::: everybody's got the fever :::

Tonia at Study in Brown has a great post on the family medicine chest here. Lots of great suggestions that I already use, and lots that are new to me. So many people I know have the flu/swine flu right now. Tonia's post is so highly appropriate and full of truth, both practical and beautiful. Thanks, Tonia!

::: thicket dweller and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad morning :::

It's 6:33 a.m.

How can the day suck already?

I'll tell you how--when you're the mother of children who feel that they're failing.

Late last night, before bed, after Monet was sound asleep, I signed on to Edline, the school's academic tracking system. It's a system that has great potential, except that I keep believing that the teachers are actually using it, so if I sign on and find that there's no homework or class notes for Monet, I believe there's actually no homework or class notes. It doesn't occur to me that a school system would set up, maintain, and point parents to a system that some of the teachers use and some of them don't.

Apparently, however, when it's time to put up weekly progress reports, they do.

And Monet is failing History.

HISTORY!

How can a person FAIL History? Math, I can understand. English? Not in this house, buddy. But HISTORY?

One of my biggest pet peeves in life is that someone would make history boring, would give a kid a list of names and dates and measure their success in the class by whether or not they can memorize them. That is totally not what history is about. History is US! It's the story of where we came from, what mistakes have been made, what successes have been celebrated. It's about human beings, and triumph, and tragedy, and passion, and drive, and LIFE. How can a person hate History? How can a person fail History?

Well, I'll tell you one way a person can hate it. If, like I did, they have a History teacher who was only there because he was the boys' basketball coach and you couldn't be a basketball coach unless you taught a class, so he taught History, and he didn't care about it, and he leered at the high school girls, and he was totally and completely boring. Completely.

Now, here's my son, and I'm thinking, "Heck, it's twenty-five years later. Surely they've made some advancements in the training of History teachers," but then I log on to this sometimes used, sometimes not Edline and I see that he's not just failing, but he's REALLY failing. So, while he's dead asleep, I pull out his five-subject binder and flip to the History tab. Page after page after page of photocopied worksheets with fact upon fact and obscure name upon obscure name that they're supposed to define and identify.

He's only been in class for THREE WEEKS! Each of these people listed lived an ENTIRE LIFE! How in the world can you cover one whole sheet of names, one whole sheet of lives in THREE WEEKS? How can you absorb that, let alone CARE about them?

I guess this is the Charlotte Mason in me coming out. I don't understand the need to cram a bunch of facts into a kid that he won't remember, won't care about, when you can spend some good quality time on a few key things and really give them a passion for them.

It doesn't help that, when we were trying to make the decision to send Monet to this small private school, people assured us that he'd do fine. People have been assuring us all along the way that he'll get plenty of help, that he'll succeed, that the staff won't let him fail. And in spite of my worries and concerns and careful questions and requests for extra help and extra patience, he's struggling in Math, he doesn't like English (be still my HEART!), and he's failing in History.

Sigh.

Then here's me, carefully composing two e-mails--one to the Math teacher and one to the History teacher--asking what we can do to help Monet succeed, and when I press "send," I find that Edline has "logged me out" because my account had been "inactive" for a period of time. Writing, I think, is an activity. It's pretty active. No logout warning, no autosave. Two carefully composed e-mails...gone.

So I'm feeling pretty upset about this, right, when I read a note on facebook from my college-aged daughter, who apparently bombed at an improv and didn't make it into her school's production of Into the Woods, which she really, really, really wanted, and who's feeling like a failure in her Media Production class, and I find that she's really struggling right now, that she's really feeling down and rejected and pretty much like a failure, and, as I read the things she's upset about, I wonder how much of it I planted in that head of hers--her need to be funny, her need to hide her emotions, her need for perfection.

Then I start beating myself up, and I wonder, "Why didn't I plant confidence? Why didn't I plant resilience? And God! Why didn't I plant the need for God?!?"

And so here it is, 6:49 a.m., and it's a sucky day already.

So I'm going back to bed, and I hope when I wake up, the new day won't be as sucky.

But then I remember that I have an appointment today to have an ultrasound done on my apparently failing gall bladder. Today.

9/9/09 at 9:00 a.m.

I could use a lift, God, okay?

Midwinter

Ms. Booshay over at Quiet Life issued a photo challenge. Post the sixth photo in your sixth folder. Donna's is stunning. Mine is eh. Though shalt not covet they blog neighbor's camera and photographic eye. ;-)

It's now day five of some illness that has me feeling less-than-healthy. I've been spending this week in bed with a pounding head, fever and chills, throbbing eyeballs and wracking cough. Yesterday, I finally went to the doc because I was fairly sure I had the beginnings of sinusitis and bronchitis. The doc agreed. While we were in there, Bo had his nostrils swabbed for a flu test, which was very unpleasant (so he says. I closed my eyes and could only hear the procedure) and came back negative. Negative! Today, he's feeling the effects of a bad cold, he says, but not the flu. Could I just have a very bad cold that carries with it the classic symptoms of influenza?

