What We Need Is Here

ELDERS: Shocking, yes, but you just may become one yourself someday

My dad with his great-grandson

If you are over 25, you’ve probably experienced a bout of the cognitive dissonance inherent to aging.  It comes with being able to remember decades – that you graduated from high school ten years ago, that it’s been twenty years since you were in elementary school. And it gets worse as you get older: “Wait, I’m fifty? But my mother is fifty!”  It’s hard to assimilate the fact of aging especially as you begin to approach the age of people you once thought of as “old” and, ummm . . . irrelevant.

Personally, I’ve always had an affinity for old folks.  In my early twenties, at home during the day with a new baby, I sometimes watched a public television show on aging called “Over Easy with Hugh Downs." It gave me some much needed perspective as I was in the process of being bumped up into the parenting phase of life.  Later I lived near my grandparents for a while and was amused when my maternal grandmother sometimes called me or one of my daughters by my mother’s name. She had had two little girls who had two little girls, and now one of them (me) had two little girls. It must have seemed to her at times as if life were recycling itself with slightly different faces – same make, different models. Being close to my grandparents helped soften me toward older people in general, even the slow-moving ones who would aggravate me when driving. I would imagine they were my grandparents experiencing their last years of independence and freedom before their license is taken away.  I have appreciated the older people in my life, and the grand arc of life in general, but I still have had plenty of youthful arrogance in my attitude toward their opinions and ways.

Now, true to form, in my “middle years” I am appreciating more the wisdom of elders - in part because I can actually imagine myself becoming one. But also because I have personally lost so many of them at this point in my own life. My grandparents’ generation of teenage flappers, depression parents and WWII workers and soldiers, watched their roaring 20s youth re-lived  in the free love of the sixties.  They’re almost all gone now.  With them goes their particular insight into youth and old age, patriotism and genocide, wealth, loss, family…  And now my own parents are going. My father was diagnosed last year with a terminal illness that affects his brain. One effect of his illness is a compulsion to tell stories, which flies in the face of his lifelong reserve.  It’s as if something in him knows his time is up and he wants us to remember him a certain way, to honor what he was and what made him who he is.

I ask myself what I have to tell, or will have to tell in my old age – and whether anyone will want to hear it.  Right now I feel particularly fortunate to have young adults in my day-to-day life.  They are dealing with so many of the same issues that I did when I was their age. I particularly appreciate the conversations with them about their parents and the struggle to separate from them, to grow up.  At my age now, it seems like yesterday that I was managing those same tensions -- discerning which of my parents' values would be useful to me, how to step out into my own life while still giving due respect to those who gave it to me, how to honor their values while tossing quite a few of them out.  But I also hear my younger friends’ struggles through the filter of being a parent myself – close in age to theirs.  I feel the loss and fear of having people you have loved since birth, and did your best for, begin to make their own decisions – some very contrary to your own.  There has got to be some value to this, some wisdom in holding both of those mindsets in one brain. I am reminded of something I heard once somewhere about our being not only the age we are, but all the ages we have been before. So I am 5, 10, 21, 30, 40, 50 . . .  What more will I be when I am 60 and 70 and beyond?  Like almost all adults of a certain age, I wish I had asked my grandparents a few more questions before they left.   “Remember” was the last word my grandmother said to me.  How much wisdom is out there in our own communities waiting to be heard, carefully sorted through, perhaps, but really listened to?

*****

Recently I came across a very sweet website about aging: Time Goes By: What It's Really Like to Get Older. It's smart and funny and honest (reminds me a little of good old "Over Easy") - a glimpse of the future that might someday become your present, if you work hard at it.

*****

And some more inspiration for you - from my young adult friend Kim: A little India Arie. Lovely.

Blue House Pants™

family pants

I love it when resources and needs come together. So often it's the other way around: There's a need for a vacation, but no time or money. Or tons of seeds, but no garden space.  How about this: There's a need for fair-trade boxer shorts, and we have a lot of sheets.

