Oстранение

Did I surprise you with that title? I didn't even know I could write a title in Cyrillic. The miracles of cut and paste. That word, ostranenie, is from my old grad student in Russian literature days. It means making strange, or, as the idea is called in English, defamiliarization. It's the artistic technique of making familiar things strange so that the audience can really see them again.

One of the most delicious things about having kids is how they make the old familiar world strange again. I especially enjoy how they make me see English with fresh eyes.

Mike and I were playing Dinosaur bingo with Greta a few nights ago. She was in her glory because Ev and Clem were off at a birthday party and she had both of us to herself. She got 5 in a row and she shouted out, gleefully, "DINGO! I got DINGO!"

So close, and yet, so far. Too many David Attenborough videos for that kid, I guess. We've been eating up Life of Mammals. Greta is, for some reason, particularly taken with the 8 foot long blue whale penis in the Back to the Sea episode. She tells everyone we meet about it.

Last Monday a friend and I took three little girls to the Little Farm at Tilden Park. Greta saw the cow and shouted, "Look, that cow is a female! You can tell she's a female because she's got gutters!" I guess udder is a strange word, and it makes sense that gutters would channel the milk.

Evelyn trying to make strange tracks that would confound trackers.

Back when Ev was five and Clem was three Mike told them when they were getting out of the car that it was a good idea to roll the windows up, so cats wouldn't jump into the car.

A few days later we were traveling on a 4-lane road at 40mph or so. I noticed a bug in the car and rolled down the windows to let it out. The girls started screaming, "Roll up the windows! Roll up the windows! A cat might jump in!"

I laugh every time I contemplate a world where cats come flying in your car window at 40 mph. Not that it wouldn't be dangerous. It is so sad that I forget so many of the wacky things they say. I really need to keep a notebook in my purse.

Dingo! Why didn't I think of that before?

Look...

...what Clementine did with my camera.

We were at the U.C. Botanic Garden and she wanted to get a shot of the baby newts in the pond. So...she stuck the camera in the water.

Good thing it's our new waterproof camera. We're testing it out before we take it to Hawaii next week.

Here's that baby newt.

Then I thought we should get a newt's eye view of our group. I shot up from in the water at the girls and Mike and his mom and dad here for his brother's wedding on Sunday! Greta didn't lean out far enough so I only got the top of her head.

It would seem newts have a better view of us than we do of them, at least without the aid of technology.

Put on your lipstick humuhumunukunukuapua'as, we've got a camera and we know how to use it (at least a little bit).

Balance

Doesn't Balance Man make it look easy? Standing there, surrounded by nature, insouciant, on one foot. The everlasting rock beneath him, the seasonal and nourishing pumpkin behind him, the sun on his shoulders. The weighted bar he holds pulls him down, and yet lets him balance more easily.

Evelyn made him as a birthday present for a friend. It is hard to see the work when he balances there with such apparent ease. She whittled him out of a branch.

Then she stripped and whittled a supple branch to make the balancing rod he holds. The weights are two circles of a hollow stick she sawed off with her leatherman. They are filled with clay from Williamsburg.

To hold his balancing rod on she needed glue. But Balancing Man is an all natural kind of guy. So Evelyn combed the backyard in search of soaproot. She peeled it, boiled it, mashed it and strained it to make glue.

Here she dabs on the glue. But not before moving the bar left and right, turning it slightly backwards and forwards, making tiny microadjustments until he balances just right, on one foot. She needed some help, because before the glue balancing man would drop his bar, and then she'd have to start all over again.

Evelyn gave her balancing man to her friend. I was so sorry to see him go.

But, Evelyn, if you are taking orders, I think I would like a balancing woman with three children on her shoulders.

What balance would she strike as she tried to stay standing and provide balance in their lives and in her own?

Time for free play.

Costume and photograph by Clementine

And time for coloring Medusa heads on Grecian urns.

Time for whittling balancing men, and time for writing balanced arguments.

Time for her children and time for herself.

I got some time making new friends and meeting in person friends I knew from their blogs. The girls were pulling me to leave, but I resisted, enjoying so much conversations taking place in real time instead of ever unfinished in posts and comments.

Friends are life's balancing rod. The longer the rod, the easier it is for balancing woman to stand.

