parenting

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

When Christmas Isn’t Merry

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The throaty sound of her voice makes me want to cry. McBride’s version of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas demands I pay attention.

“Through the years we’ll all be together, if the fates allow…”

Well, they didn’t allow.

*  *  *

I’m not above circling the block to re-evaluate my parking options, especially with three kids who traveled with me longer than daylight and a cargo hitch bolted to the back of my car.
We’ll just walk a little farther. It will build character in them, and maybe some chest hair with these stupid temperatures.

“Okie dokie, hats on everybody.”
I give my son a look of challenge when he says, “I don’t need it. I’m not cold.”
“Well you will be out there,” I urge with a lazy wave to the Midwest tundra.
“I promise. I won’t.” Fine, Stubborn Mule, get hypothermia for all I care. You’re so like…your mother.

It hits us like a collision, that wet cold that seeps into every orifice of our being. We brace our shoulders and tread a little faster to the building, any building that will shield us from the ridiculousness of it all. But which door? There are two, both bright red and on the same wall, yet the mistake could cost me embarrassment beyond tolerance. Oh, the anxiety.

So I check everyone’s britches are free of their rear, take a breath, and choose the one with a promise to get us out of the arctic soonest. We open to stairs, cases of them, and another closed door. For pity’s sake, the anxiety, again.

A side door. Which means not a stage door so basically, perfect.

We made it, I think through an exhale, and notice someone from my family who looks quite like my uncle 30 years ago. Ah, my cousin…I think. I hope, because I just called him by my cousin’s name.
He seems too young to have so much beard. “How are you?” I ask, and immediately question my own question. The answer, I know, is in the casket up front. His taut mouth and heavy eyes tell the same story: This day is not wanted. It’s just so difficult.

Glancing around I catch eyes with another cousin who seems more like an aunt because of the decades between our birthdays. But in the entirety of the moment that span closes under the helm of family. That’s all we are in this sanctuary, family, who’s come together to remember and say goodbye.

With a pointing finger I explain to my kids where we’re heading, the line of people at the front.

“Why is that man laying down like that?”
“Good question. I’ll tell you when we sit down.” It’s enough to quiet her and give me time to ponder the anomaly. In church, dressed up, but there’s someone at the center of the room who looks like they’re taking a nap. We spend countless minutes looking at them as they don’t move. Then there’s crying and tissues and wiping and nodding. Yes, this would be confusing to a preschooler.

She’s sitting, my aunt, as she looks up at me with a kind of lost joy and I take her hands. “I know you’re mine,” she says. “But who are ya?”
“Cheryl’s daughter,” I say without offense. How can I feel anything but compassion in the face of a woman who’s lost the love of her life? Which is no exaggeration. When her husband was five years old he told his father he was going to marry my aunt.
It’s in my eyes, I realize, that she knows me. They are my mom’s. And they are hers, mirroring mine.
“Oh, you have such a good mommy. Thank you so much for coming.”
There’s nothing left but an embrace. It conveys all we feel.

The line gets less easy as the hugging doubles, triples. Cousins, spouses, some I haven’t seen since we scraped by puberty. “I’m coming for you next,” I tell one of them.

When we finally find our seats and I’m overwhelmed by the magnitude of the organ pipes taking me back to my childhood with their chords of How Great Thou Art, I lean to my mom. “I am much too happy for this occasion.”

“Let your heart be light.
From now on your troubles will be out of sight.”

We are not so naïve to understand our troubles aren’t distanced. In fact, for certain members of my family this reality will be an unwelcome constant through the holiday season. But maybe our hearts will be a little lighter because we walk through it together.

What She Doesn’t Know, Yet

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She has her typical determined saunter. Which is an art considering “determined” and “saunter” are difficult to marry. But that’s my girl.

“Mail, ” she breathes with a flared nose. “Is this actually mail?”

“Yes. Are you going to pay my bills?”

“Wait,” she says suddenly serious. “What am I going to do?”

Mm-hmm. That’s the nature of bills sometimes, Sweet One.

Why My Daughter Got a Bob Cut

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It was the stack of mail- envelopes, flyers, dreadfully artificial campaign poses for the upcoming election- that made me relax. Because it looked exactly like the three piles I’d stuffed into the corners of my kitchen. I sort of wanted to shout in exuberance, “Your children run around in their underwear with Easter baskets on their heads while they’re supposed to be brushing their teeth and putting on their shoes for school, and this is why you don’t have time to scrub the grease out of your hair let alone open mail or pff, sort it into manila folders for proper bill paying…too?” But if I’d said it out loud she might have taken that horribly uncomfortable look of confusion which says, no, that’s just you. I couldn’t risk such vulnerability.

The three friends ran to us seconds later with princess dresses that needed zipping. “Can you help me?” they asked.
“Yes. I sure can.”
With giggles in their palms they scurried upstairs.

