The Cheerio Section

Daniel Schwen - Own work, CC BY 3.0

Periodically I hear rumblings about parents who bring their children to Mass. The children are noisy, they won't sit still. And the Cheerios. All those crumbs. If you are going to bring children and their Cheerios, better bring your dust buster and clean them up.

Sometimes I think the subtext is that these parents haven't taught their children how to behave at Mass. Can't they get through an hour without eating? Can't they sit still?

I sat in the Cheerio section for Mass on Sunday, a little one to the right of me, a little one in front of me. Each with their Cheerios. As I knelt after communion, a little face popped up in front of me, her bag of Cheerios in hand. She ate one and flashed a contented smile. Meanwhile, we are singing "I am the Bread of Life, you who come to me shall not hunger..."

It occurred to me that parents who bring Cheerios for their kids are teaching them that the Mass is a place where their hunger can be fed. And is that such a bad thing?

Prayers!

A couple of Sundays ago I was sitting next to a family with two young boys at Mass, one an infant, the other about two. They reminded me of those days when Mass was a full body workout, as we juggled babies in arms and toddlers at our feet.  (If you think distractions in prayer are a problem, try praying with a toddler and a three-year old, then we can talk distractions.)

Last week as we prayed the universal prayers for the needs of the world, to which the assembly responded, "Lord, hear our prayer," the two-year old suddenly burst out, "Prayers!"  I turned to his mother who moved quickly to shush him and whispered, "Lest we think they aren't listening!"

I'd written those prayers, and I always worry that I'm missing the little ones, that these prayers go straight over their heads. But apparently not entirely. "Prayers!"

It reminded me of my summer visit to the Specola, where Mass was celebrated with the three or four of us who were around.  There was no haste in these celebrations of the Eucharist, and when it came time for the universal prayers, they came in fits and starts, in English and Italian from all present. For those from the community traveling, for those in ill health, for local difficulties, for our families, for the world, the Church.  Prayers, we cried again and again. As we proceeded with the liturgy, I imagined those prayers piled on the altar, spilling over, offered up with the gifts, the whole to be sanctified, to be made whole in what was broken.

So many people in my life right now have asked for prayers, friends and family both. I pile the prayers at the foot of the altar - for my dad, who is struggling with serious health challenges, for my sister-in-law who is hospitalized with meningitis, for a young friend undergoing surgery. For the nation, for the Church, both in difficulties...for peace on earth. The needs are great and small alike. "Prayers!" indeed, I think.

What will my community pray for tonight?

For the People of God, to whom God has chosen to come close… 

For those who long for light, for those whose lives are overshadowed by war, economic unrest, or violence in their neighborhoods and homes…

For the safety of those who must travel, for pilgrims, immigrants and refugees… 

For the homeless, for children and families who will not have a roof over their heads tonight… 

For the sick, for children who are ill and for their parents... 

For our dead, those in need of our prayers and those now singing joyfully before the Lord…

Prayers!

Escucha! Exercises on the border

Listen, I'm sorry that didn't listen last night before dinner.  Or afterward.  Perhaps when I pray Compline, I thought. Wrapped in the comfortable dimness, solaced by the familiar prayers, perhaps then I will be able to listen to the children taken from their parents without weeping.  My finger hovered over the white triangle, wondering how this might sound to my husband in the next room, whose mother came to the US as a child — alone — fleeing the Nazis.  I let it go.

The last intercession for Morning Prayer today opened with an imperative "Remember the poor and the afflicted..."   And so after closing my breviary, I hit play. I listened for 7 minutes and 47 seconds to children wailing for their parents, to a young girl pleading to call her aunt so that she could be with her mother again, to harried consular officials trying to sort the situation and to the exasperated, mocking voices of the border patrol, "Well, we have an orchestra here..."  It's in Spanish, and I didn't need the subtitles, removing yet another layer of insulation. 

I replayed it and listened with the ears of the Third Week, hearing again to the confusion and existential pain of children taken from their parents.

