Author: Brittany

Slurpity Slurp

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The smack-slurp is loud, easily audible above the roar of baristas who banter in partial truths. Yeah, I come here too much. It’s a problem. 

I don’t even realize what is happening until her finger is aggressively curving the arc of her paper cup. She is shamelessly scraping out syrup and sucking it off her finger. I glance around in shyness, under the radar. As if I’m whispering to a best friend I wonder, Am I the only one seeing this?

Back in she goes, another swipe, another lick, and I’m doing everything I can to force my eyes into submission in my own space.
She cares not as she snaps the lid in place and goes back to her social media scrolling.

That’s when I look at my cup. I mean, I could. She did. No one really saw, though we all know it wouldn’t have mattered.

I rise up, my shoulders are bold. “Could I have a venti water?”

I’ll save it for a day I choose the drive-thru.

 

Coffee Cold as a Blizzard on Mother’s Day

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It sits there with just a few sips missing and I know I’ll end up drinking my coffee as I do almost every other morning. Reheated.

The usual escapades are unfolding. My daughter is angry that her brother has infected the air of her bedroom with his cootie-like oxygen molecules, and Miss Petite is having a meltdown about wearing snow boots with her favorite dress.
I know, I want to say to her. It is nearly two weeks into May and the idea of that blizzard, the one outside, makes me want to spread eagle on the bathroom floor too. But one of us must keep it together. So I’ll do it. I guess.

I get ready in spurts, half-listening to the articulate speeches on inequality in our household republic given graciously by my oldest. Except then I remember this is a dictatorship. Go change into something not jammies, and without peace signs. Thank you.

The clutter of combs, earrings, toothpaste, too many hair ties, an old watch, or two, and various sizes of brushes slam against the face of the drawer as I open it. I pull out the big round one and turn up my drier. I think they talk to me, the kids. At least, I see their lips moving but it’s like listening on the other side of glass. I make some confused motion that will exasperate them from still trying. They just get louder.

Finally, I’m in a zone. The kind where I’m doing something monotonous and there is just enough space for me to think. I push myself to come up with words but instead, it’s all faces. Beauty. Of the amazing women I know.

There’s one with fists like iron, to fight lawmakers by day and to keep her marriage together for her kids by night.  

There’s one who sits on the toilet lid as tears slide from her knuckle to the hundredth stick test that never shows a second line no matter how much she prays in those 4 minutes.

The one who knows the only baby she wants is the revolving door of patients that walk through her office, and a small cat named Tibbles.

The one who is actually a dad carrying both roles, spent and depleted in every way and still missing the wife he sees when his little girl giggles.

One who has a daughter she’s never said by name, or held, or heard whimper because she was called home before she made it to her mommy’s arms.

One who lives with newspaper ink on her fingers from scouring coupons to feed the five foster kids that need a place to name home.

I sit on the side of my bed and tell the kids to come close as I open my card from them. The first word is Grandma, picked out by my son who really just loves Snoopy no matter what the sentimental words declare on the front. I mean, he’s seven, and has obviously not made me a grand anything but messes. I open it, and I’m grateful. To be their mom, to be in their life.

But also to know some pretty incredible women who do some pretty unbelievable caring, biological mother, or not.

Would anyone like to warm up my coffee? I need to sit here and remember a few people.  

 

Slow Your Hurried Self, Time

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Tucked just below a small bow on her neckline are her hot pink nails, a reminder to me of how much girl runs through her veins. Her eyelashes hover over the top of her cheek and when I trail down a tad, I find a that cute little mole. Her skin, it’s creamy and perfect, unblemished by acne or scars that promise to come with future hormone changes. I will hate that time for her. And for me, because it will most assuredly test our relationship.

I do not hurry to my phone or think of how many minutes until the school bell. I care nothing of the forecast or what e-mail will need my reply. Instead I memorize the curve of her nose, the ruffle of her hand-me-down jammies around her wrist, her smell. The bangs I trim, the ones she scoots across her forehead when she’s coloring or after doing somersaults, lay ever graceful above her brow.

I’ve been a parent long enough to know these moments matter, and will not last. I will forget, and then someday ache for such early morning cuddles.

Don’t pass quickly, time. Slow your hurried self. I’m just so in love.  

What About Birds?

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A bird person I am not. At all.

Theirs is the only exhibit I skip when at the zoo. The Big Year, with some of my favorite actors, left me dumbfounded. I’m sincerely curious when I ask, “What is the draw? I’m just not seeing it.”

There are at least a handful of them, brown with strategic spots like a domino, in my vision from my spot on my patio. I’m scooping together a little lettuce, a bit of strawberry and Feta, some almonds while they are as settled as a toddler. So, not settled. They flit and they flutter, to and fro, and I’m tired trying to follow them. One of them does that creepy thing birds do where they turn their heads like a cap on a bottle. No neck, just a beak reaching much farther than seems natural to do.

One of them hops between the dime-shaped leaves of our Aspen. The branch keeps a sway long after the initial impact and I wonder if this is their version of a trampoline. Another jumps in, but on a different branch. Soon they are intermittently scattered, just enough distance to claim their space, just enough intimacy to be a unit.

That’s when I hear the bird on the highest branch start screeching, and remember why I don’t really like this species. I scrunch my nose at the sound and pretend that she’s a plump southern belle with a wooden spoon and a whole lotta sass. With her eyes on the side of her head she’s punching that beak here and there giving what-for’s to the others. Or maybe it was a male saying, Hey, back yo-self up off my lady friend.

I’m probably wrong in every way since remember, I don’t care enough to know these habits. But I breathe deep the fresh cut grass and let the wind move my hair across my neck. I settle for all of us because my children run circles around me like my new feathered friends. The screeching is too much, the constant movement more than I can pace.

I drag my eyes down to read, take in something other than the air of rivalry.

“…but we also exult in our tribulations…”   – Romans 5

We do? Actually, most of the time I sound more like my three-year old when she looks at me out the top of her eyes and says, “Everyone’s being mean to me and I don’t love it.” I tend to order another coffee and sink into that dark place in my mind that throws parties. The pity kind.

The sun comes through the rainbow umbrella above, and I read the words again.

This morning when tears streamed angry down my daughter’s face, I was not exulting. When my son lay on the floor and ignored my order to get ready for school, I was not exulting. When my little one screamed her way up every, single stair to her bedroom last night, I was not exulting.

“How?” I ask Him.

And I feel His response in every part of me that begins to relax. “I will take care of the ‘how.’ You only need to think about the ‘where.'”

I rest, because I know my direction now. And it is enough.

 

That restless energy is for the birds.

Rotten Eggs

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“You hard-boiled a carton of eggs,” he says as if we’re in the opening act of a 90’s sitcom.

“Yeah.” I want to smile so badly at what’s coming, but refrain in the off chance I’m wrong.

“I went to crack one open and I was like, ‘Whoa, this egg is rotten.'”

Can you see it? The underneath of a pat of butter starting to melt and slide across the warm pan. His anticipation of all the ingredients coming together in a sizzle. The salivating and hunger pains. And then the repulsion, maybe even a hint of worry that one he’s chosen should have ended up at the local country store under a heat lamp instead of our fridge.

Well, it is the day before Easter, dear.
The smile comes. Because I was right, and it is so delicious.

“Keep Back Nothing”

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“Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.

Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality  will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay.

But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”  -C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

There is nothing for me to add except to say…brilliant. And also, maybe that we should incorporate “twopence” back into our common conversations.

The Twitter Bird Looks Innocent Enough

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So, I suck at Lent.

The Twitter bird who looks innocently like it belongs in a baby nursery, ensconced in a sky-blue background, the one I had allowed to grip me with talons until I couldn’t see the loneliness of life. The status bar of Facebook consuming my every spare moment, and all the tough parenting I wanted to escape.

The goal was to release these things that had begun to choke out my capacity for what played right in front of me.

Oh, but then someone stole the blanket that someone else used the week before and had apparently claimed for all eternity. And someone small is getting her own opinions so that the slightest injustice warrants every octave of screams while she rolls around her chocolate brown bedding. Still someone is stressed by taking over a new business and needs, needs my support to pick up the slack at home.

Save me, columns of recipes with various cheese, and witty comments of friends. Fill, you blogs about love that I will repost so I and my list of contacts will know I mean well. Just do not require me to actually change my life. Let me read about good mothers while I have everyone in timeout. Draw me out of my reality while they draw blood.

I count my “likes,” check who notices my updates, write another so that attention will tell me my value.

And forever, I come up empty.

Frankly, what is up with social media? Why do we love it? Why do we always, always keep checking? What makes us obsessed to the point we are dropping a line about how we found lint in our belly button (Ew.), or saw a man with three heads (I hope not.)?  We want to be funny, we want to be clever, smart. But more than anything we want to be known. I understand that some of you hang in the shadows, never posting and constantly browsing. We know you’re out there with your tentative “likes,” and your quiet online wanderings. We feel your presence and deep down, I think you also want connection.

I started to research this question. As it turns out there is a physiological response to telling the world about our constipated poodle. (Again, ew.)

“Through a series of experiments, the researchers at Harvard University learned through a study that the act of disclosing information about oneself activates the same part of the brain that is associated with the sensation of pleasure, the same pleasure that we get from eating food, getting money, or even having sex.” -Lance Brown, WTWH

Well. That helps explain a few things.

And like food, money, or sex, social media can become unhealthy when not moderated or used in context. Lovely. (Me, over here. My scrolling is out of control.) 

I started to scramble to the computer with fervor, ready to wipe out all my accounts when I countered my own thought. What if I approached social media differently? What if some lonely soul out there needs to know they aren’t isolated in their belly lint predicaments? Or what if, as I posted this week, we did more I see you instead of I need you to see me? What if social media is our opportunity for good and not just a place to gain self-esteem. As if that ever works anyway.

“MRI studies have revealed that when we perform an act of kindness, the brain’s reward center is aroused and we experience feelings of pleasure.” -curiosity.discovery.com

 Huh.

And hear me, there is nothing wrong with posting ridiculousness. I happen to have deep, and reverent appreciation for goof. I’m just thinking about my own heart. My own sense of loneliness, how my worth plays into this, what I can do to offer versus what I can do to feel better. I think we all have a personal journey to question when it comes to what we write, post, or comment. So much I have regretted, so much I have learned.

How much more good I could do if I choose.
Kids, timeout is over. Let’s go play outside.

Love Beatings and Face Squeezes

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Her colorless complexion is the first thing I notice when we enter.
My youngest daughter is leading me, her supplies of books and colors and printed pages of princesses and her purse all scrambled about coated arms. She’s every bit of girly I wasn’t. Sure, I could appreciate a red-headed Mermaid, the haunting songs of a beautiful blonde who touched a spinning wheel at sixteen. I liked pink, enough. But this girl I get to raise, the one who tries to boss me around, she goes far beyond whatever capacity I had for priss at her age. It’s fantastic fun.  

“Hi Grandma,” I say on behalf of both of us.
“Oh hi, Sweetheart.” Her voice swells and dips in the timbre she reserves for her family. If she wasn’t in a hospital bed she’d be heading straight for my kidneys, patting them until they were loose pinballs lighting up points. She’s known for this gesture. I may have even blogged about it before. You’re “in,” if Grandma makes your organs sore.

We settle. Well, the little one unloads her suitcase of “at-all-times-needed items” and I put my purse out of the way.

“How are you?” As the words come out I put an easy hand on her shin, a mound beneath blankets.
“I’m mad.” And I chuckle. It’s just so Grandma.
“Yeah, why?” She’s chuckling too, one of her greatest qualities. Laughing at herself. I take a second to make a mental note to be so spunky in my old age.
“They just came in a did a test and said I might not go home. And this morning I got up and showered, put together my things, because they said I would go home.” 

Her shoes sit parallel on the couch as if the second the nurses turn their heads the shoes will be running, with her in them.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” 
Crooked fingers comb the top of her head. “I guess there’s still fluid around my heart, but that’s what they’ve been working on.” The fingers fly out and her words end in a bite. “I don’t understand why they can’t figure it out.”
“Ugh, that is frustrating.” 

