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.

Autism

I do not like Halloween.  I have never liked Halloween.  I love the idea of competitively dressing up in a creative costume, and going door to door to strangers houses who smile and gush on you and give you something kind.  But I cannot risk seeing the horribleness associated with such a wonderful idea.

One Halloween, many, many, many years ago, we did go trick or treating.  Someone from church called up.  In retrospect, I grudgingly suspect that they knew I would not take the kids out, and felt sorry for them.  Grudges are heavy to hold. 

At any rate, they said they had made cookies just for my kids, and asked if we were going trick or treating.  As they only lived 2 blocks away, I sucked it up and decided to go. 

Not one to fight nature, we of course trick or treated all the way there, and all the way back, and, once again, not being one to fight nature, my then three year old ate a whole bag of candy in one night.

When debates about vaccines arise, and science is worshipped, the voices of those who link vaccines with their child's late onset autism are often trod over.  If you had ever seen a single experience change your child so significantly, you would at least have compassion in touting statistics that say autism isn't linked to vaccines.  If you had ever doubted your memory of abilities your child will never have again, you would perhaps question cold statistics more thoroughly.  I have.

I do not see autism itself as something caused by something bad, or cured by something good, but as a different way of thinking.  We all are on a spectrum, or jumping around somewhere adjacent.  But there are those who think of many things, but not deeply, not overintelligently, and there are those who think of only one thing, but to a degree so discerning that most people pass them off as idiots when they talk about it, because most people can't comprehend even the smallest part of what they know.  "Neurotypical" is what is used to define the status quo of very broad, but not very deep, thinking.  "Monotropic" refers to the opposite.  These are merely different ways of thinking, not some horrible demon that needs to be cast out.  Autism itself does not need a cure.  But seeing a demon take over your child is something I am familiar with.  When something as irreversible as how I had cut her toast, sent her into a 3 hour fit of screaming  at the top of her lungs where she wouldn't let us near her,  and where she was no more in control of her body than a drunk alcoholic (very different than a normal 3 year old tantrum - seen enough of those too), then Autism seems like something covering your true child, something to cure.

But it is not the Autism that needs cured.  Some people have tough feet, others' are more sensitive.  Yes, you can train your feet to be tough, you can get callouses on your feet, and some people enjoy doing so.  But calloused feet are not always an advantage.  Forcing everybody to "toughen up" their feet and then diagnosing those who either don't want to, or whose feet toughen slower as needing "intervention" is wrong. 

After changing our diet miraculously gave us our daughter back, I realized how many years of her life we had missed.  But it was not the Autism that took those years.  The Autism is who she is, how she thinks.  It was the environment that hurt her.  Just like rough pebbles hurt a tender foot, unexpected events in life hurt her.  Training her to "deal with it" would not have taken the hurt away from her.  Perhaps it might have even made her feel more alone.  Not that she regrets alone.  But drugs to deaden who she is, or "therapy" to train her into thinking her concerns aren't as important as our neurotypical concerns, would not have "cured" her.  Maybe covered her up - as she is not as far on the monotropic scale as some, but not cured her.  The only decent way to help a person with Autism, is to do just that.  It is to make sure that their tender feet don't encounter any tough stones.  It is to build them shoes, or slippers, or socks, or whatever it is they want for their feet, so that the tough stones don't poke through so sharply.  With us, this was diet.  Diet was HUGELY a part of it.  To the point that when she is on a good diet, she probably wouldn't be able to get diagnosed with autism at all.

I was very hesitant to post about autism.  The last thing I want is someone to say, oh, I see, she isn't perfect, the poor thing, because her kid has autism.  I am not perfect because I am human.  Every parent that isn't perfect has a reason.  Every child that throws a temper tantrum, every person that has a melt down.  We all have reasons.  Clumping a group together for amnesty is not what the world needs.  It needs unconditional love and acceptance.



Why is it that if a person has an obvious "special need" we are kind to them.  We excuse them.  Being blind, deaf, crippled, even having obvious downs syndrome is OK, but people with eye boogers, especially if nothing else seems different or deserving of our pity, especially if they are perhaps better than us at something, people with eye boogers are the most shunned and the least accepted of all people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspies_For_Freedom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistic_Pride_Day

http://jerobison.blogspot.com/2013/11/i-resign-my-roles-at-autism-speaks.html

                                    

"Wallace would have like to say, 'Hello.  My name is Wallace,' but saying hello was not on his list."

        This is my favorite book about differences, not "special needs".  It has it all, from the hurt ignoring a difference gives, as it implies the difference is bad, to the need to simply think differently.  And it does it in a happy upbeat way - nobody really is trying to hurt someone by being uncomfortable around a difference - they just don't know what to do in the situation.  All this, and it is just an underlying theme in a hilarious kids book (easier to read than Dr. Seuss - a child can teach themselves how to read from this book).  The truths are so universal and subtle that the reader is left wondering if the correlation was even meant by the author, or it just showed through because it was a good book.

