My Kids, My Heroes

"Mommy says I look just like Daddy!"  Damon and Matthew

Khalil Gibran, a Lebanese American artist, writer and philosopher, said it best.

Your children come through you but not from you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life does not go backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as arrows are sent forth.

Krishan Chopra, in his book "Your Life Is In Your Hands: The Path To Lasting Health And Happiness" (from which I also picked up the above quote), explains it this way.

According to the law of karma, a child is born to particular parents and a particular environment because his karma - the accumulated impressions of all his past actions and experiences - requires him to acquire certain physical and mental characteristics and have certain opportunities in this lifetime.  He does not get a good or bad environment because of his parents, but because his own karma places him in a situation in which he can, if he so desires, utilize his accumulated knowledge and abilities and add to them.

I like karma.  It places the responsibility for your life into your own hands.

Krishan is worth listening to.  Not only is his book a fantastic explanation of Hindu beliefs and values, he is obviously no slouch as a parent either.  His son, Deepak Chopra, seemed to turn out okay.

"Uh oh.  Mommy needs pictures for her blog again!"  Aidan and his sight words.

In essence, the concept of karma says that your children chose you as their parent for a reason.

I'm still trying to figure out what my kids are getting from ME, but I sure as heck am learning a lot from them.

This week the peer pressure on Ryan from the girls in her class got so strong that I finally spoke with the vice-principal.  Getting your bra snapped by anyone, even another girl, is bullying.  Although Ryan is no stranger to bullying - it was considered normal and routine in Germany - it was a welcome change to have help from an adult authority figure.  Guess what?  Not okay in Australia.  But even with help from the adults, this situation is not going to go away.  Ryan is not going to conform.  And the pressure - right now it is to join THE GROUP on a 3 day camping trip the school has planned in 5 weeks - is not going to go away.

And so Ryan has decided not to go camping. 

That kind of blew everyone away.

But why would she want to spend time with kids who are trying to control her and tell her what to do, who won't leave her alone, let her do her own thing and be her own person?

Ryan on Jack.  Now THAT's a big horse trying to buck my little girl off!

The adults are worried about her 'missing out' on a school experience. 

The kids will continue to pester her. 

And Ryan will continue to quietly walk away and do her own thing.
I have no idea how this confident, self -assured child came from needy, attention-seeking me. 

But I really couldn't be prouder.

She is so happy with her horses and her riding - this week she was the only one Jack didn't buck off in the field - and with her sketches and well, HERSELF - that she doesn't need the confirmation of others telling her that she is okay. 

Jack figures he might as well listen.

It would have made parenting her for the past few years a heck of a lot easier if she HAD wanted to please me.

From Ryan, I am learning to be my own person, to be less needy and more confident in myself.

Andrew is teaching me to be a better person as well.  And also to stick up for what I believe is right.  Maybe that's why I had to become a mother.  I doubt I would have stuck up for myself the way I will for my children.

This weekend Andrew was placed in goal for both halves, despite the deal we had with the coaches that he would play one half in the position he loves, in the field.   I wasn't there, it was Damon's turn out the door at 7 AM, but they were playing The Pythons, the strongest team in the league, and the pressure was on.  Losing 0-4 after the first half, even with Andrew in goal, the coach coerced Andrew into playing goal again in the second half, while Damon was away signing the volunteer register.

When Andrew protested the coach told him "You HAVE to stay in goal.  You need the practice."

Andrew was in tears, but he did what his coach asked of him.  And he did it well.

Andrew teaches his class about hip-hop.  (Mr. Biri on the right.  AND note the use of whiteboard and computers!  21st century in THIS continent's schools!)

Damon was furious.

I would have pulled Andrew off the field.

The coach isn't a bad person.  He just made a bad decision.  He chose points in a game over the joy of a 9 year old playing that game.  He broke his promise - and the rules of fairness and sportsmanship - in order to look better on a scoreboard.  And- although he doesn't know it yet - he's lost one of his most valuable players for next year.  Go and find yourself a goalie NOW!

What Andrew couldn't understand is how an adult could go back on his word.  But he played on anyway.  What a champ. 
How could I not, as a parent, step in and pull him from this kind of coaching?  He knows what's fair and he knows when he has been let down.  And now he knows he is worthy enough for his parents to stick up for him.

In goal.  But itching to get on the field and run.

I'm actually trying NOT to make waves the past few weeks.  The academic thing flew by with no issues.  The camp thing will have bigger repercussions since now other people are considering withdrawing their children as well.  But, for once, I am not doing any of this to make a statement or because something isn't right or because I can't have it my way.  I am simply doing what is best for MY kids given the present circumstances.  Am I going to change the peer pressure in Ryan's class?  No.  But I can help her not have to deal with it over a three day sleepover.  Do I want to have to struggle with Andrew's coach a second season?  No.  And so we change teams, and leave him to his decisions without trying to change them.

