Holiday Treasures and a Family-Infused New Year!

Part of our New Year's Eve involved packing up the holiday decorations. As we only had a very small artificial tree this year due to location, I had to be highly selective about which decorations I brought. I didn't go for fancy or beautiful or the most expensive, I chose the photo ornaments the kids painted each year when they were little and the ones they selected each year that hold memories (like the monkey ornament that's missing a foot because my youngest, who selected it while shopping at Cost Plus Market, thought the foot of said monkey tasted great!). 

I also brought the Star of David tree topper that I made out of cardboard, tinfoil, a chopstick and some ribbon the first year in our new home to honor my traditions and as well as my husband's. It was meant to be a temporary fix until we could find or make a better one, but now, 18 years later, we tenderly keep this homemade tree topper alive for another year...and hopefully another after that. When I asked my boys if we should bring the tree topper this year due to its fragile state, they exclaimed, "Of course!" As if the idea of NOT having it was blasphemy! This is how ordinary stuff becomes treasure. And the treasures are the only things that made the journey with us this year. 

Our year abroad taught us a lot about treasures and meaning and the insignificance of stuff. I'm deeply grateful on this New Year's morning for the lessons we gained that year and which continue to inform our family life. Spending NYE last night with our boys, talking, reflecting, and collectively as well as personally looking to our new year, set my heart and my family on firm ground for this new year. I'm not sure we would have done it, nor that our teenagers would have complied if not for the year we spent somewhat trapped together and learning that organic and forced family time nourishes all our souls. 

May the new year bring your family nourishing time together as well as nourishing time for each individual independently. At least for me, the two feed one another and make the other richer as a result of the pairing. And may you find and make treasures--from stuff embedded with meaning and treasured moments captured in memories forever. 

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Happy New Year! 

Kids, Parents, and Too Many Holiday Presents

It didn't take us long to realize we had a problem. Our first holiday season as parents was an initiation into overwhelm! My husband and I each have divorced and remarried parents. That means between us we have given our children eight grandparents and nine aunts and uncles (premarriage)! Our first born was the first grandchild in the family. To add extra complexity, my husband's family celebrates Hanukkah and Christmas, while mine celebrates Christmas and Solstice. This equals two major gift giving holidays, multiple celebrations, and extended family that numbers over twenty! 

Through that first overwhelming holiday season, we learned valuable lessons. Here are some pointers we gained from experience.

1. Start Young. This is the most important advice I can give you. Decide when your kids are still young--like preverbal young--how you would like to navigate the expectations around receiving gifts. As one of my parenting mentors told me many years ago, "What kids get they come to expect." You get to decide what they get and in doing so, you also determine what your kids come to expect. Make decisions mindfully and thoughtfully or you will find yourself scratching your head when your kids are older wondering how come they expect SO much stuff! After our huge first year, we established that on Christmas our kids would get one gift from Santa, a single gift from my husband and me, and a stocking. Our sons (who are now 14 and 16) still expect this, and only this, on Christmas morning.
2. Organize extended family with the power of the wish list. After we learned that extended family loves to shower the grandkids with goodies, we started being proactive and strategic with our wish list. We knew we were lucky to have so many generous adults wanting to make the holidays special for our kids and excess was rampant. We started saying things like this: "Thank you for wanting to give our kids such beautiful gifts. This year we could really use your help with..." One year, we decided to build a play structure in our yard and asked the extended family to gift the boys with components of the structure. One family member gave the slide, another the climbing wall grips, another the swings, another the play steering wheel and telescope, and another the monkey bars. The play yard was epic! The kids loved it, had gifts to open from each grandparent, the boys were excited by the entire building process that ensued soon after the holidays, and played on this holiday gift for years (my 16 year old was "hanging out" on the swings with a friend last week).
3. Simplify and Be Creative. With multiple holidays to celebrate, we had to simplify and be creative or go completely mad! We decided that Hanukkah would be the festival of lights AND books. Each night of Hanukkah, our boys would get a new book. The night we would celebrate with my husband's family, they would select the book and give it to our kids. This not only helped to minimize the over abundance of plastic toys, it built the kids' library and kept it fresh year to year. As a side bonus of this gift-giving ritual, our boys are avid readers who love books.
4. Think beyond the store-bought gift. The year we lived internationally, we had to think far outside the gift-giving box. We were living out of suitcases and spent Christmas in a hotel room in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Gifts had to be practical and portable. My husband and I filled the kids’ stockings that year with coupons. They included such options as “pick the restaurant,” “pick the movie,” and “one hour of extra screen time.” Our boys treasured these coupons of power and used them judiciously. 
5. Practice saying "no." Yes, you can say no and the holidays are a great time to do so! You can say no to plans as well as to your kids' wants. Their wish list might be long or contain something big, but you can always say no. As a parent of two teens, I have a garage littered with reminders of times I wish I had said no. I wish I knew then what I know now. 
6. Role model the value of meaningful experiences beyond gifts. Holidays are not just about gifts. For kids to learn this they have to SEE us actively engaging in OTHER things with at least as much vigor and attachment as we demonstrate around gift-giving. For the last decade, our family has participated in a charitable event on the morning of Christmas Eve. It is an important ritual that reminds us of our good fortune while also helping others.
7. Make holiday traditions meaningful and memorable. Creating (or continuing) family traditions can go a long way in solidifying holiday memories and meaning. For our family, traditions and the absolute adherence to those traditions, have become more important to our teens than to us! For our boys, Christmas Eve IS going to my parent's home, eating raclette (don't ask), and playing charades. For them, Hanukkah is lighting the candles and eating
   
