Weep to Have

I feel poetry but lack the power to make my words profoundly beautiful like my thoughts. This month while reading Jane Eyre, I found that Jane felt the same about her artistic ability. When Mr. Rochester asked her about some of her paintings, she said, "I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realise." Sometimes a particular poem strikes me because it captures my feelings in a way I am "powerless to realise." This week I encountered Shakespeare's Sonnet 64 and feel new awe at his power.

Impermanence and inevitable loss are his themes. He begins:

          When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
          The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
          When sometimes lofty towers I see down-razed
          And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;

Amid monuments to the dead, the poet laments time and weather's slow destruction of our attempts to remember them.

The next four lines show the effect of the tides:

          When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
          Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
          And the firm soil win of the watery main,
          Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;

I feel a faster progress of decay and visualize a child's disappointment at the loss of his "kingdom of the shore," a sand castle.

Viewing ruin all around him, he thinks:

          When I have seen such interchange of state,
          Or state it self counfounded to decay,
          Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
          That Time will come and take my love away.

Because nothing is permanent, we will inevitably lose even those we love. His concluding couplet mourns the having because of the fear of losing:

          This thought is as a death which cannot choose
          But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.

I feel this as I witness and participate in my children's inexorable march to adulthood. I know my goal as a parent is to eliminate my position so that one day they will all leave my home, but I still dread it. When my mother visited a couple of years ago, she swept my floor after lunch one day, and I complained, "My floor has to be swept after every meal."
  
She replied, "My floor stays clean, but my house is empty."

I "weep to have" because I fear for the empty house, the loneliness I know I will some day feel. One day at church I sat between my eldest daughter, Karina, and my youngest, Helena, the beginning and end of my cycle of motherhood. I remember Karina as the baby in my arms, but she stands taller than I am and will leave for college in only three years. I try to grasp that remaining time but the "firm soil" increases "store with loss" and runs right between my fingers.

Some day I will ask myself where the years went, but I will know that I lived them. I am grateful that in the midst of a busy life I can spend each day with these children, to help them, know them, relate to them. The days and stages of their childhood dissolve like sugar into the syrup of my life, sweetening it but in an elusive way I find difficult to distinguish and savor. One day I will have the time and solitude to savor it and the sweetness of my memories will remain.

Sonnet 64

When I have seen by time’s fell hand defaced

The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometimes lofty towers I see down razed,

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage:

When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

And the firm soil win of the watery main,

Increasing store with loss, and loss with store:

When I have seen such interchange of state,

Or state itself confounded to decay;

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate—

That Time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Don't bring these things to the table

"Table Manners Made Easy," our new chapter in Sheryl Eberly's 365 Manners Kids Should Know: Games, Activities, and Other Fun Ways to Help Children Learn Etiquette, began on May 5. From now through mid-July, behavior at the table will be our focus. On Saturday we read a short list entitled, "Don't bring these things to the table." In case you were wondering, here they are:

• Handheld video games
• The remote control for the television (keep the TV off during meals)
• A magazine or book
• The newspaper
• Homework
• The dog

I guess five out of six isn't too bad. We will continue to have our manners lessons every morning at the breakfast table, along with the book, even though I now know it to be a forbidden item. There isn't another time with the entire family present that would be as convenient. Consistency trumps etiquette this time.

A Thinking Love

I am a stay-at-home mother, a chef, a nurturer, a seamstress, a musician, an educator, a baker, an accountant, a writer, a wife, a student, and a lover of the arts—all without pay. I am not a housekeeper, a maid, a chauffeur, or a laundress, although at times I do the tasks necessary for those roles. I am also a feminist who worries that by embracing these roles I appear to be an unliberated housewife who has attenuated herself into a mere outline of her husband and children. This life satisfies me even as I visualize an imaginary feminist despising me for my unliberated life.

Save your contempt. I don't despise you in return. The Mommy Wars have always mystified me. I do not need to justify staying at home by persuading myself that my children will surpass those of the career-balancing mother in every way because I sacrificed my identity on the altar of motherhood. I chose this life and think other women should be free to choose theirs. While Eric works, I have the freedom to help my children grow, to watch their identities unfold. I also choose to consider it my calling, not my job.  I do not need or want a salary for my work because I love it for itself. Renumeration would only cheapen my motivation. My worth as a person and my identity do not center on what I receive money for, which I consider a hollow way of valuing a person. I think Eric sometimes envies me my freedom to pursue my interests with my children.

