Mayflower, Pinta, and Santa Maria?

So, Thanksgiving is Thursday, and Christmas is just around the corner. I am beyond excited, let's just get that out in the open right now. Thanksgiving I only like because I am a traditionalist. I rarely think of the Mayflower on Thanksgiving, in fact, if I am going to be honest I can never remember if the Mayflower goes with Thanksgiving, or if it was the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. And quite frankly, it doesn't matter that much to me. They were all boats. I know that. I also know that a holiday where the main objective is to give thanks is all good. Turkey, eh, I could take it or leave it. The sentiment though, I think we need to pause and give thanks more often, so I am all about it.

It is easy for me to be thankful. I have a wonderful family, job, friends, and good health. I know what it is to love and be loved. I have woken to the pitter patter of little feet running down the hall, and have fallen asleep with the warmth of sweet baby breath on my cheek. I have danced in the kitchen with my husband, to a soundtrack in my own mind, while waiting for the bacon and eggs to cook. I have had loss, but I have not had the kind of earth shattering, life altering loss that crushes me under the weight of it.

So many people don't find it quite so easy to give thanks. They struggle with health issues, with brokenness, and they live with a hole in their heart etched from unspeakable loss. Just thinking about it breaks my heart. The thing is, that they inspire me because even those people in my life living in utter despair find things to be grateful for. It's like they know that a choice has been set before them, and they choose gratitude. Grateful people aren't necessarily happy. Some of the most grateful people I know cry all the time, but I haven't seen a more beautiful thing than when someone with every reason to be bitter chooses to give thanks. It is humbling for me to see, and I hope a reminder for those of us who don't have to dig quite as deep to find things to show gratitude for, to show it all the more. And may those of us who "have" this holiday season, be looking to help others have a little too.

How do you force gratitude if you don't really "feel it"? I don't know. I think maybe gratitude is just seeing what you are instead of what you aren't. It's seeing what you have instead of what you don't have, and it's seeing how far you have come, and not how far you have left to go. It's focusing on whatever beautiful thing you had, rather than on the pain of losing it. I think, at its most basic level, being grateful means you don't feel entitled to anything. When no one owes you anything, or you don't see yourself as a "good person" who "deserves better", then everything is more than you could have asked for. Maybe gratitude is just the fruit of humility. Live humbly, and gratitude will abound.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. May you be surprised by how many blessings you find yourselves surrounded by. Most importantly, may you spend a few minutes looking around to see them.

:)

Oh, and the boats are important, so here you go. Thanks Google...
The Mayflower was the ship that brought the Puritans (pilgrims) to the new world where they could escape the tyranny of the King of England (James 1) and the Anglican Church. (The church established by Henry the Eighth as the official Church of England (Angle-land) when he broke ties with the pope and started his own church). The Plymouth colony was begun in 1621 by these Pilgrims.

Columbus, 129 years earlier, had sailed in search of a better trade route to the orient. He proposed, properly, that one might sail around the world. He failed, however, when he discovered that the Americas got in the way of that route. His ships were the Pinta, Nina, and Santa Maria.

Super Me...It Was a Nice Thought

Yesterday morning, I woke up on top of the world. Mind you, it was at 6:30 in the morning, when my 8 year old walked up to my bed side to ask me if she could play on the computer, but even so, it was a good day. The first official day of my Thanksgiving break was upon me. I had 8 whole days ahead of me to be home, and be "Super Me" -the best mom,wife,and friend that I can ever be. No excuses. No work to do, or rush of to, or come home late from. Just all of the good parts of me to dedicate to all of the people that I love, with no excuses. To top it all off, I woke up to rain! Bonus! It wasn't the typical Florida rain, that you can see move in like a wall of black clouds against an otherwise bright sky, drops buckets on us for a moment, and leaves at quickly as it came. Rather, it was a drizzly, enduring, rain that fell from an entirely grey sky, and that I could tell with just a glance was going to be happy to stay with us all day. I love this kind of rain. It is a call to comfy clothes, coffee, and quiet moments. And, since it was the first day of Thanksgiving break, I decided making hand stamped Thanksgiving cards with the kids would be fun for everyone!

