Hear, Hear!

Today’s prompt:

Do you hear what I hear? Tell us about a sound. What do you hear in your house or at work?

Right now, I am attempting to ignore my four year old as she scolds our two kittens for antagonizing the cokatiel. One of my sons is listening to a lesson for school on his brother’s Kindle Fire. I can hear our four zebra finches beeping and chattering away in their little voices, sounding like feathered clown cars and creaky gears.

One of the other kids is practicing the piano—the same eight measures over and over again, perfecting the intricate fingering. He broke his arm eight weeks ago, making him unable to play, and he’s been stressing about his upcoming music festival—he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to participate, but the cast came off two days ago, and he’s making up for lost time, determined to master the music in time to compete.

One of the kittens just streaked past the dog, making him jump and bark his head off, pawing at his crate door. Guess I’ll go put the kittens away before I let him out. Our Border Collie has a strong prey drive, and I worry one of these days he’ll catch one of them.

E-mail notifications are pinging as I sit at the computer, tick-ticking away at this post.  I can hear the big rigs carrying fill dirt or sugar beets rumbling down the rural highway behind my house and the not-so-distant train announcing it’s crossing the road on the tracks less than a mile away.  When we moved out here, to Nowhere’sville, we didn’t know about the trains—and they kept us up at nights—their horns and whistles shrieking on the hour at 1:00, 2:00, and at 3:30.  Now, we don’t even notice them---but visiting guests always do.

Finally, the boy on the piano is getting those measures right—sounds like he’s satisfied, as he’s now stumbling through a different piece.  He’s persistent. He’ll get it.

This post is part of Think Kit by SmallBox.

Scratch & Sniff

Today’s prompt:

Scratch & Sniff

Scents have the power to take us all kinds of places. What smell takes you somewhere else? Where'd you go?

I thought about this prompt all day, but the only thing I could think of was the smell of my junior high—with it’s funky smell of industrial glue, aerosol hair spray, and Exhiliration! perfume.  Ugh. I so don’t want to be “taken back” to that particular place, or to those gawky, angsty years, especially via smells.  So, instead, here’s a list of smells I appreciate:

Newborn babies—one of my favorite things about having teeny babies was cuddling with them and sniffing the tops of their heads or backs of their necks, taking in that distinct new baby smell. That’s heaven, right here.

Rain—I love rain and overcast days. While most of the people around me pine for sun and warmth, I feel so alive and energized in cloudy weather.  Also, it really brings out the red in my hair.  But, back to the smell of rain—it’s the smell of promise and growth to me, whether it’s wet earth or wet pavement.

Parrots—I love the subtle, sweet, dusty-grain smell particular to psittascines. I kept budgies as pets growing up and would spend hours in my room playing with and talking to them, or watching them play on top of their cage and fly around the room.  I don’t own budgies now, but I do have a cockatiel.

Used bookstores—that mix of old paper, ink, binding glue, leather, and old building is just magical. I am lucky enough to experience that smell in my own home, since we converted a bedroom to a “library” to house a good portion of the books and homeschool curricula we own.  Every time I walk into our home library, I feel like I’ve stepped into a sacred place.

Clean laundry—I suppose, like rain and newborn babies, this smell is kind of a cliche to like—but whatever. I do a LOT of laundry with seven people in my household.  Also, I workout a lot, as does my husband---so there is plenty of dirty laundry to deal with.  I like doing laundry because it’s a chore that is easy and offers immediate satisfaction—wash, fold, put away, and DONE. Unlike the kitchen, which is so much in use all the time that the cleaning NEVER feels done.

Endust and Pine-Sol—my mom was quite a neat freak and we “white gloved” the house twice a week.  My responsibilities included dusting and vacuuming, and cleaning the bathrooms. Even today, my house just doesn’t FEEL clean without those products.

Ground beef and onion being fried—it just smells like the promise of a hearty meal, and it usually is---it’s the base of a lot of what I cook at home—chili, tacos, enchiladas, spaghetti sauce…great, now I’m hungry!

This post is part of Think Kit by SmallBox.

 

 

 

 

In My Eyes

Today’s prompt:

In Your Eyes

Share a photo or paint us a picture with words. Show us something from your year through your eyes. Did you see something that took your breath away? Or maybe you just couldn't look away?

My husband took this picture on a two week trip to the Oregon coast this summer. The folks in the photo are our kids.  We love the ocean and even though this day was cold and windy and it was getting dark, my wistful tribe didn’t want to leave the beach. I love how the kids are silhouetted here.  They are adventurous and love to travel, to experience new things. They like being together, and are generally kind and get along well.  Looking at this picture reminds me how much I love my family and how much I love exploring the world with them.

