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.

Teen Jeopardy: The answer is

Played in my study:

"I know the answer will be no, but I'm going to ask you anyway.."

And the question?

(a)  Can I have (the newly repaired) car?
(b)  Do you have $5 I could have for lunch?
(c)  Do you have a copy of the Bryn Mawr Commentary on Lysias?

And....it's (c).  Crash had 20 lines of Greek to translate.  But one car is back from the shop, all shiny and undented.  Woot!

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.

Hark I hear the harps

As part of a summer organization binge (an attack precipitated by the finishing of the house renovations) I bought two new bookcases and have been electronically cataloging and re-shelving my professional books. This afternoon both boys were up in my office clearing their plans for the rest of the afternoon when Crash peers more closely at the shelf he's casually propped up against.

"A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin? Seriously, Mom?"

"If a library is reflection of its owner's mind, I'm not totally sure what my books tell tell you about me..."

"Knitting Know-How..."

"Dictionary of 26 Languages..."

Yes, yes, I know I've got ecclectic interests. Finally The Boy spys a small blue book, "Mangles, Mops and Feather Brushes?"

A reprinted book of household hints from the late 19th century. He opens it at random and begins to read solemnly, " 'Inspection of Linen. Fold carefully — with taste.' With taste?!"

We're all confused. Honestly, I'm happy if the laundry gets put away period, I don't care if it's been folded tastefully or even folded at all, as long as it's not in baskets in the sunroom.

They departed down the stairs, singing (in two part harmony) Dashing Away With A Smoothing Iron. I'm remembering a day when The Boy was 1/2 the age he is now (and half the height), invaded my office of an afternoon. And as they broke into "Hark, I hear the harps eternal..." I realized that I was hearing the sounds of heaven, right here and now.

Steamed Neocolonialism

The Boy is reading When Parents Text. He just appeared in my study....

The Boy: I just thought I'd share this one... (p. 33)

DAD: ...Mom made soft rice & steamed neocolonialism.
DAD: Broccoli

Me: They both probably go down better steamed.

(As his just desserts for invading my study, I made him read the piece I'm presently working on, which includes the term somatic proprioception.¹

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1. how your brain knows where your nose is when your eyes are closed

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.

Phaith: Become what you receive - Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi is celebrated this week (the date depends on your local diocese, the traditional Thursday or translated to Sunday). My column in this month's Phaith, on how meals shape our communities, large and small. Full disclosure: The table at my house rarely rises to the level in the (stock)photo that is shown with the article. Trust me on this one. And the conversation is not always, shall we say, elevated in tone. But there is much laughter and love....

"Dinner was almost cleaned up, the last dishes were stuffed into the dishwasher, and Chris was at the kitchen table neatly packing the leftovers while chatting up our guest. A cherry red apron over his jeans, Mike was sifting powdered sugar over the top of a chocolate cake. Kaitlyn bet him a cake that he'd get into Georgetown, and acceptance letter in hand, he's making good on the wager.

As he presents his creation with a flourish to Kaitlyn, wrapped and ready for her to take home, I notice that he's put it on my best cake plate, a wedding gift from a good friend. "Nice choice," I tell him. He grins.

The china cabinet isn't off limits to the kids at my house, so I'm neither surprised nor bothered that Mike has gone rummaging in it for just the right platter. He knows, too, that I believe in using the good dishes not only for big holidays, but also to mark somewhat less momentous occasions -- such as the end of semester breakfast with my students, where guests are perched on chairs, and parked on the carpet.

My kids have learned that meals are about more than refueling. It's a time set aside for us to be together, to hear how the day has gone, to laugh together."

Read the rest in Phaith.

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Photo is of Mission San Miguel's sanctuary. My parent's parish.

What I learned in graduate school in theology...

Crash (wandering into sunroom, pencil behind ear, paper in hand): Can I ask you a quick question about Catholic moral theology?

Me: There is no such thing as a quick question in Catholic moral theology.

Mother's day (transferred)

I woke to a sky imperceptibly lighter than it had been on my midnight excursion to the chapel, and to bells calling the community to Vigils. In the darkness, I dressed and made my ablutions — remembering both Jane Hirshfield's poem which opens with that morning exercise in a Zen monastery, and a friend's recollection of his monastic stretch where the Buddhist abbot remarked to him, "You could at least wash your face!" before the early morning service. I wended my way to the chapel, collecting Psalter and Ordo as I went, the holy water in the marble basin at the door providing a second, bracing Asperges.

