Cassocks, Icons and Pascha Jammies

Sadly, I forgot my camera when we went to get a guardrail for my four-year-old's bed, so my "Wow: doesn't Target sell atrocious clothing for little girls?!" post is going to have to wait...

In the meantime, some musings about iconography and cassock-making. And a picture of the cassock I made for Josh when he was made a subdeacon:

Walking to our respective destinations this morning (the girls and I to a prenatal appointment; Josh to work), I told Josh that cassock-making seems so much more profane than iconography. When he asked me why, the best answer I could come up with was that, whereas the cassock is a mere garment, an icon is supposed to be a "window into heaven." But then, expanding on this, I ran into some trouble. "A cassock," I suggested, "is supposed to veil or hide the man behind it. An icon," I continued, "is supposed to... point to something other than itself." The more I thought about it, the more I realized the two had some underlying similarities: vestments veil the priest, and show forth Christ through him; icons themselves are mere paint and wood, and show forth Christ by drawing the viewer's attention beyond themselves.

Well, there you have it: cassocks and icons. And, while I'm flaunting my sewing projects, here's some clothing for little girls that I don't deem atrocious--their "Pascha jammies," as we call them (made for last year's Paschal Liturgy, when all us crazy Orthodox parents drag our kids to church in the middle of the night!)

Picking off the Vegetables

So I recently realized that what I mistook for piety in my two-year-old was really a combination of common sense and the desire not to burn her tongue. (I should have guessed as much: this is the child who piped up "I don't like church.  Mama, I don't LIKE CHURCH"--during the Cherubic Hymn, no less.) Naomi has for the longest time been my little prayer conscience: "Time to pray, Mama! Time to pray!" she would exclaim as I set the food on the table. Only now do I realize that she only says this when I tell them "Careful: it's hot!" "Time to pray," for Naomi, may amount to nothing more than a way to delay the beginning of the meal, a distraction to keep her from diving in too soon so that her food might cool down to a reasonable temperature in the meantime.


Another recent mealtime trend in our household is the picking off of the vegetables. I used to have children who would eat anything, anything I put in front of them: broccoli, kale, squash, sweet potato, tomatoes, carrots, corn, cauliflower, peas, etc. You grew it, they ate it! Do 3-year-olds come with a manual for driving their mothers crazy??? Katie has recently declared war on several (fortunately not all!) vegetables, and Naomi is quickly following suit, thanks to the example of her cool older sister. This is a problem in our household. A serious problem. Take tonight's meal:

 That's mushrooms, red pepper, green zebra tomatoes, onion and Swiss chard. The crust and cheese are really just a delivery system in my books; pizza's not pizza without the veggies! Katie sat in front of her pizza for nearly twenty minutes, diligently denuding the piece of my masterpiece that I had placed before her until it was deemed vegetable-free and passed inspection.


Now I realize this is small potatoes. In some ways I know that I've already lost the food battle, because when our kids are teenagers, you bet I'll be stocking the pantry with junkfood to ensure that our place becomes the hangout spot of choice! And by that time, I'll have a thirteen-year-old Naomi who can not only tell me "I don't LIKE church," but who can also refuse to get out of bed on Sunday morning, refuse to put on clothing, and refuse to get in the car (or on her bike, or whatever.) This thought terrifies me.


It's not that I want little carbon copies of myself, or that my children have to absorb each and every one of my values. It's just that some of what we do as a family--pray together, worship together--is so very important to me that I would be heartbroken if their came a time when we no longer shared that. As I see it, the Eucharistic Liturgy is the very foundation of spiritual health. And I realize that, just as we do for vegetables, we can lose our taste for church (though perhaps on a slightly different timeline.) Perhaps our spiritual senses become duller as we encounter the world in all of its flashiness. Perhaps we lose our way through woundedness. Whatever the cause, once off the road it can be immensely difficult to find one's way back.


