Mr. and Mrs. Thomas

I saw Mr. and Mrs. Thomas today. They didn't see me. I was in my car, and they were at their van, loading and unloading Mr. Thomas's scooter and wheelchair, then getting in and driving away. I knew it was her because I had crossed paths with her a few years ago at the YMCA pool and we spoke briefly. Mrs. Thomas was my 10th grade math teacher. Mr. Thomas had been the school sports team photographer who remembered the name of everyone he'd ever met even once, including mine. As I watched them from a distance, they were all smiles and ease with eachother, just like I remembered them from high school.

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas were the first black/white interracial couple I knew. I met them individually before realizing that they were married. (The photo of their teenage son on Mrs. Thomas's desk led to the ah-ha moment.) I knew nothing of the state of their marriage, of course, but they seemed happy when I saw them at school, and once when I ran into them at the mall when I was still in high school. In college, I thought of them when I started to date Firmin, and then later when a fellow student informed me (with that smug tone that girls half in love with their professors adopt) that Professor So-and-So didn't believe interracial marriages could work in the United States. Of course Professor So-and-So was a black man divorced from a white woman who apparently found it easier to be a psudo-victim than simply a failure at marriage. But I was only 20 then, and his pronouncement gave me pause. The memory of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas gave me hope.

When I met Mrs. Thomas at the pool a couple years ago, I wondered about her husband. It had been so many years -- enough for even a once-happy marriage to have bottomed out or for death to change everything. For fear of causing pain or embarrassment, I didn't ask. So today, when I saw her with the man on the scooter, I leaned forward and squinted. He was in shadow that made his skin color hard to discern and I didn't have a good view of his face. Plus, I saw Mr. Thomas less frequently than his wife when I was a teenager. She stood in front of me daily for a year, while he took my cheer leading photos a few times and said "Hi, Stephanie!" like he was really, truly glad to see me on the rare occasions we crossed paths. I couldn't swear in a courtroom that the man I saw today was Mr. Thomas, but when the spring sunlight caught his brown skin, his salt and pepper hair, and his warm smile, I was as sure as I needed to be. Most of all, the two of them together just looked like Mr. and Mrs. Thomas. They exuded the same easy camaraderie and affection, the same friendliness and sense of stability. I was so happy to see them. They still give me hope.

Pictures of my People!

A really fun part of genealogy research is finding photos and portraits of ancestors that you've learned something about. After my post the other day, I realized that I had pictures of several of the individuals I mentioned. I thought it might be fun to share some of them, plus one or two more that are just interesting or fun. If you haven't read the previous post, you might want to do that now, as I will refer to some of the stories I told there.

Remember the illegitimate son of an English nobleman who indentured himself to a Quaker family to come to America? Well here he is, Philip Packer Jr.:
Presumably, this portrait was painted before he came to the wilderness of Pennsylvania, probably when he was still living off his father's money. His father had holdings and business interests in Ireland, and he seems to have kept his little family there quite comfortable. When his first wife died, he married his mistress, Sara Isgar and brought her to his English home. However, since all of his children by her were born prior to their marriage, the children had to make their own way after Daddy's death. His children by his first wife got the estate. Here are Philip Packer, Esq., and the lovely Sarah Isgar, my 10th great grandparents:



Those of you with exceptional memories may have noticed that Eli and Ann Packer were the names of my last Quaker ancestors who died in Gratiot County Michigan in the 1800's. Eli was a direct descendant of these peolple. Philip Jr. became Quaker in Pennsylvania while serving his Quaker master. Perhaps the master had something to do with it, but I suspect the young woman he wanted to marry there had even more influence on his conversion!

Below is Groombridge place, the family home that Philip Packer Sr. re-built outside London in the 1660's. Packer was apparently an architect, a contemporary and friend of Sir Christopher Wren. The grounds are open to the public today, and the 2005 movie, Pride and Prejudice, was filmed there.




The picture below is an illustration of the adventurer with the Persian family meeting with the Indian Mogul in Agra, India circa 1604. His name was John Mildenhall (the family name later became Mendenhall), and his story is so fantastic that I have trouble believing it. It includes passing himself off to the Indian court as the ambassador of Queen Elizabeth I (he was not) and securing trading rights which he later sold to the recently formed British East India Company. Crazy! But apparently true! He is even buried in the oldest English grave in India. You can visit his tombstone there.



