Playing the Mennonite Game...ca. 1800

In Chapter 5 of The Trail of the Conestoga, the Brickers arrive in Canada and meet up with another Mennonite family, the Moyers, who have settled in the Niagara area. After a welcome and a meal, they begin discussing the really important things.**

At this juncture, Sam found it convenient to change the subject of conversation by inquiring if Rachel, too, might be an Eby.

"No," replied Levi, "Rachel is a born Cressman, and her mom was a Shantz. Her mom's oldest sister was married with a man that had a brother, and he was a hired man once to Christian Eby. Ain't that right, Rachel, how it goes?"

But Rachel had a different version of the connection. According to her tell, it was her mother's youngest sister that had married a man, whose sister had married the hired man himself. But whichever it was, they were agreed upon the personnel of the hired man in question. He was a Baumann. Black Ephraim, they called him, for he was of a swarthy complexion.

"Baumann!" exclaimed Annie. "What for Baumann would that be now?" She knew so many by that name.

"His mom was a Bingeman, or a Sauder," replied Rachel, "or was it a Wissler? I can't think. But anyway he hears a little hard."

"Ach, him," cried John, discovering a flash of identity in the midst of diversity. "I mind him. He was at a funeral once—"

"That's him," interjected Levi, with an air of finality. "He chenerally always likes to see folks get buried."

And so the identity of the hired man was established and the bond of friendship strengthened between the Moyers and the Brickers. "It seems like we are long friends already," observed Levi, "knowing Ephraim Baumann together like we do."

**"Find-the-relatives" smalltalk among Mennonites is jokingly referred to as the Mennonite Game.

What are you reading at YOUR kitchen table?

A homeschooling blogger pointed me to this article by Mark Oppenheimer on homeschoolers and their books, from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page. I like his point that homeschoolers (of all stripes) seem to have "a preference for long books, often parts of a series, consumed with a leisure that public-school curricula don't allow." Even as a homeschooling family, time often seems too short to read some of the good stuff we'd like to; we only got a couple of books into the Swallows and Amazons series and I've always wanted to go back and read more. The Apprentice and I are currently reading Oliver Twist when our schedule says "Apprentice's time with Mom" and our other work is done. Dickens is another one of those writers whose books take awhile...but that's good, isn't it? You feel like you've lived with his characters for awhile after spending a long, leisurely time working through Great Expectations or Hard Times.

And public-school curriculum doesn't allow for long books and series books? Hmmm...that would seem to deny the popularity of Harry Potter, but I know what he means. It's the advantage we sometimes do take for granted: time. Take it, even if you're public-schooling, even if you have only a few minutes a day to read together. In Edith Schaeffer's book What is a Family?, she tells about the years when her daughter and son-in-law found their only uninterrupted time together with their school-age children was at the end of lunch hour (because their dinnertime and evenings were often shared with other people in their ministry). So that was it...a few minutes to read from a book together at the end of a quick lunch...but that was what they did.

P.S.: We don't read at the kitchen table, though; well, sometimes with cups of tea and a book of poetry. But usually we're on the couch or on the parental squirrels' bed.

Trendoids spend lots to scale back

Saturday’s National Post ran an article by Style At Home editor Yuki Hayashi called “Retro Chic is Child’s Play.” Subtitle: “Old-fashioned housewares, toys and clothing are the hot thing for mom and dad’s stylish newbie [baby].” The gist of it (with apologies because I can’t link to it) is that Bob the Builder wallpaper borders are passe in nurseries; chandeliers and refurbished dressers are in; plastic toys are out, “golden age” 1920's-style toys are in. But only if you have the money to buy them. (Mama Squirrel’s main feeling about this nursery-retro thing is that possibly the decorators haven’t actually lived with children very much; crib blankets made of antique chenille don’t sound like they’d survive more than one good upset stomach.)

Mama Squirrel knows she should be delighted to hear that companies like T.J. Whitney’s Traditional Toys are producing things like hardwood ABC blocks, and that stores like Toronto’s Kolkid are selling them (although as the store owner says in the article, “These aren’t Wal-Mart prices.”). As her friend the Deputy Headmistress at The Common Room has pointed out, there are many advantages to natural materials, simple toys, things carefully chosen and worthy of being passed down to future generations. Things that biodegrade, things that have educational value, things that are fun.