But, as I often say, things like this are God's way of slowing us down, and I have been slowed w-a-y down, what with this unfriendly visitor and this amazing Midwestern weather. We're actually having a winter this year, and it has everyone in a tizzy! School called off day after day (ours continues on, of course), meetings canceled, practices postponed. People are bustin' out the sleds and skis. My neighbor has been so kind as to plow my long, country drive, sometimes multiple times a day. But now that I'm a mini-van mom, I'm still stuck here until the man with the snow tires gets home. So I've settled in, have just about worn out my iPod and wireless keyboard, and have drunk more licorice tea in the past week than most people drink in a lifetime.

Believe it or not, I've actually enjoyed this winter, even with the illness. I've awoken to so many beautiful sunrises, and, as I type, I'm blessed with the view of a gorgeous white dusting of snow on the huge silver maples. I love the clean whiteness. If I could have my way, it would stay like this until April, when the crocuses start popping up from the earth. I know that we won't have Spring in January or February, so it's just fine with me if the land lies dormant under the blanket of white. It's when it all melts and we have two or three months of ugly, brown, litter-strewn mud to contend with that my sadness kicks in, that I feel the effects of that terrible bleak midwinter.

I do have compassion for those who have to navigate the roads and sidewalks in this weather. I wish there were some way we could all do the sensible thing and just hibernate for these months, but I know that it's not realistic (though I've never been accused of being a realist!). But even in my compassion, I can't hide my excitement when I see these incredibly big, fluffy snowflakes that are even now dancing outside my window.

While I certainly look forward to spring, I know that it's quite a ways away. So, for now, I embrace winter!

What Is It with Us and Winter? A Tragedy Averted

For some reason, winter is always a problem for us. Terrible things seem to happen during winter. One year, I was very overdue with The Baby and my dad ruptured several discs in his back. We were living in a small cabin with no indoor bathtub or toilet and there was ice everywhere. For my dad to get back and forth to Ol' Rosy (the outhouse) was impossible, so he had to use a bedpan, which spilled on several occasions. I, and my very pregnant belly, spent a lot of time close to the floor that winter cleaning nasty messes.

Then one year our whole family got sick. Pneumonia, bronchitis, sinusitis, laryngitis--you name it, we had it. Bo was sicker than he'd ever been, unable to sleep and in terrible pain. On Christmas eve, I'd still not put up decorations, wrapped gifts, or anything. We were in the middle of building a house and everything just seemed hopeless.

Two years ago, we had a horrible ice storm and were without power for a week over the Christmas holiday.

Because we live on a hill, getting into the driveway once the winter weather hits is quite a challenge. The first winter we lived here, we were driving home from visiting friends up north and arrived home very late, to the tune of 2 a.m. When we reached our road, it was clear that we wouldn't be taking that route with our big van, so we tried an alternate route. That route was completely drifted over, a fact we didn't discover until we'd unsuccessfully attempted to navigate it and ended up back-end first in a snow drift. With a two-week old baby, four kids and a young guest in the car, we tried to figure out what to do. It was a two-mile walk in the drifting snow, by now it was 3 a.m, and we couldn't run the engine for fear of the tailpipe being blocked by the drift. We'd die of carbon monoxide poisoning. My husband had his cell phone and called my dad to rescue us. He got the Jeep stuck in a snowdrift and staggered through the storm a 1/2 mile to be stranded with us. We finally called a neighbor who brought his truck and shuttled us to our drive, where we trudged uphill and then steeply downhill to our littel cabin in the woods.

This year, we've had very mild weather. Until today. It was great for sledding and snowboarding, but when we arrived home from church, we were unable to get our van up the drive. That was tolerable this morning; there was nothing to carry. But this evening, we had fourteen gallon-jars filled with raw milk, a sleeping toddler, three bags of groceies and a few sundries to haul.

We decided to get out and push.

The three older kids and I got behind the van and pushed as hard as we could. At first, we didn't seem to make any headway, but then we moved it a couple of feet. The frightening thing was that everytime we seemed to get the thing moved, one of us would lose footing and the van would start sliding backwards. I thought for sure I was going to end up on the ground with the van sliding over me.

But we made it up the hill and into the parking area. There, we realized that our Jeep was parked on the wrong side of the garage, which would make it difficult to unload the van.

"Do you want to move the Jeep, or do you want me to?" asked Bo.

