The Afterword of Crisis

A library visit yesterday started off with me and the three Littles standing on the ground floor of the library, waiting for the elevator door to open.  When it did open, Middle reached out and placed her palm flat against the door, apparently to “help” it open. But her hand slid right along with the door into the crack between the elevator door and the wall.  Her hand stuck there. The door stuck there. 

My  years of growing up provided me with such an abundance of warnings about the dangers of elevators, escalators, skinned fingers, broken fingers, mangled and lost fingers. Somehow, I failed to convey these fears to my own children:  Keep your hands out of cracks where automated doors and railings are concerned.  Better yet, don’t even touch them.

I looked at Middle, grabbed her hand. “Can you pull it out?” I asked, tugging gently. “No,” she answered. The door was still trying to close, the force pulling her hand even further inside the crack, except now her hand was too thick to fit further in. But that door wanted it, it wanted it, it did. And Middle was stuck, paralysed, her eyes wide with surprise, fear.  She screamed, then.

There’s a moment, when time stands still in crisis, where you survey the scene, take in the problem, the potential solution, and realize that while everything depends on you (the lone witness) to get the problem solved, you (the lone witness) don’t actually have the resources to help, the power to stop an automatic door, to free your child’s hand from a crack in the wall.   So you yell, you yell into the quiet library, “Can somebody help?” And some men come running, at first in slow motion, as if it hasn’t really clicked yet—Child’s Hand. Stuck. In Elevator. And then it clicks, and they run faster, and then they run so fast you can tell you are in an Actual Emergency.  They run deliberately, right for that elevator door, like they know how to fix this problem, like they know what buttons to push. One runs right inside the elevator.  He must push a button. Thank God he pushes the right one. 

The elevator door slid open, releasing Middle’s hand, which was red from base knuckles halfway up her fingers. It began to swell. The nice library man—one of the men who’d come running—got a gauze bandage and medical tape, wrapping and securing it gently over Middle’s four fingers. He’d never done this before, he said, but Middle didn’t care. The gauze bandage was for psyche’s sake (Middle’s), only.  But the icepack brought by the library man did help with swelling.

I walk around without really thinking of all the many things that could go wrong in a day. But when we exit crisis, there’s a deeper knowing of how many things could really go wrong, how bad it could be, as well as deep gratitude that they haven't and it isn't.  It’s a revelation I take in, an internal shaking that lasts ten minutes through the filling out of the incident report, through the wrapping of Middle’s hand, through the wiping of all those tears.  In spite of this, the Littles have a sense only of a moment’s present danger, or lack of it—not all the coulds and what ifs I could apply to the future.  Tiny, in her stroller, had stared at the scene with apparent curiosity and now appeared disinterested, clamoring for Chex cereal pieces.  Middle, was relieved, and fixated on the nurture represented in the  gauze bandage, the pack of ice.  And Oldest, seemingly oblivious to the gravity of said crisis, emits an exasperated huff and said, “We’re wasting all our time at the library!”

Endangered Metaphor

About the same time I started having oodles of I’m Pregnant Dreams a few years ago, I also had We’re Moving Dreams.  The houses in my dreams had lots and lots of extra space for lots of children, children’s toys, children’s nurseries, children’s clutter, and children’s run-around kinds of fun.  There were bathrooms (more than one—glorious!).  And secret rooms that opened into secret rooms for more space and more children.

In case you’re wondering, I’ve never taken the words “be fruitful and multiply” to mean that my two or three children were not plenty of apples in my basket. I’m perfectly contented right now with the size of my brood.  So, at the present time, the appealing factor in these dreams is the more space, not the more children.

But these dreams keep coming about moving, about rearranging spaces and making spaces—space so that I wouldn’t have to listen to Oldest and Middle argue every morning over whose blanket is in whose way and whose clothes are on the floor. And oh, what I would give for space for them to run around and dance and shout and hoot and holler, a space far enough from me in the house that I don’t have to listen/watch, where I can stay zen, where I can think quiet thoughts, whisper quiet prayers, chop vegetables in quiet and then, when I’m ready to dance and shout and holler myself, I can join them in that other place.

I’ve also pointed out to the husband that there are four females living in a house with one bathroom.  I give it two more years, tops, before this becomes a matter of national security.

