Five Years Earthside

Five years for Isaac! Five years I have been his Mama. An honour!

Little birthday boy:

Dr. Isaac

Birthday Farm visit
With Aunty Helen

Sheep 'Mama' and Baby 'Isaac' lamb, newborn and basking in Spring sun!
Newly born

Isaac's asked for Birthday Tea - Tacos, veg chips, salad and a Castle cake!

On being social/a social being

I walked four miles with Felix in the sling today. I have not done that for ages but today was just the most beautiful day of the year so far. Blue skies and white clouds and glorious sun, sun, sun! I feel sun deprived like I've been some mama bear asleep in a cave all winter. The air was cool enough to whoosh thrillingly up my nose and lift the air from the back of my neck, but the sun walmed my back so deliciously. I stood against a tree wondering what type it was, Fe and I picking at the ground until we had unearthed some brown chestnut shells and and so my wondering was over. Snug in a nook of trunk was a whole 'conker'. Fe was so excited by it, he held it in his fist for the rest of the walk. Later he might solemnly place it on the nature shelf. Or hurl it there too (or into an entirely different place), there is always that.

Now, people are still always asking me the dull questions pertaining to Isaac's lack of formal (institutional) schooling. (Because how on earth could he receive any type of an education without a teacher telling him what he needs to know?) The main question which folk seem to think is the biggie, that they get stuck on is the 'Oh my god, what about socialisation?' Isn't he going to be a social misfit, an anti-social freak who won't be able to hold a conversation with the 'mainstreamer' ? I suppose, I sometimes answer (very slowly -and in a very friendly way- although that gets trickier depending on how many times I have to say it and to whom, yk?) that it all depends on what you think socialisation means. For me it means the ability to get along with a wide variety of people; different ages, different backgrounds etc. And, I really don't see how this could be achieved in a classroom setting where 20-30 four year olds are herded each day. What variety! My teacher friend tells me that the social aspect of schools would be the one thing above any that would be her driving force to homeschool. That as soon as kids are ushered in to the classroom - like any other mammal they establish a pecking order, the best (conventionally speaking) looking kids and wealthiest at the top, the rest falling away behind. Those poor and ugly kids (this teacher tells me) get the least attention from everyone, even the teachers who are supposed not to be biased on such things, but the others take up more of their time and then when it is time for streaming and the seperating into academic sets these stragglers get put at the bottom (where she speculates they probably stay for the rest of their schooling). These kids are those most likely to be bullied. This does not mean the pretty and rich kids are spared the daily torments of bullying either though, anyone remember how it was a cyclic thing? How it was one girl one week and then another the next, clothes, hair, eyes - anything could be subject to ridicule. In this classroom setting. Where boredom and inactivity and bouts of ridicule induce frustration. Anyone remember coming home from school and taking out the daily pent up emotions on siblings, parents? My teacher friend also tells me that the social interactions going on amongst the children in her classes were all involved with who went to who's party and what toys which person had and who wore what... She said the triviality and pettiness often stunned her. Why were these children interested in such things? Lots of reasons of course, down to parenting attitudes and commercial advertising etc but she said these kids whom she got to know all, crowded as they were (rather unnaturally for any mammal, especially a highly sensitive mammal such as a human being) into one room, were constantly competing with each other (and for her, their only teacher's) attention. In such subtle ways, never truly trusting each other, but only ever having each others opinions and favours. The classroom was their life and not a very good one. Did she have time to answer their questions? (Personally I hardly have time (would a teacher even have the constant inclination?) to answer one four year olds constant questions never mind another 25 children's!). If it is indeed true that children learn through imitation then the social niceties that we hold so important can hardly be imitated through imitating another four year old! I just read an article from another teacher who talked of the daily violence children carry out and receive, all of which is regarded as 'normal' by student and teacher alike. This teacher speculated that this unacceptable level of physical violence totally desensitised children. Their own pain was never taken seriously, they never regarded anyone else's as being important or significant either. Teachers regarded it as general 'messing around' and it was so widespread as to receive little attention. I am nodding and remembering myself a boy with his legs stretched open and hammed against a tree, some boys pulling his legs, the other behind him pushing, laughing all the way. This boys could not walk or came back to school for days. But everyone still laughed about it. Teachers included.

