Yesterday in Second Grade...

 ...actually it was Friday, but I am late posting...

During breakfast, at the second-grader's initiation, we argued over whether marsupials and monotremes should properly be classified as mammals. We talked through the the familiar refrain: if you have a problem with someone, use your words not your hands to solve it, and if that doesn't work, ask an adult for help.  And we listened to bass and piano music.  We also did some pre-planning for another 3D sewing project which has not moved forward since.  There was also some spelling and typing practice as the second grader worked out how to type search terms related to that sewing project pre-planning into the browser.

Then we loaded up for a field trip as I was not teaching that day.  We listened in the car to the Penderwicks on Gardam Street, one of our favorite audio books from the library.  We practiced our favorite Latin phrase from it: "Mendax, mendax. Bracae tuae conflagrant."  (Translation: "Liar, liar.  Your trousers are burning."  Hahahaha!) And discussed the English word "conflagration."

We took some electronics to the electronics recycling where we discussed why we had to pay money to offload an item with a compressor in it. 

We drove some four or five miles to the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood where we passed two synagogues, looked at the Hebrew writing on their outer walls, and discussed the decorative menorah on the top of  one.  We cruised the neighborhood looking for backyard sukkahs on that eighth day of Sukkoth, while discussing Jewish tradition and denominations.  (Anne spotted three sukkahs.) We also talked about the 40 years in the wilderness and read the part of Leviticus 23 where the command to celebrate the Festival of Booths is issued.

We parked, masked up,  and visited the playground at Seward Park overlooking Lake Washington, where the second grader made especial use of the zip line.

We also chatted with a census worker at the park and discussed the importance of the census for community planning.

After our return home, the second grader called her neighbor friend, and they painted a piece of lumber in acrylics and then had to follow directions carefully for clean up after the initial burst of creativity in cleaning didn't match the art instructor's (Grandmother's) careful instructions in that activity.

Then, second grader and neighbor played a game of their invention, and a big disagreement sent the neighbor home. Second grader asked for adult help, and neighbor friend and her mother returned for a therapist-style discussion.  

..."Anne, you wanted to talk about the problem you had?"

..."So you felt Anne was trying to trick you... Anne what's your perspective on that?'

(Some people might think that such a discussion is a side-track from the business of education, but I think it is one of the main things.  Enough respectful guided discussions over the years can only prepare her well for the challenges of adult life!)

There was bass practice.

...And watching of YouTube videos about koala conservation and care for orphaned kittens.

...Listening to more bass music - Classical, jazz, and pop covers.

I probably forgot a bunch of things, but for now I am digging the tossing of curriculum, the living life while observing all the learning actually going on, providing guidance and opportunities, and assisting as needed.

Turning of the Seasons

Lazarus' fourth birthday, Labor Day, was the last our last day of summer. We spent some lovely time at the beach - Seahurst on Puget Sound. It was windier than usual, and there were quite the little waves coming in. What a beautiful day! Just about dark the wind shifted dramatically; strong winds blew in from the Cascades, bringing with them our first wildfire smoke of the summer - with terrible breezy flappings and nasty particulates. Then, the following morning we were back to school.

This is a transition I dread each year. I have lived in the North my whole adult life, aside from two exceptional years in Alabama. The summers here have such long, glorious days with so much sun, and despite various weather patterns in different parts of the continent, the fall and winter are characterized by such rushing in of darkness, and grey, grey, grey in the heavens. Clearly I am solar powered and as the summer heat is rarely oppressive, I mostly feel Autumn as a time that my batteries go weak and I must power through. Winter, though, can be exciting. In late December the light starts getting longer, and it is like a weight is taken off. And if there is snow... Then I am very happy again.

I spend so much small, quiet expectation looking toward Summer. It is the time of freedom, of something different on the calendar, of adventure, and of course, of pleasant weather. Fall is the return of the drudgery of routine, of predictability, and of commitment. It is the time of being imprisoned in so many small ways.

Our first week back was predicted to be one of the warmest weeks this summer, so I had mentally planned on our weekend afterward to either 1) make a quick camping trip out to Lake Crescent or 2) take the kids to the beach as much as possible and finish up a long-standing project: filling our sandbox. [This involves multiple runs to Lowe's, pushing 500 lbs at a time on a rolling cart, loading it across the small car carefully, and then borrowing our neighbor's wheelbarrow to move it to the sand box.] But instead, more and more smoke rolled in. I couldn't even go outdoors to hang laundry. I sat inside with zero motivation and watched the kids jump on furniture and zoned out while they watched way too much stuff on YouTube with an annoying sexist/unkind background to it. I couldn't muster the brain to figure out what indoor projects could/should be done or even clean up the basics. I sat in my own haze, feeling antsy, and feeling sad that the fires had taken our last warm weather from us.

Finally, yesterday, we started to get some rain, and our particulate matter had gone down enough that it was okay for people without asthma and such to be outside, and I went for a long walk to stretch my wings. (It still smelled a little smoky, and there was clearly still plenty of haze, but for the first time, I could actually see all the way to the SeaTac control tower about five miles distant. Previously, I could not even see to the bottom of our hill.) I was musing on how our culture is all about being productive and seizing the moment, and how I was instead going to be comfortable with the fact that I had no energy or happiness in doing that during the smoke season. I was intending to be ok with accomplishing little.

I thought about it some more, though, and realized I had accomplished a few things with big impact. I started lessons with a new student family. I launched our new year of online group classes, and the first meetings felt good. I reached out to friends when things weren't going well (like when the toddlers, whom I'd left watering the garden, instead flooded the studio and ruined some electronics.) And I realized that what I was *doing* for Anne's education was not working.

See, I had this idea that we would just cover the basics with a curriculum I loved and then she was free to be a kid the rest of the time. And it has contributed greatly to the friction in our home. I've debated sending her to brick and mortar school, which would not make it better, but it would make someone else the bad guy. But the more I thought about it, why did we even need a bad guy?

The truth is, people are born to learn and enjoy learning, and what Anne needs is merely a little guidance and assistance in directing her curiosity in helpful directions and then resources to learn deeply what interests her. Some call this, when done well "unschooling", but that label has gotten a bad rap from those who misunderstand it or have seen it done badly. I like the phrase "natural learning." I am a person full of questions, and when I want to know something, I look it up online, I watch a video, a read a book, or I ask someone. And because I care about the answer, it becomes a part of me, rather than "required knowledge" that gets tacked on. In just the last few days, for example, I had some questions about child sleep, about the anthropology of hunter-gathers, about how to make play dough, about SIPS, about the genetic relationship between crocodilians and dinosaurs, and about cream of tartar, and I went out and learned what I wanted to know. I have known all along my job with Anne is really to facilitate her learning process so she can live a life of learning and curiosity. Checking off the "we did school today" box because she and I nearly killed each other while making it through a beautifully designed phonics lesson where she learned something against her will was not heading toward the end goal. Suddenly, "school" is feeling fun, and less oppressive. We are swinging into a routine which is pleasant, and I am trying to come to grips with the Fall weather and darkness, and remembering that Spring is only six months away.

Consolation Camping and Philosophical Questions

Last week was my 40th birthday, and I had wanted to do something memorable as consolation.  Various ideas and plans fell through until Friday morning, two weeks ago, I spent some determined hours on the internet researching beach camping options in western Washington.

Monday morning, off we went to the Olympic Peninsula, and we ended up staying quite a bit later than planned, until the following Tuesday, although we collectively came home once on Thursday (my birthday) after the first sixteen hours of forty-eight hours of steady, soaking rain.  The kids and I also came home one other time for a dentist appointment and two doctor appointments.  In true Ballance fashion, it was all rather spontaneous, as it seems we do the things we value with less planning and the things that have to happen (but have no love attached) with more planning.

I wrote and drew my way through the trip in a tiny blank book I kept in my bag, using a black ball-point pen.  I would have written and drawn more if there had been less driving.  There was too much driving.   Did I mention, there was too much driving?

Day 1: Drove out to the coast amidst errands and missing NP pass and packing and unpacking and realizing we needed to take two cars. (Five people plus camping gear and food for a week doesn't seem to fit in a Honda Civic.)  Finally found a campsite at Cottonwood, a DNR campground in between Ruby Beach and the Hoh Visitor Center.  Spent the late evening at Kalaloch Beach, where we saw a cloudy sunset, followed by a beautifully clear, starry night with a view of the Milky Way.

Day 2: Beach 4 and Kalaloch Beach - most relaxing day with the least driving.  Beach 4 at high tide is pretty intense - it is not for the faint of hear.  Kalaloch is a large expanse of flat, sandy beach - very relaxing.

Day 3: Hall of Mosses at the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center and Rialto Beach.  First time ever to Rialto - felt so foreign and amazing! Untold number of enormously giant drift logs.  Rain started at nightfall.

