Joy 1: Screw Flowers for My Desk

Because E. had the day off (his boss is Irish, so he gets the Friday after St. Patrick's day off), we did this:

No kids, no deadlines, no rush, no traffic.  Just beautiful snow, a beautiful day.  Nothing but joy.

The flower was a lame way to start the joy project anyway.  Stay tuned for tomorrow!

Respect Mother

First of all, if you find yourself yelling, "Respect your mother!" to your children, you have probably already lost that battle.

Second, I have been in a funk.  I have had the blues.  There has been a dark cloud over my head.  I have been residing in sadsville.  I am riding a segway, slowly, toward downtown Depressionland.

You get the picture.

This is because of:  salary negotiations, nuclear freak-outs in Japan, a weird sleep cycle, a cosmic energy force field belief monster out of whack, I am almost 36, the world is round, there was a cloud in the sky, nothing at all.

It lifted a little the last few days, thankfully, but it was not a fun place to be, for me or those around me.  I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry.

But I don't want to go back there for a while.  I don't like it.  None of my mind-melding ninja tricks work when I am in that place.  I am not in that place very often, but when I'm in it, it is deep and it is lonely and I will do just about anything to crawl out of it.

That sort of desperation isn't pretty.  Just ask the cheese fries, milkshake, and three beers I met on Tuesday night.

So, we'll try a little experiment here.  You know how I like the experiments:  the year without fried food, the "veganism" (with lots of enchiladas snuck in, hence the scare quotes), the No Impact project.  This experiment will be a simplified version of The Happiness Project.  It's also similar to my efforts with the joy jar, which you might remember from this 2009 post, when Eric was being laid off:

I spent the morning trying to get our landline number switched over to Eric’s cell phone, canceling the cable and the newspaper, cutting our donations, and calling my gram to see if she would pay for Addie’s ballet lessons for a while (praise Ruby, she will).

I don’t think I’ll miss the t.v. too much yet, plus we can still watch stuff on the computer, and we kept Netflix for now, so that we have movies to watch.  The girls will miss Noggin, but tv wasn’t good for them anyway, right?  They’d rather spend the time with us.  When I canceled the paper, I was told I could retain online access for six months for free.  Golden.  Better for the environment anyway.

We haven’t made any decisions about our biggest expense–the kids’ school.  We’ll do that when we know more about when, exactly, Eric’s last day will be (which could be anywhere from two weeks to three months).  That will be the biggest change, and I’m only beginning to get used to it in my head.

An awesome book I’m reading suggests this:  fill a jar with lots of things that you would like to do, and that are in line with your goals for growth.  Like, my goals have to do with giving myself some love without spending on material possessions, and with feeling more connected to family and friends, and also feeling the love of spirit.  So my jar has little slips of paper with things like, “learn the words to a good song and practice singing it,” or, “call a friend,” or, “meditate for 15 minutes.”  Whenever I’m feeling anxious about stuff, I get to pull a paper from the jar and take a mini-break, practicing something that keeps me in line with where I envision my life going.  I was feeling pretty down last night, and pulled the song one.  I haven’t decided which one yet to learn, but I’m excited about learning a new song on the piano, and practicing singing it.  I have something to look forward that is free and makes me happy.  It’s a gift to myself.  Cool, huh?

Eric put my hand to his chest last night–it was vibrating like a drum with anxiety.  “We have to remember we’re on the same side,” he said, after I said some not-so-nice things about feeling freaked out about his finding a job.  How could I forget that he’s human?  That he feels this more deeply than I do, losing his livelihood?  Shit.  Shit.  That sweet heart, pounding in that chest.  The most important thing is to believe in him now, and to trust (see Nanny’s post for a truly awesome example of how this works).

“What you need the most right now is each other,” says Toni.

“You can freak out if you want to,” my friend Ellen reminds me.  “But really, it’s all good.”

Sue:  “You and Eric have created a very solid foundation. Plant yourself there. And thrive.”

And you all called, and gave us virtual hugs, and laugh and cry with us.  Thank you for this love (and also, Rose, for the cookies, which make many things better).  It’s all good.

Anyway, I'm thinking I need to go back to the Joy Jar for a few weeks.  30 days, in fact.  And everyday I'll post my joyful thing.  I'll send my love and light and some money to Japan, and will go to work everyday, and raise my family.  And maybe my joyful things will be there, and maybe they will come from the joy jar.

So, check back in and see what's up and we can graph my progress together.  And if you have joyful things, tell me about them, or post them on Facebook, and we can share in it together.

My joy jar is still full from last time I used it, so here's the first pull:

"Go to the florist and buy one beautiful flower for your desk."

Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow?

Pirate

by Addie

Rubes

Joke of the week:

My grandma just died.

[pause for effect and sympathy]

And then they brought her back to life four minutes later!

I've been getting people with that one all week.

Ruby seems to be doing better.  She's terrorizing the nursing staff at the hospital (including a woman I happened to go to junior high and high school with) and generally raising hell.  When I talked to Ruby on the phone yesterday she told me not to worry.  "I died on Saturday," she said.  "I won't be doing THAT again."

Mostly she's angry she didn't get to see the white light.

I want to comfort her on that but am having difficulty summoning my sympathetic voice.

I joke, I kid, I dance around it.  But her almost-dying was much more traumatic, for me, than I anticipated.  She seems to have dealt with it fine, but I had the realization during that whole event that I am an early-griever.  I get bad news--PruPru has cancer, Ruby is dying--and I freak out.  Totally and utterly.  System failure.  I get an upset stomach, I shake, I can't focus, I cry uncontrollably.  I'm unable to do anything but collapse on the bed and pass out until the whole thing blows over.

Then, I'm pretty much fine.  I can handle oozing tumors and open casket funerals and whatever other gruesome things come my way.  They don't bother me much.  But that first day, whoa.  I'm a mess.

This does not bode well for those around me.  First, it means I'm terrible in a crisis.  I always thought I was kind of good in a crisis, but now I see that I'm not.  I'm worthless.  At first, anyway.

Second, it is not very comforting to those around me, all this gnashing of teeth and wailing.  I mean, PruPru is still alive.  Ruby is still alive.  And I basically write them off for dead in the first instance.  I mean, how's that for optimism?

I don't know what all this means.  I think it is somehow connected to that panic attack I had about that half-dead mouse the cats brought into the house that one time.  I'd link to that old post but I'm too lazy.  Anyway, it's the same feeling, that doom is approaching and some action is required of me and I'm trapped.

Panic.  Freakout.

This is probably connected to my control-freak-ness.  You see it all clearly, don't you?  You understand me better than I understand myself?  If you do, please email me offline so that I can develop some self-awareness around my early grieving and quit being such a pain in the ass.

Death Always Rings

Death always rings us by telephone.
We have programmed an especially loud brrring-a-ding
into the handset
to mimic the wee-aah of the European siren.

The ring charges our adrenaline, jumps
us out of bed,
but we revel in its familiarity--
drink in its tones
cradling the plastic between ear and shoulder like
the lolling head of a newborn baby.

We prefer a few rings to compose
        ourselves.
        a more rhythmic breath.
        some wisdom.

In this way, our panic remains private.
        Contained
by the nine-number pad and breaths
crackling across space.

Death comes to us over the wires
from a hospital bed in Idaho
an abandoned mine shaft in Germany
catacombs in New York
labs in Colorado.
We wait for the ring

and toll in the years that way.

The Great and Terrible Ruby

My brother texted me last night that Ruby--my maternal grandmother, formally named June but nicknamed Ruby, for critical distance's sake--was sick and in the hospital again.  Her heart and lungs have been in bad shape for a while and she's been lugging around an oxygen tank.  This slowed her down some, but not much, and last time I was with her (when I was in Idaho for my other grandmother Muggs' funeral) she was still entertaining and terrorizing most everywhere she went.

At about 3 in the morning, my brother woke up wide awake, and shortly after received a call that Ruby's heart had stopped and that she was on a breathing machine.  She's alive now but still on the machine.  She has a DNR, so if her heart stops again, well, that's it.

Here we are again, in that liminal space between life and death.  A few weeks ago, I thought it was Pru's last day, and she's sitting on my bed now, winking at me in her wise way, and if it weren't for the grotesque tumor on her leg, I would not know she is sick.  But the vet tells us she could slide downhill tomorrow and, well, that's it.

Before hearing again from my brother this morning about the heart and the breathing tubes, I had finally decided to pick up the book about Muggs' family, the Browns, in The King's Pines of Idaho.

The author, Grace Edgington Jordan, published the book in 1961.  She writes about my great-grandparents and McCall,

Built at the south end of the larger of the two Payette Lakes, McCall would eventually have become a resort, at least in summer, without any Browns about.  The lake water is a fine sapphire, the air is high and clean, and the hills are spiked with cool evergreen timber.  But without the payroll of Carl Brown's lumber mill, operating many years, McCall would never have become much of a business place.  And without the cooperation, the willing hands and the brains of the Browns and those the Brown children married, the village would not have attained such things as its efficient community hospital and modern high school.  Aided and encouraged by the caring of the Browns, McCall has become a uniquely satisfactory place to live, self-dependent, spirited, and beautiful because it is natural and unaffected.

My chronicling has not been easy.  The Brown left hand doesn't even want to know what the right hand is doing.  If you confront a Brown concerning money or effort that he has given to some good local cause, he may finally admit that Yes, maybe he did do this or that.  And then he begins to play down whatever he did.  To get any of his goodness or charity on paper requires ingenuity and drudgery.

I admit to a little pride over this history, but there is more than that, too, as I read this book in 2011, after losing or about to lose most of my grandparents.  I think about how closely my family's fortunes have been tied to resource exploitation--the Brown's lumber mill and Boise Cascade's exploitation of public lands in the West fairly intimately connected.  My father's attempts to connect to the wealth of oil and gas, and the fact that I received a scholarship from the Western Petroleum Marketers' Association as a college kid, my face on the cover of their annual report.  And that McCall, mostly, has become mostly a resort for the very wealthy.  Most of us could not afford to live there, and even vacationing there is pricey now.

Also, that phrase, "the Brown left hand doesn't even want to know what the right hand is doing."  Jordan makes it sound as if that is all about humility.  And partly, it is.  The Browns and Davies are definitely humble about their accomplishments--pride is strongly discouraged.  But they are also intensely private and even exclusionary, whether they mean to be or not.  They're friendly and personable, definitely, but I don't know if they are embracing and connected beyond their nuclear families.  They seem to marry people who desire those connections, which may be the thing that holds them together at all.

In my own life, this has manifested as my not always feeling connected.  I have a tendency to hold friends and family at arm's distance, even though that is certainly not what I feel in my heart.  I see this with my dad, too.  From my vantage point, he was not much involved with the Browns/Davies, even though he was definitely proud of being one.  This meant I wasn't involved with them either.  I did not see him much, and since he did not see them much, I did not know them hardly at all.

Except, ironically, through Ruby, who made sure I had a copy of The King's Pines of Idaho.  Ruby, who made sure I knew I was related to the Browns.  Ruby, who drove me to McCall every summer and made sure we found a boat to take us by the Davies place so that I could know my other grandparents.

She was a huge pain about it--don't get me wrong.  She believed the Browns/Davies to be some kind of Idaho royalty, which is why she wanted me to know them.  She never forgave my mom for messing up her marriage and marrying someone who was not Idaho royalty, and she made their lives quite miserable at times.  I was also frequently embarrassed by Ruby when we visited the Davies--they seemed so normal, and followed the rules of politeness and distance, and she never did.  She never recognized boundaries and it caused no end of trouble and embarrassment.

But her transgressions at least meant I knew that part of my family, while their recognition of boundaries would have meant I never knew them.

Such a study in extremes.

Anyway, this is what I'm thinking about.  These liminal, boundary-crossing spaces in my head and in my heart and for my grandmother this morning.

Ping Pong Playa

One of the hardest things about coming to Mines to teach was leading discussion.  At Scripps College, an all women's liberal arts school, I could get away with handing students an interesting text and saying, pithily, "What do you think?" and off they would go.  They were hungry to chew on ideas and to have discussions with one another and it was just in the air at that university--and maybe at most liberal arts universities--to give the text a go.  And, shoot, I thought I was a brilliant instructor.  Basically, they were making me look good just by being fabulous themselves.

Mines is an engineering university, though.  Some of my fellow scholars estimate that, by the time they graduate, students will have completed around 5,000 "problem sets"--they're given problems and asked to "plug and chug" on them.  Constraints are almost always determined and there is nearly always a "right" answer.  Furthermore, their technical classes are largely oriented around lectures, in which they feel they are given "the answers."

So then I show up here at Mines, 27 years old, cocky, thinking I'm a good teacher.  I'm hip, I wear a jean jacket, I crack wise.  I put my stuff down; I give them a good text; I sip my coffee; I ask them what they think.

Blank stares.

Silence.

Me, panic.

75 minutes to fill.  I got nothing.

Eight years later, I almost never go into a classroom counting on open discussion about a text.  I carefully prepare "agendas" for each of my classes (these are for me, to remind myself what I have planned).  I craft discussion questions, devise pair-share activities, assign "quick-writes," make powerpoints, have video clips, sing, dance, cajole, facilitate, soothe, provoke.

It's exhausting.  But it usually works.  And it's sort of required.  Most of my fellow instructors do some version of all of this.  A lot of it is just good teaching.

But it can also look a lot like ping-pong.

A student pings a comment to me, I reformulate it, comment on it, repackage it, and...pong...throw it back out.  Another student picks it up and pings back to me and I pong.  I am the center of that discussion, the fulcrum, the ponger.  The ping pong makes things move and I meet objectives and things stay lively.  It's not always perfect--many of my coworkers are much better and more liked and more effective teachers than I am.  But it works better than the dead, ill silence, and I think students end up learning in my classes.  Which, after all, is the point.

Still, it makes me the focus, doesn't it?  And my students don't ever get the opportunity to really talk to one another, seminar style.  Which was my fave part of school.

Other than the keggers.

But that's for a different post.

So, today, I bailed on all my fancy, controlling pedagogical tricks and went into class asking them why they couldn't just ping pong with each other while I watched.  They said they preferred for me to give them the answers.  I said that, for today, I wouldn't.  I sipped my tea and stood back.

And you know what?  They ping ponged each other.  They made very smart points.  They participated.  They discussed with one another.  And it was good.

For about 40 minutes.  And then some began to dominate the conversation and we ran out of steam.  I took over and wrote things on the board and ponged and I think it ended okay.

Still, it felt like a victory.  Or at least an interesting experiment.

Could I have done that on the first day of class?  No way.  Could I have done it in my other class, where there is an undercurrent of angst and, dare I say, a seething anger about the grades they got on their last assignment?  Maybe not.

But I'll be experimenting with ye olde ping ponging again soon.

Pong to you.