The Third Week of Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises is a contemplation of Christ's Passion. The Third Week demands presence, not just to the externals, to the physical suffering, but to the internal anguish that is set out for us on the cross.  To see the pain of rejection and feeling hated, as David Fleming SJ puts it in his translation of Ignatius' text [197].  The Third Week demands that we slow it down, to watch and listen and experience again and again.  Until we can etch into our hearts what mercy looks like. This is a schola affectus, lessons for the heart in recognizing mercy and salvation in the midst of rejection and evil.

¡Escucha!  ¡Mire! The Third Week is playing on our borders.  Can I — can we — put ourselves in the way of the Passion.  Look!  Listen! Have we learned what mercy looks like? Does it sound like wailing children separated from their parents for what is the equivalent of a speeding ticket until the parents cough up the fine?

I hear you saying, but these are people crossing our borders, they are likely to be criminals and they are taking away resources from citizens. This isn't anything at all like speeding.  Just for a bit of context, in 2016 speeding accounted for more than a quarter of all traffic fatalities, more than 10,000 people (NHTSA).  Compare that to the total number of murders in the US in the same year:  17, 250 (FBI).  Arguably most of those were not committed by people who crossed the border without proper documentation.  If this is about the safety of people, tell me why we don't have a zero tolerance policy for speeding. Why are we aren't pulling children out of the cars of people stopped for speeding? It would certainly deter parents from speeding. In Pennsylvania alone the annual cost of traffic deaths due to speeding is almost a half billion dollars (CDC). The cost nationwide of traffic deaths and injuries exceeds 400 billion dollars, well beyond any estimate of the cost of undocumented people in the US.  A zero tolerance for speeding could make Americans safer and save us a lot of money.  Why aren't we on this?  Right.

In the Exercises of the Third Week, Ignatius expects a response that goes beyond tears, that extends beyond our own sorrow for what we have brought to an innocent.  He expects action. What will I do? Certainly not advocate for family separation for speeding tickets. 

¡Escucha!  ¡Mire! 

Blood Feuds: The Great Bryn Mawr Bake Off

"Can you search to find what to substitute for glucose syrup?" I asked Crash.  Corn syrup, as it turns out. "It's cool to find a use for corn syrup besides making blood." he mused.

Math Man likes eclairs.  For Father's Day I bought him a book of fancy eclairs (or rather a book of eclair recipes) to browse, and promised to make him some.  The Egg has been home for a few days between a summer of math research and the start of his senior year and binge watching the Great British Baking Show.  Crash is also here for a few weeks between a stint in England and his next stage management gig, and thought to stretch his cooking repertoire beyond Budget Bytes and blood. Hence the eclairs.

Raspberry and chocolate, it still looked like Macbeth in the kitchen yesterday. (See below)

This afternoon we had The Egg making bread, Crash making choux for the eclairs (from Tom's mom's recipe after the book's recipe failed us) and me making braised short ribs for The Egg's departure dinner.  It was a lot like an episode of the Great British Baking Show.  Right down to Chris fanning the chocolate glazed eclairs with the baking sheet.

Kitchen Mitosis

The Egg in my dad's kitchen, making

eggs. Family recipe of bacon & eggs.

I reached into a kitchen cabinet tonight looking for a particular mixing bowl, then remembered it is in North Carolina, where The Egg is having a ball doing math and cooking for himself.  So bits and pieces of my kitchen have gone south for a few months: skillets (plural), sauce pan, pasta pot, spatulas large and small.  And that mixing bowl.  It’s a bit like mitosis.  There is the junk DNA — the kitchen towels, of which I have such a surfeit, I can’t tell you which ones went — and the dominant genes, only a single copy is necessary for the function — I can make do with just the one skillet.

