Month: January 2011

I am standing in line at my local grocery store. Nothing very exciting while waiting to pay for groceries, you’ll most likely agree. Chocolate bars are the same, chewing gums with colours covering the whole rainbow spectrum are displayed at my kids’ eye level so they can sharpen their whining skills every time they’re shopping with mom. This time I’m by myself, a treat in itself. The magazines are painted the usual stuff: Faces may be different but on any given week someone famous is getting divorced, having a baby or is being subjected to the horror of wearing same haute couture outfit at some gala event not much different from the one last week to begin with. Still, who wore the outfit better?

The cashier’s name is Lisa. I like her. She’s always asking the mandatory “How are you?” but I always ask back not just to be polite. And every time we strike a real conversation. I’ve told her about my boys, she’s told me about her daughter more than once, we talk about having to hang in there when you feel like running as far your legs can carry you. Today she can probably say she’d been better. And that’s kind of what she says to the guy in front of me when he asks about her day. He smiles and says “Well, have a great time!”. Lisa smiles and retorts “Yeah, I’m having a party the remaining of the day, you know?”. With a seemingly undefeated bright sparkle in his eyes, the guy says “It’s all up here, remember that, whatever you choose to believe,” says the guy while gently tapping his temples with his index finger.

So I almost feel like I’m stepping into something deep when I get to pay for my groceries. I look at her and smile. “It’s all in the head, you know that, right?” she says convinced that she’ll make my day or days roll smoother from now on. “I know, but it sounds way easier than it actually is.” Not playing hard to get, just knowing that for a fact. “Well, you heard the guy, even that is up here,” she insists. She means well, we’re friends. My day rolls the same but now I know I can turn it around. I get my groceries and the rest of stuff I did not pay for but was given anyway by my well-meaning friend. Everything is relative, isn’t it?

I was on the bus the other day with my youngest son. A woman in a wheelchair got on a bus a couple of stops later. She smiled a lot and had a dog in training with her. Then a blind man with a guiding dog, a golden Lab, got on the bus too. Both dogs were calm and quiet. Between following the trails of raindrops on the foggy window with his tiny index finger, my son’s attention was drawn towards the two people and their dogs. He asked questions about them, why do they have dogs with them, why is the woman in a wheelchair and how come that the man cannot see. How do people become blind? Can someone be born blind? His eyes got bigger as I explained it all the best I could. Life as we see it. It amazes me how matter-of-factly children take everything in. Time spent on a bus with a child is of a special nature. There is so much to see, more so through the eyes of a child. Questions danced around us like the raindrops outside on the pavement. New sounds, voices overlapping, faces coming and leaving, smells of wet winter coats mixed with perfumes and that unmistakable almost moldy undertone coming from never dried umbrellas. So much to take in.

The woman got off the bus, and the man with the golden Lab asked what kind of dog she had. Obviously he knew there was another dog. “A black Lab,” I said. We exchanged a few words more about dogs and how amazing they are and then the man and his dog got ready to get off the bus. Before leaving he turned around and said “Thank you for your time.” Just like that. I gave him a couple of minutes of my time and he thanked me for it. Wow! I could not help but how often I let time slip through my fingers like egg white and did not appreciate the great gift of it. Not planning to cranking along without a moment’s peace, but I’d like to make the best of my time. Because I almost felt ashamed when the man thanked me for those two minutes or so. Come on, I had wasted more than two minutes on purposeless activities that day alone. And it’s not even about stopping here and there to smell the roses. That adds to the appreciation of life around us. It’s idleness that bothers me. So here I am, promising to give it yet another try. Gentle reminders like the one I got are most powerful.
Our bus trip took three hours. We both learned so much. More to come if we don’t let the egg white stuff called time slip too easily through our fingers. Challenging? Most likely. Worth it? You bet.

Thank you for your time.
 

I’ve always been apprehensive about schools. The actual institutions scare me. Perhaps scare is too big of a word. Schools intimidate me. Maybe it was the preschool teacher who was of a more stern nature that I expected as a three-year-old. Maybe it was the fact that there was no choice in sight. I grew up in a communist country and uniformity was the saveur du jour whether one liked it or not. I always felt quite tense when I approached the actual institution. I would have a hard time therefore explaining my many years in school while pursuing my education, from mandatory elementary and high school, to a bachelor degree followed by a Masters degree, either of them mandatory. I might not be able to come up with credible arguments after all. Not to mention that I also hold a teaching position at a post-secondary school in Vancouver. What gives?

