The Zoo

June 3, 2012 By

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.

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

dancing queen

May 29, 2012 By

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.

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

one liners, part III

May 19, 2012 By

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.

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

apple of my eye

May 14, 2012 By

I was annoyed.  Here we were on a budget and my husband was off buying random things for his computer.  Didn’t he understand I’d see the bill?  Didn’t he get it that we are trying to be frugal?  The conversation went something like this:

“I see you bought something at the apple store,” I said.  I was scrubbing food off plates after dinner.

“Huh?”  He looks up at me from his magazine, looking empty and confused.

“You don’t recall what you spent hundreds of dollars on just last week?”  I rolled my eyes.  I scraped harder.

“It must have been some kind of mistake.  Maybe they mischarged me for something I bought on itunes.”

“Not possible,” I said.  “It said apple, not itunes. You should call them.”

The following week, I emailed my husband the 1-800 number listed next to the charge on the credit card bill.

“Did you call?” I asked one morning.  “The apple store, I mean?  That’s a lot of money to be overcharged.”

“Back off,” he said in a hurry.  “I’m in meetings all morning.  But I will.”

On Saturday, I brought it up again, how crazy it was that he didn’t remember what he bought, or that apple really overcharged him that much, and reminded him that we had to cut back.  Did he not take this seriously? Why was he acting like it was no big deal?  Am I the only one around here that worries about such things?

But Sunday was Mother’s Day, so I let it go.  Early in the morning, while the sun was just peering around the horizon, my husband got out of bed and woke the children.  They all came bounding in, singing and yelling.  “Happy Mother’s Day!” my daughter shrieks, handing me a poem she had written and a box she claimed to wrap herself.  Her hair was wild and messy as she sat cross-legged in a tie-dye shirt and underwear on our king size bed. “Open it!” she yelled.

I start to unwrap it, and I see the little familiar white logo peering around the wads of tape. A brand new iphone.  From the apple store. My heart sank.  All that scolding and nagging, for goodness sakes.  I felt ashamed.  “I saved up my allowance to pay for it,” my husband says as he points to a wad of cash in the top drawer.  Just put it in the bank and use it on the card.  He had a glimmer in his eye, like he pulled one over on me.  Like he got me good. And he did.

I hugged my kids.  I read the poem with gusto.  I ripped open the box and hugged my husband for the secret he held onto for weeks.  I smiled at the gesture.  For the love and sacrifices and surprises my family has always shown me in my short stint at motherhood.  I texted my husband later, on my brand new phone.

You make it so easy to be a mother, it said.

I love apples.  You can throw them in a bag on the way to the park.  You can surround them with cinnamon and bake them in a crust. Or you can talk into them, and hear your husband’s deep voice on the other end telling you he’ll be home soon.  Kiss my boy for me.  Keep the soup warm.

My family is so fun to love.  They make my heart swell and I just want to wallow in them for the rest of my days.  It’s not the poems or expensive gifts or trips to the vegetarian place I love (that they hate) that matter.  It’s that I get to see the members of my family open their eyes every morning, one by one.  I get to wrap their sleepy bodies in my arms at night.  It’s the expressions on their faces when they are excited, and the longing need for me when they are weeping.  It’s the surge of sweetness I feel when I touch them, like a slice of warm apple pie on my tongue.

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Inspirational, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , , ,

Advice for my daughter

May 9, 2012 By

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

Filed Under: Love, Motherhood, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

Brushstrokes

May 8, 2012 By

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.

