I Hate Housework Too

So, the very next time you happen to be
Just sitting there quietly watching TV,
And you see some nice lady who smiles
As she scours or scrubs or rubs or washes or wipes or mops or dusts or cleans,
Remember, nobody smiles doing housework but those ladies you see on TV.
Your mommy hates housework,
Your daddy hates housework,
I hate housework too.
And when you grow up, so will you.
Because even if the soap or cleanser or cleaner or powder or paste or wax or bleach
That you use is the very best one,
Housework is just no fun.

-Lyrics to “Housework” by Marlo Thomas, from “Free to Be You and Me”

People often say to me: “Faith, your house is so clean and tidy. How DO you do it?”

HA HA! No, not really. In fact, nobody has ever said anything remotely like that to me. (The closest I’ve ever come to this kind of praise was a friend who complimented me on having it “all zipped up,” but I assume she was talking about my pants).

I’ve never been a huge fan of housework. This probably springs from growing up in the cleanest house ever. You may think that your moms kept their houses clean, you many even think that YOU grew up in the cleanest house ever, and that’s very sweet…but you’re wrong. Of course, the natural outcome of growing up in the cleanest house ever was that I vowed never to spend as much time cleaning as my mom. And the PROBLEM with this is that I have high standards of cleanliness — I can see the mess, it bothers me — but I don’t want to be the one dealing with the mess. It gets ugly, I tell you: it’s like Fight Club up there in my brain, with Tyler Durden played by my cleanliness standards.

My war with myself over housework had the potential to become a huge problem when we moved to Vermont. Back in Berkeley, our family rented a 900-square-foot, 2-bedroom, 1-bath bungalow; upon moving to Vermont, we tripled our living space. I’m still embarrassed about this, because I’ve never considered myself a Big House Person. Big houses tend to get filled up with more stuff (I fear accumulating too much stuff), and they tend to require more time spent cleaning (enough said). But we chose the house we are in because: (1) we had 3 days with a month-old baby to find a place, and this was the obvious best choice, (2) we are now a family of 5 and also want space to host people (especially grandparents), (3) we moved to Vermont, where real estate is waaaaay cheaper than anywhere else we’ve lived. So, here we are, and I have to say: the housework hasn’t been so bad.

How have I managed the increased housework load? Well, I had this little revelation shortly after we moved here: Did you know that big tasks become more manageable if you break them into smaller pieces? (That’s how it is with my revelations: takes me a decade to achieve an “Aha!” moment, to which everyone else says, “Duh!”). For instance, it doesn’t take long to clean one bathroom (at least not the way I clean a bathroom). We have 2.5 bathrooms, so I clean one a day on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. And so on with the other chores. (This all, of course, until I can get the girls to take over for me — and trust me, that’s already beginning). Eat your heart out, Good Housekeeping!

Aside from basic housework, however, we have another issue: creeping kids’ stuff. Back when we had only one child, I was determined that kids’ toys, books, and other kid-related paraphernalia would not take over our house. When I was growing up (in the cleanest house ever) there were certain rooms that were set aside for adults, like the Living Room and the Dining Room. It seemed right and proper that adults — who, after all, OWN THE HOUSE — should have spaces where they can walk freely, unafraid of stepping on Legos or tripping over Exersaucers. We handled the problem of kids’ stuff in our Berkeley bungalow by stacking everything in a towering pile in one corner of the living room.

But that pile grew and grew, and we kept having more kids. Then the older kids needed new toys, because an Exersaucer isn’t much fun when you’re 3, but the new baby still needed the old toys, so we couldn’t get rid of them. The kids’ stuff took over our house like kudzu.

Moving to a bigger house should have solved the problem of creeping kids’ stuff. But it didn’t.

Here was the plan: in our new house, we have a room we call the Rec Room. It’s a funny room built over the garage, up a small flight of stairs from the Mud Room. As such, it’s separated from the rest of the house in a way that makes it unusable for much, but PERFECT as a dumping ground for kids’ toys. The idea was that all of the girls’ toys would live in the Rec Room, keeping the rest of the house clutter-free.

It hasn’t worked. Oh, the girls were initially excited about having a toy room, but they quickly saw through the plan. The first problem is that the Rec Room is far away from wherever I tend to be. Of course, this is precisely the point, but it turns out that our girls prefer to play directly underfoot so that I’m immediately at hand to help them change clothes 53 times, mediate disputes every 3 minutes, and wrestle Barbies into complicated outfits.

