My Doodlebug started kindergarten today. True and I waved to her as she marched into the school from the kindergarten playground, accompanied (to our great relief) by two of her best buddies from preschool. We were more emotional than she was, for sure. She was grinning and proud of her new backpack and her Tinkerbell lunchbox, and we're virtually certain that she'll have fun, learn things, and make friends -- which, to us, is more than just what kindergarten is about: it's what life is about.

I bumped into a friend at the coffeeshop later, and we were discussing the various merits of the two kindergarten teachers in the "general education" track at school, where our daughters are. I mentioned that I'd observed both classes last spring when we were house-hunting, and felt that perhaps the teacher Doodlebug has might be slightly more businesslike, but I wasn't worried. "Doodlebug could make a rock want to cuddle with her," I said, and it's true. She will be fine.

That said...only 30 more minutes until I can go pick her up!!!

Bedtime with True!

I was just talking about this with him a couple of days ago -- how much I treasure the moment when I curl my body around his, press my face into his back, and fall asleep with my hand over his heart. I am grateful that, no matter what, for almost every night of our lives together, we will share that moment. It is the single most relaxing, peaceful, heavenly moment of my day.

I am tempted to say that it's children, but I don't think we create those. They are given to us, not made by us. Even as my daughters grew inside me, I felt that I was being made as much as they were, and by the same creator.

I was also inclined to say that MUSIC is the most beautiful thing a human being can create, but then music isn't a thing, is it?

The most beautiful THING created by another human being, I guess, has to be a THING, an object. I admire art, and I certainly have some favorite artists. We bought some art by Joy Bergsma on our trip to Alaska, and I think it was really stunning. My favorite art also has words: the Storypeople art by Brian Andreas.

I wish I could make that kind of art - but I'm glad it's here to share.

I just started a wonderful new class at the Old Town School of Folk Music: French Canadian Fiddle. I've been looking for something to spice up my playing for a while, and when my friends and I played for a fiddle contest this summer, we found ourselves playing not old-time American tunes, but hybrids from around the world -- one Klezmer tune that had become a part of Celtic tradition somehow ("Freylach") and one recently composed tune in the Romani style ("Gypsy in the Woodshed"). I realized that I was looking to try some new sounds.

French-Canadian music, from what I've read and from what I learned in the nearly one-hour lecture my fiddle teacher gave the class on Tuesday night, is a hybrid of French, Scottish, and Irish music. The tunes I'll be learning in this class focus on the Quebecois style, which, as it turns out, is the one that turns me on the most anyway. My teacher is clearly smitten with this music, even though it's not the style he's played the most. He talked at length about the abandon with which the Quebecois play, the bending of rules and the emotion they put into it. From what I've seen, it's true. The first French-Canadian fiddler I ever saw was Andre' Brunet. Check him out here:

Watch his feet, and the accordionist's feet. That's mild tapping and dancing compared to some of the others I've seen. Part of this style is that the fiddlers (or sometimes guitarists or accordionists) dance their feet on a board on the floor to create the rhythm. It's a fantastic sound, and after learning the basic moves for this, I am truly in awe of how they do it at all, let alone while they play so beautifully, LET ALONE for hours on end. After half a minute or so, my shins ache and I break rhythm -- and that's with my fiddle still in its case! Check Andre out again:





After this week's class, I now sort-of know exactly one French-Canadian tune ("La Bastringue," the "twinkle twinkle little star" of F-C music, apparently). I can't wait to learn more. Playing with abandon sounds pretty good to me!

Environmental Footprint Class.

All kids should be taught about their impact on the earth. Think about how effective the anti-smoking campaigns have been -- even Doodlebug turns up her nose at every cigarette smoker she sees. If all kids were taught from the very beginning about what happens to each piece of paper, each can, each plastic fork they throw away; if they were shown what eating conventionally raised meat does to the earth and how the food gets from the farm to their plate; if they knew what the difference would be in walking to the store once a week for one year instead of driving; if they saw caring for the earth to be as much a part of their learning as math and science, can you imagine what kind of kids would emerge? Of course, some wouldn't absorb it or care, just as some kids never see the value in math or reading, but some would embrace it and internalize it.

Imagine it -- a whole generation of kids growing up who saw caring for the environment and world as a given!

