My wife’s huge mistake (6am convos, Babel, building character via mandated discussion groups, the not-so-secret lives of celebrities, cryptography).
6am
Drank coffee and chatted with my friend about Socrates, education, technology, Silicon Valley parents, electronics in the classroom, and changing norms in learning, the trait of Attention, and the importance of words versus pictures.
Pre-breakfast
I told our 6-year old last night that I was unhappy with the state of their shared room, and he took this to heart; rejecting breakfast until he had satisfactorily made not only his bed, but both his brothers’, and arranged their bedroom to his aesthetic taste. He did so with a barely disguised grin, and my heart bounced.
Old Testament world-building
We talked about the Tower of Babel tale in the book of Genesis. I divulged that it’s one of my favorite stories, in large part because of its complexity and mystery. Think about the logistics, on multiple levels. It’s a catapult for conversation and query. Ted Chiang wrote a wonderful short story about this. Not a spiritual one in any sense, but one I enjoyed greatly because of the on-the-boots perspective imagining the motivations and lives of workers on the tower.
Poetry
We opened with some Emily Dickinson. Despite her preoccupation with Death - or perhaps because of it? - she is a lovely way to begin the day; to feel the elegant stumblings of her word arrangements and cryptic notations of both the concrete and the abstract; I love the way she noticed the little things and found beauty around her increasingly-small physical world.
Soundtrack a life
I spoke with our younger boys for a bit in a discussion group. This discussion group was a mandated session, required by me, and necessary for their education and character development. It is an ongoing trial and horrific ordeal for them. Their older siblings had to go through it, and sometimes still do. It involves having to dialog with me about Conflict. it involves having to give complete attention and talk about The Golden Rule and its tangible meaning in our lives and relationships. It’s a pretty good rule for living. But we all forget sometimes, and that’s where I come in as a handy reminder.
I’d like to think that someday they’ll be grateful for these guided, mandated conversational sessions. Or at least they’ll have something to laugh at together, and maybe co-author a memoir about Life With Father.
Social Studies
A 10th grader works on writing closing arguments for a mock trial revolving around the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.
Maths
A 7th grader works on solving equations in inequalities.
Example: -2x = 20
The imperative of play
I ordered them to play, and play today included Mr. Potato Head combined with wood block building. A six-year old joined this with forays into dancing and balancing on a large sturdy cardboard tube that inexplicably made its way from the garage into our living room. There were also glances at me, and whispering and giggling. I have been meaning to find out what these were about.
Conversations and People
Long ago, my wife made a mistake. Yes, my lovely Countess Becca. This is what she did:
She brought home People magazine from her office.
I don’t think of myself as stodgy or stuffy. I love movies and entertainment of all levels, and can get caught up in celebrity stuff sometimes. I guess I thought of ourselves more as a Wired, National Geographic, Atlantic family than…People.
Guess who’s in the minority? Yes. Me.
Our older kids gobbled them up. Our oldest son shrieked at any references or photos of the Royal Family. Oh, we still have the other magazines and millions of books around. But People is what gets pored over and brings the shrieks. Fine. I can be fun too. Except…
…except when I look over and see not one, but two fresh children reading different copies of People. By fresh children, I mean ages 3 and 6. They’re old copies, and the fresh readers are coloring and marking them up, and burst into their sister’s room to show and share with her, and next thing I peek in and they’re camped out around her bed while she’s trying to read Grisham’s Testament and they’ve got these old celebrity rag magazines splayed open and are giggling their way through, pointing out every possible Olivia Rodrigo sighting with whoops and gasps and demands to show her immediately. Their sis tolerates for a while, and eventually boots them out. I make her do it though. I could have made her life easier for a minute. But I didn’t.
I smile, and consider thumbing through one myself.
Prelude to a Neal Stephenson novel
In the same way I like the idea of quantum physics and high math, I like the idea of codes and cryptography. There’s a reason some subjects are left to the experts though. Here’s why:
We have a giant whiteboard. A real whiteboard. Not a fancy electronic smart one. A dumb one that you write on with dry erase markers. I love it. We use it a lot, and I write a lot of things on it; outlines for the day, snippets of poetry and Latin, schedules and ideas and quotes and…sometimes I want to remind myself, or some of us, of something, so I write something cryptic up there, something that I am guaranteed to remember, something that without fail, kind of like my dad remembering his passwords for most things, something that there is no way I can forget. It’s a clue to myself to remember something.
Except I manage to consistently mislead myself and lose track of what I was trying to cleverly remind myself of.
In this case, I wrote the phrase J G CC - BoR
I am hoping it comes back to me.
Happy scenes from today
A 12yo boy sweeping the dining room as sunlight bursts though the windows
A 12yo boy reading The Far Side to his younger brothers snuggled up, and explaining what different panels mean
A family game of Spot-It
Starting Mission Impossible with the Olders
Two musicians playing instruments and singing their hearts out on a living room floor
Summary
So we learned some stuff, and did some stuff, and went outside and tried to assemble an old workbench, and some kids worked with some animals and shoveled their poop - the animals’ - for pay, and there were some vibrant dialogs. It was a Wednesday, and it was good.
