Andrew Wyeth, who did some of his most famous paintings near where we are in Maine, said his father believed children need ample amounts of boredom in order to develop their own creativity. I think he was right.
We've had mostly beautiful weather during our vacation in Maine, but we've also had our share of rain.
Rain, fog, no television, no friends, and no phone. M deserves a medal for playing a record number of "Monopoly" games. There are other children around - we see them at nearby tennis courts for lessons - but they don't surface when our children play baseball or soccer on the big lawn below our house.
I think the lack of anything to do, the boredom that my children are experiencing, is bearing fruit. Fruit in the way of collaborative creativity.
The other day my oldest son, who is 17, started writing a play.
In the evening, as I read Babar and Zephir (by Jean de Brunhoff) to my youngest two boys in their bedroom, my eldest came in to sell the roles he'd created for his youngest brothers.
It rained this afternoon, beginning on the way home from our family's less-than-scintillating visit to a nearby town. Tonight all six of my children are at the dining room table reading the new script.
Even if they never spend another minute on this play of theirs, I love the fact that for a little while they are doing something creative, something with their minds and hearts, something that has nothing to do with computer games or movies or other technology that is served up to them for their entertainment.
This morning I tried to draw a picture of the incredible view out the living room window. I already respected artistic abilities, but my meager drawing made me put artists somewhere close to God.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Maine
We got to Maine yesterday evening.
It was raining, puddles were everywhere. Even the pine trees over my car couldn't shield me from the elements. On the root-covered, uphill path to the house we'd rented by the sea, my sandals squished the soggy grass, my jeans and t-shirt got soaked.
When I packed for this vacation, back in Abu Dhabi, how could I've forgotten I was headed for northern New England? I should've brought warmer clothes. Water repellent clothes.
But that night's discomfort was a small price to pay.
Early the next morning I woke to the moan of lobster boats, stopping to check their traps and then moving on. I looked out the window: the rain was gone, the fog lifted. Dark purple delphiniums, pink spirea, and yellow lilies bloomed under a golden sun.
The living room of Cliff House overlooks the metal-blue water of the Sheepscot Bay. Rugosa rosebushes border a meandering path down to a rocky point below the house.
Three years ago M and my daughter Julia, now 12, spotted a white seal there. I'm hoping for a repeat sighting, especially for our two youngest boys, Albert and Hugh, 9 and 8.
The smell of the sea is even stronger than in Abu Dhabi. At night the air is chilly, filled with the scent of a log fire.
It was raining, puddles were everywhere. Even the pine trees over my car couldn't shield me from the elements. On the root-covered, uphill path to the house we'd rented by the sea, my sandals squished the soggy grass, my jeans and t-shirt got soaked.
When I packed for this vacation, back in Abu Dhabi, how could I've forgotten I was headed for northern New England? I should've brought warmer clothes. Water repellent clothes.
But that night's discomfort was a small price to pay.
Early the next morning I woke to the moan of lobster boats, stopping to check their traps and then moving on. I looked out the window: the rain was gone, the fog lifted. Dark purple delphiniums, pink spirea, and yellow lilies bloomed under a golden sun.
The living room of Cliff House overlooks the metal-blue water of the Sheepscot Bay. Rugosa rosebushes border a meandering path down to a rocky point below the house.
Three years ago M and my daughter Julia, now 12, spotted a white seal there. I'm hoping for a repeat sighting, especially for our two youngest boys, Albert and Hugh, 9 and 8.
The smell of the sea is even stronger than in Abu Dhabi. At night the air is chilly, filled with the scent of a log fire.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Keeping it Simple
In two days we leave New Hampshire for the coast of Maine, my favorite place in the world.
M arrived from Abu Dhabi. He and our eldest son, who is 17, then drove from New Hampshire to Washington D.C., where M had meetings. They looked at several colleges on the way down, our son checked out three more in D.C., and they're visiting two schools on the return trip. They arrive back in NH tomorrow evening.
The rest of us left the cabin by the lake last week. The morning we departed I saw 25 geese on my neighbor's lawn.
Now we are "camping out" in our own house in New Hampshire, taking advantage of a gap between renters. We don't have a stick of furniture, except a long oak table in the kitchen.
We are sleeping in sleeping bags, some of us using a towel or a blanket if we don't have a pillow.
I love the simplicity: I have one style cup for water, juice, milk, beer, wine and coffee. Every room in the house is spacious, clean, orderly with nothing in it. Our meals are usually one-dish affairs; Robby, 14, asked me last night why it's so much harder to clean up from dinner in Abu Dhabi.
The priority these days is on seeing loved ones. I haven't seen everyone I wanted to, but I've tried to make sure each of the kids has seen at least one friend.
When we move back to NH in July 2008, after a second year in Abu Dhabi, I wish I could refuse to take back all the belongings we've put in storage. I wish we could exist as we do now, with no curtains or "things" to slow us down from seeing the sunlight and the trees outside.
M arrived from Abu Dhabi. He and our eldest son, who is 17, then drove from New Hampshire to Washington D.C., where M had meetings. They looked at several colleges on the way down, our son checked out three more in D.C., and they're visiting two schools on the return trip. They arrive back in NH tomorrow evening.
The rest of us left the cabin by the lake last week. The morning we departed I saw 25 geese on my neighbor's lawn.
Now we are "camping out" in our own house in New Hampshire, taking advantage of a gap between renters. We don't have a stick of furniture, except a long oak table in the kitchen.
We are sleeping in sleeping bags, some of us using a towel or a blanket if we don't have a pillow.
I love the simplicity: I have one style cup for water, juice, milk, beer, wine and coffee. Every room in the house is spacious, clean, orderly with nothing in it. Our meals are usually one-dish affairs; Robby, 14, asked me last night why it's so much harder to clean up from dinner in Abu Dhabi.