I copied a quote onto a sheet of paper once.  I'll have to credit the author - also of Indian descent I believe -when I find it again.  It goes like this.

You can't always change the circumstances.  But you can change your circumstances.

I was wise enough fifteen years ago to recognize that it should be written down.  But I had no idea what it meant until this week.

I don't have to change the world or fight for what is right in order to quietly make things right for ME, my kids, and our personal circumstances.  Things only change when you make choices for yourself, instead of worrying about making them for everyone else too.

My Brumbies making pizza.

Maybe that's what being a leader really means, not forcing everyone to follow you, but setting an example and allowing them to make their own decisions based on that example.

Ryan and Andrew have taught me to do things for us, for me, and for them.  Without worrying about what everyone else is going to do.  And being their mother - and seeing how strong they are - has made me strong enough to make those decisions.

How this crooked bow has sent out these straight arrows is beyond my compression. 

But I do strive to be more like them.  And am grateful that they chose me to be their mother.

Oh.

I hate it when someone else has the same thoughts as I do and writes them down just that much more succinctly.

Here I've been bitching and moaning and psychoanalyzing myself for a year.

Why don't I fit in? Why I am different? Why is it just so damn hard here?

And then I read Stefan Theil's piece in last week's Newsweek (March 15 edition, Waiting for Merkel) and he sums it up in two sentences.

Okay, he's talking international politics and I'm talking personal fulfillment, but I think we're both on the same page.

"Over the two decades since its reunification, Germany has turned into a sated and inward-looking power concerned more than anything with preserving the status quo. Merkel has become Germany's most popular leader since World War II by promising Germans continuity, and won reelection in September 2009 on a platform of avoiding change and reform."

Oh.

Thanks for waiting with that bit of insight, Stefan. I would have been a boring person without all the inner turmoil and conflict.

Puzzle Pieces

My friend Lori came up with the answer last night over pizza.

"You see, people in a society fit themselves together like puzzle pieces," Lori explained. "And, if through the process of personal growth and discovery, your puzzle piece changes shape, well, they just don't know what to do with you anymore."

Oh. It's that simple. And here I was making a big fuss over it all.

I just don't fit in.

Well, thank goodness for that!

I can only apologize to all of those I had fooled all this time. I looked like a puzzle piece, I acted like a puzzle piece, I did all the things that puzzle pieces are supposed to do. I tried to pretend, especially to myself, that being a puzzle piece was what it was all about and that I really wanted to be a puzzle piece.

So it really is all my fault that the rest of the puzzle pieces don't know what to make of me now that I've decided to be Playdough.

Playdough is messy. It has no form, no specific plan, no instructions on exactly what you are supposed to do with it. It comes in bright separate containers, the colors all nice and clearly defined. But the more you play with it, and the more creative you become, the more the colors stick together and the uglier and messier it gets.

Once you start with the Playdough, it will never go back neatly into its properly labelled containers.

My apologies for getting sticky all over your carefully constructed puzzle.

It's a hell of a mess to clean up.

We're Not Going To Take It!

I've taught the kids some "Twisted Sister" lyrics this afternoon. And then we all practiced headbanging - which, it turns out, hurts my neck more than it did 15 - 20 years ago - jumping off the furniture and yes, defying authority.

What have I been thinking? Here I am, trying to teach my kids to fit into a society that actually will benefit more if my kids don't try to fit into it.

Let's face it, I was really self-conscious, as an American who expects immigrants to adapt to America, that I should try to integrate into our adopted country as well. Learn the language. Respect the culture.

Yada yada yada.

Been there. Done that. Bought the Lederhosen.

Ryan (yes Ryan again, I don't want to get into it) came home almost in tears because her bicycle didn't pass inspection again this week. Let me explain. The fourth-graders in our part of Germany all study, and practice, and then are tested, on bicycle safety and traffic laws. By the police. Which all sounds nice and harmless and very civic minded - until you see the list of bike requirements.

I told Ryan she could tell the police officers that if they expected every child to have a safety kit - including first-aid, repair and pump - then they should feel free to go ahead and provide one. I also told her to tell them that her family didn't feel they needed one, since we just stopped and asked a German for theirs if we ever ran into any trouble. And, I have to be fair and honest here; whenever any of my children gets injured on the playground, two or three people come running to us with first aid kits. And we have asked a passing bicyclist for the use of his pump when one of our tires went flat; of course he had one and he was glad to help.

