Kay Pelham

Today my oldest of two sisters is 7 decades old. She has ten years on me, and since she married and moved to the other side of the country when she was 19, my childhood memories of her are very few. But I think even that far away sister had a great influence on who I grew to be.

My oldest sister was a reader, thinker, talker (and how!), and challenger from the time she could do any of those things. She was a child of the 50s and 60s when many traditional ideas and values were being turned upside down in the schools, in churches, in society, and among her same-age peers. Hearing stories about elementary-aged Rita responding to a teacher that was challenging her belief in Bible stories made a big impression on her littlest sister Kay.

My oldest sister married Maurice Delwin Watson in August of 1970. I’m sure you can do the math and can determine that last year they celebrated their 50th anniversary. If my memory is still serving me right, they met when she was 15 and he was some months shy of his 17th birthday. He had come up with a group from his church in Texas, and she had crossed over the river from our Illinois home, to work in a summer campaign in Iowa, inviting people to church and to study the Bible. It was with the organization Campaigns for Christ, and one of their directors, Lloyd Deal, would end up officiating at their wedding 4 summers later. My sister and her husband have remained faithful to each other and to the Christ for whose cause they first met 55 years ago. I have no memory of meeting Del in the summer of ’66, although I heard he had visited our little house on the Illinois side of the river. What I do remember is visiting them in their homes in Colorado, Texas, (I missed visiting in their Oregon years), North Carolina, and Tennessee, and seeing the shelves of books, and hearing the discussions of “the Greek” and various translations of the Bible, and their efforts to get the people of their current church fellowship to study and think, and to care about studying and thinking. What I also saw was a couple faithful to each other and their children. Little Kay from age 9 saw and knew that this was exactly what she wanted. This is what big Kay got at 40. She waited because she saw what was possible, and she would have no less.

My oldest sister brought The Beatles and Petula Clark into our home — much to our mother’s chagrin. The Beatles’ album “With the Beatles” was hidden by Mom in our East Moline house, never to be found when we moved from that house. I believe she also put an end to the “Downtown” single. But guess what, Mom? I love The Beatles and Petula Clark! I often credit my older sister Karen with my love for music, but really, where would Karen and I be without Rita’s boldness in the 1960s? (And I don’t think that Rita especially cares for The Beatles anymore.) Rita was to me a groovy icon of the 60s. I thought she was beautiful. And groovy. She loved the folk songs of that time and still has that Mitchell/Baez soft vibrato in her singing voice. Rita sang in high school choir and college choir. All 5 of us ended up singing under G. Donald Dyer in high school. He was an excellent musician and teacher, and I’m grateful to Rita for leading the way. Mr. Dyer remembered all 5 of us, from the ’69 grad to the ’84 grad.

My oldest sister is also a visual artist. She took private art lessons in high school and has continued to sketch and paint through the years. She currently is owner/operator of “Grandpa’s House“, a store of handcrafted items from local artisans. She teaches classes in drawing and doodling. Yes, doodling. Along with marrying a fellow believer and student of the Bible, she also married a fellow artisan. Together they have remodeled (that seems too dainty a word for the work they’ve actually done) our ancestral home and turned it into its current state as a craft store, and what some have called a museum of rural life. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that because when it comes to being a visual artist, my oldest sister’s influence on me has been for me to look and admire but not to do. She’s good. Very good. I can’t draw a straight line, nor a curved one, at that. But I certainly appreciate the skill and work that goes into it.

My oldest sister made her baby sister’s wedding happen 32 years after her own wedding. Sure, I found the guy, but all that other stuff, oh, no. My oldest sister’s artistic skill runs far beyond painting a picture. I picked the music…and, yes, the guy. And my attendants. And the minister. But the rest the wedding and reception, including making the cake, were all my oldest sister. (Not to leave out my mother making my dress, my sister-in-law making the bridesmaids’ clothes, and my niece — Rita’s daughter — helping with planning and directing the ceremony. Yeah, I’m beyond blessed.) So, after persuading me to have my wedding in Tennessee (and not in Atlanta, where I was living at the time), she put it all together. Why? I guess that’s what oldest sisters do when they can, even when the baby sister is marrying at 40.