On to more normal (and recent) people:

Here is my Great-Grandfather, my maternal grandmother's father, a cute little boy who grew up to have a rather sad and hard life:

Alexander Franklin Fraser

Below are his parents, Bertha Harpham and Clarence Joseph Fraser (of Scottish descent). Clarence was a good deal older than Bertha, and she was widowed young, with no money and several young children. She also had physical and perhaps mental health problems. Her life story -- what I've been able to piece together of it -- is quite painful. Unfortunately, her children suffered right along with her -- a pain that was passed down for a couple of generations until my grandma and her siblings eventually seemed to pull things back together in their own adult lives.


Bertha's mother died when she was only 4 years old, and her father seems to have disappeared from her life at that point. Her mother's mother had died years before in childbirth. So Bertha was was raised by her mother's father, Franklin Squire and his 3rd wife. This 3rd wife had charge of several of Franklin's children and grandchildren by his previous marriages in addition to her own babies as they came along. Plus, for a time, her aging father *and* Franklin's aging father, both in their 80's, were living with the family. Even if her step-grandmother was a saint (and how many of us would be, under those conditions?), I don't imagine poor little Bertha got as much love and attention as every child needs. Her vivid unhappiness in later life, which living family members still recall as their strongest memory of her, is sadly suggestive.

Franklin Squire himself was a busy man outside the home. Not only did he have a rather large farm to tend, he was the early leader of the Michigan Seventh Day Adventist Church that I mentioned the other day. This is a portrait of him:

And last, but not least, I just had to include this picture of my maternal Grandfather's Grandmother. (My g-g grandmother.)
Don't you LOVE the hat? This is Mamie Gooderham Salisbury Harvey Cutler. (Well not Cutler yet in this picture -- he came later.) Based on clues, I believe this may have been her wedding photo when she married her 2nd husband, Samuel Harvey, in 1910 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She was divorced from my g-g grandfather at that time. I believe my he may have been a scoundrel! If I am right on the date of the picture, she is about 39 -- very close to my age right now. :o) My mother remembers visiting Mamie a few times as a child. In her later years, Mamie and her 3rd husband lived very near Tiger Stadium in Detroit. That whole side of my grandpa's family were big Tiger fans! They would meet at Mamie's house and walk down to the games.

Patterns of My People

So I haven't blogged all summer! In large part, it's because I've been spending most of my discretionary computer time (as well as some time I should have been doing other things) researching my family history. A couple of readers have expressed interest in reading about what I found. I've found a lot, and believe me, you don't want to hear it all! Even to my own family the details can be overwhelming, so I won't go there much, in spite of the fascination some of those details hold for me.

Instead, I want pull the focus back and show you the entire tapestry, because, rather wondrously, I've discovered that there are clear patterns and trends, even across disparate family branches and several centuries. Detailed information about individuals has been amazing to discover, but these patterns feel more significant to my sense of self. I don't feel like a different person or anything, but I do have a stronger sense of belonging to a larger story. I could go on about that, but I won't for now -- maybe another day. Perhaps also another day, I'll share how I got started on this journey, if people are interested. I've only been doing it for a few months now and I'm still a little in awe of how much I've learned about my heritage in that short span of time.

For now however, here's a bird's eye view of the landscape and the people who gave me birth:

1) America's story is my story. Before I began this project, I thought that my family in America would trace back no further than the early - mid 1800's. Most of the immigration stories I knew about came from this period. Indeed, most of the branches of my family did immigrate during the 19th century. However, one of the earliest discoveries I made was that I had many ancestors who came to Pennsylvania on ships commissioned by William Penn to bring Quaker settlers to his new charter colony in the 1680's.* One even came as an indentured servant, which no doubt seems more romantic and adventurous to me than it did to him! He was the bastard son of an English nobleman who couldn't inherit a dime, poor guy. That was on my father's side. Later, I discovered that some of my mother's ancestors were in colonial New England as early as the1630's! Can't get much more "founding father" than that unless your people came on the Mayflower. So I'm all in, right from the start -- the good, the bad and the ugly of our country's history is my history as well. That's something I didn't know until just a few months ago.

* I did not have even the faintest inkling of my Quaker ancestors when I became a Quaker a few years ago. The last practicing Quakers in the family, Eli and Ann Packer, died in Gratiot County, Michigan 1867 and 1871. The faith did not survive in the second generation in central Michigan, probably because there were no Friends Meetings there at that time. Although Eli and Ann both had Quaker ancestry reaching all the way back to the time of George Fox, the memory of our Quaker roots was lost in my father's family until I uncovered it this spring. I got to share this information at the family reunion this summer, so now it is remembered again. :o)

2) I come from rural and village people. My ancestors were farmers (many, many farmers), blacksmiths, millers, small-town day laborers, wool packers, weavers, etc. These were the professions of the men, of course, but my female ancestors were of the same stock -- they were the daughters, and then wives of the men who plied these trades. The women's lives are, if anything, even easier to imagine, as they likely varied less according to the trade of their men. They were gardeners, food preparers, livestock tenders, dress-makers, healers, neighbors, friends, pioneers, and perhaps most predominantly, mothers. They were the mothers of 5, 8, 10, 14 children. Most of them, until more recent generations, buried at least one child and sometimes several. A number of them gave their own lives for posterity, dying in childbirth or from complications thereof. These women married later than I'd been led to believe by popular history. Certainly, there were a few 17 and 18 year old brides, but not all that many. 19 was a more common age, with many entering their first marriage in their early 20's, and marrying men who were, on average, just a few years older. (There were some exceptions of course, especially where a man who was a widower wed a never-before-married young woman.)

