The Nativity, Beginnings, Middles, and Faith

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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.

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My holiday from urgent tasks

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Yesterday morning my life was awful and impossible. This evening life is good and happy. Since nothing much has changed in the last 36 hours I am reluctantly forced to acknowledge once again that my emotional state is prone to fluctuation and therefore not a good short-term measure for my quality of life. What is valuable is taking an after-the-fact look at the specific complaints I listed as to why my life was impossible. The analysis is not surprising. I am not spending enough time on activities which replenish my emotional well-being. I’m not just talking about “taking time out for me” because some of the things I find most fulfilling are when I spend time deliberately helping someone outside my immediate family. Other soul-filling activities are actually a lot of work, (gardening, writing, family photo books) but the work I spend on them makes me feel like my life has value in a way that I can see and measure. I can see the weeds pulled, the words written, the pages finished. It is kind of hard to quantify “parenting” particularly when it is like the air I breathe, omnipresent and invisible.

The holiday has created a little space where many of my other responsibilities are held at bay. It is rather like one of those lulls in the crashing waves where the ocean pulls back leaving me standing ankle deep in wet sand. There are no packages to ship, emails to answer, tasks to complete, because most everyone else is also on vacation. The schools have backed off as well. There will be homework to manage next week, but this week is clear. The waves that have pushed against me and occasionally swamped me have retreated for a moment. In this space I organized and sorted and discarded. Mostly this is a physical sorting as I discarded years of old papers and garbage. As I sorted through piles, my brain also sorted. I dredged up old memories and then filed them away in new places. As I organized, I began to picture how my physical spaces need to be arranged so that I can accomplish the tasks that are in front of me. But I tried not to think too much about the tasks themselves. Tasks have dictated the order of my days for more than half a year. The biggest value in this holiday space is the freedom from urgency. I have time to consider what is important to me rather than what must be done right away to prevent an imminent crisis.

My space will only last until Monday. I can see the urgency swelling like a large wave gathering momentum to crash across the shore. A part of me wants to start preparing now, hurry and complete a dozen small chores so that they’ll be out of the way. Instead I am doing the mental equivalent of wiggling my toes in the sand, looking at the sky, and taking a deep breath. It is good to take time off from battling the waves to remember that I like the beach.

Before Monday arrives I intend to have a plan. It needs to be simple and low maintenance, but I need some structure which demands that part of each day is given over to things which are important even though they may not be urgent.

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The Whats and Whys of our Christmas Traditions

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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

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Parenting Challenges of the Christmas Season

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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.

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Try new foods dinner

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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.

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Sleep debt comes due

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I gave up on trying to work when I snapped awake to discover that I’d laid my head down on my desk and fallen asleep while waiting for my computer to process. Since the process in question took less than a minute, I’m guessing sleep hit as soon as my head was down. I’ve been on a roll all week long, moving steadily and shorting myself on sleep. I guess my body decided to call in the sleep debt. Which is fine. I’m not exactly on vacation, but we’re definitely in a vacation rhythm around here. So this weekend will have extra sleeping in it. Then next week can have extra organizing and cleaning. Then there will be Christmas.

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Pictures from my dorm room walls

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Among the things I located in yesterday’s paper sorting was a file folder full of pictures that I once used to decorate the wall of my college dorm room. The walls of the dorm were painted cinder block and we were forbidden to do anything which would damage the paint. In order to make the room feel more welcoming than a jail cell, most of us plastered the walls with posters, clippings, and other cheerful things. I did the same during my first year. My second year of college was transformative for me. I was going through a conscious process of claiming adulthood and defining myself. I did not put just anything amusing on my walls. Instead I carefully sought out images which I felt were truly reflective of who I was. I collected pictures as the months progressed. Some came from magazines or cards. Others were carefully photocopied from books. I hung the pictures carefully, neatly. Then half way through the year I re-hung everything on diagonals creating dynamic angles. Howard had entered my life and completely rearranged the way I pictured my future. My dorm walls echoed my internal insecurity. At the end of the year I took them all down and carefully stowed them in a file folder. I married Howard and became absorbed in creating a communal life with him. He did the same. Our walls were hung with things that reflected us both.

Yesterday I opened the file and carefully flipped through the pictures. A wash of feeling wafted to me from the pages. The images stored echoes of that definitive stage of my life. The room I used to live in came back to me. I remembered the wooden crate I used as an end table, the way my roommate and I rearranged the furniture in a non-standard format that felt more home-like to us. I remember that for the first time I was sharing space with a roommate that I’d deliberately chosen rather than one to whom I had been assigned. We had a lot of fun and some over-stressed arguments, but it was a really good time. The pictures carried all that, and they spoke to me. “Remember. This is who you are. You were this person before you were a mother, a wife, a business manager. You still are this person.”

I have no desire to go back to dorm room days. I like who I am. I like everything I have learned along the way. Besides, a lot of the ground between there and here was really unpleasant to travel. I’d rather not cross it again. But in my heart and mind that dorm room exists and the things that happened there are a part of me. The self-definition I did there is the foundation of who I am now. Looking at the pictures helps me see that I’m at another point of self-definition. With this office reorganization I am going to have a space that is truly mine. I can arrange it and decorate it however I will. And I think I will pull out some of these college pictures and hang them again. The decision carries with it a little bit of fear. It was so joyous to find this pocket of memory. I want to hoard it away so that its power will not dissipate. But on the whole, I think that having a visual reminder on my wall will be good. “This is who you were, and still are.”

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Office Cleaning Continues

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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.

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Starting in the corners

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My front room is a mess. It has been a mess since some time before Thanksgiving. I don’t like it when my living spaces are a mess, and I’ve been sorely tempted to clean it up by shoving stuff elsewhere. I don’t because that is what I’ve been doing ever since school started and at this point “elsewhere” is full. Last week I finally had space in my brain to try to figure out how to clean up the front room. In order to do it, I had to start in my office. This makes sense when you realized that “elsewhere” is usually in the middle of my office. This continues until my office is impassible. Which it was.

So I began to clean my office. Unfortunately many of the things in the middle of my office had been stuffed there because they simply did not have other places to belong. All the stowing spaces in my office and storage room are full. Half of what they are filled with is the wrong stuff. Things I use regularly reside in piles and under other things while things I no longer need sit neatly on easily accessible shelves. Reorganization is in order. So yesterday I began. I am going through my office shelf by shelf and evaluating everything. I’m putting things where they will be readily useful. This is not going to be a quick process. I expect it to take weeks.

Yesterday I finally accepted that my office needs to be an office instead of also doubling as a guest room. I set up a permanent shrink wrapping and paper cutting desk. Now there is not room for me to put an inflatable bed in here for guests. I am sad, because I like being a good hostess and giving guests their own space, but this makes much more sense on a daily basis.

Today I began going through the four drawer file cabinet. All the drawers are stuffed full and I intend to look at almost every paper in there. I already have two garbage bags full of shredded out-dated documents. The world will not suffer for me shredding old utility bills. I keep the tax related stuff back 7 years, but I’ve saved so much garbage paper. It wasn’t garbage when I stowed it carefully away, but it is now. Soon I’ll be able to re-think the organization in those cabinet drawers. I’m hoping to be able to stow writing notes in the newly created spaces.

Onward I will head to the cubby holes and shelves. Then into the storage room. I will haul garbage bags out. I will have a stack of things to give away or donate. In the end I will have space and the supplies I need ready to be used. It is going to be good to have an office that I am able to vacuum.

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