I opened my cabinets that contain my stamps and card making supplies, and called Taryn to my bedroom to help me carry the armloads of colorful ink pads, cute scissors, patterned papers, and raffia (one can never have too much raffia) to the kitchen. She came after I called three times. Super Me didn't let that ruin my mood. After all, we were about to have mommy-kid perfection. We had about three trips to make, but after the first trip, Taryn never came back. Trevor had been getting dressed, and then joined me to help carry some more stuff. Then Taryn ran back to me in the bedroom, my arms full again with supplies and announced, "I'm done. Come see my card." Thoughts were flying through my mind. She's done? We haven't even brought all the stuff out there yet. I haven't even cut the card stock into card-sized pieces, how is she done? Super Me said, "OK honey, let me put all of this stuff down THAT I DIDN'T EVEN SET UP FOR US YET, and then you can show me." She showed me her card. It was cute, but had been finished in a rush. Oh well, we could make more. Then she said, "Oh, and you need to fix these stamp pads."

It was a simple statement of fact, and said so airily that she may as well have said, "Oh, and I want marshmallows for dessert". It caught me off guard though, and I felt an anxiousness in my chest that is all too familiar. Super Me slowly gave way to Plain Old Me, and I could feel it coming on. It started off slowly, "Taryn? Why didn't you wait for me to help you open the stamp pads? These are tricky ones, and I expected to help you." The words were calm, but there was a tension in my voice. She just shrugged in reply. As I had been talking, I had been trying to fix the ink pads. I held the red color in my hands. It was in two separate pieces. These particular ones are meant only to slide open and closed and never to actually be separated at all, and I tried to force them back together. I was getting ink all over my hands, and all over the parts of the ink pads that are not supposed to be inky. I was also getting revved up. "I just don't understand why you couldn't wait." I said again, louder. Then, in an instant, my mouth had taken over my brain and was running the show. "You always do this. You always have to be the first one to do everything, and make sure you get the first choice of the colors, and you never wait. It's all about rushing and being first AND IT'S SELFISH. Now instead of you and Trevor having a fun morning of Mommy-Kid time you are getting to watch me GET ANGRY AT INK PADS! HOW"S THAT WORKING FOR US ALL?"

The kids were quiet. Trevor announced that he felt bad for Mommy, and Taryn quietly said she was sorry. I just walked out of the room, too late, for a mommy time out. I knew I was making a big deal about nothing. I knew I said things that would hurt my little girl's heart, and that those stupid ink pads had been sitting there in the cabinet in my room for a year, and that even if they were broken it wasn't important. I was disappointed in myself, and in Taryn. She really does tend to rush, and put herself first, and break things. Mostly, I was disappointed in Super Me. I had big plans for a perfect day because every other day I have so much going on that I have reasons to justify impatience, and imperfection in my parenting. On this perfect, lazy, rainy, peaceful day that I had set aside just for me and my angels, there was no excuse. And even with no excuses, I couldn't be perfect. Not even for, like, 5 minutes. Super Me, exit stage left.

I came back out to the kitchen where Trev was waiting quietly at the table. Taryn had moved to the couch and was reading a book. I called to Taryn to come join us, but she said she was afraid she would break something else. My heart sank, and so I went to my little girl, and picked her up, and told her that no one is perfect. That even when she is trying her best, she will make mistakes and she will break things, and that sometimes when that happens I will get mad because I'm not perfect either. I told her that even when I'm upset, and even though things might get broken, that I still want her to try again, and I still want her around. Every time. For forever. And she told me I hurt her feelings, and I told her that I was wrong, and so sorry. She told me I made her feel bad, and I told her that was the point. We both laughed at that. It was the point. I got too upset, and too loud about it. I should have been able to help her to feel badly about her behavior without being ugly to her, but I did want her to feel badly about what she did. I was wrong to yell, but she was wrong to be impatient and rush. She understood, and kissed my cheek. Then I kissed her little nose where it wrinkles when she laughs, and we made a big mess of that kitchen. We made pretty cards, and ugly ones, and plain old me with all of my imperfections made perfect memories with my family...covered in ink, and giggling, and being together.

And we were on top of the world.

Teaching is Easy

Teaching is easy. I wanted to say it just to see what it sounds like, since I have never actually said those words ever before in my life. Well, probably I said them when I was a snotty, know-it-all, 17 year old talking to my friends about our teachers. Never, though, since I have been a teacher,have I uttered those words. Here's the ironic thing. In it's most basic form, teaching IS easy. It is passing on something I know to smaller people who don't know it. I have been "teaching" all of my life. Whether it was as captain of a sports team, or partnered with someone in study group. I always found myself naturally comfortable in a role where I was breaking down information for other people to try to learn. So, why then is the occupation of teaching so hard?

I know what you are thinking. "Oh no. Here we go. More about how hard teachers work." You don't want to hear it. After all, we already have a whole week dedicated to appreciating our occupation. You have countless friends who are teachers, and you read TIME magazine. You know why teaching is hard. Long hours, not enough pay, parents with unreasonable expectations, limited support at home, too many state assessments, Common Core...and on and on. Here's the interesting thing though; you've got it all wrong. It's true, those things (and a whole bunch more) make teaching very difficult. However, those state tests, and parents who want me to parent for them are really not the hardest part of teaching. The hardest part of teaching, for me, is making the tough decisions.

When I talk about the tough decisions, I do not mean whether to take off 1 or 2 points for sentence structure. That's simple stuff. The decisions I'm talking about are much, much harder. Like, do I write a note in a student's agenda for bad behavior when I suspect that punishment at home for a bad note is extreme? What do I do for the student who practically can't see because he needs glasses, and no matter how many times I try to let his mom know, I can't get through to her? The hardest part is trying to decide whether or not to call The Department of Children and Families. As mandated reporters, teachers have a legal obligation to call DCF if we suspect abuse or neglect of any kind. That's a tough call to make. We don't want to put families through an investigation unnecessarily, and we don't know for sure that what we suspect is actually abuse. Plus, if a child is being neglected, is it better for them to live at home with their siblings and neglectful parents than it is for them to be taken away and put into a state system? Will the parents pull their kid from my class, angry that DCF contacted them? If so, is it because that child really IS in danger and they have something to hide? Tough decisions. When the student looks at me, with hungry eyes, and tells me he didn't eat since his free lunch at school yesterday because the only food his mom could buy at the store was formula for the baby, what do I do?

My students think I have all the answers. After all, what I can't answer off the top of my head I can find in a Teacher's Edition or answer key of some sort. What they don't know is that the answer keys only give answers to the easy questions. The agonizing decisions that make me lose sleep, and soak my pillow with tears don't come with a solution manual. I'll tell you what though...if someone could come up with one of those, teaching really might turn out to be not so hard after all.

:)

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.”
― Galileo Galilei

This HAIR!

I have this hair. It is like a lion's mane only re-worked by God to have a few more human characteristics! One of the things about this hair is that it it THICK! Almost every hair stylist that I have been to, throughout my life, has given me a guilt trip when they have had to blow dry my hair. They act as if it is my fault, or like I have done this TO THEM. Their cold stares accuse me of walking in with some evil genius plan to give them the arm workout that they never wanted that day. I have always thought to myself, "I am super sorry your arm is shaking and you are breaking out in a sweat, but you do this once every couple of months and I do this EVERY DAY!". When it's shorter, it is easier to control and simpler to straighten, but when it is long (like it is now) I let it be "curly" much more often.

That leads me to another thing about this hair; it's neither curly nor straight. Mostly, it is just BIG. If I let it dry on its own, it just puffs up and is a little wavy and coarse. I know, lucky me. Some (blessed) people have bone straight hair that just hangs neatly behind them, while others have soft little curls that cradle their faces. Me? I have the ever coveted coarse, wavy puffball atop my head. Usually I will put some product of some sort in my hair when I am not committing to a full blow dry and straighten. I do that just to keep the puff at bay. I vary it up between styling gel, leave in conditioner, silicon smoothing gel, or any combination thereof. It doesn't really make things better, just less like a pile of disheveled straw. I am always self-conscious when I leave the house like this, but honestly, if I don't spend an hour on my hair in the mornings then it isn't going to look nice, and some days I just don't have an hour to spend. So, although I seldom go to work with untamed hair, it has happened a few times.

I remember the first time I went to school with wild hair this year. I left the house with my mane still a bit damp, but with gel in it to keep it from puffing. As the kids started coming to school (and my hair was getting drier and drier) they began commenting as eight and nine year old kids will do.
"Mrs. Freitas, your hair looks different today!" said the nice kids.
"Mrs. Freitas, I like your hair curly," said the SUPER nice kids.
And then, the honest kid spoke.
"You know what it looks like?" he thought out loud. "It looks like you were standing too close to an explosion."
The kid was dead serious. Not a mean, or funny bone in his body. Just matter of fact. I knew right away that the last time he saw hair like mine was in a kid's movie where explosions happen and the people standing nearby end up with crazy, smoking hair and black soot all over their face. I almost died laughing when he said it. Mostly because it was something I would have totally said to describe how my hair looks and feels on those untamed days. That's one of the things I love about teaching. The brutal honesty of kids that I get to be surrounded by at all times.

