Diversity

I just read this staff blog entry from  Faith in Vermont from the 10/2/12 edition of the Addison Independent (a local weekly newspaper not too far from us).  It was fabulous and very well put. I'm sharing it here in its entirety.  Thanks for putting what I think into words!

Uncomfortable by Faith Gong

My last name is Gong, but I’m not Asian.

I think this probably confuses people the first time they meet me; nurses scanning the waiting room for “Mrs. Gong” tend to overlook me, and many people repeat “GONG?” upon learning my last name, as if they must have misunderstood.

That doesn’t bother me one bit, honestly, because I spent the first two decades of my life saddled with the maiden name “Cinquegrana,” courtesy of my Italian father. I can’t claim to have married my husband for his last name, but its lone syllable was a definite selling point.
My last name is Gong, of course, because I married a Chinese-American man. We were married in Manhattan, which is 48% White. We had three half-Chinese children, all born in Oakland, California, which is 35% White. Then we moved to Middlebury, Vermont, which is 86% White – and that figure, from the 2010 census, includes the Middlebury College student body. According to the same census, the state of Vermont is 96% White. That makes Vermont the whitest state in the nation.

I’m not usually aware that our little family is adding racial diversity to the whitest state (although I will occasionally realize that my husband is the only Asian in a room, or that my daughters are in a small minority of brunettes at their preschool). That’s due in part to the fact that I’m the whitest member of our family, so I’m arguably the most comfortable in this setting. It’s probably also because we live in Middlebury, where the aforementioned college attracts a great diversity of students and faculty -- enough to make it 10% more diverse than the rest of the state.
But I think it’s more than that; I think the fact that our multi-racial family is so comfortable here says something special about Vermont. It’s funny, but those awkward moments when nurses look over my head as they call “Mrs. Gong?” and people squint at me quizzically when I say my last name – those moments all happened in Manhattan and the Bay Area. Here, our family has been warmly welcomed by fellow Vermont transplants and fourth generation Vermonters alike. I can only describe the experience of my family, of course, but never once has anybody in Vermont commented on our name or our race.

How is that possible, in such a remarkably UN-diverse place?  It could be that there are so few Chinese people in Vermont, nobody expects “Gong” to be attached to an Asian – it’s just not in their frame of reference.

But I give Vermonters more credit than that. My own theory is that Vermonters pass so little racial judgment because most Vermonters live in small towns. Living in a small town, you learn a lot about diversity. Not racial diversity, per se, but PEOPLE diversity. Simply put: Everybody is a little weird. Your neighbors may be Chinese, or they may have ten rusted-out pickup trucks in their yard, or they may cover their walls with antlers, or they may breed llamas. (Actually, after 18 months in Vermont, I no longer find any of those things weird). My point is, everybody’s got something. And it’s a lot harder to hide your something in a small town, where you see the same people every day.

This is where I believe the legendary Vermont reticence – some would call it “chilliness” – comes in. I’ve found most Vermonters to be quite friendly, but they do set boundaries. I wouldn’t label this “chilliness” so much as “respect.” If you plan to live for decades within the same small community, you’d best learn to respect people, to allow space for their weirdness.
Last month, my husband and I had the enormous pleasure of attending Mike Sommers’s one-man show, Vermont Boy in West Oakland, at the Town Hall Theater. Sommers, who grew up in Middlebury, performed a hilarious and moving monologue about his experience moving from Vermont to a primarily black neighborhood in West Oakland, California – not far from where we used to live.

At one point, Sommers’s Oakland neighbor asked him if he was uncomfortable being the only “white boy” on the block. Sommers replied something along the lines of: “I’m a Vermont boy; I’m uncomfortable around everybody. I look at white people, and all I see are city folk.”
In other words, to live in Vermont is to be weird, plain and simple. Vermonters live in the least diverse, most rural state in the union. Perhaps it’s this deep-seated knowledge of their own weirdness that makes Vermonters so tolerant of difference, diversity….weirdness, in others. Everybody’s got something.

