European Vacation

We are planning a European vacation!  We have been talking about when to take a family trip to England for a while now and next year feels right.  That is not a statement I can substantiate definitively but the fellas are great ages to really enjoy this; they are old enough to travel well and young enough to soak it all in and see it through the eyes that we sometimes forget we have when we are adults.  In our infinite wisdom we decided that since we will be in the general vicinity we should also visit France and Germany on the same trip.  We have always enjoyed a good challenge but we then realized that 2012 is the year the Summer Olympics will be held in London and the year that Brits will celebrate the Queen’s 60^th Jubilee.  Not everyone may be familiar with the latter but it is a big affair if you are British and closes schools and results in street parties and potential chaos for travelers.  We thought about 2013, we discussed going earlier or later in the year, we stared at each other disappointed for about 15 seconds and then we decided we should map it out and see just how impossible this could be, surely not impossible enough to thwart us?

Subsequently we have been search engine fiends looking for killer deals, short listing places to visit and then adding three more, and being creative about ways to get from here to there and back again in about two weeks.  When I announced that I was making a spreadsheet my delighted hubby chuckled and said “Sweet, now I know we’re really going!”  We have to make sure everyone has finished the school year and we want to be certain we can make our annual trip to Iowa to visit family at a different time next year without throwing everything into disarray.  Then there are passports, arrangements to meet friends that I haven’t seen in years, plans to see friends that are temporarily living in Stuttgart, an uncle to be introduced, and reserving rooms in the Bed & Breakfast that used to be my parent’s home.  My hubby and I have a list of things we want to do that has to be culled and places to add that the fellas have suggested, not the least of which is the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe.  As an adult I am appalled that we would travel all that way to ride a big wheel but as a child I would have understood it unequivocally and this is their trip too so it has been added to the list.  The problem is not where to go and what to see, it is where to stop and we keep adding to the list rather than subtracting.  It seems like a wonderful problem to have and I realize how fortunate we are to be contemplating such an adventure together.

As a self proclaimed over-thinker my mind has wandered and tried to determine if the fellas will be remotely interested in visiting the school I attended and how we manage to visit the local pub with them in tow.  Will they appreciate the beauty and respect the serenity of Notre Dame and what to do if they say that the food that has been prepared for them is awful?  We’ve discussed and over-analyzed how to mentally prepare them for each day as it will be packed but we do not want to feel rushed.  There is so much fun in planning and anticipation and we want to plan the days and then let them flow, be spontaneous and drink in the experience, every delicious new moment.  For now I lie down with a picture of us huddled together having our picture taken at the top of the Eiffel Tower and it’s a great way to fall asleep!

Girlfriends

I underestimated the value and the strength of female friendship for a long time.  I went to an all girls’ school from the ages of eleven to eighteen so there was no shortage of female friendship and I may have taken that for granted.  I actually loved going to a Girls’ School because it removed all pretension of having to be cool, calm and collected around boys.  We were able to be silly and girly and we had the freedom, which I believe was the intention of our parents, to focus on our studies without the distraction of boys.  It did however serve to fuel a curiosity about the opposite gender that had to be satisfied largely on the bus ride home.  Some rather curious girls, who shall remain nameless, even propagated a stunt that was supposed to involve three members of the Girls’ School infiltrating the Boys’ School which was separated from us by a big wooden door.  As to how this was going to satisfy the mystery that are boys was not an integral part of that plan but as news of the plot spread there was increasing interest in its outcome.  In my memory that door is twenty feet high, about two feet thick and creaked loudly on the rare occasions it was slowly opened.  It was also right by the teachers’ lounge so no-one in their right mind would have chanced walking through it without clear and specific instructions from someone with authority. 

Therefore, it seemed perfectly logical at the wise age of about fourteen to think that a grand heist could be pulled off by crawling through one of the windows that was on a level with the driveway that passed the Boys’ School on the way to the Girls’ School.  Entry was discussed and planned with great detail but it appears that there was no escape plan; luckily that fell into place ultimately.  The first one in was the only one in because at the very moment of infiltration a teacher from the Girls’ School appeared nonchalantly around the corner.  Of course theories have since been exchanged about this perfect timing and the apparent unperturbed manner with which this teacher headed towards the small crowd by the window.  So pull her out or shove her in was the only choice and they shoved her in and the window slammed shut.  Feeling quite triumphant for a moment that one lone girl in a classroom of boys soon found out that she stood out like the proverbial sore thumb and consequently the next teacher that passed which was shortly thereafter, also with alarmingly good timing, escorted her back to the Girls’ School.  She did at least get to go through the door or the Iron Curtain as we called it, which gave her some credibility but then she had to explain what on earth she thought she was doing.  

