A Moment to Pause

We have been so busy lately that there has been no time to write which is very unfortunate, because there have been so many things that I have wanted to write about. Malcolm has been keeping his busy social schedule. I think that he has much more community and friends than the average three year old around here. Keeping up with all that keeps me very busy, but honestly as I talk to more parents it seems that they do not spend nearly as much helping their children deepen their relationships with their peers. It seems that is rarely prioritized, and I wonder why. In many ways it is much easier for me when Malcolm has other children around. He is entertained and the adults in the house do not have to perform, we are able to get much more done, and he is much less crabby than usual in the evenings because he is so happy to play and less focused on being tired and hungry and wanting immediate gratification. Often, it is also means that the adults in the house get to connect with other adults as well, so other than a little extra clean-up and perhaps a slightly later bedtime, I don't really see the downside. He is so enriched by having those relationships and challenged to learn and grow in many other ways that I feel that it is really important.

I think that perhaps other people just feel that they want more time to just be with their families, and I often feel that way, but I often think that adding more children and parents at least weekly just intensifies the quality of that time. I don't know, perhaps I am not really explaining it well, or perhaps I feel this way because of my cultural perspective and the cultural perspectives of other adults in the house. All the other adults in the house grew up in places where extended family was the norm, and although it was mostly my mom and I growing up she did have a very large social network of family friends that help raise me and that is where I learned my community-building skills.

I am often struck though by how different the world is that Malcolm is growing up in. I often hear people say that Portland is not diverse, but they must live in a different Portland than we do. On our block all the families with children have bilingual parents, and all of them are bilingual in different languages Tongan, Swahili, Spanish, and probably more that I have not discovered further down the street. They all ride their bikes, watch out for the neighborhood raccoon, tell stories about what our chickens do when they get out, and new friends are starting to play in our garden or hang out with us in the park.

Malcolm does not see language as a barrier to play. He sees every child around his age as a friend he hasn't met yet. He already knows that he can be president, and he loves his large group of important adults.

We have been spending lots of time in the garden since the sun returned to the Rose City. Last year, I never took pictures of the garden this year I want to make sure that I keep tabs on its evolution. So here are some pictures that I took in the last few days, but there have already been some major changes that will need to be posted later.

Making Bread

I have been really inspired in the breadmaking department lately. It helps me feel that I am connected to women and ancestors all over the world, and that no matter what the economy does that I can feed my family. I wish that we had enough land that I could take all this urban farming to the next level, but I am able to grow some of the herbs for the bread and harvest the eggs from our yard, that is a great start, but what I wouldn't give for a little land, some fresh honey and a garden overflowing with food and flowers to frolic and learn in. In the meantime, I am still experimenting with the bread. Here are the pictures of my last batch of abundant loaves for the family.

New Life, New Struggles, New Growth

It is definitely still Springtime, and I am thrilled that some little bit of sunshine has finally returned to Portland. If you don't live in the Pacific Northwest or perhaps a tropical rainforest then you may not know what it is like to feel like your feet are starting to mold, and that perhaps that myth about Oregonians growing duck feet is not that far off. I am not really designed for that, and my husband, being a native of Kenya in East Africa is definitely not designed for all that rain. To top that off the little that we managed to preserve from our first year garden last year has all been depleted. I am so tired of grocery store food, I am aching for sun and food directly from our backyard. The recession has also hit our house, neighborhood church, just life in general. We have a friend, another Kenyan immigrant staying with us because he has not been able to find a job for months, our neighbors next door have an in-law staying with them for the same reason and another part of community village has lost her job as well. So I have been thinking more and more about the adage that "real revolutionaries grow their own food."

It seems like despite our best efforts at nonviolent communication, or general togetherness this house has been full of very loud processing while all of the struggles that we face come up. Honestly, it is all here we are very diverse household. Two of us are immigrants, one of us is a child, one of us is queer, most of us are Black, and let just say that income is enough at the moment, but you never know, it can still be tenuous. So Easter fell in the midst of all this, and brought with it the message of new life and I started processing that. Then I had an issue with my tooth that brought unbearable pain, but one of my coworkers at school put me on to squirting Echinacea directly on the area. The earth is miraculous! This was amazing, and then this same week we got our baby chicks.

Here are some pictures of our garden starting to come alive, and the new baby chicks. I still have at least three posts worth of topics to cover today, but I will try to break them into sections so that you can all read the parts that are most interesting to you.

My favorite moments

These days my favorite moments are when Geoffrey and Malcolm are sleeping and I am lying on the bed listening to them. It so sweet and so peaceful.

