Musin' Mama: Life at the Speed of Wonder

Monkey See...

2012-01-25T11:24:00.001-07:00

I've noticed I've been short lately. Prone to snap at the kids in irritation over what ought to be minor frustrations or setbacks. Tending toward strident demands rather than gentle reminders. Inclined to rant or rave or lecture in moralizing tones about appropriate behavior.

I've noticed my kids have been less patient with each other. More likely to respond with the exasperated tone of a teenager to each other's errors. Less likely to use their powers of calm, rational conversation to work out a fair solution.

Coincidence?

I think not. I'm feeling convicted this morning. I wish I knew what takes residence beneath the surface of my emotions at times, replacing my reserves of patience with simmering vexation, goading me to react with toddler-worthy tantrums rather than calm, productive intervention. Ugh.

But today, though I still feel that undercurrent of crankiness, I am going to focus all my energies toward exercising the same emotional control I ask of my kids. Novel, eh? Practice what I preach.

It's not as easy as it sounds: so often the kids are wrong and so often I'm right! Right, I tell you! But right and wrong are secondary to the kind of love that inspires change and transformation, to the kind of gentle truth that allows us to take a long, hard look at our shortcomings and acknowledge them, confess them, and then release them. Seeing the struggle in myself reminds me how much harder it must be for a four- and six-year-old to wrestle their, at times, overwhelming emotions.

We're really not so different, adults and kids.

So in addition to making a concerted effort to model emotional control, I'm going to allow my own challenges to breed empathy for my kiddos' attempts, however feeble, to manage their own frustrations appropriately. And perhaps that empathy will help temper the toddler inside so I can be the first to cultivate a kinder space for confronting our shortcomings.

Fairy Tale Christmas

2011-12-02T14:17:00.001-07:00

This afternoon while playing with her nativity set, Abby brought forth every Christmas figure we own-- from masses of shepherds and wise men and donkeys and sheep to Santas and snowmen and elves--to see the Baby Jesus. Actually, to see the two Baby Jesuses (we have two different nativity sets).

I like the idea of these two Christmas worlds colliding in front of the manger because, in fact, there's great truth in the idea of all Christmas traditions finding their meaning in the incarnation of Love.

But I think my favorite hybridization of the commercial and the holy came when she asked me to get "the Cinderella angel and the Belle angel" so I could set them up in front of the manger. Confused at first, I looked at the figures and realized one angel was blonde-haired with a blue gown (Cinderella) and the other was brunette with a yellow gown (Belle). Clarity.

Ah, the glorious mind of a four-year-old, where no detail is inconsequential and where every story is part of the Story.

Move

2011-11-18T10:51:00.001-07:00

Our bodies were designed to move.

I never used to realize this. I think as a child and teenager, I was naturally inclined to run and jump and play sports. I was "active" without thinking about it and without realizing how good it was for me.

But after that, until a few years ago when I decided to ride in the annual Bike MS event, I didn't think much about exercise unless it was in the I-never-have-time-and-don't-really-enjoy-it-anyway context. So I went through my days working or teaching or nursing babies or taking care of household obligations, never realizing I was missing out on something. Big.

When I committed to the ride, a 150 mile bike ride over two days to raise money for the National MS Society, I knew I'd have to train to be able to accomplish such a feat of endurance. Ben was two-and-a-half and Abby was a baby, but they were both old enough to go into the rec center's play school program, so I began taking indoor cycling classes there.

And I finally understood what all those exercise fanatics had been talking about through the years.

After the first class, as sore as I was after, I was hooked. Addicted. Compelled to return. On many afternoons, I walked into class stressed--sometimes frustrated with my kids, sometimes angry with myself, confounded by a problem and spinning circles in my mind trying to figure out. In that hour class, though, as my body became fully engaged in pushing pedals and climbing hypothetical mountains, my mind was unleashed to process the problem d'jour. And most days, I left calm, renewed of purpose and spirit. The ability to get lost in the lyrics and rhythm of the music while pushing through self-imposed limitations left me free to recognize my mistakes, identify the source of conflict, and make a plan.

When I began teaching the classes, I lost some of this mental space because I became the one responsible for cuing the drills, keeping time, and pacing the class. But even then, I left class feeling better. Sweating is both a physical and emotional catharsis, I think.

I've branched out of the cycling room this month into a variety of other classes--Zumba, Pilates/Yoga, a ballet-based strength class--and I feel that same rush of possibility I felt when I first pedaled a spin bike. It's good to be the student again, and to push my body in new ways. I'm reminded that physically challenging myself does more than make my body stronger. It makes my mind stronger. It makes my spirit stronger. It lends perspective to every other aspect of life.

I think God made us this way.

There's a reason research shows exercise helps not just the health of the heart and lungs and muscles but the brain and mental health, too. When we cease to use, to challenge, to push our bodies, I wonder if we sacrifice one of the vehicles through which God reveals himself to us.

Jesus was the Word made flesh. To enter our reality, to draw us to himself, to accomplish the redemption of the world, he assumed our anatomy. When Jesus hungered and thirsted in the desert, when he stayed up all night praying, when he carried his cross, when his back was beaten, when his flesh was pierced--those events were every bit as spiritual as they were physical.

The body is more than mere bones and nerves and muscle and skin. Our body, our flesh, is the vessel through which our spirit experiences the world. Through our physical body, we give. Through our physical body we receive. Through our physical body, we come to understand Love.

To live fully, we must move.

Two Perfect Minutes

2011-11-15T14:45:00.001-07:00

Sitting on my lap in the same yellow rocking chair in which I rocked him as a baby, Ben read me the book he brought home from school: Henry and Mudge and the Forever Sea. The series of books, written in simple yet lovely language for the early reader, chronicle the adventures of a young boy and his giant, drooly pup, Mudge.

These books have been Ben's favorite since we discovered them at the library over the summer. Now that we have our own giant dog, Merlot, Ben understands the canine nonchalance of Mudge, who--in the midst of Henry's escapades--remains faithful to his doggy nature: eating, sleeping, licking, snuggling, and maintaining a gentle loyalty to his boy. These behaviors usually appear in contrast to the activities of the humans in the story, to subtle comic effect. The humor is never lost on Ben.

So last night before bed, we're in the chair together, and I'm marveling at the ease and fluency with which he reads this book that at one time would have been challenging, when Ben reaches a page where Henry and his father are making sand castles at the beach. The author narrarates their contributions: Henry's father made the towers, Henry made the moats, and Mudge, true to form, makes a bed and goes to sleep.

Something about this line tickled Ben's sensibilities, causing him to chuckle, then giggle, and then laugh, uncontrollably. Delight consumed his little face, which turned crimson from breathlessness. I couldn't help but laugh along, watching his eyes turn up with exuberance. When he finally pulled himself together and turned the page, he fell into another fit of laughter at the sight of Henry's dad's rubber lobster on top of the sand castle, poised like a flag. This time, he giggled so hard he doubled over, rocking back and forth in hysterics.

It was two of my favorite minutes of parenting. Ever.

To witness him reading, to contemplate the growth that has occurred in six years, to see him connect so strongly with this sweet story, and to share in the joy of all his skills and experiences converging in complete understanding--it was the kind of moment I wish I could bottle to pull out on days when my soul needs some joy.

More and more lately, I find myself watching this little boy with wonder. Parenting, at times, is like slowly unwrapping a gift in which I discover, little by little, how thoughtfully and purposefully these little people were given, and how perfectly they fulfill the desires of my heart.

The Strange Beauty of Bad Days

2011-08-29T14:47:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I wonder if everyone's experience of motherhood is a roller coaster like mine: high highs, low lows, and a sense of chugging away toward some distant pinnacle only to be swept down the other side in a sometimes exhilarating and other times scream-inducing ride to the next ascent.

Is this normal? Because sometimes I wish I were on the baby rides that pitch only slightly and never come close to evoking relentless thoughts of one's fallibility.

But the good is so good. On the good days, I think the bad are worth it for these moments of unprompted, un-reminded, unsolicited kindness, gentleness, and self-control; for these sincere displays of love and joy; for these priceless windows of peace.

I guess I wonder why that spirit isn't alive everyday in every circumstance. And the self-critical part of me says if I were a good mother, everyday would be like that.

And then grace whispers in my ear that love would not be Love without the other days, without the opportunities for forgiveness on my part and theirs, without the reminder that we are all imperfect and in need of a safe place to call home while we pick ourselves up from our failures and try again.

Somehow, it is the bad days that make us truly a family.

Tenacity

2011-08-18T14:38:00.004-06:00

"Mommy, you need to put Abby's pedals back on. She's ready for them," Ben informed me when I walked into the garage where they were putting on shoes and helmets to ride their bikes in the driveway.

At Abby's request, I had taken her training wheels and pedals off the week before so she could practice balancing on her little pink bicycle. She spent nearly two hours that morning hauling her bike up the hill of our driveway, turning it around, and coasting down. At first, she looked more like a bobble head, tipping back and forth from one foot to the other in attempts to keep herself righted. Occasionally she fell. A few times she grew teary or frustrated, impatient with the learning curve. Always, she got back up and tried again.

I sat in the driveway that morning and marveled at her determination. She would not, could not give up. After a harder fall, when the tears were slower to stop, I suggested we take a break for some water and a snack. She agreed, and we sat side by side for a few minutes. I wasn't sure she'd want to head back into the hot sun and continue wrestling her bike, but when she finished her granola bar, she tipped her head way back to see me from under her helmet and said, "Ih'm reahdy to trhy agaihn."

And back to the bike she went, dragging it up the hill one more time, turning it around one more time, hefting her leg over the seat one more time. This time, she made it to the bottom without touching down--and she smiled that coy, half smile she gets when she's proud of herself but doesn't want to let on. I cheered and clapped and made the kind of fuss only mommies can, and she continued on, growing more confident each time her body self-corrected the leaning bike without using her feet. By the time we put her bike away to pick Ben up from camp, the balance was second-nature. She had, through sheer will and perseverance, conquered this skill.

So several days later when Ben said Abby was ready for her pedals, I found the wrench and reattached them. That same coy smile graced her face in anticipation. Once the bike was ready, I had to beg her to please wait a minute before getting on so I could run in and grab the camera. I knew what was coming.

In true Abby fashion, she threw herself into the attempt without reservation, trying to put both feet on the pedals while standing still. She caught herself before falling and tried again. I encouraged her to start on a hill again so she'd have some momentum to give her time to get her feet on, and here her brother took over, explaining that when he first put his pedals back on, he started at the seam where the garage meets the driveway, using the slight slope to get himself going. Abigail listened to his coaching, moved her bike to the edge of the garage, and pushed off, stopping only after she had completed a few laps around the driveway. Ben smiled, I cheered, and Abby grinned. We now have two kids riding their bikes without training wheels. What a summer.

I learned something about both kids. Though I've always admired Abby's spunk and independent spirit, I hadn't realized just how tenacious she could be in the face of a challenge. Witnessing her resolve and stamina opened my eyes to the unstoppable force she will be when she puts her mind to something. I can't help but wonder what she'll attempt next.

And while I've always appreciated the kids' relationship with each other, I did wonder if Ben might feel a twinge of jealousy that Abby ditched her training wheels so soon after he did. But there was nothing but support and encouragement from him, like he hadn't even considered that her learning something he had just recently mastered himself would be cause for anything other than celebration.

As for me, I'm just grateful to be present to witness these milestones, to be available to coach and cheer and take snack breaks and document the monumental moments that spring out of mornings that begin so ordinarily...to live life at the speed of wonder.

The Big Kid Era

2011-07-11T23:27:00.002-06:00

Ben's tooth is wiggling. Indeed, more than wiggling. It moves back and forth so readily, I am certain it won't be long before the small gap in his bottom teeth, newly appeared as this bit of baby bone edges out, becomes a true hole waiting for the adult replacement.

I can hear the slightest lisp when he talks, his speech already impacted by the mere looseness. I see him take careful bites on the other side of his mouth. Sandwiches, apples, and carrots require a strategic approach. He asks me to look, pushing this passport to higher childhood back and forth with his tongue. I smile and make enthusiastic exclamations over how soon it will come out. He shows me how his top tooth is just beginning to budge, and I make silly jokes about how we'll have to start calling him "Toothless." He grins, catching my reference to How to Train Your Dragon, the movie we watched together when he was sick a few months ago.

He turns six next week. The year of five has ushered him into the world of reading, biking without training wheels, skiing, and now, officially, swimming (for a dozen yards or so, at least). He is so utterly competent, explaining to me how how the remote-control helicopter he bought with allowance money saved for months works, reading quietly the Table of Contents of his new book to decide which story he'd like me to read, pointing out the rocket boosters on the Atlantis as it prepared to launch, teaching Abby how to punch "700" into the calculator, making a sign for the rocks he and Abby decided to "sell" at our garage sale Saturday: "For Free ShinY roks." But the physical evidence of his loose tooth makes the leap to big kid undeniable.

I remember in pregnancy thinking about this hypothetical person I was incubating, how excited I felt to snuggle this newborn against me, and how impossible it seemed to conceive of this tiny person growing into a six-year old, specifically. I remember thinking, What would I do with a six-year-old? I don't know how to play with a six-year old... In my pre-mommy naivete, bigger kids seemed so one-dimensional, so removed, somehow, from my vision of motherhood snuggles and giggles.

But now, I think, six may become my favorite age yet. Each year grows more and more magical than the previous. There are still snuggles and giggles, but now our relationship has so much more dimension than the days of feedings, diapers, and naps. We hike together and discuss homelessness and reminisce about when he and Abby were babies. He teaches me things, makes me dig deeper into my resources as a person because if my five-year-old son can look at a piano and figure out how it works, than surely I can take a few minutes to understand how this toy functions so I can fix it now instead of leaving the task to Josh when he gets home.

Ben delights me with his personhood. He is self-assured enough to present his tin of rocks--curated from our backyard and polished with a little soap to make them extra shiny--to garage sale shoppers, and yet innocent enough to believe rocks from the backyard are so precious and obviously valuable that he should curb demand with a limit of one or two rocks per customer so as not to exhaust his supply.

I love him.

We are a third of the way to official adulthood. We sold many of our baby things at the garage sale; pangs of nostalgia surfaced in quieter moments. Can it be we've already left the era of babyhood firmly behind us, the once-exhausting and seemingly endless stage now only a memory?

I look at women with grown kids differently now, already understanding the way they look at young mothers knowingly, remembering what life was like in its ups and downs because they've lived those days--and many more--with their own kids. I see how quickly the time passes between infancy and adulthood. And yet a twelve-year-old or an eighteen-year-old is unfathomable at the moment.

The growing up is insisting anyway: one year, one milestone, one loose tooth at a time.

Diffusing the Fear

2011-05-01T20:54:00.004-06:00

His little body visibly melts as he releases the burden of his nighttime thoughts. Through tears, Ben shares the images keeping him awake at night: being trapped in a web, a sword hitting Daddy, losing Teddy, falling from high places, weapons, and more and more and more.

"When I go to bed, I keep thinking mean thoughts, and that's why I can't fall asleep," he says. By "mean," he means unpleasant, frightening--not malicious.

I listen and listen and listen, thinking what a relief it must be for him to finally release all this fear. I hold him on my lap, affirming how scary those thoughts must be, how frustrating to lay awake thinking about these things. He nods his head and says, "Uh-huh," every time I put words to his emotions. He continues to share images as they come to him, as though the very act of verbalizing these mental terrorists disarms them, and he can't bear to let any go unspoken. Several times, I say, "Thank you for telling me. I'm so glad you've told me."

For a couple weeks, we've noticed how long it has taken him to fall asleep. Often, he's still rolling around in his bed an hour after we turn off the lights. He doesn't fuss or make trouble, but sleep hasn't come as readily as it usually does, and his shortened night is evident the next day in his eyes, his touchiness, his likelihood to put his head on his arms at the dinner table. I hadn't known until tonight that he was wrestling hypothetical tragedy in his bed.

I ask him if we can pray, and he nods. Together, we do spiritual battle against the thoughts holding his sleepy mind captive. We pray against fear and anxiety, we ask for peace for his room and his bed, we claim the blood of Christ over our home, our family, his life. And when we're finished, we talk some more.

I tell him that many of those pictures in his mind probably come from movies he's watched or books he's read. The web clearly comes from the Veggie Tale with the bad apple who spins webs of temptation around her targets (those Veggie Tales are often scarier than they seem). After I mention that, he says the sword is the one he saw in Peter Pan, the gun is from Fox and the Hound. There is power in recognizing why our mind dwells on certain thoughts, and he seems to draw some confidence in identifying the images' source. I tell him that these images are the reason why Daddy and I want to make sure books and movies and stories are appropriate for him before he sees them. He seems to receive this familiar phrase, "to make sure it's appropriate," with new appreciation.

He finally settles. His breathing steadies and his tears stop so that he can get ready for bed. Abby, who has been wandering in and out of his room while we talk to give him hugs or bring him Teddy, continues to tend to her brother with concern. We finish our routine of books, prayer, and songs, and I tuck the kids in bed.

Tonight, Ben is asleep within minutes. I exhale.

I love that little boy, who at times possesses such maturity and at others reminds me he's so young. I'm grateful he trusted me with his fears tonight. Still, I wonder if we've allowed too much too soon. I walk this line of wanting to protect him from themes and images that seem too mature and wanting to allow him the freedom to explore and ask questions about the conflict of good versus evil in this world, a conflict he bumps up against in his own life. I worry sometimes that I'm overly protective of what he's exposed to, and in the same breath, I wish I could go back and retract the dozen movies we've allowed him to view. And yet, he so thoughtfully processes them, asks insightful questions that strike at the heart of the films, draws beautiful comparisons and parallels between the stories and experiences he's had.

I don't know whether we've sanctioned too much, but as a mom, my greatest hope and desire is that whatever happens in my kids' lives, they feel they can talk to me about it--openly, honestly, without reservation or sugar-coating. I want to always open the door for more conversation, to lay the groundwork for future disclosures, and I think tonight was a step in that direction. So whether we've been mistaken in our decisions or not, we are prepared and willing to process the fallout with Ben, because few things diffuse the thoughts and fears that plague our minds like the ability to confess them to someone who really loves us.

Ben and I agreed we'll try to find less intense movies for him to watch (which, for the record, he generally only watches when he's sick). I'll continue to scrutinize the content of his interests and will probably be more conservative in what we introduce. In the meantime, we'll continue our dialogue, and I'll continue to pray.

May these two kinds of conversation be constants in our relationship.

Why?

2011-04-28T14:48:00.000-06:00

Some days I wish I'd gone to medical school. Over the last two years, Abby's asthma has often left me wanting more understanding about lung function, pharmacology, and accurately assessing respiratory status. Of late, we are navigating a series of question marks about her hearing, which for weeks at a time suffers significantly enough that the poor girl says, "What? What did you say? I can't hear you," to any statement issued at a normal volume.

This noticeable hearing loss coupled with the fluid that comes and goes in her ears and her giant, golf-ball sized tonsils landed us in an ENT's office this morning, where Abby zoomed trucks across the floor while I attempted to remember from my mental catalogue of doctor visits when fluid has appeared and disappeared from her ears, how many ear infections she's had in the last year (not many), and which antibiotic she was given for said infections.

The audiogram--dubbed "a hearing game" for Abby's benefit, which she giggled through as she put bears in cups every time she heard a "little birdy"--showed "significant, mild hearing loss" in her fluid-filled right ear. And for the record, her hearing currently is much improved from a few weeks ago when she was sick and it felt like I had to shout every question, answer, and direction to be heard. The audiologist wants to see her back when her ears aren't fluid-filled to see if the hearing loss is, in fact, a result of the fluid.

We spoke with the ENT about her other symptoms. I did my best to assure the doctor that Abby does not, in fact, show signs of sleep apnea, but we get to do a sleep test anyway. He audibly gasped when she opened her mouth to show him her tonsils; his skepticism at my insistence that she does, indeed, sleep soundly--without the tell-tale apneic episodes I've observed in Josh--was palpable. Sigh. We'll follow up with him, too, in two months to see if the fluid has resolved and to review the results of the sleep study.

And to top it all off, the doctor prescribed a nasal steroid to use everyday until we return to help with some of her persistent congestion. If her congestion worsens, he recommends a nasal wash. Uh-huh. I can just see Abby's enthusiasm at having a saline solution squirted into her nose each day. I couldn't even do it to myself a few years ago when I was fighting a terrible sinus infection.

On most fronts, I'm happy to wait and see and do tests to gather greater diagnostic information, but in the meantime, I can't help but wonder why her body struggles in these ways. Is there an underlying condition? Is it simply a case of genetics predisposing her to some anatomical challenges? Is it the result of something in utero or environmental?

I suppose to some degree, my frustration stems from my struggle to follow blind instruction, a remnant of my authority-challenging inner self. The need to understand why and to argue the counterpoint of a decision before accepting the outcome began when I was about Abby's age (insert laughter of my parents here) and hasn't diminished with time. But without the benefit of a medical education, I'm left to draw my own semi-educated, self-informed conclusions. And so, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I'll fall to the default explanation of genetics and anatomy and fill that prescription for the nasal steroid.

Such is the challenge of parenthood--moving forward in faith, even when I harbor so many questions.

Learning to Live With Imperfection: A Two-Way Street

2011-04-25T11:18:00.001-06:00

"Soon after [toddlerhood], he learns right from wrong and has to process his own failures and feelings of 'not being good enough.' He also learns that you aren't the perfect parent, and he learns to accept and work with someone who is also 'not good enough.' Forgiveness becomes a reality. Anger toward and love of the same person is a developmental milestone. He learns that there is not a 'good mom' and a 'bad mom.' Or a 'good me' and a 'bad me.' There is a 'good and bad me' and a 'good and bad you.' He is building frustration tolerance with himself and others. And that milestone gives him the ability to be imperfect and have relationships with imperfect people--a skill that serves him for life."

--Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend, Raising Great Kids: Parenting With Grace and Truth

This principle of the duality within me as a parent is the truth I'm learning to embrace, and I needed the reminder this morning. A rough start to the day with Ben left me off-kilter--not to the same extent that the same exchange would have a year or two ago--but still with questions and doubts and feelings that the conflict could have gone better. I assert again that parenting is hard, hard work at times, and not always clear. The only constant is the imperfection of all parties and the undeniable need for love, which covers a multitude of sins, in all circumstances.

I think at times I worry that there is no room for my own sin and inconsistency as a parent, as though somehow, to do the job "right," I can never make a mistake. I don't think I had considered that by living with me, a "good and bad" me, my kids learn how to forgive and extend grace to others in their life. By seeing my own failure and, in many circumstances, repentance, my kids learn to own their own failures and to repent. I will never be perfect in this life, and so I have the opportunity to model how to handle our imperfections. I suppose the key is to recognize when I am wrong so I can confess my errors to my kids and seek forgiveness. That confession brings healing to the situation. The truth-telling of where I sinned in the conflict sets us all free.

I take comfort in this idea of imperfect kids learning to live with imperfect parents and, in turn, an imperfect world. And as my kids learn to accept a mom that makes mistakes and comes up short of the ideal, I am learning to embrace the reality of imperfect kids. I'm not sure where I got the idea that kids should be "good kids" all the time, but it's a lie that I'm better able to recognize and relinquish day by day. In failure, we have greater opportunity to love. Forgiveness, grace, and mercy are powerful mentors.

In the end, we are all prodigals, and the point of that parable is not that the son should never have left, should never have failed, but that the Father's love remained constant, and abundant, regardless. May I have the wisdom and grace to lavish my kids with such love, and may they return the same love in the face of my own faults.

In so many ways, they already do.

Love Bugs

2011-04-15T09:54:00.000-06:00

Last night at dinner, Abby leaned toward Josh and said, "Ih luhv you, Daddy. Sometimes Ih talk to Jesus becoz youh're my favorite Daddy in duh whole wohrld."

Josh melted, I smiled, and Ben said, "Abby, you're full of love and silliness and songs."

Out the Door

2011-04-05T09:17:00.000-06:00

When the doorbell rings this morning, the four of us--the kids, the pup, and I--enter a frenzy of activity at the front door. Ben and Abby fasten shoes and gather coats and bags, and I wrangle Merlot away from the door so they can get past without being trampled by an exuberant puppy desperate to greet the mom who drives the Tuesday morning carpool shift. I hold Merlot's collar, her front paws swimming wildly through the air in desperate attempts to propel herself out the door, and the kids slide out. When the door closes and I release her collar, Merlot sits placidly, empty of all trace of our epic struggle. I roll my eyes.

I don't dare open the door again, so I look instead through the window to make sure the kids get in the car without a sudden realization that someone has forgotten a backpack or lunch or library book or other necessity. What I see, though, is Abby standing in the driveway, unmoving. She's looking at me with an impish smirk. I brace myself for whatever assertion of will this three-and-a-half-year-old darling may throw down at 8:30 a.m.

When she catches my eye, however, she waves at me and, smiling, shouts, "Bye, Mommy!" before turning to the car and skipping off for her morning. It happens in a second. And I pause, right there, waving and smiling back, to give thanks for these little people whom I love.

What is True, Regardless

2011-03-25T18:36:00.004-06:00

"I lihke your rehd cayne, NetNet," Abby says, ever-mindful of aesthetic.

We walk through the parking lot to the hospital doors, and Abby asks a dozen questions about the two helicopters landing on the helipads. She holds her auntie's hand, the one not holding the pretty red cane, and in typical Abby fashion, she motors in every possible manner but walking: hopping, skipping, weaving--in starts and stops. I say silent, smiling prayers that she doesn't tumble us all.

We navigate through the corridors of this beautiful, new facility, and Abby exclaims over the coffee stand and asks to push the elevator button and wonders aloud why the hospital is an airport when she passes the large, portrait windows looking out over the roof and parking lot. When we reach the neurology department, we sit on the bench, and she asks to play with the cane--an endeavor that proceeds successfully for approximately twenty-three seconds before she attempts raising it skyward like a baton and then grounds it against another patient's ankle.

While NetNet fills out her paperwork, I settle Abby at the table with her pink legos, hopeful this diversion will provide the focus her ever-busy body needs. She builds and settles, but her voice retains its signature boisterousness and signature volume--loud--half-narrating, half-singing her three-year-old stream of consciousness.

Her presence is a lesson in contrast. The air of the center is quiet, somber, serious--as most hospital waiting rooms are--but Abby flashes joy like a beacon from the pre-disease world. Her pink boots smack of care-free confidence, and she brushes her hair out of her face with girly, business-like efficiency. She is wholly unaware of the dozens of people around her facing new diagnoses or inexplicable loss of function or a future full of questions marks. I am aware of people watching her. Some smile, some just observe. Her auntie and I exchange amused glances and discuss whether having Abby in the exam room will be too much of a distraction. We decide we'll all go in together.

Abby plays quietly with her legos on the chair while the professional checks my sister's eyes, reflexes, strength, and balance. There has been new weakness, new numbness for the first time in two years. Little Missy worries the flashlight shining in NetNet's eyes will hurt her eyes, and my sister explains what the light does and that it doesn't hurt. I am struck by the fact that, regardless of context or ability, my sister is simply NetNet to Abby, always. NetNet's personhood, importance, role, does not change, even if her body does. Abby's perspective is the most real, the most true.

She finishes her lego creation: a tall, tall house with a swing on top. I tell Abby I would like a tall house with a swing. My sister says, "Don't you miss those days, when you get to create whatever you want?"

I am grateful for her lightness of being. I read the signs proclaiming that Colorado has been identified as a high risk zone for MS and that MS is the leading cause of disability among young women, and I wonder about Abby's future. She is more likely to get MS given her aunt's diagnosis, and we live in a latitudinal hot spot for disease anyway. It is possible that one day this beautiful, exuberant girl will receive the same news her beloved auntie did the day before her twenty-sixth birthday.

I hope fervently not, but if so, my prayer for her would be the same as it is for my sister. That she would know she is not defined by her ability or lack thereof. That she would know to her core what is most real, most true. She is loved profoundly. She is unchanged in my eyes. She is a vessel of light in a world of serious, somber waiting rooms.

What is Fleeting--And What Isn't

2011-03-22T10:32:00.001-06:00

They sat on the couch in the early evening light: Abby snuggled into Daddy's side, Ben resting his head just under Daddy's chin. Josh read the book aloud, and the kids--content in their father's arms--grew still, and quiet. I watched them from the nearby chair, memorizing the picture, reveling in this little miracle of family, already feeling nostalgic for this togetherness, knowing they will not always tuck in so close.

Even as I wrestle with this sense of fleeting time, I remind myself that we are in this moment now, enjoying our children at this age, savoring this era's gifts. Time may pass quickly, but we're not missing it. We spend time on the couch with books now, invest ourselves in these moments as they arise, in hopes that we build a relationship that will remain intact regardless of age and size.

