Entertaining Aunt

I had a couple of friends coming over for dinner and I needed something interesting to do with Tilapia. I don’t really cook so much as heat things up, so it had to be simple and foolproof. I pulled some lemon-pepper marinade out of the fridge, put it down on the counter and went away to answer the phone. When I came back I picked up the bottle and shook it with all the enthusiasm I could muster. The only little thing I forgot was that I had loosened the cap when I got it out. A second later I was standing in the kitchen with marinade dripping down my face, through my hair, all over my clothes and down the cabinets. I took a few moments to let the shock wear off and survey the damage. It really was quite spectacular. It occurred to me, as I was standing there in lemon scented socks, that this is the reason I live alone, so no one is there to witness the train wreck. Just in case you think this was an unfortunate but atypical incident, last week my sister-in-law emailed an asparagus soup recipe to my mother and me. I replied that it tasted like dirt and thanks to my new hand-held blender that I have yet to master, it was now all over my kitchen wall. My mother’s response was, “That’s my girl.”

I have very vivid memories of my mother trying to teach me to cook. She can make anything without a recipe but I was the queen of banana bread. That is the only thing I remember making as a kid. When I get good at something I tend to stick with it. In my teen years I progressed to lemon bars, which was exciting for everybody. My mother was very smart about teaching me to cook, which sounds odd now that I have so graphically described her failure. She figured out that I am a stubborn piece of work and I don’t respond well to the now-I-am-going-to-teach-you-something approach. She didn’t put me in an apron and say, “And now we are going to cook.” When she was making dinner, she would casually mention tidbits like, “To get the core out of an iceberg lettuce, you slam it down on the counter and then the core twists right out.” Her cooking tips have stuck with me through the years because I didn’t realize I was being told what to do. The fact that I can’t keep my dinner off the kitchen walls has more to do with my unwillingness to practice than the quality of my education. My cooking skills did not develop beyond cookie baking and breaking up a lettuce because in my young adulthood I discovered that you can have pad thai and chicken tiki marsala delivered in thirty minutes for a fraction of the effort and cost.

The only place I get any experience is when I am helping out at my brother’s house. My niece Rose likes to get involved. She smashes egg shells into the omelets, loses count when she is measuring flour, and usually spills milk all over the floor. I don’t like cooking to start with, so I certainly don’t love cooking with a six-year-old tornado who insists on doing everything herself. But I am constantly reminded of the times my mother watched me burn this or put the wrong ingredients in that. People who have been afforded that kind of patience have a duty to pass it on, I guess. I don’t announce to Rose that I am cooking, but if she notices and pulls up a chair, I hand her the eggs. Then I get the spoon I will need to fish out all the eggshell.

What I can try to pass on is something that I did manage to learn from my mother: the art of entertaining. It has always amazed me that my mother can whip up a meal for twelve people with an hour’s notice and not freak out about it. In high school, my brother and I could easily sweet-talk her into letting our friends come over at the last minute. Something mysterious would come out of the freezer and turn into a fabulous dinner without any drama. We were so proud of her for that. Other mothers would carry on at the imposition or just let us fend for ourselves. The art of entertaining is a fabulous thing. Most people assume it’s about money and snobbery, but it’s actually about planning and presentation. You can order pizza and still present it to your guests like you care. Entertaining well is not about having a fancy home or owning the Crate and Barrel catalog. Money certainly helps provide the appearance of class, but in reality it is an attitude and a way of behaving. If you have ever turned on a television, you know that money does not produce class. So you don’t need money to learn how to treat guests in your own home.

When Rose grows up, I’m not the one she is going to call to ask how long you cook a turkey or what spices you use on a rack of lamb. But as an adult that she looks up to, I can teach a few things by example. When my nieces and nephews come to my house we are more likely to have a food fight with Goldfish crackers while watching The Lion King than to sit at a nicely set table, but there are always opportunities to teach good manners and entertaining etiquette. When we have dinner parties, Rose sees me taking coats, offering our guests something to drink and making sure everyone is included in the conversation. Children absorb so much from the example that we set. Let’s just hope she doesn’t follow my example of the proper way to apply lemon-pepper marinade.

An Aunt’s Role in Preserving Family History

My grandmother has a large, blue ceramic jug decorated with the face of a pirate coming out of the mouth of a lion, among other various characters you would not expect to find peering out from the side of a jug. In other words, it is very ugly. We don’t know how my great-great-grandparents came into possession of this monstrosity but it has been passed down for generations and now sits proudly in my mother’s living room. My brother and I have a running joke about which one of us has to take it and when we get fresh, my grandmother occasionally threatens to leave it to one of us in her will. I am trying to keep on her good side. What I have claimed as mine is an equally gaudy gold and green jar that has a music box in the lid. My great-grandmother kept dried ginger in it and my brother and I learned how to get the lid off without triggering the music box and we would sneak a piece, lick all the sugar off and then throw the spicy ginger away. It is a worthless jar that she probably won in a raffle at her lawn bowling club, but I love it and have cherished it for as long as I can remember.

