Oh, the Clutter!

I was not a tidy child. In fact, my older sister got so frustrated with my messes that she would clean up after me! But then I grew up. I went to boarding school where our drawers were inspected every Saturday morning and if our underwear was not neatly folded, we were not allowed to leave for the two hours of freedom given us each week. And then I was on my own and had no one to clean up after me. Maybe I had become accustomed to having clean spaces, having never known anything else. Whatever the reason, I became a tidy adult. I often recall Jeremy’s uncle Doug laughing at my organization of my junk drawer (I still reorganize it sometimes, thinking of him laughing from heaven).
So it bothers me that childhood involves so much clutter. And I don’t mean the toys. I love the toys, sometimes more than the kids do. What I am talking about is the unnecessary STUFF. The birthday party favors that are bought because ‘you HAVE to have favors’; the endless papers that come home from school; the weekly deluge of stuff made in Sunday School. THEY DON’T NEED IT!!! Any kids would be happy enough to just be at a party and walk away with happy memories, a belly full of cake and an awesome sugar high. There are favors that are not just junk - my sister just gave the kids at her son’s party a little canvas bag full of up-cycled crayons and notepads with an applesauce crusher - she’s a genius  (and a pediatric nurse practitioner). One party my son went to, all the kids got one of those cool bubble wands. Loved it! But the plastic made-in-china garbage stuff has got to end. It makes me nuts!
Then there is all the school clutter. The endless papers and crafts. I want the to keep some memories of their childhood but when they can make a foot-high pile of paper at the end of each week, it is out of control!!! Thankfully Hannah and Eli have become pretty good at pitching papers into recycling (often times now without me even seeing it, so hopefully I don’t miss something important). That is just the worksheets. Then there is the stuff that is supposed to be meaningful, the craft projects, the Sunday School projects. I know that learning requires some hands-on activity but when I have every surface of my house covered in ‘meaningful’ crafts, something has got to go! I don’t think it is enough to say that parents ought to just make up their own minds about what to keep and what to pitch. That is not fair. I worry that someone will come to me with a crumpled piece of art one day and tears in their eyes because their work was not valued. Can’t we please find other ways to make meaning? I mean think about it - someone, some organization spent their money buying the supplies to make whatever this is. Often times, someone has put in hours of work cutting out pieces of the finished article for each child in the class. Then the kids spend ten minutes throwing it together and they bring it home. It may sit on a counter for a few days but eventually someone has to ask, ‘is it okay to throw this out now?’. And that person feels like a jerk, knowing how much time and effort (and a bit of money too) went into making it.
So please, please, can we stop this ridiculous trend? Can we let kids have lessons that don’t involve making STUFF? I think they’d learn every bit as much and even more.

Paper Airplanes and the Holy Spirit

I’ve flown a lot in my life. I think I was a week old when I rode in a plane for the first time. A little Cessna. My parents and sister and I had to fly to another town to get our groceries when we lived in the highlands of PNG. In high school, I flew home to PNG from Australia at every term break, totaling sixteen flights a year for four years.
I know that some people are terribly scared of flying. I was never terribly scared, but I will not say that I never worried. When I did worry, I would close my eyes and picture the hand of God, holding our plane and guiding it to its destination.
Jeremy and I were shepherding the second grade class this morning and the lesson they were being taught was about the Holy Spirit. And paper airplanes.
After this past week, I figured I needed this as much as they did. A neighbor in his last days, a former co-worker (can you call them that when it was student teaching??) with potentially bad news about his cancer, and family friends dying in a plane crash and leaving behind three daughters who are just entering adulthood. As well as the more trivial, yet ever present, worries about kids and money and daily ‘stuff’.
I was not at all surprised when the second graders replied that they did not know what the Holy Spirit was. But I was pleasantly amazed at the beauty of this lesson.
The children were lined up and given a piece of paper and told to throw it. What a disappointment, the papers all fluttered to the floor. This symbolized us trying to go about our lives without paying attention to the directions we are given through Christ. Then they were told to fold the paper once, and again, and one last time, never more instruction than just to fold it. Each time they added a fold, they got to throw it and see what happened. Each time a disappointment. Just because the Holy Spirit is with us does not mean that we get to stand by and do nothing and still expect everything.
The kids were then given step by step instructions to make their own ‘Holy Spirit Flyer’. They were thrilled to see the planes take shape and then could hardly wait to fly them.
Isn’t that something like parenting? We are amazed as we watch our children grow into their own person and then at some point, we let them ‘fly’ off on their own.
Now the kids lined up and took turns throwing their planes. And as seven year old boys will do, the jokes about crashing began. The connection sunk in immediately and I wanted to shut my eyes, to block out their words, to stop imagining that dear sweet couple and their last moments as their plane’s engine blew up, sending them plummeting to the earth with one final explosion. But then I caught myself and began to piece it together. Was not the same Holy Spirit with them in their final moments? God’s hand was still with them, it just continued to carry them away, up to Heaven as their plane dropped away. They were good, kind, generous people who raised kind and loving daughters.
While my heart aches for all the suffering of those around me, I have found a bit more peace today, knowing that that very same hand of God that I pictured so long ago is with us all as we fly, whether literally or metaphorically. I just pray that I can live as he taught, follow his instructions, and help to bring some of that peace to other people’s lives.

And Now What?

In early December I got word that my doula certification was official. Two weeks later, I finished my student teaching - the end of my master’s degree program. While I am still teaching my natural birth classes, co-leading Girl Scouts, and volunteering with Sunday School, I was worried that I would be bored.  
Not to worry! I had forgotten that I had signed up (out of Mommy-guilt) to put together Hannah’s class quilt and volunteered to teach an Art Explorers lesson for her class as well. Oh, and the house has a number of projects that are long-overdue for attention. I managed to attack both kids’ rooms and do a clean-sweep for outgrown clothes and ‘stuff’. And now that I bought that nice fabric to make the quilt and I have some left over, I’m thinking of making some clothes and accessories for the girls. And there is that scarf I started knitting for Eli. And the book I’m supposed to be reading for my book club (which I’m hosting). Guess I won’t be bored.
It is funny how, for the past half year, I had built up this long list in my head of everything I was going to do when I was done with student teaching. I managed to grossly over-estimate how much could actually get done in a day (or week)!
I had also forgotten how nice it is to have lunch with Evie. We both like to sit in the sunlight at the end of the table at lunch time and soak up the warmth as we eat. I always joke about having a nap, hoping that one day she will humor her mama and cave in. No such luck so far.
I had applied for a half-time teaching position at a nearby school but I think it was filled before my application even got in. I’m not too worried. It would be nice to earn some money to refill the empty coffers after paying for grad school. But as my wise younger sister said, “it is just money and we have each other.” She is right. Evie will never be three again.
So for now, I will continue to teach natural birth classes and hopefully get some doula clients so that we can plan our summer trip. And I will marvel at how blessed I am.

The Lord Giveth and The Lord Taketh Away

Wednesday morning, I held the foot of a mother as she pushed her newborn son into the world. Thursday evening, I held the hand of my husband’s Grandma as she passed away. There was crying both days. Tears of joy and tears of pain at both. It is the natural ebb and flow of life.

In what was some amazing timing (or perhaps a mama and baby who were really wanting me there as their support) the baby came five days after his due date, the day after I returned home from vacation. Leaving on the baby’s due date was very hard for me as I had really hoped to be at the birth to support this family that I had come to know, not to mention complete the requirements for my birth doula certification. I hoped and prayed throughout our vacation, believing it impossible, that this baby would wait. And he did.

The labor and birth were perfect, classic second baby labor with very speedy pushing and birth. Everything went as it should with no complications. But birth is never a ‘blah’ event, no matter how textbook it is. There are moments of self-doubt, of anger even at having to go through such a struggle to bring this new life into being. And then there are moments of incredible joy, when the baby is placed lovingly on the mother and all is known to be well. When the tears of relief and wonder escape the eyes of all present.

Gram’s passing was similar in a way. She was 93, she had lived a long and richly blessed life. She passed her driving test almost a year ago and was still getting about mostly on her own only months ago despite her repeated wonderment at when it would be her turn to go. She knew her race was nearly done, she was at peace with going on to meet the Lord (she even quoted her mother, saying “Jesus doesn’t want me and the devil won’t take me”). She fell and broke her hip two months ago and recovered well from the surgery, even walking a bit right before returning to her own condo a few weeks ago.

But it was her time. In the last three weeks her congestive heart failure progressed more rapidly and she was unable to get comfortable rest at night. She still wore her beautifully radiant smile when we visited her only three weeks ago, she lit up when she saw the children. But we could tell that the end was nearing and she was struggling more and more each day.

On Thursday evening, Jeremy got home from work and I had dinner packed up to eat in the car. We had talked with his parents and knew that we needed to go and say our goodbyes. When we arrived his mother met us and told us we had just made it. Gram’s breathing was very labored and her breaths were few and far between. It picked up as we talked and as she listened to her other grandchildren talking to her on the phone.

Evie sat with grandma on the bed pulled up next to GG as Jeremy and I held her hands. Hannah and Eli came in to hold her hands and say goodbye and then Hannah made a friendship bracelet for GG. We put the bracelet on next to Gram’s rosary and Hannah started working on another behind me on the bed. Evie and Grandma moved to the floor to play with stuffed animals and conversation turned to the birth I had attended the day before.

As we talked, Gram’s breathing slowed more and more and then stopped. Mom looked up from where she and Evie were playing, noticing and came to Gram’s side. Aunt Peggy also came over from where she had been sitting and hugged her mother. There were tears. I sent Hannah to the living room and gave Gram one last kiss.

Then I found Hannah, GG Rosebud, in a puddle of tears.

Life, even when it goes as we know it should, is not easy. I guess that is good, but man it hurts. We moved here with the purpose of raising our children close to their family. I wanted my kids to know what I never felt I had - to have relatives at all their birthdays and all the holidays and even the in between days. Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and by God’s amazing grace, two Great Grandmas that they would grow up knowing and then live their lives with the wonderful memories of them. And we have that at a cost. The cost of true sorrow over the loss of a loved one.

My own Grandpa died when I was six years old. I knew him and loved him but I had also spent a large part of my life very far away from him. I remember when he died. I remember my Mom being very sad but I also remember thinking that there was something wrong with me because I was not as sad as she was.

A year ago last week, my own Grandmother passed away. We had the fortune of being with her to say goodbye two days before she passed. I felt a different kind of sorrow at her passing, more a sense of wishing that I had gotten to know her better. I did have some great memories of times spent with her and her old cabin in Marquette marks the one place in this world that I truly feel connected to (being the one place I have returned to repeatedly in my life since I was a baby).

Gram Jennings I will miss more in the everyday. I had the good fortune of getting to know her well over the past fourteen years since Jeremy and I were engaged. I have always been impressed with her sense of style and her generously loving spirit. She made the best lemon cream angel food cake (which I tried making and failed miserably at - I’ll have to work on that). St. Patrick’s day has always been celebrated with corned beef and cabbage since I met her and I love it (being a non-red meat eating person these days I still allow myself some corned beef on St Paddy’s day). I have always loved that she likes silver as much as I do, she got the kids beautiful silver baby rattles. I loved that she loved my kids and enjoyed watching her eyes light up when the kids came to visit. I know they are going to miss the games of hide and seek they always played at her condo. All the family festivities will be a little less without her. One less place at the table for Christmas and Thanksgiving and birthdays and just plain old family get togethers.

