Home Is Where My Earrings Are

Those of us who grew up going to international schools have our own stories, our own experiences, our own Trivial Pursuit moments.  We reminisce about cutting class and escaping to the local sari-sari store to buy cigarettes.  Remember that evil gym teacher who always tortured us with laps around the track in the blazing tropical sun?  The swishy typing instructor with the lizard-skin pants?  Remember being caught smoking in the girls’ bathroom?  Or the time you leaned against the sink in there and it fell to the floor in a reverberating crash, tiny pieces of porcelain raining and tinkling all around?  Amazing how fast you can run away from trouble!

Still gorgeous after all these years!

How many of us ever wondered about those hearty souls who spent their lives educating us?  How did our teachers end up in a classroom in India, or Manila or Saudi Arabia (for Pete’s sake!) sharing their wit and wisdom with us Third Culture Kids?  Listening to us whine and moan about our tumultuous TCK lives, offering a pat on the shoulder when tragedy struck.  For some reason these brave people stayed in our minds and hearts over the years.  Are our relationships with our TCK teachers deeper than most student-teacher attachments? 

“Home Is Where My Earrings Are” is a memoir of a life in international education.  Dannie Russell’s husband, Daryle, was my high school principal in the Philippines.  I don’t remember meeting Dannie, but I feel like I know her quite well after reading her book. 

Dr. Russell was a kind, benevolent dictator, if you will.  I was never afraid of him; he always had a smile, that big California grin, and never appeared stern, although he ran a tight ship.  Nothing made you sit up straighter than the words, "Psst!  Here comes Doctor Russell!"  When my father was transferred to Singapore in the middle of my senior year (gasp!) Dr. R. was kind enough to decide that I had taken enough classes to earn my diploma.  I’m not sure that was accurate, but I was forever grateful.  The actual piece of paper, written in English and Tagalog, arrived in a big brown envelope not long after we arrived in Singapore.  (While that may be impressive to most, I later learned that kids in Africa had diplomas that were printed on lambskin).  As if that wasn’t enough, Dr. Russell arranged (with my parents’ cooperation of course) for me to return to Manila in May, to graduate with my class.  At the commencement ceremony, he handed me my empty diploma folder with a wink.  I think he may have had something to do with me getting a blind date for the prom, but that may be stretching it a bit.

My blind date to the prom in Manila.  

In her book, Dannie writes about the behind-the-scenes adventures of the wife of an international educator, and later about becoming an educator herself.  She writes about their early days in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia (ever practical, laughing at the convenience of having a bidet right next to the toilet when dysentery strikes); the opulent-but-casual formality of Manila (from the intricacies of having President Marcos speak at graduation, to scuba diving lessons with the wife of the American ambassador); and their frightening arrival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (no pictures of boys and girls together – rip, tear!  No Disney videos!  No chocolates, they might have alcohol centers!)  Dannie’s positive attitude is pervasive; she only gets down when they arrive in Saudi to the news that the headmaster Dr. Russell is replacing has refused to leave, insisting that the “new guy” will never make it.  She senses that they are being socially snubbed, but that doesn’t stop her.  She decides that she is going to meet a new friend every month, and she does.

Living in Riyadh during Operation Desert Storm, under constant threat of SCUD attacks from Iraq was harrowing, to say the least.  To diffuse the fear?  Celebrate with a SPUD party!  Nothing like a baked potato bar to calm the nerves.  When you lose your sense of humor, you're a goner.  While most schools beg and plead for more textbooks and library books; in Riyadh the Russells pleaded for money to buy gas masks.  

Dannie baked cookies and personally delivered them to the American troops at the front near the Kuwaiti border.  Their daughter was detained at one point by the Saudi “morality police” the mutawwa, for not wearing an abaya.  This after they had lived in the country for nearly 11 years, having never worn the veil.  They had always respected the rules there, always dressing conservatively. 

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-should-i-know-about-saudi-arabia.htm

Not your typical teacher’s life story, “fer shure”!

