Family

The Nativity, Beginnings, Middles, and Faith

By / December 24, 2010

Shepherds, wise men, angels, Mary, and Joseph, they all rejoiced at the birth of Jesus. They all came from cultures which prophesied and awaited the coming of the Messiah who would save them all. I wonder how dismayed they were to wake up the next morning and discover that there were diapers to be changed, sheep to be fed, and normal life to be lived. The birth of Christ was a long-awaited moment, but it was only the beginning. Years of work and preparation were necessary before the true work of the Messiah could be done.

I am in the middle of raising my children. This Fall has been a tumultuous one, not in events, but in emotions. In no measurable way am I at the culmination of anything, nor at the beginning of something else. It would be nice to have a clear marker on the road, what I have instead is Christmas. I stare at the porcelain nativity scene and look at the baby. I look at the Mary in blue, so serene. They are frozen in the moment of joy, which turned out to be a brilliant moment at the very beginning of a long hard path. But once the path was done, not a one of them would regret it.

I’ll take Christmas as my marker. The fact that I’m here means that 2010 has passed and somehow we all survived. More than just survived, we have grown. I will photograph many things tomorrow and years from now I will look back and be able to see the whats and whys of where we are. I think I will look back and see that this Fall and this Christmas were a beginning. More importantly I’ll be able to see what was begun and why it matters.

I don’t think the real Mary was quite so serene as my porcelain one. She had just been through labor, not the medically-assisted, epidural-ific version of labor that I have experienced. She did natural childbirth. In a stable. With no doctor or nurse, or anyone but Joseph nearby. She must have been frazzled, sore, and high on endorphins. She knew she was at the beginning of something, all new mothers do, but what measure of terror she must have felt when contemplating the path before her. Perhaps she did not experience the Nativity as a moment of pure clarity and beauty, but rather as a muddle which only made sense later.

I think I can have faith in that. I can trust that it will make more sense later when I am not in the middle of so many things.

The Whats and Whys of our Christmas Traditions

By / December 22, 2010

Traditions exist for reasons. Sometimes they exist by nothing more than inertia and become burdens for those who must carry them onward. But good traditions help define the community or family which upholds them. My favorite traditions are the ones which spring into existence simply because they bring fulfillment to everyone involved. I remember during the early years of our family, we cast around trying to find Christmas traditions which fit. These days we have a solid set of Christmas traditions which work very well for us. I expect they will evolve as our family continues to shift and change, but for now they are good. I thought it might be interesting to list our Christmas traditions and the purposes that I feel they serve for our family.

Christmas tree: We have an artificial tree. We haul it out of the basement, assemble it, and put ornaments on it.
Why: The assembling of the tree heralds the beginning of the Christmas season. Looking at the ornaments connects us with Christmases past and often sparks the re-telling of family stories.

Pile of Christmas books: Lately I’ve taken to arranging all our Christmas books across the front of the piano so that they’re easy to select from. We don’t have many Santa-themed books. I tend to go for more unusual, less saccharine Christmas stories like A Wish for Wings that Work by Berke Breathed or Miracle by Connie Willis
Why: I like having new/familiar books available at Christmas time.

Countdown Candle: On a candle I paint numbers from 1 to 25. Each evening in December we light the candle at bedtime snack. It burns while the kids eat and I read from one of the Christmas books. The kids take turns blowing out the candle.
Why: This one grew out of my love for some way to count down until Christmas. One year someone gave us a countdown candle and it fit so nicely with our regular pattern of reading aloud at bedtime that we have done it ever since. I expect that this one will fade away when the kids stop wanting me to read aloud at snack time.

Gift Wrapping: The kids select gifts for each other, wrap them and put them under the tree. Lately all our gift paper has been white and drawn on by hand.
Why: Watching the accumulating pile of presents under the tree makes the kids happy. The white paper is a concession to the fact that the kids always liked drawing all over the gift wrap even when it already was covered in pictures. I’m not sure how long hand-drawn gift wrap will last as a tradition, but it works this year.

German “poor man’s christmas tree” on Christmas eve: This carved wooden pyramid features little wooden nativity figures which spin around as the fan blades on top are pushed by the heat of the candles which ring the base. Ours was given to me by my sister who served her mission in Germany. We light the candles, turn out the other lights and have a little Christmas Eve program which involves reading and cookies.
Why: We wanted a way to help the kids focus on the spiritual side of Christmas prior to the excitement of Christmas morning. We found that turning out the lights and lighting candles helped focus the attention of the kids. They quiet and watch the spinning shadows and figures while they listen. It is a little ceremony that creates a space of peace and calm right before bed.

