Black and White and Sad All Over

It seems to me that there are many people for whom the world is black and white. Everything they think about can be divided neatly into bins: good or bad, like or hate, agree or disagree. They go along, not really worrying about much, because anything new they hear can be easily sorted away. If they ever need to tell someone what they think of a certain topic, they rifle through the bins, find it, and say exactly what they've decided on the matter without hesitation or deliberation. And so certain are they of the conclusion they have made and the facts or thoughts that allowed them to arrive at that conclusion, that even in the face of other facts or another side of the story, they will not change their minds. Each topic must remain in the bin in which it was originally placed.

Sometimes I am so envious of those people. Life must be so easy for those people.

Instead of having the neatly ordered and labeled bins, I feel like I have maybe only two bins. I have the bin where I keep the few things about which I do feel certain (or at least certain enough to keep in the certainty bin). And then I have another bin. The bin for everything-else.

All the stuff in my everything-else bin is all jumbled together. When one of the everything-else topics comes up, I pull out my thoughts on the matter and hold it up to see what conclusion or near-conclusion I came to the last time I considered it. Then I take the new information I'm getting about the topic, along with whatever I might have inadvertently gleaned about it while thinking of other related topics, and I add that all together to see what I think now.

I think that some would argue that it is prudent to be willing to re-examine my thoughts on a matter when presented with new facts or ideas about it. But I find it to be crazy-exhausting sometimes. And if a topic is especially concerning to me, I like to put it out there and get the thoughts of others on it.

The problem with this is that it often draws criticism from the people with all the neat bins. The neat bin people seem to think there is only one "right" way to think on the topic and wonder how I could possibly not see it the same way they do. Of course, trying to present the new facts or ideas about it that I have discovered does not help matters. In fact, it often makes it worse. If they reject the facts or ideas as some kind of bias or propaganda, we really can't have a dialogue. We are on two different pages and using a completely different sorting system.

It's not that it bothers me when people don't agree with what I think. It bothers me when our sorting systems prevent us from being able to have a civilized discussion. It bothers me that I can't always explain what I think about something because my thoughts about it are changing as I speak. And, even though I sometimes wish for everything in my head to be easy and neatly sorted, in a way it makes me sad that some people refuse to ever re-think their conclusions and re-sort their bins. Maybe neither system is ideal, but I guess that when I think about it I'll just learn to live with my messy-yet-often-revisited everything-else bin. At least, that's what I've decided about it for now.

There's No Day Better Than Today

"tomorrow you will know there’s no day better than today
we don’t see how lucky these days are til they go away
til these days go away"
- Ingrid Michaelson
(If it will work, you should go here and click "play" and try to listen to the entire song. It's the only place I could find it.)


"I will shoot you with my massive lasers." - Owen


"O-WEN!" - Luke (About 80 times a day.)


"Mom! The baby learned to fly!" Owen (Don't worry. It was a Hero Factory baby.)


"When I grow up, I'm going to drive a Mustang. A green one." - Luke


"Look at my cool outsuit." - Owen
"Owen, it's 'outfit,' not outsuit." - Luke


"Oh. Yeah. I love to play basketball and I'm really good at it." - Owen
"Really? Can you dunk?" - Luke
"What's a dunk?" - Owen


"Why is it called 'Lady and the Tramp'? Does it have a tramp?" - Luke
"Um, what's a tramp?" - Owen
"I don't know. Mom? What's a tramp?" - Luke


"When I grow up, I'm going to be an architect." - Luke
"Yeah, and when I grow up, I'm going to be a storm chaser." - Owen


These are just a few of the things I've heard my kids say over the past weekends we've been trapped together. The one-car thing is still a huge pain and I think that by the time Sunday afternoon rolls around the boys and I are starting to go a little stir-crazy. It's a lot of togetherness with almost no breaks or distractions. For all of us.

