Author: dawnhirn

American Idol
Family · Travel

American Idol

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What about the book:  “The Ugly American”. . . . . have you read it?  It was 1958, smack dab in the middle of the cold war between Russia and U.S.-the novel was set in an American Southeast Asian country. We were losing our struggle against communism (fiction, folks) because of the ineptness and bungling of the US Diplomatic Corp, being too arrogant to take time to understand local culture. (Reminder:  all fiction is based on some truth.)   And the lead character says:  *“A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They are loud and ostentatious.”

American’s were pigeon-holed!  Of course, the worst of these stories made the newsfeeds. There were places in the world where Americans were not treated fairly because, we were told, foreigners thought ‘Americans were pompous, arrogant and selfish.’

When the Hirn family stepped onto the scene 50 years later, our reception was quite the opposite.  The Asian people treated us like Rock Stars.  Each day was a series of photo-ops and the guys held up beautifully during the pressure of performance. Parents love to credit themselves for their kids’ good behavior.  And after all, Ron and I had drummed into the boys the importance of accepting everyone, regardless of race or religion or looks.  But if we get credit for the good behavior, must we take blame for the bad behavior?

Ron and couldn’t have been more proud of the guys.  They followed our lead to engage with the people as much as possible, to smile, reach out and be patient for the Asian Paparazzi.

And for 5 weeks, we experienced what it was like to be an American Idol.  What a great feeling!

And then, we went to France . . . .

Have a great weekend!

*Lederer, William J; Burdick, Eugene (1958). The Ugly American

Encouragement · Family

From this day forward

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That’s how you should live everyday!  But those words are generally reserved for the day you are married.  From then on, they are only used when you are angry, usually followed by some sort of mandate:

From this day forward , you will not flush paper towels down the toilet.

From this day forward, you will not hide Cheetos in your room.

From this day forward, we will pay cash for everything.

The best resolutions involve the pursuit of happiness and don’t necessarily have to be reserved for the wedding or New Year’s Eve.  Families should make new resolutions on a regular basis.Not that the old one’s aren’t any good – but things change:  we make mistakes, reassess the situation and make new plans.

Ron and I made a resolution after we were married:  We would share our joy of travel with our children.  After school, I had gotten bitten by the wanderlust bug, and had little difficulty sharing my enthusiasm with Ron.  Once Ryan and Tyler joined the family, we adjusted and kept right on going.   But then tragedy struck, and from this day forward seemed to be cursed with warnings.   We didn’t want to take any chances with Tyler or his two little brothers, Trenton and Colton.  From that day forward, we lived as close to home as possible, sheltering and guarding our remaining treasures.

But as they will, sweet memories slipped back in; we remembered  how much Ryan had loved these adventures – how he had always carried his prized Pokemon Backpack with him.  And we started again with a new from this day forward. 

 And forward we went!  Ron, the boys and I were on a mission.  We studied other countries,  the cultures, the economics,  foods, highlights and lowlights and let the kids make some very important decisions about where we would go.

From this day forward include your family members as you build your dreams.  You are building memories right now – from this day forward.

Talk soon, Dawn

Adventure with Engagement AWE

Wazzup? Hey, ya’ll! Yo!

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American’s have a host of greetings – from sea to shining sea.    “Whazzup,” “Hey ya’ll,”“Yo,” and “Dude!” all boil down to “hello.”  Your  greeting of choice depends a lot upon your age, what part of America you are from and your training.   Can’t imagine a presidential candidate addressing a crowd by opening: “Howdy dudes and dudettes.  Sup?”   And if he or she waits for a response to the question, it could be a long night.

Months before we took this world trip, we studied about the places we wanted to go, and in addition to making the boys do extensive reports on the countries we were about to visit, they were required to learn “hello,” “goodbye,”“please,” “thank you” and the equivalent to an apology “excuse me” in each language.

The first country we visited, Japan, was a snap: “Konnichiwa,” they shouted out.  They even nailed down the nod. Then came China and they boys threw out a “Ni Hau” or an occasional “Nay Hoh.” But once we hit SE Asia, we traveled so quickly through the countries, words seem to constantly change.  But this didn’t stop the guys – well, any of us for that matter.  We butchered attempts at “hello,” “thank you,” and “please.”  But it didn’t matter to the people.  They were eager to help us with our pronunciation. And of course, that opened the doors for new friendships.

We were flying through the “Adventure” part of the trip, but never ever lost our enthusiasm for the importance of “Engagement.”  AWE – Adventure With Engagement.  The engraving AWE on my leather bracelet is a daily reminder to me.

Don’t be afraid to practice the words you have learned in an effort to communicate.     Most everyone we approached was more than willing to reach out and engage with someone who is sincerely trying to communicate.  Imagine how honored they feel knowing that you cared enough to try.

So for now — ‘Do svidaniya,’ which means “till we meet again” in Russian.  No idea how to pronounce it?  Welcome to my world!

Talk soon!  Dawn

Family travel

Misunderstood

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We sent our video guy ahead of us to clear the path for our coming to the school:  the Hirn Family visits an India Classroom.  As best as he was able, he explained to the heads of the school who we were – the Hirn’s from Alabama, USA – and that we wanted to simply observe classroom education in other countries. We had three boys and wanted them to have the experience.  And it was an experience, indeed!   Turns out our videographer hadn’t completely bridged the communication gap.

No, we were not the International United States Delegation in Charge of Developing India School Curriculum, nor were we able to offer them any suggestions  whatever about what the United States could do to assist in this endeavor.    They escorted us to our seats down front and to the left of the class, and we watched them repeat the things they had learned (which apparently they thought we had written,  but we have no memory of doing.)  Then they nodded our direction so we could show our approval of a job well done.

The Hirn Delegation remained expressionless.

These classrooms like so many others in the world are bare-boned.  Students here sat in chairs — no desks, no books – as they listened and repeated word for word what the teacher said.  It was exhausting!  But like so many other foreign schools, they haven’t been afforded the tools or the opportunity to learn as we do.

They probably thought to themselves:  “No wonder.  Look who’s writing the curriculum!”

In the words of Lil Wayne:

“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good . . . Oh Lord don’t let me be misunderstood.

Talk soon

Dawn

 

School of Hard Knocks
education · Parenting

School of Hard Knocks

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In the midst of a year boiling with political controversy, we are now given something else to consider: Do we want to encourage our kids to take a year in the school of hard knocks – the Gap Year. “Taking a structured Gap Year invariably serves to develop the individual into a more focused student with a better sense of purpose and engagement in the world,”  from Joe O’Shea’s book, Gap Year: How Delaying College Changes People in Ways the World Needs.

Today’s High Schoolers face pressures you and I didn’t face until we were in college and in some cases, Grad School.  The heights they must hurdle keep getting higher, the options keep growing and way too soon, they have to make crucial decisions: Where will you be accepted to college and what is your major?   Most of them don’t have a clue who they are much less who they want to become.  And the question:  “what do you want to become,” sounds like a life sentence!

Long before it was fashionable, I took the ‘Gap Year Challenge.’  Having saved up enough money, I grabbed my passport and backpack and headed out to Western Europe- on my own-volunteering, working and exploring. This decision changed my trajectory in life. Geography, sociology, politics, foreign relations, languages, health- the subjects I had breezed through became my reality to survival.

Aside from my Passport, I had no privilege in my travels, which heightened my awareness for self-survival and strengthened my empathy for others. Nobody here owed me anything. But I could give a hand up to those who had not been born as lucky as I.

Following my Gap Year, with a renewed appreciation and commitment to the opportunities I had been given,  I returned to College, then Grad School and was a much more appreciative, eager and confident student.   I am a better person for the experience and happy I participated in life’s prep-school:   Gap Year ‘The School of Hard Knocks.’

For more information check out:  World Race  https://www.worldrace.org/?tab=routes

Talk soon!  Dawn

potty talk
Parenting

potty talk

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Alfred Hitchcock, one of the crown princes of filmmaking once said:  “The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.”  Strange observation, but not for those who knew Hitch.

When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go!  American parents of toddlers don’t take any chances and from the get-go clothe their babes in diapers.  But Chinese toddlers run commando, wearing kaidangku, pictured above.

Their little ones are taught potty training early in their lives.   Parents ‘hover’ their child over a toilet and give them this que:  Shush, Shush. But what happens when your take your child out for a day?  Oh, the stress!  Parents must remain alert, constantly vigilant, ready to find a bush, or a gutter, or a trash can, and teach their child the meaning of a whistle or “shush shush.’

 “On Command” doesn’t always work well for toddlers, who seem to learn tactics of war early.  The Chinese form of potty training takes incredible patience. Is it even possible to train American parents to endure this training?   We, who have mastered the term “Quick” and applied it to everything from food to banking to drive-thru Christmas nativity scenes, will begin looking for short cuts.  And a slit in your child’s pants may to be the answer. After all, who is really potty trained – the Parent or the child?

We are automatically inducted into the world of competition from the time we are born.  From your first word, to your first step, to your last diaper, your progress is measured against other babies. And the sad thing is, you have absolutely no control – you’re just a Pawn in the game of competition.

Now that the one-child policy in China has been lifted, we can only assume the current population increase of almost 8-million per year, will reach new heights.  Perhaps out of necessity  American quick fixes will catch on, and parents will trade in their kaidangku for a twelve-pack of Huggies.

There goes the landfill!

dawn

Adventure with Engagement AWE · Family

Slogan

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Wouldn’t it be nice if every family had their own Theme Song?  Can’t you just see it now- a family enters the soccer field and the music kicks up, so you know without looking, they’re here!   Worked for Sesame Street, the Addams Family and the Brady Bunch, but of course they entered at different times, so it was never confusing.

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Might be easier to stick with a slogan.   We did.  Adventure With Engagement.  It kind of explains our jump into six-months of family world travel as we tried to embrace the world after the loss of our first son. Perhaps this insanity requires explanation.  We needed to make more wonderful memories and family adventures are always the longest lasting, probably because family members are the ones who are there longest. We made a lifetime of memories and highly recommend AWE!IMG_4619

Adventure – When you run out of things to do, your mind will need a place to go.  A sort of ‘mental root system.’  If you have spent no time in development, how can you ever expect to pull up great memories?

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Add Engagement to your Adventure.    Sharing an adventure doesn’t really work unless you have someone to validate the story.  Can I get a witness?   That fish you caught has no real size until someone says “wow, you should have seen it!”  That time you got lost in a country where you couldn’t read the signs or speak the language wouldn’t be told if you weren’t there to provide the ‘rest of the story.’ But people aren’t just interested in the end: they want the whole story, every stupid mistake that led to embarrassment, every discovery that led to surprise, every misstep that took you somewhere you never intended to go.  Most of these stories are the stuff life is made of.

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But the best adventures rarely come scripted.  We all learn as we go.  We bond as we learn.  It all starts with Adventure and gets better with Engagement.  But who knows – you may escalate from your own Slogan to your own Theme Song.  This HIrn would like to hear her family brought in with the Disney Aladdin favorite:   A Whole New World.  But if we have to just go with our slogan,  Adventure With Engagement, I guess I’ll just ‘Let It Go.”

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Stir up some family AWE.

Dawn

Encouragement · Family · Travel

Unplugged

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We weighed the odds:  iPhone or no iPhone – that was the question.  But of course, when you are a Hirn, you travel on the skinny.   You stay on a budget. So you already know International cell phone service was OOTQ.   (That’s Hirn code for Out Of The Question.)

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In addition to the sheer pocket-ripping expenses, we would have had to keep up with more than 25 SIM cards and an unlocked phone. There were other obstacles:

Internet Service in different countries is limited.  Very limited!  Oh, there are public hotspots:   Starbucks was always accommodating us by allowing us to use their Internet Service only after purchasing our favorite pick-me-ups(no free Internet abroad.)  But our intention was to see the city, not sit in a Coffee Café.   The Hostels we stayed in usually had Internet Service as well, but once we were on the streets, we were unplugged.

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We wanted our boys to understand basic navigational skills.   We didn’t give the guys calculators to find the answers to their math questions, so it stood to reason we wouldn’t give them a GPS to find their way around foreign countries.  The two most dependable navigational tools are still a compass and a map.  And although Ron was our leader we worked together as a family to find our way.  We were in this thing together!

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America’s Global Positioning Satellite has spoiled us all.   When you travel unplugged, you commit to taking extra time to find your way.  You must have patience.

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Trial and error are integral parts of discovering Adventure With Engagement.  And there is no better Adventure than being engaged with your family as you try to find your way home, or at least back to where you are staying.   And when we got there, we all sang silent praise to the gift that awaited:

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Hostel, Sweet Hostel.

Dawn

Grief

Move!

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“You don’t say that to people,” my mom would say.  You say “excuse me.”download-2

I don’t mean that kind of move.  I mean the kind of move you scream at yourself after you go through the tragedy of losing a child.  And the reason I say “move” is because you can’t.  You’re stuck.   Does that make me a sadist?  Nope.  Just a realist.  Because the only positive way out of tragedy requires a step up, and that is the last step you want to make.

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You cannot simply erase the circumstance that has brought you to this level, by walking away.    Why should you deserve that luxury, when the person you lost couldn’t?  But meanwhile, you are dragging down all those who love you – those who follow you, those who walk beside you and those you lead.

Losing Ryan was beyond anything I had ever feared or imagined, and if I stepped away from that place of tragedy  I was certain it would be a terrible disservice to him.   But God had given me this precious child – not given really, lent him to me for a time.  It just happened that God’s timetable was different than mine.

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Ryan is safe now, completely healed, walking, running all-boy in Heaven.  God’s promises have made me sure of that.   I was left here for a purpose.  I still have things to do,  to try to be a good wife, mother, sister, daughter, and friend, but also to encourage others who are walking this lonely gully.    I am qualified now, not by degree or title, but as a silent graduate of the school of loss.   Bit by bit I may have these things taken away from me too.  I’m not a fatalist – just a realist.

When you are stuck in a downward spiral, pray about it.  But be ready to take the first step in a positive direction, out of your comfort zone of personal pity, into the unknown.  Put yourself and those who love you back on the road to discovery. Head toward the gifts God has left you  — toward a hopeful expectation of joy.

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Dawn & Colton London

Move.

Have a great weekend.

Dawn

Encouragement · Grief

Vanilla or chocolate?

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How many decisions do you make in a single day?  I checked Google and came up with a broad spectrum of answers:  One site said 35,000.  Another said 27.

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It’s safe to say, it’s a lot!   We all know there are probabilities at play:  If you don’t pay down your credit cards in time, your interest rates will soar.  If you run in the rain you’ll get just as wet as if you walk.  If you eat junk you will feel like ‘junk.’  Few of the wrong decisions we make have long lasting ramifications, but when you go through something traumatic, it changes everything.  Decisions suddenly carry so much more weight.  “What ifs” and “Just supposes” impair judgement.

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For years after we lost Ryan, we went over each decision leading up to the accident wondering what choices we could had made differently.  Well meaning friends suggested ways we could prevent lightning from striking twice in our lives.  With no disrespect to the Astrological chart, crystal gazers and fortune tellers, I would not choose to govern my life accordingly.

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Regardless of how much planning goes into our lives, accidents happen.   We will never get over our loss.  But the story we wish to share is about our recovery.   And true recovery is never weighed down by superstition.

If you have gone through a tragedy, you know, it takes time to trust your decisions again.  Face this fact: indecision is also a decision.  Forgive yourself for what you ‘might have done’ and realize that if given the same set of circumstances, you probably would have done the same thing.  We all have the best intentions when it comes to those we love.

The only way out of pain is through it.  Move forward.  Never rush.  Remember, Jesus prayed the Lord’s Prayer, asking His Father for the gift of grace and blessings one day at a time.  It’s a Daily Bread-thing.

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Live the life God has given you.  Find new adventures with your family. And the ones He has lent you will follow your example.

Got to go work on the script.  Talk soon!

Dawn