Tag Archives: truth

Of Tolerance and Friendship: The Conclusion

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I started writing yesterday about a political disagreement that ended in someone who once referred to me as “one of the very chosen few in the inner circle of [her] life” publicly declaring me no longer a friend.

Today I am revealing the topic of debate in hopes that friends can, indeed, disagree.

If you are unable to maintain a friendship over disagreement on a single issue, I feel it proves you to be intolerant. It makes you an enemy of your cause because I’m likely to associate you (and possibly your cause) with fanaticism and irrational fear. You have not won anything for that which you campaign, instead you have willingly abandoned the opportunity to discourse with someone who once held esteem for you.

In actual fact, what you are saying is “I was wrong about you – I don’t like or respect you at all, and cannot stand to have contact with you because you are so foul; if I had ever known you believed this way, I never would have been your friend in the first place.”

And to me, that is the worst sort of hubris and the least civilized part of human nature. “If you are not like me, then I will drive you away.” We have been fighting against that mentality since the beginning of recorded time and it has caused nothing but problems for humanity.

I guess the only reason I can imagine that I would not want to be a person’s friend any more would be that level of intolerance. If you are unable, or worse unwilling, to hear the viewpoint of another and agree to disagree, if you are unable to find any sort of common ground, I you dole out hatred or withhold love over a single issue than I am probably not a good fit for you as a friend.

Though you can expect that I will listen to you with respect. And if you would like to move me into the “crazy friend” category and have more careful contact with me, that’s alright. I will likely be doing the same with you, but it isn’t going to change the things about you that I already liked in the first place. It is okay with me if you are judging that area of my life, I’m probably doing it too – but so long as we are doing it in order to understand one another and maintain our relationship I say no problemo. And I’m probably going to work hard not to offend you in this area, because I don’t own you and it isn’t my job to make you think like I do.

If you did come up with a deal-breaker in terms of friendship yesterday, I hope it wasn’t over gun control.

I have been a political orphan my whole life. I grew up in a home with a Canadian parent (liberal and statist) and a tea party-esque parent (ultra-conservative). This was a great contributor to my understanding of tolerance and my confidence in the ability of people to disagree and continue to hold one another in a positive light. As an adult, especially once we began homeschooling and undertook a thorough review of American History, I began to have more and more in common with the Libertarian party (click here to learn about Libertarian Philosophy and here to read a great compilation of rebuttals to objections to Libertarian views). The Libertarian ideals of personal responsibility alongside their fiscally conservative/socially liberal platforms lined up with my understanding of what America was meant to be. During the last presidential election, I finally felt like I had some choices that I liked because I was paying attention to third-party players. In terms of gun control, I am a firm supporter of the second amendment and staunchly against more firearms regulations.

If you disagree with me about gun control, and especially if you live in the New York area, I encourage you to exercise your First Amendment rights and contact my friend Christine at Quasi Agitato. She is a part of the Million Moms For Gun Control movement and is hosting a rally in NYC on MLK day.

And whatever your position is on any of the most intense questions of our day, I encourage you not just to tolerate, but to seek out, read about, study and consider each side of the issue. One of the best ways to do that is to talk with people you like, respect and care for.

If there is someone you respect and care for who feels differently than you and you find that discussing it causes too much friction, I hope you can be considerate of one another. Change the subject. Stick to the topics you enjoy sharing, relish the places you have common ground and above all, treasure your relationship.

Your comments yesterday were so helpful and insightful. I feel I have a better understanding of what this person was feeling (she really does class me as a child-abuser and does believe anyone who disagreed with her is extreme whackadoodle and out of their mind). I also have a new perspective on my own treatment of sensitive issues among others, especially those whose relationship I take for granted.

These problems are problems we are facing all together. They can only be resolved by educating ourselves, listening to one another, and giving each side a face and a name; because each side represents real people. First we must truly care about each other, only then can we start dealing with the issues that bind us (whether we like it or not).

Of Tolerance and Friendship; Part One of a Two-Part Series

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I am sorry for my disappearance into the hole of the holidays…this has happened every year I have blogged and I am surprised by it each time. NOTE TO SELF: duh!

I have returned with a heavy topic for you. This series is meant to stimulate thought and conversation, but most importantly the former. Please keep your comments kind and positive.

I am a big fan of tolerance. The thread of my writings, if you’ve been reading me for long, are pretty consistent in the message “do what is best for your family; make an intentional decision of what that is.” I’ve been clear in stating that what is best for my family has nothing to do with what is best for yours.

