Learning about learning

Often when I pick up a book because it looks interesting - judging by its cover - without knowing anything about it, it turns out to be forgettable. But sometimes it lives up to its cover. That's the way I feel about Allison Gropnik's The Gardener and the Carpenter.

Gropnik is a professor of psychology (and wife to one of the Pixar cofounders and a mother of 3), and she has done a lot of research into human and animal behavior, and the science of behavior fascinates her, and she has the talent to weave the science into an interesting book. Her name wasn't unknown to me, although I didn't immediately recognized it; I've enjoyed reading Gropnik's columns in the Wall Street Journal. A memorable one was her essay on children as scientists - they observe, explore, mimic, test theories and look for connections as they encounter the world around them.

Gropnik's book is partly an exploration of human behavior focusing on how children learn, and partly, the part that drew my attention to closer reading, about changing our understanding of our role as a parent to one that is focused on the relationship rather than focused on an end goal. And the final chapter addresses the question of why have children at all, if we are not in the business of producing a certain type of adult, in other words, if parenting doesn't have a pay-off.

Gropnik's argument is that parents should be more like gardeners who nurture and tend their gardens, than like carpenters, who craft their wood into an object with an end in mind. She points out that "parenting" as a verb is a relatively new concept. For instance, we don't "child" or "lover" our parents or spouses. The relationship between parent and child (or between spouses or friends) is not an action, but a state of being in relationship. Rather than trying to form their children into something or someone, parents should try to be available to their children, to provide them stability, safety, and opportunities to explore, to observe, and to learn (hence, the connection to The Nature Principle, near where this book was shelved).  She  rejects the idea that parents have ultimate control over what kind of people their kids become by saying that nurture is only one part of human development. She points out that despite the rise of parenting how-to books, there are no guaranteed methods for producing successful, productive, happy adults. Trying to follow a prescription or blueprints for parenting will only make us more neurotic and anxious, instead of more relaxed and confident in our identity as parents, so that we can actually relax and enjoy parenting.

This metaphor alone, without all the scientific data, isn't a new idea, but I need to be reminded to take a step back when I'm worrying about the kids' development. On the one hand, I want to give them opportunities to try new things and to develop the discipline of practicing in order to improve at a skill. But here's a statistical analysis of a parenting conundrum: I keep attempting to sign kids up for piano lessons because I believe music lessons provide a skill that brings joy eventually, help form habits of discipline, and form neural pathways that affect all kinds of other activities. My thought was I would have each kid take two years of music lessons. However, 5 of the 6 the kids who have had lessons never want to practice, and 4 of the 6  show no real musical aptitude. Only one kid now loves to sit down with his guitar or banjo or ukulele and strum some songs.  Occasionally, one other kid will sit at the piano or pick up his clarinet and play a song then wander away again. The sixth child only had about six months total of lessons here and there. Am I gardening or carpentering when I want the kids to take 2 years of music lessons? I'm glad I gave them the opportunity to learn music, but I want to support them in following their own interests, not mine.

Another comparison Gropnik makes is to dieting. We now have more nutrition books, more recommendations for losing weight, more types of food, and more access to healthy foods, but we are in many cases less healthy, and in more cases more neurotic about what we eat. Approaching diet as a science project takes away the joy of eating. Similarly, replacing the relationship between parent and child with a prescription for how to parent takes away the joy of parenting. 

Gropnik's book is not an appeal to return to the past, but she does use appeals to examples of parents in primitive cultures or in the distant past as a way of demonstrating both how children learn and human beings bond, and how we don't need a prescription for raising children. She encourages parents to rely on our intuition and traditions, on the example of our grandparents, who let children explore their environment and have the freedom of unstructured play, but also taught small children to do chores and practice cooking. 

There are some dangers in idealizing the past, and while grandparents are an excellent example of people who take joy in children, I wouldn't be surprised if my grandmothers were somewhat anxious as parents.  Gropnik frequently uses her grandson as an example of how children learn and uses examples of how she plays with him as examples of how play helps children problem solve and observe in order to learn. Perhaps because she is a grandparent and not the parent, she is free to be involved in a loving relationship because she is free of the pressure of "parenting." Grandparents have a special relationship with children predicated on love and enjoyment of each other's company. My behavior was certainly affected and moderated by my desire to please and not to disappoint my grandparents, particularly my grandfather, who frequently expressed his pride in us and his affection.  Perhaps her argument should be "try to be more like a grandparent to your child."

