My Children Made me This Way

It’s quiet here. Not something that happens often, but a thing so complete when it does that it makes me shiver with the promise of the future. It is most assuredly the sound of the future for a mother who is watching her children grow. Silence is the double edged sword that we seek and we fear. It is the thing that we want most but know that it holds the things that we fear.

It holds the promise that something that should not be happening is. Ask any mother, any parent really, and they will tell you that quiet in a house full of children in the middle of the day is very rarely a good thing. And is that quiet comes from a yard, oh that has a double concern. That holds that slight whisper of fear that they are either at something they should not be, or the terror that they are no longer there. Mischief is quiet and loss is silence.

It is that quiet that wakes me from a full and hard sleep in the morning, even when I have been up till dawn. It is that sudden stillness of my house that makes my breath catch and my heart race, and puts me awake with my feet on the floor before I even think. The Monsters go quiet right at the heavy moment before they wake, and that is what wakes me. I can move quietly from room to room, touching finger tips to sleep flushed cheeks and ponder the quiet that will be.

Even when they sleep the Monsters make noise. There is the soft huffing of breath takes, sighs and the noises of restless rolling. They talk in their sleep, to no one, to each other, to everyone. There are little snorts and snores. There is comfort in that sound. And it is that thing that I think I will miss the most. Someday when that silence is complete, and the Monsters are grown and gone.

I wonder if it will wake me then, or if I will have finally earned a full night’s sleep that does not come in fits and starts with the restlessness of a child’s whispers and sighs. I am not sure I look forward to knowing. Today I am glad the silence is no cause for concern, a temporary reprieve as they pour over coloring books for a second day. I am not ready to have that silence redefine me.

The excitment levels this morning were as high as they were last yesterday. I woke up to bouncy Monsters begging for pancakes as they tried to play with 4 different toys at once.

C sat at the dining room table for nearly 20 minutes trying to figure out how to color, play marbles, and watch a movie all at once. F was wearing a new red cowboy hat, taking her new babydoll for a ride on her stick horse (that happens to be a unicorn)  while shooting at her brothers with thier new toy cap guns. D has been listening to her new music on her MP3 player while playing the new Zoo Tycoon game she got. And S has mastered marbles and puzzle putting together while playing with transformers.

I have been snapping pictures with a disposable camera (as my digital bit the dust last week) and these will be far more interesting than the ones of them ripping through wrapping paper. These are the ones that are memories in the making. Besides, they will be burnt out and sleeping by 9pm, and I HAVE to document how we got to that!

As we finished clearing the table and putting leftovers into containers one of the very first thing D and F both asked was if I would make scalloped potatoes tomorrow with some of the ham. I love this recipe, it is complete comfort food to me, and one of the things that I know the Monsters will eat and I thought I would share.

Let me say however this is a family recipe, and I come from a long line of women who just put things together, and I don’t have exact measurements. How much you make and how many it will feed depends on the size of the pan you make it in. I learned to make it watching my two different Great Grandmothers, and then my Grandmother make it in warm cheery kitchens. Somehow my Mom never learned it. This was something that was made as the women in my family chatted and laughed and bitched in the kitchen, telling stories and cooking, and it was passed on by observation and nothing more.

Ruth and Adalaide’s Scalloped Potatoes

• Potatoes-sliced
• Large Onion-peeled and sliced thinly
  
• Leftover Ham-cubed or shredded
• cold butter-(1-2 sticks, margarine doesn’t work nearly as well.)
  
• Flour
• Parsley
  
• Pepper
• Garlic Powder
• Milk (1 quart to a half gallon depending on how big your pan is)

1. Preheat your oven at 425°f. 
2. In an oven safe pan begin layering your ingredients as follows: potato, chunks of ham, onion, sprinkle with 2 tbsp flour, drop in 2 tbsp butter, a sprinkle of parsley, pepper, and garlic powder. Then start once more with the potatoes and continue to layer until your pan is full.
   
3. Pour milk over top until your pan is about 3/4th of the way full.
4. Cover your pan and put it into the over. I suggest putting a layer of foil under the pan as boil over is very likely to happen. Bake at 425°f until the milk comes to a boil. This takes 5-15 minutes, and personally I never catch it before the it starts to boil over.
5. When it comes to a boil uncover and reduce the over temperature to 350°f and bake 45-60 minutes, or until your potatoes are done (soft when poked with a fork.) and the top is lightly browned. 

And that’s it, the ham is usually enough but you might need to salt to taste. I tend to cook without it. There are lots of things you can vary, and we have over the years. You can use turkey rather than ham or even bacon, switch spices, even add cheese as it really is a great base to add flavors.  Both my Great Grandmothers where making variations of  this recipe on farms hundreds of miles apart in Clearfield, PA and Cazenovia, NY during the Great Depression with whatever was on hand. Just a toss together of simple country fair that has become a family favorite.  Enjoy.

