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~a month in the life of a lifelong learner~ unrivaled unraveling

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~1-23-19 to 2-23-19~

 

winter wonderings

Quinn took three classes at Winter Wonderings at OSU this year, and finally got to enroll in one of the Minecraft modules. He also took manual chess programming and Oregon geology. Rich drove him to his class one Saturday while I worked farmer’s market; so grateful for his stepdad presence in Quinn’s life.

he was excited about an idea he had for his next minecraft tag class. he wanted to plant all the different species of trees, and one thing he has figured out how to do is how to plant a giant spruce tree (you plant a 2×2 area of spruce but then let one of the saplings grow, apparently) and then when it’s fully grown, he planned to mine into the trunk, creating a spiral staircase that ends up in a watchtower up at the top.

social and cultural

nestled among the progeny of camp boss

the second middle school dance took place, with a theme of midnight in Paris. He came out afterwards with his scarf and said he was the only one who attempted to dress French. “it was a semi-formal!” i had no idea. obviously a lot of other kids didn’t know what semi formal meant; he was not the only one in jeans. he had a great time, and danced all night again. otherwise, that day was a Friday and so, the usual 3 dinners and a bath.

saturday afternoon quinn binge watched naruto and rich and i napped. then we ate leftovers and went to the little mermaid. quinn had seen it with school, but he wanted to go again. he tried to prepare me for different parts “this part gets a little sad, but it gets better again later on.” he wasn’t the only one; the 3 year old girl seated in front of us breathily whispered to her mom, “it’s ariel!!!!”

quinn’s female friend who will henceforth go by the pseudonym goldberry has become friends with the whole fellowship and has been eating at the same lunch table… goldberry was in the little mermaid cast, and quinn said hi to her afterwards in the green room. this month he asked, “do you think goldberry and i will ever actually go on a date?” she was back in his group in science, and he seemed really happy about that. they were working on green home design. then later in the month, she confided in him that she is gay. he dealt with some disappointment about it not looking like they’d ever date, but also felt honored she had been comfortable enough in their friendship to know she could say this to him and trusted that he would be a good friend to her. he also seemed to appreciate that i had experienced the same thing a time or two in my life.

other social engagements this month included a sleepover at aragorn’s where there was much playing of the game go as well as video games. Rich, quinn and i attended the valentine’s dance performance. we also drove quinn and aragorn to and from their penultimate winter wonderings, and rich and i had a nice lunch and went shopping for fun chopsticks while we waited for them. as we headed home for a birthday sleepover, we got to listen to them singing every word of take on me (every bit as popular in grade 6 this year as it was in 1985 just after a-ha released it – in fact the marching band has chosen it for their song list to memorize for this year). We of the front seats of the car strained not to laugh out loud when aragorn asked, “are you guys familiar with the band nirvana?”

Anime/ramen birthday party! the characters of naruto eat their favorite food, ramen, with chopsticks, so the boys all dined accordingly. They ate lemon cupcakes in the conventional manner. We celebrated with aragorn, legolas, and legolas’s little brother. A good time was had by all, and the boy turned 12.

fine dining

We met rich’s mom for her birthday at the noodle cafe. quinn ordered shrimp tempura and udon noodle soup. he ate the tail on the first one and then said, “oh, you’re not supposed to?”

“it’s fine to eat it but was it chewy?”

he said, “yeah, it was hard to get through it.” the noodles there are amazing and big and homemade. for the first few he’d pull an individual noodle out of the broth onto his plate and cut it into bite size lengths with his fork and stab each one to convey it to his mouth. then he switched to getting one end into his mouth and sucking it in. we were laughing about how he doesn’t get out much. he kept getting distracted by the tv on the opposite end of the room showing cool aquarium fish. and then he would talk about his advanced theory on some topic… then he’d know absolutely nothing about a topic (government shutdown) so we’d explain it to him. it was fun. he asked if we could come back to the noodle cafe again sometime because he really liked the shrimp and noodles. and the crab and cheese wonton appetizers.

karate

quinn is being taken to karate by his dad on occasion, which is a big win in the department of self advocating.

One night i had no idea he would be there, so i walked in for my class to see him working with sifu, which was a pleasant surprise. i got a nice big hug and a short check in and observed that he was still wearing the same yoda socks he left in days earlier. grubby, but happy.

He had his half-blue belt test this month. he did well and got to show off his analytical side as usual, and he is doing better all the time with sparring. he still gets put on the floor in a headlock, but we talked more about the one kid who does that to him every time, about how he really doesn’t do karate when he spars, he just tackles. and how that shows a lack of skill on one level. i was able to point out some specific moves quinn made that were especially showing his strengths like his speed (he was getting punched a bit by one kid, but then got off a really fast punch to the kid’s face (and it was well within the expected range of control, he wasn’t mean or malicious but he was getting a good shot in, and both he and the other boy knew it.) and when headlock/tackle boy got quinn wrapped up, well, quinn wrapped him up right back… neither one of them were getting off the floor… it felt less one-sided than usual.

he did very well on his techniques and forms as he usually does. if someone forgot a technique, sifu would often have quinn demonstrate. he also reacted really well on action/reaction testing.

Over the longer term, it is easy to see so much growth in coordination- things like keeping his hands in fight position when he kicks… he used to always drop his hands and now almost always maintains hand position.

The ceremonial kick was still a struggle. when he talked about it later it sounded to me like he actually doesn’t believe he is flinching or feel himself flinching. i think the way he experiences it may actually be that he is doing his absolute best not to flinch, and he can’t control it. In other areas he is still figuring out how to be consistently aware of his body and i have a hunch it’s in the same category. i don’t think quinn is trying to be defiant or noncompliant, or that he is *not trying not to flinch… i think he truly believes he *is not flinching.

the awesome thing was once he told me his take on that, he moved on and wasn’t obsessed or stuck on it or disappointed with the one thing that didn’t go well, he was happy with other things, and was able to feel good.

we also had a great discussion of goals he has for his karate. he could articulate exactly what a setback it is to not be going to class during his dad’s weeks. he told me he had been discussing it with his dad, and had asked him to take him to at least one class each week so he can go a faster pace and still try for his goal.

after the belt test he grabbed two more pieces of pizza and his graph paper, pencil, and ruler/protractor/circle stencil/triangle tools, and sat at the table drawing an elaborate graph papery something. he would not tell me what it was, just that he *needed to do that at 9:30pm after a 2 hour belt test, before he could let his brain go to bed. intense!!!

we both attended a weekend karate seminar with sifu z at our dojo, which is a pretty big deal for our little town. sifu z is a 9th degree black belt from LA and we’ve been at his seminars before, but only in bigger dojos. we were worn out by the end, and learned a ton. quinn did a great job with his partners, who are both kids he can often goof off with, but they stayed on task. he was very animated on the way home, saying, “at one point we had three black belts helping us! sifu todd, sifu z, and mr martinez!” and then listed all the black belts in order of what degree (how many stripes) and then was rattling off facts about how the different lineages of kenpo pracitioners relate to one another. knowledge he has picked up by absorbing and listening to everything.

sifu todd had told sifu z’s 6 year old that if he behaved throughout the whole seminar, he would get out a balloon for him and he could take 6 tries at popping it on the ceiling fan (our sifu knows how to motivate each individual child). at the end of the seminar, he did as he had promised, and inflated a giant red balloon and the boy started launching it at the ceiling fan trying to pop it. i watched from behind quinn, who was sitting on the bench watching very intently, with his fingers stuck in his ears. Quinn has come so far with tolerating sensory input, but it’s moments like that when i realize sensory intensity is still such a big deal for him. things like popping balloons, he can now deal with emotionally (he isn’t grieving the death of the balloon anymore if it’s not his balloon) however he still wants nothing to do with hearing it pop.

executive function literature

i finally managed to get my hands on the book misdiagnosis and dual diagnoses in gifted children and adults through interlibrary loan. it’s something i should have read 6 or 7 or 11 years ago. i think i remember my therapist telling me about the book, back in the 6-7 years ago time frame, and it would have helped me sort through my is-this-asperger’s quagmire. had i been gainfully employed at the time, i may have just bought it, but that was part of the quagmire and all.

i also enjoyed another book called differently wired, written by the host of the tilt parenting podcast. both the book and the podcast i would recommend to anyone else with a person in their lives who doesn’t quite fit into the neurotypical mold.

finally, an audio book on processing speed called bright kids who can’t keep up has been on while i’ve been analyzing lab data. i have only been passively absorbing some of the soundbytes from it, but some of the things standing out are examples like your kid not remembering a party invite until it’s the last minute; or staying on the edge of the playground deciding what to do and meanwhile all their time goes by… there are lots of glimpses of how processing speed could easily be part of quinn’s package.

Quinn’s math class started geometry (he was thrilled). on his homework, he was calculating area of a parallelogram and said, “whenever i see a parallelogram, i think sandcrawler, from the jawas.” (is it okay if i’m a little disappointed he doesn’t need to slay monsters anymore to get his homework done? it was so brief. he is impressing me with some observable work ethic improvements.)

on to trapezoids, one problem gave him the area of 160, and the height of 8 and base2 of 30, but he had to solve for base1. this stumped him briefly, as he had so far been calculating area from b1 b2 and h. i said, “they give you…” and restated the values listed, “so you basically solve for x.” i continued rambling about how i thought he should write down the steps and he interrupted me “10.” then it took until the next night’s homework session to get the steps written down, though he had solved it in 2.5 seconds. there was no fretting or fighting though, just time wasting and lollygagging now. less stressful these days. this same month was when he had to determine the surface area of the pyramid of Giza but got sidetracked on the fact that the base length was a fibonacci number.

he had an A in math at the halfway point through sixth grade! most of his grades were good, though he would have had more A marks if notebook grades were not factored in (his math teacher being an exception – she overlooked his incomplete notes given he had clearly absorbed the material). he will need to work on note-taking skills more. executive functions include things like note-taking, and while some kids might just start writing down what teachers say or write on the board and develop the skill without direct step-by-step instructions, i think quinn is a guy who needs more steps spelled out such as, “if i am writing it on the board, you should write it in your notebook,” or “make sure you write down xyz notes during class today,” and most likely beginning the sentence with the name “quinn” would help it take effect. other contributing factors for him might be that it takes him extra time to write anything down, and i think he has trouble dividing his attention between listening and writing; he is absorbing all the information without taking notes, and acing his exams, so there’s that. he will continue to find his balance of effort required to learn the material vs effort required to achieve a certain grade; he has no problem learning material without taking notes, but notes are often part of the grade.

one social studies assignment had been due on friday but he “thought”‘ he could get more time to do it monday. i told him i’d rather he got it done at home because if it had been due it made more sense to get it handed in asap, and also i am encouraging him to get a grip on his notebook, so focusing his class time on that seemed wise.

