Yes, Let's

Yes, let's return the Christ in Christmas. Although, first to those of you who aren't Christian by faith, but still celebrate this holiday by culture, you're off the hook here. After all, this was actually your holiday first. I don't remember what you originally called it, but I know you were celebrating the winter solstice long before we Christians came along, and it would be a bit churlish of us to demand that you celebrate the holiday in the way we see best. Now back to those who claim the name of the Christ as their own.

I absolutely agree that we should be putting Christ back at the center of Christmas, but what if we went deeper than posting "Merry CHRISTmas!" on facebook? Instead, what if we put Christ back into his holiday by living deeply, meaningfully, intentionally the way Jesus lives? We could start by celebrating in a way that puts others before ourselves. I don't just mean people we like, our friends, families and certain coworkers, I mean the World, the one Jesus came to save, the one he lived for and later died for. Let's consider putting the whole of creation before ourselves. Let's make meaningful sacrifice, on the order of giving up our own glory that the World may know the Love of God. Perhaps we could start with The Other, The Different, even our Enemies.

Let's put Christ back in Christmas by searching our own hearts and souls for places that we have told Jesus he has no business going, places where we like things fine just the way they are, thank you very much. Let's relinquish our certainty that we know not just what's best for ourselves, but what's best for everyone else, our clear-eyed view of exactly how Jesus should be working in this world. Let's let go of our certainty that we have inalienable rights to anything. Let's live up to our claim that Jesus is our King. Let's live humbly and move graciously through the world.

We could put Christ back into Christmas by living joyfully all season long. We could share the joy not only of giving, but of forgiving. We could share the joy of not needing our own way. We could share joy by letting people be who they already are, God's precious creations, and not frustrating subjects for us to control.

As I drive around town and am implored by billboard and church sign alike to "Remember the Reason for the Season," I have to wonder something. In the attempt to put Christ back in Christmas by demanding that everyone share the same greetings, put out the same decorations and in general celebrate with the same traditions, is it possible that we have actually just shoved Christ right out of Christmas and put ourselves and our own righteousness into the center of it?

I Hate the Whites

Ok, maybe "hate" is too strong a word. But I really don't like them. The problem with the whites is first of all there are too many of them, and of the too many, too many more are little. They use up a lot of time and resources. The next problem with the whites is that they require a lot of extra services that aren't needed by other groups. There's extra care and concern that goes into many of the whites. To really get anything done with some of the whites you have to provide the same services twice just to get them up to basic results. It's all very frustrating. They just continue to look scruffier and older than every other group.

It annoys me so much that I've begun to discriminate against them. I save them for last. Sometimes I overlook them all together figuring, "I'll get to them next time." I allow them to languish, hidden behind a closed door, even after they've nearly been all taken care of.

One thing that really annoys me about the whites is how they so many of them don't stay together anymore. I see more singles than pairs these days. Some people have even started pairing whites that don't actually belong together in a misguided effort to force "pairhood" on those who just don't seem to want it.

Well, I think I've come up with a possible solution to this problem. I think I'm going to stop treating the whites like they're something special. I think I'm going to stop putting them in their own group altogether. I think I'm going to start mixing them in with the colors and the darks. That ought to solve it because soon there won't even be any whites. They'll all be grey, or pink.

More Stuff No One Warns You About

As per usual I was behind on detail sorts of jobs that have to be done but never seem to make it on to my priority list. I'm sure you'll be shocked when you learn that I couldn't get "Pay for childcare" onto the priority list. That job smells like paperwork and I'm allergic to paperwork.

When I pulled into the driveway to drop off my check this morning, I saw that there were two vans ahead of me so I knew I'd have to just quickly dash in, drop my check and leave. It turned out to be two people who were doing some work at the house, not parents dropping off, so it was a good twenty minutes that I stood there visiting with Rose after I gave her the check. We had a nice little chat about her kids, my kids, the daycare kids, no politics or religion today, but we usually hit those topics too. Somewhere in the last twelve years that Rose has been caring for my children, we became friends.

As I was walking out to my van after, I commented to the lady who was leaving at the same time, that I had stayed longer than I had intended. I said, "My kids only come one day a week now and I just don't get enough Rosie Time like I used to."

That's what no one warns you about. You hear a lot about how fast your kids grow up and how you better enjoy those moments because some day they'll be gone and all that, but no one tells you that they're going to out grow people to whom you've grown attached.

Two years ago, when Abby finished kindergarten, the teacher and I were so sad to say good-by to each other. We had had regular contact for six years and now we were going to have to switch to "Hi/Bye" friends. That leaves a space in your life that the first grade teacher doesn't fill. There's no one quite like a kindergarten/preschool teacher.

Then there are the friendships with other kids that your own kids out grow. When JD's friend was over the other day he was teasing JD about not listening to his mom and how he should just do what he's supposed to do for a change. I asked him, "Jake, if you and JD stop being friends, can we still be friends?!" Luckily for me, for the moment at least he's cool with that.

Looking ahead I just see a whole lot of separation over which I have no control. I dread the day the last kid finishes elementary school and I have to say good-by to that whole family of people. By then I will have spent something like 16 years in that building, with those people. Right now I actually look forward to conferences or evening activities as a time to catch up with friends.

Then, I suppose, there's going to be the boyfriend that I like who gets dumped or scarier yet, a fiance. I mean I can joke about continuing to be friends with JD's friend, but in reality that would be a little creepy. And really, my kid's relationships are going to be a "no fly zone" as far as my interfering is going to be concerned- especially if I'm just being selfish about it!

I know this is how things work and life is change and blah, blah, blah, but I just want permission to mourn a little when these losses happen. They don't make a card for, "Hey my kid is done with you and sorry about that but I guess we're not hangin' out anymore, so see ya!" You're just stuck feeling a little sad and at loose ends on your own.

I'm wondering though, if I can't keep the friends, and I have to move on to different teachers, can I at least keep Rose?

Hmmm, I guess I better look into how serious she is about getting paid on time.

