Our family isn’t typical…
My boys dance. Eric guest performs. Jordan studied for 7 years. Alek still does. Most recently, he appeared as Harlequin in our local production of the Nutcracker. He’s very talented and we’re very proud of him. They began dancing when they were 4 and have worked hard at one of the best studios in the Midwest. When Ravynn turned 4, the boys came to me concerned. She wanted to take ballet, too, but they worried that it was only for boys [never mind that their classes had always been full of girls]. They were incredibly pleased when we bought a tiny pair of pink ballet shoes. It wasn’t until a minor incident in 4th grade when they felt the bullying effects of being different. A very kind teacher explained what exactly was the problem with the phrase ‘ballerina boy’ and it mostly ended. There are still comments flung around, but Alek who’s 12 and in 7th grade is strong and ignores them.
Our family is goth. Locally, we’re semi-famous for it, but you may have noticed from other comments or photos or even the About page associated with this blog. Eric and I embrace being different, but each of the kids have at points heard rumors or fielded snotty comments based on how we look or dress. It’s a great opportunity to talk to them about stereotypes and prejudice and about not having to conform to make other people happy. For the most part they get it, but I understand [having been a 10 year old girl once upon a time] that there is still a sting involved. I hate that. At the same time they love when their friends think we’re cool because of the way we dress or the music we listen to. I kinda like being famous at the elementary school, but not to the detriment of my kids.
When I read news stories about bullied kids or hear about it from fellow moms, my heart aches. No child should have an unhappy childhood. I mean there are some situations that cannot be avoided and the pain of them cannot be minimized, but… if the pain is caused by other kids or adults being hateful and unaccepting. Well, the simple fact is that should be easy to change.
Several weeks ago, a Facebook post brought my attention to the blog, Portrait of an Adoption. Young Katie was being teased for wanting to carry a Star Wars water bottle to school. Three cheers for social networking. Geek Girls came out in force to support Katie. As I understand, Geeks, Nerds, and Dorks all came out to support her and give her strength. I think this is awesome! It’s what I’ve tried to teach my own kids. Differences should be Celebrated. Sometimes they are, as with Katie’s situation.
Checking on Portrait of an Adoption, I read the story of author Cheryl Kilodavis and her book My Princess Boy. Her website explains it as:
My Princess Boy is a nonfiction picture book about acceptance. It tells the tale of a 4-year-old boy who happily expresses his authentic self by enjoying “traditional girl” things like jewelry, sparkles or anything pink. It is designed to start and continue a dialogue about unconditional friendship and teaches children — and adults — how to accept and support children for who they are and how they wish to look.
The response she is getting isn’t near as positive as Katie’s mother found for her. Now, it isn’t all negative and maybe I”m experiencing emotional reactions to the negative comments that I do see. I’ve been in the same place. People have, over the years, explained to me that it’s not ‘normal’ for boys to study dance or to have long hair [Eric does and Alek did until he cut and donated it in the summer of 2009]; I’ve been told that it’s not normal for them to do these things because society believes them to be ‘for girls’. Somehow along the line it became acceptable for girls to want to do ‘boy things’, yet not for boys to want to do ‘girl things’. I suggest we let kids do kid things and leave it at that.
I’ve fought the good fight for my kids. Cheryl is fighting for hers.
I encourage you to honor acceptance for everyone and embrace diversity in your own life today.
Tags: alek, ballet, bullying, Cheryl Kilodavis, dance, eric, jordan, my princess boy, portrait of an adoption, social networking, teasing
Posted in Books, Current Events
Alek went on a run today. Dance is back in session, but he has Tuesdays and Wednesdays off this semester, so he wanted to fit in some additional exercise. He was gone less time than usual for a run, but longer than I would have been in 26 degree weather when he came into the house alerting us that there was an owl in the neighborhood. Now, we don’t live in – or even near - a big city, but we’re firmly in a suburban area. I’ve seen turkey vultures, a deer, a pig, and many many bats, but never an owl. The other kids and I threw on shoes and hoodies, grabbed the camera, and headed down the street to check it out.
The girls and I had seen an owl demo at the PowWow last October, but we were still excited to see this tiny creature [Alek had called it a baby]. When we arrived at the neighbors yard, Alek pointed and smiled. It took the rest of us a while to find the wee thing – Bravo to its cloaking skills!
Wow.
It’s all I could say. Jordan asked why I was so amazed and I laughed. Why wouldn’t I be??
- I expect owls to come out at night, yet it was day.
- I expect owls to dislike the cold, yet here it is the middle of winter.
- I expect owls in the wilderness, yet we were in town.