I have to admit that I skimmed a good chunk of this book, even though I enjoyed the writing and the ideas. With my reading turning more nonfiction lately, I read differently.  I do a lot more skimming. Does this count as reading a book? Often with nonfiction first chapter has most of the information of the book condensed into 15 pages, and the last chapter contains the philosophical reflection on this information and its effect on our choices. The chapters that were pertinent to how I might parent with practical applications were at the very end of the book. The first quarter, maybe third, of the book goes into more scientific detail than I care to read deeply about.  Two lengthy chapters are primarily dedicated to evolutionary explanations for a long childhood and for parental and romantic love, and in several instances, Gropnik uses animal behavior as examples of parental behavior. Animal behavior is interesting, but it doesn't motivate to change my own behavior or particularly clarify my understanding of human behavior, and frankly, neither does evolutionary theory.  For one thing it is largely conjectural -  I'm sure it's based on fragments of bone and artifacts of tools and homes, but how much do we really know about our predecessors' feelings? Can we recreate a life from fragments? And how does evolutionary theory account for grandparents? Gropnik recounts the idea that having older adults around in the community allowed the younger adults forage for food while someone minded the cave babies, but it's hard to accept that natural selection is the cause of this development in human society, and not some Intelligence.

Another reason I skipped most of the section on evolutionary theory as an explanation or guide of human behavior today is that we are so far removed from that environment - shouldn't our behaviors and approaches to love and childrearing have evolved and adapted to our current environment? I'm know that discussing our elemental nature in regards to human behavior throughout time is an interesting mind project, but I don't feel compelled to read about caveman behavior in order to be convinced about a way to rear children today.  So I skimmed, which seems to happen frequently when I read nonfiction - I don't want to read all of the science parts, just the practical and philosophical parts.

One of those sections was about how children learn, which is more interesting to me as a parent of a toddler who is helping to run a preschool co-op. One of my favorite subsections is called "In Praise of Mess," which proclaims the glorious fact that messes are signs of children learning, that children thrive in an environment where they feel free to make messes. Also: stories are important. Check. Despite the disclaimer that this is not a parenting how-to book, the preponderance of information proving that children learn by different kinds of imitation is a strong reminder to watch my own behavior and tone of voice.

Also interesting was the section on essentialism - how children infer that certain things have an essential likeness and way of being that makes them similar or different than other things. For instance, concepts of "boy" and "girl" are understood by very young children as essential categories.

Gropnik also praises apprenticeship learning and giving adolescents opportunities to engage in meaningful work as a part of education.  And while she is critical of medicating children who are mildly ADHD so that they can fit into a traditional school environment instead of adapting an environment to fit their style of learning, she is not dismissive of new technologies and uses a parable about a "device" that changes the world (the book) to suggest that new technologies are always developing and not only changing the way we communicate and socialize, but also the way our brains work. For instance, the ways we see and remember have changed over time as an adaptation to being a reading people. Reassuringly, she points out that the ancient arts - drama, music, poetry - have not disappeared, but have continued to flourish as technologies have changed.

Home schoolers might find reason to rejoice in some of Gropnik's research - she gives multiple examples of how school learning is not the most effective (partly because a "goal" - all A's and a college admission - for school assessment does not always accurately measure how a young person will manage as an adult).  Young children learn best by discovery, by practice, and by being shown examples (imitation), rather than by being told something and then being tested over it. Being a good test taker is not the end goal of education, and yet that is what schools seem to emphasize with assessment based learning, all reasons home schoolers rely on when questioned about their choices. Gropnik points out that learning to read and to do math are not ends unto themselves, but means of further learning, which is one of the most convincing secular reasons for choosing an alternative way of teaching. But she doesn't really address home schooling as such, even though she has praise for  apprenticeships and project based learning and mentorship relationships.

When I think of how our older children learned to read without really being taught and how much history, literature, and science they absorbed from our field trips and projects, I keep debating whether I should or shouldn't home school the toddler, especially for the early grades. On the other hand, this child craves social interaction, and while having a consistent caregiver is important to development, as children age, they also develop their interests and benefit from learning from masters about subjects I know little or nothing about. My ideal would be to find a small, Catholic classical school that uses project based learning, especially for its science and math classes, and had a rich arts and music curriculum. Now if only some billionaire would fund it ...  

