Let them eat toast

March 5, 2013 By

SONY DSC

I’m always annoyed when the host of a cooking show tastes her food at the end of the episode, rolling her eyes back in ecstasy.  Not only does she magically create beef rolls, arugula salad, and a pear tart in under twenty minutes, but then she brags on herself.  “Oh my gosh,” she says into the camera.  “This is so good.  Seriously.”  Her hair is all blown out and she wears a size two but she takes a glorious bite of something with a face full of Chanel make-up.  Honestly, it does look amazing, and if she says it’s the best pizza ever it must be.  But I am at home at 4 pm staring into my refrigerator, wearing sweatpants and my daughter’s vanilla cupcake lip smackers with not a stitch of real adult make-up on.  I glance back at the television and see this beautiful person still standing, doing all kinds of lovely dicing and chopping, and I watch in a trance as her curls are still in place.  The cabinets are white and all the dishes are white and she never seems to run out of spoons.

But meanwhile, back in real life, dinner happens.  While I desire to produce homemade chicken stock on a Tuesday afternoon, or make stuffed peppers with a side of beet salad, serving it to grateful children who ask for a double helping of roasted squash, I end up making scrambled eggs with cheese. The little song I made up about it being breakfast for dinner! (it comes with a dance) is so overused and nobody likes wheat toast anyway.  So it’s milk with no chocolate, eggs before ice cream, and please sit down at the table because we aren’t wild animals eating our kill.  Which ends up in a rendition of accurate wolf howling and a discussion of how much we all hate eggs and me bemoaning the fact that I could only find two spoons.  My daughter shrugs like she is completely unaware that there is Lenox silverware hidden in the garden being used as tiny shovels for the dirt-fairy nymphs.

Where is my make-up artist? Where is my blow-out? Why are my children so resistant to toast, I’d just like to know?

One of these days, someone will create a real cooking show, where the chef runs out of time and keeps getting interrupted by a toddler trying to climb the cabinets to get into the shelf for old Valentine’s Candy.  You’ll see her start to sweat because she’s embarrassed about her child’s behavior and ends up using baking soda instead of cornstarch or throws in way too much salt.  Then at the end of the show, when she can’t quite make it to the pear tart because her son keeps trying to grab power bars from the pantry to curb his imminent starvation, she tries to cover for herself and says that you can just eat a whole piece of fruit for dessert like she planned it all along.  But no one believes her because come on.  No one wants a stupid pear.

At the end, she’s supposed to taste what she made. While she’s lifting the spoon to her mouth she slips on the dog’s water (who sloshed it all over the tile? I swear) and her daughter walks in and grabs a bruschetta from the presentation dish.  “Oh my gosh,” her daughter says into the camera.  “This is the nastiest thing I’ve ever had.  Seriously.  Don’t ever make this again.  I’m going to Shelly’s to eat macaroni and cheese.”  Then the poor little chef cries and gives her toddler an old piece of candy after all and we see her sneaking a beer in a red Dixie cup.

I’d be like YES!  I love this show!  I’m a huge fan!  You managed to make a crappy version of stir fry, sure.  But look at that salad! That’s good!  And you tried so hard, and you didn’t totally lose it with that dog water spillage thing, which is so impressive and shows how calm you were under pressure.  So what that your daughter didn’t like bruschetta?  She wears hot pink shirts and eats macaroni with powder sauce, so her credibility is nil.   It’s cool.  I’ll send you a recipe using a can of soup, some Ro-Tel, and some crumbled up chips and we can all feel like normal people.  Then I’ll go skipping off to the garden to find all my spoons and thank the stars that I’m not alone.

NBC, take note.   One of these days, just allow the chef to say what’s she’s actually thinking, which is “please don’t eat this.  I just tasted it, and honestly it tastes exactly like cardboard because it’s only pasta and peas with unsalted butter.  Next time I’ll find a sauce or a cream or something.  Really.  Trust me on this.”   I would.  I so totally would.

