You've gotta hand it to our landlord. He is so consistent. He consistently consistently consistently disagrees with me about what constitutes necessary maintenance.
Take, for example, the lock on the door to the front building, just inside of which our bikes are stored, and slightly farther inside of which, I might also add, three other tenants are stored. (Our apartment is accessed via a different door.)
The lock doesn't work. In other words (and I include these words because he actually said "what do you mean by 'doesn't work'?"), when you put the key in the lock and attempt to turn it, such that the bolt slides across into its little house, it doesn't turn. Thus, the door does not change in status from unlocked to locked. (sarcasm mine)
I've been telling him that it "doesn't work" for months. I started in May. It's now September. He sent out a reminder to the tenants that it's important to lock the doors for security.
But none of this is why I'm writing. I'm writing because I noticed, thanks to said landlord, that I'm getting used to muscling my bike in and out of my living room, through the narrow passageway/mudroom, and up and down our deck stairs (which are covered in plants and other hazards). When I started this madness - the third time I found the front door standing wide open, inviting all who were interested to help themselves to a bike or two - I thought for sure it was going to drastically alter my biking habits. I'd be way too lazy to contend with the entering and exiting, much less the tripping over the thing once it was stashed inside our tiny living room.
To get it back in, for example, once I've been out for a ride, I have to stand beside the bike, lean forward beyond the handlebars, and open the storm door with my right hand while steadying the bike with my left. Then I tip my helmeted head against the storm door to hold it open wide enough to thread the handlebars through and shove the front wheel through the doorway. Once the front wheel is in, I thrust my right hip repeatedly against the back of the seat without moving my head so as to rock the back wheel enough to hop the heavier back end of the bike over the threshold and into the mudroom. I almost take a chunk of skin off some part of my body in the process.
But my point is that when I took it out this morning I didn't even think about it as a thing at all, which leads me to the unpleasant possibility that there are other things I whine and carry on about which, were I to just go ahead and do them a few times, would become not only tolerable but even just part of the fabric of the day. Or, better still, material.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The Cilantro
I'm finding that there are at least some new tricks you can in fact teach an old dog.
Last fall, I waited until late October, early November even, to take apart our little deck garden. I say little because it generates such a tiny fraction of what I remember emerging from the gardens of my rural childhood. In the course of it, though, this little deck garden can feel rather sizeable. When we put in the seedlings in the spring, we start by herding the ragtag collection of pots from the basement and friends' garages and barns, lining the pots with rocks for drainage, hauling and heaving soil from elsewhere, and then proceed to the fun part of actually nestling the little guys into their new homes. We have quite a bit of sun to offer them, so they seem in general to like it here. As long as it's summer.
Taking the garden apart at the end of the season is a difficult task for me. The crowd of plants we keep is like the best kind of house guest to me - it just sits out there being charming, ready to keep me company at a moment's notice, but I get to choose when I hang out with it. I can barely wait to see what it's done overnight each morning when I wake up. This means that admitting - come late fall - that the tomatoes really aren't going to get any riper on their vines, the basil really can't handle the frost, and the morning glories are done with their daily performances, does not come easily to me. Hence, last year, I dragged my feet for weeks, and then found myself poking through pot after pot of freezing cold dirt plucking even colder drainage stones so I could rinse them off and store them for next year.
In my every day life I frequently find myself repeating this sort of mistake, where the lesson and its solution are crystal clear but my stubborn will causes me to refuse to learn it. But the prospect of icy fingers seems to have carried sufficient weight that I am this year slowly, methodically, taking apart the garden before winter descends. I think I also decided that it was more respectful to the plants themselves to do it this way - return them to the earth somehwere when they've done what they can rather than force them to go on battling gravity and elements so far beyond their respective primes. Further, I know in the back of my head and heart somewhere that the chances are good that this month and next will be our last in this home. I may not actually have the late days of October and early days of November in which to complete the project.
Which brings me to the cilantro. We are extremely lackluster cilantro farmers. Our tomatoes do well, our basil, all the flowers we've tried so far, and even the peppers and eggplant we introduced this year and had to fight some pests to protect. But cilantro, though we love to cook with it, repeatedly gets away from us. Once it gets started, it grows fast, and you have to keep using it and using it or it gets too tall and stringy. We can't seem to muster the diligence to keep up with it. Today - day two of my Take Apart the Garden on Time effort - I admitted that the cilantro was ready to be uprooted. I squatted beside it, apologizing quietly for our delinquence, and began to notice that the roots seemed especially abundant for a plant that hadn't been encouraged to do its best work. I was impressed that it had managed to commit itself so completely to its pot. I could relate. This tiny urban home we've made here is the first in my adult life in which I've bothered to really settle into. We've got so many good memories from our life here, and I have to keep reminding myself that we get to take them with us, and that their existence doesn't mean it won't work well to move on.
