Terrible/Perfect

Sorowfull Loveing Magic

This is the work of my daughter, age 7, 1st grade.

Today I drank her in, her eyes, her hair, I folded her (cold) hands in my own in the dark of her bedroom and thought of those twenty (twenty, twenty, twenty...) mothers. Empty hands. I contemplate them with my own hands shaking.  

I'm not a champion of any simple one-phrase cause or solution for this type of violence, except perhaps that like begets like, and we live in a post-Columbine world. The seeds are planted, and we water them with every headline.

I will say that if we wish to limit the scope of mass gun violence, banning combat rifles for non-military use is a good place to start. Perhaps limiting the scope will eventually limit the frequency. And it's not too early to talk about this. It's not too early to write to your representatives in Congress. It's not too early to write an initiative in your state. No one has the right to bear all possible arms. Not at this cost.

There is a wide wound in my heart, and if I put my ear to it I can hear the echo of a wild and howling grief. It's the same echo we all hear when our hearts are pulled open by our firstborn. It says "If I lose you, I will die." 

From my heart, I wish the families of Sandy Hook the sorowfull loveing magic of time. I wish them peace, when they are ready for it to find them.    

25 Days of Christmas: Days 6-10

Puppet show...cookies...latkes...Zoolights...paper chains.

I'm tired. And feeling really frustrated by a couple of projects I was really excited about but aren't turning out how I'd like them to. And while trying to get some craft projects done, I have a kitchen full of dirty dishes. Grumpf. Super grumpf. Better luck tomorrow.

25 Days of Christmas: Days 1-5

Waldorf fair...tree...peppermint play dough...glitter houses...snowflakes.

And the process...

I made them clean this up. They didn't like it. Heh.

Baby is suuuuuper needy right now. He's acting like my other kids did when they were teething. Not likely at eight weeks, but nonetheless I can't put him down and he's keeping me up until about 1 a.m. every night.

And yet...

I'm more on the ball than ever: I'm being active with the girls, engaging with the baby, putting a home-cooked dinner on the table in a timely manner, washing diapers, keeping the toilets scrubbed. With my first kid I was blearily forgetting to put the bag out front for the diaper service by 10 a.m. Now I'm all "Sure, let's do a play date tomorrow after the puppet show at the library and we'll have a hot cocoa party and I'll do some cross stitch after I serve the kids lunch!"

I think it's partly just the confidence I have as a third-time mom and partly the diamond hard knowledge I possess that every single "little thing" I let go or put off until some fairytale quiet moment called "later" is going to rise up and destroy me. There are so many of them.

It's sink or swim. I'll go with a swim and a smile, thanks!

Advent

We're doing something a little different this year with the advent calendar by trying an activity countdown. It's something I saw for the first time last year and was enthused about. We're just not able to accommodate anything else in the way of toys besides the couple of gifts they get from their grands, and my girls have had pretty major issues in the past with the caffeine in chocolate (sounds ridiculous, but I've dealt with sleepless babies and tossing and turning little girls too many times to doubt the connection), so toy or chocolate advent calendars aren't a good choice for us. But advent calendars featured hugely in my childhood Christmases, so I feel like it has to happen.

I'm way into paper decorations these days, so I made a simple paper tree and glued on little paper squares for pockets. In each pocket is a rolled up slip of paper with an activity written on it. I also made some quick little paper candles, so once the activity paper has been taken out a paper candle can be put in its place. Should be pretty cute when it's all "lit up". 

Here's my list of activities for 2012:

1st: Visit the Waldorf Winter Faire

2nd: Get the tree

3rd: Make scented play dough

4th: Begin a village of little glitter houses

5th: Make ballerina snowflakes

6th: Marionette show at the library

7th: Bake and decorate cookies

8th: Make latkes

9th: To be decided

10th: Family singalong

11th: Make a paper chain

12th: Make salt dough ornaments

13th: Decorate gingerbread houses

14th: See the tree at the state capitol building

15th: See the Nutcracker ballet

16th: To be decided

17th: Bake a gingerbread cake

18th: Fold Moravian stars

19th: Make seed cookies for the birds

20th: Family game night

21st: Solstice! Go on a nature walk and leave seed for the birds

22nd: Make cards for the family

23rd: Have a picnic dinner by the tree and watch a Christmas movie

24th: Candlelight sing at church and leave out cookies for Santa

25th: Merry Christmas!

***************

If you wanted to do something like this, your list could be whatever. I've focused on activities that I know my kids will really enjoy, but you could focus on deepening your faith, doing service, or just really simple little things like "have a hot cocoa in front of the fire". The point is, I think, to bring what's important to you in this season to the forefront.

It's a lot of work, to be honest (it doesn't help that the baby has begun to be wakeful and very needy for a few hours right after the girls have fallen asleep). Last night I was up later than I'd like making sure I had the recipe and ingredients for homemade play dough.

But!

There's nothing on there that I don't want to do with the kids, and I'm the sort of person that won't do certain things without a big push (for instance, I cannot calmly cook or bake with my children without serious advance notice). And, as is the whole point of the exercise, my kids are smitten. My oldest is stoked to pull out and read the little paper in the morning, and she's been quite vocal about how much anticipation she's feeling. And, for me, I get to do things with them that I'm normally too lazy to commit to, all to the strains of Sufjan. Win-win. Totally worth the effort.

Getting it

I'm enjoying a little rennaissance at the moment. The here and now is pretty dope, despite some left hooks here and there. 

When I'm happy, as I have been these past days (weeks?), and I mean "Whoa, I kind of feel high," happy, I get a little worried: Do I have high-fuctioning bipolar disorder? Am I mildly oxygen deprived? Do I have a tumor? I think the doubt comes from years and years of having not felt good. I'm feeling settled and productive and at peace. This can't be!  

But I think (I hope) this go around it's just the result of postpartum hormones, which have always been kind to me, and my enormously pedestrian Happiness Project efforts, in particular honoring my need for a calm (read: tidy) space at home. The more I work the knots out of the tangled skein that is my home environment the happier (calmer, kinder, easier going, more engaged, more productive) I feel. I have a long way to go still, but we got through house and tree decorating so smoothly. I felt really excellent, with the music playing and the dinner promptly on the table and now with the dishwasher whirring.

Sometimes I marvel at the increase in self-knowledge and happiness I've experienced as I've grown older. When I was younger I think I pictured happiness looking something like this, a kind of idiosyncratic domestic bliss, but I couldn't figure out how anyone would get to happiness, whatever it looked like; it was like another country that I could see in pictures, but there were no flights, no trains, no buses, no roads.

But I guess you just put one foot in front of the other over and over and one day you find you're in another place.