   latkes (OK...Hanukkah has also become the "book" holiday, but we did the best we could!). Thanksgiving is about sharing our gratitude, one by one around the table, creating and putting on a play in front of the fire after dinner with the other "kids" (the plays have changed over the years as the kids have grown, but the tradition is unchanged). I am certain when my kids are older, their memories of the holidays will be about these aspects. Rarely, if ever, will their memories be about the material gifts they received.

These are a few of the ideas we've incorporated into our family life with relative ease and joy. It hasn’t always been possible to maintain traditions to perfection, but we have done the best we can—going as far as finding raclette on Christmas Eve the year we were in Vietnam. We missed our family, but I can guarantee memories were made!

The holiday season can be a truly overwhelming time for parents and kids alike. 

What do you do to minimize holiday gift overwhelm and maximize meaningful connection during the holidays with your family? 

Things Don't Always Go as Planned

For the last three months I have been eagerly awaiting June 4th, the day I would get to welcome a group of birth worker sisters to my workshop space and home for a sisterhood retreat and sleepover. Together and individually we prepared for our time together: gathered necessary items, planned our time, prepared the space, bought and prepared nourishing and less nourishing food items to help us get through and celebrate this time together, made plans with our families for our time away from them, and journeyed from our homes to the location where this much anticipated event would occur. We gathered together in Topanga Canyon on Saturday morning with smiles and excited anticipation of our time together.

Everything was in place, just as we expected. Well, almost.

We got a note a week or so before our event from one of our sisters letting us know that she could no longer join us due to a health issue. Then another emailed the night before that she too could not join us as it just wouldn't work with her new family and another mama couldn't swing it along with a recent move and recovery from having sick kids. The morning of our special weekend, another mama emailed she just couldn't do it with everything else happening in her life. From 13, we were down to 9.

The 9 of us there, gathered, joined together, dropped in, and readied ourselves for our much anticipated retreat. Collectively, we created an altar and shared our intentions, moved our bodies, grounded on the land, and embraced the energy of sisterhood. This was going to be just as we intended! AMAZING!

Our collectively created schedule of events included movement, rebozo work, discussion/exploration of archetypes, fire circle ritual and singing, belly binding, and an overview of my dissertation (per request of the group). These were our scheduled modules. We also had many open times for swimming, talking, eating and the chance to share a glass of wine together in person rather than via social media, the thought of which inspired the weekend to begin with! You might say, we had a two page, carefully constructed, birth plan for our weekend.

And, as is often the case, the Universe had other plans.

At about 4:30 on Saturday, in the midst of our discussion about archetypes, my neighbor burst into our space with the announcement that there was a fire.

Did I mention we were in Topanga?

We stepped outside the bubble of our workshop womb to see a large billow of smoke rising across the ridge in front of us. Living in a dry chaparral environment known for its flammability, fire is both familiar and terrifying.

