On turning 39

Tomorrow is my 39^th birthday. The kids keep reminding me of the fact that next year I’ll be old. My sister-in-law started a list of 40 new things to learn before she was 40 (or was it in her 40^th year?), which I thought was fun, so I’m going to copy.  But this might become a list of things to do when I’m old. 

And I’m going to cheat and start off with some of the new things I’ve done/learned since we’ve lived in Guam.

1. How to scuba dive. (Since I had so much the anxiety about accidental drowning, getting lost at sea, and losing my kids in the ocean, this is probably the hardest thing I’ve learned.) We did our first boat dive to a shipwreck site.  For the first ten minutes in the water, I had to chant to myself “Breathe in, breathe out, clear your ears. Breathe in, breathe out, clear your ears. Breathe in…” It’s so unnatural to breathe through a regulator. For a minute I forgot that bubbles are supposed to come out when you exhale and I was afraid my regulator was broken. But once we could see the wreck, I could stop remembering to breathe, and just enjoy. Swimming over and around a giant coral freighter on its side is pretty cool. An underwater ghost. The site is actually home to 2 wrecks, one from WWI and one from WWII (the freighter), but the WWI wreck is too deep for us beginners.  I even relaxed enough to join in the fun of passing a pincushion starfish around.  Sorry that we did not replace our stolen underwater camera before doing this.

2. Seeing a sea turtle, octopus, and clown fish (snorkeling)

3. Completing a triathlon (and winning my age group).

4. Hiking a waterfall

5. Jumping from a waterfall

6. Swimming in a cave

7. Growing orchids and bananas (they are growing; they just aren’t producing yet)

8. Learning to like coconut

9. Making chicken kelaguen

10. Picking mangoes

11. Learning to paddle board

12. Swimming to Cocos island

13. Going to yoga regularly

14. Riding the Manta (superscary waterslide! Makes you feel like a preteen! Wahoo!)
15. Learning to surf

Those are the things I’ve already done. I’m sure I’ll think of some more as the week goes on.  Some goals I thought of:
- Read 40 books in the next year

- Travel to Japan and Palau

- Learn some Japanese

- Run a marathon – I’m debating this one. I ran a marathon right after I graduated from college, and did pretty well: 3:13. But the training takes a long time, and I’ve recently recovered from a tendinitis issue in my hip.  Recovery takes a lot longer now that I’m older, but I still have a competitive streak. I’m not sure how much time I want to put into training. Ditto on doing an extreme triathlon like the Xterra, which a friend just did. I get a little rush of adrenalin just from the idea. I love these things, but the training time – and equipment costs – feels selfish. (Reminds me that I enjoyed this article at the Image blog, mostly because I love Chariots of Fire and the “God made me fast” quote.)

- Learn to play the ukelele

- Make lesson plans for my community college class instead of just notes (does this count or is this just a to do list item?)

 - Make a bucket list?

I’m going to have to get creative to come up with 40 things. Open to suggestions. 

Clips we've watched lately

This video clip was shown at a home school conference I went to today. "Conference" is perhaps an overstatement. About 30 parents met at a church to hear Debra Bell talk about inspiring kids to love learning and to be independent learners. I have been despairing about my effectiveness as a home schooling mother lately, and actually had an interview yesterday to teach middle school English at the most expensive private school on the island (which would get my kids deeply discounted tuition). But Debra Bell was inspiring, as was this Sir Ken Robinson video.  Much to discern in the next month or so.

Onto another issue: I admit to being behind the times here, and I'm having a hard time getting excited by the candidates, but I was happy to see Notre Dame support the lawsuit against the HHS mandate. George Weigel makes some good points here. And this ad was kind of fun, although melodramatic. Made me miss Williamsburg.

