What did I do all year?

Last Friday’s Plinky prompt was “Summarize your 2011 with one sentence for each month this year.” I thought about it briefly – and concluded that I would find it very difficult.

For the last several years, I have written some sort of family Christmas letter (or at any rate year-end letter, as I often don’t get it done by Christmas). I always intend to work on it long before Thanksgiving, but there are two significant challenges. One is finding a way to write the letter that is interesting and avoids bragging or complaining. The other is remembering what actually went on in our family more than a month or two ago.

This year I didn’t even try. Family and friends are communicating more and more by facebook these days, so they should have a reasonably good idea what has been going on with us, without my having to write a letter. (Though we did get a Christmas card asking if my husband had heard from any churches lately, so apparently we failed to effectively communicate about his new position as part-time pastor.)

Doing the Plinky prompt offers one advantage over sending out a Christmas letter. People who receive one of those letters may resent having to either read it, or perhaps feel guilty for not reading it. But no one has to read answers to Plinky prompts. I could brag about accomplishments or complain about problems – if I could just remember them.

I tried looking back through my saved emails to see if that reminded me of major events from the past twelve months. But apparently I don’t send or receive emails related to major events. Or else nothing major has happened.

Then I tried looking through my blog posts for the past year. That yielded a few more ideas, though it still appears that 2011 has been fairly uneventful.

• January: In between reading several books, I helped my son Al make an alligator pinewood derby car.
• February: I helped my son complete the last of the requirements to earn the Arrow of Light before he bridged from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts.
• March: I participated in a Toastmasters area speech contest and won – due to the lack of any other competitors.
• April: I found out that my Toastmasters membership had lapsed the previous fall, so I was ineligible to compete at the next level.
• May: I became the President of our Toastmasters club – primarily due to being the only member willing to volunteer to serve in that office.
• June: We visited a church and town in Nebraska that seemed like a good fit for our family, but it did not work out.
• July: My son Al and I celebrated his twelfth birthday with a Pirate Party.
• August: I became more enthusiastic about Toastmasters as I attended officer training – but learned that most of the members of our club planned to drop out and that the club would most likely disband.
• September: I started following Dr. Ann’s Eat Right for Life program, learning to choose more healthy fats and carbohydrates.
• October: I helped Al make an Ent costume for Halloween that won him first place in the costume contest at the church party we attended.
• November: My husband was called as part-time pastor at a church where he had been doing pulpit supply, so we finally have a real church home for the first time in a few years.
• December: We lost our home internet connection for two weeks and I spent a lot of time reading (even more than usual).

Not much to write a year-end letter about, is it? But considering all the unpleasantly eventful things that could have happened that didn’t, sometimes it can be good to have an uneventful year.

Books: Nature Via Nurture

Several weeks ago, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal, about how children deprived of the opportunity to learn to speak when they are young are unable to acquire the skill later in life. I had long known that learning a second language is much easier prior to about age twelve, but I had never thought about the significance of that time period for learning one’s first language. Near the end of the article, there is a suggestion that the difficulty that autistic children have with language development may also be related to the “window” for such learning opening too early or too late.

Curious to read more by this author, I googled Matt Ridley and found that he not only writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal but that he has also written several books. Of these, Nature Via Nurture:Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human seemed particularly interesting, and I was pleased to find it available through the local library. It is written as popular science, not a textbook, so someone interested in learning in depth about how genes work would probably be disappointed. But for someone like me with an interest but little previous knowledge on the topic, it is a fascinating book.

My previous knowledge of genes was not much more than what I learned in tenth grade biology. I knew that genes are responsible for physical features such as hair and eye color, as well as a number of other traits that are not as easily defined or traced. I knew about dominant and recessive genes, which explain why I had red hair even though no one else in my immediate family did. I knew that genes are only part of the story, as even identical twins are not identical in every regard. And I knew that there was a great deal of research going on into the genetic basis for a number of physical and mental disorders.

I realized, however, early in the book, that I had no clear idea exactly what a gene was. (Much later in the book I found out that is in part because the word has been used in at least five different ways in the past century.) I asked my husband Jon, since his first career was in molecular biology, and he explained that a gene is the coding to produce a specific protein. That puzzled me even more – what does producing a protein have to do with having red hair or blue eyes? Jon did point out that genes are so small that scientists usually can only trace specific traits to part of a particular chromosome, not down to the level of a particular gene.

Finding recipes that fit

I just finished an absolutely delicious lunch,  plus it was healthy and wasn’t a lot of work. The one drawback is that my family doesn’t share my enthusiasm for it.

Sunday lunch is usually leftovers or sandwiches, so I figured it was a good time to experiment with something that they might not care for. I had cooked myself a batch of quinoa week before last, and it was reasonably good-tasting but not wonderful. This time I wanted to try Dr. Ann’s recipe for Quinoa Plus 4 P’s. The one ingredient I didn’t have was fresh parsley, so mine is actually Quinoa Plus 3 P’s. But it was so good I see no reason to add the parsley.

I’m not sure just what made it so great. The chicken broth I cooked the quinoa in? The addition of a spoonful of olive oil? The toasted pine nuts? (First I had to find instructions for toasting pine nuts, which turned out to be pretty easy.) The peas? The grated parmesan cheese? My husband took a taste and said it wasn’t bad, but nothing special. I disagree – it really is good.

Along with my bowl of quinoa, I also had some veggies with hummus, and a Jonamac apple. I just made a new batch of hummus yesterday, and I think it’s my best so far. I’m not sure if it was the fresh garlic instead of powdered (last week I used fresh but used a bit too much, as well as using too much lemon juice), or the fact that I’m getting to the bottom of my jar of tahini, where it turns out that perhaps I needed to have stirred it a few more times, because it’s thicker at the bottom. At any rate, the new batch is delicious – but no one else wants any.

Books: Hiroshima in the Morning

When I first heard about this book, I had no plans to read it. I was sitting in the waiting room at Meineke while getting an oil change before leaving for Michigan to take our son back to college. I had brought along a library book and I tried to focus on what I was reading instead of listening to the talk show on TV. During the first talk show I mostly succeeded, but the interview on Oprah’s show caught my attention from time to time.

There was a woman talking about how she never wanted to be a mother. She had gone to Japan to do some research, initially encouraged to do so by her husband. During the months she spent there, apart from him and her young sons, she found herself changing, or perhaps she had never been the person she and everyone had assumed she was. She didn’t divorce her husband right away, but she sees that time apart as having been when the marriage began to unravel.

I read somewhere that she came to regret the decision, but I heard no regret in that interview a couple of weeks ago. She had married young, had never been on her own before the trip to Japan, and had never had the opportunity to choose on her own what kind of person she wanted to be. Her husband wanted children, and promised to be their primary caregiver. So she had become a mother despite her own misgivings.

Games: The Game of Life Adventures

If you’re looking for a fast-paced game, this isn’t it. It doesn’t have to take a long time, but there’s no point in trying to finish as quickly as possible.

While I do enjoy some games that require speed (such as Word Bubbles at lumosity.com), for the most part I prefer to take my time and think things over. I think Al is a lot like me in that way – one of the fastest ways to get him frustrated is to give him a time to complete something. When I see games where speed is crucial (many if not most of them, it seems), I know it’s not a good choice for us.

When we play the Game of Life, either the original board game or the newer Extreme Reality version, Al always wants to add some storytelling to the game. We always have to make up names for the people we marry and our children, and keep each other informed on what our children are like and what they’re doing. We describe vacations, accidents, and other events as the game proceeds.

That made the Game of Life Adventures card game a perfect fit for us, because it encourages storytelling. It’s even in the rules, that you have to tell a story with each card you play. Now, the story can be a single line of explanation, but I like to expand on it more, and Al embellishes even further. I don’t know if we make our life stories as exciting as we can, as Hasbro urges us its product description of the game, but we do exercise our imaginations.

