Generations of Understanding

I had to stop what I was doing just now to get up for moment and attend to something...The children are napping and I was planning the weather curriculum for Kyan's preschool time...While I was up I noticed the mail on the porch and went out to retrieve it. In the pile of mail I found a birthday card from my Grandma. I opened it right up and smiled immediately to see that she had sent me more of her poems. My grandma is 87 years old (I think that's right...give or take a year) and is one of the most amazing women I have ever met.

I stopped my planning, put aside my thoughts of reading my book, and came straight to the computer to record the moment that my grandmother just gifted to me. As I stood at the counter reading her poems I laughed a bit for they were about a mother who wanted to do all sorts of things, read poetry, write poetry, take a walk, but was stopped every moment by the needs of her children or the house. I smiled at the poems, but when I read her letter and heard her voice speaking so clearly in my head the tears began to fall.

I talk and talk (oh how I can talk) to friends who are mothers, friends who aren't mothers, strangers in the store, you name it, about the trials of motherhood, the struggle of being a stay at home mom, the sleepless nights, and though many of my fellow mothers can relate to my plight I have yet to feel a level of empathetic understanding anywhere near what I read in my grandmother's letter. What strikes me is that though our lives are so incredibly different and though there are generations between us, there is a commonality that transcends time and circumstance, a bond that is so simple and so strong.

I have always thought of my grandmother as old fashioned. She was born and raised in the mountains of North Carolina and when she came to live with us when I was twelve years old her Southern upbringing still shone brightly in her. She is still a little Southern woman, but she has been changed a bit after more than twenty years living in Ohio with my somewhat eccentric and very liberal family. I still remember when she was searching for a doctor in the phone book and refused to choose anyone with a name that sounded even remotely "ethnic". I was appalled by this and it took me years to understand that she came from a different time and a different place than I did and that she was a product of that just as I am a product of where I come from. She has come a long way since then and I have come a long way, too.

I see now that we are not so different. The image of my beautiful grandmother scrubbing floors and rocking babies all the while composing poetry in her head strikes such a chord within me. I write this blog to fill the void where my intellectual self should be...The last time I took a bath and relaxed for twenty minutes I began to outline the novel I want to write...Sadly, I have yet to put even one of those ideas down on paper.

When I am on my hands and knees scrubbing the toilet or listening to all three children scream at me at the same time I begin to feel like I am lost in this vortex of motherhood that will not release me, and I despair. Yet in the same day I can find myself lying on my bed alone with one of my babies while he nurses and looks up at me with the deepest love and trust that a person can ever know. In those moments I feel my heart about to burst from the overwhelming love and happiness that I feel as a mother. Both of these feelings are my truth.

Perhaps many women have lost this connection with their grandmothers because most of us work outside of the home now, something most of our grandmothers did not do. I will say that I did not feel this so strongly until I became a stay at home mother myself. When I was working it was a different type of struggle, a different flavor of desperation, one that my grandmother could not understand, but my mother could. I suppose I should count myself lucky to have had the opportunity to walk in both of their shoes for awhile so that I can experience and feel what it is to be of the women from whence I came.

My birthday is tomorrow and I think my greatest gift has come today....an understanding and an empathy that spans generations and has now settled deep within my heart.

Here are the poems that my grandmother sent to me:

Trapped
by Mabel Fish Raffield

Today, I wanted to read poetry,
        But I had to clean the house,
For I heard a small voice chanting,
       "Duty first, or you're a louse!"

Yesterday, I wanted badly
      To go watch the setting sun
Go to bed in pink pajamas,
      But the dinner wasn't done.

And last week, I ached to wander
      Down beneath the apple trees,
Where Spring was giving a garden party,
      Scattering blossoms on the breeze.

But I had to wash the dishes,
     Mend the clothes and sweep the floor,
Do a washing, rock the baby,
     Make the beds and, oh, much more.

Seems my wants are all against me;
      Every time I want to play,
Duty's lurking in the foreground,
      And always gets in my way.

There's a world, somewhere, I'm missing
      Cause I can't get out the door;
Reckon there's a hint of poetry
      In a well-turned daily chore?


The Losing Battle
by Mabel Fish Raffield

Ever try to write a poem
    By a pile of dirty clothes?
Now, let's see..."The silvery moonbeams"...
    Gee! that garbage tries your nose.

