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Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Grammie's gig

SO, these are my inner dialogues these days...
me:  I'm a New Englander, many generations over. . .  so, the whole 'thrift is good' thing sings in my blood. I dream of pies that I make by hand and canning things and making all of our bedquilts.
However, I am a girl of the 1980's and 90's and I don't really know how to do any of this.  I have made pies but find it sort of laborious and I don't really like to EAT them, to my husband's great chagrin. I don't can anything although I did make up a bunch of pickles this year. - which are languishing in the closet even now.  I'm a bit afraid of exploding jars in the basement, the dark, dark basement which houses many spiders to keep me from the laundry machines. . .   Quilts bigger than a 3 foot square are going to be a bit more than I can handle soon, I think.
Me, again: This whole thing of shifting 'back to the land' that becoming more self-sufficient  (as all those crazy linkings are leading me to)  will grant me is going to take a lot of shifting.  I've got my Grammie's support but she is a memory and an idea now and I would really like to talk to her some more. . .  I don't want her to be some schtick that I use to soothe my own imaginary wanderings.  she would disparage that idea.
I'm getting very good at telling the boys to go outside, and not following them. very good. We have a posse of boys from the neighborhood who show up at just about every hour/any hour and they play without frontiers in our city backyard. . . and they all, in their utter city-kid-ness, 'i wish michael jackson was my dad' (yeah, i heard it, i did... can you BELIEVE how his 'image' has reformed since his death? holy mother)
these kids actually make me feel better about C going to school in this neighborhood.  they have survived, they can read, they can talk... and they can play...  maybe i have more choices.
What if all this 'back to the land' domestic fronteir-ing stuff is just prep to get me to homeschool?  holy shit.
I've thought more about it in the past 35 hours than ever in my life.  My poor kid, my poor, incredibly social public school kid.  my poor me, my poor me, who was thinking i'd have soooo much time to myself this year.  my poor country, run by politicians who are corporations, and not by humans who understand that ACTUAL diversity of economy makes education more difficult, and the struggling schools should be MORE highly funded/staffed because their work is ACTUALLY harder.
the american dream?  my dream? public schools would actually be the popular, educated choice, not just a political or economical move.
36 kids.  what the hell kind of learning is going to go on there?  i'm sort of devastated.  what kind of mother does this to her kid?  why isn't everyone up in arms?
My grandmother would be too busy to deal with this. but she had trust in the teachers and in her kids not to mess around, and she just kept making her pies... and her home, and a backdrop for the brungup of a crew of six. 
i love to say 'brungup'.  say it with me.
keep the faith...

2 comments:

Still Life With Coffee said...

Um.... 36??? One teacher??? please tell me this is not true??
If there are 36 kinders and 1 teacher, that is a huge problem.
You need to complain to some sort of administrator. This is complete and utter nonsense. Hopefully parents are going in and either complaining or volunteering to fix the adult/kid ratio. Hugs. <3

Mama Mama Quite Contrary said...

Love the Michael Jackson comment and your subsequent analysis.

Can't wait for V to get back to school so I can get back to my domestic duties. Oh, and this heatwave has got to go too.