Today

Today is the birthday of C.S. Lewis, Louis May Alcott, and Madeleine L'Engle. Who knew these three shared the same birthday. I learned this from my daily email from The Writer's Almanac. I recommend signing up for these emails if you would like a daily dose of poetry. I often love the poems printed in these emails, but I don't like to repost them on the blog because most of them are copyrighted. Not that this probably really matters given my very small readership...but still.

Here's the link to sign up if you're interested:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

Procrastinating

I need to finish editing an essay that I wrote for an anthology titled Growing Up Churched. I have to cut the essay from 5000 words to 3000. Ugh. I have been so busy that I haven't been able to work on it at all. Today, I was surprised by some canceled plans and got 5 whole hours to work on it! Crazy! 5 hours. I have done more stupid stuff online in the last 4 hours. Sigh. I have also gotten some writing finished, but good grief. Now I'm going to do something productive and make myself some lunch so I can stop feeling so light-headed. And I'll ponder the telling of my life story in 3000 words.

Introverted

This has been my schedule for the last week:

Sunday: Eric and I went to a storytelling event, met friends for dinner in Brooklyn, and then took a taxi to my father-in-law's (Lenny) house to greet Eric's aunt and uncle who had just arrived from Germany
Monday: Worked all day, went straight to dinner with Lenny, Jan and Hanne (the aunt and uncle) and Eric
Tuesday: Worked all day, went straight to dinner with the same group, then went to watch a contemporary ballet show, got home at 11pm when Eric had to prep the turkey for Thanksgiving
Wednesday: Cooked and cleaned, tutored for 2 hours, cooked, went to class, met Eric at a party
Thursday: Started cooking at 8:30, took a 1 hour break, cooked and prepped the rest of the day, guests arrived at 3 and left at 9:30
Friday: Cleaned up, went to a movie with Eric, met the same group (9 of us in all) for dinner at the raw food restaurant
Saturday: Met Lenny, Jan and Hanne and went on a drive out of the city to walk around, came into the city for dinner at Angelica's restaurant

It has been a wonderful week, but I would like nothing so much as to sit all by myself for a very, very long time.

12 Years

All week I have been meaning to mention this on my blog, and I have been so busy, I haven't. This Thanksgiving marks the twelve year anniversary of my becoming friends with firefly. Twelve years ago we gathered with a group of girls to eat the Thanksgiving dinner in the cafeteria one week before the real Thanksgiving. After dinner we went to our Intro to Literature class. We were listening to a guest speaker that night, and Marti had to leave early because she didn't feel well. About an hour later, I also threw up and left class to go back to the dorm. The next morning I was still too weak to go get breakfast and my roommate didn't help me after leaving for class. Marti, who had heard from others in the class that I was also sick, came down to my room and offered to get me something. (She was feeling better by that time.) I gratefully received her offer and when she came back with food, we got into our first one-on-one conversation. I think we talked about demons or something. :) Who knows. We were very serious young students and took comfort in being able to talk with each other about the pressing concerns of the world. That really hasn't changed much, though now we do tend to laugh at ourselves a bit more.
Firefly, your friendship was probably the best gift from Westmont. Thanks for all of these years of love and care.

The True American Holiday

Eric and I are recovering from Thanksgiving today. This marks the sixth year that I've celebrated Thanksgiving with Eric and his father, Lenny, and it's become a yearly ritual that I love. Eric prepared turkey, garlic mashed potatoes, roasted green beans, and cranberry sauce. I made rolls, two pies, squash soup, and roasted vegetables. It was a ton of work, but we always have such appreciative guests that it's worth every minute.
This year we had a very international crowd for the feast. I invited a Turkish couple that we've become friends with this year, Eric's aunt and uncle from Germany were visiting, and Arno and Dorit--I call them Eric's adopted grandparents--are Holocaust survivors who immigrated to America in the 1940s, but still identify strongly with their European identities. Arno and Dorit speak German, so they had a great time speaking German with the aunt and uncle, and my Turkish friend has an uncle who lives in the same town as Eric's aunt and uncle, so she understands a little German. Eric, Lenny and I understand no German, so we kept having to pull the conversation back to English.
It was an interesting mixture of people. The Holocaust survivors with the German aunt who's father was an extremely prestigious general in the old German military. The Turkish friend with a general father in the Turkish army who could identify with my German aunt's experiences in a rigid military culture. There was one tense moment where we all talked about how German society is not accepting the Turkish immigrants. And yet, by the end of dinner, we all had such a great time together that we decided to all get together for dinner again tonight! Lenny invited everyone to a restaurant that makes raw food. I can't wait to hear the reactions to this experience. I can't imagine a bigger meat eating crowd, and Lenny wants to do raw food. Should be interesting...
I hope your holidays were joyous. Here are a couple of pictures from our day:

