In A NutshellLXV

OK, you know what we're doing here. And today, we are down to

65. This is the profession that I often mentioned when people asked me what I was going to be when I grew up:

I wanted to be a number of things when I was younger, even at one point, a priest.* In junior high, it was an astronaut. That was out. Somewhere in there was the lighthouse keeper** and the reporter*** and the famous author.

But, since they don't have a college major called famous author, I decided to be an archaeologist. Had I known at the time about Indiana Jones, that would have added a definite level of spice to it. From my freshman year of high school, I read piles of books about lost cities and expeditions into the deepest jungles.**** It was only after I quit college in the end of my sophomore year and then returned with two small children that I gave up that dream.

* Now there's a hoot for you. However, at the ripe age of six I didn't know that I was going to wander away from religion, and that girls didn't get to be priests. Of course, when I was growing up, I mostly wanted to be things that girls didn't get to be. The fact that we weren't Catholic didn't even deter me. And something of it must have held on there somewhere, because I took Latin and always said it was so I could talk to God. Then the Church (that I didn't belong to) gave up Latin and started doing Mass in the vernacular, and it was all for naught! Who knew that God spoke the vernacular? However, I really liked Latin, where I met Jack Hairston's brother Tom.

** The thought of anyone as gregarious as I am in such a solitary profession beggars the imagination! I would have died of loneliness or gone stark staring bonkers. There is an Eric Frank Russell science fiction story called "Tie Line" about an interstellar lighthouse keeper, who is the only human being on a small island on a water planet. And how the lighthouse service keeps dropping him things that are supposed to keep him sane -- records of city traffic, but since he is from a small island city sounds don't seem like home to him. Then they get the idea that it needs to be something alive, and since the island is so small a dog or cat won't do so they drop him a preying mantis, but that creeps him out. And then one morning, he wakes to the sound of sea gulls. Read that in 1956, remember it still. Love it. But, I do know it would have taken more than sea gulls to keep me sane in the much less solitary conditions of Earthly lighthouses. And, now, they aren't even used any longer.

*** That would have been a good choice. I could talk to people, find out things, and write. I'd like that a lot. I loved being on the college paper.

**** As a matter of fact, it was because of reading those books about archaeology that I met Kate, who was also reading them from the same library.

In A Nutshell LXIV

So, here we are in our 201 part series answering questions from The Book of Myself, from a mother to her daughter. And today, we are down to

64. I hated this particular work assignment:
When I was self-employed, I got to do things I loved to do and do them pretty much the way I wanted to. But, I also had to sell my services. And I'm not good at that. When I was growing up, if I asked for something and was told no, that was it. Ask a second time, and I lost something I already had. I didn't do that very often, as you can well imagine. So, I don't do well at sales, because I get moderately sick to my stomach is I have to ask again. I couldn't sell Bedouins shares in an oasis.

There are a couple of things about this that puzzle me. One is that Forrest had the same situation I did, and he is one of the best salesmen you'll ever meet. He once sold an extremely expensive camera that had terrible balance to a customer who had commented on the John Wayne poster behind the counter by telling him that that it was a very good camera, which it was, but that "only a real man, a real John Wayne" could manage it.

And, I make my living selling ideas. I have had few jobs that didn't involve me helping people recognize ways that they were getting in their own way and helping them to develop the skills to overcome them. I've convinced people who thought that young children thought like adults that they not only don't, but can't. I've convinced people to totally change the way they talk to their children and what they expect of them and how they discipline them. I've talked parents into being less strict and more strict, into granting more freedom and cutting the chaos and getting some structure in there, for Pete's sake! I am very skilled at looking at what is happening now, comparing it to what is needed, and tailoring a plan to help this parent get from here to there with maximum success and minimum resistance.

When I was in college and working waiting tables, I always got good tips and part of it was for being good at selling. I remember the woman who really wanted a piece of cheesecake but thought that she shouldn't. When she asked me how many calories in it, I answered, "Oh, our cheesecake is calorie free. We only charge for the cheesecake; we add the calories free." And, she laughed and had a slice.

When I was a Junior Achievement adviser, I gave the kids sales skills lessons, and our group made record breaking sales. How to recognize which people were willing to be talked to, how to talk to them, how to find out what features they needed, how to answer objections, how to close the deal. I can teach it. I just can't do it.

Hell, when I was trying to sell my own services, there were times when I knew that the prospective client would be more trouble than the money was worth or was totally inappropriate for the services I was offering, and the more I tried to talk them out of it, the more they insisted on doing it. So, why can't I sell when I know it's selling? When I'm trying to make money? Where is the disconnect between what I do and what I can't seem to do?