Over the years, I have tried hard not to let my mind wander toward the idea of moving to a larger house. Much of the world lives in small spaces. Why can’t I?  The American model is start small, go big. Increase, increase, increase, until you’re an empty nester and all that increased-house size leaves some people feeling empty, lonely, wondering what it’s all for.  So I’ve resisted. If we could just make it through their teenage years, till they’re off to college--it’s only another decade till the first one goes. But I fear, if something doesn’t change, that I will lose my sanity before the decade is up.  My children need to run around and be loud.  I need to walk quietly and think in quiet.  This combination doesn’t bode well for harmonious living. Either I am the grinchy mom who’s spoiling all their fun, or they are my husband’s children from whom I need escape long before lunchtime.  

But moving is stressful.  That’s why I’m trying to stay so very zen about this whole process.  Maybe we’ll move ahead this year, maybe next.  Maybe we’ll wait till we have more equity in our home. Maybe we’ll sell our home quickly, by owner, or it’ll take forever. And maybe a home will open up in our girls’ school’s neighborhood that is just the perfect size, with just the right features, at just the right price and we’ll buy it before we even know what’s happening. 

And moving is stressful for children, as well as grown-ups. That’s why I’ve told Oldest I won’t mention it anymore until I know we’re serious about a change.  Right now, Moving is a thought, a dot, on the horizon we could be sailing toward.  Still, each day, I look around our Raven Street house more purposefully. I see the clutter that a realtor will someday tell me to remove. I am more bothered by a garbage disposal in the sink that broke last spring.  I am highly motivated to fix our garage door.  And today, during Tiny’s nap time, I spackled holes in our bedroom wall.

But there is one particular bit of nostalgia that makes the idea of moving difficult.  3106 Raven Street has not only been my home for the last ten years, but my metaphor for where life happens, where children are born and morph into beings with kaleidoscopic personalities, where marriages weave their threads into long epic narratives, where we learn how to love each other, where God is.  So now, my metaphor is endangered, and what does that mean for the groundedness such symbolism seems to provide me? 

What happened earlier this evening is almost too dramatically ironic, almost too ridiculously perfect to ever come to fruition, that I can hardly utter the words aloud:  I found a for-sale home in our neighborhood today. It’s the right size; it’s got the right features. It’s on a different street, with a different house number, which I almost didn’t notice when I drove up to 3105 Raven Court this evening and peered through the windows into an empty living room.

Possibly, God was laughing when I realized the home’s address—not because this is the house for us, necessarily, but because, truly, the power of the metaphor is what it points to.  And in that case, the joke is on me. Because--really—if we keep on living like we’re still learning, then every home we live in for the rest of our lives will be On Raven Street. And so will yours, if that’s where you want to live, too.

This Friday Morning

It’s Friday morning, in June. Most of the time these days I don’t know the date exactly, but just that we’re floating somewhere between The Last Day of School and The Ice Cream Social. That’s far off in a land called August and Sultry Heat.

This morning the air is moist and cool enough for me to pretend I am living near the sea. Only three blocks north and I will trip into a warm Iowa ocean.  On this warm, Iowa ocean of a Friday morning, and on any old Friday morning this summer, I try to get to two grocery stores between 7:20 and 8:20.  The husband and I have worked this out by prearrangement. I leave as soon as he’s out of the shower and get back before he needs to catch the bus to work.  This is better for us than me taking all three girls to the store in the middle of the day, tripping up and down aisles and repeating myself ad nauseum about only purchasing what is on the list.

When I walk into our local food coop this morning, I am enveloped in a sense of comfort, of familiarity.  The employees are unpacking boxes and stocking the meat counter this early in the morning. The produce guy, with those big round earrings set into the center of his lobes, watches me and smiles when I look his way. I know him, from these Friday mornings.  But surely, he doesn’t know me amongst the hundreds of customers who come in here each week. Then again, maybe he does, the way I know all these vegetables before me, have memories of treating them well—raw or with heat, garlic, olive oil—and sometimes dismally, allowing them to wilt in the crisper, their natural sugars fermenting beyond what any palate could tolerate.  I survey all the organic produce that is close to 2 dollars per pound.  I pick local kale, organic sweet potatoes, zucchini, oranges (from far away), apples, and local red-leaf lettuce, thinking I will make green smoothies this week, thinking I will copy that sage-and-sweet-potato recipe I saw on cable programming yesterday, thinking I better do something with all this produce because I pay fifty bucks when I get to the counter for the veg and some some meat and plain yogurt and one fancy schmancy drink I bought for the husband because he likes it when I come home bearing tokens of I-was-thinking-of-you.

