Solstice: Dark night, Starry night

Winter Festival was celebrated last night at school

Every year at midwinter, all the primary kids carry little glowing lanterns and snake their way through the darkness into the big circle. Songs are sung to the beat of the drum  Dark night, starry night...New beginnings. Like all previous Winter Festivals  - we’ve been to a few now - it is on a freezing cold night, under a million glinting stars.  And it’s very beautiful. The return of the light.

But this year our son is no longer in primary school. No lantern, no longer so engaged; but roaming loosely with his friends in the darkness, appearing periodically to tell us how bored he is. SIGH...We had to forbid him from bringing the soccer ball.

Though we all agreed afterwards, F too,  that the flaming hot air balloon lanterns released by the year eight kids were cool. They wafted up, fiery and silent, and away into the black sky. Magical. And on the way home in the car , F was humming Dark night, starry night...

(Winter Festival 2008 at Noosa Pengari school)

...the pimple, the detention, & Ferdinand Magellan

This brochure came home from school, promoting a program run by ‘ROPAK’ (Rites Of  Passage for Australian Kids) It’s one of many recent reminders that, as parents of an adolescent, we are entering The Difficult Years (strike dramatic chords of doom). 

There have also been special talks about how to keep them away from drugs and alcohol; we are armed with  pamphlets documenting scary neuroscience evidence regarding long term effects of said substances on under-eighteen brains. Handy hints on How To Communicate With Your Teenager ETC.

And now this graph, courtesy of ROPAK. According to which  ...subjective happiness (is there another sort?) peaks at age 12, then declines alarmingly till age 16. 

Funny how there’s always some ‘researcher’ who wants to come up with ‘scientific ‘ evidence to confirm the bleedin’ obvious, when all you need to do is drive past the local High School to see how hunched and self-conscious most of them look. I remember it well myself, the agonises and the ecstasies of adolescence. 

The other thing that came home from school this week was a Detention Slip. (Strike those Chords Of Doom) Regularly Late To Class, it said. It seems all seven of the boys in class got detentions. Seems they all suffer from selective deafness which causes them not to hear the end-of-lunch bell when they are playing soccer (which is whenever possible)

F was a bit pale as he handed the form to me for signing - it’s the first time he’s been In Trouble. I didn’t let him get off too lightly ie. made him sit through the serious “I’m not cross with you, but I want to understand what’s going on” talk. And the “Punctuality is important” talk. He couldn’t wait to escape. Back outside to kick the soccer ball. 

An hour or so later I found him whistling merrily as he carefully burnt the edges of a sheet of paper to make it look like ancient parchment. For a school project on Ferdinand Magellan and his Voyage of Discovery. (due last week) There was ash all over the kitchen but I didn’t have the heart to mention it. 

Ash - spotted kitchen, definitely in the ABNS category, as described by Engaging Your Adolescent seminar  ie Annoying But Not Serious

Oh, and the other marker of teenage-dom: His first pimple. On his chin. He seems quite proud of it. 

the mowhawk, the girlfriend

He’d kill me if he knew I was writing this - no matter how much I love and adore him. He is thirteen now, a teenager. I am no longer a child he informed us last week. In his still-high child’s voice. Hmm.

His friend E and he have been talking for a while about getting mowhawk haircuts, like E’s big brother. Went to pick him up from a sleep over at E’s last weekend and there they were, E and F sitting on the sofa with their brand-new mowhawks, looking  like a pair of young cockatoos, still wet behind the ears. 

Their sculpted crests were held aloft by a massive amount of product provided by E’s big brother. But even at their spikiest the mowhawks didn’t look very shocking. E’s Mum hadn’t shaved their heads completely, left it short and sleek on the sides - done a pretty good hairdressing job I thought. Though I tried to act at least a bit disapproving - I mean what’s the point of a mowhawk if your parents think it looks cute?

Body-piercings, tattoos, different matter altogether, and please may they go out of fashion soon, before he’s old enough. But hair - do what you like - it grows back. 

The next day, F’s splendid cockscomb had collapsed, and it looked, I thought like a quite stylish haircut. But what would I know? I found him gazing tragically into the bathroom mirror. 

My old hair gel, expiry date 2007, retrieved from the depths of the bathroom drawer, failed to save the day, in fact made matters worse: sticky and limp and icky-smelling.

I look crap, he announced morosely. He jammed the awful football beanie his dad bought him on his head and it stayed there for several days. Everyone at school, he said thought his hair looked crap. Like a metro-sexual. Pressed, he wasn’t quite sure what a metro-sexual was, other than a person with un-cool hair. (I’m not sure myself)

Coupla days later - we were kicking the soccer ball back and forth on the lawn - I noticed that the mowhawk had re-arisen phoenix-like into a pointy, sweet-smelling mountain range, shining in the morning sun.

You got some proper gel,  I say

Yeah, he says

Someone give it to you?

Yeah (giving the ball a good kick)

One of your mates, E?

Nuh...

One of the kids on the bus?

Nuh...(kick)

Someone in your class?

Yeah..

One of the boys?

