empty praise

The letter of the week in E’s 4 year old preschool class this week was C. And to make things even cooler, E’s sharing day was Tuesday. He had been looking forward to his sharing day since the first day of school, and he flexed extremely well when the sharing bag came home with the note that he was to bring things that start with the letter C. That ruled out his most treasured motorcycle, which was atop his very long list of ‘things to bring for sharing.’ Immediately he went for some of his treasured cars. I asked if his teachers would mind if little Calum went to school with him for the day. E responded, “He moves too much.” Ah, yes, so true.

As he started rummaging for his Corvettes and Convertibles, I (unfortunately for him) started my best impersonation of the egyptian opera singer from old school Sesame Street song “C is for Cookie.” Then I had this freaking stuck in my head for about 2 days. (You know you want to watch it!!)

So continuing on my momma nuttiness for the day, anytime I would say something that started with C, I would tell E that he should take that for sharing. (If I was him, I would totally take a bag of Starbucks Verona and say, “This is one of my mom’s most treasured C things.”) He really wasn’t amused at any point in the day with my suggestions. Apparently I’m not cool already.

The big sharing day came and the cars were a hit with the boys, and the girls who shared brought things like cats and a comb and a Curious George doll. So many options for the letter C.

A couple of hours later when school was over, I picked up my special copy of the new Chip Heath & Dan Heath book, “Switch” (not officially released yet.) I can’t quote it as the cover says in all caps bold, “Not for sale. Please do not quote, blog or review until January 1, 2010.” Is this breaking the rules, mentioning that I am reading it and saying what it says on the cover? Hmmm. We’ll see.

Well I’m not going to break the rules any further, just in case. But I will say, that the reason I got the book was because I was enticed when hearing them speak at the Leadership Summit back in August, while I was experiencing the change of losing-turned-transitioning my job. They were talking about one of the most feared words for many: CHANGE. The book itself has a subtitle that goes something like this, “How to change things when change is hard.” So far, it’s quite good but I guess I’ll have to talk about it in a few months.

Last week, I was talking with a friend and I said, “I’d love if 2010 wasn’t a year of hard change.” There’s something in me that feels like we are just getting settled into something here in life, so I’m subconsciously bracing myself for some rock-my-little-world, earth shaking change with a high magnitude. It seems like we can look back over the last few+ years and identify some major changes that we have faced, adapted to, battled and/or conquered. I’m talking 6.2-9.0 on the emotional/mental/spiritual richter scale. Of course, change doesn’t always equal bad. As in one of our 2008 changes was the birth of little C. That’s a good change, but hey, it’s change in a pretty significant way.

I remember that 2004 was the year we bought our house, had our first child, my Grandma died (first grandparent in a season where three of them passed away within 13 months), Nate changed jobs and our basement started flooding on a regular basis. Sparing the details of what kind of significant changes and circumstances have happened in the last 5 years leads me to this whopping cliche, “Change is the only constant.”

Yep, one thing I feel pretty secure in is knowing that change is inevitable. Change can be enormously wonderful. Change can be disturbing and disruptive. Change can rock the boat so hard that I live just clinging to the life preserver sometimes. Change can add up and get heavy. (Yes, I’m being a doofus and smiling at the thought of the four jars of coins we keep around the house for all our extra coins.)

So what will this next year bring? Change, I’m sure. But like I told my friend, I’m just hoping, longing for the good kind. Whatever that may be. I’ll take a cookie at the very least.