Poor Ryan. It has to be the year she takes a bicycle class from the cops that I decide to start resisting authority again.

On the other hand, her bike finally passed inspection on week three when she explained to the police that, although her rear light was not the required red, the light blue showed up in the dark just as well. Reasoning with the police! In Germany! You go girl!

The problem lately has been unreasonable demands/expectations from the school. Too much homework. Money for books. The bike thing. But the other problem is that the other mothers just go along with it. They bitch and they moan. Their lives suck too. But it's the way it's always been. It's the way it's going to be. And it's just something they have to get through.

Germans may not like the rules, but they will follow them to a T.

Which I why I finally called an Italian mother about the book thing. I had just received a letter from the school telling me that my daughter had destroyed a book to such an extent that we were being required to pay for it. Huh? Come again? I had seen the book in question - albeit last year - and never noticed any damage. Had she torn the pages out, defaced it with doodles, scrawled all over the margins? Nope. It's a little tattered, dog-eared from use. But the way the letter was worded in German was as if she had intentionally destroyed it. And it begged our forgiveness but was sure we would understand and forward the required money. A German friend of mine said it was standard and that she'd had to do the same thing the year before. It was the school's way of getting new books subsidized a bit from the parents, she figured.

My Italian friend and I saw it differently. "I've been here ten years," she said, " and it's time to draw a line and tell them when they are wrong. I'm not just going along anymore." How did I even know she had received a letter about a book? Because her daughter and mine were chastised in front of the entire class. Her daughter is also distraught that her bike hadn't passed inspection yet either.

The police had told the children that if their bikes hadn't passed inspection by next week they would no longer be allowed to participate in the program.

Let me repeat that. The police had told the children that if their bikes hadn't passed inspection by next week they would no longer be allowed to participate in the program.

The authority figures are threatening - and shaming - the kids in school. Is it only the tea-dumping Americans who see something wrong with that?

I could obviously start in on a rant about the German mentality - again - or I could just teach my kids that it's not only okay to be different, but that I expect them to defy the status quo when they feel it is wrong. I tried it this afternoon. "The Germans are crazy." I told them. "But you have a choice about who you want to be. You're only a quarter German which still gives you a fighting chance." My sarcasm , fortunately, goes right over their heads at the moment.

We talked about doing what was right, even when the powers that be tell you not to. We talked about freedom and individuality and standing up for yourself; about being who you are and not who the system is trying to force you into being.

It may be even harder for Andrew than for Ryan. At least she never stands a chance of being what they want her to be. Andrew came home from school with his first math test. 52 questions in 20 minutes. The test that took Ryan 22 minutes - and she got half right. He not only got all 52 questions right, he did it in 9 minutes and then had time to draw an intricate mural on the back. How do I know it took him 9 minutes? Because it turns out they are timing - and praising - and comparing - and therefore - once again, shaming, the other kids in the class who aren't meeting the gold standard.

It's easy to be the golden child in Germany.

Which is why he's letting his hair grow and learning to play electric guitar!

PRESSURE!!!

Billy Joel's song keeps going around and around in my head. "Pressure." Just like we played it over and over again the first year of college.

"But you will come to a place
Where the only thing you feel
Are loaded guns in your face
And you'll have to deal with
Pressure."

But who would have thought that that place was your children's first day back to elementary school after summer break?

Honestly, these people are nuts.

I announced my new "no stress, no pressure" policy while walking over to the church for the traditional start of the school year mass. The other mom looked at me like I was crazy. But had I noticed that the teacher had left something off the list of things we needed to buy? She was sure we'd need a large cover for the large German notebook. She was getting it this morning. Would I like her to pick me one up as well. "No," I said. "If the teacher finds it important she'll let us know." In the meantime I figured Andrew was able to write in the notebook even if it was missing the proper cover. "But everyone knows that German is red, and it's always been that way and....." she went on.

Later she worried that she had let her son label his notebooks himself this year. Last year she had typed his name onto tags and stuck the tags on herself. On one hand, she figured, the children ought to be encouraged to do these things on their own. On the other hand, she worried, he had very messy handwriting and was still having trouble with the X in his name and she wasn't sure how damaging it was for him to see those messy notebooks day after day.

I am not making this stuff up.

When I announced, to a group of moms in front of the church, that I had learned math on regular lined paper, and that I thought three separate notebooks, one with no vertical line on the right hand side, one with a vertical line on the right hand side and one with two vertical lines on both the left and the right side was overkill, I drew blank stares. "I know. I know." I said. "Ordnung muss sein." After all, I am half German too.