Nuh (a little smile breaking out)

Hnm, one of the girls then, mmm

He assumes an exasperated ‘Don’t you know anything?’ expression and says

Actually...well haven’t you ever heard of a girlfriend?

(keep kicking the ball)

Oh really , who is it? 

Not telling....

...and the little smile again....

Sorry no pic of The Mowhawk, but I have this thing (possibly paranoid) about not wanting my boy’s photo on the internet...

Here is a photo of his bedroom - dear old Tintin and even the footy heroes now all but obliterated by The Simpsons

my parents’ wedding day

I have a theory that my parents married each other mainly to annoy their respective parents. 

My mother was supposed to have married some nice well-fed Jewish boy, a son of someone in her parents’ Sydney eastern suburbs social circle. Her parents  were newly-affluent first-and second-generation immigrants and my mother was your classic Jewish Princess. 

My mother’s mother, Grandma Julie,  was I think, seriously pissed off that she missed out on the big show-off wedding in the synagogue, with her daughter swathed in metres of tulle, dripping pearls and gardenias. Reception with free-flowing champagne, dancing; and the mother-of-the-bride the envy of all her bridge-party friends. 

Mum’s old scrap books - which I never saw until after her death - suggest that up until then, Laurel had happily fulfilled her mother’s social aspirations. The scrap books are full of cuttings from the Sydney social pages. Sweet and  pretty, my mother  is usually on the arm of some tuxedoed young man. And is described as attractive brunette or charming and vivacious...in a breathtaking brown suit or  striking a new fashion note in a dark green ensemble

She’s snapped in strapless evening gowns, with gardenias in her hair, at The Younger Set Ball and various charity dos. She is seen at  The Trocadero, Valentine’s and  skating parties at The Glacerium. Always well-dressed and always smiling. 

Then, in her early twenties my mother sails off to England ( prettily-gloved hands waving, great tangle of streamers from the deck of the Stratheden ) and meets my father.  

I suppose my father was a breath of fresh air to her. He was tall and lean and cynical. Handsome, of course, too. Quick-witted, and not afraid to hold controversial opinions. He quoted Marx and Shakespeare, Shaw and Russell. 

He took her camping. He introduced her to a different idea of what it meant to be Jewish. Told her about Jewish intellectuals and artists - Einstein, Chagall, Menhuin. She was prepared to overlook the fact that he could be a bit moody. 

His parents had hoped that he would marry a nice fresh-scrubbed Sunday School teacher from the Camberwell Church Of Christ in Melbourne, where my grandfather was a lay preacher. They were stern old Scots, teetotallers, who knew that money was the root of all evil. God knows what they thought of the vulgar new in-laws!

My father grew up in a house where good morals and correct English grammar was more important than having fun. Unsurprisingly, he ended up drinking, smoking, womanising...

So there they all are, all those long-dead ancestors of mine, on that long-ago day in September 1953, lined up for the photographer. Both sets of parents probably full of misgivings. 

And of course it didn’t turn out so well. Mum used to say that the marriage was happy for the first year or so. I think that meant before I was born. 

I often look at this photo and marvel at the absolute otherness of the two families. And feel how I have a foot in each camp somehow.

Pick yourself up, dust yourself down...

and start all over again. 

For me it’s essentially a matter of getting out of bed and dashing off to gym. Get the serotonin pumping before the existential angst has a chance to fully kick in. If I do this, my day will usually be okay.  

At this time of year it’s dark and cold, at 6 a.m. and bed is cosy. Early morning discipline has been flagging - one reason for yesterday’s miserable glumph.

Once I’m out of bed - yes, I did it this morning - it’s all pretty easy. Into the gym gear, quick drink of hot lemon and out the door before the kookaburras start up. It was 13 degrees, according to the car thermometer when I left. The winding road to town was empty. The village still asleep. It is my favourite time of day.

As well as warming up the body, I give my mind some early-morning stimulation via the iPod. I have podcasts of  dharma teachings, Radio National, BBC, all kinds of  stuff, as well as music.

Today I listened to a TED-talk: Someone called Dan Buettner was talking about longevity. They’ve found, apparently, a group of very-long-lived people in Sardinia, and another in Okinawa, Japan. And of course they had to come up with some Americans too. What did they all have in common?

Interestingly, the longest-living Americans turned out to be Seventh Day Adventists. The Seventh Day Adventists ( unlike the other groups) include many and varied gene-pools,  but all have similar rituals and rhythms to their lives. 

One of which is the Day Of Rest which (like Jewish Shabbat) is observed for twenty-four hours from sunset on Friday. No going shopping, no overtime, no hurtling down the highway to get your kids to a soccer match. Nothing more active than a ramble in Nature. God, how civilized!

All three communities had a spiritual basis of some sort, and a strong sense of mutual support. People are surrounded - often spend their whole lives with - like minded others. 

Which made me think about what I wrote yesterday- how all those daily emotional stresses and strains out in the rough-and-tumble  human world actually cause wear and tear on our nervous systems, our adrenals etc. I can often feel it physically, in my heart or my belly, that acidic feeling of anxiety or frustration, even if it’s just momentary. 

