The Way From Here

Ping Pong and Hot Tamales

          The relationship I have with each of our four children began the moment I held that fragrant newborn in my arms.  It was unasked for and immediate, complete with everything we would need for the journey ahead.  Through the years, communication, playfulness, respect, and a sense of belonging, were at the core of our ties, they were the things we valued and developed.  They were also the very things I often forgot when we landed in the changeable territory of adolescence.     
     There are a thousand ways to raise happy and healthy children. I have seen strict parents and lenient parents do it. I have watched intact families, single parents, rich and poor manage to instill a sense of purpose and meaning in their children. There is no grand formula, no one set of criteria for success save one: There is a sense of relationship between parent and child. However misguided, lopsided, or messy the connection may be, if there is a relationship, there is hope, there is forgiveness, there is a certain resiliency that absorbs the lurches of mistakes and failure.  In many ways, it is unimportant how you cobble a relationship together, as long as there are corridors and alleys of connection.       
     I needed that sense of relationship about a hundred times a day raising our kids through their teen years. There were times when most forms of communication were issued in the command tense over unfinished business or mysterious outings---“Finish your homework, empty the garbage, Where are you going?  Who are you with? When will you be home?”      In the end what helped save life from becoming an unrelenting yammer-fest were hot tamales candies and ping-pong. I am not kidding.  I was a little desperate. It started one autumn afternoon when our son came home from middle school flat and monosyllabic for the fourth week straight, I pulled out a gigantic box of the red-hot candies and shook them enticingly.  “Want one?” I asked.  “Sure,” he said.  “Well, you have to beat me at ping pong then.  Winner gets 10.”  He looked at me scornfully.  “Just give me some,” he said.  “Forget it, you have to earn them,” and I cha-cha-cha-ed downstairs shaking the box like a mariachi hoping he would follow. 
     He did.  We played.  We talked.  We even laughed, because truth be told, he is a whole lot better at ping pong than I am, and he coached me with a muscular voice on how to play more competitively.  I often leaned on ping-pong and hot tamales with the others as they moved through their detach-and-grow-distant moods. The game became a conduit for communication without eye contact, for sharing the silly and the profound on a level playing field.  The command tense swung around to the kids telling me I wasn’t quite good enough and here’s how to do it better.  “I learn better if you don’t yell!”  I caught myself saying one eye-opening evening.     
     As the ball landed back and forth, idle exchanges sometimes led to topics more difficult to breach when we were eye to eye or confined to chairs.  There were gaps and pauses before replying, sideways lunges and rich conversational detours.  The game was a metaphor in many ways for the things that were going right in our relationship: having fun loomed larger than who won, the world wouldn’t end if we changed the rules, and a shared laugh bridged the worst day.     
     Margaret Mead once defined the ideal human culture as one where there is a place for every human gift. Whether the human culture is at work or home or the community, the meaningful use of our gifts can hold people together in fundamental ways.   Don’t wait for the right time to connect with your child.  That day has arrived.  It is right now.  As deadlines are being met, laundry folded, and as another workday draws to a close.  Sometimes the most important thing we can do is drop everything for red-hot candies and a game of ping-pong.

A Measure of Work

     I've worked hard in my life.  I've been what you could call poor.  I never went hungry or without shoes, but I've been poor enough to consider a Barbie doll  an uncommonly generous gift, and a night at the movies a real splurge.  I'm not poor anymore, but those lean years have added something to my life that my children may never experience.      
     When I was a girl I saved every penny for a bike that became my transportation for many years.  I learned how to change the brakes, adjust the gears.  I kept it polished and oiled and ready to fly down the flat Idaho roads of my girlhood.  Years later I loaned it to my sister who needed something to get her around.  She eventually bought an old car and sold my bronze beauty for ten dollars.  I was unaccountably mad, even though I could now afford a new bike, a fancier one.  For a long time I hid my anger until it became the soft sadness of a declining thought.      
     I learned to work as a child. My brothers and sisters and I cleaned house, folded clothes, mowed the lawn, and in the summers I worked on my grandfather's ranch digging up waist-high plants he called Chick's weed.  Grandad said it would make the cattle sick if they ate it.  Chick was the trickster of his stories.  Chick was smart.  Evil.  Chick planted poison.  Made potholes in the road with his teeth. Chick gave you bad dreams and laughed. "There he is!" Grandad cried as we worked in the fields, "Oh, you missed him.  He's fast.  Ducked behind those weeds."  The mosquitoes hung in clouds while we worked. At the end of the day Grandad gave me a dollar. I rolled it up and put it under my pillow.  At night I dreamed of Chick stealing it away into the dark.     
     I was expected to work.  Expected to leave the house at eighteen.  Go to college if I could save enough money.  I never felt deprived or diminished.  I burned down to the edge of who I thought I was, and rose up again stronger for it.  My children are carefree, optimistic. I can tell by the way they fling themselves into new situations.  The way they sink into sleep at the end of the day. Oh, they have their grievances and fears. They howl about Saturday chores, mourn about not fitting in.  But sometimes I think life is too easy for them. I worry they will grow fat with a complacency that won't burn away.  I worry my children will never know the uncomplicated reward of earning a bike with counted hours of work.      
     Suffering does not make one wise.  Wisdom is cultivated when we learn to love and be loved.  My first covenant:  to love.  The next is to prepare my David children for a Goliath world. Earning the courage of true warriors is difficult.  They must fight many battles without me by their side. They must learn to meet resistance with perseverance and face this endless world with faith and passion.  If I have done my job right, my children will link their imaginations with work.  They will measure the labor that makes a dream come true.  They will flush Chick laughing in the weeds and catch him with their eyes.

