It’s been a little while since I posted about my experience of learning to paint with oils. I’m finishing my third set of studio classes now.

This is my biggest painting yet—a 16 by 20 canvas. I used my photograph of my neighbor’s magnolia blossoms as a reference. I am very pleased with how this came out. I tried to paint quickly and with emotion. I allowed the underpainting to show through for the first time in the hopes that it would lend a dreamy kind of atmosphere. I see a couple of things about this that I would like to fix, but I think it’s basically done. I think I’ll even sign this one.

I’m really enjoying my teacher, Randy Blasquez, and my classmates. I’ve now been coming to class long enough that I’m getting to know other painters and see and learn from their processes, too. Everyone is different. Everyone struggles with different aspects of painting. Each subject we attempt has its own challenges. I love tackling new things, and I feel I’m learning with each painting I do.

I’ve done a very little bit of work at home, which was very fun. My new easel, whom I named Anaïs, and my new “French Mistress,” whom I named Genevieve, are working out really well. Genevieve is a wood palette box that holds my glass palette and keeps paint from getting everywhere. These gizmos are beautiful and functional. I waited about six months before investing in these items. I think I had to prove to myself that this painting this wasn’t a fly-by-night whim.

This is a shot of my slightly damaged painting I did in class back in February. Some “helper” seems to have dragged a little finger from the dark center of the poppy down into the pot and the blue of the tablecloth. I’ve managed to take out most of the line with some very careful scrubbing, but I still have to repaint part of the poppy. I like this painting, too. I like the shadows especially. While working on this painting I was consciously trying to use more paint. That probably sounds funny, but I have a tendency to be conservative—oils are pricey. I wanted this painting to have more flow and texture.

Last Friday I got to go to a plein air workshop. It was my first experience painting landscapes outside. I’ll write about that another time. For now, I’ll say it was amazing and fun—and full of new challenges.

Dragon and Archangel Michael from 2009

It’s Michaelmas time again, one of my favorite times of year. Over the years, as I’ve engaged in our Waldorf school’s Michaelmas Festival, I’ve come to see Michaelmas as a truly enlivening and uplifting event that reaffirms my faith in humanity’s goodness. Michaelmas happens each year at a time when I find myself noticing nature turning toward dryness and decay. I notice all the upheaval in the world, both personal and global. It’s not that such things don’t happen at other times of the year, but something about this season makes them more poignant for me. As the nights grow longer and the year begins to die, my own dragons surface and start making noise that cannot be ignored. And so, I pay them some attention.

We all have faced some dragons recently! Ian faced the Tough Mudder and emerged victorious, having worked so hard to prepare both physically and mentally. Asher has faced down his own fears about being in a new school. Lucas is wrestling with new expectations on him now that he is older, and finding that sometimes he wants to quit piano and sometimes he doesn’t—for playing requires discipline and fortitude and stick-to-itiveness. My own issues revolve around some beloved family members, and their ill health is weighing on my mind. (Oh, and fear of failure. And fear of success. Money woes. All those old standbys are still present, too.)

Our Michaelmas nature table display, with handmade figures

For me, the Michaelmas festival reminds us that we all have a part of us that lurks in the murk, with our dragons—fears, angers, resentments, jealousies, laziness, etc.—as bitter (and sometimes comfortable) companions. Our societal dragons are fear, hate, bigotry, greed, and isolationism. And yet despite our foibles and in the middle of our challenges, we keep striving, working for the good. We shine our lights into our days and nights and work to make the world brighter in small ways and in big.

With Michaelmas, we have our metaphor of plucking up our courage and going out on the field to meet our dragons head-on. Though we are frightened, we call them by name and take a good hard look at them in the sunlight. And in doing so, we shrink them and corral them, tame them or banish them, or simply bring them under our better control. When we face reality with honesty and bravery, we are imbued with light and can use this strength daily in our interactions will all people.

But let me be clear, dragons are mighty teachers, too. Our dark sides can be a source of inspiration, power, and mystery. The fertile soil of our inner darkness must be balanced and harnessed by the light in us, that we may live healthy, happy lives and do soulful work.

Asher is experiencing in Kindergarten the story of a simple boy, George, who acts out of bravery and righteousness to help others and in doing so overcomes fear and darkness. He retold the story to me yesterday with great gusto. The older Kindergarten children are making their wooden swords of righteousness. They are dyeing silken capes with golden light. They are preparing themselves to be bold and good in the world.

Lucas’s 2010 modeling clay scene of Archangel Michael battling the dragon within a ring of fire

Lucas’s class, the fourth grade, are making shields. In the Michaelmas festival this Friday, they will protect the villagers when the dragon arrives. Their great courage will shield the innocent from harm.

