Talk Feeleez

Rainbow

I guess it's the time of year for big thoughts. At our house we light candles for Hanukkah, then again for Solstice, then again and again each day of Yule as we find ourselves craving the ritual. Nathan always passes the candle to each of us to put some good mojo or wishes into it. Needless to say my mind has been turned toward wishes and mojo for a couple weeks now. It's been turned toward big thoughts. 

Two things have happened to aid my big thoughts.

1. I thought I turned thirty-seven in June and was trundling along under that impression for the last six months when Echo tuned in and reminded me that I am actually thirty-six. A year younger. With this new information I feel like I got a freebie, a whole additional year added to my life. 

2. Nathan gave me a rainbow stacker for Yule. A rainbow stacker is (supposedly) a children's toy, several pieces of wood shaped and smoothed and painted rainbow colors. When stacked it makes an arcing rainbow, when taken apart and re-stacked it makes a lot of fun and different shapes.

A little backstory: I've wanted a rainbow stacker for five plus years! When I gave birth to Echo I felt my hands firmly on the steering wheel of our little family. Though I had held the mama role, in our house anyway, to Bella and Xi, I still was the "newest" member to the family. The girls came with outfits from their other houses and Nathan had sheets and toys and clothes and other aesthetic objects already in place. But now that I was giving birth to Echo, I was suddenly in charge of this little human and her aesthetic world, her onesies and blankies and toys. 

So I wanted the rainbow stacker. 

The rainbow stacker lives at our local awesome toy store called Walking Stick Toys and although we go there often and pass by the window on our way downtown, somehow the rainbow stacker just didn't make it onto the practical purchasing list. 

Now I don't mean to get too over-involved in this but I suppose, now that I think about it more, the stacker represented not just what I wanted for the new baby in terms of toys, but for what I wanted in general for our family. I wanted to be the type of family that had wooden quality toys- and all that I associate with that. Peaceful parenting, a safe home, happy children.

The funny thing is... we have that, even without that particular toy.

Yet when I see that stacker on our wooden floor I can't help but think: Now I have everything I always wanted. The tendency, for me anyway, is to take that thought and quickly calculate that if I just have the material objects I want then my life will be complete. But I remember what the stacker stood for and that we created that for ourselves, the effect of the rainbow stacker, without actually owning it.

Is my description a tangled web? I meant it to be simple. How's this:

• The time of the year and the candles and the wishes have helped me isolate what my vision is for myself and my family.
• The fact that I am a year younger than I thought means I have the feeling of extra time, that I have all the time I need to get where I am going.
• The rainbow stacker is a physical reminder that I have everything I need or want, that I have always had it. And even if I can't see it right now, it is all coming. 

The even shorter story is that all this results in a good feeling.

Nathan is driving Bella to her other house, our time with her always too short. I've put Owl City on Pandora to distract the middle daughter from being too annoyed by the little sister. Snow is falling. The cat's on Echo's lap. Homework awaits Xi. A gingerbread house kit, having fallen through the cracks of the holiday bustle, waits for Papa to return. 

Really, it's all rainbow stacker.

A Week In 158 Words

red tafeta swirling

black velvet 

crumpled paper stuffed in a bag

a giant stuffed animal duck named Domo

wine

snowy boots

pumpkin pie

birthday cake for breakfast

chocolate brownies

andy goldsworthy book and documentary

pyrex mixing bowls and food storage units, and new cake pans (bestill my heart!)

pajamas all day

american girl dolls recovering from an actual ski day (with boots, skiis, poles, and helmet!)

dog walks as the only outing

a giant batch of dog biscuits

cookie deliveries to surprised neighbors on Christmas Day

patient grandmother tutoring major sewing project

late night adult talk

three-child mayhem by day

Harry Potter by evening

new musical insturments for the basement band (aka "100 Percent")

leftovers for dinner

snowflakes that look like actual snowflakes (snow dwellers you know what I mean)

sleeping cat always on someone's lap

blue skies

indoor archery practice in the upstairs hall

phone calls to the important ones

miniature native american set underfoot

happy snuggly partner

squeaking guinea pig

Bon Yule!