The biggest realization along the years has been that learning and going to school are two different notions. In some fortunate cases they can work into one harmonious solution for both student and teacher, but in many cases they don’t. Children’s creativity sometimes gets dampened during school years. Sure we raise children to be part of the society and the society works in away that is may not accommodate everybody’s whims and ways of learning. Although lately attitudes have changed. The society has an increased hunger for fresh thinking and innovation. Creativity has become the hottest currency in today’s market. And that is just as it should be. The caveat is that the creativity that was seriously dampened during school years may not be able to be revived to fit the societal requirements our children will be exposed to as they enter adult world. But if traditional schooling is out, what are the alternatives and do they really preserve and enhance creativity after all or are they just a hype that might or might not be short-lived. Homeschooling came to mind shortly after my oldest son, now eight, started being interested in learning about letters and wanting to read on his own. I did not sit him down to do it the way I was taught the alphabet. We had a wooden alphabet and the letters had to find their spots on the big wooden board. The game we invented was musical and fun and he learned his letters before I realized he did. And once he learned to read new horizons opened. They keep opening still. Since learning the letters of the alphabet he has been navigating through the ocean of learning by his own steering. And learned tons while doing it. At the same time, school has been fun at times but often his school days started and ended with grunts. “I am bored” or “Why do I have to go there and learn stuff I know already or stuff I am not interested in?” have replaced morning and afternoon greetings quite often and I wish I wasn’t such a two-face when I answered the latter. “Well, sometimes we come across things that are not that interesting at first but if you give it time…” I would say. Yeah right. So is homeschooling the answer to the dampened creativity dilemma?

Well, for starters, I did not consider homeschooling as a viable alternative for a long time. Because I was quite ignorant about it. If I am not Amish or a devout Christian wanting to isolate my children from the world, I thought – like I said, I was rather ignorant about the issue – then why would lean towards homeschooling to begin with. But then I read about it in books written by authors whose opinions I value a lot, and I met homeschooled kids and I was impressed with both their level of knowledge and behaviour. And I talked to their parents and I even thought of attending a homeschooling conference in town. My opinion has changed dramatically. Not dismissing public or private schools. In the interest of fairness, I will say that school and learning can work like a charm for some kids. But I am not very sure they do for my first born. And while he is still in a public school, and is lucky enough to be studying with a teacher who is extremely open-minded and creates a safe space for children to grow academically and have their individual talents nurtured, I still fear that he might lose a certain spark along the way.
I often talk about homeschooling with my son and we’re getting closer with each discussion to giving it a try. Do I think that homeschooling will work for sure? Well, I don’t. There are no guarantees in life with anything, are there? But I think of the times when my son was reading about the solar system because he wanted to know so much about it and he was studying the charts of summer and winter skies. And then I think of the times when he was so interested in cars that he read all the magazines he could get his hands on, car specifications, new models, engine capacity and all the things only a car aficionado would put up with. And that is when I get this feeling that homeschooling and self-guided learning might work after all.

Come to think of it, I am not opposed to traditional schooling. All I expect from it is to allow my sons’ passions and creativity to be nurtured and encouraged. And while the classroom cannot walk through the thicket of learning guided my sons’ compasses, I would like them to be given the space and chance to know how to read their own compass and follow it with confidence.
 

New Year’s eve has something quite special to it. The thought of moving into a new year is exciting. We get a chance to try again every 365 days. Another chance to try and be more organized, a better friend, a better parent, a chance to try and be kinder, slimmer and maybe smile more. Yet most people know that resolutions don’t last. A friend who used to have a bakery said that New Year’s resolutions last precisely 17 days. That’s right. After 17 days of quietness, she said, people would start flooding the bakery again, slimming resolutions and all left at home or chucked on some frosty sidewalk like a piece of gum that lost its flavour.

I never went crazy on setting resolutions, but this year is the first when I am skinny-dipping in the ocean of what’s ahead and go without any resolutions. You see, ever since I started writing, I loved getting a new notebook and starting writing in it. That first page euphoria followed me around all these years like a faithful dog. I love my laptop but it doesn’t even come close to writing the first word on that first page of a brand new notebook. And every time I did that I was trying to promise myself to make good use of every page. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t. Knowing that each page will eventually succumb to scribbling in pen or pencil made me be careful and remorseful too when things did not work as planned and I always moved on to the next page hoping I’ll make good use of it.

I woke up with a good solid thought on the first morning of this New Year: Make every day count. Just like I was trying to make every page count. Some would say it sounds like a resolution, others will argue that it’s a hazy one. Well, categorizing can easily become a waste of time. Not going there. So here’s my thought, all fresh and delicious like some of the goodies in that bakery where slimming resolutions died at the door. I’ll make every day count. Whether it is writing, running, biking, reading, helping someone, laughing and playing with my boys, listening, caring, feeling and acting grateful, making someone’s day better, I’ll do it. All of these every day or a few, or just one. Sprinkle some of first page euphoria magic dust on every morning and let it work. Come to think about it, I’ll have morning to night to make every day count. All 365 of them, not just 17. Now that’s a pretty sweet deal.