I am a printmaker. It's one of the things I'm proud to say about myself. Printmaking is not just a craft, but a way of looking at the world. And one of my life's greatest delights is when I can share this craft and lens with others. Today I was fortunate to have the opportunity to share it with a bunch of kids.
How to make a simple dry-point intaglio print:
First scrape down and round off the edges of your plate. Then plan your work with a permanent marker on the plate.
Then use an etching scribe to scratch the design into the plate. We used acrylic plates first.
Then we used zinc for the second round of prints. The scribe cuts a groove into the surface that has a burr on one side (and sometimes on both sides). This groove will hold the ink during printing.
When the plate is run through the press, the wet paper is pressed into all the grooves, and around the plate, giving a noticeable relief to the print. We can take advantage of this by carving the plate to form an interesting 3-D effect when it's printed.
When using only lines for depth of colour, texture, and form, it can take a very long time to get the whole plate finished.
Some scribes are easier to create deeper lines with, but in the end inking is as much or perhaps even more important to the outcome of the print than the lines themselves.
Ahhh... ink. Thick and sticky, it needs to be mixed well on the glass plate using little cardboard paddles. I don't have a photo of the paper, but generally when we start inking a small plate is a good time to start soaking the thick, fibrous intaglio paper. This ensures that the pulp of the paper will be moveable and will push well into all the crannies of the plate.
Then the ink is wiped onto and rubbed into the etching plates.
Using a smooth paper, we then have to wipe all extraneous ink off the plate! Technically, all the lines (grooves) should hold the ink while it wipes relatively cleanly from the smooth upper surface. However, the wiping can be tweaked in many different ways to allow for a lot of rich moody tones and layers of depth.
Finally, the wiped plate is laid on the press bed, hands washed (for the umpteenth time in this process!), the wet paper laid carefully over the plate, and then a sheet of newsprint and three layers of wool felt. And then we slowly and steadily run it through the tightly-wound press.
And this is what it's all for! That moment when we peel back the paper and discover what we've created!! No two prints are entirely alike, and every time we peel back the paper it feels a bit like a gift.
Between 2-hour-long sessions of intaglio practice, we
went out for a very wet rainforest picnic, and to see if we could find
some nature-made prints. We found our own footprints, first, then the
print left by lichen that has fallen off a tree. We found the hole in the
ground left by an uprooted tree, and even an owl pellet! We decided it
qualified because, like all prints, it's a mark left by something
departed - an impression of the past and a clue about past events.
owl pellet
Prints often have a feeling of melancholy, because of the inherent
absence or loss involved in their making. We breathed on the studio
windows and made prints of our faces in the steam. They were gone by the
end of the day. It's good to think about prints; about the impression
we leave upon the world and the impact we have. Prints speak also about
memory. They remind us that the impression is not always the same as the
original. And like memory,
every retelling takes on a different character; a different reality.
Prints remind us of our importance in the world, of the many different and multifaceted truths, and of the relative
changeability of it all.
Tali had two assignments for
school: Earn $150 towards the school field trip, and support a cause. He
decided to try busking, and of course he chose the cause closest to his
heart: Trees. He'd never tried busking before, but at the end of this
first day he said "I loved it! I don't even care about the money - I
just love to see all the people smiling."
When he has busked enough that
40% of his earnings equal $150, he will bring that to his school, and
donate the remaining 60% to the Ancient Forest Alliance.
We have multiple food issues in our house, and consequently I cook most of what we eat from scratch. I've never loved cooking. I would love it if I only had to do it for special occasions, but the daily grind of baking and brewing really was old a very long time ago. It doesn't help when my meals aren't appreciated, and I confess to being a leftover queen, and to receiving the kind of hapless hums that one is bound to receive in response to third-night-leftover meals. Over the years my daily meals have become less and less inspired, except when I can get up the inspiration for something truly grand. And to be honest, that inspiration is rarely my children.
Of course this gives me a lot of mama-guilt. I feel like my children's meals should be my greatest inspiration, and I should love cooking for them more than anything. I tell myself frequently that I'm failing them. And I feel like they don't see how much I love them, because I know I'm not expressing it as much as I should be in the food I present to them.
I have to create a lot of recipes to create allergen-free versions of the foods my kids like, so I print a lot of recipes off my computer word-processor. Consequently I have a big sloppy stack of stained, crumpled, disorderly 8-1/2 x 11" sheets which I have to pick through every time I need a recipe. I have some multiples printed, only because I reprinted after being unable to find what I was looking for.
On my fortieth birthday this past November, I received one of the greatest gifts of my life.
My children made me a recipe book. They got a big red binder (my favourite colour!) and a bunch of plastic page-protectors. They searched through about ten years of files on my hard drive and found a selection of food-related photos, which they printed and used to decorate both the binder and the beautiful divider pages they created. And of course they stuck it all together with specially-chosen sparkly duct tape.