This is not an environment which I would want anyone I know to be a part of, never mind the beings I love and cherish most in the world.

Socially - I have one of the most social people I have ever met in my life living with me right now! He is not afraid to talk to anyone, regardless of age, he see's himself as being able to have interesting conversations with adults and honestly he is amazing company. I can think of many many anti-social adults I know - they all went to school. The socialisation 'issue' for me is just a non-issue. I see and converse with school children I know and there is a hesitancy there in talking to me - I am the 'other', the adult, the one who is known to withhold and punish and who tells them what they 'need' to know. That barrier was still there for me until I five years ago when I became a mother! I met Don's parents still feeling this way and hardly wanted to speak to them, they were 'the other' and asked, asked, asked me questions..... Now I realise the only barrier there is one created by the teacher. The parent. So I am trying, that socially me and my sons can experience life together as equals. This is an ongoing challenge for me. I have not experienced life this way. Until now. So I am born anew with each of my children and try to discard the older skin of 'the other'.

Thinking Mullabanda

Walking with small people means that the exercise is so minimal for me (due to their slower walking style) that I sometimes feel I may just as well be lying down. That is I used to feel that I may as well be lying down.

Now I think Mullabanda.

According to my yoga teacher, mullbanda is this: the pulling inwards and upwards of the fingers of muscle in the lower abdomen and pelvic floor. Once we do this, we start to automatically lengthen the spine upwards from the back of the neck (think shimmery silver thread pulling up the back of the head toward the sky). When I start to feel my feet drag at the impossibly slow pace my children set, I think Mullbanda and click! - I feel my body working and tightening and straightening it's self out. It is fantastic. I think mullabanda at the oddest times; sitting right here, lying in the bath, pegging wet clothes to the line, chopping veg... Seriously. I am finding that this it is a good workout and mindset (*feels* happier too) for anytime.

But particularly for these slow walks of ours. Rather a nice word to roll out of the mouth too. Kinda chantlike.

A House of Straw

Ever since buying a copy of The Straw Bale House and another UK book designed around building a straw home in a temperate climate such as here, just like the foolish first little pig, I have been dreaming about building my own house of straw. Something like this:

Or simpler, on one level like this:

I love how they are new, but look rather timelss and classically human dwellings. That the walls can be curved and rounded with interesting ledges and niches, how they can spread out downwards to the ground, gently grounded -planted. The Nant-y-Cwm Steiner school in Wales is lushious with walls that flare out to meet the ground, a live mossy grass roof.... of course I'd like one of those too:

A composting toilet and a spring or well for our water. Now all I need to do is find the land with such planning persission as we would require, and also keep it to the budget which we have. Also with living costs for one year. Seems rather daunting. Don is keen to spread this out but if we rent somewhere for a year then our money will be gobbled up with the paying of rent. I am so disatisfied with the prospect of continuing my existence as it is currently. This eating up of every resource on earth, the living here -where I am right now: everything is dead - the people, the land. There is no vibrancy here, no joy, no community and no spirit. It deadens me, slowly. I do look for beauty in a single tree or blade or shoot, after a while the larger whole of living here swamps the tiny bits of joy I can cultivate or sow or observe. I want to live lightly. A sustainable living. I want to leave my children with a piece of land and the hope of being able to provide for themselves in totality, to share with them the skills I learn in order to be able to do this: organic vegetable growing, animal husbandry, the building of a compostable toilet, a clay oven, how to trap and skin a rabbit. In my bones I can feel a world where my children or grandchildren will be working to stay alive with so little (since we, this generation, are sucking Gaia dry so quickly) and I sometimes feel desperate to learn so much! Not in ten years but right now.

