may nuggets: questions

In yet another manifestation of my compulsive instinct to draw parallels between teaching and parenting, I have been thinking about questions lately.

I have spent the past three weeks teaching one of my beloved books, Wuthering Heights, to an inspiring group of sixteen-year olds. It is one of a handful of books that I can blame for making me yearn, twenty years ago, to become an English teacher. It is a book from which I tore a page when I first read it--during my first year in the US as a high-school exchange student in Ms. Hartz's AP English class at Monroe-Woodbury High School in NY--that I still keep tucked away in a folder with my most prized possessions.

the dry winter is already taking its toll on the landscape

This is my first time teaching the book to high-school students, and I am shocked to discover how hard it is to ask the right questions about it. My impulse as I enter the classroom each day is to  begin effusing--to read aloud beautiful passages, to point out the complexities of narrative structure, and to lecture about the way the unlikable but lovable main characters in the novel underscore the inexplicable currents that push us toward certain people and away from others. If I obeyed this impulse to talk rather than ask and listen, I'd likely be met with stiff disengagement from my otherwise vibrant eleventh-graders.

Instead, I have spent hours over the past couple of weeks trying to come up with the right questions. While chopping vegetables or running along the Bay or dancing to "Crazy Love" or playing with Sava and Raya, I ponder how to ask, in as few words as possible, why Cathy does not choose Heathcliff; why books define the love stories of both generations; how Heathcliff can love so much that he hates; and whether physical passion trumps intellectual companionship in the end.

As with so many things in life, I find that resisting the impulse to tell rather than ask, and then finding just the right words in which to couch the one important question, takes both mental self-discipline and the courage of imagination. While the former may have been inculcated in me during the grueling years of rhythmic gymnastics, no one ever mentioned the word "imagination" when I was growing up. In a political system that prized conformity over creativity, we trained to answer questions but never to ask them. Reading books meant uncovering a "correct" interpretation, and writing well meant regurgitating the thoughts of others.

she plods along cheerfully

he RUNS far ahead of everybody else

That is why becoming an English teacher in a country founded upon the idea of creative inquiry has been a more compelling journey for me than I can ever explain to my children or my students. That is why teaching, like parenting, feels daily like a venture into the heart of darkness.

It's hard to admit it, but I've come to recognize that my default mode in parenting, as sometimes in teaching, is telling rather than listening.

It takes all of my willpower and self-awareness to ask questions rather than dish out answers, to pause before speaking, and to offer my children the space to think and feel.

More nights than I care to admit, I go to sleep promising myself to wake up next morning and begin the day with a question rather than a statement.

It's hard work, but so worth it.

:::
Rado started work for a new team at Google, and his colleagues are now all over the world, including a few in San Francisco. So, once a week he plans to take the train to the office in the city, while the kids and I spend the whole day alone, together.

This is daily life for most families around here, but it is new for us. We each work a fifteen-minute drive from home and both kids' schools, so not being able to get to each other within a quarter of an hour feels a bit tingly and a tad scary. (We also, for the record, have never spent a night away from either child. Either of us. Crazy.)

To mark our first day with "tata" away in the city, and to prove that we can do it, I took the kids on a solo hike on a dusty afternoon.

In a landscape that looks dramatically different from just a few of months ago (check out here what it looked like in November and then again in February), they walked without complaint and played house on fallen logs.

We all felt both gratified and accomplished.

:::
In other news:
Mother's Day celebrations included a trip to the beach and a hike into the heart of coastal wildlife at Pescadero Marsh Natural Preserve.

Between the lush life of the marshes and the fact that we met only one hiker during a two-mile walk, this is easily one of our favorite recent finds.

Never mind that the weather forecast promised 71F and sunny, but the fog never lifted and the temperature, when we left at 3 pm, topped an impressive 59F.

The kids never seem to mind the chill, and, when they don't, neither do we.

We found the best climbing bay tree ever,

and--for whatever explicable reason lost upon those of us not scientifically-minded--this marsh turned out to be ladybug heaven. We've never seen so many ladybugs in a single habitat. After his initial fascination, Sava ended up stepping on them on purpose, while Raya walked with at least one crawling on her (and oblivious to Sava's destruction) during the entire hike.

Then after a lunch picnic, a whole lot of playing was had on the beach.

Creative souls had erected makeshift huts from driftwood along the beach.

The kids' favorite part of the whole day? Jumping off (or being hurled from) tata's legs into the sand.

They were breathless with laughter, again and again and again.

Oh, and Raya posed for Sava, like the naughty, dirt-encrusted mermaid that she is.

After years of living here, I am finally falling in love with the California coast, fog, wind, freezing water and all.

:::
In a tie with the Pescadero Marsh for coolest weekend jaunt, there was Berkeley Adventure Playground a couple of weeks ago.

and the birthday celebration of one of our favorite seven-year olds.

Where to begin describing this fantabulous place?

First off, with hammers and saws given out as rewards for finding nails lying on the ground, this playground is not for the faint of heart.

Kids can add to the playscape, creatively, by building and smearing painting.

They can zoom down the Zip-line and crash into a dirt pile, as Sava did, fearlessly, approximately one-hundred-eighteen times.

They can risk their lives by climbing and jumping down a giant fishing net, probably meant to ensnare Leviathan:

They can push a barrel up a hill and then chase it downhill while screeching with delight.

They can walk on ropes.

They can climb onto and into makeshift structures that probably would be banned on any other playground:

They can play "doctor" with afore-mentioned favorite seven-year old.

Oh, and right outside the playground, there is the Berkeley marina and a paved path that, had we had any energy left after the Zip line, the hammer, the ropes, the fishing net, we would have gladly explored on the four bikes we brought from home.

Next time.
:::
In a third tie for favorite weekend jaunt with Pescadero Marsh and Berkeley Adventure Playground, there was San Pedro Valley County Park in Pacifica, where we joined two other sets of lovely people.

This is, approximately, what a walk with four three-and-a-half-year olds, three seven-year olds, and one one-year old looks like. Approximately.

Occasionally, children disappeared in the tall grass.

Also occasionally, the seven-year olds had to resolve gender and temperamental issues,

while the three-year olds grudgingly practiced "sharing."

It was all loud and exhausting and beautiful, no matter how one looks at it.

:::
Last but not least
Stuff They Say 

photo taken by Sava

Raya has been, for months now, potty-trained for the Number One job. She staunchly refuses to do Number Two anywhere but in a diaper. We're pretty chill about the whole thing, but recently, in a rare moment of impatience, I used the ill-advised threat of "consequence":
Me: You know, sweetheart, at some point, we are just going to stop buying diapers.
Raya (after a five-second pause): Well, I'm gonna make so much money, I'll buy another box of them!

While diligent about the Number One job, she'll also use it as a power tool at critical moments like bedtime. When I asked her recently to pee before going to be bed, and she repeatedly refused, I told her she couldn't put on her pajamas until she had at least tried to pee. I went about my business while she, frowning and stomping, sat on the potty.
Me: You are sitting down having a pee!
Raya: Nope, there is NO pee. Just yellow water. See? It's just yellow water.
Can you say thirteen-year old?...

There's so much that goes unrecorded in the grind of daily life.
Rado was reading to Raya a Jack Prelutsky poem tonight called "Four Fierce Tigers." Mid-way, she said musingly:
I don't want to be a fierce tiger. I just wanna love some people.

you can't tell, but Raya is wearing THREE dresses on top of each other

Raya was sick for a brief thirty-six hours recently, which meant that one morning Sava and I had breakfast alone, while Rado nursed Raya upstairs. On that occasion, Sava remarked:
I don't need to worry about Raya bothering me when she is sick. That's the one thing I don't need to worry about when she is sick.

During weekend edition on NPR last Saturday, Scott Simon played a song that went exactly like this: "Thank you for touching me there . . ." While I mixed pancake batter, hoping neither child had heard this so I wouldn't have to answer uncomfortable questions, Sava chirped in cheerfully, in between giggles:
Aha! I know what they are talking about. Private places! 

Lastly, one of my favorite stories of the past weeks. During a random visit to Sava's school last week, his teacher told me of an incident that had happened the day before. The kids had spent several days making a collective book called "Someday," to which each child contributed a page, drawing and writing about what they imagine becoming or doing when they grow up. They all had been told that, once completed, the book would be sent to each family for one night to share with the parents. When the day came for the first child to take the book, Sava declared that his page was not going in the book; he objected, in tears, to having his picture and words shared with people that he didn't know. His teacher didn't oblige him, but she was confused as to why he objected and what she should do about it. We resolved the issue at home by talking to Sava, but we also made sure to tell him that we feel proud and amazed at his deep and well-justified sense of privacy. When he is sixteen and considering membership to Facebook, we would like him to be able to read this story. Here is his "Someday" page:

Someday I will be a Blue Angele. I will do flips in New York city, zip through buildings in Michigan, and fly upside down over Niagra Falls.