My grandmother was recently in the hospital with heart failure so the family gathered together for some quality time. Naturally with a scare like that she was thinking about what she was going to leave to us, and the subject of inheritance and the importance of family heirlooms was on all of our minds. Grandma had just shipped her personal belongings from Australia to California when she moved in with my parents, so the house was overflowing with memories. I wandered from room to room remembering childhood visits with my grandparents: the silver hairbrush that always sat on her dresser, the painting of a tree that I always thought looked like a fat lady posing for a photo, the horse statue that I played with when she wasn’t looking.

Sitting in my grandmother’s hospital room in a moment of quiet, I asked her why it was so important to her to pass these things down. She said that what mattered to her was to be able to pass down an appreciation of the things of beauty and quality that she had valued enough to work for, to care for and to carry across several continents and back. The monetary value of her worldly possessions was meaningless; but they represented her life and her parents before her and their parents before them. Passing down the art and objects of beauty (blue jugs aside) was very important to her. She wanted me to learn that this life is not about acquiring as much stuff as you can. You should have things around you that matter, not just things that you have because that’s what Charlie Farnsbarns has. I didn’t ask but I think Charlie Farnsbarns is her version of keeping up with the Joneses. It’s been a while since I was fully fluent in Aussie slang but I’m pretty sure she made that up.

After contemplating this ritual that my grandmother was going through as she assigned her precious treasures to her descendants, I was lying in bed one morning listening to my mother making pancakes with her own grandchildren. My eight-year-old nephew was looking at a cabinet of knick-knacks and said to his little brother, “See that glass ship in a bottle? I would like to inherit that one day.” I lay in bed smiling. He wasn’t wishing he had a ship like that. He wasn’t asking for it. It was his ginger jar.

As the only member in my generation of the family without children of my own, I won’t be the one who is charged with keeping the treasures—and the memories that go with them—in the family. So I have been thinking about what I can do as an aunt to keep our family history alive for my brother’s and cousin’s kids, and here is what I have come up with. I would like to preface this list by saying that I am not necessarily talking about money and things of value here. Although my grandmother has some pieces of art that are beautiful, my family also has a set of multi-colored tin cups that we treat as family heirlooms because of the memories that they bring up. Family possessions do not have to have monetary value to make them important.

Tell kids the history behind family heirlooms and where they came from.

I would love to know how my great-grandmother came into possession of my ginger jar. I took the opportunity at the hospital to ask my grandmother about some of the decorations I had seen in her house for decades but had never taken the time to ask about. I listed many of the things I remembered as a child and she gave me the story behind how each of them came into her possession. I was shocked to realize that some of her things went back five generations. We don’t like to talk about having stuff because it sounds materialistic and crass. But as my grandparents get older I have noticed more and more that their stuff, the little knick-knacks and furniture that have survived through the years, really matters to them. These possessions represent a lifetime of memories. By learning the stories behind them, we are more likely to care too and treat their things with respect. I have personally observed how hurt an elderly person can be when their family shows no interest in the things they have loved and treasured. I am going to find more opportunities to tell my nieces and nephews about our family gems so that when it is their turn to take care of them, they will appreciate their significance and honor the memory of our ancestors. 

Tell kids stories that connect them to the family history.

When we visited my grandparents as little kids, my brother and I would jump into bed with them in the morning. We thought it was great fun to wake them up but now that I am an aunt who loves my morning snuggles, I realize they were probably lying there waiting for us. We would beg my grandfather to tell us stories about when he was young and it didn’t take much coaxing. We learned the stories by heart and would make requests such as, “Tell us about the time your dog got attacked by a kangaroo while you were mustering cattle and how you saved his life,” or, “Tell us the one about when Mummy got in trouble for riding her big sister’s horse and fell off.” My favorites were actually about World War II because it was a time we could not relate to and even the stories he could share with children were fascinating. He had a great tale about how he and his mates distracted a truck driver and relieved the Americans of their supply of socks and underwear from the back of the truck. He had a good laugh every time he told that one. As kids growing up in the city in America, those stories connected us to farm life, our Australian culture, and the history of the war, all at the same time. My father’s father had a similar morning story-time ritual and I have never forgotten the stories of how he survived the war as an Air Force bomb aimer and how our family came to be who we are now. They are both gone and my paternal grandfather’s military cap sits on my brother’s mantel piece and my maternal grandfather’s hat is on my shelf. Those hats represent every one of those stories for us.

Stories about the family can connect children to family heirlooms and give young ones a tangible connection to the past. Children understand things they can touch and feel. My great-grandfather was a jockey, and tales about my great-grandparents living in Hong Kong to help start the horse racing industry there give meaning to the Asian sculptures and furniture that my grandmother has saved. I don’t consider myself a good storyteller and I have never taken the time to tell the kids about what life was like for their dad and me growing up in Australia, or adjusting to our new life in America. Maybe instead of letting them fight over the games on my iPad when they get into bed with me, I should try starting my own morning story time.

Let kids grow into an appreciation of things

If my parents gave my nephew that ship in a bottle now, it would instantly lose its meaning for him. My ginger jar means so much to me because I have spent thirty-something years looking at it, playing with it and admiring it. My mother has had it for a while and she could have given it to me when I was younger but if she had, I wouldn’t appreciate it as much. Give children something to look forward to inheriting and they will value it more.  