I can just imagine the conversation between the newly married Dannie and Daryle:  “See honey, we’re going to go live in Africa, where we won’t have many modern conveniences.  You’re going to teach English, and one day you’re going to be caught in the middle of a violent student demonstration.  We’re going to meet Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian emperor.  Then we’re going to move across the world to the Philippines, where we’re going to hob-nob with big-wigs there and you’re going to volunteer at a refugee camp in Thailand near the border of Laos.  You're gonna go into the jungle and with a bunch of teenagers, you're gonna build a school.  Then we’ll go to the most restrictive Muslim country in the world, live there during a war, and after that we’re going to move to Pakistan, visit Afghanistan and eat grilled sheep parts with the Taliban.  What do you say?”

I can just hear Dannie … “When do we leave?”

Recovering

This is a post I wrote a year or so ago, about the term "Recovering".  Thought it might be worthwhile revisiting.

Recovering Third Culture Kid: "Recovering"

The Road Home

Images used with permission

What is “home”?  For many it is bricks and mortar, the smell of mom’s cooking, the feel of a cotton blanket on a familiar bed.  It is paintings, objects and photographs of a life lived.  On a broader scale, it is a familiar language, black pavement with straight lines.  Home is the people who know you best: family.

For a third culture kid, the word “home” becomes muddled.  The bricks and mortar one day could be tatami floors and shoji doors the next.  The cooking in this place smells different; you can’t get Chef Boyardee here.  The bed is a strange one, although the blanket may be familiar.  The language is foreign, staccato, strident.  The pavement is broken, dusty. Everyone is a stranger; you said good-bye to the cousins at an airport far, far away.  The hours on the airplane, and shuffling, sleep-filled eyes grainy, through chrome and glass airports, have left your brain cobwebbed and confused.  Even if you wanted to go home, there would be no home to go to. 

After watching “The Road Home”, (http://roadhomefilm.com), a short film written and directed by Rahul Gandotra, (shortlisted for an Oscar in 2012) the first words that popped into my head were, “a gem” and “a delightful visual taste of a pain that I know.”  Beside the fact that the movie is filmed in National Geographic-like detail, and gives us exquisite snapshots of rural Indian culture, "The Road Home" is an affirmation of the issues of Third Culture Kids.  In this short, 23 minute story, every feeling, every longing, every search for home is played out against the backdrop of what is very likely the place where God lives.

The protagonist is a young Indian boy, Pico, who has been raised in England, and is, for the most part, through and through British.  His accent is as English as tea and buttered scones.  But on the outside, he is Indian.  The opening scene shows him being taunted by his schoolmates because he has whitened his face in a desperate attempt to erase his “Indian-ness.”  He can’t understand why they are jeering at him; you can almost touch his confusion and his pain.  “Indian!  Indian!  Indian!” they yell.  Why doesn’t he run away?  Why is he trying to cover himself up?  You can almost hear the cries of his youthful inner self trying desperately to make his outside match his inside.**

We see him sneaking out the window of his Indian boarding school, ironically named, The Woodstock School.  He is desperate to get home to England, to his “home”, the only home he has ever known.  For some reason his father, back in Britain, has decided to send him back to India, but for what?  To get in touch with his heritage?  Probably, but more realistically to get him into the London School of Economics, and then to Harvard for his MBA.  But what is the point?  An international school in the foothills of the Himalayas?  Where is the Indian heritage in that?

Don't we all feel like we're running after or away from something?

Pico sprints down the curvy road away from the school as the morning bell rings.  He is approached by taxi drivers, who speak to him in Hindi, assuming, of course, that he is Indian.  He certainly looks Indian.  Therefore he must be Indian.  Pico gets angry, yelling at one point, “I’m British!”  One sympathetic taxi driver agrees to drive him to New Delhi, and the journey begins. 

Most of us Third Culture Kids are trying very hard to do the same thing as Pico: we just want our outsides to match our insides.  We want to go “home”, like Pico, but oftentimes “home” doesn’t exist.  We spend our lives trying to find “home”, and for the most part we never get there; our lives are a constant journey.  Our Road Home has no final destination.

In my case, being an American, it should follow that America is home.  I look American, I sound American.  I can disappear into a crowd.  But on the inside, I am as foreign as can be.  To many Americans, foreigners are just that: foreign, and not worthy of being understood or studied.  (Like a Third Culture Kid?  We may seem a little weird, come across as a little arrogant.  Not many people take the effort to get to know us).  Not to say that all Americans are xenophobic, but many are.  I had a teacher in primary school tell me that Singapore was in China.  Even in fourth grade, I knew that wasn’t true.  Many people I meet here in the States don’t care about what goes on outside our borders, unless we were fighting a war or our jobs are being exported there. 