The other thing that I love is gazing at our garden, the chicken, our vegetable starts growing and the circle of tulips around the plum tree which is now in bloom. I can gaze out the window endlessly at it on rainy days and just sit and play the rest of the days. I am also noticing that the native Currant and Salmonberry bushes that I planted are thriving.

Garden hikes in the city

Today Malcolm and I finally made it to the Honeybee Hike in Leach Botanical Gardens. I had read about it in the Metro Parent which is my guide to events kid-related in the city. It was a lot of fun and I felt like I had discovered a whole new world in Portland that I had not known about. I would not have expected this beautiful forested area to be off of 122nd. I am posting pictures here of Malcolm looking at the little pond. He was trying to see if he could see the frog eggs. I promised him that we can go back when the tadpoles hatch, and he also loved looking at the mallard duck couple. The theme of the walk was shapes so we went through the garden trying to find different shapes in the flowers and the leaves.
Malcolm trying to see the frog eggs in the pond-"When are the baby frogs coming mama? When will the eggs open?

Two Mallard ducks graced us with their presence.

My Little Lion

Malcolm has really been into being a lion lately. It was this game that started at Mountain Valley a long time ago, and then never really stopped. Malcolm rushes to get into the lion costume as soon as we get to school, and will only take it off long enough to use the potty, and only if I reassure him that I will save the lion costume until he is done peeing which I faithfully do lest disaster occur.

He did have a week of biting at school which was hard on all of us as a community, but it seems that a week off for spring break was just what he needed. He says that he wants to be a happy lion now that gives hugs, although mostly he only wants to do it to his favorite people.

He is growing in so many ways, but in other ways he is really a mystery to me at this point. He can express so many things and tells elaborate stories, but there is a way that he is separating himself from me too. These days he really wants Daddy or Uncle much of the time and does not want mama.

I know that this is a part of growing up, although this is making my I want another baby hormone go wild too, but of a part of me is injured. I am sort of indiginant " Hey remember you came out of my body? Quite painfully I might add, and I have rearranged my world for you and to spend time with you and home and community school you and teach you about art and music, and how to make things and go on endless train rides with you? Remember me?"

Also, for the past two days he has refused to nap for me. He is obviously exhausted but he just won't sleep and then he spends the rest of the afternoon bursting into tears, and I try to use all my nonviolent communication to empathize our way through. The problem is you are supposed to give yourself empathy first, and I always skip that part. I know I am not supposed to forget that part, but I don't really know how to do it. Is anyone willing to shout "Stop self-empathy first" at me the next time he is screaming?

Signs of Spring

Spring has finally begun to spring in Portland. There is talk of chickens everywhere! We went to a tuplip festival, and our garden has been completely transformed into an urban homestead. I will post pictures of that soon, but am still plagued with a few technical difficulties. There do still seem to be a lot of uncertainities in the air, the recession is definitely impacting Portland, but when the sun comes out after all those months of "liquid sunshine" and we all get our much needed doses of vitamin D, everyone's mood changes.

I am also uplifted by other things. I am taking a class with Geoffrey and Nathaniel in Nonviolent Communication with Children. I love this class! I can not really get enough of it. I can't say that I have perfected it, epsecially in some of those more heated moments, but it does give me another perspective and way of looking at things, and a different way of approaching other family members in the house. In fact, it has given me a whole new set of tools for communicating with many people at Mountain Valley as well as at home. It is continuing to shift my thinking in terms of how I want to raise Malcolm, and educate him.

I am really open to a lot of possible futures for Mountain Valley, but it would be great if it became a charter school and then it would really be a special place for kidsof multiple ages where we could really venture out into the city and other parts of the wide wide world to learn about all sorts of things.

I am also learning a lot more about permaculture, simple living, and many other things. I am just dying to dive into all of these inter-connected areas and recreate myself and create the world with Malcolm and my family. I have been saying lately that what I really want to do is to make stuff, grow stuff, and create stuff. Malcolm is done baking pumpkin bread with his Uncle. I got to go-bathtime.

Family Photos

My long lost brother ( he would probably say that I am the one that was lost) came into this week for a visit. So Malcolm got to meet his Uncle Victor. It was great. We got to learn a little bit about what he discovered about the Bridgeman family tree, and connect. We went to a wodnerful Korean restaurant called Toji. By the time we got back though Malcolm was totally exhausted. We kept him out way past bedtime.

Daddy's Back from Kenya!

Geoffrey finally arrived yesterday. I can not express how much we missed him, and it seems like the world shifted as soon as he arrived. Malcolm is more excited and fulfilled than I have seen him in a long time. In fact they went out to ride the Max train while I worked on our taxes ( still not finished) and worked on updating the blog.

Here are some pictures of the reunion. Geoffrey showered us with beautiful African clothes!