Then they carefully sorted all of my many pages into the book, and presented it to me with cards that said they love me, and a coupon for more divider pages or page protectors, whenever I need them. The first picture I saw on the cover of the binder was my 2 and 5-year-old children having a little picnic under a tree. I remember that day so well.
I remember how I helped them put the food together and then left them to go out and picnic on their own, and how proud they felt as they did it themselves. They included photos of their older selves making cookies, of a wedding cake I made, of some special family meals we had...
...and I cried. I sobbed and sobbed as I looked through the book and felt all the stress of not-good-enough just fall away. I felt suddenly like my children saw me. They see how I struggle to be enthusiastic about cooking. They see how much it matters to me to make good food. They see the effort I put into their lives, and mostly they see how much I love them. They see me.
I've already redeemed my coupon once for a section of my Indian recipes. I use my book all the time, and I tell everybody about it. They've seen me cry about the beautiful book on more than one occasion. It is a good and wonderful thing not only to be acknowledged by my children, but for them to see how great is the gift of that acknowledgement.
We don't get much ice time here in the rainforest, so every year or two, when the pond or lake does freeze enough to skate on, we get as much joy out of it as we can. I'm not a good skater at all. I can go forwards, backwards, and around in circles (but not with much control...). However, when I put on skates and fly out under the open sky - especially with the whole lake to myself - I feel a kind of euphoric freedom that I don't believe I've ever known in another situation. It's my happy place. So this year (as usual), we kept the kids home from school and skated from night to day and back to night again. Ahhhhhh...
Bubbles in the surface of the ice - lit by our flashlights in the night.
Flashlighting through the ice to see the dormant lilies and lake-bottom, below.
By the next morning there was a centimeter of fresh fluffy snow on the ice!
Those who skate together stay together! ...or something. It does take a fair amount of coordination and in-the-moment correction to manage skating together when neither of us actually skates very well, but it's wonderful to share the moment!
My favourite sport shoes. :-)
My favourite man.
My favourite boy.
My favourite girl.
My favourite place to go flying in the wind!
We had to share the same two pairs of skates between the four of us, so unskated people made things like footprint art.
...and more footprint art. We wonder if people in airplanes saw it.
And we borrowed somebody's hockey equipment - thank you, whoever you are!!!
Part of the joy of skating is the silly awkwardness of getting geared up and un-geared up. :-)
Earth Day Every Day is a bi-monthly series of essays I write for the Bowen Bulletin, re-published here for fun!
~
At the community
choir concert this past stormy weekend, every choir member carried a flash light. If the power had gone out (which, unfortunately, it
didn't), they would have continued by flash light, as they did briefly
at one of their rehearsals, last month. So in one of our quirky Bowen
moments, the choir left the stage with headlamps and flash lights in
hand, and three headlamps still dangling from the rungs of a stool, on stage. And during intermission we hung around in the foyer of the
Chapel, and some of us out in the windy dark night.
This is the time of
darkness, when life and community brings us out to walk around
carolling or shopping or visiting with friends, and an increasing
amount of that time is spent in the dark. There's something about the
lack of light that makes us appreciate the gift of it, and everything
else we often take for granted. As the sun drops off our horizon, we
begin to see in different ways.
Dusk is confusing to
me; my mind still believes I can see, but my eyes struggle to resolve
the vast array of patterned greys. It's like being lost in the
half-tones of a rich intaglio print, and eventually I lose visual
focus, reverting to other senses, as recourse. Have you ever noticed
the sound of bats' wings as they turn in flight, or the buzz of a
nighthawk's dive? It's a sound that strikes me at the top of my
spine, as the world falls into dark.
I like to walk
through the woods without a flash light. During my many walks
throughout the year I have come to know these woods, so that darkness
brings new experiences, but not often new footing. Still I have to
feel my way along, and go much more slowly than I would during the
day. The moon is a welcome lamp, but on moonless nights, like the one
last week between the storms, even the stars give light. It takes a
certain amount of darkness to be able to notice the stars' light
falling between the boughs of hemlock and cedar. I enjoy the softness
of soggy needles underfoot, and the cool refreshing damp of the air
on my cheeks. This is the joy of living in a rural place where we
choose wilderness over concrete; sensual exploration over street lights and expediency. Especially at this time of year.
This is the time of
darkness – not just because of the number of daylight hours, but
because of the power outages, throwing our families into impromptu
candlelight dinners and wood-stove-cooked meals, necessitating
neighbourly helping-out, caretaking and community. We chose this
island; we chose this lifestyle, and many of us delight in the
inconvenience. This is the time we celebrate the darkness by lighting
our cove and our homes, and by singing to our trees. Yes, my family
sings to our trees.
