Divination

As I arranged the new assortments of Valentine's at hopscotch, one in particular caught my eye. Cootie Catchers. That's what some children's marketer decided to call those pieces of paper that first graders fold into four squared fortune telling devices. In my day, one layer had boys names (who you would marry), one layer had the kind of car you would drive, one layer had the kind of house you would live in. It got me to thinking about all the other toys from Magic 8 balls to Ouji boards to mood rings and fortune telling fish that are based around divining the future. The thing that struck me when I took stock of my inventory was that the reading of the tea leaves starts at such an early age. I am a moderately superstitious person, I read my horoscope, I take my fortune cookies to heart. I HATE the ones that tell you you are a loyal friend. How is that a fortune? I look for omens. Whatever. I know it's silly, and it's more for entertainment than really thinking I have a clue what is going on in my life. But I do give them consideration which always makes me laugh a little at myself. When did this start, and how? It seems to me that I learned to twist the stem off an apple while saying the letters of the alphabet (again to find out who I would marry) at a very early age, and from another child. It also seems that these practices are carried out much more among girls than boys. I know it has been necessary to the survival and strategic positioning of the weaker sex that we gather information constantly, I suppose it makes sense that this information gathering would extend to the future inasmuch as we feel it is possible.
Well, that's it tonight. Just a musing. I'll leave the answers to the sociologists.

Dressing Up!

As a toy store owner, I feel kind of lame about how little of the estimated $5.8 Billion Halloween dollars I capture. I mean, it's primarily a kid's holiday right? Maybe it's my bad attitude. Because, I not so secretly feel the best Halloween costumes are the home made kind.
There are trick or treater's that do as little as they have to (sometimes nothing) to run amok and score candy, and then there are the people that I go out to see. These people make their own costumes and their children's costumes, and for them, Halloween is an opportunity to entertain us all, a quiet competition with all the other ghouls and greats that roam the streets All Hallows Eve.
These costumes are not to be confused with "dress up" which is what we call our costumes at hopscotch. Halloween costumes are like (and sometimes include) a corset. Uncomfortable, impractical, and can lead to stumbling and shortness of breath. A child can not conduct imaginary play in most Halloween costumes. Take my son the ding dong for instance. There may be two hula hoops in there, but I can assure you, there will be no frivolous play taking place.
Just as much as I hate cheap big box store bought Halloween costumes, I love selling Dress Up. Especially boys dress up because it is often overlooked, and our little boys LOVE to dress up. They want to be astronauts, knights, superhero's, and in my nephew Paul's case, Captain Underpants. He had his mother shave his head and spent an entire summer in underwear and a red cape. Clever boy. Girls want to dress up like princesses, fairies, and fairy princesses. There is no one place in hopscotch as gender specific as dress up. Good quality dress up is as comfortable as every day attire, it has stretch and comfortable seams. It can be put on and taken off with ease by a four year old. Good quality dress up is the best accessory for that crowning jewel of childhood, the vivid imagination. It should be even more durable than regular clothing because there are some who will put it on every single day, and many who will try to convince their mother's that it should be worn to bed as well. It will be worn on the most grand adventures. Adventures that will often include mud, and the rough bark of trees, dog slobber, and bicycle chains. Yes, durability is a must. But then, that goes for most good dealings with an active childhood.

Fall

Last week I brought my son home from college for the first time since he's been away. When we got out of the car in downtown McMinnville, he inhaled deeply and said "I love how Mac smells. You can always tell what time of year it is." It's so true. In the winter when you walk around town you smell the smoke from wood stoves, rain, and the earthy decay of leaves. In spring, the grass, lilac, and still the rain, but lighter, cleaner. In summer the heat of the day brings the scent of hay being cut and ripe fruit, and when it rains, the mix of all that with dust and welcome cleansing. Now, with fall comes crush and fermenting fruit, the sweet scent of dry leaves falling, and the chill dank of mildew seeping in around the edges. Here at hopscotch the signs are clear also. Leaves blow in through the open door, soccer cleats muddy the floor, and board games, and craft kits reign supreme. I love seeing the supplies for family times indoors going home with my customers. Of course we have the hot items that seem to disappear before I can finish receiving them. Bananagrams, the hemp bracelets book, legos and potholders craft sets come to mind. The ones I really love to sell though, are the sleepers. Pattern blocks, marble runs, and chess just sit around the store unless I almost force my families to "please, trust me!" These were in the category that I called "child traps" in my household. I would just leave them out and an entire morning would be gone building, creating, listening to books on tape and just being together. So, though it makes me sad to see the days growing shorter, I do enjoy the slower pace and indoor activities that the chill weather brings about, and I especially love the anticipation I see in my families as they pick up supplies for their own cozy hibernation's.

