Tag: family

Release The Bunnies

This rose is a symbol of my renewal and my promise to myself to be brave...even in the face of family.
This rose is a symbol of my promise to myself to be brave…even in the face of the scariest things in life…like family.

This afternoon, we hosted my family for Easter dinner. With my sister Julie tucked in safely in her new life in Connecticut, there were 9 of us, including my sister and her husband, my dad and his wife, and my mom. If you had asked me 10 years ago if I would ever intentionally host a gathering with these guests invited at the same time, I would have laughed in your face. But time has a way of softening things or giving us enough distance from past mistakes to think that even questionable things might be wise choices.

The funny thing for me about sharing a meal with family is that it’s like having dinner surrounded by mirrors. Everyone at the table reflects something I am or do. I see myself everywhere I look. I see myself in the passionate way in which my father speaks, in the way my mother perpetually plays devil’s advocate, and in the way my sister sneaks in a comeback on the sly. Mostly what I see when I look at my family, though, is how we’re all struggling and we’re all trying. I see our common humanity. I recognize that we all have learned so much over the years, yet we have so far to go.

It got me to thinking about this Bunny Buddhism quote:

One must be kind, for every bunny is fighting a hard battle.

It’s easy to be hurt by members of our immediate family because they’re the ones we instinctively believe should never hurt us. Even when they do hurt us because they know our kryptonite, we often stick around because we’re invested. Sadly, it’s far too easy to be with family and inhale the negatives and fall into old patterns. Our communal bad habits creep in like skunk smell through car windows on the highway. Our family ties don’t so much bind us together as box us in. Our shared past becomes the basis for all current dealings, and with our common history comes baggage we can’t set down. Every mistake we’ve ever made, every misstep we’ve ever taken, has been cataloged and inventoried by these people. And we think we have each other figured out. We bring up past transgressions and trade them like stocks on the NASDAQ. None of this is good, helpful, or right.

So tonight as I sat with my family, when words felt hurtful or I wanted to judge, I tried to remember my bunny quote. I listened to what was going on behind the conversation. I paid more attention to the subtext. Every person on this planet is fighting their own battle. I have no idea what their journey looks like, and I can barely begin to imagine what they might need. What I can do is remind myself that we’re all battling a demon or twelve or twelve hundred. We’re all being the best bunny we can be in the moment. If we ask for more than this from each other, we’re asking too much. As I worked to set down the trunks of history between us, I heard an entirely different conversation than one I might have heard otherwise and I learned more about my family than I have in a long time.

To grow, we have to let go of our preconceived notions and open up to new possibilities. If I don’t want to repeat my history with these people, I need to give them room to be different. A caged bunny may be safe, but she’s not exactly free to experience exponential personal growth. Every bunny has a struggle. I don’t need to add to it. Perhaps if I free other bunnies from the cages of our shared history, my cage door will swing wide open too. The world could use more free range bunnies.

 

 

Posted on by Me 4

Our Lady of Perpetual Slow Learners

Lovely couple of kids
Lovely couple of kids

If there’s one thing I’ve learned through my journey as a parent, it’s that expectations can be your undoing. In terms of expectations, mothers are doomed from the start. From the day we pee on a stick and see pink lines, we are an expectant mother. Our pregnancy bible is entitled What To Expect When You’re Expecting, and we devour the information between its covers because pregnancy is so new and different and impending parenthood is equal parts exhilaration and terror. We want to be prepared…as much as anyone can be prepared for the arrival of something so much a part of oneself and yet totally unlike anything anywhere else. While our children begin their lives unencumbered by the existence of expectations, we embark on our parental career ready to measure them against the rubric of the typical. And that’s the point when we make our first big mistake.