There are times when they get really loud and fight with each other and it is all I can do to not go crazy. There are times I feel like I've reminded them a billion times in one day to use their manners or pick something up or follow the house rules and I end up yelling and feeling like a total mom-failure. But there are other times, when I'm sitting between them on the couch, reading while they watch one of their shows and they are all snuggled up to me, that it's not so bad at all. And the other day we were blasting "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz and dancing around all silly and I actually thought that maybe I don't suck at this whole mom thing as much as I thought.

But when I think of those rare, almost magical mom-kid moments, I can't help but wondering what life will be like in 10 years. Will they totally despise being around me when they are sixteen and almost fifteen? Will they shut me out completely to the point that I feel like I don't even know them? When I think about that, it makes the times when we are stuck at home together, but having so much fun, seem even more valuable. Just thinking there will be a day when they not only don't need me, but don't want me around either, makes me want to capture these times and make sure I never forget them so I always have them to look back on.

I know I've said it before that I am not one of those parents who wants to keep my kids little and hates the thought of them growing up. I love seeing the new things they learn and the new stages they reach. It isn't about wanting to freeze time or not wanting to embrace the future. I certainly hope there are better days ahead than a lot of the days I've had lately, but at the risk of sounding ridiculously sappy (especially for die-hard realist who rolls her eyes at anything overly optimistic), I think what this song reminded me is about noticing the good and the love in some of these "todays." Not taking the good times for granted. I don't know if tomorrow will be better or worse. I need to capture whatever I like about today and remember how lucky it is when there is anything good.

Glass Work and Questioning God

I'm not entirely sure of what happened to me between the time that I graduated college and the past few years. As I mentioned previously, after I graduated, I tried to avoid politics, or even difficult/controversial topics. I guess I got so caught up in working and starting a family that I went on auto-pilot and just held to a vague framework of the beliefs I'd been raised with. I have felt like it is only within the past two or three years that I really began to question my own views and sort out what needed to stay and what needed to go.

Yet, the other night while we were cleaning up the basement, I came across some old college papers I'd written. Many were for policy classes or other requirements for my Political Science major, but one was from my art elective -- Studio Experience in Glass. I actually gained very basic experience in glass blowing, which was absolutely amazing for a totally non-artistic person like me. I loved it and wish I could find a local glass studio to do it again. Anyway, why we even had to write papers for the class is a mystery, but we did. As I glanced over the essay I found, I kind of couldn't believe what I read. In my mind, I was pretty conservative -- personally, politically, and religiously -- in my college days. But take a look at this excerpt of the paper I found:

There are so many things of which I do not even pretend to have a vague understanding. My questions are at times disconcerting, yet I really want to find real answers or be left with my questions. I have reached the point in my faith where the religious cliches are not only inadequate, but they almost disgust me with the way they trivialize human suffering in the hands of an incomprehensible God.

It may seem like a contradiction to say that I believe in God and in miracles while having almost no understanding about either. I grew up in the church and I am very tired of expectations to know which Bible verses to quote when and for which answers. It seems to me that many churches perpetuate the idea that if everyone can be like the people on the stage, then our questions will melt away in the music and the prayers. However, I can't rid myself of the feeling that if I pretended to know the answers, I would really be pretending that my questions did not exist. To me, pretending that I have all the answers is much worse than clinging to unanswered questions.

I mean, what?? I don't know what the specific assignment was, I have no memory of writing that, and I was actually surprised at how similar that me was to the current me. I have no idea how I seemed to lose that for a bit, but maybe that is why the way I feel now seems SO right. The questioning, the not-conforming, the unintentionally inviting criticism.... It's not new. It's just me. I'm not perfect. I don't have all the answers. In fact, I have far more questions than answers. But this is is the real me. Take it or leave it.

Happy 2012

We had a good Christmas.  Not our best, but pretty good.  The boys were sick, so we were all very tired and a little grumpy, but I am thankful we were able to celebrate together.  I know holidays can be stressful and that we sometimes aren't able to celebrate the way we would want, but I hope everyone had some good times and made some good memories and got at least one gift that was pretty great (or that you got gift receipts or gift cards and can end up with something pretty great).