In A NutshellLXIII-A

It's been a while since I did one of these; time to get back to it


63-A. I remember this about my step-father's work and responsibilities: I have to say that this drawing is perfect for Daddy's work. He was a salesman, and he could, indeed, have sold ice boxes to Eskimos.

Daddy grew up the son of Irish and German immigrants in the days when "No Irish need apply." His father was usually very underemployed and it was a large family. Daddy sold newspapers on street corners in Oakland in 1908, when he was five. He was always small, spending some time as a young man as a jockey, and he often had to fight older and bigger boys for his corner. When he was in his 70s, he was threatened by a young man in a parking lot. The newspaper account kept saying things like "the 73 year-old Ward took a length of pipe from the back of his car and backed his 26 year old assailant into a corner." (The local paper always covered anything he did and said, because he had acquired a reputation as a colorful person when he was on the city council.) He may have been frightened, but he probably was frightened when he was five. Once you learn to fight for yourself, apparently you never forget.

While I knew him, he was a salesman. In the course of a few years we moved from Stockton to Puerto Rico to Denver to El Paso to Roswell. Where ever we went, Daddy flourished. When I was starting high school, he requested an assignment that would allow us to stay in one spot. So, he was given a territory in San Francisco, and we moved to San Mateo.

It was after we had moved to San Mateo that the company was sold and the new owners decided to winnow out the older workers. Daddy's territory got smaller and smaller, until he could call on all of his customers by noon on Monday. Since you can't call on people more than once a week, he spent a lot of time in movie theaters for a while. The thing that amazes me is that he didn't spend any time in bars, since surely what was happening to him was enough to drive many people to drink. He told me once, decades later, that the only dream he could remember had been when he was working in San Francisco -- he dreamed that a snowball was chasing him down a steep mountainside, getting bigger and bigger and closer and closer. He said it terrified him, even thinking about it then.

Daddy decided that he was not going to be able to wait this out until his approaching retirement, and quit to start his own business. Because all of his California contacts were in Stockton, he moved the family back there and opened his own printing business. And when his partner embezzled all the money when Daddy was almost 60, he closed that and started over. He was not only a good salesman, he was a sharp trader, which allowed him to feed his family through the worst of the embezzlement crisis. He started with a wheel barrow and traded up, one step at a time, keeping the family fed just on trades. Once he had tied up that situation and started the new business, without a partner this time, as soon as there was money he bought half a steer and filled the garage with canned goods. He wasn't ever allowing his family to come that close to hunger again.

Daddy worked until his late 70s, cutting down on hours but going in five days a week. He left my mother in a beautiful house and well provided for. He has been gone now for over 20 years, Mama is 84, and she need want for nothing.

Once, when he was about 76, a neighbor asked him how he had ended up with such a beautiful wife and he answered, "I'm a good provider." I think it is sad that he never realized that although his ability to support his family was impressive, it was by far not the best thing about him. I think it is sad that so many men don't realize that they are worth more to their families than just the paycheck.

In A Nutshell LXIII

OK, you know what we're doing here. And today, we are down to

63. I remember this about my father's work and responsibilities:

My father was a drummer in a dance band before he met my mother, but I don't remember that. I'm not certain if he gave up music because of losing his hearing or because of the Depression. By the time I was born, he was deaf and working in the shipyards, between the hulls of battleships. All of the time I knew him, he did construction work. When I look at this picture I think of my mother, washing clothes in trailer park wash rooms, in set tubs, on a scrub board. Click the picture and see how dirty my father got at work. And then, I got pomegranate juice on my little white dresses. Poor Mama!

My father always took a shower and changed clothes before he came in when he got home from work. I can remember my grandfather and great-grandfather doing the same at the end of the day. A person didn't traipse into a home in all that dirt. He had to wear boots on construction sites, and he was like me -- his feet overheated easily. So, he not only had dirty clothes, but stinky socks. Mama wouldn't let him keep Limburger cheese in the house because it was bad enough that she had to wash his socks, she wasn't dealing with another pungent odor if she didn't have to.

Because of his hearing, my father was very lonely at work. His hearing aids couldn't filter out background noise and it wasn't really possible to listen to two or more people at once, so he had trouble making friends on the job. At home we all knew -- stand in front of him or touch him to get him to turn towards you, and only one person at a time. You can't train a work crew.

We moved often, and he worked on many large construction projects in California. We traveled the length of highway 99 many a time, and the oleanders in the center divide seem to run through many of my memories of my childhood, as well as many of my dreams. Indeed, 99 runs through my early childhood like a ribbon, taking us north and south, always returning to the Central Valley, where my parents grew up. I first saw mirages on 99. I first saw orange juice stands that looked like giant oranges on 99. One Christmas, when I had received more dolls than I wanted, I threw them out of the car window all along 99. When we returned to Modesto, there was a neon windmill at the north end and at the south end of the town, on 99. See a windmill, know you're close to the family homes.

