JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

The flexibility of homeschooling allows us to take a vacation after Labor Day. While many others headed back to school and came back into town, we drove south into central Oregon for play and rest. Between our visits to the High Desert Museum, Newberry National Volcanic Monument, the Sunriver Nature Center and Observatory though our kids enjoyed plenty of education during the vacation. We glimpsed the moon, Mars, Venus and Jupiter, galaxies and stars through telescopes. Michelle Thaller’s infrared movie both taught and entertained us. We walked among pumice and obsidian flows, noticing squirrels and flowers living among the rock. We watched raptors soar, petted lizards and adored a baby porcupine. Bats fluttered around us one night and owls hooted as we walked in the dark and found a duck’s nest.

It was a week of much-needed refreshment in the desert. Each morning, as I went for a walk soon after sunrise, I would find myself staring into the dark eyes of a doe. Once a stag literally bounded across my path. Another time I glimpsed a desert rabbit bouncing between rocks.

And then, after hiking, biking, swimming and exploring, it was back to home for us too. And back to routines and schedules, intensified this year by new additions such as soccer for Michaela and piano lessons for Abigail. It also seems time to reorganize our studies with more structure. Now that two kids in our family can read, write and play with math problems, I am discovering how fast my days fill as I work with each one.

The past week disappeared in the adjustment of going back to home. This morning I’ll try to publish a few of my favorite vacation pictures and some ideas I missed. It’s good to be back home, renewed by our time together as a family. Here are Ted’s report and photos.

It’s not every day I discover a writer, mother and blogger whose inspiring ideas I want to copy in my own family.

Thanks to Bainbridge Buzz and its compiled list of local bloggers (thanks to the Buzz too for starting a weekly report on local blogs) I’ve enjoyed Islander Nancy Blakey’s blog The Way From Here.

On her website, Nancy Blakey described her blog:

These essays and journal entries reflect the lurching, joyous process of raising four children. It is a place where terrible birthday parties are thrown, tempers are lost and found, and the ways of a child bring the whole world into perspective.

One of my favorite posts this summer was Mom-n-Me Breakfasts: (here’s a short excerpt)

In this big family of ours we have a strategy for stretching that precious listening time. On Thursday mornings before school I rouse one of our four children and we go to breakfast at a local diner on the island where we live. It is a school day. We have routines ahead of us, but what makes the day special is life set aside for a few hours. We eat an extravagant breakfast and I listen to each child, one Thursday at a time, with undivided attention. I say little about table manners (although it is tempting), and I don’t take advantage of the warm feeling between us to discuss the friction or issues I may have with a child. I simply listen.

One Thursday morning at the diner I watched our thirteen-year-old son jitter his knees and roll his neck to some weird inner music. He dropped silverware on the floor, speculated how to make earrings out of empty Tabasco jars, and wiggled a loose tooth over and over. Ben ordered soda pop instead of orange juice and a huge ham and cheese omelet that he tried to cram into his mouth in three bites. I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t decide if I should laugh or scream SIT STILL! But then something happened: the ghost of Norman Rockwell whispered in my ear asking me to look at this live wire half-grown boy as if he weren’t mine. As if he were the subject for a magazine cover. I saw a lovable knucklehead with big feet. The image made me smile.

“MOM!! A HUGE WEASEL!” Ben yelled around a half a piece of toast stuffed in his mouth.

It’s also not every day that Bainbridge Islanders see weasels. The girls and I on one afternoon July down at the dock saw these weasels splashing in Eagle Harbor (but no camera!) and Beth Freeman this week was able to capture some pictures of them (a whole family!) with her camera – go look!

Other favorite posts include Alaska Time and The Dishes Can Wait (I can’t seem to get permalinks to these archive posts – try scrolling through the blog) Here’s an excerpt from The Dishes Can Wait – a must-read for moms! I wish I had received this encouragement years ago…

During my baby years, the years our four children were between the ages of newborn and five, I divided the world into ‘permanent’ and ‘impermanent’ things. The daily mountain of laundry, washing dishes, grocery shoppping, all fell into the ‘impermanent’ side of life. These things seemed necessary but dull. Anybody could do them, and they would be done today, tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that. Impermanent, as I saw it, would not change the world or leave a trace of my performance.

Permanents, on the other hand, left an impression in the slippery slide of my life. Reading a book, writing in my journal, making something: a sweater, an arrangement of flowers, a slingshot, meant I was alive underneath the fatigue.

Both on her blog and her website Nancy Blakey inspires me with her honesty, experience and practical suggestions. Look at these projects to try! Great ideas for homeschoolers or anyone who wants to have fun with kids and use her mind too!