The NY Times had an article earlier this month about preparing young people to “adult”.  The article included a list of experiences and skills to help get adolescents and young adults ready to launch.  Listed under “Daily Functioning” was “Cook three basic meals. (Eggs, cereal and pasta don’t count.)”  I told Crash and The Egg that I thought pasta counted if you made your own pomodoro sauce or mac and cheese from scratch.  (Our go-to base recipe is from the 2011 cover of Bon Appetit, and I highly recommend it, you can make it in not much longer than it takes to bring water to the boil and cook dry pasta, and freezes like a dream.)  Math Man wanted to know if quiche counted, or is that just eggs. We agreed, it counts as a real meal.

We have a shared Google drive folder with family recipes in it (my mother’s pound cake, my grandmother’s pie crust, hey, someone needs to add Aunt Vi’s gumbo recipe). Crash recommended Budget Bytes to The Egg as a source of tasty budget recipes.  I tried one of the recipes The Egg cooked last week - a sticky soy ginger sauce that tasted great on salmon over rice.  Genetic inheritance in reverse.

The Gifts of Christmas: Guest Post

Two summers ago I spent a week at the Collegeville Institute for one of their writing workshops.  (They are an incredible experience, the next round of applications is open, check them out!)  Melynne Rust, a United Methodist minister, was one of the other writers in my workshop.  She is a writer with an ability to turn the ordinary into the memorable. I still remember the opening to Melynne's piece that we workshopped for her — and this piece, too, resonated deeply with me, in part because Crash has gone off to spend Christmas with the brilliant and deep and funny Maiden of House Clark, in part because I can still remember my mother wistfully reflecting as I moved a continent away from her, that once she was married, she never again spent Christmas with her family of origin.

Just as I can always hear Good Friday and Easter simmering under Christmas, I hear in Melynne's beautiful reflection the tension between holding on and letting go. It's the Transfiguration, it's Mary Magdalen's moment in the garden, but written in the letters of our own lives. We want to cling, but are called to let go.

I note that I gave Crash luggage tags for Christmas last year, so likely shouldn't be surprised that he uses them.  Now, over to Melynne:

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The Gifts of Christmas
Melynne Rust

It is the morning of Christmas Eve when my daughter announces she will be leaving the day after Christmas. I am heartbroken; it feels as though she has only just arrived. Initially, she planned to be home for two weeks, now she will be gone in half that time.

April says she wants to return to school to work, to earn money for her trip to Argentina after her college graduation in the spring. This is what she says, but it is not what I hear. What I hear is that she does not want to be with us, her family, at Christmastime.

This brings up memories of when I was her age, when I was in college and went to spend the holidays with my fiancé’s family instead of my own. It turned out to be the best Christmas present of all, not having to go home to all the dysfunctional messiness that was usually magnified this time of year. I am afraid April feels the same way about us that I had felt about my family of origin; that all she wants is to get away from us. Are we dysfunctional? Are we a mess?

I confess my fears to her, and she tries to reassure me that it simply isn’t true. She says she loves being home with us, but she wants to get back to her job at the coffee shop. It is something I cannot understand as thoughts of my younger self flood my rational brain. I am despondent the entire day, yet I hide my sadness and fear beneath a cloak of self-righteous anger towards April.

And I keep wondering, what happened to my little girl who didn’t want me to leave her at bedtime? Where is that precious child who could charm me into staying with her as we read and re-read her favorite storybook? Every night we finished the book with the same ritual of declaring our love for one another. “I love you up to the moon, Mommy,” April would say, and my steadfast response would be, “I love you up to the moon, and back.”

How can someone who had been such a ‘mama’s girl’ be the same person who, when she was only sixteen, spent a year in Austria as an exchange student? And then, as a junior in college, she spent another year in Argentina as part of a study abroad program. And now she is determined to go back. Why does she always want to leave?

At the Christmas Eve service that night I cannot bring myself to join in on the lovely carols we are singing or the special scripture passages we are reading. After we return home, I am unable to celebrate with the others as we share delicious desserts and toast with champagne. I want to be filled with peace and hope and joy, but these elusive Christmas sentiments are well beyond my reach as the melancholy envelops me.

