Forest Fires

When I was in college I knew a guy who was a forestry major and firefighter in the rugged mountain-scape around Ellensburg, Washington.  He told me awesome stories about firefighting, using what we know about slope, direction of a breeze, and digging trenches to guide a roaring fire towards extinguishing itself out.  But most interesting, I think, were his accounts of curing tree diseases that struck me most deeply.  Sometimes an entire area was so infected with illness that to seize the spread of the disease to more trees in neighboring areas, they would strategically create a controlled forest fire to purify the ecosystem.  Not only did this help the health of the forest, but the fire also created nutrient-rich ash for new life to thrive, and some trees even have fire-triggered pinecones that release seed only during blazing infernos.  To save the forest, they burned the trees.

I think sometimes we encounter forest fires like this.  I've had situations where relationships were razed to the ground, and it was excruciatingly painful, because of course burning hurts and smoke is blinding and choking.  But when the air is clear again, and the wounds have scabbed over, something wonderful happens.  Where it was once clogged with illness or unhealth is now an open and vast field, allowing room for something better to grow again, something new.

It's interesting how these forest fires take shape in our lives.  A misunderstanding with a dear friend can lead to a deeper friendship.  An argument with a spouse can bring about new understanding and clarity.   I've had bad mom moments that have left me so greif-stricken and bereft with guilt that my only choice was to change, and (hopefully) become someone more like the mom I wanted to be.  A beloved person in my life had an extramarital affair, and the relationship with her husband was completely and understandably torched.  But their commitment to God and each other allowed them to plant seeds of new growth in their marriage through lots of hard work on themselves and their relationship, and these many years later they are perfectly aligned together and are showered with blessings.  The fire that took my family away from me remains a vacant lot, yet I can't linger there.  Sometimes the vacant lot needs to be vacant because that's the healthier option, the better option.   It's sitting fallow.  So I water the field where my boys and husband are, where my friends are, and grow among their boughs.

My dear Austrian friend, Judith, has a life I admire and sometimes envy, as she travels around the world living very simply in a small villa in Spain, or a city in Sweden, or a thatch hut on the beach in Columbia.  Keeping track of her has been a joyous challenge of the 15 years of our friendship, and her email was currently the only thread I had connecting us.  With our email account stolen last week, blocking our access to our contact list, I bemoaned losing her completely.   How was I to find her now as she galavanted around the world?

Driven to find her contact info I did what any red-blooded American would do, and googled her, discovering only a paper from Graz University she had published on psychology while in grad school, nothing else.  When Aaron suggested I revisit our old email address I argued that it was dead, and wouldn't be able to access.  But I remembered our old password and after all this time, was able to log in and find her address!

That was a success, but more, I discovered that people had still be sending us emails to that address unbeknownst to us.  One email was from a Korean student I had taught ages ago as a recent immigrant student in 7th grade.  After she moved into high school, I privately tutored her in language arts, and I continue to have a deep fondness for her all these years later.  And there in this dead email account I found from her a note, sent just six weeks ago.

"Dear Mrs. V.  
How are you?  I'm suffering from the famous "what will I do with my life after college?" syndrome.  Can we get together and talk?"

I couldn't get over the luck of finding this, and replied right away.  But it doesn't end there.

About three weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend at church that wounded and confused me severely.  Honestly, it broke my heart.  We had gone to Africa in the same group where we bunked together in a cinder-block shack suffering as sisters would the braying donkeys outside our window and the Muslim call to prayers throughout the sweltering nights.  I respected her and looked up to her, but that conversation left me feeling gutted.  I felt the best thing to do was prune the friendship and move on.

Yet there in this dead email account's in box was a note from her.  

"I feel I owe you an apology after our exchange tonight.  I hope if I have offended you, that you can forgive me for my insensitivity toward you."  

So as much as I've complained and moaned about the inconvenience of our email being stolen, I now see it as a blessing.  I never dreamed of visiting that old email account until I had lost Jude's address.  And after the fire I shuffled through the ash to discover wonderful, green, and thriving signs of life.

Eat'cho heart out, Spielberg!

Fade In:
The room is lit with three of four bulbs in the overhead ceiling lamp in the boys' room.  The children are snuggled up under Aaron's chin and he reads from a library book characterizing voices.

Aaron:  "Then as Captain Amazing flew from the garbage can, the slimy creatures within called after him.  Come back, don't go.  Come back."

Andres:  No, Dad.  No.  Um, can you read that part again, but this time, say it like they really want him to come back?  Because the way you read it, I don't believe they really want the captain to come back.  Say it like Gollum would say it.  Scratchy.  Whispery.  A little bit scary.  Okay?  Go.

2012 in a Flash

Phew!  2012 went by in a blur!  Turn up your volume, and see it through our eyes.  (For best images, click the gadget icon and increase quality to 720p).

