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Artful Campers

Letter writing, museums, and camping have something in common. They take time. This summer, we took time to enjoy many moments away from the seemingly immediate demands of modern life. We got away from devices and noise and experienced the subtleties of life we so often fail to perceive.

We took time.

Delaware Art Museum is inviting families to take time together in the Copeland Sculpture Garden for twilight art making, moonlit sculpture tours, and bedtime stories during their very first campout on August 18th! Tent camping will happen in the Garden and limited space will be available inside for sleeping bags.

The Labyrinth at dusk, the sunset light falling on Crying Giant, the colored lights of the Museum at dark…this promises to be a special evening.

It will be extra special for me and my sons as the Museum has dedicated a magnolia tree to my late wife, Mary Kathryn Zerbey. It has yet to have a plaque, or made official with a ceremony, but it is a touching gesture to have a permanent place for Mary at the Museum she introduced us to seven years ago.

I had left my job as a proofreader and editor to care for our sons. Mary knew me to be restless and sent me to the Museum. After a stroller tour and a Glory of Stories, we were hooked. Not just to Delaware Art Museum, but all museums. We’ve delighted in countless hours in collections of varied stripes. They’ve become a focal point of our educational lifestyle. Places where knowledge isn’t just discovered, but applied, challenged, connected, explored, and brought into full color and dimension.

An opportunity to spend 13 (or more) hours in a corner of our world that has brought us so much value? Oh yeah, we’ll be there August 18th.

God bless,
Jason

 

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The Wrong System Restore Date

During Mary’s final days, I was inspired to take my sons on a real adventure. Mary took every opportunity to spend time with her family. Not one vacation hour was ever held over year to year. She was present as often as possible and we are (literally) eternally grateful for the time we all had together. She would amass her paid time off and start rigging the calendar in January to prepare for her favorite two weeks of the year, and by December we would have her all to ourselves to close out each year. But we never took time for a proper road trip adventure.

It took me three months after Mary’s passing to pull out of the driveway in a borrowed 19-foot RoadTrek 190 with little idea of how long we would be gone or how far we would go. After nearly seven weeks and 3,000 miles of visiting with friends and family, wandering, and exploring, we rolled back into that driveway and we had gone far.

But I messed up.

In the three months between Mary’s death and the trip I had started to develop our new life. Laundry, dishes, meals, bedtime, church, play, rest, blogging, personal business sorting, soccer, jiu-jitsu, Facebook engagement…everything was different in small and large ways. I was watching the changes, analyzing them, and through trial-and-error and important prioritizing, I was internalizing and owning those changes.

I thought the road trip would be an extension of that process. A way to prove to myself that the Zerbey Three could love each other, adventure, and still get the basic practicals done. It felt that way for six weeks and three days. Then I got sick with a nasty stomach bug and was blessed to be staying with Mary’s parents. I know I’m not going to do this alone, but I was almost incapable of providing for my sons and lying in bed thinking about what was next. Going home. It was one of those changes I hadn’t faced. Mary wasn’t there to build the ready-for-the-car pile in the hall. Mary wasn’t there to negotiate our departure time. Mary wasn’t there to wrangle with her mom about how much food we’d take with us. All of a sudden, she was gone again. Driving home, I had that empty passenger seat and no one to figure out what “had to” come in the house tonight and what could wait. I lost all the rhythms I composed in those first three months. I didn’t have enough food in the fridge and the washing machine wouldn’t accept any quarters.

I’ve got to look at this reset as an opportunity to do things better. I made a ton of mistakes in those first months. I hadn’t elaborated a perfect system that’s now lost. I had a survival system that would not last and now needs a full rebuild. So, I’ve got my first pot of coffee and blog post going. I think that’s something.

God bless,
Jason

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Not Strong

I yell at my sons. I bully them and unleash my temper and can’t hardly explain why afterward. I can’t blame this on grieving as it has long been a weakness. I’ve tried to will it away. I thought I was strong enough to simply send it to the cornfield.