Today, I am humbled by the immense privilege and responsibility that is child-rearing. I am so very thankful for the children that have been given me, and it is with fear and trembling that I anticipate holding and releasing their hands as they meet the challenges of daily living.

My $50 Infection

Did I mention that getting sick cost me $50? $15 co-pay and $35 for the drugs. Fortunately, this isn't a tight month for us, so it's not so much a matter of literally not being able to pay it, so much as it is a matter of how many other things I'd like to do with $50. Like buy groceries. (For 5 days). Or go out to dinner with my husband. (Twice!) Or to the movies. (4 times!) Or buy myself some new clothes (or some new-to-me clothes--like a whole new wardrobe from Goodwill!) Except for the first item, these are things we don't do all that frequently precisely because we "can't afford it." I feel like I should now add "getting sick" to that list. Fortunately, the last time I was on antibiotics was about 4 years ago and Josh hasn't needed them in the history of our marriage, so (by the grace of God) it's pretty much already on the list of things we do infrequently. (I take that back: we've spent a fortune on drugs for me to deal with post-partum mental health issues, which should count as illness, though try to find a healthcare plan that covers that kind of thing and you're outta luck!)

Yep, paying $50 out of pocket because I had the bad luck of contracting a urinary tract infection definitely made me miss Canada in general and Quebec in particular. Ah, socialism!

This is not to say that I have any sense of entitlement when it comes to healthcare.

I can see the point a fiscal conservative might make: why should tax payers cover the costs of your sickness? Not that it's particularly relevant in this case, but such a person might also add something about how such "entitlement programs" encourage unhealthy lifestyle choices, since no one has to pay a dime when their chain-smoking gives them cancer, etc., etc. (You know, because people in Canada are so much sicker than Americans, the obesity epidemic so much worse. I'm being sarcastic, 'case you can't tell.) But no: I don't feel as though I'm owed government subsidized healthcare, and if I lived in Nigeria, I'd see the sense in doing without it. But I live in the richest country in the world. (Right? I think that's still right...) I live in a country that can afford to send all its children to school for free. (Since when is schooling more vital to human life than treating a potentially deadly bacteria?) I live in a country that can afford to invade other countries, for goodness sake, and uses my tax dollars to do so!


And herein lies what I see as the Conservative Contradiction:


Whereas it is considered "intrusive" when a government uses tax dollars to pay for the necessary medical treatment of its citizens, it is often considered necessary for the government to intrude into the affairs of other countries--other countries! not even their own citizens--in order to ensure that the human rights of that country's citizens are being safeguarded.

I mean, when I see a bumper sticker that says "Get US out of Iraq," ten to one says it's not on a Republican's car!  (Of course, for the most part the countries deemed worthy of invasion or "aid" are almost always countries that pose a perceived threat to the US, rather than countries like, say, Rwanda.) It seems like a classic case of wanting to have your cake and eat your neighbour's too: the government better stay out of my backyard, but they sure as heck better be spying on the "Ruskies" or the Iraqis or somebody to make sure we're safe! (As safe as we can be with over 50 million uninsured citizens who, when facing serious illness, have little way of finding the means to pay for it.)


I say charity starts at home. Of course we have an international obligation as the rich country that we are to attempt to spread social justice throughout the world. But while our own citizens remain in the position of being financially penalized for illness--or, God forbid, refused life-saving treatment for lack of funds--how dare we consider ourselves the "civilized" ones?

Dr.'s Orders...

Well we had a full day. First the "butterflies with paint," which turned out quite well, despite my initial reluctance. Here's Katie's: 

Then, a meeting with an inner-city ministry leader, to organize the "Youth and Sports" section of the program. (I vaguely remember writing my name on a piece of paper with that heading at a training event for this ministry because it was the closest thing to something that fit my interests and talents, and now find myself heading up this section of the program. What on earth do I know about youth and sports?!)

