HISTORY AND HELL RAISING- How Generational Gaps Among Families Serve to Bend our Beliefs.

The day after Christmas two of my favorite people show up on my doorstep; they appear unannounced like it’s going out of style. It’s kind of an “old-school bad-assary” vibe as they walk through the door. They have shunned all the hype about the ways of the interweb; social media is for idiots and sinners, and they are ‘keeping it real’ without the constant communication of cellular devices. They are like a couple of really sweet, familiar gangsters that roll up on you in the middle of the day while you’re wearing sweatpants, no bra, and a greasy top bun: they’re old, they do what they want. These are my grandparents.

I tell myself, as I feign a wide relaxed smile, that it’s okay to be loved for who I am. The kitchen is littered with last night’s dinner dishes, a shocker to any 50’s housewife. I wince at the thought of them focusing in on my holiday banner: “Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Feminists, People of Color and LGBTQ.” They probably wouldn’t sneak-attack visit me if I made more of a priority to go and visit them on the reg. But, since I don't (and clearly harbor some shame for my ingrate-granddaughter-ness) they have a pass to get all up in my business whenever they feel like it.

Well into their eighties, my grandparents come with all the quirks that most human beings suffer from at this advanced age: aches and pains are accumulating, minds are wandering, and little fucks are given about what is acceptable to say to people’s faces. On their surprise visit, prior to this one, my grandma picked up the Rad American Women A-Z book from our living room shelf and flipped quietly through the pages. She noted, with spitfire efficiency, that an honored lesbian woman was being celebrated on one of its pages. Dismissively, she tossed the book down onto my coffee table and turned to my grandpa. “Gene,” she said, not a bit under her breath, “they’re raising a bunch of queers.”

Obviously, these two beloved people have ways of thinking that are ingrained. I lack any true resolve to promote a progressive opposition. The ‘Fox News’ laced opinions that they share with me are just the tip of the iceberg. I hear the history in my grandparent’s judgments. My grandmother’s childhood looks like Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath; families of farmers subsisting on the little fruits of their own labor. The only great thing about the midwest at this time is a depression. Folks are terrified by the changes in supposed “separate but equal” policies. My own great-grandmother depended on an orphanage to raise my grandma during some of her formidable teen years. Shit. Was. Real.

After my grandparents were married and anchored down in California suburbia, the honeymoon was short-lived. They were handed two young cousins to raise, as well as providing for the three children that they brought into this world on their own. There was a strict adherence to the literal reprimand of “spare the rod, spoil the child”. My grandpa spent long hard hours on the road as a trucker. Roosevelt's “New Deal” must have felt like a smack in the face to a man who had to choose between devoted husband, attentive father, or reliable provider. I feel a deep sadness for the young motherhood that my grandma had to traverse mostly on her own. I know my grandparents did the best they could with the lives they were given.  

On this day, my children are blessed to have great-grandparents. They came to our house laden with presents, wrapped in paper and ribbons that would shame JC Penny’s gift wrapping department. I’m also pretty sure that the only reason Avon is still in business is due in part to my grandma’s loyalty. My four kids tore through the fancy packages to reveal an abundance of trinkets and toys. I am relieved that, for the most part, they manage to make eye contact and say thank you. My youngest buries her head in my stomach only for a moment, to burst into tears as the last presents are opened, and she can’t control her desire to have more. Oh, Christmas. I manage to say something humbling about expectations and kids. My grandma noticeably glances at my grandfather with a look of disapproval.

They have come like the wise men, suddenly there, bearing gifts and judgment, and Dollar Tree bread: two whites and two wheats, because they didn’t know which type we preferred. I thank them graciously and imagine the geese that we will feed this bread to at Bass Lake, the following day. I am well aware that a treasure trove of wisdom lies in these two worn vessels; they have lived entire lives, more than double my own. The deep well of memories I can draw upon to recall my youth is flooded with their presence: loving me as a child, guiding me as a teenager, and supporting me as a confused adult. No matter the circumstance, they have always been there to embrace me as one of their own.

