I assembled a trebuchet
Luke Skywalker slingshot ready to take out the dark lord
Ponies and Barbies and zebras, oy vey
Puzzles and playing cards
Flashlights, fleece, painted fingernails
A few minutes by the fireside
before I fill out the Christmas cards that just came in the mail today
Have fun assembling your Christmas treasures!
(Image from Mathworks.com)
We’re on our fourth consecutive day of merriment. Surprisingly, I haven’t crashed yet. I just stare in a sort of middle-distance coma. My oldest puked last night due to an overdose of chocolate. My middle child hid in her room for most of the party last night because, first, too many people were looking at her, and, then, because she wasn’t getting enough attention. My youngest wandered around petting babies and regaling adults with party conversation. I got strong hugs from family I don’t see nearly enough. I got to speak on the phone to another I didn’t get to see, but warmed to hear his voice. For all the stress and worry in anticipation of the holiday, it left me with a warm and fuzzy feeling in addition to the exhaustion. So my family found me in the woods and sat by the hearth for a while. May you all be warmed by the fire of family with none of the third-degree burns.
It occurred to me last night, as I drove in a dream-like state from sheer exhaustion, that the dreams we experience in REM sleep and those that our soul manufactures for our future do, indeed, intersect.
In the land of greeting cards and self-actualization, dreams are lofty ideals. A higher state of being to which we aspire. Some goal, which in the practical nature of the ‘real world’ seems too good to be true, unattainable. If we could do anything with our lives, it is our dreams we would live. Some bliss-inducing, talent-utilizing best form of our lives. The realization of our truest potential.
In the land of our subconscious, dreams are bizarre alternate realities. Different worlds where I tour Jamaica with Ziggy Marley, but don’t leave the restaurant until I collect the empty glass spice jars from the table that came from my kitchen. Where another woman literally tries to insert herself between me and my husband. Where I’m forever late to work, in danger of missing the bus, grossly under-dressed for some huge milestone in my life.
Ironically, the only way we remember dreams is when our sleep is interrupted. The whole story, the important details would be lost if the alarm or an insistent child didn’t come calling. And usually that’s perfectly all right. More beneficial. All those anxieties that would eat me alive – or that at least would gang up with those that torment me in my waking hours – are processed by my subconscious so I don’t have to worry about them later. I’ve always been one for multi-tasking; if my brain can tick a few worries off the list while I sleep, fantabulous.
If my subconscious can harness its power into removing some of my anxiety while I sleep, I will be more able to achieve my waking dreams. More at peace, calmer, even-keeled, ready to step up rather than be dragged down. The physical processes of sleep prepare our mind and psyche to focus on achieving that other sort of dream – the ones that don’t even occur in our wildest dreams.
So while one sort of dream seems unattainable, the other bizarre, one begets the other. Our subconscious and our soul working in concert to give us true vision.
I would LOVE to have dinner with you – if you bring the spice!
Everybody’s talking about The Sound of Music lately.
Julie vs. Carrie. Film vs. live performance. Old vs. new.
Initially I was appalled at the news of a SOM revamp with Carrie Underwood. Who could mess with Julie Andrews’ dulcet tones? I pushed it out of my head and got too busy to set the DVR. After putting the kids to bed the night it first broadcast, I wandered downstairs to my husband’s channel surfing. The remote lighted upon Carrie’s rendition of “The Lonely Goatherd”, yodels and all. Woo Hee. Bouncing and dancing and yodelling. Can’t fault a chick for that. I was thoroughly impressed. She has a lovely voice. But that’s all I watched. I wandered off in another direction.
A few days later, my oldest daughter had some friends over for a mini-birthday celebration. The movie this newly-minted nine year-old chose to watch? The Sound of Music. (original on VHS, baby!) And the four other girls who attended sat in rapt attention and sang along! My husband turned to me and said, “There is hope [for the next generation]!”