Overall the Deputy Headmistress took it well and I thought she may have actually smirked when I tried to make it sound like I had innocently tripped and haphazardly fallen through a window but she was rarely given to such facial expressions so perhaps I imagined it.  I must have been convincing when I said that no-one was involved in my untimely and unfortunate dive so sentence was passed and I was given the first “detention” ever in the history of the school.  In fairness it lasted about twenty minutes on the last day of school because none of the teachers were interested in staying a moment longer than the end of the school year required.  I was also the local hero for about an hour so at least longer than my detention lasted.  This innocent fun and other episodes I can come back to at a later date did not alert me to the camaraderie of female friendship.  I merely took it for granted that there would always be women who shoved you through windows and for whom you covered when necessary.  I did not truly value what women bring to another woman’s life until I was far away from my family, living in Okinawa, Japan and needing someone to be my sounding board so that I would not worry my parents.  Only then did I realize just how much women need women.  We women need each other to patiently listen to all the details of our woes, we need each other as a conscience sometimes, and we especially need each other to tell us that he’s not got enough for us; our girlfriends are the few we will actually heed in this arena. 

As women we bring warmth and understanding and lack of judgment to each others’ lives.  We seem to understand, even when we cannot explain it, why something made our friend irrationally insane and we share those hurt feelings and want to protect each other.  We want the best for our girlfriends and mine seem to put my best interests ahead of their own in a remarkably selfless way that demands no thanks or explanation.  Women need each other to tell us that we are not crazy or rotten to the core for feeling the way we do sometimes and this kind of understanding makes us want to be better people.  We can live without fixing it but we cannot live without talking about it.  If the women in my life did not know how much I value you and love you, I hope that now you do…thank you!         

Fifty Years!

This is dedicated to love and hope and being with the right person through thick and thin.  This is written in celebration not sadness.  This is my opportunity to recognize the rarity of true love and the miracle of commitment.  This is a confession that I never understood how uncommon the partnership my parents shared was until we faced the most severe of challenges together.  Even then that understanding was not truly cemented until I met my husband and had the opportunity to share that same gift; true love, deep respect, and friendship.  This is a commemoration of two lives brought together by chance.  Two people who barely knew themselves before they bound their lives together in marriage and shared their dreams.  They had two children together, lived in almost twenty homes together, and owned a business together.  On November 4^th 2011 they would have celebrated 50 years of marriage together.

When my husband and I were engaged and busy making plans for our big day and life after that with our new family I decided to read the letters my parents had exchanged when they were engaged.  The letters were a joy to read and showed them young and in love and planning for a life together.  My Mum was rather bossy at times in these letters and my Dad was tender, neither of which I saw very often when I was growing up.  It was a dynamic that I saw more of the older I got and came to realize that my Mum’s quiet strength complemented my Dad’s ambition and big personality.  Equally, men of my Dad’s generation were not demonstrative but his tenderness was always there and he respected my Mum and her opinion with all his being.

One of the most beautiful moments I have ever witnessed, and I say again that this is written in celebration, not sadness, was when my Mum asked my Dad to share with her what he was going to say at her funeral.  Despite him trying to hide it, my Mum had worked out that my Dad had been writing her eulogy. My breath catches whenever I think of it and the bravery they demonstrated, my Mum for asking and my Dad for honoring her wish.  He asked to wait until he felt he had it perfected and then one evening he quietly said, and he was not a shy retiring man, that he was ready.  He had written it down but he did not look at the sheet of paper in his hand, instead he looked into my Mum’s eyes and never wavered for a moment.  He spoke slowly and steadily and before long my Mum and I were holding each others’ hands and had tears streaming down our cheeks.  He soldiered on, missing his partner and friend already but wanting to pay her this tribute, wanting the opportunity to tell her what she meant to him and what their life together meant to him before she was gone.  He finished with a poem by Leo Marks he had found and read to her before:

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause

For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours
And yours

I dedicate this blog to my Mum and Dad in celebration of their 50^th Wedding Anniversary.

Guy Fawkes Day

This past Friday we honored our annual tradition at work by inviting our families in to Trick or Treat.  Some years Halloween has been cold and snowy and this can be the best opportunity for our children to score the sweet stuff without contracting frost bite.  This year, despite a little bit of snow earlier in the week, the temperatures were warm and the kids came out in droves.  We hosted several princesses, a soldier, plenty of scary ghouls, Papa Smurf, Mario, and an adorable bumble bee.  That was just the children; among the adults we were honored to have Tina Turner on site, a caveman, a redneck and some very cordial witches.  Personally, I decided that I topped out as Trinity from the Matrix several years ago and decided to quit while I was ahead after that.  I wore my bejeweled Happy Halloween T-shirt to demonstrate that I am far from anti-Halloween but these days I leave the dressing up to those more creative than me (which is the vast majority of the population).

