Hands Full of Rocks

Fall means charity

So, around here (that is, in our family), autumn is charity time.

I don't know how much it is a reflection of culture (harvest is in!), or logistics (ack! Have to get the charitable contributions in for taxes!), or other stuff, but fall seems to be our biggest chunk of attention to the charitable work.

Sunday I was part of the UU Fellowship service, talking about practicing our principles. The principles of being present, being in community, and taking action, in combination are a big part of what it means to be a UU. They're also a big part of our family process, on both sides (after all, those values are common to many other religions, such as the Quakers, being the other side of the family).

So Baba and I got up in church and talked about how we do this. How do we get the kids involved, how do we make it light them up?

How did we get kids to choose to do extra chores to pay for their public-radio membership?

How did we get kids out in the dirt, digging up history or planting trees?

How do we get them to send money to a girl's school in Afghanistan, or donate to Doctors Without Borders?

How do we get them to get excited about donating food to the food bank?

How do we get them involved in the research project for (hopefully) inoculating amphibians against the fungus that is killing them around the world?

We only had two minutes to talk, so I tried to make it short - but that meant we didn't really get to explain HOW in detail. More 'what' than 'how'.

A little on the how, though - like staying aware and open for the possibilities. Listen for the question that you can let them answer from their values. Like for public radio, explaining what a pledge drive is, but not asking them too much, or telling them, or lecturing, or bossing - just discussing, and asking what they think. Funny how they will come up with the idea that if they're listening, maybe they should support it, too. My kids are therefore the youngest contributors to the public radio classical music station they've ever had.

In coffee hour after the service, though, we got more questions. HOW do we do this? How do we get kids to want to help?

Following the kids is the core of it, for us. We don't make them do it, even if we set them up to do it. If I'm going to donate food to the food bank, I plan it to have the kids available to come along. But that's the cheap-ass version of the process. The deeper level is watching for what upsets them, and finding a way to answer that anger or hurt or fear or sorrow.

So, when my mom's house addition meant that some beloved trees were going to be taken down, my mom didn't just assuage their sorrow or tell them to deal or otherwise just answer that part of the problem, she promptly contacted the Nature Conservancy and asked if there were any tree-planting events going on that needed volunteers. So the kids in honor of the trees lost went and planted trees in a place where those trees had been lost long ago - and would now get to grow back in a protected and safe place.

It answered the pain with action.

And there's also the chance to follow someone else's passion that isn't mom-and-dad's. Like, my sister - aunts and uncles and friends are part of this. My sister has many passions, and is an expert on charities (it's part of her job). She found the amphibian research project that needed a push - they really needed to hire a grant writer, and she talked to them about funding that. And the kids donated specifically to that. She's also into the non-profit archaeology group that we dig with - she set that up, and got us psyched, got us started, and ... well, the kids got to light up on someone else's cool.

And then we celebrate that - the events are documented with more care than we give birthdays and holidays. Certificates of thanks are framed and put on their bedroom wall (at Baba's house, where there is more wall space, but where they see what they've done often). We talk about it with others, in front of them, show the pride we have in their willingness to help. We embed it in conversation with them, as well.

The opportunities are endless. We choose differently each year, but the point is to choose. Start, find something that lights them up. Whether it is a 'do-good' thing (Doctors Without Borders) or a 'fight for change in the world' thing (a girl's school in Afghanistan) or an arts thing (volunteering at the Art Museum) - it doesn't matter.

Starting matters. Practicing being aware of the community matters. Being open to the opportunity to create change matters. Doing it as a family matters. We do it all year long, but the peak is really in the fall, when we gather as a family-extended, and think about gratitude as part of Thanksgiving, and send our gratitude back out into the communities in which we see ourselves - local, regional, global. 

Christmas is so commercialized at this point, it is hard to fight back without undercutting the fun. 'Tis the season becomes too complicated, fraught, confusing.

For us, this is the season of giving.

Tweaking Christmas

We're tweaking Christmas again this year.

Some things are completely worked out, and are now settling into a nice tradition.

Like, we know that Dad-and-Shelle's Christmas will be the week before or after the official day, on the weekend (or so), on a date mutually agreed by the majority of his kids - it maximizes the overlap of family. That one is a Pollyanna between the grandkids. The core of that one is that we get together, as many as possible.

