So the day finally came, after much caroling and gifting and sugar and laughter it was time to bid goodbye to the children and their families for two weeks over the Christmas vacation. I am now home with my whole, beautiful family sitting in front of the fireplace watching comedies and laughing together in the special way that only families can. Rather than chronicling the project in this entry i thought it would be appropriate to share around some thoughts that have been occupying my mind a lot, especially this month. I will preface this with a little story (which i may or may not have already recounted in a blog).

I've heard that one night Mr. Rogers was set to appear at a fund-raiser of some kind in which various entertainers and famous people were featured. It was a suit-and-tie type of thing with cocktails and dinner and the whole bit. So the story goes, Mr. Rogers came out after some comedians whose jokes catered more to the adult crowd and he asked something of the audience. "Everyone take one minute," he began, "and think of all those people in your life who loved you into being." After the minute was up you could hear a pin drop except for the sound of quiet sobs and sniffles.

This story, particularly the phrase, 'loved into being', really resonated with me. I am dedicating this entry to my beautiful family, all of you. I see families like streams, flowing through time in the form of generations. What flows is the values and ideals that live in the hearts and minds of the family members that are preserved in how we live our lives and raise our children. In my family a vast diversity of lifestyles is represented. We have Catholics, protestants, Buddhists, Hindu-esques, liberals, conservatives, homosexuals, heterosexuals, metrosexuals, artists, scientists, politicos and painters just to get started. We are a veritable smorgasbord of lifestyles and perspectives though when all together are somehow bound by that magical and restorative force that is Love (with the capital 'L').

Through all the holidays and rituals and motions that we've gone through, Love is the one thing which stands out against all else as the most significant and important part of all of it. If you asked me what i received as Christmas gifts three years ago i most likely wouldn't have a clue. However, i could tell you of a very short conversation between my aunt and my mother in which my aunt was explaining that despite my (at the time) edgy appearance (which included spiked-colored hair, big metal jewelry and perhaps eyeliner) she saw in me a fundamental goodness that outshone any attempts of mine to project the contrary. I could tell you that this conversation took place perhaps 10 years ago though i remember it like this morning. It is such a family who dares to love a wretch like me that is perhaps the greatest, most abundant gift of all. So, in the spirit of the holidays and with a grateful heart i invoke the immortal words of James Taylor in beseeching you to,

Shower the people you love with love
show them the way that you feel
things are gonna work out fine, if you only will

May all who read this have health, love and fortune both incoming and outgoing in the coming year.

Yesterday it rained cats and dogs. In the play yard there was very little dry land. Only little muddy island stood between massive puddles big enough for 5-7 children to frolick and flail madly in. It had been raining with pretty consistent furor since the previous evening and by the time our fleet of rubber-clad munchkins took to the ground it had taken on more of a swampland-esque texture with grains of sand and plastic toys bobbing about in it. Immediately little masses would gather in the boggiest parts, thrashing arms and shrieky laughter kicking up waves of mucky, greyish-brown under a murky Oakland sky dripping severely. In one direction you would see a little one with a plastic cup gingerly pouring muck into the galoshes of his unsuspecting accomplice. In another eyeshot you might get a pack of wily ones smashing into the puddle with plastic baseball bats and giggling uncontrollably at the effect.

For the first thrity or so minutes i could only stand watching, half-amazed and half-perplexed at the scene before me. As an adult we lose so much, we think that we need so much to be happy. We placate ourselves with entertainment and fine dining and trifling hobbies while the lucky children need only a little rain and a pair of galoshes to have the whole world. Its part of the reason i am here now, to rediscover that place where life is abundant again, where the sun shines and the birds chirp and i am grateful even without entertainment systems and designer suits and a cool new ringtone for my cell phone. Working with children and the developmentally disabled has revealed to me how profoundly little we truly need in this world and how vastly much time we waste working to get that which we do not need. So much work in pursuit of so little happiness - its a major theme in this world. Lasting happiness, i believe, is a state of mind that must be carefully cultivated through compassion and understanding and patience. It will not be found in a beautiful body or a regimen of pills or a bottle of beer. Those things will only bring the fragile joy that washes away like sandcastles at every sunset.

However i know that fundamental to this realization is the fact that we (i) cannot judge those who seek happiness in the world of pleasures because its all based in the same basic feeling: that we want to be content. Even as i watch my kids and see them growing little by little, chanting the refrain to the latest overtly sexual and demeaning pop song or parroting hateful speech from movies and TV must i remember that it is my place to hold the light that they bring to my life and give it back to them as much as i can manage. Its like the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange that takes place between plants and animals (and humans). Each has something vital that the other needs to grow and thrive. Children need me to teach and guide and give form to their chaotic lives. I need children to remember that happiness is a rainy day. Though i live a life where money plays a trifling part, i am filthy rich.

