DotMoms

Just give me a hammock and call it a day

By Lana

Oh, I moan about life here in Thailand. A lot. The heat, the critters, the traffic. The military coup, the lack of democracy. My mother-in-law. The occasional tsunami. My blog is a glut of gripes, and these are the ones I select for public consumption. My private writings -- ooh, shudder the thought if anyone digs these up -- read like a Woody Allen movie without the humour, without an end (it's all about me, and woe is me).

But at the risk of making myself seem unsympathetic to the reader, I have to admit that overall life here is good. Too good to be true sometimes. Very, very cushy.

I have a maid who comes twice a week and scrubs the house from top to bottom. When the yard starts to look unruly, as it often does with the tropical growth, my husband makes a call and a day later we have a team of guys here attacking the palm leaves and cutting down the coconuts. Once, we even hired someone to come and change our light bulbs. I'm not kidding.

When something needs to be done, I don't think about how I'll do it. Instead the question that arises is, "Who can I get to do this for me?"

Thus, over the years, living in the not-so-real world, I've become lazy, especially about cooking. I'm not an avid cook in the best of times, but combined with the sticky heat (yes, I'm moaning again), the lack of an oven, and the fact that I can scoot down the road and pick up a fresh, healthy, fully cooked Thai meal for a buck, cooking becomes an even less attractive option. 

Then I had kids.

Toddlers, it turns out, don't really dig Thai cuisine (Ever seen a 1-year-old's reaction after eating a stray chili? Not pretty). And loading a baby and a toddler into a car, then unloading them at a restaurant while you wait for the take-away to arrive, then loading them up again, only to re-unload back home, seems more work than just whipping up a dish or two. And the goal here, of course, is to minimize the workload. Because that's the goal of everyone in the tropics.

I've been given some great cookbooks by well-meaning friends and relatives. They're great reads. I love looking them over, mouth watering, imagining the tastes of these wonderful dishes. Then I close them, put them on the shelves, and make one of the three standby meals I regularly prepare: fried rice, pasta with mushroom sauce, chicken nuggets.

By sheer coincidence these are the exact same meals –- the only meals –- that my 2-year-old son will eat. My tepid desire to cook withers even further with every morsel that is spat out, referred to as "poop," or met with a clenched and unyielding mouth.

It's one of the great ironies I've discovered in motherhood: Something you once held in total indifference is now the cornerstone of your feeling of worth as a human. Feeding the family. Vitamins, minerals, leafy greens, hold the salt. Providing nourishment to another. Blah.

Who can I get to do this for me?

No, I'm not quite ready to turn over the feeding of my children to another. That would be beyond lazy, wouldn't it? That would be so ... unmotherly. But as I face yet another turned-up nose, I just might reconsider.

Because here in the tropics it's all about doing nothing -- and feeling good about it.

Lana is a freelance writer and mother of two, living in a state of perpetual confusion peppered with moments of joy, in Phuket, Thailand.

Small victory at the store

By Lana

It started off as a routine grocery shopping trip. I had dropped my toddler off at his grandma's so it was only me and my newborn on this expedition as I headed to the only supermarket on the island of Thailand that has grocery carts with infant seats, a wonderful and thoughtful feature.

It was a weekday morning, so we were able to get around the store and through the checkout line with speed and ease. As I was paying, Chalida started to cry, so I finished up and sat at the bench near the exit –- another thoughtful feature -- for a quick feeding, and then we were on our way.

Or so I thought.

As I walked through the exit I heard a loud, "No!"

I looked over and saw a uniformed woman coming toward me rapidly, "No! No! No!"

"No what?" I asked. "What's no?"

"No, you can't leave here."

"Why?"

"You must change the cart. You can't take out the baby cart."

Suddenly, I heard a woman shouting.

Seconds later, I realized it was me.

"Why, why, why? Why!" I asked forcefully, in two languages.

The woman didn't explain. Instead, she said that I would have to put all my grocery bags into another cart, a cart with no baby seat, then I could take that cart out of the store.

"You mean I have to push a full cart of groceries out, down to the underground parking lot, while holding my baby at the same time? Why, why, why! Except for the little seat, they're exactly the same! Why can't I just take this one?"

No answer. Nothing.

"Humpph!" If you can't explain the reason for the rule, then in my mind it's rendered invalid.

