Early morning, after the airport

Fried Eggs over Volume

Our breakfast was made today as part of a pretend kids' cooking show. Fried eggs, over medium, beginning with turning on the burner and ending with cleaned plates.

A past love of the '90s Canadian TV series "Popular Science for Kids" left them pretty familiar with the science-education program format, so when they asked for the "lesson part" of the show, I threw together something about volume measurement. In my best Julia Child voice, I walked them through a comparison of some common measurements. Quickly, they caught on to my pattern and wanted to take over the pouring, discovering that I had rigged the jars to be ordered in a 2:1 ratio. Woody wanted to add teaspoons and tablespoons, and learned for himself that they equal out at 3:1.

Figs and Teeth

This is our new rabbit. Fox named her Figs. He put on a puppet show for her this afternoon so she wouldn't be bored in her cage. He wanted to involve her in the drama when we gave her some out-of-cage time, but since the act was about knights and guards and police chases, we suggested maybe he just tell her the story instead.  He declined, but said that keep a bit more distance during the chasing parts and would not actually touch her with the K'Nex crossbow. 

We are all a little bit smitten with her unbelievable cuteness, silly movements, and twitchy-nosed curiosity. Woody and I sat on the floor and watched her wash her face with her front paws, spook herself and jump into the air, stand up on her hind legs, and oh-my-god--yawn! with her bright pink mouth and fierce little teeth!

Speaking of teeth, Woody lost both front teeth the past two days. He has resumed the wrestling with whether or not fantastical characters--this time, the tooth fairy--exist, a dilemma left off at Christmas this year and begun Easter the year he was 5. He wants to be a kid that believes, but he keeps talking himself out of it. Luckily, this quibbling has no effect whatsoever on his appreciation of everyday magic like having money appear mysteriously under his pillow.

First Swim of the Season

Living as we do now where winters (and sometimes springs!) can be bone cold, snowy, and icy for days on end, I have come to see the first swim of the warm season as something of a rite of passage, a self-blessing and expression of gratitude to be coming into one's green world and living body for another turn 'round the wheel. 

the Helpers

We were out yesterday when Woody caught a bit of a news segment about the three kidnapped women in Ohio. He asked us about it. I told them both that a very sick and disturbed man had kidnapped three girls and kept them hidden in his house for ten years. I said that about a week ago, one of the women started screaming and a neighbor heard her. The neighbor came and broke down the door while the kidnapper wasn't home and freed the women, and they called the police to bring the kidnapper to jail.

They didn't say much more about it at the time. But later that night, Woody brought it up in passing, and Fox wanted to retell the whole thing to both Daddy Honey and I. It was clear that to Fox, the focus of the story was on the heroism. Daddy Honey remarked that he was sure in Fox's mind, the rescuer was wearing knight's armor.

But judging by the two little "good guys" I spend most of my days with, I think it might have been cammo.

Three pictures of outside in May

 Woody: "I want to learn all the old skills. I want to learn how to make a fire."

Fox, with Woody at the plate: "Go, Woody! You're an awesome kid!"

New-to-him shoes and favorite socks.

Politics and the End of the Theater Season

"The Herd," on display at the Walton Arts Center as part of the Northwest Arkansas Artosphere project, a synthesis of art and sustainability.

Ten or so years ago, I sported an anti-Wal-Mart bumper sticker among eight or nine others proclaiming my allegiance to progressive, hippie, liberal, one-love, and diversity concepts. It was such an obvious choice to me then, to shout-down the gigantic corporation responsible for so much environmental destruction, destruction of small-town economies, and unjust labor and pricing practices. Most of those things are still true about Wal-Mart, though like many of the biggies, they've started singing about the good they're doing, too in the hopes of improving their big ugly images.

Solar-powered Sun Boxes, instruments that individually project tones in the B flat chord, filling the space with a gentle but provocative-sounding almost-song that changes as you move around inside the piece. On the plaza outside the Walton Arts Center in downtown Fayetteville. I walked through them and my heart burst open.

Here's an uncomfortable rub: my boys and I have, all this year, directly and profoundly benefited from what the heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune chose to do with their money. For $5 a ticket, we enjoyed seven world-class performances--dance, puppetry, theater, music, acrobatics--from all over the globe through the Walton Arts Center's Colgate Classroom Series, a year of short matinee performances aimed at exposing kids to fascinating and wonderful art on stage. It worked. We were enchanted.

I don't love the round of applause solicited for Wal-Mart (and Colgate-Palmolive, and Edy's Ice Cream) from eight thousand elementary-aged children before each and every performance. And yet, I am grateful that my son had a conversation with an Australian puppeteer last week, that they both have deep connections to the children's books they've seen adapted for the stage (including Grug, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Little Prince, Guess How Much I Love You, I Love My Little Storybook, and We're Going on a Bear Hunt), and that they have grown to approach all kinds of performances with an open and eager mind, since their experiences have been overwhelmingly positive and fun.

The fact of the matter is, some very, very rich people--whose parents made money partly by exploiting and mistreating others--gave a lot of that money to the community they live in, which my family happens to share. I don't know really what to do with that narrative except to sit with it, to keep living my life in a way that feels right, to help my kids to find their own truth using compassion as a guide, and to express gratitude for that for which I am grateful: My children love the theater.

So much about parenting has asked me to pay attention to the nuance, to get off my soap box to watch and listen, to hold open doors for possibilities, to really try and tease out why I think and behave the way I do, and if those patterns are serving me and my children. I didn't know parenting would be like that. I thought that being so entrenched in my compassion-and-justice-driven politics and so sure of my own research and well-reasoned conclusions were great advantages to raising up new human beings. I felt glad to have waited a bit to have children so that I really got a chance to figure out what was the right way to be in the world. In some ways, this was true. Being compassionate and justice-driven are good things. Being curious and studious and thoughtful are good things. But being entrenched isn't often a good thing. Sometimes, being sure isn't.

More and more, I'm wanting to puzzle through, to admit conflicted feelings and impulses, to lean into my mistakes and faults to better recognize and learn from them, and also, to accept my own--and others'--hypocrisies as part of that which makes us human beings engaged in the interdependant struggle of living together as best we can.