Wider world – Page 5 – My Truant Pen

My Christmas letter

So after posting on Facebook about whether holiday letters are totally annoying or just a little annoying, I wrote a holiday letter to go into the grand production that is my Christmas cards. (The cards usually include: hand written address, hand stamped stamp on envelope, stamped return address, Christmas letter, picture and personal note to recipient. I sent out 80 this year. I have already purchased next year’s Christmas cards.)

Well, Facebook told me that other people’s Christmas letters were annoying and braggy, but that mine were entertaining, charming and practically a public service. This was good, since regardless of the outcome of the poll I was going to send them. Of course, don’t think I wasn’t thinking ahead. I KNEW that my Christmas letter was as good a prewritten blog post! Win!

So with no further ado, for those of you who did NOT get a Christmas card from me this year, here is my Christmas letter:

Christmas 2010
Dear Friends,

February found a big change in our family. After over 7 years with B Applications, I felt ready for some new challenges. On the 22nd of February, I started in a new role with XYZ Corporation. On March 1st, Millipore was acquired by ABC Corporation. Surprise! It’s been a wild ride since then. I’ve moved from programming, to project management, to business analysis. I’ve gone, in one year, from a company of 17 people to a company of over 40,000 worldwide. I wanted to grow professionally – I’ve gotten that in spades! So far, I’m really enjoying it!

Changing my job had some other effects. Sadly Abuela — the woman who took care of Grey and Thane since Grey was 2 months old — was right next my old job. She was not anywhere near my new job. So with sad hearts, we said goodbye. Grey and Thane started going to the YMCA in our home town, along with many of their best neighborhood friends.

My husband and I celebrated our 10th wedding this summer. For our honeymoon, we traveled to Greece and visited every Byzantine church in Athens (and a few that were actually Episcopalian). For our 10th anniversary, we went a little further East, to the ancient city of Istanbul. It was fantastic. We wandered the labyrinthine streets where the palace had once been, stood in the center of Justinian’s Hippodrome, climbed the walls of the Fortress of Europe, walked under the high vaulted domes of Hagia Sophia, sat on the rocks of the Bosphorus watching a continent’s worth of shipping vessels and learned to love aubergine.

Grey turned five this fall. It’s amazing the difference a year makes. He’s now a very active reader and particularly loves the Owly books. In addition to preschool, he’s spent a year doing aikido and has earned his yellow stripe. He’s taking swimming lessons on Saturdays, and on Mondays he’s taking a cooking class that seems to specialize in the gooey and sweet. There’s still plenty of leftover time for running around, playing on his beloved “screens”, coloring, building with Legos and playing with his friends.

Thane is two, with all that means. After getting ear tubes last February, his language abilities have just exploded. He talks all the time, with amazing fluency, audibility and persistence. (That’s a nice way of saying the kid is never quiet.) His primary passions are cars (especially emergency vehicles) and dinosaurs. Thanks to Jane Yolen’s “How Do Dinosaurs…” books, his favorite dinosaurs include Pachycephalasaurus, Tapejara and Neovenator.

It’s hard to capture a full year in one page. The boys and I went to California
for 4 days to see my grandmother. We went camping in New Hampshire 4
times. Adam has continued to grow professionally at his job.
The cats are both still fat and lazy.

We hope that you and your families also had a year of
growth, fun and joy together with another one to come!

The section above was a PITA to format. There was a Christmas tree at the bottom of the stationary.

Love, Us

My Second Career

We 30-somethings have spent our lives being prepared for a working life that looks very different than our parents’ and grandparents’. I remember when I graduated from High School hearing that a person my age could expect to have seven careers over their lifetime. Of course, at the time, I had no clue what one career I might pick. In retrospect, I had a blithe confidence that whatever career I ended up doing would be awesome and I would be awesome. Perhaps I would be a wealthy scholar, of um, something. Ah, the hubris of youth!