Because I was only six when I lost him, I don't know much about my father's work. Except that he got up and shaved and dressed to go to work the day that he died.

In A Nutshell LXII

Well, here we are again, down to


62. I remember this about my mother's work and responsibilities:

Mama was a mother at 19, and began her married life at the end of the Depression and the beginning of WWII -- which meant that she didn't have a lot of the things that we take for granted these days. We lived in a small trailer with an ice box and, consequently, an ice man to deliver the ice and the need to empty the drip tray so that it didn't overflow as the ice melted. She didn't have a washing machine, using a scrub board in the set tubs at various trailer parks where we lived. No dryer. No vacuum cleaner. No dishwasher. One car, which my father needed to get to work, so that Mama took me with her on a bike. Not a nifty, geared, easy to ride bike. A one speed Schwinn. When I was too young to ride the handle bars, she pushed me in a stroller and walked everywhere.

There were no TV dinners or mixes in those days, so Mama made everything except bread and soup from scratch. When she baked pies, she always made pie-kisses for me. She hadn't learned to cook from her mother, because my grandmother got nervous if anyone watched her cook, so when my parents were first married, my father took her to live with his mother for a while. I think that my grandmother Hunt, who could be very petty, didn't really want Mama to be as good a cook as she was, because Mama is a very middling cook, and Grandma Hunt had run a barbecue that had been renowned clear to San Francisco.

Even with no modern conveniences, a trailer only takes so long to clean, so Mama and I had lots of time to play and for her to read to me and teach me nursery rhymes.

After my father died, Mama had to go to work. I know that at one job she was fired and had no idea why until, years later, she mentioned something to Daddy and he realized she had witnessed larceny. She worked at a collection agency, and while there went in and destroyed the record of my father's debt, which had been a result of the Depression and paid off before his death. And she worked as the children's library assistant, a job that she loved the most.

After she married Daddy, the only times she worked outside the home were when she wanted to -- she was a Welcome Wagon hostess and tried to sell real estate and became a bookkeeper, which she was very good at. Housekeeping was much easier this time around. Daddy loved showering her with things to make her life easier, and she had all the latest housekeeping and cooking equipment. And a new car every year.

I think that mothering was harder, though. First off she had three children. Forrest had been a baby when our father died, and he was always a pretty easy kid to care for, being very well mannered and obedient. It was the things that had earned him the nickname of "For Ward, boy, boy" that started turning her hair gray. When he was four he fell into a swimming pool, ate poisoned cherries and went into convulsions, dived off the coffee table onto the Spanish tile floor and cut his scalp, and rammed his head into an open ornamental iron gate and cut his scalp yet again.

Colleen was just a difficult child. She was very sickly for the first five years of her life, constantly coming down with infected tonsils during polio season so that they couldn't be removed. Once her tonsils were out, her hair changed. It had been short and frizzy, never needing cutting because it never grew. After the operation, it became straight and healthy and grew long and lovely. And, Colleen simply refused to be disciplined. She told me once that she saw that Forry and I were always in trouble no matter how good we were and decided there was no percentage in that. And since neither Mama nor Daddy had any idea of what to do about it, she pretty much ruled the roost.

And I was a true gem. I had my little contretemps with Daddy over chores and simply refused to bend. I knew, because Mama told me often and often, that if I wanted something from him all I had to do was get my chores done before he got home, and I refused to "pander" to his demands. It was a matter of principle, or so I thought. And Mama was caught in the middle.

In A Nutshell LXI

Well, here we are again, and down to:

61. I enjoyed this particular work assignment:

Montessori teachers regularly visit each other's classrooms to observe techniques and gain ideas for additional materials. There are enough standard materials for the math, geography, and sensorial curricula that a teacher is not required to develop any of her own. Practical life, science, and reading are more dependent on the teacher using Montessori principles to create her own materials. A poor Montessorian has little in these sections. An adequate Montessorian has full sections in every curricula. A good Montessorian has added variations in math, geography, and sensorial. Variations encourage the child to practice the same skill in different ways, which leads to better mastery as well as the ability to generalize learning. Adding exercises involves finding the objects that will be correctly usable in the classroom and attract the children to want to work with them.

When I taught in Fairbanks, we were the only Montessori school in the interior, and the only American Montessori Society school in the state. There were no other schools for us to visit. No other teachers for us to exchange ideas and techniques with. Consequently, every year one of the teachers was sent to the Lower 48 for the annual American Montessori Conference. We would go to workshops and discussions for a week and come back with wonderful ideas and at least one or two people we could call when we needed an objective viewpoint. Because my family lived near San Francisco, the year the conference was given there, I went. I spent a month in California, visiting family for three weeks and leaving Richard and Julie with them for the week I was in The City.

