A Different Kind of Family: The Year of the Giraffe

Beward of ghosts and monsters sign
cooperating not completing
Couple holding hands behind children
Photo by John Mark Smith

One of the principles I outlined in the post in which I outlined the themes of this blog was partnership. https://julewardwrites.com/committed-relationships/marriage/new-year-new-beginnings.  For me, partnership signifies that while Jay and I recognize that we are not meant to “complete” each other, we do realize our marriage works best as a cooperative. With two typically developing children and two children with special needs, working in partnership proved to be a key ingredient in creating a “good enough” family.

Siblings of children with special needs have many advantages, but they also shoulder tremendous burdens that are not easy to talk about. This is true not just because they are challenging and difficult, but also because they can be quite subtle.

Halloween: A holiday of contrasts

Halloween brought the differences between the two “halves” of our family into sharp contrast. Kristy and Johnny remained essentially remained toddlers in heart and mind all their lives. They didn’t quite “get” the rationale behind their costumes, but enjoyed the attention of “dressing up” on the night of

Dad taking little costumed girl out trick or treating
Photo by Haley Phelps

Halloween. They then accompanied their dad around the block. He rang doorbells and urged them to say “Trick or treat,” which they sometimes did and more often did not.  Neighbors smiled and complimented their costumes and dropped candy in their plastic pumpkins.  Often, Jay ended up carrying the pumpkins home and usually he rounded up the ritual after about a half dozen houses. That was fine with them because as soon as they returned home, they got to eat some candy, the one part of the whole rigamarole that actually made sense to them.

sanctioning breaking the rules
Artistically decorate pumpkins
Photo by Drew Hays

Carrie and Betsy, however, took to Halloween with a fervor that would have done their Druid ancestors proud. Of all the year’s holidays it was, hands down, their favorite.  Yes, they greatly anticipated Christmas. They loved getting a pile of new gifts and enjoyed getting together with the big extended family for dinner. But Christmas’s traditions lacked the mystique of Halloween. It was a time that sanctioned breaking the rules. Most of the year, we taught our children the expectations and responsibilities of the society into which they had been born. As they grew, the rules became more demanding.  Most parents do that, but Jay and I had to ask more. We expected them to be more empathetic, more responsible and more resilient than other children their age.

imagination fireball

Thus, a holiday that invited them to do all the things that were normally forbidden sparked their imagination and kindled their creativity into a fireball of activity. As much as they anticipated acquiring a huge hoard of candy, that wasn’t the main focus of their excitement. What really got them going was

Kids in costumes
Photo by Conner Baker

planning to wear the best possible costume possible. They were quite dedicated to crafting their own Halloween attired because they valued originality.  They determined to take on a unique character, one entirely different than any other child of their acquaintance. It was a project that often began no later than October 1 as I mentioned in last week’s blog post. https://julewardwrites.com/committed-relationships/marriage/celebrations/celebrate-october

over the top creativity
Giraffe in wild
Photo by Kelly Arnold

The ambition led to the “Year of the Giraffe.”  Our daughter Carrie’s closest friend Thea matched her enthusiasm for creativity. They often turned our basement playroom into wholly other worlds from space stations to Sherwood Forest. So it was not surprising that for their ninth Halloween, they decided to be a giraffe. Their vision and zeal was astounding in two such young artists. They decided to create their giraffe from paper mache.

Making even a small object using this technique takes numerous supplies, careful planning, and enormous patience.  Yet these two little girls were planning to make a human-size (albeit child-size) animal with this technique, guided by a library book.

challenge of papiermâché.

Thirty years later, I would visit the beautiful baroque town of Lecce, Italy. There I watched in fascination as artists fabricated beautifully intricate statues using the art of papiermâché. Even a small piece took them several days to complete, and they had trained since adolescence in this craft.  I thought back to those two little American girls, once again flabbergasted at their bravado.

the giraffe

Carrie and Thea conceived a plan where Thea would be the front half of the giraffe and Carrie would be the rear.  Thea would work the giraffe’s mouth, begging “Trick or treat,” and opening its jaw with a lever. She’d hold a box for the candy to fall into. Carrie’s job was to hold onto Thea’s back and wiggle the giraffe tail in “thank you.”