Day 4: Beach 3 in the rain - we were the crazy people out there at high tide in the pouring rain with three small children.  There is a lovely creek that runs through it all.  Stopped by the two large (no, enormous!) cedar trees.  In the rain.  Then packed up our campsite in the rain. And drove home in the rain.  Disappointment. It was my birthday.  And the end of our first camping trip in three years.

Day 5: Baked a day-late birthday cake and visited Dash Point SP between rainstorms. Dash Point is a large, flat sandy beach where the tide comes in fast and everything is calm.  It's on the Sound.

Day 6: Drove back to Port Angeles in one car, having shed non-essentials like the camping mattresses...and finally(!) found a campsite at Heart o' the Hills in the Olympic NP. Walked in the old growth forrest.  Unlogged woods are SO unbelievably different from second-growth forests.  There is no comparison whatsoever.  The kinds and density of trees are different.  There are different things in the understory.  The old trees are so much bigger.  It is so much more mysterious.

Day 7: Hurricaine Ridge with views out to Vancouver Island and in toward Mt. Olympus and friends.  Salt Creek County Park on the Strait - rocks plunging straight into the ocean with tide pools and a huge kelp field.  A playground.  And trails in old-growth forest overlooking the Strait.  Then then kids and I drove home, leaving Jared at the campsite.

Day 8: Jared did the best hike of his life, and I am a wee bit jealous.  Kids and I went to medical appointments, watched our dumpster get picked up, did a bunch of laundry, cat, and plant care, packed more food, and drove back to Heart o' the Hills.  Attempt at campfire was totally unsuccessful. Must learn more about that for our next attempt.

Day 9: Sequim Bay SP (quiet bay on the Strait, much frequented by boats) and Kitsap Memorial SP (must be the most scenic SP in Washington - smooth rock/gravel beach on the east side of the Hood Canal, overlooking the Olympic Range) and then drove home, un-Ballance-ly arriving at a reasonable hour to complete the day.

The philosophical questions... I saw the Milky Way for one of the few times in my life.  Thinking about the nuclei of atoms,  the solar system, and the galaxy.  Wondering about the plane of the solar system relative to the plane of the galaxy.  Wild, untamable beaches remind me that this is an ocean planet, not so much a land planet.  Thinking of other ocean planets and moons and find myself feeling I am an alien on my own planet, seeing it with unfamiliar eyes.  Thinking of the planet as a single organism, which changes over time rather than a collection of individual organisms.  Connections between life forms in the food chain.  Visible and invisible-to-us creatures.  Prayers - and sometimes we are the answer to our own prayers....

Photos, sadly will be only on Facebook due to irritating issues with blogger.

Musical July

Earlier this year I was sad that I had not been hired to teach at any Suzuki institutes, as I LOVE teaching in that format.  I get so inspired and grow in my own work.  Jared had been hired for two, plus a chamber music camp out on the penninsula.  But then, we all know what happened after that.  Everything is canceled.

Our current volume of music activities of July has ended up a sort of surprise, then.

First of all, Jared and I put together a 30-minute program of music by Black composers and offered it to any neighbors who were interested, via Buy Nothing.  We played for neighbors in our alley.  We played for neighbors at the park behind our house.  We played in the parking lot of a townhouse community.  Next week we will play it in a neighbor's yard - she is giving it as a birthday gift to her elderly aunt.  We both have enjoyed over the years promoting less common music and this seemed like the right gift to share at the right time.

Then, Jared suddenly had the opportunity to take five weeks of a Dalcroze workshop online with Jeremy Dittus in Colorado, which did not involve the expenses of travel and lodging.  He's just completing week one of that.  In preparation, he did a lot more clean-up on the garage/studio, and we borrowed my brother's nice electric keyboard to put out there.  It has also involved working to shift family bedtimes as the classes start at various earlier hours of the morning than we typically find ourselves working.  Plus we had to shift our summer group class workshop (online this year, of course!) a week earlier.  Lots of rescheduling of summer lessons associated...

Last week was our group class workshop.  We had two groups, which met online for an hour each, daily, doing Dalcroze and ensemble work. We also had a "Share Your Music" Skype call - less formal than a regular recital; many of the students performed pieces they'd learned on their own.  And a few students plus a couple of friends showed up at the park for a flash mob performance (masked and distanced!) for neighbors, which we also shared on Buy Nothing.  As usual, this involved my transcribing music.  For the performance we had French Renaissance polyphony, folk songs from Korea, Japan, and the African-American tradition, some short pieces by composers in Africa, and a transcription I made of Joplin's Rag-Time Dance.  I also made practice videos of all the pieces.  Good stuff, but certainly time-consuming.  The flash mob was so much fun we have scheduled a second one in August - same repertoire.  More about transcriptions in a moment...

I have a student preparing a book 3 recital for his home (in another county which is less affected by Covid).  The recital will be in August, but we have not seen each other in person since March.  I will be accompanying him on piano, so last week I made recordings at mutually agreeable tempi for him to practice with.  I had to find moments where our cabin was quiet so I could record on our living room spinnet.  (There are be a few random - "Mom!" moments in the middle of recordings, but nothing that would impede my student from practicing effectively.)

I also have a student preparing her senior recital for August.  Originally, she had planned for July at her church with a hired pianist, but... So now the recital will be in her yard with me accompanying her on violin (for the Mozart Violin Concerto in Bb) and viola (for a transcription I had made of an unpublished version Joshua Bell performs on one of his CDs of the Massenet Elegie.). I had originally transcribed the Elegie off the recording since no purchase-able version exists.  The CD version was violin and orchestra, and I had used that to create a violin and piano version.  But now, no piano and no pianist, so I have "upgraded" to a violin and viola version....

Jared and I decided that starting this week I would offer some outdoor lessons to interested students.  We have no shade in our yard.  Jared put a tarp from our kitchen annex roof across the walkway to the roof of my studio.  I clipped back some of the overgrowth, leveled a couple of the bricks, and moved the secondary junk pile to the main junk pile.  Also relocated the city bins to the front yard, and swept.  Then I get my chairs and stands and such set up for actual lesson times.  Very nice to see some people in person, even though we're masked.  I think that my teaching got much more efficient and detailed online when I started typing notes for students (copy & paste plus my ability to type faster than write by hand opened some doors for me.) Then I brought that newfound detailed-ness to an actual in-person where I can see and hear better, and I am happy with the density and usefulness of the information I am presenting.  It's up to the students to actually open their cases at home and make use of it...

Normally, when the Suzuki Association of Washington State asks around for teacher to evaluate graduation recordings submitted each June, I ignore the email, but this year I though I would like to get my ears and eyes on what else is going on out there in teaching-land in Washington.  I volunteered to evaluate five recordings.  The five I was sent represented three teachers I know personally, and I actually know two of the students personally, as well.  It was fun to hear their progress and get a sense of each of the teachers' current strengths and blind spots (we all have them!). I learn so much from doing that, and hope I can incorporate what I observed into my own teaching.  That also happened this week.

My next musical project is to make some inquiries to other professionals who have published arrangements and transcriptions of public domain music, since I have created a lot of those over the years and find out how I should pursue publishing and monetizing some of my work.  There are lots of reasons to do it, and this seems like the right time.

Full Circle

A couple of years ago, Rachel Barton Pine was in town to perform the complete solo Bach works on Baroque violin, under the auspices of Seattle Early Music.  When I saw that concert listing, I choked for joy and for price, then happily put down the $60 for a ticket.  (The concert was memorable!)

It turned out that while she was in town, some fellow CIM grads living in the area (I don't know them - I think they were in school after I graduated?) hired her for a high profile masterclass at a fancy place in Bellevue.  I did not send any students to play, as I didn't have anyone at the level they were looking for, and I did not go either, as I didn't want to plunk down another $25 to attend. 
But... my former violin student and babysitter, now neighbor and teaching colleague, Anne, had won a free ticket to the masterclass from the Classical radio station.  And at that masterclass, she heard it announced that Rachel would be giving another free masterclass at a church [in a non-descript lower-middle class neighborhood] in south Seattle [near Renton.]. She texted me about it in the wee hours of the morning, and the next day, she and my Anne and I loaded up and drove over to the location in question.

The masterclass was wonderful, as were the students.  The students, it turned out, study through a non-profit in Renton call Keys to Change Violin Studio, run by a Dr. Quinton Morris.  They were all middle and high school age, and mostly people of color, playing music from French Folk Song, up to Lalo Symphony Espagnole.  And clearly their teacher knows what he is doing.  Very perceptive, kind, and detailed.  Rachel worked with them in such helpful ways, and at the end, she and her young daughter (close in age to my own Anne) performed several violin duet pieces, which were as yet unpublished, from a project Rachel was spearheading called Music by Black Composers.  They had put together a program they were going to be performing all over Chicago for Black History Month that year, and I was impressed with the pieces, and with the performance of the little girl with her mother.  (When she wasn't playing, she was with her nanny coloring in the other room; Anne and another young child joined them when they tired of the masterclass.)