Homeschooling has given me my greatest purpose. Through home education I believe I can give my children an individualized education superior to any they could receive in school. I have not lost myself in the process, but instead it has led me to utilize more of my mind than anything else I have ever done. Pestalozzi said:

The mother is qualified, and qualified by the creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; . . . and what is demanded of her is––a thinking love . . . . God has given to the child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point reminds undecided––how shall this heart, this head, these hands be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. Maternal love is the first agent in education (Charlotte Mason, Home Education, 3).

I give a "thinking love" to my children not through the suppression of my individuality but by using all my faculties and abilities to tutor them as I work with them daily. Every mother is an expert in her own children, and I try to use my expertise to help each child develop uniquely. Suzuki wrote: "The word education implies two concepts: to educe, which means to 'bring out, develop from latent or potential existence,' as well as to instruct" (Nurtured by Love 86). As much time should be spent educing children's humanity as instructing them. Coaxing out their latent qualities requires much time and the knowledge of and love for each individual that I alone possess. In the process I realize my own potential.

Reading, accompanying a choir, writing, singing, teaching, explaining math concepts, directing a play––my week consists mainly of these activities, all of which benefit both me and my children. Sometimes I think that feminism in the 20th century could have taken a different path, that envisioned by Charlotte Mason at the century's start. She wrote:

We are waking up to our duties and in proportion as mothers become more highly educated and efficient, they will doubtless feel the more strongly that the education of their children during the first six years of life is an undertaking hardly to be entrusted to any hands but their own. And they will take it up as their profession––that is, with the diligence, regularity, and punctuality which men bestow on their professional labours (Mason, Home Education, 3).

Educating my own children is my professional labor. It takes diligence and more of my intelligence than anything else I have ever attempted. Every day I learn a little more about the value of each child, of the difference a good education can make, and about having a large impact on a few people as their latent qualities develop. I am living the life I have chosen. In the middle of the daily chaos I find myself, no mere outline but fully fleshed, a complete woman. And yes, a mother.

A Lazy, Sky-High Fly Ball

Grayson, parkhand, ex-Minor League ball player, never learned to read. After he finds a young runaway, the two become friends, and Maniac Magee assumes the task of teaching him. Grayson finds that he must practice reading just as he used to practice baseball. And it can be frustrating:

Vowels were something else. He didn't like them, and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. . . . To the old pitcher, they were like his own best knuckleball come back to haunt him. In, out, up, down––not even the pitcher, much much less the batter, knew which way it would break. He kept swinging and missing (Maniac Magee 101). 

I swung and missed yesterday morning, just like Grayson in Jerry Spinelli's Maniac Magee, only instead of learning how to read I was learning how to tie knots. I attempted two knots necessary for rock climbing: a figure eight with follow through and a clove hitch, both of which I have learned before. Even though I read instructions in my rock-climbing book, examined the pictures, and Eric walked me through the process, I still struck out.

Eric didn't let me give up. He coached me repeatedly after each failure, just like Magee coached Grayson:

But the kid was a good manager, and tough. He would never let him slink back to the showers, but kept sending him back up to the plate. The kid used different words, but in his ears the old Minor Leaguer heard: 'Keep your eye on it . . . Hold your swing. . . Watch it all the way in . . . Don't be anxious . . . Just make contact' (Maniac Magee 102).

Magee felt confident that if they kept at it, Grayson would learn to read. Eric believes I can learn to tie knots, even though I lack spatial visualization ability and have fumbling fingers. "Anyone can train himself; it is only a question of using the right kind of effort" (Nurtured by Love 37), wrote Suzuki. What, then, is the right kind of effort? The Suzuki Method has taught me that it consists in part of these things:

1. Small steps
2. Consistent effort
3. Repetition

When working with my children, I have found small steps to be an invaluable tool. A piece of music can be broken up into ever smaller portions: lines, measures, single notes, and if any larger portion is too difficult, a smaller one can be found that is achievable. In addition, the Suzuki books also haved graded repertoire, beginning with simple pieces that build necessary skills now for more challenging pieces later. The same process can be applied to every educational situation. Although strugglings and frustration usually play a role in learning anything, I have always found that breaking a task into smaller steps makes the impossible possible.

Even though I felt like it wasn't possible, Eric kept me at it. He guided me through each small step until I succeeded in tying a clove hitch. The knot worked!

However, small steps will not make a difference without consistent effort. Learning only takes place if lessons are spaced closely enough that any ability gained is retained. Otherwise, frustration can resurface as the skill has to be relearned, something that has happened to me with tying knots, so three hours later, Eric brought me rope and I tied it again. This time, it will stick.