Mom-n-Me Breakfasts

      It isn't always easy being part of a big family.  There is always someone older or younger than you, more needy, louder, bigger, or faster.  Sometimes your voice is lost in the crazy swelling orchestra of brothers and sisters stretching up and out.  There are dentist appointments, baseball games, and school carnivals.  Sometimes it seems there is never enough to go around.  Not enough time or energy.  Not enough listening.        
     In this big family of ours we have a strategy for stretching that precious listening time.  On Thursday mornings before school I rouse one of our four children and we go to breakfast at a local diner on the island where we live.      It is a school day.  We have routines ahead of us, but what makes the day special is life set aside for a few hours.  We eat an extravagant breakfast and I listen to each child, one Thursday at a time, with undivided attention.  I say little about table manners (although it is tempting), and I don't take advantage of the warm feeling between us to discuss the friction or issues I may have with a child.  I simply listen.      
     One Thursday morning at the diner I watched our thirteen-year-old son jitter his knees and roll his neck to some weird inner music.  He dropped silverware on the floor, speculated how to make earrings out of empty Tabasco jars, and wiggled a loose tooth over and over.  Ben ordered soda pop instead of orange juice and a huge ham and cheese omelet that he tried to cram into his mouth in three bites.       I didn't say a word.  I couldn't decide if I should laugh or scream SIT STILL!  But then something happened:  the ghost of Norman Rockwell whispered in my ear asking me to look at this live wire half-grown boy as if he weren't mine.  As if he were the subject for a magazine cover.   I saw a lovable knucklehead with big feet.  The image made me smile.      
     “MOM!! A HUGE WEASEL!”  Ben yelled around a half a piece of toast stuffed in his mouth. 
     I wiped the smatter of his toast crumbs from my face and looked through the window onto the street where he was pointing.  A river otter.  It was a wild and sleek otter strolling down Main Street at seven thirty in the morning.  There were eight of us eating at the restaurant that morning and we all rose from our chairs as if from pews in a church and walked outside with the cook.   We watched this wondrous spectacle on an ordinary morning until the otter disappeared down a ravine that led to the harbor.        
     We returned to our breakfast, but nothing was the same.  Ben had led ten pairs of adult eyes to a river otter on Main Street.  We were too busy reading the newspaper, drinking our coffee, or thinking of ways to put a lid on a boy's goofy energy to notice the miracle right before us.  Blink! and it was gone.  As fast as a thirteen-year-old boy would be grown and gone.      
     Thursday mornings at the diner live long past a few hours for us.  It is body and soul time.  Beginning with a good cup of coffee with endless refills for me.  This is necessary if your daughter wants to talk about friend problems.  Sip listen.  Sip listen.  She can indulge in a cup of hot chocolate herself.  Feel better and decide that one good friend is worth three flighty ones.  She orders a hot and tender waffle with real maple syrup and orange juice (sensible girl).  I have my usual, the Morning Saute.  It is a deliciously vigorous mix of sautéed spinach, mushrooms, green onions and tomatoes over two poached eggs on toast. We look at the clock and linger over our hot drinks until it is time to drive to school.       Ten-year-old Nick orders bacon and eggs every time.  Nicky feels he is too old to play with the box of Mr. Potato Head pieces available for restless kids, but he will watch other children play with confused longing (I'm big.  I'm little.  I'm Nick.  I'm Nicky).  Our Thursday mornings together are gloriously simple.  He's TEN.  He loves eggs over easy and Mom and Dad.  Mind and body are perfectly synchronized before the surrender of common sense and stability to preadolescent hormones (Nick has two other brothers smack in the middle of that dangerous territory; I silently beg him to play with Mr. Potato Head).      
     The gourmand of the tribe is Daniel.  He is an accomplished cook in his own right with an adventuresome palate.  Daniel most often orders the morning special---this morning an egg scramble with mushrooms, jack cheese and basil.  He chooses the biscuit and douses it heavily with butter and jam. The muffins are flavored with seasonal berries and not too sweet.  Daniel approves.  We study for a test on Africa between the hot chocolate and the eggs.  "What is the capital of Liberia?" I ask him.  "Hmmmmm. . . " Daniel muses,  "Liberate men roving--Liberia, Monrovia!"  That's my mnemonic boy.
     Our island diner may not be in your neighborhood, but most likely there is a warm and intimate place washed in the good smells of something baking near you.  Patronize it.  The neutral territory of a cafe is a safe place for uncovering all the interesting, sad, unique thoughts of a child that can spiral past us at home.  My parenting downshifts, I am able to feel tenderness for a moment.  Maybe realize that all this growing up before me is fast.  Fleeting.  Thursday morning is a chance to savor my daughter, my sons, before the mind fades away to another load of laundry, another meal made.  On Thursday mornings my eyes are opened to the miracles in each child.