Solstice is over but tonight is the absolute longest night for the Monsters. They have been bouncing all day, they have been threatening each others behavior with Santa and the naughty/nice list.  It’s hard to find things to occupy minds and hands that are already caught up in day dreams of what tomorrow will bring. They are already lost in the excitement.

At the moment they have popcorn and are watching The Santa Clause 2 and we are tracking Santa online with Norad . After the movie we will do cookies and milk for Santa, brush teeth,  and then they will get tucked in. About 16 times. It will take everyone forever to fall asleep tonight. (even me)

I love watching them on days like today when they are bright eyed and pink cheeked with anticipation. It is one of those things that makes me smile and is the best thing about being a mom.

So Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight.

I have been wracking my brain today trying to think of a tool that I use to pass along, and I wasn’t having much luck. The Monsters are in overdrive. Christmas is in sight, there are shiny things and cookies and candy and presents to tempt them. It’s cold and rainy outside so they are stuck inside. School has been out since Friday and so they are stuck inside with people they are related to (heaven forbid). The house is getting noisy. Toys are getting boring. TV is getting irritating. Loud Monsters are not at all conducive to blog writing and they have been getting louder by the hour.

Like most kids the Monsters love to cut and color and glue things, but coloring books only hold their attention for so long. We made paper chains and snowflakes the other day to decorate the house and windows with and that kept them occupied for a better part of the day so I decided to see what sorts of paper crafts I could find online and I stumbled over this pair of sites:

The Toymaker (click Free Toys at the center of the menu) has ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL free printables paper toys and crafts. Simple toys with an old feel and beautiful illustrations. I am in love with this site.

Robert Sabuda has some great pop ups that older kids can make. D (12) and S (10) worked on these with very little help from me at all. F (7) and C(5) colored and then did some of the cutting, and then the older two put them together. We used printer paper as a pattern and transferred the images onto construction paper for a couple. These might make great gifts as well.

These have kept the Monsters occupied, and low and behold I found a tool of the trade too!

Winter Solstice is one of the Sabbats (have look here at Wikipedia for a nice general explanation.) that many Wiccan’s and other various Pagan/Neo-Pagan’s celebrate. It is the longest night of the year literally (in the Northern Hemisphere). At the winter equinox the hours of darkness out number those of light at a ratio that is never greater any other night of the year. Because of the position of the sun and the tilt of the Earths axis we are the furthest away from the sun at that time then any other time during the year. After that the days begin to grow longer steadily, even when we all seem to be in the grips of winter, spring is already on its way.

I have always celebrated by staying up all night, I light my Yule candle (a log when we had a fireplace) and I tend it all night. It is a time to reflect and consider. I watch the stars, and the sky, and I think about the things that I want to come into my life with this new Sun. This however is not a very practical way to introduce the Monsters to this Sabbat (Though this year D did stay up most of the night with me) and like many parents who are raising children on this path I had to find a way to include them, so here is part of how we celebrate.

The day is S’s, it is his birthday and we keep it that way till after cake and presents. And then we all have a bath to relax and settle. We read stories about the Sun, myths about Gods and Goddesses and we talk about what each might mean. Right before bedtime for them we go through the house turning off all the lights, welcoming the darkness as a time for renewal. And then we light up our tree. It stays lit all night long, welcoming the God and light back into the world. I tuck them into bed with dream pillows and wishes for dreams about renewal and they are off to sleep.

When the sun comes up in the morning and they wake up we have their ritual. And it is breakfast. They help me cook, this morning it was butterscotch oatmeal , buttered toast, and hot chocolate, and we talk about their dreams. The kitchen is noisy and warm, and we giggle at the silly, and nod at the serious and we put all that energy and magic into our food. We sit at the table, and the candle that I have had burning all night is at the center. We talk about the coming of the Sun again, and what Solstice means, both literally and spiritually and we eat. At the end of the meal we put out the candle, bit of food each of us has left in our bowl is placed on a plate and we set it outside as an offering.

It is simple, but that’s how I am raising my Monsters to be good little Witches.

Second birthday of the month and the last of the year, a not so little any more blonde boy is moving into double digits and making me feel old. I posted yesterday about time, and every time the year turns on one of my Monsters I have an even more acute awareness of the manner of its passing.

This one tried to kill himself and me both the day he was born. Umbilical cords are scary things when they are wrapped around necks and then made to short by that very wrapping. But he breathed, and I stopped bleeding so he obviously didn’t succeed as we are both here for this birthday. He does however still have a need to get tangled up in to all sorts of things he shouldn’t.