As I was duly impressed with Quinton, whose day job is on the faculty at Seattle University, I took down his contact information.  A year later, last Spring, I invited him to my little living room to give a masterclass for some of my and Anita's students.  It was a wonderful masterclass, as I knew it would be, and my students and I appreciated all the concrete and helpful feedback he gave them.  Also... Quinton mentioned that grew up various places in this very neighborhood, starting on a street just two blocks down the hill from me.

Before that, however, the first volume of the Music by Black Composers series was published, and I ordered it right away, and I began using it in group classes right away.

This Saturday (tomorrow) at 2:00 pm Central, Rachel's daughter, who will be celebrating her 1200th day of consecutive violin practice, is giving a recital of the entire Music by Black Composers Volume One via Facebook Live, with her mother accompanying; and Rachel says, via an online music teachers group of which we are both members, that they are planning to put it up on YouTube for future listening.

(Link to Live recital HERE.)

This coming Wednesday, it is my turn to offer a masterclass for Quinton's students at Keys to Change (via Zoom, of course...).  And our own studio will be playing recitals on Skype this Thursday and next Sunday, on which will be performed two numbers from the Black Composers book.  I can't wait for the second volume!

My Tiny "Corner" of the Planet

Last evening around 9:00 pm we were finishing up dinner in the back yard.  It was not dark yet, but certainly dusky.  In the large plum tree which hangs over the fence from the neighbor's yard, a beautiful, perfectly groomed creature woke up, stretched, and climbed down the trunk onto our large junk pile.  He watched us but did not seem afraid of us, not even Nutmeg or my toddlers.  We watched him, too, in awe.  He is a large raccoon.  I have the feeling he has been watching us in the evenings for some time as it has been light so late, and knows we are no threat to him.  He poked around in the pile for a bit, then went straight to his watering hole - a large tarp folded around leftover roofing material, which collects and holds water with each rain.  He sniffed around in the short grass in front of the shed where Nutmeg had been sitting for some time.  He decided to wander into the open shed, and Jared walked over to tell him he didn't want to get stuck in there for the night.  Our beautiful friend exited the shed and went underneath to explore there.  After a while, he crossed the yard again, climbed up the gate, and then walked the top of the fence along the alley until he was out of sight, off on his evening mission of whatever it is raccoons do - finding some meals and socializing with others of his species?  We watched him in awe and are so glad he is here!  In our yard, which was quite sterile when we moved in, and has now progressed to European import meadow, we have only ever seen insects, small invertebrates, the occasional visiting cottontail, crows, small songbirds, an occasional visiting opossum, a rare visiting squirrel, and sometimes an exploring rat invader come from the next door neighbor's attic (I can see the rat family's egress from our back patio table - they come out at night, and I have seen a little rat face poking through a knothole in our fence, or a rat scurrying in the plum tree or junk pile.  Rats are not native.)  Now we are privileged to have a raccoon for a neighbor! 

In other news...

We are underway with Furniture Tetris, and have done some of the big jobs already - Jared has started teaching (online) this week in the garage remodel.  Lazarus and Anne have moved into the front bedroom.  We have seating for more than two people in our living room.  Laurel has her own little toddler bed.  Shed clean-out has begun.  There is lots more on this project to keep us going for the whole summer, I am sure.  For example:  hemming the curtains in the kid's bedroom, finding a Craigslist dresser for Laurel, migrating all the file drawers and boxes from various locations around the cabin and shed to the newly reinstalled bookshelf in my room, "seasoning" the chalkboard paint in the new studio, painting the trim, moving the upright piano to its new corner, finishing up the DIY coatrack for that space, going through more boxes in the shed, adding more wall-top bookshelves, hanging up our framed pictures, finding some industrial shelving for our little dining/mud room/laundry/kitchen annex to put all the bulk bins on, getting a dumpster for the enormous junk pile, etc.  You might get the idea, but somehow this list makes the project list sound smaller and tidier than it feels to me.

With our family spread into two bedrooms now and all of the teaching moved to the outbuildings (minus daily morning group class online, which requires the use of our living room spinet - it has been tuned in the last century, unlike the new donor upright in the new studio, which needs a full servicing, new strings and everything, before it is useful in teaching), our cabin feels much larger.  It is sort of a freeing feeling.  At the same time, it feels as small as it is - we cannot "grow" here anymore without some unforeseen creativity or a house addition.  However, I have been blessed during the years of my adult life to live in some places where I saw the creativity of neighbors in small spaces.  I think especially of our apartment complex in Kent, where the majority of our neighbors had come here from abroad and were ready to make do with whatever they could.  We were all in two-bedroom/one-bath units with one living room, a small kitchen, a couple of closets, and a tiny porch.  (Our cabin has the same square footage as those apartments.  But we have the massive blessing here of a yard, unlimited street parking, and the outbuildings.) Our family of two, then three, then four, hosted an exchange student and taught lessons in our small place.  Our next-door neighbors on one side were a couple plus an elementary-aged son and teenaged daughter.  Our upstairs neighbors changed a few times, and usually had three generations in the unit.  Our other upstairs neighbors were a family of four plus the wife's sister and her two kids.  And our next-door neighbors on the other side were three related couples with four children between them - one family sleeping in each bedroom and the third in the living room.  Our neighbors across the parking lot from us were a family of four, which grew to five.  So I have no illusions about what is required for space that one might get from looking around at suburban America and all the home decor magazines....

There has been a lot of painting this spring.  The garage studio: one layer of primer.  A layer or two of white on the ceiling.  Two layers of yellow on the walls.  Three layers of chalkboard paint over that.  And the fence along the alley is now held up on the outside by a thick layer of paint - leftover from a project our professional painter neighbor did.  He often has extra paint from a project which doesn't match anything, and he gives it away.  I will have to acquire some more for the inside of the fence, which is currently held up by... toothpicks.  If it has enough paint holding it up, we won't have to replace it for a few years.  Also, we need to scrape and paint the exterior of the cabin.  The shed needs some more painting, and the studio building will need exterior paint after we finish replacing the rotten bits of siding.  I also have not painted our mudroom, although it has been on my list for two years.  So that's plenty of work to keep everyone busy.

Also, I have gone wild with the garden this year.  Last May I used some leftover landscaping bricks to build a kitchen garden off the edge of our patio and I migrated the few things we had been growing in the pre-existing, nearly decayed-into-the-ground garden box out by the garage to the garden box.  This year I wanted to buy some seeds (a desire which I had begun to plan to indulge in before lockdown and victory gardens).  Our kitchen garden has a number of perennial herbs as well as rhubarb, but there was still space for a number of seeds.  And then everyone went wild with victory gardens, such a happy thing!  My brother built his, and filled it with starts.  When he ran out of space, he brought me his extra starts, which filled the rest of our kitchen garden.  So I determined to rehabilitate the old garden space for my seeds.  I planted it with flowers, tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, squash, and pumpkins.  More of the seeds took than I imagined.  Plus we had some really exciting volunteers from the compost in addition to a few ancient seed packets I threw in pots to see if they would germinate.  So now I am filling up our driveway with pots of tomatoes and squashes and pumpkins and greens and flowers, and it is really quite astounding.  I am collecting neighbor's cast off nursery pots and buying potting soil and I am having so much fun.  I loved plants as a child when we had a very large, semi-wooded backyard, but I have had no reason to engage much with plants when I spent most of my adulthood in various apartments with little access to nature.  Now I am spending a lot of time replanting and watering and weeding and admiring, and it is very happy.

Heartfelt Experience

Two beautiful writings about heartfelt experiences...

This was written by my blogging friend in Texas:
What the Lord Told Me About 2020 Back in January...

And this was written by a violin teacher I know in Oregon:
I hate this pandemic.

And where we are ::  Still mostly at peace.  Not having to prepare our space, our lives, our children for myriad lesson visitors daily.  Not having to commute to Gig Harbor once a week.  Not having to drive anywhere!  Nice weather.  MOSTLY more positive family dynamics.  Growing relationships.  Online lessons going better than before for most students.  Online group class, online bass and art lessons for Anne, online church...  More work on the garden and the studio remodel.  No one has been sick for two months, because we haven't had chance to meet any germs.  (Oh, except the night Laurel was up all night vomiting - I don't know what she ate, perhaps it was something nasty she found in the compost?).

But I have had several for-no-reason sleepless nights.  Just like when I've been pregnant. (Which I'm not.  End of story.) Sometimes my body knows something my mind doesn't - like maybe the quiet questions about the future of dreams, big and small, spoken and unspoken?  Questions of the future? which I don't honestly worry about much, but maybe my body knows...

It's not about Mother's Day...

I read two fantastic and fascinating pieces about women, but it's not to do with Mother's Day, truly.  But so appropriate.  Just wanted to share them for your ponderation and inspiration.

First is from American historian Heather Cox Richardson, who specializes in American political history, literature, and religion:

Mothers' Day

The second is reporting on gender dynamics in groups, which comes from Brigham Young University:

When Women Don't Speak

You're welcome.

