notes from the field: carnivorous bees

Are bees carnivores? A bee put its front legs on a dead daddy long legs. It does the same with honey. At home lets print the pictures we took when they come to our house I will put them in my book. I think bees are omnivores. 

Direct from the field journal of Frances to you. She said our nature walk yesterday was in fact the first official meeting of the field explorers club. The first time didn't count. That was just our backyard.

Yesterday morning I had no plan for the day. If you read my last post, you might understand how I was feeling. Done. Empty. I tried to pretend like reading the paper in my pajamas at 8:30 was a normal thing for me to do. (It's not, and certain people noticed). As the freshness of the early morning became a fading memory, as humidity set in and the cicadas started to really belt it out, we all began to stumble precariously around the opening of The Pit. Do you know the one? It is awfully hard to climb out of once you're in it, and is characterized by slow movements, irrational digging in against any suggestion of mobilization to visit somewhere beyond the pit, laziness that lapses easily into irritability, and a general heaviness of spirit.

So I had to move quickly. I announced that we were going on an adventure, which caught the attention of two small people who were already sliding down the steep walls of The Pit like a helpful branch that juts out of the side of a cliff in cartoons. I came up with a nature walk in Truxton Park, whose trails we have strangely never explored. We put on sturdy shoes and packed for a mini safari with field guides, journals, water, snacks, and binoculars.

The accoutrements of adventure and scientific inquiry made it all real and exciting. We probably walked less than a mile, but along the trails we collected many feathers and pine cones, and saw all kinds of bugs, one gorgeous swallowtail butterfly, two lizards, a nest full of three juvenile hawks (thank goodness for those binoculars), and witnessed the above-mentioned scene, in which a honeybee seemed to be feeding off the corpse of a daddy long legs.

What? asked Frances. Bees are carnivores?! We three sat and watched for a long time, pondering the implications of a meat-eating bee. Notes were taken. Illustrations followed. Our club is not for the casual naturalist. 

And the best part? Our trail emptied out near a playground, the sight of which had my studious field explorers yelping with excitement and sprinting towards within seconds. I sat in the shade and watched them play, which is a new development (versus me pushing kids on swings and assisting in challenging climbs). They looked so lithe and brown, summery big kids possessed of all kinds of unknown capabilities.

 

I've been reading about how my daughter is spirited lately, which has indeed helped in our most recent struggles, if only in granting me some much-needed perspective and space for reflection. (Not unlike the pleasure of sitting in the shade and watching my kids play.) It also provides a theory, which as Anna commented in my last post, is invaluable - the theory itself isn't necessarily important, but the reassurance that comes with an approach to interpreting present behaviors is. 

So while I haven't hit on a magic solution, things are looking up around here. This spirited  mama is beginning to see her spirited big girl in a new light. She is her own person: inquisitive, creative, intense. She would like to know more about the eating habits of bees. Where did this singular child come from? In the push and pull of everyday life, it's easy to forget how extraordinary it is to watch someone grow up, slowly but surely becoming the person she is meant to be.

dinosaur yoga

As I've become more committed to yoga this summer (especially thanks to my weekly practice group), Gabriel has become more enamored of playing dinosaur yoga with me. He's the expert on dinosaurs in our family, so it affords him the rare pleasure of exerting his knowledge and authority. Dinosaur yoga is also the place where his dinosaurs and my asanas overlap, coming together in a unique, creative mishmash. Plateosaurus, corythosaurus, and ankylosaurus all make appearances on the mat. Yesterday we pretended to be a pair of pteranodons soaring above water (blue mat) and land (green mat), arms stretched in a T, one leg behind us (think warrior three), scanning the surface below for prey.

I've been trying to be more mindful about spending time with my kids. You'd think that wouldn't require quite so much effort and intention, considering my very part-time work schedule and my love of writing about family life. At the very least, I need material to work with, right?