If I had to picture my ego as a living being, it would be a baby bird. It is strong and has potential, but it is very small and the world is so very, very big. What impact can it have on a landscape so vast in comparison to its tiny size? Better for it to survive day-to-day, to make tiny ripples in its own small puddles and ponds, to try to forget, as much as possible, what it is really up against.

It is the time of year to do teshuvah, which is the Jewish concept not of "repentence," as it is often mistranslated, but of a return to one's true self, a return to what one knows is right. It is a correction. Traditionally, we ask forgiveness of those against whom we have sinned, and forgive those who have sinned against us. For many years, I've taken this portion of teshuvah very seriously. I've raked through the leaves of my past to uncover people who fall on either side of this teeter-totter, and tried to apply the appropriate closure.

I forgave someone this year who hurt me very, very badly, more than twelve years ago. It was really hard to do it, and hard to tell her about it, and hard to see her name in my incoming email with the acknowledgement of my forgiveness. It was hard to change my perception of her as purely bad to what she seems to be now: repentant, self-actualized, and probably healed from whatever pain caused her anger and violence during that time. Now that my big step of forgiveness is done, I feel cleaner, quieter in my heart, safer in the world somehow, but it has forced me to realize something about myself and what really hurts me the most about people. Of course, I, too, have changed since that friendship ended, and over time, have begun again to trust new relationships and believe that the people with whom I surround myself are able to love me as much as I love them.

I've talked before about faith being my biggest, tallest obstacle: faith in myself, faith in others, faith in the universe. I work hard to achieve that faith: that people will be trustworthy, reliable in their personalities -- that my perception of them is accurate, and that I can both trust my own intuition and trust their intentions for me. When my work at trust and faith is done, and then someone disappoints me, it is so easy for me to get discouraged. My ego is badly hurt. Should I be angry at the person I trusted, or angry at my own intuition that told me to trust that person in the first place?

My ego needs gentle hands around it. It is only a small bird. Those hands that hold it can feel the strength of its wings, beating against the air, but remember -- it's just a baby bird. Don't drop it. It hasn't yet learned to fly consistently.

Little Shmoo and I are on two wheels!

I have been trying to get my bike in usable shape again all summer. The bike I have cost me $40 in college, bought from a used bike shop when my old bike finally rusted to pieces. It makes me laugh to look at it, because along the side of the center bar, it says "Panasonic" -- just like the TV. There was an electronics and furniture store in Madison with a loud and irritating spokesperson. His television commercials featured him screaming "COME ON DOWN TODAY AND GETABIKE! BUY A TV, GETABIKE! BUY A SOFA, GETABIKE! GETABIKE, GETABIKE, GETABIKE!" I always loved to imagine that my cheap used bike was from Crazy TV Lenny, the result of a GETABIKE giveaway.

In any case, while I rode it with some regularity before Doodlebug was born, I have to admit that it has spent most of the last five years in either a garage or basement. When we moved to Evanston, I hoped to use it again to get from home to the coffeeshop where I do my freelance work. True hauled it out into the yard and greased the gears, inflated the tires, and dusted off my helmet. I was all excited to take it out the first week, but realized I couldn't find a bike lock anywhere in our piles of stuff. Another week (or two) went by until I gave up and went out to buy another lock. That day, I got everything in my backpack, put on my helmet, added the bike lock key to my keyring, and went out to the garage to GETABIKE, and wouldn't you know it, the front tire was deflated and cracked.

Fast forward a month -- finally, finally I got the energy together to take my bike in somewhere and get a new tire, when a friend of mine started showing up all over town with her three-year-old in a great molded plastic seat on the back of her bike. I suddenly pictured Shmoo and I, the wind in our hair (ok, our helmets), cruising the streets on GETABIKE together. This time, it took two bike shops (one could fix the bike and one could install the child seat), but here we are, all about town on a GETABIKE built for two.

We have some kinks to work out. Shmoo does not really like her helmet, and that results in her screaming "NO BIKE! NO HELMET!" whenever we begin our adventures. However, since the tantrum is equally intense when it comes to getting in the car, I'd rather have the helmet fight now while it's still nice enough to travel al fresco. Yesterday, though, we learned that her screaming stops almost completely if I sing throughout the entire ride. So, anyone in the Evanston area, watch out for the GETABIKE Minstrels, singing choruses of "The Wheels on the Bus" and "The Name Song" as we zip through town. If she's not on the back of the bike (like today, a work day for me, so I biked solo), it's slightly quieter.