Most American religious folks believe that Christianity is the one and only way to heaven.  I have seen people cry real tears for the “lost” people.  I chuckled silently as I imagined a group of Buddhists praying for the poor Christians who don’t know the Bodhisattva.  It’s been a constant refrain in my musings, but having come to know other religions on a genuine level has opened my mind to myriad possibilities for living one’s life, and where one goes when this life is done.

I never learned how to be a “typical American kid” whatever that is.  My daughter, who has been to the same school her whole life, isn’t happy unless she is surrounded by several of her friends.  I, on the other hand, am happiest when I am alone.  I was forced to learn to occupy myself because there were so many times in my life when I was alone, either on a long-haul flight across the Pacific, or left behind while my parents took trips to exotic places.  Making friends for me is exhausting, because I had to do it so many times, over and over, sometimes with not-so-good results.  My daughter, on the other hand, does it like she breathes. 

I may never know what it is like to have a permanent “home”.  Even now, I am a newcomer where I live.  I’ve only been here a year and a half, and I’m waiting patiently to bloom where I am planted.  But it’s hard to wish for home when there never really was one to begin with.  I may look like I fit in, but on the inside, I am so very different.

Pico, in “The Road Home,” has a home to wish for.  He wants to go back to England, the only home he has ever known.  He doesn’t want to be Indian, even though when he looks in the mirror, an Indian boy stares back at him.  At the end of his journey, I think he comes to terms with his reality and reluctantly agrees to meet the Indian boy in the mirror.  In a way, all of us TCK’s are Pico.  We just want to feel like we belong.  Perhaps the only way we can belong is to realize that we never will.  

You can "rent" The Road Home for 48 hours for only $1.99, but I encourage you to buy the DVD so that you can listen to the director's commentary.  He is actually a TCK himself, and talks about what he was thinking with every scene.  

More about the film:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2012/01/oscars-short-films-the-road-home-rahul-gandotra.html

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1537956/

https://www.facebook.com/rgandotra

Watch:

** Gandotra explains in the director's commentary that there have been several interpretations of this scene.  Is it a dream sequence?  Did the taunting kids paint his face white?  Or did Pico do it himself, thinking no one would notice?  You decide.

A Third Culture Kid Thinks About Guns

It’s happened again.  This time it was innocent little kids who were slaughtered, along with their teachers who were trying to protect their charges.  Who wasn’t horrified, disgusted, sickened?  They were little babies!  Senseless!  People are asking, “Where was God?”  Why do these things happen?  Why?  I have a dear friend from the adoption community whose daughter was a student at the Sandy Hook School.  This beautiful little girl, born in China, was in the fourth grade, and escaped, but her trauma is real, excruciating.

More recently it was a movie theater.  Before that a grocery store.  A college campus.  A shopping mall.  A military base.  A restaurant.  The absolute last places to which any of us think twice about going and fearing for our safety.  The knee-jerk reaction is that we should make guns illegal.  Sounds good on its face.  But doesn’t it then follow that only criminals will have the guns, and we law abiding citizens won’t?  As Susanna Hupp says in the video above, all of the incidents happened in “gun free” zones. 

The Philippines that I knew in the mid-1970’s was a country under martial law.  Martial Law is supposed to be a temporary fix for times of civil unrest or political turmoil; however, in Manila it lasted from 1972 until 1981.  Nine years.  Martial law means the suspension of most civil rights, and puts civilians under military courts of justice.  It suspends the rule of habeas corpus, which protects prisoners from unlawful imprisonment.  It’s a scary concept, which, in its most literal sense, puts all citizens at the arbitrary mercy of the government. 