I walk them slowly out to the driveway a short hour later. My grandma maneuvers out from her walker to get into the car as my grandpa unfurls a dozen dollar-store noodles out of his trunk and into my arms. I buckle the shrinking mother of my mother into the passenger seat, making sure she is comfortable. I glance at the Trump bumper stickers plastered across the dash; ‘Jesus is King’ dangles from a windchime attached to the rearview mirror. I fear that my grandpa’s view of the road will be obstructed, that they are too old to be so independent. I feel like we are miles apart from each other, even as I kiss my grandma’s cheek.

She tenderly grabs my children one by one and pulls them into her frail arms to plant kisses on their cheeks. She reminds us that not a day passes when she doesn’t pray for each of my family members by name (even the future queers). Maybe our very existence is a startling opposition to what they believe. Because we are family, they will love us first and quietly chastise us second. Hopefully, the takeaway will be that not all democratic, snob-bread-eating, non-believers are monsters. And I can look forward to the handful of times that I still have left to spend graced by their sudden presence in my life.

-Emily

CAT PERSON FAN FICTION

This story is written in response to Cat Person, by Kristen Roupenian, published by the New Yorker on December 11th, 2017. 

Robert came home on a Wednesday night babbling to himself. He smelled faintly of Red Vines as he pulled off his Pendleton and threw it across the sofa. Yan jumped down from our shared place at the windowsill and without hesitation began thrusting himself between Robert’s pacing shins.  I took refuge under the coffee table and watched as our human traversed the living room, clearly lost in a thought. He repeatedly licked his thick, flushed lips hidden under an abundance of facial hair. His eyes were narrowed and focused. His hands ran up and down the length of his own torso as Yan mewed, desperate to fulfill Robert’s apparent need to pet.

I anticipated the light kick he would give Yan on his next trip across the room but instead, Yan’s persistence yielded affection. Robert paused at the far wall and stooped down from his giant height to pluck Yan from the ground. “It’s time to get rid of her shit,” he said half to Yan, half to himself. His large clumsy hand pulled a game of Balderdash from the bookshelf and glanced around the room, eyes resting on the Salvador Dali poster above the chair. “I always hated that one.” Then his eyes lowered to mine and as he had done repeatedly over the last eight weeks, he cursed the woman who named me; “Fucking Alice.”

By the next week, he was barely recognizable as the caretaker we’d come to know. The routine of our mornings halted by his frozen leviathan presence in odd places throughout the house. He startled me several times in the hallway, his form paused except for the thud of his thumbs resounding against a glowing screen. Back in the kitchen Yan and I caterwauled incessantly for the Meow Mix fixed in his hand. His eyes were locked, scanning the message on the screen in his other hand. Perplexed, he spoke to himself, trying out some humorous rebuttals, then laughing alone with his ego, he set the box of food down so his thumbs could resume their relentless flutter, and walked out of the kitchen. After he left for work I pushed the box down from the counter and Yan and I ate the spilled contents off of the linoleum floor.

I had come to know Robert as all house cats know their caregivers, too intimately. I found myself locked behind a closed bedroom door with him only once. My hackles stood involuntarily on end, ears flattened, as I cowered beside his bed. I had heard these shameful monologues before from the safety of another room. Yan never seemed to mind the vulnerability he displayed during these fantasies. Tonight the groans of pleasure echoed into the dark corners of the bathroom, where Yan and I rested, tails swishing on a bed of Roberts dirty laundry. Yan could always foresee the sensitive way Robert would interact with us afterward, free of all self-loathing. We were drawn to the temporary calm of his unwavering aura, the result of a satisfied human who seemed momentarily comfortable in his pink, hairy skin.   