Giraffe's face
Photo by Chris Leipelt

Once their plan was complete, they set to work. Thea’s family generously offered their basement as a work space. The girls used chicken wire to fashion the head, the neck, and body of the giraffe, which would extend just past Carrie’s shoulders. With Thea’s dad’s help, they put the lever in place for opening and closing the mouth. Next, they dipped strips of newspaper into a mixture of flour and water and draped them over the form. It took several layers and they had to wait for each to dry.  The final piece really looked quite giraffe-like. They spray painted it and drew on the eyes. Their last task was the easiest. We had bought them gold-yellow turtleneck shirts and tights.  They drew, a giraffe-coat pattern on these with markers.

ready, set, go

They only just managed to finish the day before Halloween. They brought the costume to our house and practiced prancing from the kitchen, down the back hall, through the dining room, into the foyer, and into the living room.  There were a few glitches, but eventually they had it working like clockwork.

Blurry rain storm
Photo by Matteo Catanese

The next day by the time my children arrived home from school, it was pouring rain. Surely, Jay and I told each other, it would let up by dark. But it didn’t. We decided to pass on taking Johnny and Kristy out.  Betsy and Carrie were undeterred.  Thea came as soon as her mom would allow her.  With Jay and Thea’s dad holding umbrella, the two girls slipped into the costume and started down the sidewalk. Drenched children in dripping costumes trod up and down the steps of the Victorian rowhouses, a task that wouldn’t have been easy for a two-person giraffe under any circumstances, but one made almost impossible by the downpour.

dissolution

Still the girls pushed on. Slowly the giraffe dissolved around them, strip by

Ghostly hot drink
Photo by Toa Heftiba

strip, it slid to the ground until they had to concede defeat. What was left of the giraffe was shoved into the trash can on the way into Thea’s house.  Her mom hustled them into dry clothes and gave them steaming cups of cider to drink. Both girls were too disheartened to even cry. Thea’s brother offered to share his candy. They didn’t hear him.  Finally, Thea’s mom called us.  Jay went for Carrie. She didn’t want to talk about it. After all what was there anyone could say?

Even now the memory churns up so many conflicting emotions – pride and sympathy, disappointment and admiration.  And, of course, the knowledge that there would be other Halloweens, other celebrations.  It’s a lesson the whole world is learning every single day in 2020.

Have you watched your child experience disappointment and defeat? Can you share the story?

Halloween Moon
Photo by Altinay Dinc

“There is a child in every one of us who is still a trick-or-treater looking for a brightly-lit front porch.”

— Robert Brault

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/g22656178/halloween-quotes/

October: Love Among the Pumpkins

Kristy in a pumpkin patch
turn to each other
Older couple embracing
Photo by lotte-meijer

Celebrating whatever we could whenever we could added reserves to our marriage’s emotional bank account, a concept offered by John Gottman in his relationship guide, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.  This principle works just like a monetary bank account. Every day couples have opportunities to turn toward each other in small and big ways that build up a reserve of trust and goodwill. Couples can draw on this through stressful and conflictual times. https://psychcentral.com/blog/7-research-based-principles-for-making-marriage-work/

maximize the “maxi-moments”

As much as such crucial feel-good mini-moments have contributed an overall sense of well-being to our marriage, Jay and I have also regularly relied on turning as many of them as we could into “maxi-moments.” In other words, we sparkle the glitter of celebration’s magic over life’s small achievements and imbue them with extra joy. We are now

martini splashing
Photo by Amy Shamblen

coming into the time of year that is a heyday for celebration. The pall that has been cast of 2020 causes some people to feel as though hoopla and revelry might be out of place, but the rest of us are proclaiming, “Not at all.  Never has there been a more crucial time than now to commemorate life small joys and blessings.

