Christmas 2019

We broke down and bought the kids a Nintendo switch.

While touched by the kids' desire to want to buy gifts from r one another, we consciously decided to scale back this Christmas (despite the Nintendo purchase), and encouraged them to write cards to one another. They included coupons redeemable for chores.

After opening presents, we headed to the pool for a quick dip and to allow Clementine to try out the mermaid tail Santa brought her.

Christmas dinner.

Grief and Loss

It is not easy to remember Christmas isn't a happy time of year for everyone. 

For every family gathering under a twinkling Christmas tree, opening presents amidst a sea of wrapping paper, sipping egg nog or mulled wine, bellies full of Christmas ham and candied yams, there is someone sitting at a hotel bar watching football or cricket, perhaps far from home. 

A co-worker in the security section told me yesterday he was working on Thursday. He said he didn't mind. Working on Thursday, Christmas Day, at least meant he got Saturday off and two days off in a row when paired with Sunday. He's here in Colombo by himself, his college-aged kids back at university in the States. He said he didn't mind and had found the silver lining in his situation, but it's hard not to imagine him wanting to be somewhere else, anywhere else, than alone in Sri Lanka on Christmas, despite the warm weather, palm trees, pools, and beaches.

I think most people have mixed feelings about Christmas. I know Elise does. I do, too. Sometimes, I feel deficient because I don't loooove Christmas, that Christmas isn't my favorite holiday. I like it well enough, and I do love spending Christmas with Elise and enjoy how much magic it brings the kids. 

Christmas has always served as a poignant reminder of a childhood being shuttled back and forth between divorced parents. Every other year I would spend Christmas morning with my mom then at 12:00 my dad would come pick us up to spend a second Christmas in the afternoon with him, an afternoon which usually began with a long Christmas dinner with distant relatives and innumerable cousins I didn't know or see but once a year. If that. Every other year, the opposite would be true, we'd spend Christmas morning with my dad, until 12:00 when he would take us to my mom's house. 

Perhaps, I should have grown out of this resentment by now, but this was pretty much the norm until I had a family of my own, spending part of the day with my mom and part of the day with my dad. 

Before Elise and I met, I spent several Christmases by myself. Likely, intentionally. Exhausted by the effort of trying to navigate this balancing act. Perhaps, I was in Boulder where my work schedule and lack of disposable income made it difficult to fly back to Florida. I would go on long bike rides or a hike in the morning, then maybe to a movie at night. It was lonely as hell, but bittersweet because it was a path consciously chosen, self-imposed exile. 

It's hard to be "big" on Christmas coming from South Florida. No Christmas in Florida is like the silver screen, Hollywood vision with snowmen, caroling, mugs of hot chocolate, and going window-shopping in the town square. South Florida has its own unique conventions for Christmas. Not the least of which is a boat parade. 

My mom was never "big" on Christmas either. She had her own way of doing things, a way to put her unique stamp on the holiday season which included not having a Christmas tree. She would pick a pine branch from the yard and dress it up as the saddest looking, Charlie Brown Christmas Christmas tree you'd ever seen. Sometimes, she wouldn't even do that. Instead, she would just get a poinsettia and call it the Christmas tree. We didn't have Christmas decorations and we never put Christmas lights on the house. She never got a Christmas ham or turkey, but entertained with a variety of small game birds, quails, dove, and Cornish game hens. We'd have Publix fried chicken on Christmas Eve. 

There have been a couple of Christmases since she died, but she is always missed. For a lot of others, this will be the first Christmas without a loved one. 

I recently stumbled upon an interview with Stephen Colbert, the late-night TV host, conducted back in August by Anderson Cooper, the CNN anchorman. I don't know how I missed it.

The lengthy exchange (as detailed in an article in Vanity Fair by Kevin Fitzpatrick) began with Anderson Cooper recalling the death of his mother earlier this year. Cooper then pivoted to 1974, the year Stephen Colbert’s father and two brothers died in a plane crash when he was only 10. 

As Colbert explained how his upbringing subsequently pushed him toward escapist fantasy literature and comedy, Cooper questioned how the late-night host learned to accept tragedy as a way of life. “You told an interviewer that you have learned to—in your words—‘love the thing that I most wish had not happened. You went on to say, ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ Do you really believe that?”

“Yes,” Colbert replied, later clarifying the quote originated with Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien. “It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that. I don’t want it to have happened. I want it to not have happened, but if you are grateful for your life—which I think is a positive thing to do, not everybody is, and I am not always but it's the most positive thing to do—then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can’t pick and choose what you're grateful for.”

