Month: October 2013

Surprise

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Are you a person that needs a plan? Someone who gets a little uneasy without a schedule, hates surprises?
I can absolutely appreciate this. I make arrangements, think about things ahead.

And love surprises.

I like to mesh these two qualities together by putting together a surprise.

So in three hours I’m walking into our elementary school. The nurse/administrative assistant will be sitting at her desk with her sickly sweet voice, perfect for all persons under 4 1/2 feet tall. Through the smells of glue and paper and dirty hands, I’ll pick up a festive looking pen that’s had leaves taped to the end of it, leaving it heavy and unbalanced on my fingers. I will sign my kid’s names much before the school bell is set to ring. They are not expecting me. They have no idea that Daddy is meeting us or that we’re playing hooky for the afternoon to raise chaos in our cute town.

There is candy to be had, activities to be completed, and schedules to ruin.

Happy Halloween, it’s time for me to plan an “unplanning”.

That Will Forever Make Me Cringe

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“Oh my gosh, that was crazy.”
“Oh my gosh, what did you do?”
“Oh my gosh. You are being really annoying right now.”

One of my kids has made this phrase her mantra. She is allowed to use it, from time to time. But for every cool flip her little sister makes off the couch they are not to be flipping on, every injustice to the childhood race, or exciting news of where we’re going over the weekend? This Mama is ready to tone it down.

It’s cold and has been for two days now. I’m reminding my son to wash his hands after he goes to the bathroom at school since yesterday he confessed with pride, that he never does.
“Fine, have fun vomiting this year.” My horrible parenting at its best.

“Have we ever all been sick at the same time?” they ask.
I begin to relay the story of when we had just the two kids. It was like a scene from Nightmare on Elm Street. One started and it didn’t stop until the last person in the family, Dad, became a casualty. It was the only time I’ve called my mom in the middle of the night asking for help.
I point to my oldest. “You started puking and then he started puking and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh my kids are so sick!'”
Bing! Wonder where they picked it up.

“Let’s find something else to say,” I suggest.
“Why can’t I say it?”
“You can, but we’re saying it all the time and I think we could say something else.”

What I knew growing up was a parent that could hardly utter “butt,” except in a near-whisper, and a parent who would yell the f-word at a football game. If you know them, you know who’s who. And they did not live in the same house for obvious reasons.
I fall somewhere in the middle and at varying times in my life have wavered closer to one side then back to the other.
In everyday language I am respectful, thoughtful (eh, mostly), and I don’t think about swearing. When I’m angry, I have no problem coloring my language like a crisp, fall day. However there is one word I will never say. And I will discipline my kids in a heartbeat if they use it in slang.

God.

I will repeat that name a thousand times in prayer, and cringe every time I hear it out of the context of honor. 

“How about, ‘Oh my stars?'”
There are giggles all around.
“OK.” She smiles.

So the next time you see me and you tell me you’re pregnant, you’re quitting your job, you’re going to start wearing kimonos on a daily basis?

Oh my stars. And garters.

Why Don’t You Play Too?

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Nights are growing longer like the way she’s growing her hair. She agreed to let me crop it for summer and then missed how it used to fall around her shoulders. It’s in the not-yet-light hours when she turns our door handle.

“Mom, I’m freezing.”
“Well go put on more clothes.”

We are shouting these whispers in the medium between a whirring fan and the solitude of the slumbering. She returns quickly with a pillow, Heart Pup who has been by her side since she barely fit into a carrier seat at the hospital, and a little more desperation than necessary.

“I need a blanket. I’m still SO cold. Will you get me one?”

I say nothing, contemplating the alternative I’m going to give her because I know for certain that I won’t be getting out of my cocoon for what she can do herself.

“Mom? Can you get me a blanket?”  
“You can grab your comforter off your bed.”

Her abandoned pillow lies faithfully on the floor while she’s off retrieving. Dad has made a rule that when he’s home, in other words when he’s still in bed, no big kids allowed on that sacred Queen size. It is why our youngest will be resented, though I don’t think she minds. She’s too distracted being the only one cuddling between us.
During weekdays all remaining four of us pile in to listen to the garage door lift and the truck growl to life. We revel in our freedom and defiance until elbows start to fly because someone is touching someone is touching someone.