Their relationship to us has already changed in the five and three years we have called them ours, but it grows sweeter, richer, with time. The nature of our interactions will continue to change as the kids grow older and more independent, as they are drawn out of the shelter of our family and into the lives they build with their own friends and, eventually, families--and we will miss this time when little bodies fit so cozily, and happily, in our arms.

But I choose not to believe that this evolution of our role will constitute loss, that the future will be any less precious than the present. I am trusting that our relationships will continue to grow ever sweeter and richer as we make space in our days, in our lives, to know them and to walk with them through their worlds.

Sometimes, I watch our kids sleeping, their still babyish bodies sprawled across their beds, their faces infantile in their peacefulness, empty of the day's activity--and my heart aches with love for them, with an overwhelming desire to scoop them up and snuggle them forever. I imagine this urge will always exist, even when Ben and Abby are in the throws of adolescence or watching their own children sleep. But while they may not climb into our arms in ten, twenty, or thirty years, our love can provide the same strength and kindness, the same respite and security, then as it does now. Indeed, I pray for the grace to make it so.

In the meantime, though, I'll squeeze them as much as they'll allow while our arms are still their favorite place to be.

He Knows Me

2011-03-17T20:15:00.003-06:00

In the car today after Ben's ski lesson, he carefully unpacked his end-of-session goody bag full of everything from cliff bars to stickers to maps of the mountain, all a gift from his instructor. He pulled the contents out one at a time and showed them to Abby, who admired them dutifully.

At one point, Ben said to Abby, "I'm not going to show this to Mommy because she won't like it."

At this declaration, I, of course, quickly glanced in the rearview mirror to see what might be too offensive to show me. I glimpsed a plastic skull ring on his finger and began thinking about how amazing it is that he can intuit my discomfort with all things grotesque or morbid and then began worrying that I've been, perhaps, too overt in my discomfort toward such objects so that he would feel, at five, that he needs to shield or protect me from certain things--or, perhaps more accurately, protect his loot. Because I was already plotting how I might get rid of that ring. Is that terrible? And if this is the dynamic now, how will he ever feel comfortable confiding in me as he gets older and the issue becomes more complicated than a skull ring.

So I said in my most encouraging, light-hearted voice, "It's okay, Bug. You can show me anything."

At which point, he held up another plastic treasure and said, "See, Mommy. It's a spider ring. You don't like spiders."

To which I exhaled a great sigh of relief and chuckled internally and confirmed, "Yep, you're right. I don't like spiders," and then proceeded to exclaim over his creepy crawly.

Spiders. I should have known.

The Social Jungle

2011-03-14T15:01:00.002-06:00

I watch Abby show her picture to her friend. "Do you like it?" she asks, and I see her heart hanging out there in the space between them--earnest, sincere, hopeful.

Her little friend, also just three, ignores her.

"Do you like it?" Abby asks again, this time a little louder, in case her friend didn't hear.

Her friend looks up from her own art, looks at Abby's picture, and puts her head back down, saying nothing.

This intentional act of ignoring leads Abby to press further: "Do you like it? Do you like my picture, [Friend]?"

And finally, the little girls speaks: "I don't like those colors."

My mama heart catches.

"What color do you like?" Abby asks, seemingly unfazed.

"Pink," her friend declares.

"I like pink, too," Abby says. It's true. She loves pink. But this picture of the world with the sun beams streaming out of it and the continents and a few people doesn't call for pink. Instead, Abby used blue and red and green and yellow, as most maps do.

Abby returns to coloring her picture with not-pink and says, "I'm going to give this to my mom." Her tone is as light as it was when she began the conversation. She puts the lid on her marker, folds the paper up a dozen times, and brings it to me. "This is for you, Mama," she says with eyes that sparkle with pride.

And I am so, so grateful.

It amazes me how early kids learn to be cruel. So quickly interactions among children can degrade into Lord of the Flies hierarchies and power plays and the use of others for one's own social advancement. They learn how much power they can wield through silence or imitation or feigned indifference. They test each other's reactions, intentionally provoking anger or frustration or tears because, whether they realize it or not, there is a thrill to having that kind of control over another.

But it's unfair, because children don't yet realize that these social games and relational rivalries are untrue. How many adults carry around the wounds of childhood, scars from the playground wars that left them feeling ugly or stupid or weak or different? Kids internalize the opinions of those around them, even if the messengers are only three or five or ten or fifteen and hardly qualified to make judgements about the value of another person.

I'm sure my children are not innocent of these interactions. I'm sure they try their hand at these cheap tricks. I've listened in the back seat as Ben has tried to tell Abby something, with increasing insistence, as she ignores him, reveling in the power of her silence to elicit such emotion from her big brother. Once we've experienced this treatment, once we've been on the receiving end of meanness, it is all too tempting to try it out, to propel oneself out of the role of powerless and into the role of powerful by turning on someone else. It is one of the great ironies of life that we tend to hurt others in the very ways we ourselves have been hurt.

In fact, many of the kids I see playing this way are younger siblings who have likely been treated this way by older brothers and sisters who learn to be mean from friends who've been mistreated by other parents and siblings and friends. There is a heritage of cruelty that trickles down to even the youngest and most innocent around us.

But still it pains me to watch kids, my kids especially, hand their hearts to little people around them who don't recognize the significance of the gift. Children trust freely, they believe easily, they offer themselves unreservedly--and this is at once the beauty and danger of youth.

My mama heart was so grateful Abby chose to give her picture to me, because I will always see the value in her creations because I will always see the value in her. By focusing on my response rather than her friend's, her little spirit remains buoyant, unfettered by the judgements of another. I want my children to listen to me and Josh above all other voices. The more they trust us and our word, the less vulnerable they will be to the falseness around them.

As they grow, they will be, indeed have already been, hurt by those around them. But I pray that my love, that our love as parents, helps to heal those wounds, to mitigate the damage, so they grow up with a true understanding of who they are, unmarred by others attempts to establish themselves at another's expense.

Aftershocks

2011-03-11T19:33:00.000-07:00

On October 17th, 1989, at 5:04 p.m., I was putting away laundry in my room--finishing up my final tasks before our family would settle on the couch to watch the World Series where the Giants and the A's would play each other--when the rumbling started and the house began shaking and then kept shaking and shaking. I ran to my doorway, as all children raised in California have been taught, and saw my youngest sister, just five at the time, trying to climb the ladder to her top bunk, too little to understand. I remember panicking for her and trying to coax her down. When the shaking stopped, I grabbed her and then watched my other sister finish her scramble up the stairs to my mom, her homework left on the floor of our family room where our TV had fallen.

Our thoughts went immediately to my dad, who drives all over northern California for his work, and we began trying to get in touch to make sure he was safe. He was fine, though we understood all too well how easily we could have lost him. He was supposed to be on the Bay Bridge that day, which we learned had collapsed in part.

The Loma Prieta quake registered a 7.1 magnitude and lasted twenty seconds by some accounts, a full minute by others--a seeming eternity, regardless, when you're riding out the waves. But the worst part was the aftershocks, which triggered a rush of panic and adrenaline and fear that this one might be the one that changes our story. All three of us slept on the floor of my parents' room for a week, too fearful of being apart.

Eventually, we went back to our own rooms. Eventually, we went about life without the anxiety that it might end at any second. Eventually, we stopped running through the what if's that prepare us for life's hypthotheticals. But there were still times when I'd hear the rumbling of what I later realized was a semi driving by or, even years later in college, the approaching T in Boston, when my heart instinctively skipped a beat and my stomach fluttered with dread. The trauma of survival remains, not just in your memory but in your body. Survival changes you. Even when your experience is one one-thousandth that of brothers and sisters around the world.

When I heard about Japan this morning--their 8.9 earthquake followed by a devastating tsunami--I thought about the widespread grief and fear and panic that would ebb and flow for these people over these next several hours and days and weeks and months and years. I thought about the thin, tight feeling that takes residence in your chest whenever you wait out crisis, the feeling that makes it impossible to breathe properly and that leaves you bone-weary, teetering on the exhausted brink between stoicism and weeping.

Now they are being rocked by aftershocks as large as many countries' initial, catastrophic quakes. And they have the added mass destruction of the ocean rising out of its bed and sweeping away any hope of survival or recovery in some parts. It is heart-breaking. 88,000 missing. So many more waiting, hoping, praying. Homes, businesses, livelihoods destroyed. The enormity of their loss is unbearable. Impossible to fathom.

And the ripples of this quake reach the other side of the globe. It is extraordinary that the western coast of the Americas braced for their own waves, our global community separated--and now connected--by a mere ocean.

These disasters dash the illusions upon which we rely every day: that our world is safe and secure, that when we go to bed at night, everything will be the same as when we woke up, that we are somehow in control of our lives. It is a global wake-up call.

But even before I heard the news of Japan this morning, I'd been reflecting on how tenuous our sense of reality is. Our friends' infant son--seemingly healthy at birth--now waits in the NICU at Children's Hospital while doctors conduct test after test to determine the cause of his seizures. Each day, they wait for an answer, for any word that the crisis is over. They make it through an afternoon without a seizure and hope that perhaps they are getting close. And then his little body shakes again, and the hope gives way to unbearable disappointment and renewed anxiety. Over and over. They are suffering their own aftershocks, a personal tsunami, and I wonder how long it will take before their lives resume the illusion of normalcy.

My heart is heavy today. I know neither story is over, and I know that time will heal much, but first, these precious people must ride out the emotional marathon of the aftershocks, even as they try to piece together a semblance of their former lives.

Lord, help us all.

In Process

2011-03-08T15:30:00.001-07:00

There is a big world my children will walk into one day.

In truth, they already walk in this big world, but it is like the dream version where bad guys are mostly fictional and the golden rule is standard and black and white has not yet melded into the complexity of gray. Where they hold the hands of adults who love them and who make sense of inconsistencies and who carry the heavier things of this life until they are old enough to manage them.

There is a big world that we walk into everyday. Where humans are trafficked and children are exploited and people's vulnerabilities and misdeeds are manipulated to keep them in slavery.

But sometimes it feels like I walk in the dream world, too. My reality is so far from their realities. And yet these miseries are not so far from me. A few doors away, maybe. A few miles at most.

I've found my mind drawn to them recently, these anonymous sufferers. They have taken residence in my head, and I'm left wondering how to reconcile their existence with mine, wondering what to do with the knowledge of problems so deep and wide.

It's an incomplete thought, I know. But I want to keep looking past the illusion until I find an answer (is there an answer?). This is life in process.

Carpe Diem, Five-Year-Old Style

2011-02-23T21:59:00.001-07:00

Benjamin is on the cusp of riding his bike without training wheels.
On the cusp of skiing a real mountain.
On the cusp of swimming.
On the cusp of sitting with a book for hours on end, hopelessly seized by a story.

All this latent potential, this ability waiting to be possessed, realized...

He has it. He's growing it. Little by little. Day by day.

But he waits for it. He works steadily. He rushes nothing. There is no frustration, no impatience, no impetuous stomping of feet.

"I love riding my bike," he says as we put his bike away to head in from the cold. "It's fun to learn."

"I love learning how to ski," he tells me at the foot of the bunny hill.

After he finishes our bedtime story, he says, "Learning to read is fun."

The outcome, the goal, the skill itself is secondary to the joy of acquiring and building and improving.

I get his perspective, understand his love of learning completely. But I am amazed he has such insight at five.

May he always be so wise.

The Thermometer Phenomenon

2011-02-19T22:04:00.000-07:00

I remember times in high school and college when friends would ask me to feel their forehead to see if they seemed feverish. I remember obliging them but insisting I had no sense of what felt normal versus hot. "Maybe you're a little warm?" I'd offer, unsure. "Do you have a thermometer?"

My hands were untrained then. This knowledge of what feels normal comes only from time and experience and a relationship where touch is so routine, so regular, any variation is instantly recognizable.

I've become a remarkably accurate thermometer. With my kids, I know immediately when something is amiss. I wrap my hand around their foreheads and have a sense of whether they run a low fever or one that rages. "They're probably under 100," I can say to Josh, and I'm right. "I'm guessing he's around 101," and he is. Or, like yesterday, I can hold Abby on my lap and feel the heat radiating from her little body and know she's very, very sick, know that when I get the thermometer, the reading will be well over the typical temperatures that accompany run-of-the-mill viruses and infections. 104.5, to be precise.

This skill is a gift of motherhood. With the arrival of my kiddos, my body became so intimately acquainted with the bodies of my babies that I recognize every change, every anomaly. Nights of feedings, days of snuggling and soothing, hours of carrying and bouncing and hand-holding and hugging have left me expert in the feel of them--and this expertise is absolute.

So this morning when I felt Ben's face, I knew that his low fever hadn't changed, that it hadn't yet spiked into the harbinger of the flu that Abby's body fights so fiercely. And when I felt Abby's head, I knew her fever was still high but that it was no longer alarmingly so. And later this afternoon, when I returned to the house after the kids' naps, I felt Ben's forehead and knew his temperature had finally spiked. The thermometer read 103.2, confirming that he, too, was coming down with the flu. Conversely, Abby's little face finally felt fine--and sure enough, the thermometer read 98.8.

It's one of those aspects of parenthood you don't think about until, one day, you're amazed at how refined your sense of touch has become, how sensitive your hands are to even the slightest difference. I could never put this skill on a resume, yet it's an exclusive credential, one that only a select group can boast, evidence of the hours logged loving and knowing and being present.

The thermometer phenomenon: just another of the invisible wonders of motherhood.

This Morning's Gems

2011-02-18T15:11:00.000-07:00

All the World's a Stage

While I brushed her hair in the bathroom, Abby said, "Walking is like dancing!" And for her, the two generally are synonymous.

***

You Know You're from Colorado When...

...your five-year-old says, "It's warm like summer here," and the temperature is 47 degrees and sunny.

***

Beauty Everywhere

"Ihs this mih albutiful?" Abby asked while we did her nebulizer treatment. When I said, "Yes, this is your albuterol," she said, "Ih cahn't say al-bu-ter-fall." I like her interpretation better anyway.

***

The Scientific Mind at Work

While driving to the doctor and discussing possible reasons for the forest fire at the end of Bambi, Ben suggested, "You know how when you rub two rocks or sticks together for a long time it can start a fire? Maybe when the two big deer were fighting in the movie, their antlers rubbed together and made a spark that started the fire." Sounds plausible to me.

***

Best of All

On the card Ben made for me after breakfast, he wrote: "to mY Best mommY EveR."

Sometimes, I just want to squeeze them for being who they are. I love those kids.

Enough

2011-02-06T22:43:00.006-07:00

Inventory of Week:

Saturday: trip to ER where Josh is diagnosed with kidney stones
Sunday: skiing with the kids
Monday: Ben wakes at 4 to throw up and spends the day home sick
Tuesday: school cancelled due to near-record low temperatures; we spend morning in urgent care because Josh's pain is unbearable
Wednesday: school cancelled again; the kids and I visit the Denver Museum of Art
Thursday: full day of school, spin, volunteering in Ben's class, and ski lessons, punctuated by Abby's cries of pain through the afternoon and night due to ear pressure created by lingering congestion and elevation changes on our mountain roads
Friday: doctor's appointment for Abby (no ear infection, at least) and pancake dinner to celebrate Ben's completion of another box in his reading series
Saturday: quiet day of play and errands
Sunday: skiing with the kids

It's been quite a week. Epic in its absolute lack of reliability, predictability, stability, stasis, or any other semblance of normalcy.

And yet all the more memorable for the moments of fun and sweetness in between the crises.

After soothing Abby back to sleep for the third time Thursday night--her tears upon waking nearly inconsolable as she waited for the latest dose of pain medicine to take effect--I lay in bed exhausted, yet thankful. I found myself praying, gratitude overflowing from my heart: that our challenges are temporary, that our family is generally healthy, that I have the freedom to be home to take care of my family when they're sick, that I was able to find subs for my spin classes, that even though it had been a hard, hard week, we managed to ski and enjoy the art museum and read books together.

That when the pain in Abby's ear grew intolerable as we drove down snow-packed Squaw Pass from Ben's ski lesson Thursday, Benjamin--concerned and desperate to help--counted down the minutes until she could take more medicine in his most empathetic, big-brother voice.

Seeing someone you love in pain is all-consuming: it taxes every emotion, focuses all your energy to survival--theirs, and when it's over, depletes you of everything but overwhelming love, and gratitude that it's over.

It was an easier week for me than for them. I did not have to feel the pain; I merely witnessed it. Yet we all shared in this experience of family, of bearing together the sorrow and frustration of not being able to fix it, of not knowing what's around the corner, of not being able to count on the daily routines upon which we rely. We lived minute-to minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, holding our plans loosely, not knowing whether pain or illness or weariness would topple our finely crafted agenda.

Instead, we said, "Maybe we could...if everyone's okay...we'll see how we're feeling..."--and then accepted each moment as it presented itself. It felt strange, almost irresponsible, to cancel plans one afternoon and hit the slopes the next. Yet this was our week. One day we're rushing to the doctor, and the next, all is tranquil again.

Only one thing was constant: in each circumstance, we shared life in all its messy glory.

And at the end of this tenuous week, my heart aches and bursts with love so fierce, I know I can slay life's dragons with it. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, they are mine, and I am theirs--and this is enough.

Change of Plans

2011-01-31T15:21:00.000-07:00

There's a moment at 4:18 in the morning--when you enter your son's room after being woken by cries of "Mommy" to hear him say he feels like he's going to throw-up--when you face a choice: internally bemoan your exhausted state and clamber for some shred of control, or surrender.

I'm learning to surrender.

We walk to the bathroom together--my eyes barely open, his eyes showing the signs of discomfort and exhaustion--and I sit on the edge of the tub while he kneels in front of the toilet. We wait there together in shared misery. And wait. After a few minutes, when it doesn't come, we return to bed, but we both know it's a temporary reprieve. Once you've been woken at that time by a sick child, the chance of returning to sleep uninterrupted are slim to nil, and as anticipated, he calls just before five, having done the real thing.

The rest of the morning flashes before my eyes. What was supposed to be a quiet, productive morning of research and writing followed by reading time at the kids' school gives way to the new reality: last-minute carpool arrangements and canceling plans and bathroom runs and Gatorade.

But there's no use fighting it. Stomach bugs trump everything. First and foremost, I am wife and mommy. Everything else is secondary. Rather than try to maintain any of my original agenda for the morning while he recovers on the couch, I give up my to-do list. We take Abby to school, carefully navigating the icy roads, and Ben and I return home to snuggle up and watch a movie, together. The time is quiet, sweet, and I receive this change of plans as a gift of alone time he and I rarely get these days.

Now he's napping, for the first time in months and months. Abby, too, slumbers upstairs. Outside, the snow that came down as an icy mist this morning is now fluffy and falling fast, covering our little corner of the world in tranquil, white frosting.

It is not the day I anticipated. It's better.

Defying Inertia

2011-01-18T00:27:00.004-07:00

Last night, I felt an overwhelming desire to get the kids out today. Somewhere. Anywhere. Depending on the weather. I hadn't come to any conclusions about what our big outing would be. I just knew I wanted one.

This morning, though, the kids woke up and played and played and played while I handled the morning chores of breakfast and getting Merlot fed and walked and responding to various emails that needed attention. The kids were so happy playing in their pajamas, in fact, that I was tempted to scrap the whole plan to leave the house and just enjoy a mellow morning in, together.

But something nudged me to find an activity and go, and so I threw the idea of an outing into the realm of possibilities for our day, and the kids latched on. The mere mention of an adventure was enough to send them scrambling upstairs to dress themselves, and we made it out the door in less than the usual eternity it takes us to complete the steps of putting on coats and shoes and buckling into the car.

I settled on the Colorado Railroad Museum because it was close (and we needed to get Abby home for an early nap so she'd be up in time for her afternoon dance class), it was indoor with an outdoor option (so we could handle whatever the weather presented), and it's hard to pass up giant-machines-that-go when small children are involved (vehicles of any kind hold universal appeal for small people).

The museum was a hit. They pushed trains over bridges and into the roundhouse on the train table set up in the lobby; they were enthralled by the huge model train set that ran through tiny mountain towns and tunnels and trestles downstairs; and they never ran out of enthusiasm for the offerings of the outside yard full of actual, retired trains that they could climb in and on. Our morning at the museum was so delightful, they begged to stay longer when I said it was time to go.

Looking back at our time, I can't believe I considered not going. I was tempted to abandon my plan this morning when the kids were playing so nicely, tempted to stay put and take the path of least resistance: leave the kids in their pajamas to play puppies and dinosaurs and whatever else their imaginations manufactured--and just hang out. There's nothing wrong with this method of passing time--it's great, in fact--except that it is my regular default, and I probably succumb to the ease of that plan too readily. This morning, however, I made a conscious decision to step forward, defying inertia, to create new and different memories with my cuties. And the shifting of momentum to get us moving was absolutely worth it.

As we drove home, Ben, unprompted, thanked me for taking them to the museum. "What made you decide to take us there?" he asked between bites of his lunch in the car.

"I thought it would be fun for us to have an adventure together," I told him--and he half-giggled to himself, pleased with my answer.

Later in the drive, he announced he wants to be a conductor when he grows up. I could see the visions of maneuvering those mighty machines with their solid levers and mysterious switches dancing through his head.

There's nothing wrong with surrendering to the call of a mellow day at home, but it also pays to act with intention, to make a plan and stick with it. I know this mellow mama will be looking for more opportunities to do so in the future.

Wait for It

2011-01-11T12:40:00.001-07:00

Since we live in the mecca of snow-centered diversion, it is considered a given that our children will learn how to ski. "Have they learned how to ski?" is as commonly asked as "Where do they go to school?" And since the slopes are so close and the resort passes for children so cheap--sometimes even free in faith they're cultivating a life-long, eventually-paying enthusiast--many children learn young. Several of our friends' children began at two or three-years-old; some of Ben's friends are on racing teams this year.

So I'll admit to feeling a little pressure to get our kids out there and on their way to a winter full of downhill adventure. But that pressure has always been tempered by an awareness that Ben, our prudent, cautious, calculating little man, would need introduction to this sport at the right time: start too soon or too fast, and we may kill any chance of getting him back on skis before his tenth birthday.

We contemplated starting him last year, but the logistics of getting him up with Abby still so small were prohibitive. So we determined we'd start them both this year, figuring our fearless three-year-old would probably be happy to try anything big brother was doing and hoping the company of little sister would give Ben the added bit of comfort he might need to jump into something new and unfamiliar. We rented gear for both of them for the season and decided that as soon as there was enough snow, we'd start practicing in the driveway as a warm-up to the big-leagues on the resort runs.

The kids couldn't wait to try their skis. They'd put them on in the house with their ski pants and helmets and goggles and gloves and try sliding on the carpet, talking about how excited they were to learn. We all talked about the fun we'd have when it snowed. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans, and we didn't get our first real snow dump until this last weekend, when normally we would have had half a dozen major storms by now.

We saw the weather report Friday and told the kids we'd be able to try skiing Sunday. When we went to church Saturday night, Abby told everyone she was going skiing the next day. I prayed the storm would work its magic so as not to disappoint.

The snow indeed began falling overnight Saturday, but it came down slowly, gently, accumulating barely an inch or two by morning. The kids have no real sense of quantity, so as soon as they finished breakfast, they asked if they could ski. We told them we'd need to wait a few more hours, hoping enough snow would accumulate to make it even remotely feasible. The kids busied themselves with puzzles and games but continued asking when they could go it. Around 10:30 that morning, we decided there was enough snow on the grass to at least get them up on their skis and begin learning some basics, even though our driveway, the perfect bunny hill, still didn't have enough coverage.

Their excitement was palpable as we bundled them up to head out. With their ski boots on, they tromped like seasoned professionals out of the garage and into the yard. Josh grabbed their skis, and we all stood at the top of our yard anticipating the maiden voyage.

I was nervous, I'll confess, not sure what to expect from the kids as they experienced the sensation of gliding downhill for the first time. Would they be okay with falling? We'd tried to explain how fun it is to fall in the soft, pillowy snow. Would they mind gathering momentum before knowing how to stop? We'd assured them they could always fall over if they felt they were going too fast.

Josh helped Ben, then Abby, step into their skis, and they practiced falling over sideways. He taught them to scoot their bottoms right next to the skis before pushing up with their arms in order to stand back up. He instructed Ben on how to step widely with his skis to point himself downhill. Then he let Ben grab his arm with both hands, and they began: slowly, almost having to propel themselves at first, and then sliding freely as the slope increased. Ben smiled. He fell over near the bottom of the yard. And he said, "I want to do it again." Success.

Abby's start was more eventful. We think her boots must have been too tight at first, because after one run, she wanted to be done, claiming her legs were too tired. After we helped her out of her skis, she fell like a tree into the snow, laying there until I came to help her up.

But after loosening her boots and getting her back up again, she made another attempt and then asked for more.

We spent the next forty-five minutes pushing the kids back up the hill so they could slide down again. After just a few "runs," Ben wanted no assistance other than to help him back to the top, where he could turn himself around, get going, and stay balanced as he slid down. He even managed to make his "pizza wedge" and stop himself on a handful of occasions. Throughout our time, he'd say, "This is fun! Skiing is fun!" through big smiles of pride and accomplishment and delight.

Though Abby's three-year-old coordination left her more dependent on us, she smiled and smiled, letting go of Josh to slide to me for the last few feet of her course each time down. I'd catch her under her arms and she'd lean back, looking up into my face with a huge grin. I'd kiss her cheek, turn her around, and push her up once again. Several runs in, she said, "I like skiing!"

When we depleted the supply of snow in our yard and came back in the house to warm up, Josh and I exhaled a collective sigh of relief. Our first session went about as well as we could have hoped. Ben clearly has the coordination and motivation to pick up this new skill and excel. He absorbed every instruction Josh gave him, learned and executed the skills quickly, and enjoyed the process. When he begins his official lessons next month, we have no doubt he'll be ready.

And watching Abby's process confirmed that we're right to wait another season before officially putting her in lessons. She's enjoying a taste of it, but she's not quite ready for the full experience yet.

There are times I second-guess our decisions to wait or slow down on introducing the kids to experiences. But our morning in the yard confirmed we are wise to listen to our gut. We really know our kids best, even if it means they're a little behind some of their peers. Ben's ready, really ready, and he'll probably catch up quickly--quicker, I imagine, than if we'd pushed him into learning too soon.

When the timing's right, it's clear. And it's worth waiting for.

The Stockings Were Hung by the Chimney with Care...

2010-12-24T21:20:00.001-07:00

Last night, Josh and I sat on the family room floor in the light of the Christmas tree and wrapped and wrapped and wrapped. We lifted each gift out of its shopping bag, all carefully chosen for a three-year-old girl delighted by puppies and princesses and pink and and a five-year-old boy discovering the wonders of reading and enthralled by toys he can construct, engineer.

Tonight, the kids made an extra-chocolatey glass of milk and chose two of the cookies they decorated to leave out for Santa. As we headed upstairs for bed, the doorbell rang, and we opened it to neighbors serenading us with carols. We read 'Twas The Night Before Christmas and the final page of our advent book, which ends, of course, at the manger.

And so, with the kids tucked soundly in bed, Josh and I descended to the family room to make our final preparations for morning. We brought up all the gifts and placed them around the tree. We wrapped the last few gifts we remembered we'd stashed in closets and drawers months ago. And we filled the stockings with their presents from Santa.

The North Pole contributions were more difficult to find this year. Abby asked for a "reindeer she could sleep with," and while most years, I feel like I see reindeer everywhere, I must have been in the wrong places this year. Yesterday, I finally saw a darling, girly reindeer with a red and white polk-a-dotted bow between her antlers: Clarice from the movie Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It's soft and snuggly and perfect.

Ben, to our chagrin, asked Santa for a Santa costume. I knew as soon as he said it we'd have trouble finding the big red suit for a child. We saw some options online, but they were either expensive or huge, so I managed to pull together a makeshift suit comprised of 1 Santa hat, 2 Santa slippers, and cute Santa pajamas--or so I thought until we pulled the pajamas out of their packaging tonight and found they said, "What Santa doesn't bring me Grandma will." This little tiding of joy was invisible when I bought them. Argh.

So in an effort to save the costume, Josh spent part of the evening in the kitchen sewing a patch over these tacky words (I know, I know: domestic diva I am not; Josh is the one who sews in this family). When he finished, the patch actually looked like Santa's sack, like it could have been part of the original design. On the patch, we wrote "To Ben, From Santa"--a personalized touch. How many kids get that? It's impromptu and imperfect, but I hope the gift is received as wonderful because it's from "Santa."

