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An Elevated Family

Three years ago this month our boys began training Brazilian jiu-jitsu at Elevated Studios.

Stephen and Renée Plyler have become so much to our family. They are mentors to our boys and treat them as equals. Stephen is an expert instructor and Renée always wants to know what’s happening on the home education front.

When Mary was sick, Stephen came and visited her and Renée is often watching the boys for me. They were at Mary’s memorial service and I can always count on them when I need help.

Incredibly, Elevated is even bigger than these two impressive individuals.  When the Roll for Zerbeys fundraiser was held, the studio was packed with students of all ages, parents, friends, and family. The children grappled with each other and black belts.

It’s not just skill that’s lifted up at Elevated. Every day they are empowering others to be stronger in mind, body, and spirit. I’ve learned a lot by observing Stephen’s teaching techniques and discussing the ins-and-outs of home education with Renée. My boys are more significant humans thanks to their guidance.

God bless,

Jason

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Learn Do

We love knowledge in the Zerbey house. But knowledge without purpose can be dangerous. Don’t get me wrong, I love “useless” facts and trivia. If you’re going to be excited about the acquisition of information, you’re going to end up with a lot of weird debris in your head. But it’s not without purpose if it is part of a habit and lifestyle of learning, if it keeps you educating yourself and those around you even when you don’t mean to.

All knowledge can be interesting and useful, but it is up to the student to bring purpose.

Apprenticeships look like the future to me, but opportunities are lacking for now. I like the idea of internships as they are voluntarily entered into by people who have an interest in something that is actually happening in their world, right now. Delaware Museum of Natural History just announced their 2018 internship program.

My boys are a wee young for an internship, but they love the Museum. I suspect they’ll find their way behind the scenes one day.

God bless,

Jason

 

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Love and Math

Our second son was born in 2011.

Love was multiplied. Our first born came to visit his new baby brother and love multiplied again.

Of all the blessings Mary and I received, none compare to our two boys. They gave us higher purpose and brought us closer to God. They put us on a path to be saved by Christ, deschool ourselves, and create a life centered on learning.

Life is immeasurably better with children. Not always happier, and certainly not easier, but it is better.

For these reasons and more I’d like you to consider supporting a GoFundMe campaign to help an old friend adopt. I’ve met some amazing adoptive parents and I know Majesta will be an awesome mom.

I met Majesta nearly 20 years ago and she was almost entirely responsible for launching me on a backpacking adventure across New Zealand and Australia. For Christmas this year, Mary got an Oz-formatted VHS tape of me skydiving converted to DVD and we watched it for the first time. That journey still lives in our family and I am so grateful for Majesta and the friendship we had.

Unfortunately, Majesta never met Mary. One night I stood my ground on principals that I thought were more important than a great friendship and I ruined that friendship. I first laid eyes on Mary during that ridiculous argument. She was dancing with her sisters at an upstairs bar in Rehoboth Beach. Who could miss that? Better question: What possessed me to go to the quieter downstairs bar with Majesta to fight over the perfect familial arrangement?

Mary having a good time and me across the room pushing buttons in a heated discussion, it was like we were already married.

I met Mary, and I lost Majesta, later that weekend. They would have been marvelous friends, having fun and keeping me in check.

As I take inventory of this life without Mary, the holes and empty places seem to be everywhere. I’ve got to keep filling them with love. She left us with so much and there’s no reason to stop multiplying it.

Please consider helping Majesta and Stephan multiply their love: https://www.gofundme.com/give-them-the-adoption-option.

God bless,

Jason

 

 

 

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Do-It-Yourself Lego Storage

Maybe you have a ton of Lego or maybe you’re just getting started with your collection. Either way, you’ve got to do something with them. Without going into all the possibilities, we’re re-builders. My boys get a cool set, build it, savor it for a couple weeks, then break it down to use the components. So we sort and store our bricks to keep them ready for the next building session.

Without spending hundreds on clear plastic drawers or ready-made solutions, we often employ the actual Lego boxes to hold our loose bricks. If you’re willing to carry the cost of new-in-box Lego, why not reuse that expensive packaging?