Let’s face it.  Despite our best intentions, you just sometimes have to eat toast.  Put butter and salt on it if you wish and call it garlic bread.  Add a song about how toast rhymes with roast and how the ghost gets the most.  Then forgive yourself for having breakfast for dinner, or the fact that you gave your kid candy, and that you have been wearing work-out gear for three days with no Chanel in sight.   Honestly, your kids don’t care.  They’re too busy eating to notice.

photo:

Scrambled Egg with Toast

Filed Under: Cooking, Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Motherhood, My life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Little Boys

November 15, 2012 By

I cradle his head in my forearm, his droopy eyes and fat cheeks soft.  I lay my cheek against his and smell his quick honey breath.  It’s a small space between love and hurt because sometimes I want to squeeze him so tight the air squishes out and I’m left with a rag doll and I think how can I love this boy until the end of time?  I rock and rock like a ticking clock even though he’s asleep by now because I don’t want to break the spell.  I praise God for this magic who is a blessing.

At midnight I hear his cries, the pacifer, I dropped it, momma, and I run into shush him back.  And when he crawls into my king-sized dreams I welcome him in, even though he kicks and pats my face and says in a whisper are you awake?  Are you awake, momma?  He flips and tucks and pats me to sleep because that is the world of one who is two.

But I’m awake and angry at this boy for always yelling and kicking and screaming I want dat and never listening to my incessant pleas.  I want to make it stop as I run him back to the time-out chair.  Teeth are for chewing, not for sister’s arm, I say as I pull him back to a place of reverence.  He pouts and swings his legs and says he’s sorry.  He wraps his arms around my parched throat and says I wuv you mommy and I am suddenly filled, love pouring and drenching and filling what was never really empty to begin with.

Having a little girl is sweet and pink and bubbly but having a son is a different animal and it’s an Achilles heel.  I want to stay hunkered down in his devotion and I place my hand over his little child kisses like I can preserve them there, fossils of when mommy was everything and nothing else mattered. I want them tattooed on my cheek so I can see them there and weep.

This love cripples me so. Someday he will leave – they both will – and it reminds me again that there’s a small space between love and hurt and sometimes they happen at the same time and that’s okay.  So I rock and shush and sing and pray.  Lord help me see the beauty of spilled juice and toilet paper heaps and rocking babies.  It’s so precious and warm and soft.

Hurt or no hurt, it’s more love after all.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Motherhood, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Dirt

September 21, 2012 By

It’s so nice to see my children playing with dirt and plants and rocks and sticks.  This what I wanted when I had children – to see them use their little imaginations and explore the world around them. No television for my kids.  Nosiree.  Let ‘em get their hands dirty.

I see my daughter hauling the new Britta pitcher from our kitchen to the front porch to make chocolate smoothies. She’s loading it up with dirt and rocks.  Wait just a minute.

Then my son begins to yank off all the blooms from the plumeria with glee, just ripping and pulling and throwing them all around with wild abandon.  One after another he yanks at them like he’s some sort of flower executioner.  The louder I yell, the more he plucks.

“For the salad! It’s for the salad!” he screams. I can’t do anything about it now, their little heads lying on our front walk like corpses.

I turn around to see my daughter creating salsa with rosemary leaves and sticks, and she somehow weaseled her way past me into the kitchen again for the pottery barn dishes to use as place settings.  How do they do all this so fast?  Do they have superpowers?

“This has gone too far,” I say.  I walk over to remove the plates and I hear my daughter yelling for her brother to stop.  He has turned on the water hose and is spraying her down, trying to aim his hose into the pitcher she’s holding in her hands.  By now my kids are sopping wet and dirty from head to toe and that t-shirt from Janie and Jack is now stained and beyond repair.