When I arrive home, I don’t see Tiny at first. She is sitting on the floor, ensconced from my view by the bulk of her highchair. Husband, Middle and Oldest are draped against the landscape of the kitchen: Middle sorting through the remnants of a bag of corn chips; Oldest standing between fridge and table, passing ingredients for nachos from one to the other; Husband drying a bowl near the stove.  Tiny sits in front of the dishwasher, entranced by bobby pins and hair bows. Someone has brought the basket of hair accessories from the hall closet for her to play with, and play she does.  It’s rare for Tiny to be content these days unless you are holding her hands, helping her to walk.  But hair pins and bows do the trick. So do centipedes, grass, and compost.

This Friday morning, the big girls have two ginormous laundry baskets full of laundry to fold and put away. They will drape dishtowels on Tiny’s head instead and will only fold when I remind them, when I warn them, stop putting things on your sister’s head.  They will take half an hour, but in fits and starts they will finish all this laundry, begging for the swimming pool when they are done. I will promise to check the weather, promise to check the hours of the local pools before this Friday morning turns into Friday afternoon and then Friday evening, which contains an entirely different set of concerns: when is bedtime? who will pick what show to watch when the babysitter is here? how many snacks before bedtime do they get? How many hours of TV? will the husband and I stay out too late? How tired will we be when faced with the needs—of all three Littles, of the long grass in the yard, of the vocational work that has come home with us—when we wake up on tomorrow’s morning?  I won’t run to the grocery store, but I’ll take Middle to gymnastics, then the colorful and bustling Farmer’s Market. The girls will still rummage in the kitchen, foraging for breakfast.  And maybe the atmosphere will—or maybe it won’t—suggest an Iowa-near-the-ocean, fog rolling in from an invisible sea.

When the Third One Comes Along

Tiny turned one year old yesterday. Exactly one year ago that day, I was walking the sidewalks on Raven Street with a friend, pausing for the hearty contractions, walking through the milder. My neighbors, most assuredly, peeped from their windows at my swollen belly and bent over form.  I was aware, good-humoredly, that I was a good show, more exciting than most of what happens on the block.  A woman in labor, just an hour or two on the other side of new life entering the world. In the coming months, the neighbors would gawk and giggle at Tiny from a respectful distance.  Only one would offer to hold her, coo, and make faces for her entertainment, jiggle her and rock her during rough afternoons. The rest are not those kinds of neighbors. Though at times I think how quaint it could be if they were, because then the neighborhood would be celebrating with us this week—this week that delivers us a Tiny who is a slender 18.8 pounds but tall: a willowy thirty inches tall when standing, assisted by a parent, sister, grandparent or other good-hearted charity worker who is willing to walk, hunched over, as Tiny leads them around the house/church/yard by the hands.  Her rosy cheeks, her quad-toothed smile, the chestnut brown wisps of bangs that part down the middle of her forehead make her a vision that could turn anyone into a lover-of-Tiny.

Or, so I think, biased as I am.   I have been a lover of all my babies, and have acted like the man in the New Testament parable who invited all his servant could find to attend his banquet, to fill up his table in celebration. For Oldest’s first birthday, our home was jam-packed on a humid June day. Twenty-five or thirty friends and extended family members, most over voting age, were invited to watch and cheer as our one-year-old bit timidly into a chocolate-frosted cupcake for the first time, as her fingers flirted with the satiny paper wrapped around a book, or a bag of blocks.

It was the same dimension of celebration with Middle, in frigid November. Her wisps of blond curls flipped out over her ears as she toddled and tripped over ribbons and bows scattered on the floor, and all the adults roared with laughter as we listened to the pre-recorded song on a battery-operated toy about a farmer and his hybrid animals: You put a pig in front, you put a horse behind. Put them together and what do you find? A Pig-Horse! Little Middle stared at us crazies, giggled, and toddled away. 

But yesterday, for Tiny, it was different. Our local family has grown enough to make for an adequate number of guests: Two big sisters, a grandpa, and his GF, who is also a lover-of-Tiny.  And I, well, I have grown so scattered, so stretched thin from loving the first two babies-turned-children who have so many wants I am working on fulfilling from day to day. And so many needs. There’s the obvious, such as laundry, and food in their bellies, and direction on bathing, or spelling, or chores.   There’s haircut, doctor appointment, and dentist scheduling times two. And then there are Deep Talks, where one of them goes philosophical and analytical and reveals her possession of more self-awareness than most grown-ups I know, and needs to ask questions about my childhood, about what it means to grow up, about the etymology of swear words.   The other needs Snuggling and Book Reading and relentlessly pursues accomodation.

So yesterday, the day of Tiny’s birthday, it turned out I had to take Oldest to her Annual Allergist Appointment where they performed Not-Fun Tests and made her eat peanuts, which made her sick, which made them make us stay in the clinic for observation, which meant we were late getting home. I had not made frosting for cupcakes, had not checked our supply of candles, had not wrapped the Eric Carle book I purchased for Tiny. By previous-child standards, these were parenting fails.