In addition to attending workshops, I was assigned to find materials for our classroom. At that time it was almost impossible to find pretty things in Fairbanks and we starved for them. The board sent me with $100 to find what I could. I, being familiar with the possibilities of San Francisco, went to Cost Plus Imports. I found lovely trays to put new activities on.


I found beautiful bowls to sort things into. We could use them in any section of the class, since sorting was done in all of them. Children could sort buttons by color or size or shape in the sensorial section. They could sort unpopped colored popcorn kernels with tweezers in the practical life section. They could sort cut out letters by vowels and consonants in reading, and numerals by odd and even in math.

I found a fantastic selection of baskets, which we used like trays, to contain the parts of an activity. Pretty baskets from around the world could also be used in geography and art, drawing the children's attention to the different methods of construction and decoration. Sorting pictures from Peru into the Peruvian basket and from Greece into the Greek basket gave a nice touch.

And a pair of long handled syrup pitchers to add as a variation in practical life. In teaching three year olds to pour water, we started with pouring dried beans from one creamer to another, moved up to rice, and then to water. These pitchers were just a touch harder to control than the creamers and gave the children additional practice with fine muscle control. And because none of them had ever seen anything that looked like this, they really liked using them.

The conference was the first week that I was in California, so I filled four large boxes with my treasures and mailed them to my team teacher, who received them a good two weeks before I returned. Two weeks during which she and the board members unpacked the boxes and wondered how on earth they were going to pay me back for all the extra money they thought I had spent. When I got back and called in I was told that they could understand why I had bought every single thing I had but . . .. And I was able to tell them that, actually, they had $5 change coming. Prices in California were so much cheaper than in Alaska; at Cost Plus cheaper still.

Obviously, I enjoyed this assignment very much. I still remember so many of the things I found and brought back.

In A Nutshell LX

OK, you know the drill. And today, we are down to

60. My first job for pay was:
Babysitting. The first children I took care of lived next door to us in Roswell; I was 13 and they were about four and seven. They were good kids and it was fun to play with them. They went to bed easily and then I could read, which I loved. The only problem was that the parents were always broke (the father was the treasurer for the school district, which gives you lots of confidence, doesn't it?), and I used to get paid in ear rings. My guess is that the ear rings were worth a lot more money than I had earned, but they were for a very sophisticated, tall, blond woman with a long neck and I never liked them.

One time, when I was living in San Mateo, California, and 15, I took care of the baby next door. It's a good thing that we were next door because I had no idea how to get that baby to stop crying, and Mama came over and comforted her and got her to sleep.

My favorite time, though was after high school graduation. I went into the California State Employment Office in Modesto looking for a summer job, and the man who interviewed me hired me to take care of his children for six weeks while his wife (a school teacher) was in Sacramento earning her continuation credits.

The little girls were 18 months and four years and they were delightful. The youngest called her sister Holly "La La" which the parents couldn't figure out; it was obvious to me the first day I was there. She rode her trike around the backyard for hours, singing, "La, la, la, la, la." When they were in the backyard I had to keep a close eye on them because the 18 month old loved to eat big, green caterpillars.

Their mother may have been a good teacher, and she may even have been a good mother, but she had no idea how to keep house. Or teach her own kids manners -- they would pick up an entire fried egg and shove it into their mouths. And I had nothing else to do but play Mama. I taught them table manners and a number of other skills; cleaned them up and had them dressed nicely and dinner ready when their dad got home from work; and cleaned the house from top to bottom. I had thought that they had avocado green appliances in the kitchen; when I finished the four day cleaning of that room, I discovered that they were white.

And one thing I learned from that was that playing house was fun, and taking care of kids was wonderful, but I really didn't want to be a housewife. Once I had the house really clean, there wasn't that much to do and no adult company until I walked home to Auntie after work. Not the life for me.

In A Nutshell LIX

OK, you know what we're doing here. And today, we are down to

59. I remember these chores growing up:

Dishes was an early one. Drying while Mama washed was an enjoyable activity, as I explained in Modern Conveniences, Modern Losses.

And I talked about the trouble I used to get into around my chores here.

Mostly I did girl chores -- dishes (which, eventually came to mean cleaning the kitchen as well), sweeping the porch, taking out the garbage and waste baskets, cleaning the bathrooms, and occasionally washing windows or helping to put the clean laundry away. Very rarely Daddy would have me clean out his tool box or other organizing thing, which I always enjoyed. Once Forrest and I picked up small rocks from the lawn so they wouldn't get in the lawn mower -- I remember hating that one.

