Hamilton

Aaron and I had the great privilege of seeing Hamilton together last month. It was a sheer delight.

We both have had the soundtrack completely memorized for years, and still it was hugely entertaining to see the play. There were visual effects and jokes that we loved, like the little move Mulligan does when Hamilton compliments his pants, and the fact that during the whole scene with the Adams administration, King George is onstage laughing his head off. There were also aspects that deepened the meaning. For example, Lafayette only appears in the first half and Jefferson only appears in the second half, so those two characters are played by the same actor -- meaning that when Jefferson asks Hamilton, "Did you forget Lafayette?", it is also Lafayette asking him that question. Wow.

Aaron was overjoyed with the experience of seeing this play in real life. He compared it to going to Tanzania - one of his life's other really extraordinary experiences. He is studying Colonial Boston in school right now, and he really noticed how much more meaningful the story is when you know more of the history; for example, he had not known about the Boston Tea Party before, so he had been missing those references. He has been listening to the soundtrack again, trying to connect what he's hearing to the history he's learning in school. He also explained that the play has a personal message for him:

Aaron: Part of why I enjoy this play so much is that I am like Hamilton.
Rachel: You feel that you are like him?
Aaron: Yes, because a lot of how he made a difference was by being a writer. He wrote about the hurricane when he was a kid, and he wrote political speeches, and he wrote most of the Federalist papers. And I am a writer. I want to make a difference in the world by my writing.

I love this connection. I think that middle school will greatly increase both Aaron's writing power and his opportunities to use writing for social justice, and I'm looking forward to what's next for him.

Voice change

Jordan's voice is changing. This is potentially a bigger deal for a boychoir boy than it would be for most boys... he has a lot invested in his beautiful pure high notes. But he also has the best people to walk him through it, and to understand it as an ordinary embodied experience. When he realized what was going on he went to his choir director, who sent him to the voice instructor, who worked with him to change old voice habits. Meanwhile, the guy he stands next to in choir went through this a few months ago, so he can say things like, "Oh yeah, that was so annoying, but it only lasted a week or two." I found myself wishing that there was this kind of no-nonsense support and mentoring for every part of puberty: for skin, for moods, for all of it.

Meanwhile I played him this great old clip from the Brady Bunch.

When it's time to change, then it's time to change
Don't fight the tide, come along for the ride,
Don't you see?
When it's time to change, you've got to rearrange
Who you are into what you're gonna be!

Walkout

Yesterday was the National School Walkout for gun control. Jordan's school participated actively: here is the letter we got from the assistant principal.

Dear Parents, 

In the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the gun safety debate is once again at the forefront of our minds. However, as I told the kids last week in All School Meeting, the response feels a little different this time. Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have organized and are actively seeking support of their message, that "Congress must take meaningful action to keep students safe and pass federal gun reform legislation that addresses the public health crisis of gun violence." Many of our students have expressed a desire to support the message and to add their own voices. 

On March 14, next Wednesday, a National School Walkout is planned. The walkout will last 17 minutes to commemorate the 17 lives that were taken on February 14. We have invited students to join in showing our support for safe and sane gun laws. Students who would like to participate in the walkout have been asked to join me for one lunch period before March 14 to research and study gun laws and statistics in the US and to make thoughtful signs to hold during the walkout. Additionally, teachers have been sharing and assigning reading and holding discussions in classes to make sure our students are informed about both sides of the debate. I am amazed, heartened, and optimistic about our kids' response to this conversation. 

Please join us in continuing this conversation with your students at home. And, if you would like to, join us at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, March 14 as we congregate outside our school building to show our support for the Parkland students and say #Enough. 

Thank you,
Catherine

I am proud of the leadership position the school is taking, including educating the students about the issues. I joined the walkout myself, which for me meant standing for 17 minutes in contemplation of the lives lost and lives still at risk. About half the school participated. Here they are holding their signs along the street in front of the school.



As you can see in the photo, the street is very quiet at 10am on a Wednesday. But everyone who drove by honked and waved and gave the kids a thumbs-up. I imagined driving around the city past multiple schools and seeing multiple demonstrations.

Jordan chose not to participate in the walkout. He felt sure that there was not going to be much of an audience for their demonstration, which said to him that it was not very meaningful, and he felt his time would be better spent in class. In addition, when there was a walkout protest last year (about the election), some kids behaved badly - for example, being rude to passing cars; Jordan felt implicated in their behavior that time, and didn't want to participate in that again. I think all these reasons are completely legitimate and am pleased that the school supported students' individual decisions. (I also learned that the school had provided this week's structure partly in response to last year's behavior: they wanted participating students to show some investment in the issues first, by spending a lunch period doing research and making signs.) For myself, I felt that participating linked me to something bigger, whether there was an audience or not, and I wanted to spend that time in silence. 

I have friends whose kids organized their school's walkouts and gave amazing speeches. I have other friends whose kids' schools did not support the walkout, such that those kids were marked with an unexcused absence. I think that those kids got different and also-valuable pieces of education, about leadership in the former case, and resisting local authority in the latter. 

Aaron's school did not communicate with the students about the walkout. They explained,

Our students are too young to know all of the details for this event. Our recess time is 10:00am and our students will be happily playing outside. SJCS teachers and staff will walk outside at that time, and we will stand together while watching the students play and quietly hold the intention for the end of gun violence knowing that other teachers, staff and high school students around our country are doing the same at this time. May we all grow in wisdom and courage. 

Though I think the school is right that on the whole, elementary school children are too young, I was pleased to learn that Aaron's grade honored the moment in their own way. They talked about wanting everyone to feel safe in school, discussed the ways in which their school strives to keep them safe, and stood in a silent line for 17 seconds.

Eye trouble

This morning the vision in my right eye was seriously not okay. I was seeing everything as if through a uniformly dirty window, or a milky haze, and also there were a million black specks swimming before that eye. If both eyes had been that bad I would not have been able to drive or read, even with my glasses. I've been very nearsighted all my life; this was something entirely different, and pretty distressing. Pro tip: Do not google "sudden impaired vision in one eye" and expect to find anything encouraging. Top contenders include advanced diabetes, stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, and a brain tumor.

After a couple hours in which nothing got better, I called my eye doctor. She said to meet her in her office shortly - the office was closed, but she was on call. After a thorough examination she explained that the floaters and milky haze are from blood inside my eye; this is not so bad in itself, but it's important to know what is bleeding. The culprit in my case is a small retinal tear. This happens because as we age (phooey), the vitreous shrinks and pulls away from the retina, and sometimes it sticks and tears it a little. It is very important to treat retinal tears immediately, because if left untreated they can worsen and let fluid collect behind the retina; this is a detached retina, which is a medical emergency with real risk to your vision. So she called her favorite retinal surgeon, who said he'd meet me in his office in an hour for a quick procedure. Really? Well, fortunately, our plans for the rest of the day were flexible. And I seemed to have made the right decision calling a doctor right away.

The goal of the laser surgery is to zap little spots around the tear to kind of tack the retina in place, so that the tear can't worsen. I am still amazed at the procedure. After examining my eye further to locate the tear as specifically as possible, he placed a special lens onto my eyeball so I was like a cyborg: this lens had mirrors on it to direct the laser. I sat in the usual optometrist chair with my face in the usual device, and he blasted about a dozen quick shots of the brightest light I'd ever seen - so bright it almost hurt, but not really. It was like looking into the Eye of Sauron, only green.

Then I went home! The whole thing was only four hours from start to finish. There is no pain or discomfort. (I'm a little wiped out, but I think that's mostly from the drama.) My vision is still hazy in that eye because the blood is still floating around in there, and it might take several days or even weeks to clear, but it will clear eventually. I go back for followup in a few days. Over the coming months I might have more such events so I need to keep an eye out (ahem).

The whole afternoon was kind of amazing. I am awed to think of all the systems that are working so well on my behalf for me to get this kind of treatment. I have great medical insurance, a longstanding relationship with a good optometrist five minutes from my house, access to an optometrist on call who showed up right on time to help me, and access to a retinal surgeon ten minutes away who also came in just to take care of me. The doctors are supported to come in on a Saturday afternoon when the office is closed to attend to an urgent patient, and both of them used extraordinary technology to address my problem. They also taught me what I need to know so that I can continue to take good care of myself. I am grateful for the people, machines, and systems that are working on my behalf, and feeling very aware of how different things could be if even one of these things were not available. 

Musicians

Aaron learned the basics of the ukulele a couple years ago and loved the heck out of it, but he had not been playing it for the past year or so, because he didn't know many chords and it had gotten boring. Then Dale pointed out to him that his wonderful ukulele book, "Daily Ukulele," has a chord chart in the front - and it was a revelation. Any chord you want, right there! The next revelation was that "Daily Ukulele" actually has 365 songs, so that you could learn a new song every day for a year. How awesome is that! Aaron proceeded to learn five new songs then and there, and another five the next day. Clearly he can read a chord chart.

One day he picked out "Don't Worry, Be Happy," which Dale could also strum on the guitar, and Jordan hopped over to the piano, and the three of them played together. Dale's music-father heart just about burst with joy.

And it really is pretty amazing. Jordan can accompany pretty much anything you want on piano; he can play any melody he hears (in essentially any key), then accompany it with chords that he finds himself. And Aaron, even on a song he's just learning, is such a good all-around musician that he is a pleasure to play with: he keeps time, he knows how to drop out and come back in, he responds to what the others in the band are doing without getting frustrated or needing things to be just so. For Dale's mom's birthday we had a little family singalong with Dale on drums, Jordan on piano, and Aaron and Uncle Danny both on ukuleles, and Danny was extremely impressed with Aaron. Danny is one of these extraordinary musicians who plays pretty much any instrument you hand him, so that is quite a compliment.

Jordan, meanwhile, has not played the ukulele in any concentrated way; but he does sit down with it and strum a little song sometimes. At some point I realized he was doing this without a chord chart... so how does he know where any of the chords are? I asked him, and he said, "I just find them." I had never thought about anyone possibly doing this. But the frets are a half-step apart, and his music theory is so deep that chord structure is just a second language to him, so he just fiddles around and finds finger positions of his own that produce the chords he wants. This casual musical sophistication, with both kids, is a wonder to me.

PT

My knees started to hurt, so I am seeing a physical therapist, and it's amazing. Last week my guy showed me a core exercise (the "dead bug") that I had not thought would be possible for me, and it turned out that I could totally do it. It was exciting! The next week, he started me on side plank, which I was terrified by, but he helped me do it with strength, and what do you know, it is in fact possible for me. Such an experience! I show up, and he doles out increasingly challenging things for me to do, and I do them, and I get stronger!

I left that day thinking, if only life were like this. In PT, you are not faced with challenges that are too hard for you. No one asks you to do such things, because they know you would injure yourself. Instead you are given a steady progression of increasingly challenging things that strengthen you in specific ways, so that you can eventually do things that you had wanted to do but couldn’t. What a wonderful system. Life, on the other hand, hurls challenges at you almost randomly, and some of the challenges might be beyond your strength. I guess you have to learn to recognize the ones that are too hard, and figure out how to say no, so that you avoid injury? Does it work like that?

Leavenworth: Sleigh ride

Right down the street from our marvelous Leavenworth lodge, you can take an actual horse-drawn sleigh ride around the valley. The day we went, the clouds draped themselves among the trees on the mountainsides, and it could not have been more beautiful.