2011 was kind of a strange year. I'm not going to do a recap of it, nor am I going to outline all my hopes and dreams for 2012.  I think I'll just try to leave it as it was and take the next it as it comes.  It would be great if there were less war, less hate, less discord, less hunger, and less sadness and if there were more peace, more respect, more love, more generosity, more opportunity, and more compassion.  For the most part, these seem to be pipe dreams, but I hope we will all do what we can to discourage the former things and contribute to the latter.

That said, I'll wish everyone a wonderful New Year's Eve with people you care about and a very happy and prosperous New Year!

Tinsel

Although Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, I have always loved Christmas.  Not just the presents, but the decorations and the music and the lights and the traditions.  All of it.  I loved getting to stay up late when I was little to watch Christmas movies.  I loved candlelight service at church, when I got to hold a real, lit candle.  I loved playing with my sisters and moving around the figurines of the old nativity set my parents had.  I loved lying on the floor under the Christmas tree and looking up at the lights and the ornaments.  And, of course, I loved the anticipation of Christmas morning.

Wednesday we had a family movie night and watched Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer.  When the song "Silver and Gold" came on, Ryan asked me if we ever put tinsel on our tree growing up.  My parents never had tinsel, but it reminded me of a memory I hadn't thought about in a long time: trimming the tree with my sisters at our grandparents' house.

We spent a lot of time at their house growing up, as my mother often helped my grandpa (or "Pap" as all the grand-kids called him) care for my grandma. Even when Mom wasn't there helping, my sisters and I slept over regularly, sharing the pull-out bed of the hideous orange and yellow floral sofa.  We would wear Pap's t-shirts as nightgowns and he would sing to us old hymns like "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder" and "Old Rugged Cross" as he tucked us in.

It was always fun to stay over, but we especially looked forward to December when we got to help decorate their tree.  We would follow him down the narrow steps to the basement, and help gather the pieces of the world's first artificial tree to drag back up the stairs.  Okay, so it wasn't the actual first artificial tree, but probably close to it.  It smelled a little musty from its home in the basement and you could see the twisted, metal wire of the pieces showing between the matted "needles."  Once assembled, it had a strange, alien quality, with the unwieldy branches curling up at strange angles.

None of that mattered to us.  We loved digging through the ornament boxes and hanging up the strange shaped glass Santa faces or birds with colorful feathers.  Best of all, we were allowed to put colored lights on it.  But not just colored lights.  The ones that blinked!  It was only white lights and sentimental ornaments at our house, so this was quite a treat.  And they let us use tinsel.  I think more of it probably ended up on the floor and in our hair and static-clinging to our clothes than where it actually belonged, but we loved playing with it and adding it to the tree.  How pretty it looked reflecting the colored lights!

Regardless of how tacky this all seems to me as I'm writing it, in my mind's eye I can still see how beautiful and magical it was to us at the time.  I loved driving up to their house and seeing that tree blinking in the front window.  I'm sure we loved rearranging the ornaments every time we went over.  But my favorite part was snuggling up on the couch bed with my sisters and falling asleep in that tree's beautiful glow.

Merry Christmas everyone.  I hope your celebrations are full of love and laughter and cherished memories.

At Least

I am not one of those über-positive people.  I am a realist.  I'm not always trying to look on the bright side, nor do I think it is necessary to try in vain to find a silver lining in a situation that, quite frankly, sucks.  Sometimes things are crappy.  That is part of life.  I think that acknowledging this fact can help us appreciate the truly great things in life.  There are wonderful experiences out there.  I don't think we need to cheapen them by pretending that bad things are actually good.  Just let things be what they are and try to deal with them in the best way you can.

I also don't think it is very helpful to try to make oneself feel better by comparing situations with those even less fortunate or going through an even worse situation.  I know I've blogged about that before, but today I think it's worth repeating.  The people I know who are in really bad situations or who are going through a really tough time?  I feel terrible for them and would give almost anything to make things better for them.  I'm not going to try to use their pain to make myself feel better.  That is just sad.