And did I mention we were a group of BIRTH workers gathered together for this event...women both skilled and experienced in managing high stress situations with unpredictable outcomes?

Yeah. That's who walked out and faced this unwished for addition to our highly anticipated birth...I mean retreat.

The next hour was spent educating ourselves on the severity of this unwished for situation. What do we know? Where is it? What are the current concerns? What if we wait an hour? Are there other things we could try first? How are we feeling about this situation? What does my/our intuition say to do or not do?

Knowing what I know about fire, Topanga, and emergency services and access to information in times such as these, I tag-teamed my phone and computer, put on the TV and gathered my neighbors who had lost internet access when the fire began (they have a different service provider than I do). We set up command central in my living room and waited.

The birth workers also waited, as they are so good at doing. They went on with the afternoon knowing at any moment the next best thing to do might be to pack up and leave, but for now, we did not need to pull the plug entirely, rather simply adjust. Like in birth, time would give us more information and more experience with which to guide our next move.

Like we often have to do in labor, I gave myself a comfortable boundary within which to relax and wait: if any area in Topanga was put on mandatory evacuation orders or my area was given voluntary evacuation orders, we would call the retreat complete. No one wanted to. We had done so MUCH to get HERE to this moment. Our dreams and expectations were grand! In none of them did a major fire event enter the fantasy.

Time passed. The retreat group swam in the pool and enjoyed each other's company, with their stuff packed in case it became time to go. I stayed active in my living room command center. The moment came. A few fire zones near mine were ordered to evacuate.

I pulled the plug.

It was no longer time to wait or to look for alternatives. The time had come for greater action. As the sun began to set, we closed our retreat, not with the ceremony planned for the next day, but with a certain amount of haste and motion. We gathered for a group photo on the deck overlooking the smoke plume and said goodbye.

We had to walk our talk. We had to practice doing the next best thing. We had to walk our labyrinth of excitement turned disappointment not as a metaphor, but as real life. Yes, it was "just" a retreat, but the excitement and disappointment was no less real. We got to practice holding both emotions tenderly within our hands and hearts.

The doulas left and my shit got very very real. The letting go intensified as I went around my home looking for things I couldn't live without...treasures, photos, heirlooms and what I could leave to potentially burn...what to hold onto and what to release, even reluctantly.

Ash from the fire on the back windshield of my car. 

I had to help my teenage sons do the same. Boys who have lived in the same place their entire lives, young men who have gathered treasures and crap that now fills their shelves and some of which touches their hearts deeply. They too had to decided what to take and what to leave with the possibility, albeit unlikely but felt no less real, of never seeing any of it again.
My husband came home and we loaded our cars with boxes of photos we've been meaning to digitize for the last several years and other important items. Left behind were some surprises: my doll collection from my childhood, my box of high school mementos, my wedding dress. It was an exercise in forced clarity.

As we drove away after our Topanga zone was put on "voluntary evacuation" orders (a decision we made to role model being conservative in terms of safety and to support our emergency responders in making a tough situation as easy as possible for them). We had everything that mattered...our pets, our photos, a few special treasures, some heirlooms, and each other.

Oh, and at the last minute, my son grabbed a few chocolate bars left by my birth worker sisters intended for our retreat, and now soul food for retreating evacuees.

Things don't always go as expected. We plan, we prepare, we organize, we ready ourselves and others for the big event. AND then, we have to let go, practice being with what is, showing up for the moment, surrendering what needs to be surrendered, doing the next best thing, mourning the loss of what we had held with such excitement, and gathering clarity about what really matters.

The Alchemical Shift from Stuff to Treasure

Tonight, I'm so tired. I'm tired of living out of boxes. I'm tired of the smell of the guest house when there are four of us living back here with our dog and all our crap (both in boxes and oozing from them) where little bits of food can easily hide and worse, rot. My own home feels dirtier than almost anywhere we stayed in the developed or developing world!

I've been down right calm about this whole thing with minor breakthroughs of freak-out, but mostly flowing with the boxes, lack of cooking surfaces, dirt, chaos and mayhem. If you had told me a month ago that three weeks after returning state-side I'd be living among my boxes, sleeping on mattresses on the floor in our guest house AND that I'd be relatively OK with it, I'd have thought you were nuts. What's happening instead is that I'm the one going nuts!