Next, a failed nap attempt. They both fell asleep in the car on the way home. At 11:30. Go figure. Needless to say, neither one made the transfer to their beds. AAAARGH! I would have just left them there and leaned my seat back for a little shut-eye myself, had it not been that I really, really had to pee. (Despite the gallon of cranberry juice, diluted and sweetened with stevia so I could choke the stuff down, the UTI was only worsening.) So, after a quick visit with a friend to try to reclaim my sanity, I headed off to the doctor's office to confirm what my body has been telling me the past couple of days.


Reading over my antibiotic information, I was reminded of a pet peeve of mine that I thought would be appropriate to share in this forum. Namely, the following instructions: "This medication passes into breast milk and may have undesirable effects on nursing infants younger than 1 month old. Consult your doctor before breastfeeding" (found on the drug pamphlet) and "Warning: breastfeeding not recommended while taking this drug. Consult your doctor or pharmacist" (found on the pill bottle). At first glance, these instructions might seem fairly innocuous. After all, everyone knows that some drugs aren't safe to take while nursing a baby, right? And nobody wants to harm their infant inadvertently by breastfeeding while taking a drug that would be dangerous to their baby's health. Now, never mind that it didn't occur to my doc that I might still be nursing my toddler (as I am) and that he didn't feel it was important to reassure me that it's fine to nurse her and take these drugs because she's old enough that they don't pose a threat to her (which they don't). What troubles me about the warning labels on these meds (and on any that are not deemed compatible with nursing by the medical community--I've read several of these kinds of labels) is the implicit assumption that if it's a choice between breastfeeding and taking medication, then breastfeeding is clearly out. These kinds of assumptions drive me crazy, especially when you consider the horror stories some women live through in order to be able to nurse their babies--everything from latch problems to severe mastitis. Women often initially sacrifice comfort, time, energy and sleep in order to cultivate healthy nursing relationships with their children. Where does the medical community get off thinking we're just going to toss that all away in order to cure some ailment?

I'd like to see a label that reads: "This drug may not be safe to use while breastfeeding. If you are breastfeeding, see you doctor for an alternative medication." There. That wasn't so hard, was it? And if there's no alternative, well lets work to find one. And in the meantime, let the woman in question decide which she wants to give up, rather than treating breastfeeding as the expendable item on the table.

Fall

As I sit here at our kitchen table in the dark, watching my early rising almost-4-year-old munching on her cereal and feel the cool--no, cold--air drifting in from the open window, I realize that fall is here.

We've had a great summer, a somewhat carefree summer, but now it's over and it's time to buckle down and get into some kind of sensible routine. (The munching has ceased, so I now have her sorting the different cereal grains into separate piles--there are 7--to buy me a little more time!)


September, for me, has always seemed more like the beginning of a New Year than January and knowing that it is the beginning of the Church Year, gives me a strange mixture of anticipation and dread...apprehension. That's what it's called!


On the one hand, it's a fresh start. Another chance to understand more fully the power and beauty of the liturgical calendar. Another opportunity to recommit to trying to pray regularly with my children throughout the day. On the other hand, it's time to start all over again. Nothing changes in the liturgical pattern from year to year in the Orthodox church. In fact, not much changes from Sunday to Sunday. Most Wednesdays and Fridays are the same too: cereal and nutmilk for breakfast, hummus wrap for lunch, lentils for supper, and so it goes. And there are problems in the church--age old problems that likely won't change in my lifetime. (This is one reason why I can comfortably list Orthodoxy among my list of "Earthly Cares," ethereal though the liturgy may sometimes be...) Here we go again, I think. ("Again and again, we pray to the Lord." And again. And again. And again...) But wait? What's this about "coming soon"?

A "soon" that lasts 2000 years could seem like someone's idea of a cruel joke. On the other hand, each of our short, short lives bears testimony to that soon. I realize with every week, month and year, that time is just speeding up as I get older. (Maybe that's part of why I started this blog: I want so desperately to slow it down, to capture these little moments that make up the fabric of human life...)


