maya

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.

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.

It’s Fave

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Image

Eyes sag droopy and we are lazing around like the cold of the day calls us to do. We’re tired from staying up so late last night, talking to Grandma and watching movies well beyond a sensible hour. Friday nights over spring break demand this kind of irresponsibility.

We don’t really all fit on the Queen bed but that’s beside the point. Dad is teaching chess to the girl with stringy hair. The boy is watching, waiting for his turn in his too-big jeans held steady with a belt he found in our closet. The little one is cross-legged, coloring while she sings with abandon Father Abraham. Right arm, left arm. The pen marks she accidentally swiped across her cheeks are only cute because her voice is small and she’s three. I could never get away with such behavior.

Most of us haven’t brushed our hair, a couple of us our teeth. We’ve disregarded normal eating schedules for snacks and we’ll probably watch another movie after we’ve all been beaten by rooks and pons at least once. I’ll push for a round of Yahtzee, maybe a few deals of cards first.

One of us yawns, someone else sings in operatic tones and before we know it we’re all laughing hysterically.

This could quite possibly be the best day of my life.

Pass the Cadbury chocolates.  

I’ll Figure it Out as I Go, Thank You

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If you don’t enjoy or relate to stories about children, you may not want to tune in for the next 16 days, 19 hours, and 17 minutes. I’m not counting or anything but that is how much time is left for Spring Break and many of my posts will likely be about my kids. Although come to think of it, if you don’t appreciate stories about children you may not want to tune in ever. It is my life.

“Mom, can you print me a NEW Hello Kitty?” My youngest daughter has such passion, no sentence is without emphasis. “NEW,” she says again with a pucker. 
“I got it. And yes, when I finish this.”
“Uhhh! I JUS,’ want, a Hello KITTY picture.”
“Sh.” I am watching Ramona and Beezus with the older kids while I eat breakfast. Hey, boundaries are boundaries and I happen to have them with my three year old. She can’t boss me.

We stretch when the credits scroll, procrastinating at getting our butts in gear for the day. I scoot them upstairs with motivational applause. “Come on, get dressed.”

As promised, I sign into the computer. The Hello Kitty picture is picked oh so carefully, thoughtfully, until all her wrongs are made right.  

“Mom, can I print one too?” my son asks.
“Yeah, go brush your teeth and slick that hair down from the two-inch Alfalfa cowlick you’re sporting first.”

He hops away while I take a face pad that intoxicates the entire bathroom with an antiseptic perfume to clean the night of sleep off my forehead. I straighten sheets and pillows, and stuff a thousandth load of darks in the washing machine.

“This isn’t working,” he says with a crack in his voice that tells me he’s frustrated.  
“What’s the problem?” I say squinting at the screen and clicking the links. Load. Reload. Hourglass timer. Reload again. Close the window. Open a new one. Google searched for Donkey Kong coloring pages.
“There ya go, Bud.”

I dole out to-do lists for the girls and grab stranded socks that have strayed from their partner. 
“How do I do this?” He is worried he will never get his beloved page.
“Right-click. Then paste it in Wor-“
“Okay, okay,” he tells me with annoyance. “I know.”
Oh. Well of course you do. The way your father knows his way around a grocery store. Hardly at all, save for the candy aisle.

My teeth have that after-coffee grime I’m always urgent to brush off, but when I pull the drawer out for toothpaste and mentally prepare the speech I’m about to give on chores, I hear him once more.

“Do I hit ‘OK’?”
Hm, that depends. I’ll require more information. Click ‘OK’ to close the window and erase the hard drive? Click ‘OK’ to join an Over 40 single’s chat room? Send a complaint to the White House (Leave that one to me. I have a few items to discuss.)? To print?

“Let me see here,” I say, bending down to assess the situation. Everything’s off. The copy is horizontal when it should be vertical. He’s widened it far beyond the bounds of the paper size. The selection is too light of a gray, and I simply want to tell him that the next time he thinks he can do things “by himself” could he please, just, not. It would be so much easier if I did it for him. 

Great advice, until I’m hit between the eyes with the force of a Mack truck. Because he’s exactly like his mom.

Don’t show me the instruction manual, keep any advice to yourself, I’ll figure it out as I go, thank you.

So how do I parent a child who is as independently spirited as myself? Let him fail, I think. Allow him to run full boar into his dreams, into what he thinks he knows. Watch him succeed and be there when he doesn’t so he’ll have a safe place to hurt. Then brainstorm about what went wrong, where the motives got skewed, come up with better options for the next time.

