The Way From Here

Where R U?

      I am a grandmother now and it is an astonishing world of love and unending delight .   Finn, two years old, and Poppie, 5 months, now crowd my waking thoughts.  Everything is new; everything is now, with their Zen approach to the present. This snowman with raisin eyes is the most important self-made creature on earth.  The heartbreak of no is complete, universal, until attention shifts onto something else-- a truck, a game of chase-me.  These children continually remind me that the present moment is all that counts.  Joseph Campbell calls it eternity—where the past and the future intersect and fuse to this precise moment, here while you are reading.  Now while I am writing.  An eternity available to us all if we can remember to stay present.  Easy enough for kids, challenging for adults, but we know it when it happens. The past fades, the future is a blank slate, as attention shifts to now.

     One morning I took Finn to the same park I had taken his mama with her brothers when she was a girl.  I remembered the anchor and solace that playground provided for my friends and me—the kids climbing and tumbling largely ignored by the mothers swapping stories.  Oh sometimes things would get out of hand, and we would yell and move our arm around in their general direction, or a child would call out Watch me mama!  As she jumped from a swing at the height of its apogee into the beauty bark, but they had playing to do and we had talking to do and the worlds intersected only when necessary. 

     I sat down and watched Finn join kids of all sizes doing the things kids are wired to do:  stooping, jumping, skipping, and throwing.  Several mothers who could have been my friends and me sat nearby, only they weren’t talking.  They were head down texting on their cell phones.  I watched them fascinated.  Occasionally a child would yell Watch me mama!  And there would be a pause as she finished texting and she would look up and say the same things we said:  Wow, be careful.  Then she would drop her head back down.  Sometimes the mothers talked to each other.  Sometimes they held out their phone to share a photo, but mostly they were separate and hunched over their cell phones--the world at their fingertips while another world unfolded in real time right before them.

      This unsettled me, but why?  In both cases, years apart, the kids were largely ignored, as it should be.  A recent observational study of children at public parks by Myron Floyd at North Carolina State discovered that kids whose parents hovered over and managed their activities at the playground moved less, engaged less and were ready to go home faster than kids whose parents stayed on the periphery of their play.  

     I wondered if I was falling back on the Good-Old-Days thinking that my mother had hauled up occasionally (“I’m so glad I’m not raising kids today…”).  It’s an easy fallback, but not one that felt like it fit here.  It’s a grand time to be raising kids, but several things came to mind.  Years ago at that park we were heads up, with a diffuse, if unfocused, attention to the energy unfolding on the beauty bark.  The moment the head goes down, the focus shifts to the demands of the screen and closes down peripheral vision and attention, one of the reasons texting and cell phone use while driving a car is illegal.  More critically, it isolates those in our company while we tap away.  We are separate islands of intention.

    Technology has intersected with parenting for a few generations.  When my mother used a phone it was attached to a wall in the kitchen and had a short cord.  She kept her conversations short when the five of her children were underfoot.  My conversations on the phone when the kids were young were longer.  If I had to connect with Greg in Alaska, or with a troubled friend I had a remote phone that I could take outside on the deck and hold the sliding door closed while the kids pounded the glass, then pounded each other on the other side when I didn’t respond.  Gotta go. Click. 

     I mused on the role screen time has taken in our lives today, this hand held device that trumps human connection.  Fast-forward ten years in the lives of the families I watched that day and I wondered how they would handle a 12-year-old texting (or working the Cloud by then) at a family dinner with grandma.  Put it away, the mother will say.  Not now, the Dad will scold.   But if we don’t model appropriate times for social media how can we ask the same of our children?  We set a formidable example that the company of those we love comes second to an invisible receiver on a tiny machine. 

     I don’t believe unwavering attention upon our children is good.  In fact I believe it inhibits the development of the resiliency we need for a meaningful life, but I do believe that when we are engaged in social media in the company of our children, we can miss the winning basketball shot at a game and the window for conversation when we pick them up from school—irretrievable moments that build a family dynamic brick by brick.

    The role of the parent is to explain the world to their children, to help them make sense of complicated emotions and situations, to provide a language rich environment filled with words to lay down fears and foster curiosity.  Social media eats up this time, the arc of human connection passing unseen.  Where r u?    

     Finn is exploring the meaning of later.  I wanna dig, wanna go outside, wanna cookie.  Lay-ter he says repeating after me with a furrowed brow, not now.  He is not sure if later is a minute, an hour, or a month but we are getting to that, it will come.  As long as later is not connected to Nana on a playground texting his mama that Finn is the most enchanting 2 year old on the planet, that instead I participate in the tickle and chase of the present, because the boy will grow and the moments will slip away.

 

His Hungry Ghost

     There was a ghost living under the bed of our four-year-old son.  It was so ugly there were no words to describe it.  The ghost did not make a sound.  It slipped into corners and behind doors, watching, waiting for the boy and when it saw him the ghost laughed in splinters that froze the blood and made his hair stand on end.  No one could see it but our son.  This made the ghost laugh more.  It grew stronger feeding on the boy’s fear.  It was a monster. 
     Our son could not sleep.  The moment he closed his eyes the monster slipped around the room he shared with his brother and mocked him.  It made the covers lift.  It moved toys.  His brother yelled at him to go to sleep, if there was a monster he would see it, he said.  His brother called him a baby, but that did not hurt as bad as the monster’s red eyes watching from the edge of the light fixture on the ceiling.  Every night we peered under the bed, into the closet, behind the doors, looking for signs of the ghost.