Well, I need to help my daughter "do a butterfly with paint" (you know, as opposed to the crayons I suggested.) So I'm off. Happy New Year, everyone!

St. Joshua Son of Nun

This is the first icon I completed without the oversight of a teacher. It was a gift for my husband, Joshua:

 The text reads "Be strong and courageous. Do not be cowardly or fearful, for the Lord is with you in all things, wherever you go."

Once Again...

 Now that I'm pregnant again, and nearing the end of the first trimester, I find myself thinking back to both my birth experiences, as well as to the 11 week miscarriage I had in February. And reading other birth stories and other blogs about breastfeeding and motherhood. At some point, I'd like to get around to posting detailed, individual accounts of both births, and perhaps even of the miscarriage, which was sickeningly, horrifyingly labour-like, but as I lie here on the couch with debilitating nausea and a suspected UTI (from dehydration, most likely), I realize that tonight is not that night. I would be up well past my (9:30pm) bedtime, and that would spell disaster for tomorrow. Nevertheless, I want to paint a picture of my relationship with procreation in broad strokes.

Katherine Eva (soon to be 4) was born after 42 hours of excruciating labour (I'm counting from the first contraction, but the bulk of those hours were active labour.) We had planned to birth at home with the help of a direct-entry midwife, but decided to transfer to the hospital at hour 36. I was exhausted and scared. So was my husband. My midwife was weary and concerned. The hospital experience was what it was. I was positioned in a C-Curve, had a fetal monitor strapped to my belly, and had an IV put in my arm. I accepted narcotics, which seemed useless in that I still felt a whole lot of pain, but I progressed from 5 to 8 under their influence, so maybe they helped to relax me. (My midwife swears I was already almost fully dilated at home, which leads me to believe that being in the hospital was stressful enough to cause my labour to regress. I know there's debate in the medical community about whether or not this is possible. I'm convinced it is: our minds are powerful, powerful things.) I remember desperately needing to pee and not being permitted to use a bathroom. I was offered a catheter (uh, no thanks?) and a bedpan (in a room full of people--yeah, right), but under no circumstances was I allowed to use the bathroom to relieve myself, despite completely normal readings from the fetal monitor, which was horribly painful against my contracting, exhausted uterus. I initially accepted an epidural, though when the anesthesiologist got there I was told my husband would have to leave the room. At that point, I was so frustrated I told that doctor exactly where he could go shove that needle. (Hint: it wasn't in my spine.) So, no epidural. Pushing was two hours of hell. Hospital staff insisted on having the cord cut as soon as she came out--before breathing was established, the idiots, let alone before the cord stopped pulsing--so she was whisked off my chest before I could hold her so that they could give her oxygen. She weighed in at 8lbs13ounces, which they thought was a lot, so they wanted me to bring her to them for a heel stick before every feeding. I finally refused (what? I can say "no"?) but only after letting them stab my precious baby in the heel 4 times. I was exhausted and needed to go home and sleep, but they wouldn't discharge Katherine for 48hours because they were concerned about my lack of a hospital file and wanted to run a host of bloodtests, many of which I'd already had! All in all, there are only four good things that I can take from that labour experience, and three are negatives. 
1) No Cesarean. Thank God I did not choose a hospital birth initially. I am almost certain that given the length of my labour, I would have gone under the knife.
2) No epidural. This gave me the confidence I needed for my second birth experience. Also, my blood pressure tends to be on the low side, and epidurals can cause drops in blood pressure.
3) No episiotomy (and no tears). Thank God for a doctor who'd done her research. I vividly remember leaning forward as Katie was crowning and begging her "Please, please, don't cut me!" And she said, with some pride, the most reassuring words I heard from any of the medical staff that day: "I've never done an episiotomy."
4) A healthy, beautiful baby. Yes, the hospital experience was thoroughly traumatizing (as the loss of autonomy and physical integrity is wont to be), but I cannot be utterly ungrateful to the people who, misguided though they were, assisted in the birth of my first daughter.


