Parenting with joy and grace
December 31, 2012 4 Comments
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 7,100 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 12 years to get that many views.
October 27, 2012 2 Comments
I know, “hate” is a strong word. I try and avoid it if I can but I have very strong negative emotions regarding the whole concept of Halloween 
Maybe if I had been raised in the U.K. I would have had better emotions in regards to it. But I was introduced to it as a grown-up with her head “screwed on” as they say here. Meaning, I see things as an adult and I am not easily bought into a holiday, especially if it involves nonsensical partying, people dressed into monsters and witches and children being greedy for even more unhealthy treats.
What really bothers me about it though is the fact that it robs our children of connecting to the real world and understanding its intricate beauty. To understand about the miracle of having a harvest to reap, in the form of pumpkins and apples and potatoes. To realise there is a Master Mind behind what surrounds them and that they can rely on Him for having food on their table. I think our children need to understand that God made this world to make complete sense, with a sequence of seasons that reflect our lives faithfully:a season of hidden growth is followed by budding shoots, beautiful growth to maturity and then the reaping of crops.
The whole Halloween celebration is about a scary-other world where there are ghosts and wizards and goblins and blood-sucking creatures. A world that makes no sense whatever but in bringing bad dreams and fears. A world I would never want to live in and definitely I would want my young daughter to know nothing of.
I will cherish forever the memories I have of autumn days spent with my granny in her village home, coring apples and baking them in the oven. I remember their sweetness but most of all feeling safe and reassured by her words that all was well with the world because it was still functioning as it had been designed to function and the apples were a proof.
We made chocolate-dipped apples this week with Emma in Funky Monkeys. I hope she will remember not only the sweetness of the chocolate but also the feeling of security of a world as it should be, where apples still grow and daughters are still cherished.
October 12, 2012 3 Comments
I feel very honoured to be part of the very first ever International Day of the Girl.
I heard of International Day of the Girl for the first time this morning. One of my friends on Facebook put up this link for a new website Too Young to Wed and it caught my attention as it had the picture of two eight-year old girls and their 29-year old husbands on its landing page. The subject stirs me every time, as you might already know if you have been following my blog for a while and read my review on a Thousand Splendid Suns and Harmattan.
So when an email came in shortly after from Mumsnet Bloggers regarding the International Day of the Girl I knew I had to tie these two separate events and write a post about girls who don’t have a voice or a choice. I did a bit of research and found a lot on the subject. I would like to mention here the very interesting project of 10×10 “a feature film, Girl Rising, and a social action campaign”as presented on their website and the Because I am a Girl campaign by the Plan that supports investment in girls’education.
I have a nearly three-year old girl. She has dreams already. Dreams of being a ballerina. And a teacher.
And we have dreams and desires for her. Dreams of Emma growing into a sensible and wise woman. We desire her to get into a good nursery, a school with dedicated teachers and later on a grammar school where she is encouraged to learn and reach her full academic potential. We dream of her going to university. We dream of her being loved and cherished by a man who will treat her with reverence and respect. We dream of Emma being happy and fulfilled in every possible way. But above all, we have dreams of her growing up to be what God has designed her to be: a ballerina or a teacher or a social worker and we commit to be here for her and support her whatever her dreams and desires will be.
I am writing on behalf of all the three-year olds whose lives have been set of a tangent they will have little say in choosing. Girls who are perceived as barter goods and sexual objects. Girls whose only precarious knowledge will be in reproduction and raising children while they are still children themselves. Girls for whom education will be a mythical concept and never a reality. Girls who will be always victims and never victors. Their reality is not our reality because we were lucky enough to be born in a “civilised” country where human rights are a given, not a chimera, a fanciful mental illusion or fabrication. Our hearts long to feel the fulfilment we were designed to feel when helping our fellow human being yet we live our lives too far removed from a reality that’s only 12 hours away from us by plane. These little girls, these rising generations need our help. What are we going to do about it?
Image courtesy of the Plan.
October 2, 2012 3 Comments
For almost three months while we were in Greece I kept thinking: “I need to write a post on Greece as a dichotomy country, as I have seen it as a resident, not a mere visitor.” I never got around to do it. We’re living in two hours for Ireland so this is my last chance.
Why dichotomy country? Because there is such a massive difference between the public and the private property. Because there is such a contrast between what people tell you about their salaries being cut and the abundance they still live in. Such a gap between the blessings that God has poured upon this country and the negative attitude and talk you hear everywhere. Let me give you some examples of what shocked, amazed and saddened us for 90 days or so.
