My First Real Prom

I am almost sure I went to prom in high school, but can't remember much about it or even whether I had a date. It couldn't have been much fun. And with three sons through school now, I seem to have able to avoid the whole thing... until today.
My eldest went to prom on Kwaj.  And Jake, being Jake, took care of any arrangements needed for ordering a tux and coordinating garment colors.  The corsage was ordered well in advance and shipped across the Pacific in a refrigerated container. Where in Kwaj, being Kwaj, it was completely acceptable to show up in island formal which means... anything goes. He went to prom by bike.

 My second son attended senior prom in Europe and informed me that he needed a well-fitted suit. I provided the money for the tailored suit and managed to get one shot of him as he left on foot with his friends.  I have no idea what his prom was like, but I am sure it included lots of alcohol. 
Now my youngest son is attending his senior prom in America's heartland.  Neither he nor I had any idea what this entailed.  But my husband is right, here in Minnesota Prom is like a wedding celebration.
Everything started months ago with people casually asking me if Ben was going to prom. As if I knew.  Then my son casually informed me that he had asked someone to prom.  That set the wheels in motion and my 'to-do' list was started. I couldn't have done this without the help of friends and family who would drop hints in a conversation at church or a forwarded email of what was next on the timeline. 
I had to go in to school and buy my son a ticket. Then I was told to go back and buy tickets for myself and Jon. We paid for reserved seating at the Grand March.???  Did this mean I was involved in Prom in some way? Did I have to dress up too?

This is when I realized that prom is really for the parents.  Like a wedding, we tell our children what is expected of them on the big day, meaning to insure they don't miss out on anything, but manage to stress them into conforming to expectations.
My son didn't want a tux, but I ended up renting one for him and making sure the colors coordinated with his date's dress. I ordered the corsage, and arranged for the pre-prom photo shoot. I have never ordered a corsage before and had no idea what I was doing. After asking me for as much information as could be imagined about my son and his date, the florist informed me that they only did white roses. I ordered the white roses... for $50.

There was a stressful eve of event when Ben began to see that his mother was in fact more involved with prom than he was. His mutiny played right into my hands when he suddenly decided to forsake the family's planned event at the farm and arranged for others to meet at our house. I provided food and Jon took pictures. We met the other parents and found common ground.
We all went round to the school where the students would board a bus to a party aboard a boat.  This "grand march" into the school drew quite a crowd. And we all followed the students into the gym to watch them promenade once again, with lots of posing for photos along the way.

 And just when I was beginning to feel like the whole event was just a ruse to make young people feel like they fit the mold, I saw a young couple doing their own thing. They wore plaid instead of a tux and gown, and proudly walked in while the crowd gawped.  As parents we are all secretly glad it isn't our child going to prom in jeans, but it was also a relief to see someone break the rules.
The strangest part for me was to find most of the boys wearing garters on their arms.  I was told this was an age-old tradition, but I still don't understand it.  And I am glad Ben didn't feel he had to wear a woman's garter to fit in.

So that was my first experience of an all-American hometown prom, and probably my last.  I am sure I will hear more about the actual party aboard the boat, and about the crazy Post-Prom party where the students are locked in a sports/activity center for the night to keep them from getting into trouble. 
I am glad my son, who is experiencing his fourth Jr/Sr HS in four different countries, is getting a chance to  have a real prom. He deserves a bit of fun!

An Introduction to Winter Sports

Winter arrives and my usual outdoor activities seem less appealing. I look for something to keep myself active and busy during the months of subfreezing temperatures and icy snow.
Skiing seems out of the question. I would have to drive miles to find a decent slope, and it is an expensive way to get hurt.
Then there is the infamous ice fishing, which I have never tried because... it just doesn't make sense. Why would anyone choose to sit out in the middle of a frozen lake for hours inside a claustrophobic hut?  Cross country skiing should be more popular around here.  The trick is finding a day when there is enough snow on the ground without the -25º wind chills.  Jon has found his course around the lake, but can't fit many laps in before the sun sets. It is dark early and invites us to stay indoors.