Why should little trinkets like a ginger jar and an Air Force hat matter? Throughout much of human history, families were connected by land. Land gave the family roots and great care was taken to keep it in the family generation after generation. The land was not yours but something you were charged with taking care of until it was time to pass it on. Now that so many of us live in cities, we have lost that connection. When we die, we pass down whatever financial assets we have, but money dissipates. With no emotional association or family ties, it is likely to be spent or devalued by the economy. Families benefit from financial inheritance and that is a good thing. However it cannot replace the role that living on the land played in keeping loved ones together and preserving family history. This makes preserving items of family significance all the more important. It is not about materialism or accumulating wealth. It is about connecting to where we came from and keeping the legacy alive.

One day my brother will display the ugly blue jug and visitors will have to think of kind things to say about it. “Wow, isn’t that . . . interesting?” I will be very proud of him for caring enough about our family heirloom to ensure that it is safe and still around to be inflicted upon the next generation. I too am going to help keep our family history alive for my nieces and nephews so that when it is their turn, they understand and appreciate the things that represent their amazing and colorful family.

Is Your Brain Tricking You Out of Happiness?

When my husband passed away, I went through a pretty steep learning curve while adjusting to taking care of our house and large garden. Manual labor and nature have never been my friends. I very quickly learned a few things, like screwing a sprinkler head onto a garden hose requires that you turn it off first; watering the plants in stilettos may aerate the lawn but will require an outfit change before work; and weed whackers are the devil’s garden tool. After purchasing what I perceived to be a needed part from Home Depot, it took me 30 minutes to put the weed whacker back together. I spent another 20 minutes getting it started but when I did, it took off with great enthusiasm. I wrestled it into submission and stuck it down near some grass that needed to go away. Then it fell apart, bits flying all over the garden. Some sort of manufacturing defect, I assumed. After repeating the whole process, the part I had just bought needed to be replaced. In frustration I launched it across the backyard, uttering unpleasant things about my husband leaving me. At this point a neighbor stuck his head over the fence and offered up his gardener. He was a bit of a recluse and the only time I had managed to speak to him was when my dog ran through his wet cement. So he must have been very inspired by the spectacle to come out and kindly give me his gardener’s number.

When I married my husband I knew that he had cancer. I had five years to imagine how I would manage on my own. I pictured myself as the elegant, tragic widow who exuded strength and composure, gracefully thanking people for their sympathy. Not once did I see myself screaming at airborne gardening tools. Actually, almost nothing about how I thought I would cope with grief turned into reality. Gardening aside, I did quite well with the process and found my way through some pretty dark times, but it wasn’t the journey I had built up in my mind.

Daniel Gilbert, a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, wrote a very interesting book about how our brain perceives happiness, called Stumbling on Happiness. Gilbert describes an experiment in which volunteers were shown a series of three letter trigrams, such as DXW USY OSQ etc. They were given one trigram and told that this one was special. The subjects were asked to figure out what made that particular series of letters special. In one test group, it did not take long for the subjects to figure out that the special trigram and only the special trigram contained the letter T. In a second test group, the special trigram was distinguished by the fact that it lacked the letter T. It did not matter how many set of trigrams the second test group analyzed, not one of them figured it out. It was easy to notice the presence of a letter but impossible to recognize the absence of one. Our brains also have this problem when creating images of the future. When we imagine what circumstances in our future will bring us happiness, our brains leave out a lot of important information.

Gilbert describes an example of how our brains work. “Our inattention to absences influences the way that we think about the future. Just as we do not remember every detail of a past event (what color socks did you wear to your high school graduation?) or see every detail of a current event (what color socks is the person behind you wearing at this very moment?), so do we fail to imagine every detail of a future event. . . . To illustrate this point I often ask people to tell me how they think they would feel two years after the sudden death of their eldest child. As you can probably guess, this makes me quite popular at parties. . . . People typically tell me that they imagined hearing the news, or they imagined attending the funeral, or they imagined opening the door to an empty bedroom. But in my long history of asking this question and thereby excluding myself from every social circle to which I formerly belonged, I have yet to hear a single person tell me that in addition to these heartbreaking, morbid images, they also imagined the other things that would inevitably happen in the two years following the death of their child. Indeed not one person has ever mentioned attending another child’s school play . . . or eating a taffy apple on a warm summer evening, or reading a book . . . When they imagine the future, there is a whole lot missing, and the things that are missing matter. . . . it is difficult to consider what we may not be considering­—and this is one of the reasons why we so often misinterpret our emotional responses to future events.”