Credit: Aaron J. Jackson Crabb http://www.examiner.com/slideshow/loboc-riverboat-cruise-on-bohol-island

What it meant for us was curfew (1-4 a.m.) and lots and lots of armed military police everywhere.  Our school was surrounded by a very tall stone and iron fence, and there were security guards at every possible entrance.  (Somehow we kids knew how to break out, but I daresay we weren’t tempted to break in).  They checked and re-checked IDs before allowing anyone to pass.  They called ahead to the office to let them know who was coming.  Going to the bank, we had to pass a guard with a very large rifle (although I noticed once that the gun had no trigger).  There were signs at restaurants, stores and art galleries that read “Please deposit firearms here”.  I guess it should have been a scary place to live, but I was never afraid.  That may have been naïveté on my part, but I never saw fear in my parents either.  I pretty much had free rein to come and go as I wished (well, for the most part!)  I never gave it a thought, but I probably felt safe because there was no danger of being shot at in a public place.  If I had been a Filipino citizen, I would have had to ask myself if the tradeoff of losing my civil rights for being safe from being shot was worth it.  Gun control in Manila didn't help Imelda Marcos much when a deranged man attacked her with a bolo knife.  

I didn’t grow up in a “gun” family.  When I think back to my early childhood in Louisiana, I remember my dad used to go duck hunting.  I think it was a business thing, and he only did it because he had to schmooze with customers or higher-ups in the company.  He had an enormous pair of waders that I used to play in.  We did have a shotgun that made many moves with us, but for the most part it stayed wrapped in its leather case, hidden in a closet.  I’m pretty sure it was illegal for us to have it in the Philippines.  I don’t know the whole story but there was some clandestine transfer of the gun to someone who disposed of it. 

Fast forward to the present: My husband has taught me to shoot.  I’m pretty good at it, at the gun range, and I have a healthy respect for fear of The Gun, but I’m not comfortable with The Gun.  I don’t even know if I could shoot a 400 pound gorilla who might break into my house.  That said, if I was ever in a situation where a lunatic was on the loose, I would want to stand very close to my husband, who can shoot with deadly accuracy.

Which brings me to the point: who is doing these killings?  Mentally ill people.  By definition they must be mentally ill – who in their “right mind” would do such a thing?  Do we really want to disarm ourselves, leaving the deranged and the criminals with the guns?  Do we want to be at the mercy of the next psychotic break?  And if you extrapolate that idea to us, the people, being unarmed, and the government-slash-military being the ones who are armed, is that a viable option?  As Susanna Hupp says, the original intent of the Second Amendment was for us to be able to protect ourselves from THE GOVERNMENT. 

This isn’t a gun issue.  It is a mental health issue.  No matter how many people try to de-stigmatize mental disease, it remains an enormous stigma.  We recoil at the word “schizophrenia” and “bipolar” and “autism”.  Most of us turn away, thinking, “There but for the grace of God go I.”  For those who are in the thick of it, it is a living nightmare.  As the parent of a child with a form of autism, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I found myself at his school, asking, insisting, then begging to have him tested, begging for help, begging for accommodations, and was made to feel like I was a hysterical helicopter parent.  One school, a private parochial institution, asked us to leave, saying “We can’t do anything with him”.  The memory of that one still stings in a major way. 

At one parent meeting at the new public school, I sat in front of a semi-circle of stern-looking teachers who, one after the other, told me all of my son’s shortcomings, telling me “what he needs to do” and “if he would only” and “you need to”.  I could only get one word out before the tears started falling.  Not a single one of those ladies reached out to pat my arm, hand me a tissue, nothing.  They just sat and stared at me as I blubbered.  It was humiliating.  If it was humiliating for me, you can only imagine the humiliation my child suffered every day in his classes.  Not to say that all teachers are heartless, I know there are very good ones out there, but where were they for my child?  The other kids labeled him “odd.”  I cried inside as other kids asked his brother to play.  When I suggested that my other son might like to come too, the reply was, “Do I have to invite him too?” 

This son is now in his early 20’s.  He has a job, lives in an apartment with two roommates and is doing great.  I could not be prouder of him.  He is only mildly affected; many people are surprised to know that he has Asperger's.   An amazing therapist encouraged him to embrace his differences instead of fighting them.  She gave him valuable tools to begin his life as an adult.  I can’t imagine the pain of those whose kids have really big problems.

Mental illness is for the most part invisible.  We as a society make it invisible.  We brush these people under the radar, looking the other away so we don’t have to deal with them.  When one falls through the cracks, listens to voices in their head and starts shooting people, we don’t look at the mental illness, we look at the guns. 

