Daria Doering

Christmas 1997

 

Dear Family, Friends, Cohorts & Compatriots,

 

Greetings from the Doering family!  How are you?  We hope that the people we love are in good health and spirits.

 

Our year has been, well, too busy.  My leisurely summer, hanging out on the front porch and watching the children play, turned into frantically planning a high school reunion.  Then, just after I’d turned over the reins of the Attachment Parenting groups to someone else, the Union Tribune decided to do an article about us, which put me right back in the thick of it.  Finally, it became clear that Nick was having a truly horrible year at Grant, and we ended up switching him to another school, which has been a major transition for all of us.  So we’re alive, trying to be happy about the many adventures and blessings the year has brought us, but trying to get rid of some of them too.

 

Let’s see, the highlights of our year:

We sent Mike to Mazatlan, unencumbered by his family, to celebrate his 50^th birthday.  For five days, he was able to get enough sleep, eat as much shrimp as he wanted, and run up the phone bill.  Not to mention staying at his favorite hotel, the Bel Mar (reminiscent of the Adams Family mansion), sunning and swimming on the playa, and shopping at the Mercado.  Then it was back to reality, being jerked around (uh, welcomed) by his three darling children, loving wife, and wise employer.

Mike faced some interesting challenges at work over the year: He had a major case involving an oil refinery explosion, and learned more than he ever wanted to about oil refining after spending months poring over reams of piping diagrams that chemical engineers could barely understand.  Then there was the excursion to inspect a prison, and the small mistake that left Mike and another inspector strolling through a bustling prison exercise yard unescorted.  But Mike has had junkets, uh, trainings in San Francisco, L.A. and other places, so he’s happy.

We are also about to become grandparents, as Mike’s daughter Jennifer and son-in-law Patrick are expecting a baby in April.

 

The most meaningful thing that happened to me this year was the Pacific High School Reunion of 1997.  PHS was an alternative boarding school I attended in 11^th grade.  Located on 40 acres of magnificent redwoods in the Santa Cruz mountains, it featured: students living in geodesic domes (which former students had built) with no electricity or running water; no classes; little supervision; total freedom; lots of drugs, sex, and rock’n’roll; and co-habitation with the Hog Farm commune, of Woodstock fame.

It closed in the late ‘70’s, there had never been a reunion, and I got the urge bring this strange chapter of my past which I had very mixed feelings about to some sort of completion.

I had various good memories from Pacific: getting up every morning to milk the goats, learning to cook (for 60 people) and knit, acquiring organic gardening and outdoor survival skills, being part of the Bay Area culture of the ‘60’s, and eventually becoming a whitewater rafting skipper, working for a teacher I’d met at Pacific.  But I had many bad memories too, stemming from too much freedom and too little guidance for teenagers, leading to various excesses and abuses.

Organizing the reunion was a massive effort (mostly done by two other poor souls whom I recruited, thank God) involving tracking down hundreds of alumni from scratch; organizing a three day camp out gathering at Portola Redwoods State Park, adjacent to the old PHS site, which is now a Zen retreat; and creating a PHS web site and “PHS Reflections,” a book of reminisces by alumni.

The reunion itself was fantastic, and included visiting the old school site, a slide show of the dome-building and other eras in the life of Pacific, a facilitated group discussion of “What were the effects of the total freedom at Pacific?,” a catered barbecue, and lots of music making.  Everyone was so overjoyed at finally reconnecting with the others with whom we had shared such a unique experience at such a formative time in our lives.

I reestablished some friendships, did a lot of crying and venting while walking around the old school site, wrote a lot about it, but finally took away from it all the positive feelings about my time at Pacific.

Perhaps most striking to me was the fact that we had all entered Pacific as drop-out’s, chronic runaways or misfits who couldn’t or didn’t want to cut it at public school.  But 25 years later, we almost all had college degrees, and had entered a lot of interesting professions, from doctors to environmental consultants to professional musicians to engineers.  That chaotic place of acting out adolescent craziness seemed to have actually been a positive influence in all of our lives.

At any rate, the whole experience was a big shot in the arm to me: to organize a highly successful reunion, resolve some issues from my past, get re-energized from the idealism that did spawn Pacific, and read the stories in “Reflections” of a fascinating group of people.

Plus I got a renewed appreciation for the sixties, and made a long list of all the far-out-there things that started or took off in that decade, and now are mainstream: environmentalism; wholistic health remedies (herbal, homeopathic, acupuncture, etc.); organic & whole grain food; meditation; alternative schools & educational reform; therapy & support groups; more eclectic clothing & decorating styles.  Other things are “mainstream” that perhaps shouldn’t be: Legal mind-altering drugs (ritalin, prozac); we used to have ye olde shoplifting, now we have bankruptcy?!

 

In my spare time (an oxymoron) I started taking a class in tole painting.  I’ve always loved folk art, the decorated wood items from Tyrol, Norway, and the gypsies.  Now I’m learning how to do a bit of it myself, which is very satisfying.  My other spare time pursuits are reading the National Enquirer, and I have reduced my musical ambitions to playing the recorder, and can’t even do that.

 

I think our most satisfying family experience this year was going to the Renaissance Faire in Orange County, another thing I hadn’t done since high school days.  After dragging them there under protest, our children particularly enjoyed the “human chess game,” the tournament fighting, and storytelling.  We all loved the non-stop dancing, drama and live music; the outrageous and fascinating renaissance fashions (a cleavage lover’s paradise); the horse show; the good food; and the cost was practically nothing.