On Midwinter morning
we go out to get a Christmas tree. It's always a tree that is slated
or fated to come down anyway, and we bring it inside to decorate. As
we hang up the cherished ornaments, some of them generations old, we
sing, and share memories of years past. As the longest night of the
year falls around us, we hit the main breaker for the house, light
lanterns from the fire in the wood stove, and parade out into the
dark, weaving a stream of firelight through the yard. We sing the
Tree Wassail to all the fruit trees and to many other cherished
trees, as well. As we walk around singing, tripping, laughing,
holding hands and trekking through swampy areas, we feel the world
around us. In rainy years, the rain slips in around our necks and
soaks our heads as we go. When it's frosty the grass crunches under
our feet and sometimes the sky opens up to reflect our fire with
starlight.
When we've sung to
the trees, we return inside, where we take the fire from our lanterns
and light the candles on the Christmas tree, symbolically bringing
the light we originally took from the wood stove back in to light our
home. And then of course we sit around singing together all evening.
That's how we spend our Midwinter, singing to the trees.
If you had never been diving, you might assume that islands float. Then you might learn that islands are, in fact, just mountains poking up from the sea floor. And you would be told that islands don't float. So what if you then found yourself on a floating island? Would you even recognize it as an island?
What if you learned to recognize life by our current earthly definitions, and then you went exploring on some distant planet and came home empty-handed, only because you were unable to recognize life in a different form?
What if you lost your beloved baby - the one who was real to you, even though your parents kept telling you it was plastic - and you cried every night and found no joy in your days for months, and nobody understood your pain because your definition of 'real' was not in their dictionary? Then what if you pinned all your hopes for finding your beloved lost baby on Santa Claus, and you wrote him a letter, but they told you Santa Claus couldn't find your baby, and sometimes real life just hurts, and then your Auntie and Nana colluded to replace your baby as a Christmas present from Nana, and she wasn't the same baby, and you gave her a new name, and the hole in your heart wasn't filled but you felt joy again, and you discovered that Santa Claus is real, and that Nana and Auntie are a part of him, and you lost a little faith in the world, but you gained a little, too? And what if you spent the rest of your life searching for answers and discovering all sorts of new ways of looking at things, because somebody let you make your own definitions instead of boxing you into their own?
These are the caribou that my daughter saw on Grouse Mountain. They were supposedly Santa's reindeer, and I told her that Grouse Mountain just wanted to attract more visitors by pretending they were Santa's reindeer. She went into the little hut there to visit the man dressed as Santa, and told me afterwards that she knew he was the real Santa because he was so nice to her, and he loved his wife, Jessica. And because Jessica was friendly, too. I told her maybe they were just nice people. It was shortly after this that she wrote a letter to Santa asking him to help her find her missing baby. To Santa and Jessica, and the two bored caribou on Grouse Mountain, thank you for giving my daughter hope.
Some people think science is about definitions and categories; rules and laws and putting things into boxes. I think it's about breaking open all the boxes.
Science is about opening our minds.
So what about "magical thinking"? I've been told many times that magical thinking harms our children, either because it sets them up for a huge disappointment, or because it leads them to believe things that are just not true. In allowing them to believe in things we have no empirical evidence of, we are lying to our children; leading them into a life of blind compliance. Further, magical thinking allows us to be taken advantage of due to the inherent innocence and vulnerability of belief in unproven ideas. Nobody wants that for their children.
But I believe that a lack of magical thinking does the same. It hobbles us to the chain of somebody else's empirical evidence or, even worse, as scientists it closes our minds and limits us to the ideas of our predecessors, unable to make advancements or explore new possibilities.
We've probably all heard Arthur C. Clarke's statement that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", and many renowned scientists who were once considered lunatics have experience with that. Of course many theories are eventually proven false, just as many supposed facts are also eventually proven false, and then many falsehoods are eventually discovered to be true. How can we navigate this confusing landscape of understanding with our minds firmly latched onto empirical evidence? We need a broad imagination and acceptance of our own lack of knowledge to learn anything at all.
The Critical Thinking Association states that 'magical thinking is the opposite of logical thinking'. I feel, in fact, that they are inextricably linked. Reason allows us to consider all alternatives for a given question and to choose those potential solutions that merit more exploration. Logical and critical thinking give us the tools to explore those ideas. Without any faith in the plausibility of those ideas, what reason do we have to explore them?
