Start of a New School Year

I enjoy live-blogging. I sometimes follow live blogs for sporting events, especially since we don't really have t.v. (beyond what might or might not come in on regular reception minus cable). I like being able to follow along inning by inning in a big baseball game, reading the highlights of what happened.

Most of the time I don't think of my life as something that would be worth live-blogging (can you imagine the boredom of the description? Did the dishes. Folded laundry. Read chapter. Cleaned up spill. Checked email...) but the first day of school is always a day which makes me wish I could do a live-blog feed. Not so much to chronicle all the little things we do, step by step (though that would, at least, make for slightly more interesting reading than the above) but to remind myself of all the little things that bring joy and encouragement in our homeschool life. Not to mention to provide notes to myself about what we can always "tweak" to make something in our learning life work better.

The beginning of the year always feels shiny and new, but this year, thankfully, it's felt more that way than usual, and I'm extra thankful. The summer whipped by and was filled with so much work that it almost felt (almost) as though we'd not gotten a break at all. In fact, physically and emotionally, I'm still pretty tired as I move into this new fall...and I'll admit that had me a bit worried last week as I lesson planned and thought through all the "shape of our days" sorts of things I need to think through when we move back into this season. 

But the sweet girl was rarin' to go yesterday morning, and that makes such a difference. When you have a student who loves learning and is excited about getting the adventure going, it means the world to a teacher!

I was truly amazed at the kinds of leaps she has made learning-wise. It's not just that she's reading and writing and thinking with more confidence. She's taking ownership of her learning in new ways, and that's exciting to see.

Not that we haven't hit a wall already. At least this year it took us until day two to realize, once again, that this adventure we're on is all about learning as real human beings with lots of flaws. Not that we really forget, but sometimes in the shiny newness, we discover temporary amnesia! We are trying Latin (again) after our rather dismal Latin failure two years ago. A shiny new curriculum I am excited about, but the sweet girl still has the taste of the old one in her mouth, and balked about seventeen minutes in. Sigh. But this too shall provide good food for learning, both for student and teacher. Or so I declare.

So what are we studying this year? Besides our usual morning prayer and scripture meditation, we kick off each day (Monday-Thursday) with language arts. That includes spelling, grammar, and writing.  After that we take a little break before diving into math. Right now, while we're still in shiny new school year mode (getting up early!) and the weather is nice, we're getting in a nature/exercise walk after math, sometimes followed by journaling or reading time. Then after lunch we do either history (M-W) or science (T-Th) with supplemental subjects on different days (geography, Latin, health). Fridays are devoted to art and music (with math again afterwards) and with homeschool group later in the day.

Day two done...and tired as I am, so utterly thankful we're rolling again, and especially thankful we've managed to step, with courage, into another year on this journey.

The Quilt That Covered Me For Years

Last weekend we bought a new quilt for our bed.

Normally that wouldn't be something I'd find a need to post about on my blog -- or even turn into a status update on Facebook! It's actually not the new quilt (a practical machine washable one, lightweight with lovely colors, on major sale) that I feel a need to post about. It's the quilt we're retiring.

That quilt (the one pictured above) was handmade by my grandmother. My beloved Mamaw passed away almost seven years ago, the day that the sweet girl turned one month old.

Mamaw was an amazing woman. Tiny and tenacious, she gardened and quilted and canned for years in her small mountain home in western North Carolina. She often made what I thought of as "milestone" quilts to celebrate marriages and births.

By the time Dana and I got married, in 1992, she was in her early 80s and her quilting activities had slowed down, mostly because of her failing eyesight. I didn't really expect she'd be able to make us one and so was extra-delighted when she presented us with a quilt (the last one she ever made) in 1994. It was not her best quilt, she apologized. Some of the stitches came out crooked (I loved those). But she wanted us to have it. She stitched our names in tiny little red stitches on the inside corner. "Both your names," she emphasized, "so you'll always have to stay together." Her way of telling us that marriage is meant to last!



Although part of me considered the possibility of giving the quilt a longer life by only using it for decorative purposes or only using it once in a while, I found I just couldn't. My grandmother was such a busy, grounded, active person, always doing things for others, that it just didn't make sense not to use her gift to us as it was intended to be used. It was lightweight and stayed on our bed year-round. It's been there for fifteen years.

In the past couple of years, it's begun to get ragged. I started to cringe whenever I had to wash it as some of the tears got larger and some of the batting came loose. Unlike my Mamaw, I have no sewing gifts, and there wasn't much I could do to repair it. The edges and corners also began to look perpetually grubby and dingy. I used it longer than I should have probably, but it had become such a comfort and such a icon of love. Yes, it was a quilt that graced a marriage bed, so it represented that, but it seemed to bundle many other kinds of love in its warm folds. I cuddled with it on the couch on sick days, wrapped it round me in times of grief, and wrapped up in it to read countless times. I snuggled my nursing baby in the warm embrace of this quilt.

It was past due for retirement. It was time to take it off the bed and replace it with a serviceable quilt for "everyday use." As I folded it up and smoothed its soft surface, I found myself remembering a poem I wrote years ago when it was brand new, a tribute poem to my grandmother. It's one of those poems that makes me realize there really are moments when poetry can be a touch prophetic. I thought I would share it here.

You Gave Me Strawberry Squares

You gave me strawberry squares
stitched together with gnarled love
and trembling tenacity.
Patches of red cut a zig-zag path
against a field of soft white cotton.
"If I have one more quilt in me, it's yours."

You pulled it, piece by piece,
from your inner spaces
like sticky strands of intricate web.
Your weaver-hands are old.
You say you lost the needle
whenever your eyes got tired.
I see you searchng, on hands and knees,
looking for the eye, the center of things.

I patch your story with every question
about every photograph in the album.
We lose the thread of conversation
in the jumbling of years,
but always find the center again.
Your life has ripened on the vine,
bright like cloth strawberries.
Your creation holds the colors
of Christmas, the fruit of summer,
full circle in the midst of squares.

This quilt will cover me for years --
the fruitful squares of story
keep me going when I can't find the eye.
What did you think while you sewed
the pattern, bent over the frame
like living prayer?
(Was the pattern there all those years?)

Did you think about
the boxer dog who stole brown workpants
and green shirt right off the line,
how Papaw gave away the best beans
in the row because giving the best
is what you do,

the depressed corn field
where hungry neighbors stole healthy ears
and you pretended not to see,
the grave your men dug in the same field
for a friend,

the way you could turn your
Baptist-preacher-father-in-law
on the sheets with one hand
he took to dying so lightly...

You remember it all, the places,
the names, the color of the corn
and beans, the feel of the sheets
and the smell of the field,
and it's all there, stitched into
strawberry squares you gave me,
past pieced lovingly to future.

This quilt will cover me for years.

(EMP)

Hairdryers We Have Heard On High

I was thinking back the other day to this season in our lives three years ago.

Not many people know this, but the year the sweet girl was two was an incredibly hard year for us. In early summer, D. and I had essentially been forced out of our jobs, work we liked and work we thought we were doing well. We thought God was calling us to relocate and spent a ton of time, energy and money traveling so D. could interview for various jobs. Doors kept closing on us, including some that initially looked very promising.

By Christmas, we were beginning to run out of resources, both inwardly and outwardly. We spent that whole year basically unemployed (except for a few temporary assignments we could get once in a while) and running on fumes. We had received an inheritance from D's grandparents, money we had hoped could pay down some debt and perhaps even provide a down payment on a house...something we've never been able to do. Instead, we were forced to live on it, grateful beyond words that we had it, but frustrated too to see it going toward daily expenses when we'd hoped to put it toward the future.

In the middle of all these things (and more) that swirled around us, our little girl was not talking. Not at all. When we thought back, we realized we had not heard her little voice in a long time. I won't go into details here, but we had a long and difficult stretch of time when we thought we might be facing a diagnosis on the autism spectrum. Besides the loss of language (she had been speaking a few words for a while, then stopped completely) there were a few other "quirky" things going on in behavior that made the developmentalists wonder aloud.

I know, all children have "quirks." And all grown-ups too. I certainly had (and have) my share. But when you're trying to keep anxiety and concern at bay, some of those quirks can look hugely significant, perhaps disproportionately so. One that always concerned me, perhaps more than it should have, was the sweet girl's high sensitivity to loud, mechanized noises. The vacuum. The blender. The juicer. My hair dryer. Hand dryers in public restrooms (which could send her into such a frenzy that I dreaded ever having to take her into one). During her first three years, I essentially had to give up using any loud appliances when she was in the house. Well-meaning friends sometimes encouraged us to just keep doing those things and she'd get used to it. Or to take her along on my hip while I vacuumed, for instance. What I couldn't always explain was the gut-wrenching quality of her reactions. It was such a visceral reaction -- she would quite often literally shake in fear, and no amount of calming or soothing or shutting of doors (in our one floor apartment, hard to conceal sounds) seemed to help.

In the past two years, she's made huge strides in this as well as everything else. Once she could use words to express her feelings, she could talk about how much she didn't like the noise. Step by step, that led us to be able to help her to do other things about her own response. Now, for instance, when I use the blender to make her favorite blueberry smoothies, I just give her fair warning that I'm about to start, and she heads to her bedroom and closes the door.

I knew we'd come far when, several months ago, I suggested that she let me dry her hair...and she let me. Mind you, only on the lowest setting. And this was a special, relatively "quiet" hairdryer that my dear sister had bought for me when the sweet girl was a baby, hoping I might be able to use it. Drying her hair on bath nights quickly became an enjoyable and relaxing time we'd spend together, though for the first several weeks, she always prefaced the moment with a long string of "remember, Mommy, don't turn it on high, I don't LIKE it on high, it's too loud, please keep it on low."

Until last week. When she suddenly said, oh so casually, "Maybe next time you can dry my hair, you can put it on high. Just so I can feel it. Not this time. But next time."

"Okay," I said calmly, inwardly turning cartwheels of joy. It's such a little thing really, but it's not. It feels big for her. For all of us.

So when it came time to get the hairdryer out the next time, just the other evening, I tried to match her casual tone. "Remember you said you might want me to turn it on high the next time? Would you like me to?"

She hesitated, and then she said yes.

So I slowly moved that button down to the high position. The pitch, the volume, the hot air, all zoomed to loud life right behind her. Startled, she jumped, and for a second I braced myself for quick shouts to turn it off. But they didn't come.

She relaxed. She relaxed into the warmth. "Mmm! Mommy, it feels GOOD! It feels good on high! I like it!"

Like I said, I know it seems small. But sometimes small victories can also feel hugely significant, maybe disproportionately. Or maybe not. Right now, I am just rejoicing in this little step my sweet girl has taken, knowing there will be so many more.

I'm also wondering how many times I am rigid and frozen in my own fears and insecurities, while a loving God sits behind me (and before me and round about me) ready to move the button to a higher, louder, more passionate setting, knowing I am ready for it long before I know that about myself. Like my little girl, I hope I will have the courage to relax into whatever he has in store for me.