We found the televised version on-demand this past snowy weekend and that same daughter begged to watch it. The five of us squished on the couch and did. I don’t know whether it was that this new cast did such a bang-up job or if it was the sheer magic of the story itself that bore me along in its spell. I couldn’t keep from singing. I teared up when the Mother Abbess implored Maria to “Climb Ev’ry Mountain”. I finished with a hope in humanity, the enduring strength and support of family, that standing for one’s ideals will pay off in the end. My middle daughter requested to watch it again two days later when she returned from school. All three girls sang and danced around the living room as if on alpine mountains.
What is it about this story that captures our imagination?
The music has become part of the cultural canon. The refrains are easily learned and easily lodged in one’s head. Their topics and the theme of the story itself is familiar in some way or another to us all. We’ve all struggled with our life’s calling, finding a true mate, the personal vs political, facing up to or hiding from our problems. Perhaps the most enduring theme of all is that love does indeed conquer all – even amidst dire struggle and imperfect circumstances.
For me, personally, the part that really struck a chord – that point in the movie when you could’ve knocked me over with a wisp of Edelweiss – was the conversation between the Mother Abbess and Maria when she balks at returning to the von Trapp home. Maria asks, “How will I know which life is mine to live?” or some approximation of that (a line I don’t think was even in the 1965 film). The abbess (portrayed by Audra McDonald) tells her emphatically that she must go out and look for it, at which point she breaks into a soul-stirring rendition of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain”. Are you supposed to have life epiphanies watching network-television rip-offs of classic cinema? I had a moment.
This conversation, these words, the Mother Abbess’ exhortation, the orchestral arrangment – they spoke to me of things I’d forgotten. Things I’d known, but forgotten to pursue. Things, necessities that have been dulled by constant use or made commonplace by their very existence. Things I learned as a child – most notably when I was presented with a cross inscribed with its own exhortation: “Christ is counting on you to search.”
I may have been like Maria, sulking behind the abbey’s walls because life hasn’t turned out the way I’d expected. Maybe I’d forgotten how to climb those mountains – or even how to try. I’d gotten lazy in my search for a dream that will make me want to live and love it everyday of my life. And I’d forgotten to listen for the sound of music in the hills all around me.
The Sound of Music (1965) was playing on the hospital TV as I labored with my third daughter. I vetoed my husband’s choice of some flavor of Law and Order, saying I’d be witnessing enough blood and gore that night. Somewhere in my subconscious, I hoped it would soothe and inspire me. I can’t say that it necessarily did, but I can’t help but think that, now, it’s brought me full circle. That labor signalled the beginning of one of the roughest times of my life. Perhaps the Mother Abbess’ exhortation has been sent to me again to snap out of it and get out and climb.
I grew up with many students who hated poetry. Talented students. Intelligent students. Students who could write well themselves. But understand what a poem was really saying? And enjoy the process? No way.
And then I became a teacher. I worked with many teachers who avoided poetry, either because they had experiences similar to my former fellow students or because they figured their students would react in much the same way.
Somewhere between the playful lyricism of picture books and class study of extended texts, readers lose the magic of words, metaphor, and imagery, which is a missed opportunity for all. Poetry uses words in beautiful and economical ways, providing teachable moments for literary terms and succinct expression.
That’s why when I find a children’s anthology of poetry, I am more than happy to check it out. The latest one I’ve discovered is Sky Magic, a compilation by Lee Bennett Hopkins. His volume, My America: A Poetry Atlas of the United States, with lovely illustrations by Stephen Alcorn, once part of my classroom library, is now part of the special collection I plan to share with my own children. So I was eager to check out this other volume, illustrated by Mariusz Stawarski.
Every poem in Sky Magic evokes the dreamy nature of stargazing and sunny mornings. Every one is accessible, even those written by ‘adult’ authors. An excerpt from Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo mixes well with a poem by children’s author and poet Rebecca Kai Dotlich (whose poems in There’s No Place Like School, compiled by Jack Prelutsky, I love). All are accessible because they use sparse language to tell stories. All good poetry does so, through phrases and symbols, examples and metaphors. And there is no child – young or old – who cannot appreciate a story. Poetry anthologies made specifically for children have the added bonus of illustrations to add yet another dimension to the story. Stawarski’s paintings are so evocative of dreamy days and nights, they bring figurative language to literal life.
