Out of the mouths of babes #6

picture by jimmiehomeschoolmom

There is always some resistance but we have a Saturday morning clean-up ritual with the children.

This involves a bed making, floor-clearing, putting-away-fest that ends with an ‘inspection’ (all in fun - not exactly the white glove treatment) and a rating out of ten.   Before the TV goes on, or any activities start for the day, we get it done and I think the routine is starting to pay big dividends, reducing the amount of clean up work I have to do in any given week.

This Saturday was no different and the kids got down to business without complaint.  Except for Miss Four, who has spent the past few days in her new ballet uniform, twirling and jumping and demanding everyone’s rapt attention, or else!

Her resistance to helping out on a Saturday morning, or for that matter, shirking the dishwasher duties her three sibs attend to every day, has probably evolved from her being the youngest, and therefore, most indulged child in the family.

We say, “You’re four years old now, and you have learned from watching everyone else.  Now it’s time to start helping out.”  But we are met with silent resistance.  And her stamina in the resistance department is only exceeded by her stamina in the screaming department - though we anticipate she’ll grow out of that one soon.

This morning, before the clean-up commenced, Miss Four put on a dance performance.  “Dad,” she said, “I want to dance to some classical music.”  We weren’t aware she knew what classical music was but at least we had something to appease her majesty.  In the end, Miss Four put on a great show, dressed in a pink leotard and tutu.  Ballet becomes her.  And her big sister too.  Heaven help us.

And so it was, just one hour later when Saturday clean-up was well underway and everyone was coaxing Miss Four to do her very best and help get things tidy, that our little primadonna declared,

“But Daddy, you know that I just don’t do work.”

February 6th, 2010 - Posted in gratitude, childhood, parenthood, play, ritual | | 0 Comments

What’s on the shelf?

picture by lungstruck

When I was a child, I was a voracious reader.   I remember loving Enid Blyton, then Nancy Drew, then Trixie Belden, and devouring Archie comics on the holidays.  I used to go with my mother to the local book dealer, in the main street of my home town.  While Mum traded paperbacks, I used to browse the second hand books and traded comics and always got to come home with a brown paper bag full ‘new’ reading for myself.  I remember how dog-eared and sticky-taped some of the comic books were, but they still had purpose enough, so long as I could turn the page.

In highschool it was Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell and John Wyndham.  In university, it became Edgar Alan Poe, D H Lawrence, Doris Lessing, I even read Fyodor Dostoyevsky (just don’t ask me about it ‘cos I didn’t understand it).

And then I stopped reading literature.  I don’t know why.  I can’t blame it on having children because I had stopped reading long before that.  Maybe part of it was having to read so much academic content at uni, reading became a chore.  Maybe part of it was my magazine addiction, which gave an instant hit of wisdom without having to give much of myself to the reading experience.

Maybe part of it was the accessibility of television.  When I was a kid, there were only two channels and between them not much to watch.  Now I can get a story or three every night of the week, and follow the series week after week, so who needs to invest in Catherine and Heathcliffe, when we can have any number of dramas at the push of a button?  Careful, don’t strain yourself.

And now the wonderful world of books has returned to me and it’s been something of an epiphany.  My tastes are eclectic, I will read almost anything, fiction or non-fiction, and derive some kind of pleasure from it.   I’ve begun collecting with a vengeance, and particularly love finding a classic hardback, no matter what edition. I have a copy of House at Pooh Corner, dated 1956, and a 1968 edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.  Not necessarily old or valuable, but they give me pleasure just having them on the shelf.

And I suppose the example my mother made trading books at the old bookstore back home has stuck with me as I’m a happy book lender and, particularly with fiction, am happy to keep passing books along a chain.  They are communal property, to be consumed by as many people as possible.  Ever noticed how people will gravitate to the bookshelves when they’re wanting to get to know you better?  Like the contents of the bookshelf are an outer representation of the inner person?  I like to get rid of my old stuff.
I have a growing collection of women’s health, pregnancy and parenting books.  My shelf is loaded most heavily with non-fiction in the form of memoir and biography, psychology, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and titles by Bernard Salt and Malcom Gladwell, visual arts, architecture and gardening.  I might call myself atheist, but I have a rather broad collection of spiritual and self-help and motivational literature.  I’m drawn to encyclopaedias of any variety and have two books (you know, in case we lose one) on How To Do Just About Anything.  You wouldn’t believe how handy they are.

And then there are the back issues of National Geographic, Australian Yoga Life and Simply Living.  I still don’t know why I keep them.  Like I’m some kind of squirrel stowing it all for the long winter.

So what’s on your shelf?

January 31st, 2010 - Posted in gratitude, nostalgia, play | | 6 Comments

Romance

picture by DaveFeyram

The great thing about this time of year is the urge to purge that tends to come along with Xmas and New Year.  I suppose I subscribe to that Chinese tradition of ritualistically cleansing the house ever year, what we in the West all know as the De-clutter.  Please, it has earned its capital ‘D’.  Life is never the same once you make the commitment.