The idea of how our minds perceive and dwell on potential grief has been on my mind ever since a conversation with my sister-in-law. I am the appointed guardian for her three children should anything happen to her and my brother. I am actually the guardian for more than one family so I have a list of people who are not allowed to fly on the same plane together just in case I instantly turn into the old woman who lived in a shoe. I don’t remember how it came up while we were sitting in a theater waiting for the movie to start, but she expressed how much she has thought about what she would do if she found out she was dying. How would she pass the torch and prepare us all for the tragedy? How would she help me become the surrogate mother that her children would need? I have always imagined that if my brother and sister-in-law died, I would move into their house, send the backyard chickens to a “farm” upstate, hire a nanny, and put a psychiatrist on retainer for my occasional nervous breakdowns. The thought of losing them is so horrific that it’s probably best not to think about it, but that doesn’t stop me. I should have learned through the death of my husband, that no matter how you imagine you will cope, how long you plan or how much information you put into the scenarios of how your new life would be, you are wrong. You think you are preparing yourself for a possible outcome, but you are actually just making yourself unhappy.

It is almost impossible to make yourself stop daydreaming about the future. Who hasn’t imagined what they would do if they were told they had cancer, just found out they were adopted, or Johnny Depp showed up at their door begging to let him whisk them away to his private island? What else is there to do during the daily commute? We get out of bed and go to work, workout at the gym and brush our teeth. Almost everything we do is designed to give ourselves a better future, so how can we not think about it? Our brains are not built to only live in the moment and we are going to spend most of our time imaging and planning the future. But we do have some control over whether we allow our minds to obsess over it. We need to understand that the brain cannot give us a complete, realistic vision of what will make us happy. Just as your brain leaves out the good stuff when you picture a future tragedy, it also leaves out the bad stuff when you imagine your perfect life.

My life as a tragically-young widow has turned out better than I expected. Now I live in a garden-free apartment where I am doing my best to keep a house plant alive. I often dream about being married again and having a family. Somehow that vision never involves children throwing up in the back of the car, pee all over my bathroom floor, or being tricked into eating food that has already been chewed; all things that have happened to me because of my brother’s children. I have the best of both worlds and I am trying very hard to keep my imagination in check and be content. And when Johnny Depp shows up, I will feign surprise and wonder if my life could be any more perfect.

Teaching Timeless Etiquette

I recently took my niece to her first ballet. We saw the Russian National Ballet perform Cinderella.  At age 6, Rose is a little young for a full-length ballet but the stepmother was a large, comic man in a dress and the stepsisters were funny so it was a good way to introduce the theater and fine arts. She sat still longer than I expected and although she thought the girls were too skinny and couldn’t understand why this theater didn’t have popcorn, she liked the fairy godmother’s costume and the pretty music.

When the performance was over, the dancers were still taking their bows when people in the audience started making a beeline for the door. I thought, “These people just danced for you for two hours and you can’t take a minute to show them your appreciation? They are still on the stage, for crying out loud.”

We live in a country where you can see something as extraordinary as a ballet (and the Russian National Ballet no less) for the cost of a week’s worth of Starbucks. Are we showing our children by example that we don’t take that for granted, or are we teaching them that being first out of the parking lot is more important than other people’s feelings?

The problem I had with the ballet exodus is that I’m sure none of those people walking out in view of the performers thought for a minute that it was rude. It was not an intentional snub, just a thoughtless and self-centered action. It occurred to me as I was standing there clapping that you don’t have to be well-versed in theater etiquette to realize that this scene is awkward and unfortunate. Common courtesy tells you that, if you take a moment to see the world around you and not just focus on your own interests. I hate to think what our Russian guests were thinking.

My sister-in-law has a book on her shelf called Etiquette by Emily Post, published in 1946. I enjoy browsing through its helpful rules to live by such as the appropriate attire for your butler and the protocol of leaving a calling card. One of my favorite passages is about the etiquette of leaving someone’s home. “When a visitor is ready to leave, she (or he) merely stands. To one with whom she has been talking, the visitor says, “Good-by. I hope I shall see you again soon” —or “sometime” —or “I’ve enjoyed our talk so much.” Naturally a woman is less effusive in what she says to a man than in what she says to another woman. And yet she may very well exclaim, “I’ve been completely thrilled!” if he has told her anything that can be truthfully described as thrilling, but not otherwise.” The entire book goes on like that and I find it endlessly entertaining.

Obviously social norms have changed since the days of Emily Post. We are no longer bound by rules of how to introduce your guests on arrival or who sits to the right of the host at a dinner party. After wrangling Rose into a dress and tights for the ballet and convincing her that going to the theater was a dressing up occasion, I was a little disappointed to see people arrive in flop flops and jeans. Emily Post would have fainted. However, I have come to accept that any social norms that might suggest control over what you are allowed to do are a thing of the past. I recently had brunch in a fancy restaurant in downtown Los Angeles next to a woman wearing pajamas. Breaking convention doesn’t bother me when it is harmless and you are the only person who looks like a fool eating breakfast in your sleepwear. However, I refuse to give up on the idea that there are standards of politeness and consideration of others. Some rules of etiquette will never die. You may not be required to exclaim, “I’ve been completely thrilled!” when saying goodbye anymore, but you do have to wait for the curtains to close instead of walking out while the performers take their bows.

Employing common decency means thinking about other people, paying attention to the situation around you and setting a good example. I think it might possibly all come down to one word: gratitude. A person who is grateful for the people in their lives, the experiences they encounter and the opportunities that come their way, are not the people who cut in line to get ahead, spray you with food because they are talking with their mouth full or slamming the door back in your face because they couldn’t be bothered to hold it for you, to name a few of my pet peeves. We all are prone to unintentional offense because we are human, but my outing with my niece has inspired me to be a better example of how a thoughtful, considerate person behaves. And I might try to throw “completely thrilled” in there next time I am saying farewell, just for fun.

