Standing Up Against Hate

I have been disheartened, disenchanted and stuck in the mud this last week. I realized how much of a bubble I live in and how much denial I was in that people would honestly elect Donald Trump. My heart hurts that bigots are smearing their hate in Trumps name feeling like they have won. The mean streak this week in the USA is sickening. We are stuck in a new world where the only answer is action. I wanted the transition of power to be more gentle than this but it’s not going to be and not settling for hate is the new mentality I have to embrace. Of course this is not a new mentality. As a woman raised in a sexist society I have had to take this approach to life over and over again. In fact Trump winning only puts into perspective all the times I have felt like the bully won. His rise to power reminded me of all the times I saw an unqualified male leader take dominance in my life and make things hard for me. After crying a bunch about these early experiences I was able to get a clearer perspective on the current situation. My biggest skill in this new world is being a good listener and showing up. 

I am a mother of two young children. I parent them solo a lot of the time and most evenings. I have to make focused decisions on the right kind of actions and demonstrations to take for them too. I will have to notice, which move will be about love, strength, and caring versus anger, dejection and fighting. I also have to be a steadfast beam of hopeful light in this dark and divisive sea. I already feel like I have said to too much in front of them. I will have to apologize a lot in the coming months as my emotions run towards the same hate I am preaching against. The people that voted for Trump are not the problem. These people actually want change as much as I do. I just want to go about it in a different way. I want a world where we live in harmony with nature, where money is not at the center of our universe and instead caring for each other and the planet are the most important things.

I got a bee in my bonnet last week. I was ready to take action. A friend sent me a Facebook message. The event was a chance to show solidarity to our Muslim neighbors. The organization CAIR Oklahoma was having a gala honoring Muslim Americans. The task was to welcome them to the event. We wanted to say we don't believe in Trump's agenda and we care about you and will stand up to people that throw hate in your direction.

The second I walked down the escalator to the event center with my two lovely daughters in my arms and by my side, tears came into my eyes. The hallway was lined with 100's of people from all walks of life spreading their message of love. These folks were just like me, sickened by the week’s events and trying to do something. 

I decided the kids could be a little extra tired that night. I would go and see how peaceful it was and leave if I felt like the children or I were in any danger. I decided it was ok for my back to hurt holding my 17 month old in a front carrier standing the whole time. I called my friends ahead of time and made sure they were going with their kids so Sweetpea would have others to play with. I decided that doing something was a lot better then hiding out in my home, overdosing on social media, sugar and fear.

It made a difference. Sometimes you do something and it’s hard to tell what difference you made. This can lead to discouragement and makes it hard to do more things. This event showed me how huge this was for this group of people. Holding signs stating  "Your voice is heard," "We welcome you as neighbors and friends" and "We will not let them target you." I watched as the attendees of the event walked up and down the hallway, glowing with tears in their eyes. I was hugged; people kissed my children and thanked them and me for being there. Some attendees walked down the hall with their phones on video broadcasting our action for all their community to see. They walked down the tunnel of love and respect we made for them. I was over come with emotion. Spreading love is the real power. Standing by people's side that are targeted with oppression, saying I will not stand for this is how we will get our message across.

We are bigger then the haters in this country right now. We are better equipped and more organized than we ever have been before. Americans don't want Trump, they want change and we on the left are now charged with the task of insuring that change is for the better. I am a mostly white European decent middle class female; other than sexism I could easily hide from the abuse. I am choosing not to. This is a choice I will have to make regularly these days. I will not stay silent.  Trump is not my president; he never will be.

Adult Unschooling

Definition of Unschooling: An educational method and philosophy that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning.

By Diala Brisly

One cold, January morning earlier this year, I told my partner, “let’s take this year to get our finances in order, no big trips, just focus on work that will pay off our debt and get us in a better place to do more of the things we want.” It sounded good to both of us. I was a little sad to put off seeing family and friends we love far away, but felt I was making the proper kind of adult decision a family with small children should make. Then life happened. My job became something I didn't want to do anymore. I got so inspired by the book I was listening to, "Last Child in the Woods," that I decided I couldn't wait any longer to follow my life path of teaching the skills of sustainability and living in connection with the earth.

I struck out, I quit my job and went rogue. I started my own business: Under The Canopy.  I am in month four of being a small business owner and it is going well. Currently, Under The Canopy consists of two after school programs and a series of workshops. I hold all my classes outside teaching about nature and how to connect to a deeper sense of place. It is a lot of work, but my passions in the driver’s seat and my family is supporting me. 