If I am crazy I can join the polar bear club and plunge into a freezing lake. Or I can seek out a warm gym with indoor pool in which to spend some of those dark hours.  I confess I joined a Pickleball group which meets twice a week, indoors, to hit a plastic ball over a makeshift net. No one can say I don't exercise!
However, these are not the winter sports that really get us going and let us sink into bed exhausted at the end of the day. This is my version of the winter sports that I have taken up since moving to Minnesota.
First I dig myself out. I can spend up to an hour several mornings a week shoveling the driveway before I can get the car out. The snow is not cooperative. It sticks to the pavement and lies over sheets of ice. It laughs at my attempts to shovel and whips back in my face. I scrape and I chisel, knowing that winter is far from over and it will all need to be done again.
Then there is the getting of firewood, because there is nothing better than sitting by a real fire on a cold night. But firewood just doesn't appear in the wood box.  It must be cut and trucked in from the farm, before carting it piece by heavy piece to our wood pile.

Before making a fire I put on my gloves and boots and traipse outside to look for sticks for kindling and logs that are not covered in snow or ice. I was told that being cold burns calories... I'm certainly burning a few.
This activity usually leads to cooking.  The cold makes you hungry for potpies, warm cookies and soup.  So I shop and I chop, then I roll and I bake.  There is no pizza delivery service here or restaurant nearby, but the eating is good!
The winter sport that keeps me the busiest is home improvement projects. After being forced to stay inside on a day when the snow is howling outside, you start to notice all those less than perfect parts of the house.

In October we started with tearing out carpet, toilets and walls. Yesterday I was tiling the dining room floor and refinishing a table top.  "Not a sport ," you say? Well tell that to my tennis elbow I got from, not pickleball, but sanding and painting the drywall. If, like me, you have spent hours in Home Depot looking for bullnose tile and thinset, then you know how arduous these projects can be. I spend hours researching and searching for materials. And I often have to start again when I have come to the conclusion that it just doesn't look right. This is a winter sport that I am just learning and will need a lot more practice before I can join the big leagues.

Beginning and Ending with New Year

Most New Year's I find myself in the middle of a trip. More often than not, I am traveling at the end of the year and the holiday creates some inconvenience.
Traveling without reservations through Chile in 1992, Jon and I found ourselves joining a local family in their New Year's Eve festivities. They roasted a whole sheep on a spit in the back yard and put handfuls of lentils in our pockets. The party was warm and welcoming and we flew south the next day in high spirits, looking forward to adventure and some glaciers. What we found instead was a placed closed down for the New Year's holiday. No hotel, restaurant or travel agent was open.  We wandered the empty streets and wondered what to do next. Another local took us in and let us sleep in their children's bedroom.  The next day we went back to the airport and got the next flight out. The start of the new year was a bit of an anticlimax.
That pattern continued through the years. The New Year's Eve

celebrations in Rio cannot be missed. There is no way to avoid the party, it takes over the city. So we dressed in white and joined the millions on Copacabana beach for the fireworks. The air was thick with smoke and the water lit up with floating candle-lit rafts. It was a good idea to take a dip in the ocean before starting the long trek home. The New Year usually started with snarled traffic on the roads and the city badly in need of time to recover from the festivities. A sleepy and hungover start to the New Year.

This year I am not traveling, I am staying home by the fire. But as always, I will awake to a New Year and feel the need to do some cleaning up. It is time to put away the Christmas decorations, organize the now full cupboards, throw away the leftovers, and try to get back to normal life. Christmas was warm and fuzzy, but now it is time to take a cold shower and get moving.
This need not be as bad as it sounds. Last year, in Sri Lanka, I had a very different New Year's experience. Again, we were 10 days into our trip round the island. We didn't expect any party. The Sri Lankas don't party much. They don't drink or eat out. We had difficulty finding a place to celebrate Christmas. As we drove round the inner highlands I saw no bars, clubs or recognizable restaurant chains. We had stayed at a string of cheap hotels with only the bare basics. So on New Year's Eve we went out on safari, then went to bed like the animals, at sundown.

The surprise came New Year's day which, for once, outshone the night before. Our hotel (where we were the only guests) had rustled up a New Year's breakfast for us which we ate outside off banana leaves. It was made of sweetmeats, fruit, coconut rice, and colorful cake. I enjoyed it very much, and even was served decent coffee. The waiters hovered round and explained each dish and beamed. Then they showed us how to turn our cups upside down and 'read' the coffee grounds.  The patterns would tell us what to expect in the year to come.  I don't really know my way around coffee grounds, but I saw some high points between the drops dribbling down the side. I'm sure that means there was some good to look forward to.