I've been exploring the idea of Santa Claus with my children since my son was three. That's when he told me that Santa Claus was coming. Not wanting to shatter his little heart too quickly, I asked him why he thought so. Apparently he "just knew". I told him that Santa Claus had never visited me (or him, for that matter), so I doubted that he would begin, then. I said I wasn't even sure Santa was real, and if he existed at all, he surely wasn't sitting in every mall in the country, and my son agreed. But some of those men might be very very kind and wanting to make children happy, so doesn't that mean they're doing Santa's work? Maybe. But what if there's no real Santa? I told him that the North Pole is nothing but water and ice, and he replied that there must be something at the bottom of the sea, or that people could live in the ice. And I thought, Who am I to tell him that's impossible? So I didn't. And Santa came. Because it's not my place to determine for my son what's real and not real,
or to define the idea of Santa Claus based on my own upbringing or the popular standards. That year there were things in the stockings from me, and some from Santa.
I don't want to lie to my children, so I tell them the truth, which is that I don't know.
In the abstract from his research paper, Magical Thinking and Children's Cognitive Development, Eugene Subbotsky states that "...despite the fact that multinational industries (such
as toy production and entertainment) exploit and support magical
beliefs in children and many TV programs for children show magical
characters, surprisingly little is known about the effects of magical
thinking and magical beliefs on children's cognitive and social
development. Is involvement in magical thinking confined to the
department of entertainment, or has it also to do with more practical
aspects of children's lives, such as learning and social communication?
It is hypothesized that magical thinking does indeed positively affect
children's cognitive development, by enhancing creative divergent
thinking in children."
So what kind of world do we want to live in? A world where everything is untrue until proven true, or a world full of possibility, exploration and growth? I never believed in Santa Claus because I thought he was impossible. Now, as I explore the many aspects of him with my growing children, I am open to the possibility of him. I also partake of his magic, by participating. I and my children absolutely adore our sneaky little stocking-filling expeditions in the night, and we are all a part of Santa Claus. That joy is one of the gifts of keeping possibility open. Another is the knowledge that my children's minds are open, too.
I had the great fortune of exploring some of our local natural and historical sites with some 8-13-year-olds this week. Our home was previously logged and explored for mining, so there are artifacts from this time scattered all over the second-growth forests, here. We had six hours to explore, some useful and rugged gear, and enough food and warm drinks to keep us nourished.
The first stop was the lower Mt. Gardner mine adit. There are four such adits on the western side of Mt. Gardner, and this one is the most accessible, so it's where we began our day. Apparently the Bonanza adit was after gold, but obviously they gave up before getting very far. The entrance to the adit is full of a very deep and long puddle, which makes a great home for frogs and salamanders, both of which we managed to catch a glimpse of, as we entered the dark. Just a little further in we found a harvester (photo), and two pairs of giant mating crickets!
Eventually the rock floor emerged from the puddle, and we explored both forks of the adit with our flashlights. We found some interesting numbers spray-painted on the walls, and wondered about their meaning, and we found both ends of the tunnel had old broken chairs and wet fabric dumped in them. There were also used tea-light candles stashed all over the place, the remains of a cardboard beer box, and some other bits of garbage. The kids decided that people like to hang out in the mines, or possibly store their belongings there so nobody takes them.
Then we turned off our lights. This was a big achievement for those kids who had required two attempts to enter the mine in the first place, but they chose to stay and challenge themselves to brave the dark - and they did it! With the lights out at the end of the mine, it's so dark that we can't see our own hands in front of our faces. We can't tell the difference between eyes closed and eyes open. And when we're quiet we hear every movement of our bodies inside the rock mountain.
But when we sing? Well that's amazing. We began just testing out single sounds and single notes and ended by singing the Hard Rock Miner, together, before returning to the light. Being enrobed in the reverberating sound is an experience you'd have to try out yourself to imagine.
Then we headed into the forest!
This part of the forest is richly carpeted with moss, making it feel not just welcoming but also very peaceful and enchanting. Somebody who obviously feels the same way has built a stone circle in this area, and we found it a perfect spot for an earth meditation.
Earth meditation is something I like to do with people as a way of connecting with the environment we're exploring. We begin by stretching and relaxing into the ground, then closing our eyes and calmly observing what we feel and hear. Of interest is not just what we observe, but what about it. Where does the sound appear to come from? Is it near or far? Is it moving - where? What are the different feelings in and around our bodies? How are those feelings different from each other?
Then we open our eyes, and this is what we see. Well... of course it's a lot richer than this photo can illustrate. We look at the texture of the bark closer to us, and the difference between the needles up close and those that are farther away.
We compare the colour of the sky directly above with the colour of the sky all around the edges of our view. We look at small details and we look at the big picture. This photo can't do it justice, because really it looks circular, like a dome. Sometimes we see raindrops or bits of debris falling towards us and can observe perspective in real time. When we're finished observing and talking about what we discover, we simply get up and move on.