I can see how a life of unschooling has led me to this point. As a teenager I dropped out of mainstream education. I was thirteen and my mom and I decided I could take a "break" for 8th grade. I was unhappy at school. I always struggled with the way school was taught and I also was having trouble with the social dynamics of the middle school we chose. I went from a sweet public elementary down the street from my house, to a stiff upper-lipped prep school in another town where I knew no one. In elementary I was co-editor of the school newspaper; I was known as the writer and had a close group of girlfriends. In middle school I was an outcast, from the tough streets of my hometown, a much more urban environment then those posh suburbs.  I started getting low grades even in English, my favorite subject. There was less and less creative writing and more essays focused on correct grammar rather than the flowery, poetic, language my romantic heart loved to use.

We viewed taking a break as a chance for me to homeschool for a year before I entered high school. After leaving the prep school I was down trodden and spent a lot of my time watching TV.  I wanted to check out from the world. As I started to shed the layers of self-consciousness and slowly rebuild my self-esteem I saw the whole beautiful world that lay before me for the taking. I met a bunch of "unschooled" teenagers, youth that had never gone to traditional school, forging their own paths, working in the world and following their interests not based off of what they should be learning. I found a community in these “unschoolers”.  I decided on a plan, and I was not going back to school.

Fast-forward many years later to my adulthood. I worked many jobs as a young adult, lots of nanny gigs and clerk jobs in small shops. I knew I could pull off the unschooling as a teen because I had my parents backing me. As a young adult I wondered how unschooling would look now that I was grown up. I got a sense of what adulthood would look like and figured out a myriad of ways to side step all the boring BS I saw other young adults going through. I got a high paying, low hours, very precarious, job as a nanny. Being a nanny you never knew when the family would change their mind and not need you anymore. I made good money but rarely had the job security other more regular jobs come with. I worked as a nanny till I had enough money to travel for a few months. I would go off on an adventure, come back and repeat the process. I became interested in going to art school in my early 20's and did what I had always done when I had a new goal. I broke down the steps it would take to get me there. I got my GED and applied to college. I got in to my first choice school that did not use traditional grades and had an interdisciplinary liberal arts focus. I was also eligible for in-state tuition and being twenty four, not reliant on anyone else’s income, I was eligible for more money to make it all do-able financially. 

While in school I met my life partner. We decided to be committed to each other and then we got the surprise of our lives, our first child. I was uncertain how to pull off this parenting/unschooling life. One obvious choice would be to leave the financial part of our lives to my partner and be a stay at home mom (SAHM). SAHM's got all the freedom to do what they pleased with kids, play while others worked and it seemed like a good package. I started off SAHMing but two big things hit me with a thud. First, SAHM only truly works if your partner makes enough money that you are not constantly worried about making ends meet. Second, being an unschooler for most of my life I had so much creative ambition, so much zest for life. I wanted to make a bigger dent in the world then just parenting my children. I wanted to carry them along with my vision and parent them while affecting change on a grander scale. I had also been a nanny for many years, caring for young people was grand but I wanted more, I also wanted to work with adults and not always be in the care giver role.

I started looking for work with strict criteria. Being a recent college grad, in Austin, a new city, with a young child, and without the exorbitant amounts of money it costs to put a child in day care, it was slim pickings. I was thinking,  “this job better be worth leaving my kid, it better make enough money to pay for her childcare, and it better be fun and engaging”. It took me two years to find a job of this nature. Still, precarity followed. I got a job working at an after school program teaching art and social justice. It was perfect for me creatively. I got paid enough, I got to make art, write fun curriculum, work with interesting artists and activists, and be a leader. It was all the things I could want in a job. It was also part time work that changed seasonally. I was moved to different schools and had long stretches during school breaks where I made no money at all. Finding childcare for just the afternoons to make it all financially do-able was super challenging. Still the pros out weighed the cons and I stuck with it, picking up holiday shop work when I was off for too long. I found a flexible in-home day care Sweetpea loved that would have her just in the afternoons. It felt like I sort of had it made. I had a really fun job and I got to be with my family a lot. The uncertainty was hard going though, never knowing when the next job would be and where. We also started desiring other things, like a home we could set roots in, a weekly connection with family. We were ready to settle and Austin didn't feel like the place to do it.

We moved to Tulsa two and a half years ago. Upon arriving I got a job doing visitor services and programming at a public garden. The garden was dreamy work, flexible with my child care schedule, not too many hours, and the biggest plus: stability. My hours were set. This was a great thing until it became not a great thing. After 2 ½ years of being locked into a low pay non-profit job I was feeling the urge to move on. I still felt like we were scraping by and the only ways to move up in my organization was doing more stuff I didn't want to do. It was time to follow my bigger vision for teaching sustainability. Under The Canopy was born.