Valerie (snake), Henry-dog, Echo, Me, Xi, Ken (guinea pig), Nathan, Bella, Frau (cat), Nimbus (cat), Luella May (hen), Pansy (hen)

The girls are taller, Nimbus is fatter, everyone chose their own outfit.

We love all of you!

Heart Strings

We went to Xi's annual Christmas performance yesterday. Fluorescent overhead lights, endearing cardboard props, cameras flashing, cute mishaps. Classic. It was so classic that the older kids even played Hot Cross Buns on recorder. 

And then they started singing. I may write about this every year, if so you could remind me, but there is something about children singing. I know this isn't news, entire choirs, thousands of them across the globe, are made up of children with angelic voices, but kids singing really get to me. I always tear up even if the song is a funky snowman version of Blue Suede Shoes complete with knee swinging and uh-huhs thrown in. I love earnestness. It's one of the most precious commodities in our world as far as I am concerned and children singing are always earnest.

The performance was tumbling along as I am accustomed and then the last song began. The kids sang this:

 

The music teacher, Matthew from Tangled Tones changed the refrain from Is Love a Lie?, to Is Love the Light? Twenty, straight-backed, earnest kids were singing this sad song. I was completely taken off guard. There we all were, proud parents with digital cameras in hand, weeping. I am haunted by the memory and also pleased by it too. The whole scene was perfect in the context of the last week. Our emotions had a place to go. We had something to drift on for a moment, in the middle of the day, in the middle of town, in the middle of winter.

While I exited wiping my eyes, Echo, simply liked it and then turned her attention toward the snowman cupcake she'd had her eye on.

I suppose kids are good for that too, not only can they pull your heart out with a flick of their angelic-singing wrists, they can also steer you back onto the road of fully-functioning by drawing your attention back to simple life pleasures like snowman cupcakes.

In that vein:

Look how many pomegranate kernels I shucked!

My grandma, dad, and cousin sent me a box filled with almonds, walnuts, pomegranates and persimmons. Pounds and pounds of fruit and nuts picked by my very own family. What a treasure trove! I have been making bliss balls (almonds, walnuts, coconut butter, cinnamon, cocoa, raisins, macca powder- all ground up in the cuisinart) and shucked the pomegranates to be eaten by the mouthful (the rarity!) and to use in smoothies. I followed Martha Stewart's method which worked really well.

xo

In and Out of the Game

I've spent the last couple of days getting my head back in the game.

The day after returning from Portland I hauled ass getting ready for our local killer craft fair called the Made Fair. I had my inventory squared but I needed to make teeny signs that said things like "Cinnamon Rolls $1.50" to put next to teeny cinnamon rolls, and get all my ducks in a row. I also needed to zip over to the jewelry store for some last minute details and, since it 'tis the season we had planned to put up our tree and deck the halls.

I can get stressed about that sort of thing even though I know it's ridiculous. I'm huffing and puffing looking at the clock, too realistic about how much time each task requires and knowing that even a day with moderate goals can get away from you. My family accompanied me on the walk to the bead shop and I was tapping my toe, wanting them to do a little less snow eating and a little more brisk walking. Brisk walking - Ha ha.

Here I am stuffing my annoyance into an untidy package of patience while Nathan snaps my picture.

The entire next day was spent selling miniature food to gushing folks. I really like what fairy food does to people. They seriously squeal. At the end of the day my face hurts from smiling in response.

That night, after helping Echo fall asleep, I stumbled downstairs only to let Nathan know I was going back upstairs to fall back into bed.

Then it was Monday. A regular day. Not a roadtrip day, not a craft market, and I put my head down; answering emails, freshening up the Feeleez financial books, printing shipping labels, and catching up with 6512. I cobbled together a homeschool curriculum for the week. We swam at the Y. I was just starting to feel like I had my feet under me again when I remembered. 'Tis the season... which means the regular game, of life and business and children, is just the baseline! There is all that merrymaking to be done as well.