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

Odd and Curious Thoughts of the Week

April 30, 2012 By
  • Recipes are helpful.  Like telling me to use large eggs when making a Bundt cake.  I was just about to grab those tiny little quail eggs that I keep in my refrigerator when I had the forethought to double check.  Large eggs.  Wheh.  That was a close one.
  • I abhor having to type in those random letter combinations when I comment on another blog.  The caption always says something like “Prove to use you’re not a robot!”  Who came up with that phrase?  If a robot is smart enough to surf the web, come up with an email address, and put snarky comments on someone’s blog post, shouldn’t we be encouraging it?  Wouldn’t that be utterly awesome?  The phrase should instead read, “prove to me you’re not an internet scammer who wants to download a virus and steal my bank password.”  Or,  “enter in this stupid combination of letters because it’s automatic and I don’t know how to disable the damn thing.”
  • To prove my point about eggs, I went to the grocery store.  They have large and extra-large, and they are all the same price. I think we can quit referring to egg sizes, recipe people.  For those who actually live on a farm where the small ones are common, figure it out.
  • My sweet son is running a fever.  I feel just awful because he was extra cranky a few nights ago and I just might have made statements at dinner with friends similar to “that is so annoying” and “seriously, kiddo.  Deal with it. Just let me finish eating already.” I am heartless.
  • Tonight, our daughter came into our bedroom an hour after we thought she was asleep, lost in hysterical tears.  “I love my last name,” she sobs.  “I love the way it sounds when you say it all together, and someday when I get married I’ll have to change it.”  Uh, okay.  You’re five years old.  Most kids worry about getting a new backpack, and my daughter worries about losing her identity to her future spouse.  “You don’t have to change it,” my husband says, as if he’s disclosing some big secret.  “It can always be yours.  Love’s not found in a name, anyway.”  She is thrilled.  All is well again in the universe.
  • Last weekend, when we were working in the yard, my husband asked me if I’d seen the garden hoe.  I told him we shouldn’t discuss her in public, and especially around the children, for crying out loud.  Show some respect. 
  •  I get so excited when I hear the little ding on my iphone because I just know it’s the sound of an email – THE email – from the one literary agent who loves my novel and thinks it’s a bestseller in the making.  But it’s from Shutterfly, stating that they have new portrait mugs.  Well then.
  •  I thought about changing my blog name today to something whimsical like “graceful waters” or “she who runs with kitchen shears” instead of the super lame hill + pen. It’s like I am a caveman, beating my chest. I am hill.  I use pen.  I don’t even use a pen since I type everything.  But I was lazy and had laundry to fold.
  • Writing can be torture.  It’s lonely and sad, and you feel at times that it has no meaning.  But then you start envisioning someone laughing, or crying, or changing their behavior after reading your words, and you feel like a superhero.  At least that’s what you tell yourself to keep on writing.
  • This afternoon as I went to check the mail, I saw my neighbor and his wife standing in their front yard.  “Nice weather,” I shouted.  It’s what you say to be cordial.  It’s the neighborly thing to do. “Not if you’re digging a hole,” she yelled back.  I smiled and waived.  Yup, it’s no fun digging a – what?  Huh? Should I be concerned?

And it’s just Monday. . .

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

Infinity, plus one

April 19, 2012 By

“I sure love your daddy,” I said to my daughter once as we were walking hand-in-hand though the grocery store parking lot.  Sometimes I do that – say things I’ m thinking out loud.  It often gets me in trouble, like when I’m judgmental or harsh or wish someone would move the freak over in the fast lane.   But this particular day I was thinking about her father.  My husband.  The man I love more each passing day of our almost thirteen-year marriage.

“You love him more than anyone in the whole world?” she asked.  “Like the entire earth?” Her little hand was clutching mine as she looked up and squinted through the sun.  I’m wondering what she’s getting at, like if we lived on a smaller planet I’d just sorta hang out with him.  Maybe buy him a soda or get him a ticket to Sea World.

“Do you love him more than me?” she asked.

The question hit my face like a slap as we walked into the grocery store.  Right there by the pineapples.  How do I answer such a question?  How can I possibly explain such a love while picking out grapefruit?  This was my first-born.  My precious child.  I was the center of her little world.

“Well it’s just different,” I said.  I was really hoping she’d just let this go so I could head to the cheese section in peace.  But she was so fixated on my response that she flat-out ignored the free samples.  This was serious.  I could have just said I loved them both exactly the same – children like for things to be fair and equal and perfectly symmetrical.  Half the pie.  We each get a balloon.  Three candies each.  But I couldn’t lie.  Not to my own child.

My daughter and I gush a lot.  It makes my husband roll his eyes and leave the room, mostly because it’s (1) annoying; (2) loud; and (3) insanely repetitive.

“I love you a million times,” I’d say to her.  Of course she loved me too.  Except a million zillion times, plus infinity.

“I love you that much, plus one,” I’d say.

I do love her so.  I have an immense longing to protect my children at all costs and surround their world with freedom and creativity.  And they love me, to the extent they know how.  It’s so innocent.  Full of happy bubbles and sparkles.  It’s so squeaky and pure I wish I could bathe in it.  But my daughter has so much yet to learn.