It’s super simple: Choose a box from a set with 200+ pieces. They’re sturdier than the smaller sets and will last forever. I wouldn’t use a 300+ set box for anything but the largest bricks and elements. Otherwise, you’re in a perpetual needle-in-a-haystack swirl.

Use a box cutter or scissors to cut down the sides of the face of the box to create the lid. Start at the end that’s already open and don’t trim anything off. Open the new lid and apply duct tape (I love Gorilla Tape, I’ve had to replace cheaper stuff after a while) to the back wall of the tray. I mistakenly cut the back side of the box for this lid, so I needed those little rectangles along the top seam, it wasn’t enough and I replaced them with larger strips later.

Tape closed the open wall of the tray with as much, or as little, tape as you like to get your desired look.

Now, the lid will close with the extra tab actually fitting back in the box to secure it for storage.

For display, fold the lid backwards and bend it across the bottom seam of the box to create a new fold. It may not sit flat immediately, but after having some weight in it the box should sit just fine and the lid will still return to the closed position.

My first experiments with this technique were with much flimsier cereal boxes, but even those have lasted years with little maintenance.

Please put any questions in the comments section. I’ll have a lot more to say on Lego sorting and storage in the future.

God bless,

Jason

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Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

Metallica, Nikka Costa, Matisyahu, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Billy Idol, Rage Against the Machine, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Hoots and Hellmouth, Michael Franti, Shelby Lynne, White Stripes, Iggy Pop, K’naan, James Hunter, Fiona Apple, and near ad infinitum…

You know a girl who enjoys all these bands AND has seen them live? I did. I had the pleasure of seeing almost all of them with Mary.

She was the perfect concert partner. From scamming us into Audioslave, to almost getting me into a fight at The Queen, to headbanging to Peeping Tom under the midday Chicago sun, to losing our younger son in the hedges at Bellevue State Park during a lunchtime performance, to seeing Carolina Chocolate Drops at our first music festival as a family of four in 2012: Appel Farm Arts and Music Festival.

I never got her to a David Bowie show, but he supplied our wedding song:

“When you rock ‘n’ roll with me
No one else I’d rather be
Nobody here can do it for me
I’m in tears again
When you rock ‘n’ roll with me”

It feels too darn true right now. Music used to get me so high, used to get me moving, used to be a salve. It doesn’t have that power now. I might get a little sad or a little happy, but I ain’t getting high. I can’t see the mountain tops of joy Mary and I climbed while experiencing music. But I’m optimistic enough to keep climbing.

The Zerbey Three are journeying to Delfest in Maryland this spring. I don’t know how I’ll keep it together when we see some of Mary’s favorites like Rhiannon Giddens, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, or Birds of Chicago; but I need to share every bit of her with our boys that I can.

God bless,

Jason

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Don’t Read Shakespeare

It started about here.

Our son was less than a month old when I read Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days to him. Okay, he slept through most of it and failed the quiz, but I was too excited to withhold my love for literature. Bonus: Mary never got tired of giggling at my pronunciation of “Passepartout.”

Eight years later we reread the same cheap translation (sorry, Jules), mapped Phileas Fogg’s circumnavigation of the globe, and that little boy was on stage in a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

I dreaded reading at the primary level and I wanted to spare my children the years of easy readers and dumbed-down everything. But you can’t go from ABCs to Robert Louis Stevenson overnight, right?

Why not? Stevenson’s Treasure Island was my first experiment. We had seen the N.C. Wyeth paintings at Brandywine River Museum of Art many times and what boy doesn’t love a pirate adventure? We picked up the Scribner Storybook Classic edition at our library (Wyeth galore), and trucked through the skeleton of the story directly. Next, we got the audio book, grabbed the unabridged edition, and alternated between reading at home and listening to the story in the car. We’ve gone through Wells’s “The Time Machine” and Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” in much the same manner. Graphic novels are another great tool we employ.

I was going to work my way back in time towards Shakespeare and Chaucer, but a hitch arose. Delaware Shakespeare was bringing “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” to the people, for free! Sure, our elder son had seen “Twelfth Night” when he was three months old and had delivered a line at the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s passing. Even his younger brother knew that Shakespeare was not just a really cool Lego figure. But Pericles! I’d hardly heard of it and had little time to prep them. I went to Wikipedia and Sparknotes and had small hope of relating this convoluted story line to the boys. Fortunately, Edith Nesbit came to the rescue with her Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare (audio available for free at Librivox). We sat in the parking lot of the senior center and finished up listening to and discussing Nesbit’s retelling and I prayed that these 5- and 7-year-old boys could stay engaged for the full production.

I wasn’t as quick to come to tears then as I am now, but it was the kind of home education win that seemed to be years away. It was nothing short of beautiful as they sat front row and disappeared into the Prince of Tyre’s tumultuous world.

Reading Shakespeare isn’t for everyone. In fact, no child needs to read it in the original (controversies over that word aside). Watching Shakespeare? Experiencing it? Those are for everyone. Delaware Shakespeare’s Community Tours have reached out to the uninitiated in the elderly, imprisoned, homeless, mentally ill, and under-served populations of Delaware and Philadelphia in meaningful ways. We’ve witnessed the magic of Shakespeare touch people who never thought they could penetrate the language. A good production will move you and you may not even know why.

You don’t have a personal passion for literature, or any subject, to encourage appreciation and *gasp* teach it! I look to children as mentors when it comes to curiosity. I try to model my approach to knowledge with the same creative and naive perspective that they naturally embody. We were all that way once, when did we lose it?

God bless,

Jason

p.s. – Maybe we’ll see you at Lantern Theater’s production of The Tempest.

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Adventures Expected and Unexpected

This is a picture from our penultimate adventure as a family of four.

My two boys and I met my wife, Mary, for a home education field trip to Delaware Humane Association as arranged through Brandywine Hundred Library’s Book Club for Homeschoolers. It was a lunch time excursion to a local organization to explore, enjoy, and learn about our world. It exemplified how we lived and approached the education of our boys. Set up by a dear children’s librarian and attended by friends; we toured the facility, met rescued cats and dogs, and learned about the adoption process and dog safety.

Mary didn’t feel so well later that Tuesday. She worked from home the following day, but didn’t feel any better after lots of water and rest. On Thursday, she saw her primary care doctor who diagnosed a nasty cold virus and prescribed medicine to relieve the symptoms. Friday was better, Saturday worse. Super Bowl morning we ended up at an urgent care clinic and they diagnosed flu, influenza B was confirmed at the emergency department. It was too late for anything but more drugs to combat symptoms. We got home to watch the Eagles finish the game and I thought I just had to keep Mary comfortable enough to get over the worst of it and start to heal.

She didn’t get any useful rest and just after midnight on Monday night we were back to the emergency room. Mary’s condition over those few hours worsened quickly. The hospital diagnosed a bacterial infection alongside the influenza. She couldn’t regulate her own breathing. She had practiced yoga and mindfulness and I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t take deep breaths. After multiple approaches and efforts the doctors sedated her and employed a breathing tube to get her the oxygen she needed.

I thought this was the turn around. She had finally stopped coughing and was now getting the rest and therapy her body needed. The doctor relieved me of that notion directly, “There is a high probability of death in this case.” No, I didn’t believe it and I shared that news with too few people. I thank God that Mary didn’t overhear that conversation as I came to observe over the next few days that she was very aware of what was happening around her, even under heavy sedation.

She fought an amazingly quiet fight. She believed she could win, she probably believed she had to win. She fought and stayed alive long enough for dozens of friends and families to have a chance to see her one last time. She fought and stayed alive long enough for her boys to be there and tell her that they loved her. She fought and stayed alive long enough for me to come to some type of peace, to give me the strength and love to be a better father and to take care of our boys. That peace has been shaken in the last month, but it came back to me in my lowest hour, saved me again, just like she saved me 13 years ago, and innumerable times since.

We didn’t plan this final adventure as a family of four, but the real adventures refuse to be planned.

I’m going to use this space to honor Mary Kathryn Zerbey for the rest of my days. Not just to share stories of the past, but to document our adventures as the Zerbey Three. Mary has left this Earth, but not our hearts. She’ll be with us every step of the way.