But only if I use repetition to cement it in the mind and the body. "If some skill is easy for you, that is evidence that it has been developed through training to such an extent that it has become a part of you,  . . that your purpose has been achieved by work and repetition until the skill has firmly taken hold in your consciousness" (Nurtured by Love 43). I need tying knots to become as automatic as other things I take for granted, like knowing how to read.

Though practice is frequently grueling, the reward of watching something difficult become
 easy is immeasurable. With weeks of work, Greyson began reading, "nailing those vowels on the button, riding them from consonant to consonant, syllable to syllable, word to word" (Maniac Magee 102). I love Spinelli's description of Greyson's feelings that night:

The old man gave himself up willingly to his exhaustion and drifted off like a lazy, sky-high fly ball. Something deep in his heart, unmeasured by his own consciousness, soared unburdened for the first time in thirty-seven years, since the time he had so disgraced himself before the Mud Hen's scout and named himself thereafter a failure" (Maniac Magee 105). 

Learning frees us to drift off "like a lazy, sky-high fly ball." What we now know takes hold in our consciousness, changing forever both who we are and how we view ourselves.

Algorithms are Recipes

At 6:30 this morning, I grabbed paper and pencils, and Eric and I figured out why the algorithm for extracting square roots in Katie's math book works. Why did we choose to do math during our early morning time together? Well, finding square roots was yesterday's math lesson in A Beka Pre Algebra. I followed the directions, walked her through a couple of problems, and was ready to set her working on her own when she said, "But I don't understand it. I can't do it if I don't understand it."

Just the day before my mother told me she skipped the section on extracting square roots with my niece. I never did it myself until yesterday. Eric also never learned how in school but taught himself some time along the way using Newton's Method. A calculator makes fast, efficient business of finding square roots. Why should we bother?

An algorithm is basically a recipe for solving a math problem. If you follow the procedure correctly, the right answer will be the result. In traditional math education, like A Beka PreAlgebra, the recipe or algorithm is what matters and helping the student understand why rarely merits mention. A recipe for pancakes may warn against overbeating because it makes them tough but usually lacks an explanation. Knowing that they become tough because the gluten develops and creates more structure in the batter doesn't change the recipe. Following directions and practice make good food and good math, not an understanding of the process.

Do I believe that? Absolutely not. My favorite biblical proverb has always been "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding." I do think knowing how gluten functions in doughs and batters and how I can make changes to vary the results makes me a better cook, even if it is in an intangible way. In cooking I manipulate ingredients to vary the results; in math I vary the results through manipulating numbers. Michael Ruhlman's Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking explains the value of knowing the mathematical ratios for doughs and batters, imparting the craft of cooking with an elegant simplicity that made the cookbook a pageturner for me. Deriving square roots without a calculator will make Katie and me magicians performing a number trick, but understanding the algorithm will raise it above that.

First we turned to our supplemental math curriculum, Math-U-See. Steve Demme on the DVD usually explains everything comprehensively, but he lacked an explanation for finding square roots, so we decided to figure it out ourselves in the early morning light. I extracted a square root, then squared it to examine the process. Eric compared it to the squares of binomials and trinomials. Somewhere along the way, I found a way that made it clear for me, he found one that did the same for him, and we compared notes.

A couple of hours later I explained it to Katie. "Oh! It's like multiplying backwards!" she said and then completed the lesson. I wish understanding everything about life could be as simple as math and cooking.

A Poetry Assignment

Poetry combines my love of language, music, truth and beauty. The best poetry fuses these elements together in such a way that I think, "That is true. I wish I could phrase it so well." My current nightstand read, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship by David Whyte, while not a book of poetry, is written by a poet. He explains early on that as a public speaker he mostly relies on hundreds of memorized poems that he strings together into speeches. I immediately began my list of "Poems to Memorize." Perhaps we all might be a bit more of a poet if we spent our time reading, writing, memorizing and reciting poetry.

I studied poetry in high school and college but claim no expertise in teaching it. Since grandmother, mother, daughters, and nieces recently began a three-week study of 19th-century British and American poets (not meant to be exhaustive), I have been attempting to feel my way through teaching it. For each poet we study, I have assigned us to write a poem based on one we have read. Speaking for myself, I know it has not made me write great poetry, but I have a greater appreciation for the poets we have studied, and I do feel I can consider myself an amateur poet.