Wrongo. I hid it away and let it grow. I killed the Tooth Fairy, scared my sons, and screamed in front of my young nephews. In an effort to not share my shame, I became monstrously shameful.

Our hosts, my sister and her husband, neither kicked me out nor gave me a beating. She found a GriefShare meeting and informed me I was getting dropped off while she took the boys to the Knoxville Zoo. Griefshare has been an invaluable tool for my healing and my sister found this meeting without knowing my history with them. It seemed like the perfect release for the pain my actions had caused.

But I didn’t do it right. I got talking about Mary, home education, and my sons, but not my weakness. I left feeling increasingly anxious and panicked. I took to emailing a dear friend and tried to make my confessions. For the second time that day a strong woman had the answer I needed.

I never intended to lie about “doing fine,” but as my strength has waned, I’ve neglected my self-awareness and been overly concerned with not hurting and worrying those I love. My friend reminded me that I need to trust these people. That if you’re reading this, we can help one another.

I like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to be fun places. When they get dark, people seem to feed it rather than bring light to it. And I’m not snapping a lot of well-framed pictures while I’m stomping around like a toddler. So I’m here to officially record my discredit. I have to fix this and I’ve failed on my own. I’m going to trust you and God more from now on. When Reverend Peyton sang “Since I Laid My Burden Down,” I forgot the part where the Lord picks up the burden.

If you’re hurting because of a hidden shame, please find someone to confide in. With hope, he or she will help you find others to trust. Some weaknesses might be too much to overcome on your own.

God bless,
Jason
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#3Zs Road Trip Day One

Excited and up early to get too many things finalized to leave home!

I put Matt McWilliams and Tom Woods in my ear and start the coffee maker, in the dark. I’m totally inspired by this home educating, libertarian dad who is supporting his family. Okay, he’s not flying solo, but this makes me think I’ve got a chance to make this insane life work for me and my sons. I’m listening very closely as the coffee urn reaches its maximum capacity, and the brewer keeps doing its work regardless.

So it seems life won’t be perfect.

Not a problem. I’ve had too many people inspire me and too many reasons to forge a meaningful life.

God bless,
Jason

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Zerbey Three Adventure Day X-1

Fear and trepidation. I’ve become too familiar with these feelings in the last few weeks. It’s time for some exposure therapy. I’m throwing my sons in a Roadtrek 190 and we’re going to tackle the unknown.

Mary and I each went camping our whole lives and our first born spent a weekend in an old tent before he was seven months old. Just before she passed, we were debating the first new purchase of a tent in decades. A big, lovely suite of outdoor living with hinged door and screened-in mud room (my dirt-in-bed-phobic favorite). It was still there in her digital shopping cart as I started to pick up the pieces from her death. In those first days of the Zerbey Three I knew we needed something more than just right now. We needed a goal and an adventure, something with just the three of us.

Now we’re here. New tent purchased and tested and recreational vehicle borrowed. The RV only has three seats and it’s hard to conceive of this journey happening had Mary not left us. Last night, my elder son asked, “Why did Mom die?” I know he was thinking of those three seats. I told him that we need to pray and ask God for guidance, for patience, and for a way to see the purpose in our lives. That I’m not smart enough to solve this puzzle without help. That we’ve got to work to give it meaning.

I feel closer to God outside. All the green of spring is life anew. Regenerating is more painful than I had hoped, but I see a lot of growth to be had in the weeks ahead.

God bless,
Jason

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The “In-Laws” Problem

I’ve got the best problems. My favorite ones are all mine, I don’t have to share them with my boys and they involve an adoptive family that has embraced me for as long as I can recall.

Sure I remember some hesitance from Mary’s more protective family members when we first started dating; but I’m protective of those I care for too, so any perceived distance formed into bonds of trust. It wasn’t long before I had a great big pile of “in-laws.”