We're hoping this may morph into a "cottage industry" for our Catholic Worker House; you can read more here. But we're also thinking it's a good way to help clothe a family. Re-using is time-honored for sure. Before the advent of shockingly cheap clothing (back when we used to manufacture clothing in the USA and labor laws forced us to offer fair hours and wages, safe working conditions, and adult labor), families saved money by handing down clothes, often re-made to fit the next in line.

Now we're looking at sheets and other large swaths of fabric with fresh eyes: I see embroidered baby pants from the sage green flannel sheets; I see skirts and pants from the floral curtains we no longer have windows for (uh oh, now I'm seeing the Trapp family on the Sound of Music - STOP!).

And I'm seeing "locally sewn" pants-making this Saturday in our dining room. If you know how to sew and can help, or if you want to learn how to sew (so you can help), stop by.

locally-sewn

Darkness and Light

Sunrise, San Felasco Hammock

Our household decided to give up night-time electricity for a couple months. It was a spur-of-the- moment decision in response to the question, "is there anything we can do together to celebrate Lent?" We didn't anticipate what it would be like, except that we would not be doing what we often do at night - retreat to our own bedrooms and get online to check email or watch the Daily Show. The idea seemed good to us immediately, and it has been.

For those of you unfamiliar with Lent, it's the eight weeks preceding Easter during which many Christians focus on "prayer and almsgiving." A more modern way of saying the same thing is that it's a time set aside to examine relationships - to each other, to God and to ourselves - and to adopt practices to straighten out the ones that have gone askew.  Each of us have our own practices, but we wanted to do something together as a community as well.

As we expected, the practice has shaken up how we spend our evenings. Before daylight savings kicked in last weekend, sunset was around 6:30, so we were eating dinner by candlelight and washing dishes by the faint glow of an oil lamp. While darkness no longer sets in until after the evening chores are done, the difference in our evenings is still striking.

• We tend to seek each other out. After trying to read together in the living room by one shared oil lamp, we ended up talking instead and realize that several of our household are excellent storytellers.
• We enjoy the streetlight. Recently, during this lovely warm spell, we've sat on the front steps and chatted while watching people walk, bike and drive by. More stories - about our day, our families, philosophies, pasts, and plans.
• We've noticed the phases of the moon. Any one of us could tell you where it's at on any given night.
• We go for walks. We live downtown and have well-lit streets. John and I have not taken walks together for years.
• We go to bed earlier. We decided to use wind-up rechargeable flashilights in our bedrooms instead of candles (much safer in our old frame house!). We read in bed (among other things) and then fall asleep, sometimes hours before we normally do. Having time for the "other things" is very nice ;).
• We get up early. Although I don't think we're spending a lot more time in bed, we do seem to be sleeping more "naturally" - falling asleep when we're tired, waking up refreshed. 

I like the quiet time with each other, and the glow of the oil lamp, and noticing how subtly it is getting lighter each day. I'm glad we're doing this.

A real gift - and a crafter's dream come true

Riley (my daughter Megan's little boy) snuggled up on our bed for a nap this weekend - looking precious like all sleeping three year-olds do.  He was wrapped up in the quilt made from squares my great-grandmother pieced 75 years go, and my mother sewed into a quilt just a few years ago. She gave it to me one recent Christmas, and I don't think I've ever loved a gift more.

Seeing little Riley cuddled warmly in the handiwork of his great, great, great(!)-grandmother, I thought how this is the secret dream of anyone who's ever spent time making something - that it might somehow bear the love you have for the person you made it for, that it might even continue on doing so into some bright, unknowable future long after you've become a somewhat sketchy remembrance. 

The squares were made from flour sacks by Nettie Green Avery who lived about 45 miles from here and wasn't known for her artistic ability as much for her chicken and dumplings. But she had a son who made a living as an artist - one of the five children who survived their shaky childhoods growing up in a tenant-farming family on infertile sand at the turn of the 20th century. And her granddaughter, my mother Sandra Richardson Martin, painted with oils and watercolors (like her Uncle Jay) before turning to quilting. This quilt is their mutual handiwork and now delights this daugter of their tribe and warms the newest generation.

I tell little Riley that it was made by "Gimmie" and by her gimmie - Grandma Nettie. When I think of the things I will be sending off into the future, I think these two things will be among the most precious: a gift from two of the line of meticulous, practical women in my family who have an eye for color and harmony - and this new little boy. 