I love my people. My family under this roof and my family under those other roofs. I love my neighbors and friends. And I want to express that this time of year. With presents, and cookies, and cards. When I remember this, while glancing at the calendar, before you know it that head I thought I had firmly back in the game has just come unglued from my body.

BUT. These are first world problems, I know. Scrambling to buy and make presents, dashing off to buy gingerbread ingredients. These are luxury tasks. And that's a good thing to remember. It's important to appreciate that the very fact that I am in a position to even put these "chores" on my list is a sign of wild abundance. 

So I am grateful.

Yesterday I went gift shopping with Echo and bless her little heart, in order for me to shop "in secret" and in order for her to be surprised by any gift I might buy, she turned her head in the opposite direction anytime I lingered to look at something. I put things in my basket and covered them with my coat. Then at checkout Echo shut her eyes. Isn't that the cutest and possibly most difficult thing for a child to execute???

I am grateful for that.

Going to bed last night she said: "Mom, thanks for covering the gifts with a coat to make things easier for me. And thanks for being my whole world of love."

I am grateful for that too.

Perspective is so nice. 

So Fun

A couple mornings in a row I've woken up groggy, fuzzy-headed and sleepy. I've had trouble falling asleep and wake up a little depressed, a little yawny. I am embarrassed to admit that it took me a long time to put two and two together. Halloween candy binge at 10pm? That'll do it. 

    

(Apparently GMO, corn syrup-filled, "snack size" tidbits behave pretty differently from our usual late-night snack of organic, hippie, chocolate covered almonds.)

    

So those days are over. Really, who needs a substance pushing you toward funkiness? Even if it does taste delicious. 

    

We rocked Halloween. I say rocked because we had fun, the girls hauled in 169 pieces of candy, our neighbors are ridiculously friendly and generous, and nobody melted down about costumes.

    

Echo chose angel as her get-up and surprisingly never wavered. We rummaged through the dress up, borrowed a pair of wings, inherited a halo and VOILA. We didn't even do a trial run, she just put it all on weds afternoon and was good to go. But the best part, the best part of costuming in general I suppose, is that she felt angelic. She kept using the word "graceful" to describe her feelings.  

    

Xi chose Cleopatra early on but it's trickier when the kid divides her time between two houses. Neither set of parents knows quite where the costume, or the kid's ideas about the costume, stand when she's not with them. In other words I wasn't going to knock myself out trying to find a golden snakey headdress if in the meantime Xi's at her other house, having changed her mind and gathering the costume ingredients for a Taylor Swift ensemble. (Experience is invaluable in these situations!) But Xi was steadfast too. It was Cleopatra all the way and she gave us enough time to put it all together.

    

In fact, I did some serious channeling of my sister and my mom. I channeled my mom, who can turn materials not usually thought of as costumey into a costume, and my sister who can whip out several different costume possibilities thirty minutes before departure. With Xi giddy and in tow we trooped into my closet (for a nightgown of course) and down into the basement (for a remembered scrap of gold fabric) and by the time Nathan and Echo emerged from homeschool "music class" we had an Egyptian queen in our midst.

    

    

But here's where you really have to pat me on the back, or where I pat myself on the back because I dug up the sewing machine (Never before used in our family. I can whip out forty-two miniature and life-like trout, complete with scales and gaping mouth, but I've never sewed a stitch.) and taught myself how to thread a bobbin and all that jazz in order to make a cape. 

    

My girls were seriously looking at me like I was a superhero.

    

Holidays are so fun. We continued the tradition from my childhood of making a big pot of soup and teaming up with neighbor friends. The weather was friendly and "warm" for October. It was heavenly.

