Oh yeah.

He’s back… and he’s been quite the challenge to “manage” while we’ve been working through the Great Altoids Gift Challenges.

Here’s what he’s been up to this year — from my newspaper column.

We can freely debate the existence of Santa in our house — but when it comes to Elf, there is no discussion. Out of all of the make-believe characters that are introduced to children, Elf is the only one that truly helps me. For example, I’ve found him standing guard in front of the Kitchen Aid Mixer, preventing me from creating a icing-massed disaster with my over-zealous dream of a Martha Stewart gingerbread house. Some days, in the throes of the holiday hustle and bustle, Elf is the only one who remembers to move the marker on our Advent Calendar.

More importantly, when the stress level is too high, he’s the one who pulls out the karaoke machine and gets us singing to yet another verse of We Wish You a Merry Christmas. And thoughtfully, Elf mixes the reindeer food in advance, so that we’re ready. I’ve warned my family not to have any discussions that even hint at the possibility that Elf is nothing but velour and stuffing. If Elf ever heard us talking like that, he would leave for sure.

Except for this year. Elf has been making his mischievous side a bit more apparent. His antics go beyond the snowball fights he organizes with the other stuffed toys in the house, (the one that involves mini-marshallows). I’m talking about that one particular morning we found he had made snow angels. On the counter. With flour. The next morning, the boys woke up to find their room had been “toilet papered.” Elf was found sitting in the corner of the room with the empty toilet paper roll dangling from his velour-stuffed arm. Elf loads the TiVo with Christmas specials, leaving no memory space for our own shows. And Elf is always the one who leaves the Legos lying all over the floor — it’s never the boys, so they tell me. We came home just in time one night, to catch Elf sneaking the tape off the wrapped presents under the tree. And, don’t even ask us about what is up with our Christmas lights — Elf messes up the timers on the lights so that the lights are on during the day, and off in the evening. Sadly, there are even teeth marks on the gingerbread ornaments dangling from the tree — from very small teeth.

One morning, Elf made the boys late for school. They had trouble scrubbing off the single red dot that Elf had painted on their noses while they were sleeping.

Clearly, Elf may have over-stayed his welcome this year. Yet, Elf, I’m learning, is perceptive. He knows when I’ve had enough, and just when I’m searching the house to find him so that I can promptly stick him back into the Christmas storage box in the attic, he changes. That’s when I find him sitting in a rocking chair, with a stack of Christmas books neatly propped in his lap, “reading.” Or, the clincher, is the notepad I found on the dining room table. Each page included a date, with a list: “Things I Caught Your Kids Doing Good this week.”

Would I still be able to dig out a treasure in our Superman Gratitude Journal? Now that the boys are getting older, would their little lists still have “melt-your-heart” treasures like “getting my brother out of the crib?” or “running through the dust when Dad blows the leaves with the leaf blower?”  Yet, I found one. Several, actually. But here’s one treasure. From my newspaper column.

As my boys struggle each night to fill their list of “Three Good Things,” I realize that this exercise of gratitude takes just as much physical exertion as running across the soccer field to maneuver the ball into the net for a goal. Based upon the mounting stack of scientific research, the act of giving thanks alters our brain chemistry, and this filters through our body to improve our blood pressure, respiration and heart rates while sending endorphins throughout our brain – just like a work-out at the gym. The art of giving thanks is an exercise that permeates our physical and emotional systems.

We are so careful to ensure that our thank you notes and words reach our benefactors. But if we really understood the power of gratitude, we would see that the act of giving thanks is one of the most selfish indulgences we can give to ourselves. Researchers at UC Davis are now calling gratitude the “forgotten factor” in happiness research.

Habitually expressing gratitude makes us less likely to notice what material things others have that we don’t. We begin to realize the futility of ensuring we have the newest, and latest gadget to fill an empty void. Gratitude, just might be – no — it is, the magical elixir to cure of so many of the ills attributed to our mad-paced modern society. Through this daily practice of “Three Good Things,” we could end excess spending, stress, depression and anxiety. And with the positive effects gratitude has on our circulatory and respiratory systems, we might be able to make a dent into the national health care crisis.

Just try to hold the emotion of anger, guilt, defensiveness, resentment, irritability or fear while holding the emotion of gratitude – can’t be done. The brain is a muscle, with a stubborn temperament toward the negative. You can make gratitude your default by working your brain out as the muscle it truly is, away from the negative and toward the positive. Work your brain out with the same diligence as you should be working out your heart muscle at the gym.

