What I learned from watching Dumbo

My children are currently obsessed with watching “Dumbo”, so I have had the opportunity to become well acquainted with the script and story lines. Good thing I actually like the move. Here’s what I have learned.

1-      I learned that storks bring babies. Really? I thought that babies came from… uhm… well… you know. J The first time we watched it, I taught my kids the word “stork”, but then I got concerned when they decided that THEY came from storks and felt the need immediately clarify that it was just being silly in the movie.  Really, they came from my tummy. Hmm…. Thank goodness they didn’t ask how they got in there. I DO NOT look forward to that conversation as my daughter’s BS detector is gonna cause me big problems.

2-      I learned that you can sit on clouds, like a chair. Actually, this one made me laugh. As a kid, I always believed that clouds would feel like cotton balls and now, as an adult, I still feel like they should. I know enough about science to know that they don’t but I still (in that small child part of me) feel like they would. Silly… I know. I guess we all hang on to a few of our childhood beliefs, despite being taught the truth that contradicts them.

3-      I learned that the state of being drunk is actually more like being high on acid. Ok, I’m half joking. I don’t know what it’s like to be high on acid, but I do know what it’s like to be drunk and it’s certainly NOT that crazy drugged out scene from Dumbo and his mouse friend’s perspective.  Waltzing pink elephants? Interesting…  Then again, maybe I just haven’t been drunk enough.

4-      I learned that size doesn’t matter. (Ok… have your laugh here and get it out of the way. I didn’t mean it that way.) Timothy the mouse is tiny and Dumbo is huge. Despite that size difference, Timothy is the older, wiser and more confident of the two characters. He’s in charge and takes great care of Dumbo when his mom can’t be there. Sort of reminds me of those small statured people whose personalities take up the whole space with their poise, confidence and enthusiasm.

5-      I learned that all anyone really needs is one good friend on their side to survive. You can be down and out, but if just one person is committed to your well being, you will probably be ok in the long run. Even if it doesn’t feel like that at the time.  That piece of news wasn’t entirely new to me, but it’s always nice to be reminded.

6-      I learned that a soul’s destiny is not necessarily in line with the assumption made by those around them, those judging by stereotypes and generalizations.  A flying elephant? No way… But it was Dumbo’s destiny to succeed by being different. By using his distinct (and initially mocked) features to move in his own direction, find his own success. I love that. We should all have that perspective on our own lives.

7-      I learned that sometimes the story ends happily. I know. It’s Disney. OF COURSE they have a happy ending. But here’s the thing. They don’t promise that Dumbo is never treated badly by the other elephants again. They don’t promise that it’s happily ever after. They simply show Dumbo flying, reunited with his mom, and happy for the moment. And that’s promising. It’s good enough.

Who knew watching Disney with your kids could be so educational?

Jumping head first, and heart first, into a book...

I just finished teaching a two week creative writing class, to middle school age kids. It was wonderful.

They were eager and smart, creative and funny. They had enough umph to be ever present, but not so much that they were hard to handle. Needless to say, I had a tremendous amount of fun teaching them. 

During the course of the teaching, we discussed the question, “What makes a piece of writing good?”.  I posed this question to the group and listened carefully to their responses. Some students commented on picking a good character or theme, while others commented on the importance of using interesting words. All the students brought up excellent points, but were effectively circling what I considered to be the more central answer. 

A good piece of writing elicits an emotional response from the reader. This response may be happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, intense curiosity, or intellectual stimulation. The reaction needs to be present or the reader will simply be bored. And not every piece of writing appeals to every reader. James Michener has been around for ages, earning a decent sized popularity over the years. I, however, consider the best possible use for his novels to be the cure for insomnia or fuel for my fireplace in wintertime. I could not find his writing more boring. It simply does not reach me. And that’s ok. Others disagree with me and they are entitled to do so. More copies for them. 

I just finished reading a novel called “unorthodox” by Deborah Feldman. It’s the story of a woman who escapes from her life in a Hasidic Jewish community. I just finished the book, and I will tell you this. I spent the entire book consumed with the desire to jump into the book and hug the main character. Seriously. She’s miserable. She’s confused. She’s trapped in her life, unable to express herself, and she sees no way out. Every moment of her life that she has anticipated to be joyful turns bitter and she is left profoundly disappointed and feeling unworthy of happiness. 

Have I mentioned that I just want to hug her? I want to hold her and tell her that she will be alright. That she is not strange or demented. That she is simply ill fitted to the world into which she was born. I want to inform her that some women are liberated from her life of restraint and limitations. Happily, the book ends with her successful escape from the community, taking her young son with her.

