My tree of life

"A walk around my Tree of Life", December 2009

My Christmas tree of life

A tree brought to life with my memories of people, places and times.

I usually buy my tree the week before Christmas and leave it out on the balcony until I have time to start decorating it. This year it was bought and brought straight indoors and I spent several evenings during the last week of Advent hanging up the decorations that have been stored away all year.

I savour this time as each and every treasure that I bring out of the box has a special meaning for me, either because of the place where I bought it or because of the person who gave it to me.

The actual activity of doing the decorating holds the biggest memories of all. I always did this with my Mum. In my childhood with my sister too, but later for many years, when Sis had a home of her own, it was just me and Mum.

Mum and I decorated the tree together most years until I was no longer living in England. When I went to live in Hungary in 1989 I was thirty two years old, that’s a lot of years of hanging shared memories on a tree!

It is only through writing this that I realise just why my Christmas tree decorating and its treasures are so important to me and why, even though I am living alone, I continue with the tradition.

It was my Mum who made it so special

As we “worked” on the tree she told me stories about her own childhood Christmases and we talked about the people who had given us the toys that we were hanging on the green branches. We enjoyed the smell of fresh cut tree, we enjoyed the time together.

Until I lived “abroad”, each Christmas as soon as I got home from wherever I was living Mum and I would go up into the box-room together and hunt out the ancient cracker boxes that we used for storage. Opening the boxes one by one we would re-discover the same old childhood decorations and packed up with them, the memories.

It would always take us ages to hang them because, as I have said, we would talk about where each one came from and I would have hundreds of questions about the places or the people.

All these memories, plus many more newer ones of my own, are now hanging on the tree beside me. I was so happy when, a couple of years before she died, my Mum gave me the ancient cracker boxes with their contents, memories and all.

Now as I decorate my tree on my own, I really do savour every single minute. There are so many of my friends and friends of my Mum “hanging out” with me each Christmas. When they are all hanging, sparkling underneath the twinkling lametta, I enjoy many evenings sitting and reading, or blogging or painting beside it, now and then fiddling with the odd clown or creature who just refuses to look in the right direction.

This year I bought myself a new treasure. I found it in the bookshop in Johannis, the area of the city where I live. It was the day on the last weekend before Christmas when the streets were covered in snow that was glistening brilliant blue in minus fourteen Centigrade.

I bought a glass snowman with a carrot nose and a Besen under his arm. It has found its place on my tree and each year as I take it out of the ancient boxes it will remind me of the lovely place where I now live, of the sudden coldness that arrived on that day and of the peaceful hours that I spent in the bookshop choosing presents.

I have brought things home over the years from most of the countries that I have visited and from the English, Welsh, German and Hungarian cities that I have lived in too. There are decorations from Mexico and Guatamala, from North America and Canada, from Australia, New Zealand and of course from England. There are decorations sent from friends all over the world.

There are dolls on the tree, old and new, there are birds and stars and angels. There are Santas, made out of wood, out of metal and out of cloth, Santas playing music, riding sledges and even a rubber one standing on his head. There are even the red “Conductive Education” Pedro boots hanging on my tree!

I don’t usually do lists but I am going to do one now. Working from the frog angel at the top down to the reindeer on a peg at the bottom I am going to list some of my special memories. I will try to match them to the photos at the top.

· The Frog Angel – a present from my Sis, who watched me since a tiny girl observe in wonder each frog that I ever met!

· The Skinny Santa that Mum bought us when we were young and what we decided was the best decoration that we had. He immediately replaced the old tatty fairy at the top. He takes second place these days to the frog angel.

· There at the same height are the German frog-fairy and the New Zealand pixie, both arrived in the post three years ago from two very special friends.

· Four clowns who are ancient (one has a foot missing) have been hanging around the middle of the tree for some fifty years now, as have the two plastic dollies, one red (belonging to Sis) and one green (mine). I have no idea who gave them to us but most probably they came from a lady-friend of my Grandma’s, who gave us many of the toys on the tree.

· Of the same vintage are the colourful chocolate umbrellas complete with chocolate. The silver and gold umbrellas were a more recent present, from Mum. She sent them when I first had a tree in Germany, in 1993. They are also still complete with chocolate. My Sis and I were experts at not eating our chocolate figures and insisting that at Easter and Christmas they got packed away for next year.

· There are two knitted dollies, the pink one belongs to Sis and the blue one to me. We always only hung up only our own toys and this year I phoned as always to tell her I would do it for her if that was OK!

· There is only one knitted golly, made for me when I was a two year old by my Mum. My sister of course has kept hers too. It is different from mine only in that her golly is wearing trousers and not dungarees which I think is probably a reflection of the clothes that we each wore at the time!

· Then there are the three Christmas bells, used to call the family when the Christkind has been to deliver the presents. These were not used for this purpose as in our family Santa climbs down the chimney in the middle of the night. These bells were presents from special people, one from Budapest and one from Pecs, each in different traditional ceramic styles. The third I was given in 1987 by the family I spent Christmas with in Adelaide. Seven years ago that lovely Australian cousin died so it holds extra special happy/sad memories for me.

· Happy/sad memories are also woven into the white snowflake that hangs behind the tinsel, given to me by a younger colleague the Christmas before she died.

. There is the fortieth-birthday tiny- teddy and the fiftieth-birthday wooden angel.

. The delicate stable scene in a walnut shell, with figures made from date stones and grains of wheat, has survived eighteen years unscathed since it was given to me on my third Christmas in Budapest.

· The more robust but still very small Christmas scene reminds me of the Christmas of 1988 that I spent in Mexico and, as my gaze falls on to the handmade heart beside it, I recall the summer before, spent with friends in the Bahamas.

· And of course there is a train, a brass one that reminds me always of my Dad, even though I bought it myself. Dad was a steam, and diesel and electric train-driver! there is a peg with a reindeer to remind me of mum (she used pegs for everything but as far as I remember never on the tree).

There are too many things there to list them all, many of the rest come from a few special friends who send me something each year.
The rest of the treasures I have bought for myself on holiday, at markets and on special days in special places.

I remember a story behind them all, each time they come out of their boxes. Santas from Hungary, a glass Santa from Prague, a glass cat from Atlanta, Georgia, glass angels that adorned a present one year, stars from the market in Nürnberg, a teddy made by my Auntie, another given as a special thank you by my Sis. There is even penny-farthing made by a friend from a scrap of wire that he found as we sat around a table on my thirty-fifth birthday, in a garden in Szentendre, Hungary!

It is no wonder that it takes me so long to decorate my tree with so many people and places to think about.
I am so lucky to have so many special friends and memories joining me each year from all over the world.

And because my tree lives it also grows.

Timing, time and Begeisterung

Dr Franz Schaffhauser, Dr Zita Makói, Dr Andrew Sutton,

Novmember 2008, Budapest, Moira conference

Begeisterung

A very young athetoid girl was thrilled this week when we discovered together that she needed hardly any help getting from her place at the dinner table to her walking frame in which she can then go under her own steam to the bathroom. With just a few words of direction she did it and she thought it was magic.

The ladies working in the integrated Kindergarten were “begeistert”(enthralled), astonished and delighted as they watched this. It really was like magic and all our faces were alive with wonder and joy. It sounds soppy but it really was like this.

The following day this girl and I were disappointed and far from delighted when one of the very same enthralled and astonished ladies picked her up from her chair and plonked her in her walker. I could have cried but I didn’t, but I was surprised that the girl didn’t put her parts on, shout and scream “I can do that on my own and you know it”. Then again even if she had done so, this busy lady probably wouldn’t have had time to notice because this girl has a quiet and unclear voice.

Instead of crying in dismay I remained clam and quietly reminded the lady of what she had seen to inspire her wonder the day before. I had hope that on other days it would now be different.

I have been guilty. I know I have done similar things, but I would like to think that when I have then I have done them with more thought and consideration. I hope that I always include my clients, my children, in decisions of how we get from A to B, I hope that I can judge whether children are tired and then use an alternative method. I hope that I will look at the situation and offer them means for success that suit the situation. If I offer walking then it is because we have time for walking and because they have the energy to walk the distance required. I hope all of this is true but I am sure that I too am guilty of offending!.

There is always time, however, to stand up from the table or sit down at the table, we all have time to do this. And here was the ideal situation for the lady from the kindergarten to try out the “new” method, time for us all to have joyful faces again. The moment was lost in the rush, in the notion that there was no time.

It was at this point that I realised why the magic sometimes works, why the tricks come to fruition and why some “clowns” perform magic and why others do not.

Take all the time that you need…

It is to do with having and making time but it is also to do with timing. It is a complicated combination of all sorts of aspects to do with time. It has to do with taking time to observe, time to make changes and time to change ourselves. It is about taking the time to notice that a hand can grasp a walking frame placed a centimetre further away and that it is then not necessary to touch the hand doing the grasping, and about making the time to do this each day.

It all takes time, but the time taken now saves time later, a time when we don’t need to be there at all, when not even a verbal instruction is needed to go to the toilet. There comes a time when it all happens spontaneously, when it works like magic.
First and foremost I believe the most important factor is time. Time to feel the magic working, for it is only then that the motivation is created in the soul of a child or the carer for things to be done independently.

It comes down not only to getting the timing right, the positioning right, but taking time, giving time, timing the moves and the words, and keeping time, keeping a rhythm.

It is about always having time for the people we are working with, having time for ourselves to look at what we are doing, having time for the tasks we set, having time to do everything well.
There is one sentence that is the essence of whether there is magic or not. It was there to be heard again this week when we were asking the children what they still need to learn so they can dress themselves independently. This sentence is:

“It takes too long, Mummy doesn’t have the time!”

But where’s the time coming from?

We live in a world where no one seems to have time for other people, where everyone is rushing around. How sad it is not to have time for one’s own children but, as I witnessed in the Kindergarten, it isn’t only the Mummy with no time.

Yes there is often a shortage of staff but I think it is always better to achieve less in a day with success than to do more in a slapdash, rushed, unconsidered way, with no success.
When we asked the children about dressing and undressing they knew what they were capable of:
“I can do everything alone except put on my shoes” said one.
Another replied “I can undress but not dress myself alone”
Then another “I can get myself ready for bed”

Then came back the million dollar question from my colleague:
“How long does it take you in the mornings to do this?”

Nine times out of ten the answer is “ I don’t know, because I don’t do it, I would take too long”.
Too long for what? I asked myself. Out loud my colleague did dare ask:
“Wouldn’t it be better to get up half an hour earlier?”

These children cannot of course decide this. We need to discuss it with their families. At the moment all children in the group attended conductive mother-and-child groups and kindergarten groups for at least four years. This is why they are so active and can do so much of the dressing and undressing themselves. They all have families who know about and are involved in Conductive Education, but on hearing the children’s answers somehow I doubt that their families are really interested in a “conductive upbringing” in my sense of the word. For most of them their lives just don’t have time for such a thing.

No time for magic moments.

Call in the clowns

While I have been writing these postings on “magic” in Conductive Education, and reading with interest all that Andrew Sutton has recently added to the discussion, I have been constantly reminded of Hunter Campbell “Patch” Adams, the man whose life was depicted in the film Patch Adams, starring Robin Williams.

Dr Adams believes in the necessity of developing compassionate relationships with patients and that this kind of care relies on humour and play, which are essential to physical as well as emotional health. His vision is to open a hospital offering free ”holistic” care.

While doing a spot of Google research I found a website advertising courses in magic for occupational therapists, with the idea of using magic tricks to improve hand and finger movement. I am, however, more interested in the other kind of magic that I saw in the film Patch Adams.

I live near a hospital in Nürnberg and have often seen a “Clowns for Hospitals” van driving past my house. Perhaps I have this magic taking place right on my door step.
Back on Google I have not found anything specific about Nürnberg and clowning in its hospitals but I discovered a lot more about the Red Nose Clownsdoctors Foundation set up in Austria in 1994.

Several European countries are members of the International Clowndoctors Foundation including both Germany (Rote Nasen Clowndoctors) and Hungary (Piros Orr).

Clown doctors are specially trained artistes who visit patients in hospital with the aim of bringing humour and laughter into their lives and through this to bring them seelische Untertutzung, (uplifting the soul). The patients are visited regularly by the clowns and cared for with both medicine and humour with the hope that they improve not just for the moment but permanently.

The “magic” that I am talking about is more to do with the magic of "Clown doctors" than it is with learning of magic tricks to develop hand movement as the advertisement for occupational therapists advocates. Although of course it is possible that one can influence the other even if the initial aims are different.

What is the magic in Conductive Education?

Is it the "tricks" used to achieve something that I describe as magic?

Or is the magic really that feeling of success that reaches the soul when the tricks bring results?

I believe it is both, but certainly the one which " does the trick" is the magic that reaches the soul.

While I was searching the net for more information I found Dr Zita Makói, a Hungarian pediatrition who brought the clown doctors to Hungary. She was coincidently also Director of the Petö Institute for a short time before the present Director, Dr Franz Schaffhauser, took over the post in October 2007.

In an article “A portrait of a clown” Zita Makói gives an insight into the work of Piros Orr, which she describes in this way:

“The clowns know about a level in children that not even parents and pediatricians know. They step over limits because they don't follow a nurse, doctor, or parent model. It's outside of the real world, like magic. “

She goes on to say:

" But there's a long list of requirements to be truly successful: an artistic background, sensitivity, tolerance, capacity for team work, ability to communicate, not just with words, and not just with children but with parents, doctors and nurses too. “The clowns are not performing so much as building relationships—one-to-one. They must be in tune with the parents' wavelength, and cope with the specific atmosphere of the hospital, of the nurses, and of the doctors. It is often very tense, and always changing,”

This description of the qualities that a clown doctor needs is so reminiscent of what Dr Hári told us, as students are the requirements needed to be a successful conductor. The final words referring to constant change are particularly important in my work as a conductor.

Most importantly, though, whether you are a clown doctor or a conductor we need to find time, use time, make time and teach our clients and their carers to do the same. If we can achieve that then we may have time to look for the magic.


Notes

Magic Moments by Perry Como and Burt Bacharach –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvPfjd0eTpI&feature=related

Andrew Sutton -

http://www.conductive-world.info/2009/04/conductive-education-its-magic.html

Hunter Cambell “Patch” Adams –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Adams

RehabEdge magic course –
http://www.rehabedge.com/search/detail.asp?id=1358#classes

Red Nose Clowndoctors , Austria -
http://www.rotenasen.at/int/at/ueberuns/geschichte/

Red Nose Clowndoctors International-
http://www.rotenaseninternational.com/rotenaseninternational.php?case=history.php&banner=bannerrni.jpg&adresse=http://www.rednoses.eu

Red Nose Clowndoctors in Hungary – Piros Orr –
http://www.pirosorr.hu/English/index.html

A portrait of a clown, featuring Zita Makói and János Greifenstein (Greifi) –http://www.artsiter.com/museum/aci/newsletter/feature3.html