The priority these days is on seeing loved ones. I haven't seen everyone I wanted to, but I've tried to make sure each of the kids has seen at least one friend.
When we move back to NH in July 2008, after a second year in Abu Dhabi, I wish I could refuse to take back all the belongings we've put in storage. I wish we could exist as we do now, with no curtains or "things" to slow us down from seeing the sunlight and the trees outside.
Monday, June 25, 2007
A Log Cabin in New Hampshire
The children and I arrived back in the United States last week. M will join us soon.
We are staying in a log cabin in a rural part of New Hampshire. (Our own house is rented.)
I am soaking up the change of scenery, trying to burn it into my memory for when we return, in late July, for a second year in Abu Dhabi.
The sky is dusty blue, it seems bigger here, and it often has a gorgeous display of cotton-puff clouds across it. The road we travel into town cuts through hills covered in trees that make me think of gigantic heads of broccoli standing so close together you can't see their stalks.
Twice last week, when I was driving to the cabin late at night, deer loped out of the woods and and paused at the edge of the road. I slowed down, in case they charged my car. A deer did run into my car a few years ago in New Hampshire. But both times (last week) the deer walked back in to the forest.
Our log cabin is on a lake. The air is cool and dry. We don't need air conditioning, and my sunglasses don't fog up when I go outside.
Yesterday I saw beautiful lilac-colored dahlias for sale; I'm trying to resist buying them because in four weeks we'll be back in Abu Dhabi.
Two of my goals for when we go back to the UAE: to own a small palm tree and to take Middle Eastern dance lessons. The good news is that I know where to acquire both.
We are staying in a log cabin in a rural part of New Hampshire. (Our own house is rented.)
I am soaking up the change of scenery, trying to burn it into my memory for when we return, in late July, for a second year in Abu Dhabi.
The sky is dusty blue, it seems bigger here, and it often has a gorgeous display of cotton-puff clouds across it. The road we travel into town cuts through hills covered in trees that make me think of gigantic heads of broccoli standing so close together you can't see their stalks.
Twice last week, when I was driving to the cabin late at night, deer loped out of the woods and and paused at the edge of the road. I slowed down, in case they charged my car. A deer did run into my car a few years ago in New Hampshire. But both times (last week) the deer walked back in to the forest.
Our log cabin is on a lake. The air is cool and dry. We don't need air conditioning, and my sunglasses don't fog up when I go outside.
Yesterday I saw beautiful lilac-colored dahlias for sale; I'm trying to resist buying them because in four weeks we'll be back in Abu Dhabi.
Two of my goals for when we go back to the UAE: to own a small palm tree and to take Middle Eastern dance lessons. The good news is that I know where to acquire both.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Talking with some Emiratis
This was taken last October at the Emirates Palace Hotel during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.M and I were invited to a special Iftar, when Muslims break their daily sunrise-to-sunset fast.
The men in the picture were telling me about the reasons for the fast, which include going without food or water even on the hottest days.
They said it is to draw the person closer to God, to live as simply as possible, to feel how it is to live as the poor do, and also to continue their tradition.
From Ireland to Abu Dhabi to New Hampshire
On June 6th I returned to Abu Dhabi after a week in Ireland.
M was incredibly kind to let me go, bearing all the responsibilities of his work and the kids' last week of school, too. (When I booked the trip last winter, I didn't know it would be the last week of school - SAT exams, finals, a sixth-grader's portfolio exhibition, an eighth-grader's graduation, end-of-year parties for the third- and first-graders... I didn't. Really.)
I went to Ireland alone, to attend a writing workshop in Listowel and to visit my grandmother in Dublin. It was a restorative seven days, where I could call my time my own, eat or not eat, socialize and withdraw when I liked. Fantastic.
Tonight the children and I fly to the US after a year in Abu Dhabi. (M joins us soon.)
It seems fitting that my last day of our first year here will be spent thus: I'll apply for my first job in over 17 years (at a school), and then, what's more exciting, I will for the first time visit the home of an Emirati lady.
My children tease me (constantly) about my eagerness to meet the "locals." So far they've been far more successful than I.
However, the other day I was watering my garden and a woman dressed in the full black abaya approached me.
"Are you Joe's mother?" she asked.
"Are you Sultan's mother?" I asked.
We are both looking forward to meeting today.
(This photo M took last summer when we were all in Ireland together; it shows three of our boys on Innishbofin, an island off the coast of Clifden, Galway.)
M was incredibly kind to let me go, bearing all the responsibilities of his work and the kids' last week of school, too. (When I booked the trip last winter, I didn't know it would be the last week of school - SAT exams, finals, a sixth-grader's portfolio exhibition, an eighth-grader's graduation, end-of-year parties for the third- and first-graders... I didn't. Really.)
I went to Ireland alone, to attend a writing workshop in Listowel and to visit my grandmother in Dublin. It was a restorative seven days, where I could call my time my own, eat or not eat, socialize and withdraw when I liked. Fantastic.
Tonight the children and I fly to the US after a year in Abu Dhabi. (M joins us soon.)
It seems fitting that my last day of our first year here will be spent thus: I'll apply for my first job in over 17 years (at a school), and then, what's more exciting, I will for the first time visit the home of an Emirati lady.
My children tease me (constantly) about my eagerness to meet the "locals." So far they've been far more successful than I.
However, the other day I was watering my garden and a woman dressed in the full black abaya approached me.
"Are you Joe's mother?" she asked.
"Are you Sultan's mother?" I asked.
We are both looking forward to meeting today.
(This photo M took last summer when we were all in Ireland together; it shows three of our boys on Innishbofin, an island off the coast of Clifden, Galway.)
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