My oldest sister began homeschooling her youngest child, a son, when he was in 2nd grade in the mid 90s. I was a single woman living in NY, about 2 decades out from becoming a mother myself. I was concerned. Won’t he be isolated? (His older sisters were in high school at the time, and then off to college.) But then I realized between church, playing soccer, and other family activities, he had plenty of time being around others — kids and adults. As with that “socialization” concern, all others fell by the wayside as I witnessed my sister facilitating her son’s education. I knew before I even married that if I did have a child, I would homeschool. Without my sister’s example, which allowed me to enter the ‘homeschool world’, including getting to know other homeschool families, I wonder if homeschooling would have even crossed my radar. And what a blessing it has been to homeschool my own son from birth.

Family lore tells that in the late 50s, Mom would gather her 3 children after church to travel home, and she would count them “Eeny-Meeny-Miney, and there ain’t going to me no Mo.” Well, Mo was, and that would be me (and then our #5, brother James.) I’m glad there was Mo, and I’m glad there was Eeny. I wouldn’t be who I am without her.

Thank you, Rita.

When I lived in NYC, my friends and I liked to go to a Cuban/Chinese restaurant called La Caridad. It was cheap but very good food, and it had fast service. A long line out the door didn’t deter us; we knew it would move quickly. And there was a reason for that. Now, when my friends and I went out to eat, it was not just to eat but to have long talks. But that didn’t get to happen often at La Caridad. The servers would come by, see the empty plates, and say, “You done. You go.”

On the morning after our son James spent his first night in his “big boy bed” — which at first was mattress/box spring on floor without a frame — he hops out of bed around 5AM, comes into our bedroom and announces, “All done sleepin’!” And his Dad responds, “No, you’re not,” and escorts the toddler back to his room and into his bed.

Done. I am not done. Until my last breath is taken on this planet, I am not done here. Unless I become mentally incapacitated before that day comes, I am not done learning, I am not done changing. I am not done being a better person than I was the day before — kinder, more thoughtful, more patient, a better listener, a better communicator. I seek to know more because I want to be a better friend and teacher. Many put the books away — they are done! — after high school or college. I earned my last degree thirty-four years ago. I began teaching and working other jobs before that time. The books are still out. The conversations are still happening. I am still learning. I am not done.

Our world is becoming more and more chaotic. Without getting into too much political theory, let me say that I believe that there are some who are glad to see this and are working for this culture of disorder. The story at the beginning of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, as well as other mythologies, tells of order (cosmos)being brought to chaos, and that this is a very lovely way to live and for a society to function. Why would anyone want it any other way? I’ll leave that for you to ponder.

In Al Pacino’s 1996 film “Looking for Richard”, he involves several American & British actors in discussions of Shakespeare’s play Richard III and in filming many scenes from the play. He also goes out to the street and interviews random people about their knowledge and thoughts about Shakespeare. From my memory (maybe one day I’ll hunt down the scene on my VHS tape) he talks to a man on the street who has the appearance of living on the streets. I remember that the dental work seemed to be lacking. But this guy spoke very eloquently. He spoke about how kids don’t have language anymore. He said maybe if they knew some Shakespeare, they would have words to express their feelings, and there would be less physical violence going on.

Words. Words with meaning. Phrases and sentences with rhythms to communicate clearly their meanings. Words and rhythms of stories and songs that touch our hearts, souls, and minds. Stories and songs of fiction. Stories and songs of history. Stories and songs of heroes. Stories and songs of the Everyman like you and me. They touch our Minds. We know we can be better —- kinder, more honest, more giving, more gracious. They touch our Hearts and Souls. We want to be better. We want to live in community where each part does its work and looks out for his neighbor as he does himself.

The guy on my old VHS is right —kids don’t know Shakespeare. Kids don’t even know standard nursery rhymes, folk songs, and folk tales. I’ve learned this through decades of teaching piano. I learned this as I listened in on my husband’s public speaking class for teens. As he was trying to find something they could relate to for whatever his purpose of the moment was, he listed song after song, tale after tale, rhyme after rhyme, and this table of about a dozen homeschool(!) kids said, “Nope, nope, nope, didn’t know it.” I’m over there thinking, What a waste of homeschooling!

My friend Angelina has a Master’s degree in Literature. (She dropped out of a PhD program, weary of an academic world that really doesn’t care about the material.) She teaches Literature classes to middle school, high school, and adults. She also hosts, along with her husband Thomas Banks and Cindy Rollins, a weekly podcast called The Literary Life. Angelina’s main mantra is Stories Will Save the World. I highly recommend going to the podcast and finding the episode on “Why Read Fairy Tales?”, as well as others of this general nature. You will find her on a few other podcasts speaking about the importance of story — fairy tales and myths. (For starters, see here and here.) She believes that a child needs a foundation of these stories. I love to hear her stories about the connections that her middle school students are making with other stories as they are understanding the elements of story under her instruction. And it doesn’t stop with story. They relate what they learn through story to what they see going on in the world around them. And having been transformed by story, they are resolved to live rightly in the world.