That was the condensed version, I swear! I tried to stick to the raw facts and leave out most of what was going on for me on an emotional, psychological and spiritual level during that birth. But the next birth story will be shorter, mostly because it was more peaceful.


Naomi Johanna (now 2 and a bit) was much more civilized, taking under twelve hours to emerge, God bless her. (Okay, my seasoned cervix might have had something to do with it too!) A few hours on the birth ball, a few hours in the birth pool (a new addition from the previous homebirth attempt: I knew I'd need to pull out all the pain management stops), and I was all set. We were able to treat the event with the sanctity owed to all birth. We prayed, we lit incense, we put Holy Water in the birthing pool. My doula (also Naomi's godmother), was an extraordinarily calming presence. The pushing was intense, but manageable. I was only afraid at one point, when my midwife said "We've got cord! Don't push yet! Wait, wait!" and my body was pushing Naomi out with or without my consent! I never got a chance to feel the "urge to push" with Katie, rushed as I was in the hospital, with a team of nurses cheering "Push! Push! You're at 10! Push!" So this experience was miraculous to me, my body doing the work for me! She came up out of the water, took her first breath and wailed, but was quickly soothed in my arms and at my breast. Papa cut the cord a while later, at my request, because the afterbirth was quite painful, and I needed him to take the baby. All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better birth experience.

Warning: the following describes a miscarriage. It is not especially graphic, but I am describing a miscarriage and I don't mince words. If you want to skip this account, by all means do so. But please no comments that suggest you were not warned. Yes, it is a revolting, horrible and appalling thing, as death tends to be, but it was a revolting, horrible and appalling thing that happened to me, and there was a certain sanctity hovering around the experience, just as with my birth experiences.


The miscarriage. The miscarriage was hard. Once a sonogram confirmed what the slow bleeding suggested--no heartbeat, a 9-week-old fetus when I was 11 weeks pregnant--I went home and waited for nature to take its course. We cried. I got some herbal recommendations from my midwife to speed things along. I saw my family doctor for advice about how to manage the miscarriage. And I waited. And waited. When it finally began, it began with a vengeance. I felt like I was in full-blown labour, but with no doula, no midwife, no birth pool and no baby. That last one was what made it all so hard, the pain so futile. At 11pm, I told my husband that I wanted to go to a hospital if the worst wasn't over by midnight. At 11:15, I said: "Get me to a hospital!" Our children were sleeping, but fortunately our downstairs neighbours are close friends (Naomi's doula and family), so we knocked on their door with a baby monitor on our way out and asked them to watch the kids. (My dear friend ended sleeping upstairs, just to be sure she could hear the children.)
Now I hate hospitals. Hate them. But I can thoroughly relate to the experience a friend of mine had when serious medical concerns forced her to birth in the hospital: I was relieved to be there. Before we'd left home, I'd been soaking quite a bit more than the "safe" one pad an hour, but I'd been told by friends who'd miscarried at home to expect a lot of blood, that this was normal, that it would stop once you passed the baby. By the time I got to the hospital, I was bleeding so profusely, there wasn't any point in changing my pads! If I had begun to hemorrhage like this at home, I would have been terrified. Being in a place where they could monitor my vitals, give me extra fluid and enough pain meds to take the edge off was just what I needed. I don't think that miscarriage at home is always dangerous, but in my case it would have been. There was something pathological about that miscarriage. My uterus was trying to flush out the dead child by wringing itself out like a sponge, but for some reason my body wouldn't release the dead one within it. Once the placenta finally detached and came out, the relief was instantaneous. I was still weak and sore, but the contractions--for that is what they were, not "cramps"--ceased.
Now my primary reason for wanting to miscarry at home rather than the hospital has to do with my belief in the sanctity of the human body, even human remains. Human remains are holy and as such deserve a proper burial. I was told that if I went to the hospital, my baby's remains would be sent to pathology and then destroyed. I couldn't live with that. But I knew what I was up against when I went in, so I made sure that I was alone in the bathroom when the right time came. As grotesque as this might sound if you don't get my sanctity-of-the-body logic, I carried my baby's remains out of that hospital in a plastic cup safely tucked away in my bag and buried them two days later in a monastery cemetery, after a small service performed by the sisters of that monastery. I named that child Julian Ariel. (It seemed a good name for a baby whose gender remains a mystery to me.)


