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This morning when I got up, Gwen was downstairs on the couch hugging Paddington Bear and crying.

I asked her why, and she pulled out the book she was reading (Here Comes Paddington) and pointed to the place where Paddington asks if the marmalade will be too expensive because "I don't have very much money". She was so super awful worried about Paddington not having any money that she couldn't even move on to the next sentence (when Mr. Brown says "of course not" and that they wouldn't be charging Paddington money because he'd be one of the family).

Milestone: First time crying over a book.

[This was written up for FB; cross-posted here with only minor changes.]

Buckle up, people, this is going to get long.

Lots of you know that I have been involved in a medieval re-creation society since I was not-quite-14 -- almost 2/3 of my life now. In this society, the highest recognition for excellence in the pursuit of the arts and sciences is the Order of the Laurel, which stands in equal rank with (among others) the knights of the realm.

I have wanted to be a laurel one day since I was, oh, about 15 or so.

Some of you know that I am currently at Raglan Castle, at Ffair Rhaglen, an annual 10 day event at which we are given the freedom of the castle, with 120+ people camping on the grounds, and living their daily medieval lives there.

It is the highlight of my year, it is my second home, it makes me feel safe.

About a month ago, I was approached by a friend for assistance in putting together a ceremony involving a public disputation ending with a licentiate to teach, following medieval university traditions concerning masters of arts, with a view towards my dear friend and best beloved twin Ari Mala a companion of the Order of the Laurel for her excellence in heraldry, in scribal arts, in prose and poetry, in the crafting of words, and in languages.

This was basically the most awesome thing I could think of. I have long felt that if one is to make someone a "master (or mistress) of arts" in the context of a medieval re-creation society, that it should be modelled on the medieval ways of making masters of arts. And to see Mala being made a laurel with such an awesome, and appropriate for her and her scholarship!, ceremony? At Raglan? How could I not want to be a part of this?

One thing led to another and we ended up founding a university (Seint Scholastes Halle is the founding college of the Scholastican University of Drachenwald), the founding of which would be marked by a public disputation on the nature of good vs. evil, an appropriate topic since since she, the proposer of the thesis, is the evil twin while I (Ary Bona), one of the disputants, is the good twin. She was up for a bit of a lark, and we planned it all so that Tuesday night in court she would propose the thesis, presenting three arguments for the thesis that evil is better than good, which arguments were to be individually refuted by myself; Dame Lynette, magistra artium; and Master Alexandre, magister artium. Wednesday morning, there would be the resolution to the disputation, at which point Mala would be offered the option of obtaining her licentiate to teach (in the form of becoming a magistra artium herself and a companion of the Order of the Laurel) at Wednesday evening court, after sitting vigil to contemplate the nature of such of an offer.

It was a brilliant plan. I couldn't think of a better ceremony and setting, or timing, or anything that could make it more fitting for her.

Which just goes to show that I, unlike Socrates, do not know how little I know.

The disputation in the great hall of Raglan Castle was amazing (and it was filmed so I'm sure it will turn up on the internet at some point), with Mala making her arguments, the disputants responding, and then Mala summing up her final position, and we awaited the words of the king and queen to reconvene us in the morrow for the resolution of the disputation.

Instead, I heard it announced that the first disputant had disputed so well, that the point would be awarded to her, and it was *my* name that was named that I be escorted to *my* vigil, to spend the night receiving council so that I might make my decision to the king and queen in the morning whether I would be entered into the ranks of their laurel order.

Dear reader, I have never been so blindsided. Even when my husband proposed to me and I laughed because I didn't realise he was serious.

The best part of the remainder of the evening was when Mala came into my vigil room and proclaimed "gotchya!" and I smiled inside because I could tell she had as yet now knowledge of what was to come...

In the morning, in front of their majesties and all the court I resolved the disputation (in favor of good over evil, of course), citing the authorities of Anselm, Aquinas, and cookies, and then heard the words of my peers (and sobbed unashamedly when Mikey's words were read, there is no other Rose whose words could have meant even half as much), and was given the insignia of the order and confirmed as Drachenwald's newest member of the Order of the Laurel.

At which point, Dame Lyonet knelt before their majesties, pointed out an imbalance in the humors that arose from having elevated the disputant and not the proposer of the thesis, and begged the boon for Mala, and the look on her face at that moment was, dear reader, priceless. "Gotchya", dearest twin, "gotchya."

She was led off to her vigil, and as I was laureled in the morning in the sun, she was laureled in the evening in the shadows, and we are henceforth confirmed in our twinship for now we even share the same birthday.

