Illustrative

I also spent some time trying to determine what my son's so mad at; and then, when I thought I had a hint of an answer, I presented his teacher some ideas for tweaking his spelling homework.

Last night I used Adobe Illustrator to place spelling words on a computer screen – scattered about like a roll of Yahtzee dice – and then he dragged-and-dropped the words into reverse alphabetical order. We created a pdf of the resulting file and emailed it to his teacher.

After I let him play with Illustrator for awhile, of course.

Looking at this list, I find it rather shocking that anyone learns to spell. Write? Wrap? Royalty? Yeah right.

m-a-c-h-i-n-e: Machine

When I was a teenager my dad went through management training which he then used on my sisters and my mom and me. It turns out management philosophies work really well with teenagers. I'm not being facetious; I'm serious. I remember all his dictates. "No flat surfaces!" he'd declare, eyeing the papers and backpacks drowning the kitchen counter. When I'd fight with one of my sisters and eventually, inevitably involve the innocent third sister, my dad would cry, "Bring in the third party!" (I hated that he exposed that one. Bringing in a third party is a great way to deflect blame.) And when my mom would yell at him, he'd stare at her for a second, then ask one of us kids, "What's she really saying?"

That last one made the biggest impression on me, perhaps because one of my sisters was always yelling at me and so I had ample opportunity to apply it. (LOL Juliane!) No, seriously, it's a useful conflict management strategy. Pausing to determine what a person is really saying keeps one from reacting defensively. It encourages dispassion. It probably drove my mom nuts.

Anyway, after I wrote that post about homework, my dad's voice echoed in my head. I began to wonder why homework makes me so angry. How can it possibly be true that my kids' homework is more painful than mine was? I remember the mind-numbing nature of fourth grade vocabulary homework quite clearly, thankyouverymuch. Also, I have to make my kids do lots of things they don't want to do, but nothing makes me gnash my teeth and wail like homework does.

So: what am I really mad about?

***

I've got two answers.

The first is the most obvious: given the structure of our evenings, the kids need to start their homework while I'm starting dinner. Enough said, eh?

But also, I've been turning homework into a larger issue. When my son fights me over spelling, for example, I think about how I communicate at work entirely by email, and I wonder how the hell he'll manage in a world like that. In other words, when he fights spelling, I see him Unemployed! in Greenland!

I need to trust both my kids more than that.

P.S. All y'all's comments on the last post were really, really helpful. My husband and I talked over everything you said, using it as a springboard to develop our own approach.

P.P.S. I'm embedding this just because I can. What a geek. (At least, I think I can. Entertonement offered it as a free clip.))

Rage against the masheen

I hate homework. God, I hate homework. I hate my kids' homework more than I ever hated my own.

Both my children – the first grader and the third grader – have one assignment per school night, plus they are expected to read 20-30 minutes. (Aside to Maggie: neither has a reading log.) The reading is enjoyable but the homework! the homework! It sucks.

Now, I do believe my third-grader's homework is reasonable. He can't spell to save his life, so he needs to work on it every night – but he won't do it without a fight, nor without a substantial amount of patience on my part. (Once in desperation I told him I'd pay him if he did his homework without argument. He said, "Mom, it doesn't pencil out." Pencil out. I taught him that idiom. I just love having the tables turned on me.)

My first-grader's homework, on the other hand, strikes me as busy work. I mean, it is busy work; I think that's the point. I think she's being taught to do homework. And I am being taught to help her with it. Unfortunately the teacher is so particular that even when I review it, it gets sent back as incorrect or incomplete. I told my husband that she'll fail first grade unless he – a much more detail-oriented person – helps her out instead.

Sigh.

I talked to my dad about this yesterday, and he said exactly what I tell my own children: Get over it. Every kid in America has to do homework, and every parent in America has to supervise it.

I sympathize with my son. I want to rage, "But WHY? It's STUPID!"

Because.

Just because.

Thanks for listening. I feel better now.

Cold water, hot sun

For jo(e) and Mayberry, who asked.

In early October the McKenzie River is just barely deep enough to raft; we kept joking that if any of the kids fell out of the boat, they could just stand up. The water would be swirling around their knees. Every time we made the joke, though, we'd sternly tell the kids BUT DON'T FALL OUT – because folks, that river is cold. It's cold enough to stop your heart. It's so cold you can't get used to it; you can only resign yourself to the impossibility of ever again being warm.