At the request of one of my daughters and one of my nieces, we included Edgar Allan Poe in our study. I gave the following assignment:

Using Edgar Allan Poe’s “Alone” as your inspiration, write a poem on the topic of your choice using the following guidelines:

• Describe a feeling.
• Use dashes as your only punctuation.
• Make each couplet (set of two lines) rhyme.
• Each couplet should have the same number of syllables on each lines, either 7, 8 or 9 syllables.

Example poem:

Alone

Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were — I have not seen

As others saw — I could not bring

My passions from a common spring —

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow — I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone —

And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —

Then — in my childhood — in the dawn

Of a most stormy life — was drawn

From ev'ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still —

From the torrent, or the fountain —

From the red cliff of the mountain —

From the sun that 'round me roll'd

In its autumn tint of gold —

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass'd me flying by —

From the thunder, and the storm —

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view —

My niece just completed her final course of chemotherapy for leukemia last week. The poem she wrote, "Jealousy," touched me with the true feelings of a 14-year-old girl. Here it is:

Jealousy

Whenever I look around and see—

Pretty girls with hair—unlike me—

Curly—straightened—or wavy hair—

Sometimes it’s really hard to bear—

My thoughts are filled with jealousy—

Why not that hair belong to me—

A wig I wear upon my head—

Taken off when it’s time for bed—

I’m not saying—I’m jealous all the time—

Just sometimes it hits me in my mind—

When I have thoughts of jealousy—

I think—one day—that will be me—

My assignment idea, good or bad, is not the intellectual property of anyone other than myself. You are welcome to use it in your own home or class, but I do politely request feedback on whether you enjoyed the assignment if you do indeed complete it.

Everyone has Parents

"Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams and your children all have something in common – Parents. You can make the difference."

When I saw this advertisement for a seminar, I thought to myself:

"Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Hirohito and your children all have something in common: parents."

Right now I find my responsibility and influence for good or bad in my children's lives overwhelming. Suzuki said, "A child improves depending on his parents." The bible reads, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6). When a person goes bad, the parents usually get the blame. Last week I read an article about Tiger Woods that placed the blame for Tiger's lack of moral character squarely on Earl Wood's shoulders. The author, Jason Whitlock, wrote:

After his press conference in February, I wrote a column comparing Woods to Michael Jackson. No one blamed Elvis Presley or Quincy Jones for Jackson's fall from grace.

We blamed Joe Jackson, Michael's father.

Is there a difference between Joe Jackson and Earl Woods?

Both focused on raising entertainers more than human beings.

When I read the article, I was ready to blame Earl Woods. I even thought of blogging about it. Of course I am trying to raise caring human beings with character. Shame on him!

This week I'm not so sure. I'm in a Christian, forgiving mood. As a homeschooler, not only do I get the blame if my children are poorly behaved or delinquent, but I also get the blame if they lack knowledge of history, times tables, reading, writing, penmanship, nutrition, science, spelling, grammar, and algebra. Have I missed anything? My husband Eric kindly and quickly pointed out to me mid-rant that I also get the credit, but at that moment I didn't care. It's just not fair!

My Christian mood might not be strong enough. The person I can't forgive is me. Sometimes I get tired or sick and I realize that I am not consistently working with my children on the skills I want to help them develop. In my view, consistency is the hardest thing to be consistent about. Today when I walked in my children's rooms, disgusted with the mess on their floors, I felt angry. When I walked in my own room, disgusted with the week's worth of laundry baskets full of clean clothes on the floor, I felt shame.

Shinichi Suzuki said, "Practice only on the days you eat." How impossible that seems to me! Some days we miss math, on others instrument practice gets skipped, we don't do a little Spanish homework every day no matter how many times I set that goal. When I'm in a dark mood, I conclude that THE thing wrong with my life is me. I lack pretty much everything.

Excessive guilt and discouragement are unproductive feelings. I realize that perfect parents don't exist. I do, however, give some priceless things to my children that no one else can:

• I love and want each individual child.
• I spend lots of time, both quantity and quality, with them. Benjamin Franklin wrote, "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." I believe that by giving them what "life is made of," it shows that I value my family.
• I know them better than any other teacher could.
• I never give up (for more than the length of a pity party).
• I seek improvement.  

My religion also gives me comfort. A speaker in my church referred to the effort to be like Christ as "attempting the impossible." As a mother, I'm sure that all my attempts are exactly that. However, if we lay our efforts on the altar, Christ accepts our sacrifice, our heart and our spirit, and we can be given beauty for ashes. That is a grace, a strength, a promise I can rely on, because everyone has parents, and we can all also be the children of Christ.