Gifts for Jesus: We have a green velvet box which holds pieces of paper. Each year we write down what we want to give Jesus as a birthday gift. No one else gets to see it. This is done as part of our Christmas eve around the German candle tree. Afterward we have cookies.
Why: This was a deliberate addition to our traditions as a mechanism to help the kids understand why gift giving is so prominent in the holiday. It is also good for each of us to think through how we can be better people and give service to others, which is really the only way we can give gifts to Christ. The cookies were introduced as a reward to help the young ones focus. They aren’t necessary anymore, but we still like cookies.

Christmas Morning Surprises: We have never been proponents of Santa in our house. Instead we have a small array of gifts which are for the whole family to share. The kids know that Mom and Dad buy the gifts even when they are very small. (One child hypothesized that we wait until kids are in bed then run out and buy them that very night.) These gifts are displayed in the family room. When the kids get up on Christmas morning, they line up and enter the room together to see what the surprises are.
Why: The joy of shiny new things on display for Christmas morning is reason enough.

Stockings hung by the fireplace: We have huge stockings because Howard did when he was growing up. Most of the month they hang rather limply, not particularly decorative. But on Christmas eve we stuff them full of treat food such as cereal. The kids can dig into these as soon as they are done admiring the morning surprises.
Why: It is nice for the kids to each have a little stock of Christmas morning goodies that is clearly theirs rather than shared by everyone. Also having some of the morning surprises hidden away extends the new-things joy.

Christmas Breakfast: We require the kids to all have a solid breakfast before we proceed any further into the day. The breakfast must include protein.
Why: The whole rest of the day goes better if the kids are not sugar crashing and cranky.

Present Preparation: The morning surprises are played with and admired on both sides of breakfast. Eventually one of the kids wants to open the presents under the tree. We require all children to get fully dressed and the family room to be cleaned up before we proceed.
Why: This is both a stalling tactic and a chaos reduction tactic. If all the surprises of the morning are expended in one quick burst, the rest of the day feels anticlimactic. So we deliberately try to slow things down so that the kids will savor and appreciate instead of rushing on to the next thing. The fact that they know work lays between them and presents means the kids are a little more content to play with the new things that they already have. The clean up also means that new things do not get lost in the chaos of wrapping paper.

Gift giving: The kids carry all the presents from under the tree into the family room where we all have room to sit down. They then sort the presents according to who is giving the present. So each of us has a pile of the gifts we are giving and those gifts from other people are stacked in a seventh pile. Then we start with the youngest and someone gives a gift to him. He opens it. Then on upward in age.
Why: Again some of this is a stalling tactic. By drawing out the opening, everyone has time to focus on the gift in their hands rather than tossing it aside for the next package. Requiring people to hand-deliver the gifts they are giving helps us all focus on the act of giving rather than on getting. It also encourages mental/emotional connections between the receiver, giver, and gift. The process does not always work perfectly, but the structure encourages good habits in us all.

Christmas Dinner: We all sit down at the table together for a delicious meal. This usually happens around 2 pm. Between breakfast and dinner, people snack.
Why: It is another point of family connection. We like an excuse to eat yummy food. Also having a solid meal helps prevent sugar crashes and crankiness.

Christmas Day Movie: We always make sure that one of the Christmas gifts is a movie that we can sit down and watch together as a family.
Why: This way when the mid-afternoon crankies/boredoms hit we have something new and soothing to do as a family.

German Candle tree reprise: We light the candles again and turn out the lights. On this night we read something like How the Grinch Stole Christmas rather than Luke 2.
Why:It brings a spirit of calmness to the end of our Christmas day and reconnects us with the spiritual heart of the holiday.

Other traditions which we used to have, or which I like the idea of, but which are extremely hit and miss for our family:
Caroling
Sending out Christmas cards
Giving treats to neighbors
Giving gifts to teachers
Driving around to look at Christmas lights
Outdoor Christmas lights on our house

Parenting Challenges of the Christmas Season

By / December 21, 2010

Christmas is a season full of parenting challenges. Somehow I must sift through all the loud proclamations of desire and protestations of need to determine what is actually the best gift for each of the children. In deciding upon gifts I need to find a balance between long-term usefulness and Christmas morning joy. I also have to balance size and cost so that none of the four children feels slighted. All of this must be done within a budgeted amount of money. There are always last minute shifts in interest or need. And sometimes wants and needs are significantly divergent.

Additionally I must try to teach my children something larger about giving and how to go about it. They each must participate in the selection of gifts for siblings and parents. I have to teach them how to discern what a sibling would want that we can actually afford to give. Despite the fact that it is so much simpler for me to just select gifts for them to give to each other, I have to figure out how to let them do the picking. Then there are the little educational speeches about how to behave when we give and receive gifts, which are aimed at making the present opening a conflict-free experience.

Along with the responsibility to teach about giving, I also have religious responsibilities to teach the spiritual meanings of the holiday. Somehow this needs to be framed in a way that is meaningful to each child. One size does not fit all. Lessons about service and giving outside our immediate family are also important to feature. These things must be scheduled and framed in such a way that they are positive for our family and don’t kill the budget.

Cultural events abound during the holidays. Surely I should add some of these into our lives so that we may be enriched.

Then comes Christmas day itself. Allowing the children to tear through their presents in under an hour leaves the whole rest of the day feeling somewhat anticlimactic. It also means that the kids are so focused on the next present that they do not focus on the one in their hands. Thus evolves a series of seemingly-torturous-to-young-children rituals whose sole purpose is to slow down the events of Christmas. Much of the joy of Christmas is in the anticipation and so it must be extended and released as slowly as possible.

Last year I orchestrated a beautiful Christmas for my family. By dinner time I was a wreck, too tired to appreciate what I had created. So this year I somehow need to do all of the above, while also making sure that I do not overload myself.

Ha.

I think the core of sanity in my holiday season is to realize that Christmas is a community created event. I need to stop trying to create Christmas for my family and allow us all to create it for each other. This was the philosophy behind my laissez faire approach to decorating. It is also why I had a brief conference with each child about what they’d like to get for siblings. Then I acquired those things, but waited for the kids to be interested in present wrapping. They each did their own wrapping this year, which allowed them to focus on the gift and the person to whom they were giving it. Hopefully that will create an emotional connection that has them excited about giving on Christmas morning. The kids will be prepping the food for Christmas day. Much of this will be done in advance so that no one slaves for hours in the kitchen solo.

Even in writing this blog entry, I am still plotting and planning. I need to let go and trust that we have enough good structures built over many years. These solid traditions do not need me to steer quite so fervently as I did in the years when we were establishing traditions. I need to relax my grip a little.

Try new foods dinner

By / December 20, 2010 / 4 Comments

The tofu was in the fridge courtesy of the Dirty Jobs episode where my kids got to watch Mike Rowe make tofu. They all declared a burning desire to taste this amazing-looking food. So we bought some at the store, but since Howard and I have actually eaten tofu before, it sat untouched in the fridge. The caramel cheese was in the fridge because Howard sometimes buys new foods on a whim. It isn’t actually called caramel cheese, but that is exactly how it tastes. The real name of this food was lost with the original packaging. The block was sitting in a ziploc bag in the fridge for weeks. The edamame were in the fridge because Howard went out to eat with his brother and brought them home.

Then I went grocery shopping and discovered that the fridge is too full. This is how we came to serve tofu, caramel cheese, and edamame for dinner. We declared it a special “try new foods” dinner because putting the right spin on this kind of effort has a major effect on how the kids react. Their willingness to participate was also also affected by the fact that we offered bacon to any child who at least sampled all the new foods. In the end tofu got four thumbs down. The caramel cheese got two thumbs up and two thumbs quite emphatically down. The edamame got a grudging pass from three of the kids and an enthusiastic thumbs up from Patch who loves veggies. They all loved the bacon.

As experiments go, it was a positive one. Of course I’ll need to make sure that snack is hearty since not a one of them ate enough food at dinner to last all night.

Office Cleaning Continues

By / December 16, 2010

I sorted through 15 years worth of filed papers today. I ended up with five boxes of paper that could just be pitched and a huge stack of paper which needed to be shredded before it could be pitched. It turns out that 10 years worth of bank statements fills four garbage bags when shredded. Part of my brain rebelled at the wanton destruction of data that the shredding represented. An analysis of all those papers would tell worlds about our life and habits during that era. The rebellious thoughts were squelched by remembering that during all of those years I have been entering all that data into Quicken. I have it all in digital form where it can rapidly be turned into reports. There is no reason to keep storing the paper.