My reading list looks like this:

Quasi Agitato, a brooklyn-based red head I have a lady crush on who combines humor with intensity,

Writing, Wishing, giving me a glimpse of motherhood from across the globe, supportive and community-minded

MODG, always makes me shoot coffee out of my nose, usually by the most creative use of swearing ever,

Sellabit Mum, sometimes sentimental, often funny, occasionally gripping, always a good read,

It’s On My To-Do List, Catholic homeschooling mother of four littles, this blog is about everything on Delena’s mind,

Four Plus An Angel, where I’m either going to weep or sit riveted at least once a week,

Bread With Honey, my crunchy mommy hero and an inspiration in how I cook and educate.

As far as what our lives look like every day, these women and I do not have a lot in common. In several areas we are on truly opposing ends of the lifestyle spectrum. There are things they write I would never agree with. There are things they do I would never do. I can say with 100% certainty that everyone reading this blog feels the same way about me.

But I like them, these bloggers. I have a burning desire to be friends with them, to hang out with them in real life, rather than just being their internet stalker. Despite the areas where my opinions and views are divergent, I still feel that I understand where they are coming from and I want to hug them, sit in a room with them, learn from them. I like who they are.

I was publicly “unfriended” by a real life friend whom I have been close with since I had only one infant. That’s more than a decade of shared nursing sessions, toddlers distracted, eyes rolled at whiney kids, secrets passed, feelings shared. And I don’t just mean unfriended on Facebook. This person unfollowed me on Instagram, Pinterest, and any other social platform we had contact through. I’m sure my numbers are deleted from her smart phone and my email address has been purged from her contacts.

I am still mystified by this encounter. I disagreed with this friend on a hot-button political issue.

Please understand, I have hundreds of Facebook friends. They are on every end of the political spectrum you could imagine. Many of these friends post links to, banners for, memes supporting, and articles about their ideas. I tend to leave those alone when I am not aligned with their thinking because I’m interested in knowing what they believe and why, and I believe in free speech. Even if I disagree with their position, I’m likely to read their link or article in order to better understand their view. So why did I get involved in this particular discussion?

The post began with “Unless you believe in this cause, unfriend me.”

I engaged in discussion because I assumed my friend just didn’t realize that there were people she liked and cared about and respected who didn’t feel the same. I knew I would be moved into the “crazy friend” category, and I wondered if I might stop receiving invitations to visit…but I never expected “You are dead to me.”

I’ll not bore you with the details, but once it was clear that I did, in fact, disagree with completely and not support the cause this friend was championing, I was erased from her life. She told me it was a sacrifice she was willing to make for her convictions.

As I see it, cutting someone out of your life for refusing to agree with you doesn’t make you a martyr, it makes you a jerk.

What about you? Do you have an issue that is a deal-breaker in terms of friendship? Religion? Abortion? Politics? The definition of marriage?

In my next post, I will reveal the issue at the crux of this public friend-cleanse I was a part of. Hint – it isn’t any of the above.

Our old friend, dyslexia

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I have talked before about our second son, Farmer Boy, and his struggles with dyslexia.

The year after he was diagnosed, we had Little Cowgirl screened as well. We knew she was too young to get an extremely clear picture, but her results came back as a pretty convincing “probably so.”

Her journey so far has been much less difficult than her brother’s for several reasons. First of all, she is not as severely dyslexic. Secondly, she is not a self-flagulating perfectionist. Third, I knew ahead of time she might be dyslexic and approached teaching her from that angle. Fourth, she has never been learning in an institutional setting.

Homeschooling, however, cannot escape dyslexia. Like most children, Cowgirl has kept up just fine through our kindergarten and first-grade work. Then, like most dyslexic children, she started to show signs of struggling once we got into the meat of our second grade learning. When we first started learning about dyslexia, the psychologist screening Farmer Boy told us that most children are not diagnosed until closer to fourth grade. They typically begin falling behind in second grade, require extra help through third grade and are finally tested in fourth grade.

First grade went so well for Little Cowgirl that I allowed the whole magical year to drift by without stopping to be thankful. Her phonics program was a good fit and I knew I was teaching her in the method she needed if she were dyslexic at all.

Second grade, all twelve weeks of it so far, has been humbling. Parts of it have felt like starting over, and most of the new material has been like a wall made of brick. It is hard for me to say this because I always want to put the best homeschooling foot forward – I want everyone else to see how well it’s going for us. It’s also important for me to be honest in this space. That doesn’t mean I’ll be posting the details of our worst day ever (I”m a best day ever sort of gal). But it does mean I’m going to cop to it when something is weighing us down.

