Archive for May, 2008
May 28th, 2008
I wonder if falling into formulas of writing doesn’t turn into a kind of block? I start feeling like a parody of myself. Something cute the kids said or did, some piece on NPR, and its application to my life, earnest self-examination, pat little summarization. And when I write about something like the Suzuki Lessons piece, I wonder if I sound as if I think I have all the answers? When my best friend leaves a comment about mother guilt I wonder if I haven’t given a lopsided version of things, that I need to rush back in and qualify how I worry about pushing my kids for the wrong reasons, how the time I spend practicing with them is time not spent cooking nutritious meals and how much self-doubt I go through still regularly? That sometimes I think a little bit less time with me might be good for the lot of them?
Should I, for the sake of honesty, be talking instead about how I get PMS and yell and tell the kids that since I have to spend all of my time picking up after them maybe tonight I won’t have time to read to them? Should I be talking about my guilt that I felt like I had nothing left to give getting involved with a co-op preschool for Rainer, even though I loved the co-oping I did with each of his brothers? Yesterday a friend told me about the preschool her daughter was at with one opening for a four year old, and so I went today and met the teacher and fell in love because she was just right with the way she talked to him, at his level, answering his question “What’s this?” with “What do you think it is?” really engaging him, and I realized he needed that kind of interaction with an adult and I haven’t been giving it to him and the school is an easy bike ride from my house, and it just felt so RIGHT, and then I found out tonight that that space is not available and am a little bit heartbroken? And guilty because I should have planned ahead for the whole preschool thing for him?
I know that in pondering whether blogging about your kids is exploitation I started in with the question of what I find comfortable writing about for the whole world to read, but aside from the moral/ethical questions of privacy and safety, there’s a more aesthetic one. Can I put myself out for commiseration without sounding like I am whining? Can I be proud of an accomplishment without sounding insufferable? If I share the self-doubts am I somehow reinforcing some model of female relating by self-doubt? Can I adore my children without making them overly precious? If my worldview is inexplicably optimistic (really, don’t ask, I haven’t a clue why it should be) and I tend to get more excited about the things that work than depressed about things that seem hopeless, does it make me impossible to relate to? In the end, I guess, these questions are paralytic, there is no sentence I can make up that some little voice in my head cannot suggest a horrible misreading of, so I just have to go ahead and write what I need to write, and trust the reader.
May 26th, 2008
It’s probably clear that being part of my kids music education is a big part of my life, it gets a substantial part of my time each day and I put a lot of time into thinking about it. And most people would probably nod and agree “Yeah, music education is great for kids” and leave it at that, but of course, being me and having spent so much time and emotional energy into it, I am surprised at how it has become a part of my identity, and I have been a little frustrated not to have met other parents doing it with whom I can talk about it. Lots of Suzuki parents are a little strange, I think you sort of have to be to look at your three year old and say “Hey, I have an idea, let’s make practicing the violin a part of our daily routine.”
So when I talk about being a Suzuki parent I have no idea what it means to you. Until my own kids were doing it I mostly thought of those other violinists who were learned to play by ear instead of learning to read music when I was a kid, or the freakishly poised Japanese toddlers on television, and it didn’t occur to me my own kids were ever going to be Suzuki kids. Our first ‘cello teacher in Dallas used the books but not the method, and my own sister used the books as her ‘cello teacher had, in a hodge-podge with her own experiences learning music and pedagogy classes from the university. Then we moved to Portland, and the ‘cello teacher Aodan got was really a Suzuki teacher. We had a mixed experience with his brothers’ violin teacher, but she made sure we were really immersed in the method and all of its implications. My sister got her Suzuki qualifications as a teacher as we started becoming real Suzuki students, and she and I have benefited from the other’s perspective in this process, and it’s something I fits naturally with her more empathetic and light-handed yet serious-about-the-music approach to teaching (should mention here that I really wish we were closer geographically so she could teach my son, but not being so, I am on the phone with her all of the time trying to get from her what Suzuki and music education really is about, what it really means).
This is what Suzuki means to me: making listening to the repertoire a part of daily routine, the parent as practice partner, sitting quietly in the lesson taking notes and then using the teacher’s suggestions to guide practice all week. Progressing through the songs in the books in the order they’re given, trusting that the order has its own logic, and watching my five year old get excited recognizing the piece his brother has already played that he is going to play one day. I think ideally we’d get to be part of more regular group classes, but that hasn’t worked for the younger boys with our family’s schedule this year.