So here I am, a full-fledged adult in my mid-30's with two kids, a life partner, a mortgage and a degree. I am also now officially an adult unschooler.  I am living authentically, financially soundly, presently for the important work of parenting my dear children and sharing my vision for a sustainable future through the work of nature awareness at Under The Canopy. The next step is helping daddy get a chance to be an adult unschooler.  Our vision is to form a beautiful life doing the things we love with our family at the heart of it. We might be in debt for a while, we might not be able to travel for a while, but you can be sure we are following our dreams. Wish us luck!

 

 

The Do-able Camping Trip: Tips on Camping with Little People

I always imagined we would be a camping family. Being outdoorsy and loving adventure the way I do, I saw camping as my family’s way of bonding and having a cheap alternative for vacation. While all this is true, it took us awhile to make it happen. I often run into the stumbling block of having a partner that does not feel the same way about prioritizing adventure, so it’s all on me to make these jaunts into the wild happen. Finally, last winter I set the intention that we would go camping Memorial day weekend and by gun, we did!

This trip went smoothly and it was fun.  Our camping trip included nostalgic experiences from my childhood, and a sense of awe for the beauty of late spring. We also stayed mostly in our budget! The trip included two adults, our 5 1/2 year old and an 11 month old. This trip went so well I am now on a mission to encourage more parents to take their young children camping. Most people I know think it’s a good idea to go camping but rarely get to make it happen. It can be daunting, what will we do all day? What if the kids can't sleep? What if terrible weather hits the campsite? I will lay out for you how to make camping with young children go well. I know you all can do it too!

 1. Keep the location simple. Families with young children need lots of uncomplicated time in nature to relax and discover the world around them. You don't have to go far from a city to find this. We asked friends for recommendations, checked out websites and looked at a book about camping in Oklahoma. I chose a site that was 1 hour from our home. The place had bathhouses, water pumps, a pool, a play ground, tent camping away from the RV's, and some nice, easy to manage trails. The location was ideal, far enough so that we felt we were having an adventure but close enough so we could come home quickly if we needed to. It was also in the country but close to a town where we could easily get amenities and play if we wanted to.


 2. Warm your kids up to the idea of camping ahead of time, and test all your gear beforehand.  I have talked up camping to Sweetpea for a while but since we have never gone she didn't really know what it would be like. A few days before the trip we set up our tent in the living room. She helped me put it together. We played in the tent most of the day and imagined what it would be like to be outside under the stars. I told her stories from my childhood camping and stories from when I got my own tent in my 20s and backpacked across Europe with it. As we went to put "Minerva" away one of the zippers broke. I was so sad to see my tent broken and knew we could not fix her before we left. When I told the news to daddy he said it was time to get a new tent. A big one our whole family could be in together. This is where we went over budget, but now we are the owners of a big, cushy tent we will be able to play with for years to come. 

3. Have a good mix of activities but don't pack too much into a day. With little ones its good to have two major parts to the day, but keep it to that. They mostly want to be in the rhythm they are at home only in this new, fun context. The day we did push it by renting a canoe for the evening lead to two whining and crying kids. Luckily near the end of the ride they both fell asleep and daddy and I got to have the awe filled experience of canoeing around in the evening. That said, we vowed to axe it next time.

4. Make your trip mostly tech free and plug into nature. Daddy definitely was checking his smart phone some by the campfire at night, but mostly we tried to leave the technology at home. I didn’t realize it was bothering me that he was on his phone till I saw him do it. To get him away from the screen I would just suggest we go for a walk to the look out and watch the stars. We also played cards by candlelight one evening. This opened time to using our senses and seeing more clearly what was around us. We took in the smell of the cook fire, strange bird calls, and the dazzle of late spring wild flowers. Our lives are often a buzz with technology, camping is a great chance to take a brain break from our phones and busy lives at home.

5. Keep the bar low for what your kids can do outdoors and they might surprise you. We took Sweatpea on mini hikes though out the campsite. We did not expect her to hike for hours in the heat; we just took her on the easiest trail and turned around whenever she was ready. Since she was leading, we ended up stopping a lot but that was good. She owned the hike and gave us a chance to take more pictures of wild flowers. When she would say she wanted to turn around sometimes I would push her and say maybe a little more? What’s beyond that bend? That sometimes worked and sometimes did not, either way we were building a relationship with nature and the more she got to decide how long she wanted to be away from camp, the more excited she was to go for a hike.