And this is what it means to be Mommy and Daddy. We get to create the magic of the season. We set the tone. In every aspect, we get to wow and surprise and delight. And it is our joy to do so.

While wrapping presents last night, I felt such excitement to see the kids open their gifts--a grown-up giddiness not unlike the childlike anticipation I felt when I was little and couldn't wait to open my own presents. I thought of the verse in James that says, "every good and perfect gift is from above" and gratefully acknowledged that these gifts come not just from me and Josh. I considered the verse that reminds us that if we on earth know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more the Father in heaven delights in giving good gifts. And I reveled in the knowledge that tomorrow morning is but a taste of God...not in the tangible items that will be unwrapped and played with but in the Love that accompanies each gift.

It's nearly midnight, nearly Christmas: the stockings are hung with care, we've left the plate of cookie crumbs and the empty milk cup by the fireplace with notes for each of them from Santa, and now we'll head to bed with visions of giggles and laughter and the wonder of our precious little ones in our heads. In the morning, we'll open stockings, we'll sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus with candles in our coffee cake, and we'll begin the exchange of so much more than commercialism.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

"Is Anything Too Wonderful for God?"

2010-12-14T11:08:00.002-07:00

I discovered Sara Groves last Christmas on the radio and downloaded her holiday album, Oh Holy Night, to enjoy this season. I love her folksy voice and her original arrangements for the traditional hymns I've sung since childhood. In the last several years, the words of songs like "Oh Holy Night" and "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" have held new, poignant meaning anyway. But somehow, listening to the lyrics in a different rhythm, with a different melody, invites yet another, new reflection.

This song, "It's True," which begins and ends with Groves' young son narrating the encounter between the angel Gabriel and Mary, nearly brings me to tears every time. The incarnation itself is miraculous. But the idea that God would send a baby--not an army, not a natural disaster, not a political powerhouse--to save the world leaves me reeling in wonder.

"But this is too wonderful," Mary says.

"Is anything too wonderful for God?" the angel replies.

...No. For nothing is impossible with God. And if God is love, and if nothing is impossible, then we are in for some wonders.

At the end of the song, the young boy describes the star shining above the stable in Bethlehem, "like a spotlight" on the baby Jesus "showing people the way to him," because, he says, "God was like a new dad. He couldn't keep the good news to himself. He'd been waiting all these long years for this moment. And now, he couldn't wait to tell...everyone."

In the world, often those who believe this story muck it up, convolute it, add their own interpretations and regulations and conditions, stripping it of it's glory. But at it's heart, this is a love story. It's good news. God saved the world with a baby: helpless, defenseless, needy, intimate--subject to all the injustices and failures of those around him that the rest of us face every day, bearing it all to destruction on the cross, in his body broken, blood shed.

In this story, there are no uzis, there is no fire from the sky. Just a baby God, lying humbly in a food trough, for the love of us.

It is too wonderful.

It's True

(featuring Toby Groves)

by Sara Groves

In your heart you
know it's true
though you hold no expectation
in the deepest part of you
there's an open hesitation

but it's true
kingdoms and crowns
a God who came down to find you
it's true
Angels on high
sing through the night alleluya

heard it told you
think it's odd
the whole thing fraught with complication
the play begins with
baby God
and all His blessed implications

but it's true
kingdoms and crowns
a God who came down to find you
it's true
Angels on high
sing through the night alleluia
alleluia, alleluia

Oh it's true
kingdoms and crowns
a God who came down to find you
it's true
Angels on high
sing through the night alleluia

"I Wuv Mrs. Kwoz!"

2010-12-12T20:21:00.001-07:00

We attended the annual Fire Department Christmas party last Sunday with the best Santa and Mrs. Claus in the history of St. Nick. Ben couldn't wait to see Santa. Abby couldn't wait to wear her Christmas clothes. Several days before, she said, "Mommy, I'm worried my feet will grow too much before Christmas and my Christmas shoes won't fit." I assured her it was highly unlikely her feet would grow that much over the course of the next few weeks, but she was much relieved to put them on for the party and finally wear them.

All week the kids discussed what they would ask Santa for this year. They also had detailed conversations about how Santa would know which stocking is Abby's since she decided she wanted hers to be the reindeer stocking that's usually mine instead of the angel one she's used the last few years. Ben, very pragmatically, brought up this point when she decided to trade. He also suggested the solution: let Santa know at the party. She agreed.

At the party, the kids waited patiently in line to see the beloved North Pole residents. When their turn came, both kids happily sat on their laps: Ben on Santa's, Abby on Mrs. Claus's. Since we've seen this same Santa and Mrs. Claus since Ben was a baby, Santa & Mrs. Claus remembered the kids, and Mrs. Claus, who seems to have a special fondness for Abby, delighted in giving her lots of squeezes and kisses. Abby seemed to soak in every second of time with her.

Santa chatted with Ben for a minute while Mrs. Claus talked to Abby about her pretty red dress (did you know red is Santa's favorite color?), and when the time came, Ben asked for a Santa costume (where am I going to find that?), Abby asked for a reindeer she could have in her bed (a reindeer stuffed animal), and then she shyly informed Santa of the new stocking arrangement here in Ben-and-Abby land. With this explanation, the kids said goodbye to the costumed couple, who've infused their roles with a very real kindness and gentleness. We gathered our coats and headed home.

When we got to the car, Abby said, "I wuv Mrs. Kwoz."

I think the feeling is mutual.

***

Hoping this season brings the same merriment and magic to you and yours.

Levity

2010-12-06T00:31:00.004-07:00

Somewhere in the middle of Utah, on the second day of our twenty-plus hour drive from California to Colorado, after a week of staying up past midnight playing games with family and then waking up with the kids bright and early in the morning, following an all-night drive to California the weekend before, Josh decided he needed some sleep.

We traded places at a rest stop overlooking miles of untouched land so I could drive, throwing out the sack from our most recent fast-food meal and giving Merlot a chance to use the natural facilities in the course of two minutes. In order to get over the Rocky Mountain passes before the snow and darkness conspired against our journey homeward, we made our stops absolutely efficient.

We chose to swap about an hour after lunch when the kids would normally rest so, presumably, the car would be quiet. I pulled back onto the highway, set the car's cruise control to 80 on our 75 mph course, selected music conducive to nap time, and settled in for my portion of the drive, absorbing the vast expanse of flat land punctuated by massive bluffs in every shade of pink and orange. Josh let the kids know it was rest time, telling them he needed to sleep, too, so he could drive the difficult sections of snowy roads we knew we'd meet later in the day. In the back seat, Ben and Abby grabbed their stuffed animals to settle in, and Ben picked up a quiet activity to occupy his time now that he no longer needs the daily afternoon sleep.

What ensued within minutes, however, was riotous laughter--the kind that only grows more exuberant with each new request for quiet. As much as Josh tried to position himself comfortably, no matter how mellow or melodic the music I chose, regardless of how sternly we insisted it was rest time, the kids simply could not contain their giggles. One would start and the other would join and after an hour passed this way, Josh sat up in his seat, conceding the battle for sleep.

As dire as the exhaustion was, though, we caught the twinkle in each other's eye. Whatever the circumstance, the laughter of our kids reveling in each other's company is impossible to scorn. We couldn't help but enjoy their childishness, even if it was at the expense of much-needed shut-eye.

Not surprisingly, the kids quieted after we gave up our effort to induce slumber. Abby's eyes grew at first stare-y and then drooped ever further until they finally closed. Ben's attention was drawn by the activity in his lap. Josh finally had the quiet--and sleep--he so desperately sought earlier. While he dozed, I drank in the vistas and the music, meditating on the miraculous world outside the car--and within.

It's funny how often parenting teaches this lesson. Thou shalt not get what thou seeks in the moment. But thou shalt often get something better, and eventually, when all seems for nought, thou shalt receive a miracle of grace--and rest.

About a year and a half ago, I wrestled some mighty demons--critical and condemning voices I met at the crossroads where my expectations of who my children should be met the reality of who they were in the moment. And in that meeting of the twains, I had to confront who my children are, who I am, what my role as a mother is, and more importantly, what my role is not. That struggle was a significant impetus for starting this blog, where I would have a space to process and navigate this murky territory of parenthood requiring the absolute surrender of self to what seems an impossible job but that, in reality, is the glorious gift of getting to know a person created wonderfully and fearfully, and shepherding this most precious creation through a world at once wondrous and cruel.

It has been this recognition that Ben and Abby are not my creation, not mine to "make," not mine to control but, rather, mine to love and discipline and forgive--over and over and over--that finally brought freedom from the whispers of doubt and failure that had plagued me. Over the course of this trip, I got to live in this new reality: not fretting about the childish mistakes and misbehaviors of my children, regardless of who was present to witness their imperfection, but accepting it all as an invitation to love more, to forgive more, to trust in Someone outside myself more.

Because I've come to believe, somehow, that my children's behavior isn't always a reflection on me. That he who is forgiven much loves much. That maybe God even set it up this way. That the opportunities I have to love my children through their imperfection actually increase their ability to love those around them. We love because we were first loved, but love based on performance is not love at all. To the contrary, I'm beginning to think the more we know we are loved apart from performance, the more we begin to perform. So we actually had very few frustration-inducing moments during the week, probably because I wasn't trying so very hard to prevent them out of fear that I or they would look bad, wouldn't perform adequately.

Anyway, all these thoughts swirled while I navigated the windy highway up and down the rocky bluffs standing between us and home, the kids' laughter from the previous hour a soundtrack for these reflections on grace and freedom. In the end, their levity, unwelcome at first, amplified my own.

And we all rested after all.

Today's Heart Attack

2010-11-16T23:02:00.002-07:00

Merlot networks with the local, oblivious to her obvious size disadvantage. As far as she's concerned, this may be her new backwoods playmate. She's deaf to my voice, to squeaky toys, to the kids calling her name from the front door.

She actually follows this buck up the street and into the neighbor's yard, creeping as close as she can before the buck moves a few steps away, hoping to shake her off like a pesky fly. I know she means no harm, and somehow, it seems the elk does, too. In fact, the elk looks at her with something like amusement, affection even. It's me, the lady hollering "Merlot" from across the street with traces of panic in her voice, that captures his attention.

When she realizes the elk is not going to play, Merlot walks past him to graze on goodies further into the yard. There they stand in nonchalance--pup and buck--mocking my desperation (if only I had that photo). I decide to make my way to the backside of the house from another street, and I catch Merlot's eye, which is when I take off running the opposite direction. Dogs are powerless against running away: they're compelled to follow. She sprints, nearly running off the ledge next to me in her haste to reach me. And so I leash her, walk her back to the house, and shut the door in relief.

Just another day in Evergreen.

"License, Insurance, & Registration, Please"

2010-11-08T14:52:00.002-07:00

The learning opportunity was mine Friday.

We drove over a bump in the road as we coasted down the hill, and the car felt like it was sailing. I knew immediately I was going too fast. So did the policeman driving the opposite direction. I watched in my side view mirror as the patrol car pulled over to the side of the road, waited for the cars behind him to pass, and then turned around into my lane. It was no surprise when the lights flashed behind me, so I pulled over and waited for my doom.

In the meantime, the kids noticed everything.

"Mommy, why did you say 'uh-oh'?" Ben asked.

I figured this was a good time to model the concepts I'm trying to teach them: owning up to your mistakes, accepting the consequences, and moving on. So I answered honestly: "I was going too fast down that hill, and the policeman noticed. I'm probably going to get a ticket for going too fast."

This was a good exercise for me in taking responsibility, since I tend to blame all my tickets on the (obviously) ridiculous and unfair cops on the other side of the window. But as I've had to explain the job and role of policemen to Ben and Abby over the years, I've also had to concede that they do, in fact, exist to maintain the safety and well-being of the general public and that they aren't just driving around looking for opportunities to ruin people's days (the glaring exception here is, of course, the Morrison cops, who gleefully stalk the worst speed trap in the country... And maybe a young officer in Idaho, but that's another story).

It may sound strange, but I was actually a wee bit grateful for this incident. Over the years, Ben has grown irate at the idea of a policemen giving people tickets. He used to give long soliloquies about how he would drive away fast if a policeman pulled him over or how he'd tear up the ticket if he got one. I've tried explaining that this response would simply make things worse, resulting in an arrest or in losing his license, but he just comes up with more grandiose methods of escaping the punishment.

I'll admit to fretting at times about his attitude toward authority: it's clearly not the policeman's fault if someone breaks the law, and people who follow the rules have no reason to fear cops. Police really do have the public's interests at heart, even the dreaded highway patrol: there are fewer accidents in the areas that cops patrol regularly. People really are safer when cops regulate speed. But it had seemed much of this rationale fell on deaf, or defensive, ears.

To my relief, this attitude of his has subsided lately, and he's actually talked about wanting to be a policeman when he grows up. He even wanted to be one for Halloween, but we did our costume shopping too late, so there weren't any officer costumes left in his size.

Still, there were times I thought it might be valuable if Ben saw me get a ticket so he could see that getting one does not come from a policeman's meanness but as a natural consequence to breaking the rules. Police officers are generally nice, normal people--not bad guys out to get us. Here was Ben's opportunity to witness this truth first hand, and I was well aware of it.

The two officers came to the passenger side window and asked for my license, insurance, and registration. They asked if I knew why I was being pulled over, and I answered honestly: I was going too fast. When they left, the kids asked why they needed all those papers, so I explained they needed that information to make sure there wasn't a record of any other laws I had broken. "What happens if they found something wrong?" they asked. "Well, I'd have to pay the consequence for that, too. But I know I haven't broken any laws, so I don't have anything to worry about."

When the officers returned, they handed me the ticket and the rest of my documents, explaining the details of when and where I could go to court and contest the ticket before a judge if I wanted. I nodded as they spoke, and when they finished, I apologized.

"I am sorry," I said, hoping I sounded sincere. "I didn't realize how fast I got going there."

"That's okay, Ma'am," the officer said. "I don't take it personally, and I hope you don't either. Try not to let this ruin your day." With that encouragement, they walked back to their car.

His response was perfect, and I was glad the kids heard it. It reminded me of how discipline should be implemented: calmly, objectively, without the impassioned reaction of a personal affront. I want to carry out my children's consequences with this same kind, calm, detached perspective. I'm not taking this personally. I hope you don't either. Try not to let this ruin your day, Pumpkins.

We drove away but continued discussing Mommy's grand mistake.

"Why do you have to go to a judge?" they asked.

"Well, if I felt the ticket they gave me was unfair or that I wasn't doing anything wrong, I could go talk to a judge and tell him my story, and the judge would decide who is right. But since I know it was my fault, I'm just going to pay the ticket. There's no need to go to court." We talked about how I'd write a check when I got home and put it in the mail.

"Wasn't the policeman nice?" I asked. I saw the kids nod in my rearview mirror. "They're just doing their job. Even though it's frustrating to get a ticket and have to pay some allowance, it's my fault I got it, not theirs."

We finished our errands, the kids occasionally reminding me not to go too fast as we drove. "Don't worry. I'm being very careful about my speed now," I told them.

"I'm going to be a policeman when I grow up," Ben said. "I'm going to keep people safe."

"And I bet you'll be a nice policeman like those guys," I said.

I learned something. I hope the kids did, too. And so, this is the only ticket I've ever been grateful for.

But I sure hope it's the last.

Monumental (Revised)

2010-10-30T13:55:00.001-06:00

We've been taking the kids to swim lessons on Saturday mornings for the last several weeks. This morning, Josh and I decided Abby and I would stay home in hopes of protecting her already stressed lungs from suffering further irritation in the chlorine, so Josh took Ben. The phone rang about an hour and a half after they left, and when I answered, Josh said Ben wanted to talk to me.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Mommy! Guess what?"

"What, Bug?"

"I have something really exciting to tell you, and I'm really proud of myself for doing it."

"What is it? I can't wait to hear!"

"Well, I was in the water, and [the instructor] kept moving backwards and I was doing those ice cream scoop things with my arms and I was kicking my legs and my face was in the water for like...about, um, 20 seconds, and Meg didn't even help me!"

"You did it all by yourself?!?!"

"Yeah, I swam all by myself!"

Enter orchestral overtures and fireworks and streaming lights from heaven.

This is a moment that has been years in the making...hoping. There are some milestones with some kids that feel like summiting Everest. Swimming was one of Ben's Everests, but I think we've finally made it.

*****
Okay, so Josh tells me I may have overstated Ben's accomplishment here--though I've accurately reported Ben's perception. Regardless, Ben is closer to swimming than he's ever been, and his ability to go further for longer, now, is clearly just a matter of time, whereas before it was not certain how he'd get to the point where he could put his head in the water, let alone swim. Maybe it was only a few seconds this morning, but it was the breakthrough that matters. Proficiency will come.

The Language of Abigail

2010-10-22T10:42:00.000-06:00

At the breakfast table this morning, Abby and I were playing some word games. This started when Abby got her yogurt from the refrigerator and asked me what flavor it was.

"Boysenberry," I told her.

"Does ih haf poison ih-nit?" she asked.

"No, Abby, it's not 'poisonberry.' It's 'boysenberry'--with a 'buh' not a 'puh.'"

"Oh. 'Boy-sen-bew-wy.' Whah else stahrts wif 'buh'?" she asked.

And so the game continued. At some point, I asked, "What sound does 'teeth' start with?"

She thought for a minute and mouthed it silently: "'Tuh,'" she said. "Teef stahrts wif 'tuh.'"

"That's right!"

"And 'teef' wymes wif 'beef,'" she added.

Hmmm...I couldn't argue with that.

In the Shadow of the Polka-Dotted Nightlight

2010-10-21T00:13:00.000-06:00

I held my baby (can I still call her that at three?) in the dim glow of her nightlight tonight, waiting for the medicinal mist to work its magic on her lungs. The shallow cough has been hovering for a day or two, and then the tell-tale rattling began this afternoon.

Unfortunately, Abby now realizes the inconvenience of the nebulizer. She protested both treatments earlier today, whereas before she simply resigned herself to this fact of life. After all, this machine has coexisted with her since she was nine months old.

When I went in to treat her late tonight, I mistakenly thought she would snuggle into my arms and accept the nebulizer without protest since I had to lift her out of a sound sleep to rest upright on my lap. But even in her sleepy stupor, she cried, "I dohn wahn-uh do dat. I dohn wahn iht," clearly communicating her strong opposition. I don't blame her, but I also know her body needs this help, so I braced us both and continued.

When she realized the situation was not negotiable, she gave up her fight and resumed her slumber in my arms. We sat together for several minutes: me leaning against her bed; her leaning against me--body still and heavy, eyes closed. I held her largely to keep her positioned properly for the meds, but also to feel the weight of her, to see that she still fits on my lap though her legs spill far over where they used to fit neatly, to enjoy her presence while it's still mine to enjoy, to will my love out of my heart--out of my very being--and into her still small but ever-growing body.

These late-night moments with Abby and the nebulizer have always been sweet because she's always accepted them with peace and a seeming awareness that this is what had to be done. We've passed these stolen minutes in mutual reverie, savoring the snuggly togetherness. It was painful tonight to share this closeness against her will, to insist upon her rest in my arms. I felt a twinge of sadness at her attempt to squirm away.

But this is my job: to have arms strong enough to contain any protest or rebellion or railing against her best interest. And it is a sacred job. I know her lungs need the freedom to expand and fill. I know her body needs to be able to breathe. She sees sacrifice. I see life. I see it on her behalf.

There is divinity in it, I think, to sit on the omniscient side of another's pain, to recognize the profound disappointment and frustration of one I would die for and yet to will it anyway for her benefit, so that she might live life to the fullest. All of it--every intention and motivation and action--is wrapped up in love. Deep, unstoppable love. Love that is willing to insist in spite of herself.

Equally spiritual is her willingness to submit, to surrender her will to mine--trusting that I know, or at the very least, trusting that I love.

I held my Abby tonight, though she would have preferred I left her sleeping, and I learned something about our Father in heaven who loves perfectly and wills all things for our good. I pray that I will have the faith to surrender even when I feel like going back to bed. And I pray someday that Abby will see and understand why I held her tight so the vapor could reach her lungs in spite of her sorrow. It's so she could breathe. And live.

It shouldn't surprise me anymore when I find myself on holy ground in the most everyday places, but it still does: burning bushes, baby's breaths, my daughter's room in the shadow of her polka-dotted nightlight...

All hallowed by Love.

Theology 101: From the Mouths of Babes

2010-10-15T16:03:00.001-06:00

In the car, we listen to the kids' favorite album du jour: a collection of worship songs sung by kids. We've been listening to it over and over (and over and over), so now the kids know most of the words and sing along, announcing which song is which when the music begins playing. They also ask dozens of questions about what the words mean.

Today Abby asked, "Why do dey say, 'Open duh eyes of my hahrt, Ward, I wahn to see youh?"

I thought for a moment and said, "I think because sometimes it's easier to live our lives when we can see where Jesus is and what he has made and the work he is doing around us. So they're asking for eyes that can see him everywhere."

"Jesus wohrks in evwee-one," Abby said.

"I know what Jesus's work is," Ben added. "Do you want to know what Jesus's work is?"

"Yes," I answered, wondering what he would say.

"Jesus's work is to tell us he loves us. That's the work Jesus does," he explained.

I thought for a second and realized that was as pure and accurate an explanation of God's work in this world as anyone could possibly articulate.

"You're right, Ben. Jesus is always working to show us he loves us."

Amen.

Man Does Not Live By Bread Alone

2010-10-01T19:01:00.000-06:00

In the group of friends with whom we meet weekly, the men have taken up the craft of bread-making. It is a serious endeavor with discussion of yeast and starters and stones and technique. They have books filled with recipes and baking secrets. They exchange discoveries with each other as they mix their dough and knead their loaves, forming them into perfect, symmetrical shapes. Several of the men in our group are scientists or engineers or both: all are smart men, strong men, confident men, and this wild frontier of bread, both science and art, calls to them like a siren.

Our group went away to the mountains for the weekend, and by the middle of our first day, the house was filled with the warm, slightly sour aroma of fresh bread: focaccia, oatmeal wheat, sourdough. As they worked, I looked on in wonder at the dough rising out of its bowl; I peeked at the bread baking in the oven, marveling at the ministry of heat. Bread-making is a process, a labor of love executed in multiple steps over many hours and days.

Perhaps because the process is so long, so involved, so passionately rendered, the breaking of the bread in our time together becomes sacred, sacramental. We eat this bread, made by hands in our midst, with wine over conversation of glory and failure and hope and fear. We taste it fully, savor its richness. The bread brings us firmly into the present and transforms our time into communion: we sustain our bodies together, and this shared rite allows us to also sustain our spirits: we confess, we speak truth and hope into each other's lives, and we do it all in remembrance of Him.

I used to think people who made their own bread were crazy, but I'm being converted to the fellowship of the real thing. It takes time, yes, and energy, but it yields so much more than carbohydrates. Faith, hope, and love; comfort in small miracles; the hard-earned joy of labor and its fruit. Freshly-baked bread speaks to something in the soul about goodness, unadulterated goodness. Jesus called himself the bread of life. He told the disciples to think of him anytime they broke bread together, drank wine together. We taste the mystery anytime we share a meal, but its significance seems somehow magnified in the simplicity of bread.

In our temporary home in the mountains, I breathed deep the fresh, yeasty smells, and I sensed my spirit rising, my heart growing with quiet gratitude: for the bread, for these friends, and for yet another glimpse of divinity.

Take Me Out to the Ballpark

2010-09-27T15:30:00.001-06:00

Around 7:45, sometime in the bottom of the 6th inning, after hot dogs and M&M's and talk about strikes and outs and runs, he says, "I'm tired, Mama." He climbs into my lap and lays his head against my chest, content to take in the game's sights and sounds from the comfort of my heart. He is first a child and then an observer of the world. For now, baseball is secondary to Mommy.

He alternates between snuggling, yielding to his five-year-old circadian rhythms that typically have him deep in dreamland by this time, and looking up and around when the crowd cheers or when the zealous fans around us coach the batters at maximum volume.

I soak in his closeness. Josh and I exchange smiles. We are parents: proud, in-love with our family.

Later, he reaches for Josh to hold him during the seventh-inning stretch. Perched in Daddy's arms, he can see everything. When the masses begin to sing, his eyes twinkle, and he sings along: "Take me out to the ballgame...". He forgets a few words, but this momentary lapse is okay--it gives him time to smile, to grin wildly at the joy of it, to feel the way he belongs to this world because he knows the song, can participate in the tradition with the grown people. Until the fireworks, this brief musical interlude is his favorite part of the night.

I've never had a better time at a ballgame.

Portrait of a Future Lady as a Young Girl

2010-09-20T09:23:00.002-06:00

I had to pull together photos of Abby for her birthday celebration at school—one from her birth and for each birthday thereafter. With the help of a teacher, she will glue them to a timeline with her own narration of the photos’ events to share with her classmates as she holds a small globe and walks around the “sun”—a small, lit candle—once for each year she celebrates. There will be three revolutions this year, and for me, each trip represents universes of meaning and love and growth.

There are so many pictures to choose from, and the looking, the remembering, is, in itself, a gift. Captured by camera, these moments--small, simple, seemingly insignificant moments--bring back the fullness of that time, of the person in that time, and have the power to make me ache with gratitude and wistfulness and satisfaction all at once.

As an infant, she lies sleeping on a blanket, her small body requiring the support, the structure, of my arms and hands to do anything more; her baby head leans to one side, revealing soft wisps of dark hair; her tiny hands curl into fists as though grasping invisible fingers—perhaps they do.

As a one-year old, she sits unaided in the fall leaves, rapt, holding one of these papery crackles between two fingers and studying, with a trace of uncertainty, the remnant’s meaning.

At two, she stands in the knee-high grass and peeks at me through strands of golden hair aglow in the fall sun; her face hints at laughter, at joy; she is radiant.

At nearly three, she half runs, half skips through the trees, her face a wide, open smile, her long hair bouncing behind her. She plays, and in the playing, lives.

With every year, with every day, she grows and changes, becomes ever less dependent upon my arms and hands and ever more dependent upon her own. Her own two feet propel her through a world of wonder, her own fingers grasp at discovery. Though I am convinced that everywhere her foot falls and her hands search, she encounters traces of an invisible God, she does this now of her own volition with her own spirit at the helm. I stand by and watch in awe at the mysteries of the universe unfolding before her.

I feel both nostalgia and anticipation. As an infant, she felt like a present that would unwrap herself, revealing more and more of who she is with time. I know three years of her now. I miss the baby body that fit softly in the security of my arms. I marvel that her once-baby arms now wrap themselves around me for love rather than dependency. I wait expectantly to see how her grown arms will embrace the wide world. All in the same breath.

Autonomy is its own miracle, more staggering than even sunshine and fallen leaves, for in giving birth to choice, this self-determination gives birth to the possibility of real love. And so my nostalgia is tempered by joy in the tenderness she now freely shares.

What If--And the Mystery of Family

2010-09-12T15:02:00.000-06:00

Somehow over lunch, the topic of fire came up, as in "What would happen if there were a fire?" We hadn't had a detailed conversation with the kids about the various "what if's," so it was good to talk about what we would do, how we would get out, and how we would keep ourselves safe. We talked first about the idea of a forest fire and what it would mean to evacuate, taking only the most important things we couldn't replace--Mommy's computer with all our pictures, Teddy and Froggy, Merlot and Jasmine, etc.--and then driving to safety. With the huge wildfire in Boulder, I've been thinking about this concept a lot recently. Then we talked about what we would do if there were a fire in our house.

The kids asked question after question about the possible variations on a scenario, so occasionally Josh or I would bring it back to the main point: "If there's a fire in the house, you need to get out of the house as quickly as possible." Bottom line: keep yourself safe. At some point, Ben mentioned grabbing our important things before we got out, and so we quickly clarified that if there's a fire in the house, we just get ourselves out as fast as we can without stopping for anything. In a house fire, we emphasized, we just get ourselves and, hopefully, Merlot out. I think I said something like, "But you guys don't need to worry about Merlot. Your job is to get out of the house right away, and Daddy or I will figure out if we can safely get Merlot."

The tenor of the conversation changed here. Most concerned, Ben asked, "But what would happen if the fire got Merlot?"

We couldn't avoid the question at this point, so treading carefully, we said, "Well, Merlot would probably die."

And then I watched Ben attempt to control the emotion that flooded his face as he tried bravely to form the words, "Why would she die?" But he couldn't get past the first word before his lip trembled and his eyes filled with tears and the sadness spilled over onto his cheeks, finishing the sentence in heaving breaths. In seconds, he was completely overcome with sorrow at the thought of losing his beloved puppy, and Josh and I found ourselves crying, too--though for us, the tears came from deepest empathy for our tender son imagining such a loss.