Jesus Loves The Little Children

I like songs like this.  I know that there is a fear of "indoctrinating" children, but I think God is happy that they are exposed to His existence.  What I wonder is when I stopped being loved.  Why is it that society tells us the Jesus loves the little children?  What about the big children, or even (gasp) the wicked adults? 

Suddenly society can tell us what God thinks about us, or rather claim that Deity reflects their feelings about us.  Why, when a child does something, is it forgivable.  They aren't really wicked at heart.  Maybe they were raised wrong.  Wasn't Hitler once a child?  When did he become unlovable?

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt ^alove thy ^bneighbour, and hate thine enemy.

  But I say unto you, ^aLove your ^benemies, ^cbless them that ^dcurse you, do ^egood to them that ^fhate you, and ^gpray for them which despitefully use you, and ^hpersecute you;

  That ye ^amay be the ^bchildren of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth ^crain on the just and on the unjust."  (Matthew 5:43-45)

 

I used to always think that we were supposed to love our enemies so we could be "good".  But here it says that we are commanded to do so in order to be like God.  For God loves our enemies just as assuredly as He loves us.  And He loves us whether we are good or bad.

 

I grew up with a more strict religious upbringing than my husband.  I am grateful for the knowledge it gave me at a young age, of the love of God for me, but inherent in such upbringings is a very real likelihood of pride, of judging not only other people according to their supposed righteousness, but also ourselves.

 "For with what ^ajudgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what ^bmeasure ye mete, it shall be ^cmeasured to you again."  (Matthew 7:2)

 

When we were first married, he used to always say he loved me, and I would ask him why.  This confused him.  He said there wasn't any "why" about it.  It was love.  If everything about me changed to something he didn't like, he would still love me.  This idea confused me greatly.  Who was I?  Was I not this overly righteous person I had so tried to become?  Wasn't I loveable because I was perfectly nonjudgmental?  If he didn't necessarily love anything about me, did he really love me? 

 

Victor Hugo (who else?) addresses this very perplexion in my favorite of his books, (and my favorite book.) "The Man Who Laughs".  (free here)



 

 

 Where Gwynplaine must choose between being loved by someone who loves him no matter his appearance, which she cannot see, and someone who loves him for his appearance.  Is it better to be loved despite who you are, or for who you are?  But what if you change?  Is it better to be unknown, and loved no matter who you are, or known, and loved for that part of you that is known?  But what of your other parts?  What if the part you are loved for is misinterpreted by your lover?

I would rather be known than loved.  I would rather someone truly understand me, than want my happiness.  But I have come to discover over the decades, that true love is not dependent on the traits of the person being loved, remaining static.

I prefer the last song on this disk:


"Jesus loves me when I'm good.  Jesus loves me when I'm bad."

Though "when I'm bad it makes him sad" could be grossly misinterpreted.
When I hear it I imagine a suffocating guardian leaning over one, saying, "Don't be bad, because that makes me sooooo sad!" in a manipulative voice.

True sadness from someone being bad whom I love comes not from them "disappointing" me, but from the true sorrow from consequences I cannot simultaneously prevent and give them their freedom at the same time.  Such as if a bad choice killed another in a car wreck.  If this happened to a loved one, it would indeed make me sad.  Thankfully Jesus has a cure for His sadness, as He can take away the horrendous sorrow we feel from regretting "being bad".

testing

Because I can never make the links work the first time - I decided to first post here, then give the post it's own page when I finally get it.  So this will be updated every time I post a post with links.

me

http://sameoldart.tumblr.com/post/55136644707/ron-mueck-at-the-fondation-cartier
I came across this sculpture entitled "Woman with shopping" by Ron Mueck, the other day.
And I felt like I was looking at myself.  Not because she has features like me, or dresses like me, but because she feels like me.  It is almost as if the artist saw me one day a couple of years ago, and decided to make a sculpture of me. 

http://sameoldart.tumblr.com/post/55136644707/ron-mueck-at-the-fondation-cartier
You can almost see into her head, the more work that must get done, than she can even think about.  Life has fed her so much at this point, that she literally doesn't have even enough energy to enjoy the newborn baby on her chest.  It is long since she has been a person.  It is long since she was a living plant, making decisions based on anything to do with herself, she is now the dirt a living plant needs to grow.  She has been the soil for so long that the thought of when this change happened, is not even relevant.  She is a mother.  And she is that baby's world.  Whoever she is, whatever she is, that baby adores her, not just more than anything in the world, but she is the only thing it cares about.

I do not feel sorry for her.  It is the way things are.  And this artist has captured the beauty of reality.  I feel as if someone, on seeing me, instead of wanting to throw stones, instead of pointing a finger and saying "Bad Mom!", saw the beauty of the millions of moms around the globe, who have given all for their children. 

I see myself also in the smile of a lady, not yet old, but wrinkles pulled tight against the overexposed bones of her face as she waits in a food line.  Wrinkles from ages of worry about enough food, or enough shelter to prevent frostbite.  But she is living, and there is a happiness in that living, a joy in compulsory determination.