they did mayan and aztec civilizations and had moved on to inca, and i remember loving the quipu knot tying code system of the incas. their assignment was to make up their own code system analogous to quipu, so basically if you have 1 knot it means A, double knot means B, etc. he did the project completely backwards. he tied knots in some yarn, “i just did what felt right,” and then he was in a position of having to reverse-engineer a code that would result in his randomly tied knots to make them stand for something meaningful.

so it was a very good thing we tackled it at home because he was stuck (how could he not be) and i encouraged him to start from where he was, and write down how many knots he had of each kind (single, double, triple knots) and then we’d decide how to reverse it. we did come up with a system, and between choosing letters to represent what he had already tied, plus adding in a few more knots or untying a few that were extra, we made it work. he is such a funny guy. this is where the executive function comes into play (or fails to) and in one of the books i am reading they use executive function interchangeably with “judgment” and say how in gifted kids judgment can lag behind intellect. he is the poster child.

somewhere buried in a homework episode about tying and untying knots to reverse engineer a solution is a metaphor for parenting.

in between busy weekend and busy school days, he has read 3 books (warriors and 2 books from the diary of an 8-bit warrior minecraft series; none of them terribly difficult but he is just as insatiably absorbing literature as ever….)

another stuck moment occurred on a math homework question: give an example of a real world application where one would need the exact area of a circle, as in, the area expressed in terms of π instead of a decimal approximation… photos were placed beside the question, one of which depicted a round skylight window. i am not sure how or why quinn would or should know why it would be necessary to calculate exact area of a circle, and i personally do not know how an area of, say, 4π  square feet is ever useful in practical application, so i was little help, but i encouraged him not to overthink it, and notice the image clue of the window. i asked what it made him think of… “a hobbit house!” and he wrote down, “to build a round door in a hobbit house,” and moved on. yay for avoiding stuckness!

his whole math class failed a test, so she gave them all a retake, and quinn worked on it thursday with everyone else, got 1-6 (out of 28 questions) done, but got stuck on 7. on friday he finally figured out 7, but got stuck on 8. i found this all out monday, with prodding and interrogation. “well, let’s go over the types of questions so you can get it finished tomorrow.” it turned out that he could reproduce the problems 7 and 8 verbatim (drawings and everything) and we sat there until he could tell me how to do them (i said i would help but not tell him how, since they were test questions) and he finally got it. he was just so convinced he “couldn’t” so therefore he could not. he just lost confidence again.

we discussed a couple things i think we can also file under executive function skills.

  1. if you struggled through problem 7 and went home that night knowing you would have the next day in class to finish the test, but went back to it with no extra preparation, you probably struggled just as much! next time, go home and figure it out or ask someone to help you figure it out. you have to believe you have the skills and were taught the things you need, and that you can find them out with a little bit of effort.
  2. if you don’t know how to do #7, skip it and come back to it after you finish the rest of the questions. when i was helping him prepare for the next attempt at finishing it, i asked him what other types of questions were left and he hadn’t even turned the page, so he didn’t know. now he hopefully will be less stuck on doing the questions in order every time. i asked him if he was open to going out of order if he was truly stuck, and he was honest and said he did prefer to go in order, but that now that we’ve talked about it he feels like he sees the benefit of skipping and coming back in this type of scenario, to save time.

one car conversation launched from quinn telling me he is going to drop out of accelerated math. his teacher told him they would either have to take the state test at the end of the year, or take her own test of the material, which was not going to be any easier than the state test. he had planned on opting out of state testing forever, but he also did not fancy the idea of taking her test, at least not the way she so threateningly advertised it. our conversation centered on talking him down from dropping out (he may have learned to look for extreme “solutions” somewhere); providing reasoning such as that the other math level teachers may have the same requirement so leaving his current level may not solve the issue; discussing how his current teacher’s communication style can sometimes feed his anxiety (and when i reworded what she said, re-framing the end of year testing as a choice he could make, simply providing reasoning that she needs to see how far they have come this year and what level they should be pursuing next school year, rather than making it sound so daunting and threatening, he admitted that didn’t sound as bad); and speaking of how the state smarter balanced testing works and why it is stressful for him, and how we can work on coping strategies if he does decide to try that one again this year. my understanding is that the sb test keeps presenting the student with more and more incrementally difficult problems until it eventually stumps them, and thereby determines the extent of their knowledge by measuring an “end point” of sorts. “but i’m a perfectionist and it causes me an unrivaled amount of stress!” said quinn. i love that he realizes why this bugs him, but also that he can carry on a conversation with me about why it doesn’t need to be a source of anxiety for him, since we agree the scores mean very little to us (we measure learning differently), that if he goes in knowing there will be some too-tough problems, he can head off that stress.

on being differently wired

during another car chat after school one day, quinn and i had another installment in our ongoing conversation about his learning style and his particular challenges and strengths in school, which i believe is helping him develop the language to talk about it all. he was telling me something about naruto and one character was said to have “an IQ of over 200!” and after he was done telling me about it, i asked him if he ever wondered about his own IQ.

“no…. yeah, actually.”

i asked him more about it and he asked, “can you give me an IQ test?”

“no, it’s a pretty involved test, so it just takes some planning… and i’m not sure if you can have one at school or not, but maybe.”

“okay.”

i was trying to convey with my tone, “if we were interested and wanted to pursue it, we could,” not stating that we were going to pursue it yet… just seeing where he stood and how he felt about it all.  delving more into what he believed would be beneficial about knowing his IQ, he told me he wasn’t sure other than knowing he would like to know.

“well, i think those tests usually say other things about how you learn and what your intellectual abilities/strengths/challenges are. people have all different combinations, say even if you have high IQ, you could have lower processing speed, or someone could have high math ability but low verbal ability, or different things like that.” i was intending to give non-specific examples but he picked right up on processing speed.

“yeah, like how my processing speed makes me need more time to think of what to write, or to take a test, but i can easily do the test, and understand the material,” and he listed some of his own quirks. and it was cool to hear him talk about his particular spice blend.

then he said, “i feel different, and i know i am, but sometimes i would like to know for sure.”

more talk about what it means to be gifted and how it’s not that someone is better or worse, it’s a difference, and it can come with things that are beneficial and others that are challenges, but it’s real and true about him. we talked about how sometimes it is nice to know and be able to name things and for example say to a teacher, “i get stuck. i really have a hard time getting unstuck sometimes. i’m stuck right now and can’t figure out how to start this assignment….” and using his teachers as a resource, once you know this Thing is something about you that maybe not everyone experiences, and being able to see yourself starting to have that experience again and call it what it is and go to your resources (teacher, peers, book, google classroom, etc.) to help you with unsticking, not just stay stuck. or, “hey i sometimes struggle with processing speed, so i need more time to finish my test,” might be something worth knowing about your learning and be able to articulate it to someone who when they hear those words will understand what they mean. i explained that sometimes tests can be beneficial if they help identify areas that can be solved or improved for the way a person learns, if that person isn’t able to just go and ask for what he needs and has to prove it to teachers that they must give more test time (or whatever the accommodation may be), but that tests are not always needed if one can self-advocate.

on the topic of identification of gifted students it turns out quinn has quite an opinion about it and feels that some kids get missed who should be in tag, and that a lot of the kids who are being missed are also being labeled other things. he said, “i’m not sure i want to have slow processing speed identified by a test or if it is, to have that told to my teachers, because a lot of people get labeled things like that and end up getting stuck in special ed.” i did not want to jump to a conclusion about what he meant by that so i asked if he knows any kids in special ed, and he said not really but he knows of one kid, (we’ll call her), “silvana. she is in special ed but the times that i have met her or been around her, i could just tell she was like me. i think when you’re like me, you can tell when other people are the same way, and i felt that with her. she may not be able to speak the same or show off what is inside her the same way i can or others can, but i just *know she is every bit as smart as others, probably a lot smarter.”

i melted into a contented mama puddle, hearing him say that. silvana (not her real name) is a dear sweet child who indeed is in special ed, does have language and learning disabilities. however, i see what he sees in her; she has been on numerous field trips with quinn’s class over the years, when i have been along as chaperone. i just love that while so many would assume that she is unable to understand, he sees right through that.

he seems to realize that gifted isn’t necessarily an easy path, it comes with its own obstacles, and not everyone who is gifted is recognized as such, and recognizing struggles sometimes means you get treated like you’re anything but gifted… and just discussing how gifted is its own special need, too. he is also seeming to appreciate having a vocabulary for his path and a way to articulate what it is like to be him in a learning environment.

i told him that for some kids, special ed is exactly what they need, in order to learn in a way that suits them. i agreed it would not be the best setting for him to learn in, and what his special needs require is maybe more time on tests, help with stuckness, etc., but also acceleration of material so he does keep moving forward with his learning. i wanted to give him perspective on how being placed in special ed isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if it is the right thing.

it was a really nice chat, and he seemed to feel validated by it all, and latching onto some of the language and ways of articulating needs and solutions to challenges.

twelve is sublime!

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twelve is a sublime number, a number that has a perfect number of divisors, and the sum of its divisors is also a perfect number. there are six divisors of twelve (1,2,3,4,6,12) and 6 is perfect; adding 1+2+3+4+6+12 = 28, which is another perfect number; this double perfectionism defines twelve as a sublime number.

something about two scoops of perfectionism feels familiar, almost like i’ve written about it in the context of quinn before.

sublime also means “of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe.” i think that may turn out to be true of twelve as well. i may be a biased observer, though!

