The Nine-Year Change

I met with Emily earlier today because I wasn't able to make the class meeting scheduled for tonight. I appreciated the articles she gave us about the 9-year change, and when she asked about potential forums for discussing this and other issues, I thought about our class blog. I originally started it at Anne's suggestion as a way to share what happens in and around the classroom and perhaps to inspire discussion and sharing from others. Perhaps we can start that now?

I am particularly grateful for these articles because they remind me, and reinforce for me, that these eyebrow-raising behaviors of my once-predictable daughter are normal and expected. This is comforting when the once-sunny day becomes "the most miserable that has ever been," and the viscous clouds over her once-cheerful head rumble and brood with frightening ferocity. Was is something I said? Is there a way back?

Her 9-year train seems to have left the station right on time, and it's barreling through those mountain passes huffing and puffing -- ethereal steam morphing into sooty black smoke at regular intervals. I've been a perplexed observer most of the time, never sure what to say or do. Do I become more firm? Do I give her the excessive comfort she seems to need while she yells at me for all I'm doing wrong? Do I try to make a joke? Most of the time I end up feeling like I could really really use an instruction manual.

I now realize, after reading one of Emily's articles, that I'm often too intellectual about it. I talk too much. I reason in every which way, or, losing my patience, snap out insensitive comments to "get over it" -- whatever the "It"-du-Jour happens to be. She would if she could.... So, Steiner wrote about Images. And, I did run out and get The Power of Stories -- thank you, Meri :). And I'm feeling like it would help me to take a more imaginative approach to all of this. From one of the articles:

"Rather than seeking an 'intellectual' response to life's questions, what the child really desires is an understanding that arises from the soul -- a 'feeling' understanding emanating from a sympathetic interrelationship with the states of human evolution and the world in general. Thus the most profound question for the child is: 'Who am I and where is my place in the world?' This is a markedly different outlook from the 'dream-like' existence which had been like a protective sheath or cocoon around the child. Instead, the child now begins to search for the 'reality' of life."

From: The Child's Changing Consciousness and the Waldorf Education, by Rudolf Steiner (1923)

I told Avella the other day to go though the mood that suddenly hijacked her happy day with the sobbing threat to remain forever. "You can't go around this or over this -- you have to just go through it." I didn't even know what I meant by it, but now I can see that 9-year train shooting into the side of the mountain through that gaping tunnel that is home to so many ghouls. And, bringing myself into that visualization, I become more sensitive to just how difficult this transition period can be. I remember being frightened by the tunnels at the zoo when the noise of the train suddenly imploded in that thrust into darkness, and familiar faces turned ghoulish in the flashes of sickly light. It seemed everyone around me was laughing and having a grand time. They didn't perceive my distress, or the cause of it. Of course, the cause is imaginary. But it doesn't make the feelings from it any less real. That is what I have to remember with my daughter. I have been there. To our own degrees, we are all still there.

All of this challenges me to remember my own experiences in year 9. It is a difficult place to return to. I don't know why. It seems I can remember my years before and after without much difficulty. But trying to enter into my mind at that age takes some effort. My baby half-brother was just born and our newly-meshed family (from 3 kids to 6) was feeling its growing pains. I was no longer the youngest, but I still received the brunt of my family's bad moods. My 2 natural siblings were both teenagers, and seemed to be flung further and further away from me by some centrifugal force. My mother had moved to her third state and I still didn't see or hear from her very often. My sister was kicked out of the house for her rebelliousness. Our next-door neighbor, my brother's best friend -- the one he played Dungeons & Dragons with and who tolerated his pesky little sister -- was killed in a car accident a few miles from our house just after he got his driver's license. I will never forget that night that we found out. I will never forget the energy that came off of my brother as he ran to his room in the basement. There was no talking about it. I remember sitting alone in my room and drawing a rose in my journal, wondering what I was supposed to feel and think about this thing called death. Shortly after this we moved.... I supposed I'm starting to remember why it is so hard to remember.