Our friends own the raft; it's a fairly small one with just one set of oars; and I'm an inexperienced boater anyway, so I sat on the back with my son and our friends' son, worrying about keeping them warm and laughing. It turns out that two eight-year-old boys – encouraged, perhaps, by two grown men – can entertain themselves with songs about certain smelly bodily functions and jokes about knocking other people senseless, particularly little sisters, for three hours.

The day we rafted happened to be my eleventh wedding anniversary. I suppose it's a little odd to spend an anniversary with another couple and their child, but we had a great time. About two hours in, we pulled ashore at a natural beach, in the deliciously warm sun, and my friend took this picture of us.

Ha!

Graffiti

Perhaps the pictographs inspire people, or perhaps all those gray, blank surfaces compel them: all through this section the rocks bear inscriptions.

I wonder how old this writing is. It could be one year old, or sixty. I wonder how many people have taken a similar photo here.

Eh eh

Before we hiked Sunday, my sister-in-law said to be sure to stop at the "big rock." I thought she was joking (see previous set of pictures); but lo. There is a big rock. It reminded me of a glacial erratic – it stands on end in a meadow – but of course it's volcanic, too.

I need a geology class. Is it aa? I think it's aa.

*

Near here we encountered a man meditating. He sat beside a pool of water so clear you could see footprints in the bottom. We had been howling like coyotes and startled and blushed when we saw him, but he said it was all right.

Shadows

Artist Sister-in-law suggested my little family hike along a particular trail across the way from Sparks Lake* where springs emerge from tumbled lava rock, and where one may find petroglyphs.

"Take pictures of the shadows for me," she said.




Hidden in the shadows.


Shadows of the past.


Shadow of the future.

I thought this might be a hummingbird nest – Hummingbird Island is nearby – but my daughter declared it a cocoon.



Me and my shadow.

I leave it to you to decide whether she is my shadow, or I hers.


The dark shadows of fall.



*I thought she called it Devil's Garden, but the internet says Devil's Garden is near Fort Rock. I couldn't find this trail on any online maps.

Dodge. Noun. A quick movement to avoid something

This post was bothering me so I re-wrote it. Apologies to anyone stuck reading it twice.


The school said my kid doesn't understand idioms, such as (they said), "It's raining cats and dogs" or "You're pulling my leg."

Well DUH, said I. Who ever uses the phrase "It's raining cats and dogs"? Of course he doesn't understand those idioms. They should have asked him to define "yard sale" instead.*

I love idioms. They draw pictures in my mind. One member of my extended family often gets idioms wrong and it makes me laugh: not at him, but at the funny image it brings to mind. Six of one and a dozen of the other, he said, and I imagined one of those old-fashioned scales tipping wildly, with six eggs on one side and a dozen on the other. I don't think that means what you want it to mean, as Inigo Montoya would say.

(Raining cats and dogs: what kind of weather does that describe, anyway? Howling, because the cats and dogs are fighting? Drenching, because the rain drops are as big as cats and dogs? I don't think I get that idiom.)

If the school wanted me to help my kid with integers I'd have to get a tutor, but idioms are easy for me to teach. When we practice spelling I give him a kind of idiomatic background to each word, like so:


Dodge. Verb. To avoid by moving aside quickly.

• Use in a sentence: He tried to hit me, but I dodged out of the way.
• Common idiom: Dodge the bullet.
• Factual meaning: To move aside so quickly that a bullet shot at you won't kill you.
• Idiomatic meaning: To move so quickly that you avoid getting hurt or in trouble.
• Use in a sentence: I thought my mom saw me sneak a bite of that cake, but I dodged the bullet.
• Adjectival form: Dodgy. Evasive, tricky.
• Use in a sentence: I think my son just snuck a bite of that cake. He's a bit dodgy, that one.

Then he pretends to shoot me in slow-motion and I pretend to dodge the bullet in slow-motion, just like in the movies. Just like in the idiom.

---


This past Friday I tried to convince my husband (who really wanted to talk about Audis) that concrete language is Ursula LeGuin's genius, as illustrated in this brief passage: "I believe that as soon as wishful thinking or a conscious political or didactic purpose intrude on that credence, they deform it and the story loses plausibility. Wishful thinking gives us the feeble kind of fantasy where everything is easy, and you never have to feed or water or look after the horse you rode all day."

Isn't that great? She says blah blah blah political didactic credence plausibility – what does that even mean? the words point to nothing – and then she tells you about a foolish story in which a person waves a wand and viola! magically, instantly, without effort or consequence, the horse he rode all day is fed and watered and rejuvenated. He lies back in his hammock. Viola. Oh. Now I get it.

*When you crash so hard that your hat goes one way and your goggles go another way and each ski ends up a dozen yards from your point of impact, that's a yard sale.