1+2+3+6. i have found the months leading up to 12 to be rather intense. the list of divisors adding up to 12 and making it therefore a semiperfect number all happen to be ages i can look back on and say were also ages where i noticed intensity. it remains to be seen what level of intensity is in store for this new year of quinn.

there are only two known sublime numbers, 12 and (2126)(261 − 1)(231 − 1)(219 − 1)(27 − 1)(25 − 1)(23 − 1). The second of these has 76 digits:

6086555670238378989670371734243169622657830773351885970528324860512791691264, so it’ll be a little while before he celebrates another sublime number birthday. i believe he is excited for next year, however, since it’ll be a fibonacci birthday! his first since becoming aware of the existence of fibonacci birthdays, so it’ll be big, aside from other reasons why people blow 13 out of proportion (eek! a teenager!).

he climbs into the front seat of the car to ride home from school now, so nearly adult-sized (he has surpassed several of my good friends in height, in fact) that he is safe up front. the same kid whose outgrown car seat (with 5-point harness) i had to gently remove while he was at his dad’s, because he was quite attached, not even 3 years ago. i pull away from the curb, and he immediately starts rocking back and forth, the sign that he needs a bathroom badly and hasn’t gone all day. we chat about strategies for actually using the multiple bathrooms provided by his institution of learning, i have him picture them, decide which ones he likes most, picture where they are in relation to each classroom, and then have him mentally walk through his daily schedule to try to find the most likely mid-day opportunity to fit in the use of his preferred one en route between classes. he decides on the way to or from band will work best, since he passes a good one, band takes place just before lunch, and he is only carrying sticks and music books, as opposed to his gigantic binder and computer.

later that same day, he is finishing his math homework with some reluctance, when he notices that the last problem is about the great pyramid of egypt, and forges ahead so he can get to that one. when he does, he reads that he is to calculate the lateral surface area of the pyramid, which (the math text claims) originally had dimensions of 754 feet slant height and 610 feet along each side of the base.

q: oh! 610 is a fibonacci number!

me: um, is it?

q: i remember, because 144 is a fibonacci number, and 610 is the one that breaks the pattern of double numbers… 144, 233, 377, then bam, 610.

me: huh.

q: maybe the ancient egyptians knew about fibonacci numbers! and phi! do you think they could have?!

he is cuckoo for irrational numbers, and phi is one of his faves. the asynchronous life of a poppy at twelve is struggling with bathroom planning, while being 100% set for a dissertation topic.

actually, it turns out he is not the first person who noticed something phi-ish about the pyramids at giza. he was thrilled to hear the google results, as he really didn’t much fancy the idea of writing a dissertation, but he does want to go visit the pyramids one day, and is glad they may reflect a number sequence near and dear to his heart.

although i have gotten away from enumerating quinn’s life in months, he can appreciate that he is now 144 months old! 12 squared! 144 being a member of the fibonacci sequence, to make it extra awesome.

other than being sublime, 12 makes an uncanny number of important appearances in mathematics. i read in a paper on the occurrence of 12 as the solution to lattice polygons that the various methods of proving this fact suggests connections among seemingly unrelated branches of math. which reminds me of another math research paper we came across recently. we were tackling a logic puzzle together, and quinn had wanted to try the most difficult one. after two nights of post-dinner work, we were getting close to finishing, but the final steps were dependent on a single clue we weren’t entirely sure how to interpret. we did trial runs of the results based on two different interpretations to see if either one came up with a valid solution, or hit a dead end. if we decided to read the clue as “neither x nor y is z” implying that x is also not y, then we could complete the grid without conflicting results; but if we decided that “neither x nor y is z” leaves the possibility that x could be y, we could not complete it, but also did not end up with conflict, we simply lacked enough information. quinn felt we couldn’t be sure, and said, “i have to google something,” pulled out his computer and typed in, “if neither x nor y is z, does that imply that x is not equal to y?” and google gave him one result. both of us reacted with, “that’s never happened before,” and laughed about that one time quinn broke google. the one result was for a 51-page dissertation on math logic which mentioned david hilbert on the first page, with whom quinn was familiar because vi hart talks about him. not a lot of other 11-year olds would say, “ooh, hilbert!” but now he is no longer eleven, he is twelve.

one of the biggest deals in math relates to 12, in that a function in number theory, the riemann zeta function, is considered to be of great significance, in fact it is considered the most important unsolved problem in pure mathematics, and its solution promises a million dollar reward, as one of the millenium prize problems established in the year 2000. hilbert, that guy who quinn and vi hart keep mentioning, had declared the importance of the problem exactly 100 years before that in a celebrated speech at a 1900 international conference. the function relates to the distribution of prime numbers, and where 12 comes in is that the value of the zeta function at −1 i.e. ζ(−1) = −1/12

-1/12 is the theoretical sum of the harmonics of all the primes. the zeta function not only relates to prime numbers, it also describes the music they make, which, if the riemann zeta hypothesis is true, turns out to be beautifully harmonious, and if it is false, dissonantly ugly. the hypothesis has yet to be proven, but this has not stopped its provisional use in a towering pile of proofs of other theorems on the assumption of its being one day proven true. if not, the pile will collapse like an epic game of jenga. euclid, euler, gauss, have all worked on this problem of the primes; riemann took it to imaginary number land, wrote a ten-page paper, and cracked the mystery. with how tickled quinn is by irrational numbers, i think imaginary numbers will be right up his alley when he gets there.

twelve is symbolic for quinn in other non-math venues. he is of course an avid fan of greek mythology, and the twelve olympians and the twelve labors of hercules are just two of many examples of the appearance of twelve therein. in norse mythology, another of quinn’s interests, odin has twelve sons. quinn was born a fire pig in the chinese zodiac, a fact of which he is fond, and we have now come full circle to a new year of the pig. so anyone born this year is a pig like quinn (can we think of any newborns? yes we can! though this year’s babies are earth piglets! and speaking of people with twelve sons, one of our new babes is named for a couple of the sons of jacob!)

uncle quinn holding new pancake w

there are twelve lunar cycles in a year, so each time quinn travels once around the sun, the moon goes from kayak moon to boat moon to fender moon and back again a dozen times! many other aspects of timekeeping (a skill around which i hope to see much great development during his year of twelve) involve twelve, of course.

it’s the number of noon, of midnight. of magnesium and cranial nerves. of a hurricane wind on the beaufort scale. of humans who have walked on the moon. of the seats filled around king arthur’s round table. of notes on the chromatic scale (see also twelve tones by our favorite mathemusician.)

speaking of music notes, i just learned from my twelve-year-old that his synesthesia extends to them. i finally thought to ask if he saw music notes in colors like he does letters and numbers. “eighth notes are orange,” he told me. “quarter notes are blue. whole notes are green. they used to all be orange and yellow, but now they’re different colors.”

“what about half notes?” i asked.

“i think those are white. sixteenth notes are red.”

“and rests and other symbols?”

“rests are black. they’re devoid of color because they’re devoid of sound. i think.”

i had wondered about it, thinking maybe he saw the color corresponding to the letter name of the note (A orange, B red, C gray, D black, E white, F brown, G red), rather than colors designating each type of note, and when i brought that up, he said that yes, he does also have those letters still associated with the same colors when they are naming a note, but the note itself has the note color, not the letter color (reference chart here – and he still names the same colors for the same letters, 3 years later).

things about quinn at twelve:

he knows how to self-soothe with graph paper.

he is a nonlinear learner. giving him harder version of problems helps him articulate the procedures laypeople might use to solve them, when he just *knows the answers without knowing how he knows.

he still wants to be a paleontologist. for a presentation on occupations that he had to give to his spanish teacher, he included a slide about it. he was nearly undone by the dreaded literal interpretation nemesis, given that he was supposed to write 10 sentences about future occupations, and technically, he did. he wrote 5 questions and 5 answers for his 10 sentences, however, his “sentences” for the answers were “no,” and “si.” i spent a few days convincing him that wasn’t what his teacher had in mind, and he finally agreed, added 5 more slides and questions to his presentation, and scored 100% instead of 50%.

as he cruises past 5’3”, he still manages to tuck himself into position to tell me, “you find an egg.” being his mama, i feel even more sublimely lucky than if i found a dozen eggs! happy dozen years to my mighty quinn!

thankful thursday ~ heartstrings

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28 days of gratitude ~ day 15

i am grateful the special at cafe mundo was so delicious, that the company was excellent, that the movies we rented at the grocery store were particularly heartwarming this time, and reminded me of my son’s affinity for australia (just like the protagonist of alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day). his new elective class is called travel hacking and his first presentation is about perth, australia. i believe his trip to europe next year may be just the first of many travels, judging by his interest in faraway places and desire to visit other continents. he fancies australia because of the cool architecture, the dinosaur fossils, the dialect, and of course, wombats. i am trusting our connection will be such that while he may travel far away, he will always return, just like a boomerang from down under.

 

28 days of gratitude ~ day 16

there’s always a token day in a gratitude challenge that reminds me to be grateful i don’t need to earn an A in gratitude. this is that day. a day full of blessings like the rest, but through which i admit to have trudged with less of an ability to access the gratitude attitude.

28 days of gratitude ~ day 17

it’s a no-brainer on a day like this. a slightly delirious, sleep-deprived, elated day. today i am grateful for the absolutely amazing experience of being present for the birth of my sister camp boss’s newest bundle of joy. when i recently shared with her my ambition of having a parallel life to this one in which i become a midwife instead of a marine biologist, she said i could tag along. of course i am grateful as well for the health and well being of my sis and safe delivery of my new nephew, but selfishly, being able to check the box by “attend a human birth” on my bucket list, is something for which i am thankful and will cherish the memory forever!

28 days of gratitude ~ day 18

i am thankful for being able to give a friend what i needed when quinn was born. someone to come in and clear the dishes from the sink and give it a rinse; to handle the homeschool algebra lesson; to make sandwiches for lunch and prep the dinner and hold the baby so she could stretch her hips and systematically put the laundry pile through the machines. i needed it, way back when, a lot more than she did, she always does such a good job of coordinating her household, but it still felt healing to my 12 years ago postpartum self who was very isolated and lacking support. immense gratitude for the community of women surrounding and supporting me now, in all kinds of ways.

 

28 days of gratitude ~ day 19

tonight i am grateful for moon dates with my rainbow love, a rainbow ring around the moon.

 

28 days of gratitude ~ day 20

today my husband had to go to the dentist and jury duty, which made me grateful that all i had to do was go stand in a 2 degree cold room for a few hours, performing water changes on tanks full of arctic cod eggs. i have been feeling more grateful for my day job(sss) than i had been in january, with my current funding stretching out a year ahead, and government shutdowns at bay for the time being. also helpful for stoking the gratitude fire is my husband cheering me on about being a badass whenever i am blah-blah-blah-ing to him about work.

being so busy also is a great time to remember to be grateful for nachos!

 

28 days of gratitude ~ day 21

i am thankful for rainbow lights and laughs. our bedroom lightbulb needed to be changed. my husband says he didn’t spend very long in the lightbulb section of the store before choosing this one. he had installed it and i saw it right away when i went to change clothes and turned on the light and oohed and ahhed. later that night at bedtime, he was in bed and had the covers pulled up and i could tell by his eyes he was laughing. “what???” i asked. he said, “there’s still something else you haven’t noticed yet.” he waited. and waited. he had to 100% point it out to me and even then my reaction was, “oh that’s different?” apparently the lights over our bathroom sink have 3 bulbs and apparently one was burned out, and apparently all 3 had been mismatched bulbs…. the one that was out was the round kind that was supposed to be in all 3 fittings, but the other two were random ugly bulbs. he had gotten 3 of the nice round ones. he explained how it had been bugging him for a while. obviously i couldn’t then lie and say it had been bugging me! if it was up to me, they’d be mismatched forever and i might wait until all of them burned out to replace any. i am thankful for balance, rainbows, and bringers of light to my life.