It's strange actually as it is the returning back to "normal" that is the most unnerving. Today began the first full week back to school for the boys. I went to yoga, grabbed a few groceries so I have food items that could be made into lunches, and returned home. That was the problem moment. I came home. I walked into my room of stuff and I sank. I did what I use to do when I would return from a morning like I had today and I sat at my desk.

But what then? What do I do at my desk? I use to sit at my desk and respond to emails before diving into graduate school work. Yes, I have my dissertation still in front of me taunting me to begin...to dive in and join my classmates in the work most of them are already a year into at this point. But who am I kidding? I can't start writing or even taking notes for my dissertation in the kind of clutter that is surrounding my desk and my life.

Writing didn't even enter my mind today as a possibility. Instead I answered some emails and puttered on the computer before turning to the mountain of boxes and with a heavy sigh, opened one.

Yesterday and today I attempted to tackle "books." Books seemed like a good place to enter the mound. It seemed like a manageable segment of our stuff and one that I could easily purge heaps. I started off strong. I entered the cookbooks and cut about a third of those. Coffee table books too were sliced. Then, I opened the kids' books. Sound of tires screeching! I purged lots, but when you purge lots from mountains you still end up with mountains, just smaller ones. We have sooooo many books.

A part of me wishes I had no attachment to any of the books I went through today. That way I could just pack them up and cart them off to the library or charity and happily donate the lot of them. But instead, each box held treasures. Almost every night for nearly 13 years (minus the first few months or so) one of us would read stories to the boys at bed time. Most of the books left in the boxes are well loved, cherished and some I can recite by heart. These books mark moments in our lives with our boys. Odd Velvet, Mama Do You Love Me, Monster Mama, Cow on the Roof, Frannie B. Kranny, and of course, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day...to name but a few, all are part of our story--our family story. They make me laugh, smile and a few can choke me up.

We no longer read those books to the boys. Now they like series. Not so much KK, but Ru still loves to be read to before bed even though he's blasting through books on his own reading over 50 books during our year away. Thankfully, he gets that being read to is different, special. Brent and I sometimes have to wrestle to see who gets to read to the boys. Right now, Ru and Brent are near the end of a three book series and I haven't had a single night of reading since they started. Looks like I'll be needing to find a new series as I might get a turn soon.

But this doesn't help with the multitude of storybooks we've collected and that have collected us. What do I do with them? We're tangled up together, these books, our boys and I. It's true our boys are getting older and their need for these books is or maybe already has shifted. It took me years to get rid of their favorite board books as I saved those in case my niece or nephew were around and needed a favorite story. Jamberry still floats rhythmically in my mind as soon as I mention board books..."One berry, two berry, pick me a blueberry..." If how long it took to part with those is any indication, I'll maybe purge the remaining storybooks when my kids leave for college.

And, maybe not. I still have a few books from my childhood that I've been able to share with my kids and as memory links for me to my own childhood. Yes, this is exactly the part of what makes my "pack-rat" tendencies thrive and it is also what helps create heritage. We don't have a lot of connection to things that last or that come from those before. New is best, but what makes something live is to use it.

My niece with some of my dolls that are now hers

I still have a box of Madame Alexander Dolls (the 8 inch ones representing different countries and stories). Like the books, I can't seem to let them go. I played with them, hard. They are collectors dolls, but not ones anyone would ever want. To the outsider, my dolls are in bad shape. I dressed and undressed, moved their arms and legs, gave them names, families and frequently took them on wagon trains to far off lands in our living room...one year we even decorated the Christmas tree with them. Now, the glue that holds their hair in place is gone, the elastic in their bodies connecting to their limbs is old and very few shoes are left in the whole lot! But these dolls and my sister's dolls are precious because they lived rather than stayed perfect on a glass shelf or their box. Just like my treasured books, I can't let them go. When loving energy has been spent and memories woven into the molecules of the dress or page the item becomes elevated from thing to treasure.

