TIME on free-range kids

Here’s an article I love: Can These Parents Be Saved?, by Nancy Gibbs. I love the movement that it represents — the one that supports free-play over homework, letting kids experience failure, and not treating parenting like yet another form of product development.

I love it, because it feels right to me somehow — I mean, really, haven’t babies managed to survive crawling without kneepads throughout most of human history? Should I really be correcting my kid’s homework so that it’s 100% perfect before it goes to the teacher, or is there some actual value in her experiencing a red “X” on the work she does? Do we really believe that if our child doesn’t make figurative drawings by age 3 that this somehow affects their employment potential at age 30?

There’s also some part of me that feels let off the hook. The truth: I don’t want to do flashcards. I don’t want to fight over homework. I don’t want to spend my one precious life in the car, ferrying other people, even my beloved girls, from one enriching activity to another. I don’t want to live in fear that if I accidentally missed Merrie’s first-ever dive off the high diving board (and I did), that I have failed her on some deep and profound level, the results of which will show up in her eventual incarceration, or perhaps her failure to get into an Ivy League college in the year 2020, which is just as bad.

I love my daughters, I love them dizzily/madly/gleefully. But even if I could mold them into some model of perfection (and I’ve long since given up on that), are they better off for my efforts to mold them? Or might they be better off with a mother that sometimes just did her own thing…while letting them do theirs? Perhaps I am just rationalizing my own selfishness here, but I can’t help but feel like one of the best gifts I can give them is to show them by the way I live my life the value of learning/doing/trying. And to do that, I have to reserve some of my own life to learn/do/try — not just as a parent, but as a person.

It also means letting them go, being willing to let them skin their knees and lose a game and take a risk, even when the outcome isn’t assured.

It’s never an easy balance, this parenting gig. Never. Kids need help, they need support, they need guidance, they need us.  They’re children after all. But there is a line in there somewhere — the fine and sometimes invisible line between helping and hovering — that perhaps we shouldn’t cross, for their sake as much as for our own. These kids are going to make their way in this world without us — so soon, they will do this, so much sooner than we know — and they maybe could use some practice with this, with living with the consquences of their own choices.

If there is an irony in this article, it is this: there are now “slow parenting” classes and simplicity coaches, who will “go into your home, weed out your kids’ stuff, sort out their schedule, turn off the screens and help your family find space you didn’t know you had…” There are books and T-shirts that you can purchase in the name of free-range parenting, workshops that you can sign up for, web sites you can spend your life exploring.

(And, ahem, blog posts you can spend time writing, and TIME articles you can spend time reading).

All, of course, in the pursuit of overparenting less.

But with that irony noted, here’s something hopeful from the article: a TIME poll asked how the recession had affected parents’ relationships with their kids; nearly four times as many people said relationships had gotten better since the recession, as said the relationships had  gotten worse. Maybe this is because we, out of necessity, started saying “no,” stopped signing them up for classes they didn’t especially want or need, and just sort of let them experience the world.

I have no illusions that I’m doing this parenting thing correctly (whatever “correctly” means). My kids will hold things against me someday, perhaps even big things (it’s a rare adult that doesn’t hold big things against his/her own parents, after all). Mistakes? I make them; my biggest ones are surely the ones I can’t even recognize.

Parenting is like reading Braille when you’ve never learned it, like trying to put together an IKEA bookshelf using only the Swedish directions, and with no picture at all of what the final product should look like. It is messy, frustrating, worrisome business. But perhaps, if we worry a bit less, we can enjoy it a bit more. And if we should  wind up with the spare nut or screw or washer that just doesn’t seem to fit anywhere, or if one of the shelves tilts heavily to the wrong side, maybe this is okay. Look at that bookshelf! It’s so quirky and unlike all the other bookshelves!

Or maybe, if we just step back for a moment, we might even discover that our IKEA bookshelf actually knows how to build itself.

If you’ve got parenting wisdom, or anxieties, please feel free to share. Or not; perhaps we can just let the kids play by themselves for a while, and we can talk about something else entirely. Like, um, read any good adult books lately?

The right wool just feels so good

I have been on a knitting kick recently. Scarves, entirely: all of them made from the divine Misti alpaca chunky wool.