So there are tears of sadness. And perhaps there should be tears of joy. Joy that she is finally in heaven where she so badly wanted to be for the past few months. The joy of her passing from this life on earth on to her eternal home, something like the joy of a baby being born.  Once the baby is born, the mother begins her worrying, "is he cold? hungry? wet? hurt?". And now our worrying over Gram is done but our sadness remains.

It is as it should be, just not easy.

My Ideal School

I am a fantastical idealist. I believe that everything can be done better and that there is always room for improvement and that maybe, perhaps I could be the one to do it.

Having almost finished my masters degree in education, my head is full of the latest and greatest teaching methodologies and theories, some of which are in use around the world and led to greater successes than what we see in our own public education system. Things as mundane as ‘what do the kids sit on?’ cross my mind regularly (form what I know about our natural physical state, I cannot stand to see children made to sit in seats all day - an exercise ball would be so much better and more natural for their bodies - as would getting up and moving more)!

Make no mistake, I know that we are blessed with some pretty darn good schools where we live, but that is not enough to stop a dreamer from dreaming!

So what would my ideal school look like?

It would be situated near the river and near an open park with natural spaces for exploration and hands on learning. The children would wear uniforms (yes, I did just say that). The building(s) would have windows that open and stay open on all pleasant days. The school would have a garden that is tended by the kids and that provides food for the lunches. School days and annual calendars would be made to work with families - slightly longer days that start a little later and longer school years that have more long breaks within them, similar to the year around schedule. There would be a pool and tennis courts and basket ball hoops and fields for more sports.

And these are just the visual trimmings. The meat of the school comes from the approach to learning and assessment. Teaching would be student-centered with more choice available to students in their learning and more flexibility in assessments, allowing for an individualized education that allows and encourages each child to reach their fullest potential. No cookie cutter test driven learning here, thank you very much!

Oh! I almost forgot, kids would be allowed time to wash their hands before lunch at a long trough-sink that would run down the hallway leading to the cafeteria.

Teachers would be respected as professionals and would have onsite childcare and preschool available for their young ones with time allowances for breastfeeding moms so that returning to work is not wracked with guilt but with pride.

Experts in al areas would be consulted in an ongoing basis to keep the school running at maximum potential and serving families in the best and most honest and straightforward way, keeping communication open to allow for constant improvements.

Students would interact with the world and use technologies to stay abreast of current trends in society - using new technologies to forge international learning communities that support one another and sharing students work in a way that connects them to their parents (imagine being able to see a poem your kid just wrote while you are at work!) and with other learners (think shared subject area blogging about current learning).

The possibilities are endless!!

Someday, someday.

For now, I am preparing to student teach in the fifth grade and hope that I can use some of this enthusiasm to get my students excited to continue learning where they are headed - the terrifying halls of middle school!

Tot at the Wheel

I was recently telling someone this story and though I should write it down for posterity.

When I was about 2 years old and we were living in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, my dad had flown somewhere and while we waited for his plane to return, my mom and sister and I were visiting our friends at the Catholic station on the top of a mountain. Mom was talking with Father Hans while my older sister and I were playing around, running in and out of the house.

Now, you have to understand that out in the bush where we were, there were not many vehicles and even fewer people who could drive one, so everyone who had a car occasionally left their keys in the ignition.

So I am told that I heard and then ran out to confirm by sighting my dad’s plane coming in for landing at the air strip. I ran in to tell my mom and she must have, in good mommy fashion, said something like, “okay, just a minute,” and resumed finishing her conversation. being impatient, I ran out the our Suzuki jeep that had it’s doors off and jumped right up on the driver’s seat. Did I call my sister to come join me, or did she just run with me, I don’t know. But at any rate, she jumped in the passenger side and was holding on to the roof with her feet on the seat and her rear end hanging out a bit. Which was probably a good thing because I turned the key in the ignition and the jeep began rolling backwards down the mountain.

