Sunday, November 29, 2009

Thanksgiving in Venice

Thanksgiving is always hard for us. The holiday does not mean that much to me--I wasn't raised with Thanksgiving, and the menu is too full of things sweet and mashed for my taste. Moreover, we have no extended family to speak of that we could share it with. Most of my family is abroad, George's parents are dead, and his older kids have tended to spend it with their mom. Now that they are all grown-up, they often visit the families of their significant others, American families that have strong Thanksgiving traditions.

So years ago we figured out that the end of November was a perfect time to go abroad. The flights are at their rock-bottom cheapest, and you can bargain if you are renting an apartment. Again and again we plan to go to some new place in the world, and invariably we end up, again, in Venice, taking a place far away from the hoopla of tourists. For a week, or more, we come and on a very tight budget pretend we live here, belong here, are Venezians. We play the game so well that by now, although we speak almost no Italian, tourists stop to ask as for directions.

Above: This is building in which we rent a small two bedroom.


Left: This is the courtyard you enter once you have opened the main portico with a huge key. It's very quiet.

Below: After using another big key on a door off the courtyard, you get to "our" little house. We have a small wintry courtyard of our own. "Our" little place occupies a couple of rooms on the first two floors. Did I mention it's very quiet?

Why Venice? It's the most beautiful place on earth--for me. It's so very old. It has survived fires, plagues, endless wars, rising winter tides. There is so much to see, to think about, to feel. The city is--improbably--built on water. Improbably, it resists destruction. Wandering for days around its alleys and passages, through its churches and museums, I tend to perceive marble seeping into my spine. I feel stong, invincible. If Venice can hang in there, so can I. One's own silly troubles seem just that--silly. It helps that there is fresh and bountiful food of beckoning colors to be bought at open-air markets where the vendors are friendly, and that the wine is cheap, and that the air smells of salt and frozen seaweed and is full of the warm sound of churchbells. Here, I'm always, first and foremost, happy.

For Simon the trip is not all joy thus far. He says he is homesick for all things American: his friends, his home, his toys, the Florida sunshine, Burger King. He's a bit like the American tourist from hell. Back in Florida the supermarkets are bigger, he says, as are the refrigerators, washing-machines, bathrooms, restaurants, roads, etc. And, of course, the TV sucks. If he hears English spoken by anyone, he hits upon them all smiles: "Where do you come from? I'm from Miami. My name is Simon." At a restuarant in Murano, he said to the waiter, "You look just like Millard Fillmore, do you know that?" Simon was right--he did. I found myself struggling to explain in a mix of English and Spanish to the confused and apprehensive waiter, who didn't know if he had been praised or offended, who Fillmore was. "Un presidente Americano. Un buono uomo," I kept repeating, hoping he understood. But by nightfall, Simon will acknowledge he had a good day. It helps that you can get a small gelato for less than 2 Euro.

And it helps that in this town, where so little is recognizable to him, where there is so little he desires--there are no American bookstores, or a Gamestop, or a cinema, or a Video Arcade type place--he found sailboats. Simon has been learning to sail and was delighted to look down from the bellfry of San Giorgio Maggiore--and there they were.

I, in turn, who desire so little in Miami, am full of wishes and appetites: for Pistachio cake, and marzipan, and that apartment at the top of so many buildings. If you look closely, you can see they have a small roof-top garden.



I daydream how in that apartment I would be endlessly happy, eating little peaches shaped of marzipan. One feels so alive when one is full of wants. I, who hardly ever have my feet out of Birkenstocks, today saw a pair of boots, and a flashy purple handbag, and red mittens. I wanted them all. None of these items, except for the pistachio cake, will be bought. But it is lovely to covet them for a day.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Photographs

A Photograph of Zachary Taylor.
Steadily, Simon continues to read a presidential biography every week: Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce. Simon notices, about each one, that he, too, could not fix the problem of slavery.

“They're not as smart as Abraham Lincoln. They're not as courageous,” Simon declares. This week, reading about Franklin Pierce, he exclaims with genuine excitement: “Oh goody, Pierce is the fourteenth president. Only two to go until Lincoln. Lincoln will fix everything.”

Oh, goody. I'm delighted by Simon's excitement. I didn't know he had been keeping such careful count, or that he had fully comprehended how all pervasive the problem of slavery was, how it was the growling grizzly bear in the Oval Office and in Congress for every administration, somehow kept appeased by a diet of compromises.

But Simon does understand--the south insisted on slavery, the north wanted it abolished, yet year in, year out, decade in, decade out, the Union survived due to the imperfect but devoted work of this group of presidents.