     No monster, we said. 
     It’s gone, I said closing the closet door.
     Go to sleep, his father said.  There are no monsters.  Monsters are in our heads.
     Our happy son grew thin and pale.  Dark circles bloomed under his eyes.  He began turning suddenly to catch the ghost behind him.  He refused to go in his room alone and had to be carried.  His feet could not touch the floor, the vibration of his steps called the monster.  The boy begged for me to sleep with him at night, the monster stayed away when I was around.  Please Mommy, he whispered.  Please.  
     I checked under the bed, I opened all the drawers.  I shook out the blankets and lifted the pillow.  The boy sat on the bed hugging his knees watching, 
     No monster, I said.
      I crawled into his bed and wrapped him in my arms.
      Monsters hate love, he said closing his eyes. 
     Our son jerked awake each time I slipped from the bed.  Don’t go, he cried.   He’ll come back. 
     His father called out.  How much longer, he asked tapping his watch from the doorway. 
     Monsters don’t follow time schedules, I said.
     His father went to bed alone and read a book on the Russian mafia.
     The house grew quiet and settled.  The wind combed the trees out the window as I laid in the dark against the warmth of my son and thought about monsters, real and imagined.  I thought about a friend who believed cancer was stalking her with every headache.  I thought about our money worries.  A neighbor was sure his wife was unfaithful.   There are monsters everywhere, even as our hearts beat hard against logic.  They claim our waking moments and defy the reasonable explanations from those who love us.  We tell our children there are no monsters as we throw drugs, alcohol, and food into the nameless dark that threatens to swallow us whole and spit out the bones.  We lie awake at night imagining death, loss of power, divorce, and the thousand sunderings of being human, helpless before its unacknowledged size and shape.  There are no monsters we assert, even as our own lives tell our children the truth. 
      I eased from the bed and pulled the covers around my boy.
     One afternoon I stood at the sink washing peanut butter from lunch dishes when I heard a scream.  Our son ran into the kitchen and leaped into my arms.
     He’s.  In.  There.  He whispered.  The blanket lifted up on the couch by itself!
     Tears filled his eyes.  His horror was palpable, and for a moment I wavered.  Could there be a ghost that only he could see?  Was he prescient to unseen forces that would claim us all in the end?
      I carried him into the living room to take in the otherworldly blanket and sort the mix of thoughts running through my head.  Something snapped into focus.  I set him down and said the words we all long for when faced with the unsolvable.
     I know what to do, I said.
     We drove to the grocery store where I bought blue food coloring, an empty spray bottle, and almond extract.  He carried the paper bag into the car and held it on his lap. 
     It is very difficult to get rid of monsters, I told him driving home.  But there are a few tricks that never fail. 
    I turned my head to him.  Look at me, I said.  His brown eyes met mine. 
     That never fail, I repeated.  We can get rid of him but it will take some work on your part.
     He nodded wordlessly as we pulled into the driveway deep in our own thoughts.  I walked to the sink and held out my hand for the paper bag.  I filled the spray bottle with water and unscrewed the cap from the food coloring.
     What color is this? I asked.
     Blue, he said.
     Right.  Blue is the color of the sky when it is sunny.  Monsters hate sun.  They like the dark.
     He nodded as I poured the bluest of bright skies into the water.  I uncapped the almond extract.
     Smell this. 
     The boy sniffed the bottle and handed it back.
     It smells good doesn’t it?  Ghosts hate the smell of anything that smells good.  They like the smell of stinky things.  To monsters and ghosts this is the stinkiest of stinks.  They run from a sniff of anything sweet and go back to wherever they came from.  This is called Monstercide.   Insecticide kills insects.  Monstercide kills monsters and ghosts.
     I shook the bottle and held it out. 

     Spray this wherever a monster has been, I said.

      I followed my son.  He sprayed the blanket in the living room for several minutes then gazed at its damp and folded defeat.  He walked down the hallway and sprayed each family photograph framed and hung on the wall.
     Those eyes follow me, he said. 
     He walked in his room and sprayed his bed, the window, the closet, and inside each shoe.  He opened drawers, sprayed the clothes, his toys, a box of Legos.  He aimed the spray over the floor where he walked, and into the air.
      Hand that to me, I said.  I better get the ceiling and the light where he could hide.
      I stood on the bed and sprayed the light for along time.
     Enough?  I asked.
     More, he said.
     I sprayed more.  The room smelled like marzipan and Christmas and good things in the kitchen.  I threw myself on the bed.
     Let’s think like a monster, I said.  Where else could you get in?
     He pulled me to my feet and sprayed the threshold of the room.  We moved through the house and sprayed every threshold and door until the bottle was empty. 
     Can we make more?  he asked.
     Yes, I said, and we did.
     The boy went to bed that night with the filled bottle gripped between his fingers.
    I am going to sleep with Daddy tonight.  The ghost is gone, I said.
    He nodded.
     If it comes back I have this, he said waving the bottle--the talisman against the dark, my ticket back to the marriage bed.
  Right.  We have the power now, I told him.
     And somehow, miraculously, we did.  The ghost disappeared.  When it tried to sidle back into dreams, behind open doors, generous doses of Monstercide sent it back to the dark place where ghosts and monsters live. 
     As our son grew he shared his weapon with the sleepless and the anxious, with the people fighting monsters no one else could see.  He shook the solution of water, the bluest of skies, the sweetest of scents into an alchemy of hope aimed at the unknown, one answer against the dark.