At one point in my life i can remember wishing that there was a 'child rental service' during the holidays. I was of the age where the sparkle of innocence begins to fade and Christmas day becomes just a brief flash involving a meal and presents and a particular awareness of the absence of magic that adults will go to pathological lengths to try to preserve in their own celebration (check how many boxes of trinkets, and counting, are in your storage spaces). I still remember the last time, after i had already crossed over but my sweet little sister still stood on the good side, watching her come bounding down the hall in her little white nightgown with eyes like stars, throwing her little arms up over her head and chanting, 'ME-RRY CHRISS-MISS! MERRY CHRISMISS!!!' I recall sitting and watching it all happen and trying to hold back tears through much of it because i thought it was all over, i thought i would never have that twinkle again.

Luckily, i was wrong. Christmas got a kick-start this weekend at Sophia Project with our first round of weekend 'respite care' in which we take the opportunity to give the children as much holiday cheer as we can manage to squeeze into our short time and their short attention span. In both houses special Christmas trees were rushed in on the 1st of December to be ready for the arrival of the weekend children. Meanwhile some of my coworkers prepared big batches of sugar cookie dough which sat in the fridge like portly little elves.

The weekend would then unfold with a fine balance of play and celebration, giving just enough of each to keep everyone interested. Friday night after a series of adventures involving legos and frantic running about the house we gathered in the sleep room where a small tree stood in the corner. Carefully, with the guidance of Carol and David (if you haven't caught on by now, the Mama and Papa of Sophia Project) we wrapped it up in lights and bedecked it with twinkling ornaments and a handful of candy canes. After this we somehow got through a few carols in the soft light of the tree while three little boys stuck out their tongues, rolled their eyes, climbed under beds and occasionally sang a little. Saturday morning found me in the playroom with three, 6-7 year old boys sewing stockings out of felt and yarn. While they painstakingly pushed and pulled their needles through with little tongue-tips jutting out in sheer concentration i sat with the scissors cutting out assorted designs including conifers, ornaments, stars and name-initals. After managing to convnice each of them to sew at least half of the stocking, we finished up and then moved into the kitchen to hot-glue. Needless to say, the boys were overjoyed that the glue came out of a 'gun'.

Later that day after various attempts to engage or at least run-ragged our little ones we removed our dough-lumps from the fridge and gingerly showed the boys how to roll them out evenly, flour the table, press the cutters and maximize the surface area of the dough. We then freed the boys to spin cyclones in the living room while the cookies went into the oven. While the cookies baked we all assembled, (boys from our house and girls from the other) and marched like little inner-city ducklings down to the skating rink, a mere ten-minute walk from the house. Being saturday, the rink was packed and the sheer density on the ice truly made for a wonderful, idyllic wintery experience (even though the weather outside was sunny and perhaps 65 degrees). Wrapped up in our sweaters and hats we clung to the side wall, spun dizzily, slid to and fro and made every attempt to go in one direction as Christmas classics piped with much reverberation through the olympic-sized rink. This went on for about 1 1/2 hours though the sounds of children laughing remained in my head for the rest of the day.

Later we took the boys back to the house and gave them the opportunity to bury their little cookies in icing and sprinkles to be taken home at the end of the weekend. We then filed back to the other house for a lovely spaghetti dinner before the main event - the lighting of the Sophia House Christmas tree. On the level of a child's heart (and mine, last night) i would say that this is tantamount to what happens in Time Square or DC at this time of year.
One by one, the children were called to the table which was layed with a massive assortment of ornaments, almost all red but in all shapes and sizes and textures. As each name was called a precious little girl or boy would approach the table with eyes full of wonder and a grin whose breadth emobodied the spirit of Christmas itself, taking the ornament ever-so-carefully up to the giant tree and placing it on one of her branches. This would take some time and nobody would think twice about giving it as much as it needed. While the children were not of the most settled variety, during this event they lay calm as new fallen snow just watching it unfold. There were quiet murmurs but nothing more. This was a sacred space.

When the tree was well-covered and glistening the lights went low and the room was filled only with the glow of a single string of white lights and the eyes of a dozen awe-filled children. We then sat and one-by-one the children picked out their favorite carols which we all sang together. With each carol a something would grow in the room, a warmth that pervaded the atmosphere like the smell of Christmas cookies in your mother's kitchen. Deep down inside i wanted to cry. I wanted to cry my eyes out for abandoning my youth and innocence and leaving behind all the magic that went with it. I wanted to sob for gratitude at the opportunity to be there and then with those beautiful children in the warmth of that room where in a cruel and unforgiving world they all felt perfectly safe. I wanted to run and wrap my arms around them and tell them that they didn't have to worry and that there is a Loving and benevolent force behind all of this looking after them and they should never despair but just keep believing in the magic...

But i know that such promises are not mine to make and these are things they have to learn on their own, so i just sat in the corner with my eyes on the floor and a fire in my heart, praying. May all beings be peaceful.