Slaying the dragon

I think of death more than most people.  It’s only natural when you come face-to-face with it so often. My cardiologist can’t explain why my heart rate plummets dangerously low.  My oncologist tells me I’m in the clear now, ten years since melanoma cropped up like a nuclear bomb in my eyeball.  It’s been six years since I was in the hospital with a raging abdominal infection and two years since my heart flat-lined on the table.  I’m good, considering.  But the collateral damage that results is that I’m always pondering the blackness, leaving little notes for my children, and love letters to my husband.  I can’t ever leave enough, like I need to stockpile memories and words and tiny little charms.

Imagining my own death is hardly painful – I trust in God and believe there is a better place looming.  But I am utterly paralyzed when imagining it all happening in a different order, that the offspring might pass before the maker.  The thought of burying my own is too heavy a cross to bear, and I cannot place myself in the position of the one viewing the wreckage.

For whatever reason lately I keep stumbling across stories involving this particular tragedy. It’s not like I sought out to read them.  I was looking for a new website designer and found Anna See’s blog, An Inch of Gray, and was immersed in her story of her lost son, and grief, and hope.  A high school friend of mine died before she reached her 40th birthday and her mother still posts little thoughts on her facebook page.  I am spending the weekend with your boys. I miss your smile. And my dear writer friend Melanie Haney wrote a wonderful post on life and loss this week in her blog, A Frozen Moon.

I wonder if it’s good to think such horrid thoughts.  Maybe one just shouldn’t go around borrowing trouble.   And yet it seems as if this topic is pushed in front of me, against my best efforts and my own will.  The other night I was so consumed with sadness that I fell on my knees and begged God to never let this come to pass.  I am not as strong as Job: I would be unable to simply pick up the pieces.  I am not Abraham, who walked his own son to the alter.   I’m not Jesus who can say forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.  I am afraid I could never forgive.  I am so utterly weak.  I can do great things, but not this.  Please dear Lord not this.

So I tried thinking of happy things.  I loaded the dishwasher, read my daughter a book, cleared my head.  But last night I had fitful dreams.  I tossed and turned and kept saying no to some imaginary dragon.  I was fighting all night long and I can’t exactly remember why.  I woke up exhausted and overwhelmed.  Maybe I was fighting the devil himself.

Today, when I picked my son up from preschool, I swept him up in my arms and held him like he had been restored from death.  I stood right there in the little room, crowded in blocks and caterpillars and mothers busy picking up their children, and sobbed.  I peppered his cheeks with kisses and squeezed his body tight.  I walked out fast so the teachers wouldn’t notice, but I’m sure it was futile.  As I put him in the car, he looked at me and said simply, “I sorry, mama.”  Because his beautiful two-year-old heart is filled with compassion, and he didn’t understand my tears.  It’s okay, son.  I just love you so.

I wonder if Satan and God have been having a discussion about me, like they did with Job.  She’ll crumble like a house of cards.  She won’t stay faithful.  Without those two children, she’ll falter.  Let me test her, I beg you. I wonder if God would have faith in me, as he did in Job.

Because honestly, I just don’t know how God could see his only son suffer.  I would die in his place.  I would run and scream and not be able to bear the weight of it.  I would pull out my hair and rip my clothes and crumble to nothing. And yet I am weak, and can’t see the rising.  For in Christ there is always rising.  Through the blackness and cries of disbelief and anger and sorrow, there is light burning.  God knew of this.  It’s okay, son.  I just love you so.

Despite my own weaknesses, the rooster crowing thrice at dawn, and my utter ridiculous failures, I will rest in that hope.   I pray that certain things never come to pass, but I cannot guarantee such a future. My husband is the beam to which I’m tethered.  My children are the brightness and lightness of my very being.  But God is my strength, and without him it all crumbles like a deck of cards.

Tonight in my dreams, I’ll slay that dragon.  I’ll plant kisses and seeds of joy and fight fire with fire.  I will love my family through the tantrums and the screaming.  I’ll keep loving when we don’t speak and when life is all stressed out and messy.  I will show the devil that he cannot take away this love, no matter hard he tries.  So if it’s ever ripped from me too soon, I can say with my whole heart that I did enough.  I loved enough.

God is enough.

Free as a bird

Last week, my daughter found a dove in the yard.  It had fallen out of its nest and sat there in the grass, looking confused and bewildered.  Of course it’s hard to read the emotions of birds.  It might have been trying to kill itself, inching and pushing and finally managing to throw his distorted body from the tree.  He might have been downright furious at the failed attempt.

Something was clearly wrong with the poor thing.  It was too large to be a baby.  Part of his feathers were grey and thick but his front half was a damp mass of skin and fuzz.  He could hardly open his little beak and looked a little bloated.  I placed him in a box lined with cloth and began to give him drops of warm water with a medicine dispenser.  I set the box in a high place and just hoped he lived. I just couldn’t see him lying there all night in the grass, devoured by dogs or hawks or other preying things.  Leave the guy alone.  Even birds need a place to rest.

I read online that you can mash up egg yolks and wet dog food and feed it to injured birds, so I rushed to the kitchen to make a life-saving paste.  There I was, trying to get the sick little thing to open its beak to take it in.  Once I squeezed too hard and too much came out, his poor eye covered in wet yolky-dog food.  I tried to wash it out but there he sat, wet and dirty, sick and sad.  It was hopeless.

I fretted all night about that bird.  I prayed that it would find a way to live.  That it would fly off and join the other doves, free and glorious and shining with silver radiance. But the next morning it had a fluid pocket jutting out below it’s beak.  I probably choked it to death with a tiny shred of dog food.  Great. My mother-in-law tossed it in the dumpster.  We’ll just tell the kids it flew away, she said. I wish she had at least broken its neck first and put it out of his misery. I hated that neighbors would toss garbage bags on top of him, just another piece of trash like used milk cartons or Frito bags. 

I wish we could all die elegant deaths – not in a movie theatre riddled with stray bullets or driving to Subway in our Subaru to get a ham sandwich.  We should all get to say our piece, kissing the heads of our little ones and quoting Thoreau.  We should all get to make amends and die in our sleep with our best dress on.   It fills me with rage that good people have to go so quickly.  That they are off to the market for strawberries one day and the next they are pinned under a car or lying in a hospital where all the zig-zag lines go flat.  I don’t like to think of living things contorted or bloated or twisted up in bullets. No one should die in the bottom of a dumpster.

But in the end, I suppose it doesn’t matter how we exit.  It’s a temporary holding place, this life, where we muddle through and say our prayers and eat our broccoli.  Someday, if I die a gruesome horrible death, falling out of my nest and landing in unfamiliar territory, no one needs to save me.  No one needs to worry about feeding me mashed up food or dropping water in my parched throat. For I’m off to fly – my elegant wings spread before me, soaring through the air and breathing in the fresh smell of freedom.  Like a bird.  Back home.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlestilford/732688216/

The BFF Rules

Girlfriends are awesome.  You call them when you’re bored, when you get a new job, or when you want to get a play-by-play rundown of Top Chef because you forgot to Tivo it and you were stuck in a meeting.  And when you just can’t breastfeed one more day or you feel like bludgeoning your own husband with a meat cleaver, you pick up the phone and speed-dial your BFF. It’s not like you can only have one of them.  I have several – each a bestie in their own right.  Here are my top ten rules to abide by when cultivating these important relationships:

(1) Accept them like they are, but also laugh at them. When a friend tells you she has a bad habit of buying fancy water, or expensive chocolates, or pricy shoes, tell her that her vices could be much worse.  Think of something more expensive that she’s not buying by the truckload (champagne/new cars/trips to Vegas) and tell her that she could be buying that.  So in reality she’s very frugal, and you’re proud of her, and agree that overpriced organic baby soap from France does smell quite nice.  But for the kid’s birthday, be sure to buy some generic bath wash from Wal-mart that has some Disney character on it and smells like raspberry that may possibly be radioactive.  Because honestly, it cleans just as well.

(2) Offer small reminders of your love.  Like care packages.  They can be small, and contain thing from your pantry, but how fun is it to get a package in the mail full of power bars, gum, and a message scrawled on the back of an electric bill?  Mail is giddy and silly and fun.  Go on and add that postage expense into your monthly budget.   To my friends who haven’t received a package from me in a while – I’m sorry.  I’ll do better. I may be mailing you fruit snacks and goldfish.  Deal.  I’m also a huge fan of random texts and short phone calls when you only have three minutes.  Please don’t use that lame excuse of “I was waiting for when I had time to talk.” When exactly does one have that kind of uninterrupted time?  I say never.   Unless you’re on the toilet, and that’s just disgusting.

(3) Pray for them.  For when they are going through hard times, or when their life is upside down.  Pray for their very soul.  And mean it.

(4) Support Them at All Costs. Repost and like and comment away on her witty facebook posts because flattery will get you everywhere and us gals have to stick together.  Celebrate your BFF’s adventures and never allow guilt or jealousy enter the relationship.  Just because you work at the DMV and she got a job in New York as a fashion model doesn’t mean you can’t be happy for her good fortune. Hug her neck.  Buy her a drink. Then look for another job.  For goodness sakes –why do you want to work at the DMV?

(5) Listen when they vent about their husbands, but the next day forget the entire conversation.  If a girlfriend unloads on you about how her husband is lazy and never picks up his dirty laundry and doesn’t appreciate all she does around the house, your response should be something like, “What a jerk!”  Fast forward three days, when the same girlfriend received a dozen tulips from her formerly jerky husband.  She tells you he’s the most fabulous man ever.  Your response should be, “What a sweetheart!” See the difference?  It’s subtle, I realize.

(6) Be insanely loyal.  If you hear someone talking bad about a bestie (She’s a bit controlling if you ask me), redirect the conversation (she’s strong willed, but man that girl can run a meeting like you wouldn’t believe.  Makes the men shiver in their boots). Then meander from that to a conversation about boots in general, which leads you to that trendy little boot store on South Congress, which of course makes you focus on funky clothing, which you lack, and then you can begin a tirade on how your mother keeps buying you sweaters from JC Pennys.  See how this redirection thing works?

(7)  Don’t keep score.  If you watch their kids twice and they only watched yours once for half an hour, or if you always bring them Starbucks but they never return the favor, remember that a friendship isn’t always completely equal.  You have them in your life because they bring something wonderful and precious to yours.  It’s not a card game whereby they owe you when you do something for them.  You each have your strengths and weaknesses.  Give effortlessly without keeping a tally.  That’s exhausting.

(8)  Don’t let things fester.  The worst is when you allow some minor annoyance to get out of control and it drives a wedge into your long-standing relationship.  If they always text when you want to talk by phone, or if they smack their gum too loudly, or always wait for you to pick up the check, tell them.  It doesn’t have to be some insanely serious talk, where you hold their hand by the fire and say “it’s not you, it’s me,” but you can respectfully tell them that “hey – what’s up with me always paying for lunch?” or “it bothers me when you always email when I just want to visit.”  You have built up enough rapport to be honest.  If you can’t, or if you are afraid of splintering the friendship, how solid is that foundation?

(9) Keep it real.  The best thing about girlfriends is the ability to find common ground, and laugh about shared experiences.  Whether you are sitting around drinking wine or running together at 6 am or just texting in the carpool line, find a way to add humor to their day and remind them of how blessed they are.  So their kid broke their arm and they had to endure ten days in the Cayman’s with their overbearing mother-in-law and their husband is away on business for two weeks.  Your response shouldn’t be “you poor darling – that just sucks for you and I don’t know how you’ll possibly endure.”  They went to the Cayman’s, for crying out loud.  They drank fruity cocktails and now they get to wallow around in stretchy pants making microwave dinners.  Life really isn’t that rough.

(10)               And finally, be careful who you let in.  Don’t throw your heart into someone who doesn’t hold friendships in high esteem, or who won’t get your back, or acts one way around you and a different way around others.  If you work this hard to cultivate friendships (time and energy spent away from your own family), make sure you give your heart to someone who will cradle it, and respect it, and who deserves who you are.  Because you are fabulous.

Let’s find a way to coexist

In an abstract world, controversy is fun.  Everyone picks a side and argues their points, shooting down the other side with logic and theory.  It’s high school debate meets law school meets logic games, stirred together with a nerdy competitive streak and a sense of humor.  Someday soon, I’m going to host a dinner party where people are forced to pick a position out of a hat.  They will be forced to argue that particular side over a chocolate flourless torte and coffee and hear the other side’s arguments.  Maybe it will encourage people to think that every coin has two sides.  That we are all made with different thoughts rattling around inside our brains.  And that’s a good thing.

But then there’s real life.  Whether you’re getting donuts or pumping gas or eating waffle fries – you are constantly being judged.  Judged for your appearance, or haircut, or bumper sticker.  Judged for what you appear to believe.  Judged for what you say to your children or what organization you donate to.  You are tarred, and feathered, and left to die.

In real life, you have to pick a side.  There’s no room to scratch your head and see that two differing opinions have their own independent merit.  There is no ability anymore, with the advent of cable news and talk shows and celebrity obsession and facebook, to think someone who has a strict religious code who can’t wear pants or must never cut their hair has the right to think that way.  They are crazy, or need to keep to themselves, and they are wrong on every social issue that varies from yours.  Don’t give those people money.  Pray they don’t vote.   Make sure they keep to themselves – oppressed and put in the corner where they belong.

Aside from being a carnivore or vegetarian, if someone believes differently than you do on an issue such as same-sex marriage or abortion or any issue touching upon race or worship, that person is deemed to be wrong.  They are so wrong that they are borderline evil.  You don’t want your children playing with their children.  You don’t want to live around them.  You don’t really want them to maintain a successful business or have a long, healthy future or even make it through a string of green lights.  They contribute to hate.  They fuel all that is wrong with the world. You want them to fail.

When did we grow so angry?  When did we stop seeing the value of differences, and embrace our ability to come to our own rational decision?  Come on.  Let’s all put our big girl pants on. Maybe we don’t see eye to eye, but let’s find some common ground.  Let’s search for a middle area where we can all walk around without spitting or seething or giving each other dirty looks.  So I believe in God and you don’t.  So I think one way and you another.  That’s okay.  I still like that purple shirt you’re wearing and I think you deserve to a good night’s sleep.

There is evil in the world that must be stopped.  Hitler murdered Jews.  It was not only acceptable, but mandatory, to do whatever it took to stop him.  The same goes with leaders in today’s world that commit genocide or murder children or encourage rape or sexual trafficking.  If one person says, “let’s all hate Hispanics and do them harm,” obviously our overarching moral compass will react with “hell no.  That’s wrong and I’m not going along with it.”

But for goodness sakes.  The fact that one person believes one way and other differently makes this entire world a more interesting place.  If someone supports Cause A that differs from your personal belief system, donate to Cause B that is in line with what you believe.  Take care of your own family, and your own life. Then go about your business.

If only our world was a fairy tale, we could all eat torte and debate about controversial issues and go home happy and fulfilled at the end of the night.  We would embrace the unique talents and styles and thoughts of those around us without being so hateful.  We could simply agree to disagree.  We would find a way to coexist.

You know that funny little plastic bracelet that kids used to wear?  They handed them out at church camp and Sunday school.  It said “what would Jesus do?”  It’s been overused and vilified, but it’s a legitimate question.  How would Jesus handle all these differences?  How would he deal with all these competing moral dilemmas?

I’ll bet he would love, and forgive, and love some more.  Jesus certainly didn’t apologize for his beliefs, but I’ll venture to guess he didn’t walk around tripping those who thought differently. He might have known in his heart they were wrong.  But I’ll be he didn’t stare them down with hate like they had a disease or paper their houses.  I’ll bet he didn’t call them ugly names or start a Disciple-wide boycott.  He did his best to spread his own message of salvation, love, and forgiveness to the poor, distraught, and sick. If others didn’t like it, that was fine.  Let the chips fall where they may.

Let our lives be more like that of Jesus – filled with peace, and logic, and patience.  Let us not fear that which is different.  Let us coexist, for goodness sakes, so we don’t live like a bunch of savages.

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/auntiep/407993029/”>Auntie P</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photo pin</a> <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>cc</a>

keepsake boxes

I’m a keepsake packrat.  Like the outfit my sweet baby wore home from the hospital or that brown plaid shirt my husband wore on our very first date.  It still has a little tiny hole in it from where his pledge pin went.  How cute is that?

These things mean nothing to anyone else, but to me, they are priceless.  I never take them out and run the tattered fabric though my fingers, or line the walls with monogrammed onsies in shadow-box frames (thank goodness, because we put people who prefer to do these things in group homes). Instead, I vacuum seal them, keep them in our attic, and freak out if my husband tries to move them to a storage unit or sets them anywhere near the corner of the garage reserved for Salvation Army Pick-up.

Ridiculous, our attachment to such things.  Are we thinking that somehow, we can transfer the memories to our offspring so they will also save them, and then we’ll have five generations of sleepers and Christmas dresses to store until the end of time?  “Oh, look honey.  It’s a tiny little t-shirt that says Back Seat Driver that some ancient-relative-I’ve-never-met wore! And this glass bottle with a cracked yellow nipple? Priceless!”

I have two huge keepsake boxes for my children, because I’m sure they will want to use the same napkins from my very first baby shower (I was given three extra packages!).  I’m absolutely positive my granddaughter will want to see the coloring books given to guests on her mother’s fifth birthday.  I even saved cupcake toppers, in case my great grandson wants to stick fifty-year-old toothpicks with rotten paper elephants in mounds of chocolate icing.  Because they so totally will.  Don’t spoil my dream.

To make matters worse, I included little cards indicating the significance of each one.  Like “you wore this dress on your 5th Birthday!” and “this was your favorite night-night book!”  I document such things because I want you, dear offspring, to at least feel shooting pains of guilt as you load this crap into your minivans and head to the Goodwill drop-off the minute I pack my bag for the nursing home.  Or, worse, it will force you to cram you children into old smelly clothes that have been sitting in a box for half a decade to please your delusional mother.  Then you can store them for another forty years until they are eaten by rats.  See how awesome I am? You can totally thank me later.

I thought of all this as my mother was lamenting how kids these days don’t sing the same songs that we did when we were kids.  No one in this century runs around whistling Father Abraham. And if they did, I feel kinda sorry for them. Because there are new fabulous songs with movements and catchy tunes that are more exciting than the old. We can’t transplant everything we loved into our children so that they will see them the way we did.  They have different eyes.  They live in a different world.   They don’t really want used and worn-out baby shoes, or every Christmas dress.  They want to experience it for themselves.  They want to start brand new keepsakes.  They want to bloom.

I went to the attic and stared at the boxes I’ve been saving.  Shoes and bonnets and recital pictures.  Albums and records and hundreds of pictures. I wonder why I feel it’s so important to live in the past.   Why I can’t free myself of the dusty memories.

If Jesus tapped me on the shoulder and said simply Follow me, I might just put my hands in a time-out for a sec to see if we could have a tiny little discussion about all these keepsakes.  I’m so totally there, this whole following God into the wilderness business, but can I negotiate a rider?  Like a teensy weensie addendum regarding the wedding album?  After all, it took me weeks to chronicle all that happiness and paste the little stickers in the scrapbook, and I’d hate to throw all that out.  Right?

As it turns out, it might just be stuff after all.  If those boxes burned to the ground, the stories are already saved in my heart.  They are woven throughout bedtime stories and summer nights and lightening bugs and popsicles.  My children will smell fresh bread and cut grass and strong coffee and be transported back home, where the pillows are soft and the sheets are dried on the line.  They will have so many memories and jewels in their crown that come from their childhood, and the stories that I write, and the love between their mother and father than transcends space and time.

Help me, Lord, to build up keepsake boxes in their hearts.  Today, when I lost my patience and yelled for everyone to just be quiet and said we were never, ever going to get smoothies as long as they lived if they were just going to sling them around the backseat, I didn’t mean it. These are the years of keepsakes, every one. Help me relish it and drop those moments into storage, to be pulled out, and laughed about, and treasured. 

The boxes can burn.  Because I’m filled with all those lovely memories that can’t be stripped away. These keepsakes don’t rot or get musty with mildew or bear someone else’s monogram.  Now that’s worth saving.  And passing on.

The Zoo

I apologize in advance for such a long post, but on this one I was a horrid self-editor and just couldn’t bring myself to cut out any details.   Please forgive me!

It all started out so simple.  My husband had a board meeting in Dallas on a Saturday.  We figured it made good sense to drive up together, meet a girlfriend and her children, and we’d all hit the zoo while my husband was trapped in a long, boring meeting. A well-crafted plan!  So we packed our sunscreen and juice boxes and hit the road in high spirits.  In no time flat we’d be feeding the giraffes.  We’d be looking with awe as elephants fanned themselves with muddy water and giggling at those darn flamingos standing precariously on their tall, spindly legs.

I should have seen it coming when we stopped for lunch and a bag of food fell over, tumbling French fries this way and that in random places between my seats.  But this was a fun day with friends and cheetahs.  What could possibly go wrong?

My husband’s meeting was deep in the barrio somewhere, which meant I was weaving about unfamiliar territory amidst unfamiliar people.  My children were singing Wheels on the Bus as I gripped our own steering wheel, my blond hair tied back in a bun and my eyes squinting to find the right turn.  Finally, after delivering my husband safely, I took off for the zoo, which is literally two exits north. This is when things started to go south.  And west.  And east again.  Despite the zoo being a stone’s throw away, I still managed to miss the exit and I went on a fun-filled ride through pawn-shop, bail-bond, check-cashing and cheap-auto-insurance heaven.  I turned around and weaved over and tried to look at the map on my phone while not hurling my children into the taillights of the car in front of us.  We finally made it an hour late, but who cares?  We have all afternoon! And how long does it take to see gorillas anyway?

I drove up to the parking attendant to pay and she informed me that today of all days was their annual special event that required them to close early.  In three hours, specifically.  They’d shut the doors and shoo all the zoo-goers to their SUVs promptly at 4 pm and “we aren’t kidding,” the man says.  What were the odds?

So we all pile out of the car, get the stroller in zoo-read shape, and head inside to meet my dear girlfriend and her family.  To the giraffes we go!  Time’s a wastin! So we all schlep it over to pay $5 for a few lettuce leaves so that the overfed animals can get their daily intake of salad.  My two-year-old is frightened by the whole concept and just pitches the leaves over the fence.  They float to the ground like parachutes.

Next up is the monorail.  The kids are ecstatic about the train ride, so we all sit in a pressure cooker of sweat and trapped air for a good half hour, desperately pouring water down our children’s throats to prevent heatstroke and pointing out various animals down below.  “Deer!” my son says at every single animal. I start to correct him, but what’s the point?  We’ll never see that particular antelope again in real life.  “Yes! Deer!” I say in return.

After the train, we all head to splashdown so the kids could cool off in a manufactured river that’s only a few inches deep and smells very strongly of urine.  I watched my daughter and her friend lay their entire bodies in it, waving their hands around and pretending they’re mermaids.  I’m slightly horrified that there’s a kid in front of me with a sagging poopy diaper laughing and dancing around in the water my son just traipsed through. But it looked quite fun and maybe I need to back off on the germ focus.  After all, what are immune systems for?  What’s a few diluted pints of pee amongst friends?

So we dry off the children, change their clothes, and head to see the monkeys.  But before we get there, we are stopped by a zoo employee and told that the north end of the zoo is actually closed. Only for today, you see, because of the special event going on. So no monkeys.  But back by the entrance, there’s a bird show going on.  “See how things have a way of working out?” I tell my friend as we laugh and do a stroller u-turn in the walkway.  I grab the hands of my daughter and her dear friend, walk down three flights of stairs by the little zoo theatre, sit on the front row right in front of the tuxedo-outfitted penguins, and wait.  But people are leaving.  The penguins are walking off the stage, their little feet waddling out of sight.

“So sorry,” the penguin handler tells me.  “But the show ended about five minutes ago.”  Just our luck.  Yes, yes.  That figures.

We finally just hauled the kids to the carousal and let them ride the pretend horses around and around.  They were thrilled.  My two-year-old clutched his horse as if he might get bucked off and giggled with glee.  It was just in time for the zoo to close, whereby we were being asked to leave through the front gates. “Come again!” the zoo worker said.

The incredible mother that I am, I managed to pack seventeen juice boxes but no real bottles of water, and neglected to bring any hand sanitizer. So my children were covered with animal and train-rail and carousal germs of all sorts as we finally headed back to the car.  We hugged our dear friends, changed my kids’ clothes in the parking lot so they could pass out with sheer exhaustion in something clean on the way home, did my best to wipe them down with generic-brand wet wipes, and called the day a success.  Despite the fact that we were only at the zoo for a short time and had a four-hour drive back home.  And despite the fact that we would all likely die of a strange, urine-transported disease and didn’t see one single monkey.

The kids and I headed back to the barrio to get my husband, who was wrapping up the board meeting that very moment.  On the way, I hear my daughter say something disturbing in the back seat. Something like “what’s that all over you?”  She was speaking to her brother.  I was filled with terror.

I pulled over in a dollar store parking lot, taking up several spaces, and forced myself to turn around.  I had given my son a squeezable fruit, which is great for travel and presumably less messy for young children. Unless it happened to be a blend of apples and spinach, and is the color of grass cuttings.  In this case my son believed it appropriate to simply squirt the crap all over his body and then mash it into the car seat and his clothing like finger paint.

I’m trying not to curse as some man walks up to me to either ask for money or mug me, but I give him dirty looks and shake my head because I have better things to do, like strip my kid down to his diaper and wipe the green goo off every crevice of his body.  It’s crammed into the straps of his car seat like glue.  Great.

“Did we stop for a Frosty?” my daughter says as she notices there’s a Wendy’s nearby.  I look over at her, my hands covered in green mashed ick, after just shooing away a homeless person and glancing around to make sure no one’s going to car-jack us, cursing under my breath when I realize I don’t have any extra clean clothes and wiping my son’s body down with wet wipes while in a parking lot in a rough part of town.  Yes, my love.  We stopped for ice cream. The homeless dude that was asking for money just walked off, like Nu-uh. I don’t want any part of that craziness. 

My kids never did sleep on the way home. They decided to sing seventeen renditions of Happy Birthday and slung barbeque sandwich all over the backseat.  My son had not one, but two large poops that he so happily declared to us as my husband gripped the wheel and just hoped to the dear heavens that there was justice in the world and we’d get home already.  The kids got louder and louder on the way, possibly fueled by a mid-trip ice cream, and it at the end it was like a grand finale at a firework display.  My son wanted a cup of ice in the front seat and kept screaming “LEMME HAVE IT!” at the top of his lungs.  My daughter applied some of my lip gloss, which she said did NOT smell like cocoa or butter and kept saying “It reeks in here!  Open the window!  I can’t take this smell!”  Finally my husband and I just started laughing at how ridiculous it all was.

At nine o’clock when we arrived home, I threw my son in a warm bath and covered him with soapy bubbles.  In deference to the day we had, he stood up in the bath and peed for a long, solid minute. Somehow, I wasn’t at all surprised.

All in all, it was glorious. Any chance to see one of my best friends is worth it, and now we have even more stories to add to our long, thick book of friendship. The fact is that I’d do it all over again in a second.  One day, when the kids are grown and gone, my car will be clean and things will work out the way they’re planned.  But I’ll burn with longing for the loud, messy, insane world that I now wallowing in, green goo and all. These glorious little people make me laugh and smile despite having to get my car detailed on a regular basis. They might fill my car with stale French fries, but they fill my soul with happiness as I pick up their tired, sticky bodies, their mouths covered with the sweet residue of ice cream and their hair matted together with dried sweat.

They fell asleep so happy, and the next morning all we heard about was the carousal and the zebras.  The “geewaffs” and the choo-choo and all those deer.  And that makes it all worth it, monkeys or no monkeys, bacteria and all.

dancing queen

It’s been three years in the waiting.  Three long years of dance practice, ballet shoes, various pairs of tights, and teachers.  Finally, our daughter of almost six years had her first dance recital.

And it was miserable.

It all started a few weeks back.  “You know, mom,” she said.  I was squatting down on the floor trying to get tights around her thighs and making a mental run around the house with my mind wondering where her tap shoes were.  “Dance just isn’t one of my talents.”  She said it so earnestly, like she put a great deal of forethought into it.  I chuckled a little, because what does a kindergartener know of such things? She said she was a bit behind the step.  It was hard to keep up. I lifted up her chin until her eyes were level with mine.   I told her she never had to do dance again in her whole life.  But the recital was in two weeks, so Lord-willing she’d finish what she started.  We Hills always finish what we start.

The first year she took dance she was only three.  She was so excited and bubbly, her little pink tutu hanging below her chunky little tummy.  She smiled at me and waved as she threw scarves in the air. The next year I was working and had a baby and it was all too overwhelming to keep track of.  She had pre-school, which kept her consumed with art projects and new friends.  Dance was always an afterthought.

But this year she’s almost six, and I was determined to not miss the much-touted recital.  I watched her practice from outside the window at the studio, her body standing in first position, her arms at a graceful arch down at her sides.  She dipped into a plie and swept her arms up in a semicircle above her head.  I caught her watching herself at the barre to make sure her shoulders were back.  Her neck tall.  Her toes pointed.  She looked just like a bird, slender and curious, standing on the edge of the water.  Just like that, she was learning how to be a dancer.  And yet her thoughts were elsewhere.  Her steps delayed.  It’s hard for a girl to dwell in the present when there are four more beats to attend to.  There’s no room for reflection.  The music keeps on plodding forward like a military march, relentless in its precision.

The day of the recital, I tried to make it exciting.  I curled her hair and let her wear pink lipstick.  I pressed blush into young cheeks that were too pretty to decorate and told her how special it would be that I would see her on stage.  The curtain.  The dancing.  The thrill!

I waited with what seemed like thousands of other parents in the auditorium to see my little girl prance around in the lights.  It was inordinately hot and I ended up on the third row behind a woman who was breastfeeding and next to a lady with a child in her lap.  They couldn’t start the show until every last person was seated due to some fire safety issue, so we all sat glaring at the late-comers, our heads sinking in our hands, while people bumped and squeezed their way into random empty seats in the crowd.

Finally, the show started.  I had no idea there were so many numbers. Little girls tapped and turned in glitter and sequins with big, beaming smiles.  Like freshly-picked apples they bobbed around, red and sweet and buoyant.

Finally, it was time.  The curtain opened and I saw my daughter  – the tallest one in the class, stand there in a flowing ballet outfit covered in pink flowers.  But unlike most of the dancers, who were smiling and waving and acting like they had a slight interest in being there, mine looked as if she was auditioning for the Olympics.  As if each step held great importance. She was a bit behind the beat, but in one pivotal moment all the other girls hugged the person next to them and my daughter got to stand in the middle and bring her arms up in a sweeping circle above her head.  I cheered out loud and my heart welled up with pride.  That’s my girl!  That one right there in the middle who is perfect and wonderful in every way!

After her number, I ran backstage to greet her.  I wanted to hug her neck and tell her I was so proud of her excellent arm-sweeping and toe-pointing.  She didn’t look excited to see me.  She begrudgingly took my hand until we left the dressing room, and then shook me loose.  She moved her shoulders when I tried to put my arm on her back to guide her forward.  “What in the world’s wrong?” I asked. “We were supposed to do a group bow,” she said, like I should have known.  But I was already there, and waiting another hour for a bow on stage amongst seventy other girls was downright silly.  Right then, my daughter caught the loving eye of her grandmother, who said she was the best dancer in the world and told her she’d have driven a thousand miles to see the show. My daughter smiled feebly as we walked over to the trophy table, and as we picked it up and left she tugged at my hand.  “It isn’t even real gold,” she said as she looked down at her prize.  “No,” I said.  “They never are.”

On the way home, my father stopped and got my daughter a lemon slush.  Her face lit up and she smiled the first true, authentic one I’d seen all day.  “Can I get a large one?” she asked.  She clapped her hands together and began to hum in the backseat of the car.  Funny what makes a little girl happy. Not the lights or the stage.  Not the makeup or the attention.  Just a slush, on the way home, with cool air blowing in her face.  She wiped at her lipstick and gave me another sweet smile. As if to say it’s over.  Finally. 

Our daughter likes to live within her own space. Where you can move as slow as you feel.  I’ll miss seeing her arms above her head and the look of her little body in a leotard standing at the barre.  But I cannot force her to be someone she is not.  For she is growing into her own kind of swan, gliding along the top of the water, learning to dwell within the swollen drops of her own rain.

That’s a kind of dance, I suppose.  But it is set to her own music, where there is real gold at the end of the rainbow.

one liners, part III

Right now, my two-year-old son is speaking in short and very direct sentences like “me eat” and “I do it.”  There is also the ever-so-popular “MINE” and “No night night, mama.  Applesauce.” Although my son’s extreme narcissism and obsession with slapping my face while saying “no hit” at the same time are great fun, for now I’m focusing on what my daughter has said in the last few weeks that bears repeating.  Here goes:

  • “Can you read to my imaginary friends?  I read to them all the time, and they want to hear from someone new.”
  • “So it’s murder to kill someone else but solders can do it in battle and that’s okay?” “Honey!” I yell.  My husband was changing clothes after work. “Your daughter’s got a question for you!” That’ll teach him to come home late.
  • “Charlie said that Texas Tech smells like pee pee, and then William said the University of Texas smells like roses,” she said.  “What did you say to all that?” I asked. “I told him roses stink.” Then she paused for a few moments.  “Well, roses don’t really stink, I know, but some might.  And at least they are very strong smelling.”
  • “For (my brother’s) birthday, I’m going to make him a pretend laptop out of construction paper. But it’s only going to have ten buttons and no mouse.”
  •  “I read the entire book about Davy Crocket and I don’t see why he’s such a hero. But I skipped some parts.”
  • “I have a bug bite on my back and it itches like crazy.  If only it were on my elbow. That would be so much better.”
  • “Did I fail to mention I hate strawberries?  Because right here on my plate I see strawberries.”
  • “It’s just regular milk, I know, but I’m pretending that it’s chocolate.”
  • “I don’t understand why you’re so snappy,” my daughter tells me one morning. It involved me telling her to put on her shoes seventeen-thousand times.  But whatever.
  •  “Guess what? My teacher is having a boy and she is going to name him either Truman or Moses.”  “Really?” I asked.  “Well I don’t really know,” she tells me.  “But that’s what I think she should name him.”
  • “I always want mac-and-cheese.  If you ever wonder, that’s what I want.”

To live in a five-year-old’s world for a day, I swear.

Advice for my daughter

My dear daughter,

You are so precious at this age.  Everything I do is right, and true, and my kisses are like pink bubble gum sparkles on your cheeks.   I am taking it all in that you love me so.   But soon, you will see the ugly and cruel side of life.  I will stop making sense to you, and you just might not like me as much.   I always hope that you’ll laugh at me and consider me wise, even into my age-induced Alzheimer’s days to come.  But in the meantime, consider this advice:

  • When in doubt on what spice to use (whether it’s in eggs or potatoes), use Herbs de Province. You can’t go wrong.
  • You will someday be tempted with many vices.  Some are minor, but others have lifetime consequences.   Please don’t experiment with drugs.  They kill.  Got it?  Are we clear on this?
  • If your clothes are too tight, it looks like you’re tying to hard.  Let your body speak for itself.
  • Embrace who you are.  If someone suggests you to change your character, find a way to distance yourself.  Such people are toxic.
  • Laugh all the time.  It’s good for your soul.
  • Find true friends, and work to keep them.  They are more precious than diamonds.
  • Pray.
  • If you are engaged and you have the tiniest shred of doubt that the man you are about to marry isn’t right for you, walk away.  It can be the day before.  It can be the day off.  I promise I won’t judge.  Just politely return all the presents and keep your head held high.
  • Kids are glorious, but don’t rush into having them.  Enjoy your freedom.
  • Don’t eat low-fat ice cream.  Go for the real stuff.
  • A meal that takes a long time to prepare, with excellent ingredients, is worth it.  It shows how much you appreciate your guests.
  • Always, always, always tell the truth.  Lies are corrosive.
  • Nothing you could ever do in this world would cause me to stop loving you. Please remember that however hard you fall, I’m here to catch you.
  • Look for character traits in a man that your father has: strength, honor, loyalty, and wit.  Because you’ll be married to him for a long time, and you need to laugh through many trials.
  • Never email thank-you notes.  I have on occasion, but I’m not proud of it.
  • Reading fiction is never a waste of time.  It cultivates a garden in your brain filled with glorious blooms of words and characters.  Speaking of, read Atlas Shrugged, and Jane Eyre.
  • Wash your hands to the tune of Happy Birthday.  Twice.
  • Please know that when I die, I’m not forever gone.
  • Live life with wild abandon.  Freely and fully, knowing you are a child of God, rich in spirit and talents.
  • Sing and play any instrument you can.  Music is the closest you’ll ever feel to heaven.
  • Cut all your hair off at least once in your life.
  • Travel to Europe.
  • When you think there’s nothing left – when life is bitter and cruel and seems like it’s suffocating you – laugh.  Then laugh some more.  Always find the funny, because it’s there like a rough-cut jewel.

In your five-year-old world, I know so much.  But soon, when I fall out of favor in your eyes, I hope you take these bits of advice to heart.  My sweet young daughter, light of my life, child of my heart. . . It’s a rough world out there, but the battle has been won long before you entered it.  Your job is just to navigate through the best you can, with your head held high, smiling in the light of the morning sun.

Be the woman I know you can be.

Mom

Brushstrokes

The artwork of Georges Seurat is ugly when you stand up close.  The compilation of colors and brushstrokes and dots make no sense when you’re staring directly at them.  You go take a look at Monet’s Water Lilies from a foot away and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. I think life is that way.  Up close, it’s messy and ugly and disorganized.  But just take a look how breathtaking it is when viewed as a whole.

CAMILLE PISSARRO: “Landscape at Pontoise”, 1874.

Just this week, I tried to capture unique, individual moments.  Globs of paint just slapped on the page.

  • I walked into my daughter’s room and my son had happily covered himself in black Sharpie marker. I mean all over. On his legs and his hands and his stomach. “What in the world have you done?”
  • “Don’t you ever swing with your brother walking behind you,” I yell to my daughter as my son lands face-down in the dirt, screaming.  “Swing! Swing!” he says to me as if I didn’t just see what happened.  Then she starts crying because she feels bad and says  he shouldn’t have been there to start with.
  • “Can you read just one more chapter?” my daughter begs.  “Just one more?” She cuddles down into the pillow with sleepy eyes.
  • “You eat that carrot,” I say.  “It’s good for you.  There’s just one more on your plate, for goodness sakes.  It’s not like I’m asking you to eat a mouthful of dirt. Why are you making that face?”
  • “Ice creeeeeeam!” my son shrieks.  “Not for breakfast, kiddo,” I say in return. He throws himself down on the floor in protest.
  • I look at my daughter, with a headband and a ruffled purple skirt and a shirt that says Girls Rock.  She’s wearing shades with Tinkerbell on them and her hair is all messy. “But why are you wearing sweat pants underneath?” I ask.  “It’s 90 degrees out.” She shrugs.
  • “Is that hail I hear?” my husband says, as he rushes outside to check the garden.
  • “Time for bath,” I said as my son took off running.  I had to chase him all over the living room while he squealed with delight.  I finally grabbed his shirt and pulled him to the floor.  “Noooooo!” he yelled.  “No bath!”
  • “Let’s move,” I say to both kids.  We are late, as usual.  My daughter’s pony tail looks horrible.  It’s all lumpy.  And is that a stain on her jumper?
  • “I’ll just have Wheaties,” my husband said.  “But I made chicken pot pie,” I whined.  “I worked so hard and made the crust and everything.”  I’m not proud to admit it, but I think I stomped my foot a little.
  • Why is there a pair of scissors lying in the bathroom?  Why is this toothpaste open?  And why, for the love of everything in this world, do you kids always run around messing things up the very moment I clean them?
  • Re-fold that towel.  Put away your shoes.  No, not in the middle of the floor, but in your closet.  Please don’t hit your sister.  No, you can’t have another juice box.  Did you get into my makeup? PICK THAT UP, for crying out loud!

But when you stand back from afar, it’s a blend of screaming and laughing and crying that somehow makes up a family.  It’s the texture and pattern of our journey.  I try and gather up all these tiny brushstrokes in my heart.  At the end, I’ll look back and think to myself –

Oh dear God.  How breathtakingly beautiful.