Thoughts on First Day

 The Quaker Meeting that I attend has ventilation problems. That's never a good thing but when viruses gather where people gather, it can be a bit dodgy. So, we crack the windows to make sure the air moves around, even now, in Winter.

We keep our coats on as we sit in silence. This morning, I remembered my childhood Winter Sundays. The pastor of the Catholic Church my family belonged to poured the parish's money into the school. The nave had ceilings that were as high as heaven. The aging, overburdened furnace churned out heat and it sailed immediately to those heights. We never took our coats off unless we were lucky enough to sit right next to the heating vents.

Those memories made my Winter coat feel like a hug as I sat in Meeting. I imagined people long gone putting their arms around my shoulder - Friends who have moved to other states or other parts of the world. I remembered F(f)riends and family whom I will never see again in this lifetime. This morning, they sat with me, as I huddled in my coat.

I remembered teachers and the other students at that parish school. They sat with me in Meeting, too. Worship shared has no boundaries.

If our ventilation problem isn't solved by summer, we may end up meeting under the trees in our shorts. And that will be fine.

Where two or more are gathered in the name of peace, there also will peace be found - even if it comes in a Winter coat.

Sunday Selfie -

The Army Ants came first.


It was a tough time. The budget was tight and services to children and infants stretched. My husband and his good friend worked in Intake, under a director who was later accused of malfeasance. (I forget exactly what she did.) At one point, Hub and J were ordered to tell new callers that they could not offer them ANY services. They took that order hard and did what they could to help all callers.

Their cubby was located near the front door of the agency. Hub took some of our son's Army Ants into work. Do you remember those?

When Hub and J found that workers came in to play with the Army Ants, (arranging them in battle positions or other positions, probably), they decided to make their little way station a "destination" office.

"The Quote of the Day" was a big hit. More about that later.

When the holidays hit, Hub asked me for the tackiest Christmas decorations we owned. He and J festooned their work stations. The other workers LOVED it.

But the best thing they did during the holidays in that time of duress was the Word of the Day. Each morning, they picked a word and offered prizes (candy) to anyone who guessed that word.

If you know my Hub, you can just imagine what words the workers expected. After all, it was a high stress time in the office. Caseworkers offered every foul word as a possible choice.

At the end of the day, all those barnyard speakers were delighted to find that Hub and J, both of them world class cursers, always picked something benign.

"No, no!" Hub would say in his mildest, somewhat incredulous voice. "The word is 'holly'." Or reindeer or snow or something else seasonal.

Hub told me that story - again - this morning. And it cracked me up - again - as it does every time I hear it.

It was a stressful time at work and here at home. Hub rose to the challenge, helping his co-workers stay sane in a job that is thankless and emotionally draining. J is gone and we miss daily.

When the agency's awful director was finally removed, Hub and J auctioned off their Quote of the Day post-its to raise money for small gifts for new foster kids. It was the end of an era.

Step up to keep your friends and family sane this holiday season. Do the little things - offer tea - a smile - a joke - Hold the door open. If you work, make your workspace a safe and cheery space.

If, like the coworkers in this story, you feel like cursing - buy some Army Ants! 





Bill's favorite Quote of the Day from the days of Bill and Jim:

"My kingdom will always have room for a boot licking lackey like you." (From the Gummy Bears cartoon show.)

Summer! We Hardly Know Ye!

Yesterday, D and I wandered over to her house and her lovely pool to hang.  D does not get a lot of time to hang in her own space - no more than her parents do.  But yesterday, Little Blue Bunny watched D practice getting her face wet, swimming to the deep end and back.  He was super impressed.  He tried to get his face wet and it scared him.  Poor bunny!

We made him a boat from a juice carton and he lazed while we dunked underneath the water and paddled and just messed around.  Then we went indoors and D found something to do.  So did I.  It was the most relaxed afternoon we've had in months.

Summer has changed. 
Long ago, we slept in. We did our chores and then we went outside.  Everything else was left up to chance; bikes, puddles, clouds, lightning bugs.  We played capture the flag and shadow tag under the streetlamps.
We joined the summer reading club and picked out books we weren't "allowed" to read during the school year.  Nancy Drew!!!  Cherry Ames!!! Hardy Boys!!  GooseBumps (not my generation, but still a sturdy series).

Summer was a huge blank canvas.  Now summer looks like a paint-by-numbers scene.

Day camps - known as daycare during the school year - arts camps, gymnastics camps, dance camps, science camps, sports camps- that's where our kids spend the summer days.  They have to get up as early as they do during the school year because their parents have to work.    If they are lucky, they have friends at camp.  Or, they have grandparents or caregivers who come in to help care for them.  More likely than not, kids are hustled off to care arrangements.