Tired and frazzled, but filled up with stories

It's 10pm on Monday night, and it's the first time I've been home since 9am this morning. I spent the morning watching storytellers, the afternoon tutoring, and the evening having dinner with Eric, his father, and his German aunt and uncle. Dinner was oddly stressful. Len brought up some very serious business news and was trying to share it while Eric was trying to help his aunt and uncle understand the Vietnamese menu. That was stressful--trying to make sure everyone was getting what they needed and feeling like it was impossible. Then Eric and Len started talking about Eric applying for German citizenship. And Len mentioned casually, that once Eric got citizenship then he could come with us to Germany and we would take care of him. I was completely baffled and frustrated by the conversation. It stresses me out to think about emigrating to another country. And so I shared this. And that wasn't well understood by his German family. And the whole conversation just felt like it spiraled into a strange abstraction through a series of subtle miscommunications.
But other than this evening, I've had a wonderful day. I followed a new storyteller today, and I loved his style. I got to watch two storytellers and have a lunch discussion with them both. It was a lot of fun to talk story with them and analyze how the students responded to the lessons. I love story. I love watching children listen to stories. Their eyes light up, their mouths fall open, they start to act things out, they crack up with laughter. It's a joy-filled profession. I'm also enjoying watching so many different age groups. It's fun to watch how their sense of humor changes with their age. It's interesting how a room of first graders won't question the fact that the story is about pulling a turkey out of the ground, but second graders would find it ridiculous and need to point it out to the storyteller. And today, there was a group of 3rd grade girls who had a lot of trouble with ambiguity and not having control. At one point the storyteller was sharing different types of possible endings to the same story, and after listening to the options, one of the girls turned around and said to her friends, "I think he did by accident. Right? He did it by accident!" As if voting on it would turn it into an absolute.
"A little political activist," one of the storytellers guessed about this girl.
(Sadly, I think I was that student when I was little. I suppose I shouldn't judge her so harshly--or myself for that matter--but it embarrasses me nonetheless.)

What It Means to Have a Y Chromosome In My Family

Last night at 9pm, I got this phone call:

"Hello."
"Hi, Kirsten. Is your husband there?" (in an urgent tone.)
A slight pause from me as I register that this is my grandmother.
"I'm sorry, that wasn't a very nice greeting, was it? How are you? This is grandma. Is Eric there? I'm having a problem with my DVD player, and your father is not home!"
So I say to Eric who is sitting calmly reading an article on his computer, "It's my grandma, she wants to talk to you."
I then get a wicked grin on my face as I stand there watching for his reaction to her request. It's not like I couldn't help her with her DVD player, but I have a hunch it will be frustrating, and besides, she did ask for Eric.
Eric takes the phone and says, "Hello Betty."
And I wait for it, and then the look of surprise registers on Eric's face as he says, "well what button are you pushing?"
Another pause.
"It says 'disc 1 empty'? Well then you need to switch to one of the other disks and press open."
Another pause. And then Eric tries to explain the concept of multiple disk trays to my grandmother--unsuccessfully.
Eric throws up his hands to me in frustration that he manages to hide in his voice.
"OK, Betty, let's try this. Tell me what type of DVD player you have." He gets out his computer to look it up online, hoping to find a picture that will help him know how it works.
BUT, my grandma couldn't figure out what type of model she has. So Eric went to our DVD player and says, "I think the brand would be written on the front. Our player says Panasonic on the front."
My grandmother starts to read everything that she sees on her DVD player.
"Oh, that's a good idea. Keep reading me the button names."
A pause.
"You have a button called 'disk skip'? Excellent. Keep pushing that button, Betty."
A pause. Then what I assume to be my grandmother expressing her gratitude.
"Great, I'm happy I could help. You're welcome, Betty. Goodnight."

And she hangs up. Not a word of greeting to me. Not a word of news. She just hung up and got back to her DVD. And Eric and I had a good laugh about the fact that she never considered asking me for help.

Teeth

I went to the dentist today. It's a new dentist for Eric and me. Our old dentist retired this year. When he looked at my X-rays, he commented on how good my bone depth was.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"31," I replied.
"Oh, a baby!"
And when I thought about my age in terms of my teeth, I agreed with him. I hope to live past 80 years of age. And so I haven't even reached the half-way mark of my relationship with my teeth. I should probably floss more.

Time

New Yorkers walk the way L.A. drives--fast except when stopped by traffic. We walk with purpose and irritation at anyone or anything that gets in our way. We change lanes quickly, walking into the gutter if necessary, to pass slow commuters. The left side of the escalators are reserved for walking. Traffic lights are mere suggestion of the right of way, at any moment a walker will challenge a car to a game of chicken. By straining against the streets and the crowds, we manage to shave second--minutes even off of our commutes.
What do we do with this precious time we save? We have conversations--debates--about the best and fastest methods of transportation. Like this conversation I recently had with my husband at a party with another friend of ours:
"It takes me 10 minutes to walk to the 7 train from our apartment."
"It does not take 10 minutes to walk to the 7 train."
"Yes it does. Door to platform, 10 minutes. I've timed it."
"Well maybe the way you walk. It takes me 5 minutes."
"No way it takes 5 minutes. Come on. Maybe you could do it in 7 minutes, but I don't believe you walk it in 5 minutes. Are you counting the time it takes to get up the stairs and on the platform?"
"OK, maybe it takes me 7 minutes to get to the platform, but there's no way it takes me 10 minutes."

The irony is that I really enjoy traveling from place to place in NY when I can just relax and accept the time it will take me. There is always a lot going on, stores and people to observe. I can read, ponder, and often even write while on the trains. And yet, I play my own game of chicken when I decide when to leave the house for any given appointment. I squeeze the extra 5 minutes out of my time at home, even if it means the difference between a stressful commute and a leisurely one.

(Maybe I'm just continuing the irony theme that Anne has started on her blog.)

Validation

Last night in my Writing Workshop class I read aloud the first part of an essay that I wrote about my experience as a missionary kid. I read a section that dealt with the first two years as an MK, when my parents were deciding to become missionaries and we were moving all the time to raise support and get the necessary training. I have really been processing that time in my life a lot this past year. I was 11 when my parents decided to join Wycliffe and 13 when we left the U.S. to move to France. Those years typically represent a disempowerment experience for girls, but for me that was combined with the confusion of constantly moving and having all kinds of major identity crises at once. The outcome of this confusion and turmoil was that I became a fundamentalist teenager. Then moving overseas made me reconsider some of my rock solid certainties.
But anyhow, what I wanted to say is that reading the essay to my writing class last night made me feel so amazing. I've sent the essay to a bunch of friends, and I've gotten positive feedback, but some part of me felt like maybe they were just being nice because they were my friends. But this group of relative strangers (it is a safe environment and an encouraging one, but I don't know these people, and they don't know me) really responded to my writing. They were moved, and felt such compassion for the narrator in the essay. It helped me to really stand up and own the fact that I lived through something unusual and difficult. And it helped me to listen to their compassion for that young-self that I've been trying to understand and forgive and honor this past year.

Natural IUDs

I started this post last night and then deleted it in a fit of panic after Googling my name. I have an unusual enough name that I'm not confused with hundreds of other people on Google. And now they have some new search sites where people can see all of my relatives listed and for $50 anyone can purchase a complete background check on me. Not that I have anything to hide -- but yikes! It's just so icky. And now my blog is associated with my name. So I have this vulnerable feeling that makes me want to delete the whole thing.
Nevertheless, I really enjoy the connections I'm making to the few people who actually read the blog, so I've decided to push through my anxiety. Though I still may delete the whole thing. Maybe I'll try coming back under a new name and try for some level of anonymity.
The reason that I feel so vulnerable with this post is that I want to write about something that I wouldn't necessarily share with the world. And yet here I go...
I went to see my OB-GYN on Monday for my annual check-up and to check the status of my uterine polyps. I learned I have uterine polyps last year, and my doctor suggested that I have a surgery to cut them away. "I seriously doubt you'll be able to get pregnant with those things," she told me, "they are like natural IUDs." I decided to try alternative treatment, acupuncture, which I started in April. The good news from my doctor visit is that the acupuncture is having an effect, the polyps are smaller. The bad news is that if I want to get pregnant in the near future, they probably aren't small enough, and progress with alternative methods is slow.
I have very mixed feelings about the surgery. My doctor feels like it's not a big deal--the polyps are annoying, but there's a quick surgery that can make them go away. (Of course I have to be completely sedated, but it's still minimally invasive as far as surgery goes.) I feel like there must be a reason my body is creating these polyps and cutting them--though it may solve the short term problem of getting pregnant--does nothing to address whatever it is in my body that makes these grow. (in fact they almost always come back, and the surgery needs to be repeated) I guess that's where acupuncture comes in, and I should be grateful that I have both options at my disposal. I can both treat the underlying problem and have the quick fix that will allow me to get pregnant.
But I'm deeply torn emotionally about this whole thing. I really don't want to go under the knife or to be sedated. I feel like a wimp for feeling like this, but I do. I also don't want to wait another year or two to be able to conceive. And that feeling is its own rabbit hole of confused emotions.
I never planned to have children. I never planned to not have children, and if anyone ever asked me if I wanted children, I would always say yes. However, I never really gave much serious thought to the fact that having children can involve intention. I certainly never wanted to get pregnant when I didn't want children--when I knew I wasn't prepared to support them financially or emotionally. But to stand up and now admit to myself and the world that I want children is really difficult. To be willing to even go through surgery to make it possible.
I find it hard to plan for my future. I really like thinking that one day I'll look back over my life and be pleasantly surprised by the twists and turns my life took. I don't like admitting that I want something unless it's absolutely certain that I can have it. It's part of what make career planning so hard for me. I just have this deeply ingrained habit of squelching dangerous desires.
So kids--well, I don't know what I imagined. That's the problem, I never imagined. And now I'm imagining having one and it's so scary. It's scary to think that maybe I wouldn't be able to conceive. It's scary to think that there could be years of wanting but not having a baby. It's scary to think of the baby actually arriving in the world and being my responsibility! It's scary to think about the rest of my life being changed by this decision. And the hardest thing--for me--is to face all of those fears and still move forward with determination to realize this desire.
I've scheduled the surgery for December. Unless I get pregnant this month, I'm moving forward with it. :) Please pray to the fertility gods. :)

Two Laughs from Thursday

Laugh 1:This little girl was a "Memory Maker" yesterday. The Memory Makers retell a story from the previous week's storytelling time. She told the second half of the story "Boneless."

Boneless is a creature with no skin and no bones. Every Halloween he scared the children and ate their dropped candy, until one day the children decided not to be scared. They went right up to Boneless and asked him, "Boneless, why do you scare us?"

Then this Memory Maker said, "And then Boneless tells the truth." Pause, and in a quiet, serious voice, "But I don't know the Boneless truth."

Laugh 2:
During Dance Therapy class the group was unusually chatty. Normally we start dancing and everyone goes inside their own head and gets quiet. But last night, everyone engaged with the group and told stories and laughed and acted silly with each other. It was a funny shift in how we relate to each other. But that's not the funny story...

While we were talking, someone mentioned how they went to a Bar Mitzvah and all the kids knew these choreographed dances to pop songs. Then my professor said that apparently it's very popular to hire "party promoters" for Bar Mitzvahs, which are professional dancers who organize the kids and get them dancing. She learned this when she arrived late for a Bar Mitzvah and saw the party planners out on the dance floor. Confused, she turned to her friend and asked, "why are the hookers dancing with the children?"

Imagination

Yesterday I worked with my student (feels funny to say that about a child I tutor as opposed to a child in my classroom--I wonder why) on writing. She had an assignment from school to write about the First Thanksgiving from the perspective of a Pilgrim girl. The teacher provided a lot of information about the feast and then she had to put it together in a first person account.
J (my student) and I started talking about this assignment when I saw her last Friday. I told her to stretch her imagination and try to see the scene in her head and then tell me what she saw. We got some books from the library to help put some historically accurate images in her mind's eye. And then today I had her make a web with notes of what she saw, ate, did, felt, so that she would have that information all ready for the writing.
I taught her a fun trick I learned from a storyteller. She has the kids place their thumbs in the middle of their palm and then wrap their fingers around their thumbs very tight. Then she tells them to close there eyes and wait for the hand motion to activate their imagination. If they wait long enough, they will be able to see the colors and shapes with their eyes closed. (I love the gesture that makes this activity so concrete. I think it's genius. And it keeps little hands still.)
So I did this with J as part of the brainstorming, and then I set her loose to write her assignment. It was wonderful to see her dive into writing. She loved writing up those 12 sentences. She delighted in little details that she thought to add--for example that she didn't like the onions because they made her cry. And she wanted to keep working on the assignment even after she'd finished the part she was required to do for homework.
It was such a joy to watch her open up to writing. (In the middle of writing her paragraph, she stopped and said, "I need to do the imagination trick again.") It was wonderful that it wasn't just a matter of counting out the required ten sentences or looking back to the teacher's paper to answer the questions in the assignment. J really could picture the scene and her excitement flowed from using writing as a way to capture something in her mind's eye.
That's why I love teaching writing to kids. The victories are small, but so clear and visible to the adult eye.

And here are the flowers that the family gave me for my birthday. A really wonderful birthday!

31

Today I turn 31. I'm having a great birthday day so far, with lots of time in the morning for reflection and work-at-home, and then tutoring and a birthday dinner with friends. Eric has lots of fun presents for me--books, a video, and I believe earrings, though he's saving those until the end of the day, enjoying dragging out the gift giving process as much as possible. It's a sunny, crisp day, and I just finished listening to a great "This American Life" show while I cooked myself lunch and ate and cleaned up. And I was sung to by a duo in California. A really great day in all.

Shopping/Planning

In an attempt to write more frequently, and not just about serious topics, I thought I'd ask for some input on meal planning. Robyn got me thinking about this with her post about Rachel Ray this week. I watched a Rachel Ray show today, because her post had made me curious. And for what it's worth, Robyn, I enjoyed the show. (I think she's a bit annoying to watch, but I think that of all cooking personas.) I learned something new about spaghetti--putting butter and Parmesan cheese on the noodles before adding the sauce--interesting, and probably really yummy. But watching all of these cooking shows (I watched a couple today) has got me thinking that my problem with cooking really is never in the kitchen. The problem is planning and shopping for food. It seems like if I get too much food, then things will come up and I'll be eating out, and then food goes bad. If I don't shop enough (because we've been eating out a lot) then when I have a night at home, I don't have enough ingredients to make a satisfying dinner. (That's not entirely true, but it is a frustration.)
I've been imagining that I should get really organized and go through my cupboard and refrigerator and try to stock up on basics--like butter and good flour, and spices, and such. And maybe get some containers that would help me store things well. Or become better at cooking and freezing. But then I also think I just need a better routine for thinking about meals and shopping. How do you all do it? Any suggestions?

I am/I follow

Last night I realized that in French "I am" and "I follow" are the same words--Je suis. The thought just popped into my mind during dance therapy class. I was moving, not thinking about French language or the meaning of being or following, but once the idea came to me, I realized it summed up nicely some other thoughts I'd been having earlier in the day.

I observed two storytellers in a school Thursday morning, and one of the storytellers dressed up like a colonial school teacher and pretended with the 4th graders that everyone was at a colonial school. The kids were separated by gender and lined up to represent the grades in a one-room schoolhouse. The children had to stand and address the teacher as "School Master Jonathan" before saying anything. They learned about the hickory stick punishment and sitting in the dunce seat. And he had them all recite the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The storyteller also went over the subjects that were taught, and he shared how "history" back then was memorizing kings and not called "social studies." And "mathematics" was different because it was all memorization and recitation, not word problems.

After acting out a day in the life of colonial school children, the storyteller left and returned as the storyteller to do a Q & A session with the kids. In the last class, one of the kids pointed out, "the golden rule says to treat others nicely so they will treat you nicely, but the teacher didn't have to treat the kids nicely." That astute observation and the constant reminder of how much colonial school was about recitation and perfect penmanship got me thinking about the evolution of what gets taught in school. Today many specialists argue that school is too rote, we aren't doing enough to foster kids' creativity. Leaders today want workers who can adapt to ever-changing demands in business and society and find creative solutions to problems. And that kind of training asks for evermore equality. You can't tell a kid to obey your every word and "be seen and not heard" and then expect them to grow up to be a super creative thinker. And I think it's interesting that we now want and need creative thinkers and that we respect a certain level of challenging authority because that's where much innovation comes from. It made me want to really study what societies teach their children as an insight into cultural values.

Continuing on this vein of thought, though, I came home and had a short break before I went into class. I watched a tivoed (is that a word?) rerun of Scrubs in which the older doctors are bemoaning the fact that there's no respect for doctors anymore. Now, the show claimed, people think they know everything because they can read the medical information on Google. I thought it was funny to think that doctors feel that same loss respect as teachers. (assuming the show is reflecting something real in the medical world, of course) Teachers are often complaining about how difficult it is to do their job because there's no respect for the position anymore. I think those comments say more about the fact that school hasn't evolved as fast as society. I think kids would be hungry to follow a great teacher and would show her a lot of respect, but kids won't tolerate much of the boredom that comes with school. And we no longer tell them they have to--that they just have to tolerate things they hate and suck it up. As a society, I think we are starting to tell our kids, "if you aren't happy, change it. Speak up. We want to hear you." Don't follow, be. It can create a certain level of chaos--all of that being. We certainly need following for any society to work, but I think it's interesting to think about how much and in what situations.

And then I closed the day with a conversation with Marti about some big changes that I'm feeling inside of myself. A shift internally in how I perceive my relationship with my mother. I'm feeling a greater sense of separation, a greater freedom to be and not to follow her ways. And so it seems very appropriate that my mind made that silly connection between the French words yesterday.