Lights in the Rain
The combination of holiday lights and wet pavement is lovely. Completely worth getting wet.
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Songs of Christmas
This morning I turned on “You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch” as background while I did the dishes. Except that song never stays as background. Within moments I was singing along. Howard wandered up the stairs and joined the chorus. Then he plugged in his iPad to play an alternate version. We sang to that one too. After the music stopped, Howard pointed out that it really is an odd addition to the canon of Christmas music. It is a song about a truly terrible person sung by a narrator who is trying really hard to be thoroughly insulting. Yet it is unequivocally Christmas music for me. This is because every time I hear the song, I remember the rest of the story. I remember that Christmas came without packages, boxes, or tags. I remember the whos hand in hand singing. Most of all I remember the Grinch’s heart, his triumphant return, and the carving of the roast beast. None of this is in the song, yet all of it is there. This is the power of story.
I started to think about it, and realized that this is true of many of my favorite Christmas songs, though for some it is not the story their writers may have intended. I remember the other times of singing a particular song. Memories return of singing when I was 10, 12, 15, 25, 38. Year after year the songs do not change, but they accumulate more meaning with every memory which is attached to them. Ten years from now this morning’s impromptu concert will be part of the grinch song. It reminds me of an essay I wrote long ago about composite memories. Love in the Cookie Dough.
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Attending a Concert
It was an excuse to dress in fancy clothes, which concert we picked was an after thought to that original purpose. My friend and I both lamented that our lives did not have enough reasons to be pretty, so we created one. That decided, we selected a Utah Symphony concert. We left early so that we had plenty of time to travel and find parking. We talked of various things on the way there, but our discussion turned to umbrellas when the first fat drops of rain hit the windshield. Neither of us had one, but we agreed that a little rain would not hurt us. We parked the car and still had an hour until concert time, so we walked to Temple Square.
The Christmas lights on temple square are a popular destination in December. The rain had cleared out the crowds some, which meant that we were able to see the lights reflected on wet pavements as well as shining over our heads. We stepped inside the Tabernacle because I love historic buildings. A man was playing songs at the organ, but we did not stay long. Our evening would have music later. We wanted someone to take a picture of us together in our lovely clothes, so we walked over to the visitors center.
I heard the sounds rising from a floor below. It was obviously a choir, but there were multiple tempos and discordant notes involved. Some of the voices sang away making up words as they went. I cringed inside. Who on earth selected such a choir to sing on Temple Square during the holiday season? I stepped down the stairs, and breathed “Oh.” I never knew before how much a sight could change a sound so completely. The faces of the choir were beautiful, happy, Down’s Syndrome, differently abled, did I say beautiful? The music they made brought tears to my eyes because by seeing them I remembered to listen to the joy instead of the notes.
We arrived at the concert hall wet, and a little footsore. Abravanel Hall was designed as a concert space. The whole thing is built like the cone of a speaker and everywhere I looked there was wood. I loved the feel of it. Once I came home I learned trivia like the fact that cello and base players are encouraged to make holes in the stage so that their instruments will resonate through the wood of the stage.
I watched the conductor as he gestured with his entire body. I watched the musicians as they responded in unison. All of them joined together, so practiced that they become one until the music ends. The conductor was emphatic, gentle, vigorous, smooth, sharp, and soft. I watched his hands and back, realizing that every motion was speaking to the orchestra in a language I do not speak. Sometimes I could discern meanings, but mostly I could just tell that communication was taking place.
I know the terms fugue, cantata, symphony, chorale, I can even look up the definitions, but I have not studied the forms. I can not listen to the first few minutes of music and know which themes will come back. I felt the beauty of the music, but I missed so much nuance. Without advance preparation, I did not understand the stories of the pieces. All I was left with is knowing I’d been in the presence of something remarkable, but not being able to explain what or why. I know the violin soloist was virtuoso, particularly for one so young, but I did not have the appreciation of my friend who grew up with music and played the violin as a girl.
We talked about music on the way home. My friend feels music inside and doesn’t need it to have words. I appreciate music most when it exists in support of stories, whether those stories be in dance, song, or acting. I learned songs at an alarming rate during my growing years. I loved the blending of sound and story to create something lovely. Music without story is more difficult for me to comprehend and appreciate. This is not something I knew about myself until tonight.
All the kids were still awake when I arrived home, but they vanished into sleep soon after. I got to sit in the kitchen and tell my visiting sister about the fun time I had with my friend. The concert was scheduled long before I knew my sister would be in town this weekend. Also there were brownies. I always recommend coming home to a plate of brownies after a concert.
