Wrap It Up

In the next couple of days our family will take the time to clean up the pontoon, pull it out of the water and get it prepped for winter. It’s kind of sad.  Summer has been over for a good while, but looking out and not seeing the boat in the water is just a reminder that soon snow will cover the ground, and not long after that, ice will cover the lake.  There is a good deal of fun to be had on the ice. But it is definitely the summers on our lake that we enjoy the most.  In particular, summer on the boat.  

On calm summer mornings it’s the best start to a day to slowly cruise around the lake, enjoying coffee. I never get tired of watching the sun, shimmer like diamonds, across the water. Early morning, or late afternoon. Even the kids enjoy cruising around.  We have great conversations on the boat. The kids have our full attention, and we are all engaged. It is such a special time. Then there are the more lively moments. We often have a boat load of kids, climbing and jumping off the boat, swimming around and under it. We often pack picnics and spend hours in the middle of the lake or anchored on the sand bar. Our family dog, Abbey is also a fan of the boat.  As soon as she sees us heading towards it, she runs ahead and jumps on.  She won’t be left behind!  And on those rare occasions when we try to, she sits on the shore and cries, howls, so heart broken that we are forced to return to get her.

Soon the boat will be stored and we will only have the sweet memories of summer.  But that’s okay, they are some amazing memories.  And we also have the anticipation for next spring when we will uncover the boat and cruise around the lake that first time.

Housebound Blues

I never realized how isolated I would eventually feel being a stay at home mother.  Daily life is busy and of course filled with the activities of children. But after a while, I had a feeling of loneliness and emptiness.  It was a difficult feeling to acknowledge, because initially it made me wonder why was I not satisfied?  I had been given this amazing opportunity to be at home full time with my children who I not only loved, but truly enjoyed.  I wondered if it was a shortcoming on my part. I would feel anxious for my husband to come home from work, to hear about his day. I was anxious to hear accounts of people who I had worked with who he still saw periodically at work. When he would come home and be in a bad mood I couldn’t deal with it.  I told him that he was my only tie to the grown up world and I needed him to be in a good mood. How unfair is that? 

Eventually, I gained some perspective. I lost the feeling of guilt.  I accepted that it was a natural to feel lonely and miss the stimulation that adult contact provided.  I had always found balance difficult to achieve.  Where my husband was able to get in a golf league, and pursue his interest, I never could justify taking “me time” with all the tasks I had to do.  It was always me holding myself back because my husband was always supportive of me pursuing interests. I wish I could say that I’ve changed that but I really haven’t.  I am in touch with more friends than I used to be, though I rarely schedule time out with them.  I have returned to school.  It’s wonderful for my mind to feel challenged again. But even now, I feel like I am struggling between the children and the time that I need to study. They don’t really understand the demands of the school work and I don’t want to short change them because I have decided to go back to school. I wonder if balance will be this ever elusive element in my life. 

Life on the Lake

 

I have to admit, I always wanted to live in the middle of 10 acres.  I grew up with neighbors really close in a small town setting and I just felt like I wanted something different.  My husband wanted to live on water.  Somehow he won.  But in letting him win, I have won too. 

 I think the longer I live on this small lake of ours the more I appreciate it. A lake offers so much.  It has an abundance of wildlife, like the geese and the beautiful swans.   We have deer that roam around the lake. Of course there are the fish.  This year we were able to see nearly two dozen fish beds on our shoreline.  The water in our lake this spring was unusually clear, so it was the first time we had seen the numerous beds.  I could not get over how the fish hovered over their plate-sized  beds, that were in almost perfect rows.  Like synchronized swimmers, they turned in circles at the same time, and went back to hovering, all facing the same direction.  I find it so curious how nature has all of these peculiarities that were you asked to design them from imagination, you couldn’t even compare. 

We see muskrat, turtles, and many beavers.  The beavers have been very active over this year and have taken down nearly a dozen large cotton trees around the lake.  I have joked that if they continue,  our lake will be bald.  But in truth, it might not be a joking matter. Such a small animal has an unusually large impact. They create these elaborate dams that can wreak havoc with our water levels as they block the outlet streams from the lake.  Every so often the DEQ comes out and clears the streams of the dams.  And the beavers start all over.  That must be frustrating.

I imagine that 10 acres would hold a good deal of wonder.  For now, I’m just enjoying this over-sized mud puddle we share with the animals.

Good as Gold

I received very little advice when I quit my job to stay at home with the kids full time.  My cousin gave me my first piece of advice.  She told me not to obsess about my house.  She gave advice as someone who had left a job and went through the difficult transition as well.  I wasn’t sure at the time if she was directing this particular tidbit towards me believing that I have some control issues and being confronted full time with the state of my home may leave me in a frenzied whirlwind.  But I accepted it and am so grateful for it.  I definitely have more time to devote to maintaining order in my house, tidying and cleaning up. But even though it may receive greater focus from me, it still has the same ranking on the list of priorities for my husband and children.  I try to remind myself of that, as I hang up their jackets for the third time in a day, or rinse the toothpaste out of the sink where they brushed their teeth.

The second piece of advice I received was from a friend who had also left a job to stay home.  She told me that when she first stayed home she fell into a habit of procrastinating.  Always being at home, it is easy to think that you have all the time in the world to tackle the one task or set of tasks that linger before you.  Eventually she came to the conclusion that though she was no longer leaving the house to go to “work”, this was her “work” and she started treating those pesky tasks as part of her job.  It seems like such a simple concept, but I still marvel at it.  Procrastination can overtake you gradually, until one day you realize there are no clean clothes to dress the children and you never called the washing machine repairman like you “intended”. You create your own chaos with a series of neglected tasks that were never urgent until they were.

Certainly we all learn our own lessons in our own time.  I reflect on this advice and I think that each piece made part of my transition easier.  I only wish I had received more.

Marx in Soho by Howard Zinn

Saw this production at U of M Flint.Very thought provoking.

Standardized Testing

            My children recently went through standardized testing at school. I had never given much thought to this testing until having read The Big Test by Nicholas Lemann.  It is a book about how and why the SAT was developed and its role in society.  Originally, it had been used by some well-intentioned Ivy League university presidents to identify bright minds of different socioeconomic backgrounds and offer them the elite education until then reserved for members of the wealthiest and most influential families. While the original premise was respectable, Lemann does a wonderful job exemplifying how the SAT has fallen short of its promise in leveling the socioeconomic playing field and has done more to perpetuate an elite culture based on financial advantage.

            Lemann goes further and examines the policy of affirmative action, that like the implementation of standardized testing, came into existence without a broad national discussion. Affirmative action was a result of a presidential executive order.  Considering myself a strong proponent of affirmative action, I felt very disheartened by the realization of what an insignificant band aid affirmative action is and what systemic social change was sacrificed at the signing of this order.   Affirmative action was intended to address issues of inequality by lifting a small portion of underrepresented minorities up to higher education and employment.  Much like the SAT, it reinforces that elite culture instead of guaranteeing equal education and opportunity for all, not just a select few.  One is left wondering where would our country now be had these two very influential social determining factors not been implemented.  Had the country been forced to truly address unequal education, and hiring practices what would our country look like today?  What would the face of higher education and government look like?

            When my children take standardized test, I think differently in that I really think about it, and that I have a new awareness and ambivalence about the ramifications of testing.  What before seemed so innocuous now takes on a darker tone.  I wonder if everyone were to read The Big Test, would we, as a society, challenge the status quo and renew a fresh commitment to dealing with systemic inequalities and ideas of merit. I certainly have.