Josh immediately grabbed him and held him close, and we both comforted him with assurances that this would probably never happen. We assured him that once we knew all four of us could get out safely, our next priority would be to get Merlot, too. And Jasmine.

"But Jasmine's not an outdoor cat," he reminded us, wiping his eyes.

And so the conversation moved into other hypotheticals. After we finished our lunch, we walked outside all together and pointed out their windows and the best way to get out of each one if they couldn't get down the stairs and out the front door. And we made plans to go get ladders this afternoon for each of their rooms in case they ever did need to escape out a window.

The conversation was good and necessary on so many levels. We made our escape plans, determined a meeting place outside the house, and gave the kids clear instruction on how to proceed in case of a fire. And we navigated new territory that brought gravity to the idea of this emergency that, I think, underscored why we have some of the rules we have and the severity of the consequences when something goes wrong. But it also touched on bigger issues of ethics and morality and philosophy: the weight of a human life versus an animal life and how to prioritize those lives when resources, such as time, are limited. Mostly, though, it gave us a glimpse of how important this four-legged friend has grown to our family and especially to Ben, who grieved deeply the mere thought of her loss.

I'll admit, though, I was taken aback by how quickly my own emotion rose to meet Ben's, as immediately and instinctually as a fight or flight response, as though it were my own grief. In a profound way, Benjamin is an extension of me and Josh, our love combined in one body. He is bone of our bones, flesh of our flesh. And so we saw our son's emotion, and it became ours--not in some unhealthy, codependent way, but in Love: in the identification and recognition of our own painful humanity passed down to him. It's hard to articulate, but today at the lunch table, the layer of reality lurking just below the surface revealed itself through these unanticipated tears. We are family, and that small truth means so much more than coexisting under the same roof.

No Judgement

2010-09-11T22:32:00.000-06:00

We just got home from church and tucked the kids in bed. This is the first time we've attended the actual service (as opposed to helping in the nursery or attending our "home church" which takes place the last Sunday of the month in lieu of the regular service) in months--and months and months. It is so good to sit and listen to truth.

Tonight, our pastor continued talking about John 8--the second of three sermons. He's been teaching through the book of John for nearly a year, I think. And tonight, he spoke of God's judgement, which is actually no judgement, contrary to the popular notion of fiery judgment propagated in most religious circles. "Neither do I condemn you," says Jesus to the woman caught in adultery after the religious folks dropped the stones they were ready to launch moments before Jesus said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." He encounters her in her sin--and offers grace.

In fact, he bears the judgement for her sin--for our sin--on the cross and then offers us Love in its place. Love becomes the judgement. So he invites us to surrender our judgement of ourselves in order that we would live in the freedom of his judgement, which is no judgement, which is Love. Are we willing to receive Love, in spite of what we know of ourselves?

It's crazy. We spend so much time trying to hide ourselves or make ourselves or create some version of ourselves that can be considered good, and all God asks is that we surrender our efforts and live in the truth of who we are: people who are trapped in self-focus and self-determination and self-awareness and self-consciousness but who are invited to rest in His goodness, to sacrifice the idol we make of ourselves in an attempt to be good, allowing Him to make us good through Jesus, through Love--the way, the truth, and the life. Actually, love is the ability to forget ourselves for even just a second in order to focus on someone else. Love is the gift of seeing beyond ourselves--not in some martyr-ish, put-everyone- else's-needs-above-my own kind of way, but in a freeing, I'm-not-so consumed-with-my-own-insecurity- or-shame-or-sense-of-needing-to-prove-myself-that-I'm-incapable-of-living-beyond-my-own-daily-drama. What a relief to be free of me.

God's invitation is almost the antithesis of what any "good Christian" would tell you.

Stop trying. Stop striving. Stop worrying about yourself. Rest. Receive my love, and in turn, without even realizing it, you will love, too. Gospel.

Anyway, God is so much better than I ever thought. What separates deity from humanity is not that God has some penultimate knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, that allows him to punish appropriately and justly but that God loved us so much, he chose to endure our punishment for us and give us his righteousness. In effect, he traded judgments with us. So we are no longer judged. We are only loved. And when we receive that, understand that, it changes everything.

That understanding helps me surrender my kids, my efforts at being a good mom, my fears that I am not doing well enough, my sense that I need to always be doing something better, and trust that He who loves and made my kids will be faithful to redeem them, to redeem my messes, and to love them through me far better than I could ever hope to love them on my own. Somehow. Through some divine mystery that I can only begin to glimpse.

So I pray for the faith to believe it--and rest.

It's Been a While

2010-09-09T16:15:00.000-06:00

And I can't say why except that the longer my little blog sits unattended, the harder it is to dive in again. So here I am, putting something down to at least alleviate the, albeit false, perception of pressure.

I think to some degree I'm dizzy with my newfound freedom. Both kids are in school now: Ben everyday until 1:15 and Abby three mornings a week. This time alone without the soundtrack of questions and needs and observations still feels novel, and there's so much I want to squeeze into that time, it's hard to know where to start.

Perhaps more significant is my confusion over what this blog is about, or more precisely, who it's for. When I began writing a little over a year ago, I wrote what I felt compelled to write. I wrote about the moments and thoughts and incidents that grabbed my heart, and I wrote it as truly as I could, without regard for what someone on the other side of the screen might think. What is true about this? I would ask myself--and then sit down to make sense of it in words, the writing and the discovery one in the same.

The fact that others could identify or find encouragement in this space left me giddy, though. Writing is infinitely more satisfying when shared. But I realized that satisfaction had to be secondary to the process in order for me to remain honest, or at least as honest as I know how to be in this season. I knew if I thought too much about who might be reading, I might be tempted to censor or omit ideas or thoughts.

Lately, though, as I think about trying to "earn some allowance" writing for magazines or other venues, I find myself conflicted. I have no clips--no official record of my writing as commodity--and so I wonder if I should send editors or folks interested in my work here. But here, I do not write commercial pieces about how to be a better mom in ten easy steps. Here I delve into matters of my heart, and my kids' hearts, in light of the Grace I've come to know, and while I certainly have no problem with people reading these thoughts, it's not exactly the kind of subject matter you throw at people in a professional context.

So then I find myself torn--between working towards an allowance, which is probably poor motivation indeed, and sharing my heart. And then I wonder if there has to be a difference between the two. Maybe. Probably. I don't know.

What I do know is that thinking about the hypothetical editor on the other side of this screen stymies the muse. Traps me in self-consciousness. I know for a fact that the times I write best are the times when I can't help but string words into sentences into paragraphs into stories for the love of the process, the craft, and the Meaning that begs me to find it.

Paradoxically, though, when I'm not worried about an allowance, the thought of someone on the other side of this screen motivates me to continue. Last night, in my confusion and frustration, I shared with friends that I hadn't written here in weeks and wasn't sure how to spend my time--and I asked them to pray. This afternoon, I received an email from a mom who reads my blog over her brief lunch break on the one day a week she works, and she shared that these words mean something to her. It's funny--I've actually had several people mention my blog in the last week or so as I've wrestled with what I'm doing and say that they've shared it with someone or mentioned it to a friend. So I'll take it as a sign.

She, you, gave me the impetus to sit down this afternoon while the kids rest and write something. This. Me. Today. Unsolved, in process, without the trimmings of lessons learned. Her words helped me to get over myself, really, and write--in remembrance of who I am and why I'm here and what I love.

Thanks for being patient while I figure it all out.

The Power of Contrition

2010-08-23T19:47:00.000-06:00

Tonight before dinner, while they were supposed to be washing their hands, the kids squirted hand soap in the toilet.

Why? I'm sure I couldn't tell you. I'm sure they couldn't either. I'll chalk it up to the irresistible call of science. What would happen if...

Our toilet seems no worse for the soapy wear. My tired body and frazzled nerves were, though. It wasn't so much this particular incident as the series of thoughtless acts that have littered our last few days--each insignificant in itself yet culminating in a roar of frustration. Arghhhhh! Enough already.

We talked about their decisions over the last few days at bedtime in lieu of reading books. Not in the "mommy's-really-angry-and-lecturing-in-a crisp-cool-voice" but in a "mommy's-really-weary-and-wondering-why-we-can't-just-make-life-easier-for each-other" kind of way. I laid out my feelings, we prayed as we do every night, and after we said, "Amen," Ben seemed to get it, expressing genuine repentance a few times: "I feel sad about my decisions, Mommy...I'm wondering why I did that, like Pickles the Cat...I'm sorry for making you feel that way." (Pickles the Fire Cat, in the book of the same name, begins his life chasing small cats from his yard, but when he becomes the fire cat and learns to help, he feels remorseful for his previous behavior, wondering why he treated others so poorly.)

Ben's contrite spirit is everything on a day when I've wondered if anything I'm doing as a mommy is effective. And it makes me wonder about parenting. In the end, it seems the most effective parenting moments I have are based on relationship. Mommy is a person. Ben is a person. Abby is a person. We all have to get along in this house and in this world. How can we best do that?

I'm sure childishness will strike again, but hearing even just one sincere apology renews my patience one hundred-fold. I apologized tonight, too, for lacking patience and for channeling my frustration into my voice. We all confessed. Then we all forgave each other. And we all went to bed at peace with each other.

Confession. Forgiveness. They are oft-neglected but powerful antidotes to all that is ugly within us.

Bad Guys

2010-08-22T23:22:00.000-06:00

"But Mommy, why don't they want people driving on their road?" Ben asked as we turned the car away from the street with the "No Trespassing" sign.

"Well, maybe they want to make sure no one drives up there who might want to cause trouble," I suggest, not entirely sure why the "No Trespassing" sign would be necessary on a road so far from civilization.

"But Mommy, a bad guy could still just drive up there," Ben reasons, the boy who always looks for the way around the obstacle. Someday he'll win a chess tournament. Or cure cancer.

"Yes, a bad guy could just drive up there, but probably there aren't too many bad guys around who want to drive up there. Probably there are just people like us who are hoping to get a closer view of the buffalo," I reason back.

"But what if a bad guy just drove up there?"he presses.

"Well, then the people who live there would probably call the police, and the police would come protect them,"I say.

"Do the police have ropes to tie him up?" he asks.

"No, but they have handcuffs," I say.

"Would they use their guns to shoot the bad guy?" Ben asks.

"Not unless they feel someone is in danger. The best police officers are the ones who hope they never have to use their gun," I say, my stomach turning over at the thought of guns and violence and destruction, even in defense of the innocent.

It's a new phenomenon, this stomach-turning response to pain in the world, whether "deserved" or not--a product of motherhood and the unsettling realization that all bad guys are people; that all villains came from someone, somewhere; that there are always miles leading to a particular outcome.

In the car a few days earlier, I listened to a segment on NPR about how the children of Iraq are faring the war. Early in the piece, a young boy is interviewed about the death of his parents: he says his mother was kidnapped one day when she went out for a walk. He overheard the call his father received, asking whether the family was Sunni or Shiite, then threatening to "blow her up with the other Shiites." They did just that, strapping a vest of explosives to her body and detonating her life. The boy's father cried so hard at the news, his asthma was triggered--and even after being taken to the hospital, he died, leaving the boy without parents. Later in the piece, Dr. Haidar Al-Maliki, a child psychiatrist at the Central Hospital for Children in Iraq, describes his observations from working with orphans and traumatized children. These children, he says, have grown accustomed to violence, many of whom witnessed their parents or others close to them killed in cruel and gruesome ways. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is common among children like this. Her fears that when this generation grows up, the country will be full of traumatized adults who will turn to violence themselves. He ended the interview with a prophecy: "I've said it before and I'll say it again, we killed one Saddam, but we've created a million Saddams."

Mileage. Trauma. Bad guys. Who is the bad guy? This world view of motherhood does not happily coexist in a culture that exults "survival of the fittest" and "kill or be killed" as its modus operandi. And it's certainly not easily explained to a five-year-old fascinated with guns, bad guys, superheroes, and self-defense. I remind myself that his world view is black and white, that it's supposed to be at his age. But internally, I wrestle, wondering how to raise a child who values both justice and mercy, who knows right from wrong but does not judge, who Loves.

From the backseat, I hear, "But Jesus loves bad guys. If I caught a bad guy, I would treat him respectfully because that helps him learn how to treat people."

My breath catches. I hear Love.

"Yes, Baby, Jesus does love bad guys, and you're right: we teach people how to treat us by the way we treat them." This revision of the golden rule has become a mantra in our household as the kids navigate the territory of sibling-hood and friendship and bump up against selfishness, their own and each other's. We've also talked often about how Jesus loves good guys and bad guys--and thank goodness, because the line between the two is so thin sometimes. Jesus draws no distinction between hate and murder. But even as I marvel at the truth that is rooting itself in Ben's soul, I wonder about the practicality of such a "philosophy," worrying he might neglect to defend himself if faced with someone who wishes him harm. And then I think of Jesus again and wonder where this model of self-defense came from. Certainly not from the cross. I drive, perplexed--yet grateful for a God who is far better than any authority I know on this earth.

I can't remember how the conversation ended. We arrived at the pizza restaurant, and the kids dissolved into tears over who would get the drawing board at the table. Abby had an accident in her chair while I was at the salad bar trying unsuccessfully to quiet her repeated, insistent requests for cheese pizza from across the restaurant. When finally I had both kids at the table, happy, dry, and with food, I managed to eat a few bites before Ben said, "Mommy, I need to go potty." And so, weary, I got up and walked him to the bathroom, trying not to feel frustrated at nature's call.

"Mommy, I love you. I love you more than I love myself," Ben said from the stall.

The bathroom trip was redeemed.

"Oh, Sunshine, that means you love me like Jesus," I said. "And I love you, too."

Redemption is everywhere. In the bathroom of the pizza restaurant after a harried half hour. In Iraq. In the hearts of good guys and bad guys, however the distinction is drawn. It is a hope I cling to in a world ravaged by brokenness and "bad guys." All things are being made new. That's a "philosophy" I can believe in.

Car Seat Tale

2010-08-13T14:10:00.000-06:00

From the backseat as we drove home from the rec center this sunny afternoon:

Ben: "Abigail Grace Taylor, I would love to play with you."
Abby: "Benjowmin Davih Taywor, I wouh yuv to pay wif you."

Sacred sibling vows--all sincerity and sweetness.

Sigh.

(Un)Sleeping Beauty

2010-08-02T22:14:00.000-06:00

The kids grow more and more amazing (and stupefying) by the day. We took them camping over the weekend, our first attempt since our camping trip two summers ago was cut short by freezing temperatures, and it was a success. The kids loved the tent, the sleeping bags, the campfire, and the novelty of living outdoors. They ran around the site finding sticks and playing games in the tent and asking questions. The day was so full, Abby asked to go to bed before we'd even had dinner and s'mores. Her eyes drooped, and she gladly put on her fuzzy winter pajamas so I could tuck her into her sleeping bag. She said she didn't even want to read books or sing--she was too tired. So I kissed her and left the tent to return to the activity outside.

In spite of her exhaustion, however, Abby talked and sang and jabbered for nearly an hour. She finally grew quiet as we settled in to roast our marshmallows, and we relaxed in the knowledge our baby was sleeping. Not twenty minutes later, though, we heard a loud, panicked cry, and Josh ran to the tent to see what woke her. We heard him ask, "Abby, what happened?" in a voice that triggered my worry, and then he stepped out of the tent with Abby in his arms where we saw her right eye completely blackened.

Half a dozen possibilities came to mind. I didn't see blood but didn't know if it was there and just covered in dirt. Had she found some ash? Had she found a pen? Was there something in her sleeping bag? Nothing made sense--until I entered the tent and found my makeup bag out and its contents strewn all over the tent. As I picked up blush and lip gloss, I heard Abby say "mascara" as she explained what had happened, and I looked down to find the mascara wand and the tube on the tent floor. Then I noticed black mascara on the floor, the side of the tent, and the air mattress. Abby's quiet had not been due to sleep but rather due to her focused exploration of Mama's things.

The pieces came together, and we couldn't help but chuckle. Here we are in the mountains having rustic adventures, and Abby is playing beauty parlor in the tent when she should be sleeping. It was too funny, and too cute. We cleaned her up with my face wipes--a time-consuming endeavor. Her attempts to apply mascara to her own eyelashes resulted in black gook covering the top and bottom of her eye, the top of her cheek, and some of her nose. Her hands had black streaks, and I think this must have prompted her cry: seeing her hand covered in a mess she couldn't fix.

We wiped her off gently, intermittently crooning consolation and hiding our giggles. As we returned her to her natural skin color, she asked, "Mama, how do you get it on your eye?" I explained my technique and then said, "Abby, I'll teach you how to put mascara on in about ten years, okay?" She seemed to accept this timeline and also indicated she wouldn't be playing with my makeup in the meantime. We'll see if the trauma of her black eye is enough to deter further experimentation.

They're learning the world--at times too slowly for my liking, at times sooner than is appropriate. Josh and I step in to navigate, encouraging them along or slowing them down, equipping them to face greater responsibility and freedom in some areas while reserving other privileges for later. But in the midst of this swirling sea of life stand two little people who love us like we hung the sun, moon, and stars.

When I pulled into the garage tonight after teaching my spin class, I saw the door from the house open so Abby could peer out. She beamed--a huge, sincere smile--as she stood there in her little pink pajamas, her tan legs bouncing and tick-tocking and swinging in perpetual motion. I waved at her, and she rolled her wrist in circles, her best attempt at an enthusiastic wave. She waited for me to get out of the car: half big girl, half baby, all charm and cuteness. And I couldn't help but freeze the moment in my mind to remember when she's applying her own mascara someday. These are precious days.

The Happiest Birthday

2010-07-24T20:13:00.000-06:00

Some days in parenting are just magical. The air is clear of conflict, the kids’ spirits shine brightly, and the atmosphere hums with joy. Ben’s birthday was one of those days—the excitement over his graduation from four-year-old to five-year-old was practically palpable. Even Abby, whose own birthday is still months away, resonated with anticipation. In fact, her sincere and heartfelt celebration of Ben throughout the day made this birthday the best yet.

Josh and I woke to Abby’s voice that morning sometime after 7:00. From her crib, she called loudly to Ben through their shared bathroom door, “Ben, Ih’m soh happy ihs your birfday today! Ben, Ih’m soh happy you were bohrn today!” Ben, king of accuracy and precision, clarified with the patience of a wise, old sage, “No, Abby, I wasn’t born today!” but clearly enjoyed her excitement. Abby, undeterred by his correction, shifted into a rousing version of “Happy Birthday,” her exuberant two-year-old voice leaving Josh and I in silent giggles next door.

These are the moments parents dream of, the exchanges that sometimes feel like the stuff of parental fairy tales--until we wake one morning to find the fantasy has, in fact, invaded reality, that Love does exist on earth as it does in heaven.

The day continued as sweetly as it began. Over lunch at the kids’ favorite pizza restaurant, Ben leaned over and kissed my head, saying, “Thank you that it’s my birthday.” Josh and I could only smile at each other. It felt like we spent the whole day enjoying our children’s purest selves and glancing at each other in delight.

The highlight of the day, however, was taking Ben to see his first movie in a movie theater: Toy Story 3. I had previewed it a few weeks ago and decided it would be appropriate for Ben, who we knew would love the story and characters and play and with whom we could discuss the darker characters and themes. Abby, though disappointed she couldn’t join us, seemed to understand why she was staying home with a sitter to take her nap. And so the three of us drove to the theater, bought our tickets, bought a box of candy of Ben’s choosing, and settled into our seats with our 3-D glasses in place.

When the movie began, he sat on the edge of his seat, attending to every detail with absolute focus and concentration. He laughed out loud in the funny spots; he whispered questions (“What does ‘selfish’ mean?”); occasionally, he reacted in his normal voice (“Is that the real Buzz Lightyear, the one with the real laser?!”), which we figured added to the authentic viewing experience of the grown-ups around us. And when it was over, he asked, “Can we watch it again?”, his love of the experience clear. As we walked back to the car, he said, “Buzz Lightyear is my favorite superhero ever, and he’s always going to be my favorite no matter what, even when I die and am under the ground and not alive anymore. He’ll always be my very favorite.”

He’s there, he’s arrived at boyhood—a lover of stories and adventures and daring rescues and bad guys brought to justice or demise, with enough understanding of the world to appreciate conflict and plot but with enough naivete, still, to adore a superhero, to believe in an unstoppable force of good and strength capable of vanquishing any evil. Five-years-old ushers us out of preschool days and into the era of true boyhood. And this new age sparkles with wonder.

Ben wanted to keep his 3-D glasses rather than recycle them and asked to take one of our pairs home for Abby. He gave them to her as soon as we got home. And though, by the end of the night after dinner and cake, both kids had reached the edge of their self-control, Ben still offered to let Abby open one of his presents as he had promised earlier in the week, “because I love her.”

It was a magical day, full of everything good and right and true: love, gratitude, selflessness, innocence, joy, and enchantment. Not everyday is like this. But this day existed, without contrivance or reminders or promptings or any other intervention.

And I'm pretty sure I'll remember it for a long, long time.

Don't Freak Out

2010-07-19T15:31:00.004-06:00

...but I'm going to share the most important information I just learned about keeping our children safe from sexual abuse.

***Because the statistics show that a third of women and fifteen percent of men are survivors of sexual abuse, it is possible that some of you reading this blog are survivors. I want to acknowledge that though this material is sensitive, there is information here you can use to keep your own children safe.***

(For more information, please visit Feather Berkower's website: www.parentingsafechildren.com. There you'll find statistics, resources, articles, and information on upcoming workshops. She also coauthored a book that will be published in the next few months: Off Limits: A Parent's Guide to Keeping Children Safe from Sexual Abuse).

In high school, I learned that sexual abuse happened to people I know. In college, I became aware that it was not a rare exception but an alarmingly prevalent issue for countless children. Ten years later, I look around my life and find it hard to know off the top of my head which list would be longer: that of friends who escaped childhood unaffected by sexual abuse or that of survivors I know. Child sexual abuse is real. It happens every day to kids all around us. And it is not selective: socioeconomics, degrees, Pottery Barn homes, and loving parents do not make a child immune.

Yesterday, however, I learned information and skills that will increase the odds that my children will reach their eighteenth birthday without experiencing it. And I feel compelled to share this resource and just a few of the things we took away yesterday with anyone who will listen in hopes that more children will become "off limits" to sexual offenders.

After two years of missing this parenting workshop due to scheduling conflicts, I finally had the opportunity to attend Feather Berkower's "Parenting Safe Children" class on Saturday, a workshop designed to educate and empower parents--and other adults or caregivers--to keep kids safe from sexual abuse. I'd heard amazing reviews about Feather's presentation from everyone who had attended previously, and I knew I needed to invest this time for the sake of my kids.

This is not your average parenting workshop. Feather addressed with tact and empathy and poise and clear, thorough information an issue many people are afraid to even acknowledge. Though the content, by nature, is difficult and, at times, uncomfortable, Feather managed to lead us through our time together without leaving us queasy or paranoid. Rather, Josh and I left confident, feeling empowered that we had the information and skills we need both to empower our kids and also to "filter" the people and places in their lives to give them the best possible opportunity to be safe, to become "off limits" to sexual offenders.

The statistics around child sexual abuse are staggering--I'll share just a few of many. From her thorough presentation we learned:

*1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys are sexually abused by the time they're 18
*40-50% of offenders are juveniles (this includes teenagers as well as young children sexually offending other children)
*of adult offenders, 95% are married men with children
*by an overwhelming percentage (80-95%, depending on the study), most offenders are known to children: offenders are relatives, neighbors, family friends, babysitters, coaches, etc.
*these statistics are based on incidents that are reported: imagine how many more go unreported...

Though most child sexual abuse is committed by males, the stereotype of the dirty old man lurking in the playground bushes is a far cry from reality. It is far more likely that our children will encounter offenders on a play date or at school or in their very own homes in the form of friends or loved ones. Remarkably, Feather described the types of individuals likely to offend with compassion, many of whom learned their behaviors when they themselves were abused (it should be stated clearly, though, that not all who offend were abused and not all who are abused go on to offend). Still, the familiarity of most offenders is what makes this problem so insidious.

But we are not powerless against it. Feather reminded us several times that we can equip our children to make them significantly less vulnerable to abusers.

After leading us through the statistics around the incidence of child sexual abuse and the characteristics of abusers, she outlined the qualities of children who are vulnerable. She described the "grooming" process most offenders use to gain the trust of children and their parents so that we could recognize warning signs or red flags, and she described the qualities of safe kids and safe homes. Did you know that one quality that makes a child more vulnerable to sexual abuse is not knowing the anatomically correct terms of their "private parts"? We've chosen to teach our kids the names of all their body parts, but I'd occasionally had nightmares that they would blurt these terms out in the middle of the grocery store or school or a dinner party, embarrassing all of us. Now, I realize that this knowledge, whether it leaks out in public or not, is a gift and may even communicate to the ill-intentioned around us, "I'm off limits. Someone's talking to me about things that matter."

Feather also discussed helpful and unhelpful responses we could provide to our children should they ever disclose that they have experienced abuse. In this case, calm, loving reassurance is key: "Thank you so much for telling me. I love you no matter what. This isn't your fault. I'll do whatever I can to keep you safe and get help." In fact, the mantra of the afternoon, whatever the situation, seemed to be, "Thank you so much for telling me. Let's talk about it" or "Thank you for asking--that's a great question. Let's talk about it." Though the thought of facing this situation has always terrified me--creates a pit in my stomach that just aches when I think about it--I now feel better prepared to handle it in a way that would allow the healing process to begin right there and hopefully not exacerbate an already difficult situation.

In giving us tools to protect our children, Feather gave us tools to be better parents in general. She encouraged us to really listen to our kids, to hear beyond the words they use to what they might be trying to communicate, to ask questions that invite discussion and to respond in ways that show our children we are available to talk about whatever they may be processing in their worlds. She gave us permission to be truly honest with our kids--at age appropriate levels--when asked difficult questions about sexuality, our bodies, and other topics we may be tempted to put off until later. And she gave us principles, "Body-Safety Rules," that we could take home and begin using with our kids immediately.

We had our first conversation with Ben about "body safety" that night at dinner (Abby had gone to bed early, but we will share with her as the opportunities arise). We shared with Ben where we had been and told him we had learned some important things about keeping him and Abby safe. Over the course of dinner, we reinforced concepts he already knew ("You are the boss of your body," "You are allowed to have privacy when using the bathroom or getting dressed"), clarified rules we've implied or assumed he knew by talking about them openly ("No one is allowed to touch your private parts unless they are helping you get clean or unless your private parts are sick or hurt and a doctor needs to help them," "You are not allowed to touch anyone else's private parts," "You have our permission to say 'No' and disobey if a grown up ever breaks a body safety rule"), changed some rules in order to make our home safer ("We don't have any secrets in our family, ever. We may have surprises like birthday gifts or special events, but if anyone ever tells you not to tell Mommy or Daddy something, then you need to tell us right away. There shouldn't be anything you can't tell us"), and assured him as much as we could in one setting that we will always love him no matter what, that he will never get in trouble for telling us something related to body-safety rules, and that he can talk to us about anything.

Ben, our rules- and boundary-lover, embraced these new tenets. "If someone ever tells me not to tell you something, I'll say, 'No, we don't have secrets in our family,'" he told me. We began playing "What if" games as we got ready for bed.

"What if a babysitter tells you you can stay up and watch a movie way past your bedtime but only if you don't tell Mommy and Daddy?" I'd ask.

"I'd say, 'No, I can't do that,' or I'll say, 'Okay,' but then tell you the next day," Ben said.

I don't harbor illusions that he is now immune to the grooming ploys of an offender, but if we continue to have these kinds of conversations; if we continue to talk openly about our bodies and these body-safety rules; if we take advantage of the "teachable moments" in a day related to privacy, secrets, and body safety; if we foster closeness and provide plenty of attention and affection within our family--I am hopeful that if a situation arises--and I pray it doesn't--but if it does, our kids will have a gut reaction that tells them something isn't right and will feel empowered and entitled to say no, to communicate overtly or perhaps even unknowingly that they are "off limits."

I highly recommend Feather's workshop. There was so much more information than I could possibly include here. If you are local, I will be hosting one of her workshops sometime in the next few months for neighbors and friends and would love for you to join us. If you do not have the opportunity to attend, you can find more information and resources at her website or you can order her book, which we will be adding to our collection of parenting materials as soon as it's out.

We spend so much time teaching our children about safety: to stay away from hot stoves, to wear helmets when riding bikes, to wash their hands before eating, to be aware of "stranger danger." But the body-safety principles we learned yesterday may be the most valuable "safety"instruction we ever provide them. At one point, Feather asked, "What if every parent, every adult engaged in a child's life, had access to this information?" It's a fascinating question. Could we virtually eliminate child sexual abuse? Even if we didn't eliminate it, how many more children could be protected?

It's a worthy goal. Will you join me?

(To find sources for this information, please visit Feather Berkower's website: www.parentingsafechildren.com)

Summer

2010-07-14T14:32:00.011-06:00

Today is hiking narrow trails through tall grass,
holding little hands and kissing scraped knees.
Today is wildflowers of purple and yellow,
inviting small voices to say,
"Look at this, Mama! Do you see this one?"
Today is hot sun and quiet shade,
chuckling creek and hushing pines.

Today is growing boy wielding sticks,
protector-child fending off invisible bears.
Today is little sister following brother's footsteps,
scaling slopes too steep with resolve to keep up.
Today is puppy legs climbing hills,
bounding ahead and coming back.
Today is muscle and exuberance,
finding strength and receiving joy.

Today is fresh air and a mother's brand of tranquility:
small bodies, big smiles, excited voices, and time to stop or go
or breathe deep or look around,
all around.
Today is nowhere to be and no one to see.

Today is summer.

A Small Town Story

2010-07-07T15:26:00.006-06:00

Da Kind Soups here in Evergreen is small town business at its best. Sample any of their two hundred homemade soups and you'll know: they're here to provide excellent food to the community they live in and love. In their first year, Denver's premier magazine, 5280, named them "Top of the Town" in Soup, an accolade not easily won but clearly deserved.

Their menu is simple: each day, they offer ten of their homemade soups alongside five sandwich choices. Dustin and Ariane Speck, the owners and chefs, are warm and welcoming, greeting their customers by name and providing limitless samples of the day's soups to aid the impossible decision. They are careful to offer soup options that are vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, or dairy free for those patrons on restricted diets, though taste never suffers from the omission. In the spirit of small town warmth, they celebrate the store's anniversary by giving away their soup and bread for free all day.

Above all, they value their customers. They once forgot to give me a sandwich in my to-go order, and when I returned the next week for another meal, they gave me the entire meal for free: soup and sandwiches for three on the house to make up for an innocent (and rare) mistake. I hadn't said a word about the missing sandwich.

Though I was never a soup person before, I've converted. The kids and I frequent Da Kind almost weekly. It has heart and soul, ingredients missing from many enterprises these days, even other places in Evergreen. They operate by their motto, "Live a kind life."

This is a place you crave for the flavor but return to for the community.

It was crushing, then, to learn that Dustin, who creates every recipe and makes every batch of soup himself, suffered from subarachnoid hemorrhaging (bleeding on the brain) a few weeks ago. Beyond the chef at the store, he is the father to the couple's two elementary-age boys. I looked up the term on-line and found the statistics grim: in half of cases, the bleeding results in death. Of the half who survive, many suffer significant loss in physical or cognitive facility. When I heard the news, he was still in ICU and though his prognosis looked good, things were still touch and go. Risks of additional bleeding or other complications kept him under the close eye of doctors and staff. My heart was heavy--for him, for his family, for the store, for the town. They are at the heart of Evergreen. Their loss is everyone's loss.

The shop closed for a few days around the event, but then reopened with a message on their billboard announcing, "Soup man's down but spirits are high." The shop's employees, who are loyal to the shop and its customers, worked hard to carry the extra burden of work while Dustin remained in ICU and Ariane attempted to take care of him and her boys and the store's responsibilities. The billboard was updated occasionally with messages indicating Dustin was doing well or offering gratitude for people's support.

When I went in yesterday to get dinner, I'll admit it was as much to find out how he was doing as to bring home a tasty meal. Before I could ask, Ariane, who seemed to have stopped in briefly but been roped in to help with the dinner rush, told me Dustin is coming home today. More remarkably, he returns home without a single deficit. There will be no physical therapy, no occupational therapy. He has no memory loss, no mental compromise. He comes home as healthy as he last left. It is the very best news.

They'll have to keep his activity-level low for a while as his body continues to heal and recover, but it sounds like he'll be back behind the counter, every bit himself, in time. I left overjoyed for them, for their family, for the store, and for our town.

In two short years, they have become fixtures here. We feel that we know them, that they know us--to the extent that it's possible over the exchange of warm soup and a smile. We have come to depend on them not only to feed our bodies but to feed our souls in their simple, kind way. By all accounts, they have experienced a miracle. And their miracle is everyone's miracle.

Sunday Morning Reverie

2010-06-28T22:27:00.012-06:00

You get up with the sun on a Sunday morning and get dressed. You pack up your things and load into the car with a few friends to drive to the start. You eat breakfast, wondering if this food will provide enough fuel for the day ahead. You fill your water bottles. You rub in your sunscreen. You fasten your helmet, adjust your sunglasses, secure your iPod, and check your bike. Then you clip in. And you ride.

Your muscles feel tight from the day before. You wonder how long it will take your body to warm up and find its rhythm. You smile at the volunteers on the corner cheering you along the course and pointing out turns. You thank the officers directing traffic at the busier intersections. You make note of every sensation in your body, wondering if it is a temporary ache or an all-day companion. You see other cyclists. You pass some. Some pass you. You read the jerseys of the folks near you and wonder where the teams come from, who started them, how they got their names. You think how nice it would be if the seventy-five miles you rode the day before were it.

You reach the end of town and see the long line of cyclists stretched out before you like ants, ascending the mountain. You grab a drink. You shift once, pedal. Shift again, pedal. You shift, shift, shift until there's nothing left to do but grind. You hear your breathing become shallower, faster. You find a rhythm for your pedals and hang onto it, pushing one, then the other, and again. You pass some. Some pass you. You feel strong. You wonder how to become stronger. You hear a man thirty years your senior say, "Do it for Dannette," as he passes, having read the tag on your back that says, "Riding for:". And you think, It is a gift to push my body like this. You feel grateful for this second seventy-five miles.

You feel the morning sun, already high, blazing on your shoulders. You watch the city stretch out behind you, the mountains before you. You wipe the sweat from your lip. You inhale. You exhale. You push one leg, then the other. You near the top and you hear someone say, "It's a beautiful morning," and you think, Yes, it's glorious.

You enter the cool shadow of the mountain as you pick up speed on the back side. You shift, shift, shift, pedaling, and then you coast. You grip the handlebars tightly, searching the road for any tiny rock or seam or crack that would take your velocity and redirect it skyward--and then ground you. You get a chill from the wind as you reach the bottom. You appreciate it, knowing it won't last long.

You round the bend and shift once, pedal. Shift again, pedal. Shift, shift, shift until there's nothing left to do but grind. You settle in again for another climb. You move your hands down into the drops of your handelbars. You bend closer to your legs, willing them to work harder. You find your rhythm: push, push, push, push. You feel your lungs begin to fill. You feel your lungs empty. You wish you could breathe deeper, wish you could satisfy their demands for oxygen. You inhale again. You exhale. You pass some riders. Some pass you. You grab a sip of water. You feel strong. You wish you were stronger.

You near the top and see a young woman walking her bike the rest of the way to the top. You notice her gait is uneven. You look more closely and see that her right leg is prosthetic. You glance up and notice her jersey: "I ride with MS." You inhale. You feel more reverence and respect for her than you can hold. You exhale. You think, It is miraculous what the human spirit can overcome. You breathe. You pedal. You swell with gratitude for the blessing of your own health. You wish you could do more than just ride a bike. You wonder how much closer this ride moves the world toward a cure.

You reach the top and grab your water bottle. You drink long. You shift, shift, shift, pedal. Shift, shift, shift some more until your speed exceeds your ability to pedal in your highest gear. You begin to coast. You straighten one leg on your pedal and bend over the bars, lifting yourself slightly from the seat. You enjoy the momentary relief. You watch the road carefully as your speed increases. You see the rest stop ahead, full of bikes and riders and volunteers. You see hundreds. You know there are thousands. You think, This is better than church. You revise your thought: This is church.

No stained glass. No pastors. No sermons. Just three thousand people riding their bikes. In love.

You pull your brake handle toward you. You slow down. You unclip your right foot from the pedal and continue braking. You guide your bike into a gap in the crowd. You hear someone singing show tunes. You stop, put your foot down. You unclip your other foot and get off. You set your bike in the gravel and grab your empty water bottle. You head toward the line of people waiting for the port-a-potties.

And you think, There is much good in the world.

The Longest Day of the Year

2010-06-22T01:30:00.004-06:00

(Written June 21st, 2010; Posted June 22nd, 2010 at 1:29 a.m.)

Today is the longest day of the year.

Five years ago today, I had my carpets cleaned. I stood in the kitchen--my belly eight months swollen--enjoying the breeze through the open windows and wondering how long it would take for the carpets to dry and for my feet to return to their normal size and for this baby to come. I cleaned and put things away and generally kept moving to avoid the stillness that reminded me of my discomfort, physically. And then the phone rang. And it felt like time stood still.

On June 21st, 2005, my sister Dannette called after an appointment with a neurologist for a number of inexplicable and sudden symptoms. I had been waiting for her call, wondering what explanation they would offer for the numbness in her hand and the loss of strength in her leg and the spasming of her muscles. When I answered, she said hi, and I must have asked her something like how did it go--I don't remember. What I do remember is her answering, "Not good," so casually it was almost wistful. "They told me I have MS."

I remember feeling the need to hold it together, to remove any trace of panic or despair from my voice while I asked her for more specifics of the appointment. I remember sitting down in a chair in the kitchen, staring at the base of the phone on the counter. I remember her saying they would start her on IV steroids to treat the symptoms and then explaining how the degree to which her symptoms went away or remained would determine which stage of MS she was in.

I remember hanging up so she could make other calls--though I desperately wanted to keep talking to her because talking about it was easier than thinking about the implications--and then weeping with the phone in my hand, wondering how I would ever feel joy again, wondering how I would enjoy the birth of my son.

The only experience I'd had with MS was through a family we knew casually from our former church. Chris, a husband and a father to three young children, already lived his life from a wheel chair when we met him. We watched his body deteriorate over the course of a year until he passed away, leaving his family bereft. When I hung up with Dannette, I didn't know his death was the rare exception, didn't realize the disease takes remarkably different courses in each person. All I knew was that my sister, thirteen months younger than me, was facing a life far different than the one we had envisioned for her, and I grieved that life like a death.

I called Josh at work, and we cried together. And then I began hours and hours of research: into the pathology of the disease, into treatment options, into resources and specialists and every piece of information that might offer some hope for her prognosis.

It was the longest day of the year.

Dannette turned 26 the next day.

Benjamin was born one month later, nine days late. I've often wondered if God provided that extra time to recover from the shock of her diagnosis so that I could feel the exhilaration of his birth rather than the persistent sorrow that lingered for weeks after the news. Within a few weeks, my body--full of its pregnancy-induced discomforts and inconveniences and frustrations--returned to normal. Dannette's did not.

To say the next three and a half years were hard is an understatement. Some of her original symptoms resolved, but she wrestled with new ones, invisible to the eye but ever-present in her day. She relapsed often, took multiple courses of steroids which, though useful in reducing the MS symptoms, caused unbearable side effects. She learned that only peanut M&M's could relieve the metallic taste in her mouth. She modified her car so she could drive left-footed, giving her the freedom to go to work even when her right leg refused to function. She managed to live life, to maintain her independence which she clung to with fierce determination even in the worst days of her disease, and to remain graceful in the midst of seeming calamity, but she wrestled with her body in a seemingly endless, uphill battle. She fought hard, every day, for a sense of normalcy, and we who could do nothing watched in awe--and tried to hope.

Then, a year and a half ago, she began a new treatment. Though proven effective, this drug is not available to everyone since it carries the risk of a devastating side effect. Fortunately (or not?) for Dannette, the severity of her disease tipped the scales of her risk-benefit analysis in favor of trying it.

And it worked. Is working.

She has been free of relapse for a year, free of steroids, free of the heavy weight of dread that she might wake up and lose something, like her mobility or her cognition or her freedom. She lives, now, lighter and less burdened and more inclined to use her body skiing or cycling than to wish it away.

This weekend, while Josh and I ride 150 miles to raise money for the National MS Society, Dannette will ride the 25 mile course on her recumbent trike. Her three wheels eliminate the problem of balance. Her clip-in pedals keep her feet engaged no matter how numb they grow or how much they spasm. This feat was unthinkable a few years ago. But now she sees the possibility in the former impossibility and seizes it. With joy.

Today is the longest day of the year. Dannette and the rest of my family joined us for dinner tonight. We laughed like children, struck silly by the memory of her training ride a few weeks ago when she rode strong for nearly fifteen miles before bonking, having run out of food, fuel for the body. She and my youngest sister recalled through giggles how slowly she moved: slower than the little kids on their bikes, slower than the pollen blowing through the air, slower than the old woman with the cane. We could laugh at this because it wasn't so much about MS and the tragic hold it has over her life. We could laugh because she is living, and in the living, she is reclaiming herself. She bikes now. And eats peanut M&M's on her own terms.

According to Wikipedia, "solstice" is the Latin term for the astronomical event it describes: "sun-standing." The summer solstice is the day the sun reaches its northernmost position, appears to stand still, and then changes direction.

Five years ago today, while the sun stood still, so did our family as we grappled with the unknown of Dannette's future. Today, the sun stood radiant, bright, full of promise--and I couldn't help but notice Dannette did, too. Her course, our course, seems to have changed again, but this time, the future shines with hope.

To the Writers of Room 177

2010-06-18T23:31:00.000-06:00

It's funny how a group of people who begin a week complete strangers can feel so familiar by the end. I bid adieu to my fellow writers this afternoon, feeling a genuine pang of sadness to leave this group I've come to know both through the conversation and through the writing we shared this week.

There's something about the anonymity of getting to know people you'll likely never see again that opens the door for exchanges more intimate than some have with closest friends. Over dinners and lunches, in always-changing combinations of us, we talked about spouses and religion and sex and family and race and addiction and geography and travel and childhood and war. We asked questions about writing accomplishments and aspirations, sought out advice from those more seasoned, wondered at those who can spin a tale with seeming ease and grace. We spoke candidly, freely, feeling no need to censor ourselves for people we'd leave a few days later.

In class, we learned even more--from the words and phrases we selected to convey the characters and places and events we discovered and remembered and created in Room 177.

And somehow, through all this unedited dialogue and coexistence, we came to understand each other, to appreciate each other in all our apparent strengths and quirks. That which at first annoyed or distanced grew endearing as we waded past first impressions to the layers beneath.

I spent my driving time tonight reflecting on my week's companions and their backgrounds, turning over our interactions, remembering the moments of hilarity and poignancy. Already, I feel nostalgia for our time together.

As important to me as the writing I completed this week is the time I spent with these people: parents and grandparents and engineers and designers and lawyers and farmers and teachers and students and librarians and comedians and sales folk, some still working and others retired, some married for forty years and others three times, some from the coasts and others from the middle and one from across the world. But all writers. And all an unexpected gift to me for the week.

Here's to you, fellow world observers and storytellers. Thank you for sharing your lives with me. May you enjoy every success to which you aspire.

Where the Real Learning Occurs

2010-06-16T09:34:00.007-06:00

In the middle of Iowa City--this fabulous little college town with coffee shops that stay open until (gasp) 11:00 at night, pubs and sports bars with suggestive names like Third Base, and wonderful little eateries of all ethnic varieties--there is a playground full of kids.

The playground sits right on the main pedestrian mall of town next to the campus's signature cafe, so that all the patrons inside see the wonders of childhood when they lift their heads from their work. The children climb its ladders, hang upside down from its bars, run down its bridge of stairs, play hide and seek in its shade.

I wonder who uses it. Families who happened to settle here after completing their education? Families of grad students raising their kids around the university while mom and/or dad completes their academic endeavors? College students who made it past third base and found themselves with an unexpected companion?

It comforts me: the presence of children in the heart of higher education, the juxtaposition of little ones running with unselfconscious abandon in this place of ever-increasing self and global awareness. Their play is grounding, brings perspective and context to the intense studying and striving and building of resumes. It proclaims what I've come to know in these last few years: that children and learning are not mutually exclusive; that children, in fact, inform the other with unparalleled depth and truth.

This playground in the middle of the University of Iowa has drawn me all week--I think because it symbolizes my life: a campus of hopes and dreams and goals and learning and awareness--sometimes painful awareness--of myself and the world around me. But in the middle, where no one can miss it, springs the playground of my own little loves, where I find them stretching their limbs and laughing in the sunlight.

There, for them and for me, the real learning occurs.

The New Gift of Gratitude, in All Things

2010-06-14T12:35:00.000-06:00

Yesterday in our first workshop session, our instructor asked us to introduce ourselves and share briefly why we're here. When my turn came, I explained that I'm home raising my kids, that I started a blog here in Iowa last summer, and said, "I'm here because my husband is wonderful, as is my mother-in-law who's watching my kids this week so I can be here." A wave of understanding and appreciation went through the group, acknowledging my fortune. I am blessed.

I drove 800 miles yesterday from Evergreen, Colorado, to Iowa City, Iowa. Every summer, the University of Iowa hosts a Summer Writing Festival offering week-long and weekend writing workshops over the course of six weeks. I attended a blogging weekend last summer on a whim, and when I returned home raving about how amazing the time was, Josh suggested I try a longer one this year.

So here I am. I spent twelve hours in the car yesterday--in my little red Mini-cocoon of solitude. I spent the first four hundred miles searching out the road through the rain while thinking, reflecting, processing, and feeling genuine appreciation for a husband who would support this very inconvenient endeavor and for in-laws who would give up a week of their lives to enable my absence on the home-front. In my long stretch through Nebraska, I saw billboards for the University of Nebraska: a photo of investment mastermind Warren Buffet gracing the corner with his graduation year below, and his thoughts in giant, white letters on a red background: "My advice: invest in yourself." It seemed an appropriate sign for my journey. This is a week I've been given to focus on my writing, my passion, me.

But I do hope it is an investment in me that reaps dividends beyond myself, though I don't always know where I'm headed in this investment of time and resources toward an activity I feel compelled to do. I walk through bookstores and see thousands upon thousands of titles on everything from the state of American politics to organic gardening. Unless a book appears on Oprah or the tables at the front of the bookstore, how many people actually read most of them? Publication is not my end-game, or at least not my primary motivation (though I certainly wouldn't turn-down J.K. Rowling's gig). Earning some money doing something I love certainly would be ideal, but Josh has told me on several occasions that he doesn't care if I ever earn a dime writing--he loves that I do it for writing's sake, or, more accurately, for my sake. I love this about him.

Still, write I must, for reasons that are beyond my comprehension at the moment. In some mysterious way, writing quiets the whispers of doubt in my mind. It heals my soul, this confession and acknowledgement of short-comings and fears. It renews my hope that all things are being made new. It helps me cling more securely to the possibility that what I see is not the sum total of what is occurring around me. Plots far greater than I can conceive are playing out in and around and through and in spite of me. And perhaps this clarity is the gift not only to me but to those around me who have less of my insecurity and fear to wade through and deflect in a day.

I spent a lot of time with me yesterday as the highway stretched on and on before me. I'm comfortable with that. Me, myself, and I dialogued contentedly through the hours--at times absorbing the music I listened to, at times running through imaginary conversations I need to have with people I love, at times wondering about the characters and places around me. I thought of the usual fountain of questions and commentary that accompanies me most of the time I'm driving somewhere, and I appreciated the quiet while simultaneously appreciating the small voices that are the soundtrack of my daily life for this fleeting season. I remembered the very first cross-country drive I did when Josh and I were "friends," the drive that solidified our fate as life-long companions, and I wondered what we'd be talking about if he were with me. But I accepted the time alone as a rare gift, one I accept with open hands.

Last year when I came to this Festival, I needed the time alone like a passenger on a crashing plane needs an air mask. I was desperate for the break and the time and the stimulation, desperate to catch a breath from the daily demands of life with little ones. This state of mind is hardly healthy when trying to be a wife and mother.

This year, I am grateful for this time, but I do not grasp for it like a dying person. Writing has done that for me: brought me balance, brought me to an understanding of who I am in the midst of my circumstances, brought me the ability to accept all, or at least most, aspects of my life--in their challenges and their joys--for the time they are to be, brought me peace and joy. So this week, life offers 1600 miles of driving, a week of writing and biking and existing alone with my thoughts, and days of limitless possibility. Next week, life will return to the comfortable chaos of kids and puppy and company and the welcome companionship of Josh. And today, after a year of musing in this space, I can say without hesitation that I am grateful for all of it.

Perhaps there will be other gifts afforded by this investment; indeed, I hope so. But if this is all I ever get, it is enough.

Mommy's Helper

2010-06-09T15:28:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, Merlot's bladder moves faster than I can. This can be terribly frustrating.

After she finished her lunch yesterday, I walked into the kitchen to grab her leash so I could take her out, and in the thirty seconds it took me to retrieve the leash, she began "doing her business" on the floor by the door. THIRTY SECONDS!

This is not really her fault--though she knows she's supposed to potty in the yard, she doesn't yet have the bladder control necessary to hold it when it's full. And as far as she knows, she did everything she could to communicate. She stood by the gate to the door and waited, as she usually does to signal she needs to go, and I simply wasn't fast enough. Fortunately, she'll stop mid-stream if I distract her, so she at least finished her "business" in the yard.

Nevertheless, it is frustrating when I'm in the process of doing the very thing she needs only to be thwarted by time and puppyhood. I had been cleaning the house that morning and had no desire to clean up another mess, let alone one of an excretory nature. But I entered the house resigned to the new task at hand--only to find Ben on his hands and knees taking care of it already. With the spray in one hand and a big towel in the other, he kneeled on the floor soaking up and spraying and wiping until it was clean, my little boy acting so selflessly, so responsibly. I wanted to squeeze him a hundred times.

I gushed my thanks and appreciation and gave him every accolade I could think of in the moment, and then I kneeled next to him to help with the last bit of clean-up.

"I'm almost done, Mommy," he informed me quite seriously. "I already got the other side."

The wonderful thing about Ben is that his coordination has caught up to his attention to detail, so when he does a job, he does it well. I don't have to sneak back later when he's elsewhere to go over his work. He's old enough now to be able to recognize a situation that needs addressing, to take care of it all by himself, and to be a genuine help. I didn't ask him to clean up Merlot's mess. He chose to do it himself. He left his game to grab the towel and cleaner to help his visibly frustrated mommy.

Oh, the encouragement that gives me! Because there are days when I wonder what in the world I'm doing as a mother, but then I get these little glimpses of what we're sowing, and I am filled with hope and wonder at the crazy gift of family, of sharing life with two people new to the world and learning its workings. If he can help his mama at four, how will he be helping the world at forty-four?

Hope springs eternal.

Riding the High

2010-06-07T23:27:00.002-06:00

The cloud passed. Josh arrived home that night after reading my blog and talked some sense into me. I thank God for him. We all need someone who can see through the muck of the day-to-day to the truth of the matter, the reality. I'm learning what triggers these moments of doubt and, little by little, identifying how to see my way out.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying the high from the spin class I taught earlier. The rec center has decided to start an intro class as a stepping stone for beginners to enter the program, and I am the instructor. The first Monday of the month is a free orientation where we spend more time on set-up and the basics of position, form, and self-awareness on the bike. We had seven people tonight, five of whom had never been on a spin bike before, and I realized as I left that I love teaching: first-time spinners, high school students, my kids, Merlot... I love taking something previously unthinkable and making it accessible. I love introducing a principle that illuminates everything around it in a new way. I love clarifying an idea that was once fuzzy or nebulous. I adore seeing people grow in confidence and the belief that they can, indeed, do--or understand--something they were certain was too hard.

I think some part of me was made to teach. In spite of the many admonitions I received not to become a teacher when I grew up, I did, and for a few years, I felt every single facet of my being was exercised and utilized and challenged and stimulated in the classroom. As a parent, it feels much the same; the subject matter has simply shifted from Shakespeare to sharing. Raising a puppy adds to the fun.

We have all been created--and equipped--with the strengths and temperaments and personalities to do something, to feel a deep exhilaration as we utilize the minds and bodies and hearts we've been given. I felt it tonight--the rush of contentment and joy in exercising my particular set of attributes. Like Eric Liddel, the Olympic gold medal runner of Chariots of Fire, I think we've been made to "feel God's pleasure" when we're living out of the truth of who we are and what we excel at and how we're designed to complement this world.

My great blessing is that Josh recognizes those strengths in me, gives me space to nurture them, encourages me to use them. He generously provides not only the freedom to explore what I might be capable of but also the resources to make a legitimate go of something. He trusts me to know myself and what I want and then makes a path to its existence. I have often thought how different my life could be if I hadn't met a man with such faith in and love for me. He is amazing.

I hope Ben and Abby find their exhilaration-maker one day. I hope we can recognize and encourage it as it unfolds. I hope Josh and I together can help clear a path to its existence, whatever "it" may be. I pray one day they walk out of an office or home or restaurant or gym feeling God's pleasure because they are doing exactly what they've been designed to do.

It's a great feeling.

My Prayer

2010-06-02T14:55:00.000-06:00

I can feel the cloud moving in, but I'm trying to push it away. Still, I find myself searching for some evidence that I am helping more than harming, making things better rather than worse, raising these kids in love and joy and acceptance rather than the fear and frustration and blame I sometimes feel I project.

Perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love casts out fear.

My love is not perfect.

Perhaps that is not the point.

God's love is. Do I trust him with my children? Do I trust him to redeem my mistakes? Do I trust him?

It is human nature to want to quit what we cannot do well. As a parent, I feel constantly confronted by my failure. But it's not like I can quit.

Maybe surrender is the alternative. Can I surrender?

The short-term remedy when I'm questioning my role, my relationship with them, is to connect. Solid, undivided attention is in order. Play time of the highest magnitude is called for. I know of no better way to communicate their value than to show them they matter to me. To look them in the eye when they're talking, listen with my whole heart, and enter into the moment.

I've been here before. Will I ever move past it completely? Two steps forward, one step back. I hope. Sometimes it seems more like one step forward, two steps back. But it is only by grace that I step at all.

This is my prayer: that I can surrender these steps--in all their faltering and seeming futility--to a rhythm of Love so that this pilgrimage feels less like slogging and more like dancing. Every day. No matter how rocky the terrain or steep the ascent.

Big Boy (and Girl!)

2010-05-27T15:30:00.003-06:00

My kids recognize a Starbucks emblem as readily as I identified the McDonald's arches when I was a kid. It's a sign of our generation. I don't mind, I suppose. Given the choice, I'd rather they grow up drinking three dollar coffees than eating thousand calorie meals. Still, it cracks me up when we pull into a parking lot and Abby says, "Thehr's Stahr-bucks!" like she's hit the jackpot, as she did this afternoon after lunch.

We unloaded to walk in, and Ben, who has a renewed interest in his little wallet full of allowance money, asked if he could please pay for their "special milk."

Who am I to argue with that?

So when we approached the counter inside, he walked up and, after asking me for a reminder of how to order their drink, said confidently, "Can I please have a grande milk with one pump of raspberry syrup?" Though she could barely hear him, the lady behind the counter smiled her encouragement and passed his order on to the barista.

"One dollar and nineteen cents," she informed him, and with a little coaching from me, he carefully identified the requisite dollar bill and two dimes, handed them over the counter with pride, and received his penny in change. "You're a big boy now, aren't you?" she said, still smiling at his sweet independence.

As if on cue, Little Miss Sunshine next to me chimed in a voice audible to the whole shop, "Ih'm gwow-ing, tooh!" as she bounced up and down.

My soul bounced all the way home.

Riddle Solved

2010-05-25T10:56:00.003-06:00

Why did Ben and Abby cut Abby's hair at Puppy Kindergarten?

"Because we thought I would get a doughnut," says Abby.

Of course. Ben and Josh's post-haircut ritual is to get a doughnut.

You can't make this stuff up.

Arriving

2010-05-24T21:29:00.000-06:00

Our limiting factors are changing: from two little people we call Ben & Abby to things like time, other responsibilities, and garages that need cleaning out. It's glorious.

On Saturday, we biked dozens of miles with the kids in trailers, and for the first time, we wore out before their attention spans. On Sunday, we managed to walk all the way around Evergreen Lake at their request without multiple "rests," tears, or other complaints. Even Merlot managed to use her nose with moderation, and while she was happy to greet any party willing to say hi, she was also able to walk by when necessary. All five of us enjoyed our time from start to finish. Monumental.

