“Women, who feel shame when they don’t feel heard or validated, often resort to pushing and provoking with criticism (‘Why don’t you ever do enough?’ or ‘You never get it right.’). Men, in turn, who feel shame when they feel criticized for being inadequate, either shut down (leading women to poke and provoke more) or come back with anger.” -Brene Brown
Or she could have just written Chase and Brittany in large, bold letters. That would have been fewer words.
He was as eager as I was tired. After turbulence (all and every severity of which I despise), circling above our airport, being rerouted because of a tornado only to hop a second plane hours later, and landing at midnight had left me ragged.
“You need a taxi?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Where to?”
I told him.
“Seventy-five. We’re union, clean, and very safe,” he said.
“Just hold on a minute with your union, ” said the burly woman who was obviously in charge. And if she wasn’t, I was still going to pay attention because she didn’t look like someone you’d want to cross. “Let’s check the rates before you quote her a price.”
She must not have known I was exhausted enough to offer up one of my kidneys to get to my own bed. Anyway, fine. Check your sheet. My husband will appreciate it.
“Yes, seventy-five dollars,” she said.
“Hired,” I said.
In the soft yellow hue of the parking lot lights he loaded our bags while I slid to the far seat of the van. Taxi interiors are nothing to be desired, really. The seats are cracked, the buckles are gummed. It’s a germaphobic nightmare, but in my stupor I let my freak flag rest.
I noticed a piece of paper taped to the glove box. Mohammed, it read, and he changed the station from hip hop to soft rock.
Interesting, I thought. We must look like some fuddy duddies who enjoy that sort of music. Well, wrong. It’s much worse. We like oldies.
Chase and I spoke in hushed voices about our flight, how late it was, how we couldn’t wait to see our kids. But soon we were watching traffic, not saying much.
“Night shift, huh?” I said. (Writing that feels like it should be a lame pick-up line in an off-colored comedy.)
“Yes, I work until 6 am.,” he said. “But then I have the days so it’s OK.”
“Ugh, that’s hard. You have a family?” Sheesh, might as well as his blood type too, Nosy.
“Yes, I have two children. My daughter is three and my little boy just turned one. My wife, she is pregnant.”
“Aw, congratulations.”
“Thank you. They are so much fun. It’s hard when I get off and they are waking up and want to play. Do you have children?”
“We do. We have three. Two girls and boy. They are with Grandma.”
“Ah, so you could have a break.”
“Exactly.”
“Yes, that’s so important. Are you going to have any more?”
“We don’t know, but three feels like a lot right now.”
“We want a lot of children. I have a big family, 10 brothers and sisters.”
Come again? “Oh really? That’s amazing,” I said.
Chase wondered what I was wondering too. “Can I ask where you’re from originally?”
“Somalia,” he said. (At least I think. Again, in my catatonic state these details may not be completely accurate. Mohammed, if you’re out there, I apologize.)
“Well you speak excellent English,” I told him.
“Thank you. I was a boy when we moved here, when my father decided he wanted better for his family. That’s when we came to America.”
“What a bold decision.”
“Yes, it was a difficult life. People are always coming in here and saying, you know, ‘Oh, I don’t have any money, my life is so bad.’ But where I come from you are so rich here. You have so much.”
He told us how he tried to date girls here but they didn’t hold the same values and traditions he did. How he had an arranged marriage with a young woman from his home. The differences in our cultures. About Buddhism. And Christianity.
Two weeks later their faces glow, the way ours did from the dashboard of the taxi. I watch my three watching fireworks spreading in a crackle across the sky. Every explosion reverberates deep in my chest and I think of Mohammed’s words.
“You have so much.”
Because men killed, and men died.
Because women sacrificed, and women lost.
Because a few said there had to be more than shackles; there had to be freedom.
Because One poured out everything.
So that we may speak.
So that we may worship.
So that we may be germaphobes.
So that we may have 11 kids and drive vans and start over.
To some, July 4th isn’t just a holiday, it’s a chance at a better way of life.