And yet. One-on-one time together is a rare occurrence. I have less child care this summer than I do during the school year, and so I am squeezing in work email-checking and freelance pitching while the onions are caramelizing or while Frances is momentarily absorbed in a book. Plus there is the garden to weed, the weekend trip to plan, the insurance company screw up to investigate, the grocery shopping to do, the clothes to fetch off the line before the rain starts. And so it is remarkably easy to spend a day together with my kids without ever truly being together...I distract, I manage, I tell them to wait five more minutes. Let me finish this phone call, and then I can help you with your bathing suit.

Frances has been especially difficult lately. It's as if she has been living life with her toes lined up at the edge of a precipice, and any discomfort or unexpected obstacle life throws into her path can send her right over the edge. A lost hair band, a tricky shoe buckle, a request to put her clothes in the hamper before we can read together - all potential reasons to scream, to panic, to begin the descent into emotional free fall. Relax, we say. Take a deep breath, we say. She responds as if we are nuts: people, I'm falling over the side of a cliff here, and you want me to relax??

Talking about it isn't helping. Yelling at her isn't either. (Oh but I do it, all the time, and I am ashamed). I made an appointment last night with the child therapist that I talk to occasionally, and put out a desperate plea for book recommendations (more are welcome) to help guide us through this challenging moment with our intense, brainy, sensitive child.

But my intuition says what Frances and I need is some dinosaur yoga. Or her version of it, whatever that may be. We need one-on-one time doing something creative and fun, something we both care about that engages our bodies and feelings and imaginations. Reading together on the couch during Gabriel's nap just isn't cutting it these days. We need something outside of usual life, and we need to do it together.

These moments of parenting, when I realize myself to be at a complete loss, are humbling. I can so easily fall into painful doubts about my ability to provide my kids with what they need to grow and flourish.

I really like to be good at things. (So much so that it's kind of a problem sometimes). In previous jobs, I enjoyed positive feedback and the satisfaction of successfully completing concrete tasks. But this mothering job is all about process, about moment-to-moment shared experience, about the accumulating days and ever-shifting colors that make up family life. With the exception of a nicely executed birthday cake or Halloween costume, there is no resting in the uncomplicated happiness of  a job well done. The job is never done.

And yet, most of the time the small beautiful moments that catch me unawares - sweetening a chaotic morning and opening me anew to life's wonders - are more than enough. Most of the time, my cup overflows...except when it doesn't. Sometimes life with a beloved someone who is small, vulnerable, amazing and infuriating can really hurt.

connected & in constant motion

I met Emily Rogers in 2002, during our first week of graduate school. I remember scanning a cavernous room filled with women (and a tiny handful men), all milling about during an orientation meeting for the social work program at Bryn Mawr. I spotted Emily right away. She had a long braid, beautiful posture, and an air of quiet confidence about her that made me want to be her friend. We discovered that we both lived in Center City, and along with another excellent new friend named Patrice, we began carpooling back and forth to the Main Line together. 

I haven't seen Emily in over five years, ever since she and her husband Gregory left Philadelphia to return to their native Austin. But somehow she has remained a presence in my life, and I'm unfailingly enriched by my occasional virtual brushes with her sensibility, perspective, and clarity of expression. She has always struck me as a profoundly honest person, which is why I invited her to write a guest post for Homemade Time. I am so very grateful that she agreed.

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I started, actually re-started, potty training my four year-old this week. At this point, we have several failed attempts behind us, but we took the leap out of diapers even though Lena’s ability to communicate still hovers well below her chronological age. Since there isn’t any way to explain to her in words, pictures, or gestures that she absolutely must use a toilet any time she needs to go, I’ve chosen a method that combines the regimentation of a production line with the social isolation of house arrest. 

Surprisingly, I don’t hate it. Her toddler brother, Simon, has spent the last few mornings with his grandparents. I’ve pared down our schedule to the minimum trips away from home. The result is that I’m spending more time alone with Lena than I have since Simon was born more than a year and a half ago. The single-minded focus that I have on her bodily functions echoes the time when we were mother and first-newborn when I kept a chart tracking all her input and output. The co-existence of tedium and joy has given color and texture to many of our days together.