In which mother and daughter read about mother and daughters reading

Happy Feast of St. Rita – our village’s patroness. The church is hosting a fiesta this weekend with the traditional na' taotao tumano to follow.  We went to a high school graduation party last weekend and the food was never ending, so I assume there will be plenty to eat here. Our dive instructor, who is not a small guy, said he lived for a month without buying food when he was single. I asked if that was because he was eating coconuts and mangoes.  No, he said, he just kept going to rosaries and fiestas. He'd show up near the end and bring home balutin, or leftovers. 

Here's a description of the fiesta from the local paper:

OUR VILLAGE GOALS

• Revive the tradition and celebration of our patron Saint, “St. Rita” that has been part of our village identity since the original people of Sumay Bay were relocated there during World War II.
• Invite local and foreign people to partake in a weekend of music, games, food, and good Guam vibes for all ages.
• Remind and inspire our community the importance of keeping these village traditions alive.

FEATURES AND ENTERTAINMENT

• Fiesta Sponsored by Host (Fiesta Food/Drinks)
• Classic/Custom Car & bike show
• Live Entertainment with Guam’s top Music and Dance Performers
• Sponsor & Raffle give-aways
• Live Cultural Performances
• Saturday Night Movies in the Out-Field
• Cock Fight displays

We’ve been reading a selection from Saints for Young Readers for Every Day every morning, and from it the kids were startled to hear that Rita prayed for the death of her sons to prevent them from avenging their father’s murder and becoming murderers themselves. She didn’t want them to go to Hell, I told the kids. But a part of me wonders why she didn’t pray for their conversion, instead of their death. A troubling story. Is this a story of extreme love – that a mother prays for her children to die rather than suffer eternal hell? Makes me think of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, in which the baby is killed to avoid suffering slavery. But isn’t this the thinking behind abortion? “I’d rather my child avoid suffering…” One of the things I enjoyed in Simcha’s Fisher’s chapter in Style, Sex and Substance was the reminder that we have to let our children go and make their own mistakes, if they must. It was a timely read, as we are beginning to see our teens asserting their independence.

So while the older boys are pulling away, the nine year old and I have had a string of bonding moments. First there was the trip to my grandmother’s funeral, and now we are reading The Mother-Daughter Book Club books by Heather Vogel Frederick.  My daughter picked one up at the library and read it before I had a chance. While they aren’t great literature, and there’s more talk of boyfriends and fashion than I normally would care for, they have a tone of refreshing innocence. And we are actually talking about books!

Our library only has the last two, so the girls in the book club are in 8^th grade and 9^th grade. Some of them are interested in boys and fashion, but beyond some mistletoe kisses, there’s nothing heavy. And I love all the quotes from the books that begin the chapters and are interspersed in the narrative, showing how clearly books and life intersect.

In the first one we read, Pies and Prejudice, (the titles initially turned me off checking them out myself) the girls read Pride and Prejudice, and one of the girls moves to England. My daughter was tickled that I picked it up to read after her and enjoyed it. And I’m tickled to think she’s beginning to discover an interest in things Anglo.  She even has mentioned starting a mother-daughter book club.

The second book we read is actually the last in the series. In Home for the Holidays, the girls read the Betsy Tacy books. Like Emma, the bookworm in the club, I haven’t ever read these books. They weren’t at my library when I was growing up. But now my curiosity is piqued, and I’m going to hunt some down. Some of the details mentioned make me wonder if I’ll really like them – Betsy may be too boy and party crazy.  But I love quotes like this: “Betsy returned to her chair, took off her coat and hat, opened her book and forgot the world again.” And from the descriptions in this book, I wonder if Betsy’s experience of her world is similar to my grandmother’s growing up years, with her social clubs and parties.

Since finishing these books, while waiting for me to decide whether to buy the next or for the library to get more, my daughter has moved on to The Penderwicks, which is thrilling because I loved it so much. More to share!