Actually, considering the hoo-raw around chores at our house, it is really amazing how few things I was asked to do.

My favorite, very favorite story of a chore-like thing happened one day when Colleen was about four, which made Forry nine and me 14. We were in the back seat and Daddy was driving us back from some trip out of town. Colleen was fussing and kicking Forry and carrying on and Daddy told me to entertain her. "Teach her something" was the command. So, I started teaching her the sounds letters make. This didn't hold her interest until I remembered the Ipana toothpaste commercial with the Ipana spokes animal, Bucky Beaver. So, I started doing alphabet variations, which Forry and Colleen then sang after me.
Bucky Beaver
Cucky Ceaver
Ducky Deaver
at which point, Daddy suddenly focused at what was happening in the back seat and said, very firmly and sternly, "That will be enough of that!"
It was only several years later that I understood what the problem had almost been.

In A Nutshell LVIII

And here is yet another episode in our adventure of answering questions from me for Julie.



58. What I enjoyed doing most after school was:

I loved being outside. Climbing trees, building forts, running, swinging, playing games. Lots of hopscotch and jacks in my younger years. Lots of exploring and adventure in my entire childhood. Lots of sitting in a tree or on the grass and talking for hours. Walking, everything from to the mall to around the block. Kate and I used to walk to the mall almost daily. Gail Jennings and I walked all over Berkeley. Walked to school or to work. Walked to see friends. When I was in high school, I would walk from one side of Modesto to the other, going over to see my grandparents. No one thought a thing about it. It was wonderful -- I could watch the progress of people's gardens, or of fields full of crops.

I did play indoors in the winter when we lived in Denver. I can't remember spending time indoors for play anywhere else. I began in the trailer and there wasn't room indoors to play much. And most of the places we lived when I was a kid had very inviting outdoors to play in. We were out of our parents' hair and their absolute control -- a win/win.

In A Nutshell LVII

OK, you know what we're doing here. And today, we are down to:

57. My favorite mentor-role model in college was:

My master teacher, Eileen Mills. Eileen had been in Montessori for about ten years when I did my student teaching, and she was a model Montessorian. She supervised her student teachers with the same kindness that she taught the children. She was an adventurous teacher and her classroom was full of innovation and delight.

The year before I met her, Eileen had lost two children. One was killed by a hit and run driver just two weeks before the other died of cancer. Eileen continued to teach, saying that without her work she didn't know how she could have survived. Her son had collected snakes, and after his death she brought them into the classroom and shared them with the children. Many the day a teacher or child would be busy and have a garter snake wrapped around an arm. I loved the little things, so soft and, when attached to a person, warm.

Eileen was a model of how to teach both children and adults and of how to deal with the hard blows that life delivers. When I was teaching in Fairbanks I sent her some fur samples to put in her sensorial activities. About six years later, I was again living and working in California and took a course from her on teaching evolution to preschoolers. She brought out the furs I had sent to show the rest of the class as an example of how the Montessori curriculum can be expanded and the environment of the given school highlighted.

In A Nutshell LVI

OK, you know what we're doing here. And today, we are down to:

56. My religious training growing up was:

Hit and miss and confusing. My great-grandparents were church goers, and my mother had been before she married. But my grandfather Herndon and my grandmother Hunt stayed as far away from church as they could. When Grandpa was in the hospital dying, in 1975, the chaplain came by to see him, and Grandpa pretended to be asleep rather than deal with that. My grandmother Herndon had several siblings who had married into the Church of the Brethern, one of whom became a minister, as did his son.

My parents were sorta-Christians. I don't believe I ever went to church before my father died. After my father had been dead for a few months, Mama decided that going to church might be a comfort, so the two of us went to the local neighborhood church. It was Pentecostal, not necessarily the best introduction. When people started speaking in tongues and rolling on the floor I got hysterical and Mama got me out of there.

With this background, I went to a Catholic boarding school when I was six and seven. We did Mass every morning before breakfast. I liked it. The incense, the music, the voices of the nuns and girls singing, the Latin -- it was very sensuous and calming. Nothing like the other experience. As a matter of fact, I later took Latin, having decided to learn to speak God's language so I could talk to him.

One of our classes in school was catechism. All of the other girls were getting ready to have their first confession and communion. The nuns were not used to having girls at the school who were not Catholic, and so Sister Lagara and I got caught in a truly horrible experience. Each girl was given a white paper lamb that represented her soul to pin on the wall. Whenever we committed a sin, we were to put a pencil mark on it. And when we went to confession on Saturday, it was replaced with a new lamb. Except I wasn't Catholic. I didn't go to confession. My lamb got blacker and blacker and blacker, and the pencil marks began to tear the paper. There I was, with my immortal soul getting unforgiven black and ratty with holes, and Sister Lagara could figure no way out. Finally, one Monday we went to class and none of the lambs were there. Added to my learning that people who died without being baptized Catholic went to hell, and my having a father who had died without being baptized Catholic, I can't say that catechism was a positive experience for me.