So, if you’re curious about this festival, here are some other places you can look. I hope that it might inspire you as it has inspired me.

My post about Honoring Our Dragons.

A Michaelmas craft the boys and I enjoyed last year.

Last year’s 2010 School Michaelmas Festival. And here’s 2009′s festival post.

Last year’s family Michaelmas celebration at home. How might you make a dragon dinner?

Third graders making dragon breads at Sacramento Waldorf School

Here are some other wonderful Michaelmas links for you to explore:

Read this one. I promise you won’t be disappointed: Barbara Klocek’s article about Michaelmas in the Kindergarten. (Mrs. Klocek was one of Lucas’s Kindergarten teachers.)

Lots of info about Saint Michael and Michaelmas here.

Carrie’s 2009 post about Michaelmas on the Parenting Passageway is here.

A great post about building a dragon with a sixth grade Waldorf class is found on The Waldorf Way blog.

A new article about Michaelmas “The Festival of Human Becoming” by Danielle Epifani on The Wonder of Childhood online magazine.

Mamaroots has a tutorial for making stick dragons

The meaning of the Michaelmas festival by Rudolf Steiner is here.

Rocking Granola has a great list of more resources here.

Asher has started Kindergarten! He’s been very excited about this all summer. We attended an end-of-summer work party one morning and an orientation morning a few days before the official start of school. Here he is on that September 2 morning.

Pretty proud and hopeful, right?

The first day for Asher to join the Red Rose Kindergarten at Sacramento Waldorf School was last Wednesday. He happily posed for pics and marched headlong into the yard to play with friends, many of whom were in preschool with him last year.

He likes the swings and to run around in the circle bordered by the straw bales. He’s eating all his lunches up nicely.

This first week has been a little hard, however. He’s still adjusting to all the newness—new place, new teachers, new classmates, new rhythms. My little guy who is normally so bold and jolly has been crawling into my bed before dawn, crying and saying he doesn’t want to go to school. Nothing has happened or gone wrong. It’s just a lot of change all at once. I think things are gradually improving as the days add up. I have picked him up a few days “early,” meaning after lunch at the end of the Kindergarten morning, instead of after nap group. His problem may be merely that he doesn’t want to nap.

I know in another week his anxiety will be gone and he’ll be making lots of friends. I know that he’s brave and will soon be a ringleader. But right at this moment, my sunshine boy is working through it. It is both hard and exhilarating to watch him tentatively taking these steps into the world.

I am having more success this year than possibly ever before. Which is why hurting my back last weekend has really thrown me off. See, I’m not not exercising this week because I don’t want to. Well, OK. I’ll turn that around: I’m not exercising this week not because I’m too lazy, or my kid is sick, or there’s no time, but because I can’t. Because I should heal from whatever the hell I did to myself. Because I don’t want to make this mild injury worse.

And, well, this not exercising is kind of driving me nuts. I can actually, honestly say it: I’m missing my exercise this week. I’m feeling really hampered by this mild back pain, this slight impediment to my normal, everyday movements. And I don’t like it. I don’t want to rest.

Those who know me will realize how big that is.

Ian deserves all the credit, except for the fact that those calories I’ve been burning regularly since January 17, 2011 were my calories and I burned them. But Ian helped an awful lot—by coaxing, encouraging, cajoling, rousting, pushing, and loving me into our shared exercise and my fitter, stronger body.

It’s worked. I’ve accomplished 121 workouts since we started seven months ago. I won’t go into all the gritty details. The truth is I hated many of them, especially those that began and ended before 7 a.m. But what I like is the accumulation of them. The collection of workouts. The notches on my bad-ass belt. The sparkly jewels on my custom rainbow-and-unicorn reinforcement star chart that Ian made for me.

My relationship to exercise in general has always been wobbly—often emergency-room wobbly. Exercise has always meant to me asthma, asthma, and more asthma, running around toxic school fields of allergic green death. There have been some small exceptions in my adult life, since asthma maintenance drugs have improved immeasurably over those I took as a child. The crux there is they were always brief exceptions, short forays into the realm of normal people. In high school I enjoyed dancing in musical theater productions quite a lot. In college I walked all over the hills of Santa Barbara, Berkeley, and Saint Andrews in Scotland. During one of my office jobs, Ian and I managed to drag ourselves to the gym with good regularity.

Something always came up, though. Asthma. A massive deadline, or a whole season of them. A nursing baby in arms. Then another. It just got more and more complicated.

