September Eleven

Early in the morning, and I am worn out, with two teens off to school.
Wes is on the topic on 9/11, "How many years ago was that?"

I tell him to add it up....2001 to 2013.

I was up late working with Wes on missed homework assignments.
 I mourn the loss of what might have been.

I loved school.  Getting up early.  Going to the library and doing research on a topic I knew nothing about, and FINDING OUT FOR MYSELF facts and ideas new to my mind.  I did it myself.  I needed only the books in front of me.  It was the magic of my life, wizardry at the highest form.

Some research was based on literary topics, some on science, some on thought processes.  Lives of people, some well-known, others by-standers in the stream of life, but all discovered by my thinking and living excitement in learning.

None of my children have been lighted by this spark.  None of them like learning at all.  None of them "care".  It has been one of the saddest realizations, that excitement in learning is so elusive, so hard to convey, so fragile.  I do believe it is one of those inherited traits, that some of your children (like blue eyes) inherit and some do not.  My children, the adopted ones, just did not get that gene....

I have fought for each and every one of them for their learning.  I have read to them all.  They have all had good literature available, books, paper, pens and art supplies;  good music(which they insist burns their ears...).  Yet there is a chasm between where I was at even the age of 6, and my children in high school.
I was fluent in three languages in ninth grade, and learning Latin (the fourth).  I spent each afternoon with my mother in the studio helping her teach children ballet, and learning the art of ballet.  When I was not in class, I would work on school work.  It was a simple life.  I graduated Cum Laude from High School, but I loved learning.  It was nothing I was forced into, nothing my mother told me or made me do.  I do recall her saying, "You are just like your Father.  He loved learning, and he was so good at languages and books.  I could never do anything right at school."

As I get more experience in the field of parenting, I learn to lower expectations.  I have found that a child needs to build their own goals and expectations, not live up to the ones their parents set for them.  Often that makes for unhappy future adults, and poor relationships down the road.  Allowing the "child/teen/adult" set their own expectations makes a lot more sense, and lowering your own allows them to "never fail" in your eyes.  I love that part of the lower expectations.  Every success is a surprise and a wonderful joy you can celebrate together!

I recall expecting to only speak German to my first daughter since that was how I had learned my first language.  She was very young, but knew I was not speaking English.  I would speak  English to Jim, German to her, and she would slap my face.  Even at 4 or 5 months old, she would have none of it!  It was at kindergarten we learned that she was unable to sound out words, and could not read like the other children her age.  Held back, it took her longer to master those same skills.  If I had persisted in speaking German to her, I believe I would have confused her.  Her brain was not able to digest the various meanings and sounds the way mine did at a young age.  We are all different, and she was telling me she could not handle the influx of information.  I had to lower expectations even at the very beginning of my parenting life!  At least I was an older parent, and I listened to what my child was saying.

Today is a day we take stock in our lives.  We look back on where we were, when the country was attacked.  I don't think we can forget that America was the scene of an attack.  It makes us feel vulnerable.

Why would we want to do this to another country...send flights overhead to seal memories such as these into another people's collective minds?   End war and start no new strikes!