Simple Pleasures

I love the toy store in summer. The kids come in with a few dollars to spend and no adult to help them stretch it or suggest they save it for something better. Grownups just don't get it. It's the little stuff that's magic, and having it right now, with your own money that makes the summer sweeter. I have many suggestions for the kids with a few coins burning a hole through their cut offs. Take a few parachute guys on a trip to the second floor balcony of Hotel Oregon. You can let them float down onto pedestrians and drop into the pints of beer on the sidewalk tables. A handful of mini pigs to hide around your grandmothers house? Under her coffee cup, in the medicine chest. Marbles, by the each. Dime a piece. Need I say more? Old fashioned candy sticks, bazooka bubble gum, medium size jawbreakers, Taffy's, all for a quarter each. Balsa wood flyers, yo-yo's, and hacky sacks are also pretty special, but at $3 to $6 the kids really have to know what they want to blow their whole wad on one item. In the new fad category there are the Japanese Eraser's and those shaped rubber bands. Schleich animals. The kids pay with their own money to collect these great toys.
My favorite has always been bubbles. Magic, wand and all. I could spend (and have) entire afternoons blowing bubbles. The kids and I used to make bubble wands out of any piece of baling wire, slotted spoon or finger crocheted yarn loop. We experimented with home made recipes to support our by the bucket consumption. We took a road trip to Austin, my friend Sarah, our seven young children, and me. Sarah took us to a great toy store (Toy Joy) and introduced me to Pustefix. I was immediately convinced they lasted longer, and were more iridescent than other bubbles I had tried. These were the Best Bubbles Ever! With the zeal of the newly converted I went into the world to preach my truth. I'm still convinced that I see more shimmery rainbows in every Pustefix sphere, but you won't catch me in the store waxing poetic about it. It creeps the customers out.
Though I love the wand, rainbows, and watching them float out of sight, my favorite thing about bubbles is how they bring people together. At an outdoor concert, a picnic, or festival, break out the bubbles and people begin to smile. My children's great grandmother didn't have much energy by the time they came around, but she could sit in a chair and blow bubbles. Soon a dozen of her offspring would be dancing at her feet. That is magic.

Going 2 see Alice in Wonderland. I'll post a review later. Looking 4ward 2 it.

The Unpredictable Easter Bunny

Difficult as it is to get an Easter Bunny sighting, it is even harder to predict what that wily character will be putting in the Easter baskets. I never would have known it based on my own upbringing, but that guy (does the EB have a gender? I mean there are trousers in any pictures that show clothing, but really the rabbit drops EGGS right?) Okay, so our androgynous EB...now I am really off on a mental tangent. Bear with me here because the first androgynous character that came to my mind was the old SNL "Pat". Pat the bunny. That's funny right? Maybe you're not as sleep deprived and rummy as I am. Back to my point... EB brings actual presents to LOTS of kids. Not just eggs and little stuffed chicks and bunnies. Gifts. Not even Easter related gifts. Stomp rockets and dolls. Craft kits and huge stuffed animals. Why the huge discrimination against some children (my siblings and me for example)? Why does EB DELIVER to some homes, and leave eggs at others? Are eggs the equivalent of a lump of coal? The first year I owned hopscotch Easter time buying took me by surprise. Since then I have become more and more prepared. Theoretically. You see EB has years, and EB has YEARS. Whereas Santa has favorites that you know you need to have on hand for him every year (tricycles, doll houses, electric trains, chemistry sets, etc.) It's anybody's guess what EB is going to be looking for. I think, androgyny aside, EB is pretty cutting edge. One hip bunny. What's hot sells like crazy, so it's important for me to figure out what that is going to be starting in January so I can put off ordering it until the end of February then fret over every order that is not getting here fast enough. This year, I predict that EB will put a lot of Japanese erasers in the baskets and buckyballs should be big. Webkinz, yes still, and the East coast EB will definitely be putting those animal shaped rubber bands in the basket. Our west coast EB is a little less of a trend setter here and they haven't quite caught on. The plush kings have outdone themselves with some of the cutest spring lambs, chicks and ducklings coming from Gund, Douglas, Ganz and Manhattan to name a few. We are already moving some of those out the door. As far as things that don't fit in the basket, those silly Perfect Petzzz, and Wild Creation Frogs are going to top the list. The EZ Roller, Bruder trucks, and Kettler Trikes should weigh in pretty good too. Hope there is peace and health this Easter if not equity in distribution of goods. If you should catch a glimpse of the old EB this spring, could you please drop me a line and let me know what your take is... Patrick or Patricia?