I need to cultivate more patience I know, otherwise I will itch with wanting and honestly I am trying to learn to give up the desire for more, more more.... in all of it's forms.

I can read at least. That I can do right now :) My sanity often resides within pages of books where I can find measures of comfort that is surely unworldy.

So we did not change our lives today very dramaticallly - but we did change our Nature/Seasonal shelf. First day of Spring, so happy to pull off the winter pictures and clay statues for sprightly lambs and hopeful nests! All Felix wanted on there was a 'nest like the one in the book' (Gerda Muller, Spring) and Isaac was keen for us to make little wool lambs since he saw some new ones at the farm the other day with his Nanny.

With Felix:

And without (note - the blackbird has only one leg - as pointed out by Isaac. Felix chimed in - no it is in his mouth... ugh! What strange boys :lol )

Labour of love

Finished Isaac's boy doll. It has moveable limbs. I only did it this way instead of the whole body cut from one piece of cloth as my book said a limbed doll was easier for little ones to dress. Sewing the flats soles of the feet was the tricky bit for me as hand sewing I suck at. I made little green felt boots by hand though and they turned out to be really satisfying to make. It is so easy to sew felt. Must get more for Isaac to sew - he is really quite good with a needle and thread and some of that squared hole fabric; he can cross stitch neatly.... Also made a sleeping bag (old wool jumper), a wool hat and a red t-shirt (wearing it). Still to make PJ's, pants and a backpack - 'tis an 'explorer' doll after all :) I bought this hank of blonde mohair too, thinking one boy at least would want a light haired doll, but no, so looks like I need to make another for my little niece too- ahhh, I just like making them actually....

Three Years...

Felix Euan's Third Birthday!


Today we woke and sang 'Happy Birthday' in bed with a tiny fairy cake/banana muffin with a candle. Much joy as we followed the star trail (left by the 'Birthday fairies') down the stairs to the birthday room.

Playsilk covered table, flowers, cards, birthday crown (made by big brother), balloons, a streamer covered doorway and presents! 'Wow, is it Christmas?' he asked!

After lunch we planted his birthday (cherry) tree in a large (moveable) pot.
Later - an extended family feast of biodynamic lamb burgers, salad, root vegetable chips, dips and raw veg. Plus the asked for ground almond chocolate cake with dried mango 'cat' features.

Three magic years with Felix!

Kaplan Shanley vs. Weston A. Price vs Me

Whilst washing the breakfast dishes this morning I had a heated debate with Laura Kaplan Shanley and Weston A. Price (whose mate Francis Pottanger also chipped in now and again to back him up). It went a little something like this:

So you think that if a woman truly believes that she is capable, that her body knows exactly how to overcome any birthing obstacle and if this woman is in-tune with herself and child enough, her body will respond accordingly and say, switch positions making birth easier? That a woman needs to totally and utterly believe in the birthing miracle and her own body's ability to see this through and it will indeed happen? During pregnancy you suggest women meditate daily upon the sort of birth they desire, visually see this birth taking place, with all of it's particulars. This is an exercise, along with exploring any birth related fears and past birth experiences to totally overcome fear and set the mind toward a pain-free and pleasurable birthing experience. I love that! This is exactly what I read over and over and followed the exercises and saw myself doing and feeling and responding during my birth/S. Yet. And yet. If a woman has a 'bad' (meaning managed hospital -including c-section- or some other birth related mother-child emotional trauma) birthing experience, ultimately, it is her own 'fault' for not believing enough in her body's capability and ultimate wisdom and ability to birth her child. That maybe, even, she harbored the secret (sub-conscious) belief that she didn't deserve a good birthing experience? This is what I dislike about this theory. Because should a woman not birth her baby in pleasure or with satisfaction it is therefore her own fault! The guilt involved in that! Do women really need more guilt? For not digging deeper into the tangle of her emotions and past thought? For not brain-washing herself well enough? Where is the empowerment (yes I am all about empowerment lately)?

