So many little things

I have been thinking of many things lately but with little time to process them; perhaps it is time for a quick takes type post?

1. While Northern California is suffering from wildfires, it has been scorching hot down here. School was out one whole day and two half days for heat because temps were in the 90s and the school is not air-conditioned. I was sorry I didn't neglect responsibilities and head to the hills. I have been craving a camping trip this fall, but it doesn't look like we'll have a weekend away after all.  I worried about my new friend I had made because I'm sure she doesn't have air conditioning either, but she called me yesterday out of the blue. I'm glad she remembered me and that now I have her number because a big locked gate surrounds her house, making it impossible to knock on her door.

2. A great deal of thought lately has been devoted to college applications. Our third son is in the thick of essay writing for an early decision deadline. I am once again knocking my head on the wall for not encouraging him to write more this summer.  I vowed this time would be different after the angst and suffering of watching the older boys write and writhe over this process, and yet here we are again with five days until the deadline and essays still needing revision. Life keeps interrupting.

3. One happy distraction is planning for our preschool co-op, which is going well.  About 8 moms and 12 kids (3 of whom are siblings in the 10-16 month range) are meeting Monday mornings at our church for a couple hours of stories, songs, and crafts. I've been having fun picking out activities from cheery online resources, although I am usually the story person and not the craft lady.  The idea is that each mom prepares for a station and that we'll rotate each month. The stations are circle time with prayer, story and sharing, then craft and activity - usually planned by a mom who has an OT background, so she incorporates gross and fine motor skills, then snack, music and movement, free play, and a final story. But someone is always absent, so we have only changed jobs a couple times, which perhaps is just as well because we are getting into a good routine. The kids know what to expect and are happy to be together. We have a good mix of boys and girls.  LC loves it - it is just the right mix of organized activity and unstructured fun. She comes home and asks for homework - coloring pages and letter pages and cut and paste number pages. Then on Wednesdays we have been meeting for a field trip or a park playdate. We were supposed to go to the pumpkin patch yesterday, but with the heat, we just went to the beach.

4. I had an interview the other day to teach at another community college, but I think I blew it accidentally on purpose. At the school where I am teaching now on base, enrollment is way down, so I only have one small class. With another kid heading to college next year, I'd like to add another class to my schedule, although with this pre-school thing, teaching CRE, and managing - or mismanaging - home life, I want the timing to be on my terms. So I filled out some online applications and got an email invitation to an interview. The drawback was that it was at the campus on the north side of the county a half an hour away without traffic.  I liked the dean of the department when I met her and being on a real campus again in a department - as opposed to the little regional office with two classrooms on base where I work now - was invigorating.  But in the interview, I revealed my limited schedule. I haven't heard anything back. I think about emailing to reconnect, but then I think, I don't really want that job anyway. The little one will be in kindergarten in two years. And as much as I think about what I would be doing if I didn't have a three-year-old, I continue to ponder homeschooling again.

5. The class I am teaching is going well. I had a student who actually asked for more work and not just anything - he thought Engl 102 was going to be a literature course, which at other institutions it often is, but not this one. This English 102 is focused on writing research papers. Over the last couple terms, I have trimmed the syllabus because students weren't doing the readings, weren't turning things in. Now should I lengthen it again? I am making up a list of recommended readings and will send him some vocabulary words for discussing vocabulary and a few prompts for paper topics centered around literature. And I'm rethinking my approach.  Meanwhile, I've been frustrated with my daughter's English teacher who consistently gives low marks on writing assignments but gives no feedback or explanation of his scoring. He handed out a rubric at the beginning of the term, but he doesn't indicate how the points he gives correlate to the rubric. In other words, he writes a number on the top of the paper and that's it. No other marks. As a teacher who devotes a lot of time to feedback so my students can actually learn from their mistakes (if they read it), I am almost irrationally irritated. I've told her to go and talk to him, but I also want to send a scornful email accusing him of laziness.d

6. Boy Scouts - Why? Why? Why? This is old news, but if you haven't heard, Boy Scouts of America is now allowing girls to join.  On their website it sounds like Packs and Troops will have the choice of whether or not to admit girls in separate parallel groups or in co-ed "family" groups.  On the one hand, I have often wished that my girls had the option to join something more like Boy Scouts.  My daughter and I both had negative experiences with our one year of Brownies - nothing particularly egregious; we mostly felt bored and we hate to sell cookies.  The challenge to success inherent in the programs offered by Girl Scouts is that the individual leaders determine the direction of the group, and if they are not outdoorsy types, then camping, hiking, boating, and those kinds of things don't happen.  I understand why women and girls are attracted to the program BSA offers.  However, I am skeptical about the success of a co-ed group. BSA already has Venture Crew and Explorers, which are co-ed groups for high schoolers. They haven't really taken off most places. My real fear is that the type of moms who are already involved in Boy Scouts are often the type who take the fun out of things by being bureaucrats and safety police - not that safety and rules aren't important, but the focus on paperwork and what not to do tend to limit what you can do. I am concerned that with more girls involved, more moms will get involved and soon the problems of Girl Scouts will be the problems of Boy Scouts. My first choice would be to continue the program that allows the boys to enjoy time with other boys and male mentors, and give the girls the opportunity to do something similar but different, which may be what happens with these parallel groups. I used to love the program I did with my dad called Indian Princesses (not politically correct anymore) through the YMCA. We camped, carved, burned wood and leather, and learned other outdoors skills. It was super fun and special to spend time with my dad doing outdoorsy, survival things.

The other complaint I would make to BSA is to bemoan the way this announcement was made - a public relations nightmare. Most of our scouting friends were completely caught off guard by this decision. It seems like a tyrannical move on the part of the Board of Directors to make the announcement with little conversation about the change among members. And it feels like a betrayal in a way of their own core principles. Of course, the reason why they did it without discussion is obvious - they didn't want to negotiate.

We are not quitting boy scouts - or scouting. I could be wrong in my pessimistic expectations.  Maybe LC will even be a scout. But I'm not celebrating the change.

7. We went to a dinner the other night (see top photo on the previous post) for the Seabee Historical Foundation.  We were one of the younger couples there. It was a night to honor the Navy's Construction Battalions and Civil Engineer Corps and to thank donors to the Seabee museum. And it was also a night of stories told by retirees about their experiences and about the generation that preceded them and that founded the branch of the Navy that builds and fights. One guy told a story about how during an air raid in Vietnam, the Seabees positioned themselves near the runway. As soon as the enemy finished bombing the runway and had flown off, the Seabees would come in with shovels and dirt and fill the holes. They don't get the glory, but they make it possible for others to do their job without dying.

There was another young couple at our table. The Seabee was from Appalachia, and his wife was from Poland. She had less of an accent than he did. But his hobby is working with programming and 3D printers and the programs he designs in his spare time are so complex I can't explain them here. So he wants to get out of the military soon and work on these models. What impressed me about his story is the contrast of his impoverished youth with his ingenuity and optimism about possibilities. Growing up without running water did not limit his imagination or confidence.

8. I have been missing fall weather and color, missing our older boys, missing having time to go on a weekend camping trip, longing to move away from our busy street corner in a busy city to someplace quieter, more pastoral. Here is link to a trailer for a movie about Wendell Berry: https://vimeo.com/216446791

It's a melancholy time of year, almost November, "no fruits, no flowers, no birds, no leaves - November!"
Remembering that old poem by Thomas Hood (I had to look up the author) reminds me to share a link to an article about Richard Wilbur, perhaps my favorite that has been passed around following his death: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/06/gods-patient-stet. From Mystery and Manners.

Some Days

Practicing being a princess fairy

Go Irish, Beast USC!

Meeting up with little Junipero Serro at Mission San Luis Rey

Sunny days are for swinging

Save. 

The overseer

Sunrise

A small adventure

Last week, I met a new friend, only now I don't know how to reach out to her.

LC (the toddler who is growing up much too fast) and I were walking home from big sister's volleyball game yesterday when we spied an elderly resident trying to push a full grocery buggy up the curb. The wheels were caught on the irregular pavement.  I helped her pull her cart up onto the sidewalk. She was grateful, but refused any further help and carried on down the sidewalk very, very slowly with her heavy load, after she assured me that pushing cartfulls of groceries a mile was her way of maintaining health and vigor in her eighties, the proof being that she had not been to the doctor in thirty years.

So LC and I continued home, but I couldn't stop thinking about her. I had noticed an address sticker, the kind that comes free in the mail from organizations that want a donation, on the handle of her cart, so I put walking shoes on LC and the two of us walked to her house a few blocks away from ours and found her just unlocking her gate.

For a brief moment, I hesitated at the corner.  Dare I step into the life of another person? Should I leave her to her independence, or just pretend I happened to pass by? Do I turn away from engagement with another human being or do I involve myself in someone else's story?

I finally turned the corner and called out some platitude about making it home safely. Although at first my neighbor again asserted her independence, she seemed delighted to see us, and finally accepted our help unloading her full load of groceries, almost entirely bottles of Ensure and cranberry juice, out of the cart onto her front step.  The step was not to a door she used, though, so she was going to have to carry them, practically bottle by bottle to the house. I offered to carry them to the kitchen for her, but she declined my help. Then she launched into a long story about how she had built the house herself after her husband died and her contractors ran away with $80,000. First she told me about applying the stucco, then about digging six foot holes for concrete reinforcement for the fence posts, themselves reinforced with one inch rebar.  Next she told me about building her bedroom. "Do you want to see it?"

An invitation was offered that felt rude to refuse, and she wanted to give us some dried fruit from her many trees. Noting some fig trees, I was tempted. (little did I realize the fruit was so old as to be practically mummified.) So we followed her in.  When she locked the gate behind us, I felt a little like I was stepping into a Hansel and Gretel story.

The inside of her house felt even more like a haunted house. Dark and musty. Boxes and stacks of books and magazines everywhere. Ancient furnishings. Odd statues and tschotskes, some pretty, some not so pretty, things from a tourist kiosk or a grandchild's gift.

She did not seem embarrassed by the clutter. She might be called a hoarder, because the kitchen counter was covered by recycled plastic yogurt cups, reused plastic bags, plastic lids, and paper towels drying to be used again. On the floor in front of all the cupboards were stacked boxes of Ensure, several more of which had just been purchased.

Her hands were young and strong looking. Maybe she did build the house and lay the tile and smooth the stucco.  She showed me the stairs she built and the bathroom she tiled and the floors she laid. She showed me pictures she brought from Europe and pictures of her only son. He always went to private school because she knew what was in public schools - sex and drugs. She told me how her mother just died at 104 in the Netherlands and that she had had 18 children.  She said she had a daughter, but she thinks her husband killed it as an infant when she was sleeping. She gave me a bag of dried fruit and told me about her dehydrator, but I am guessing it was dried out years ago. She told me how she loved to read history and how she loved gardening and leaned out her upstairs windows to pick the fruit. A tour of her backyard led me to guess that she hadn't harvested fruit for a year or two because the trees looked thirsty and withered, long past bearing. She told me she wanted to sell her house for 2.5 million dollars and move to Fatima because she had such a feeling of God's presence and peace when she visited there, as opposed to Lourdes.  This was the day before the 100th anniversary of Fatima.

I finally had to go home to make dinner, and she walked me halfway back to my house. I asked her for her phone number, but she couldn't remember, so she told me to leave her a note, which I did the next day, but her gate was locked so that I could knock on the door.  I haven't seen her out.  Now a week has passed since I've seen her - very quickly for me, perhaps not so for her -  and I am worried that she won't remember who I am or that I forgot her.  Today is another busy day, but I am going to walk by and leave another note. Maybe she will answer if I call out. Another friend at church knows her, but not well and doesn't see her out much anymore.

I wonder how many of these houses here have a lonely person living inside. With this being a tourist area, it is easy to assume that most of the houses belong to the upwardly mobile or real estate investors. But there are some people who perhaps have been forgotten, and soon their stories will be lost, too.

At the home place once more

This past weekend, a super sale on airfare enabled us to fly the family back to Indiana to surprise my dad for his 70th birthday.  He had just had surgery to repair a torn patellar tendon, so our trip was also a wish-you-well visit.  Although the process of traveling -taking a red-eye, sitting in cramped seats, waiting for a rental car - is not always pleasant, the excitement of being on a journey, on a vacation, even if very short, and the joy of arrival, the pleasures of being together, always overwhelm the minor inconveniences.

One of the refreshing parts of this trip was the preview of fall weather.  The leaves hadn't changed to auburn and gold yet, but the light was different, the air was crisp, and a few fall wildflowers bloomed in autumn shades.  It was a brief respite from the eternal summer of southern California. (A friend once assured me that San Diego does change in the fall - the days are shorter because of daylight savings time. And actually, the sun shines more, because the marine layer dissipates.) 

There are two types of walks in the woods: A walk with family or friends, full of cheerful chatter, crunching leaves, comforting companionship, and high spirits. And then there is the walk taken alone, marked by deep breaths of the scent of decaying leaves, that bittersweet quality of recognition that time is passing but joy exists in this moment, a swell of poetic appreciation, heightened senses, gratitude. They both are satisfying. 

A friend who has four boys once said that her family is only happy when burning fuel.  That could be said of our family -- except that we are also very happy to be consuming fuel.  

And much delicious fuel was consumed over the weekend. We picked up donuts after our predawn arrival at the famous Long's Donut shop in Indianapolis where there was a line formed before it opened at 5:30 am. That was the gift we surprised my dad with when we walked into my parents' house while they were still asleep.  Friday night was Oktoberfest at my sister's church, Saturday was a BBQ party with the extended family, and Sunday after church we lunched on leftovers and then for supper feasted on freshly harvested garden produce and beef from one of my parents' butchered Belties.   

A couple of other highlights of the weekend: One, hearing my sister sing in both her bands at a fall festival. She surprised me with her talent. I knew she was good at playing the cello and guitar and that she was teaching herself to play the banjo, but her vocal talents have developed since the days when we competed to sing the loudest along with the cassette tapes we dubbed from our cousins and friends. Her bands, one a female trio that sings folk songs and hymns and one a Grateful Dead cover band but also good at soul music, were really good - looking forward to their next recording.

I also noted how relaxed this fall fest was.  The trend for festivals at our last couple of parishes is to do things up fancy, but then people come, eat, spend tickets on jumpies and carnival games, and then to leave to go the next thing on their schedule. They don't really hang around. I loved that at this midwestern church, it seemed that people came to this festival to spend the evening. They sat around. The kids ran around throwing balls and jumping on hay bales, while they sported painted mustaches and butterflies on their faces. The beer tent sold bottomless cups. The adults listened to the music and talked. No one seemed in a hurry or stressed out. 

A second highlight was how much all the cousins enjoy each other's company. They only see each other a couple times a year, but they fall right into the patterns of companionship they've known for years.  The teen group now hovers in a bunch near the countertop covered with chips and cheese or lounges by the fire pit where they exchange tales or tease. Who knows what they talk about. They are a gangly bunch and seem to find comfort in their mutual dis-ease of adolescence.  

Meanwhile, the preteen group raced in perpetual motion from one activity to the next. They spent hours resecuring the fort they built last summer. They begged to drive the new Polaris ATV or at least to ride with one of the uncles willing to speed through the orchard and careen around the back field. They chased after balls and threw things in the fire and got dirty and sweaty and hungry.  Somehow they devoured half an entire sheet cake, several dozen sugar cookies, an enormous tray of banana pudding, and half a chocolate bundt cake, in addition to the barbecue, macaroni, beans, coleslaw, and other sides that formed the main meal. Then they begged for s'mores after nightfall. Calories burned faster than they could be absorbed. 

While not quite as active as that middle group, the preschool bunch of cousins still seemed to delight to be together also. This age group is mostly girls, in contrast to the preteens who are mostly boys.  The little girls played with the old playskool people my mom held onto and dolls picked up at garage sales.  They giggled. They touched each other's faces and squeezed in inexpressible delight.  They left cookies with bites taken out of them and plates of barely touched cake around for the preteens to gobble up.  They cried when it was time to go home, because it was so wonderful to have a friend who is just your size and just your speed and who is willing to spend all day playing with you even though you sometimes grab or don't share.

The weekend came to an end all too quickly. It was easier to adjust to the time change going east than returning west, so I've felt hazy all week. The onset of a cold hasn't helped with clarity. But it is clear to me that taking this trip is worthwhile.  Pictures don't capture the beauty or the feel of the place, but here are a few:

A walk in the woods with a dog

A type of Goldenrod? I can't find this flower's name.

Golden rod

Deer tracks in the dry creekbed

Jewelweed and common boneset, maybe

The sky is even more blue

Early fall: the corn is done, but the zinnias bloom on

Monarch

Spreading weeds

Fall festival

Artists

Sister Sinjin sets up

The Busted Mufflers jam

Poison Ivy looks pretty

Trees along the meandering creek - I think they call it a river

The new Polaris

The preteens took a photography walk and captured some pretty flowers

The Belties

Moonrise

Ok, I had fun driving it, too.

Welcoming home.

Alert! Crazy lady driver!

The natal family

Cousins!

More cousins!

Not too much cake after all

More teen artsy photos