My Holiday Pinata

I like order. I especially like it when it comes to the holidays. Tradition trumps chaos as a theme of comfort to me during this season.

I think that’s why singing the 12 days of Christmas song is so much fun. I know what comes next and I enjoy putting things in their perfect rightful order. Partridges before Turtle Doves and so on.

Yet I hate order. Especially when it comes to my siblings. As the youngest of five, order means I will forever be the baby. Always the one that was last to do anything, always the one who needs constant advice and care from the olders. Or so they think.

Despite the fact that I am 41, a mom, a wife and responsible grown up, the minute I return to my hometown, I somehow morph back to being seen as the baby. For the moment, I’ll call it “birth order disorder” to sound cool.

I love going home – there is a comfort in returning to my youth and remembering all the places and spaces of those days. Yet the recycled youth trips send me returning to my most awkward days.

It’s probably because my siblings are there to remind me of every stupid mistake I ever made, like the time I set the house on fire (not my fault), putting the cat in the dryer (total accident) and driving the car into ditches (bad tires). Despite the fact that I should be able to enjoy the emotional pinata of joking – the truth remains that pinata parties are only fun for the whackers, not the piñata.

So as I return to my current home, relief sets in as I leave all the inadequate days and times behind. I return to the comfort of the life I have now, despite my past. My perfect order – no piñatas allowed.

The End of Mid Life Crisis Cooking

Today I gave up cooking like I'm having a mid-life crisis.

It began with the meatloaf. Kindly, my lovely neighbor brought her extras from dinner to spare me the trouble of cooking. I called her blessed as I was relieved of having to come up with a meal for one less day.

As my husband came home from a long day, he casually asked "what's for dinner?"

I replied "meatloaf, courtesy of our awesome neighbor."

Then came the look. Now if ever there were a sweet spot in my husband's heart, it's for meat loaf. And mashed potatoes, and Jell-o salads and pretty much anything that Betty Crocker ever uttered. Yes, my husband is a plain and simple, meat and potatoes love kind of guy.

I am not. I am a spice it until your lips look like you just had Botox sort of cook. I am season it until it wants to get up and do a dance in a red hot dress sort. I love every kind of exotic food, weird spice, unusual and strange fare that sends my husband's Prilosec-loving stomach into flips just thinking about it.

So there was the meatloaf. Love at first site by him, a side of jealousy sauce bubbling in me.

It occurred to me that maybe I was trying too hard and needed to give it a sweet rest. Those were not my words, but words that were inspired in me as my son was reading the 10 Commandments as part of his devotion time.

It went something like this.... "Thou shalt not be jealous of what your neighbors have...or what your neighbors possessions are or your neighbor's meatloaf!" I swear I read meatloaf jealousy right in the Kid's Adventure Bible.

I decided to give it a rest as instructed by the 10 Commandments. I was trying too hard. As I put down my Bon Appetit magazine and picked up Betty's handbook of 1950s perfection, I decided sometimes the simple things truly are the best.

Going Off the Grid

One Mom’s Adventure into the Wilds of Homeschooling

Homeschoolers are weird. They are the people who make meals out of dryer lint, wear clothes from hemp seed and study the sonar tracking of bats. Or so I thought. Until I became one of them.

This week, I read that according to the United States Department of Education, an estimated 1.5 million children in grades K-12 were home educated in 2007. This number grows by almost 10 percent every year. The real kick for me was reading this week’s New York Times Sunday Magazine calling homeschooling “suddenly chic.”

As I read that line, I got a huge smile on my face. I even had to say it out loud -- “I am now chic! The New York Times says so!”

This adventure began when it dawned on me that no one “got” my son. All the things I felt were his assets were considered “problems” at school. We had tried it all -- public school, private school, tutoring, testing, extra work and support at home to constantly help our son succeed. But no amount of shaping tooled his square peg self in the round hole of traditional education.