Through the past year I’ve taken my readers along with Jay and I through many adventures and good moments during our earlier married years – the time before we were parents. Once, we began welcoming children into our family, lots of things changed – even our love for each other. It became deeper and more meaningful as it blossomed into new life. The times and ways we celebrated also evolved.

getting ready for halloween

When our children were young, Halloween beckoned them from the end of every October, transforming the entire month into one of almost daily merrymaking. Often planning for costumes began even before October 1.

Fairy in woods
Photo by Anthony Tran

Almost daily, my children feasted on stories about dragons and princesses, fairies and witches, sprites and elves, magicians and wizards. For most of the year, those wondrous creatures were confined to the pages of fairy tale books.  On Halloween, they came alive.

My children planned their costumes with dedicated enthusiasm and amazing creativity. They didn’t simply “dress up” as some fantastical character.  At the core of their being they transformed into their roles. For that one night, they’d be actors on national stage. They took their parts in that performance very seriously.  Many educators have noted the academic, social and emotional benefits of “dressing-up.”

Child as dinosaur
Photo by Jeremy McKnight

https://blog.bellalunatoys.com/2016/10-benefits-of-dress-up-play-for-children.html But my children didn’t need grown-ups to tell them this. They could no more resist the pull of this alternate reality than they could resist the clanging of the ice-cream truck.

a month is a long, long time

But waiting for Halloween, even with all the costume preparation, can seem very long.  A month is a big percentage of a small child’s life. Thus, like many other families, we built other rituals into October, milestones on the way to Halloween. They didn’t equal the excitement of the big day, of course, but they enhance both family bonding and holiday exuberance. Among these traditions, a visit to the pumpkin patch was, perhaps, the most anticipated.

Pumpkins
Photo by Kathleen DeNapoli

Like the grape stomping featured in last week’s blog post (https://julewardwrites.com/committed-relationships/laugh-together-stay-together-side-effect-of-grape-stomping), a visit to the pumpkin patch offered the chance to flee the city for the day.  While we all loved the vibrancy and convenience of city life, a trip to our favorite country haven helped our children learn first hand about the source of our food through a learning process that felt to them like sheer fun. Instead of heading toward Michigan, the pumpkin search took us north out of the city to Wisconsin.

city family’s day on the farm

All Southern Wisconsin, many working farms opened their gates to city

Girl holding bunny
Photo by William Daigneault

slickers like us, giving our family a peek into rural life at its best – at harvest time. We didn’t always choose the same farm because we loved exploring new places, but the experiences often mirrored one another enough that we were never disappointed. We enjoyed picking apples, drinking cider, and, of course, selecting a pumpkin for each child to take home and carve. The kids usually demanded that a corn maze and a petting zoo be part of the experience.  They loved hold and petty fuzzy bunnies and feeding goats kernels of corn right from their hands.

Hayride
Photo by Indianapolis Chronicle

We usually ended our day with Jay accompanying the kids on a hayride. I never wanted to go because I remembered the hayride of my childhood on my cousin’s farm. Horses pulled those wagons. At the Wisconsin farms, giant, rumbling tractors pulled the load of high-spirited kids and parents.  They loved it. But it wasn’t for me.  Instead, I’d wander into the farm stand and buy cider, apple butter, and pies. They were expensive but so worth it.

carve the pumpkins, eat the seeds

It would be evening by the time we headed back to the city with a car full of tired children. The next day we’d carve the pumpkins so they’d be ready to put on the front porch for Halloween. I would painstakingly clean all the strings off the seeds so we could salt and roast them. My children would not ordinarily have eaten anything quite so gritty, but it was part of the ritual. So, they savored them.

emotion bank account: in good shape

October filled our family’s emotional bank account. We would drawn down on the reserves of joy and enthusiasm in times of challenge and stress, grateful that we made plenty of space in our lives for the renewable resource, celebration.

