I didn’t write in the journal every day, and I never could be sure whether I’d heard from God or not, so I eventually abandoned the whole idea, delight-based learning, seeking God for the children, etc.

I revisited the journal in the same spotty fashion this fall, as I try to find out how the children learn best. It turns out I learn best by obsessive journaling. Who knew?

I’ve written my recent discoveries in the journal, as well as my educational experiments. Today I went back and read what I’d written about the children from 2004 until 2009. Many of the things I wrote down from God were very loving. Many of the things were very challenging. Based on how many times I wrote some of the things, it was obvious I didn’t do them right away.

Reading through the questions I had and the answers God had, it’s hard to believe I doubted it was God. I still have to convince myself that God told me to do some of the things I ended up doing, as well as other things I never did do.

I wish I’d been more diligent about it. I should be on my 6th journal this year, at least. I think I’ll make it my goal this year to use up this whole journal and start on another.

I wonder how far into this project I’ll get before I know all the best ways to reach the children?

I have another book for piano lessons. I pulled that out today, and saw that we’re due for another recital. And, unrelated, I’m sure, my 15 year old son practiced piano without my telling him to today.

Do you journal your children? How has it helped you?

First she did Michigan’s Junior Miss.

Now she’s preparing to do Miss Michigan USA. You may have heard of the current Miss Michigan. Her name is Rima Fakih, and she is also Miss USA.

Rima’s win at Miss USA has significantly raised the profile of the Miss Michigan competition. My daughter competes this weekend against 69 other young ladies. My daughter is Miss Kalamazoo.

We are so excited we can barely breathe.

I know, that sounds random and disconnected; I quit going to book club when my mother died. But it was my mother’s book club. I just crashed it at Carol’s invitation some 14 odd years ago. Most of the women in the club are older, in their 60s and up, my mother’s peers and friends.

When she was there, I thought it was cool to be in a group having intelligent conversation with her peeps, many of them movers and shakers in our town.

But after she died, the club was a painful reminder that she was gone, so I stayed away.

Now Carol is back, and she is applying that subtle pressure again. I feel a tug to reconnect. But it feels like a selfish reason. The club started a book writing project years ago, when Carol was still in town the first time, I was still active in the club, and my mother was very much alive. I think I may want to return to the club so I can be part of that book.

Carol told me of her writing homework. I remembered our sessions where we were directed to write for 5 minutes straight on a topic, then read what we wrote aloud to the group. We never discussed editing this stuff. I’m embarrassed by some most of what I wrote. But they’re using some of my stuff as a sample.

Then Carol told me she didn’t know who wrote this piece on beauty. It began: “Beauty is a thicket I’ve been tangled in my whole life. . . ”

I got a shiver down my back. I would know that writer anywhere. It was my mother. As Carol read on, I remembered the evening we wrote those passages, and I could hear my mother read it.

She wrote, “my mother and her sisters were beautiful in the traditional sense. They had light skin and long hair, and with my brown skin and nappy hair, I was sure that I was not. . .” And I was plunged back into my mother’s pain. I felt the weight of her perception of her inadequacy the whole time she was alive.

I remember talking to my friend Claudia after the funeral. She told me that she knew my mother, or had seen her. “She was what they call a handsome woman,” Claudia told me.

I think my mother would have been surprised to see how hard her cousin Tona, whom she envied forever, took her passing. How Tona felt she’d made a spectacle of herself kissing the body and weeping openly.

My mother had tried to keep me away from Tona and her family for many years, so I could avoid the pain she’d felt growing up being compared to her porcelain doll of a cousin. When I’d been born very pale, some of those people tried to welcome me into their group. My mother resisted them, and we didn’t see much of them as I grew up.

I may have had some of their coloring, but I got my mother’s nappy hair, so I wouldn’t have completely fit in over there anyway. My mother passed on her own ambivalence about the hair and the beauty. Beauty was not a priority for her, even though she did keep herself well stocked with Barbara Walden cosmetics.

It was weird getting a hippy-type programming about beauty from her and then rubbing up against her mother, who thought beauty was important. She gave me this ancient girl’s book about beauty etiquette, and wrote this dedication: “Dearest Angela, I expect many thing of you. Beauty is one of them.”

