Sandra Tayler

Tonight I went to a church christmas party.  I have no idea how many hours of work went into putting it together.  It was obviously a labor of love because you couldn’t pay someone to work that hard.  The walls were lined with mural sized scenery paintings and they’d constructed a train that kids could ride in.  They even did a  reading of The Polar Express complete with costumed actors.

That was the problem.  I took my kids to a church function where they were told a powerful and beautiful story about believing in Santa Claus.  Christ was not mentioned once in the entire evening.

I suddenly understand what it must be like for a non-religious person to be surrounded by christian assumptions.  I don’t believe in Santa Claus.  I don’t teach Santa Claus to my kids.  We all have fun together pretending about Santa Claus sometimes, but we all know it is a pretend game.  I’m never going to have to face a child who feels like the magic is gone from Christmas because they figured out the truth.  I will never teach my children anything as truth that I don’t believe is true.

This puts my family at odds with 99% of American society.  Santa Claus is pushed at my children in school, by friends, in stores, in books, in movies, just about everywhere.  I’d have thought they’d be taught correctly at Church.  To be fair, they are taught many wonderful and truthful things each Sunday.  We come home feeling enriched and peaceful.  Tonight I came home tired and empty.  Howard was furious.  (He wrote his own entry about it.) 

The kids had a great time at the party.  They don’t know how upset their parents were.  There is no gain from us ranting and raving in front of them.  Particularly when it could get back to the people who labored long, hard, and lovingly with the best intentions.  But before bed I snuggled the kids together and we read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.  That is a book with a wonderful message and no Santa Claus anywhere.

I have been pondering taking a dance class of some kind. There are a couple obstacles in the way of that taking place, money being one, babysitting being another. So then I ponder exactly why I’m interested in a dance class because if I can identify the need I’m trying to fill I may be able to fill it in a different way. It didn’t take much thought to figure out what a dance class would provide: Focused physical activity and Time away from the kids. Going to the gym used to provide those for me. I don’t at all regret signing over the membership to Howard. He makes such good use of it. I do miss what it used to provide.

I haven’t found a solution to this yet. I’ll just have to make do.

Today in an effort to avoid japanese animated hamsters, I responded to Patches’ demands for “Taro!” (Hamtaro) by shoving in a tape of The Iron Giant.  Such has been the mania for Hamtaro & friends in our household that most of the other videos we own have been neglected.  This meant that Patches had no memory of ever seeing The Iron Giant.  It was a brand new movie for him.  He was completely mesmerized “Robot!” I was informed when the movie was over.

90 minutes of peace is an unusual occurance, so toward the end of it I wandered in to see what the kids were doing.  I happened upon the finale of the movie.  I have seen this movie dozens of times as it has fallen in and out of favor with the kids, and yet those final moments before the explosion still have the power to bring tears to my eyes.

“You are who you choose to be.”
“Superman”

I annoyed Howard this evening. He came home grumpy after having done some grocery shopping. I was in “I’m reading and hiding from the children” mode and he rapidly figured out that if he wanted dinner, he’d have to do it. So he began cooking in the cluttered and grubby kitchen that I’d not gotten around to cleaning today. And I read. Few things are more frustrating than working when you don’t want to, but working when you don’t want to and someone else is sitting in plain sight Not Working definitely qualifies. I finally clued in and did some work to help.

I’m so glad that Howard helps so much in the kitchen. Keeping the kitchen clean is definitely a weak point in my housekeeping skills. I’ve gotten lots better than I used to be, but I’m still pretty sure Howard is frustrated by it every single week. He is frustrated, I know he is, but he doesn’t say anything because he values our relationship more than he values being able to vent his frustration. I can’t describe how grateful I am for that.

. . . for mice to move into our walls. Sigh. I heard one tonight. It was in the wall of Patches room, the wall right next to his crib. The Mommy Bear tells me that is far too close to my baby and that I should tear the wall open to slay the interloper. My more logical brain tells me to use traps. Unfortunately I have no clue where to set traps to catch that mouse. I have to set traps where the mouse goes and Patches and Gleek don’t go. So far I’ve only managed to identify one location like that, and it is inside a wall where I can’t go. grr.

Having skritching in the walls is NOT going to be helpful in quelling Gleek’s nighttime fears.

Any suggestions/tips on vermin killing are welcome. We get little brown deer mice.