Reading updates

I’ve been on a bit of a reading jag lately, since the plane trip back to the states and then finishing my class. But I have not been on a writing jag about that reading. In order not to forget everything, some quick clips:

* First two books that disappointed: mad at myself for giving it the time: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. What exactly did Walker Percy love in it? I wonder if I read it at a different point in my life, I might see something redeeming in the book (an appreciation for the comedy of interconnectedness?), but the words that come to mind to describe it are bombastic, crude, bitter. A rant against the vulgarity of the vulgar that celebrates vulgarity. The main character, Ignatius, is repellent. And I never once laughed outloud like the New Republic reviewer on the back cover told me I would. I just felt disgusted. But I did finish it -maybe because I have a soft spot for New Orleans, or because Toole at least had enough talent that I kept expecting something would happen or would appear, that would make the effort of reading about fools worthwhile, but nothing did. Promise undelivered should have been Toole’s epitaph.

* Another lauded book I couldn’t find love for was The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford. It was totally not what I was expecting, which I think was a story along the lines of An Officer and A Gentleman.  Instead, it's a first person flashback by an unsuspecting cuckold who seemed whiney. I didn’t admire the narrator in the least, nor could I really despise his wife.  Is that a flaw in my moral make-up? He didn’t know her. She was who she was. He was ignorant to have married her, and more ignorant to have failed to see how he was disappointing. Of course, she shouldn’t have been such a floozy, nor should The Good Soldier have been such a flirt, nor Leonora been so frigid. I suppose the good in the book was that the characters were all so fallen, that they couldn’t blame others for their failings. And the characters were convincing. The themes of the unreliability of memory and the inability to really know a person, and the difficulty of changing direction once a step in the wrong direction has been made, are interesting themes. Unfortunately, the book ends with despair all around, instead of leaving any faint hope for change.

* I did enjoy Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel. Short essays on places were accompanied by “Guides”: artists or writers who explored those places in their work.  I’ve liked de Botton’s essays when I’ve strayed across them, and this book didn’t disappoint. The first essay examined how our anticipation and experience rarely correspond: “It seems we may best be able to inhabit a place when we are not faced with the additional challenge of having to be there.”  He notes how a small disagreement with his companion ruined a stay in the tropics: 

"Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect. Thus we will not enjoy – we are not able to enjoy – sumptuous tropical gardens and attractive wooden beach huts when a relationship to which we are committed abruptly reveals itself to be suffused with incomprehension and resentment.”

Later, de Boton writes about our appreciation of small details in foreign countries: “However absurd the intense reactions provoked by such small (and mute) foreign elements may seem, the pattern is at least familiar from our personal lives. . . To condemn ourselves for these minute concerns is to ignore how rich in meaning details may be. . . . What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.”

The chapter “On Possessing Beauty” is guided by Ruskin. I’m inspired to read more Ruskin after quotes like this: “There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.” A paradoxical quote for a book on travel. But what Ruskin does is encourage both sketching and “word-painting” to contemplate the beauty of small details of places. It is sad that so many adults give up drawing, especially if they were the sort of child who filled up pages with sketches.

The last section is on “The Return;” the guide is Xavier de Maistre, whose masterpiece is “Journey Around My Bedroom.” The book sounds dull. But de Maistre’s thought, echoed by quotes de Boton gathered from Pascal and Nietzsche, is that the pleasure we derive from travelling is more from our mindset than from the actual destination. When we go someplace, we expect to see new, amazing, beautiful things. We take the time to study the importance of building ands gardens and battlefields.  We are delighted by shops and restaurants. De Boton describes this attitude as “receptivity,” and he spends a day strolling around his neighborhood attempting to see things as a tourist.  Expecting to see something interesting, he does in fact notice new details. And so the quote from Nietzsche: 

“When we observe how some people know how to manage their experiences – their insignificant, everyday experiences – so that they become an arable soil that bears fruit three times a year, while others – and how many there are! – are driven through surging waves of destiny, the most multifarious currents of the times and the nations, and yet always remain on top, bobbing like a cork, then we are in the end tempted to divide mankind into a minority (a minimality) of those who know how to make much of little, and a majority of those who know how to make little of much.” 

