Recently in California Category

From The Call of The Wild's chapter 6, "For The Love of Man"  ~

"Now, MUSH!"

Thornton's command cracked out like a pistol shot. Buck threw himself forward, tightening the traces with a jarring lunge. His whole body was gathered compactly together in the tremendous effort, the muscles writhing and knotting like live things under the silky fur. His great chest was low to the ground, his head forward and down, while his feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring the hard-packed snow in parallel grooves. The sled swayed and trembled, half-started forward. One of his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. The sled lurched ahead in what appeared a rapid succession of jerks, though it never really came to a dead stop again... half an inch ... an inch... two inches... The jerks perceptibly diminished; as the sled gained momentum, he caught them up, till it was moving steadily along.

Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware that for a moment they had ceased to breathe. Thornton was running behind, encouraging Buck with short, cheery words. The distance had been measured off, and as he neared the pile of firewood which marked the end of the hundred yards, a cheer began to grow and grow, which burst into a roar as he passed the firewood and halted at command. Every man was tearing himself loose, even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in the air. Men were shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general incoherent babel.

But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head was against head, and he was shaking him back and forth. Those who hurried up heard him cursing Buck, and he cursed him long and fervently, and softly and lovingly.... Buck seized Thornton's hand in his teeth. Thornton shook him back and forth. As though animated by a common impulse, the onlookers drew back to a respectful distance; nor were they again indiscreet enough to interrupt.


But we were never the kind to let a little indiscretion stop us. "Whoo-Hoo! Buck did real good, right?!" cried Katrianna, relinquishing her grip on the dining table's edge & jumping from her chair to race about the living room in a fury of exhilaration.  While pushing the table 3 feet back to the original position from which Katrianna had propelled it while listening to this last scene (her moving response to rising action), I had to agree. "Yep, Buck was fantastic! And Jack London's pretty amazing, too, isn't he?"

"Well," declared Mikaela, from where she stolidly sat, "he's no Louisa May Alcott!" But at least she was in the room when she said it.

Knowing that the girls wouldn't have the heart to embark upon manly man Jack London's writings on their own, for the first time in a very long time I was reading aloud to the kids (and to Chris). Just a few pages or a chapter at a time, usually when we were finishing up with lunch or dinner. In the last few days I'd even found the book waiting on the table for me, placed there by Katrianna, instead of the usual preceding groans from both girls.

Indeed, there had been progress since page 1 when Mikaela literally ran from the room. That was OK, she didn't have to listen, I told her, fully accepting of her literary discernment and autonomy. I read just loudly enough for her to hear from the hallway, yet softly enough that she didn't catch on it was intentional. Worked! She had to strain mightily to catch each word and, as soon as we stopped, would reappear so the rest of us might patiently endure her long-winded explanations of how superior Alcott's Eight Cousins is in every way. Finally, she saved herself the trip, sometimes even forgetting to grimace, and excused her presence by citing a desire to leisurely enjoy dessert... before summarily assessing London his just desserts. (Eh, her bite is worse than her bark?)


We were answering London's Call of the Wild for two reasons: 1) to expose the girls to a recognized classic in a "boy book" genre that I knew they'd otherwise try to Pass the Buck on, and 2) because we were then in California, not far from Jack London State Historic Park. That's right, I was plotting for an imminent visit to Wolf House  -- cuz, ya know, The Buck Stops There.



And Jack's Ranch really was a Beaut! A mix of oaks, redwoods, meadows & vineyards, with pretty views all around. There were gardens growing the practical & experimental plants he cultivated, such as Luther Burbank's "spineless cactus," which never completely lost its spines, a thorny non-development for the evolving gentleman farmer (and his hungry cattle).... And thick groves of imported Australian eucalyptus saplings that he planned on harvesting to sell as pier pilings or hardwood lumber, an unforeseen technicality being that their wood was deemed "too soft" (poor JL, always barking up the wrong tree... actually, 81,000 of them... turned out to be a shady business at best... he couldn't hardly stand it). But he did manage to reap record-setting oat hay crops from the previously over farmed acreage, plus personally design palatial pigpens that enabled one man to feed 200 swine simultaneously, a feat that would understandably inflate any male ego. Hmm, he found success sowing his wild oats & going hog wild - guess those accomplishments speak for themselves...

In the House of Happy Walls, built by his "mate woman" (aka, second wife) after London's death & now a museum, we saw many of his papers & letters, photographs, boots and a grand piano roarin' with vintage '20s tunes thanks to a genuinely genial volunteer (no, his name wasn't Charles, but he was a ton of fun, plus had an easy speaking style, was ready to Lindy an ear & didn't make no flapper about our rather Raggedy foxtrot). Throughout the mansion were numerous souvenirs that he & Charmian had acquired on their South Seas sailing adventure, an around-the-world trip for which he'd allocated 7 years but ended after only 27 months due to health issues, a disappointment which made him sea-sick. (He'd always adored the ocean, even in his earliest days as a reputed "Prince of the Oyster Pirates" who, under fear of incarceration, suddenly morphed into a prodigal California State Fish Patrol deputy.)  In the dining room, beside a long, narrow table with pine benches & chair seating, were the white china dishes that London acquired secondhand in Samoa, after learning that they had belonged to Robert Louis Stevenson during his stint on the islands. Artifacts were abundant, including statues displayed at nearly every turnon the wide staircases, featuring a recurring motif of the couple's entrusting to well-endowedments (?). Charmian's bedroom & bathroom also revealed a procleavity for noteworthy busts, such as those of Venus de Milo & Nefertiti.  