Earlier this year when I was downsizing and decluttering like a maniac, the underlying question was always "what really matters?" This question rears its head again during this busy season of cluttered values - of being tasked with creating beauty, celebrating simplicity, and loading Santa's pack. I haven't solved the Christmas conundrum by any stretch, but I remain ever hopeful that the celebrating will tilt toward what really matters - friends, family, tradition, gratitude, and generosity. Gifts will be a part of it, yes, but I will keep close the dream that some of the gifts of this season will find their way into the future still bearing the love with which they were created and given. 

*******************************

Some ideas for a simpler season:

• Bill McKibben's Hundred Dollar Holiday
• Christmas With More Meaning and Less Money

The shadow side of Toyland

Christmas is in the air, even though it's 70 degrees outside and early November.  Besides the catalog bilizzard, store aisles are filling up with Christmas goods.  And this is only the beginning. Thanksgiving weekend heralds the beginning of the "Christmas season" according to merchants and just about everyone else - transformed at some point from the more somber season of Advent of times past. Back in the day, Christmas began on Christmas day and ended at Epiphany twelve days later.  But now that's clean-up and recuperation time.  Our function as dutiful consumers over, there's no longer use any use for the tree which we gladly toss within days (it's kind of old anyway since we put it up at the beginning of the "season").

I don't mean to sound exasperated; I've come to peace over the years with how Christmas is celebrated and over the years have found ways that work for our family  to avoid some of the more commercial aspects of it.  I always felt a bit of a stranglehold regarding the Santa Claus business though. Once a saintly guy who left coins for the poor, he was turned into an omnipotent extortionist to be pulled out when we wanted to threaten our children into good behavior - and then turns against us when it comes to Christmas shopping, pressuring us to make sure our children feel as loved by Santa as the next kid - by shopping and spending more. 

The issue for me was consumerism and the environment; how would we teach our children values like frugality and simplicity when they each got five new toys (at least) each year from Santa?  And, honestly, I hated the clutter of the new stuff. We tried different things over the years - having the kids go through their rooms and choose things to give or pass down to a younger relative, asking relatives to give them something useful (like a sleeping bag or lunch box); Still, we ended up with a lot of stuff.  

What I haven't always been as conscious of is the social justice ramifications of where our toys come from - how they are made, who made them at what cost, who profits, etc., and how these issues are connected at the core to values like simplicity, frugality, ecology, and consumerism - how they are connected to the well-being of our children. Sharon Astyk, author of Depletion and Abundance, has such a wonderful understanding of this. She brings to light the motivation behind and the consequences of our desire to shower our children with toys during the holidays. Here's a somewhat lengthy excerpt from the chapter "Raising Kids in a New World."  I think her book woudl make a great gift.

If you are like many parents, you've spent a good bit of time in the past few years sorting through your kids' toy box, tossing out lead-contaminated toys, items made with endocrine-disrupting plastics and other dangers. It turns out that not only are our houses cluttered with toys but the toys themselves are often toxic. In the summer of 2007 there was an enormous outcry against Chinese toy manufacturers. How, we asked, could they dare to endanger our kids?

But of couse, such anger is misplaced. All of the relevant toys were cheap plastic crap, manufactured in a poor country with lax standards on environmental, child and worker safety. They were being manufactured in a comparatively unregulated economy by people making tiny wages, often in poor working conditions, on a contract given to the lowest bidder. The average action figure that retailed for $10.99 actually cost far less than a dollar to produce, and only a few pennies actually went to the guy whose job it was to ensure safety. And every single parent and grandparent who bought one of the toys knew that this was true - or could have if they stopped to think for two seconds about where the toys came from. We either didn't bother to think or we trusted that other people, far away and with no incentive to do so, would care more about our kids than we care about theirs.

I'm not blaming anyone here - I'm as guilty as anyone of this. I buy toys at yard sales, but plenty of them started out as cheap new toys somewhere. The truth is that because we think our kids need a million toys, we need them to be cheap. That way everyone who knows them can afford to buy them a ton of stuff for Christmas, birthdays, and whenever Grandpa comes to visit. They can have gift bags at every birthday party, a toy in every Happy Meal, a bunch of junk for every occasion. And they can have toy boxes full, closets full, houses that look like stores. This is possible only is we cut every corner, pay no attention to the environment or labor practices or sustainability. The problem is not any particular toy - it is all the toys.