After breakfast we received news of our driver. His mother had died overnight and he had gone home for the funeral. Another man was there to drive us on to our next and last destination on the coast. And just like that we were reminded that life is full of unexpected turns, both good and bad. We cannot even try to predict the events of the year to come. Thankfully we checked in to our next, and best, hotel on the beach. Our adventure over, we could relax in a place with western food and bathrooms. We took time to remember the events of the past year, what had brought us to this place, and what we wanted to do next year.  New Year's is not an ending, or a beginning... it is the place in between the past and the future. And like Janus, we should pause and consider looking both directions at once, learning from the past and pursuing a future with hope.

I Wonder as I Wander

It is easy to see how I identify with the story of the magi at Christmas.  I have spent Christmas on five different continents, and in the middle of an ocean. The wise men traveled afar following a star. There is more I'd like to know about these men. What were they hoping to find? What motivated them to make this journey?  Did they hope to be led towards peace in their troubled lives?

We hear more talk of "joy" and "love" at Christmas these days. And we get busy trying to recreate those moments of joy in our own ways. I know my parents certainly worked hard to bring Christmas cheer when we were growing up in Brasilia. First there was the business of finding a bush that could be clipped and wired with branches to look like a tree. Then my long suffering father would spend days inspecting each bulb in the old string of lights in order to get them working. The preparations for the feast started well in advance with the making of the fruit cake and mincemeat being shipped over from England.  There was plenty more food to make on the day, along with holding a father-son soccer match and planning the silly party games I looked forward to all year.

After leaving home I did not immediately try to recreate Christmas and took the opportunity to travel during the holidays instead. My first attempt at making Christmas was in Sofia when Jake was one. That year the US Embassy flew in trees from who-knows-where, and we found a cheap string of lights that melted after being plugged in. Everyone else we knew had traveled leaving us to celebrate alone. Jon ended up going rock climbing Christmas Day, while I took Jake downtown on the tram to a newly opened McDonalds.
My attempts at making Christmas in Rio fell equally flat, as I found cooking and baking in the heat of summer without air-conditioning a real chore. We ended up in the pool trying to cool off.
I hit my stride when celebrating on Kwajalein. It wasn't without effort. No one works harder at celebrating Christmas than the Marshallese.  They have created their own traditions with original music, dances and parades.

 The island has made the season their own with wacky activities to get everyone in the mood. Santa is flown in by plane, then swims up to the beach in scuba gear with lighted tree. Palm trees are lit and sailboats make the parade of lights. Packages are ordered months in advance and everyone shares when the local grocery store is out of butter and sugar. With a lot of help I was able to make Christmas memorable for my family, although I was miles away from other family and friends.
So next chance I got, I got all of us flights to London to spend a traditional English Christmas with grandma, cousins and brothers. Everything was perfect, with the roast turkey dinner, pulling crackers and opening presents round the tree.  However, just days before, I had found out that my passport would not be renewed and my traveling days might soon be over. I was painfully aware that there are problems ahead that I cannot control or fix. There are times when things look bleak, however we dress them up with Christmas cheer and warm feelings.

Like the magi, I am looking for peace that will last past the holiday season, blot out desperation and the general stress of living. I look for hope that the future months and years will bring love and joy where there is despair.
Last Christmas I traveled to Sri Lanka in an attempt to skip the normal Christmas festivities and look further afield. I did not find any answers or everlasting peace, just a different perspective on the holidays.
However you get ready for the holiday, may it make you happy and hopeful.
(Below are blogs from my last two Christmases)

Blog: Living Ruins and a Dead Body

Blog: Skipping Christmas

Unpacking a Story

We have begun a new chapter in our lives, and that involves some tearing out and rebuilding. The ugly bathroom was the first to go.  In the process we uncovered some interesting "artifacts" left behind by the previous owner.  We puzzled over how these had come to be trapped in the walls or behind the plumbing. We will never know the story behind them as their owners have since passed on, an it is their story to tell.  I suppose one could make up a story involving a bullet and some carefully labelled nail files.
In the midst of the demolition, our long awaited shipment arrived from Kuwait. The shipping company, who I will not name here, was cagey about its whereabouts for months, and then suddenly it arrived on our doorstep. Way too tired to start unpacking, and not knowing where I'd put the long forgotten items anyway, I went to bed.