My nearly complete lack of urban roots did surprise me a bit, given the broad scope of time and places and people involved. Yet even those who disembarked on American shores in New York City seemed to have set out for the country nearly immediately. My few wealthy and well-connected ancestors (remember the bastard son?) were landed gentry -- rich country folk, but still country. With nearly 500 individuals in my family tree so far (not all of those are direct descendants -- some are siblings, etc.) I can think of only one branch of the family that seemed to stay in a city for several generations, and that was colonial Springfield, Massachusetts. I'm not sure if Springfield counted as a "big city" back then or not! It was certainly not rural much beyond the founding years, however.

3) I don't have a single ancestor who came through Ellis Island. So many people ask about this! It's one of the first questions I got at family reunions this summer: "Do we have any family who came through Ellis Island?" Nope. Many people don't realize that Ellis Island didn't open as an immigration point until 1892. (I didn't know this either, until I looked it up.) All the branches of my family were in the New World by that time, save one: my Norwegian great-great grandfather was a stow away on a cargo ship in 1898. I believe he simply slipped off the boat and into the crowds on the dock. An undocumented immigrant...

4) I am a Northerner. So far, I've found not a single direct connection to the American South or West. Michigan, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ontario account for probably 90% of my North-American born family members. The remaining 10% would be from a few other New England states, Quebec, and Indiana. I think that about covers it. Certainly some of my ancestors' descendants or siblings migrated south and west, but no one that led to me, as far as I know. I may have a Native American g-g-g grandmother, but I have only the say-so of my great-grandmother and her sister regarding this, and they are no longer around to interrogate. I know how often this kind of family lore is untrue, so I'd very much like to prove it or disprove it somehow. But even if it's true, she was said to be Ojibway, so still a Northerner!

5) My European ancestors were northerners as well, from England, Scotland, the pre-German states, Ireland, Eastern France, Norway, Finland. No Spaniards, no Italians, no Austrians, no eastern Europeans. One long-ago ancestor, who was quite the adventurer, had a Persian wife and children to whom he left his entire estate when he died. Nice for them, but I'm sure it didn't go down well with his English wife and family, from whom I am descended! So no Persians either, darn it! ;o)

6) No Catholics. I have not been able to confirm a single Catholic ancestor thus far. I do have some Irish potato-famine immigrants (on my father's side) whose religion I don't know, but my earlier Irish immigrant ancestors were protestants. I do know that by the second generation in American, my potato-famine Irish folks were not practicing Catholics, so I don't feel I can assume that Irish = Catholic in their case. Of course going back before the Reformation (which I have not done) most of my European ancestors would have been Catholic, but clearly we've been Protestant (or non-religious in some cases) for a very long time.

7) And the Protestants were often outliers! With Quakers and Restorationists on my father's side, and Puritans and Seventh Day Adventists on my mothers side, I seem to come by my contrary religious tendencies naturally!* One Puritan ancestor converted to Baptist very early on in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was involved in Baptist "church planting" north of Boston. Baptists might seem pretty mainstream today, but his erstwhile fellow Puritans didn't think so in the 16oo's! One of this Baptist's descendants became a prominent leader in the early Seventh Day Adventist Church in Michigan. Another (the sister of the Adventist) became a follower of Joseph Smith and married an early Mormon elder. (It's thanks to her descendants that this branch of the family is so well researched!)

8) I don't know as much as I would like to know. A sad, but predictable truth: Most of my ancestors remain anonymous to me. I might know when and where they were born or died, how many children they had and perhaps what they did for a living, but that is all. Some left tantalizing clues, such as the obituary of a 4th great grandmother which contains this phrase: "Though surrounded my many depressing conditions, she won and held the respect of all..." I long to know what the "depressing conditions" were, but I probably never will.

