kyle

Whispers of Adventure

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They were like raindrops on paper, nearly undetectable with a simple glance. Right there in the middle of my pillow, forced through the sheet were five nail brads. 

Don’t react, I told myself. It’s only the most sacred of places where I lay my head after the children have been awake all the livelong day and are finally perfect- as in asleep. But don’t panic. 
 
I called my son upstairs because let’s face it, girls don’t randomly want to puncture furniture with sharp objects. Very often. 
“Um,” I said pointing to the nightmare before me. “Were you mad or what made you want to do this?”
“Yeah.”
“All right so what’s up?”
“I don’t know.” 
Wildly insufficient right now, Sir. “What were you mad about?”
“Always having to do stuff I don’t want to do.”
“I get that. I don’t like doing stuff I don’t like too. Actually I’m frustrated right now so should I go cut up your favorite ball cap?”
“No.” His voice cracked just a bit as the pieces of understanding started to fall together. “But the girls told me to do it.”
Yeah, no. “Let’s come up with better ways to be angry.” And by the way you don’t get candy, well, ever again.  
 
It’s not even this civilized sometimes. In the four weeks since they’ve been out of school I’ve already found myself not wanting to parent several times. A day. I get into a pattern of trying to manage them apart from me instead of engaging. It becomes a chant. 
 
“Stop.”
“Shhh.”
“Don’t touch that.”
“Get down. Settle down. Slow down.”
“Quit it.”
“Take that out of your mouth.”
“Why did you hit her, cut those, carve this…” 
 
To which they say, “I’m about to pull down my pants so you better get out of my room!” 
 
These aren’t the kinds of coping skills I’m modeling for them, I assure you. Hilarious though it may be. 
 
Last night I did one of those desperate pleas to my husband: “I beg of you. Please. I must get coffee. Alone.” They weren’t sentences, just a series of gasps. I took with me a book that had radically changed my approach to parenting when I first read it, and my own understanding of God’s view of us.
 
“I think a Father’s job, when it’s done best, is to get down on both knees, lean over his children’s lives, and whisper, ‘Where do you want to go?’ 
God asks what it is He’s made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that deep indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then, leaning over us,  He whispers, ‘Let’s go do that together.” -Bob Goff, Love Does
 
This comes from a chapter where Mr. Goff describes taking all three of his kids on an adventure when they turned ten. It’s a dramatic act of whimsy that celebrates thinking outside of schedules and preparation. Literally, he and his daughter leave for Europe a week after she suggests she’d like to sip tea in the fashion of royalty. 
 
When I got home I snuggled between my oldest two and draped my daughter’s legs over my own while we watched Harry Potter. Imaginary worlds and heroism in the face of evil- past bedtime? Let’s do this together. 
 
“…when Jesus invites us on an adventure, He shapes who we become with what happens along the way.” -Bob Goff

In the Belly of My Closet

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It isn’t a thumping like they say in books. Nor does it sound like the hard edging of her slipper hitting the floor- bomp, bomp, bomp. It’s a river, a desperate rush of adrenaline that mimics the overflow of our Colorado spring.

I am stuffed into the dark belly of my closet, clogging my ears with fingertips so the only thing I hear is my pulse. Crouched and spent I begin to speak honestly.
I’m unraveling. I can’t do this well.

Because I could scream and cuss and take out all my frustration on them the way they’ve been doing with each other. God knows I want to.
Oh I’m sorry, do those statements make you uncomfortable? Well. Welcome to the guts of good parenting. The place where you put yourself in timeout for the sanctity of everyone’s survival. The moment that brings a meshing of surrender and relief. Sometimes it’s enough to just choke out loud, “I cannot. Do. Another second.”

Her screaming seeps through to my hearing and so I make a mad dash to the door. “Is there something you need?” I ask as she flails in the hallway.
“I don’t want to be out here!”
I consider kneeling down to join her but how would that be helpful. “We are all split up and taking a break. You need to look at books quietly before you can get up.” And also so I don’t call the psychiatric ward on myself. 

The morning has been reduced to this. The broken glass because he was doing chores because he’d hit his sister because she was copying his every nuance because her sister was egging her on because no one in this house can have breakfast in civil fashion.

Summer vacation is supposed to be laughing and pools and s’mores and relaxation and book-reading and you know, a vacation. But the thing is, they are always, just always there. And they are always fighting. (Ok not always.)     