I force both of them to the porch and run inside to get the broom, but now that the smoothies are done they most certainly must be tested.  Suddenly they are pouring the goopy mess into little cups, runny mud oozing over the sides and on our front porch to be dried into concrete.  These are so chocolaty, they say.  You simply must have one. I strip them both down and make them take baths before dinner.

After baths, they sit watching Arthur and I’m so thankful for television and quiet and warm bubble baths that make things right again.

It all sounded so good at the time.

 

A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.

-Rachel Carson,

Filed Under: Motherhood, My life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Letting Go

September 20, 2012 By

my daughter, now six

—-

Being a writer is hard.  I love the feeling late at night when I finish an essay, like I crossed a finish line or finally caught a breath of mountain air.  I like getting positive feedback as a balm to my itchy insecurities.  And when I sent my novel – my baby child that stole nights and weekends and so many rivers of tears– off to my editor, I was grateful when she said it’s good.  It’s actually really good.  And yet agents email me saying “it’s not you, it’s us” and “we are so sorry for this rather impersonal rejection.”  It’s a literary black hole, and you have to hold onto the railing to keep from being swept under.

I wish I could roll up my sleeves and go have a meeting with someone.  I wish I could just go make something happen. I’d curl my hair and put on my heels and pound my fist on a desk.  Progress will be made.  Things will crawl off dead center because I know how to make people jump.  I got a job once by making an appointment with the CEO.  Somehow a job was created.  A job I dreamed up in my head and convinced them they needed.

And yet here I sit alone, eating pistachios and drinking coffee and reading other people’s words.  I try and let writers inspire me, and be thankful for their successes, and try and feed on the natural creativity that follows.  I tell myself that God is listening and my blog followers are listening and these things matter.  And yet my mind wanders off to bad places – dark caves where I’m nothing and my life is insignificant and my words are just cheap imitations.

I think about that time six years ago, when I lay in a hospital bed staring at the ceiling tile.  After a prolonged labor and emergency c-section she was finally given to me, this beautiful gift from God that I didn’t deserve.  She was so white and angelic and I wouldn’t let her go.  But days after arriving home with my first-born they came to take me away, on some damn stretcher that held heart victims and dead people.  There were doctors and surgeons and tests.  There were re-incisions and pains and organs being shut down.  I just kept looking at that ceiling tile, thinking God just wouldn’t do this to me and he couldn’t possibly let me die.  Not now.  Not like this.  I’ve worked so hard, remember, Lord?  I make things happen. Are you listening up there?

I asked for the breast pump, my body filled with drugs and steroids and horrible chemicals of all types, and forced that milk out through excruciating tears as each surge of the pump caused my scarred and infected abdomen to seize.  But I was a fighter, and this wouldn’t break me.

See, God?  This is what you’d be saving. 

One night, a nurse came in.  She looked right through me. You need to let go, she said.  You need to let God to take over. I was angry.  I was pissed off at her accusations.  Who the hell are you, all up in my business about faith?  Have you not seen how hard I’ve worked?  Have you not seen my tears and heard my prayers? I am dying here, woman, with the fever and the infection and the chills.  Can’t you see that I’m trying?  Can’t you see I’ve not seen my baby’s face for weeks and this just isn’t working like I planned and I’m so damn sick of this place?  Can’t you see that I have this tube in my throat and my husband isn’t eating and it just never ceases?  Can’t you see that I don’t want to see a picture of her, my perfect three-week-old daughter, because it fills me with rage and sadness? Isn’t this enough?

You have to let it go.

I think about that night when I get this way.  When I think I’m in charge.  When I keep pounding away on the keyboard like the surging breast pump.  When the devil whispers in my ear that my words don’t matter and a book deal is the brass ring and all this is just a big vat of wasted time.

Stand back, Devil. 