"A dreamy waltz and midnight magic"...
    Oops, the baby needs a change...
Punkin, please get out of that jelly...
    "waves of madness, delightfully strange."

Punkin, please! I'm very busy...
    "lilacs by a wishing well,
Pale moonglow and misty stardust"...
    Feed teh baby, she's starting to yell.

Dishes piling high and higher
    Till they overflow the sink,
Butter's melting on the table...
    "Peachy blossoms, downy pink."

Tell a story? No, no more!...
    "Dreams fashioned by a bright star, lofty"...
Two big eyes that stare straight through you,
    But I'll be darned if I'll be a softy!

"A full moon shines on Lover's Lane"...
    Please, now, Punkin, do be still...
"Lips that meet in"--Oh well...
    Jack and Jill went up the hill.

Disaster

Yesterday while driving with the boys in the car I was listening to NPR as they were recounting statistics and information about the disaster in Japan. Kyan has started picking up words here and there from the radio and he asks questions that I can't answer. I knew better than to leave the radio on, but it was on when I got in the car and I got sucked in and didn't turn it off right away. He picked up the words, "killed" and "wave" and began asking difficult questions.
"Mommy, did a wave kill someone?" "Mommy, is it a wave like Daddy rides on his surfboard?"
"Mommy who got killed?"

I wasn't prepared to discuss the disaster with him and though I considered trying to on a simple scale, I decided against it. I diverted his questions with some lie about fishermen who were catching fish in the waves and then killed the fish to eat them...what can I say, sometimes I have to lie for his own good.

It got me thinking, though...When are they old enough to know what is going on in the world around them. I pondered that and decided that, for now at least, I am glad that my smart little boy lives in a bubble where the world is safe and happy and good. I worry that if he learns too early of the instability, the war, the natural threats, and the inherent evil that exists in the world then he will learn to fear rather than to act.

I am afraid. I am scared to death of the stories coming out of Japan right now. The nuclear threat alone is mind blowing and though I am many miles from Japan and my boys are mostly safe from that particular threat, I think of all of the children of Japan and their mothers and fathers who are living a nightmare right now. There is nothing at all that they can do to protect their children from this disaster; there was nothing they could do to protect them from the earthquake or the tsunami. How on earth could I explain that to my son?

Someday he will have to learn about the world at large and all of its flaws and dangers. I know that. Yet there is nothing more precious than childhood and I will not take that childhood away from him. Not yet, at least.

He asks me constantly why I don't like guns and other weapons and why I don't like him to check out books that have violence in them. I try to explain that guns kill people and weapons hurt people and that I don't like that. He is already smart enough to come back at me with the fact that guns and weapons also kill animals so that we can eat them. I still stand strong that weapons are not toys, so we do not use them as toys. I wonder all the time if I am just deepening his obsession with weapons by resisting what everyone tells me is his natural impulse to want to play at violence. When he comes into the room holding two guns that he has, quite creatively, fashioned from Legos, I am at a loss. I scold him for it without even thinking and then when he sulks off I begin to wonder if my response is appropriate.

Short of sitting him down and educating him about the consequences of violence, the casualties of war, children bringing guns to school, people killing one another on the streets over a pair of shoes, etc. which I am not about to do with a 3 year old, no matter how bright he is, I have no real way to impress upon him the gravity of enacting violence for play.

Someday he will see other kids playing video games where people kill one another with guns and he will probably even pick up the controls (at someone else's house) and laugh and joke while he, too, kills imaginary people and watches the blood fly. He will not play these games at home, but I am aware that I cannot shelter him from the world forever, so how do I prepare him to meet these grim realities with grace?

It is completely beyond my understanding that these games even exist, let alone that people allow children to play them. How and when did death and violence become a game that we market to children? I can understand, to some degree, the argument that children should be introduced to guns at some point so that they are not ignorant of the realities and/or so that they have a working knowledge of them and a respect for their power. I hear that argument from my father in law and my husband all the time, and though I can't entirely accept it, I can see where they are coming from. How, though, can we make any argument for the existence of these games that make our children squeal with glee to see blood fly from their victims and body parts explode into pieces around them? Maybe those who allow their children to play such games believe that children can differentiate imagination from reality, but I would counter that the rising cases of violence among children tell us otherwise.