9) I know more about some ancestors than I ever dreamed possible. I literally put my face in my hands and gave a little sob when I read this about my 10th great grandmother: "Marjorie was moderately active in the Women's Meeting at Middletown (PA). She served on five marriage clearness committees and one committee to labor with a friend who had failed to uphold Friends' principles." Reading about her serving on clearness committees for marriage over 300 years ago -- something I might do today in the very same tradition -- made her suddenly seem very real and dear to me. Here are some other things I know about Marjorie: Her first husband (my 10th great grandfather) died very shortly after their arrival in Pennsylvania, leaving 30-something Marjorie with 6 children, ages 16, 15, 14, 9, 6, and 3. She remarried (quickly!) in 1684 to a man whose wife had died on the voyage to Pennsylvania. Theirs was the first marriage under the care of Middletown Friends Meeting, which still exists today. Later in life she and her husband became involved in a painful schism among Friends, but Marjorie was later reconciled and was buried in Middletown Friends Cemetery. Her husband never came back into unity with Friends, but his step-son -- the one who had been 6 when his biological father died -- requested that he be buried next to Marjorie. The request was granted. Perhaps only other Friends will appreciate how easy and satisfying it is for me to imagine this request being brought before the Men's Meeting by a loving son, the ensuing Spirit-led deliberation among those in attendance, and the gracious outcome. I think about Marjorie sometimes as I'm going about my daily life and wonder what she would think of me and my world.

10) The tapestry grows exponentially. I'm struck by this: My mother's ancestry -- all of it -- is only half of mine. Same for my father, of course. My grandparents each share only a quarter. My two sisters and I are the only people on Earth who share this specific history as our full heritage, yet we share many of our more recent ancestors with hundreds of others, and each of our distant ancestors with thousands or even millions of people alive today. Our children share our lineage as well, but they have double the number of ancestors we do! My own children's ancestry stitches on the Caribbean Islands and the continent of Africa, making their lineage stretch across nearly half the globe. My youngest sister's new baby will someday trace his father's roots through Mexico and on to wherever else that leads him -- probably Spain, other places in southern Europe, and Indigenous Mezo-America.

The richness of all of this astounds me. I may have traced only a couple of family branches back to the 16th century, but of course they all go back that far, and farther: to the beginning of civilization, to the beginning of humanity itself. We are also growing forward. Someday, about 300 years from now, my 10th great granddaughters will walk this earth, perhaps here in Michigan, perhaps in a far-off land. Probably both, as I'm likely to have quite a few 10th great grandchildren! I will be a tiny part of their tapestries, woven in with all those who came before me, and all those yet to come, gathered and joined to another whole cloth with every generation in an ever-growing family.

The Fruit Bowl

Do people still have fruit bowls? Thanks to my husband, we do! A few weeks ago, he pulled most of the fruit from the fridge, stuck it in my big stainless steel mixing bowl and set the bowl on the dining table. Then he proceeded to leave little notes for us some mornings when he observed specimens going soft: "Time to eat the mango!" or "Time to eat the pears!" Lo and behold, we are eating more fruit! Above is our bowl after yesterday's trip to Horrocks. There are several varieties of apples, pears, avocados, mangos and kiwi fruit. Bananas are elsewhere so that they don't get bruised, and grapes stay in the fridge so Ethan doesn't help himself to a choking hazzard. Here he is hefting a blurry mango. :o)

The only downside? Having to dump all the fruit on the table when I need the mixing bowl for, ya know, mixing stuff. Otherwise, I highly recommend reviving the fruit bowl, at least for the winter months.

Beautiful Living

Tonya at Plain and Joyful Living has a post up today entitled Vision.  She relates how her family's decision to live simply in rural Vermont has meant coming to terms with the fact that not everything on the homestead is beautiful.  Money to landscape nicely, haul away rubble from building projects, or repair the barn is not usually available, so they live with visions of future beauty among the not-so-beautiful parts, relying on the work of their hands and Providence.  This passage exemplifies her can-do spirit, I think:

I didn't want to look at those big ugly concrete blocks, however, so I am in the process of building a branch fence to put right in front of them. I will plant sweet peas in front of the fence and I can envision the beautiful flowers and green vines climbing over the fence this summer. I piled up rocks around the well head as a worked in the garden. There was trash to remove. I found some flat rocks to add to our entryway walkway. (The chickens enjoyed finding insects and worms while we were cleaning up!)

