Bright Yuletime Light

Last night we were supposed to have a play date at our house with our "park friends" Holly and her son Andre. She called and suggested that instead we look at a well known holiday display not far from our house. The temperature was crisp but not frigid and it would be a good time to walk around outside. Anytime for my kids to walk outside in the dark is usually hugely fun so I was immediately on board. And this was a great night. The displays are all hand carved by a local resident from styrofoam and carefully and lovingly painted. It is his gift to the community and the season and he has done this for more years than I can remember. There is a guest book in his yard and all the visitors sign it. Amazingly, he came out of his house to chat with us. He is 98 years old now but still spry and alert and together. His joy in the season and in children is still so very evident. When he was younger (though still a senior citizen) I remember that he visited my eldest son's class in public school and taught the children how to shape the styrofoam with a plastic knife. Last night he told us of how he was born high up in Canada 98 years ago and gave each of our children a sweet little carved styrofoam mouse. I don't know if next year he will still be here, 98 years old is amazing in and of itself--those mice will be family treasures reminding us in years to come of a funfilled night with friends and the gift of the holiday decorations made by a very special man.

Modern Day convenience I can not live without!

A vacuum cleaner. Really. I think I could live with out a dishwasher (though not happily.) I know we have lived without a dryer. But a vacuum in a family of 6, well that becomes a necessity. Despite having a dog (wouldn't you think of a dog as a 4 legged vac?) our living room looks trashed at the end of 24 hours. There is debris, cheerio detritus from the littles, and just stuff. Weird stuff that I don't always want to look at too closely! LOL

On Saturday our vacuum died. It is an electrolux and by and large a hardy beast. But it refused to continue vacuuming and croaked. I took it to the store where i bought it only to discover an empty store front and a tiny sign with a phone number to call for service. ACK! I went home and called but of course it wasn't till Sunday night that we got a call back letting us know that Tuesday he would come to do CPR on said ill vac. Many days. Many debris filled days!

I am happy to say that the vacuum is now fixed. It sucks mightily once more. Detritus is gone, at least temporarily. :-)

Twisted Tangled Thanksgiving Holiday

Whew! It is over! I am dancing on the inside as a result of that. In some respects, actually a number of respects, this was a good holiday. The best part was that my wife was calm and happy, and if not happy, at least calm! (grin) Our respective families bring out the worst in us. Her sis arrived on Wednesday with her overnight bag in hand and her emotional baggage packed as well. She is not a happy person and strives for happiness by being sarcastic and unkind to others. How many other people are sarcastic when their 4 y/o nephew asks to play Candyland. It amazes me that she has no idea what a gift the love and adoration of a child is. That she doesn't get that there will be times when he could care less that Auntie has arrived. I know she has no children of her own, but still is seems so obvious to me.

Thanksgiving day was punctuated with the excitement of a power failure right as the turkey was going into the oven. Now most of us (me and the 4 kiddos) are vegetarian so the plight of tom turkey was not too big a deal to us. But I knew it would be huge to the rest of the family. We called the electric company and the power could be off they said till after 11 a.m. This would not give a reasonable time to cook the bird so Kirsty and i began making alternative plans. We could still use the gas burners on the top of the stove, so we planned out a nice though unusual Thanksgiving menu. However the goddess was smiling upon us. We got power back in less than 45 minutes though the store 3 houses up from us didn't get it back till 11. So the turkey and all the sides cooked without a hitch and dinner was only about 30 minutes late.

Our gathering on the day was really nice, though it was exhausting. Not just from hosting, cooking and cleaning, but emotionally. Why do families have to bite at one another? It mystifies me and left me in the position of feeling the need to turn conversations to other avenues several times.

The next day my mother was arriving for a visit. My sister called me and asked if she could stop by too so that she could see Mum. OK I should be bigger than this but I was hurt. I was hurt because I invited her to a long planned summer party this summer and she said she would come and then blew us off to go and visit her father. I invited her twice to come to our house on Thanksgiving. She declined and chose to spend the day with her ex. OK fine. Or I try to say fine. But it bothers me that she can't come visit us and really was only there because she wanted to see my mother. So I am left with feeling petty and smallminded and trying to rise above that.

We prepared the house as best we could for Mum's visit. There is stress to her visits. I love her and i love to have her be with the kids here because it is their home and they are able to play and interact in a much more easy going environment than when we travel to her home. Which we do monthly, and the kids are really really good about trying contain their natural exuberance while at Nana's tiny little apartment. But back to the stress. Being as I am the fourth generation to live her, Mum can't visit without finding something wrong with the way we keep the house. Once it was the pellets we store on the front porch. Another the number of strollers we keep in our front hall. I was told our house was so cold she would freeze. (uh huh Mum, may I refer you back to the pellets on the front porch???) My children are critiqued; thankfully not to their faces but to me. My kids are really by and large good kids. But they are kids. They are not good kids all the time. And our house is far from quiet. I try as i know my wife does, to make sure things are welcoming for her. Food is abundent and home made, tea waits for her when she arrives--I know in Maine she hasn't any one to "do" for her and to be pampered a bit must feel good. Her bedroom is fixed and pretty, her grandkids can't wait to share themselves with her. So I visit and smile and wait for the shoe to drop. Because I know it will. It always does. And sure enough true to form, it did. Last night while I cleaned the kitchen after supper and she sat sipping tea and dessert she asked me why the siding hadn't held up better on the house and why there was such unsightly black streaks on the front of the house. I wanted to flatten her. Really, I did. I told her it was from the traffic and that we wash the house and it comes back. You would have thought that would end it. But no, this is my mother. She asks my wife the same damn question this morning. Now I really wanted to flatten her. I feel like she never sees the beauty of our family, the love that we share and have for her and instead is so busy looking to see the family homestead is kept the way she feels it should be. Appearances and all that. It is so shallow and so sad.

Then last evening rather late at night Mum's cell phone rang. Her husband had fallen at the long term care facility and been taken to the hospital for a CAT scan. He was now back at the care facility and his granddaughter was settling him in. He was okay but I know Mum felt guilty being here with something happening there. And I felt so badly for her. We have planned this time together for months and now it was going to be shortened.

And yet a small and guilty feeling part of me is quietly relieved. I don't have to listen to any more veiled comments for a while. I don't have to worry when my kids race through the house playing knights. I can just be. They can just be. And it is good.

More on Thanksgiving

I have been thinking a lot of how being in relationships means blending family traditions and how this happens sometimes seamlessly and sometimes hesitantly and sometimes awkwardly. I think in our family we have had all three "phases" of blending so to speak but have come to a place where things feel pretty good to us all. At least I hope so.

I also realized that I have been rather elitist about Thanksgiving. In my family, this was a big feast day. Big in every sense of the word. LOTS of food. And the focus was on fresh food. Big waxy turnips that would be chopped up that morning. Onions that made your eyes weep while they were chopped to add to stuffing. Bright orange carrots in big bunches and acorn squash. Preparations began the week before. Family china was carefully and lovingly washed. The silver polished. Pies made and stored for the big day. Centerpieces were made and the furniture in the dining room gleamed with freshly applied lemon oil. As a child, I didn't love the wholeThanksgiving experience. The food wasn't really all that appealing to me; at least till you got to dessert. And though there were lots of people around, we children were expected to watch the Thanksgiving parades on television which I personally found excruciatingly dull. But there was still something sort of magical about the day. I did love how pretty everything looked. I loved the fact that people came to visit. I just wished there was more kid friendly food and that there was something I could do.

When Kirsty and I became a couple we began having Thanksgiving at her family's home. And Thanksgiving was very different there. The food was still ample but their taste was different. Not many fresh veggies. They came from cans or frozen bags. We squeezed around a dining room table that just barely had room for us all but there was a feeling of warmth and camaraderie while her mother was alive. There was lovely china that was their family heirlom but there were always such dire threats for the person who broke or chipped a piece that I was petrified to help set or clear the table. After Kirsty's mom died, her sister continued to host the Thanksgiving meal but the joy was not there. I thought at first it was just the normal working through of grief. A chair once filled by a beloved person was empty. But it was more than that. Her sister didn't love preparing for the holiday. The meal felt diminished. Where before I didn't care that the veggies were canned or frozen instead of fresh, I found myself feeling that I hadn't had Thanksgiving despite being there most of the day. I tried helping. I brought a centerpiece. We helped prepare the meal as much as we were allowed. But it all felt remarkably second rate. Kirsty and I grew our family again and yet again and by child number 3 the little table could have no more people squeezed around it. We were told the children would have to sit in the living room on TV trays.

In reality they probably wouldn't have minded. But I minded. Deeply. Profoundly. I minded because I felt that they were being told through actions that they were second class citizens, not good enough to sit with the rest of us at table. If there had been other young cousins for them to sit with that would have been different. But on her side of the family, Kirsty is the only one to have children.

So I put my foot down. I could ignore canned veggies, but I couldn't do my kids in the living room another year. And we were adopting again, bringing a family of six to a house that didn't have young children. I felt this was a burden to Kirsty's sister and dad. We should offer to host the day. We did and after much wrangling it became a new tradition. And it is good. The table is big enough for 12 people and there are all ready 10 of us occupying the chairs now. The dining room is decorated up for the day. The kids make place cards for everyone. This year my KC grew the pumpkin that will be our pumpkin pie. He is so proud of this achievement. Fresh vegetables mingle with the canned varieties on the table. There is laughter, Thanksgiving parade watching by those who enjoy it (personally I still hate it but inexplicably, my children love it!), football watching by others, and did I say laughter?