6. Always pack water, granola bars and Band-Aids before setting off anywhere. The first hike we went on was just to explore the camp ground. Sweatpea fell and scraped her knee halfway down a hill. She was super upset so I said I would go back to the campsite to get her a Band-Aid. While there I grabbed a few water bottles and granola bars. The band aid made her feel better and later on when we got a little lost following a deer path, the water made all the difference in us being able to happily finish our hike. Moral of the story, even for the shortest time out, make sure you have these things.

7. Don't let the threat of rain stop you. I think one of the major things that keep people away from camping is the fear of bad weather. I am here to tell you can even have fun camping while it is raining. If you prepare and have a good waterproof tent you can cozy a rainy afternoon away in your tent. Or, grab your boots and find puddles to splash in. Examine what the forest looks like before, during and after the rain. It is not a lot of fun cooking in the rain with no campfires, but the water can bring on other fun like playing with mud and telling stories about the rain. If you pick a campsite near a town you can even order pizza to go and eat it in your tent. Or go out for the meal and come back to your cozy tent that evening for playing cards and reading books. You can sleep with the peaceful sounds of raindrops. Rain also tends to clear out less intrepid campers so campsites are quieter. You feel like a real outdoors person after braving a few days outside in the rain. Also, nothing can beat the smell of trees and plants after rain.

8. Take advantage of all the things the park has to offer. The first thing I did after signing us in was look at all the brochures in the park’s office. I went over the map with the ranger and found out about all the cool things happening that weekend. We used the pool and the canoes. I bought a glow in the dark constellation bandana, and I got a fun mini passport book for Sweatpea for free. This booklet had all the state parks in Oklahoma and activities to do in each park. Activities included checking out special sights in the park, fun yoga moves, and a scavenger hunt on the trails. We did them all and she got a stamp at the end of our stay. There are so many fun and inexpensive ways to connect to nature in a park, it only takes time to look up info and ask around.

The hardest thing about camping with a baby was feeding her. The picnic bench was too much fun for her and she kept trying to stand up and eat. Her standing made her fall a lot and get food everywhere. I was a mess after every meal trying to hold food in my hand and put it in her mouth. I highly recommend some kind of traveling high chair for the baby stage of camping.  I also found it hard that she was crawling around in the dirt and putting everything in her mouth. Though this was challenging I still think it was important for her to explore and get dirty. We just changed clothes a lot, fished for rocks and acorns in her mouth and when I could not take it anymore, played in the tent or just put her in her carrier.  


Remember that adventure for your family is as simple as all sleeping in the same room with only a layer of tent separating you from the outside. Eating outside and seeing the stars are huge benefits as well. There is no need to plan a lot of stuff to do; the adventure is found in living outdoors for a small span of time.

 

Connecting to the Natural World

My sensual relationship with the natural world all began in a small yard, in an urban neighborhood, in a dirty New England city.  I think most young people feel a call to the wild from the domesticated edges of the nature that surrounds them. City parks and the wild un-kept fringes of these places hold mystery and sensual nature experience. A tree with climbable branches, a little danger and daring, a branch of a bush that hangs down and creates a perfect reading nook, these are the things that stimulate a relationship with nature.

As a child I was an amateur naturalist. In my urban New England town I would collect bags full of horse chestnuts and crab apples. I explored the giant woodpile my parents had delivered to our driveway each spring. We would spend the summer piling the logs into neat rows on the front porch preparing for long, cold winters. Each log was a microhabitat for bug life. I would often catch salamanders in my hands and examine all the squiggly bugs hiding under a log at the bottom of the pile. My brothers and I would play king of the mountain and climb to the top of the woodpile or hide buried among the logs on the far side of it. 

In my little urban yard I spent a lot of time hiding under the eaves of lilac bushes reading Shel Silverstein poetry. I would write in my journal under a rose bush in the semi-wild strand between our property and our neighbor’s property. The huge Norwegian maple tree in the corner of our yard was a dear friend of mine. I would gather her leaves into piles in the fall and try and kick the piles down while swinging on our play set. I picked raspberries in the far corner of the yard and marveled over the mystery of a hidden quince that flowered each spring and produced little sour fruit I did not know what to do with.

One arbor day I was given a pine sapling and planted it next to the hemlock in our yard. I planted it in the shade of the big hemlock and it soon died. I was discouraged not knowing how to properly plant the tree so it would survive. Another year, in the front yard, my mother had me plant corn seeds and before long our corn stalks reached their arms to the heavens with yummy large cobs to eat all summer. I became a corn maiden.