We know also that we'll do first Christmas in the morning at our house (one gift from Santa, one from parents), second Christmas at Baba's (my mom's) for breakfast and stockings and gifts with that sibling set (of those local enough to attend, which includes some overlap). There, a heavy emphasis on gifts to leave at Baba's house for the kids to enjoy (since they spend so much time there).

And then there's third Christmas - in the afternoon at ep's parents' place, where there is again much family and a lot more of the gifts-to-take-home, though recently an emphasis on things that solve a real problem for someone, or feed into a craft or hobby. There's a lot of looking at sketches and waving hands and talking about materials, oohing over office supplies for the sib with his own business, and grandkids ranging from 4, to adult-and-home-from-Basic-Training being enormously silly with their cousins. Emphasis is on family helping out family, crossing energy from one to the other, interweaving ourselves more intentionally at this point.

So, that seems pretty much worked out. We've managed to work through the huge issues, like working out the whole swapping every year between who got Christmas eve and afternoon, and who got the (obviously more special) early morning. That was miserable - my mom does a formal breakfast, his family does dinner, every-other year we swapped the order, and therefore got neither breakfast nor dinner. I think we did that four times, all before we had kids. Not the most fun.

And we've got the message through about how to balance the gift-giving on all sides. Not so that my family balances with his, but that we all feel comfortable at each event with the amounts we and others give. This year it was quite clear that nobody wanted to overflow our house with more clutter (hint, having the grandparents come help with the house helps make clear how much the clutter damages our lives, rather than enhancing our lives). That makes the whole deal easier. The kids will get things they're interested in with minimum storage requirements - the emphasis on things like learning how to tie knots and make a fire with firewood and cook and build stuff is higher. We haven't had much issue with CPC (cheap-plastic-crap), ever, but even fabulous toys with parts end up drifting into heaps when there are too many of them (hence the toy library, which is unfortunately also now a heap, since I haven't been able to sort it out properly for months).

Actually, having kids made it easier to balance what we want to celebrate, and where. We wanted our own morning. Then it was 'mid-morning to early afternoon' vs 'afternoon to evening'. That was easier to work out, since one wasn't weighted to specialness and sleepy kids and all the joy of discovery.

But we still have some stuff to work out, tweak and tweak again to make it fit comfortably. It's only been 11 years of tweaking.

Now, I know we're extraordinarily lucky that we have all our parents nearby. Maximum distance is about 45 minutes, and my mom is a mile away. It does make it hard to figure out where to spend the time, and when, and there's more expectation that we will spend it. Bonus, we enjoy our various local relatives, even if there are frictions at times. We work it out. 

So, it looks like one more of the minor issues is settling into a standard pattern. Our tree goes up Christmas eve eve (second day before Christmas). This is mainly because with all the family around, we're putting up my mom's tree, and my IL's tree, and the kids are decorating those, and then the time goes away to do it sooner. Since we (still) do live trees, we can't put it up at Thanksgiving and have it make it, so it ends up after everyone else's. We keep it up until at least Epiphany (edited, thanks GB) (Jan 6), and often the week after. So, that one is settling in. It's not my ideal, but it is an accommodation that works for the kids, the grandparents, and us, well enough to be fine. And it is what the kids are growing up with, so it feels normal to them.

But there's still the pesky Christmas Eve thing.

For a long time we alternated between the Quaker side (evening sing at the Friends Meeting) and my side ... that was initially going to the high Episcopal Christmas Eve service for the 'smells and bells' - insence and bell choir and candles and liturgy ... as much UU as we are on my side, my step-dad was Episcopalian in origin, and he tended to split time between the two churches, this time being one of them. I didn't even need to learn to love that service - I also love the Catholic services, and could place myself within their realm as a reverent guest and accept their blessing without any personal conflict, the same way I could do at a Buddhist temple in China. The Universalist in me, I suppose.

Anyway, we slowly drifted off from that due to the kids, among other issues (including ones to do with the direction of that particular church), and shifted focus to the Christmas Eve family traditions. My mom does a range of Eve things that are kid-friendly, and have kind of become kid-mandatory.