Halloween

I know it's a little late for a Halloween post, but for pete's sake, I was awfully busy getting ready for Halloween before Halloween, so there was no time for blogging about it! I mean, I had hair dye to find, a costume to throw away after I tried to sew it and failed miserably, t-shirt drawers to dig through and stupid tie to unearth. That's a lot of effort people! There were also many trips to Goodwill and The Salvation Army and a few actual costume shops. Luckily I have Charlotte to mail me just what I need in my moment of desperation.


The other problem is that Halloween has gotten to be a long drawn out affair- kind of like Christmas. My kids had to get dressed up four- yes you read that right- FOUR different times! They went trick-or-treating THREE times! It seems like there can be as much as two solid weekends of Halloween festivities. It's not just that Halloween was on a Sunday this year and so all the Dutch people wanted to trick-or-treat on Saturday. I've felt this way for several years now. I disagree with the line of thought that goes, "Well it's so much more fun to wear your costume more than once, after all you put so much effort into it! Or if not effort, money!"

I might sound a bit like a Halloween Scrooge here, but that would be far from the truth. Since childhood, Halloween has actually been my favorite holiday. My reasons for choosing Halloween for this honor are actually not very flattering. Halloween is my favorite holiday because it is the one holiday where your parents do not say, "Remember the true meaning!" In fact, your parents may not want you to think about the true meaning at all, depending on what their understanding of the origins of Halloween are.

Halloween is really all about the candy, the costumes and the decorations. No need for deep reflection and inward searching. No opening yourself to the lessons of the season in order to let it change and mold you. If you seem to only be pretending, well you're in good company because it's all about pretending!

At Halloween it's appropriate to scare yourself silly and then laugh yourself silly because you were so scared. It's cathartic; I believe that's the word. We put a lot of effort into being serious and deep for most of the year, or at least we're asked to do that. It's good to have a holiday that doesn't make any sense and take time to enjoy the ridiculous.

At Halloween we get to be silly, foolish, crazy, awful or whoever we never get to be, and then get lots of compliments- and candy- for it. Nice.

Sweet Boy

I walked into the teen center at the YMCA to take my seven year old to the bathroom.

"I wonder if JD's actually doing his homework?" I thought aloud. Inwardly, I answered my own question with a pretty solid negative.

I looked in the window to the computer lab; JD sat at a screen filled by the game Adventure Quest. I sighed. Even though that was exactly what I expected, somehow I had continued to hope that he would be diligently plugging away at his math.

The seven year old went to the bathroom and then headed back outside to soccer practice. I sat down beside JD, who had hastily closed the Adventure Quest window and turned to look at me guiltily.

"Why aren't you doing your math research?" I asked.

"I couldn't remember the guy's name that I'm supposed to be looking up. It made me depressed, so I just decided to play Adventure Quest." His head hung low and his shoulders slumped. His long hair hid his eyes.

"Uh-huh. Do you have it out in your backpack in the car? The backpack I suggested you bring in with you 40 minutes ago?" I leaned back in my chair, arms folded across my chest.

His face lit up and he jumped up from his chair, "Oh yeah! I do!"

And off he went to the car to search for the scrap of paper on which he had written some Chinese mathematician's name. I spent the minutes waiting for him to come back trying to let go of my annoyance and frustration. I thought about how he's only 12. How far he's come since he was 8. How smart he is once you get him focused in on the project. Focused in. Right. He hadn't taken his Adderall this morning. Ergh! Getting an ADD kid to focus on remembering to take medication to help him to focus is, well obviously that's a lot to ask.

A sense of sadness crept in to take the place of annoyance. My son really wants to do amazing things. He wants to build, to create, to discover. He once said that he might have to be a teacher because, "All this cool chemistry stuff just isn't that fun if you don't have anyone to show." He's passionate about justice too. He's been known to take boys at his school to task for not treating his sister well.

On the other hand, it's true that there's only so much I can expect when he doesn't take the medicine. I've seen a lot of half built inventions lying in the grass, and seen too much finished homework that never made it to the turn in box. Or homework that went undone because a crucial something was left somewhere else. Still, I don't want him to have free pass to be a mess if he doesn't take the medication.

He is a beautiful, smart, funny, sensitive boy. And all of that can be overshadowed by the chaos that can be swirling around him.

Should I feel happy that there is a medication that he can take to help him slow down his thinking enough to let the magic out, or should I be sad that the magic that is in him inherently can't just be let out in its natural state? Should I be glad that this medicine lets him focus on a project long enough to create something amazing - and finished, or should I feel sad that there is no appreciation for the joy of the process, only the product?

On the surface, the "half finished" life that he leads sounds so typical of a preteen boy. Is it my child who a problem, or the world he lives in? Does figuring that out matter? If there is a "brokenness" about him, should he learn to let it become some kind of a gift, or should he fight to get rid of it?

It's so tempting to jump in and answer these questions with the arrogance of an outsider. It's easy to see only two camps. It's so easy to point an accusing finger in one direction or another. I think there's more to this. Sadly, I can only sense that there's more; I just can't name it.

I think that the only question that I can answer right now is, "Does figuring it out matter?" For now, I'd answer, "No." I think that for now, I'm going to sit in this tension and watch and wait and see. I just hope I have the focus to do it.

Schools

You might have seen the movie, or at least the promos for it, Waiting for Superman. It's a movie about school reform. It "stars" one of my favorite educators and one of my least favorite educators. The documentary exposes all the horrible things that are going on in public schools and how they are failing kids, leaving them "waiting for Superman" to get them out of there.

This movie drives me right up a wall (full disclosure, I couldn't bring myself to see the whole movie because the promo itself gave me a stomach ache), along with a Newsweek cover story from last spring that also was all about the horrible public schools. This article was also a big fan of KIP schools and Teach for America. Their star witness was that same least favorite educator that I mentioned a moment ago.

You might also have seen an ABC story, I don't remember the exact show that ran the segment, about SEED schools. It's a story about a boarding school for poor kids. They don't have to pay and they get all the great education that rich kids get at their boarding schools. At the SEED schools children aren't just taught a demanding curriculum, they are also taught how to study, how to behave, and what the rules of society are if you're going to make it.