It seems people living in close-knit, supportive communities suffer from a lot fewer inflammatory diseases.

In fact according to Dan Buettner spending quiet/meditative  time - whether it’s ancestor worship or a walk in nature has scientifically proven health benefits. So darned obvious really  - but why do most of us so readily relinquish our precious quiet time?  As if ‘busy’ was good. 

Most of these folk who live long healthy lives eat lightly, and mostly from plant-sources. Most of them don’t do any structured ‘exercise’ ( I’m heaving weights up and down when I hear this) - but exert themselves every day in the normal course of their lives. I bet they don’t spend a lot of time staring at computer screens either. Oh and they mostly have gardens....I think I ‘ll get out right now and attack those weeds in the veggie patch.  

the green-eyed monster

“The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”

~John Milton, Paradise Lost

My friend S, a fellow-Gestalt therapist said yesterday, “Everyone experiences it, it’s just that we actually talk about it”

We were having coffee in town and  discussing a newly-formed  group which neither of us had been invited to join. We were feeling a bit miffed about being excluded - though we realised on closer investigation that we probably didn’t really even want  to be part of that particular outfit. Yet still the sense of exclusion, Why weren’t we asked? We had to laugh.

My feelings of rejection are not always so easily ferreted out and owned-up-to and laughed about. Like most of us humans I'm buffetted about all day long by the subtle or not-so-subtle currents of acceptance and rejection, approval and judgement. Real or imagined. 

Sometimes it’s a vibe from complete strangers - or from that person who always ignores me, never seems to recognise me. Sometimes it’s from loved-ones ( ‘Are you cranky with me?’) It’s a kind of constant static. The over-worked ego monitoring & responding to all those little interactions.

Some of us feel it more keenly than others. Some protect themselves by living alone in a cave. Some of us  brazen it out with more ease. Some days  it’s all water off a duck’s back. And some days are worse - more raw, more vulnerable - than others. Actually I am having one of those sort of days today.

Cyber-space is my cave for hiding out. Nothing in my (mostly pleasant) external reality has changed, but I’m swamped with feelings of despair and tedious old tape loops about failure and inadequacy. Even while another part of me knows otherwise. 

But it's interesting to notice how writing it down actually changes how I feel, takes  the sting out of it.

I'm tempted to delete all the above & dash off  one of my usual cheery posts about how great my life is. Or else offer some wise reflections about  how everything is illusion, all impermanent, and how  it’s only our clinging to the ego and the false sense of separation that cause our misery etc. 

oh bla bla. 

this is just how it is today, tomorrow, who knows?

Rest in natural great peace this exhausted mind,

Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thoughts

Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves

In the infinite ocean of samsara.

Rest in natural great peace.

—  Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche ( quoted by Sogyal Rinpoche)

Wet ‘N Wild

F has been campaigning to go to Wet’NWild  for the last two or three birthdays, but until now we have always managed to squirm out of it. ( It’s too far to drive, too expensive, too cold at this time of year). 

This year his father and I decided to overcome our theme-park-phobia. We went the whole hog: Seven boys, two carloads, 8.30 a.m. departure. We took sausages for the barbeque ( & tofu for the vegetarian), tomato sauce and a chocolate birthday cake baked by D. We took cups, plates, chips, fruit, hummus, the Esky, candles for the cake, matches, towels. Etc. etc. 

We arrived just before Wet’NWild opening time at 10, and left when it closed at  chilly 4p.m. The boys ran around excitedly from one thrilling drenching experience to the next, returning every hour or so, breathless and dripping wet, for a quick pit-stop gobble of  food before dashing off  again.

D & I  spent most of the day in a large pavillion full of empty picnic tables, near the closed-for-Winter ‘Calypso Beach’.

Our day passed gently enough - we sat at our picnic table and flicked through the weekend papers. We prepared for the next feeding frenzy, and cleared  away the half-eaten remains of the previous one - buns, biscuits, pieces of carrot abandoned in the rush to get back to the action. And we  shooed  those damn crows away. Turn your back for a moment and they were plucking bread rolls off the table. 

All this to a soundtrack of thumping doof beat pumped out from speakers around the park. If they’d turned the music off it might have felt almost peaceful, in a dead, off-season-ish way.You might have heard  some squealing and splashing and probably the chug of all those pumps sending mega-litres of heated water down slides and tunnels and into waves and whirlpools and fake waterfalls. The place was half-empty, which suited us fine - no crowds, no queues. 

It’s totally tacky of course. All concrete, and synthetic grass, and faded gaudiness. The fake beach, the huge carpark, the badlands-feelingy, with the Highway zooming past outside. But the boys were euphoric. The Black Hole,The Tornado, Kamikaze. It was so cool, it was awesome. 

I had a brief wild ride on what the boys regarded as a pretty tame water-slide ( You screamed, on that little kiddie thing?) Then a nice soak in a hot spa, then repaired back to the picnic shelter and the Weekend Magazine.

My personal highlight: late arvo, after the cake, the song etc.: My now -13 year old boy said “This is the best birthday I’ve ever had ” And hugged me - in front of all his friends!