The dangerous thing about going to a concert is that now I want to go to many more of them. I want to see live performances, dance, plays. I shall have to pick and choose, the tickets are not cheap. I also want to make another trip to Temple Square. Gleek has been really wanting to see the Christmas lights. I should learn how to ride the Trax train and make a day of going to see Temple Square with her. She would love it. There is a special feel the moment I enter.
It is now long past late and headed toward early, but I did not want to let my concert thoughts escape me. I know they will synthesize and change during sleep. This is good, perhaps tomorrow I’ll have even more things to say about the lovely evening I just had.
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Parent Teacher Conferences and Praise
In Elementary school, parent teacher conferences are simple: one teacher, one appointment. Junior high is more complicated and the school seeks to solve this issue by a sort of open house conference night. Sometimes they have all the teachers seated at tables in the commons area and the families form lines in front of those tables. The long lines impede on the space for other lines and to get down to the teacher at the end one has to wend through a crowd. Other times the teachers are all in their rooms and the lines form outside the classroom doors. I’m not fond of this free-for-all style of conferences. Often I side step the issue by simply contacting the teacher on a non-conference day. If I do attend the conferences, I want to whittle down the line standing as much as possible. The child and I chose which teachers we most need to see and leave as soon as possible. It seemed like a good strategy, but tonight Link showed me where the strategy fails.
“I want to see all my teachers.” Link said. “I want to hear what they think of me.” So instead of picking the one or two classes where his grades demonstrated that he might need extra attention, we stood in line for every single teacher. They praised him. “I wish all my students were like him.” “He’s attentive, helpful, and raises his hand to make comments.” “Sometimes he’s quiet, but he’s doing great on all the tests.” “He works hard and never tries to slack off.” Link smiled and I swear he walked taller as we left the school. Why did I not realize before the value to be found in letting a kid listen while a teacher and a parent agree about how wonderful he is?
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The State of My House
I have eight boxes of calendars in my front room waiting for Howard to draw and me to ship. Next to those boxes is a stack of packages that I assembled this morning and are waiting for me to put on clothes so I can take them out to the mailbox. There is also a bag of garbage waiting to go out to the can. The area in front of the coat closet is in its usual jumble of discarded coats, shoes, papers, and toys. The cubbies next to it–which exist to hold all this stuff–are empty. Obviously there needs to either be a system overhaul or extensive re-training. The Christmas tree stands in the corner, lights off during the day, but still a lovely promise of holiday to come. There are no gifts under the tree and likely won’t be for weeks, though Howard and I have begun discussing what we want to do.
The kitchen table is littered with books, papers, and dirty dishes. All of these are freshly accumulated from last night’s homework time and this morning’s breakfast. The table can go from pristine to cluttered in less than five minutes–and it does on a daily basis. Kitchen counters, ditto, with the addition of crumbs, cutting boards, and other food preparation supplies and spills. The walls are dirty because some of them are fourteen feet up and we’ve never climbed up there to wash them. I shall not speak of the floor.
The family room is currently clean, but there is an unassuming file box sitting on the game table which heralds an imminent take over. Soon the couches will be shoved out of the way and shipping tables will be set up. The fireplace is covered in games and toys which don’t currently fit into the cabinets because the cabinets are jumbled rather than organized. The upstairs hallway needs to be vacuumed, but someone needs to put all the books back onto the shelf first. Picture books are prone to leaping off of the shelf and piling themselves onto the floor. The kids have once again taken to storing things on the floors of their bedrooms. They leave walking paths at least. I shall not speak of the bathrooms.
My office is fairly clear because it was used to house guests last week and will be put to similar use this weekend. I do need to do some careful putting away since this batch of guests includes one toddler, one preschooler, and two grade school children. Things will get touched. The laundry is actually contained in baskets rather than spilling forth to fill the entire laundry closet. That is likely to change in the next few days because I’m not going to spend much energy on laundry other than to make sure we don’t run out of clean underwear.
This is my house. It is in a constant state of flux. Sometimes I look around and think I’m doing okay. Other times I’m appalled at my housekeeping. Mostly though I call it good if the fluctuations pass through cleanliness often enough for us all to know what it looks like. I have a definite correlation between clean house and being less stressed, but the causality there can flow both directions. Sometimes I clean to become less stressed. Other times I’m less stressed therefore I have time to clean. It is the cluttery times which show me where to focus my attention when I have organizational energy. Like that front coat closet. I’m seriously considering tearing the front wall off of it and turning it into a nook instead of a closet with a door. In theory this would encourage people to hang their coats, but the reality might be mess visible all the time instead of some of the time. I’m still pondering ways to set it up so that the system still works when we’re not focused on it.
