Kids Saying and Doing

Last night’s babysitting triumphs deserve some reporting. During dinner, I told the kids about today’s party for Jason’s upcoming birthday. The coolest part, I said, was that we were going to have snack foods that started with each letter of Jason’s name. We talked about how to spell Jason and then guessed different foods whose names started with those letters. They mostly made up nonsense words that began with the correct sounds, but they were interested and engaged for a sustained amount of time. I tried to give them a hint about the “n” by telling them that pistachios, almonds, and cashews were different kinds…they guessed ice cream. Hopefully they will remember that those are also different kinds of nuts.

After dinner while the boys played rambunctiously, yet cooperatively, in the basement, six-year-old Kelsey and I got creative upstairs. In recent weeks I’d brought some projects to work on while the kids watched movies, and she’d seen me at work braiding and sewing t-shirts for a rug and knitting. Last night, she got excited about doing her own craft so she looked in the supply closet and found just what she needed: paper, markers, pipe cleaners, tape, and popsicle sticks. She decided that she wanted to make a birthday present for Jason (who, by the way, she’s never met and knows of only as my friend).

The two of us gathered around the kitchen table, and she flitted around, doing some drawing, some tearing, some moving of objects as her vision developed. Eventually, she hit on the perfect idea: a pencil holder! She started to coil a pipe cleaner into a spiral and then gave it to me to finish. This, I learned, would be the base. Then, she began taping popsicle sticks together for the sides.

When we needed to take a break, we went to the other room and practiced our gymnastics. Kelsey turned many cartwheels, and we did some stretching together. Eventually, I decided to try a cartwheel, too. Feeling nervous, I asked if Kelsey could encourage me and give me some tips. She told me to imagine that I was just like her, and she cheered when I did it.

Returning to the craft project, we did team work on the popsicle-stick taping. As we worked, Kelsey had some great ideas for giving the gift to Jason. She said that I should have all of the guests write their names on it and then surprise him with it. I thought it was a great idea but I privately wondered if the pencil holder would stay together long enough for people to sign it. Later, she said that I could take it to the party but that I needed to bring it back next week. As we worked, Kelsey became increasingly more invested in the project. She fished for compliments several times, asking if it was a good idea and if she was very creative.

As bedtime approached and the pencil holder was nearly complete, Kelsey began putting the finishing touches on: a green pipe cleaner around the outside to give it some color. Some crumpled red tissue paper inside the pipe cleaner for…decoration? I began trying to re-direct her attention toward pajamas and BFF (brush-floss-flouride), so I told her that she’d done a great job and made a beautiful pencil holder. Knowing that her attachment had grown beyond her original idea of a gift for Jason, I asked if she wanted to keep so that she could enjoy it herself. Without hesitation, she said yes and asked me to be sure to show it to her parents when they got home. 

Car-less 2013

Since moving to Chicago in 2009, I’ve been introduced to a new way of life. Not owning a car is relatively common among my friends and acquaintances in the city. Some don’t even have driver’s licenses. Where I grew up in rural Kansas this was, of course, unheard of and impractical if not impossible. Now, I walk two blocks to the grocery store. There? Ten miles.

Though exceedingly grateful for my car as I traveled to church by 9 am on Sunday mornings or as I journeyed to my weekend babysitting engagements on the other side of the city, I also did a lot of walking those first couple of years here: to class, to the gym, to my part-time job.

Slowly I got used to using public transportation. With practice riding my comfort level on the buses increased, and I stopped experiencing anxiety that I would miss my stop. I became better at standing and walking on moving trains without tipping or tripping. Using the Chicago Transit Authority system, it turned out, I could get anywhere in the city that I wanted to go and didn’t have to worry about finding (and paying for) parking. In 2011 I invested in a bicycle and used it to commute to my summer internship in the Loop.

The gradual lessening of my dependence on a personal vehicle was good, but I remained skeptical about whether I, too, could go car-less. Even as I marveled at the small carbon footprints and the complete disregard for no parking signs and gas prices of those without vehicles, I enjoyed the ease and comfort that my car provided.

