Auld Lang Syne

Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind

The oldest friends I can remember, the oldest "friends" I can remember playing with as a child, are my cousins Mark and David Boe. Aunt Mary would come over to our house fairly regularly to visit with mom and while she did, Mark and David would play with Susie and me in our backyard at our house in Bloomington. It's probably about then that I learned how to tell time, because when it was time for Aunt Mary to leave, we'd hide Mark and David. After all, if they were hidden, they couldn't leave, could they? Never mind that we couldn't play with them either, it was all just part of a wonderful game. We had all sorts of wonderful games, we four! Some were part of the silliness that is just part of being a member of the Boe family...

At family dinners, someone will always quietly starting passing ALL the serving dishes around the table in the same direction. There will be some people who are in on the joke and others who are so busy talking and eating, they don't realize it's all for nothing. Everyone waits to see how long it takes those folks to notice. Except for the year Barbie, who was still in a high chair on the corner of the table, got impatient with the nonsense and flipped the bowl of mashed potatoes on the floor. She still hears about that one!

Another dinner table bit of silliness is to put your index finger on the side of your nose. If you noticed someone doing it, you were supposed to do it too. You were just supposed to continue doing whatever it is you were doing, or saying, but with your finger on your nose. The big joke was to see who was the last one who noticed.

We also held Easter Egg hunts and then Easter Egg smashing contests. There's an art to coming up the winner in the egg smashing contest. But I still remember the year Mark hid my mom's egg under a plant next to a dead robin. Her shrieking and scolding and his laughing are the epitome of both of them and still makes me smile.

Then there is the habit of pulling out your hankie (or kleenex, or anything white) to wave goodbye as people leave. I'm told that comes from great-grandma Geisen, Big Muddy. But everyone does it for everyone, especially as they leave the Farm. It's a way of saying I Love You.

But probably the biggest silliness Susie and I had with Mark and David growing up was on holidays when someone was cooking a turkey and we'd form teams to try to be the first to get the red and white temperature probe that pops up when the turkey is done. I have no idea who came up with this game, but we played it for years. We'd form teams of two, usually me and Mark and then Suellen and David. We'd go to great lengths to get the cook (usually Aunt Mary) on our side, then distract the other team so we could be in the kitchen at the exact moment the bird came out of the oven and claim the probe. The rest of the evening would be spent trying to steal it away from the other team. This was incredibly important because whomever had the probe could POKE the other team with it!

Mark and David are from a family of five boys. They've shared with me that Susie and I are like the sisters they've never had. I always looked at Mark as the older brother I never had. I don't see him that often because he lives half a content away. But he always calls me when he comes back home so we can be sure to see each other. I have always felt protected by Mark. He was there for me when my mom died. He keeps in touch in spite of the distance. So....as we take out our white hankies and wave goodbye to 2011, here's a toast to my oldest friend and favorite cousin. Love you, Mark!

We'll take a cup of kindness yet
For auld lang syne

Not a Day Goes By

Got a picture of you I carry in my heart
Close my eyes to see it when the world gets dark
Got a memory of you I carry in my soul
I wrap it close around me when the nights get cold
- Lonestar

Pictures are so important. They capture moments in our lives, in our histories. The truly good photographs capture personalities. I have always been interested in history. I think that came from reading Laura Ingalls' books. From that, it was a short leap to wanting to know about my own history. And the Thomas family was rich in that history.

Grandma Helen had a wonderful treasure trove of old papers and documents and photos that have all been passed on to me. I have indenture agreements from the 1700s. I have property deeds that pre-date the American Revolution. I have family bible records and wills. I have business IOUs that give me insight into my ancestors' business transactions, and diaries that share private thoughts, and personal correspondence that document romances and family feuds. As I delved into the genealogies of the various family branches, I found church records and census records and cemetery records. I traveled to places to get first-hand information, and watched as the internet offered an explosion of scanned records.

The most fascinating have been the photographs. The earliest I have are the silhouettes and the pencil sketches that were done at the time of the Revolution, long before the invention of photography. But they clearly show me who our Dutch ancestors were - the Van Schaicks. And then I have some treasured daguerreotypes that were taken before the Civil War that show me what my Thomas ancestors looked like, including Moses Thomas who was born in 1779. Over time, the photographs change from sepia to black and white to color.

There are hints in these photographs too. In multiple photographs of the same individual, some show nothing but seriousness. Others show a twinkle in their eyes. Others have a hint of sadness. Some have very plain clothing while others have jewelry or a pocket watch or a mason's pin. As I've taken up scrapbooking, I'm looking at how I can pull together the information I have with the photos I have and preserve the memories of these ancestors. It is important to know our past - who they were, the world that they had to live in, and the legacy that they left us that we will, in turn, leave our children.

For Christmas, Theresa gave me a flat "family tree" metal sculpture that is about 3x3' and hangs on the wall. It has several small picture frames that you can hang among the leaves on the tree, of family members. She started with my mother in the center and branched out from there. It's beautiful, and it made me cry. It's full of all the pictures I carry in my heart...

