Lessons I've Learned From Harry

I think I've mentioned once or twice that I love Harry Potter - the books and the movies. Of course the books are better. You get a more in-depth portrait of all the characters and end up with deep attachments to many of them.

There's the Weasley clan, probably my favorite cast of characters - besides Harry, Ron and Hermione of course. Then there are the professors and all the students from the House of Gryffindor, not to mention Gryffindor alums like Sirius, Lupin and Tonks.

Every time I think about the world J.K. Rowling created I am always astounded at the depth and breadth of the story.

The movies follow the books close enough that I won't complain. I'm a book purist, so any divergence can send me over the edge. 

While we have most of the movies on DVD, I rarely sit and watch them. However, when ABC Family has its Harry Potter weekends, I'm glued to the TV. I think something about the commercial breaks helps. You can get things done in between - diapers changed, clothes washed, kids bathed, dishes cleaned.

Dumbledore's words of wisdom leave me pondering for days.

I was particularly struck by another of Dumbledore's assertions when watching The Order of the Phoenix this past weekend. I'd never paid much attention to it before.

"It is not how you are alike; it is how you are not."

Hearing, and actually comprehending the truth in it, brought me to tears.

While it may not seem like much, especially if you are unfamiliar with the story, it was spoken by Dumbledore at a critical point in Harry's struggle with Voldemort. 

If you've spent a lifetime trying to not to be like someone, you'll understand the importance of that statement.

There's always this nagging fear that you will end up just like that person, or group of people, you don't want to become. Sometimes, focusing on that fear makes the similarities all to clear. But when you step back to see the differences, then the important truth is revealed.

Birmingham Children's Theater

Yesterday was our first time seeing a play staged by the Birmingham Children's Theater. Located at the Birmimgham Jefferson Convention Center in Birmingham, AL, the play was a new twist on Cinderella.

At not quite a full hour, the running time was perfect for squirmy little ones.

The small room with the bleacher-style seats was a rather cozy space.

The fairy godmother, or the fairy godmother in training I should say, made it fun and interactive by having the children in the audience pretend to stir a magic pot throughout the performance.

And afterward, before stopping for lunch and heading home, we walked around downtown Birmingham. There aren't many comfortable July days as far as temperature goes here in Alabama, but yesterday morning proved to be pleasant, non-humid and breezy.

The theater company has what sounds like a great season planned with shows like City Mouse, Country Mouse, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (we just finished reading this book, so this one will be a must) and The Secret Garden.

A Circle of Quiet

I was disappointed during the first 50 or so pages. I expected to be wowed, calmed and transformed. Instead, I was just trying to keep up with her train of thought.

"A Circle of Quiet" is a memoir by Madeleine L'Engle, wife, mother and famous author of many children's books.

Once I slowed down - I would describe myself as a fairly fast reader - I came to realize how much I think like the author. She's incredibly opinionated and idealistic. Two traits that can be both a blessing and a curse.

I erroneously presumed this was going to be more about a young mom finding her way during the early years of motherhood. It's more about a writer trying to find her way through motherhood AND life.

The book was first published in 1971. It spans mostly through the decades of the 50s and 60s. She died in 2007.

She was a Christian with doubts. That's something refreshing to hear because I'm not sure that many of us don't have doubts. It's just most of us are too afraid to face them or admit it to anyone else, let alone another Christian.
 
She was a mother struggling to be a writer and a writer struggling to be a mother. She accepted the many paradoxes of life. It amazes me that many of the things she wrote about then, in terms of the struggles of her time, are the exact things many of us struggle with today. She worried about pollution, disease, the disconnect between many parents and children - why the two generations couldn't talk or connect.

She advocated reading the great writers, both in children's and adult literature, and to read them at all ages.

Here she is in her own words. As you can guess, I picked the passages that most resonated with me.

ON TEACHING:

"How do we teach a child - our own, or those in a classroom - to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh; to love; to accept the fact that the  most important questions a human being can ask do not have - or need - answers."

ON THE DIVIDE BETWEEN THE YOUNG AND OLD:

"But the adolescents today are concerned over a general lack of memory in their parents and teachers, and it is this forgetfulness of what it is like to be twelve, or seventeen, or twenty-one, that is largely responsible for the famous generation gap. The young look at the amnesiac over-thirties and say, 'We look at the adults around us, and if this is what it means to be grownup, then we say, No! We don't ever want to be like most of the adults we see.'"

ON HEALTHY ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS:

"What about your relations with the rest of the world? It's all right in the very beginning for you to be the only two people in the world, but after that your ability to love should become greater and greater. If you find that you love lots more people than you ever did before, then I think that you can trust this love. If you find that you need to be exclusive, that you don't like being around other people, then I think that something may be wrong. This doesn't mean that two people who love each other don't need time alone. Two people in the first glory of new love must have great waves of time in which to discover each other. But there is a kind of exclusiveness in some loves, a kind of inturning, which augurs trouble to come."

 ON AGING GRACEFULLY:

"What about the mothers who loathe the thought of getting old, who think it a disgrace to look or act their age, as though becoming mature were something to be ashamed of instead of rejoiced in, mothers who pride themselves on dressing like their teenage daughters, and consider it a compliment when people say they look like sisters. Perhaps the daughter doesn't want a sister; perhaps she wants a mother."

 Amen on that one Mrs. L'Engle.

For What I Do Is Not The Good I Want To Do...

Tom Sawyer got the gist of it when he realized the following:

"...namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing."

