Things I'm Happy About

Below you will find a shameless list of Happy Happenstance and Real Rewards and brow-sweat flinging Phew! Findings. As I keep going on and on about, this is it for us. It's a sort of Finals Week for the Parents, Class of '07. So here it is. This is what I'm glad about.

1. All three kids understand the difference between ranting at general injustice (or bad luck or momentary disappointments or personal pain), and whining. In this house we do not do whining. It displays a lack of gratitude, and a deficient perspective on the world and one's own place in it, and on top of that, it's bad manners.

2. See this painting? It's by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and it's called L'Innocence. I am very pleased to take note of the fact that all three of our offspring have been able to learn the difference between being an unaware child (no matter what your age is) and being deliberately innocent. They know the difference between art (which this is, despite its politically incorrect draping of the subject) and things that are lewd, titillatingly, and gratuitous. So now we live with young adults (for just a little while longer) who protest (loudly) when the Globe Trekker or Rick Steves have to use a fuzzing filter just to show museum art or people on a beach. That's stupid. The kids know it.

3. It is Ernest Hemingway who is credited with the saying that "courage is grace under pressure." I note with pleasure, that each in his (and her) own age-appropriate, still-growing, and also firmly rooted way is a young adult who believes this. They admire people with self-control. They are becoming people with self-control. Recently, our young giants have been faced with older, and yet not wiser people. And they have been asked to listen to the lack of wisdom being imparted to them in some truly unpleasant ways lately. This has been a test, and I held my breath, waiting to see what would happen. Hallelujah, raise your hands, my kids have behaved with courage. In such pressure as that, they have neither stooped to disrespect nor compromised their integrity.

Three points of such gratitude and reward that I hardly know what to do with myself when I think about it. So many, many, many times we didn't know what we were doing. We just faced in the direction of stubbornly cheerful gratitude and optimism, and politically incorrect exposure to all the arts and creative endeavors we could find, and we tried to set a courageous example no matter what the pressures were. We prayed for wisdom. We said things like "we've never run out of food and money at the same time." (Yes, it was that dicey sometimes.) We believed the triad: God is good, God can do anything he wants, and God loves me - and we believed the corollary: this, therefore, whatever it is, is really and truly okay.

I do not write (and then publish) these thoughts in order to boast of my own triumphs -- I write (and publish) them to tell any parent of younger children who might be reading that even when it looks like there is no way - no hope - no prayer - no chance that this bit you're in right now - that even THIS will turn out for the best, you have a reason to keep believing. Face toward the Light and bring your kids along. They'll get the habit of the Sun on their faces. I promise.

The last echo of the last week of the last year of school

Well, this is it. Out of three, I got one kid who says so - and last night he said so. "I just found out that I'm done with school on Thursday of next week." (He's a senior, but not a conventional senior, so he hasn't been paying attention to all the senior activities. He's getting a state diploma instead of a local one because he didn't attend conventional school during his freshman year - thus, a lack of a specific kind of credits - thus the state diploma for Mr. Responsible and the Delinquents. Maybe they could start a band.)

So this is his last ordinary Thursday. Lots of theater stuff over these next few days. The performances are this weekend, and he's worked his head off for this play. He's also spent a lot of time raging over the lack of attachment to the outcome he has seen in his peers. "Don't they realize we will be on stage with everyone watching?" "The way they're acting is disrespectful to everything that has ever happened on that stage - it's disrespectful to the whole idea of theater! To everything creative! What is wrong with these people?" (Eighteen year olds don't much seem to have any setting between "Volcanic" and "Comatose" - I'd assert that it was just this one kid, but he's the third of three and I'm not senile yet. Then there's the written evidence of my own youth - I found my journals yesterday.)

Anyway, I've been thinking about the different perspectives that have evolved in my own head throughout the years. My own end-of-high-school experience wasn't my first. My sister is eight years older than I am, and when she graduated from high school, I was nearly ten years old. At that time, I thought that "high school" must surely be some sort of earthly Nirvana - some sort of cross between a fantasy amusement park and a library - something very, very "high." I mean, just think about the name of it! It's called "HIGH school." It's "school" (which is as good as life gets, unless you can find a way to stop time completely - whenever you want - so you can read without getting interrupted), but it's "high" - what couldn't happen in a place called High School?

Plus ... there was this other thing.

In Portland, Oregon, where I grew up (me and Beverly Cleary), every spring ends with the Rose Festival. It's the City of Roses. There is the International Test Garden and Washington Park up on the hill where the Oregon Zoo is - the the Zoo Train runs between them. And Rose Festival includes the Grand Floral Parade. And the Grand Floral Parade includes ... ta!dada-daaaaah! ... Rose Festival Princesses! Princesses, I tell you! There were princesses chosen from ... (guess -- guess where the princesses are --) High School! So, excuuuuse me, but what is not to love about High School? They've even got princesses there!

Eight years later, and a thousand thousand miles away in perspective, my own high school graduation came. And from the murky mists of my childhood, a deep longing came with it. Not only was I in a small high school that didn't participate in Rose Festival, but there was the hard and inescapable fact that I wasn't Rose Festival Princess material. So ... my perspective on "my last week of school" had all the usual things. It was my last week of a life all laid out and decided for me, with my only actual responsibility being to turn up and do the assignments given. It was my last week of being constantly, week in and week out, with the friends I'd known for years - many of them since fifth grade. It was my last week of going to school in the morning with my little brothers in the same car. It was the last week of a lot of things. And ... (sigh ..) for me, it was the last week of the Long and Lovely Dream. No escaping it now. I was really and truly never going to be a Rose Festival Princess. Shoot.