 

28 days of gratitude ~ day 22

i am grateful that i get to be a grandma so early in my life. today my third granddaughter was born, a girl birthday sandwich on 2-22 (we always celebrate on the 22nd around here; dorkaversary!) in between one uncle on 2-21 and her uncle quinn and her daddy who share their birthday on 2-23. a week of celebration forever after it shall be!

 

28 days of gratitude ~ day 23

i am grateful for so many new babies leading up to my son’s twelfth birthday this week, reminding me of just how lucky i am to have the honor of parenting a whole new person in this lifetime. as he gets less new and more gangly and sometimes surly, it can be easy to lose sight of what a privilege it is to bring a child into the world, as someone who always knew i’d be a mama. my new nephew’s birthing bore a lot of resemblance to my own home birth, and witnessing it was an amazing gift both in itself, and in the ways it allowed me to revisit the wonder of that moment twelve years ago. my new granddaughter came along in a more mainstream manner, but i’ve been reminded of the hospital angels who helped me through my recovery from blood loss and who helped me figure out how to survive the pumping life of a nicu mama. i am so grateful both of these babies entered the world in good health, and so proud of both of their strong mamas whom i’m blessed to have in my life.

28 days of gratitude ~ day 24

i am grateful for all of my family, and my step-daughter is in particular on my mind today. i have always felt 100% embraced by her as her dad’s partner, although i am not technically old enough to be her mom. we are doing some pretty major bonding, as she is seeking new mama advice and reaching out with questions for my input. if you know me, you know i don’t believe in tmi, so i am open to discussing any topic or seeing any human part or fluid. nothing’s really off the table, everything is better with more knowledge. saying i’m open to it is litotes, i love to get into lengthy discussions of uteri or breasty-booby stuff! it’s making me grateful for my husband raising such a good natured woman, for my experiences leading to having some potentially useful advice, and this awesome new feeling of pride and joy in a daughter person when i thought i wouldn’t have one of those. i wasn’t sure if i was going to be called a grandma name or be mary beth to this new little one, because mary beth is what my other two granddaughters learned to call me when i was their grandpa’s girlfriend and they were very little (they don’t call quinn “uncle quinn” either, since they are not much younger than he is!). however, as we were leaving from our visit, she told baby girl to say bye bye to nana. it was at that moment that i was overtaken by a cloud of either pollen or cat hair.

 

28 days of gratitude ~ day 25

though i had good intentions to mindfully practice gratitude each day this month, i have to admit i have written many of these gratitudes after the fact. some were bullet points that i elaborated, and some were fabricated completely out of looking back through texts or photos and remembering what happened on that day for which i was retroactively grateful (and would likely have been grateful in the moment, though i wasn’t paying serious attention to it.) i don’t think it’s cheating, but i’m also not taking this class for a grade, so there’s that. i am grateful for writing, the process of looking back and reflecting on life’s moments, because sometimes there is just no time for writing while living!

 

28 days of gratitude ~ day 26

i am grateful for a new fluffy pillow.

28 days of gratitude ~ day 27

today i am grateful for big snowflakes, and a gangly brand new twelve-year-old sprawled on the window seat, describing their movement to me. “i saw three helicoptering ones! and one that was gliding! and look, there’s one that’s just like a parachute!”

i am also grateful for a young woman who has for the past several years looked up to me as a mentor in science, since before she began pursuing her undergraduate degree in biology. when she texts me out of the blue to ask if i can give her an example of experimental pseudo-replication in a marine setting, i text her back right away, explaining my understanding of the concept with examples, and why it’s an ethical issue. it’s a string of several rather verbose and jargon-filled text messages. she writes back letting me know she was on the verge of tears, and her professor still hadn’t emailed her back, and she needed to finish the assignment so she could study for tomorrow’s exam; which on some level i just knew, because i’ve been there, in that space where it seems like experimental pseudo-replication is the most important thing, instead of one of the many small things. it’s a little difficult to reconcile how i feel lukewarm towards my own career path and have even considered alternatives, and yet, i encourage her interest in this field and give her a leg up every chance i get. it’s almost tempting to stay around just so i can work for her one day.

28 days of gratitude ~ day 28

28 days went by so quickly, what with new babies i thought might both wait until march to make their appearances. if i have learned anything this round of gratitude, it is how much complaining i still do, how far i have to go yet to be in gratitude for a greater percentage of the time. i am grateful for the new awareness, as much as i wish for a different result, and to not be so bothered by the cold, my son’s lingering cough, and being too busy to write. the thing i love so much about gratitude is every moment is a new opportunity to start again. from the first sip of coffee in the morning, to the last bite of nachos in the evening, my days are packed full of blessings. babies, kitties, angular tweens to cuddle. trees swaying in the breeze, rainbows peeking subtly around clouds, flurries of snow. day lengths are becoming almost tolerable, and i can feel the trout lilies and trilliums are ready to bloom, right around the corner.

~two months in the life of a lifelong learner~ percolator

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a long and winding hodge podge of learning and living that i have decided to stop editing and move on from… read at your own risk (warning! verbosity ahead!), and probably pour yourself a cup of tea first.

science fair! i had the privilege of being the science fair mentor for quinn’s 5th grade class. his teacher had a very clear plan and it made it very easy to guide the kids through the process of gathering their data. they worked in groups to build worm compost bins, and then ran experiments based on, in most cases, food preferences of the worms. quinn’s group chose to compare the worms’ preference for raw potato to cooked potato, by adding equal amounts of each food at the start of the 4 weeks, and weighing what was left of each type after each week passed.

after i got done doing science with the kids one afternoon, i had a great conversation with quinn’s teacher. i opted quinn out of the state smarter balanced testing this year. it’s a matter of filling out a form, and since the detriments to quinn seemed to be outweighing the benefits, i filled out the form. his teacher had emailed me about another test called oaks science, that he will take as a 5th grader, and letting me know that if we wanted to try to opt out of the OAKS, it required a religious or learning disability reason and apparently involves a great deal of writing on the parents’ part.

this is all aside from star testing which actually provides some insight on specific skills; in quinn’s case the insights are limited based on how far out of range he scores. he still takes a star test at the beginning and end of the year.

i had emailed her back explaining our reasoning for the SB opt out was that Q was showing signs of stress last year and that all the rest of my misgivings about standardized testing aside, that particular test doesn’t even seem like it offers teachers any feedback on how to help kids learn. i have seen the results for the past two years, which aren’t returned until fall (when quinn wlil be a 6th grader with a different set of teachers) and seemed fairly useless to me.

i asked her what her take on the OAKS was, whether it was like SB, whether she felt some other way about SB, acknowledging that i’m not the teacher, and want to know if i am missing some truly helpful aspect of it. i said i’m happy to write something though i could prove neither religious nor learning disability for quinn.

she eased any potential worries about the science test, said she thinks he should take it because it’s far less involved… 40 science questions with definite answers, not open-ended essays. she doesn’t think it will stress him out the same way the other one did, she sees that he gets hung up on writing answers, he percolates in his mind and it takes him a while to start writing. i loved that she has such an accurate observation of him, and also that she phrases it in such positive terms; she says she is fascinated by his differences. if she saw any sign that he was experiencing stress from the science test, she would “find a glitch” and that would be that.

she ended up sharing her own dislike of the sb tests, is glad i’m opting quinn out of them, encouraged us to opt out all the way through high school, and even finds the star only so useful for his level. she feels what he might really benefit from is tag testing, and even moreso, pre-sat testing when he gets to middle school. she told me she thinks i will really need to advocate for him over there, because she feels he really needs more tag programming and isn’t getting it. i’m so glad i shared my reasoning for opting out, because i think it freed her to share her take on things, and it turns out she is a pretty incredible ally in terms of seeing clearly what is needed with this boy’s education.

we planned what he will do during testing week, and while there were several good options for students opting out, we agreed the best was for him to do an independent project. she liked the concept of genius hour that google uses to foster ingenuity, and she felt quinn could handle an open-ended project on a topic of his choice. she wanted it to entail some sort of end product that he could then share with the class (a presentation, animation, essay, artwork, etc.)

she was also supportive about us going to new york for a week, saying he will learn a lot from traveling!

“percolating” is such a perfect word to describe quinn’s thinking process, especially when it comes to getting ready to write something. he does most of his work inside his head, then it comes pouring out in the eleventh hour, spilling onto the page in a form that requires little editing. what wonderful images and memories the word “percolator” brings to mind: from recent fourth of july camping trips, enjoying breakfast around the campfire, to long ago visits with aunt margie and uncle george in their cabin in the adirondacks. again, it’s amazing to find someone who has the capacity to observe such things about my kid so thoroughly in spite of the fact that he is “number 27” out of 30 kids in her room. seen, known, valued for who he is; sense of belonging, connection. see also: educational priorities.

this story has been percolating along, about a page every few weeks or so…

mapping was a big topic covered in recent weeks. quinn’s imaginary land of canith has realistic longitude and latitude lines, a legend, and all the physical features of a map that you could want!

his tag class also included some compass and map work. another week involved animal tracks. one week, they worked outside and made miniature shelters. at the end the instructor let them all destroy their structures, but quinn had built his off to one side by a rock and said he was the only kid who decided to leave his up in case a squirrel needed a place to hide.

i picked quinn up from school one afternoon, and he was his usual one-word answer, surly after school self, which i’ve come to think of as “feed me” and so i didn’t start asking a bunch of questions (i’ve learned to wait until later for the most part). he was coming from a dad day and therefore no lunch leftovers to eat, but i had a tangerine. i did ask if he had remembered to bring his state book home (because when i was in class for science fair on thursday, his teacher had mentioned he still needed to finish it up). he said no. then when i asked if we should go back in for it, he provided self-defeated answers, “no, we can’t, because…” and “it’s raining” and “we’ll get hypothermia.” in the meantime, i had showed him the pack of brightly colored paper i had picked up (including martian green and cosmic orange) for making more of the origami octahedron project he liked doing the previous week at school. i had gotten a smile out of him with the martian conversation (because he read it aloud and then i said oh, like marTEEans, from martia?) but he was still mopey, so i re-parked and started peeling the tangerine, and then handed him a slice, calling it a marTEEan orange power pack, and said it would protect him from hypothermia as we returned to the mother ship… and also from scurvy. and by then he was laughing and walking in the rain into the school to get his stuff. and he said they were cosmic orange power packs, duh.

so, handling moody tweens is easy. just be a goofball. and provide snacks.

in his homework folder, he had a handwritten note from a friend saying to please bring himself and his family to go bowling at 3:30. (no bumpers). no date was specified, so i asked quinn, and he was pretty sure it meant the following day, saturday. luckily, i had background info that this boy’s dad is a fb friend of mine and rich’s due to being in one flew over the cuckoo’s nest with rich, so i did some parental fact checking, and sure enough, it was legit. the response i got was, “i had no idea the Quinn he was talking about was your Quinn!”

