Mama's Musings

Halloween à l'allemand

What can I say but, huh? Halloween fever has swept over the European continent. At least it seems so. My little cow town has decided that Halloween is a good thing to celebrate. As I mentioned earlier, a sign hung in the school window announcing that Halloween was to start at 6 p.m. Say what? It required collective agreement. It was a subtle message with nothing more than a few Halloween-like figures and the date. The rest was up to the trick-or-treaters and compliant neighbors to handle.

Halloween in our house went like this. Sophia woke up, then puked. Okay. No trick-or-treating for us. Boy, was I elated that I made Andreas go out at the eleventh hour to buy a ton of candy. And did we ever need it.

Ding dong. Jackson nearly jumped out of his skin as he did hurdle jumping over the stray legos in the living room while Sophia lay on the couch shivering in her fairy costume and crown. Jackson grew estatic as he exclaimed how the TWICK -N TWEETERS were here! As soon as he was confronted with the ghoulish group of twenty-five kids, he retreated to the safety of his lego-littered living room to let Mama handle giving out the candy. After filling the twentieth bag with goodies, I had to call for reinforcements. Andreas tugged open a second bag.

I have never seen such organization in my life. Eight adults, twenty-five kids, and a bunch of flashlights and reflective clothing. They group marched from house to house, sweetly saying "Süsses oder Saures", the German equivalent to the Halloween Mantra of trick-or-treat. We thought we were safe until ten minutes later, the next batch showed up. For a while there, I thought perhaps all of Paunzhausen had sent its prodigy onto the streets with face makeup and a floppy hat.

Upon further inspection of the goods we were dispatching, I noticed that Andreas had purchased pseudo-candy. I am by no means a snob. Designer clothing means little to me. Is it itchy? I won't buy it. Is it too tight? I won't go near it. When it comes to candy, however, I require a certain level of finety. The candy he bought wouldn't cut the mustard in my book. He had purchased TWAX and MOUNTY, not TWIX and BOUNTY. Even Jackson rubbed off the faux coconut onto his pjs' sleeve. It didn't stop me from having a nibble, I might add. Uh oh. I feel a tug in my tummy. Let's hope my day doesn't end the way Sophia's began...

Can you say tired?

Sheesh! This week has been filled with heavy-duty parenting, major decision-making and the most difficult adult class I have ever had to teach. When it rains, it pours (and usually cats, dogs, and other domesticated animals). Is it truly Saturday evening? I am thankful for that.

Our strength gets tested every day of the week. This was my week to be tested beyond the norm. Okay, I can accept spilled juice on the living room floor or a bouncy three-year-old who, ha ha, just doesn't want to sleep much. But the latest is peer pressure. I really want to have a teeny tiny Halloween party for my kids at home. I suppose I can still convince them it is okay to do that instead of trick-or-treating with other kids. Somehow it feels strange to do it in Germany. Some people think it is neat; others do not.

Let's look at an example. In my child's school there is a sign hanging in the window. All it says is "Halloween, 6 p.m." There is a picture of a spider, a pumpkin and a ghost. No one knows what it means. How can you determine when Halloween begins? Should I make the party be at 3 p.m. to give my kids' friends enough time to bob for apples and carve a pumpkin before the doorbell starts ringing? What are the chances I am going to get out of this thing alive? Slim to none, I fear. It's just been one of those weeks...

What Do You Do When...

...your daughter follows her strong-willed friend right into traffic? I had a near-miss today, and boy! was I mad! My daughter NEVER crosses a parking lot or street without me. She is five, and she knows the dangers associated with crossing without looking first. But today we were walking with her friend from kindergarten. They took off, running down the street without listening to my warnings. By the time I caught up with them, they had run into the kindergarten after crossing a parking lot after I told them twice not to. I was LIVID!!!! I tried hard to keep my cool. With as few words as possible, I let them know how I felt about their decision not to listen. It was awkward as the other parents dropped off their kids. They paid more attention to my anger than to the children's mistake. It was embarrassing and uncool, and all I could do was walk away and calm down. I am still not calm, and I am worried I will blow up at them when I see them both this afternoon.

What's a mother to do?

The Touch of an Angel's Wing

The only way I can describe last night's performance by Anastacia is in the form of a short story. Her battle with breast cancer has been an inspiration for millions. Her voice is amazing, her way of being down-to-earth and loving. It was so refreshing to see a superstar behave as she did, to treat others with respect and dance in the light in the celebration of life. She's got God's magic resting inside.

The Touch of an Angel’s Wing

The angel fluttered her wing against the woman’s face. She stirred, then rolled her cheek into the pillow. Sighing, the angel tried again.

“You will dream big things,” the angel said. The woman’s eyes flipped open for a moment, and then she fell back into the tunnel of darkness.