Why all this rambling?  Well, today we officially became a one car family.  The eleven-year-old car we've used as our commuter car has finally broken down to the point that we cannot justify sinking any more money into it.  We've put about $1000 into it in the past six months, $600 of that this week.  The shop put in the new fuel pump and all the stuff attached to the new fuel pump, started it up, and the head gasket blew.  SUCK.

We cannot afford to buy a new car this month or even next month.  Sadly we are not one of those families who has $30k stashed away to just go out and get another car.  So, the boys and I are going to be pretty much stranded at home for the next however many weekends, until we can come up with what we need to get another car.  Ryan needs our other vehicle for taking Owen to-and-from school Monday through Wednesday, I need to get to the office on Wednesday and Thursday, and Ryan has to drive to work Friday through Sunday.  Clearly we have some logistic issues to work out.

So, there you have it.  Frustrating week.  Bad news right before Christmas.  No, this is nothing like the worst thing that could happen.  I can think of at least four families I know personally who right at this moment are dealing with much worse.  But I'm not going to pretend this isn't a major frustration.  I'm not going to pretend we haven't been stressed about it or aren't hating that we are going to have to go to the shop and fork over $600 for a car that doesn't even run.  But you know what?  This is life. 

At least this didn't happen in the summer.  At least the weather over the next few months is going to be crap and I'm not going to want to take the boys anywhere on the weekend anyway.  At least I have family close enough who would be able to help me out if I really get into a major jam.  It's not a silver lining, but I'm a realist and you'll have to settle for an "at least."

Ms. Poli Sci

About a year and a half into my college career, I came home for Thanksgiving break and announced to my family that I was changing my major from English to Political Science. My parents seemed baffled by this, as I had never really shown an interest in politics outside of registering to vote. Now that I look back on it, I understand their bewilderment. But I was nineteen and not exactly loving college and wanted a change. Besides, my English classes were much less likable than the required American Government class I was taking at the time. Professor Paula Maras-Roberts made government and the study of how people interact with it seem like the most exciting thing in the world. I had a serious crush on Political Science and I'd be damned if I wasn't going to act on it. That's what you're supposed to do in college, right? Take risks and make moderately rash decisions?

I actually think it was a good choice for me. I did really end up liking my classes. The department was small, but had a wonderful staff. I was able to take several courses as one-on-one independent studies with the head of the department. We would meet once a week in his tiny corner office that was crammed with books and hash out all sorts of topics. However, the more I studied political science, the more I knew I didn't want anything to do with politics. After I graduated I got a job working on projects at an IT company and left my political science years behind me.

Yet lately I've been drawn more and more back to that realm. Not that I have a desire to leave my current job and take up politics, but just seeing what is happening in our country, how divided it is and how toxic the rhetoric has become, it makes me wish I could do something. I've started reading more political articles and trying to engage in conversations with people to encourage them to take a step back and see those they disagree with first as fellow human beings and Americans before they see them as the enemy. Let me tell you that my thoughts are often not met with open arms or minds.

I realize that having another person disagree with you can sometimes feel like a personal attack. It can seem that they are trying to invalidate your perspective or question your character. But why does it have to be that way? Why is it so difficult to engage in a conversation with another without resorting to personal attacks or name-calling? I recently had someone tell me that because I don't mind that the First Lady is trying to curb childhood obesity by encouraging more access to healthful food options, I'm setting the stage for liberals to take away our Bibles. What? And by no means are these extreme reactions exclusive to one side.

I really don't know what to do. The easiest thing would be to keep my opinions to myself, vote, and write an occasional letter to a senator. However, I have to believe there are more people out there who want us to respect each other and try to work together. I have to believe there are those who are willing to extend a proverbial olive branch, table the most divisive issues, and work to find any tiny speck of common ground on which to build something positive. I want to believe that if more people started insisting on respect over disgust, we could make some progress in that direction. Obviously what we're doing now isn't working.