I confess that I am a fan of the British Royal family.  (Make all the jokes you want).  Every day these people go around the country, making public appearances.  One day it could be a tire factory or a boat launching, but on another it is at hospitals and facilities for the elderly, the physically or mentally disabled or the terminally ill.  They are patrons of a multitude of charitable organizations who care for these folks.  Look at the long list of charities which Princess Alexandra, a cousin of the Queen, supports:  Alzheimer's Society, St. Christopher's Hospice, Royal Navy Nursing Service, Mental Health Foundation, Cystic Fibrosis Trust, and many others.  And she is just a “minor” royal!

Princess Alexandra opens Mental Health Foundation's New Office

Many dismiss the royals as archaic and medieval, time for them to move on.  But think about it: by publicly supporting these institutions, which take care of the most marginal members of their society, they are acknowledging these people’s existence, validating their illnesses and their very difficult lives.  We could all take away a lesson here.  Remember how Princess Diana hugged the child with AIDS?  Look  how far we’ve come from the days when AIDS patients were treated like lepers.  Google “mental health cuts in the US” and you will, as I was, be shocked at the number of articles, just in the last month.  Louisiana.  Texas.  Maine.  Ohio. 

There is a joke about a man standing under a street light, looking for something.  Another guy comes along and asks him what he’s doing.  The man replies, “I lost my wallet.” The other man asks, “Where did you last see it?”  “Down the block,” is the reply.  “Why are you looking here?” the guy asks, incredulous.  “Because there is more light here.”  Maybe we are all looking for solutions in the wrong place.  

Thoughts on Boxing Day

An Expat in America’s Thoughts On Boxing Day

Boxing day?  As in Ali, Frazier and Sugar Ray?  Uncle Joe and Cousin Billy Bob getting into it after too much eggnog?  Nope!  The British Day After Christmas when the servants were traditionally given boxes of money.  Or perhaps the opening of the alms-boxes in churches, to spread the money amongst the less fortunate.  If you've been a fan of "Downton Abbey" you remember the servants' ball, where the Lord of the Manor dances with the lowliest of scullery maids.  Seeing as all these folks probably had to work on Christmas Day, it seems only fitting.

My mom, the Anglophile, has always tried to preserve many British Christmas traditions that have been bowdlerized by the Americans.  My gifts from her usually include a jar of Devon cream, lemon curd or Crosse & Blackwell Branston Pickle.  Christmas Eve morning, the household stops for the broadcast on the BBC of the Lesson in Carols from the Kings College choir at Cambridge University.  The sound of the first plaintive notes of "Once in Royal David's City" still gives me chills.

Mom insists that Christmas BEGINS the day OF Christmas.  As in the twelve days of.  As in, December 25 is the day that the partridge and the pear tree arrived by UPS.  Christmas continues until January 6, the feast of the Epiphany, which is the purported day the Wise Men arrived at the stable.  (Only 12 days across the desert on a camel?  I think not!)  My question is, after all that time, was there STILL no room at the Inn?  Surely there would have been a room by then?  Mom tut-tuts at all the forlorn Christmas trees lying in the gutter on December 26.  But since most Americans put up their trees on Thanksgiving Day (a full MONTH) before Christmas, they most likely need to do this to reduce the risk of conflagration!

For years, my family has had Crackers on the table for Christmas dinner.  (Not the Ritz kind, but those shiny wrapped bundles that you pull apart to open them with a bang).  I was intrigued to learn that the tradition of wearing fancy headgear harkens back to the Saturnalia celebrations.  Christmas after all historically encompasses many of the pagan winter holidays like Yule, Solstice and Saturnalia.  Our unsuspecting dinner guests would be required to wear the silly tissue hat all through the meal.  And Mom wonders why they never accepted another invitation from us?  It warms my heart that you see crackers pretty regularly in the U.S. these days.  Maybe mom's mission to Anglicize us all is working?

Fear not: Mom is an equal opportunity critic.  Even the American traditions aren't safe.  She takes it upon herself to inform hapless sales clerks that the reindeer in "The Night Before Christmas" is NOT named Donner (that would be the name of the group in the 1800's that  got stranded in the Rocky Mountains in a blizzard and ended up eating each other to survive).  Furthermore, mom points out, the poem is really called "A Visit from St. Nicholas."  Get it right people.  The reindeer in the original poem was named "Donder" which is close to the Dutch word for thunder.  Which makes sense since "Blitzen" is the word for lightning.  After a little research, I found that the GERMAN word for thunder is indeed "Donner" so she's only partly right.  But Clement Moore (who wrote the poem) called him Donder, so Donder it should  be.  The poor lady in the Brighton store the other day didn't know what had hit her.