Then winter came, and the problem became one of climate. Our Rec Room is so cut off from the main house that it has its own heating zone. It’s also cut off by a door that we close in the winter to keep cold air from the garage/mud room from entering the main house — which means that the heat from our wood stove doesn’t reach the Rec Room. In other words: the Rec Room is completely impractical to heat, so during the winter it’s freezing. Unless I go up there an hour in advance of any playtime to crank up the heat, the girls have to wear full winter gear just to play with their toys.

Result? Our sun room, which I’d envisioned as a space for quiet reading and art projects, now looks like this:

And our living room, which I’d imagined would remain a completely “adults only” zone, looks like this:

The girls and I tidy it up, but the creeping kids’ stuff inevitably re-explodes. So I’ve decided to relax. I’m not going to waste too much time or energy fighting it. These kids outnumber us now; it’s natural that their stuff is taking over our house. Instead, I’ve decided to file this situation under the “I have three young children” excuse.

This is another nifty revelation of mine: if you have three young children (say, between the ages of 1 and 4), most people tend to cut you a lot of slack. My theory is that they’re just so relieved that you’re not lying on the floor sobbing with exhaustion and desperation, that people are willing to excuse all manner of bizarre behavior from mothers of young children. Behavior that in any other situation would earn me a label as a substandard person suddenly becomes perfectly acceptable, even understandable. Twenty minutes late? “I have three young children.” Wearing sweats for the fourth day in a row? “I have three young children.” Chugging a third cup of coffee and wolfing down old birthday cake for lunch? (That’s just a theoretical situation, mind you). You guessed it. Certainly Playmobile figures strewn across the carpet, applesauce on the walls, and marker on the couch fall into this category as well.

Obviously there will come a time when the girls will be older and more mature, and the “I have three young children” excuse will no longer work for me. At this point, I will have to begin behaving like an upright citizen with a tidy house. OR, it’s just struck me that there may be another solution:

Keep having more children, for as long as possible!

That’s clearly the answer! I can get away with a messy house for years! What a revelation!

I can’t wait to tell Erick when he gets home from work.

Attack of the Plastic Princesses

I never made a conscious list, but if you’d asked me what kind of mom I’d be before I had kids, I would have said:

-My children would play primarily with non-toxic, sustainably harvested wooden toys.

-I would nurse every child until at least age 1.

-Organic fruits and veggies would be part of every meal (after age 1).

-Cloth diapers only!

-My children would not watch videos — or anything on a screen — until at least age 2.

-Disney princesses, Barbies, and any other plastic characters hawked by ginormous toy companies with questionable ethics would NOT be part of our family culture!

Now, to be fair to myself, I did do a few of those things…for the first year of our first child’s life. But somehow, three years later, Barbie has taken over our house.

More accurately: the Disney princesses wore down our resolve, and Barbie was the second line of attack.

It’s still a mystery to me HOW Fiona first became obsessed with the Disney princesses. You may be thinking: “You don’t KNOW? Where were you? Weren’t you watching?!?” All I can say is: Yes, I was watching, but I still don’t know. What I do know is that — despite the fact that I’d never bought her anything Disney, never knowingly exposed her to anything Disney — a few months before Fiona turned 2 it was like a switch flipped on in her brain and suddenly it was ALL about Disney princesses. Almost exactly one year later, the Barbie switch flipped on. As younger sisters, Campbell and Georgia never had a chance of avoiding the obsession.

Of course, nobody really had a chance of avoiding the obsession, and I was naive if I thought that this was something I could control. One mom vs. the combined force of Disney and Mattel: sounds like a pitch for the next Michael Moore documentary (Mike, call me). Maybe, maybe if we never left the house, I could have shielded them from the pervasive marketing of these two companies. Because this is how I think the switches in Fiona’s brain were flipped: all it took was one trip to Target — or, for that matter, the grocery store, where today she noticed Barbie mouthwash. And we don’t even go shopping very often, but the girls can (and do) check out Disney/Barbie books and DVDs from the public library.

It’s a humbling business, this parenting. Could I have fought against the marketing that spurred Fiona’s insatiable desire for anything Disney princess/Barbie? Could I have sat her down and said, “In our house, we don’t play with these things?” Of course I could have.

Did I? No, I did not.

And sometimes, I feel guilty about that decision. But mostly I’m okay with it.