I am very thankful to be homeschooling, she doesn’t have to continue struggling through some of the things that aren’t working. She doesn’t realize that I’m switching out and dialing back some of her grade levels. She is happy to be in second grade and looking forward to her First Reconciliation and First Communion later this year.

I also realize that she is young. She is younger than the other second graders. Her motor skills are in a different place. Her experience is less.

If I could go back and do it over again, I would still begin her kindergarten lessons when she turned five. She was ready. I would still use the same phonics curriculum.

But I would probably have planned this year differently.

Homeschooling has been like every other part of parenting (for me, anyway): A constant guess. I base my decisions on what I know about each child and their situation, line that information up with our ultimate goals and pull the trigger.

I’ll let you know in about twenty years whether or not we even came close to the target.

Five Reasons I’m Not A Great Homeschooler

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There is no such thing as a perfect fit. How often do we find ourselves saying, “Well, in a perfect world…” but the ellipsis itself answers the question. Here are some reasons I’m not the world’s best homeschooling mother.

1) I have too much to do.

We run a large (comparing acres to number of employees) family farm. I do a large chunk of the office work, along with being ‘on call’ to run parts, people or vehicles at any time. I’m not sure it adds up to 40 a week, but it’s not too far from that. I volunteer in our Parish. I run (almost) every day. I blog (albeit inconsistently). I am obsessed with nutrition and want to make everything from scratch and have sliced, fresh, *living* food every day. I’m sure I don’t’ have to explain to you that there just aren’t THAT many hours in a single day. So I’m constantly juggling what needs to be done RIGHT NOW and what can wait a few days. Which brings us quickly to number two:

2) What can “wait a few days” is typically housework.

I have an entire category named “our house and the drudgery that is cleaning it.” Seriously, need I say much more? I try to stay on a schedule but honestly, it is never going to be as important to me as the items I just listed in my first reason. Which is such poor way of managing life because the secret here is that I absolutely HATE when the house gets away from me. It makes me crazy. And depressed. And I’m mortified when someone drops by, which is always (literally, without fail) one of the two weeks of the year I’ve literally let everything go.

3) Lack of patience.

Many of you who read this are going to laugh. How could a person who homeschools be impatient? Many of my friends will protest, “You are SO patient! I’ve seen you! You handle your children so well!” And to you my dear friend I say, could you please-please-pretty-pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top come and hang out at my house all the time? Because I am ever so much more patient with an audience.

4) I am overconfident.

I tend to be like this in every aspect of my life until reality (or having a baby) knocks me back with a hard punch of humility. I have an “everything is going to work out just perfectly” attitude about most everything, most of the time. It’s unrealistic and unfair. It sets me up for disappointment, and worse for disappointing.

5) Can anyone say scatterbrain?

My mother is still horrified because I admitted to her that (already) once this year I forgot to take my sixth grader to band. I mean it – completely forgot. Didn’t even realize it until the next day. I’ve done the same thing with tutoring. And playdates. And a dentist appointment. Once, at the end of a school year, I found an entire piece of curriculum I’d purchased and totally forgotten to use at any point. It wasn’t written on my schedule, so I never thought of it again (even though it was sitting right there on the school shelf alongside everything we were applying each day). Honestly, that’s quite ridiculous.

So there you have it. The top five items that create a poor fit between myself and our lifestyle. Yet I’m doing it, and it is going really well. Proof, once again, that if I can homeschool, anyone can.

Predictably, you can look for a post about why I’m great at homeschooling coming soon.

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When forgetting is ok…

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I somehow didn’t get this photo added in yesterday’s post…

It’s no great sin to be forgetful. But I hope everyone is remembering today where they were eleven years ago. I was nursing my first baby in the blue rocking chair we bought specifically for that purpose. I had just woken up, and I was still groggy with first-baby-lack-of-sleep.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been awake ever since that moment when I turned the television on and everything changed.

Life is like taking a trip with your family; we are all in this together. It’s especially important to remember that.

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*Tissue Warning*

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Yesterday My Farmer stopped in, between haying jobs, to have supper. After the meal the children disappeared outside while their father and I continued to ‘cuss and discuss’ (as he would say).

The hay was still calling, so eventually I walked him out to his truck. We could hear happy, distant voices after I kissed him goodbye, so we wandered out toward the barn to see what was happening. This is what we found:

Their words were spilling all over one another in their mad rush to tell us all about the game they were playing (hint: it involves Star Wars) and my heart was so full with love for them…for everything about them. I had one of those moments where time stopped, where I became certain I would always remember how I felt in that instant. Somehow I sensed I was putting away a memory I could take out time and again (and again and again) as the years go by, as I grow older and they grow old – I can bring it out and remember just how I felt. I can feel that happiness again.

This doesn’t happen very often. The last time it happened to me was the week my Little Cowgirl was born. My grandmother came from Vancouver to stay with me. The boys were two and four. We were sitting on my porch, watching my boys play in the grass while I nursed my infant daughter and shared a snack together. My grandmother asked me for the recipe for the banana bread we were eating. I will never forget that moment.

I was absolutely sloppy with happiness to be sharing the ‘forever’ moment yesterday with my husband.

I looked at My Farmer and choked out “Look at them. Aren’t they just fabulous? We are going to miss this SO much.”

He never took his eyes off of the children he made with me.

“I already do,” he answered.

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Wheat Harvest 2012 – A Pictorial Diary: A Salute to our Military

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Yesterday was a terrific day to be a farm family here in Kansas.

We harvested wheat in the shadow of our guardians yesterday.

One field we cut yesterday is across the road from our Air Force Base.

We work to feed, they work to protect.

Harvesting makes for long days, high stress, heavy pressure and occasional explosions of emotion.

I’m certain those same words apply in a different way to everyone working across the road from this field. Except sometimes they also work in fear of their immediate safety.

I never have to feel that way – because of their willingness to sacrifice, because of their pledge to protect and defend.

My children can run to their Dad, they can work with him, they can stay with him all day long if they wish.

Racing through the hay patch to Daddy.

Soldiers’ children spent months, sometimes years, separated from a parent.

Some families don’t get their soldier back.

To every person I know, including those in my own family, that has spent any time in any branch of the military, I thank you. To every individual working across the road from us yesterday, and to every person working for the United States Armed Forces anywhere in the world, I thank you.

To anyone who has ever lost someone they love in the line of duty; I will never be able to thank you enough.

I can only offer you the fruits of their sacrifice – everything I raise, most especially these children. I promise that they will be taught to appreciate and understand what your loss has given them, what it has given all of us.

I will teach them. I promise.

I wanted to make this post on D-day, but we didn’t harvest this field until yesterday. I hope it holds the same meaning. May we all be examples for our children in respecting and appreciating our military soldiers and their families.

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Of Reaping and Weeping

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Farmer Boy wants to grow up as quickly as possible. He is like a thirty-year-old trapped inside a nine-year-old body. Play for him always means work in a different way than it does for my other two children. Last September, as my mother-in-law lay dying of breast cancer in a hospice unit, Farmer Boy followed his father’s example. He sowed wheat.

When faced with crisis, sometimes people fall apart. Other’s pray. Some people turn to addictive behaviors to crutch through it (like drinking, smoking, eating or crocheting). I talk or write (and crochet. And drink a little).

My Farmer works.

When a situation beyond his control becomes emotionally unmanageable, he maintains equilibrium by getting his hands dirty, or wielding shop tools, or roaring into a field.

It reminds us that life goes on; the Earth continues to spin and the seasons will keep changing and there WILL be a tomorrow. I think working gives him a sense of the world being bigger than himself, and allows his personal tragedies to stay in perspective until he feels ready to deal with them.

I’m not certain that a person is ever ready to deal with their mother dying. They just eventually have to.

Last September, My Farmer’s mommy died. She was his friend. He saw her every single day of his life with the exception of college. Somehow they had managed to grow their relationship past the mother/child bond into an adult friendship (that’s hard to do). My Farmer harvested corn or milo or soybeans all day and then sat by the slumbering, failing body of his mother all evening. Sometimes he stayed all night, giving his father, brother or sisters a break. When we knew there was no turning back, when we had to help her face the idea of hospice, he planted acre after acre after acre of wheat.

His little son watched him. And he sowed his own.

Last wheat harvest, one year ago, was the final time my mother-in-law was healthy enough to participate in the activity on her beloved farm. She helped us shuffle equipment and people from field to field. When the children got tired of riding with Dad in the combine or Mom in the grain cart, she watched them at her house. She made or picked up supper sometimes. And we all felt bad every time she did because we could see (though not openly admit) that things were beginning to get rough. But she wanted to so badly; she loved the farm, loved the work. She loved to help; service was an essential part of who she was.

It should be no surprise that the planet has spun us back around to this same place, but it is. Today would have been their wedding anniversary.

Farmer Boy has been harvesting his wheat, just like Dad. In all things, there is a cycle of birth and death.

There is always an ending.

There is a proper time for everything, but we don’t always know when that is. We just try our best to be prepared and accept the unknown.

He came out of bed repeatedly last night with flimsy excuses. Finally I gave up my conversation with My Farmer and went to sit at his bedside; something was obviously bothering him.

“Mom? I can’t stop thinking about what happened to Grandma. I keep having flashes of being with her at the hospital, of how she looked and how she sounded. I keep remembering her funeral.”

We cannot always understand God's timeline.

“I just can’t stop thinking about when that is going to happen to me. Not cancer, but…you know…that one day I’m going to…perish.”

(I guess he’s like his mother – Sometimes my friends laugh at me because my texts contain un-textlike vocabulary.)

“One day it’s going to be me, under the ground like that. Like Grandma. I know that my ‘being’ will keep existing, but my body is going to be buried forever.”

"There is a time to every purpose under heaven."

We talked about heaven for a long time. He wondered what it felt like, and I told him to think of a time when his heart was so full of love and joy that it seemed to be spilling out of him – he said when Grandpa brought him a junker mower to take apart – I told him that heaven is like that, but even better.

We talked about making sure we don’t worry so much about dying that we forget to live – really live. About how Grandma never let dying get in her way of living.

“Some things about this life are so good, Mom. But it’s so sad that we can’t have a pause or rewind button. I don’t want to get old. But there are good things about getting old. Think about your Gramma, Mom – she’s so old and she is so healthy! She lives by herself and goes to the aquarium and picks up babies and cooks and cooks and walks to the pond behind her house. I don’t think I’m going to die until I’m very old. Most people in our family live for a really long time. But I wish there was a pause button.”

He finally fell asleep, holding my hand in both of his, pressing it to him to be sure I wouldn’t go away.

I wish there was a pause button too.

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Wheat Harvest 2012: A Pictorial Diary – Rained Out

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The van was loaded with suppers to hand out to the harvesting crew and we were pulling out of the driveway when I received the following text from My Farmer:

"Must be wheat harvest."

We are used to violent late-spring weather. This is Kansas, after all. We weren’t the setting for The Wizard Of Oz for no reason, people. I had been watching the radar all afternoon, willing the storms to stay north of us and continue their due-east movement.

By the time I arrived with the food, the last desperate passes were being made as the drops began to fall with greater regularity. No one stopped – the food quietly grew colder as the combines (both finally working at once) ran a losing race with Mother Nature. Finally forced to shut down, My Farmer watched the sky.

It didn't look good.

That row of trees marked the divide between the 80 acres they just finished harvesting and the 50 acres they rolled into next.

Time to get everything under a roof.

Eventually, it all came down. I tried to come up with a metaphor to express what it’s like – the wheat was ripe and ready. The 70 mph wind and rain will have beat some of the grain right out of their heads onto the earth. The ground is going to be sopping wet, rendering us helpless to watch the remaining kernels dry too far, losing test weight (it will take more seeds to make a bushel this way – our overall yield drops). It’s especially depressing because our wheat this year was remarkably good. That happens once a decade or so in farming.

The best example I could come up with is getting a big anniversary bonus after ten years at the same job along with your usual paycheck. They give you all of it in $1 bills, laid out single file in a trail from your work place to your home. Whatever the wind blows away before you can pick it up is gone. So you gather up your friends and whatever helpful equipment you can come up with and start picking up bills as fast as you can. A storm changes everything.

We were really fortunate – everywhere to the north and west of us received a dose of devastating hail. Hail completely destroys a crop. We have friends who weren’t so lucky with the weather last night.

My Farmer is taking it in stride – that’s just how farming goes, he says (as he opens a beer). I know he feels sick, but he is also right. That’s just how farming goes. This, my friends, is where the wise saying comes from…don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

In totally unrelated news, my friend Mad Woman is raising money to fight breast cancer. I contributed this morning, in memory of my Mother-In-Law and I hope you will consider contributing as well. Breast cancer can suck it.

And I’ve been sharing how I created an almost-free curriculum when we began homeschooling over at Growing Your Homeschool.

While we wait to get back into the fields, I’ll be thinking of those farmers who won’t be going back in because there isn’t any wheat left standing.

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