Disposing of garbage paper was only part of the benefit of this project. I unearthed many hidden treasures and have now organized them so that I can find them again as needed. Memorabilia is all filed together as are health documents and contracts. I also have a big stack of file folders which are available for reuse. A piece of my brain is happy knowing that I’ve collected fragments of writing and family stories together. Someday I’ll put together a book out of it all. Not this year though. I need to finish cleaning my office and then use the space to continue working on all the other lingering projects in my life.

Nancy’s Post on Bias and Robots

By / December 13, 2010

I have been buried under a deluge of family stuff and Kiki’s bigger-than-we-thought-it-was, due-this-week history project. So I am going to direct you to this amazing post by Nancy Fulda. She talks about bias and robots. Nancy also happens to be my sister, a fact which frequently makes me glad.

Clash of the Emotional Crises

By / December 7, 2010

Today has been a fairly good day. True, Kiki was a little emotionally fragile, but she handled it well. This is often the case when one person is emotionally off balance. The real excitement begins when two or three or six of us are all teetering, trying to hang on to rationality with the tips of our fingernails, and crashing into each other. We’ve had more than our fair share of crashing emotional conflicts this fall. The feminist in me is frustrated to admit that most of them centered around one or more of the females in our house. I do not think that this is due to our female-ness. We’re just the ones struggling to find balance. Howard has struggled a bit too. My sons are both ensconced in secure places and I pray that they stay there until the rest of us get sorted out.

Kiki’s frustration this evening is centered around her art. She feels stuck and all the solutions she can see require time (which she does not have to spare) or money (which she does not have at all.) She curled up in my lap and spilled her woes. I sat and listened, doing my best to just accept her feelings without feeling guilty for not fixing the problem. The minute I begin thinking about how I ought to have done something differently so that Kiki wouldn’t feel stuck, I have preempted her emotional experience and turned it into something which is about me. (Yes I do that. Far too often.) The conversation wended around in circles for a bit. Then I said:
“You know, the fact that we’re having this conversation means that things have already begun to get better. You have time and energy enough to feel frustrated, which is an improvement over the way things have been lately.”
Kiki quirked her eyebrows at me the way she does when I’ve said something for which she has no context. “That’s a weird way of looking at it.”

I suppose it is, but it also feels true. I feel like I’ve finally reached a place where life can slow down a little. We have whole weeks where we don’t host Clash of the Crises Part N. I finally have space in my brain to anticipate and head off the imbalances before they reach crisis level. I can organize the house and plan. Though I confess that my plans did not start with defrosting the freezer that was left open over night by someone undetermined. My plans are destined to be rearranged and that is okay too.

Savoring the holiday

By / December 6, 2010

All around me are people whose lives have begun to speed up as the holiday season kicks into gear. They’ve got calendars filled with events and task lists full of things. My life has just done the opposite. I finally have time to catch my breath after the break neck pace I’ve been running. November was full of frantic must-get-ready-for-the-holidays both on business tasks and for the church Christmas party.

(ASIDE: I successfully planned, managed, and catered a dinner party with a program and activities for 280 people. This still blows me away. Also: 130 pounds of ham is a lot. The smell of ham lingers on hands despite repeated washings. And thank heavens for neighbors who have crockpots to help cook hams when it won’t all fit into the church ovens.)

Now all the hurry to get ready is done. There are still things to do. Our tree isn’t fully decorated yet. Not a single present is wrapped, although many of them were acquired during the November preparatory flurry. But the things that are left are things I’m content to savor.

Last year I stage managed the perfect Christmas for my family. I even mentally composed a blog post which talked about how to engineer a Christmas to maximize joy and avoid the tantrums and disappointments which often accompany the holidays. I had it all noted down, ready to write. But at the appointed writing hour on Christmas afternoon, supposedly the pinnacle of perfect Christmas triumph, I sat down on the couch and cried. Looking back, I recognize exactly what happened. It is the same thing that happened after the Halloween Carnival in October and last Saturday when the Christmas party was over. To run these events I extended myself, used up all my reserves of energy and then some. It caught up to me and I sat limply without any easy-to-see measure of success. When I run myself ragged for a book shipping, I know I have succeeded because of the packages. Creating an event for other people is far less tangible. So while I sit, too tired to move, my brain starts picking at the things I feel I could have done better. At that beyond-tired moment it is impossible for me to believe I succeeded.