It all goes back to the original question: When do we begin to educate our children about the difficult things in life? It has to be early enough to allow them to make intelligent decisions about the media and the "play" that they will be introduced to when they are outside of our influence, but not so soon that the bubble of childhood is breached before they are ready for such exposure. I wish I could say that I can clearly see when that should be. I can't. I hope that one day I will just know that they are ready. I hope that I will make intelligent decisions about when to tell them about the 10,000 + lives lost because the ground shook and a wave came or about the fact that we power our society with toxic materials that can kill us all if we lose control of them. I want my sons to be intelligent beings who fight for our environment and our human decency when the time comes, but I also want them to be children that still believe in their parents' power to keep them safe. Once again, it comes back to walking the line and hoping like hell that I don't lose my balance.

Sustainable Families for a Sustainable Future

The world around us is changing before our eyes. Our children seem destined to live in a world dependent upon non-renewable resources for its survival. According to Steven L. Hopp, as published in Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, “Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars. We’re consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen—about 17 percent of our nation’s energy use—for agriculture, a close second to our vehicular use.” [1] With the price of gas becoming a financial nightmare for most families, what is the future of our fossil fuel dependent agricultural market?

As we all watch in horror, the earth herself is protesting the wrongs that have been committed by humankind. The oceans are rising as the polar ice sheets are retreating. Polar bears, penguins and other Arctic animals are threatened with extinction. “The vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is real, it’s already happening and that it is the result of our activities and not a natural occurrence.” [2] As we each sit in our small corner of the globe it seems impossible to conquer the road ahead; it seems unlikely that anything we do, insubstantial as we seem, can make any difference at all. Realistically, we ask ourselves, can the food we eat really make a difference? Despite this mentality small pockets of people all around the world are rising up against the tide of corporate dependence and learning how to sustain life independent of the tyranny that has overtaken what should be a simple, graceful, and somewhat independent dance for survival. These people are focusing their eating habits on their local community and teaching their families to examine and value the path that food takes to get to the table. In the San Francisco Bay Area a group called “Locavores” formed with a focus on eating only food grown within a 100 mile radius of their homes. In 2005, Jen Maiser, Jessica Prentice, Sage Van Wing, and DeDe Sampson challenged Bay area residents to attempt to live as locavores for one month. The movement has continued to grow and the word “locavore” was the 2007 word of the year for the Oxford American Dictionary.[3]

We as a society, and none of us can truly claim innocence, have come to accept the creature comforts promised by the advancement of technology, agricultural industry, and fossil fuels. We start our car each day and think only briefly, if at all, about the true price of the fuel it will take to carry us from point A to point B. We wander the grocery store aisles never doubting for a moment that whatever we desire will be waiting somewhere in the fluorescent lit building of wonder, carried there through the infinite power of fossil fuel. It is easy, in a day and age such as this, to assume that these are simply the rights and privileges we have earned through innovation, creativity, and intelligent invention. We, as a species, have obviously dominated the globe. We seem to control every aspect of life that sustains us, and we assume the sky is the limit. The glass ceiling is not shatter proof; nothing should hold us back from exerting our power and control over what once seemed insurmountable odds.

I think back to the days of my ancestors, both European and Appalachian striving to live in a new world, and I try to imagine life as they knew it. When I do so, I see scenes from a historical fiction novel. I see their struggle as Hollywood projects it onto the big screen, and only sometimes do I hear the stories my grandmother tells. When I really strive for understanding, however, I realize I have none. In all truth, I cannot even begin to understand the struggle of my ancestors just to put food on the table. I, who buy bananas from the tropics, tomatoes from California, apples from New Zealand, and fish from Chile; I, who surf the Internet, and check e-mail hourly; I, who complain about the time it takes me to prepare a meal each night... How can I ever truly understand? Yet I want, more than anything, for my children to understand where the luxuries on which they thrive are coming from, and, more importantly, what we are truly paying for them. Do I want to deny them these luxuries? Yes, I have recently decided, there are some of them that I do want to deny them. But there are others I want them to appreciate and understand before they enjoy them. I want my sons to participate in the process of making responsible decisions, not just for their individual welfare, but for the welfare of all human beings on this earth, and all future generations to come.