Day by day, I watched him come home from school and the gregarious, creative, joyous boy slowly began to fade away. As the months wore on, I noticed he began to shuffle like an old man, burdened by school. He had trouble sleeping at nights, having unsettling dreams about school. This began to evolve into uncharacteristic behavior like cheating, hiding his work and sabotaging his efforts by throwing work away before it could ever be graded. He was in a downward spiral and nothing helped right his course. This was no life for an 8 year-old boy – to be this burdened by school at such a young age.

I began to look at other options – there had to be somewhere, some place that my son would thrive. I began to imagine my dream school – I wanted my son to first learn about his faith, I wanted him to love learning and see it as a joy and delight. I wanted dynamic learning for him – not to sit at a desk all day, only to speak when he perfectly raised his hand. I wanted him to learn outside, at a museum, at a garden or a café. I wanted to be able touch, explore, see, and experience life as a learning lab – not as simply a worksheet to fill out, another checklist to complete.

I wanted to take him places, teach him life skills like how to cook, how to be a supportive young man for our family and community. I wanted him to have a service project that was more than about selling something or collecting pop tabs. I wanted him to spend time helping in a real way where he could experience the joy of making a difference. I wanted him to speak the language of my Spanish heritage.

Where could I find such an amazing place? Home.

Homeschooling became an easy choice when I began to look at all the research. Simple things like the fact that most kids only get about three minutes of individual attention for instruction per day. Surely I could do better than three minutes. The fact that pure academics only took up about 2 hours of the day – the rest was busy time, waiting in line, going to the bathroom, playground, library, art, computer – things that I could easily do on my own. I was spending more than that on my commute alone. Not to mention all the extra hours of volunteering, hours of homework after school, hunting down a project doo-bob or a colonial costume. Before there simply wasn’t time to do all that I wanted for him as a family. Now I could design his education to make it our own, based on the priorities we had and what he was passionate about learning.

Will we do this forever? I don’t know. Will I be any good at it? Will it rain a year from today? Who knows. What I know is that this is the right choice for our family right now and I will continue to evaluate my son based on his love of learning, the life and faith skills he is building.

I know homeschooling isn’t for the faint at heart. I like to think of it as “going off the grid.” Saying it that way, it has sort of a cool, James Bond mission style sound to it. It certainly sounds better than we have decided to give up all we know about traditional schooling and do it on our own.

Coming home to school is not for everyone, but for our family it was the only choice. Going off the grid gives us the freedom to encourage our child in a loving, enriching way. In our hearts, there could be no higher calling.

Gaps

When I hear the word “gap” I think of Leon Spinks and fourth grade.

If you don’t remember Leon – he was the heavyweight champion of the world, amazingly defeating Muhammad Ali in 1978, exactly when I was 9. You probably remember him as the unlikely winner with the huge gap in his front teeth – not a slight gap, more akin to a Grand Canyon-size spacer. In the peak of Spinks fame, timed with the cusp of my awkward pre-teen years, I also had a funny-looking gap.

Thank heavens it was nowhere near Spinks size. But all the same, it might as well have been. It was the most embarrassing thing ever to be compared to a heavyweight boxer. I don’t think I smiled once after Spinks won the title. I never forgot the humiliation of the ugly “gap."

Recently I was reminded of gaps again at a writer’s conference. In a field of 600 other women writers, it was easy to start the comparison game. In my head are all the gaps screaming out at me “her shoes are nicer than yours” or “she looks more professional than you, she probably is a better writer” to the ultimate take down “what are you doing here thinking you can write?”

Even though my teeth have since grown together (thank God), I still am constantly reminded of my gaps. The places in the heart that no matter how hard I try, never get filled in. No amount of compensating, positive thinking or smart wardrobing covers their places.

The very first speaker of the writer's conference must have picked up on the “gap vibe” as she immediately talked about how all of us feel inadequate. She reminded us that everyone has gaps and it is only our Creator that can fill them perfectly. She reminded us how wonderfully made our Maker designed us. Yes, despite our gaps, we are perfect in His eyes. My soul breathed a sigh of relief with a “thank you for reminding me.”

As we prepare for the fall season and school year ahead, it’s a great time to remember we all have gaps. Our kids have gaps, our families have gaps, our friends and teachers have gaps. But divine love fills in perfectly. So next time we start focusing on our spaces, we can breathe a deep sigh of relief. With that breath, we can remember gap-filling grace.

Hockey Love

Loving hockey is like loving that misfit family member that demands all of you and smells bad.

This blazing hot Southern week has been spent in the confines of an ice rink. Despite the bad fluorescent lighting and high stink factor of the locker rooms, I have counted myself blessed to freeze my hockey mom buns off. Rather, more blessed to see my son in love with something like hockey.

Now I have had my share of “discussions” with other friends about the violence of hockey, how it teaches kids to fight, how the injuries are beyond belief. But I can see more violence on their video game shelves and the TV shows they watch. I understand that hockey requires a great deal of aggression to be any good. But so does life.

The thing about hockey is it’s really hard. Not only is it physically demanding, but it requires strategy, discipline and serious teamwork. It has become a metaphor for all the tough things in life. For us, the lesson of hockey is that to get really good at something, you have to work. Not only work hard, you have to work your buns off and be good to your team along the way.

Hockey has become the teachable reference for math, for learning something new, for doing the difficult things. It teaches them at an early age that team is everything --- if you’re a jerk to your team, no one’s going to give you the puck. For a kid to know early on what it’s like to work through something hard as a team means they have a true appreciation for when they succeed, win or fail.

Watching my son circle around and around on the frozen rink is really boring, and stinky. But he loves it and he shows up every day with a good attitude, ready to work hard – because hockey is something he loves. I adore that he is gaining a valuable life lesson that he can carry with him the rest of his life. This lesson will go with him to his future job, perhaps his marriage and putting his talents to work. For that great reward, I can handle a little stink along the way.

Wild and Precious Life

Since it is now officially summer, it's a great time to ponder a true "Summer Day."

With that said, here's a beautiful poem I found that reflects on this notion of life being like a summer day. Gorgeous and lush in fullness in a moment and gone the next. Take a read and then consider, what will you do with this "one wild and precious life?"

The Summer Day
By Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Birds, Bees and Me

Every summer, I take a little time to have "a talk" with my son.

I was inspired by a dear friend who shared how she used to have "grown up time" talks with her son each summer as he grew through the years. She started simple with a very basic "bees" talk, that continued to expand. I loved this idea -- it sounded very warm and encouraging. A special bonding time to be had with mom and son.

Every year since he was 7, we have had our little "talks." Some may think 7 is way too young, but I want my son to hear the words from me, not some trashed up version from friends or the media. I didn't want my son to have it like I did, never from my parents, mostly from slumber party conversations among girlfriends. As a young girl, my wisdom was given in bits and pieces -- found in the library books all the other girls checked out, gossiped about in secret, giggly conversations.

I wanted my son to "know" from a wholesome standpoint that all of this life, sex, puberty stuff was completely normal, natural and the way God has gifted us. But more importantly, to know in a way that honors things, not shames it up or makes it feel weird or guilty.

Recently, I took a trip with my son, now almost 9, to North Carolina's Outer Banks. We were walking along the majestic sand dunes of Jockey's Ridge, one of the largest naturally occurring sand dune along the East Coast. The beauty of the moment must have inspired me as I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for this year's "talk."

So I immediately launched into "important discussion mode" -- reeling off facts, information, details about the human body and things I felt like he needed to know. He listened patiently for awhile, nodding his head like a serious scholar. He didn't say much, but waited until I was done with my monologue. I paused and he took his chance to say, "Okay mom, that's enough. You can stop talking now."

The moment stunned me. Busy with all of my reasons, facts, details, I never stopped to wonder if he really wanted to know. I told him because it's what I wanted as a child, but he did not. Yet. I realized he was okay with not knowing all the grown up stuff. In that precious moment, I was grateful my son wished to remain a little boy for another year.