Thank God for Grandpa and his GF, who watched Middle and Tiny, and cleared our dining room table, grilled burgers, and boiled corn so we could sit down, ravenous, and watch Tiny squirm in her highchair.  And Grandpa’s GF dressed her in a special one-time-outfit—a pink birthday tutu and white t-shirt—that would be stained with chocolate chip frosting the second we brought out her first cupcake. When we sang happy birthday, Mark holding a plateful of cupcakes in front of her, she looked at us like we all had a touch of fever and then ripped into a cupcake, crushing it into chocolate smithereens on her highchair tray. Soon after, she let us know she preferred popcorn instead.

 Now that the third child has come along, the fanfare is  dulled—at least for us. Even so, my love couldn’t be more resplendent. And this same love is more prophetic  than ever it was with Middle and Oldest. I can see into Tiny’s future and love her as six-year-old Tiny and as almost-nine-year-old  Tiny because now I know what it means to parent not-just-babies, but children at the entrance to that long tunnel called Growing Up.  So at night, when I nurse her, I stare into her stained-glass-blue mosaic eyes and imagine her someday-fuller face, her someday-sloping nose, the someday-forehead that I will bend down to kiss goodnight or lean toward to kiss goodbye and my breath catches in my throat at all that expanse of change and time.

Raven Street Notes No. 4

Oldest wanted to know what a role model was this week.

"It’s someone you look up to," I told her. "Someone who is a good example of what you’d like to be when you grow up."

She ponders.

"So, who do you think a good role model for you is?" (I’ll admit it. I was fishing).

She ponders.

"You are!" She points at me with a grin on her face. "And so is Emily—she’s a good role model for a fourth grader."

Fair enough.

A fourth grader is exactly what Oldest will be in a few months. In some ways it’s good her sights aren’t set too far beyond right now. She wants to stay a kid for as long as she possibly can. And her ability to eloquently express such a sentiment reveals to us just how hard staying a kid might be. But we’ll do our best to help her.

She told us “kid pajamas”—rather than sleeping in sweatpants and a t-shirt—just might do the trick.So I bought her a striped Gymboree nightgown, and I vowed not to mention for now the changes I see, the girl about to turn into a woman.

*

Middle endearingly bid me “Goodnight Mrs. Weber!” when I tucked her in this week. Before the aw-that’s-cute feeling could really concretize, she launched into her refrain: “Goodnight Mrs. Wierdo Weber.”

*

Is there anyone out there who can’t get The Hunger Games out of their heads? I am haunted, truly, haunted by the characters of Katniss and Peeta. So much so, that I could not watch Lauren and Scotty on American Idol during finale week without superimposing a pseudo-Hunger-Games narrative over their story, and feeling like such a voyeuristic consumer of the possible/potential romance wafting in the air around them. They did look sort of doe-eyed at each other, after all. And Mark says that--just like Katniss and Peeta--Lauren and Scotty probably share a trauma bond.

Writerly Navel Gazing

Having an MFA means I’m smart about some things that most people have no use for, let alone interest. I’m sitting in the office I used the three years I was in my program, surrounded by books whose authors are all speaking to one another. Authors I’ve shared a laugh with over dinner and authors I’ve watched from afar, in a crowded lecture hall, smitten by their very presence and the movement of their lips as words floated from them. These books, their authors, are all talking to me, chattering that makes such a din. I want to dive back into them after this year of hardly listening. I want to dive into my own words on the page. And, more than anything in the whole wide world, I want the words I wrote to become part of this chatter, this conversation among readers, writers, thinkers, poets, artists, and cultural critics.

It’s a quiet whisper of a prayer I utter many times a week: Make a place for it, the “it” being my manuscript. If you care to know, it’s one of those my-horrible-childhood kinds of books, but I mean that in the best possible way. Like my whispered prayer, the book tells a story that lies dormant beneath this life I live now, filled with the clattering of dinner plates and children’s laughter and screams. It’s a “grief book,” meaning I wrote it in grief and it makes most people who read it cry. Editors like it or at least they send me grand rhetoric about appreciating the time spent with it. But this market is competitive, they tell me. Our MFA program directors told us the average time it took an MFA student to publish a thesis is seven years. Seven years. I fear I will give up long before then, but no—I can envision this alter self sidling up and taking me by the hand, leading me forward past all of my apathy and ready-to-give-up-now-ness.
You may not realize it is so totally not-hip to write about wanting to be published because doing so implicates one as the narcisstic, self-aggrandizing writerly persona that one so doesn't wish to be. But here I am all the same, wanting to find a home for this book. Ann Lamott once said she thought getting published meant self-esteem would begin arriving by phone, fax, and mail. But, honest, I don’t need a publisher for self-esteem. I really am at peace with myself in the world, but I’d be really awfully glad for this book to find its place in the world, too.

