The 'Jama Zone

TODAY’S BIG STORY:  The 'Jama Zone!  I have never quite understood the paradox of children.  I have observed that they attempt to be the most independent when they are in fact the most needy.  They are the most endearing when they are the most aloof, and they are the most amusing when they are the most bored!  Haha! So goes the contradiction of bedtime – the worst and best thirty minutes of the day.  Bedtime is a routine as long standing as lullabies, and for children, bedtime is the ultimate paradox.  Bedtime is the call to war that begins in the cradle.

Bedtime was a KING-SIZE issue for my three children; it still is.  Even into their adult years, my kids relish a goodnight’s sleep, but they hate going to sleep.  When the two youngest kids were toddlers, our oldest daughter would read a dozen Little Critter or Berenstain Bears books with them until the three of them fell asleep together in a full size bed.   The girls finally outgrew the resistance, but their younger brother never did and never has.  To this day, he absolutely hates bedtime!  It’s never too late for one more movie or one more conversation or one more game.

On the other hand, I am Pajama Mama; I love everything about the 'Jama Zone! Years ago, when I first wrote this story, I actually thougtht about opening a small retail shop that specialized in everything bedtime.  I thought it would even be a cool idea to wear pajamas to work!   I enjoy soft pillows, clean sheets and comfy quilts.  I fancy night lights, quiet voices and well-deserved peace.  And I adore pajamas and house shoes!  I could live and work in pajamas and house shoes! I love to shop for pajamas and house shoes!  There is something about  a pair of new pajamas and house shoes that makes you feel like you have really arrived…especially during the holidays and hospital stays. I remember when my youngest daughter was a toddler, she was given a long red night gown with a matching housecoat.  She wore that gown until the long sleeves came to her elbows, and the long gown came to her knees!

 I do not know the psychology behind my bedtime must-haves; however, I do know that my most treasured  must-have – my absolute bedtime essential – is a book.  Maybe I have outgrown the bedtime story, but as long as I live and read, I will always close my eyes with a book in my hand – which is probably why I love the ‘jama zone.

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THE ‘JAMA ZONE

“Kids, it’s bedtime!  Time to get your ‘jamas on!”

BED ALERT!  BED ALERT!

This is Captain Matt speaking!  Prepare for countdown!

Special Agent  P.J. (Pajama) Mama at Kitchen Command is giving the final orders!

We are now entering the ‘JAMA ZONE!

I will make contact with Deputy Dad to delay this mission for as long as possible.

            “Dad, do we have to get ready for bed?  We just started having fun! 

Can we please stay up for thirty more minutes?”

Negative!  Deputy Dad looks at Special Agent P.J. Mama who shakes her head.

Continue mission as planned! Pajama Mama says NO!

Attention!  Attention!

Calling all crew members to Captain Matt’s bedquarters!

It is time to suit up for the bedtime battle ahead!

Baby Bonnie, you put on your battle booties and basic training pants.

Sergeant Wilkie, you take the camouflage briefs and armored tank top.

I’ll take the ‘Jama Zone combat suit!

The sheets are drawn, and we are ready for the tuck-and-snug tug-of-war!

Sergeant Wilkie, you are in charge of our newest recruit, Baby Bonnie.

She is still part of the infant-ry, and she is easily hypnotized with lullabies.

Make sure she stays away from warm bottles of milk,

 P.J. Mama’s rocking chair and Deputy Dad’s recliner!

            “Hey, kids, come to the kitchen. I have made you a warm bedtime snack.”

Our final food ration for the day – warm milk and oatmeal!

Crew, listen to your Captain!

This is not – and I repeat – this is not a bedtime snack. 

Candy, cookies and chips are snacks!

This is top secret sleep food!

Sergeant Wilkie, I have some bad bedtime news.

This report just came in that Baby Bonnie is down for the night. 

It happened in the high chair –

face down right in the middle of her oatmeal…not a pretty sight.

P.J. Mama has taken her to the baby bed barracks.

It’s just you and me.

We have to stick together like sleepless soldiers and stay awake!

           

“Matt and Wilkie, when you finish your snack, make sure you go to the bathroom.”

The next stop in the ‘Jama Zone – that scary little cubicle in the eastern sector.

Boot camp in the bathroom!

SCRUB YOUR HANDS!

