Christmas 2006
Dear family and friends,
A hearty holiday greeting to you! We hope you are happy and doing well.
We feel very blessed at this time of year, especially walking down Dana Place, a true “winter wonderland” of lights. We also feel thankful because my big project of late was organizing the “Mission Hills Thanksgiving Window Painting Contest,” in which students of all ages and adults painted scenes of things they were thankful for on store windows in Mission Hills! See our website (designed by Nick) and photos at http://members.cox.net/thanksgivingwindowpainting. I read a wonderful book called Attitudes of Gratitude, and realized how gratitude truly is the “mother of joy.”
I’ve had to work at that attitude, because I’ve had a rough couple of years, with two very challenging jobs. Maybe I’m the kiss of death, because both schools that I taught at closed. This year I’ve been subbing plus studying and taking tests to gain my high school credentials in English and Social Studies. Not having a job that pays a living wage has been equally challenging, causing depression, financial panic, feelings of failure, etc. However I just learned that after three years of subbing, interviews and other efforts, I have gained placement on the Court Schools “eligible to employ” list –feels like having laid siege to a castle, and finally gotten in – and hopefully I’ll have a job by next year.
Life has also been hard because our three darlings have grown up on us! Nina just started middle school, Jake started high school, and Nick will graduate from high school this year. This hit me hard during the summer, and I went through months of agony over missing our cute cuddly children, various things I wish I would have done, and so on. I considered starting a “pre-empty-nest” support group! Finally I realized it wasn’t so much that I’d made horrible mistakes, but that we were so happy together, for so long, that I really had the illusion it would go on forever. Our kids are still sweet and love us, but they’re just very independent, busy and don’t need us the way they used to. So I guess we’ve done our job.
My children say there is now a word for people like me: “emo.” “Emo” (which stands for “emotional”) is a music and clothing style that is trendy among some teenagers these days. Emo’s wear tight pants, dye their hair black, have it hang in their eyes, are depressed and discuss self-mutilation and suicide. I don’t identify much with that, but I guess it’s interesting that such a subculture exists …
As far as “good news,” I had my 50th birthday this year, and we celebrated with a fun family trip to Puerto Nuevo, Mexico. We also took a summer trip for Nick to go to hockey try-out’s at San Jose State University, and the best part of that trip was listening to The Count of Monte Cristo on tape … what an enthralling book. We listened to the abridged version, which was still 12 tapes long … the full version is 36 tapes!
For fun, I guess I write, even some poetry (see our family website (http://members.cox.net/doeringsx5). I wish I would have written a poem to each of our children every year on their birthdays, summarizing the events of their year. Then I have my five journals: personal, family, joys, prayers, and projects. The family journal and joys journal are fun to read back in. The personal journal is so painful I don’t want to look back on it, but I guess it’s a reminder of all the various agonies I’ve lived through and come out the other side. The prayer journal I should look back on but usually don’t!
My most fun is walking with some wonderful friends-who-are-better-than-therapists every Saturday and Sunday mornings; bless them!
Our favorite movies of the year were Mystic River and Sideways …
Mike is chugging along as always. Since this year marked our 20th wedding anniversary, I’ve reflected quite a bit on our “journey” together. I would say our modus operendi is: I get us into messes, and Mike gets us out. I’m very driven, and start various projects and adventures. I always work hard and get us almost to the finish line, but then I invariably run into some insurmountable problem, and/or collapse from exhaustion. At that point Mike takes over, rescues a precarious situation, and finishes the job (while I generally go to sleep). This has happened so many times; most recently, with the window painting contest, where it was Mike who was scrubbing sidewalks with acetone when they hadn’t been masked sufficiently, and scraping the windows for those who did not show up for clean-up day.
Another example: at All Saints, I was in charge of coordinating the school science fair, plus overseeing my own students’ science projects, and was absolutely panicked over the whole thing. Then I got a brilliant idea: I’ll do what I always do – get Mike to rescue me! Mike is an excellent working scientist, not to mention that he has been a judge at the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair for the last several years. I decided that whatever help my students needed, I would write it down, come home and ask Mike what to do, and tell the students the next day! It actually worked quite well. I also realized what my science fair hang-up had been: I had the misguided idea that science fair projects are all supposed to be “original,” which is impossible. You have to get students to do any old thing – just practice the scientific method – then they may actually come up with something a little different, and win a prize, which two of my students did.