“It’s snowing!” my daughter yells through bites of cheese. Her snack was in the purse.

For the next hour we visit. I take the occasional break to hear comments from the pee-wee peanut gallery about varying shades of purple, or to quiet feet that need to tap.
I ask about family news, knowing that will brighten even her worst of days.

At one point she stops in exasperation. “I mean I’m almost 83.” As in, enough already. Time to get on with the whole dying thing because she doesn’t have any patience for the hospital scene.

Please, God, when I’m hooked to drip bag and I’m nearing a century, let me sass like that. I beg of You.

“Hopefully if you have to stay tonight it will be your last.” (I probably should have been more precise in meaning that she wouldn’t have to be in a hospital, not last night..ever.)  

“Yes, that’s right.” Her Christian upbringing and vintage values tell her to be grateful. I hear the way she’s forcing it. But she’s adorably still ticked off.  

One word begins to connect to the next. In this room that is as shadowed as the parking lot out her window, I see a nap reaching for her. It’s more than a nap, though. She’s weary, this woman whom we forget to call, who comes to our football parties content to watch us more than the sport and sip a Diet Coke. Her time is about done while we keep busying ourselves with all the things that will also discard us when we get old.

A loud, relentless thought grabs me in that moment: she needs to be hugged, touched by another. How her arms likely ache to wrap around a fellow soul. How her cheek might want to brush another cheek. How long it’s been since she’s bruised our sides with her love beatings.
No longer does her husband, his body tucked in a grave next to her plot, come home with a kiss.
Much less often, and with weak knees, does she steal an embrace from one of her grandbabies.
For the rest of her days, she’ll sleep alone.

The fistful of crayons that are the “chosen” few are thrown back into the bag. We bundle up for the cold. We gather the stacks of papers that sneak to the floor as Little One chatters and sings and chatters.

I wonder if she wonders as the goodbye is nearing, if we’ll do more than say it. If we’ll show it.

“By Grandma. Love you.” I squeeze her face against mine. “Take care of you.”
“Thanks for coming, Sweetheart.” She loves so much, even those of us who simply married into her big brood. “Tell Chase hi. Love you.”

Hours later I am looking both ways and beginning to merge onto the street where we live when my phone beeps for me.
“Hi Grandma.”
“I just had to tell you that another doctor came in and said I could go home.”

I cheer. With abandon.

I Would Want to if I Didn’t

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Not a corner in our house is sacred when your name is Mom. Not the spaces that lack speakers, Wii controllers, and Disney titles. Not the bathrooms, the pantry, or closets. One would think certain subtle clues would keep the mongrels from disturbing me. Like when I’m in the middle of a sentence on my cell phone. When the doors are locked. Even when I’m sitting in the passenger seat of my car…in the garage. No, they are not deterred.

It’s in one of these situations that the ear-splitting screams of my youngest daughter come piercing into the bathroom. She’s so distraught her lips turn a sallow gray between breaths and wails.
“He jumped on me right here!” she chokes out, hand to her nose.
I’m instantly ready to do battle, which is a conflicting emotion when the enemy is also someone you protect. I take a second to avoid reaction, to keep myself from grabbing him by the hair. Experience has taught me to be wise to the other side of the story.
“What happened? Why did you do that?”
He’s already cracking, holding back his own tears. “She hit me.”
Ah, there we have it. “But you’re so much bigger,” I say. Within seconds I’m assessing the morning and I realize we all need a time-out before this escalates. “Everyone grab a book and get on their bed.” One of the greatest parenting skills I’ve ever learned and will never master: redirection.
“Whyyy?” they moan. Well, because I’m about to tear my eyeballs out, that’s why.
“Go.”

While I really want to escape into the numbing affects of social media, I don’t. We have zoo plans and we’re not going to ruin them. Hopefully all the lions and giraffes and penguins will pull this family back together.

On the drive there I go over what happened.
“Buddy, you’ve been given the gift of strength. You are powerful and jumping onto your sister’s face could hurt her. You might have broken her nose. It wasn’t okay for her to hit you but it’s also not okay for you to body-slam her.”
A giggle bursts out of his mouth.
“Let’s use that gift to protect your sisters, all right?”
“Ok.”

The small one falls asleep (hallelujah) and the older kids quietly listen to music…after elbowing each other and being separated. We bob to the likes of country music with the sunroof open, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I even start to believe this day will turn out.

Then she wakes up sassy and unwilling to do anything I tell her to do. Then the others argue with me about needing jackets and water bottles. Then the walking doesn’t end and the clouds turn no humidity into an arctic blast of frigidity. Then the whining ensues, and though the hippos are heavy with entertainment, the traffic home is not. It’s just heavy.

We enter the house bone-tired and grumpy. Everything is how we left it, all stacks, and strays of crayons and shoes and dishes. My margin for making dinner is thinned to a sliver.

While we eat I tell them how I didn’t hear a single “thank-you.” Of course then they say it as if they’re offering me fresh strawberries, but you know how those taste when they’re forced. Sour. I remind them that they need to respect me, be grateful for a mom who takes them places. Good grief the entry tickets were as much as a third of our grocery bill.

Now this morning I’m looking at a clutter of hair products near a mirror splattered with toothpaste. Demands return, nail polish is painted on the dresser, they fight over which cartoons to watch first, and I wonder why I’m so tired of it all.
When something in me shifts.

I HAVE CHILDREN.

If I didn’t, I would long for the mess atop the counter. I’d do anything to hear arguments about who sits where and who is breathing whose air. I’d ache for bad attitudes after miles of elephants and seals. I’d relish the picking up of flung jammies and washing melamine plates with superheroes.  

Guess who’s ungrateful.
Yeah.

Who, Me?

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Recently I was asked by a group of ladies to answer an e-mail thread titled Who Are You? A seemingly simple question with a few obvious, quick answers.

Brittany, Britt, B- all depending on who you are in my life.
Wife
Mom
Blogger

But I took my blue ballpoint and went a little deeper. It’s a question I’ve explored much over the last few years in a myriad of ways. What do I really want in life, for this life? Who do I want to be, what legacy do I want to create?

-Born to a building supply warehouse manager and a college registrar in the 80’s.
-Collateral damage of a divorce as a preschooler.
-Blessed with a third parent, a step-parent.
-A Midwesterner who doesn’t miss the humidity but longs for the green, rolling hills and towering oaks of the backcountry.
-A country girl. Forever.
-Raised a hunter. I know how to load and shoot a rifle, and have killed and helped gut two deer.
-A former codependent who at times forgets the “former” piece of that sentence.
-A born-again child of God, saved by Christ, no longer a legalist though my theology has hardly changed.
-In love with moving writing, strong coffee, and food so delicious I nearly buckle.
-Free, in so many, many ways.
-A young bride, a wiser wife always learning.
-Mother to a girl, a boy, and another girl, for whom I’d die.
-A friend who pursues, is patient, and will say the f-bomb with you when the situation requires.
-I don’t give up, but I know my limits even if not until they’ve been exceeded.
-A listener to a melting pot of music from Elvis and Stevie Wonder to Bruno Mars and Katy Perry to The Band Perry and Hunter Hays to hymns that were the staple of my childhood.
-Undefined by things in my past that don’t benefit my true identity in Christ.
-Favors antiques and vintage décor.
-A woman who knows how to implement boundaries, though I may have to remind myself of the need.
-Relentless desire for the outdoors, even if it’s just a scenic homepage on my computer screen.
-Will waver between an afternoon iced caramel mocha and an Angry Orchard, though I most often go for the coffee.
-Obsessed with Seinfeld, The Cosby Show, and action or sports movies with a moral ending.
-A damn good blogger who will write whether there is an audience or it stays hidden in my journal. (My mother will raise her eyebrows and cringe a bit, and my husband will cover his open mouth for using that word.)
-Seeker of truth.
-Daughter of Abba.

How would you answer?