I adore Misti alpaca chunky wool. I mean, I really adore this stuff.  It is incredibly soft to the touch, with a nice stretchiness that makes it easy to move across the needles. And because it is so chunky, it knits up quickly — essential for those of us new knitters who also happen to have the patience of a toddler. And although I can currently knit precisely 4 things (two of them shown above), it is lovely enough that a couple people have mistaken me for an expert knitter. No kidding, people have actually said, “I can knit a little, but I’m not nearly as good as you.”

(Tip for novices: you look more expert when you knit with good yarn).

At $14 a skein, Misti alpaca chunky wool is not inexpensive, but I ask you: what is the price of perfection? I swear to you: this stuff is just that. Perfection.

What you see here are two “ribs and ruffle” scarves, in blue and red (free download, y’all). The are easy peasy; the rib is formed with a slip stitch. No purling involved! And you need just a single skein!

The grey scarf I call “ribs-and-ruffle-minus-the-ruffle.” I wanted something masculine, so my rows are nearly twice that of the ribs and ruffles version, with no ruffle. I cast on 28 stitches, and kept going. I love it: it feels rugged, solid, and soft to the touch. Perfect for a manly man who’s not afraid to admit having loved “Pride and Prejudice.”

Want to get knitting, but have no skills whatsoever? I swear: these are the scarves for you.

In the past, I have wondered why people knit. Why make a scarf, when you can so easily go to the store and buy one, possibly for quite a bit less? More recently I might have tried to answer my own question, by saying something heady, like, “it’s an act of creation, and creating things puts us in touch with the best energies of the universe,” or “it allows us to opt out of the corporate hegemony that dominates so much of our modern lives,” or “by embracing the domestic, we are connected to the generations of women that came before us…”

And while all of those things might be true, I also have a different answer: because the right wool just feels so good.

Perhaps someday I will move on to other projects. Perhaps someday other types of knitting adventures await me. Perhaps someday there will be hats, holiday stockings, shawls and sweaters. For the moment, though, I am content to hear my wooden needles clicking away, and to look down occasionally to see these beauties forming.

Delightful, y’all.

 

D is for… (a cure for winter blues?)

D is for deadline.
D is for done
D is for delight, and dancing, and divine joy.
D is for “dang, it’s nice to be here again.”

D is for many things. Not just dragonfly.

 

D is for a few other things, too:

Dog hair, of which we have too much.
Drama, which my children offer in copious amounts.
Dude, where’s my car? A film I have not seen.

D is also a vitamin. Vitamin D is the “it” vitamin lately. Actually, it is not really a vitamin at all, but a hormone. But never mind that. Do you hear about vitamin D all the time? Because I hear about it all the time. If you live near me, you surely have heard much about it lately;  during our public radio station’s last fund drive, literally hours and hours of physician interviews about vitamin D were played over the airwaves.

Winter is hard for me. I get tired, I get sick, I grow weary. Colds come and go. It is dark early. When it is not dark, it is gray: trees, skies, the earth: all of it. Days stretch on. Some mornings, it is hard to get out of bed.

Almost a year ago, I mentioned on this blog that we had all been sick. Sick as dogs, I said.  Anna, one of my favorite commenters, suggested that we should get our vitamin D levels checked. Because D is often for “deficient,” which apparently the vast majority of us are, particularly those of us who live in places with dark, cold winters.

Could this deficiency be related to my wanting to take to my bed during the cold winter months, like some tragic character in a Victorian novel? Maybe. And maybe it could do much more than that.

Every time I hear another study about vitamin D, I’m all, “No way. Nuh-uh. don’t believe it..” Because sometimes D is for dubious.

But as we hurtle toward another New England winter — one that is surely going to be filled with viruses — I started looking into the vitamin D connection, and I have to say: D can also be for dumbstruck. Because the research — I’m talking peer-reviewed research, mind you — suggests that a little boost to my vitamin D could go a long way toward curing the winter blues. And so much more.

Our bodies, these amazing things of ours, convert sunlight to vitamin D. That vitamin D helps us absorb calcium, as well as to regulate cells. But even in the best of circumstances many of us don’t get much sun in the winter — especially not when our latitude is roughly the same as that of Toronto, Canada. Way up here, the sun never gets high enough in the sky for its ultraviolet B rays to penetrate the atmosphere. Literally: some of us live way up here where the sun don’t shine. even in the warmer months, we have office jobs, homework, meals cooked in indoor kitchens, teevee time, car trips, and so forth. Suddenly it’s not hard to understand why 70% of children and even more adults and teens are deficient in the stuff.