A horrid term. Beyond the socially negative connotations, I was already leaning libertarian and these folks meant a whole lot more to me than our legal connection. They accepted me as family, I accepted them, and blood ties were born with our boys. The legal binds are cut with Mary’s passing, but that has no relevance to our lives.

It does have relevance to terminology. Language is important to me as I try to navigate and define life. It has always been a central focus when I’m facilitating education or explaining a concept to my children. English language is inadequate in many ways (“home school” topping my list), but it doesn’t appear to have anything better than, “my late wife’s parents” or “Mary’s brother-in-law.” How about, “my late wife’s brother-in-law,” yeah, that just dances off the tongue.

I’ve found some articles on the subject (here and here), but it doesn’t seem to be a hot topic. Nor one with a resolution.

I’ve been too traditional to invent a lexicon to describe our world, but our existence has become exceedingly non-traditional and I may have to revisit that position.

God bless,
Jason

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A Precipice

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
John 1:14-18

Truth. God is the Word and the Word is truth and grace. The act of creating, of bringing something good into the world requires us to speak with truth. Speaking truth isn’t going to build heaven on Earth, but it can build the tools we need to survive the hellishness we will face.

I have truths I’m terrified to share. I’m lonely in the most juvenile of ways. I want to hold a pretty girl’s hand, but I don’t feel whole enough to make that a fair deal for anyone. I don’t want my loneliness to hurt anyone else, so I’ve kept it to myself. I’ve hidden the truth and it fed my pain for not being spoken. It became a physical pain and it came close to breaking me until I decided to reveal it.

I was playing terrible soccer in a terrible game and feeling terrible about myself when a lightning storm cut the game short and sent me off towards a terrible fork in the road. Seriously, a lightning storm. Sometimes God really gets how thick-headed we can be.

But I still didn’t get it. I was aimed at a bar and the first drink I’d had in two months and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to close that place down and cry all over the bartender and anyone else I could find. I had that vision and knew I had to literally drive past Mary’s resting place to get to that first drink. There it was. I looked at the clock and a grief support group that meets at our church might still be there. Looking, and smelling, pathetic in my soccer kit I crashed the meeting and tried not to fall apart.  The leader stayed after the meeting and we talked about the nuts and bolts of going from “dad and husband,” to “dad and ______” I didn’t go home with many answers, but I was reminded of the value of truth.

I’m not as ready to rebuild my mind as I thought I was, there is a lot to clean up first.

Mary and I worked hard at being truthful with each other. We knew that a marriage could fall right through your fingers if both parties didn’t focus on maintaining that foundation of truth. Mary knew my weaknesses and that made them lighter (even when I wasn’t in the mood to hear about them).

I don’t expect this to be the last precipice I toe up to; but like any other anticipation anxiety, I’m healthier for choosing to look into the chasm rather than blind myself to it.

God bless,
Jason 

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The Learning is Out There

When we started on this educational journey, we only knew the words “home school.” We got desks set up and slowly began to transform part of our house into a school room. We didn’t recognize it right away, but major problems were there from the start. We weren’t being rigid, but we were looking at education as a mere “part” of our lives. Even worse, narrowing it to a physical area of our home. “School” was the other problem. We were trying to replicate an environment of learning that hadn’t been satisfactory for ourselves. Every time we left the house to go to a museum, park, arboretum, music venue, or even the store, our children’s curiosity led us down unexpected paths of enrichment. We were slow to learn from these experiences that the excitement of life and knowledge was out in the community. Engaging with new ideas and experts in their own environments.