My hair? It IS thick, and coarse, and wavy, and long. It can be overwhelming and wild, and sometimes it definitely makes me look like I have been standing too close to an explosion.

But THIS HAIR absolutely ROCKS at Bon Jovi concerts, and I am grateful for every last piece. :)

Someone Call Me If There's A Hurricane Coming.

I don't want to alarm anyone, but I don't watch the news. I have friends who are news junkies, and they can't understand how I can live without knowing what's going on in the world, but I say that makes us even because I can't understand how they can get out of bed in the morning after hearing what IS going on. I am not naive. I mean, maybe I am a little naive, in general, but when it comes to the news, this is a calculated choice.

It started simply enough. We have children who are very sensitive, and we live in a big city where someone has been murdered in the general vicinity of our home pretty much every night. Every day we would hear bad news,and not far around the world, but from right here in Central Florida. Kasey Anthony, Jennifer Kesse, Trayvon Martin...need I go on? Not to mention our local grocery store being held up at gun point, or car-jackings in our mall parking lot. We had to react to the news the way we reacted to shows that may surprise us with profanity, and quickly turn it off before we had to field a million questions from scared little kids about things like, "What does fatal mean?". The thing is, the news is not good. (I'm sure this is not "news" to anyone.) Occasionally the terrible updates would be peppered with something nice, like a family leaving a 200% tip for a waitress on Christmas Eve, but mostly, just terrorizing. And here's what I decided. 95% of it I don't need to know.

I don't need to know when a little girl goes missing in Aruba, or mudslides destroy 300 homes on the West Coast. There is nothing I can do about the suffering woman who drove her van full of children into the ocean. In short, I would take it in, and bear the burden of the entire world because it was piped into my living room. Then I would stress over it, and worry about my children, and my family. It bred fear in me, and quite frankly, in a lot of ways I think watching the news has gotten (for some people) like "rubber-necking" when coming upon the scene of a car accident. They watch because its hard to look away. They watch because of the shock factor of how some of these things could ever be true. In most cases though, we can't help, and we can only pray.

Every night when I say prayers with my 6 year old, Trevor says, "God, thank you for my mommy, and my daddy, and everyone in this world, even the bad people. Please help them know you so they won't be bad anymore, and please don't let anyone get hurt tonight. In Jesus precious, precious, name. Amen." I don't know. I'm not a prayer expert, but that about covers it. No terrorizing news required. I am not sticking my head in the sand refusing to accept the world I live in. I get it. It's bad. I'm just not going to fill my house with it.

There are some things I need to know, like Red Sox scores, but I have my ways of finding those out. In regard to the rest, someone call me if there's a hurricane coming. I'm gonna need water and gas for the generator.

“I love Huey Lewis, but not the News, because the News is too depressing.”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not for Sale

Family

One of the life “rules” that I will try to impress upon my children will be to always live near family. I don’t live near my family. My sister is a 9 hour car ride from me, and my parents, grandmother, and brother’s family are triple that. The thing is, I need them. I have friends here that have become my family. They know me better than my own family in some cases, and they have seen me through thick and thin. That being said, nothing replaces that need to look into someone’s eyes and see the reflection of yourself from every stage in your life.

As good as friends are, with the exception of the one or two you still keep from your first neighborhood, they didn’t “know you when…”. They don’t know to make fun of you for wetting your pants when you couldn’t get out of your snowsuit in time, or to tease you for having a crush on some fruit loop who didn’t know you existed. They don’t know because they weren’t there. They can’t remind you what Mom called that recipe that you loved so much, or cry with you as you stand beside your grandfather’s grave and recall dancing on his feet, or long walks in the garden. They want to, because your friends (who are like family) are amazing people. Don’t get me wrong, you couldn’t do life without them. What I will tell my kids though is, don’t fool yourself into believing that they replace family.

I went home to Maine last week for my grandfather’s funeral. It was a big family affair because he lived a big, long, impactful, impeccable life. Beside my immediate family, my mom’s four siblings and some of my cousins were there too. For me, living so far away, it was the silver lining on an otherwise heart wrenching experience. If I’m being honest though, as excited as I was to embrace my family, I had some apprehension at seeing some of the aunts, uncles, and cousins who in some cases I hadn’t spent any real time with for 15-20 years. I felt like it would be a recipe for awkward, and I hate awkward.