So what have I learned from practicing music with my kids?
1) Modelling is a much more effective way of teaching than lecturing. The boys may need suggestions on ways to tweak their technique to get the sound they want, but they’re smart enough to hear the difference and letting them hear and adjust and work on making their own playing get closer to the sound they hear in their heads is much more effective than telling them what to do.
2) They listen better to themselves than to me, so it is more effective to ask them a question “Why do you think it sounds scratchy?” than to say “Hey, use more speed and less pressure and your sound won’t be so scratchy.”
3) The best practice is somewhere between work and play, it is paying attention to a challenge, and because I am trying to help them meet the challenge, I have the responsibility to help define the challenge in small, concrete ways (”Let’s see if we can do ten bows parallel to the bridge”) and create fun ways of representing the accomplishment — a tic tac toe board they get to fill in, or those little barrel of monkey monkeys hanging from a peg or the music stand. I have to learn to make the challenge appropriate, so it doesn’t feel like the finish line is always being moved further away, which would be frustrating, or that it is condescendingly easy, which would feel manipulative.
4) I am a more effective practice partner when I am matter-of-fact. I will empathize “it must be hard to stop playing while your brothers seem to be having fun, so we can go practice, but we need to get this done.” I try to make sure things that need working on are just things that need working on and not moral failures, even if the thing that needs working on is a more basic skill, like stopping and listening, and making sure that things accomplished are celebrated for the discipline and hard work they represent, not just for the skill they show. I do have an emotional response of course, when a small person shows the determination and faith to turn, by practicing, what seemed impossible into something that is a matter of course, whether it’s the concentration to a balance a small toy on the scroll while I play through Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, or getting a difficult bow stroke. It is moving. But that’s different than feeling proud when someone else admires or angry or frustrated when I cannot communicate what I need in the practice.
5) When you make practicing a matter of course, like toothbrushing, and you’re there alongside the child, making it good time that you spend together, the chore-like drudgerous aspect of practice goes away, which has made me re-evaluate a lot of the dreaded and drudgerous chores in my life, and how often there is a voice in my head resenting the unfairness I perceive or how I don’t feel like I don’t have time to do the things I want to.
6) That when the ‘cello teacher told me “When someone asks what you’re working on just say you’re trying to improve tone quality and intonation because that is the goal of the every Suzuki student at every level” there was something deeper there than a glib answer. It’s a letting go of the idea of “advanced” and “beginning” because the progress from one piece to another isn’t entirely arbitrary, but has to do with how much more learning the teacher believes can be wrung out of working on a particular piece for that particular student. Different stages are easier for different kids. I was given a gift as a violinist to get to be a beginner again with each of my kids and heal some of the weird feelings I had about hierarchical rankings of which violinist sits in which chair after auditions. Playing with three different boys with entirely different needs in terms of willingness to confront frustration, abilities to self-regulate, natural inclination, and orientation for my approval has helped me to let go of ideas of “natural talent” and realizing potential. I still have pangs when I hear a fifth grader rocking on a piece I played in high school or when Aodan tells me that the youngest violinist in his orchestra just turned six, but to my great astonishment the kids have internalized so many of the good aspects of Suzuki that they will remind me that what is important to them is the enjoyment of playing together.
7) That old “Process not Products” emphasis is everything. If something tragic happened, I would be grateful for the time I spent connected with my kids, making music with them and not be angry that we had wasted all this time and they’d never get to be the musician I was trying to turn them into (I’d be angry at the universe for a lot of other things, no doubt, but not about time spent wasted practicing). It’s not that the results of practicing are meaningless, it’s just that I cannot be oriented towards results, because learning a new skill ends up being a lot like growing something from a seed, long periods of apparent dormancy when progress is impossible to discern and then, over night, amazing shoots of tender greenness. Each of the three boys I have practiced with seems to go through periods of what I call maintenance practicing — where I am satisfied just at not apparently losing any skills, and then there will be a little leap and suddenly we’re at a new level, and I’ve had to learn that these two things are different aspects of the same process, and it happens in the building a marriage, it happens in trying to develop as a writer, it just is how life is.