Humidity assaulted my hair the way waves had come at my feet.
I maybe have an hour, I thought as I stood waiting for Chase to lock our room, until my flat-ironed highlights turn to a tangled mess of fuzz.
The black and white cat who so very much wanted to be friends, mewed a pathetic whimper down our hall. Huh. Now that would suck. To be a walking hairball in this suffocating air.
Chase and I strode across the concrete bridge of our resort and already my cuticles were sweating. Our hands found that familiar place of connection as we breathed easy because our kids were thousands of miles away with their grandma.
I’m not bragging, but I’m bragging. It was amazing.
“Hola,” we said in painful Americano.
“Hola,” he said. He opened our gate with a nod and a smirk. Maybe because he knew my husband was about to approach the street the way he approaches spiders. With great fear and trepidation. I mean, we were a few days into our vacation so he’d watched us hop resorts several times already. He’d seen the frantic eyes, the scurry, the dust that clouded me as I was left to fend for myself.
“Want a drink before dinner,” Chase asked once we’d survived a Tasmanian of a Camry.
“Yeah, sounds good.”
They were sitting atop the same barstools where we’d met them earlier. When our shoulders burned like the sand and we smelled of salt and seaweed.
“Heeey!” we said as though we were longtime friends. And of course in bar-speak, we were.
“That wedding was beautiful.”
“It was.”
I’d seen them as part of the onlookers who’d climbed trees and lifeguard stands to watch our family.
“Where you guys from?” she asked us, her voice whiny and a bit grating.
“Denver. How about you?”
“Florida. We came down here and left our kids with their dads.” Her thumb waved over to her girlfriend.
She has a life, I thought. Parents she’s close to, relationships that have hurt, friends that have stuck it out, siblings who won’t speak to her, a school she attended, a street she drives every day to get home, a family of her own. There were many days before this, the one that crossed our paths.
“Ah. How many kids do you have?”
“I have four. She has two,” she said.
“Wow, four.”
“Yeah, after my first two I was diagnosed with cancer in my ovaries and my stomach.”
“Oh. My. Word. Are you kidding?”
“No, so I went through chemo and radiation, that’s why my hair’s so short,” she said with a flip of her cute blonde bob. “The doctors told me I’d never have any more kids.”
“And you have four.” I’m no genius but the math wasn’t working out. I could feel a meaty story coming.
“Then I found out I was pregnant so they wanted me to have an abortion, but I just couldn’t do it, you know?”
I think I closed my mouth long enough to get my next words out. “What a difficult decision to have to make.”
“It was crazy. And then I went in and they were like, ‘There are two sacs,’ and I was like, ‘What?'” Her sentences were running into each other with a nervousness that said she was letting us see a preciously vulnerable place. My own breathing became a little faster as I listened.
“I went through with the pregnancy. Both boys were almost full term, born a healthy six pounds, and I’m cancer free now.”
“No. No way. That is an unbelievable story. I…that’s amazing.”
Sometimes my faith grows in places I never expect. Even at a poolside bar with an afro and a sunburn.
They are yellowing, all the vintage photos of sprayed bangs and oversized sweatshirts. In their background we see furniture now considered antique and labels of pop culture that make us question what we were thinking.
There are black and whites. Wedding days where lace graced shoulders and arms interlocked. Army hats over crew cuts. And our friends as slobbering pudge-balls, almost as unrecognizable as they are adorable turning upside down on laps.
One after another reels through my line of vision until I stop. A lump plagues the width of my throat where I’m too good at holding things in. Pain has taught me this, yet I’m just learning it about myself. How good I am at constructing emotional walls, barriers so that no one will see what I think will make them leave. These pictures, this isn’t the whole book of our lives. We are picking and choosing and hiding what we don’t want known.
What do you do on a day that celebrates a person who only gave you heartache, or bruises? Big and bleeding under the surface, yellowed around the edges of backs and cheeks, like the images we splatter across social media. How do you survive all the odes and dedications for someone who may have left you, or was called home before you were ready? What about the guy whose entire life was a lie, who called you stupid, never had time to play, or whom you never met? How do you get through the barbeques when you spent your entire childhood believing you were never enough?
The daddy wound. It runs so deep that few of us escape it.
Even the good ones who get on their knees to tower Legos sky-high, do skipping races, throw laughing toddlers in the air and catch them, and say “I love you” every night don’t do it right all the time. They lose their cool now and again, work too long one day, and forget how it looks to love well.
There’s just something about fathers. And I wonder if it’s designed this way. If this deeper longing that never releases it’s grip is because we are constantly in need of Someone more.
My knees bobbed, I swayed as the drum beat into the core of my soul. Words fell off my tongue in a sea of a thousand more when I heard Him whisper to me.
“I. I Am. I have never missed a second of your life. When you thought no one else saw you fill those tissues with tears, I did. When emptiness grated relentlessly against your heart, I knew. When everyone else abandoned you, I didn’t.”
Our stories matter. Our daddy stories matter. There’s One who wants to write new pages, and remind us of how He’s in the margins of all the chapters before as the Father of the Fatherless.
He’s wearing stripes just the way his dad wears them, and it’s about the only similarity between the two. Well, that and a strange, innate fascination with gadgets and electronics.
“Can I play on the IPad?” he asks.
“Later,” I say, hoping this pathetic response will buy me a significant length of time before the next time he comes to me. No such luck.
“Okay, after I get ready for the day?”
“No. I’m not sure when but later.” There are too many variables to what will happen between now and the next second that I cannot give him a definitive answer. Honestly, is it not so obvious that I am juggling, spinning a plate on my nose, hopping on one foot and standing on my head all in one breath? I guess that was just me that noticed.
Chore lists get assigned, crusty socks are tossed in hampers, errands are despised, and when I’m nearly in the garage door I hear him.
“Mom, can I play the Ipad?” His voice holds an every-increasing anticipation, almost cute enough for me to acquiesce. Almost.
“Let me have a second to get in the house, Bud.”
“Okay but can you just download Math Blaster? Oo, and Weird Animals? Aaand, there’s this cool skater game that my friend was playing on his phone at school.”
Phone? Seven year olds with data and apps and…hold on. I need to catch my breath.
“Not. Right. Now.”
His back arches as it always does when he’s damming tears or anger. “But you said.” His voice cracks and I know it’s both emotions this time.
“You’re doing your pretzel moves.” He laughs and his machine-gun sputter relaxes some of the tension between us. “No, I said later. Like, maybe.”
“But maybe is ‘yes’.”
“Maybe, is I might say ‘yes’ or I might say ‘no’. I think it’s rest time.” For me.
But then he’s popping his eyeglass through my bedroom door after 20 minutes. “Mom, look how wiggly my tooth is.”
“Yep, it’s ready. Go back to rest time.”
“You want to feel?”
“I’m good, thanks. Go.”
Ten more minutes. “Is rest time almost over?”
“Well it might be a lot longer if you keep coming in here.” Shoo.
“Okaaaay.”
As if I’m the one being unreasonable. Pff.
Another five.
“Mom, will you help me pull this?”
I don’t think I’m in any sort of position and/or mood for that kind of activity. “When your rest time is over.” Please, let me connect one thought to another. Or even simply come up with a single, complete thought. That would be thrilling.
By then our little girl is awake and I’m surrendering like the Broncos in the Super Bowl (still a fan).
“All right Buddy, rest time can be done.”
“Can I play the Ipad?”
Help.
Summer break is really just a series of encounters with my children. In fact, I’m considering renaming this blog to that very title for the next two months because it may be all this space will hold in these coming weeks.
“That shower took a long time.” She is graced across my pillow with a color scheme of pencils to her exact choosing.
“Well I had to shave. All the hairs, off the body.”
“That’s weird.”
“Well, you’ll have to do it someday.”
“That’s… really weird.”
It kind of is, isn’t it.
WHOLE FOOD ENERGIZER, read the bold letters I didn’t notice. They are written on the bottle of Chase’s vitamins. Why am I looking at men’s vitamins? Because mine ran out.
“Just take one of my multi’s,” I tell him when he hasn’t any more.
“No. I might grow breasts or something.”
“Are you being for real right now?”
“I’m not taking them.”
I, on the other hand, have no problem stealing from his stash when the tables are turned, but last night I couldn’t figure out why I was folding laundry like a machine.
“Want to watch another episode of Seinfeld? How about Hoarding: Buried Alive? So interesting.” I spoke in speeds hardly comprehensive to my husband whose eyes were half closed.
He yawned. “You can start one and if I fall asleep, well, no harm.”
It was like I had six arms and the piles were sorting themselves. I brushed my teeth and popped an Aleve because as it turns out, the new Power Yoga DVD I purchased is nothing like the beginner session I’ve been doing for 5 years. Youch. Apparently I was long overdue for a little challenge.
My novel drew me in page by page, I started to relax. But long after the light switch clicked off, I tossed.
Then some idiot dog thought it was afternoon instead of midnight and shortly thereafter I was stifling giggles into the pillow because all I could think about was Brian Reegan going, “Hey! Hey, hey, hey! Hey, hey!”
Listen to the bit and you’ll know why this is funny.
Blankets pulled close. Blankets kicked away, like I’m on the brink of menopause. Which I am not, thank you.
Ugh, the night. Would I have to entertain it until morning?
Aha, a snack. I needed a snack.
I grabbed my book, a Melatonin tablet for good measure, and then was off to the land of cheese. Still, everything I was doing was in super mode when I heard little feet drop to the floor and run to what I know is my bedroom. I found her cuddled against her daddy. I scooped her into me and breathed in her sleepy breath. There is nothing like the restful face of a child.
All right, round two. By then it was after 3:00 a.m. and I was in that place of debating if I should just fold the cards I’d been dealt and get some stuff accomplished or chance that I’d actually rest.
Suddenly it was morning. I did it. I fell asleep. In my haze I almost forgot to check the label inside the cabinet.
Mm, hmm. That explains it. Selfie note: no vitamin-taking at bedtime.
From now on, I will be more careful. Being up all night isn’t really beneficial for my kind of daily schedule.
But hey, at least I didn’t wake up with a beard. So that’s something.
‘Tis the season for sunburns and skinned knees. For crickets harmonizing in the dark and ceiling fans that keep warm air circulating. It’s time for ice cubes crackling in tea and grills that sizzle with the searing of meats. Bring on pasta salad, watermelons shaped like baskets, and volleyball nets in backyards.
My eyes are tired. I am tired. The night settles into a quiet rest, every last scary thought cast into oblivion with my mother’s caress across their forehead. A breeze hits me through blinds that bang easy on the sill. I let down because all three of them are finally down, and I escape from lengthy lists of what I will need to attend or pack on these last few days of school. I forget about the laundry backed into a corner of my bedroom, ignore the toothpaste splattered mirrors, and let the cool wash over my skin the way water showers my Impatiens.
But somewhere in the midst of all this easing there is aching. A nephew who will have a funeral. A marriage withered and dry, cracked on the edges with pain that doesn’t give. A parent with a diagnosis that guts a family. The quiet eases nothing. The emptiness, a beating of the soul. A summer’s breeze, razorblades, because it feels that nothing is as it should be and everything has changed.
“What if we have it all wrong? This question recently came from a friend. “What if danger, heart-wrenching circumstances, sorrow is our means to life?”
When the morning is already hot on my arms, I pinch buds of Petunias, wrangle them loose from their stem so that many more will come. When snow has stopped its angry tantrum and frigid temperatures dissipate, chive sprouts return greener and fuller. Only when a tree’s lowest branches are sawed free can the rest of it reach high.
Come through the screen, night air. Remind us that winter doesn’t last and hope comes after death.
“And the ho-o-o-ome, of the-e, bra-a-ave!”