Confessions of a Sick Child's Mother

It was funny when, in a fit of sleep-deprived delirium, I tried to stick an infant pacifier into Middle’s mouth.

But it was a different story when I held Middle’s shot-glass sized portion of children’s Tylenol up to Tiny’s lips (twice) and let her sip away at it (once).

Lucky for Tiny, I stopped myself in the nick of time, before she consumed the maximum a Tiny liver can tolerate.

I was mortified. Still am. I was five seconds away from having to get Tiny’s stomach filled with charcoal and pumped like an accordian. Please, don’t ever mention this to my husband.

Sickness with the older girls is much easier than it used to be. Middle, with hearing loss and double ear infections, scooted the yellow leather recliner two feet from the 48” flat screen and turned on PBS with volume cranked up so high I felt like I was in a sports bar on game night. There she stayed, red-cheeked and glassy-eyed, from morning til dinner time except for potty breaks and a brief but urgent desire to sit outside in the sunshine.

I used to be the kind of mother who sat with her children on the couch for the whole day, reading to them, talking with them, snuggling. Now I’m the mother who almost wouldn’t know they are home but for “Viewers Like You” service announcements blaring in the background and the occasional refill on a cup of juice. Oldest and Middle used to be the kind of children who asked for stories and snuggles on sick days. But they’re not so much those kids anymore. They’ve passed those needs down to Tiny like an outgrown pair of jeans.

Of course, Tiny can't ask yet like they used to. Currently battling two ear infections, she whimpers, smiles, whimpers, tugs at her ears, blows raspberries, whimpers and then buries her face in the skin that stretches beneath my clavicle. Last night she woke after an hour of sleep and cried—but not hysterically—for two and a half hours straight. Then we took her to the ER, and—I was right—she had ear infections.

Tylenol mishap aside, Tiny has a lot going for her in that Oldest and Middle have trained me well to recognize illnesses that merit a doctor visit. I’ve got a 4-0 score this past year, 4 being the number of times I accurately guessed what was wrong with my children and took them to a doctor for the necessary treatment. Strep, ear infections, allergies, flu, warts, slivers, stomach aches, bug bites, coughs and colds and asthma. I know what to do and who, if anyone, to call. I’m a walking Merck Manual.

But I'm not Donna Reed, and I don't have the most devoted bedside manner anymore.  I wonder if I should.

My latest guilt-inducing moment of the sick season was that I was so tired last night that I sent Tiny off with her father to the ER. Without me.

I’ve never. Ever. Ever. Sent my children “off” to the ER. Without me. I'm the one, at all crazy hours of the night, who goes to emergency rooms--because what if something happened and I wasn’t there? And what if they needed their mommy to hold their hands or talk to them or sing a song and I WASN'T THERE?

But last night (here it is) I was too tired. Really. Balled up on the couch exhausted, and I asked the husband what he thought about the ER and taking Tiny and he said he would and I pushed them out the door. To my credit, I immediately made a contingency plan to join them at the hospital if necessary. And then I went to sleep, on my bed, with the phone volume on high. And slept peacefully until he called with news.

My take-away from the week: Motherhood is getting easier?

How I'm Not so Green After All

It’s true.
Yesterday, my father came over to help me rake, clip trees, and pull gnarly bushes that had cropped up all over the garden.

There's me, surveying a pile of spindly tree parts that would not easily decompose for many months: “I think I’ll throw these in the compost bin.”

Father: “Do you ever use your compost pile?”

(Meaning, I think: Do I ever use the finished compost in my garden?)

Me, nodding to tree parts, “I use it to put things in.”

Father: “Why don’t you just get rid of it?”

Me: “But then where would I put things?”

Confessions of a Nursing Mother

Wanna know what clears a roomful of male church staffers faster than anything?

Saying, “I think I’m gonna pull out the breast pump now.”

It’s a great repellent power I wield when I want to be repellant. If I want a church classroom all to myself on a Tuesday morning (though I hardly ever do). Still, mentioning the breast pump to these guys is on par with tossing a loaf of bread into a flock of ducks, except instead of scurrying toward, the male staffers scurry away. Entertainment value. Yes.