No Weeds

The other night I pulled out one of my Allison Krauss albums for the kids in lieu of the U2 album they requested, and I realized how much I have missed listening to her the last few years.  In my teenage years in Texas, then in Ohio, and then again in Alabama, I had a room to myself, or at least many hours to myself at home, and I spent time listening to music I really loved.  In between times in New York and now in Washington, I have mostly listened to other people's music, and though there is quite a bit of overlap, I think maybe I have lost a little piece of my soul....

When I was out walking this evening with Laurel in the stroller (on a timer; I had a just-because cake baking in the oven), it suddenly occurred to me that my life motto should be pulchritudinem de micis (my best Latin stab at "beauty from scraps".)  Mind you, I haven't been searching for a life motto.  However, in the Penderwick books that Anne and I love so dearly, all of the family members have a life motto in Latin.  Mr. Penderwick is a botanist, and fluent in Latin - his language of choice when he wishes to mutter to himself in the presence of others.  This motto came to me suddenly as I rounded the bend on my 1.1 mile route and started on the uphill portion, and I could see all the possibilities.

Depending on your eyesight, you may see rather little beauty when looking around my substantial and metaphorical space.  My small home is physically chaotic.  My yard is part junk yard, part jungle, and part barren wasteland.  My wardrobe has its peculiar moments, overshadowed by yoga pants and printed T-shirts.  My music-making is only a little here, a little there.  One can discern tiny clues if one is searching, but many would miss the beauty for the scraps.  That is part of the thing.  I am a keeper, a looker for the overlooked - overlooked music, overlooked people, overlooked weeds, overlooked pieces of cloth....  I am a collector of scraps, seeing their possibilities.  Whether or not I actually create beauty, I imagine it.

As I have been working extensively in the yard and garden in the last week (powered by unexpected spring sunshine), appreciating the bits of tangled life growing there, a line from Paul Fleischman's Weslandia replays in my head: "In this type of garden there are no weeds."  Maybe that should be my life motto instead.  Anyone who knew me well at the age of twelve or so will appreciate my personal connection to this inspired children's story.

Unexpected Preparation

Just like every other American, I was not planning on collective quarantine.  I was warned about this by Near and Dear some weeks before it became a reality, and frankly before much was widely known by the average person here, but such warnings can seem abstract or far away until the time arrives. 

In our current situation, there are several things I am very thankful for.  

• After much deliberation, we decided to do homeschool with Anne this year.  I wasn't sure it was the right choice, and it has been very hard for us, but it has been so nice for her (and us!) not to have a massive disruption in her routine.
• As long as our students' families keep their jobs (and they are mostly in the brackets of people who probably will), we keep our jobs. Of course, all our teaching has moved online now.  We have reformulated our group class and won't probably be able to take new students for a bit... But still.
• Jared and I had already been teaching some online lessons for the last seven years, so this is not a huge learning curve for us.  But there is also an amazing online Suzuki teaching group which has sprung up for collective brainstorming and support, which has been lovely, too. 
• Not too long ago, Jared ran an ethernet cable out to my studio so that I'd be able to connect for internet lessons out there, rather than in the kitchen while Jared was teaching in the front bedroom and kids are crashing about the cabin.  [ In this age of teleworking, people have begun referring to family members as "coworkers." Henceforth, I shall refer to my house as "cabin". (Some of my violin students have gone up to spend quarantine at their ski cabin, which is slightly larger than my little house.) "Cabin", thus, sounds more cozy and restful, and for those who have never seen our rather small house in person, better explains why the kids and I need to lock ourselves outside if Jared happens to be teaching a Dalcroze class from the living room spinnet.🙃
• When our previous laptop had an unfortunate accident, we replaced it with a cheap laptop, AND were loaned an out-of-use laptop by a student's family who then moved to Hungary and left the laptop with us, leaving us with two computers on which to do our remote teaching rather economically.
• Minus one week of rain, the weather during quanrantine has been incredible, allowing the kids to spend most of the day in our fenced backyard (another HUGE blessing.)
• Not having to have the house clean enough for students daily and not packing/unpacking driving to Gig Harbor weekly has really added some peace into our routine.  (The cabin is NOT that clean, but it is not a struggle and worry now.)

The long shot of it is, we have more peace and less video watching and are content for now.  I wish I could pass some of that to you who are in a trickier spot through this!!!  Thinking of all of you and wishing you the best in your social and economic lives.

More about Vancouver

We traveled to Canada like it was 1999.  No cell phone service.  No texting.  No GPS.  No internet.  Ahead of the trip we wrote down directions to each destination on a sheet of paper; then we intuited any navigational mishaps through the use of north, south, east, and west.  We paid for food with actual cash.  We used our phones only as clocks and cameras.  We planned actual meeting times and locations.  Jared was there for work.  (*This is officially unfair.*) The kids and I went along for fun. As fun as an overnight trip with three small children over an international border in two cars could be (see: five people PLUS cello don't fit in a sedan).  I wanted to find things to do with the kids in late winter which would not break the bank.  So... We visited Stanley Park where the adults took turns playing with the kids on the beach and going for walks or jogs on the trails.  We took the kids swimming in the hotel pool.  And while Jared was teaching, I took the kids to Lynn Canyon, which has extensive hiking trails and an amazing suspension bridge.  It also has a small, free, and really family-friendly ecology center filled with interactive exhibits and dioramas: a small wing about local animals, a small wing about local plants, a small wing about the history of people in the area, and a kids' wing with more dioramas, a video with different animal sounds, animal puppets, animal coloring projects, maps, animal puzzles, books to read about the seasons, and toy animals.  All three of my kids were happy for hours.

I drove around fairly extensively on some main roads in Vancouver, but surely I didn't see LOTS of town.  There is some pretty heavy industry and lots of shipping, just like Seattle and Tacoma.  I noticed that the development is more dense and mixed use than what I'm used to, and things seem to be kept cleaner.  I did see some homeless individuals, although very few compared to what I'm used to seeing in Seattle.  A large percentage of houses are at least partly stucco.  There seems to be little in the way of landscaping.  And lots of houses are surrounded by a front gate made with metal, brick, cinderblock, or concrete.  No billboards, and store signs are less obtrusive.  Parking and left turns are a pain, and most of the main roads are city driving - very little in the way of freeways.  Lots of very high-end shopping and dining, and very walkable.

Also the hotel had no microwaves.  Our baked potato plan went down in flames with that.  Fortunately we were three blocks from Whole Foods, so we found things that our weird dietary issues could eat without the use of heating or cooking.

The Canadian border agents were professional and armed, and seemed to be mostly female and friendly.  The American border agents were profession, armed, and gruff, and seemed to be mostly male and very militarized.  More "equipment" and metal gates and cameras entering the US, at least to the untrained eye.  These two groups are working right next to each other.  I wonder if they are friends and if they ever cross the street to socialize.

If you are not aware (and I was't until just recently), there is a little tiny bit of British Columbia, one town worth, which juts south of the 49th parallel, making it part of Washington state.  It's called Point Roberts.  The school there only runs through third grade, so from the fourth grade up, Point Roberts kids are bussed across the border into Canada and then a 45 minute drive back across the border to Blaine, Washington.  Can you imagine going across two international check points twice a day in a school bus?

Disappointments

There were a couple of big disappointments for me personally in the last two weeks.  A candidate I actually looked forward to voting for dropped out before I had a chance to fill out my ballot.  And the Seattle Young Artist Music Festival was cancelled.  This was the first year I had three students entering in the complete program category, two of whom I started myself, and they have been working hard, and had already been working with a professional accompanist.

...

Someone Near and Dear was hospitalized for a lung issue for nearly two weeks starting January 10th, the same day the first traveler from Wuhan was hospitalized in another Seattle hospital.  Near and Dear found the hospital quite boring and did as much research on the far away corona virus in China as could be done - reading every paper and scientific opinion put out there.  In late January, Near and Dear detailed to me quite a bit of this research, which made it clear to me that we would be experiencing the virus in the US at some point in the next year, and that a large percentage of the world population was expected to get sick (40%-80%) without any intervention.  I was given a lot of statistics on communicability and incubation and fatality rates and the possibility of reinfection, as far as it was known.  When it became clear on March 1st that covid-19 had been silently spreading through Seattle and the first fatalities were happening, I had already been prepared for the idea that Seattle might be the first place in the US to get hit, and that social distance and quarantine might be a real thing.

That weekend we went to Hurricaine Ridge for our one day of winter (and it was glorious!).  Glad we got that in, as last year it was cancelled due to the government shutdown. (Plowing in National Parks was out.).This weekend we went with Jared to Vancouver, B.C., where he was teaching a Dalcroze workshop, and we got to experience some more beach, mountains, and rain forrest (and the hotel pool!)...

Last February we had two weeks of being snowed in and teaching via internet - Snowmaggedon.  This year, looks like we'll have a similar deal, but without snow.