There's a Somewhere Out There: The Making of a Wish Book

    There are few milestones in life more significant than graduating from high school. It’s right up there with getting married, with having a child. 
    Oh having a child.  My life would be immeasurably different without the raising of our four children.  Each baby gave birth to a new and different me.  A good me:  generous, playful, creative. A bad me:  impatient, overburdened, shrill.  An ugly me: vulnerability disguised in fury.  It’s all there untidily wrapped up in a package called mom.  That’s me.  I am somebody’s mom. Four somebody's:  Jenna, Ben, Daniel, and Nick.  And even though they have graduated from high school and are out on their own I am still, will forever be, Mom.
    As these breathless, radiant, incredibly special human beings approached 18, they managed to accumulate enough credits and good grades to graduate from high school.  I fretted with our first graduation.  What does a parent give to equip a budding adult?  Luggage?  She loved her battered back pack with the tears and stains of adventures like so many earned badges.  An airline ticket?  She had saved her money to travel, and her ticket had more sweat and dreams embedded in it than one her dad and I could give.  In the end her uncle made a mahogany chest we filled with the stuff of independence:  bedding, sharp cooking  knives, a frisbee, towels, phone cards--the kind of stuff that upon launching she would take or borrow from us anyway.  But the most important thing we placed in Jenna’s trunk proved more useful than luggage, more precious than travel.  It could not be borrowed.  She could not do it for herself.  Over the years Jenna has returned to it again and again, during good times as an affirmation, and bad times as a reminder of what could be.  It was a handmade book of memories and wishes from people who loved her, who knew her, who opened her vistas with their rich and singular perspectives.
    I began with a list of important people in her life:  grandparents, family, teachers, her horse trainer.  Children she had babysat for who adored her.  Neighbors, friends of mine who have known her from birth, friends of hers.  The girl is an extrovert and the list was long.  When I made her quieter, more self-contained brother’s book, the list was much shorter.  The key is not the length of the book, but the quality of relationship between the graduate and the wisher.
    I asked each person for a memory of Jenna, and a wish for her future.  It was a look to the past that helped shaped who she was, and a glimpse ahead, of what the future could hold.  This proved to be extraordinarily poignant for me as I transcribed them to the page.  Most folks had memories I had no recollection of, or they had a perspective of Jenna that was different from mine.  There were stories of  adventure and humor, of generosity and honesty.  And truth be told, I needed to be reminded of these traits before she left.  A  strong willed 18 year old, ready to get out of the house can make you lose perspective in a crazy way.  There were wishes I had forgotten to wish for her, that were useful and tender and considerate.
    Now, I am one of those people who love sinking my teeth into a project, and I made this one a little more complicated than pasting photos on a page of words (which can be every bit as meaningful).  I made a Poloroid image transfer of each person onto water color paper, and bound the book by hand.  This took a very long time.  Scotch drinking, bleary eyed, 2:00-in-the-morning-several-nights-in-a-row kind of time.  You don’t want to do that.  Give yourself a stretch of weeks to do it in. 
     Each book I gave our graduates had a title and a photo on the hard bound cover.  I placed a lacy liner paper between the cover and the title page,  I wrote a dedication.  I gave all rights to the graduate in writing on the last page in case they wanted to publish it and make a gazillion dollars one day.  I tied silver beads to the cord that bound Jenna’s book.         
    The process felt like labor, the end result as precious as a newborn--wrinkles, smudges, mistakes and all.   Just like life. Bumping and lurching along, spreading its wings,  standing on tip toes,  ready or not, here she comes. 

Art Smart: Encouraging Your Child's Creativity

    Some of the happiest kids I know stir up mud stew in old pots on summer days.  They paint sidewalks, make snakes from clay, and plant potatoes when given a chance.  These kids tape paper into chains,  draw gardens, and make pipe cleaner people who hang from trees and slide down stairs. Somewhere in these children’s lives there is room for their imaginations to stretch.  The kind of imagination with no apparent purpose.  It idles and hums along.  It swoops and swings, unfolding new ideas where it lands.  Our imaginations are a large part of who we are and where we are headed.  Our lives are bound by what we can envision, and the envisioning process begins in childhood.
    Consider the home the seed bed of creativity.  It is where we learn to imagine the possibilities and ways to make them happen.  One of the most important things parents can do to encourage this process is to cultivate a climate where creativity is welcome.  Creativity does not require huge amounts of money, a fancy easel, or a computer.  It does require a corner to create in with a few supplies, the time to make it happen, and a certain amount of surrender by parents to creative disorder.

Space and Supplies

    Let’s begin with the corner to create in.  Not a room (although that would be dreamy), a basement, or a studio.  Simply a space where creative resources are handy.  These resources can include a box of art supplies, a dress-up box, and my family’s favorite, and inventor’s box.  They are simple to put together.  The art box is the most used resource box in our home.  Include things normally reserved for adults:  good scissors, stapler, a paper punch.  Paper (tissue, construction, typing, graph, etc.), felt tips, glue sticks, stamps and ink pads,  clear tape, bingo markers, sharp pencils,  scratch-on letters, pipe cleaners, doilies, blank note cards, clay, colored paper clips, erasures, etc. 
    Whether you have boys or girls, toddlers or teens, a box filled with thrift shop treasures will last through years of plays, Halloween costumes, and games of pretend.  We have collected basketball uniforms, filmy peignoir sets, cowboy boots and gold slippers.  There are wigs and jewelry, glasses and hats in our box, along with hunter’s vests and bathrobes.  All found at thrift shops and garage sales for a few dollars.
    Our beloved inventor’s box is nothing more than a junk drawer’s contents in a box.  It holds rubber bands, scraps of wood, corks and wire.  There is an old transistor radio, a broken egg beater, tiny motors from electronic supply stores, and the batteries to run them.  There are bolts and nails and a big roll of duct tape.  Consider throwing in straws, small cans, and old game pieces. 
    The ideal place for your boxes is a room off the kitchen with a big old table (if I had my way, I would turn every formal dining room in America into an ART ROOM ).  Children seem to create best under our feet, near light and familiar domestic routines.  We are fooling ourselves to think kids will go down to a dark basement or an out of the way room to create (would you?).  They want  a corner where the project can sit undisturbed, where they can call out for us to come and see!  Pull out a card table and leave the boxes underneath it, within easy reach.  These boxes hold the wondrous ingredients to express imaginations, and will provide hours of self-directed fun.