So our vitamin D in the winter months is limited. If we could boost our D-levels, we could probably reduces mood disorders, like PMS, depression, seasonal affective disorders, and other mood disorders. But that’s just the beginning.

Mind you: D is for doctor, which I am decidedly not.

And also: D is also for dietitian. Again, I am not.

But.

Just start scanning some of the almost 47,000 peer-reviewed studies, and you will find that having sufficient vitamin D levels is associated with lower risks of overall and cardiovascular mortality, cancer incidence and mortality, and autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Can I just repeat that for a minute? The research suggests that Vitamin D lowers your risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and autoimmune disorders.

It can also other things, like lower your risk of diabetes.

Or boost your respiratory health.

Or heal chronic lower back pain.

Or boost your cognitive function.

If you’re elderly, it can reduce your risk of falls. Not just aid your bones when you do fall, mind you, but actually reduce your risk of falling in the first place. (really? wow.) It might mitigate the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Look, I know there’s a ton of junk science out there, but we’re talking peer-reviewed literature here. Even if only some of what they say is true, it’s still pretty darned impressive.

So here’s my question: what are we to do about all of this? Most of us need to increase our vitamin D levels. Got it. But by how much?  And how? Some say more sun is the answer, but then dermatologists remind us of that pesky skin cancer thing. There’s also food: sardines, salmon, cod, fish liver oils, and eggs, but even that seems to be not enough for most people. Meanwhile, your vitamin D levels have everything to do with how much sun you get, what your latitude is, how dark your skin is, what you eat, your weight, age, and other lifestyle factors. Which is to say: I don’t know what you you need.

The best bet is to get your D-levels tested; ideally by a physician. I say this, but of course I haven’t actually done it yet. Because sometimes D is for “Do not,” as in “I do not follow my own advice.” You can just go ahead and start taking supplements;  one article published in the British Journal of Dermatology said that “At present, most experts in the field agree that the evidence to date suggests that daily intake of 1000-2000 IU vitamin D could reduce the incidence of vitamin D-deficiency-related diseases with minimal risk in Europe, the US, and other countries.” Note that that was published just this month. Because sometimes D is for “Date,” as in “Up-to-date.”

Be careful, though: you can take too many supplements, leading to a build-up of calcium in the blood. Sometimes D is for don’t go overboard, please.

Me? I’ve started taking 1,000 IU of vitamin D3 each day. At some point, I’ll get my levels tested, too. I’m also trying to boost my fish consumption (in the words of Bruce, the evil/kind shark from Finding Nemo, “I’m having fish for dinner tonight!”). Will I maintain my winter-time mojo this year? Maybe. I will let you know.

Anyhow, here’s the comment from Anna that first kicked off my research:

Have you had your Vit D levels checked? Unless you get/make enough Vit D all summer, you don’t make any Vit D during the winter in your neck of the woods. Everyone of my Upstate NY family has tested this winter as severely deficient in Vit D, including the 13 and 15 yo nieces, one of whom has spinal bone issues. Everyone except my dad (he listens to me) avoids the sun, uses a lot of sunscreen, thought the D2 additive in their skimmed milk was adequate, and/or relied on a puny amount of D2 in a multivitamin. Additionally, D in cheaper tablets is not well absorbed; D3 in oil capsules or drops is far superior. Low fat diets also hinder Vit D absorption from food and supplements. All foods that contain natural Vit D also come with fat, btw.

I’m not terribly into taking vitamins (I prefer nutritious food instead). But it’s hard to get enough Vit D3 from our food, since we evolved to get it from sun (not D2 the synthetic additive in milk, but rather D3, the same molecule we make in response to midday unfiltered sun exposure on our skin). Even living in So Cal, with indoor lifestyles, some use of sunscreen to prevent sunburns, clothing, etc., most people I know who have tested their levels were deficient or very low in the reference range without adequate supplementation. Even with a high amount of the foods that do naturally contain D3 (egg yolks from outdoor chickens, grass-fed whole milk, liver from outdoor mammals, poultry, as well as wild caught fish liver, etc. – in other words, not CAFO food).

When it comes to Anna, D is for Darned Smart.

Want more? There’s a nice article on vitamin D, authored by an MD (though not, I will point out, peer-reviewed) in Mother Earth News.

And now, d is about to be for darn, I really need another cup of coffee.

 

Mum was the word

a typical day of laundry, mid-pediculosis. Looks quaint in sepia tone, no?