Try again. Always try, because you will anyway. You’ll think you know, and when you find out you didn’t, I’ll be right behind you ready to help map out the next route.

“Yep, you got it. Hit ‘OK’ and go see if it came out of the printer.”
He barrels down the stairs and is back in prompt fashion. “There were two since I clicked ‘print’ before you told me.”

Of course you did. And look how you figured it out.   

 

 

Rounding to 30

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For as long as I can remember I’ve had an unrelenting ache to be known. When I’m caught in a confrontation, it isn’t as much about being right as it is about being seen, heard, understood. While I’m rounding the corner to my thirties this week, I think about those three decades, what they’ve meant, who’s walked beside me, who’s let me slip away, and there’s a phrase I read last week that I just can’t shake.

I HAVE FORMED YOU.  – Isaiah 44

What I don’t remember is where we were or the age I was when I did this. What I do remember, was looking for the familiarity of knee-length ironed shorts, the aroma that is my mother, and her safe form I was certain would shield me from the shyness that was creeping in when I looked up at foreign faces. I found her, squeezed her thigh as only a toddler can, and then was caught by surprise when the person attached wasn’t my mom at all.

I HAVE FORMED YOU.  -Isaiah 44

Our kitchen carpet was like a kaleidoscope of oranges and browns, like all carpet laid in the 80’s. It was morning. And it was my birthday. I squealed and lowered into a crouch with my hands out like I was about to receive the biggest balloon of all my short years. “I can’t believe I’m nine!”

I HAVE FORMED YOU.  -Isaiah 44

Midwest summer days nearly suffocated me. Still, it was better than school. My cousin and I tromped around the fields, dodging bees and boredom in the in-between of elementary. We wound our way through the strawberry patch and picked our afternoon snack. Sweat tickled my ears when I brushed dirt from the red wonders I ate, and memories etched into my mind, not letting me go even 20 years later.

I HAVE FORMED YOU.  -Isaiah 44

Standing in front of my peers I suddenly couldn’t get away. The desks were too close, the eyes were all on me. I wanted to speak what I was going to say but in a rush I went to the bathroom. “It’s a panic attack, not a heart attack,” the doctor later said. It came to be the first of many.

I HAVE FORMED YOU.  -Isaiah 44

We drove over a day to get home from Texas, my mom and I. More than once. In the desolate, dry spans of Oklahoma we made up songs. Particularly about the friend of ours with big lips, the one we’d just visited. (He knows who he is, and he’s proud of his smacker.) Each phrase ended in a rhyme, the beat consistent through the words.

I HAVE FORMED YOU.  -Isaiah 44

I didn’t make it to the end of the driveway before I broke down in tears. I wanted a baby, and my friend had just announced she was having one. What if I never hold my own, a part of Chase and a part of me? What if there’s something wrong with me? Or him? What if it never happens? In the days that followed I learned why I was so emotional. That the girl who is now one year from a two-digit birthday was already growing.

I HAVE FORMED YOU.  – Isaiah 44

Yesterday my kids were outside in their bare feet, when they weren’t roller blading or getting their socks wet. They were breaking apart the crumbs of a snowman they built over the weekend, a large mass refusing melt. I was kneeling by the new green of my lilies starting to peek from the ground unaware that today we’d be 30 degrees with more white falling from the sky.

When I struggle to know how to do this life, when I have mornings I don’t want to make lunches or agreements on how much Wii will be allowed later. When the cold of the day seeps too deep into my soul, I remember One who hasn’t left since I was too small to see with the naked eye and just starting in the womb. He hasn’t missed a moment, a skinned elbow, a tear, or a laugh.

“And another will write on his hand, ‘Belonging to the Lord.'” -Isaiah 44:5

And He won’t miss the ones ahead.

 

It’s Allowed

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In an outfit I would never pick and one she always wants, the eyes of my youngest dart between two movie cases. A duo of princesses, each the heroine of their own story, and each role models I love her idolizing. But she cannot choose. I see her mind working, back and forth, afraid to pick one over the other because dang-it, they are both great.

“Actually, I just want to take both of them upstairs,” she finally decides, not really deciding at all but procrastinating the inevitable.
“Okay, sure.” I laugh under my breath.

On my bed, the struggle is the same. Location change hasn’t made it easier, but finally she goes for it. “This one. I’ll do Brave next time.”