One of the most important organizational lessons I’ve learned is to think of my house as spaces instead of as rooms. The rooms have names, but each room has multiple purposes. The family room has a video game area, a computer area, storage cupboards, and an open space which sometimes is full of the game table. When we want to host a large gathering the game table gets stowed in the corner and the furniture slides around to create an open space in the middle of the room. Or if the event focuses around gaming, then the big table becomes the center of the room. My office serves as a storage space, library, craft space, guest room, work space, and quiet retreat. Things get pulled out and put away as they serve the purpose at hand. By thinking in spaces, I’m able to make the same desk serve three purposes depending upon how I set it up.
We are always tinkering with the way our household is arranged. I don’t know any other way to manage a house that contains six people who are always growing, taking up new hobbies, abandoning old interests, and pressing forward.
And now I should probably go get dressed to take out the garbage and those packages.
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Homework Hour
“Children!” my voice was pitched loud so that it could be heard over their chatter and pierce their internal imaginations. “I have two children with two projects and we have about two hours before bedtime. There is only one of me and I’m going to need you to follow instructions.” My declaration came at the end of fifteen minutes where I kept trying to get the kids to focus, but they kept pinging off in random directions the moment my back was turned. Patch’s project was an animal report where he made a lift the flap book about leopards and a shadow puppet play about monkeys. Gleek needed to construct a Mesopotamian house out of paper that compared and contrasted it to a modern house. These are the sorts of projects which lead to late hours and many tears, except this is at least the third such set of projects for the school year and thus far we’ve avoided major project meltdown. The kids nodded in response to my words and began adjusting their ratios of work to distraction in a more productive balance.
I was not good at projects when I was in school. I was a fairly classic procrastinator except in the cases when I loved the project and thus expanded it to be much more difficult than it needed to be. I was really good at working in a huge burst of creative energy, but not at all good at continuing to work when the energy ran out. Even in my early mothering years I would work in bursts, organizing the entire house, making a cleaning schedule, and then letting it all fall apart less than a week later. Somewhere in the last seven or eight years I learned how to work a little every day. Perhaps it was learning about the power of practice in creating excellence, but more likely it was just that I’d finally lived long enough to see the the accumulation from small efforts. The most physical manifestation of this was the day when I received an inch-thick book in the mail which was full of one year’s worth of blog entries. I’d written a novel’s worth of words a day or two at a time. I could see that later blog entries were smoother than early ones. I could see that my skills at layout and design progressed from year to year. Expertise requires practice over time.
My children appear to be learning this lesson at a much younger age than I did, probably because I’ve been so focused on it myself. I don’t let the big projects slide, they have to work on parts of them days and weeks ahead of time. In our business I’m always deciding what needs to be done today in order to prevent next week or next month from being crazy. Keeping track of kid projects is part of that. Last year I did all of the tracking and enforcing. It was exhausting. This year Gleek is doing it all for herself and Patch is beginning to. Patch sat down to draw a cover for his Leopard book while Gleek scrounged for scissors and tape. I went to dig out our shadow puppet theater and discover which pieces could be re-used for Patch’s play. I came back upstairs to discover Gleek playing with her stress ball and Patch eating pistachios. I redirected them back to work. I cut out a cardboard alligator (You can’t have a monkey play without an alligator) and then took the pistachios away from Patch until he glued down the informational flaps into his book. Later Patch declared that he would die from having to write down a bibliography, but he did it in his deliberately over dramatic voice, so I just waited and then he wrote it all down. Gleek was in the front room throwing her stress ball onto the floor to watch it flatten, but when asked, she informed me that her house was done.
In the morning Patch will need to practice his shadow play. Gleek will need to figure out how to transport her house safely. There will also be computer homework (10 minutes typing practice) and some spelling sentences to be written. The homework does not end until school does, but the work and projects just seem to fit right in with everything else around here.
This Week Just Filled Up with Things
The schedule for this morning was rearranged by a flat tire while Howard was on his way to the airport to drop off some friends. They made their flight, just barely. I was the back up plan and ended up following Howard home as he drove with the spare tire on the freeway. We have a new tire now, thank goodness for warranties. In the less fortunate category: An unexpected medical bill for nerve conduction testing we did on Howard’s hand last April. Insurance cut the bill in half, but it is still not cheap. The garage door needs to be fixed and so does the fridge. Fun.