I see how my daughter expresses her bold 9 year-old self when her life -- though certainly not perfect -- is a lot more warm, loving, and supportive than mine was. I didn't act out, because it wasn't an option. I'm sure I cried often, but it was done alone. There wasn't anyone in my life at home who wondered -- or had the time to wonder -- what life was like for me. I think I stopped wondering what life was like for myself. By the time I reached 14, I had pretty much stopped talking altogether. I felt I barely existed.

This may sound pretty extreme or depressing, but as I remember all of this, I realize that being fully present and engaged with our children -- particularly as they go through these tremendous transitions -- means helping to bring them to life. It is no less than that. Avella shocked me the other day by saying out of the blue, "Mom! I'm so glad you made me." I laughed but quickly corrected: "I didn't make you, God made you." She said it again, and I corrected again. But I feel now that I stand corrected. God makes all, certainly. But God makes through me. And I make her -- every day. Through my love, guidance, and attention. I know the power of these things, because I experienced not having these things. Like many others.

I wafted ghostlike through my "Feeling" and "Thinking" development years, as the Steiner philosophy perceives them, so that by the time I was in my early twenties, I was almost mad with the question: 'Who am I and where is my place in the world?'. There was no safe place to live through this question as a child. There was no adult who could hold that space or begin to reflect any sort of valuable answer back. At some point, I could not hold that transformative question down any longer -- it burst to the surface like a spitting, seething volcanic eruption. I was 9 years old in my twenties, and it was, I believe, a lot harder to handle.

So thank God my daughter feels safe enough to express her dramas and her fears. Her joys and her sorrows. Her silly songs and dances as well as her rolling around on the floor in devastated agony. Maybe I can stop trying to understand it, and how to respond to it, from a distant intellectual capsule. Maybe I can allow that 9 year-old part of myself to roll around on the floor with her (internally) and wail with an abandon I couldn't express in my childhood. And after we're finished wailing (she outwardly and I inwardly), I might be able to give her an even more compassionate embrace than I could after raising my eyebrows and scratching my head. And maybe it won't take her quite so long as it took me to feel okay about being on Earth in this body and making for herself a perfectly wonderful answer for who she is and where she belongs.

"Our highest endeavor 

must be to develop 'free' human beings 

who are able of themselves to impart purpose 

and direction to their lives."  

~ Rudolf Steiner

A World of Shelters

Our 3rd-Graders express themselves through Shelter:

Ava

Elijah

Voss

Claire

Carson

Lucas

Taylor

Isaiah

Eli

Jack

Avella

Cypress

Walking into Winter with Our Own Small Lights

In Passing

How swiftly the strained honey

of afternoon light

flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off

its special mystery

in order to break into blossom:

as if what exists, exists

so that it can be lost

and become precious

~ Lisel Mueller

July was never meant to hold Thanksgiving. There is no room for it, with its abundance of warmth, sunlight, adventures, and leisure time with loved ones. In fullness there is no space for gratitude, for depth of gratitude comes with loss. It seems to be the way we work.

It is therefore fitting, and right, that Thanksgiving has been placed towards this time of year, when even the sunlight, though it may still seem abundant most of the day, takes a cooler slant, seems a little thinner, warns us, almost, that it could go at any moment. Time is spread too thin – it is practically threadbare at the elbows. And hours are filled with doings and workings, so that, even if our loved ones are near, it seems we hardly see them.

In days of old, we would have had harvest-consciousness at this time of year. Working hard to collect the fruits of our labor, and (if a good year) celebrating the abundance. But just beyond the celebration of fullness lie the barren fields, the abandoned tools, the chill in the air, and the whisperings of winter death. It is the loss that makes everything precious, and stirs gratitude from the place where things matter. It is the loss that reminds us cyclically that nothing is permanent, everything a temporary gift. 

