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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?

For most of my student years, I was not fond of history. Too many teachers had focused solely on dates & famous leaders and, in even the most challenging classes, tests were mere measures of meticulous memorization. The 'story' in history was lost, taken over by war generals, names of battles and what I suspected were some teachers' overwrought compensations for their own frustrated machismo. Even in college, I was bothered to find that friends, who seemed quite nice otherwise, were in fact history majors - what sort of deep seated psychological issues were they hiding? Who wanted to spend all their time delving into the gory details of madmen, power trips and world destruction? 

Well, I'd eventually discover, my kids did. But, tyranny was only a minor part of their enthusiastic attraction to history, so they ended up - in ways much more persuasive than any teacher I'd ever had - taking me in and showing me the excitement that could be had by studying history. In a way, their tabula rasa innocence allowed them to accept the past 'as is' and skip the moral judgments which made me categorize things as 'good' or dismiss them as 'bad.' More effectively than Shakespeare, they put the play-fulness into historical drama, bringing individuals' personalities, the fascinating interplay of flaws & virtues, back into the stories. Of course, we also end up learning "the lessons" - both academic and ethical - intrinsic to the events, but without our primary concern being the weapons used or detailed listings of physical wounds inflicted (and without the requirement to demonstrate ultimate subject mastery in the form of a unit chapter test).

When Mikaela wanted to learn about WWII in fourth grade, I initially practiced my usual evasive maneuvers & put it off, hoping she'd forget about it until she was "old enough to handle it." I'd taken a college course on Holocaust literature that was thought provoking, mostly depressing, yet sometimes uplifting, and I solemnly looked forward to the time - when she was in high school, maybe - that I would be able to share those books with her - Night, Schindler's List, Survival in Auschwitz, Judgment at Nuremberg, What's to Become of the Boy? But, there was no way I felt she was ready for that now... or seeing war footage...  or watching the compelling but brutal movies that even overwhelm adults... 


I couldn't figure out how to teach WWII to the under-10 year old set besides the pedantic "just the facts, ma'am" approach, so I did what any thoughtful parent or teacher would do in that situation: I stalled. But, it wasn't long before Mikaela started independently building her own reading list and surreptitiously checking out WWII books from the library. She'd easily defeated my curriculum-setting axis, so my next strategic move as a homeschooling mom was clear: I allied myself with her efforts and she immediately began teaching me and her sister.

Freed from my preconceptions or didactic objectives, I was soon able to find excellent, age-appropriate resources & made several suggestions, but mainly I relied on Mikaela's instincts. Some books she started and then stopped after a few pages or a couple of chapters because they were "too scary." And, although I very anxiously put aside my apprehensions about letting her read The Diary of a Young Girl with its abrupt, wrenching conclusion, in an outcome I couldn't have foreseen, she never reached the end. Stopping halfway through, she declared that Anne was "too boy crazy" for her to continue. Since she had read other accounts of Anne's fate (including letters by Anne's father) and I know she will one day reread and finish the diary, I found this temporary assessment rather telling - it was clear that she saw Anne as a full person, not just a symbol of war, and, ironically, that genuine identification made her realize (even inadvertently) that she would better understand Anne's situation when she was more mature herself. She put Anne Frank's diary back on the shelf "for the next time we study World War II, Mom."

In the time we devoted to WWII, Mikaela learned an enormous amount and taught me even more as we followed her student-led syllabus (recorded in my teacher's log):

HISTORY - JANUARY: WWII for Mikaela, brief overview for Katrianna (studying dinosaurs instead)

Create collage of WWII drawings & symbols for portfolio theme divider
NY Times The Complete Front Pages & NY Times Greatest Stories collections: read 'real time' newspaper articles leading up to war, during war & victory celebrations; discuss tone of war-time ads in paper; read current articles about Pearl Harbor 65 yr anniversary & google for more info
Read fiction & non-fiction books: One Eye Laughing, The Other Weeping: Julie Weiss (Dear America); Number the Stars; Lily's Crossing; Sadako & the Thousand Paper Cranes; I Am David (too scary); American Girl: Molly on the Home Front series + A Spy on the Home Front + nonfiction study guide; The Devil's Arithmetic; Introducing Shirley Braverman; My Secret War; Diary of Anne Frank (1/2) + Nonfiction book w/photos, Anne's report cards & various info about her; The Causes of WWII; Witnesses to War: 8 True-Life Stories of Nazi Persecution; WWII Days: Projects ideas + background, facts; The Bombing of Pearl Harbor; A Time to Fight Back-Stories of Resistance; Growing Up in WWII; Memories of Survival; Children & War; Rescued Images: Childhood in Hiding; Hey, Don't You Know there's a War on?; Ten Thousand Children: Kindertransport; Carrie's War; Early Sunday Morning (Pearl Harbor); Journal of SP Collins, WWII soldier; Journal of Ben Uchida (Internment camp)
Watch movies/videos: Sound of Music; Miracle of the White Stallions (Vienna's Spanish Riding School); What Have We Learned, CB? (Omaha beach, France, poppies); 60 minutes show @ just released WWII records w/interviews of camp survivors, original Schindler's list document, Anne Frank's papers, etc; K's Egypt video: section on Egypt's involvement in WWII; PBS documentary @ women pilots program in TX (WASP); PBS show @ 1949 Berlin airlift; Bedknobs & Broomsticks (movie has WWII references, book does not); Molly on the Home Front tv movie 
Fold 100 origami cranes based on Sadako book
Learn terms: anti-Semitism, Axis powers, Allies, D-day, blitzkrieg, dictator, inflation, fascism, Gestapo, Holocaust, kamikaze, isolationism, nationalism, U-boat, Nazi, Aryan, crematorium, concentration camp, deportation, genocide, ghetto, swastika, yellow star, atom bomb - Hiroshima, Nagasaki
Complete workbook pages; look up definitions in encyclopedia for terms; make battles list
Discuss artists, ie Paul Klee, labeled as "degenerate" by Nazis who removed works from museums
Write & type original WWII story: diary format @ US kid & her soldier dad serving overseas 12 pg
Interview grandparents about their experiences as children during war
Write & type 1000 word research paper on kids' contributions to war effort, cite primary & secondary sources + include bibliography (narrowed to 5 topics, started with Women Airforce Service Pilots & then switched to kids' contributions)
Attend talk given by former WWII female resistance fighter at university memorial event
Visit Holocaust museum, view & discuss exhibits



Visit Los Alamos "Manhattan Project" museum,view exhibits, A-bomb, talk with docents @ G-pa (M invokes moral absolutism here and insists bombs were wrong) 
 





The following year in Europe, we got the opportunity to apply what we'd learned. One result of my newfound, daughters-inspired appreciation for history was an insistence that we not only see "fun" & touristy sites, but that we take some time to pay homage to the past, recognizing both the bad & good in history. I'd always struggled with the dichotomy of regarding war as wrong and ignoble, while I believed most soldiers were exceedingly brave and honorable. In WWII, the moral imperative for military engagement made 'right' & 'wrong' and the heroism of those involved uniquely evident. Yet, even when we cannot extol noble causes or justify a particular war, we will continue to glorify the people who sacrifice for our sakes and a victorious human spirit that often emerges most distinctly amid conflict. Having children - and relearning history with them - only deepened my sense of debt, humility and thankfulness to those who are willing to stand up and serve for their own and others' families.

For twenty years, I was an 'A' history student, but never retained - & usually couldn't forget fast enough- what I'd learned for the tests. History was summarily lumped in with my natural aversion to villainy, horror movies and obscure, irrelevant minutiae that, outside of a classroom, only occasionally showed up as Trivial Pursuit questions. But, apparently, what they say is true - even for the most incorrigible student, all it takes is the tutelage of motivating teachers: Katrianna, who began her Egyptology & Ancient Rome dual PhD program in preschool, and Mikaela, who so far has instructed me on medieval times, the British monarchy, the American Revolution and WWI & II. I'm receiving a first rate education this time around. In fact, I think I'm majoring in History...   

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.