As a grown up and mother in my Mid South little city I use the nature in my back yard as a contemplative space for myself. I do a "Sit Spot" in a corner of the yard twice a week. For 20 minutes I sit in that spot and watch as the life of my back yard animates before me. I have never felt bored doing this. There is so much to see, listen to, and understand. I now long for my sit spot session. It is my quiet time to take in all that surrounds me. Getting to know one place, one habitat, has taught me to fall in love with where I live. It helps me to be more focused when I come back to my home afterward and step back into the role of parent. It also helps me to remember how important it is to spend time outside with my kids.

Children approach nature differently from adults. In my adult lens I want to preserve nature, to examine it without the influence of my touch. A child wants to get up in nature, feel it, pick it, prod and poke it. If we don't give them a chance to do this, they lose interest. Although I know about these differences, they can be hard to stomach. I hate it when Sweetpea picks flowers from our front yard bush. I find them piled on the console table, presents for me that are forgotten soon after the picking. I realize that in her picking she is getting to know the plant, she is touching and ripping, smelling and feeling all the essence the plant has to offer. If she just looked at the plant with her eyes she would soon tire of it. Unless I sat with her and encouraged her to look deeper, she would forget the plant. The act of taking from the plant helps her to build a relationship with it. She also helps me trim this bush in the spring. When new shoots threaten to take over the front porch. We get to hack them down together. We have a delightful scented pile of brush to play with for the next few weeks. These branches could become fairy crowns, birds’ nests, or the woven mat of a roof for an earthen shelter. 
The possibilities are endless for a pile of sticks covered in leaf and blossom. 

I have learned as an adult there is a whole category of intelligence called nature intelligence. When I have called myself a plant person I did not realize I really had the brain for it. I soak up nature knowledge and it comes easily to me. I hear a plant name and know it by heart almost immediately. I never saw this part of myself as a career path, I always saw this talent as just a part of me. Being a plant person was a piece of who I was, but not a calling. As the world shifts and changes, our climate becomes more unpredictable. Food is becoming more expensive and insecure and disconnect from the place a person lives is more prevalent. I am starting to see how much plant knowledge and earth connection is needed. My interest in birds, plants and the day-to-day wildlife is something a lot of people don't have and need help finding.

I am now seeing it as my mission to teach the skills of sustainability. I am bringing nature knowledge to young people. I am teaching adults to remember what having a sensual connection with nature is by learning about the environment that is right in front of them. I believe when people know the nature that surrounds them they care more and are more likely to make choices that keep the earth in mind. People feel Connected to the beautiful and intricate web of life starting in their backyards.

Nature Knowledge all starts in our daily environment. This knowledge is potent, it is believing we have influence and are connected to all living things. If we realize this, we give power to the earth and we give voice to the policies we want to see in place. We must appreciate the importance of being present with the beauty of our own little worlds and make sure it survives for generations to come. 

Choosing the Un-Hip Home "2 Years In"

In all my wildest imaginings of where I would find home I did not expect to find myself in Tulsa Oklahoma. I have chosen to have a place and community I call my own regardless of where it is. I have lived many places in my life, mostly in the Northern states. I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. As a teen I spent a lot of my time on a Metro North train bound for New York City exploring the city with a tight circle of friends in the surrounding Tri-state area. As a young adult with a taste for adventure I moved myself across the country to Seattle where rainbow flags lined the streets and the breath taking beauty of the natural world made me vibrate with emotion. While nannying on the side I would save all my money and go travel in Europe and South America.

After becoming a parent my priorities changed. I wanted family, I wanted people that were as dedicated to raising my kids as I was. I flirted with the idea of returning to the land my people are from. Though I grew up in the North, my parents are from this Southern land. My husband’s family lives in Tulsa. For a soft move to see if we could really live in this part of the country we moved to Austin, Texas. It is a reclaiming of my heritage to return to the south. While in Austin I watched as the tech industry took over this small, hip town. I really liked the city but watched as the rent price went up and my neighborhood became too expensive to live in. This is when Tulsa started looking like the right place for us to live.

My new home is buried deep in the Mid-South in a red state, and so be it. I say screw moving for a job, screw the idea of moving to the over inflated markets of hip, liberal, coastal cities and living dirt poor under the confines of cool. Screw all that, I am moving to Tulsa. I am excited, exploring like a little worm investigating the interior of a ripe apple. What layers does this city hold for me? What opportunities can our family glean from this place? What can I bring here? These questions lie on the surface of this overwhelming sensation of, I am home! I don’t have to move again!

