Thank-full

One Thanksgiving morning my cousins and I engaged in a debate over the importance of eating breakfast. I had slept over at my cousin Connie's house, and, as our central preoccupation involved the quantity of food we would be able to consume at the afternoon feast, we were concerned with how eating breakfast would impact our ability to gorge ourselves later. It was determined that, contrary to our gut feeling, eating breakfast would actually enable us to eat more of our Thanksgiving dinner, because the morning meal would stretch our stomachs. Fasting would only hinder our gestational goals.

Remembering this debate, I am struck by how, as children, we approached Thanksgiving with the sole goal of becoming full. How we approached the day with the will and desire to feast on the things that were offered us. As an adult, my approach to Thanksgiving has changed. Achieving fullness takes a back seat to food preparation, calorie counting, and making polite conversation with company.

I'm glad that Thanksgiving is more than just a day to consume vast quantities of food. But still, I wonder if there aren't lessons to learn from my childhood approach to the day. Lessons like deprivation only promotes deprivation. Lessons like viewing the table set before you as abundant and enough to satisfy. Lessons like the only way to achieve fullness is to partake of the things that are offered to you here, now, today.

The difference between feast and famine is so often perception. The bounty of our table is so easily diminished when we focus our gaze on our neighbor's spread or await in vain the more elegant entrees that will be served next year. The difference between living an empty or a full life depends less on what our life contains and more on our attitude toward and about those things.

My table is so full. And I hope to approach it in the same eager way my childhood self approached the Thanksgiving table. So I'll loosen my belt, take an extra helping of mashed potatoes, and squeeze in that third piece of pumpkin pie. But first, I've got to eat breakfast...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Week in Review

On Halloween, Henry absolutely refused to wear his costume. This was about the closest we got to having him wear it - and he cried and screamed for the whole 30 seconds it was on. He didn't let not donning a costume stop him from trick-or-treating though. The basic concept of receiving free candy from complete strangers really appealed to Henry.

After trick-or-treating, we headed over to an Obama rally held at a nearby park (sorry, Dad). Although you can't tell, the man at the podium next to the white rectangular teleprompter really is Obama.

This is Henry and I at the rally. Henry is definitely not looking too excited to be there. In fact, as we were driving to the park, we told Henry we were going to see Barack Obama and he said, "No, John McCain!"

This is how I found Henry at 6 a.m. this morning. I could hear him dragging the chair around and knew he was up to something. This is a new move he's figured out - I've had to start hiding the candy and Oreos on the top shelf of our pantry.

This is where I found Henry at 11 am this morning. I think the time change has really thrown him off, because he has refused to nap all week. I think the lack of sleep must have finally caught up with him - I don't think he moved from this position for over 2 hours.

One of these things is not like the other (?) (!)

Recently I heard a poem on NPR written by Elizabeth Bishop that I really liked. I checked out her anthology at the library and had Bubba read the poem as well, convinced that he too would like it. To my dismay, he not only disliked it, he strongly disliked it. He thought it was the most depressing, awful thing he had ever read. This awful poem, titled "Breakfast Song", reads:

My love, my saving grace,
your eyes are awfully blue.
I kiss your funny face,
your coffee-flavored mouth.
Last night I slept with you.
Today I love you so
how can I bear to go
(as soon I must, I know)
to bed with ugly death
in that cold, filthy place,
to sleep there without you,
without the easy breath
and nightlong, limblong warmth
I've grown accustomed to?
—Nobody wants to die;
tell me it is a lie!
But no, I know it's true.
It's just the common case;
there's nothing one can do.
My love, my saving grace,
your eyes are awfully blue
early and instant blue.

Okay. I'll give him that it may be depressing. But the funny thing is, he recently purchased a song on iTunes that seems strangely similar in tone to this poem. The lyrics, in part, are:

She says "If I leave before you, darling
Don't you waste me in the ground"
I lay smiling like our sleeping children
One of us will die inside these arms
Eyes wide open, naked as we came
One will spread our ashes round the yard

My question is: is there a material difference between these two? Is it reasonable for Bubba to despise one and cling to the other?