Gropnik never mentions home schooling, although she does use the private school/public school conundrum as an example of how utilitarianism is not the best approach to parenting, or to forming public policy about individual children. The most interesting chapter is the last one, in which Gropnik addresses Mill's utilitarianism, the claim that what is good is what is the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and Kant's deontology, or claim of a universal moral principle, and rejects them in favor of Irving Berlin's value pluralism, the idea that there are multiple goods, some of which are incompatible, but equally valuable, for addressing how to think about the parent-child relationship. For example, public school is good for a great number of people, but for a particular child, it may not be the best choice. Value pluralism seems to apply to many parenting decisions - we are constantly coming up against competing goods. Even the choice to have a child cannot be subject to a universal or utilitarian approach. I particularly liked Gropnik's point that we can't know what our life will be like with a child because we become different people after childbirth. We are enlarged by love to place another person's life above our own.  As she writes, "Deciding whether to have children isn't just a matter of deciding what you want. It means deciding who you're going to be."

Unfortunately, many people do approach the decision to have a child from a utilitarian perspective, or decide that becoming a person who puts another person's needs about his or her own, is a limitation or, worse, an enslavement, when in fact, to love another person that much is an enlarging of the heart and a liberation from selfishness. She quotes Virginia Woolf: "'Never pretend that the things you haven't got are not worth having.'" in response to the idea that because not having children allows you to have more free time and fun, then having children will take away joy but limiting your participation in some solitary or adventurous experiences. But raising children is a valuable experience of its own (that still is compatible with many other valuable experiences0.

Gropnik's praises the experience of having children not from any measurable standard, but because it enriches our life on so many levels, in a great deal because the relationships we form with our children and the people they bring into our lives are also enriching. These relationships form the person we become. But she also recognizes the freedom of the individual to NOT have children. 

"Precisely because such decisions are so morally profound and life-transforming, we should respect the freedom of individual people with individual lives to make them. It should be obvious by now that I personally place a very high value, the highest, on caring for children. That is also true for many people in religious traditions, and is often articulated as the justification for opposing contraception or abortion." 

After making this statement, she confesses she made the difficult decision to have an abortion after she unexpectedly got pregnant at age forty. This is a surprisingly personal confession in a book that reads as relatively impersonal, although there are several anecdotes of her loving interaction with her grandson and a couple anecdotes of her actions as a mother to three sons. Knowing how much being an older mother to a young child has enriched my life, I feel sorry that she felt compelled to make that decision. Ideally, people would recognize that having one more person in the world to love and to love them would make their life more full. But this argument is only possible to make by witnessing to the joy of being a parent.

And here is where Gropnik's main idea - that as parents, we are in a relationship with our children, not involved in a project to produce a successful adult - is a very humane understanding that also applies to our relationship with our parents. And rather than build institutions that force us to adapt our relationships to our aging parents and to our young children to fit the institutions (large schools, retirement homes), perhaps we should adapt our institutions to fit our relationships. All kinds of policies could be adapted and resources allocated to support these relationships.

Gropnik closes her book with poignant example of the immeasurable value of the parent-child relationship and the importance of play to both. She describes a scene from the old silent movie Nanook of the North in which a struggling Inuit hunter makes a sled and plays with his toddler son in the snow with his son. The joy that both experience outweighs the hours and materials he invested in making the sled. Some experiences are priceless.

Gropnik's most eloquent paragraph summarizes her understanding of these relationships in this way: 

"Why be a parent, then? ...Being a parent isn't worthwhile because it will lead to some particular outcome in the future, because it will create a particular kind of valuable adult. Instead, being a parent allows a new kind of human being to come into the world, both literally and figuratively. Each new child is entirely unprecedented and unique -- the result of a new complicated combination of genes and experience, culture and luck. And each child, if cared for, will turn into an adult who can create a new, unprecedented, unique human life. That life may be happy or sad, successful or disappointing, full of pride or regret. If it's like most valuable human lives, it will be all of these things. The very specific, unconditional commitment we feel to the child we care for is a way of respecting and supporting that uniqueness. Part of the pathos, but also the moral depth, of being a parent is that a good parent creates an adult who can make his own choices, even disastrous choices.... But it's also true that being a good parent allows children to succeed in ways that we could never have predicted or imagined shaping."

So despite the fact that I didn't read a good chunk of this book very closely, I was enriched by reading it and reminded to relish the experiences that we have with our children and to fret less about the classes and lessons that they may not be taking part in or things they lack. I need to praise more and nag less. In the end, it all comes back to love. 

