... one of your commenters points out that you've said "a whole heap of things", and you don't see what's odd about that.
... you no longer recognise one slice of ham between two slices of buttered bread as a sandwich. It's simply not worthy of bearing the name.
... your 6 year old daughter tells you she thinks you should get braces on your lower teeth. In her life, 99% of teenagers, and quite a few adults of varying ages, have braces, and crooked teeth are a crime against humanity (and, for the record, mine are only very slightly crooked).
... you find yourself telling someone about Guy Fawkes' night, and explaining that it's a "celebration of democracy" (yes, I used those very words), because that suddenly seems like a positive way of describing the rather sinister practice of burning effigies.
... you still hold onto practice/practise easily enough, and humour will always need its u, but centre begins to look wrong.
... you've written 325 blog posts.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
Thanksgiving
This has been our fourth Thanksgiving in America. We’ve joined in a little more each year, and I’ve come to like the holiday. But it’s not my own, nor will it ever be. It’s a good example of how knowledge, and the way it intertwines with experience, is so much more complicated than we give it credit for.
My children know the history that the Thanksgiving tradition stems from, because our first Thanksgiving here, I bought them each a book, and read to them about it. But there it is, right there. It’s so different for them. Their American friends won’t have the stories read to them out of books. They’ll be told them by their American moms, digging around in the memories of their own American childhoods, and wrapping the tales with the warmth and significance that comes from the feeling of passing something on to the next generation. "This is our narrative. This is who we are." That’s what the stories say.
My family can enjoy a turkey dinner, but we don’t have the traditions. We don’t have decorations and special dishes, brought out and dusted off year after year. We don’t serve up unpalatable green bean casserole which nobody likes, but which has to be eaten because it is made from the recipe written in the book in Great-Grandma’s spidery hand-writing. We can’t reminisce about the time our parents made us dress up as pilgrims, or reflect on how the holiday has become so much more commercial than it used to be.
We can understand Thanksgiving from the books, and from watching how others go about the celebration. But that understanding is head knowledge, not knowledge in the marrow of our bones. It’s the wrong kind of knowledge for a holiday celebration.
At first I resented Thanksgiving. My birthday is 24th November, and 9-yo’s is the 28th. The last thing I needed was a whopping great public holiday plonked on top of the last week of November. I’ve always tried to be protective of 9-yo’s birthday, because as a child, I hated having a birthday close to Christmas (though come on, people, it’s a full month before... The logic must be that 1 in 12 of the population is in a similar or worse predicament, not to mention the January birthday folk.) So I saw Thanksgiving as an unwelcome interloper. Not only Christmas to contend with in birthday rivalry, but now Thanksgiving too.
With the passage of time, though, I have come to enjoy Thanksgiving. I can’t embrace it in all its glory, with pilgrims and natives helping each other through the year by planting corn, shooting turkeys and waving two fingers at England, but I do like the whole thankfulness theme. I’ve learned about one or two family traditions which I’m going to adopt, to encourage the children to reflect on what they have in their lives to be thankful for. I think that’s a good thing to add to our yearly calendar. I suppose it’s the role that Harvest Festival plays in Britain.
As for me, well, I’m jolly thankful for the opportunity to be spending this Thanksgiving in the mountains of Colorado, for the second year running. You can’t beat mountains. I could list a whole heap of things I'm thankful for, but that would be bordering on the cheesy, and I'm feeling the need for a restoration of ironic equilibrium after my last post. So I won't do that. Instead I'll focus on what I’m not thankful for, and what I'm not thankful for is that the laptop crashed as I was writing this post first time round, and the whole thing disappeared. It hasn’t come out nearly as well second time round. Wah.
My children know the history that the Thanksgiving tradition stems from, because our first Thanksgiving here, I bought them each a book, and read to them about it. But there it is, right there. It’s so different for them. Their American friends won’t have the stories read to them out of books. They’ll be told them by their American moms, digging around in the memories of their own American childhoods, and wrapping the tales with the warmth and significance that comes from the feeling of passing something on to the next generation. "This is our narrative. This is who we are." That’s what the stories say.
My family can enjoy a turkey dinner, but we don’t have the traditions. We don’t have decorations and special dishes, brought out and dusted off year after year. We don’t serve up unpalatable green bean casserole which nobody likes, but which has to be eaten because it is made from the recipe written in the book in Great-Grandma’s spidery hand-writing. We can’t reminisce about the time our parents made us dress up as pilgrims, or reflect on how the holiday has become so much more commercial than it used to be.