I am so glad to add these women to the balance:

maya: urban organica

amy : diary of a domestic animal

sarah : urban. prairie. forest.

molly : a foothill home companion

tricia :: wonderfarm

tara : tara.mama.wendy

But as I think about it I am not sure where the children should go. Not only on Balancing Woman's shoulders, for sure. They are also part of the rod and the weight. Their joyful smiles and silly tricks, their hugs and kisses, their imaginary friends and bedtime stories are the counterweight to the woes of the world.

And as they get older they are even a lot of help around the house.

After dinner we were out on the court playing sharks and minnows. Evelyn and Clementine are faster than I am now. I'm only good for a few seconds. In between rounds I went and balanced, panting, on one foot on the rock that balancing man was standing on in the photo.

It didn't seem so hard.

Pillow Talk, or Therapy Needed

A couple years ago I read that many kids who struggle with reading have a focusing problem called convergence insufficiency. It was so sad, the article lamented, that these kids weren't getting treatment when CI could be diagnosed simply by watching the eyes track a pencil eraser in toward the bridge of the nose. The eyes should track together smoothly.

I grabbed a pencil and I tested Ev. Smooth.
I tested Clem. Raggedy.

And I shrugged it off. Probably a chicken and egg thing. She doesn't focus up close, so she can't. When she spends more time reading her eyes will learn to coordinate.

But they didn't. And I forgot about the study for a while.

But at 9 the girl who loves to listen to Dickens on CD won't read anything but Calvin and Hobbes. So I took her to the eye doctor and they do the same test I did with the same results. Except it was even clearer this time. The doc did it three times. Her left eye at some point would just jump ship and look straight out while the right stayed on track.

I should probably schedule some couch time with a therapist for having not acted on what I learned years ago.

Clem went in for the comprehensive testing yesterday.

It was at a university center where they have doctors in training. We get led into a narrow room with chairs on both sides. The four of us are sitting knee to knee with four doctors (three of them in training) opposite us.

"So, you brought the whole gang!" says the doctor in charge.

"We homeschool," I explain. It is always the whole gang.

They nod.

They explain the testing. She'll need to have her eyes dilated to find her "true prescription". She could be farsighted, the doctor explains. Her young eyes could be compensating enough to pass tests, but not to maintain concentration.

"Have you ever had your eyes dilated?" the doctor asks Clem.

"No."

They look at me. "I think she has." I have a vague memory of disposable sunglasses.

"You have to protect your eyes from sunlight after the dilation," the doctor says.

"Oh yeah! I have had that," Clem says, brightening. "Remember, mom? That time you made us wear pillowcases over our heads."

I see a shadow pass over the eyes of the four doctors across from us.
I can just see them thinking. Homeschooling mother makes children put pillowcases over their heads.

I am thinking where the heck did she come up with that? When she was a toddler she used to wriggle herself inside a pillowcase behind the pillow. Then she'd bumble all around the house bumping into things and falling down and laughing her head off. But I distinctly recall weighing in on that activity and I was not pro.

Though when she did it wearing her dad's giant shoes I had to laugh, too.

There are more tests next week, including the dilation (note to self: bring pillowcase). After that she'll start vision therapy. I have my fingers crossed that it brings everything into focus for her.

She's grown up so much from the little girl, who, if I left out any three container type objects in no time would have one on each foot and one over her head. Boxes, mixing bowls, plastic pumpkins, and yes, pillowcases.

But no matter what she might say on the therapist's couch one day: I didn't make her do it.

No Talking Allowed

So Clementine was working on her math and getting frustrated because she now has to copy some problems from the computer screen and work them out on paper. She draws well and has excellent fine motor skills, but she has always chosen to write very little.

Instead of writing words and numbers, she draws them. They get fancy doodles. She spends a long time making a one with a flag and base.

I realized that our push for math was going to require a push to write as well. I browsed through my groaning shelves of unused books. I was about to put my finger on a Handwriting Without Tears (my own handwriting experiences in school were full of tears) when I stopped on Games for Writing instead.

I flipped through it and stopped on The Silent Game.

So I wrote to Clem.

"We are going to play a silent game. No talking allowed for 15 minutes."
I had no idea how she would take this. An hour and many pages later I got this note:

Sometimes silence is golden.