I see myself in the lady at the park whose arms are so covered in freckles upon freckles that one could not tell what color her skin originally was by looking at them.  Resilient hands rough with creases from well used bones and veins.  Intriguing hands, that could tell so many stories, if only they were asked.

It is an exhaustion.  But exhaustion beyond thinking is not bad, it just is.  There is a fulfillment in exhaustion beyond exhaustion, that will never be found another way.  A feeling I would not want to have never known.  When you're hiking down a mountain trail, and the sun set hours ago, and you gave up being able to put one leg in front of the other even before that, but you have no supplies to stay on the mountain overnight, and you know you must get down.  So you have long ago lost consciousness, just muscles grating on tendons, and blisters on your feet, and perhaps more than a little thirst on the top of the back of your throat where cautious sips from a too empty canteen will never reach.  What would life be without a feeling like that?  What would life be without living?

Or running a marathon, and wondering if animals' fur rubs them like your clothes rub you.  Wondering if walking is not only faster than your stumbling gait, but if it would rub your hipbones in their sockets the way each landing on the pavement does to yours.  Shifting your weight to be caught on a bending leg before you know for sure whether or not it is a phantom leg, and your real one, muscles frozen, finally refused to move forward.  The heat of your blood draining through your body, and refusing to believe that you are dizzy, though you are not sure that you are awake.

Or childbirth, a hard one, a first one.  Never having known your limits.  Never having known that what you thought was enough exhaustion to kill you a million times over, would now be something you had long left behind, not by choice, but because your body will do this work whether you bid it to or not.  Finding bruises on yourself days later, from repeatedly pressing into something with the pain.  The lulls between contractions taunting you, as you know another will come, and another, and another, and another.  Your muscles stronger than you knew, stronger than anybody could know, stronger than they are.  No sport could get this out of you.  No life or death situation, no being chased by something that will consume you.  Then you would merely be consumed.  But in this case you aren't.  And you realize for the first time, the impossible things, nobody is capable of motivating themselves to do, that you can do, now that you are a mother.

The freedom of want vs. need

After all my kids have been throwing up for a couple of days, I put the babies in disposable diapers because I know what's coming next. 

The reason I have disposables laying around though, is the huge difference it makes in my happiness.  If I don't have anything to put on the babies' bottoms, but am forced to hand sew diapers out of old T-shirts and hand wash them in the freezing cold outside, then sometimes I start to feel sorry for myself, and begrudge my situation in life, despite it being far easier than the vast majority of people not only in the world today, but throughout history.  But, if I know I have a silly little disposable diaper just sitting there waiting for me to give up and be just like everybody else (yes, you taste pride here ;) then I will do whatever it takes to use cloth diapers because I WANT to, and try incessantly to prove that cloth diapers are not just better for the environment, but easier and more fun as well!  Well, I fantasize that if I had the perfect diaper stash and was actually organized, it would be just as easy to grab a clean cloth diaper out of the laundry basket, as it would be to find a disposable diaper.

The truth is, that the hardest part of using cloth diapers is finding the clean ones somewhere in the clean laundry mountain - or wishing that I had enough that if I didn't wash diapers twice that day, I would still have a clean diaper to find. 
Fun-wise, cloth diapers beat disposables hands down.  How many people do you know who drool over a chance to buy a disposable diaper?

I do find it helpful to keep the disposable diapers in the car.  That compensates for my disorganization, because just pulling one out of a package would be easier than conquering the laundry pile, but the thought of having to run out to the car, gives me just that much more needed motivation.

I used to think that my kids would learn through natural consequences, and I spent hours pretending I wasn't nagging as I said things like, "I can't do all these dishes by myself and read you stories and if the dishes aren't done we won't have anything to eat the cake on, so please help out because I can't protect you from the natural consequences of not helping."  It was true, but it wasn't (isn't - blush) fun.  I realized that perhaps humans in general don't like to HAVE to do anything, and that whether it is another person, society, or natural forces, the result is the same - it somehow takes the fun out of it.  We love choice!  We are so intelligent that we create choice where supposedly there is non.  It is my belief that there is always another way - a funner way!
But whether there is another way or not, it is way more fun to choose to do something, than to be compelled to do it.  So instead of self-righteously trying to force acknowledgment of the stark reality of natural consequences on my kids, I find it my job to cater to their innate optimism.  Doing the dishes is a completely enjoyable choice of what to do with ones time, if there is not undue pressure to think that our lives rest upon whether it gets done that minute or not.

Then I realized this was true for the rest of the world too.  How much fun is a job that one feels one has to go to in order to get a paycheck to stay alive?  Yet this is the story of the vast majority of employed people in this country.  So many enjoyable tasks are turned sour, by making them compulsory.  And it is my belief that so many useful tasks are left undone, or done poorly, because those doing them, do not enjoy them.