Tale of a Home School Dropout

We’re in a magazine article, sort of. We were some of the people sitting around the camping trip at the beginning of this article from Touchstone. Reading it has made me wistful for home schooling, but I also want to point out Mr. Mitchell’s idealism. I am in complete agreement with his conclusion: Home schooling can form kids to a good kind of normal ("a steward of the good, the true and the beautiful" - an oddity in the world's eyes).  I concur with his approach to education, similar to Uncle Ambrose’s: lots of high quality books, music, and art, limited exposure to television and other forms of mass media, unscheduled free time to play, and lots of family memory-making/character-forming moments.

On the other hand, although I fully ascribed to this pedagogy for the four years we home schooled, and continue to follow it as much as possible as a parochial school family, the reality is that we don’t live in a quaint English village like the Linnets that doesn’t intrude so rudely as the contemporary world does. Nor does every child’s temperament respond to this approach.  And schooled children get more opportunities to practice virtues in the face of temptation.  And sometimes Mom just gets so tired of trying to sell these ideas that she burns out and turns into a screaming meanie (or is it meme?).

Perhaps I had too high of expectations for our home school: I pictured the kids sitting around listening to me read out loud while they colored or did puzzles quietly at my feet. We were going to be done with school subjects by noon and then go for nature walks. We’d memorize poetry and Bible verses and make little notebooks. The kids would turn out faithful, artistic, literate, imaginative, and whizzes at math and logic.

For maybe a year this little tableau actually took place a good portion of days. I was in danger of becoming a self-righteous home schooler, but I had to endlessly monitor math work, so we were rarely done at noon. I couldn’t quite get organized enough to play very many math games. We took nature walks, but my energetic boys never really wanted to sit and sketch what they saw. They memorized a couple poems and copied out Bible verses for handwriting practice, but don’t remember much, if any. Somehow, when I said, ok, now we’re going to do this, no one ever jumped for joy or worked very hard.

Then my fifth and sixth began to demand more attention, my olders became more reluctant to do what I asked without complaints, my middles needed extra help learning to read, so that I didn’t have time to read out loud myself. The world intruded: my husband’s job required him to travel more; our house seemed too small and then we had to get it ready to sell; I got too busy with outside things: all small volunteer jobs in themselves, but together they took up a substantial amount of time and emotional energy. My mass attendance was sporadic because wrestling toddlers distracted me enough that I often felt I needed to go straight to the confessional after attending. Needless to say, my spiritual life was not healthy. By our fourth year, I daily found myself screaming and pleading and generally making my kids hate “school.”
Can I complain more? If I could easily diagnose just one reason for why our home school failed it would probably be that I got distracted from our real purpose of learning to love to learn, and focused more on trying to do too much. I pushed too hard, both the kids and myself, and we all collapsed. I wanted our home school to look like some of these happy, crafty places, but I wasn’t willing to negotiate on amount of math and grammar we did every day. I couldn’t be happy with what we did do, and focused too much on what we weren’t doing.

My theory is that people who succeed at home schooling are of two types: Relaxed, unschoolish, take each day as it comes types, or very organized, focused, disciplined types. Wanting to be both, I ended up neither.
So now my kids are in a smallish Catholic school. I am pleased for the most part with their education. They use a lot of home school basics: Shurley Grammar, MCP Phonics, Saxon math. The Accelerated Reader program allows me to make some suggestions for good books, and my sixth grader is actually more motivated to read classics to earn extra points. My second grader adores her soft spoken, pretty teacher. And my very active kindergartener is finally learning some letters and sight words. At the weekly Mass, they sit up and seem to pay attention because the priest caters to them. (I could do without the singing during the consecration, however.) Their new friends seem like good kids, although many have cell phones and ipods. They all are excelling and happy for the most part.

But when I subbed a couple weeks ago at the high school and helped out in the elementary cafeteria today, I was saddened by some of what I saw: at the high school, the halls reeked of hormones. Most classes had a flirter and a goof off distracting everyone else. Lots of preening, not a lot of academic challenges. At the elementary, I felt sorry for the classes that were being punished with no talking at lunch because a couple of kids were being kids. You can already see the exhaustion in the teacher’s faces from trying to meet all the goals they have to meet with 15-20 kids who are at different levels. A lot of time is taken up with telling kids to stand in line, sit up, quiet down. Concepts are repeated frequently to make sure the slowest learner gets them (although I recognize I didn’t repeat things enough). And when it rains, recess is spent watching a PBS kids' show because the school doesn’t have a proper gym, only a PE room.

So I remain half hearted about school. I loved the little family run school the kids attended when we lived in Illinois. I loved our home school co-op and sports league in Virginia. I am happy with our little Catholic school in Mississippi. Can it form my kids into stewards of goodness, truth and beauty? Maybe. But when we move next, I may order up some home school catalogs. Then again maybe I won’t. I’m hoping God will send me an obvious sign.

Reading high

Finished Linnets and Valerians last night and loved, loved loved it, even if the ending was a little too tidy and perfect. I spent the hour after I finished it in a state of distracted bliss. A happy mix between fairy tale fantasy and fantastical reality – British magical realism, I guess. Can I go live with Uncle Ambrose – or send him all my children? How many books are there where a group of four siblings have great bonding adventures? (The Penderwicks, the Pevensy’s, the Swallows and Amazon’s crowd, the Bobbsey’s, who else?)

An antidote

Happy Dancing! (I may be late in stumbling on this from Melanie at Wine Dark Sea, via another blog on her 9/25 post.)

Overheard

Last night I tried to read a book while waiting to pick up my 11 yr old and his friend from football practice, but I couldn't help overhearing a conversation between the lady sitting next to me and the lady sitting behind me on the bleaches. First lady says she's going to Applebee's to watch Monday night football after this because her cable has been cut off. She got her new job just in time to pay a bunch of bills but hadn't gotten around to that one. Lady behind makes sympathetic comment.
First lady says that it was so bad last winter that if it weren't for the casinos, her kids wouldn't have had Christmas. The casinos picked her family to receive Christmas gifts and a tree and food. Her soon to be ex husband had run off with all her money - the $1400 she had just deposited in her bank account. Second lady makes surprised comment.
First lady then tells how her soon-to-be-ex got mad because he thought she had a friend and locked her kids (they had a different dad) in their rooms, and threw her around the living room and then went to kitchen for the broom and broke three of her ribs. Lady behind makes men are jerks comment.
First lady then talks about how she is a new woman now he's gone, how she really does have a friend now, but how she'd live with a guy but never get married again (as if marriage were the problem). Then she turned her attention to her son and yelled at him to tackle some kid.
What do you do in a situation like this? Turn to this lady, hand her a card for the battered women's shelter, tell her how to get help for her and her kids before she gets into a similar situation with her new friend? I didn't want to admit I was eavesdropping, nor do I know of any battered women's shelters here. Instead I pretended to read and gave thanks that I have a loving husband, our bills are paid, and our kids don't rely on the casinos for Christmas. I hate the idea of the casinos, I'm afraid I might get cooties if I go in one, but they do foot the bill for a lot of good work around here, including this sports league, the charitable gifts, a city park fun day with free food and bouncies, lots of the rebuilding after Katrina, etc.
Today is the feast of the Archangels. Even though they are supposed to be the guardian angels of popes, may they watch over those kids who have to hear their mother have her ribs broken by a man who's not their dad.

YA fiction

Have been reading children’s literature lately, two books about very different childhoods. First I finished The Great Gilly Hopkins, the story of the flower child’s daughter who is dropped into foster care. Gilly is passed around from family to family and learns to be tough and heartless to survive the heartbreak of being unwanted. Her final foster home is with 3 other “rejects” of society, who actually learn to love her, so that when her grandmother discovers her existence and comes to get her, Gilly doesn’t want to leave. Her grandmother is a lonely, fussy old woman, but because of her loneliness, she is in a way just as needy as Gilly. So even though Gilly’s mother continues to reject her, the book ends on a hopeful note with Gilly finding a settled place and a purpose.

Written in the 70’s, this is one of those realistic Generation X chapter books so popular then. I went through a Katherine Patterson phase in grade school, along with a Judy Blume phase, a Lois Lowry phase, and a S. E. Hinton phase – all edgy, naturalistic (ok, maybe the paranormal stuff in Lowry was fantastic, but it was realistically portrayed), issue oriented books. (I also went through a Narnia phase, an L. M. Montgomery phase,an Alcott phase, a horse book phase, etc.,so I had balance. My own boys prefer fantasy and Brian Jacques type books, which is just fine with me, although I know there can be hidden ideologies there, too.) I had forgotten about the racial tension in this book, and I think I was oblivious to the pathos of the foster mother’s affection for the mentally disabled foster boy. I certainly did not tear up when I read this book as a kid – the only book I remember crying over was Gone With the Wind. (And for a long time I didn’t cry during movies, preferring to remain stoic and impartial, as a rejection of my mother’s pitiful sobbing. Then the floodgates were opened one day when I was pregnant, nursing a yearling, and holding a toddler while watching Farmer Hoggett dance when Babe is accepted into the sheep herding competition – a triumphant moment in film!) But Gilly’s encounter with Wordsworth through the blind African American neighbor, Mr. Randolph, was beautiful, if a bit contrived, as was the honesty of her 6th grade teacher in reaction to Gilly’s insult and the final goodbye of Trotter; all had me choked up. Although Gilly was not an admirably behaved child, she was smart and brave and recognized her worth when she finally believed she was needed.

In complete contrast is Linnets and Valerians, written by Elizabeth Goudge only about 15 years earlier, but set 60 years earlier. I’ve barely begun this story of 4 British siblings, left by their India-going father with a fussy grandmother, not too unlike Gilly’s grandmother, perhaps: a don’t touch/be quiet grandmother. The book begins with them escaping from their grandmother’s, “borrowing” a horse and cart, and tearing off across the English countryside, until, providentially, they are brought by the pony to their elderly uncle’s vicarage, a dusty, castlelike house with a kindly, dwarfish caretaker who talks to bees and other animals. The uncle doesn’t like children, but he likes to classically educate them, so the four are allowed to stay. They aren’t punished for their flight from their grandmother, their theft, or their snooping around the village, as long as they come to their lessons.

With the tone of a fairy tale, this book is a child’s fantasy of a perfect childhood: freedom to ramble interesting places, no meddling adults, no unbearable consequences for poor behavior. Gilly watches Sesame Street with her foster brother in the afternoons; the Linnets run around quaint villages and have tea. I wanted that latter kind of childhood, although reading about people like Gilly maybe made me appreciate what I did have: freedom to ride a bike around country roads, a mother who let us leave blanket tents up for days, lots of art supplies and pets, a vacant lot and a pond next door, horses to pat in the field behind our yard. Although I’ve tried not to overschedule my own kids, I know they lack many of those freedoms. And when they do have free time, they want to play Wii or watch a movie. Will they feel their lack or will they remember fondly what freedoms they do have?

A perfect poem for today

After 2 weeks away, my husband comes home. He should walk in around 8pm, so I've been mopping and making cookies and playing domestic, after slacking for 2 weeks. But the bleach was hurting my nostrils, so I took a break to look up Sara Teasdale, who is beloved by the Paul, the narrator of The Anthologist.  And look, a perfect poem for today!

"Eight O'Clock"


BY SARA TEASDALE

Supper comes at five o'clock,
      At six, the evening star,
My lover comes at eight o'clock—
      But eight o'clock is far.


How could I bear my pain all day
      Unless I watched to see
The clock-hands laboring to bring
       Eight o'clock to me.


Sara Teasdale, “Eight O'Clock” from Flame and Shadow (New York: Macmillan, 1924). Copyright 1924 by Sara Teasdale. Reprinted with the permission of the Office for Resources, Wellesley College.
Thanks http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=175279
See the Poetry Friday list Susan Brown's page for more poems. 

Watching the clock...

Reading log

Just finished Thomas Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Came across it when I was browsing the library for books about teaching writing when I was almost going to have a job at the community college. It's reductionist, formulaic, and repetitive, but I still liked it. Foster goes over some obvious material, eg. watch for references to the Bible, to Shakespeare, and to Greek and Roman mythology. But he also makes looking for symbols and understanding them simple – and takes away the fear of getting their meaning wrong. So it appeals because it gives assurance of being correct – or close enough. The guy obviously has a schtick he sticks to when teaching – and usually that makes for an effective teacher.

And that’s something I lack. Maybe I should’ve majored in the sciences, because I like having answers -and doing research. I’ve been guilty of doing too much research looking for answers that aren’t available. The best lesson I learned from teaching the high school Brit lit class at our co-op is that I need to keep it simple. You can only cover so much information in an hour. I would spend so much time looking up dates, and terms and styles and contemporary works, that I shorted time on the text. I was guilty of what Flannery O’Connor accuses reading teachers: of reducing works to a theme or moral or social studies: 

"The High School English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility, if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands." (Mystery and Manners)

Also reading The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. Grabbed it off the New Fiction shelf as I was checking out at the library where all the homeless hang. It’s about a poet who has to write a preface to a new anthology of rhyming poetry, but he suffers from major writer’s block and from the break-up of his love affair, among other sorrows, but he’s actually still capable of hope and moments of joy, particularly when expounding on his favorite poets. The main character is a little pathetic, like one of Richard Russo’s heroes (breezed through That Old Cape Magic; glad I didn’t spend more time on it, yawn.), but I’m thoroughly enjoying the musings on poetry and literature and the praise of rhythm and rhyme. Inspiring me to pick up some poetry. Wish I had read both these books before teaching Brit Lit.

Kids started reading an Eoin Colfer book. I can't keep up with what they're reading, but I just started to reread The Great Gilly Hopkins after reading the Katherine Paterson book about her writing. She does have a gift for painting a picture with words.

Just love books about books …

Gracias

It is a wonderful thing to have friends who are willing to drop everything to help you.

Yesterday I talked to a friend from Illinois who was one of these kind.  She and her husband took my boys all day when I was having a baby. And they would've kept them longer if needed. Our friendship grew because we had the same number of kids who were about the same age, we were homeschooling, and did NFP.  Five years after moving from Illinois we're still in touch. She is recently recovering from cancer.

This weekend, I talked to our friends from Virginia who are the next best thing to relations. They, too, we met because we were homeschooling kids about the same age and were open to more.  We're planning a camping trip to Tallulah Gorge in Georgia in a couple of weeks. Can't wait. If I died, these friends are the type who'd take in all the kids.

Now here we are in Mississippi. Last night at the park, just as we were about to leave, my monkey boy jumped/fell off the slide and cut open his head on a bar. The park we were visiting was right next to the fire station, so we were able to get a little clean-up and bandage work done by the EMT's before heading off to the hospital to get staples (his 3rd set). And fortunately for me, we were also near our new friends' house, friends with kids about the same age, open to inviting 5 more in, so I didn't have to corrale them all at the ER for 2 and a half hours.  It is reassuring to know we have friends to call on in a pinch. I am grateful.

Community isn't always just the place where you live.

"A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves."  - Wendell Berry in "The Loss of the Future" from The Long Legged House.

Corrections/Additions

Yesterday evening I received a very nice note from Cindy of the butterfly sighting site, Journey North, which gently and with tact questioned whether perhaps what I might have seen was the Gulf Fritillary, which migrates earlier than the Monarch and only goes so far as Florida. After examining the photos she sent (and realizing that the butterflies I saw were heading east), I concede she is correct. The Gulf Fritillary is a Monarch mocker.  Perhaps if I had spent more time helping my brother with his entomology projects in 4th grade, I would've realized, although I'm pretty sure the Gulf Fritillary is not often found in Indiana. This new knowledge hasn't lessened the delight of the experience, but made me realize that although insect identifiers might not receive as much attention from marketers as bird watchers, they still have a fascinating hobby.

Yesterday evening I also talked on the phone to my husband, who is still in Africa. Ramadan has just ended, so the Djiboutian interpreters brought in to the office a meal to share: young roast goat, a salad with tuna, carrots and peas, rice, simosas, fish, bread. A feast. A moment of communion between Muslims and Christians. A small bridge built.

Djibouti

Ugandan cornfield

Ugandan homesMy handsome husband on a small bridge built by Seabees in Uganda

A little boy with miraculous medal enjoying his sweets from the Seabees.

More beautiful photos from Kenya on my sister's other friend's blog.

Science in Action

My youngest wanted to walk the bridge today, probably because the past couple of times we have done it we've had company. (There's a 2 mile bridge that spans the opening where Back Bay meets the Mississippi Sound.  Rebuilt after Katrina, it features a wide pedestrian walkway and a great view.  Mississippians trying to shed the stigma of living in the fattest state in the union now have a place to walk, jog, or bike 4 miles round trip without fear of getting hit by a pickup, esp. one wearing these.) I hesitated, but decided I could use the workout, so changed to jogging clothes and loaded up the baby jogger.

After being helped by a friendly security guard at the casino parking lot to inflate the bj's tires, we got underway. Without anyone but a three year old to talk to, I thought it might be a long trip, but then we started noticing the butterflies. First in singles, then duos and trios, septuplets ... I was slow to realize that we were witnessing the migration of the Monarchs to Mexico.  That mythic journey I'd read about in science books was taking place now. Butterflies whizzed by in drunken flight, blown about by the traffic's airstream.  They seemed to follow the bridge, as if they would follow the coast before crossing to Mexico. They were surprisingly fast.

I counted 235 during the 4 mile run.  Saw a couple sulfurs and at least 1 comma (or was it a question mark?) resting on the walkway barrier, so more tagalongs might have been mixed in the crowd.  The seagulls seemed to ignore them. Not good eating, I guess. I wonder if any had come down from Indiana.

                                                                                              Flickr photo from wolfpix

Glad I went - I felt like a part of history in the making.  From this site, it looks like this is just the beginning. (Ok, I reported the sighting.) Fly high, fly swift, little butterflies!

Someone new to read

Listened to this interview with Irish poet and former priest John O'Donohue on NPR this morning, which set my mind spinning before Mass. Fortunately, the topic was beauty and God. Now to hunt down some of his works, although I'm curious about why he left the priesthood - or maybe the right question is why did he become a priest in the first place. This interview offers some insight - and more food for thought.  Maybe there's a reason his name is unfamiliar to me, but if our library has one of his books, I'll be thrilled. At one point in time I thought I might write a dissertation on the theology of beauty (or on the metaphoric meaning of marriage in Wendell Berry's works); I keep following threads even though the idea of a research paper sounds like purgatory now.

What we watched today

The Olivia books: cute and clever

The Olivia show: dull drivel

Ian, why did you sell out?

Africa

My husband has been on a trip to East Africa, a trip I wish I could have gone along on, but found the prospect too daunting because of the short duration and vast logistics of his travel plans.  The base he's visiting has potable water trucked in for drinking and laundry. It's hard to sustain our way of life there; it's easier to live in a grass hut and become resistant to the parasites that live in the water, if you don't perish first. The children beg for sweets, but if you give them too many, then will their teeth rot?

So Africa is still on my list of places to see before I die.  It used to be tops of the list when I was a kid because it had so many animals - one, big, open air zoo, right.  But now I want to witness the scenes where Cry, the Beloved Country, Left to Tell, Out of Africa, and even the Alexander McCall series, are set, although movies like Hotel Rwanda and Last King of Scotland (did I mention it stars James McEvoy?) highlight the dangers.

Last year at a cub scout camp I met a woman whose parents were missionaries in Africa, just like in the Poisonwood Bible, about which I had mixed emotions although it fed my fascination with missionaries and the children of missionaries (Could I embrace deprivation and find the faith/bravado to drop everything and go where we aren't necessarily welcome?). This woman didn't wear shoes until she was sent away to boarding school in about 5th grade.  I didn't get to know her well enough to pry as much as I'd like, but she had mixed emotions about the experience.

But then what kid doesn't have mixed emotions about their parents' way of life?

My sister's friend is living in Africa, in Rwanda, and writes about it here.

Bedtime Reading

Started reading Abel's Island by William Steig to the kids. I loved it as a kid, which along with Felix Salten's Fifteen Rabbits, I read more than once - unusual for me. Reading it again, I have to ask why I liked it so much, other than it's an animal story, has Steig's grown up vocabulary, and the mice wear handsome 1920ish attire, like something from J. Peterman. I don't think I picked up on the fact it's a rework of Robinson Crusoe, and probably would've liked it less if I had known. Maybe I desired my own room so much I loved the idea of my own island even better. So tonight I could sympathize with my melancholic son, who moaned about wanting his own room as the youngers, supposedly listening, steam rolled and hooted and hollered at each other. I don't blame him for wanting a little piece and quiet.

Maybe it's time for a canoe.

Bird Watching

Every morning we drive by a pier down the street that is really only pilings left after Katrina. Although it is in a prime location, I hope it is never rebuilt. One of the highlights of our morning drive is counting the pelicans roosting there. Top count is 14. To this midwesterner who didn't see the ocean until I was driving age, and then only from a plane, pelicans are fascinating. Somehow I had the impression they were rare, but they are everywhere here. How can you help but wonder how their absurdity can be explained by natural selection? They rather seem proof of the whimsy of God. Their heads look like wooden spoons tucked under their wings.

During the day, the pilings are covered with seagulls and the occasional cormorant, which always reminds me of The Story of Ping and tossing little boys overboard to catch fish.

But at night, (we don't have a decent camera, or I'd sneak down and try to get a photo of this), the cattle egret roost on the pier. They hunch up into their bodies and look like luminous white barnacles or whelk clinging to the pilings.

(First shot is from Flickr. Sorry one is mine.)

profiles

Is it a sign of vanity to keep changing my profile photo?

Working

A couple of days ago, the local public broadcasting radio show had the call-in question, "Do you think children turn out better when one parent stays home?" I wanted to call in and say what a stupid question, but refrained, assuming they were hoping to raise hackles to lure in callers (similar to discussions about marriage.)

As a stay-at-home mother, I don't want the pressure of having to prove my kids are "better." First of all, what is a "better" kid? How many stay-at-home moms have kids who have issues? My own, for starters. Did I originally stay home because I believed it would be better for my kids? Sure. And because, as a liberal arts major, I didn't have any really great financial prospects. I had high-minded ideals about marriage and family, and still have ideals, but also am learning to live with a reality that is quite different from what I imagined.

From time to time I have taken low-paying jobs for the satisfaction of having a job. And perhaps out of pride, which was damaged once when I ran into a professor, whose decidedly dull "oh" in response to my answer that I was staying home with kids, cut deeply. I also was disappointed to lose out on a community college teaching job this fall when classes were cut, even though I was in a tizzy trying to arrange babysitting for my 3 yr old.

So yesterday I subbed at my son's high school. I loved meeting his classmates, I enjoy being around kids that age, and I like standing up in front of a class asking questions and telling kids what to think (or sitting behind a computer . . . ). But it was painful to get my own kids up extra early, drop the 3 yr old at the institutional day care center on base, drop off younger kids at friends' house for a ride to school, and drive to older's school, and then run the route backwards on the way home. And I was so tired at the end of the day that I drank coffee and stayed up way too late reading blogs.

But I did take a little extra time to sit and read stories to the youngers after the running around was over. Whereas sometimes when I'm home, I let them go do their own thing more than I engage with them. Instead of playing with them, I clean, cook, fiddle with paperwork, work on volunteer duties, etc.

So I feel like defending working moms. But after my brief day of work yesterday, I don't know how they do it all without fizzling. Then again, I don't know how some stay at home moms do all they do - I admit to experiencing a twinge of envy/awe when reading some blogs. Heck, I fizzled out from home schooling. More on that later.

No perfect answer, no perfect kids. More indication that despite breeding, bearing, and bringing them up, I have no control over their souls.

(All I had to do yesterday was show "The Fellowship of the Ring" and pass out a worksheet. A line, straight from the book, stood out: when Frodo wishes that none of this had happened, Gandalf's voice says, "And so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for you to decide. All you have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to you." A good reminder to redeem the time we have, at home or away...

At the home cinema

On Saturday, we watched Revolutionary Road. I checked this out with trepidation from the library. I knew it was about a troubled marriage, but I was so thrilled to find a new release I couldn't resist, even though Leonardo DiCaprio irks me. (Why couldn't they have cast James McEvoy?)

We even debated watching it, but Dan checked out the Bishops review, and since they didn't give it an O, although they warned about "excessive smoking," we popped it in.

This is no heartstring tugger. Rather, a stomach churner.

But we watched it all the way through, and when it was over questioned whether we had just wasted 2 hours. But over gin and seltzers (influenced by all the martinis consumed in the film), we talked ourselves into believing it was less of a narrative and more of a parable about self-destruction with a backwards message of redemption.

Short Summary: The characterization is flat: Kate and Leonardo (April and Frank Wheeler) fall in love quickly. She wants to be an actress, and he's a longboatman, trying to avoid being an officeman like his father. But she finds him fascinating (first clue.) Plotline is thinly developed: After they get married, get pregnant, and move to the suburbs where she makes one last, failed attempt at being an actress, life starts to stall. He goes to work with a mass of clones, eventually has a shortlived affair with a secretary, before April decides they really are something special, and so they should run away to Paris to prove it to themselves and everyone else. The emotions are hyperstrung: they blow up at each other for small provocations. Children are rarely present and only as backdrop. They drink and smoke constantly: a sign of dis-ease. And the ending is depressing: April has a home abortion and dies after Frank uses her pregnancy as a reason to cancel on the trip to Paris, when he wants to take a promotion at his hateful place of employment.

It's a tricky movie. For a while you want to sympathize with one or another of the characters. Who hasn't felt they are destined for something important? Who hasn't felt stunted or trapped by their job? Who hasn't thought life would be better only if we lived somewhere more exciting? So the Wheelers are an Everycouple of sorts that buys into the individualistic creed of modern times. They really aren't distinguished by special talents, other than by the extent of their self-absorption. Only the movie's madman thinks they are right to run away to Paris. Although perhaps the tragic ending would seem to confirm the idea that really they should have gone away, but they would have taken their selfishness with them. Frank, with no real gifts, likely wouldn't discover his true vocation and would resent April's work. April would probably run away with some Frenchman. April keeps talking about how she wants Frank to "be a man," but her Parisian plan is emasculating. What Frank really needs is some physical labor to give his life meaning.

Now the ending: Did April's death cause Frank to be more attentive to his kids? Did it cause the neighbor couple to love each other more? Are we supposed to see ourselves in the role of the real estate agent's husband, who turns off his hearing aid so that he doesn't hear his wife's disparaging, self-assured censure of the Wheelers?

So maybe this movie, although dark in the vein of Graham Greene and O'Connor, wasn't completely nihilistic after all, but a portrait of how selfishness leads to self-damnation.

Off the shelf

We finished Saving Private Ryan last night, and although perhaps the stoic in me wants to say that it pulls the heartstrings a little too hard, I did love the ending. And in a year or two, I'll let the boys watch it and hope that they remember to "earn it." We all owe our existence to the sacrifices of others. Only sometimes that is hard to remember when we're making our own.

So today the kids are watching a more age appropriate but probably time wasting film: G Force. Dad's on duty, and I'm reading blogs. I meant this to be something of a book review blog, so here are some quotes from what I'm reading lately:

From Katherine Paterson's The Invisible Child:
In "In Search of Wonder" she talks about books providing children a source to wonder at nature - human and the natural world, at language, and at the mystery of meaning. She writes: "If knowledge without a sense of reverence is dangerous, morality divorced from wonder leads either to chilling legalism or priggish sentimentality . . . When I write a book I am not setting out to teach virture I am trying to tell a story, I am trying to draw my reader into the mystery of human life in this world. I am trying to share my own sense of wonder that although I have not always been in this world and will not continue in it for too many more years, I am here now, sharing in the mystery of the universe, thinking, feeling, tasting, smelling,seeing, hearing, shouting, singing, speaking, laughing, crying, living, and dying."

She goes on to say we need to share with children the wonder of death as well as the wonder of birth. So someday we'll let the boys watch this movie, but now maybe The Fighting Sullivans is what we should look for.

I liked this too: "Meaning in a story reflects our belief that there is meaning in the universe, that no matter the disorder that frames our lives, in the center -- in the place that reveals who we are -- there is order."

I remember loving Paterson's books as a preteen. After rereading Bridge to Terabithia as an adult, I hesitated to recommend it to my kids, but after reading this collection of essays, I agree with what she is about. She says in "The Invisible Child" that people criticize her work for being hopeless or having unlovable characters, which hurts her because she loves her characters. "It is my hope, of course, that children will find these characters to be real children like themselves -- that they will be able to see themselves in them and then as they come to love and forgive these people on the page to be able to forgive and love their own deepest selves. . . . We do well to be suspicious of love that comes too easily."

Likewise, Flannery O'Connor rails against writing uplifting, moral stories, that reflect the prosperity of America and the joy of life in "The Fiction Writer and His Country" in Mystery and Manners. (I'm going to try to revisit Southern lit while I'm here, although O'C also rejects labelling regional writers. "Most readers these days must be sufficiently sick of hearing about Southern writers and Southern writing and what so many reviewers insist upon calling the 'Southern school'. . . . The writers of the editorial in question suggest that our anguish is a result of our isolation from the rest of the country. ... The anguish that most of us have observed for some time now has been caused not by the fact that the South is alienated from the rest of the country, but by the fact that it is not alienated enough . . . The woods are full of regional writers, and it is the great horror of every serious Southern writer that he will become one of them." Even more, I imagine, would she cringe at being included with the ya-ya sisterhoods and sweet potato pie queens and all their knock-offs that lack even the sense of being "Christ-haunted.")



Back to the comparison with Paterson: "My own feeling is that writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eyes for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable. . . Redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in the actual life we live, adn for the last few centuries there has been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause."

And like Paterson, O'C refuses to write the uplifting fiction the "tired reader" wants. "There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration."

Which brings me back to last night's film and reminds me of the tragedy described by Pentimento. Real darkness is out there. But still we hope for light. And keep trying to earn it despite recurring failures.

War

Last night my husband and I sat down to watch Saving Private Ryan. My 12 yr old has been begging to watch it ever since a fellow history buff friend of his was given the privilege and filled my son in on the blow by blow events of the movie. So I promised to preview it, since I had never seen it before. The library here had a copy in yesterday, so I checked it out, fully intending to let my oldest 2 boys watch it over the weekend. My husband popped it in the player last night, even though we were tired and ready to crash after putting the kids down.

"Just watch the first 15 minutes and you'll know whether you want them to see this or not."

45 minutes later I finally peeled myself off the couch and turned it off. "Definitely not."

I knew this movie had a lot of explicit images of warfare and death, but I wasn't prepared for the extremity. While watching bodies blown through the air, the beach stained with blood, medics stuffing guts back in stomachs, and a dazed soldier picking up his arm and walking away, I was in a state of disbelief. How much of this was poetic license? How could someone survive and continue to function, let alone continue to fight in combat or to run into enemy territory to save a fellow soldier, after experiencing such a bloodbath?

There aren't very many World War II veterans left. Their stories are being lost.

And I haven't seen that many flags flying at halfmast today in honor of September 11. I'm ashamed to admit we don't have a flag pole ourselves, just a little flag windsock.

Despite the revulsion at warfare this movie induces, I don't believe we'll ever live in a time where there isn't a war being fought somewhere. Human nature is just too easily provoked to anger. I want peace for all mankind, too, but believe we'll only find it in when the brutish part of our nature is dead. Is the hunt for Private Ryan redemptive? I guess I'll have to watch the rest of the movie tonight.

Aside from the graphic imagery of the movie, imagery that imprints on the brain in a way that written descriptions don't, there is another reason why we decided this movie was inappropriate for our kid. His father is deploying in a few months to a country where bombs are blowing arms off, and guts are splayed open, and people are shot in the head. We thought this war would be long over before his turn to go came up, and now we're kind of thankful that he's having a chance to do his duty, and to give some of these other servicepeople a chance to go home. We feel a little guilty for not having to had to make the sacrifice yet.

I know modern warfare is a lot cleaner than it used to be, and I fully expect that my husband will return home safely in six or seven months, but I don't need to be putting out nightmares every night he's gone. I'm sure there will be enough without watching movies like this. Thanks to all those other wives who have comforted their children in the middle of the night during their father's absence.


And for those we remember today:
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Enmeshment

One of the few things that lodged in our memories after my husband and I took our marriage prep inventory is the categorizing of our families of origins. I can't remember what his family's label was, only that it was the diametric opposite of my family of origin, which was given the title "chaotically enmeshed."

This is obvious when my cousin calls from 500 miles away to ask if I'm pregnant before I've taken a pregnancy test.

Or, like a couple nights ago, when my husband asked if I had a blog. He heard it from my dad who heard it from my sister (who tends to be entangled in many of these grapevines). This was after I had made one post. He was worried I was trying to keep it secret. I was worried about having anything to say. Why did I want to blog?

I admit, I was very anti-blog the first time I heard about them, which was about 5 yrs ago, when a friend told us about his friend's blog. So I logged on and read it and was infuriated at wasting my time and at his semi-illiterate, profanity-laden comments criticizing some girl on the El for reading The Brothers Karamazov. Blogs seemed like the place for ego trips and mommy updates. Neither one did I want to read.

And, sorry, this one will probably be little different: I want to make note of the things I find myself forgetting which I want to remember and wanting to make a story out of the experiences we're going through. And a place to write done what I'm reading - if I can remember.

Plus I don't scrapbook.

Local Color

I should point out that there is more than one thing to smile about around this place. Yesterday it was passing a sign on a stripmall storefront church that advertised the preaching of "Juan 'the prophet' O'Neill." I'm sure he gives a good sermon.

And today it was the guy sitting on a cooler at the bottom of the highway exit ramp holding up a ratty cardboard sign that read, "Why lie? I need $$ for beer."

And I'm guessing why people keep their coolers out on their front porches: They really stink after being loaded up with fresh fish and shrimp.

Interlopers

Today another military wife who grew up just a couple hours away asked if I felt like we were settling in. We have now lived in this house for 2 whole months. We have pictures on the walls. I have found places to shop other than Walmart. I've figured out a few routes to run. But I still feel like a newcomer.

Is it because I'm from the north and this is the deep south? I'm really midwestern and have more in common with the people here than those on the east coast, where we had been living for 4 years. Is it because it is so darn hot and humid here? It gets hot enough back home to smell alfalfa cooking, a sweet smell of summer.

Maybe it is because I feel sad driving around here. So many homes boarded up (hurricane shutters or washed out windows?), yards grown over with weeds, rusted out cars and old coolers parked out front. There isn't really an urban center because it was washed away by Katrina. The devastation of that storm is still plainly evident four years later, and I feel a little guilty when I complain about this place. The proportion of destruction is difficult to imagine. Perhaps more difficult to understand is why people came back. Why rebuild multimillion dollar casinos on the beach, daring another storm to destroy them? Do they make that much money? The perseverence of the people is awe-inspiring, but their daring is even more surprising. Perhaps because I dug up my own roots and moved on, became a displaced person by choice, I wonder why not resettle somewhere safer. But then what place is really safe?

