Free your kids

There is a wonderful page on facebook called Free Your Kids   https://www.facebook.com/freeyourkids

This is only one of this father's wonderfully written thoughts!

"What if I admitted to you that it's scary? What if I told you that many days I get tired of being different? What if I confided in you that poking the tiger often leaves me feeling unbalanced and out-of-sorts? What if I told you that, sometimes, I want to shovel the dirt back into the rabbit hole?

What if I told you that critically examining every piece of information I'm presented with leaves me... drained? What if I told you that I sometimes wish to lower my head and rejoin the safety of the flock? What if I told you that re-examining and critiquing every custom and belief I had instilled in me as a child leaves me feeling insecure and frightened?

What if I told you I must find the truth no matter where it lies? What if I told you that I can't turn it off, that I can't disengage, that I can't simply decide to become "normal" again? What if I told you that, for me, knowing the truth and living my ideals trumps any temporary desire to soothe my soul with platitudes?

What if I told you that living freely doesn't come easy? What if I told you that questioning everything scares the hell out of me? What if I told you my biggest fear was losing everything I had because I failed to conform? What if I told you that following this path is lonely and confusing?

But what if I told you I can't stop? And furthermore, what if I told you I couldn't stop even if I knew for certain that every one of my fears would come to pass? What if I told you that, no matter what, I can't and won't put the genie back in the bottle?"

Learning to Pray

I learned to pray as I learned to talk.
I did not learn to pray because "if I prayed God would give me blessings."
I did not learn to pray because "good people pray."
I did not learn to pray because I hurt God's feelings when I didn't pray.
I didn't even learn to pray because I would hurt my parents' feelings if I didn't pray!


I learned to pray because I love God.
I learned to pray because I know He loves me.
I learned to pray because I know I can tell Him anything and everything and He will still love me.
I learned to pray because I know these things.  Every single morning of my life, if I cared to get up that early, I could peek into my parents' room at 4:00 am and see my mother kneeling up against her too soft chair, audibly pouring out her soul to God.


I know she loves Him.
I know she knows He loves her.
I know she knows she can tell Him anything and everything and He will still love her.

Hanging out the Laundry

The few dead leaves rustle back and forth in the wind.  Neglect has caused the line to bite into the tree as it's bark folds around it. The smell of soon to be damp dead grass kisses my toes.  My feet, unintentionally tearing the dry covering, make a love path of exposed dirt.  The ball of my  bare foot digs into the not quite softening earth, as my weight shifts, baby and all, from basket to line to basket to line, lulling him with my slow deliberate rhythm.  The dark frozen earth gives calm peace as it rubs onto my bare skin.  The almost sharp wind caresses my face through my tangled hair, and the smell of last years apples finally looses it's grasp on the tree.  My fingers are just cold enough to know I am alive as I hurridly shake them to give myself a little more time to complete my task.  The ridges of my face taste the cold they are exposed to, and the baby snuggled deeper in his pouch.  The dead grasses make patterns on the ground that only living things can breathe, as the wind blows a longer strand against my bare ankle and life down my throat.  Mischievous eyes drink in the open world, safe in my presence, as the kids peek out from the hammock they have made out of an old sheet.  Little eyes exposed to the wild of the wind, as hidden bodies wiggle in the constant movement that is a child.  As my fingers burn with the coldness of my task, I feel the peace of working in the closeness of my children under the open sky, and the calmness, that I have carelessly trod on in the rush of life, washes over me like the wind.

Exploring!

I have already managed to teach my one year old that exploring and curiosity are bad, or at least not things "approved of" by Mommy.  When I walked around the corner, he started and backed away from initiating an investigation of the myriad unknowns of his world.  Later, he looked up at me questioningly, recognizing I was there, before he reached out to touch something new.  Not in the beautiful hesitancy of trusting a parent, where a parents advice on something potentially scary, is sought.  Not using me as a partner to investigate and navigate the world that has taught him healthy respect and hesitancy, but gut wrenchingly a look for approval. "Will I be pulled hastily away from this 'danger' as well?  I might as well ask, as to reach out my hand for comprehension, only to have it pulled back." 