Poems, Prayers and Promises

And talk of poems and prayers and promises
And things that we believe in.
How sweet it is to love someone
How right it is to care.
How long it's been since yesterday
And what about tomorrow
And what about our dreams
And all the memories we share?
- John Denver

On Christmas Eve, we were all gathered around the kitchen center island munching on snacks, and someone made reference to a line in the poem "The Night Before Christmas." Laura's boyfriend had no idea what we were referring to. We were all surprised that he didn't understand the reference and in unison, the girls started reciting the poem. They didn't quite get all the way through it, but they were close. And we started talking about poetry. The other one they know well and can recite most of is "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert W. Service. It's a long one, 14 verses.

Both my mother and my father's mother, my Grandma Helen, used to recite poetry to me. I'm not sure why my mother was so big on poetry because I don't ever remember her mother reciting poetry. Grandma Helen had all sorts of nonsense poems she would recite to us. But every December 24th, my mother would read "The Night Before Christmas" to us. And "The Cremation of Sam McGee" was one of her favorites and we all thought it was just ghastly enough to be fascinated with it as children.

Another favorite of hers was "Barbara Fritchie". A story about Stonewall Jackson marching into Frederick town, and 90 year-old Barbara Fritchie flying the Union flag from her attic window in defiance. And when the rebels tried to shoot it down:

'Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag,' she said.

I always thought that was an incredibly brave and patriotic thing to do. And if I reflect back, that was probably planted the earliest seeds of my patriotism. The understanding that being patriotic means taking a stand for your country in the face of personal cost. The poem was written in 1864, and whether or not the events in the poem occurred exactly as written, it has inspired countless others, including Winston Churchill who visited the town in 1943 and recited the poem as well.

One Christmas, Grandma Helen gave us the book, "The Best Loved Poems of the American People." I spent countless hours pouring over that book. It contained some famous passages from Shakespeare, some well known Bible verses, famous speeches, songs such as the Star Spangled Banner and God Bless America, and dozens of others. Many of the poems in that book are part of the Core Knowledge curriculum at my school. At a time when too many school districts are cutting curricula, poetry is too often on the chopping block. Or it is replaced with simplistic poems by modern children's authors. Classic poems are just as important as classic literature, and can be just as inspirational. It's important to share them with our children as part of our past and our future.

And what about our dreams,
And all the memories we share?

Daddy's Money

She's got her daddy's money
Her mama's good looks
More laughs than a stack of comic books
A wild imagination
A college education
Add it all up, it's a deadly combination
- Ricochet

My Baby Girl was telling me about the person she was interning with. His parents wanted to send him to a language immersion boarding school at age 11. Boarding schools were the norm in his country, but he objected to the language immersion. He told them he refused to go. They insisted as his parents they knew best and he must listen to them. He told them if they sent him, he would break all the windows he possibly could on his first day there. The school would either expel him or give him another chance. If the school gave him another chance, he would break any remaining windows at which point they most certainly would expel him and he would never get into another boarding school. His parents decided not to send him. My daughter did not consider this very good advertising for having children.

While each of my children have presented their own parenting challenges, it seems to me that she has been my most strong willed of the three, although to a less violent degree than her mentor. "No, I will NOT join the National Honor Society!!!" and other such statements were not uncommon. She thought up activities her sisters never would have, constantly kept us on our toes with her activities, and continues to do so.

One area where my husband and I are strong partners is our parenting. Not that we have always made the best parenting choices - after all, no one gives you a manual - but we do have certain areas where we strongly agree, and I think this has been key. The first is that we believe in helping our kids channel their personality traits constructively. This has been key over and over and over (and I have been fortunate enough to build an entire school on this philosophy). It meant that when my middle daughter demanded a lot of physical attention, then we looked for socially acceptable ways for her to do that at each stage of her growing up so she didn't seek it in unacceptable ways. It meant when my oldest daughter acknowledged her perfectionist traits, we helped her look at careers where that was an asset.

We've also always tried to ask ourselves what our end goal is in any situation - and keep focused on that rather than the short term. That's why when my Baby Girl insisted the NHS was stupid, we were able to come back at her with the reasoning that we wanted some stand-out listings on her college applications and give her a list of what we saw as options rather than get in a battle over NHS. It's an adult version of....You have to wear socks, do you want the red socks or the blue socks? Parenting this way minimizes a lot of the teenage battles we know our friends had. It also lays the ground work to discuss with kids why some choices are better than others, thinking through options, etc.

And the last thing we did was tag-teaming. When one of us was better suited to deal with a situation, we acknowledged that and took the lead. Or, when one of us had reached our limit, we acknowledged that too and took over for the other one. Sometimes we were able to realize that limit before things escalated. Other times, maybe not so much. But it was huge to be able to do that for each other.

So my take on this is that when children give us challenges growing up, if we as parents invest in them and support them and nurture their strong will (instead of medicating them) these are the children who will grow up to have the most impact on this world. I can look at my Baby Girl's mentor and know that somewhere along the way, his parents did something very right.