Bless her heart, Mom has good intentions.

Merry Christmas to all .. the turtle doves are in the mail.  

Christmas Post 2011

Well, okay I'm going to rehash an old post anyway.  I'm proud of this one!

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Displaced Christmas

Same lyrics, different melodies: Coping with an expat Christmas

Read this interesting blog about not being "home" (wherever that is) for Christmas.  I found it a little cynical .. although I understand.  Everyone who celebrates Christmas seems to have their own idea of a "genuine" Christmas, i.e. what it should be, what it means, what accouterments should come with it.  (I think it's called "tradition" haha).  Maybe it's based on that one perfect Christmas from childhood where everything came together in a symphony of smells, tastes, sensations, and thrills.  For me it was the magic of going to bed with a few paltry gifts under the tree, only to wake up to find the living room practically strewn wall to wall with silvery wrapped presents.  See, there really IS a Santa Claus!  Even if his handwriting was eerily similar to my father's, I chose to believe.  My mom's initials are S.C., so even if the cards were signed from "S.C.," I ignored the irony and chose to believe they stood for "Santa Claus".  Even though I loathed going to midnight mass at church, and sat sleepily through the service, yawning as if my jaw would come apart, that memory goes down with the whole Christmas package (pun intended).

My ideal Christmas is located in New England (think Currier & Ives) with snow on the ground, getting a sled and a breathtaking Scarlet O'Hara doll from Santa.  My mom was in a choir that year that performed in gold paper dresses (don't ask me how they pulled THAT off) doing great hits from Andy Williams and Herb Alpert.  One of my favorite Christmas songs is the great chart-buster "The Bell That Couldn't Jingle" and I love it because of its obscurity.  Another favorite was Alan Sherman's "The Twelve Days of Christmas" (not the usual one!)  (All these songs traveled with us on my dad's reel-to-reel tape deck).  I think of my parents dressing up, dad in his red sweater and Santa tie, drinking a cup of tea while waiting for mom to come out, in a great whiff of Chanel No. 5, her ears sparkling with gold earrings and her wrists tinkling with bangle bracelets.

So how are we to live up to that New England standard, living overseas?  New traditions crept into the family lore.  In Japan of the early 1960's it was hard to get Christmas wrapping, so the cry on Christmas morning was "SAVE THE BOWS!" Gifts were unwrapped carefully and the paper was carefully folded into squares, saved for next year.  I was in a performance at school, dressed in a hula skirt, and we danced to "Christmas Island".  We used to go to some enormous banquet Christmas Eve, which was really more like New Years' Eve, with noise makers and music that went on into the wee hours of the night.  That was the Japanese equivalent of midnight mass for me.  I was so worried about getting home in time for Santa to come!

Brussels came in a close second for "Ideal Christmas".  We made weekend trips to Germany (the REAL home of Christmas!) and stocked up on ornaments and decorations from there.  Mom still re-uses tags from those days, with glitter and pictures of old Europe on them.  There was snow on the ground, and we went to the dreaded midnight mass at a British Anglican church.  So the agony became a little more bearable because it was done with an English accent.  Very little.

Then came our move to the Philippines.  The first obstacle, other than the weather, was finding an acceptable Christmas tree.  We brought in a pathetic looking tree that may or may not have been in the pine family.  Mom, against all odds, actually decorated it and made it look quite presentable (again, pun intended!)  It wasn't the New England Christmas tree, but it, like Charlie Brown's tree, became part of our family history.  Midnight Mass in Manila involved sweating and fanning, but I still yawned and loathed it.  Check.  One year it involved a typhoon.  Okay, liquid snow; close enough.  I'm pretty sure we had turkey too.  Served by our maids in their Christmas aprons.  Now there's a tradition that I'd like to bring back.  These days, when we're all stuffed to the gills and the dirty dishes and cooking detritus spreads out towards the horizon, mom and I lean back and yell, "PACITA!" as if she would come running in her slippers and clean it all up.