It’s like I’m waking up from a long sleep.  Why, hello there. Hello! The word sounds funny having not used it for so long. Hello! Hello! Hello!

Yeah, weird.

I got a lovely note from Sarah at Mum in Bloom, saying kindly, “where are you? I hope you are okay.”  Thank you, Sarah. Thank you for asking. I am. Everyone here is, knock wood. Here are a few of the factors in my vaporization from the interweb:

1. Big deadlines. Been writing lots. Lots of articles, press releases. The biggest news is that one project is a book manuscript, a co-authorship with Beth Bader, who writes over at Expat Chef. Food and families, families and food. Recipes, tips, resources, and a tad or irreverance.  It’ll be out in like a million years. But our own deadline is November 1. For many, many months, this seemed far away. I was able to say things like, “oh, it won’t take long to complete.” “We’ve got so much of the information already.” Then, around the time I came back from carpentry camp, the deadline became real. Surprise: it takes plenty long to complete a book. It’s not complete yet, but I see a light, which means I am in a tunnel, and I am nearly through.

2. Small people. Weeks of no child-care at the end of the summer. No camps, no school, just kids, bored and restless. I literally did a victory dance on the first day of school.

3. Small creatures. I should have known not to test fate with that victory dance. My karmic payback came on the second day of school, when we got a phone call from another 2nd grade family. This was a phone call no one wants: head lice. We were not spared. Just like that: weeks gone. Laundry, so much laundry. Non-stop vacuuming. Nose hairs being burned off by pediculicides, which is just a fancy way of saying hideous toxic chemicals.

My face in Merrie’s wild curly hair, pulling out all signs of pediculosis, which is just a fancy way of saying bugs. Did you know that lice reproduce sexually? Yes, tiny bugs were gettin’ busy, makin’ whoopie, beddin’ down, knockin’ boots, right there among the shafts of my daughter’s hair. I tried not to think about it too much.

Did I mention I was supposed to be finishing a book manuscript during this time?

4. Big pain. I sat hunched over my daughters hair and I sat hunched over the computer. For a solid month, I sat. I sat so much that I threw my back out. Yes, I am possibly the only person to ever throw her back out from sitting. Yes, that is humiliating. Don’t pity me, though: in my younger, healthier days, I once mocked a man who threw his back out while putting on socks. There’s that karmic payback again.

my new chair

5. Big ball. Physical therapy, yoga, long walks, stretching, bike rides, one of those giant medicine balls to sit on while I write. I am sitting on it now. No, I do not feel silly. Yes, that is only because you cannot actually see me. Yes, sometimes I bounce up and down on it like a small child.

That’s where I’ve been. May we just pretend it’s two months ago, please?

Hello.

Carpentry for Women part VI: coming home

This is the last thing I’ll write about carpentry class here for a while. Promise. But if you missed the other parts, you might consider reading:
Part I. Arriving
Part II. Who we are
Part III. Power Tools
Part IV. Precision
Part V. Foul-mouthed beauties

That's me with my tool belt, yo

When it was all over —after we’d shared a tiny, touching graduation ceremony in the shed we’d built, after we had laughed and taken photos of our work and wished each other good luck on our next projects, after a final meal together and final hugs —I packed up and came home to Life As I Know It.

The girls had enjoyed a great week with their dad — Camp Daddy, they’d dubbed it. While I had stood in the sun beside a pile of lumber, they had visited Ben and Jerry’s, the Vermont Teddy Bear Company, Shelburne Farms, the ECHO Lake Aquarium Center, Circus Smircus, two libraries. They had been swimming, hiking, visiting a series of cafes and restaurants. Many mornings I had left the hotel before they woke up, and a few evenings, I had returned after they had gone to sleep. Now, the week done, we were back together — a family once again.

On the drive home, the girls listened to an audiotape of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Charlotte flipped through picture books, mouthing words she cannot read, and Merrie leaned into my seat from behind, draping her arms casually over my sunburned shoulders. The evening sun cast long shadows on the valley farmland. As Blair drove, I pulled my knitting out — the first I’d touched my scarf since the welcome dinner five days before — and thought about the week.

I thought about boards that did not fit, about cuts that were not even, about ten beautiful women with foul mouths and strong arms, about a small, not-quite-finished shed standing in a beautiful valley that my own hands had helped build.

My heart cracked a little as I realized that it was all over, just like that.