As they started arriving at the house, I realized quickly that I was right. Not only was I very sad, but now I was very sad around people who I didn’t feel like being vulnerable around. These vaguely familiar faces from my past were people who were related to me, but not connected to me. I was drowning in awkward, and I had a cold, which as everyone knows makes everything worse. Truly, I felt kind of bummed. I wanted to go home and take refuge in my family, and instead I had to be polite.

Polite doesn’t last long for family, and that was true for ours as well. Do you know what happened once the polite wore off? My family quickly got about the business of being awesome. Not just my comfort zone of my immediate family, but the rest of us too. They were funny, and kind. What I had assumed was going to just be related-ness without connection turned out to be relationship. We love so many of the same people. We have memories of times spent in the same houses, walking the same streets and jumping off the same rock walls. Even more, we shared the bond of loving a man that the world would be a little darker without, and though we could tell our friends back home all about him, only our family could remember the twinkle in his eyes, and the deep voice with which he sang hymns. I think that’s what makes family so important. They share your people with you. It’s like a big heart shaped Venn Diagram, and though the parts that overlap maybe small, they connect us in a deep, meaningful way.

I wish I was surrounded by family every day. I like to think that I would appreciate it if I was. Family isn't everything, but they are a piece in the puzzle of “us”, and when that piece falls into place we see the picture completely. We can still figure out what the puzzle looks like with a piece or two missing, but how much easier it is to make out the image when all the pieces are there. I hope I see my family soon. I hope we can get to the business of being awesome, and pick right up where we left off. I hope we laugh again, and cry, and catch up on what we have been missing. I hope that once again, we find relief and comfort in how snugly the pieces fit. Some families are close in proximity, and though mine isn't, we are close at heart. In a perfect world, I could have both.

"Say it ain't so, Uncle Steve. Say it ain't so." :)

A Letter to My Hero

I wrote a letter to my hero today. It started off most unremarkably, with a discussion about the weather. It seemed silly, because by the time he reads the letter, the weather will inevitably be different, but it seemed like the customary thing to do. Actually, if I'm being honest, by the time he gets it,the weather will not have changed at all because this is Florida and it is always hot here, and humid, with occasionally heavy afternoon showers. Even though it started off like a typical letter (is there such a thing in 2014 as a typical letter?) in my heart it felt like the most important letter I have ever written.

Why was it the most important letter that I have ever written? I think because it provided me a chance to share my heart with my grandfather, Raymond Joseph Osborn. The man that I middle-named my son after. This week, my 98 year old, amazing, inspiring grandfather moved out of his home and into a Veteran's Home. My heart has been so full of emotion thinking about this, from the other corner of the country. I have been talking to my mom,my sister,& my husband about it, but I have needed to talk to Ree Ree. And so, this letter became a huge deal to me.

There was a lot of chit-chat in my letter, for no reason other than my inclination for chit-chat. However, there was also a lot of truth, and that was the part that meant so much for me to say. I told him that I have been thinking of him more than usual this week, knowing that he and my grandmother are going through this big life change. I told him that I have always found him to be the most remarkable man-for his character, integrity, intelligence, and aptitude for so many things like puzzles, fishing, and writing. (I feel like I get my love of writing from him.) Then I told him that I find him even more remarkable now, than at any other time in my life. He is so brave. I know that leaving home and moving away from his wife of 70 years must have felt like the scariest thing, but the fact that he did it even though he didn't really want to- that is courage at its finest. I wanted him to know that. He is not a frail old man now because he is living with more assistance. He is selfless, and brave, and continues to take care of his family by going to a place where we can know that he is best taken care of, thereby giving us peace. I told him that I hope it feels like home there soon. Of course, a home of a different sort, but that I hope he makes friends, and that there are nice people on staff that grow to love the sparkle in his eye and his sense of humor. He has always been kind, and he is easy to be kind to. All he has to do is be himself!

Lastly, I told my grandfather that I love him. That we all do. He knows that distance does not diminish love. He was separated from his young bride to go and fight in WWII, and his love for her was in no way lessened. I reminded him that whether he is just separated from them by a few miles, like he is now from my parents and grandmother, or by hundreds like he is from me and my sister, that is true today like it was for him back then. I also wanted him to know he is not forgotten. He is on my mind now, more than ever. He is in my heart, and most importantly in my prayers. I am so grateful for him.

Home is where the heart is, so now, a little piece of me calls the Veteran's Home my home.

"I will be in touch soon. Don’t feel like you have to write back. It just feels good for me to talk to you. I am sending some pictures from the kids. Taryn, Trevor, and Jayme all send their love.
Love, Jen"