mckenzie

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.  

 

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.  

Gum and Eternity.

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Lucky Charms is hitting their bowls and smelling oddly like the yeast I use for pizza dough. They’ve already made time to fight over who will put away the milk and which spoon goes to whom. They are trying to annoy each other with repetitive noises. Thank you, I’m thoroughly exasperated.

“I read something this morning and I’m curious what you think it means,” I tell them. Their interest is tickled enough to stop poking and grunting. “Things that we can see are temporary and things we cannot see will last eternally. Ideas?”

My oldest daughter takes the challenge by starting first, which is more about not letting her brother talk and less about having something to say. I know this by the way she hesitates after each word. “Temporary…means…power,” she says with white dribbles on her chin.

I’m trying with great effort not to let myself get distracted by the learning curve of her hairstyle.
Um, no. “Try again.”

“Wait.” She is stalling again. Must. Answer. Before. Him. But his patience can only last so long.

“It means-” he begins.

“Let her finish and then you can try.”

She takes another stab at it, and at her brother. It’s a one-two punch if she can pull it off. “Temporary means, like, it won’t last forever.”

“Exactly.”

“But,” she says. “We can’t see, like, fairy godmothers or Santa Claus and they won’t last forever.”

Now I’m the one feeling a kick in the gut. Think fast. “Right, but they aren’t real. I think it’s talking about things that are real.” Whew. Save. Back to the exploration. “So the things we can see like our house, the trees, even our bodies, won’t always be around. Our souls, our spiritual hearts will live forever.”

My son picks up a small box. “Like this gum. We chew it and when we’re done we spit it in the trash.”

OK. Well, I think we got lost somewhere. Go get ready for school.

Great and Mighty Pleas

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She’s trying to hold it together in the off chance there’s still a sliver of hope she can convince me. Oh, how she barely balances steady while she awaits her fate.

“But Mom, I didn’t exactly do my homework because I edited as I was writing the other night.”
“I understand. But you didn’t talk to me about that when I told you twice to get it done, and as I’m looking at it now, there is work we must finish.”

She starts to waver, feeling her case falling.

“I erased an “s” on one of the words and I changed a letter to capital,” she says.
“I think you barely looked it over because you wanted to watch T.V. And that’s the point, isn’t it? That you didn’t really do it.”
“But Mom.” Her voice cracks as it dips and heaves like waves. She crosses her arms and plops down angry. I try not to laugh.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “You don’t get T.V. today. We’ll fix your story together tonight before you write the final draft.”
She pouts silent and in a flash I’m back to my third grade year. Arguing with my mom about why I should stay up late, the valid reasons other kids got to linger after the college basketball games. They were perfectly good reasons, I tell you. And they would have worked for me too, if she would have just listened.
The begging, the pleading, the drumming up of any excuse that sounds legitimate. The trying to sound mature and the severe incompetence to do so, what with the sobs and hysteria when I didn’t get my way.
I had a friend that would sneak to her phone and call me. She’d whisper into the receiver, “I’m grounded. What do I say?” I’d look over my shoulder for the enemy (my mother) and whisper back. “Sound super sincere, and tell her you’re sorry and that you’ll really try to do better.” She’d call back twenty minutes later. No whisper. “I’m still grounded.”

These flashbacks happen in odd ways now that I’m a mother. I connect dots I never would without having my own children, because I see the other side. Was my mom thinking what I’m thinking now? You see, dear one, I know this scene. I’ve been where you’ve been. And I know what you don’t. How much more it will benefit you if I teach this lesson instead of acquiescing and teaching you another. I promise with all my heart, I get how this sucks. (no, she would never think the word “sucks”) I recognize the game. Though you might think you aren’t winning, you are with what this is cultivating: character.

There was great weeping and gnashing of teeth as her siblings started cartoons. More desperate pleas were tried without success. She made her brown-sugared toast. I poured some coffee.

“I want you to sit in the front room.”
“But I’m not watching.”
You know that look where you aren’t even weighing the options, you just mean what you said? I did that. It was awesome. “Go in the other room, please.”
Mighty stomping, crumbs flying.

We sat with the sun making stripes all around us. I didn’t check Facebook like I really, really wanted. Instead I engaged, surprising even myself.