The next morning I go through the motions of making coffee and tea and try to fix a smile on my face as my grown children find their stockings and discover the gifts I had stuffed inside. As I watch from a distance, April unwraps two beautifully crocheted luggage tags. I had forgotten about buying those for her. She holds them gingerly in her cupped hands, and then glances over my way, a mesmerized hint of a smile on her face. I can’t say for sure, but that look on her face makes me worry that she might consider the luggage tags to be my blessing on her never-ending travels.

I think back to when I first saw them. They had caught my eye because they looked like April; they were creative and vibrant, the colors of her spirit. But that wasn’t the only reason I had bought them for her. It was also because I knew—deep down inside me I knew—that discovering the world is the way April discovers herself. This is who she is.

I had forgotten this yesterday, when my own history and my own needs stood in the way.
Whether or not I want to acknowledge it out loud, I know the luggage tags are my blessing on April’s perpetual leave-taking. I know they symbolize my maternal longing for her to live into all of who she is, even if it draws her away from me.

Something softens in me, and it causes my anger to lose some of its edge, my sadness to lose some of its focus.

After the kids finish with their stockings, they begin to pass out their gifts for my husband and I. April comes over and gives me a handwritten note and a photo of a painting she is having done for me. It is a night scene of the ranch where she had worked in Argentina, and it has a full moon shining down upon the land.

Here is what she wrote: “Dear Mama, I think now more than ever this painting is appropriate. I want it to symbolize that we are always together in spirit, despite our physical location. It has and will continue to comfort me knowing that wherever we are, we are both looking at the same moon. I love you to the moon and back. Love, April.”

As I tearfully read the note, I finally begin to hear April’s voice, to really hear what she had tried to say to me the previous day. April has given me what I could not claim for myself: the gift of her continual love and devotion, even in the midst of venturing off into her own dreams. She has also given me something I had not been able to receive the night before: the gifts of peace and hope and joy, the gifts of Christmas.

Melynne Rust is a United Methodist minister, writer, wife, and mother living in a small coastal town in Florida. She and her husband have three adult children, two of whom live nearby and one who lives in Argentina. 

Compassionate chemistry

The Egg got his wisdom teeth out on Wednesday, it was a tough go, and early in the game we had some trouble getting ahead of the pain, even with a best practices management plan from the oral surgeon.  But get ahead we did, and I'm grateful for the chemistry that made him more comfortable.  Still, I'm aware of the huge holes in the pharmacopeia with respect to pain. There is really just a single class of drugs (opiates) which effectively relieves moderate to severe pain, and the side-effects are substantial.  And many people around the world do not have access to even these.  Compassionate chemistry research?

Distraction-proof liturgy

There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town; they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one's mind while living in a crowd; and it is possible for those who are solitaries to live in the crowd of their own thoughts. — Amma Syncletica

The photo is of three rocks, set outside a tea house at a temple in Kyoto. The rocks would be set on the path when a tea ceremony was in progress, to keep passers-by from accidentally interrupting the proceedings.  

PrayTell posted my question about materials for engaging young children in the liturgy in their Non Solum feature.  It's a holiday weekend, so there hasn't been much discussion, but the little there has been is fascinating.  I asked about ways to engage children with the liturgy itself, not for strategies for keeping them amused while the rest of us participate.  But of the three comments there, two are about how to prevent children from being distractions (avoid liturgies at which they are present, don't bring loud toys for them).  

Can we distraction-proof a liturgy? Should we?  Push the children aside until they are "fully conscious" of what they are about (are any of us fully conscious of what we are about in this space?)?  What about the cell phones going off?  The man with dementia who mutters loudly during the homily?  Could we silence the hiss of the oxygen tank used by the man in the front row?  And even if we could get the distracting people out of the church, would we stop the train that rumbles by, a mere forty feet away from the ambo? I think not.

Perhaps the deeper question is how do we have Amma Syncletica's undistracted minds living in a crowded church?

Python mom

The Boy got a Raspberry Pi (a small very, very inexpensive computer) from his uncle, Geek Guru, for Christmas. He brought it with him to California and yesterday the two of them spent much of the day trying to get an LED to light up on command. They downloaded and updated, The Boy learned some vi (an editor), some more Python (a programming language). The LED lit up, it flashed, a series of LEDs flashed. There was much cheering coming from the dining room.

He wanted to play again tonight, but Geek Guru went out to dinner with his wife No-No Nannette (for their 25th wedding anniversary). So I'm sitting at the kitchen table listening to The Boy gripe about the vagaries of using vi to edit a file on a Mac (the mapping of commands to keys is a bit of an issue). I taught him to keep a backup of a working piece of code, and to edit only the copy. I advised on Python where I could (I'm a pale substitute for my brother on this one; Geek Guru is a nationally recognized Python expert).

I helped him figure out one bug in his Python code, and when the LED lit up, he leaned over to me and said, "You are the best mom ever." You've heard of tiger moms? I'm a python mom.

What would we do in the zombie apocalypse?

Scene 1:  Small suburban brick home on a cool summer evening. Windows are open.  Sound of cat meowing.

Mother (on sofa with ice pack on her foot) :  Can you let the cat in?
(sound of light flicking on and screen door opening)
Son 2:  Fluffy...Fluffy...Oh, sorry, you're eating.  (sound of screen door abruptly closing)

Son 2:  (turns to mother)  Nope.

Scene 2:  Clock shows an hour later.  Sound of car pulling up, car door closes, house door opens.

Mother:  Can you let the cat in?
(sound of light flicking on and screen door opening)
Son 1:  Whoops.  (sound of screen door abruptly closing)  Sorry, Mom.  I don't do dead things after midnight.

What, I wonder, will we do come the zombie apocalypse?

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Illustration is from XKCD.

The hardest part of teaching

Crash is home from WJU, thoroughly soaked in Greek.  He's adding to his cooking repertoire in return for tutoring me in Greek, this week learning to stretch the dough for my thin crust pizza.  (My crust is surely not as thin as Stratoz' or my great-grandmother's strudel, you can't quite read the paper through it!)

As we put together the pizzas, I kept wanting to show (do!) rather than coach.  I would hand the spoon back, or give him back the grated parmesan cheese or...until finally Crash popped out with, "The hardest part of teaching is letting someone else do the fun part."

Yep.  My respect for my parents grows ever deeper.

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My general chemistry students aren't likely to believe that I actually enjoy working out a hard problem, and it's hard to coach them through it instead of just indulging in the doing myself.  But it's true.

From Phaith: Pearls of Great Price

Philadelphia's Archdiocesan magazine, Phaith, is now being published in an online version. This column appeared in the October issue.

Victor was a bit dubious about this column, worried that he didn't come off very well, sitting in that conference room.  He did his fair share on this project, even relinquishing his favorite part (the tiling) to me.  I love the phrasing, partners in the whole of life. Marriage in my book isn't about going halvies, but about going all in.  Whether it's patios built amid the heat, or children or illness or no lights in a storm...

“Dad says this is your anniversary present,” said Chris as he tipped a wheelbarrow of sand into the form for the new patio. He sounded dubious. Covered in sweat and dust on a sultry afternoon in August, I was piling up 20 pound slabs of stone, while my husband of 20 years sat in a cool conference room at the college, sliding papers around a table. This do-it-yourself project did not look much like the anniversary gifts touted on TV. No pearls?

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.  I’d been contemplating this line from Genesis since I’d heard it read at Mass the week before while Victor and I stood on either side of our oldest son, Mike, at the opening Mass for his freshman year at college — almost 19 years to the day since we discovered we were to become parents. Bound by our vows, we found ourselves bound up anew in this child. A gift on our first anniversary from God to us.

Through the years we joked with each other that we each did 75 percent of the work of being parents, as Victor paced the floors with a disconsolate Chris at 2 a.m. or I tutored Mike in algebra after dinner. Laundry, dirty dishes, play dates and college visits. Fall hikes, family dinners, water fights and choral concerts. A full measure of challenges and joys nurtured equally by each.