This post is part of Think Kit by SmallBox.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Today’s prompt:

Get Analog

No screens, no technology – what did you do with your hands this year?



What did I do with my hands this year? I did a whole lot of Krav Maga. For the uninitiated, Krav Maga is the official Israeli military hand-to-hand combat fighting system. It is contact combat, and is not considered a martial art---because it’s not an art at all—it is a set of techniques to neutralize an imminent physical threat at the hands of one or more attackers. The techniques are designed to follow instinctive body movements and training involves working under intense physical and mental stress, and from a position of disadvantage, such as being pinned down, choked, grabbed from behind, or having multiple attackers. Practitioners are taught how to defend themselves while simultaneously counterattacking.



Unlike MMA, there are no rules or time limits in Krav Maga. You do WHATEVER you need to do to get safe.  Krav Maga is not a sport, it is a self-defense system. Training through realistic scenarios, It teaches practical self defense techniques, situational awareness, and how to turn disadvantages in to advantages to protect and defend oneself and others. 

In the studio where I train, we not only learn how to punch, kick, and strike with knees and elbows, but we also learn to disarm gunmen and knife or stick wielding attackers.  We are taught to make use of weapons of opportunity—if not your own body, then a rock, a book, a handbag, even an attacker himself—to ward off and neutralize a threat.  Recently I have been training in resisting and escaping from kidnapping scenarios—they have involved one attacker throwing a pillowcase over my head, while another attacks me with a stick.

Below: A typical Krav class—my instructor and a student (center) demonstrating a defense against a headlock.


I LOVE Krav Maga. I am absolutely addicted to it and am now training to become an instructor.  In the five-ish yeas I’ve been training, I have become a different person.  When I started, I was timid, cringing, constantly apologizing for taking up space. I was afraid to really live for fear I’d anger someone or get hurt. I was passive and reactionary. The Krav Maga training I do for dangerous and deadly scenarios has changed all that. It’s the best therapy in the world. Who knew that the confidence and skills gained from training in hand-to-hand combat would carry over into regular life? I’m comfortable and confident in who I am. I’ve learned to be aware, humble, to look at every situation as a learning experience, and I’m not afraid to get into things and go after them—be they bad guys or life goals.

This sign is not at all ironic in Krav:


This post is part of Think Kit by SmallBox.

Selfie

Today's prompt: 

Your 2015, Reviewed

Give us the 30,000 foot view. Or, hone in on a few highlights. Let's bring last year to life before moving on to what's ahead.

I love this picture of myself and think it sums me up in 2015 perfectly.  Half concealed, half disclosed. At ease in both the dark and light spaces in my life.  This year, rather than battling my demons, I shook hands and accepted them. We’ve come to the understanding that they will always be with me, but I'm the boss.


“I’m friends with the monster that’s under my bed/Get along with the voices inside of my head/You're trying to save me/Stop holding your breath/But you think I’m crazy/Yeah you think I’m crazy…” –The Monster by Eminem, featuring Rihanna

This post is part of Think Kit by SmallBox.

Happy New Year and some writing stuff

Starting anything new makes my stomach twist like wringing out a wet rag.  It’s an uncomfortable sensation, but also oddly satisfying.  I feel this way with any new endeavor, and the stronger the wringing sensation, the more I know I’m getting into something good.
I committed to posting on my blog at least once a week for the entirety of 2016, but I felt like I needed a boot camp of sorts, so I joined Think Kit—a group of bloggers that wanted to flex their blogging muscles. Each day this January, Think Kit will provide a writing prompt for the group to use to get the creative juices flowing.  I will post each day here using the prompt (or one of the “lifeline” alternative prompts.) This is exciting and a little scary—so I must be doing something right!  Geronimo!
Today’s prompt is:

First Line

Pretend you're writing your autobiography. Give us your first line, a first chapter, or even just an image. What's the story of you?
Socks.  I think about them quite a bit, because I absolutely must change my socks three or four times a day. I carry clean socks in my gym bag (naturally) but also in my purse, in the console of my car, and even in my coat pockets. I don’t consider myself an obsessive-compulsive personality. In fact, I’m pretty fast and loose with housecleaning and hairstyles and noise and just about everything else, but in order to feel right with the world, I must be wearing clean, dry, comfortable socks.

This post is part of Think Kit by SmallBox.

Defensive?