I went off to a fine fine liberal arts college and got my incredibly useful double major in English and Medieval Studies. You’re almost holding your breath waiting for the cold reality-bath that I seemed destined for at that moment, aren’t you?

But…. my esoteric studies in Wind Instrumental Ensembles in Italy from 1450 to 1620 had inadvertently inspired me to get some useful skills. (NOTE: That’s actual heritage 1999 HTML going on there folks! AHAHAHH! I’d forgotten the Web Rings! Those were all the rage….) I’d built on this experience to have, by the time I graduated, roughly 3 years experience doing websites. This was in the year 2000 (pre-bust), when very few people had more than three years, and anyone with a pulse could get a programming job. That’s exactly what I did.

I tell this story nearly every time I have to explain to someone how an English/Medieval Studies double major ended up programming.

The entire first decade of the 2000s I spent on variations on that theme. I learned a medium-niche programming language called ColdFusion. I got pretty good at MS SQL Server development (coding queries, etc.). I can do an inner join with the best of ’em.

Across three separate jobs, I kept trying to move from programming (which I was unexpectedly pretty good at at) to a job that required talking and writing. If you were to draw up a list of the things I’m best at, talking and writing are probably right up there. I once won $1000 in a contest doing impromptu speaking on the Constitution. I am unafraid of presentations. I like meeting people. I like talking. I’m a rampant, unrepentant extrovert. And I spent ten years programming?

So in February I got this new programming gig in a totally different language (which I didn’t know) in a much larger company (going from a 16 person company to a 6,000 person global company). There was talk of the “succession planning team” (which I think must be mythical since I’ve never heard of it since). I thought that maybe this was finally time for me to break out of the code-mines. I’d become… I dunno… a project manager! Or maybe manage a small team of coders?

Since then, it’s been a whirlwind. I did to a tiny tiny bit of programming in that new language — exactly one function. Then I suddenly got assigned two large, really large, projects to manage. And we got acquired. And I got moved around. And suddenly everything I thought I was working towards I got. Bing! Your first genie wish arrived!

Holy cow.

This is it. I’m into my second career. There are no IDEs in my new career. I do not write code. I am expected to know a bit about all the acronyms and be in depth about none. My key skills are multitasking, interpersonal relationships, paperwork, fantastic note-taking, question-asking and presentation-giving. It’s a moving, spinning target with words that I thought were generic buzzwords suddenly taking on terrifyingly specific meanings. I am the one who tells people how we take an idea and make it happen. I have to update the budget. I talk a lot about making sure we’re in alignment.

I am learning so very much. I flip between terrified and excited. I don’t even know how to talk about what I’m doing. Do I sound bombastic and self-centered when I talk about the people, the politics, the circumstances of my job? This new career is of the kind that can suck you in and demand your entire personal life if you let it…. how do I not let it? I have a gazillion and one friends who are programmers. I could bounce things off them and my husband if I felt out of my depth. I have, well, pretty much no friends who are doing what I’m doing now. Who do I bounce things off? Or do I tie them up tightly and keep them inside? This new career is Corporate with a capital “C”. Nylons and ties Corporate. I have a Blackberry. Everyone seems to have a BMW, unless they have an Audi. How does that relate to my personality and identity… to who I really am?

When I was in high school, I did Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), mostly because you got out of class and went places where you could meet cute boys. I did extremely well at typing (my typing speed is still one of my secret assets). But I could never even imagine myself in the buzzword world of the Keynote Speakers, the swank unreality of plush hotel lobbies with fountains and glass elevators and stultifying conference rooms. Now I find myself wondering if I should find out if there’s a local chapter and volunteer with them.

All this has really shaken me. It’s hard to talk about, because it’s a very good change. Any sort of “working through” this sounds like bragging in my head, so I don’t do it. And I really can’t blog about the specifics because, uh, that’s career suicide and stupid to boot. But work is taking a tremendous amount of my intellectual energy. I come home really tired. I hardly ever have “extra” time at work that I can spend doing things like blogging. You might have noticed by my frantic “Please, at least one update a week!” pace here. I’ve held the line on hours worked, but somehow it seems like my days are even more compressed.

