Star-light...Star-bright...

Rob and I slipped away to our community's private beach last night at midnight. Dragging reclining lawn chairs, toting a few snacks and a sizable amount of bug-spray, we set up 'camp'.

Camping out to watch the Perseid meteor shower that is! We used to drag the children from their beds, back when Bobby was a baby and Kathryn a grumpy, tired kid who thought staring at the sky was 'boring'. She doesn't quite 'get it' yet, so is happy to stay home in bed when Rob and I sneak away for our twice yearly starlit dates.

I've always been awed by the vast night sky, velvet black with it's scattering of cold diamond stars. I remember as a teenager, climbing up on the garage roof on warm summer weekends after babysitting jobs. The neighborhoods were quiet, mom and dad weren't expecting me back at an exact time, and I was 'safe' there, close to home. I'd lay up there with the warm, scratchy shingles gripping my clothes lightly, like sandpaper, feeling the magnitude of the heavens as they pulsed above.

Each twinkling star winked at me as we conspired together, me dreaming dreams, and the stars sending their light across a galaxy. Every shooting star then was a gift, and the mystery of the milky way caught my imagination with it's millions of stars gathered onto a hazy ribbon.

I have fond memories too...of 'Star Hill' in Rome, NY...where our family would sometimes gather late at night to drink in the sight of an uninterrupted summer sky filled with more stars than you could imagine. There, atop the verdant dome of grass, breezes tickling our faces, we would send out our silent pleas to the heavens to send us a star-fireworks display! Shooting stars, falling stars, earth-grazers with their phosphorescent tails lingering behind and fading to view after long moments left us hungry for more.

Last night was no exception, and the earth's rotation pulling us through the Perseid debris provided us with some exceptional flashes and bursts.As we talked and reminisced on years' expeditions past, we would gasp or exclaim, pointing out each sighting to each other with awe and delight. There was easily, to our count, a falling star or two each minute, with a good half-dozen 'earth grazers' that flamed across the sky with impossible brightness, trails lingering and fading behind them, making the trip worthwhile.

The surf was gentle, the sand free of critters, (though not sand-fleas, mosquitoes and black flies, dangit!), and if there had been a nice breeze we could have stayed out longer. As it was, dressing in jeans to ward off the swarms of biting insects left us warmer than was comfortable. That surf breaking lightly on the beach looked SO inviting! If we had brought towels, I'd have gone in the water in a heart beat...night-scene from JAWS playing in my mind, notwithstanding!!!

We did walk along the beach, playing tag with the surge of foaming water a little, and we found, to our delight, that our dragging steps in the damp sand stirred up the flash and glitter of microscopic bio luminescent phytoplankton washed up on the shore. "These tiny plants give off a faint bluish-green light and silver spark when stepped on or in stirring the sand around. Apparently, the occurrence of dinoflagellate blooms coincides with certain weather and oceanic conditions, and can appear one night, and then not appear again for months. The luminescence of a single dinoflagellate lasts for 0.1 seconds, and they don’t live in the sand more than a day"*, making our experience even more memorable.

Walking backwards, each dragging step stirred up enough glitter to satisfy Tinker Bell at Disney! Tiny twinkling lights at our feet echoed the vast array of twinkling glitter above. What a magnificent sight!

We had arrived about midnight, and at about 2:30am, the muggy, sticky, humid air and droves of insistent bugs sent us scrambling back to the relative cool and safety of the air-conditioned car. We spent another hour there...Rob snoring loudly in his reclined seat, while I propped up with pillows, backwards on my seat, head on the dash, staring up through the windshield at the familiar sky of my youth. With the air conditioning on, and no new prickling bites or buzz-by mosquitoes with their high-pitched whine in my ear...I connected again to that deep peace I feel when in view of a clear night sky draped with it's black crepe and shining silvered sequins.

With no moon in the sky to compete with, the stars twinkled and glowed with a brilliance seen only in the rare occasions we can get far enough away from civilization to enjoy true darkness. The heavens dazzled with ice white flashes, alternating with cold blues, twinkling reds, and the bright flashes and streaks of shooting stars.

It's a privilege to live in a world swathed and cradled in the beauty of the heavens.

*http://www.beachconnection.net/news/glow0806_0423.htm

Celebrity Breeds Immorality? Or Vice Versa?

I saw an article on MSN news today titled, “Britney (Spears): Has She Lost It?” Unfortunately, the only answer to this question is another question: Who cares? Or...more accurately, WHY do we care?

We live in a society that lauds celebrity despite or perhaps because of, moral depravity, shoddy or absentee parenting of children born to unwed parents of dubious or fleeting commitment, and personal gratification over law, morality, or common sense.

When I consider the famous (or infamous?) quad of teen-role models, and take a moment to reflect on the kind of society that applauds the vacuous, self-indulgent and irresponsible behaviors of Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie, Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears, I shudder to think of the generation we are raising under their powerful examples.

What a waste it is that these women of influence, gifted with lives of ease and wealth, armed with a mighty sense of entitlement, completely lack any interest that is not self-serving. I know the fast, early rise to wealth, fame and power is not without its share of dangers, but why does society hold them up worthy of continued celebrity? Are we so unconcerned and out of touch with the toll it takes on core values, to have our youth aspiring to this?

Perhaps that is the trouble then. The breakdown of the family has spawned a generation of single-parents too tired, too disinterested, or too focused on their own needs, to do the work necessary to teach, police, implore, restrain, and educate their children.

The 40-somethings are competing to be the next 20-somethings, and the children raised in such homes are left to the wiles of the media in their formative early teenage years.

The all too-pervasive, and persuasive forum of the media holds excess, immorality, immodesty, and instant gratification up as the new standard of interest. Whereas they may shake their heads solemnly while writing the articles, they send their photographers out in droves for a flash or glimpse of reckless or immoral behavior. They comment hungrily, feeding on the refuse left in the wake of these mega-stars’ passing.

There aren’t enough parents teaching their teens to look beyond what which current trend dictates. There are too many clamoring for standards of dress that set dangerous precedent to the moral ambiguity of our rising generations. Adults that should see the pitfalls snap up the latest trends and styles in a desperate attempt to hold on to, or compete with, fleeting youth.

The over-sexualized media portrayal of women convinces many that Britney, Lindsay, Paris and Nicole are worthy of adoration based entirely on their social status. It’s past time that this status holds up as the ideal. We need more valiant mothers, more strong, noble, intelligent women going about the quiet work of raising children and teaching them to be moral contributors to society.

If we continue to hold celebrity to such low standards…how can we show our children where to place appropriate value? Paris skips in stilettoed heels from one pink-Porsche party to another, laughing vapidly and mocking the mundane. How much would be accomplished if she were well-spoken, appropriate, and lent her considerable resources to a worthy cause?

So Lohan’s in rehab, and Britney’s falling apart, and even though they did it to themselves, we bought their complacency with our acceptance...and that's even worse.

Beach Babies

I bobbed about in the surf yesterday with my little flotilla of children in "floaties", and all was well in the world. The sun was hot on our faces, heads alternately warmed from the sun and cooled by the waves and breeze. The laughter of sand-covered, salt-sticky children echoed from the beach. Feet in the surf, the line of mothers on camp-chairs reached to the double-digits, and babies slept or fussed under umbrellas. Young men skimmed recklessly on wave boards across sands wet by receding waves, and young women bobbed like giggling message-filled bottles, moved to the shore by rolling of the sea.This was our day at the beach yesterday with a good showing of the mothers in our ward, future leaders in tow!

I definitely took too much stuff. Next time, it's me, the kids, the "floaties", one towel, hats and my chair. That's it! They were happy to run on the beach, exploring shells, flinging wet sand into the pounding surf, toss their shells with a 'plink' into the waves that washed up the beach, dig holes that quickly filled and melted back into an unbroken shore again, and ride the swells with mom. All that other stuff was just more to carry, more to clean, and more to fill with sand!

Even though I spent most of my time counting heads and worrying like a mother hen, it was a wonderful day. We filled the van with the requisite amount of sand, stopped for Slurpee's at 7-11, and watched the kids fall asleep damp and sticky in their car seats on the way home.

Once home, we unloaded mountains of wet, sandy towels, wet, sandy toys, wet, sandy children in wet-sandy shoes...into the house. Kids went straight to the tub to peel out of their sand-filled suits! A castle's worth of sand later, kids washed and dried, fed and settled down to watch a show, mom is hosing off beach toys, unloading the car, rinsing sandy shoes, and putting laundry through. I just want to take a nap!

The day was glorious, the sun and ocean the perfect temperatures, the company, heavenly. Looking forward to next week!

Procrastination...

I know I am doing it. I can feel it both weighing on me, and running around feverishly in the back of my mind. The list is long...the task, daunting at best. It's just that time of year again, and I dread it anew. The day is calling to me...and it's saying, "RUN AWAY!"

I am talking about the mountains of clothes I need to go through...again. Every six months I have to empty the children's dressers and closets and drag out the bins and bags of next-size, next-season, clothes to fold and put away for use.

I don't mind the task in theory...but in reality, with three toddlers running around...it's just not as easy as it needs to be. What I really need is a big block of uninterrupted time to be in there with the door closed, piles and piles of clothes around me to work and think. What I'll get though...is a few minutes here and there...fighting off kids jumping through the organized piles, and tossing the articles into the air like jumbo confetti. Or...worse yet...'helpers' that shuffle, tuck and squish clothes into and out of piles randomly, or undress and redress in a dozen different outfits they discard like banana peels all over the house.

In between going through the old clothes and folding the new...the kids will need diapers changed, Sippee cups filled, foods, snacks, entertainment, refereeing, hugs, kisses on boo-boo's, an occasional swat, time in mommy's lap, the password for the computer game, and someone to make sure they aren't playing with knives, electrical outlets, or worse...the soap-pump in the bathroom!

It's a big, thankless, job. It's necessary but knowing it's impractical to put it off with the school year about to begin, doesn't make it any easier to begin. Maybe if I stop feeding them...I won't have to do it again for awhile...

I am sitting here typing and with every click of the keyboard, I feel myself growing more firmly into Rob's shoes....p-r-o-c-r-a-s-t-i-n-a-t-i-o-n. Life gets too quickly out of hand with tasks like these not taken care of. Especially in a house the size of ours, filled with as many people as it is.

If I can't have help with the job itself, how about some appreciation for the Herculean efforts of one dedicated mom?? Hmmmm. I do wish my dear husband had a clue about the work involved, but I don't think the male mind has the necessary depth and faculty to imagine the effort involved in the mundane, but critical details of running a household full of children!

'Tis thankless work, but I will find joy in serving my family.Surely there are mothers out there, certainly my own, who can appreciate the immense task. Those piles of clothes are staring at me. Who's going to blink first??

Time to stop typing...and lift the burden of a big chore not done...to the satisfaction of the job well done. Wish me luck!