Reading to Flurry

I'm laid up in bed with a bad cold. Amelie loves coming to my bedside and unwrapping cough drops for me. She has unwrapped more cough drops than I could possibly consume in one day. Since I don't have the brain power or the wrist strength to type out a real blog post, I'm leaving you with a couple of photos of my girl "reading" to Flurry the therapy dog at our local library yesterday. (Thanks, Michael, for these snaps.) Doesn't the dog look like he's really listening?

Worry Less, Live More

My husband thinks I worry too much. Maybe he's right, although sometimes I'm just stating a fact ("Amelie is going to bed too late"), which my hubby quickly translates into worry-speak ("Amelie isn't getting enough sleep and will end up sick or slap-happy or the victim of some other terrible fate").

Who's the real worry wart?

Still, I think he's right that I, and probably the rest of the population of the free world, should worry less.

Last night we finished watching the documentary film Born into Brothels, about a photographer who travels to Calcutta, India, to chronicle the lives of prostitutes and ends up teaching photography to a rag-tag band of red-light-district children. It's an incredible story. I fell in love with these spunky kids, who discovered a new world through the camera lenses provided to them by the impassioned and protective British-American photographer Zana Briski. As she gets closer to the children and learns more about the bleak futures that await them, Briski devotes her boundless energy to getting these kids out of the brothels and into boarding schools, where they can get an education and a chance for a better life.

The photograph at top, taken by 14-year-old Suchitra, is one of my favorites. Sweet-faced Suchitra was not one of the lucky ones. Her mother would not allow her to leave the squalid brothel, where she is likely contributing to its income today.

Seeing this movie I am shamed by my silly little worries about Amelie watching too much television or not eating her veggies. And I am dazzled by the unaccountable flashes of joy and humor and even genius emitting from these scruffy kids as they struggle against enormous odds for a kinder future.

Today's mantra: Worry Less, Live More. Oh, and laugh more too.

Born into Brothels
worrying

Better Than School

Sometimes I wish I had kept my mouth shut about our intention to homeschool Amelie. After all, our girl is only two - which means that I have to listen to people's objections to this scheme for a good 3 or 4 years longer than necessary. Not everyone is unsupportive, of course, but some friends and relatives take every opportunity to tell me why they think homeschooling will turn my kid into a weirdo or a misfit with no friends and no chance of getting into a good university, blah blah blah.

It's always reassuring to learn that people with these ideas usually know very little about the reality of homeschooling.

Of course there's always the chance that a homeschooled kid will turn out to be socially awkward. Yet schooled kids can be pretty weird too. I remember some strange characters from my school days (a boy who ate a piece of the innards of a dissected frog comes to mind) - and in retrospect I believe that the contrived world of compulsory schooling made some kids this way.

But the pushback that I'm receiving from a few friends and family members is nothing compared to the tremendous pressure that trailblazing homeschoolers faced in the 1970s and 80s, when a homeschooling movement quietly started to unfold in this country. Nancy Wallace tells it like it was in her excellent 1983 book Better Than School. Wallace's seven-year-old son was miserable in school, but when his parents inquired into teaching him at home they had to face an unsympathetic and all-too-powerful school board. After a few tense meetings and a lot of paperwork the board reluctantly allowed the Wallaces to homeschool Ishmael. Yet the school officials plagued this poor family with disdain and intrusive surveillance along the way.

Wallace has a slice-of-homeschool-life style that I really enjoyed. We get to see Ishmael and his sister Vita find and explore their passions, from writing stories to working out Bach minuets on the piano. In the chapters on reading and music, Wallace looks so closely, so lovingly, at the way her children learn. She honors her kids' unique learning styles in a way that simply isn't possible for even the most well-meaning schoolteacher, who has 29 other pupils to look after. And when Wallace discovers that her kids have a gift for music she makes piano and violin a centerpiece of their education, creating a conservatory-like environment and filling their lives with musical opportunities.

These kids are lucky. Are they weird? Hell, yes. Who wouldn't call a nine-year-old who writes operettas weird? But what's wrong with that? Seems pretty great to me.

homeschooling
Better Than School

Happiness Is a Pot of Soup

It's getting cold up here in the Catskill foothills. The trees are stripping down to bare essentials, and the deer are wearing thicker coats. The black bear are preparing for their long sleep.

Even though I am from the Northeast, and even though I have Eastern European Jew babushka-wearing genes, I really feel that my soul (if not my body) is of Caribbean descent. This is not my season.

Yet on my way to teach yoga yesterday morning, I couldn't help but notice the delicate shimmer of frost on the grasses. I couldn't help but notice that so many yellow leaves had conspired to fall in one night, blanketing the hillside in gold. There is much beauty this time of year.

Here is my winter survival plan: Make soup. Drink tea. Keep flames dancing in the woodstove.

Yesterday we had one of those rare, lovely Sundays with no plans at all (aside from the morning yoga, which is a joy). I spent the afternoon cooking wholesome things for our little family. For lunch there was quinoa, braised greens from a New Paltz farm, and lemon-pepper tofu. Incredibly, Amelie ate the greens. Heartily. Then Michael made a house-warming fire in the woodstove and Amelie "read" books to Pooh bear (with amazing accuracy, I might add) while I got to work on a pot of soup. The recipe, courtesy of my mother-in-law, is fast becoming a family treasure.

Three Grain Soup

3 medium leeks, white parts only, chopped (I use a big onion when leeks are not available)
2 medium carrots sliced 1/2 inch thick
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon thyme
salt
14-ounce can crushed tomatoes
6 cups water
Head of garlic, peeled but not chopped
1/3 cup brown rice
1/3 cup lentils
1/3 cup wheat berries and/or barley
Big bunch of kale, chopped

Combine the leeks, carrots, oil, bay leaves, thyme, and salt. Cover and cook on low 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add tomatoes, water, and garlic and bring to a boil. Add grains and lentils. Cover and simmer until tender, about an hour. Add kale for the last 15 minutes. Cook to desired thickness, or add more water if necessary.

I always double the recipe, filling two quarts for the freezer for future meals.

Cornbread is a nice accompaniment. I made some yesterday and forgot the sugar. So we just drizzled each slice liberally with honey. It was a meal fit for Pooh bear, if not a king.

soup

Back to (Semi)Normal

Well, Amelie and I made it through Daddy's Longest Business Trip Ever. And we are just so glad that's behind us.

Eleven days on our own wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Amelie and I were a team, and that felt good. And we had a lot of help from my family. Here's Amelie with her grandpa, dancing on a chair in his greenhouse. She loves it in there, surrounded by colorful finches from South America, painted turtles, giant toads, noisy bullfrogs, well-fed koi fish, and even a water dragon.

We spent Halloween with her cousins in the trick-or-treat paradise known as Montclair, New Jersey. Amelie couldn't believe her luck when she knocked on the doors of complete strangers and they handed her candy. She couldn't understand why she wasn't allowed to tromp through their houses, though. Who would say no to a toddler in a ladybug costume?

The biz trip had its downside, of course. Keeping up with my freelance work was hard. Some mornings Amelie went to her favorite play space, the Sunshine Club, which is like a high-class daycare full of fabulous toys and just 4 or 5 kids on most days. And then there were the times when she just watched A LOT of videos while I tried to bang out a 400-word article or proofread a newsletter. She thought she had won the jackpot, but I wallowed in guilt about her television binge.

It was times like these when I began to doubt our ability to homeschool Amelie. Most homeschooling families have one stay-at-home parent who's completely dedicated to their children's education. Usually Michael and I will both be at home, but we'll be juggling work and homeschooling. Even now we have dedicated work shifts to keep our time structured and make a clear separation between work and childcare. Yet unforeseen trips like this one will inevitably come along and throw us into a tizzy again.

Should one of us quit working? With expenses like ours it doesn't seem possible right now. And since both of us are freelance we have no job security whatsoever. With both of us working, we at least have each other to fall back on if the work dries up.

Michael is back home now, so my confidence level is rising again. We have Amelie recovering from her TV addiction on a 12-step program. We are eating less Halloween candy and more home-cooked meals. Things are looking up.

homeschooling
working mom