Why Christmas is, inherently, nostalgic

The kids and I weren't aware we started a ritual last week, but it was the beginnings of something worthwhile. Basically all you do is come home from school and work and go to the freezer and take out the Slow-Churned Edy's Chocolate ice cream and eat as much as you can stand while talking about your day at the kitchen table. You do this every day, at first because it's cold outside and oddly the most comforting thing is a bowl full of chocolate ice cream, with requisite chocolatey mustaches to boot.

In order to continue the ritual, you have to buy more of the freezer food of the gods. No other flavor or variety will do. You can still sit and talk about big ideas and bellyache about petty people, but something will be missing. Graham crackers and milk do not cut it.

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My friend Lisa picked me up from the airport today. I knew we didn't have any ice cream at home so I made asked her to take me to Frogurtland so we could dish, literally and figuratively. It was like I was homesick for chocolate ice cream.

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My uncle Bob died last week and it was the kind of awful terrible unfathomably unfair thing, in spite of having lived a very full and happy life. Just the way he went. Parkinson's Disease is a total crap way to go, the slow lumbering suffering and total awareness of the dismantling of everything over which you once had control.

I'm not into the theology of our loved ones smiling down on us. Not yet. I'm into the theology that we weren't made for any of this. We were made for a better world. Every ache and acute feeling of separation in this world is a reminder that we were made for wholeness and unity.

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The best scene in all of Mad Men is the last episode of Season I ("The Wheel") when Don Draper is selling the "carousel" marketing pitch to Kodak. He defines nostalgia in such a perfect way that it reaches across every culture, generation, sex, race, state. Nostalgia, "delicate but potent," that which causes us to ache in our hearts to return to a place we have once been, to have what we once had.

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The irony of the song "Silent Night" is that the entire point of Christ's entrance into this world was to expose the violence, the jealousy, the greed--the total lack of heavenly peace on earth. There could have been little solace there in the manger or beyond, given Herod's orders. According to Ortberg's "Who is this Man?," Herod, upon hearing the news of the birth a King of the Jews, ordered soldiers to plunge their swords into every baby boy in Bethlehem. How still we see thee lie.

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Christmas is nostalgic. Christmas is the reminder of three-speed bikes once-longed-for. Christmas is finally getting to go to midnight mass. Christmas is observing new chocolate ice cream traditions at 3 o'clock in the cold winter afternoon.

But Christmas is also inherently nostalgic. Christ's birth is nostalgic, pointing us to a condition we once had and can once again attain, but only through Him. He was born, vulnerable to a broken world. The earth ached to return to what it once was. Christ, the one who would redeem us all, longs to restore our factory settings so that our hearts may no longer know the pain of separation.

American Parenting (see also: a tad bit over it)

I have to be careful how I word this and how I identify the cast of characters since I live in a small community and folks might read this and think I was talking smack about them and retaliate by accusing me of counterfeiting all my kids' Boxtops for Education. *** Anyway.

Once upon a time, I was at a children's tee-ball game. The average age of the players was no older than 6. The coach, we'll call him Coach, was watching his wife, we'll call her Mom, who was taping the bench where the players would sit whilst waiting to go up for their at-bats. Mom was taping the spots in an orderly fashion and doing a bang-up job.

Part of me was thinking, That's nice, I bet she saw that on the Pinterest. The other part of me was, Yeah, I bet you those kids can probably figure out how to sit down without someone taping their names for them? And anyway, have you ever met a 5 year-old? Sitting isn't their best gross motor skill. Unless you ask them to empty the dishwasher. Then suddenly they're champion sitters.

Okay, but then Coach starts critiquing Mom about her measured taping skills. He starts arguing with her about there not being enough room for all the kids on the bench. Like maybe she should have used a tape measure to precisely allocate a certain number of inches for each tee-baller rump. He starts hammering out each spot on the bench where the tape line should have gone, and suddenly Mom is feeling bad and Coach is clearly irritated and I'm on the sidelines totally embarrassed that this is happening.

This. Is. So. Unnecessary.

Why is the five year-old tee-baller and her best seven pals not doing this themselves? Even if it's not perfect, why are they not the ones marking up the bench so that they can take pride in their butt-assignment system? Why are we as American parents riddled with so much guilt and why are we so quick to swoop in and help our kids navigate situations that we ourselves were fine to figure out. Further, why are we taking all parenting cues from Upworthy videos and bloggers (hi.) and glossy photo DIYs pinned to the internet?

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"Have you talked to your tweens about over-the-counter medications?"

I read the above on the Twitter tonight.

It is not enough to cloth diaper and puree organic root vegetables and help them with Sudoku-style math every night.

You have to add not oversnorting Afrin to the list of Things to Talk about with your Tween. Or you fail.

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The moral of the story is, I should never have read Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting (now with Bébé Day by Day: 100 Keys to French Parenting). Laissez Faire parenting, aka parenting that encourages discovery, is so my jam. Packing my bags for France, parenting abroad indefinitely. Who's with me?

Changing the story because I can

It was the kind of story that wouldn't usually affect me because I am busy counting calories or inputting symptoms into WebMD or clicking out of stories that tend to depress me. But instead I decided to risk being depressed and to drink in the details of a story of a pastor who was left for dead in a ditch. Maybe he got unwittingly involved in a drug deal gone deadly or maybe he really was living a second life or maybe we'll never know. But the whole sad stuffed with sadness with a side of sad made me... I couldn't get into life for the rest of the day.

Who wants to keep doing this life thing on this planet where the animals in the jungle have more regard for one another? Oh, hey there, lion, king of the jungle. Were you trying to get by? Oh, wow, look at you letting me through to my prairie dog tunnel. Thanks for being such a bro!

Is the internet just addling my brain or is every other headline about total rotten awful malicious garbage rotting on top of perfectly good soil?

I had to change the story. I needed to believe in the other stories that were using the soil for good. I asked the book of Faces: who is someone who invested in you, that made a really big difference.

The responses were just so good and life-giving. Coaches and 5th grade math teachers and counselors and hubbies and grandmothers. They saw soil--maybe it was good or total garbage but they planted seeds anyway.

People are worth investing in, people are worth investing in, people are worth investing in because people are worth investing in.