I chose simplicity, a life based on connection to loved ones, a do-able place where I don't have to live on the edge and can write from the fringe. A place I can afford to live in and be able to buy tickets to visit the people I love in those above-mentioned hip, liberal, coastal cities. It is a relieving feeling having a place called home. My cancer crab nature has been looking for roots my whole adult life.

I live now in the land of my husband’s family. I live in the state my dad was raised in. I am circling back into a web that I cast aside in my younger adulthood. I want my kids to know their grandparents. I want to have big family dinners and be able to know that people here have my family’s back. These desires outweighed the red flag warnings of moving to a place where I knew I would be fish out of water. In Tulsa my punk/queer history could easily slip under the surface and into hiding.

Going undercover with my radical nature has been a part of living in the South. I had to get used to this upon moving to Texas a few years ago. I am now more selective with whom I share what. When I was younger it was all about in-your-face confrontation. Living on the edge meant being your self no matter what. Now I see I can be myself and not share all that comes into my head. I can think my opinions and still get along with folks very different from me. This is a great skill to adopt.

In some ways this place is sheltered from the harsh realities of a competitive city. Tulsa says: “welcome! Here is a new opportunity or possibility for you.” And Ha! In my face! It can be hip here. Tulsa has a thriving alternative scene complete with artists, climate change activists, hippie farmers, entrepreneurial young couples and pug lovers. Not as many radicals as in the Northwest, but still freaky people choosing to live here.

One of the biggest differences I notice is the lack of transplants here. Spending all my 20's and late teens in the transient North West it is so odd for me to be around all these people that come from this place. There are also folks that never left. I have seen stylish, young Okies selling fermented preserves, sporting handle bar mustaches and wearing ironic T-shirts like the best of them never having left their hometown. There is a lot of hometown pride here. I see many a shoulder adorned with a tattoo that outlines the state with a heart over Tulsa.

When I move to a place I learn all about it.  I study the history, culture, and natural marvels of the place. Tulsa is old. The actual rock that makes up the land is filled with fossilized shells. Prairie grass still rolls around some parts of North East Oklahoma. They call this land Green Country. The wind can howl through you and bring with it the cold weather. There is a Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival. Where the attendees watch as a Prairie Chicken “displays” on its gobbling grounds. One day I will make it to this festival and chortle happily.

This place is native as well. Native American culture surrounds the dominating white culture. I thought of this a lot when I first moved here. Making connections into the Native community is important to me, but it has not been easy. It is easy to surround myself in predominantly white culture and forgot about the fact that this is Native land. I feel it even more living in Indian Territory and seeing tribal plates everywhere.  I notice it when I see entering and existing reservation signs on the roadside. What does it mean to enter Cherokee land? Land that was given to Cherokees that was not even their ancestral land? I am 1/16th Cherokee and I am still figuring out what that means and how to claim it as a person of the predominant white culture while still being real.

I have gotten good at moving and remaining authentically me no matter where I live.  I still feel a part of the East coast and West coast within me. I carry both cultures as well as a good Southern twang now. After a couple of years here, I have settled in, and it seems that Tulsa and I have blended. We have grown together. Maybe my edgy east coastness has been toned down, and maybe Tulsa has taken a step towards being a touch more liberal. Maybe I just fell in with the right crowd. I believe it is a combination of all these things.  Something about getting older has made me feel more grounded in the person I am, not striving anymore to be something greater, or in a particular culture that I have to fit into. I am home for now and it feels so good.

      

      

The Checks of Shame

I receive WIC.  Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a government-subsidized program designed to help low income families pay for groceries, promote health and breast feeding. You can sign up when you are pregnant and stay enrolled if your income is still low enough to qualify, until your child is 5. I have been on WIC with both my kids. I got it when I was first pregnant with Sweet pea and now I get it with Pickle. Apparently my mom used to get WIC back in the day when I was little. WIC has been a great breastfeeding support system for me. They gave me a free electric breast pump and all the pump parts right after having Pickle. While I am super grateful that I get a significant discount on groceries every month I often wonder at what cost. 

WIC is not a delightful experience. Because the government subsidizes WIC, the food is very specific, down to the ounces of how much you can get of one thing. WIC allows only generic brands, nothing quality, just the basics. This specificity leads to many mistakes. In the beginning I would screw up all the time. A 16oz loaf of bread can be hard to find. There is no handy swipe card, in Oklahoma you get big checks with the items written out on them. In the 2 years that we have been on WIC since moving here I have had a total of one pleasant, pain free interaction when using WIC. As I am writing this I can't believe it either. Really, just one in two years!