Share a book such as Sky Magic with the young readers in your life – or the poetry phobes – and usher in the dawn of a new era: another form of storytelling and verbal vision accessible to all.
Legends
In the language of stars
lie stories of old
brilliant legends
told; retold.Spelling out sagas,
spilling out light,
a mythical manuscript
filling the night.
– Avis Harley
We’re taught to see the big picture. The interrelationship of all things. This keeps us all on the same page, united in our humanity, celebrating our differences in their similarities. It helps us make meaning and induces awe. I get it. I value it.
But this mindset is antithetical to a ‘one day at a time’ mentality; a live in the moment attitude; that ever-present push for mindfulness.
Especially for an anxiety-ridden person such as myself.
How can I not ‘sweat the small stuff’, when it adds up to a whole mess of stuff? Each tiny bit of tedium I must attend to throughout the day fills up the entire day. I cannot shut off the mechanism in my mind that fits each peg into its hole in the mosaic of my life.
X leads to Y then to Z and every consonant clamors in dissonance. I can’t hear the letter for the alphabet.
I’ll always be an English major, though I graduated a number of years ago. I’ll always be a book reviewer. An English/Language Arts teacher. A writer. A critical reader. A literary theorist. All this is type-set into my skin. I eat, sleep, and breathe words, letters; their combinations, their phraseology.
I am forever searching for ways to form patterns, find themes, stack layer upon layer of meaning.
But what about when I need to reduce? To distill an idea down to its purest form? Base. Primitive. The smallest atom of an idea. I need to reverse operations. How do I learn to do that?
“The proper, wise balancing
of one’s whole life may depend upon the
feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.”
― Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
I’m allergic to Christmas trees.
I may have inherited my father’s nasal repulsion to the pine pinnacle of the holiday season. There is, in fact, a very high likelihood of that, as I start sneezing as soon as I sit near it.
But that’s not the only form of allergic reaction there is.
The other kind begins round about the time the plastic totes of Christmas decorations pile up in the living room. Upon their appearance, the kids descend in a maelstrom of grabby fingers and fists like the clutching, covetous old sinner himself. But it’s me that’s more like Scrooge in my demeanor. I can’t handle the tissue paper strewn, the fragile ornaments bounced, the stockings splayed when they are not to be hung by the chimney at all right now – never mind with care. They wanted to trim the tree three days ago; their father and I have to attach tiny twinkle lights to the end of each tree branch with a slight gap in tiny twisted wires before even one ornament can be hung.
If we manage to fend them off long enough to get the lights on, once the first ornament is lifted, all bets are off. Look at this one, Mommy. When did I get this one? Is this yours? Daddy’s? Can I put this one up? Do you have a hook? Is this one okay here? Ooh, pretty.
Half of these comments are in response to a family heirloom made of blown glass teetering on the brink of extinction. It’s like they tag-team you: one grabbing the fuzzy, innocent lamb so the other can grab the cut-glass crystal pendant while your back is turned. Wait, what. No, not that one. Don’t do that. Mommy will do that one. Stop. Don’t touch. Daaaaaaaaadddyyyyyy!
My husband actually got me on video last year mid-rant as I tried to control the chaos. It didn’t work and it didn’t make for fun family movies. This year was slightly better. We put the tree in its stand one day (after smearing the ceiling with pine sap and chopping the perfectly tapered spire from the top so it would fit); did the lights and ornaments the next. The plan was to light a fire, put on Christmas carols, and take our time. The kids ended up nagging us for the better part of the day while we attended to family business and I still ended up twitching.
At one point, as I stared down into my four-story ornament organizer, I actually contemplated dropping small squares of paper into each compartment so I would remember where each ornament belonged upon dismantling of the tree. That’s when I figured I was probably taking things too far.
a. I am way too concerned about the level of organization for my out-of-season decorations.
b. That means I probably have too many decorations.
c. That also means proves that I’m a control freak.
d. And anal-retentive, type A . . . .
e. By fitting things, stuff, multiple objects into compact little boxes to contain them, I’m trying to establish some sort of order on a time/situation/season when I apparently feel overwhelmed.
f. My head is so full of stuff nowadays (several years now) that it can’t hold it anymore/together.
