MyTurn/YourTurn: Easter Basket

YourTurn:  If you could have an Easter Basket made for you by anyone living, dead, or fictional… who would it be?

Answer in the comment section, or better yet answer in your own blog and just tell us to come visit you.

Change

“Change” has become the buzzword of this Presidential election season.  Candidates are trying to convince voters that they are the best agents of change.  Also, we’ve just completed January, a month where many of us resolved to change aspects of our own lives.

YourTurn:  Now that January’s over, how are you doing on any New Year’s resolutions you made?

Famous

I’ve never really wanted to be famous. (Well except maybe for that brief period of time when I wanted to be a pro wrestling manager for the WWF.) Even though I love being on stage and involved with theatre, I never had any plans to “make it big.” In fact, fame really bothers me. I don’t understand why regular people get obsessed with fame and support the “celebrity gossip industry.” Why can’t I watch a news broadcast without the mentions of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, or Lindsay Lohan? Whatever they’re up to, it’s never any good. There are millions of people making destructive choices like theirs every day, so why do we need to somehow glorify them? It’s ghoulish and represents the worst of our society.

This is not to say that I don’t want to be known. I enjoy living in a smallish town and knowing quite a bit of people just due to the fact that I’m a teacher. I probably like this because I’ve always admired the fact that my dad seems to know people everywhere he goes, and they’re always glad to see him. When I get a little smile or handshake in the grocery store, I guess it makes me feel a little bit more like him.

I heard a great poem this week, and its final lines capture my concept of fame:

I want to be famous to shuffling men

who smile while crossing streets,

sticky children in grocery lines,

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,

but because it never forgot what it could do.

The poem is “Famous” by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Does it surprise you, then, that one of my favorite movies is It’s a Wonderful Life? It’s so redeeming for me when the everyman George Bailey wins in the end, with all of the people he’s ever helped rallying to his rescue in his time of need. I guess that’s the kind of fame I’m hoping for. I hope that my life is making other people’s lives a little bit better, and that in the end I’m “famous” for that.

YourTurn:  What kind of “fame” are you working for in your life?  How do you hope others think of you now?  How do you want to be remembered?

(Disclaimer:  Sorry about the silly music at the end of the YouTube clip. It’s the only one I could find that started where I wanted it to start.) 

Charity

“Charity sees the need not the cause.”

German Proverb

This summer I attended a workshop for debate teachers.  One of the unintended consequences of this workshop is that I have this nagging sense that I should be doing something to help those in poverty.  This is because we spent a lot of time discussing this year’s high school debate topic: “The United States federal government should substantially increase its public health assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa.”

If you think for even just a little bit about the state of public health in some developing countries, the problems seem staggering. For example:

• Nearly 1 billion people live in substandard housing without clean water or adequate sanitation.

• 18 million children have already lost one or both parents to AIDS, 12 million of them are in Africa alone.

• Around the world, one person in seven goes to bed hungry each night.

• A child dies every 15 seconds from diseases related to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.

Of course, the list goes on and on.

It is easy to think about all of the reasons why these problems exist and blame the corrupt governments, military warlords, wasteful organizations that don’t use donations efficiently, etc.

Yet the problems are still there, and people still suffer.  I feel guilty because I don’t have a lot of extra money to throw at those problems, but if I did I believe that would be my “cause.”  Combating poverty and all of its related problems keeps popping up as a burden on my heart.

In researching the issue today, I came upon the Free Rice site.  From what I can gather, it’s legitimate.  I’ve played quite a bit this afternoon and have even added an image link over in my sidebar to remind myself (and hopefully you) to play a little bit from time to time.

I’m going to keep thinking, researching, and praying about what I can do regarding this issue.  If you have any suggestions for me, please share them.

YourTurn:  What issue or cause do you care most deeply about? 

Easy Morning

MyTurn:  I love a relaxing morning. I should have cherished them more on my pre-parenthood days.  In fact, if I could give one piece of advice to those expecting their first child, it would be:  sleep in and take it easy while you still can.  With my kids staying overnight with my parents, my wife and I have been able to enjoy a leisurely morning.  I’m set up with my laptop here in the living room, sprawled on the recliner watching political pundits predict New Hampshire and analyze Iowa.  I enjoyed a tasty breakfast of granola cereal, sexed up with some M&M’s.  Life is good.  I’m in my PJ’s and it’s almost noon.  Folks, I am a happy man.

YourTurn:  Describe how you should spend an ideal, relaxing couple of hours. 

MyTurn/YourTurn: Theme Song

MyTurn:  “Sing it again!”  My son, Eli, requests music as he runs quickly from the kitchen to the family room and back again. “Sing it for me!”

My daughter, Eva, obliges for about the sixth time:

Spiderman, Spiderman
Does whatever a spider can
Spins a web, any size
Catches thieves just like flies

As he gets to the refrigterator Eli/Spiderman stops to “climb” it, putting his hands up on the front of it and moving them back and forth. Then he runs back into the family room shooting webs from his hands complete with self-made sound effects.

YourTurn:  If your life had a theme song right now, what would it be?  Would there be different songs for different parts of your life or is there just one that best sums it up overall? 

Accomplishments

MyTurn:  Having small kids causes you to get excited about odd things, such as what goes on in the bathroom.  Most people don’t normally go around discussing the finer points of their pees and poops.  But pee-pee is big news around our house this weekend.

Eli make a giant leap for preschoolerkind yesterday by staying dry ALL DAY!  He’d never gone on the potty more than twice in one day, but yesterday he went at least six times.  He even wore his “big boy underwear” all day except for during his nap and our lunch at McDonald’s when he wore a pull-up.  There was much applause, celebration, and doling out of stickers and M&M’s as reward.  He was a pretty proud guy.

So I’m sorry if this is “too much information,” but we’ve just gotta shout about it.

YourTurn:  Describe an accomplishment that you or a loved one has achieved lately. 

Comfort and Joy

MyTurn:  A few months Eli went through a phase where he was having trouble sleeping. He didn’t want to be left alone in his room and would cry for what seemed like forever until one of us would go back in to him.  Since we didn’t want to establish any bad habits or new routines that we couldn’t follow through on, we didn’t let him come to sleep with us and I also didn’t want to keep rocking him back to sleep every time he cried.  We’ve had to try a modified “cry it out” method with both kids at least once in their little lifetimes. It’s heartbreaking, but has led to two kids that pretty consistently have no problems getting to bed and staying there all night long. (I am frantically knocking on wood as I type this!)

To prep him for the fact that I was going to leave him, I started saying, “OK, I’m going to give you one more hug, one more kiss, and one more pat on the back and then I’m going to go.”  I’d leave and he’d keep on crying.  In our modified method I would go back, but I’d extend the amount of time between my visits. He’d cry for five minutes, then I’d go back for a while. We’d repeat the “one hug, one kiss, and one pat” routines, then I’d live for ten minutes.  Then fifteen. Eventually, he fell asleep.

The nights got easier until that phase eventually passed.  But “hug, kiss, and pat” has become part of our bedtime routine. It’s a sweet little goodnight ritual that we share.  The feeling of his little hand patting my back is probably far more comforting to me than my pat is to him.  I treasure it each night.

YourTurn:  Do you currently or have you ever had any routines or rituals that comfort you? 

MyTurn/YourTurn: Grown-Up Christmas List

MyTurn: My community was hit with a tragedy this week. In a murder/suicide, a man shot his wife, two daughters, and stepson before shooting himself. While mourning this loss, so many people have been wondering how this type of thing ever happens. What happens in a life to get someone so twisted from what’s normal that he would kill his own family and himself? It’s impossible to know the answer.

Since one of the dead is a student of mine, I’ve been trying to help my students and myself deal with the loss. I told my students that I felt the best way for us to respond to this was to try to do good things. If we could learn anything, maybe it is that we should try even harder to love those around us and focus on doing good. I paraphrased something that I read online about how there is no such thing as darkness, only the absence of light. No such thing as cold, only the absence of heat.

Maybe there’s no such thing as evil. Maybe there’s just the absence of good. Maybe just the absence of love.

If we all focus on doing good to others and loving one another as much as we can, perhaps we can drive evil away just as darkness is driven away by lighting a candle.

So I guess that’s one of the things I’m wishing for this Christmas. I’m wishing that everyone can love and be loved in such a way that the world becomes a better place.

I’m reminded of Amy Grant’s song “Grown-Up Christmas List.”

So here’s my lifelong wish,
My grown-up Christmas list.
Not for myself,
But for a world in need.

No more lives torn apart,
That wars would never start,
And time would heal all hearts.
And everyone would have a friend,
And right would always win,
And love would never end.
This is my grown-up Christmas list.

 

YourTurn: What’s on your Grown-Up Christmas List this year? What’s a Christmas wish that you would make for the world? Why?

Update:  Danielle has written a wonderful response to this post entitled I Believe.  I encourage you to read it!

Trim-A-Tree

MyTurn:  Our Christmas tree is like a big scrapbook.  Since we’ve made a habit of buying ornaments that represent things, our tree and the process of trimming it are very sentimental!  We have “sections” on our tree: vacations, grad school, each kid has a section, Star Wars, It’s a Wonderful Life, etc.  We try to add new ornaments at this time of year to represent the big events of the past months, and pick up new ones during the year when we visit new places.

This fabulous lady is celebrating her eigth year with us, and she’s one of my favorites.  We got her the Christmas that we got married, which also happened to be the Christmas when the world was bracing itself for the dreaded Y2K event.  We’ve loved her from the start, and every year at least once either Brooke or I has to say “Happy New Millennium”  in the breathy Marilyn Monroe voice we imagine that she has.  She’s been at three different residences with us:  or funny little shag-carpeted townhouse apartment in grad school, the cute little one-bedroom house we rented when we moved here, and the cute little house that we own now.  No matter where she’s been, she’s added a touch of elegance to the holidays. She’s big, befitting the “big” New Year she celebrated.  I love it that she still looks great today, reminding us that the “shine” of this new Millennium hasn’t even begun to wear off.

YourTurn:  Do you have any special items of holiday decor that you treasure?