Is March Over Yet??

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Spring is trying really hard.  I think although it is only the beginning of March, Spring is trying to get a hop on things.  The weather outside today could have been mistaken for a warm Spring day - at times even a very cool almost summer day.  It probably only hit around 55, but it felt like 68 - 70.  Wow - how just a few degrees make such a difference.  After months of intense heat (and high heating bills), I turned off the heater, left it off all day, and even OPENED THE WINDOWS!!  

For those of you who know New England, you know how crazy that is!  I was so tempted to go to the garden store to pick out flowers, veggies and grab another bag of mulch for the beds.  But then, a little voice (my son's) reminded me - "Mom, it's only March!"  Ugh.  Muddy March.  I really have a hard time loving this month.  It's long, muddy, and doesn't typically bring much celebration with it.  We do celebrate Easter, and occasionally it lands in March, so there are exceptions to my hating March rule.  But for the most part, I close my eyes and hold my breath until April 1st.  I can't help it - it's always been that way for me.

So I am working on what I can do to move through the month without cringing.  I can bake green gluten-free cupcakes for the 17th and St. Patrick's Day.  I can decide to take one day each week and visit with a friend.  I can invite people over and we can cook an international feast.  We can get together with friends to have a craft night - where everyone either works on the same craft together, or brings their own to work on while chatting.

There really are some good ideas for things to do without even thinking too hard about it.  And the reality is, now that my boys are older, I am pretty busy running them around.  So March should fly by...

I did read about a wonderful idea in a Family Circle that I picked up while waiting for my recent mammogram (have you had YOURS yet this year??).  12 women get together monthly at someone's home to visit and enjoy a meal.  At this gathering, each woman brings $20, and the host puts up $30.  The collected $250 is then anonymously donated to a family or individual in their town who has demonstrated a need.  The money is accompanied by a card that reads something like, "From friends who care".  Can you imagine how this would feel to someone who just needed a little bit extra to get by?  I imagine it might give someone that push to try again the next day to do a little better.  I like this it.  Sounds like my town could use something like this.  How about yours?

Learning the Art of Praise

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I love you. I think you are beautiful. You are so thoughtful. I can’t wait to spend time with you.

Do you remember how those words, and others like them, feel? Praise. Attention. Love. We don’t pass it around as much as we like to hear it ourselves. Some folks love to get this type of attention, and yet others act as though it is the last thing they want to hear. But deep down, don’t we all love to be acknowledged? Don’t we all find some security 

while being validated? How can you turn down the positive comments when someone else appreciates who you are and what you’ve done?
I know I feel uneasy when I’m with someone who notices everything I do and comments on it in a ‘too-upbeat’ positive manner. You know the ones – they find something ‘happy’ in everything they do, everything you do, everything going on around them. They find the traffic jam making them late to have a positive twist. They find the baby screaming all the way across the continent on the plane to have a silver lining. They find the job demotion to have some sort of happy ending that you would have never seen. I don’t wish unhappiness on these individuals, but I do question their ability to find everything, I mean everything I do to be good and perfect. That’s when I begin to mistrust their comments and wonder about my abilities. I ask, “If they found that horrid meal to be ‘scrumptious’, how is it that my improvised, on the spot music was also ‘scrumptious’. But I digress…
I recently had an experience where I was with people who are dealing with challenging circumstances. I was amazed at how well each individual was coping with the situation, pleasantly surprised that life had not stopped them completely in the path of change and illness. You never know how life will twist and shake you from moment to moment, and you can only hope that you are strong enough to continue standing up to the challenges. These folks had not lost their laughter, and clearly had not been worn down by illness and frustration.
What I found missing was the reaching out to one another that so supports each of us when we’re in trouble. Praise and admiration was all but missing in most of the conversations. I know underneath the pain and suffering, there is complete and utter devotion from one person to the other, but if you were an outsider, you wouldn’t know it. What happened to the love and understanding we show each other on a continual basis? What happened to loving each other openly, just because? What happened to sharing feelings because they are there to be shared? Why do we let our hurt feelings smolder under the façade of getting through the day? When we meet up with loved ones after being apart for the day, where is the bodily contact to share how much love we feel? I often tell my 11 year old son, “I missed you today” when he comes in from school because I know it makes him feel good. He worries about being away from home, somehow thinking home is much more interesting than school (something I don’t doubt). Telling him I missed him lets him know I was thinking about him through the day, and want to know how he is. I ask him all sorts of questions to let him know I am interested in what he learned and did that day, and in turn, he has learned to be interested in my day. He has observed his father verbally checking in with me, and imitates him by asking if my day was exhausting or fun (most days it’s both).

Have we, as a culture, forgotten how to check in with each other? I know a couple who go right into each others’ arms for a kiss when they get home at the end of the day. At first I thought, ‘Geez, get a room’, but now I love that they can’t wait to see each other after a few hours apart – and this is after 15 years of marriage and several children. We could all learn from them.
Are you lovingly challenged? What’s the first step to welcoming love and praise into your life? Consider the following comments and see what you might be able to add into your dialogues at home:

• I thought about you today.
• What did your boss say at your meeting? (open ended question that asks for more than a yes/no answer – and leads to more questions/comments).
• You look wonderful in that sweater/dress/bathing suit.
• Thank you for taking care of _____________.
• It is wonderful not to have to think about _____________, thanks for taking care of it.
• Thank you for listening to me.
• Thank you for taking care of me.
• Would you come with me? I’d feel better if you did.
• It was good to have you close, that was difficult for me.
• I love you because ________________.
• Let me take care of that for you today.
• Would you like to choose the movie tonight?
• What can we do together this weekend?
• What can I do to make it easier for you today?

Open-ended questions typically draw people into conversations. They demand an answer more developed than yes/no. Closed-ended questions only ask for a yes or no, and are good for times you need quick information – when all you need is a yes or no. If you are hoping to carry on a conversation beyond yes/no, look for ways to ask open-ended questions, such as those listed above.
Something I tend to forget is how powerful physical touch can be. A light touch to the shoulder, arm or hand can be a wonderful way to connect with someone you know somewhat well. For those closer to you, a hug, kiss, or squeeze can feel so good, and it’s almost guaranteed to dissolve those blues that come from switching from work to home. Occasional comments of praise and love ‘out of the blue’ are welcome oases in a day full of challenge and struggle. Try an experiment: In the course of your conversations today, add just one positive, loving comment of praise. Pay close attention to make sure the recipient hears the comment, then watch the reaction. You might be completely surprised at how soon you’ll want to do it again, and possibly with other individuals as well. It’s contagious.  And the best thing about it?  It comes back to you. As long as it’s genuine (not my Miss Happy from above), you really can’t go wrong. Good luck and let me know how it goes!

And by the way – you are looking absolutely stunning today!!

My teaching is finished and now I have a little time to see some of Vietnam before flying to the West Coast to visit family.  I have enjoyed teaching 26 lovely teachers, who are representatives of several schools for blind children.  I witnessed a beautiful concert in our honor this morning that brought me to tears.  20 blind students, all around 14-18 years old, stood in the auditorium to share the most beautiful, traditional Vietnamese music.  Huge drums and stringed instruments accompanied their amazing voices, as I stood in the back and basically wiped my eyes the entire time.  It was not only the music that was so moving for me.  It was the whole experience.  To come from such a privileged place - the US - and not to have thought I was so privileged.  

Of course, I'm not rolling in the dough.  I have a hard time 'making it' just like the next family.  Most months, my paychecks don't stretch far enough.  But here was a group of people who live in extreme poverty, but had the richness in their lives to come together to make incredible music.  And here they were giving their gift of music to us in appreciation for what WE did this week.  I felt both honored and very small at the same time.

Yesterday, I saw people living in the gutters as we drove around in the school van.  I saw men hanging hammocks from the trees along the street at night as their place of rest - just around the corner from my hotel.  When you purchase things, you are expected to haggle.  They jack up the price for foreigners, and it is expected that they will be bargained with.  But every time I do it, I keep thinking - this item is costing me $5.  At home it would be $25.  I should just give them the extra money.  But my colleagues assure me that it would be wrong.  And I suppose I understand.

Somehow, I need to bring this experience home with me as a way to be much more appreciative of my warm bed, car to drive, home and garden, steady job.  I don't have to live on the streets, nor will my children.  I can travel to foreign countries and visit new sights.  I can go to school to advance my education, or I can choose to change my occupation.  I can even change my life structure to include more time off with my family.  I have many choices which my new Vietnamese friends do not have.  And the biggest lesson I have to learn is that even with less, even with 15 people living under one roof, even with crazy traffic in a huge city, even with hardly enough food to feed their family - these folks are happy, social, loving and highly intelligent.  Happier and kinder people I have never met.  Every street corner has someone laughing, smiling or chatting away with someone else.  It has been a truly rich experience.  One that will live with me for a long time.

Friends Are Coming for Dinner...A Challenge!

Our wonderful friends are coming to dinner tomorrow night. I am so excited as we are also expecting several inches of snow as well, so it surely will be a magical night. I do have a dilemma, though: Being that I did not plan to have guests (additional 5 people) back when I did the grocery shopping this week, I did not purchase extra supplies for the big dinner. So I have decided that even though I am not completely prepared, I will challenge myself to come up with a tasty and fun meal for 9 people without grocery shopping.

“Why”, you may ask, “aren’t you going to the store to buy good food for these wonderful friends for dinner?” Well, all I can say is that in the recent past, I have been known to grocery shop, with or without a list, with every intention to ‘just get a few things’ for situations just like this and end up spending $80. Easily. And I could go back and do it again the next day. Whenever I had the whim of something tickling my gastronomical fancy, I would hop to the store and purchase much more than I ever needed. My pattern has cost me an exorbitant amount of money over the years, more than I ever budgeted for. It was the ‘sneaky’ money that crept away from my pocket without much thought. And at the end of the week, it accounted for much wasted, slimy foodstuffs.

So what if I play a little game and assume I have everything I need in the pantry to make a wonderful dinner for 9? My husband and I did this on Christmas when we discovered that we needed to bring a dish to the family meal. Instead of going to the store on Christmas Eve, battling the crowds and getting more frustrated, we chose to root around and create a dish with what we had on hand. We ended up with beautiful stuffed peppers, filled with chipotle sauced beans and rice. We had just received several red, green and yellow peppers from our organic delivery service, Boston Organics, and I could prepare the entire dish completely without having to shop at all. Lovely.

What will I make? Looks like mushroom and cheese pizza for the kids, and black bean fejoida with brown rice for the adults. Fejoida is a Brazilian dish, typically full of sausage and other meats. The one I make has black beans simmered for hours in sage and other great spices. Being that my husband is a vegetarian, I leave the meat out. It comes to the table accompanied by mandarin oranges (which I do not have, but I do have blood oranges), onions (which I have a zillion of) and cheese (good there). Since I have so many onions, another thought is to make onion soup for the adults. I have a box of gluten free cake mix (yuck, a box – but actually I find the boxed gluten free mixes to be a bit better than what I could do from scratch), and I think I have ice cream. I have popcorn for a snack/appetizer which I can pop and mix with curry powder and butter for a treat.