Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Children & motherhood

Saturday smiles: Holiday edition

Who knew that putting up the Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving could be a mood changer? There’s something about the lights and the change in decor. And the candles. It all just says “home” to me. And “special.” It’s a special time of year, and even though we lost a good chunk of ornaments when our basement flooded in September, we still have the important ones. The ones that tell a story.

Decorating for Christmas — that makes me smile. Especially when the kids are excited and want to help.

They got their own decorations this year. Well, actually, they got them last year but this is the first time we’ve had them out.

It’s three Little People nativity sets — the classic manger scene, the inn of Bethlehem and the three wise men. The kids are having a blast playing with all the characters. Isabelle was even telling Bible-themed, theologically sound stories with them today. (She can’t help it, really. Her dad is in seminary and sometimes reads from his texts to her to see if she’ll take a nap.)

Even rearranging the living room and other parts of the house to make room for Christmas makes me smile. Sometimes, change is good.

Taking the time to enjoy a special meal. That’s another reason to smile.

And setting the table with the “nice” dinnerware, placemats, a tablecloth and cloth napkins. Even though it didn’t feel like much of a holiday to us, the little things made it more meaningful. Also, the kids added this touch to the table.

A Little People Thanksgiving set they received in the mail earlier in the week. Yes, our house is overrun by Little People, in more ways than one.

Then, there was the parade, an annual Myerstown event that lines up in front of our house. The entries we see out our window are always about a third or halfway through the lineup, so we walk to church to watch it all the way through.

This year, the kids really got into it. Okay, I know that doesn’t look like Corban’s into it, but he was locked in, taking it all in.

When a miniature car beeped its horn, he jumped like 6 inches in the air. He was startled but he hung in there. He needed my lap later, but watching the parade with my kids was a big smile-maker for me. Especially since Phil had to work and I was on my own. I survived another on-my-own parenting adventure. Woohoo!

Later, everyone loosened up a bit.

This just makes me smile. She’s such a ham. And she loves it. Being the Statue of Liberty is her dream job, I think. That or fairy princess. Or pirate. Or artist.

I’ll let you guess what he’s pointing at. It’s not horses. Or tractors. Or animals. It’s a football on a banner for the town’s league. I motioned to one of the nice young men handing out candy that Corban was a future football player, and he gave Corban two lollipops. (I say he’s a future football player because he seems to have a knack for hitting things with his head.)

Yeah, there’s a lot of kid smiles this week.

Like this moment when they were sharing and playing nicely together.

If we colored one of these pictures this week, we colored half a dozen. They love to color. And that makes me smile.

I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner, mostly by myself, and my kitchen is not the worse for it. In fact, it looks better than it does in a normal week of cooking.

My husband came to our rescue, unexpectedly, while the kids and I were at the tree lighting ceremony in town. Corban had almost fallen out of the wagon on his head (I was literally holding him by the zipper on his sweatshirt) and I was ready to pack it in before the tree lit up when my handsome husband came striding up the street. It was almost like a movie.

A man at church said the molasses cookies I made for the potluck were “just like my mom used to make.” A HUGE compliment of my baking. I’ve found another go-to recipe for gifts.

My best friend said, “I can tell you these things because you won’t think I’m crazy.” And that makes me smile, too. Because that’s a great measure of friendship. Crazy, off-the-wall, hair-brained ideas, and friends say, “Go for it!” (She’s that kind of friend to me, too.)

I had plenty of lows this week, but man, when I look back on the highs, I’m so glad they come to mind more easily and stick in my head more definitively than the lows.

Here’s hoping you have plenty of smiles in the weeks to come!

It only takes a spark: how a Happy Meal can lead to bullying

Sometimes, I’m embarrassed to be human.

It was a Saturday night, and I had the opportunity to take the kids to McDonald’s for supper. I know. We live an exciting life when a trip to McDonald’s for dinner is a high point.

Anyway, it’s not something we do often, and something I rarely consider doing by myself. But we had been just busy enough that day and I was too tired to cook that it worked out.

So, there we sat in McDonald’s — me, a 2-year-old and a 3 1/2-year-old, –eating hamburgers, a chicken sandwich and french fries when a couple of tweens or early teens walked in to order. I watched them casually because they kept running from the restaurant to the car to ask a question about the order. Eventually, a mom and a young boy came in to pick up the order and raise a stink about something.

I couldn’t hear what the problem was, but the mom was definitely upset about something. I know because I’ve been there. I’m not a directly confrontational person, but if something doesn’t go the way I think, I’ll make a snide comment or mutter under my breath. That’s what this mom was doing. Then, she gathered their food — four Happy Meals — and the kids and hightailed it out of the restaurant, knocking over a display in the vestibule as they went.

I should mention that this mom was short and, shall we say, stout. I don’t make a habit of pointing out people’s body imperfections because I’d hate to have someone point out mine. (They’re painfully obvious to me, so I don’t need a second-party reminder.) But her appearance is important to the story.

At the booth next to us sat an older couple and their granddaughters, who were probably teen-aged and elementary-aged. As soon as the miffed mom left the restaurant, the quartet next to us started making fun of her.

“Looks like she’s had a few too many Happy Meals.”

I would have expected it from the teenager, maybe, but this comment came from the grandfather. And it didn’t stop there.

“I guess she hasn’t been counting calories.” He said this because before the Happy Meal episode, the four of them had been looking at the calorie counts of their  food.

All four of them laughed at his jokes.

I wanted to cry.

I don’t know what officially constitutes “bullying” or how you define it, but this group’s behavior made me uncomfortable. I wondered what the grandchildren were learning from this? That it’s okay to poke fun at someone’s weight if they’re behaving impolitely? That some people are better than others? That some people have more worth than others?

Maybe I’m making too much of it, but regardless of how you define it, isn’t this where bullying starts?

I write those words with a heavy heart because I know that I have failed in the same ways. I have been bullied and I have bullied, though at the time, no one thought to call it that. It wasn’t violent, physical bullying but emotional, verbal bullying, the latter of which can be the worst kind of all.

I remember being afraid to sit in the aisle seat on the bus because the boy who sat in the seat behind me would snap my bra strap. (I was already self-conscious about needing to wear a bra. His acknowledgement of my, ahem, development, only pushed me into further self-consciousness.) I remember the sting of jeers about my weight. (I wasn’t skinny, but I was chubby in my awkward adolescent years.)

And I remember putting other people down to make myself feel better. In one particularly painful memory, I loudly declared I already had the game a classmate had given me as a gift at my birthday party. She was not a popular student. (Nor was I.) Years later, she was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It eventually took her life.

What I also remember about the birthday party incident is my mom pulling me aside and telling me that it wasn’t nice of me to make the girl feel bad. She told me what to say and made me apologize to the girl. I’m sure the damage had been done, but I’ve never forgotten the lesson.

I guess that’s what I wanted to see in the booth beside us. Adults being adults and instructing the next generation that it’s wrong to make fun of people just because they look different, even if they might “deserve” it at the time.

A day after the McDonald’s incident, an elementary student told me about a girl at her school who used to be her friend but decided one day that their friendship was over.

“She wrote a ‘p’ on my hand and said it meant I was ‘poo.’ Sometimes, I don’t want to go to school because of her.”

Her words haunt me, and even though she comes from the type of family who has probably talked about this, I’m resolving to tell her mom about it. Just in case.

No doubt as Black Friday approaches, we’ll hear stories of people trampling other people for the sake of a deal. I hope not. Those stories make me sick. It may not be bullying, but it’s definitely not right.

I’ll leave you, now, with this. I’d heard the song before this week but I really heard the words the last time it was on the radio.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBIpvoNVlDk]

Maybe if we start to look at each other through eyes of love, we can restore people’s sense of worth. And end the senselessness of kids and adults alike killing or prostituting themselves (or anything else) because of bullying.