I hear her snuggle up and we are quiet, we two awake ones. Words of a friend from long ago come to me.

“Why don’t you play too?”

You see, I once used that same desperate whine as my daughter.
“While I’m doing dishes and cleaning up, he’s wrestling and tickling the kids. If he would help me then we could all get stilly together.”
“And what would happen if you just left the dishes?”
I raise my palms, eyes closed. “Whoa, whoa. I can’t do that. I mean, they’d be dirty, all over the counter.”

With a fistful of covers that I roll back in a triangle, I take my own pillow and steal some pink quilt. She scoots closer and I can hear the way she tries to control her excitement.

“Hi Mom.”
“Hi Sweetie.”

I can play too.

I’d Likely Pay You Three Times Your Normal Rate for This

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She found his feet while grabbing an apple. Curious, she knocked a hollow sound through his entire leg. He was silver, empty, stuck. And I am just like this Tin Man.

“Mom…” I turn my head in a momentary lapse of my condition, and I pay for it dearly. My only choice is to become stiff again, using my entire torso like a bad version of Mr. Roboto.  

What did I do? I don’t know. The only thing I can trace back to is one night when I got up to slay the green-faced witches of my little one’s bad dreams, my arm was prickling with the claws of evil flying monkeys. But that hardly seems enough to have me in such a statuesque manner.

“I’d likely pay you three times your normal rate for this,” I said to my chiropractor the next day. 
And with a click then a pop, I was oiled at the joints. God bless that man for not up-charging.

Days later I am not back to normal but I’m getting there. I can look in my blindspot when I drive or under my son’s dresser for the stack of clean clothes I told him to hang in his closet. I remember what a privilege it is to have my bones, muscles, and tendons doing their thing right.

I sigh. “There’s no place like home.” Or the office of a skilled bone-cracker.     

I may regret this post, but I’m too heated to care right now.

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I have deep respect for those who ride on the stars and stripes of this country. They offer their time, their hearts, their bodies, and their lives to serve and protect.

But you know you live in a high-class, boring town when you get a parking ticket at 2 a.m. for your vehicle being backwards, in front of your own house. You know there isn’t much going on when the sales tax is already 7% and somehow find a little yellow envelope on your windshield at the elementary school where your kids attend. Trust me, there was more than enough room for your comrade firefighters to do all they would ever need to do. Thank you, thank you for protecting this community against all 15 of us volunteers who probably gave your children cupcakes during that one hour.

Officers who are itching to fight crime: I salute you, with only one part of my hand.

I may regret this post, but I’m too heated to care right now.

Off the Cuff

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There is a blog post I just moved to the trash bin. I started it over the weekend and I gotta tell ya, it was going to be great. I was going to use big words and say things that were meaningful. You were going to love it, praise it, share it, and I would feel good about myself. Until it was awful.

What I was writing was true, it meant something to me, it was relatable. But it was also forced. Ergo, trash.

Moments come to me when I think, Why even write? Really, am I going to pen 1,000 characters about how there was mud on my shoe, my kids are adorably hilarious (which they are), I love the outdoors, I’ve read something touching, and then through all this I’ve had a grand epiphany about life?

Not to mention, I will absolutely repeat myself. I have right now, in one of my scrapbooks, two nearly identical pages of my oldest kid’s pictures from JCPenney, about five pages apart. I did the same page, twice. It will happen on WordPress too. Watch for it.
I will misspell things, never get affect and effect right, and write in fragmented prose.

BUT, it is when I read a great story, or watch one unravel scene by scene on a screen that I remember why I want to do this. I cannot get enough of a phenomenal telling.

What’s your favorite movie? Book? T.V. show?
What do you love about it? 
Me too.  

Words, they stir and they move and they teach and they connect us in a way that matters. 

I want to do that.      

Lumping

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All fist, she methodically traces the outer rim and beyond of her lips. I hope this is not indicative of how she portrays my make-up applying abilities. Nonetheless, we have some lessons to learn in the future about how it’s done. And Ronald McDonald will only be brought up as a contrast. Unlike today.

“Go make your bed,” I said to her. This may seem a large order for a preschooler but as the youngest of three, all chores are a privilege. It declares that she too, is big stuff.

I hear her in there straining and shuffling the sheets.
“I’m so mad! It’s not working!”

“You want me to come help you?”

“No!” Right, of course not. And watch the attitude Miss Two-Feet-Tall-Clown-Lips.

“Ugh! It’s just not working. And God‘s not even giving us snow!”

Oh, now she’s lumping. This I know came from me.

“It was a horrible day,” I say through sniffles and gritted teeth. “I couldn’t get a shower, the kids clawed their way around chores, and all of them were talking to me at the same time. Whoever said that days off from school should be called Fall Break is a slanderer and an adulterer of the truth! It is NOT. A. BREAK! And I hate my cell phone. I’m going to take it to Verizon so I can chuck it at the idiot who sold it to me.”

Lumping. May cause emotional whiplash and confusion. Also known as pouting.

We got the sheets fixed, everyone goes back to school this week, and there were no severe casualties from either. However, the verdict is still out on Mr. Verizon.  

 

Life isn’t meant to be easy, it’s meant to be lived.

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They piled off the bus, dropping pumpkins and scarves, and moving like syrup across a plate. Slow.

My oldest went with her great-grandma and cousin to a farm yesterday. They bounced along in a wagon pulled by a tractor. “It was a hayride with no hay. We said, ‘Why do you call it a hayride then?'” They ate hot dogs, drank chocolate milk, and “visited” all the way back.
This is being recounted in the lobby of the Senior Center while the kids are playing Pass-The-Skull, a new, unofficial game that can arouse a fierce competitive nature in even the shyest of personalities.

As you may have guessed, I am more interested in the elderly hovering around the glass entryway than the triangle of kids on the floor. I study their interactions through the smell of cafeteria food and moth balls. It’s a potpourri all its own, and it’s my future.

“I didn’t know that was your husband until he said, ‘Thanks for helping my wife.'” Hunched Shoulders is smiling, the words coming out intermittently. “I was surprised because you two are so different. You are quiet and he is very talkative.”
Black Tennis Shoes and High-water Slacks is smiling back, shifting her feet. And I’m thinking, Simmer down you sweeties. One of you is still wearing a ring.

I spot another couple. They are mingling, working the social circle of this wrinkle parade I find so unbelievably adorable. I start to wonder if they have the same conversations they’ve always had, just evolved.
“Herb, does this fanny pack look OK or does it make my butt look more saggy?”
“It’s fine, Maude, but why are you wearing those pointy shoes?”
“Well, I don’t want to look like a square. I may be old but I ain’t dead yet. Here, put your tie on. I’m not going to the potluck with you dressed like that.”

This morning I’m talking generations of behavior with my husband. Wounds, traditions, and memories passed through the ages, contributing to the potluck that is us. What things are we keeping? What will we start in our family? What do we not want to keep going down the line?

“Oh, I worry for our kids. I don’t want them to struggle so hard and I just feel like what we do isn’t enough.”
“I know.”

It isn’t. It never will be. It Can. Not. Be.

All of it hits me faster than I want to accept it. This parenting, it will never be enough to keep them from making mistakes, from pain, or from hardship. Because life isn’t meant to be easy, it’s meant to be lived. And that entails the aforementioned.

Dang it.

It’s a perfect design, really. At some point we have to choose. We have to do our own seeking, our own learning, our own discovery of who am I and who is God.
Where do I find the most peace, contentment, connection? Where do I learn the most about how I relate, where I fail people, how I love or don’t love well, the lies to which I cling, my hopes, my longings, that I’m actually quite capable and good at some things, or that time and again no matter the journey-I find myself back on the lap of God? In the muck and mire of the day.

Am I willing to be the kind of parent that wants this for her kids?

Yes, no, yes, but I don’t think I mean it, OK yes, I don’t know, ultimately…yes. It will rip my heart out, I can only say it in a weak whisper, but yes.
And they’ll need someone who can go through it with them.

So here I am, ticket in hand for the rollercoaster that’s ahead.

Start the Brewing. I’m Gonna Need It.

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All I hear is the fan that is making the left side of my face a little too cold. It’s 5:08 am. and I’m going to regret this in a couple hours. This being awake.

“No one is up bothering us. Why are our eyes open?”

“I. Don’t. Know.” We say this through black-rimmed glasses and over the tops of our books.