When I can finally trust that my voice will stay at manageable levels I gather them close. We sit on legs, feet, and the little one rolls on her back. I approach with a question since listening, I’ve learned, is actually more telling.

“What do you think about how things have been going? How do you feel about the way we’ve been acting?”
“Stressed,” says the oldest with a half-smile. Don’t start with me, girl. 
“What do you mean by?” says the other with her toes in the air.

“Pick one of these: sad, mad glad, scared.”

“Sad.”
“Mad.”

“Yeah, and why?”

“Because she was-”

“Eh!” I close my eyes in dramatic gesture. Maybe there are times when they need to listen. “We’re all guilty here. And we don’t treat each other the way we have been. We’re a team that has each other’s backs, loves well, and helps out.”

“Ok but can I play the Ipad?

What have I…don’t even…”No.”

“Let’s all try to do better.”

They scatter and I open the fridge to find the milk jug decorated in my son’s signature design. Some things aren’t worth the energy.

What Engagement Means to a Boy

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The girls mirror each other on the couch with pillows and blankets and fevers. They have made a cocoon out of a comforter, and I nearly dive in with them.
Kyle is keeping his distance in the kitchen, happy to have an all-access pass to our Netflix subscription at the expense of his sisters’ miseries.
The belly of my coffee mug swells against a backdrop of physician notes, a listing of side effects for an antibiotic McKenzie needs. It’s long enough to make a person wonder if it’s humanly possible to survive any given medication.

Though I worry about their health in the midst of spy movies with gadget sounds and words like “vortex” and “Armageddon,” it’s my son’s disengagement that really has me bothered. I watch him as I have so many times and think, How do I engage this boy? What makes him come alive, and let’s do more of whatever that is because I’m terrified of his own cyclone of impending demise into an eternal pit of withdrawal. 

“You’re going with Dad.”
He bends the way he does when he’s feeling intense emotion. “Why? I don’t want to,” he says with a quiver in his voice.
“I’m sorry you don’t want to. Why don’t you want to?”
“Becausssse, there’s nothing to do and it takes soooo looong. It’s so booooring.”
“I’m sorry that it’s boring. Is there something that would make it more exciting?” As in, You’re going so suck it up Bud and find the fun. But less insensitive.
“No.”
“Well, it may be a long couple of hours. Here, let’s pack a few things in case you get antsy.”

I gather a Target bag of goodies and do not insist he change out of P.J.’s. He tromps to the garage door with dinosaur pants stuffed into the necks of his snow boots. It carries a sort of indignation that reminds me he is still alive somewhere in there.

Soon I get a text from him, which I’d like to pause and say is the weirdest. My children texting me. (sigh)
“Hi mom hows ‘i goin’?”
“Hi buddy! Good how are you? Miserable? :)”
“No. Bored.”
“I’m sorry you’re bored. What would make it more exciting?” And I’m annoyed at my own repetition.
“Freddys! We’re here right now.”
“Lucky!!”

Later when I force the T.V. off he wanders around our family room like the vultures in Jungle Book with their British accents and stunted syllables.

“So what we gonna do?”
“I dunno. Watcha wanna do?”
“Don’ start ‘at again.”

 Tap-tap-tap, go the small discs on the checkerboard. They send him into a tizzy of laughter until he can hardly catch his breath. “That is so funny. It was like tap-tap-tap.” 
I laugh because he is, and soon he’s found an energy that will not be stopped.

He blows milk bubbles to the lip of his glass.
He sucks in air as he speaks so the pitch of his voice rises a couple octaves of irritating.
He covers his mouth with his hands and says, “I can’t be quiet.” I noticed.
He scoots a rocking chair around the hardwood and gets his legs stuck in the sides.
He chews up…an eraser.

But he’s back, he’s him and I wonder how, when it becomes obvious.

His dad engaged him.

The night before Chase hit a breaking point with the noise of three children. As he tucked Kyle to sleep I saw them get forehead to forehead in a tender moment amid the most important parenting words I’ve heard: “I’m sorry.” It was vulnerable, priceless. It set the tone for the next day when they downed hamburgers and recited lines of movies. When they hopped in the truck and braved the snow. When they talked about respect with words like s&$!. When they came home as men.

Now please, go disengage. It’s bedtime. 

When Calvin and Hobbes Take Over

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“Babe, come listen to what he just said.”