After that, we were anxious to get some fresh (or perhaps less fresh) air & began a half mile hike to see the ruins of London's 15,000 square foot Wolf House. Moss-covered walls and deteriorating bricks are all that remain of his dream, creating an atmosphere very much like that at Tintern Abbey. Dampness, steeped in the towering Redwood trees, imbues a natural mist & mystique pervading the foundation of the gutted 4-story, 26-room, 9-fireplace structure with its once indoor, but now open-air, rainwater-harvesting swimming pool. Nearby, his gravesite, marked by a lichen-sprouting boulder & surrounded by a gray weathered picket fence, holds his & Charmian's ashes. Before leaving, M&K whispered their Secret Club password to them both, as they had to the spirits of Eugene O'Neill & Robert Louis Stevenson, two more authors with northern California connections who shared such an honor.

We walked back through the woods and past the London-made lake where he liked to swim & canoe with his many invited guests, that is when he wasn't too busy playing pranks on them. And then on to the cottage where he lived and wrote during his eleven years at Beauty Ranch. He couldn't afford to fulfill his promise to rebuild Wolf House after the fire (hard to believe, but he'd made just 750 bucks for Buck's tale spin), so he added a study annex on the groundskeeper's cottage where he'd first started out at Glen Ellen.

There, his sleeping porch was the most intriguing place of all, for it was where he spent his nights after staying up late with the company he kept (Charmian had her own bedroom) and where he woke early to complete his "profitable chore" writing allotment for the day.



Strung across the small, sun-drenched space was a thin wire dangling slips of paper clamped on with wooden clothespins -- his novel filing system for jotted phrases & story ideas -- the original post-it notes? Nearby was his study, adjoined by another nook filled with books, a gramophone & a typewriter, the space often used by Charmian while she typed + edited + added descriptive passages to his manuscripts (sorry, Mr. Whipple, it seems he couldn't help but squeeze the Charmian).




Which leads to a 3rd, unanticipated reason that Call of the Wild was such a special book for us: It spurred conversations and memories of our own family's wolf-dog. Though in appearance he resembled White Fang much more than Buck, we couldn't help but get taken in by London's (or Mrs. London's?) description. The story's violence and dogs' poor treatment are, as expected, very difficult to take. But since we'd already studied a lot of historical accounts about the Gold Rush & learned about London's own trip to the Yukon (where he got such a debilitating case of scurvy that the doctor forbade him from working his claim & promptly sent him home), the truthfulness and reality of the experience helped offset, a little anyway, the brutality and inhumane aspects. Yet, it was the portrayal of Buck & his transformation that got us -- his depiction is so well done and provides such comic relief at times. When Buck finally finds Thornton, his last, nice owner, London shows his stuff by perfectly capturing the our dog's character, playfulness, and pride & nearly redeems himself for all of his 'dhishoom - bhishoom' author sins. As a result, long after we'd finished the novel & trip to California, thanks to Jack London & much to M&K's delight, we continued the ritual of sharing stories about our lauded hero - in the form of a family dog - while finishing up dinner desserts.

There were a few other, lingering effects on the kids, as well. Three days after our visit to Jack London State Park, Katrianna lost her first front tooth. She hopped around clutching her tooth fairy pocket, filled with hopeful prospects of the "gold" she might discover under her pillow the next morning. And for two or three months, inspired by London's next dog adventure story, she proudly referred to herself as "No Fang."

And the following Christmas, Grandma gave the girls sweaters. A bright, multicolor, striped one with a hood for Katrianna, but a light gray-green, "old-fashioned, ladylike Louisa" cardigan was Mikaela's pick. The aspiring author then began waking very early in the morning, when it was still a bit chilly, to don her sweater & take pencil in hand to write 1,000 or so words before breakfast. Mere coincidence, certainly, that she settled on that number... For she'd never readily admit that Jack London could offer any good writing tips.

I was born to teach. I mean, I was born to a teacher. Wait, better make that, I've borne with teachers all my life. Hmmm, that didn't come out quite right either...

As far back as I know, there have been teachers in every generation of my family, often several per generation. Born into the upper classes (8th grade-level equivalency or higher), teaching is our "family business" - we're pre-school apprenticed, fated by an ancient caste-them-into-the-educational-dungeon system, forever destined to a life of demagoguery... oops, sorry, typo there - should've said pedagoguery, of course. So easy to confuse those two, isn't it? But the latter originally comes from the Latin word paedagogus, which means "slave who escorted children to school and generally supervised them." Yep, that's the one I meant.  

Coming from this long line of teachers (and figuring out how, after getting all the wiggles out, to stand still on it with tippy toes tucked together), I see the world through sophist-colored spectacles. Clearly, it has influenced my perspective, encouraged a yearnin' for learnin' and modeled the value -- dare I say the nobility? -- of academic professions. But, I would probably have to conclude that the most invaluable lesson of my upbringing was learning how to live happily on a teacher's salary.

Generally, people don't claim that aspiring to make a teacher salary is setting the bar too high. In fact, they might even go so far as to question the worthiness of one's ambition, if not intellect, for choosing teaching as a vocation. Others opt to express their dismissive disdain by simply quoting that educator-beloved proverb, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." But, as one accustomed to living on a teacher's wages from the perspective of a child, a grandchild, a teenager and an adult, I am also familiar with the possibilities that exist despite the relatively 'prohibitively low salary' - not only the validation that a scholarly life is one worth living, but one that affords huge payback in terms of time off and travel options. (Yes, there's time travel, too, but that's another entry...)