Active Listening

Sometimes, and this will always surprise when it happens, the children parrot my voice, my language, my gestures.  I worry about what I model.   But once in a while, it's adorable, and this dialogue not only made me laugh but impressed me, too. Way to go on those healthy "I feel" statements, Andres!

Me:  Son, will you please brush your teeth and comb your hair before we go [to school].

Andres:  Um, let's just take off combing hair.

Me:  Why?

Andres:  When you tell me I need to comb my hair, it makes me feel like you don't like my hair the way it is.  And it hurts my feelings.

Season of Wonder

Raph getting ready to play outside in the cold, all bundled up and eager to earn his hot cocoa afterwards.

They did a good job of this little craft. Their little fingeres smelled so fragrant, citrus and herbal.  

We picked Aaron up at work early that Thursday so we could make the show at the Tacoma Dome at 7:00, and beat the hellish traffic Tacoma is so well known for.  Andres had no idea what we taking him to, but we told him he would love it.  Here we stopped in a train station converted into a novelty mall for some Thai food on the fly before the show.  

At the Dragon Show!   Andres finally figured it out when were walking into the dome and saw some posters.  He was excited, but nothing could prepare any of us for how awesome it was going to be.  

Dragons flew over our heads!

This was a great gift from grandparents this year.  We all loved it.

I'm so glad Aaron got shots of the boys doing a great job decorating the tree.  Someday I'll have the most perfectly decorated Christmas tree and there won't be any one to pluck the ornaments from the hooks and pitch them to the floor where they shatter into a million shards.  And I doubt that tree will be as wonderful as this one, with five bulbs clustered so lovingly onto one branch, and I'll mis these little hands making the season so merry and bright.

Because wasn't Jesus born to deliver us from the Dark Side?

The boys LOVED this gingerbread playdough recipe, and they played for hours with it.  Andres made elaborate gingerbread men, and Raph made babies and covered them with blankets, and said "nigh-nigh, baby."  It was so fun, and this recipe was super good.  The aroma was amazingly delicious,  better than real freshly baked gingerbread men, and the texture was out of this world.  

Andres' gingerbread playdough gingerbread man.  He's pretty good!

Gingerbread decorating with Tia Kissy!  We had dinner of gyoza and rice, then set about to making our little edible arts.

Tia Kissy was a gingerbread making machine!  We loved her artistic skills here, and laughed at how each one had it's own expression, as if he didn't know what was going on.   The bored one.  The confused one.   The sneaky one.  The depressed one.  The too-much-tv one.  Each little cookie had his own story.  She did a fabulous job making these little guys look classic and yet individual!

Aaron was a great sugar guy, after Cris and Andres piped, Aaron was working magic with the sprinkles

Raph liked watching and he got to eat some of the first samples hot off Tia's assembly belt.  

I was so proud of Andres for working his own piping this year!  He was adamant that he could manage it himself, and to my surprise, he did a great job piping on the orange scented buttercream.  His first attempt fell short of his artistic vision, and he had a mild setback that he had to overcome as he adjusted to this new "medium," but he found his stride and hammered out some really cute gingerbread men.  

When I was little, December was marked by frosty earth, naked trees, sky the color of milk.  School was preparing  us for Christmas concerts (when Christmas was still allowed in school), and there was a buzz of anticipation in the air of the upcoming holidays.  Before my parents slit, my family didn't go to church, so we indulged in secular foci, and mostly having very little if anything to do with Christ or the Mass of his birth:  Santa and elves, reindeer, cookies, trees, tinsel, stockings, more cookies, visiting grandparents, presents, lights, ornaments, and did I mention cookies?  The first time I heard the word Advent I was married to Aaron.  So my Christmas memories from childhood are rather saccharin-loaded empty calories.

I still get excited as soon as our Thanksgiving turkey leftovers are sealed in saran wrap and tucked into the fridge, waiting to become enchiladas or soup or sandwiches, because for some reason that's the tolling bell of Christmas season.  There's so much to do, and so little time.  I enjoy it.  I do.  I always wish I had more to give more.  So I do what I can, as ever, trying to be more creative with homemade gifts.  Including cookies.

These were so cute and fun making as a family!   Our favorite one was the red-eyed guy that wasn't too merry,  but the golf-pants dude isn't smiling either, so I adore him as well.  

I loved how we created little caricatures of each other, Cris with her long black wavy hair, me in a brown shirt, and Andres with a red-lipped smile and a batman shirt.   

Raph will help more next year with the cookies, this year he was the cheer/taste squad.  We have Aaron in glasses  playing his guitar, and Raph is in his striped shirt with curly hair.  