We are in Costco with all the mountains of bulk items a family of five can pack into one cart. I was scanning aisles because sometimes it’s easier to leave the brood near the socks and go hunting for applesauce alone.

“What.”
“The girls said they were going to be the mice and he had to be the cat.”
“Yeah.”
“And he said, ‘Why do I have to always be the evil nemesis?'”
“How does he know that word?”
“Calvin and Hobbes.”

Well, read on my boy. Read on.

This Kid

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“Mom, it snowed a little last night.”

“I know, barely. I thought they were calling for about an inch.”

“It snowed at 3 a.m.”

Inwardly, so he can’t see the bad parenting I’m exhibiting in my heart, I roll my eyes. This kid and his know-it-all remarks sometimes drives me to resort to such horrible behavior.
“Oh, how do you know?” I say it as a statement, an afterthought that doesn’t demand an answer, though I know he’ll oblige.

“Well, the Accu Weather on the computer at school said it was going to be snowing at 3 a.m.” (And I don’t even know how you spell Accu Weather at this moment.)

I look at him dumbfounded. “Oh my goodness, you are Kevin.”

“I got you milk, eggs, and fabric softener.” -Kevin McCallister, Home Alone

“No kidding. What a funny guy.” -Peter McCallister, Home Alone

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My kids call it the spider tree. It’s the Aspen at the back of our yard, forced into the corner where two sides of tall planks of fencing meet and shield our neighbors from unsightly behaviors like headstands gone awry and thirds of s’mores. Only a bush when we signed closing papers, it has grown with the years we’ve made this space ours. A ball stop for my husband as he pitches to our son, the starting point for Easter relay races, the shade needed for family photos. And this time, the backdrop for a showcase of Harry Potter characters.

Someday they’ll tell us in drawn out, annoyed voice inflections about how “we always had to take pictures outside.” I will care not. Because in ten years when one of them is balancing 12 credit hours, another is explaining scientific theorem of tornadoes using words too large for my comprehension, and the youngest is a pock-marked hot mess of hormones, I will be thankful for these snapshots that captured time. I will remember how they couldn’t quite fill the Gryffindor robes. How my son’s glasses were the most authentic addition to the costume. How black and orange tights bunched just behind the sweet bows of little shoes. The kind with a strap over the top of her foot and a rounded toe. The kind she won’t want to wear in middle school.

When I look back on this day I will not remember bad attitudes or impatience over darkness taking a millennia to arrive. I won’t remember their eye-rolling about arms so nearly touching each other’s they could gag, or the restlessness in all of us while Dad figure’s out camera settings.
I’ll see how their smiles were a clue to their budding personalities: her crinkled nose often accompanied with that signature, infectious giggle; his relaxed, obligatory grin; her lack of lips as she pulls them tight so her cheeks bulge sweetly.

Some leaves are starting to brown around the outer margins, like ready pie crust. Some are just peaking in yellowed brilliance. But most have dropped from every cool breeze that brings with it a promise, it won’t be long now. The earth groans for winter’s rest. The way I’ll groan for them to be young again.

“You are but a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”  -James 4:14

Just like that, the limbs will be bare.
Just like that, snow and ice will have their way.
Just like that, my daughter will have her own babies. My son will stand tall and strong in tears and a tux as he watches his bride walk down the aisle. My youngest will have taken more risks than I could have ever dared.

Just like that, they will be gone. And I will miss all this.

Children, What Say Ye?

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“Mom, um…um…what did I wear when I was a ballerina?”
“Oh this?” I ask, holding up what I think sparked this conversation.
“Uh huh.”
“A leotard.”
“What? A lenar?”
“Le-o-tar-D.”
“…I do NOT know what you just said.”  –my spunky 4 year old girl

“Say you could do anything you wanted today. Go-”
“Stay home.”
“-anywhere and it wouldn’t matter-”
“Home.”
“-how much things cost.”
“Play games on the Wii.”
“Really? Not Disney World or some wild adventure like hiking the tallest mountain in U.S.?”
“Actually, playing Wii all day with Tyler.”   –my introverted 7 year old boy

“I feel like a slave,” she says looking at the mound of crisp, flowery-smelling, perfectly folded clothes she must organize.
“Well, how should I feel then?” I smirk because I’m giving her the reality check of a lifetime.
“Like the King of slaves.”
Until she says that.   –my sassy 9 year old girl

 

Beuford the Skeleton

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They come off the bus like bouncy balls on stairs and I greet them with a smile that cannot contain the love I feel.