However, like anything else, the cost of this trendiness puts it out of the realm of most of us single-incomers, at least in its upscale incarnation. The Squirrel family does live near an educational/alternative toy store (although not as funky a place as the stores in Toronto). Some of the toys there are very good and affordable, others fall into the grandparents-only category. Handmade hardwood blocks would be nice if we had a couple of hundred extra dollars for them...ironically though, the squirrelings still play with a tubful of pine blocks that Grandpa Squirrel cut in his workshop about thirty years ago. (They make great beds and tables for the squirrelings’...ugh...collection of plastic troll dolls. Definitely not Retro Chic.) We do have some alphabet blocks, too, but they came from the dollar store and were bought because we needed to spell somebody's name on a birthday cake. How about the squirrelings’ much-used tubs of Duplo and Lego? Mama Squirrel knows quite well that those are not made of natural materials and that they would probably hurt the sensibilities of the trendoids (not to mention their feet if they stepped on a lost piece). But they do have a place in the Treehouse (usually all over the floor).

The main ingredient that seems to be missing in all this trendiness, is the creativity and fun of doing and making these things yourself. (Oh please...like back to The Waltons? No, really. Besides, this is where ANYBODY can do this just as well as the Trendoids, even if the toy budget is miniscule.) Two of the squirrel girls have handmade rag dolls that their Grandma Squirrel made them (with dresses to match some of their own). The Apprentice has made model “cub cars” with Mr. Fixit (one of them won a championship race a few years ago). The squirrelings have made Barbie dresses, things for their dollhouse, and put together battery-powered gizmos like a flashing headband. (Mr. Fixit can always make those books of science experiments work.) Ponytails has knitted herself a hairband and is busy right now learning to boondoggle (see her post below).

Our young squirrels are not short on toys. They have classic books and things to use their imaginations with (even if they're plastic). They have homemade things we've improvised (or they have, which is even better). They also have a Dora the Explorer backpack, a beeping plastic cash register, an assortment of Barbies, and the aforementioned plastic trolls. The squirrel philosophy is that it is better to have things that you like, that get used, and that mean something, than to worry about how they fit the decor.

And in Mama Squirrel’s final opinion, it is more fun to crochet a puppet yourself than to buy it in a funky store on Queen Street West.

Nobody's home

This AP story appeared today in our local paper. The headline used was "Intimacy lost in families’ non-stop busyness."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/22/national/main682369.shtml

Please go read it. It’s a story about families that are so on-the-go that they don’t eat dinner until after 10 p.m.; where homework is usually done in the back of the van on the way to hockey practice; and where it’s very unlikely that more than a couple of family members are even in the same room at the same time.

This is something Mama Squirrel feels very strongly about. Some of the squirrel family’s favourite evenings after supper are when everyone’s squished onto the queen-size bed, reading or cuddling or just fooling around together. (Although at those times she wishes it were a king-size bed.) There was something to be said for those old farmhouses with one warm room, though they had their drawbacks too.

Recently we’ve had some firsthand experience of the "on the run" lifestyle. The young squirrels have joined a choir that practices on Wednesday afternoons, and then they and Mama Squirrel take a twenty-minute walk (timed without any snow and no stops at the bookstore) to meet Mr. Fixit at his office for a ride home. By now it’s 5:00, so dinner is either something from the crockpot or (occasionally) pizza ordered before we leave the office. Wednesday night is also either the big squirrels’ night to go to a church group (while The Apprentice babysits), or The Apprentice’s turn to be driven to church for her youth group (20 minutes each way and she has to be there right after supper).

After a couple of weeks of this, Mama Squirrel began to have a great deal of sympathy for people who do this almost every night. Once a week is enough, thank you.

But the part about this newspaper story that really caught her attention is that the parents say "this is good for them [the children]." Now Mama Squirrel is not naive about the way newspaper reporters sometimes twist what people say (it has happened to her). But she wonders how this family came to that conclusion. Do these kids really want to be cramming their homework in the back seat? Do they like having no real dinner until after 10 p.m.? Do the kids ever get a chance to play in their backyard, or play a non-moving board game, or do some of the not-so-structured cultural activities that the Headmistress recently posted about? When do they play with their friends? Do they ever get to blow bubbles on the back porch? Although the parents described here say that their children are having a better childhood than they themselves had, one would have to wonder.

Mama Squirrel recommends the books What is a Family, by Edith Schaeffer, and For the Family’s Sake, by Susan Schaeffer MacAulay, for anyone who, like her, worries about what our togetherness is becoming.