Brainy baby or Overstimulated?

Let me start by saying that we don't have television. We do watch movies with our kids, but we have not had a television subscription the whole time we have been raising children. Nearly 19 years now. There was that one time we signed up so my husband could watch the world cup in the comfort of his own home, but we couldn't wait for that 18 month subscription to be over. Just too much noise! Too much monitoring. Too much fear mongering. Give me my rose colored glasses and get the glowing box out of my house!
At Toy Fair I met a really nice woman who worked at Brainy Baby. She was very excited because a new study was just published that shows that Brainy Baby DVD's help toddlers learn and remember. This was huge for them because the whole industry had been given a black eye by an earlier study that stated the opposite about the Baby Einstein series. I smiled and nodded as she told me how great the findings were, how the products of the company revolutionized early learning. I truly sympathized with the difficult position their company must be in since that Baby Einsteins study seemed to be everywhere. But, nice as she is, I just don't buy it. I mean, I believe that the DVD's do teach children. I've not met a child yet who isn't learning constantly. I just don't believe that putting your child in front of a screen is optimal. I believe in snuggling them on your lap with a book that contains the information you want them to learn, looking at pictures, pointing to them, saying the names. I believe that crawling on the floor playing with good open ended toys will teach them so much more, build a bonded relationship between parent and child, and mellow everyone out. The flashing lights, sounds, and images on a television screen may hold a child's attention, but so will a war scene. Doesn't mean that level of stimulation is appropriate. I'm still thinking this one through, because I know all about the multiple demands on a parents time, and being able to farm some of the basics off on a machine is tantalizing. At first take though, I feel like it's just lazy parenting. We don't have kids to plop them in front of a screen. We have them to share with, to play with, to build relationships with. I think I'd rather have a not so brainy baby who felt good in their own skin and bonded to the people they love.

Safety and Freedom. Can we give our children both?

Rowan (my youngest) and I have decided to see some old Disney classics this week. All of ours are on VHS, and it's been a while since anyone in this house has watched anything on VHS. Our pics, Snow White, The Fox and The Hound, Bambi, and Aladdin. We watched Bambi, then The Fox and the Hound back to back, and Rowan turned to me and said "Both the mothers die" Well, this is a theme you hear discussed a lot as a mother of small children living in progressive SE Portland. Disney's misogynistic bent. Always offing the mother. I knew this formula, and started to tell Rowan what I knew, first off that every movie we had rented had no mother from the start, or she got killed early on. For the record, I never believed this was misogyny . I just thought it was a convenient formula. Anyway, I start to tell Rowan how leaving the character without a mother puts them into all kinds of danger which allows for a conflict to be resolved through the plot of the story. He said "Oh, I just thought that without the mother, there was no one to stop them from having adventures and experiences that would make a good story." I just shut up. Now, I know all of the psychological Run Away Bunny mumbo jumbo about how it makes the child feel powerless because the mama bunny is always able to bring them home again. Again, never bought into it. I think The Run Away Bunny is Great. I think that Guess How Much I Love You is great. Some psychologists think the daddy bunny in Guess How Much I Love You is always one upping the baby bunny and making him feel powerless. Whatever. My point is that Rowan has never heard these psychologists. He was just giving me his take on offing the mother. Mom gone, adventure ensues. I have an eighteen year old who is really putting me through the paces here lately, and I have been forced to take a real good look at my parenting. Do I do too much for my children? Do I allow them too many freedoms?
Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away... "If you run away" Said his mother, " I will run after you, for you are my little bunny." I guess, if you use the right intonation and inflection it could be construed as a little controlling. But we are supposed to have control. We are supposed to keep them safe. It's our number one biological objective. Have babies, keep them alive. Safety and freedom. Perfect balance, please. Does anyone have the formula?

