Letter to my children: Safeguarding childhood

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Dearest Beloveds,

Gone are the days of midnight feedings and chasing you around the kitchen - more physically taxing situations. Now I seem to spend a lot of time with mental situations. Where I need to figure out how much to share about the bigger world around you. It feels more and more that my job is less to tickle you and more to act as a buffer for your curiosity and fears as we enter the big world together.

Questions such as “How much does this cost?”

“Do we have enough money?”

“What are you all talking about?”

I don’t want to burden you with things like taxes and the minutea of your Mother’s health shenanigans. I also don’t want to lie to you.

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Letter to my children: Technology will not save us

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Letter to my children: Technology will not save us

Dearest Beloveds,

When I was in my early tweens I came home from school after a parent presentation from Senator Al Gore about the J curve and global warming.*

I was very upset and Baba took me on a walk. “Dad! There are too many people on this planet and not enough resources! Did you know there is trash in the ocean? There is rain that has so much acid in it that statues are MELTING!”

I remember him taking a deep breath and turning to me. “Don’t worry, Corinna, technology will save us.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, there are very smart people out there who are working on this now and it will be okay.”

My beloveds, I am never going to tell you that technology will save us from the mess we have made on our Mother: the Earth.

There are three reasons why: 1) the physical needs of technology directly harm the earth 2) technology separates us from the present moment 3) technology is the latest iteration of human supremacy that created the schism in the first place.

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Letter to my children: How to model safe rule-breaking

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Letter to my children: How to model safe rule-breaking

Backpacks were shrugged off as we reached the end of the gravel lane. Bean declared to her brother, “I look on the left - you look on the right.”

“I always look right!”

Let’s stop this before it balloons. I interjected, “I will look both ways too,” and waded onto the domed center of the asphalt road. High stepping with the thrill of illicit I called out as I scanned the horizons for cars. “Why is it so much fun to go into the road?”

The crickets sang to us from the tree line.

“Because it is cheating!” A big grin split Dragon’s face.

I laughed. “It is cheating.”

He continued, “because you are breaking the law and nobody knows!”

“I hear a car, let’s go back to the side. Don’t run.”

We have a long stretch of straight road on either side of our lane where we need to meet the bus. At least half a mile on either side keeps us safe during the slow traffic times in the morning.

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Letter to my children: Love languages

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Letter to my children: Love languages

Dearest Beloveds,

There are many ways to communicate. Words are very useful but also constrain. You will realize when you become familiar with more languages that languages are both a container and a funneling of experiences/wordview. The most glaring example that comes to mind is the ability to own land vs belonging to the land vis-a-vis the Europeans and the Native Americans (respectively).

The wonderful thing about strong relationships is that communication can happen without words - and often does.

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Letter to my children: “Give me a bunch of while whiles”

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Dearest Beloveds,

About two weeks ago your father and I started noticing this conversation happening. One of us would be washing dishes/feeding the dog/chopping vegetables/putting on socks/etc.

“Momma/Dada! Where are my socks/hat/shoes/big boots/bathing suit/goggles/etc.”

“I will be right there. Give me a second to finish up and I will help you.”

A small pause.

“It has been a second. WHERE are you?!! I can’t hear you moving!”

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Letters to my children: Berry season

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Letters to my children: Berry season

Dearest Beloveds,

When we lived in Michigan I thought the 5 pound boxes of blueberries one could purchase were obscenely amazing. I would eat blueberries for a week straight, until my tooth enamel yelled at me to stop (too much acidity).

Now we live in New York, with pick your own berry farms surrounding us and I realize that obscene is not the word. The words are glory, bounty, lavishness, profusion, cornucopia, richness, or abundance.

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Letters to my children: Complicity

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Dearest Beloveds,

There are times when I think about the lessons your father and I are trying to teach you and I feel proud. To look in someone’s eye when they talk to you, to not give up before you try, to share our allowance with others who have less, why we turn the lights/fan off when we leave a room, how to take turns, why it is important to eat salad etc etc.

Other times I am not so proud - this morning was one of those times.

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Letter to my children: Why do Baba and Meme live with us?

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Dearest Beloveds,

The subject of this letter was in my original outline that I wrote before Baba died but the sentence sounds better with a double barrel as opposed to just Meme, so there we are.

Meme lives with us because when your Momma was in my early twenties I helped Meme put Grandma (her mother) into a series of assistant living and nursing homes.

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Letter to my children: Axes and Extinction

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Dearest Beloveds,

It has been a while since I wrote because we have been all over the place in terms of doings. Our RV trip to NM, your Dad taking off time for us to split wood, our first trip on an airplane in 2 years… the past two months seem to have flown by.

And here we are, the glory of spring has passed and it is now summer weather.

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Letter to my children: Dinner Games

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Dearest Beloveds,

I know I need to focus and go back to the outline I made of what I wanted to cover for you two in these letters, but I feel this is super awesome and I don’t want to miss this.

There are three games we are currently playing at dinner: I Spy, Animal Vegetable Mineral, and Guess the Number - each with their own vagaries, shall we say. I Spy is fairly straightforward.

Dragon, “I spy with my little eye something yellow.” Then we all guess and can usually figure it out fairly quickly.

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral involves partners because sometimes the items can be tricky.

Bean and I will drum on the table and sing while the Dragon whispers his to Dada.

Bean, “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.”

Dragon, “Animal”

Bean, “Do we eat it?”

Dragon, “No”

Bean, “Does it have four legs or two?”

The Dragon will look at Dada in confusion. Dada, “I think four legs.”

Dragon, “It has wings and drinks blood.” (Darling, for some reason, after more than 2 or 3 questions, you always jump in with a huge hint.)

The Bean smiles hugely, “Is it a mosquito?”

Dragon, “YES! A squito!”

The Guess the Number game has changed the most since we started playing it a few months ago. It used to be that one player would have a number in their head between 0-20 and the other players would guess. The player with the number would say higher or lower and eventually the number would be revealed. Bean, with your math learnings, you have changed the whole equation.

First, you share the new rules, “Okay, so come up with a number between 0-50. Momma, do you have one?”

“Yes.”

“Is it an odd number?”

“Yes.”

“Does it have a 4 in it?”

“Yes.”

“Is it 41?” I nod no. “43?” I nod no. Your voice and face get more and more animated as you circle round the number and hone in on what it could be. “45?”

“YES! You did it! That is amazing! I love how you honed in on that so rapidly by using your noggin. Such good noggin work!”

It is incredibly impressive Bean to watch you use your math prowess to approach the numbers game in such a new way. I can see your neurons firing so bright and that is awesome.

This snapshot of our current life, so grateful I am for you both. Thank you for being my beloveds.

Letter to my children - our wall of white privilege

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Letter to my children - our wall of white privilege

Dearest beloveds, what a glorious time to be alive. I am going to continue to talk to you about today about what I have been talking about all week.

On our wall we have framed pieces of lace from Great-Grandmother’s many boxes of linen bequeathed to me over the years. Nearly every holiday gathering Baba’s family would do a distribution.

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