our two families got along quite well, and the boys are a lot alike. two smarty pants stick figures.

after bowling, we had dinner with rich’s mom and some friends, which was fun and fancy. quinn did well with the fancy factor (napkin in the lap, multiple forks and spoons and courses). he is fun to be around, which i’m glad i can say about my ten year old. here he is at home the next day eating the leftovers of his herb chicken, still painstakingly scrubbing his sprig of rosemary and slice of lemon over each bite before consuming.

it’s been a time of ups and downs with friendships for quinn. while nothing major has taken place, i get the sense that things are shifting a bit for him and he is finding that he values certain things in friends, some of which he hasn’t quite found yet. one friend he has thought of as a best friend named another boy as his best friend while he and quinn were playing one day. i had a chat with quinn after overhearing that, deciding to risk bringing up a touchy subject rather than let it go untalked about. it did definitely come up on his radar, though he didn’t give it any energy with the friend. he got his feelings about it out with me, and though it didn’t feel great, he also realized it didn’t have to mean anything terrible, either.

we talked more about what he values in a friend. one thing he likes about the bowling friend (he’s going to need a pseudonym soon, i can tell) is that, “he understands what i’m saying.” i probed further to find out that what he means by that is, the vocabulary and language quinn uses are understood and do not need further explanation with this boy, do not need to be simplified or defined. they keep up with each other. they have a compatible sense of humor in that they both like word play, and they can get pretty complicated with their discussion topics without needing to slow down.

there’s a lot going on in social development. some intriguing correspondence from a female karate friend inspired quinn to respond in cursive to her letter. i’m glad to find that: he is eager to fill me on the details and let me read both his and her notes; that he seems to have a sense of the appropriate level of friendship at this age level and kept it all in friend terms; and that he writes with good reciprocity, both sharing some of his ideas but also asking her likes and favorites.

i just wanted to mention/appreciate that i love my dojo. sifu and mrs. todd have been so supportive of working with quinn in the limited time they have with him (to date his dad has remained insistent that he cannot bring him to class during his week) and they’ll even refuse to charge me full price for quinn since he is there only half of the time. meanwhile, they work hard to catch him up on his techniques when he is around, and they see who he is and what his strengths are, and emphasize those while helping him in areas where he is not as strong. they recognize things like perfectionism (they ease up the test pressure and focus on the fun), they recognize his desire to one day teach, and his cognitive abilities to retain all the details about each move of each technique, and they put him to work helping other students. i talked with them about how i feel he will become less tolerant of his dad’s refusal to bring him to activities, as he becomes a teen, and sifu was in agreement that time would come. it’s what i hope for with everyone who enters quinn’s life in any meaningful way, that the focus will be on quinn and what is best for quinn, that quinn will be seen and known and valued for who he is, and that the connection is alive and foremost between him and anyone in a teaching capacity. (once again, see educational priorities.)

they constantly express how happy they are that we’re a part of the dojo, so i know the feeling is mutual!

he has been reading up on egyptian mythology, and requesting books on hieroglyph translation! he also read riordan’s greek heroes tome, now that he has read pretty much everything else the man has written.

cats are sacred in egyptian culture, right? this one expects to be worshipped… the past few months she often helps quinn fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning.

one morning the day of his music lesson, i got him up a half hour early and he played a full third of the drum section of his book… he has much better focus in the morning. we have had some discussion about how he may need to work at the bells harder (the snare drum just comes so easily to him) but that it will be just as rewarding or even more so to get better at the bells, since he will have to work harder. i’m trying to do things to keep practice fun for him, and continue to help him when he gets stuck in perfectionism mode. rich helps by furthering his musical education, putting beatles cds on the stereo. i mix up what instruments we play (recorder, guitar, piano, miscellaneous percussion), rename his tunes, play along with him on a drum, piano, or recorder, and inform him of silly lyrics trivia.

quinn and i went to the talent show at his school, because his friend (of the bowling invite) was in a skit and also playing his guitar in the show. we ended up sitting right in front of his friend’s family and that was cool and random. he came to sit with us and they got to chat. after we left i was musing with quinn about the band they’ll form together, and quinn thinks they need more players, “like maybe a flute and a trumpet?”

we try to fit in a few of the “art fridays” classes offered through the visual arts center, and the one called mayan metalsmithing caught quinn’s eye this session. he loved the owl image he saw in one drawing, and ended up borrowing from that idea to make a very intricate pyramid with symbols representing four elements and other details. he certainly had fun using this new and different medium for creating.

we had a fabulous family visit in new york, complete with lots of learning about: wizard chess, drums, winter olympics sports, shelter building practice, plane de-icers, and the origami yoda series his cousins had out from the library.

i got quinn on friday from school, and took him to his “mayan metalsmithing” art class at the visual arts center. we went home, ate pizza for dinner, and got ourselves packed up.

before the trip, we got to spend the afternoon with rich’s daughter. she had on hgtv show called fixerupper, which was impossible for quinn to pull himself away from. still, he manages to learn things, and while we were waiting in the airport he told me that he wants a fixer-upper and to fund his paleontology research by flipping houses. his exact words were that he would “use the money for more expeditions and plaster”. i encouraged him to learn all the building skills he possibly can from his dad, so he can put them to good use. i think it’s an excellent plan, better than trying to compete for grants. the part he loved the best was taking a “blank” room (his word) and deciding what to do with it and putting all the things in it (he will also have a warehouse… to hold the optional items.)

we took a red-eye flight there as usual. as we were landing in newark, quinn and i were able to see the empire state building and the statue of liberty from the plane. flying to syracuse, quinn spent a long time looking out the window at the view of snowy new york countryside – i can picture him gazing out with his with hands folded in his lap.

i will also be able to picture quinn’s cute upturned face when he finally hugged grammy.  their bond is like nothing else in the world.

after some soup and corn muffins for lunch, the boys began dueling with lightsabers. as soon as that got rowdy, i strongly suggested we go sledding before the snow melted all the way, and we had a fun afternoon sledding, tobogganing, and generally playing in the snow.

we had a picnic dinner, as is the christmas tradition of the rews, and since we haven’t all been there for one since quinn was just shy of 2, we observed the christmas picnic tradition together.

by the time i woke up the next morning, uncle t and grampy had already left for work, and quinn had gotten up and was on the loveseat snuggling with grammy, just the two of them, just chatting. lots of cousin play time happened, and quinn began drawing a game on graph paper in his spare moments. quinn and i talked some about being a person who needs to do some recharging in between being with people, and i see how self-aware he is in this department nowadays.

we had so much fun watching the olympics. we mimicked the vocalizations of the curling athletes and feigned understanding of the subtle intricacies of the sport. we cheered on the men’s bobsled teams who incredibly tied for gold, and reminisced about olympics of yore when germany was still divided into east and west. rich and i had recently learned that the berlin wall has now been down as many days as it had been up, and grampy remembered having written an essay about the berlin wall in his younger days.

quinn got up  before me again the next day, but it was because he had fallen out of bed (from a mattress on the floor, so no biggie) and he immediately went downstairs to grammy, who tucked him into her bed for another 15 minutes so he could have a gentle wake up. my favorite thing is that he doesn’t bother to wake me up, because why would he when there is a perfectly good grammy to go to?

the paper airplane shop began in earnest on this day, and lasted through the rest of the week. mario’s design for an airplane called a scooty was a big hit, and many prototypes were made. the living room was a big mess after a while, but i grabbed a brown paper bag and named it the “airplane garage” at one point, said it was time for the boys to park their airplanes in the garage if they were ready to go outside, and they were, so they did. it got called “the garage” the rest of the week.

luigi made himself a parachute and wanted to do an egg drop, and i encouraged him (he was inspired by quinn’s parachute which he had seen in oregon) and then he and i went up to the barn to drop it off the hay loft, and it worked great! he was so thrilled.

in the world of olympics, it was the day lindsey vonn was doing her downhill skiing and we were screaming our heads off just as though we actually care about skiing.

that afternoon the kids played outside in the 60 degree weather for hours on end: swinging on the tire swing, climbing trees, building shelters, riding bikes, trying to jump on the pogo stick… and generally running around in the breezy mild weather.

before dinner, boys were hanging around the table so i put a pile of place mats and napkins, a stack of plates and a pile of utensils on one end of it and asked who would like to help with setting the table. quinn and schroeder (quinn’s newest cousin) handled the whole thing. quinn made a comment that he can’t refuse because he is a certified technician, and the tone of what he said was so cheerful and positive (instead of “i’m obligated” it was more like “i feel compelled to and proud to do it.”)

quinn did so well with bedtimes and routine, possibly motivated by the fact that he then ended up being the first cousin up every morning to monopolize grammy time.

i got up early and went to see my friend the next morning and when i got home, quinn was playing chess with uncle t (who took the day off wed) and i guess they got a few games in before the other boys woke up.

we all cheered on the olympic short track skaters because… well, because!

then rich and quinn and i went to visit uncle b, and got to see his baby goats (bowie and pixie, boy and girl, so cute!) and then go to his practice space so quinn could see his drums and he could show him some stuff. i took video of each of the beats he showed quinn so i can put them on his computer for him to play back and try to replicate… he had this look of awe listening to uncle b on the drums. he was kind of shy once he got behind the drums himself and it took him a minute to play anything, but he did do the basic rhythm he knows, and then he ad libbed a little bit and it was pretty cool. uncle b said, “he’s got that rew music gene” and seemed proud to have a nephew following in his drumming foorsteps. i am so glad they got that time together. he encouraged quinn to listen to certain drummers, and named several bands who have inspired him… quinn was soaking it all in.

that night i happened upon a scene in which quinn, luigi and mario were trying to make an origami cat using a you tube video, and uncle t was trying to help them. i sat in to try to help as well, but it was a difficult one, and we ended up watching the second half and realizing we should bail. then the boys helped quinn make an easy 5-fold origami yoda they had learned, and then i put quinn to bed.

the next morning at 8:00 i started seeing snowflakes… quinn came downstairs a few minutes after 8 and it was snowing in earnest, and the sound of him gasping… priceless. he told me he never saw it snowing before, only had woken up to snow being already on the ground, so he was feeling the magic. i asked if he wanted to go out right away, but he said no, he wanted to wait until there was some on the ground and then go out and play. it just kept falling and falling all day! 8 hours later there were 6 inches on the ground, and many giant snowballs, snow people, the base of an igloo, and ski tracks. quinn’s snow person had a big base, and tapered to a very small head, and he called it the security guard.