Then along comes the Weston A Price info, offering physiological and anatomical reasons as to why women might currently have a hard time bearing babies. That due to generations of mothers eating non-nutritional food stuff, a diet rich in 'white-man's' modern convenience foods, our very bones have narrowed. He claims we see this in our own faces - teeth that have no space, the overcrowding, the narrowing of our faces, echoed through our bodies. In women, this means our precious baby-bearing pelvis too. The non traditional food consumption causing long labours and birthing difficulties. When Pottanger show those photos of the cats after three generations; the crowded little teeth, the inability to birth their litters, the dead or droopy, ill kittens. I can see how this could be very true. Then I see how I too am that third generation of women eating poor food stuff. The end of the line. The generation which dies out. Yet we don't. Because of the surgical tools which free our babies from our wombs and stitch us back together. (What of this fourth generation then?)

I can put aside my guilt because my mother's diet was unable to give me a wider, traditional body-shape?

But then what? That leads to a dead end does it not? A mother can then feed her children on a diet rich in fat soluble vitamins and traditional foods but can she change her own body? I mean I have read that a traditional diet can shorten labour, but what about the actual narrowing of bones? Can this be changed?

If this notion of Price's is held and believed, then how can one put their faith in the type of faith Shanley offers? Faith of body and self. Impossible! Irreconcilable!

This is where I am at. But there is something else emerging after these years of thought about this troubling subject. Reading zen. Knowing I need to abandon the theories I feel I 'know'. Step aside from the written word and just feel. My mother tells me she thinks the more I read the more expectations I have. I don't know. I am not confusing this with wanting to remain in the mud-bliss of ignorance... That I probably know the answers to my questions. The art of knowing that the me, the true me, is not the waves of emotion that chop and clash on the surface - including the 'stuff' that happens to me. The true me is the great unknowable depths of stillness and ocean below. When I can visualise this then it is empowering to see that I am ultimately more than my birthing experiences. That what happens to me and what I think and feel are mere waves. When I can draw upon that calmness and depth, stillness that goes beyond time and any measuring then suddenly I am not Mother Guilt. Or confusion. Or Mother Narrow Bones. There is a satisfaction in knowing there is a beyond. That my true identity as a woman is not snagged upon the details.

(So, on a lighter note - if you might be pregnant reading this and fear your body shape verges on the narrow - eat good food, and cross your fingers for good measure. If your birth is not one of supreme pleasure then relax in the knowledge that according to zen-like religious thought you could very well be born again as an ocean dwelling dolphin-mermaid-nymph who births orgasmically in her sleep :) )

Radio ga-ga

Does anyone else just detest the constant background blah of the radio? This is the most common reason for dh and I to disagree during the weekend. Honestly, it is farcical. But really I cannot stand the constant background drone of chatter and advertisements and clang-bang music assaulting my ears. It feels like SUCH an intrusion into my own personal head space. Sometimes it gets so that I can't even think, just feel this surging anger at The Radio. And of course Dh for having put it on. He just thinks I am being ridiculous and that music makes him feel good, that the radio especially because you never know what is coming and get these wonderful surprises - songs you haven't thought about for years, old favorites, new tunes.... I have put forwards lots of suggestions (non of which have been met with success).

1) Shut the door to room with radio (does not work because little boys like to go to and fro between us and like door open. Especially since so often I say 'in this house we keep doors open' partly due to loud door bang games and little fingers)
2) suggest use of personal ipod type of music library - dh actually told me to f**k off with that one (not exactly sure why other than feelings of my 'controlling' him *shrug* and his not liking feelings of been confined, which ear-piece induces)
3) The listening to music of which I also like - but this dh says looses the spontaneity of radio which he most enjoys.

Throw radio out of window then run out and stamp on it a good ten times, pick up remaining pieces and hurl at brick wall? Can you believe I actually bought him this current monstrosity-digital-radio with far too many stations? What was I thinking....

I have told dh it is his turn to suggest ideas now, but he claims I am the one with the problem.... Which is true but does not sit right.