And I still don’t know if I will succeed at this, if I want to succeed at this… what success looks like and whether I’m willing to accept the consequences of success.

Thus my transition from Career 1 (programmer) to Career 2 (Business Analyst).

Have you made career transitions? What career number are you on? Have you found them hard or easy to make? What was your favorite and least favorite career? What did you do when you found yourself succeeding faster than you can adjust your self-image? What’s the biggest career-related adjustment you’ve ever made, and how did you do it?

Not scare-mongering

My sons’ daycare hosted an event to train parent’s in the new safety curriculum. Hint to everyone: here’s how to get young parents to come to your event. Offer babysitting AND dinner. I probably wouldn’t have gone, otherwise, but that critical combination told me that they were serious. They really wanted me there. I heaved a sigh, and we went.

I consider my own parents some of the finest examples of the parenting genre. I wish I could bottle their parenting and uncork it onto my own kids. (Camp Gramp will have to do.) And my folks’ philosophy is usually described by my mom as “benign neglect”. Perhaps uncoincidentally, my childhood memories mostly include leisure, fun, exploration, etc. If my children had my childhood, I’d be delighted. My aspirational parenting philosophy would be to raise Free Range Kids, confident and capable to deal with what our safe, careful, child-friendly area has to offer in the way of real life. So I went to this training ready to do some serious eye-rolling to what I figured would be an inevitable histrionic over-reacting.

Well, color me impressed. The curriculum and training were done by the Committee for Children, with funding offered by a local business. (Wish I could remember who — they deserve credit!) They got off on exactly the right foot with me. Here’s how the introduction to a book to share with our kids put it, “This book will not frighten your child. It will give your child skills that will help make him or her strong. A strong, informed child is a safer child.”

Awesome. Fantastic. Let’s not wrap them in bubblewrap. Let’s not keep them inside forever. Let’s not hover. Let’s give them skills to make them safer! Sign me up.

And it just got better. The “touching saftey” chapter is one of about 17, with others being firearm safety, fire safety, kitchen safety, water safety… good stuff! And all very reasonable, centered and operating on the assumption that our kids could apply simple sense to stay safe. Plus, it gave we parents excellent language to use to talk about tough stuff, and they even showed us videos of parents superbly handling some of the hardest discussions a parent might have with their kids. It was extremely valuable training for us, and an excellent curriculum for them.

There is so much in the world that seems hysterical or divorced from reality – especially when it comes to kid’s safety. I thought I’d just take a moment to let you know: a private company is helping fund an excellent, sensible curriculum to teach our children how to navigate through the world instead of hiding them from it. Fantastic.

Election Day is tomorrow

I remain convinced that the best, most constitutional way to fix the issue of money in politics is for voters to ignore ads and money when placing their votes. Poof! Money ceases to become important, and whatever criteria we’re using to make our decisions suddenly becomes critical.

So today, in advance of election day, I went and found my ballot, compared candidates answers on a range of questions, and made up my own mind based on stated policies who I wanted to vote for. Take that, attack ads!

For my fellow citizens of the Commonwealth — Boston.com has a great voter’s guide. You can print or email your ballot when you’re done to take with you into the polling place. You can also tweet/facebook your endorsements. This is a great opportunity to help make America a Republic where votes can’t be bought, they have to be earned by thoughtful statements of policy. I think that’s something we can all agree on.

Helicopter Parenting – take 2

I’ve thought of two other things I wanted to say about helicopter parenting. This is the blogger version of thinking about a witty retort two hours after you need it — you come up with your points two hours after you’ve clicked “Publish”.

(Note: if you will be seriously distressed by hearing about bad things happening to kids, you might want to skip this post.)