 

Our beloved children:

Nick’s big news is that he started attending the Waldorf School of San Diego in early November.  He loves it and we love it, though it is very different and seems to be affecting us as well as him.  There is no homework, which was a big bone of contention at Grant; it is much more wholistic and age-appropriate in emphasizing practical arts such as gardening, cooking, knitting and building as well as academics; there’s constant physical movement and recitation instead of sitting still and reading; in fact the students create and illustrate their own books instead of reading textbooks, and chant lovely poems throughout the day.

But I think, moreover, there’s such a kinder and gentler atmosphere as a whole.  The school is run by the teachers and a Board, no Principal, which seems to eliminate this administration-teachers-parents oppositional triad I’ve experienced elsewhere.  There are no grades, just student reports.  I don’t know whether the kinder atmosphere or the more fun and appropriate curriculum is what has produced such positive changes in Nick, but we’re just thankful.

Nick also attended Rawhide Ranch in Bonsall this summer for a week, a sleepover camp where I went as a child.  It looks like Knott’s Berry Farm, has animals of every description, and seems to be a cross between farm life and boot camp.  Nick did a lot of mucking out of llama and rabbit cages.  When we went to pick him up, I breathlessly asked how he’d liked camp, and he said “Not very much.”  My heart sank until five minutes later when he asked how soon he could come back.

 

Conversation overheard between Nick and Jake:

Jake: I wish I had eyes in the back of my head …

Nick: You wouldn’t enjoy that very much!

Jake: How do you know?

Nick: I didn’t when I had them.

We call Nick “the king of ad-lib”…

 

Jake is in Kindergarten at Grant, has a fantastic teacher and loves it.  Jake didn’t like the Waldorf Mom & Tots class we attended, and didn’t even seem to enjoy preschool.  His teacher says he’s “task-oriented”; maybe that’s the best explanation.  Jake has made many wonderful friends at Grant, but still remains basically a homebody who gives us tremendous joy.

Perhaps Jake’s most exciting event of the year was when his salamander had a baby.  As Jake explained it, he was holding his beloved six-inch fire salamander, and thought it was pooping.  He put it down, and out popped a miniscule one-inch baby salamander!  It was a total shock because not only had we not known the salamander was female, and not known it was pregnant (we only had one salamander), but it had never occurred to us that amphibians could do anything other than lay eggs!

The children ran all over the neighborhood, taping up little posters they had written about the joyous event.  Neighbors congregated to view the baby.

Two days later, however, tragedy set in.  The baby died, and then, very unexpectedly, the mother died, too.  Ah, the harsh world.

 

A typical day with Jake:

Mom wakes up every morning inwardly trembling over the issue of “What is Jake going to wear today?”  These days he is in a phase where every clothing item must be sweats with a sports logo.  If all his sweats are dirty, a pitched battle ensues.

Yesterday, however, Jake had been lobbying for a shirt with a zipper.  Dad loaned him a zippered sweatshirt and rolled up the sleeves.  Later that day, Mom happened to see a handsome zippered shirt on sale, and bought it for Jake, which he is now wearing.

Today, Jake gets that look of intensity on his face, and announces he wants a shirt that is “all white, with long sleeves.”  Miraculously, after panicking, Mom remembers that she bought just such a shirt for $2 to xerox a picture onto, but decides to forget that plan and give it to Jake now.  This satisfies him for five minutes, and then he insists that he needs “black stripes on the arms and front.”

At this point, something snaps and Mom is screaming like a maniac, jumping up and down, screeching obscenities and yelling so loud that she starts coughing and can’t speak (as happens so often).

But after a few minutes she cools down, and decides that if Jake wants stripes rather than the lizard picture she’d been saving for that shirt, it’s okay with her.  Dad then takes over, takes a felt pen and ruler and draws stripes.  This contents Jake for about one day, until he starts demanding “Indian clothing that laces at the neck.”

 

Our Nina is still a total character: trouble-maker, flirt, funny, charming, intimidating.  Nina is quite an arguer, and doesn’t hesitate to put anyone who crosses her in their place (usually me, of course).  When she’s mad, she refers to her brothers contemptuously as “little mister guy,” and screams “don’t look at me” if she can’t think of anything more scathing to say.

Nina’s exploits are legion, but here are a few notes taken over the year:

 

September: On a recent day, during a friend’s visit, Jake got out his little drill and drilled two holes through the hardwood floor in the playroom.  Two of the kids had friends over, and after they left, I called Mike in desperation, telling him how I was sick, the house was a mess and I was too exhausted to clean it up, etc.  Before he could come home and rescue me, Nina took a big bowl of soup I had given her and deliberately threw it on the floor.  Then she put the empty bowl on her head like a hat, and grinned triumphantly.  So I staggered through mopping the floor and washing her hair.

 

October: Nina’s escapades for this week included:

1)    Carefully pouring her dad’s English Leather aftershave down the toilet.

2)    Throwing all the marbles from the Chinese Checkers game out the window.

3)    Ripping three rolls of exposed film off of their spools and cutting them up with scissors.

4)    Getting her hand stuck in the charity coin box at the grocery store.

Her typical response when confronted with these acts of destruction is to smile and say, “I like it.”

Most days, I can only say that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, and usually alternate between doing both.

 

Have a wonderful holiday and New Year’s.  You can also now e-mail us at doeringsx5@earthlink.net.