There was my great grandfather, a world-renowned physicist, who traded in the rights to his many inventions for university tenure & a nicely painted portrait that hangs for perpetuity in a dank & dusty lab hallway somewhere. That seemed patently fair...



There was my grandmother who, like a Willa Cather heroine, left Nebraska at 17 to attend college in the east and then crisscrossed the country by train for graduate school in California, presiding over a one room schoolhouse back home and teaching Latin at a prestigious boys' prep school in New England. She seemed to have lived everywhere, but always in very small quarters, tiny houses which appeared to have been plucked from miniature Christmas village scenes. Or, there were the photographs of her smiling from the deck of a 15' boat with its sleeping bag-sized cabin, her stay-afloat-home for a two year, now-you-sea-me, now-you-don't, tour of the Atlantic.


There was her sister who also became an educator, first in the US and then abroad in Germany and Japan. She taught 3rd graders on American military bases and saw the world on holiday. When she finally reunited with her sisters in Nebraska, well after they had all retired, each returning from whence they came, her shelves were filled with European trinkets, Japanese folk art, textiles and fantastical carvings. When I was little, each December had delightfully arrived with Christmas advent calendars she sent from Germany. Decades later, to her great grandnieces, she delivered in person the materials used long ago in her classrooms: books filled with legends of that just peachy Little One-Inch, LPs of traditional Japanese folk music & classical compositions like Peter and the Wolf, sets of world geography flashcards that served as the girls' first introduction to Cold War-era political borders, and a collection of black & white & yellowing How and Why Wonder-full science books. And, she was the one who always had the same answer any time I expressed doubts as to what we should do for & with our kids: "TRAVEL!"


Of course, not all of the influential teachers relative to me were required to be my relatives. There was Mr Martin's syrupy sweet, yet unflappable, Jack support of a teaching-traveling lifestyle, one he insisted came full stacked with fringe benefits which over easily offset the occasional, if pressing, prioritizing dilemma created by limited income: Would you like 2 sausages - or - 2 slices of bacon with that?

There was also another of my high school teachers whose roving nature proved instructive. Initially, she checked her restless spirit by taking library science courses on the side. Understandably burnt out on American literature after marking up one-too-many The GraDes of Wrath essays, she was no doubt desirous of making that lucrative, lateral, librarian career path leap (a sure sign she was a Libris?). But, eventually, bibliotheca thrills could no longer satisfy, as her untamable soul wandered among rows of travel guides and shelved discontentment. Sure, for a while she'd been appeased by a rebellious resistance to systematic Dewey Decimal classification, but that couldn't last forever -- things were stacked against her from the start. So, she took early retirement, bought a little RV & began solo trips, making larger and larger concentric circles until she'd finally escaped Texas' gravitational pull and experienced wait-less-ness.  

Later, there was a fellow English department faculty member, thirty years my senior, who every summer took her mother and rented the same quaint cottage in England. Thanks to a standing agreement with an elderly lady there, they'd upheld the tradition for nearly twenty years. It was easy to imagine my colleague & her mum sipping tea, nibbling scones and chatting with their landlady-turned-bonne amie about the noontime's light drizzle or teasing shows of sunshine... How very proper for one assigned by fate (and the scheduling committee) as a purveyor of British literature! An arrangement so thoroughly pleasing in its safety and simplicity, she returned each fall refreshed and at peace. Then, on spring breaks, she pursued her other fancy free pastime -- massive archaeology site digs. In her school marm sensible shoes, ankle-length heavy skirts and hair-pinned bun, she was the best disguised Indiana Jones I ever met. Would have given Harrison Ford a run for that crystal skull, too, I bet, if she wasn't so busy writing college recs.

And, like my grand aunt, there were a few college friends who also went the Japan route, most as English language tutors. One couple married just before embarking & thereby received the ultimate parting gift: a combination first job with international experience + a guaranteed, all-expenses-paid, year-long honeymoon an ocean away from the in-laws. Another guy, a journalism majoring single, kept renewing his annual contract because he'd become an overnight karaoke club sensation, playing sax & apparently looking just enough like Sting (requisite stringy blond hairdo) to get steady gigs. At last, vindication for marching band nerds can be found just one continent over!  [Thanks to opportunities available in the wide world of teaching. Actual results may vary.]

Although I'm no longer a paid teacher (not that I haven't tried to unionize, but it's so laborious and strikes me as futile somehow), I still set our family's budget parameters by teacher salary standards. With that comes a practical and well-known comfort level, passes down my inherited values system to our daughters, and is a relatively easy way to ensure that we can continue to homeschool & travel for as long as we'd like. We're far from financially savvy - it just doesn't take much finesse to work out a budget when you adopt a going light, less-is-more philosophy.       

"So, how do ya'll do it?" (This is the question we often hear, though the rhetorical subtlety of 'Well, la-di-da!' sometimes suffices.)  Actually, it started when we were settling down & had no travel plans. We married and bought a very modest house, one we could afford based solely on Chris' single income (which just barely exceeded first year teacher earnings at the time) and my graduate school contribution-leeching-liability status, as assessed by the bank's loan officer. Most significantly, the monthly payments were so low that we could still cover them if - irony forewarning here - Chris ever got fired from his job for refusing to travel for work, an often contentious point with a succession of bosses who always threatened to, but never actually did, let him go. Instead of focusing on moving up (in the corporate hierarchy or to a "better" neighborhood), we put time spent together, and then time spent with our kids, ahead of getting ahead. [Plus, it turned out that we loved our little, unpretentious neighborhood, one that included a friendly mix of people and interests, a preponderance of teachers & an active contingent of watchful retirees. It's the closest one could come to living in small town, Nebraska, in a city containing 5 million people: a forgotten, six-street, "No Outlet" corner of a sprawling, post-WWII tract housing subdivision. On summer evenings, husbands met on sidewalks for rousing games of washers, wives exchanged cuttings from flower gardens, and kids ran about displaying their most impressive collections of crawdads & Texas toads, extricated from blue jeans' pockets mercifully still alive and not croaking.]  

