I always feel a little odd when I think about my “roots.” Same with blood and blood lines and “family ties.” It is because I am adopted and I simply don’t know how to “hold” these words in my soul. I simply haven’t ever been able to make a decision about how to think about these concepts. I have always known it would be easier if I had some… conviction about it. It is the indecision that comes with having to choose which family to identify with as my connection to the past, my ancestors. It leaves me feeling a bit lost. I know I could decide to call either my biological family my “roots” or my adopted family my “family ties.” But neither quite feels true to me. I have always been comforted by the stories in both families that I am a tiny bit Cherokee. Somehow by having the same lineage in both families, it is true. I feel connection to the possessions of those I loved and those of their ancestors that they loved. I feel less connected to family reunions, family trees, and the concept of “ancestors.” When I was 21 years old my birth mother searched for me. I met her and much of her family. They were nice people and I enjoyed visiting with them. I was in a relationship with them for a while and then for a variety of reasons backed away for a number of years. I reconnected with my birth mother a few years ago. It is a fairly casual relationship now–we talk by phone a few times a year. I have liked the concept of genealogy and tracing roots since I first heard of it. I love the idea of being a detective, tracing people through genealogical lines and learning their stories. But I always stop before I engage because I wouldn’t know which family to trace. Neither feels right. My biological family because it is lacking the love—I don’t really care how...
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Since I first brought her home, Been surprised by the intensity of my love. I didn’t know I could love that deeply. When she was little and would get hurt, Been surprised by the sickness in the pit of my stomach. Now she is living on her own, Been surprised by the sense of well-being since she is home visiting. I didn’t know there’d be a little worry in the back of my mind No matter where she is or where I am, I am conscious of her in my subconscious. Been surprised it is there for her all the time. I wonder what new lessons about love I will have Been surprised by what I learned from this creature, my daughter. I didn’t know if I would love my boys the same way. They are so different and a unit–twins. Been surprised that I love them every bit as much–but each love is different. It was the newness of the eldest child that first taught me about love. My learning now comes from daily practice of carrying them with me in my...
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When my 4-year old twins, Emerson and Xander, were in kindergarten I got to visit their classroom. I noticed how many of the challenges we see in leadership teams have roots early on in the kindergarten classroom. I have to say, my children’s teacher was brilliant. I watched her blend great facilitation, inquiry, and relationship skills while keeping the interest of 17 busy 4 year olds for an hour. I saw her demonstrate great leadership skills herself, but I also saw her teaching leadership skills—something I work hard to teach leaders to do. Here’s what I saw: She has a busy classroom and sets it up in such a way that the children are rarely in trouble. She doesn’t keep them sitting too long or chastise them for talking. She creates time in the schedule for them to talk to each other—she believes in their relationships with each other. She fits the learning into their natural flow. She doesn’t keep herself at the center of their learning—she creates opportunities for them to learn in a variety of ways—she strategizes how they can learn from a variety of people. One of these opportunities is the third graders who come in to read to the kindergarteners once a week—they have a buddy system and they love it. This is teaching two skills: mentoring and helping others, and learning from others. She had another staff member come in and work with the children around the topic of responsibility. There was a book reading and a heated discussion led by the staff member, and I saw the teacher talking about responsibility during the time the kids got their coats and boots off and hung them up, and again when a child spilled a tub of small toys and they all helped pick them up. During circle time, I watched this teacher do 3 things that blew me away: the first was an inquiry session with my son Emerson. She asked him to figure out which of the children was...
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I just spent 10 days in Texas with my 98-year old grandfather, Bubba. “Bubba?” you ask. Yes,that’s what we call him. It’s a nickname he got many years ago when his sister couldn’t say brother. I was in Texas because Bubba recently spent some time in the hospital and I needed to visit him and the rest of the family.
Since we were eating out a lot I got to have some pretty tasty Texas-style food. The Tex Mex Chile Rellenos and BBQ brisket were good, but by far my favourite–for culinary and sentimental reasons–was a nifty little corn tortilla sandwich called a “Chihuahua.”
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When we first moved to Canada in 2002, we were immigrants. We didn’t have family to show us around so we stumbled our way around the culture, trying our best and sometimes failing both miserably and comically. Fitting into the local school system was challenging for us since we looked like we spoke the language and we seemed to fit in. Our immigrant-ness was invisible so it led to some funny challenges. Like the day Sela came home and said, “Quiz me on the provinces and their capitals!” I have to admit it had never actually occurred to me that provinces had capitals although when I thought about it, it made sense. “Do you…er…have a list?” I asked. We figured it out and we all learned the capitals together. All Canadian elementary students have an agenda from the school that is used for back and forth communication with the teacher. We got a note one day in the agenda that Sela needed duotangs. We were puzzled. I knew that duotangs had been on Sela’s school shopping list at the beginning of the school year but since I had no idea what they were, I had ignored them (one of my immigrant strategies is to wait to see if things get clearer with time). I figured, maybe the teacher could help us with the duotangs, so I told Sela to ask the teacher where we could get them. “Shoppers” was the answer. We actually were lucky enough to know this did not refer to personal shoppers like they have at Nordstrom or any other kind of actual shopper, “Shoppers” refers to Shoppers Drug Mart which is the Walgreens of Canada and a near monopoly. They are a little different from Walgreens and most of them have cosmetics and a small grocery section. And apparently, school supplies. We went off to “Shoppers” and looked around everywhere to see if we could find a sign that said duotang. We are fairly smart, we started in the school supplies...
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I have been on a major organizing kick. I have been buying magazines for a couple of years that mention “organizing” on the cover. I got a quote from a professional organizer. And we decided to give it a go ourselves first, to see how far we could get. I bought a book that I liked and I have been following the author’s steps of: Sort Purge Containerize Equalize I worked in my office all last week and got it up to speed, and this week I am working in the boy’s room. It’s a big job. I worked on Xander’s side of the bed on Sunday and we got a good start. I’m going to try to do one side of the room each day. Today I worked on their Lego table. I had looked at it yesterday and I’d been asking them how it might make sense to organize it. Emerson said by color and shape. I was driving by Target and I had some time so I went in to look. I found some plastic bins in 2 sizes. I got 12 small bins that stack and 6 large bins that stack. I thought we could use the small bins for the Legos themselves and the large bins for unfinished work and projects since they are always working on something. I also got a label maker, as recommended by the book. I brought everything home and went through the mess of Lego. One of the hardest parts of getting everything organized is letting go of feelings of inadequacy or shame that I haven’t done this sooner. Anyway, I sorted every Lego into a box by color, and the organization system started to emerge. I got my label maker and labeled every container and every section. The label maker was very satisfying and fun. I tried to think about what might work and how to make it a useful system. I was lucky that I had a block of time when the...
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