the year of focused calling

it has begun.

i started calling this year of dissertation writing my year of saying no (to everything except to my family and to my dissertation).

my wise sister Sarah encouraged me to reframe that as my year of focused calling. it's my year to focus specifically on my dissertation, to my calling as a scholar, researcher, writer.

i vacillate between feeling overwhelmed, feeling extremely blessed and fortunate (so few people in this world get the luxury of having the time/opportunity/job to thinking/writing/reading), feeling resentful of the demands of this work (for me, for Jon, for my kids), feeling excited about what i'm researching, and on and on.

i remember in my guidance committee meeting a few years back, one of my committee members asked me about the affordances that motherhood provides for my life as a scholar. the question took me off guard. i hadn't even considered having space in that meeting to discuss such an issue.

years later, i'm still reflecting on that question. and, i'm thinking about the interrelated one: how my scholarship helps me with motherhood/parenting.

more to come.

"You see George, you've really had a wonderful life"

I feel that way.

Mochas. Flowers. Cards. A birthday video. Presents. Phone calls. A list of why I'm loved.

Jon, kids, family, friends: thank you.

I need my kids...

This past week it snowed for the first time this winter season. On Thursday, we woke up to the world carpeted in pure white.

My first reaction was to sigh and lament the extra work involved in scraping off the car and getting the kids dressed in their hats, mittens, snowpants, boots.

My kids, on the other hand, were so excited. They were outside playing in the snow at 7:45, shreiking with delight as they rolled around in, played with, and ate the snow.

I needed them to remind me of the magic and beauty in snow.

I haven't been blogging lately...

...but I have been resonating with a book titled: Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace (Ayelet Waldman)

what i've been thinking about

i have been in academia long enough to recognize patterns in my behavior.

whenever i get stressed or overly anxious about my school work, i become increasingly interested in any other non-school related topics/issues - all in the effort to procrastinate and fantasize about doing work on other interesting topics.

lately, my interest has been in parenting articles/perspectives. in all honesty, i seem to just stumble across them (an article in our local newspaper, a segment on npr that i listened to while i was driving, casual disscussions with friends).

anyway, here are two of the most recent ones. perhaps some day, i'll do scholarly work on the cultural themes/discourses across these pieces/perspectives and my positionality in relation to them. but first i need to finish (or actually start) my dissertation :)

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103794433

Learning from my kids

The kids are making forts today. As I carry a load a laundry through the room, I stumble over blankets, pillows, and the worlds that they represent. I need to be reminded that everyday objects like the cushions on our ugly couch can be transformed into magical kingdoms, that food tastes better when eaten in a small dark home created by little hands, that the laundry can wait.

I've been chewing on this (sent to me from my mom)

My mom sends me things to read. The topics vary. Sometimes she finds things she knows I've been thinking about. Sometimes it's things she thinks I should be thinking about. Whatever it is, I always read them and I'm always prompted to think about something in them.

Over the years, my collection of photocopied articles and newspaper clippings has grown. So has my deep appreciation for this gift of learning, thinking and fostering dialogue among loved ones that my mom has modeled so well for me.

A recent article she sent me was entitled: The building blocks of being a dad (Larry Matthews, Globe and Mail, June 15, 2008). Though it's about being a dad, I think what Matthews writes about applies to both fathers and mothers.

He writes,

Fatherhood came to me at age 30, thrusting me into a role that was both mysterious and mundane. The mundane came in a barrage of infant needs. Thankfully my wife had prepared, studying how-to books well in advance of our son's birth, and bringing forward the collected wisdom of a durable Atlantic community. I served as the assistant, and was on a steep learning curve. One lesson I learned about the care of another human being that the mundane – the food and clothes and diapers and equipment – is inescapable. I have been slower to grasp the mystery...

...And that is the mystery – that helping raise these tiny creatures for whom I was responsible would create a profound desire for them own heart, and that a parent’s need for a child continues to grow. How utterly I have come to need my children, how deeply they move me, and how powerful they have become in my life.