*The subject matter in this post may be touchy for some. And my handling of it is probably clunky, because I’m still sorting my thoughts and how best to articulate them, while attempting to preserve the dignity of the people discussed. Please note it was written in a spirit of self-reflection following a Facebook conversation with my friend Chad.  He graciously agreed to allow me to use his name and post our original exchange, which you will find in it’s entirety at the end of the post.

About a week ago, my friend Chad posted the following picture on Facebook:

I don’t typically get into it with people over politics or their stances on social issues, but I in this case, I felt I had something to contribute, so I commented on my friend’s post:

 

What followed was an exchange that left me a bit exasperated with my friend, and in looking at it with the distance of a week or so, it appears to me that Chad and I really, fundamentally believe many of the same things (in this case, that ALL lives do indeed matter.) Where our communication breaks down is that I feel the All Lives Matter slogan is a defensive and reactionary response to an actual and necessary social movement (#BlackLivesMatter) and is dismissive of the fact that many Black people feel their lives DON’T matter as much as others’.

When I first saw #BlackLivesMatter, I understood it was a response to the apparent uptick in wrongful deaths of Black people by White police and others, but because I live in a fairly white-bread, insular community, at first, it was barely on my radar.  However, it kept popping up in all my social media, so I started paying close attention to it and the concerns and fears and the stories of the people who were hashtagging it.  I started reading articles, reaching outside of my own social and media circle, following Black bloggers, and transracial and adoptive families with the intent to understand—to listen—to their experiences.

As I listen, I’m learning.  #BlackLivesMatter is not just a group of people “pulling the race card” as I’ve heard it called. They are people who are calling out actual problems and real injustices happening to people because of the color of their skin.

Throughout my discussion with Chad, I had been trying to point out that it is important to LISTEN to and try to understand WHY #BlackLivesMatter does not mean that other lives don’t—and I felt he was missing my point.  To me, he seemed defensive and shut down, not even open to listening to people’s experience with racism and the need for a social movement to change the systemic and structural racism in our society.  I asked him why he felt so defensive and if he had read the links to articles I had posted for his perusal. Rather than answer my questions, he returned it to me—“Why are you so defensive?”

At that point, frustration set in heavily for me. My goal in the discussion with Chad was to open him up to the idea to GIVE EAR AND THOUGHT TO OTHER PEOPLE WHO DON’T SHARE HIS EXPERIENCE so he could see why THEY feel a need for #BlackLivesMatter.  Unfortunately,I don’t think I succeeded, because Chad didn’t answer my questions. I have no idea if he read the links I included in our exchange, because he didn’t indicate he did, though he did tell me that he understands that minorities have struggles as well as strengths.

I feel it is crucial to LISTEN to people who feel dehumanized and devalued, whether or not I agree that they are such. My feelings are not theirs. My experiences are not theirs, so I don’t get to decide how THEY feel. And once I’ve listened, I must try to understand. And then I must work for change, so that they feel secure that their lives matter as much as anyone else’s. THEN will #AllLivesMatter. So, when Chad turned my question “Why are you so defensive?” back on me, I felt I should walk that talk, and honestly consider the question in the spirit of believing that Chad really wanted to know my thoughts and feelings, rather than using it as a volley to evade my questions and suggestions for reading.

So, was I defensive? Yes. I get defensive when I don’t feel heard, when my questions don’t get answered, when I have spent hours poring over an issue, approaching it from as many angles as I can possibly find in an effort to understand and find the Truth (with a capital T), and am dismissed when trying to share what I’ve learned.

It is not a bad thing to question a system, even if it appears to be working for you.  It is not a bad thing to take the time to listen to the experiences of others, and to conscientiously consider their beliefs, even if they are markedly different than your own

It frightens me when someone makes negative blanket statements about a group of people—any group of people—based on race, gender, politics, or religion.  Doing so diminishes the humanity of that group, and as Ann Voskamp puts it, “It’s when we dehumanize anyone, that we can legitimize anything.” That is a terrifying truth that history has played out time and time again. .

As for #BlackLivesMatter, I feel it is (unfortunately) a necessary social movement. If we truly believe that all lives matter, we will not blow off Black people as playing the race card when they call out injustices. We will listen and work until they feel heard, understood, and safe. If we truly believe that All Lives matter, we will do the work to ensure it, even if it is uncomfortable, messy, and awkward.

I came away from my discussion with Chad feeling that even though we were both talking English and both have a heart for making the world a better place, we were speaking different languages and I am still frustrated that I haven’t figured out how to bridge the gap. 

In the meantime, here’s our exchange, as food for thought—both on #BlackLivesMatter and an example of how (or how not?) to discuss tinderbox subjects with friends on social media: