family

Some early holiday thoughts

A couple of people have asked what specific holiday music I listen to, since I’ve made several references to my year-round passion for Christmas carols.  I have been accumulating CDs I love over the years and I recently made a playlist of my very favorites, which I happily share at the bottom of this post. The question put Christmas on my mind, though.  Christmas is my favorite holiday.  It always has been.  Much like in the rest of my life, I refuse to over-program the holiday season.  I do my cards and my shopping early.  We say no to a lot.  And, as a result, we can really sink into December, rather than sprint through it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have some important family rituals around Christmas (I had completely forgotten that I’d written about our traditions already, until I stumbled upon this post in the archives).  One thing I don’t do early is buy our Christmas tree: we don’t go until the middle of December.  We do go to the same farm every year, as a foursome on a Saturday morning, and the pictures from that outing are always some of my favorites.  Grace and Whit are each allowed to choose one ornament from the overheated greenhouse where you check out, and they look forward to and plan for this choice for months.

We always decorate our tree on a Sunday afternoon, sometimes with a few dear friends or family present (you know you’re special to us if you’ve joined us for this tradition!).  We crank up the carols, drink hot chocolate, and pull out the ornaments, spreading them over the coffee table, and Grace and Whit slowly trim the tree.  Almost every single ornament carries the freight of memory, and I adore the process of lovingly looking over each one.  This is a ritual that was a part of my childhood, and I’m happy to have recreated it with my family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each year I buy a personalized ornament for each child.  I’ve done photographs, silhouettes, and initials.  I’d love any ideas for this year’s special ornaments.  For the last several years I’ve found them on etsy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One weekend afternoon in December we always bake and decorate Christmas cookies.  For the last several years we’ve danced along to carols as they baked: last year it was to The Lower Lights holiday CD.  It’s extraordinary to me to witness how easy it is to make a tradition and how important they are to my children.  We just randomly started dancing to carols one Saturday afternoon a few years ago, and now it is so vital a part of our family’s year that Grace talks about the “Christmas cookie dance party” all year long.  Attitude is all it takes to imbue the smallest activities with meaning.

Last year we were with my sister in Jerusalem for Christmas, which was a once-in-lifetime experience that none of us will ever forget.  This year, the children have lobbied hard to wake up at home on Christmas morning and I think we’ll make that a priority for a while to come.  As is our standard custom, we’ll celebrate the Solstice on December 21st, we’ll go to our church’s Christmas Eve family service (we missed it two years ago because we were in the ER with Whit), and we’ll mark the evening of the 24th with fantastic wine and carols around the dinner table at my parents’ house with our oldest and dearest friends.

There is so much richness ahead.  I can barely wait. I’m grateful that my bias towards under-committing continues into the holidays, that there are many nights where we sit and look at the lights on the tree, that there is still time to sign along to carols and talk about what different ornaments represent and bring baked goods to friends and write love letters to our grandparents.

And with that, here’s the playlist I’ve got on repeat these days:

Joy to the World – Amy Grant
Angels We Have Heard on High – The Lower Lights
Angels from the Realms of Glory – Annie Lennox
O Come, O Come Emmanuel – Sugarland
Universal Child – Annie Lennox
O Holy Night – Martina McBride
Silent Night – Stevie Nicks
Love Came Down at Christmas – Sean Colvin
The First Noel – David Archuleta
Oh Come All Ye Faithful – Amy Grant
In the Bleak Midwinter – Sarah McLachlan
Auld Lang Syne – Barenaked Ladies
Little Drummer Boy – The Merry Christmas Players
The First Noel – Annie Lennox
Do They Know It’s Christmas – The Tributes
Believe – Josh Groban
The Holly and the Ivy – Annie Lennox
River – Sarah McLachlan
O Little Town of Bethlehem – Annie Lennox
O Come All Ye Faithful – Josh Groban & the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

How do you mark this holiday season (whatever your specific celebration)?  Are there any particular traditions that are special to you?  And do you have any ideas for this year’s personalized ornaments?

Harry Potter

I was perhaps irrationally thrilled when Whit chose to be Harry Potter this year for Halloween.  Grace was a member of the US Olympic soccer team (you can see her gold medal), a choice that I loved also.

But my Harry Potter obsessed self was delighted when Whit decided to be Harry this year, his 2nd grade year, just as Grace was Hermione in 2010 when she was in 2nd grade.  I am thrilled that over the years we have had full Hogwarts representation in our house. Whit’s costume, in case you are confused, is Harry in his Quidditch robes.  This is an essential distinction for my son!

