Modern Pioneer

"There is a charm, even for homely things, in perfect maintenance." -Louis Auchincloss

I spent a lot of my weekend reclaiming my home. It seems that increasing busy-ness without hiring a cleaning person or someone else to pull my old weight equals disaster on the home front! Every single realm in my home dominion has been out of whack since the holidays. The laundry has been a continuous pile either on the dirty or the to be put away side. My fridge was emitting strange odors. The pantry was a pile of unorganized goods, my floors all had telltale crumbs from lack of vacuuming, and my car was looking like salt stain was the chosen paint color. It was all contributing to a level of disorganization that was making me internally grumpy and out of whack. Outer calm reflects inner peace right?

Every day chores are easy to put on the back burner when other fires need to be put out. But I have to say it felt really nice to focus on my home and making it livable again. It made me feel a much needed sense of respect for what I have around me each and every day. Plenty literally oozes out of every drawer and cupboard and I think it's easy to not see the forest for the trees sometimes. I have talked about the concept of stewardship here before and it's something I truly believe in. I should act as the steward for the things I have, responsibly managing and caring for the immediate world around me right down to the oil in my car and the crumby carpet underfoot. It doesn't send a very good message to my children, or my commitment to the environment, if I let my "toys" and plenty pile up or break.

My recent lack of stewardship and home management was also feeling like a black eye thanks to the book I'm currently reading called The Egg and I. Set in the 1940s and written about that same time, it tells the story of the hilarious escapades of Betty MacDonald, who married a chicken farmer and moved to the middle of nowhere beneath the Cascade mountains on the coast of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. The book is a fun read thanks to the wit of the storyteller, but it also makes one mindful of just how much home improvement and conveniences have taken place since the farm days of the 40s. It makes me realize just how good I have it around my house, how absolutely doable housework and home management have become. I have so many time saving devices at my disposal. Washing machine, dishwasher, hot water to name a few! We have a leaky sink faucet in the kitchen right now and we've been turning off the water directly at the pipes under the sink until we fix it so we don't waste, and I found myself getting so annoyed with the hassle of having to lean down to switch it on to wash my hands or soak a dish....never mind the fact that this woman in my novel had to walk out in the pouring rain to pump herself a measly pail of freezing cold water! She then had to boil it pot by pot with a wood burning stove for any washing or bathing required. What is wrong with me?! How easy I have it peeing indoors and touching buttons to cook food, suck up dirt, wash and dry my clothes and dishes! I fear I would have made a terrible pioneer.

We do live in a more complex world in terms of other commitments and expectations-and I feel women particularly face this modern burden. Most of us are no longer one loaf of bread short of starving or one pair shy of wearing dirty underwear everyday. We have plenty to juggle. In the literal sense of the phrase. And I'm thinking in modern times that's more the appropriate definition of stewardship. Juggling the plenty, making it count and matter rather than shoving it in a closet or rusting in the yard unused. Today's home manager isn't up at 4 am letting rolls raise and hanging wash by the coals of the wood stove, but instead has to master time management both inside and outside the home and using the words I have enough. This role might not be as physically taxing or as linked to survival as the kind played by Betty MacDonald and the millions of other housewives and managers of the recent past, but I'm not so sure it isn't just as important to happiness and a sense of succeeding on the home front. Here on Summerhill Drive, I guess I am a modern pioneer.

(Above images from Corbis. com. Aren't they fantastic?)

Pep Talk

If you've been here awhile you may remember that every year I like to come up with some mantra that I would like to sum up the year ahead of me. It started with "kicking A" a few years back and progressed into just be better, then "keep your head on straight". I think I've finally settled on one for this new year. I have a lot of irons in the fire right now, so to speak. It is a huge time of transition for me personally, and I'd probably also say spiritually. The funny thing is that 2011 is also, according to numerologists and new age types, a year that represents a shift in focus and paradigm for the entire planet. We are collectively entering a new cycle of birth and growth. This idea registered with me because I'm feeling so much focus right now on creating and bringing about new growth in my own life and I sense that many of my peers are doing this too. The prediction feels right to me and it makes me extremely hopeful and excited about the year ahead for the whole lot of us out there in the world.

It takes a lot of energy to make things happen, to make life happen the way you'd like it to. I can't think of a more concrete symbol of energy than flame or fire. This is a year I'm going to need all the energy I can muster so I have decided 'STOKE IT UP' is my new mantra winner. It also makes me happy to use this phrase because it strikes a personal chord. My dad is the best fire master I know and I grew up with lots of family time around the fire and hearing "throw another log on the fire" and "stoke the fire, Alli", and now my kids regularly help do this job when they are at Grandpa's house. Anyway, this mantra feels really apt for the kind of life I want to lead in 2011. I love the word stoke and its inherent snowboarder-esque "I'm stoked" enthusiasm, but I also love that it's an action word. It is not passive; one cannot properly stoke sitting on one's ass, and that's what I need, what the world needs really, more action, less talk. A get 'er done sensibility.