Why? Well, first of all I’m not convinced that Disney princesses and Barbies pose an inherent danger to my children. I’m aware that they’re not the most intellectually enriching toys — although they certainly keep the girls engaged in imaginary play for hours — but it’s not as if these are the only toys or books available in our house. I do recall a big brouhaha over Barbie dolls some years before I had kids; I believe the debate centered around the (valid) accusation that Barbie dolls provided young girls with unhealthy body images and shallow role models. I’m also fairly certain that, if I scratched the surface, I could come up with numerous ethical concerns attached to both Disney and Mattel companies. I could easily look both of these issues up online, but I haven’t, because I know what I’ll find: lots of loud opinions.

You could accuse me of moral laziness, and to some degree you’d be right. Especially when it comes to corporate ethics; I’d like to take ethics into account in everything I do, but frankly, I just don’t have the energy. I’m more than willing to boycott some obviously bad things, and write letters, and so on. But my first priority is to keep a household (mostly) afloat and relatively peaceful.

I’m also trying to equip my children to function in the big bad world out there, not subject them to some experiment in absolute moral purity — in the same way that I’d prefer to allow my kids to have chocolate and learn how to eat it in moderation, rather than ban sweets altogether. As for the morals of the Disney princesses and Barbie themselves: they’re certainly shallow, cliched, and unrealistic looking — plastic, in every sense. But if a 6-inch plastic toy is what my daughters are ultimately going to choose for their lifelong role model, there’s a lot more wrong in our house than the toys we play with. Furthermore, the stories that go along with these plastic princesses ultimately have to do with the power of love, friendship, and being true to yourself. And that I can work with.

The other reason I haven’t banned the plastic princesses from our lives is because, in the big scheme of things, any gains to be had from booting out Barbie don’t seem worth the ensuing battle. If my preschoolers love a certain toy (and they DO), and I don’t believe it’ll ruin their characters for life (and I don’t), then it’s not worth the fight. Some things are worth the fight, like sharing and washing your hands and keeping your underwear pulled up, and sometimes I feel like I’m fighting all day long. But who was it that said: “Tyranny breeds resentment”? (Just Googled it: turns out it was me, and a handful of online gamers. But nobody suitably quotable). I think that my kids will be more likely to respect my position in the bigger fights later on if they know that I’m selective but serious, rather than if they perceive me as wantonly denying them anything fun. You may ask: “But aren’t you worried that you’ve already lost control, and that they’ll be smoking crack outside the A & W at age 16 because you let them play with Barbies?” Absolutely. I’m worried about a lot of things, but only time will tell.

Here’s what I can control: the attitudes I model to my girls about Disney princesses and Barbies. So I don’t go overboard with enthusiasm when it comes to these toys. During Fiona’s Disney princess mania, I quietly steered her towards Pocahontas and Mulan, and she remarked, with admiration, that they were the “strongest” princesses. I have personally bought them almost nothing related to Disney princesses or Barbies; they have one tub of my old Barbies (Doesn’t recycling offset the ethical concerns?), and their grandparents supply the rest (and if parenting’s taught me anything about grace, it’s that you don’t muzzle the grandparents!). Never once have I said, “Hey, let’s play princesses/Barbies!”

But Erick and I still feel like Barbie has taken over our house.

POSTSCRIPT: Just so we’re good: I did not write this to justify myself, or, GOD FORBID, to suggest that anybody should go and do likewise. I wrote this because it’s something I’m right in the middle of, something I’m still struggling with. I wrote it to share, because I’m more and more convinced that the best thing we can do for each other as people – aside from babysitting each others’ children – is to share: that it’s hard, that it’s confusing, that we’re not the parents we expected to be, that if we hear the theme to “Barbie’s Fairy Secret” one more time we are going to LOSE IT! So please, feel free to share back. Feel free to completely disagree with me, and pass along any tips on how I can get this stuff out of the house without alienating my children forever!

Some Fun Now

This one might be mostly for the grandparents, but it feels like it’s been a while since I posted fun pictures of the girls doing what they do. My recent conversion to the art of doing nothing, combined with illness and winter, has led to all sorts of fun.

Indoor Fun:

Fiona modeling her marshmallow necklace.

Turning the storage closet into a little house.

And Outdoor Fun:

Hanging out in Campbell's Cave in our backyard.

Fiona atop her "Ice Castle" in our backyard.

Another view of the "Ice Castle." We have awesome rocks in our yard!

And then, this past week, the FUN highlight was Georgia’s First Birthday!

We tend to downplay first birthdays in our house, because, really, the kid doesn’t remember and there are OH! so many birthdays coming along. But Georgia’s birthday was particularly fun because she had two big sisters to plan it.

As these things go, it’s unclear whether Fiona and Campbell were really planning Georgia’s birthday for HER or for THEMSELVES (Fiona: “I think Georgia would LOVE this princess book!”, Campbell: “Georgia really needs a toy car!”), but they decided that the festivities should have a cat theme, and helped me shop for the appropriate paper goods.