So much joy from the unexpected. Even being someone who loathes surprises of any nature, this was a wonderful bright spot in the day and left us wishing for a new surprise tomorrow. The potential impact was not unnoticed. Mentally, I wagged a finger at myself.
We could all benefit much from delivering the unexpected. Most of us, I believe, settle into the ‘normal’ and the comfortable in many areas of our life. Family friends, business… emotional, physical, mental. The forces around us urge movement and perhaps even chaos, but we resist, wishing to be rocked like infants into a comfortable state.
We must work towards new ‘unbelievable’ events by surprising our relationships in a new way. We must. The owl has decreed it.
What unexpected things can you bring to your own life to better yourself, your loved ones, or even strangers you come in contact with? I’m putting this into practice beginning immediately – focusing on Bats! meow… and on my intimate family relationships.
I urge you to look for your own owls.
~sheila
Monday. First one in the new year. Kids back to school. Grownups back to work.
After we’d celebrated Yule in December and anticipated the days growing longer and after we’d gone to the grocery on Saturday in long sleeved shirts instead of winter coats, I was completely unprepared for how cold and dark it was at 7:30AM when the girls stepped out to wait for their buses. I think I should have taken coffee with me. I should have also taken coffee with me when Eric and I trekked across town on foot [really, it was only a few blocks] for a scheduled 9:00AM appointment in the courthouse only to find a note posted informing us that the courthouse is closed for observance of the NY holiday.
Grumble.
At least I had this gorgeous face waiting outside with me.
The cold walk back to the car instead of sitting down in a nice warm office got me thinking about yesterday’s post, though. The ‘roll with the punches’ aspect of acclimating to the change around me. As a DM, I’m responsible for many of them, but sometimes a player with throw a weird decision my way or a random question will throw me into a tangent of new creative options to test the players.
Today, in the cold, I wondered about new creative options to test me.
We all become lazy and comfortable in the roles we build for ourselves: wife, mother, sister, friend, business owner. And shouldn’t we all want to be the best of them that we can? Maybe we all need a random dice roll to move us in another direction?
I think I’ll try it.
~sheila
Truth:
I found my Christmas stocking FULL of items suited to being a DM. For those of you not in the know, a DM is a dungeon master. Sort of a tour guide in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. I’d played a bit shortly after Eric and I got married and moved to Orlando, Florida. I was hooked. After we moved, we tried to get groups together every now and again, but nothing stuck. A couple months ago, we tried again to get a group together. It worked! I’m sure it helps greatly that three of our four kids are old enough to play and the youngest already shows an interest. Even if we can’t find friends to come over and join us, we’re set!
Truth: I greatly dislike DMing. Judge, jury, executioner. Yes, it all sounds like something I should enjoy. Storycrafter, dreamer. More like me. Organizer, task-keeper, manager. Even more like me. However, there is something about the job that drives me up a wall. A weathered, gray stone, stained with the blood of orcs, wall.
Truth: I shouldn’t complain. My family likes playing together and they claim I’m good at it.
As it turns out, I’m in good company as a DM and player. Many people I respect greatly are known to play. Kevin Smith, Jon Favreau, Matthew Lillard. Even Judy Dench!
So, as a part of my preparations for 2011, I’m embracing what D&D [DMing, especially] can teach me.
- Planning
- Updating those plans on the fly
- Enjoying the journey
- Accepting help
- Always using a critical and creative eye
Although, I also need to keep in mind that it’s not all about the loot or the XP.
~sheila
So often New Year’s celebrations focus more on wishing good riddance to the year just ended than to looking ahead to the year just begun. We look at [and routinely list] the changes we want to make in our lives to make them better, but rarely look at the personal changes that will make us better people. Losing weight is good; living a healthier lifestyle is better. Making more money is good; being happier in our chosen profession is better. At least from where I stand. 
My goals -including my business goals- will be made with personal improvement in mind.
Our celebration was very low key. Kids and I watched a movie while Eric played a game on the computer. About 10 minutes before midnight, we switched the TV to the FOX NY party and counted down the last 30 seconds to the new year together, then toasted with champagne and sparkling juice. A birthday wish to my dear Mother rang out in our home as fireworks echoed down the street.
For many years, my NYE plans included a midnight call to Pennsylvania. This year, though, it was spent explaining to our kids why Grandma doesn’t read the birthday cards we send. That renewed my interest in completing our family tree project. Keeping everyone connected, you know And made me promise to take a photo a day throughout the year. Hone my skills and keep me blogging.
Best wishes for health, happiness, and prosperity to you in this new year.
The next week will move us closer to a solid plan for the year.
~sheila
Not really.