Margot became a household name in the following weeks. Robert’s intensified escapades in the bedroom were saturated by the name; strained vocal chords always asking her “Do you like that?” One night after he emerged from his room looking expended, he retrieved a drink from the kitchen where he found me tucked into a ball on a dining chair.  He gulped down his water while he stroked my neck reassuringly. “What Mu,” he asked with affectionate mockery, “Yan avoiding you and your shitty-ass, cat moods?” Afterward, Yan bathed my muzzle reassuringly, reminding me that my vulnerabilities could be a curse or a blessing, and in any case, at least Robert had called me “Mu”, instead of “Alice’s fucking cat”.

As a cat, I didn’t have to go through the infernal suffering that humans did with their relationships. Alice and Robert had adopted us as a couple. She named me Mu. I remember the way Robert immediately chose Yan’s name afterward, making an attempt to be clever. Mui- fluid, lucid and moving. Yan- straightforward, like an edge, never changing. I could care less that Alice had left. My “shitty cat moods” allowed me to be detached, as long as Robert could remember to feed us.

But it all got worse. We noticed that Robert’s giddiness had dwindled. The excited expressions drummed from Robert’s thumbs had ceased. Instead, he sat with a sullen expression, his gross faux-fur hat pulled over his large head, as he stared transfixed at Margot’s glowing messages. Yan took a direct hit from the phone as Robert thrust it away from him and into the couch, crushing his tail without any remorse. He retreated to my side, where I  crouched under the chair, judging our care-less-taker. Robert continued to sit, struggling in his voluntary remorse, resisting the urge to respond to Margot, obsessing over their shared text history, and inventing every imaginable form of betrayal hidden between her words.

We resorted to drinking from the toilet for an entire week as our water bowl sat empty. Robert resorted to drinking from a bottle of whiskey in his bedroom, silently watching porn, no self-expression left in his arousal. The cat box overflowed with shit. Humiliated, Yan and I scratched pathetically for a vacant space in the litter.

Then one day Robert’s dysfunctional fog suddenly lifted. The house became a torrent of motion as Robert dusted and vacuumed, stuffing dirty clothes into baskets and lighting a scented candle left behind by you-know-who. He heartily blurted out the lyrics of a Cake song from the shower, hot steam rolled from under the door as Yan and I sat outside it, ears twitching. As evening descended, something volatile was in the air.  With wet hair dangling in his face Robert pulled off the jeans he had just put on a minute ago and shook his naked legs into a pair of khakis instead. “I’m too old for this.” he murmured while glancing up into his nostrils, face pressed into the mirror over the bathroom sink. I stealthily followed him through the house as Yan napped, unperplexed by the recent uptake in Robert’s energy.

Nervously Robert checked and rechecked his pockets as he stalked through the tidied house looking for his car keys. He found a forgotten pack of Starburst on top of the fridge and tore into them, eating half the package before checking the breast pocket in his jacket and finding his keys there. He rushed out the door, slamming it behind him. I jumped a moment later when he came barreling back through the door. He tore the Salvador Dali from the wall, leaving Starry Night up over the mantel. With his free hand, he swooped down and grabbed Yan from his reverie on the couch, stuffing him beneath his arm so that he could grab me with his free hand. I made to run down the hallway but he caught me by the scruff of the neck. I yowled as Yan dug his claws in silently to Roberts Pendleton and his grasp tightened, pulling my skin.

Then nothing but the night air was holding me. Flung into cold darkness, over the hedge of the neighbors, the framed poster shattering just beside me as we both hit the ground. I couldn’t see where Yan had hit. I quickly dove under the hedge and watched Robert stuff his supersized self into his white honda civic. He peeled out, leaving a wake of colorful starburst wrappers to settle in the gutter. “Fucking dick” I hissed.

-Emily

BODY LANGUAGE- Teaching Our Children to Value Their Bodies.