In good news: The calendars will arrive tomorrow instead of Friday as I’d calculated.
This means our house has to shift over into shipping high gear, except Howard still has to do a week of comics, I have pack meeting, parent teacher conferences at two different schools, and Patch has a big book report due on Thursday. On Friday I’m fleeing the house to go to a concert with a friend and returning home to a house full of guests.
So.
Ready. Set. Go.
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Seeking for Meaning
I picked up a copy of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I know I read it long ago when I was a freshman in college, but I wanted to reacquaint myself with the words of this woman who was writing creative nonfiction before I ever knew there was such a thing. I’ve just barely begun to read it. I’m impressed with the way she compresses ideas into sentences and seems to abandon a theme only to bring it back later. Mostly though, I’ve been wondering what it would be like to have a life where I could go visit an island in the middle of a creek every day. Not just visit it, but spend hours there thinking long thoughts about life and meaning. It almost makes me want to read a biography of Dillard. How did she pay her bills while pilgrimageing to and from Tinker Creek? Did her other life obligations just not make it into her words, or was she like Thoreau who deliberately created a space separate from regular life so that he could experience it, think about it, and write it? I’ve always meant to read Thoreau’s Walden Pond, but just now I think I need to find voices which discuss finding serenity in the middle of things rather than leaving all things to find serenity. There are lessons to be learned in the abandonment of things, the foremost being that many essentials aren’t as necessary as we think. But at least four of my “things” are children and I could not live with myself if I failed them because I sought some separate peace.
My life is full of trivia, small errands, debris on the carpet, and spills hardened on the counter tops. It is hard to pull a sense of connection from a spill on the counter in the way that Dillard connects a fast flowing creek with ideas of struggle and grand truths. Somehow nature lends itself to slow thoughts, big ideas. Mostly the spill on the counter means it is time to clean again. A month ago we got away by visiting Fremont Indian State Park where I looked at tools and clothes crafted by the hands of Native Americans long before my grandmother was born. I marveled at what they created and pictured how they used those creations. I saw carvings on the rocks of the canyon and pondered the devotion of the artist who worked there. Then I come home to plastic and molded metal. These things are no less marvelous. They represent feats of skill and engineering. That plastic toy from a fast food meal represents the combined knowledge, experimentation, and labor of hundreds or even thousands of people. It exists because those people shared their knowledge with each other and worked together to create a society where plastic toys are so common that they end up in the trash. There are definitely points to make about wastefulness and entitlement, yet I don’t know that every Native American moccasin maker was focused on art either.
Dillard and Thoreau sought truths in nature. I tend to seek them in faith, community, and nature in domestic doses. Though sometimes I even find truth while doing dishes and laundry. I think truth and meaning aren’t in things at all. Truth and meaning are in the people who take time to ponder the world around them. I don’t have to run away to find miracles and lessons. Though sometimes getting away and coming back gives me new perspectives, which I suppose is what Dillard and Thoreau were doing on a grand scale. I can think beautiful thoughts and write beautiful words from where I am. The value in a pilgrimage is what the traveler gives to it and gains from it, not in the miles traversed.
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Shining a Light
Among the lessons given in church today was told the story of the lower light. It is a smaller light on the shoreline which (in a world before GPS) was used in conjunction with the lighthouse to help ships navigate to safe harbor. A story was told of how failure to keep the lower light burning nearly led to disaster. Then a rendition of Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy (#335 in the LDS Hymnal) was played. Something in the stories and song spoke to me. It did so despite the my automatic emotional shield which goes up any time I sense that I’m about to be told a tragic story from which we should all learn a lesson. I like to pick my own lessons, thanks. I like to discover them for myself rather than being told what they ought to be. Yet the idea of being a light to others spoke to me. We are all commanded to be lights to others. I can think of dozens of people who have been so for me. They are people who taught me how to be a friend, how to parent, how to think about injustice, how to make the world a better place. They are people who live in my neighborhood, who write books I read, who I read about on the internet, who I pass in the grocery store. Most of them will never know how they have helped me or even who I am. Listening to the hymn, I felt that I need to be doing the same for others. The thing is that if I try to set up camp and show off my light, I’ll likely put it on some hill where it will do no one any good. I sent out a silent prayer, what is my light and where should I shine it? What will be most useful right now? Clear and calm, the answer was: write.