1. The private and the public.
The Greeks are so very proud of their apartment buildings, their houses and their gardens, especially those who live in the North. Extreme care is giving to keeping an aesthetic appearance through micro-irrigation systems, lawn and building maintenance. We have travelled a lot in Europe so I can say without goofing that the average apartment building in Greece exceeds by far the quality and square meters of even those in Switzerland. The public, on the other hand, is at the other extreme pole. Roads are unkempt and pure dangerous many times. The bins are rarely collected on time due to councils’ lack of funds and subsequent bin men strikes. Compost is literally dumped on the road from the very tidy private gardens of the illustrious Greek citizens.
The Greeks adopt the same attitude when it comes to dealing with people. If it’s on their private territory they go out of their way to make you feel welcomed. They overfeed you and treat you like royalty. They are the best of friends and the kindest neighbours. If they deal with you on public territory you’re…well…unlucky. They are rude and grossly inefficient when in public positions(I came to believe their standard response to ANY query is NO, before they even listen to your request). They honk, beep and curse when driving, to the slightest mistake you make. They are impatient in buses, on the road, in the market(even if you’re pushing a pram). As I said, unlucky.
2. Poverty and waste
I felt for the elderly in Greece. They are the ones who have felt the blow the hardest when the government decided to cut down salaries and pensions. We know there are many people who won’t be able to heat their homes this winter because heating oil has become way too expensive. I felt for the young families where one or both of the parents have lost their jobs and they had been forced to move in with their parents. I cried when one day a young woman in the market approached us(and everybody else passing by) asking for help as they were being evicted from their rental accommodation. It broke my heart to see she was carrying a young child who was too ashamed to look people in the eye and had her head burrowed in her mum’s shoulder. It left me shaken because I know how proud Greek people are and I knew this young woman had reached the bottom.
But I was shocked time and again when we went out and saw people leaving heaps of food on the table at the end of a meal. People buying six to eight 10-kilo detergent boxes at the time just because the supermarket had a deal they couldn’t resist. How their sweet shops and bakeries(ARTos, very appropriately called) are amazing artistry display shows and how much of their produce goes in the bin at the end of the day. Looking at the tempting sweet shop window displays, noticing that the only businesses doing well in Greece at the moment are the food shops I had the strong feeling Greek invest their money in the immediate pleasure, not in the everlasting. In palatable goods and not in feeling good about helping each other and their country to progress.
3. Rich country and poor attitudes
Which brings me to the general attitude of poverty of attitude. As I said, we never stepped into a public office without being given the standard “no” first. Even when doing simple tickets like buying bus tickets we were asked to go back(a mere 30-minute drive) the following day because there was NO way they could release tickets from the day before. When asked why the public service workers just stare. If it hasn’t been done before, they won’t initiate the change, even if it’s as simple as releasing a ticket. The Greeks seem to have lost never had a sense of civilization as in ” the social process whereby societies achieve an advanced stage of development and organization.” From early days they have labelled themselves as democrats; democracy as in “a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them.” I found functionaries in Greece unwilling to want to help their country attain that advanced stage of organisation because they are only interested in exercising supreme power over the poor people they were appointed to serve.
On the upper hand, Greece is a blessed country. With wonderful scenery, glorious weather and beautiful fresh produce. These alone should suffice(and has for us) to make one grateful and happy to have lived here. Greece has wriggled its way into my heart. I fell in love with it when I was 17 and I came here camping with YWAM. I fantasised in it as an Erasmus student and now I love it with a mature love of understanding and acceptance. I am sorely sorry we have to leave it for a season but I know we will return sooner than later. Because we love it and we can’t be away from it for too long.
June 20, 2012 Leave a comment
I can’t remember last time I saw a movie in a cinema. Oh wait, something vague is coming to mind…it’s been a few months at least. Anyway, last night I just decided to go solo, left toddler with hubby for the last half an hour of her awake time and fled the house. Quite literally. Gooodness knows when I’ll be able to do this next, with us travelling to a different country and all…
I didn’t have much time to check reviews on what’s good of all the movies that are out at the moment. What to expect had a cute trailer. Although seeing it I didn’t expect much ,to be honest, as I know trailers generally contain the best bits in the movie and I wasn’t particularly impressed by it.