I met my husband our last year in college. He was a fraternity boy with political ambitions.  He wore beat-up, red wing boots, pulling his hat low on his head to cover up his red, tired eyes.  I was drawn to him in a strange way that ignored all consequences.  His crooked smile kept flashing through my mind all the moments of my days, and the world was somehow off balance without him in it.  That was how things always were with us. From the very first moment we spoke, it was like that big wheel in Lost where all time and space shifted.  We didn’t really have a choice.  We were all but helpless participants in God’s master plan to yoke us together, one pushing and one pulling in all the right moments.  I melted when he touched me.  I would have followed him anywhere, to the very ends of the earth.  No matter what the size.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love my children with an emotion I didn’t know existed until their faces were raised to meet my eyes.  My throat closed up when I saw their bodies like tiny angels and thought I wasn’t worthy to own such beautiful things, even for such a little while.   Sometimes I stop folding laundry or scraping old oatmeal off cereal bowls and just look at them, my sweet precious little children, basking in the glow of the everyday.  They are the big miracles of life.

But someday, they will go.  They will take the extra china and good thread count sheets and beg me to make them cookies, but they will still leave.  Some other mother, who rocked and held and loved their child as fiercely as I have loved, will send their offspring out into the world and the two will meet.  And I will be but a memory of past days.  The woman of remember when and you just won’t believe. Then, it will just be us, my husband and I, rocking away on the quiet front porch, alone.   Or sitting in some café in France, drinking wine with grins on our faces.

I suppose when my daughter is older, after she struts headstrong into her own separate world, she might understand.  After she survives her own youthful heartbreak and finds a partner who feeds her soul.  Maybe then, she will know the answer, standing in the produce section, with refrigerated air blowing into her face and melon in hand, how to answer a question from her child about the intricacies of love.

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

Rising

April 10, 2012 By

Every Monday, I take off my wedding ring and pull my hair back in order to mix, pound, and watch bread rise through the dark oven door.  I always need to control something, and my two-year-old never listens.  So bread has become my new muse since leaving the corporate world.  Watch out, Julia.  Here I come with this hard crust and soft center business, all up in your junk about how Parisians do it best. So says the woman who used muffin mixes and bought canned biscuits.  I shudder now at the thought of my former self.

The old me wore heels and rushed off to the office, saying things like “well that’s a bifurcated approach” and “I hope we don’t bust our E&O deductible.”  I never used yeast packets except for holidays, and couldn’t understood why things never looked like magazine photos.  I was harried, and short-tempered, and wondered why my husband didn’t pitch in more with the kids.  I was juggling a career and a novel and small children and, well, I didn’t have time to wait hours for things to rise, for goodness sakes. I scratch my head at that woman now.  I pity her a bit, running around and around the wheel at a dizzying pace.

My life is simpler now.  I am settling into a new routine.  I complain less.  I sigh less.  I try to hug my children more.  But most of all, I’m grateful.

I used to think staying home was akin to bondage, where men secured all the power and the women were forced to perform menial tasks.  Who is John Galt? was framed on my desk, as if to remind myself to keep fighting against the machine. Stay-at-home mommies wrung their hands about potty training and play dates and had nothing interesting to talk about.  They wore flip-flops and gym shorts and all went to Starbucks after carpool talking about reality television.  I went to law school.  I defended the Federal Government.  I’m a fighter.  Women before me forged a rugged trail for me to blaze through.  Plus – it was good for my daughter to watch me working, so she could witness first-hand one who could do it all.  I could buy bread at the grocery store.  Right?  Anyone give me a hell yeah?

But one day, I quit running.  I realized that my life was out of balance, and I longed for peace.  So I quit my job, and bake day firmly settled over our house like a bad coat of dust. Maybe it was to fill the house with an aroma of warm wheat.  Maybe it was so my daughter had memories of always having fresh bread.  But when I really dig down deep, I think it was just my way of working things out.  To put my frustrations into tangible form.  I punched and kneaded and watched the first few batches bubble up or not rise at all and wondered how I’d make it in this new life.  But I kept trying.  There was always next Monday, after all.

I’m so very thankful these days.  I piddle around the house.  Sometimes I take a bubble bath after I drop off the kids.  I take long walks and pray for wisdom.  I make up songs with my daughter and let my son pick me flowers on a Tuesday afternoon. I used to laugh at those mothers.  I used to think they were crazy.   I was built for more than this, I thought.  While waiting for a new batch of bread to rise the other day, I took a walk in a wooded area around our house.  I heard the snort of a deer not ten feet away before she went running off at breakneck speed.  I laughed out loud, scared to death of a deer.  As it turns out, this is enough. I’m finally hitting my life’s stride.  I finally feel ready to stretch myself in ways I never did before.