When I sit my boys down each night to turn their brains around, to name their gifts,they must physically stop their bodies from twitching, so they can concentrate. This work takes focused time, as what rises to the top the quickest are the disappointments, the frustrations and the anger. Yet, there is something else lurking underneath it all, and it comes as they wait. Once the first good thing finally pops out, the second and third come faster, and soon, there are eight,instead of three good things.

The thank you lists that result from this concentrated, stillness can be deeply insightful. One night my son had written the words “Pye, Zanfel, Fone” on his gratitude list. Pye was the lemon meringue pie I made for dessert. Zanfel is the name of the Poison Ivy treatment we found at Walgreen’s. Fone was for the telephone he used at school to call me to ask if I could take him home early because the Poison Ivy hurt him so much.  The poison ivy by the way, was quickly spreading… he was beginning to look like this

again – with swelled eyes.

I thanked him for his list. Yet, I was unable to capture with words the level of gratitude that was stirring in my own heart.

More details about my mysterious silent retreat… from my newspaper column.

When I embarked on my one-week silent retreat, I knew there would be plenty of time for yoga, reading and contemplation. Meals, reduced to the sacred ritual that they truly are, were to be taken slowly and mindfully, savoring every morsel. I know your mind has already conjured up images of tofu, quinoa and passion fruit, because those were the same images dancing in my head too as I carried my bags to my gorgeous bay-windowed room with a fireplace. So you can imagine my surprise when they revealed the room’s “pantry” complete with refrigerator, toaster and microwave, with its stash of Fruit Loops, White-flour English Muffins and real margarine. Sure, there was a token basket of fresh fruit in a linen-lined basket with a paring knife, but to a girl, alone, who had just turned her cell phone over, the Fruit Loops proved to be an overwhelming temptation.

In the retreat’s silence, I learned to follow the rhythm of the house, detecting the scents of lunch and dinner being prepared a couple of hours before I would eat, and the peal of the grandfather clock standing in the downstairs entrance chiming 12 times, and again 5 times, signaling that food was waiting for me.

Each meal had a token plate of stacked white bread, with a side of margarine, never butter. There were two exceptions – the night my plate was laden with spaghetti and meatballs, the white bread was replaced with white Italian bread. Beside this carb was a curious little jar of a clear yellowish liquid, “what could that be?” I little taste revealed it was the palest looking olive oil I have ever seen, to be used as dipping oil. Or was it perhaps, canola oil? And the cheese? The shavings were poured into a glass bowl with a spoon, and came from a green can, rather than a grater.

On the second occasion, I found my heart leaping at what would be considered in some parts of the world, pita bread, along with a huge lump of hummus and red pepper dip. Even then my hopes were dashed, as I soon found the hummus was definitely laced with mayonnaise. That night, the Fruit Loops were a welcome midnight snack.

Yet, I was under extreme pressure to clean my plate, as I was acutely aware that my spiritual director, someone honored, created each meal for me. How could I hurt her feelings? That mushy, smelly plate of grayish-green broccoli turned out not to be so horrid after all.

When my spiritual director was called away on an emergency, a surrogate director prepared my meal. Even though he was “all thumbs” in the kitchen, his cornbread was light and delicate, and sweet. I later learned that he tried to mix the cornmeal, egg and milk all together in the baking pan. “Please tell him how good the cornbread was,” I told them.

When he offered me a Klondike Bar for dessert, I almost declined, as I have never had a fondness for icy sweets. I found myself saying, “Yes, sure, I’ll take a Klondike bar,” with enthusiasm.
He looked so relieved, as he placed the bar on the table. I then realized, what a gift I had given him. He had no idea what in the world to give me for desert, and heaven forbid, I would ask him to bake me a cookie, which, I’m sure he would have, if I had asked.

When it comes to Christmas presents, kids have a sixth sense; they can smell presents the way a Mom can smell chocolate. You’ve worked so hard to find them the perfect gift, and then, they find the gifts and spoil the whole surprise.