I love Thanksgiving. I love the fact that I look at our dining room and it shines with welcoming beauty. I am grateful, truly grateful for the fact that we have food aplenty, especially this year when so many people are struggling. I am grateful for family, for the faces that are gathered around that table. I am grateful for my wife and my children. They remain always my greatest gifts.

And I am grateful for canned yams and mayo for the broccoli because these will always remind me of people I love (not that I will ever personally eat them!). Somehow their presence is a blending that seasons the day in a special and wonderful way.

Thinking of Thanksgiving

The economy is so bad this year. It is impacting our household in a myriad of ways. Yule will definately be smaller and this bothers me. For 2 yrs now KC has asked for a "rose petal cottage." I am not sure it is the best gift for him and last year didn't get it because it seemed flimsy. However this year he asked again and this year flimsy or no, there is no way I could afford it. Sigh. That rots. The rational part of me knows that we can and will give him a wonderful Christmas experience. I do get that. But the fact that he asked for the same thing for 2 years is what bugs me. Sigh again. A big part of me thinks that the magic of childhood is the dreams that become realities for you as a child. On the other hand, the rational part of me knows I personally asked for my own horse every year from ages 5 to 11 and I didn't get it!

On the other hand, despite having to be careful, we are so much better off than so many people. Where I work, there are people from all walks of life, but mostly from much tougher situations than I am in. People who aren't agonizing over the rose petal cottage. People who agonize over buying meds or paying rent. Over how many times a week their kids can eat lunch. The people who have a really low income seem to have a safety net. They qualify for programs that make sure there is food on the table, their energy bills are usually paid etc. Their kids get free lunches or reduced fee lunches. They get holiday baskets to help with Thanksgiving. But there is an increasingly large segment of our population that fall through the cracks. People who are newly out of work don't always qualify for aid. Or don't know where to go if they do. Single people with a low wage job tend not to be a segment of our society who are noticed as needy. The person who is out of work for a month due to illness and who doesn't have young children tends not to qualify. So every year we tell our site that we are holding a lottery for thanksgiving baskets. In reality we pick 5 families that we know won't have a Thanksgiving without some help. Our staff donates veggies, fruit and turkeys and we deliver them the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. We let the "winners" know ahead of time to alleviate any stress they may be having over their holiday meal. To a person, they have cried with relief and joy. Several have let slip stories of additional hardships that they are facing. Not in a "pity me" way, more in a matter of fact, sharing a facet of their life way which is somehow all the sadder to me. And it isn't hardships like giving up a cable channel. It is hardships like affording medicine for diabetes or even the type of food that a diabetic should eat. It is hardships like not being able to buy meat. I am a vegetarian by choice not because I realized that I couldn't pay the light bill if I bought meat to eat.

So today I am grateful that my biggest worries are keeping magic and good memories a part of my children's childhood. There will be food aplenty on the table next Thursday, much laughter and hubbub and we are very blessed. And I am giving thanks.

Musical Musings

I think if I was told I had to choose between having access to music or having television that there is no doubt that I would choose music. Not that I have a great singing voice--it verges on the edge of just barely adequate. Not that I can play an instrument, years of effort proved that I am totally unable to learn to read music. But I love music. It allows me to process feelings. A particular Bob Marley song always reminds me of KC because I sing it to him each night. It reminds me of events and happenings. A particular Norah Jones cut was very popular during our first trip to Chicago. MeatLoaf's album marked the first year that my wife and I lived together. Music marks my days and thoughts in a way that is deeply important to me.

However until recently I have had to watch or listen to far more television than I would ever choose on my own. Due to our piece work that we do each night, Kirsty would put on the television when she first went in to set up the job. And it stayed on till we tottered off to bed. Enter the wonderful invention www.pandora.com! The music genome project has made my evenings so much more beautiful. Kirsty has fun creating new stations (wonder how many families have a Raffi Radio!) True, she and I don't really like the same kind of music, but I would rather listen to any kind of music than a banal TV show. And while I am pathetically inept with the TV remote, I know how to click Pandora over to the station I created! :-)

More mental health musings

My sister and I have a very weak thread of communication right now. I am concerned for her. I know she has some mental health issues. There is enough distance physically between us that I can not with four children easily schlep up to see her. And frankly I don't know her actual address, only the town she is living in. She is presently living with a friend while she gets herself and her life back together. I email her a couple times a week. And I agonize over what to say. Is it hurtful to talk about our family and what we are doing together? Is it reassuring to have someone write the same way they have always written to her, or does it seem insensitive to whatever it is that she is going through right now? Is it intrusive to keep asking "hey, how are you doing?" "sis, we are thinking about you and want to know how things are with you?" or even "what are the kids up to?" I never hear the latter and I worry for them. I know she has work to do on her own issues; I wonder if there is time and energy for theirs. But I can't ask that; I know that for sure. So I wander through this very blindly with no real idea if I am helping or harming and I hate that.