Time

    Time is inextricably linked with creativity. You cannot use your imagination, or bring an idea to fruition without the time to do it in.  We unwittingly rob children of time in several ways--with television, and with an overabundance of activities where adults determine the rules, the process, and the product.  Classes in music, dance and belonging on a soccer team do not necessarily enrich children.  It often puts them on a fast track to burn out at tender ages.  The time spent on classes, practicing and performing can deplete a child’s creative energy--energy that could be spent claiming his or her imagination without an adult’s well intentioned interference.
    For most children, television eats up more time than anything else.  By simply turning off the TV set, you are adding hours of creative time to your child’s day.  It can be difficult in the beginning.  She will do everything in her power to convince you why she should watch cartoons, and fret and fume and stomp around.  These are good signs!  It means your child is grappling with boredom.  Think of boredom as an ally, for it leads to the place where ideas are born and carried out.  Boredom is a bog invitation to do anything to escape its clutches.  Imagining your way out of it breeds resourcefulness, a powerful skill to possess in life.

Tolerance

    Most kids are equipped to make things happen.  Most parents are not.  It can be a mess.  And we do not always have the time or the energy for the disorder.  Creativity is not always messy, but the best activities often are.  Think of it as a feast.  When we sit down to a delicious meal, someone had to chop, peel, bake and stir her way to the food before us.  There are pots and pans in the sink, and piles of dirty dishes.  Creativity is a feast, not a fast food.  Someone has to paint and poke and glue his way through it.  We need to be reminded to surrender to the disorder of undefined feasts, to give in to the mess in dirt and paint and scattered cushions on the floor.
    Surrendering to disorder does not mean your child rampages through the day mashing clay into the carpet, or moving restlessly from one activity to the next.  It is valuing the true creative drive in your child above your need to keep things in place.  It is saying yes to a highway of chalk on the driveway and helping to make a batch of cookies.  Yes to playing with Daddy’s shaving cream in the bathtub, and a tea party with graham crackers for all the dolls. This is the stuff of memories, of a childhood well lived.  Years from now no one will remember with fondness the clean house and scrubbed floors.  We remember the dandelion bouquets and the hand painted cards.  Surrendering to a child’s imagination is being aware that there is no mess in the world that cannot be cleaned up.  Not one.
    Creative kids tend to be happy kids.  They are the flexible thinkers, the dreamers and dawdlers.  These kids are not tethered to the probable, not always satisfied with mainstream answers to solving problems.  They take risks with new ideas, and then take the ideas further than most.  They grow into tomorrows Einstein, Picasso, and Spielberg.  Imagination informs their lives, and the future stretches before them as a horizon of possibilities.  It begins with a corner in a warm room.

The Wrong Side of Greener Grass

     Every once in a while I am hit with a longing for something I know I shouldn’t expect.  Things that I tell myself I am only buying into out of cultural pressure. Like children who dress neatly in good clothes, or for someone, say  my husband, to surprise me and whisk me away for a weekend.  Once many years ago, I was hit with an immediate and sudden need to be recognized, appreciated even, on a very specific day, for a very specific amount of time:  Mother’s Day .  Was it too much to ask for?
     Our children were at the ages of 9, 11, 13, and 15.  That little factoid right there should tell you something.  Add an absent husband, an overwhelming spring calendar of fund raisers, endless carpooling, multiple sporting events, and you have a recipe for one depleted mama.  Me.  I was exhausted and ready to be honored.  Ready for breakfast in bed and dishes done, for no bickering or slamming of doors.  I wanted to open my eyes in the morning to an appreciation reflected back from my precious offspring.  I wanted peace, and manners, and a kind of backseat Sunday where the kids automatically agreed to do whatever I wanted without complaint.   Okay.  I’ll just say it:  I longed for the perfect Mother’s Day.
     I figured I would kindly take the breakfast-in-bed part out of the equation and  set up instead a brunch at a swishy restaurant with my best friend Margo and her family.   Next, a hike in the Olympics, then dinner at home—cooked and cleaned up by the kids.  It sounded good. Everyone knew the plan.  I was hopeful.
     I opened my eyes to the alarm, not the kind gaze of children.  I poured a cup of coffee that I had made myself into a mug.  Somehow I had forgotten how hard it was to wake teenagers on Sunday mornings.  After several fruitless attempts I must admit that I ended up screaming at their sprawled bodies:   ‘It’s my day, get it?  GET it?!  MY DAY!  MOTHER’S DAY!! Get out of bed NOW.’  I slammed the door and spilled coffee down my bathrobe.  I opened the door again.  NOW! I screamed into the room and slammed the door again.  That should wake them up.
     It was not a good start.
     Their manners were terrible at the restaurant.  There was egg on faces and elbows on the table.  There was slurping and slumping and sighing.  I gave them my  fiercest look and hissed general commands in their direction.  My best friend’s two children were perfect.  I am not kidding.  Perfect.   Table manners, eye contact, everything.  “It’ll get better, Nanc,” Margo whispered as her Jesus children gathered to say good-bye to me and oh! Happy Mother’s Day!
   It got worse.  Everyone protested the very idea of the hike; they were sullen in the car and complained bitterly that someone’s elbow was digging into someone’s side.  I gripped the steering wheel and was silent.  Silence is my best weapon, mostly because I use it only in emergencies, when life is catastrophic, weirdly skewed.  Mother- silence is scary territory:   What is she thinking?.  How can I fix it?
      Not this time. 
     We lurched along the hike, cut it short and drove home.  The kids  stormed into the house, and asked what was for dinner.  I looked at them for a long time, turned and walked upstairs, gently shut my bedroom door, threw myself on the bed, and cried. 
     Mother-tears are right up there next to Mother-silence.  It rarely happens.  What to do?  What to DO?! I felt them think behind my closed door.
     One by one the kids tiptoed inside and gingerly sat on the edge of the bed.  They stared accusingly at each other and patted my back, murmuring of course they’ll make dinner.  It’s Mother’s Day!
     ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ our daughter said, ‘The boys can fix it.’ 
     She pulled me to my feet and we walked outside into a fine spring evening.  I could hear the boys industriously banging pans and rummaging through the refrigerator.  Jenna chatted hopefully as we walked and I gazed at our neighbors on their front porch.  Dave was busily barbecuing, Fran was sitting on the porch swing gently swaying with her daughter, sipping a glass of wine.  ‘Hello!  Happy Mother’s Day!’ they cheerily called out.  Ka-chink.  Fran and Dave toasted each other and their perfect daughters.  Their perfect lives.  I waved half heartedly back and stared glumly ahead.  I felt crippled.  Jenna and I walked on for a spell then turned back.  Everywhere I looked, neighbors were celebrating Mother’s day with laughter, animated conversations, and grilled meat.  I limped home.
     The kids tried, they really really tried to resurrect the day for me, but it was too late.  I smiled weakly at their efforts.  I told them it didn’t matter, we could celebrate Mother’s day any old day.  Like next Sunday when Dad is home from Alaska. 
    My children were relieved.   I went to bed.
     Months later I ran into Fran in the grocery store and confessed my terrible envy at her life that day.  Fran burst out laughing.
     “Oh Nancy!  I had just had a conflict with the girls and saw you walk by with Jenna and I thought to myself: I wish we were on a peaceful walk together like that. Then I looked over at the Johnston’s and there they were,  celebrating their Mom’s newly earned law degree, so happy and connected.  Laughing loudly, loving and working together on their outdoor dinner.  You all were having the perfect Mother’s Day, not me.”
     I have thought about that day often through the years.  Not just because, in the end, these children of ours turned out to be loving young adults who, since that time, have granted me many pretty-close-to-perfect Mother’s days, but because the yearning for appreciation runs deep and dies hard within all of us.  A friend once told me that the four A’s of healthy  relationships are appreciation, attention, acceptance, and affection.  I think those four words take us as close to love as we flawed humans can get.  We long for them all.  We need them all.  Wife to husband, true friend to true friend, parent to child.  When they are absent, we hunger for their return, when they are present, life feels pretty close to perfect.  Peachy  perfect.  Even if their timing doesn’t always fall on Mother’s day.

10 Secrets of Happy Families

     Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were a magic formula for family happiness? And if we followed that recipe precisely, added all the right ingredients at the right time, our relationships would be a love feast sustaining us through thick and thin. 
     The truth is, there is no one way, one path, to a happy family.  It is a complicated, sometimes messy business that asks more of us than we always feel willing to give.  Happiness rules can change from family to family, and from culture to culture, but there are certain collective tenets that invite depth and meaning to our relationships.   The following ideas are only a few of many that can help to foster a sense of wellbeing in families. 

1. Deposit the qualities into your relationships that you wish to withdraw.  Think of the person as a bank account.  For example, you wish your child were more patient and loving, your partner more appreciative.  Bite your tongue, and plant patience.  Tell your partner you noticed the effort to help even though she or he was tired.  Sometimes we become the very qualities we are upset with and the family account bottoms out.

2. Show up on time.  It is a strong and vital message that says you will do what you say you will. 

3. Be affectionate.  Scratch backs, say  ‘I love you’ every day.   Lounge together, hug daily.  If affection does not come naturally, practice it in tiny doses of touch.  It is never too late to learn how to hug and kiss those we love.

4. Help decrease sibling rivalry by opting out of most conflicts. Many studies show that the more a parent interferes between siblings, the less close and more discord there is in the relationship.  Sometimes it helps for a parent to mediate solutions by sitting the siblings down and asking them to define the problem, repeat the other’s viewpoint, then brainstorm solutions; this means the kids, and not the parent, are the major investors in the answer and its outcome.  Always step in when a conflict gets abusive or violent.

5. Appreciate each other.  Sometimes it is the little things that can make or break our level of coping:  showing gratitude for help, noticing the effort someone is making, or drawing attention to the hidden kindnesses in a day elevates our sense of feeling loved.  It’s important to feel loved, because the bottom-line is, you can’t give what you don’t have.

6. Build resiliency in your relationships.  Accept life’s bumps, betrayals and skinned knees as part of the larger picture of a meaningful life.   Do not fix all problems.  Your assumption that a family member will deal just fine with an issue will often make it so, building self-confidence and perseverance.

7.  Communicate.  Listen first and foremost, with eye contact and open body language.  Do not interrupt.  Ask questions.  Share your own perspective.  Be vulnerable.  Some of my most effective parenting happened when I told my teenagers that I was scared, and for me it always comes out as anger.  Communication is one of the cornerstones of healthy relationships, even if it is a lurchy, uneven, process.

8. Accept the differences in one another.  There is a powerful quote by Maya Angelou that sums it up:   “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  Acceptance is the present tense of love.  It tells us we are precious as we are, not for what we could become.

9. Tend to your own life.  As parents we often set aside our own needs for our children, yet adults need to belly laugh, stay up late, eat good food with friends and indulge their own passions and interests too.  This creates a home climate that encourages health and vitality at its very roots.