 St. Augustine once said that miracles “have a tongue of their own … let us not only be delighted with (their) surface, but let us also seek to know (their) depth.” So, too, do these sacraments that hallow our lives have “tongues of their own” that speak to us not only when we first celebrate them, but again and again, drawing us into the depths of the mystery that is our relationship with God.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church begins its discussion of the sacrament of marriage by reminding us that it is a “matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life.” After 20 years of marriage — after 20 years as partners in the whole of life — my labors on the patio truly felt as much a gift from Victor to me, as it was my own gift to him. Caught up in this sacramental marriage, we are mysteriously one body. 

Chris’ comment made me think not only about the bond that Victor and I share, but nudged me to seek something of its depths. God dwells in me, and I in God. I have nothing to offer, but what I myself have been given. What work I do is not my work, but God’s gifts, at work in me. God offers to do not just 75 percent, but 100 percent, and calls forth the same in me, in each of us.

Where are the pearls? I have been given them. A string of days, dark and light, each built over time of many layers, knotted together. To have and to hold – and to share –from this day forward.

Chippies and Paste: Letter to Crash's college roommate

While looking for something on my computer the other day, I found an old set of instructions for babysitters, written when Crash and The Boy were 3 and 1, respectively. The instructions covered food, entertainment, comfort and bedtime routines. There was a brief lexicon included, which noted (among other things) that a request for "chippies and paste" was not the cue to start an art project (mosaic?) but Crash's way of asking for tortilla chips and salsa (the salsa came in the same shape jar as the paste at pre-school).

Reading it with the boys, I joked that I should write a similar note to Crash's roommate to-be at college.

Food: Crash does not drink coffee or tea, but prefers his caffeine cold, carbonated and carb-free (e.g. Diet Pepsi). He like hot chocolate, chips and salsa [Ed: some things never change], chicken, rice and chocolate. If he seems to be lagging, feed him solid milk chocolate and he will perk up in 30 minutes or so. We will be sure he has an adequate supply when we drop him off.

Comfort: See hot chocolate, above.

Entertainment: Building large stage sets, taking apart large stage sets. He has been sent with a variety pack of band-aids, please let us know if he starts using duct tape to patch the wounds and we will send more.

Bedtime routine: See description of mad skill with Nerf darts and light switches here.

_____

UPDATE: My sources insist that the use of the term "mad skill" is no longer appropriate. See change above.

Easing Separation Anxiety: A Guide for Teens

Crash Kid is off to spend a week with friends "down the shore" as they say here. Math Man and I are nervous. This is his first extended trip without us or someone else acting in loco parentis. He's an adult now, parental substitutes are no longer required by law. As I watch him get ready, making the shopping list, shopping (with a budget), packing up and organizing meals, I'm reassured that he's ready to do this. Then I think about Jersey Shore (a show I've never watched, and probably shouldn't this week -- see tips below!) and wonder if I have lost my mind.

As Crash and I ran errands yesterday, we talked about the separations to come. This one and the one approaching in eight weeks and nine days (not that he is counting) when he heads off to college. We reflected on previous separations, what made them easier and harder. I teased him that I felt like we were back in the toddler days, dealing with separation anxieties — just this time the roles were reversed. He was leaving us.

I wondered how much of that old advice would apply....

(Revised from the advice for parents of younger children here.)

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It's natural for your parent to feel anxious when you say goodbye. Although it can be difficult, separation anxiety is a normal stage of development for your parent. With understanding and some simple coping strategies, separation anxiety can be relieved—and should fade as your parent gets more practice.