But other than that—nursing? Entertainment value? Nil. Which is hardly surprising, since consumption of breast milk can hardly even be as stimulating as a viewing of The Wiggles. Except when my babies did what I called "nursing for sport"—a nipple wrangling, on-off-on-off, back-arching affair in their early months, most likely caused by gas and indigestion rather than recreational drive.

I made a contract with Tiny when she was born: I’d nurse her a year, at least. The first few months were awful. I hurt just like I did when I nursed Oldest, when I was a novice with virgin nipples and couldn’t go anywhere without the assistance of a nursing pillow in the shape of a half-eaten donut . But I made it through Tiny’s first many months. I nursed her around the clock. Every two hours. Every hour and a half. She was distracted, would eat five minutes at a time and therefore seemed hungry every fifteen minutes. At times, when it seemed I didn’t have enough milk for Tiny, I took supplements and herbs. They made my armpits smell like licorice. A small price for Tiny.

Eventually I could leave her long enough in someone else’s care, leave bottles of breastmilk for her to consume, which meant I would have to pump an equivalent amount in order to maintain my supply. First law of breastfeeding: demand = supply. Lower the demand, and you lower the supply. I had to keep pace with her hunger, and I found myself ending every social engagement prematurely, with the words, “I have to go pump.”

I pumped in a parked car. I pumped in bathrooms. I pumped in the church nursery. I pumped hungry, thirsty, reading, and typing emails. Once, I pumped while driving. I won’t do that again.

I’ve been satisfied that I could keep it up for Tiny. I’ve patted myself on the back. But guess what? Tomorrow she is ten months old, meaning I’ve fulfilled 5/6 of my contract. And Tiny eats Chex cereal now. And pureed blueberries and apples. And miniature bricks of colby cheese. The last two times I’ve pumped, there’s been less milk. And less milk. Because she’s not demanding as much? Because she’s older?

I’m bothered by this development. I think I would like to keep Tiny tiny for at least six more months. Would like her to nurse like she needs a meal and not like she’s stopping by the drinking fountain on her way out to recess. And while she’s regressing in the eating department, I think I’d like her to shrink three inches in length, and not flip over while lying on her changing table, and not scoot-roll from one end of the house to the other. I’d like to be able to snuggle her one last time and not have her screech for the TV remote that is almost within her grasp.

At the same time, I love that Tiny waves goodbye to me when I tuck her in for a nap. I love that she squeals “hi!” and wiggles her fingers in the air when someone new walks in the room. And after days and days of pat-a-cake, Tiny can now clap her hands. This is no small feat. This I could not rewind. And Tiny, at ten months old, stands at the window, banging with flat palms, at her sisters who giggle outside in the sunshine or wind or mist. Her lower front teeth jut out in smile, in delirious desire for everything beyond the triple-pane glass—the fall’s leftover leaves skittering across the lawn, the plastic soda bottle that escaped from the neighbor’s recycling, the silver maple’s long, horizontal branch that stretches across our yard. None of this I could undo.

So happy tenth-month, Tiny. I'll make my peace with it.

But now I really do have to go pump.

Confessions of a Spring-Break Mother

It’s the first warm weather of the year, and all the neighbor kids gravitate to our backyard. I’d like to say it’s the magnetic personalities of Oldest and Middle that draw them, but I’m afraid it’s a rusty old trampoline sans net and protective vinyl lining over the springs. Some of the neighbor children have permission to perch atop the trampoline but have been admonished by their parents against bouncing and jumping. Of course they conveniently forget, and I can witness any one of them doing exactly what they shouldn’t any time I catch a glimpse out the window. (My husband and I are dismantling this beast this weekend so it will soon not be a temptation.) For the time being, this reduces my afternoons to backyard policing of the trampoline and other matters. There was a group ice-cube fetish today and, while I changed Tiny’s diaper, the pack raided the kitchen, slamming ice cube trays against the table, dragging out my measuring cups (as “ice cube holders,” to take outside). They are supposed to remove their muddy shoes but have found a short-cut around shoe removal by simply wearing socks during their muddy backyard play. It takes me a while to catch on, and dirt clods and leaves accrete on the kitchen floor. I had to chase after those measuring cups too, which they promised to bring directly back and didn’t. And then one child burst in, indignant over another child’s threat of hurling a rock against her. “Did he throw a rock at you?” I ask. “No. But he was going to!” “I’m glad he didn’t,” I sigh and usher them back outside.