Playmobil!

Our holiday Playmobil arrived last week. That includes Advent Calendars and Santa Claus figures that will be stubbornly placed in the basement until I feel I can't hold out any longer. I always aim for the week of Thanksgiving, but give in a bit sooner to the pressures from a retailing perspective. Never do I place stuff mid-October like the big guys, I just can't rush my life like that. So, the advent calendars are sitting on a shelf marked seasonal with all of the Christmas ornaments, bow bedecked Christmas bears, Elf on the Shelf's and I still can't believe I ordered this... Christmas Pickles. The rest of the Playmobil is up on the shelves though, and it brings me great joy to look at it. We got the Egypt stuff in, which is very, very cool, but my favorite in this shipment has got to be the jewel thieves. Nothing like a little toy cat burglar to make me giddy with delight. I never got to have Playmobil when I was a child. We did have the little fisher price stuff though, and I feel like they allow the same kind of play. Playmobil does it with far greater detail, ingenuity, and way more cool little everything. My sisters and I spent hours with our fisher price toys, and when I send a set of Playmobil home with a child, I know the same kind of imaginative play will ensue. Worlds will be created for mini lives to be lived. A yearning to make those worlds come to life will be deeply seated at the core of the play, and that somehow on some level, that is exactly what will take place.

Gratitude and the divine.

I run. It keeps me somewhat sane. I was going to say sane, but I realize there are many who would debate that, so somewhat sane it is. Every day when I run I pause down by the Yamhill river, take my ear buds out, breathe deep, and give thanks for everything. Here's the catch. I'm not religious..I don't know who or what I'm thanking, I just know that it has to be done. Whether or not there is some higher order I feel I have an obligation as someone who is blessed with abundance to recognize that not everyone is. It has nothing to do with God, though I do feel the divine in my surroundings.
I'm perfectly happy in my lack of faith. I work hard to make the lives of people I touch better, and having been through intensely religious phases in my life can say that I live my life basically the same as I would if I feared judgment from on high. Raising children without religion has proved trickier than I imagined. What I would not give for simple "he's in heaven with Jesus" answers from time to time! I wanted to raise them to be able to make their own decisions regarding the divine order of things. To seek their own truths, and sometimes I fear that I have left giant blank slates for someone else to come along and fill.
I believe in sitting down at meal times and eating with friends and family, and as I have stated, in giving thanks, so at every meal our family says "thankfuls". We go around the table and acknowledge two things that we are sincerely thankful for. That, education about the religious beliefs of other people,and reading bible stories is the extent of our religious indoctrination. Some people worry that not having God and fear of judgment would leave children without a moral compass, but that hasn't been my experience. My children love (and can't stand) their fellow man just as much as any God fearing Christian. They also know that when you are a jerk, people treat you like one which makes your life miserable (Karma).
At hopscotch I have had a hard time deciding which religious materials to have in my product mix. I have some in books (Beautiful Noah's Ark book just came in), some in infant for baptisms and births, some in puzzles,some in educational, and some first communion type lockets and crosses in my jewelry. I want to offer something for everyone, and I truly believe that the tradition and cultures of all faiths are beautiful, diverse, and worthy of preservation. (Now I am hearing all of the childhood sermons about the hottest fires of hell being reserved for those who straddle the fence. Man that stuff stays with you!)) That said, I simply cannot stomach little white bears with angel wings that have sound chips that play electronic greeting card versions of Jesus Loves Me. The hottest fires of my own personal hell have shelves and shelves lined with them playing ceaselessly. Yup. I just tackled religion in a public forum that is directly tied to my business. Not recommended. Don't really care. Politics tomorrow?