WASH YOUR FACE!

COMB YOUR HAIR!

BRUSH YOUR TEETH!

Scrub-Clean-Wash-Comb.

Brush-Floss-Gargle-Rinse.

Brush-2-3-4!

Scrub-2-3-4!

Hang in there Sergeant Wilkie!  It’s a dirty job, but we only have one stop left!

            “Okay, boys, head to your beds, and I’ll come by and tuck you in.”

Sergeant Wilkie is worn out. 

Clutching his battle-worn teddy bear and waving a cartoon-printed pillowcase,

he surrenders like a tuckered-out three-year-old.

The weary warrior has aborted the bedtime mission and gone under cover.

I am the only one still awake in the ‘Jama Zone. 

I am the six-year-old survivor of the pooped troop, 

and I have the snooze blues.

All systems are down. Only the night light is on.

At this point, there is just one thing that can keep me awake.

I reach under my bed, and I pull out a box.

My secret weapon against battle fatigue – twenty-eight ‘Jama Zone action figures!

Suddenly, the door opens, and I hide the box under the bed!

            “Matt, are you still awake?  Do you want me to read you a bedtime story?”

Oh No!  What do I do now?

Reading bedtime stories is what make Special Agent Pajama Mama so special!

Not even the captain of this bedtime crew can stay awake when she enters the camp.

She is highly-trained in pillow talk operations, and she does not fail.

She takes her position on the edge of the bunk.

The sleeping quarters are quiet.

P.J. Mama is armed with my favorite book, and she begins to read,

            “Once upon a time there was a little boy who discovered a  wide-awake place where children always had great adventures, but they never, ever went to … 

…sleep.

The 'Jama Zone is now secure.  Special Agent P.J. Mama mission accomplished as she closes the book on another bedtime story.


Dianne ; )

Beautiful Belongings

I just love the NEW BOOKS table at our local library.  If I am in a hurry, I simply choose one or two random books from the table, and occasionally I am delighted with my selection.  The books on the NEW BOOKS table are not always new; they are just new to our library.  The books are also seasonal, such as diet and exercise in January or love and marriage in February.

This past week, I selected a book entitled Words for the Wedding – the revised and updated 2011 version by Wendy Paris and Andrew Chesler.  According to the jacket summary, the book “presents hundreds of classic and contemporary poems, quotes, quips and blessings from the Buddha to Bono.”  So I checked it out, mainly for the quotes.   

What a surprise!  I had expected traditional and modern ceremony readings, including the exchanging of vows, wedding prayers or sample toasts.  What I found instead, just in time for Valentine’s Day, was a celebration of love in all of its varying stages, forms and expressions.  OMG!!  My most favorite passage is written by Roy Croft, a 20^th-century American poet, and is simply entitled “Love.”

I love you, not for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you, not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me.  I love you for the part of me that you bring out; I love you for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart and passing over all the foolish, weak things that you can’t help dimly seeing there, and for drawing out into the lights all the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.  I love you because you are helping me to make of the lumber of my life, not a tavern, but a temple; out of the works of my every day, not a reproach, but a song.  I love you because you have done more than any creed could have done to make me good, and more than any fate could have done to make me happy.  You have done it without a touch, without a word, without a sign, you have done it by being yourself, perhaps that is what being in love means, after all.

WOW!  “I love you for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart and passing over all the foolish, weak things that you can’t help dimly seeing there, and for drawing out into the lights all the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.”  How could the fragrance of a dozen roses or the sweetness of the most expensive chocolates ever say more than those perfectly-written words?  The “heaped-up heart” and the “beautiful belongings”  ~~ such perfectly-illustrated phrases that portray the power of true love.  CLICK!  Love, for me, now has an image!  

Years ago I made my first trip to my Grandmother’s trunk.  When the trunk was opened to me for the first time, I saw everything. I noticed safety pins, rubber bands, newspaper clippings, and all the "heaped-up"  junk that was so visible on that top layer; however, after four or five visits, I “dimly” noticed those “foolish, weak things.”  I was much too anxious to set aside that top layer and and pull out all the “beautiful belongings” from the very bottom of that trunk!

