'Tis the Season

It's the season for giving and receiving and I think I've finally gotten the hang of how to be at ease with both. It wasn't always so. For example, my mother used to love giving me fresh white Carters underpants as a holiday gift. Instead of being grateful for these lovely soft white panties, I was ungrateful and wished I was given something I really wanted.

I was not a good gift recipient. I wished and wished to receive things I wanted rather than things others wanted me to have. Looking back now, I think how lovely it was to have a mother who would annually refresh my supply of undies so I wasn't stuck with greying or yellowing, holey and stained ones.

My friend Karen gave me a good talking to, when I was into my fifth decade. So many birthdays and Christmases gone by, and finally I was ready to learn. She explained that gifts are not about wish fulfillment, nor about need. They are EXTRAS. It is the recipient's job to see the beauty in each choice, to accept it graciously and lovingly and honor the donor for remembering us.

When my daughter got married, she did not have a registry like so many people do these days. In her opinion, having people choose for her was more of an honor, more exciting and more thoughtful than just fulfilling someone's wish list. Carefully she integrated each gift into her household and life. I was impressed and wished to be like her. I needed to grow and change in this area.

My dear departed Maggie was another fabulous gift recipient. What a pleasure it was to give to her! Everything she received left her breathless. She responded as the most innocent child to each gift, as if it were amazing and the most delightful thing she could imagine.

I think that if she had received those undies from my mom, she would have taken them to her cheek and rubbed them softly with her eyes closing, declaring them utterly soft and pristine. She would have made my mother feel as if she knew JUST what she needed.

Slowly I have adapted. I can't say that I have turned around completely. Often people choose what they themselves would like, rather than what the recipient would like. If I had read the cards right, I would have given Mom white undies too!

Giving gifts has become easier for me too. I don't strive to find the absolute perfect gift for everyone nor try to determine what they want and shop endlessly for it. Instead I do my best and take real pleasure thinking of the THEM that I know and choosing accordingly.

My friend, Margaret, likes to recollect early Christmases with her hard-working, single parent mom. The last week for Christmas they would take a paltry sum of money out on the town and choose small thoughtful gifts for everyone on their list. Margaret recalls how little money was spent and how much pleasure gained, year after year.

It isn't that wish lists are wrong or bad, that registries are either. I actually appreciate them at times. I like to be able to choose when to use them and when not to, which of course I can! and I keep a wish list myself for those who like using them. It's just that my expectations are different now.

I'd like to say, Do yourself a favor and don't sweat it this season. Have fun. Enjoy underspending and cavorting through fun merchandise for gifts. You could probably do a fair job by just gong to the hardware store!

Or follow the advice of Karen's childhood neighbors, the Harpers - Everyone gets one thing they need, one thing they want and one surprise. What a great rule for parents to follow. Keep the expectations low and the kids will ultimately be happier. They'll still get gifts from relatives which are extras.

When you open your own gifts, try to behave as a child who is underprivileged and is thrilled with anything at all. That's my hard won advice.

The Card-Making Workshop

My friend, Jenny, is taking a bit of time off from her career to regroup and think about what comes next for her. She is an educator, but also an artist and explorer of visual horizons. I invited her to come to a retreat at our house and to choose a workshop for playing together. She chose card-making and I dragged out materials that had lain around the shanty for years, unused though beloved. We both had the idea that we would make a birthday card edition to use over the next year.

We worked over the span of three days, one of them rainy when we didn't even set foot outside. Jenny was at one end of the table and I was at the other, with all the materials piled between us. There were nature samples (pressed flowers, leaves and ferns), rubber stamps and stamp pads in a few colors, hand-painted fabric swatches, paint samples from Home Depot. Mixing and matching, gluing and stamping, we worked happily while conversing about life.
In the end, we were astonished that we BOTH had exactly 21 cards!
In 1968 I attended Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. In the weaving studio, I heard a woman say that crafts were just the background for her, while she accomplished her main goal of getting to know other women. That revelation has proved true for me to this day, these 43 years later.

