mckenzie

Just When I Think I’m the Teacher

Posted by

0

I find her curled into herself, all knobby knees to her chest and tears sticky on her cheeks. She loves them to stay there, craves for me to see their dramatic fall. It’s the stuff of an aspiring teenager and that’s about enough to take the wind right out of me- the changing I’m witnessing.
With elbows on my legs I bend to meet her gaze and ricochet her emotions.

“You’re angry. I get it that Mondays are tough. And I see you.”

“I just hate going to school because it’s so hard for me and I couldn’t find my other slipper and I’m freezing (oh, the desperation). I want to be home with my family.” (Ah, yes. Bringing out the big “family” bomb sounding so well and good.)

We were in the aftermath of the flinging bootie, her burst of growling. I saw myself plain as day in those angry eyes.
“I’m really glad we had two days together. What if our government made you go to school 7 days a week?” (Which at the moment was tempting me beyond what I could handle.)

The brother interjects just like a brother. “Yeah. At least you have the weekend.” Not now, oh righteous one. Eat your Fruit Loops quietly. 

“Then we would get longer summers.”

“What if you didn’t? What if you had to go to a school where you couldn’t pick your own friends and the teachers made you hate God or you got in trouble?”

Why? Why do I say things like this? Guh. 

“I would still love Him.”
The crease in her forehead relaxes to curiosity. “Are there schools like that?”

“I don’t know.” It’s then I consider stopping but that would be wise and stuff so, I keep going.  “But there are people who lose their lives and even their heads for trusting in Jesus and not following other faiths.” And I believe in my bones He weeps at each family and limb torn apart, for every child found face-down on the beach or bloody and forgotten, every ounce of pain in every lonely mother.
“What’s great about where we live is we have the right to guns so we can protect ourselves.” I say it aloud so they’ll feel safe, and how do I explain that death means nothing when we know where we’re headed? How do I really even explain it to myself? Because what, Lord, of the things happening that words can’t contain? It’s heavy, too much.

The day moves on with a morning bell, an exhale in the car once the noise of the three of them hits the school sidewalk, me cursing my decision to say oh the many things. I scrub at tacky milk spills on the table and pick up wadded toilet paper from the floor and think, thank You that I never have to tell them we don’t have breakfast…or food at all. Thank You for not asking us to hide or risk being murdered. 

We get a mailer of a handsome boy in Africa whose name we try pronouncing. We’re told of the way he doesn’t learn ABC’s or 123’s because he has to work for his family at his tender 6 years old. How the prevalence of auto-immune diseases threaten his existence, and his favorite food is rice.

I become frustrated at their giggling, their poking each other’s sides in tickling. When I’ve washed my hands of them, put them to bed, she sneaks down to me in the dim light coming from above the stove. As I whip around to march her back to her room I see the way her hands cup the box. Tears come again but this time she’s keeping them full, rounded like bubbles at the crests of her lids.

“Here, Mom. He needs this more than I do.” The words hang in the kitchen with the lingering smells of dinner. I choke and grab her to me, the whole of her many months of saved dollars smashed between us. The doll she’s giving up, an afterthought.

Just when I think I’m the one teaching, she gives me the lesson of my life.

“…and many rich people were putting in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent.
      …for they put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.”   -Mark 12:41-44

  

In the Belly of My Closet

Posted by

0

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.

A Letter From Heart-Pup

Posted by

0

Today is our birthday. Can you believe it’s been ten years since Dad picked me off the gift shop shelf? It was a happy place with all the balloons and cheerful t-shirts but, I was mostly glad to be chosen. Sure, somewhere I was manufactured, stuffed and threaded and given a tag. But the bunny in that book is right. You aren’t really alive until you love.

Those first days you slept a lot. I sat in the corner of our Pack ‘N Play, listening to the cadence of your small breaths. So tiny that sometimes Mom would lick her finger and put it under your nose. I’m still not sure why she did that. Even your cries back then were soft. That of course took no time to change and soon I was grateful to be there to comfort you since you usually felt safe when I was close.