And now here we are. My other two kids went around this rite of passage. They didn't go to high school - just enrolled in community college at the age of sixteen (with varying degrees of success), and so they didn't do the Last Week of High School thing. But this kid - this last of the tribe - this vocal and verbal and very vibrant guy - whose trademark statement is the fact that he wears dress socks but makes sure they do not match - he's doing it. And he's talking about it. (This too makes him different from his siblings. He says stuff.)

And so now here I am. This time I'm not the little sister - and I'm ready to admit that high school is often neither high nor school. And I'm not the disappointed never-crowned princess wannabe ... well, not much, anyway. This time I'm the mom. It's not my last week. This time I am off to the side, hearing echoes of the past, and still able to hear so much more of the music than I could back then. This time I see the fear and recognize the frustration and remember the eagerness to just get on with it and to finally be done with all the setup.

And now I know. Many times, in many ways, over and over in this life, this is how it will be for our son. He will feel eager to get on with it - wish that he could just click on the "fast forward" arrows for this last bit - and at the same time have a kind of exhilarated fear roiling around inside him because you can't know what happens next until you get there. This isn't the last time he'll feel like this. But it's the first big one.

After this, these almost-but-not-yet moments won't ever again be quite so sharp and sweet and strong for him. There will be more settings on his emotional scale - a lot of them as time passes - all the reactions between "Ballistic" and "Lethargic" will be added to him. That's what makes this first one in a class by itself, maybe. Maybe the sharpness of this time is simply the fact that there are no incremental settings in an eighteen year old's emotional reactions, and there has been no time yet for a sense of proportion and perspective. Maybe when it becomes possible to anticipate at least some of the possibilities, it also become impossible to feel things like that.

I wouldn't change that fact of life even if I could. We would tear ourselves to pieces and eventually melt and flame and burn away in a heap of emotional heat if we had to live all our lives at the age of eighteen. Just like with love, we need the deeper roots and the weathered storms and the sorrows and the tough times, and we need the joys that come from something we can't yet name when we're eighteen. We call that a marriage - not just a date. But also just like love, this beginning time is really something wonderful.

Memorial Day Poppies

In search of some good photos to use for this topic, I found what I think may be the most succinct version ... at Kathy Ireland's site, of all places!

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on May 5th, 1868 to honor and decorate the graves of fallen soldiers during the Civil War. Later on, this holiday came to include fallen soldiers from any war.

To honor Memorial Day from the gardening world, Moina Michael wrote a poem about Poppies and War in 1915, inspired by the poem "In Flanders Fields." She then began to wear red poppies on Memorial Day in honor of those who died serving the nation during any and all wars.

Later a Madame Guerin from France was visiting the United States and learned of this new custom. When she returned to France, she made artificial red poppies to raise money for war orphaned children and widowed women, which became a tradition that spread to other countries as well.

For some lovely photos, see this site.

Woman's Work on Memorial Day

Some of us do the part that helps the ones who do the soldiering.

And some of us have seen an opportunity to join more personally.
Sometimes the men do the supporting role.

And sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
And some of us are the parents who are startled to discover heroism in our own children. We all know - war is hell. From the gates of hell, oh Lord, deliver us.

For the Army.

O LORD God of Hosts, stretch forth, we pray thee, thine almighty arm to strengthen and protect the soldiers of our country; Support them in the day of battle, and in the time of peace keep them safe from all evil; endue them with courage and loyalty; and grant that in all things they may serve without reproach; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

ABC news needs to get out more - just my own opinion, of course

Meet the New Millennials
They're Young, Cool and Not Keen to Get to Work Before 10 a.m.

That's what ABC thinks, anyway. I must beg to disagree with the conclusions, though. I have great hope for the future when I look at the "kids" coming into adulthood today. Here's why.

1. People who moan about the inadequacies and mindlessness of an incoming generation are always OLD. They are attached to old ways - old thinking - old solutions - old paradigms. New is bad for these people simply because it means that they no longer know what's going on and can't control it.

2. The peers of my children seem to fall into categories more clearly than our generation did. We had a lot of structure that the people before us invested in -- we rebelled at the parts we were asked to play, but we saw parts. The new adults of this world do not have that - and they are choosing their own parts. There are more clear strivers and more clear slackers. And they know who each other is.

3. Because so many of our generation dropped the ball when it came to paying attention to their families (having ourselves grown up with "as long as you're happy, dear" being one of our accepted family values), today's new adults are oddly competent in many cases. They have had to be. Somebody's gotta make dinner.

4. The creativity bubbling up in the arts is a great heaping pile of evidence that these kids have stormingly large imaginations. Formidable. Stunning.

5. More than ever before, there is less and less patience for what we here in this house call "moooo." The herd is full of mavericks who won't wear suits if they don't really need to.

My husband and I look around, and we are GLAD that the upcoming generation will be in charge one day. We think they'll be better at it than we ever could be. Hail the Revolution. It's not being televised.