Aunt-centuate the Positive

No one at my brother’s house understands the concept of sleeping in. It is just not done. I have come to understand this fact and adjust my bedtime accordingly, knowing that at the crack of dawn, three children will be fighting over a spot next to me in bed and a turn with the games on my iPad. If I am lucky they let me keep my pillow and I never complain about the early morning intrusions. One day, however, they were a little more feisty than usual. They turned on the light, snapped off my sleeping mask, jumped on the bed, pulled off the covers and dragged me to the floor by my feet. Once suitably restrained on the floor, they demanded piggy-back rides, which happens so frequently they have shortened “Please Aunty Jo, may I have a piggy-back ride” to “Pretzel!” I’m not entirely certain but I think it might be my horse name. This did not produce the desired activity so my eight-year-old nephew, Rider, sat on me and said, “I’m sensing some negativity.”

I think of myself as a fairly positive person. Maybe not when being physically abused at 6 a.m., but, you know, generally speaking. My nephew’s early-onset sarcasm always makes me laugh but this time it got me thinking about whether he really does notice when I am negative. Growing up, I had a friend whose father was kind of a negative person. When she asked him for permission to do anything, his first reaction was almost always “no.” She knew that if she kept talking and explaining the situation, he would have time to think about it and come around. She had learned that his first reaction was going to be negative and that it was not always the final word on the subject. She had to give him time to work his mind around to something more positive. It was fascinating to watch and had a big impact on me.

I have noticed that some people are inherently positive and always see a challenge as something that can be overcome. We all know people who smile all the time and exude happiness. When my husband was dealing with a setback in his cancer treatment, his doctor suggested a “laugh clinic” that was being held in the hospital. A woman in a clown nose had patients in a circle and was teaching them how to fake a hearty laugh. She claimed that if you pretend you are happy, eventually you will be. She proved this theory by explaining that when she was standing in the street in her pajamas watching her house burn down, she made herself laugh for 20 minutes and felt much better. She was clearly insane and I kept wondering when the psych ward was going to notice she was missing.

While there is apparently such a thing as being ridiculously positive, others have to work on how they react to difficulty and need constant encouragement. Many of my friends who are parents have one child who sees the good in everything and one who has to be convinced that the world isn’t going to end when things don’t go as planned. Why do some kids chug up the hill chanting, “I think I can. I think I can” while their sibling is thinking, “I cannot pull even so little a train over the mountain. I cannot, I cannot”? They have the same parents, so clearly nature has a hand in deciding this personality trait. But what do parents do to nurture the right attitude that an enthusiastic aunt can take to heart?

I turned to a friend who has twins. One is like her, a happy, positive person. The other she describes as a born pessimist. When anything goes wrong he is automatically having “the worst day ever!” She has started a routine to help him train his brain to focus on the positive first. When he gets in the car after school, he has to tell her one good thing that happened that day before he is allowed to go through his laundry list of all the wrongs he has suffered. He is still allowed to tell her about his problems, but first he has to focus on something positive. Then she helps him find something that he can learn from the things that were bad. Even when venting about the negative, he has to find something that he can take away and use next time he finds himself in that situation. She is using this repetition in hopes that he will learn to find the positive first on his own.

If you do a search for self-help material on how to have a positive attitude, like me you will be bombarded with people who can tell you how it is done. Just put your mind to it! If you change your thoughts, you can control what happens in your life! Create your life from within. If you want love, focus on all the people you love. If you want success, focus your mind on the areas where you are already successful. There are books and books of catch phrases that are hard to argue with, but training your mind to automatically go to a happy place is easier said than done.

I decided to start small. I get that a positive attitude is part of the personality you are born with, but attitudes and thinking can be changed. Ask any psychologist. Like almost everything in our ever changing lives, the knowledge of how to be positive can be learned and the skill developed. If I am going to help my nieces and nephews cultivate a positive attitude, I first need to lead by example. I made a conscious effort to change “you have to” to “you get to.” “Hey everybody! We get to put on our pajamas and brush our teeth!” OK, so maybe that wasn’t the best moment to launch the plan. Three-year-old Stanley’s bottom lip starts quivering at the mere mention of an N-A-P so it was a tough sell. But I like the theory. The kids can only benefit from my efforts to positive. Don’t get me wrong, I marched their behinds to bed because doing what Aunty Jo says is not optional, but I did it with a smile.

The amount of time that I get to spend with each of my many nieces and nephews is not going to change their personalities. That’s not my job. But I can avoid showing them how negative is done. To be clear, anyone sitting on my head at 6 in the morning is going to continue to sense some serious negativity. But I am determined that one day, my attackers will look back at my influence on their lives as a positive one.