Ironically, I was mentally planning this blog while I was baking pies. It was a Sunday afternoon and my family and I had gone berry picking that morning. The farm did well by us. We bought blackberries, onions, tomatoes, peaches and potatoes. We bought so many blackberries because we love them. Especially my husband. He is nuts about them. He also loves crumbles, so instead of making traditional pies, I was making crumbles. He had “suggested” that maybe crumbles would be nice to make. Hint, hint, hint… 

 

So there I am, baking crumbles while he mows the lawn and the kids are playing outside on a beautiful summer day. Go me, liberated woman. I should be the one to talk, right? 

I suppose the equation needs to be balanced by the fact that I love to cook and bake. I find it satisfying and before kids I would spend hours in the kitchen by choice on bad weather weekends. I adore the instant gratification of a meal or dessert in its finished form, a concrete result of the hard work. I find comfort in the sound of food sizzling and knives chopping on cutting boards. It’s a Zen thing, culinary therapy at its best. My choice of afternoon activities would have much larger implications if the opposite were true. 

But still, I have to wonder. Do I love to cook because I was raised that way? Because my mom cooked and society told me that it was my duty? Is my desire to cook and bake well simply a symptom of my desire to fit into my role or would I have loved it anyway? 

It’s an interesting question, with no possible way of truly answering.What I will tell you is this. 

It was a good book, a great story. And it made me feel something significant. Congratulations to the author. She achieved her goal and should be proud.

Cleaning out my study, cleaning out my life...

I have decided to venture forth and conduct a thorough clean out of our study/guestroom. Why, you ask, is this such a big deal?
 

I’m so glad you asked. I’ll tell you. 

Our study is a catastrophe. A veritable black hole of crap that has no home and therefore has been dumped into the room for which mess and disorganization has the least impact. It’s a black hole of papers that are no longer relevant, wrapping paper that we never liked anyway and books that we haven’t looked at in years. And that’s being modest. Simply opening a drawer resembles traveling back in time to projects and priorities past. I actually found paystubs from 2006, neatly sorted and stapled. Seriously? THAT’S going to be helpful to hold onto. Uh huh…  

In the back of my mind, on that long term “to do” list of life, cleaning out the study is always towards the top of the list. I frequently squash it back down because it feels uncomfortable to contemplate that which I should do and don’t. After all, I can just close the door and pretend it’s not there. Right? 

And I’m not saying that I don’t have a good excuse. I do. But I don’t. My life is busy. I have two kids and a life that never stops moving. My house’s current, daily needs trump those needs that can be disregarded without immediate negative consequence. Should I make dinner or clean the study? Hmmm… Laundry or clean the study? Hmmm…. Should I read with the kids or clean the study? Hmmmm…. The immediate need always wins out, and it should. In reality, we need a hot dinner and clean clothing significantly more than we need a clean, organized study. My kids need a hands-on mom more than they need a clean study. 

But is that healthy? To what degree? 

I had a falling out with a friend about 6 months ago. This is highly significant because I’m not the kind of person who has “falling outs” with people. When I called another long time friend to talk about it, she was shocked. She actually asked me to repeat myself because we were on cell phones with mediocre reception and she thought she had misunderstood what I said. She asked me if I had ever had a friendship end abruptly. “Not since middle school” I answered. 

And it’s true. I say this not be brag or present myself as perfect. It’s simply the truth. I have lost friends over time as interests or priorities shift, but I have never “broken up” with a friend. At least not since middle school. 

So when this friend “broke up” with me, I was taken aback. I had felt the drifting, but I hadn’t perceived the drifting to be significant enough to warrant a break up. Decreased time together, sure. Total abrupt end? Not so much. 

And I’ll tell you the truth… I was upset.

In hindsight, however, I’d like to say “thank you” to this former friend. In a bizarre sort of way, she knew something that I did not. She knew that she was not a good friend for me. She harbored stress in ways and quantities that were toxic to my state of being, whether she knew it or not. She was competitive in situations where I didn’t even see a race. She was frequently abrupt in situations that I felt warranted smiles and finesse. Her life goals were so different from mine that conversations had become incompatible.

And maybe that mess in my study is the same. An energy sucking force of mess and chaos, driving me to distraction and discomfort. Perhaps we are supposed to clean out our lives from time to time, and be ruthless about it. 

You know… leave the past behind us.

A little tummy rub...