At that point my mom and Father Hans must have come running form the house and one of them managed to pull my sister out of the side while the other tried to pry me out. Did I put up a fight, not wanting to get out of my sweet ride? Maybe. Somehow, I must have fallen for a brief moment so that my legs were under the jeep and the wheels were rolling toward me. Someone pulled me to safety and stopped the car only inches from a large rainforest tree.

Whew!

Maybe this was just another day on the mission field for my parents.

They say that your earliest memories are usually traumatic events that your brain stores with whatever language you have available at the time. So when I was five years old and woke up from a dream about an airplane rolling over my legs, my mom put it together and told me this story.

Crazy. But that is my life and there are plenty more where that one came from.

Twelve Years - Already???

As my facebook page has so kindly reminded me, our anniversary will be this coming Sunday. June 26th. And this will be our twelfth. I know it is cliche to say ‘where has the time gone?’ or ‘it seems like just yesterday!’. Sorry, but it does! I overheard a friend recently telling someone that he always jokes that he and his wife have been married for thirteen years, nine of them happily. The fact that we have a child who will be turning nine this year startles me every time I am reminded. I know some people thought we were married too young and had children too young but we don’t regret a thing. Sure, we have disagreements like anyone else. I know I’m no walk in the park to live with (just ask anyone in my house the day after I have cleaned!). And yes, it might have been nice to have been more financially stable at times (like now, LOL) but what is romance without a few kinks to work out?

You want a good story? I think our story is pretty good. (of course I’m biased)

It all started on a.... Okay, I don’t even really know. I know it was a park around Detroit called Greenfield Village or something like that. There are some pictures somewhere. Anyway, the reason I don’t remember is that I was a couple months old. Jeremy was five years old. He had a baby brother who was a few months older than me who was colicky. So the story goes that Jeremy told his mom repeatedly in the following days that, “that Martha baby is such a good baby, that Martha baby doesn’t cry.”

At that time, my parents were serving as missionaries in Papua New Guinea. Our parents had met when my Dad was serving his vicarage year at their church the year that Jeremy was born, so when we were on furlough, it was a good chance to catch up with old friends. While we were in PNG, Jeremy’s parents would send us care packages with toys and books (when studying children’s literature in college I went home for Christmas and brought back some of my favorite childhood books only to open them and find inscriptions written to Jeremy in the fronts of several!).

But back to the childhood years. When I was seven my family moved to Chicago for my Dad to work on his PhD at the U of C. This meant we got to visit with the Paschkes more often and I developed a schoolgirl crush on Jeremy. Of course, he was 12 or thirteen at the time and he was way too cool to pay attention to an obnoxious little girl in pigtails chasing him around. He does vaguely recall someone chasing him with water balloons at a church picnic. Yup, that was me! I thought he was dreamy with his braces and his big smile, looking so cool as he headed off to baseball games or band practice when we were visiting for dinner.

Then we headed back to PNG for two years. The next time we returned I was twelve and something about moving so frequently gave me the boldness needed to send a letter to Jeremy after we visited them on our way through town. I was in seventh grade and he was a senior in high school who had a girlfriend but he actually wrote back to me. Of course I was heartbroken to learn that he had a girlfriend but I loved reading his letters and loved that he cared enough to write to me so we continued writing. For six years.

Yes, you read that right. What started out as friendly notes back and forth grew into love letters over the course of six years. I was in boarding school in Australia for most of that time and checking my mailbox at the end of the school day was the best part of my day. When I had a letter, it made my day. I would grab it and run to my room and lay on my bed to read his letter even before changing out of my uniform.

