The Ghost of Christmas Past

I am in the holiday mood and I don't want to write a blog that will get me all fired up and in a rage. I feel happy and warm with the holiday spirit and I want to share that with all of you. So, if you will humor me, I want to take a walk with the Ghost of Christmas Past.

One of my favorite Christmas memories is sitting in the dark, watching the tree lights, with Christmas music in the background. Growing up, it seemed so magical and exciting. I can still recall the feeling I had inside, only at Christmas. We would put our sleeping bags by the Christmas tree and sleep downstairs by it some nights. Of course, not THE night...when it got close to Christmas, we had no desire to sleep by the tree, lest we scare Santa Claus away.

Our tradition was to hang our stockings along the staircase...and we knew Santa had come because he would take down all of the stockings and put each person's stocking by her (or his, for my dad...lol) pile of goodies. We'd sneak down, sometimes in the middle of the night, to check if the stockings were still up. When I discovered the stockings missing, my heart would leap and I would be flooded with excitement and anticipation.

I remember one of the more daring and dramatic Santa Claus occurrences was one year when we went to Midnight Mass. When I was in grade school, the parish still had the Midnight Mass at midnight (it's earlier now). We looked forward to this as kids because we got to stay up late! That year, the stockings were gone when we got home from church! (Events such as these were clear evidence of SC's existence provided to the naysayers at school.)

Speaking of evidence, one year, Santa made an actual appearance, IN PERSON, to Jill and I. We were all sitting in the living room when we heard a knock on the door. Jill and I answered it and there was Santa! He personally delivered our toys that year and we got a picture with him (now there was physical proof!).

One story we like to give Jill shit about is the year she wanted a My Pretty Pony waterfall. She didn't get it when all of the presents were found and she wanted it so badly, I think she started to cry. My parents couldn't take the sight of her disappointment so they told us to check outside and we found the pony waterfall laying in the snowbank by the door. Santa must have dropped it on his way in! It turned out, when my parents were setting out the piles of gifts, they thought the piles were uneven, so they took one of Jill's gifts out to be returned. When they saw how dismayed Jill was, they devised a plan to stage a Santa Claus blunder.

I also have fond memories of driving around Denison, bundled up in the back seat of the car, looking at all of the Christmas lights and singing Christmas carols. The ones with a lot of lights were deemed "lighthouses". Mental notes were made to pay these houses a visit on the drive the following year.

Denison also had an actual little house the town put up every year where we could go see Santa (this also seemed pretty legit when it came to belief...I mean, there was a house!). I remember and we still have a picture of Molly screaming in terror as Santa holds her and poses for a picture. She was 10...just kidding...I think she was two.

My mom would make sugar cookies (let me tell you right now, for the record, I have never tasted a sugar cookie that can match hers) in a bunch of different Christmas shapes and we would all sit down to frost them together. As the tradition progressed, we came up with contests (ugliest, creative and the most recently added "it was good until..." category...see picture) and each person picked cookies s/he had decorated to enter into the contest. We all voted and let me tell you...since we are Aleschs, the contest was always taken very seriously and documented with pictures, for posterity.

There are cookie stories that live in infamy, to this day...like the time I tried to be super creative and stuck a Reese's cup on Santa's cookie sack (my thinking...it was brown, like his bag...brilliantly clever). Turns out, not so much and it gets brought up every time we frost cookies (no one would eat it!). Anne also still takes some very serious ribbing for her cookies as a child...she would pile every decorative bead and sparkle and frosting color on one cookie. Those were always "left for Santa" because they were pretty much inedible!

There are 17 years between Kristen and I, so I felt fortunate that the Christmas magic was extended into my adult life. Santa Claus still came to all of us because Kristen was young. He still took the stockings down and put them by our gifts. And even though I didn't like to get up as early when Kristen found the stockings were gone, I enjoyed the magic that I still felt and the warmth of enjoying that time with my family.

As the years have passed, our Christmases have looked different from year to year. The year Jill was deployed in Afghanistan, we took a soldier nutcracker with us wherever we went and took our picture with it, so she "was there with us" (Kurt Warner even signed it that year at the Fiesta Bowl parade!).

We have added people to our family and shared our time with other families and friends, which has enriched our lives and memories. I like thinking back on my Christmas memories and enjoy the feeling when a Christmas carol evokes a memory (The Oak Ridge Boys Christmas and Mannheim Steamroller are essentially the soundtracks to my Christmas memories). I hope you all have the same simple, beautiful, funny, heartfelt, nostalgic memories, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or like me these days, enjoy getting together with family and friends to celebrate our lives, light and love together.

Started from the Bottom Now We Here

Hey ya'll! I hope you all are enjoying the holiday spirit and gearing up to spend a copious amount of time with your families! Because I am also enjoying the holiday spirit and gearing up to spend a copious amount of time with my family, I will not be making this blog super long. I would just like to fill you in about a huge part of my life right now.

