Rules vs. principles
>>Principles are things like treating each other kindly, respecting other people's property, trusting your children. Those principles will look different from home to home in the details, because respecting one child means helping them create some sort of schedule, where another child despises that sort of thing. Unschoolers naturally do things very differently from home to home, even child to child because we are principle, NOT rule driven.<<
Here's something that rarely gets said in the rules vs. principles arena.
Rules are derived from principles.
"Don't play in the street." is derived from the principles of physics regarding mass (two masses cannot occupy the same space), in this instance, a car as one mass and a body as another. This principle of physics as applied in this instance is harmful to the body, not the car.
Because humans have minds and cars don't, we naturally try to avoid the application of the principle by not attempting to put our body in the same space as a car. We know that generally moving cars are found on streets, so we keep our bodies out of the street.
Except if there's a parade, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Further, because we have minds and survival instinct, we transfer that principle of physics into one a human can relate to, and that is, it's better to stay safe than not. It's better to do those things that will not put us in the path of applied physics, and so we have developed as humans the principle of safety.
It is a most basic principle of being human. Maslow and all that. It is applied differently from era to era. "Don't venture out of the cave when the mastodon is nearby." "Don't go out on the sand when the waves are higher than your head." "Don't climb into the gorilla enclosure."
Those are all applications of the principle of safety. They are rules that we have derived from the basic principle of safety, which is derived from the basic principles of physics.
The problem with rules is that they are made to be broken. Principles are not.
"Don't play in the street." Just what do you call a parade? Work? What about the basketball hoop at the end of the cul-de-sac? Basketballs don't bounce on the grass.
Once you can determine that the street is no danger according to the principles of physics--the street is blocked off for the parade; you stay alert for cars--you are free to apply the principles of joy and happiness, in the street or anywhere.
The rules are a watered down outgrowth of misguided attempts to apply principles. It's impossible to make a rule for everything. It *is* possible to apply principles to everything. Principles don't change. The application of them does, and that's how we end up with so many rules.
Moms Support
I posted this on serviceflags.com's user forum in response to a similar post by another mother. I hope it turns into something large.
My son is deploying to Iraq right after Christmas. I have been looking all over the internet for other mothers who feel the way I do about it. I know what you mean when you say your life is at a standstill. Intellectually I know the odds are good that my son will come home. That does not comfort the deepest part of the mother's heart.
Sometimes I get that shaky feeling you get when your toddler walks away from you in the grocery store, and momentarily you don't know exactly where he is. That's how I feel about my son being gone. We've been preparing for this deployment, knowing it was coming, for a whole year, now. I've had time to work through some of the issues. As it gets closer, it just seems to get harder.
My son will be here tomorrow with his wife, for 24 hours. I feel very fortunate to be with him for xmas. After that we won't see him again for many months. We won't be able to just give him a call when we want to chat. His 23rd birthday will come and go, and we'll do our best to celebrate with him long distance. His wife will have her graduation from college and he won't be there to applaud. I am hoping to connect with other mothers in my situation. Since my son is married, I am not in the communication loop between the Army and the family. I have to rely on my daughter-in-law to give me information, and I want to know all of it.
I, too, served in the Army National Guard (my son is in the Reserves), so I am too familiar with what he's going through, the training he is receiving. My former unit in the 39th Brigade is currently serving in Iraq. One of my dearest friends from that unit was killed in the first months there. I know how the Army operates, and so I understand when my son says he doesn't know what day he'll be in Iraq. He doesn't know and they won't tell him until he gets there. The sites and sounds of my own intensive training is still palpable in my memory, these 20 years later. When he describes the training to me on the phone, I can feel it again. It's a mixed blessing, being personally familiar with the ways of the Army.
If anyone knows about a place where mothers are gathered to support each other while their children are deployed, please post it. While mothers and spouses of those deployed have similar worries, it just doesn't seem the same. I specifically want to connect with other mothers. I am not interested in the politics of it. I have my own opinions on that, and it divides us and I would like to focus on the thing that we have in common; the deep and abiding wish to have our children always and forever out of harm's way.
Moving Day
I'm up early today after a couple of days in bed with a sinusy cold that has now moved to my chest. It's one of those days where I'd rather stay in bed a little longer, but life intrudes. Will and I are going to help Mandy pack up their one-bedroom apartment so her parents can move her to her 3 bedroom house a few cities away. It won't take long to pack, and I can't imagine why she needs my help. But Jake wants me to go. I don't mind, really.
Mandy is used to having her family's involvement in things. I don't recall ever asking my mother for help in moving. I really don't mind, but it's a different way that I'm not familiar with.
Mandy also needs me to come to Memphis with her and help her sell the van to Carmax. They got the van for free, so all they get would be profit. But I think they'll be in for a shock at how low Carmax is going to go on it. Jake doesn't want to let it go that low, and I know it will be a point of contention between them if she sells it that cheap. I offered to take it to my house and sell it, but the logistics of getting it there are going to be difficult. I guess I'll just be encouraging and helpful, and help Mandy walk away if necessary.
