Family

I just spent the weekend with my mother's family. Some of my closest friends growing up were my cousins. Four of my mother's siblings still live in or near the town where I grew up, although many of my cousins have moved on, some even to other countries. I love my cousins and aunts and uncles quite fiercely, and I miss how easily and regularly we once got together. My cousin Deb's husband says that facebook was made for people like her, and I told her, "It was made for families like ours. That's why we call it 'cousinbook!'"

In so many ways I am not like my family. I vote differently, I attend a different church, my opinions and tastes are in sharp contrast with many of theirs. At the same time, and oddly enough, I feel so at home and able to be myself when I am with my extended family. I especially feel free to be the kind of parent I truly am. My kind of strict is their kind of strict, and my level of "don't worry about it" was introduced to them by my own mother years ago. They're used to it by now.

When I walked out into my aunt's backyard and saw two eight year olds trying to climb the tent poles I had to laugh- that is SO my son! And when I asked one of them, the one highest up the pole, if he also climbed trees he said, "I live in the country, of course I climb trees!" That is the kind of confident, "What's wrong with you?", answer any of my kids would have given. Later I saw one of the college age great-grandkids up in a tree and I had to grin.

It's not that there's never been friction or disagreement in my mom's family. They like to say there are as many opinions as their are Ramseyers, and family legend has one uncle telling one of the aunts, "You go on and pray about it 'til you come around to my way of thinking." A cousin said he'd be more likely to come to this event if I could promise him no one would start talking politics. I also don't think everyone in the family has that same sense of, "These are my people," that I have. But I guess I can't write their story, only mine.

My family makes me feel like the quirks in me make me both fit in and stand out. I guess that's really what everyone wants, isn't it? To be unique enough to be special, but not so weird that you have no home? I'm glad that I have family that gives me that space.

I Need a Wife

My sister is in town for the week and working from my house while her kids get some alone time with Grandma and Grandpa. She's actually sitting one desk over from me right now pounding away at someone's data. She gets up in the morning, gets straight to it and works most of the day. She always was disciplined like that, and I've finally learned not to be jealous.

The first morning she was here I brought her some coffee when I got mine, and later some toast and blueberries when I had some as well. At lunch I made macaroni and cheese, a favorite of hers, and she left her computer to come join us for it. At dinner time, risotto and spinach salad, she remarked, "It's amazing what I can get done when I don't have to take care of anything else! What I need is a wife!"

Exactly. That's what my job share partner and I say all the time. I could be so much more productive if I had a wife. I think I'd be less stressed as well. After all, if you have a wife, you don't have to think of everything yourself. Wives are so good at looking around and seeing what needs to be done and then just jumping in and taking care of it. When she's done, a wife doesn't need to tell you what she just did so you can be impressed with her for moving the Earth and realigning the stars.

If I had a wife I could focus more on showier tasks that really impress people because all that little boring detail stuff would be taken care of by her. I'm sure my blog posts would be higher quality because I could write them straight through without having to save the dinner from burning.

There are probably even more benefits to having a wife, but you know how it is with wives; it's hard to fully appreciate all they do.

Side by Side

I don't mean to sound wise. Although, at the rate I make mistakes, I should be a sage on the mountain by now. I do realize that I'm standing at the beginning of something with a bend coming so soon in my path that I can only see the littlest way down the road.

For a while I was afraid to enjoy the beauty of any moment because I knew that pain could come ripping through just a moment later and you would look back on that "Last Perfect Sunday" and think, "How could we sit there and be happy and laugh and wonder when a freight train of destruction was already rounding the bend and speeding toward us?"

Later I learned that being hit by a train hurts like hell whether you see it coming or not, and if you're always trying to peer down the tracks into the fog and around bends so that you'll be ready, it's like you're actually pinned under the train already and never going to be released.

Right. But what I was really thinking about was this moment that I'm in with my twelve year old, the one going into seventh grade this fall. Right now, for this summer we are in a beautiful place. Part of what makes it beautiful is that I have time to be side by side with him. We work together, mow the lawn, clean the house, cook, weed, etc. We also play together. While I watch this time together, I think, "This something our fast world has taken away from children, side by side time. We think that teens, or nearly teens, want to be away from us and so we don't just let them, we send them." Our busyness demands that they take care of themselves and find their own way. We shove them from being children to being free grownups in a matter of a few quick decisions.

What I see right now is a boy who likes to come and go from my side. Like a toddler I suppose, but with a much bigger range. On Friday he was off exploring creeks and rivers with his friends and making his own decisions about paths to take and stops to make. Sunday we were side by side as we examined art and watched the coy in the pond. I swear, I didn't have to beg him to go with me.

Those who are further down this teenage path than I am may be chuckling to themselves because they know, or think they know, what kind of trouble is around the bend for me, but I think I can still hope that if I keeping the invitation open to work and play side by side, I might find my long haired, wild son still wanting to do some traveling side by side. I think if I throw that hope away in favor of being realistic, I'll not only destroy this beautiful moment, guarantee that no more are coming.

Team Jacob

Last night I went to see Eclipse with my friends. I wore my Team Jacob pin and my friend said, "How can you be Team Jacob? Edward is her true love!" I didn't answer my friend because I couldn't think of something snappy fast enough. Later though, I thought, or I realized, I don't actually believe in true love in that way. I believe you can have a love that's true, but I don't think I buy the "one person/soul-mate" kind of true love.

I think I'm Team Jacob because I did fall in love with my best friend. I love our story. There are no fireworks and no magic looks, no fate and no aligned stars. Russ likes to tell people that before we got together he interviewed me. It's true, but he was interviewing me for a job that I eventually got as an RA at CMU. It was a very small staff, just three RAs and a hall director. Actually I didn't like Russ much that first year and I was much closer with our other teammate. Later though, we worked at the same summer camp, dated each other's friends and I got to know him a little bit better. After camp, and after ending those summer relationships, we just started hanging out more. We had dinner together, with other people, watched TV, played games, and did work. When Dave, our other teammate, left us we became even closer.

The way Russ tells the story, he knew that we were going to get married when one night, as I headed out with my friends I kissed him good-bye. I didn't think a darn thing of it; we were that close. Shoot, we'd been walking around holding hands for months, but I still just felt like we were just best friends. Later when Russ started to try and tell me about his deeper feelings for me, I didn't want to hear it. I was too afraid that I would lose my best friend. I told him that dating would just ruin everything between us and he said, "Fine, then we'll get married." Part of me thought he was crazy and part of me thought, "Of course we will, who else would I want to spend the rest of my life with?" Sure enough, two years later we were married.

It's a good story. And really, I like it just the way it is.

Creativity

Oddly it's going to be a Newsweek article on Creativity that is going to shove me out of my writing slump. "For the first time, research shows that American Creativity is declining." Well, duh. (In a world where creativity is declining, I feel like "duh," is an ok word.)

When I was in third grade I had this amazing teacher. She taught me the multiplication tables and long division and Shel Silverstein. Those are the only academic things that I can remember from her class. But that's not all I remember about her. She used to inflate this gigantic bubble made of plastic sheeting that our entire class could fit inside. While we were in their she would tell us stories, do little one woman puppet shows, sing songs with us, just be. I remember have ages and ages of time on my own to explore what interested me, to sit in the hallway with my friends and write a play that we later performed for the class. Boy was that a struggle, a beautiful struggle that has helped make me the person I am today. At the end of the day we used to listen to these weird children's songs by some artist named Tom T. Hall. They made us laugh and imagine scenes in our heads. These things and others are the reason I loved Miss Grant and always list her in my top three favorite teachers of all time.

I teach fifth grade now and I don't do anything even close to the way Miss Grant did with us. I don't have time. I have a strict curriculum to get through. I have tests to give and a guarantee to deliver on. I also have parenting to handle. Apparently, if kids are ill prepared for my class, it's still my fault and I may not "leave them behind." (As if I would intentionally leave them behind, but apparently someone found out how I'm supposed to make horses drink and isn't telling me.) That strict curriculum is long on right answers and speed, but short on using your imagination and discovery. In teaching reading, it doesn't really matter too much if you can visualize what you're reading in your head; it only matters if you can read so many words a minute. It doesn't matter if you can learn to put yourself in the characters' shoes, it only matters if you can choose the main idea out of a possible four choices given.

And that's just reading. There's still the cuts to arts and music in every grade, the lost recess time and the imaginative play that used to happen in the lower grades.

I don't think that over testing and unimaginative curricula are the only things to blame our lack of creativity on, there's our wanton consuming of media and entertainment as well. But if I start in on that I'll be blogging until the middle of next week.