We didn't invest a lot in social standing and, likewise, we've always chosen a fairly low-key lifestyle in other ways: We drive one 10 year old car, never had cable tv, belong to only one country club (the whole country's club - we're proud, card-carrying National Parks' Pass members), don't own a boat or ATVs or jet skis, do not indulge in drinking, smoking or other egregious & costly personal habits (golfing), own few appliances & tech gadgets, don't pay private school tuition fees or purchase pre-packaged curriculum kits & courses, stopped buying furniture when our house was furnished, and don't have season tickets to sporting events, the theater, the ballet or the WWF. When we had kids, and again when the kids convinced us to become vegetarians, we also cut back on eating out and began cooking most meals at home. And, once we went to Europe and realized we could get by with carry-on-bag-sized wardrobes, we reevaluated there, too, simplifying our - and the washing machine's - clothing loads thereafter. Through it all, we discovered that remarkable inverse relationship: the more "stuff" you have, the less you can do. Fewer things = less maintenance, less cleaning, less dusting, less washing, less insurance and way less worry.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating asceticism or living too far below one's means for effect (or 'for affect'), but what we value often does not correlate to $$ spent. We're not Zen, we're just not extravagant. Plus, it frees up a lot of energy and resources that can be put toward what we do desire: globeschooling.
 
We are lucky that Chris' business allows him, to a large extent, to set his own schedule and have flexibility in where he works. We're also lucky we can homeschool. However, both of these were decisions we made with consequences to risk if it didn't go well and pressures that are still there even when it does. It also took us more than a decade to find a successful way to work & be together, including one year when Chris got fed up with the corporate world and joined me as a high school geometry teacher, and another, Mikaela's first, when I worked and he stayed home with our baby and his entrepreneurial dreams (voluntarily reducing us to a one-teacher-income household again). Amazingly enough, he couldn't get his start-up business going between diaper changes, two-hour-long power lunches of mashed bananas and our infant's insistence on pulling all nighters every nighter. So, we switched. Chris returned to the corporate life, waiting to try again another 4 years later. 

The "jump" into globeschooling was equally daunting. Especially when it seemed that anyone doing something similar recommended a $150,000 per year minimum budget and/or had just purchased a 43' yacht - with more rooms & amenities than our house - to sail around the world in precisely 365 days. But, the idea that travel is only for the rich or privileged few is an antiquated notion (ok, maybe it was true in Antiquity, but Saint Augustine - who said "The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page" - and Harley Davidson - who spoke in slightly less mufflered tones - changed all that). Yet, it's still a myth perpetuated by some in the travel industry & most of the rest of us, too: it's elusive, not for regular folks, esoteric, ethereal. Or, it's dicey, scary, dangerous, you'll definitely get lost. Certainly, you'll need a lot of help. And a chaperone. A translator. A valet. And an all-you-can-eat buffet. If you really think about it hard enough, surely you can find at least one valid reason NOT to go....

But, with Do-It-Yourself itinerary planning, you can not only get there more cheaply, you're almost guaranteed an infinitely richer experience because you thought about it, researched it, looked forward to it and invested the time - not necessarily the money or tour package "incidental costs" - to appreciate what you're gazing upon. Eventually, we figured out, there are hundreds of ways to Go West, Young Globeschoolers!  And east, north and south, too. We just had to begin by finding one that didn't make us too uncomfortable or stressed out & start there. After that, it got much easier.

Surprisingly, it was at William Randolph Hearst's 'La Cuesta Encantada' that we found the culmination & confirmation of our family's guiding philosophy 'Tis better to be independently minded than independently wealthy. The in-house movie "Building the Dream" detailed the passion & impetus for Hearst's constructing a 'Castle on the Hill.' And why? Because his mom took lil' William sightseeing in Europe when he was ten years old. So taken was he with the experience that, when he inherited his father's magnate status, he told architect Julia Morgan, "Miss Morgan, we are tired of camping out in the open at the ranch in San Simeon and I would like to build a little something..." That meant the Enchanted Hill: 165 rooms & 127 acres of manicured gardens, terraces, pools and walkways. Plus thousands of imported artifacts, tapestries, furnishings, fireplaces and even a complete, reassembled 15th century ceiling harvested from a Spanish  convent to grace the billiards room. All in order to fulfill his fantasy of replicating medieval feudal society right there in 1920s San Simeon, California... or Palatine Bust? Now, our own kids weren't moved to do the same when they got back home from their European vacation (although we did offer them two tubs full of Legos if they wanted to give it a try), but it did make us realize that...

Just like Hearst, we tripped around Europe, if not in the same grand style (in our case, it was great grandma's style), it was nearly the same in substance. No, we did not enjoy the voyage o'er the pond like William -- from first class cabins on a luxury cruise ship that sped to the Old World in three weeks. Instead, we found a discounted flight in coach which got us there in nine & a half hours (mere seconds behind those in business class, btw). No, we didn't leave good ol' dad behind to tend the store (and gold, silver, lead & quartz mines, as well as fret over the hopelessly unprofitable San Francisco Examiner money pit), but went all together to ensure that Chris got as little work done as possible. And, no, we weren't able to devote a year and a half to our journey, but we still saw 90% of what Hearst saw during our time there. Only without staying in a swanky villa the night before, hobnobbing with our entourage, heeding propriety's sake, arriving in a timely manner appropriate to our station & getting mention in the society pages (inexplicable, really, since I diligently sent out press releases) and without a chauffeur (well, 3 of us had a chauffeur. Went by the name of "Mom." And drove the pumpkin-converted-minivan 30,000 km in 3+ months.) Yet, sights are the same no matter who's looking at them. In fact, sometimes because we had a short kid with us, we actually were allowed to move up 'to the front row' for the primo view. And, if you get up early enough, you can feel just like a débutante & enjoy having even the most famous places all to yourselves. (Ok, that's not true - débutantes sleep in.)
  