I was an angry teenager, and didn’t want anything to do with that book or my grandmother’s demands. I was completely irrational about it. When our church started a library, we donated that book.

I discovered it much later, when I was a wife and mother of 2, taking my hungry baby to the church library to nurse him during service. I thought the 50s girl book was so charming and quaint. I couldn’t believe how wrong I’d been in judging my grandmother.

I find myself struggling with some of the skewed beauty values I’d gotten from my mother when I deal with my daughters, especially the oldest. She likes to experiment with make-up, wigs, and costumes. I am uncomfortable about all that. I hear my mother’s voice chastising me for constantly looking at myself.

But I know that at her age, my daughter is trying to find out who she is. It’s a good time to do that, before she’s got a family to take care of. She has a sense of self I never had. She knows she is beautiful—she doesn’t know she’s gorgeous, but I think she’s getting an inkling. She needs to continue her exploration until she finds what she’s looking for.

I look in the mirror sometimes and I see my mother looking back at me. It startles me. Did she know she looked like that? Did she know how many times I am told I am beautiful? And I look just like her?

What beauty issues do you have? How do you pass them on or stop yourself from passing them on to your daughters?

I have also been experimenting with teaching Chanya to play. I thought it would be cute to put her on the program tonight.

Chanya and I had a rough dress rehearsal. She was distracted. She was more interested in sucking her fingers than playing her piece. I wasn’t sure whether she’d be up to performing when her time came.

I started the program out with Esteban. Bad idea. He played tentatively and choppily. He was obviously nervous, and it sounded like he didn’t know his music. So he won’t be headlining any more recitals for a while. Esteban made a bee-line for the couch after his performance. He didn’t want to bow.

Joy was next up. She started out much more confidently than Esteban, her piece sounding like real music. Then she hit the section she was less sure of. The music lost its way, sounding confused and repetitive. Joy slowly got back on track and finished strong. She took a hurried, joyful curtsy before hopping on the couch.

Imani’s playing had a mellow tone to it. She played with dynamics (loud and soft) and she had a lighter touch than Joy. Imani took a confident bow. She had impressed her father.

Chanya had been sitting quietly on the couch in between Yanni and Xay. I didn’t know if she wanted to leave her spot to go perform. I picked her up and asked her, and she was happy to go to the piano. I started playing chopsticks, and she copied what I played. Then she looked over at her father. I gently returned her attention to the piano. We played through the notes twice, and left the piano bench.

I softly told Chanya to take a bow, fully expecting to bend her body for her, showing her how to bow. Before I could help her, Chanya had bent her tiny body at the waist and put her hands on the floor. It was the deepest bow I’d ever seen.

I should have known little miss precocious would already know how to bow.

But as I knew he wouldn’t have his piercing high voice forever, I made him sing the low part. Now, at 14, he is more a baritone, but has a solid tenor’s ear. Yanni is a soprano that sings alto at home.

And I was done. But I have more children than just those two, and I felt burdened to teach Esteban tenor. So I started singing the tenor part in our bed-time prayer. We sing the Lord’s prayer (in Spanish) at bedtime. My singing tenor has forced Joy and Imani to really learn the soprano part. They are now strong on that part, and Esteban now knows his tenor part.

But. . . now Chanya is trying to sing along. And she’s singing the tenor part as well. Now, if I’m burdened that the boys sing tenor, then I need to make sure my girls are singing girl parts.

So I sent in for reinforcements. I had Xay come and sing tenor for Esteban so I could sing soprano for Chanya. It didn’t work so well tonight. Chanya stopped singing altogether when I changed my part. Thus begins another steep learning curve. But she’s only 1 1/2. I can be patient.

They’re all playing into my plot of having a choir at home. Now if I could just get Yanni to come sing alto. . .

I’ll start with Esteban. It is so hard to believe that you are 5! And yesterday you wanted to celebrate with your very own party. Even though the weather didn’t cooperate, your guests were great. 7 people came to help you ring in 5 in style. There are still water balloon shards everywhere. And today it had the nerve to get warm enough to play with your new sprinkler!