We can understand Thanksgiving from the books, and from watching how others go about the celebration. But that understanding is head knowledge, not knowledge in the marrow of our bones. It’s the wrong kind of knowledge for a holiday celebration.
At first I resented Thanksgiving. My birthday is 24th November, and 9-yo’s is the 28th. The last thing I needed was a whopping great public holiday plonked on top of the last week of November. I’ve always tried to be protective of 9-yo’s birthday, because as a child, I hated having a birthday close to Christmas (though come on, people, it’s a full month before... The logic must be that 1 in 12 of the population is in a similar or worse predicament, not to mention the January birthday folk.) So I saw Thanksgiving as an unwelcome interloper. Not only Christmas to contend with in birthday rivalry, but now Thanksgiving too.
With the passage of time, though, I have come to enjoy Thanksgiving. I can’t embrace it in all its glory, with pilgrims and natives helping each other through the year by planting corn, shooting turkeys and waving two fingers at England, but I do like the whole thankfulness theme. I’ve learned about one or two family traditions which I’m going to adopt, to encourage the children to reflect on what they have in their lives to be thankful for. I think that’s a good thing to add to our yearly calendar. I suppose it’s the role that Harvest Festival plays in Britain.
As for me, well, I’m jolly thankful for the opportunity to be spending this Thanksgiving in the mountains of Colorado, for the second year running. You can’t beat mountains. I could list a whole heap of things I'm thankful for, but that would be bordering on the cheesy, and I'm feeling the need for a restoration of ironic equilibrium after my last post. So I won't do that. Instead I'll focus on what I’m not thankful for, and what I'm not thankful for is that the laptop crashed as I was writing this post first time round, and the whole thing disappeared. It hasn’t come out nearly as well second time round. Wah.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Religion
I thought it was time I wrote about my experience of religion in the Midwest. This has long been tucked away in my ‘not sure I want to go there on my blog’ folder, along with guns and obesity. Now there’s an attractive pair of bedfellows.
The first thing to say is that it’s very British, this reticence to talk about religion. How did that happen in Britain? Is it too personal? Is it too sensitive in these multi-cultural times? I have to say, I have found it refreshing here, to have it off the taboo list. When we arrived, people asked “will you be looking for a church?” much as they might have asked “which sports are you interested in?” And whether we’d said yes or no, either would have been fine. It’s something that people are much more relaxed about. I know the Bible Belt has a bad reputation, and perhaps we’ve just been lucky, but I can’t think of any occasion on which I’ve felt pressured or offended by any church or individual. I suppose it would be fair to say that as we did the rounds, looking for a church we might call home, we didn’t exactly head to the ones that advertised themselves as unpleasantly fundamentalist and Bible-bashing. But you know, even as I type that, I’m trying to think if I’ve come across some that would fit that description, and I honestly can’t think of any. I conclude that a very little of that kind of stuff has gone a long way in fostering an unfair reputation. I guess they must be around. Perhaps they just don't have a sign outside saying 'Unpleasantly Fundamentalist and Bible-Bashing'.
I find myself stuck at this point. Many many times in my head - most Sundays in my early blogging days - I have written amusing blog posts about an English woman’s perception of church life here. And I could reproduce one of those here, and make you laugh. I could. I mean, we all know that God, underneath His impressive ability to stand up for all nations, is really English. We have the best hymns, we have the best buildings – cold and draughty, with hard bottom-aching pews, just like they should be. We understand that when you leave church, you exchange two sentences about the weather, shuffle your feet a bit, and then head home for a decent Sunday roast. That’s how God planned it. I’m sure it’s in the Bible somewhere. They don’t really appreciate that here. They worship in modern buildings, which are warm and comfortable. They have guitars and keyboards instead of organs. They make way too much eye contact as you walk through the door. They even have people specially to do that, who wear badges saying “Greeter”. And there’s hugging too. I know, I know. It’s just not right. Not right at all.
Over time, though, I have gingerly crossed some lines. I find I can’t write that post any more. Where I used to see a room full of people who didn't seem to understand how to do church properly, though they were having a good stab at it, I now see a community of people living health-filled, grace-filled lives, gathering for worship, and I know I am privileged to be of their number. These are the people who stood with me and my family in the dark days of last summer. These are the people who brought us dinner evening after evening, who took the children off for whole days, whose phone numbers I could have called at any time, day or night, sure of receiving help. These are the people who stood with me in the anxious times when waiting for test results, who shared my relief when these were good (mercifully often), and who fell to their knees in prayer on my behalf when they were bad. These are the people who rejoiced with me when my hair grew, who allowed me space to be sad, be angry, be happy, be weird. These are the people who have puzzled over my odd European perspectives in discussion, and who have embraced my English eccentricities. These are the people in whose company I have wrestled with things, questioned things, faced things, and laid things down. These are the people who I know will carry me in their thoughts and prayers after we’ve (eventually!) left the Midwest, as I will carry them.
I have learned more and received more than I bargained for, here in the Bible Belt. I could tell you a whole lot more about that, but I’m going to sit back now, and watch the comments box go strangely silent. I suspect we’re all British here, when it comes to religion.
There is one thing I miss, though. Because religion is so much more acceptable here, there was an edginess about being a Christian in the UK that I don't experience now. There used to be moments, moments which I loved, when I'd be talking to a mum from school who I'd known for a while, and I'd drop into the conversation that I went to church. The conversation would hesitate, just briefly, before she would express polite interest, or not, while her face would have written all over it the suppressed exclamation "but Iota, I thought you were NORMAL!". I'm a bit of a rebel at heart and I do miss those moments, so if some of you could oblige in the comments, that would be nice.
The first thing to say is that it’s very British, this reticence to talk about religion. How did that happen in Britain? Is it too personal? Is it too sensitive in these multi-cultural times? I have to say, I have found it refreshing here, to have it off the taboo list. When we arrived, people asked “will you be looking for a church?” much as they might have asked “which sports are you interested in?” And whether we’d said yes or no, either would have been fine. It’s something that people are much more relaxed about. I know the Bible Belt has a bad reputation, and perhaps we’ve just been lucky, but I can’t think of any occasion on which I’ve felt pressured or offended by any church or individual. I suppose it would be fair to say that as we did the rounds, looking for a church we might call home, we didn’t exactly head to the ones that advertised themselves as unpleasantly fundamentalist and Bible-bashing. But you know, even as I type that, I’m trying to think if I’ve come across some that would fit that description, and I honestly can’t think of any. I conclude that a very little of that kind of stuff has gone a long way in fostering an unfair reputation. I guess they must be around. Perhaps they just don't have a sign outside saying 'Unpleasantly Fundamentalist and Bible-Bashing'.
I find myself stuck at this point. Many many times in my head - most Sundays in my early blogging days - I have written amusing blog posts about an English woman’s perception of church life here. And I could reproduce one of those here, and make you laugh. I could. I mean, we all know that God, underneath His impressive ability to stand up for all nations, is really English. We have the best hymns, we have the best buildings – cold and draughty, with hard bottom-aching pews, just like they should be. We understand that when you leave church, you exchange two sentences about the weather, shuffle your feet a bit, and then head home for a decent Sunday roast. That’s how God planned it. I’m sure it’s in the Bible somewhere. They don’t really appreciate that here. They worship in modern buildings, which are warm and comfortable. They have guitars and keyboards instead of organs. They make way too much eye contact as you walk through the door. They even have people specially to do that, who wear badges saying “Greeter”. And there’s hugging too. I know, I know. It’s just not right. Not right at all.
Over time, though, I have gingerly crossed some lines. I find I can’t write that post any more. Where I used to see a room full of people who didn't seem to understand how to do church properly, though they were having a good stab at it, I now see a community of people living health-filled, grace-filled lives, gathering for worship, and I know I am privileged to be of their number. These are the people who stood with me and my family in the dark days of last summer. These are the people who brought us dinner evening after evening, who took the children off for whole days, whose phone numbers I could have called at any time, day or night, sure of receiving help. These are the people who stood with me in the anxious times when waiting for test results, who shared my relief when these were good (mercifully often), and who fell to their knees in prayer on my behalf when they were bad. These are the people who rejoiced with me when my hair grew, who allowed me space to be sad, be angry, be happy, be weird. These are the people who have puzzled over my odd European perspectives in discussion, and who have embraced my English eccentricities. These are the people in whose company I have wrestled with things, questioned things, faced things, and laid things down. These are the people who I know will carry me in their thoughts and prayers after we’ve (eventually!) left the Midwest, as I will carry them.
I have learned more and received more than I bargained for, here in the Bible Belt. I could tell you a whole lot more about that, but I’m going to sit back now, and watch the comments box go strangely silent. I suspect we’re all British here, when it comes to religion.
There is one thing I miss, though. Because religion is so much more acceptable here, there was an edginess about being a Christian in the UK that I don't experience now. There used to be moments, moments which I loved, when I'd be talking to a mum from school who I'd known for a while, and I'd drop into the conversation that I went to church. The conversation would hesitate, just briefly, before she would express polite interest, or not, while her face would have written all over it the suppressed exclamation "but Iota, I thought you were NORMAL!". I'm a bit of a rebel at heart and I do miss those moments, so if some of you could oblige in the comments, that would be nice.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
The Chicago Six
So there I am, sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Chicago, listening to another English woman tell a story which begins “so there I am…”, and I’m thinking “I love that – the way English people tell stories in the present tense. I miss that here.”.
Get me, though. Chicago. Chi-ca-go. I’m having this FABULOUS week-end. We’re eating, we’re drinking, we’re being driven around on our own personalized tour, we’re looking at pictures in the Art Institute, we’re strolling around Chicago in the late autumn sunshine… We’re having the best week-end, and all the time, we’re talking, talking, talking. I think I haven’t ever talked so much in a 2-day period in my entire life. We talk as if talking is going to be banned tomorrow. We talk as we eat, we talk as we walk, we talk as we sit in a taxi, we talk when we’re ready for bed and should be going to sleep. I don't mean 19 to the dozen; it’s more like 91 to the dozen. We use much-loved phrases, rarely heard in our American lives: we speak about a fortnight, faffing around, losing the plot, being all over the shop, going to the loo. It’s the conversational equivalent of comfort food. I feel enveloped in a warm blanket of spoken words.
The cast list. You want to know the cast list. There were the two Chicagoans who organized us and looked after us. Thanks, Expat Mum, for your knowledgeable guided tour, and Nicola, I’m in awe of anyone who can wear a white wool coat and keep it looking that good. There were the two Californians, who turned up in bikinis carrying surfboards. Hope you’ve warmed up, Calif Lorna and Geekymummy. The East Coast was represented by Nappy Valley Girl, with her tales about visiting New York's Museum of Modern Art, (though I suspect she’d just got lost in her own neighborhood and was looking at the Hallowe’en decorations, which, if her blog is anything to go by, are works of art of museum quality in their own right). And then me, feeling like I’m one of the hicks from the sticks, though I think I impressed them all with my tales of how we have electricity and hot running water in every house, and a Wal-mart on both sides of town.
I remember a period of time when bloggers in the UK started meeting together. In real life. In the flesh. Sometimes it was an ad hoc group, sometimes it was arranged by British Mummy Bloggers. There was a flurry of ‘meet-ups’. If I’m honest, I hated reading those reports. I felt I was missing out big time. I wanted to know what it felt like to clap eyes on a completely strange face, and yet know the person behind it so well. I wanted to join in all the posting and commenting: “you were JUST like I imagined you! Can’t wait to see you again!” Sometimes living abroad really sucks. Then last summer, I was thrilled at the thought of meeting people at Cyber Mummy 2010, but I was also a little irritated that the blogging wagon had rolled on without me. Everyone was over the novelty of the whole meet-up thing, and was moving on, before I had even had my first taste. People were going to Cyber Mummy because they wanted to attend the sessions and learn stuff, when all I wanted to do was sit at a succession of coffee cups and talk. Not even talk… Just chat… I’m even going to confess (sorry, Susanna, Jen, Sian) that in advance of the conference, I emailed a few bloggers who I really wanted to meet, and sought to lure them out of sessions, so that I could fill my day with my own personal serial meet-up. (It only partially worked.)
Anyway, what I’m trying to say, in amongst all this wittering on, is that this week-end in Chicago was not only a fun-filled, chat-filled, friendship-filled two days which will live in my memory for years to come, but it also somehow made up for all those meet-ups in England which I missed. And in Chi-ca-go, for heaven’s sake. Yup. I think I’ve caught up now.
Thank you, fellow members of The Chicago Six. I wish I could put all those conversations we had over the week-end in bottles, and uncork them over the next few weeks. I'd love to re-run them and chew them over again and again. There was so much great content!
PS Since someone is bound to ask, I don’t know if I’m going to Cyber Mummy 2011. Don’t know if I’ll be in England at the time. But if I am, and you fancy a quick coffee and a chat behind the bike sheds when teacher isn’t looking, email me.
