Shining a Light

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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.

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Projects

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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.

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Decorating for Christmas

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Last year I performed an experiment. Partly I did it because I was too stressed and busy to do anything else, but I also wanted to see what would happen. Instead of orchestrating the holiday decorating, I pulled out the boxes and waited to see whether the kids would put things up. I left the boxes out for a week and then whatever was still in a box didn’t get put out that year. It was informative to see which Christmas decorations really mattered and which were clutter. I culled out the clutter before putting all the decorations away. This year my approach is different. With company expected and a shipping coming up as soon as the calendars arrive, I do not want to live with a clutter of decoration boxes taking up space. It feels like today is my one day to spend on decorating for the holiday. After today I’ll be launched into all the tasks which people outside my house depend upon me to complete.

In the past several years there has been a source of holiday guilt. We have not put up outdoor lights. I simply have not had the energy and no one else devoted the time. I knew I was making that choice and felt fairly at peace with the lack of outdoor lights, but other members of my family felt the lack. This year I wanted lights outdoors. I wanted them both as a gift to my family, but also because I just wanted them. It meant I had to climb a ladder, which is something I liked doing at a younger age before my imagination was quite so full of scenarios where people fall off ladders. I braved the ladder. I altered the plan so that I did not have to climb through a tree which apparently hosts some hibernating wasps. I knew I had to do the outdoor lights first or I would be too tired to do them later. I will put up a Christmas tree in defiance of fatigue, I will not put up outdoor lights in the same condition. I know me.

The outdoor lighting began at 11 am. The tree assembly began at 1 pm. Lighting the tree began around 3 pm. It is now 5:30 and the decorating is essentially done. I know I’ve accomplished the most important piece, which is this:

Some of these books are so sappy they are annoying, some of them are wistful, some of them I love, some of them we still have because the kids love them even if I do not. I try to collect them carefully, because we don’t have any more room on the piano, but I can’t turn down a book which speaks to me. Somehow pulling out the holiday books makes the season real. Oddly, the other thing that does this is my Christmas tree skirt. It is red, white, and green crushed velvet. I only ever get a good look at it when I am putting it on or putting it away. The rest of the time it gets covered with gifts.

This year we have a small addition to our decorations. Max is a sock doll zombie who has been part of our Halloween for several years now. But this year he didn’t want to be put back in the box with the pumpkin stuff. Surely a little friendly zombie can be a Christmas decoration if he has the appropriate hat, right?

The house is decorated. In the process of decorating, both Howard and I accomplished a dozen small house maintenance tasks which have been waiting. Things feel renewed and ready. Tomorrow I have to get back to my regular work.

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Thanksgiving

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The elapsed time from when we gathered to pray over the food and when the first child asked to be excused from the table was about fifteen minutes. I momentarily considered denying the petition and requiring more family togetherness, trying to stretch out the Thanksgiving meal. Except I could see that two other children were also nearly done eating and I didn’t really see the point. Four hours of preparation, fifteen minutes of eating time. If the time spent eating is the focal point of the holiday, then I could easily feel frustrated or like the holiday was not all it should be. Except Thanksgiving is not just the part where everyone sits down and eats. Thanksgiving is the kids squabbling in the back yard because I sent three of them outside to bag leaves, but two of them are more interested in playing parachute with the garbage bags. It is the dance Howard and I do around each other as I’m preparing rolls and he’s making mashed potatoes. We trade off counter space, spatulas, and measuring utensils, taking turns at the sink. Then we flow easily into making stuffing and chicken preparation. Thanksgiving is me organizing the linen closet because it has been out of control for months and somehow neat stacks of linen make me feel ready to decorate for Christmas. Thanksgiving is requiring the kids to clean up their stuff so that the front room is ready to host our Christmas tree. Thanksgiving is bright sunlight and cool air which we draw through the kitchen with a fan because the oven has been on all morning. Thanksgiving is me sitting in the kitchen with the dirty plates and left overs while the voices of the kids playing games float from downstairs. The whole day is the holiday, not just the part where we eat food.

Part of me wants to photograph everything from the scattering of half full glasses on the table to the dirty dishes in the sink. Today my eyes find beauty in all all of it. These things tell me stories about family and togetherness. Unfortunately the photographs would just show dirty dishes in a chipped porcelain sink. I can not preserve Thanksgiving. I have to let it go so that we can move onward to what comes next. In this case the very next thing is kitchen clean up. Tomorrow we’ll haul Christmas out of storage and arrange it all over the house.

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A Thought on Thankfulness

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Over at Feel More Better, Mir Kamin has written a beautiful post about thankfulness and happiness. One paragraph in particular jumped out at me.

Life is hard. I fear for those I love, and I hurt for those I can’t protect or heal. But somehow I’ve learned that wrapping that hardship around me like a familiar old blanket does nothing but make everything worse. Some days are hard. Our heartbreak isn’t even close to being over, and there will undoubtedly be days when I do pull the covers over my head and wish the world away… for a little bit. In the meantime, just as I can’t stop the bad stuff, I can’t keep the sun from shining, I can’t stop my son from dancing into my office to make me laugh, there’s absolutely no stopping my dog from being a joyous goofball over the dumbest things (“ZOMG A DUST MOTE!!”), and there is love enough in my life to hold me up when I falter. I wish life was easier. I am grateful anew for the uncomplicated bits, when it’s not.