The government in Washington state has taken clear leadership.  All gatherings of more than 250 are banned, and schools in three counties are closed for a minimum of six weeks.  Our business will continue as usual, but with more internet lessons, likely.  I have one student's parent who is being tested for covid-19 as we speak.  That parent has not entered my home in months due to the driver's license of the child, and as a precaution, we have moved that student's lessons online indefinitely.  I hate internet teaching, but I see the wisdom, and frankly, I can't afford not to teach.  Several of my Seattle colleagues have already taken all their teaching online this week, and we are all talking about how to manage group class ideas via technology.  Group class is a real part of our students' tuition, and we owe them something beneficial, as we owe ourselves the income. 

Our weekend recital is cancelled.  We chose to do that preemptively before the state implemented new rules to protect the elderly from a visiting virus; I did not want to unwittingly take germs into a retirement home.   Another retirement home about 10 miles from here has had 20 deaths to date from this virus.  So we are having small recitals in-house, during group classes next week.  Possibly taking the two at home to the park a block away if the weather permits.

Anyway, I don't see anyone around here panicking.  Truly I just see lots of people and organizations taking the lead to protect our vulnerable neighbors.  Near and Dear is one of them.

(It is interesting to be in the middle of all of this, not so long after I finished reading about the cholera outbreak in London of 1854.)

Kids, Books, and More Extra

Not so long ago, the post I wrote after Lazarus' birth resurfaced in some people's email, triggering questions as to whether we'd just had a fourth child.  Honestly, I'm not quite sure how that happened.  I WAS digging around on that post that day trying to download a picture, because that day was mathematically significant.  It was the very day that Lazarus was three years and five months, the precise age that Anne was when Lazarus was born.  I am amazed at how old I thought Anne was at that time, and feel sad that I expected more from her maturity-wise than seems reasonable with Lazarus.  I guess that is the curse of being the eldest.  I am trying to revise my expectations for her in general... 

With three kids, though, I do feel like I've entered this odd "secret" club of "big families."  It seems funny to me, because I grew up in a three-kid family, and I NEVER had the sense of being from a big family.  I heard from so many sources that going from two to three kids was MUCH harder than going from one to two.  So frankly, I set my expectations for that transition *really low* and gave us as much grace and time as we could afford.  In my experience, and maybe because of my expectations, but maybe more because of the particular personalities of who we had, it was a much easier transition on the whole.  Sure, it's trickier to get everyone clothed and fed and out the door or to get everyone in bed, but not THAT much harder.  

However... once Laurel got to be about nine or ten months old, it became a whole different story.  She was no longer a cute, time-consuming doll to her siblings, but a real person who was standing up, walking around, getting into their stuff, talking, taking their things, and having obvious opinions.  That's when three got really hard.  We've made progress since then, but I'm not going to lie - it is overwhelming sometimes.  The complexity of relationships has multiplied, and with it the behavior challenges.

We LOVE getting audio books from the library.  In the last few months we have heard: 

• Twenty-Eight, a book about 28 figures from Black history. Yesterday, the pastor started telling a story about Harriet Tubman in the sermon without mentioning her name, and my eldest leaned over and said, I know who that is!
• The Wind in the Willows - a classic I had never read before
• Winnie the Pooh - another classic I had not read before
• The Great Cake Mystery - for those who have fallen in love with Mma Ramotswe and her Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana, this is a chapter prequel for children
• Little House on the Prairie - a favorite from my childhood which I barely remembered when I heard it again.
• The Penderwicks.  This is a five-book series, and hands-down Anne's favorite books of all time.  We have heard all but the second.  It is inspired by Little Women and references it on so many levels, but is set in more recent Massachusetts - there are recycling bins, bus stations, day care, cell phones, and computers with the internet.
• Because of Anne's love for the Penderwicks, we just started listening to Little Women, which I had never read, and Anne is loving it, too.
• Also, I read to them Sarah Plain and Tall, which dovetails nicely with Little House.
• And I have been slowly reading to Anne the first five of the Betsy-Tacy books, which I had never heard of, but a friend gave the collection to Anne upon hearing of her love for the Penderwicks, as well.  It is tales based on the author's childhood in Victorian-era Duluth.
• We just finished listening to The Great Trouble, a historical novel about the cholera outbreak in London's Soho in 1854.  Dr. John Snow was instrumental in ending the epidemic, as he rightly theorized that cholera was water-born, rather than caused by "bad air".  The story was told from the perspective of a fictional 13-year-old orphan who did odd jobs for the doctor.  Fascinating!
• I read Michelle Obama's memoire, which my dad gave me for my birthday.  So interesting to see how someone else's life unfolds in a way totally different from mine.  Very personal and relatable, though.
• I am reading The Yellow House by Sarah Broom, another memoire given to me by Jared for Christmas.  The author is only a few months older than me and grew up in the poor part of New Orleans.  It is her family history going back generations, her childhood in the Yellow House, Hurricaine Katrina and its destruction of everything she new in New Orleans, and her life after the Water.  Again, fascinating, and particularly so, since we are the same age.

The More Extra of this week:

Nutmeg had a weird knee injury and a trip to the vet on Thursday morning.  Anne has been helping me give her her pain pills.

Wednesday night our 13-year-old water heater conked out, so while I was at the vet, I was fielding calls from Jared about decisions needing to be made regarding that.  Someone replaced it on Thursday in time to get our little house reorganized for group class.

Also on Thursday, between the vet trip to Kent and the hot water heater replacement, I took Anne to Seattle for her bass lesson.  On the way back, we stopped at the retirement home where we had scheduled our studio recital for March 15th to find out the reservation wasn't going to work after all.  Fortunately I found another retirement home the following day who could host us.  I HATE making phone calls for business stuff, but of course it's part of life....

The Time of Extra

During the first two months of this year, there is a lot of extra happening in addition to our happy little routine we have settled in since September. 

In no particular order...
We buy a set of six or so season tickets to the Seattle Symphony, and this year most of the concerts we have picked happen to be mid-January through the first week of March.

I finally bit the bullet, so to speak, and am getting some dental things I'd put off taken care of.  This involves five trips to Kent.

I was behind on the cat's shots... so there are three more trips to Kent. 

And, speaking of putting off, now I've had three (and there is at least one more) trip to the chiropractor as well as additional exercises...

And a few other things, too...

Someone near and dear was in the hospital in downtown Seattle for 10 days, and we went to visit four times.

We finally had some friends over that we'd been trying to get together with for many months.

Anne has a bass recital next weekend.

I have a paid playing gig coming up.

We had to get new passports for the girls.

Jared's phone met its bitter end.  After being dropped, it fell in the toilet.  And then while drying out in a bowl of rice on top of the fridge, it fell to the floor again.  After Jared's first attempts to get a new phone we discovered that the  account is in my name and I have lost my password, so we had to plan a time to go to the store together, with kids in tow to take care of the problem.

The front screen door also met its bitter end, although the frame is still attached, and walking right through it is a fun magic trick.

There were a couple of snow days.

I have kept up with Anne's bass practice like the star Suzuki parent I aspire to be.  We have gotten behind on her other schoolwork, which I do not regret.  She's actually almost done with first grade math, and is quite good at it.  We are going to start phonics in earnest in a couple of weeks.

Last Tuesday, she called her grandmother in Oregon and said she was coming to visit for a week.  So... we drove her down Friday, spent the night, and drove back home Saturday in time to get a wee bit of exercise, eat dinner, and load the kids back off to drop them at Jeffrey and Linda's house while we went to a concert.  She seems to be having the time of her life, and despite her trepidation about sleeping alone, she is doing just fine.  And I hear she even did her bass practice and brushed her teeth yesterday.

Belated Silly Days

I guess I'm down to posting about once a month.  Recently I read someone saying, "There are no life hacks for three kids in five years."  That's where we are, so writing is scarce. 

I promised some sweet Silly Days from the fall.  Silly Days are the made-up stories Jared tells the kids in bed at night where they each star as something other than themselves.  I love lying in the dark hearing his creativity flow forth.  Everyone is quiet, and there is no fighting.  Talking in our beds in the dark at night is a family highlight for me.

An excerpt from one of Anne's....  Anne often asks to be some sort of medical person.  In this one she was a surgeon and had already done one surgery that day.... "Your next patient came in, and you said, 'What are we doing for you today?'  The patient said, 'I want you to make my chin longer, and my ears longer, and my forehead wrinkly, and make each of my teeth crooked.  And also all of my fingers longer.'  You said, 'Are you sure about all of that?  You know that surgery is permanent.'  'Yes!' said your patient.  I want to be a goblin.  Here, look at this picture of a goblin I found on the internet,' said the patient as he handed you his phone.  You took a careful look at it.  'I think I can do all that for you, but I can't make your skin green.'  Your patient said, 'That's okay, I can use face paint for that.'..."

An excerpt from one of Lazarus'... He was very concerned at that time about monsters, and asked to be a GOOD monster for his silly day.  "When you woke up, you had been sleeping all day in a drawer in the closet.  You peered around, and it was dark.  You could tell it was almost time for your favorite little boy to go to bed.  You waited until he was sound asleep in his bed, and you slipped out of the closet, and curled up next to him in his bed.  All night long, any time bad monsters wanted to bother your little boy, you would protect him and tell them to go away."

