Christmas 2004
Dear family and friends,
We hope you are having a happy, healthy and relaxed holiday season!
I had written a positive and dignified Christmas letter this year for a change. However Nina declared it “the most boring thing she’d ever read,” and the children insisted we go back to our usual format of foibles, which I didn’t have trouble finding in the family journal. So here goes.
For our part, if last year was a quest for survival, this year was a time of just plain going through hell, mostly due to several dumb decisions I made.
I went around all year babbling hysterically to anyone who would listen about High-Tech Middle School (which I gave in to Jake not attending after he was accepted, and school has been hell ever since) and Ficus trees (I had ours taken out because the roots were a problem, not realizing that Jake still liked to climb on it, and that we would spend months in intense mourning over the tree). You don’t know how many Ficus Benjamina trees there are in San Diego until you’ve foolishly yanked yours out, and every time you see one, it feels like a knife in your heart. I couldn’t get over the fact that I had made these poor decisions that seemed to be ruining our lives.
Then our bathroom floor began to literally cave in. The tile cracked, the floor became spongy, and Mike had to cover it with a plywood board so we didn’t fall through it. Water also started leaking through a basement wall. It looked like it was time to remodel the bathrooms! We spent the summer stuck in San Diego, trying to accomplish that goal. However, trying to remodel a house at this time is comparable to trying to buy a house at this time … not easy. Contractors are all busy and charging a lot. It didn’t happen, and we are still frustrated and working on it. At least the pipes have rusted into place and stopped leaking.
My big adventure for this year has been substitute teaching. Subbing is usually somewhere between a small disaster and a large disaster. It feels kind of like jumping off a cliff … whee!! … here I am with 30 probably mischievous kids … with five minutes to look over the lesson plans for the day … will I survive?
Mike is still working at Cal-OSHA, and has virtually a second job driving our boys to hockey. Though in all his spare time he did manage to finish our attic into a wonderful half-height sleeping space for the boys. It is very cozy and picturesque – wood paneled ceiling, beige scavenged carpet and shuttered window – in Mike’s unique style. It freed the boys’ bedroom to be the music room, with Nick’s huge drum set in it! Mike’s big bummer is that his favorite English pub – Speaker’s Corner – closed down. So he has been forced to roam the city in search of a new place to get away from his family.
Nick is goalie on an A-league travel ice hockey team, and is so far undefeated this season. He and Mike travel out of town (usually within Southern California, but sometimes to Arizona or Palm Springs) every other weekend. The boys have hockey practice four nights per week as well. This has completely fractured our family life, but after years of fighting it, I am trying to improve my attitude, be supportive, and appreciate all the good things that hockey has done for our boys. Such as Nick having his first job, at the winter ice skating rink at Horton Plaza!
During the summer, Nick and his friend Nathan participated in Sierra Service Project again, in which high schoolers from church youth groups spend a week on an Indian reservation, doing housing renovations. This reservation was in the desert, and I was very worried the whole ten days he was gone, that perhaps I had sent him off to swelter torturously in hundred degree heat while laboring endlessly … What happened, however, was that the weather was unexpectedly mild, and more importantly, our church linked up with a larger group from La Jolla United Methodist, that was almost all girls! Nick and Nathan bonded very closely with these girls, and have been spending as much time as possible at LJUMC ever since!
Jake had a trying time last year as one of only three sixth graders in his class, but is now at Correia Jr. High and doing better. He is on a tournament ice hockey league that plays local teams, with out-of-town tournaments only four times a year (during holidays, and always in different locations than Nick’s concurrent games). Recently Jake has suddenly transformed from being a solid defensive player but almost never scoring, to scoring six goals in his last six games!
One of Jake’s big moments last year was playing the piano at both the 5th grade graduation and his own 6th grade graduation at Grant elementary (Grant will be a K-5 school from now on). His playing of From a Distance, the theme song from Titanic and other pieces was so beautiful and moving that it was one of the high points of my life! Jake is an angel of caring and grace who constantly pulls all the other motley members of his family upward with his example.
Nina is now attending Explorer Charter School, near UCSD, and is very happy there. She has said that she “wants to stay at this school forever,” and “why can’t school be seven days a week rather than five?” She also picked up a love of two-square from the school, and spends every spare moment playing it.
I had been terrified of having Nina go to school so far away, and all the driving involved with having three kids at three schools. But amazingly, thanks to intensive planning and supportive friends, the carpool situation is working so well. Jill Perlman has been kind enough to include Nina in her daughter’s activities and take her to gymnastics, Girl Scouts and more. I drive an afternoon carpool every day to Correia and then High-Tech High, which is actually a wonderful interlude in my day, and gives me some time to talk with my boys in the front seat.
Nina has the goal that we be like a picture postcard family, with the perfect house, attire and behavior. We have really failed her. She did succeed in convincing Dad to put up a tire swing in front of our house, which many kids have enjoyed playing on.
Nina also has her own failings, particularly “anger issues,” though she has really come to terms with that over the past year, and seems like a new person. However the following anecdote came from the time of “the old Nina”:
Yesterday I took Jake and Nina to their piano lesson. Nina got more and more agitated on the way there, for some reason I couldn’t figure out. She started screaming and crying that she hadn’t practiced and hadn’t done her theory, and didn’t want to take her lesson. I couldn’t understand it because I thought I’d heard her practicing and that she’d done very well. But Nina kept carrying on more and more intensely.
Finally Jake offered that he could have his lesson first, to give Nina a chance to do her theory. So we got there, and Nina and I stayed in the car. She continued to cry, yell, and exhort me to not have a lesson, for a solid hour. I was lying prone on the back seat, feeling exhausted, battered, and in a state of numb shock. But I consider it my parental duty not to give in to unreasonable demands, so I held firm. I told her she could have a shorter than usual lesson, but we weren’t going to skip it. Finally she screamed at me to get the hell out of the car, which I was more than happy to do, so I went into the studio alone.
Nina marched in after about five minutes. She glared lightning bolts at me from the doorway. Nina in all her fury is truly terrifying, and I sat there half petrified and half laughing. Then she came and sat with me on the couch. She dug her fingernails into my bare foot, while hissing, “I hate you!“ at me repeatedly. She continued to glare daggers, whisper that she hated me, and try to pinch and scratch me; all when the teacher wasn’t looking.
Finally she went for her lesson, which went fine, although she was a bit subdued. But then about halfway through, she said to the teacher, “Can I sing?” She sang “Kumbaya” in a loud, operatic voice. Jake and I never laughed so hard in our lives (behind hands clamped over our mouths) as when we heard the “ball of anger” suddenly burst out in song! Then she sang “America the Beautiful” too!
Another “Nina moment” came when, with Valentine’s Day approaching, Nina told me she wanted to take a box of chocolates to “James Smith” (not his real name), a boy she’d had a crush on for years. I told her that we weren’t going to do that! The idea of going to the house of a family we barely knew, and our eight-year-old daughter giving chocolates to their son, horrified me! But Nina kept bringing it up, and I thought – maybe I’m just letting my own hang-up’s interfere in this situation – so I told her we’d ask her dad. Mike said he thought it was an innocent enough idea.
So we actually did it – we bought a huge six inch Hershey’s kiss, which Nina wrapped beautifully in a gift bag with tissue and ribbon, and went over to the Smith’s house. On the way there, Nina kept saying she hoped James wouldn’t answer the door. He did! His brother and mom came to the door too, so I chatted with them about “Marston Middle School,” where his brother attends, as if everything were normal! I guess it went okay, and I ended up being proud of my daughter for following her heart despite her discouraging mom!
Then Nina went through a strange interlude during the summer that had a big effect on me. She suddenly developed an intense fear of dying, for no discernable reason. She went from being a particularly joyful and exuberant person to crying all day long, for weeks. I talked to her about the afterlife, and told her why I don’t fear death in the slightest … but nothing seemed to help. Finally, in desperation, I remembered that some people have had “near death experiences.” I found an incredible website that has hundreds of accounts of near death experiences, and started reading them to her (www.near-death.com). They were amazing, and completely resolved Nina’s agony. She started saying, “I love the human life cycle!” I devoured them myself, plus more books on the subject, and now feel I understand the purpose of life on earth so much better. My perspective has changed so much (see more on new family website).
Then there was the “Miss Valerie” (school counselor; name has been changed) business. All year I had railed about her painting the girls’ nails at recess and lunchtime, and the waste of taxpayers’ money, all the things she wasn’t doing, plus the fact that at St. Vincent’s they didn’t allow nail polish, which is more the way I feel about little girls and nail polish. I considered going to the principal and the district.