It all matters.  My words matter.  My life matters.  Whether it’s typing or living or birthing or dying, we all just have to let go.  We aren’t the one making things happen. God makes things happen. We are just the instruments of his peace.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Motherhood, My life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Odd and Curious Thoughts of the Week

September 11, 2012 By

(1) My daughter asked why baby teeth fell out and I told her that the big grown-up teeth are underneath pushing them.  She said that wasn’t true because she doesn’t feel those big teeth yet and if they were pushing wouldn’t she see evidence of it?  I sighed and said that baby teeth must just have good timing.  Teeth don’t have brains, she says. She’s already surpassing me in logic and she’s only six.

(2) I love rap so much and it annoys me that they keep talking about clubs and drugs and money.   Let’s quit degrading women and start using this incredibly emotional forum to discuss rising from poverty and struggling past the racial divide.  Because when I hear Eminem’s Lose Yourself after all these years I’m still so powerfully moved. 

(3)  I made a chicken black-bean casserole tonight.  I used refried black beans instead of whole.  I added sour cream.  I threw in some cream and cumin and added bell peppers.  I smeared it into the pan and topped it with sharp cheddar.  It turned out looking like a large platter of smashed up dog poo. My cousin is a chef and says we eat with our eyes. She speaks the truth.

(4)  Sometimes I get annoyed that my daughter’s private school is so strict and rigid and her homework consists of reading and more reading and math worksheets.  But then I think of how awesome it would be to be forced to do all that reading and it makes me feel better.  This weekend I’m going to have her draw all the animals she can muster so we can add glitter and sparkles and create a mud pie masterpiece.  We’ll shake out all the sillies and dance to Elvis and on Monday we’ll go back to math worksheets again.  A few drops of glitter may or may not fall out of her backpack Monday.  I’m denying any knowledge therein.

(5) I spoke poorly of someone long ago and it got back to him through a tangled web of connections.  Although I don’t remember what I said it was something related to our tense working relationship at the time.  Vitriolic speech comes back to haunt you.   It’s a reminder to not speak with a forked tongue.

(6) I tried to explain to my daughter the other day what it means to speak with a forked tongue as we were looking at my son’s book of reptiles. She just looked at me and nodded in that way you nod to senile people.  I think she secretly believes I’m a toad trapped in a mother’s body and most of what comes out of my mouth is pure drivel.

(7) My son cried for almost an hour after his nap today because I wouldn’t drop everything I was doing, hold him in my arms, rock him back and forth while standing, and tell him it would all be okay.  Well I have things to do, buddy, and I can’t just pacify you at your every whim.  I’m over thirty and you’re only two and I can’t go around caving in to your ridiculous demands.  I ain’t raising no sissy, I told myself as I stood firm by the sink rinsing vegetables for dinner.  Keep crying if you want to because it has absolutely no effect on me.

(8) This afternoon, after rinsing vegetables, I sat down on the chair and held my sweet baby boy in my arms.  I rocked his little body back and forth. It’s okay, I whispered to his tear-stained face.  Mama’s here.  You’re safe.  There is no hope for him, I tell you.

(9) When Adele has her child that poor little thing will be so spoiled because her mom will sing Over the Rainbow and Amazing Grace and will catch herself humming Rolling in the Deep in the Burger King drive-in.  The kid will forever cringe at church when the choir starts and there’s just no living with a music snob.

(10)               Today I talked to one of my best friends and we laughed about farts, fans, and how we weren’t buying our kids smart phones until they were old enough to earn them.  We are so turning into old people.  The only thing left to go is our hearing and cute underpants.  Lord help us.

(11)               Sometimes I sit and stare at the blank page like a devil that laughs at my face and tells me there’s nothing more to say.  I start writing anyway.

Filed Under: Humor, Inspirational, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , ,

BUSY, a Guest Post by Melanie Haney

September 10, 2012 By

Hey guys!

I’m honored today to introduce you to my wonderful writer friend, Melanie Haney, who writes over at A Frozen Moon.  Go check it out and read her lovely words.  Although we live in different parts of the country, we still struggle with the same issues: motherhood, faith, joy, and living the best life we can right where we are.  I love her honesty, her flowing style, and let’s not even go there with her amazing photographs.  Her pictures capture the essence of childhood, love, and fleeting moments that we often don’t capture.