I hate cleaning, but I like a clean house. And I know children: they aren’t likely to halt at the first sign of their own muddy footprints and ask me for Murphy’s Oil Soap. They will drag my baking supplies to the backyard and forget about them in the sandbox. I muster patience. I muster tolerance and call out directions. I try to hide my grinchiness, remind myself about the importance of hospitality, and hospitality to children no less. As I washed the kitchen floor this afternoon, Oldest came in again for ice or kleenex. I asked, ashamed of my grinchiness, “Am I a friendly mom?” She shrugged and smiled, “Well, yeah. You’re friendly.” I guess she was telling the truth since she’s pretty good at that.

I decided I’m done with kitchen invasions for this afternoon. Now, when I hear the back door slam, which it does about every four minutes, I sing out, before knowing who it is, “Stop right there! What can I get for you?” like I am their own personal cruise director. But that’s okay, because cruise directing is much easier than cleaning detail. The last request was “just to stay inside for a while.” Everyone was playing hide and seek and she couldn’t find a place to hide. I realized that indulging the refugee was practically like beckoning a full on game of chase indoors. “That’s probably not very fair, is it?” I asked. “Do the other kids think it’s okay to hide inside?” She refugee sighed, acknowledging this truth, and returned outdoors.

Someday they’ll be so independent I’ll probably wish for a couple interruptions now and then. But right now, I am so ready for this mud to dry out and for Monday to come—because that’s when school’s in session.

But There Are Always Reasons for Leaving

In spite of the cold, there were many reasons for leaving Raven Street this winter, mental health being chief among them. Because who can stay home with only the company of three small children all day every day? So I go out with children when it’s not too cold, and sometimes when it is. And I leave by myself sometimes even when I think I should stay and put said children to bed, or read to them, or play cards. Sanity is important.

But there are other reasons, good reasons for leaving.

I’m reviewing a book for Fore Word now that is an elegy of sorts to a woman’s therapist. In it, she paints a compassionate and wise man who saved her life, sort of, as well as the lives of many other patients. I’ve had therapists, counselors, social workers in my life who have saved it, sort of, along my way. And once in a while still, I go see A., a woman who talked me down from many ledges many years ago when there were parts of my life that were much more broken than they are now. She has become a confidante, a pseudo-mother/girlfriend who happens to have a degree in psychology and whose armchair assessments of people and dynamics in my life are dead-on, breathtakingly so. I leave Raven Street for A.

And then, there’s this coffee shop downtown Iowa City that I show up at Tuesday mornings, below zero temps or no, and meet these three guys I’ve been meeting with the past three years, more or less. Capanna is where we order drinks at 8 a.m. or 8:15 if we’re late, and then we sit down and we talk about everything happening in this church we are trying to grow well and honorably and creatively. I show up with agenda items written into an app on my phone; I show up with notebook and pens and scribble away and draw arrows and make asterisks, and look at the time on my phone a bit compulsively. I ask questions and make commentary and sometimes dry, ironic and/or sacreligious quips that make them laugh. And they do the same. But underneath it, we’re serious, very serious, about wanting our church to grow well. And of course, there are Sundays, were I leave for LIFEchurch, arriving before the first service and leaving after the second--unless I have meetings afterward—and offer what I have to give, which usually has an administrative/organizational ring to it, and a prayerful, worshipful ring as well, I hope.

Since Tiny arrived, it seems I've hardly spent a spare moment with my dad. But at the urging of his girlfriend, we have now instituted Family Dinners at Grandpa’s house. It’s a great deal for us: Dad and Diana insist on doing all the cooking, and they take requests from family members in turn. The only dinner that didn’t float my boat was Middle’s pick, the Mostly-White Dinner: chicken, rice, potatoes, (and bread, too? I can’t recall). Initially, I was not allowed to eat salad with the meal, but Middle relented at the last moment.

Haircuts. Yes.

Groceries. Middle cannot live without milk. I cannot live without vegetables and cheese. Oldest, will pale without garbanzo beans. And the Husband longs for seltzer water to make his own natural juice-based sodas.

As winter turns to spring, it seems there may be more, daily reasons, for leaving Raven Street, though not because of any faraway destination. After weeks-long bouts of illness in the family and after nine months of trying to home school and home-run all within Tiny’s tiny naps, I am waving the white flag of surrender. My home-school ship is going down. At least, I hope it is. Today, we left Raven Street, taking Middle and Oldest to a trial day at Lemme Elementary. Middle takes it all in stride. She’s been begging for this since preschool. She arrived in the kindergarten class this mornign and helped the teacher ready the room for the school day, unmounting the turned-over chairs that were perched atop the students’ work tables. Oldest has less confidence, but hopefulness that she will make friends and enjoy herself. She’s a smart cookie, that Oldest. She knows more than she lets on, and she sees things in the world that might pass most grown-ups by. Sometimes seeing like that is a blessing as well as a trouble. If you think of it, say a prayer for Oldest today as she explores her new surroundings. She’s looking for a gift.