I love to nerd out and watch those youtube videos showing chain reactions like this. It's impressive to see materially/physically the way one small action or movement can set a series of events in motion. It's the ripple, the domino effect at play. I can't help but believe that the choices I make in my life have this same effect on a larger whole. What I decide to do today makes tomorrow take shape. What I say to my children tomorrow effects what they will say to their children in 30 years. What I don't do or say can't ever happen, it can't ever become a ripple on the surface effecting the larger wave. It's nothing, a non-factor, and there's not much life in nothing as far as I can tell.

The truth of the matter is that we are all shaping our reality each minute of our lives. It suddenly feels very important to me to make the choice to stoke rather than to sit and watch and dream. I've done enough watching and waiting for now. I'm ready to fill a corner of the world with what I want to see.

All this self pep talkery makes me mindful of a wonderful quote by Goethe that is always at the top of my inspirato file...if this can't nudge to get in the zone of action, I don't know what can....

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."

STOKE IT UP!!

You say it's your birthday...

My oldest child is fast approaching her 7th birthday. Next week I will have a 7 year old daughter! I find it rather shocking since that means I've been parenting, been MOM, for all that time; I've been on the clock and basically responsive and responsible for 2,555 days! It feels like quite an achievement for both me and Cleo.

Parenting is as dynamic and mysterious a process as photosynthesis, as far as I'm concerned. Parenting has shaped my heart and mind in ways that I certainly couldn't ever have predicted and it has challenged me to the breaking point on many occasions. I think one of the biggest perks, and certainly one of the most balancing principles of parenting is the way it humbles you. Daily I'm humbled by the humongous love I feel for my kids, one that seems to just keep exponentially growing. I'm humbled by all the mistakes and instantaneous regrets I feel when I mishandle or ignore something and watch the mood and problem spiral out of my grasp. I'm humbled by the way my kids seem to just keep loving me right through all those mistakes I make. And I'm humbled by the enormity of the task of teaching and caring for someone for a lifetime, knowing that whatever happens this relationship of being a parent to a child will define me and help define them.

Cleo as an almost 7 year old is so full of wonder and smart little quips that I seriously want to bottle her vitality and save it for some future rainy day when she's a teen, lying on the bed in headphones texting, dull eyes staring back at me. She can be rough and tumble or dainty and fancy. She likes dinosaurs and peace signs and owls. She is attracted to treasures and hoards small objects like, ahem, ancient skeleton keys stolen from Grandma Mia's house. She collects rocks and crystals, loves Scooby Doo, ancient Egypt, and anything macabre. I know I'm biased, but I think she's utterly fascinating. But don't get me wrong, I forget this important fact daily. I think sometimes I forget to see my own children, or maybe it's more that I tend to only see them as my children and forget to see them for themselves?

The monotony of routine as a parent, and the fact that you are responsible for creating a human who understands manners, grammar, morality, and kindness is what can make you numb to the experience. But boy, taken out of context, kids are magic. Watching Flynn walk around with his white elephant gift-a disposable camera- over the holidays was enough to remind me that everything he sees is of interest to him. The doorknob, my face, the toilet bowl. Details are interesting to kids, and as they age, I'm learning that they have such fascinating ways of putting all those details together to form a world view. I was telling Cleo a story about my youth at my Grandma Lou's the other day and she interrupted me to ask "so was all the world gray back then?" She was interpreting black and white photos and movies into her perception of the past. Isn't that interesting?

Taking the time out of my busy task mastering role to really just hang out with my kids and talk to them feels like a worthy goal. Over the holiday break I indulged and let my chatty Cleo talk my ear off while I tickled her back before bed. She's always talkative at this time of night but most the time I'm eager to get her down, get to my couple hours of uninterrupted freedom. Or I can only see it as a ploy to stay awake longer so I tend to cut it short and sometimes even get annoyed at her long list of topics she wants to discuss at such an inopportune time. But it was so fun to just listen to her with a free ear, one hungry to hear her funny thoughts and wishes. We have discussed things like why we can't be buried in our own backyard when we die, having cake shops next to each other one day and apartments in Paris where our whole family sleeps on bunk beds, why Arctic animals have white fur, and who the oldest person we know is. Our conversations have zest and depth and I think its because I'm really listening and entertained by what she has to say. I'm being present. And often I think that's the hardest thing to do as a parent and a busy adult with adult sized worries and preoccupations, but also probably the most valuable thing I can do for my kids. I believe giving attention to others is always a gift, but giving true attention to my children is as much a gift to me as it is to them. It gives me the chance to unwrap-present-like- the daily hard work and grind of parenting and transform it into a fleeting moment of discovery and connection. Who is this person I'm so driven to love and protect and nurture anyway?