After reading (and admiring) her post, I found my thoughts taking a tangent on the role of consumerism in our conception of beauty and ugliness.  Beauty -- that is, the orderly, manufactured beauty that requires purchasing things -- is lifted up in our culture as a key to a happy, meaningful life.  This is a marketing ploy, of course, but it's wielded not only by mainstream corporate interests (which I am fairly successful at ignoring), but also by interests which are much more alluring to me. I'm invited to furnish my home with beautiful organic products, to purchase aesthetically-pleasing, artisan-made toys, tools and clothing that support local, independent manufacturers and merchants. (I almost feel guilty NOT buying them.)  I could landscape my yard with native vegetation and pave my ugly mud driveway with permeable concrete -- as beautiful as it is environmentally friendly!  My home really should have bamboo or cork floors (gorgeous!) instead of the dirty, undoubtedly toxic carpet we live with, shouldn't it?  Even at my co-operatively owned grocery, special products for beautiful sustainable living abound, strangly tempting even when I don't really need them. Hand-thrown pottery with eco-friendly glaze, or my grandmother's hand-me-down 1970's Corelle? Hmmm... (Actually, that one's a no-brainer with kids, and we could never afford the pottery anyway, but you get the idea.)

Frankly, waging this constant internal battle to resist these messages can be exhausting.  Marketers -- even ones who pay their office cleaning crew a living wage -- are clever, clever, clever.  They can make me forget what is truly beautiful in my life, and that's a shame on me, as much as them. 

On my best days, I feel good about how we are resisting consumerism in favor of other, more meaningful life experiences.  I can catch Tonya's vision and see that we are working toward a different kind of beauty in our lives, a kind of unkempt, wild beauty of gardens and fruit trees, of family togetherness and honey bees.  On my worst days, I feel like I'm not even doing a good job with the meaningful life experiences part, and I really just want some matching furniture.

October 2009

It's been a while since I've posted anything here. I've been wanting to put up something of substance, but honestly, my brain hasn't been ruminating on much that is original lately. I've been getting into the homeschooling routine for this year, finishing up the garden (still don't have the garlic planted yet), running to sports practices and games. I guess all of that external activity is not good for introspection and reflection. I still think about things, but mostly they are things that are brought to my mind externally -- from reading or hearing a news item or someone else's thoughts about a subject. I'm not reflecting long enough to form many  new or interesting ideas of my own. This doesn't feel bad or wrong; it's just where I am right now. As we head into November and the natural world goes dead and dark, perhaps I will be able to turn inward and find something worth writing about. In the mean time, here are some scenes from our house in October. Missing are pictures of Alexander's flag football. I really wish I had some, because 7 year old football players are super cute. :o) I think all of the recent pictures of Alexander are on Firmin's iPhone and I don't know how to download them. My own hit-or-miss shots with the real camera will have to do:

This is a typical mid-afternoon scene in the living room. The older kids are off playing elsewhere -- perhaps outside or on the computer -- having finished their school work for the day. I'm in the kitchen. Ethan has finished his nap, had a little Mommy time, and will play contentedly by himself for quite a while. What you can't get from the picture is the background sound track: The Wiggles, most definitely!


Firmin has always loved spending special one-on-one time at the table with the kids while they are little. I think Ethan looks especially like Firmin in this photo. He always has, but this picture captures a more mature face than Ethan usually exhibits, so the similarity stands out all the more. Ethan usually looks much more toddler-ish -- more like this:

Friend Ann washing some of the 200 chairs stored in our garage for eventual use in the new Meetinghouse. Between the grime from their previous life and the dust from being in our garage for a year, the cleaning crew had their jobs cut out for them!

Even hard work is fun if you get to use a power washer!

Brianna's bookshelf. (Found this on the camera -- she must have taken it.) The top shelf is her "stack" -- the books she is planning to read, aranged in the order she plans to read them. Most of the stack is composed of library books. The bottom shelf is a selection of books that she owns. This stack is average to small. Since this picture was taken, we've been back to the library. Her current stack is larger than usual and fills the top shelf completely!

Not Back to School Day 2009

Pencil Peril

Quaker blogger and writer Eileen Flanigan has a blog post up that is mostly about finding time to write amid the back-to-school hustle and bustle. But tucked in there is a thought or two about using up old school supplies rather than buying all new ones each and every year. As homeschoolers, there is less pressure on us to get all new things in the fall (and we don't need many folders, etc. as there is no daily transport from one place to another required for most of their paperwork.) Pencils, on the other hand, have become an issue. Ethan (almost 2) has for some time now been fond of biting the erasers off pencils. He doesn't eat them, just bites them off, sucks on them for a few minutes, then spits them onto the carpet. Pink block erasers are strewn about the house but never seem to be handy when we need them, and end-cap erasers are a choking hazard for Ethan, so I've bought more new pencils in the last 9 months than in the previous 9 years! Environmentally unfriendly as it may be, it's actually kind of amusing when we step back and observe ourselves:

"Mommy!! Ethan's got a pencil with an eraser!"

"Quick, trade him for a bitten one!"

"He doesn't want it! I can't get it away from him!"