We both wrote a back-to-school post and shared it with each other, so to read mine just mosey on over to her blog and check it out.  Have a great week!

Busy

by Melanie Haney

The final damp breaths of August have exhaled and here we are.

We are back to school. We are pencils and backpacks and looking out for the first falling leaves, when really, we are still shaking the sand from our flip flops and sweating by each afternoon in our new school clothes.

We are morning routines that start too early and buses that are never on time.

And me? I am one week in and torn between my love for autumn in New England, and my hesitance to push my family forward another year so soon. I am another year older myself and feeling the middleness of it all, how if my life is a ladder with years for rungs, I am quite possibly approaching the center. Enough behind me to be steady on my course, enough ahead of me to keep me looking forward.

But mostly, I am tired.

Tonight, I am sweating, crawling under the table and sweeping every little unwanted bite from dinner into my palms – partially chewed hot dog, mushy canned peas, sweet potato fries with the ketchup sucked off – and while doing so, I am making my best attempt to meditate on goodness. To focus on the goodness of a meal that can nourish my children, the gift of having a floor to clean, the blessing of a body that can get down on hands and knees and that I am able to be the one home to do this (most evenings.)

All good things, wrapped up into this little life of mine, and I am thankful.

And then, Evie throws up in the bath tub.

While she stands, naked and dripping on the bathmat, I let the water from the tub and find myself (again) chasing partially chewed hot dogs, but this time down the drain in waves of warm soap and other unsavory bits. As I do this, the phone rings and my husband tells me he is just on his way home now. Yes, great, thanks, handful of sopping paper towels and toddler puke, k-bye.

Meanwhile, Alex is poking his head in and asking if I have had a chance to read his school paperwork yet. It’s a story about he and his friends and how one of them used to have brown hair, but the summer sun has turned it blond. It is not Shakespeare and I worry, while handing it back to him with an encouraging smile, that his new teacher won’t encourage him or praise him or guide him as well as his first grade teacher had.

It all just seems so fragile at the moment with him – approaching eight, losing teeth, asking each night if he can stay up later, the disappointment on his face whenever there isn’t time for just one game of UNO or SKIP-BO before bed.

I re-wash Evaline and Lila and wrap them in towels and remember that I am trying to slow down and focus. Right. Focus. I unplug the drain and I am thankful for water – for hot water, even – and enough to fill the tub twice. I am thankful for this wriggling baby girl in my arms who I don’t yet need to send off into the world to be assessed or judged or bothered by things like lunchboxes with her least favorite sandwich or who she is going to sit next to on the bus.

I am thankful for the time I have been given, with her and with all of my children. Towel-swaddled Evie and I stand in the mirror and kiss cheeks and touch noses.  What a gift.

And then, she pees on me.

I kid you not.

Deep breaths. Focus. For this fall season, this is my life. And I will be thankful, be present, notice the good all around.

It’s one in the morning and I should be sleeping, but I am typing. Evaline stirs and comes to our bed. Of course, she did not wake in the hours between putting her to bed and when we went to bed. Of course, she did not disturb us while Vinnie was still awake and I was editing pictures while a slow documentary on the history of a board game (Monopoly) played in the background. No, she waited for this moment, for this quiet bedroom and my empty arms.

I put the laptop down and let her crawl all over me.

It’s two in the morning and she is still here, twisting and snuggling some, but mostly kicking. I nudge Vinnie awake to try and take her back to her room.

It’s six in the morning and Alex comes to our bedroom. Evie is here too, again. I think I might have slept an hour or two, maybe.

Lila bounces to the bedroom and informs me that I still need to pack their snacks. And that she likes chips. I blink at her and she quickly adds, but whatever you give us is good because all the food in our house is good!

