Moment by Moment

What a long, grey rainy season it's been in Washington.  Earlier this week I had a moment that broke my heart open.  It was just a small thing: my daughter, unable to sleep, asked me to draw her a bath at 12:30 in the morning.  It was not hard for me to do.  I was tired, I lay in bed, but we had no need to be up early. I had no reasonable objection.  "Sure, why not!"  No biggie.

Six months ago, it would have been harder.  I likely would have kvetched about it as I dragged myself out of bed, making sure she felt guilty about it.  A year and a half ago, I simply would have refused.  Who gives their child a bath after midnight?  Such a simple thing.  The result?  More happiness.  Peace.  A child who feels right in the world, and can drift off in comfort.  A need met.

Life is made of these moments. 

I am really glad I am able to become a nicer person, both for my children, and for the sad little kid inside me.

So Many Ways to Play

A Farm.

My kids discovered Minecraft this summer, when their Uncle visited for a few days and showed them.  If you don't know, Minecraft is "a game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine. At night monsters come out, make sure to build a shelter before that happens"(From Minecraft.net, where you can start playing).

They experienced the joy of discovery; my son in particular, who has loved to search for all manner of treasure or valuables since he could crawl, delighted in mining deep into the ground and finding blocks of valuable ore (diamond, gold, lapis, etc.), which he could take home to refine into precious gems and metals, and further use to manufacture golden and diamond armor, tools, and weapons.  The combination of this industrious and creative work with the excitement of then preparing for battle and going out into the darkness, facing the creatures of the night, and doing his level best to triumph, put him into a state of flow.  The triumphs were felt deeply, the defeats were felt deeply, and he would gather himself (and his things) together and, when ready, sail back into the fray.

This happened in front of a backdrop of beautiful (if rudimentary, graphically) circadian cycles, sunrises, days, sunsets, nights.  Life, death, creation, destruction, creation, gathering, forging, facing the Night-- these were just a few of the many archetypical themes of the game.

Then they visited their Uncle in another state, and witnessed him running his own Minecraft server on his PC.  As the admin, he had godlike powers to summon any materials without the effort of mining them, to create and edit the terrain of the game in any way he wished.  He could create in-game explosions on a truly massive scale, demolishing whole hillsides at a mouse-click.  When we returned from the trip, thei interest in mining had waned, paling in comparison to the glamorous things they had recently witnessed.  At a friend's house, they saw a new twist on the game: mods-- modifications to the game you can upload and install, creating whole new versions of it.  They gloried in one popular collection of mods called Yogbox, which brought to the game new delights such as baby animals, unicorns, breedable horses, airships, an infinite supply of building materials, and the ability to fly!  Now the game was all about animals and building and manufacturing fantastical things.   My daughter in particular gleefully built intricate zoos-- squid pens, chicken pens, horse stables-- huge and intricate habitats with unique specifications for each species. 

My unicorn sculpture under the stars.

Around this time we bought another computer, so they could play side by side.  Then something new and wonderful happened: they discovered the joy of Multiplayer.  They were able to login to the in-game world of a friend who lives far away-- and play together with other kids, and each other.  This introduced the practice of in-game chatting, by typing messages to communicate, such as "please don't burn down my house" and "do you want to build something together?"  In this multiplayer space, a  number of kids ranging mostly from 6-10 played together, building a wonderland of rollercoasters, sculptures, waterslides, murals, treehouses, fountains, skyscrapers, hotels with posted room rates, and so forth.

Max's tall treetop restaurant in front of a sunset, rainbow arch entrance to fairyland area in foreground.

Next we started running a server of our own, so friends could join them in their own world.  What immediately followed was the concurrence of playing together online in multiplayer and chatting on the phone.  Playing Minecraft exploded into a flurry of negotiation, problem-solving, conflict resolution, teamwork, and gushing creativity.  There were at times 5 kids phone-conferenced together, all at their computers, playing together, building together, and totally in flow, for hours at a time.  One of the other kids started a server, so then they did the same things in that world, which she introduced with a set of rules and guiding principles, which everyone more or less agreed to:  houses should be approved by the Mayor to be private residences, others can be built and be for public use or can be sold. You could select a job from a job board (police officer, banker, etc) and do the job to be paid in diamonds, which you could get at the bank.  The most creative and rich period of their game experience yet is unfolding now.  In these multiplayer worlds together, in-game and by phone, these kids have, among many other things:

• built voting booths
• run an election
• built cities with municipal facilities (mayor's office, water treatment plant, jail)
• built toilets and showers with switches to turn them on and off (with pistons and circuits)
• built a garbage can that you can deposit blocks and items into, and have them disappear
• worked out a permit system for provate property vs. public property
• made a job center and bank for getting paid in diamonds as wages
• organized and taught in-game classes on skills like archery, secret bunker-building, and building water treatment acilities
• working together to overcome disasters with flooding and lava flows destroying structures
• built several restaurants stocked with food items, counters, tables, chairs, background music, decor, menus, ways to handle payment
• built amusement park rides with functioning parts
• built zoos
• built several traps
• built huge sculptures and wall murals
• built castles, skyscrapers, farms
• planted, tended, and harvested crops to make other items from
• built a massive, incredibly long roller coaster that travels through China, Japan, Montana, Africa, and many other places
• and on, and on, and on, and on.