And another one of Lazarus' where he wanted to be a generic monster...  "You had been awake all night, the way monsters are, but it was just starting to get light so you had to hide.  You turned into a little puddle on the floor and started to ooze under the kitchen cabinet.  Just then, Daddy came walking in and stepped on you, and said, 'Ew!  Cat barf!' So he got paper towels and a spray bottle and cleaned you up."

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Last weekend felt both small and memorable.  Friday our small neighbor was over for the morning, and by staying outside for a few hours myself, I was able to keep the kids outside.  When it's not summer so that everyone is home from school, it feels like such a battle to get the kids enough outdoor time.  They rode bikes, puttered around, and collected and decorated pinecones with peanut butter and bird seed.  I hung the cones in our little front tree, which I also pruned, and used the long sticks to make some sort of strange Earth Mother decoration which I hung on our front porch.  I also pruned our three hateful front shrubs, hauled the clippings to the compost, and hung our hose up for the winter.  Other big projects for the weekend.... I hung a VERY heavy mirror I had sitting on the floor for some months in our kitchen/dining/laundry/mud room, and... moved litter boxes.

When I was a child, we had some neighbors who moved away from their duplex for a while and came back maybe a year later.  I don't remember the circumstances exactly, but I remember one day my mom and another neighbor went over their to clean out their freezer.  The freezer wasn't working and the rotting meat therein was full of maggots.  I didn't go in the house, but played in the yard for hours while these VILE smells, like I have never smelled before or after, came wafting around.  That smell and my visualization  of what has caused it has been my benchmark for *nasty* ever since.

...Due to the drainage problems in our sloping bathroom, and the fact that the cats kick litter out of their boxes no matter what, our bathroom had reached a crisis.  Despite the philosophical and space reasons for keeping a litter box in the bathroom, it. was. not. working.  So now both of our litter boxes are in our kitchen/dining/laundry/mudroom.  It's crowded in here.  I do have future solutions on my mind for the time soon when we don't have to move the sofa in here during group classes....  The cleaning of the vileness under and behind the industrial shelving in the bathroom, previously meant to be part of the solution, didn't rate quite as high as the maggot-ed duplex.  But it was not completely out of that league.  Cleaning involved a trash bag, a vacuum cleaner, a brand new roll of paper towels, a metal blade found in the garage, and enough bleach I could still smell it two days later.  "Gag a maggot" is a phrase used in my family.  It was that.  And when I was done, the floor was likely clean enough to eat off of, but my interest in doing so was a negative ten.  I was very proud of the result, and proud of myself for tackling and finishing it.

Saturday morning, I was on for playing piano in the little kid Sabbath school class, and as the girls were still sleeping at departure time, only Lazarus and I went.  He petered out partway through the church service so we came home to find the family band going wild in the living room.  Jared was improvising on the piano, Anne had made drums out of our bulk bins, and Laurel was dancing and playing arm violin with a practice bow.

Saturday night Linda was hosting a house concert, and as Jeffrey was out of town, either Jared or I was slated to attend and help move furniture, etc.  Since I'd been down to Auburn already that morning, it was Jared's turn.

Backing up a night...What transpired, though, on Friday evening, and throughout Saturday afternoon and evening was very wonderful - both completely ordinary, and completely magical.  We put up our little tiny Christmas tree purchased the previous evening at the corner lot and lugged home on top of the stroller, as well as our two strings of indoor white lights, and we got out the unbreakable decorations.  It is constantly in a state of being decorated and undecorated by small hands.  Very fun.  We created a whole Christmas corner with the tree, a windowsill of angels, and the wooden nativity.  And then... the snowflake factory started.  Between Anne and Jared and me, we must have made fifty or more snowflakes in all the hues available from a pack of construction paper and a pack of printer paper.  Amazing!

Saturday night while Jared was gone, I threaded all those flakes and hung them from the ceiling.  We also took down our felt Thanksgiving tree and tacked up our felt Christmas tree.  I also set up my great-grandmother's electric/ceramic tree in another windowsill.  Additionally I cleaned the kitchen and most especially the kitchen sink, which had moved onto the *vile scale*.  And found a new spot for our ALWAYS IN THE WAY  rolling dishwasher.  It's the little things.  Also it's probably stress cleaning, although that's vaguer and harder to pinpoint.

Jumping ahead to yesterday... I pulled out the cloth diapers again and reconfigured the bathroom storage for them, so we're going to have another go with that. I am trying to cut down on waste and consumption and especially PLASTIC.  Every toothbrush manufactured since they started making plastic toothbrushes in the 1930s is STILL out there.  Lots of them are floating in the ocean.  That is also vile.  Recycling mostly doesn't happen, no matter what you put in your recycle bin.  So that leaves it down to reduce and reuse...

I have moved so many times without cleaning out. And have collected so much STUFF.  So many places felt temporary, and I didn't want to get rid of things I'd want in the next place.  Now we have added three more people and their stuff.  The necessities of life are expensive these days.  And the luxuries are cheap and badly made...  I'm only a few months from forty, and I sort of vaguely imagined I would not be living like a clutter freak and hoarder at such a distinguished age.  So now I've joined a cleaning-out group for mothers and the Buy Nothing Project (both amazing facebook groups), and I'm getting the inspiration and the destination for all the stuff that is not working in this house.  I'm expecting to live in this house for a LONG time, because it has been such a slow and tricky move in, and moving seems extremely unpractical/financially unfeasible for any years I can imagine in the future.  I feel sentimental about almost all kid stuff, especially baby stuff, but I've managed to offload some unused toys and the baby bath and walker that Laurel has outgrown.  Some people are not sentimental at all and can declutter easily.  I am not there, but I am irritated enough about the mounds of junk on every horizontal surface, that I can do hard things so I don't have to live the rest of my life this way.  Maybe it's not stress cleaning.  Maybe it's Swedish death cleaning.  I can't wait for our two-week Christmas break coming up so I can WORK on the project without having to be ready for students at various hours.

Sunday afternoon, just as I was finishing up typing the programs for tomorrow's and Tuesday's studio recitals, I received an email saying my reservation for the library for Sunday was cancelled.  The whys and wherefores are not entirely clear, and I think it might have been my fault. I ran out to garage where Jared was installing the baseboard heaters to ask him to help me brainstorm a solution and saw Anne coming down the alley with our neighbors.  I hadn't seen her yet that day, as I had been out on a walk when she woke up and was invited to their house.  I joined them and told my friend about the problem.  She brainstormed for some moments, too, but the best thing she said was, whatever happens, it will all be over in a week.  I thought that was such a great way to look at the problem.  It was only temporary!  I texted and emailed some people whom I thought might have some ideas for me, and put it to bed.  Monday morning I started making cold calls (something I despise!!!!!!!) to various retirement facilities, and mercifully got a yes in under half an hour.  ("Hi, this is Ruth Marie Balance, and I am a local violin teacher.  I have twenty young musicians ready to give a recital at 2:00 on Sunday, but we don't have a venue.  Can we come perform for your residents?")

There's so many more details I'm leaving out, but that's the gist of it for now...

I have another post I have been wanting to write for a month about bedtime stories, but blogging time is pretty limited these days.

Connections and Tetris

Connections

This week I came to the designated end of a big push to find more students.  On Wednesday we started a class for brand-new beginners.  My goal was to fill it with ten families, but we planned to make it work with just five.  In the end we only came up with two, and I was feeling somewhat defeated over the weekend.  But after the first class, and upon review of what's in the pipeline, I think my work in "advertising" was truly positive.

If you know me, you know I love all my students, and have found ways to connect successfully with a wide variety of profiles, but in replaying comments that Jared and I have made to each other over the years, I realized I heard myself saying that I really want to keep investing in beginners and growing together over the long haul.  I did some research over the summer by connecting with people who have done group starts, as opposed to the one-at-a-time starts I have always done, and I got some great ideas, and frankly, a good feeling about the group dynamic, and the easy out on all sides for those who start in our studio but find that Suzuki lessons with us is not what they were looking for.

Despite various methods of trying to reach out over the years to new students (because there really are people out there who want to play the violin, viola, and cello, and who will mesh well with our particular way of doing things!), nearly all of our students have come down to word-of-mouth connections.  With some great advice on how to "language" things from my dad, I communicated with so many people I have connections with.   Emails, and text messages, and fliers, and in-person communications EVERY day for some weeks.  As a result, not only do we have the two new students, but actually several more who are very interested in starting with us in the next few months, but for  a variety of normal logistical reasons couldn't do this particular class.  It feels very hopeful.  I have also come to realize that despite my introversion, I am definitely someone who is looking to connect with people and connect people to each other.

Now that we are off to a solid start with this class, I feel like I can relax a little bit.  Make some cookies or something...

***

Tetris

Earlier this year I was talking to another parent who lives in a house only a little bigger than our 840 square feet, with as many family members.  She described her home life as constantly shuffling *things* around.  I can't tell you how much that applies in our house, too.  Especially since Jared and I are teaching in this same tiny space.  