With four curious boys in the house, I have researched the topic extensively. My results appeared in the newspaper for an article I wrote for the SNP. Here is the complete article:

If you have children in your house who can read, you might want to cut this article out of the paper and stash it in the trash as soon as these hiding places are safely tucked in your memory. The spots listed here are stealthy ingenious because they are, as Poe’s purloined letter, so obviously right in front of your nose, yet still concealed. For example, while you wouldn’t be the first parent to hide your child’s presents under your bed, nor would your child be the first to check there first. Today’s parent must be armed with new solutions to out-smart today’s child. For example, how many children would think to check under their own bed for those delightful gifts?  Parents of dust bunnies everywhere can attest that the lost sock or the delinquent library book is usually always found there, even after the child guarantees you that he’s “looked everywhere.”

I once thought garbage bags would be clever — dark-colored garbage bags full of neatly wrapped presents, stored in the garage, right alongside the garbage cans. For an entire month, my boys were never asked to take out the garbage, “I’ll handle it,” I said. Still, I found the garbage bags had been untied and the smartly wrapped parents now sported torn edges where the scotch tape had been pulled off and re-affixed. I would have faired better if I had simply tucked the gifts into the attic, and put them into the plastic tubs labeled “Valentine’s Decorations” or “Summer Clothes.”  Or why didn’t I take advantage of the empty storage containers that were tossed aside once our Christmas decorations were pulled out and displayed?

If you store the gifts out of your home, say, at your office, or at Grandma’s, for example, there is always the challenge of migrating the presents back into your home for Christmas morning — a large task to add to any Christmas Eve. Storing them in the trunk of the car runs its own risks, as sometimes those battery operated toys get jostled around, and the word’s “I’m Elmo” can reverberate through the car just when you have the kids packed in for a night-time cruise to look at the city’s Christmas lights display.

Of course, you could just leave the wrapped presents under the tree, and tell the kids the truth, while trusting them with the responsibility of doing the right thing. “Here are your presents. You can peek, but if you’ll do, you’ll ruin your own Christmas morning.” The year my parents left the presents out under the tree, I did sneak downstairs after they were asleep, and tore the corners off every present addressed to me. That was also the last year I tried to unlock the mystery of any surprise that passed through my life.

Today’s cyber market place delivers its own clandestine challenges. Your computer’s search history leaves a clear trail – that must be deleted from your browser, and your computer. Without this step, a quick glance at the search history will reveal your entire Christmas plan. That handy “memorize password” feature exposes the order history of every item you’ve ordered on amazon.com, along with their delivery dates. How will you know your security features have been breached? A sure sign is when your child looks at you and says, “Mom, that Xbox 360 your ordered is the wrong one. The 4G is the right one.”

Share your own best-kept parenting secrets, learn from other moms and connect with some of our great mom bloggers! Please list your meal-saving strategies for picky eaters in the comments below. Everyone who comments will be entered in a BlogHer giveaway for a $200 Visa gift card. Enter here.

Adapted from my newspaper column.

I am bored. If there is any mantra that epitomizes summer with children, that phrase is it. As their mother, the words send me into a tailspin. Childhood should be happy, joyful, and adventurous. Not boring. What can I do to pull them out of this distressing state? My suggestions yield little fruit. “I don’t want to do that.” By the time the kids are done nixing my propositions, I feel just as bored as they do. Signing them up for yet another summer camp becomes appealing. But what would I be depriving them of if I rushed to fill those empty hours?

Kids have a miraculous ability to feel boredom whether they have access to stacks of the best selling kid books (the library), the latest DVDs, a new slip n’slide, or the top-rated game for their game system. The result is the same. I’m bored.

Setting doesn’t seem to matter either. My children spend most of their summer deprived of the ability to flip through the channels of a television, along the banks of a small lake. They, justifiably, in their opinion, managed to utter that phrase of tedium on a particular day, despite the fact that their morning involved tracking an army of ants to their home, feeding a lost baby Robin a worm, catching no less than 4 toads, and built and decorated a toad-condo out of an empty cardboard box. The fishing gear, rafts and water trampoline had yet to be touched. At that moment, I looked at one sincerely sad face, and into his bewildered eyes, and laughed. Preposterous. “You don’t even have the slightest idea what being bored feels like,” I decided.

Maybe, they aren’t really bored. Perhaps kids just aren’t used to the feeling of autonomy after spending most of their year being told what to do, for how long, and when. When they get home from school, there are more books to read, and more worksheets to be completed. At their sports practices and music lessons, they are to practice drills, in this particular way, for this amount of time.