skiing was such an intense emotional experience for him. i found all of my gear from when i was his age (miracle… shoes in attic, skis in barn. poles in cellar…) and we realized the boots fit him fine! so we snapped him into the skis, and he was excited! and then he was frustrated! and then he was angry at me! and then he was angry at skis! and then he was on top of the world again! like that, for the whole time. he was so happy to be doing it (i mean, olympics mania was not lost on the boy) and yet it did not come easily, and he fell and it didn’t feel great, and he didn’t think i was right that falling is an essential part of the learning process with skiing. later on, we had yet another conversation about how sometimes we can be perfectionists…. and i think he is gaining insight about that all the time. so all in all, i am very glad i put him on those skis, and put that good challenge in front of him, and though it was not easy, it was enjoyable and a memory he will love forever.

schroeder came over, and quinn and mario went sledding with him and they had tons of fun. the snow kept falling… then at 4:00, it stopped and the sun came out! so we retired to the indoors for tacos! it was a wonderful, snowy birthday eve.

birthday!

there has been much written on the subject of this day already, a cold and rainy, paper folding, family gathering, peach pie eating, wonderful day of celebrating with his whole family all together on his birthday for the very first time.

in the morning we went to the cider mill and got to see andy and molly. they had been out of town visiting family for spring break, but it was so good to get to see them again. we got apples and donuts and went back to the house for play time until we had to leave for the airport.

quinn used his new birthday present book on star wars origami when he got home to create r2d2 and c3po. he had a frustration at one point and as i was trying to talk him through staying with it and staying calm, he told me, “i’m a perfectionist.” his increasing level-headed awareness of this inner challenge will help him so much in overcoming the associated obstacles!

he has been exploring more game programming using scratch. on one occasion he looked at trying to make a dinosaur bone digging game in scratch, and he played some other peoples’ games about dinosaurs.

he also started making a game called kashyyyk battle. one of the books i gave him for his birthday was about making star wars games in scratch. he read a bunch of it on the plane ride, and it is amazing to me how he started with making the (someone else’s icon design) whale swim across the screen to now googling “how to make gravity in scratch” and implementing all this crazy code and designing these characters himself (drawing individual pixels). yoda has a lightsaber that appears if you press space bar, to kill the clones… it’s a work in progress, but he got gravity working… and he knows exactly what he is going to do, he just needs more time to implement it all.

 

one afternoon, he thought of an idea for a new “story mode” game, after experiencing “scratch – story mode” and given some prior experience with “minecraft – story mode.” he worked in his graph notebook that bears the label “quinn’s games” to develop 3 characters (they bear striking resemblance to quinn himself, and his cousins mario and luigi) and began percolating some ideas about the story line of the game, in which he knew the heroes would encounter at least one dragon.

on time management… i’ve had him start using a white board to plan his time. one non-school friday he woke up just before 9 and he had until 2:30 when he’d leave for his dad’s, so i had him plan out his day in segments of 30 minutes. he got to choose when to have breakfast, lunch, music practice and homework, and then see how many other half hours were left for free choice (a game of bone wars, time to himself, time with me; i gave restrictions on my own time such as needing the time slot before his lunch free for making lunch) and he followed the plan pretty much to the letter and with only a little bit of grumbling/processing and a growing awareness of the passage of time (we used a timer for each 30 minute segment). i haven’t asked him to plan every evening, but some evenings i do bring it up, so he does less leaving things until the last minute or skipping them entirely (music practice is hard to fit in without some intentional planning, with all the karate and trying to get to bed on time and lengthy dinner and bath processes). this seemed like an area that could do with more scaffolding and coaching, and it seems like the right time to get some practice in before middle school.

one small victory in this area was that he got caught up on a whole week of reading summaries in one night. typically, he struggles against writing even one summary, and he is required to write four of them per week. he didn’t write any while we were in new york, believing he did not need to, but found out when he got back that he actually did need to. he set a goal for himself to have it done by wednesday, and worst case scenario friday, so he wouldn’t have to miss any recess to finish it at school. (that would take place after the one week grace period, so the following monday). he got home from karate one night and set to work and got 6 summaries written; not only did he get the back work done, but got himself up to date on his current homework for that week. all without a single mention from me, he just did it.

also in the department of planning ahead, he knows that he wants to do a comparison of the various mythologies he has learned about- greek, roman, egyptian, norse – when he spends his week opted out of testing.

for his karate birthday, i brought mini cupcakes and sifu gave him an amazing gift of throwing knives that quinn has been ogling in sifu’s weapons case for a while now. it’s so neat how he pays attention to what the kids care about. i brought cookies to school for his birthday on the monday he went back, since he had his actual birthday while he was in new york.

hat day ~ guitar and other instruments keep him interested in music even if his principal instrument is causing frustration ~cracking crab

“look out, snack shelf, because here comes winter storm quinn!” we had to laugh that winter storm quinn came and hit new york the week after we visited.

we celebrated st. patty’s with our local family. corned beef, green jello, plasma cars, and all the usual fixings!

quinn’s class took a 3 day field trip to outdoor school at the local omsi site known as camp grey. i chaperoned for two out of three days, so i got to photo document as well.

on day 1, the topics were marine mammals and birds. after stretching out a rope and visualizing the actual lengths of various marine mammals, from sea otter to blue whale, the kids got to cycle through stations, checking out bones, retrieving “food” out of water using different tools to represent baleen (strainer) and teeth (chopsticks), donning a blubber glove to see how much warmer it makes the water feel, dropping slinkies from their ears to the ground to test out echolocation, and designing their own marine mammal based on the adaptations they’d learned about. after lunch, they hiked to the jetty and did some great bird watching, spying an osprey nest, many cormorants, and a few other species, in addition to some harbor seals.

on day 2, our group went on a nice long hike to the beach! to warm up our brains before we left, we did an exercise using a crumpled up piece of paper to represent a watershed. the kids drew waterways where they seemed likely to exist based on the paper’s “topography”, and then the leader used a squirt bottle to demonstrate how the water would flow around the watershed. the hike involved some plant identification, a fun game of tag to represent the food web, and a fair amount of free time to explore and play.

and one certified cursive signature writing technician!

pi day!

quinn had his half-purple belt test! he tested alongside two of his peers who were receiving their green belts, so it was a pretty intense and thorough test, in which each kid was truly taken to their edge and made it back safely. each kid also had a chance to showcase the areas in which he shines, and while the other boys were both very strong in sparring, quinn’s talent for memorizing forms and for understanding theory were also displayed.

origami!

the science fair event was held at quinn’s school. i appreciated quinn’s teacher’s approach once again in that her class did a group effort sandwich board and a nice bulletin board, and skipped the individual displays (aside from worm bins! the actual experiment!)

it was a nice opportunity to talk with his teacher about him, whereas my usual capacity as a classroom mentor or field trip chaperone doesn’t often allow for that. she is looking ahead to middle school and said that she will recommend him for the 7-8 accelerated math class beginning in the fall. even better, she knew more about the teacher than i do, and said “i want him to have her right away.” this bodes very well, coming from this wonderful teacher with whom i feel very lucky he has gotten to spend fifth grade.

i also got to hear about how she feels quinn “thinks so outside of the box” and uses language in “ways i’ve never heard from other students.” she told me, “sometimes i put quinn’s assignment  on the bottom of the pile to save it for last, it’s like dessert!

i looked over at quinn, who was listening in, and said, “it’s story ice cream in a bowl.” and he smiled.

a pirate looks at 40

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i’ve been spending hours each day in a walk-in freezer, straddling two different lab jobs which is marginally better than a lapse in funding. the arctic cod eggs in my care are beginning to hatch, and the spring equinox felt like an auspicious occasion for their entrance. when i emerge each day from 2 degrees celsius, i am grateful to retain the use of my extremities and to be useful and efficient.

at the dragon house, we’re excited about the return of longer daylight hours, so we can take our after work bayou walks. my birthday blossoms are in bloom, it’s the season of trout lilies and trilliums!

as life seasons go, i am ready to fully embrace my 40s. as i embark on a new decade, i would like to write more, complain less about not having time to write, and streamline….

streamline is my word for 2018, by the way, but i never had time in january to write about it. i’ve been doing a terrible job of implementing it in certain areas, but making some headway in others. in the physical realm of streamlining stuff, i have donated lots of books and other unneeded items, and created more physical space, which i’m realizing i value more than even books. my goal is to have my household reflect those values one day, but it may be a work in progress for some time. in the cyber realm i’ve unsubscribed from any email subscriptions i receive and promptly delete; i figured there might be around 10, but i stopped counting at 50 and i do a lot less deleting these days. i kept a small handful of subscriptions i actually click on and read, and this streamlining effort allows time for that.

in a more metaphysical sense, streamlining is a term that makes me think of the ways i spend my life energy, and ways i could conserve it more efficiently. dolphins have been friends of my spirit for more than half my life now, and provide the perfect mascot for becoming more streamlined. some of the definitions of the word focus on how the motion of the fluid around the object is smooth, or the condition of being free from turbulence; however the more i think about it, the less it has to do with the status of the flow of life around me, and more to do with shaping myself in such a way that i present less resistance to the flow.

2017 was such a momentous year, that my only resolution for 2018 was to have a very mellow year, one in which i can take moments to reflect on the year just past. so far, 2018 has been intense in its own ways, with little time for reflection, but with spring, often comes more energy for me, and i anticipate a flurry of wedding and family visit catch-up posts soon. in fact, my intent is to carve out some time for that as a birthday present to myself!

i expected turning 40 to feel like a bigger deal, a little more biblical in proportions. you know, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights… take a walk in the desert for 40 days and nights, hike up mount sinai for 40 days and nights, etc. it turns out that 40 may just be a biblical way of saying, “umpteen,” and not necessarily a numerical value. which seems to more accurately describe how old i feel. a vague, abstract, age that is not quite eleventy-seven and not that much older than my teens, yet with a sense that a lot of years have gone by. and i’ve developed the ability to nap on cue (40 winks?), which i think is a good sign that i’m ready for my 40s.

in other areas of cultural significance, 40 is the highest number ever counted to on sesame street.

a glance back at four decades…

1988: when i turned 10, i had a birthday party with all of my friends. i was allowed to get my hair permed and start growing it out. my favorite color up to that point was pink. i was into art and music. i was counted on for my work around the farm. i had one of my favorite teachers of all time for fifth grade.

1998: when i turned 20, i was on a tiny island called rum cay in the bahamas which i reached via schooner! this was during my sophomore year of college, the spring term of which i spent on a semester-at-sea. the title of this post is also the title of a jimmy buffett song i first heard at that time, half my life ago: “mother mother ocean, i have heard you call; wanted to sail upon your waters since i was three feet tall.”

2008: when i turned 30, i was mama to a beautiful one year old boy. i was looking for jobs on the oregon coast so we could relocate here, and spending the rest of my time being a mama and busing around portland with my little guy, managing to work part time sequencing dolphin dna with him strapped to my back. within months i was moving, with a restraining order in my hand, my baby helping me keep my integrity as my compass bearing and my course set resolutely to onward and upward.