May 23rd, 2008
If there was a set of books I wanted to inhabit most as a child it was Milne’s Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh books. There was a lovely completeness to the world of this boy and the companionship of his toys, with their range of personalities, a gentleness to the adventures and a general celebration of friendship. It was always the books, mind you, never the Disney version. That voice was so wrong! My father could recite many of the Milne poems from memory and so can I now somehow, so they were the poems that taught me to love poetry. I have a memory of going to a children’s theater production of the stories and being so caught up in it that that was all I would play for weeks.
And at some point it was explained to me that there was a real Christopher Robin, and that he had had an Edward Bear (Winnie the bear was at the London Zoo) and that his father had preserved his childhood play in these books, and I was, honestly, envious. Why did my own parents not write down every charming thing I said and did, create storybooks centered around my dolls and toys? My father told me that the real Christopher Robin had actually had a very difficult time being Christopher Robin. He’d gone to boarding school and been taunted with classmates reciting the poem: Hush, hush, whisper who dares? Christopher Robin is saying his prayers… and he hadn’t grown up very happy.
Did Alan Milne exploit his son?
Exploitation is probably the most devastating charge laid at the feet of mommy bloggers — and while I don’t feel like I fall easily into a category of mommy bloggers, I do blog and mention my kids by name and feel compelled now and then to protest that I’ve thought about this, a lot. It gets periodically discussed and analyzed, especially in the endless blogging about blogging, and goes back, even to before everyone had a blog and Anne Lamott and then Ayelet Waldman took flak on Salon.com for writing about their families. And I tend to fall in with the “Parenting is hard and important and potentially isolating work, and writing about it is a way of recognizing its difficulty and its importance and even, by reducing the isolation, making it more bearable” camp of defenders. Then again, I tend to also be a person that believes that not talking about things makes them bigger and scarier. Which can be tricky to balance against privacy and modesty.
It seems like some blogs are written by people trying to promote themselves professionally and personally, so their names are, reasonably posted all over the place, and other blogs are written by people who would rather not have thier names obvious because of employers and exes. I don’t think of myself as a self-promoter, but I also am not willing to spend lots of energy concealing who I am because I am comfortable with what I write being out there for the world to read. Of course you might decide that your children have nothing to gain from having their names out their even if you refuse to buy local news paranoia about child predators or you are worried about their potential dates googling their names when they are in high school and getting too much history of their potty training. On the other hand, I think my children are reflected lovingly, and when my children’s uncle says something about how great it will be for my children as adults to have the window of my writing on their childhood to get this glimpse, I think I must be doing something ok.
People have all sorts of approaches to levels of disclosure and need for privacy and I am not sure that any one of them is right or wrong, or that I am even capable of seeing all the factors and consequences I ought to be considering, and yet I hope my love for my children shows as I write about them, that they do astound me frequently and as exhausting as motherhood can be, I couldn’t ask for more amazing people in my life. I have faith that my husband and my children’s grandparents and aunt and uncles reading would let me know if my judgement in publishing something here were questionable. Because I have offended a child of mine talking on the phone with a friend about something he did, I am going to ask for the permission of the children who can read before publishing anything that has their names in it.
Anyway, I am not worried about them going to boarding school and being taunted by classmates who have memorized my writing — I suspect for their generation there will be sympathy for those few oddballs whose parents didn’t blog about them.
May 19th, 2008
So there are toy catalogues sent to parents like me — that is, somewhat crunchy parents who embrace peace and non-violence, and spend money on our children as if that can shape their values. These catalogues have page after page of toys with fair trade stamps, toys tested for lead paint, toys that challenge assumptions about gender and promote open-ended and imaginative and problem-solving play. There is never anything plastic or Fisher-Price in the whole catalogue. And inevitably there are board games that bear no resemblance to Candyland or Chutes and Ladders because they are “collaborative” rather than “competitive.”
If you have ever watched a three year old devastated because his five year old brother beat him at a board game, you might decide that competitive is bad. And I have issues with competition, thinking that the competitive aspect of playing violin in a youth symphony did something to suck the joy out of it for me, put anxiety where I didn’t need anxiety, made me listen for other people’s mistakes so I could feel better about myself.