Part and parcel with the game play, my son is reading and typing, communicating with an explosion of "written" language, heretofore only nascent.  My daughter is enjoying the valuable opportunity to practice social skills around entering and leaving groups, negotiating and presenting ideas in a group.  When she needs a break, she just steps away to do something else, or plays a different game (which has incredible rewards of its own, but that's another blog entry.)  Another kid is practicing skills of facilitation, and learning server commands.  It's all quite marvelous.  Tonight they're building castles together.

Wide glowstone and obsidian boulevard lined by super-tall birch trees, under the moon.

I feel so lucky, to get to witness people completely engaged in every way.  If your kids are having a hard time leaving the computer, you might consider joining them as much as possible, if only for the privilege of seeing brilliance unfold.

Addendum: 6 months later:

I just went back and read all that.  Six months later, in April of 2012, we traveled even farther on our Minecraft journey.   After our first Multiplayer server, the kids discovered the Studio Ghibli films.  We built a new server, based on that: Totorocraft.  It had many sculptures, lands and towns based on the different films.  It had an economy, and many related intricacies.  I administrated the server, helping the kids work out conflicts when necessary, helping solve problems.  We had, on average 10 people at a time online to play with.   It was great fun. 

The first thing we built on Totorocraft: A Giant Totoro!

My daughter in particular developed a keen interest in administering a server herself, and trying on "being in charge".  She had a vision: Kittencraft.  She built the spawn, along with a few friends helping a bit.  She made the first rule on the server "no correcting spelling", as she wanted to create a space where she could joyfully communicate with the written word, without worrying about spelling things according to the dictionary.  Eventually, she wanted a grander spawn city.  She wanted it to be Egyptian in style, so we looked up a lot of Egyptian temples and symbols, reading about gods and so forth.  We stayed up all night long, working feverishly to finish the new spawn before our agreed-upon deadline of the next afternoon.  We built the Catshepsut Temple, and a city all around it, with traditional Egyptian houses, and the great pyramids.  We built a Sphinx with all the warps in it, to serve as a hub.  Seeing my daughter so completely and utterly engaged and delighted, working so hard at something so important to her, in flow and firing on all cylinders, was a privilege to see and be part of.  It is one of the happiest memories I have with her to date. 

She ran Kittencraft admirably, at 8 years old.  She enforced rules and worked her way through figuring out how to be tactful.  She did astonishing things.  I heard her say to herself many times, "I am so proud of myself!"  She was fully immersed, and came out the other side with a keen knowledge of what she loved about the game: that there are so very many ways to play it.  My children played Minecraft every single day for about 10 months, at a total of approximately 2000 hours.  My son gradually moved on to other games.  About a month ago, Katie discovered to her extreme delight another open-ended, many-ways-to-play-it game: Roblox.  After 10 months of Minecraft, she is moving on to new challenges; new ways of building and interacting and scripting and operating and problem-solving.  Kittencraft is still up and being visited by friends every day-- she may want to return to it, I don't know-- but in the meantime, we all 3 carry Minecraft inside of us.  We have learned so, so much.

The Floating Moon

I wrote this more than a week ago... already, the equinox is less than a week away, and I am almost there, ready to settle down and turn inward.
 ...
September finds me floating in space, looking down at the turning season, the Turning of Attentions to School and the over-filled days.  Everyone turns as One Body to look toward the future: the Content to be taken in, the Projects to be done, the Rhythm of the busy days, Getting back down to business.  Up here, floating in September, I try to re-orient myself to the Turning, schooled business of my local world.

The truth is, I am floating because I am not ready to settle down, nor to go indoors.  Soon.  The Autumnal Equinox seems like it will be the right time, and it's not quite here. World, I think, Wait for Me.  

        

Juxtaposed with the Ever-present Busyness, I find the Emptiness: the emptiness of the daytime public swim, the emptiness of the library, the blessed emptiness (except for the toddler set, of course) of most of the places we go.  It is peaceful, but it is also, briefly, lonely-- Not Yet!  I think.   In a few weeks, the floating will end, and, later than most,  we will settle slowly back down the the earth, to the re-connecting that comes with the cooling weather and the linking of ourselves to our hearth.