Every time Sylvia the Silver Saturn broke down, Jason and I had a conversation about whether this was the last straw. And every time, we paid for the repair. Last summer we even set a limit: if the repair was over $200 that would be it. It cost $175.

When the car wouldn’t start this past Thanksgiving, we figured it was the battery and got it replaced. When the car wouldn’t start again a few days later, it turned out that the alternator was the problem and our favorite mechanic shop would repair it for $365, parts and labor.

This time, as part of our discernment process, we pulled out a thick folder of receipts from various auto shops. We got out a calculator and started figuring. The water pump, the starter, the radiator. The series of electrical failures including the one at the rest stop in Iowa that resulted in a 60-mile tow to Des Moines and an overnight stay there while we waited for the fix. Not to mention the price of gas, regular oil changes, registration, city stickers, insurance, and those pesky street-sweeping tickets. The time had come and the $365 alternator repair—as it turned out—really was the last straw.

We’ve been car-less for two months now and are doing well. We signed up for a car-sharing program and have done a little cold weather biking. We don’t have to scrape the windshield or dig the car out when it snows. We don’t have to worry about the coolant light that came on at inconvenient times, and we won’t have to get an emissions test in the spring. Best of all, the car owner’s guilt that had been growing in me since I first learned about the car-less lifestyle has vanished completely. 

Cattle and Cantaloupe

“Start a blog” being one of 41 things on my 30 Before 30 list, it seems as if my first entry should be epic. A brilliantly crafted piece of prose that delves into existential questions of meaning, perhaps. Or, more personally, a thoughtful and summative reflection on the past three and a half years of full-time graduate studies. Instead, the interesting occurrence that will mark my inaugural post is a report on a recent dream:

The family was gathered on the farm in Kansas, celebrating a holiday or a homecoming or maybe just some lovely late spring weather. Grandparents, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and siblings milled about the yard and—in particular—the orchard and garden area east of the house. Uncle Blair was in workout clothes, jogging around the barnyard to get some exercise. Some cattle also milled about, friendly and unobtrusive guests. Also a source of sustenance in unexpected ways.

It came time to prepare dinner, and I was tasked with cutting the fruit. My fruit-loving status is well-known in the family, and this duty is a favorite of mine. Little did I know the horror that was to come. Cantaloupe—a summer favorite—was on the menu, but instead of cutting into a store-bought stash of melons I picked up my knife (the one with the wooden handle that mom always uses) and began to cut off the tails of the cattle. These tails, so it seemed, were slices of melon. This was a horrific realization. Though the cattle didn’t protest, I was deeply impacted by the visceral nature of the task.

I filled a basket[1] with bite-size pieces of cow-tail cantaloupe, and the family gathered in a half-circle to pass the basket around while we blessed the food. The prayer was a beautiful song, sung in parts. The words were unfamiliar but the tune was the same as “Great God the Giver.”[2] I desperately wanted to participate in the sung blessing, but I couldn’t grasp the strange words.

In the end, after the cantaloupe had been passed and the blessing sung, I busied myself repairing a nearby fence, attempting to prop up different parts in order to reinforce the structure of this cow pen. My mind was preoccupied with a conundrum: I had been so disturbed by my earlier encounters with the cantaloupe cattle that I was working to convince myself that becoming an honest-to-goodness vegetarian was a necessity. There was only one serious problem with this proposal: would that mean I could never eat cantaloupe again?

---

[1] The basket, a play item from my childhood, was pale yellow with chipped paint and many rusty places. Maybe a half-bushel in size, it was made out of wire and had a handle for carrying. It was a totally impractical object for holding cantaloupe slices of any kind. 

[2] Great God the Giver is a song that I’ve heard and begun learning in my Chicago church community. Generally an “insider” when it comes to church music, with this sung prayer I have experienced what it is like to be the person who can’t follow while everyone around is clearly in the know.