What finally struck me was what all of these schools have in common. It's something that none of them have explicitly acknowledged. The SEED school does it the most obviously, and they are the ones who opened my eyes to it. Each of these schools change the community the child lives in. The SEED school takes them right out of it from Sunday night to Friday night. The KIP schools have longer school days and Saturday school; kids are in school more and in their communities less. The Harlem Children's Zone starts teaching kids' parents before the kid is even born. Those children are going to grow up in a fundamentally different community than they would have if their parents had not been touched by the HCZ.

I finally decided that, unwittingly, each of these school reformers have really just illustrated what my gut has told me all along is true: A school is part of a child's community and the rest of the community impacts that child's education too.

That's what was making me sick when I read Newsweek: How could it all be on me? I'm one person in a child's life. I get such a short time with them and I can't MAKE them do anything. I can engage, invite and entice, but ultimately each child and his or her parents have their own choice in whether or not they're going to succeed.

I'm not saying there are no bad teachers. Of course there are, and they don't have any business staying in education. Go ahead, find them and root them out. You might find when you get there though, that more than a few of them once were good teachers that got left behind in a community that was falling apart while people with the opportunity ran off to chase the newest and the best.

When we're looking at the big picture, we're going to have to do more than run down teachers to solve the problem. Somebody is going to have to get serious about building up communities. Actually there are a few Somebodies already, so I guess I should say that a lot of Somebodies are going to have to get busy building up new communities. It's going to take some sacrifice and discomfort, and frankly, we're not actually all that big on that here in America.

Public Health Alert!

I don't mean to scare you, but- no actually that's not true, I TOTALLY mean to scare you. There is an addiction that you need to be VERY concerned about. It's probably not on your radar yet because experts have not yet started to ramp up awareness. In fact, there is probably a conspiracy to keep this subject in the dark. If everyday people found out about this addiction and decided to get serious about it, that would be disaster for the culture of power.

It starts out so innocently. In fact, back when you were innocent, your natural instinct was to avoid this addiction; you didn't even have to try. When you were in the seventh grade, no one had to tell you that waiting until the last minute would lead to lower productivity, you just knew, and you felt good about it. Yes, I'm talking about the Addiction to Productivity.

Later in life, perhaps in college, but maybe even in high school (this addiction is hitting people at younger and younger ages), you have your first productive day. You feel that high that comes from crossing off items on a list. You get that rush as you cross off the last item, and you realize you have time to spare. Oh it feels so good. There is a bounce in your step, a lightness of being. Oh, if only you could always feel this way!

And then you realize- you can! There is nothing to stop you from being productive tomorrow! In fact, you could make tomorrow's list RIGHT NOW! Oh, how you long to get started being productive again. In fact, thinking about how productive you are going to be tomorrow is actually turning into a buzz killer for today's high, maybe you should just get started on tomorrow now.

Oh, it seems harmless enough at first. In fact, being productive feels good. It makes you look good, you're confident when you talk to people. But don't be fooled. The size of the list of crossed off items that you need to get the same high just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Soon you just want to be productive all the time, even on holidays, and that's when you realize you're in trouble.

You are no longer happy with a day in which all you got done was coffee with friends. You can't just sit and while away an afternoon with a good book. When you don't feed your productivity addiction, inanimate objects start to "speak" to you.

The Laundry calls out, "Fold me! Put me away!"

The Van complains, "I'm so tired of being full of all this junk! Why don't you clean me out so I can feel light and empty?"

Stacks of files nudge you as you walk by. They look at you with sad eyes begging to be filed in alphabetical/chronological order.

When you don't feed your productivity addiction your self worth starts to plummet. You wonder, "What's the use in living? I'm not getting anything done anyhow."

You start to become paranoid, thinking, "No one likes me or cares about me now that I'm not getting anything done."

It's a scary world friends and only you can stop the spread of this addiction. Stand up and fight for change now! You should get on facebook and start a group to stop productivity addiction. Gather people in your home to discuss and support one another. Pass out fliers at large public events. Create a ribbon campaign of car magnets and pins! Get going! Get busy helping people recover from productivity addiction today! You'll feel good about all you're doing to make a difference.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Did you ever read those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books when you were a kid? They're not great literature, and sometimes not even great stories, but it was still fun to read them. It was fun the first time through just because you got to be in charge of where the story went. When you finished, it was just as fun to go back and try out different choices and see how that affected the story.

Yesterday when I was out at the beach in Muskegon, I thought about those books. The pier (or breakwall, I don't actually know the correct term) in Muskegon has giant rocks all along it. When I say "giant," think "squared off hunks of rock that are the size of cars or, in some cases, vans." Because the rocks are squared off and have flat sides, it's pretty easy to walk along them. Pretty easy. The challenge comes in when there is a good sized gap between rocks. When that happens, you might have to jump. Sometimes the rocks are tipped with an edge facing up, making a terrible landing spot for the jump. When that happens, or if the gap is too large, you have to choose another path. Other dangers involving the water are also close at hand. Rocks that are constantly wet are slippery with mossy seaweed and are off limits.

I don't usually walk on the rocks. I stay up on the flat, dry, safe pier itself. It's my children, all three, ages 7-12, who walk on the rocks. That's actually the reason I stay up on the pier. I'd have to choose between watching where I was walking and watching where they were walking if I was on the rocks. Besides the fact that there is actual danger in what they are doing, I just simply enjoy watching them on the rocks.

The 12 year old is very confident; he's been doing this for years. He likes to pick the most challenging path he can find. He likes to go right out to the edge of the dry rocks, down underneath the rocks into "caves," and across gaps to landings that require he immediately spring to the next rock because they are no landing at all. He likes to have one foot on each of two rocks and jump back and forth between them, inching higher with each jump.

The youngest is much more cautious because this is the first year she's been allowed to follow along. She stands on one rock for a moment, sizing up the gap to the next rock.

"Do you think I can make it Mom?" she asks.

"What do you think?" I say. "If you don't feel confident, don't do it."

"I think I can!"

"Ok, go for it then." I watch as she pushes off and lands with bent legs, leaning too far over so that she has to catch herself with her hands. "Perfect!"

"Are you proud of me mom?" she asks.

"I'm proud of you for thinking for yourself and making your own decision." I say. (I mean, after all, who wants a kid who thinks she has to take crazy risks to make you proud of her?!)