Or, to be honest, that's what I understand. Simon gets that there was a BIG problem, that the BIG problem needed to be fixed, and that “forever” went by without it getting fixed.

Grown-ups value compromises. Eleven-year-old boys who have worked their way through stacks of superhero comics, as well as all things Greek, want someone to walk in with an army of 300 and fight to the death of all, if necessary, and change the course of history

* * *

The series of biographies Simon has been reading, Getting to Know the U.S. Presidents by Mike Venezia, is full of illustrations: painted portraits, etchings, maps, period prints and posters; however, beginning with these presidents, with only the exception of William Henry Harrison, the biographies invariably include a photographic portrait. How does my thoughtful, deep-feeling son respond to these black and white pictures, pictures that are not heroic portraits, pictures that show lined and wise faces in the flesh, in need of a haircut, and in rumpled clothes?

"Mom, he is so very ugly. He is so old. I don't like him. I don't like him at all. Actually, I think I hate him.”

Hate him? Really? When I pursue the question--“Why?”--I get an answer that reiterates what he has already said.

Somewhat irritated, and a little loud he says: “I told you already, Mom--are you deaf, or something?--because he's very old and ugly.”

I point out Zachary Taylor's military accomplishments, or Millard Fillmore's success in getting Japan to open up to trade.

"Yes, Mom, that's true. But they're old and ugly.”

So this is what I've been thinking about this week, working in my yard when I've had a minute--it's planting season in Miami. Why would Simon say that?

Yes, TV is to blame. From the cartoons he watches, he learns that surfaces seem to matter a lot.

And it is his age. Having recently become aware of just how young he is, he wants to have some power over the world, and naming its imperfections gives him a fleeting illusion of control. Again and again, he impulsively takes aggressive language out for a spin, sees what it feels like to flex your mots injuste muscles. So-and-so is old, or dumb, or mean, or fat, or ugly, or has bad judgment. Or worse. A moron. A turd.

And it is the kids his age he hangs with. They're all nice, yet every third word out of their mouths is an adjective describing something or someone with utter contempt: ugly, lame, boring, stupid.

It's a full-time job just to fight this verbal self-assertion, to talk about respect, generosity, kindness; to point out that no adult in our lives talks this way; to speak of the character of heroes—none of them called someone a moron; to remind him what it feels like to be on the receiving end of nastiness; to ask him what kind of world he wants to live in.

But I don't think that all the above adds up to an answer that explains why Simon responds so negatively to these presidents. I think the answer lies in the fact that of these presidents there are photographs.

Zachary Taylor, like William Henry Harrison, was a war hero with an astounding track record. He fought wars against the Indians, the British, and the Mexicans. Often Zachary Taylor was outnumbered. Usually, rifle in hand, he fought right alongside his men.

Of Harrison there are no photographs that Simon has seen. But he has seen one of Taylor--see above. In that picture, he looks like the guy at your local supermarket who sweeps up the broken jar of tomato sauce, should it slip out of your hand. Taylor doesn't resemble a hero. He looks like a man who has had a rough life, and he wears that life on his face.

I find myself pouring over the photographic portraits--can't keep my eyes off them. These men were human beings: tired, spent, dignified, disheveled, strong, full of feeling and breath.

It is their very humanity Simon finds troubling, I think. He hasn't figured out yet that there are no super-heroes with super-human powers, only human beings--like Simon, like the aging presidents in the photographs, like the guy at the supermarket.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Moral Passion

“I'm a bit sad that you dwell so much on the sad and depressing stuff of history,” my mother wrote me this week. Mother is smart as a whip, and she cares deeply about Simon.

She's right--the readings last week were high on the sadness and horror scale: all consuming fires on two continents, the Plague, doom and destruction. That combination of misery wasn't on purpose—that's where we were in the textbooks that week: the Great Chicago Fire for American history, and the Great London Fire followed by the Plague for world history.

“You probably just don't mention the positive, the creative, the artistic and technical breakthroughs,” Mother went on to write, adding, ”But they are so important. Don't forget them. How about journeys of discovery?"

Good questions--how about all the good stuff in history? The discoveries, the great feats of technology and construction, the grand achievements in the arts?

Many are covered, wonderfully so, in this year's primary textbook for American history, The American Story—100 True Tales from American History by Jennifer Armstrong. We've read stories about the building of canals and railroads; the discovery of a dinosaur in New Jersey; the finding of gold in California; the development of the clipper ship; the reconnaissance balloon corps used during the Civil War; the introduction of the steam-engine into mining; and Alexander Graham Bell and his telephone, among others.

