Sevenses

The longer I parent, the more justified I feel my parents to have been in, well, much of my childhood.  Once a week or sometimes once a day I will have a small "aha" moment and realize, "Oh, that's why my mom did that."  Numerous tiny wounds and resentments that I've half-jokingly cherished since I was three have been slowly leeching away as I encounter the same kind of situations with my child.  And today, we had a perfect parallel experience because today is Boogaloo's birthday.

I have a vivid memory of my seventh birthday.  I don't remember the cake or the presents.  I vaguely remember the guests.  I do remember wearing a hand-me-down blue plaid dress with a white lace collar which I really, really loved.  But the most potent memory I have of my seventh birthday is being forced to clean my room on my birthday.  It just seemed so unfair.  It was my birthday.  I shouldn't have to clean my room.  Moreover, I should not have had to clean it by myself.  Most of the mess belonged to my sister, who wasn't so much younger than I am that she couldn't have helped.  I don't remember what I said to my parents, but I know that I said plenty in my head and under my breath.  I very strongly felt that the fact that it was my birthday should make me above such things. 

Fast forward 28 years, and Boogaloo is getting ready for school on her birthday.  She can't wait to tell her friends that it's her birthday, and trusting this fervor to keep her moving, I decided to jump in the shower. (I should mention that procrastination is a long standing problem at our house.)  I told her very specifically, "By the time I get out of the bathroom, you should have your school clothes on."  But when I got out, she didn't.  She was standing by her bed in her pajamas with a big box of crayons and her drawing notebook.  She jumped guiltily and began pulling her arm out of her sleeve, but it was too late.  Mommy had seen. 

I did not shout.  I rebuked her very calmly, but then I walked across the room and confiscated her crayons and drawing notebook.  As I carried them out of her room and as she threw herself on the bed and wept as only a seven-year-old drama queen can, I felt a stab of reminiscence.  My reasons were perfectly good.  My daughter has a knack for disregarding the necessary in light of the interesting.  This is not okay before school.  We've been through this before.  I daresay my mother had perfectly good reasons too.  (I was probably driving her crazy with excitement about my party, and cleaning my room was a good way to get me out of the way.)  And as I walked the three steps to my room, I realized that I was not ruining my daughter's birthday.  I was keeping instruction consistent, which is much more important than any special day. 

Did I ruin Boogaloo's birthday?  The short answer is no.  She told me she was very sad.  I accepted that.  I told her that I was a little angry.  She processed that.  Then she did the responsible thing and got her school clothes on.  I won't say that the issue was entirely smoothed over because I had to endure some hints about the drawing that she'd like to do before the school bus came, but when she got on the bus she was once again excited about her birthday and the party that we have planned for this evening.  And honestly, it's going to be a pretty cool party.  We booked a room at a place that's even better than Chuck E. Cheese.   I'm pretty sure that by the time she gets her crayons back tomorrow, she'll have forgotten about the whole thing, which doesn't answer well for my parenting.

Football Blues

Try though I might, this year, I just can't manage to hate the Patriots like I did last year.  Last year, a healthy antipathy blossomed up in my chest every time I saw a red, grey, and blue uniform.  It was hard to be civil to pictures of Tom Brady online.  Even after the Broncos beat them on the way to the Superbowl, they were still the "evil Patriots" in my mind as in the minds of so many others. 

Maybe it's because the Patriots were trailing the Ravens by two touchdowns at home when I started this blog post.  Maybe it's because they started the season by losing three games.  Maybe it's because Brady looks a little older and a little scruffier and downright tired at times and there's a rumor that he might be released in the next couple of years (seems to be the Patriots' modus operandi to release expensive veterans, or at least so the experts say).  But of late I just can't muster the anti-Patriot luster.  Of course, now that they're going to the AFC championship while the Broncos are eliminated from the playoffs, I can feel a  bit of the old spite coming back.  Just a bit. 

Football feelings are funny things.  Watching football is kind of like watching no-penalty politics.  Mini-nation states form around the success and failure of these people in pads and helmets, and real animosity forms around victories, losses, and gestures of unsportsmanship. Of the two, I think politics generates more heat, but football generates more commentary (at least in the U.S.) and almost as much venom.  It all stays pretty civil in my football communities.  My husband comes from a multiple team family, and neither betting nor gloating happens untowardly. Unless something head to head is happening, they view having multiple teams as a chance to appropriate a win when one's own team is losing.  (I.e.  At least the Packers are going to a championship.) But I have heard stories, oh I have heard stories. 

 If you think about it, every office and many families are like tiny United Nations of sports fans.   Temporary alliances form, prejudices develop beyond the conflict at hand, and sometimes forces have to be brought to bear to keep the peace.   Identity among the masses is at stake.  This thing that I love must have success so that my love will be vindicated before the peoples.  Yeah, people are weird, and the Patriots are too good to be anything but football evil. 

The Atsma Family Christmas Letter

Dear Family and Friends,

May God bless you as you wrap up the current year by reflecting on his love and begin the new year with the hope and encouragement that come from being united with Christ. 

Last winter we actually had snow in OR. 

I dearly hope that this letter is not in lieu of Christmas cards, but momentum runs against me.  I can't think of a year since I've been married that I have gotten out all my cards on time. If you've gotten a card from us consistently, I have no explanation.  If you haven't, it's nothing personal.  It's just the season.  Sometimes I wonder how life was simpler for my parents because Christmas was always ready when I was growing up.  The cards were always sent, the goodies were always plenteous, and the stockings were always hung at least two weeks before Christmas.  The only answer I can come up with is only that we had no Internet back then. 