Alaska Time

     It was a life of screen doors slamming, dogs barking, and ringing phones.  There were endless errands to run, car pools to drive and the appetites of four growing children to consider.  When I got the chance, I ran and gardened and fed the homeless on Thursday nights.  There were few moments in a day to hold close, empty of demands.  Like everyone I knew, I was busy.   Now, I made noise about changing this--to drop the obligations, say no to the uncountable claims on my time--but it took a sizable stumble and thump to change things.  It took the mythic dimensions of Alaska to stop me in my headlong tracks.       
     My husband Greg works the Bristol Bay salmon season every summer.  For years Greg had urged me to join him with the kids, and when our youngest turned three I said yes.  I imagined six weeks in a cozy cabin with a lush landscape outside our door.  The kids and I watched the movie ‘The Wilderness Family’, and saw a happy clan sawing logs and saving a baby cougar.  Adventure beckoned!  With anticipation we flew to King Salmon, Alaska.
      Greg arrived at the airport in a battered truck.  Wedged together in the cab, we bounced down the highway of potholes--formidable potholes-- that turned the drive into an endless polka of body sways and head thumps against the truck roof.  The tundra stretched before us flat and peculiar, the sky a vault of scattered clouds.  There were no discernible features to orient ourselves.  No rise of peaks, or spine of hills to navigate with.  My eyes slid uninterrupted to the wide horizon.  I drew a breath and looked away.        We pulled into a rutted drive and lurched to a stop before a structure that looked something like a trailer if you glanced at it sideways real fast.   
     “Here it is!” Greg said, “Here is home!  I have to get back to the boat, I’ll see you in the morning.”      He gave big hugs of encouragement, and extricated himself from our arms.   We stood in the dust with our bags and watched him drive away.     
     Home was a truck container.  Someone had cut windows from the sides, called it a trailer, and set it upon a scraped off patch of tundra.  We stepped gingerly up the plastic fish box that comprised the threshold to the door.   
     “This can’t be it!”  our nine year old daughter cried.  “I could never, EVER, live here!”  I felt a slow slide into an unnameable  place reserved for car accidents and broken bones.       It smelled like a swamp on a warm day. Greasy towels hung on a rack, the faded sofa was missing a leg .  The water ran tea colored from the faucet, and to our horror we discovered a strange trumpet-shaped lichen growing from the carpet of the bedroom.   Home.
     I rolled up my sleeves and went to work while the the kids threw themselves outdoors to dig rivers and channels in the dirt.        The days unfolded endlessly, unpunctuated by dark at this latitude.   The light did strange things to our appetites, to our sleeping habits.  Bedtime became a battle when the sun called my children out to play at midnight.  I lurched from one problem to another.  A water pipe burst from its joint under the trailer.  Squalls blew in and to the kids’ delight, filled their river world with currents of water--joining mud, skin, clothing and children in a happy marriage of mess.  The mosquitoes drove us like cattle from tundra to trailer to car.  In the evenings bears nosed around the margins of the trailer searching for garbage.  Twenty hours of available light to see what my Wilderness Family had come to:  a place of mud, mosquitoes, and bears;  to a dirty tribe of dislocated travelers.
     One sun filled night I hung clothes on a line strung between scrub alders, then sat down to watch the kids play baseball with neighboring children.  They moved the bases around in the dirt until they were satisfied.  The three year old was allowed 10 strikes, a girl declared, older boys could hit only within the base lines or they were O-U-T out.  She glanced over at me.  “You wanna play?”  she asked .  I shrugged thinking there was something else I should do, like pick the lichen that sprang daily from the bedroom. 
    “She’s a good player!”  my  son cried.  I smiled.  I hadn’t played since high school.   I hefted the bat and considered.  “Batter... UP!” the girls shouted.   I hit a home run deep into the tundra.  “NEW RULE!” a boy screamed, “Mothers can hit to base lines ONLY!”  I was in league with the big boys now.  We played for hours under that midnight sun, laughing and shrieking, changing rules, shaking the dust from our bodies in charged halos of light.  Suddenly I was a girl again, unfettered and breathless with the crazy fun of it all.  Something shifted inside.       
     I changed the rules:  The days would be governed by the urges and appetites of our bodies, not the clock.  We began to rise at whatever time we woke, eat when we were hungry, and sleep when we were tired, even if that meant dinner at ten and bedtime at two.  Problems that seemed overwhelming fell away, and the weeks stretched long, empty of duties.  We called it Alaska Time. 
     With Alaska Time I became an available lap, a willing ear for listening to worries and dreams.  I was idle arms for holding, for pouring plaster in bear tracks, for throwing a baseball.  I was newly opened eyes to see the treasures available to children:  Mud.  Boundless light.  Midnight drives to watch caribou graze and eagles wheel in the sky.         There was no turning back.  The journey to Bristol Bay offered a touchstone to measure our lives against.  Alaska Time.  In a walk after dinner; in dropping everything to play ping pong.  In watching a radiant sunset, and naming the stars that bloom in the sky.  It is Alaska Time when the rules change; the dishes wait; the phone goes unanswered.  Alaska Time in the words---Yes, I want to play.