Get me, though. Chicago. Chi-ca-go. I’m having this FABULOUS week-end. We’re eating, we’re drinking, we’re being driven around on our own personalized tour, we’re looking at pictures in the Art Institute, we’re strolling around Chicago in the late autumn sunshine… We’re having the best week-end, and all the time, we’re talking, talking, talking. I think I haven’t ever talked so much in a 2-day period in my entire life. We talk as if talking is going to be banned tomorrow. We talk as we eat, we talk as we walk, we talk as we sit in a taxi, we talk when we’re ready for bed and should be going to sleep. I don't mean 19 to the dozen; it’s more like 91 to the dozen. We use much-loved phrases, rarely heard in our American lives: we speak about a fortnight, faffing around, losing the plot, being all over the shop, going to the loo. It’s the conversational equivalent of comfort food. I feel enveloped in a warm blanket of spoken words.
The cast list. You want to know the cast list. There were the two Chicagoans who organized us and looked after us. Thanks, Expat Mum, for your knowledgeable guided tour, and Nicola, I’m in awe of anyone who can wear a white wool coat and keep it looking that good. There were the two Californians, who turned up in bikinis carrying surfboards. Hope you’ve warmed up, Calif Lorna and Geekymummy. The East Coast was represented by Nappy Valley Girl, with her tales about visiting New York's Museum of Modern Art, (though I suspect she’d just got lost in her own neighborhood and was looking at the Hallowe’en decorations, which, if her blog is anything to go by, are works of art of museum quality in their own right). And then me, feeling like I’m one of the hicks from the sticks, though I think I impressed them all with my tales of how we have electricity and hot running water in every house, and a Wal-mart on both sides of town.
I remember a period of time when bloggers in the UK started meeting together. In real life. In the flesh. Sometimes it was an ad hoc group, sometimes it was arranged by British Mummy Bloggers. There was a flurry of ‘meet-ups’. If I’m honest, I hated reading those reports. I felt I was missing out big time. I wanted to know what it felt like to clap eyes on a completely strange face, and yet know the person behind it so well. I wanted to join in all the posting and commenting: “you were JUST like I imagined you! Can’t wait to see you again!” Sometimes living abroad really sucks. Then last summer, I was thrilled at the thought of meeting people at Cyber Mummy 2010, but I was also a little irritated that the blogging wagon had rolled on without me. Everyone was over the novelty of the whole meet-up thing, and was moving on, before I had even had my first taste. People were going to Cyber Mummy because they wanted to attend the sessions and learn stuff, when all I wanted to do was sit at a succession of coffee cups and talk. Not even talk… Just chat… I’m even going to confess (sorry, Susanna, Jen, Sian) that in advance of the conference, I emailed a few bloggers who I really wanted to meet, and sought to lure them out of sessions, so that I could fill my day with my own personal serial meet-up. (It only partially worked.)
Anyway, what I’m trying to say, in amongst all this wittering on, is that this week-end in Chicago was not only a fun-filled, chat-filled, friendship-filled two days which will live in my memory for years to come, but it also somehow made up for all those meet-ups in England which I missed. And in Chi-ca-go, for heaven’s sake. Yup. I think I’ve caught up now.
Thank you, fellow members of The Chicago Six. I wish I could put all those conversations we had over the week-end in bottles, and uncork them over the next few weeks. I'd love to re-run them and chew them over again and again. There was so much great content!
PS Since someone is bound to ask, I don’t know if I’m going to Cyber Mummy 2011. Don’t know if I’ll be in England at the time. But if I am, and you fancy a quick coffee and a chat behind the bike sheds when teacher isn’t looking, email me.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Dee and Des
Those of you who have kicked around for a while in my corner of the blogging world might remember Dee Parrot (pronounced like the French par-oh). If you want to know what Dee was all about, try saying her name out loud several times in a row. Dee Parrot. Not just Dee. Otherwise you'll just be sitting there going "dee dee dee dee dee dee" and feeling a little foolish.
Dee was my creation, along with her husband Des, but I have passed ownership of them over to Heather who blogs at Note from Lapland. Dee had been languishing silent and unloved in the blogosphere for over a year, and when Heather showed an interest, I unhesitatingly packed Dee off to her, complete with password, and said "Here is Dee. Do with her what you will." Heartless, I know. Dee deserved better, and I am pleased she is getting the kind of makeover she needed at Heather's hand. I couldn't resist writing for her, though.
So do head on over, and have a look.
Dee was my creation, along with her husband Des, but I have passed ownership of them over to Heather who blogs at Note from Lapland. Dee had been languishing silent and unloved in the blogosphere for over a year, and when Heather showed an interest, I unhesitatingly packed Dee off to her, complete with password, and said "Here is Dee. Do with her what you will." Heartless, I know. Dee deserved better, and I am pleased she is getting the kind of makeover she needed at Heather's hand. I couldn't resist writing for her, though.
So do head on over, and have a look.
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