So previously I discussed the role that risk analysis, concerned onlookers and the media play in the creation of parental hovering. Another element is a lack of expiration dates on recommendations. For example, we ALL know that you should NEVER leave a child in the bath tub unattended, right? There are about a gagillion places you will be told this as a parent. It’s in all the books, the pamphlets you take home, the top ten lists of things you must do as a new parent. Here’s a sample of the kind of text you’ll read several times as a new parent, “Leaving your child alone while they are in the bath, even for a minute, is just begging for an injury to happen. It is never a good idea. It never will be. If the phone rings, let it. Do not leave your child alone to answer the phone. No phone call is more important that your child’s well being. If someone knocks at the door, let him or her. Again, no visitor is more important that your child’s safety.”

This example goes on for seven more paragraphs. Another page I found includes gruesome examples. Of course, this is all true. Bath tubs are not a safe place for anyone (grownups included). A small child could have a bad outcome. This is important and true.

The catch is that no where in all these breathless warning is there an expiration age for this advice. They talk about “your child”. Well, just how old should my kid be to be allowed privacy in the bathroom? Is Grey old enough? The biggest risk to leaving him unattended in the bathtub is much more likely the state of the bathroom floor if he’s not constantly reminded about splashing rules. Ok, so you say five is too young, perhaps. What about 7? 10? 13? 16? 19? Obviously there’s some age by which your child is old enough to be left alone in the bathroom, and you’re totally creepy for supervising. But I’m pretty sure that in all the articles on the core requirements of parenting that I’ve read, that age was never mentioned.

I can truly understand why some parents would continue doing things like supervise bath time, even when it is no longer needed or appropriate. I mean, just reading some of the warnings about bad things that have happened in baths is very convincing to me, even with this thesis as my starting point. So the risk of bad things makes you continue your constant and tiring vigilance. But it’s so hard to see the other side of that risk. I’m pretty sure that my 5 year old doesn’t feel suffocated by my supervision. He also hates to ever be in a room alone. Is that because I’ve never let him be in a room alone? Am I teaching him fear? Passiveness? Some of those traits of the helicoptered children? It’s hard to know what the most appropriate thing is to do, even in this one small example.

It would be awfully nice if some of this advice came with an end date — preferably one prior to your child getting their driver’s license.

My second thought on protecting children came in traffic the other day. Our area has significant immigration. In the town I go to church in, much of that is from Africa. There are plenty of kids born and raised on the Continent who have come here quite recently. As I sat at a light, I saw two boys, pretty clearly recent African immigrants, bicycling quickly down the road wearing no helmets. Now, as that other post shows I have very strong opinions about the importance of bike helmets. So I mentally shouted at the kids (as I so often do) to WEAR A HELMET ALREADY.

Then my sub-processor noticed that the story on NPR was about the Lord’s Resistance Army (for the strong of stomach only). I imagined being a mother who had left the Congo or Sierra Leone or the Niger Delta with my children to end up in this cold, idyllic New England Town. I imagine heaving a huge sigh of relief. They were safe. The fate that had befallen their brothers, cousins, friends and uncles would not be theirs. No land mines. No roving bands of bandits. No post-election violence. No opportunistic armies looking for pillage, violence or recruits. No snakes. No kidnappers (by comparison). No Guinea worms. Safe. If I were that mother, how worried would I be about helmets? If I were that mother, marvelling at pure, convenient, running water and comparing that to the hours I’d spent walking to and from the disease-ridden source I’d had before, would I fret about leaving my child unattended in the bath tub?

Of course those two boys I saw were more likely from a more stable country (Ghana, perhaps) from a more modern house, etc. But still. Seeing those boys from this other world I heard about on the radio here on my own New England commute reminded me of the context of my fretting.

What about you? Do you have a hard time stepping back? How do you gauge when the right time is to offer autonomy, even though risks can never be entirely mitigated? Have you ever had your worries put into perspective? How do you walk between these competing concerns of safety and independence?