I’ve learned that one has to feel bread dough to know whether it will turn out okay, regardless of what the recipe says.  You have to pat and form and squeeze it beneath your fingers.  You have to knead and pull and give it time to grow. To let the yeast mix with the warm water and sugar.  To rise.

Sometimes you just have to push the pause button and take it all in.  Long measured breaths.  One ingredient at a time.  Then, you’ll start to see how God is working all around you.  How he softly calls you to do something greater, and bigger, and more glorious.

A friend told me to cover my dough bowl with hot tea towels, which was an excellent tip, and I rub risen loaves with water to form a harder crust.  Just for looks, I sprinkle the top with oats.  I love every part of baking bread, from the smell of the yeast granules to the way the molasses runs down the heap of sticky dough like dark rivers, to the moment I pull it out of the oven and my family comes rushing over, asking for butter.

I am so grateful for this moment in time to walk slowly with my hands behind my back.  I am allowing my words and thoughts and the meditations of my heart to slowly expand, growing into myself with each passing day.  I am praying.  I am listening. I am rising.

Filed Under: Cooking, Health, Motherhood, Religion Tagged With: , , ,

diamond dust

April 2, 2012 By

I am no stranger to eye surgery.  I’ve had so many of them you’d think it would be easier just to rip the thing out and replace it with wood puddy.  I’m sure all eye cancer survivors are familiar with this feeling. But the last one was different.  It could have been because I was at a different place.  Or used a different surgeon.  Or, quite possibly, it could have been the fact that I was awake the entire time.

It all happened in a blur – the doctors telling me that I had a cataract that simply must be removed, that my eye was dangerously close to exploding with excess pressure, that my retina would forever be damaged.   The procedure had to be done sooner rather than later or face rather ugly consequences.  But I was pregnant – over six months so – and I didn’t want to do it.  But there I was, faced with the choice of having surgery while pregnant, IV drugs and anesthesia seeping into my son’s developing little brain, or waiting as each long day stretched on to see if my eye would blow up like a defective bomb.  Did they think I’d risk anesthesia drugs when I wouldn’t even eat feta cheese for fear my unborn child might get botulism? That’s crazy talk.

So I asked the logical question.  Can I do it without anesthesia? After all, Lidocaine would numb up the eye so I couldn’t feel any pain.  Right?  “Uh, I guess,” the doctor said.  He said he had a heart patient once that couldn’t have anesthesia or his heart would stop, and that guy lived.  This was his one eclectic example.  Awesome.

But on the day of surgery, it wasn’t a joking matter. A much older nurse walked in and repeated that I was to have eye surgery with only a small amount of IV anesthesia.  “You are mistaken,” I said loudly (how did I know she wasn’t actually hard of hearing?).  “No anesthesia,” I said.  “None at all.”

Another nurse came in to start an IV, which is apparently a requirement whether you have drugs or not, and we all listened with a fetal heart rate monitor to my little boy, kicking and spinning happily in my belly, oblivious to the word outside the womb. Finally, I saw the surgeon.  But instead of assuring me that this would be fine and my decision to go IV-free was a noble one – he thought it might be wise to let me know that moving, even a slight bit, could have disastrous consequences.  I didn’t find this little lecture particularly comforting.  Does one tell an astronaut that one false move might mean he’s forever thrust into the abyss of space, never to return to the life and family he knew?  Not helpful.  But there he goes, telling me to be still.  Like moving during awake surgery would be something I planned on doing.  “Can’t you tape my head down with duct tape?” I asked.  He snickered at that, which I thought was a perfectly reasonable request.  “Won’t do any good,” he replied.  “If you were going to move, no tape would hold you.”

Then, as my face turned to the color of copy paper, he told me that since my eye was full of oil (to hold up my tired and radiation-damaged retina), which is “not like normal folks,” it was also possible that his incision might cause the oil to come rushing out like slicing a hole in a water balloon, running into places it shouldn’t.  “That would be a real emergency,” he said.  He waits until now to tell me this? “Well let’s try to avoid that,” I said, seeing my husband out of the corner of my good eye kicking the floor.

Finally, I was wheeled to the OR.  Along the way, I was lectured by the anesthesiologist that at any time he would start IV anesthesia if I couldn’t handle the pressure, or got too anxious.  “I’ll be just fine,” I lied, thinking about oil oozing out of my eye and into my brain, laughing and dancing with freedom.