The day started with presents. Georgia had some lovely gifts from her family. The “big ticket” item that we gave her was a toy kitchen; we’ve noticed that all of our girls can play for hours with their friends’ toy kitchens. The one we ultimately got is a gently used wooden kitchen, which we found at a great store in Ferrisburg called ReRun Fun.

Fiona and Campbell "help" Georgia open her presents. (This is kind of how it goes when you're turning 1).

Because she’s a third child, Georgia spent the rest of her birthday being shuttled around to her sisters’ events, like storytime at the library and swim lessons at the college pool. But back at home for dinner, it was CAKE TIME. The cake was a homemade deal: strawberry cake with chocolate chips and chocolate frosting (as per her sisters’ instructions). She seemed to enjoy the cake concept, especially her first taste of chocolate.

The final event was planned by Fiona, who thinks that no party is complete without a game of “pin the something on something.” (We’ve done “pin the seeds on the watermelon,” “pin the crown on the princess,” “pin the petals on the flower,” “pin the bone on the dog,” “pin the feather on Pocahontas” — you get the idea). For Georgia’s birthday, it was “pin the tail on the cat.” No surprise: Fiona won.

All partied out, we carried Georgia off to bed. It was a swell party to mark the end of her first year.

Give Me Patience! Right Now!

I know you’ve heard a lot from me this week. If you can take any more, I’ve got a little reflection on patience over at On the Willows today.

Georgia Elizabeth Hope

Just about one year ago today, many of you received the following announcement:

Hello, friends & family!
We’re thrilled to announce the happy & healthy arrival of our third daughter, Georgia Elizabeth Hope Gong. Georgia was born on March 1, 2011. A typically tiny Gong girl, she measured in at 5 lbs, 8 oz and 18 inches long. Everyone’s doing well, and we’re all back home now. Fiona & Campbell are embracing their roles as big sisters. As the lone male in our family, Erick is planning on getting a male dog (a companion for long, QUIET walks in the woods) and a shotgun (for the teenage years).

We can’t wait for you all to meet Georgia!
With love & thanks,
The Gongs

A Word About the Name: Georgia’s first name comes from the song “Georgia on my Mind,” made most famous by Ray Charles. For some reason, Faith heard this song frequently throughout her pregnancy, and we thought it would make a pretty girl’s name! Upon looking into the song’s history, we also liked the fact that on March 7, 1979, in a mutual symbol of reconciliation after conflict over civil rights issues, Ray Charles performed it before the Georgia General Assembly. Georgia’s two middle names come from her two wonderful grandmothers, Elizabeth (Betty, Erick’s mother) and Hope (Faith’s mother).

It’s cliched, but it’s hard for us to believe that our third daughter is already one year old.

I find it more difficult to write about Georgia than about either of our other daughters. After all, the original Pickle Patch was started back when we just had Fiona, and it was TOTALLY focused on: Fiona. An entire blog about one little baby! Back then I had no difficulty documenting her every move. Perhaps one reason that this is harder to do for Georgia is that I just don’t have the time to pay attention. The sad fact: the more children you have, the less attention you can give to each of them. And the baby is, quite honestly, at the bottom of the pecking order. Everything they can do you’ve seen twice before, and their needs are more basic than the complex socio-emotional needs of the older siblings.

But I think it’s more than just a matter of my time. I think it’s also that, having seen two older children grow past babyhood, I realize how little we still know Georgia. When our older children were Georgia’s age, we extrapolated many things about their personalities and preferences that later turned out not to be true at all. You think that, as a parent, you know your children better than anybody else — and that may be accurate for a time, but the truth is that it’s very, very hard to really know another person. Even when it’s your own child. (Even when it’s yourself).

But this is about celebrating Georgia, and there is plenty to celebrate! Here’s what we DO know about Georgia at age 1:

-She is VERY loved, by every member of our family. Everybody wants to hold her, hug her, tickle her, and “help” her all the time.

-She is a trooper about being dragged around from place to place. This all started back when the poor kid was one month old and we lugged her cross-country to Vermont to find a place to live. Two months later, we moved her cross-country for good, and then proceeded to shuttle her around to all her sisters’ activities. No complaints from Georgia about any of this.

-She is NOT a trooper when it comes to physical discomfort. Unlike both of her sisters, who do a pretty good job bouncing back from falls, headbangs, and scrapes, Georgia will scream at the smallest bonk. And don’t even try to touch her neck, ever. A wee bit dramatic, this one.