All in all, we made do wherever we were, appreciating the unusual customs, incorporating the culture of where we were into making new traditions.  We never wished we were back in the states, because, while that was "home" to most Americans, wherever we were was "home".  And that was okay with me.

It's All About the Light

Christmas is almost here again!  I thought about rehashing some of the earlier blog posts I have written about Christmas around the world, and the various ways my family adapted our own traditions to the places we were living.  But some thoughts came to me, like visions of sugarplums dancing in my head.

This is a year when my children will spend Christmas with their dad in North Carolina (we rotate years).  They did spend Thanksgiving with us, and we had the chance to exchange gifts and enjoy that holiday as a sort of hybrid.  My soul was warm and fuzzy, surrounded by my five (not so little) chickens.  We ate ourselves into an L-tryptophan turkey coma, and went to see the Cirque du Soleil Christmas show at the Long Center.  We were just together, and to me, that was the culmination of the Christmas spirit, right there, a little early. 

For the past few weeks, I have watched my neighbors put up Christmas lights (some of the displays are gargantuan, over the top!)  As I go off to sleep at night I can hear the carols booming from a house that has its lights synched with a radio station.  Lines of cars slowly make their way down the road, children excitedly leaning out the windows taking in the sparkle and glimmer.  As for me, I have my little tree in the front window, although I only used lights this year, no ornaments.  I did wrap some lights around the back porch railing, so we do look somewhat festive.  In honor of my husband’s Jewish heritage, I like to embrace Hanukkah (the festival of lights!) as well, and have fallen in love with the a cappella group “The Maccabeats” who have made a name for themselves in YouTube world. 

I work in retail, and it’s hard not to get caught up in the bling and the swag that decorates our store and the ones near us.  Williams-Sonoma is always putting out samples of goodies, and I often wander down there for a taste.  Their store is the epitome of Christmas tastiness and I love just wandering around, even though I can’t afford half of the things in there! 

My mom and I are planning to go to a Christmas Eve service near her house, and my husband and I will have dinner with her Christmas night.  Other than that, our holiday will be muted.  But I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.  I feel that without all the trappings of Christmas this year, I am feeling the real meaning of it.  No last minute dashes to the mall to “even up” the present count. No staying up til the wee hours of the morning to assemble a toy with instructions written in Japanese.  No mountains of discarded wrapping paper.  No soldiering through the day, eyes grainy with lack of sleep.  No cooking for hours in the kitchen, then having the meal gone within minutes.  No stacks of dirty dishes.  No looking at the decorations still up in February, thinking, it may be time to get on with it. 

Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ, who, for many, is a beacon of light in a dark world.  History and archaeology have shown that Jesus wasn’t necessarily born on December 25, and there are stories that the date was really a pagan holiday that the early church used to encourage converts.  Never mind that shepherds didn’t have their sheep in the fields at this time of year, and never mind all the skeptics who put Jesus in the same category as Santa Claus.  It is a time when we can appreciate that no matter how dark the world gets sometimes there is still light.  If Jesus is that light, then so be it.  Jesus or no, there is still good in the world, and I truly believe that goodness will always outshine evil.  Next time you go to the movies and some dipstick turns on his cell phone to check his messages, you will appreciate how any light, no matter how small, will illuminate the darkness. A physicist could explain all the mathematical reasons why darkness is merely the absence of light.  To me, darkness is only the temporary absence of light.  As my dad used to say, "It's darker than the inside of a hat!"  Take off your hat, and there will be light!

I have a friend whose daughter was a student at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown.  This beautiful little girl survived the tragedy, but there are so many families whose lives are indeed very dark right now.  I don’t know how much light would be needed to dispel that darkness, but it is good to see how many people all over the world have reached out to try and help in their own way.  I like Ann Curry’s plan to commit one act of random kindness in honor of each person that died that day. 

For me, this year, Christmas is all about light.  I feel closer to the light this year than ever before.  Much like the Grinch who realized that even though he stole all the material things in Who-Ville, Christmas still comes.  As long as there is light, there is hope.  I will never lose hope and confidence that goodness will prevail.  In whatever fashion you celebrate this season, be it the winter solstice, Yule, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Christmas, I hope you will always put your faith in the light.