No Place Like It

We spent last weekend traveling in New York and New Jersey with other members of my husband’s choral group as they performed in a convocation of choruses from around the east  and midwest. After a very full weekend of singing, socializing, and sight-seeing, we traveled home on my birthday early Sunday morning. Contrary to what you might think after my last post in which I so fondly reminisced about birthday parties of my youth, I no longer care much about celebrating my birthday. Perhaps I got it all out of my system when I was younger. Now, I prefer the kind of understated recognition my son enjoyed in his childhood - a quiet day at home, some family time, maybe a nice dinner at a favorite restaurant. So I happily boarded the plane at 9:00 a.m., knowing I’d be home in time for lunch and would have the remainder of the day to myself.

It probably won’t surprise my readers if I say there is literally no other place on earth I’d rather be than in my home. It’s my sanctuary, my happy place, my salvation, all contained within the space of four walls. As we wandered shivering through the noisy, crowded, dirty streets of New York, wending our way amidst scaffolding, steering clear of the mass of bodies pushing headlong into the wind toward office, home, subway, train, my heart was beating a rapid tattoo - get home, get home, get home, it battered against my chest. I imagine my face wore the panicked expression you see on the eyes of a lost dog anxiously running down an unfamiliar street. Where is my house? Where are my people? Where is my home?

Sometimes I feel as if I need to apologize for loving home so much, for my desire to be here rather than traipsing around the world. For most of my generation, traveling is listed at the top of their ubiquitous bucket lists. There is a sensation that in order to be smart, interesting, and informed, one must be a traveler, must yearn to see and experience foreign lands. If that need doesn’t exist for me, am I therefore provincial, small-minded, and dull? If I don’t force myself out into new and different places, will my intellect atrophy like the sinew of a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair?

My love of home is long-standing and probably inbred. My mother despises travel - her mantra being “don’t take me anywhere unless I can get home to sleep in my own bed.” My grandmother and aunt were like-minded, and when I was younger I determined to be different. I scoffed at their attitudes, which I felt were based on fear and provincialism. Jim and I did some traveling, and I congratulated myself for (eventually!) learning to fly without fear, wander around in unfamiliar cities, even spend three weeks criss-crossing the United Kingdom.

But no matter where I am, every night at dark I am struck with an unassailable bout of homesickness, a heart-wrenching longing for my comfortable chair, a hot bath in my own tub, my bed, pillow, and book to lull me to sleep. With each passing year, it becomes more difficult to over this feeling, to find an acceptable balance between the longing for home and the potential benefit of having new experiences.

Right after my son’s birth, he developed severe jaundice and was having a terribly difficult time nursing. His healthy eight pound birthweight quickly dropped to six and half pounds. The head of pediatrics was called in, and after a five minute consultation diagnosed “failure to thrive.” The doctors wanted to send me home and keep Brian in the hospital. I protested, and because this was 34 years ago and insurance companies did not have the same stranglehold on medical treatment they have today, I was allowed to remain in the hospital in an attempt to maintain nursing. Finally, after a week of being in a hospital room with two other women, a week of aching to go home with my baby, I convinced the doctor to discharge us, even though Brian still hadn’t regained much of his birthweight.

“It will all be better when we get home,” I promised him. I’m upset, I can’t eat, I’m not making any milk. I just need to go home."

When we got home that day, my mother and grandmother had been at our house all day, making fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits, macaroni-and-cheese and cherry pies - all those fat-filled Southern comfort foods that spell H-O-M-E. Within a day or two, the baby was nursing like a champ. Within two weeks, he had gained three pounds. Home worked its magic on both of us.

Last Sunday as our plane headed west toward Michigan I felt myself becoming more and more energized with each passing mile. Despite only three hours of fitful sleep the night before, I was wide awake and excited. Although Jim crashed on the sofa exhausted and travel weary, I arrived home with abundant energy, spent the day putting everything back in order, catching up on e-mails, planning for the week ahead, cooking dinner, enjoying a movie on television. I reveled in a hot bath in my garden tub, the warm blankets on my bed, my favorite fluffy pillow, and a book.

These days it seems that  home calls to me as it never has before. Perhaps it’s because I have become so enamored of this new house, this new neighborhood, because I sigh with pure delight each time I walk in the door and know this beautiful place is my home. Perhaps it’s because I feel a need to be closer than ever to my mother, who becomes more frail with each passing day and depends on the security of my nearby presence. Perhaps it’s because I need the sense of constancy and permanence offered in  daily routines, which in some ways have taken on the essence of sacred rituals. Morning coffee. Walks. Reading and writing. Bath, books, bed.

