Kampuchea Crossings

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KidLit Review: When the Clock Strikes on Halloween

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I was eight when I experienced Halloween for the first time. It was our first year in the US, and my Aunt took me trick-or-treating with my cousins. Remember those costumes in a box, plastic mask on top of the neatly folded outfit underneath? I was Supergirl. When that first door opened and candy dropped into my orange pumpkin basket, the entire scope of my being focused completely on the singular goal of getting and devouring more sugar.

As a mom, the thing of wonder Halloween became for me that day is something I enjoy sharing with my kids. Lisa Ferland’s bedtime picture book, When the Clock Strikes on Halloween, brings back those memories.

It is Halloween. Mummies and goblins and witches all know it’s a big day, and we follow them through their tricks and their treats, as a big clock counts down the hours. What is the goblin doing at three? Where are the witches going at six? Who are all these creatures?

It is beautifully illustrated by Pei Jen, with lots of fun and cute details to engage the young reader’s curiosity.

Adding in the time element is useful. With the countdown, children are introduced to the concept of telling time (by analog) and what happens sequentially through the day, e.g., the sun goes down and it gets dark in the evening.

What I love are the questions at the end for open-ended discussions, to nurture comprehension and critical thinking. It’s never too early to help kids make sense of incoming information!

For disclosure, I received a book from Lisa to review. But it made our night time rotation with my daughter asking her older brother to read it to her. And it got the kids thinking forward to Halloween. They had to mark it on our wall calendar and counted the months left (six! how time flies!). Now they’re also talking about what they want to be, because they help make their costume every year!

All in all, this picture book is great for kids up to eight years old. And I’m looking forward to more books from Lisa and Pei!

Check out this book and all of Lisa’s other books on Kickstarter!

Building Families, Nurturing Communities: The Important Role of Social Workers in Adoption

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As families journey through life together they’ll face important, complex questions at each phase. With over a hundred years of experience, it is now an enormous community of birth parents, adoptive parents and families, and adoptees that Monica and her colleagues at Spence-Chapin have nurtured. ..

Read the rest of the article on the Spence-Chapin blog, where it was written for Social Workers Month.

Things I love about winter

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After three years back in the Northeast US, I’m basking in the change of seasons. Spring is so hopeful and romantic, brimming with life and new beginnings. Then there’s Summer – what’s not to love (so says a Pacific Islander)? And Autumn, charming you senseless with its burnt shades of color and kicking off the onslaught of festivities worldwide.

Winter? It took living the past seventeen years in the tropics, without the seasons, to come around to winter’s magic. This year I am all about the dark bleak days of winter and embracing the chill. It’s well into January now, and so far it’s a mild one. But we’re looking at double-header snow systems this coming holiday weekend and I’m crossing my fingers!

Photo at Mohonk Mountain Lodge by Keith Kelly

Minus winter sports (which I’m not so into, having spent my formative years under hot tropical suns), here are my favorite things about winter:

  • Fewer mosquitos!
  • Back-to-back holidays! Halloween/All Souls, Diwali, Christmas, New Year’s, Twelfth Night, Mardi Gras!
  • Skies that are insanely clear and full of stars, sunrises are brilliant and you get way more dramatic cloud formations! See the science of amazing winter skies in this link.
  • The first snowfall of the season
  • Snow-blanketed streams and trees covered in snow
  • The snow-dampened quietness of the world
  • The way sunlight refracts off snow-covered lawns and landscapes
  • The smell of cold, crisp air early in the morning
  • Walking on empty trails
  • The crunch of snow under your boots
  • The smell of pine
  • Snowball fights
  • Firepits! Bonfires! With a mug of spicy hot chocolate!
  • Blizzards and snow days
  • Building snow forts for a snowball fight!
  • Icicles
  • Sledding
  • Driving stick through a nighttime snowfall
  • The sadistic satisfaction of seeing people slip ‘n slide :-)
  • Ice sculptures
  • Minimal crowds in the outdoors
  • Thick socks, tights, leggings
  • Heavy blankets
  • No humidity, a.k.a., good hair days :-)
  • Boxing out grandmas and kids for a better gawk at festive over-the-top Christmas lights and displays lol

  • Firing up those old wood stoves
  • Lighting up candles
  • The glow from the Christmas tree, candles and string lights inside a dark room, or through residential windows
  • All manner of spiked food and drink – egg nog, coquito, hot toddies, mulled wine, hot apple cider, champagne on New Year’s! 
  • Foods you don’t see until the holidays, like panettone, vanillekipferl (German vanilla crescent cookies), or even ludefisk!
  • Rich heavy foods taste so much better when you’re coming in from the cold – hearty stews, roast meat, pies with whipped cream, Mac ‘n Cheese, sour cream on chili, hot soups.
  • Making snow angels on the fluffy snow on top of ice-covered creeks
  • Snow- and ice-scapes
  • Snow-covered trails
  • Maple syrup harvest season

And lastly, I love my winter pre-dawn runs, when everyone else retreats to indoor gyms or stays in bed altogether :-)

I’m sure more things belong on this list, and I’ll keep adding as I recall them!

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The best app for trying different types of meditation – Insight Timer

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I tried the gamut of meditation apps, and as a beginner my favorites were Headspace and Calm for their easy to digest introduction to mindfulness meditation. Through both apps’ introductory content I was able to sustain a meditation habit for about 20 consecutive days on each one. I was able to see a positive difference.

  • Calm $12.99/month; $4.99/mo for annual subscription of $59.88; or $299 lifetime
  • Headspace $12.99/month; $7.99/mo for annual subscription of $95.88; or $399 lifetime
  • Insight Timer $5/month paid annually

Both apps are highly rated and popular, but soon their linear approach, limited offerings and voice acting got boring, and that’s when I found Insight Timer. (I am not affiliated in any way to this app except as a user). A couple of things I love about this app:

Its diverse pool of resources (teachers, users, and approaches to meditation)

I love its diverse pool of genuine teachers, music tracks, talks and courses. If you’re a beginner the breadth of options can be off-putting. The focused approach of Calm and Headspace was definitely helpful when I started out.

There’s a large directory of meditation types and origins, and teachers are from all over the world. There are spiritual and science-based approaches, guided meditations and music-based timed sessions. Topics run the gamut – confidence, stress and anxiety, sleep help, athletic performance, pain, depression, love, focus, etc. Customization options are endless.

Users are also similarly scattered all over the globe, similarly-minded folks aiming for more balance in their life. There’s literally thousands of people meditating at the same time you’re on the app. You can reach out to them or to the teachers through the messaging functionality, topic forums and session ratings. The community came together organically, and its diversity was really helpful for me finding the approach that works for me.

User experience

I know you’re supposed to find a quiet and comfortable spot where you’ll be undisturbed for a period of time. But uninterrupted free time is rare! I meditate on the bus or subway during my commute, while waiting in lines, or during my run. That means I can’t close my eyes, sometimes I’m standing in the middle of a packed subway car, and disturbances are pretty common. But these conditions actually make it perfect for me to hone my skills – ask me to tame my thoughts in the middle of a fast-paced high-volume workday now!

A progress tracker helps motivate (much like in DuoLingo if you’re using that to help learn a new language), and functionalities include bookmarking sessions or favorite teachers. There are extensive features to users for free or at low cost (I’ve not had one prompt to upgrade nor are there ads), with premium features for access to courses and downloads. The courses aim for different goals, and lets users correspond directly with the teachers and other users.

The business model supports teachers more than other commercial apps

Most appreciated is that it’s a commercially conscious platform that supports its teachers who contribute such high quality content. Half of all income go directly to the teachers. The business model is aimed at, in the words of its CEO Christopher Plowman, “accelerating the benefits of meditation around the world by harnessing the silent power of this community”.

Where to start?

Don’t know where to start? I still use the the free options. I like the guided meditations. I found I prefer male voices and secular approaches. And my go-to teachers remain these three after cycling through numerous others over the past year:

  • Tomek Wyczesany – Technical or science-oriented meditators will appreciate the context in which he places this practice. https://insighttimer.com/tomekwyczesany
  • Susan Blondin – Her calm voice and expert guidance is very soothing
  • Tom Evans – His voice and message is comforting

Meditating with an app is a lot different from live sessions with an expert to guide you, or the 3 or 5 day vipassana meditation retreats I did at the pagodas/wats in Asia. I love that this app supports teachers and that quality sessions continue to be uploaded. I discover so many different ways in my life that meditation can help me with, thanks to the diversity of teachers, topics and group discussions. This is a great app for those who are just starting out or looking to maintain their practice.



Moving on and saying goodbye…

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She kept us on our toes for six weeks, clocking an impressive array of medical emergencies one after the other. Who knew that heart failure could be so stunning, and tragic, and poignant. I got front row seats to a thoracentesis procedure, where the fluid was sucked out of her lungs through a long needle. I got to sit with the MRI technician at 3 am as he isolated the network of carotid arteries on the screen, searching for the occlusion. I got a crash course in thyroid function and how it slowly but steadily weakened one system after another, the signs flashing by without me recognizing their urgency except in hindsight. She racked up to eleven specialists/teams coordinating her care by the end, with visits nearly every hour ’round the clock.
 
The oncologist said the cancer was already growing for around 10 years – in other words an indolent or low-risk biology. It was just one of the problems I watched her ignore when I found out about it nearly a year ago. There was no convincing her, as she discontinued all medical visits and her one medication, in what I think is her way of going away quietly without being a burden to anyone. She thought she was being kind, thinking quietly of others in her unobtrusive way as she had done all of her life. Except things don’t work that way. When her dementia finally set in enough to allow me to take charge, I pushed aggressively for the medical visits and tests. By then she trusted me for everything. But all the medical advances at the hands of an incredibly coordinated care team at Mount Sinai Hospital wasn’t enough. The descent into progressive systems failure isn’t painless and, in her case, accelerated a dementia that wouldn’t have taken her as quickly if she’d just continued her healthcare regimen. None of these stick around in her memory because the neurons and pathways have deteriorated, and there’s little energy to spare past the increasing chronic pains. Meanwhile, people who love you watch helplessly and run around like chickens with heads cut off, scrambling to make things better. 
 
It’s a raw emotional landscape, uphill in every direction with few high ground. You go from berating yourself for not doing enough, to resenting her for not taking care of herself. In the midst of all the bad-to-worse news you get one small breakthrough, and then the universe takes that away. And it cycles around again. So you take it out on everyone else who love you while retreating from friends and others who try to reach out. And you feel horrible through all of it. But you do it all again the next day.
 
I know all my wants are selfish – she has a right to her decisions and the pain even if she didn’t ask for it. She likely knew what she was doing.
 
I wish I knew if she understood any of what happened these six weeks, or still recognized how much we love her, even after her brain finally let the fading memories go, including who I was.
 
I wish I can say thank you or buy chocolates for all the strangers or colleagues or friends who braved that miserable fog themselves, and are giving a guiding hand or are simply there through the fiber optics. 
 
It’s done now, after nearly six weeks of intense days with her. It was sudden and shocking and sad.
 
Til next time, Mom. I love you both and know you’re together again..

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