Back to the present. I carry within my body a fourth child. God willing, I will carry this child to term and have a healthy, peaceful pregnancy and homewaterbirth. Nothing is certain, and yet I hope, I trust.

Pantocrator

This is the fifth icon I have finished, once again with the help of a teacher. This 2X3 foot icon was a 3-month-long project, not counting the time it took to build the board!

Early Stage:

Complete:

The Gospel text reads: "I Am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live." (It's kind of hard to see from the photo.) The highlights in the cloak weren't particularly well-executed, but otherwise I'm happy with it. Not really knowing what to do with a 2X3 foot icon in my home, I plan to donate it to the new FOCUS center in Pittsburgh, an Orthodox outreach center attempting to provide aid to those in need.
 

Holy Face

Here is the second icon I completed, once again under a teacher:

 This is the initial stage, developing a strong sankir (flesh), followed by the highlighting stage:

 

Man of Sorrows (Restoration)

This was my first icon. I did it as a gift for my dear friend and spiritual father, the priest of the first Orthodox parish I attended.

What you see here, though, is actually a restoration of that icon, and it took almost as long as the icon itself initially took! (The icon was completed under the instruction of a teacher; the restoration I did alone.) I guess my friend and his family had an infestation of silverfish (!) and they attacked the icon, which I guess makes sense since I use the traditional egg tempera, and not acrylic. Who knew silverfish like egg yolk? Anyway, they took these huge chunks out of it, and I had to restore much of the sankir (flesh) and border. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the result, though I can still see some inconsistencies in the paint...

Butterfly Raising

So, one Saturday in late July we found an exciting looking caterpillar hanging out in our parsley. At first, I was inclined to let the girls look at it, then put it back from whence it came. But then I remembered how my childhood best friend had raised a monarch butterfly, and how exiting it was as a child to witness it's emergence into the world, post-transformation. I brought it in...

Online, I discovered we had ourselves a Black Swallowtail caterpillar, and that they eat fennel, parsley and dill, all of which we have in abundance in our garden. So I harvested a little of each, and placed it at the bottom of a large glass jar (our cookie jar, so no cookies that week!) with a cheese cloth covering held in place by an elastic band. I also added a stick, for when it decided to cocoon.

I read that I had to clean out the poop daily, and I wasn't really looking forward to this, as the caterpillar was already pooping copious amounts... Fortunately, this was because it was time for it to cocoon! I guess they have to clean out first? Anyhow, not long after the copious pooping, the caterpillar crawled away from its food source and began the strange cocooning dance they do. It was evening by this point, so we watched for a bit, then went to bed.

The next morning, the cocoon was complete. And the waiting began...

I have to say that by the following Saturday, I was starting to get a little stressed, as the butterfly had not yet emerged, and it looked like the cocoon was darkening. Was it dead? Was I a butterfly murderess? What would I tell the girls? Mommy messed with nature and ended up killing it?

The next day, we got up and began preparing for church. As I got the girls their breakfast, I glanced up at the glass jar. When I saw black, I panicked for a second, thinking the cocoon had darkened completely and all was lost. But no: it was the newly emerged butterfly, crawling out from its "tomb" to greet the world on Sunday morning...