In the Name of Science

     There were four glasses on the kitchen counter filled with mysterious looking liquids.  Chicken bones were brewing in vinegar, and horsey looking molars cadged from the dentist lay at the bottom of milk, soda pop, and fruit juice.  Our babysitter eyed them speculatively as I gave her instructions for the evening.  "Science or snacks?" she asked, "I can never tell at your house."     
     Science is not sacred around here.  It can be found nearly everywhere---during bath time under an upside down cup, in the delicate balance of a homemade balsa wood airplane, inside a bottle of soda pop, sometimes on the kitchen counter in weird stews.  I don't think our house is particularly different from anyone else's.  The only difference may lie in our noticing, then sharing, that the paper stays dry in the  upside down cup in the bath, that the shape of a wing makes a difference in flight, that the floor is noticeably colder than the ceiling above the top bunk in winter.  The sharing of that attentiveness, not necessarily the scientific explanation, is what brings science into our laps.      
     It wasn't always this way.  In the beginning my approach to science was slow, hesitant.  How could I, whose real science education ended in fifth grade, inform my children about anything  scientific?  Tentatively, I began to try a few experiments largely for myself.  I chose projects that looked interesting, that seemed safe.  Inch by inch, month by year, I grew more bold.       Today we'll try just about anything in the name of science.  We've thrown eggs wrapped and suspended in various materials from the second story window to see what worked best to keep them from cracking.  We've lit eighteen candles under a big jar even though the project called for one.  We've frozen teeth in blackberry pulp just because my five year old asked a very good question:  "If the stuff was freezing  would it change the tooth more?"      
     Sometimes our experiments fail.  There are times when the seeds won't grow, the balloons refuse to inflate, and the eggs break.  To tell you the truth, if the experiment seems worth it, we do one of two things:  actually follow the directions step-by-step---a tedious undertaking for a wide and speculative family like ours--or we'll backtrack and try a new approach (more fun.)  If the experiment doesn't seem worth the trouble, we drop it.  Simple as that.  With the burden of slogging determinedly for perfect results lifted, we feel more free to try  an experiment, any experiment.        
     My efforts to bring science home are rewarded in rich and subtle ways. "If water has more pressure the deeper it gets, would a blown up balloon explode under water if you got really really deep?"  This idea from our seven year old has all of us wondering.  I don't know the answer, but I love the question.  And that's what science is, no more than the shape of a question.  The answer can lead you to wondrous places. 

Five thoughts that help to keep science alive for our family:
1.  Work with one broad topic at a time---earth science, living things, matter and energy, astronomy, are just a few categories.  We usually try several experiments and projects within each subject.  Your local library is full of science books for children on each subject.

2.  Do not tell your child the outcome of the project.  Allow him his own discovery.  The results will have a much greater impact on his understanding.

3.  Allow your child the freedom to explore further with the materials of the project, even if it seems foolish or redundant to you.  This is the way of all scientific discoveries. 

4.  Try to do home experiments regularly.  Even if it is only once or twice a month--most experiments can be done in a matter of minutes--you will provide a powerful tool for learning more about the world around us.

5.  Don't be inhibited by your own lack of science. In many ways you are in a better position  than people with strong scientific backgrounds--for you are freer to learn like a child, to bump and roll along, make mistakes, ask questions.  You can be a powerful role model for demonstrating how learning never ends, that it's okay (and often appropiate) to fail, and that the world is an endless source of wonder at any age.                                      

Earth Science Experiments

Centrifugal Force in a Cup

     I remember the magic of this one from my own childhood (using a half-filled pail of water,) but never knew the scientific principles that governed it.  I do now, and so will you and your children! 

What you will need:
paper cup for each child
string
water     

     To make a string handle, poke a hole on opposite sides of the cup near the rim.   Measure approximately three feet of string.and thread through both holes, then knot the ends at the top.  Fill the cup halfway with water.  Now for the fun part!  Ask your children what will happen if you turn the cup upside down (I bet the breakfast dishes on this one!)  Then take the handle and spin the cup of water around in a big circle either above your head or at your side.       Centrifugal force keeps the water in the cup, defying the law of gravity.  By spinning the cup, you are placing a greater force on the water than the pull of gravity.  Tides are caused on one side of the world by the gravitational pull of the moon.  The other side of the earth has a tidal bulge too, stemming in part from the spin of the earth on its axis and on its journey around the sun.  Gravity prevents the oceans from spinning off into space, while centrifugal force contributes to the pull and draw of our tides. 

Inventive Water Filters

      I can tell you exactly, in measured layers, how to make an efficent water filter with the materials listed below, but allowing your child (and yourself!) the freedom of experimenting is a far more meaningful experience.  The basic principle behind this project is used the world over for making clean water. 

What you will need:
plastic soda pop bottle (liter size works best)
wide mouth quart Mason jar
cotton balls
old nylon stockings
clean sand (whatever is available: coarse, fine, medium, beach, etc.)
clean pea gravel
crumpled paper towells     

     To make the filter, cut the bottom off the soda bottle with scissors.  Next, gather the materials and put them in separate bowls on the table.  Then make a pitcher of muddy water, but not too muddy.  A couple spoonfuls of dirt in a pitcher of water with a few pine needles or small debris thrown in works fine (you may want to get more adventuresome with dirtier water later.)       You are ready to experiment!  Begin by stuffing the narrow opening of the bottle with cotton balls.  Then work in layers of the chosen materials, instead of little of this and that.  When you are satisfied with your combination, place the filter over the wide mouth jar and pour in the muddy water.  You should have dramatically cleaner water than what was poured in! 