This is why the only assignment I gave to Howard for the Christmas party was to take care of the kids and to tell me I did a good job when it was all over. He did exactly that, and it worked. I collapsed and he was rested, ready to take care of me.

I have another Christmas ahead of me. I’m going to use the lessons I’ve learned this year, particularly those about delegation. Christmas is a community-created event. Our family works together to bring it into existence. In years past I did all the planning and gave everyone their cues. I declare the day for tree assembly and decoration, then I exert energy to make it occur. I decide, then I make it happen. Most everyone else floats along on the current of my making.

I’m doing things differently this year. We put up the tree a week ago because Howard needed a Christmas tree. The ornaments came out yesterday because Patch wanted to do ornaments. Rather than declaring an official ornament time, I just opened the box and the kids have been putting them on as the mood strikes. The same has occurred with the other decorations. Rather than one big expendature of effort, we’ve had lots of pleasant little moments. We’re savoring the holiday instead of hurrying to get everything out so we can “enjoy it.” I spend too much of my life hurrying now with the intent to relax later.

I’m curious to see how long it will be before the kids ask to wrap the presents they’ve selected for each other. I wonder if waiting until they are concerned (rather than me wanting “wrap presents” out of my brain) will make a difference in how they feel about the gifts they are giving. I wonder if involving them more in the process of creating the holiday will result in something whole and good, without being picture perfect. It will certainly be interesting, and it sounds so appealing after all the planning and managing that I have been doing lately.

Conversation in the car on the way home from school

By / November 30, 2010 / 2 Comments

My two youngest kids are discussing Santa as I drive them home from school. At ages 9 and 7 neither of them are true Santa believers, but they happily discuss the logistics of Santa with the same enthusiasm with which they discuss imagined battles between Daleks and Cybermen.
“There’s not just one Santa, you know.” Gleek says confidently.
“Yeah. There’s lots.” Patch agrees.
“Thousands. One for each house so that everyone gets presents.”
Patch nods.
“And they use lights on Christmas trees as teleportation devices.”
“There’s only a problem if one of them dies.” Patch adds.
“No. Then the others would just take care of that house.” Gleek scowls at her brother.
“But if lots of them died then there would be trouble.” Patch says trying to find the failure parameters of the mythos.
“Yeah, but that won’t happen because it is Christmas.” Then Gleek turns away, confident in the happy imagined world she has made.

There is silence for a minute and then Gleek turns to me.
“Could we make grape flavored roofs?”
“I don’t think so. They would be kind of sticky. Why would we want to do that?” I ask, confused by the sudden change of topic.
“If we could, then the icicles would be grape flavor. Only…” Gleek’s eyebrows crease together. “We’d have to build a glass shield so that the icicles didn’t get dirty.” She ponders this as we pull into the driveway. Then we got distracted by the process of bringing things into the house and finding the cat for after-school petting. We never did find a solution to the problem of grape icicles. Perhaps tomorrow.

A star for the tree

By / November 29, 2010 / 1 Comment

We used to have a star to go on top of our tree. We’ve actually had several over the years, but they broke. For the past couple of years we’ve been starless as I sporadically searched for a star that was elegant and durable. I was tired of Walmart stars which only lasted a year or two. The kids were happy with them, but I wasn’t. However I did not feel like buying a star was an important quest, we managed to have Christmas without it.

This evening we hauled out our Christmas tree and assembled it. I hadn’t really planned to tackle it today. I was content to wait until the kids felt like putting it up without my help, but we needed a family home evening activity and the project seemed tailor made. During the branch fluffing and assembly, Gleek commented about the lack of a star. I reminded her that we were currently starless. “I’ll make one!” she announced. Then she dashed off to the kitchen. The boys and I were too busy strewing lights on the tree to notice her absence much. She returned, triumphant with a star of colored crayon on copy paper. As soon as we had all the lights in place, I clipped up her star.

Considering the level of Nintendo love around here, I shouldn’t be surprised that her star looks like it is just waiting for Mario to ascend the tree and hold it up with a triumphant trill of music. I even like the fact that it is held in place by a couple of the document clips that I use when shipping books. I think it is one of the best stars we have ever had and seeing it smile down on us is going to make me happy all month long.