A Very Merry Solstice

Ah, The Festival of Lights. This year, in our ongoing efforts to minimalize these last days of December, we took the simple yet radical step of shifting the holiday onto solstice. We told the children they'd get one big present each, and posted our needs on a local homeschooling list. A drum kit turned up for R, and an art table for AJ. We set them up in the middle of the night in their rooms (they were in our bed). The kids went through their stockings, we lit candles, and they spent the day drumming and artmaking. It was blissfully low-key and fun. And we were already pretty low-key, with our traditional refusal to travel on Christmas, or cook exhaustingly, or shop overmuchly, added to which, we turned down Hannukah this time out. We've been making, decorating and burning beeswax candles.

For the second year not-in-a-row, we set up a Yule Tipi instead of buying a tree. This is a tripod made of branches about four inches in diameter, attached at the top by screw hooks and chain link and stabilized about halfway down by a chain that runs among the three supports. In the summer we use it to grow beans and other climbers in our garden. This time of year we can bring it in, stand it in the corner, and wire on hemlock, yew and whatever other evergreens I can find out in the yard. I'll post a picture soon. It looks like a magical shaggy forest thing, and our cat loves to sit under it. You can put presents under the Yule Tipi, hang out in there, or simply look at it from the couch. Ours is decorated with cobalt blue LED lights, which generate less heat than incandescents. Still, I suppose it's a bit of a fire hazard, so I'll continue to spray it daily and take it out to the side yard on New Year's Day and adorn it with nut-butter-and-bird-food decorations for the wee critters of the neighborhood.

May your Yuletide be green, piney, and happy.

What Makes Us Us

Well this karate/tae kwon do class is going just swimmingly. Or should I say roundhousingly.



Although R was uncomfortable the first couple of times, so much so that his empathetic mother has been sad and nervous about it since the first observation class, he rallied during a couple of individual sessions with the instructor and now he's doing great. He is quick and flexible, and the teacher calls him a "mongoose." He gets right in there for the matches. Tonight he raised his hand to volunteer to go against a kid much larger than he is. "You're brave," the teacher said. R looks great in his gi. He sits straight and listens. I am learning not to wince when I hear words like "competition," because the class members really do seem supportive of one another.

I love the teacher. "No winner but two champions," he says. Or, "I like her guard and I like her balance." Or, "Look at that kick! Excellent!" Or, "If you believe in the spirit of jujitsu, it will be there for you. If you don't believe, it won't be there for you." Or, "close your eyes. Now imagine you are riding a fire-breathing horse."

AJ is enthusiastic, especially when kicking. She puts her hands up by her ears and sinks way down into a ready stance. In between drills she jumps up and down with excitement. After class she comes up to me and says, "I want to do this one thousand times a day."



Tonight at bedtime the three of us looked at a book called What Makes Me Me. We read a chapter on personality. The kids took a test to learn some things about what makes them them. R discovered that he is an introvert, and very conscientious. AJ found that she is an extrovert, an agreeable extrovert. I was insulted by a section of the test designed to evaluate a person's level of sensitivity. The category was called "Neurotic." Sensitive is not neurotic. I'm sensitive on that point. Not neurotic. Sensitive. It's a gift. Some of our nation's leaders should look into it; maybe it's a thing you can hone or develop or if need be, pull out of thin air and attach to your being with soap, the way Peter Pan sticks his shadow to himself.

It's hard not to jump up and run onto the mat to do sidekicks with the kids during that class. At midnight, after we had prepared the solstice celebration for the morning (more on that in the next post), H came at me in the bathroom as I was preparing a tub of hot water to soak in. "Snake arms!" I said. We locked and began to wrestle. I tried to trip him; he stepped on my foot. I mimed a sucker punch to his face. "Your shoelace is untied," he said. It didn't work—I know when I'm barefoot. We were not being champions. But maybe we could learn. I want a coach pronouncing my every move "awesome" or "stylin'!" "That was the best kick I've seen all night! What a block! I like your spirit! Very . . . sen-si-tive!"

December 14, 1961

Today is my birthday.

My present to myself hasn't arrived but I ordered it last night:

Aimé Césaire: The Collected Poetry (trans. Clayton Eshleman & Annette Smith)
Forces of Imagination: Writing on Writing by Barbara Guest
Washtenaw County Jail and Other Writings by David Herfort and Michael Ruby

I try to do my favorite things on my birthday. My husband scratched my back when I woke up. Then I took a hot bath while reading a short story by Samuel Beckett. That sounds like a downer but it wasn't. It made me feel happy.

My children have given me several drawings and felt hearts.

The house is warm; the fuel is evaporating.

Later we will go to the library, maybe get some piney boughs to green the house since my birthday ushers in The Festivals of Lights. We will take my son to his art class.

Now it is breakfast time. My husband has made me eggs.

There is a story in a book on autism I'm reading, about a boy exhibiting delayed echolalia who, every time he put on his hat, said "He's a happy man right there." His parents didn't know why he always said that when he put on a hat, any hat. Then one day they were watching an old golf video. A golfer got a hole-in-one and doffed his cap to the audience. The announcer said "He's a happy man right there." The text goes on to say of this boy that "the phrase made little sense to others and didn't help him communicate his wants or needs."

Why do I feel so much for that boy when I read his meaningless phrase? Like he's my own son.

Anyway.

My husband has made me eggs. She's a happy woman right there.