Jon wants me to come on a carriage ride with him while I'm in Memphis. How in the world I will do that and drive all the way home and see Lemony Snicket with Will and Charles is beyond me. I don't suppose I'll get to see Lemony Snicket tomorrow. But I really want to. Will and I have been looking forward to this day for a long time, and he gets to do it with Charles. But I won't.
I thought juggling my kids' needs when they were little was hard. Jon demands my attention but insists I give it to him from 350 miles away. Will is ignored enough in the day to day while I attempt to get things done, like housework or cleaning out the car. Jake...he's the one I keep thinking I've left behind somewhere. I came out of work the other day to go home, and my mind went through some sort of gathering sequence. I mentally "counted heads", getting orientation to where I was and where my family was and what was next. I found myself reaching behind to grab Jake's hand, because in my head I momentarily realized that I didn't know where he is. I panicked, and then righted myself, but still, I reached back and felt around me as if I were looking for something. It must have been weird to see. The rising surreal panic was weird to feel.
Having a pity party won't help. Better go pack some clothes.
Perspective
Cathy has cancer. She's about 32 and has a 6 yo son Matthew at home, and a husband who adores her. I spent a portion of my husband's office party last night talking with her.
Cathy works for my husband at his office. She's been there a long time, and she's the go-to gal for everything in the office. I don't know exactly what her job is, except maybe doing the books. But she knows everything about the place. I can tell that Charles confides in her about important business things--the numbers. She keeps his confidence locked up like Ft. Knox.
She keeps no secrets about cancer. She was wearing a stunning auburn wig last night. I didn't recognize her at first. She was tall, and thinner than she should be, and wearing a long suede skirt and twinset. I sat down next to her and told her how great she looked in that red wig. She joked about how now everyone's seen all her hair colors. Larry said he thought she looked good as a blond, but he's changed his mind now that he's seen red. Her skin is just the right color for it.
While everyone else was sampling the hor'dourves, I asked Cathy how she was doing. She told me all about what's happening with her chemo, that she's done with this last round for at least 2 months, and how she can't remember how long it takes for her hair to grow back. She told me about how she's losing her hearing a little, but it might come back, and that the growth they removed from her neck during this last round was malignant. I don't know what kind of cancer Cathy started out with 4 years ago. It doesn't matter, though. She has it and it has spread and she's going to die before her boy grows up.
Somehow the conversation moved to attitude. Cathy has a great attitude and she'll tell anyone that they can ask her anything about her cancer and she'll tell them. But she's not pushy about it. She told me all this because I asked. I felt utterly comfortable asking about her hair and other not too personal things. She started talking about perspective and we talked a little about Nick, another of Charles' employees who is now serving in Iraq. She asked about Jake and how he was doing.
I gave her all the updates, that I'd spoken to him right before I came in the restaurant, etc. In fact I still had a few tears welling up when I'd walked in, so I had to duck into the restroom to compose myself. I always shed a tear or two when I hang up the phone with Jake.
Sitting there with Cathy was comforting for me. Not that I was thankful it was not me in her shoes. Not in that way at all. But her example of being in control of how to think about her cancer helped me. I can't compare having cancer to my son going to Iraq. I told her that. But we connected on the fact that the two things are always always in the forefront of our minds. Her cancer for her, and my son in harm's way for me. A layer of ozone through which every thought is filtered. She talked to me about the odds of something happening to Jake and how dangerous it was to drive on the interstate. I asked her how she handles the cancer being the one thing overshadows everything. She said it just does. It is. There's nothing to do about it.
And what about the unspoken? There's always that. Always, I know that the other person is thinking, "what if he doesn't make it back?" What if you don't make it back? She nodded and we shared a silence that to me meant we understood each other. She said she does think about that and she knows people are thinking it. But it just is.
I find that there's no real reason to tell others that my son is going to Iraq. I want people to know. It seems like something I have to put on every morning, like a blue shirt. Like they won't know me or see me or have any way to relate to me without them knowing that. At a meeting at work, where I formally met everyone for the first time, the one thing I could think to say about myself was that my son was going go Iraq in January. And to justify that, I quickly added, "So if I freak out next month, you'll know why."
Wouldn't it seem odd that if Jake...oh geez, I can't even type it..the idea seems so bare and naked and direct...if Jake weren't to make it back, wouldn't it seem odd to the people I've met at work and other places if I suddenly disappeared and THEN they find out my son was in Iraq? Wouldn't they wonder why I didn't tell them?
I don't know how to take off that particular blue shirt.
Charles told me later that Kurt, who is Cathy's husband, says that Cathy is really strong at work. That she puts on a good face and a good attitude. But when she comes home she's exhausted and lies on the couch and is afraid. She has plenty to be afraid of. Who can endure the pain of knowing you'll leave your child motherless?