Group class days at home (currently Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday), we reorient our dining table and chairs by 90 degrees in our dining room/kitchen annex/utility room, and add our sofa (truly only a love seat) so that we have room in our tiny living room for our class.  This sounds simple, but it involves massive clean-up (see: three kids).  And also, if anyone needs to access the fridge or bulk goods during the hours of rearrange, it involves literally climbing over the table to reach them.  (Let's say Jared wants to put rice in the rice cooker for dinner in between two lessons.  He is standing on top of chairs and the dining table to reach the corner where the rice bin is located, and then climbing back over everything to reach the pot, hidden from view behind a curtain in the so-called kitchen.)

Let's talk about our official *kitchen*.  The so called foot-space, if no cabinet or over doors are open, is about seven feet by three feet, boxed in by a weird pillar in the middle.  Smack in the middle of that small walking space, we have a full-size dishwasher on gimpy wheels (you know that shopping carts which doesn't run smoothly? > Those wheels.), which came with the house.  The dishwasher is at all times blocking a) the silverware drawer and the kids' dishes drawer, b) the sink, c) the oven, and/or d) the cabinet.  It is truly the most difficult small kitchen we have ever had in all our dwelling places.  When I gave my parents their first tour of our house on Skype, I showed them the kitchen, and my dad kept insisting he'd like to see more of it.  But that was it.  He'd seen it all.  I have done less cooking in this house than I have in any place I've ever lived, and I'd like to think it's because Jared likes to cook and would rather I do more kid stuff.  That is likely true, but also, it's because it is such an awful kitchen to work in, I usually want to give up before I start.  In order to do anything in there, one is physically shoving the dishwasher back and forth, climbing over chairs, walking in wide arcs in and out of the kitchen around the pillar, squeezing past the table to access the bulk goods and refrigerator, and becoming totally exasperated.  Jared is a saint (truly a SAINT!) and cooks copious amounts of tasty and nutritious food for all of us, and then washes the dishes.  I honestly don't know how it doesn't drive him insane.  

There is also the laundry.  The clean laundry migrates from the dryer and various precarious hang-drying spots to the sleeper sofa, and then sometimes to the beds or tops of bedroom cabinets before it gets folded and put away, often in a hurry before students arrive. Hurriedly dumped on the bed, that is.  Next to Jared's nice cello in its case, and a pile of books which fell off the adjoining bookshelf, a sleepy cat or two, and hopefully not on Laurel's napping spot.

These are all the most obvious examples of work-flow issues and TETRIS in our house, and I could go on for hours if I wanted to.  There have only been two places I've lived as an adult where I thought my home was tidy and organized, and both of those had a LOT more square footage per person than my truly charming 1940s War house.

Anyway, this is not a complaint.  It's really to preface my excitement about some genuine change coming down the pipeline, which is so close, I can almost... feel it.

My 9'x5' mini-studio attached to the end of the garage is in full use for all of my lessons now, and the larger 13'x20' studio is getting close to usable.  Plus, of course, Jared and his dad added the 12'x12' storage shed last year (which could use some more internal work on my part to get everything stored well).  Right now! > the garage studio is sheet-rocked minus the window and skylight openings and the attic access.  There is still taping and floating, texturing and painting, and eventually flooring and baseboards to go (and probably several things I don't know about).  The new donor upright piano our neighbors passed along needs work before it is ready to lead improvisation in Dalcroze or accompany the string group.  It is playable (although a half-step flat), but we need a professional to work on it - no one has maintained it in at least 20 years....

But as soon as we deem that room suitable for all group classes, I have grand plans for interior  house reorganization, which I know will improve our family flow.  The kitchen will be more functional (although a full remodel/addition would be the true solution to its issues).  I might even consider cooking something more complex than popcorn.  The living room will be friendlier.  The laundry room/dining room/kitchen annex will be a wee bit less crowded.  We will have TWO bedrooms in which to store beds, toys, books, and homeschool stuff, and I will not have *six people stepping on my bed pillow as part of their normal throughway every day*.  This evolution will not be instantaneous.  It will probably take several months from start to finish, but I am excited.  Also, in this house, I am ALWAYS trying to clean out. (Which goes against my nature.  But so does looking at the horrible headache of clutter all the time.) I have no illusions that our space is going to be showing up in House Beautiful, but I have hopes that certain things will be more functional for all family members.  I have been committing Tetris in my mind with all the furniture in anticipation.

Imperialist Gardens

Yesterday morning as I was walking the neighborhood solo while the kids were still sleeping, basking in the morning sunlight, enjoying exploring everything I can see, my mind was whirring, as it is often wont to.  Some themes from the previous night's post came spinning out in new ways, and now I have more to say, and it is not about schooling, although maybe it is...

It is about colonialism in all the negative senses of the word. 

As I look at yards around houses, I see familiar things.  I see a few large native trees.  I see some smaller ornamental trees, usually imported from another continent.  I see lawn.  The lush lawns are made up of only one or two species of grass not from around here.  The scraggly lawns are made up of whatever felt like growing.  Most of them, lush or otherwise, are regularly mowed into submission, chopped to a length deemed attractive by the residents, or to a length imagined to be deemed attractive by the neighbors.  There are flower beds containing shrubs and flowers and various plantings, mostly imported from other continents.  And there are the gardener's nemesis: weeds.  Weeds, of course, are ugly plants that we don't want soiling our space.  Or a gentler definition: weeds are any plant that is not where we want it to be. 

In a naturally balanced ecosystem, of course, there are no weeds.  Weeds are only defined by what humans don't want.

Think me crazy, but I have always been sympathetic to weeds, and I have felt badly about pulling them, preferring to let life live its own way.  But of course, that isn't practical is it? 

I realized on my walk, all of a sudden, that the imperialist culture of Western Europe (which we erroneously conflate with Christianity ALL THE TIME) that took over the world, snatching unknown people for forced labor, and rounding up or killing other unknown people which were in the way, to create a lifestyle of comfort for ourselves, is exactly how we create havens of rest around our homes, too.  "Weeds" are how we see the native plants which are the foundation of the carefully balanced ecosystem in our place.  And "weeds" are how we see native people who don't fit in with our culture of comfort.  We bring in other, more-comfortable-to-us species to please our senses without considering the soil, the water systems, the insects, the birds, or anything else that lives in symbiosis.

This was heavily on the back burner of my mind while I was teaching in my corner room at the church in Gig Harbor late yesterday afternoon, when a man came around the corner with a LARGE propane torch, setting fire to the weeds growing up between the landscaping rocks just outside my window.  He got carried away, and accidentally burned some young trees and ferns and shrubs which were meant to stay.  With heavy clouds of smoke going up, he had to run the hose on his fires and stomp them out, leaving charred blackness in the so-called landscaping.  Then he came back with a huge plastic bucket labelled weed-killer. 

The man was merely doing his job. 

I felt angry.  Vaguely angry that he was endangering the building with roaring fires so close to the eaves.  Very angry that he let the fires burn some carefully bedded plants.  Partially angry at the environmental degradation caused by unnecessary smoke, the production of propane for this purpose, and the poison of the weed killer.  But I was most angry that we see the miracle of tenacious, beautiful native life, growing in its own perfect spot, as a nuisance which must be killed. 

But the man was merely doing his job. 

We do this stuff ALL the time in so many ways.  And we have NO idea what we are doing.  We are all just doing our jobs.  This is how its always been done.  This is the most efficient, expedient way.  This is what's practical.  This is what the neighbors expect.  This is normal. 

We never stop to think outside the box - our little box of cultural comfort handed down to us generation after generation.  I come from slave-owners many generations back.  Slavery is officially illegal, but do you think all the attitudes which made it possible are dead?  I doubt it.  There are tiny whispers in the way we do little day-to-day things, handed down from parents to children, grandparents to grandchildren. 

Looking at imperialist gardens, it is easy for me to see today how we could slash and burn whole forests, kidnap families in the middle of the night and ship them overseas to work unpaid under the eye of the whip until death do us part, selling off their family members at a whim,  pour poison in people's drinking water for financial gain and lock the clean-up in irrelevant legal battles for years, create damaging earthquakes to wrest bits of ancient forests out of the ground to propel us from place to place at our convenience, laugh at the possibility that the only way we have left for the few tough-enough-to-still-be-alive remaining rightful inhabitants of the continent to find their way forward is to let them swindle us in casinos, consider nomads eyesore to be rounded up and placed somewhere out of sight (was that the Plains Natives in the 1800s? or is that the tent-dwellers in large cities in the 2010s?).  We are a culture that uses force, coercion, and abuse to control those we see beneath us, and THAT INCLUDES OUR VERY OWN CHILDREN.  And then we are unhappy people, and we wonder why.