Coincidentally at the library one day my daughter selected Nancy’s book Lotions, Potions, and Slime Mudpies and More. My older girls went through the book and used yellow stickies to mark each idea they’d like to try…

Nancy has four other books, filled with fun ideas from her years as a mom of four.

At the Eagle Harbor Bookstore website earlier this week, I discovered Nancy Blakey will be appearing on September 22 at 7:30 pm to speak about her latest book: I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers. She’ll be reading her essay Sex Education: The piece has its origins in conversations with her daughter Jenna about Jenna’s sexual activity. Other contributors to I Wanna Be Sedated include Anna Quindlen, Dave Barry, Barbara Kingsolver, and Louise Erdrich.



I think I’ll be there!

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four-year-old Michaela took this picture of feet at the party

On August 17 a group of Bainbridge bloggers got together to say goodbye to Sarah Gould and Adrian Sampson before they each left for college. Ted and I hosted the party at our home and guests included Chip Gibbons, Ed, Mary and Jared Hager, the new college students and a couple members of BI Geeks including Sarah’s father, Rick. Alas, I miscommunicated with Chris Holmes who had wanted to be there too. Walker Willingham and his family attended the vigil on behalf of Cindy Sheehan which was also the same night. I would have changed the date to prevent the conflict, but it had been put together at the last minute during the last week of Sarah’s time on the island.

I apologize for taking a while to post this but I was waiting until the kids could post their photos. I think Michaela took many of the pictures posted in the girls’ flickr account. The group of feet was one of my favorites – guess who? – and the rest are here. See the new flickr tag bainbridgeislandbloggers!

Sarah so far has posted from Reed, where she is enjoying the blue glow. Adrian, hope you are doing well at Harvey Mudd!

Thanks to everyone for getting together! It’s fun to experience our blogging community take shape!

I confess that when I first read John Scalzi’s Being Poor via Dina Mehta’s post, I laughed. Ted and I sleep on a lumpy futon bed and no one would describe us as poor. We also had a time in our marriage when all we could afford to drive was an $800 car. Even then I would not have said we were poor. In a subsequent post, John Scalzi explained why he felt the need to describe “being poor” and I appreciate his motivations, his experience and his compassion.

Being poor means different things to different people, as evidenced by the response to John Scalzi’s post. For example, in the Bay Area, with its high housing prices, many people who live next to the freeway are quite rich. This is a description that changes based on nation, culture and region and on a personal basis of experience. Although I agreed with some of his descriptions, I thought his list couldn’t compare to the one by zigzackly Dina linked, titled Being Really Poor, and the pictures she used to illustrate what it means to be poor in India.

However danah’s post encouraged me to go read the comments on Being Poor. And I did. Wow! The hundreds of writers (enough that John Scalzi created a second post for comments) reveal the difference of definitions but also the ways many have suffered. It is powerful. Thanks to everyone who shared stories!

Regardless of how poverty is defined, both John Scalzi and people writing in the comments agree that being poor impacts you forever, even if someday you are no longer in that situation: But I will note that having been poor in some sense never leaves you. Poverty has power.

While I wouldn’t say I have ever been poor, I had moments during my childhood that came close to a few of the descriptions in Scalzi’s post and comments. Maybe I laughed because the post fell too close to what I knew. There was a lot of financial [and emotional] stress. We grew up drinking powdered milk, mixed in a purple pitcher I can still see and smell, because we couldn’t afford fresh. We had times when all we had to cook for dinner was a box of macaroni or an envelope of dried Lipton soup. We worried how long the old car would last, and what would happen when it died.

I carry the impact of those times with me today. If I am running out of groceries and low on food supplies at home, I feel anxious. When I go to the store and stock the pantry and fridge, I feel comfort. It’s an automatic emotional response based on memory, not rationally-based on our current checking account balance or proximity to Safeway.

Financial poverty is powerful. When a child grows up hearing the phrase “we can’t afford it” and living deprivation daily, it burns into the mind, like a branding. It’s like a sharp bitter taste you will never forget.

I also believe there are other kinds of poverty that are powerful. One can be poor in health, poor in relationships or poor in spirit. There are many ways to feel deprived and denied, emptied and abandoned, cheated, imprisoned and oppressed. There are many ways to be hungry. And yes, many of them can be related to each other.

Fear of poverty is also powerful. Many people who were once poor are afraid they will be poor again. And some who have never been poor fear what they have never known.

Poverty is powerful. Yet I believe that generosity is more powerful. The best way to overcome the fear of poverty is not to hoard but to give.

I want my memories of macaroni and powdered milk to motivate me to pour out whatever I have to those who are poor in any way. That’s the power of poverty I want to experience now.

Whether or not we can agree on a definition of poverty, we can all give something to each other. Thank you to John Scalzi, to Dina, to everyone who has responded and engaged in this crucial conversation. Thank you for giving to us all.