I sat in the dimness, marking my psalter. The Camaldolese Office of Vigils is longer than the Office of Reading in the Roman breviary where I make my home, and finding my way for this first Hour of the day was proving challenging (mostly because it arrived at 5:15 am, I suspect). I thought I had the basics down, but couldn't figure out why the Ordo kept directing me to antiphons for a regular day in Eastertide. It was Thursday, Ascension Thursday, or so I thought.

Actually, not. Right around dawn it dawned on me that the celebration of the Ascension in this very rural diocese has been transferred to Sunday.

Yesterday night, after a glorious day of sailing (in my opinion, there is no better way to spend a Pentecost afternoon than thrown onto the mercy of wind and water and light), after my spouse had headed to bed to read, and while both sons were out with friends, I filled the claw foot tub and soaked the bruises and sore muscles away.

Long before I expected him home, the front door creaked open and I heard The Boy's footsteps. "Mom?" "I'm just getting out of the tub!" I wrap up in my robe and pad into the hallway. There is The Boy, "I brought you a s'more." Oh, my. I had teased him that if I were providing marshmallows for the teen-age late night fire fest at the end of the block, the least they could do is bring me a toasted marshmallow. I laughed and told him that I thought we were doing Mother's Day in reverse. Instead of breakfast in bed to start the day, I was getting a s'more in my PJs at the end of the day.

All in all, a lovely way to celebrate Mother's Day, even if transferred two Sundays forward!

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An account of last year's celebration with my merry men. Photos are of the dawn (taken just after Vigils, outside the chapel here) and a s'more (from the Wikimedia collection)

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.

Existential cat (not to be confused with Schrodinger's cat)

I have teenagers. Therefore, I have angst. My own. Theirs. Sometimes their friends'. Ahh....but does my angst compare to poor Henri's? I think not. First off, angst always sounds more profound in French. And, in my house, the tasty snacks are within reach, at least as long as I use the kitchen stepstool. Chocolate assuages many an anxious teen's worries (and his mother's).

Laughter is even better than chocolate — so pull up a chair, an angsty teen should you have one, and prepare to laugh.

Asparagus Fingers

"Can someone with asparagus fingers give me a hand with the steamer?" called The Boy from the kitchen. Years ago one of my nieces watched my dad pick up a pot from the stove without a hot mitt and wondered if he had "asparagus fingers." A synthetic organic chemist, handling hot equipment was par for the course for my dad, no need for asbestos gloves!

The Boy had another school project going in the kitchen, though at least this time it did not involve animal intestines and our kitchen now has such essentials as counters and running water back on line. He read Daughter of Heaven for his English class. Its subtitle, A Memoir with Earthly Recipes, explains a lot about why he picked this particular memoir to read.

He made enough steamed sponge cake for his class as part of his oral presentation. To steam it he had to lower a filled pan into a pot of boiling water with a steamer at the bottom. With only a quarter inch to spare between cake pan and pot this meant having a high tolerance for heat and some ingenuity. We ended up lowering the pan down with a sling made of cooking twine.

There was a bit left over for the sous chef - it's pretty good with a dusting of powdered sugar and tea!

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Photo is from Muffet at Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Silent. Surrendered.

"Silent, surrendered.
Silent, surrendered, calm and still,
open to the word of God...."

This is the video I posted this week for the RevGalBlogPals Sunday feature. I found it while chaperoning the high school crew. They are in the throes of the final weekend of building the sets for their spring production of The Wiz. The music here is pounding, the saws are whining and every so often a voice comes over the sound system asking for a hand with the lights. Silent. Not. Still. No way!

And here I am tucked up in the back, getting warmed up to write a column that is due later this week. There is something quite wonderful about being "in" on the mysteries of constructing a set, of watching ideas take flesh. The giant green oval of yesterday that today is clearly an emerald throne, the props staff hunched over the computer hunting down a traffic signal they can afford (and that will get here in time). The myriads of details that only a few people might notice, the hammered flat soda cans affixed to the flats, the stuff atop the cabinets stage left.

I see the production with different eyes, knowing what's been poured into it. I'm writing a piece for the feast of Mary, Mother of God next year, I just gave a night of reflection on Mary in the Lenten Gospels (wrestling again with the time paradox of being a writer bound to both the liturgical year and printer's deadlines - there's a crucifixion metaphor there, I'm sure, but it might be more properly reserved to editors), and this has me reflecting on how Mary saw things, knowing so intimately what was poured into the Incarnation.