We don't want to build our own castles in the air. Just visit them on occasion. [Well, in the interest of full disclosure, Mikaela did suffer a temporary bout of mansion-envy, cured only by seeing the gargantuan things up close. They lacked the warmth and charm with which her active imagination had lavishly furnished them, visions instantly dispelled by grand foyers filled with hunting trophies: glass-beady eyes peering down from decapitated heads onto a less than receptive Mikaela. Now her make-me-green wish is not livin' large, but livin' off the grid, the goal being cozy & extremely efficient square footage.] M&K do appreciate the magnificence of what they see, but it is tempered with the reality of what they know, such as: Marie Antoinette, the girl who grew up in Schönbrunn Palace, eventually lost her head in Versailles; Catherine de' Médici & Diane de Poitiers, who fought viciously over the questionable figure Henry II cut in his knobby-kneed tights, were left with only Château de Chenonceau's beautiful gardens to haggle over for their troubles; painter Vincent Van Gogh took as his subjects those lovely irises & olive groves primarily because they were located just outside the doorway of his sanatorium; and, Jack London's dream home mysteriously burned down upon its completion, leaving him to write & pass his two remaining years in the small shack's sleeping porch where he first started out at 'Beauty Ranch' ...

When I was growing up, we didn't travel much and I never watched Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous. If you didn't want to be rich or famous, what was the point? But, maybe there was one, one that fits in with our belief system, after all. What Hearst's example revealed is that you can see & learn as much as "the elite," but perhaps more because their own lives also serve as examples to illustrate greatness' foibles, follies & flaws. In a moment much too clichéd to invent, we were talking with an elderly woman at the gas station in nearby Cambria after our tour. Her auburn hair faded to gray, she was wistfully reminiscing about pony rides she & the other servants' children had been allowed to take when she was a little girl. She told us about his exotic zoo animals & all the fine folks who came to visit... However, as we were saying goodbye, she felt compelled to add, "But we all hated Mr. Hearst. No one around here could stand the old man!" Too often, the most transparently obvious lesson is that money and material things are transitory and do not make people content anyway. Ironically, being witness to this simply reinforces an idealism of resisting the allure & false promise inherent in equating materialism with happiness. Overall, it was an excellent way to satisfactorily answer any lingering questions the girls might have had on our Home(school) Economics Final Exam.

Which finally leads me back to an alternative take on that teaching career postulate:   

Those who can, do teach. Those who can't teach, whatever do they do?

We're officially on "summer vacation." That can only mean one thing: Mikaela & Katrianna are now doing more schoolwork in a week than we accomplish in an entire month all together. Over time, I figured out, if I really want the kids to get busy with the academics, I just declare a holiday.

When they were little, M&K loved to "play school." Actually, they've never stopped. Our school curriculum & tempo are already guided, in large part, by their self-motivated learning styles and interests, so there is little difference when school is "on" or "off." Every now & then, however, I feel the inexplicable urge to exclaim, "Give me a break!... Please?" That's okay, the girls happily take charge and institute some discipline around here. And, since it's merely semantics anyway, I write down all the stuff they do "for fun" on our "vacation" and count it as school without their knowledge.
 
So, what are they doing? Well, there's the usual summer stuff: all-day playdates, lots of hiking & outdoor activities, plus baking, crafting & gardening. We're also visiting museums, zoos and state parks before they get too crowded. (FYI, we generally begin 'summer vacation' around mid-April... uh huh, homeschoolers are renegades.) And they're currently publishing the fifth issue in yet another newspaper venture...

But, mostly, they are preparing for the SAT.

No, I did not manipulate them into this (not that I'm knocking that technique, don't get me wrong). All on their own, they proclaimed one day that they weren't going to college because "We're going to HOMECOLLEGE, Mom!" Believe it or not, I wasn't immediately filled with a sense of maternal pride or teacherly accomplishment. When Mikaela was born, I'd come to terms with the idea that I would have to do my best by the kids for the next 20 years or so and, in our case, that includes homeschooling them. But, after that, I want to rest (or learn to fly airplanes, not quite sure). So, with no ulterior motive except perhaps to completely discourage the idea, we eventually came to an understanding. If they got such high SAT scores that they could win academic scholarship offers to competitively ranked universities of their choice, I would then agree to let them skip college. Otherwise, no dice. (Of course, I'm also counting on the inevitable, evolutionary desire to get as far away from one's parents as possible kicking in at around 17. Ok, who am I kidding? - maybe 16? 15? Do I hear a 14? Or, if they really are so smart, certainly they'll divine the genuine lure of further education: no full time job required. So, I'm not too worried. Yet.)
 