I’ve loved Harry Potter for a long time.  I read the first four books at the end of the summer of 2000, and distinctly remember walking to a bookstore in Boston the morning after our wedding to buy #4 in hardback to bring on the plane to Bali.  I already had #2 and #3 packed.  Matt joked that I was on my honeymoon with Harry, so obsessed was I.  So I read the series first alone, as an adult.  Then I read them again with Grace (we are on #6 right now; she could read them by herself these days but prefers that I read to her, so I do).  And now I am reading them for the third time with Whit (we are on #3).  I am pleased to say – and not surprised – that new facets of wisdom, insight, and humor reveal themselves with each additional read.  I think the first 2 Harry Potter books are the only books I have ever read three separate times.

I am smitten by almost everything about JK Rowling’s magical world.  I think Harry is a brave, honest, human character with tremendous inspirational power.  I think Hermione is a heroine for the ages.  I adore the way JK Rowling asserts that school can be refuge and home, a place we are known and loved, a place where we learn about our own power, interests, and passions.

I think of Hogwarts often.  I’ve written about how my blog is my own pensieve.  Albus Dumbledore is my absolute favorite character in all of fiction (and that, my friends, is saying something).  One of my life’s central themes, that of light and dark, is the animating trope of the whole series.  JK Rowling has much to say about the inevitability of light and dark in every life, about their intertwined nature, and about how one casts the other into relief.

Some of my favorite – of a long, long list – lines from Harry Potter are these:

Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

Of course this is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?

It is our choices, Harry, that show us who we truly are, far more than our abilities.

We’ve all got both light and dark inside us.  What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.

Photo Wednesday 20: Halloween through the years

2005: chicken and egg

2006: firefighter and dalmation

2007: Tinkerbell and Peter Pan

2008: Wonder Woman and Superman

2009: witch and clone trooper

2010: Hermione Granger and Maverick from Top Gun

2011: vampire and Anakin Skywalker

Hurricane Sandy

Around 6:00 on Sunday night the call came that school was cancelled on Monday.  So we slept in (“we” is mostly Grace, who now sleeps later than the rest of us by a wide margin), enjoyed some lazy coffee, and then looked around at each other.  A whole day.  Gulp.  I decided to take Grace and Whit out for a walk because it wasn’t really raining that hard yet and, as we know, I am a stubborn devotee of the power of Fresh Air.  Off we went, in our matching raincoats, down the street.  We walked randomly around and admired the leaves, noting that they would probably all come down.

And where did we end up?  Our favorite local book store.  We browsed and browsed and I bought Lee Woodruff’s Those We Love Most and emailed myself a few Christmas present ideas for Grace and Whit.  Then we got hot chocolate at Dunkin Donuts and headed home.

Whit and I finished Harry Potter 2 a couple of weeks ago, and is our tradition, that meant he could watch the movie.  It was a perfect day for it.  Matt put the movie on as I put in a load of laundry, and when I came upstairs this is what I found.  I realize I am preempting the Halloween reveal post I had planned, but this just slayed me with adorableness so it is worth it.  Whit had put on his costume, including the glasses, and was clutching his Nimbus 2000.  When I asked why he was wearing his Quidditch robes he looked at me placidly and shrugged.  Duh, Mum.  Have I mentioned that I adore Harry Potter?

After a late lunch the wind started howling for real.  I felt agitation rising in my chest.  I was short and snippy with the kids and Matt, anxious.  It was just a matter of time before the power went out.  I hate the power being out.  I was sitting in bed with my book when … boom.  Lights out.  Darkness fell, and silence too.  The alarm beeped a few times, and then the children called out, simultaneously, their voices striated with panic, “Mummy!  Mummy!?”  They came running into my room.  For the next four hours the three of us were not more than three feet apart from each other.  When they are nervous or uncertain, they are drawn to me like magnets, and this fact annoys and pleases me in equal measure.  For a while they stood at the window watching the street.  A few big branches had come down on either side of us, and the rain lashed the windows.