Boys and Trains.

What is it with boys and trains? In an era when most boys have not even seen freight being unloaded from a train let alone ridden in one, many are still obsessed with them. It amazes me! It's not just Thomas either. As a matter of fact, our Thomas sales have taken a dive as our other train sales have climbed. Our electric trains do great particularly at Christmas time. Is it grandfathers passing along their passion? It really seems more organic than that. Eight times out of ten when a little boy comes through the front door of the store he heads right over to our Plan City train table. For some of these guys we are known as the train store though trains make up less than 1% of our inventory. We used to be exclusively Brio and Thomas, but then Brio went and got all strange and new-age with their trains and began manufacturing in China so I stopped ordering them and introduced Melissa and Doug for a generic non-character train. Yes, M&D is manufactured in China also, but they are priced like they are manufactured in china. I brought in Plan as an environmentally friendly option. Manufactured in Thailand from reclaimed rubber-tree wood. I love Plan toys! Boys and cars, I get that. Boys and construction stuff, I get that too. Boys and weapons, I even get that. But trains! I don't understand the drive in this day and age. Still, I must admit that though it is considered trespassing, I can't resist the urge to balance on the rails between 3rd and 5th street on my walk home (where this picture was taken incidentally). I enjoy the sound of the rumble and whistle when the 11:00 blows through town. I am transported by old songs of riding the rails and the freedom that it presented. I look forward to a time when we abandon much of the transportation we currently use and ride the rails once again.

Keeping it Fresh

We received our new Schleich display today and it is BEAUTIFUL!!Craig is our Schleich rep and he came out to help me put it together. One of my favorite low tech toys has always been a little plastic animal, and Schleich makes them the best. When I was a girl the only ones that were available to me were dinosaurs that had belonged to my dad. I wasn't into dinosaurs, but I spent hours with them forming family groups and enacting drama's large and small. Whether drought, starvation, or predators of unknown origins, survival was top on my list of things to play out. This kind of role playing is important to children learning how to relate to others, and how to interact with others. I can still conjure up the nurturing feelings I felt for my little dino family. One of the best things about these animals as opposed to dolls for this kind of modeling is that they are non-gender specific. Boys and girls alike enjoy playing with them. This makes them an ideal item for a family of mixed genders to collect. And, barring fire or a labrador retriever encounter, they will last for generations.

Community...and parks....

It's no secret. I love this community. As a mother, one of the things that I appreciate most is the park system. We spend a good portion of the year at various games and practices in Joe Dancer park. My dog and I are down there running the trails nearly every morning. The picture I posted was taken at the City Park, or the dragon park as all of the kids in my family call it. My dad was part of a community crew that built that play structure for the children of this community nearly twenty years ago. There were literally hundreds of people that donated money, time and tools to build it. I love that their grandchildren are playing on it now. With it's water feature, rock wall, skate park, etc. Discovery Meadows is the shiny new playground on the McMinnville park scene, but the city park is by far my favorite. It embodies so much of what makes McMinnville a great community to raise children in. First of all because it has been a gathering place for as long as McMinnville has been here. Secondly because it has that wonderful low tech wooden play structure that was built through community contributions and our volunteer spirit (not every community has that, it's special). Thirdly because it is at the center of our downtown and part of a walkable community with the library and pool right there. For my next blog I'll go on and on about some wonderful toy we have here at hopscotch (there are so many! we are receiving our Christmas inventory and every year I get so excited by it!) For today however, with summer drawn to a close and each sunny day feeling like a theft from the looming rainy season, I wanted to wax poetic one last time about summer days in the park.

