First Day of School = Surviving a Teacher Strike

For the first time in 100 days [a friend counted - that number is legit] I am home alone.

Home alone.

I. May. Cry.  And the tears will not be those of lament.

I love my children - they are extensions of my very own heart with legs attached to it - and they love me.  But we needed a break from one another and we all needed time in our own worlds away from one another.  This morning, we got it.  Each child got delivered to separate classrooms with desks, not dining tables.  They went to an actual school, that's away from our high rise building.  And I left them there - all of us smiling.  I went directly to the water and walked alone along the seawall.  As I walked I came upon a series of stacked rocks indicating there had been folks there meditating on balance.  Even nature understood that school was back in session and balance had been restored.

All those stacks of rocks are balancing - no glue, no cement.

And now, my family along with countless others in British Columbia, can officially say we've survived the Strike of 2014!  Survival looked different for each family affected - some chose to move into private schools, some had to scramble for daycare, some enjoyed another holiday and some (like us) gave homeschooling a whirl.  We may not have done any of these dances gracefully and sometimes we weren't anywhere close to in sync, but we gave it our best shot and have come out on the other side. 

Our homeschool days looked like this:
9AM - sit down at the dining room table [which had been cleared of dishes and replaced with textbooks, computers and notebooks]  Each child worked on their own lesson and I sat between them answering questions as they arose and explaining new concepts as best I could.
9:45AM - the bell rang [or timer on the stove] and we completed the 7-minute workout app
9:52AM - Kids got 10-15 minutes of freeplay while I washed dishes, prepped lunch or got materials together for their next lesson
10:05AM - sit back down to the dining room table for lesson #2 or completion of lesson #1
10:50AM - bell rings and we complete another round of 7-minute workout app or kids got to choose favorite exercise or we'd just have a dance party
10:57AM - freeplay
11:10AM - lesson #3
11:55AM - bell rings and kids put away books while I prepared lunch
1PM - try to get out of the house to play at a playground or something OR complete household chores OR mama completes her chores while kids get to choose a movie

I'm not gonna lie.  It was exhausting and I learned  great deal:
1 - I am not meant to be a homeschool mama - eventhough we got into a rhythm and it got easier, it's clear my kids need to go to school and I need them to go to school.
2 - Awareness of how much gets done between 9AM - 12PM.
3 - Alone time is a treasure.  I'm nicer when I have some moments that are just my own.
4 - Putting together educational outings for my children and our friends is fun.  Our field trips were really helpful in maintaining sanity for all of us!  Henry and Lydia needed the interaction with peers and we are fortunate to live in a place with so many opportunities for learning.
5 - My husband is a God-send and I'm grateful we're on this parenting journey as partners.  We could not have gotten through this as well without his support and help with the house.

As I mentioned, our field trips were sanity savers.  Here's what we did:

We visited Maplewood Farm (www.maplewoodfarm.bc.ca) in North Van.  To really understand this field trip it's important to realize that we live in a high rise condo building in downtown Vancouver within 5 blocks of stores like Tiffany, Hermes and Gucci.  We see luxury cars on a daily basis - Ferrari, Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, Bentley, etc.  So going to a farm, and realizing that it's only 20 minutes away from the city, is pretty exotic.  Henry came away from this trip wanting a pet goat and being entertained by their efforts to eat his shirt and shoelaces.  Lydia tried to coax bunnies from their little homes with carrots and enjoyed feeding a donkey.  We all learned how to milk a goat.  And we did all this with friends and it was a really fun day of picnicking, playing and learning about animals in a hands-on, unplugged way - only about 2 miles from where we go to play LaserTag.  The dichotomy was funny and reminded me of the importance for Philip and me to be sure our children remember their roots - and be mindful and grateful for the people whose labors we enjoy without ever meeting them.