I love the thought that accepting we are powerless against bad things also means that we should accept the good things too.

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Living With Writers

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I was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book when one of our house guests wandered up stairs. I didn’t pay much attention, because we’ve reached the point in their stay when they know how to fend for themselves in my kitchen and I no longer feel obliged to jump up and play hostess. After a few minutes I became aware that he had looked in multiple cupboards but had not selected any food items.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” I asked.
He looked up at me, or at least his eyes did, it took a moment longer for his brain to arrived from whence it had gone.
“Yes, but not in the real world.”
“Ah.” I said and went back to my book.

I’m not sure why wandering around and looking at things unlocks scenes and dialog in the writer brain, but I’ve been around enough writers to know that most of them do it. The symptoms are remarkably similar. The writer moves about looking at things, usually at a somewhat ambling pace. Body motion is not the point, and has to be conducted in such a way that one will not collide with obstacles while the brain is elsewhere. The ambling or cupboard opening will continue until suddenly the writer’s head lifts up and all the casual motion disappears. Movements become extremely purposeful as the writer seeks out pencil and paper or computer. The writer has found the piece they need and hurries to catch it lest it vanish. I do not recommend attempting to communicate with the writer while they are wandering, answers are likely to be somewhat tangential to whatever you want to discuss. If you attempt to communicate after the idea has struck, but before it is pinned down, you’ll likely get a hostile response.

I’m not immune to these writer quirks. Just yesterday I wandered outside. I didn’t even realize I was trying to work on a writing problem. I just thought I was bored. So I walked in my garden, looking at the wet leaves under my feet. I noticed the flower beds I intended to weed before cold weather hit, but then didn’t. I looked at the bare branches of my trees and pondered the pruning that needs to be done in spring. I paced up to the top of our little hill and wondered what I should do next with my day. Before I had time to answer that question, my back brain took a critique comment and the text of my picture book, combined them and the exact words I needed floated to the front of my brain. I headed straight for the house to write them down. I’m afraid I was a bit short with the telemarketer who called the house just as I put my fingers to the keyboard.

It is nice to live with people who understand this process, who will not attempt to talk to the wandering writer and who will get out of the way when the words strike. We don’t always get it right, but practice has taught me the body language to look for when Howard is working on plot. The kids have all learned it too. I’m always amused when I see the same behaviors from the kids when they are trying to sort the thoughts in their heads. Our household patterns probably look very strange to outsiders.

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Rounding the Corner into Thanksgiving week

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There is nothing like sitting in a church meeting next to a friend of a different faith to make me thoroughly aware of all the oddities and eddies of culture which surround the doctrines of my faith. I loved hearing the questions they had, because it prompted me to re-examine and think about customs which had become invisible to me. I also loved the comparative religion discussions which followed. For the most part our conversations have stayed in the realm of general faith and culture without delving into doctrinal comparisons, but even these conversations have me noticing how the doctrines of my faith drive the culture of my church and my house. This is as it should be. The things we believe should shape every facet of our lives. I think about that when I’m contemplating the atonement or eternal life after death. These things are huge and important, yet I still run around as if the world will end unless I answer emails promptly. Perspective readjustment is one of the reasons I attend church every week.

Our friends will leave in just two more days. Then our house will feel empty with just six of us here. The way these friends just folded right into our household routines has been lovely. Also they cook really yummy food. I’m a little bit sad that they won’t be here for the actual Thanksgiving feast, because I’m sure that would be amazing. As it is, we’ll probably do a repeat of the year when each family member picked a dish to prepare. I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to having vacationy days as well.

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Bright Holidays in the Dark Season

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It was dark when I came up the stairs at 5:30 pm. My office has no windows, so if I work in the afternoon, I don’t notice the fading daylight. I just emerge and discover the world to be already dark. It makes me understand why extra lights are such a feature of the holiday season. We’re trying to chase away the darkness with holiday cheer. Or maybe that is just me. This is the time of year when I light candles and watch the melting wax. Last year I even made some candles. We try not to break out the holiday music until after Thanksgiving, but that holiday is only five days from now. Somehow the march of days has carried me all the way to the end of November. We’ve entered the dark, housebound portion of the year. Part of me wants to jump forward to when there is more daylight. Part of me wants to slow down because time is slipping away quickly. Part of me wants to dash ahead to embrace the coming changes. Part of me wants to huddle right here where they haven’t happened yet.

I’ve begun to accumulate things which will be wrapped for Christmas. At this time of year I have to figure out how I’m going to manage (or not manage) the holiday. During the financially lean years of 2004-2006 I did all the planning and shopping. I carefully balanced everything and had it all done before Thanksgiving. Last year I was too stressed and busy to do much advance planning, and the holiday happened anyway. This year I appear to have some brain space to spare for holiday planning, but I think that perhaps I shouldn’t. Christmas needs to be a community project, not mine to arrange and manage. Also, the spaces I have in my schedule need to be filled with more writing, not more elaborate holiday preparations.