As a mom, and a person of faith, I've been trying to wrap my head around what I wanted Christmas to be like for my family, for my children.  I think Aaron and I have done a fine job of breaking traditions and creating our own, both exhausted and wary of the "this is always how it's been done" practices that we were raised with.  So since Andres' birth we've never had many traditions carried over one year to the next, still wondering what should be carried on, and what definitely needs to be changed.  Since we attended Columbia, we've been more intentional in Advent, and that is one thing that has been number one on our "keep" list each year, although it looks different each year as the boys grow, traditions are slippery at this stage when you're creating them as you go along.  The decorations, however, shrunk down significantly this year.  We had a tree, the Nativity from Granny's home ceramic business in the 60s, a fresh evergreen wreath on our door, and on Christmas Eve,  after our friends and their children left after dinner and cheer, we got out the stockings and left them under the tree.  Nothing else.  Partially because we don't have room in this smallish dwelling.  Mostly because my attention was split, and I was distracted from all the frills of the holiday as I worked hard to wrap up the first draft of my script to send it in to my teacher by Jan. 31.  I wrote 141 pages in about 5 weeks, which was a brutal pace, but I made that deadline by the skin of my teeth.

This December was a departure for us, even when compared to the previous fifteen years of departures in Christmas traditions.  We still lit the tree up, listened to Crosby and Sinatra, watched us some Merry Christmas Charlie Brown, had the elf on the shelf get into all kinds of mischief,  went driving around to look at Christmas lights, decorated sugar cookies and gingerbread men, played games and laughed with friends, feasted on roast beast, and still prayed around our Advent candles.

But for the first time, I'm beginning to evaluate what Christmas really means to me personally, and what I hope to bestow on my children.  I don't want it to be hustle and bustle and materialist commercialism,  although I'm not judging, after all it's exactly how I was raised.  But it doesn't work for me now.  I felt it start to overwhelm me one day early in December when I had a bazillion things to do on my list when I called a friend about some urgent church business and she seemed so calm and collected.  "How you holding up?"  I had asked probingly, wondering what her secret was.  "We just don't make a big deal about Christmas." The response both shocked me and challenged me.  I was asking myself for days afterwards how much more we as a family could omit to keep Christmas as pure and pointed as possible.

One thing that I was championing this season was a reduction in toys.  My children play with anything.  Dryer sheets tied onto pencils are superheroes.   Acorns and bottle caps unearthed in the bark chips at the park are boats, or get away cars for the bad guys.  Aaron and I scaled way back on the toys this year, and, after months of waiting and watching for Dreamworks How to Train Your Dragon live show to arrive in Tacoma, we sent an email requesting grandparents pitch in as a gift to the boys.  That's one of our family's favorite movies, and we love it dearly.  I even tear up every time at the end.  So the dragon show seen live with super large animatronic, real fire breathing dragons made for a special memory as a family together, and allowed us to do something that we wouldn't normally be able to do.

This year (and granted it may change next year) I wanted my family to feel Christmas is magical, a season pregnant with great anticipation, and joy, a time of wonder and reflection, family, magnanimity, music, humility, humanity and community.  And small.  Very small and simple.  Tiny Tim small.  Or lonely shepherds small.  Or sleeping newborn baby small.  Not insignificant by size or volume, but precious and treasured because something so massively valuable is incomprehensibly tiny and fleeting.

Gratis

November closed sweetly, softly.

Raph and I were able to enjoy a day at the park, the sun beaming from a crisp blue canvas, and a brisk wind swirled the leaves around us.  It was a beautiful day, a day that reminded me of my own childhood growing up, when autumn meant leaves, and sunshine, and cool air.  It was a porthole into the uneasy room of nostalgia, the thing I treat like a beast and hold at bay with a whip and chair.  But I focused on my little boy in his red cape and his wild curls billowing in the wind, his warm spirit and our special time together, just he and I.

I love watching him discover, explore, be himself, a marvelous little creature that seems as though birthed from the forest or sprouted from the earth like an uncurling fern, like a wee gnome or, more appropriately, a hobbit.

He found a stick that fit just perfectly in his little hands and clanged it merrily against the mossy rocks, the trees, the crabapples that littered the ground.  I thought it added to his magical appearance, like a wand or staff, as he scampered about over the hills and through the pines of the park.   It was a day I simply went slow and relished.  And found myself feeling so grateful for him in my life, adding such peace and hope and healing.  And for Andres, my wonderkid, my sweet, artistic, storyteller.  This month we snuggled up after school and before quiet time to read Harry Potter, nestled into a cozy comforter and blueberry tea with honey and lemon, sipping around Hermione and Ron, quidditch matches, and potions class.  I'm grateful beyond words for my little men.  They're healthy, bright, and lovely souls.  

