Being a teenager is kind of like living in a communist country. Have I mentioned that?

Communication within said communist country is severely limited. No messages are allowed in. Few messages are allowed out. The regime (teenage queen bees or any other group of friends) cuts you off from all other sources of influence until you forget you are living in a world bigger than the small area of your immediate proximity.

Remember that feeling? As a teenager you feel the watchful eyes of your peers even when they are nowhere in sight. You feel their judgment and think of ways to win their approval. It is a nasty regime. A manipulative government.

My parents did an awesome thing during my years behind the Iron Curtain. Like the smartest outsiders who were able to send in secret messages of hope to the prisoners inside the communist controlled countries, my parents found a way to penetrate the walls of my too-small world.

When everyone else in my sophomore class ordered a class ring, my mom made me a better offer – a daughter’s ring. Even now I’m not sure how she did that. Mom, how did you do that? But somehow, even though teenagers are known for temporary decisions and not foresight, I remember thinking I would wear the daughter’s ring longer than I would wear a chunky ring with an eagle inscribed on the band. We told the jeweler my birthday month and the birthday months of both of my parents.

What arrived was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen. In the middle was a pale aquamarine stone; one each side were the smaller birthstones of my parents, one golden topaz and one dark purple amethyst. The setting was silver, another sign of my weakened state since I picked it to match my braces. Like I said, it’s a rough country.

That ring was a parenting stroke of genius. Every time I wore that ring I was reminded of my real place in this world. I was reminded that I belonged to something bigger than the high school corridors I walked and the teenage relationships I cherished. Like the leaflets dropped from bombers during war, my little aquamarine sat on my finger and whispered messages of hope and safe passage.

*The ring in this photo is an antique from the Flikr account Camellia Collection.

This is from an essay called “The Intelligent Heart” by Patricia Foster. It was assigned reading in one of my classes. Now I know why. The essay was so bossy, I stopped mid-paragraph and pursued a lead on a story I’ve been thinking about for a long time but have never been brave enough to chase down. Here’s the section from Foster’s essay that moved me to action:

We believe that personal stories matter . . .

When functioning properly, the intelligent heart knocks at our door, awakens us from dreams, shudders from the drafty places in our apartments, and demands a quick audience. Write this, it says. And this. And this. And this. Faithfully we write it down, trying to quiet the alarm that it will be embarrassing, stupid, irrelevant, or that most insulting of faults: already done. We listen because it is urgent, because it sneaked up behind us and blithely tongued our ear. We listen because it seemed hungry and furious, as alive as thunder before a late summer rain. We listen because we know that stories come from the mystery of knowable places. . .

Ada looked like this when we started calling her Ada Bean. She was just so cute and round! When she was in preschool her teacher asked her what her full name was and she said, “Ada Bean Jewel White.” We still call her Bean or Beanie.

Sometimes we call her Little Mama, too, because she mothers us all. This year Claire is moving into her own room upstairs and Ada is happily taking on Macy as her new roommate. I don’t think having her own room has even crossed her mind. She is a giver, a lover, a friend.

This morning at breakfast she was explaining to me that she and Jesse had decided NOT to sign up for the school reading program at school that would earn them free tickets to Six Flags because “Macy and Claire would still be too afraid to ride those rides, so we can go when we’re all older.”

She took to school a package of candy bracelets and watches and was plotting in her little mind which of her classmates would choose which sticky accessory and making sure she would have enough.

I couldn’t love this girl more.

Happy Birthday, Our Ada Bean Jewel White! Six years old TODAY!

You know we’re football fans at our house. College, NFL, flag in the backyard, we like it all! When I say WE I mostly mean Dan, Jesse, and me, but when we told the girls about the joy that is a Super Bowl Party they were suddenly interested in our beloved sport. (Much like the rest of America, I’m sure. Football game? No, thanks. All the best kinds of snack food, drinks a plenty, funny commercials, hype, AND my friends? See you there!)

We are a Sunday night kind of church, so we had to DVR the game to watch later at our very own Family Super Bowl Party. Pizza, spinach dip, bean dip, chips (of the pretzel and tortilla varieties), individual sized sodas, and brownies. We were all in the spirit.

As we loaded our plates and settled in downstairs (a place the kids don’t usually get to eat), Macy looked at the TV and called out, “I watch Carly” – that’s iCarly and, yeah, she totally missed the point. And was very upset about it.

Claire tried to do better. At one point she cheerfully shouted out, “Go Texas!” Which is very strange since we never cheer for Texas and this was an NFL game – New Orleans and Indianapolis. The wiser among us chuckled a bit so she tried again, “Or – whoever is playing!”

It was just fun to be together – no matter what happened in the game, as far as family time – We Won! It was also fun to see Drew Brees kissing his infant son while confetti filled the air above them. Oh, and it was pretty nice to win my Fantasy league over my father-in-law and brother-in-law who spend actual time thinking about it and calculating their decisions.

Yeah, that was definitely fun! : )

A couple of weeks ago at one of my son’s basketball games I came up with a plan for world peace. Well, I’m going to test it at the little league sports level first, but I totally think its going to work.

We have a player on our team who is kind of tall for a 5th grader (my son, by the way, is a 3rd grader but the team needed to recruit in the lower grades to have enough players) and he can get rather emotional and, ahem, rough when he’s playing. One might even say grouchy. In fact, during this particular game the ref stopped the whole thing to walk across the gym, point him out, and let him know that “we don’t play basketball like that” when an under the basket tussle turned ugly.

The thing is, this little/big guy has, as my grandmother would sweetly proclaim, “had a difficult childhood.” And she would be right. An absent father and an addicted mother were two counts against him; I’m sure there were others. Most of that is in the process of complete reversal, but still the scars remain.

I imagined that parents of the other team might be tempted to comment negatively on our player, much like the parents on my side had pointed out a few hot heads on their team. Now, something you should know about me is my utter and complete discomfort in these situations. To be honest, I don’t even like it when my own husband critiques someone in the privacy of our own home. When that person is not there. And Dan has no plans to do anything about it. Its like I’m afraid that conversation is somehow going to escape the walls of our home, find its way into the ears of the victim, and permanently damage his or her psyche. I’m so weird.

I took a strengths test once that labeled Connector as my greatest strength. Reading that result was like a moment of lifetime validation. It’s why I stopped following an author on Twitter last night because I finally couldn’t stand his negative comments about others (he KNOWS anyone can search his tweets, right?, and Taylor might get her feelings hurt if she reads what you just tweeted about her! Even though her live performance at the Grammy’s was slightly less than stellar. But I’m sure there’s a good reason for that.) It’s why I know I’ll never be a big time blogger because I just hate talking about the topics that divide us and make us want to leave strongly worded comments.

So at that game I had an idea. What if, in the name of good sportsmanship, each team sent one parent representative to sit among the parents of the other team. Then, when the opposing team started to grumble about our big guy’s black cloud, I could tell them about how his life has only been stabilized in the last couple of years and really he’s so much better behaved than he was as a fourth grader. They, in turn, could give me back stories on their players. Understanding would ensue. Peace would prevail.

What do you think? Could this be a Nobel Peace Prize winning entry? I think so, too.

Have you read Walter Brueggemann? I’ve just been introduced, but what I’ve read so far is very challenging.

I’m reading from a collection of prayers from the book Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggeman, edited by Edwin Searcy .

This piece opens with the traditional refrain, “Thank God It’s Friday!” and continues with a list of reasons we do so: we are ready for a break, a rest from the work of our week, and we are somehow deserving of this respite.

The end of the prayer/poem is quoted here so you can feel the power of his words for yourself:

But mainly, as we come to Friday we know in our deepest places that Friday is your day of entry into the hurt and hate of the world, your day of bottomless weakness where we have seen you allied with the world in its deepest disorder. We know you to be a Friday God without the honors of omnipotence. And so we pray that you will “Friday us” into the very weakness where we may receive our new life from you.

We pray in the name of your Friday Child. Amen.

How does that challenge our American middle-class perspective on weekends? In more ways than I can count right now, but I’m certainly going to meditate on it. When I read it I feel challenged, but not hopeless. What are your reactions?

There is nothing better than starting your day with this simple reminder:

Breakfast with Macy from Felicity White on Vimeo.