She’s not even close, and who of us ever actually hit that note well? A small margin. The rest of us kind of lip sync, our hearts swollen proud and hands reverently gracing our chests while the “singers” fill in what we cannot. Or, we hurt the ears around us, like she’s hurting mine just now.
My little one is pounding my shoulders and kissing the back of my head. Her Frozen ballad comes next, clashing nicely with her sister’s patriotic scream.
I get out bread, crusty at the top from nearly being burned by the freezer. With a knife I spread peanut butter in swirls, trying to make it look perfect the way the old father/son JIF commercials used to advertise. Always, always I needed a sandwich after watching those. And then I’m remembering the ponds from past Country Time Lemonade ads. Kids jumping in, the narrator charming me with his raspy voice, and suddenly I want to be there too. I want the nostalgia, the feel of what’s vintage and safe and fun.
There’s a fight near the coffee table and someone has moved on to, “Now bring us some Figgie Pudding, nah nah nah…”
Time for school.
It’s an ugly sweatshirt. When I first found it, damp, lonely, and tucked between a pile of forgotten camping gear, Chase advised against finding a spot for it in our closet. I already knew of a place.
And so it came home with me. Since then it has become my favorite. I wear it in the morning when my little one wants breakfast and there is no time for brushing out hair tangles. It stays as housewear because, of course, I do heed some red flags of fashion.
From upstairs I hear the doorbell that sounds too loud against my minimal hours of sleep. The pilling sleeves of my beloved hoodie are pushed to the crooks of my elbows. I’m not presentable per se, but I’m dressed.
Then I see them, two of them all ties and smiles, and there is no escape. I’ve left the front door open. I have no chance to pretend I’m not home. I adjust, tug at the cuffs and scooch the neck opening to try to make up for no makeup, and greet them with circles under my eyes.
“Hello Ma’am,” he says.
Ick. Singes the ears every time.
“Hi.” I barely respond when he’s already talking again.
“Do you notice how stress is a big part of life these days?”
There’s a measurable pause as if he’s expecting me to say something. I do not.
“I mean, do you notice that we tend to stress more…”
I think, and I’m just guessing here, he thought my bored face meant I wasn’t listening. Really, I didn’t mean to ignore the prompt to speak but I was seriously debating using sarcasm to lay out the last two decades of my panic disorder symptoms. Stress? Yeah, I’m accustomed to the likes of it.
“…as we get older?”
Now listen here, Sonny Boy who thinks I’m a Ma’am. Just because my sun freckles and grays are showing doesn’t mean you can take that tone with me. Kids these days. (He’s probably a baby, like 28 or something. Still.)
But I reign it all in with an, “Mm, hmm.”
“If I could read you something,” he says with a Bible open right to the rehearsed page, and proceeds with thy’s and thou’s. “Pretty simple, isn’t it?”
He’s so chipper I want to twist his nose. Instead I nod.
“Now, we’d like to give you these pamphlets and if you have your own Bible (Ha. And ha.) you can look up some verses on the back of them.”
Why don’t you ask me if I have a Bible? Or why at this late hour of the morning I’m in raggedy clothes? If you spent five minutes getting to know me you’d understand the reason I look like I can’t wait for you to leave. It’s because I can’t wait for you to leave so I can go back to my youngest girl who was puking while you were likely sleeping last night. So I can finish shampooing apple chunks out of the carpet and bleaching the toilet where the unspeakable happened.
You’re missing me even while you’re looking right at me.
Oh, how many time I’ve done this. When my stance on abortion sets up a blind around the woman who was gutted and now aches from the decisions she’s made. When theological accuracy replaces a hug and an open ear. When my political affiliation alienates anyone on the other “side.” When being right is more important than being a safe place. When a man with a backpack full of pamphlets makes me roll my eyes because I know just as little about him as he does me.
When the mission becomes more important than the person, love is lost.
“We’d like to stop by the next time we’re in your neighborhood. To see how you’re doing,” he says.
I’ll put on my sweatshirt and try not to shush the kids so you think we’re out of town.
Whispers of a Scattered Mind 