How to Plan a Family Bike Adventure

Despite the looks of horror that I got from people when I told them what we were doing, the family bike trip we took in August went really well. It was a five day trip along the Great Allegheny Passage from Pittsburgh to Rockwood and back (about 200 miles), with a little city cycling between Pittsburgh and Homestead.

(We were grateful that my Dad joined us, increasing the adult-to-child ratio! The little girl in the background is a neighbour who desperately wanted to come too!)

We had rain, we had some whining from the kids, but overall it was a good time. Such a good time, in fact, that I thought I'd post some tips that will help you plan and execute your very own family bike adventure. Here they are:

1) Make sure your youngest is about 1 year old (some would say at least). This is for safety's sake. Despite my love of the bicycle, I am willing to give it up for a year or so after the birth of each child. Young babies simply do not have strong enough necks to support the weight of a bicycle helmet on their little heads as you go over bumps and make sharp turns. If you have a really little one, by all means plan. Buy that front-riding bike seat you're dying to try. Pick up some panniers. Look around for some bargain lightweight camping equipment. Just please don't put a little baby on that bike until they are strong enough to handle a bump or (God forbid) a wipe-out!

2) Assess your needs. Are you rough-it types who don't mind sleeping on a camping mattress after a long day on a bike, or would you prefer to fork out the extra dough for a B&B and sleep in a real bed? How many days of cycling do you think you can sustain? Be honest with yourself: what will work for you and your family?

3) Assess your children's needs. How long can they last in the car? Don't anticipate that they'll be happy cycling for much longer than that, especially if they are too little to be doing any pedaling: they get bored. You will need to take frequent breaks, so do some research about the places you'll be passing. Is there an icecream shop? A playground? Also, bring lots and lots of little snacks. They'll need them. You'll need them.

4) Acquire the necessary equipment. Bikes are obvious, but you'll also need spare tubes, chain lube, a small pump, etc. If your children are too little for their own bikes, you'll need a seat of some kind for them too. Trail-a-bikes (also called "tag-alongs") can work for kids who are tall and strong enough to do some of their own pedaling, bike seats are great for the littlest ones, but I don't recommend a bike trailer unless your entire route is paved. The extra wheel and weight back there will really slow you down! Probably the best scenario if you have two little ones is a front-riding seat on each of the adult bikes, with some gear on the back of each bike. That way, the weight is decently distributed. (In our case, I had both girls on my bike, one on a front-riding seat, one on the back, which adds 70lbs to my bike, and Papa had all our gear on the back of his bike, which made his bike pretty unstable.) If you're roughing it, you'll need camping equipment. You'll need some non-perishable food if you don't want to eat out every night, although this can get heavy to carry, so locate the grocery stores on route and try to carry just what you need for the day. You'll need weather appropriate clothing. It was August, but we were glad for the raincoats we brought for the girls, as they got colder just sitting still in the rain than we did cycling in it.

5) Train. Go for lots of weekend day trips before the big event! You'll need muscles you can't get without lots and lots of cycling!

6) Plan a route, then scale it back. Don't overestimate yourselves. I know I can do a sixty mile day with both kids, but on our five day trip, we scaled it back to 40 miles so that we could sustain it for 5 days and so that it would be fun for the kids. Don't try to do more in a day than you've cycled on one of your weekend day trips... If anything, do less!

7) Have a contingency plan. If unforeseen circumstances prevent you from getting to your daily destination of choice, have another, closer location in mind. Even if you plan to camp, know where there's a B&B in case the weather gets downright dangerous.

8) Get out there! Hope you have as much fun as we did. I'd love to hear your stories!

Girls' Bike Trip, May 2011

Here are some pics from our 60 mile day trip from Pittsburgh to Ohiopyle to kick off the May long weekend. The girls and I left just after 7am from our home in Pittsburgh, cycled for a bit, caught a bus to keep us off the worst roads on route to the trail, then cycled from Dusquesne to Ohiopyle along the Great Allegheny Passage! (In May, the trail wasn't yet completed to Homestead; it's still not complete all the way to Pittsburgh, but they're working on it.) Papa picked us up around 6:30, so it was a long day, but well worth it! Highlights included biking over the bridges from Connellsville to Ohiopyle in a gentle rain, with the sunset just beginning. The low point of the day was when I realized we had inadvertently stopped at a completely bee infested playground! (Not the playground featured in the pics--another one.) We were really fortunate to escape without being stung!

Here's us at Connelsville. No pic at Ohiopyle, unfortunately, as the torrential rain had started and we had to get the bike on our car and get to our campsite in Maryland.

Katie missed out on our icecream stop! :( But we didn't tell her, so she'll live...

The railroad theme of this playground is appropriate, given that we were cycling along a trail that used to be a railroad along the Youghiogheny River. There's a functional railroad along the otherside of the river: we heard and saw many, many trains that day!

Why I Am Not a Feminist

So the fact that I feel compelled to include this post is mostly a result of the way in which many people have come to understand intelligent womanhood in general, and intelligent motherhood in particular. More specifically, it stems from the incarnation (in-web-ation?) of both in the "mommyblog." (Slogans like "thinking + motherhood = feminist" come to mind.) Don't get me wrong: I appreciate these women. I am grateful for their spunk, their commitment to natural, gentle parenting, their willingness to question what they see as the prevailing assumptions about gender and (in)equality. But I am also often saddened by the tone taken in such blogs. And a little baffled. I'm an intelligent woman (or so I like to think...) Why can't I relate?


Before I begin to explain why I can't and don't call myself a feminist, I need to come up with a working definition of the word. Yeah, I know: easier said than done. But what exactly is it that I'm refusing to call myself? I'm very much aware that I may get to the end of this post, and still get comments from people insisting that I am, in fact, a feminist, in my own way, etc., etc. (Honestly, this seems about as patronizing to me as it would likely seem to a self-proclaimed atheist or agnostic were I to insist that really, truly, they were a Christian "in their own way." But if you feel the need to do this, PLEASE include some kind of working definition of "feminist," so that we at least know what we are talking about!)


Back in the day, my undergraduate "Feminism and Philosophy" class was defining feminism as the belief that women have been and continue to be systematically, deliberately and seriously discriminated against in various ways. I know self-proclaimed feminists who would take issue with aspects of this definition (deliberate discrimination, for instance), but in general it seems like a pretty good one to me. Maybe another way of saying it is that a feminist believes that women must fight not to get the short end of the stick.


 The first problem I have with this view is that it seems to undervalue the unique joys of being female. In order to think that women are being gypped, I have to look at what women have, compare it to what men have, and come to the conclusion that men have more, women have less. Aside from the near impossibility of such a task, which seems to require a kind of omniscience, there is the problem that such a judgment must have as a presupposition that the particular things that are unique to men or that men tend to have more of are better than those things that are unique to women or that women tend to have in abundance. I look at my children and I think of the unspeakable joy of carrying them, birthing them and nursing them, and I cannot believe this. Another way to explain this is my reaction to popular attitude t-shirts for young girls that say things like "Play like a girl: Beat the boys." I don't want my daughters to believe that "beating the boys" is the standard of excellence. In my mind, a fight like this defeats its own purpose by setting up what boys or men can do as the pinnacle of human achievement, and forgetting that women have their own unique gifts and vocations.

Another problem with such a view, as I see it, is that it is primarily reactionary: we've been harmed, we've been injured, we've been discriminated against, so we must fight back to ensure that it stops happening. I guess from my perspective, fighting back IS the short end of the stick. It takes up too much energy, and keeps us from living. If I'm spending all my time trying to "beat the boys" instead of kicking the ball (or whatnot), I'm missing out on the game. What's to stop us from just living, as women, doing what we do, exercising our wills with whatever freedoms our current position in life offers us? Must we be so quick to jump to those odious comparisons?