teachable

Not yet noon and we've paused to google whether rhinoceroses are related to triceratops, only a few minutes later asking Siri to myth-bust ear wig "facts."  There were balls in the kitchen at breakfast, related to the distance of the moon and the rate of speed it's traveling as it moves toward earth. Or something. 
Last week was a self-directed report about guerrilla warfare and Mao Zedong and Huey helicopters, which turned into a math lesson comparing numbers of deaths between war and covid19. 

There may be more teachable moments than there are opinions about hybrid versus remote learning.

The boys are joyful and resilient, they climb trees and correctly identify obscure insects.

We are trying to look ahead at the new school year with more curiosity and less panic. We are all going to learn something, that's for sure.

Can we raise them, somehow, outside the cult of selfishness?  Can we teach them how to roast a marshmallow right, to delay gratification.  How to dig a hole, to write a poem, to bake bread?

I find myself trying to manage unfamiliar feelings through the rearranging of objects, the ordering of things, right shoe then left, lining up the laptops and organizing the tupperware, smallest to biggest. Inside-outing the dirty laundry, following the rules as if it will keep us safe, as if it could bring her back, as if we're earning points, as if it even matters.

No one is achieving amazing things here. We'll save that for another school year. Or something.

The months ahead are going to be hard for lots of reasons, relentless generalized anxiety notwithstanding, and I want our home (and our home-school) to be a place of peace and comfort and connection. I have my own work to do.
The days may feel more liquid than solid, a vast a spreading goo, unmanageable. It's okay if we're not sure what's next, that it might be something unexpected.

None of us expected this.

water and rocks

Let us never forget the way nature helps bring peace to unsettled feelings.

John Bryan State Park

well then

Not today, I tell the boys.

Sometimes life just writes you tiny, awful poems.

We can't.
It's closed.
Unsafe.

Yes, but they say.
Instead.
Watch this.

The boys reframe our circumstance, measuring everything - surprisingly, inevitably - against an endless horizon.

curious time

Blue was the color of summer
of the sky and the water and the
feelings we left inside

life at home

books, tattoos, climbing trees, water, watermelon, board games, baking, napping...

what wonders await

In the forest the boys follow footprints, hunting for burrows and hollows and nests, hiding places.
All three of them seem satisfied among the trees, thriving in nature, and it makes me feel that way too, or at least that satisfied and thriving are possibilities.
They turn tree roots into hopscotch games, inspect feathers and toadstools and stones. They bathe in shallow creek beds, skipping rocks and experimenting with things that float.
I look around, pockets heavy with acorns and pinecones and shells, and am reminded of the enormous smallness of it all. And while the boys find treasures I try to find a way to forgive myself for not knowing the unknowable.

heights and lowts

Listening to his brothers talk in whispered tones that turned to loud cackles, Hank said That's their inside joke. But I know an outside joke!

Noticing glitter at the fairy garden, he shouted That is SO COOL. A million perfections.

Hanging balloons for cousin Nora's birthday he requested they be tied at different heights and lowts.