Several years ago I began Linda Breen Pierce’s Simplicity Lessons but never quite made my way through all twelve lessons.  I can’t even find it on my book shelf now so no doubt I passed it on to some needful soul.  I can’t say it changed my life, but it did confirm the path I was drawn to take.  Iwant a simpler life with a smaller carbon footrprint.  I’ve had mixed success and I’m still on that journey.

Then last year I did Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way via an online working group, which further challenged my thinking about work and career and life in general.  I suppose I came to trust my instincts a little more, to let myself feel instead of having to intellectualise everything - as I am wont to do.

So it was kinda humorous, and with just a bit of ‘caution to the wind’, that I indulged darling hubby’s desire to move a red hued painting by a friend of mine from a prominent place in the house to the right hand opposite ‘romance’ corner of our marital room.  Was he trying to tell me something, I wonder?

Feng shui?  Of course, I’m a sceptic.  On the other hand, what reading I have done on the subject  suggests it’s all about enabling efficiency and flow in our living environments.  Flow, being that state where amazing things become possible, is what I’m all about.  My inner sceptic, however, isn’t dazzled by the flutes and mirrors.

I this point I must explain that we have not had an official ‘bedroom’ since children came on the scene.  When they were small, our mattress remained sensibly on the floor, pressed up against one wall,  giving space for other mattresses so that we might accommodate any combination of sleeping babies and children, with washing baskets crammed in the corners, or any other crap that didn’t have a rightful place to go.  It was surely a metaphor for the time.  Partnership and parenthood were one and the same and there was no space for romance.  (Remind me again how four children are conceived??)  We had not, until recently, even owned a proper western style bed (who cares really, but it is symbolic).

The process began when someone in my study group for The Artist’s Way raised a discussion about where we keep our most personal symbols of our relationship with our significant other.   I had to take note that hubby and I kept our wedding album stuffed in a dusty space under our (recently acquired, Western style) bed.  Not exactly a fortuitous place to keep it, that much was obvious.

So I moved it to the bottom drawer in our chest of bedroom drawers, alongside our winter knits and long johns.  Also not somewhere we regularly access, as Queenslanders in Australia, the climate is decidedly sub-tropical, but it was still a cosy place, regularly accessed and containing many warm couple and family memories.  It’s not who we are now, but it’s who we once were, and it’s good to remember.  We’re not inclined to pull out the wedding album and reminisce.  That’s not us.  But the album seems somehow more contained, more nurtured, and more protected there.  That was a year ago and it is still the right place for now.

The most ‘feng shui’ thing about our recent choice, to switch a simple picture on the bedroom wall, was that it resulted in the two of us swapping sides of the bed (for purely logistical reasons) and rearranging the furniture and giving our space a complete clean up.  Now it feels so fresh in there!

So the bedroom is tidy now (relatively), and the new furniture arrangement has better flow and efficiency than it previously had.  And the cobwebs have been cleaned from under the bed, the dust has been wiped from those hard to reach places.  And communication has flowed as a matter of course - as though that’s what happens when couples get in and clean out a room, their room, together.  Romance.  It’s not what we think it is.

January 28th, 2010 - Posted in happiness, partnership, consumerism, ritual, beliefs, health, self-care | | 2 Comments

Domestic haiku #22

he mows the grass

but fails to

gather the fruit

January 21st, 2010 - Posted in haiku | | 0 Comments

Back to school

picture by  LittleMissSilly

We’re almost ready and it feels a little bit sad that the holidays are coming to an end.  It wasn’t that long ago that the kids were all home with me every single day, all day and we could do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, without answering to anyone.

Now the school bags lie bulging by the front door.  The new school shoes wait in the cupboard.  We’ve done the necessary haircuts and bought new lunchboxes.  Even Miss Four will have childcare three days a week (I expect) and I’m not sure I’ll know what to do with my empty nest.  I seriously doubt it will equate with a tidier house.

And they are ready - oh so ready - to begin a new term with their new books and pencil cases.  Ready to say goodbye to Mum and the long holidays and reacquaint themselves with their school friends and their petty games.  Ready for their new teachers too.  The children inform me they wish to ride the bus this year, and if at all possible, do after school care activities with their friends.  Ready and willing!  Am I able?
Why should I sign them up for after school care when I’m home every afternoon to meet them and make them afternoon tea?  Don’t they love me anymore?  Don’t they appreciate the effort it takes for me to have them ready for school?  I’ll be back to the slog of washing uniforms and packing lunches and nagging about homework and trying to fit a meal between taxi-ing everyone to their extra-curricular activities.  I’ll be returning to the morning rush, the ringing phone, the lost shoe or sock (singular - they never disappear in pairs, have you noticed?).  Am I ready for this?

Despite the mess and the fights and the declarations of boredom, I love having my kids home for the holidays.  I miss them when they’re at school.  I wonder if they miss me.

January 20th, 2010 - Posted in personal growth, childhood, nostalgia, community, duty of care, friendship | | 1 Comments