Instead of singing along to the soothing sounds of Bing Crosby’s crooning, I want to stab an ice pick in my eye. Instead of reliving the memories of each ornament and the story it tells, I’m making horrible memories for my children as I snap at them. It’s too much all at once. And there’s that expectation of being so flippin’ merry. There’s the pressure to recreate Currier and Ives. Instead of taking it slow and easy, everything needs to be a production with the stage set and the characters in play.
Do you ever feel like this during the holidays!?
So, yes, I’m allergic to my Christmas tree. Yes, I hate trimming the tree. Don’t send the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future to my door; I’d probably just yell at them for pawing the ornaments anyway.
Whatever our proclivities in music, whether we like it or not, pop music is infectious. It’s catchy, has a funky beat to it, and makes us want to move our bodies – most of the time. Pop is, after all, an abbreviated form of popular.
I, however, shunned this mainstream music sometime around tenth grade, when Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder burst on the scene with their unapologetically noisy and angsty music. Bubble gum and lip gloss and boyfriends? Ugh. Gritty guitar and grunge and pissed-off people? Yes!
I scoffed at the perfectly polished, canned rhythms and the lifestyle it seemed to eschew. I slapped a bumper sticker for the local ‘modern rock’ radio station on my car and changed the channel for, oh, about 25 years.
And then my children discovered how the controls on the radio worked. They discovered the bouncy, syncopated beats. They called out from their belted backseat bastions for the bastions of popular culture.
Who me?
It was only a matter of time, really. I remember belting out every single word to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” as a kindergartener. They only want what feels good and sounds good, with none of the prejudicies of high art vs. low, sophistication vs. simplicity.
However, it is in being forced to listening to these songs and music that I’ve made an important cultural discovery. There’s a whole lot of people walking around completely clueless of their personal worth.
Listen to One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful” (I’d post the link but that totally crosses the line of my personal philosophy. Sorry – you’ll have to find it on your own). “You’re insecure” is the first line of the song. You don’t know you’re beautiful? Looking at the ground when someone looks at her? The entire song is these young men pointing out to the female subject that everything about her is what makes her beautiful.
Bruno Mars’ “Treasure”: a song worth it just for his Jackson 5/Early Michael Jackson-esque singing, but that also has a theme of not knowing one’s worth. Despite being wonderful and flawless, the subject “walk[s] around here like you wanna be someone else”. He tells her, “you should be smiling. A girl like you should never look so blue.”
So what is it about our society that we need pop artists to tell us we should be content with who we are; that we should be happy? What is so lacking that even the airwaves rush in to fill the void?
To me, it’s a disturbing trend. Someone, something has failed in our current system of being if there is a trend like this among music. I’m not saying it’s bad to build people up; I’m wondering why there are so many walking around already beaten down.
Were we not loved as children? Were we not told of our innate worth through hugs and hand-holding and ‘I love you’s? Have we suffered a spiritual crisis that has let us forget that we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’? As a special deacon used to tell me, “God made me and He don’t make no junk.” We all have our worth. We are all someone’s treasure – even if no one else’s on earth, at least our own, and certainly to God. Our very existence is enough to make us beautiful.
Looking closely at these songs has also tipped me off to one other disturbing nuance: the fact that, in both songs, males are telling females their worth. As a woman and mother of three girls, it scares me that the lyrics could be construed as a lesson to value oneself through the lens of male approval. There is something very special about finding a partner who will value you and point out beneficial qualities you may have missed in yourself. But to look solely to an outside – especially sexual – source for self-worth is dangerous. The fact that pop music is so infectious and seemingly feel-good could slide such messages right under the radar without young people even realizing their transmission.
And here I was scared that my kids liked pop over some other style of music. It runs much deeper than that. Now I really have a reason to go listen to angsty music. But, if I haven’t ruined the carefree nature of pop music, I could go listen to that for a pick-me-up. Whatever it is, we all have to move our feet in time to the rhythm and pick each other up if we fall.