Everyday Empathy

At a conference for financial professionals in Miami recently, I attended a keynote speech by Michael J. Fox. I’m pretty sure he has nothing to do with the world of finance, but sometimes I think they choose speakers at these events to help us forget for a minute that our livelihoods are dependent on the U.S. economy. I was so interested in hearing what he had to say that I arrived early and sat in the front. It was inspiring and depressing, sad and hilarious all at the same time. He has an endearing sense of humor and an inspiring message but it was hard to watch knowing that he is struggling with Parkinson’s disease. Despite his life-threatening illness, he spoke about the amazing opportunities he has been given because of his disease and how important it is to be optimistic.

All of his stories were memorable but I keep coming back to one: After a vacation in Paris, he and his family flew on the Air France Concorde back to New York. For those too young to remember, the Concorde was a supersonic plane that could get you from Paris to New York in 3 hours if you were willing to sell a kidney to pay for the ticket. His wife is afraid of flying and was particularly afraid of the futuristic Concorde. Michael promised her that if this trip was too much, they would never take that type of plane again. One Valium and three hours later, the family made it to New York. The next day Michael was in his office watching television and heard that the next flight to leave Paris after his family took off had crashed, killing 113 people. The Concorde never flew again. In telling this story in his book, Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist, he finishes by saying, “Sometimes, when you are alone, minutes pass before you even realize you are crying.”

There is a reason why I have been thinking about this story. In 2001, my parents came to visit my husband and me in New York. We took them on a road trip up the coast and had a wonderful time in Cape Cod. On the way home, we dropped my parents off in Boston as their flight back to Los Angeles was leaving from Logan airport the next morning. My husband’s office was on Park Avenue, but the morning that my parents were traveling, he had a special meeting in the World Trade Center. Exactly one week later, he called me at 8:45 in the morning and said, “Turn on the TV.” We watched the twin towers fall together on the phone, completely stunned by the fact that if the attackers had launched their plan one week earlier, my parents would have been on the plane that crashed into the building and my husband would have been on the 34th floor. I was at work surrounded by others who were also sitting around the TV in stunned silence. Sometimes you don’t have to be alone for several minutes to pass before you realize that you are crying.

As a society, we don’t have trouble empathizing when tragedy hits us on a national scale. Our hearts go out to the people whose houses are washed away by a hurricane, whose businesses are destroyed by an oil spill, or whose families are devastated by a madman with a gun. We are a very caring and generous nation and we rally around those who are suffering. I was only one of many in my office who shed tears when we heard that 27 children and teachers that we had never met had been murdered in their classroom in Connecticut. Why is it that so many have trouble taking that empathy down to a small, everyday scale? Why can’t we empathize with people who don’t share our level of education, our financial status, or dare I say it, our political point of view? Seth Godin is an author who has published 14 best-selling books about societal issues such as the post-industrial revolution, marketing and leadership. On his popular site titled Seth’s Blog he recently posted this quote: “When we extend our heart, our soul and our feelings to another, when we imagine what it must be like to be them, we expose ourselves to risk. The risk of feeling bruised, or of losing our ability to see the world from just one crisp and certain point of view.”

Since I am as guilty as anyone, today I am going to try to take an ounce of the empathy that I feel for the families burying their children in Newtown, and exercise it on something trivial as well, like people who can’t quit smoking or listening to country music. Imagine what our world would be like if we were all willing to empathize, even just a little bit, with people whose habits, preferences and opinions annoy us.

Gift Giving and Children: How Much is Too Much?

Listening to the radio on my way to work, I heard an interview with a singer who was enjoying his first big hit. The DJ asked what big purchases he had made since becoming rich and famous. I was expecting him to say a house or a car, but he proudly announced that he could finally afford to buy the Lego Millennium Falcon, a space ship from Star Wars. He had wanted it his whole life and that was the first thing he did with his new found wealth. “Huh,” I thought to myself,” I just bought that for my nephew.” For a brief moment I felt a twinge of guilt for being that family member who showers the kids with material possessions and then leaves the parents to deal with the consequences. How ridiculous that a rock star was excited about earning his prize and I just dropped it into the lap of a spoiled eight-year-old. And then I got over it, took my nephew to Disneyland and bought him whatever he wanted.

Giving presents to my nieces and nephews makes me happy. I will do just about anything for those moments of dancing around in excitement, hugs, and loud proclamations that I’m the best aunt ever. Everybody who loves a child wants those moments. However, they also need to be able to find the boundaries. As an aunt, do I understand how my gift giving enthusiasm is impacting the children? I thought about it and the answer is no. No, I do not. I have no experience in keeping children grounded and grateful while everyone around is giving them everything they ask for. I’m also willing to admit that I’m not likely to learn. I’m not going to stop buying Lego or going through the American Girl doll catalog with my niece to figure out what she wants next. I also do not want to cause problems, and turn those sweet little “you’re the best aunt” faces into spoiled “this is not what I wanted” scowls. I truly believe that giving children too much at once is detrimental, but I want someone else to worry about it and let me be the popular aunt.