    

Oh, and the part that really tickled my heart: Henry! Most years I bring him trick-or-treating, other wise he'd spend the evening barking at small children from the confines of our fence, but this year I let him off leash. I always walk Henry off-leash because he's well-trained enough to do so, but typically on Halloween I leash him for organization's sake. This year, for whatever reason I didn't, and I am so glad! He was outright adorable going door to door. I think he really thought he was a kid and part of the pack. He looked like a trick-or-treater with a really good costume. And he got treats! That mooch convinced more than one neighbor to dig out a bag of dog bones.  

    

    

Tonight we roll right into El Dia De Los Muertos and are organizing ourselves into a family of skeletons. I don't know what the heck I did before I had kids.

    

Love to you all.

Happy Mother's Day

I think we can all agree motherhood feels good. Not just on that particular sunny Sunday in May but all those other times too. It's like the best kept secret of all time. We're discussing diaper rashes and playgroup drama and cereal bits left in our sheets but silently what we are really saying is:

Isn't this the best thing that has ever happened to you?

Punishment: Fail

On Saturday the girls and I were struggling. It seems the tail-end of this local cough and cold that has been making the rounds involves a fair bit of squabbling. I've been making polls of my friends that have also had this cough/cold thingy and their children too have been swinging from idyllic, sweet, sibling-play to all-out brawls. One moment my kids are snuggled in a home-made nest of fluffy blankets incubating some eggs, surrounded by stuffed animals and sparkles of good cheer and then? Mayhem. Tears, screeching, and stalemates. Three billion and forty three times per day.

To say I was at my wits-end is an understatement. At one point, after unsuccessfully trying to negotiate an argument about a piece of plastic (really everything has been a point of contention) while showering, I grabbed my towel and ran into the bedroom and shut the door. When they followed me (of course they followed me) I said: I can't take the arguing. I want two minutes to get dressed in peace. If you start to argue I'm going to ask you to leave. They argued after maybe fifteen seconds of peace, and I ushered them out the door where they cried. My blood pressure spiked even higher and that peace I sought was never found.

Later the sun came out. The girls rode their bikes around and around in the driveway and I raked all the leaves off the newly sprouting irises. There was a good chunk of time with no arguments. We were all breathing the spring air and loving life. When Kris rode up on her bike we gathered around her for a chat. I asked her if her kids had been doing the sibling squabble thing and she said absolutely. She said her husband had been on the phone several times with the Easter bunny discussing whether or not he should come by this year. My girls eyes grew several times their normal size. They wanted details. Kris said her kids had not been wanting to brush their teeth and not treating each other well and Tim was discussing with the Easter bunny if an Easter celebration was going to work out this year.

My girls looked to me, anxious beyond belief, and asked if our Easter was going to be canceled. I said things were still looking pretty good for them. Then I remembered how my own mother had canceled Easter one year. I laugh about it now, remembering my mom taking a stand because Emily and I were being complete teenage assholes and she didn't feel like putting together a sweet gift for us. It makes sense to me now, as an adult. As a kid, even a teenage one, I was pretty bummed. The girls listened to this tale with more anxious faces.

Then Kris pedaled away and we rode bikes and raked some more. 

When we went back inside the squabbling started before I even removed my coat. Warmed by the fun of outside and forgetting myself for a moment I joked that maybe I should call the Easter bunny. The girls panicked and I laughed and made it clear I was joking. But in an instant Echo, the four-year old who has never been punished or threatened, declared: If you cancel Easter, we are going to cancel MOTHER"S DAY!

Gulp.

A lot of thoughts and feelings passed through me in that moment. I wanted to punish her for saying that. I felt sad. I felt shamed. I thought again about how sarcasm and adult jokes really aren't funny to children. I thought this kid is too smart for her own good. And I also thought: Oh, right, punishment FAILS. 

Perfect example.

