Getting off my list
Sep 27, 2002 Infertility
Well, I finally made the break from my infertility AP list. I just didn’t feel at home there anymore. I’m still technically on the list because I’m the owner (long story but I’m not the list founder just the owner) but I’m nomail. As I’ve written before, I never really felt supported about my decision to suspend treatment even though I have since found out that there are other moms on-list in the same boat. They happen to be the less vocal ones. And then there have been some posts that have bothered me a little. Entirely about me, not about them. I realized that I wanted more support about HSing and less fertility talk so, duh, I got off the infertility list and found a small HSing list. For Jewish homeschoolers, no less.
My friend L. thinks this stuff is hilarious. You know, these specific lists for attachment parents dealing with infertility and for Jewish homeschoolers. (There’s one for Jews dealing with infertility, too, but they’re mostly Orthodox and I can’t understand all the Hebrew.) I told her there’s a list for everybody no matter how obscure they are. And isn’t that what makes the internet grand?
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Tags: homeschool, Infertility
Noah’s first sentence
Sep 26, 2002 Parenting
Noah read his first sentence today. It was the always popular: A fat cat sat on a rat. I used a technique I got from the Ruth Beechick book and it clicked with him. He was really excited that he read it and later on that day he was talking about it (he kept saying to me, “Hey, Mommy, a fat cat is sitting on your rat!”) and I said, “Congratulations, Noah, this is a big deal and I’m proud of you.”
“No, congratulations to you, Mommy,” he answered.
“Not to me, you’re the one who read that.”
“But you’re the one who taught me.”
“Actually, Noah,” I said. “You taught yourself, I just gave you the tools but you’re the one who flipped that switch in your head.”
The great thing was that we did this one simple activity and he got all excited and that was it, we didn’t need to do more. I didn’t need to drill him or make him go fill out a worksheet. And I got to see the light in his eyes when he got it.
There’s this great luxury (and burden) of time in homeschooling. Time with your kid, time to dawdle, time to come back to something over and over again.
I told my friend L. that I feel like someone who just gave up smoking because I’m sort of this crazed homeschooler right now. I’m wild-eyed and wringing my hands but at the same time I keep saying, “Why isn’t everyone doing this? This is so great!”
I am flipping insane. Aren’t you glad you aren’t married to me?
Speaking of my husband, Brett got in a car wreck today. He’s fine, the other person is fine, the cars are fine (but cosmetically challenged). The thing that’s worrisome is that he thinks he fell asleep going through an intersection. He went across two lanes and doesn’t remember it. He thinks that the car fumes may have conked him out because it’s the first time this year that he drove with the windows shut. If that *is* the problem, I hope it’s a new one because Noah and I drove all winter in that car and I’d hate to think that I was slowly asphyxiating my son. Thank god Brett’s fine, though. And the guy he hit was really kind about it.
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Tags: homeschool, Homeschooling, Noah
Another reason to love Lynn
Sep 26, 2002 Read/heard/seen
Not that you need more reasons because she’s so dang loveable! But now she’s gone and posted this useful link in her Diary of a New Homemaker! It’s the Totoro FAQ! If you haven’t seen this movie yet, you must go out and get it. (Sarah, are you listening??? Heather, now that you’ve come over to the dark side of children’s videos????) Really, take my word for it.
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Survivor’s Guilt
Sep 26, 2002 Judaism
I just finished A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O’Nan. I was taken aback at first because it’s written in the second person but I fell into it very quickly and the device works. It’s beautifully written.
The book is about a young man, a veteran of the Civil War, who lives in Friendship, Wisconsin with his wife and infant daughter where he acts as sheriff, undertaker, and pastor. He is a man of tremendous faith, living under a crippling burden of survivor’s guilt because of the war. A diptheria epidemic hits the town and he struggles to save those he loves from the disease and from the threat of a wildfire looming just beyond Friendship’s borders.
It’s a very, very disturbing book; just heart-wrenching. It’s a great book club book because it’s chockfull of symbolism. I’m going to try and get one of my friends to read it so that we can talk about it. Why the horses? How did the knife end up in his pocket? What about the elephants?
Here’s a clip from a more benign part:
You think of the night you first saw Marta — at a barn dance in Shawano — how, like now, you couldn’t sleep afterward, how it seemed that her grin and the cock of her slim hips threw your whole world in doubt. She danced herself into a sweat, and when you tried to take her by the waist — primly, oh, with the most noble intentions — she kicked you in the shin and whirled away laughing. Though you’d spoken only a few words to her, you felt — you hoped and feared both — that soon you’d be leaving behind everything you knew. It was exciting, and frightening, and while that’s not quite how it feels tonight, you recognize this new edge the two of you have stepped over.
But that was willful, you think. This is different.
Faith will always save you. In the dark you repeat the phrase to yourself, as if that will make you believe it. It’s a question, really, and you think the answer could make a good sermon. When won’t faith save you?
When you believe too much in this world. In yourself. In anything but God.
When you won’t let it. When you don’t want to be saved.
And why wouldn’t you want to be saved?
Because you don’t deserve to be.
It reminded me of one of my favorite books, This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski; the best depiction I have *ever* read of life in a concentration camp and survivor’s guilt.