He has big, clear blue eyes and curls a girl would die for, both win him almost every person who looks at him. He has never met a stranger, just a friend he doesn’t know yet. S has smiled his lopsided grin at everyone who looks at him since he figured out how. He talks and talks, and reads and reads, and inherited his lack of grace from his mother. What ever it takes he loves to make people smile and has become the biggest goof ever to that end. And oh my god does he dance like the white boy he is.

He’s smart, and doesn’t even have to try. It comes as easy to him as breathing when you convince him to pay attention. He has his head in the clouds all the time. He has an imagination that just never stops, and a temper that flares fast and hot. But it’s forgotten nearly as soon as it’s over and he has the softest heart. He cries as easily as he laughs.

He is silly, a clumsy messy smart noise with a frog in his pocket and dirt on his face. And S is turning ten today.

Happy Birthday Hug-a-Bug

Wow, five days.  What happened to the days when it seemed like it took an eternity for Christmas to get here? I swear when I was a kid it seemed like it took forever and a day for the time between one Christmas and the next to pass. It just never seemed to come soon enough. And now? Now I swear that it’s a week between Christmas’s and it might be a month’s span that passes for a year now.

Anticipation, expectation, and perspective all seem to shape how time moves. Maybe that is why we have never figured out time travel. Maybe time it so personal a thing, time is something that hinges on personal observations, our own physical markers, and the processes of our minds, that you can’t move through it because isn’t a constant. In a way that’s comforting, that we are in control of our own time. That clocks and calendars are really just a suggestion to measure the passage of a day. They are created things, man made devices to cut up an infinite thing into something that we can measure and therefore digest because if we left it as it is it’s too large a thing to fathom. Maybe we actually do have all the time in the world.

Now if you ask the Monsters it has been at least five years since we last had a Christmas, and this next five days will take about a month at least to come to pass. Then the rest of the time they are off of school, the two weeks between the 22^nd December and the 5^th of January, that will take three days. To me that span of time will seem to take three months.

This week will be over in a blink of an eye, but it will take forever for it to happen. A contradiction? I don’t think so. The beauty of one mother and four children’s minds will make it so.

13 years ago I got Santa back. The 19^th of April there was a whole world of whimsy handed to me along with a tiny baby girl and Santa Clause was one of those things. The jolly man in the red suit had come to see me last when I 11, and the next year thanks to some classmates he was no more. That Christmas I wanted my parents to prove me wrong when I announced that I knew all about Santa. I wanted them to tell me he was real and my classmates where mistaken. But they didn’t, and Christmas changed for me, it lost some of its shine.

D was born and in December there was Santa in his red suit trimmed all in white fur, reindeer flew against a starry backdrop, and there was magic once more. All that had been lost was brought back into the world with my daughter that year. Stories I hadn’t heard in years where retold. The Santa plate was dug out, and the big mug for milk. My husband and I melded traditions from his family, with traditions from mine and we started a few of our own. The bits of magic that make you giddy as you count the days returned and the shine came back to Christmas.

Today some of that shine dimmed. D lost Santa today. Classmates spoke the words and she came to me with that look that said she didn’t want it to be true. The question was asked in a tone that said she wanted her friends to be wrong. But she knew. You could see it there in her eyes even as she asked. And once you know you can’t unknown it, no matter how badly you want to so I told her the truth. She gave this half smile and nodded. She promised to help keep Santa for her younger siblings and then she wandered off to her room.

I went off to my room too, and I mourned that loss. Santa flickered in my house, he lost some of his shine and he has begun to fade. There are still three to keep him real for a few more years and that means we will have the magic for a time still, but it has begun. The one who brought him back to us has lost him and that will make this Christmas’ magic just a little bittersweet.

It is exactly a week till Christmas. Seven days. And this is the most glorious week of the year. You see this is the week the Monster exhibit their best behavior. This is the week that in their minds is of the utmost importance because every bad thing they have done the other 358 days can be reversed in the eyes of Santa during what I like to refer to as Redemption Week.

Please and thank you will are tossed about with out reminders, and even offered to one another.

Homework is done as soon as they get home and without asking.

Meals are eaten without a single ‘Yuck’ or “EEeww’ uttered. They will even use napkins and that those table manners I thought went in one ear and out the other.

There is no running, ball throwing, or tag being played in the house and not once is it because I had to threaten them.

Lights get turned off. Dishes find the sink. Towels and coats both are hung up. Shoes and clothes are put away. Neatly even. I can even see bedroom floors.

Arguments between siblings are short and quiet. As though they are hoping that the volume and duration will keep possible negativity to a minimum.

They show a mastery of inside voices that brings tears to my eyes.

Bed times are not only be observed they are brought to my attention five minutes ahead of time. Faces are be washed, teeth are brushed and they call sweetly for tucking in.

There really are so many reasons to love this time of year.