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Pondering Family and Systems

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Yesterday I was told a story about how military officers get eighty soldiers to take a shower in ten minutes using only six shower heads. It involved marching naked with bars of soap, jumping under the water, running to the end of the line and soaping while waiting for another turn under the water. I listened to this story and had the natural “glad I don’t have to do that” thought. Further stories included keeping one of the two available bathrooms unused and spotless for inspection, having a special set of never-word underwear, also for inspection. In hearing these stories I began to think about human nature, the psychology of creating a unit out of disparate people, and why individuals need to be stressed in order to forge that unit. There is the pure physical necessity. We’ve only got ten minutes and eighty people to get clean is a powerful incentive to shed the trappings of regular civilization. Necessity changes the rules. However there is also great cohesive power when a group of people experiences the same unpleasant thing, they begin to bond.

Howard and I are not military, nor are we ever likely to be, but we are definitely trying to forge a group of individuals into a unit which is capable of hanging together in a crisis. We are building a family and sometimes that requires a sacrifice of individuality for the good of the group. Unlike the military, families must sometimes sacrifice the good of the group for the growth of the individual. Yet there are things to be learned from the tactics of basic training. It is only by pushing people beyond their limits that they get new limits. There are times when the role of parent feels astonishingly similar to the role of drill sergeant.

The source of these military stories is a pair of friends who are staying with us. They are a couple who intend to have children in the future and have been quite honest in admitting that they’re watching to see how we run our household of four kids. So far they haven’t gotten to witness the melt-down stuff. We’ve been moving smoothly through our routines with the kids managing their responsibilities. Knowing that they’re observing, causes me to step back and observe too. It lets me see that currently our family runs like a well oiled machine. All the parts have roles and responsibilities. We all know our assignments and chores. Sometimes there is friction, but the system as a whole works well. This is not how it used to be. When the kids were young everything felt much more messy. Every chore was an argument. Every bedtime a battle. We built systems and they fell apart. We built new systems out of the pieces of old ones and they fell apart too. So much of the work during those early childhood years was spent trying to create family identity and patterns out of chaos. There were entire years when we went to church, not to be spiritually fed, but to teach the kids that church is what we do on Sunday. Some things came easy others felt like we would never get them right. Yet here we am with this functioning system and I can’t pinpoint when we stopped having to massively reconfigure it every three months. I’m also acutely aware that even though things are running now, there are additional reconfigurations in our future. The cool thing is that this system now has six mechanics instead of two.

I’m watching my friends too. I listen to their stories about military life and see how they work together to build a family despite the demands that military careers present. I ponder the unfairness inherent in the fact that if a heterosexual couple wants to have biological children, the woman is the only one who can give them birth, no matter how much logical or fiscal sense it might have to assign child bearing differently. I’m also thinking about the larger unfairness in family planning. There are people like Howard and I. We’ve had our babies and have moved onward to where the thought of having another baby is dismaying. Then there are other people who have yet to be able to parent despite longing for it.

I also see the ways in which larger communities also arrange themselves as needed for crowd control, people management, and (hopefully) personal growth. That last part sometimes gets forgotten in places where it should be paramount, like schools. Sometimes the systems need to be tweaked, other times they need to be completely reconfigured. Brilliant people can make a hodge podge system work beautifully, but it is best when the system is set up so that everyone does a little bit of maintenance and all runs smoothly. All of these thoughts swirl around each other and through each other, not coalescing into an particular insight or realization. Yet the patterns of flow are interesting. I shall have to think more on it.

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Lessons Learned from a Hard Day

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It is not the best of days when five out of six Taylers end up yelling, crying, or both. We weren’t even mad or sad at each other, rather family members carried it with them when the returned to the house, and then there was the odd pocket of grief tripped over at an unexpected moment. Stress from one of Kiki’s school classes required tears and sorting. Link needed to hear some sharp words about meeting the efforts of others half way instead of expecting people to spend effort trying to understand him where he is. Gleek was wound up with frantic emotions fed by insecurities and manifesting alternately in rowdiness or anger. Howard and I did not manage all of this without losing our patience. Yet for all the emotional turmoil that yesterday spilled everywhere, it was a good day. It was not a fun day. I don’t ever want to have it again. But at the end of it we all emerged in different emotional places. Those of us who weathered the emotional storms emerged with new insights into ourselves and each other. Hard can be good, even if it is no fun at all.

Lessons learned:
Sometimes struggling through a hard thing is what we need because the experience of struggling teaches things that we can not learn otherwise.

If we want understanding, we have to extend it.

When someone goes into a litany of how they are ugly, untalented, horrible, unfashionable, etc. no amount of argument will change their opinion. Sometimes the best thing to say is “I love you anyway.”

There are things we don’t realize we want until we are sad that the opportunity for them is passed.

Friends make the world better.

Today was something of an aftermath day. When emotions spill all over the place it takes time to pick up and move onward. Extra sleep, good food, friends, and laughter put things to rights again.

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