Throughout the course of the day, several people asked me if we celebrate Halloween in England.  When I was little we did not but I think that the American Halloween traditions have been adopted in England in recent years.  We do however celebrate Guy Fawkes Day which is very close to Halloween in terms of time, but quite different in terms of origin.  In the spirit of cultural exchange, it is my pleasure to educate you about Guy Fawkes Day if you are not already familiar with it.  I believe this will serve not only as an insight into that particular festivity but demonstrate how traditions are formed and baked into the very fabric of a country’s culture for seemingly the oddest of reasons.

Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Bonfire Night, is a commemoration of the infamous Gunpowder Plot hatched in the early 1600s.  A band of plotters intended to restore a Catholic monarch to the throne in England and given the times the most logical approach appeared to be to blow up the Houses of Parliament and assassinate King James I.  This required quite a lot of gunpowder and Guy Fawkes was put in charge of guarding the stockpile.  On November 5^th, 1605 after authorities received an anonymous letter, Fawkes was found with the gunpowder, questioned and tortured and eventually he revealed the plot.  Subsequently he was found guilty of high treason, a significant charge with extreme consequences, and sentenced to death by being hung, drawn and quartered, a barbaric practice and a very painful way to go.

As a result, an Act of Parliament designated November 5^th a celebration and Londoners were encouraged to recognize the King's narrow escape from assassination by lighting bonfires.  This evolved into making effigies of Guy Fawkes from old clothes stuffed with newspapers and sitting him atop the bonfires and burning his likeness throughout the land.  Eventually the celebration included roasting food over the fire and then grew further by letting off fireworks as the evening grew darker.  Nobody really seems to know why Guy Fawkes became the mascot for the Gunpowder Plot.  He was not the brains behind the machinations and while he served a key role, it was certainly not a role that could not have been performed by many others.  It is however his legacy and every year he is burned over again for more than 400 years now. 

I’m not sure if that makes us a violent nation, a collection of monarchists, or just like societies the world over, people who are drawn together by celebration, food and the desire to mingle.  We want to know our neighbors, we want to break bread together, and we like to sing and dance and sometimes dress up and this is as good a way as any to achieve this; however, I will admit the root of these events is nothing less than bizarre sometimes.  Please don’t think any the less of us and Happy Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day to all!

The Joy of Boys

Every week is a random week when you have four boys but last week was particularly random.  Certainly not in a bad way, just in an unexpectedly random way!  

The usual soccer game schedule is two practices a week and a game on Saturday.  This week there were two games on Saturday, the first of which the team played like a well oiled machine and our very own Pele scored a goal.  He then proceeded, as is his right as a goal scorer I think, to run around the field at top speed with arms flailing in delight.  It was but four short hours until the next game but somehow it was a completely different team that returned.  They saw the team that had soundly beaten them the first game of the season and it was all over at that moment.  Their opponents had the psychological edge from the start and it did not get any better.  What amazes me, in that random way life has, is that we were all ready with the speeches about having made a valiant attempt and being against a tough team and Pele walked off the field without a care in the world and said, “Can I go to Matthew’s now?”.  For us it was disappointing to see the team lose after such a great victory that morning but for him the game was merely a stepping stone to the time that he could go and be with his friend.  If only we could always shrug off loss so easily.

Our budding thespian invited us to his play and we gathered with the camera and our hands ready for clapping.  We tried to remember that it was not appropriate to cheer only when he said his lines (perfectly I might add), so we cheered equally for everyone and only a little bit extra for him.  The play itself was somewhat random in that it was a murder mystery at a pie contest and when the dead bodies appeared they were clad in footie pajamas.  The village crowd was also able to hold up signs as they pleased which instigated audience participation.  The actors did not seem to mind at all that during their lines there were random shouts of “Boo”, “Oh My Pie” and “Yummy”.  What struck me as random and wonderful at the same time was how relaxed our actor was among his friends and in his environment.  He was lighthearted and his face was glowing with enjoyment.  During his last stage appearance he did not look like he was having fun at all.  This is also the boy who was quite nervous about middle school and in less than two months he was at home and had a new found confidence among a peer group of sixth to eight graders, he being one of the younger players.  It was marvelous and warming and felt right all at the same time.

The next morning everyone left for school except one…the one who decided that he had something on his mind.  I love that he talks to me and I am always touched when he starts out by asking my opinion.  In this particularly case he wanted my opinion on why teenagers (no-one was named but I can guess who) can be mean sometimes.  Without thinking I hypothesized that because teenagers have so much going on emotionally and physically and even psychologically it is a lot to balance and that makes them grumpy sometimes.  I only said physically once and it was buried in a long sentence but somehow it randomly led to me delivering the lighter version of sex education at 7:45am.  I believe in honesty and so under the exacting gaze of a 10-year old I did not flinch and did my duty quite beautifully I believe; diplomatically but no code words.  I even managed to get in the bit about waiting until you have found someone you cannot live without.  When I got to Starbucks that morning I happily accepted an extra shot of caffeine.