Putting reading into practice

Before the college kids boarded their plane last weekend to head back to campus, we had time for a quick hike through the regional park.  (They now are in Washington, DC, for the March for Life - having spent all of 5 days on campus before leaving again.) We covered five or six miles in about 3 hours - the terrain was rocky and up and down. Our elevation gain may not have been much over all, but we had some pretty steep climbs - no switchbacks for the weak. The three year old started out on my back, and then she took a turn on her oldest brother's back and then she decided she wanted to walk herself. And walk she did. She is a good little hiker, happy to be in the company of her big brothers, the kind of big, scruffy, intimidating beings who would have scared me to death at her age.  I think they enjoyed being out in the sun in shirt sleeves before heading back to the arctic blast of their midwestern campus. These boys have come into their own as young adults. They no longer have to be encouraged to get outside and do things. They have ideas and prospects and a big wide future ahead of them.  I sometimes don't feel like I'm my age, but when I see them, these young adults, I realize how much life I have lived. A friend, a younger mom who moved here last summer after the boys had gone to college, commented the other day after church how surprised she was to see that our kids are men. Maybe that means I talk about them like they are children, maybe because I talk about their childhood to other moms sometimes. Nearly a generation separates the oldest and youngest. But some of our happiest times together lately are spent watching them together. It is especially happy when they are sharing with her their pleasure in spending a day under a deep blue sky. 

Letting the little lady lead the way

Gummy break

City skyline on the horizon

Following the creek - a recent rain had left behind running water in the bed - not always the case

Breaking in the knees of her new Christmas clothes

A few hours of rain brings the hills back to life.

2017 Reading in Review

Half way through January, and I have only finished two books. I am almost done with a third, but after spending 40 hours in the car for our Christmas trip, I haven't sat down to read as much. Having the kids home from school has also slowed my reading because we spend more time talking or watching Dr. Blake or The Great British Baking Show, our newest Netflix series.  I'm also trying to read the Gospel of the day and a reflection at night, but I find myself skimming. Not exactly lectio divina.

Time for the annual reading round-up, the grand analysis of reading trends of 2017.  I read more this past year, but as I look through my list, I am having trouble identifying a "Don't Miss This!" book.  I read a lot of interesting and worthwhile books, books that I would recommend, but there's not one that outshines the rest. Here is the summary:

Number of books: 64.  More than the last couple of years, but I counted literary journals - of which I have also read more since I have a Paris Review subscription and my sister is sharing Lapham's Quarterly.  Although I read more, I posted much less.

• 6 of those 64 were journals of short stories, essays, and poetry.
• 7 were rereads
• 26 were nonfiction. 
• Of those, 9 were memoir type books
• 4 were books for spiritual growth
• 3 were collections of essays
• The other 11 could be categorized as how to or history I think. Now that I think of it, I did not include the three travel guides to Ireland that I read pretty thoroughly and included a lot of historical and cultural information.

Of the 43 books of fiction:

• Only 6 were children's chapter books. And only 1 was a read aloud. I did not count the countless picture books the preschooler and I have read.
• 4 poetry collections. I read more than usual amounts of poetry this year including the journals.
• No big classics per se, although the Montgomery books and the Laura Ingalls Wilder book are children's classics, and the Elizabeth Bowen book, Death of the Heart, might count as a lesser classic in a stretch.

The evaluation:

• Books I read even though I didn't love them and wish I didn't spend the time: Never Unfriended, A Table in the Wilderness  - both of these were books that addressed faith written by young bloggers and both had a similar feel - a bit repetitive, a bit hyperbolic.  Other books I was disappointed in: I couldn't bring myself to love either Gibbons' Recipe for the Charmed Life or the Diaz book. Other people love the acclaimed The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but I never felt drawn in. Oscar reminded me a bit of Ignatius Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces, a book I disliked intensely. Because he was large or because he was critical? I'm not sure, but neither book gets a thumbs up from me. Station Eleven also got great reviews, but I couldn't bring myself to accept that people would still be living in tents in an airport twenty years after a catastrophic flu epidemic - WHEN PERFECTLY GOOD HOUSES ARE EVERYWHERE! And libraries full of books about how to set up electric currents, among many other valuable skills. What else did people have to do all day. They don't even seem to be gardening!! I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough. 
• My favorite novels this year were Reading Turgenev, Silence, The Course of Love, and for fun, Finding Bernadette. Silence I've read before, but the William Trevor is new to me. I was charmed by Alain de Botton's The Course of Love, an analysis of a marriage. It was a book I couldn't wait to sit down with - Charming and interesting point of view, likable characters. The Bernadette book was light and fluffy, but one that was fun to read. My fifteen year old read it first and loved it.  It's sometimes hard to find books she likes to read that don't seem too adult - so I'm always excited when I find a winner for her.
• I did love Melissa Sweet's Some Writer! about E. B. White and rereading Emily of New Moon - those two win for best children's book, and maybe favorites of the year.
• Other books I would recommend: of course, The Joy of Love by Pope Francis, and also Houselander's Reed of God, Barron's Vibrant Paradoxes, Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, and George Weigel's Letters to a Young Catholic.  Books that stayed with me several weeks after I read them: Tattoos on the Heart by Father Greg Boyle, Irish Saints, and the Warnick book This is Where You Belong. Neil Gaiman's big book of collected essays The View from the Cheap Seats may be the book I read with the most relish.  I don't love all the science fiction that Gaiman loves, but I love his frank delight in literature. 

