Good Morning my family
Do you think that this rain will bring flowers?
The lovely poem that my kindergartener brought home yesterday. More of a survey, really. She left a space for each family member to respond – except the three year-old “because she can’t write yet.”
God, I hope it brings flowers. And I hope you stay as lovely and sweet as you are right now. With your sense of wonder and hope and excitement.
Play dates are for moms. Contrary to popular belief, they are not for kids.
It is moms who drive this runaway train off the tracks. While children like to play together, they would not give a crap if they did not organically meet Suzie at the playground. They would not cry if Sven didn’t come to their house for a tea party. They would not be scarred for life if abstract murals were not painted at the museum with the ‘it’ kids in kindergarten.
The moms would lose out.
On the opportunity to:
I’m not looking for a mate – just a partner in crime
And while all this is already over thinking, there’s even more to the psychology of play dates.
Remember, mothers are just grown-up kids.
We worry about making friends just as much as we did in our younger incarnations. What will we talk about with these new moms? Will we get along as swimmingly as our children? What if we hit it off with a mom at drop-off or pick-up and she has a child in another grade or – gasp – of the other sex!? Sometimes a compatible mom friend just doesn’t have the right kid to hide the real intent: that moms want to make friends, too. [Perhaps more than their kids because they need an ally in this crazy road trip called parenting.]
New situations make us nervous, too. What is the play date etiquette? Do I invite myself in? Do I drop-off and ditch? How much do I discipline my kids in front of this other parent? Will they follow the kids-will-be-kids approach or think I’m lax if I don’t? Will they think I’m horrible if I don’t make my kids clean up before they go? Or will they be appalled if I walk up the stairs into their child’s bedroom looking for the toy tub?
Peer pressure, though less crippling than in junior high, still exists. Do we share our deepest, darkest bad mom moments? Will she understand and share her own? Or will she judge? Will we commiserate over this shared, easier-said-than-done existence? Will we build each other up or tear each other down? Will we be able to have a real conversation as two people who happen to be mothers or as two women trying to fit the textbook model?
“Play” dates are really just a lot of work. Our kids would get along just fine if we sent them to school; if we took them to the playground and let them chat up little Sophia on their own. What intrinsic need does it fulfill in us? The need for human [read: adult] companionship? To keep them busy before their idle hands find the devil’s work? To make it easier for ourselves?
When I was a teacher, we used to tell particularly snarky students that we didn’t need them to like us because we had enough friends. As moms, do we? Are we using our kids as an excuse to make connections for ourselves? What is it that we are lacking?
And for what else do we use them as an excuse?
It’s cool to run. 
And, no I don’t mean that as an allusion to Disney’s lighthearted take on the Jamaican bobsled team, though I can see Doug E. Doug’s goofy grin right now.
There is a movement in motherhood right now to run. It seems to be the mode of fitness that’s all the rage. And not only do they run, but they write about it. Blogs on mothering and running are popping up all over the place.
Always one to eschew trend (or at least be snarky enough about it to try), it irritated me at first. Let’s all run and share our times and trials and how we balance that with motherhood. Woo hoo. Jump on the bandwagon.
What’s with all these fit people!? And what the hell does it have to do with mothering?
Then, I met a mother, who for all intents and purposes, was single for the next six months. Her husband was deployed, leaving the task of moving cross-country to her and their three children. I wanted to collapse just thinking about it. She did have some family support and a great sense of humor, but it still was a trying task to say the least.
She told me how one day she asked their eldest to watch the other two so she could go for a run. ‘I just had to get out,’ she said.
Suddenly, I got it.
I’ve mentioned before how my favorite scene in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is Ashley Judd escaping to a motel room. Maybe running – even if only around the block – provides enough of a catharsis to make coming back around the bend possible. Enough of the venom sweats out the pores and steams out the ears to return to stasis. The legs know they can propel us forward if needed, the pistons fire. We can move of our own volition.
Muscles atrophied from marathons of criss-cross applesauce; pelvises pushed out of whack from babies on hips; Lungs exhausted with wasted breath. When it runs, the body remembers another purpose. It remembers its former master and serves her for at least a little while.
I am not a runner.
I am the girl who, upon reaching junior high and meeting the kids from the other feeder elementary schools, was remembered by my performance in the sixth grade Olympics – as in “aren’t you the girl who puked after the 800?” Pacing? What’s that?