I want this for my own girls someday. Whatever they do, whatever life brings, I hope they will always be able to make the choice to do something for themselves, to leave behind the “shoulds” and go learn something unexpected. If they can do it surrounded by supportive women who laugh easily, all the better.

I’m still no master carpenter; this I know. However the words that swam before my eyes on day one no longer feel so foreign. I know the difference between a joist and a jam, between a block and plate, between a shill and a truss. I know what it means to place studs “16 on center,” and I know that when it’s time to rebuild our deck, we’ll need to use galvanized deck screws, both for shear strength and to avoid a galvanic reaction between the nail and the copper in the wood. Look at me: I know about galvanic reactions.

I know how often carpenters use math — in adding and subtracting fractions, in using the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the length of, say, a roof rafter.

I know that there are things that I can do — with time, effort, and perhaps a little more precision than I put into most things.

Carpentry for women, part V: foul-mouthed beauties

Part five of an absurdly lengthy meditation of my week at Yestermorrow. This one comes with a warning label. I’m generally pretty good about not cursing here, aware that all kinds of people, including my mother, are reading. But this one is specifically about language. Colorful language. Offended by the F-word? The S-word? The D-word? Move on, then. Nothing to see here.

***

We curse like sailors. Or perhaps I mean like carpenters.

It begins gingerly; on our first morning together, our instructors show us different types of nails of increasing length and heft — a six-penny (6d), an eight-penny (8d), a twenty-penny (20d). Then Patti holds up a railroad stake. “And this is what we call a BFN,” she says.

A few understand right away. A few dutifully write down in their notebooks — we are still taking notes at this point — “BFN.”

Someone asks, “a what?”

Another explains: “A big fuckin’ nail.”

From there, we get more comfortable, and our language gets looser. Our cursing is of course aided by the frustration that learning any new task involves — particularly a task where a measurement that is off by a mere 1/32 of an inch can ruin an entire morning’s work.

There are bent nails, a wobbly cut with the circular saw, a board cut too small, a beating sun on a hot, humid day. All bring forth colorful language from our lips.

Carpentry for Women part IV: on precision

Here’s part IV of my carpentry experience.

***

This is not work for the imprecise. I realize that right away.

I’ve never been precise; I am impatient and scattered, and for all the time I spend in the kitchen, I know enough steer clear of soufflés and pie crusts, anything that shouldn’t be attempted with a half-assed approach. I can’t apply nail polish for the life of me. When I lived alone, I occasionally had the electricity or phone turned off — not because I didn’t have the money to pay the bills, but simply because I was too disorganized to do it on time.

So this carpentry thing: it tests me.

Did you know that there are two sides of a pencil mark? There are, and when you’re cutting a board, you must make a clean slice on one side of the line or the other. Let the blade stray too close to the wrong side of the line, and your board won’t fit — it will either be too long, so you can’t jam it in to its intended space, no matter how much grunting and body weight you apply, or it will be too short – unable to meet the other boards.

My instructors understand this. To me, they are as skilled as surgeons, as exacting as engineers. Nothing is off, even by one-thirtysecond of an inch. Cuts are clean, angles are exact, boards fit squarely where they should.

“They have experience,” I tell myself. “They’ve been doing this for years.”

Carpentry for Women part III: Power Tools

Part III of my Yestermorrow experience. I do go on, don’t I? Carry on: I’ll be done with this soon enough.

We look at tools. There are so many.

Take the hammer, for example. There are hammers with wooden handles, hammers with fiberglass handles, $90 hammers with  titanium handles. There are straight claws, curved claws. There are hammers with waffle-heads — don’t use those on trim work, mind you — and hammers of many different weights. If you’re going to frame a house, you want a heavier one, maybe 20 ounces. For smaller indoor projects, you’ll want something lighter; 14 ounces should do.

Patti and Lizabeth decode these tools for us. We learn about the speed square, a little metal triangle filled with notches and marks (useful for everything, it turns out. We will spend the week using the speed square to make sure boards are cut evenly, to draw lines for cutting, to measure angles). We begin to understand a tape measure; it is, I discover, marked in red at 16” intervals, because that is the distance between most wall studs. We learn that a nail set can be used to get a nail deeper than a hammer can, that a pipe clamp is the strongest kind, that a saw with higher teeth per inch delivers a finer cut, that a woman — yes, a woman — invented the circular saw.