Valentines for God

The question of the day on Whirled Views at worldmagblog today was “Who do you love?” (Someone did point out that it should be “Whom do you love?” but I suspect that whom is going the way of thee, thou, and verily.) Some people started their list with God, and I certainly would like to say that He is at the top of my list, but I don’t know that my life bears that out.

I had made a special Valentine for my husband, using a kit that provided 100 Scrabble tiles and a card with a mini Scrabble-style grid inside, so that I could write my own message of love to him. (The grid was just large enough to allow me to include my 7-letter first name, so despite my aspirations to construct an intricately interlocking message, I ended up sticking with the rather prosaic I LOVE YOU, with LOVE and YOU sharing the O.) I bought a Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream bar for us to share (he can’t eat much sugar without getting sick).

I had bought Dove chocolate hearts, and included one in my son’s lunch today, along with a Valentine card. I had sent off a package to our older son last week, including a bunch of those chocolate hearts and a couple Little Debbie’s Valentine brownies.

But what had I done to express my love to God today? Not that He probably has any particular interest in cards, chocolates, flowers (as receptionist at work I delivered at least six flower arrangements to co-workers), or the other typical expressions of Valentine’s Day sentiments. I could say that there’s no need to do anything special to express my love for God today, differently than any other day (not that I do so well at it most days). But then, I could say the same regarding my love for my husband and sons – yet I went out of my way to do special things for them today.

Books: In the Company of Others

When I started reading the book that first introduced Father Tim, At Home in Mitford, I was entranced from the first page. This second book in the Father Tim series (which follows the Mitford series) took several chapters to draw me into the story. But I’m glad I kept reading, because In the Company of Others is as full of mixed-up people finding the difficult but wonderful way back to God as the Mitford books were.

In fact, it’s even more full of mixed-up people, and part of the difficulty in reading it is keeping track of them. There are the other visitors at the fishing lodge, the family and staff who run the place, as well as related family at the big manor house nearby. The fact that there is a mystery about just how some of the people are related just makes it that much more confusing to sort them out. And there are not just the people in the present whom Father Tim and Cynthia interact with, but also those whose lives are recounted in a dusty old journal that Father Tim and Cynthia are reading during their vacation in Ireland.

This journal is probably the biggest complaint readers have about the book. No one but Father Tim and Cynthia wants to read it, because “‘t is long-winded as any politician…” But the retired priest and his wife are fascinated by this special window into the life of a nineteenth century American-trained Irish country doctor. (They became so caught up in the lives of these long-dead people that they found themselves praying for them.) I found many of the journal passages boring myself, but forced myself to read them because Karon obviously considered them an integral part of the story.

For people with an interest in Ireland and its history (which no doubt includes Jan Karon, who did a great deal of research for this book), the novel may be a special treat. (The flyleaf indicates that Karon considers it her favorite.) I didn’t have too much trouble with the written Irish brogue, which some readers find more difficult. I enjoy historical fiction, particularly of the British Isles, so I took some interest in the history recounted in the journal. But I think I would rather have read a book entirely devoted to that story, rather than just the diary excerpts mixed into another book.

The peculiarities of human character and their interactions with one another are always central to Karon’s books, with Father Tim usually being the one to also point people the way to interact with God as well. Here on vacation, with his wife largely confined to her room due to an injured ankle, he becomes the confidant people turn to in their distress – even though they are Catholic and he is a Protestant. As he did in Mitford, and everywhere he goes, he listens, he counsels (including hard advice, like forgiveness instead of bitterness, and listening instead of making promises), and he reminds people of God’s gracious love.

People in pain do not easily take his advice. Reconciliation with people who have hurt each other many times over the years is not easy, nor is reconciliation with a God who has not made life easy either for those who follow him or those who do not. But those who are willing to accept His help to reconcile with each other and with Him find the blessing of doing so, and hope for the future even though their troubles do not go away (especially as many of their troubles are of their own making).