I think we'll have to try the cilantro again, a third time, in our new home, wherever it may be. It's possible I'll be outvoted, but I think I'll at least campaign for it. Seems like there may be more to be learned from this good committed sport of a plant. It's also of course possible that I won't be outvoted, and then I'll wish I had been, as it's entirely possible I won't yet have embraced competent cilantro farming as a new trick worth learning.
Last fall, I waited until late October, early November even, to take apart our little deck garden. I say little because it generates such a tiny fraction of what I remember emerging from the gardens of my rural childhood. In the course of it, though, this little deck garden can feel rather sizeable. When we put in the seedlings in the spring, we start by herding the ragtag collection of pots from the basement and friends' garages and barns, lining the pots with rocks for drainage, hauling and heaving soil from elsewhere, and then proceed to the fun part of actually nestling the little guys into their new homes. We have quite a bit of sun to offer them, so they seem in general to like it here. As long as it's summer.
Taking the garden apart at the end of the season is a difficult task for me. The crowd of plants we keep is like the best kind of house guest to me - it just sits out there being charming, ready to keep me company at a moment's notice, but I get to choose when I hang out with it. I can barely wait to see what it's done overnight each morning when I wake up. This means that admitting - come late fall - that the tomatoes really aren't going to get any riper on their vines, the basil really can't handle the frost, and the morning glories are done with their daily performances, does not come easily to me. Hence, last year, I dragged my feet for weeks, and then found myself poking through pot after pot of freezing cold dirt plucking even colder drainage stones so I could rinse them off and store them for next year.
In my every day life I frequently find myself repeating this sort of mistake, where the lesson and its solution are crystal clear but my stubborn will causes me to refuse to learn it. But the prospect of icy fingers seems to have carried sufficient weight that I am this year slowly, methodically, taking apart the garden before winter descends. I think I also decided that it was more respectful to the plants themselves to do it this way - return them to the earth somehwere when they've done what they can rather than force them to go on battling gravity and elements so far beyond their respective primes. Further, I know in the back of my head and heart somewhere that the chances are good that this month and next will be our last in this home. I may not actually have the late days of October and early days of November in which to complete the project.
Which brings me to the cilantro. We are extremely lackluster cilantro farmers. Our tomatoes do well, our basil, all the flowers we've tried so far, and even the peppers and eggplant we introduced this year and had to fight some pests to protect. But cilantro, though we love to cook with it, repeatedly gets away from us. Once it gets started, it grows fast, and you have to keep using it and using it or it gets too tall and stringy. We can't seem to muster the diligence to keep up with it. Today - day two of my Take Apart the Garden on Time effort - I admitted that the cilantro was ready to be uprooted. I squatted beside it, apologizing quietly for our delinquence, and began to notice that the roots seemed especially abundant for a plant that hadn't been encouraged to do its best work. I was impressed that it had managed to commit itself so completely to its pot. I could relate. This tiny urban home we've made here is the first in my adult life in which I've bothered to really settle into. We've got so many good memories from our life here, and I have to keep reminding myself that we get to take them with us, and that their existence doesn't mean it won't work well to move on.
I think we'll have to try the cilantro again, a third time, in our new home, wherever it may be. It's possible I'll be outvoted, but I think I'll at least campaign for it. Seems like there may be more to be learned from this good committed sport of a plant. It's also of course possible that I won't be outvoted, and then I'll wish I had been, as it's entirely possible I won't yet have embraced competent cilantro farming as a new trick worth learning.
November, approaching
In my bookmarks, this blog is still called November. I noted this just now as I was logging in to comment on the day because November's now looming large not because I have plans to write another novel (though I wouldn't put it past me) but because it looks like we're going to move, come said month. We don't know where, except that it'll be within working distance of Portland.
I woke up, not surprisingly, earlier than necessary this morning. I tried a new experiment in which I didn't bother fighting it but instead tried to study the awakeness. I kept saying really profound things to myself like "This is interesting. I wonder what this is about."