And speaking of saws, there are so many: cross saw, coping saw, hack saw, compound miter saw, chop saw, band saw, jig saw. Each has a specific use, and I learn that I’ve tried to cut branches with a saw that is intended to cut metal, that our uneven laundry room door is such a mess because we used a saw that is intended for cutting curves.

(Later, I will go online looking for used saws for sale. During a Google search, I stumble upon a story about a woman who was badly injured after her partner placed a sex toy over a jig saw, an power tool with a blade that has a rapid up-and-down motion. The saw cut through the plastic toy, then through her body, and she was admitted to the hospital bleeding severely. She survived, but reading the story, I can’t help but think that none of this would have happened if the poor woman had taken but a single carpentry class).

There are tools, the instructors explain, that are works of art. They mention a line of Japanese chisels, each one made by a master blacksmith, the wooden handles hand-carved until the tool is a thing of beauty. It seems I’ve spent the last several years learning that there different levels of everything — from cheap factory-manufactured detritus, made to last only a short time, to refined artifacts, handmade by masters. I don’t know why I would have expected tools to be any different.

We oooh and ahhh over certain tools — the utility knife that allows a blade change without unscrewing, the Stanley tape that extends a full 11 feet before bending — and someone laughs that “it’s as if we’re looking at shoes, but it’s tools.”

I like this. I like knowing what to look for in an extension cord (a grounded one, with a heavier gauge, the shortest you need for the job, and preferably one that doesn’t get stiff in the cold). I like knowing that the numbers arranged in circular form around the head of a drill — numbers I’ve always ignored — allow you to adjust the torque, or power, of the drill, so you don’t accidentally strip a screw.

The first time the instructors hand me a circular saw, though, I’m stunned. It is so loud, so powerful, so unwieldy. I realize for the first time how dangerous this carpentry business can be. This machine could slice through anything: a piece of furniture, a leg, a small child. The circular saw doesn’t think, which is precisely what makes it so frightening. It is up to me to do the thinking.

I understand now why in previous classes, there have been students who didn’t want to use it at all, didn’t even attempt the circular saw until the last day of class.

My first cut with the circular saw is wobbly, and the resulting board is shorter at the top than the bottom. It is wildly imperfect. Still, I am relieved.

I didn’t chop my arm off. Or anyone else’s, for that matter.

***

Still reading? Well, you’re halfway there.

Part IV. Precision

Part V. Foul-Mouthed Beauties

Part VI. Coming Home

Carpentry for Women part II: who we are

This is part two of the rather absurdly lengthy six-part series about my carpentry for women class at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, Vermont. If you missed part I: Arriving, you’ll find it here.

There are nine of us in the class. In no particular order, we are:

• Jory, a school social worker from Vermont, a hiker and gardener, mother of a college-aged daughter.
• Ilona, a recent Smith graduate, former ultimate Frisbee player, student of an international boarding school, and classical guitarist, working now in an office job in the green economy in Washington DC.
• Donna, a nurse from Central Massachusetts, a motorcyclist, who dreams of building a home closer to her two grown sons.
• Alexis, a middle school art teacher and ceramicist who recently purchased five wooded acres of land in New Hampshire, where she plans to build her own timber-framed strawbale house.
• Theresa, a former financial executive from New Jersey, a single mother whose children have grown. The day after her youngest child got a job, she quit her corporate job working for real estate developers, to move to Philadelphia where she will study urban planning.
• Sarabel, a free-spirited employee of the Farm School in Western Massachusetts, a nonprofit that provides overnight, back-to-the-land experiences for children.
• Cindy, a retired diplomat of the United Nations, now splitting her time between Vermont and South Africa.
• Sasha, quiet, a 30-ish newlywed who works with youth, who is moving to a new city the day that class ends, and starting a new job two days later.

Then there is me: mother of two, wife of eleven years, semi-professional writer, striving to do more for myself.

I count the number of students who appear over 35, and under 30. The class seems split evenly — something that brings me no small relief.

We have two instructors, both professional women carpenters. Patti drives a silver Ford pick-up truck, is partial to Long Trail beer, and carries a guitar in a case emblazoned with bumper stickers, one of which says “Practice conscious acts of solidarity and organized resistance.” In her spare time, she rides motorcycles, plays folk festivals, has a radio show celebrating women’s music. She wears a scruffy T-shirt and a worn Yestermorrow baseball cap over her short hair. She stretches her muscled legs in front of her as she describes the 11-year process of building her own home.  At one point during the week, she will tell us she does, in fact, own both an iron and a blowdryer — both are in her wood shop, used exclusively for carpentry.