Helicopter parent in training

For some reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about the messages society sends to parents about parenting over the last five years. Many times, especially on bad days, the message seems to be “UR DOIN IT RONG. ITS ALL UR FAULT.” OK, possible with better spelling, but still. This was particularly brought to mind a few days in an Annie’s Mailbox column. (What – I’ve confessed my addiction to advice columns previously!)

Dear Annie: Last weekend, I stayed at an upscale motel where they serve breakfast in the lobby. After eating, I went to the elevator, and a little boy, perhaps 6 years old, left the table where his father was eating and announced, “I’m going up to Mom.” Dad agreed, and the boy rode up to the third floor with me, chatting the whole time, before getting off on my floor and pounding on a door farther down the hall.

Annie, this child could have been abducted at any time. The elevator was at the intersection of two hallways and was 10 feet from a stairwell. Anyone could have gotten on that elevator or been in the hallway when he got off. I was tempted to say something to the parents, but figured I would be told to mind my own business. Please remind parents that the world is not child friendly and safe, and even the most responsible “big boy” or girl could disappear in a matter of seconds. — Concerned in Texas

Dear Texas: We appreciate the heads up. Most children are safer than we fear, but still, parents need to be cautious and alert. A motel is filled with strangers, and there are hallways, doorways and empty rooms where kids can be lost — or taken. It is foolish to allow young children to run around unseen and unsupervised in such places, not only because the child can lose his way, but because it presents an opportunity for those with malicious intent. Next time, speak up. Even if the parents tell you to MYOB, they might be more circumspect in the future.

I read this and heaved a big sigh. This could totally be me with Grey. I would do this (let him tackle a task he was capable of), and I would feel anxious about it. And I would have thought of it before a stranger came up to me and told me that I was endangering my child and that he could be snatched away by bad guys at any moment. (For the record, strangers concerned about the appropriateness of your parenting are about a gazillion times more common than strangers interesting in kidnapping your child for nefarious purposes.)

I think a lot about risk analysis, and about what’s likely to happen, what is unlikely but dire, and what is unlikely and undire and try to act appropriately. Yes, a child in a hotel could be abducted (risk: 1 in 347,000, most of which are by people the child knows. The odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are 1 in 1.5 million). The hotel could also be blown up by terrorists (1 in 88,000). It could explode due to a gas pipeline rupture. It could be hit by a meteor ( 1 in 500,000 over the next century). My child could be exposed to measles from an unvaccinated patron. The hotel could have trace levels of radon that might lead to cancer years later. It could be serving salmonella eggs in the continental breakfast. The biggest actual risk my child faces, however, is when I strap him into his carseat to leave the hotel (1 in 23,000 for a child). I do try to be careful: my children are ALWAYS buckled in in the car, they will ALWAYS wear helmets when appropriate, I actively supervise them… but I still want to teach them to be independent people who are capable of doing things without me.

Which brings us to the second way we parents are all doing it wrong. In addition to being negligent people who allow our 6 years olds to go to their hotel rooms without us, we are also helicopter parents who are ridiculously over-involved and have wrapped our children in bubble wrap, denying them any opportunity to develop grit, fortitude or independent opinions.

So to sum up, parents should exercise CONSTANT VIGILANCE while creating independent children who try and fail, and learn the appropriate lessons from this.

Do you see any problem here, or contradiction? Yeah, me too. I do know which side of this divide I come down on. I believe in my children’s capacity. I work hard to provide them with early and non-permanently-damaging opportunities to discover cause and effect, and consequences. I let them jump when they might break their leg if they’re not careful. I let them out of my sight when it seems appropriate. I’ve tried to give them the skills to mitigate this. Grey knows his full name, his address and my cell phone number. I’ve taught him how to call people on the phone, and when to dial 911. I’ve taught him what to do in case of a house fire ( 1 in 1,116 lifetime). I’m not careless.

I’m just trying to raise children who can thrive without me, so I don’t have to negotiate their benefits package for their first professional jobs when they’re 23.

Top ten reasons you should move to Stoneham MA

So I’ve been waging a not-very-subtle campaign to get some subset of my friends who are “thinking about buying a house maybe some day” to consider doing so within convenient walking distance of my house. This is entirely selfish. It’s simply much easier to have a social life when you have friends on this side of the Big Dig.

Pony ride during winter fair on Stoneham Town Common

In support of this attempt, I thought I’d put together a top 10 list of reasons you should move to Stoneham Massachusetts.

10. The local paper is hilarious. It assumes you already know everyone important in town, exclusively covers potlucks at St. Patrick’s church, and used to feature a safety column by Officer Rotondi, who was rotund. The safety column was excellent, with advice like “Do not put your credit card on the internet. Many criminals are now using the internet.” Best of all is the crime blotter. Every third entry has to do with someone calling the cops on the “youth” who were found to be loitering. One person called the cops because they saw a deer.

9. The Middlesex Fells reservation is part of Stoneham. Who knew that we had such an extensive quasi-wilderness area in sight of Boston? There are miles and miles of trails. You can take an all day hike, with excellent views of the city skyline. It’s close enough to Stoneham Town center to be a reasonable walk, or a quick bike-ride, and is open for cross country skiing and snow shoeing in winter.

8. Melissa’s Main Street Bistro has quite possibly the best menu I’ve ever seen anywhere, ever. Better yet, they deliver on the promise of that great menu. They mix an incredibly powerful martini (and delicious!) but the great news is that if you live here, you can just walk home.

7. We’re right at the corner of I93 and I95. You can find no better location for an equally inconvenient commute for you and your partner. We’re also 10 minutes from the end of the Orange Line (depending on where you are in Stoneham, it’s possible to get closer).

6. Stoneham Town Day! September 11th this year! (You can find this actually helpful information buried on page 6 of the newspaper….) There’s carnival rides, booths from every organization in town, balloons, politician’s kissing babies, raffles and fried dough. Fun for the whole family!

5. My neighborhood has a Walk Score of 80, which is very walkable. Grey can easily walk to: a grocery store, pharmacy, library, bank, post office, police station, park, ice cream parlor (2), about 15 restaurants, live theater, mechanic, bike store, hardware store, furniture store, homepathic store, dance studio, martial arts studio, 5 salons, and best of all, the Book Oasis. And more! As far as I can tell the only things you can’t walk to are the hospital (4 miles) or a movie theater (5 miles).

4. Local politicians actually walk around and knock on doors to personally introduce themselves during election season. I find this both charming and useful. I’m sure it happens other places, but I promise it never happened to me any other place I’ve ever lived.

3. The town square. It’s un-selfconsciously exactly what you imagine New England towns that predate the Revolutionary War to be. It has the bank, post office, funeral home, church, fire station, police station, town hall, park and Honeydew Donuts clustered around it. The church carillon plays music every hour on the hour between 9 and 9. Stoneham Town day is held there. During the summer they hold concerts on the Band Stand. Santa comes to visit in the winter. And every Tuesday in summer and fall we have a Farmer’s Market! You can see people taking strolls, sitting on the bench, or playing Frisbee on unscheduled evenings. Charming!!!

2. Housing prices have held up. The median home price is down about 10% from the peak and has risen this year. Stoneham boasts a nice mix of single family houses, multifamily houses for rent or purchase as a condo, and apartment units. It’s a demographically diverse and well-educated community, but not so upper class that you won’t be able to find a place here you could afford.

And finally, the top reason you should consider moving to Stoneham Massachusetts….

1. I live here, and you could hang out with me!

Istanbul & Camp Gramp: Day 2

August 2 —

This morning was a tough start. Jet lag persists. But we roused ourselves and headed out to Topkepi Palace, ostensibly before the worst of the tourists hit. After a snag involving insufficient lira and government buildings that don’t take credit cards or dollars, we got in. We saw the harem first. It was lovely, with amazing detail work. There are, however, only so many Iznik tiles you can admire before they blur together. Then, by luck, we caught an open air concert of the military band. It was quite wonderful, although their trumpet section wasn’t up to my standards. After that the circumstances went downhill.