I woke up to find that Jon had unpacked and displayed my dearest memories for me.  They are my collection of decorative pieces picked up over the years and lugged from place to place. They date back to my first teapot, bought on my limited budget during my student days in Gloucestershire. Some are wedding gifts or gifts from students in Brazil. None of the pieces are large, because of having to be transported, and few are expensive, since I expected to lose a few when they fell into my toddlers' hands. I had begun to collect a painted egg from every country I visited until my one-year-old thought they were toys to be thrown around. A few of the wooden ones survived.

I was amazed at how good they all looked together in one display. Despite my obvious taste for color and pattern, they are very different in styles and reflect very different cultures. However, each has meaning to me, and there is a story behind each one. A friend once described the process of moving as packing and unpacking your life.
I questioned my husband on the location of some missing pieces I knew I had packed.  He suggested I might have put them in with something else and sure enough I found some hidden treasures that I had stuffed into a jigsaw puzzle box. I'm not sure that was such a good idea, because it is easy to miss something when sifting through 2000 puzzle pieces. But that is where I came upon the pictured conglomerate above.  And here is the story that lead to those separate memories being fused together.

The shipping company in Kuwait had quoted us a cost (one which our employer would not cover) of $3000 to move our personal items to the US. Under the misunderstanding that we could reduce that cost by half if we reduced the size of our shipment, we had begun to sell off as much as we could and repack items together to save space. I got rid of half my puzzles, and kept only those of places I had traveled to: London, Venice, Rio. Then I found all those small items I had picked up in bazaars in Eastern Europe and off the beach of the Marshall Islands that would fit inside the boxes with the pieces. The small Russian stacking doll had been a perfect choice when we lived in Bulgaria in 1996.  Then Russian crafts could be picked up cheaply at local stalls outside the empty shops. They made perfect gifts for family back home, and could easily fit in a suitcase. Even better, they were unbreakable and could be played with as a toy. Over the years, and five moves later, it is still with us. In my collection of painted eggs, I found one made of wax. It was a rather ugly candle, and I can't remember where it came from, but Jon liked it and it didn't take up much space.

The movers arrived and totally ignored all our pains to reduce the cubic volume and charged us $3000. There was nothing we could do but pay up and hope we didn't offend any port authorities enough to lose our boxes altogether.   A few days later we left the country, right before record high temperatures hit Kuwait.  That July they claimed the temperature had reached 62°C, or 143°F, the highest ever recorded on earth and still debatable.  I'm guessing our boxes were still sitting in a warehouse at the port at that time.  So the candle melted together with the puzzle pieces of London and the Russian stacking doll.
Displayed on my shelves I have pottery from Windsor, Istanbul, Sofia, Barcelona, Jerusalem and Warsaw.   I have hung on to gifts from Brazilians and Marshallese. And Jon's shelf now contains a bullet to go with his Scottish hip flask. My life unpacked is a potpourri of delicious reminders of where I have been. I could just frame my passport, but then I might forget the stories of my life.

Homecoming

I still don't quite understand the Homecoming tradition. I know that it attempts to promote school spirit around a football game, but why there is a coronation and why middle-schoolers dress in wacky costumes is not clear to me. I am trying to figure out how I, as a teacher, and how my son, as a senior, fit in.
We are celebrating 'coming home' by moving back into our Minnesota home and looking forward to fall and winter festivities surrounded by family and friends.

An unexpected bonus of moving back to the US was having old friends be able to come and visit. These are friends we made overseas, but have the Midwest as their home base. We reunited with some Kwaj friends and their three year old son. Fortunately the weather was warm enough for us to visit outside and enjoy the balmy end of summer season. The only down fall was the dropping walnuts. Our yard has three huge trees that drop their nuts the size of golf balls with every gust of wind. The nuts hit the roof, rain down on cars and patio furniture and cover the ground. Any activity outside becomes one of "duck and cover", always alert of falling nuts. Sitting outside becomes hazardous, and I have been struck on the head while sipping a glass of wine.
These conditions didn't deter our visiting three year old. He  promptly donned a bike helmet he found in the garage and continued to explore the back yard. There were nuts to toss, squirrels to chase, seedpods to pop and a garden with cherry tomatoes just ripe for the picking. Inside the house was a basement and an attic with endless possibilities for finding hidden treasures.