The Floating moon will pass into connection with the ground, and all that happens there.  On the ground, I will meet the withering vines and the falling fruit.  On the ground, I will meet the dropping leaves and the shuttered days. 

Right now, I am still here, swimming not-unpleasantly in late-summer not-schooler juxtapositional space.

So Long Red-Berry Moon, Hello Tangled Heartbreak Moon

Thimbleberries, Red Huckleberries, Black Raspberries

The moon is almost full again.  A few hours ago, I was snuggled in bed with my children as it peered in, looking like a glowing bowling ball, through a fat crack in the curtains.  The kids dug out the old tattered board-book copy of "Goodnight Moon" from the bottom of a bookshelf somewhere and we read it, there, while the moon peered at us.  Now the moon has moved on and the children are asleep behind me, and I feel urgently I must lately say goodbye to the month that passed.

All this long and busy month I wanted to write about July.  Now August is half gone.  I was going to say to you: 

Here, on this hill where I live, in my own native language, I would call this the time of the Red Berry Moon.  The salmonberries are few and far between, almost gone... the strawberries are just past their peak, and the raspberries are just right.  The thimbleberries are suddenly offering themselves to the world, all humble and red and silky soft, and the red huckleberries, shiny and tart, appeared overnight like crimson pearls peppering the woods.  The blackberries are still small and tight and green, and the wintergreen is blooming.

One day in July, the kids and I walked to the park, and picked big handfuls of red huckleberries.  There weren't enough for a pie, so we mixed them with strawberries, and had enough. That was my first Red Berry Moon Pie.  Not two weeks later, we went back and the thimbleberries were ripe-- we mixed them with the red huckleberries again-- after all, they grow right beside one another--and just a few black raspberries we found-- and made little half-moon tarts.  They were absolutely incredible.  Thimbleberries are so very soft, they don't keep--so you can't buy them, I don't think--but oh my, were those tarts ever amazing.

In those days, one ancient month ago, the foxgloves were just about gone, and the daisies were coming into full glory.  July is a dream.  Nothing but dreamy days, no end of summer in sight, with fat peas popping in your mouth and red berry juice staining your hands.

Now, in mid-August, the daisies are spent and curling, the fireweed and the crocosmia are dropping their petals, and the hummingbirds, over their love affair with us, are moving on.  The teenage raccoons are on the prowl, and the lilies are breaking my heart, blooming just as I'm about to leave town.

I do not love August, the month of breaking up with summertime.  August is the inevitable conclusion to April.  The fragrant Stargazer and Casablanca lilies that bring me to my knees are the reverse of lilacs-- just as fragrant, in their own way, but tragically so. 

I was so busy this last month, my garden was woefully neglected.  It languishes, a dendritic tangle of wilting nasturtium vines, of irregularly watered bean vines, and mildewed squash plants, also withering from hydrative inconstancy.  I feel sad--so full of woe, in actual fact--to know what it might have been.  The daily, family-full life I hold responsible for this neglect is a rich and worthy and choice one, but the heart still grieves for the fallen.

In any case, if there is anything on which to count, it is this: the Barreling on of Time.  In this, the Tangled Heartbreak Moon, everything feels difficult: every strand of coming and going and gathering and remembering what to bring and driving around lost and trying to make this or that thing work properly when you read the directions backwards and the broken things over here and the chaos that comes at the most difficult moment, when one needs just the tiniest moment of peace to go on, and the howls of injustice and the howls of pain and the howls of glee and the ever-so-slight kisses on the cheek from a tender young person whom you love so achingly much and yet never quite enough, although you try so very hard every day to somehow make it even astonishingly more than one could imagine-- the Tangled Heartbreak Moon is full, and peering in at me like a bowling ball.

I do not love August, and soon it will be something else, and I wonder what that will be like.

Go Ahead and Sparkle

One day when I was in 9th grade, I had a Study Hall on my schedule.  I didn't want to go sit in a boring study hall, so I went over to the empty music room and practiced my cello instead.  I was later called to the vice principal's office.  He said to me with a stern look, "It seems you weren't in study hall today."  I replied with disinterest, "Yeah, I skipped it."  He lit up, delighted no battle would be necessary, and said with a triumphant smile, "You catch on quick!"  He wrote me a detention slip and sent me on my way.

Detention was identical to Study Hall; it was in the same room and everything.

Cello, Pen and Ink, circa 1989

Another day, not long after, I rode the bus to school one morning, decided I had better things to do with my time, and proceeded to walk home.  I lingered in the park for awhile before walking the 5 miles home down a rural road.  (I didn't get detention, though-- just a bewildered conversation with the principal, who had just recently mailed me a hand-signed letter congratulating me on winning an essay contest.)

The Girl Who Wouldn't Work to Her Potential, Graphite, 1989

I spent my days at school staring out the window, waiting for them to end, so I could go to the library and read about the things that actually interested me, or go home and record myself singing in the stairwell, teaching myself to sing more on pitch, or set up still lifes on the kitchen table to photograph, or write stories on the obsolete electric typewriter my mom had brought home from work, or stay up half the night listening to music and making things.  I really had so many better, more important things to do, things that made me sparkle all over. 
 

Still Life with fancy bed sheet drapery, circa 1988

Some people mesh well with school, and some people love the structure of being told what to read, and some people are quite content to follow directions and get good results, and most people don't have a choice anyway, so they might as well make the best of it (and I believe I could have been happier there with a bit more support).

I am doing everything possible to support the Sparkle in my children.  It's pretty clear what lights them up. Who knows, maybe one day they'll want to go to school and that will light them up. I'd be rather surprised, though.  They don't seem the Study Hall type. They're more the "let's hike 5 miles barefoot!" type.

Hiking Barefoot

After 18 years of Formal Education (some at great financial expense) and another couple decades of working at jobs and developing social skills and [still] learning to parent, what do I do now?  I'll tell you:  I do.....exactly what I did when I was a kid, when I got out of holding school for the day.  I take photographs, I paint, I sing, I commune with plants and trees, I make music, I cook, I read, I write, I learn, I live.

I sparkle.

I really do feel I'm the same person I was when I was a kid.  I'm older, wiser, far more mature and experienced... but I'm the same basic person, with the same sparks.  I think I can reasonably surmise that my kids, right now, at 6 and 8, are essentially the same people they'll be at 40.  I can help them be Who They Are, or I can send them on a long and circuitous goose chase, before they finally find their way back again.

Ferns in the Woods, circa 1991

 Sometimes life doesn't allow you to do what you want to do all day-- especially when you're an adult with a family to support.  I've worked really difficult, low-paying jobs to pay medical bills, to try to get health insurance, etc-- and who knows, I may need to again at some point.

When you're a kid, though-- the only time in your life when you don't have so much responsibility--  
 instead of practicing for being an adult, (and you really don't have to practice-- life keeps throwing stuff at you until you figure it out) being a kid is the time to practice Sparkling With All Your Might-- so when you grow up and have to Deal with the Hard Times, you still remember how to Sparkle, in the middle of it all.

So, please, go right ahead and loosen your grip.  Don't worry about your kids being able to cope with Disappointment and Sitting Still and Necessary Boringness.  Life has it covered.  No problem.  Instead, why not  practice some courage and optimism and .... Sparkle?

A new box of crayons for my birthday, 1976.  Sparkle!!!

Awesome Quest 2011

Weekly Awesome Quest Challenge #1:

Part of being Awesome for me is pushing myself out of my comfort zone. My comfort zone sure is comfortable, but not terribly enjoyable. There are a lot of things I hold myself back from. How can you take a step out of that zone this week? What have you been holding yourself back from? 


... I hold myself back from letting anybody in public see me practicing juggling, guitar, or French-- three things I want to practice frequently when I am out hanging around waiting for my kids somewhere, but am completely embarrassed to do so, because I'm awful at all of them.  In the next week, I'll do one of them, even if other people are around.  Yikes!

My Watery Balloon of Disappointment

I suffered a disappointment the other day.  It surprised me how acutely I felt it; it filled me up like a fat water balloon and came pouring out my eyes.  

My kids suffer disappointments all the time-- a balloon pops, the rain falls when they were counting on it to shine, the cheese puffs are all gone-- it happens constantly.  I suffer fewer disappointments, and feel them less intensely, most of the time.  Every now and then, though, it pulls the rug right out from under me.

I noticed how, when I was filled up with disappointment, I was unable to listen to my kids, or say "Yes" to much of anything.  I needed to finish feeling the thing I was feeling.  I needed a little space to work through it.  It took me a few hours.

It reminds me of the many times when my kids scream and wail in despair over the things that feel rotten to them, the game that was lost because s/he forgot to save progress, or whatever.  Sometimes their dad and I come up against the intensity of it, and find it unreasonable, and it's hard to take. 

But yes, we all really do need the space to feel what we feel, as long as we need to feel it.  It is unreasonable.  It has nothing to do with reason. 

When my son is in the throes of that feeling, how can I expect him to get over it and just "get along" with his sister?  When my daughter is in the throes of that feeling, where do I get off telling her not to be "so dramatic"?  It's hard for everybody in the world to be giving and kind when their Watery Balloon of Disappointment comes Pouring Out their Eyes.  Imagine how hard it is for a little kid!

I guess I'm glad I felt so rotten and sad the other day.