(Do bloggers naturally make much of little?) Ironically, I never really had a sense of wonderlust as a teenager.  Perhaps because I was such a reader, I didn’t have a passion to travel, although I did want to see places I had read about – England, Greece, Italy, New England… But here we are travelling about, never staying one place long. So in some ways we live like perpetual tourists, charmed by local customs, on the prowl for historical markers and interesting hikes each time we move someplace. The danger is not being about to settle, to sit quietly at home, as Pascal warns.

And yet on my visits home, I’m always warmed by the return to the familiar. In one chapter, de Boton contemplates the meaning the “sublime,” and he quotes Thomas Gray, the poet, on how the Alps are “pregnant with religion and poetry.” Certainly, mountains are the epitome of sublimity, but I’ve always been struck with the beauty of my own childhood home in the Midwest: vast, brilliantly blue skies across spreading expanses of fields of winter wheat, the unexpected, quiet beauty of wildflowers in deciduous forests, the repeated pleasure of witnessing the consistent return of spring bulbs. According to the Romantics, the sublime has to have an element of danger. Little threat of avalanches, wild beasts, or even of getting lost – there’s always a friendly neighbor about. Tornadoes threaten, I guess.  Perhaps the biggest danger in the beauty of the Midwest is that it will all be lost to encroaching development.

* Criticism of rampant consumerism was one of the topics I agreed with in Barbara Kingsolver’s book of essays, Small Wonder.  But sometimes her  crusading tone strikes me as too self-assured.  Kingsolver’s book left me unsettled about life choices: our car is too big, our food travels too far, my kids watch too much TV and spend too little time in nature, I spend too much time on the computer, and I’m contributing to American imperialism by being a part of the military. But after a couple of weeks away from the book, that guilt over those incidentals has faded. I’m not a crusader, although I do think in terms of making responsible choices. However, those choices are influenced by our circumstances and relative value. I’m not going to use more gas to drive to the other side of the island to buy organic food shipped from New England, instead of buying what the commissary has from California, which leaves money in the budget for donations to charity and college accounts.

Her letter to her daughter at 13 pricked my conscience. She encourages her to learn to make good choices and be responsible for the choices she makes. Meanwhile, I was left wondering if I am too protective. I didn’t want the 15 yr old reading “Slaughterhouse Five” although I was reading all kinds of junk at 15. Would he recognize the nihilism in it? Am I getting too prurient in my middle age?

* While Kingsolver writes with enough passion and inspired imagery to make you think twice, I was disappointed with the volume of The Best Spiritual Writing of 2010 the most recent volume at our little library. Most of the essays weren’t challenging. The most memorable were the one about someone meeting the Dalai Lama and the one about traveling across Afghanistan, neither of each were particularly spiritual. Nothing on par with the bits I read of C. S. Lewis’ Letters to Malcolm or Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation or parts of L’Engle’s Walking on Water, all of which I started at my mom and dad’s and never finished, but would like to go back to.

* I did finish The Love of my Youth by Mary Gordon in one evening, when I babysat for a friend who had to go to the emergency room. (She ended up being fine – just a bad case of what people call Guam crud, which can be pretty much anything.)  And the book was fine, too – a story of two former lovers who happen to meet again in Rome 40 years later. They eat lunches and tour Rome and reminisce together, while the reader puts together the pieces of why their relationship, which seemed practically perfect, fell apart.  My favorite parts were descriptions of Rome. The book just didn’t really come alive for me, although it was entertaining with a satisfying conclusion.

So this almost catches me up to what I’m reading currently: a Mother-Daughter Book Club book with my 9  year old. Report soon.