Cheap toys aren't just bad for our kids, they are bad for everyone - for kids, for workers, for the planet, for the future. The toys are made by impoverished people who didn't get to have toys themselves growing up, sometimes by children who are enslaved in factories instead of playing at home. And for all that the lead paint on Elmo's face is dangerous for our kids, it is worse for the workers who make the toys. They are the ones who work 12 hours a day with lead paint - many of them young women at the beginning of their reproductive years. The factories emit greenhouse gasses that warm the planet and use up limited supplies of petroleum for what? For a toy that will be broken in a mattter of days or hours? And their destruction is inevitable, because children with a million toys simply cannot understand the value of a thing - and children who own only cheap plastic junk are not making a mistake when they imbue it with no inherent value.

What's the solution? There is only one answer I know of, and I hope that parents and grandparents will begin to take this seriously - many, many fewer toys, made to much highter standards. That is toys made of natural materials that are demonstrably nontoxic and made without waste. Toys you make yourself or that your children make. Toys made from non-toxic recycled things. But most of all, fewer of them for every child. That means not 50 dolls, but one or two. Not 100 stuffed annimals, but two. A set of blocks. Some old clothes for dress up. Pots and pans and empty cans and boxes for playing store. A blackboard and chalk. Some crayons and the backs of paper you've already used. A few balls. A bat. A glove. a few games. Lots of books. Perhaps one big thing - a dollhouse or a battle cruiser or some trains and track.

. . . If we're honest about our motivations for giving our children toys, I think we'll find that this is what we are seeking - the child inside us who loved a particular toy, or a few particuar toys, and felt powerfully about them. We give our kids toys because we want them to have that magical and imaginary space in their lives with a toy that feels real to them. So we give and give and hope that the next one will be the one. But the reality is that it is more likely that we will create magical experiences for our children and grandchildren if they have fewer toys, rather than more. The experience we remember is in part a conequence of limitation. That is, we imagine better when we have more reasons to imagine, and fewer real things that substitute for imagination. Our toys are real to us precisely to the same extent that we make that possible by limiting them.

Had enough?

This is five days worth of catalogs. Honestly, I like looking at the pretty things, but I don't need them and am done looking. It doesn't do me, the environment or the local (including personal) economy any good to receive these bedazzlers everyday in the mailbox.

We've been recycling the catalogs, but the amount of energy used in the production/recycling process is not something we want to keep contributing to (we stopped subscribing to our handful of magazines for the same reason).  So, after a bit of research, it looks like we have two options. We chose Catalog Choice since it required less personal information.  Check it out!  If you're getting the same number I am, we could make a real impact.

We're excited about scaling down for Christmas in general, and removing tempation is one step. There are several other steps we need to get cracking on now that November has arrived. More later.

 First two steps 

Also thinking about ...

 Making Christmas gifts

 The Election (did you vote?)

An Aside

Oh my! I am going to have to briefly interrupt this local-living blog to say, "Ben is still cancer-free!!!!"  I think I want a Snickers Bar!

Feeling Good, Nina Simone

Travel ... and Home

Now, that was a quick month, which is exactly how I like my North Florida Julys.  We are pretty much moved in, although still going through duplicates of kitchen things, organizing the office, and rearranging furniture.  I weeded the little postage stamp garden out front – mostly flowers - while thinking how to round up some more food garden space quickly.  And I traveled.  And traveled.  And traveled. 

I thought of all that traveling as a way to make up for some of the homebounded-ness I felt during Ben’s cancer years (and to escape the aforementioned month).  Look at where I went!

First, five days after moving, to Pagosa Springs, Colorado to visit my parents.  Pagosa is at the foot of one of the most incredible mountain ranges in the world, and my parents have a view of them from almost every window.  I never got tired of rounding the curve of the road a few yards from their house and seeing them spread out before me, never got over the lump in my throat of seeing something so beautiful.