"Be careful yanking it away; if he lets go, you'll stab yourself in the face."

"But he won't let go! Arrgh! He bit it! Now I can't do my math!"

"Nice try. Just get a new pencil. I sharpened a bunch of them the other day."

Someday when Ethan gets older, he's going to wonder why we have 100 pencils in the house but NONE with an eraser. We can't wait to tell him...

Two Year Old Conversation

Scene: Ethan (nearly 2) jumps from the sofa and partly lands on his big brother, Alexander (7).

Ethan (bending over Alexander and looking him right in the face): Okay?

Alexander: I'm fine.

E: Okay?

A: I'm fine.

E: Okay?

A: I'm fine!

E: Okay?

A: I'm fine!

E: Okay?

A: I'm Okay.

E: Okay?

A: Yes.

E: Okay. (He climbs back up for another jump...)

Boston Road Trip Pictures

In the car and ready to go. Yes, they are already eating.

Mom is still in a pretty good mood, despite leaving about 2 hours "late". I like road trips.

Granny and Grandpa Charlot meet Ethan for the first time.

Best toy ever!
Ethan played with this for almost an hour while Firmin and the other kids watched an OmniMax movie at the Boston Museum of Science

For Brianna's birthday, we went to Friendly's and got a 12 scoop sundae to share. Yum! The girls on the right and left are Brianna and Alexander's cousins (Firmin's sister's kids). We stayed at their house and all the children had a blast together.

I-93 as it goes under the city.
This is the result of The Big Dig, which began when Firmin and I were still living in Boston and is very nearly finished. This is what $14.6 billion dollars looks like!

The more scenic result is the park/greenway below, where the ugly, elevated highway supports used to be. The North End and Downtown seem much more a part of the same city now.

We were walking the Freedom Trail this day. The splash fountians were a big help for the kids who were starting to feel hot and tired! This was one of only 2 warm sunny days while we were there.

Dinner at Granny's restaurant after our day in the city. The couple in the mural above are Firmin's parents. (His dad's head is cut off in this pic!)

Alexander, hamming it up with his cousin Chrismin (nicknamed Caillou), who spent a few days with us at Linda's. The boys had fun together and got along great.

One of the highlights of the trip home was our last pit stop at Cabela's, a *huge* sporting goods store and tourist destination all in one. The kids enjoyed climbing on the big statue of wrestling bears.

Looking Up

I haven't gotten the low-down on the situation, but it appears our neighbor's grandchildren and their mother might be living with them. They've been frequent visitors in the past, but now seem to be around every day for the entire day. (Not sure what the school situation is either...) They are an 11 or 12 year old girl and a 15 year old boy. Brianna and Alexander have always enjoyed playing with them, and they seem to be good kids. The girl even takes time out to play with Ethan. I'm thinking of asking her to do some "mother's helper" work for me this summer if she's still around. I'm also impressed with the boy. He seems (from the distance I watch at) to have the right mix of youthful enthusiasm, older kid know-it-all, and big brother affection. Both Brianna and Alexander have significantly improved their basketball games by playing against him!

But now that they are around all the time, I'm thinking more about influence. They've moved beyond basketball and bike riding -- though they still do plenty of both -- to games involving more imagination and dialog. I've not seen anything to cause alarm; quite the contrary. But I'm aware that I don't see everything. I'm also aware that a 15 year old boy could have tremendous influence, for good or ill, on my nearly 7 year old son. I can tell that Alexander looks up to J. and enjoys spending time with him. Today, when I mentioned that J. was outside shooting baskets, Alexander left his computer game immediately to go outside and play. (A minor miracle!)

Our family has been blessed with good older-kid role models for our children. My sister's kids (now middle-schoolers) are wonderful, and the older children in our homeschool group and at our Quaker Meeting are also the kind of people I like to be around. However, this is the first time Brianna and Alexander are developing relationships with older kids that I don't personally know well. Their grandparents are good people, and they seem to be as well, but there is a level of trust and letting go that I'm not yet used to. So for now, I'll keep my eyes open and hope that these neighbor kids will be among the good role models who are showing my own children how to be the kind of kid a little one can look up to.

Random Pictures Just For Fun

Brianna and her friend Wren. The children in First Day School visited the new meetinghouse construction site and posted their hopes and dreams for the new building on the studs, so that they will be there behind the walls for always. (Click here for photos of the building progress.)

Dissecting an owl pellet takes concentration.

Our newest porch residents!
5 day old robins

Who knew a cold fire pit could be so much fun? Ethan looked like a little coal miner.