There is so much more that I can say, to so many people. But for those of you know what the Laurel order is and stands for, you know what this means to me. Those of you who do not, I hope this has given a sense of the magnitude and the importance of what happened yesterday.

I'm sure there will be pictures eventually.

"Mummy! You know what will be SO MUCH FUN? I'm going to take all the cards out and shuffle them and then put them back in order!"

...says Gwen of her 100s of lego cards, which are neatly in plastic sheeting in numeric order.

Oh my goodness, she is my child.

They're teaching Gwen how to sing.

Not just the words of songs, rhythms, melodies, but how music works. Today on the way home, Gwen sang me a song that she had written. It was a melody involving "Do", "Mi", and "So", complete with hand motions indicating each tone (hands are placed at various heights either in fists or in flat palms upright or angled). Then she invited me to compose a song in the same way (and seemed quite pleased with my "So - Mi - So - Mi - So - Mi - Do - So - Mi" tune).

What I know about music could fill a tea cup. I know the lyrics of many songs and enjoy singing very much, but I've always known that not only can I not sing in tune, I can't hear that I'm not singing in tune. The only way I could play piano or record was by numbering my fingers and then numbering the notes on the page. I can look at a piece of music and get relative ups and downs and longs and shorts from it, but nothing absolute.

What every parent dreams of is being able to give their child what they never had themselves or what they cannot give themselves. I don't really feel my lack of musical acumen. My parents gave me ample musical education opportunities and I'd much rather that they let me quit piano than that they forced me to continue.

When we signed Gwen up for Choristers, it was knowing that (a) she enjoyed singing and (b) it wasn't just the proper Choristers who got a good musical education. When she discovered that people actually wrote the songs that she loved singing so much -- sometimes they were even written by the people who were singing them in the videos! -- she was fascinated by the concept. There's no way I could ever teach her any musical theory or composition or all the stuff about writing songs and making music which seems to me to be entirely ineffable but which is actually teachable. Days like this reinforce my belief that we made the right choice w.r.t. her schooling.

There's a game Gwen likes to play. I tell her "You don't like X", where X is something she obviously likes, and she bursts into gales of laughter and replies, "I DO like X" or some such contradiction.

On the way home, she played it with me -- she told me things _I_ didn't like -- and I turned the tables by agreeing with her instead of contradicting her. She thought this was HILARIOUS.

I thought it fascinating the list of things she came up with that I don't like. They include:

- Books
- Ice cream
- Birthday cake
- Wine
- Beer
- Scotch
- My glasses
- Teaching
- Doing my hair
- Myself

And then she tried to trick me by throwing in "You don't like potatoes", and she laughed and laughed when I contradicted her.

But then she thought of something that was SO preposterous and SO far from the truth that she could hardly bring herself to even say it, she was laughing too hard at the idea that this could be something I didn't like. Finally she managed to get it out:

"You don't like me."

(Of course I agreed with her completely and said she was the worst human being that I knew.)

I love that this concept is so far from the truth that she could barely even conceive of it being true.

Wait, that's ships, isn't it? I can never keep naval/navel straight.

Today I got the author proofs for "The Sum of Our Memories", the 7,000-word short story I extracted from 80,000 words of 400 words/day writing last summer and sent off to a call for submissions for an anthology, and was rather shocked when it was accepted. I queued up the soundtrack for it (Genesis, "One for the Vine"; The Strawbs "Ghosts" and "Hangman & the Papist"; The Crüxshadows, "The Hanged Man"), and began to read.

Oh man. I had forgotten just how dark the story is, and how it deals with miscarriage and suicide and loss of identity, and just how many nightmares (the literal sort) were exorcised in the writing of it. I came away from reading it feeling like I'd received a punch to the stomach.

--

Is it hubris to say that your own writing is good? I mean, no one has ever told me that it isn't, but one can't always expect one's parents to have an unbiased opinion. My academic papers always got good marks in university, and when I submit papers to journals, the comments I get are always about content and not style. If I thought about it at all, in the last decade, I'd probably simply say "Yeah, I'm a good writer", but this wouldn't have meant much because lots of people are good writers.

Except, lots of people are not. [Shelve this thought; we'll come back to it.] And other people who I would've pegged in the "good writer" category singled me out as "a good writer". One of my co-authors, while we were drafting, specifically asked me to edit his parts of the paper with liberty, because he really enjoyed and appreciated my style. Sitting down now, I can't recall other specific examples, but I do know they exist, in the last ~2-3 years: Academics specifically saying they enjoy the way I write.