Near the stone circle is a fort that a previous group of kids began building a few months ago, so this group continued it. They also built secret caches for treasures they were finding, and began a large game of invasion and reconstruction between what turned out to be two distinct fort areas. Weapons such as this spear and hammer (right) were built and traded, and various forms of defense were invented as well. One that was new to me was a system of defensive lasers that could only be turned off by singing a very precise series of notes. If the "password" was sung correctly, the lasers would turn off; if not, the singer would encounter booby traps.
As the game evolved, it necessitated a couple of brief conversations about comfort levels for attacks, and the time needed to develop and repair, between attacks. Eventually this game petered out, and we went down the mountain in search of the old steam donkey.
During lunch time I was informed that all of these kids have learned the song Donkey Riding in school, but that all of them thought it was about a donkey (animal). Of course it's not, and we of the pacific rainforests are accustomed to finding the remains of steam donkeys in our wilderness, so we had a great opportunity to talk about that song! When you're "stowing timber on the deck" you're certainly not riding on a small equine, but rather a great honking steam-powered engine!!
Riding on a donkey!
A few meters away from this main boiler, we found the rusty old top of the donkey, as well as some old cable, and other metal parts. Eventually, over the rest of the day, we found many stumps with spring-board notches cut into them, and also one with spikes in it. We wondered whether perhaps that was close to the spar tree, as we also found a huge pulley, there. If you're interested to see all this gear in action, here is some old silent footage of Vancouver Island logging. Watch for the man cutting and preparing the spar tree, then
installing the giant pulley, then
you will see a clip of the loggers "riding the donkey" (this is what they're
talking about in the song!), and finally you see them start to use
it:
Of course all this excitement wouldn't be nearly enough. There is a great creek running through the area we were in, and it had to be explored! This creek offers a mini canyon, as well as a great tumbling section of rounded rocks and precarious logs for climbing on. We had many near-soakings and a couple of near boot-fillings.
The day wrapped up with a great game of witch's potions, cache-building, dam-building and water play.
We came out of the woods completely exhausted, but all having made discoveries that were unexpected, inspiring and engaging. I have no idea what parts of this day will stick in the hearts and minds of the kids I shared it with, but for me, it will be yet another day where I opened myself to experience and came home rich. What a perfect day!
Earth Day Every Day is a bi-monthly series of essays I write for the Bowen Bulletin, re-published here for fun!
~
Here we are, waking up to a new red dawn. Apparently our prime minister designate is a rockstar. Now let me tell you about crawling through the mud in the woods. Priorities.
A couple of weeks ago, one of the kids I work with climbed up onto a leaning tree. It was a soft green moss- and licorice fern-covered maple, reaching out between great black crystal-like crags of old burnt cedars. He climbed up and back down three times, and when he satisfied his skill-building needs, he just sat up there for a while. That seat in itself was pretty amazing, but from where he sat, there was something far better. “Hey guys! I see a swamp!” He shouted. Some of the other kids looked up from their boat racing and bridge building, and one declared “no more swamps”. She was the one wearing running shoes. But I followed his gaze, and within a minute or so, he was down from the tree, and everyone had joined the quest for the swamp.
Just around a cedar shell we found what looked like the beginnings of a house – raw posts sunk deep into a grassy clearing just beside the creek, a shovel, some roofing, and a creeping carpet of moss. Our leader ducked under some salmonberry bushes, crossed the creek, and crawled through the mud to a group of trees and logs, beyond. “Holy!” He shouted! “It's a cave! I found a cave with a river in it, and a waterfall, too!” I struggled through under the salmonberries while some of the older teens picked their way around to the other side, where we found the small creek streaming into a loamy under-tree cavern, and winding its way between small sand bars, about two meters below our feet.
I checked the time, and felt pressured to hurry them back to the school for lunch. But I squatted down and checked out the soft sand under the tree, instead. As time marched on, I became worried about their parents' reactions if we arrived late, and encouraged them to leave. But they were busy. Some kids climbed into the cave; some harvested licorice fern, and one sang a song before accidentally slipping between some roots and nearly into the deepest part of the 'cavern'. As his friends helped him out of the tight space, I worried about the kids injuring themselves. But I waited quietly. These kids helped me to discover new delights in an area I've visited far more often than they have, and I was grateful for their perspective.
It's so easy to become wrapped up in our adult lives, and to feel the urgent present moment more important than the building of our future. It's so easy to find ourselves more important than the discoveries of children crawling through the mud. Obviously we understand so much more than they do. But then again, somehow we don't.
Here we are, waking up to a new red dawn, and on Monday I watched a few of my teenaged friends posting “voting in the only way I can” updates to social media, and witnessed the infectious joy as the mock school polls managed to overthrow the conservatives. The IPS outcome was apparently (in this order) Liberal, Green, Marijuana, Conservative, NDP, and Marxist-Leninist. What would happen if we placed more value in the thoughts and intentions of our youth? What would happen if we listened to their hopes and fears with the same sincerity they afford to ours, as they're listening to our grave adult conversations from neighbouring rooms, and wondering if their world will fall apart?