I have come to call WIC the checks of shame. “Time to go do my checks of shame shopping!” I shout as I leave the house on Monday with a sarcastic grin across my face.

There I am, scanning the aisles trying to find the shortest line with the most competent looking cashier. I have tried to strategize when I go WIC shopping to avoid a long impatient line behind me. In the middle line, is a free space, I wedge my cart in. Time to put on my sing, song, happy go lucky voice as I hand over my checks. “I am doing WIC first. “ I say calmly. The cashier is an older woman who already looks terrified. I remember to put my cloth shopping bags in front and let the bagger know to fill them all the way up. I often end up with 4 plastic bags at the end, even when I bring my own bags. Oklahoma still has not figured out yet that I bring bags because I don’t want plastic.

I cheerily put forward my WIC items, cleanly separated out, meticulously scrutinized for the proper ounces and brands. I think maybe this time it will go smoothly. I give her the first check, the easy one.  All there is on this check is milk, eggs, bread and PB. She spends a lot of time clicking buttons before she has to call her supervisor over to remind her how to do WIC. I wait patiently. I try to coach her on what to push, since I have watched every mistake ever done by a cashier. I point at another cashier I recognize in the line over and say, “she can help, she has helped me before. “ No dice, guess I should have noticed her line before this one. The supervisor comes, does a quick tutorial and we are back in business. First check down, I am in good spirits, than I go in for the kill. $12 of fruits and vegetables. According to my mini WIC encyclopedia I get to have fresh produce, it can be organic vegetables, pre-washed greens, all $12 worth for a month! Maybe for some $12 of produce is significant but for our family it barely buys 2 meals. Still free food, is free food, so I put down the check and wait. A calm before the storm.

The cashier starts up her process then after the first vegetable she rings up, it says, this is not a WIC item. She tells me flatly “This is not a WIC item.” Like every other week I get out my mini encyclopedia and explain to her that yes, any and all vegetable and fruit are game for my $12. She calls the supervisor over again. This time I am getting hot around the face. I now have 2 other folks behind me, “this will be awhile” I tell the women behind me. She does not budge. Then I realize I recognize the other women behind her. It’s a friend. This friend is probably one of the best people to run into in this scenario.  She and her family are chill and sweet people who are thoughtful in trying situations. I am trying to play it cool as we wait. We start chatting about the church we both go to. Its pleasant but I am also distracted by how long this is taking. I am really heating up by the time the supervisor arrives and saves the day with his “special card.” She can now finish ringing up my $12 of produce.

One more complication arises. I got too many vegetables. In this case often the cashier will just add my extra veggies to my non-WIC items. Only this cashier really did not know what she was doing. She wanted cash. I reach into my wallet and hand over $5. That was supposed to go to something else. It sucks that money is so tight $5 feels like too much to give.

I say thank you, say goodbye to my friend, and wheel out into the spring air. It is when I get to my car I realize the bagger switched halfway though that transaction and gave me 3 plastic bags. I get in my car and cry.
At least once a month I come home crying after a WIC trip. The mark of being low-income stings. It’s so confusing and hard I often wish we did not qualify for it at all.

But we do, and until we do not qualify I cannot see any way of not taking the free food.

From Hyperbole and A Half Blog

The Burning Hot Nanas

There is a "gentleman’s club" my daughter and I pass on the way to her Pre-K. It is a place right in the middle of a busy, family oriented neighborhood strip. Her dance school is a few blocks down, its surrounded by a vet office, plant nursery, restaurant and violin shop. I don't know how the club came to be there but there it is, right in our faces as we drive from point A to point B. I find the place sleazy & do my best to ignore it.

One day my very observant Pre-K kid asked me about the place. "Mama, why is there a picture of burning hot nanas on that building?" (nanas is a friendly term for breasts we used when she was breast feeding, pronounced nah-nahs.) The strip club has its name emblazoned on a red sign with women's nude torsos engulfed in flames. This is it, that horrible moment where I have to decide how to explain to my daughter the exploitation of women in our culture. I rack my brain for the most simplified response I can imagine. "Well, honey, the person that owns that business put up that sign. What do you think of that sign?" a pause from the back seat, "I don't like it." Neither do I honey." Another pause, then she says, "We should tell them to take it down. " I said “yes that is a great idea."