-Also unlike both her sisters, she has four whole teeth at the age of one (they both got teeth much later), comforts herself by sucking on two fingers (neither sister did), and is crawling (neither sister crawled before walking).

-She loves: using chopsticks to simulate playing the drums, dancing, reading books that have little flaps to open, and pulling things out of anything.

-She has the best laugh in our entire family, hands down.

So, Happy First Birthday, Dear Georgia! We love you very much, and look forward to figuring out more about who you are as you continue to grow.

Back to the Start

Our second child is nothing if not confident. I don’t know where she gets it from — certainly not from emulating me. It’s like she was born knowing who she is, and being completely happy with that.

Recent example: Erick took the girls out on Saturday morning and had to cram them all into a small bathroom to change Georgia’s diaper. He set Campbell up on a table where she could see herself in the mirror, thinking that would keep her occupied. Did it ever! According to Erick, Campbell looked at herself in the mirror like she’d never seen herself before, gasped with pleasure, and said, “Daddy, I’m so PRETTY!”

And then this morning I took Campbell and Georgia to Open Gym. Open Gym is a great little thing that Middlebury does during the winter months: they open up the town gym (basically an old high school gymnasium) two mornings a week to preschoolers. There’s a closet filled with mats, hula hoops, basketballs, and toy cars for the kids to play with. It’s as close as you can get to an indoor playground, which is essential when the weather is blah.

Today at Open Gym, Campbell spotted a scooter; not just any scooter, but a PINK BARBIE SCOOTER. It looked kind of like this:

And because she is so confident and determined, and because that scooter was just so PINK and alluring, she hopped right on. Campbell is two years old, a SMALL two years old; the handlebars were about even with her head. But she grabbed on, and because she’d never scootered before, she started wiggling her butt around to make it move. Obviously, that didn’t work very well, so I tried to teach her how to push off with her foot and then pick it up so she could zoom.

It’s kind of a hard concept to master, but after a couple tries she got it! She’d push with her foot and lift it up just at the right time.

The only problem was that she was moving backwards.

And that, I couldn’t help her with. I was able to teach her how to move, but I couldn’t teach her how to go in the right direction.

But here’s the thing: she didn’t care. It didn’t matter to Campbell that she was putting in all this effort just to move backwards. She just wanted to MOVE, and any direction was the “right direction.” She was really, really pleased with herself. So Georgia and I applauded and cheered, and it was a fun little morning.

I think there are some lessons in there about life, and motherhood. (But right now I have to hunt down our “1” candle, because Georgia turns 1 tomorrow. We have a 2, two 3s, and a 4. I know we had a 1, because we used it twice in the past, but of course I can’t find it now. Fate of the third child.)

About the Weather

The color of the sky as far as I can see is coal grey.
Lift my head from the pillow and then fall again.
With a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather.
A quiver in my lips as if I might cry.

-10,000 Maniacs, “Like the Weather”

A view of downtown Middlebury almost exactly one year ago, taken by Erick when he was interviewing for his job.

This is at least the third post that I’ve dedicated to the winter weather — or lack thereof — we’ve had in Vermont this year. The longer I live, the more I realize how much of life really IS about the weather. Woody Allen is quoted as saying, “90% of life is just showing up.” But think about it: your ability to show up and the events that you may or may not show up to, are both directly influenced by the weather. Case in point: many of you may know that I met Erick when he was a customer at a (now defunct) restaurant in Greenwich, CT where I spent a summer waitressing. What you may NOT know is that the reason Erick showed up so regularly in my restaurant that particular summer was because the air conditioning in his office was turned off on weekends. See? I owe my current life to hot weather (and maybe a cheapskate landlord).

Somehow, I managed to get through most of my life to date blissfully unaware that weather was running the show. I used to mock my mom for shushing us whenever the weather report would come on the radio. Now, I AM THAT MOM. I still think it’s folly to actually believe any given weather prediction, but I’m fascinated by the game of probability inherent in forecasts: Will it or won’t it? And I can’t get over how the weather forecast on the Google homepage on my laptop can be so completely different from the forecast on my iPod. (There have been times when I’ve had to double-check the location, because they couldn’t possibly be predicting weather for the same location. They were.) And the real fun comes from comparing those two forecasts against what’s actually happening out my window. It’s like gambling for non-gamblers.

I think weather seems so powerful because, in this age of technology and comfort, weather is one of the few things left that we can’t control. But, oh boy, can it control us! I first became aware of weather’s power when we started having kids. This may strike you as funny, since all of our kids were born in California, which has a reputation for being 72 degrees and sunny all the time. But let me assure you, California does have seasons – albeit seasons that are subtler than those in other parts of the country – and it does have weather. And there is a very dramatic difference in one’s quality of life when one can take the kids to the park on a sunny day vs. being stranded at home by torrential rains. Activity level, emotion, even the types of foods and beverages we consume — all of these are directly affected by the weather.

Of course, the seasons here in Vermont are much less subtle than those in California, ranging from 90-degree humidity in the summer to subzero snowstorms in the winter. And here we are in winter, when, for reasons previously explained, we were looking forward to a decent dumping of snow. Well, winter this year has been like the worst, most unhealthy relationship EVER. If I’m Elizabeth Taylor, winter has been my Richard Burton.

Oh, it started off strong. Winter was flirting with us by late fall. Snow before Halloween! A white Thanksgiving AND Christmas! Snowshoeing before the New Year!

Then, for reasons apparently best explained by “Arctic oscillations,” winter shrugged its shoulders and said, “Meh.” And it left. It left for virtually all of January and February, teasing us here and there with a few dustings of snow that melted within a day. Heartbreaking. But after the denial and grief came resignation; we were ready to start a new, healthier relationship with spring. This past week, the girls and I were marveling at the bulbs starting to bloom outside the library, we relished being able to go outside without hats, gloves, or boots. A fresh start seemed possible. And that’s when…

WINTER CAME BACK.

“You can’t forget about ME!” winter seemed to say as forecasts called for up to 6 inches of snow. Everywhere I went, people were asking: “Are you ready for the snow?” as if we lived in a place where snow is a novelty (which, granted, it has been). Speculation was running high that winter was REALLY starting and would last into April. When I picked Fiona up from preschool on the day of the “big storm,” fat flakes were starting to fall. They were sticking by the time we got home, and the girls ran right from the car to the yard to play.

It snowed all night long. Excitement was high in our house. We woke up the next morning, opened the shades, and saw this:

To which I say, “Meh.” That’s not enough snow to build a snowman or even a snowball that’s not bristling with grass. It’s like being promised dinner and a movie, but getting pizza and putt putt. I feel like I’m in eighth grade again, with a crush on the boy who maybe sort of likes me back but behaves erratically because he doesn’t know how to handle his feelings yet.

Oh well, there’s always next year. Everything gets better in high school, right?

Elsewhere in the World…

Sometimes — especially when it’s the dog days of winter and I’m home with sick children — my world can get feeling a little…small. Which is why I was particularly excited to get an email from my friend Linda introducing the new website for Through the Eyes of Hope.

So, by way of quick introduction, I met Linda back when we were both living in New York City, and we were both fledgling photographers. But she was always much, much better than me. She did let me tag along with her on some wedding jobs, though! Here’s her photo website, but to be honest I don’t know if she’s even doing much of this anymore, BECAUSE:

She went to Rwanda.

I so clearly remember Linda’s first trip to Rwanda, since it happened right around the same time that Erick and I were going to Tanzania to help manage a school and house building project. Back in New York, Linda and I had some great conversations about how Africa had changed our lives. But there’s change and then there’s CHANGE: Africa changed my life in the sense that I support my husband’s research there while sitting in my comfy Vermont kitchen and patiently (sometimes) waiting for the right time for our family to get more involved; Africa changed Linda’s life, and she went for it. She kept going back and back and back, she started photography workshops with orphaned children at the Kagugu School, and out of that she founded the Through the Eyes of Hope Project.

Artist-Kagugu-Kids — See if you can figure out which one is Linda in this picture....

You can learn lots more on the website, but Through the Eyes of Hope is thriving now. Linda teaches photography skills to kids in Rwanda — and, when she’s stateside, in the Bronx — and puts on shows of their work. The kids use the photography as a way of capturing their lives, they learn marketable skills that help them pay their school fees, and the act of making art also serves as a form of therapy to heal what’s been broken in their lives. I always get so excited when I read Linda’s updates, because she’s just been so dedicated to this project even when it has NOT been at all easy. Sometimes I know it’s broken her heart, but she’s the Little Engine That Kicked Butt.