The middle one, like always, has moved off on her own. She doesn't need me to watch her in order to feel the joy of what she's doing. She's testing her bravery, her strength, her judgment, and it feels good. She doesn't need an audience to make the experience complete. I watch, of course, anyhow. I so enjoy the satisfied smile on her face as each decision plays out, and she knows that she's chosen well.

As I walk along, enjoying the moment, I'm glad they have this place, this time. Too much of their lives is scripted, prescribed and safe. I hope that the joy I get from watching them motivates me to let a little rock wall walking seep into their everyday lives.

Perspective

My shower had been draining slowly for months and yesterday it just got on my last nerve. The last time this happened I called a plumber to come snake it out. He ended up not even charging me for it because he said that he only had to clean out from right under the drain cover and it took two seconds. So, this time, I unscrewed the drain cover and pulled out a big clog of gross and ran the water to see if that did the trick.

It was still running slowly. Shoot. I dug around in there with my finger and then the screw driver when my finger wouldn't reach. I poured in some baking soda and vinegar to try and fizz it out and finally added something called Drain Maid, which is some kind of organic-keep-your-drain-running-free stuff. Then I waited.

After a while I went to take a shower. The water was moving better than it had been, I noticed with satisfaction. About half way through my shower the water really started moving. "Wow!" I thought, "Yes! I did it! Man, look at my skills." I lathered up my legs with joy.

About two minutes later I heard a big commotion. "Ergh, now what?"

"Mom! Mom!" I heard the thunder of feet on the stairs.

"Can't I have just one peaceful shower?" I grumbled in my head.

"Turnofftheshower! Turunofftheshower!" The bathroom door slammed open and my four foot high herald burst in. "Mom! Turn off the shower!"

That's when I could hear the other kids yelling from downstairs, "It's raining in the house! Water is coming out of the ceiling! Mom! Turn off the shower!"

I grabbed a towel and rushed downstairs to the kitchen. (This might be a good time for a quick aside to thank Russ for "forcing" me to buy extra large bath towels a year ago. "Honey, you're the best. I will never doubt your need for newer, bigger, better.") There stood my older two children, and a neighbor girl. And water was indeed running out of the ceiling.

"My hand is wet!" the neighbor girl said.

"I think more than just my hand is wet," I said with a laugh. I find making jokes keeps me calm and from lashing out at innocent bystanders in a stressful situation. I probably should have remembered that later in the evening when I was pulling down chunks of ceiling and trying to catch the water so it wouldn't just drip in any old random place.

This morning our new best friend Jim came in and confirmed what we all suspected. In my drain cleaning efforts I had punched a hole in the drainpipe. Granted it was corroded and soft and all that, but still I did it. That sounds a whole lot different from "I did it!" doesn't it?

Ah, perspective.

I Might Be Magic

Seriously. I'm starting to think I might have magic powers. The thought has been growing for awhile, but today, wow! Wait, let me back up.

Russ, my husband, is type 1 diabetic. He's a lot of other things too, but they don't really enter into this story; I just think it's important that you know he's more than just his diabetes. Right. So, because he's diabetic, he has a lot paraphernalia, and it goes everywhere he goes. Some of it's easy to keep track of, like the insulin pump, after all it's attached. Some things are much harder to keep track of, like the blood sugar kit. If you've never seen one, it's about the size and shape of woman's wallet, or a kid's DS- whichever picture works for you. That means it's small enough to easily misplace, but it seems like it should be large enough to make it also easy to locate. So one would think.

Russ does not believe in the "man bag" per se, but he does take a backpack loaded with all the things he might need (wallet, keys, reading material, drugs, BLOOD SUGAR KIT) with him on many occasions. When he doesn't have the backpack, he has a briefcase. Now, the man is the Director of Operations for an entire region of the YMCA, he is not dumb, nor is he unorganized. In fact, he's much more organized than I am. However. He can search that backpack two or three times and not locate that blood sugar kit. When that happens, especially if the blood sugar is already dropping, muttering and frustration begin and so I offer to look for the kit.

As I pick up the backpack to search, he says, "I already looked in there! It's not..."

"Here?" I say as I pull out the blood sugar kit.

Do you know how many times this has happened? Me either; I've lost count. I can also find the blood sugar kit on a previously searched desk or counter. I have also found a camera that was "Absolutely NOT" in the back pack that had been "searched, like five times already!" See? magic powers.

Today though, whew! I was on fire.

Russ and I also have three children. Mostly they take after me, but in this way, they take after their father. They cannot find anything. The youngest beauty has been searching for her bathing suit for a week. No one has looked too hard for it though because she could just wear her old one. Yesterday when her right butt cheek was hanging out of the suit, however, it was time to throw it away and get serious about finding the new suit. I didn't really enter into the hunt because A) I was busy and B) I was annoyed that there had to be a hunt at all. The suit was not found before it was time to go to friends' for swimming, so shorts and a t-shirt were taken.

Fast forward to 10:00 pm tonight when we return home from the friends. As I was tucking the girls into their loft beds I said, "Tomorrow we have to get serious about finding that suit."

"I don't know where else to look!" Not-Bathing Beauty wailed.

"Well, we'll figure that out in the morning," I said, and then glancing- GLANCING, I TELL YOU- at the closet, whose top shelf I could see clearly from my loft vantage point, I pointed and said, "There it is. Right there."

Yes, that's right, I put two seconds effort into looking for the suit that has been lost for a week and, boom, there it is.

Magic Powers. What else could explain it?

Summer Camp

As anyone who knows me already knows, I was a camp counselor for three summers from 1989-1991. I loved that job, except when I thought I was going to die from over work, poor nutrition or bedbug bites. It was the kind of summer job that changes your life, no kiddin', no literary hyperbole. There's just no way to describe the camp counselor experience that hasn't already been tried.

I can still see the prints of people I met and things we experienced on who I am today. I credit that experience with my firm belief in social justice and green awareness. I also learned that I do NOT want to be in charge of other adults ever again. Leave me with the kids. I learned to persevere through physical and emotional exhaustion and how to feel great when I hadn't had a shower in too many days to count.

It's not just the lessons learned that are still with me, many of my relationships from those are still at the center of my life. My husband and I worked at that camp together. As did the best man at our wedding and half the brides maids. I got my sister to come work with me for one summer, and when I student taught in England, I went to find the English counselors I had met at camp. It was at camp that I learned how to be friends with other girls. That's a skill I tell ya.

It all sounds so romantic doesn't it? Ah, wouldn't you love your kid to have such a transition to adulthood. Yeah. It was also the craziest time of my life. I cannot believe the trouble that my friends and I got into- and survived! I did some of the most horrible decision making I have ever done, or hopefully will ever do. I'm not a huge fan of my kids getting details of that time in my life yet, so I'll leave it at that for now. A perfect, or perhaps even good, role model I was not.

The thing is, now my own kids are going off to camp and somehow I don't think camp counselors are making any better decisions than we did. I know what all we did, and can guess what the new crop is doing, and I'm choosing to send my kids anyway. I loved camp as a kid and I sure don't want my own kids to miss out. I also think that in a few more years my own children will be the camp counselors and will be just about as wise as those who came before them. And I hope they laugh, cry, win, lose, struggle and thrive just as much as we did.

Fear

"...I will fear no evil, for my God is with me..." (Psalm 23)

"Perfect love drives out fear." (1 John 4)

I think there has been a deep, even twisted, misunderstanding or use of that first verse throughout Christian history. I think deep in their hearts people understand the first bit to mean that God will help them conquer whatever it is they're afraid of. Not conquer the fear, conquer The Thing. Sometimes that Thing is an enemy of some sort and there ends up being all kinds of bloodshed, real and metaphorical. Sometimes The Thing we fear is loss of control that we never had anyway, and we end up destroying our world, or relationships, or our own real selves. No one stops being afraid of The Thing, they just believe they can conquer The Thing, and all the while they're fighting The Thing, they actually hold tightly to the fear and use it to fuel the fight.

Perfect love drives out fear, and The Thing that was feared can continue to be or not be. It no longer matters. If you, a person, are living in perfect love, you don't need to fight The Thing. You are safe. Perfect love drives out fear because it gives you life that continually renews, heals and lifts you up.

Family

I just spent the weekend with my mother's family. Some of my closest friends growing up were my cousins. Four of my mother's siblings still live in or near the town where I grew up, although many of my cousins have moved on, some even to other countries. I love my cousins and aunts and uncles quite fiercely, and I miss how easily and regularly we once got together. My cousin Deb's husband says that facebook was made for people like her, and I told her, "It was made for families like ours. That's why we call it 'cousinbook!'"

In so many ways I am not like my family. I vote differently, I attend a different church, my opinions and tastes are in sharp contrast with many of theirs. At the same time, and oddly enough, I feel so at home and able to be myself when I am with my extended family. I especially feel free to be the kind of parent I truly am. My kind of strict is their kind of strict, and my level of "don't worry about it" was introduced to them by my own mother years ago. They're used to it by now.

When I walked out into my aunt's backyard and saw two eight year olds trying to climb the tent poles I had to laugh- that is SO my son! And when I asked one of them, the one highest up the pole, if he also climbed trees he said, "I live in the country, of course I climb trees!" That is the kind of confident, "What's wrong with you?", answer any of my kids would have given. Later I saw one of the college age great-grandkids up in a tree and I had to grin.

It's not that there's never been friction or disagreement in my mom's family. They like to say there are as many opinions as their are Ramseyers, and family legend has one uncle telling one of the aunts, "You go on and pray about it 'til you come around to my way of thinking." A cousin said he'd be more likely to come to this event if I could promise him no one would start talking politics. I also don't think everyone in the family has that same sense of, "These are my people," that I have. But I guess I can't write their story, only mine.

My family makes me feel like the quirks in me make me both fit in and stand out. I guess that's really what everyone wants, isn't it? To be unique enough to be special, but not so weird that you have no home? I'm glad that I have family that gives me that space.

I Need a Wife

My sister is in town for the week and working from my house while her kids get some alone time with Grandma and Grandpa. She's actually sitting one desk over from me right now pounding away at someone's data. She gets up in the morning, gets straight to it and works most of the day. She always was disciplined like that, and I've finally learned not to be jealous.

The first morning she was here I brought her some coffee when I got mine, and later some toast and blueberries when I had some as well. At lunch I made macaroni and cheese, a favorite of hers, and she left her computer to come join us for it. At dinner time, risotto and spinach salad, she remarked, "It's amazing what I can get done when I don't have to take care of anything else! What I need is a wife!"

Exactly. That's what my job share partner and I say all the time. I could be so much more productive if I had a wife. I think I'd be less stressed as well. After all, if you have a wife, you don't have to think of everything yourself. Wives are so good at looking around and seeing what needs to be done and then just jumping in and taking care of it. When she's done, a wife doesn't need to tell you what she just did so you can be impressed with her for moving the Earth and realigning the stars.

If I had a wife I could focus more on showier tasks that really impress people because all that little boring detail stuff would be taken care of by her. I'm sure my blog posts would be higher quality because I could write them straight through without having to save the dinner from burning.

There are probably even more benefits to having a wife, but you know how it is with wives; it's hard to fully appreciate all they do.

Side by Side

I don't mean to sound wise. Although, at the rate I make mistakes, I should be a sage on the mountain by now. I do realize that I'm standing at the beginning of something with a bend coming so soon in my path that I can only see the littlest way down the road.

For a while I was afraid to enjoy the beauty of any moment because I knew that pain could come ripping through just a moment later and you would look back on that "Last Perfect Sunday" and think, "How could we sit there and be happy and laugh and wonder when a freight train of destruction was already rounding the bend and speeding toward us?"

Later I learned that being hit by a train hurts like hell whether you see it coming or not, and if you're always trying to peer down the tracks into the fog and around bends so that you'll be ready, it's like you're actually pinned under the train already and never going to be released.

Right. But what I was really thinking about was this moment that I'm in with my twelve year old, the one going into seventh grade this fall. Right now, for this summer we are in a beautiful place. Part of what makes it beautiful is that I have time to be side by side with him. We work together, mow the lawn, clean the house, cook, weed, etc. We also play together. While I watch this time together, I think, "This something our fast world has taken away from children, side by side time. We think that teens, or nearly teens, want to be away from us and so we don't just let them, we send them." Our busyness demands that they take care of themselves and find their own way. We shove them from being children to being free grownups in a matter of a few quick decisions.

What I see right now is a boy who likes to come and go from my side. Like a toddler I suppose, but with a much bigger range. On Friday he was off exploring creeks and rivers with his friends and making his own decisions about paths to take and stops to make. Sunday we were side by side as we examined art and watched the coy in the pond. I swear, I didn't have to beg him to go with me.

Those who are further down this teenage path than I am may be chuckling to themselves because they know, or think they know, what kind of trouble is around the bend for me, but I think I can still hope that if I keeping the invitation open to work and play side by side, I might find my long haired, wild son still wanting to do some traveling side by side. I think if I throw that hope away in favor of being realistic, I'll not only destroy this beautiful moment, guarantee that no more are coming.

Team Jacob

Last night I went to see Eclipse with my friends. I wore my Team Jacob pin and my friend said, "How can you be Team Jacob? Edward is her true love!" I didn't answer my friend because I couldn't think of something snappy fast enough. Later though, I thought, or I realized, I don't actually believe in true love in that way. I believe you can have a love that's true, but I don't think I buy the "one person/soul-mate" kind of true love.

I think I'm Team Jacob because I did fall in love with my best friend. I love our story. There are no fireworks and no magic looks, no fate and no aligned stars. Russ likes to tell people that before we got together he interviewed me. It's true, but he was interviewing me for a job that I eventually got as an RA at CMU. It was a very small staff, just three RAs and a hall director. Actually I didn't like Russ much that first year and I was much closer with our other teammate. Later though, we worked at the same summer camp, dated each other's friends and I got to know him a little bit better. After camp, and after ending those summer relationships, we just started hanging out more. We had dinner together, with other people, watched TV, played games, and did work. When Dave, our other teammate, left us we became even closer.

The way Russ tells the story, he knew that we were going to get married when one night, as I headed out with my friends I kissed him good-bye. I didn't think a darn thing of it; we were that close. Shoot, we'd been walking around holding hands for months, but I still just felt like we were just best friends. Later when Russ started to try and tell me about his deeper feelings for me, I didn't want to hear it. I was too afraid that I would lose my best friend. I told him that dating would just ruin everything between us and he said, "Fine, then we'll get married." Part of me thought he was crazy and part of me thought, "Of course we will, who else would I want to spend the rest of my life with?" Sure enough, two years later we were married.

It's a good story. And really, I like it just the way it is.

Creativity

Oddly it's going to be a Newsweek article on Creativity that is going to shove me out of my writing slump. "For the first time, research shows that American Creativity is declining." Well, duh. (In a world where creativity is declining, I feel like "duh," is an ok word.)

When I was in third grade I had this amazing teacher. She taught me the multiplication tables and long division and Shel Silverstein. Those are the only academic things that I can remember from her class. But that's not all I remember about her. She used to inflate this gigantic bubble made of plastic sheeting that our entire class could fit inside. While we were in their she would tell us stories, do little one woman puppet shows, sing songs with us, just be. I remember have ages and ages of time on my own to explore what interested me, to sit in the hallway with my friends and write a play that we later performed for the class. Boy was that a struggle, a beautiful struggle that has helped make me the person I am today. At the end of the day we used to listen to these weird children's songs by some artist named Tom T. Hall. They made us laugh and imagine scenes in our heads. These things and others are the reason I loved Miss Grant and always list her in my top three favorite teachers of all time.

I teach fifth grade now and I don't do anything even close to the way Miss Grant did with us. I don't have time. I have a strict curriculum to get through. I have tests to give and a guarantee to deliver on. I also have parenting to handle. Apparently, if kids are ill prepared for my class, it's still my fault and I may not "leave them behind." (As if I would intentionally leave them behind, but apparently someone found out how I'm supposed to make horses drink and isn't telling me.) That strict curriculum is long on right answers and speed, but short on using your imagination and discovery. In teaching reading, it doesn't really matter too much if you can visualize what you're reading in your head; it only matters if you can read so many words a minute. It doesn't matter if you can learn to put yourself in the characters' shoes, it only matters if you can choose the main idea out of a possible four choices given.

And that's just reading. There's still the cuts to arts and music in every grade, the lost recess time and the imaginative play that used to happen in the lower grades.

I don't think that over testing and unimaginative curricula are the only things to blame our lack of creativity on, there's our wanton consuming of media and entertainment as well. But if I start in on that I'll be blogging until the middle of next week.

When I was a kid my dad always had job lists for us. Sometimes they were permanent lists of jobs that constantly needed doing. Sometimes he would make a list for just that one Saturday. While I didn't love the chores, I didn't really object to the list method of doling them out. What I objected to, was the no list method. The method where my dad would say, "I need the house cleaned up today," so you would get started with what you thought that meant. Then, usually just as you thought you were about done, there would me more to the job than you realized. Argh!

While I'm sure there are things that I do, that my parents did, that I swore I never would, the not list method of chore assigning is not one of them. There are a lot of variations on the list method at my house because I'm easily bored, oh, and because kids grow and change. I've blogged about one of my game list methods before. Today I tried a new method. I was hoping for some of those other life lessons that you learn along the way.

"Alright," I said to Rachel and JD, "Here are your strips. JD, these are for you. You can put them in any order you want or draw them at random. I don't care. Rachel, these are for you and Abby to figure out who does what. Except one. One of those is for JD. You two go negotiate and decide who gets what."

They seemed excited as they ran off to the basement to discuss without my interference.

Yeah. That didn't last long.

"Mom!" JD came racing back upstairs.

"Mom! JD is ruining everything!" Rachel's screeched from the basement, accompanied by foot stomping.

"JD, are you ruining everything?"

"No, she just wants me to draw my job out at random, and I don't want to do that."

Rachel flopped into a kitchen chair, tears in her eyes. "That's what's fair Mom!"

"You want the whole thing to be a drawing?"

"Yes. That's the only fair way."

And that's when I realized that there's "fair" and "nobody's fault," and those are not necessarily the same thing. If they drew out the jobs, somebody could get stuck with all the big jobs and somebody else could get all the little jobs. All that would be accomplished would be that the lucky people would get to shrug their shoulders and say, "It's not my fault! It just worked out that way." It wouldn't make the injustice any easier to bear for the unlucky kid.