Catching up with old news

I'm a good week behind the times here, or more. Presidential politicking is blessedly far away.  I know that it is civicly irresponsible of me to be ignoring the big decision coming up in November, but I'm grateful to be far from the throes of angst and mudpie slinging.  Big issues are at stake, but I keep hoping some perfectly awesome philosopher-king will ride up on a white horse and save the day. (I was just talking with my mom this morning about the crusade to redefine marriage. If marriage eventually is redefined, then perhaps the Church should come up with a new name for marriage, something to indicate its sacramental and procreative nature. A question of semantics, but semantics matter.)

I've also been catching up with blogs, after a respite from reading them because of travel and school.  Lots of mother-issues under discussion, provoked by Time's nursing toddler cover and CNN's Mother's Day  anti-mothering defense. Both seem deliberately delivered to provoke controversy.  The editors probably love the backlash, so I won't add my two cents.  

Along similar lines, Clare Coffey’s article about the glorification of domesticity and mothering (in response to political jabs that I missed) also generated some interesting discussion.  I probably don't need to comment on this either, but to silence the circulating thoughts, I'm writing them down. I read Coffey's article after I read Sally’s remarks, which seemed convincing, and then the comments, which was probably a mistake, because my reading was a bit biased.  My impression was not so much “what naivete!” but “what a difference a generation makes!” I know few real women who claim to find complete fulfillment, or a sense of glorious martyrdom, in being a mother, but blogs may give that perception. It also seems to me that a lot of men are doing a lot more parenting than they used to do.  And does the generation just below mine perhaps put more emphasis on doing things "right"?  

Most of the women I grew up with had good paying jobs lined up to begin after they picked up their college diplomas, unless they were going to spend a year or two doing service work (seeking cheap adventure as well as global peace?), going to graduate school, or traveling. I was the first of my college friends to get married, and my wedding was a whole year after graduation because my future husband was still in school and I was going to grad school. Being a stay at home mom was a little counter-cultural and crunchy, but none of my immediate acquaintances said anything of praise or blame when I left my parttime, stopgap job to have a baby nine months after we married.  Most of my small group of college friends married, had children, and now are raising their children, some while working either parttime or as volunteers, and some full time.

Being a liberal arts major, I never anticipated having a high-paying career, nor believed that fulfillment was to be found anywhere but in the search for Truth.  Nor have I ever cared enough about fashion consciousness to put effort into looking cute at the playground where I might be critiqued by other people's nannies.  I've probably perpetuated the stereotype of the frazzled mother, but if I weren't the frazzled mother, I'd probably be the frazzled schoolteacher or librarian, or whatever. I have that kind of hair.

Admittedly though, I have glorified the idea of motherhood to a certain extent, but this glorification, and ideas about education and fertility and nurturing, were based a good deal on books like Love and Responsibility and Familiaris Consortio, which made my decision to stay home seem noble rather than sacrificial. I’d had a lot of babysitting experience, too, like Coffey, so I thought I knew how to take care of kids, but babysitters don’t have to stay up nights nursing or calming sick kids or worrying about all the ways they are messing up their children psychologically. Plus, I had my brief taste of graduate school and working life, and then happily settled in at home. It wasn’t until a couple of years into it that I realized how hard it was to give up worldly things, like work that wasn’t undone within 2 minutes, adult conversation, reading late into the night, etc. But I never really completely gave up those things, so I've never really felt like a true martyr. And a part of me suspects that the internet artificially inflates the number of people who actually fit the mold that Clare describes.

Since I’ve had paying jobs and I’ve sent my kids to school at different times, I don’t exactly fit the stereotype that Coffey seems to be rejecting.  Have I missed out on something by not working regularly? I’ve made sacrifices, but I’ve also been able to do a lot. I’ve loved being able to take field trips and spend time volunteering and hanging out at parks and libraries.  I’ve also loved my little parttime jobs. I’ve always kind of assumed I’d go to work when the kids were older, but to be honest, I’ve gotten a little lazy. I like being able to volunteer, and workout, read, go to daily Mass, grocery shop during the day, bake every once in awhile, take trips without taking leave, - all those humane perks that make being a stay-at-home mom less of a martyrdom. Working fulltime doesn’t sound so appealing any more.