...I caught a glimpse of a procession of fathers marching across the Canadian Tire parking lot. Each man is drawn by the child in front, the past pursuing the present and, through them, our hopes for the future. In my vision my father, who is 81, and will cross town to see his son, followed me and behind him, my grandfather, and behind him, my great-grandfather, all drawn forward by their daughters and sons.

In front of me strode my son, oblivious to my vision, and not thinking at all of the sons and daughters I hope he has some day, so they may teach him what it is to play freely, to need others deeply and to know pure joy.

The mundane and the mystery. I like that.

Some thoughts from "Taking Faith Home"

Every week at our church, there's a "Taking Faith Home" slip of paper to take home with us.

This week, there's a quote I really liked:

Christian parenting is not about having it all together or following a predetermined pattern. It involves living daily in dependence on God's grace and love in Christ. And as we do, we teach our children the most important lesson of all: that God is for and with them in Jesus, no matter what.

Semantics?

A few weeks ago I tried to convinced Jon that the reason we're so tired when we go to bed is that we live a full life. (I also suggested to him that some day, when we're older and having trouble falling asleep or sleeping in, we'll look back on this season of our lives and envy our abilities to fall asleep the minute our heads hit the pillows). I have to admit that I'm not sure he was convinced.

In a phone call with my dear friend Heidi, she commented to me that the difference between being "busy" and "living a full life" has got to be more than just semantics.

Right on.

And so, I work towards articulating that difference in words but also deeds.

Prior knowledge

It's been raining for the past few days. The kids and I have done a lot of playing indoors. Yesterday I helped them build a fort in their bedroom. It was fun.

It was even more fun to overhear the kids playing as I sorted through their summer and winter clothes.

Claire acted out Little House on the Prairie (books we've read together), the story in the Bible when Herod decided to kill all the baby boys (she and David had to run away from the giant so that her babies wouldn't get killed..there seems to be some confusion between the David and Goliath story and the Herod story), music class (she goes to music class once a week and led me, as "Mary" through one of the activities she does there), and preschool show and tell (she asked me the kinds of questions that her teacher asks her when she does show and tell).

In the education field, we talk a lot about students' prior knowledge and the importance of tapping into what they know and experience. Claire's collage of stories and experiences, all acted out in a 1 hour of rainy day play, reminds me of how complex and multifaceted kids/students are, and, of what an impossible job that teachers, and parents, have.

Multitasking

As a mom, I need to multitask...all the time.

Sometimes I think the cumulative effect of almost 5 years of doing this, has left me with a very short attention span (I think about this whenever I sit down to do my school work).

"A series of unfinished conversations" is how I like to describe some of my friendships with other moms of young kids. I just never seem to be able to finish a sentence when I talk with them as our kids play.

It's easy to frame this as a necessity, as something that I need to do, that moms have to do during this season of life. I've been wondering though if more of what I need to do is to live more fully in the present, in the moment, in the particular time, space, and task.

Sin Boldly

Here's what I've been chewing on lately...

It's from a book that my friend Jane recommended I read. The book's called Sin Boldly. It’s written by Cathleen Falsani, a religion columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Here’s what she writes in one chapter:

A friend of mine, who lost his mother when he was a young teen, believes that the love of a mother for her child, that unconditional love that the Greeks called agape is, in fact, the first experience humankind has with grace. Mothers, and women in general, he argues, are special vessels of grace, both for their own children and for others. The disposition of the soul of a woman who is a mother is open to the flow of grace in a special way because of the powerful selflessness mothering engenders in creators for their creation. (p. 171)

Falsani then goes on to describe how a group of women in Kenya…mothered her “in a way that forever changed the way I think about motherhood and grace.”

Though I don't feel particularly "grace-full" this evening (I wasn't very patient with the melt-downs that all 3 kids had), I do feel refreshed and renewed with this quote - ready to lavish them with my small attempts at grace.