I think that summer leisure is encoded in our DNA as a necessary part of life.  We want the rhythm to change with the seasons.   When we don't get a chance to control our days, we get anxious and testy.  Or, - and this is worse, - we lose the ability to find things to do, retreating into screen time, food or whatever we are told to do by others, whether we want to do those things or not.  BLAH!

Kids don't know or care that summers are different until they start reading books that show children enjoying freedom!  Like The Penderwicks!  Or The Swallows and Amazons.  Gone-Away Lake or  even One Crazy Summer  (OK, that one IS about a summer camp in a hot crowded city but there's a lot of free time in there.)

So, are summers just different or worse or better or something else entirely?  How can things change for the better?

Ah, well, that's fodder for another post.

Let me know about your favorite summer book in the comments.

Fireflies

Today, I am sharing books about fireflies with the children at the Allentown Public Library.  And we will be making this Karen Maurer original craft:  Bugs in a "Jar".  (I decided to do away with the crumpled paper at the bottom of the cup. It's distracting.)

I got my inspiration for this craft from an article I read, suggesting that children could use clear plastic take-out cups and the lids as bug collecting "jars".  That's a lot safer than the canning jars I used as a kid.  One trip on the pavement and there would be shards of glass everywhere.  And take-out lids already have holes punched in them for the straw.

To make my "bugs" glow, I used glow in the dark pony beads, available online at Oriental Trading.   Any pony bead will make a bug and you can get a bag of 100 hundred beads for $1 at Dollar Tree.  The glow-in-the-dark beads go with my firefly theme.

The wings are scraps of tulle.  I bought mine at Dollar Tree but any craft store has rolls of the stuff for cheap.  Other possible materials for wings include tissue paper, which is a little delicate, and scraps of thin fabric.

My take-out lids were given to me by the good people at Panera on Cedar Crest in Allentown.  If you are doing this with just your family, save your take out cups and lids and the craft is truly cheap.

It's Thursday and that means I should talk about Storytelling.  One of the best types of storytelling is when people share stories of "when I was little".  So instead of featuring a storyteller or a book, I challenge my readers to tell stories of summer nights "when I was little."

When I was little, we chased fireflies, counting them up and trying to outdo each other.  The smaller kids would swing their hands through the air and shout out numbers, whether they caught a bug or not.  There is nothing worse to a little kid than not being able to keep up with the older kids.

How do I know my little brothers and sisters counted pretend fireflies?  Well, when they finally caught a lightning bug - that's what we called them - they got so excited, they gave themselves away.

We lived near a park - the picnic kind of park - and there were perhaps six lone streetlamps casting our shadows long and dark on the grass.  The street lamps didn't put out enough light to discourage the lightning bugs.

We ran outside in our pajamas and in our bare feet and we sang snatches of songs.  My sister and I liked to pretend we could speak other languages by singing "O Sole Mio" as loud as we could and then gibberish to the rest of the tune.  We only did this at night.  Night makes anything seem possible.

Those memories are not really a "story" but they were fun to share with you.  Catch some real lightning bugs tonight.  Check out Firefly.org for information about these amazing little lightbulbs.

Dad, the Storyteller

The storyteller I want to feature today is my Dad - Franklin J. Chiles - builder, desgner, husband and father, father, father, father, father, father, father, father and father.  After he retired from his business, he worked as a Deacon in the Catholic Church.  Right now, he is a patient in the Heart and Vascular Critical Care Unit of a local hospital.

One of the first things I remember about my father is the stories he told - true stories of his growing up years.  My Dad was no choirboy - and not just because he can't carry a tune in the bucket.  Made up stories just to make us laugh.  My Dad came home and preached to us with stories of the people he met during the day - the ones who struggled against unbelievable odds and managed to smile - hint hint!!

Here is a story he told often to my younger brothers and sisters as Mom and Chris and Eric and I put supper on the table.

He was walking up to a house on the hill as the sun dropped blood red and bleeding in the western sky behind it - casting a black and eerie silhouette.  

Broken toys and debris were scattered across the weedy overgrown yard.

The most dreadful screams and hollers echoed from the house.  

Banging and pounding and scraping sounds - as if a huge battle waged - came from this creepy house.  But my father was tired and he had worked a long hard day.  

There was no other house in sight.  

He needed a place to stay.  

He trudged up and up the hill to the front door.  

A false step almost sent him into a pit of vipers, coiled and hissing beside the front door.

The woman who answered the door looked crazy.  Her hair sprung from her head in all directions.  She carried a screaming imp in her arms and two others - with wild red eyes and black mouths, clung to her legs.

She looked at my father and screeched.  "You're late for supper, Frank, and these kids are driving me crazy.  Where have you been?"  My Dad was home.

Here's hoping and praying that Dad has many more stories to tell.