The temperature in the OR felt something like Alaska in the dead of winter, so they covered me with warm blankets.  They began to strap probes to my chest and someone stuck a breathing tube in my nose.  “What the heck’s that for?” I asked, but everyone was so busy they didn’t answer.  Then, I realized why.  After wiping half my head down with iodine, they stuck a piece of plastic down around my face with a hole in it in the center to expose the surgical field.  The rest seemed to cling like saran wrap and came down on all sides.  It now made perfect sense why all the nurses were asking me if I had claustrophobia.  I think perhaps I do, just a bit, when my face is covered in plastic so that the only way I can breathe is to assume oxygen is coming in through the tube in my nose.  Huh. Didn’t see that one coming.

 

So there I was, sucking down oxygen, my arms secured to my side with Velcro straps, waiting.  Dear Lord.  I just can’t do this on my own.  Finally, after a few shots of a numbing agent, the surgeon went to work.  I tried to imagine I was lying on the beach in Aruba the summer my husband passed his bar exam, the night we sat on the sand and watched the moon edge into the night sky.  I used those tips they gave you in yoga and childbirthing classes, relaxing and breathing in deeply.  I told God that this effort was for my unborn child, which should count for double, so maybe this thing could just hurry-on-up.

Then, I heard my surgeon ask the nurse for an instrument (I’m making up the words of the instruments since I don’t remember the exact medical terms).

“I need a 2.75 septical,” he ordered.  Pause.

“We have a 2.8 septical, Dr. Walters,” she said clearly in response.

“I actually need the 2.75,” he replied.  Suddenly I’m ripped from Aruba and I’m back in an operating room, feeling like I’m participating in my own nightmare.  I wanted to yell at the nurse.  “He wants a 2.75!  Give him what he wants, damnit!”  I was screaming on the inside. I thought I might be shaking. Suddenly, the nurse’s voice reappeared.

“Here it is, doctor,” she said, as she must have been attempting to hand it to him.  Another pause.

“Actually,” he said, “I don’t trust your instruments.  Can you rip open my emergency kit?” he asked someone in the distance.  “That one there, right by the door?  Reach in and grab by 2.75 septical.”

Of course, the emergency kit.  During surgery where I can’t move or my eye oil will come oozing out and bad things will happen.  And I’m freaking pregnant.  Does any of this shock me?  Of course not.  That’s exactly my luck. But I am usually not awake to hear about it.

Annnnnd, he was in my eye again, doing something important.  Suddenly, I was sweating.  Why was I covered with so many blazing hot blankets?  I couldn’t find the moon anymore. And my nose had a sudden itch that couldn’t be scratched.  After what felt like an hour, I tried to speak.  Being fearful that talking might make me somehow move, it sounded more like “whaddadon.”

“Well right here, I’ve got an instrument with diamond dust on the bottom,” he said, emphasizing the word diamond like it was supposed to be really impressive.  “I’m just doing a little scrubbing.  You’ve got lots of debris in here I’m trying to get rid of.”

“I sure like diamons,” I muttered through my clenched jaw.  He snickered at that one.

Eventually, it was over.  They ripped the plastic off my face, unhooked my arms, and let me breathe good ‘ol OR air without a breathing tube.  As I was wheeled back to the post-op room, where my husband was waiting, I felt strangely normal.  “Pretty easy,” I lied.

My son is two years old now, full of energy and strength.  He is a wanderer, my boy.  He likes to be outside, exploring and running and feeling the dirt in his hands. He is strong.  He is healthy.  He is perfect.  I use my eye to wink at him, my precious son, as he runs around the back yard with disheveled hair.  I have my hand on my hip, about to stir up a batch of brownies.

“Ya’ll be careful on that slide,” I’ll yell through the open window.  My heart is filled with a surge of love as I see him.

Diamond, or no diamond, I am so incredibly rich.  I am filled with so many blessings I feel like my soul might burst instead of mere oil.  I am lucky to survive.  I am lucky to be linked with such a strong, beautiful man.  I am lucky to have two children who take my breath away on a daily basis.

But truth be told, it’s not really luck.  I’d have run out by now given the comedies of my life.  I think instead it’s grace, and a love greater than one I’ve ever known. God was there then.  He is there now.  Guiding and holding me still when my body is full of tremors and doubt and fear.

Sometimes that love is too overwhelming for me to take in, like a basket full of diamonds twinkling in the light of the afternoon sun.  I sure like diamonds.  They remind me of things that are pure, and unchanging.  Things that last forever.

Filed Under: Eye, Health, Humor, Motherhood, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

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