We chatted about the utterly exhausting nature of a motherhood while I watched her slice apples in a way that made me want one simply for the beauty of it. “Girls!” she yelled. “Come wash up for lunch.”
Hands behind my back, I scanned their pictures like I was putting together a puzzle. Sunshine and smiles, outings and events, the stages of their history as family. “Girls!,” she said again and turned to me. “What are they doing?”
I wasn’t concerned. I mean, three ladies of royalty were likely just having their pre-lunch tea. Right?

“I’m going to put this little one down for nap and tell them to head to the kitchen.”
“OK, sounds good,” I said and took a piece of cheese when she was out of sight. I pondered the flow of her hair, how thick and perfectly brown it looked. Perhaps I should stop searing mine into submission every day.

“What are you doing?!” she screamed.
With bite marks on the edges, I put the cheese on the counter like a guilty puppy. I was about to remind her she had invited us for lunch when I realized she wasn’t talking to me.
“How…why, did you think this was OK!”
Ahh, I thought. Another mom who loses her cool once in a while. Yes. Friends we are to be.
“What were you thinking?!”
OK, this is becoming a bit extreme. How bad could it be? Nail polish on the carpet? Paint on the bedspread? Laundry hanging from the ceiling fan? The girls hanging from the ceiling fan? Maybe she’s not used to having playdates.

I climbed the stairs, Monterey Jack still in the corners of my mouth, and said her name in sweet softness I hoped would mediate the tension. “Is everything all right? Can I help with something?”

She opened the second of her French doors. “No, everything is NOT all right! Look at them,” she said in a panic I wasn’t expecting. I started scanning them for missing limbs, blood spurting in the length of feet, lipstick gone wild across cheeks. There it was, two little tails of hair hanging where the rest of my daughter’s curls used to land. I sucked in air the way I do when I think my husband is about to get into a head-on collision. The gasp he hates. “Oh…honey,” I said touching her head. “What happened?”
“She cut our hair.”
Her other friend kept a finger to her lips like she was going to lose it, so I scooted her into an embrace and tried to give her the freedom it looked like she needed. “You can cry if you want.”
“I don’t want my hair short.”
“I’m sorry, Sweetheart.”

My friend sank to the floor in defeat. “What do you even do in this situation? I cannot believe this. Look, I’m shaking,” she said, fingers covering her eyes. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “It’s hair. A real problem is a cut-off ear, someone touching private parts that are too young to be touched. This, will grow back.”

The girls remained silent, except for her daughter who was on repeat saying, “I’m really sorry, Mommy.”

We tried to distract ourselves with lunch and after all that, God knows, we were hungry.

“I just, you guys are so put together, I’m…” she said of the other mother and I.
Hold it right there. “That’s a lie. No one is ‘put together.’ I got a call from the school last year because my son was dared to cut off another girls bangs. And he did it.” Good one. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?
“Yeah, but-”
“Listen, this is going to be the BEST story. You will probably tell it for years and even laugh about it.”
“Can I just say thank you for being you? You’re being so great about this.”
Um, you don’t need my permission for that. “Oh. You got it.”
“Want to see the bathroom floor?” she said with a smile.

We gasped together that time, marveling at how much was strung along the tile, and took pictures because, well, it was unbelievable.

“I guess we should make hair appointments,” she said.
And it’s like she’d turned to me in the deepest pit of parenting, put an arm around my shoulder and asked, “You too?”
“Yep, me too.”

At the Crossroads of Mistakes and Apologies

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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?

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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

 

Roll up them sleeves, Women

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5521102662_0f81745fca_oThe car moved with the highway, and I along with the car. My thoughts trailed like the curves and turns.

“Where’d you go?” Chase asked.
“Oh, I was just thinking about that woman’s boots. How they’re cute but not something I’d buy.”

My guess is this is when he started to second-guess his question.

“And I was thinking about how we passed each other a lot last year but she never talked to me. You know, when I was depressed and a good day was when I was wearing actual clothes instead of something suitable for crawling back to bed. She talked to me this morning. I wonder if it’s because I’m, well, more put together.”  Seemingly, anyway.

“Women are so good at relationships,” he says. “But there are times, when I’m around a lot of them, it’s also kind of scary.”

To be honest, I can feel the same. And why? It’s a question that plagues my journal. Here’s some of what I’ve wondered.

First, there’s immense pressure in our culture to possess several personalities. We must be Rosie the Riveter when taking care of our homes, flexing our biceps and waging war on dust and clutter.

We’re supposed to mimic June Cleaver for field trips, clad with gluten-free, soy-free, nut-free, good-for-you cookies and an adventurous yet sweet disposition, even while on the bus ride home. Five boys to one chaperone? Not. Happening.

When meeting the girls for dinner we have to be Carrie Bradshaw, steady in our high heals and up-to-date in fashion that looks effortless. Pa-lease. 

When our kids get home from school we are supposed to turn into Mary Poppins, complete with a British accent, powers for tea parties on the ceiling, and a song for practically any circumstance. Now that, would be cool.