Yesterday Howard came up to me, gave me a hug, and said “Life is good.” I must agree. I really love our post-Novell existence. The only stress that looms is stress over money. But that stress isn’t the frightening “will we have enough to feed ourselves?” it is the worrisome “Can we bring in enough so we can keep Howard from having to go get a corporate job?” In other words what we fear most about this new existence is losing it.

We’ve fallen into some very traditional roles in this new life. Howard brings in the money, I manage it. I also do most of the housework and childcare. I’m not grumbling, because for the first time I really see how work = money. The money comes which comes in is directly related to the hours that Howard puts in while in his office. I’ve never been able to see that direct connection before. I’m also not grumbling because in this new life Howard actually does MORE housework and childcare than he had time to do before. He has time to play with the kids, which they love, and gives me a break.

We are so incredibly fortunate to be living this dream life. We’re both scrambling as hard as we can to continue it.

In the past few weeks I’ve noticed a steady downward trend in the number of people who have me listed as a friend. This doesn’t surprise me. I started this journal thing with a bang. Howard shunted a whole bunch of traffic from the Schlock Mercenary front page into my journal. Then I aired some of my most amusing stories up front. Unfortunately the aim of this journal is not to be endlessly entertaining. I don’t seem to have Howard’s capacity to write something funny on a nigh daily basis. So it doesn’t surprise me that many people who impulsively “friended” me are discovering my regular journals uninteresting. All that ramble leads up to this announcement:

For anyone who would like me off of their friend’s list, but hasn’t because they worry my feelings will be hurt, go ahead and take me off.

I don’t want anyone to be annoyed by my little rambles.

Last year at about this time I gave a short speech/lesson to a gathered group of women. It got such a positive response that I wanted to recreate some of the thoughts here and share them again.The topic was “Creating good traditions” I took a slightly different slant on it.

Traditions are incredibly valuable to families and societies. They bind groups of people together with joint experiences. They also connect people to the past. There are so many sources out there that extoll the wonders of traditions, that I wanted to spend time talking instead about knowing when to get rid of traditions. Sometimes a tradition lives and thrives for years doing all the good things that traditions are supposed to do, but then the people grow and situations shift and what was once a wonderful tradition becomes a burden. When a tradition only adds stress and creates rifts, then it is time for the tradition to go.

Growing up, my family caroled the Twelve Days of Christmas every year. We’d pick a couple of families and for each of the twelve days prior to Christmas we’d take a treat and sing a few songs. With 7 kids and two parents it was a significant choir and we all loved it. It was a Christmas institution. Then I married and didn’t go home for Christmas anymore. I had a new home. Two people seems too few to go caroling. And frankly Howard wasn’t interesting in packing up and going singing every night for the twelve nights before Christmas. He hadn’t grown up with it and loved it the way I had. So I sadly missed the tradition for years. When Kiki was 3 and Link was 18 months I determined that I was going to MAKE our family have that tradition. I expected mild resistance, but was sure that in short order the wonderfulness of the experience would shine through and they’d all be begging for carolling time the way I used to. It didn’t happen that way. Howard refused to go at all. Putting together the give-away items was lots more work than I’d expected. The kids wouldn’t sing and hated having to go out in the freezing cold. (I grew up in California, cold wasn’t a problem) It was a miserable experience and I gave up halfway through, bagged the rest of the give-aways and gave them to the families to open on a daily basis. Then I cried and felt like a key piece of Christmas was gone forever.

I was wrong. I was trying to forcibly create a tradtion, when the best traditions are the ones which grow of themselves. In the years since that miserable Christmas, our family has grown some traditions which are every bit as wonderful as nightly caroling. And they are the traditions which fit our family perfectly. They are traditions that I couldn’t have anticipated because I didn’t realize we’d have a 9 foot tree or a german nativity candle carousel or 4 foot long stockings. I was trying to recreate the Christmases of MY childhood when what I needed to be doing was discovering the joys of Christmas in my children’s childhoods.

The point of all that ramble is this: Traditions need to change and flow. Sometimes it is time to let go of a beloved tradition because it doesn’t build anymore. Sometimes it is even a relief to let the tradition go.

There were so many women who were so relieved to have been given permission to get rid of unwealdy traditions it amazed me. I’ve thought of it often since. I think we burden ourselves with too many things we “should” do. Particularly in a tradition rich season like the holidays.