Okay, it had a large number of cliches ( all American movies do, I’m afraid): the rich and famous father who married a slut much younger woman and the scarred for life by his father’s behaviour son; the clueless father-gang thing protecting each other’s back sides(Daddy Day Care popped to mind); the bitches more fortunate women for whom pregnancy means a healthy glow and an almost instant delivery; the mother/monster type of woman whose life centers around baby and keeping husband on tight leash.
It also had a lot of truths in it and as a woman who’s been through pregnancy, delivery and the lot I was actually impressed by how accurate the movie was in pinpointing them:
1. Forget about what all the pregnancy books say you should look, feel and expect when you’re expecting. Every woman is different and she will look, feel and process things in her own unique way. Some have it easy, some have it tough, it’s the way life is!
2. Becoming parents doesn’t happen only one way. The movie follows a couple through the emotional(and a tad hilarious) process of adoption and very candidly includes them in the parenthood gang. As I see it, adoption is way underrated as the less acceptable way of having a child and the movie manages to raise awareness on the subject in a very natural way.
3. Losing a baby during the first stages of pregnancy is another almost taboo subject because of its delicacy and intricacy. Another point from me for including the couple who loses the baby and their pain and struggle amongst the other couples until the end.
4. For those of us who had a “normal” pregnancy and delivery, the girl who “calls pregnancy glow for what it really is: bullshit!” is highly inspirational. You can have it worse, girls, we, at least, didn’t pee ourselves throughout the pregnancy . But we got everything else, from tiredness to hemorrhoids to…okay, better stop there, right?
5. For those of us who had a “magical” pregnancy and an easy delivery, well, it’s not like you did anything to deserve it, right, it’s the way your body worked!!!
I was surprised that an American movie designed for a very wide audience offered a bit more depth than expected. And it probably offered those giggling teenagers in the audience a better view of what it really means to become(or be unable to become) pregnant, with all its array of joys and deep issues. Although judging by their careless giggles later on in the toilet and by the instances they chose to recall(“I peed myself, I peed myself!! Hihihihi”) I had this overbearing feeling it didn’t really sink in. It never really does,anyway, does it, not until you’re there ??
May 18, 2012 7 Comments
Okay, we did it again! Got on a plane with minimal fuss(and preparation) and went to see Papou and Giagia in Greece. There are adjacent reasons to the visit but I’ll share when there will be something to share. For now, we are here, doing paperwork by day and passionately debating(as concerns hubby)/begrudgingly avoiding(as concerns me) politics at night. And eating LOADS in between. Everything that’s fresh, everything that’s tasty, everything that’s smelling nice finds its way into our mouths.Both hubby and I were raised in warm countries where the fruit and veggies you eat come no further than 20 kilometers away and are always ripe and juicy and ready to be eaten. We have missed that more than we want to admit even to ourselves and we are making up for it now and teaching our daughter to do the same.
Anyway, I wanted to do another thing in my post today. I have been nominated for the ‘Versatile Blogger Award’ (http://versatilebloggeraward.wordpress.com/) and I would like to return the favour, thanks Iva and nominate some blogs myself:
1. http://www.theimaginationtree.com -for their play challenge emails, they are a God-sent and a great source of inspiration.
2. http://www.romanianmum.com – for being brave and blogging as a Romanian! For the emotional richness of her posts and the beautiful way she promotes everything that is Romanian.
3. http://grenglish.co.uk – for providing such a humorous view on what it means to be married to a Greek and have a toddler
4. http://lovenewblogs.com – for doing such a great job at promoting “new kids on the blog”
5. www.mothernaturelovesyou.com – for blogging with such grace about parenting and life in general
6. http://yourlifetube.com - for providing diverse and insightful posts on weight loss, healthy living and exercise
7. http://www.catchy.ro – sorry but this one is in Romanian. The first pertinent, well informed and down to earth Romanian blog/website I came across.
8. http://www.growingajeweledrose.com – a wealth of ideas for entertaining toddlers
9. http://famigliaandseoul.blogspot.com - for the sensory bin ideas and many other ones!
10. http://handsonaswegrow.com
12. http://thespohrsaremultiplying.com
13. http://www.emsyjo.blogspot.com/
14. http://tickledinlove.blogspot.com
15. http://crittersandcrayons.com
The rules for the Versatile Blogger are as follows:
If you are nominated, you’ve been awarded the Versatile Blogger award.