After Mama remarried, we didn't go to church until I was 13 and we were living in Roswell. We attended the local Southern Baptist church, also a real experience. I remember the minister preaching about how the Catholics were going to hell. And the Jews. And the Methodists. And the American Baptists. And then he preached about how divorced people were going to hell, and since Daddy had been divorced twice, that was that for church. Some Mormons came to preach to Mama and Daddy, but they disapproved of coffee and cigarettes, so we didn't see them for long.

When I got to high school, I read about Buddhism and a number of other religions, and decided that they all had interesting stories, but I saw no evidence that they were real. In my 30s I did a flirtation with Unity for about three years, but other than that, I've pretty well been an atheist for most of my life.

In A Nutshell LV

OK, you know what we're doing here. And today, we are down to:.

55. My teachers generally described me as this kind of student:

Bright and talkative. Years later, when I was working helping people change careers, part of the process was to assess their motivated skills. Motivated skills are the ones that you will use even when you aren't supposed to. The things, I used to say to them, that you used to get in trouble for in school.

Because what I used to get in trouble for in school was hearing what the teacher said and knowing how another student was hearing it differently and knowing how to phrase it so the other student could understand. And then explaining it that way. Oddly enough, very few teachers appreciate a child as a team teacher!

Things would be going just fine, the teacher would say something, a student near me would say, in honest confusion, "What did she say?" or, "What does she want us to do?" and I would answer. Too often the other kid would say, "Well, why didn't she just say that?" And I would be in trouble, yet again. One teacher even told me that when I got a paycheck I could teach her class for her.

Almost every question that a teacher asked, up would go my hand. I was in high school chemistry before I hit a class where I didn't almost always know the answer. I've only taken two classes in my life, chemistry and college physics, where I wasn't the first one done with the test. Well, I did have an anthropology class at Berkeley that I could never finish the test -- but no one else ever did, either. And, the professor told me that I got more of it finished than anyone else ever had. He designed his tests that way.

In A Nutshell LIV

This weekend I got feedback that some of my readers see the familiar picture of Julie and me and read the first few words and think it's the same post! I have been using the picture because it is one of the few I have of the two of us, but I will vary them. And vary the words of the introduction. OK, you know what we're doing here. And today, we are down to:

54. My elementary and high school could be described as (small/large, public/private, academic/vocational): all over the map.

Let's start with elementary. Some were small, some were large. Some were public, two were private. One was even boarding school. I guess all of them were academic. Some were in the country, some in the city, most in the suburbs, one on an island, one in the Rocky Mountains, two in the desert. Moved around a lot. My first four were in California, then Puerto Rico, then Denver, then El Paso, then Roswell. And, of course, the one in San Mateo, California, where did I three weeks of post graduate junior high. Most, being public, were secular. Two were Catholic, although I wasn't.

Moving on to high school, both were moderately sized, public, academic, and fairly new. One was very suburban, being in San Mateo, on the San Francisco peninsula, and therefor part of the bedroom communities even then. The second was in Modesto, which was at that time country, and when I attended, there were houses on one side and farm land on the other.

In A Nutshell LIII

In a Nutshell

A place set aside to answer 201 autobiographical questions from a mother for her daughter. This may take awhile...join us if you like.

53. One of my favorite kinds of homework was:

Writing stories or poems. I loved it. From early on, through the creative writing class I took in college, writing fiction was heaven. I got a typewriter when I was 12 and wrote all the time. In those days, the stories that I wrote were mostly suggested by books and stories I was reading. The author wouldn't explore something as thoroughly as I wanted, so I would sit down and do it myself. It made a lot of my early work derivative, but then the point was not to be original as much as to learn the craft. Kind of like apprentice painters learning to paint in their master's style, I was exploring styles and figuring out that dialog didn't read well when it either copied daily speech too well or not well enough. Learning the "three act" model of introduce cast, introduce problem, solve problem was a job in itself. Interestingly, in all of the folk literature, ancient classics, modern translations, etc. that I've read, that three act pattern is standard. I think it may be the way our brains function when they think about events and when they learn from stories.

I love telling stories. I am renowned for it. In my parenting classes, I used stories as the link that would allow the students to understand the theory. I think that if I had to give up telling stories, I'd be in big trouble.