I knew fairly early on that our sons were not typical. They did not follow growth and development charts. They were on their own schedules. Things their peers were readily learning, our sons could not. They skipped letters in the alphabet  and struggled to write their own names. They were uncoordinated with sports and were unable catch a ball or skip or follow rhythm. Physicians noted their shortfalls while reassuring us that they were fine. In school, they displayed obvious intellect while retelling stories or playing creatively, but rote memorization of math facts escaped them. They began to get poor marks on tests science and social studies tests despite knowing the answers when asked orally. We were frustrated. We knew they were intelligent, but their grades didn’t reflect it. Teachers told me they weren’t trying, but I knew how hard they worked. I could see their constant struggle to keep up and fit in with expectations they now innately understood by watching their classmates and receiving their report cards. When we finally realized that they had learning disabilities, the damage had been done. Our sons no longer believed they could be successful. Expectations were crushing them.

This year we pulled them out of traditional school and did what we swore we would not. We put them into a special school, a school for children who think differently, a school for the atypical. We’d been hesitant to take this route, fearful of pointing out to them and to others that they weren’t measuring up in regular schools. But the time for denial being a river in Egypt was over. They needed help…no matter what that help looked like. Their new school was a big adjustment for me. You see, there are no grades there. None. Kids aren’t in 4th grade and they don’t earn letter grades. They’re not evaluated that way, and teachers and students don’t discuss grades. They discuss progress. They discuss solutions to struggles. While the kids are evaluated regularly, they are assessed solely on improvement. If they’re improving, they’re on the right track. If they’re not improving, it’s time to re-evaluate how they might learn better and pursue a different route. It’s so simple it’s scary.

And, honestly, this new system of analysis did scare me. I was so tied to our traditional conventions that the variation seemed dubious. As a culture, we subsist on numbers and quantitative results. Our conversations with other parents about our children often revolve around concrete standards. Bobby came in First at State. Jimmy has a 4.0. Sue got a 1300 on her SATs. Hey. I get it. It’s an accomplishment and a feather in our caps when our child is successful in a way that we can readily point out. I know from personal experience, though, the other side of that equation. When our sons were earning C and D grades, I perpetually feared having someone ask me about their report cards. I knew that based on their grades our boys would be marked as subpar by others, and that was frightening. And now when they’re getting no grades, well that’s even scarier. When you tell someone your son is “around the 4th grade level and is a consistently improving student,” they look at you as if you’re sporting three heads. No one is up for flexible standards of personal success although that is the only type of personal success there is…the personal kind.

If we’re going to live by expectations (which we seem bound by human nature to do), perhaps we could be a bit more flexible with our assessment of others? We could accept steady improvement as our rubric. We could value overall forward progress over typical milestones because the truth is that not everyone is typical in every way. Our sons are slow learners because their brains process information differently than the majority. So what? It’s taken me almost 46 years to believe that a piece of paper doesn’t prove wisdom and all the outward success in the world doesn’t make you a better person than the next guy, and that makes me a pretty slow learner too. I’m learning to let go of expectations and becoming more patient with myself and with others. It might be two steps forward and one step back, but I’m making progress just like my sons. By the end of my life, I like to think I will have evolved not just to standards but beyond them in ways that are immeasurable.

I threw away the books that told me how my children should be. I now appreciate them for how they are.

Posted on by Me 7

I’m A Ninja Like That

Here Joe eats wild caught tuna from a can to get me off his back about protein.
Here Joe eats wild-caught tuna from a can to get me off his back about protein. I might harp a bit about food occasionally. What mother doesn’t?

Our sons have many predictable rituals in our home. None is more predictable than the two-hour-post-dinner-second-dinner. This annoys the living daylights out of me. I understand they are growing. I understand they are hungry and therefore, like every Labrador retriever I’ve ever known, constantly believe they are starving. And all this would be fine if we were independently wealthy but, alas, we are not. And a year ago, in an attempt to cut processed and genetically modified foods from our diets, I began doing the majority of our grocery shopping at Whole Foods. This was not an inexpensive choice, but it was one I felt good about making. At the rate our boys are currently eating, however, we will have to disconnect our cable and wireless Internet and drop our iPhone plans to support the sudden bump in our Whole Foods habit.

Tonight, two hours post dinner as per protocol, Joe came downstairs and asked if he could consume the last of the chocolate ice cream in the freezer. He’d already had dinner and dessert, so this would technically be his second dessert. I balked.

“What fruits and vegetables have you had today?” I asked.

“I had that chicken soup for lunch,” came the reply.

He was referring to some of the homemade chicken soup I make for him each week for his school lunches. He enjoys it, and it’s a labor of loving creating a whole food lunch to infuse some measurable nutrition into my son’s diet. Sometimes I put kale in it. Sometimes I toss some edamame in there. It is always full of vegetables. It is always organic. So I had to give him some credit for that meal.

Sensing I was not quite fully satisfied with his answer, he quickly added, “I had a mandarin orange too.”

“Well….that’s probably about half the fruits and vegetables you should have eaten today,” I said. “You would need more of that before you would be eligible for more of dessert.”

In our family, dessert is not an issue. They are allowed dessert every night because they are blessed with skinny genes. Caloric intake is not a concern for our boys who are only in the 10th percentile for height and weight. Nutrition, however,  is a constant struggle. It’s hard to get them enough calories in healthy foods to keep them growing. They require more nutrition than they have traditionally been willing to ingest. We have to sneak it in through negotiations. So off he went to the kitchen in search of some additional nutrition to appease his demanding mother. Hubby and I went back to watching our Netflix movie.

Eventually, the banging noises coming from the kitchen got my curiosity.

“What did you find?” I asked, fully aware of the current Mother Hubbard condition of our cupboards.

He held aloft for my approval a now empty package of organic, chopped, frozen spinach, which he’d dropped into a ceramic bowl for heating. Interesting, I thought. Although I had bought that frozen spinach specifically for inclusion in one of my green smoothies, I decided that now was not the time to complain about his eating my food. I’d sent him in there to forage for something healthy, and he’d found it. Best not to bicker when your child listens to you and chooses spinach for his evening snack. And he did consume the entire 10 ounce package. Without butter or salt or any enhancement whatsoever. God bless him. I’d managed to sneak two additional servings of vegetables into our nearly teenage son’s day without so much as an eye roll or grunt from either one of us. Yep. I’m a ninja like that.

Of course, he still got his second dessert. It was chocolate ice cream. There are some forces of nature that even a ninja warrior can’t fight.

Posted on by Me

A Reason To Celebrate

Luke and Steve exhausted in Ecuador

Today is Father’s Day. I’ll be honest. It is a tough day for me. I have never had a close relationship with my own father. We spent years estranged. We do not agree on most things. And I am not certain that there is any way to fix the situation because after 45 years of consistency you begin to accept that some things simply are what they are. Picking out a Father’s Day card is difficult because in the myriad cards available in the store there isn’t one that says, “I know you did your best, and I’m learning to be okay with that.” But I am not at my laptop this morning to write about my issues. I’m here to write about my husband and how he has given me a reason to celebrate Father’s Day.

Twenty years ago when my husband and I had been dating for just a month, he introduced me to his parents. We met for dinner with the whole family at an upscale, Swiss restaurant, and there I got my first glimpse of where Steve came from. There are moments in your life when a seemingly insignificant gesture suddenly epitomizes something much more grand. At one point during dinner, my father-in-law, deep in conversation with his son, leaned in closer to him and laid his arm across the back of Steve’s chair. He was talking and smiling and you could see in his eyes how much he loved being with his son and how utterly unafraid he was to show his son how important he was. I had never seen anything like that, such a small gesture that demonstrated the appreciation, love, and affection between a father and his son. That was the exact moment when I knew that Steve was solid. I knew he would someday be an amazing husband and a devoted father. I knew I had no reason to fear.