Number 5 Road in Richmond, BC, is also known as the "Highway to Heaven" because it is home to so many different faith communities.  We visited 5 of the 30+ options, and the day was full and rich.  Interestingly [and unintentionally], we were on this field trip on September 11, and being among people of various religious beliefs was, for me, a redemptive way to spend that date that is so charged with emotions and memories of destruction.  We were invited into each place of worship warmly, there was a mutual respect among people with widely different beliefs, the hospitality of a shared table was a common thread.  We had Communion in the most tangible way as we made our way down No. 5 Road and hope was alive.

We started at the Buddhist Temple (www.buddhisttemple.ca) where the scent of incense permeated the air and we learned that the goal is to cut the ties to sufferings and ego that bind us. Our delightful guide shared that Buddhists believe in relative truth - he gave the example of looking at a flower as a person, fish and bee - each being sees the same flower but their perspectives are different.  We see through human eyes, fish see through curved eyes and bees through compound eyes.  Each of us experience the same flower but in a different way, so we are all partly right. Interestingly, we also learned that anyone may become a Buddha - it may take several incarnations, and to reach full enlightenment you must cut even your tie to Buddhism at the last possible second before your death.  The temple was ornate - bright golden statues with red accents, parishioners bringing offerings of food and flowers - and fascinating.  Our tour guide was delightful. 

From there we moved to a Mennonite Brethren Church (www.richmondbethel.ca) and its familiarity was refreshing.  As a Christian denomination we found a sense of home - Lydia said this was her favorite place we visited because it was most like what she knew at Fort Hill (www.forthillchurch.org).  We saw the nursery, the worship space, the playground.  They were hosting a 'strike camp' for families who needed care for their children during the strike.  We talked about our loving God and grace and community.  It was lovely. 

We moved onto a Hindu Temple (www.ramkrishnamandir.com) where we removed our shoes at the door and entered in silence.  Our host was a lovely woman who invited us to sit on the floor of the worship space and talked to the children about yoga, meditating by concentrating on breathing and engaging our whole body in worship.  She encouraged them to roll on the floor (which they were more than ready to do by this time of day) and talked with them about reincarnation and the privilege of returning to earth as a bird or elephant.  She offered us food and many happily partook. 

Our next stop was at a mosque (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Richmond-Jamia-Mosque/162309383806206).  Again, we removed our shoes and women covered their heads as a sign of respect for their worship space.  We entered into a large room carpeted with a linear design that helped guide people where to sit for prayers.  The niche in the room indicated the direction you would face for prayers and there were no pictures on the walls or decorations around the room.  You see, these decorative pieces could serve as distractions from Allah and could, potentially, become idols, so they are not used.  Our host taught us a great deal about Islam, emphasizing that Muhammad is not the founder of Islam - instead, he is the last and greatest prophet.  They offered us refreshments before we left.  The homemade samosas were some of the best I've ever tasted and the hospitality was lovely.

The final stop of the day was a Sikh Temple (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nanaksar-Gurdwara/167366943286558).  We all covered our heads here and removed our shoes again.  We learned that the key belief in the Sikh tradition is that we are all one and there is one God.  It was interesting to learn that there is someone in their worship space reading their holy book twenty-four hours a day.  There's even a curtained bed above where they sit so readers may take rest as needed.  Our host was a delightful man who made sure we knew we were invited to partake from their cafeteria which is also open 24 hours per day and the food is always free.

Our next trip was to Lynn Valley Ecology Center - it's about a 25 minute drive from our building and shares a great deal of information about wildlife in our neck of the woods as well as the flora and fauna here.  We watched a movie - "Wild in the City" - which I expected to be akin to a National Geographic production.  Instead, I think the film and I were roughly the same age and there was no narration for the first 10 minutes - simply the sounds of someone playing "The Entertainer" on the piano.  I got nervous the kids would zone out and get squirmy, but, instead, they started recognizing buildings downtown and various animals they'd seen as they had meandered through Stanley Park or along the seawall.  Then, an NPR-esque voice began a soothing narration and afterwards, we left to explore the valley.  We crossed the suspension bridge [without incident I might add] and went down to the 30-foot pools.  Henry cliff jumped for the first time into the glacial water while Lydia cheered him on.  They played with their friends and built and destroyed dams and rockhopped a la Montreat.