We were the new neighbors. I had just unpacked the last box and paused by the window to appreciate our green lawn when the sprinklers popped up to do their scheduled watering.  Delighted by this new pleasure, I hollered up the stairs, “The sprinklers are on!” My six-and-under trio flew past me and burst out the front door.  They threw off their clothes and, within seconds, surrendered all their tiny dignity to the wet spray. I felt at home as I hunkered down on our new porch steps with my five-month-protrusion resting between my thighs. I sipped my tea and surveyed our tiny slice of Eden, filled to the brim with gratitude… (gratitude and a growing baby.)

I guess I just expected that the population at large would embrace the sight of my naked kids. I still adored their tiny curved bellies, their smooth little bottoms, and their complete abandonment to joy, sans all clothing. Only now, we were not in the middle of a secluded forty-acre plot, we were visible to other homes.  And I very abruptly learned that we were wearing the emperor’s new clothes. 

“Look! Those kids are all naked!” a shrill voice heckled from the end of the driveway. Side by side, two little kids pointed fingers from the serenity of a shared Power-Wheel.  My children, unaware of their indecency, sprinted forward at the sight of the new comers just as the Power-Wheel, admitting shrieks of terror and glee, turned on a dime and disappeared back down the rode.

I pregnant-strutted as quickly as possible down the steps and across the driveway to gather my flock.  We had done nothing wrong. I could fix this; make sure the shame of this moment didn’t stick. “C’mon,” I said, taking in the next row of houses, people inside, probably watching, “er…let’s all go inside.” I escorted my little exhibitionists into the house, but fearfully forgot the lesson outside.  I soon learned it takes more than one naysayer to break the unclothed spirit of a kid. 

The following week I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the house right next door was a family of crazy homeschoolers, “Like us!” (I assumed incorrectly.)  My eldest daughter gregariously enveloped this shy, polite as-all-heck, neighbor girl. Holly was one year older and loved crafting and reading and make-believe, and seemed to be a perfect companion. I had hopes upon meeting her that she would become an example of maturity and manners for Haven. 

We all became accustomed to the intermittent ring of Holly’s baking timer whenever she came over to visit. Every fifteen-minutes, a jangle notified her that it was time to run home and “check in.”  I didn’t think too much about it, until one afternoon when her mom came knocking on my door to confront me about the picture of a naked woman that my five-year-old son had in his bedroom. Confused, I allowed Holly to escort her to a poster on his wall of animated super heroes, complete with an overly busty Mystique in her blue skin.

An acute awareness befell our home during those future fifteen-minute increments.  Of notable interest was how often my family was categorized as “weird” in a squeaky little girls voice.  My 6 year-old son without a shirt on, or myself exposing a breast to feed my new born, were observed to be “gross.” If any proper names were used for body parts, I could be sure to have an overly friendly confrontational chat with the mother. We both kept the peace by fake laughing over one another about the crimes our children were committing. Exhausting!

But our girls were friends, both homeschooled. We owned houses next door to each other. There didn’t seem to be another solution. I felt panic when that sweet little face appeared at our front door.  She gently swayed side to side in her new dress, thoughtfully calling me “Miss Emily” and politely asking if Haven could play. I can still see my children’s confused expressions as she shrieked through laughter “STOP LOOKING AT ME” while they played dress up in the living room.  Later she chastised them for kissing their dad and me on the lips.  I began imagining the horror of what the neighbors would think if they found out I sometimes showered with a kid or two.

I wish that I’d foreseen the impact that this little friend would make in such a short time.  Gone were the moments of pure nudity, but I had expected that sooner or later (definitely later).  And in its place a growing fascination was fostered for all things that could be suspects of shame.

That’s when I decided to get real naked with myself. I was leading by example when it came to being comfortable in my own skin, but that hardly required me to talk about the opposition. I didn’t know how to deflect the harm of other’s judgments. I was a little kid all over again and silence reined over the ridicule of our human bodies.  If I allowed it, another family would interpret what I knew was right for our individual family, and it wouldn’t be with a favorable artillery of words.

I began to use any comparison with the neighbors as a soapbox moment in my anti-humiliation campaign.  I was not immediately successful at this, and even fearful that I couldn’t or even shouldn’t, be telling my own kids about their own bodies. Thankfully, with every new word tackled: “sex,” “vulva,” and yes, even *gasp* “masturbation,” I realized that my kids were way less mortified than I was.  I made it clear that what I expressed to them was unique for our family, just like the neighbors had their own very unique way of talking (or not talking) about bodies. 

We discussed “sexual objectification” at the Target check-out line while analyzing Kim Kardashian’s magazine cover.  We shared beautifully illustrated books about different types of bodies, allowing these to be coffee table friendly, regardless of who was visiting that day. This last year when an adult discussion on politics lead to my daughter asking some very specific questions about her president, we had an empowering talk about consent.  And nobody turned into a three-horned-sexual-ghoul.  Nobody was emotionally stunted or robbed of their innocence. If anything, after our experience with the neighbor friend, I feel that I have given that innocence back to them.

I have heard similar stories of parents who speak freely about bodies and sex with their kids. I wish that someone had told three year-old me that having a body was okay. In fact, it is super-cool, and special, and fascinating to learn about and absolutely worth protecting.  I won't pass the fear I felt about my own body onto my kids, a fear that grew mostly from silence.  My parents didn’t want to talk about it, and that void filled up with misconceptions. 

Had I not faced the obstacles that our neighbors provided us with, I may have missed an invaluable opportunity to cultivate the natural flow of conversation about our bodies. Although we struggled in the moment, I appreciate the opposition that parenting with others provides. It allows us to dig deep and get critical about why we have the values we do. As a budding teen, Holly is a less frequent visitor at our house, but we have maintained a healthy relationship with our neighbors. I hope that we have been a catalyst for productive conversations in their home, as they so clearly were in ours (even helping us to identify how Mystique was being sexually objectified right under our noses). 

I have healed some of my own un-ease about my own body through ensuring that my children value theirs.  And consequently, I can’t shut up about it now.  The more that I discuss this issue with the people in my parenting world, the more I realize that I am SO not alone. Do you have a personal stigma attached to body image from your childhood? And, does it effect the “sex /body talk” in your own home? 

-Emily

One 'Tis the Season' Weekend in a Mom's Life.

The quarter cup of coffee John left in the Keurig this morning is a sign; if you want it, drink it. It’s not nearly enough to fill a cup, and cold for that matter, but if you don’t want to put in the effort, suck it up, literally, because that's all that's in there, a suck of coffee. I opt to prepare a giant portion of steaming, black liquid for myself. Afterwards, I finish assisting my 10-year-old son in preparing breakfast and then retreat to the far end of the bar with my coffee, where I pop open my laptop and delight in my comfort zone.

As I bring the warm liquid to my lips, and swallow, and breathe, I begin to write the first sentence of this paragraph. Suddenly, my tweenager barrels into the kitchen, pulled into the realm of wakefulness by the smell of breakfast. She slides in next to me at the bar with her plate and wolfs down the first bite while simultaneously launching into a self-indulgent recollection of a dream that she’s just had. I only have the patience to say, “I’m not really able to give you my attention right now, so maybe you can tell your siblings instead” (thank you other children) as I pull the plug from its outlet with too much zest and head for the living room. I hear her sulkily deny all eager requests to hear her dream as I resituate myself.

No sense in pretending that I am entitled to be that rude. “Haven, I’m sorry. I just made too many commitments, they are catching up with me, and I took it out on you. I’m sorry.” She acknowledges me with a tip of her head while silently chewing. Now Olive, seeing that I am once again amiable, saddles up beside me to show me her latest drawing. It’s a picture of the gingerbread house, much like the one she covered in candy last night, riddled with details to be covered. And also she would like me to know that people in “magic-land” have moles on their faces that are much larger than mine. “You are lucky Mom, in magic-land people have to drag their moles on the ground when they walk because they’re so big!”

She’s right. I am lucky.

This beautiful morning, that I am now struggling to keep up with, is being thwarted by the repercussions of all those wonderful things that I filled my weekend with. I didn’t lesson plan. I didn’t make time to address my upcoming schedule. I didn’t communicate to myself, or anyone else, that I needed to make productive space for the future so I could hit the ground running instead of being a snarky, bossy grown up. I didn’t open my eyes and welcome the vast opportunities this day has to offer because I was too dang busy blowing off adulting and enjoying myself. Like filled to the brim Keurig kind of enjoyment.

The elation I felt after leaving my college campus this weekend (with a mutha-you-know-what-ing A!!!!), led to me peacefully pushing a shopping cart full of organic chicken through the pre-apocalyptic aisles of Costco and sharing a smile with every disgruntled holiday shopper I passed. Things started to lull as I got sucked into the time warp of Target, where I spent a luxurious half of an hour touching and comparing the 53 different textiles that consumers can choose from to keep the water in their shower. As fate would have it, John called at the moment I was leaving the aisle with a gold arrow embossed curtain and reminded me that we don’t need one. (Angi! The struggle is real!!)

Once home, I clung to the last strands of getting things accomplished and managed to bang out a clean kitchen. My saving grace was that dinner was being served at my mom-in-laws and all I had to do was show up. Huzzah! We ate dinner as a family and I genuinely relished Grandma Patsy’s spot-on, 83-year-old recollections of her past. To say that I felt gratitude for all of this is an understatement. The family that surrounds me and my children is a humbling experience that reminds me of any prior time in history when I took it for granted.

When I bowed out at bedtime to meet up with some friends, I traded all that responsible, mindful, and ‘determined to conquer all the things’ attitude for adult beverages, good friends that I rarely see, and copious amounts of laughter. It was a worthy endeavor, to say the least.

Don’t tell my buddies, but the next morning, after 5 hours of sleep, I regretted it. Regardless, dressing my little darlings and brushing hair at 8 am, in preparation for sitting on Santa’s lap, was an equally worthy endeavor, and clearly, if I want to have it all, I’m going to have to pay for it. Breakfast afterwards was a hit, thanks once again to my amazing MIL, who I can only imagine was just holding it all together after spending 48 hours with her own mother (Grandma Patsy) because we love the women that raise us but that raising part comes with a host of kinks; case in point, me shutting down my daughter’s dreams this morning…

I surrender myself to the couch as soon as I walk in the door after breakfast. Video games watch my kids while I throw the better part of a Sunday away. I successfully rally to stuff the kids with an early dinner before we depart for a second festivity. Loaded with $25 in candy, we join a troop of children at our neighbor Sonya’s house to deck individual homemade gingerbread houses out with every form of sugar imaginable. The amount of work that goes into this holiday endeavor is beyond the capabilities of my mind. Just know that Sonya is a freaking angel.

A friend and I take our children back to my house; two of mine have already experienced explosive, sugar-laden diarrhea, and the others are ramped to annoying as F' heights, on all forms of corn syrup. Thankfully,  there is a video game to fix this; it's an outdated Wii that makes them move while demanding their focus. So, Courtney and I retire to the kitchen, where our husbands hide during holiday festivities and drink the remainder of their beers. We let the kids stay up too late and just flat out enjoy one another’s company.

That brings us back to today, when I chastise myself for not staying on track and half-assedly coerce the kids to home school themselves while I write an overly indulgent blog post (oh gawd, she learned it all from me!) Perhaps the reality is that allowing productivity to slide and living in the moment (even if it requires a round of Ibuprofen and a midday nap), is the only way to acknowledge this decked-out-in-lights season. I am too indebted to all the wonderful people that share their time with me and my family to begrudgingly require a flawless state of efficiency. We have to give ourselves permission to play catch up, and say sorry, and be less than our 110% selves. Otherwise, we might not get a chance to eat, drink, and be merry.