Practice separation. Leave your parent for brief periods and short distances at first. Try offering to go to the grocery store for them, or to pick up a sibling at an after school activity. Be sure to return when you said you would.
Schedule separations before naps or meals. Parents are less susceptible to separation anxiety when they’re tired or hungry, they're grateful they don't have to pick you up.
Develop a “goodbye” ritual. Rituals are reassuring and can be as simple as a request for money, a jingling of your keys, or a cheerful exchange of "Drive safely!"
Allow the parent contact. At times of stress, a brief phone call—a minute or two—with you or a short text message may reduce separation anxiety. Avoid calling from noisy places, or sending photos with strange people in the background. Parents have active imaginations at this stage, which can fuel their anxieties. Keep it short and sweet, and remind them that you love them and are thinking of them.

Help your parents find peer support. Arrange a shared activity with other parents. It will help them to understand that the feelings they are experiencing are normal. If you keep it local, they can walk, exercise can help ease some of the physical symptoms of anxiety.
Leave without fanfare. Tell your parent you are leaving and that you will return, then go—don’t stall.
Minimize scary television and reading material. Your parent is less likely to be fearful if the media they consume do not fan their anxieties. (No Jersey Shore for mom!)
Try not to give in. Reassure your parent that he or she will be just fine—setting limits will help the adjustment to separation.

Crash Kid crashes

My oldest, known on the blog as Crash Kid, or more recently as just Crash, earned his blog name in an incident seven years ago where he collided (on his bike) with my Mini Cooper and broke the tail light, but somehow not his collarbone.  (All that milk he drank.)

Last night, as I sprawled on a bed in my hotel in Roanoke, trying to get the notes for my slides to show up on the screen of my iPad in a type size I could read (I was ultimately unsuccessful, but that is an entirely other story), my phone buzzed with a text message.  It was Crash, who had crashed in the Cooper.

Once my first worries had been assuaged, i.e. everyone was fine, I wanted to know the damages.  A dent in the back bumper and...a cracked tail light.  The other one this time.

The real irony in this story is that the collision occurred at 1 minute past 11, the driving curfew for those with junior licenses in Pennsylvania.  Since Crash turned 18 yesterday, and now has a senior license, this was the very first moment he was legal to drive past curfew.

I was starting to wonder if Crash needed a new blog name, now that he's about to go off to college (Georgetown!).  Somehow, I think Crash still suits.

Crash course: buttons and books

Crash added two skills to his growing repertoire this weekend. He can now sew a button back on, which meant learning how to thread a needle and how to tie off the thread at start and finish. He even took the advanced course, learning to sew on a coat button (you need to wrap the thread under the button to create enough space between the button and coat to fit the other flap).

He also learned how to bind a simple folio - a skill that any historian should have, no? He was fascinated to see how a book went together (he and a group of friends created a medieval bestiary as part of a project for their humanities class), from sewing the folio (more practice in threading needles), to creating the covers, the flyleaves and the spine. He wondered about how you make a large book, so we looked at the techniques for sewing together multiple folios.

I wonder what other practical skills I need to teach him before he heads off to college?
He can cook a respectable number of things from scratch, though he laments being in a family of cooks, where the ability to make a cake from scratch is considered "basic" not "advanced."

Feints and faints

Two verbally adept teen-aged boys confined to a small space is a learning opportunity for their mother. I took Crash and The Boy to the local hospital this morning to get some routine blood work done. This meant folding them into my Mini (putting either of them in the back seat requires facility with human origami), where they spent the 10 minute drive reading the lab order slips and suggesting what might be inflicted on the other with the merest flick of the wrist and the making of an additional check mark. I learned that they can't pronounce "progesterone" and that I should hold onto the lab slips in the future. Just in case.

The receptionist in the lobby enjoyed calling them back with a cheery, "Mr. Donnay and Mr. Donnay?" and sent them both off to the same room for the draw. I had learned some years ago that the exam rooms at the pediatrician's had grown too small to hold them both. I learned today that the same holds true for these spaces. Even though the sparring was entirely verbal, I felt like I was continually trying to referee a bout between two fully armored knights holding lances -- on horseback -- in a small castle courtyard.