10. Pay attention.  You can’t push rewind on childhood.  The dishes can wait, turn off the cell phone, limit computer and TV time and step into the present where each moment is full and fleeting.  The truth is, we don’t march into adulthood with grateful childhood memories of clean houses and absent fathers.

The Forgetting, The Remembering

     There are a thousand ways to raise a happy and healthy child. I have seen strict parents and lenient parents do it. I have watched intact families, single parents, rich and poor, manage to instill a sense of purpose and meaning in their children. There is no grand formula, no one set of criteria for success save one: There is a sense of relationship between parent and child. However misguided, lopsided, or messy the connection may be, if there is a relationship, there is hope, there is forgiveness, there is a certain elasticity that absorbs the lurches of mistakes and failure.  It can be time consuming.  It can disrupt schedules and interrupt well laid plans, but there are few things in life more rewarding.   
     It is important to remember a good relationship is earned, and not granted on some magical day when we have more time, more money, and everything crossed off our lists of things-to-do.  Whether it is a connection with our partner, our children, or our friends, the vital underpinnings of healthy relationships include understanding, interest, warmth, and enjoyment. William Glasser, a psychiatrist and educator, calls them the four A’s of healthy relationships:  Acceptance, attention, affection, and appreciation. 
                                Acceptance
     Everyone wants to be understood.  Not necessarily agreed with, or approved of, simply understood---in the classroom, the boardroom, around the world, and in our homes.  If we can manage to get into one another’s shoes and see life as the other might see it, it makes a remarkable contribution toward love and conflict resolution.  Bump this concept up to a grander scale and it promotes world peace. To be understood when we feel overworked, underappreciated, ignored, or hurting is a powerful antidote to the cultural disenfranchising process running rampant today, and it is one of our most powerful tools of influence as parents.  When you understand and accept a child with all their gifts and difficulties, he or she is suddenly lovable, worthy of regard and not just another problem to solve.  We all need a harbor, a safe place where we feel accepted for who we are, and not who we may become.  Acceptance is the understanding that we are all human trying to do the best job we can with what we’ve got.

                                Attention
     Our middle son was born between strong and outgoing siblings that took up much of my time and energy.  As a toddler he was more introverted and self-contained than the others, but every once in a while he would go through periods when my time was too spare for his comfort and he acted out with furious abandon.  That is when we played the I-See-You Game, nothing more than calling out loud all his movements and actions.  “I see you walking and jumping up and down, grabbing a book.  Oh look!  I see you have grown so much you can carry 4 books at once.  You are strong.  I see you are walking with big feet and strong muscles.  You are waiting for me to put baby down for a nap so we can read.  You are sitting beside me.“  It worked like magic.  He would calm.  I kept eye contact.  Most of the time five minutes of I-See-You brought the boy back to himself.  Adults are the same.  I see you had a hard day.  I see you trying to juggle several things at once.  I see you are my beautiful one. Attention is one of the simplest things we can give, but it is easily squeezed out of the day with the velocity of our lives.  We are moving too fast, burdened with too much, to pay real attention to our loved ones.  Yet paying close attention does not take any longer than drinking a cup of coffee or reading the newspaper.  Attention is in eye contact, in stooping down to the level of your child, in setting aside the task and listening with everything you’ve got.  It is within reach for even the busiest people, and is simply a choice away.

                                Affection
     It was a bad day for our eleven year-old daughter.  Her new cat had run away.  School had started recently and her friends were preoccupied with others.  She was on the uncertain threshold between girl and young woman.  Everything seemed confusing.  One moment she was light filled and gleaming, the next she railed against everything in her path.  She slumped into the kitchen after school and threw herself down in the nearest chair.  It was tricky.  I could ask what was wrong.  I could ignore her and act cheery. Or I could do what my own mother did with me on bad days and gather her into my arms and fold her up. My default mothering, the one that rises up unbidden when things get emotional and takes over, is embedded in my own childhood for better or worse.  One of the better parts is filled with affection.  I feel lucky.  In some ways it was like being raised in a litter of puppies with an abundance of sprawls and licks and close proximity to people I love.   Feet on laps, linked arms, braided hair and kisses good morning, kisses good night. I thought everybody lived that way.  In the end I told her she looked like she needed a hug, and I smooched her behind the ear 10 times because it tickles and it always makes her close her eyes and smile.  We sprawled on the couch together and talked about our bad days, I had one too, you know, I told her.  We snuggled for a time then rose and went our separate ways feeling warm and connected. 
     Showing affection is not all kisses and hugs.  It can take the shape of a warm look, a hand on the shoulder, a tucked in blanket at night before bed.  It is your hands holding a face and smiling, brushing hair gently, scratching an itch for someone, and holding him up when he feels like he is falling.  Affection is the balm laid on an emotional wound or a difficult day.  It is kind regard expressed physically with a touch or a hold.  It is easier for some people than others to express affection. Many close-knit families are more reserved and save demonstrative behavior for special occasions.  The most important thing is authenticity.  If you don’t normally kiss and hug, it can feel strange if you suddenly act as if it is important; for then it becomes a duty performed in a sea of obligations.  Affection, above all, is not a duty. 