I am the woman who hates being reminded of that fact that her butt is not what is used to be by the jiggling that follows her down the hill when she does run.
But I have noticed the feeling of exhilaration when I stretch my legs and pump my arms and fill my lungs. Even if it’s only chasing my toddler down the street to the bus stop, I feel the strength and feel as if it can carry me even further. And not away – but to push my limits, see how much I’m capable of, feel some sort of strength when in all other ways I’m beat down. To shift the pain from my head and heart to the burning in my thighs, the constriction in my lungs, the stitch in my side.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to start sharing my best times and workout routines. It would just depress us all anyway. But let me just say to all the mother-runners out there, I get you. Even if I can’t be you – I get you.
Taking three small children to church is always a crapshoot.
Taking three small children to mass after a long night of merry-making and a morning of present-opening and candy-eating ups the ante even more.
Our three made it through the three readings from the Bible and the pastor’s homily surprisingly well. I’ve found, however, that it’s always the second half of mass where the clapper hits the bell.
The fidgets start: the foot-thumping, kneeler-diving, seat-switching. And that’s only the non-verbal. Then you have the inter-sibling jibes and jokes, the giggles and snorts. And the doctrinal observations and questions, which at any other juncture would be welcomed wholeheartedly, but not when presented in a stage whisper in the midst of a lull in the sound issuing from the PA system. They never make noise when the organ is grinding, do they?
My five year-old came out with some good ones this Christmas mass. When a prayer included a request for “eternal rest”, she turned to me incredulously: ‘a turtle?’ During the prayer of the faithful for the departed, I hushed her vehemently when she said what I thought was, ‘this is boring.’ Then I realized she was adding to the prayer, ‘like Grandpa Warren’, my deceased grandfather, the great-grandfather she never knew.
At what point do we as parents and parishioners expect children to behave “appropriately” at mass? There is no magic age at which they suddenly will learn to sit still and attend – especially if they’ve been excluded from mass up until that point. In my constant vigilance to keep her quiet, I nearly reprimanded my daughter for realizing the importance of a prayer and adding the memory of a loved one to it.
If we shut them down totally, we’ll miss gems like my two year-old last Christmas, who asked loudly enough for all those around us to hear, “Where’s Baby Jesus?” A woman with three teenaged boys approached me afterward and commented on how nice it was to hear her little voice, to see the innocence and wonder of the young; that she knew the true meaning of the season. At first, I laughed it off, a bit embarrassed at our disturbance, but then realized how nice it was to hear this older mother’s comment; a validation that this is how children are supposed to behave, that we need to appreciate it; and that it’s not a failing on the mother’s part to seal her child’s lips.
My favorite church faux pas by far, though, is when my eldest daughter was maybe four years old. She proudly belted out the words to the closing hymn of mass, “All the Ends of the Earth”. Only she didn’t know that was the refrain. Instead, she sang, “All the ants of the earth.” Classic. All of us can see the power of God if only we look closely enough. And watch for lessons all around us – even in the wee ones kicking the back of our pew as we try to pray.
Today my daughter and I wandered into church.
New to town and in search of someone/anyone in the rectory, we’d wandered in there a couple months ago. Apparently to her three year-old mind that signaled a routine. So today after we finally did complete that unfinished business in the rectory, she wanted to go into the church again.
I hadn’t been planning on it. I’d finished my list of tasks and was headed to the car. I began to say we were done and could go home – when I paused. Why couldn’t we go into the church? We didn’t have to rush home. And even so, I make time to do all sorts of ultimately extraneous errands. Why shouldn’t I stop to spend a moment in the quiet sanctuary of the church? And at this point in time, in my life, in society, a prayer could certainly be used.
Angela and I entered the dark hush of the church, a sacred feeling sweeping over me in a way that just doesn’t happen with the hubbub of a congregation-filled Sunday. We quietly trod towards the sanctuary, my eyes on the golden glint of the tabernacle and rosy glow of the Christ candle, Angela’s moving from side to side across the pews.
“Where are all the people?” she asked.
Years of Catholic devotion springing to life through the sense memory of approaching and genuflecting on the altar, I continued forward without answering. After we both genuflected and crossed ourselves – she doing a surprisingly good job for a three year-old – she asked again.
“Why aren’t the people here?”
Just like my initial response to her request to go in the church, I had a quick and logical answer – it’s not Sunday, there’s no mass right now.
And then I saw this beautiful little being standing next to me, a human in miniature, not even as tall as the altar, asking her question again in her sweetly innocent voice.
“The people should be here,” I said.
“Yes, they should,” she said.
I knelt down and focused on the image of Jesus on the cross, His presence in the tabernacle, the light from the candle. I acknowledged all that He gave us and how all we do is ask for more. And then I asked for more. I asked for strength to give Him my all; to turn it all over to Him. I prayed to remember this lesson my daughter had unwittingly given me – to go to Jesus; that I should be with Him there and always.
And I suppose, somewhere, inside me, I knew this. I chose today, a week before Christmas, the midst of a week of trials and tribulations all around me, to officially register at the parish – a task I’d been meaning to do since moving in. Why now? The same reason I agreed when Angela suggested we enter the church. Something inside me needed this lesson, this reminder, this preparation of Advent that always seems to fall short other years.
And it is no small wonder that it came from a small child of God.
Last night, my husband and I watched The Odd Life of Timothy Green. We were looking for a feel-good, fun film to offer some distraction and diversion. Instead, it made me think.
The story is book-ended by Cindy and Jim’s overwhelming desire and relentless pursuit of parenthood. Before they digest the heartbreaking news that they cannot conceive, they build the idea of the perfect boy – then pack their dreams away and bury them safely underground.
Watching the palpable yearning of these scenes, I realized the amazing gift of my own children. I felt almost guilty that they came to me so easily; for getting so caught up in the drudgery of day to day that I fail to see the miracle that they are. How blessed we are.
Then Cindy and Jim’s dreams of the perfect boy sprout out of the mud and they obtain instant parenthood. Their joy at his arrival was a familiar feeling. And that the universe rewarded such yearning was a gratifying feeling. They truly wanted this child.
As the movie went on, however, their journey seemed to be less about Timothy and more about their own performance. How did Cindy’s child measure up to her sister, Brenda’s? How would Jim better his own father’s parenting skills? Were they making the right choices? Were they keeping him close enough?
The scene that haunts me most is their argument after Timothy’s game-winning goal for the opposing soccer team. As per his demeanor throughout most of the film, Timothy is nonplussed by his social and sporting gaff. He is happy simply to have participated and had fun. Cindy and Jim, however, have an all-out fight about their parenting. Did they hope for the wrong things for their child? Are their own feelings of validation getting in the way of their parenting?
Yes.
In their pursuit of parenting excellence, Cindy and Jim lost sight of the most important thing – their child.
Is that not a struggle we all face as parents?
Do we use parenting as a vehicle for helping our children fulfill their true potential as human beings or to fulfill our own latent, unrealized dreams? Do we get so wrapped in assessing and perfecting our own performance that we fail to see the perfectly imperfect little being we so longed for in front of us? The yearning to have a child is a strong, very personal and intimate one and that child truly is a part of us; however, it’s also essential that we see their distinctiveness as well. At some point, their needs and desires diverge from ours and our performance is simply a supporting role.
If I allow for a willing suspension of disbelief, I know that Timothy is a magical being sent to prepare Cindy and Jim for parenthood. Indeed, soon after his short visit, they adopt a young girl. But as Timothy departed from them, he said they had always been ready for parenthood. Were they? Were/are any of us?
Are we ready to subvert our own desires and needs for the care of this little one? Will we be able to use our own experiences to teach him or her without projecting our own agenda? Will we be able to train his or her growth without stunting it?
It’s not about us. It’s not about the perfect child. The idea of perfection is a box in which we cannot place our child. Nor can we do it to ourselves as parents.
I’ve stumbled upon perhaps my most brilliant and self-preserving idea yet. Not only will it make and keep my children happy, but it will keep me from losing my patience, temper, and ultimately, mind.
I’ve been increasingly irritated by the constant demands for snack and drink from my cherubs. It’s a never-ending cycle. I’ve tried to institute schedules. Three squares, of course, with one morning and afternoon snack. I’ve taken into account thirst during playtime, allowing a water bottle at any point during the day. However, independent studies in our home have found that true thirst is only satiated by fruit juice or chocolate milk. And that if said thirst is not satiated, desperate whining ensues. And those little bellies just can’t last twenty minutes until a balanced dinner is placed in front of them. Oh, the horror, the agony, the hunger eating away at the tender muscle at their bones.
Dinnertime itself presents a whole new slate of irritations. The heretofore-ravenous hunger is somehow sated within two minutes of meeting those colorful vegetables and proteins; the cup of milk drained dry with t-minus ten seconds before my husband and I sit down. Just as my mouth is about to close around my first forkful of food, the demands come. Can I have more milk? Yes, in a moment, I respond, trying to savor a few bites before I return to the kitchen once more. But I want miiiiiiiilllllllkkkkkk. I said you can have milk. Let Momma have a few bites of food first. But I want MIIIIIIILLLLLLKKK. *$#&@*. I grab the offending cup and stomp to the kitchen. When I return with cup filled and plop into my seat, oh-so-ready to resume my meal, the next little voice says, Can I have more milk? *&$@*#&#&@(! You didn’t know you wanted milk when you heard your sister ask for some? But I wasn’t done with it then.
It was after one such episode that I came up with my brilliant idea. My patience gone and my language and attitude most definitely flip, I announced to my husband – gesticulated actually – that I was going to strap a feedbag to the front and a camelbak hydration system to the back of each child. It would make life so much easier, I raved. Food and drink on demand! Their needs met with nary an act on our part. He laughed and pointed at me: there’s your next blog.
One half of my brilliant idea
Yes, and maybe my million-dollar idea. At the very least, it would make me less irritated. Though my kids would probably be the next three statistics in the childhood obesity epidemic. I guess we can’t have it all – though they’d have food and drink all day if I’d let them 😉
Ironically, the section of the book I’m reading right now is all about transitions.
To ease the transition of moving for our children, I gathered a thematic collection of books to borrow from the library:
As I sifted through the on-line card catalog, I extended my search to books for me. I think originally I was looking for books on the logistics of moving, tips and tricks. Maybe. Who knows? I’m all over the road lately. But in any event, I found two titles that sounded interesting. The first, Moving On by Sarah Ban Breathnach, caught my eye because I’ve had Simple Abundance on my shelf for years. I figured the universe might be giving me a nudge if I was seeking books on moving and here was one by the woman who first introduced the idea of a gratitude journal to me. Though I know her other title to be more of a self-help, for some reason I expected a memoir on the rigors and epiphanies of moving. There are personal anecdotes, but it’s also about finding one’s true home regardless of physicality; being comfortable with one’s space in the world regardless of where she calls home. The idea of home and making the space within those four walls enjoyable is tackled, but it’s really more about letting go of excess baggage to make room for that enjoyment.
Ha, ha, ha. So funny as my days are filled with purging and packing. I am totally in limbo. This home no longer looks like my own as the boxes begin to outnumber the intentional home décor. My new home is still occupied by someone else. So I’m hanging out somewhere in the ‘twain’. I can’t do any of those exercises she suggests for finding what works about your home because I don’t know which one to focus on! I know the chaos that surrounds me right now certainly isn’t working.
So I get about halfway through this book and reach the section on transitions. A major thrust of it is that we actually make these difficult times even harder for ourselves by refusing to let go, go with the new flow of things, honor the past and appreciate the future. Who, me? I hate change. There are some people who have wondered if I want to move. Yes, of course. And another scared, change-hating part of me, says, this is so freakin’ hard. I lay in bed one night and realized I’d have to leave the blades of grass I’d stenciled onto the walls of our first nursery (affectionately known as the grassy knoll). So between the stress of actually making the move a reality and the mental and emotional preparation, I probably do come across as a little ambivalent at times.
But not because I’m not looking forward to settling in our great new house and setting up shop, exploring the community, meeting people. It’s just because I’m apparently really good at setting up roadblocks on the way to transition town.
And so this is where another highly appropriate quote from Moving On comes into play. Ban Breathnach shares the words of Mary McCarthy, who says,
“There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.”
Ha! If that does not describe me in nearly every aspect of my life, I don’t know what does. How often have I relearned something I’d already known? How often have I ignored what needed to be done though the answer was staring me in the face? Human frailty, I suppose. That damn weak free will. We know what’s best and yet take the easier, more convenient, if insanely repetitive and possibly destructive, path.
I know I need to focus on the amazing truths on my doorstep. A rich life lived in this beautiful little house with many pleasant memories to pack. A lovely, airy, hope-filled home waiting for us to fill it with sights and sounds and silliness. I know I can be my authentic self there. I know this transition will make me stronger and truer. It’s just a hell of a lot easier to feel it when you’re at the other end of the journey.
In a somewhat related vein, the other book I chose to read is a memoir: On Moving: A Writer’s Meditation on New Houses, Old Haunts, and Finding Home Again by Louise DeSalvo. I have yet to read it. I’ll let you know what epiphanies that unveils ☺
What books have helped you and your children make a successful transition when moving?
I’d like my fifteen-minute break now, the first of two, of course.
Then I’d like to take my lunch break where I will leave the confines of the workplace for a change of scenery.
I’d like to punch out when my eight-hour shift has ended, after tidying my workspace and locking the door on it until morning.
I’d like to collect my paycheck and cash it at the bank, cold, hard, currency in my grimy little hand.
But I don’t get breaks. I don’t have free time. I don’t get off work.
Lately I don’t even get to sleep through the night.
If only I had some vacation credits to cash, but my employer doesn’t offer those either.
These three are the toughest little tyrants I’ve ever worked for.
[Bad Mommy Disclaimer: this post is tongue-in-cheek, of course. Most of it anyway]
I am a late convert to the school of Shel Silverstein. While my peers cut their literary teeth on his silly and sentimental poems, I had never read them. My mother hit all the other required lending from the library – Dr. Seuss, Sesame Street, Richard Scarry – but I had never cracked the spine of Where the Sidewalk Ends.
Until my first grader came home singing its praises. Her teacher had read it aloud to her class and she was hooked. A week or so later when we signed her up for the summer reading program at our local library, she went straight to that book as the first she’d ever check out with her own library card. Her nose stayed in that book like a bloodhound to a trail – except when she’d call me over to read a particularly silly poem or look at a contorted pen and ink drawing that she found equally funny. And from there, she guffawed through Runny Babbit, onto A Light in the Attic, and Falling Up.
It blows my mind to be here at the exact moment when my child becomes an obsessive, voracious reader. I know I’m one, but I can’t even say that I remember exactly when it happened (though it was most likely on my mother’s lap at bedtime). Where the Sidewalk Ends is her gateway drug.
Harry Potter hit at the outset of my teaching career. Then and many times since, I’ve heard people disparage its literary quality (which I don’t necessarily agree with), but applaud its ability to get kids hooked on reading. I am not drawing parallels that bring Mr. Silverstein’s work into question, but having never been privy to the mania surrounding his work myself as a kid, I can’t say I understand it. But, hey, it has lit that part of my child’s brain that makes her interested in an author, a genre, amassing a body of knowledge – it’s literary gold as far as I’m concerned.
And tonight, I mined for gold even further when I held up two books for she and her sister to choose from for bedtime reading, one of which was The Giving Tree, knowing full well which one they would choose (her sister is also becoming enamored with the idea of Shel Silverstein just by hearing big sis talk about it all the time). The Giving Tree is actually the only Silverstein book I’m familiar with, having received it as a gift for the girls (no doubt by one of my contemporaries who has fond childhood memories of biting into it) when they were smaller. I remember reading it in a hormone-induced haze and choking through my words at the end of it. Man, it got me.
But the simplicity of it got me even more tonight. And the message that it has for all readers – young and old alike.
I was reading it with a different eye, tuned into the words in light of the poetry my daughter has been reading. Spread across multiple pages, the beginning is actually an extended stanza. I could see the line breaks and hear the cadence across the creases. But then the boy grows older. And things get more complex. There is an up-tick in language. A problem. Discussion. Back and forth. A one-sided decision. And the tone of the story remains at this elevated level until the boy returns as an old man, weary of the world and its ways, and ready to embrace what he already knew as a young person.
So, tonight, as a thirty-three and seven-eighths year-old woman, I learned a lesson from reading Shel Silverstein; one that I couldn’t possibly have learned had I encountered him for the first time in first grade. By keeping things simple – our language, our needs, our desires, our interactions with others – life is more enjoyable for everyone. It is only when we want more, we expect more, we demand more, that things gets muddled and more difficult, especially when we look for those things in inappropriate places. Being totally appreciative of what we have and honoring those who help us get it is a place to start. And perhaps we wouldn’t be so very tired at the end of it all if we remembered these things.
Who would’ve thought that I would’ve learned such a profound lesson by reading a bedtime story to my children? Certainly not I. So a big shout out to Shel Silverstein tonight, wherever you are – for opening my daughter’s eyes to the wonders of reading and giving me new eyes to see.
Chopping Potatoes 