The readjusted pace that potty training has imposed on our family has opened a small clearing in our usually frenetic schedule of learning opportunities and therapy appointments. From this vantage point I can see back to an old way of being that is barely comprehendible any more, a time when my own self-interest was all there was.  As I’m sitting on the edge of the tub in my tiny bathroom with my knees resting against my daughter’s knees, I can foresee a time when all of us will be more engaged with the outside world, and it will be a good thing. Between Lena achieving steady, albeit delayed, progress in her development and Simon marching steadfastly through the toddlers’ milestones of autonomy, I wonder what kind of parent I will be in response to their expanding worlds and my own.

The encompassing dependency of babyhood and the amplified attention I’ve given to Lena’s special needs, have marked the perimeter of almost my entire experience of being a parent. When my children were babies, I spent most of the day physically connected to them: nursing, wearing them as I went about my day, and sleeping next to them through the night. I functioned as an extension of them with my whole self eclipsed by their need to eat and feel comforted in a world that was completely alien to them. And since Lena hasn’t yet formed a relationship with the world outside a very small circle of comfort, our normal total mother-infant absorption morphed into a different type of relationship that in terms of time and energy is very similar to what I would give a baby.  While I don’t see their need for all of me vanishing overnight, it’s clear that as time goes on there will be ever-widening clearings in my life and eventually something else will fill them.

At first I thought the vague agitation that grew out of this expanding space was about my need to participate more fully and permanently in a career, but I think that is only part of it. Parenthood transformed my own trajectory to one that mirrors the development of my children. As our life course spins us away from one another, we are still bound by some cosmic gravity. Having children presents a constant pull and tug between intimacy and independence, between confidence and doubt, and between having expectations and releasing expectations. Being connected and in constant motion has created a new sensory awareness of the world in me, and I am curious to find out how it will alter my own perceptions and experience from this point forward.

Emily Rogers lives in Austin, TX where she is surronded by an extended family and many supportive fellow parents. She works part-time, bringing a social worker's perspective to a community-wide planning body on ex-offender reentry.

field explorers club

So after four days away from my family, I did not slip back into the waters of daily life with my kids like a jumping silver dolphin who slides gracefully into the sea after a brief flirtation with the air. Nor was I like a sea turtle who suddenly moves smoothly and effortlessly after flopping around on the sand. I was not like any creature who belongs in the water at all. I was more like a kid who has not yet learned to swim but thinks the water looks awfully inviting, and so jumps in only to find it's cold and foreign. Thrashing about in utterly exhausting futility ensues.

Gosh. That doesn't sound too good. It hasn't been terrible; it just hasn't been smooth. Wednesday was my birthday and I felt mad at Frances especially for not being nicer to me (perhaps a misplaced expectation to have of a six year old, but it bothered me all the same). Maybe she and her brother were punishing me for going away. But maybe I was asking for it: I felt behind in various areas of my life when I got back, and commenced to multi-task at a fiercer than usual rate around the house. Such as simultaneous laundry-folding, email-checking, pesto-making, inner wheel-turning...all while I am ostensibly listening to one of my kids tell me about his dream last night. Sort of.

Between their acting out and my evasive distractedness, I have been missing the feeling of true connection with my kids. So this morning I finally made a move to break our bad habits. I proposed we form a field explorers club.

Inspired by a new favorite from the library, Field Trips by Jim Arnosky, each child packed a notebook, binoculars, and pencils in a newly designated field bag. Frances brought along her bird books. Then we set out across the 30 feet that separates the back deck from the garden, and began to record our observations. Gabriel planted himself on a garden path and began drawing a daddy longlegs he found on a zinnia leaf, and Frances gravitated towards the swings, where she listened to the birds in the trees and tried to identify them by their calls.

We were driven indoors within 30 minutes by the fantastically aggressive mosquitoes, so the club members continued drawing indoors, aided by books. We have not yet made membership cards, but I think that would be a good idea.

 

Because maybe a membership card tucked in my wallet might remind me that sometimes all it takes is a deep breath, an intention to slow down and look around (if only for a half hour!), and join together in a simple, common pursuit. Creating our club was hardly a silver bullet (I nearly strangled Frances about two hours later) but it did gently realign something inside me. On a hot and humid July morning, that slight adjustment in my vision made all the difference.