I should explain that here in Thailand, as anyone even marginally aware of the culture knows, shouting and openly expressing anger or frustration is a big no-no, and it will most likely produce a reaction exactly opposite to what you're hoping to elicit with your yelling. I've known this since I first landed in Bangkok 11 years ago, but I just didn't care. I was mad as hell at this idiotic store policy, and I felt I had to stand my ground.

Knowing that any further rants or requests to see the manager would be met with stony silence, I stormed back into the store, my newborn jiggling gleefully in her now-precious seat.

I quickly headed to the other exit. As I approached, I saw another uniformed woman standing by. This time, I employed a technique more in line with the local culture and did what most Thais do when they know they're being subversive: I avoided eye contact, breezed past her, then rolled on out to the elevator.

After pressing the button, I stood and waited for the elevator to come, not looking back once, even when I heard footsteps approaching rapidly behind me. The doors opened and I trundled in, pressing the button to close the doors as I entered.

Breathing a sigh of relief, and feeling a bit silly about the last five minutes of my life, I rode the elevator down, then with ease and a slight feeling of triumph, I loaded the baby and groceries into the car and drove away.

Gloria Steinem said that women get more radical with age. I think that's true, especially if the woman is a mom who just wants to get one of her daily tasks done as efficiently as possible, without harassment, without hassle. Now that I'm a mother of two, I realize I'm prepared to fight tooth and nail for an extra five minutes of "happy family time," and I'm no longer willing to put up with any amount of crap that's flung my way.

The meek may well inherit the earth, but they're not going to get the grocery shopping done.

Lana is a freelance writer and mother of two, living in a state of perpetual confusion peppered with moments of joy, in Phuket, Thailand.

The view from atop a very large belly

By Lana

There was just no way to blend in. I was a "farang" (foreign) woman in a Southeast Asian country (Thailand) about ready to pop with my second child. Though my foreignness often evokes stares and comments here, when waddling around, I felt like Moses parting the Red Sea, such was my wake.

It wasn't such a bad thing. In fact, I'm so used to being "seen" in Thailand that whenever I go back home to Canada I feel invisible and start to wonder what's wrong. And no one expressed too much horror at the sight of me. What I noticed, however, both with this pregnancy and the last, is the marked difference in reactions between the sexes and between cultures.

To best express the differences, here's a sampling of comments made by people upon meeting and greeting me.

From a Thai woman:

• "Your stomach is HUGE!"
• "Oh my, you look soooo FAT!"
• "You're so fat. How many kilos are you now?"
• "You must be having a [boy/girl] because your stomach is so [high/low/protruded]."

From a Thai man:

• "Having a baby?" No further comment.

From a Western woman:

• "Oh wow, you must be close! But you still look so tiny!"
• "You know, if you stand a certain way you don't look pregnant at all!"
• "You look great!"

From a Western man:

• No comment at all; eyes flick down, up, around, and down again. Discussion revolves around weather, work.

There are exceptions, of course, including a male Thai former colleague who actually reached out -– three times –- and rubbed my belly while we stood and talked. It was slightly unnerving but nice at the same time as he was very sincere in his excitement for us. He and his girlfriend are "trying," I found out later. And there was the Thai female friend who said I still looked slim; she'd gained more than 40 pounds in her pregnancy.

Now that I'm in my mid-30s, I'm (almost) worry-free about how I appear to others. And being accustomed to the Thai forthrightness on appearance, the fat comments don't bother me. I'm most mystified, however, about the Western male reactions. Perhaps it's because most of my acquaintances in this category were befriended in my former life as a writer/journalist/social animal, and they're not ready to see me as a mom. Or maybe they're just trying to be polite. Or is there something raw/primal in the sight of me that leaves them speechless? It will remain one of the many unanswered questions in life, I guess.

Not that I have any control over it, but I try to think about which type of reaction I prefer. I could do without the HUGE emphasis on my hugeness, but at the same time I'd like this body-changing-life-changing event to be acknowledged. I'm having a BABY, for pete's sake!

So next time you see me, feel free to comment –- and add a dash of insincerity on my glowing great looks if you could.

Lana, a freelance writer living in Phuket, Thailand, has slimmed down considerably since writing this post. She and her Thai husband welcomed their baby girl into the world on October 26.

My apologies

By Lana

When I was young, my travels were limited to my home province and the mountainous areas of our neighboring province – or, to put it another way, about as far as my parents could stand to be in a car with three bickering girls. I didn’t take an airplane until I was about 10, when we met our grandparents in California to see Disneyland.

My son, on the other hand, is only 18-months-old and has already logged several thousand air miles, having flown from Thailand to Canada and back again – twice – as well as 3-4 trips up to Bangkok from Phuket. Lucky him. Not so lucky are our fellow passengers on these trips, who get to see our wee one at his full, squirming, bawling overtired glory for segments of our long journeys.

I see their faces when we sit down near them – a wince, a cringe, a furrowed brow; wondering what they’re in for for the next 10 or so confined hours. I know. I was once a cringer. I used to wonder why anyone would breed, much less tote their brood along on flight after endless flight.

Now, I, as the cringee, would like to offer a note of belated apology to all of those around us on our latest excursion to and from Canada, which involved a grand total of 35+ hours flying time on 8 airplanes, between 5 airports in 3 countries.

To those waiting in line for the bathrooms, I offer a sincere apology for not only making you wait for several minutes, but for also leaving behind a lingering stench of pee. My boy seemed to think that the small, plastic room was designed for target practice and decided to try to spray every surface upon removal of his poopy diaper. I managed to contain the poop, but not the pee, I’m afraid. I did my best, but wiping the walls, mirror and toilet while trying to contain an excited child made for a less-than-perfect cleanup effort.

To the airline, I apologize for turfing the nice comfy slippers you provided for the flight, though I can testify they are made with the best absorbent materials ever, and you’ll probably be glad to know that they helped make your bathroom floor sparkly clean.

Apologies to the passengers unlucky enough to sit near us when our precious released a loose stool just seconds before we began a (seemingly endless) descent and therefore couldn’t leave our seats.

To the flight attendants, we are sorry for leaving behind a rat’s nest of cracker crumbs, bread, fruit and noodle bits mashed into the floor, seats and blankets, as well as a mountain of paper wrappings, juice boxes, ripped up magazines and tissues.

To the people in row 57, we so regret the constant scramble in the overhead compartment above you through our backpack for diapers, change of clothes, books, toys and various snacks.

Lastly, to the lady in row 56, we are very sorry for disturbing your sleep with the relentless kicks and tray banging on the back of your seat, and the sharp shouts of “no! stop it!” every five seconds.

Oh, and a big thank-you to the lady across the aisle who, upon witnessing our struggle to put our crying, tired boy to sleep, hissed at me, “Feed your child! He’s obviously hungry!” There’s nothing a mother appreciates more than unsolicited advice from a stranger, especially when it’s delivered with such kindness and care.

For you, I offer not an apology but a request that you keep your nose in your own business next time. And while we’re on the subject of noses, I hope that your surgeon apologized to you for the work he did on yours. (Ah yes, the comeback I wish I had thought of then…)

For all the passengers and crew who had to endure our long journey with a toddler and managed to not only smile at us, but also offer assistance at every turn, we offer a huge thanks and good karma to all. And an advance apology…

Next year, we’ll be traveling with two.

Lana is a freelance writer living in Phuket, Thailand. She and her Thai husband are the proud parents of a toddler son, with another child due to make his/her splash in early November.

Pondering #2

By Lana

In addition to the ubiquitous $5 “Gucci” and “Chanel” clothes sold by many street vendors throughout Thailand, there’s a T-shirt popular with tourists that bears the phrase: “Same same but different.” 

As much as I’d hate to go around looking like a (gasp!) tourist, I’m tempted to buy one of these shirts and emboss it with a big arrow pointing to my ever-expanding belly because, for me, “same same but different” succinctly captures the feeling of being pregnant with baby #2.

With all my bodily and hormonal changes, there’s a sense of having done it all before. The first trimester, slightly queasy at times with no desire for any food besides cheeseburgers. The tightening of pants and bras. The bad skin, the tiredness. The resurgence of energy and the start of the belly button’s outward stretch into the fourth and fifth months. Same same. Plus there’s the added bonus of knowing exactly – from first-hand experience – what’s coming up in the months ahead.

There’s also the reassuring feeling that the things I worried about so much during the first pregnancy and in the early months of motherhood will all come to pass. The breast pain, the hours upon hours of feeding and crying, the night wakings, the five poopy diapers a day, the raging hormones. I’m ready to take it on and am even looking forward to tackling life with a newborn again. And now, knowing how fleeting and special those first few months are, I’ll be sure to treasure that time, those moments, more than I did the first time around.

And yet…

Different worries creep in. The oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-we’re-doing-this-again flashes. Unsettling thoughts of child-times-two logistics: loading up the car, shopping, trips to the doctor, travelling, making sure all are fed and reasonably clean. And the unanswered questions: How will we cope with two? How will my toddler cope with a younger sibling and more distracted parents? How on earth will I be able to breastfeed a wee one and still engage an active and demanding 2-year-old? How will I not go freaking crazy?

But overall, this time around my anxiety level seems much lower. For one, my precious doesn’t give me the luxury of time to worry, what with bubbles to be blown, books to read and little red shoes to be velcroed on RIGHT NOW!

And something has happened to me, too, since I found out I was first pregnant back in May 2004. I didn’t know then just how wide a heart could be cracked open by a small bundle of warm flesh pressed against me. Or how, even with the sleepless nights, the frustrations, the fears, the tears and the dread that you’re doing it all wrong, you’d trade years of your life away for that moment of seeing the fragile, hopeful, perfect face of your just-born baby, crying on your chest. Or his first smile. Or the first time he kisses you back. Or….I could go on and on.

I’ve experienced all the firsts. Now I’m ready to try a heaping serving of seconds, and I know it will taste just as sweet. Same same, but different.

Lana is a freelance writer living in Phuket, Thailand. She and her Thai husband are the proud parents of a toddler son, with another child due to make his/her splash in early November. 

Every day’s a picnic

By Lana

Since my wee one learned to walk four months ago, I’ve discovered some new equations that have come to define his toddlerhood:

Toddler + food = disaster

Toddler + sitting still = the impossible

Toddler + food + sitting still = are you kidding?

He hates, hates, hates the highchair and in his subtle toddler way he lets us know by either exploding into a big bawl or ferociously trying to escape every time he’s in it. At first, we were able to keep him in there long enough to at least get some food down, but later he began acting up even before we were able to strap him in. We tried to make mealtime fun and interesting and lighthearted, but our efforts were drowned out by his rage. Not only that, I began feeling very concerned for his safety, as he was able to squirm right out of the chair, straps and all, and would probably take a flying leap if we weren’t close by to retrieve him.

We succumbed, and finally after weeks of frustration we gave up on the chair altogether.

The nice thing about living in a mixed-culture household is that you have the option to pick and choose cultural norms that best suit the situation. No one in Thailand uses high chairs. There’s very little emphasis on teaching babies to use cups, spoons, etc, by a certain age. No one in Thailand seems concerned about mealtime methodology at all – just shove food into the kid whenever he seems hungry, wherever you are.

Based on the Western ideal, such a lack of structure should lead to chaos at the dinner table for years to come, or worse, eating problems. But from what I can see, Thai kids seem no more or less capable of sitting through a meal than kids back home in Canada. Certainly some are bratty and fussy, but most I see are polite, competent and eat whatever’s put in front of them – yes, even the spicy stuff. And in general, Thais have far fewer hang-ups about food than North Americans, and it’s most evident in their waistlines.

So for now, and for the foreseeable future, we’re doing it Thai style. We have a low table where we set all the food and we all sit on the floor around it. “Sit”, for my son means he has his bum on the floor for the first 3-4 bites, then takes off running, comes back to the table, orbits around a few times, then leans on either my husband or I while we give him more food, then he’s off again. The sitting, running, orbiting (and spilling) continues till the food’s finished.

It’s chaotic, but it’s a whole lot easier on the nerves and everyone’s more relaxed. I am, however, trying to work out how to teach a 15-month-old how to mop the floor…

Lana is a 31-year-old freelance writer and new mom from Canada who sold all her stuff and ran off to Phuket, Thailand, five years ago.

Mother-in-laws and mixed messages

By Lana

It's been a while since I've written about my mother-in-law. For a while after the birth of my son last year, I had a burning need to write about her all the time, just to vent, and to document her, shall we say, quirks.

Like how she was all set to move right in to our home the day after I gave birth to take charge of everything (we didn't let her). And how she harassed me every day for six months to get him onto the bottle so that she could have him at her house for longer periods of time (he hated the bottle). How she fretted over his light eyebrows and rubbed cloves and pea leaves on them a couple of times a week for a few months to thicken them up (they thickened). Or how she, only after I set an ultimatum and bought her an only-an-idiot-couldn't-figure-out-how-to-use spare car seat, gave in to the idea of strapping him in when taking him out in her vehicle.

It took a while, but we've now come to a place of peace. I wouldn't say we're the best of friends, but we've reached a point where we mutually feel that the other won't kill, maim or otherwise destroy this beautiful boy. She might even think I'm doing a good job of raising him, even with all my strange Western ideas. And I'm grateful to have her help take care of him.

Our conversations when I pick him up from her place are now pretty straightforward. Some questions: "Did he sleep? How long? What did he eat? Where did you go?" Reciprocated by some exclamations: "He ate a lot! He's so smart! He had a big poop!"

We still have some issues, mainly surrounding cultural expectations about weaning and falling asleep. After a few weeks of difficult adjustments and lots of cuddling and bedside reading, I was finally able to get my son to fall asleep at naptimes without giving him the breast for extra inducement. He still nursed once before bedtime, but not with the same enthusiasm as before, so it seemed that breastfeeding was coming to a near close. So I was chagrined, to say the least, when a week or two later my mother-in-law happily announced that my 14-month-old boy had finally taken a bottle! At naptime! And he fell asleep while drinking it!

Aarrgh!

I thought that the weaning had been completely sabotaged, but so far it hasn't affected my efforts. We're still on the once-a-day breastfeed and I only give him cups to drink from, at snacktimes and mealtimes. My mother-in-law still insists on giving him the bottle when he's at her house, worried that he'll shrivel up from starvation if he doesn't get it. Though I've expressed my misgivings, I haven't asked her to stop.

My boy's fairly flexible on the issue thus far –- takes a bottle when given to him, doesn't create any drama when it's not. I think perhaps he's learned at his very young age already that Grandma does things one way and Mom does them another.

I haven't decided whether or not this is a good thing. Will he be confused, or will he just learn how to work it so that he gets the best –- and the most –- from two women in his life who love him boundlessly? I'm not sure yet, but I take the twinkle in his eyes as a good sign.

Lana is a 31-year-old freelance writer and new mom from Canada who sold all her stuff and ran off to Phuket, Thailand, five years ago.

Sticks and stones

By Lana

Living in a different culture, you'd think I'd have a high tolerance for other people. The truth is, I don't. Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky, but I'm finding that the more people I'm in contact with, the grouchier I become.

Since becoming a mom, my tolerance level has reached a new low. My 13-month-old son cannot yet understand most of the words people say, but even so I'm extra sensitive about what his tender ears are privy to. I live in a place that attracts people from all over the world, which is wonderful, but there's a trap that many fall into after living here a while -- I call it the "whining expat" phenomenon.

Among the whining expats, the topics of conversation vary, but the overriding theme is usually that Thais are useless/untrustworthy/lazy/stupid and if they could only do things like we do in [insert home country here], then everything would be hunky dory.

Being married to a Thai, this has always been grating to hear, but now that we have a son this sort of talk is especially hurtful. And though my grasp of the local language is somewhat shaky, I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of conversations in Thai about the crazy/bad/ugly foreigners swirling around the island as well. My son, who will very likely be bilingual, will have to hear ethnocentric rantings in two languages.  

So what to do? As much as I'd like to shield my son from such conversations, I know that it's not realistic to think that I can always protect him from the harmful words of others. I hope he's strong enough to be able to embrace the best of both of his cultures and recognize the shortcomings of each. I hope he is never made to feel like he's "half" anything, but a whole person full of potential.

I know it won't be as simple as repeating that old line, "Sticks and stones may break my bones…" but I will fight and scratch and tear away at bigotry every day to ensure that words will never hurt him.

Lana is a 31-year-old freelance writer and new mom from Canada who sold all her stuff and ran off to Phuket, Thailand, five years ago.

Learning to stand

By Lana

Newness flourishes with each passing moment
Soon a painful separation
Followed by many gentle detachments
As you learn to stand on your own

The passage above is an excerpt from a poem I wrote while I was pregnant with my son, who is now 13 months old. I wrote this poem as a way to describe all the cloudy, scary, fluttery feelings I had as an expectant mother.

One year on, I'm officially a mom, yet many of the cloudy, fluttery, and certainly the scary, feelings remain. It's only been recently that I've gotten over the impression that all that I'm doing with my son is pretend, playing house –- a mirage mom, if you will.

I suppose all the people I know would say that I'm doing OK. My baby's happy and healthy. I've read all the books, the ones with the titles like, "What the Hell to do in the Toddler Years," and see that my precious is right on target in development.

But still there's this nag in the inside of my head, who keeps screaming on a daily basis, "You're a fraud!"

I think my bafflement has come mainly from my confusion about how things would go as my son grew up. When I wrote about the gentle detachments, in my mind this was a series of moves towards independence, a linear thing, i.e. he learns to sit, then crawl, then walk. What I didn't understand is that one detachment often creates more entanglements, i.e., he learns to walk, and walks right up the stairs and into the cupboards and towards the electrical outlets, and keeps walking towards things that will maim/kill him over and over and over again, becoming ever more persistent with each "No!"

What I didn't understand is that as his physical need for his mother lessens, the emotional needs grow, and it's these emotional needs that are the trickiest -– and scariest –- to fulfill. Everything he does –- eating, playing, going to sleep –- is now fraught with a minefield of choices. React wrong to his pickiness, and he'll have food issues. Handle his sleepy time incorrectly, and he'll become an insomniac.

The "What the Hell to Do" books are dog eared and abundantly bookmarked, but I've stopped counting on them for all the answers. Competing with the nag now is a voice, ever less faint, that tells me to trust my instincts. And that same voice whispers, "It's OK to make mistakes."

Lana is a 31-year-old freelance writer and new mom from Canada who sold all her stuff and ran off to Phuket, Thailand, five years ago.

Christmas is a state of mind

By Lana

Yet another Christmas is rolling in like a monsoon rain cloud and I, as always, have done little to prepare for the festive season.

Christmas in Phuket is always bit of a bummer. Though the shopping malls are blasting “Jingle Bells” at every turn for the tourists’ benefit, and many teenaged cashiers are wearing fuzzy Santa hats, I just can’t seem to get into the Christmas spirit. Something about sweating in 90-degree heat on an island where the 25th of December is just another workday for most just doesn’t make one want to exalt “Deck the Halls!” or sing about dashing through the snow. 

In the past I've combated the Christmas blues by doing something enjoyable, yet not too "Christmassy" like spending the day at the beach. Now that I have a son, however, I've been trying to think about how I can give him a special day that will form part of his cherished childhood memories, like Christmas was for me. He's only 11 months old, but I thought that this year I should start some sort of tradition or ritual for him to look forward to in future years.

So a few weeks back I hit the shopping mall to browse for toys and decorations, as well as for things to send my family back home in Canada, but it wasn't long before I started feeling depressed about it all. I felt frantic, not festive.

I started thinking about all the families here in Phuket and elsewhere who are still suffering as a result of last year's tsunami. I thought about the little boy across the road, who as far as I can see has only one toy, a little broken plastic truck that he has been playing with for at least the two years that I've lived here. I became conscious of the fact that while I am living in comfort, there are people within walking distance of my home who can barely afford to feed their families.

That's when it hit me: I've been clinging to the hollow rituals of Christmas without reflecting on the meaning behind them. I've been putting my energy and resources towards buying things for people who don't need any more things, while ignoring the plight of those with real needs.

There are countless articles written in the West advising people on what to shop for, how to create the picture perfect Christmas décor, how to make a delectable dessert and especially how not to overindulge during the holidays. So how about this for a headline: "Stop stuffing your faces and stockings and open up your eyes and hearts." Sound harsh? Well, not as harsh as the daily life of most people in this world. Worried you won't be able to get your kids all the items on their wish lists? Well, think about the parents who can't even encourage their children to wish for anything because they won't be able to provide it, ever.

This is my guilt speaking here, so please don't take offence.

Anyway, after some discussion with my husband we've decided that instead of buying fake trees, gourmet meals and a wagonload full of toys, we're going to give to the local volunteer rescue foundation, which not only saved many during the tsunami, but who are heroes every day of the year. Instead of presents from me, my family will be given my love and support, and my sincere hope for their continued health and good fortune.

I've come to realize what I should have known all along: Christmas has nothing to do with the snow, tinsel and presents under the tree. If you have the means and opportunity to give, then give with all of your heart. This is the true Christmas spirit.

Lana is a 31-year-old freelance writer and new mom from Canada who sold all her stuff and ran off to Phuket, Thailand, five years ago.