Colbert added that the common bonds of suffering can often bring people closer. “You get the awareness of other people’s loss, which allows you to connect with that other person, which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it’s like to be a human being if it’s true that all humans suffer."

I believe this is an important reminder that life is a gift to he appreciated. All of it. The bad along with the good. Yes, loved ones will die, accidents will happen, friends and family will get sick. This is all -- as tragic as it is -- life. 

Bob Ross, the TV painter with the frizzy hair and soothing voice, perhaps said it best in an episode of his show The Joy of Painting from fter his wife, Jane, died from cancer. 

In the episode, he's painting a scene with a lake resting between two majestic mountains. He loads his brush up with a dark mixture of paint and starts to dab it all across the bottom of the mountains.

"Don't worry," he tells viewers, "I'm only adding this dark for contrast. Gotta have dark. Gotta have opposites, dark and light, light and dark, continually in painting. If you have light on light, you have nothing. If you have dark on dark, you basically have nothing," he practically whispers, his brush tapping rhythmically on the canvas. "It's like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come."

Belief

Last night, Friday night movie night, we watched The Rise of the Guardians, a tale of belief, notably the competing desires of both the Bogeyman, aka Pitch Black, and Jack Frost to be believed in by little kids. 

It's the time of year when, as parents, we answer a lot of questions about belief and existence. Peter constantly asks, "Are you Santa?" Or downright states, "Santa isn't real." Sam is at the age where he's afraid to not believe, as though not believing means he won't get any Christmas presents, or more largely, that not believing signals a transition, growth, from the innocence of youth to something else, something he may not be fully ready to face. He may have already crossed the Rubicon of belief. If he has, he's been awfully quiet on the subject. 

For Clementine's sake we quiet Peter's doubts. If he doesn't believe in magic, don't spoil it for those who still do. Without really answering his question, staying intentionally vague, neither affirming nor denying the existence of Santa, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny. 

Somewhere along the way, Elise and I stopped forcing religion on the kids. When the kids were younger and when we lived in Florida, we occasionally attended church on Sunday mornings. For a short while, we said prayers before bed, when Elise or I were tucking the kids in, kneeling at the foot of their beds, clasping our hands together, bending our arms at the elbow, and bringing our clasped hands to our foreheads, short letters to God dictated to our bed linen, thanking Him for certain things, requesting of Him others. We still say the blessing before most meals, but have directed some of those prayers to Poseidon, Zeus, Vishnu, Buddha, Mohammad, or any deity du jour.

Attending church in Colombo is a practical unreality. Last Easter Sunday, suicide bombers blew up churches and the lobbies of hotels catering to wealthy Westerners. Needless to say, we don't plan to go anywhere near a church or a Western brand name hotel this Christmas. Jews and Muslims in the United States may harbor similar fears. 

All the kids attended church preschool. It was just the right amount of religion at the time. 

I don't know if either Elise or I are prepared to say we don't believe in God or a god. I do think we are prepared to say we no longer believe in religion, at least institutionalized religion as it is practiced in most places around the world, an artificial construct to gather money, collect power, and exert control over others. In that sense, I don't know what to believe.

In a less religious household it is more challenging to keep the spirit of Christmas from being all about getting toys and commercialism. Last night at dinner, I had to remind the kids Jesus was a real person who imparted upon the world real kindness and forgiveness. Christmas is about Jesus' sacrifices, and we should remember to treat others as we would like to be treated, to be kind to one another, and to forgive. While we're enjoying the Christmas ham, drinking plummed wine, and opening presents. 

It's hard to say, but if I wasn't more religious when my mom was alive, I definitely feigned religion better for her benefit. Towards the end, I don't think I was fooling her. She was always perceptive and likely sensed she was losing me, but having her in my life at least forced me to go through the motions.

Watching the movie last night did make me think about belief. What do I believe in? 

Belief is a form of trust. I believe in Elise. I trust her. I believe in myself and encourage my kids to believe in themselves, too. Things many pray for we can make happen ourselves if we believe in our own capability. 

I don't think too deeply on the subject. On the subject of spiritualism or the afterlife, I prefer to be surprised. I have faith things will turn out all right and don't worry about much, but not because a higher power is watching over us or guiding our hand, because we've worked hard to be capable individuals with family and a few close friends to lean on; that's what I believe in.

Democracy

This not a political post.

But it is a post about politics. What's the difference? In an era of increasingly polemic idealogical differences between the two primary political parties, I've become more and more interested in the structure of democracy in the United States, if not the policies themselves. How did we get here? And where do we go now?