Yes. All the food in our house is good. I pull the blankets back and here we go again. Four children, three bus stops to wait through, two snacks and lunches to pack, one house to clean, one wedding to shoot (tonight, another tomorrow). But in it all – in all this new routine, this autumn, this back to school madness, you are here and you are good and I will focus on blessings not nuisances.

I walk to the kitchen.

Asher greets me with a sheepish smile and two donuts hidden behind his back.

Oh, and wet pants and a wet bed.

At the bus stop, I sip coffee and people watch while my kids run around the lot with their friends. I notice the absence of our neighbor and his daughter and for a moment, I feel the wisp of death, curling itself back into my thoughts.

But then the bus pulls around the bend and the children all bolt to line up. I smile at the enormity of Lila’s pink backpack on her little girl frame. Alex turns from his place in line to send me a big smile and a goodbye wave. I drive home to poopy diapers and laundry loads and charging camera batteries and client emails and a text from a friend are we still on for a walk (in twenty minutes)? and busy-busy-busy.

Yet, in it all, goodness. In it all, a life, my life, written over seasons and chapters and papers that are scribbled on in cursive, in Crayola, in eloquence and in gibberish – with pages torn, spilled on, scattered on the floor and somehow shoved back into sequence.

And I am thankful. Folding laundry. Changing diapers. Muttering over the damp sheets on Asher’s bed, the spilled Cheerio’s on our kitchen floor. I am thankful for it all, every little thing that keeps me focused on the this place, this page, this season here on this middle-ladder rung moment of my life.

Filed Under: Motherhood, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

A mix tape for my daughter

September 8, 2012 By

One of the reasons I have been drawn to music is the power it has to take you from flat-out normal to exceedingly sad, or from bored to overwhelmingly happy, in less than four minutes.  And when listening to longer, more complicated pieces, like Bach or Puccini or Durufle, you sit in a concert hall feeling arias building and cadences growing, and your heart starts racing.  You find yourself residing in another dimension, and suddenly you can’t even breathe.  And then one day when you are diagnosed with cancer, you are in a Dunlap’s parking lot in Waco, Texas, listening to a scratchy rendition of Eva Cassidy singing People Get Ready live at Blues Ally.  You sob and rock like a child and you think you heart just fell out in front of you.

Music makes all time and space melt around you like butter, and you are suddenly very far away, peering into the very realms of heaven.  Maybe I find the addiction to music fascinating because it puts one face-to-face with strong emotion, and only when you work through the pain and fear and passion that it evokes can you really heal.

So when I peek inside my daughter’s room and see her sitting alone listening to music, it makes me smile.  I want her to have the same elated cries, and find joy in certain phrases, and think she can make through this life.  I want her to have hope, and be confident, and find the joy in all things.

Then she asks me to buy Party in the USA on my ipod.  Ugh.  I’m suddenly thrown back into reality of her 6-year-oldness.  We’ll work on her taste a bit.  But the yearning’s there.  And that’s a good thing.  She already owns The Best of John Denver, so at least there’s that.

So I put together a little mix CD for her of songs that are joyful, and express my love of life, and of her, and the south.  These are songs I don’t mind being etched into her little brain, for her to recall in her later years.  They are but a few of great inspiring songs to come.  What a lifetime of music lies ahead.

  • Strip Me, by Natasha Bedingfield
  • Come To Jesus, by Mindy Smith
  • The One I Love, by David Gray
  • Summer Dance, a flamenco guitar piece
  • Dreams, by Fleetwood Mac
  • This Old Porch, by Lyle Lovett
  • You Know I Love You Baby, by Mindy Smith
  • Southern Kind Of Life, by Kasey Chambers
  • Bridge Over Troubled Water, by Eva Cassidy
  • Grace, by Saving Jane
  • I Know You By Heart, by Eva Cassidy
  • Over the Rainbow, by Ingrid Michaelson
  • Shake It Out, by Florence + The Machine
  • The Way I Am, by Ingrid Michaelson

What songs have you always wanted your daughter to know?