Henry and friends jumped from the rock outcroppings in the back of the photo.  Big fun!

 

Lydia and our buddy watching the older kids cliff jump

Relaxing in the Lynn Canyon headwaters

What turned out to be our final field trip before school returned to normal schedule, was to Vancouver's City Hall.  Betty was our tour guide and gave us insight into the art deco building's design, the city's crest, the building approval process and council chambers.  We actually sat in the council chambers to watch a video outlining a brief history of Vancouver.  The kids were most entertained by the gold plated mace gifted to Vancouver from the UK.  We left with souvenirs and photos in the press area. 

Gold-plated mace - notice Queen Elizabeth keeping watch above

Council Chambers

Henry making a very important announcement at City hall's press area

Checking out models of future buildings around Vancouver with a buddy

Statues outside City Hall of big legs - Lydia stomped on their toes :)

Our final trip will be to Victoria to see our provincial Parliament in action.  We will head that way on October 8 and look forward to the fun ferry ride there and back, as well as a visit to the Royal British Columbia Museum.  It will be a nice celebration of our survival and of the community who rallied together to get through this trying time.  It really does take a village, y'all, and we're fortunate to have landed in a place with people who are willing and able to try their darndest to make lemonade out of lemons - even when it's hard to maintain a positive attitude.  Here's to a new school year - may it be as normal as they come and may the drama be behind us.

OFFICIAL First Day of 2014-2015 school year

Life's Train Wrecks

I've never borne witness to a train wreck - thankfully. However, we ventured to the site of a decades-old train wreck tens days ago or so. It's become quite a novelty around here and lots of folks hike into the woods to see the seven rail cars that remain from the crash. As the story goes, the railway company likely decided it was too expensive to extract the cars from the forest so they just left them there - gnarled and rusting. As we wandered through the wreckage, Philip and I joked that Harrison Ford was surely going to jump out of the twisted metal boxes a la The Fugitive. The cars are scattered through the forest that has grown up around them and mountain bikers have turned portions of the wreckage into a bike park - with bridges and ramps around the cars and sometimes on top of them. I can't imagine riding my bike over the roots that run along the ground like veins and arteries to get to the wreckage - much less intentionally riding my bike off the top of a 6' tall rail car! The cars also serve as homes to some - as evidenced by the bedspeads inside them and the remnants of campfires and various beverage cans strewn about. The whole scene makes for quite an experience as you wind along the Cheakamus River en route to the frozen-in-time disaster scene.

Cheakamus River - the glacial waters are a beautiful green/blue color

Here's the thing - what was once left as forgotten rubbish has become a destination. It's become a place of renewal, of physical challenge and of home to some. Grafitti artists have decorated the twisted old metal cars in a way that seems so shout, "Welcome! We're glad you're here!" Strangers cross paths here and say hellos. This abandoned place has become the site of spontaneous, temporary community - and its new reality probably never crossed the minds of the number crunchers who determined it easier to cut their losses than tidy up the mess they had made. My aha! moment came when it dawned on me that we've all lived through our own train wrecks - more than a few sometimes - and we're life continues when we find a way to redeem the wreckage and make it into something beautiful - even home. The analogy reaches further still when you think about the fact that these wrecks happen when a train is in the midst of a journey - going somewhere - when it's stopped abruptly and unexpectedly.  Alas - the journey doesn't wait - damage must be assessed, 'new normals' defined.  If the train stayed parked on the railway after a wreck, commerce would come to a halt, other journeys prematurely truncated.  The wreck, while informing the railway's future, can't be allowed to definitively end all journeys that travel that road. 

 

 

The thing that looks like a wooden palette is part of the bike path.

Native art - the orca

Grizzly Bear

Bridges for bikers and hikers

We're in the midst of a nasty, nasty teacher strike here in British Columbia. The whole province missed two weeks at the end of last school year due to the strike and there is no indication when we will go back to school this fall. I'm irritated. I'm sick of the political pandering. I'm super-sick of the fact that both sides keep saying they want what's 'best for the children'. Give me a break - what's best for the children is that they go to school. We're lucky though. I'm at home full time and can try to serve as my children's teacher. Families that have two working parents are scrambling to find childcare. It's a messy, messy wreck indeed. [Full disclosure: my attitude is not positive. But - we're in this reality and I've got to figure out a way to help my children learn and make the best of it.] So, each day we learn. The glimpses of redemption include: friends who share curriculum they find online that has been immensely helpful; books of curriculum at Costco that cover Canadian standards; a plethora of field trip opportunities in our backyard to help in hands-on learning; a supportive husband who helps make sure the house stays tidy and reminds me to breathe as I don the hats of mama, teacher, lunchlady, janitor and wife. I hope and pray that Henry and Lydia will look back on this time as a positive time - and that they even have a little fun with their mama as their teacher. I'm learning quickly that my patience needs work, routine is important and days are long. But we're working our way through the wreckage - finding a way to try and build our own bike park amidst it and hoping a resolution to the strike will bring renewal and solace to a currently disjointed scene.

The week we took this hike we had gotten some really hard news. We learned that friends from Charleston had to bid farewell and bury their 18 year old daughter just a week after she began her freshman year in college. Their sweet girl had been one of 'my kids' when I served a church in Mt. Pleasant - when we met, she was the age that Henry is now. She was shy, had sparkly eyes and a smile that lit up her entire face. She had 2 sisters and her mom had been part of the committee who called me to the church position and her dad and Philip were both engineers with experience at the same firm. I learned more than I realized from their family - they parented with love, boundaries and faith. They showed me what it looked like to be involved in the lives of your children and the lessons I learned from them have helped shape me into the parent I am today. The news that their daughter was gone was abrupt and tragic - and I was a wreck. For the first time since we moved here, homesickness was palpable. I wanted to be with and among 'my people'. I wanted, selfishly, to be able to grieve this loss in the midst of a community that had helped raise me. I wanted to hug my parents and my sister and I wanted my children to be surrounded by people who had known them since birth and loved them deepest. I cried. I hugged my own children tighter and we prayed - for her family and for the doctors who had cared for her and for all children. We prayed that every child could know the love that she had known and that the community who loves her and her family could heal together. I felt stuck in sadness but something about being among those broken, twisted railway cars helped me shift perspective. How could I find a way to redeem the grief? How could I react in a way that honored her memory and family? In that moment, it occurred to me that I'd never told her family how they had impacted me and I needed to do that. That simple act moved me into a new focus - and I realized that there were lots people I need to thank for their role in my becoming. This would be the conduit by which this wreck was ushered toward becoming something more beautiful.

Inukshuk in the forest - a native way of marking a path; pointing the way - these had been built about every 10 feet along the hiking path leading back to the railroad

Now I understand that while I've never personally witnessed a train wreck in its literal sense, I've survived more than a few in the figurative, and am wading through a couple as we speak. I know I'm not alone - we've all got our own wrecks and trying to leave in our wake places where hope springs from disaster is helpful and beautiful. I see wreckage in a new way now - it's a birthing ground for something we haven't thought of yet - something to redeem the mess. And that makes me want to live intentionally. May we all try to see one another as survivors and agents of rebirth. May we be part of continuing the journey and helping point the way when we see people stuck in the wreckage. Maybe, just maybe, if we shift our perspective the world will become a better place - heaven knows we've all got something to share.

 

Continuing the journey...