Below: Fun at the park

First Haircut

Firmin gave Ethan his first hair cut yesterday. I was worried he'd look too much older, and I'm pleased that the change isn't too drastic. He's still my baby! :o)


Before



















After

Snatches

Sorry for the long hiatus between posts. Seems I seldom have more than 5 or 10 minutes to spend on the computer at one sitting, though I have those minutes several times a day. A good blog post -- any blog post other than a "Wordless Wednesday" -- takes much more concentrated time than that. (Even this one is taking longer than I intended!)

The good news is that I'm ready to begin a re-ordering phase. Perhaps it's the season, or just that I'm tired of always feeling behind. I feel like I do so much in "snatches" these days -- the computer, the kids, household tasks, gardening, errands. It all feels dis-jointed and inadequate. I hope to be able to organize my days such that I spend less of my life in snatches and more of it in full experience. Knowing myself as I do, it's a tall order. But now and then I manage it for a while, and life is so much better when I do. If I succeed, you'll likely see more blog posts and fewer Facebook updates. I like Facebook, but it's like living on snack crackers when you really want to cook and eat a good meal.

Computer time is over now -- gotta put the kids to bed. Wish me luck... and Light.

Girls Will Be Girls

Yesterday, we went to an indoor play facility on a day they offer a good deal for homeschoolers. I guess lots of kids have reached to that end-of-winter craziness. It was packed and the children were even more rambunctious than usual.

Alexander (age 6) always has a blast -- doesn't matter if his buddies are there or not. He plays with friends, acquaintances and strangers alike. Give most boys a room full of bounce houses, a few beach balls, and space to run and they're set for hours. Ethan (17 mo.) also likes to run and play on the toddler toys that are available.

Brianna (age 8) has not always enjoyed herself so much at this facility. The bouncing and running are fun for about a half-hour, but after that, much depends on who else is there. Yesterday, I'm pleased to say, was a good day for her. Her best friend was there, but that was just the beginning. There was a fairly large cohort of upper-elementary age girls who spent the afternoon in a herd -- sometimes talking, sometimes bouncing, sometimes wandering here and there looking older than they had any right to. (When did Brianna start sauntering?) She's not always comfortable in groups like that, but yesterday she was clearly one of the gang.

On the way home, I observed aloud that she seemed to have had a good time with all those girls. "Yeah" she said in her usual understated way. Then after a beat, she continued: "At about 2:00 we formed a club. It was called the 'Girls Rule, No Boys Allowed Club'." The mature adult mother of two sons in me cringed just a little. But the former third grade girl in me gave a fist pump in the air, and I felt myself smile.

The Book Was Better

Brianna, Alexander and I recently finished reading The Spiderwick Chronicles book series together. Night after night for about 3 weeks, we reveled in the delightful descriptions of the creatures, the mystery, the suspense. Tonight we capped off our experience with a family movie night, popping popcorn and watching the film version of the story. (Sheilding Ethan's eyes where necessary.) The movie effects were excellent, the acting was superb, and the story line was clear. Judged solely on it's own merits, it was a good movie.

But, as readers everywhere might predict, it couldn't hold a candle to the books. Not only did the sequence and location of events diverge early on, but it soon became clear that some of our favorite scenes and creatures were left out. No Dwarves, no elves (!!), no Phooka. And no dragon, which meant no arial battle between the dragon and the griffin -- bummer.

As sorry as I am that the movie didn't delight us more, I also feel a smug satisfaction. I love that the experience of huddling together on bed and reading a good book aloud can still trump Hollywood, sophisticated computer effects and all.

Up next: The Tale of Despereaux, which we will start reading tonight. Will we see the movie afterword? Probably, but expectations will be low.

Sumo Wrestling

This week, we read about the Edo period of Japan in our History curriculum. One of the activities following the reading was Sumo wrestling! In addition to trying it out ourselves, we watched some truly informative and interesting YouTube videos on Sumo. (This one and this one. They're short -- check 'em out.)

The kids had great fun with it. For a while. Turns out the old saw is true: "It's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt." But even so, I think Alexander (the one who got hurt) would say it was worth it. It should be noted that the injury happened when they deviated from acceptable Sumo maneuvers and decided to run their pillow bellies together at top speed. Xander being the lighter of the two, went flying backwards into the wall.

So they got a little Physics lesson too. Ah, homeschooling!

Back to the Garden

I took a break from my garden this year, since Ethan was at a very attention/vigilance-demanding stage during the spring and summer. It was absolutely the right decision, but I've missed having my own produce right out the back door.

Next year, Ethan will be able to toddle around the garden with me, digging holes and generally entertaining himself. So I've been getting ready for next spring. Having a baby in September of last year meant that the garden never did get "put to bed" in 2007. There were dead garden plants and weeds everywhere. Not to mention gobs of grasshoppers, which I recently learned thrive in messy, weedy garden plots. Earlier this fall, I got out and cleaned up the mess. Then last week, Alexander and I weeded one corner and planted lots of garlic.