It’s an injustice to be up when the Littles are sleeping. Maybe.

I’m creating characters, a second dive into the waters of a book. It’s overwhelming and I often feel like I’ll never have a last page. Actually I haven’t started writing it yet. I’m just seeing the people, getting a feel for the web of lives I will intersect. I realize it isn’t just a protagonist, there is a life, a history, generations of family. So there are dots and hyphens and outlines on my notebook pages and I can see people I like. People I hope you will know one day.

My first attempt at a book was disconnected. And naïve. I sat down at the computer and just started going, thinking the words would come and I’d learn about the characters as I went.

That was stupid. I couldn’t keep details straight. I changed, tweaked and rewrote everything with no direction but an end result. I wanted to get there quickly and, well that doesn’t make for very good reading.

The ideas tonight, the ones keeping my eyelids wide are on paper now. I’m going to settle in, give the night another shot. Of course, this means that someone will need to turn our bedroom handle. They will need cuddling and breakfast and cartoons. They will tell me of these needs with their morning breath and stale Pull-Up, which only a mother can appreciate.  

Though I think now, perhaps, the two hours of quiet was worth it. Coffee anyone?

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”

                                                                                                                -Saul Bellow

 

Ferris Wheel of Tantrums

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My jaw is locked again, her screams are ringing through my head like the pressure of a sinus infection. They settle into a moan, a forced noise so I don’t forget she’s there. I clutch the oak trim of our counter as I remind myself it’s her choice and I just have to follow through with what I said. Go ahead, be upset, not changing this mama’s mind. 
She calms enough for me to talk to her. But a hug, a kiss, another poor decision later and we are cresting the top of the Ferris Wheel of tantrums once more. Round and round, up and down we go. And I want off the ride.

As with all great battles, we make a peace treaty. I feel certain I am the declared winner, though the true victor is exhaustion. She finally succumbs to her pillow and I melt into every step leading me to the kitchen. I take a deep breath. I need something. Left of the fridge, bottom shelf. There it is, my salvation. Hershey’s dark chocolate Bliss. Oh, it is. I escape, I indulge, I take because I deserve. I’ve just spent the better part of the morning straining, at times unsuccessfully, to stay the adult. What I really should have is a hot fudge sundae so massive in girth that it would only fit in the bowl of our fire pit. But I’m not stocked for this kind of decadence so I do what I can with the candies.

Entitlement, how did I find you?

Really. I am such a political advocate against this kind of thing. I come from hard-work, do-it-right-with-all-you’ve-got parents who taught me never to cut corners. I admire in all three of them a loyalty rarely found anymore. My mom spent over 25 years in one position, my dad has been 35 years at one company, and my stepmom, wait for it…47 years in the same dental office. I believe there is a serious, personal flaw in people who are entitled to everything they want. People, like me.

Yes, I work hard. No I don’t expect everything done for me. But I also want to be thanked for cooking dinner. A standing ovation would be nice after taking care of all three of my kids for the summer. I don’t think a Grande Caramel Mocha is too much for running so many errands. Just a little color for the gray hair I don’t want to admit I have, every two or three months. I need, need a Dr. Pepper on a lonely day, to watch Parenthood every night so I can catch up to season 5, and QUIET. Can I just, get, some quiet?

Granted, none of these things are bad. Balance requires some checked out, veg out, “me” time. But what’s been happening to my heart is ugly. I have become discontent.

Ann Voskamp is teaching me different.

The truth is:

I GET to have three, healthy kids to drive me bonkers. I’ve spent most of my life wanting kids around me and I have not been asked to do without them. 
I GET to stay home to teach my little girl to be respectful even when she’s highly disappointed and angry with her circumstances.
I GET to have a yard that needs mowed.
I GET to have running water, hot or cold or anything in between, so I can wash dishes that served us meals others would call extravagant. Yes, even Ramen. 
I GET to learn the hard, uninspired, meaningful, poetic, regretful, bipolar process of writing that in fact, does touch some of you out there. 

When I know I’m blessed, I become the blessing for someone else. And that’s the place of contentment. 

Thank you. “I say the words slowly, hope they soak into his pores, broken man who yearns to bless, and I am him and he is me and behind the masks we are all the same. All, we only find joy in the blessings that are taken, broken, and given.”                                                             -Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts