My Dad

My Dad was born in Paris in 1928. In September he will turn 80 years old. He has lived an interesting life and has been a good Dad. On this Father's Day, I'd like to tell you a bit about him.

Right after he was born, he contracted pneumonia and also had to have surgery for a growth behind his ear. He's lucky to have survived. As a little kid he had crossed eyes and had to wear glasses to correct his vision. It worked, but in the mean time he certainly looked like an easy target to a big kid who saw him waiting outside a store for his mom. The kid announced to my dad that he was going to hit him in the jaw. My dad with his confused, bright, crossed eyes asked the kid what a "Jaw" was. The kid told him and then did not hit him there. I think my dad's pitifulness won him over.

When my dad was really little the very nice lady at the bakery gave him a cookie as he was holding his mother's hand during her purchase. The next day, my dad had a gang of 5 kids asking for a free cookie at the bakery. Uh, no.

He had a friend with the nickname "Fish Ears" because he had nonexistent ears. As a scrappy Jewish kid in the 1930s, my Dad spent a lot of time proving that he was valid and valuable and so he excelled at sports; he played football, baseball and basketball. Because he was a Jew, at Easter time he got beat up, which was a whole other sport...

He grew up, got a B.A. from Columbia and an MBA from Harvard and he and his new wife went to Venezuela in the mid 50s to continue their new adventure together. My brother and sister were both born there. My other sister and I however, were born in a south suburb of Chicago--not quite the same romance as being born in a foreign, exotic country during a mostly peaceful revolution. Harvey is not Caracas.

My Grandpa taught a Sunday School for all the Reform Jews in my Dad's neighborhood and as part of it, my Dad, Uncle and all of the others had to go outside and shoot hoops at the end. Grandpa believed in a sort of ancient Greek ideal of intellect and physicality being married and supporting each other. He himself had gone to school in Madison on a basketball scholarship. So he got my dad and Uncle D. boxing gloves because that might be fun for the boys. Except the physicality wasn't really part of Uncle D.'s make up. Also, my father was older. Plus, my father was a big sturdy kid who would later on play football in high school and college.

Here is how the boxing went. My father would beat the crap out of his little brother for the length of a 78 record. He would want to bow out, and then my Dad would convince him that he really made progress that last round and they should just do another record--same thing all over again. My dad also wouldn't let his little brother into the "One Million Club" which had one million members, but not Uncle D. apparently. Thems the breaks--what are ya gonna do? Being the youngest just stinks sometimes. That's the law of the land.

When my dad was older and had a summer job driving a Coke truck making deliveries he very slowly backed up and very slowly ripped out a fence, picket by picket at a posh country club. The club was not his scene. When he married my English/Dutch, Episcopalian, gentile mom, both sets of dads tried to talk them out of it. My mom's dad felt she was too young to get married at 19. My dad's dad warned my mom that there would be certain country clubs that would not let them in. It really wasn't their scene any way. Really, that was OK. The last time my Dad was at a country club, he ripped their fence out.

Every summer, my dad took us camping in the North Woods. He taught me how to fish, how to paddle a canoe, how to read and orient a map, how to portage. It's largely because of my camping experiences that I understood how I was part of the natural world which led to my wanting to homebirth. I knew that I could, because I am natural. I knew that my anatomy and physiology and mind and body and heart could work like that because that's what they're all supposed to do.

I think one of the reasons my Dad felt strongly about going camping with us every summer was that he wanted to get away from the rat race and he wanted to act out his childhood's greatest ambition. When he was little, he was asked what he'd like to become when he grew up. He answered that he'd like to be an Indian. Not to co-opt a Native American culture or a very vague Great Neck, Long Island 1930s idea of "Indian", but to live a life in Nature, with Nature and with the Nature within is what he really meant but couldn't quite say as a boy.

Nowadays, my Dad writes plays and has them produced at community theaters and even had one produced as part of a juried selection in New Jersey. When my Mom goes to aerobics class a couple of times a week, my Dad rides his bike to the local lake where they have their canoe docked and he paddles himself around for exercise and maybe to connect with Nature and to clear his head. I like to picture him doing that. I can see him making sure, steady J strokes through misty, early morning smooth water, it broken only by the ripples radiating out from his paddle and the canoe.

My Dad gave me sage words growing up:

• Time is all you have. (His father had told him that too)
  
• Perfect is the enemy of good. (He got that somewhere)
  
• Make a good today, which will create a good tomorrow and a good yesterday. (I think he might have gotten that somewhere)
  
• Act as if the world isn't going to blow up, because it just might not...(This is definitely his)
  

I should explain that last one. During the early 80s I was very concerned with the nuclear arms race. I was sure that we were going to have a melting, firey, nuclear holocaust either by crazy choice or by accident. I knew we would have a nuclear war. My Grandmother (my father's mother) told me I had Weltschmerz which means world pain. My father wanted me to live my life and not get hung up by the world's problems, except that's not how I roll! Besides, I learned at his knee.

My Dad was on the school board in my town when they figured out how to desegregate the schools in our district by busing African Americans from a separate area at the edge of town to our local schools. I have faint memories of being at board meetings with my mom and me doodling with chalk on the blackboard at the back of the room. I remember trying to discuss all of this at the tender age of 7 with my neighbor down the street as we walked to school. She told me if you were against busing, you were for Nixon. Her family was for Nixon. I wasn't sure who I was for or what busing was, but I knew we weren't for Nixon. God!

Once, we were on a family vacation to Colorado, when we saw a smushed snake in the road. It had probably been run over and was struggling. My Dad insisted that we put a bandaid on it to at least cover the wound and maybe give it a chance. It probably didn't work, but it showed me what caring meant. It showed me that it's OK and good to stop and try. I've carried that lesson with me my whole life.

It's not all sweetness and light with my Dad. Don't be fooled. I've also learned that my Dad can grow increasingly paranoid and accusatory under certain circumstances. One time, we were all at my parents' house and we were all bustling around helping with meal preparations. My Dad was doing the bulk of the cooking and was keeping track of everything he was doing except for one thing...

"Alright! Who's the wise guy who stole the dill!!"

He said that in all seriousness. Really. Well, as you might imagine, no one had stolen the dill. He quickly found it. All I know is, do not get between my Dad and his herbs. Seriously.

Happy Father's Day, Dad! I love you and hope you have a fun day today.

Here is some cyber dill for you.

A Rose is a Rose is a Rose...or is it?

Occasionally as I write here, or in sending an e-mail, my computer thinks I've misspelled a word. It underlines it in red to signal me. Actually, I haven't misspelled the word, it just doesn't recognize the word. My computer has kind of limited thinking. Here is a list of words it does not recognize:

homebirth
La Leche League (it recognizes the "La" and the "League" but not the "Leche")
unschooling
deschooling
kefir
kombucha
probiotics

It does however, recognize these words:

homeschooling (it used to think this word is wrong too)
meditate
co-sleep (I think only because it recognizes the co and the sleep)
yogurt
cultured food
attachment parenting (again, I think it recognizes the separate words--it wouldn't know attachment parenting if it tripped over a slinging, nursing toddler on their way to the family bed)

Who are these people who are writing the software for computers? Do they not know these words? I guess that they don't--lots of people still don't know them, and yet an awful lot of people have found health and happiness in unschooling and drinking down some kefir. There have been millions of amazing homebirths and the mothers have gotten great support for their breastfeeding through La Leche Leaque.

If language is knowledge, what does it mean that these terms are not recognized? I guess you could call these things other terms, maybe a rose is a rose, but if you don't know the rose exists, an alternate term doesn't matter.

Here are the words again with links to find out more. Maybe they're new to you too. Here's some information and you can take away anything that you find interesting or helpful.

homebirth
La Leche League
unschooling
deschooling
kefir
kombucha
probiotics

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

Philip K. Dick, How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later (1978)
US science fiction author (1928 - 1982)

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.

John Maynard Keynes
English economist (1883 - 1946)

Little Boxes

The other day, I wrote about my daughter's love of putting me in jinx, and my husband's refusal to ever be put in jinx.

Anonymous responded with this comment,

That brings back memories! My siblings and I had our own version of "Personal Jinx." "Jinx" meant you couldn't talk at all until someone said your name. "Personal Jinx" meant that it could only be undone by the person who jinxed you. If we said "jinx" at the same time, we would rush to be the first to say "double jinx!" (that meant your name had to be said twice). Then there was the ultimate jinx: "Double Personal Jinx!", said with much pride and excitement at being able to utter such a rare and powerful curse. (Of course, this led to some intense arguing if a person refused to comply.)

To which I replied,

Yeah, I still don't get that whole, "...refused to comply." I just never knew that anyone could break from that kind of authority and snub the jinx.

I'm too rigid in my thinking, clearly. Some of you people can see outside of the box and therefore think outside of the box and ultimately BE outside of the box.

I'm just glad I now realize there is a box!

Maybe I'm not being completely fair with myself. I mean I homeschool my kids, and while not as fringey and strange as that once was, people can still look askance as their wheels are turning in their heads at the thought...I had homebirths with my two kids. They were two wonderful, awesome, amazing, powerful births that gave us our healthy, beautiful babies. We had a family bed until the kids were ready to sleep on their own in their own beds. I can only recommend a King size if you plan on fitting two adults, two little kids and two cats all aboard. We have a king size. A lot of kids sleep with their parents and aside from comfort issues people either feel OK with that and enjoy the normalcy of its naturalness, or they feel guilty and want to get their kids independent as soon as possible by making them sleep alone at night because that's what you're supposed to do. Well, we don't do what you're supposed to do because we do what we do! There are other natural, non-typical ways to live that we have adopted and it all works for us.

Maybe we're not in the little boxes that I think we're in. Maybe my recognizing the jinx is just a vestige from the literal thinking I had (and sometimes still have) when I was a kid. There's a black and white thinking there that is hard to shake unless you look totally beyond the boundaries.

I think a lot of people are still stuck in that thinking. If this is white, than this must be black. If that country is that way, then we must be this way. If there's a problem, there must only be one solution...well no. No to all of that. There are all sorts of realities and ideas and suggestions that may be contrary to one another and yet all still be true. There may be shades of differences rather than exact opposites.

Radical thinking, eh?--especially in this age of lapel pin criticism. How about passing a G.I. bill that supports the troops and their service as a means of showing patriotism? Might that also be a patriotic act? Might that show love of country?

Any way, I am glad that I know there are boxes, and other than the jinx, I think I've broken out of them in a lot of ways. But, I think jinxing someone is fun, and my kids do too. I don't mind staying in that little box with my kids, just don't try to put me in any other little boxes...

Love/Hate

Love:

My husband, my kids, my kids when they were my babies, homeschooling my kids, all kids, all babies, my friends, my family, the family of man (OK and womyn), roasted garlic, laughter, irony, wild flowers, thunderstorms, foreign films, cow bell...I have to have more cow bell, my wicked cool Romika shoes that I got pre-compact, my cat, when I catch my cat in pre-vomit mode and can get her out to the porch successfully, adventures, poignancy, crying at sad movies, the shape of certain water towers and not others, the way dandelion stems curl up when you split them and put them in water, Harold and Maude, chocolate croissants from Trader Joe's (the baked ones are good, but the frozen uncooked ones are even better!), stickin' it to the man and this magnet that I don't feel I can get and put up on my fridge until the kids are waaay older...

Oh yeah, and sunsets and rainbows too!

Hate:

The white racist, homophobic, patriarchal, bullshit paradigm, lies, liars, and the lying liars who tell them, hypocrisy, arrogance, mean people, shallow people (although sometimes they can be fun!!), not catching my cat before she vomits all over our living room rug, or downstairs rug, or the rug in our bedroom, teasing of the kid-to-kid variety, not getting enough sleep, ABBA-really I can't even get into the very high camp factor there, ice berg lettuce, cheap plastic toys, the idea that formula is equivalent to breast milk, the idea that homebirth is dangerous, the idea that just because someone is a woman she is entitled to get all the women's vote and be crowned the nominee even though she hasn't won as many primaries or popular vote as another certain individual (wink, wink--I think you all know who I'm talking about here!), and drivers when they cut into my lane at the last moment to move over because of lane closures because of construction...HELLO! You got the notice 1/4 mile back just like everyone else that the lane is closing--move it over and don't insist that I let you in at the last moment, even though I will because I'm cool like that.

They Try to Tempt Us...

Oh no. Oh no you don't. You are already on my hit list and you shouldn't be sending me any more catalogs soon, or so I've been told. You've been deleted.

Oh no you don't Mini Boden with your cute little cotton clothing for my daughter. You either Pottery Barn. I don't care if there are reduced delivery charges so I could get jute rugs with fabric borders delivered here more economically. No. Not even you Daedalus Books. I see that there are over 240 new titles, but the library has THOUSANDS of new titles and they're free...Yes, I know Mini Boden, that there's 10 % off if I buy now, but that's not going to happen.

Really, your persistence is admirable. But, I am up for a good fight and you guys simply won't win. I gave birth at home you know. Twice. I'm not afraid of you. Do you really think I'll be cowed by some slick, glossy magazine paper covered in pretty pictures? Do you?! You're are so primitive you catalog companies. You think you can dangle shiny things in front of our faces and we'll lap it up like little dogs jumping for a treat. People are catching on. I'm not alone in this. People are looking deeper, and are finding that things alone don't fill the holes in their lives. Even with aromatherapy and scented candles and bubble baths and a calm, soothing place set aside in people's homes, still they are starting to realize that real shifts in perception and calm come from within and not in buying $80 calming bubble bath despite what Oprah says.

Get real.

Meanwhile instead of buying your quality products, I'll watch my daughter lay bricks from her brick house building kit she got at Christmas. I'll watch as she mixes the mortar and water with her little trowel and carefully spreads a thin, uniform layer over a course of bricks.







I'll watch as my son gets out his Chinese calligraphy set and mixes the ink stick with water and swirls the brushes in and paints an abstract painting of his own design.






Although you are pretty, I'm looking for something more substantial around here these days. Surprisingly, we don't feel empty without you in our lives. I feel comfortable with us going our separate ways. I think...well, I think--and this is hard for me to say, and yet I must--I think...we should...start seeing other people...

Goodbye catalogs. It's me, not you.

Drawing With Dad

I like posting stories about our daily life around here. We're just a normal family, and yet so many of our life choices have been anything but typical. My children were born in this house. Every birth is exciting and every birth is special. But, being able to welcome our babies to life here in our own home was particularly special for us. Only about 1% of babies born in the United States are born at home. My family and Husband's family were both here for the birth of our son. Cheers rang out from the stairs where my mother, mother-in-law, and sisters were sitting as I labored upstairs in our bedroom with my husband, a doctor and 2 nurses when my son was born. My daughter's birth was so easy, and I was so relaxed and so far along that the doctor came AFTER she was born and so it was just me, my husband, our almost 2 1/2 year old boy and my new daughter here. And, I breastfed these kids for YEARS!

All of these ways of living are so natural but they're not typical.

We homeschool. Again, not a typical life choice yet one that many families are making with increasing frequency. There are estimates that about 2 million kids are now homeschooled. So, for some, not quite the freaky thing it once was. It's not fringey any more and everybody at least knows someones cousin's brother-in-law's niece's husband's sister's son's great aunt once removed who is doing it as well. So, totally common these days. People do still look askance a little bit at the kids' soccer matches when I tell them we homeschool..."Oh!! Really?!! Oh, I could NEVER do that! But I know a friend who has a cousin whose brother-in-law's niece's husband's sister's son's great aunt once removed is doing it as well. Wow. Good for you..." Polite smiles all around.

Any way. Back to our normal every day life around here. Below, you see pictures of my husband drawing with our kids at the kitchen table. All three of them are quite visual and I've improved my drawing abilities because of them. I never had a lot of art classes in school and I never just picked up a pencil and started drawing, but my kids do and so does my husband.




They are drawing bicycles. Sometimes, a lot of the time, they draw buildings with vanishing points and aliens and monsters and apple trees and ants and horses and mountains and flowers and robots and snakes.






Here, you see my husband drawing a High Wheeler, or an Ordinary or for you folks across the pond, a Penny Farthing. This is just a simple sketch, but I am so impressed with his abilities. He's like this all the time. He just grabs a pencil and with a few strokes has a clear, recognizable image. The kids have gotten this from him. Drawing is now part of our curriculum and the kids love this aspect of their schooling. I do too.

Canoe, canoe?

Canoe, canoe? Can you? I can. I can paddle a canoe. I can portage a canoe. I can paddle and portage a canoe.

I learned how to paddle a canoe when I was a little girl and we started going up north every summer to go camping in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It was a magical experience to be fully immersed in true wilderness for a week every summer.

We would park our car at a certain lake that leads to several more, and then paddle across it. That's when we would portage, carrying the duluth packs filled with our clothes and sleeping bags and tent and tarp and string hammocks and cook stove and food, and carry the canoe and paddles, and then paddle again across the lake on the other side. We could go across a few lakes in a day until we would find our campsite, make camp, set up the tent, the tarp, the hammocks. Tired, sore, and exhilarated we would watch the first sunset that night and hear the loons calling each other across the lakes.

This yearly retreat from civilization that took us away from all the worries and stresses of elementary school for me, and the worries and stresses of corporate America for my executive father, and pre-teen cliques and jealousies and judgment for my on-the-cusp-of-teenage sister also brought us all closer to ourselves. My mom didn't really have a break from anything. She was now doing dishes in the woods. Doesn't that sound awful? And it was often cold, and often rainy...I can see how it wouldn't necessarily appeal to everyone. However, I felt challenged and enveloped by Nature. I became one with it. And I learned to work with it.

It was us against the wind when there were white caps tipping the tops of the waves and we had to paddle all the way across the lake against that?! I learned to whittle with a big knife. I learned to build a fire from one match. I learned to maintain a fire all day. I learned how to catch a fish, clean it , fillet it, cook it, and clean up afterwards (sand works great to scour out a pan). I learned that you have a choice when you are cold and miserable--you can play cards in the tent with your sister, you can put on your rain poncho and go sit under the tarp and see and hear how the rain falls on the lake, on the tarp, on the needles of the giant white pine next to you. You can sit there with your instant cocoa trying to stay warm in your multiple layers of clothes and think about how you got to that campsite the previous day, and what you will do when the rain stops, and what you will do the next day. You can have a conversation with your family. You can see ducks on the lake gently paddling in the rain and shaking out wings and preening. And then the rain does stop. See--you're OK. It's OK.

In the BWCA I've seen: loons, ducks, gulls, bald eagles, hummingbirds, hawks circling overhead, great blue heron fishing at water's edge, mice, ground squirrels, rabbits, mink, beaver slowly swimming low in the water and then with a slap of their tails submerging, deer, bear, snakes ribboning their way across calm water, frogs, toads, turtles, bluegills, perch, big mouth bass, small mouth bass, northern pike and I've smelled a moose--I didn't see it. I don't know if moose tastes like chicken, but I can tell you that it does smell like horse. I've seen: lichen, moss, ferns, wildflowers, blueberry bushes, jack pines, red pines, white pines, aspens, birches. I've seen woody, loamy soil only a few inches deep. I've seen rotting, decaying logs, mushrooms, fungus growing on logs and on the side of tree trunks. I've seen: dragonflies, maiden flies, flies, horse flies, mosquitoes, spiders, beetles, ants. I've seen: mist hovering above the lake at dawn, and sunsets painted with purples and pinks and oranges, and northern lights. I've felt the sun on my face, on my arms, on my hair, on my legs. I've shivered after jumping in for a very cold swim.

I learned that Nature is messy. Dirt gets in your instant lemonade. Mosquitoes bite your bum when you're on the wooden throne that's up the path away from the campsite going to the bathroom. (The wooden thrones, not enclosed latrines, are only on the U.S. side. On the Canadian side you can use a shovel--go to it!!) Gulls eat the fish heads and guts that you put close to lake shore on the shallow rock ledges that surround the land. Snapping turtles inch closer to get to the fish you have on a stringer in the water. Little birds furiously chase eagles who've stolen their chicks away. Bears get into your food pack that you didn't string up in the trees first thing when you made camp. And from then on, at that campsite you sing, "You must never scare a bear! No!! You must never scare a bear when you go to the throne!! No Way!! You must never scare a bear!!" And you remind yourself that you never get between a bear and her young.

I learned that I am strong. I learned that Nature is beautiful. I learned that I am a part of Nature, not apart from it. I learned that I am an animal connected to all of the other animals. As an adult, when it was time to have my babies, I knew I could do it. I knew I could do it at home, naturally, with my husband holding my hands through each contraction. I knew I would breastfeed as my Mom had and all the generations before her.

I'm hoping that I can help my children learn all of these things. When they are old enough, we will go to the BWCA, and I will do dishes in the woods, and we will talk under a tarp while the rain falls down in little rivulets making a path down to the pine needle covered ground. They will whittle and build fires and eat blueberries and see birch trees with white trunks and feel the wind in their hair and fight white caps on the lake.

Canoe, canoe?