Back in April, I took a temp job as a third shift sewer at a pillow factory in a neighboring town. The work is easy; the other sewers are sweet; the hours took some getting used to, but I’ve adapted. Even getting back into the swing of it after a long weekend (I work M-Th, 6:30pm-5am) is easier than it was at the start. The real issue I’m dealing with -DAILY- is how much this schedule is interfering with everyday life. So many things I did regularly have fallen by the wayside.
I’m not just talking about FarmVille! 
Although that clearly shows signs of neglect.
Mostly I’ve been neglecting this blog, my Facebook fan page, and other online communities and message boards where I promote the site and gather advice and hints. By the time I get back, I’ll need to start over building relationships. More incentive to make time for all of it, I guess.
But when???
… pardon my moment to whine …
Working until 5am, I get home at 5:30 and cannot fall asleep right away. I stay up and catch up on some DVRed shows. I get to bed by 6:30 and sleep until 1 or 2. I do not get enough sleep; I know that. Having to leave for work before 6, I have about 3.5 hours. During that time I want to spend time with my kids and I have to do errands and household chores. I feel bad about the things I feel there is no time for. And I feel there isn’t time for much.
… end whining …
Hopefully soon this time dilemma will change. I’ve had two interviews this week and I feel really good about them. At the same time, I’m daydreaming about Bats! meow… being a full time job.
Step One: revival of the blog!
Welcome back!!
So we upgraded our phones. Just about the first thing I did was find the WordPress app. If I learn to type faster, I’ll blog more often.
~ sheila
Jordan and I were out today returning DVDs to the library and getting milk so the kids would have some for breakfast in the morning. While out, we spent some time discussing the Neil Gaiman lecture yesterday, just checking in to see what we each really got out of it now that we’ve had some time to let it soak into our squishy little brains. Not surprisingly, we focussed on the same bits – the “just write it” advice directed to an aspiring writer over on the right. Jordan is working on a novel and needs to get past a sticky point; I need to sketch, plan, and sew. Bats! meow… needs new designs. So the advice applies to both of us. In order to help myself, I decided to take a quick tour of some of the nicer kids departments in town. Keep in mind that in our small town [about 40,000 people], there aren’t a ton of high-end stores and what is considered high-end here, probably isn’t in any larger town.
That being said, I love small-town living
We ran to the mall and strolled through two stores. I believe that was all that was available, but it was all we wanted to take time for too – the milk was in the trunk! One thing that struck me was how much styles haven’t changed since I was a little girl. I said a dozen times, ‘I had this same dress when I was little.’ The styles were the same – even the colors. One shop [the nicer of the two] had racks upon racks of red, white, and blue clothes. Even as a 7 year old in 1976, I wasn’t loving that… This is me in 1972 [I'm in the blue dress] with my parents and younger sister.
It gave me hope though. I mean the styles running around in my head are the ones I’m seeing on the racks – and clearly they don’t change that much or that fast that I’ll lose the window before I complete the project. I’m on track!!
Look for more soon.
The other night, Neil Gaiman spoke at the McFadden Memorial Lecture at North Central High School in Indianapolis. He was charming and entertaining. More than that, he was inspiring. He read stories he’d written [one only a few weeks ago that I MUST own if it's ever in print] and shared bits of his life with his father and his daughter.
We sat at almost the back of the auditorium, but on the aisle closest to where the podium was set up, so we got some amazing photos. I was surprised that although an animated speaker, the photos just don’t show it – and I took A LOT of them.
I did learn, even though I’ve heard the same advice a thousand times, that the best way to write is just to write. To get it down on paper and to edit it later. Honestly, I know that about writing, but something about the way he said it, made it relevant to the other areas of my life – design and parenting and being Sheila, among other things. So I left with a new motivation to sew. Yeah!
At one point, I had the distinct feeling that I was watching Peter Pan, after he learned those incredible storytelling techniques from Wendy. Fascinated by the shadow he cast, I snapped this photo.
I think it’s my favorite
I found this article today while searching for documentation on the Victorian custom of cemetery picnics. These statues are favorites of ours and we often leave flowers with them on our visits.
The Statues — Their Story
Children’s graves are the saddest in any cemetery, but especially on twilight days like these when cold keeps visitors away.
Maybe it is their small size, tombstones only half grown, or the small spans of their dates, speaking of life unlived.
Most often they are smaller and more simple than the markers around them, small and simple like those they remember.
But more than 100 years ago, when George Hilligoss’ only two children died within six years of each other, small and simple was not enough. He required a monument as elaborate as his grief.
That monument still stands today looking out of West Maplewood Cemetery in Anderson toward the traffic of Grand Avenue, two statues of white Italian marble on a shared pedestal. Life-sized replicas of Hilligoss’ children.
Charlie Ingersoll Hilligoss is portrayed as the 16-year-old he was when he died. He stands with his elbow leaning against a stone pillar and wears a suit, coat buttoned as if against the cold. He holds his hat in his hand.
His sister, 6-year-old Gertrude Pauline Hilligoss is seated close enough for him to touch with a book and a bundle of stone roses in her lap. Water drips from the edge of her stone skirt.
The passage of 100 [years] has antiquated their clothing. A hundred winters of snow and rain has worn the carving of their names and the message underneath: “We know that life is all the sweeter that they lived. And death is all the brighter that they died.”
But 100 [years] has yet to dull that universal pang, that grief for lost children. Maybe it is that, besides their lovely white faces among the anonymous tombstones and obelisks, that interests passersby.
Maybe that is why, though they are not known to have any living relatives, brightly colored bouquets of flowers appear in heir hands with each change of the seasons.
The late RE Hensley, once president of the Madison County Historical Society, was one person who found his curiosity piqued by the melancholy likenesses of the two children.
In 1975, while cataloging the names on the cemetery tombstones, he took it upon himself to find out who they were. What he uncovered fit on one side of a typed sheet of paper.
George Hilligoss, Charlie and Gertrude’s father, was a doctor who practiced in the Madison County are for 30 years, for some time owning an office on Anderson’s Main Street. An Indiana native, he was one of the county’s original settlers and a veteran of the Civil War before becoming a prominent Anderson resident.
He and his Prussia-born wife Caroline had a son, Charlie, in 1871, and a daughter, Gertrude, in 1875. An article published much later in an 1892 edition of the Anderson Democrat, detailing the arrival of the children’s monuments from Italy, call the two the pride of their parents. “The children were exceptionally precocious and possessed mental strength that was far beyond their years,” it said.
Gertrude died first in 1881, then Charlie in 1887. Their causes of death are unknown.
“I think the children had died of some kind of disease,” says Donna Nicely, a secretary at the Maplewood Cemetery office, but no one knows for sure. Cemetery records which would have held that information were lost in a fire more than 50 years ago.
Whatever the causes of their deathes, it can be assumed they were blows to the two parents, suddenly childless. In his short account, Hensley writes, “It has been said that the deaths of Charles and Gertrude weighed very heavily on both Dr. and Mrs. Hilligoss and that she could never reconcile herself to the fact that they were dead.”
Hensley goes on to say that George Hilligoss was the first president of Camp Chesterfield, the spiritualist camp founded in 1886, a year that falls between the deaths of Gertrude and Charlie.
Whether or not the loss of his children stirred his interest in a spirit world can only be guessed. Probably no one know sif a bereaved George and Caroline tried to reach their children beyond the grave.
What is known is that they were desperate to have their children remembered on earth. The Anderson Democrat article says that the couple conceived the idea of having the statues made shortly after the deaths. They found a sculptor in Florence, Italy, and sent him two life-size photographs of Charlie and Gertrude to work from.
It took three or four years for the work to be completed. For several months, the Italian sculptor refused to finish the statues, in protest of a highly publicized incident in New Orleans in which some Italians were lynched. But friends intervened and he did eventually ship the completed works, in 1892, to Indianapolis.
More than a century later, local history buffs have not been the only ones to be curious about the cemetery monuments. “Every once in a while we get calls on the Hilligoss children,” says Phyllis Leedon, a librarian at the public library in Anderson. “As far as I know, there’s no family.”
Nicely says the cemetery office also receives calls periodically from people curious about the identities of the two children. She has felt a twinge of it herself, driving by them everyday on her way to work.
“Oh, I think they’re beautiful,” she says. “For many years, they’ve had some kind of significance.”
Especially to children, it seems. Nicely has heard the spook stories some tell about the two statues changing positions. Sometimes, it is said, Charlie’s hand rests on Gertrude’s shoulder, sometimes at his side.
There is something strange about their ghostly forms, luminous in the long shadows of ware winter trees, and something sad about the melting snow lying on Gertrude’s lap, on Charlie’s shoulders. Only the latest in a century of snows.
“But fate had ordained that they should live only in memory,” the newspaper article says. The statues demand at least that much, causing strangers to pause and pity, to wonder about the two lost children just as their father must have after they were gone.
Perhaps it would please him, even though, he is gone now too, buried next to them.
–Steffen, Colleen. “The Statues — Their Story.” Anderson Herald Bulletin 31 Dec. 1996: A1+. Print.
The Indiana Memory Collection website states, “An iron fence once surrounded them, but it was taken during WWII for scrap metal.”
Don’t we all hope to be loved so much? And if we do love someone else so much, shouldn’t we tell them?
Now, back to my regularly scheduled research.
~sheila