My husband and I are affectionate people. It’s part of who we are, both as ourselves and in our relationship with each other. We use touch to communicate affection, support, agreement and overall positive thought.  It’s not astounding that this habit has passed on to our children. My son was cuddly from day one but my daughter took some months to learn how to truly appreciate and utilize the affection she was receiving. These years later, this is still somewhat true. My son is a cuddle monkey, to the core. My daughter picks her moments to cuddle when she chooses, but does a spectacular job at those times.

During TV time in the afternoon/evening, the kids like to lay themselves all over us to get various parts of their body tickled. Backs, legs, heads, feet, even tummies. You name it; they love to have it tickled. They wiggle themselves into the perfect position and then let their eyes glaze over in contentment as they lay there in an exhausted stupor. With the disappearance of nap, this time of day has become even more essential to their emotional well being, which is not shocking because at the end of the day they are TIRED!.

The other day, my daughter and I took a shower together. This is not uncommon. As the kids get older, the incidences of them jumping into the shower with mom or dad have increased, replacing the more frequent baths of the past.

So, we’re in the shower and my daughter places her little hand gently on my tummy.

Me: “Hey honey. Whatcha doing?”

Her:  (Smiling at me happily) “I’m tickling your tummy (and she starts to tickle). Do you like it?”

Me: “Yes, honey. I do. It feels nice. Thank you. “

Her: “(smiling even bigger) “oh good. Then I’ll do it some more”.

It’s fair to say that I teared up a little. She wanted to make her mommy happy, so she chose to reciprocate in a way that makes HER happy. How wonderful.

And then I had another thought.

I’ll be honest and confess that I do not have a flat tummy. Not even close. No fashion magazine is begging for me to bear myself scantily clad on the cover of their latest issue. I struggled with weight before kids and giving birth to twins did not help. That said, while I strive for my children to have healthy bodies, I do not want to pass on body issues. The fact that I’d like to lose some weight for health reasons is another issue entirely, valid in a totally different discussion.

I could have asked my daughter to leave my pudge alone, or found a reason for her to not touch the parts of my body that cosmetic America say aren’t trim enough. I could have commented that I was fat or even indicated that I didn’t like my body because of the impact she and her brother had upon it. I could have said all these things, but I didn’t. And I’m glad I didn’t.

I want her to like her body, just the way it is. She’s got a beautiful little body. And I’m leading by example.

An encounter with my former self...

I went to target the other night. I didn’t really want to go but I had a few items that I simply had to cross off the “to do” list. It was late. Ok, late by my current standards. 9:30pm. (Yes, I do know that my college self would be appalled by this statement. That was when we used to head out for the night. ) I’d been with my kids all day and then rushed out to the door to tutor immediately after they hit the sack. I enjoy the tutoring and wouldn’t stop, but it does make for a long day. 

As I headed out the door, close to 10pm, my feet were dragging and I started dreaming about my pillow. A tiny, silent complaint began to rise, begrudging the fact that I had to shop so LATE. And then I reached my car and I saw them. Or rather, I heard them. 

Parked diagonally across from my car, facing me, was a car full of teenagers. A soft top jeep with music blasting. Windows wide open.  I didn’t’ recognize the song (yeah… big shock there) and I couldn’t make out the words (even bigger shock…) but I did catch a few words of the main chorus. 

“Parking lot party!”

The kids were talking, dancing and singing along. They were having a great time. Totally beyond my control, I started to smile. Smile huge. 

That was me, once upon a time. That was totally me.

My friends and I always played our music too loud. We laughed a little too joyously in public places and we rarely cared what those “old folks” thought of us. We had the right to be happy in our lives, just as we were.  

These kids weren’t drunk, or at least they showed no signs of being. They gave no indications that they planned to vandalize anything. I heard no profanity. They were simply being kids. Living large.

One of the girls in the backseat of the jeep noticed me and smiled, waved. She quickly and easily assessed that my observation of her group was nonjudgmental. The driver, a boy, thought I had said something and turned the music down low. He called out the window with a friendly and respectful smile. “Hi. Did you just say something?” 

I smiled back and responded, laughing. “No, but I was just watching you guys. I used to do that and when I realized how long ago it was I started to feel old”. The kids all laughed and the boy looks straight at me, still smiling. “You should do it more often, then!” And he turned the music back up, recommenced singing. When I pulled out of the parking lot a minute or so later, the kids all waved to me. I waved back. 

He’s right. I should do that more often. Ok, maybe not THAT, but something that has nothing to do with my life as a mom of two young kids and co-owner of a time and money consuming house. Something that has nothing to do with laundry and food shopping.  I should dance more, simply because I like the music I hear. I should go out for drinks more often and “hang out” with my friends when we are banned from talking about anything child related. 

Amazing what you can learn from a teenager.