In 2018, I'd like to recommit to reading something from a "Best of" list - maybe Dickens, maybe Willa Cather again, a Chekhov book I have in a pile, or maybe a writer I never really got to know? - I want to read a writer who never disappoints. I've got a few books on my bedside table from The Little Free Library - those aren't always promising, but one is The Very Long Engagement. I again want to get back in the habit of reading aloud to the two youngest girls at night - but the allure of netflix is strong... Usually we save it for weekends, but our weeknights, in between homework and practices are usually pretty full. Bedtime comes too soon.

The importance of Vitamin N

My book list this year is getting off to a slow start. First book of the year: Richard Louv's The Nature Principle.  Like This Is Where You Belong, it didn't provide a new cause to take up, but it strengthened my resolve to put a higher priority on doing activities that take us outdoors. My kids are tired of hearing me talk about "Nature Deficit Disorder."

Louv's book takes the ideas behind his first big hit, Last Child in the Woods, and applies them to a wider scope.  Kids aren't the only ones who need to engage with the natural world regularly in order to learn, create, and be well; everyone does.  Louv does the research to show how important time spent outdoors - or even just in the presence of plants and pets - is to mental wellbeing, emotional health, and creativity.  He describes the efforts of health professionals to prescribe "Vitamin N" in order to preserve health and promote healing. He provides lots of examples of people who have made a conscious effort to not just save the environment but to help people interact with it. One of the parts that stuck out to me was his description of the change within the environmental movement.  First generation environmentalists were all about protecting the environment from the encroachment of people. People and nature are at odds in this dialectic.  Then environmentalists began emphasizing personal responsibility: recycle, buy less or buy green.  Now the movement is attempting to reconnect people and the environment. How can we treasure what we have? How do we live with it?

Sometimes I default to thinking that spending time in nature means being immersed in the woods, camping or hiking, a backpacking trek. The title of Louv's last book may have perpetuated that idea. But Louv shows that even time in a garden or yard provides "Vitamin N." A bike ride, a trip to the beach, or a walk around the neighborhood can have a similar restorative power. We don't have to get into extreme sports to engage with nature. Walking the same route often helps us see the changes in the seasons, the amount of growth or decay from month to month. I don't take advantage of our proximity to the beach as much as I should. We met up on the beach with friends the other day for the moms to exercise and the kids to play in the sand. They had a great time, (Although the little toy snow shovel we brought was a source of contention. Why do I even still have this thing? As a sand shovel it doesn't function very well, but it is bigger and more attractive to three-year-olds than small plastic sand shovels.)

Some places make engaging with nature easy. In northern Illinois, we lived close to one of the many forest preserves. I used to walk the paths, often with the older kids in the baby jogger, and feel a million miles from the city. In Indiana, the year of Dan's graduate school, our rental house backed up to a big ravine that separated our neighborhood from a big city park. The boys played soldiers and explorers for hours back there. In Guam we had the jungles. In Mississippi, desserted lots. Both our homes in California have been close to mountain trails that we try to take advantage of.

That said, the younger kids complain everytime I say, "Let's go on a hike!" They hate getting dragged along on a forced march, although during the actual event we have great conversations, and they seem to enjoy being there and doing something. The older kids now want to go hiking on their own, and I hope the younger kids will eventually feel the same way.  But I do need to remember that we don't have to spend two hours on a trail to engage with nature.  Just playing in the park is good enough. And I need to branch out a bit and try new things.  We've never gone skiing. One son went rock climbing and river rafting with scouts and loved it.  Fishing from the pier, paddle boarding, biking down the strand, taking a picnic to a new park are all ways that we could spend time outdoors together.

Just being outside together, not in front of screens, is enough.

Modest resolutions

Why are so many people opposed to resolutions? I know it is trendy to belittle making resolutions because not many people succeed in following them, but some do end up becoming habits. So even though I consistently failing in managing to remember my resolutions much past February, I consistently enjoy the process of doing a yearly examen and deciding what goals to set for the year ahead.

