My Thoughts Exactly

I read the following at The Variegated Life

• How can I teach the Critter to be gentle if I’m yelling all the time? How can we teach the Critter to take care of his things if we’re letting clutter pile up everywhere? How can I teach the Critter that his dreams matter if I let the shitbird frighten me away from my own true heart’s desires?

These are exactly the same thoughts I have about raising my son. I don't want him to remember his childhood as a time when he was getting yelled at all the time, because that is how I remembered my childhood for so long, and I hated it.

I want to go home from work at night and play with him quietly and teach him things but, I get home and he goes into some other mode. He gets grabby and screamy and all he wants to do is go outside even though it is dinner time and I am starving. So I rush through dinner and we go outside and he is mostly good, but as soon as we get in the house, it starts all over again. Perhaps this little guy just wants to have the camping life also. I can't wait to take him camping. To introduce him to sleeping in a tent. Maybe, since the air conditioning appears to be broken, we should sleep outside for the rest of the summer and have a taste of camping.

I also want to let him have fun and discover all the wonders of life, but it's hard to balance the fun he has spraying the water from the bathroom faucet with my knowledge that water is precious and should not be wasted like that. Does anyone ever find the balance? If you have, let me know how you did it.

Fruits of Summer

The strawberries are done for the year, but we are now enjoying black raspberries by the handfuls during our walks and still being able to collect some for freezer jam. Plus our mulberry trees still have several berries that have barely begun to ripen.

Every night that the weather and mosquitoes permit, we take a walk on the paths in our yard. When we get near the mulberry trees he demands to be let out so he can walk over to the tree and pick himself some berries. He also enjoys eating the black raspberries, but we discourage him from picking those himself--he knows all about thorns.

I love that my son already knows where some of his food comes from. Harvesting the garden this year will be great fun for him, if he doesn't pick all the plants before they have a chance to produce.

I love the physical, fleshy, edible, fruits of summer, and the seeds of knowledge that they are planting in my son's mind. One day soon he will bear those fruits as beautifully as this summer has borne her strawberries, black raspberries, and mulberries.

To Make Life More Like Camping

Yesterday I looked around my house again. My son has too many toys, I have too many unused blank journals, we have too many dishes; there's too much stuff everywhere. I thought, "I don't need this stuff when I'm camping, why do it need it when I'm living?"

When I'm camping I can walk around without tripping over books and papers. When I'm camping, I do what needs to be done when it needs doing. When I'm camping, I am free. I want to make my regular day-to-day life more like camping. So how do I do that?

Step One: Donate everything I no longer need or love.

Step Two: Stop buying things I don't need or love--even if they're $ .49 at the thrift store.

Step Three: Clean something everyday.

Step Four: Enjoy some fires with my family.