He discovered the delight of fishing off the dock and brought back my few years here when my sons were that age. They enjoyed the same delight in catching an ugly old bull head and then being afraid to touch it. I found myself once again doing the unwelcome job of de-hooking the fish.
At that time we had moved back to the US exactly because we wanted our boys to experience the simple pleasures that come with growing up in a small town in the Midwest.
So why did we leave again and take our family globe trotting, in and out of three high schools on different continents? In the backs of our minds we did have a nagging concern that we were depriving them of a wholesome childhood at the expense of our wanderlust.

My friends have now left with their little boy and travel half way across the globe to their home far away and I ponder this anew. In some ways all of my sons' life was a series of field trips. Trips out to explore new geography, to learn of the history and culture of their home, to see the living world around them. Then traveling back to the US each summer was yet another field trip to visit the people and history that make them who they are today.
I know at least one of my sons is tired of these trips, that like school field trips, are more about learning something new and less about pleasure.

Wherever we are, childhood is about learning, growing, exploring and pushing back boundaries. My children certainly have had the opportunity for that both home and abroad.  And while my boys have never had the chance to be crowned Homecoming king, they do understand the meaning of Homecoming. We come home to appreciate our roots before heading back out to take in some more of what the world has to offer. My oldest was described as "not a risk taker" at the age of three. Now I can see him very easily going on a scientific exploration of Antarctica!

Foreign Exchange Student at Football

My son's frustrating start to his senior year of high school began at the first home football game.  "I feel like no one cares about me," is his reaction.  He finds out only hours before the game he is supposed to be playing trombone in the band. He has no music and has never played any of the songs, including the national anthem.  No one has taken the time to share important information with him and he is lost. Technically he is not a new student, but a returning student who everyone knows by name. He attended Kindergarten here and is related to more than one member of staff. Where most of the town sees our family as returning home, my son feels like a foreign exchange student after being overseas for 11 years.

We got through the first home game by following the crowd and sitting with the cheering parents. I felt as foreign as my son. I was surprised that I was expected to show up to watch a game where my son was not playing, bring my own chair to sit out in the cold, and pay for the experience!  I had no idea what was going on the field, and worried how my son would do in his half-time performance.
This was obviously a community event with the whole town showing up.  Many were not watching the game, but watching kids who were there to run around and buy hot-dogs. There was a score board full of numbers, ( why not just 2-0?) , an announcer of player's names, and bright lights to highlight the action. None of it was of help to me. Later I discussed the game with my son. He said he sat next to a nerdy band kid who explained the game to him. Well it seems like someone finally realized there was a need to introduce this foreigner to his new home.

So at my next game I decided to play the foreign exchange student and ask for some clarification. I learned that there are nine players on the field, but another 25 kids dressed on the side lines. Why so many? Well, there are injuries and special players for different parts of the game and youngsters hoping to play varsity one day. I learned that when the refs throw a yellow rag down they aren't throwing a fit, but calling a foul. I learned that the "chain gang" on the side line aren't coaches or parents, but officials who mark where the ball went down, or where it should go down. I learned that when everyone "takes a knee", they aren't showing reverence, but rather they are in time-out, waiting to be allowed to play again.

But the most surprising revelation of the night was the story behind the girls all dressed in football jerseys and walking back and forth as a pack on the side lines. From what I could tell they weren't cheerleaders,  but more like groupies. I had to ask. I learned that each girl had asked a boy on the football team if she could wear his number for the season. Then she dutifully wore his "shirt" to each game and called out "We love our boys" in encouragement and support. After a touchdown the whole gang went down to the end zone and did jumping jacks numbering the score on the score board. It sounded very much like the medieval practice of a knight going out to battle wearing a lady's colors.

Family members and friends I was sitting with revealed all this tradition with pride. They themselves had worn a boy's number and shouted about their love. They described the pageantry at bigger schools where bands march, with flags and even guns are twirled!   You could hear the love and pride of mothers and grandparents as they cheer on their sons and grandsons, but never bragging. "He's faster than he looks!" "Was that my son?" The small town home game traditions are old and strong.