Yesterday afternoon, we spent an hour driving around trying to find a little trail I had read about in a magazine. When the whining of the kids had finally convinced us to head home, we suddenly came upon the trail head, just a few miles down from the casinos. We all hopped out and walked the short trail. We surprised small lizards, giant grasshoppers (looking like they were painted by Walter Anderson, a local artist, my son pointed out), a moth that hovered and flitted like a hummingbird, and a marsh grown over with pitcher plants, an orchidlike plant I didn't recognize, and a vivid red lily. I plan to buy a Gulf Coast plant identification book. I want to go back with my camera. A connection to this place has formed. Now I just need to take the time to eat a good po'boy.

P.S. After a little searching, I think what I thought was an orchid is really the blossom of the pitcher plant.

From arbolz

Misunderstandings

Yesterday I had one of those nightmarish moments while driving down the street when I saw emergency vehicles and then realized it was my family in the car that was pulled over. My parents were visiting, so my husband, dad and 5 kids were in one car, and my mom and I and the other kid were in the other. "That's Daddy," said my daughter from the backseat as we drove by. I quickly turned to go around the block back to where a fire engine and 3 police cars were parked as an ambulance came whining around the corner. "That's my family!" I yelled to the police officer waving on traffic. Thanks be to God, no one was injured. My husband had lightly tapped a small sedan with our large GMC Yukon XL.

Neither car had any damage, but after the fear of injury left, the fear of losing money set in. The driver of the other car was extremely upset and nervous. He had refused to move his car because, as he told my husband, "I can't trust you! It might ruin my case!" He asked to be taken in the ambulance to the hospital, because "you never know what might be hurt," and his car was towed. As my husband filled me in on these details (including the policeman's comment: "That guy is nuttier than squirrel shit."), I began to envision a conspiracy at work. This guy must have just been begging for an accident. He accelerated and braked on purpose so he would get rear-ended. He was planning to sue us. My mom and I went back to the scene of the "incident" to take photos and ended up following the tow truck so I could obtain evidence to convince the prosecutors that no damage was caused to the vehicle. For 24 hours I was consumed by imagined courtroom dramas in which I either fall down crying in front of a money-grubbing, ambulance chasing lawyer or I stand up and launch into an attack on the prosecutor and the system for taking advantage of my family. I scripted various defenses and responses to calls from the insurance company and lawyers.

Then after Mass the next day, we received a call from the young man in the sedan's father. He had come to town from Texas to pick up his son and was calling to let us know there would be no lawsuit. His son has Asperger's syndrome and had been in an accident a few years ago where he was taken advantage of. He had followed his father's instructions never to trust anyone and always to call for help. The father was very apologetic and talked for some length about how his son loved to come to town to eat crab legs at the casino buffets for a little vacation. Perhaps he feared that this incident would end his son's limited independence. He thanked my husband for his patience and hung up.

As my husband filled me in on the details of the call, remorse and pity set in. I had wasted at least a day fearing the worst. I had let anxiety and distrust construct an elaborate situation that almost seemed inevitable. And I had wildly miscast the main character's intentions and motivations. Perhaps I should be calling the father of this guy to apologize for jumping to conclusions.

Moving

When I was in high school, I had big dreams of going to college in some big, busy city far from my quiet, rural midwestern town. I ended up going to college a few hours from home in the same state. It was a good school with some great teachers and students from all over the place, but there was a tiny part of me that thought maybe I'll go to graduate school in a big city and live in a little garret. Then I met and fell in love with my husband. And what luck! He was in Navy ROTC, so I now had a ticket to see the world! We haven't been stationed overseas, but we've had our chances to visit foreign countries and to see the country to a certain extent. And most places where we've lived have been close to water. Hence the title of this blog. That, and the fact that we do have a view of back bay from our back

yard. (Same bay, someone else's yard in the title.)

The irony is that now I sometimes daydream about a little farm somewhere in the midwest where we can stay put and grow things, including roots.

I write that last line knowing that we are settling in, at least putting in surface fibrous roots, if not deep tap roots. With each move, my first impressions are how different everything is; my last reflections as we leave are about how we've come to love the people and places where we have been. My kids are growing up in a very different way than I did. But I hope, trust, that at some point in time they find that there is only one place where home is not a relative term.

Getting Started

Perhaps if I start my own blog, I won't spend so much time reading other people's postings and feeling small for not accomplishing more with my time. And I'm hoping to centralize a place to note thoughts on what I've read, what we've done, what's going on, so that as my memory declines, I'll have a place to come and jog it, instead of trying to remember where I jotted something. The thought of starting a blog has been intimidating because there are so many good ones out there - what's the point of adding more mediocrity to the pool? But a note in a book I was browsing the other night encouraged me to get started. From Katherine Patterson's The Invisible Child: "When I protested to [her mentor] that I didn't want to add another mediocre writer to the world, she gently reminded me that if I didn't dare mediocrity, I would never write anything at all."

So this is the answer to a dare.

And I finally settled on a title that wasn't taken.