Suggestions/ideas most welcome :)

Knit

Just before I deleate these pics from my digital (seems frivolous to keep stills of knits forever!) I thought I'd post some here: items knitted in the last 6-7 months. Lots not photographed too though - mainly dozens of hats for friend's children, and relatives wanting scarves and yet more hats (I could knit a hat in my sleep I think!). This tiny clutch bag at the top is the most recent - a birthday gift for my sister's birthday, two weeks ago. Currently knitting doll itmes for two boy's birthday dolls :)

limbo, and lambing

We don't just watch The Lion King btw. I suppose we could though (I'd certainly have lots of time to blog... Though wonder what about....!). Whilst visiting, my sister asked me about a typical day for us - as an unschooling family. I said, well this is one. Some days we don't 'do' much (as in I don't have a timetable or label every activity with it's usefulness in educational development). Some days we are very busy, even if our busyness consists of cutting paper shapes and gluing, baking, reading and feeding horses. It is not a strenuous kind of busy. Just a pleasant one. I am in a limbo place for my own part. I might be busy with the garden digging and such but with a move imminent it feels rather pointless. I see logs I'd like to haul back to use as bed-borders but I don't...Because a buyer might not like them. So, I pour over ideas for our next garden, willow arbor's and fence weaving, which vegetables I can plant and when. A play pit... Now this one I really like: Dig out a heap of earth; rough shape of sand pit, stack the earth to one side and hammer in large wooden stakes to stop it all tumbling in. The mound can be used for climbing etc but plant it up with wild flowers and sweet herbs etc too. Line the pit with gravel and then different grades of sand. Keep it a pit though, the idea is a place away from noise, wind and prying eyes. Make a little wood or stone shelf to one side for 'cooking'. Throw in some old pots and interesting chunks of wood. I am sure every child would soon individualise it too. I keep seeing little interesting ideas - instead of a water butt, use a shallow trough for little ones to use with boats and other water play. I am storing these gems away for my next garden which will not have a trimmed lawn and proper flower beds, but will be mostly wild looking. Except when you actually get close up and see how there is a vegetable patch and climbing fruit bushes over there, a conversation pit/willow den hidden just there, a slide sitting on the downside of a slope of earth, a tree house hidden with a rope ladder dangling to show the way. The sort of garden my child self would still love. I am reading up on chickens and their keeping of them. But really they seem quite low maintenance, other than fox proofing (human hair dangling in little bags and spread around the property was one idea mentioned - can you just imagine going to a hairdressers and asking for their trimmings :lol). These garden projects would be gulped up with eager, outstretched hands by my boys I know it. So I am gathering ideas, picking my seeds, ready.

Am keeping my hands busy with knitting and Waldorf doll making instead (and my usual recipe trawlling and experimenting). My oldest son's has a head but now I need to go and take out the rest of my stinking sheep fleece. It needs to be soaked and washed several times, dried and then carded for the stuffing which I have ran out of. It is a really smelly job. I keep putting it off. I like the bit where I have a nice puff of carded fairy fleece in a cloud mountain sitting waiting to be used. I am not going to buy it that way though. Stubborn? No, that would be too lofty, really it is the amateurish satisfaction from doing things right-the-way-through. Martyr style my mother teases, but it is my trying to get to the bottom of things, not having the mysterious process carried out by someone 'other'. Even though no-one would ever see or know what was in the doll!

Of wool - It is soon lambing and my own personal favourite time to spend at the Camphill farm. Always there are lambs (the unlucky third sibling, or motherless waif) that need bottle feeding with raw cow milk. They huddle under the heating lamp, in their makeshift straw bale home and compete to get to the teat. I like to pick out the true runt, the ones with legs thinner than my fingers, their bleats like the mewwing of a cat. Always there are too many for the deaf farm hand to feed and he is glad of hands. I am so glad of this Spring after this Winter. The more seasons that pass me by the more I am glad to see the next one rather than dwelling on the missing of the previous.