I hope I'm not speaking prematurely when I say it feels like we've arrived. Or, at the very least, are arriving. We're getting to do things together as a family without the sense that we're racing some invisible clock of the kids' interest or energy. It seems we're on the cusp of a golden era in childhood (and canine ownership).

Maturity is the word of the moment. The kids are maturing. (Merlot is maturing). I can see it grow and develop by the day. More confidence. Less dependence. More patience. Less immediate need. More awareness of both self and others. Less blind demand. More appreciation for the adventure of time together. More trust of us and our ability to craft fun. More interest in the world around them and in developing their ability to navigate it.

As we reached the end of our walk, I said, "Ben, you're getting stronger! You've made it all the way around the lake without needing any breaks!"

"Yeah. Last time when we walked with Rebecca, I had to stop a lot, but I'm getting stronger. I've been exercising."

Later, he told Josh he wanted to walk around the lake three times next time.

Confidence. Growth.

And maturity.

Oh, the visions of summer fun floating through my mind.

Abby's New 'Do

2010-05-19T22:49:00.009-06:00

Abby's first haircut did not occur at a salon, or a barber, or even at home under the careful eye of her mother. No, Abby's first haircut occurred at Puppy Kindergarten this evening, a creative masterpiece of the preschool variety.

The kids had to come with me tonight because Josh was out for the evening. The plan was for them to bring coloring supplies, and they could spend their time either creating works of art or watching the puppies from the blue benches lining the wall in class.

This was the plan. As most parents know, however, there can be great disparity between the plan and reality.

Before we left the house, both kids took great care in selecting exactly which coloring books and materials they'd bring. They even grabbed the place mats we use anytime we're coloring in the house to protect the table surface from errant coloring strokes.

Ben told me he had decided to bring his little safety scissors and cutting workbook so if he got bored coloring, he could do some cutting, and then if he got bored with that, he could go back to coloring. I hesitated when he mentioned this plan, but he's always been duly responsible with his scissors, so I conceded. He has been completely engrossed in his little workbook of increasingly difficult cutting patterns lately, and I appreciated his logic and forethought.

Then Abby mentioned she was bringing markers, and I hesitated again. I suggested we just bring crayons, but she asked with her nicest manners in her sweetest voice if she could please bring her markers, so I conceded again, wanting to reward her polite petitioning in addition to recognizing that she far prefers her markers to her crayons.

Besides, I reasoned, the afternoon had been so delightful, I felt justified pushing my usual play-it-safe mentality aside, choosing instead to trust them. They rounded up their materials and packed them carefully into their respective backpacks, taking their responsibility to provide their own entertainment with great seriousness and a palpable sense of duty. Buzzing from laundry room to cupboard to kitchen with importance, they nearly glowed with pride in their independence and self-sufficiency.

And I, too, glowed--basking in their maturity and accomplishment with an almost smugness. In my mind, I watched the three of us walk into class with Merlot in tow, the kids wearing their self-packed backpacks. I saw Ben and Abby sitting quietly on the bench, happily whiling away the time in the usual fog of focus that comes over them when they're engrossed in a task. I practically envisioned the other puppy owners looking on in fond respect of my well-groomed and beautifully-behaved progeny. I was proud of my darlings.

But you know what they say about pride and where it goeth. Before the fall--of Abby's lovely golden locks, apparently.

Far from the quiet and focused angels I had envisioned, they--with the aid of another child from class--made enough ruckus in the first ten minutes to merit three visits from me. Each time I left the group to shush them, Merlot strained with her full weight against the instructor holding her leash in maddening attempts to follow me. By the time I arrived at the bench the third time, Ben had marker on his forehead and mouth, Abby was coloring on the placemat while her coloring book sat undisturbed just inches away, and the contents of the art box were strewn across the floor from end to end of the bench.

Exemplary mother and puppy owner I was not. Yet somehow, this public display of imperfection made me smile inside, almost laugh. I was too crazy to have time for embarrassment. Maybe I'm finally learning to accept the areas where I don't have control.

Which I now know includes puppy kindergarten.

So by the end of class, when the same instructor who wrangled Merlot's leash so I could quiet the peanut gallery stepped outside to the puppy potty place to inform me, with blond hair in hand, that Abby's tresses had met with scissors, I felt only amusement. And wonder at how an afternoon that had started so beautifully could end so badly.

"I wanted to let you know before you went back in so you'd have a chance to collect yourself," she said kindly. "I don't know who did it. They were going to throw the hair away, but I thought you might want it."

"Okay," I said in a vaguely optimistic lilt and took the hair from between her fingers, trying not to think about the fact that my own fingers were greasy from the summer sausage I used to win Merlot's cooperation in class. And so I walked inside to collect my less-than-perfect progeny and their once-thoughtfully-packed belongings--Merlot's leash in one hand, Abby's hair in the other.

As we left, the instructor was nice enough to share that when her daughter cut her own mane, it was the week before she had to be the flower girl in a wedding, and her coiffure involved chopping the hair right above her forehead down to the roots. Then this instructor/mother smiled encouragingly before turning to the next group of puppies and students.

She's been there. She knows. She doesn't judge.

As we drove home, the kids and I talked calmly about what went wrong. "Why don't you tell me all the ways you broke Mommy's trust tonight," I prompted. And one by one, they rattled off their offenses. Both confessed to participating in the haircut.

"What do you think Mommy expected when we went in?" I asked.

"To sit quietly and color," Ben answered.

"I'll have to think about what to do about this," I said.

Eventually, the conversation veered into other territory before circling back to the idea of building versus breaking trust in the context of Merlot.

"Why did Merlot run so fast to us when we called her?" Ben asked as the highway began to ascend the mountain.

"Well, because we're teaching her that good things happen when she comes to us," I explained.

"Why does she need to come to us?" Ben continued.

"We need to know she'll come when we call so that we can give her more freedom. When we trust she'll always come to us, we can let her off her leash in the yard or on hikes or when we're out playing at the park. The more we trust her, the more freedom we can give her." I hoped the parallel wouldn't be lost on him. I'm beginning to realize how much of the relationship between parent and child depends on trust. And I think Ben gets it, to an extent. He sees that, now, he will have to begin building trust again before I risk giving him the freedom I did earlier.

It turns out the damage is not too bad. Fortunately, they only made a couple snips to the hair nearest her face, and the shortest "layer" is still close to chin length. I think a good stylist will be able to camouflage the amateur styling while maintaining most of her length. And at the rate her hair grows, even the shortest layers will be grown out by the time she heads to preschool in the fall.

In the morning, I will ask the kids to gather all their markers and scissors to put in a bag that will go into timeout for a while. At some point, I'll give them the opportunity to earn them back with chores. We'll need to get Abby's hair cut by a professional, and I think I'll have the kids "pay" for it. Ben can contribute some of the allowance money he's saved up, and Abby, who doesn't yet receive an allowance, can contribute some of her toys toward remedying their mistake.

A few weeks ago I was told that the key to surviving puppyhood is to remember that the good days are the glimpses of who Merlot will be when she's grown. The good days show us who she is becoming in the midst of the days when all seems for nought.

I hope this principle is true of childhood, too. Ben and Abby really were amazing as we got ready to leave the house. And they really were fountains of immaturity at puppy kindergarten. This does not make them good kids or bad but, rather, little people with their own jumble of virtue and vice still in process. Small wonders--yes. Small tornadoes--yes. But it helps me to think the shining moments are the ones we'll be seeing more and more of as they grow.

For Here, Please

2010-05-15T11:01:00.002-06:00

The beauty of Saturday morning is embodied in the "for here" cup.

Around here, we have approximately nine of the original dozen coffee cups we received at our wedding nine years ago and a collection of tumblers we've accumulated over the years. During the week, those tumblers get all the action. I fill my "to go" cup first thing and then cart it all over town through the morning--to school, to the rec center, to the store, to gymnastics. It's an emblem of our full but generally fun mornings of activity, keeping me buzzing as we buzz around town.

On Saturday morning, however, I choose the "for here" option: a huge yellow mug that fits perfectly in two cupped hands. I hold it carefully in front of me while I fold myself into the couch, and here the warm porcelain sits undisturbed in my palms for a few precious minutes. The first sips are the best, enjoyed in the company of Josh in the quiet morning before the kids come down and turn the house on with their boisterous energy. We sit together in our pajamas and talk, enjoying a few stolen moments alone before the day begins.

When the darlings arrive, we both set down our cups to give hugs and snuggles and make breakfast and walk Merlot and read books and build legos and tidy the looming mess. I return to it between demands, sipping the lukewarm coffee out of principle. The "to go" tumbler actually makes more sense on Saturday mornings--would be less prone to spill, would stay warmer longer, would be easier to carry from room to room. But I can't bring myself to give up this relic of unhurried mornings and the freedom to sit and be without the pressures of the clock.

It's pure symbol, but its nod to timelessness is priceless. It makes me believe, whatever season of life we're in, we can and should steal a few moments to linger over a cup of coffee on a lazy Saturday morning, even if the definition of "lazy" is revised over the years to mean a few minutes of lingering rather than a few hours.

"'For here' or 'to go'?" Josh asks me from the kitchen, the man of my dreams serving up our favorite morning ritual.

"For here," I say.

It's my line in the sand, my insistence that, kids or puppy or not, there is something special about Saturday morning, something slow and simple and worth savoring. We're not rushing anywhere today. We're just existing, here.

Abby Sunshine

2010-05-10T11:05:00.006-06:00

“Is that her name? Sunshine?” The Cat Lady asked me.

“No,” I said, smiling as I thought of this very un-me, hippy-evoking name. “Her name is Abby—Abigail. I just call her that sometimes. I have lots of nicknames,” I explained.

Abby and I were in the cat room established by our local pet rescue at the pet store. This day, there were 18 cats there, some perched on the many shelves hung for that very purpose, others curled up in the various kitty beds and baskets, a few strutting purposefully through the kitty jungle gyms. One greeted us at the door, rubbing her cheek against our legs as we squeezed through the door so as not to give the escape artists opportunity to get out.

Abby loves coming to this room. She exclaims over the different cats in their various sleeping positions. She recognizes a few that have been there a while and calls them by name. She squeals when one approaches to say hello. “Put your hand out and let them pet you,” I advise her in an attempt to prevent her from greeting one that would rather be left alone. She stands still, doing her very best to be patient, until finally one steps closer and lifts its head to her hand. “She peht me, Mama!” Abby announces.

We stayed for about twenty minutes this particular day, talking with the kind old woman who comes throughout the week to clean the room and fill the food bowls and refresh the water and give the cats a bit of love. We’ve met other volunteers, too, but she has been there the most. This time, she told us she would be out of town for the next two weeks because she was going to volunteer at an animal rescue in Texas she’s worked at for several years. “With the pigs this time! I’ve never worked with the pigs before,” she informed me.

As we talked, Abby walked around carefully, talking to this cat, laughing at another. She reached her hand out to pet a tabby on a low shelf. The cat was amenable at first but then squirmed out of reach. “I think she’s all done, Abby,” I said, and Abby took a step back and put her hand out, waiting--hoping this less-intimidating invitation would be received. The cat hung back but then slowly stepped over to offer its head. “Gooooohd kitty,” Abby crooned in the same sweet voice she uses with Merlot. “Whah uh niiiiice kitty.”

The woman commented on what a smart girl Abby is, how kind. “She really is sunshine,” she said. “How old is she?”

“Two and a half,” I said, and then the Cat Lady resumed her description of this animal rescue, of how being there restores her faith in humanity.

When it was time for us to leave, we thanked the woman and wished her well on her travels. “Can you say good-bye, Abby?”

“Gooh-bye,” Abby said, hopping out the door.

“Bye, Sunshine!” The Cat Lady said. “Bye Abby Sunshine!”

*****

It seems that with each day, Abby comes into more and more of herself. Her person is emerging with its distinct personality and likes and dislikes and quirks. She loves animals. She loves to color, disappearing into a world of still and quiet for hours sometimes, her hand moving steadily back and forth with her crayon or marker, her head bent over her masterpiece, her face serious, focused. When she plays, she laughs freely, smiles coyly, tosses her hair like a grown woman. She asks Ben about his day at school as we drive home. She rests her blondie head on my arm as I sit next to her at the table, coloring with her. “I yuhv you, Mama,” she says quietly.

Abby brings a levity to our home, a buoyancy. While Josh and Ben and I tend toward the more introverted, introspective side, Abby is pure charisma and charm and fun. She draws us all out, especially her brother, whom she adores. They are good for each other, bringing balance to each other’s extremes. He provides structure where she is lacking (picking up toys comes to mind). She offers affection and compassion when he is in a funk. “Whah’s wrong, Behn?” she asks in her sweetest, most concerned voice, and he responds to her, comes out of himself and his moody place to be with her.

And lest you think she is all party and pretty girl, I must state for the record that she is smart, articulate-- picking up turns of phrase from our conversations, counting everything in sight, asking me how to write letters, pretending to read books. And somehow, she is learning to control her seemingly endless energy. After church yesterday, her teacher told us that Abby was great in class: “She sat still and listened all through the story, even when the other kids were squirming and wiggling around.” Josh and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised. Our Abby? we both thought. Indeed.

She is her own creature, no doubt given to our family to balance our analytical, type-A, engineering, structured tendencies with some exuberance, some joy. Everyone sees it, her brightness and light. Everyone comments on her physical beauty, which is made all the more striking by her internal delight in the world.

Sometimes I worry about what we’ll face when she reaches adolescence with her beauty and confidence and easy charm. But then I watch her put Ben in her place, insist that Merlot “siht” or “yeev it,” pester Josh and I incessantly for this or that, or retreat into her own soul as she colors, and I know she will hold her own in this world. I know she will be the one calling the shots in her own kind, self-assured way.

She really is pure sunshine: Abby Sunshine.

Dear Blog,

2010-05-07T21:56:00.001-06:00

I am woefully remiss in tending to you with my usual diligence. A busy schedule complicated by an unwelcome attack of the viral nature has left me void of writing time (though not musings). Please do not despair; this hiatus will soon end, aided by the welcome arrival of Grandma and Papa. Perhaps to a local establishment of the caffeine-peddling variety I can steal away for some much-needed mental unloading.

In the meantime, thank you for understanding. I look forward to reacquainting shortly--

Fondly,
Shaundra

What I Learned This Afternoon...

2010-04-26T19:29:00.000-06:00

That when your friend offers to drive you to pick up a car you've left somewhere else, it's most efficient to remember the key the first time.

That when your daughter says her tummy hurts, it's best not to give her red juice, for this makes cleaning the carpet after she throws up infinitely more challenging.

That a little boy can minister to one's soul far more profoundly than any pastor, musician, or artist could ever aspire to.

That love does, indeed, conquer all.

Home Again

2010-04-25T14:07:00.000-06:00

We’re headed home now—a bit more tan than before, a lot more relaxed. The kids eyes are heavy with the happy exhaustion of hours spent splashing in the pool and combing the beach for crabs and seashells. I spent the first half of the plane ride downloading and labeling the five hundred photos I took and thinking about how to organize them into an album. It was a good trip, a sweet week marked by far more giggles and smiles and games and adventures than meltdowns.

Coming home is always bittersweet. It’s hard to leave paradise and unlimited time together and family we only get to see every few months (not to mention amazing food and gorgeous vistas and the sound of the ocean ‘round the clock). A few days ago, Ben asked why we can’t live in Mexico--a good question indicative of the fun we’ve all had. We agreed that it would be nice to stay before reminding him of our responsibilities to work and school and friends and home.

“And we have to take care of Merlot,” he added seriously.

As much as we’ve enjoyed our vacation, though, there’s comfort in returning to our own space and routines and daily life. The night before we came home, Ben, who’s been staying up well past eight every night in order to enjoy time with his older cousin, asked when he could start going to bed at seven again. Both kids are ready to get home for their weekend treat of chocolate milk. And we’re all excited to see Merlot again, who has probably grown another ten pounds since we left. Vacation is wonderful, but it’s also nice to know we’re returning to a place we love. To the familiar and comfortable. To responsibility and productivity. Even if, at times, it feels crazy.

It’s the break in routine that makes vacation so enjoyable—and helps us appreciate home, too.

Family. Vacation.

2010-04-21T16:04:00.007-06:00

My eyes burn. Sting with the blur of over-exposure. Sun, so much glorious sun. Shining off the aquamarine sea. Reflecting from the white surface of our boat. Twinkling back from Ben's eyes. "My favorite part," he said as he watched the water splash in great, white droplets off the boat's sides, "is seeing the boat make waves in the water." His face unintentionally communicated his genuine delight with that smile--the one that barely turns the corners of his mouth up in amusement and focus and sheer joy.

We saw dolphins today. Three of them arching and slinking through the waves in magical synchrony. And manta rays. Dozens of manta rays flapping their triangle fins through the water and then under our boat and, further off, leaping out of the water in a frenzy of bird-imitation. We watched fish swarm our tidbits of bread and exclaimed at the blue-footed boobies perching on the rocks above our boat.

On the way back to the marina, I held a sleepy but contented Abby on my lap--her lax body wrapped in a warm yellow towel in my arms, her eyes open just enough to not miss anything.

The opposite of craziness and over-commitment is vacation, and we're enjoying every minute we have to play with the kids and catch up with Josh's family and observe the birds eating the papaya in the surrounding trees and note the changing intensity of the waves beating the shore just below our villa.

The kids adore their cousins and the ability to spend most of the day in their bathing suits. We grown-ups adore the pool-time and the casual conversation accompanied by fresh guacamole and salsa and margaritas and Grandma's limitless capacity for games of Go Fish with the grandkids. And we all enjoy the break in routine and the time to simply exist, together.

Family vacation is a gift of time and of sharing each other and of walking a few days of the journey together.

Thanks, Grandpa & Grandma.

Too Much of a Good Thing

2010-04-13T15:02:00.000-06:00

The craziness creeped up on us. We agreed to this. Signed up for that. Accepted new responsibility here. Stepped up our commitment there. We made a few small changes over many months, but the cumulative effect is significant. Suddenly, I can no longer remember all our commitments in my brain (I know there are folks for whom this is always the case, but generally I can keep track with amazing accuracy). Currently, the number of evenings we're committed in a week doubles the number we have free. Now, I require a calendar that can come with me wherever I go rather than being able to rely on the weekly one I keep on the fridge. "I need to check my calendar," I say. And I do.

Because between the kids' activities and the pup's vet appointments and kindergarten classes and training sessions and teaching spin and volunteering at school and keeping up with certifications in the fire department and helping out in myriad roles at church and the dozens of meetings each good thing requires in the process, we're suddenly swamped. They're all good and we enjoy them all individually, but it has become glaringly clear that we are now over-committed: that seemingly innocent yet frantic place that makes us scratch our heads and wonder how--and more importantly, why--we allowed it to happen.

Part of it is the season, the countdown-to-summer-freedom that causes most organizations to go into end-of-school-year-squeeze-it-all-in activity and event mode. But regardless, something's gotta give. Soon.

The question is what? And when? And how?

I suppose it's time to re-evaluate our priorities and hopes and dreams for our family to determine which commitments bring us closer to each other and to those things that are most important and which commitments are simply distractions. This is not to say that any of them are unimportant. But in a world that offers so much opportunity to serve and learn and play and build relationship, a discerning eye matched by a resolve to engage in a few things fully rather than in a smorgasbord shallowly is nearly as important to one's quality of life as education, resources, and time.

We've actually guarded our family's time quite effectively for several years. When the kids were babies, in fact, I would have enjoyed a little more involvement in life beyond the domestic front. But now that the kids are older and more adaptable, we've gotten carried away in our newfound freedom. This isn't a new plight. We've been here before and watched lots of others struggle, too. However, we know better than to keep grinding away complacently. It's time to make a change.

Big decisions forthcoming...

Heard 'Round Here Lately

2010-04-09T15:07:00.005-06:00

Benjamin: "Jeeps can drive off-road."
Mommy: "You're right: they can drive off-road."
Benjamin: "When are we going to get a Jeep?"
Mommy: "I don't know if we will. We've never been off-roading, though it sounds fun."
Benjamin: "Well, when I grow up I'm going to buy a Jeep. And then you and Daddy will have to get two more kids because we won't be your kids anymore."
Mommy: "Well, you'll always be our kids, even when you're grown up. But do you think someday I could go for a ride with you in your Jeep?"
Benjamin: (Big Smile). "Yeah, and you can bring Daddy and Abby, too. Then you can get a little car like the [Corvette] we saw yesterday because you won't need a row for our car seats. But you won't be able to drive that to the airport because the luggage wouldn't fit. You could probably take the silver car instead."

*****

Abigail: "I yike my fower barrettes thah I goht fuhr Eee-stir."

Mommy: "I'm so glad! Why do you like them?"

Abigail: "Be-cohs they're so, so pink."

*****

Benjamin: "The sun is like a towel for the snow."

*****

Abigail: "Mommy, I very yuhv Mehr-yoh."

*****

(Before his haircut at the new barber shop yesterday where he's been once before)

Benjamin: "Mommy, why doesn't Ms. Carolyn talk very much when she's cutting my hair?"

Mommy: "I don't know, Sugar. Some people like to be quiet, but you could always ask her questions if you want to talk."

(After haircut)

Mommy: "I see what you mean about Ms. Carolyn not talking very much. Which do you prefer: having your hair cut by someone who asks a lot of questions or having it cut by someone who's quiet?"

Benjamin: "I like people who ask a lot of questions, like Mr. Irv."

*****

Abigail to Merlot upon sitting (sounding most Italian): "Whaht uh guh-duh gihhhhrl!"

Go, Baby, Go

2010-04-05T20:27:00.000-06:00

She runs.
She prances.
She hops.
She flits.
She tiptoes.
She twirls.
She jumps.
She skips.
She bear crawls.
She butter-flies.
She donkey-kicks.

But she does not walk.
(And rarely sits.)

Abby smiles and careens and laughs and falls with a heart that's light and bright and full. And while we catch our breath and shake our heads and occasionally pull our hair, we acknowledge that she was designed to move, to do, to go places. So we bite our tongues as much as we can and pray that she reaches the finish line in one piece.

Go, Baby, Go.

In Memoriam

2010-04-01T16:17:00.008-06:00

When Ben's hair began to grow in as a baby, it became clear that the poor kid would have a life-long wrestling match on his hands. With two cowlicks swirling into each other on the back of his head, his mane was destined to defy gravity. We began using product on his hair long before his first birthday, but I'm pleased to report that, after four years of gelling and brushing and plying, his hair will generally succumb to our demands.

This reluctant cooperation of his locks is only feasible with the right haircut, however, and we knew this would be the case early on. We took Ben to see Josh's barber when Ben was just 10 months old, and "Mr. Irv" pronounced immediately how unfortunate it was that Ben got Josh's hair. He did manage to cut it in such a way that we had some ability to control it, putting Ben's soft baby fuzz in an envelope for us to save. And so Josh and Ben have been visiting Mr. Irv every four to six weeks since. I think Irv has had a quip about the unfortunate display of genetics every time.

Seeing Mr. Irv was the first tradition that belonged to Daddy alone. On the Saturday mornings they had an appointment, Josh and Ben would eat a quick breakfast and then hop into the Mini to drive down the mountain to his shop in Lakewood. They'd chat with Irv once there, taking turns in the barber's chair. With Ben, Irv was quick, patient, engaging, and kind. With Irv, Ben was comfortable, chatty, patient, and still. Folks often commented on how well behaved Ben was in the chair, and Josh and I gave silent thanks for the way Irv made our son feel at ease and welcome. After haircuts, Daddy and son got doughnuts to celebrate their time together before meeting me and, eventually, Abby wherever our adventures had taken us.

Going to see Mr. Irv became an event, an outing, special "guy time" for Ben to enjoy with his daddy and Mr. Irv--a ritual embodying the quintessential community and male mystique of the proverbial barber shop.

Toward the end of February, Josh called Irv to make an appointment and couldn't get ahold of him. Josh tried calling all week to no avail and finally gave up, assuming Irv had gone out of town to care for his mother, whom he visits often. Josh and Ben had their haircuts elsewhere, and we assumed that whatever had taken Irv out of town would be resolved by the next appointment. Yesterday, however, Josh tried calling again to make appointments for Saturday, and the number had been disconnected. This strange turn of events prompted Josh to run a search on-line, where he discovered Irv's obituary.

Our beloved Mr. Irv passed away on January 30th, 2010. There was no mention of cause, so we are left wondering what happened. Josh sent me the link to his obituary yesterday afternoon with a short note that said, "This makes me sad."

It makes me sad, too. It's not that Irv was an integral part of our family, but he was a consistent one, a kind one, a friendly and familiar fixture in our family's life. Josh has been visiting him for over seven years, and there are few other people outside of family and close friends who have participated in Ben's life so regularly since the beginning. Ben loves Mr. Irv. Irv loved Ben well.

I'm sure Josh and Ben will find another barber shop to visit on Saturday mornings, and I'm certain they'll continue their doughnut tradition. But it will be different. There aren't as many places in the world where people care to know, really know, a man and his son.

Josh asked to be the one to tell Ben about this loss, but after getting home late last night, he hasn't yet had an opportunity to have the conversation. I wonder how Ben will receive the news. He'll have a dozen questions, I'm sure; unfortunately, we won't have many answers. This will be his first experience with the death of a person, and while he will probably make lots of connections to our cat Kashmir's death, this is bound to be different. I imagine he'll have some profoundly simple insights into this sudden absence. I can't help but wonder if he'll cry.

I'm struck by how wide a person's circle of influence is, how deep the impact of one's goodness runs. Several times over the last twenty-four hours, I have grown teary at the thought that this man is gone from us. I suppose that is the beauty of a life well-lived and genuinely shared, no matter the capacity: you occupy a place in another's heart that cannot be otherwise filled.

We'll miss you, Mr. Irv.

The Curious Blessing of Divided Attention

2010-03-29T15:01:00.002-06:00

After a week with puppy, I'm realizing that the most surprising gift Merlot brings our family is the curious blessing of divided attention. Because I have to watch her like a hawk to ensure she is not "eliminating" in the house or chewing on something that isn't hers or harassing the kids too enthusiastically, I no longer have time to pay attention to every little thing the kids are doing. And strangely, this reduced attentiveness is good.

Before Merlot came home, my eagle-eye attention to detail was focused unrelentingly on Ben and Abby: their manners, their treatment of each other, their squabbles, their behavior good and bad. This is my job as their mother, but I think my focus tended to be too critical at times, too nit-picky, too comprehensive, not selective enough. No one needs someone paying attention to every little decision all day long. We all do better with a little breathing room.

Merlot's presence has created a blessed distraction from my worrying and their childishness. Now, I more prone to notice the things that truly need noticing, and I'm finding the kids work out the rest pretty proficiently on their own. As I coach them through their interactions with Merlot, I find ample opportunity for praise and encouragement and constructive feedback. With my hands full of treats and leashes and dog toys, I can no longer help as readily as I used to, so they are gently pushed into another level of self-reliance.

And because I'm forced into paying close attention to what Merlot is doing, I am more "present" in the moment than I have been, less prone to get lost in e-mail or household chores. I can't leave the kids and Merlot alone together, so when they're all together in the family room, I am there, too--working on puzzles, playing games, zooming cars, helping the kids train Merlot. Our time together has been more focused, more intentional, and more enjoyable. We're all participating in this joint adventure of puppy love, and we all seem happier as we work together as partners in training. Rather than squaring off in unnecessary power struggles, we work shoulder to shoulder toward a common end. My kids respect my instruction, I value their cooperation and help, and we all see the fruits in Merlot's learning and progress.

I knew we would all love petting the puppy, admiring her giant paws, laughing at her silly antics, and receiving her sweet affections. I did not anticipate how her presence would improve our relationships with each other. It has been a pleasant surprise and makes the frustrating and crazy moments worthwhile.

Merlot has wagged her way into our hearts and become a favorite family room fixture. More importantly, she has bred a kindredness among the four of us that is fresh and healthy and good, really good. At the rehearsal dinner I attended last weekend, the groom said that when we ask God for a gift, He gives good gifts--the kind that continue to reveal their value and blessing day after day. I prayed fervently that if we got a dog, God would bring the right dog to our family. I believe we have her, and this gift keeps giving.

Our New Addition

2010-03-24T22:35:00.000-06:00

In case a four year old and a two year old weren't challenge enough, Josh and I decided to invite a puppy into our home: Merlot came home Sunday, and there's nothing like adding another variable to life to make you appreciate how "simple" the days were before.

She's actually ridiculously sweet, content to be petted and loved for as long as someone is willing. She sleeps like I thought our children would when they were infants--for hours at a time day and night. She's figuring out that the bathroom is outdoors, she's learning to sit for attention, and while she sometimes gets carried away with Abby, our other "puppy," she's generally quite unexcitable with the kids.

She is a ton of work, and it's hard to go back to that state of constant vigilance required when a newbie is learning the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable, how the house runs, and what the ground rules are. It feels like having a newly walking toddler in the family.

There are times I wonder if the kids will grow resentful of all the time she requires or if the constant supervision and training and teaching and instruction will cause the pup to lose her appeal. But so far, the kids have listened willingly and followed-through beautifully as we've taught them how to teach her. Even after periods of stressful interaction when Merlot has jumped or nipped or when the activity level in the house has exceeded my level of tolerance, the kids still say how much they love her or comment on how cute she is or pray for her at bedtime. Somehow, they're taking the bad with the good, the frustrating with the endearing as readily as they accept each other. If I may say so, it's incredible to watch. I'm not naive enough to think they'll never grow disillusioned with this bundle of needs, but I'm encouraged by their response thus far.

What is sobering is the realization that this puppy will pass both Ben and Abby in size in a matter of mere months. This leaves little room for error in our training endeavors. As novice dog owners, this reality is a bit overwhelming and contributes to that "What have we done?!?!" feeling that creeps up in the more chaotic moments.

But, as with everything in life right now, we're embracing her with faith, hope, and love, trusting that she's the right dog for our family and that the investment of time and energy now will reap dividends in the months and years to come. Already, it is sweet to watch the kids' confidence grow before our eyes as they learn how to handle her boisterous affection and see how we encourage her successes and watch as we gently but firmly correct her mistakes. Deep down, as difficult as some moments have been, I think it's really good for all of us.

Right now, I'm alternating between typing and praising her for her extraordinary valiance in the face of the vacuum. Life has become more divided again, the demands more consuming. At times I wonder why. But I realize it's an investment in relationship resulting in love and life abundant. Like all truly worthwhile endeavors, it's short-term pain for long-term gain.

Here's to many years of fun and companionship, Merlot. Welcome to the family!

Anticipating the Others

2010-03-22T21:58:00.003-06:00

I breathed a huge sigh of relief Friday night.

I attended the rehearsal dinner for a bride whose family I've known for over fifteen years. After thanking all their guests who had traveled from near and far, the couple took time to honor the role each person present had played in bringing them to readiness for a lifetime commitment to each other. It was a sacred time, and truly incredible to hear how this group of otherwise strangers had impacted two people.

They spoke for nearly two hours, though it didn't seem long. There were people there whom they'd known since babyhood, friends from college, colleagues turned cherished confidantes, roommates, mentors, family companions, and lots of family. The bride and groom spoke of the myriad ways these people had invested in and encouraged them, of the significant influence they'd had in shaping who they are today: from rafting miles and miles into the ocean to funding education to counseling them as they faced and surmounted rocky terrain in their relationship to simply standing witness to the many milestones in their lives thus far. The tapestry of stories was lovely and meaningful and, frankly, awe-inspiring.

And I realized that Ben and Abby will have their own toasts to give some day, their own stories to tell, their own entourage of supporters and cheerleaders and mentors and faithful friends to thank for helping them become the man and woman they will be when they stand at the altar and exchange vows with another person who's been guided and shepherded and encouraged and loved by his or her own entourage of faithful and willing supporters.

Sometimes, in these precious fleeting years when they're so small, it feels that their path in this world will be shaped for better or for worse by me and Josh. But I realize that our children already have some other remarkable individuals who consistently take time to know them and love them and acknowledge their gifts and encourage their interests. And this sphere of influence will only widen, will only grow more diverse and more specialized.

Soon teachers and coaches and classmates will join the ranks of the life-altering. Later, friends and their parents, roommates, coworkers, mentors, amazing people they happen to run into at some ordinary, unremarkable time who will become major characters in their stories--these, too, will step in to shoulder the weight of growing them into maturity. Eventually, they may marry and have children, and then they will have to confront who they are and who they want to be with an honesty and clarity heretofore unknown.

I witnessed Friday night the proverbial village at work with and, at times, in spite of their parents. Building on their parents' successes and strengths. Redeeming their parents' failures and mistakes. Frankly, it was so much less about their moms and dads and so much more about the extraordinary symphony of people and events that God composed for a young man and young woman who are now husband and wife. It was beautiful to behold: a masterpiece, really.

Seeing this provision has relieved me of a good deal of responsibility and angst. I am a part--a significant part, perhaps--of Ben and Abby's stories, but just a part nonetheless. Now, as I endeavor daily to raise them with all that I am--good, bad, and otherwise--I also anticipate and look forward, in faith, to seeing the rest of the ensemble appear.

Thank you all, whoever you may be.

What I'm Enjoying at the Moment...

2010-03-16T17:18:00.000-06:00

Sea air and solitude. Harbor seals frolicking in the bay then flopping on the nearest sun-drenched rock. Cypress trees, seagulls, skies of blue, and the sweet smell of flowers blooming on the trail from here to there.

Other people's children. Other people working. Other people vacationing.

And the constant backdrop of salt water drifting in, millions of ripples moving in synchrony towards the shore, churning in creamy foam when they arrive from the horizon.

But mostly the sea air and solitude.

Josh and I are in Monterey together for a few days. He's attending a conference, and I get to just be. The kids are playing securely in Grandma and Grandpa's love and affection. I imagine they miss us in the quieter moments between giggles and games just as our thoughts turn to them in the space between our delights here.

It is at once completely familiar and completely novel to move about my day without them.

I simultaneously miss them and cherish each moment I have to myself. I imagine watching the seals with them and then return to the pressing decision of where to settle in for a glorious afternoon of reading and writing without interruption.

Motherhood has changed everything and nothing.

I suppose it's because I am still me, but now I am also more, belonging as much to Ben and Abby and Josh as to myself.

It's nice to realize that, though life is different, below the roles and circumstances I am not. In the sea air and the company of myself, I am content. And when Josh and I return to those precious blondies sleeping soundly at Grandma and Grandpa's, I am content.

Wherever I find myself in the journey from horizon to shore, I am, and this understanding is good.

Ode to Spring

2010-03-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

Having grown up in California, I never truly appreciated the spring until I moved to Boston for college and experienced for myself the long, frigid days of winter, the frozen dormancy of everything, the monochromatic landscape of gray and brown stretching horizon to horizon for months and months on end. Winter reigns the calendar there, surrendering its rule for only a few months of summer with a couple weeks of spring and a few weeks of fall to bookend the respite.

In California, winter is just a name we give to the months when the temperature drops to jacket-wearing weather. There may be fewer flowers, and some trees lose their leaves, but the landscape remains vibrant, filled with bushes and shrubs and plants and trees that retain their luster in the mild temperatures of the Sunshine State, the hillsides and valleys rendered greener than any other time of the year by the winter rains. Most outdoor activities exist year round in California; schools have outdoor hallways and passing areas. Little changes from season to season aside from adding an extra layer or two for warmth. This is California's blessing.

But it does create a void: a void of longing that, elsewhere, is joyously and enthusiastically met in spring. It lacks the communal celebration that occurs in those places where everyone has survived together yet another storm, yet another cold spell, yet another winter. It wants the collective anticipation of warm breezes and open windows and the novelty of sun on bare skin. It misses the communion of neighbors reacquainting after a winter hunkered down indoors.

Here in Colorado, our weather is somewhere in between--cold, cold temperatures with lots of sunshine; landscapes at times covered entirely in gorgeous snow, at other times slumping in their brown and barren desolation. We are not buried in ice for months on end, but we do not have the luxury of simply throwing on a sweatshirt to play at the park. The cold is more forgiving, or at least more relenting than Boston's, but we still yearn for March when the temperatures occasionally reach sixty and playing outside becomes enjoyable rather than merely survivable.

It's a funny time of year here, a time when I literally watch the trees bud, see the blossoms swell, witness the leaves sprout only to see the entire symphony of life bowed over by inches of snow. It is not uncommon here to wear flip-flops one seventy-degree day and snow boots the next as we uncover our driveway from the latest blizzard. It's absolutely nuts. But it's glorious, because we get a taste of the summer life waiting just around the corner. It whets the appetite for sunscreen and t-shirts and long mornings at the park and longer afternoons riding bikes and kicking balls and blowing bubbles in the yard.

The kids ask me what spring is, and I tell them it's the time when some days feel like winter and other days feel like summer. We've been listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons in the car lately, and they're enthralled with "La Primavera." We listen and talk about why it sounds like spring: crescendos and happy melodies and triumphal rhythms mimicking the explosion of growth and life and activity around us.

There are times I miss California and think how nice it would be to raise children in a place where the park was a legitimate option most days. I imagine what it would be like to wash my car and have it remain relatively clean for more than two or three days at a time. I daydream about the ease of schlepping kids from here to there without all the winter paraphenalia.

But there is something about spring that is too precious to give up now that I understand it, now that I actually feel it.  It has taught me something about waiting and anticipating, about appreciating tiny buds and shoots and growths--small promises of the invisible world at work beneath the surface, about enduring the barrenness and believing its temporality. It's a season that ministers to the small hopes I nurture for myself, for my family, for the world.

Somehow, spring is worth surviving winter.

Mommies, Children, Puppy, Sermon

2010-03-08T15:27:00.001-07:00

I've missed being here.

But the week I've had has been worth the sacrifice. It was a hard week, busy and full and exhausting with a lot of hope and expectation and uncertainty hanging in the balance, but those kinds of days and weeks often offer the very best rewards for our efforts.

The climax of the last seven days occurred Friday, when I was given the opportunity to share my heart with some remarkable women and fellow moms at the church we call home. I spent most of the week preparing, which largely amounted to a lot of head-spinning and swirling reflection: so many thoughts and ideas about this impossible job, so many stories of failure and redemption, so much to share about coming to the end of myself as a mother and having to step into faith and hope and love in Jesus--and in my kids. I eventually found some kind of direction through the ocean of possible approaches. The waters finally parted in my mind to make way for a coherent story, and--as is the case anytime we dare to reveal our heart in its deepest, truest sense within a community that embraces rather than judges frailty--it was good. For me. And I think for them. There is a collective relief in confession and in an acknowledgement of what is true. It begins to crack open our heart and mind to something greater than our confines of fear. This is fellowship, communion, the proverbial village at its best. If only we had more of it...

Then Saturday, after the first long, full night of sleep I'd had since Monday, Ben and I had a lunch date after my spin class at the rec center. We sat next to each other at the table eating our vegetables and then our pizza, talking about the basketball game on the t.v. nearby. Our time together was simple but sweet. He asked if he could get Mike & Ikes from the candy machine after our lunch, and I agreed. It's a date, after all. To my surprise, he turned down honey on his crust (a tradition specific to BeauJo's pizza here in Colorado), noting that his body probably didn't need two sweets. I was so proud of his budding awareness of nutrition, of his ability to take care of himself with such discipline. I think I smiled all the way home at this evidence of his developing decision-making skills, this small confirmation that the work of handing over decisions and responsibility does, indeed, pay off eventually. We don't always get to see the fruits of our parenting labors so clearly, so I accepted this glimpse as a gift.

The highlight of the weekend came Saturday afternoon, when we trekked to Loveland--over an hour and a half drive from our house--to see the puppy that will soon be ours. We hadn't known which puppy would be ours when we visited the litter a week ago, so we hadn't paid particular attention to their personalities. After spending the afternoon observing and playing, any reservation I had about this puppy endeavor vanished. There will be hard work and frustrating moments without question, but I am convinced Merlot will be the perfect addition to our family: warm, affectionate, drawn to people and to us, playful but also the first to lay down on the sidelines and watch the others in their puppy play. Abby, who acts much like a puppy herself, excited the pups in her exuberance, often resulting in a barrage of jumping up and barking. Merlot found her interesting but responded with the least excitability, attracted to our bouncing, shrieking, giggling girl without losing herself. If she can handle Abby, she can handle anything, I'm sure. Now to potty train a two-year-old and house train a puppy at the same time--let the chocolate chips and doggy treats roll!

I think what made this week so sweet for me was several small fruitions of hope (which our pastor, in the midst of yet another profound sermon, pointed out is by definition a hole, a longing, a desire as yet unfulfilled). Hope hurts at times, aches. But I realize it also keeps us alive. This week represented a small taste of hope fulfilled: in being received and understood by a community of women, in witnessing Ben's self-discipline, in seeing a hint that we have, in fact, found the right dog for our family. All these holes of uncertainty that represent my hopes, big and small, profound and mundane--for a community of moms who can speak truth into each other and their children, for a child who will learn to make his way in the world, for a pup that will bring more joy than trouble to our home--they all filled in a little bit, making it easier to have faith in what is to come, increasing my willingness to hope even more.

Abby has a lovely book called All the World which surveys the simple, ordinary, everyday elements of life and then speaks to their great significance. It begins, "Rock, stone, pebble, sand. Body, shoulder, arm, hand. A moat to dig, a shell to keep. All the world is wide and deep." It continues this way throughout the book before ending, "Hope and peace and love and trust. All the world is all of us." I love this story, made especially precious by the little voices next to me who recite it from start to finish.

For me, this week was "Think, write, speak, listen. Mommies, children, puppy, sermon. A life to share at home, out there. Hope and faith grow everywhere."

It was an eventful week for me, and it was good. But it's nice to be back here sharing it with you.

Beyond Obedience Training

2010-03-02T20:09:00.002-07:00

There have been a few times when reading dog training books has felt a little like reading the gospel, when I've wanted to stand up and shout, "Yes, yes, yes! Exactly!" (a strange and unexpected reaction, I'll admit). Patricia McConnell's book The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs explores the inherently different nature of humans and dogs and how our species-specific ways of communicating get us into trouble with each other. Based on this understanding of canine behavior and communication, she makes a case for benevolent leadership with tips for successful training. Much of what makes a good trainer, it seems, is the same as what makes a good parent: clear boundaries, plenty of praise for good behavior, consistency, and redirection to what is acceptable rather than harping on what isn't.

(Interesting aside and canine tip of the day: as humans, our first instinct when we see a dog is to lean forward into their space, reach our hand over their head, and pet them; this frontal approach with our hands raised is how we greet other humans and comes naturally. Dogs, however, interpret this move as a dominance display and may even feel threatened; they'll tolerate it from humans they know and love but would much prefer to be approached from the side and rubbed under the chin or on the chest. Pay attention next time you or someone else greets a dog: you may find they duck their head or back away or grow tense. I've been observing it ever since I read about it. Who knew?)

The parts of the book that have resonated most are those that address leadership and motivation. Much of what I'm reading boils down to the idea that we want our dogs to do what we ask because they want to, because they believe it's in their best interest, not because they are afraid. This concept parallels my desire for my own kids. I want my children to make good decisions not because I make them do the right thing or because I told them to and they're afraid of me but because they know life will go better for them if they do, because they know it is in their best interest to make that decision.

McConnell writes this: "So much of old-fashioned obedience training could be summarized as, 'Do it because I told you to, and if you don't, I'll hurt you.' The assumption seemed to be that dogs should do what we say because we told them to: after all, we're the humans and they're the dogs, and surely humans have more social status than dogs. If a dog didn't obey, then he was challenging his owner's social status and needed to be forcibly disciplined to be kept in his place...Many people use force because of the myth of 'getting dominance' over their dogs. But yelling at a dog, reaching for her collar, and shaking her is a very primate thing to do, not something that she will inherently understand. It might make her afraid of you, and it might make her pay a lot of attention to you, but it won't teach her what you'd like her to do. Giving a dog a hard jerk on her collar is like rapping a child's hand in school when she gets the wrong answer. It may make the child afraid of making a mistake, but it doesn't do anything to teach her the right answer" (p. 147-148, 182).

I'll confess there are many, many times I wish my kids would just obey. There are times when I feel affronted by their behavior, when I think, "How dare you ______ (insert irritating, disrespectful, or immature behavior here)." I am the adult; they are the child. Don't they know I know better than they do? Don't they know our lives would be easier if they would just comply? Those are the moments when I'm tempted to try to make them do something rather than frame the moment as a learning opportunity. McConnell discusses the irony that force (she means physical but regarding the kids I mean emotional or authoritative force), which seems powerful, in fact, is only necessary when we lack power. It may be effective in the moment, but no true learning occurs.

The moments I feel most enraged, most angry, most inclined to rant or rave or punish are the moments when I find myself without power, when I've backed myself into a corner--often over a power struggle I shouldn't be in in the first place--and don't know what to do. Regrettably, I've done a lot of damage in the name of authority--it's an ugly place but one I'm learning to avoid more successfully each day. If my kids and I are pitted against each other in this kind of emotionally charged situation, I'm better off stepping away than coming on as the you-do-it-or-else mommy. No learning occurs when we're in fight-or-flight mode. When I find we're headed to this lose-lose realm, I'm beginning to use the phrase, "We'll talk about this later. I make better decisions when I'm calm." I buy myself time to figure out a legitimate consequence, they see a model of self-control even when tempers are flaring, the relationship is preserved, and we do not suffer the emotional fall-out of an authority trip.

Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I succeed. Always I learn. This is how it should be for my kids.

If my goal were to teach my children to do what others say, then this model of "obedience training" might be effective. But it's not. My goal is to help my children learn to think and make good decisions for themselves, whether someone is telling them to or not. I want them to have the confidence to make hard decisions when offered a ride home from a drunk friend, when handed the drug-du-jour, when asked to compromise their values, when tempted to cheat, lie, or steal--not because they're afraid of what Mom and Dad might say if they find out but because they're thinking about the consequence for themselves. This confidence can only come from experience, and I pray to God they don't gain that experience in a situation with potentially fatal or irreversible consequences. So I have to let them think for themselves now, make their own decisions now, fail now, feel the small, insignificant but nevertheless painful consequences now so that they learn how to choose.

I already see it working. Ben is only four yet he demonstrates such incredible thinking skills, such sound judgement. I never have to haggle with Ben over whether or not to bring or wear a coat; he has learned to trust me when I say it's pretty cold outside--not because I've made him wear a coat every time but because I've given him the freedom not to wear it, and he's experienced being cold. It didn't take long for him to realize it may be best to wear it, or at least bring it, just in case. Just yesterday, Ben looked at his library book and asked when it's due. I told him it's due Friday, and he said, "Well, I'll bring it back Thursday just to be safe." It still amazes me when I see him put away his books or toys during rest time, turn off his light, and crawl in bed for a nap because he recognizes he's tired. This kind of thinking is not bred of simply obeying my authority. It comes from experiencing cold, Colorado mornings. It comes from paying fines for late books. It comes from feeling tired and cranky. It comes from making a mistake, feeling the consequence, and having the opportunity to choose differently next time.

I want to work all things in my children's life together for their good. I want to give them free will within the boundaries I set for them. And when they choose to go outside those boundaries, I want them to experience consequences in the safety of my love for them so that, hopefully, they won't have to experience the harsh consequences of a larger world that has little concern for their well-being. And hopefully, when they venture out in this wide, wide world, we'll have a relationship that goes far beyond me telling them what to do.

I want them to learn so much more than obedience...

***

We found out we'll be bringing a puppy home in a few short weeks. Merlot is her name--for now, at least. I imagine there are many lessons in store for me; I've learned so much already. On the one hand, I can't believe we're bringing another creature into the house that needs training and discipline and guidance in addition to all the physical demands of meals, potty breaks, play time, etc. On the other hand, I am smitten with the notion of relationship, of bringing more love and joy into our home, even as we invite their bedfellows, frustration and discouragement. It is a beautiful mess, family, and a beautiful blessing.

"That Was the Day My Heart Growed"

2010-02-26T14:43:00.000-07:00

Friendship is important, even at four years old.

Ben had a rough morning Wednesday--it was waterworks for about forty-five minutes before we left the house because he wanted to stay home with me and not go to school (I was out of town last weekend and have had more evening commitments than usual, so I think he's feeling it). I finally managed to get him in the car to go to school, but he told me he was going to be sad all morning.

When I picked him up later that morning, I asked him how his day was, unsure of what to expect. I must have sounded concerned, because Ben gave me a look that indicated everything was fine, saying, "Quinn made me happy. When I got to school, he said, 'Benjamin!' and that made my heart grow." Then he chattered happily about his day all the way home.

I was touched by how profoundly he was impacted by his friend's simple enthusiasm to see him. I believe Ben when he says his heart grew: when we are met with love in times of pain, we are changed. We learn to trust, to reach out, to receive. Ben experienced friendship in a vulnerable moment, and this small act of kindness reminded him of his value.

I also love how incidental, how unassuming the exchange was. There was no pep talk, no word of wisdom, no intentional encouragement from his buddy. Quinn probably didn't even realize Ben was having a hard morning. They are simply friends, and this friendship sustained Ben through a difficult morning, transformed his sadness into something good, something true.

It's interesting to me that Ben used the language of his heart growing, which I assume he borrowed from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Ben's love for this story borders on obsession. During the last two Christmas seasons, he requested to read it countless times and then asked approximately a million and two questions about The Grinch: why he wants to steal Christmas, why his heart is too small, why he doesn't like the Whos, why he lies to CindyLou Who, why his heart grows, why he gives it all back at the end, why, why, why. He and Abby and Daddy would act out the story, taking as many toys from the family room into the living room as their arms could carry and then bringing it all back again. Usually I would play CindyLou Who, asking in a squeaky high voice as they gathered their loot, "Santy Claus, why? Why are you taking our Christmas tree, why?" He even bought Josh Grinch pajamas for Christmas, not because he thinks Josh is a grinch but because he's simply enamored with the story.

So we've talked about The Grinch's behavior and why he doesn't like Christmas, and we've talked about what makes people mean or small-hearted. We've talked about what The Grinch learns about Christmas and the Whos and how that changes him. At the end of the book, of course, The Grinch is transformed by The Whos' sincere love for each other apart from the packages and trimmings and feasts. As his sleigh of contraband Christmas teeters on a mountain peak, threatening to fall into the abyss below, The Grinch hears the Whos singing, sees their holiday spirit glowing brightly. In turn, we learn that "in Whoville, they say, that the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day."

Ben believes The Grinch's heart grows in response to the Whos love. When met with Quinn's enthusiastic greeting, Ben recognized love and felt himself change. This tiny exchange, which must have lasted mere seconds, impacted him deeply, enough that he told me the story again yesterday on our way home.

"That was the day my heart growed," he concluded as we rounded the turn toward home.

Indeed.

Sweet Dreams, and Namasté

2010-02-22T21:54:00.001-07:00

There are moments in parenthood when everything is right, when a deep, abiding sense of contentment and peace and gratitude fills the soul. I had one of those moments tonight, and I savored it, let it linger in all its wonder, breathed deep and long the air of clarity and perspective. It was not exciting. It was not momentous. But it was pure and true. Genuine. A glimpse of life on earth as it is in heaven.

Josh had a business meeting for the fire department tonight, so I had the kids to myself for bedtime. We made it through the usual flurry of activity surrounding bathroom-using and pajama-dressing and tooth-brushing. By the time we settled into Abby's big green chair for books, the kids were visibly tired. Ben rubbed his eyes and yawned; Abby climbed into my lap and rested her head under my chin, relinquishing her usual post of autonomy next to me.

As has been the case the last several days, Ben chose his little, phonetic reader to read to us. Now that he has discovered his power of reading, he finds delight in being able to read us a bedtime story. His skills are becoming more fluid. Now he stops to sound out only the occasional word. He puts the sentences together more quickly, even adds the appropriate intonation. He can read a whole "chapter" of four to five stories in a sitting before tiring. I'm astounded by his growth. He hadn't read for Abby yet, but I was confident the novelty of Ben reading would quell any impatience she might feel toward his speed.

I was right. They both settled in, their bodies still and relaxed, their energy quiet and calm. Abby didn't complain or grow impatient once, not even in the places Ben paused for a significant time. She even began to point out the "I's" on the page that began many of the sentences. Ben rested his head on my shoulder as his little pointer finger moved steadily from one word to the next, and I was torn between wanting to let Ben continue reading indefinitely for the magic of it and knowing they needed to get their heads to a pillow before they crashed. Having them both snuggled close, sensing the absolute contentment in their spirits, feeling the drive and rush and play and defensiveness and offensiveness and exuberance and scramble to figure out their world leave their little bodies as we all sat in the security of each other's presence--it was sacred.

When Ben finished the three stories we had agreed upon ahead of time, he handed me the book Abby had chosen. She ran into Ben's room earlier to find The Moon Shines Down by Margaret Wise Brown, the same author who penned the children's classics Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny. It's a charming story narrated by a koala bear who imagines all the children of the world seen by the moon: "I see the Moon and the Moon sees me, and the Moon sees the Dutch boy far over the sea..." As he describes the many children and their homelands, the koala prays a blessing over each one, saying, "O God bless him and God bless me..."

The kids have it memorized, so they took turns reciting various pages. At one point, Ben recognized the word "the" in the text and then saw "to," "and," and "of"--a few of the site words he's learning. It was as if another light bulb went off in his head. I could practically see him thinking, Hey, these books are made up of the words I'm learning and reading. The destination of his efforts came into focus.

We finished reading, sang our songs, and prayed, thanking Jesus for each other and for the events of today, praying for tomorrow's activities. When we finished, Ben hopped down with his Teddy and walked into his room; Abby got down to walk to her crib. I remembered at the last second to put Aquaphor on the two scrapes healing on her face before scooping her into my arms to hug her and kiss her and lay her down. As I set her in the crib, I said, "I love you, Abby. You're a good girl, you're such a good girl." She looked at me for a moment, as though contemplating my words, then leaned her head into mine and declared quietly and sincerely, "I luhf Gahd."

In one small sentence, she pierced my heart with her unadulterated, unsolicited, unscripted profession of faith.

There are so, so many theological concepts I could run on and on about here, but what struck me most profoundly was how simple it is to confess our desire for God, how uncomplicated it is to receive Grace. There's no need to pray a special prayer, no need to understand every nuance of sin and atonement and life redeemed. Abby loves Love, and that is enough. Faith is as effortless as sharing her two-year-old affection for an entity that, in her reality, cares enough to bless the moon and her and the children living far over the sea.

We grown people, especially those of us who've grown up in church circles, have this tendency to convolute all matters spiritual, to add a bunch of musts and should's and formulas and prescriptions to faith. It is all chaff, no more the substance of faith than the lines in a coloring book the substance of art. Ultimately, it all comes down to a mustard seed of faith in Love, and I think a lot more people have that than anyone realizes: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love, does not know God, for God is love" (1 John 4:7-8). I know a lot of people who love--some in beautiful, sacrificial, Mother Theresa ways, others in simple, everyday, unassuming ways--many of whom won't be found in church on a Sunday morning. Maybe because they don't find much that resembles Love in the places we talk most about God.

Tonight in the green chair, Benjamin, Abby, and I glimpsed heaven because the three of us simply rested in each other's love--without competition, without jockeying for position, without seeking attention or affirmation. We rested, together, in Love. Abby's precious proclamation merely put words to what we already knew and recognized.

I wish these moments with the kids weren't fleeting, didn't appear only in brief flashes of brilliance. Often I wonder why we can't "just get along" all the time, and I grow frustrated when this expectation suffers the inevitable let-down of reality. But I think in this world it is impossible to shed our competition, our jockeying, our attention- and affirmation-seeking for more than a few minutes at a time, let alone at the same time. This pattern of life is so ingrained in us, so endemic to our flesh. We are driven, enslaved in our cells, in our very DNA, to nature's law: "survival of the fittest." Government, economies, religion, HOA's all serve to uphold this tenet.

How can I possibly expect my children to deny their flesh when I can't get over my need for people to think I have great kids? Competition, jockeying, affirmation-seeking is my curse, too.

The only antidote, I think, the only relief from this pressure-cooker life is to stop thinking about ourselves and instead love: to help others survive, to affirm other's worth, to esteem other's accomplishments, to carry other's burdens, to shelter other's frailties--not in some self-deprecating, neglectful state of martyrdom, but in blessed freedom, resting in the knowledge that God is for us, not against us, rejoicing in the truth of every person around us.

I love the phrase "Namasté," which loosely translated means, "The divine in me honors the divine in you." Beneath our flesh--our striving, competing selves--is an image of God. It is in me. It is in Ben. It is in Abby. It is in you. What wonder when we get to see it without its ugly cover-up.

Tonight in the green chair, the flesh was too weary to raise its ugly head, so we got to experience Love instead.

Namasté, dear friends.

Who Needs the Fountain of Youth?

2010-02-22T14:21:00.002-07:00

This afternoon as we drove home from Ben's school, Ben and Abby had a conversation in the back about their ages, who's big, and who's old. At first Abby said she was old. Great, I thought, if she's old, then we're all in trouble. (Although her request for a laptop and her own iPod next Christmas might lead you to believe she's older than two).