_____
Tangential reads: Robin on shifting perspectives in prayer and the feminine in the divine which made me think a bit more deeply about what shifts when we consider the quieter perspectives, the silent voices, in the Scriptures...

and Jayme Stayer SJ's Sh*t Christian Poets Say: The Problems of God-Talk, Sentimentality, and Style. I loved the piece, which is sharp and scholarly without sacrificing wit. As I wrote the bit for RevGals I did imagine Stayer would find the lyrics to this piece somewhat wanting. I have to admit his piece nearly made me terrified to ever pick up a pen again to write reflectively about prayer or theology, though he allows that prose writers have a bit more space to work: "A large part of the problem is the medium of poetry itself: the pressure that the lyric mode exerts on language makes the words vibrate with intensity. The problem of style is solved much more easily in prose. The casual, button-down modes of prose—such as narrative, memoir, or personal essay—are roomier places to switch registers of discourse."

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."

Counterpoint: Chemistry and Calvin

It's a frequent trope in musical theater, two solos sung in counter point — often underscoring two characters vying for affection, or perhaps attention. Cut to last night, in the living room:

The Boy (chemistry book open on lap): So, I'm not really getting this ratio thing. If you have a higher atomic number, you want to lose neutrons...
Crash (simultaneously, European history notes in his lap): Do you know anything about Calvin?

Mom (attempting to diffract): Yes/Yes.

The Boy: Why do you get beta decay?
Crash (at the same time): What is Calvinism now?

Math Man (entering stage right): What did they say about the kitchen?

Two simultaneous conversations I can almost handle, the third sent me over the edge. I diverted Crash by asking him if he knew Calvin's five points, suggested to The Boy that he might have done enough nuclear physics for the night and then fled for my study!

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Read about Calvinist chocolates here.

The Rules: Seven Motifs of Disgust

[Warning: This post offers no deep spiritual insights. Contains references to adolescent humor.]

The house rules have been posted on our refrigerator since 2005:

1. If you open it, close it.
2. If you use it up, throw it away.
3. Put it in the hamper.
4. Flush.
5. No Greek choruses.

Last year, when I was writing this piece on urban legends of chemistry we added an unwritten rule to the list. Conversation invoking one of the seven motifs of disgust were banned at the dinner table.

Tonight The Boy asked me if I could list the seven motifs for him. "Uh, not off hand, why?" "In Latin class today my teacher told us three topics that should never be raised in polite conversation and I told her that at my house the seven motifs of disgust were banned. When she asked what they were, I told her the only one I remembered was bestiality."

Oh, no. Now I wonder just what this teacher thinks we talk about at the dinner table.

The legendary seven 'motifs' of disgust were described in a paper by a colleague ("Individual differences in sensitivity to disgust: a scale sampling seven domains of disgust elicitors" Haidt, McCauley and Rozin, Person. Indiv. Diff. 16, 701-713 (1994)). I promised The Boy I would look them up, so here goes (with examples mostly drawn from conversations vetoed under the policy at our dinner table similar to the items on the "official" scale - these are not for the faint of heart, and after reading them you may understand why I ban the topics).

Food: Eating olives and vanilla ice cream at the same time.
Animals: You are walking barefoot and step on something that Fluffy left on the mat.
Body Products: I have teen-aged boys...do I need to say anything else?
Sex: (This is the bestiality one...and no, we don't talk about that at the table, it's just what they invoke when I bring up the Seven Motif ban.)
Envelope violations: Remember when The Boy cut his foot and....
Death: Picking up one of Fluffy's offerings...
Hygiene: Learning that someone else was using your toothbrush in the (mistaken) belief it was his.
Sympathetic Magic: Thinking that tongs that have been used to pick up a dead mouse can be used for food if well washed (a proposal actually made by a male person in my house and which I firmly squashed)

And who said that psychology research is merely an academic exercise?

Zen and the art of mother maintenance

I'll admit straight off that I've never read Robert Pirsig's book Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. Excavating my desk this afternoon, I found a note to myself which says only, "Zen and the art of mother maintenance." Would that I could remember exactly what I meant by that!

Could it have something to do with the conversation I had two weeks ago with Patient Spiritual Director in which I said I wanted to find a Carthusian abbey? Where my cell is sacrosanct?

Breathing space has been in short supply (as the lack of blog posting suggests!) and my guys have been doing their best on the home front to help me maintain some equanimity. Math Man had a class tonight and as the boys and I cleaned up after dinner, we talked about who had what for homework. I told them I had a column to write and they promised me at least one uninterrupted hour (and gave me two!). At this point in my life, a more cherished gift than roses or chocolates for the maintenance of their wishfully contemplative mother. It's an art!

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Photo of 1954 Triumph. Used under Creative Commons license.

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!

Offhand comments

Crash, on the way out the door, "I wonder where the rest of it is?" I'll spare you the details, but part of the ensuing conversation involved explaining the difference between gerbils and voles. Fluffy is on the prowl.

I don't mind. Last year I got zero plums from a tree overflowing with them. The squirrels were very efficient. This year, I want at least one plum.