However then Nina started saying to me, “I’m sorry, Mom, but I couldn’t resist …” and coming home with painted nails. She came home with a well-done French manicure, which is her passion and goal in life. I started thinking – maybe I shouldn’t complain about Miss Valerie. A free French manicure … Maybe that means more to Nina’s happiness than anything else. Maybe I’m wrong again …
Another “awakening” I had occurred through my discovering the Japanese therapies of Naikan and Morita and the philosophy of Constructive Living, which combines the two. Morita therapy has as its basic premise that we need to accept our feelings (rather than trying to change them, which isn’t possible), and focus on right behavior. Worthy behavior often leads to more pleasant feelings. There is a big emphasis on the importance of one’s attention, and the need to turn attention outward, toward appreciation of life and concern for others. Practitioners of Morita therapy feel that many mental illnesses (depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc.) are caused or exacerbated by self-centeredness, and that Western therapy, with its focus on how you feel and changing how you feel, is ineffective.
For me, these concepts have rung so true, and been so helpful. I had never before so fully realized what a huge problem self-centeredness is; how it worsens depression and interferes with relationships (more info on family website and at www.todoinstitute.org).
Finally another thing I’m happy about: I was supposed to teach a high school English class this year, and spent the summer intensively preparing. I’ve always hated “great literature”; most of it seems nihilistic and depressing to me. I haven’t read anything except non-fiction for decades, and the thought of teaching it was terrifying. Plus just hearing the phrase “literary elements” practically made me break out into a cold sweat, since I had no idea what they were or how to teach them. So I started listening to massive numbers of books on tape from the library, plus even doing some reading of fiction! I actually listened to a book by Dickens and enjoyed it (Oliver Twist)! The class ended up getting cancelled, but I have kept reading!
In addition to literature, I now start every day with studying a little Latin, world history and physics, on about an elementary school level, as I never understood or retained much from my years in school. But after years of searching, I’ve finally found books that I love and can connect with … see family website for my recommendations and reviews.
This studying is such a joy for me; such a relief after a lifetime of feeling unable to really learn. I now feel that learning can’t really happen until it has happened on the physical (experiences) level, emotional (stories that touch our feelings) level, and moral (making judgments) level … the intellectual level is LAST. I am constantly working on plans for education in which students experience, feel and evaluate before being exposed to anything dry or theoretical (textbooks!)
Below are contributions from our children, which I take no responsibility for!
Nick’s section:
This year when we were at our thanksgiving hockey tournament in Peoria, Arizona. The entire fourth floor of our hotel was taken up by our hockey team and their families. Every day we would end up in one person’s room, either playing poker or Halo 2 for hours on end. One night after a game we got back at about 7, and played HHHalo until 2 a.m. At about 12 we discovered that almost all of our parents were in someone’s room drinking, and security had paid them a visit to tell them they were too loud. At about 1 a.m. security paid us a visit, and continued to do so about every 10 minutes until 2 a.m. At that point she threatened to call the cops. Someone said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get some Krispy Kreme right now?” Then someone’s sister looked out the window, and told us that there was a Krispy Kreme right across the street.
Once we made it to the Krispy Kreme, it turned out to be closed. We then remembered that there was an enormous truck around back that someone had thought about stealing doughnuts from. We went back and asked the guy if we could have any. He said, “Sure, take as many as you want, it makes my job easier.” He told us that they were day old and he was taking them to the dump.
Eight of us took about 40 dozen doughnuts back to the people who had stayed behind, as well as all of our drunk parents, most of whom by that time had switched from beer to vodka (except my dad). We then started playing Halo again and ate doughnuts until about 3 or so. The next morning, we were informed by our coach, that we were being blamed by the hotel for destroying something by the pool, being in the pool past 10 o’clock, and banging on the back door to get in again (none of which was true, because we went through the front door on the way back to offer the security lady some doughnuts). They also said that we were being too loud and walking the halls at a time beyond midnight, and they tried to kick us out. We somehow got around that and won the tournament.
Jake’s Contribution:
Lately we kids have found a way to make our mom’s constant dozing fun. When
someone is half asleep, they can say weird things (as we have figured out
from parents reading bedtime stories while tired). So we ask our mom yes or
no questions. Example: “Mom, are you a dog?” (No response.) “Mom?” “Eh?”
“Mom, are you a tree?”
“Yes.” However, another funny thing about my mom is how smart she is even while
subconscious. Whenever Nina and I are talking around or to our dozing mom, she will make little sounds to show that she’s sort of listening. At a pause in our speech, she will reply with a “Hm.” At a comment her sleeping mind thinks might be funny, or that we laugh at, she’ll give a little “He he he.”
In closing, have a wonderful holiday and New Year!
See more of our family journals, book reviews, information on near death, Naikon, Morita, education and much more at http://members.cox.net/doeringsx5.
With love,
Daria Doering 
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