Filed Under: Motherhood, Music, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Slaying the dragon

September 6, 2012 By

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.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Motherhood, My life, Religion Tagged With: , , ,

Ten Things I Shouldn’t Admit

September 2, 2012 By

(1) I create very extensive stand-up comedy routines in my car while driving places.  The words “please stop doing that” and “leave funny to the professionals” just might have been uttered by some very tall man-person in my home on multiple occasions.

(2) I love to iron, in the wistful sense that once a year or so I’ll pull out some cloth napkins and slowly press them during the changing of the seasons as the Autumn wind is blowing through the windows and I’m listening to an Adele album while drinking chai tea.  Aside from that one particular set of circumstances, ironing’s just meh.

(3) My two-year-old has decided that he has immunity from all bad deeds as long as he says I’m sorry and offers a hug.  Today he sprinkled baby powder over his entire room, squirted lotion on my wood floors, ate nothing for dinner but demanded bars for an hour, marked on the furniture, and hit his sister.  Sorry, momma?  Hug?  It’s not a magic eraser, kid.  I ain’t fallin for it.

(4) I made homemade play dough this afternoon because I am that cool mom that does fantastic crafty things with her children that they damn well better remember.  My son spilled salt all over the floor, I had to cook the concoction and dirty up several pans, I ended up getting green food coloring on my hand for the rest of the day that doesn’t come off even with sandpaper, only to end up with two tiny lumps that my children rolled into snakes and made into hearts for seven entire minutes.  Then they declared play-dough dull and boring in comparison to afternoon cartoons and ran out of the kitchen muttering about juice boxes.  Save yourself the trouble.  Buy it instead.

(5) I’m going to buy a new Burberry coat and when my husband casually asks how much it costs I’ll just say Sorry? Hug?

(6) I let my dog out to pee this morning before I even had my first cup of coffee and our neighborhood dog walkers stopped in their tracks at the sight of an unbound, leash-free animal.  Like my 14-year-old spaniel is going to attack them in a wild crazy old-dog vengeance.  I don’t even think he saw them given his poor eyesight and general inability to move fast or care much. He sauntered slowly toward the mailbox and began eating some other animal’s poo.  The dog walkers stared in disgust and one said “just keep going, Muffy.  It’s just none of your business.” I just waved.  “Have a great morning, ya’ll!” I called out.

(7) I have a thing for Jennifer Garner because I loved Season One of Alias so much and I secretly believe that if we were placed in a room together we’d become BFFs and would agree on all childrearing techniques and would bond over tea and scones.  But now that I’m putting it out there on paper it sounds weird and stalkerish and perhaps it’s strange that I always click on her picture in celebrity websites as she’s coming out of Starbucks.  I’m all “hey, Jen.  Is that your double frap with no foam? I know you love em. check it.”

(8) I am not ever going to make sandwiches in my kid’s lunch box that look like a tropical beach with coconut and palm trees or make vegetables look like monkey ears.  My knives aren’t that sharp and they won’t eat anything green anyway and I just can’t go around setting the standard that high.  I’ve decided that pinterest is evil and exists to make mothers feel like pond scum.  What happened to the simple lunch note that reads “have a great day in wonderland, sucka”?

(9) I honestly don’t know what Jennifer Garner drinks at Starbucks.  And I don’t say “check it” in real life because I don’t know exactly what that means.  I do, however, periodically watch movie previews in which she stars.  Maybe weird. Not as weird, however, as saying “check-it.”

(10)               I get winded sometimes when climbing stairs, but I’m too embarrassed to admit I’m out of shape so I say things like  (sigh) I’m so bummed that Heidi Klum cheated on Seal or (sigh) I really need to go the grocery store for toothpaste or (sigh) I really hope my daughter likes those new socks I bought.  Basically anything I can sigh about that brings more air into my oxygen-starved and bloated lungs.  Maybe I should just work out instead so I don’t have to sound like such a ninny.