Water Pressure Experiment     

This hands-on experiment demonstrates how water pressure increases the deeper you go. 

What you will need:
plastic soda pop bottle (liter size)
masking tape
nail
water
food coloring     

     Punch a line of holes down the plastic container with the nail, then tape each hole closed with a small piece of masking tape.  Fill the container with water, add food coloring, and ask your child which hole she thinks the water will spurt out of with the most force.  The answer may surprise her!  Then remove the pieces of tape.       The weight of water pressing down (whether it is in the ocean or a cup) increases the water pressure, and makes the bottom hole spurt out the furthest. 

Paper Clips and Poker Chips: Inventing with Kids

     There is an inventing box in our garage filled with the kind of junk that is given away for free at yard sales.  Two coffee cans, bicycle parts, an old egg beater, and a broken thermostat from the newly repaired furnace are the latest additions.  You may have similar odds and ends sitting around somewhere, but not collected together and called the 'Inventor's Box.'  That's the secret, removing the name of something so it can be reinvented into something new.      
         This is an interesting process Dr. Karl Dunker calls functional freedom.  Take a hand egg beater for an example.  Functional freedom occurs when you remove the egg beater's original function simply by putting it in the Inventor's  Box, then you are free to turn it upside down, and the beater becomes a helicopter, or it can be taken apart and the pieces redesigned into a toy power boat.   
     Functional fixedness, its opposite, is seeing an egg beater capable only of beating eggs.      Functional freedom suspends the obvious, and allows the development of unexplored ideas.  Children, with their unburdened perspective, are naturally equipped to discover new uses for familiar objects.  This is the glorious process of inventing, of 'thinking outside the box'.     
     Begin by cleaning out your junk drawers, the garage, kitchen cupboards.  Collect paper clips and rubber bands and corks.  Add broken wind-up alarm clocks, old telephones, wire, batteries, small 1.5 volt motors from Radio Shack, popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners.  Check out the 'free' boxes at rummage sales and garage sales.  Use your imagination!  Anything that is not dangerous can be used in an Inventor's Box.  Add real screw drivers, electrical and duct tape.  Our Inventor's Box grew over the years from a small bin to an Inventor's Room that took up half of the garage, but then I am a pushover for hare-brained ideas.  I even have a few myself now and again.       
     It is important to remember that the inventing from your box precludes instructions.  Instructions only lead one in linear fashion to a thing someone else created first.  Brainstorming, however,  is a different matter.  Brainstorming together invites speculation.  There is nothing like the impetus of a wild idea, refining itself through the process of brainstorming, leaving ever widening circles of 'why not?' in its wake, to make you feel alive.        
     After the brainstorming, step back.  Allow your child full rein with the materials without your input or feedback.  Research has shown that too much feedback is a creativity killer, even good feedback. Think of your own attempts at a new skill.  If someone was hovering over you while you were learning how to play pool for example, and giving you a constant river of cheery comments like:  ".....ooooooh goooooood effort!  Wow!  you are really trying hard!   That is really great!..."  even when you KNOW you are playing horribly and you just need more practice, odds are you'll find yourself shutting down on some level, giving up.  Let the kids fly with their imaginations, alone.     
     The development of creative thinking in children is an important issue for our society.  Creative children grow into creative adults, contributing new and transporting ideas for old problems.  By encouraging the native curiosity and inventiveness of our children, we, as parents, are also contributing richly to mankind's future.       There are many ways parents can enhance creativity in their children.  One of the most fundamental is to focus on the creative process itself, and not the product that results.  Unfortunately, it is natural for adults to eye the pretty product, the useful invention and give it full measure of recognition, but not for children.  Children are far more interested in how one arrives at the product, to the invention.  In other words, process is paramount to a child, and the product an expendible result.        
     This was graphically impressed upon me one winter during school vacation.  We were vacationing in a different time zone, and the children rose every morning at 5:00, their biological time.  We used those early morning hours to write travel journals, or 'articles', our kindergartner called them.  Ben wrote, with the help of his big sister, an elaborate column sentence on each page about splashing waves, wild cats, belly aches, and getting lost.  The articles were carefully illustrated, and soon he had a small book of beautiful pages:  a five year old's precious testimony of a family vacation.  Ben ended up leaving his book of articles on the plane home.  I was heartsick, Ben was indifferent.  Utterly indifferent.  It was the process  of creating it that was meaningful to him, not the product that resulted.
     Children create from the fund of knowledge they possess at the time, and the experiments, the manipulation of materials, the fooling around with the exciting question 'What-would-happen-if. . . ?', have lead our children over the years into ever widening circles of creative thought.  Even if that meant messes, failures, and predicaments to bear with.  For our family, it was a small price to pay in exchange for the adventure in inventing, the thrill of self-discovery.