Steve and Joe
Steve and Joe happy in Hawaii

Now it might have been a bit naive on my part to take such an innocent gesture and ascribe to it such a grandiose meaning, but I don’t think so. Twelve years into this parenting gig with my husband and I don’t think I was wrong in my assessment. (Of course, I rarely think I am wrong about anything.) He is every bit as genuine and affectionate with our boys as his father is with him. From Day One he has been there for us. He never works more than 40 hours per work week. From the beginning he fed, changed, and bathed our boys without complaint. When they were sick, he was the first one to the thermometer to apprise the situation. When they puked up seemingly impossible amounts of pizza, fishy crackers, and juice, he disinfected the mess with the utmost courage and care and far less gagging than I ever could. He read The Hobbit to them, struggling mightily with the lengthy lists of names but muddling through undaunted. Many days after putting in his time at work, he arrived home excited to see us only to find that I was glassy eyed and already AWOL; instead of  being selfish he took one for the team and fixed dinner, did dishes, made lunches, and put the kids to bed so I could regain some sanity. He cried with me when we identified copious obstacles our sons needed to overcome with fine and gross motor skills, speech and language, reading, and academics. He spent hours building and flying kites, untangling fishing line, finding the tiniest of Lego pieces in the largest of Lego storage buckets, and perfecting his driving skills on Mariokart Wii. He has given all that he is and then some for our little family. For all the times that he felt like he was a single parent doing more than 50% of the work in the house, he never balked or grumbled. He’s a far better person than I will ever be.

So now when Father’s Day rolls around and I start to feel a bit melancholy, I think of Steve. I think of the father that he is and the gift he is giving to our sons with his constant presence in their lives, with his patience, and with his dogged devotion. When I see the tender-hearted, gentle, kind young men our sons are becoming, I see their father in them. (When I see their stubbornness, their impatience, and their kookiness…well…that’s all me.) I have plenty of reason to celebrate on Father’s Day. It’s just not the reason I expected.

Posted on by Me 8

Thank God My Son Is A Geek

Sample of a text message I received from my son
Sample text message from my son

The other day I was talking to my sister about Joe and how he’s growing up. I told her that he’s now texting his friends from his iPad. Personally, I find the whole thing reasonably amusing. Joe is not exactly the world’s greatest speller and when he texts me I often have a hard time deciphering what he’s trying to say. I imagine the process is even more difficult for a 5th grader who has less experience with the English language and with Joe’s spelling missteps than I do. My sister is more of a worrier than I am, so her mind immediately went worst-case-scenario on me.

“Who does he text?” she inquired.

“A few of his classmates,” I replied.

“Boys or girls?”

“Some of both, I think.”

“What do they talk about?” she wondered.

“I don’t know,” I answered, surprised at the question.

“Well, don’t you read his texts?”

I have to admit this threw me. Honestly, the thought never occurred to me to infringe upon Joe’s privacy. Maybe it’s naive of me, but I simply don’t see my nearly 12 year old son becoming involved in anything nefarious or sordid via text messaging at this point. First off, he’s barely one step off thinking girls have cooties. Secondly, when Joe texts me he sends me little emoticons of elephants (my favorite animal) and chickens (which he labels as “Kauai Super Chicken). Lastly, he’s the most forthright kid on earth. On the few occasions he’s been dishonest, overcome with self-inflicted, internal, gut-wrenching guilt he has confessed before I even suspected he had lied. And why would I have to read his messages when he tells me what he and his friends talk about all the time?

“No. I don’t read his texts. I have no reason to,” I said confidently, certain that my boy was sweet as seventy pounds of pure cane sugar.

“Well, don’t you want to know what’s going on with him?” she chided.

“Ummm….honestly, no. I don’t really need to read about who has a crush on whom and what episode of My Little Pony has them cracking up.”

“Huh,” my sister replied, somewhat judgmentally. “I’d just want to know more about his life, I guess.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess that I want him to know that we trust him and because I have no reason not to I’m going to let him have some privacy.”

The conversation ended there and we moved onto another subject to avoid a potential argument. But after our call I started to wonder if I was being too idealistic in my approach to Joe’s texting. I mean, I suppose he could be having conversations I might not approve of. He is getting older. They did just have “the talk” at school. He’s a shy, sensitive kid, but those are sometimes the ones you have to watch out for the most. After discussing it with hubby, we decided to take a quick look at the last texts Joe sent. The conversation was with a female classmate and it went exactly like this:

Friend: What are you talking about?

Joe: The realm of gondor

Friend: Ok??

Joe: Middle Earth

Friend: Ok??

Joe: Next to the realm of mordor where mt doom is where the ring was forged

Friend: Is this the lord of the rings?

Joe: Yes. It’s ausome (sic)

Upon reading this little tidbit, I wanted to run to my sister and tell her that I was right. I have nothing to worry about with Joe and his text messaging…at least not yet. He is just a sweet, innocent kid who deserves some trust. But I didn’t do that. Truth is I felt dirty and downright shameful for not sticking with my original instinct. I had been right to trust him in this instance and knowing that I’d violated his right to a private conversation with a friend when I had no cause for suspicion made me feel lower than a downward-facing mole on an express elevator to Hell. (And although I would not hesitate to do some snooping on my son if I did ever suspect something was seriously amiss, I have no plans to make a regular habit out of sticking my nose where it does not belong.) I still feel rotten about it. And that’s certainly not anything to call up my sister and brag about.

If there’s a plus side to this whole experience, though, it’s this…given the substance of this conversation between Joe and a female classmate, I doubt he’s going to be having any unseemly conversations with members of the opposite sex for quite some time. Unless Joe happens upon a preteen girl who obsesses more about The Lord of the Rings, sharks, and Marvel superheroes than she does about make up and the cutest member of One Direction, I likely won’t have to check his texts for at least a few more years.

 

 

Posted on by Me 3

Life’s What You Make It

Joe at the beach
Joe at the beach

Our oldest has had something of a rough re-entry into landlocked life since we returned from our Hawaiian vacation almost a month ago. I’m afraid that on our trip Joe realized that he, in fact, is not a mountain kid but is an ocean kid living in a city over a thousand miles away from an ocean. Since returning home, he’s immersed himself in ocean research, continually forcing us to watch episodes of The Blue Planet all about the seas. He’s been on Google Earth checking out locations for snorkeling vacations. (He’s currently leaning toward the Maldives. We’ll head there right after we win the lottery.) He’s also been driving me crazy by insisting that the incredibly crappy, gravel beach at the small reservoir a mile from our house has to be a regular destination for us this summer. I’ve tried explaining to him that I don’t see myself spending my summer on a bed of gravel next to a big pond that is occasionally closed to swimming because E coli bacteria is proliferating there. He seems not to hear my negatives, simply reminding me that this is the closest he can ever be to a beach and that he’s an ocean kid and not a mountain kid. Don’t we realize we’re torturing him by making him live in Colorado so far away from the ocean? Yes. He’s a bit of a drama queen. And he keeps asking us to move.

Today was the first nice day we’ve had thus far this year. The temps soared into the low 70s and everyone was out in shorts. After nothing but snowfall this spring, today felt like our deliverance. The hope of summer was so close we could almost smell the campfires and see the columbine. We imagined finally putting away our snow gear and justifiably pulling out our flip flops. Although we’re not quite out of the woods yet (looks like we might see snow again next week), we allowed ourselves today the opportunity to imagine the sound of nails being driven into the coffin of a long, cold winter. Joe was beside himself with glee, dreaming perhaps of our warmer days in Hawaii.

Late this afternoon, he asked us if we could go to the beach across the street. All I could think was that it’s starting already…the battle I will face this summer. We told him no. We’d just gotten back from a 30 mile bike ride and we wanted to hang out at home. But Joe persisted. Finally I decided to check the web site for the state park where I discovered that the swim beach was closed until Memorial Day. When I told him the bad news, the poor kid cried. He actually cried. Unable to bear his frustration, we told him we would drive over to check out the situation.