To top off my random boy experiences week, my teenager called me on Friday afternoon to inform me that from now on he does not need the help of his Stepdad and I anymore when playing Are You Smarter than A 5^th Grader.  We were summarily dismissed because, and I quote, “I score a lot higher without you.”!!!  If that doesn’t wrap up a random week, nothing does!      

Career Blues

I have decided it is time for change!  Not change for the sake of change but deliberate, purposeful change in my career path.  I want to get off this beaten path and pursue what I love to do, train to be the best I can be, and then do it everyday.  I want to be my own boss and I want to write and I want someone to pay me lots of money to do it!  There, that’s a start on the path to change; direction mixed with tenacity and a dash of ignorance equals endless possibilities.  It trumps being a defeatist and committing to sheer boredom for the rest of my waking years….that last statement may have been gratuitously dramatic but it is how I’ve been feeling.

The career blues crept up on me, a midlife crisis of sorts.  Not a fully fledged breakdown, more of a slow disintegration into self-pity and I’m not particularly a fan of self-pity.   Recently I started to wonder what I have accomplished.  I mean what have I truly done to make a difference, to save someone, to be the best at something?  Naively I thought that it would all miraculously fall into place because for a long time it seemed like the puzzles pieces aligned and the last step led to the next which was somewhere meaningful and fulfilling.  The trajectory made sense but it doesn’t anymore and I’m feeling better and better about demanding more.  For a while I have been searching and scrambling for any semblance of direction and asking myself that resoundingly hollow question “Is this it??” but now it’s time to stop asking and start doing.  The answer is “No, this is not it.  This is merely a stepping stone.” 

I became immersed in the story of Steve Jobs’ life this week; this isn’t a bad thing in my opinion.  Much of the world rightfully mourns him as a bright spot on a dusky horizon with innovation tucked in his pocket or under his arm.  I glommed on to that feeling of loss and connected to it and then realized that the healthier approach was not to mourn the demise of my career (definitely too dramatic) but to pursue the future.  I fear that for a time there I let myself succumb to what Steve Jobs warned against - being trapped, not just by the opinions of others but by my opinion of myself.  I have not retraced all the steps that took me to a place where I no longer believed I was more capable.  To a large degree I think I put things on hold while I was finishing my Master’s degree and have not jumped back in the game since then.  The obvious irony is that I embarked on that journey aspiring for more and by the time I graduated I didn’t know what more meant.  

I want to share the words that jolted me.  They felt like cold water being splashed in my face and a poke to the ribs.  They hurt because I had become ambivalent and expected success while exerting less effort.  They are widely quoted words from Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement address but they bear repeating, “No one wants to die.  Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.  And yet death is the destination we all share.  No one has ever escaped it.  And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life.  It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new.  Right now, the new is you.  But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.  Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true.  Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.  Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.  Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart, and intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to become.” 

Words to live by!

40 Reasons

To my husband who hit 40 this week, 40 reasons I am madly in love with you:

1.       You are a committed and loving Dad

2.       You are truly a role model for our boys

3.       You love your Mom (someone told me to always look for that in a man!)

4.       You adore your Dad – always have, always will

5.       You are a man who will do anything for his family

6.       You still know all the names of everyone you went to Kindergarten with

7.       You dare to dream

8.       Your rules are consistent

9.       Your values are admirable

10.   You are a man of integrity

11.   You believe in romance

12.   You look good in biking shorts

13.   You are fun to be around

14.   You take responsibility for your decisions

15.   You dance like we’re teenagers

16.   You sing with abandon

17.   You treat everyone with respect

18.   You are stubborn and determined

19.   You embrace a new adventure

20.   You do not assume you know more

21.   You are willing to learn

22.   You demand more from yourself

23.   You are not afraid to be silly

24.   You take the time to explain why (multiplied by four!)

25.   When you smile your eyes light up

26.   You treasure your friends

27.   You are intelligent but not arrogant

28.   You are encouraging and believe everyone has something to offer

29.   You listen to understand

30.   You are humble but know your own worth

31.   You question the status quo

32.   You hold my hand while we sleep

33.   You are willing to fight for what is right

34.   Even when you’re angry, you’re not scary

35.   You are firm and fair

36.   You hate to disappoint

37.   You love to travel and try new things

38.   You clean up goooood!

39.   You are not opposed to eating ice-cream on the couch together

40.   You are thoughtful and kind everyday

I love you in more ways than I can tell you!  Thank you for being my husband, my partner in crime, my lover, and my best friend!