What then...Someday treasures will either lose their power, or the space in our home will no longer allow them to be saved, or a niece or nephew will come along and need that very doll or that exact storybook. Then they are passed, the legacy and heritage is handed on. Something about that form of purging feels better than OK, it feels right. When I pass on a treasure to another in my line they are not just getting a book or a doll, they are being handed a link to their ancestry, our shared ancestry. Perhaps it is through the sharing of treasures that I feel my stories continue to live...my dolls will find joy in being played with once again and the words flowing off the pages of favorite books will further sew families together as they have stitched together the bedtimes and hearts of ours.

It is a hope or perhaps just a delusion that enables my tendencies to "keep" when toss, give away or gift would be far more productive at creating space. I am choosing to be judicious. I will not make space simply to make space, especially if the cost in doing so takes a seam ripper to the fabric of some of my most precious of memories. At some point the threads will fade on their own, but until then, treasures will remain.

We might get back into our house tomorrow...or maybe Wednesday...or...

Soon all of the treasures will need to find a more permanent home. And the stuff will need to be further sorted as only treasures will be joining us on the other side of the yard. If I think about it too much, it's a daunting task. Today, I managed a box or two. That was it. That was all I could do when faced with familiar routine and out of control environment.

The ground is still rocking, shifting, settling. And it's time to go to bed.

Nomads and Memories

The strange truth of our re-entry so far is we are living all in one room not all that unlike how we lived much of our time away. Our home currently is a one-room, yoga-studio, guest house that has many boxes and a few crammed beds. The boys' bunkbed is at the foot of the one we're sleeping in and the close proximity does nothing for intimacy and everything for what my heart needs right now, family closeness. Meanwhile, across the yard sanding is deep in process and the familiarity is being adjusted. Even our house is getting a facelift as this year away did for our psyches. 

But, I am attempting to still get through boxes, opening, purging, dumping, sorting, tossing and keeping the treasures. Each box is a surprise, sometimes joyous and others a bit of a drag. Today, I opened two boxes sent from our travels back home for us to find, like I did today, and remember.

I loved opening the one from Vietnam as I couldn't remember a single thing we sent home from that location as Brent ran down to the post office just before we headed to the airport and therefore was a bit of a whirlwind in my memory. Such surprises awaited me! Inside were mementos from what was quite likely the very best, simplest Christmas ever.  There was the fabric we used to make our "tree" and the paper ornaments that I found in a small shop that I adored. They were worse for wear as the reindeer had lost its antlers and Santa needs some foot surgery, but the memories were totally intact, no glue gun needed for those! With a smile on my face, I packed them up in a box all their own and relocated the box to the garage with the rest of what is clearly labeled "Christmas." I look forward to having a rush of joy when, in early December, I find that box again when we begin to deck our halls for another celebratory season.

I also unpacked the large box from India. You have to understand, I have a certain set of problems with India. I love it, adore it, and shopping there is a magical journey unequaled in any other part of the world I have yet to experience (and I have experienced a LOT of other shopping meccas). I go a bit nuts. It might even be a bit of a psychological break as I buy things with glitter and sparkle, unlike anything I ever wear at home. My inner princess gets so happy and she must have been in charge of the rupees this trip as what I found when I opened that box was a hoot!

I had remembered the numerous saris I bought hoping to use them in my house for curtains, pillows and who knows what else. This is what I'm going to use them for and I'm excited to have some of India touching all around my home. But what else was in that box? Well, apparently, I like scarves. And ninja pants. And glittery bracelets and hair clips. And some ready-made top/bottom Indian-style outfits I wore everyday while there. And several fun tailored items I'd forgotten about that will be such joy to wear. And several tailored disasters likely never to see the light of day! 

Regardless, the boxes of travel trinkets have already served their purpose...they have connected me with memories of joy, connection, and play. I had worried that buying stuff along the way would just be a burden...we'd have to figure out how to ship it home which could get expensive, would we even want what we fell in love with while away, and might it just be more STUFF? This time, I have to say that the resounding answer to those questions is I'm glad we brought some of the trip home with us. Bringing it home helps us to bring it home. These little treasures are reminders of who we are and who we have been and become. I'm grateful to have them.

So if you see me wearing some strange outfit, just smile along with me and know that perhaps on that particular day, I needed to wear a different skin on the outside to match the one underneath, one that was made for me by a tailor in India attempting to do what I can hardly do myself...figuring out exactly what I want and how to make it all fit just right.