Faith Gong has worked as an elementary school teacher, a freelance photographer, and a nonprofit manager. Since moving to Addison County in 2011, her work has involved caring for a house in the woods, three young daughters, one soon-to-be-puppy (coming next week!) — and writing for her blog, The Pickle Patch.

Always something....

Today marks several "somethings" more or less converging.  A year ago, my host mother Lucette passed away.  I have intended many things since then, including writing what I've nicknamed "Ode to Lucette" to share how this simple woman impacted my life... but I haven't done it yet.  We won't even mention the rest of the things I haven't gotten around to, but given this "anniversary", it bears mentioning.  I love her, remember her, and wish I could find (make?!) time to share in a more deliberate way about her. 

The other "somethings" relate to family adjustments - whether it be homeschooling (a desired and permanent at least for this year for our eldest, Patience), or potential milk allergy or lactose intolerance (Constance - the persistent tummy aches are definitively milk related, so now we begin the process of figuring out what that looks like in the specifics vs. the "generalities" of milk vs. the rest of her food), or tendonitis (officially diagnosed this afternoon - Patience - and it will result in much accommodation over the next few weeks around schooling and housework), or increased homework (both boys figuring this one out, increasingly...)

I think I'm feeling as busy as I ever have, and the adjustments are rather significant.  I'm tired.  But I'm happy too.  And I'm enjoying the fall and my kids and my family.  Those are good things.  Thankful to know how to proceed with the girls and their issues, thankful that schooling is going well overall, for everyone, thankful that the boys are growing well and "manning up" to their new levels of expectations.  The relationships are good.  Papa Bear and I have been communicating particularly well in and through my weaknesses I think in all this.  Very good really.  But it's hard to find time to share it.  Hope this brings those of you who read this "up to speed" at least a little.  And hopefully some day soon I will be able to find time to elaborate on much of it, but that's our September (and especially this week) in a nutshell. 

Football 101

Football is new to us this year. Dante decided to try it out as he enters 6th grade. The divisions are simple - Grades 2, 3, and 4 play flag football. Grades 5-8 play tackle and are divided into two groups, each of which are divided into a JV and a V so to speak.


Dante has been initiated quickly with two solid weeks of nightly practice (two hours plus each night). He's playing safety on the defense.  I suppose we'll learn what that means as time goes on and we watch him play.  It looks for the moment like he's playing "V" (mostly w/other 6th graders) which is great since he's with his friends.  One of the "fun" things about all this is with baseball, Essex Junction (the village of) and Essex (the town of) are separate and bitter rivals.  But for football, we play together - meaning we play alongside some of our baseball nemeses.  Incidentally, his head coach is the girls' softball coach for Patience's fiercest school rival.... We live in a small world.


The learning curve for our family has been steep with equipment confusion and lessons (and after several tries practice pants that actually fit).  We still haven't figured out the glasses so he's playing kind of blind.... we do need to figure that one out soon.


Yesterday he had his first official "suit up" in his uniform (he's number 55) for the local Jamboree. There were scrimmages between multiple towns. He was out the door at 7am and home at 3:30. We carpooled with another family we know, which helped tremendously (they were there in the morning, our family was there in the afternoon).


It was hot and a long day, but he's loving it. It's fish to water kind of love so far. And yes, he's sustained an injury (minor, but his hand was pretty swollen) on the first day of tackle practice. He was beaming from ear to ear telling us about it.


Go Dante! Let's play some football!

Our gardens

The gardens - both backyard and community garden - took a long time to get going.  It took two weeks to get them in but I didn't start until very late May, or maybe even early June.  I have included here photos of the process and the progress as well as updates at the beginning of July and the first batch of flowers in mid July.


Some notes to help "follow" the progress. First, we plant very little in the way of veggies at home due to shade. We have a small plot of beans and peas. Second, we do have lots of cutting flowers, though most of these are at the garden, not at home. Still, there are a few here. And I was able to locate and transplant several flowers that seeded themselves from last year and came up again, so they are in the four corners of my garden.



Also, I basically planted six rows, each covered w/black plastic. I use cardboard and straw to make my paths and all this extra prep work helps make it possible for me to maintain it (as in keep the weeds down) for the whole summer. I am thus able to put my efforts into tending the actual plants and watering as needed (lots so far this summer - for most of June it was daily, and again the 2nd half of July it's needed plenty of water.)





Our plants of choice include a variety of tomatoes (these were among the first things I actually got in the ground), leeks, beets, carrots, and green beans for our vegetables. The lettuce grew fine but was bitter and eventually went to seed when we didn't eat enough of it. That was a bit disappointing but relates as well to us being out of town and overlap with our CSA. We have a couple green peppers as well which appear to be flourishing unlike some years. The leftover cucumber seeds from last year sprouted fine, but attracted cucumber beetles promptly, despite radishes planted all around so we got rid of them and replanted with more beans, beets and carrots (later harvest than the first planting! yay!).











Flowers that appear to be doing well (mostly from last years' seeds) include dwarf sunflowers, snapdragons, marigolds, nasturtiums, CA poppies, bachelor's buttons and cosmos. The sweet peas didn't sprout, nor did the Chinese forget-me-nots. I think some of the asters are doing ok but they're a little slower than the other flowers so it's been harder to tell how they're doing. Most of the zinnia seeds did not come up, but I'm enjoying the few that did tremendously. Next year we'll buy fresh seeds and I'm sure it will be better. I'm discovering which ones I like better for cutting and so the experimentation is critical.

Projects and Performances

The end of the school year is chock full of activities and goings-on.  I've been trying to compile several blog entries since early June (it's now late July) to share these things with you.  This entry is one to share with you some of the fun times we had, especially projects and performances.

To start, my kids gave me a number of choice, personal gifts and cards on mothers day.  Probably the most creative was hand puppets - note his and hers (covering father's day as well but she couldn't wait) - made out of the pajama feet we'd cut off.  What a great idea!





And then, there was plenty of singing and dancing at school.  First, Constance's grade (the whole 2nd grade) did a music show, including dance routines.

















Some weeks later, the whole school (all four grades, all 12 classes) did a show where each class performed a choreographed song from each of the decades the school has been around.  (They were celebrating 60 years this year).  It was a great success.  Vivace's class did "Wake up Little Susie" and Constance's class did "Thriller."  They both did a great job and it was very fun.
























Patience then juggled her multiple involvements at the annual middle school spring concert.  Here she is performing with the handbells.  She also sang in the chorus, played viola in the orchestra, and played piano with the jazz band.





 
Andante finished his final reading project with one he designed himself.  It was a "lego" book project and he loved it.  His teacher complemented him on his creativity, taking a book he enjoyed, and coming up with a project that took advantage of his peronal interest in building and pretending with legos.

 





Three of the kids performed at their studio's annual piano recital and it was a wonderful evening filled with music.  Constance was terrified but she did it.  As always, playing on a grand piano is a unique experience, and made their music sound amazing.  Bravo to all three for their hard work and this wonderful performance for us all to enjoy!



 







Finally, Patience and the middle school jazz band went down to the Burlington Jazz Fest on Church Street to listen to others play, and to actually perform in their own right.  It was a fun time, even if it did rain, and we enjoyed it thoroughly.

Quarterly Clinics

 I have a love hate relationship with paperwork.  At one level, I enjoy the detail, the patterns, and the way it all shares information.  But I am a procrastinator.  In the midst of everything else I have to do, I put it off, whether it be budgets, correspondence, or diabetes charting.  The correspondence used to catch up with me at Christmas time yearly (not sure I ever catch up any more - sorry folks).  I catch up with the budgets at least once a year for taxes.  And charting is a quarterly nightmare task to accomplish when I get behind. If only I'd work on these things more often, we'd be talking minutes per day.  Minutes to write down what we've spent.  Minutes to write down numbers for the daily glucose readings, basals, carbs eaten, dosages...  but when I don't, we're talking hours. 