I am grateful that my daughter is able to receive an education centered in that place where things matter. I am grateful that she is guided by teachers, songs, and rituals that honor the preciousness of life and spirit. I cannot take it for granted. And it is this gratitude that comes to my mind as we prepare for this year’s Lantern Walk.

It is called a Festival, but it is of a different sort. The exuberant energy of May Faire, when life is bursting forth in blossom and color, is transformed at Michaelmas into a last huzzah as we brace ourselves for the coming darkness. As we approach Lantern Walk, this energy withdraws more and more, readying itself for hibernation, donning its reverent cloak.

Lantern Walk, as it is visualized by our Sanderling community, has two equally important components. First, we are invited to come together to create a sacred space through our sharing – of bread, cider, soup, and warm friendship. It is a time just for this – to stop and see one another, and to share with one another in this small escape from the comings and goings of our lives. And second, within the comfort of this sacred space, we are invited to share the experience of facing that which lies just under the abundance – under the fullness of activity and chatter that fills and forms our daily consciousness. We are invited into silence. Into darkness. Into mystery. We are invited to demonstrate to our children how to offer reverence back to the wonder of Spirit that sustains us. We are invited to learn from our children how to walk into great darkness with innocence and a humble light of our own making.

Let us walk with gratitude together. For just a few hours, let us forget our judgments and dissatisfactions. Let us forget ourselves, and stand with quiet courage, humility, and reverence with our children in this space that is offered to us. Let us not take this day for granted. 

More People Want to Live Like This

My passion for education once found me commuting over 2 hours a day to try to teach high school out in the desert. The best gifts those 12 months gave me was depth of prayer and a visceral sense of what I really wanted. (And what I did not!) 

What I didn't want, was life in a car, only to deliver me into a system of education so removed from the human soul that participating in it seemed to bleed my own soul right out of me. And what I wanted, came to me in simple images and feelings  as I let my tired spirit soar over the inland landscape as I drove back and forth. 

I wanted to make bread. To drink milk warm from a pitcher. To feel earth in my hands and the sun on my head. To laugh on a daily basis.... The images were simple. The list was short. 

With the mantra of these images in my mind, I walked away from my secure job so that I could be a mother in the way that made sense to me. I didn't know at the time what my life would look like one year, one month, one day after that, but I felt that I was opening myself to embrace that which spoke to my spirit. Maybe it would involve bread. And growing things....

This past April, our 2nd graders journeyed to the Sugarman's Sugar Sweet Farm to experience a day in the life of a farmer. They gathered eggs (and chickens), pet the wooly lambs, drank milk straight from the udder, came nose-to-nose with llamas, and learned about the rhythms of a rural life. They came home covered in hay, dirt, and sweat. And grinning from ear to ear. 

Yet another reason why this way of learning and growing makes sense to me. It is rooted in life. The real touch and feel and smell of life. It is about sun, and bread, and growing things. 

Maybe I left teaching in the public system because I finally realized I couldn't create a way that felt true from within it. Stowing away in the belly of the ship hoping to re-steer the ship was not the most efficacious approach. The only result was nausea. No, give me dry land. With earth I can dig my fingers into, with the clucking of chickens, the wholesomeness of fresh milk, and the earthy smell of sunning lambs. 

Our children need to touch things, and pick them up, taste them, and try them out. To engage with the world that is a part of who we are. And our world can be a simple world. I believe we all really want it to be. I believe we would all be happy to slow down a bit. To feel the sun and the earth. To take some silent moments to watch things grow. To consider who we are when we are nose to nose with a llama, or heartbeat to heartbeat with a chicken. Maybe we would breathe a little slower. Let go a little more. Learn without effort. 

This makes sense to me. It is a simple list. But somehow I get the feeling that so much more is happening that cannot be seen behind the glowing smiles of these children's faces. 

I get the feeling that, if given the chance, so many more people would want to live, and learn, like this.  

(Photos thanks to Cindy Issel.)

                           

Mother's Day Tea in 2nd Grade

Another Beautiful May Faire Day