Lizabeth — there is no “E,” though I will spend the week stumbling over that — is direct and wry, a former Peace Corps volunteer, simultaneously petite and  rugged. Her long hair swept up casually, and she wears a T-shirt that says, “Don’t Panic: Go Organic.”  Lizabeth explains why she became a carpenter in a single, short sentence: “because my dad was a sexist.”

Carpentry for Women, part I: arriving

Recently, I did a week-long Carpentry for Women class at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, Vermont. I sat down to try to write about it, to capture some of how it felt to be there, and what came out was far bigger than a blog post should ever, ever be. I wanted to do justice to the week, not say simply, “yeah, it was cool” (although it was). So I’ve chopped it up, and will post some of it here, in a series of six sections. Yes, six.   I don’t expect anyone to read it all. My mother will. The rest of you are free to go. But if you’re curious, here you are:

I am sitting alone at a picnic table. I clutch my knitting, pretending to concentrate on the needles and yarn. Already, in the few minutes I’ve been here, I have dropped a couple of stitches, even though the project I’m working on, an easy ribbed scarf, couldn’t be simpler.

Near me, a group of twenty-somethings plays hackysack. Others sprawl casually over the lawn, drinking beer out of mismatched glasses. One guy strums a guitar. I’m trying not to look too closely at anyone, but I swear I just saw a man walk by wearing a T-shirt with an image of a massive Hummer, beneath which are the words, “Sorry ‘bout your penis.”

Someone offers me a glass of wine, and I nod, gratefully.

“Yes, please,” I gulp. I feel out of place. I feel old.

It’s the evening of my welcome dinner at Yestermorrow Design/Build School, which for 25 years has taught sustainable design to both amateurs and professionals. I’m here to take an introductory Carpentry for Women class, something I signed up for many months ago when it didn’t seem real.

Suddenly tonight, after I kissed my children goodbye and got in the car, it became real, and I felt terrified.

Yestermorrow sits by the side of Route 100, a two-lane country highway that runs through the Mad River Valley, some of the loveliest, most pastoral landscape Vermont has to offer. The 38-campus is beautiful, filled with forest and field, wildflowers and mountain vistas.

Nearby, I see a stone wall curving gracefully into an arch — the evidence of a stonework class. Across the field, chickens peck beside a homemade chicken coop next to a garden filled with organic bounty. In one direction, I see a bench made from bent wood, in another, a solar shower and composting toilet. There are fluid cob garden walls, straw bale cabins, earthen ovens, and a tree house that is the stuff of any child’s fantasy — enormous and round, with a cedar shingles, cathedral-type ceilings, spacious enough to accommodate an entire classroom of little ones. These are only the things that remain on campus, of course; throughout Vermont, there are boathouses, concert bandstands, children’s playgrounds, timber-framed homes, green roofs, garden sheds, and buildings to make cheese. All of them made by hand by Yestermorrow students, interns, and staff.

Sitting here, I am intensely aware that the question will arise at some point, “why did you decide to take this class?” For the moment, the best answer I have is this: because I don’t know how to do anything.

That’s not entirely true, of course. Once upon a time — a million years ago, it seems — I learned stuff that was mostly useful under the harsh fluorescent lights of the modern-day office. I became master of the press release, the flow chart, the well-placed bullet point.  In recent years, though, I’ve left that behind, with no small amount of relief. Since then, I have been trying to learn practical things, the skills one never gets to learn in a cubicle. The fact that I’m holding a piece of knitting, even this simple scarf, is evidence of that I’ve had some success. I’ve learned other things, too: I can make a batch of yogurt from scratch. I can build a fire in my wood stove. I can grow tomatoes in a container. I have made my own all-purpose cleaner for the home, and this spring, I began learning to use an axe on saplings.

Sure, I can do some things. But it’s already clear that people here — these people who look so young — know how to do so much more.

Watching these people from the corner of my eye — people who look like they’ve never given much of a thought to children’s schedules, to preschool dropoffs, to family meals, gymnastics classes, pediatrician’s appointments, toddler toothpaste, or the other mundane business of family life — I realize, I should have come here years ago. I should have come here, done something like this, after college, back when I was busy pursuing jobs in high-rise buildings.

I could have been like these others, once. I would have loved it. So I am also thinking this: I missed my chance.