We were able to bring the season inside with painted coffee filter leaves, which Raph and Andres both loved, and we hung them in our window against a wet and cold day outside.  

I was astounded at how good they both were with the paint and the effort.  These guys are really good artists, and Andres took it upon himself to add venation to his leaves, and folding them, cut intricate patters from them as we do with snowflakes.  It's times like these where they create their own masterpieces and I'm amazed at these little men growing up without me able to keep up sometimes.  How can it be that I have a 6 and 2 year old?  It's a precious life, and one that I celebrate, even when it's hard and lonely work, this parenting thing, I celebrate it and am indescribably thankful for them and my husband.  

Because with this autumn as the leaves change and flutter to the rain-soaked ground, our life is undergoing a similar season change.  Aaron finally submitted his application to UW and now we wait, to see where God sends us next.  Who knows what will bloom in the spring?

So it closed, as all Novembers do, with Thanksgiving.  For the past five years we've been sharing this feast with our dear friends, as our four boys played upstairs or in the basement, true as cousins.  This year we missed another family and their little boy who are usually a beloved part of the tangle, but it remained a wonderful night with a most delicious vegetarian fare, laughter, and what for me feels like family.

And I look at it and marvel at the abundance of our life.  This is a challenging time, and hard as it may be, as lonely and sad as it sometimes is, I am moved to take stock of the overwhelming gifts in my life, in the life of my family, and friendship, especially now more than ever.  

We may not have money, and we may not own property, or have impressive jobs, or all the answers when it comes to parenting, but this I know:  these gifts, these blessings, have been given to us, to my family, and although I don't feel deserving, I raise them up and dance among them.   They blow around me, and lift me up.

Trifecta Monday

I'm not complaining.  Honestly I'm not.  Bare with me, because I'll come around.  

Here's the thing.  Initially I was going to do this really cool daily project with the boys this November to take time out of the day and pray around one specific thing we are each grateful for, you know, building up for Thanksgiving, and just to get in the practice of being grateful on a daily basis, appreciating all the blessings we have and take for granted.  I even had a really cool art activity to tie it into, a visual of being rich in blessings, something they could grasp and understand at their developmental levels.  It was going to be a real Gold Medal Mom Moment, a thing we could grow closer together in doing together, and learning about being thankful in a cute, colorful way that could be displayed and remembered.    

But life has a way of derailing us sometimes.  We get sick, our kids get sick, our bank account is empty and so is the fridge and the gas tank and the cough syrup, and suddenly that really cool art project gets lost in the shuffle of just basic survival.   Do we have meds for the boys to sleep?   How creative can I be with dinner tonight? (Popcorn is a filling meal, it turns out.)  When will we be able to go to the doctor, fill a prescription, and not be financially set back for a month because of it?  I am really the best primary teacher for my child since I snap at him for things most 6 year old boys do, like squirming in the chair and horsing around rather than focusing and getting his work done?  Does my youngest child have special needs?  If so, what do I need to do for him?  If not, do I have special needs?  If so, how many can be remedied by crying in a hot shower after lunch?  

Remember, I promised I wasn't complaining.  I want to remember this, to jot this all down in an honest way because things won't remain this way, and I don't want to forget.  Our life will change and this season will pass and I want to tell my future self and children that there were some freaking hard days in there.  

Because today was that day.  You know, the one where everything is harder, everything hurts a little more, things are a little darker than you know they really are.  Yes.  That day.  

There's stress with Aaron's application to UW, and the deadline is in a month.  Today was Grocery Shopping Day that didn't transpire because my meds were shockingly pricy, so no groceries this week.  We are ALL sick.  I had the flu last night and Aaron woke up with a cold this morning , the boys are both coughing all over the place like fiends.  It's germ city around here.  Raphael painted the kitchen in maple syrup this morning, and although it smells warm and cozy because of it, you stick to the floor everywhere you step, and his coughing woke him from his nap, meaning that he screamed and cried. All. Day. Long.  Any fun learning activity was completely down the drain at school today so I gave Andres pages and pages of skip counting practice.  No wonder he was squirming in his seat, eh?  He said "boring" for the first time in my presence today when I wouldn't let him watch TV or play Angry Birds and I chastised him, saying it was bad word not allowed in the house.  

Not complaining at all.  But I do want to remember these days, too.  Because although that "I'm grateful for" activity would have been really cute and made for a wonderful blog post, the truth is I'm trying to be content right where I am, even on these days where I know I'm failing all over the place.  Especially on these days when I'm failing, I appreciate things much, much more.  I appreciate my health more, my family more, my home more, our penny jar more, hot showers more, that canister of popcorn kernels more...suddenly every small thing that has always been there all along is precious and treasured.  

There are some freaking hard days, and they teach me so much about what really matters.  I'm grateful for that.