Christmas is for...

 Little kids, first.

These are little first graders from Casey and Riley's school, performing a song at the holiday concert last week. They were led by my friend Tracy, who has been teaching them music in the Music For Minors program. They did an amazingly good job of their three songs, and I was really impressed with them, and with Tracy's teaching. They also kind of broke my heart. They were so enthusiastic, so happy. And of course all of us were thinking of the little first graders from the school in Connecticut who are gone, or the ones still alive, who are traumatized by what happened in their school. Kids are resilient, there's no doubt, but to have something like that happen to your community or your family, even if you didn't even directly witness it, leaves permanent, altering marks on your psyche. The kids left will be different people now than they would have been before this happened. They've lost that innocent joy that these kids you see in this picture still have. And that is a tragedy of a less easily seen nature, and not something that can be given back to them no matter how much therapy or aid they're given.

The Holiday Concert was fun, happy, and bittersweet all at the same time, at least for me. My guys are in sixth grade now and they've grown out of a lot of the spontaneous gestures that the little kids have. They've become much more conscious of what others might think of them and it inhibits them in some ways, while it also makes them say and do really stupid things in vain attempts to be cool. I suppose it's a natural part of growing up, after all we look at adults weirdly if they shriek and jump up and down and do flips all over the furniture. So maybe they do have to learn to be conscious of what others think. But I miss that uninhibited joy. Okay, with my guys the flips over the furniture are still happening, but they're learning to control everything else a little more. And it's a little sad when the Christmas stuff is colored with them not wanting to do some things anymore because they're too silly or babyish now.

Holidays are so hard for many of us; there's so much expectation of happiness, and you're supposed to spend it with family and be loving and perfect and all. And it's never a perfect thing, really; even if you have a great family there's still friction and arguments and over-tired kids who melt down and things like that. If you manage to have a near perfect Christmas with kids, that's a Christmas miracle, really. If you don't have family or you're estranged from what family you have, you're faced with what you don't or can't have. It's hard in so many ways. Holidays bring up all of those things and people we've lost, or never had.

It's hard to go on after losing a loved one. My wise friend Annette told me a while back that holidays were especially hard, and that one had to find ways to make new traditions for holidays, make complete breaks with the old traditions that were Before. And that makes so much sense. But as she said, it takes time. What she didn't dwell upon, but is a great example of, is that it takes a ton of courage, perseverance, and determination to keep going, one small step at a time, to rebuild a life from the ashes of the loss. I wish for all of those parents in Connecticut the strength to go on, and the perseverance to find a pathway through the dark times they're going through now.

The Christmas season has always been a bittersweet time for me, and it can be hard for me to stay 'up' during it. I think with increased age, however, I'm coming to accept that melancholy is a part of the holidays for me; I need time to mourn people and things lost, as well as to savor the goodness in my life. I need a balance where both sides are acknowledged and recognized and felt, rather than trying to stuff the sad parts down and deny them. Christmas is not all about happy-happy all the time, not for me, not anymore. I used to love Christmas and all the implied magic surrounding the winter holidays. I felt that magic in a very real way, but it became harder and harder to feel, to rediscover that magic as the years went by. Life experiences tend to change us from those innocently joyous little kids we used to be. But bittersweet can be a good thing; it makes me savor the good parts, remember the parts that are irrevocably in the past and do some mourning if it's needed, and be able to see and recognize the good parts happening now that are fleeting in their own way. There's a lot to be said for enjoying the moment.

I am so incredibly fortunate with all my family and friends, and this Christmas especially it seems appropriate to appreciate all of the wonderful people in my life and to say thank you for being part of my life, though many of you are scattered all over the globe. I am a lucky person and you all make my life richer. Merry Christmas, all of you. Hope you can find some of the magic, too. I'm sending out virtual *hugs* to you all. 

Zeitgeist

We went to see the Hunger Games movie last night. This was mainly because Riley has been devouring the books and desperately wanted to see the movie, and it has been getting favorable reviews. So we all went and bought a few snacks for unreasonably high prices (the overall total to take 2 adults and 2 kids to a movie and get a few movie snacks is shocking these days). The theater was full even though it was a Sunday evening.

Normally I doubt I'd bother to write up a post about a popular movie. Lately I haven't bothered to write about much of anything, to be honest. I have been stuck in a funk for a couple of weeks, partly because I seem to have developed Metatarsalgia in the ball of my left foot, which is also the leg that has a big metal plate along the length of the tibia due to a bad break a few years back. Add my usual amount of tibia pain to the ball of the foot pain and it's keeping me from taking Yoda Bob Dog for our usual walks and it depresses me. Anyway.

I have not read the books at this point, I have only the movie and Riley's reports to form my impressions, so whatever I say can safely be taken with a grain of salt. But what an interesting cultural reaction to a really dark concept. The people shown in the Districts look straight out of 1930's dirt-poor coal miner communities, while the rich in the city are futuristic and obviously don't have to do hard menial labor; they can afford to devote most of their time to decorating themselves. The contrast has been drawn very broadly.

There are very few characters in the entire movie who are sympathetic, actually; most of them seem set up for cardboard symbolism rather than as believable developed characters. Which I'll admit irritates me; I don't like being hit over the head with the Message, however one cares to interpret the overbearing message of the movie. And it seems that different factions in American society find ways to interpret the Message for their own groups; though it's not a perfect fit it could certainly be read as a commentary on the 1% vs. 99% Occupy wealth distribution idea, and I hear that the conservatives are interpreting this movie in their own way as a condemnation of the excesses of liberal values as well. Whichever way one looks at it its painted with a very broad brush. Polarization comes to mind. It's really not a feel-good story with a satisfying happy ending, and of course the books aren't either. It's interesting since usually movie goers really want happy endings; they can handle harrowing subjects in some cases but usually those types of movies only do well if they're well made, important historical subjects and offer some light at the end of the tunnel. This particular movie doesn't offer that.

So what is the appeal; why are people so willing to go see it? This movie is doing well in the box office and getting good reviews. It's very surprising considering the really dark content; kids killing kids, poor kids being offered up as a poor underclass sacrificial punishment/payment to a rich upper class that governs with iron control. There is no real ending; though our protagonists manage to survive, there is no hint of an overall bettering of the societal ills, though the movie leaves plenty of room open for sequels. There is no satisfying blowing up of the Death Star at the end. Honestly it surprises me; if this had come out when I was a teen it would have bombed, I'm pretty certain. The societal timing of this story is everything, really. It's not like the concept of the story is really new or that different, it's more that it somehow fits in with the zeitgeist of the times right now.

So what is the flavor of the times now that this sort of story appeals so much to the younger crowd? They identify with it; they feel in tune with it. It's alien to me. Riley seems quite comfortable with the notion of a large, underprivileged, underdog class. My guys are growing up with a deep feeling that our society is not fair, that a select few have all the power and all the control. This Hunger Games story feels familiar to them, like an extreme extension of the way things are. It's a weird notion for me to grasp. It's not like the notion of working class vs. upper crust is new, after all; that's always been around. But it may be a relatively new notion that most of us as Americans are just always going to struggle, be working stiffs who can barely make ends meet. That whole notion of the American dream, the self-made man, if you work hard enough you can better yourself, is eroding away. My guys do not seem to be absorbing that idea the way that my generation did. We grew up with the clear idea that if we applied ourselves and worked hard that we could do better than our parents did, raise ourselves up. My boys see us struggling to keep jobs, struggling to pay the bills no matter how smart we are or how hard we work. I don't think this is because Paul and I are whiners, blaming everyone but ourselves. We have just fallen into harder times where most everyone is struggling and with things like the Occupy movement they are seeing that the basic structure that we live with is unfair to the majority of people. They are growing up more quickly and much more cynical than we were.

I grew up with the Vietnam body counts on the news at night. I had friends with older brothers or dads who served and were lost in Vietnam. There were still nuclear drills at school, where that special alarm would go off and you were supposed to 'duck and cover' under your desk. Like that would help, really. But as kids we were presented with external fears that probably unified us as a country, certainly as American kids. We pledged allegiance to the flag and our country, we were taught the ideas at school that we could be proud of how people wanted to come to our country because we were free, we were brave and we welcomed people who were different and gave everyone equal opportunities. It may not have been perfect or always true but we felt that at least we were working towards it, that it was the right thing to do. My boys are not growing up with those ideas, though we make our own efforts to give them good values and a sense of right and wrong and what's good and fair.

We transferred them to a public school in a richer neighborhood because it offers a science and math magnet program; if they went to their home school in our neighborhood they would not be getting taught science at all. We cannot afford private school. They will not not be able to go to the best colleges because university fees are so expensive and only the wealthier kids can afford to go. Scholarships are a possibility but those have become scarcer and the competition is fierce. College in this country is much more expensive than it was when I went, and it wasn't exactly fair then either. It's gotten worse.

It's just a fact that kids from wealthier families are given more opportunities for a better life. And my boys are soaking all of this in almost subconsciously. We're solidly middle class, and they know we could be much worse off, but they've also had to do without when money has been especially tight. And I think they have a good feel for how precarious our financial situation is. I think they're lucky, happy kids overall, but the zeitgeist of what they are absorbing in school and from the world around them is frightening.

They do not see this country as a good place, the land of the free, not the way we did as kids. They think of other countries as being better places, fairer places, more caring places. They see other countries as places for better opportunities, and this country as a place with very serious problems that they feel powerless to fix. They feel invisible and unwanted in this country. And they may well be right, though it really hurts my own deeply American heart to think that.

I'm not sure what the solution is aside from our own parental efforts to give them love and make sure they know that we value them and think they can do great things. It feels like an uphill battle to overcome the damaging massages they're getting from everywhere outside, that's for sure. All those kids that are going to see The Hunger Games are identifying with the kids being sacrificed. And what does that say?