This fall I received a phone call from a company that helps teachers plan national and international trips for their students. I always have said that while I am teaching I would like to take at least ONE group of students abroad and give them an experience that they may not be given otherwise. That being said, I thought about dates, the timeline of my own life, I talked to my administration and now here I am writing this blog.

This summer I will be taking a group of EIGHT students from the street of Shelby Drive all the way to Costa Rica. Teaching Spanish in a low income community is sometimes (actually a lot of times) difficult to get your students invested in the language because most of them will argue that they will never use it. Knowing the way our world and the systems within that world work, it is sometimes (actually a lot of times) difficult for me as an educator to counter that argument.

 "Oh you'll use it in college." "You'll get a better paying job." "You can flirt with a girl from Peru." My go-to superficial rationale for learning Spanish was starting to get old because a) I didn't really believe it and b) The kids definitely didn't believe it. I really just wanted my kids to get invested in learning, critically thinking and the idea of being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I decided that I needed to make the importance of learning Spanish more tangible for my kids and that's where this summer trip comes in. On this trip, my kids will not only be flying on a plane for the first time, they will also be leaving the only world they have ever known for the first time. They will become comfortable with the uncomfortable while actually getting to use the Spanish they have learned over the course of the two years with me in a REAL WORLD CONTEXT!

I am really excited to take these kids which I care so much about to a place that will allow them to grow as individuals and scholars. Our trip has the perfect mix of educational and cultural experiences. One day we will be viewing the hot volcanoes while another day will be spent in a local village and school site. You can see our itinerary to the right. The balance of educational and cultural experiences will allow us to practice our Spanish a majority of the time. My kids and I have made a goa

l that we will speak in Spanish (even when we're not around native speakers) 80% of the time!

With all that said, this trip is a fair amount of money. Each student is required to pay $2,300 which includes airfare, hotels, food, and adventures. On top of that each student will have to pay for his/ her own passport since it will be their first time out of the United States. For those of you that know me and have seen me planning for the trip, you know that the eight students and I have been working our behinds off trying to fund raise a large portion of the money needed. We have come a long way, but we have an even longer way to go yet. I teach at a Title 1 school and for a vast majority of my students, it is extremely difficult for their families to pay a large sum like this one. I, however, do not believe that money should ever prohibit a student from following their dreams or partaking in a prosperous experience. Their education MATTERS.

During this holiday season, think about donating your money to our scholarship fund for these eight awesome students. The money you donate will allow the students to apply for scholarships that will be put toward the cost of their trip. Students will write an essay and a 200-500 dollar scholarship will be rewarded to the students that demonstrate a love for learning and passion for education. We believe that it is important to show our students the value of hard work and effort through this scholarship campaign.

If you have a penny or two to spare, please think of the Fairley High School Spanish club. I hope you can love on these students just as much as I do :) The link to donate is listed below:

https://www.crowdrise.com/fhs-to-costa-rica/fundraiser/kristenalesch

Thanks for your support,

Eight Grateful Students and their Ambitious Teacher

Stop Telling Me What To Wear

I’m not going to pretend that I’m writing about a subject that has not been addressed before. Nor am I going to suggest that I’m writing anything new or groundbreaking on this subject.

I am, however, writing on this subject because it keeps happening, and I am BEYOND sick and pissed off about it.

Dear People,

Stop, stop, STOP, JUST STOP thinking that you have the right to tell me what to wear. Seriously. Stop it. You do not have the right to dictate my clothing.

Unless I am naked, unless I am wearing smelly, ratty sweatpants to a work event, or unless I’m wearing a shirt with language that denigrates others, just STOP telling me what I should or should not wear.

Most of these incidents- where others think that they can dictate what I wear- actually happen in my professional career.  Here are some experiences that I have had in the last couple of years:

1)     I was visiting an elderly man one-on-one about the loss of his wife. The sole purpose of these visits was to talk about HOW MUCH IT HURT that his wife was dead. At the end of one of our sessions, he asked me if I would “wear the outfit with the red scarf again because I looked so pretty.”

Needless to say, I had to terminate that therapeutic relationship and refer him on. Sir, we are here to talk about your deceased wife, and I am not here for you to ogle.  We are in a professional relationship, I am an intelligent woman respected in my field, and YOU SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO TELL ME WHAT TO WEAR!

2)    When I worked in the hospital, one of the social workers commented to another one of my colleagues that “Anne doesn’t dress like a chaplain.” WTF does that even mean? Unless you are a Catholic priest, chaplains don’t have a certain dress code. So WTF does it even mean to “dress like a chaplain?”

Look here, people. I dress in bright colors, okay? I dress in bright colors because I LIKE THEM. And I like bright colors because they are cheery and they reflect my personality. I’m not going to start dressing like the damn grim reaper because 1) it’s not authentic to who I am; and 2) there is enough sadness and despondency in the world that I don’t need to contribute to it with my wardrobe.

Moreover, while I AM indeed a chaplain, I am also a woman. I’m not going to wear a burlap sack or a monk’s robe. I AM going to dress somewhat with current fashion. So yes, this DOES mean that I wear tall boots. It DOES mean that I wear slim cut pants with short boots. It does mean that- God forbid- you can tell that my body shape has some curves. It’s not like my chest is hanging out in my clothes. But you know what- I do wear fashionable clothes, and you can tell from looking at me that I’m- gasp- I AM a woman.

This is an example of my style and what I like to wear. SO OFFENSIVE, right!?

I get so irate thinking about this scenario because I think that the implication is that to be a chaplain must mean that you can only be one thing- a stodgy male. And you know what? It’s NOT mutually exclusive to be both a chaplain AND a female. I AM both of these things, and my clothing WILL embody both of these identities. When people tell me that I “don’t dress like a chaplain,” I feel that what they are really saying is “you aren’t male, and your comfort with your femininity is challenging.”

That’s not my problem, folks. That’s YOUR problem. I understand how I can be both female and a chaplain. If the embodiment of those two identities is too much for you to handle, that’s your issue. DON’T put it back on me by saying, “Anne doesn’t dress like a chaplain.” YOU are displacing your own issues and making it my fault, when it is really YOUR own discomfort that is the problem. YOU need to address this within yourself, and I don’t need to start wearing shapeless brown bags in order for your narrow worldview to fit easier.

3)     I recently completed a presentation at a hospice conference. I remember what I wore- I wore a gray skirt, black tights, and a sweater vest. One of the comments that I received about my presentation was that “I wasn’t dressed professional, and my wardrobe was distracting.”

First of all, asshole, I was wearing a sweater vest and a gray skirt. Last time I checked, that WAS considered professional ware. WTF do you want me to wear? I’m not going to wear a suit or a blazer- it’s not comfortable for me to wear, especially when I’m walking around doing a presentation. I walk around a lot when I present, I use a lot of gestures, and blazers just get in my way. So if a blazer isn’t an option, what IS considered “professional enough” for you?

Also, what exactly was it about my outfit that made you uncomfortable? Was it the fact that the sweater vest was colorful? Because again, I’m not going to start wearing drab colors. I’m not sure who decided that “drab colors” was equivalent with professional, but I’m not going to abide by that ridiculousness. Besides, I did have a gray skirt on, so I had one article of drab clothing on.

If it wasn’t the bright colors, was it the fact that I was wearing a skirt? Did that make you uncomfortable? I was standing during the whole presentation, not to mention I was wearing dark tights. So you didn’t see a closeup of my ass. So what the hell was your problem, then? Was it the fact that I was wearing a skirt, and I may have looked *gasp* like a female? And the skirt did go a bit above my knees! Oh my goodness! Were you aware while I presented that I was actually a female?! If so, what bothered you about this? Was it because again- your brain could not compute how someone could be feminine AND an authority on a topic!? Holy shit! I may have looked somewhat attractive in my skirt, and I managed to convey knowledge on a topic. That must have been difficult to comprehend!

Moreover, if you thought my gray skirt was too sexual, that again is YOUR problem, not mine. I wasn’t showing any skin, nor was I trying to woo you- I was presenting on grief, for the love of God. So if you thought that my skirt conveyed too much sexuality, that is YOUR problem, not mine. I'm not going to change my outfit just so that you can be less distracted by the fact that I'm a female. YOU need to work on that issue, NOT ME. I was presenting on human loss, YOU were thinking about how I was "distracting."

I could go ON AND ON about additional incidents, but I do not want to turn this blog post into a book. The point of all of these anecdotes is that other people decided that THEY had the authority to tell ME how to dress. Again, I’m not so much of a crazy individualist that I think that “anything goes.” I honestly don’t think that I should have all of my body parts on display, nor do I think that people should wear ratty sweatpants in a professional setting.  However, in each of these scenarios, I was dressed in nice clothes- although these clothes were bright clothes that did accent my femininity. Again, GOD FORBID.

I’m left with the conclusion that people simply aren’t comfortable with me being able to embody multiple identities at once- that I cannot be female AND a chaplain AND an authority in my field. I’m also left with the conclusion that other people STILL think that they have the right to dictate my life- including something as mundane as THE STYLE OF MY CLOTHES. THE STYLE OF MY CLOTHES. This is what we are concerned about- the style of someone's clothes.

I WILL wear bright colors, and I WILL dress like a female because I AM cheery, and I AM a female.

BACK OFF, and STOP COMMENTING ABOUT IT. Moreover, stop THINKING about it, and start thinking about WHAT I’M SAYING AND DOING.