My sweet father in law always wishes me a happy birthday on my children's birthdays. It's a lovely recognition of the fact that for all us parents out there on the day our children are born a new us is born as well. Our life divides, our heart multiplies. I've never felt that more than on this 7th birthday of being a parent. Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday, Cleo. I am one lucky lady to know you.

Be Still

Maybe it is because we're in the midst of the busiest couple weeks of the year, but I have been thinking a lot about the loveliness of home time, of staying in my pjs and making bread at 1:00 in the afternoon and just being with my own little family without a laundry list of to do's, parties, projects, obligations, and work shifts. I haven't had a day like that in a long, long time and I can feel myself teetering on the brink of exhaustion. My brilliant sister once described the difference between being an introvert and an extrovert as either feeling that social situations "fill you" or "drain you." I fall firmly into the filling up category when it comes to people, and being a pleaser by nature I have a hard time saying no to social engagements and I'm always interested in planning events where I can see those I love. I also think I'm always rah rah rah party because I spend a good number of hours each day at home with kids, insulated from outside connection. Getting out really means something to me, it's a break from routine, and I tend to thrive on it. But I also tend to create, plan, and commit to a lot of extra curricular situations that tax my family's resources both financially and in terms of our chance to be together as a family unit-2 parents x 2 kids.

I think it's pretty impossible to change what fundamentally floats your boat, so I know I will never become a hermit long term. But I do think it is time for me to hunker down a bit and get re-centered with my family. Last year I read about an idea on the wonderful crafty blog Inchmark about taking a week to "BE STILL" as a family. The idea is really just what it sounds, to make an organized and committed stab at retreating to do nothing and to enjoy that state of peace. Inchmark does this at the start of the holiday season, but I'm thinking the perfect time for my family to make this a yearly tradition will be the first week of the new year. It feels like an intuitive way to start off 2011 and I'm always happy to set a worthy goal right from the get go. I'm in love with short term, manageable resolutions that can wither after 7 days!

In our week of being still I plan to resist the urge to make plans, to go out to dinner, or work late. The week will give us a chance to read books out loud and privately, do puzzles, play with our new Christmas bells and whistles, and to sit by candlelight. I imagine some walks and maybe a few craft projects but lots of time by the fire, slow simmering soups, music listening, design magazines and Roald Dahl on our laps. No friends, no play dates, no errands, no outside activities, just me, myself, and mine own at home on Summerhill Drive.

It sounds pretty heavenly, right? I really don't mean to sound all bah humbug because I truly am looking forward to another glorious week of Christmas break with friends and loved ones and fun activities and parties, but I hope that knowing that the stillness is coming January 1 will help me to soak up the love, the bubbly, and the joy of this crazy, hectic, glorious season that much more. Turn outward so I can happily turn inward.....

Glad tidings to you...

I think Dr. Seuss is one of the great American literary treasures. Everything he wrote was pretty much pitch perfect (and in trisyllabic rhythm, no less!) and represent heavy ideological thinking packaged in a humorous, wacky, and utterly original style. I just ran across his "A Prayer for a Child" and thought it was a perfect little message to send out into the computering ether this holiday season. Enjoy, and please have yourselves a merry little Christmas-with peace and good will toward all.....

Prayer for a Child

From here on earth,
From my small place
I ask of You
Way out in space:
In every land
What You and I
Both understand…

Please tell all men
That Peace is Good.
That’s all
That need be understood
In every world
In Your great sky.
(We understand.
Both you and I.)

-Theodore Seuss Geisel

written in 1955 for Colliers magazine and accompanied by above illustration

Finding the fa la la la la

I really do love this season. I'm no banner waving Christian so honestly "the reason for the season" is just part of what I love about Christmas. The lore of St Nicholas and the idea of celebrating the Solstice, the longest night of the year with it's thoughts of a brighter, warmer, greener future, also make me pretty giddy. I love the fresh beginning of the New Year approaching and vow every January 1 to tackle aspirations and try harder to fix stubborn habits. It's a glorious time to look both backwards and forwards.