I urged Grace and Whit to take advantage of the little daylight we had left.  They huddled together in the bay window my bedroom, right by the chair where I sat (for scale, see the toile arm of the chair I was in in the picture above) and worked on Perler beads, Grace’s current obsession.  The sight of their heads bent towards each other as they worked on task together managed to worm itself into my anxiety and crankiness and warmed my heart.  As I read in the faint daylight by the window, I realized I wasn’t as anxious anymore.  I’d been afraid the power would go out.  And it had.  Once more, with feeling: anticipation is worse than reality.  Over and over again, I seem to need to learn this lesson.  Just last year, Hurricane Irene tried to teach me.  And yet I never quite get it.

Everybody was crawling the walls, so we decided to go out for dinner.  We drove three blocks to a restaurant we love, passing houses with every window ablaze with light.  It felt like we were one of about four houses without power.  My bitterness rose.  Still, I tried to shake it off and our dinner was random and hilarious, like most meals with Whit at the table.  You can see how deserted the streets were as we walked back to our car.  Grace and I actually turned around and walked the short distance home, holding hands all the way.  It was warm enough that she was wearing flip-flops.

We came home to a dark house and brushed our teeth with headlamps on.  Whit unrolled his sleeping bag on Grace’s floor because they wanted to be near each other.  And Matt and I got into bed with our books and lamps.  The wind howled and it was dark and I felt sorry for myself that we didn’t have power.  But I also felt a powerfully how fortunate we were, and a deep sense of safety spread through me.  After what I feared had happened, I was no longer anxious.  With that on my mind, I went to sleep.

Both sad and liberating

As usual, I was both fascinated and touched by your questions on my Sixth Blogging Anniversary post.  I wrote about what I am reading, and which blogs I most devotedly follow.  Now, a different question:

Parenting “emerging adults” is an exercise in letting go and it’s both sad and liberating. If you ever want to write about “healthy consequences” or “natural consequences,” that would be interesting to me. What I mean is letting kids learn from negative experiences rather than constantly rescuing them. This discernment has been hard for me because it’s a balancing act–trying to figure out when they need scooped up and loved versus when you should let them squirm in their own doings and let them figure their way out themselves.

I have thought about this a lot.  I believe absolutely in letting kids learn from negative experiences, and in resisting the urge to rescue them every time they trip. In fact I would call this one of the central challenges of parenting.  I return, again, to Erdrich’s red string that ties our hearts: we have to give children enough rope that they can learn to fall and get up, while trusting that they are still close, that they know the bond we share doesn’t fray when it’s stretched.

As with all things, I only have my instinct to guide me here.  And a whole lot of love.  I’ve been mulling the question almost non-stop since I became a parent 10 years ago.  Several years ago, I wrote this:

It (developing resilience, letting children fail) is about letting my children be, even when there is conflict between them. It is about letting them lose at games and sports. It is about not shielding them from the world’s ugly and hard edges, not coddling them when things are going to hurt. It is about sticking with rules even when they cause disappointment or, more likely, screaming tantrums. It is, fundamentally, about teaching children that the world – and my world – does not revolve around them. This is a hard lesson to impart, full of discomfort and sadness. But it is also probably the most important thing I can teach Grace and Whit.

Obviously parenting, and the need to let go, is on my mind often.  More recently, I wrote this:

They don’t belong to me. On that I am absolutely clear: the crystalline, sharp clarity of sunshine on icicles. No way. I brought them into this world and that is all.  I love my children too much to handicap them with over-protection. I love them so much that I continue to challenge myself to let them go a little bit, knowing that that letting go lets them build muscles, physical and emotional, that will help them stand steadily in life’s waves. To let them go I have to trust them. And myself. And I do.

I read these two passages now and I nod, because I still agree with every word.  It’s actually reassuring to me, a reminder that our parenting philosophies are formed early, and remain sturdy, even as they adapt to the various seasons we move through.  There’s a particular poignancy to the idea of letting go right now, though: it feels keener, this need to release my grip, and closer, the day when they will leave me for good.  This is true particularly of Grace, who grows so fast, in every sense of the word, daily.

I don’t know how to actually answer my reader’s thoughtful, thought-provoking question.  I wish I did!  All I know how to do is vigorously agree that this is both a challenge and essential.  I do believe that this effort – watching our children fail or err while simultaneously making sure they know they are profoundly loved and supported to the best of our abilities – is central to parenthood.  I am still very much figuring out how to do that.  I know that my efforts are helped by my fierce belief in both a benevolent universe and the sometimes-surprising strength of my own children.  \

I would love any of your thoughts on this: how do we toe the line between support and space, between prodding our children to become independent while also filling them with security and the knowledge that they are deeply, unequivocally loved?