But none of these stories interests Simon as much as the ones that involve a tragedy, a searing injustice, or a unforgivable lapse in judgment. The violent and the shameful moments in history lead to longer conversations, to conversations that get continued over lunch and dinner, to big questions that rise unbidden from the back of the car on the way to the supermarket to buy lettuce and detergent.

“Mom--I have a question."

“What's your question?”

“Why do some people kill good presidents?"

And as we wander through the aisles of our local Publix, he turns and says: “What do you think was worse? World War I or World War II?"

Sometimes his questions leave me breathless because I'm so unprepared. He will have worked his way through an audiobook on his own, and I'll have no idea what historical moment he's been cogitating about.

Why do the dark moments in history take such hold of Simon's imagination? He's only eleven. He still sleeps with a nightlight and his arm around two stuffed polar bears called Erik and Dora, much loved presents from my mother.

A couple of years ago, when we studied Christopher Columbus for the first time, Simon kept going to the globe and tracing the daunting westward route to India that led instead to America. This year, everything has changed—not only has Simon grown almost four inches in the last twelve months, he has grown in ways I'm slow to perceive. This year, when the Columbus story was covered again in world history, all Simon wanted to talk about is smallpox and other diseases the Europeans exported wholesale to the Americas.

The last few days we read about Alexander Graham Bell and about Custer at Little Big Horn, but the technological wonder of the telephone could not compete with Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer's failure to listen to his Indian scouts. They told him not to attack the Cheyenne and Lakota. They told him he was vastly outnumbered. But Custer attacked anyway. He was going to teach the Indians a lesson. Custer--and every single one of his soldiers--was killed.

“What a stupid moron!” says Simon with utter indignation--moron is a favorite word these days thanks to The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. “Why didn't he listen to his scouts? And couldn't Custer count? Didn't he go to school? I can count. I wouldn't have attacked.” Simon is outraged.

The truth is of late is he is outraged a lot. Three days ago, for world history, we read about Louis XIV. Louis XIV was decreed another moron. “Why did he buy so much golden stuff when the peasants were hungry?"

In Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw suggests that the first great passion that we feel as children is not love--but the moral sense. Suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, children are inflamed with moral passion, and from that passion the adult is born. As one of his characters says:

All the other passions were in me before; but they were idle and aimless...grotesque and ridiculous to the mature intelligence. When they suddenly began to shine like newly lit flames it was by no light of their own, but by the radiance of the dawning moral passion. That passion dignified them, gave them conscience and meaning, found them a mob of appetites and organized them into an army of purposes and principles. My soul was born of that passion.

Late last week, I came upon Simon in bed looking at a book, a hardcover, not a comic book—those were strewn on the floor. His head was lying on his stuffed polar bears. In his hand he was holding a book I had just bought about the Civil War and had left on the coffee table, unsure as to when to introduce it, Photo by Brady—A Picture of the Civil War, also by Jennifer Armstrong. The book, pitched to teenagers, tells the story of the civil war through the pictures taken by Matthew Brady and the photographers he hired to make a record of the Civil War.

“Come here, Mom. Look at this. Look--the rebels stole the soldiers' shoes."

I sit down on the side of his bed and together we look at a picture of the dead at Gettysburg.

“They stole their shoes, Mom. Do you see? That's not fair."

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Rust Stains

This week we read about disasters, and more, and more—disasters. First, there was the Great Chicago Fire, and then the swarms of locusts that swept through the mid-west in the 1870s. That pesky omnivorous scourge didn't just devour everything green, everything planted with such care by pioneering settlers--crops , orchards, gardens--but also sheared the wool right off the backs of sheep.

Our readings this week for world history were also replete with calamity: Oliver Cromwell and his bloody Protectorate, followed by the Restoration of Charles II, a time filled with the silence of the plague, the silence of the dead and dying--all you could hear were the funeral bells tolling, followed by the deafening roar of the 1666 Great Fire of London, which destroyed four-fifths of the city.

I thought Simon would have trouble handling all this suffering, but that aspect of the calamities did not interest him very much. Instead, he focused single-mindedly on rewriting history, on fixing the problem, on making sure such catastrophes do not happen again.

He said: “Well, Mom, if Chicago had been built out of bricks, the fire wouldn't have happened. Mom, what is our house built out of?”

He said: “I think if I had a farm in Kansas, I would put a net over it. That would work against locusts, wouldn't it, Mom?”

He said: “Mom, if the plague came to Miami, I would bring all the cats from all over America to Florida. I think all the pythons in the Everglades could also help. They would kill the rats that are covered in plague fleas, and that way people would not die."

The next time I toss and turn at 3 AM questioning why I'm spending so much time on history, sometimes at the expense of math and science, which are not studied with exactly the same enthusiasm, I hope I remember the net spread over acres and acres of Kansas farmland, or the rat-eating pythons of the Everglades. Simon is, if nothing else, learning from the past.

As I've told him hundreds of times, I'm so grateful he ended up in our family—just think of it, by some act of magic or fate, he could have been born into another nice family, maybe one in Italy, or Korea, or Wyoming. We would have never met. Instead, Simon ended up born to us. And that's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Should shit happen, I've got the kid who thinks of rat-eating pythons on my team.

* * *

Simon's response to these catastrophes led me not only to muse about the delight and privilege of having him in our lives, it made me aware again of the fact that Simon is an American--a 100% American boy.

At the risk of of generalizing too much, let me try to explain. I think of Americans as viewing disasters as opportunities: opportunities for action, and if action is not possible--learning. There is a relentless optimism, a go-get'em, go-do-it certainty that the impossible can be achieved, even against hopeless odds. And if all else fails, if all you're stuck with is lemons, as they say in this country: make lemonade; make the best of it; make sure it doesn't happen again.

I, on the other hand, when faced with disasters--think of other disasters. I think of wars, genocide, fires, military coups. I think of lives lost. I find myself so consumed by the lugubrious meanderings of my mind that I'm incapable of wrapping my head around the disaster, and am, initially, clueless as to how to begin to fix or improve the problem. (If there is a crisis, you should think twice about having me on your team.) I lack that American positivism. I tend to go to some dark place first. But then my parents were Simon's age in 1945. Their fathers had died. They lived in urban centers that had been, for the most part, bombed into utter ruins.

That year, when the Russians marched into Berlin, they pillaged what was left and raped more than 100,000 women in that city alone, many repeatedly, as punishment for what the Germans had done in Stalingrad. When they came to my grandmother's apartment, which they entered by rifle-butting a panel of the front door, she hid inside a pull-out couch, or so she said. Afterwords, she discovered that they had ransacked the place and had shat in the bathtub and the sink.

She told me this story in the 1980s. I was offering to remove the rust stains in her tub. In America, they had a product that could do the job; I was sure I could find something similar in Berlin. She insisted the stains would never come out. Not rust. Excrement. Die Russen. They had ruined the tub forever. There was no way to change her mind.

We have stains in our tub here in Miami. Five years ago, we had to redo the plumbing in the kitchen and for a couple of months we did dishes in the tub. Something metal scraped against the enamel and the stains will not come out without an enamel repair kit from Home Depot. Day in, day out, I shower in that tub. When I notice the stains, I think of my grandmother, who died a few months before Simon was born. She was a nice lady. Marie was her name. She read me all of Grimm's and Andersen's fairy tales during her visits to Peru long ago. Year in, year out, I fail to make the repairs.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Cowboys

This week we learned that cattle drives began right after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, people were very hungry, and longhorns were brisket and pot pies on legs. With some help, they could get themselves to a railroad, which might be a few states away, and then via rail to the nearest meat-packing plant, where Armour & Co. put them into cans.

I must confess that for decades I thought that cattle drives were about exercising the cows, or getting them to greener pastures, or maybe to another owner. I didn't realize cattle drives were the beginning of the cattle's demise--in a drive today, a can tomorrow, in someone's tummy after that. I didn't know that the history of the drives was intricately linked to the devastation wrought by that war.

* * *

It was Halloween this weekend. In the spirit of our studies, I try to convince Simon to go as a cowboy. No way.

"Mom, that's for little kids. I'm going to go as a criminal with my gun-machine.”

“It's machine-gun, Simon, and you're not going to take it out for Halloween.”

“It just shoots soft pellets, Mom, and I'm not going to aim the gun at anyone. Just up into the air.”

We have a long talk. I speak of our neighborhood being our community, I remind him of the spirit of Halloween, I mention the many younger kids up the street. I tell him that due to terrorist attacks—some of which he knows about—people are scared. I suggest that he dress up as a criminal from history—maybe Henry VIII.

"Nobody knows who that is, Mom,” he says impatiently. Sadly, he is probably right. “Remember, Mom, they don't know who the Vikings were.” Six month ago Simon made a Viking ship and showed it to the neighborhood boys who were out on their scooters and bikes—all public-school fourth and fifth graders. They had never heard of the Vikings.