It all started last summer. At the bookstore, Mikaela picked out the gigantic, comprehensive Barron's SAT prep book which included several practice tests, the longest & driest vocabulary list she could find (sans cartoons or cute hints to help you remember the definitions - perused but rejected as "too easy") and infinite math problems with obligatorily convoluted explanations (not the entertaining, user-friendly versions Chris was leaning toward because he might be able to understand them). She was fervently commending the (national?) merits of this particular guide when, lo and behold! a guy suddenly pops out from behind a corner display to concur, for - did we all realize? -  he himself had used that very same study guide when he was in high school, and had, in fact, made a  [dramatic pause] ...1600! What the dickens?! He was an indisputable apparition of Christmas future - vividly demonstrating to our impressionable, starry-eyed pupils the fate of those who get a perfect SAT score: You shall forevermore spend your evenings haunting test prep aisles in bookstores to pounce on unsuspecting passersby, the only ones who might still care 15 years after that momentous day when the postmaster delivered verifiable proof of your preeminence to the mailbox. But, that's not all: if you continue to strive & work hard, like this admirable chap, you might turn your laudable efforts into a full time career as a Princeton Review tutor. I guess what the College Board attests is indeed true - SAT scores are obviously the #1, infallible indicator of a person's potential for life-long success.


Despite the genius hustler in our midst, Mikaela stuck with her choice and was quite pleased with the prospect of spending her "free time" riffling through 1,000 vocabulary flashcards and even looked forward to solving for x. (Since higher arithmetic had often been an exercise in patience with poor instructors who didn't understand the problems any better than I did, Chris took over math teaching duties when we hit algebra. Hey, I figure that if the kids do well on the math portion, we'll look back on this as a wonderful father-daughters bonding experience. And, if they don't, I have someone to blame besides myself... I fail to see any negatives in this solution.)




However, Katrianna spent much of the car ride home slowly brooding & fuming until we turned around just in time to see Mt St Katrianna erupt right there in the back seat. POW! She was incensed:
 
Why is Mikaela getting a SAT book and I'm NOT?
I never get any challenges! Why can't I have any challenges?
My math's too easy! Don't we remember when Mikaela was learning her times tables, who yelled out all the answers first?
Same with spelling - admit it! So, tell me, exactly why can't I have a good vocabulary, too?!

It was a full-blown temper tantrum, the likes of which we'd never seen, all over a SAT book. It didn't appease her when, in desperation, we suggested she could use the accompanying cd whenever she liked - appealing to her computer-geek nature, usually a surefire pacifier. The fact that she was technically supposed to be a 2nd grader didn't provide any solace, either. So, since there was nothing else to do, I pulled over, donned my powdered wig & black judiciary robe (stored in the glove box - heck, they thought of everything in those government-issue emergency supply kits, didn't they, Brownie?), and delivered a Supreme Court-level presentation of the evidence, with a full recounting of the history & progression of Mikaela v. Katrianna's scholarly preparation thus far: an exhaustive, logical proof of the necessary steps to SAT readiness. Unable to refute the fact that Mikaela had long been doing long division - the bane of K's existence (she always came up short) - Katrianna acquiesced on the condition that if she practiced her multiplication & division all year, we would allow her to participate in each & every SAT verbal and mathematics lesson. Furthermore, if she could follow the math as well as (or, we had to concede, better than) Mikaela, we'd rush out at once and purchase her very own, personal Barron's. A quick swing by the notary's office to formalize the contract & peace was restored on Katrianna's earth. 
 
After months of long, divisive days (actually, they were colorful worksheets), Katrianna reached her quotient at last. In addition, she'd completed all of Dad's assignments & continued to get as many answers right as her big sister because she went more slowly, but with more accuracy... So, the steadfast tortoise met the rite angles of passage requirements & this summer ended up with a SAT 3-book set that was serendipitously on sale for $8 total (pshew, no cosineR needed). First thing, she devoured the writing book, highlighting significant tips and all the while talking nonstop about how it's improving her imperative skills moment by moment! She then started in on the practice questions and, when she "graded" them, her exclamations of "Hey, I got it right!" were just as gleeful as those of "Oh, I got it wrong!" Plus, we overheard her suggesting to Mikaela, "I wonder if anyone ever missed every single question on the whole SAT?" In other words, if you can't get a perfect score, consider that as the next best option...
 
Now M&K are envious of each other's SAT vocab lists & traipse around trying to outdo each other in erudite panache, dropping sophisticated word choice at will. They are also very possessive of their words and take great umbrage when the other kid tries to usurp their "turf," as in "Hey, you can't use that - that's my word!!" Mikaela enjoys taking the reading comprehension tests and then discussing why she missed a question and what possible mindset the test makers could so erroneously have employed when coming to such poor conclusions. And the essay prompt practice has led them, after two or three frantic paragraphs of timed writing, to that age-old discovery: "My hand hurts."
  
Still, they insist that they're having loads of fun. It adds a completely new dimension to what seems to be the standard(ized) practice of "teaching to the test"  -- only instead of cramming for the two weeks before it's administered, they're blithely serving hard time of 5 to 10 year sentences (including some with No Error). And, finally, no test-taking detail is too small: they've meticulously planned out which snacks they'll take along for the break times between sections.  
 
Irregardless, in a continued effort to promote collegiate aspirations, I make it a point to tour universities everywhere we visit. But, honestly, it's not helping. For instance, an amiable but overzealous Stanford co-ed's thrilling accounts of wild 'n crazy cafeteria tray stair sledding, unfettered splashing in fountains between classes, a finals week tradition of paper airplane combat, and the "totally hilarious" time capsule buried with a four-year-old pizza slice inside it didn't exactly light a fire - intellectual or communal - under M&K. Moreover, the absolutely mortifying idea of a nude beach on the campus of the University of British Columbia likely contributed to rejuvenating their homecolleging resolve. No, this is definitely not working. . .  at least that's what I tell my husband when I look up long enough from How to Fly Airplanes for Dummies. 