Since I can’t trust my own discernment when it comes to overdoing it on the presents, I have made a conscious effort to rely on my brother and his wife to guide me. I have started asking them if it is OK if I buy the creepy mummy Indiana Jones set, or the movie with the scary bear.  I am trying to ask if I can take them bowling or out to dinner when the kids are not within ear shot so that they have a chance to say no without being the bad guy. I say I’m trying because I will admit that I asked my brother about the holy grail of Lego sets as it was sitting on my bed waiting to be wrapped. Self-control is not my strong suit, but at least I am trying. Parents don’t want to say no or be forced to be the gatekeeper all the time, but they know better than anyone when their kids need the family to dial down the spoiling.

I can’t imagine how hard it is to protect a child from the commercialism and greed that is so ingrained in our world, but I think it is a very important role in parenting.  I am aware that I regularly flop over the fence, alternating between trying not to be a part of the problem and being the chief offender. The least I can do is ensure open communication with the parents of the children I am influencing. Even if I ignore them and clean out Toys-R-Us anyway, at least they can mentally prepare themselves to make room for another spaceship.

X Marks the Spot

My brother recently had a dinner party that included my parents and some close friends. When his three kids finished eating, they asked to be excused from the table. As I enjoyed the dessert and adult conversation, in the background I could see them plotting something. They were quietly scurrying around, dashing ninja style through the kitchen, like we couldn’t see them. I had no idea what they were up to but experience told me it wasn’t anything good. After about 20 minutes of giggling and trying to look nonchalant as they went in and out the back door, they came to me at the table and whispered, “Aunty Jo, can you help us with something?” I realized I was about to become part of the scheme, but I was so pleased to be singled out from all the adults at the table that I ignored the voice in my head telling me to run away.

They took me outside and explained that they had gathered all of their father’s toiletries from his bathroom and placed them in a shoe box. The box was now buried in the vegetable garden and they needed to paint an X on the ground. They were going to make him go on a pirate treasure hunt for his own comb and shaving cream. I surveyed the mess they had made in the garden and considered the possible courses of action. I could (a) act like an adult and explain that this is not a good idea and Daddy probably won’t be too happy about having his toothbrush in a hole in the ground, (b) go and get someone actually responsible for these children and make them be the bad guy, or (c) find some paint in the garage and coat the dirt in my brother’s garden. If you’ve read anything I have ever written you already know what I did. In my defense, there may have been a glass or two of wine involved, impairing my usually questionable judgment.

I knew it was a terrible idea, but three little faces clasped their hands under their chins and said, “Pleeease Aunty Jo, we’ve been working so hard on this prank on Daddy and we can’t do it without you.” I was powerless. I found a can of spray paint on the workbench in the garage and painted a small X in the dirt. The can was clear varnish and the kids began to question their choice of co-conspirator. I announced that this plan wasn’t going to work but they were not about to let me off that easy. They produced a silver can that was missing the nozzle, so as three little people danced around in excitement, I took the nozzle off another can and tried to attach it to the silver paint. That is when the can exploded, covering the kids, the fridge in the garage, the driveway and wait for it . . . my Dad’s brand new car. At this point the camaraderie of our dastardly pirate crew broke down and the kids ran into the house to tell on me while I frantically tried to clean the car and the fridge with a rag. A moment later, a grownup appeared and my little brother rolled his eyes at me and got out the turpentine. If I’m going to do something stupid, I go big, like covering my brother’s garage and family with oil-based paint. My parents never noticed anything amiss with their white car so I may have gotten away with that one. But as I stood in line with the kids waiting for my turn to be scrubbed with paint thinner, I gave some serious thought to the events that led to such a spectacular act of idiocy.

As an aunt, I have a really hard time finding the line between making the kids happy, and therefore love me, and being a responsible adult. The other day while babysitting, I overheard six-year-old Rose say to her brother, “I didn’t think she was going to let us do that.” Eight-year-old Rider responded, “Oh come on Rose, there isn’t much Aunty Jo won’t let us do.” It’s true. When the kids ask me if they can do or have something, I take a split second to consider how important it is in the scheme of things. If I am in the middle of reading my email and they ask if they can play a game on my phone, I can say, “No, I’m busy, go away” or “OK” and read my email later. The cost of saying yes is so little to me that I save my “no’s” for when they truly matter. The problem is that I get so used to saying yes that I’m not strong enough to recognize when it does truly matter, like say, when they beg me to decorate the garden with toxic paint.

Every day parents struggle with the issues of picking the right battles and avoiding the trap of being permissive so that their kids will like them. Extended family members have the same problem, but much less opportunity to practice. In the brief time I get with the kids on the weekend, I don’t want to be the bad guy and enforce discipline.  When the parents are handy I can just say, “Ask your mother,” and then it is not my problem. But when the kids are alone in my care or we are executing a covert plan in the backyard, it is my problem and I have to act like a parent. If my brother is going to feel comfortable leaving me unsupervised in his household, once in a while I am going to have to be unpopular and say no.

The point I am trying to make is being a perfect aunt is a really tough job, especially when you don’t have kids of your own to practice on and you only surrogate-parent on an occasional basis. However, some aunts recognize their failings and are doing their best to change. They need gentle guidance, patience, and forgiveness. And turpentine.