I have felt my age more this year - I rarely have a day that I don't wake up in pain. In between plantar fasciitis, patellar fasciitis, and what is probably arthritis in the upper part of my feet, I haven't run most of the year. And when I do run, it hurts. So I am beginning to reimagine what it means to not be a runner.  Having my husband and/or a number of friends to exercise with makes walking early in the morning much easier to do. I miss the solitary reflection time of running, but while I prefer running alone, I crave companionship while walking. Having someone to talk to while walking makes an hour fly by. And although our motivated "boot camp" workout leader moved to Japan, a couple friends and I are still meeting a couple mornings a week to do some exercises and let the kids play.

So for a fitness goal - met the strength training resolution. Need to continue resolving to stretch more. And eat less sugar again.

My family goal of saying something nice to each of the kids didn't really stick in my brain, unless you count blessing them in the mornings when they leave for class and at night when they go to bed. What has been a nice development over the past year are little outings with single kids and having more grown up conversations with them. It's been a gentle shift to a different type of relationship with our kids as they are getting older.  And they all still like being hugged good night, so even though "physical touch" is not my love language - my brother in law teases me about being an awkward hugger, a family of origin trait...- I resolve to keep hugging them good night and looking for opportunities for one on one time with each kid.

My spiritual goal remains the same - read the Bible more.  I have succeeded in keeping some spiritual reading at hand all year, but going to adoration never happens. At our church it is only from 9-12 on Wednesdays and Thursday. With LK in tow, I never feel comfortable doing more than stopping by to genuflect after Mass on Wednesday mornings. She likes going to church, though, so we are continuing that habit of going to mass on Wednesdays with the two high schoolers who have a late start that morning. I have two new resolutions: 1. Make sure we get to confession once a month, which often happens, but we aren't very intentional about it. 2. Keep up habit I started last year of writing down a little examen in the evenings. I wax and wane on this - just a little list of pluses and minuses for the day. It started out being a little book of things to be grateful for, but perhaps I just have a natural pessimistic streak that makes me want to acknowledge the negative, too -- in an attempt to avoid it in the future, of course.

The fourth aspect of my yearly resolutions, the academic/intellectual goal, I mentioned in the last post - which is to post more.  I keep trying to shift to becoming a morning person and get up at five or six to write and grade, so that I'm not on the computer late in the evenings, which makes it harder to go to bed. But I don't quite have the discipline to turn out the lights by ten, which makes getting up at five something I can do regularly. I can get up early when I have a grading deadline, but then I crash after a couple of mornings, because I am not simultaneously going to bed at a reasonable hour.  I can manage on six hours a night for weeks, but if that goes down to five hours then my body rebels, and I need a few days to sleep in. Consistently getting seven hours would probably help me function better all day, but with teenagers in the house, the rhythm of the day is different - they are always up late.

I also am reconsidering job options.  Enrollment is very low at the Navy College Program. I consistently have only 5-8 students a term. On the one hand, this is very manageable for making my goal last year of using students' names and for balancing family life and other activities, but on the other, with three kids in college next year, a little extra income would help our family budget. I have applied to a few other community colleges, but after I had that interview at the college up in north county, I had to recognize I need to decide how much disruption to the current status quo I am comfortable with making. No job offer came after that interview, and I think I failed it because my hesitancy about driving and committing to more than one class came through. I cringe when I think back to it, but it was a learning experience.  So now on my to do list is to look for other opportunities. But I also want to minimize the impact on family life. Right now our preschool co-op is going really well. We are a small group, but everyone loves it. I would like to keep doing it next year and keep LK home for as long as possible. Ideally I would homeschool through grade school, but it will be a challenge with only one kid. I need to borrow some other kids.

People getting up here. Time to post and be done!

Loving where you live - reading in review

I powered through several books in December, enabled by some lucky library finds, internet recommendations, and a long car trip. I hope to get around to writing about a few here.

The book I keep thinking about is Melody Warnick's This Is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live. I found it at our library after reading a review on the Modern Mrs. Darcy blog list of "Seven books to download into your brain."  It's a topic that hounds me.

The book's premise is that Warnick feels lonely and out of place in her new home of Blacksburg, VA, a place she thought would fulfill the longing for home she felt while living in Austin, TX. She reflects that she hasn't ever felt rooted to the other places where she has lived since leaving her birth place, Huntington Beach, CA. (Californians really do love their state.) She decides she is going to try to teach herself to love Blacksburg.

So she starts researching "The Lost Art of Staying Put," the title of the first chapter.  In between interviews with people who stay in one place for years and people who actively try to make their homes better, known as "Place Makers," Warnick describes her own attempts to put ten precepts for becoming "place attached" into action. Reading about her efforts is motivating, although it's hard to say whether she does become rooted in Blacksburg. Her husband doesn't love his job (teaching in the English department at Virginia Tech), and at the end the book it is clear she doesn't see herself living in Blacksburg forever, although her experiment has worked in the sense that she is more fond of it and feels attached because she has met her neighbors, has a sense of Blacksburg's history, has participated in community building events, including making up a few of her own, and has walked, hiked, and biked the city and its surrounds.

Having moved 13 times, and having learned to love almost every place we've lived, I think I could have come up with the list of recommendations that Warnick devises to put into action as part of a "Love where you live" experiment, but she does the research and actively and intentionally practices them. They are:

1. Walk more
2. Buy local
3. Get to know my neighbors
4. Do fun stuff
5. Explore nature
6. Volunteer
7. Eat local
8. Become more political
9. Create something new
10. Stay loyal through hard times

I picked up the book because I find myself frequently analyzing why I don't want to stay in this vacation destination where we live. We still have a year and a half left of my husband's current orders, and we're already discussing his next request, which he'll make this spring. I'm ready to move on, but we have a daughter who will be ready to start her senior year in high school in 18 months and at least two other kids who really like it here. There may be a job here that my husband could transition into, but it requires deploying and working long hours. It would be a rewarding job for him, but we keep asking ourselves, is the stress it would put on the family worth the trade-off of the stress of moving?

If it were up to me, I'd say let's pack up and go. But I do recognize the virtues of stability for the kids, and the reality that the next place may not fulfill any of the longings for home in my heart.

Here's the thing: I do most of the 10 things Warnick recommends: 1. I walk everywhere in this town - it's only five miles around the perimeter.
2. I try to shop local and have succeeded in drastically limiting my shopping at big box stores (if you don't include the commissary and exchange and Amazon in this category).
3. I know my neighbors by name, have been to a progressive dinner with them, and actively socialize with my neighbor next door.  I just took cookies to the neighbor diagonal across the street whose husband just died. He was a local who coached the surf teams and everyone's friend, a father of six, who died while surfing this week, probably of a heart attack. A real tragedy.
4.We do the fun stuff - Fourth of July parade, concerts in the park, Christmas parade, parties at the library, sand castle contests.
5. We explore nature in the surrounding area and the beach here (I'm also reading Richard Louv's new book The Nature Principle, and my kids can tell you that I have been on a get outside tirade. Inspired by his book, and my own predilection for being outside in natural spaces, I've been itching to just spend time at a park or beach - a change for me, because usually "time in nature" means a hike, which the kids dread, although once they are moving, they are happy.)
6. We volunteer regularly with church, school, scouts, the community.
7. Although I shop mostly at the commissary, less than a mile from our house, I also try to buy produce and wine from the local market once a week. It's often less expensive, and almost always better quality, than the commissary.
8. Numbers 8 and 9 I haven't committed to: Being political is not in my nature, but I pay attention to the issues in the little local paper. Always entertaining to read the heated arguments about bike lanes and dog parks.
9. I am not particularly creative or as action-oriented as Warnick, but I did start our little co-op and a book club that is going on its third year - does that count?
10. And I am not loyal in my heart. I get swept up in the outpouring of grief in the community when someone dies, like my poor neighbor, whom I knew, or the local SEAL team members who were killed in 2016. But I feel kind of cringy when people talk about how great it is here. I want to leave.

After my husband and I had our most recent conversation about what our options are for the future, I spent some time contemplating whether someplace else might be any better. While the rest of the country is cuddled in blankets surviving the arctic blast, we have had great weather. We can be outside all year round. I love walking everywhere and not relying on big stores. We've made some good friends, and the community events are free fun for families.

But I wish our church had more for teens. The schools are fine, but not spiritually nourishing nor particularly academically challenging.  I miss being a part of Catholic schools.  We pay exorbitant rent and pay a premium for community sports and other activities. There's a sense of entitlement and privilege that pervades the air here. I don't know if there are any houses for sell less than a million dollars. Rents continue to go up higher than what we are paying.  Our friends are mostly military people who will move eventually.  We are far from extended family.  I miss the highs and lows of seasonal change. I feel like someone passing through - and that's mostly because we are.