After our talk I was motivated and ready to put pen to paper and give this business a piece of my mind! But by the time we got home a million other thoughts had swept through my head and we were onto the next thing. We pass by this place a few times a week. Since  the initial conversation Sweetpea sometimes notices the nanas and sometimes does not.  When she does notice she says. "I don't like that sign, let’s tell them to take it down." I have told her to not look if it bothers her. I have told her yes it bothers me too and I agree we should ask to have it taken down. Finally after many excuses I told her we will write to them she just needs to remind me when we are home and by paper and pen.


I started to get a daily reminder, "Remember mama to write to the place with the burning hot nana sign." This reminder comes to me in the same vein as " Remember to take out the garbage." I tuck her into bed and she reminds me to write the place with the burning hot nana sign. I am fixing her snack and she reminds me again. Its incredible how something so intense and confusing as talking about sexual exploitation of women has become such a run of the mill conversation in my home.

One night I finally set the wheels in motion and started the letter. I am tired of feeling worn down by offensive media. I am tired of accepting the BS that says this world is just crappy and we can't do anything about it.  Even if they don't take down the sign I know it’s important to write the letter. It’s important because I want to show my daughter that we can try to make change. She needs to know that we can state our opinions no matter what. Also, that stating her opinion makes things better. In my ideal world there would not even be a strip club my daughter and I would have to interact with. Confronting the burning hot nanas is giving us a chance to say what we want in our community with our voices. This is a powerful step against sexism and towards empowerment even if the nanas continue to burn.

Foot note: To all women/mothers working in the biz and ex-sex workers this is not about what you do. We all have to make money and for some this is the most reliable option. I salute you in your efforts to pay bills and raise families as a female in this society. We are all in this together.

   

  

The Value Of Adventure

Recently a fellow mom friend and I were talking. We were discussing all the amazing adventures we had in our young adult lives. We longed for that fresh-eyed perspective of youth, having new ground to walk on, new people to talk to and new sensory experiences that drew us to the present. As we have both gotten older, we have chosen to have families and the days of wild abandon had shifted. We missed that aspect of ourselves. 

By, Rosa Mund-Zander

As much as we were happy with the lives we had chosen, that need for adventure was sadly neglected. We talked about the realities of being lower income and money going to meet the basic needs of our family. We also talked about how it’s different adventuring with small children and or your partner, trying to meet everyone's needs and your own at the same time.

The conversation boiled down to we both felt like we did not have enough adventure, and how it was a value of ours. Re framing adventure as a value suddenly made this big ever present desire in me spark to life. I have spent a lot of my motherhood down playing this need of mine. It is always last on the list of what we need to put energy or money toward. My husband has been a huge stumbling block in the way of this value. He does not mean to be. He just feels that one of us has to be the practical one in this regard, so he takes on that role. It has been a source of discontentment sense we became parents. 

By, James Richards for wanderarti blog

Usually the conversation goes like this:" let’s go somewhere fun this year! I want to see our friends in the NW." To which he replies, "We can't afford that." "There are all different ways to travel, what about frequent flyer miles etc." "We need to pay off debt before we can go into more debt." Most of the time I feel ashamed of this desire, like I am not putting the needs of my family first. Why would I want to do something as frivolous as travel?

By re framing adventures into a value I looked at the situation differently. If I don't have fresh perspective, my creativity suffers. I become more jaded and melancholy. I can't enjoy the experiences in front of me as easily. I parent better when I have fresh eyes and new experiences under my belt. I can share this value with my children, and they see the spark of life in their mom and get excited too.

I am a restless soul and adventure is an important thing to honor in myself. By hiding this need I am hiding a big part of the magic that is me and I am not ok with that.

By, Candace Rardon on Wanderarti blog

So how do you do it? I am still figuring that out. It started with a big conversation with my husband. I let him know adventures were a value of mine and I could not neglect it even though money is very tight. Just saying this out loud helped to get the conversation going. I have also made a list of the adventures I want to have this year. These are my heart felt intentions and goals. I am not sure how they will happen, but just setting the intention makes me feel excited.

I am also narrowing my focus on what are things I see as necessary places to go, verses any whim or passion. I am assembling a list of local adventures to keep fresh eyes on the place I am living now. When I read about a new ethnic restaurant or market, it goes on to the list.  When I hear about a neat hiking trail, a good swimming hole or camping spot, they all go on the list. I also keep a list of adventures I want to have with the family and what I want to do alone or with friends. It is so good to prioritize self-adventures where I only have to meet my needs. Also to be ready for a family adventure knowing it will look different and be about the needs of all of us.

Seeing the value in adventures is leading me to show myself more while being a mom. It’s a win win.