Notice the fireplace.  That was one of our major projects this year. 

The theme of our year has been the provision of our Lord and God, specifically centering around our new  house.  Last year in October, we moved into a pleasant little two bedroom house in Forest Grove, Oregon, comfortably priced because the previous tenants had taken less-than-stellar care of it, and proceeded to make it our own.  This year we have learned the joys of refinishing floors, of painting, of installing a woodstove, of laying and taking up flooring, of replacing appliances, and even laying a bit of tile. 

Our house has a large yard with several fruit trees, and we have learned how to prune and when to harvest.  I've gotten back into canning and jam making, and Seth has been experimenting with fermenting cider.  It's a great comfort to open our pantry and see pears and plums and applesauce, but man, it was a lot of work in the making.  I didn't always appreciate the comfort when I was peeling our organic pears (we all know that organic can simply mean buggy, right?) or splitting prunes in a stuffy kitchen, but we do appreciate it now. 

Seth is in the middle of his fourth year as a customer service engineer at ASML, a Dutch company that makes micro-processing machines for Intel.  His workload has been growing considerably toward the end of this year as Intel expands in our area, and next year, he expects it to grow even more as the company installs three new machines (when I say machine, you should think of something roughly the size of your dining room that makes lines smaller than a human hair).  Seth also serves our church as a pastoral elder and is thinking about chaplaincy ministry in the near future. 

Annika is growing by leaps and bounds.  In fact, every time family sees her, they say, "Has she grown?"  The answer is yeah, probably.  She is in first grade this year, and seems to enjoy school with moderation.  The homework is never a problem for her, and she has a large group of classmates that she counts as friends.  She is passionate about everything she does, especially her artwork, and we hope to get her involved in music too in the coming year.

I have been picking up some ESL tutoring at the local universities.  There is currently an influx of Saudi Arabian students in the U.S., and I've had the privilege of working with several of them to help them become more proficient in their English.  I've also started substitute teaching a couple of days a week.  On Tuesdays, I meet with an ESL Bible study group at our church in addition to a little bit of work in the church library and some music with the praise team when they need a flute. 

We took a break for a family reunion this summer, so most of my extended family finally got to meet the "elusive Seth" and vice versa. Then Seth and I competed in my first (his second) Warrior Dash this fall.  Seth spent a couple of weeks in Eindhoven for training with his company. But for the most part, we've been here enjoying the fruits that laboring in one's own house can bring and remembering that the future is always opening up in front of us, one providential day at a time. 

Much Faith, Hope, and Love to Everyone. 

Seth, Jennifer, and Annika

 

 



And another thing. . .

One of the things that I love about tutoring is the incidental knowledge that I pick up while I'm instructing my students in reading and writing.  The same thing happens with substitute teaching.  Is my student working through a unit on thrill seeking?  Guess what I get to learn about.  Does the high school need a basic geometry teacher?  Guess who's getting a refresher course in interior and exterior angles.  This past semester I have learned a number of things I wouldn't have encountered otherwise:

1. Wilkie Collins wrote the first real detective novel, a book called The Moonstone, which set the pattern for almost every detective novel (or at least English detective novel) since, including anything mentioning Sherlock Holmes.  So when I stumbled across a copy in my parents' basement,  I read it.  Not bad.
2. Blue light is a major factor in human health.  Applied in the right times in the right ways, it can completely reset our internal clocks, for good or for ill.  Electronics are a major source of blue light, particularly because we focus on them so intently, but even the brightest flourescent lamp does not project as much blue light as a cloudy winter day.  Blue light during the day is good.  It forfends depression, soothes aggitated nerves, and keeps people awake.  Blue light at night counteracts all those good things by short circuiting the circadian rhythm, an internal shift that can also lead to diabetes, cancer, and in general a higher mortality rate.  Having struggled with depression, I took notice of this information. 
3. 11 teenagers die every day from accidents related to texting and driving. 
4. Alternate interior angles are always congruent.  Consecutive interior angles are always supplementary.  Coordinating angles are always congruent.  And if you really want to confuse a student, put five different variables inside two pairs of almost parallel lines when all you really want is x, which happens to be in the top right inside corner, and y, which is directly across from it. 
5. Radiocarbon dating is only for rocks with organic matter in them, and the numbers of all rock dating methods rarely come back consistently with each other.  
6. Second-graders can understand scarcity.
7. Seventh-graders do not remember 9/11, but I remember the collapse of the Berlin Wall.  That makes me historical. 

It's fun, learning all these new things and being refreshed in things that I haven't studied since high school.  And then to apply sometimes. I told Seth about the effects of late night blue light, and we switched our alarm clocks (our last was a bright green light) to something dimmer, and the change might be improving our sleep.  (It's too early to tell.)

MOOCing

Is there anything the Internet can't do? 

I've just discovered Massive Online (Something or other) Courses, courses where thousands of people from around the world can sign up, log in, and learn something college-like, often for free.  I'm using one for professional development.  It's just like college, only in this case, it's free.  I even get a certificate of completion.  Right now I'm studying teaching argumentation to English language learners, something I will use whether I tutor or teach.  The course comes through Stanford University (yes, that Stanford) and Oregon State, and in return they get information to improve their teaching courses.  Seriously, the concept is pretty awesome. 

Of course, MOOCing leaves me with four to eight fewer hours per week, as well as one day that I can't substitute because I'm in the classroom observing or practicing my teaching, so life has been a little crazier than usual, but I'm also making contacts online and in the school district which I wouldn't have made without it.  And I've coined a new term.