Hence the problem that needs tweaking. Last year, it was a rush to complete all the things lined up for the kids to do before we left to do the evening sing at the Quaker Meeting. It was Not Fun. Hurry, go put the apples in the wooden shoes for the reindeer, hang the stockings, now sit down and one of you read The Night Before Christmas, now pack up let's GO we're going to be late!

Er.

I don't think that's the Christmas Eve to remember.

Sigh.

So, more tweaking. We're in discussions now about what we want to do, and how we want to do it. The kids are old enough to join the conversation. Then it is scheduling it all. Like, today.

Discussing it will mean talking about what is fun, and what is important (like maintaining the Quaker connection), and where those fit, and how to make them work. Doing that without strong-arming anyone when there are six potential opinions is interesting.

But we know it doesn't have to be perfect this year. Celebrations evolve. They're responsive, not rigid. So what happens will shift, and settle, and shift again. If there's a major upheaval at some point (like a loss of a grandparent), we'll shift again, find more stable ground, carry with us the things that are most important of what remains undamaged, more able to see in the clear light of loss what is and is not essential.

Meanwhile there's still tree-up and decorating for us. We haven't the money (let alone space) to do what I really want to do, which is to have a forest of small trees - six of them, one for each - that we each decorate the way we choose out of our collection of ornaments. Right now we have settled to my theme and a kids theme, with the 'window tree' (an artificial tree designed to hang on a wall that we hang in the window) being for the kids, and the 'big tree' aiming for a tree that looks like it was decorated by Mother Nature, Winter form, in an expansive mood. Ice crystals and snowflakes and some birds, but fairly frosted with them.

Poor ep, he likes a more sparse tree... I grew up on Victorian Excess for Christmas decorating, he grew up with something much closer to Quaker simplicity. Hence me wanting six trees, equal size, so we can each express our sentiment and aesthetic purely and clearly, to share with the others and allow them to glimpse our individual Truth. Another of the Quaker expressions from me, though it crosses over with the Universalist again - each expressing their understanding of celebration fully, and the forest together being the collective vision, in both contrast and symphony.

Sigh. We'll tweak that one later, if we get the chance.

Thinking about marriage

Not mine, my kids'.

I know it is a bad idea to have specific fantasies about what my kids will do when they grow up. I have gradually moved away from the fantasies and dreams that came spontaneously any time any infant of mine showed a particular talent - Mr G is musical, maybe he'll be in a band! What if Mr B becomes a famous artist, and certainly Miss M could be a rocket scientist, and oh, yeah, Miss R definitely might be an investigative journalist. The pictures that are possible when they are infants and toddlers are much easier to imagine than as they get older and more complex.

Not to mention that they make it impossible for me to picture my choice being their choice as we go. They make their own way, I don't make it for them. Any time I slip and think otherwise, they put me back on my side of the line. Firmly. I don't make their path, I can only help them tread it. And the more I try to make them take a certain line, the more they'll just choose a further different one to avoid slipping into my zone too far.

My mom has said that she was acutely aware that she was raising us to live in a world that she would be able to glimpse but would never inhabit. Her world was formed of her experiences, her history, the events and culture and history that marked her development into an adult. Ours would necessarily be different, and she was going to have to raise us aiming for a future she couldn't imagine, and certainly couldn't predict.

I'm probably less intentional about that, but I do definitely consider the future a foreign country, that will be my childrens' native land. I will live there, but there will eventually be things that I cannot quite master with the fluency of a native, just as my mom cannot quite accommodate the constant information barrage of email - she's certainly competent at it, but in that 'I've learned' way, and not in the 'well, yeah, of course' way of the native.

Which brings me around to marriage, in a strange kind of way. I was reading over at BlogHer, and this post (regarding marriage) struck me. I recognize the position of the mom - marriage is an artifact of the patriachy, it should not be necessary to form a legal bond in order to have one's rights regarding a personal relationship respected, it's questionable whether we should encourage marriage through financial and other rewards outside the social and spiritual process of union, etc. The pure feminist position, traditional style. Isn't it strange to think of that as traditional feminism? Feminism has been around long enough to be called 'traditional' ... yeah, that would be a foreign country to my mom.