Her Hearts Desire

This is a picture of Gracie Peak's birthday bin. A birthday bin is something we do here at hopscotch that is like a registry, but way cooler because the kids actually get to place their hearts desire into the bin. (the bin size also forces them to choose what they REALLY want, not everything in the store) I have come to look at them as little snapshots of the inner workings of a child at a certain point in time. Gracie is a very well rounded girl, she has her knight dress up stuff, her cupcake box, lots of charms for her charm bracelet, a sword, a huge sucker, the Klutz Guide to Immaturity, and a few other things. My kind of girl. What a child wants is a great insight into what is of value to them and who they are at any given time. I don't keep my children's report cards. I keep their Santa letters.
Wish lists and wants give insight into adult priorities also. I am a project girl, and with every project there are things that I intensely desire. When I look back through my notebooks, whether my want list included a spiral staircase, a Kubota tractor, a composting toilet, a milk cow, a herd of goats, a gambrel truss system, or a new point of sale system, offers great insight into who I was and what I was trying to accomplish at that point in my life. Many of these things I acquired, some of them (goats for instance) I am thankful I did not. That is another thing that is important to remember in these times of immediate and complete gratification. Sometimes the best thing you can give your child is to leave them yearning for that thing that is not appropriate for them or you can't afford. I have keen recollections of all the toys I wanted and never got. The memories of those longings are every bit as sweet as the memories of playing with the toys I did get. Open ended desire, longing, is vilified as lack of fulfillment, but sometimes the fantasy of what your life could be like with that shiny new thing is far more precious than the thing itself.

Beating the Heat!

Yeah, we all know about the pool, the water gun, the slip and slide and the river, but when temperatures get up above 100 degrees it doesn't prudent to spend any time in it at all. That is why this afternoon, my living room was full of teenagers making hemp bracelets and playing musical instruments. Curtains drawn, well insulated house, and big shade trees made it the perfect place to hole up. My kids learned to weave hemp using the Klutz Hemp Bracelet Book.We broke it out today to teach the other kids. Though the hemp and beads that came with it have long been used, we now have a tin full of various beads, spools of colored hemp, sinew, and beading thread. I have loved Klutz since my son was five and picked up the "How to Draw Marvel Comic Figures" book. Lived with it, drew and drew and moved on to draw more. I think that is what impresses me most about Klutz. We have lots of arts and crafts stuff in the store, but Klutz does more than provide an afternoon project. It gives children new skills. Whether it is embroidery, clay, beading, bracelets, drawing, potholders, quilting, or one of their other titles. They make project books that are based in teaching skills and give you all the components that you need to get started. I was a little worried when Klutz was purchased by Scholastic that some of the ingenuity would go out of the line, but I have been pleased to see more great titles hit the floor every year. Summer takes over and you kind of forget all of those quiet things you used to do when the rain was coming down. I am here to tell you, 100+ degrees is the perfect time to break them out again.

Summer Bounty

I am fortunate enough to have found a local farmer who will trade produce for toys. As I have found the time I have available to garden much less than it used to be this works out perfectly. They just dropped this bag of gorgeous produce at my door. As much as I think it's important to feed a child's mind and sense of adventure, I think it's doubly important to feed their bodies. Without a well fed brain and body a child can't use even the most vast resources well. One of the things I love about owning a specialty toy store is that most of the families who come through are really invested in their children. They feed them well, mind and body. One of the things I don't love is that it gives me an insulated view of the world and it is too easy to forget that this is not the way many children live their lives. There is so much garbage out there, and too often, children get a steady stream of McDonalds and television for sustenance. I guess I just want to put a shout out to all of you parents who are making conscientious decisions to feed your children body and mind. And also a shout out to Andre', Sheila, their three wonderful children and the bounty they drop at my door every week.

Change

When my kids were younger we had splattered so much paint and glue on our dining table, and gouged it with leather craft tools, that I suggested that we should divide it into five and each member of the family paint a section. That is the result in the picture there. We used it like that for years and it now hangs on the outside of the shop facing the deck. The family that created it has long since disappeared evolving into a new family with other priorities than those outlined on the table, and I do miss them, but not as much as I value who they have become. The elements are cracking the paint and the images get a little lighter every year but I am able to look at it regularly. One of these days it will be just a gouged up table top again and I will discard it and make way for new experiences and memories. We all keep our photos, our bits of paper, our writings, but most of the experiences of this life can only be archived for a very short time. Even our memory changes so what we think we have stored away is merely fantasy layered over our faulty perception of so called reality. Not much to cling to. As it should be, I say. We should no more hold to and hoard memories than we should old table tops. We can and should use them only as a catalyst for new experiences. We should break them out to freshen bonds that threaten to fray, to laugh and create new experiences, new memories while doing so. I don't know what this has to do with the toy store. It's just what was on my mind this morning as I sat on the deck, drinking coffee, looking at the table top, and that old rocker that Genna and I painted when I chose to bring my son home from the hospital rather than give him up for adoption (now there is a story worthy of a blog, but again having nothing to do with running a toy store.) Change can happen so fast these days. Especially with a house full of teenagers. For me it is somehow comforting to watch my world changing one flake of paint at a time.