* Disclaimer: I must acknowledge that my grunge/alternative music is not so uplifting and self-affirming either. It was born, in fact, of a self-loathing and misery. And among its measures are certainly misogynistic ideas and mistreatment. But pop certainly presents its off-color ideas in a much more appealing package. Plus, ‘modern rock’ is not in heavy rotation like Top 40.
** Weasel image from nursery-rhymes.org
Children all over the world have been scared into submission by Santa for centuries. Starting with December 1, if not sooner, parents have had a disciplinary lever in Kris Kringle to shove their little ones under their thumbs. And then came the Elf on the Shelf. Holy holly berries! Now there was tangible proof of Santa knowing each child’s every misdeed. Never mind the millions the mother/daughter team likely made exploiting their family tradition and the warped fun parents can have placing their elf in compromising positions each day, this was parenting gold.
Image from mommyofamonster.com
Until the morning you wander downstairs, still in a fog of sleep, and are met by the faces of your little cherubs who want to know why Mikey is in the same spot. Because Mommy has more important things to do than move a felt-covered elf with his hands and feet sewn together, that’s why! But, no, that’s not what you say. You weave some elaborate story about how he must have been so tired from all his work that he had to rest last night instead of flying back to Santa. Or you just feign ignorance. Oh, I don’t know! Maybe he’s really cozy there. You don’t tell them that Mikey had too much eggnog and couldn’t find his way back to the North Pole.
Or until he shows up for the first time this season and uber-scares the shit out of your sensitive child. Perching him above the newly acquired bunk beds so he can check them out may not have been such a good idea as he appears to be giving her the hairy eyeball as she tries to sleep mere inches from him on the top bunk. Her younger sister alights the bunk to stare lovingly into his rosy-cheeked face, agog at this Christmas marvel. But as bedtime approaches, the sensitive one dissolves into tears and you want to rip the friggin’ thing off the ceiling fan and fling it. But then he’d lose his magic! Luckily, your husband has the brilliant idea of rotating the fan blades to avert his gaze.
About fifty times between dinnertime and your little ones’ bedtime, you look at Mikey and say, Must remember to move him before I go to bed, and wrack your brain for some creative spot for him (with the new added stress this year of one that won’t cause your sensitive child irreparable psychological damage). Once the children are in bed, like the magic that flies Mikey back to the North Pole and that allows the Weeping Angels to sneak up on us, some memory sweeping phenomenon takes place and Mikey doesn’t get a new home.
That is, until 1:41 AM when you bolt upright in bed and realize you didn’t move him. After the obligatory mid-night bladder deballast that occurs in all mothers, you drag a dining chair to the foyer and remove Mikey from the chandelier. You manage to complete this feat of physical prowess while still half-asleep and live to see your pillow again, but you wake with no recollection of it. When your child asks you where Mikey is this morning, you freak out all over again. You raise your eyes reluctantly to his perch from yesterday, dreading that your child has already seen that flash of flannel. But he’s not there. How can it be? Oh, you did move him. Imagine that.
Sometimes, the elf on the shelf hides so well, no one can find him. Not even the mommy who placed him in the Elf Protection Program so his ruse of returning to the North Pole upon hearing Santa’s bell wouldn’t be blown. Mommy rips apart the bins of Christmas shmagma in the basement while Daddy keeps the cherubs busy upstairs – after she forgot to locate and place the elf while they were out of the house – surprise, surprise.
All those elves perched on the shelves of holiday houses throughout the land aren’t really keeping mischievous kids in line; they’re slowly driving parents crazy. Instead of scaring the shit out of misbehavers, they’re scaring the shit out of memory-challenged mothers and fathers. The shock of coal in the stocking is nothing compared to that early morning shock of parents who forgot to move the elf! In a world where parents can’t even go to the bathroom by themselves, stealing a spare minute or two to feign a flying elf is a Christmas miracle in and of itself.
And that’s really why we do it, isn’t it?
Preserving the childlike wonder of Christmas is part of all these machinations. Seeing the awe in their eyes makes it all worthwhile. If we can get them to behave – while avoiding nightmares – it’s all good. Just don’t ask me how I feel about it at 3 o’clock tomorrow morning.
Chopping Potatoes 