"Doesn't matter," I answered.

"I'll do it, then." And he hopped out of the car, leaving the van running.

Sweetheart asked if she could play in the snow. Her brothers had run down the hill after pushing the van instead of riding inside of it, and she thought it unfair that she'd not get to throw a few snowballs, too.

"It's dark," I protested. She lamented from the back seat.

The next thing I knew, fifteen-year-old Houdin was yelling Sweetheart's name. I looked over to see her lying on the ground behind the Jeep, the vehicle still moving slightly. It stopped, and Sweetheart scrambled to her feet, and then collapsed in frantic tears. My darling daughter had almost been backed over by her own father. He hadn't seen her. How could he have? She'd been bent to the ground to pack a snowball. I hadn't even realized she'd left the van.

While sixteen-year-old Bard was helping Sweetheart into the house and comforting her, Bo finished maneuvering vehicles and then began unloading the milk from the van. As I was putting away the mountains of hats, gloves and scarves, I hear a crash and a yell. I raced into the garage to see that one of the crates of milk had fallen out of the back of the van, shattering a glass bottle and breaking the lid off of a plastic one. Bo was beside himself with frustration.

At the same time all of this was going on, my dad was kneeling in the back of the van with his feet sticking out of the side, extracting The Baby from her carseat where she was groggily talking to him. I closed the front passenger door...on my dad's foot.

I'm not sure why these things happen in winter, but they seem to be very attracted to us. It made me think about how many things could go wrong during the day and how blessed we are that these things were potential tragedies, not real ones. At church tonight, someone announced that in a nearby city a car had slid off the bridge and crashed through the guardrail into the river. They still had located neither the car nor the passengers. How horrible those people must have felt. How terribly frightened they must have been as they realized what was happening to them, to see that river rushing toward them just before impact and to feel the icy water close in around them. My prayers immediately went up for them.

I don't know why God spared Sweetheart tonight. A foot or two further, and we might be in serious mourning right this moment. But we're all safe, as a family. We're warm and alive and blessed to be so.

I don't know, either, what it is about winter that brings these challenges, but if they come to you, too, during this time of year, please be safe and count your blessings.

Peace to you.

I'm speechless

When I was in college, I worked at a restaurant where the manager was a tyrant. On any given night, the scene in the galley would include Tom yelling at someone and that someone either yelling back, ignoring Tom or slinking away in tears.

During that time, I probably did more reading that I could ever dream of doing now, and in the course of that reading, I found a nugget of truth that I've quoted many times since.

I so loved this nugget that I wrote it boldly on a piece of cardstock, puncuated it with a smiley face, and tacked it above the window where the chef passed the food to the servers.

As soon as Tom saw it, he snatched it from its prominent location and tossed it in the trash.

The phrase was "Behavior breeds behavior."

Tom knew that his grumpiness and impatience caused grumpiness and impatience among his staff, but he didn't want anyone else to know. He seemed to prefer being bossy and nasty.

His bossiness eventually closed the doors of the restaurant for good.

I've been reminded of my favorite phrase quite often today. I awoke this morning to find that my voice was completely gone. I can barely raise it to a whisper.

This isn't the first time this has happened. I seem to lose my voice around this time every year. Twice I've lost my voice just after being asked to do a radio interview.

Losing my voice always causes me to take pause. It makes me realize how much I use--and abuse--this tool that God gave me. Rather than wishing my voice would come back, I sometimes wish it wouldn't. I've often believed that if I could be a quieter person, my kids would also be quieter people. I don't seem to be able to force this in myself, but when laryngitis strikes, I see that it's likely true.

Because the interesting thing about voice loss is that when I whisper to my family, they whisper back. Sometimes they do it to be silly. But sometimes they do it without even realizing that they're doing it.

Losing my voice tends to take away the things that most offend me about myself; yelling, responding with a sharp tone, calling for people from other rooms or from the other side of the house, being quick to speak instead of quick to act.

So, while I do appreciate my voice, I think it might be nice to lose it for a longer period of time--say, about three months. Long enough to establish new habits and patterns that I could retain after my voice returned. And if God felt that I was straying from those habits, He could take my voice away again until I straightened up.

I doubt that I have months to be voiceless, though. It's likely only days. But in that time, I'm enjoying the fact that I don't have to answer the phone, that people have to come and find me instead of hollering for me and expecting me to holler back, and that I can justify e-mailing instead of phoning.

For just this brief period of time, I get a chance to see what it's like to be a quiet person, and how that behavior can breed quiet behavior in others. And I like it. I hope I can figure out a way to make the behavior stick even after the vocal chords have healed.

Here's to peace and quiet, whatever it takes to get it.