I even came up with this theory (and even blogged about it in December) that what drives competition is a perception of scarcity. There can be only one first place, there are only so many chairs in an orchestra, there are only so many applicants accepted to this school or that program… What seemed to be at stake, I suspected, when my kids were in competition with one another was not just the feeling of being the winner, but also parental love. So if they felt competitive with one another, I must be doing something wrong as a parent setting them up against each other, making them believe there wasn’t enough love to go around! When Aodán was out of town for a week Xander happily told me he was basking in 33.3% of my attention rather than a measly 25%, so it was good for him. And I had thought there was plenty of me to go around…
So I was pretty anti-competition. And then I was having a conversation with Sarah of Cafe Mama (I do have other friends, I swear, it’s just that they aren’t all so easy to link to!) a month or two ago and she shocked me by saying, and forgive the paraphrase, that she was all about the competition. She had run and coached runners, and competition in her book, was a good thing. And because I respect Sarah so much and adore her thoughtfulness and carefully considered values, I’ve been reevaluating my position on competition.
The first thing I realized is that if you like who you are and are happy being yourself, running a race and finding out somebody else runs faster than you is not likely to crush your spirit. Also, that when you’re competitive over something expressive, like violin playing, writing, or painting, you can take judgements of technique seriously (or not) and that doesn’t mean that the expression doesn’t have an entirely separate value. Third, I was surprised to realize that I have all of these fears of competition that are not about losing but about winning and alienating people, about losing friends to envy, which actually, is short-changing my friends and their capacity for generosity. I tend to keep quiet when I am proud of something which deprives them of the of the opportunity to celebrate with me, and friendships which are only about commiseration are out of balance.
I’ve spent my life defining myself as non-athletic, and only came into a happier appreciation of my body and what it can do through yoga and natural childbirth. I blamed that on competition, I think, unfairly. To be out pushing myself on my bicycle feeling the fierce joy of pedaling as hard as I can, I wouldn’t mind the camaraderie of a friend to challenge me to push harder, race faster. My sons are starting to also define themselves by their not playing sports, but I realize that I don’t want my boys to shrink from sport when there are in fact, deep joys to be had there. I am not ready to sign myself up for hours of sitting on a soccer field in the sun, my ideal sports experience for them would have no parental involvement except a ride here and there, I wish that there were kids in the neighborhood and pick-up games happening informally after school. But I want to stay open to the sports experience for them, and in the mean time, pull out the board games where there are winners and losers and help us all practice the grace of having fun while winning and losing.
May 11th, 2008
The Lanyard – Billy Collins
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
__
Had a lovely conversation yesterday at a party with another mother, and it was the sort of conversation that was punctuated by our children’s needs, including one where her daughter brought to her the smallest crumb of the donut she was eating and proudly declared “I have something for you.” I loved how this mother explained that when she accepted the crumb, when she accepted, as we all would, on Mother’s Day, the clumsily folded pieces of construction paper with “I love you Mom” on them, it was the expression on her daughter’s face that made the gift for her. And so I thought of this woman as I was accepting my tissue paper flowers this morning and looking at the very proud and excited face of my kindergartner. I am grateful that she helped me understand the gift I am given.
And, later I thought of her again, and how she explained to me that she had never done well with mother’s groups or playgroups, that motherhood has been isolating. And I understand this — I have been hurt by playgroups, and know how bad the dynamics in a group of women can be when driven by competition and envy and gossip. But as I contemplate the acknowledgement that I think Mother’s Day is supposed to be about, I wonder who but another mother can understand what a mother does?
I marvel at my mother friends, the ones whose marriages may not have been what they thought they were bargaining for, the ones whose children have challenges that are sometimes overwhelming for a grown-up to contemplate, much less a small person, the ones who haven’t had a real night’s sleep in more than four years, the ones who struggle — that is, every mother I know, the ones with whom I have the trust to have gotten to share the struggles, to give the hug to, and say “It’s hard isn’t it, and you’re doing such an amazing job.” Or even sometimes I think what they need to hear is “You’re doing a good enough job.”