There is something really exhilarating about being arriving somewhere on a bike that I usually get to by car. I remember it from when I was a kid -- that feeling of getting somewhere on one's own steam. I feel freer, lighter, untethered. I'm so glad I have GETABIKE working again!

A monologue by my amazing Doodlebug:

"At school? Last week? One day Adam was crying because he didn't listen to the teacher and he had to sit at the hexagon table and think and he was crying! He was crying because he was so sad about sitting all alone by himself with no friends! And Suzie and I both felt so sad for Adam! And I started to cry and Suzie's mouth did like this, like a huge hu-nor-mous frown, because we were so sad for Adam, because we love him so much and we don't want him to be sad! We love him so much, Mommy! We don't ever want him to be sad!"

I don't know many times when I've been prouder of my work as a parent. Every parent has a motive for having children...or perhaps motive is too negative a word, but surely everyone has a reason. There are parents in Israel having children, as many as they can, with the main goal being to repopulate the world with Jews after the extermination of them in the Holocaust. There are parents who have children to right the wrongs of their own parents, parents who have children because they feel it's the next thing on a long checklist of things to do with their lives, parents who have children because they think children are absolutely delightful and they want to fill their lives with that delight, parents who have children for combinations of many reasons.

Well, I had children for a combination of reasons too, but one of them was that I wanted to put nice people out into the world. I felt accutely as a child, and still feel as an adult, that there are too many people out there who don't feel for each other much. There were other children -- MANY other children -- who would not have stopped for a moment to feel sorry for Adam crying at the table. I, like my Doodlebug, would have stopped. I also, like Adam, would have been sad at that table and wishing someone would notice my sadness.

So, with that in mind, much of my and True's approach to parenting has been to encourage our daughters to notice others. The world has not centered on any one person for them. We have tried to show them that, within their ever expanding worlds, growing from our little family to the extended family to their preschool and neighborhoods and now Doodlebug's kindergarten and big elementary school, there is a need for us to balance our needs and wants with those of others. Doodlebug surely had something more fun to do than cry about Adam's sadness -- but she noticed it, and felt for him. I am proud of her for that.

After she told me the story, I told her that she was a wonderful friend. Then I taught her that what she was feeling was called "empathy," and it was a very good thing to feel. I said, "you were feeling what I feel when I see you crying." And she said, "Mommy, I'm glad you have empathy too."

My great banjo-picking friend Deborah and I will be playing a nice easy-going gig at the Brothers K Coffeehouse in Evanston this coming Saturday night (September 29) at 5:30pm. For a pretty picture of us and our brilliant new band name, check out the brochure.

No, I don't think so, not completely. Assuming that one can simply choose to be happy puts quite a lot of pressure on people in difficult times. I've read a lot of responses to this question, and I wonder if perhaps "happiness" needs to be defined. I consider it not a mood, but a mental state covering more than the moment. You can have happy moments at the funeral of your dearest friend, but does that make you happy that day?

I think positive thinking is a huge part of happiness, and without choosing to be happy, there is no way to feel happiness -- but sometimes, even with the best intentions and the most positive thinking, circumstances quelch our happiness. I think "choosing" is not enough. Other people's choices affect our reality sometimes.

Put another way: happiness isn't always a choice, and neither is unhappiness.

Shortly after True and I bought our first home, I dreamed I was standing in the doorway of our bedroom, looking down the hall toward the stairs that led down to the first floor. Out of the bedroom at the top of the stairs came a toddler girl with a wild head of soft, brown curly hair. She came running down the hall toward me, and I crouched down and caught her in a giant hug.

"Mommy, let's get Daddy!" she said, leading me toward the closed door to our left.

"No," I said, "Daddy's working. Come downstairs and help me make dinner for Daddy, ok?"

She took my hand, and as we walked down the stairs, she said, "I want the baby to sleep in my bed!"

"Sorry, sweetheart," I said, "the baby will have to sleep in a tiny basket when he comes. Let's talk about it while we make dinner..."

And there my dream ends. It was four years later when Doodlebug was born, and six before Shmoo, but here's a picture of Doodlebug and I in that hug (albeit outside) just after Shmoo's birth. All of it happened -- and that little girl from the dream was ABSOLUTELY her, curls and all.