. So she asked a few more questions and we did end up in the realm of what to do about sex outside of marriage. I left her with some open ended things to think about and told her some truths about my own life that really surprised her. We ended the conversation with a deeper relationship than when we began.

Now, here’s why I loved his post. I’ve had these kinds of conversations with so many other girls in other situations that I felt more prepared than I anticipated when the moment occurred with my own daughter. She asked the question, I centered myself and began. At one and the same moment, it was easy and more important than ever. And, it was ever so much more beautiful.

I began a new endeavor yesterday.  The LightChildren are certain that I’m a. nuts and b. tormenting them.

We’ve been concerned about their spiritual formation for some time now.  Not concerned enough to actually “do” anything about it.  But we’ve been talking about it and sort of wringing our metaphorical hands and wondering what we should do.  We’ve talked and thought and agonized and then talked some more and the LightChildren have been happily oblivious.  They bring up God every now and again and we eagerly talk about Him when they do.  But that’s been about it.

So, yesterday, I grabbed my nose and plunged in feet first with a new plan.  I promptly hit the water with a stinging belly flop.  My plan was to read The Jesus Creed aloud to them each day.  I figured the chapters aren’t that dense, or that long.  They’re smart kids.  They like being read to.  It’s approachable stuff.

No.  Not so much.  LightBoy decided that raw onions were preferable.  They did engage at a couple of key points.  Enough that I’m convinced that this is good stuff for them.  But read-aloud it’s not.  I need to head back to my teacherly drawing board and give it to them in smaller bites.  Maybe pre-cooked a little too.  I also realized that we need some pre-Jesusy stuff.  You see they didn’t get much Sunday school.  LightBoy in particular doesn’t really know the big Old Testament stories (like Exodus), so the Sh’ma doesn’t make much sense to him.  No wonder he was giving me such a funny look.

We’ll try again tomorrow …

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One. 

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.

The second is this:  Love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no commandment greater than these.”