My friend Cindy raised and home-educated 9 children. She speaks of the poems that they read and memorized together, and how some of those poems have strengthened her adult children as they remembered phrases from the poems in their times of need. They began with nursery rhymes, as we did in our family. Many of the rhymes I will be doing with my pre-school class are ones that my husband and I chanted over and over with our son. “Diddle-Diddle-Dumplin’, my son John….”  So fun. So easy to learn and remember. Wonderful rhythms. And did you know that these rhythms aren’t just in poetry? You find them in prose and in the spoken word. I often notice the rhythm of my son and husband’s speech. They use a lot of triplets! These rhythms of rhyme and song get inside of you and help you to be a more effective communicator. It is not just about the right words but how you deliver those words. Who in the world wants to speak empty words to the wind? Don’t you want what you have to say matter?

When it comes to folk songs, in my world no one is more a champion of singing and singing these songs of work and play and history than my friend Wendi Capehart. Wendi is a founder and advisory member of the curriculum we have followed since my son was a toddler. (He will be a high school graduate in May.) AmblesideOnline has “folk songs” as part of the curriculum and gives monthly suggestions for your students to learn. Wendi often writes about the history and meaning of the songs on the Advisory blog. As I related in this post, her soulful rendition of “The Happy Wanderer” that she taught at the AO retreat was one of the most moving moments of that event for me. What singing does for a person has been well-documented. And singing in community is even better. Singing songs that bring joy just with their rhythms, singing songs that move us with their sad, cautionary tales, singing songs that tell of historical events that inspire us to be brave and stand for what is right.

Over these past several years I have been inspired by the words of Angelina, Cindy, and Wendi, and it occurred to me as I approach my retirement as a home-educator, that I want to be a part of filling this void in the life of the children around me, and where better to begin than with some of the youngest of the children. Thus was created from my heart — “Story, Rhyme, & Song” for 3 to 6 year olds. I’m really looking forward to this — part of this is fulfilling a wish to “do over” (with one child, I only got to do this once, and I’ve learned so much through these years). I’m hoping to inspire families to make these stories, rhymes, and songs part of their family life. We did, and I know it has had a huge impact on our life as a family and in our care about and work and communication with the world around us.

Of the three sorts of knowledge proper to a child, the knowledge of God, of man, and of the universe,––the knowledge of God ranks first in importance, is indispensable, and most happy-making. Mothers are on the whole more successful in communicating this knowledge than are teachers who know the children less well and have a narrower, poorer standard of measurement for their minds. Parents do not talk down to children, but we might gather from educational publications that the art of education as regards young children is to bring conceptions down to their ‘little’ minds. If we give up this foolish prejudice in favour of the grown-up we shall be astonished at the range and depth of children’s minds; and shall perceive that their relation to God is one of those ‘first-born affinities’ which it is our part to help them to make good. A mother knows how to speak of God as she would of an absent father with all the evidences of his care and love about her and his children…We recollect how ‘Arthur Pendennis’ walked in the evening light with his mother and recited great passages from Milton and the eyes of the two were filled ‘with tears of holy joy,’ when the boy was eight…

https://amblesideonline.org/CM/vol6complete.html#6_1_10_01

You see my title and then read my quote and may wonder what in the world is the connection. The thought I intended to share is from the title, but this morning the quote above came up in my FB memories from a query I had made a year ago about Charlotte Mason quotes concerning ‘what a mother can do’. So let me address this quote and then ease my way into the title topic.

Not at all in the spirit of current congressional shenanigans of erasing gender-specific terms, I would like to substitute ‘parent’ for ‘mother’, or let’s just add ‘and father’ because I believe both parents have a significant influence on the heart of their children. Parents know their children — or they ought to know their children. They certainly have more opportunity than the children’s teachers. Knowing the mind and capabilities of children — and their children in particular, a mother or father does not talk down to a child, nor does he play manipulative mind games with a child, nor does she show disrespect for the child as a fellow human being in any way. Parents and children share their hearts and thoughts about the realities of life, seen and unseen, from the get-go.