I dream of being organized enough that I have a large house and yard completely explorable by a 1 year old.  But then, as my child eats dirt and teeths on rocks (large clean ones he can hold in his hand are the best - they are hard and cold and probably taste good and earthy-natural-wild too), I think of all of the "safe" exploration toys on the market for his age group.  Long term safety of gnawing on plastic aside, is this limited bright colored exploration what I really want for my child?  Are bright colors better than what he could get by himself in his real, unpretentious world?  How do I define "better"?  Is it how much knowledge he can find, or what knowledge?  What would he prefer? 

Then words from my favorite book  (I know, I have more than one - or a new one every day, every moment), come back.
    How we want to mimic our parents.  We want to discover their world.  It is not some T.V. hyper plastic world that he wants to discover, that he is unsatiably curious about, but my world.  (Unless of course my world is a "T.V. hyper plastic" one.) 

I love books that capture this sacred longing of children to become like their parents.  This natural motivation that makes learning what they will need in the world they are and will be in, spontaneous.  This instinctual force that makes all play the best suited learning for that individuals life.

        

I just wish he saw me as an exploring partner, not the curiosity police of his domain.

                       


                          


                        

                              

Disposable Diapers

For years now we have been blessed with having immediate repercussions if we don't eat an extremely healthy diet.  So much so, that it had been years since I ate anything artificial.  Then somehow or other we ended up with a strawberry starburst in my path.  I remembered having loved the chewiness and the yummy strawberry flavor.  Strawberries are my favorite!  So much so that in summer we sometimes live off of Strawberry ice cream made in the vitamix with simply frozen strawberries and homemade yogurt.  So, I thought, who would know?  It isn't like I personally will go crazy if I eat this.  Maybe it would be good for me to eat it, as then there would be no chance of my daughter coming across it!  Ya, that's it, I would cheat for her sake!

So I ate it.  And it was the yuckiest thing I had tasted in a long time.  I guess after 2 or 3 years of an absolutely pure diet, and with spoiling myself and the kids with real strawberries so often, fake strawberry food coloring packaged 10 years ago and it doesn't matter, flavor, just doesn't taste good anymore!

It used to, when I would cheat at the very beginning.  I think it took 2 or 3 years for my tastes to change.  But now, cheating is just no fun.  Why bother to cheat with a diet, when it doesn't even taste good?

I was reminded of this recently when I took out the recycle.  You see I sometimes cheat with things besides high fructose corn syrup.  Every time I "cheat" and use disposable diapers, I am all too soon reminded of why I use cloth.  Contrary to even my commercial fed imagination, disposable diapers do leak, they do have blow-outs, they are never absorbent enough for the whole night (cloth, you can make them so), they give diaper rashes, stink like cloth never did, are stiff and must be uncomfortable to wear, and worst of all, no matter how you hide them, you are storing a weeks worth of human waste every single week you use them.  This last one is the one that reminded me of it never being any fun when I do give in and cheat, as I accidentally dumped the recycle in the outside garbage can in the middle of the night in the dark.  Fretting over the thought of all that sorting going to waste, it wasn't until after I dove in after it that I remembered that we had been using disposable diapers lately.

The laundry pile, swollen with the swift current of umpteen kids with the stomach flu, needed to be sorted anyway.

I love sorting laundry!  I love the different textures (we don't keep stuff with yucky textures).  I love the smell of the outdoors from the clothesline, or the warmth and floofiness from the dryer.  I love the feeling of opening presents as I find long lost friends, like my favorite diaper covers.  Cloth just feels so good, and is so much fun to put on my babies.

How I Learned Geography

How I Learned Geography

Another absolutely perfect book:
Family relationships in the midst of fleeing from war are portrayed so well here.  But it is a kids book - nothing really about war, just that it put them in the situation.  The value of knowledge.  I guess I love learning - I love watching discovery and when a person wants to learn something and their natural thirst for knowledge urges them on - and they learn so well in their own time and way.  The sacrifices one is willing to make for knowledge, it is so beautiful!  I guess I relate to it in a small way when a book is so much more important than food or sleep.
"He wrote in silence, but, oh!  How loudly he chewed!"