 

perusing the hieroglyphic dictionary

hexahexaflexagon!

2018: now i am 40. i am married to the most wonderful man in the world. i’ve grown my son to age eleven and 5’1” tall, and we really like spending time together, currently studying such fascinating subjects as hieroglyphics and hexaflexagons. though i’ve become paradoxically both more cynical and more hopeful as time has passed, the bottom line is that i’m filled with gratitude each night as i climb into bed.

 

eleven ~ the time of returning

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cue the soundtrack… the eleven by the grateful dead is the only song i know that has a time signature of eleven beats per measure! also, i liked that this version was recorded on 8-23-68, quinn’s half birthday, 50 years ago! if we add my age and his together right now, we get 50! oh the number fun to be had on birthdays….

 

eleven is such a delightfully large, odd, indivisible, palindromic, prime number! but i’ve had a thing for the number eleven for a while now. my young synesthete sees 1 and therefore also 11 in the color red, but for me it’s got a red violet hue.

 

the eleven

High green chilly winds and windy vines
In loops around the twisted shafts of lavender,
They’re crawling to the sun.
Underfoot the ground is patched
With arms of ivy wrapped around the manzanita,
Stark and shiny in the breeze.
Wonder who will water all the children of the garden
When they sigh about the barren lack of rain and
Droop so hungry neath the sky.
William Tell has stretched his bow till it won’t stretch
No furthermore and/or it may require a change that hasn’t come before.
No more time to tell how, this is the season of what,
Now is the time of returning with our thought
Jewels polished and gleaming.
Now is the time past believing the child has relinquished the rein,
Now is the test of the boomerang tossed in the night of redeeming.
Seven faced marble eyed transitory dream doll,
Six proud walkers on the jingle bell rainbow,
Five men writing with fingers of gold,
Four men tracking down the great white sperm whale,
Three girls waiting in a foreign dominion
Riding in the whale belly, fade away in moonlight,
Sink beneath the waters to the coral sands below.
Songwriters: Philip Lesh / Robert C. Hunter

 

now is the time of returning… back from another revolution around the sun… to our other homeland of new york… to seeing my child at an age of my own childhood that i remember more vividly than the ones he has been before… now is the time of returning with our thought jewels polished and gleaming!

the more i mull over these lyrics, the more appropriate for a birthday they seem… now is the time past believing the child has relinquished the rein… at first glance this line suggests passing beyond a point of no return, an ending to the innocence of childhood, but upon further reflection, it seems to get beyond assumptions that growing up means the child has gone away, and instead a realization of the child’s intactness in spite of added years. he’s still there galloping along, and we’re past believing he has relinquished the rein.

we might do another double take with the initially despairing thought of wonder(ing) who will water all the children of the garden, but bringing that thought back around to its beginning once more, we might realize it is wonder who will water all the children of the garden. simple yet profound in the layers of meaning. seeing quinn’s delight in the falling snow, hearing him gasp on the morning he awoke to see it falling, and watching his gleeful play assured me that wonder is still watering his garden.

arriving at this age that already seems pre-packaged with extra attitude and a side of, “mom, why do you have to be so embarrassing?” it is easy to feel like childhood may be approaching an ending, but there is so much childhood still inside this kid, and truly in all of us troubled grown ups as well, so much wonder and joy and spunk. yet, this season of what brings new levels of flexibility, awareness, and resilience (evidence of all of these i can already see, mere days into his time as an eleven year old) that shine like thought jewels polished and gleaming, ensuring this will be his best year yet. it may require a change that hasn’t come before, but already i see him rising to the challenges and responding with an ever-expanding consciousness.

i like the word indivisible, concerning eleven’s numerical properties. i think it’s resonating for me given how far quinn has come in his ability to roll with changes and handle emotions, and i think he’s well equipped with tools to keep his spirit whole and intact. indivisible.

for his birthday, i bundled up my stick figure in a hodge podge of hand-me-downs and rapidly serged old pieces of fleece, and stuck him on the cross country skis i used when i was his age. (now is the time of returning…) with olympics mania running rampant through the rew house, he was very excited to try, but he has yet to embrace the concept that falling down a lot is a required part of the skiing process. he did say, however, that if he wins an olympic medal for skiing one day, he’ll tell them to thank me.

 

it was special for the whole family to get to celebrate the birthday of this particular boy together, for the first time ever!

he is startlingly tall, standing with his grampy. this is all going according to his plan to avenge his mama by becoming taller than his uncles… 6’7″, here he comes.

he opened one birthday present early in the day, because i had an inkling the cousins would get a lot of fun out of using this gift together. there has been a simultaneous bi-coastal dive into origami among the cousins, between their reading origami yoda books and his learning octahedron folding in school. much of the rainy, windy birthday was spent inside, folding colored paper into dinosaurs, yodas, and more octahedra! the entire week produced several large bags full of paper airplanes, and many empty rolls of tape, so the grand finale of origami paper and books was a fitting culmination.

make-your-own-birthday-decorations. we kept it low key, and the kids provided all that was needed in the way of birthday decor.

snow – his birthday (eve) wish come true!

so much good quality time with family made his birthday all the more wonderful. homemade pizza for dinner, time with his aunts, uncles, grammy, and grampy, and playing with his cousins… the simple joys were all he needed.

given his arrival at the age at which harry potter first stepped aboard the hogwarts express, a harry potter theme ran throughout his birthday week, including a gift of some sheet music from the movie soundtrack to play on his bells, and a tournament of wizard chess games played against his uncle t. i love the way this boy makes connections in unique ways with each individual member of his extended family.

high green chilly winds and windy vines… now is the time of returning…

this past year it has finally occurred to me that his time of birth, 3:14, has numerical significance. yep, my baby was born at pi o’clock. and he is nerdy enough to find that quull. we also ate pie for his birthday, homemade peach pie to be exact, a gift of summer made by his grammy’s loving hands, and delivered across the kitchen with flaming candles by his uncle b, accompanied by a chorus of voices of cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, and grandparents.

 

turn it up to eleven!

uncle b also showed him a thing or two on his drum set, much to quinn’s delight! he’s a proud walker on the jingle bell rainbow… (i hadn’t noticed the rainbow lyric in this song until this writing, but… of course!) not only has he progressed well with jingling his bells with mallets in the past several months, he has begun to learn drum rolls and paradiddles! again, watching him connect with my brother on this level made me so very happy.

a very happy, snowy, indivisible, jingle bell rainbow, eleventh birthday to my favorite boy!

~rainbow mondays~ snow colors

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it’s been a whirlwind week of fun with family in new york, and i have the rainbow to prove it. here is one of quinn’s hand-crafted birthday decorations, a rainbow octahedron, complete with barney the origami allosaurus, hanging in the rew kitchen!

we’ll start with white, the most abundant color in this rainbow. the goal of this trip to new york was to get quinn there to experience some snow, a goal he has held for several years. it was a little touch and go for a few days, after the leftover snow we enjoyed on day one had given way to 60 degree weather, but on his birthday eve, quinn’s birthday wish came true. he woke up to falling flakes.

white: by the time he had rolled his last snowball into his igloo  base, a good 6 inches had accumulated.

white: making the most of the aforementioned leftovers, the day of our arrival.

white: fancy ice formations

 

white: birthday eve snowman construction, while the snow continued to fall.

white: amazing how quickly it accumulates.

white: hard at work on his “security guard” at the top of the driveway.

white: after sledding his heart out, he certainly slept well that night!

white: one of the biggest kids of all is the one i’m married to…

 

white: winter wonderland!

white: and then… the storm was over and the sun came out! good thing we enjoyed it while it lasted!

red: playing near grampy’s barn on the day of our arrival with his cousins.

red: it was that certain kind of snow that sculpts itself into formations as it slides off the edge of the barn roof…

red: ida red and northern spy at the local cider mill where we got fresh warm donuts and got to see our foster cousins “andy and molly.” though these two sweeties are back with their mom, they will always be a part of our family.

orange: a happy boy riding downhill on a vintage sled.

golden-brown: the local herd visiting the lower field.

yellow: black-eyed susan stems at sunset.

yellow: sunset over the leftover snow on our first day.

yellow: golden glow on the windowpanes.

yellow: the last light of day casting the walnut tree’s shadow on the porch windows.

 

yellow: sunset on sparkly icicles.

green: shelter building on a much warmer day with cousins and newest foster cousin. this was our first meeting of this cousin, who shall be called schroeder (not his real name), for his attraction to the piano.

green: sawing limbs for the shelter.

green: wake up snuggle with grammy.

green: everyone loves to snuggle with her…

blue: confused geese, not sure which way to go on such a warm day between snow storms.

blue: the rainbows on the old harvestore silo have always made me happy.

 

purple: i let the other kids do most of the sledding and snow playing, but i did go down the hill once or twice.

 

purple: then i sat around taking photos of snowflakes and icicles and sunsets while i supervised the shenanigans.

pink-purple-golden sky at the end of a snowy day.

maybe i’ll just call it red violet.

 

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

~rainbow mondays~ a crack in everything

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being the rainbow around the dragon house… rotating flowers through the rainbow jars and dying/hiding/finding rainbow eggs in stolen weekday moments before my son left for his dad’s on good friday.

this is bart, being the rainbow kitty healer. he has a special sense to know which body part upon which to drape his 19 pounds and purr in order to perform his best healing magic. he hones in on a uterus with cramps or a knee with a twinge, he drapes himself across one’s neck if one has a sore throat, and across one’s face if one is congested. so this one time (thursday) when i dislocated my left shoulder, he could be found attending to things in his usual manner. p.s. is this shirt candy pink or baby pink, do you think?

red: another fire child celebrated a birthday, and since we’re growing old together, the universe figured we could practice more “in sickness and in health.” i’m pleased to report that rich still knows how to make nachos and washed all the heavy dishes for me over the weekend. he said i don’t need to hurt myself in order to get him to help in the kitchen. not being able to use one arm for a day made me appreciate allllll of the things i do while taking for granted my two capable hands. “sweetie, would you please open my underwear drawer?” i was back to french braiding yesterday, but for friday rich got to practice his ponytail skills.

red: on saturday i was back in action for farm work, i just didn’t throw any 80 pound totes of veggies around, and restricted myself instead to emptying them out into their displays, arranging rhubarb into bright red rainbows, without holding any of it up over my head.

orange: i’ve been reflecting lately on trying to be open to what is next for me in terms of career path. now, when i said open, i didn’t mean i wanted to be broken open. i meant in the sense of brainstorming and thinking outside the box. but, as the late l. cohen sang, “there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” if nothing else, my injury was effective at enforcing that i work on my wedding invitations… i couldn’t exactly haul buckets or push the wheelbarrow around this weekend.

for fun i looked up shoulder injury in louise hay’s you can heal your life, which i’ve found to be startlingly accurate every time i’ve referred to its hippie dippy master list. it did not disappoint this time either: joint injuries represent changing directions in life and the ease with which we make those transitions.

orange: i guess cracking is how we get to the yummy part of the egg, too.

yellow: my legs were still working fine, so i took a few bayou walks with rich. we are in skunk season.

yellow: we are also still enjoying the trout lily patch immensely. in a rare moment of sun, i laid sideways on my good shoulder and took pictures of this spider’s fancy gypsy tent.

yellow: pollen!

and sun!

green: a few bayou walks with this lad were taken as well. trilliums were observed.

owls were impersonated.

trees were hugged.

green: rich and i went to a lady rizo concert last night. she is an expert weaver of metaphor during her performances. she sang the leonard cohen song i quoted above (title: anthem), and had me in tears with her recitation of the statue of liberty poem during the song’s bridge. as a new york city resident, she saw that lady liberty, mother of exiles, went dark the day the second executive order immigration ban went into effect. she wasn’t sure whether the credit was due to some crafty park rangers, or mere coincidence, but the metaphor couldn’t be denied. sometimes imprisoned lightning is more visible when it is suddenly absent. sometimes it’s the silences between the notes that sing the loudest. sometimes we can see the shaft of sunlight better when a trail of smoke goes across it, and like a light bulb to lemon juice, reveals a secret message we’ve been needing to read.

 

green: a wind storm blew a bunch of the flowers off the maple tree onto our driveway, and i find them to be quite captivating filling the green jar on my windowsill. maple is a family favorite (i’m thinking of all my pancakes and also of my great grandfather’s maple syrup/sugar business), and as i am a special fan of green flowers, these first green flowers of the spring are a new favorite.

blue: don’t forget!

purple: the garden will still be there when i get back. in the meantime, the hyacinths are holding down the bottom level of the terraces, and i’ve pulled all the ivy all the way to the cedar tree where cardboard is now laid down. i’ll be inside the house under a cat. contemplating the cracks in everything… they’re how the rainbows get in.

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

39 ~ letters in the sand

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i had wanted to say more during women’s history month, but here we are slingshot into the month of april, and 2 of my 3 big events of the year have come and gone. quinn is 10!  i am 39! and our wedding is a few short months away, for which we are giddy with anticipation.  this is my letter written in the sand, as my 39th birthday surges on by.

on april 3, i woke up, made the bed, trudged upstairs and hugged rich. when he told me, “happy birthday sweetie,” i replied, “oh yeah! i forgot!” and that, ladies and gentlemen, is 39 in a nutshell.

being born on april 3 is a little harder to fit into a nutshell, because those of us who share this birthday, jane goodall and myself included, tend to be relatively passionate, difficult to encapsulate, individuals. which means we can be boisterously enthusiastic, fiercely loving, miraculously multitasking, as prickly as we are cuddly, including the leg hair we sometimes boycott shaving due to so many other more important things we need to be doing! doing! doing!, especially starting projects, and we can be the biggest compilation of contradictions you have ever encountered. i probably shouldn’t speak for jane on these matters, but i’d be surprised if she didn’t fit some of this description, being my birthday sister.

wedding boss is learning what my mom has known since i was a child, that i have a hard time articulating creative endeavors before they are completed, that i rarely initiate group projects and prefer to make things myself with nobody watching, and that yes, i say contradictory things about my plans. “you have said both that you want lots of color and lots of flowers, and that you want to keep it minimal and use lots of white.” what can i say, sis, it makes sense in my own head! the lots of flowers in the terraces will provide single flowers for the colorful vases on the mostly white tablecloths… surrounded by rainbow prayer flags. lots and minimal and white and color.

i was born in the same year as a giant blizzard, under the fire sign of aries. a tornado of fire who can’t keep her extremities warm to save her life. to be situated in the draftiest northwest upstairs bedroom in the farmhouse was my childhood fate. i am blessed with an equally fiery fiance who, probably due to all the taurus in his chart (*wink*), is able to store his warmth and share the excess with me on chilly nights, and it’s just one of the galaxy of reasons i am so happy to be marrying him.

two aries might sound like a lot of head butting, but between his grounded earthiness and my attraction to the fire-quenching water, we both seem to have found some balance and evolved a few coping skills, not to mention the chemistry of our teamwork that seems to result in a lot of cleared land with plants growing in it. maybe aries finally become more settled with age, more able to channel that fire into a forging, creative bed of embers, than a raging, destructive inferno. sometimes i even finish projects nowadays. i know i feel a lot readier to embark on a lifelong relationship with someone than i ever would have in the previous two decades of my life.

i think my parents must have had some notion that i was a born hippie, right from an early age. at that time, the only way i had to exercise it might have been to experiment with consuming large helpings of sprouts and sunflower seeds at the pizza hut salad bar. but there were other signs, accumulated over the longer term, that might have clued them in.

when we were allowed to choose among the three afternoon tv programs (sesame street, mr. rogers, and the electric company) i remember frequently choosing mr. rogers. i was drawn to his nonviolent communication and his neighborhood of make believe. and ohhh, the crayon factory episode. when a premature calf was born and i insisted on bottle-feeding her multiple times a day during my summer vacation around age 8, they could see my (stubborn) heart for animals. i disliked eating steak, and refused to eat any beef at all if my father revealed the former name of the cow we were consuming. i belonged among the wildflowers, i belonged on a boat out at sea. with an unlimited supply of scotch tape.

my fiance knows about my thing for wildflowers. this is my birthday trout lily (in the yellow vase), a delightful patch of which is thriving on the bayou trail.

as i grew up, i went from calf rescue to calf delivery midwife. for my career path i was torn between music, art and biology, with biology eking out a slight lead due to its inclusion of wildflowers, whales, and boats out at sea, the subjects of the music and art i liked best.

jimmy carter was president when i was born, and in 1980 when the first women’s history week (which expanded to the whole month of march) was born, along with my younger sibling. he even put in a plug for the e.r.a., which still hasn’t been ratified.  i don’t know if that has anything to do with my becoming a feminist, but i always did have an interest in female heroes. i wrote essays for the famous american women contest in numerous years, my most memorable subjects being beverly cleary and mother hale. mother hale cared for hundreds of crack-addicted and hiv-infected babies when no one else would take them in. beverly cleary wrote the most captivating stories about a girl with whom i acutely identified, who got muddy, did not consider herself inferior to the boys, preferred to wear pants, and got in trouble with her teachers… in oregon. between ramona quimby and playing oregon trail on the apple iie computers, i think i have always been destined for oregon. with a strong desire for all babies to be wanted, and a need to write on behalf of women’s equality.

i wrote on quinn’s birthday that 10 is both a culmination and a beginning; 39 feels like being on the cusp of finally arriving at home within myself. i also wrote that 10 was a sum of consecutive prime numbers; can you guess what other number that can be said about?

“Thirty-nine is the sum of consecutive primes (3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13) and also is the product of the first and the last of those consecutive primes. Among small semiprimes only three other integers (10, 155, and 371) share this attribute,” says wikipedia. considering that neither of us is likely to ever reach 155 or 371, we are rocking two pretty special ages this year, my boy and i.

since i took calculus around 155 years ago, i can’t remember if the color pattern quinn chose represents a harmonic series or some other kind… 1,1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4, 1…

 

 

the song 39 by queen was an unexpected birthday gift i discovered when i googled 39 to find out its mathematical attributes. (yes i am that much of a geek.) the song touches on the subject of fleeting time when a ship full of space travelers return one year older to a world in which generations have passed them by. maybe when i chose the word ephemeral for 2017, it had something to do with how keenly i am feeling time rush by in great dollops. ephemeral like letters in the sand. relativity is relentless, “the day i take your hand in the land that our grandchildren knew…” but woven into this turnover is a web of connection. “your mother’s eyes through your eyes cry to me,” makes me think of the way i’ve been told ever since i can remember that i have my nana’s eyes, smile, mannerisms. thinking of that brings grief entwined inextricably with comfort. i have mentioned ani’s lyric about children, “the funnel through which women’s lives are poured,” and more and more, in spite of being my own distinct someone, i feel like a vessel, a conduit, through which my son’s life energy can pour forth.

so, i guess i have a lot on my mind. it totally makes sense that i didn’t remember it was my birthday!

~rainbow mondays~ a happy return of the day!

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i spent part of spring break on wedding projects, including dying and cutting the fabric for prayer flags i am asking my guests to help decorate.

checking items off the to-do list feels pretty good!

i also gave my rainbow jar/flower plan a test run, even though i didn’t have any orange or green flowers yet to work with.

 

my son requested that i buy him a set of the yoga cards his teacher uses in class. i felt like this particular card was a sign that it was a good addition to our library. he has been setting up flows for me to do with him ever since they arrived.

rainbow tidepool creatures from a low tide walk with a good friend on sunday… with sunshine! on my birthday weekend, i couldn’t have asked for nicer weather for our walk!

red: sunlit crab in the shallows

red: another, larger sunlit crab!

red: gooseneck barnacles are not often seen on land, as they often grow on pelagic flotsam. we saw a cluster on the beach yesterday, looking like they’d just arrived from outer space.

orange: crabs seemed to be prevalent!

orange: including hermit crabs! i loved this little guy perched on the baby orange urchin.

orange: as part of my pre-birthday celebrating, i tested for my orange belt! had an awesome test alongside some inspiring young women.

yellow: test day, the last day of my previous belt rank of yellow.

yellow: and one of my first days of sparring. i was dreading it, but it turned out to be very fun!

yellow: a friday night outing with some girlfriends included a fun dessert, which came with sparkler candle! the friend who took this pointed out my angel over in the lower right corner.

green: minecraft, irl! (in real life, with real bricks.)

green: more sparkly twinkles. dew on clover.

green: twisting dragon pose!

green and blue: sharing smores with camp boss!

blue: smiley face rock!

blue: eagles always visit us at this beach. this was a juvenile.

purple: we picked up some trash from the tidepools, but some trash has become a growing surface, like this sparkly red plastic. i had reached in, ascertained that it was not one to be removed due to baby sea urchin, and stooped lower to take this picture before i saw the sculpin lurking in complete stillness! they are incredible at hide and seek.

purple: still quite sparse after the wasting disease that diminished their population to almost nothing, we did see a hopeful handful of sea stars.

purple: sea urchins with tube feet visible!

purple: some of my birthday flowers, and another purple birthday present, from sparring. it looks much worse than it feels!

purple beauties.

purple: crocuses in the terrace garden. i’ve always loved the stripey ones!

red violet: speaking of stripey, the trilliums are beginning to do their magical color change trick. trilliums in red violet, 3 petals on the 3rd of april, a lovely birthday present!

white: but a few of them are still white, providing a nice camouflage substrate for the cute white spider.

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed