Looking Back

I've been writing this blog now since February 2009. Not that long, and yet, well over a year. I re-read my posts from April last year, to get a sense of continuity and space. I've never been much of a journal-keeper, and thus it is a new sensation to have so much personal information available to myself about myself... if that makes sense?

So much I lived then I continued to live throughout this year. But there've been changes. I am no longer so worried about my boys. Last year I was intensely aware of my need to get them on track, of my need to be there, of an urgency in repairing some of the unintended damage that years of working very long hours and foisting them on au pairs had wreaked.

And now, that seems like a distant dream. Leo is reading, handling his homework with relative ease (and some nudging from me). He's seeing a writing therapist weekly to improve his grammar and handwriting. Jonas is happily back in his own bed (he shared mine throughout the winter, but seeing as I kept the house super cold, you could say it was as much for shared body warmth as any affective need on his part), in his own room, strong, independent, yet still very affectionate and eager for me to read to him at night. The bickering has calmed down (who would'a thought?). The house is truly quite peaceful. I feel that my boys have gained a solidity, a firmness in themselves. They are present, verbal, communicative, relatively and mostly willing to help me. They understand me, they know me, they work with me. I'm theirs, and we are a very tight family.

When the boys went off for a 'colonie de vacances' for a week during spring break, they became closer. Leo included and protected Jonas. Jonas looked up to and easily kept up with Leo. Apparently Leo even helped carry Jonas when he had a bit of the stomach flu one day.

Mealtimes are lovely. I no longer need to fetch a child out from under the table, nor do I much need to badger about eating/tasting various food groups, and basic table rules have been absorbed. It's 'acquis'. The daily expectations of house chores, rules, etc., are part of them. No more surprises.

Leo and I no longer have our late evening chats as he is happily reading in bed -- devouring Eragon and Harry Potter and various other marvelous reads. But we are making up for this in the front seat of the car as we go to school. The urge to communicate, share, learn is very present in him. And as no topic is off-limits for me, he is free to do so and takes advantage of his most loquacious mom.

In a week I'll begin working lots again. I'm quite booked with culinary and artisans tours this season, and it will be okay. I've a new neighbor whose kids are in the school, and we'll be going over my schedule to see how he can help me. My kids can easily be at home alone now. They eat their snacks, clean up after themselves, carefully lock the door if they leave for a bike ride... They know the routine. We've moved onto another stage of our lives together.

What a difference a year can make.

Back to the Kids - dealing with anger

I am, as many of you know, housing, feeding and selectively educating a small group of pre-teens who attend my children's Waldorf school just north of Avignon. As this is one of the rare Waldorf schools that goes through high school in the country, and the only one in the South, kids come from all over to attend it. So it has become de facto a boarding school for a small percentage of the student body. However, there is no official structure linked to the school to house the kids, it is up to various parents to offer their extra rooms, generosity, welcome, food, etc., to permit these kids to be here.

A fellow single mother at the school -- a dear friend who is an amazingly resourceful woman coping with the private school tuition of her two sons, feeding her household mostly organic, raising chickens, making gorgeous shawls and working full time as a nurse -- paved the way for me to open my house to kids from the school. I observed how she structured the house rhythms, what she expected from the kids, how much she charged the parents, and have since checked in with her when things go awry in my own household.

Ostensibly I do it for the money -- it definitely helps to have a bit more cash flow coming into the house, and it also offsets my kids' tuition at the school. I am also doing the school a favor.

What is fascinating is the myriad of ways having these children in my house teaches, stretches, challenges, and at times frustrates we three who normally live here. Right now I am taken with the magic age of thirteen.

Now, I must stress that we are in France, the food supply is not riddled with growth hormones, and kids are still hitting pre-adolescence/adolescence at the relatively normal age of thirteen. Leo's teacher once accused his American side of bringing on early pre-adolescence, now two years ago??? And I simply looked at her like, what? Are you insane woman? Are you accusing my half of his genes for his early mustache? His grace with the female half of of his class? his moodiness? In any case, raised on French food, and a majority of that organic, he shouldn't have any excess estrogen flowing through his system...

In the past few weeks we've had some interesting moments of upset in the household. In particular, our young man (thirteen this February) slammed a door in anger (he was being gently teased) and caused another to fall and thus broke both the door handle (lovely, antique brass) and a corner of a table. My reaction? Get ahold of your anger kid. By all means, feel it, do not deny it, but please, do not break my house! If you're feeling physical, go for a run, go kick a (big) tree, but leave my house alone!

And yes, if you're wondering, his parents will replace both the door handle and the table. All will get sorted out.

Later, it was our young girl's moment in the sun. She is fully thirteen and aiming quickly towards fourteen. And goodness, she has her moments of being rightfully pissy and bitchy and snide and harumphs off, stomping her feet and (before I gave them all hell for this) slamming doors. I let her blow off steam and come back of her own accord. However, this would be normal, yes? I can handle most of the basic details of pre-teen moodiness.

What worries me is the way she seems proud of making the majority of her teachers angry with her. To her mind, she is fully justified in slamming chairs, stomping off, slamming doors, etc., to go outside and cool down when she feels that otherwise she would piquer une crise, i.e. have a fit. And for this, she was expelled from school for two days. Somehow, I think a bit more went into the school's decision... but I haven't had the full story.

Her mother has had her time with her, and things seem a bit better now... However, she is living with me, under my roof, for many more nights this year than at her mother's. My role is thus -- forcibly -- to educate and cajol and advise over and beyond providing her with a bed, food and hot water. And so, I've said my two bits. Basically, that being angry, feeling that intense hit of emotions overwhelm her is normal, and scary, but an important part of growing up is mastering these, not letting them master you. Far more easily said than done. But I've suggested strongly to my young girl that even when she's feeling about to burst, that she request permission to leave her class room to get herself under control. If she did that, it would not lessen her in the eyes of either her classmates or her teachers, and more importantly, I believe her teachers would respect her choice to quietly cope with the waves of emotion hitting her, and grant her this permission.

Leo, my son, is not yet thirteen. He will be so in June. As yet, we've really not had any great great upsets -- well there was that half hour of extreme depression and groaning this summer but since then... And so I asked him if he was curious about these two who are not so brilliantly handling their anger; does he sense that soon he too may be in the same boat? Not really. What followed was a question on his part as to whether a boy's handling his sex is normal.

I said yes, but in private.

A day for sailing

Or rather a summer. Whether I wanted to or not, I sailed our little sunfish back across the lake with Leo yesterday. My mother is being the super-Gramma and teaching him all sorts of good things this summer. Amongst others, he has now had his maiden voyage at the helm of our little green sunfish.

However, that said, the wind blew him away from our cove. For a time, he didn't notice and I must say, nor did we. However, it soon became clear that he wasn't able to get back home. From afar we could see he was valiantly trying, but due to the direction of the wind, was actually heading further and further towards Round Island.

So, out we went, Ma and me, in the little motor boat for a rescue mission. I actually managed to transfer boats without being dunked. -- Yes, it might have been more glamorous to dive in and simply lift myself up onto his boat, but hey, as I was able to manoeuver otherwise, I did.

Leo was pleased to see us, yet in a very good mood no matter the struggles he'd been having. No fits, no major crises, no serious loss of pride. And so I took over the little tiller and the sale and explained to him that it would take a while, but home we would eventually get.

It was long and as angled tacks as possible, the tight zig zag. Each tack bringing us just a breath towards the northern side of the lake. There was many a luff, and a moment of calm. We'd zip along, and sit idly, and at all times, I headed us as far up as I could.

A good lesson, hm? Got to pay attention to that wind. So we observed the curl of the water atop the waves, watched as we came into a strong breeze, and eventually, sailed right onto our beach. Ahhh

Then I popped up to the house to make my carrot cake.