I don’t suppose it’s surprising that Coffey’s generation should start to backlash against the “it’s good to stay home” mentality.  I am practically old enough to be her mother. Homeschooling/staying at home are no longer new and unusual. What was counter-cultural to my generation – rejecting our mothers’ rally to join the women’s lib movement and be career women – is now what the youth are rebelling against.

The other essay Pentimento linked to was the Charming Disarray one about homeschooling. Again, what a difference a generation makes. When I was datable, most guys my age had never heard of home schooling, let alone thought about asking their potential wives to do it. Granted, I didn’t exactly hang out with the orthodox Catholic crowd back then. It was still pretty fringe movement-ish.

I can understand her objection to it being a marriage criteria.  I probably wouldn’t have dated a guy who asked me to home school either. But I might have dated one who wanted to live in a tent. I like camping.  So I have to disagree with her argument that both home schooling and camping are emergency-only options, because some people, like myself, actually enjoy both of these pursuits.  (And I had an "Ideal Man List" also - created sometime in early adolescence, which included things like "Likes outdoor activities".)

I suppose my own decision to home school took root in small increments – starting with a sense of disappointment with my own education, moving on to idealistic solutions based on reading classic novels and conservative books and periodicals of my grandfather’s. And I liked the people I met who homeschooled. I liked their kids. My college theology teacher’s kids were probably the biggest influence on my decision to home school. I loved that family.  Finally, in our early marriage, my husband didn’t make a lot of money for private school tuition, nor did I think many private schools were worth the money. 

Now that we’ve had a chance to experience a variety of educational options, I have to say, I can see comparable goods in all of them. Thus, my decision about next year is hard.  The number of things I like about home schooling and about regular schools are pretty close to equal. There are also a nearly equal number of things that I don't like about both options.

Both young bloggers are good writers: a part of me felt tempted by their arguments to chuck my ideals, put the kids in public school, and go back to work.  But there are no easy answers. I don’t know where we’ll be living in two years, let alone what my career plans are.

I do know I’m glad I’m not in the dating scene. Yikes. It all seemed so much simpler before the internet.

What we've been up to lately - photos

Eagle scout project - and lunch committee

Waterpark fun

Damming the waterslide

Jr. National Honor Society Induction Ceremony

High school track meets every Friday night. My kind of fun.

Kids triathlon - our 7 yr old took home the gold in two different competitions

Finishing before the bikers

The five year old comes in second out of the girls 8 and under.
And looks darn cute doing it.

Another water park, another day. This is the Manta. Super scary.
Super fun. Takes years off of you.

Educational fun at the Agricultural Department Open House.
The culinary arts students cooked local foods and vegetables - and
roasted wild pig. Some of the best food we've had on Guam and we
brought home free plants and produce. I'm hooked on soursap sorbet.
The leaves of the soursap brewed as tea may destroy cancer cells.

Second meeting of the Catholic Home School fellowship group.
Kids read reports on saints lives or recite a poem. Then we eat and they play.
Most of the families go to the Latin Mass at the Franciscan Friary on island. They
are the most laidback Latin Mass types I've ever met. They also run the surf club.

My orchids bloomed bigger and better the second time around.

More garden shots - false bird of paradise

Wild ginger never stops blooming.

My newest orchid, purchased by my 12 yr old at the Ag fair
as my mother's day present. It is supposed to be a mother plant, so I can propagate more. We'll see.

Flowers found by the 12 yr old at the track meet.

First Communion. Happy Day!

Finishing the Perimeter Run with my teammates. 10 person teams ran 50 miles.
Started at 4 am. Ended at 11:30. Lots of fun in between. Lots of tiredness after.