And I recognize the position of the daughter, too - this is my choice, and I have the freedom to make it, and the right to ask you to respect and honor it (which the author does, even though it pains her a bit, it is clearly a loving choice to respect her daughter's path). There's a degree of relaxation in the feminism I inhabit, of embracing the rules and regulations, provided they are not rigidly applied. My brand is more about opportunity and choice, of unloading the weights against, of balancing the paths. Choose - stay at home mom, or work outside the home, as suits you, as meets your needs, as reflects your core. Choose - marry, or cohabitate, as meets your needs, as well.

Maybe it is also the UU in me, that looks at all faiths and finds some good in each, and allows for each to choose their own way, knowing that it meets a need in that person to follow that path. Yes, at times I'll address the underlying need as a question - is there another way to meet that need that has a less problematic set of side-issues? It's the Prudent part of the process. But if the choice of marry or not, this religion or that, fits that person's Effective, Prudent, True, I will not rail against it - provided it also meets Safe Respectful Kind (which kind of nixes some of the more extreme religious positions that require taking action against others or intruding on their path without regard for their choices or needs).

After reading that blog post, I thought about my kids and marriage. I know I find marriage useful and valuable, and that the service of the wedding had some power to make me feel different after than before. But that would be true without the legal aspect, if all we had was the social and spiritual. I thought about my kids marrying into other faiths, or not at all, of cohabiting, of finding their partner early, or late, or repeatedly. Some images were definitely more comfortable than others. My personal comfort zone is 'repeat what I did'. Not that this is bad - heck, better that I like my life enough to want it for my kids. But I also know it won't necessarily suit them. They'll pick their own way. I have some bets on some general details - that Mr G will find his life partner when he's college age or later, in an organic method (that is, she'll just kind of occur in his life and he'll eventually notice), say. Or that Miss R will see the partner she wants, and move toward that intentionally, whenever it happens. That Mr B will be okay whether he finds a mate or not (having just revised his future plans from 'single with dogs and horses' to MAYBE married with two kids, at all of seven ...). That Miss M will have a quiet surface to her passion for whomever it is she falls for, but that her dedication will be fierce once earned.

But that's it for the imagining, at this point. Certainly I could be wrong about those as well. I'm prepared to be surprised, because I'm still picturing what life is like in a place I've never visited, with people I don't yet know - they haven't finished forming, so I only know who they used to be, off in that distant future.

Whatever they choose, I'll have my hopes for their happiness. And I am not too fretful about the patriarchy, the legality (unless they choose a same-sex partner, in which case I'm hoping that by then the rest of the world will have moved toward the greater sum of human happiness by opening the legal options there universally), or the theology. I'm going to trust their character, listen to their logic, and see how their paths unfold. And like that other blogger, I may wince a little if their world is too much unfamiliar, but I'll step up to the never-ending challenge of being Acceptant, Loving, and Faithful.

Expectations

So, the wedding was great.

I like weddings. Perhaps more so as a PK (preacher's kid). I've seen a reasonable number (I've even, strangely, been invited to weddings of people I don't know because of encounters at my mom's house while they were preparing for the wedding - I just roll with it). I've also seen a lot of the preparations in thought, and talked with my mom about the core versus periphery issues - core being 'license, bride, groom, witness, officiant' and periphery being everything from the rings to the dress to the location to the food - everything else is gravy.

There was loads of gravy at the wedding. Gorgeous settings, beautiful attire, tasteful and elegant rings, scads of attendants, lovely music, good readings, quite a solid and well-performed homily, the whole bit. Some hiccups that will make good telling, once the ouch goes away - the trees falling across the power lines to the inn and cutting off the music at the reception (rescued by some D-cell batteries and a boom box), the kids filching cake decorations from the back room in lieu of the gluten-free cupcakes that didn't arrive.

Lovely, entertaining, good time.

And the kids behaved spectacularly well. That's even with (or perhaps partly because of) my spectacularly high expectations for their behavior.

In research on parenting and child development, over and over three underlying aspects of parenting show up as key to the child's function: democratic family process, warmth, and high expectations. They're the core of the 'authoritative' parenting style, really. The very center and core. Before even the mentoring and modeling and other meta-parenting behaviors. In my sets of rules, they come out as Respectful (the democratic process being that each person is respected as a person with their own needs, mind, intentions, aspirations, and is accorded a voice and assistance in meeting those needs within the family structure), Loving (acting in a loving manner would I assume be 'warm'), and Faithful (trusting them to be able to achieve at a high level, meet a challenge, develop skills and abilities).