The stream that flows so perfectly into the waterfall of an amazing under-tree cavern does not care which party won the election. The great community of plants and fungi and animals that depend upon the stream do not know that over at the community school we put X's on bits of converted tree pulp to determine their future. But our children know. They know that we are their voices and that our every move will determine their future. The freedom to explore and to build a deep connection with and understanding of our environment is part of the way we keep our future viable. Our children know this.
Our children are not just our future, but the future of humanity, and when we value their contributions we give them the agency to form brave opinions. We give them the wherewithal to act on those opinions, instead of being swallowed up in the present moment fears that occupy us in our busy adult lives. Here we are, waking up to a new red dawn, and our work has just begun. Let's climb through the mud and swamps to find hidden treasures. I challenge all of us to reach into the unknown and to hold our new government to task for the things that matter to our children.
Eleven years ago this very moment, at 10:55 in the morning, my powerful child came swooshing out into the world and I caught her with my own hands. I lifted her up and shouted "It's mine! She's mine! She's my girl!!!"
We have a tradition in our family of telling the kids about their births during the days that surround their birthdays. The little stories all begin with something like this: "Eleven years ago this very moment..." and end with the details: "...Tali and Nana were making applesauce in the kitchen", or "...we decided to go get on the ferry and head for the hospital," or "...I was sitting in the bath at the hospital, leaning on Pappa," or "...I told the nurse I felt you moving down", etc. The story goes on for days, and we all delight in remembering.
Hurried rice porridge and Tali's flowers and card on her birthday school morning.
But this year my beautiful daughter isn't home! For the first time ever, she's attending a part-time school program, and has gleefully brought cupcakes to share with her class. She loves her independence there, and didn't even want me to drop her off at school. So at this moment, I can't tell her "...and I lifted your little purple body up onto my chest, while Nana and Pappa came running in the door". I can't describe to her how it was to snuggle her little sticky self all up in my arms as all the doctors and nurses came hurrying into the room in a panic and we were just fine. I can't tell her how they wiped her face and how dark reddish brown it became - and stayed - and how I smooshed my lips against her beautiful soft head and cried for the joy of holding her, or how Pappa and Nana kissed us so lovingly, and Pappa declared that her name would be Rhiannon. Rhiannon Raven. And that was that, and I smiled and said "Annie" and it was all perfect.
Parenting isn't always perfect. How could we ever grow and develop if there weren't a hundred thousand hurdles to keep us leaping all the way? My daughter is a force to be reckoned with, and also sometimes like the softness of a warm wind that keeps me steady and sure as she wraps her arms around me and reminds me that there is always love.
I can't tell her these things right now, but I will. Today as I bake her birthday quince pie, I will re-live the memories myself, and tonight when I tuck her in I will sing her the song her Nana wrote for her, and tell her about my day: The day she was born and the present day that I spent thinking about the wonderful gift of her presence in my life.
This weekend I've been holding a video camera for my son, to help him with a video tutorial contest he wants to enter. I've tried to give him video advice, but he won't take it. The biggest advice he'll take from me is to turn so that he's not hidden by his own shadow. I've tried to explain that I'm not usurping his creativity; that this is only something I can see from behind the camera. But I see that he's unhappy about my input. He's always been this way: fiercely independent, to the extent that if he accepts any advice or help with what he does, he usually disowns the project. It's extremely frustrating to me.
I want him to do well in this contest! I want him to win the two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar scholarship!! And I know he's competing against kids with both years of experience and teams of expert help and advisers. I want him to succeed. And I'm afraid he'll be demoralized if he doesn't even make the first cut, as judged by the other contestants.
He's just happy he gets to judge some of his peers.
This is where I have to step back and remind myself how we got here, and what the true prize really is. I wrought this situation myself.
Since my son was born
I've been encouraging him to trust his own devices; to find his own
answers. I've rejected any program or arrangement where outcomes were
predetermined, or where the method or journey was prescribed. When a child learns that the correct drawing is the one that looks like something we already recognize, or (worse) that looks like an example they've been asked to copy, he learns that his worth is dependent upon somebody else's expectations. That's a child who now sees no value in his own ideas. When he learns that the parent's or teacher's word is the final word, he learns that his own judgement is not valued. He learns not to trust himself. When he learns that his own video isn't good enough without input from somebody more experienced, he learns that innovation is never as important as measuring up. He learns that his own agency is worthless.
Ironically, the video my son is making is an explanation of his own personal take on some physics theories. And I wanted to give him advice. Oops.