So we agree he can go trick-or-treating as a criminal but without the gun. He dresses all in black: black gloves, black sunglasses, black tights, and slips a plastic dagger into the pocket of his black jacket—a man in black. He looks more adorable than dangerous, but George and I let him know he definitely has become a terrifying crook, a thief maybe: “Do us a favor, Mr. Thief--stay away from our house.”

It is not easy to raise a boy in this seductive, consumerist, violent culture. When it comes to eleven-year-old boys, that culture takes the form--primarily--of aim-and-shoot video-games, weaponry and paramilitary equipment, and a steady barrage of cartoons and movies where the heroes have mastered the art of treating others with utter contempt. Stay out of my way, moron.

Earlier in the week, Simon had attended a homeschooling Halloween event. He had dressed up as a detective, in George's fedora and my raincoat, a costume he'd come up with in a jiffy, after I reminded him that kids would be dressing up. Looking at himself in the mirror, he said: "This is great." And yet, once we got to the party, a kid called him a dork. Simon was not about to get put down again. He, too, has learned what the culture's expectations are. So on the actual eve of Halloween, he went around the neighborhood armed, ready for combat. Make my day, worm-face.

George and I work hard trying to teach Simon that you can have a great life without being like everyone else, without buying the latest whatever--gaming-console, I-pod, I-phone, cellphone, video-game, weapon, Transformer, sneaker, designer cap, skateboard, t-shirt, or back-pack. Sometimes I feel like I'm pushing back a flood with my bare hands.

We're not nut-case radicals—Simon has a small arsenal of play-weapons, a DS, and access to a TV, but his screen time is limited, and, until recently, play-dates could not involve screens of any kind. So far so good, although I should confess he has a roomful of Lego, and if I can't immediately locate an audiobook at the library, I buy it. It's not like Simon is deprived.

For now, Simon and his friends are happy to play with Lego, or draw, or run around in the back-yard with swords, or play Battleship, or cards. For now. For now, Simon comes back from the homes of other kids and notices they have few toys, only video-games. For now, we have managed to keep his desires at bay and shape days and weeks that are fulfilling. For now, Lego and books and paper and colored pencils—and his screen-time at the end of the day—are enough. From time to time he calls me an “evil mother” because he cannot watch more TV. But then he laughs: “Just kidding.”

But this won't last. He will be called a dork again—and again. And he will try to fix it by being like everybody else. And being like everybody else will involve buying something—a gaming-console, an aim-and-shoot video game, angry music, something that oozes contempt.

I'm not exactly ready for what is coming, but I recognize it for what it is. Small consolation. I just hope I have a light touch, and some humor, when it shows up.

* * *

Cowboys. My father loved--and loves--cowboys, Westerns, John Wayne. When I was a child and an old John Ford flick was on, I could always bamboozle him into letting us watch TV.

What my father loves about Hollywood cowboys is what I find so appealing about Buddhism. The cowboys from all those movies owned nothing: a horse, a canteen, a bed-roll, a rifle--the miles of this great country stretched out in front of them. There were no fences. The blue sky was all theirs. Having nothing and wanting nothing, they were free. And as Buddhists (and all Hollywood cowboys) know--if you need nothing, own nothing, desire nothing, you will not suffer. (Or, at least, you won't suffer as much.) How do you teach that to a child at the beginning of the 21st century?
________________________________________

My father's favorite cowboy song is Don't Fence Me In. I always thought this was a song that went back to the 19th century. Researching it this week, I discovered it was written by Cole Porter for a movie. There are various wonderful versions of the song on youtube. The one by David Byrne is a favorite.

Reading List

100 True Tales From American History by Jennifer Armstrong.

Getting to Know the U.S. Presidents by Mike Venezia. This is a series. Also check out all of Mike Venezia's other incredible books at his web-site.

Simon loves The Story of the World, Vol. I- IV, by Susan Wise Bauer. He listens to the audiobooks for many hours every day. They play in the background while he fiddles with Legos or does math.


www.theexaminedlife.org

Together with Toni Deveson, Claudia was one of the founding members of www.theexaminedlife.org , a net-based home-education support group for families teaching a secular curriculum in the Miami area. Claudia remains a very active participant. The group is inclusive, welcoming families of all faiths—or lack thereof, and all life-styles. The Examined Life runs a small enrichment co-op for children in grades 4-6. This year, the co-op is covering biology, art appreciation (nine painters), music appreciation (seven composers), history—the Renaissance and beyond, and Latin. All the portfolio-ready materials that Claudia and Toni have developed themselves are available for free at www.theexaminedlife.org , including a comprehensive 36-week enrichment curriculum for the above named topics, as well as the American history project covered in this blog. The website also has a bookstore that carries all the books necessary to teach the curriculum.