I wish I could take all this baggage to the dump, leave it there, and start fresh.  The enormous dump filled up with things that should never have been made in the first place.  Garbage that will never rot.  Plastic that will break into smaller and smaller pieces and haunt us for hundreds or thousands of years.  The everything that you buy which is packaged in plastic.  Or the garbage that never even made it to the dump, which the sea water has collected in rafts the size of Texas.  Unprecedented-in-the-history-of-the-world conspicuous consumption at a daily level, and we can't even see that we're doing it.  It's cheap.  It's convenient.  It keeps us in our comfortable box.  If we want to imagine we don't need it all, never fear: every day we are advertised to in so many ways.  And we have the biological push to keep up with those around us, so we keep chasing all this pointlessness...

I wish I could take all this baggage to the dump, leave it there, and start fresh.  But the reality is slower and more difficult.  We must work through it little by little, day by day, painfully.  True change is often slow.

Noticing the problem is the first step.  Anger is a signal.  When we notice the signal as a call to action, we are letting anger work its magic.  Get good and angry...

Always Learning

As I last posted in mid-August, I was hoping to write something before September ended and I would have missed an entire calendar page.  The truth is that my life is very full, and writing this is currently a luxury afforded by not being able to sleep.

We are only three months into our homeschool journey with my first-grader, but the deeper I get into it, the more I feel it is the right place for us to be right now. 

We are about a third of the way through the first-grade math curriculum I bought, and my first-grader is really growing in her skills, not only of addition and subtraction, but of geometry, learning to count money and tell time, understanding calendars, measurements of length and volume, and skills which will ultimately lead to multiplication and division.  She is learning things which are practical in every way and will make her a well-rounded mathematician, regardless of how far she goes in math. 

Phonics is the other first-grade skill that I think is super important, and we've done a tiny bit, but too much book work isn't our cup of tea, so that's mostly on hold until we finish our math in a few months.  We have the flexibility to work deeply on one subject at a time if we need to.  I have a feeling that once we delve into phonics deeply and daily, she is going to become a real and fantastic reader, which I know she will LOVE.

We are reading, reading, reading together.  Some of it we are reading together on the sofa.  Some of it is read to us on the CD player carried, from room to room in the house, or built into the car stereo.  My first-grader really connects with stories, and she is hearing (mostly) fictional stories, mostly written for children older than herself.  Behind the scenes they are teaching her about big feelings and emotional regulation; strong, independent girls with passionate interests; how people just like her live in other times and places; how some Native cultures live in harmony with their surrounding ecology, and how those cultures and colonial cultures have clashed; how some brave children walked across fight lines to integrate American schools...  These are all things my six-year-old is thinking about from reading.  Her vocabulary is growing as is her cultural and historical literacy.  There are so many delicious things to talk about.  Can I tell you how much we appreciate the public library?

We are also finding some great videos at the library.  Lately the elder two have been watching a documentary about Mr. Rogers, the kindest man we have ever "met," as well as about sea horses - their biology, as well as joint efforts between conservationists and fishermen at protecting them.

There are drawing lessons with my mom - lessons which teach the eyes to observe reality closely and analyze it to understand its constituent parts.  Excellent skills for growing in the areas of science and philosophy, as my mom has pointed out.  Nevermind that we live several states away; video conferencing is amazing.  Somewhere down the road, I hear there is also an excellent geography course based on this more foundational drawing course.  It is art, but it is so much more.

There are now double bass lessons with a wonderful young man who has never taught a kid before.  Anne loves him and is excited to practice his assignments.  Her mother, because of her many years of teaching experience, is able to translate this wonderful teacher's rambling piles of brand new information into concrete practice lists.  This young fellow will NEVER know how much grief he is saving our family.  It is so good for my child to have a music teacher who plays an instrument her parents don't, and who is the boss when it comes to what she should practice.  I think he might have saved our family relationships.  You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.

She also plays in two of our weekly group classes and participates in the adjoining Dalcroze half-hour.  One is on Monday at home, and one is on Tuesday in Gig Harbor.  Teamwork and careful listening skills are growing.

There is a weekly Bible club in the neighborhood which involves memorizing Bible verses to earn badges (not a huge fan of the rewards set-up, but anyway...) and large-body activities with big groups of kids, which is quite popular with my child.

There is the possibility for interesting projects.  My child thinks up many of her own - she has lately been trying to figure out how to start a dog-walking business, earn money babysitting her siblings, trying to discover if there is any way she can get her own dog, sewn clothes for her Barbies, started ghost-writing a book about babysitting, tried to imagine what it would be like to break a leg, drawn series of pictures depicting various stages of human pregnancy, taught her brother music lessons...  Those are all things she has done of her own volition in the last week.  She has a fertile mind which needs space and time to create and grow, which it has when she isn't confined to the industrial walls of the wonderful school down the street, where the caring teachers must spend so much effort maintaining order in the group and teaching to improve test scores.  (None of which is to say that wonderful school might not be exactly the right fit for our family in the future.)

I have a project of my own inspiration which we are going to do in the next week or so (fit in around the rest of my life... ha.)  Along with my mother in Texas, I am very interested in ecology, and realize that native plants support native insects which support native birds and other wildlife...  Whole ecosystems are delicately balanced and when we humans tinker too much, the whole thing collapses needlessly, at our loss and the rest of creation's loss.  At my mother's suggestion I joined a group on facebook called Plant Identification.  Today I took photos of about ten different plant species growing in the "lawn" of our yard and sent them off for the plant nerds to identify.  Anne and I are going to take clippings from these plants and press them.  Then we will mount each on its own page and add the Latin and common names to them, and find out their range and habitats and whether they are native or invasive here.  I plan to hang this catalogue in our house for us to study so we know who we are living in the middle of.  I feel like we inhabit such a strange cultural space where most of us have no idea who our natural neighbors in the creation are and feel that we have no relationship to them other than to use them.

As I mentioned at some point before, in June I joined another facebook group called Christian Gentle Parenting, which, frankly, has been amazing.  There are so many resources listed, with more popping up all the time, including books, articles, videos, podcasts, specific strategies, advice for specific situations, etc. to help parents develop positive life-long relationships with their children while raising them to be responsible, kind, thoughtful, and honest without the use of manipulation, force, punishment, or shaming, all of which are SO deeply imbedded in our culture.  They just added a whole new unit on dealing with racism, which I am excited to study when I catch up with the material I am currently working through.  I read bits of things from this group almost every day, and I feel that I am becoming a much better parent/human-being-in-relationship-with-others for it, while also realizing *how much* more growing I have to do.  I am so grateful for this group.  It, like Anne's bass teacher, is truly a life-line.  God has been very good to me.

Homeschooling is wonderful, and I am *almost* in over my head.

Mayhem in Review

Starting from the last week of June:

Week 1: Jared was out of town.  I was alone with three kids for the first time.  Anne had her last day of kindergarten and her first day of summer swimming.  I taught a few lessons and hosted an end-of-year party for Anne's class.  No one died, but there were meltdowns amongst my kids.

Week 2: We had a few days off due to the Fourth.  There was garage-cleaning and planning that happened in addition to teaching and rehearsing.

Week 3: We taught our in-house group class workshop all week, and had an electrical team here to put the line and panel in for our garage conversion.  And also rehearsed with Linda.

Week 4: We taught lessons and my dad came to stay with us and do all the interior electrical work on the garage.  Also, we had five evening rehearsals in Seattle with Linda and Adam.

Week 5: We taught at the Walla Walla Suzuki Institute.  It involved a road trip (not so fun).  It was kind of an easy week there since we had Jared's parents there to do EVERYTHING for us.  They took care of the little kids while we were teaching, took Anne to all her classes, took Anne swimming daily, and cooked dinner for us.  And the campus is so small and everything was clustered right together.

Week 6:  We taught lessons and gave a full-length (sold-out!  :-)) chamber concert with Adam and Linda in Kent.  And painting over the graffiti that showed up on our garage door while we were out of town the previous week.  Also Anne had her first vacation Bible school experience nightly, which she loved.

Week 7: Zombie week.  We taught at Japan Seattle Suzuki Institute, and thankfully this year cut out hours of commuting by staying in the dorm.  But we had piecemeal hour-by-hour childcare that I didn't always have lined up until 45 minutes before it was needed.  Some incredibly generous people helped us out!  Also, the night before it all started, I smashed my middle finger on my left hand.  It bled for several hours, and had to be iced.  I thought of going out to find a doctor on Sunday night, but trying to find something on our insurance while packing for the early morning departure was not awesome, so I used bandaids and paper towels.  Thankfully, my group class pianist at the institute got me some super glue, and by the third day of the institute, my finger was no longer bleeding, and I could start to play a little bit.

Now we have three easy weeks.  Just some summer teaching, in-house rehearsing for our pair of chamber concerts in Bellingham the first week of Bellingham, and working out the fall teaching schedule.  There are some big changes coming to group class (I think?), and thinking about childcare, and recruiting some new students to replace our moving-away and graduating and changing teachers students...  And maybe cleaning out the huge and disgusting pile of boxes left over from last year's move, which are now in an unattractive and somewhat soggy pile under a big, blue, wet tarp in the back yard.