The place was packed with tourists of all stripes. The wait for the treasury was abominable, and the humidity was high. There were some neat things to be seen, but the heat, crowd, lines and lacking interpretations made it difficult for even the most intrepid museum-goers to flourish. We fled for lunch and a siesta.

After lunch we pursued a tip on where we might find a nice, handmade, leather purse…. Not a brand name or knockoff. We were unsuccessful in that quest, but met a nice salesman who admitted that he wasn’t really interested In selling us a purse, and didn’t have any relatives in the bazaar, but wished us luck. We walked home past the Golden Horn, the rail station that was the end of the Orient Express, and an expanse of the Bosporous. We sat in fading golden sun, our backs to ancient walls inscribed with Greek, watching crazy old men swim, fathers fishing with their sons, and mammoth ships negotiating turbulent waters.

A fine dinner, and then dessert on a rooftop restaurant, with a view of night lit Hagia Sophia on one side and the roiling waters of the
Bosporous on the other. My husband and I kept arguing about who had the better view.

Tomorrow is the Blue Mosque… We hope to catch that before the cruise ships overwhelm it. Then the Grand Bazaar in out ongoing purse quest, followed by a landmark cup of coffee in the Spice Bazaar.

At least that’s the plan!

We miss our boys. There are lots of kids here, so we are always reminded. Give them big hugs and kisses for us.

Brenda

Meanwhile, back in the States…
After spending the day looking at all the women in 1830 had to do, I guess shouldn’t complain. We went to Sturbridge Village. Minor complications, but for the most part, it was great fun. The Shirts (tie-dyed) were a hit! People knew we were together, anyway. We rode in the horse drawn carriage and took a ride on the boat. We saw the blacksmith. Pizza may not be 1830, but it was good. Dad got to see the sawmill working — something I saw last time. The children made candle holders. A good time was had by all.

I will try to get a picture of the crew at Sturbridge Village in tie dye off to you shortly. Dad’s is especially colorful!

Gramama and Papapa
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sounds like you are having a great time. So are we.

Sturbridge Village is really awesome. We can go again in the next 10 days free and I am thinking about it. Without Thane, it would be different. Of course, without children at all would be really interesting, but I don’t think we will manage that.

I have never seen a child that liked a bath better than Thane. My goodness. Better get tickets for the 2030 Olympics. I think he will be a swimmer.

The boys are fine. They are tired tonight, but they are both off to bed. Thane is asleep. Grey will be soon. We read lots of books tonight — it was great fun.

How do we get pictures on this computer? (Editor’s note with foreshadowing: I wish I’d managed to send her this information!!!)

Gramama

On the right PATH

I’m back from Istanbul! I have plenty of thoughts and updates, but they will have to wait for a more felicitous time. Until then, I thought I’d let you know that after a previous posting I made about PATH, my charity of choice, I’ve formed a deeper relationship with the organization, which leaves me increasingly impressed.

As part of this relationship, PATH has added me to their donor profile, a part of their welcome series to new donors.

I sincerely believe in the goal that PATH is trying to accomplish, but they are not alone in their goals. What sets them apart, to me, is the pragmatic and sensible way they identify and execute projects. That seems like a small thing, but it is the thing that takes good intentions and turns them into good outcomes, instead of just a waste of money.

I would encourage you to take a look at their mission and their work, and consider them as an option for your charitable contributions. And hey, now you know what to get me for my birthday!

Ten years ago

We are in last phases for our trip to Istanbul. The boarding passes are printed. The bag are packed and by the door. The chargers are being slipped into luggage. The debate is raging whether fresh grapes will cause any anguish in security. I am seconds, seconds away from putting the auto responder “You’re on your own, suckas!!!” (or the professional version thereof) on my work email.

I worked very hard today, and it’s tough beginning to peel my mind away. I’m awash in all the details of two very consuming projects at work. There’s the million and one things I do to keep my household and my family running, “Ok, Mom, Magic needs to get her pill morning and night. Thane eats Life cereal with milk… with his hands. You might want to wait until after breakfast to dress him. And if there are apricots in the farm share, would you mind dicing and freezing half a cup? I’m just short for a batch of jam.” All these things that I carry and remember and think about… now is the time to lay them down. If I haven’t explained something to my mom, well, she’ll figure it out. If I haven’t addressed an issue at work, well, they’ll either have to cope or wait. If I’ve forgotten something, it will have to remain forgotten for a week.

This is why we go on vacation. Because we must see how much we are laying down, and then when we return we can choose how much to pick up again. Maybe, perhaps, the perspective of that freedom of going away will show that some of those things we work so hard to sustain are not worth the energy they sap from us. On the other hand, some things we deal with as mundane requirements of our day to day life are revealed as the shining jewels of existence they are. (See also: bedtime reading time)

I am so ready for this. Tonight we will crawl on a plane — the same flight, I think, I recently took to Amsterdam. It feels funny to have Schipol become, instead of this exotic destination across the world, a familiar place where I’ve mapped out the Starbucks, thankyouverymuch. (Funny note: also on the flight will be a friend from church headed to his family in Denmark. The world is a small place.) I promised a colleague in Amsterdam I’d wave as I landed. I have a bunch of Euros from my last trip to unload, so I think some good chocolate at that nice stand is in order.

Then I start travelling space I’ve never traversed before. Never in my life have I been to Turkey — not even as a squalling bairn (which is, for the record, how I was dragged through much of Africa and Europe). I will set foot on Asian soil for the first time in my life, this trip. We are hoping to visit Hagia Sophia, the underground cistern, the Bosporus. We may take a day to go and visit Ephesus. My husband and I will read, eat, walk, talk, read books, play games and celebrate (get this!) TEN YEARS of married life. Ten years ago this week, we honeymooned in Greece when we did largely the same sorts of things, plus the beach.

These new things – experiences, memories, contexts – will provide rich fodder for my mind and spirit when I return. I know this. I still draw strength from the joy of our pre-kid trip to Austria & Italy. I’ve packed all these books on Byzantium so I can truly BE there and feel the weight of 1500 years of history. I will breathe Belisarius, Justinian and Theodora. I will hear the echoes in ancient cathedrals. I will, I’m sure, meet new characters from legends I have not yet learned.

Sometimes, lately, I have felt rather boring. The things running through my mind… they are largely not things you would be interested in. Much of the time I’m not even interested in them. Not that this is why I have not been blogging lately. No no, trust me. I am perfectly willing to blog about boring stuff. I haven’t been blogging lately because I am SUPER BUSY. But even if the super busy isn’t much affected by wandering Byzantium, the boring will be. My mind will have all this new stuff to process — things I have learned and done for the joy of them, instead of for the need of them. I am so excited about this.

And then there is my love. My husband. My joy. My partner in chaos, parenting and gaming. We are very good partners and enjoy each other a lot… when we can focus on each other. But through necessity, many of our interactions are tactical. “Who’s picking up the kids today? What are we making for dinner? Did you pick up the cat food? Do the kids sound too quiet to you?” I so intensely look forward to talking with my husband about the larger things in the world – those same things I’m eager to put into my mind. After ten years of marriage, I love my husband deeply. I also like him. I can’t wait to be with my friend and my beloved, and to have a great time.

So it’s time to kiss the kids and wish my parents luck with Camp Gramp. It’s time to shut down the computer for (gasp!!!!) like 9 days. It’s time to fill up a memory card with tourist pictures.

I will pick you up when I return. May blessings abound.