My son is very interested in photography. Until this past weekend (when
his camera died!) he had the freedom to photograph completely without
interference from anybody else, and I have always appreciated the
perspective he presents in his photos. He is slowly evolving his own
style and techniques because of the lack of interference from
well-meaning tutors like me. It's a joy to watch. You can check out his
photography blog here: http://talisphotography.blogspot.ca/
He may not win this contest - he may not even score highly enough with his peers that the contest judges will even look at his video. But he gets to make a video and share it with other teens who care about physics. If I can just manage to stop my own competitive and fear-driven interference, he will retain the feeling that his creative product is his own. He will retain the feeling that his ideas matter. He will know that he is worth something, and that is the true prize.
When I first courted my husband, he told me the only thing he had ever cooked was chocolate mousse. So, in an effort to honour his cooking skills, and hopefully to inspire some deliciousness for the two of us, I bought cream and chocolate - that's what I use to make chocolate mousse, so obviously that's all he would need - and a bowl, a pot, and a whisk, of course, which I laid out at the ready. When he came to my home, I gleefully presented the supplies, and declared, "you said you could make chocolate mousse!" His face fell.
He squirmed and looked at the walls. "Well that was with a package from Dr. Oetker", he mumbled.
My reply wasn't perhaps the most kind. I think I told him that wasn't chocolate mousse, and I proceeded to instruct him. I soon discovered that he had not only no cooking experience, but also not much attachment to food. I mocked him. And I decided to fix him. I taught him how to cook rice and steam broccoli. For the next few years, when he cooked, he made rice and broccoli. Eventually he expanded to carrots, and by the time ten years had passed, we had children, and his dinner repertoire also included fried sausages and onions, plain pasta (he doesn't see the need for flavourings) as well as salad without dressing. By that point the children had learned to mock their father, and while we appreciated the meals he made, "Pappa-cooked onions" became a frequent table joke. Pappa-cooked onions, while edible, are always on the verge of being black.
I thought I was generous in my efforts to help. I told him how I made our meals, and I bought him a book called "Cooking for Geeks", hoping to inspire that quirky side of him. He dutifully read it, but never cooked from it. And I told my friends he couldn't cook. I told them about that chocolate mousse incident. I laughed at him.
Our daughter learning to cut onions from the inventor of "Pappa-cooked onions".
Then one evening I looked at our daughter laughing hysterically at her onions, and beside her my husband silently eating the meal he had made. He was so alone. The effort he had made for us was utterly unappreciated. And then I saw what I had done to him. "I think the onions are fine," I said. "Thank you for this food", I said. "I was grateful for not having to cook, today." He barely answered. It had been over fifteen years, at that point, of quietly cooking food he felt uneasy about for a family who belittled him. And that was the day I stopped.
Things didn't change very quickly. The kids kept mocking him, and I kept reminding them that their Pappa had put his love into the food, and I kept thanking him, and he kept serving us the same food, and sitting quietly to eat it with us. Until recently, when I realized that the onions weren't overcooked. In fact they haven't been overcooked for quite a long time. And sometimes he makes steak. And sometimes he makes zucchini. Sometimes he makes mashed potatoes with sausage and kale from the garden. Sometimes he makes oven-roasted veggies and potatoes, and sometimes he makes yam fries. Actually he's quite a good cook, and I think I haven't reminded the kids to be kind to him for a long time. I've just been modeling kindness, instead, and for the most part it has been genuine, because actually my husband can cook. And I truly am grateful for the meals he makes.
We know that children grow to meet expectations, and that's no different for the rest of us. We're all growing all the time, so we're all parenting each other, all the time. We blossom into the spaces opened by others' kindness.
I've heard many times that women can't be sexist because we're oppressed. I'm not going to pretend we're not still oppressed, but as humans who also happen to wield a fair amount of power as mothers, wives, cooks, accountants, counselors, and all the jobs formerly reserved for men, maybe we can do better than to take that power and abuse it - maybe we can model compassion and gratitude. And in doing so, we can help the men in our lives to grow into this new world as bravely as we intend to, ourselves.
I have committed to a partnership. I have committed to equality, and I want to hold myself to the same standards I do everyone else. That means not saying my husband is "babysitting" when in fact he's parenting. It means not assuming that my son does something because he's a boy, or that my daughter should have certain tastes because she's a girl, or the daughter of a feminist. That means that when I am more experienced than my husband or children are in some aspect of our lives, I don't hold it over their heads, but rather understand that we are all learning all the time. It means that I am grateful my husband doesn't laugh at me when I fail to sort out computer issues, or when I make nonsensical suggestions about the wiring of our house. Or when the meal I prepare is a disaster. He is honest, but he is kind.
It's time we treated boys and men the way we'd like to be treated, ourselves.
*Out of respect for my husband, I obtained his permission before posting this.