A person can get a bad draw in life and it's nobody's fault. But that in no way makes it fair. People can get a great draw in life and it's to nobody's credit, and that's not fair either, but most of the time we don't mind when it works out well.

The problem is though, that we act like life is fair. We say that it's not. We quote The Princess Bride and all, but we live like it is fair. We live like, and we treat people like, life is fair, that people get what they've earned. If people need help, it's because they're "front porch sitting, lazy, crack heads." If they have a college education and a great middle class job, it's because they worked hard and made good choices.

That's not exclusively true. To quote The Newsboys this time, "When you get what you don't deserve, it's a real good thing. When you don't get what you deserve, it's a real good thing." Sometimes life is random. To get to my "successful" life, (or at least I see it as successful) I've had a lot of help. The people who have poured good things into my life is longer than a blog post (even one of mine) and the number of stupid things that I've done that I didn't have to suffer the full consequences for is equally long.

Life is not fair. It requires living in grace and peace.

ADD

I think maybe it's not just kids. I actually think that there are plenty of parents and teachers who have ADD. Maybe even as an American culture we have ADD. Sort of, it's not our fault; how can I pay attention to Haiti when there's an earthquake in Chile just a few weeks later? And how can I care about Rod Blagojevich, when Manny Vasile is busy tickling his male aides? Seriously! There's just way to much info coming in. And I'm supposed to be well informed and thoughtful about all of it. The proof that that's not going to happen is that I consider "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," to be one of my primary news sources.

However, there is another side to our adult ADD that is our own fault and we can actually do something about it. This is the ADD that's caused by impatience. When we want something to work, we want it to work now. And I mean NOW. We are not fans of try, try again. Where I see this as particularly troubling both in myself and others is in disciplining kids. When we set up a new discipline plan with our kids, whether that be at home or some job with kids, we expect that the setting forth of the plan itself is going to solve the behavior problem. We get really ticked off when we have to actually follow through and enact the consequences set forth for the behavior we're trying to change. We cannot believe that the kid didn't just crumble at the mere "threat" of consequences! How dare Little Festus try and see what we're made of! I'm mean, trying and exploring and checking things out is such an insane thing for a kid to do!

Even if we don't get irritated the first time we have to enact the consequence, when we don't see results in a few days, we start casting about for a new plan. Clearly this one is flawed. Here's where I would like to applaud my friend Heidi. She read somewhere that it takes a kid 10 tries to accept a new food. Heidi is one of the most patient and determined people I know. So, she started putting carrots on her son's plate every day. Every day he had to try one bite. For ten days straight she did the same thing. And nothing happened. Until the 10th day. On the tenth day, he took two bites, and then at some point he finally at the whole carrot. That woman does not have ADD. She kept her eyes on the prize and believed in her plan. Now she's on to food number two, some other vegetable that her son needs to learn to eat.

I think with that story of encouragement, I might be able to follow through on grounding my son for falling behind on his school work. If it takes ten times to try a new food, it's going to take at least that many times to try a new work habit. When he gets grounded for the third time this year, (oh wait, that already happened. whatever) I'm not going to throw up my hands and say, "Clearly he's not learning! This plan isn't working! What the heck are we going to do with this kid! Disaster has struck!" Nor am I going to let my husband go hysterical. (That also may take ten times to learn.) No, we are going to put forth our work habit expectations and the consequences for not meeting those expectations seven more times and seriously pray that on the tenth time, he'll at least take a second bite.

It's Funny What Sticks With You

When I was in my mid 20s, a girlfriend and I found ourselves on diverging paths. I didn't take it very well. I wanted to stay as close as we had been for the past several years, and I guess I didn't handle it very well. There was an exchange of emotional letters that I remember vividly. I had my feelings hurt immensely and brooded over it for many months and then off and on over the years. I'm a skilled brooder. In the final letter that I received from her I heard her say that friendships change over time and that it wasn't nice of me at all to try and make her feel guilty for not being who I wanted her to be, that I should just be happy and enjoy whatever state the friendship was in.

That, and a similar friendship fiasco that happened to me in the eighth or ninth grade, shaped what kind of friend I am now. I have four close girlfriends who live near me. We've been friends for twelve years or so, some a little longer, some a little less. There was a time when one of those friends seemed to have stepped onto a diverging path. I cried, I worried, I struggled, but this time I kept most of that to myself. This time I just offered to be around if she still wanted/needed to be friends, and did my level best to back off. She dumped the boyfriend eventually and our paths were back from the brink of permanent divergence. Sometimes still though, she's torn between her many worlds, and I feel again like our paths are diverging. And again, I worry and struggle with what to do. Mostly, I don't do much of anything about it except wait and see.

I don't know really which way is better. That's the struggle. Perhaps not everyone struggles with things like this. Perhaps it's just me because I over think things, or so I've been told. (On the upside, if I didn't over think things, what would I blog about, and there would you all be?)

Here's the funny thing though. I recently was back in touch with the friend from my 20s, and near as I can tell, she doesn't remember those letters or any kind of painful ending at all. I was and am so profoundly influenced by something that she doesn't remember or remembers in a completely different way. Part of me feels like an idiot that I wondered or worried what she thought all those years. The other part of me though thinks, it's not just funny what sticks with you, it's funny what doesn't stick with you.

I wonder what things are remembered very differently by other people whose paths diverged from mine long ago. I wonder who's life I've left a mark on that I had know idea I was leaving. I wonder if I should be paying more attention in the present.

Principles

When you were a kid did your mom ever tell you, "We all have to do things we don't like, so quite whining and get started?" In your heart did you think, "That is not true! Grownups never have to do things they don't want to do because they're the boss." Turns out she was right. Sometimes it's not just that I have to do want I don't want to do, it's not even something I believe in.

Pat and I are frustrated with the behaviors in our class this year. When she went home with a pounding stress headache a few weeks ago, we decided to have a Saturday meeting and hammer out the details of a plan we'd been thinking about for awhile. As I was explaining the new "Eastos" class money system to my family at dinner, Russ said, "So you're going to pay them to do what they're supposed to do anyway?" Yes. Yes, I am. Sometimes principles are just too heavy to bear in real life.