The Dishes Can Wait

    During my baby years, the years our four children were between the ages of newborn and five, I divided the world into 'permanent' and 'impermanent' things. The daily mountain of laundry, washing dishes, grocery shoppping, all fell into the 'impermanent' side of life. These things seemed necessary but dull. Anybody could do them, and they would be done today, tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that. Impermanent, as I saw it, would not change the world or leave a trace of my performance.      
     Permanents, on the other hand, left an impression in the slippery slide of my life. Reading a book, writing in my journal, making something: a sweater, an arrangement of flowers, a slingshot, meant I was alive underneath the fatigue.
     The division between the two moved with the day. Sometimes an impermanent became a permanent, like inventing a new shrimp salad or hanging clothes on a line in summer with the sun on my back. "Permanent!" I would say in my head, relieved that ideas still evolved, that the capacity to pause and feel a moment of light was intact.
     Permanents made a difference. They contributed to a private knowledge and lay like seeds inside, wordless and waiting. During my baby years I tried to do one permanent thing a day against the tide of impermanent. I looked for projects to do with the children. Not with the urgency of a parent intent upon stimulating creativity in her offspring, but with the awareness I was on my secret search for permanents.
     I found science experiments involving eggs and fire, and messy art from shaving cream. We made a scarecrow for the garden and a frog cage from cake pans. We grew alert for ideas, and found them in the most unexpected places. The children and I did these projects with a loose informality and followed our instincts over instructions. I still washed the clothes and cleared the table, but the experiments and projects gave me the chance to learn like a child: joyously, instinctively, with curiosity. The attention to permanents was meant for the unfolding of my creativity during difficult years, but the process embraced us all, making our lives dense with possibilities, the small possibilities that uncover the big ones.
                                                                  * * * * *
     The following projects are two of our favorites. Their beauty lies in their immeasurable results. There is no specific 'pattern' to strive for. Each piece is completely different from the piece before, and all participants are on equal footing. Your children are able to create beautiful papers beside you without the 'help' that is often nothing more than interference to them. Take your time and move slow. Whether you have a houseful of babies or your children are grown, investing in creativity, noticing the small enduring moments in life, does make a difference. The dishes can wait.

                                                       

   GARDEN PAPER

     This lovely, rough textured paper varies in color with the plants used. Experiment with different colored tissue, or try pressing dried grasses, sequins, or seeds into the paper before it dries.

What you will need:
1 cup garden snippets such as grass, flowers, leaves, berries, or soft vegetables like tomato or          zucchini.
1 cup finely shredded paper: tissue, toilet paper, or napkins work best
blender
water
newspapers
screen cut into a 12 inch square (small rolls of screen are available at your hardware store)
wax paper
rolling pin

     After collecting the garden snippets, tear or cut into small pieces and place them along with the shredded paper into a blender. Fill the container two thirds with water, and blend the mixture on medium speed until it is the texture of mush. This step breaks down the fibers of the plants with the tissue to make a pulp, or slurry as it is known in the paper making trade. Pour the pulp into a colander over the sink and drain off the excess water. You are now ready to roll the slurry into a paper. Set the piece of screen on a thick pad of newspapers, and place the drained mixture onto the screen. Cover with a sheet of wax paper and roll the slurry out, changing the newspapers as they get soggy, until the pad is fairly dry on the last roll. Lift the screen from the newspaper pad and dry the garden paper in an airy place. Check the paper after a few hours and lift the edges a little. This will make it easier to remove the paper from the screen later. When it is fully dry your family may want to use their papers for a poem, a picture, or save it for the pure pleasure of creating.

                                                         MARBLEIZED PAPER

     Words cannot do justice to this magical project. I have made marbleized paper with my children, my friends, and in a classroom of 26 six year olds and each time we lift the paper for the first peek, there is a surge of wonder at the astonishingly beautiful patterns. The process is simple, the technique easy enough for even small children, but most importantly, to create with your child and marvel together at something new is a rare opportunity to pause in our busy lives and live a resonant moment of discovery.

What you will need:
cookie sheet
aluminum foil
oil based paint
typing paper
turpentine (not the pure gum spirit turpentine)
aprons or old shirts to wear
newspapers

     Work in a well ventilated area. Turpentine vapors can be strong. Prepare the paint by thinning it with the turpentine to the consistency of milk. We use small jars with lids for this, to store the unused paint for later use (I guarantee you will be asked to do this project over!)
     Cover the work area with newspapers, and line the cookie sheet with foil. Fill the cookie sheet half way with water, and have your child dribble drops of the thinned paint onto the water with a small paint brush. The paint may seem to disperse to nothingness on the water's surface at first, but keep adding the drops of paint until it begins to glob. Swirl the paint around with a pencil or popsicle stick for the marbleized effect, then gently lay a piece of typing paper upon the surface of water. Lift the paper and lay on a newspaper to dry. Explain to your child that the reason for the marbled look on the paper is because oil and water don't mix. The oil based paint is lighter than water and rests on the water's surface. The typing paper acts as a blotter to absorb the swirled paint, and captures the beautiful patterns.

The Best Toys Are Non-Toys

      Toys.  I can wax long and eloquent on my feelings about toys.  Four kids and 24 years worth of experience have taught me that toys can charm, seduce and placate a child.  They can also accumulate in closets like breeding gerbils. Oh, kids are greedy for them.  Plead and demand and beg for them, but I have found that after the first flush of acquisition fades, all that remains is a largely ignored, multiplying inventory. 
     I feel differently about gifts not considered toys.  Musical instruments.  Sports equipment.  Art supplies.  These are valuable gifts. They last longer  and hold a child’s interest well past the holidays.  Non-toys tend to invite active participation.  They stretch the imagination, and cultivate interests and hobbies.   And that’s the key:  recognize your child’s interests, and use them as a guide to selecting your non-toy gift.  Every child has a passion that makes her heart beat faster, that pricks his attention and asks for time.  Develop it with a gift you won’t find in a toy store. 