Anyway, I really just wanted to share this as something different and introduce you to Linda, because I find Through the Eyes of Hope very inspiring. You will also notice that there are opportunities to donate on the website, OR to purchase prints of the kids’ photographs. There are some really lovely images available that I plan to give myself for my “birthday.” Our family is currently subscribed in the Postcard of the Month program, where every month for a year we get a photo postcard from one of her students. I keep them right next to my desk in the kitchen, to remind myself of what’s real, elsewhere in the world:

In Sickness and in Health…

Here’s a little insight into how I work: my sacred times of day are naptime (roughly 1-3 PM) and bedtime (after about 7:30 PM, depending on how long it takes the girls to unwind), and it’s during those times that I sit down at my laptop and write things for this blog. It’s also during those times that I clean the house, prep meals, and work on any other household projects. (And shower, although not very often). But lately, the thing I’ve been enjoying most is writing these posts. That may not be saying much when the other option is scrubbing toilets, but I truly love writing. I’ve always loved writing, but now that I’m home with three girls it feels particularly necessary. It feeds the creative part of my brain, as well as the adult conversation part of my brain — even if the conversation is one-sided most of the time. I suppose it’s kind of like writing in a journal. The “social media” aspect is nice, because I’ve never been much good on the phone, so this saves me having to make 50-some phone calls. But even if nobody read this blog, I’d still keep writing it.

Because my brain is usually dealing with about 50 things at one time, and maybe also because of pregnancy hormones (Georgia’s not one yet, I can still blame pregnancy hormones, right?), I really need to write things down right when I think of them. So that means that I have a lot of partially-completed drafts for this blog sitting around, waiting to be freed into the blogosphere. I was going to post one of the more generic drafts today. But then I decided to go ahead and be real. Because the truth is, it’s been a rough couple of weeks at Casa Gong.

As often happens in winter, there are a LOT of sicknesses going around here in Vermont. Thus far, we’ve been lucky; we even (knock on MacBook) managed to avoid the STOMACH BUG that was so bad they sent an email out to the entire Middlebury College community telling everyone to wash their hands. (Which made me chuckle; the only time Erick got those emails at Berkeley was when there was a bomb scare or an armed vigilante on campus). But this last bug got us, and it got us good.

It’s an upper respiratory thing, marked by a sore throat, post-nasal drip, a horrible cough, and loss of voice. I was Patient Zero. I don’t often get sick, because frankly I don’t have time. But this virus got me when my guard was down, because Erick’s parents were visiting. The first weekend they were here, Erick and his parents took all three girls to the aquarium in Burlington for FIVE HOURS, which meant that I had FIVE HOURS ALL TO MYSELF! The last time that ever happened was well before we moved to Vermont. So there I was, able to breathe normally for five hours, and my blood cells apparently just sat in their lounge chairs with beers and said, “Hey, let’s let this friendly-looking virus in!”

And then everybody else got it. Amazingly, this is the first time that every member of our family has been sick with the same thing. I’ve always heard about this happening, but it’s never happened to us — until now — because on the whole our family has been blessed with very good health. Which is something that I will never, ever take for granted again …for at least two weeks.

The three sick Gong girls with Granddaddy and Grandmommy at the end of their visit.

Here’s how the various members of our family get sick (in the order of sickness):

Me: I mostly just keep doing what I normally do, but I just feel extra sorry for myself. The problem is, I don’t have a good model for how to be a sick adult; growing up, I can’t ever remember my parents being sick. Certainly I can’t think of a single time when they took to their beds because of illness. The only exceptions: when my mother broke her pelvis falling off a ladder, and this past November when my father broke 2 vertebrae and 4 ribs falling off a ladder. My family is TOUGH, and if they’d just keep away from ladders, they’d probably live forever.

Georgia: Poor Georgia is like an adorable sick puppy dog. She doesn’t get fussy when she gets sick, she just snuggles up to you and moans. When she got sick this time, her eyes and nose got red and swollen and started oozing. Turned out she also had an ear infection, which is the first ear infection we’ve ever had in our family (knock on MacBook).

Fiona: Fiona loves the drama of being sick, so she kept reminding me throughout the day: “I still feel sick.” Unfortunately, this particular bug was just gross enough to keep her grumpy and home from school for a whole week, but not enough to wipe out her energy. So she was like regular Fiona, just grumpier and with frequent illness announcements.

Campbell: Campbell gets sick like me — she just denies it. “I’m NOT sick, Mommy!” she’d say. I’d take her temperature and it would be 102. “I’m okay!” she’d insist, “No medicine!”

Erick: Oh, Erick. When Erick gets sick, it completely takes him down. This time was no exception — he’s been the sickest of all of us. His cough is so bad that he can’t sleep at night. And, as I type this, he has not been able to speak for four days. Which is a huge problem because this past week was the first week of classes, so he had to teach with no voice. Then he’d come home from work and, after the girls were in bed, we’d sit at our laptops and Google chat about how the day was. Really.