Everyone in my family has experienced that top-layer love.  Love opens up to us for the first time, and all we notice is the unimportant stuff.  We build taverns ~ places where one pays for accomodations and refreshments.  We are drunk with emotion and amused by entertainment; however, taverns are built for travelers and transients and tourists.  We pass through, collecting memorabilia and souvenirs that are "heaped-up" like empty beer bottles.  All we see are the reproaches of our foolishness, and we pray that the "lumber of our life" is not completely wasted.

Then, "without a touch, without a word, without a sign", being in love changes.  The "foolish, weak things" become dim and the "beautiful belongings" are brought to light.  I have no words to describe what takes place or what is different. I only know that being in love is no longer a vacation residence or a cheap hangout or a roadside tavern.  Love is a sanctuary, love is a sacred place, love is a temple...love is a song.

What a wonderful world this would be if we all learned to love this way.  I believe that when we “draw out” the best in those around us, we lay aside or pass over the insignificant stuff.  In that process, love causes a transference that is no less than miraculous.  Those “foolish, weak things” in our own lives tend to grow dim as well… “that is what being in love means, after all.”

Dianne <3

Ancient History

Another new year, and it is already the end of the fourth week of 2012!   Whenever a new year begins, I always have this overwhelming urge to excavate.  Layer by layer, I dig up one life relic after another from the previous year.  I love every part of the digging process.  I love deep digging with a shovel, and I love scraping the surface with a spoon.  I peruse my day planner (date book), journal and family calendar to make sure that I have not overlooked a rare find for the Tomorrow Trunk.

I began this process years ago when I first read Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self by Sarah Ban Breathnach.  I use the words “first read” because I have read the book or parts of the book a hundred times.  I began underlining my favorite quotes and passages and finally just decided to underline the entire book.  One particular passage explains the excavation  process, in which Breathnach “employ(s) the three levels of study – observation, description, explanation – that Bill McMillon describes in his Archaeology Handbook.” I use the same process to record the activities, accomplishments, mistakes and missteps of the year that has passed...and hopefully, unearth a '"small thing forgotten."

This past Sunday, I attended a special ordination service for my husband’s brother-in-law.  At the service, I saw a longtime friend who is also the mother of one of my daughter’s first boyfriends.  With so much history between us, I wasn’t sure how awkward the chance meeting would be.  Even though we were best friends at one time, I had witnessed a season of strain take its toll on the naturalness of our friendship.  As we greeted each other, I realized - almost immediately - that too many layers of life had formed and crusted-over that friendship.  We were gracious to each other with both of us trying our best to be genuine. When I told my daughter about the encounter, she replied, “Well, Mom, that is just ancient history.”

It is so ironic that archaeology is derived from the Greek word arkhaiologia, which is translated as “the study of the ancient.”  Every new layer of my life requires the burial of another.  That is what makes excavating so amazing!  I can literally experience the extinction of a former me in a particular phase of my life and the rebirth of someone new as I enter a more evolved passage!  I have made statements like, “Thank God, that person doesn’t exist anymore,” or “I don’t even know who that person was.”  AND IT’S TRUE! 

Like most successful civilizations, my family's ability to evolve has been born out of difficult challenges and great struggles...which led to a necessary re-positioning and an ultimate conversion.  The excavation of my family's story has followed a migratory path of survival and success!  We rise, we fall, we move, we change and we rise again.  Through this adaptation process, we are constantly repairing, mending, improving, regulating, shaping and fine tuning each layer.  As we are reborn, we follow clearer paths and find more authentic versions of ourselves. Without this process, we live out our entire lives on a few surface layers; we have no depth to the study of our lives.

I also learned a lesson about the word authentic as I studied the principles of excavation.  According to thesaurus.com, genuine means not fake or counterfeit; however, authentic means conforming to fact and therefore worthy of belief and trust.  We discover our authentic selves when we lay claim to the events of our lives - those indisputable facts to which we must conform - and reveal them as worthy of belief and trust.  "You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours.  When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality." ~~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

Breathnach writes that expedition parties search for "the small things forgotten" according to archaeologist James Deetz.  I always desire to lift the lid of the Tomorrow Trunk and find the small things forgotten ~ today's big story tucked away.  With two of my children graduating from college this year, I am sure 2012 will bring new beginnings, new migrations and new challenges.  Our family's story will become deeper as new layers are added and old layers are buried away.  As time goes by, today's fresh memories of 2011 will seem like, well, ancient history. 

Dianne ; )