   Our List of Favorite Non-Toys

>>>a small backpack for outdoor adventures. 
>>>binoculars
>>>a large artist’s canvas and paints 
>>>walkie-talkie
>>>ant farm
>>>glow in the dark stars for the bedroom ceiling
>>>measuring tape (an any-age gift that even you can borrow sometimes)
>>>bug study kit
>>>musical instrument (consider African thumb pianos, harmonicas, drum sticks, recorders, tambourines, and ukuleles
>>>tackle box (fill with fishing supplies or beads and string)
>>>rock polisher (turn those found lucky rocks into treasures)
>>>disposable camera or an instant Polaroid camera
>>>bird feeder or a birdhouse kit
>>>sleeping bag
>>>balls: soccer, basketball, playground, baseball, or football
>>>laminated illustrated identification cards for birds, fish, wildlife, seashells, or animal tracks (the appropriate card  is a good gift accompanied with the binoculars or bird feeder)
>>>stopwatch
>>>small metal locking box with a small lock and key to hold treasures
>>>small radio
>>> a wind up alarm clock
>>>bicycle pump
>>>inner tube (great as sleds in the winter and floats on water in the summer)
>>>calligraphy set
>>>child sized garden tools
>>>cookbook for children accompanied with cookie cutters
>>>world on a stand
>>>coonskin or cowboy  hat, or beret for the artist type
>>>large padlock and key (great for eye/hand coordination for toddlers)
>>>first aid kit
>>>umbrella
>>>ID bracelet or necklace
>>>fishing pole
>>>bath supplies (including special soap, bubble bath, shaving cream (it floats!), sponges, shampoo, and a big fluffy towel
>>>lengths of 1/2-inch PVC pipe and a combination of joints (T’s, 3 way and 2 way).  Your child can put the pieces together and create giant structures.  This is a wonderful gift with unlimited options.  Available at hardware stores.
>>>snowshoes
>>>small overnight suitcase
>>>stories on cassette tape
>>>sled
>>>watch
>>>beanbag chair (this was one of our children’s favorite gifts from Grammy)
>>>bathrobe and slippers
>>>ice skates
>>>roller blades
>>>small tent
>>>alphabet stamps and an inkpad
>>>scrapbook or photo album
>>>a string of Christmas lights
>>>pocketknife
>>>sewing basket
>>>artist’s easel
>>>camouflage clothing (available at an army/navy surplus store)
>>>a good project book for kids along with the materials to do several projects
>>>snow paint:  plastic spray bottles filled with water and 1 teaspoon food coloring.  Spray the snow into rainbows!

Turn Off the Television!