My senior year in high school, Jeremy finished college a semester early and came to Australia to study for a year. He arrived when our family was on summer vacation in Cairns, so we got to enjoy my favorite waterfalls and some time together before we went back to our respective schools. Even though he was still sixteen hours away by car (which neither of us had then anyway) he could call me! I remember being in one of the classroom buildings studying on a weekend day when I heard a few of my friends running from the dorms, screaming my name - Jeremy had called (the dorm had one phone at the end of the hall that people could receive calls on). Girls intentionally walked past me several times to eavesdrop on our conversation. So imagine the excitement in the dorm when he actually came to visit once! My house mistress had come to trust me over the three year I had already been there and since he was written down as a family friend who had been approved of by my parents for visiting, she was much more lenient with our visiting. We sat on the steps or Ross Roy, the grand old building that stood at the top of the hill near our dorms to talk one afternoon and a few of my friends tiptoed past to catch sight of my dreamboat boyfriend that I had talked so much about. Then we were allowed to go into the city on the weekend for a few hours (which was pretty much unheard of for our boarding school, so all those years of good behavior paid off!). We walked around the city a bit and enjoyed a picnic lunch before he had to get me back.

Then a stroke of luck - I won an essay contest that sent me to Sydney as a part of the Youth Futures Forum, a national forum that drew youth form all over Australia to talk about how we envisioned the future of the country (I felt like a bit of a cheat, not really being Australian) and it happened to be held at the same time that Jeremy and his parents were visiting Sydney! So when my conference was over, they picked me up and I got to be a tourist in the country I had already lived in for three years. We saw the zoo and rode the water taxis and saw the famous beaches and even caught a show at the opera house. It was amazing! I do recall having that madly-in-love-inability-to chew-and-swallow feeling the whole time and when I boarded my plane back to Brisbane I sobbed like a baby. That Martha baby does cry.

After finishing high school, my family returned to the States and after a half year of working I started college at St Olaf in Minnesota. Jeremy came up to the Twin Cities to study physics at the U of M and one fall day when I took the shuttle bus to the city to visit him, we ate dinner and then he got down on one knee and proposed marriage.

I arrived back at my dorm that night flushed with excitement and after calculating the time difference, I called my best friend who was in a boarding school in Taiwan and asked if she would be my maid of honor. The plans were beginning!

Our engagement lasted almost two years but the wedding day seemed to arrive before I knew it! We were married at my Dad’s church in southeastern Indiana on a very hot June 26th. At our rehearsal dinner the night before, his uncles brought a pig out on a spit and a platter of yams as a continuation of the joke our parents had had about bride-price, which was the custom in PNG.

I woke up on our wedding day with monster-sized butterflies in my stomach. My Dad made me some tea and ran to get something to settle my stomach. The day is a blur of happy memories - I know I cried as I said my vows - I had dreamed of this day for so long it was hard to believe it was happening. I remember it drizzled as we arrived at the reception site and I insisted that the photographer still take some outdoor pictures. I remember his brothers carrying me on their shoulders around the reception hall. I remember all our friends and relatives that were a part of the day. His friends decorated our car but most of it washed off in the drizzle during the reception. I remember my Dad speaking during the reception and playing old tapes of the two of us talking when we were little. There was so much laughter and joy that night.

That outpouring of joy and love from family and friends at our wedding has sustained us through these twelve years as we moved and started our family and as we continue to grow. Sure, we have our spats, we have our days like everyone else but there are a few things I am sure of in life and one of them is that Jeremy and I were meant to be. I still feel like that giddy school girl when I think of how much I love him. Yes, he turns laundry pink sometimes but that makes him human - so that I can get past the flittering stomach of first love and be able to chew and swallow in his presence.

As testament to what our twelve years has brought us - three kids and an over-commitment to our local community - I am only now finishing this piece that I started three weeks ago. As I hear about marriages failing and unfaithful spouses and unhappy wives I know that I am truly blessed to have by my side a man that never leaves me in doubt and whose love I can always count on. Of course it is much more than that. Words do not do justice to the deep and abiding love that you know cannot be broken when you have your soulmate by your side. So here’s to another twelve years and more!