Whole and Real (mature or immature?)

Working on a new page for my unschooling site, I came across a quote:

At the age of eleven, Holly has had very little exposure to the idea of what is kids' stuff and what is not, and so her television and movie tastes are personal and calm. She will watch Teletubbies on the same day she might watch Stand By Me or The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She likes music, she understands The Green Mile, and she's analytical about the messages various PBS children's shows intend to present, about school or self esteem or history or math. It's fun for me to watch her watch TV.

Holly's not eleven anymore, she's sixteen. The last two movies she's seen in theaters were "In Bruge" (which she says is too rough for me), and "Alvin and the Chipmunks" (which she and Marty went to see at the dollar theater and were happy to find it was 50¢ night). Some others in my world seem to be acting mature (more acting than maturity involved) or are sadly stuck in an immature stage (which they'll probably figure a way out of someday, after some trauma). I know I'm bragging now, but I'm also very humble about it because I didn't know it would happen this way. My own kids are mature and yet still childlike. They're interested in all kinds of everyday things, they laugh easily, they play around without self-consciousness, but when the moment comes for someone to need to figure out what to do in a serious situation, they're right there. It's one of my favorite unforeseen benefits of unschooling, that they grew up without shucking off former stages in an attempt to prove they were big. They just WERE big, from the beginning. We didn't let anyone make them small. And because they were strong, they could afford to be gentle. (I totally lifted that line from 35-year-old SCA writings about knighthood, and they might've been lifted from other places before that.) The new page (still in progress, but I guess they're all in progress) is Food Fun. The inspiration for it came from a link I found on this blog: xanga.com/juliepersons (nice music there, too!) and the quote above came from sandradodd.com/t/holly. I love my kids in ways I didn't know mothers could love teens and the newly-adult. Kirby, Marty, Holly—thank you. You've not only made my life better, and your dad's, but because you've been willing for me to tell your stories as they unfolded, other people's lives are better too. Holly's self-portrait up top is from a recent museum day, and I had promised to put photos there. Now that I've found them, I'll do that. sandradodd.blogspot.com/2008/02/explora.html

Marty, as Bardolf, at Crown

There's Marty (Bardolf Gunwaldtsson) in the processional at Crown Tournament. He bore the favor of Duchess Aziza (who is his knight's lady).

The tournament was in Roswell, and Marty was gone for the weekend. Keith and I stayed home and did a ton of yardwork, and it was nice, but it was a little uncomfortable for me that we weren't there to see Marty's first major tournament. But Jeff/Artan, his knight and godfather was there. He knew lots of the people there. Keith and I have been to lots of those tournaments. As a parental urge, though, it was a little odd to miss it. I'm thrilled that there are good photos.

All these photos are by Geillis ui Siridein (V. Collins), and there are other photos of the day here.


Nice shield, huh? He painted it himself.
People keep hitting it, but that's better than when they hit him!










He won one, but unfortunately it was two out of three, and so his opponent won

(and was offered knighthood afterwards at some point that day).



Then a bad thing happened. Not too bad.

He was matched against Dermod, his squire-brother (they both are squired to the same knight). That's an unusual thing, in such a tournament, and the king sent someone to apologize afterwards, saying by the time he noticed it was too late to change the order of the round.

And so Marty died valiantly, and that's okay.
Dermod, his opponent, is Ben who's in lots of Holly's photos, and to the right of Holly on the cute people post.
Dermod is my student in the SCA, too (when I'm AElflaed, I mean).

This is the awkward juxtaposition of two lives. This blog is written for my friends, relatives, and for unschoolers, many of whom are not SCA members, so I'm describing it less smoothly than I would if I were on the Duckford blog.

Holly's bravery

Holly is still hugely confident, but I came across some things I wrote four years ago and they remind me of some of the unschoolers' conversations online this week.

January 17, 2004

Tonight [Holly] and I went into the gaming shop to pick Kirby up after work.
Holly's hair has lately been cut about 1/2" short and dyed lighter (its purple
went to pink and is now blondish).

Kirby's boss is 40's and has a daughter, schooled, late teens.

He said, "Holly, you have a lot of courage."

"Okay, thanks. Why?"

"To do your hair like that. Most girls your age wouldn't be brave
enough to have their hair that short."

Holly smiled and shrugged and was friendly, and I said, "She's not in school.
That helps."

He looked at me like I had entirely changed the subject, and said most women
wait another ten years before they're brave enough to have a haircut like
that, or some such.

I know he meant it as a compliment, but it was a strangely disjoint (and
still friendly) conversation.

This next one was posted on some unschooling list or another:

Wednesday, July 21, 2004 - 06:42 pm:
Today at the zoo Holly told a mom she should be
nicer to her son.

We were in a three-stall bathroom. I was in the
far one, with a baby stroller between me and the
outside (door open). I could see Holly. She was
facing the outside door, and a mom came in being
rough and threatening with her kid. Critical, not
threatening. "I'm tired of you and I'm not going
to put up with this" kind of speech.

When she opened the door to leave, Holly said "You
really should be nicer to him."

She heard me say that to our behind-the-wall
neighbor once.

The woman turned back toward Holly (I could tell
because of the sound) and said "He's my son and I
love him and I take care of him 24 hours a day and
I know what needs to be done, thank you very
much." It was a mostly nice tone of voice.

I was giving Holly the "cool!" hand signal from
where I was for having said something.

I asked her how old he had been, and she said
"About six."

We get out and there's a batch of kids I
recognized, because we had given them all some of
our fish'n'duck food. It was the oldest boy.

Marty had seen the other part of it. The boy was
in trouble for crying because an older cousin (10
or 11 he figured) had climbed up on the front of
the two-passenger stroller he and his brother were
in, and he had no place for his feet and he wanted
her off (or maybe she had stepped on him).

Then Holly said what I hadn't known. The mom had
pulled him in the bathroom and swatted him twice,
and told him she was tired of his "episodes."

So that was all sad, but good that my kids were so
thoroughly on the kids' side.

The mom wasn't being thoughtful or calming. She
was just threatening.

Holly couldn't imagine why a six year old was in
trouble because an older relative had crowded him.

The mom needed a snack and a nap, I'm guessing.
And some therapy maybe. But she got a touch
of it, when a twelve year old girl looked at her
levelly and suggested she could be nicer.

I referenced that zoo story just this week, and now I find a report when it was new! I'm very glad I wrote that down, and that I found it again today (looking for something altogether different, where I find some of my best stuff).

Holly's an inspiration to me, and I'm glad to know her and to be able to see her grow braver and better all the time.

---

Update on March 15:

I found another Courageous Holly story here: Unexpected Benefits of Unschooling. That was written in 2005, so Holly was thirteen when I wrote it, and eight years old at the time of the original incident, I think.

About five years ago, Holly was swimming with a young neighbor and her youngish uncle, who was pretty much her primary caregiver. He was house-sitting a third neighbor’s pool (so right near) and… he would not let his niece get out and get her towel.

She was cold, and wanted to get out and sit with the towel.

The answer was no.

Holly looked at all that, got out of the water, walked over, got the towel and brought it to the girl. That was brave, I think. Holly probably didn’t think “brave.”

Back from Arizona

I'm home from having spoken at the HENA conference in Tempe, Arizona. It was fun, and tiring. It was a satisfying kind of work-out, though. I went up and down those stairs LOTS, and spoke at the end of whichever hall it might be, way at the end. I was completely exhausted last night. I was asleep in the airport until Kirby called. I was asleep on the plane until they landed. I was practically walking in my sleep when Brett found me (I could've seen Holly easier in my sleep). They were nice to pick me up at the airport so midnightish. This morning I'm only kind of exhausted.

Notes will be here, and are beginning to be already.

I got to visit with Pam Sorooshian lots, and that was great. We told the latest on our kids until late into the night one night, and discussed the philosophical intricacies of helping other people understand unschooling another night. We're just that way.

My friend Lori Taylor, who used to live in Albuquerque and now lives in Tucson, was in town for an SCA thing (Atenveldt Crown Tournament). I got to see her twice on Sunday and she took me to the airport, which was wonderful.

It was a good weekend.

God, the post office, and other mysteries

I took a book to the post office to read it. There was no line at all. Just as I got near the desk, the clerk said "Thank you!" to the woman in front of me and I was up.

This is the third time this month I took a book with me and there was no chance to even open it. I had a flash today of God being that Nelson kid on the Simpsons, pointing at me from Heaven and going "Ha ha."

You probably have already envisioned the other side of this comic cosmic coin. When I go bookless, the line is long and slow.

One of those book-free post office days, I talked with the people next to me about passports. They might not have spoken to each other. The man in front of me was bikeresque, and the woman behind me had gold jewelry and conservative clothes. I bridged their gap, I guess. We had a nice conversation. She had been to England several times and I had been twice. She had been to Bermuda and he was about to go for the first time.

Last night we had a discussion here about the Crusades. Not a very formal discussion, but a story-telling and question answering and game-playing and speculation session about who went and why and who profited and how. The game we played (kind of—four people played it and the rest of us cheered them on, advised them lamely and read the bane cards aloud to them and that)... the game is called Pilgrimage. It's way out of print. The game board is a map of ways to get from London to Jerusalem passing through various cities and cathedral cities, and a player can hardly help but be waylaid or distracted by ale houses and gypsies, be stepped on by a cow, or touch a leper and have to visit a shrine or something.

The night before that session, I was reading a novel and came upon a passage about saints having been the comic-book superheroes of the Middle Ages, and having their bones and toenails and hair and body-parts enshrined all over Europe. God sent me that paragraph, I might say, if I believed in God.

I don't believe in God, but still for several weeks I've been nearly magically given examples and connections for those Wednesday night discussions, which are SCA-based for a small group of friends/students/squires-of-friends. My SCA persona believes in God. Maybe the deliveries were not really for Sandra but for AElflaed and I'm posting in the wrong blog.

It's easy to personify the effects of our own actions and the random fuck factor and create some kind of Michelin-Tire-advertisement-guy and Santa and boogey-man combination. My confusing imaginary God isn't omnicient or omnipotent. He's kinda occasionalicient and intermitopotent.

Because I'm looking for connections, I find them. Because I'm willing to talk to people in lines or read a book in public, I'll live until I die, which could be any day now or in fifty years. Given all that, I don't know when to carry a book around and when not to.

Oh yeah, the post office. I went to the post office to mail three things: a card to a family whose wife/mother died this week, socks to Texas, and cookies to France. It did occur to me that the bereaved family already had cards, Paris isn't short of artsy snacks and Texas has no sock shortage. I can either think that my offerings are special or superfluous. Most likely they're some of each.

Explora

Profoundly cute people

Isn't Marty the cutest thing? He's so cute.


Holly went on a photography rampage recently, which is fun for me. And you'll get to see Marty's nail polish if you click this one. ("What's the story on the nail polish?" I asked, when he got up this morning, and he said "We were really bored.") I don't know why he's touching his crotch. I'm sure it was an accident and he's never done it before and will never do it again. That's Brett with him (not the Brett who's usually with him, but the other Brett). They're being cute in Holly's cute room.


And Holly took some very nice shots of our friend Ben/Dermod. And she artfully messed up augmented a photo I took of her.



I'm glad we have a digital camera and I'm glad Holly likes to use it and finds willing victims subjects. Models. Targets.