-Thank the person who gave you this award
-Include a link to their blog
-Select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly
-Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award
-Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.
April 17, 2012 9 Comments
Okay, I was hoping to go and see the Titanic Quarters last weekend but the opportunity never materialised. Instead I was back to nursing sick people in our home. This time it was my hubby. He came down, fast and furious, with the same throat infection Ems had at Easter. And I was not a happy bunny!!
It’s not the nursing that got to me, it’s never the nursing in itself, it was the constant moaning: one toddler on the mend, making demands for my exclusive attention; one sick hubby, feeling sorry for himself and sniffling miserably around the house.That and the ISOLATION. You have to remember I had been in the house ALL Easter week with a feverish child (she was given antibiotic that Friday but she was still weak on Easter Sunday) and I missed hubby’s birthday party on Easter Saturday and the Easter service. Both events had been much anticipated but eluded me at the last moment. I just couldn’t bring myself to drag a wretched toddler out of the house just because I needed to see friends and take part in the Easter celebrations.
So all that kept building up over two weeks. And it did get to me this Sunday past. So as the worthy daughter of a former nurse, I ordered hubby to see the out of hours doctor and stop moping about and then I had an emotional shut down. I just didn’t have anything else to give. I downloaded the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy and I finished it in a day and a half. That sort of focused my mind on something else. Today I came upon this other book, “Mother Letters”, that’s just been released. “Share the mess and the glory”, such an appropriate logo for parenthood. It promises encouragement and support, a silent companion for mothers everywhere. Check it out. I sure will, my only regret is that I haven’t found it on Sunday night. It might have filled my emotional tanks sooner…
April 13, 2012 8 Comments
Okay, I was going to hold on with this till Sunday the 15th, to commemorate 100 years since the Titanic sank. But I am planning on a trip to the new Titanic Quarters in Belfast this weekend so why not start the commemoration now with the hope of adding pictures during the weekend?
Right, I came upon this novel on Kindle and I was skeptical at first. I mean, is there anything else to be said or felt about Titanic after Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s rendition of the tragedy? Plus, with this year marking 100 years from the sinking, we have been literally bombarded with Titanic themed series(ITV I’m talking about), expositions(Ulster Transport Museum in Cultra, county Down has opened one recently, called Titanica) and now the re-release in 3D of the 1997 Titanic movie.
I was impressed with the book. Okay, we all know what the story line is so the author had a very delicate and difficult task at hand to begin with. As I said, I felt we have been somehow desensitised by the abundance of emotions in the Americanised 1997 movie version. I for myself felt all my emotions regarding the sinking had been spent with the movie and I was plain curious of how Hazel Gaynor was going to make me “feel” again. And admirably, she managed very well!
I loved the way she intertwines historical facts with fiction and brings it all to light as a very credible story. I loved the complexity and the decency of the characters she creates starting from names of actual survivors. Loved the Irish wit and twang resonating almost audibly through the book, making it regionally plausible, not only historically credible. Loved the delicacy of feelings and emotions captured and the imagery she faithfully used to draw us back to the actual Titanic and recreate it vividly in my mind’s eye.
My favourite bit? The scene of the arrival of Carpathia and its emotional depth. Brought a tear to my eye.
My least credible bit? The parallel story of Grace Butler. Quite an endearing character herself and a lot of emotional maturity there as well but not essential or necessary to the story line’s development. The book would have done well without it as I felt it didn’t add much to its emotional depth.
All in all, a very enjoyable read with a lot of historical data to get you in tip-top shape for all those Titanic conversations around the dinner table!
April 4, 2012 2 Comments
The only way out is through
It’s established: Saturday nights are movie nights in our house!
Last Saturday this movie jumped at us in the video shop. We were in a rush, toddler was amassing chocolate star bags and Peppa Pig DVDs off the shelves at an alarming rate so we didn’t even have time to read the clippings on the back. It was enough to see Nicole Kidman was in it, we knew we couldn’t go terribly wrong.We did expect complexity of plot(which we got) but we didn’t expect a message of hope out of such a sad case.
Storyline? A young couple who have it all going for themselves (big house in an affluent suburb, important jobs,the kid and the dog!), face indescribable loss when their six-year-old boy is hit and killed by a car in front of the house. The movie observes the aftermath of the tragedy and the very different coping mechanisms the parents resort to. It’s almost a clinic observation of techniques on “How to deal with the death of a loved one.” The only thing that surprises the viewer is its conclusion.