“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort,” Jane Austen wrote. Whatever the reason, I will no longer apologize for my lack of interest in traveling or for my desire to be home. For me at this point in my life, there is no place like it.

Celebrations

Birthdays are my favorite of all holiday celebrations. I love everything about them (well, maybe not so much the getting older part). I love having a special day that is just about me, a day that celebrates my existence. I love hearing my mother’s version of the night I was born, a story that takes on almost religious significance in family history.  I love remembering some of the ways I’ve celebrated all my birthdays over these almost six decades. When I was a little girl, my mother gave me not only one but two elaborate birthday parties every year. One was a family party,  for the multitude of cousins, including aunts and uncles, who lived near us. The other was for my neighborhood and school friends, all my hand-picked favorites. The parties were always at our house, and I have wonderful memories of picking out colored streamers with coordinating decorative paper plates, cups, napkins, and candles. I always had a new dress to wear, which meant a shopping trip the week before the big day. There would be fresh sandwiches (usually turkey and ham salads), home baked chocolate layer cake, and neopolitan ice cream. All my favorites.

They were grand and gala affairs, these birthday parties. And though I swear on a stack of Bibles that I am introvert through and through, I still recall being giddy with excitement about being the center of attention during these events.

When my son was little, we had a combination friend/family party for his first and second birthdays. By this time, most of my cousins had grown up, many had moved away. Some of the aunts and uncles were retired to Florida or California. Because neither Jim nor I have any siblings, there wasn’t much in the way of family to celebrate. Brian’s birthday celebrations became small family affairs, or maybe a sleep-over with one special friend.

When Brian was in second grade, he was in a particularly nice classroom with several little boys he enjoyed playing with. I had been feeling guilty about our lackluster birthday festivities, and I suggested we have a big birthday party and invite all the boys in his class. He agreed, so we set about planning how to fit 9 or 10 little boys in our small house. I moved furniture out of the way, set up card tables in the living room, decorated with streamers. I can’t recall if we had a “theme,” but if we did it was probably either cars or Star Trek.

On the appointed day, the boys descended. There was no worry about trying to fit them into the house. They simply took over every available inch of space. It was pretty wild and rambunctious, at least by our quiet standard of living. Cake and ice cream were consumed, games were played, toys were opened and wrapping paper tossed with wild abandon. It was a a typical boyish birthday party.

After it was over and the last guest had been ushered out the door, Brian turned to me and said, “Don’t ever do that to me again.”  Turns out what I thought would be a fun and celebratory event for him was more akin to spending the afternoon in the seventh circle of hell.

One of the hardest lessons we learn as parents is that our children are not us. As a mother, I had identified so closely with my son that I assumed he would love the same things I loved. It’s hard to accept that our children don’t alway share our feelings or reactions or preferences. It’s a lesson we keep learning, every single day.

Today is my son’s birthday. He’s having a quiet day with his wife and son, going out for lunch, going shopping, maybe playing some video games. There is birthday cake at home for later, and presents and cards waiting to open. While some young men in their 30’s would probably enjoy a day hanging out with a group of friends, maybe going to a game, drinking some beer, I’m pretty sure Brian’s plans for today will suit him a lot better.

But there is one feeling I’m quite sure that Brian and I share: The day our sons were born was the best day of our lives.

Happy birthday to my wonderful son. May this new year of your life be filled with happiness!

Beginning

Sitting next to me on the corner of my desk is a mountain of paper. Six hundred and fifty six pages to be exact. When I’m sitting in my chair, the stack is almost level with my shoulder. From the corner of my eye it feels like a large benevolent companion,  patiently waiting for me to acknowledge it’s presence, offer it some hospitality, make it feel at home. Because it’s going to be with me for a while, this behemoth of paper. It has moved in to stay. It has come to be transformed from six hundred and fifty six sheets of paper into something wonderful and marvelous and all mine.

In the past few months I’ve sifted through archived writing that represents the past eight years of my life, events, experiences, thoughts, all chronicled on the digital pages of the three blogs I maintained during that time. These pages are the result of much searching and re-reading - they are what I plan to cull and craft into a small printed book of essays that are representative of this Life in General.

 Many similar themes emerged and reappeared as I revisited the pages chronicling the past eight years - my love of home, my need for solitude, my tendency to overload my life and time until I become frustrated and angry.  I recalled joyful moments when I announced my Grandson’s impending arrival and then his birth. Peaceful descriptions of summer days on the back porch, making my winter weary heart ache for such days to come again and soon. Painful stories of loss - so much loss in these eight years. And then two years ago the promise of our new house, of starting fresh.

Sometimes writing on the internet feels so disposable - we pour our hearts into blog postings and online magazine essays or stories, then push a button that disseminates them instantly across the universe where they become part of someone’s social network feed or blog reader for a few seconds before disappearing into the ether.  Creating this book feels a little bit like making a quilt, gathering the pieces, stitching the pieces together, and putting a binding around it to hold all the edges in place. It will contain the way I’ve experienced life over the past eight years and preserve it for me - and maybe for you - to learn from in the years to come. 

Writing on the internet has been good to me and good for me. I’ve met some amazing people who inspire me to keep at this writing thing. I’ve listened to and learned from their stories.  I’ve learned to use writing to help make sense of life in general and my own in particular. But at heart I’m a tangible person, I want and need to hold something in my hand to prove I was here. Artifacts of daily living are important to me. It’s why I cherish my grandmother’s sugar spoon and stuffing bowl. It’s why I keep photographs and greeting cards.

Life in General will be such an artifact.

I’m excited to begin.

Too Much of a Good Thing

When you have dogs, you spend a lot of time telling them how good they are. Literally everything they do is deserving of praise, and, because they are dogs and they adore you, they eat up each one of your accolades with a silver spoon, licking their chops while drooling for more. 

“Good boy, Magic!” I call out when he eats his breakfast without my coaxing or cajoling him with tiny bites of his favorite treats. “Good girl, Molly!” I say, when she fetches a specific toy from her basket. “Good dogs!” I exclaim, when they conduct their outdoor business in record time so we can scurry back inside where it’s warm.

When my son was growing up parents were advised to lavish similar praise on their children. “What a smart boy you are!” we might tell them when they learned to print their names or recite their address. “That song you played on the trumpet was amazing!” “Your Lego buildings are great!” “I loved the picture you drew for me, you are so talented!"

It seems that conventional wisdom has modified that advice. Parents are advised against over-praising their children, at least without some qualifications. Instead of blanket statements like “you are so smart” or “what a good artist,” it’s been suggested that we quantify our accolades with specifics. “I know you studied a lot for that spelling test and it worked!” or “I can see you worked really hard on that picture, and I love all the colors you’ve chosen.” Apparently these kinds of statements encourage children to strive to be better, and reinforce the concept of acquiring knowledge and skill for its own sake, rather than simply to please someone else or live up to the standards that have been set in your mind by unqualified praise and adoration.

The basis for this change in thinking has to do with new neuro-scientific discoveries about the brain, which tell us that our brain is capable of growth and change throughout our entire lives, rather than being fixed at a certain capacity from birth. From this knowledge, psychologists and educators have extrapolated that children who are unconditionally praised tend to grow up thinking of themselves as “fixed” learners, as if their abilities are complete and unchangeable, while children whose actions are specifically noticed believe that effort is worthwhile and will lead to further learning.

I recently read an article summarizing research on this subject, and found myself getting teary-eyed. The descriptions of a “fixed learner” described me as perfectly as if the researchers had reached inside my head and taken notes on what they found there. "The fixed learner cares first and foremost about how they will be judged, smart or not smart,” the article contends. “They reject opportunities to learn because they might make mistakes. They are afraid of effort because they feel dumb and believe if you have ability you shouldn’t need effort. They don’t recover from setbacks, and decrease their efforts when they reach one."

Check. Check. Check. And check again.

I wondered - could my entire perception about myself have been different? What would my life be like now if my parents had employed this new method of effective praise rather than always telling me how smart and sweet and beautiful and good I was?

I know, it’s a ridiculous first world problem and I was immediately ashamed of myself for even thinking about it. I was the most fortunate of little girls, growing up as the only child of two parents who thought the sun rose and set on their precious daughter. No matter that they treated me somewhat like I treat my little dogs, lavishing love and kisses on me every time I turned around, making me believe the world was my oyster and I could do or be whatever I wanted.

Certainly they thought they were doing the right thing, although I’m quite sure neither one of them had been pampered or praised throughout their early years. They were children of the Depression, and although my mother was also an only child, she grew up in a small country town with parents who worked their farm from sunup to sundown. My dad was in the middle of a pack of six children, all of them less than two years apart. He considered himself lucky not to go to bed hungry at night. There was little time or thought for praise or self-esteem building in either of these households. I don’t know why my parents decided it was important to treat me differently. Perhaps because they had longed for it themselves? Perhaps simply because time and circumstance allowed.

I am an encourager by nature. I want people (especially children and dogs it would seem) to feel successful and worthy. I want that for others because I want it for myself. I’ve never responded to “tough love” motivation tactics. At the first hint of criticism, I shut down and crawl back to my corner, certain that I’ll never amount to anything ever again. But I will blossom with tender loving care and gentle encouragement. If ever anyone needed proof that positive reinforcement is an effective psychological behavioral tool, I’m your test case.

As one who believes in the power of positive thinking to determine attitude and action, it was at first difficult for me to reject the notion that constant praise can backfire in a child’s emotional development. My husband and I are both only children but brought up in very different family environments. We each tend toward perfectionism but for very different reasons. My in-laws were never quite satisfied with anything in life - everything could always have been just a little bit better, thus their praise for any of his accomplishments was always tinged with some disappointment, no matter how minor. My parents thought everything I did was perfect - so I was under pressure to uphold my reputation! Two very different methods of parenting, with similar outcomes in psyche.

I’m thinking this new concept has some definite merit, at least in child-rearing. Encouraging the specific effort, noting the positive outcomes, these are just different ways to provide positive reinforcement to children as they grow  without the added pressure of needing to live up to certain expectations - positive or negative.

But I’m wondering how effective it would be with dogs? Imagine this - “Magic, your breakfast must have tasted very good this morning, you ate it all on your own!” or “Molly, I can tell you want to play with the fuzzy carrot squeak toy. I’m glad you found it in the toy basket!"

Maybe in their case I’ll just stick with “Good dogs!” In the canine world, I don’t think there’s any danger of having too much of a “good” thing.

Enchanted

Enchanted. That’s how I felt this morning when I stepped outside, bundled up almost beyond movement, into the icy cold air. A rime of ice covered every tree branch, each one etched like crystals against the cloudless blue sky. The sun illuminated minuscule ice crystals drifting through the air onto my head like fairy dust. I  expected Tinker Bell to appear at any moment, waving her magic wand in front of my eyes. The dogs pulled restlessly at their leashes, their own noses to the ground, oblivious to the beauty overhead. I stopped dead in my tracks and stared heavenward, my mouth open in amazement, the air cold enough to freeze my lungs on every inhale.  I wished I were a photographer, a painter, or a poet - to be able to capture this moment and do it justice, to preserve it in my memory for days when the endless gray of winter seem overbearing.

Lately I have been looking for a way in to write about this winter, this breaker-of-records winter, this worse-than-ever winter. I think back to our innocence last Thanksgiving, when the ground was still earth and not covered with mountains of snow. We had no idea what was ahead, how nature would get stuck in her endless loop of snow followed by cold followed by ice followed by snow. We couldn’t know that it would snow measurably every week starting the first week of December. That schools would reach their limit of allowable “snow days” almost before the new year began.

We didn’t know what was coming.

But that’s the thing. We never know what’s ahead.

I do not love winter. This year has been difficult, especially living in the condo. I must go outside every time the dogs go outside. I must shovel paths for them because their legs are short and they are small. I must do the grocery shopping and errands for my mother who is fearful of being out in the cold, fearful of falling, of getting sick. I must worry about driving on icy roads, about how I will get to these places I must go.

But still, and deep down, I have not minded overmuch. I come in from the cold and sit in front of the fire, a dog on either side, reading and warming my hands. I watch the birds flock to feeders all around the house, smile at them when they peek inside at me as if to say “thank you” for the sunflower seeds, thank you for the thistle and suet, before turning their tiny beaks back to their meal. I make coffee in my favorite cup, arrange bright flowers in a crystal vase. I listen to Horowitz play Chopin and Mozart, pieces I’ve listened to for more than 20 years, notes that have (clumsily) flowed from my own fingers on the keys.

I find enchantment today.

Because who knows what tomorrow will bring.

I wish this for you, that you might find something of beauty in your day today. May it be something left for you as a surprise, like tree branches alight with ice, or something you create for yourself within the pattern of your own daily life.

Find it. Savor it, slack jawed with gratitude.

Be enchanted.