But it's more than a penchant for neatness; it's the necessity of placing everything in it's proper place, of putting everything in order, of following certain rules. It's called the status quo and we have it in suburban households everywhere. But it's a damaging part of the German character. Germans may not like the rules, but they will follow them. Right down to that proper notebook cover in second grade.

Even though I felt it was all ridiculous, and have vowed not to take part in it this year (or ever again), I still felt the pressure. Later, when a friend asked me what I was planning to cook for lunch this afternoon, I honestly answered that I wasn't sure yet. (It was 9 AM.) She didn't understand. "No, I mean today's lunch. What are you cooking?" When I mischievously replied that I might just let the kids eat cold sandwiches, the way we did in the USA, I swear THREE mothers turned around to look at me in disbelief. They think I'm making this stuff up.

Die Aertze (translated as The Doctors), a German punk rock band, sum it up nicely. "Lass die Leute reden." Let'em talk.

Not to care what other people think - it really is dangerously liberating.

The Pants Of Shame

Matthew came home from kindergarten on Tuesday with FOUR pairs of wet clothes in the "bag of shame."

This is a term freely stolen from my friend Holly, whose daughter came out of our kindergarten one day two years ago wearing this horrible, 1970s, very German, pair of rainbow colored striped jeans, a pair that Ryan and Andrew had worn home often enough in their potty training days. She laughingly called them the "pants of shame" because it was just so obvious that whoever came out wearing them had NOT made it through the morning dry.

I have since discovered - mostly through Matthew - that there are a variety of pants of shame - and that they come with socks, T-shirts - and even pink flowered girls underwear if you wet yourself often enough to start deleting the stock. You should have seen the look on Damon's face when he saw Matthew in pink underwear.

Funny thing is, shame only works if you let it. (For the record, Holly's term is a joke, and the kindergarten isn't intentionally shaming the kids either. They just have a rather horrid selection of second-hand clothes.)

Matthew certainly doesn't care about the pink underwear. And now that I've decided to give up things like guilt (I swear, I shook it off in yoga class the other day!), and anger and shame - well, the clothes my kids come home in don't bother me either. Honestly, if I am going to let a pair of soiled pants ruin my day, I might as well give up now.

I'm learning that it's not about being perfect, it's about dealing with it as it comes.

Other signs that I am learning not to care about what other people think:

1. I let the kids go home from the pool with wet hair (within reason; in the winter we use the hairdryers a bit and then make sure everyone is wearing a hat or hood - or in some cases, a towel over her head - on the icy way to the car.) They also run around in wet bathing suits - a big German no-no. No signs of the bladder infections or kidney disease this is supposed to cause and they have fewer colds than most kids I know whose mother's dry their hair. I suspect a strengthened immune system. See #4 below!

2. My kids are the ones running around without jackets on when everyone else's are wrapped up in hat, scarf and mittens. Or wearing mittens in April.

3. I'll wip out a bag of cookies at the playground when everyone else is feeding their children peppers and cucumbers.

4. Damon and I used the "5 second" rule in Legoland the other day when Matthew spilled the 3 Euro bag of lego-shaped french fries on the ground while in line for the train ride. I briefly thought of the dirt, and of what the others in line would say, and then I thought of the 3 Euros for 15 fries - and we scooped them right up and handed them back to Matthew. Gross. I wasn't going to eat them, but....noone in line said a word, whether out of shock, understanding or because they attributed it to the fact that we were American.

HAVE YOU NO SHAME? No, I'm glad to say I gave it up this summer.

The Status Quo Part One: The Schultuete

As mentioned before, there is a lot more ironing going on in the world than most Americans realize. Also more stair sweeping, window washing and flower bed tending then they would believe. Cars get washed AND vacuumed every Saturday, bikes and boots cleaned after every use. Breakfast is served with fresh flowers on the table - and the butter in a real butter dish, not straight out of the package. Lunch is a three course affair and school snacks consist of hearty whole wheat bread with sliced peppers and fruit. No Fruit Loops, no Mac and Cheese and certainly no Twinkies. And yes, people really do iron T-shirts and jeans.

All of which is NOTHING compared to the social stress of arts and crafts in kindergarten. I used to be pretty proud of myself for using a pair of scissors to cut out figures and stick them on a straw. Fingerpaints and homemade Play-dough. Or just a piece of paper and some crayons. I'd even let the kids do it. You know - creative play.

Then I enrolled my kids in a German kindergarten and learned how naive I had been. It started innocently enough with a parents' afternoon to make lanterns which the kids here carry around the neighborhood at night for a few weeks at the end of October/beginning of November culminating in a big celebration on St. Nicholas Day. Less sugar than Halloween. A strong moral message about a kind Catholic saint. And burning candles inside of paper lanterns carried in the dark by small children.