When school vacation starts, kids suddenly have free rein of their own time. They are baffled. “What am I supposed to do?” they may wonder. This newfound independence must feel strange. Kids have given this, this freedom, a name of their own — boredom.

As adults, we don’t have the luxury of boredom – or freedom. If there is the slightest millisecond when the feeling of ennui takes over, we suddenly remember the emails that need answered, the leaky faucet that needs adjustment, or the fact that people will be hungry in just a few hours, and something needs to be prepared.

Some child development experts say kids don’t have enough time to feel the all-important “boredom.” Boredom sparks a child’s creativity, giving a child the needed time to use his imagination to turn clouds into animals. For only a few months of the year, kids now have the chance to think for themselves.

Now when I hear the words, “I’m bored,” I smile back, remembering that what a child really wants is permission: The assurance that it is OK to use his own power of choice. When I hear the words, “I’m Bored,” I simply look back and say, “You mean, you feel free?”

When a woman marries a man, she gains an extra seven hours of housework each week. The man drops an hour. The findings are part of a detailed study of housework trends, based on 2005 time-diary data from the federally funded Panel Study of Income Dynamics, at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (ISR). Obviously, she’s doing his laundry. The new lovebirds are also eating out less, so she’s cooking.

Once the woman has three children, her household chores go up to 28 hours per week, while the man gains ten hours. (The study stopped at 3 children; but if they would have asked me, I would have told them what happens when you have four boys. The number shoots up to 1,432, exactly.)  Housework is defined as laundry, cooking and cleaning, and this study excluded the time moms spend scheduling doctor’s appointments, sports and play dates and keeping track of everyone in the family. But dads do much of the maintenance, yard work and car repairs, which was also excluded from the study. Yet, those tasks only took about one-quarter of the hours women spent on core household tasks.

But what about men working outside the home? That should count for something, right? Michael Burda of Humboldt University in Berlin, Daniel Hamermesh of the University of Texas, and Philippe Weil of the Free University of Brussels have analyzed data from surveys in 25 countries and found that in the United States, men average 5.2 hours of market work a day and 2.7 hours of homework each day, while women average 3.4 hours of market work and 4.5 hours of homework per day. Adding these up, men work an average of 7.9 hours per day, while women work an average of 7.9 hours per day.

Yet, mothers have not always done all the housework either. In her book More Work For Mother, Ruth Schwartz Cowan reveals

Mother’s Day Art: My Mom Can Do Anything

(and hey, you, my own flesh and blood, my eyes are BLUE, remember?)

that it was the man who once held the primary responsibility of putting bread on the table — literally. Man tilled the soil, grew the wheat and had it milled. The man grew the grain, fed the livestock and butchered the animals. Once meat was available in tins, livestock was no longer necessary to feed the family. It was the industrial revolution, really, that relieved men and children of their chores: Men went to factories to earn the money to buy the goods they no longer produced at home, (meat in tins, white flour, woven cloth), and children went to public schools. Mom was left behind, alone, with her new labor saving devices, and higher expectations to do and create more. Mountains of laundry, for example, hardly existed until factories made it possible for families to buy cloth cheap. Until then, people only owned a few items of clothing that were hardly washed. Today, we need walk-in closets to handle all of our stuff.

We never expected as much from our brooms as we do of our vacuum cleaners. Our appliances may make our homes cleaner, but they come with the accompanying advertisements, and guilt, for spotless sterile homes that hold no evidence that humans, pets or the dust of the earth has ever crossed our thresholds. It’s tough to relax among the standards the media places on us.

Thankfully, these new labor saving devices have greatly increased the cleanliness, safety and hygiene of our families. Did they really save us time? Cowan says, “Women still spend as much time on home maintenance as they did eighty years ago, with less help.”

Women today are the victims of what Sharon Lerner, author of The War on Moms: On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation, says moms are part of the “great sea of beleaguered and overburdened people in America—mostly women, but some men, too—stuck between the need to support their families and the desire to live a decent life with them.” She adds, “Moms do not have enough time to handle the inevitable overflow of domestic responsibilities.”

So many moms feel literally choked by our unrelenting responsibilities. Is the reason our to-do list grows instead of shrinks simply because it is impossible? Are we still living by the household standards of our ancestors, who had husbands, children, and extended families pitching in and helping with the chores? We’ve been trying to find balance all this time, and society can’t even begin to support what we’ve taken on.

A little publicized fact came out in the University of Michigan research is that while moms still carry the heaviest load of core chores, men’s housework has increased to 13 hours in 2005, from six hours in 1976. Women’s work was never meant to be a woman’s work alone. It’s nice that dads are agreeing to share in the chores, just like their forefathers did.

Before I write my column for the newspaper, I give myself a “heads up” that I need an idea. Then, I start the laundry, clean the bathrooms, cook dinner and do yoga while I wait for the inspiration.  I expect the idea to come barreling in — hitting me over the head with a ton of bricks. But it rarely does. Usually it’s a whisper; I whisper that I push aside.  The idea grows, and it starts to integrate itself into the laundry, the bathroom, the dinner and the yoga; until it is those things. At this point, the idea is pounding in my head in complete sentences, and there is no other choice but to write about this whisper that now has a megaphone blasting through my mind.

So, this month, the story of Brownie, the school bunny that met her demise in our home, can creeping in like a whisper. I gave the story the wings it wanted, and sent the article off over a week ago. Only yesterday did it dawn on me that perhaps writing a story that shows up during the Holy Week about a bunny was probably quite brilliant. But writing about a bunny that dies? What was I thinking? My embarrassment overwhelmed me. Why didn’t I make the connection?

Thank you to all of you who are stopping me in the stores, the street and at the school to thank me for the story. Because, the truth is, giving kids the honor of telling them the truth about death makes them feel like the important people they really are. That’s a story for any season. Thank you to all those people out there who helped me see this.

Here’s the column:

We carried Brownie out of the elementary school building on a Friday, while she snuggled among the newspaper clippings in the bottom of her cage. The halls were filled with well-wishers, saying “Bye Brownie,” veteran hosts, who promised, “Brownie is lots of fun.” So many people knew Brownie, that I wondered if maybe the bunny had already visited at least half of the families in the school with children grades 3 and up.

Brownie’s care package included a scrapbook, including photos and notes from previous sleepovers; a care instruction book; and a supply of food. Bunnies like to chew everything from electrical wires to shoes, I learned, so it would be best to keep her contained when she’s not being held. She also arrived with her own portable outdoor fence, and when the kids pleaded to take Brownie outside, I had a panic vision of myself chasing the bunny up and down the streets. By Sunday morning, I feared, we’d be at Kinko’s making “Wanted” posters with Brownie’s face (scanned from the scrapbook) plastered on the top, and my phone number below.

Alas, a bunny chase was not to be my fate for the weekend. Things started out well – Brownie was rotated from lap to lap, in 15-minute increments during the Saturday morning cartoon ritual. Carrots were pulled from the refrigerator for “special snacks.” By Saturday night, Brownie, like me, seemed tired from all the excitement of living in a house full of boys.

When I tucked my 3rd grader into bed that night, a tear dropped out of his eye. He wasn’t ready for Sunday, he wasn’t ready for Monday, and certainly wasn’t ready to send Brownie back to school. “Lucky for you,” I said. “We’re on the schedule again in two more weeks.” I left him with a smile on his face, and eyes that were finally closing.

Alone in the living room, I heard a crash. Brownie was doing back flips, forcefully enough to make the cage jump a few inches across the floor. Her acrobatics lasted less than a minute before the silence came… the stillness… the missing breaths… the lost heartbeat. Betsy O’Brochta, Brownie’s “mom” drove over as soon as she hung up the phone. As hard as those moments were for her, she was thinking just as quickly as me about what we could tell the kids to “ease their pain.” “Maybe,” we said, “Brownie wasn’t feeling well. So we called the vet, and Brownie died there?” Maybe.

Now I finally had the exception to that cardinal rule at First Community Church Preschool, “always tell children the truth.” Could I tell this story with the conviction I needed? The idea of shielding him from the pain was as comforting as pulling the blankets around him to tuck him in. Yet, it left me feeling uneasy. I sent an email that night to Holly Cavallaro, a teacher at FCC, saying, “Just to spare my son’s feelings, I’m burying the truth.” Her response surprised me; yet made the entire event crystal clear. “You’ll be telling this story for years,” she explained. “If you don’t tell him the truth, you’ll always have to change the story when he’s around. Eventually, he’ll learn this from someone else. He’ll be hurt again.” Why not say, “Isn’t it nice that Brownie felt safe enough to spend his last day with people who really loved her?”

From my Newspaper Column for the SNP

She has removed the password from his Caring Bridge site, because she wants to spread the word. Seth needs prayers. The next 24 hours are critical. Feb 5, 2010 was supposed to be a day of celebration. The date would have marked the end of Seth’s 6-year battle with leukemia. Instead, Seth received more chemotherapy for the illness that was supposed to leave the 13-year-old alone by now. They also received the devastating news that not one of his 3 sisters is a bone marrow donor match.

Yesterday, a throbbing headache led Seth back to the hospital, where they learned he is now septic. He has no white cells to fight the infection. You can read the details and updates here.

All I can think about is the day, 9 years ago, when Seth was dressed like Robin Hood, running around the tree house in our backyard. Wendi, loving mom, made the costume. She made all of Seth’s costumes — including the Obi-Wan Kenobi , Buzz Lightyear, and Jedi Knight costumes. We were always impressed by her talent. The sun lit up Seth’s golden hair, and his blue eyes twinkled at me as he gripped his light saber, wondering if I was going to take away the light sabers because they were all hitting too hard. Our boys were so young and small then; we could pick them up with one arm, and hold them tight. All day long, I’ve been stuck on that day, trying to will it back. I just want to help my friend.

But we are not there. We are here. His parents want to help spread the word about bone marrow donations. I will do my part. Wendi says, “It’s one of the few organs you can donate without being dead to do it.”

Each year, we donate our blood to stock the blood banks, and this is as routine as filling up the car with gas. But how many of us have ever considered donating our bone marrow?

For some, fear is the reason we’ve never considered this gift. Fear can always be traced to unknowns. Here is what is known: No pieces of your bone are taken. Seventy five percent never need surgery; in most cases you’ll only need to give peripheral blood stem cells, which is similar to donating plasma. A bone marrow donation is a surgical procedure, done under anesthesia. Yet, both are treated as outpatient, and you go home the same day. Some donors are sore afterwards; some are not. In 2-7 days, most donors are back to normal. Most donors say they would do it again to save a life.

Thanks to advances in medicine, many of us will be hearing more about transplants; they’re increasingly becoming a path to save lives. Sometimes, it’s the only hope people have. Just like Seth, over 70 percent are unable to find a donor match within their family. Yet, even with a registry of millions, many patients still cannot find a match.

You can visit www.BeTheMatch.org to join the Be The Match Registry online. They’ll mail you a kit so that you can simply swab your cheeks at home and mail it back. Or, you can register in person February 20 at Premier Women’s Health, (614-459-1000 Ext 2007), from 8 a.m.– 1 p.m.

Since he won’t be getting a bone marrow transplant from one of his sisters, Seth hopes to get his marrow from “someone famous…. that would be cool.” Wendi wrote on Seth’s Caring Bridge web page, “In my eyes, the person who shares this gift of life with my son may not be famous, but will be truly heaven sent. An angel. A lifesaver. What more could you ever hope to be in this world?”

Is having more time to look at the stars. I know Winter Solstice is bringing us longer days… but it’s still pretty dark around here. Here’s an article from my newspaper column.

I saw no stars on that cloudy night at the Perkins Observatory. Instead of stardust, the astronomers there sprinkled my mind, and the minds of the first- and second-graders there, with wonder.

They reminded me that when we look up, we see the past; the light is already billions of years old. They reminded us that our vast galaxy is just beginning its life. Our 4.5 billion-year-old sun is still less than halfway through its life. The future lying ahead is more prolonged than the past we’ve seen.

These concepts are staggering to comprehend, but the gem here comes from remembering what my seventh-grade history teacher used to repeat: “You can’t understand the future until you understand the past.” Four hundred years ago, Galileo turned his telescope away from the sea and began to look at the heavens, and thus 2009 is our International Year of Astronomy (IYA).

Galileo’s shift of his telescope changed the world not simply because he looked, but because he observed the sky night after night while meticulously filling in the details in his observing log. He saw that the stars do shift positions, and when one star vanished, he discovered not a star, but a moon hiding behind Jupiter.

Because our word shares the same sky, astronomy is a great unifier, and may even hold our potential for world peace. Satellite pictures of our earth show us the geographic boundaries of our continents, while the political boundaries vanish.