Remember how it felt like a tent when they put us in your carrier seat and took us places? Dad would find a big blanket, the one our sister uses every night now with the pink ribbon around the edges, and he’d snuggle us together between the straps. Then he’d hide us so the cold couldn’t reach and I remember how I was so content in there with you. You found my ear once while you sucked your thumb and slowly, this became our rhythm.

The first time you called my name it confused Mom, but I knew. I knew right when you said “Butterfly-Pup” that you were calling for me.
“What, Honey? What do you want?”
“Buh-fly pup!”
“Oh, Sweetie that’s a heart. See? Heart-Pup.”
I still like to think my name is “Butterfly” though. Because that’s what you named me.

We spent hours on the princess potty, you reading me stories of other dogs and cats named Oscar or Tilly. I loved your made-up stories. When you’d slide a tiara down the length of my ears or pour me a water in a Tinker Bell tea cup. Your hair was so crazy at times, a fountain spilling from your head because the pigtails had dried it funny.

But I also remember those never-ending nights sitting beside our silver bowl and the clank of your fingernails while you were sick. I stayed until Mom gave me a hot washing. But all that soap was worth not leaving you. I’ve endured plenty of coughing, snot, tossing and dropping. Remember I was lost among the shoes? You had showed me those animals, the elephants and zebras, and then we were going home when I felt the cold tile. There were so many soles and ankles and I just wanted you. I heard you yelling at mom, and I’m so glad you told her where I was because what if I had never seen you again? What if I missed dancing in the living room, hideouts in the front yard bushes where you tell me your secrets, the smell of your face in the morning, the way you’re growing and needing me less and less? But don’t worry about that. Even this is joy for me.

After that I had to stay home more. Mom didn’t want me getting lost so she said I couldn’t come along as much. Remember when they bought the other Heart-Pup that was so not me? You could tell. They didn’t fool us though I was glad you had the company. At least until you brought home Black-Pup. He has been my best friend besides you. He was with me after Nana gave me surgery and new stuffing, when you were trying out your new camera, and the first day you went to school. I don’t know what I would have done all these school days since if it weren’t for him.

What I see, when you aren’t paying attention, when you are busy with your Spirograph or licking your latest wounds from our brother, is a lot of love. Mom sees you, adores you, is so proud of the way you know yourself enough to say your voice in a tone that is not demanding but simply is yours. Dad thinks you are beautiful, gets teary at night thinking of how little time you have left with us. Brother looks up to you. In fact that’s why he’s always trying to be faster, better, right-er, because he knows you’re two years ahead of the game. Sister wants to be you in every way. She wants your clothes, your mature thoughtfulness, your freedoms. And it’s all love. I know because I watch when you don’t.

So happy birthday from me, Heart-Pup. Your best friend who will forever keep your secrets and always be here.

Posted by

0

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.

White Oak Camp

Posted by

0

There were nights as a kid when camp felt more like home than anywhere I’d ever been. In contrast my cousin would have to call his parents to come get him before the best of the fun started. I could never wrap my mind around why. Camp, with it’s mosquitoes and spiders, it’s silent dark nights, it’s lunchtime round-robin ballads. And we got to leave our parents. I guess all that was too much for him whereas I, thought it was magical.

We’d spend mornings in memorization, graduating to the next station whenever we’d recited our phrases perfectly. To this day I recall the words etched into my heart as I sat at picnic tables etched with Amanda+Sarah=BFF BFFF. (They probably even had the heart necklace that split like a lightening bolt down the middle and became whole only when each half was together. Yay 90’s.)

Down the line we would grab our trays in the Mess Hall, my friends giddy with anticipation that it might be the day they get three letters and have to tell a joke or sing a song. I dreaded the ritual. I just wanted to eat my mashed potatoes in peace, thank you very much.

After lunch we cleaned. I mostly remember the cement shower house where Jolene taught me to shave my toes. I thought, hairless. Yes, this is a good idea. (?) And so I tried the feel of a razor over my feet. But the Pine-Sol, the gloriously woodsy smell as we mopped the floors and gossiped about tightly folded notes from boys we liked.
“I’m going to try to find him at campfire.”
“Eee!”

Oh campfire, the warmth glowing on our faces while guitar strums bounced off the trees back to us. The hope that my sleeve would brush his sleeve, that my hands weren’t too sweaty or my breath too gross as I sang. The hope that I wasn’t off-key (treacherous). That he would have to, just have to ask me to sit by him in chapel for the rest of the week, or quite possibly, for as long as we both shall live.

The last night was always an epic duel of Capture the Flag. Two teams, two flags, one winner. We’d scramble between lightning bugs and army crawl over hills. We’d get caught, then escape, or maybe not if it was him.
I won once, you know. Finally, I can publicly announce my true identity as Capture the Flag victor. Whew, I’ve been holding that in for a while.

And the bunks, where light would ease over our bed posts, where we’d giggle for hours from sickly intoxication of Kit Kats and Mountain Dew (I tended to overdo it because it wasn’t allowed at home.) Where we’d hear our cabin mom’s voice, “Girls. Quiet Down.”

It’s the voice I used last week when my daughter was no longer my daughter but a cluster of heightened pitches that rose and fell with each inside joke. She and her sleepover friend couldn’t breathe through all the hilarity. On it went, even as I turned out my light for bed.

It’s the stuff of childhood. The memories that feel like home. And I’m so glad she has that friend.

 

At the Crossroads of Mistakes and Apologies

Posted by

0

Behind all those placid expressions, her eyes betray me to the truth. They are puffy in their corners, bloodshot, and spent. Each vessel webs together like a memoir of our war before dinner. How she snapped a blanket at her brother, stomped the hardwood before me, and eventually collided with her own humanity by crying on her bed. Well, wailing the injustices of the world.

“Come sit by me,” I say gently across the table. Spelling homework, her nemesis, a struggle so overwhelming that at times I see the way she gives up trying, is splayed in front of her. She moves without a fight in an outfit I am surprised to like. This alone tells me she’s growing older. It wasn’t so long ago I was explaining the crime of her tube socks and capris, while now I find that I say, “I really like what you put together this morning,” as she walks a little peppier.

It’s as if I see her for the first time in years. But when I look, I see failure. In me.

My oldest daughter, the one who made me a mother, half-child and half-grown, the girl I’ve let down. Maybe because sometimes parenting is a struggle so overwhelming that at times I see the way I give up trying.

I pull her into me and wrap my arms until she relaxes. “My girl,” I say, turning her shoulders square to mine. “I forget. You somehow get the most expectations, the most responsibility, I guess because you were here first. I forget  you are still my girl.”

Her mouth turns slightly, a smile that hesitates from the lessons of pain cautiously recalling that some things may be too good to be true. I have taught her that her innocent longings might be met with angry, worn out replies like, “Can you please, just, pick up!” That her need for security, her most basic questions of acceptance and worthiness of love could be answered by tense bursts of, “How many times have I told you to brush. Your. TEETH…return your library book…bring your homework?”
That mistakes are an opportunity for me to be exasperated instead of the part of life that teaches us.

She nods at what I’m saying and then a nervous giggle escapes through those adult teeth who are waiting to fit her mouth. My knuckles relax onto my temple and I settle into not hurrying anything. She writes with 4th grade sloppiness I find beautiful just because it’s hers.

We sit in the shadow of our conflicts, meeting at the intersection of mistakes and apologies, and I think that maybe this is the gift I have to offer. My parenting at its best, only when I’ve been at my worst. That like Spelling homework, life is full of disappointment as much as joy and promises pain as much as reward but also, failure as a way to something rich and real.

Children, What Say Ye?

Posted by

0

“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

Posted by

0

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.

 

A Series of Encounters

Posted by

0

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.

Saved by the Bell

Posted by

0

“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.