It hardly seems fair or right or honest that I should be worried about losing my son, when I think of Cathy. But it just is. She doesn't mind.
I hope I get to talk with Cathy some more. I wish some miracle will happen and she will be cured, and all our troops will come home before Jake can get there. But right now I have to go put on the blue shirt.
Cell phones!
Jake called me last night. Despite my best intentions to never be far from my cell phone while he's away, I missed his call. I went upstairs for bed at 9:00, and he called at 9:08. In my effort to keep the phone near me, I had had it on the couch. It got shifted under the blanket and when I got up I never noticed it and forgot it. We always curl up under blankets on the couch in the winter time. Sometimes in summer, too!
So, this morning I got the message Jake left last night. He got out "Hi, Mom, this is Jake, and I had a few extra minutes and thought I'd call..." and then he turned his head or something. The rest of the message was garbled, that kind of digital warp speed garble where you can hear all the voice, but it's unintelligible. Not the kind where every other syllable is clipped off.
I saved the message. Thinking I might want to hear his voice again. I have a few messages saved on my digital answering machine like that. Little archives of the voices of the people I love. There's the one about Will calling me to ask if he could keep the cat he found at Gram's. There's one of Jake, telling me 'just so someone will know", that he and Mandy are climbing in the car for a last-minute weekend road trip and they picked Ft. Leavenworth, KS as their destination. They swung back by my house on the way home, and that was nice. There's a message from Jon being his silly self. One from my dad, saying something mundane and ordinary, like, "call me back".
The message from Jake on my cell phone voicemail will drop off eventually. Too many system resources will be used up if we all saved every message on the voicemail system. I suppose I could keep it indefinitely if I listened to the time stamp and heard the garbled message every time I checked voicemail, and then pressed 1 to "keep as new". I have to admit that it crosses my mind that it might be the last record of his voice I ever have. Even though he's not there, yet, and I'm going to see him in 2 weeks. Anything can happen.
Anything can happen. It's crazy to think that I waste so much time trying to get to a place in my head where I can hear no one else's voice. Anything can happen to anyone, anywhere. A tree narrowly missed our house in July. We would have been goners if not for the mulberry tree that caught the falling ash and pushed it towards the only place in the yard it could have fallen and not damaged anything at all. What are the odds? What are the odds that Jake will be killed in Iraq? They're slim. I think he's in more danger just driving his car down the street. That would be little comfort to Patrick Kordsmeier's wife, I'm sure. It's not much help to me, either.
I try not to worry, to get perspective. And then that perspective takes me places I don't want to go, with living now and being authentic. So, I save voicemail messages and feel comfortable about that. I feel safe that I'll have that little bit of remembrance. Just in case. And in the meantime Will's talking in my ear about fighter jets and I wish he'd find something else to do. His voice is not that of last spring's dirty-footed 9 year-old boy on the answering machine. It's deeper and better developed and more confident and knowledgeable. It's sweet to hear the voice on the machine. But he's right here, talking to me now. Flying jets around the living room, using the ottoman for an aircraft carrier.
I've decided to delete the garbled message, and I'll get a beltclip for the cell phone. And get up from the computer and sit on the couch and listen to Will fly airplanes around the living room.
Jon thanks me a lot, too
Jon has a habit of saying "sorry" a lot. Since has TS, I imagine that part of that over the years was just a tic.
But he also thanks me a lot. Sometimes I'd rather have actions than thanks, though.
Jon's out there on his own. Driving a horse-drawn carriage for money. He lives with his girlfriend. They are two very artistic people.
I helped them get their first apartment. It was fun and it's hair-raising every month to wonder if they're going to make the rent. I think they will. Jon tells me in not so subtle ways that I should butt out of his life. I have to learn not to ask about if he got his car licensed or not. It's really none of my business.
I just hope he knows what he's doing.
Like Charles keeps telling me...he's going to be a wonderful 25 year old.
The title of this blog is misleading, considering the topic of the first post.
I was thinking about starting up this blog, sitting here at the computer. I had spent a great deal of time signing up Jake's youngest brother Will for Aviation Camp at the Huntsville Space & Rocket Center. Will was awed that I was willing to spend almost $1000 on something like that. He'd been through some disappointments in previous years when the funds weren't there. We wanted to send him and take him places and do things with him, which we had planned to do when he was "older", and it never happened.
Now he's old enough and educated enough to go to Aviation Challenge by himself, instead of the parent-child weekend. He just recently started choosing to watch Discovery Wings instead of Spongebob. He still plays with his toy fighter jets, though, which is what he's doing now.
So, I was sitting there working on the last post and doing other Aviation Challenge related things. When Will realized I really did sign him up he was elated! He got up to take a shower without being asked, he was so elated. As he was walking out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, he said, "Thanks for signing me up, Mommy!"
He hardly ever calls me mommy.
I thought it would be a good name for this blog.