“Hey guys. How was school?”
“Amazing!” my daughter says. “We started our project on Ionic and Covalent Bonds and oh, Mom, it was so easy.”
“Whoa. Good, Sweetie.” I turn my attention to my son by wrapping my palm around the back of his neck. “How about you, Bud?”
“Recess was awesome! We played football in the open field and I threw the ball like, 25 yards or something and we scored right before the bell.” My eyebrows raise in awe. “The guys were freaking out and lifted me on their shoulders. They carried me all the way to the classroom, can you believe it?”
“That’s great!”

Reaching the house we all notice who is now up from nap. Behind folds of her blankie she runs to give them hugs. “I missed you,” she tells them.

“Okie dokie, let’s get your backpacks put away and have a snack. Do you want chocolate cake with Ganache frosting and a raspberry center or triple fudge mint ice cream? Because I made both today.”
“Mmm, Mom did you clean? The house looks fantastic.”

By now I hope you’re as annoyed with this story as me. Because it’s a load of bull.

I sit down to Pinterest or a Family Fun Magazine spread and this is the kind of scene I’m presented. Pictures of laughter and camaraderie. As though my kids will cheerfully, compliantly do the crafts I’ve so thoughtfully planned and paid for, sing songs about love, use their manners to pass the glue, and ask for extra hummus and carrot juice, if I will just follow these 27 1/2 simple rules of parenting.

Somehow in the distance between the accordion doors of the bus and our front porch, hell breaks loose in place of hand-holding skips.

They hit the pavement like trash bags. “The new driver is SO slow I want to tear out my eyeballs.”
So do I at your attitude. “I noticed you’ve gotten here a little late the last few days. How was school today?”
“Good.”
“Yeah? Why was it good?”
“I don’t know.”
How utterly thorough. “Well, what did you do?”
“Nothing really. Mom, can I play Wii?”
“No.”
“But why? I didn’t get to play at all yesterday and you said.”
“I said nothing. There was never such a conversation as this in the last 24 hours. I’ve seen your face all of a couple sec-” We hold our breath because somehow we just know we must. “Who, what…is that your sister?”
“That’s definitely her.” He says it without the urgency I think a statement in this situation deserves. Dare I say, he thinks it’s funny.

We reach her hysteria and I feel in my bones all the cracked blinds of neighbor’s windows. But since she’s my third child I’m not too concerned and figure they can thank me later for not leaving her in the yard to work it out on her own.
“You, lef, me, I, din’t, know, whe, you, were,” she says through hiccups. Well, Little One, if I can hear you through the house walls I think I’m close enough.

Scooping her, I smell the trash I won’t remember to take to the curb until I scramble in pajamas the next morning hoping beyond hope the garbage men will take a little longer at the next door.

Through the house is a swamp of backpacks, strewn shoes, papers about after school clubs and fundraisers.
“Excuse me, am I the only one living here? Pick up your stuff, please.” Actually, let me be honest. I didn’t say please. And I growled the other words.

There is fighting, sneering over snacks they claim to have forever hated, and despising of homework (and they don’t really like it either). There’s second grade football that is cancelled after we risk our lives in rain and lightening on the field. There is more fighting on the way home, not from the kids. There’s yelling to get ready for bed.

We’re so far from a Pinterest square that I’m ready to shove my computer somewhere a lady should never speak of. So I won’t.

Then I get an idea.

“Brush your teeth, grab a pillow and meet me back on the bed.”
“What are we doing?” they say suddenly interested.
“You’ll see.”

My youngest can’t keep still, my oldest is trying to wedge her skinny butt in the best seat, and if I don’t hurry we will have gained nothing.

“We’re going to build a story together. You get one sentence and then it’s the next person’s turn. You start,” I say to my son.

“Once upon a time there was a skeleton,” he says with a machine gun giggle.
“He loved eyeballs so much he wanted some.”
“Um, I um, I don’t know what to, umm. He had some eyeballs!” More laughter.
“His name was Beuford and one day he saw a beautiful girl skeleton named Susan.”
“He fell in love with Susan and grew a heart.”
“Oooo. Tee hee.”
“The end,” he says. And we all crack up.

Beuford, the skeleton who will never have craft instructions or make children content, but who one night made a family, a family again on a queen-sized bed.

 

Help Me

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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.

 

 

 

Saved by the Bell

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“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.