 

photo thanks to Pagosa Chamber of Commerce

After a week at home (filled with going through boxes), I left for Guatemala to visit my son, Joe, who was teaching school there for the summer.  There’s a wholly different kind of beauty there that I wrote about here.  Several times I felt astonished by how vast the world is, and at the same time so much the same all over. Mountains and mothers and babies and buses and schools and chickens and gardens, but the mountains are volcanic, the mothers are wearing handwoven skirts and the babies are on their backs very quiet, the buses are crammed six to a seat (school bus seats made for two children), the chickens are walking down the road next to you (along with cows) and the gardens are planted on hillsides so steep that I can’t imagine how they all don’t wash away.  And the beautiful languages!  In one day we passed through three different Mayan language regions while listening to radio music on the bus belting out Spanish pop tunes.   The topsy-turviest experience of all, though, was trudging obediently behind my son, who held onto the money (quetzals), spoke for me (because my Spanish STILL sucks), told me where to sit on and when to jump off the bus, ordered my food in restaurants, and even made me dinner.  I felt like a child, or a very old woman. (Definitely like an old woman jumping off the back of the moving bus).

 

I was scheduled to have a quiet week at home by myself (everyone was on their own trips to visit family members), but then Kendera, our fellow Catholic Worker and housemate, had her baby!  And I was there!  I’ve never been at a birth other than my own; it is quite a different experience from this standpoint.  And a miracle.  I couldn’t sleep for two nights thinking about it all – just like a new mom. 

Next, we headed up to Georgia to John’s family’s beautiful mountain home for a family reunion. We just got home yesterday.  And it is good to be home.  While I felt like the good of all this travel outweighed the bad, it’s not at all environmentally – not to mention financially - sustainable to travel this way (and I realize the irony of this “what we need is here” blog chronicling my travels all over the place). But I also recognize that, in addition to family, there are other goods to travel. I know the places I have visited and the differences and similarities they held for me vastly changed the way I see the world and my own life.  I encourage every young person I know to take a year off and travel or live someplace very different than where they’ve been.  It’s one of those things you can’t be too dogmatic about… Would Wendell Berry have come back to the farm in Kentucky if he’d never been to France?  Will the question of virtue and travel be completely undone by the practicality of it as fuel prices continue to rise? 

Regardless, I hope to be spending most of my time HERE for now. There is still so much to do and figure out in moving to a different home under different circumstances, but living in the heart of Gainesville within 50 miles of where my great, great grandmother lived is where I want to be, at least until global warming makes it completely unbearable, or underwater.  I am excited about living with a community of people interested in living simply, locally and with generosity - and  with whom I can struggle to figure out how to do that with all the complications of family, near and far.

Carpe the Freakin' Diem

Three years ago, I had an opportunity to go to Guatemala for the first time but was so bogged down with day-to-day life, I couldn’t decide whether to do it or not.  The school gardens I was working in were in the middle of harvest and there were so many things that needed wrapping up at the end of the school year.  I was working long hours and had fallen way behind on house upkeep. The chaos of it all was just overwhelming.  When I told my college-age son Joe my dilemma, his response was to the point: “Go to Guatemala, Mom! Carpe the freakin’ diem.” I did, and it was a life changing experience. In the end, it changed Joe’s life, too. My relationship with the school and community in Ciudad Quetzal paved the way for his later funding to study and teach there. He’s there now for his third summer.

I was thinking of that conversation with Joe while I was cleaning up the rest of his room in preparation for moving.  Our youngest son, Johnny, now has the room, and I was sorting through the last vestiges of Joe’s things and packing up some of Johnny’s before moving on to the next room which belonged to Megan, Anna, Grace and Riley at different times.   I was overwhelmed with memories of my grown children embedded in all the mess; I could imagine each of them around 8-years old: Anna (25) practicing gymnastics, Megan (27) with art supplies strewn everyplace, Joe (22) setting up his tripod and organizing his photos, Ben (20) with his baseball cards spread all over. I was even getting choked up folding little Riley’s (Megan’s 3-year old) winter things, thinking about how big he’ll be next year.  I was flooded with those timeless, unanswerable questions parents are prone to confront during times of transition:  “Did I spend enough time with them?” “Could I have played with them more?”  “Will they remember me as a good mother”  “Was I a good mother??” “Do they know how much I love them?” I missed them so much all the sudden.  I wished I could do it all again.