                                Appreciation
     Appreciation is an invisible currency not always available when we need it most.  It is hard to appreciate someone when her energy steam rolls over ours, or fatigue or stress dims the attention needed to really see him, but appreciation in a relationship is a precious thing.  It can buy a sense of wellbeing, an awareness of yourself and the impact you have, and a feeling of belonging to a family, to an organization, or to a community.  It translates across the board in the human condition.  Appreciation is understanding the value of someone, of his or her efforts, or integral nature.  I appreciate our son’s sense of humor that can change my day by making me laugh.  I appreciated our daughter’s loyalty to her younger brothers on the school bus when they were young.  I appreciate my husband’s need for downtime on weekends, for it gives us more spontaneity on a Sunday afternoon. Appreciation has its roots in gratitude and its crown in recognition.  It is considering and being grateful for the qualities that make up an individual, and then recognizing them aloud.  There are few feelings as gratifying as hearing a compliment about yourself in passing conversation, even if it is as simple as noticing the effort to help, or calling a child a kind person. Keep in mind that appreciation is not a rush of compliments or a strategy for esteem building.  It is an authentic admiration of the good traits of which everyone possesses, even if they are scattered and buried down deep.

     In the end, if I have done my work as a writer, this essay may surface in your thoughts or in a conversation with another parent. A funny thing will happen.  As you begin to think about the four A’s of a good relationship, you are likely to rattle off three of the four easily. Pay attention to the one attribute you forgot.  It will be the one you need to work on, the one that does not come as easily as the others.  I have found over the years, one time I may forget appreciation, most of the time I forget acceptance.  I have never forgotten affection.  It is a metaphysical reminder that nudges me as a parent, as a wife, as a daughter, and a sister.  The forgetting, and then the remembering is all part of the rich process of relationships. 

"Can I Play at the Dirt Pile House?"

     My friend Kate gazed out at the homes in her new neighborhood as her husband drove.  Each yard was neat and perfectly landscaped, complete with swept walkways and expensive playground equipment--one set after another as they passed, a kid’s heaven, she mused.  Clean cars were parked in the driveways.  Behind those big front doors Kate imagined tidy rooms and families with organized lives. 
     She sighed.  Theirs was not.  Decidedly not.  The move was expensive—both emotionally and financially.  Their lives were packed into boxes and shoved aside until Kate could find time between needy kids and laundry to sort them.  The kids missed their old neighborhood where their friends lived and they were all too noisy about it.  The five-year-old twins were clingy, and the three year old wore his rubber boots and coat continuously, even when he slept, because he was panicky about being left out, left behind, and felt too slow to keep up.  Life the past few weeks felt more like squatting in a refugee camp than the big move to a happily-ever-after house.   To top it all off, they could not afford to do any landscaping until fall, and that was 6 months away.  Instead, they had a backhoe shove the dirt aside in the backyard to make room for the playground equipment they were saving for.  It made a small mountain of dirt about as attractive as a clear cut in a forest of fine yards.  Kate tried not to think about it.
     One breezy afternoon after three straight days of pouring rain, Kate shooed the kids outside so she could get some work done.  They protested mightily in three-force that there was nothing to do!   One look at their mother’s face made it very clear they had no choice, but to figure it out.
     ‘What did your face look like?’ I asked her.  ‘Like this,’ she said narrowing her eyes and pursing her lips into one straight line.  She looked exactly like my own mom who every single summer day while I was growing up opened the back door with one arm and scatted my brothers and sisters and I Out!  Out! Out!
     And Kate’s kids did figure it out, in the wide open resourceful way of all children left to their own devices:  they made mud pies from the dirt hill in old pans and laid them in the sun to dry.  Later one of the twins raced breathlessly into the house looking for trucks.   “We’re making a mountain pass!” she declared.  Kate peeked out the window to muddy boys industriously digging a road with spoons for their trucks on the side of the dirt pile.  She rummaged through some boxes in the garage and found a hand trowel, a hand rake, and an old weeder with a notched end.  Kate put the tools in a bucket, traded them for the spoons pilfered from the kitchen and went back into the house where she had several hours to make a house a home.
     Over the course of the next several weeks, the kids could scarcely wait to throw themselves outside to the dirt pile.  Kate bought hand trowels and buckets for everyone.  Neighbor kids began to sidle over to consider the play, attracted by shouts of Watch out! and Hand me that shovel!  Then they dug in themselves, offering new ideas and plans for caves to park the trucks.  Kate met the Moms at the door and apologized ahead of time for the grubby state their children would return home in.  Most parents were good about it.   Some tried to ban or limit their children’s time there, not knowing that there are few rules and abundant joy in dirt.  Kids know this better than anyone.
     It didn’t take long before Kate’s home became known as The Dirt Pile House, a name she had mixed feelings about at first, but learned to love.  It made her reconsider all those expensive playground sets.  When she thought about it, they were always empty.  In fact, she couldn’t ever recall seeing kids playing on any set in any neighborhood.
     The family settled comfortably in the house, the kids enjoyed commanding the biggest heap of fun in the neighborhood, and the three year old took off his coat.  In the end, they kept the dirt pile.  Best of all, the money saved up for backyard landscaping and the pricey wooden jungle gym was spent more wisely on a family trip to Mexico that winter.   It was the sweetest trip ever.

Ma-Jean's Magic Jar

     It was my idea of a great rummage sale.  I skipped the tables with crowds around them and headed for the empty corners where creative possibilities lay disguised as junk.  I found old transistor radios and alarm clocks for the kids to take apart, horn rim glasses and a scatty wig for the dress up box, a tin of colored thread on wooden spools, and best of all, a large cardboard box of ancient Coleman parts (valves, screens, springs and brass coils) just waiting for the uninhibited to reinvent the lantern.
     On my way to the cashier, I cast one last glance over the toy table when an old peanut butter jar caught my eye.  Curious, I pulled it out from between the piles of games and books and read the label:  "Ma-Jean's Magic Jar (For times when the kids say there is nothing to do but watch TV".)  Inside were orange slips of paper.  I unscrewed the lid and pulled one out.  "Make a house!  Use chairs, couch cushions, blankets."  I added the jar to my pile of treasures. 
     Later that night I read the rest of the slips.  "Have a picnic on the front porch," "Pretend you fell down and bumped your head and broke your leg, Grandma can be the doctor," " Have a parade with records."  The slips went on to suggest that making jello, writing letters and turning seven sommersaults were all a lot more fun than watching TV. 
     Try some Ma-Jean Magic.  Sit down with your children and fill the jar together.  Ask them what they consider fun.  Add your own ideas.  Some of our favorite things to do are as simple as reading a book together or making pancakes in the middle of the day. 
    The shared pool of suggestions makes this project a success.  They are not vague orders from an adult like "Go outside and play," but instead offer immediate and tangible alternatives a child helped think of himself. 
     Ma-Jean's Magic works for me too.  Sometimes I need a piece of paper to remind me how important it is to sprawl on a bed with my children to read Where the Wild Things Are.   Besides, you never know where you will find magic.  It may even be at a rummage sale. 