Course evaluation - notes to self that may bore others

Last Tuesday was the final meeting of my literature class. I drove home wishing I had prepared a farewell speech, but I was so happy that all I had to do was prepare a final exam that I didn’t spend any time thinking about what I might say to the students as a valedictory. Fortunately, one of the kids had made chocolate chocolate chip cookies, so I wished them luck with their future studies, handed them their tests, and told them to help themselves to cookies if they needed a sugar pick-me-up.

Fortunately, the week before I had taken a little bit of time to thank the students for coming and asking them about how they thought the class went.  No course evaluations here, and the students seemed satisfied with the classroom experience they received for the price of their tuition. In fact, they were quite kind.  Some asked me to keep in touch. They asked after my family and talked about theirs. They said they now were interested in poetry and would read more. A couple of students still didn’t pass the class because they didn’t turn in their papers, but for the most part they were more attentive, more personally involved, and more intent on doing well than the students I had my first semester back in the classroom last year.  I don’t know if it was just this group of students or if it is the culture, and the fact that most of these students were also working and probably paying their own way.

My own attitude at the end of the semester is quite different that first experience at the community college in Mississippi, when I passed out the course evaluations with a shudder.  Generally this class flowed pretty smoothly.  My flaws: talking too much, not coming up with interactive/entertaining class plans, spending too much time introducing the class’s topic and not enough time on the topic. This is because I often thought more about what I was going to talk about than about what I was actually going to say.

Another stumbling block: few students actually did the reading. For poetry, this wasn’t too much of a problem, but for the short story unit, we didn’t have time to read the story in class.  A couple of times, I actually did have some plans for discussions, but if few or none of the students had read the story, there wasn’t any discussing. I was always hoping I wouldn’t have to do all the talking.

Successes: The drama unit went pretty well when I had them perform; they especially enjoyed paraphrasing Shakespeare. The best short story classes were the first class when we talked about folk tales and fables, and they told me some Chamorro legends, and the class dedicated to setting when I had them write their own description of their favorite place. They all really liked O’Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” which made me realize I need to pick a few more uplifting tales, despite Flannery O’Connor’s injunctions. No one cared for “Young Goodman Brown” and although “Harrison Bergeron” got people talking a little bit, hardly any students liked the story. It felt too flat.

That students like sentimentality was obvious in the poetry unit also. Multiple students wrote about Tony Hoagland’s poem “Beauty” because it was easily accessible and had an obvious message about beauty being what’s on the inside.  I chose the poem to illustrate differences in diction, even though I can’t say it’s one of my favorites.  I never did get around to talking about “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” even though it’s so handy for talking about figurative devices. I had it on the syllabus, but after rereading it, I was afraid that much of the imagery and nuances would mean little to my students. The descriptions of city life and ennui just seemed too foreign for this crowd. They enjoyed Frost’s “Two Roads Diverged,” despite the fact that the woods are always green, never yellow, here, but they didn’t have anything to say about some of the religious poems – John Donne’s “Batter My Heart,” Herbert’s “Easter Wings,” Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty.” But I’ll keep them on the syllabus next semester, nonetheless.

While teaching in Mississippi, I feared I was repeating what many students had learned in high school, but this semester, I gathered that few, if any, of the regularly anthologized works were familiar to the students. Everything was new. This made my job easier in some ways and harder in others.  I really should have spent some time teaching how to write a thesis statement. That lesson would have paid off.

And although it pains me to have to cut the number of poets, I think it would be better to focus on just a handful of poems that exemplify either a particular form, figurative speech, or a particular style. Let’s say we spend 6-8 weeks on poetry, with 2 classes a week. Probably 3 poems are max we can cover well in an hour and half.  So what are the best 36-48 poems for introducing poetry to the over 18 crowd?

That’s my challenge over the summer. That, and organizing notes, and keeping the kids safe, fed, clean, catechized, and occasionally intellectually challenged, while running around the island, and possibly taking a trip somewhere.

After the funeral

May already! Time for catching up:

First a funeral.

Each rose represents a member of the family.
The different colors are for different generations.
There were 54 roses altogether. And my grandmother
was an only child. . . 

My trip back to the states for my grandmother’s funeral was very brief.  It took me as many days to get back on schedule as the number of days I was gone.  My husband convinced me that I should take one child with me as a representative of the others at the funeral.  I feared cries of injustice from the five left behind, but they all seemed to accept that one getting to go was better than none – maybe they realized that the house would be one-sixth less noisy.  And we also explained that others were going to get opportunities for traveling at other times. So my nine year old daughter was my travel companion, and a very good one she was. We never really had a heart to heart conversation, but we enjoyed the serendipity of airplane meals, watching travelers in line for security checks, and resting on each other’s shoulders during brief naps on the flight. And my daughter carried six roses up to the vase in the picture above, while I carried two, to help fill in the overflowing, somewhat chaotically enmeshed, arrangement of flowers that represented my grandmother's fondest accomplishment: being matriarch of a close, loving, although sometimes quibbly, but always faithful family.  She presided happily over birthday parties, Christmas celebrations, graduations, marriages, and the other ceremonies and daily rituals that mark the rearing of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I debated returning for this funeral because I had just made the visit with my grandmother in January. At the time, I had decided I would rather spend time with her living than dead.  And we had a wonderful visit.  Knowing that it might be my last, I made an effort to be present, to listen, to ask questions.

But despite the financial sacrifice for the airline tickets, as well as the sacrifice of sleep and health, I’m glad I made the trip again, not because I felt the need to say goodbye, but because there was more of her to get to know. Listening to what my cousins and aunts and uncles had to say, browsing through all the old photos, hearing the pastor talk about my grandmother’s ministries in her church, all made me realize there were questions I didn’t ask, stories I didn’t hear during the last visit, that would help complete the picture of the person my grandmother was. As my mom has mentioned while cleaning up my grandmother’s house, here are all the pieces of a life, one that was well-lived, but perhaps underappreciated, as all lives might be. Everyone's memory of the same person reveals some additional facet of her personality. How can we ever really know another fully…

In one of her journals unearthed in a visit to the home emptied of her physical presence, but full of her spirit, she had written this piece of advice: "Look for everyday blessings that sometimes seem very mundane. A flower! A butterfly! A phone call! A special book! A song! A beautiful day! In all things be thankful."

One of the photo collages my sister-in-law assembled.

Four generations a generation ago.

I really admire the custom here on Guam have holding several nights of rosaries, sometimes entire novenas, after loved ones pass away.  Barbecues are held at different family member’s homes, or all at one central place, so everyone has a chance to come and pray and talk and share stories.  And often there are advertisements in the paper for one year anniversary parties after a death.  Maybe these are just excuses for the living to gather for good eats, but why not use any opportunity to revisit good memories and strengthen family ties? I'm glad I grabbed the chance to spend time with the siblings and cousins. Worth every penny and lost minute of sleep.

On the way home we had a short layover in Tokyo. The airport was clean, modern, and quiet. The lighting was cool, the waiting area decorated with geometic, but comfortable chairs, and the toilets all offered bidets, which my daughter mistook for the flusher.  One of the little stores had an origami exhibit that we meandered through. A fine introduction to Japanese culture.

Little Red Riding Hood

A soul ascending? The little matchgirl?

Other benefits of travel: ample time for reading (some books which I finished on the plane I may review soon), a brief experience of spring, a visit with our old dog, a view of the Alaskan skyline, time to laugh with cousins.

More updates soon. I give my class their final tomorrow night, and then I'll have more time for gathering thoughts.  

Gathering eggs just after sunrise.

Bosco has lost weight on the farm.

An out of focus mayapple, one of my favorites.

A bouquet of dogwood, phlox, and asters gathered
by the granddaughters.

Meanwhile, back at home, soccer season ended with a win.

From the plane window over Alaska. Seredipitously,
the movie on the flight was Big Miracle about the rescue
of whales in Barrow, Alaska.