Now, this doesn't really mean that much -- many people can write well and think that other people write well; many people can write well and still enjoy a specific person's style especially. This isn't enough to justify any sort of distinction about my writing.

--

Then last summer I composed this story by stitching together bits of a much bigger piece, and it got accepted.

Then I started writing The Novel and continued writing because I didn't know how to stop, and ended up in some writing groups on FB, and ended up volunteering to beta read for other people, and having other people volunteer to beta read for me.

And that was an eye-opening experience. Many, many people who have read even portions of the novel have commented on the elegance of the prose, that they find it beautiful. And I read a number of things which were, um, just not very well written. And it kind of shocked me; I knew that I've always been a good writer, but being good at writing had never stood out as any sort of especial characteristic; for all I really knew, everyone else could also be a good writer.

Except they're not. Which triggered a whole bunch of navel-gazing (wait, is that oranges, or boats? I have no idea). [This post has been mulling in my mind for a very long time now.]

--

When I wrote the 80,000 words that eventually became "The Sum of Our Memories", I wrote the story I wanted to write. When I wrote The Novel, I wrote the story I wanted to read. After finishing the first draft, I knew it needed a lot of work. I knew I needed to read it and reread it and let it rest and print it off and read the paper version and repeat until every single word was the perfect word. And yet, I'd sit down to start editing, and suddenly look at the clock and found I'd read 50 pages and it was past bedtime, and I'd gotten so completely absorbed in it.

I've let it rest for awhile now -- I now know, concretely, a few of the major changes it needs in the next drafting -- but the other night I was looking up a specific passage in it, and all of a sudden an hour had past and I was immersed in reading it. It is still exactly the story I want to read, and when I read it, it's hard to escape the feeling that this is good, this is really good.

--

I had that same feeling again tonight, rereading "The Sum of Our Memories". This is good, this is actually really good.

--

And I had that same feeling at the end of April when I completed a long short story that I wrote over the course of the month, "The Platform Between Heaven and Earth." For the final edits, I printed off a copy and read it aloud. It took about an hour and 20 minutes, and while reading it, I kept thinking "I wish I could read this around a camp-fire to an audience. This is good. This is really good." And I shared the PDF of it with acquaintances on the internet, and the response was...well, let's just say, very gratifying.

--

But there is something so very strange about waxing lyrical about how good your own work is, because if there is one person more biased than your parents it's you. How on earth can I say such narcissistic things about my own writing? How am I any judge? This is one of the reasons why this post is self-indulgent: I am giving myself liberty to articulate these internal thoughts, even if I have no evidence or validation for them.

There's also the flip side: Imposter syndrome. Why am I surrounded by so many people who struggle to maintain their faith in their works, to believe that what they are writing is good, worthwhile, valuable, when I myself am not plagued by these doubts?

I had Imposter Syndrome for quite awhile -- who wouldn't when you're 20 years old and in grad school, younger by a long shot than any of your classmates, younger than many of the students you're teaching, when you're surrounded by people who know more, are cleverer, are quicker on the mark, are better at everything than you are -- but I remember precisely the day that a switch flipped and it turned off. It was my 2nd year in Amsterdam, and I was sitting in, but not taking for credit, a philosophy of math master's course. I remember sitting in the back of the room (something undergrad me NEVER did), making snide remarks to the person sitting next to me (something undergrad me NEVER did), and asking challenging questions (something undergrad me definitely did do, but US grad me didn't as much, because I could never articulate the questions I had until a few days after the class), and I suddenly realized that I had become the person I had always felt inferior to. I was the one that other people would feel an imposter next to.

And basically after that, I've never really had any false doubts about my abilities as an academic.

But I have concrete evidence, reinforced in many different dimensions, that I am a good academic; I am a good researcher, I am a good teacher. I am not an imposter.

When it comes to writing, though, it feels like I should be more suspect of my own quality. I want to be more suspect of my own quality, because only that way can I recognize where the flaws and places that need improvement are. If I am too uncritical, I can never be better. So, it worries me, somewhat, how much I like my own writing, how it affects me when I read it, how good it seems to me to be.

--

But because I said this post was self-indulgent, I'll indulge myself enough to end it with this: It is good, it's really good.