Pretty soon,  I think we'd better start the new school year - and give the kids a chance for some "down time." Next spring, I vow to seriously look into options for summer camp. You know, the fancy free kind where you get to braid those ultra useful lanyards, build up the nerve to cannonball off the floating pier, spend forty minutes peering into your shoes to check for hidden scorpions, slap mosquitoes in time to Kumbaya and eat s'mores, like 'em or not. Golly, that sounds swell!  Precisely what M&K need: no more moping around, complaining about being bored with nothing to do & asking every 15 minutes for permission to go outside and play - the girls just hate it when I do that. I wonder, should I sign myself up for two sessions or three?

Katrianna's efforts in botany have led to the inevitable --- that's right, Sex Education.  Yep, she's discovered the Joy of Pollination!

The little Luther Burbankette is doing her best imitation of a honeybee and experimenting with cross-pollination in great earnest. Talk is all about anthers and stamens and the ripeness of the pollen. It's really been quite stigmatizing. She's become obsessed with all that is prolific in her plant kingdom.

As an added bonus, she  studied the fine art of "pinching back" and picks certain prospects for a little branching out inducement - there's just no stemming her excitement. She estimated this morning that she has over 1,000 plants in some stage or other - that includes sprouts, seedlings and all. It's likely closer to 100, but she is quite pleased regardless.    
 
Her amaryllis finally bloomed, proving my anxious worries that we had somehow chosen the one & only "dud" bulb were for naught. Indeed, it surpassed our expectations by producing six beautiful flowers, which she interpreted as an indisputable testament to her horticultural omnipotence. She then proceeded to reward her worthy subject by dismantling it, clipping it leaf by leaf, snipping it root by root, until she had reduced it to a mere replica of its former self, a light bulb. Her madness did have a method, however, for it allowed the dissection of one unfortunate soul - wherein she conscientiously adhered to the sworn principles of the Hydroponic Oath - but also uncovered several baby bulblets which she tenderly added to her nursery. I guess that'll teach her to be such a "cut up."

Lately, she's also been urging me to eat as much guacamole as possible - my parental pit-tance perhaps? No, simply a pit-ifully disguised desire for more avocado pits for toothpick skewering & observational purposes. So, now she's raising avocado plants - well, at least that's what they'll be if they reach their full potential, but at the moment they seem to be woeful underachievers who spend their time in stagnant wallowing and self-pity.

For Easter, she did surprise us all with magnanimous gifts of our very own personally decorated and exorbitantly scotch taped alfalfa seed packets, complete with homemade watering cans (paper cups with toothpick holes punched in the bottoms). Accompanying them were detailed instructional booklets which warned of the deleterious consequences of waterlogging, root overcramping & the exact technique for turning young plants regularly (which means on the half hour) toward the sunlight so they can perform photosynthesis. A staunch conservative in these matters, she expects the seedlings -once she's provided them a healthy environment- to make an honest living and earn their own food. 

But, with the exception of the paperwhites which emerged early and in showy profusion so they could have the pond's reflections all to themselves (they are so narcissistic), most of our backyard looks a bit seedy. Last week, Katrianna enriched the soil with peat moss, blackened banana peels and other organic fertilizers to sow lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, alyssum, sunflowers, cosmos & marigolds. She's also added a lot of Miracle Grow to her watering can as an antidote to revive the numerous shrinking violets and withering wall flowers.  Yet, she seems confident that she will ultimately sucseed and reap a plantiful harvest due to her willingness to get her hands (well, her gloves) dirty, along with her matchmaking 'natural selection' expertise.

Meanwhile, when dusk overtakes the remains of the daylight and forces her back indoors, she passes the evenings poring over vegetable guidebooks & flower encyclopedias in growing impatients for a bloomin' garden of her own.


Either that, or she plots in poetic couplets:
                                         by Katrianna

               Plants are nocturnal, they wake up at night,
               If you woke at nighttime, you'd be in a fright,
               To see plants who are running, plants in a hurry,
               Plants dropping their leaves in a flash and a flurry,
               Plants from your garden, coming inside,
               Plants who are humble, plants of great pride,
               The African Violet's running, thus,
               He's in a hurry to catch the bus!

[Poem reprinted here with her permission & her insistence that it is "officially quadruple copyrighted." Violators will no doubt be paid back in spades.]

Some of our past Easters have been spent at church. Some with relatives. Some on day-long hikes. Some at Eugene O'Neill's house. No, not really, there was only one Easter at Eugene O'Neill's house.

I didn't plan it that way. Last year, I'd called to schedule a reservation at the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site & specifically asked about "off hours" so we could avoid being added to a crowded tour group. "Oh, well then, you'll want to come Sunday, March 23. We're going to be open & no one's scheduled that day. All of the other times and days are pretty much full." Then she added, a little tersely I thought, "You could come that Sunday if you want. We have to be open anyway."

Perfect, we'll take it! I hung up thinking how lucky I'd been to not only get a spot, but to get one all to ourselves on such short notice. We weren't going to be in California for long, so this was our chance. I ran to my calendar to jot down the particulars when I finally understood her tone. That Sunday, just a couple of weeks away, was Easter Sunday - in March this year, not April, I'd forgotten.

I picked up the phone to cancel, but then I reconsidered. When would the girls get this opportunity again & how could I, their loving mother, deny them the joy of modern realism, abject pessimism and unresolved tragedy? I did make sure Aunty Monica would accompany us, and then assured myself that it was indeed a relatively festive way to celebrate Easter, after all.

Katrianna was not so easily persuaded. I tried to convince her that, since we weren't going to be at home in Houston, the Easter Bunny might have difficulty finding us. So, he had told me to meet him at Eugene O'Neill's house on Easter day at exactly 1:25 pm. Wasn't that neat? And, didn't she want to get her presents?

She didn't buy it, not even close. OK, go with a different approach:

"Well no, honey, I know we haven't read anything by Eugene O'Neill yet... But, he did write a play called The Hairy Ape! It is almost exactly like Richard Scarry's cartoon where Bananas Gorilla finds and eats all of the bananas in the hold of that ship, then has to swab the discarded banana peels off the deck as a punishment. You really used to like Bananas Gorilla, remember?...

"Well no, Eugene didn't draw comics. He kinda preferred the format of dreary one act plays or four-hour long modernist sagas that examined the savagery and despair of humanity. But, other than that, it's exactly the same as Bananas Gorilla!"

She told me she had been over Bananas Gorilla for several years now & she didn't have any interest in Richard Scarry, this Eugene O'Neill fellow or any other "baby stuff" anymore. As an alternative to breaking out my anthology of O'Neill's one acts, I suggested, "Well, we could go out for pizza after the tour?"  

Done! Easy parenting coercion 101.

The Easter Bunny did in fact find us in the morning that became electric with egg hunts, baskets of chocolates & brunch before we had to drive over to Danville. We arrived in the parking lot with time to spare and it was blissfully empty. Until another car arrived. And then another. And then another. And then the van, which we all just barely squeezed into so it could shuttle us up to the Tao House. Mostly I was upset our private tour had been usurped. But, I chose to focus instead on the weak moral character of these heathens who would so readily violate the sanctity of a holy day by going on a literary tour. They obviously had no sense of pro-piety.

Our guide was extremely knowledgeable and also clearly felt that there was no better thing to do on Easter Sunday than discuss Eugene O'Neill. He did take a moment to acknowledge that there were 'some younger than usual visitors with us this afternoon,' but he was a purist. That segue way over, he proceeded to display his exhaustive and intimate knowledge of O'Neill's life, including but certainly not limited to: alcoholism, child abuse, abandonment, collegiate suspension, depression, extramarital affairs, divorces, drug addiction, excommunication, banishment and multiple suicides of just about everyone connected to O'Neill in any way. Of course, he didn't realize it and nothing would have constrained our devout guide anyhow, but all of this was "old school" for my 7 and 10 year olds and they barely blinked - well, unless a big yawn sort of forced them to.

However, they did perk up when talk turned to O'Neill's daughter. Because they finally saw some way to relate perhaps? Was it the mention of a child or the father-daughter dynamic? No, it was because Oona had run away with and married Charlie Chaplin, 36 years her senior, and had been disowned by her dad forever after. He never saw his little girl again - very sad. It was hard to gauge M&K's reaction, however, because they were too busy nudging each other repeatedly, giggling and pointing at their own dad who had made them sit through hours of Charlie Chaplin movies saying, "Now, just wait, it does get funny. . .  the good part's coming right after this!" It brought up such nostalgia in them for Modern Times, I mean their quality-filled 'Dad Times.'  Still, at least the Noble Prize laureate's life had finally become relevant in their eyes. Plainly, Oona was wrong for what she did. Not the marrying a much older man part. But, the part about choosing to spend the rest of your life with someone who thought slapstick (not to mention silence) was funny.
 

A few other things caught their attention, too. The fact that inside the Tao House, which O'Neill had specially built based on the principles of Taoism, mirrors were strategically placed to ward off evil spirits and were tinted a disconcerting shade of green (perhaps to reflect the envy of all onlookers?). The fact that his third wife had changed her name from Hazel Neilson Taasinge to Carlotta Monterey to appear more exotic.




The fact that their dog was dotingly referred to as their "baby" and, unlike the husband, got to share its room with Carlotta. The fact that the neckties hanging in O'Neill's bedroom closet matched those of their dad (proving that Chris is at the height of 1940s fashion). The fact that his study was designed and decorated to replicate a ship captain's quarters. The fact that they were the only ones on the tour allowed to sit in his chair and fiddle with his vintage pencils, always kept meticulously sharp on his two desks. The fact that, in his last years, his handwriting was so tiny that the guide supplied us with magnifying glasses so we could make out the words.




And, the fact that the outside of the house had stairs leading straight into walls, going nowhere, prompting Mikaela to observe that the Tao House seemed a lot more like the Winchester Mystery House than a soothing, feng shui environment.
 

But, what about the fact that he was born and also died in hotel rooms to which he reputedly decried from his death bed, "I knew it! Born in a hotel room and, Goddammit, died in one!"  Or, the experience of overlooking the same hills and scenic views that had captured his imagination? Or, what about perusing his personal bookshelves full of literature and philosophical works? Or, how's about seeing his actual Nobel Prize for Literature award?   Ehh, not so much...





Back outside the kids went, much more interested in the fact that all of the garden walkways and paths zigzagged to throw off the 'negative powers' that, we were told, could only travel in straight lines - which, of course, induced M&K to 'positively run amok' and play tag in the estate's backyard until it was time to leave.

Still, they had given their mom a memorable Easter present - the certainty that one day this would mean something to them, too. Or, even if not, that they might at least know enough to avoid life's (and/or ENGL 401's) Strange Interludes as a result.

After our Long Day's Journey into Easter, we were playfully ushered Into Night with the help of large pizzas, sodas & tunes on the ipod shuffles that the Easter Bunny had managed to slip into a couple of eggs found at Eugene O'Neill's very own Tao House.