Like a reflex, in true big brother fashion, Ben said, no, he was old. This improves our lot only slightly.

Then he paused to actually think for a moment and settled the whole matter, saying, "No, Abby. None of us are old--not even Daddy."

Smile.

Oops: Reason #5,362 I Married Josh

2010-02-16T20:18:00.003-07:00

This morning, I conceded to Josh that I am a terrible driver--at least according to his definition.

We've been having this argument for years. He says I'm a bad driver. I say I'm not. My definition of a terrible driver is someone who regularly endangers the lives of other people through reckless or careless driving. This I do not do. His definition of a terrible driver is someone who regularly bumps into things. Depending on how one understands "regularly," I may qualify here.

I would have argued against my qualification for this title before this morning. But I no longer have that freedom. This morning, I sealed my epithet by "bumping into" my garage door. From inside the garage. Apparently, one must wait until the door is all the way up before reversing out of the garage. I chose to attempt my exit when the door was about halfway up.

No, really.

And you should have heard the barrage of questions from the back seat when it happened:

Me: "Oh no."
Peanut Gallery: "Mommy, what happened?"
Me: "I backed into the garage door."
Peanut Gallery: "Why?"
Me: "It was an accident. I didn't realize the door wasn't all the way up."
Peanut Gallery: "Why?"
Me: "I don't know."
Peanut Gallery: "Is the garage door broken?"
(Pause as I push the button to see if the door moves)
Me: "No. It still goes up and down, fortunately."
Peanut Gallery: "Did it hurt the car?"
Me: "Probably. I'll have to go check."
(Brief interlude while I survey the damage)
Me: "It did scratch the car a little."
Peanut Gallery: "But why did you bump into the garage door?"

Ad infinitum.

It was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I often wait until we're all in the car to put the garage door up so the kids don't freeze in our cold Colorado air while getting in. Typically, I buckle Abby in, get in myself, and push the garage door button as Ben's buckling. By the time he's done, the door is up. Then, like any normal person, I turn on the car and back out. I've done it hundreds of times. This morning, however, I got distracted and accelerated the routine, to my utter embarrassment.

Josh called to check-in on our morning as we drove out of the neighborhood to Ben's school. This is when I humbly and sincerely acknowledged that I'm a terrible driver as a prelude to my mortifying story. With great chagrin, I shared my "incident" in the garage.

Here's what I love about my dear, dear husband. When I told him I had actually managed to back into the garage door, he chuckled in an I'm-not surprised-because-I-know-you-too-well kind of way, very calmly asked me about the damage, and then said with all sincerity, "I'm sorry." There was no exasperation, no lecture, no rant or rave about the cost of repairs or the obvious lunacy of my mistake. We both knew I screwed up. We both knew I made a giant mistake. The consequence of my error was punishment enough, and he was there with humor and empathy to help me endure the humiliation.

I love this man.

This is how we desire to raise our kids, though, admittedly, I'm not as accomplished at extending grace as Josh is (yet). Life teaches hard lessons; there's no need for us as parents to rub it in. Instead, we can receive our little loves with empathy and a bit of humor, acknowledging their error without judgement as they feel the pain of their consequences.

What Josh communicated to me this morning is a basic belief in my goodness as a person. He affirmed that I am far more valuable to him than a car or a garage door. I married the right man, without question.

Abby and I returned home to play after dropping Ben off at school. When the time came to get back in the car to pick him up a few hours later, Abby said emphatically, "Mama, dohn forgeht to open duh door! We dohn wahn to bump it a-gaihn." Thanks, Abby. I'm sure I will never leave the garage again without checking my mirror at least a half dozen times.

We live. We learn. We grow. And if we're fortunate, we do so in the presence of Grace. Thanks, Amor.

A Taste of Heaven

2010-02-14T20:35:00.001-07:00

As Ben and I finished his night-night routine, I asked him which song he wanted to sing before climbing in bed.

He paused a moment, then said, "Let's sing 'Jesus Loves Me.' That's a good Valentine's song."

Indeed. At the age of four, Ben somehow recognizes that any celebration of love finds its origin in Love. He's absolutely right.

So I wish to honor every exchange of love today, whether small or grand, because each genuine expression of love is an affirmation that the Eternal has entered the temporal, that the Divine is redeeming the human, that Love is conquering fear. Every time a person sets aside insecurity and ambition to enter into someone else's world, to affirm someone else's worth, to speak truth into someone else's heart, we come closer to experiencing life "on earth as it is in heaven."

Our taste of heaven took the form of shoveling the driveway, warming up over hot chocolate and candy hearts, and sharing heart-shaped pizzas by candlelight. It was simple, it was happy, and it was all Love.

Wishing you and yours a Happy Valentine's Day, too...

Timing and the Small Matter of Perspective

2010-02-12T14:38:00.010-07:00

Since both kids managed to break their fevers the requisite twenty-four hours before the dog show yesterday, I loaded them up late morning to trek down the hill to see and meet the breed we've been pursuing for the next addition to our family. While there, we met several dogs--many of varying relation to the litter of pups we're intersted in--and local breeders. We stayed and watched and talked and pet dogs for a couple hours, our time confirming our interest in this particular breed.

Later in the afternoon, after the kids had rested at a friend's place near the complex, the three of us enjoyed a treat at a coffee shop: a non-fat, no-whip mocha for me, a "special milk" (cold milk with a pump of raspberry syrup) for them, and a pastry to share. We sat at a small, round table and colored as we enjoyed our goodies.

We had been there about fifteen minutes when Abby suddenly looked at me, concerned, and said most sincerely, "We forgoht to geh uh dohg, Ma-ma."

It was just about the cutest sentence I've heard her say. Like suddenly she realized nothing had changed. She was fully convinced that we had managed to overlook this monumental task. In her mind, going to see the dogs meant we were finally going to bring one home after what must seem to a two-year-old like an eternity of talking about it. I tried to explain that we went to see the kind of dog we're interested in but that the actual puppy we're going to bring home is still too little to leave its mama. I don't know that she understood, but she accepted my explanation and returned to coloring circles in her notebook.

Poor thing. It's hard enough for Josh and I to be patient with the process as we wait for the pups to grow and the temperaments to be discovered and the timing to work out and the stars to align. But we know how important it is to do this right, to make sure we bring the right dog into our family at the right time. And we have an understanding of time, of process. A few months to us is a blink, or at most a yawn, in a life that's already numbered in decades. For the kids, however, it's a very, very long time. And as much as we try to explain the process, I'm sure it still sounds vague and uncertain and indefinite. Perspective is everything: "Mama, this is taking forever. Did you forget how much we want a dog?"

I imagine this is comparable to the way we perceive our lives in the scheme of eternity. Everything to us feels so weighty, uncertain, vague, indefinite--and certainly takes much, much longer than we would like. Outside of time, however, God must see our lives as a blink. And as much as He tries to assure us that He's got it under control, that everything will work out in His time according to His plans for our good, as much as He asks us to trust Him and simply rest in the knowledge that He's handling it, we grow impatient, confused. We assume He must have forgotten, or worse, doesn't care.

So we raise our head one day, feeling the acute absence of what we want, and say, "Hey, Creator of the Universe, Maker and Sustainer of All Things, Alpha and Omega--we forgot __________ [insert the most important thing in life at the moment]." And I imagine He must look at us kindly and warmly, with all the fondness and empathy I felt for Abby in that coffee shop, and attempt to explain it to us, though He knows our minds can't always conceive of His plans or ways or understanding--in parables about sparrows and lillies, in miracles small and large, in demonstrations of mercy and forgiveness and grace.

And when that fails, he offers Himself: the incarnation of Love in Jesus, so that even if we don't understand, we can trust. We can leave the mysteries of time and longing and fulfillment in His hands and go back to coloring in our notebooks, trusting His intentions toward us are always good, believing His desire is to give us the desires of our heart.

So, sweet Abby, we have not forgotten to get a dog. In fact, we are doing everything in our power to bring you and your brother the very dog that will best satisfy your hopes for a furry friend, because we love you. It takes time--a seemingly long time--but we think it will be worth the wait. Though the delay doesn't make sense right now, one day it will become clear.

You can trust us.

Confession

2010-02-09T15:12:00.001-07:00

After ruminating on the sweetness of snuggling my sick Abby in the last post, I find the gods have conspired to remind me of the flip side of sick kids: exhaustion (theirs and mine), whining (theirs and mine), and that strange paradox of knowing they're cranky because they're sick and just not really caring after the fourth time Sibling A has intentionally goaded Sibling B into tears of tragedy and injustice.

Suffice it to say, it is days like these that remind me of why the television can be so tempting. While the kids generally don't watch t.v., sick days are the exception, and today I've had to be especially mindful not to overuse this "wonder" of entertainment in my own desperation for a bit of peace and quiet.

The irony is that the t.v. isn't really as entertaining to the kids as I might "hope." Attention wanders and I find the couch emptied in favor of making "pies" in their little kitchen. But as soon as I go to turn the t.v. off, they race back to their positions in front of the screen as though I were threatening their lifeline.

That's the thing: the box offers the illusion of fun, but so many other pastimes are far more enjoyable. So I actually find myself making statements like, "You're welcome to watch the t.v. as long as you're sitting here paying attention. Otherwise, I'm going to turn it off." I can't stand the background noise of it if no one is actually watching. And yet, secretly, I'm thrilled they'd rather occupy themselves with productions of their imagination.

If only they could enjoy said play without driving each other crazy. Alas, impulse control is inversely related to degree of sickness.

Well, through some miracle of childhood, neither child has taken a nap though both so desperately need the sleep in their run-down, feverish, antibody-building state. They will be appearing in a short minute, so I will need to find some activity to quiet their bodies while stimulating their minds and maintaining my sanity.

Yes, this is motherhood, too. And, for better and for worse, I really am a mommy.

I Really Am a Mommy

2010-02-07T18:55:00.004-07:00

Last night, although Abby continues to fight a fever, we put our kids to bed at the house of our dear friends, with whom we were having dinner. We arrived with arms full of pillows, stuffed animals, pajamas, books, and all the bedtime paraphenalia required by little ones. They've gone to sleep here a number of times, so the home is familiar and comfortable to them. Both kids asked all day when we'd be going to their house; both fell asleep almost immediately after we laid them down.

We had to wake them up in order to drive home at the end of the night, and though Ben simply closed his eyes and fell back asleep once snuggled into his car seat, Abby chatted with us all the way home, in spite of the late hour. In the car by the light of the moon, we conversed with her about our day and the lights on the dash and the lyrics of the music.

As is typical when Abby gets sick, her "reactive airways" have, indeed, reacted to this latest virus. In fact, the wheezing and whistling and rattling and spasmodic coughing showed up first this time, before any other symptom. She coughed frequently as we drove, and I couldn't help but say, "I'm sorry, Baby," every time. We've been treating her with albuterol every four hours around the clock, so it worked out conveniently to do her treatment when we got home. Once we had the treatment ready, she asked to do her medicine with me, so we turned down the lights, snuggled into the couch, and began.

It takes about five minutes to get through one vial of medicine. I sat against the arm of the couch with my legs stretched out in front of me. Abby snuggled into my lap, her own legs stretched across mine, her head resting on my chest while I held the mist in front of her mouth and nose. I could see only the top of her eyes from my angle, and as we sat there, I felt her body relax and watched her eyelashes droop closer and closer to her cheek. Though all energy and questions in the car, the hour caught up to her once we were home, and I held and kissed my sleepy darling while she quietly inhaled her medicine.

She coughed occasionally, this awful, congested, barking cough. Though her spirits remain high when she's sick, I know she feels crummy. During the day, she can hardly walk from the family room to the kitchen without her breathing becoming labored. So I cooed to her in soft, soothing mama tones. I held her little body close, brushed the hair out of her eyes. And I realized that I am one of two people in the world who gets this privilege, who gets to be "the one" to this precious girl--the one she wants when she is sick, the one whose lap she wants to climb into when she's exhausted, the one she asks for when she needs to be comforted. I am her mommy. No one else in the world has that title. This reality seared my heart with its poignancy.

She was practically asleep by the time the medicine was finished. I couldn't bear to disturb her by leaning over to turn off the nebulizer, so in a whisper, I asked Josh to do it. Then I carried her gently upstairs to her room and laid her in her crib, where she pulled her Froggy close and went right to sleep.

To Ben and Abby, no one else in the world offers the same comfort, respite, security, and love as me and Josh. Someday, that will change. But for now, it is a profound honor and responsibility. At times, my heart aches with love for them--like last night, when I snuggled my sick girl in the still of the night and my chest hurt with her coughs, swelled with longing to make her better.

For now, I hold her in my arms with tender affection; forever, I will hold her in my soul with love. I think this is what it means to be a mommy.

23 Sentences, and Everything Changes

2010-02-04T14:11:00.005-07:00

Yesterday afternoon, Ben came down from his nap cheerful, calm. He held a Level 1 Reader in his hands and asked, as I was finishing up a phone call, if he could read it to me. He has never asked this before. I couldn't have been happier to oblige him.

I got off the phone after many eager insistings on his part, and we sat together on the couch in the family room. The house was quiet and still, as Abby still snoozed in her crib. The light was warm from the afternoon sun. I propped my legs on the ottoman, Ben curled his legs under him, and he began.

The sentences were simple and phonetic: "Wag has a pal--Kitcat. Kitcat ran to a mat..."

He sounded out each word, said it again after he decoded the letters, moved on to the next word, and proceeded to the end of the sentence. When he reached the end, he reread the entire sentence aloud to comprehend its meaning. And then he beamed. I smiled and cheered. He was proud. I was proud. And he continued to the next sentence. As he went on, he recognized more quickly repeated word endings, like "-at" in "mat," "cat," and "sat." He didn't have to sound out every one.

There were times he was halting and other times he was fluid, but he had command of the process, and I could feel his confidence rising with each success, could see a world opening up to him before my eyes. When we reached the end of the third page and decided it was time to get Abby, who had woken, we both knew he had accomplished something big. Really big. He wanted some quantifiable description of how much he had read, so we counted the periods: 23 sentences he read, and he walked around all afternoon announcing it with excitement.

It was sacred to watch it come together. He's recognized the letters of the alphabet for years, has known their sounds for some time, and has been able and occasionally willing to sound out a word or two or three here or there for nearly a year. He's had all the building blocks without realizing he's had them. But yesterday, the knowledge and skills converged in his concious mind to enable him to read, really read, and my spirit lept for him.

As a child who loved to read, who spent hours and hours in book after book, who got lost in other places and times and people and events, who often finished a book a different person than I began, who preferred words to almost anything else, I revel in this feat. Because now, it is only a matter of time before he discovers he holds the world in his little boy fingertips. A universe of meaning is about to open up for him as he begins to look at the letters that surround him everyday with new meaning.

Don't worry, my expectations are in check. There's no pressure here. It's just that sitting on the couch with him yesterday felt like ushering him into another dimension. I may as well have held his hand and walked him to the moon.

23 precious sentences...it is a whole new world.

Beginning

2010-02-02T13:35:00.005-07:00

I have this little stack of promise on my end table in the form of books. One is a book on cycling training, another is a book on dog training, and yet another is a book on writing that I devoured last summer and want to revisit now that I'm putting words to the page with more consistency.

In addition to these tangible, paper wells of potential, I have some virtual resources I'm eager to digest: a few sermons I want to listen to on-line from weeks we've had to miss church, a teleclass on essay writing I've been thinking about since December, and a few internet searches I need to run as I continue my preparations to make a go of freelance writing in the fall.

And then there are the more pressing tasks I want to take care of: making phone calls, returning e-mails, creating a couple more playlists and spin routines for the classes I'm subbing for over the next couple weeks, downloading my thoughts here.

Frankly, there are so many things I want to do come nap time--that precious hour and a half in my day when the house is quiet, my time is my own, and my thoughts can wander uninterrupted--that my brain goes into overload and I end up doing just the most essential tasks, unable to decide where to begin.

Is it better to read about dog training first since we're watching the DVD's that go along with the book in our spare evening hours or to read the cycling book first since it will help me learn how to add resistance training to my weekly spin regimen in addition to helping me craft thoughtful, productive spin classes? Do I read this wonderful book on writing, knowing it will inspire me as I gratefully sit down to this blog every few days or do I spend the time looking for markets that might be interested in some of my existing writing?

It's a nice "problem" to have--so many interests and goals and beginnings and possibilities and resources that I don't know where to begin. For me, the learning and preparation is as enjoyable as the actual work, so in some ways, the fun has already begun though the actual events are several weeks or months away. But the excitement isn't helpful if I'm paralyzed with the desire to do everything at once. It's time to make a plan.

Probably I should begin with the cycling book, since getting my training underway for this summer's MS 150 (a 150 mile bike ride over two days to benefit the National MS Society) will be easy to do once I have the information. I plan on adding about twenty minutes of weights or weight-bearing activity to my Tuesday/Thursday spin workouts so that I can increase my strength in addition to my stamina. I was thrilled to finish the ride last year but felt my energy and power waning toward the middle of day two; I hope to finish faster and stronger this year.

More importantly, as I watch my sister with MS do everything in her power to take advantage of the ability her body does have right now, I feel compelled to do the same. Our bodies are a gift. Our health is precious. It is a blessing to move. Now.

Once I finish the cycling book, I can finish the dog training book. We put in an application for a puppy a couple weeks ago (I know, I know: what are we thinking?!?). In the process of looking for adult dogs needing to be re-homed due to circumstances (not temperament issues), I ended up spending forty-five minutes on the phone with a kind, kind man who breeds the kind of dog we're looking for. He's been working with dogs for decades, has raised his kids and his grandkids around them, and he couldn't stop talking about what a wonderful experience it has been for both the children and the dogs to grow up together. If he was looking to place a litter of his own puppies, I might have been suspicious that he was trying to sell me a line, but he's not--he won't be breeding his dogs for several months to a year, at least. His sincere enthusiasm for the benefits of raising and training a dog in the family caused Josh and I to really discuss what we're looking for in a pet, and ultimately, we decided we'd be willing to take on the short-term inconveniences of a puppy for the potential long-term gain for all of us.

All that to say, the litter we're interested in will be eight weeks old come March, so I figure I'll finish the dog training book and DVD's and probably end up re-reading it again by then. We may not get one of those puppies or we may get it when it's a few weeks older, and that would be fine (here, Josh gasps in disbelief--his enthusiasm rivals any five-year-old's), but I want to be ready just in case Pup prances into our life five weeks from now.

And I see the writing resources as an on-going interest that serves my passion. I love to write. I love this blog. I feel almost giddy when I learn that there are others out there who enjoy my blog, too. Though there are times I spend hours on a post and then delete it or when I can't for the life of me figure out what to write about, it is always a gift, a privilege to me, to come to this space and string words into sentences and paragraphs and stories. And when Abby starts preschool a few mornings a week in the fall, I'll see if I might be able to put my craft to work, too. So I'll always be pursuing it, but there will be times when other things--like a puppy, like life--will have to take precedence.

In the meantime, I am struck daily, hourly even, by how very lucky and blessed I am to get to do these things I love: to raise my children, to challenge my body, to teach spin classes that require me to find and listen to music as I choreograph an hour of cycling to my favorite tunes, to write and read and write some more, to undertake new adventures--our latest of the canine variety, to learn.

I used to think the opportunity to do anything new ended with graduation from college. I used to envy the high school students I taught who got to take music lessons, play sports, work on the school paper, and learn, learn, learn something new every day. I'm realizing, though, that while there are seasons of stasis--here, newborn life comes to mind--I am every bit as capable of learning something new now as I was fifteen years ago. In fact, I may be better equipped now because I actually know what I like and don't like, can more readily identify my strengths and weaknesses, and, in turn, tailor my pursuits accordingly.

The horizon is as wide and as bright as it ever was, perhaps more so. With a library card, an hour in the day, and a little imagination, the world is ripe with possibility.

The trick is figuring out where to begin...and beginning.

The Million Dollar Question: Whose Issue Is This?

2010-01-28T14:22:00.005-07:00

It's amazing what a difference it makes to parent from a place of hope rather than fear, to face an event or situation in my day-to-day with the kids and, rather than panic and react, to sit for a moment and pay attention to what I'm feeling and then take the time to identify why. Is this frustration or anger or concern really about them, or is it coming from some belief or expectation or fear I have that has nothing to do with their actions in the moment? Once I make this significant distinction, I can make a conscious decision about how to address the situation, if it's even necessary. I'm no longer at the whim of my anxieties. I choose how to proceed, and quite often, my subsequent actions are calm, kind, gentle, and empathetic, whether the kids are at fault or not. The knee-jerk reactions to my fear that left me frustrated, angry, and very unlike the parent I aspire to be has found its antidotes: self-awareness, and faith.

Yesterday, for instance, Ben came down from his nap and was using one of the wooden conductors from his train set as a giant sabor tooth, roaring and making claws out of his hands while holding this tooth in his mouth. And I'll be honest, I don't like these kinds of games. When he's pretending to be some violent animal or The Grinch or a pirate or bad guy, it unsettles me, worries me, makes me wonder why he doesn't want to be the good guy, the hero, the nice animals.

When I think about it, though, I understand why. For one, we live in the mountains where wildlife abounds: deer, elk, foxes, bears, mountain lions, and coyotes in addition to the assortment of small creatures like birds, rabbits, chipmunks and squirrels. The deer and elk and foxes wander through our yard or through the woods behind our house regularly, munching on grass or resting in the shade of the trees. At school, they talk about the various animals and their habitats. We read dozens of books about all kinds of animals and bugs. And inevitably, I'll get these questions from Ben: why do deer and elk have antlers, why do mountain lions have sharp teeth and claws, why do bees sting, why do sharks bite, why do porcupines have pokey spines, why do skunks smell so bad, etc., etc.? And inevitably, I'll have to reply, "To protect themselves" or "To eat." To which he'll counter, "Why do they have to protect themselves?" and suddenly we're in a conversation about the cycle of life and survival and the brutal reality of the natural world.

So naturally, he acts these scenarios out. He checked out a book from the library the other day about a woolly mammoth. It's published by Smithsonian and seeks primarily to provide information about the woolly mammoth in the context of a simple plot. At one point in the book, Woolly Mammoth loses his pack and is attacked by three sabor-tooth tigers. Ultimately, he's able to fight them off with his long tusks and trunk and then goes on to reunite with his pack. So it's no suprise Ben came downstairs enacting the part of the sabor-tooth tiger, claiming he was looking for a cave in order to protect himself.

Before, I would have felt anxious about this. Why choose to be the aggressor? But in my more rational state, I can acknowledge, for one, that this role seems better than the alternative role of victim. In addition, the sabor-tooth tigers are pretty slick looking, whereas Woolly Mammoth is pretty unremarkable and galumphing. And, when I really think about it, all good stories--and even games--require conflict: they require something to work against or overcome or conquer, whether it's an animal or bad guy or act of God or self-doubt or circumstance. And in a play group of one, all roles are played by one person.

So when I step back to think about the situation, to recognize where the anxiety comes from (clearly, I don't want Ben to glorify aggression and grow up thinking it's fun to be a bad guy) and then step back to analyze what's really going on (he's a four-year-old boy pretending what he's seen in order to make sense of it, and this has nothing to do with his beliefs about violence), I can respond rationally. In this case, I simply oohed and ahhed as he roared at me, and before I knew it, he had transformed his sabor teeth into tusks and reinvented himself as a walrus, an animal I feel much more comfortable with.

Because this little boy who pretends to be a sabor-tooth tiger is the same little boy who says he wants to grow up and be a daddy to all the little kids who don't have daddies, who cheers with sincerest enthusiasm when Abby makes something on the potty, who prays for our dear friend's cat not to get sprayed by a skunk again after hearing about the ordeal, who thanks Jesus for putting stars in the sky to look pretty for us, and who makes up songs about how much he loves us. Fear is unfounded here. Joy is abounding. Nothing about them has changed, but so much about me has, thank God.

Here's to the relief of parenting in truth.

Babies 'R'n't Us Anymore

2010-01-25T13:23:00.008-07:00

Abby and I made a whirlwind trip to Babies 'R' Us and the mall this morning while Ben was at school. It's a forty-five minute drive down the mountain and another forty-five minutes back up, which doesn't leave time for much else in a two-and-half-hour window. But we've needed to exchange a few things from Christmas, and since Abby's feeling under the weather, it seemed like a good, mellow morning activity--driving, listening to music, and chatting back and forth about the sights along the way.

It was a strange feeling to walk through Babies 'R' Us, though, like stepping into another time. It was only a few years ago that we seemed to frequent the store nearly as often as the OB's office, picking up gizmos and gadgets and linens and toys and creams and myriad gear for our darlings-to-be. Today, walking through aisles of bouncy seats, swings, bassinets, and exersaucers, all designed to keep babies cozy and comfy and content in those arduous months before they can communicate, I realized that baby territory feels foreign now--distant, almost unfamiliar. In just two years, we have come so far.

I remember it all, without question, but I find myself looking back at those days as history, and I catch myself realizing that this must be how all moms feel looking back, whether at babies or toddlers or teenagers. They've been there, done it all, and probably remember acutely the joy and the trial of each stage, but it is no longer reality, no longer familiar territory, even though they lived there once. This, I think, is where the nostalgia comes from--knowing that it used to be home but is no longer.

I think what struck me most is how far we've come from total dependency. Now, though still dependent in some ways, they are so self-sufficient. They eat, they sleep, they use (or are learning to use) the potty by themselves. They tell me what they need, they identify their feelings, they resolve conflict, they make up games, they entertain themselves, and they're navigating the sometimes bewildering territory of right and wrong. The present is all about conversations and coloring and trips to the park and singing songs and explaining why and handing over a little more responsibility each day.

Anyway, the dichotomy between past and present jolted me this morning, because the transformation occurred so quickly. Two years is not a long time, yet it is enough to change everything. Wild.

So Babies 'R' Us no longer feels like home. Now I feel at home at the library and the park and the zoo and the aquarium and the school and anywhere else in the world that I get to explore with Ben and Abby. Someday, those will no longer feel like home either, but something else will. Maybe even their own home, one day.

And probably sooner than I think, because time does, indeed, fly when you're having fun...

Nine Extraordinary, Ordinary Years

2010-01-21T14:55:00.005-07:00

Nine years has a nice ring to it.

Josh and I celebrated our ninth anniversary last night over dinner in front of a roaring fire at a quiet, cozy restaurant here in the mountains. We shared our entrees, as we often do when two dishes sound equally tempting, getting to enjoy both that way. We sipped wine and talked about our day, about the kids, about the election in Massachusetts, about finances, about us. Aside from the rose petals scattered on the table by the restaurant in honor of the occasion, it was little different than any other meal out. But its ordinariness was its beauty and its blessing, its testimony to how much we have to celebrate: while the years continue to pass and the anniversaries continue to add up, I don't feel much different now than I did when I sat across from this amazing man in our favorite Indian restaurant in Boston so many years ago.

For that sameness, I am grateful, because it has always been good, really good, between us. Nothing about us has changed, though so much has changed around us: I still feel the same kindredness, the same attraction, the same respect, the same conviction that we were made for each other now as I did then. In fact, if anything has changed, it is that our love has grown even deeper, even surer, even more comfortable and confident. We have walked with each other, now, through significant life events. We still hold each other's hands, but now we hold two little hands, too.

There is much that lies ahead of us. Last night, we talked about where we'd be in another nine years: Ben will be thirteen, Abby eleven; our hypothetical dog may very well have lived a full life and passed on; it's impossible to say where our careers will take us: what Josh will have accomplished, what I will be doing with myself when not shuttling the kids to school or attending recitals and games and events; we'd be happy to still be living in this same house but perhaps we will have bought a home with more land or lived in a foreign country; and who knows what kind of events will have come our way...it is all a question mark, a blank to be filled in, a life to be lived.

Herein lies the gift of "man and wife." Life, in all its triumphs and tragedies, offers enough suprises, enough drama. Marriage, by contrast, provides a precious constant: a safe haven, a quiet comfort, a welcomed respite from the craziness raging around us, a reliable refuge of fun and passion and friendship and soul-level communion, breathtaking and exhilarating for its invitation to unedited existence and vulnerability.

I like nine years. Just as I liked eight and seven and six...just as I'm sure I'll like nineteen and twenty-nine and forty-nine and sixty-nine, should we be lucky enough to live that long. For better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live, I am Josh's wife. We go to bed together and we wake up together. We pay the bills together and love the children together. We argue together and we forgive each other. We live very ordinary lives in the shadow of a love made remarkable by its consistency.

That the love we share is now normal for us, is now part of our very being, that our communion over dinner last night exists every day--this is extraordinary.

Thank you for nine extraordinary, ordinary years, Josh. I love you.