Helping Kids Who Hurt

During a family gathering, my two-year-old nephew, Stanley, climbed up onto a cabinet and pushed on the window screen to get the attention of his cousins outside. They looked up just in time to see him flying through the window, face-first onto the concrete below. It was quite a scene with Stanley screaming, parents running and paramedics on the phone. He walked away with a few scrapes and a nasty bump on his head so he was very lucky. All of the adults were shaken by the shock of watching him fall and the thought of what could have happened. The rest of the day he got whatever he wanted, and was passed from aunt to aunt for cuddles and cookies. We did not want him out of our sight and I don’t believe his feet touched the ground until bedtime.

I thought a lot that day about how hard it is to see a child hurt. There are few things that are more painful to me than watching a child suffer. There is usually little you can do to take the pain away when you would give anything to make it better, a feeling my parents know all too well. As a teenager, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. No one knew what that was at the time, so I had a script down about how it was a disease in my intestines that kept my body from digesting nutrients from the food I ate and caused severe stomach cramps. That was the simple version and people typically said “Oh,” and changed the subject. Digestive diseases are an awkward topic. I usually left out the part about how a virus was tearing up my insides and malnutrition caused all the problems that weren’t covered by the side effects of medication. If I wasn’t doubled over in pain, I probably had my head in a toilet. My experience with a very serious disease taught me that there is so much that we can do to help a child who is suffering from a health problem they can’t control and did nothing to deserve.

Thanks to my illness, I know more than I need to about what it is like for a child to endure pain and misery. More importantly, I know what is like for a child to observe what their pain and misery is doing to the family around them. Intellectually you know that you didn’t cause this and you can’t stop it, but you can’t ignore that your very existence is causing other people pain. One of my strongest memories of that time is my mother putting bowls of strained oatmeal next to my bed and begging me to eat. She put all the energy she had into whatever she could find to ease my pain, even if it meant hours of essential oil massages or getting up in the middle of the night to stroke my hair. Besides my parents, few people really knew how to help me. People very kindly came to the hospital during my frequent visits and asked how I was doing but I felt a little bit like an exhibit at the zoo. All anyone could talk about was my illness and I wanted to talk about New Kids On The Block and pretend I was a normal teenager. I felt like my future was gone and I would never be independent and able to take care of myself. Although I was 89 pounds at one point during my senior year in high school, my parents helped me with my homework and I managed to graduate. I barely remember that year because I could only focus on the pain, the guilt from knowing my illness was affecting my brother’s life, and the financial and emotional stress that I was causing my family.

Eventually I had no choice but to go through major surgery. The disease was threatening to perforate my intestinal lining, which would have killed me, so my large intestine was removed. It was a difficult period of adjustment but I learned when and what to eat, and my body adapted. It was the turning point that brought the end of my health problems and what felt like the beginning of my life. My parents do not have to sit next to my hospital bed for weeks on end anymore. They don’t have to watch me writhing on the floor in pain. They don’t worry about how I am going to support myself. I am healthy, independent and happy; three characteristics I never thought I would be able to claim. Now they get to stress over my habit of throwing myself out of perfectly good airplanes, traipsing around Europe alone with little regard for my own safety, and my elaborate plan to elope with Johnny Depp. I can’t make it too easy on them. That’s not what being a parent is about. (Out of curiosity, I called my parents, and asked them what I do that freaks them out. My dad said, “How many pieces of paper do you have?”)

In three months I am going to run a half marathon to benefit the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. The charity organization has a team of patients and volunteers that train and fundraise together. My first training session was very emotional for me. There was a time that I was so weak and frail that I didn’t think I was going to live, and in so much pain that I wasn’t sure that I wanted to. And now I am training to run 13.1 miles to support summer camps and programs for children suffering in the same way. I started tearing up as soon as I hit the track. I am not a “runner” and I am going to need every minute of the three months to prepare, but I am excited about proving to myself that I am strong and healthy, and capable of achieving such an overwhelming goal for a cause that means so much to me.

Children suffering from illness or disability carry a large burden. They have done nothing to deserve the hand they have been dealt, and aren’t always mature enough to see beyond what they are feeling right now. When you feel so bad, it is hard to look at the long life ahead of you and believe that you will be happy. Older kids can be acutely aware of the stress they are putting on their families and the guilt just adds to the pain. Every single one of us can do something to help; something to make a sick child’s day a little better; something to stimulate hope. You don’t have to attempt to run 13 miles down the Las Vegas strip like a crazy person as I have signed up for. I don’t think I even have to offer suggestions because the possibilities are endless. We all know a child whose circumstances are difficult and it does not take a lot of time or money to help someone forget, even for a few moments, that they are not like everyone else.

In hospital, I lived for the moments when a friend would interrupt my long and boring day to paint my nails hideous shades of blue and silver and tell me about what happened to them at school. All you have to do is have a normal conversation about how awful it is that Edward and Bella broke up, what Justin Bieber did this week, or encourage the hope of going to college one day. That is all it takes to be a hero in the eyes of a child that would give anything to be a normal kid for just a little while.

5 Ways to Help Get Kids Excited About School

As a guest writer for SavvyAuntie.com, I wrote an article about helping your nieces and nephews get excited about going back to school. If you have any more ideas, please let me know!

5 Ways to Help Get Them Excited About School