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell lament about it in their song "Open Season on My Heart."

"I try to change without much luck. I reach a point where I get stuck."

St. Paul knew it all too well.

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And If I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, this is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it." Romans 7:15-20

It seems like I have the best intentions as a mom, but as soon as I try to focus on not doing something, like yelling or becoming frustrated so easily, those things increase.

When I try to tell myself I need to stay away from e-mail until a certain time of day so that I can pay more attention to the children, it's like an instant urge, that I often give in to, to run to my computer (or phone or I-pad).

Should I, like George Costanza once realized on an episode of Seinfeld, convince myself of the opposite.

Maybe I should tell myself that I am no longer going to talk in a calm, rational tone of voice. Maybe I should tell myself to check my e-mail the moment I awake and remind myself of how urgent it is several times throughout the day.

I wish I had some insight or an epiphany to share about fighting the daily battles of conscience.

But I've got nothing. Sigh!

Oh well, tomorrow is a new day!

On The Day You Turned Two

You won't remember yesterday.

It was your second birthday, and it was one of the few days in the past few weeks it didn't rain.

Your brother was so excited for you that he woke up at the crack of dawn. He wanted to be the first to show you the Dora and princess balloons your daddy bought the night before. We tied them to your high chair, and you squealed with delight when you saw them.

You carried your cookie monster toy around all day and even slept with it during naptime. You were freaked out by your new "What's in the Bible" dvds, another cookie monster Aunt Anna got you and a pink, fuzzy hair clip. You made sure we knew you didn't like them.

You talked to many people on the phone and when they wished you a happy birthday you repeated the phrase back to them as if it was their birthday. 

You couldn't wait to eat your strawberry cake. You kept making your way to the dining room table trying to sniff the cake and then telling us all how good it smelled.

And today, while we were eating some of that leftover cake with real the strawberries baked inside, you leaned over and told me you loved me. My heart melted and swelled all in the same moment.

Oh my sweet, fiesty, loud, beautiful daughter. I was so afraid of having a girl before you were born. Now I can't understand why. You make me remember what it was like to be a little girl and how fun life truly is.

Some days you do scare me; it has more to do with your complete lack of fear than my fears about raising you and messing it all up.

You talk more than I ever imagined a two year old could.

You make us all laugh daily. We laugh at you and with you. Don't ever forget how effective laughter can be, both making people laugh and especially laughing at yourself, for dealing with the ills of life.

We are so glad to call you ours. And even though you aren't technically a baby anymore, you'll always be my baby girl.

CSA Wednesday

On Wednesday we head to a local farm to pick up produce as part of a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Here's what we got today:

Bell Peppers

Leeks

Eggs

Onions

This was likely the last pick up. All the rain has damaged some crops. There's supposed to be muscadines that will come in in early August, but if that's the only thing available then we'll probably pass on that pick up. No one in this house is a fan of them.

Tired

Tired - Exhausted of strength or energy; fatigued.

It's a word that encompasses many meanings.

There's the state of mental tiredness. This can occur after long hours of study. Maybe it happens because of hours, days, weeks or years spent working on a project or dealing with a problem.

There's also an emotional tiredness. Being emotionally exhausted occurs during hardships like deaths, break-ups and when strife rears its ugly head. This feeling of fatigue is usually connected to our interpersonal relationships.

Then there's the physical meaning of the word. Let's see how far we can go with this one.

Ask any pregnant woman what it means to be tired, and she'll likely tell you it carries a whole new meaning.

There's the perpetual feeling of being tired when you are in the throes of raising young children. It's an everyday kind of tired that leaves you in a stupor much of the time.

There's the tired one feels after an intense workout that leaves your body depleted.

Then there's the tired that comes along with having a late night. Maybe you stayed up too late watching TV, reading that novel or trying to express yourself with just the right word on your blog.

Maybe it was a late-night chat.

Sometimes that late night comes with a headache and remorse the next morning.

There's also a tired that comes with the seasons. Daylight saving time can throw you off for days.

Let's not forget the tired one feels from travel. There's the after the trip tired that makes you think you need a vacation to recover from the vacation you just took.

There's also the I'm not going to sleep on my flight and try to stay up the whole next day in Europe tired. This tired just might lead one to begin crying in the middle of the Louvre because a security guard wouldn't allow her to sit on the floor to rest her tired and weary body.

So you learn your lesson from that and then the next year you induce tired by taking a Benadryl on your flight to London. Only one because you don't want the groggy tired you'll have when you awake from taking two.

Then there's the husband that maybe didn't learn his lesson the year before, and he finds he's so tired he's about to vomit or pass out (maybe both) on a long, winding bus ride through the English countryside.

There are tired eyes when you've been behind the computer for too long, especially in the dark.

Then there's the pleasant feeling of tired. This one can come come on a breezy beach, rocking on the porch or on any given Sunday.

It would seem that the physical aspects of tired are endless. There's countless other scenarios not coming into play here.

There's also the state of being tired of something. It's not so much a feeling as a state of being.

First, there's the things one can be tired of, but knows there is little that can be done about them. For instance, being tired of the laundry or the need to continually wash dishes.

Next, there's being tired of in the sense of being fed up. Like being fed up with the way someone is acting or with the way you are being treated. Maybe it's the constant mess that has become your house.

Then there's the antithesis to tired of. It's the things one never gets tired of.

Like the feeling of God's providence.

Like kisses from your children.

Like knowing you are loved.