The Boy was all done and waiting for the tech to release him, when Crash says, "Hey, your hair is weirdly standing on end." For sure. Because he's about to faint. They brought him apple juice and put him flat in a chair and his color gradually returned. Thankfully he pampers well. (The one time I fainted, after giving birth to Crash, I was still saying "I'm fine." as I went down.)

His Facebook status today? "Sigh...I'm a fainter." Just like his uncle, The Artiste!

I've reached my limit and it looks a lot like sin(1/x)

My life is all about limits these days. Crash Kid is getting a crash course in the mathematical sorts of limits. He's taking AP Calculus — a year's high school course compressed into a semester. This course moves. He's had lots of questions for me, running along the lines of "how do you analytically find the limit of sin x²/ x as x → ∞ ?"

Since I'm in the incredible minority of people who on occasion have an actual use for mathematical limits in their work*, I'm not a bad person to ask. (I almost said "have a practical use" but that's an entirely other post about whether quantum mechanics can ever be said to be practical!). Still, my take on limits leans heavily toward the pragmatic. Crash is best off asking the resident mathematician when he wants to know about the theoretical underpinnings of these great mysteries. So sometimes I say, "Go ask your father!"

There's no escaping at work though. Evaluating the usability of some mathematical functions for quantum mechanics requires that you take a limit - and so my students have been dropping by my office all week to ask various questions about limits.

"Enough," I want to say, "I've reached my limit when it comes to limits!" And since it's the start of a new school year, I'm still working out the limits of how many plates I can keep spinning and how well I can keep the camels confined (cue the occasional crashing plate and spitting camel here). I made some remark at the dinner table to this effect tonight — at which point Math Man turned to Crash and said, "I'd say Mom's life is a bit like sin(1/x) as x approaches zero." They both snicker.

Don't get the joke? Check out the graph of sin(1/x) in the picture. The closer you get to zero, the more wildly the function oscillates, until it's just quivering.

There's nothing quite like getting snarked with math by your 16 year-old at your own dinner table. Especially when he's right on the money. Sigh. I think I need to set a few more limits.

*My Fermi calculation suggests the population of people who might take a limit as part of their job is less than 0.01% of the population.

Parenting Tips from Star Trek

Check out Dr. Emily's new strategies for teen parenting, inspired by Star Trek:

"By implementing a command structure, I can eliminate the debate (which is generally just a delaying tactic) and move on to Actually Getting Things Done."

Read the rest here.

Ballistics and Jesuit Education

I dreamed of parabolas last night. Arcs tracing a path from artillery to target. I need no help from Carl Jung to figure these out. We went camping on the weekend, with Crash and the Boy and an assortment of their friends. We went white water rafting, we ate camping food, we tied knots, we slept in tents, we forewent showers and we practiced many new skills, most of them having to do with shooting things or fire or both.

Crash has known MacGyver since kindergarten, though they are now in different high schools. I'm cooking dinner on Saturday night when I notice MacGyver carefully cleaning the Saran wrap which had been over the brownies, then scrounging up a rubber band and an empty Gatorade bottle. "What are you making?" I wondered as he started cutting off the bottom of the bottle with his knife. (Meanwhile, I'm sitting on my maternal urge to say "don't cut yourself with that knife!" as it is clear the young man is expert.) "You'll see."

He puts a long stick in the fire, blows it out, then sticks it into the open mouth of the bottle. (Now I'm sitting on the nerd's urge to say, "Be careful you don't burn a hole in the bottle.") I'm still clueless as to what the device he's created will do. He taps the smoke filled bottle on the saran wrap and voila, a perfect smoke ring comes out. Cool!

Cooler yet were the artillery made from ziploc bags. (Instructions for the device shown in the photo are here for the curious.) The downside of these? The ammunition. Do not use rocks. Marshmallows. We have plenty. You will not lack for s'mores. It's a good thing Crash has a hard head (to match his hard bones).

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Wondering why this post is tagged Jesuits? MacGyver is getting a good Jesuit education. It's where he learned to build that ziploc projectile launcher. AMDG.