-Emily

HOMESCHOOLING AND THE HUNGER GAMES

On a whim, I checked out The Hunger Games audiobook at my local library. It was a last-second decision. I plucked it from the “teen” shelf and plopped it down onto my pile of books already being processed. I recently had success with engaging the bulk of my kids' attention with a free audio version of Les Miserables (my favorite book) on YouTube. Before you guffaw over the age appropriateness of this decision, I will regress; parental guidance starts waaaaay before the age of 13.

Think about it; rated “G” means the material presented is suitable for a general audience. But as long as that general audience is exposed to half naked women plastered on magazines at the grocery store checkout line, as long as violence is marketed as heroism in the form of little boy’s toys, as long as our leadership is disproportionately represented by privileged white males (some who still have their jobs regardless of the recent ‘sexual-harassment’ shake-down) … I will be openly discussing things with my kids aged (5-11) that are considered outside acceptable guidelines.

Just to be clear, I didn’t pop the Hunger Games in and check out: firstly because it's dang entertaining, and secondly, because it's a brutal story. I will say that the brutality is on par with a popular history curriculum that is used at my charter school, The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer. The descriptions in the Hunger Games of people killing one another was even mild in comparison, given that this particular history curriculum geared toward ages 8-12, gives coloring pages for the plagues of Egypt, along with full details about heads being thrust onto spikes.

Honestly, violence is the least of my concerns in the Hunger Game series. What I pause and reflect on most is the heroine’s “responsibility” to placate The Capital with her feigned desire and sexuality. These are some of the best conversations with my growing daughters, who view Katniss Everdeen as a bad-ass female, quick and accurate with a bow, who single-handedly bread wins for her entire family, and has enough energy at the end of the day to selflessly exchange her own life for that of her little sister’s. Suzanne Collins’ character is an idol by those definitions. But Katniss also comes packaged as an average sexually conceptualized woman; her worth and power are marred by how well she displays her physical sensuality.

These abstract ideas that our children pick up from movies and TV shows, conversations, clothing, characters from books, and real-life people moving around in their world, these salvaged pieces of life fabricate the world that our kids sew together. It’s like Maya Angelou said:

"You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive."

This admirable quote may seem to smack my ideals in the face. I would just like to add to it that we are influenced by so many unaccountable things, and try as you might to present to your children only those influences that are positive, you still won’t be able to shield them from the “everything” else. The other option is to open up those ideas; unpack what they mean, explore what makes a human susceptible to negative thoughts or behaviors. What other option is there?

In defense of the Hunger Games, I will also add that this dystopian series has invoked feelings and conversations about many other things: our current climate, the effects of food waste, the plundering of the earth’s resources, and the counter effects of taking advantage of a comfortable 21st century life, just to name a few.

Reading aloud, or sharing an audiobook can become a bonafide, cross-curricular lesson. By following an interesting character like Katniss through an exciting plot, we have yielded discussions about our own government, what we know about United States geography, and even questioned what choices a person has when told to be obedient to an authority that doesn’t hold true to their individual morals.  

If Hunger Games still sounds a bit too edgy for your 5-year-old, (I kid! Her attention span doesn’t sit for audiobooks just yet) there are so many other options for gleaning the benefits I’ve mentioned here. Reading aloud (and independently where content is held to stricter guidelines) is the cement that holds our homeschooling together. It is time-consuming, of course, but so valuable, I don’t see that we could spend our time as wisely doing anything else.

Here are some excellent read alouds that we have currently shared, and have sparked an emphasis on some of those “influential everythings” that are hard to find a segue into on a normal day to day basis:

The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry.

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

The Breadwinner series by Deborah Ellis Pam Munoz Ryan

Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

Les Miserable Victor Hugo

-Emily