In A Nutshell LII

In a Nutshell

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52. These were my favorite sports in school:

Grammar school, definitely red rover. I loved it. I was always chosen first, because I did it so well. I don't know why, but if I was the one running, I figured out early on just where to throw myself. I don't remember where on the linked arms that was, but I do know that it wasn't right in the middle. It may have been more to the side of the smaller kid, I'm no longer sure. And, I also didn't let kids break through when I was holding. Again, I don't think it was strength so much as tactics. I do know that getting dirt on my hands so they wouldn't slip from my partners' was part of it.

For 5th and 6th grade, it was baseball. I loved to pitch and was a good batter, as told here Of course, then I got hit in the face with the ball, and was never able to play again. And I really felt that loss.

I also loved to dance. I took ballet as St. Mary's and in Puerto Rico. I was chosen as one of 12 girls to dance around the Maypole when I was in 6th grade. Our mothers made us squaw skirts, two of each color for the dancing partners and I loved mine. The day we had try outs I didn't realize that I was on the list because they called my name first, before I had started paying attention. I think I expected the names to be called in alphabetical order, and neither Joyce nor Ward was at the head of the line.

Later, when I was a senior in high school and attended the local community college for two classes a day, one semester I took ballroom dancing. Each dance that we learned, we had to demonstrate for our grade. We got to choose the partner we wished to be graded with, and three pairs went out at a time. I was chosen as partner by one young man in every group. When it was time for my test, the teacher laughed and said that the men had already given me my grade. I really did love to dance.

In A Nutshell LI

In a Nutshell

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51. One of my earliest memories about school was:

When I lived with Mama, Aunt Flo, and Forrest in the trailer and went to school, there was child care provided at the school between the time class let out and when working mothers could pick up their children. I think this must have been left over from WWII, since it certainly wasn't still around when I was a working mother.

Anyway, since Mama worked, I was in that child care. I remember considering it just school, but I think there may have been someone other than our regular teacher who took care of us. One day, during nap time, the teacher went around the room, hiding peanuts (in the shells) in nooks and crannies. Since I was unable to sleep that day, I was laying quiet to avoid waking any of the kids who could sleep, and so I watched her do the hiding. After naps, we had a snack, and then she told us what she had done and allowed us to search for the peanuts. I, of course, found an unusually large number of them. When I got home, I told Mama about how many I had found and guessed that I must have been the only one who couldn't sleep. That was when Mama told me that watching the hiding gave me an unfair advantage and was cheating. That didn't seem right to me. After all, it was OK if I got something because I was smarter than other kids. And it was OK if I got it because I was faster or stronger. Why wasn't it OK because I was more alert?

In A Nutshell L

In a Nutshell

A place set aside to answer 201 autobiographical questions
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50. This is how I got to school each morning in my early years:

Well, the first school I went to was for a very short period of time, while Mama, Aunt Flo, Forry, and I lived in the trailer in Stockton. We left Forry with a woman in the trailer park and rode a bus (with two transfers) to the school, then Mama and Aunt Flo caught another bus, with one transfer, to work. By chance, they worked within a couple of blocks of each other.

Then Aunt Flo got engaged to her boss, and he bought a house with a mother-in-law cottage, and until they got married, he lived in the cottage and we were supposed to live in the house. Mama sold the trailer to buy furniture for that house. I walked a couple of blocks to school from there. That was where we were living when I Stalked the Tootsie Roll. I don't remember how long I went to that school, but what with coloring up the wall on the staircase and tempting seven year old son of one of Uncle Wes' customer's to climb out on the grape arbor and pick grapes for me, which resulted in his falling through the arbor and breaking his arm, I was soon packed off to St. Mary's of the Palms School for Girls, in Mission San Jose (which small town has since been incorporated into Freemont). And there, I lived at the school, so we got up, dressed, went to Mass (yes, every day. Yes, even me the nominal protestant child), had breakfast, and then walked to our classroom.

And then Mama married Daddy and we lived in the country outside of Stockton, and I walked to school, and on the first day wasn't used to going home from school and was so late that Mama insisted Daddy spank me as soon as he got home.

Then we moved to Puerto Rico, where I rode the school bus. And Denver and El Paso and Roswell, where I walked. And San Mateo, California where I walked until we moved and then I rode the bus. And, finally, to Modesto to live with Auntie, where I walked.

In A Nutshell XLIX

In a Nutshell

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49. This is one of the most important things about life I learned in school:

I learned three important things about life in school.

1. Because I went to so many schools, and sometimes for a very short time, I learned to make friends fast. I'm not sure if I could consciously break that down into steps, but I know I can do it. I know it involved figuring out which kids were open to a new friend, finding something I had in common with them, and opening up slowly. Not too fast -- if you rush it, you come across like the sad people you sit next to on a Greyhound bus or in coach on a plane who proceed to tell you all about their lives, giving you more information than you will ever need.

2. I also learned that people use words differently. In the south, reckon and figure and calculate all mean guess. In mathematics they mean apply mathematical rules and solve. And it isn't only regional difference, although it was regional differences that made me aware of it. Like in Puerto Rico, where an orange is a china, and in Mexico where it is a naranja. And Daddy, having lived in Puerto Rico, going into the coffee shop in El Paso and ordering a glass of numo de china, which would be Chinese blood (actually, juice of a Chinese person, so it might be something else. Say, tears.). I remember, as an adult, an argument between two people who were understanding things in the opposite manner. She said, "everything you know, you learn from books" and he was hearing, "you're an inexperienced person with nothing but book learning" and she meant, "anything anyone could ever want to know is in a book!" Being able to hear both of the meanings in things like that has made me a very effective communicator, which has been more than helpful in the work I've done.

3. Especially in junior high, everybody thinks the place they're from is the best in the world. I went to sixth grade in El Paso, junior high in New Mexico, and then did three weeks in California. There is loyalty to landscape and culture and people. And maybe that's why I love to read books and stories with local color.

In A Nutshell XLVIII

In a Nutshell

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48. One of my strongest memories of college was:

The amazing sense of connection to the future I was preparing for and the past that the knowledge was built from. It was simple to see that there was an intersecting path between my life and all the knowledge of humanity, which met here. I was walking on one of many paths that wound, labyrinth like, across the intellectual and cultural landscape. Other students, coming in on similar paths, chose other trajectories through the space, while some on the same part of the maze as me, had entered from very different backgrounds. And, we would each leave at our appointed place and time, to create our own futures, enriched by the time we had spent here.

At the same time that I was aware of the connection of this time and place to past and future and to all the world, it was very much of the here and now, a time off from the rest of life, a place unconnected to many of the stresses and mundane concerns of before and after college. There was a sense of timelessness that was wonderful. What happened here was something that could happen no place else. The deadlines of tests and term papers had a rhythm of their own, distinct from the rhythms of the work world. The exploration of who I was in relation to this larger, more possible world was amazing.

It was an opportunity, because I was young enough not to be tied to adult responsibilities and yet old enough not to be answerable to my parents in all things, to really explore what was possible for me. What I could become, what made me comfortable and what made me uneasy. I tried different identities, even dressing the parts. One semester it was sensitive poet (not a good fit for a woman who would later dress as Raggedy Ann when she was pregnant), another it was intrepid reporter, yet another it was Ayn Rand devotee. I could take different classes and see how what I was learning felt in my life, how did it apply to me.

I explored friendships in ways I hadn't before, finding myself, because of dorm living, with more female friends than in high school or earlier. Discovering the fun of groups of girls.

I dated a med student and a forestry student and a music major and even someone from my old high school who I hadn't known well in those days. I tried out going steady and playing the field and being hard to get. I had friends who were almost preppy and off campus friends who were bohemian (no one spoke of hippies yet). From frat parties to poetry readings in coffee houses, there was an entire smorgasbord of identities and ideas to explore.

My first semester I had two roommates, one Japanese who taught us to eat with chop sticks. My second semester I had a roommate from Los Angeles who had been acting in educational films since she was six. Hell, we even had a fire in our dorm!

In A Nutshell XLVII

In a Nutshell

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47. This is why I went to college:

I don't think that it ever occurred to me, once I had heard about college, that I wouldn't go. I even intended to go to grad school, as soon as I knew about that. I ran into a friend from high school after a number of years and he asked me if I had a PhD. yet, and I responded with, "No, the highest you can go in Montessori is a masters." Which, of course, I had.

I loved school at every level. I knew I would love college. I was counting on it to find a boy friend. Auntie used to tell me, as I hung out with my group of boys but never dated, that once I got to college, where all of the boys were smart, it would be easier. And it was. I was dating almost at once. Of course, I didn't have any idea of what I was doing, and the guys did, which led to some situations I can laugh about now but which just confused the hell out of me then.

Anyway, I went to college to become an archaeologist, and when I returned after Julie was born, to become a child psychologist. I am so lucky -- before I committed myself to grad school, I went out and talked to several child psychologists and they all told me that it was very frustrating work, because parents brought you their kids and wanted you to fix the kid (which usually meant make him more obedient) when it was the parent who needed fixing. I didn't want to do that,and I have since seen psychologists who work with children who have been removed from their parents, and that is harder still.

So, instead of going to grad school in psychology, I went to grad school in Montessori education and worked with kids in a way that didn't involve "fixing" them.