I imagine Heavenly Father as getting kind of tired with me lately, in much the same way that I get tired when I have to tell my kids to clean up after themselves. I keep saying it over and over, in a dozen different ways. I give them instructions, I order, I plead, I cajole. The actions involved are simple, yet somehow they find other things to do. Then one day a child comes to me and says “guess what? If I just pick up after myself things don’t get so messy.” Then I have to bite my tongue and be grateful the lesson was learned. Similarly, I find many good things to do which are not writing. At times those things are the way I shine my light. Last winter I was to finish my office remodel. This year every time I reach out to ask for direction I’m told to just go write. I’m beginning to imagine that instruction with an exasperated tone. So I should do that. I should write. I don’t know what the outcome will be. It is entirely possible that I’m just shining this light to illuminate my own path. From an eternal perspective lighting the path of a single person is sufficient reason to shine.
Funny how when I am struggling with large and difficult things, I pray for calmness and simplicity. When I’m given calm and simple instructions I wonder “that’s it?” and look for additional things to do. I have to remember that good works do not always require epic efforts. Time to pull out my book and increase the word count.
Projects
Yesterday I was focused and effective. Today, not so much. I meant to re-focus the kids, to require them to haul out their homework papers so we could assess the work to be done before Monday. But then I found myself in the middle of InDesign putting the finishing touches on our 2011 book. After that I began the sorting of invoices in preparation for when the calendars arrive next week. Next week will also feature the arrival of company, twice. There is also a concert that I’ll be attending. Yet the week to come does not feel full of stress to me. I’m not certain why. Perhaps I’m beginning to learn how to get things done without pressuring myself with an artificial deadline. Then again, I worked past the point of fatigue yesterday because I told myself I only had one day to get the Christmas decorations up. I’m glad they’re done, but truthfully, I could have spread out the decorating a little more. On the other hand, when I scatter myself across too many projects, I lose focus and momentum. Then every day feels like a failure because nothing is complete. I like completing things. Today I am sitting next to a shining Christmas tree and I don’t have to do a thing more to it until January. That feels good.
When I cleared out the front room to make space for the tree, I sat for a moment and contemplated the empty corner where the tree would go. Mostly I contemplated the dirty wall and thought about how much it needs a coat of paint. Perhaps I’ll make that my January project. I need a happy project during the month of January when the world feels dark and cold. Making my front room nice instead of embarrassing would be a good use for that energy. Not that January will really lack for projects. I’m contemplating running a Kickstarter then. I’ll also be working on a new iteration of the CobbleStones book. Yet neither of those have the physicality of painting. I think I need to be doing something with my hands.
Howard bought Pringles today. This is not because we need to eat chips, but because I want to make another cascading pillar candle and for that I need the can. So there is another project. It is a hobby project. Something I can do in the moments when I am bored without feeling pressured to complete it. Once I’ve made the candle I will then watch it burn and melt. That will bring a very different sort of fun. As another hobby project I’m thinking about writing holiday letters. These would not be duty Christmas cards sent to everyone and meant to summarize our year. Instead they would be short notes I write when I’m thinking of someone during the holiday season. They are not an assignment with a deadline, just a way for me to mindfully address the good people in my life as part of my holiday celebration.
Right now I’m in the middle of cooking dinner. This is a project with a very definite goal and deadline. The meal in question is named “beef stroganoff” in our family, but bears little resemblance to most recipes of that name. In this meal the part of beef is played by cooked hamburger and canned cream of mushroom soup serves as the sauce. We add a dollop of sour cream for flavor then serve it over rice. The kids love it. However last week we had foodie friends in our house. It was so lovely to have interesting and yummy things to eat almost every day. I am now wistfully thinking of meals where the preparation instructions are more involved than “open this and dump.” It is yet another project, and one on which I’m unlikely to follow through. I have usually spent all my creativity by the time that it is time to prepare dinner.
I have so many projects, most of them will remain incomplete for a long time to come. Sometimes I feel quite discouraged about that. I re-watched Julie and Julia a few days ago and I felt a strong sympathy with the moment when Julia Child says “All that work, eight years, and it all was just so I would have something to do.” I’ve felt that, the futility of my efforts when it seems like none of my work will make a difference to anyone other than me. There is great value in projects which exist to bring happiness to the creator of them. I play with wax, make a candle, watch it melt, and there is no material difference in the world other than my happiness in the process. But other projects I do want to have an existence beyond me. This is when I find hope in Julia Child’s story, because her years of work were not wasted. Her work sent ripples out into the world and changed it. That is a future worth hoping for.