K, never mind all that. The point is: I’ve been running. A little. Since about March. A little here, a little there. Almost 2 miles, then almost 2.5. Then 2.7 miles a bunch of times, then that distance without any walking breaks at all.

Last Saturday, I ran 3.8 miles in a row without stopping. And when I was done, I felt fantastic.

So, I’m a runner? Me? Asthma girl? Running is the freakin’ Holy Grail to me because it’s always been so unattainable.

And now I’m benched. Slightly injured. For now. For not much longer, I hope. Because now that I’m on a roll—succeeding at this difficult thing—I really don’t want to lose it all and go back to Square-One Failure. The Harpies are shouting in my ear, “See, you can’t actually be a runner. You’re no athlete. Who do you think you’re kidding?” And I fear I will have to start over. I have fears.

I also have two stars to go before my rainbow is complete.

In a way, it was kind of his night. Independence Day celebration + 9-year-old boy + adults with fireworks money = Opportunity!

Because you have to test,

have to experience things with all of your senses,

as close as you dare.

You need to observe others displaying both prudence

and risk—to figure out why and when and how.

Sometimes you have to feel danger in your own hands

to learn exactly what makes it dangerous,

learn to harness and create with it,

learn to celebrate it, and ultimately to transmute it into experience and beauty.

Yep. Tonight I begin. I was delayed slightly in this, my most recent, foray into madness. But that was a temporary setback, a mere postponement. Tonight I step into my first oil painting class with a humble, fearful heart. Nevertheless I step because my friends believe in me—so much so, they’ve funded my class fee as a birthday gift.

Yesterday evening I went to the art store and bought $200 worth of oil paints and canvas, much of which was on clearance.

OMG. That’s a lot of money for a lark, a whim, a hobby!

Yep. The voices in my head are really loud about all this, and mostly they are unkind. The harpies are out in full flight, screeching about how ridiculous is it to start this. Who am I to think I might paint? They’re dive-bombing me with doubt and scornful comments. It’s too expensive. It’s impractical. I don’t have enough time to fold all the laundry or work to earn my living, so what in the world do I think I’m doing taking a painting class?

And yet, I’m going. I’m going to try this because I’ve always, always wanted to. And because if a girl cannot find a way to fulfill a dream once in a while, what’s the point?