I didn't get anywhere with that, but I did get a fair amount of work, and craigslist browsing, done. Unfortunately, I also watched a clip of Matt Damon commenting on the McCain/Palin ticket in which he described it as the likes of a really bad Disney movie. I hadn't heard anyone actually say "President Palin," as he did in referring to the obviously terrifying prospect of her stepping in should McCain not make it through the term if elected. I was already terrified, but hearing him say it that way sunk it deeper still. I'm having a hard time not giving money to the Obama campaign every other minute.
After it had been a few hours I thought to look outside to see if it was time to get up yet. This is what I saw, expressed in limited fashion by my camera.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Back to School...
Hi, friends. Following is an early version of the post that'll go up first on my new learning support site in a couple of weeks. I've been dreading figuring out what to say first, but I realized this morning that this is it. I'll obviously leave out most of the first paragraph. I'd appreciate any feedback you have about parts that are difficult to follow, etc.
The sunlight is doing its splashy thing on my desk, the one where it bobbles around on the surfaces once it's found its way through the leaves and window glass and early autumn air. I'm oddly aware of how much effort it took for me to make sure I had the right its/it'ses in that last sentence, much the way I noticed, playing high-speed card games this summer, that my noggin doesn't process as quickly as it once did. Perhaps that's why things that used to feel like everyday tasks sometimes now seem to take monumental effort. I hope it's that, and not that it's time for menopause already.
But back to this morning's solar behavior. I still forget at this time of year that I don't have to go back to school, so deeply set is the habit of dread. As the emails begin to appear signaling that parents' thoughts have shifted to school, tutoring, etc., I imagine their various children in this first week of September. A few will be relieved to have the days once again filled with reliable schedule, other kids, and new assignments, but will also grow frustrated that they can't go faster, learn more, stop reviewing. Others still give themselves to the trick of excitement in new clothes, notebooks, backpacks, only to realize after a few weeks, days, or even hours, that it wasn't worth it. They remember how poorly the hours in chairs suit them and begin, that early, to look forward to June.
Most would rather be somewhere else, I've found, and as a society we're so flummoxed by how to make it otherwise for them while still making sure they're ready and safe and growing and learning that we find it difficult to acknowledge it as so. They know it, too, that we don't know how to hear what they're saying, so many of them pretend it's OK. They make every effort to contort themselves such that they fit, survive, look happy.
It is no secret that I am in many cases an advocate of taking kids out of school when such an alternative would suit them and family/community circumstances allow it, but this is not actually about that. Where I want to start this year, throughout my work - here on this new site, sitting across from parents whose children are struggling, sitting also with the children themselves, and even in the rest of my days, where I'm not a professional helper but just a part of the human workings, is with the simple act of acknowledging how things are for people, creating an atmosphere in which the truth as it exists from any perspective (particularly that of a child or teen) can be told and heard in such a way that it is recognized as worth telling.
I asked Eric how things were going in class. "Fine," he said. There was enough reluctance in his tone that I waited, suspecting there was more, and he continued. "I mean, I think the teacher doesn't like me, because I raise my hand and she looks right at me and doesn't call on me." I waited again, and he looked over at me, waiting for me to respond.
"Sounds frustrating," I said. He nodded, taking a breath and looking down at the table. "I have a couple of ideas that might help," I continued. "Do you want to hear them?"
"Yup." He answered so quickly I suspected he hadn't actually considered whether or not he wanted to hear them. I thought I better check.
"Really?" His eyes snapped up at this question. I continued: "Because I don't really want to tell you my ideas unless you're interested in hearing them." He looked at me for another moment.
"No, I actually do," he said, as though a little surprised to find this out. I said first that he may indeed be right, that his teacher didn't like him, but that it was equally possible that it was something else entirely. We talked for a while about a few different possible explanations for what seemed to be happening, came up with a couple of ideas about how he might handle it, and then got going on the math he was actually there to work on.
This is the kind of conversation that's missing from the school and learning experience of many young people. The simple act of acknowledgment - whether of frustration, perceived injustice or exclusion, boredom, confusion - allows a young person to begin the process of managing a situation and working through it. When the experience doesn't get acknowledged, that process never gets off the ground. Eric's "Fine" was the way he, without knowing it, checked with adults to find out whether or not they really wanted to know the answer to their question. We roll past "Fine" more times than we realize, and never get to "I think my teacher doesn't like me," never mind all the way to what to do about it. And spending a year in the world of "my teacher doesn't like me" with no way to manage it can have an enormous impact on what gets learned that year.
So that's where I'm starting from. I'll help kids with math and spelling and reading, I'll read and recommend books and materials that make a difference, I'll work with parents to get things back on track with kids who are struggling, but first I'll remind myself to make room for the truth, to be ready for questions I can't answer for them, problems I may not be able to solve, insights that change my mind about things. And we'll take it from there.
The sunlight is doing its splashy thing on my desk, the one where it bobbles around on the surfaces once it's found its way through the leaves and window glass and early autumn air. I'm oddly aware of how much effort it took for me to make sure I had the right its/it'ses in that last sentence, much the way I noticed, playing high-speed card games this summer, that my noggin doesn't process as quickly as it once did. Perhaps that's why things that used to feel like everyday tasks sometimes now seem to take monumental effort. I hope it's that, and not that it's time for menopause already.
But back to this morning's solar behavior. I still forget at this time of year that I don't have to go back to school, so deeply set is the habit of dread. As the emails begin to appear signaling that parents' thoughts have shifted to school, tutoring, etc., I imagine their various children in this first week of September. A few will be relieved to have the days once again filled with reliable schedule, other kids, and new assignments, but will also grow frustrated that they can't go faster, learn more, stop reviewing. Others still give themselves to the trick of excitement in new clothes, notebooks, backpacks, only to realize after a few weeks, days, or even hours, that it wasn't worth it. They remember how poorly the hours in chairs suit them and begin, that early, to look forward to June.
Most would rather be somewhere else, I've found, and as a society we're so flummoxed by how to make it otherwise for them while still making sure they're ready and safe and growing and learning that we find it difficult to acknowledge it as so. They know it, too, that we don't know how to hear what they're saying, so many of them pretend it's OK. They make every effort to contort themselves such that they fit, survive, look happy.
It is no secret that I am in many cases an advocate of taking kids out of school when such an alternative would suit them and family/community circumstances allow it, but this is not actually about that. Where I want to start this year, throughout my work - here on this new site, sitting across from parents whose children are struggling, sitting also with the children themselves, and even in the rest of my days, where I'm not a professional helper but just a part of the human workings, is with the simple act of acknowledging how things are for people, creating an atmosphere in which the truth as it exists from any perspective (particularly that of a child or teen) can be told and heard in such a way that it is recognized as worth telling.
I asked Eric how things were going in class. "Fine," he said. There was enough reluctance in his tone that I waited, suspecting there was more, and he continued. "I mean, I think the teacher doesn't like me, because I raise my hand and she looks right at me and doesn't call on me." I waited again, and he looked over at me, waiting for me to respond.
"Sounds frustrating," I said. He nodded, taking a breath and looking down at the table. "I have a couple of ideas that might help," I continued. "Do you want to hear them?"
"Yup." He answered so quickly I suspected he hadn't actually considered whether or not he wanted to hear them. I thought I better check.
"Really?" His eyes snapped up at this question. I continued: "Because I don't really want to tell you my ideas unless you're interested in hearing them." He looked at me for another moment.
"No, I actually do," he said, as though a little surprised to find this out. I said first that he may indeed be right, that his teacher didn't like him, but that it was equally possible that it was something else entirely. We talked for a while about a few different possible explanations for what seemed to be happening, came up with a couple of ideas about how he might handle it, and then got going on the math he was actually there to work on.
This is the kind of conversation that's missing from the school and learning experience of many young people. The simple act of acknowledgment - whether of frustration, perceived injustice or exclusion, boredom, confusion - allows a young person to begin the process of managing a situation and working through it. When the experience doesn't get acknowledged, that process never gets off the ground. Eric's "Fine" was the way he, without knowing it, checked with adults to find out whether or not they really wanted to know the answer to their question. We roll past "Fine" more times than we realize, and never get to "I think my teacher doesn't like me," never mind all the way to what to do about it. And spending a year in the world of "my teacher doesn't like me" with no way to manage it can have an enormous impact on what gets learned that year.
So that's where I'm starting from. I'll help kids with math and spelling and reading, I'll read and recommend books and materials that make a difference, I'll work with parents to get things back on track with kids who are struggling, but first I'll remind myself to make room for the truth, to be ready for questions I can't answer for them, problems I may not be able to solve, insights that change my mind about things. And we'll take it from there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)