This lesson I want to teach my children must begin with an understanding of my own. Slowly, as I read and research, reduce, reuse, and recycle, I am beginning to see the answer. I am not insubstantial. What I do can make a difference. Each choice I make not only sets an example for my sons, which will affect the men they become, the children they raise, and the world they live in, but it also begins a ripple effect that can, and hopefully will, change the face of our planet. By choosing to buy local foods that are grown humanely and without the use of harmful chemicals, I am choosing to support a movement that can effectively rip a hole in the unhealthy trend of corporate agriculture in the same way that starting my car each morning puts a little more strain on the tattered edges of our ozone layer. It is not possible for me to completely eliminate my carbon footprint on this earth, but I can do my very best to walk softly.


Change must start slowly. I know from experience that any attempt to blindly jump into something as challenging as eliminating dependence on the comforts considered a birthright by most Americans will only result in failure. So I begin to consider where I will start, and the answer is in the bounty that is all around me in the state in which I live. By growing food of my own, as limited as I might be by my urban landscape, I can teach my sons to respect the food we eat. Together as a family we will sweat and strain to produce whatever small amount of food we can, and in doing so my boys will learn about the cycle of life. When I take my sons to local farms or farmer’s markets I will be teaching them to support the community in which they live; I will be teaching them to honor the path of life that takes our food from the ground to our belly. With these simple changes in our day to day life I can begin a cycle of change that will not only make my family healthier, but can improve the health of the planet on which we live.


If this is not empowerment then I don’t know what is. These choices I am making will take me back to the roots of my existence, back to a time when people grew their own food, and, if they didn’t, they shook the hand of the farmer who grew it for them. What I am doing by choice is nothing more than my ancestors did out of necessity. The lessons I will pass on to my sons are the lessons that my ancestors passed on to theirs. Somewhere along the way we have lost sight of the lessons of our ancestors. Life, as always, has taken us full circle: in order to continue, we must go back to the beginning. We must look at life as our ancestors did so that our children and our grandchildren can have a future.

For more information on how to practice sustainable living in your area check out these websites:

www.ediblecommunities.com
www.eatwild.com
www.sustainabletable.org
www.locavores.com

In Oregon:
http://www.oregonfarmersmarkets.org/

[1] Kingsolver, Barbara, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Harper Collins Publishers, 2007.

[2] www.climatecrisis.net/thescience: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this era of global warming “is unlikely to be entirely natural in origin” and “ the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence of the global climate.”

[3] www.locavores.com. April 2008.

bounty from the Farmer's Market

Kyan enjoying his favorite market treat

The beginnings of last year's garden!

The Harvest!

The tomatoes that got overlooked...

but, still produced in beautiful colors!

Graceful Mothering

an older picture of our "spectacle" with one additional child

I often wonder what other people see when they stare so unbecomingly at my boys and I as we make our way through the store or the library or wherever our adventure for the day has taken us. The comments that parents of multiples get from strangers are a never ending topic of conversation and the reality is just something you get used to. I usually only engage minimally, though I used to stop and converse with everyone, I've gotten a bit wiser in my 9 months as a parent of twins. Most everyone says the same couple of things in a few different ways: "My, you've got your hands full!" "Do twins run in the family?" (which is code for, "did you use fertility drugs?") and "are they twins?"

Yesterday, however, I was at New Seasons with all three boys and we had lunch so we were there for a LONG time. We had been in the same area for awhile and most of the people at New Seasons know us and talk to us when we're there. As we were leaving the seating area after lunch a woman that works there and thus sees us a lot said, as we walked by, "You handle those boys with such grace."
I said thank you and laughed it off and moved on, but the comment stuck with me all day long. I kept thinking, "that's it, that's how I want to be seen as a parent. I want to parent these boys with grace."

I think that this is something akin to "walking the line", which I talk about all the time. There is no "perfect" way to parent. I find myself judging myself constantly because I hold myself up to standards that are put forth by others or ideals that seem attainable, but really just don't pertain to me or my situation. But, if I can do whatever I choose to do as a parent with grace, then maybe, just maybe, I can truly succeed at being a good parent.

I won't begin to fool myself into thinking that there is a graceful way to handle a 3 year old's temper tantrum (especially while pushing a stroller with one baby and wearing the other in a front carrier), or a graceful way to deal with the plethora of crazy circumstances that are bound to arise when I am chasing two toddlers around while trying to corral an ornery 4 year old, but if I can carry myself with grace through most of my interactions with my boys then I think I will be satisfied.

So now I have to ask myself, "what does that mean?" Really, what does it mean to parent with grace? 

Well, first of all I think it has to do with how one talks to one's children. Because children talk back to us with exactly the same spirit that we talk to them. I've seen this again and again with Kyan. The moment I lose my cool and raise my voice or overreact to something his face changes, his tone changes, and we are locked eye to eye in a dirty little power struggle. All it takes is that split second where I let the calm and even tone, that I work so hard to maintain, slip away. I suppose he figures that if I am letting it go then so can he...so he does.

Come to think of it, I think that the power struggle is central to "non-graceful parenting". So many parents spend so much time in a power struggle with their children. I am not claiming for one second that I am not one of them. It is nearly impossible not to engage in a power struggle with a 2 or 3 year old. It's as simple as this:

Mom: Please pick up the cup you threw on the floor
Child: NO! (foot stomping)
Mom: Pick up the cup, RIGHT NOW!
Child: (escalating to Mom's level) NO! You pick it up!
Mom: I did not throw the cup on the floor so I will not pick it up, you WILL pick up that cup.
Child: NO! You can't make me.

That's it. The child wins the struggle. Why? Because it's true, Mom can't actually make him pick the cup up. Truly. There can be consequences for not picking it up. Mom can try several different tactics to convince the child to pick it up. But, the reality is that Mom doesn't want to do any of those things. All she wants is to force the child to accept that if Mom says to do something then the child WILL do it.

Ben and I used to argue over this topic all the time. I would try to give him tactics to get himself out of the constant power struggling with Kyan and he would get upset and argue that Kyan simply needed to learn to listen when he was told to do something. period. end of story.
Yeah. That would be nice. However, the reality is that Kyan is 3 years old (insert any age from about 1-7 and the answer is the same) and he is developmentally programmed to resist, to test, to push, and to say NO. There's not all that much you can do to change that other than scare your child into submission through abusive tactics.

What you can do, though, is to stop fighting back with the exact same level of stubborn resistance that he is using with you. Seriously! We get just as frustrated when our child tells us NO as they do when we tell them NO. The difference is that we are supposed to be mature enough to handle it and to adjust our reaction to the circumstances, yet instead we immediately escalate our behavior and react by arguing with our child. Do you know how futile it is to argue with a 3 year old. I promise it will be about as effective as attempting to climb a tree while wearing ice skates on your hands.

So, if I am to be a graceful parent I think I have to find graceful ways to redirect myself AND my child when we find ourselves in those moments that both of us dread. So far I do this in a few different ways:
I climb the ladder (the system that I learned about in the book, "Beyond Time Out: From Chaos to Calm").
I choose not to engage with Kyan even if he is calling me "stupid" or "poopy" or lashing out at me physically when I am attempting to discipline or say no. This one is hard, but here's the bottom line. When he does those things he is not doing them because he thinks it is okay to do them, therefore telling him repeatedly that it is NOT okay to hit or NOT okay to say poopy etc., is only feeding his fire. He KNOWS that it's not okay and that is exactly why he is doing it. Punishing him for it will also make no difference. If I punish him then he is getting exactly what he wants from me: A REACTION!

When my voice is even and calm and I am telling him that he will be spending time in his room regrouping because of whatever behavior he has just displayed, the only way he feels like he can control the situation is to bring me to his level; essentially, he is seeking to engage me in a power struggle. How can he do that? By using all of the words and actions that he knows, without a doubt, that I disapprove of. HE'S PUSHING MY BUTTONS!! And, the only way to win in this situation is to walk away. Later when he is calm and I am calm it makes sense to discuss the behavior and to reinforce that it was wrong, but in that moment if I try to do that then I am only giving him what he wants and I am LOSING the struggle. Not to mention the fact that he will process about .0000% of what I am trying to say.

Okay, so I feel like I'm rambling on and on, and you should know that I am as much trying to talk this out for my own purposes as I am trying to share the knowledge...I'm no expert, but these are a few things that I have been thinking of while I adjust to life with all three boys at home all the time. I want to be more prepared for the terrible twos this time around...not just because I will have TWO terrible twos, but because I feel like I have this amazing opportunity to stay home with my boys which allows me the time and resources to get it right...the parenting thing that is.

I'm not the most graceful person when it comes to much, but if I can be graceful as a mother then I think I can stand tall and hold my head up high. God knows that with three boys growing and changing it's going to take every ounce of my stamina and brain power to manage it, but I sure as heck plan to try!