Both art and living share this: they are a messy, dangerous process. Might as well get messy.

~~~~~~~~~~~

“Dad, who died?”

It’s May 2, 2011, the day after your birthday. We have had an exhausting weekend celebrating your 9th. We’re eating breakfast and the radio is on. Usually I turn it off while we eat but this morning I left it on. Last night’s news is still playing out: NPR with their mix of studious research and golly-gee man-on-the-street reporting. You figured out that someone was dead, and that this was somehow a good thing, and the cognitive dissonance prompted you to ask:

“Dad, who died?”

On September 11, 2001, I was working as a computer tech for an online seller of insurance. It was a job that I wasn’t excited about. What I was excited about was that you were due to be born in May of the following year. We had only recently discovered that your mother was pregnant and we were trying to figure out what that was going to mean to our lives. I got in my car like usual, turned on the radio, the disc jockeys were talking about something that had happened in New York, a fire or some sort of accident. By the time I got to the office they were talking about an attack, possibly missiles. At the office, we watched on TV as the truth was slowly discovered. Four passenger planes had been hijacked and turned into missiles: One slammed into the side of the Pentagon, two slammed into the World Trade Center skyscrapers, and one ditched into a field in Pennsylvania. We were stunned, as we imagined the blood on the airplanes, we saw on TV people leaping to their deaths from the flaming buildings. The office closed early that day, and I was left wondering what sort of world I was bringing children into.

“Dad, who died?”

When you were about 5 years old we brought home a picture book about a fireboat. It started out describing the history of fireboats in Manhattan, but as the city developed, fireboats were retired. In the 1990s, a group of friends restored an old fireboat. “How wonderful!” we said. We identified with the group of friends who enjoyed sharing big projects together—and then we turned a page, and there were the two towers in flame and smoke again. Your mother and I burst into tears; you were mystified. It had been years, but the image of the burning towers overwhelmed us. We recalled the evil perpetrated on our country, but also how that evil had affected our country since. (The book would go on to tell the story of the friends sitting in the harbor for days, pumping water onto the site of the fires. There were many stories of courage and sacrifice that day.)

“Dad, who died?”

When I was a kid Americans did not torture, even in war time. Americans did not gather intelligence on other Americans, and we did not wage preemptive war. As the years after 9/11 unwound we saw exactly how dangerous fear could be. American fear allowed a corrupt and silly President to be manipulated by oil companies into starting a war in Iraq. American soldiers, which is a fancy way of saying, “your neighbors and friends” were risking their lives and dying simply to adjust stock values. As our leadership claimed necessity we saw hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, no weapons of terror, and vast amounts of American money flow to crooked contractors connected to those same leaders. This led many of us to despair that America as we knew it was over, that we would never again see a free election, we would never see an end to fear and manipulation.

“Dad, who died?”

OK, I know this is stupid, but sometimes when I see ’90s sitcoms set in New York City, like “Friends” or “Seinfeld,” and they show the skyline during a cutscene or credits, and I see those two towers, I cry.

“Dad, who died?”

The object of the terrorist is to convince the population that the State is as horrific as the terrorists say it is. If I can control your fear, I can control you. This is deep mindfuck territory, and it works. Americans gave up so much of who we were because of our fear of what this man and his followers could do. I have never been afraid of terrorism, but I have been regularly frightened by the behavior of fellow Americans. After 9/11, civil discourse and intelligent discussion were derided, and ignorance and jingoism took center stage. When President Obama was elected, the fearful went mad. It is said that a black man must be twice as good as a white man in order to be treated as an equal, and after watching the patience and humor of Barack Obama, I think that is true. People said he was “un-American.” Fools without the wit to meet the man in a substantive debate demanded proof of his citizenship. Whereas a white neighborhood organizer would be congratulated on his dedication to his community, Obama was called Hitler. It was all simply racism, which is just another word for fear.

“Dad, who died?”

Parents are the worst sort of fear mongers. You see, we have these little bits of our hearts running around in the world. We call them children, and people say, “Oh, you are such a good person to have children. I could never have children. I am far too selfish.” That’s just silly. You see, having children is a very selfish act. It is the only way that we can project ourselves into the future. Parents have a very narrow focus: Our children are really all we care about. So when someone threatens our children, our better judgment goes out the window. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the most powerful women in the Republican party constantly point to their fears for their children: Fear is the only card they have to play.

“Dad, who died?”

According to the LA Times: “Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, in 1957, the seventeenth of the 54 children of the founder of the Bin Laden Group, a construction company. His father, Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, was a Yemeni immigrant … The elder Bin Laden was a devout Muslim, raised in the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect. He had at least eleven wives. Osama was the only child born to Alia Ghanem, a beauty from Syria who preferred Parisian fashions to the veil. As a foreigner, she did not rank high in the family pecking order. Some members of the Bin Laden clan have said her status was so lowly that she was known as “the slave” and her son as “ibn al abida” — “son of the slave.” In 1967, when Osama was about 10, his father was killed in a plane crash. His share of the inheritance reportedly was about $300 million.”

“Dad, who died?”

American students read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s about race and justice and fear and humility. There is a small episode in the text where the father, much to the surprise of his children, shoots a rabid dog in the street. He doesn’t like to do it, and it brings him no joy; he does not celebrate the destruction of a living creature. But it must be done, a rabid dog cannot wander the street.

“Dad, who died?”

When I was 9 I asked my mother why there were bad people in the world. She told me that people aren’t bad, but that sometimes they don’t get enough love, and that leaves a hole in their heart, and they do bad things in an attempt to fill that hole up. She told me that for some people, being bad was the only way that they could ever be important.

“Dad, who died?”

“… we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.”

“Dad, who died?”

Today I am looking at your mother over the breakfast plates. How do I answer this question? I start and stop a couple of times. A monster, a rabid dog, a “bad-guy,” a man who, through his cunning and violence, showed us the worst of ourselves. A terrorist, not simply someone who uses violence, but uses violence so that the victims of that violence will become monsters. Here was a man who spent his life developing a worldwide network of hate, just to throw it away on one simple murderous act that ripped the conscience and self-respect out of our nation.

“Dad, who died?”

Well son, no one to worry about. He’s dead and buried in the sea; and it is my fervent hope that as we forget his name, we will remember who we are.

“I feel like the tortoise who won the race. No wonder he went slowly!” Lucas said, staggering under its weight.

He’s off with his third-grade class for a first-ever overnight camping trip. They are going to Full Belly Farm, an organic farm in Capay (which must be really close to the farm we went to last weekend). The whole class will be sleeping in tents. It’s going to be awesome.

I am so proud of Lucas. Today, I truly feel that the time does fly by. Wasn’t it only a few months ago that I was holding his hand as we marched for the first time into the Kindergarten?

The anticipation of this class trip was hard on him. Lucas was pretty nervous and asked me more than once, “Do I have to go?” He cried and worried. It’s so hard to find the right balance between being compassionate about his emotional turmoil and being encouraging yet firm. No, I’m not going to let him skip this amazing class trip because he’s afraid of it. He is ready, even if he doesn’t know it yet. Does that make me mean? That’s mothering for you—I’m part Mom, part Sensei.

I just kept telling him how much fun he was going to have, how busy he and his classmates would be, and how it’s OK to feel nervous about things. “You’ll be fine! Lots of people will be there to take care of you,” I told him. I also know that Lucas is a wonderful caregiver, and so we role-played how he would act if he found one of his classmates was having a hard time and feeling sad and homesick. He came up with wonderful strategies for making that friend feel better. I think that made him feel empowered and competent.

I made sure Lucas has both phone numbers so he can call home if he needs to. The teachers said that would be fine. We packed a little lavender-scented pillow I made him for Valentine’s Day; something he can sleep with if he’s feeling homesick.

The worry he has been feeling the last couple of days seemed this morning to have been outstripped by his excitement. He happily trudged out the door—no tears, no bargaining, no hesitation. Just an 8 1/2-year-old boy with places to go and friends to meet.

Courage is being afraid and doing the right thing anyway. This trip seems to me to have just the right degree of challenge, the right ratio of fear to reward. And of course, it has everything to do with their third-grade curriculum, studying gardening and grains.

(These are partial-page scans from his Gardening and Grains lesson book. My scanner isn’t big enough to capture the whole page.)

I love this Waldorf curriculum. I love that my son gets to spend a day and a night on a working farm that is using sustainable practices and raising sheep for wool. I love that he knows where his food comes from. I love that part of school for him is fresh air and sunshine, digging in the mud and planting seeds, and swimming in a pond. I love that his physical and spiritual development are carefully considered in addition to his academic aptitude and achievement; that the health and unity of the class as a whole is considered. I love that he is challenged with tasks that are a trifle scary and difficult, and supported while he faces his fears and overcomes obstacles. I feel he is being nourished every day by these qualities and so many more that I can’t even put into words.

I’m just so full of gratitude, and hoping he has a wonderful time.

(My first wet-on-wet watercolor painting in … many years!)

It’s Friday and our son’s school is celebrating Michaelmas today with a festival and dragon play. Lucas’s third-grade class will be the village children and will do a country dance. Tonight our family will have a modest celebratory meal with dragon bread.

This festival is speaking to me more each year. We all face our own demons every day. We strive to subdue or conquer them so we may shine our inner light into our own lives and the lives of those we love. And the world is a brighter place for it.

Saint Michael’s Harvest Song

In autumn Saint Michael with sword and with shield
Passes over meadow and orchard and field.
He’s on the path to battle ‘gainst darkness and strife.
He is the heavenly warrior, protector of life.

The harvest let us gather with Michael’s aid;
The light he sheddeth fails not, nor does it fade.
And when the corn is cut and meadows are bare
We’ll don Saint Michael’s armor and onward will fare.

We are Saint Michael’s warriors with strong heart and mind,
We forge our way through darkness Saint Michael to find.
And there he stands in glory; Saint Michael we pray,
Lead us into battle and show us thy way.

—Anonymous

This is most of our Farm Fresh to You CSA delivery on the first day of fall, September 23. We had already eaten up all the red chard.

The only color other than green on my liquidambar tree.

Bits and bobs collected from the garden for our equinox wreath project. I’m in love with the orange rose hips.

The class dragon bread the third graders at Sacramento Waldorf School created in cooking class last Friday—see its ferocious teeth? Each child also made his own individual dragon bread. A few parents were asked to come and help with the baking. It took almost no time at all (because third graders are very competent) and my job was to take pictures.

Decorations for the Harvest Moon Cafe at the Golden Valley Charter School Harvest Faire. Our friend Parnassus worked very hard on this community event! We went last Saturday to support our dear friends who have recently changed schools, and to have some lovely harvest festival fun.

This isn’t a terrific photo of children in the petting zoo, but I’m drawn to it. Sweet little bunnies; sweet little hands.

Asher thought the duck and goose (Simon—a gander?) were especially interesting. They kept quacking and honking at him.

This is pink-cheeked, proud Asher after he braved the lair of the sleeping Angry Giant and stole a jewel from his treasure box. It was hot the day of the Harvest Faire, too.

Red hanging lanterns helped suggest the fiery colors of autumn, even though our landscape doesn’t much show them yet.

We hope you are finding and enjoying the colors of autumn!