This is how bullying is started. Or war. The parent uses the model of "might is right" and the children follow. It took Echo all of five seconds to figure out the pattern: Dislike the action of another? Threaten them with your power. Now of course, as the leader in the family I do have more power than the children. I make a million decisions each day that they have to follow: what's for breakfast, when it's time to walk the dog, what's for lunch, when it's okay to have gum, when we play with friends, when it's time to brush teeth, how many stories we read, when it's time to turn out the light. All of this power makes it even more important that I wield it with a conscience, that I use it responsibly not as a tool to manipulate my children. In this case it's important that I not use my power to manipulate them into getting along, into not expressing their feelings as they arise, into falsely "getting along".

Echo's threat was like a dagger to my heart. Cancel Mother's Day? Ouch.

I backpedaled. I assured them that no one was canceling anything. I tried to clarify that I was joking. I said we would just keep talking about the things that were bothering us, like we always do. No need to worry. And we keep coming back to it. I have reassured them several times that Kris's children definitely did enjoy an Easter celebration. I tried to explain that their Papa was just bummed, like me, that things were rough at their house. He saw kids that didn't want to brush teeth and the Easter bunny was going to bring a bunch of candy and those two things weren't making sense to him.

But unfortunately my threat lingers in the air and won't dissipate. I can tell there is a bit of concern that if they don't do things right, something wonderful like a holiday, will be canceled. This may sound like a good thing parenting wise, in fact this concept is the foundation of %90 of the parenting in our culture, but it has too many dangers. I don't want my kids stifling feelings so that the Easter bunny will come. I don't want them behaving a certain way because they fear their mother will do to them some horrific thing. I don't want them using external parameters (mom's threats) to guide their behavior.

I want them to have all of the feelings they may have and let them go so swiftly and fervently that their bodies and minds are free of them. I want them to feel safe arguing with their siblings. I want them to treat people well, not because some punishing authority is watching, but because they have empathy. I want them to treat others the same whether in the presence of an adult or not. I want them to develop a personal guidance system that is their own, not constructed from fear.

So the Easter Bunny came. The girls donned spring dresses from their Great Grandma B and the flower headbands we drag out each year. Nathan and I set up a scavenger hunt, complete with cryptic clues, and Nathan had to keep grabbing my arm to steady his giggly-tickled-feelings. The girls hunted eggs with their initials on them (to prevent the panicked competition that sets in and to inspire cooperation as each girl helps the other find her eggs). There was chocolate consumption before breakfast. A true Easter.

Xi asked again if I ever really was going to call the Easter Bunny and I said no, I don't even know how I would get his number. And she, the savvy eight-year old said: Google it?

Obvious

When I was thirteen or fourteen my parents gave Emily and I a Valentine gift. We certainly were not above chocolate and little stuffed animals, we wanted those. Actually, in our self-absorbed way, expected our parents to present something cute and delicious to us on Valentine's Day morning. And maybe we did get some novelty treats, I don't remember because what stands out in my mind is my parents standing in the kitchen and handing us a slip of paper. It was a plain folded piece of the sort my mom used for grocery lists. We took the paper, opened it up... and saw 425-0910.

A phone number. OUR new phone number.

My parents had given us our very own landline. This was the early nineties, before cell phones, ipods, even before pagers (but just barely), so one's own landline was like winning the teenager lottery. There was squealing and jumping and gushing and unbelievable excitement.

I don't think my parents were associating anything romantic with our new phone line. I'm pretty sure they were getting us one to spare themselves the constant ringing and answering and tying-up of the household line and the gift happened to coincide with a holiday. Little did they know all of the romance that would occur on that line! My goodness.

To this day one of my most heart-thumping romantic experiences was to wake in the middle of the night to hear an anonymous caller leave a Milli Vanilli love song on our answering machine.

Serious romance.

Well I don't know what the teens are doing these days by way of anonymous romantic gestures via technology, because our girls are still wee, wee enough at least. I'm sure when the time comes for them it will be apparent and I hope I am a cool enough parent to facilitate the process like my own parents did. In the meantime, my Valentine impulses find themselves late at night with markers and stickers. It's a no brainer really. What to give sweet little girls on Valentines? 

Sparkly unicorns and hearts, obviously.

Oh Okay, Happy New Year

I've been dragging my heels about this whole "holidays are over" thing. It probably happens every year and every year I forget, but this year I just didn't want the fun to end. I really liked our family time. It wasn't anything in particular, after all we didn't go anywhere or do anything for six days straight. But, then again, maybe that's it. Nothing much for six days straight. I went for a run every morning (a huge luxury in and of itself) and when I returned everyone was still in their pajamas. I would shower and put my pajamas back on. We didn't have anywhere we needed to be and our girls, supremely content with each other within the walls of our home, never even thought of departing. I'm serious. They never noticed that another day had passed. They read and played and ate and read and played and ate, so happy.

But time does have a way of passing and little by little, despite my urgings for the calendar to just stall out the "real world" began to creep back in. Slowly but surely we ran out of presents. Slowly but surely December shifted to January and before I knew it it was a Monday and we no longer had Bella, we no longer had Xi, we no longer had the visiting fish, we no longer had the visiting dog, and the cardboard recycling had crept up the basement stairs and was knocking on the door. 

So I had to admit it was over.

I guess I had a little warning. New Year's rolling around, with the emphasis on the whole "new year" part is a fairly large hint that Yule is over. But I wasn't really feeling it. I have superstitions surrounding New Years, which meant I definitely wanted to kiss Nathan at midnight because that means you'll be together over the next year (a superstition Nathan had never heard of!), but I like being with him anyway so that main goal was fairly easily achieved and didn't make the evening anymore celebratory than usual. Actually he juiced apples while I retold him, including every single detail, Ann Patchett's novel "State of Wonder" (which I am crushed to have finished). No sparkly tank dress, no champagne. We could have rallied, made a different kind of date night happen but I didn't want to. I was still in denial about the holiday termination, still clinging to our week of bathrobes, banana bread, and happy girls.

I went on a run the next morning, the only one on the river trail except for two other dog walkers (dogs don't care what the calendar says) and a guy smoking a cigarette by his car and I'm pretty sure he was just still awake from the night before. I had forgotten it was any kind of special day but when the thought flitted across my mind I felt pretty good about running on the first day of the year, that felt like a good sign that 2012 might be physically active, but not much else occurred to me. I kept thinking that I should have a profound thought, make an important list, and then, ha ha, a HUGE bald eagle turned it's head and looked at me. 

It isn't the first time I have seen a bald eagle. Missoula is like that, one minute you are running an errand, crossing the bridge to mail a package and suddenly there is NATURE reminding you that you live in the wild Rocky Mountains and beyond the surrounding peaks are not more clusters of suburbia but more mountains. Wilderness. 

So there I was, waiting to feel the weight of the New Year, waiting to feel profound, when I stumbled upon the bird of our nation, sitting in a tree twenty feet away from my head, looming as large as our overstuffed laundry basket. They look so fake, so "postal service icon" with their white heads and yellow feet. He swiveled his head to look at me and I felt silly and small in my hi-tech fabrics. But he was like: "here is some symbolism if you want, absorb it and let me get on with my life. There are some good mallards that frequent this stretch so if you wouldn't mind I'd like to get back to it."

I giggled. And guffawed. I stood awkwardly craning and saying hello. Then I ran away.

I figured that encounter counted for something. I had only to look up the symbolic meaning of bald eagles and I'd have my profound thoughts for the New Year. Today after recess duty, grocery shopping and other very unholiday-ish tasks I looked up bald eagle. Here ya have it:

Some Native American (plains tribes) refer to the eagle as an earthly incarnation of the great Thunderbird spirit. Legend further states that lightning bolts shoot from the eyes of the bald eagle, and with the beating of its expansive wings, rain is conjured from the skies.

Picture the power of the gods clapping like thunder with each flap of their wings. With each crack of thunder consider barriers and blockages in your life being shattered.

Not bad.