It’s been bad. And hard. And I’ve been grumpy because, as the first one to get sick, I was also the first one to get well…just in time to take care of everyone else. The highlight of my Wednesday was (I’m not kidding) walking down the driveway to bring in the trash bins, because that was the only time I got to leave the house.

What I’ve realized: I’m not very sympathetic when my family gets sick. This kind of surprises me, because I like to think of myself as a compassionate person. I want there to be more justice and peace in this world, I like helping people when they need it, and I try to make my life about loving my neighbor as myself. But then my kids and husband get sick, and I get…grumpy. Why is that? Why is it always so much harder to love the neighbors who live in your house than to love the neighbors who live next door? Maybe it’s because my parents never got sick when I was a kid (although my mom certainly took great care of ME when I got sick), so I never grew up having to be sympathetic to sick family members. Maybe I have trouble understanding why other people can’t power through illness like I tend to do. Maybe because at heart I’m a deeply selfish person and I resent having the needs of others impinge on my schedule in unplanned ways.

Probably all of the above, but to quote G.I. Joe: “Knowledge is half the battle!” I’m going to make a greater effort to be more sympathetic towards my own immediate family. Consider it my Presidents’ Day resolution. Feel free to ask me how it’s going 🙂

Crafty

A brief clarification on the last post: The Pickle Patch is still here, and I’ll continue to provide regular updates on our family’s life in Vermont. On The Willows is an entirely different blog, created by a friend of a friend for women to share their life lessons, to which I will contribute from time to time. My posts there will likely be a little different than the ones here: less day-to-day, more personal, fewer pictures of the kids. But I’ll provide the link when I do post over there, on the off chance that you’re not getting enough information here!

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program….

Just as I am not a born cook, I am not by nature a crafty person. On the basis of once having taught elementary school (which should require a minor in bulletin board design) and having received a graduate degree in studio art, I could perhaps pass for creative. But I’ve never been able to sustain any interest in things like scrapbooking, knitting, or jewelry making.

I do, however, have more desire to be a crafty person than I do to be a great cook, if only because the results can be enjoyed a little longer. So, when we moved to Vermont and my mom offered to bring up her old sewing machine, I jumped at the chance. Mind you, I haven’t sewn anything since I made a cupcake pillow in junior high Home Economics, but I envisioned snowy evenings hunched happily over the sewing machine, turning out cute little dresses for the girls.

And guess what? This is a happy story, not “I Love Lucy” meets a sewing machine. The only part of that vision that didn’t materialize so much this year was the snow.

As with cooking, it helps to have crafty friends. Upon moving to Vermont, I met one of the best: my friend Courtney. Courtney is the mom to two of the girls’ favorite friends, Wyatt and Isabelle. She is also an artist (you can see/buy her prints here), she sews, she cans, she hunts, she raises chickens, she works two jobs. Oh, and in her spare time, she and her husband Cris are building a house. In short, Courtney and Cris are the two people I know who would have no problem starting their own civilization from scratch. It was Courtney who lent me this book, which is what got my sewing started:

It’s a great book if you’re looking to sew something for a little girl and don’t know what you’re doing.

The first little girl I was looking to sew something for was Fiona. Two reasons for this:

1. She had a birthday back in November, and I figured it would be more meaningful to make her a dress than buy her something. So I had her pick out a design in the book above, and we went to the fabric store and she picked out the fabric.

2. Fiona loves clothes, and has a very particular sense of style. Given that Erick has been known to wear clothes until they actually fall off of his body, and I gave up caring about what I wore four years ago (when it became clear that no matter what I put on in the morning, it would look like a used napkin by the evening), this is clearly an inborn trait of Fiona’s. She loves to choose her outfit for the day…and then change it…and change it again. I have actually had to make her “Clothing Change Tickets” that limit her to two clothing changes a day, or I’d never get her to leave her closet.

So, with the pattern and fabric chosen, I got to work. Two-and-a-half months later, here’s the result:

That could reasonably pass as a dress, right? Success! And it was FUN. I’m using the leftover fabric to make one for Campbell now.

One thing I will say about sewing: I’m not sure that it’s actually more economical than buying clothes. This may be because we have an incredible children’s resale store in town called Junebug where I can find like-new clothes for $3, but fabric plus thread plus buttons plus trim are fairly expensive. And then there’s a little thing I’ve learned about from being married to an economist called “utility cost,” which takes into account the value of my time. So, at the end of the day, I’m not sure I saved any money. But I did have fun, and perhaps I gained a little bit of “crafty cred.”