But I keep reminding myself: Someplace else might have worse schools, lack a good parish, require a car to maneuver through strip malls, and create a sense of isolation. And there's starting over again knowing it would be temporary.

So I'm trying to imagine what it would mean to end up staying here six years altogether, and then my husband retires and we pick where to live. If I continue to think of our high rent as including the premium to live someplace where we don't need an extra car, school tuition, winter gear or heating/cooling bills, or a quick trip to Target for one thing and $100 of other stuff, the financial impact seems less. Our parish has great priests, even if it doesn't have a great teen program. The emotional turmoil of uprooting everyone may cause more spiritual trauma than the lack of catechism at school. Wanting to move reflects my selfishness in craving a little dream house with a big garden and a nice kitchen.  My "This is temporary" attitude is probably the biggest hindrance to loving where we live. If I can change that attitude, I would save some emotional energy and probably soften a sharp edge of resentment that I haul out every so often, usually during hormonal low times. (Is it middle age making the swing between feel good and feel bad hormones more drastic?)

Warnick's book is worth reading even if the theme is one I already know. The anecdotes she shares about other people who are making their places better and promoting where they live are entertaining and motivating. It makes me think more consciously about the adage of changing my attitude when I can't change my situation. And to a certain extent working on that consciousness - and spending more time in one place - is having an effect.

Happy New Year!

As usual, I am a couple days behind the times, but ...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2018.

I can't believe how far into this millennium we already are. I remember calculating that I would be 27 in the year 2000. It seemed so old when my elementary school friends and I were first working the math. Now it seems so young...

I have been thinking about posting New Year's Resolutions and a year in review of books, but it is already late tonight. I just wanted to add an update and to work on one resolution, which is to post more frequently.  I found myself searching my own blog a few times over the past year in order to look up when things happened or information about a book I read. My memory is failing! Or, as I prefer to think, so much information is being inputted into my brain that a lot of things have to be outputted. At any rate, I am thankful to have this repository of memories upon which to rely for a somewhat reliable accounting of our lives.

So one of my resolutions is to do a better job of posting at least weekly. These posts may be shorter and less thoughtful, but if I don't worry about writing something thoughtful, maybe I'll at least write something.

Another resolution is to put down the phone more. This should also help with reading and writing more. And listening more to the kids. And remembering more.  I have cut back on media time this year, partly out of necessity, but I still could shrink that time and not miss it. I realized when I was doing Christmas cards that I get a lot of Facebook updates from people I am not really close to- people I didn't send a Christmas card. Some of them are wonderful people with interesting or uplifting things to say, but there is only so much time in the world. And on the other hand, I have some dear friends who aren't on Facebook whom I wish I heard more from - and would, if I took a few minutes to write a letter or even an email - or call on the phone.  So I want to hand write some letters more often - and trim some acquaintances from my Facebook list.

I also need to write some thank you notes. We just returned from our holiday trek through the southwest to Oklahoma City and Dallas, and we have many people to thank for a wonderful visit and generous gifts. The travel required 40+ hours of driving, but it was good for reading, and worth the time to visit with family we haven't seen in a long time. Pictures to come.

We've spent the last few days since we've been home cleaning house and organizing. We had a small party for New Year's Eve the day after we got home - just three families. I was tempted to invite other friends I enjoy spending time with, but we decided to keep the group small so we could visit better with these friends who are longtime friends from previous duty stations who all know each other. And the conversation didn't falter, even though they stayed for 7 hours.

Tomorrow the middle kids go back to school. I will miss having them around. This break seemed short, since they were out before Christmas longer than after Christmas, and we were gone a week. The two college boys are home another week, but one is spending this week with his girlfriend, so his home stay will be even shorter.  This year my husband and I really hesitated to travel. We worry that the kids won't want to come back to our house as they get older because they won't have memories of our own family Christmas - just Christmas with lots of cousins. But they really do enjoy being a part of the big mass of family. All people who know them and love them and really care about what happens to them. With the instability of our rootedness to place, the long drive is worthwhile if it gives the kids a sense of rootedness to their people. I just finished reading a book about how to love the place where you live, and while it didn't really teach me anything new (Why didn't I think about writing a similar book? - aside from the fact I don't do research.) it did make me think more about where we might want to go when my husband retires from the military and confirmed some things that I already believed. That confirmation helps me prioritize activities and make decisions when there are so many activities competing for our time and I am so bad at decision-making.

I want to write more about that book and place, but now it's time to retire for the evening. I pray that 2018 is a year of blessings and adventures for all.