So, those expectations. I expected the kids to be respectful of the Church and the Priest, to attend to what was going on around them, to place the bride and grooms needs above their own preferences (though their needs would be addressed, their random preferences come second), to perform their tasks as practiced (or reasonably close to as practiced), and to (in all that) enjoy themselves, and (GASP) still BE themselves. In fact, the bride asked specifically that their personalities be allowed to show, because it was for themselves that they were asked to be attendants, not because they wanted attendants. They just wanted the kids, these kids, to be part of their wedding.

That's kind of a stratospheric set of expectations for an almost-11 year old, a 7 year old, and two almost-4 year olds. Almost insane levels of expectation there.

They hit the mark. Every one of them.

Even before the wedding, they were hitting the mark. Mr G had two options of sweater to wear with his kilt, one Irish fisherman's sweater type (gorgeous, but not quite matching his brother's cable vest), and the other a matching sweater vest. He loved the complex cables and stitches in the former. He thought about it for maybe three minutes before turning to me and saying that while he loves the heavier sweater, the vest would look more appropriate. And instead of returning the heavier sweater as I'd planned to do, could he have it instead as a birthday gift? (Abso-freakin-lutely, and a hug to go with!) He then assessed his shoes and asked if he could wear black dress shoes instead of his comfy and reasonably acceptable brown boots. Uh. Who are you, again? Someone grew up about four years in a couple weeks, I think.

Preparing for the wedding, I carefully made dresses that even Miss R would wear - and then a few days before the wedding, she screamed and cried and begged to not wear that dress. AHHHHHH! But the day of, she eagerly donned the thing, and spun, and danced, and ran about in it without a fuss. I had to adjust the shoulder straps twice, that's all. Barely a blip.

They walked slowly down the aisle, they genuflected as requested at the altar, they took their seats, they bowed their heads at the right places, they stood still, they watched the service, they were quiet (enough), and even though the girls were climby and rambunctious in their pew across with epeepunk, I couldn't hear them except for the occasionaly squeak of the pew as Miss M knee-walked down the length of it toward the photographer.

Okay, so Miss M also picked her nose dramatically during the vows, standing up in front of everyone. But it raised chuckles rather than ire, and she did stop when she saw me (er, frantically) waving her hand down.

And they were themselves beyond that - Miss R wore sparkly flip-flops as her shoes. Miss M wore tights with pink and purple and blue hearts all over them. She didn't drag her gigantic stuffed shark down the aisle with her, but she brought it to the church. Mr B wore his cowboy boots with his kilt. The boys both had their manes tied back into pony tails with ribbon - Mr B's was bright red, which was not at all one of the wedding colors (spiced chocolate, cream, and forest green). The girls climbed on the stone walls at the reception, and fed the ducks, and examined rocks in the dirt. The boys sat outside at the games table in the cool air and played their gift game of Piratology. There was no yelling, only minor whining maybe twice (when hungry), and loads of cuteness.

Very high expectations, met. Many people asked if they always behaved like that. It was hard to answer - yes, and no. At formal events where the expectations are very high, yes, they tend to meet those expectations. They've got practice - we go to Scottish balls regularly, and they know the rules differ from home/play/grandma's. So they're ready for that. It helps a lot that they have a clue on that part. They also have been to church (though almost as far from Catholic as you can get, being UU), and know that the service is to be respected. They attend, and focus, and recognize when they are not the center of the experience. They've been given the opportunity to experience that, over and over. So when it comes to this kind of thing, they have a distinct advantage over the typical child whose parents don't go to formal events with kids in tow.

Still, I think just having those expectations is part of the deal. Yes, there's practice, and yes, there's discussion and education, and yes, there's us parents working with the kids to get their needs met (me going off to try to find water for the thirsty kids while they are listening to the photographer and doing as she asked). But being willing to have faith that they are able, to trust them to rise to the occasion, that's no small part of it.

Reciprocally, their expectations were met - we watched for the gaps and tried to help them bridge them. We were there to help them succeed, to feed, observe, direct, do potty runs, solve problems (though Mr B was the one who suggested that the frosting pinecones might be a safe option for the sweets, even if I was the one who tracked down the cake-serving location to obtain them).

It works.

It was a lovely wedding.

Congratulations, T and K.