“You will see much,” the angel persisted. Murmuring in her deep baritone voice, the woman rolled onto her back again.

A light swarmed overhead. In the room there was a slight buzzing sound. It was always there, and if the woman listened hard, she could hear it, too. Tonight she didn’t want to listen. Her heart was heavy. Why had God put this in her path, she wanted to know. It didn’t seem fair. The rest of the world wanted to still hear her voice. Why did she have to suffer so much pain?

The angel rested her arm around the woman’s neck. Whispering softly into her ear, she told the woman all the secrets her life beheld. The woman appeared to hear her, as she lifted her body from the bed. She sat at her bedside table and began to write. And this is what she said:

Stage Fright

Where are those earplugs? Do I even have something cool enough to wear tonight? My old friend, Cherish, has invited us to see Anastacia tonight. She sounds a bit like Tina Turner, but hipper (can you get any hipper than Tina? I sure could. Just LOOK at how uncool my clothes are!).

Cherish works for the video crew who are responsible for the huge screen that illuminates the star for those in the nosebleed seats. Pretty cool deal! I look woefully frumpy in my rags. What's a poor mama to do?

Nature Park

Squinting into the afternoon sun, we witnessed the light bouncing off hundreds of parked cars in the field before us. After three hours outside at the Poing Nature Park, we were ready for a nap -- all four of us. Because of Sophia's incessant chattering in the backseat, only Jackson managed to knock off for a bit. I attempted to read a backlog of magazines which I only ever get to browse when we go on car trips, it seems.

The Nature Park was FILLED with (I would venture to guess) 1,000 sun-starved families. The kids enjoyed feeding the donkeys, the ultimate goal at the end of the park. By the time they had emptied their paper bags of grain, they were ready to seek the shelter of their car seats. Me too!

Andreas is cooking something delightul as I type this. We never did have lunch!

Sunshine on my Shoulders...

Should I be worried? My son wore his pajamas to the store today. He didn't have any underwear on, and I am not even certain whether he wore shoes. Andreas watched the kids while I taught an English seminar for the morning. How much damage could he do in five hours, I reasoned, kissing my tow-headed kids on the noggin and grabbing my keys off the table. Turning on my heel, I leveled my gaze at my already distressed husband. "I'll be back at one." I'm not sure whether it was a promise or a threat. By the looks of my dear hubby, he wasn't either.

The house was relatively orderly when I got home. No random underthings were hanging from the lamp, and there was actually lukewarm food in the oven. Andreas had managed to enforce our daily "quiet time" ritual in which the kids wreck havoc downstairs while the parents nap. Quiet as it's kept, we were sawing logs before our children could even crack their doors to see if the coast was clear. My exhaustion exceeded my concern for their safety. I assured myself they wouldn't do anything terribly naughty for the twenty minutes I feel into a deep, albeit transient, sleep. Aside from stuffing manadrin peels under the basement stairs, they didn't do anything too bad. Now, if I could only find my eyeglasses, I might be able to see if they've drawn on the livingroom walls...

Nervous, Who ME?

I seem to be a bundle of nerves these days. Why, I can't be certain? Well, perhaps that is just it. Uncertainty makes me nervous. Some days I think I am like the stock market, which despises uncertainty. Why, then, do I continue to put myself into the position of testing my own limits, almost daily?

Today I taught a group of three business professionals. They couldn't have been more diverse. One works for a trade union for the railway system. Another is an engineer. The third is a housewife who is moving to Singapore. Oh yikes! Needless to say, we had a blast today. They particularly enjoyed my teaching them the Woo Clap. For those of you who don't know it, you gather the positive energy from the Earth, waving your arms about wildly, all the while saying "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!" It's not what you're thinking, REALLY! It helps realign the energy field around your body. And it works! I had them laughing in 30 seconds.

Another great technique is the "write it down and throw it" strategy. Oftentimes, people get stuck in what they are doing. This technique says, "You don't HAVE to do it that way..." and it is amazing how quickly they learn it anyway.

Of Loss and Renewal

The last twenty-four hours have proven to me that we can only expect one thing in life: change. From a curt exchange with my boss to my babysitter almost quitting because of my daughter’s poor behavior, I have seen the depths of an awesome abyss. It became so absurd at one point that I was certain this wasn’t happening to me. I kept looking around for Ron Howard in his baseball cap.

Scene Fifty-Nine: Husband Comes Home at 10 p.m. to Witness the Aftermath -- Take Twelve, click!

It is on these days, in particular, that I am convinced my husband possesses a trouble radar. “Oooo! Looks like trouble in P-city (that’s short-hand for Paunzhausen, the cow town in which we live). Guess I’ll hang out in the lab until well after dark and lay low until the dust settles.” He gives me a call, knowing I am at my dance class, and leaves a hieroglyphic message on the machine.

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