Pride Time

    “You’re gone too much,” Nick, our eighteen–year-old, said one Sunday afternoon.  I studied him thoughtfully.  He’d grown ten fast years past the name Nicky into a lanky young man filled with strong ideas.  Ideas that leaned hard on the fierce side of things these days:  politics, girls, rowing, the price of gas, the length of his sideburns.
    “I mean I don’t miss you or anything.  It’s just that it seems you are never around.”
    He looked at me defensively and shrugged. My husband Greg and I had just returned from a weekend of working at the family ranch.  Nick had declared he was too busy to go with us.  He had rowing practice, a paper to write, and a marine science test to study for.  Besides, he wanted nothing more than to sleep IN on Saturday and NOT, no thank-you, deliver calves or lift rocks that had surfaced in the spring thaw.   Nope.  Not Nick Blakey.  He had bigger fish to fry, like renting Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and playing pool with friends.
        We were all busy for that matter.  Even though three out of our four children were at college or on their own, and it was just Nick left at home, time seemed to hold us on a perpetually short leash.  It had been a spring of travel and speeches that ran late into the night for me.  Earnest, even passionate, speeches urging parents to slow down and allow more unstructured time with their families. Often by the time I caught the ferry home it would be after 11:00 and Nick was in bed.  Family dinners had gotten shoved aside and staged.  Nick had to eat the moment he stepped in the door from rowing.  Greg didn’t arrive from work until later, and I ate with Greg or Nick or whenever my appetite and mood dictated.
        “Don’t look at me that way.  You don’t have to worry.  It’s just that when you talk about going to the movies together this week, or going out to breakfast tomorrow, it feels like you are trying too hard or something,” he continued.
        Nick rested his chin on his arms and gazed up at me.  Where did the time go?  I wondered.  How did this handsome young man land on my kitchen chair?  I sat down and sighed.  Navigating the final stages of adolescence into adulthood is difficult, and in a few short months, my time with the family, or lack of it, would be as insignificant to Nick as a pile of clouds on the horizon.  I knew this with all my mother’s heart.  I thought of the one thing I could do, that I always do when confronted with the paradoxes of parenting:  I told a story.
        “Nick, once when you kids were young, we went to Woodland Park Zoo.  We moved slow for once, and stopped at every single place and animal that interested you guys. Ben loved the bats, we stopped at the monkeys for Jenna, and you and Daniel wanted to look at every lizard and amphibian and bring them home.  Remember that?  Then we wandered over to the lions.  A signboard describing something called ‘pride time’ caught my eye.   Pride time is the invisible, seemingly irrelevant acts of social unity within a group of lions. They groom one another, they sprawl and nap.  The kittens might bat the dozing females’ flicking tails and then rassle each other with pouncing energy.  The lions rub heads, play, and sleep some more--in a pile, shoulder to shoulder, head to tail.  They lick each other, paw, and yawn and stretch and roll in the dust.  From the outside it seems that nothing important is going on except a whole lot of laziness, but researchers discovered a correlation in the amount of hours spent on pride time and the health of the pride itself.  The more time spent relaxing, the more strength and vitality in the pride.
        I felt a big BINGO go off in my head, Nick.  I translated it into human terms and thought how some of the most fulfilling times in our family were when we moved slow and scratched backs and read books.  It wasn’t necessarily the big times or the adventures that made us feel loved, it was more in the tiny acts of eye contact and physical affection.
I think what I am hearing you say, is maybe not that I am gone too much, but that we are not doing enough of the little things these days—walking Juno, family dinners, saying good night, scratching backs.  We always seem in a rush and hurry.  I think the bottom line is we don’t have enough pride time.”
        In the silence that followed I thought heck, I had sounded pretty darn good—competent, sure of myself, wise even. I would love to tell you that Nick leaped from his chair and hugged me hard, and said  all would be solved with a foot rub and a nap.   Instead he pondered for a moment and nodded, maybe a little impatient with this long and windy explanation of why he felt bad.
        “Yeah, I think that could be it,” he said.  “You haven’t made a good dinner for a long time.”
        Nick’s world in a nutshell, reduced to food. We pushed our chairs from the table and embraced awkwardly.
        “Well, I don’t have any homework tonight and I’m going to catch a movie with my friends.”
       “What?!”  I’ve just spent the last fifteen minutes talking about pride time and slowing down and you’re taking off?”
        Nick grinned and placed his hands on my shoulders.  When had he gotten so tall?
        “I’ll come in afterwards to say good night and I’ll bring that weird head-scratcher thing in.”
         Nick grabbed the car keys, opened the back door and ran up the steps two at a time.  Greg lay on the couch reading the New York Times.  “Let’s do the crossword puzzle, Nanc” he called out.   I smelled the rosemary chicken roasting in the oven for dinner.  Above it all, I heard our man-boy Nick whistling his way to the car.