This revelation led astronomers in Iran to create StarPeace, a project of IYA to hold joint public star parties near the borderlines of two neighboring countries. On Dec. 4, people from Indonesia and the Philippines came together to make a peace bridge on South China Sea, with teachers and astronomers offering free public viewings of the stars through high-powered telescopes.

The amateur astronomer George Eric Deacon Alcock discovered five comets on his own through meticulous viewings and recordings in his observing log. Backyard astronomers, like you, can use their eyes, telescopes and binoculars to create their own observing logs. Binoculars provide a wider field of view than telescopes.

In the winter, no other constellation is more distinct or bright as Orion, the Mighty Hunter. This month, if the sky is clear — a minor  miracle — look for three bright stars that form Orion’s Belt. One of the brightest stars in the night sky, Rigel, represents Orion’s foot. His two shoulders are made of the stars Bellatrix and Betelgeuse.

Orion will wait for you; he will remain recognizable in the night sky for the next 1 to 2 million years, making it one of the longest observable constellations.

As we stand solidly on earth looking up, we can barely fathom our place in a galaxy that is showing us our billion-year-old past. But imagine, for a moment, looking at earth from space, where there is no solid footing. An astronaut once revealed to me the universal secret astronauts hold: They are homesick. Not for earth, but for space.

He described the familiar heavy pull of gravity as the carrier sped back toward earth, and he instantly felt a longing for the lightness he knew in space. With tears in his eyes, he also added, “The earth looks beautiful from space. The earth glows, and it pulsates with energy.”

So far, this post has generated more personal comments to me than any other of my newspaper columns. People tell me this one is clipped, and hanging on their fridge.

We start out by identifying clear boundaries: You cannot hide on the roof (anymore), inside of cars or, definitely, in the house. Warmer Octobers, unlike this one, have, in the past, led us to impromptu games of Ghost in the Graveyard.

While summer traditionally holds hosting rights to this game, October offers an enticing venue for this nighttime version of hide-and-seek for two reasons: primarily because it’s a frightful game, tying in perfectly with Halloween, and secondly, and more importantly, October features short days, making the official start time of the game much easier to accommodate in our lives.

Still, despite this early nightfall, I find myself resistant to embark on this game. I feel the strings of domesticity and the demands of homework, and quite frankly, I’m just too tired to summon the energy to play at this hour. But there are nights when I catch a glimpse of the moon, sometimes obscured by the branches of a tree, and I see that the moon is staring right back at me.

Now, I think I’m missing out on something. We gather the kids and venture outside in the dark to play. Don’t underestimate the power of the moon; just look at what it does to the ocean.

From home base, the ghost starts the countdown — 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock — while everyone else hides. Once the ghost reaches “midnight,” he is free to leave base and search for us; our goal is to sneak back to base before the ghost finds us first.

As I hear the ghost approach “7′o’clock,” I panic because I have not yet found a spot. I start to run, I feel my blood start shooting right up to my toes and I’m breathing heavy. Soon, I’ve broken into a sweat. “This was effortless,” I whisper to myself under my breath.

Funny how this nighttime run fails to invoke the monotony that often accompanies those forced runs I try to take. Yet, it seems to have the same effect on my system.

A small hand grabs my own, and a voice says, “Mom, I want to hide with you.” We take off running, and I stumble on the perfect spot — the railing of the deck creates safe roof access to a hiding place where the floodlights do not reach. Just as the ghost yells, “midnight,” I lift my son over the railing, sit back against the wall of the house and wait.

My son’s body shakes against mine, heaving from the giggles he is trying to contain. “A spot like this could keep me winning this game for years to come,” I think. But before the ghost even takes three steps, my son yells triumphantly, “You’ll never find us! We’re on the roof!”

After a few rounds, we have exhausted all hiding spots and, unanimously, we are ready to call it a night. I catch a glimpse of the moon again, this time lighting up the flushed cheeks of my children. “Is that a glimpse of stillness I see coming over their faces?”

What originally started as the kids’ “great idea to delay bedtime” seems to have had quite the opposite effect. This evening run in the fresh air, accompanied by the adrenaline rush, seems to have flushed out the tensions of the day, unknotted my own worries about tomorrow and effortlessly moved us through that awkward transition time between day and night; between doing and being.