I am still the same woman who, when they were younger and at home, would do a little dance on the rare occasion they were all out of the house at the same time - and would dream sometimes of a future when they were grown and gone and I would actually have regular time to myself, where I could just be myself and not always at everyone’s beck and call. And I am truly glad that I have arrived here at this place in my life where I have more freedom and can even finally down-size a bit. But I still miss them. And I am awash in all the contradictions.  I am happy and sad.  I am overcome by all the losses and gains.  I wonder how to find any firm ground to stand on when things are constantly shifting and changing.

Later the same day, I got a call from my mother about my father’s recent neurology appointment, confirming he is indeed experiencing the beginnings of dementia. He is not the same as he used to be. He is going too.  I remembered driving with my dad when I was 12 or so, with the top down to our convertible, talking. I probably remember it because it was so rare to have time with him, and very rare to have it alone.  I can hear him commenting on the beautiful day and myself responding with something like “It’s not as pretty as North Florida; I miss the trees.”  I remember him slowing down and explaining earnestly that it was beautiful just like it was and that someday we would look back at that exact time and think how happy we were, that our family was all together right now, and who knew what the future would bring. Something like that.

I wish I could have my dad back. And my children. At all their ages and stages. While I was lying in bed awake last night, staring into the dark and wondering what we are here for anyway, why it hurts so much sometimes, and how we are supposed to live with all this uncertainty, my husband rolled over closer and put his head on my shoulder and took a deep contented breath.  I could feel his curls against my face and as my mind spun through this life we're catapulting through together, I felt I knew at least one true thing: We’re here to love each other as best we can, right now.  We’re here to carpe the freakin’ diem. This diem, right now.   Today.

About Our Family

We are a “blended” family of two parents and six children – three still living at home.  Like most families, we feel very busy. John works full-time for Pax Christi, a Catholic human rights organization.  I (Kelli) have been occupied for the last two-plus years as a caregiver for Ben (19), who has just finished up a long, long course of chemotherapy for leukemia. Prior to that (almost three years ago), I worked for Florida Organic Growers' food secuity program.  In 2000, John and I were among a small group of folks who founded the Gainesville Catholic Worker and we are very involved with its doings. Our other two children living at home, Johnny (12) and Grace (10), are in middle and elementary school respectively, perched right at the brink of teenagerdom. The three living away - Megan (27, Ocala), Anna (25, NYC), and Joe (22,  college in Tennessee), seem to appreciate Gainesville life even more the further away they are. It's been good for us to see "home" through their eyes.

For years, we have been inspired by the idea of “being local.”  Partly because we just love this place.  Our roots run deep here and we want to honor and protect it.  But also because we can’t imagine going on like this - as a family, as a community, as a country, or as a planet.  We want to slow down, work and play together more as a family, and free ourselves to reach out  more to our neighbors - especially those in need.  We'd like to enjoy and appreciate more North Central Florida's natural beauty as well as the beauty of the various human and cultural aspects of this particular place. We hope to see more of our resources go toward supporting the people we know and who care about this place as much as we do.  And we want to become more aware of the people and places other than our own that our actions affect. We want that impact to be a more benign one. And with global warming and peak oil looming, we are feeling a little urgent about changing our ways  - for our sake, for our neighbors near and far, and for the good of the planet in general.

We’re thinking this is going to be a pretty big challenge for us. Over the years, we’ve given more thought than effort to being local – enjoying the ambience and delicious food at the farmers market or the local grocery but supplementing heavily with just about whatever we wanted whenever we wanted it… from wherever we had to go to get it.  We want to do better.  And we want to examine other aspects of our lives besides food - what we wear, how we entertain ourselves, how we get to where we're going (gasoline isn't a local product...) and whatever else comes to mind. One thing we know for sure: we have a lot to learn.

We hope you'll help us by sharing your own experiences, insights, thoughts and questions about being local.  It's good to have company.