Earth Day Every Day is a bi-monthly series of essays I write for the Bowen Bulletin, re-published here for fun!
~
The aphids,
having sensed the weakening plants on a cool evening, have
arrived. You might not notice them at first, as you pick a few
beautifully green leaves of kale out of the garden, but turn
the leaves over or peek between the deep green folds and you
may find little pockets of grey and white: aphids gathering en
masse. They will stretch their hair-thin legs and stand tall
before becoming motionless on the spot, to live or die with
the group, according to your whim. It's gathering time.
Brush the
aphids off or cast the leaf aside and choose another. Bring in
that beautiful verdant bouquet to chop up with freshly-dug
potatoes, toss with lemon and chives, or blend into your
smoothie. It's gathering time for all of us.
Now that the
nights are cooler I find myself more often sitting with
friends enjoying a hot cup of tea and a sweater in the
evening. My husband's warm embrace is comforting instead of
stifling, and I feel like making stew, collecting up my
friends for a chat, and my children for evening snuggles.
In the
grocery store lineup I see people pile small mountains of
vegetables on the counter, and I realize how lucky I am. For
most of the summer, I eat from my garden. Having space and
time and desire to grow our own food is not just a great gift,
but a privilege. The ability to wander into the woods, pick
salal, oregon grape or mushrooms, and sit silently listening
only to the rustle of wind in the leaves is almost unheard of
for many people.
This week
I'll begin teaching in the city. The program I run happens
mostly in the open wilderness here at home, but city bylaws
and necessity for urban convenience mean that it will happen
in a small forested park, there. Most of the forest floor in
this park is bare, and littered with dog and horse poop, along
with human refuse. We can't go into the creek because of
course in such a small but densely populated location, our
impact would cause damage to the bit of remaining natural
creek. This is perhaps the downside of gathering: There are
just too many of us, and when we get together we overwhelm the
earth's ability to renew.
This year we
reached Earth Overshoot Day on August 13th.
Overshootday.org states that “Global overshoot occurs when
humanity’s annual demand for the goods and services that our
land and seas can provide—fruits and vegetables, meat, fish,
wood, cotton for clothing, and carbon dioxide
absorption—exceeds what Earth’s ecosystems can renew in a
year. Overshoot means we are drawing down the planet’s
principal rather than living off its annual interest. This
overshoot leads to a depletion of Earth’s life-supporting
natural capital and a buildup of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere.” So we've been going further into resource debt
each year for the past forty, and where are we going to turn
when the well runs dry?
Our well ran
dry this year – in the way wells do on these rainforest
hillsides: it's a shallow well dug into a small underground
stream and the water level dropped below what we need to
sustain our household's daily usage. So when I say it ran dry,
that means one day the pump hit air, and our family panicked a
little. At the end of the day the well fills up again, but to
a lower-than-average level. We can still use water, but one
load of laundry means no more toilet-flushing for 8 hours; we
haul water around to fill the small pots we've planted beside
some shrubs and veggies and a new pump was bought and put into
the pond to water the vegetable gardens; we save laundry and
bathing for later, and save even the hand-washing water to
feed to our garden. This extreme attention to water usage has
meant an adjustment in our thinking, and although it was
certainly easier when the water flowed carelessly, I'm glad
for having to learn this lesson.
I think the
solution to our global over-consumption lies in awareness. Not
the kind of arms-length awareness we get from reading the news
or signing petitions, but the kind of awareness we get from
having our own little wells run dry; from having to shake the
aphids off of our own home-grown kale, and feeling remorse at
seeing the ravens take our prized blueberries. It's those
small, but sometimes desperately important details that we
become aware of when we trade some city conveniences for the
great privilege of connecting with the land. This recognition
may enable us to enjoy consuming less; to live for what we do
have instead of what we can have, and to gather in our
hearts and community, for everything that we hold is dear.
That is a long time. Or a big fraction. To take that point down a bit:
In the first 19.7 years of my life, I did a lot of things. Then there was August 17, 1995, the day my beloved friend Chloe introduced me to Markus (bravely pushing the issue, because I had refused to meet him). And now twenty more years have gone by. I am almost forty. I have now lived longer with Markus in my heart than without.
That feels like something.
So we spent our twentieth anniversary in the house with some teens we had just met and their Dr. Who party. People we told about this looked slightly pitying, but I loved it. It was poignant. Life isn't always about extravagance, or celebrating great events or achievements. Sometimes it's about finding the satisfaction in perfectly mundane activities. Like loving. Loving is mundane, in the end. It's the constant that makes every other part of life more tolerable, more joyful, more safe. Love is delight, but it's also the warmth of a familiar and safe hand at my back when I feel cold in the night.
Thank you for your dependable love, Markus. It is more than I knew to hope for.