What I want to acknowledge them for is the strength they have to keep going when it seems they have no choice, how they make a safe place for their children when they have no safety net themselves, how they find the courage to be advocates and protectors. I want to acknowledge the vertigo you can feel, being all that stands between a child’s helplessness and a world that seems indifferent, hostile even, and to know that your job is is to strengthen the child to be launched into the world, to not need you anymore. To acknowledge that when you’ve found the strength to stifle a hundred selfish urges an hour, to wake in the middle of the night again and again, to patiently explain again and again, to listen, to clean up, to discipline, to forgive, to look for the best qualities in your child when he is manifesting none of them, to make your own mistakes, forgive yourself, and keep on trying, when you’ve completed the marathon that is motherhood to find further strength to let go. And perhaps most amazingly that these women, these mothers do it all so seamlessly that their children, their partners may never even know the weight they are carrying, the strength that they have.
Maybe it’s that the scale of what a mother does is rather hard to wrap your mind around. It isn’t something you can take for granted. Plenty of mothers are terrible, and even terrible mothers may be overwhelmed by the love for their children. But the mothers who give me strength — the ones who I know understand when I feel like I am about to break, who reassure me that I won’t — they are amazing mothers, with amazing children whom I admire and love. And as much as my mother friends have helped me to survive motherhood, I owe the most to my own mother, a woman who solves problems and makes it look easy, who I know would fight for me still, a woman who still makes me want to grow up to be just like her.
Nothing I give my own mother will ever be more than the lanyard, the construction paper, and still the best part of my day today was getting to talk to my mother on the phone. I know she cannot see my face on the phone, but maybe the acknowledgement of one mother to another mother, of what an amazing thing she has done as a mother may stand instead.
My Mother’s Day isn’t lacy or flower-filled, no civilized brunch with linen tablecloths and polished silver, or picnic concert of pops favorites, it’s a fierce acknowledgement that this motherhood business can leave you aching and bruised, weary and longing for your own mother, and still when your own child looks up at you, you’ll smile with tenderness and put that child’s needs ahead of your own.
May 8th, 2008
We blame Sarah. First she got me to read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle and think about where all my food is coming from, and now over at Cafe Mama she is challenging everyone to Car Diet, and ack, I honestly don’t believe in diets, but, well let’s just call it Car Trip Counting?
The weather’s been — well, nice is stretching it, but not miserable? And I have the bicycle and the trailer. And I know a couple of mothers who always bicycle to Søren’s school from almost my neighborhood, one of whom has been organizing a challenge to families to walk, bike or use transit to get to school. It it seems like a challenge I could handle just to ride my bike every day picking him up from school.
And I have, not the day I drove to Woodlawn to spend time with a good friend, and not yesterday when I had to rush the boys to a dentist appointment before violin lessons, but I’ve done all picking up otherwise on my bicycle, pulling the boys in a trailer. Today, when I was responsible for drop-off I even did that on my bicycle.
The first day it was a little nerve-wracking, wondering if I had my timing right, or if I was going to be confronted with hideous traffic and rude drivers. The second day I was a bit sore. By the third day I was shocked to realize I was looking forward to the time to go pick up Søren as I never had before. That the bicycle made me feel freed, and aware, deliberate and conscious. Driving makes me unhappy, traffic brings up antagonism, I waver between boredom and tension. On the bicycle I feel powerful and strong. My relationship to my schedule changes, I am not rushing so I can come home and squeeze in a few minutes by myself to exercise. I am more aware of my neighborhood, watching the pace of new construction, the change in what’s blooming in my neighbors’ yards because I am going at a pace that allows observation.
And if you ask me about riding my bicycle, those are the things I am going to talk about. I might mention hating that I can spend more than $50 filling the minivan with gas, but I am probably not going to say anything about carbon footprints or emissions of any sort. It’s not that I am not capable of anxiety over the environment, it’s just that anxiety is not a place where I can afford to live. Using fear of rising ocean levels and famine, the disruption of our whole way of life as a motivator is like using hating your body as a way to eat healthy food and exercise, focussing on fear of not being lovable and the deprivation instead of on finding yourself feeling good because of the way you are living, it’s a way to end up feel helpless and hopeless.
I do keep evaluating my life, are the elements I need in balance — time to connect with others around me, time to think about what’s important to me, time caring for my children, time caring for myself. What makes me happy about pulling my bicycle out is that it fits with my ideas of what the happiest life is for me. So maybe I ought to send Sarah a quick thanks for inspiring me.