By day’s end, we are to greet our husbands as they walk in the door like Kate Upton in an apron. He wishes. (eye roll)

All this to be pulled off without a drop of perspiration or frazzled behavior. Tough enough, smart enough, gentle enough, sexy enough without ever looking like we try. That’s a lot to carry, if you ask me.

Second, we mothers can be ruthless, making every method of parenting or choice for food an opportunity to cast a raised eyebrow.

We are afraid to vaccinate. We are afraid not to.
We are afraid of germs. We are afraid of chemicals, pesticides, and toxins.
We are afraid of public education, private education, the perfect charter school. We are afraid of homeschooling.
Essentially we are just afraid.
We stand in pick-up lines with moms who wear yoga pants. With moms who wear yoga pants and actually work out. I think it’s obvious how I know there are two categories.
Spanking or timeout or both?
Career or stay at home or both?

I think we are hard on each other because we are hard on ourselves. If we fail or think we aren’t meeting the bar of what we see, we feel shame. And since we all walk around like we just woke up with these black eyelashes, rosy cheeks, de-crusted watercress chicken salad sandwiches in our children’s lunchboxes, and marathon legs, that doesn’t take long. Funny thing is we are trying to keep up with each other so we feel like we’re good. Like we belong somewhere in this rat race of outrageous expectations. Like there’s someone out there who will say, “Me too.”
The truth is we have to make a lot of difficult decisions. Little lives have been put in our care and that is both exhilarating and terrifying.

What if we dropped our shoulders with unhinged vulnerability and just said, Yeah, these boots are adorably trendy but my socks have spit-up on them…from, yesterday?
If we knew that other moms let their kids O.D. on Pepsi and cotton candy once in a while, show up to volunteer in the kindergarten class on the wrong day. That some school years are rough and leave us unsure what it means for the future. That no mother, and I mean no mother has completely escaped the scars of pregnancy and birth. In the least we all threw up or had to use Tucks medicate wipes. Yes you did.
How the calendar has sex scheduled. AND a reminder. (Not that I personally know anyone who does that, of course.)

My youngest has been running a fever for the last two days. I’ve held her too-hot body, rubbed my fingers across her clammy forehead, and skipped sleeping. This is when I realize we parents want the same things, to teach well and love ferociously. Illness knows not suits or jammies. Coughs don’t distinguish between uniform vests and regular t-shirts, or yoga pants for shopping and yoga pants for yoga. Our sons and daughters don’t care if their muffin is made with cage-free eggs. They just want to know when they call our name in the middle of the night, we’ll raise the puke bowl and say, I’m here.

Roll up your sleeves and put on your polka dot bandanas, women. We’re in this together. And who we are is enough.

photo courtesy of http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=535413, Flickr

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

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.

 

This Isn’t the Whole Thing

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They are yellowing, all the vintage photos of sprayed bangs and oversized sweatshirts. In their background we see furniture now considered antique and labels of pop culture that make us question what we were thinking.
There are black and whites. Wedding days where lace graced shoulders and arms interlocked. Army hats over crew cuts. And our friends as slobbering pudge-balls, almost as unrecognizable as they are adorable turning upside down on laps.

One after another reels through my line of vision until I stop. A lump plagues the width of my throat where I’m too good at holding things in. Pain has taught me this, yet I’m just learning it about myself. How good I am at constructing emotional walls, barriers so that no one will see what I think will make them leave. These pictures, this isn’t the whole book of our lives. We are picking and choosing and hiding what we don’t want known.

What do you do on a day that celebrates a person who only gave you heartache, or bruises? Big and bleeding under the surface, yellowed around the edges of backs and cheeks, like the images we splatter across social media. How do you survive all the odes and dedications for someone who may have left you, or was called home before you were ready? What about the guy whose entire life was a lie, who called you stupid, never had time to play, or whom you never met? How do you get through the barbeques when you spent your entire childhood believing you were never enough?

The daddy wound. It runs so deep that few of us escape it.

Even the good ones who get on their knees to tower Legos sky-high, do skipping races, throw laughing toddlers in the air and catch them, and say “I love you” every night don’t do it right all the time. They lose their cool now and again, work too long one day, and forget how it looks to love well. 

There’s just something about fathers. And I wonder if it’s designed this way. If this deeper longing that never releases it’s grip is because we are constantly in need of Someone more.

My knees bobbed, I swayed as the drum beat into the core of my soul. Words fell off my tongue in a sea of a thousand more when I heard Him whisper to me.
“I. I Am. I have never missed a second of your life. When you thought no one else saw you fill those tissues with tears, I did. When emptiness grated relentlessly against your heart, I knew. When everyone else abandoned you, I didn’t.”

Our stories matter. Our daddy stories matter. There’s One who wants to write new pages, and remind us of how He’s in the margins of all the chapters before as the Father of the Fatherless. 

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.