WordSisters

Tag: Elizabeth di Grazia

  • What Makes For A Strong Family?

    What Makes For A Strong Family?

    Richfield Dual Language School fiesta. Playing games on McGruff.
    Richfield Dual Language School fiesta. Playing games on McGruff.

    I think about this a lot since my children will be starting middle school next year. Middle school means 900 students in three grades compared to 400 students in five grades at Richfield Dual Language School.

    Middle school means dances, parties, old and new friends.

    Middle school means more access to social media.

    Middle school means I’m just outside of my parent’s reach.

    Guatemala
    Guatemala

    Or, does it?

    A strong family is in my mind because I want my children in my circle of influence. I don’t want them to make choices that have no do-over.

    So, how to keep them close?

    A lot of people believe that eating dinner together every evening or even several times a week is vital. That isn’t going to happen in our family. Jody and I often don’t eat dinner in the evening, although we make sure our children and their friends are well fed.

    One constant in our life is putting the kids to bed. We take turns with them, as we have since they were infants. This of course, will become less practical as they get older.

    I don’t want Antonio and Crystel to be lost in middle and high school like I was. I want them to be able to ask me for help without rebuke and even to bring their friends’ concerns to me if need be. I want to be accessible.

    Boundary Waters
    Boundary Waters

    To this end, I’ve done a good job, even though at every school conference this year Jody and I’ve been surprised. The children take turns with who is having ‘issues.’I tell my kids that they couldn’t ever do anything worse than I did in school and that is the truth. The difference is the world is a much more dangerous place and a lot less forgiving than it was 44 years ago.

    Tae Kwon Do
    Tae Kwon Do

    Having a strong family means having strong relationships within the family. It’s very important to me that Antonio and Crystel are friends. Sometimes, I still remind them that we adopted them together so they would always have each other.

    Mondays have become our family Tae Kwon Do day. It is our sit down dinner. Antonio, Crystel, Jody and I are black belts. We have had many meals together the last several years. Our testing day is a banquet.

    Once in a while we have game night, and when Amazing Race is on television, we all gather around imagining Mama Beth and Mama Jody as contenders.

    Loft Mentor Series
    Loft Mentor Series

    Out of all that we do, I think it is our adventures that keep us strong. Doing new and different activities or eating meals in new restaurants. Since I won the Loft Mentor Series, we’ve been attending the readings as a family and eating out at a new restaurant prior to the reading.

    And then there are our more adventurous trips which go a long ways toward bonding us as a family—camping in the Boundary Waters, visiting Guatemala, taking a train to Chicago, Mexico, driving to Arkansas, Florida, and cross country skiing in Wisconsin.

    Mexico
    Mexico

    Sharing the above with family and friends also tightens the bond.

    A strong family can mean many things. Tonight a strong family means no electronics and no friends over until all MIS (missing homework) on a fifth grader’s conference report are replaced with a grade.

  • Genetics or Childrearing?

    Genetics or Childrearing?

    At some point all adoptive parents ask themselves this question. Maybe biological families do as well, but I wouldn’t know about that. What I do know is that Crystel sings, not only in the shower but in her bedroom, in the living room, on her way to the bus and … you get my snowdrift … she is warm to the idea of singing anywhere. On the other hand, you don’t hear a peep out of me.

    Tia Anna sharing her joy of music with Crystel. Crystel started lessons at 7 and took them for about 4 years.
    Tia Anna sharing her joy of music with Crystel. Crystel started lessons at 7 and took them for about 4 years.

    Now, is this because I don’t have the talent, or is it because singing wasn’t nurtured growing up in my family of 14? “You could have had your own softball team,” people would say. Well, we could have had a pretty darn good choir, too. Well … maybe not.

    I did belong to a choir in middle school, mostly because my best friend joined and harangued me into joining with her. My group of friends thought it was funny to stop the entire choir from making any noise while I was doing my solo to see where I would fit in the choir. The choir director noticed the quiet and admonished them. Guess what? I’m an alto.

    Antonio and Crystel have taken piano and drum lessons. Crystel is looking forward to learning flute in middle school. I was in band as well. First cornet and then French horn … you guessed it … right next to my best friend. The band teacher couldn’t hold himself back once and called me “cabbage ears.”

    Antonio giving a recital. He took piano lessons for one year and drum lessons for one year.
    Antonio giving a recital. He took piano lessons for one year and drum lessons for one year.

    Though I enjoyed playing the French horn, he also told me, “Don’t worry about playing, just march and try to keep in step with everybody else.”

    Genetics or childrearing?

    Antonio is an artist. He can look at a picture of a Pokemon and sketch it exactly. He’s been doing this for years. I used to ask him if he traced the Pokemon. I knew he didn’t—I watched him as he drew it. For the past few years he has been taking requests for drawings from his classmates.

    “I stole a drawing in seventh grade once,” I told him. “It didn’t have a name on it and so I put on mine and handed it in as my own.”

    “What happened?” he asked.

    “The art teacher said I stole the persons sketch who was the best artist in the entire class. Funny thing, I was trying to take the one that I thought could pass as mine. The scary thing was that the drawing belonged to the sheriff’s kid and I didn’t know it at the time. I had to find him in school and apologize.”

    To this day, I hate Pictionary. I can’t even draw an accurate stick person.

    Genetics or childrearing?

    995931_10200718761105581_953653948_n[1]Perhaps it is a little of both. Jody and I encourage Crystel to sing unless it’s bedtime. Antonio hits his sketchpad when his allotment of electronics time is used up. Already, he says that he wants to be an artist and I’m helping him to understand that could mean many professions: architecture, theatre backdrops, book illustrator, and so on.

    Whether its genetics or childrearing, it is great to watch something so foreign sprouting in our house.

  • Bam! Another one off the bucket list.

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMany, many years ago I heard a person say, “Do what you want to do if it is neither illegal nor dangerous.” I embodied that message, and for me, a dog show falls in that category. I’ve always wanted to go to one. I don’t know why. This was one of those wants that wasn’t a high priority but was always there niggling in the back of my head.

    A dog show falls into, “Oh, that’s different” category. I mean, who goes to dog shows? Exactly.

    When a family has so many options for weekend activities, a dog show could end up being too piddling of a niggle to ever come to fruition.

    The funniest dog show our family has ever stumbled on was years ago at the Minnesota State Fair when we chanced upon an agility contest in the round barn. Agility is the ultimate game for a dog and its handler. I’ve always hoped that lucky accident would repeat itself, but it never happened again.

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAJody has been interested in participating in dog agility shows. But, the closest we have come to being a contender is Jody teaching the dog to roll over and to shake hands. All my research shows that this does not make us a contender.

    As you can tell already the ‘dog show sport’ only interests me as an observer and if I was ever going to get to a dog show, I would need to be purposeful.

    In the Sunday paper I saw the advertisement: Land O’Lakes Kennel Club presents its annual dog show at Saint Paul RiverCentre from Friday – Sunday, January 3-5.

    I could take care of a niggling want once and for all!

    More than 2,000 purebred canines – from big to small, hunting to herding, working and terrier, and even lap dogs – would compete for American Kennel Club (AKC) awards.

    It sounded exciting. I probed the Internet to see if I could find the schedule so the day could actually be a planned outing.

    A schedule was not to be found.

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAStill, I planned, I even dealt in a little subterfuge with Jody, and we kept our outing from Antonio and Crystel until we were on our way to St. Paul. The only thing they could get out of me was that it was spelled d. o. g.

    Now that the event is over, I need to tell you that the excitement was not the dog show itself but our clandestine approach to the event, the traveling in the car to St. Paul, parking in the RiverCentre parking ramp, and cartwheeling our way to the show.

    A dog show is one of those things that you don’t have to do again. I kept wanting a bit more. But, a bit more was not to be had. You could say that it was all fluff and prettiness. None of the dirt and grit that I love.

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWhat was most interesting about the dog show is that I saw two other writers who were checking out the show. That’s who go to dog shows? Writers? I made the most of it and introduced  my family to Stephanie Wilbur Ash and Geoff Herbach. Every opportunity I have I point out to Antonio and Crystel that real people write books. “Can you believe it,” I said, “You are standing next to I’M WITH STUPID and STUPID FAST?”

    This year, if your want isn’t illegal or dangerous, go for it! Just make sure you enjoy the ride. That might be your take-away.