I recently read what I thought were two very interesting articles. The first talks about structural flaws in American democracy, most notably in the Senate and Electoral College. As the article explains, these structural deficiencies were intentionally baked into the Constitution by the Founding Father's. Today, and possibly going forward, these deficiencies may lead the United States from functioning as a true democracy. 

The second talks about why the beliefs of the two primary political parties have diverged so dramatically, so quickly, and so acrimoniously, and how that division will continue to become exaggerated going forward. 

Neither article really speaks to policy, or the "why" of government, but more to the "how" and what it portends for American democracy in the future. 

I respect the right of anyone to have widely different political beliefs than I do, even if I completely don't understand why they think the way they do. I know I have a very different world view than many Americans who probably don't think too much about what goes on outside of America's borders, if they think much about what goes on outside their county or even town. I respect the right of those to have a different political beliefs than I, understanding I would receive the same consideration. But that may not be the case now or in the near future as America becomes less a true democracy. 

It's hard not to extrapolate this argument out to it's furthest logical conclusion. If the structural flaws in the American political system are not corrected through legislation -- noting they are only flaws or deficiencies because the Founding Father's could have never imagined the internet, the strength of social media, or the fact what is true or fact can be controvertible -- the country is no longer a democracy, in the sense individual Americans do not have equal representation nor the same political rights. The disproportionate political rights will, inevitably lead to disproportionate human and individual rights as the majority party impresses their priorities and beliefs on the minority party. This is already happening in countries like Israel to the Arab minority and India to the Muslim minority. 

The fault line in America is along idealogical lines. For now. Though there are cracks along racial and  religious lines, America is strong. I am hopeful that unlike Pangaea, our nation will not drift apart, that our tectonic plate of shared culture will hold together. 

Hiriketiya

For Thanksgiving, we decided to drive south to the beach to go surfing.  We left Thanksgiving day morning, quietly forgoing the traditional turkey trot, hopping on the Southern Highway instead.

After leaving the freeway in Matara, we wound our way along a two-lane highway, occasionally coming car door to sea several times before veering off the main road onto a cobblestone path leading down to the sea.

Hiriketiya is a hidden cove surrounded by cliffs, tall coconut palms, and the press of the green, green jungle.  The forest descends all the way to the sea.  We stayed at a modern and hip hostel called the Salt House.  Complete with fish tacos, yoga, and cold beer. 

The hipster infiltration of Sri Lanka was evident, though not overwhelming or unwelcome.  Brick-oven pizzas and beer on the beach were pleasant niceties after the longish drive.  We had Thanksgiving dinner by the ocean, waves crashing on the rocks at our feet, the kids exploring tide pools in the fading light of dusk, surfers splitting the sea behind them, lingering in the swells well past sundown.  Our table sat on a wooden deck overlooking the water; the kids ate spaghetti and meatballs.  Elise and I shared french fries and Lion lagers.  That night as we walked home, fireflies lit our path, illuminating the darkest parts of the jungle; I didn't even know there were fireflies in Sri Lanka. 

The next day, we spent the entire Black Friday on the beach.  We borrowed a long board from the hotel, and Peter and Sam took turns surfing.  The break was bigger and further out in Weligama, well over their heads, so I swam next to them as they paddled into the surf.  There can be no pursuit as tiring as accompanying your son or daughter learning to surf.  I pulled them past the break, then pushed them into the wave.  I couldn't see them over the break, but knew they caught when they just disappeared beyond the wave towards shore.  I would then swim back to shore to pull them back out again; I slept well that night.

We have always said Sam is like a puppy dog, tireless.  If you threw Sam a frisbee, he would do the human equivalent of catch it in his mouth and return it to you endlessly, until your arm got tired, until your arm fell off.  Elise even calls him by the nickname "puppy".  Sam is to surfing as a dog is to a tennis ball.  He was relentless in the waves, holding his own with surfers twice his age, staying in the sea until his cheeks and nose were pink and blistered (we bought him zinc oxide when we got home). 

As Sam enters middle school and the fury of adolescence, he occasionally has what Elise likes to call "snow globe moments", times when his brain is like a snow globe that has been shaken, waiting to settle.  He doesn't know why he is angsty or upset.  Likely, there is no rational reason for his reactions during these moments, except for a torrent of neurons firing in his pubescent brain, lightning crashing. But there can be no better balm or elixir to combat this storm than the churning sea.  There is likely no greater gift Elise or I could bestow upon him then the opportunity to sit in the ocean and watch the water come in and go out underneath him, a steady rhythm when there is nothing else steady in his quickly-accelerating existence. 

And there were monkeys.  The view from our patio:

Clementine's Christmas Pageant

Clementine as the narrator in the primary school Christmas pageant!