It's a bit different, going on holiday with a kid. We have one hotel room, with a double bed and a single bed, which means when Gwen goes to bed (which has been ~2 hours later than usual, BUT France is an hour ahead of England, and we'd only been on daylight savings for a week or two before coming here, so basically it's the bedtime she'd been going to bed at up until about three weeks ago, AND we've been sleeping in until 9:30 nearly every day so she's still getting her 12 hours) around 9:30, Joel and I turn of the light and sit in the dark (thank goodness for backlit computers). Tonight he suggested running out to the Monoprix up the block to get a bottle of cider to split, which sounded like a lovely idea.

Alas, they sell cider, but not plastic cups. France is not a place where one has need of plastic cups. France is a place where one arranges one's life so that one always has all the cups one needs. But our hotel doesn't provide cups, and he couldn't buy any, so we've rinsed out one water bottle and one bottle of juice that we've accumulated, and are sitting, in the dark, in bed, drinking cider out of them.

I don't know why we aren't just chugging it from the bottle it came in.

When I found out that G.'s school class had 11 boys and 3 girls, I was a bit worried at the gender disparity, and wondered how it would play out. (I am also still not entirely happy with the "girls must wear skirts" uniform policy, but I am willing to shut up about it so long as SHE seems happy with it.)

Friday was the last day of Lent term, and since it's already my Easter break and there was no after school club, I picked her up at 3:15 with the rest of the kids. It was a glorious day and when we got to the cathedral she wanted to run around on the grass for awhile, so I figured why not. Then M1 came along with his mom, and she convinced him to come and run around for awhile too. Then M2 came along with his parents and little brother, and joined in. And then JK came along with HIS mom, and we all shrugged our shoulders and said "Well, I guess it means we don't need to take them to a playground!" The four of them spent about half an hour running around, running races and rolling down the hill, and at one point, G. shouted, "Boys, come!", gestured, and ran off. And every single one of them followed her.

I guess I don't really need to worry about Gwen feeling cowed, or learning problematic gender norms, or anything like that. (Though I'll admit I heard an echo of myself in her, that peremptory "G., come!" that I use when we're, e.g., traveling and I need her with me, NOW. So, I guess my sometimes-strict parenting style is actually a good thing, because it gives her a clear model of female leadership. :) )

A student, H., flagged me at the beginning of tutorial today saying he and another, G., had an announcement to make, if that was all right. (Important backstory: at the Philosophy Society Ball a few weeks previously, H. apparently proposed to G., and G. eventually agreed.) He showed me what they wanted to say, and I knew immediately, how could I say no?

So I called class to order, and mentioned that there was an announcement someone wanted to make, and H. got up, walked over to a third, I., and proceeded to request that she marry both he and G., complete in iambic pentameter and down on bended knee.

This is the best thing that I think will ever happen in one of my classes. I have been watched relationships blossom from day one, and while I have no idea how much of this is a joke and how much isn't (I'm not even sure any of they know!), I am loving it so much.

Today my advanced seminar switched gears from the formal logic we've been doing since October to philosophy of math. I still want the presentations to be student-given, but it's very different covering a chapter of philosophy, including motivating discussion, than it is covering a bunch of technical definitions, lemmas, proofs, etc., so I wasn't sure how things were going to go.

I couldn't have been happier. The student who volunteered for this week smashed the presentation and was very good at guiding and directing discussion, and pretty much everyone in the room was willing to talk -- and more importantly, to talk to each other rather than to me. I tried to stay in the background as much as possible, because as soon as The Teacher speaks, especially to ask a question, then the discussion suddenly becomes Students Answering the Teacher's Question, rather than a philosophical discussion.

Today was an overview of issues in philosophy of mathematics, which boil down basically to: What is the ontology of mathematics? and What is the epistemology of mathematics? I.e., what are mathematical objects, and how do we know things about them?

A lot of people already have some strong leanings towards various positions, either from their own mathematical practices, or from other metaphysical or epistemology leanings they have independently from math, and it was fun seeing them beginning to articulate these leanings to each other. At one point, one student boldly proclaimed that "THIS is what philosophy is for"---not those 'soft' questions in ethics about utilitarianism vs. consequentialism, etc. (I LOVE that "determining the real nature of mathematical objects and how mathematics relates to the world" is what they think is the most important goal/pursuit of philosophy. I guess I shouldn't be surprised; they're all taking this class!).

Another brought up the very good question of what the difference is between dragons and numbers, on an anti-realist position. One person had an answer: "Practicality. We use numbers and dragons differently".

Someone else advanced the rather bold claim that not only do we apply numbers to the real world because they work, but also the converse -- numbers work because we use them.

I am really looking forward to the coming weeks' discussions.