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Motherhood, My life Tagged With: , , ,

Odd and Curious Thoughts of the Week

August 27, 2012 By

(1) I made Indian food this week and my daughter told me it was the best thing she has ever eaten.  She also wondered if we ate it every night of our lives whether we might still be Americans.  Yes, love. We’d still be Americans.  Pass the dal.

(2) The other night my son got up ten thousand times. I scolded him every time and told him to return to bed, and he would go sauntering back with his arms dragging by his sides.  Finally, I just sat in a chair in his room and he fell asleep immediately.  Funny how someone’s presence can be so soothing.

(3) My dog’s presence is full of insanely high-octane gas that reminds me of rotten, salty hay.  I could do without that.

(4) At a stoplight yesterday, I sat behind an Elantra.  Am I the only one who thinks that name sounds like a prescription drug?  Take ten milligrams of Elantra twice daily and come back to see me in three months. At least Trailblazer sounds adventurous.  I then went on an obsessed tirade of reading all the car names around me.  Rav 4? Equinox? Are we traveling to space in that Chevy, for heaven’s sake?

(5) Jesus renamed one of his disciples from the original name, Simon, to a new name, Peter.  I find it fascinating that you can walk around all your life being Amanda and then suddenly you’re Susan.  I get that Peter truly was a new person in Christ, but I secretly wonder if Peter liked the name.  And how did that make his mom feel?  After naming her sweet baby after great uncle Simon?  Did his wife have to keep correcting herself in the bedroom?

(6) I got a babysitter for my toddler this past week to take my daughter to a cooking demonstration at a local restaurant.  She begged to stay home because she was reading and didn’t want to change out of her pajamas, but I forced her to go since I had made reservations.  Since Monday is bread-baking day at my house, I had to hurry and get the dough to rise, and into the pans, and out of the oven before we left.  When we arrived, they announced that today was a special demonstration on bread baking.  My daughter looked at me like honestly, mom? We came for this?

(7) As it turns out, my daughter did have fun baking French bread.  She got home to show the babysitter, set the bread on the table to show her father when he got home, and the loaf was promptly eaten by the dog.  I’m really hating on him right now.

(8) I bought a futon for our upstairs play room.  It’s been described by my husband as “cheap,” “cracked,” and “rickety.”  However, my six-year-old has described it as “super fun,” “comfy,” and “very cool.”  Six-year-old wins.

(9)  Our two-year-old came into our room at 4:30 am this morning with a wet shirt and told me that he “washed his hands.”  That’s never good.

(10)               “Did you throw away that Toys-R-Us catalog?” my daughter asked me after looking all the over the house for it.  What?  You mean that tattered seven-page spread that you’ve been obsessed with for days and is causing you to ignore reality so you can memorize names and prices of various toys and remind me at every opportunity that the Lego Friends is on sale for $39.99?  Huh.  I just have no idea what happened to that thing.

(11)               Please let the school year come because I’m tired of hearing “don’t rush me” and “ it’s only 8:30 and in the summer I can stay up until 9.”  The juice and the popsicles and all that packing up and sunscreen application really wears a mom out.  And then there’s the boredom and “it’s too hot” and driving constantly to grandma’s.  Movie nights and play dates and nights without baths – my life would be much better if we could only get back to routine and consistency.

(12)               Please, Lord, never let this summer end.  My children are adorable,  my son won’t take a squeezable fruit without demanding one for his sister, and my daughter lost her front two teeth.  My sweet girl reads and draws and my son carefully places rocks in buckets and waters flowers.  We take turns hauling vegetables in from the garden and everyone is all giddy to get smoothies at 3 pm on a random Tuesday.  We swim and drink juice and make videos of ourselves dancing on the porch singing songs. It’s the best time of year and I want to cherish it forever.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood, My life Tagged With: , , ,

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