Or maybe it's that principles are sometimes formed in a vacuum of inexperience and then crumble in real life. When my friend Jeff's first child was born, my third child had just turned one. He and the baby were at our house one afternoon when I was hunting all over the house for my child's sippy cup of milk. If you've ever found a long lost sippy cup of milk you'll know why I was making a serious effort to toss the house until the cup appeared. Jeff just watched and I could tell by the look on his face that he felt there was a simple solution to my dilemma: Don't let them walk around with the sippy cup!

"I know what you're thinking," I said, "And it's a great idea. I thought the same thing once. After finding many a gross cup from the first two kids, I thought, 'With kid number three I'm going to have a new rule!' Uh-uh. The rule lasted about a week after she started crawling. Keeping sippy cups in the kitchen was just too hard to enforce. You'll see." Jeff nodded his assent, but I knew he didn't believe me.

We talked about it again years later and he laughed because of course he'd found many disgusting exhibits of old food in his own house/car since our conversation.

Right now I'm looking ahead to what I think my rules and expectations will be for my teenagers. I think about cell phone use, computer use and texting, being out on their own with friends, boyfriends/girlfriends and being held accountable for their choices. I watch other people and see what they do and how it's working, I try to play out different options in my mind, I talk ideas over with Russ and the kids. What I don't think is that I can really get it all figured out now. You don't really know how you're going to handle stuff until you're living it.

My Year With My Sixth Grader, Part I

Remember when I was trying to think of one of those One Year of books that I could write? I finally found one. I told JD tonight that I wished I'd known how much time we were going to spend together this year because I would have been taking notes for a book. He said, "Don't worry, you're going to spend just as much time with me next year because I'll still have to get up at 6:00 in the morning."

Truthfully, having a sixth grader has been almost as life changing as the birth of that same child nearly 12 years ago. Only, you don't see this one coming. With a baby you have nine months to try and wrap your head around the idea that you're going to have sleepless nights, no privacy, and dinners free from adult conversation. By the time the baby is actually ready to be born, you're so uncomfortable that you're willing to endure what ever challenges parenting might bring just to get that thing out of you.

With a sixth grader, (or whatever grade it happens for your child. That's the other reason you don't see it coming; it happens at different ages for different kids.) you just "wake up" one day in October or November and look around at the landscape of your life and realize that it's completely unfamiliar. First of all there's a completely new routine that you did not set. The parenting starts earlier and ends later. JD and I leave for his bus stop at 6:30 in the morning. If I'm going to school we drive and I wait with him. If I'm not, we walk and I still wait with him, except now I'm freezing. JD is chatty at 6:30 in the morning; me, not so much. In the evening, instead of settling in for some adult time with Russ at 8:30, I'm proofreading research papers or book reports and checking the progress (only the progress, I assure you) of algebra and geometry assignments. Sometimes instead of kissing him goodnight in his bed, he's kissing me good nigh in my bed because I just can't stay up anymore.

It's not that it's all bad. It's just that it's all different. Although the fact that I'm dumber than I was a year ago is irritating. Over Christmas break JD had to do an entire research project on atomic structure. The research was going to be presented as a demonstration for the class; it also included a written component, but that written piece was NOT going to be read as part of the demonstration. I told JD that he needed some kind of written plan that helped him organized what he wanted to say so that he wouldn't forget anything and so that the flow would be logical. A huge fight ensued because, well I don't know why exactly, but I ended up having a not so mature fit and saying something like, "Fine, if I'm so dumb I guess there's nothing I can do to help you. You're on your own." I know, impressive, right?

Anyway, later we were stringing popcorn and cranberries with the girls. It was quiet and a little tense. The girls aren't crazy about all the fighting between JD and me. After awhile JD says, "Wow mom, you're really good at this! How did you get to be so good at stringing popcorn and cranberries." Right. I definitely didn't feel like my credentials as a public speaker were back in place, but I did at least feel like my son wanted me to know that he loves me, no matter how intelligent I may or may not be.

Look Out, I'm Taking a Diversity Class

Ever since I was a kid I've been frustrated by schools' efforts to get me to connect to my European roots. I understand that we're a nation of immigrants and most people came from somewhere else, but I didn't and neither did my parents, grandparents or great-grandparents. I feel no connection to any of the many countries that I could call my cultural heritage. I've finally given up on finding a dish from my cultural heritage to bring to the "Multicultural Potluck" dinner. Now I just say, "I'm from the midwest, and we eat casserole."

I figure, if I feel that way, there has got to be people of other racial and ethnic heritages that feel the same way. Maybe they just want to say, "I'm a modern busy mom, and we order KFC." I don't know, maybe it's just me.

Grateful

Really, I should be writing thank you cards, but for the moment I'm going to blog about thank you instead.

Saying, "Thank you," seems pretty straightforward. Someone shares their chocolate with you and you say, "Thanks!" They pass the salt and you say, "Thanks." They move out of your way in the row of the movie theater and you say, "Thanks." Most of the time you don't even think about it, or possibly even notice if you said it.

I actually did start to think about it a few years back. I came to a point where there were certain things that I didn't want to say, "Thank you," for at all. I didn't want to thank my husband for doing certain things like, cleaning up the kitchen because the thank you implied that he was doing me a favor and that was certainly not an attitude that I wanted to foster! I also didn't want to say thanks for things like putting away his own crap, er, I mean stuff, because it sort of sounds condescending, like you're training a child. While I might have felt this way in my heart, there was no need to let on.

Then a few weeks ago I found myself thanking Russ for something he had done in the kitchen. Honestly, the exact thing escapes me, but that's not the point, so pretend it was washing out all the plastic bags instead of piling them up by the sink. As I hollered, "Thanks for washing out the bags!" up the stairs, I was suddenly hit with a realization: I don't actually thank people for things for their benefit; it's for mine.

Saying, "Thank you" acknowledges the truth that I am not at all self-sufficient; that I actually am a dependent person. As much as I have always loved the song, "I am a rock; I am an island," it simply isn't true. I cannot get by in life without a community made up of family, friends and strangers. "Thank yous" both small and large open up the truth that I must accept grace as well as Grace.