“What are you going to be when you are grown up?”
“I have no idea.” She chews a bit. “I like art.”
“You are great at art.”
“I learned this thing at school where you hold some clay between two fingers and you stretch it.” She tips her chin and clanks the spoon against her teeth. (Yes, my children save extra brown sugar for scooping at the end.) However I’m more interested in the fact she’s telling me something I hadn’t heard yet. I always wonder how to pull these details out of them each day. Yank electronics and watch them bloom, I suppose.
“That’s cool. You could go to college for design or architecture.”
“I want to make a house with secret passageways and stuff.”
“I love that.”

Before I sense it, a connection is born and a morning is changed.
Who cares about homework? Not me.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

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.

Seamtress I Am Not

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Red, white, and blue, she brings me the scraps of material she’s haphazardly cut for her stuffed puppy.

“Mom, will you sew Heart Pup a dress?”

She has a long rectangular piece, two slivers for straps, and a shiny red strip for an accent belt. If this girl doesn’t grow up to do something in design I’ll be shocked.

My mother-in-law is a master seamstress. She could be the Betsy Ross of our time.

And I am just the opposite.

“I’m not promising anything, Sweets. If you want, you could take it to Nana.”
“Please, can we just try?”
“We’ll see.” My attempt to appease her and avoid any commitment for the time being. Which really means, based on my mood later it could as easily be a “yes” as it could a “no.” We. Will. See.

She caught me at a good time. Daddy took the boy with him while he played volleyball so it was us girls for the night. Dinner was cleaned up (it’s too bad the man who invented paper plates is dead because I’d kiss him), the house was moderately calm…”OK, sure. But don’t get your hopes up.”

“What does that mean, get my hopes up?”
“Like, don’t count on it being what you expect. It very well may not be. Like, it probably won’t.”
“Oh. Well, I’m still excited.”

I pull out the needles, dust them off, and find some thread. I don’t care the color. She won’t either. My only goal is to get these pieces to stick together and while I’m eyeballing the thread into that stupid, tiny hole I’m contemplating where the glue might be.
I loop, knot. It isn’t pretty but it’s working.

I remind her, “Even if I get it together, it may not stay.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.” When did she grow up so much?
I poke myself, get tangled in the loose lines, and will whoever is singing Kumbaya in my ear please stop.
The moment of truth comes when I try to slide this uneven, frayed, hot mess of a dress on my daughter’s dearest friend.

I’m happy to report, it fits, it’s hideous, she knows and still loves it, we didn’t have the stamina for the belt, and Nana will never see this. Ever.

Why Don’t You Play Too?

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Nights are growing longer like the way she’s growing her hair. She agreed to let me crop it for summer and then missed how it used to fall around her shoulders. It’s in the not-yet-light hours when she turns our door handle.

“Mom, I’m freezing.”
“Well go put on more clothes.”

We are shouting these whispers in the medium between a whirring fan and the solitude of the slumbering. She returns quickly with a pillow, Heart Pup who has been by her side since she barely fit into a carrier seat at the hospital, and a little more desperation than necessary.

“I need a blanket. I’m still SO cold. Will you get me one?”

I say nothing, contemplating the alternative I’m going to give her because I know for certain that I won’t be getting out of my cocoon for what she can do herself.

“Mom? Can you get me a blanket?”  
“You can grab your comforter off your bed.”

Her abandoned pillow lies faithfully on the floor while she’s off retrieving. Dad has made a rule that when he’s home, in other words when he’s still in bed, no big kids allowed on that sacred Queen size. It is why our youngest will be resented, though I don’t think she minds. She’s too distracted being the only one cuddling between us.
During weekdays all remaining four of us pile in to listen to the garage door lift and the truck growl to life. We revel in our freedom and defiance until elbows start to fly because someone is touching someone is touching someone.

I hear her snuggle up and we are quiet, we two awake ones. Words of a friend from long ago come to me.

“Why don’t you play too?”

You see, I once used that same desperate whine as my daughter.
“While I’m doing dishes and cleaning up, he’s wrestling and tickling the kids. If he would help me then we could all get stilly together.”
“And what would happen if you just left the dishes?”
I raise my palms, eyes closed. “Whoa, whoa. I can’t do that. I mean, they’d be dirty, all over the counter.”

With a fistful of covers that I roll back in a triangle, I take my own pillow and steal some pink quilt. She scoots closer and I can hear the way she tries to control her excitement.

“Hi Mom.”
“Hi Sweetie.”

I can play too.