I’ve been observing children and the effects of their relationship with their parents my whole 59 years on this planet. I grew up in church where parenting standards varied even amongst a people that claimed to be following the same ‘blue-print’/manual. I saw children very close to their parents, who would and could talk to them about anything, and others that seemed to have very little connection to their parents. Long before I read any ‘Charlotte Mason’ I had determined that children were quite capable, but very few parents knew those capabilities nor saw their own responsibilities for being involved in directing the hearts and minds of their children toward the good. When my husband and I became parents relatively late in life, we both had many adults years of observing various parenting and were determined to practice some intentional parenting. We’re not done yet, but I believe our ‘experiment in parenting’ has been quite successful as we near the eighteen year mark. We 3 are quite the team. We have respected the personhood of our son from birth, and he knows it.

Several days ago I noted to my husband that I believe people train their little ones to be deceitful by making ‘getting in trouble’ be a scary thing. The child develops the habit of immediately trying to hide the fact that they did the deed, they blame someone else, they make excuses, hide the evidence, claim ignorance. Why? What is so horrible about owning up to it and taking your licks? And how does this little game prevent the child from doing ‘the bad thing’ again? From the first ‘ooh, you’re in trouble’ (adding in the taunting of the other children) the child begins the practice of ‘fixing things’ to avoid the punishment. The poor child doesn’t get to experience grace because this idea of the punishment is so huge and scary. And note the word Habit. It becomes his unthinking practice to immediately deny responsibility. And so the child grows into a deceiving adult with this automatic response of denying responsibility.

As we were traveling home from our recent cross-country road trip, we drove through yet another fast-food establishment. It was very early morning and yet the line seemed to be moving slowly. We got to the second window, after paying at the first window, and all our items were given to us except one. The window closed and the person disappeared from that spot. Perhaps she was retrieving that last item. But she didn’t reappear for many minutes. The item was a bottle of water; how hard could this be? Were we going to have to wait for her to reappear as she was delivering the items for the car behind us? Still not there, still not there. Jack finally resorts to the horn. She appears at the window. He explains we still had one more item, and she says, “Oh, I was in the back.” What did that have to do with not completing our order in a timely fashion —- before you went to “the back”? None of us recall her even saying “sorry”; she just spit out what she thought was an excuse. As we drove away, I thought (and said out loud) how this was a good example of how some are trained to deceive — it’s an automatic, unthinking response to make an excuse without any indication of sorry —and to people she will never see again. What’s so hard about saying, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I hadn’t completed the order before I left this station and went to the back for something. My apologies.” Most likely whatever frustration/inconvenience we were feeling would have been alleviated by this simple show of humility and honesty. But you see this kind of thing everywhere. Why are people afraid to own up to the least little thing, over which the consequences would be so tiny, and maybe even disappear with the simple act of honesty? It really is an unthinking habit. What a ridiculous way to live. And it starts from the stupid manipulative games parents, siblings, and teachers play with kids.

On our trip to the other side of the country, we had the chance to visit with my niece and her family. Lovie is the mother of two boys, age fifteen and nine. Without giving away too much of family talk, a comment was made along the way in discussing dynamics of cousin relationships, that the nine year old often went to his mother crying about some situation. One relative said that he does this because he is trying to overcome whatever temptation for bad behavior/retaliation. I believe this. I am confident that Lovie and her son have this kind of relationship, and that the boy sincerely wants to do what’s right and understands the struggle that it is. I know that Lovie (and her husband) practice intentional parenting. I’m also familiar with the books and studies that the boys do in school because I have used the same with my son. It is possible to use this curriculum (just follow the book list) and fail to fulfill the aim of the education, but I know that Lovie gets the whole picture. The books and music studies and nature study and art study are used with the goal of touching the heart of her children. She gets that it is not about how much do they Know, but how much do they Care when they finish their education. I was extremely encouraged by my great-nephews in the week we got to spend with them. I’m very proud of the standards of my niece and her husband, and their honest relationships with their sons. You can see results already, and I know the years will show some unusually (for this culture) honest and caring men.

We recollect how ‘Arthur Pendennis’ walked in the evening light with his mother and recited great passages from Milton and the eyes of the two were filled ‘with tears of holy joy,’ when the boy was eight..

My blog, as well as other family websites, was down with malware for many months. My husband recently rescued this one, and now I can write again. This post is to explain my absence. Also, I’m testing some new look here of writing and editing with which I’m uncertain. So here goes. Where’s Publish?