Sunday, December 21, 2008

To Our Children in a Season for Children




I don't know much about Dr. Ray Hawkins, but I was sent this by someone close to me and I wanted to share it.
It seems to me that this time of year is about children, whether out of the pagan/Christian/Judaic Christmas Hannukah season with its Santa Claus magic, lights, and gift giving, or from the birth of the child of the New Year as we head into longer days and time seems reborn. I thought Dr. Hawkins' thoughts were excellent reminders as we bless and cherish our children in our lives.


From Dr. Ray Hawkins:


"I find it difficult listening to parents who berate, belittle and disregard their children and then demand respect from them.

As a parent, you certainly do deserve to be respected and your children need to learn to respect other adults as well. But you must give respect to get it.

Introduce them to your friends in public, ask their opinion on decisions the family is making and let their ideas be truly considered and sometimes followed. Talk to them as you would an equal, not a servant. This starts early in life.

Every 5 year old wants to feel valued by a parent. They want parents to talk to them with respect.

If they see it, they will do it. If they hear it, they will say it. If they get it, they will give it."

Friday, December 12, 2008

A Poem About Growing and Passing Things On


For Pearl in her Fourteenth Month


You have become very industrious
now that you have walking down
to a wobbly science and rooms are organized
according to your constant wanderings,
the mysterious jobs you devise
making bowls and blocks and shoes into toys or tools,
stacking and un-stacking between
giving us all little wet kisses.

Your month is the same as my four years,
so when your mother leaves the room
and you go to the kitchen gate
to whimper or howl in genuine loss I know
those minutes last forever while mine pass
so quickly if I cried it would be because I
can barely hold on like I wish to hold on to you
after you bubble away from me in laughter.

You are so busy!
Tell me stories in your babbling
language until I can learn to transcribe
the dreamt world of a life so new
that the blocks and found toys
you put in your boxes and take out over
and over again, or present to me
with such an earnest gaze

have no choice but to become treasures
so full of your untarnished heart
that they fly up into my throat a yellow bird,
a song, the thread of my mother’s
blue eyes out of your open sweet face.
How can that be? We are not blood
beyond the possibility of the convertible nature
of genes that might suck up and be changed

by love over generations until
they describe me, and me in you, in the music of your voice
without the convention of any official language,
and better than I can describe myself.