Even as my son prepares for his first all-star game this afternoon, as we have swim lessons, doctors' appointments, gardens that need watering, laundry to fold, and birthdays to celebrate, I have to focus.  Patience's quarterly clinic is Tuesday morning.  And the last time I charted was her last visit, just before taxes were due (so I fell off the wagon immediately - I didn't even chart the day of that appointment. Ouch!).  So I have three full months of numbers to fill in from the various sources.  All of it is there, just in different places, and I need to pull it all together. I've already put in two hours today and have only written in one month's worth of basals (granted I'm distracted too... which must be why it is moving along so slowly).


Sometimes I wonder why I bother.  So what if I don't catch up?  But these patterns are helpful today as well as over the long haul.  For the non-initiated, she averages 10-13 blood glucose checks (fingerpicks) per day. She gets insulin for all the food she eats (called boluses), plus a constant "drip" all day long (called "basals") and the amounts change depending on what time of day it is, and what kinds of activity she might be doing (or not doing) at any given time - less when swimming, more when watching TV, for example.  All these numbers must be written down to paint the picture.  Plus we note activity, vacations, illness, when we start a new bottle of insulin etc, since all these things are helpful in understanding the picture.  Each year we look back to the year before for patterns, lessons, regimens to follow all of which help better deal with various activities or celebrations (trips, airline flights, special meals/dinners, swim lessons...).  Yep - we use it.  Not just for patterns now that help us to adjust immediately, but for next year when we "repeat"...  When she plays softball next year, we'll look back to this year's numbers to see what worked, what was challenging, and what we learned, so that we can better treat her (avoid lows, highs, and all else - and we did learn a lot).  Her practices affected her blood sugars more than her games, for example - that will help a lot to see how that worked. 

So I'm going to get back to work.  This is what's in front of me (hidden behind this screen on which I'm typing).  I have about another hour or two before the big game and I want to get a lot done so the break can feel good and I can truly enjoy the game. 

Just a day in the life.....

Twelve years of Andante

Twelve years ago today, we welcomed our second born. Our dear Andante has always been "the 2nd child" - forever blessed with an older, doting sister. And he is a treasure.














We did work hard to train her to take over the household duties to free me up (yes, you can laugh, but anything we did, she also liked to do, like the dishes, and mowing the lawn as you can see below.)  She really was helpful too! 


























He was born on his due date - after a "false start".... and like our first born, he liked middle of the night deliveries (1:13 AM I think - she was 1:18 AM). So we had a "practice run" on the 9th with dear Patience - dropping her for the night with friends - and then picking her up, only to do it again the next day for real. That said however, we arrived after dinner on July 10th, I was not in labor, but they decided that it was "time," so they opted for the same procedure that helped move things along w/Patience.  They broke my water and waited to see what happened.  Let's just say that he was born less than five hours later.


























Going home a couple days later was interesting.  As with all our children, the relationship with the car seat was love/hate.  Generally hate - then fall asleep and you can see the effect of the drive home.  














We love all our kids, but the first two were special.  First there was our long-awaited and much cherished first born (gotta love the forced smile) and then "our boy".  There were some concerns we could even have children, and here we were with two fairly close together!  We didn't have any ultrasounds with these two children, so we had names for both genders picked out each time.  I admit to really wanting a boy the 2nd time.  I had a girl (my joy and delight!).  I just longed for a son.  When they told me "it's a boy!" I cried for happiness.  There has always been a special bond there.  She was my Christmas present, he was my birthday present.  And to have one of each is as my host mom put it in her congratulatory letter "La Choix du Roi!" (The choice of the king)






 From day one, he has been our beloved "Gift of God" (Matthew) and our stable and steady "Rock" (Alan - after his uncle, at whose wedding Papa Bear and I met).  He is our slow and steady child, with a personality like a wide flowing river, meandering along, easy-going, focussed, eager, and happy too.  He has a big smile.  I love it.  And I have loved every one of these special years God has given me to be his mom.

Happy 12th birthday, dear "Andante"!