It was nothing more than a tree, the claimed territory of my children, that made me turn off the television. TV slipped into our family when we began having babies, helping me to survive. Many mornings I drowsed in front of Sesame Street nursing the latest, knowing the others were secured to the set. Sometimes I pushed in a short cartoon video after Sesame Street for uninterrupted housework. Nothing much, nothing bad. But then the dreaded dinner hour approached, the hour when kids are biologically ornery and restless. Preparing a decent meal with tiny arms and legs wrapped fretfully around me seemed impossible. Click! Late afternoon cartoons, a repeat Sesame Street, and Mr. Rogers. Simple as that. Nearly four hours of TV a day. I scarcely gave it a thought. The television seemed a household necessity like a washing machine or a clock radio.
The summer after our fourth child was born, we decided to take a vacation. We found an old house on a lake to rent for ten days. No TV. I was nervous about it, and this shook me. How can you be nervous to be alone with your children?! It would be an experiment. Maybe we could live without television. For now, just for these few days.
And we did---easily, fully. One hot afternoon I lay on a blanket under an ancient chestnut tree, idly watching the kids scramble into its massive arms. First one, then another dared to go further, and they giddily called down to their grounded Mama. Something stirred in me--an uprising of the girl who remembered what it was like to climb and climb, up and out of the reach of adults. You could even secretly spit on the unwary, and they would think it was only a drip of sap.
All my best childhood memories took place outdoors, I thought slowly as I sprawled under that tree. Ice skating on vacant lots in Idaho winters, huckleberry picking with a coffee can tied around my waist, the delicious thrill of racing down an alley on a summer night pretending not to hear my Mother hollering me back into the house. I wanted that for my children, to give them the endless days of being a girl, a boy, and making something happen. I thought about those four daily hours of television as I gazed up into the tree. I knew as the kids grew older TV would take up more of their time, would settle more firmly into our routine unless I did something about it.
We returned home. Without a word I unplugged the set, and placed it on the bureau in our bedroom. We filled the days emptied of Big Bird and Mr. Rogers with simple things. I dragged out the box of blocks from under the bed and asked for a city that mice could live in. I filled an apple box with art supplies, not only paper and felt tip pens, but with big kid stuff like tape, paper punches, and staplers. I left it out where they could reach for it, not in a cupboard or closet that required my help to retrieve.
When the dreaded pre-dinner hours arrived I sent the children protesting out onto the deck with trucks and tricycles. There were days they mashed their faces pitifully against the sliding glass door calling "What about Sesame Street?" But I allowed boredom in those hours, invited it even---that unsatisfied state of mind that drives us all to find something, anything, to shake it off, even if it meant throwing those same trucks and tricycles over the edge of the deck, down the ravine, irretrievably buried in nettles.
It was not easy, particularly in a Northwest winter, heavy with rain. I used the library and ransacked the shelves for books---to read aloud, for simple science experiments and easy projects the children could do without supervision. If it sounds like work, in many ways it was, but I saw it as an investment--an investment that led us over time to unexpectedly rich places: to detours that became journeys, to ideas that work, through long conversations that amble and reveal.
I have discovered over the years that I am not so much against TV as I am for honoring the spark and drive in all children that lead them to play, experiment, create, and make messes. And that takes time. The kind of time that television devours---time that could be better spent on bikes, building forts, and discovering the secret trails and haunts that make memories. These direct hands-on experiences also provide the most effective and vivid way to learn. Turning off the TV creates a space to test not only developing physical skills, but complex scientific principles.
One day last summer a visiting seven year old raced into the kitchen from the woods that flank our house and breathlessly announced my boys were building booby traps. "Be careful," she called after me as I marched out the door, "They're HUMAN booby traps!" Those booby traps used simple pulleys, fulcrums, and Sir Isaac Newton's premise that "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." Perhaps one day in a physics class, their minds may sweep back to a summer afternoon when those principles were put to work "catchin' human beans."
TV can be a valuable learning tool, both in the classroom and at home. Let's face it: The growth of a seed, the habits of wildlife and the clamor of a Morrocan market have more impact on television than when read about in a book. If television is managed, our world is widened and informed. If television is abused, we spend our lives watching other people's adventures and ideas.
Like all power tools in the hands of children, television needs supervision. To deny it completely adds heft and draw to the forbidden. TV is a part of our cultural fabric. Children today, for example, know more about the demise of the rain forests in the Amazon than about the weeds and wonders of their own backyards. And yet to make responsible environmental decisions as adults, they need that territorial hands-on intimacy. Giving your child time for direct experience will link global awareness with a specific sense of place, a place to which we fully belong, where biology and geography are lived.
"Have your own adventures," I tell our children when they ask for more TV. They look at me sourly, roll their eyes, and do just that: they live better than TV. Of course they don't know it yet. It seems another absurd dictum, like wearing coats in the rain or going to bed when you're not tired. But if they are lucky, on a hot summer day years later, they may lie under the welcoming arms of a tree and remember. . . . . .

Night of the Shooting Stars

It was a hot night in August. The weekend had drawn to a close on the heels of a long hike in the Olympic mountains. I was tired. With boundless boy energy our fourteen year old declared he was going to sleep out on the trampoline that night with his friend and brothers. He turned to me-- you should too, he added. I almost didn’t hear the words. I was thinking of the spilling backpacks and damp sleeping bags. I was thinking of my comfortable bed, the wonderful book I was reading. Tonight is the Perseid shower, he said archly. The words hung in the air and I paused. The boy knew I could not resist falling stars, full moons, or the first snow of the season. I smiled. Yes, I said--the fatigue falling away--I think I should too. We spread blankets and pillows into the sweet sag of an old trampoline and turned our eyes to the heavens.
Every August the Earth moves through the leftover debris of the Swift-Tuttle comet. This meteor shower is called the Perseids, and it peaks around the tenth of the month with over a hundred falling stars an hour. We cradled our heads in our hands and watched the fat tails of shooting stars arc across the sky in luminous trails of green. A screen door slammed. A seal huffed and snorted in the bay. The air was redolent of basil and saltwater as we drifted into the wondrous contemplation of the universe and our place in it.
Eric told us he had read a book about the Earth being one blood cell inside a giant creature. The sun and planets were in his body as different cells, he continued, and the very planet the creature lived on was a speck inside a different creature. We chewed this over in deep silence, thinking the warm night air into another universe. The hours filled with words as each starshot moved the conversation to another idea, another thought. We mulled over the shape of an alien, the size of the universe, the evolution of intelligence. We designed space ships, pointed out constellations, wrapped our minds around the concept of infinity. For a brief moment we felt small and insignificant; all stages of the human cycle--including adolescence and adulthood--joined and were secondary under the wide and wheeling sky.
When my mind hauls up memories, it is the time spent outdoors, more than any other time, that I've distilled and saved. I'm not alone. Listening to my friends' childhood recollections, I've heard a hundred variations of hide-n-seek at dusk, swimming in lakes, secret forts in the arms of trees, walking on moonlit nights. These experiences beyond home, past the reach of a school yard, helped shape us into the people we are today. As we gazed at the sky on that summer evening, I felt our busy lives pause while the vault of stars created a night to remember.
At sunrise the wrens began their jubilant herald to the sun. We woke covered in heavy dew, and extricated our tangled selves from the sloped center of the trampoline. Stretching and sighing we trooped to the house and into our beds, unnumbered stars moving invisibly across the dawn, into the day.