Malcolm' Trip with Uncle

On Valentine's Weekend Nathaniel took Malcolm on a little trip up to the Olympic Peninsula to give me a much needed break, a chance to get a little respite before Geoffrey came home a few weeks later. He got to meet his little cousins up there, at least we think of them as cousins. Nathaniel's family is ours after all.

It's a New Day!

Dear Malcolm,
We Did IT ! We elected an African-American president in the true sense of the word, and more than that we elected Barack Obama a man of almost unspeakable integrity and compassion with a great sense of history. He was inaugurated 6 days before your real third birthday. We watched it at Mountain Valley with other Black children. I had you and Maya both on my lap. At points in the speech you applauded on cure, and at points you jumped up and a\down hands in the air chanting "Yes, we can."

I can not explain to you the shock that I feel at this whole event. I am still taking it all in. I am so happy that I can tell you now that you can be anything that you want to when you grow up, and not feel on some level that I am lying because of the plight of Black men in America. I feel that on the day that man took office that for the first time I became an American. Even though I was born on this soil. Even though my fathers' ancestors built this country as slaves. Even though my mother's ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower, and later became syffragists, I never felt that I was an American. I always felt too alien to have that title apply to me. I seemed to belong to all the wrong groups, or at least not to belong to write ones. Now, seeing a Beatuiful Black Man and Black Family stepping into the doors of the white house built by slaves like our ancestors as President and First Lady, and hearing him recognize people of all faiths but especially the Muslim community, recognizing people of all kinds, queer, straight, poor, rich, Black, white, and every hue in between, I feel healed but shocked.

What we have overcome my child! How far we have yet to go, but how much we have overcome! Someday you will learn how your grandmother was beaten fighting for injustice. Someday you will know what your parents went through just trying to be who we are, and how hard it is even to figure out how to love each other because of all the oppresions we must live through.

This world that we live in now is crazier even than the one I inherited from my parents. I thought that there was no way that you would live in a better place than me. I thought surely you would still face racial profiling as well as global warming, terrorism, and endless war, but now something is better than it ever has been. Some healing has happened, and if nothing else we have managed to give you a gift, a better more hopeful world than I ever imagined.

I am finally starting see what Dr. King must have felt like living in the times he did. I now see that we also live in great and historic times. I am still trying to process what I can do to heal from the past and rise to the call that the present is putting forth. I need a moment to get some rest, catch my breath, to figure out what direction God wants me to go, but I am so happy that you my beautiful milk chocolate sweet, sweet son can grow up in a world in which your humanity will be more recognized and your potential more acknowledged than was ever possible before.

Please take a moment to look at these photos. How beautiful are the Obamas? Do you see President Obama laying his hand on the same bible that Abraham Lincoln used. History has a way of coming back in cycles. There have been so many invocations of Dr.King that I think that at times I have felt him sitting next to me. In my mind, Ihave seen him embrace President Obama with pride and then whisper "Mr. President, there are a few things I would like to discuss with you tomorrow." Let us believe that Dr.King is doing the work of saints and ancestors and guiding our president still.

Thank you America for being able to take a risk, and for being willing to finally look at the racism within us and say "Yes, We can" anyway.

Malcolm, I can not wait to see what you will do in this world.

The Birthday Cake

Uncle Curtis and Uncle Nathaniel baked and decorated Malcolm's beautiful train cake. It was quite an effort. The began baking the night before the party at 6:00pm and went until around 3:00am I think. Then they continued on the day of the party from 12:30 to 4:00. The party began at 5:30. It was beautiful! We have a community with lots of dietary restrictions so it had no dairy or wheat flour ( they used oat flour instead), but the icing had about 6lbs of powdered sugar. It was as sweet as their affection for you Boo!

All Aboard for Malcolm's Birthday Part 4

All Aboard for MAlcolm's Birthday Part 3

All Aboard for MAlcolm's Birthday Part 2

All Aboard for Malcolm's Birthday Part 1

We had Malcolm's birthday party at the Children's Museum this year. It was superfun as Malcolm and I are bound to say. Malcolm helped mama and Grandma pick out the train plates and train birthday hats and everything for his party. He also approved the choice of the Children's Museum, and almost all of his friends showed up. We really have made a tradition having a wonderful time when we have a community celebration of Malcolm, and this one was a great hit. Malcolm has so many friends that we had to have an after hours party so we could invite more children, and we did have about 24 children (not including babies in arms) in attendance.

Here are pictures from our celebration. I will post additional ones later. Jessica also sent me a link to pictures that she took at the party, but I have not quite figured out how to download those pics in a way that I can post them here.

These pics show him and some of his friends, and also the beautiful birthday room that we had at the Children's Museum. There are too many to attach to one post so I will have to split it up among a few posts.