Piece Work A Plenty

Ping, ping, ping. For kids growing up in Carlton in the 1970's and 80's, no sound could make you feel more despondent than the sound of those first few berries hitting an empty picking can. In my memory I see legions of us rubbing bleary eyes riding our bikes down the streets in the first light of dawn, grass still covered with dew. In reality, it was just all the kids I hung out with. We'd hit the fields hard and early because by the time the sun was high in the sky we wanted to have enough money to get into the Carlton pool and buy something at main street market. At night we'd lay out in our yards, or up in our beds with rows and rows of berries haunting our vision. The fields don't hire children anymore and though I can certainly see why (we threw and ate more berries than we weighed by far) it still makes me sad for the generations of American youth who are growing up without the availability of consistent piece work. When kids come into hopscotch with their own money I always ask them what they did to earn it. The answers are varied, birthday money, tooth fairy money, went potty in the toilet, good grades, cavity free dental visit, but the kids who just beam are the kids who have worked hard for those dollars. It means more to them because they did good work and received a wage for it. Our house is here in town, not a farm, but we have lots of fruiting trees and shrubs. First the strawberries come on, then the cherries, then the raspberries, marionberries, blueberries, blackberries, plums, apricots, pears, and finally apples. We pick and process as much of it as we can, and the kids are all required to help. My kids, my sisters kids, they all get paid a dollar for each Nancy's Yogurt container they pick full of blueberries. They also get to enjoy blueberry pancakes, muffins, pies and smoothies through the year, but that's just a fringe benefit. The real benefit goes to us as their parents because they have hard earned pocket money to learn to manage. We have blueberries in the freezer, and the corner store has a steady stream of customers with their own money jingling in their pockets.

Choosing your battles

Zoe is my fourteen year old daughter. She does wild things with her hair. It's been black, pink, purple, silver, blue, green, platinum, and everything in between. She's naturally a blonde, I think. At least she was the last time that I saw her hair it's natural color. I think she was ten. Traditional wisdom would tell you that if you let your child do wild things you are asking for trouble, but I don't feel that way. I want my children to know that each decision I make for them is based on what I feel they have shown me I can expect from them, and from real consideration on the long standing effects that these decisions could have on their lives. Hair grows (or can be stripped out and re-colored for a mere $150) Facial piercings and tattoos are another thing.For the most part Zoe gets positive reinforcement on her color choices, but a lot of people ask me if I really think I should let her do that, or how I feel about it. I feel great! It's who she is. She is vivacious and jubilant, and probably hot pink by nature. Besides, I get to have a real live doll working at my store, and you can't go wrong with that.

Pinkies Up

Tea time has always held a certain magic for my children and me. Perhaps it's the decadence associated with a long break mid afternoon. On breezy spring days it means laying out on a blanket in the shade of a tree with a book, a plate of cookies, some light herbal teas and our conversation. During the winter months, tea gives us a cozy break in the form of red tea for the younger children and black tea for me and the older two. Books, knitting, felting, and other hand crafts coupled with long conversations complete our recipe for reprieve. I'm generally a go go mama for whom "just a minute's" and "be there in a sec's" fall all too readily from the lips. But tea gives me something to center my vast energies around and quiet into. I can sit and hold, rub and pat, talk and laugh,and just BE with my children without looking forward at my agenda. Tea is the agenda. My children are the agenda. Something that can bring a flighty girl like myself so deeply into the moment has just got to be magic.