More on Grandparenting

Stress may be a pejorative word, but in yin/yang terms it's absence does not serve us well as creatures on this earth. Coping keeps us our brains healthy, our adaptive skills tuned up and our youthfulness zipping along. In decades past, I have fantasized about leading a relaxing life, doing what I want without the stress of meeting unpleasant and unwanted demands. Naive. I'm a slow learner.

What I'm accepting more in my sixties is the beauty of such demands. In my retirement, I have fewer things to cope with than ever. Back when I was a youngster, a mother with two small children, I observed a young woman during the summer, reading in a bikini under an umbrella to her heart's content. I looked wistfully at her, remembering my pre-child-rearing days, and thought how nice it would be to sit and read peacefully. Oooh, Heaven.

Fast forward many decades and I have had the time to resume this heavenly activity. But guess what? It hasn't been nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be back when I didn't have that leisure time. In fact, there are new nagging discontents that have seeped into my old brain.

My friend, Audrey, told me about her audiologist whom she respects greatly. He said when the time comes, he plans to live in a group situation with others his age. Seeing many patients he has observed that the folks who live alone/with a partner seem to deteriorate mentally faster than the people who are forced to interact with others regularly, forced to negotiate, compromise, problem solve.

We get a great deal of pleasure from our grandchildren...and they exhaust us. One day while caring for the two boys aged five and three, I was overwhelmed with sleepiness. Dexter was napping but Zach was wide awake. I told Z that I was going to rest for a minute on the couch. When I awoke only moments later he was gone. When I found him he had gotten into wet paint and was trying to remove it from his clothes and body. He was covered. A midday bath cured all, but it was clear that resting was not an activity to partake of when the boys are awake.

Grandchildren and grandparents are a perfect match. We don't like being rushed and we have endless time to learn together. If we can keep up, I think this is a great way to combine leisure time and a good amount of stress. No wonder extended families have worked so well over the centuries.

Humble me.

My friend Nan introduced me to the idea of "pilpul." I'm not sure how that's spelled, but my understanding of this yiddish term is that it is a a form of much ado about nothing, a mountain out of a mole hill, or as Nan put it, When something that could have been a great paragraph becomes a essay, or a an article becomes a book.

I don't want this observation of mine to become pilpul, but I must say that I notice its truth every day. WHENEVER I AM CRITICAL OF SOMEONE, I NOTICE THE SAME CHARACTERISTIC IN MYSELF WITHIN 24 HOURS.

When T empties a beverage bottle, he always puts the lid/cap back on, as in this Schweppes bottle. I always wonder why he does this instead of just throwing out the cover. After all, the bottle will be rinsed by me before being tossed in the recylce bin. Every time I unscrew the lid of an empty bottle, I wonder.

But this morning while I was rinsing out the peanut butter jar and cover for recycling, I noted that I both washed it out AND rinsed it. Now, really, WHY am I rinsing off the soapsuds? It's totally unnecessary. With dishes, obviously we do it because we don't want to ingest soap, but for recycle?? I don't think so.

Hmmm. Isn't this just habit, unnecessary labor, the same as putting a lid back on an empty beverage bottle? I DO think so.

Humble me, Please.

My Newly Found Offspring

I had a epiphany recently, that is making my life sweeter, and those around me too. I'm treating others as if they are my offspring. As a mother, there is no bigger love than that for my children who are now grown. Especially when I was responsible for their care entirely, I felt everything they did, their pain and joy. I was hurt when they were injured and elated when they were happy.

As a teacher, when I had difficult students, I tried to think of them as my own children and asked myself, How would her/his mother want her/him treated? The answer was with kindness and respect. And yet, relationships with adults seem more complicated. I have found it much more difficult to accept and honor every adult in my path, especially those who pushed my buttons and irritated me. Often the people we see the most are just such people. (smile, blush)

This week I had the realization that if I really applied myself and committed myself, I could transfer my feelings for children, my own and others, to adults. With this new perspective I find that I have less resentment and more compassion toward those who challenge me. Those challenging ones are the gifts, right? How else can we grow? Not through comfort, not through insulating ourselves with those who agree with us, not through avoiding conflict and pain.