Just in time for Imani’s birthday. Nine years ago you came into our lives, forever changing them. You’re such a presence. Big voice, big emotions, big drive for perfection. I don’t think anything is impossible to you, once you set your mind to it. So today when you wanted a fabulous leotard for your upcoming gymnastics recital, you threw yourself on the floor at the idea of a plain biketard. Then I looked at it. The fabric across the back was stretched, and what was that white stuff on the shoulder? Well, at least it was on sale. . . $18? I thought I’d seen something cheaper than that at gymnastics. So we made a deal to return for the plain suit if we couldn’t find a better price at gymnastics.

We didn’t find a better price. And I watched the tears stream down your face and decided to get on the highway and drive across town to the other gymnastics place. Which looked closed and even abandoned when we got there. But the door was open, and the man there turned on the light in the clothes shop, and I noticed that some leotards were on sale for $22. That was $10 cheaper than most suits at our gym. We found two glittery suits on sale. (one for you and one for your sister) They fit perfectly! Score!

And that storm cloud cleared up for good. You get your huge party on Saturday, just like you wanted.

Happy birthday, babies! Maybe next year you’ll want to celebrate together? Huh? Or maybe this is the start of the rest of your lives. . .

9. Yanni is on a winning basketball team. As in, they beat everyone in their Indiana tournament, and it’s been so long since they’ve lost a game that we can’t even remember when that was. And Yanni leads her team in rebounds, despite the fact that she’s the shortest player on the team.

8. Chanya is standing by herself. She likes to dance and sing, and shake noisemakers during praise and worship. My favorite move is the little elbow bending she does when she’s really breaking it down.

7. Joyous can do the splits in two directions. She’s also learning to do a bridge from standing.

6. Imani can do a bridge from standing. She’s working on kicking back over from bridge position.

5. Esteban knows all his letters and letter sounds. He is starting to identify letters in print.

4. The sounds of music in my house include Bach played by three different children.

3. Yanni’s performance in HONK! had me laughing loudly and clapping.

2. Xay’s performance in HONK! was the big show stopper. I laughed, I cried, flapped my arms like a seal.

1. Yanni tried out for the Civic Theater production of High School Musical 2, and got the lead role, Gabriela!!!!

I knew the story, the songs, the dances. I had cried at the end even during technical difficulties.

But to see an actual performance? With Curtis, who was seeing it all for the very first time? Let’s just say that it became even more special.

So I’m the mother in the back laughing and clapping at all my children’s jokes. Tears streaming down my face while my son does his song and dance. And the end? It still gets me.

I want to try and catch it again sometime next week. If you’re in the area, you should too.

It’s tech week with HONK! The Musical Tale of the Ugly Duckling. As I mentioned before, Yanni has a decent part in this show. So does Xay. So they’ve had calls like 10-10, and even yesterday, when the whole town shut down because of incessant snow, the kids were at the theater ’til after dark.

And, as much as I can, I’ve been camping out there. I met another mother who moved her whole family operation to backstage. It’s a little easier for her; her children are older and all in the play. She and her husband are theater people, and it is great fun for them to watch the play unfold.

On Thursday, I caught the end of the play, including Xay’s scene. I was clapping at everything he did, laughing like Ed McMahon at his jokes, even the corny ones. And I had a handful of suggestions for improving his performance.

Yesterday, I took the babies. When we got there, the cast was getting notes and having devotion before running act 2. I saw that Yanni needed my help with her hair, and I pinned it up in a more dramatic updo than she had managed, and pinned her muppet-like feathers to the top of it. The HONK! cast is made up of animals, mostly birds, but the way they’re doing it, the animal suggestions are subtle; orange tights for legs, etc., a feather here, a piece of fur there. It makes for an interesting stretch of the imagination. Problem is, even the cast has a hard time making out what Yanni is. She is a duck, but an exotic, queenly duck. Note to self: find one of Yanni’s numerous tiaras to add to her costume!

Then the babies and I watched the tech rehearsal of act 2. They laughed and cheered loudly when their brother came onstage, and we were all thrilled to watch them redo certain parts. At one point, Joy and Esteban were running up and down empty aisles, and Chanya tried to make a run for it a few times, but I didn’t mind.

Tech week continues next week until opening night on Thursday. I’ll try to catch a few of the run-throughs. It really is exciting to watch them put the show together.

It will be a good show!