And, more importantly, who do you think is right?

Our Halloween Costumes

More things that make you go hmmm....

Riding on cars with boys - Yesterday after I dropped Bubba off at work, I was driving down Hohman Avenue (a fairly busy thoroughfare), and noticed that there was a woman sitting on the hood of the car driving next to me! The sight of a woman nonchalantly perched upon the hood of a moving car made my think, "what the?," and then I immediately called Bubba to have someone to share my incredulity with.

Goose on the Loose - I don't know if geese lawn ornaments are endemic to Northwest Indiana, but I certainly don't recall ever seeing so many of these lovely home accents anywhere else. My favorite part is that people actually dress these ceramic geese when the weather turns cold - take, for example, this specimen decked out in witch hat and cape. I'll know I'm really turning into a Hoosier when I purchase one of these geese for our own doorstep.

Free? Credit Report.com - Who would have guessed that checking your credit report on freecreditreport.com isn't really free? Okay, probably most people. Maybe the company's catchy jingle lulled me into stupidity and forced me to skip over the small print, but I swear when I checked both mine and Bubba's credit reports on the site I didn't see anything about enrolling in a $14.99 per month credit protection program. So, our free credit reports ended up costing $30 and a very annoying phone call to cancel our membership in the program. Stupid misleading jingle.

Mixed-up Marquee - The message on the marquee for Munster Christian Reformed church has me all confused. It reads: "Christ will turn you life "upside down" - displayed upside down. Does this baffle anyone else? I do not think the sign means what they think it means. To me, the phrase "upside down" connotes catastrophe - as in, "our finances are upside down," or "the divorce turned her life upside down." I think the better phrase to use here would be "rightside up." Unless, of course, I'm missing something. Maybe I'll have to attend the service to find out...

Let me see your toilet roll - Why is Henry completely fascinated with throwing things into the toilet? The other day I went in the bathroom to find this - a brand new roll of toilet paper soaking in the toilet. I swear the thing weighed 10 pounds and had absorbed about 2/3s of the the water. It wasn't as bad as the day I went in to see him dipping Bubba's toothbrush into the bowl and then brushing his teeth. Yuck! Now that's something that really makes me go hmmm.....

It's a girl!

Fast, Furious, and Frustrated

If the question "Play cars?" doesn't fill you with a sense of impending dread, then you've probably never been the parent of a two-year old boy. Like many boys before him, Henry has recently developed an obsession of sorts with playing cars. I categorize his affinity for the activity as an obsession because his requests to play cars are insistent, persistent, and resistant to the suggestion of any other activity. I have been awaken in the morning more times than I care to count by Henry thrusting a matchbox car into my hand and pleading "play cars?"

So, how does one "play cars", you ask? The activity sounds harmless enough. Normally all it involves is sitting next to Henry, holding the car he selects for you, and scooting the car around the ground. Henry is quite deft in detecting the difference between when I am just sitting there and when I am indeed moving the car around. If I disengage for only a moment, he'll instantly notice and demand "play cars!"

For me, playing cars is like watching a sporting event: I enter a sort of time-warp where the minutes pass slower than I thought humanly possible. I tell myself, "yes, I can play cars for 20 minutes with Henry," and after engaging in the activity for what seems like hours, I look at the clock and only 5 minutes have passed.

Despite how boring I find playing cars, I really think it is good for Henry. It seems to be an activity that exercises his imaginative and verbal skills. He talks a lot when we're playing cars. He'll say funny things like "Hey car, what you doing?", or exclaim "Oh no, my wheels hurt!" when a car turns over. Playing cars is definitely better for Henry than just sitting on the couch watching the tube all day.

If only I could convince myself it's good for me, too.