If you are thinking that this sounds like something your family is up to, there’s sure to be a welcoming farm somewhere near you wherever you are. https://www.travelchannel.com/interests/fall/photos/top-10-pumpkin-patches

Making cider
Photo by Rosalie Barley

” I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Quotes+about+pumpkin+patches

 

 

Laugh Together. Stay Together: Side Effect of Grape Stomping

Vineyard
Laughter: the secret of staying married
Hands filled with grapes
Photo by Labros Lyrakoris

Pretty often, Jay and I field the question, “How have you managed to stay happily married for over fifty years?” Usually we laugh because we know the questioner is looking for some deep wisdom and not expecting the response that we like to give, “grape stomping.” But we love to tell stories about driving our four kids, all under age ten to Michigan. Once there, we tossed them into a half barrel of ripe fruit and encouraged them to “smash those grapes.”

 

a tumultuous decade

2020 has been a really rough year for just about every person in the world. That’s why it vividly brings back my memories of the 1970s. In that decade our

Protestors amid fire
Photo by Hasan Almasi

children were born, grew into sturdy toddlers, and started elementary school. At the same time grand-scale tumultuous events tumbled over each other with such rapidity that we wondered if we would survive the chaos. Everything we believed in as children was called into question – our nation’s standing in the world and its ideals, our religion and its practices, our society and its standards, our culture and its aesthetic. To keep one’s balance on such shaky ground demanded not only a commitment to love, but also an ability to embrace good times when they offered themselves. Grape stomping was just such an opportunity.

necessary escapism
Grape vines in autumn
Photo by Herbert Ritsch

We found our chance to jump into this activity in southern Michigan. When most people thought of American wine in those days, they thought “California.” It’s easy to associate the growing of grapes and the production of their juice with milder climates. Today, Oregon has as wide a reputation for fine wine as her southern sister. But fifty years ago, Michigan was the third largest producer of wine in the United States.

tabor hill winery

In 1968 two twenty-something Chicagoans, Carl Banholzer and Len Olson, bought forty-five acres of farmland in Buchanan, Michigan. Totally inexperienced, they relied on knowledge gleaned from a book called American Wine and Winemaking by Phillip M. Wagner. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/03/us/philip-m-wagner-92-wine-maker-who-introduced-hybrids.html

Olsen and his wife Ellen moved into the farmhouse in November plowing

Plowing through snow
Photo by Richard Ciraulo

through a nineteen-inch snowfall to get to their new front door. The next fall the young vintners bought two tons of Delaware grapes from another local vineyard. They produced two and a half tons from the fourteen acres of young vines they had planted the year before. Now it was time to make some wine.

crushing grapes – the old-fashioned way

That’s where our family, along with dozens of other Olson and Banholzer friends, came into the picture. The two men decided to crush their first grapes the old-fashioned way, finding it easier to stomp the grapes than hand crank the grape presser. Grapes were placed in sawed-in-half wine barrels. Off came our shoes and socks and into the barrels we went. That first year we foot-stomped 400 gallons of juice for wine. Although the first bottle of wine would not be sold for two more years.

Children stomping grapesI’m not sure whether it was more fun to feel the grapes squish between our toes as the juice splashed up to our knees or to watch the delight on our children faces as they stomped merrily around in the barrels, turning shades of purple and dying their clothes with grape juice.  This was adults gone completely berserk. They were being encouraged to get “dirty,” and their parents were joining in. Adding to the merriment, the vintners hired local musicians to play upbeat jazz and country music while we stomped.  Grape crushing turned into dancing and many of us continued stomping even out of the barrels.

just recompense

When the last grape had been squished into oblivion, we ushered the children into the barn, where big tubs of warm water waited.

Cheese, grapes, wine
Photo by Jasmine Bartel

Getting rid of the purple stains had to wait until we got home.  Instead, we rubbed the kids with old towels and got them into warm clothes. Then we joined the small crowd who’d gathered to relax after the day’s labors – grape juice for kids and wine for adults. Then to say thank you, Ellen Olson treated us to a gourmet picnic spread.

A number of the people at the stomp had also helped with the work of planting and harvesting the vineyard. Olson would later say that he believed the labor-intensive work and the camaraderie it entailed helped many of his friends adjust to life during and after the Vietnam war – both those who had served and those who had struggled at home. https://silo.tips/download/michigan-wine-industry-research-state-of-michigan-department-of-agriculture-7

lifetime of laughter

Although not as deeply involved with the vineyard as those friends, Jay and I shared some of the same benefits.

feet in purple grapesJay’s work as an environmental attorney at a time when the national and international standards for the protection of the environment had only begun to be developed meant long hours, difficult briefs, and tense negotiations. It didn’t leave him with much energy or time to spend with family. During those carefree days in the vineyards, he could completely leave his worries back in Chicago. Stomping to music beats banging your fist on the table while demanding that the northern Indiana steel companies stop belching black acrid smoke into the air over the dunes.

Wine picnic
Photo by Ariel Vanessa Valdez

What I loved most was letting go of civilized standards.  I never realized until it happened to me that you give birth to stone-age humans and have only five years to transform them into citizens of the twentieth century. Those times when I could not only allow, but actually encourage my children, to be carefree and silly were few and far between.  The need to break the confines of civilized behavior made Halloween my children’s favorite holiday. Grape stomping fit into that same set of rituals, harking back to times before Victorian rigidity and contemporary rationality.

Laughter: The Cheapest Medicine

Laughter ruled the day. Everything was funny. Nothing felt forbidden. We would all be laughing in the car on the way back as we recalled various moments during the day. Of all the ties that bind Jay and me laughing together is one of the best. The silly laughter we shared during the grape stomping drew us together then. We laugh again when we remember those days and the ties become even stronger. https://julewardwrites.com/committed-relationships/marriage/new-year-new-beginnings/

If this sounded like fun to you, you can still get in on the merriment. https://www.harborcountry-news.com/features/a-decade-of-grape-stomping-at-baroda-founders/article_5a408380-d4ba-11e9-bb5d-eb685c3388da.html

Grapes hanging on the vine
Photo by Jeremy Lwanga

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. — Friedrich Nietzsche

https://www.laughteronlineuniversity.com/quotes-about-laughter/

 

 

 

Keep Passion Ignited

Golden Dome of Notre Dame
winging it on oxytocin

Couples are often determined to keep the passion ignited in their committed relationship, but find it a principle more easily stated than lived by.

Lighting your fire
Photo by Wesley Balter

For one thing, our neurobiological system is a delicately-structured instrument that needs regular fine tuning to play its best music. At the beginning of a romantic relationship, oxytocin levels peak in our blood streams. This happens because couples falling in love open the dam so to speak on the flow of this hormone.  When they hold hands, touch the other gently, kiss, hug, and stroke, the floodgates lift. Oxytocin floods every each of their body and brain. Nothing feels as good as being with this other person.

Other responsibilities, other tasks, even other pleasures often get shoved to the back burners of daily life to make room for being together and being physically close. We know this is true from everyday experience whether we are in love ourselves or not.    But the phenomenon is also backed by careful scientific research.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3936960/

coming in for a landing
Cooking together
Photo by Sorous Karim

This high state of romance cannot last forever. Once couples set up a household together, whether they marry or not, the multitude of daily tasks confronts them willy-nilly. We get busy with work, school, household chores, childcare, and social engagement. A day can fly by in what seems a minute and the most “romantic” thing we did was kiss our partner briefly on the way out the door.

That’s what can happen. Luckily, it’s not what always happens. Scientific research has also discovered that couple who test for high levels of oxytocin in the early stages of the relationship frequently test high later in their partnership as well. Behav Sci (Basel). 2020 Feb; 10(2): 48. Published online 2020 Feb 2. doi: 10.3390/bs10020048   Interview with these couples revealed high engagement in affective behavior that had continued past the initial stages of their romance.

lots of ways to light a fire
Football players at edge of field
Photo by Mike Benson

In our relationship, Jay and I found many ways to re-ignite the passion that first drew us together.  One of the best ways is also a lot of fun as well.  We go back to school together.  Well, not actually back to the classroom although some couples we know have done that very thing with great success. Jay and I join the myriads of alumni returning each fall to campuses all over the United States for football games.

In general folks may be divided on whether sporting events constitute a romantic venture.  I sit on the fence on this one because although I can thoroughly enjoy a local baseball game and can get really excited at the chance of seeing the Trail Blazers play, only a trip back to South Bend, Indiana, to see Notre Dame engage a foe counts as a truly romantic journey.  For Jay and me, it serves as an almost, literal re-enactment of the days when we first fell in love.

in the beginning

To enhance that feeling, we begin the day by parking on the St. Mary’s College

Tree-lined avenue
Photo by James Beeser

campus. When Jay and I were in college, Notre Dame students were all men and St. Mary’s was a college only for women. It still is although Notre Dame is now coed. By stationing our car at my old alma mater, we can walk down the broad avenue, lined with giant elm trees, which leads from the highway into the heart of the St. Mary’s campus, put our lives at risk by dashing between cars across Highway 190, and proceed down the leafy dirt road that winds past the priest’s cemetery, between

St. Mary's Lake at ND
Photo by Annie Maher

St. Mary and St. Joseph Lakes, and around the Lourdes Grotto and onto the campus itself. This path retraces the one we took whenever Jay came to pick me up at St. Mary’s for a game or another Notre Dame event.  Every step of the way holds memories for us.  We, of course, hold hands the whole way and cannot stop by kiss several times before we actually walk up the stone steps past the Grotto and into the mayhem that is the campus on a game day.

one day’s journey

We wind through the white-stone dormitories and classroom buildings and across the broad green lawns. Even the newest buildings on campus, ones we’ve never seem before imitate the style of the ones we know from our sojourn as students. Outside every dorm, a grill is going and the students, usually still guys, are selling hamburgers and sausages.  They taste even better than they did decades before because they drip with nostalgia. Slowly we make our way east toward the stadium, the same one in the same location.

Along with a knowing segment of the crowd, we veer off toward the library

Notre Dame library
Photo by Cong Wang

rather than continue on to the playing field. We mill around with a restless assortment of folks sporting the green and gold until we hear, “Here they come.” It’s the Notre Dame marching band.  The crowd splits apart, the band passes through. We reform behind them. They play. We sing. “Cheer, cheer, for Old Notre Dame. Ring out the echoes calling her name. Jay and I wrapped our arms around each other waist and let ourselves be swept along in the surge. At the stadium, the band marched down into a tunnel that led to the field and we turned toward the gate to our seats.

different, perhaps better
Notre Dame Stadium
Photo by Alex Mertz

The fact that we were going to sit together diverged from our school days when Jay would have headed off the Notre Dame student section and I would find my seat in the part of the visitor’s section reserved for “St. Mary’s Belles.”  In those days, following the game, finding each other again in the crowd took strategic planning, but now we held tightly together as we pushed through the gates and up the steps to our bleachers. As soon as the game began, it demanded our full attention, but we celebrated every good move of the team with a hug, happy that, though our seats weren’t as good as they’d been in our students, they were together.

We wanted the team to win, of course, we did.  And, unlike in our student days, which had been marred by five losing seasons in a row, Notre Dame usually came out the victor.  But win or lose, we were high on the excitement of reliving a time when life was just opening up for us, when we had found the special someone with whom we wanted to spend whole our life. On the walk

Country road
Photo by Alex Jones

back to St. Mary’s, on the ride back home and many days following our trek to South Bend, we once again ran on high octane (so to speak). The “real” us was still young and in love even if to the world we just looked like a couple of doting grandparents.

while in quarantine

Most of the time, we don’t have a whole weekend to devote to rekindling romance.  For those times, we try fun at home exercises like the ones on “For Better, Not For Worse” page of this website.  You might like them to. https://julewardwrites.com/radicalpromises-2/for-better-rather-than-worse-fun-fill-ins-for-couples

Also, I’d love to hear your special ideas for rekindling romance.

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”
Maya Angelou