I got choked up reading The Polar Express to Flynn last night. It happens every time I read that line about how it used to be that all the boy's childhood friends could hear Santa's sleigh bell and over time as they grew up even his sister could not hear it, could not find the magic of Christmas. It feels all too familiar now that I'm an adult. I usually feel two or three moments of full fledged excitement during the season, and like I said, I love all the history and tradition surrounding this time of year. But my heartfelt moments and excitement now seem so fleeting and are quickly over taken by the exhaustion of social engagements (seriously why does everyone have a party just this time of year? I'd welcome something say the 2nd weekend in February?); the fear of over spending and debt and spoiling already spoiled children; the wondering whether I need to have misc. gifts ready for the random neighbor or friend caller which then brings on anger about the feelings of obligation instead of generosity the holidays can incite; and lastly, hoping that I've been 'fun' and present enough to make the season as magical for my kids as it felt for me as a child. I used to spend the whole month in pretty much a state of over-excited hyper activity! My sister and I would plan elaborate Christmas Eve programs for our relatives, reading stories or acting out puppet shows or lip synching to Andy Williams' Christmas record. I would eagerly await the Christmas Eve call from Santa who mysteriously knew so much about me. (A belated thank you Charlie Seldin! I think you fooled me for 10 years.) All of December was a blur of anticipation. Now it's pretty much just a blur.

Of course a lot of the spirit of Christmas can't help but dissipate when it's my Amex, and not Santa, footing the bill to make the magic happen. I read this frightening article awhile back that said it will cost today's parents $222,360 to raise a child born in 2009. Gulp! During Christmas, it feels like that number is right around the corner. Stocking stuffers and whim buys and trying to be 'fair' to one kid and the other adds up. I try to reign myself in but its hard not to get caught up in the mania when you are out on the front lines of commerce!

Honestly probably the best boost I had at discovering the real magic of Christmas, the kind that just might still come from Santa's workshop, is when I perused Made by Joel's wonderful creations for his children. (I've mentioned him before here.) Not only do his toys and projects look great visually but they are geniusly simple and interactive. They harness the imgination, dexterity, and natural curiousity of kids. Those are the type of playthings I like to have around. And while I did make a few crumby Christmas purchases for my kids, (hello horrendous peace sign nail polish kit and squishy salamanders purchased as at the register whims) I am hoping to redeem myself and my standards by making a little something with my own two hands to put under the tree. I'm going old school and want to introduce my kids to the pleasure of analog telephoning, tin can style! Look how cute these are! It will be an interesting experiment to see if something so hands on and homemade can compete on Christmas morning in a sea of batteries, remote controls, and plastic Playmobil. Fingers crossed! Even if those fingers are painted with glittery peace sign polish...

Tis the season...

I come from a small family and have just one sibling to call my own. But lucky for me, she's amazing. Amy is probably the most trustworthy person I know, capable of holding onto triumphs and confessions and heart aches with perfect loyalty and thoughtful advice. She's probably aided in this by what seems to me an adept moral compass and a keen listening ear. She's one of those people who never seems ruffled regardless of how much is on her plate. She quietly accomplishes more than most people I know, but she isn't one to get all braggadocio about it, so few people actually realize the zillion tiny balls she throws into the air every day. She's always the 3 c's-calm, cool, and collected- and since I feel I spend half my days in twits and fits- I've always deeply admired and even coveted her degree of zen.

Amy's full of good ideas too and she absolutely made my day this week by sending a lovely little holiday note via snail mail. Inside were a few photos of cute items she'd seen in catalogs and on each she'd labeled Al or Jaren. The note simply said "because I really am a lover of the idea that the thought really does count for something...here are just a few things I would love to be buying for you this holiday season!"

Isn't that fantastic? Knowing that her family and mine, along with most people I know, are in financial lock down this holiday season, I absolutely adored this note from my sister. In fact it truly felt like she'd sent me a gift. And I agree with her sentiment completely. It really is the thought that counts and I felt loved, pegged, appreciated, and thought of just as I would have if she'd actually bought me these things. (All of which did happen to be right on point, by the way. I mean, look at those boots! A match made in heaven.) It was brilliant and made me want to go on a fake vision board style shopping spree for everyone on my list this year, cutting and tearing magazine and catalog photos and wrapping them up. I would wager that a family Christmas party could still feel pretty great even if everyone opened a gift with a photo of an item, instead of the actual item, inside.

I think it's easy to forget in the mania of the holidays that gift giving doesn't have to be an elaborate, expensive enterprise. The best gifts are the ones given thoughtfully, whether they are big or small. It's an art to be a good gift giver and to me this doesn't just mean you are a good shopper and always have something for someone. When done correctly, a gift is a true manifestation of who someone is- you "get" them enough to choose something they would choose for themselves- or you have paid enough attention to someone to know what they are most in need of.

We should really think before we buy all of the time, but especially at Christmas. I believe in the ritual of giving this time of year, it's symbolic and Christian and all that good stuff. We shouldn't complacently let it become yet another meaningless display of our buying power. If you are looking for a little Christmas time inspiration, treat yourself and read the wonderful O. Henry story The Gift of the Magi. You can give it a whirl here or seek out a copy of the above version illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger. It's gorgeous and good for the kiddos to boot. Let's hope we can all be a little Della & Jim to each other and those we love this year!

Happy Holidays!