When we pulled into the lot at the beach, we found several families picnicking and having cookouts. The boys were thrilled. There was no going back. We got out of the car and headed onto the beach. Steve and I threw the beach blanket down and settled in for the half an hour of beach time we’d promised. Although they seemed to be a bit shocked by the 45 degree water temperature (not surprising to us given that the lake had ice on it until a month ag0), the boys got their feet wet and walked along the shore. They threw sticks into the water and were giddy every time a noisy speedboat kicked up diminutive, rippling waves. Steve and I watched with wonder as our sons seemed to have nearly as much fun on this beach as they’d had in Hanalei where the strong ocean tides had prohibited them from swimming from that beach. They didn’t care that the lake is so small you can see across it in every single direction. They didn’t care that the water was achingly cold and the beach was not comprised of fine, powdery sand. They enjoyed their moment anyway. After all, they were at the beach.

I am reminded sometimes that my older, wiser, more cynical view of life gets in the way of my appreciating the smaller things. I didn’t want to go to the reservoir. I could not see the point of sitting on a rough, gravel beach with no true waves and freezing cold water. I could not see it until I was there with my boys and I witnessed the incalculable joy this weak substitution offered them. Only then was I reminded that just because a situation isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it can’t be perfectly grand in its own way. Chatfield Reservoir isn’t exactly Poipu Beach on Kauai, but it’s something. Life’s what you make it.

Posted on by Me 9

My Very Unpopular Opinion

Even this could not keep my mind off Newtown, CT.
Even this could not keep my mind off Newtown, CT today. And, I love this.

I’ve struggled for days now trying to find an appropriate place for my mind to rest regarding the events in Newtown, Connecticut. Alas, no matter in which direction I turn, I cannot find my zen about this topic. There is not a thing about it that is right. I’ve done my best to avoid too much detail in the news, to acknowledge the miserable facts without becoming morbidly curious or rushing to judgment or conclusions. At the end of the day, as cold and as hard as it seems, I need to live my life in the wake of these all too common violent attacks. So, that’s what I’ve been trying to do. I’ve been trying to distance myself from the news to keep from losing my entire holiday season to a dark abyss of the unthinkable. It has not been easy. Even my guilty escape, Facebook, has become a non-stop editorial column about the event.

Because I can’t seem to escape it, despite an entire day spent on a ski slope, tonight I would like to offer just this one comment. As we continue to think about the families who lost loved ones on December 14th, I hope we don’t forget that Adam Lanza left behind a father and a brother who are innocent of his crimes. They lost loved ones too. And, worse than that, they will have to live with the the anger, the scrutiny, and the unanswerable questions. I can’t imagine facing both the loss of my mother and brother and the non-stop judgment of the American people. My heart goes out to that family. They will never understand what happened or why, but they will always be held somewhat accountable via guilt-by-association. That’s a tough road to walk.

 

Posted on by Me 11

Take Your Stocking And Stuff It

Guess which stocking belongs to my husband…

I’ve blogged a few times recently about traditions and about how we’ve struggled to create some for our little family foursome. Steve and I both came from families with fairly ingrained family traditions. When you start a new household, you ideally take some traditions from each side and then add to them or make them your own with a slightly different twist. One thing I looked forward to when Steve and I got married was picking out new Christmas stockings that would be unique to our household. Steve and I each had inherited the stockings we’d had with our parents. It sounds silly, I know, but I was adamant that I wanted us to start a new tradition for our family with matching stockings of our choosing. I couldn’t wait to purchase and hang our own stockings and to add to our collection of what would be hung by the chimney with care with each child we added to our happy home.

The first Christmas Steve and I were married, however, my incredibly thoughtful mother-in-law had a special stocking created for me, one that looked exactly like the one Steve had when he was growing up. The stocking is hand knit and has my name as well as the year I was born (I really wish I could erase that part). The funny part about my stocking is that it is quite obviously smaller than Steve’s. My mother-in-law swears they were created using the same pattern, but you’d be hard pressed to believe it if you saw his stocking that is big enough for a Cadillac or at least for twice the amount of gifts that mine will hold. I have to admit that I was not a great sport about the gift, at least not in front of Steve. He tolerated my tirade about how I felt the stocking was an intrusion and how it robbed me of my chance to start my own tradition. Although he understood then what I did not, that his mother was trying to be inclusive and thoughtful when she had a stocking handmade for me, he also understood my feelings and told me we should go ahead and start our own tradition.

So, we did. We ordered some holiday needlepoint stockings from LL Bean and had our names embroidered onto them. When the boys were born, my mother-in-law commissioned knit stockings for them, just as she had for me. I also got them stockings, stockings that matched the ones Steve and I had chosen for ourselves. I was hell bent on setting up this tradition for our family. I figured that since his parents lived in another state, it would not matter. We could keep the stockings my mother-in-law had knit for us and just put up the other ones in our home. No one would have to know. Well, then, my in-laws decided to purchase a home 30 minutes away from us and to come to Denver in the winter. The space between us dissipated and, as it did, the ability to put up the stockings we’d bought without creating hard feelings disappeared.

Now, seventeen years after my hand-knit stocking was gifted to me, those stockings are the only ones we put out. Oddly enough, the tradition I fought so vehemently is one I now truly enjoy. I love our stockings. They were created from a pattern that Steve’s grandmother had, and we know no one with stockings like ours. Because they’re knit they stretch to hold a ton of stuffers. And, I love to point out to anyone who will look that Steve’s stocking is gargantuan while the rest of ours are all the same, significantly smaller size. Although they look funny on our mantle with Steve’s stocking dwarfing the rest of ours, there’s a charm and a story in that which trumps the visual oddity.

Every time I open our box of Christmas decorations, I’m reminded about how pig-headed I was as a young bride and how ungrateful I was when my mother-in-law was simply trying to include me in her family. I’m also reminded that I wasted $140 on holiday stockings that we simply do not use. They stay in the box while we hang and stuff the knit ones instead. They’re the ones the boys recognize and are excited to see. Now, I have a yearly reminder that sometimes the effort is not worth the battle. Sometimes, the things we think are important are truly not important at all. I no longer want to tell my mother-in-law to take that stocking she had made for me and stuff it…unless, of course, she wants to stuff it with Starbucks gift cards and cute tops from Boden. I’d be totally cool with that.

Posted on by Me

Note To Self: Cows Don’t Care About Glory

The cows…they just don’t care.

I am a stay-at-home mom, which means that I don’t get paid and that I’m never home. I live in my car. Consequently, my car (a midsize, luxury SUV in name only) consistently looks as if it’s been plundered and pillaged by rogue Norsemen (which it has because my sons have a full quarter Norwegian ancestry). This morning after the boys had removed themselves from the back seat, I noticed that I could no longer see the black, leather seats back there at all. They were covered with Legos, food wrappers, various school papers, and sticky substances I have been ignoring for weeks. The floor was not much better. I knew there were floor mats down there somewhere. But where? As far as I could tell, the carpet had been replaced by shredded tissue, chewed on straws, and Star Wars action figures missing their heads. It was at that point that I seriously began to wonder if the mess back there was partially due to a rodent infestation.

I headed to the local, automatic car wash to vacuum out my filthy car and find the silver paint again. I immediately realized I had not enough quarters for the vacuum, so I sent the car through the wash and drove home to rescue the inside. I dragged out the wet/dry vacuum, a trash bag, a damp rag, a roll of paper towels, and about a gallon of Windex to begin my quest. I was mildly concerned that during my cleaning I might shove my hand under the backseat and pull out a rodent (something similar happened in our family before when hubby pulled up a seat cushion and uncovered Voldemouse in his FJ Cruiser). I tried not to think about it as I opened the back door and started digging through the rat’s nest where my children usually sit. In the first three minutes, I rescued five mangled Lego magazines, four pieces of foreign currency (not sure when my kids had time to vacation in England, France, Italy, and Denmark without me), about a gazillion Lego bricks and assorted Lego pieces, a super-high bouncing ball, an empty water bottle, some crude drawings of battles and dragons, and a spelling list. (I’d wondered where that had gotten to.) When I at last found the back seat and started working on the floor, I uncovered an interesting piece of paper. It was in Luke’s handwriting…neatly penned but with the kind of obvious errors only a child with dyslexia could make. It said: “Note to self. Cows don’t care about glory. Cows don’t care about you.” I stood there staring at that paper with my head cocked to one side. What the hell does that mean? I had no idea where to go with that information. It was funny, but what made it even funnier was that my darling son had flawlessly executed his b and d letter reversals in the most stereotypical dyslexic way. I love the way his mind works.

I finished cleaning the car to the best of my ability without uncovering any evidence of the Lost City of Mouselantis. But, I walked around for the entire rest of the day thinking about Luke’s note to self. Instead of mice occupying my thoughts, it was cows. And, not just any cows. Cows that don’t care about glory. I later was able to ask Luke about his cryptic message. He disclosed that he heard that quote on some Lego video on You Tube. Ah. It suddenly all made sense. Chalk the whole thing up to You Tube. And to think I’d been blaming the obscure cow mention to our trip to Chick-Fil-A last week. Silly me.

 

 

 

 

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The Blogger’s Conundrum

Sometimes it’s hard for a writer to hang loose. Dinosaurs help.

One thing I struggle with constantly as a blogger is how to write things that are personally meaningful and heartfelt and yet innocuous. I often write about my family because my family is my job and my life. If I were a physician, I would write about medicine or if I were a priest I would write about faith. But, I’m a stay-at-home mom, so I write about what that is like for me. I try to be respectful. I try to choose my topics and words carefully. Sometimes, I still end up upsetting people. Sometimes, even things I feel I have written in a pointedly joking way come back to bite me because someone I know and love takes my words in a way I did not intend. It’s never easy when someone you care about lets you know your words offended, hurt, or annoyed them.

While writing about my personal life, I aspire to achieve a balance between humor and sensitivity, but sometimes I fail. And, when others fail to grasp my meaning in a written piece, I have substantively failed as a writer. I hate that. Before starting this blog, I debated about using a pseudonym. I weighed keeping my writing a secret and not publishing at all. Knowing that I write from my life experiences, I carefully considered what writing publicly would mean for my relationships. I very nearly decided not to attempt it at all. Then, one day, I resolved to be brave. I would take a risk. I would put myself out there wholly and completely, and that is what I attempted to do. Instead, though, I’ve censored myself repeatedly to ensure harmonious relationships. I feel I have barely even dipped my toe in the pool of self-disclosure. In this grand blogging experiment, what I’ve learned is that no matter how hard you try not to upset anyone, sometimes it just happens. I’ve also learned that you can’t predict what might bother someone, nor can you claim responsibility for their feelings. All you can do is write and hope for the best.

I’m down to the last 22 consecutive days left in this 366-day blogging adventure. I would walk away now (and, believe me, I’ve been toying with that idea for weeks), but I’m not a quitter. So, I’m staying until December 3rd as planned, at which time this blog will undergo some changes. I will likely reduce the amount of posts per week and I will also likely limit my subject matter. Both those things will cut down on the amount of times I’ll be able to annoy those near and dear to me.

I keep wondering how other writers balance this delicate situation. Is there a solution I’m missing? If I write honestly, am I doomed to a life of endangered relationships and lengthy personal explanations? Do I write what I want and ignore the fallout of others’ emotions? Writing is a gift to me only when I write without self-censure. I found a great quote tonight by famed poet Allen Ginsberg: “To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.” While that’s easier said than done with blogging, I suppose it is still possible. Maybe I just need to write what I need to say and then put on some noise-cancelling headphones and move forward and don’t look back?

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