Just to make us think

I don’t know exactly what the Wall Street Journal’s reason was to publish this controversial essay about Chinese mothers (other than the obvious, to sell newspapers), but I think it’s good food for thought, no matter what you think of the opinions expressed in the essay.

Hearing a view very different from your own (and I would guess that most readers of my blog would have views much closer to the typical Western parent than the Chinese mother who wrote this essay) can make you see your own views a little differently. Maybe you don’t change your views, but having to think why you hold them is good – better than having those same views without thinking them through.

And maybe thinking about those different views helps you consider that there might be some good points in the opposite view also. After all, why is it that some people do hold such views so tenaciously?

My own inclination is always to guess that the best answer lies somewhere between two extremes. In the context of the article, I would say that typical Western parents can learn from the Chinese about having high expectations, and being willing to do the difficult work of insisting on high standards being met – despite strong resistance from children.

Based on some of the comments (though I read only a few of the 2500+ comments), it’s not at all clear how typical the views of the essay’s author are, among Chinese parents. But however many do hold those views, and see them as superior to the typical Western view (and I don’t know just how typical that view is either, though I would guess pretty widespread), they can learn something from the Western point of view. Not every child can be the best – obviously. There are valuable traits and skills that may not manifest themselves in high grades and awards.

I can’t help but lean more towards the Western view, but it’s worth stopping to ask myself why.

How much of our views comes from the culture we live in? How much from our individual experience (including direct observation of others we know personally)?

Is there one best way to parent? What are the unintended consequences of both parenting styles described?

Must stability in society always be at odds with innovation? If one has to err on one side or the other, which has the better long-term consequences?

Is it possible for everyone to be special? If so, what does it mean to be special?

What do you do with the low achievers in society?

I almost didn’t read the article, because the headline “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” didn’t sound like it could be intended to do anything but grab attention and provoke strong reactions. But I’m glad I did read it. Because it made me think, and that’s always a good thing.

Anchored in Hope

I heard this phrase quite a few times this weekend: “anchored in hope.” Hope is a wonderful word, and a great name for an institution of learning. I learned from its website the origin of its name (it was founded by Rev. A.C. Van Raalte as Pioneer School, to educate the town’s children, and later expanded for secondary and then higher education), and the anchor which is the school’s symbol:

Hope’s name and seal both originate from an observation the Rev. Van Raalte made regarding the Pioneer School: “This is my anchor of hope for this people in the future.” The symbolism follows the Epistle to the Hebrews 6:19, “We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul… ” Hope’s motto, taken from Psalm 42:5, echoes the sentiment: “Spera in Deo” (“Hope in God”).

On this his third night in his dorm room, I doubt my son feels very anchored yet. But in the two days I spent on campus, I was very positively impressed by the staff, faculty, and students, and I’m sure he will come to fit in before long.

I don’t know how long it will take to reorient our family life in his absence. I could not help thinking, on the five and a half hour trip home, how changes such as this one are good to remind us that nothing in this life is really permanent. That’s why the anchor of hope in God is so important.

Images of anchors are prevalent on the Hope campus. There is a very large one in front of the Graves library, where freshman families were invited to take pictures prior to saying their good-byes this afternoon. The same image pops up in some other unexpected places, including on the breakfast plate this morning.

Journey towards Hope

The title of this blog could be a profound statement about life, but it happens to be much more prosaic. This morning we are setting out, in our now jam-packed Mitsubishi Montero, to take our older son to Hope College in Michigan. Freshman Orientation begins this evening – and so does Parent Orientation. (Younger siblings get their own program, which is primarily about having fun.)

For eighteen years I’ve tried to imagine what kind of young man my son would turn into. So far I’m very pleased and proud, not just with his academic success but his character. I’ve no idea what his job prospects will be as a vocalist or a vocal music teacher, but he is a talented musician. (I love the instrumental composition he has worked on recently, as he tried to imagine what a soundtrack to a movie adaptation of a particular story would sound like.)

So our journey is not just the five and a half trip up to Holland, Michigan, but also into a new phase of our family’s life. And hope is always a key element in facing the future with a positive attitude.