Mike used to vigorously protest each of my new projects, but now they don’t seem to faze him in the slightest, and sometimes bring him some nice bonus. Such as in January, when my mother, Connie, decided to move back to San Diego after six years in Hawaii. I couldn’t face going over there, and asked Mike to fly to Kuai (with about one day’s notice) and help her move. So he got to visit Kuai, and my mom is now living across the street from us in a beautiful house with her friend Earl. It’s great to have them so close, plus Earl drives the kids sometimes; a huge help.
Mike …
Nick is now a senior at High-Tech High. One of his senior projects was creating a film called “Competition – because Mom and Dad said so” (not a reflection on us, of course!) He did some fascinating interviews with hockey coaches, and it would have been a terrific film if the microphone had not been defective, and if one of the tapes had not been lost. But life’s for the learning, I guess we can tell ourselves endlessly. Nick still works a lot at the San Diego Ice Arena, and is playing with a terrific Junior hockey team called The Surf. He is sort of half on the team this year – he practices with them, but does not play in games. He bought himself the new Nintendo Wii system and enjoys that in his spare time.
A Nick vignette: Nick and Jake went to a garage sale with a friend. Nick called me, overcome with excitement, describing a sectional sofa they had for sale. I rolled my eyes and asked him where we could possibly fit a sectional into our house. Nick insisted it could fit into his room, and said, “Mom, it’s so small, you just won’t believe how cool and tiny it is; you have to see it!” I very reluctantly agreed, curious as to how they could engineer a sectional in such an ingenious way that it would be miniaturized. Mike and I drove to the garage sale, and my mouth dropped open with horror as I saw this object. I glared at the boys and said, “It’s HUGE, ugly, and old!” This did not deter them in the slightest. I did convince them not to purchase it on the spot, but to come home and measure first, assuring them that nobody else was going to buy it in their absence! They came home, and finally, despite my protests, decided Nick would buy it with his own money. I left the house in disgust while Mike and the boys moved all our books and bookcases in order to get this geometric print monstrosity through the halls and upstairs to the boys’ bedroom. The good news is that when they went back to the garage sale, everything had been left for Goodwill, and at least they didn’t have to pay for it! Additionally, I am proud of how good my children are at “following their star,” no matter what I or anyone else says.
Not long after the adoption of the sectional, the boys also managed to defy my ban on having TV’s in bedrooms by finding an ancient TV that someone was throwing away on the curb. Jake and Geoff carried it a half mile home, and I didn’t have the heart to snatch it away from them, so now they have a TV in their room too.
Jake is now 14 and has “gone curly” on us as Nick did at a similar age. Before our children were born, Mike said he wanted children with curly blond hair, and I said I wanted children with straight dark hair. It’s amazing how God provides. Our children started off with straight hair, and in their teen years it became curly; plus they have all gone from blond to brown.
Jake is a freshman at Pt. Loma High School. We went through a horrendous school decision, since Jake decided he didn’t want to stay at High Tech, and was accepted at both La Jolla High and Point Loma. It was gut-wrenching to turn down two of the most difficult-to-get-into schools in the county – High Tech and La Jolla – for Pt. Loma, but felt like the right decision. Jake is now back in the rigorous seminar program, and especially enjoys his physics class. He misses his friends at High Tech, and visits often. It’s proving hard for him to socially integrate into Point Loma, but we hope that will improve.
Jake is playing in-house hockey at the Ice Arena, and is also working at the temporary Horton Plaza Ice Rink, the same place where Nick started working, and the same place where we all first ice skated, so many years ago. It brought back memories of our first time on the ice, with Mike and I skating around, toddler Nina between us, holding her hands and trying to keep her upright, while we could barely keep from falling ourselves! Jake is nuts about Sushi, and buys it there every day after work.
Jake went on an interesting camping trip to Mexico over the summer. It was supposed to involve camping at a pristine beach, the picture showing waves lapping the white sands. The reality turned out to be a place of dirt and rocks at the ruins of an abandoned campground. The first day, Jake and his cohorts descended the cliffs to visit tide pools. During the night, they slept in tents, which kept getting blown over by the wind. In the morning, fastidious as Jake is, and not being one to miss his morning shower, Jake ripped a frond from a palm tree and used it to sweep several inches of dirt from the floor of the abandoned shower, which still miraculously had some water flowing through it. He ripped a rusty door off the hinges of a non-working shower and propped it against his own. When he turned the ice cold shower on, it mixed with the remaining dirt to create mud, but he managed to shower with much difficulty. After Jake told me about the trip, I wrote down this note of his final comment:
Jake: “Mom, I told you about an ice cold shower and only one toilet … about camping on the cliffs … about setting off smoke bombs … about my driving a car … and you smiled and said ‘How nice!’ and weren’t bothered by any of it, until I said, ‘I was exposed to a lot of rap music,’ and then you said, ‘Oh no,’ and shook your head!”
Our Nina is now a sixth grader at High Tech Middle Media Arts! I guess this is the right place for her, as Nina’s main passion in life is creating “layouts” on myspace.com. Her webpage is called Kiss Layouts and can be accessed www.myspace.com/kissme_layouts. She has over 20,000 “friends”, over 3,000 positive comments on her page, and over 700 positive comments on her layouts. It took me quite awhile to figure out what a “layout” is. It seems to be a template with graphics on which people create their webpages on myspace. Nina is proficient in HTML, ImageReady and Photoshop, and is constantly adding to her repertoire. She creates themed, seasonal and custom layouts for free, but I won’t be surprised if it leads to her future career.
When the “layout queen” is not busy serving her myspace customers, Nina goes to the Kumon Learning Center to improve her math, plays piano, and goes to ballet. She has finally gotten serious about ballet and takes about three classes per week. She also attends Mr. Benjamin’s “cotillion,” which I also did as a child, with his father!
Nina has taken two fabulous trips this year. The first was with her friend Faith and mom Colleen to Glacier National Park in Montana. They stayed at the historic lodge, had high tea at the Ritz Carlton in Canada, hiked, swam, and recreated. Right now, as I write, Nina is on a ten-day trip to Cancun with her friend Natalie and family. You go girl!
Nina had a “birthday party to be remembered” this year. We did our usual trip to Ultra-Zone, then the WAVE in Vista, and finally a sleepover with six girls. At the same time, Jake got a phone call from his old friend Ben, who had moved to Arizona to live with relatives after his father passed away. Ben had only that one night he could visit before returning to Arizona, so I left the party to pick him up. Jake already had three friends visiting, and they were dying to also have a sleepover, so they could spend some time with Ben. I dubiously agreed – girls downstairs, boys upstairs. Mike and Nick were at a night hockey game, and everyone knows I can’t stay awake past 9 p.m., so I went to bed amidst this “double sleepover.” Around 11:30, however, excessive quietness must have woken me up. I went downstairs, and to my horror, everyone except two girls was missing! I had told the boys earlier that they could visit another friend, and apparently the girls had followed them! I took off in my van, intercepted the girls as they reached the other friend’s house, and brought them home. God only knows when everyone went to sleep. The next morning, the girls went and toilet-papered the boys’ room. One boy woke up early, and removed all the toilet paper before going home. The girls were very indignant when they discovered he had spoiled their fun, and actually talked me into driving them to his house so they could bawl him out! I wonder why one of the girls doesn’t seem to be allowed to play at our house any more …
Conversation overheard between Nina and a friend:
Friend: “My dad is the CEO of a company, but I bet he makes less money than your dad…”
Nina: “My dad doesn’t make much …”
Not enough for those two!
Another conversation:
Nina: “Mom, you know how I love fashion most of anything in the entire world except for friends, family, God, and education?”
Mom: “Nina, I’m so happy you actually said the right things! But what about music …”
As always, I envy my skinny children. Nina and Jake’s most frequent complaint about food is that it’s “too filling.” I wish I felt that way. The other day Nina started exclaming on and on about something she’d eaten at a friend’s house called “Clementines.” I figured Clementines must be like “Madelines” …probably a type of French pastry … something I would get excited about. But upon further questioning, Nina told me the “Clementines” were tangerines! Who except Nina would get so excited over tangerines?!
Lastly, within the last week, three fears of mine have been laid to rest, with no effort on my part:
- According to Betty Willis, if a tsunami were to strike San Diego, it would not reach Mission Hills!
- According to Jake’s favorite physics teacher, Mr. Benz, if you fall into quicksand, you will not die a gruesome death; you will only sink to your waist! Those horrifying movie scenes are fakes!
- Again according to Mr. Benz, it is a myth that if you drop a penny from the Empire State Building, it will kill whomever it falls on!
I feel so much better! Now, if I could only lay to rest my fears of getting strangled in the dark (since watching the original Godfather movie decades ago), black widow spiders (since school scare tactics in kindergarten) and atomic bombs (realistic) … We hope you also feel better after reading about our various disasters, and that you have a terrific new year!
Daria Doering 
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