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Photo credit unknown

 

 

 

 

 

 

These engagements often produce much more than expected. They cascade into different disciplines and new places of wonder. From the first time I spotted our older boy’s “birthday painting” (Howard Pyle’s The Fight on Lexington Common taught us when the American War for Independence began), Delaware Art Museum has been a frequent source of these moments. After having the pleasure of meeting Brian Selznick at the opening of the From Houdini to Hugo exhibit, we had a chance conversation with a security guard who had become familiar with the boys. He introduced us to the work of filmmaker Georges Méliès, the inspiration behind Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret. As we sought out his films at the library, we learned about early film, World War I, and how onscreen special effects were born from Méliès’s live stage act. I also learned about who was behind some of the fantastical science fiction film clips that had charged my imagination as a child. Our boys grew a love for silent films and we returned many times to that gallery to explore early paleontology, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the art of historical storytelling.

A few years later we would read Selznick’s Wonderstruck, about a boy who just lost his mother, and that same security guard would attend Mary’s memorial service. Delaware Art Museum has been central to our educational life, a life that doesn’t keep attendance Monday through Friday, but a life that is with us always and everywhere. It’s a life where learning and community are interlocked and essential to one another.

[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/G1fb75f2WN8?rel=0″ title=”Mister Rogers – Human beings learn best and most from other human beings” description=”Mister Rogers – Human beings learn best and most from other human beings” /]

God bless,
Jason

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Stand On It

Whether it was monster trucks, dragsters, stock cars, motocross, four wheeling, or getting to work on time, Mary liked it fast and loud. Little did I know when I started dating this pretty hippy gal that she would take me to my first NASCAR race and accompany me to countless drag races and motor sports events.

Mary was a sensitive, conscientious, and graceful woman who could get down there on the fence with her boys and feel the rubber flying off funny car tires, dotting our skin and clothes with black. She could stand at the edge of a gravel parking lot and watch Bigfoot launch into the air and smash cars twenty feet away. She could sit under the summer sun at Dover International Speedway for hours on end rooting for, and against, the drivers. She was meant to be the mom to two gasoline fume loving boys.

Those boys still tease me about not driving as fast as Mom. My younger says, “Yeah, she had a metal foot.”
“That’s lead foot, Son.”
“Nah, I like ‘metal.'”
Metal foot it is.

Mary enjoyed so many things in life. From the quietest of museum galleries to the loudest of cars. She showed our boys that life was to be lived. Experiences became the core of our home education philosophy. Expose a child to all the wonderful creations of God and man and let that child find his own loves and passions. The boys are a lot like Mary, up for anything and ready to take the lead on an adventure.

I fear they’ll also drive like her.

God bless,
Jason

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A Dad of Letters

I embraced a psychological death this week. More than two months after the physical death of my wife I am coming to the realization that I have to rebuild part of my mind.

I listen to Jordan Peterson a lot (and you should too) and grew into maturity listening to and reading Joseph Campbell. I never thought the Hero’s Journey would apply to me, but to quote Peterson, “Wrong!” Here I am, in the dark wood, dragons all about, and a village to save. It’s scary and I tried to deny the task that God has set before me. A sulfurous beast gave me no choice in the form of a combined birthday party for my boys. It almost took me out to do this without Mary. It killed part of me and I feel a little more peace for it being gone. The emptiness isn’t so much an impassable black hole any longer, but a blank page I have to fill.

Blank pages to fill can be scary too. But more dragons must be slayed and I have been inspired to spill a lot of ink in the process. I have a thousand wells of inspiration, but one very important source came in the form of a TEDxWilmington talk that happened as I girded myself to receive guests and facilitate the celebration. After surviving the party I was able to catch a replay of Alessandra Nicole‘s presentation. I knew it was about letter writing and included an image of the boys, so we sat down to watch together. I had no idea that it would feature our story, that I was watching it at the most perfect time, nor that it would light my way farther into that dark wood.

I wrote two quick letters the next morning, one with the help and guidance of my younger son. These are small markers of my rebuilding; clearing of rubble, choosing of materials, drafting of plans, inspecting of still-standing structures and foundations, slaying of dragons. I can’t put it back together, I’m going to build something new page by page and brick by brick.

God bless,
Jason