I suppose a blog post written on my birthday should be especially reflective—taking stock of the past year, looking forward to the future, something like that. And I think it is a good time for an assessment. It’s been eight months since my mom died and eight years since we moved to Philadelphia. That’s actually the longest I’ve lived in one place since childhood. It will be our family’s fifth year at Greene Street Friends School and my sixth teaching at University of the Arts, which is the longest I’ve ever had a job, other than motherhood. In many ways, my life is rolling along, year to year, with less change than in any previous decade—at least on the surface.The most noticeable difference between this [...]

I’m learning a few things from dog training that’s making me think about the ways I’ve been training my kids:1. Let them know that you’re the “Alpha dog” and that they need to obey you. When I first became a parent, I figured I wanted my children to question things like bad government policies when they become adults, so I let them question my policies. Of course, I now have children who are independent thinkers and good arguers, skills I may be proud of when Megan wins a case before the Supreme Court, but which are currently rather annoying. Since I don’t need another family member giving me a hard time, and since I’m not that concerned about the dog’s creative expression, I’m asserting my [...]

A few days ago I was at a party and met a middle aged woman who said, “I want to do something really important before I die!” She listed some possibilities, like going to jail to end the war or restoring America’s democracy. I understood her sentiment. With so many problems in the world, I often wonder if I should be doing more to make an impact on it. But as I said to her, I’m not sure what to do. I know people who have gone to jail, and the war is still going.Later I remembered something my mother said to me at least a year before she died: “If I hadn’t had you, Eileen, I don’t think my life would have been worth [...]

I’ve had it with Disney. It’s bad enough that their female characters have waists that would choke Thumbelina. It’s bad enough that many Disney films reflect racial stereotypes, like The Lion King, where the darker lion is the evil one, and the shiftless hyenas have African American accents. It’s bad enough that they’ve convinced us that a trip to Disney Land/World is as obligatory for middle class American families as a trip to Mecca is for Muslims. Today, however, I am outraged by Disney’s marketing genius because they have got my seven-year-old boy begging to see a PG13 movie.According to our newspaper, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest includes “supernatural scares, violence, mayhem, adult themes.” Despite this, Pirates of the Caribbean is the film [...]

Spud Originally uploaded by EileenF. So here's the pooch. He's doing well, and we are all walking more! The vet says he thinks he looks like a whippet more than a pitbull and to just tell people he's "mixed."

Sunday we adopted a dog from the city pound. The children are eager to feed and walk him and earnest in their analysis of his every gesture. Tom and I, on the other hand, are just hoping this isn’t a huge mistake.It took years of begging on Megan’s part to get us to even seriously consider a dog. Then we had months of discussion until every family member was willing. I myself have vacillated quite a bit. Late last year I thought I’d be ready after my mom died, but then when she did, I realized I had more freedom of movement that I’d had in a decade, which I wasn’t ready to give it up. Then, this summer I started feeling open to the [...]

We’re back home after a wonderful eight days in Ireland. We’ve sorted through the mail, done five loads of laundry, returned most of the messages on the answering machine, and printed our pictures. So now it’s time to reflect on the trip and try to sum it up in a blog post.A highlight for me was visiting the counties where my grandparents came from, Cavan and Longford in the Irish midlands. In Cavan we only got to see the church my grandmother would have attended and the beautiful green hills nearby. In Longford, however, we tracked down my mother’s second cousin, a woman who lived with my mom when she first came to the United States fifty years ago. I knew the two women had [...]

Ireland is beautiful, and the weather has been fine. I've been particularly struck by the ancient ruins, like the 5th century monastic beehive I hiked to yesterday morning on one of the Aran Islands (I had to sneak through a cow pasture to get there.). Of course our own land has been inhabited for thousands of years too, but in the eastern United States the evidence of an earlier civilization has been paved over. Seeing the places of earlier people and their decendents gives me a different sense of time. In general, there is a different sense of time here. The Aran Islands reminded me of Africa in that way.We've has lots of adventures, including getting a flat tire on a narrow, windy country road [...]

My daughter just said that we’d have a perfect family if it weren’t for her brother. This seems a little uncharitable since she just hit him. The idea of a perfect family got me thinking about a conversation I was part of a few nights ago with a group of people, most of whom are parents as well as spiritual teachers of adults. Chris, who teaches scripture, mentioned his problem with the Biblical injunction to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” “I just think it’s a bad translation,” said Chris. Of course, I can’t remember the recent translation that Chris thought was more accurate, but it didn’t imply an impossible ideal to strive for, the way the word perfect does. It was more [...]