This week, we finally managed to get the tiller from my parents' house (thanks solely to my father -- thanks Dad!) Firmin tilled up everything but the garlic patch yesterday before dinner. After dinner, I worked like a maniac until after dark, picking out as many quackgrass rhizomes as I could -- a whole wheelbarrow full, and there are still more than I want to think about left in the garden! Those plants play to win.

Today, I gave the kids the day off from homeschooling so that they could help me get the composted manure in and plant the cover crop (field peas and fava beans). A trip to Lowes for the manure put Ethan to sleep, so we were able to work uninterupted by him. Brianna and Alexander were incredibly helpful and we got the work done in about an hour.

Here's what it looks like now:
It's not much to look at, but my garden has never been so nice and clean in the fall! I think I'll add some straw or mulched leaves when I can get some. This isn't the final look, however, as the cover crop will come up and cover the plot during the winter, fixing nitrogen into the soil and discouraging weeds.

It feels good to get back to the soil. It feels good to work hard and see progress. It feels good to share this endeavor as a family, each of us doing our part to provide some portion of our own food. It feels worth every minute.

It also feels small. I'm starting to gently work on Firmin (because I'll definently need his help) about putting a large plot further back on our property. I'd like to grow quantities of bigger crops -- squash, melon, potatoes, corn -- that I don't have room for now. But that would entail breaking a lot of sod and building a good fence to keep out the many critters (including deer) that inhabit our urban "nature oasis" back there. Getting it set up would be a project for next summer, with planting beginning next fall at the earliest. I'll let you know how it goes. Those of you who know Firmin can help me butter him up! You know -- what a great husband he is, how nice our land is, how it would be perfect for a big garden, how educational it would be for the kids, etc., etc. ;o)

Remote Rant

Unlike our TV, VCR, stereo and DVD player, which all have buttons for the most basic functions, our cable box* is NOT operable without the remote control. Whose dumb idea was this?? I don't know about other families, but in our house, remote control devices can be harder to find than an empty parking spot the day after Thanksgiving. Sure, the kids bear part of the blame, but I suspect even childless adults occasionally find themselves wandering around the living room, tossing sofa cushions and cursing. (And without kids they can curse with impunity, lucky bast... er, dogs!) Firmin and I have been known to carry a remote out of the room and absentmindedly set it down somewhere unlikely, such as the kitchen counter, the dining room table, and once, inside the refrigerator! So kids or no kids, who in their right mind would create a cable box -- the device which not only must be "on", but is also the only way to change channels -- without at least basic on/off buttons and channel up/down buttons? Then you could at least watch the show of your choice while you search for the remote!

You won't be surprised to learn that today I spent 10 increasingly frustraing minutes looking for the cable remote. I had Ethan on my hip wanting to nurse, the other kids were outside, and all I wanted was a few minutes of veg time in front of the TV. Too much for a busy homeschooling mom to ask?? The box was already on, so I could turn on the tv manually and get a picture, but all that got me was 10 minutes of some unbearably manic show on Cartoon Network before I finally found the remote...

In the trash.

Sigh.


*Background: We are in the middle of our bi-annual cable TV phase. We get the 3 or 6 month deal for World Cup Soccer and Summer Olympics/Presidential election years, then turn it off again. :o)

Dancing on My Grave

We had very heavy rains this weekend. Today, the kids and I marveled at how far the rivers in our area have over-spilled their banks. Brianna and Alexander wanted to scout a section of new trail running behind a cemetery near our house. We drove into the cemetery and parked near an embankment overlooking the trail. The kids jumped out of the van and ran to get a better look. They pointed and laughed and romped along the ridge for a while before skipping and running back to me to report their findings.

I loved seeing their joy in that place, oblivious to the remains below their feet and the granite and marble reminders of generations past. I was reminded of the day of my Grandfather's funeral some years ago. At the graveside, we adults were somber. But his little great-grandchildren, far too young to appreciate their loss, played gleefully among the leaves on that glorious October afternoon. The pastor saw them and smiled. "I love seeing young children at a funeral" he said. "They remind us that life carries on."

As the memory faded, my thoughts turned, unbidden, to my own mortality. Some day, I thought, children may romp happily on the spot where my remains are buried or scattered. Children of children of children yet unborn. I was infused with a feeling of peace and joy. It was the most beautiful thought about death (particularly my own) that I have ever had. I pray that I may be so blessed. And if I am, I hope that somehow my soul will be aware of them, of their energy, of their joy, of their dancing into the future.