I love this, the way she likes more than one thing and then knows what she wants. Except it could be, that after watching the one she’s chosen, she’ll wish she would have picked differently. She may regret the yellow dress and grossly oversized Beast. She may get halfway through and think, lots of red hair and a bow is the story my heart wanted today.

Choices, we have to make them. And sometimes I want it all when only one disc can fit into the player. Other times I go for one thing and regret it or find out it was the wrong direction.

So?

Failure, we try so hard to avoid it. And why? Because it’s hard, it’s painful? But guess what, it’s allowed. It is okay to fail, have regrets. Some of the best personal growth I’ve encountered has been through failure.

“Watch.” She looks at me to make sure my eyes are not on the computer, my phone, or scrolling the pages of an electronic novel on my device. “Watch,” she says again.
I look up, arms folded to communicate that I’m not busy.
Multicolored, magical lights are sprinkling around him. His claws are turning to toes, light pouring out of every one. He’s wrapped up in his own cape, swirling.
“He’s gonna be different. Watch.”
I am, baby girl. I promise I’m here. 
Again with the back and forth of her eyes, from me to the T.V. “See?” What she’s really asking is, Mommy, pay attention so you can anticipate what I am anticipating. Are you? Do you get this about me?
She grins with her whole face when the prince stands before the princess.

It wouldn’t have mattered which one she went with, even a wrong choice can be an abundance of lessons that will change us for the better. It may hurt like hell, those bundle of regrets, but it isn’t wasted. It forces us to grow deeper roots and become better people.  

Whoops Abound

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Whoops and hollers abounded this Christmas when the kids opened a Wii they didn’t even know they wanted. Inwardly, Chase and I were whooping too. We are not forerunners on the technology front. We live simply in this way, without satellite or cable, with movies we borrow from the library or rent for $1. It was a decision we made in protest to all the family time that was being robbed by Wipeout and American Idol. Still, we open the lid of our Toshiba when we want a Parenthood fix but the Wii, let’s just say it was a big hit.

My son is a Mario extraordinaire. A fanatic.

My daughter, the little one, she holds the remote and shouts like she’s part of something big. She is.

My other daughter, the oldest, she tries. Oh how she tries.

It is such great entertainment when they play together. My older daughter will often die on her first jump, a single slide, an erratic I’m- just- going- with- full- force attitude. It’s hilarious. But even funnier is the way she’s perfected “Button A.” The button that puts you in a bubble. Milliseconds from a painful death in rolling lava and she bubbles herself. Midair and heading for the enemy, she floats. It’s genius, really. Until her brother dies. Until he has to be in a bubble too. Because then the game is over.

I feel like I’m in a bubble right now. A writing bubble. I might come out for a snack or to ensure that no is strangling anyone else. I do what I have to, and not much more because I’m dangling above everything in my own space. While the kids jump and run and fight enemies below me, I am hovering with 26 letters and a passion.
In this space, my characters are like real people, the intersecting story of their lives, a part of me. I know them. I like them. And I think you will too.

How Foolish to Think I Didn’t Want This

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This 3 a.m. snack was not planned. But when arms full of blankie and sippy cup need tucking back into bed, there are reevaluations of the schedule.

So here I am next to a pile of tangerine peelings. A thin shadow mimics all the strokes I make in my journal because of the glow from our Christmas tree. This most sacred of symbols is a collage of hot glue and stickers, things I swore I’d never let hang in the branches. I can see through wide gaps of fake needles, straight to a trunk that is smaller in circumference than the body of our floor lamp. (On a side note, do designers of artificial trees think that the wrapping of garland in candy cane fashion actually disguises the pole?) Wooden and leaning, our star sits in vintage style at the peak.

When we were first married I liked the idea of uniform, of ornaments that would flow together and compliment each other. I wanted ribbon to accent perfectly and everything spaced just so. I wanted any future, gaudy adornments cast out and burned.

My kids, they have changed me.

There’s a little bear with a stocking cap and a polka dot number “2”. Glitter and a picture of my youngest dressed as a star at her preschool. Three blocks covered in mod podge and sanded on the edges with three faces I will someday grieve not being here during this season. One green footprint askew a glossy ball, a reminder that small was here once but doesn’t last.
Some of them are clustered together and all on the bottom row of limbs. “HOPE” is actually hanging as “EPOH” and “PEACE”  as “ECAEP.” A select candy cane also near the floor, has been handled. It is broken and pulled through the plastic packaging in great attempt to just smell the sweetness but not taste. Yet.

How foolish to think I didn’t want this.

Welcome homemade decorations, you are like pages in a book. And I’m a sucker for a good story.