Now one CAN buy lanterns in the store. If you want your children to be the laughing stock of the kindergarten. If you want to emphasize, yet once again, how really not German you really are. And so I sat down excitedly with the other moms on tiny little stools around tiny little stairs and learned the hard way that making lanterns out of cardboard and wax paper was not for the faint of heart - and certainly not for children.

At Christmas time we got a sitter so that both Damon and I could join the other kindergarten parents in baking Christmas cookies. I brought a rolling pin and some cookie cutters. And learned about pralines and sauces and creams and all sorts of concoctions that required more equipment than the American army invading Iraq. Or is that a bad analogy? I also learned that children were not invited to help with the felt fruit we were making for the Christmas fair, or the painted wooden Santa figurines or the scented candles, tie-dyed scarves or hand-painted ceramics. I gotta hand it to them, for a nation of engineers, these women can craft.

For the various obligatory bake sales, I've pretty much learned to get by with baking an American wedding cake, putting the dough in muffin tins and topping with rainbow colored sprinkles. No icing - even a German child wouldn't dare touch American icing. But the sprinkles are pretty special. I use the same sprinkle trick for sugar cookies and those sell really well too. The secret lies in doubling the sugar, but what they don't know won't hurt them.

But there was pretty much no escaping the Schultuete, a large cone made out of cardboard and filled with school supplies, sweets and small gifts, that the first graders carry on their first day of school here in Germany. It's a rite of passage and a very big deal.

I went in to the parents' (meaning, of course, mothers') afternoon full of expectations - that we were doing this together, that we would be led through the process together and that the kids would of course be participating. As mothers fought for pink and purple paper and started grabbing various things and speaking about a "charbon" I realized how wrong I had been yet again. Charbon? Isn't that the French word for charcoal? Why were we making charcoal? What about the school bag - shaped like a cone? (Envision a horn of plenty from an American Thanksgiving.) I would have started with a cone. And then decorated it. Silly me.

It was ugly. I did sit at a table with four other moms also working on the unicorn motive and so we cut out pieces of paper for each other. Four hooves times 5. Five horns. Ten eyes. By now I had figured out that a charbon was a template. But the work was grueling, boring, and serious. No chitchat, no help or instrucion and - as with most social events in Germany - not something I as an American considered working as a group. I didn't even look at the moms with glue guns and ribbons. Heaven forbid, I actually also let my child help with the cutting.

All of which meant that my daughter had the only unicorn Schultuete that looked like it was made by a child, and not by a professional wedding designer. And we stuck stickers on it and decorated it ourselves at home. It looks like something put together by a kindergartner - which in fact it was.

Which is why I got tears in my eyes this week when my friend Sue announced that she had gone out and BOUGHT a Schultuete for her daughter this year. You go girl! "I am just never going to be able to compete with what these women crank out and frankly I just have better things to do than to bother trying." she calmly explained. My hero! It turns out Lori had bought one for her son last year too, out of ignorance of the entire bastelling process she says, but a step into freedom just the same. I chickened out with Andrew too, and sent Damon to put together a simple Indian theme. But Aidan and Matthew are going to the toy shop and picking out their own. I'm a wimp, but I have role models now.

I still think the whole homemade Schultuete thing is a cultural quaintness worth preserving - for the Germans and especially to those who enjoy it and to whom it means a great deal. (Seeing the prices in the store, I also tend to think that most Germans are too cheap to fork out the 12 Euros.) I also believe that I felt so much pressure to make Ryan's so special because I remember moving to the USA the summer before first grade and asking my mother, with profound disappointment, where the heck my Schultuete was. "Oh, they don't do that here ," she nonchalantly replied, not aware as an American that she was taking away a big rite of passage I had come to expect as a German kindergartener. I also believe it's the reason I am still drawn to little German pencil cases, complete with sharpener, eraser and pencils in every color of the rainbow, sharpened to peak perfection. I never got my Schultuete.

I got something else though. Living between two cultures, I became myself, not a carbon copy of what any one of the cultures expected of me. And my children, all of our children, Sue's and Lori's and the rest of us between two (or more) worlds have that same opportunity.

You know, the kids don't care if they fit in like all the other kids. They aren't like all the other kids. And they know nothing else. Instead of trying to make them into little "charbons", one just like the next, trying to fit the mold, I'm going to give them a blank sheet of paper and let them draw whatever they like.

And I'll be damned if I'm going to teach them how to iron!