Let me expand on it a little bit. Mum completely shuts herself off, even from her own mother and sister, and lives an a recluse having occasional outbursts of rage at whoever catches her eye. She is furious with God to the point that she stops believing in His existence. Dad has a totally different approach to the situation and he clings to everything that reminds him of his son: the car seat, the boy’s drawings on the fridge and his toys. But things need to change because the human soul was not created to contain and sustain such an amount of pain and devastation. So they try to find solutions to pain: the mother(Nicole Kidman) finds the teenager who killed her son and tries to get some sort of closure. The father thinks he can have an affair with another grieving parent but realises last minute that it would be a mistake.
The title of the movie comes from the comic book the teenager who has killed their son puts together. It is a parallel world story in which a father has to get through a rabbit hole to try and find his way into a different dimension where his son has gone. Symbolically for the bereaved parents, this father finds his son but “not really, because he’s in a different dimension now, he has taken a different form.” Just like the parent in the comic book, they would have to dig their way out of the rabbit hole in which they buried themselves and live with the pain of losing their son as a substitute for the real thing.
I found the moment when the parents reconnect extremely touching. No big formulas to their pain, no magic wands to make it all better. Just learning to live again, baby step after baby step, re-learning to be part of the world without their son. Extremely touching.
What I learned? To have a lot of respect for people who have experienced a loss and are still together. A loss carries so much emotion with it that the “natural” response would be to disengage from all meaningful relationships which remind one of it. To stick with it and see it through TOGETHER involves a lot of courage, especially when the spouses’ responses to it can be dramatically different.
March 28, 2012 5 Comments
Doubt…
We watched the movie last Saturday and it kept us awake into the small hours of the morning.
The story line is quite flat, just like bad gossip: a superior nun,who’s also the principal of this Catholic school, suspects a newly appointed priest of inappropriate behaviour towards one of the pupils. She doesn’t have any evidence, only a few incidents brought to her attention by an eager and easily impressed young nun. But she convinces herself and everybody else involved that the priest has wronged the child somehow and makes him leave the school and the parish.
The movie is on the other hand brilliant in exploring the human mind and its intricacies: it makes the viewer aware of how easily a “reality” can be created out of suspicion and self-justification. As, indeed, nothing is explained in the end and the viewer is left battling a sea of endless possibilities and scenarios. Was the reality Sister Aloysius Beauvier constructed veritable or was it all in her head and she blamed an innocent man? Or were there clues one has missed (there is a very confusing conversation between Sister Beauvier and Donald Miller’s mum, the pupil in question) that were there to incriminate Father Flynn? Is there more to the story than what meets the eye?
I have been in similar situations myself, when somebody interpreted the reality from their perspective and then declared my acts as intolerable. The devastation doesn’t come only from the complete and utter destruction of that relationship but also from the doubt that is left hanging over the “accused” person in everybody else’s eyes. People are, I’m sorry to say, much easier influenced by bad reports than by good ones.
What have I learned from my past experiences that Doubt reinforced in my psyche?
1. Petty people are to be treated with respect as they can cause a lot of damage.
2. There is always another side to a story, be wise and listen to it carefully before you pass judgement.
3. Always gather evidence before throwing the stone.
4. If you look to find fault in people you’ll always find some dirt to dig out. A more applaudable approach to life would be to look deep enough in everybody’s soul to find something good to bring to light, despite “obvious” evidence!
5. Never base judgement on feelings, either yours or anybody else’s, no matter how heated the argument is. You are not in the right just because your feelings tell you so!
The movie ends brilliantly with Sister Aloysius doubting her judgement and treatment of Father Flynn. For me, it’s an open end movie, the best I’ve ever seen. Because if Sister Aloysius was right but acted too hastily and didn’t allow herself time to gather evidence then she might have released a child molester into a much bigger community and school…If she was wrong, her actions still deprived a child of the support of a vitally needed father figure and possibly left their mark on Donald Miller’s destiny…
Conclusions? It’s sooo, sooo easy to feel self-righteous and justify an act of meanness. So easy to wrong back when we feel we’ve been wronged. But meanness is not to be taken lightly and made use of easily because it will always affect someone’s life, to a smaller or a greater extent. Use your influence wisely, girls, that’s all I’m saying!