7 Reasons For Not Leaving Raven Street This Winter

My retired neighbor, or the man I refer to as the neighborhood watchdog, once inquired whether or not I had a Home Shopping Network addiction--because some weeks, he watched the packages pile up at my door. But no HSN for me, my friends. The truth is that I am the worlds most thrifty internet shopper, or I like to think so.  I know the sites, the minimum purchases for free shipping; I got a free student Amazon Prime account that ships me items in two days for free.  And Amazon Prime is really the new Sam's Club membership, people. I'm not kidding. Check it out.

So, anyhoo, here are a bunch of items, separated by web site location, for which I did not have to lug my children out in below-zero windchills on winter days to go in search of/register for in the last month. The happy news is that I ended up paying nada in shipping fees. All items, except for one, were significantly discounted.

1) 7th Generation Dishwasher Detergent, Earth's Best blueberries and apple jar baby food, Middle's handwriting book, a marriage enrichment book, an exercise dvd, pecans; cashews; dates.

2) flat, prefolded cloth diapers for Tiny

2) a dress for a special occasion

3) shoes for a special occasion

4) a bargain coat for Tiny's next winter, pants for Middle

5) natural, organic shampoo, conditioner, baby wipes, deodorant

6) an art class registration for Oldest

7) a Riff Trax for the movie Eclipse


I breathe gratitude for the Internet.

Molecular Beauty-Setter

When I was a pre-teen, I desperately wanted the Caruso Molecular Hairsetter.  Never heard of it? No problem. You can watch an infomercial after reading this post. 

While it surprised me that a paid programming event from the 90s suddenly popped into my head while applying mascara last week, I couldn't shake my nostalgia.  See, the Caruso Molecular Hairsetter curled hair with steam heat, nurturing one's hair instead of drying it like traditional curlers and irons. And the ladies who used the Caruso rollers turned their long, limp locks into a movie star 'do in the space of two infomercial minutes. As a kid, I knew about the power of curls to transform a face. Big curl was the beauty marker for women during my early childhood.  My mother was into big hair, specifically "volume." In her day, she and her girlfriends used orange juice cans to curl their bangs. In my day, she put hot rollers in mine to create what she called "lift," a frame around my small, freckled face.

We watched infomercials for fun at my house, yes we did. And some of the women of my ancestry held a morbid fascination with getting as sexy/pretty/attractive/thin as could be with the help of a plethora of resources including the book Thin Thighs in 30 Days, Color Me Beautiful, The Atkins' Diet, and Suzanne Somers' Thigh Master (Sold at a garage sale for failure to achieve expected results.)  So you can imagine my delight over the Caruso Molecular Hairsetter. On TV on Saturday afternoon? I'd watch from start to finish, adding up in my head how many babysitting jobs I'd need till I could order a set of my own, till I could nourish my own adolescent locks with steam heat, till I could waltz around the house like a movie star. Still needed to grow my hair out longer, but that was a small detail easily overcome.

I never did order the hairsetter. I got burned out on beautiful and the endless work and search of white, middle-class America, late-90s beauty. I cut my hair short. I shaved my head. I decided to dress androgynously for a while. Well, not really, but I eschewed popular expressions of femininity for a long time in my young adult years. No lace collars for me. No perms. No high heels. No nail polish. Very little makeup. Wearing any of those things made me feel like I was running out naked into the street with a clown face on. And still does a little bit.  I wore mens' Levi cordoroys from the thrift store, combat boots, and an ARMY t-shirt. I never was happier.

Over the years, my aesthetic for dressing and presenting myself has fluxuated here and there, but never back to the standards of my childhood. Yet, there's a tiny little corner in the back of my mind where a pre-teenager whispers still: "When are you ever gonna grow your hair out long?"  "When are you gonna buckle down and be beautiful?"

I notice other women who seem comfortable wearing makeup every day, women with pretty, groomed, styled hair. And for the most part, they look lovely (they do a lot of work; they spend a lot of time). The pre-teen in me whispers that she wishes she could join that club, learn how to look like a movie star every day of her life, because isn't it so fun to be "pretty"? 

Is it? Sometimes. Yes, and no. I don't know. We could, of course, segue into Naomi Wolff's whole Beauty Myth right now and spend a few years re-digesting the way culture and advertising pushes upon women to curl, primp, cut, paint, laquer, cover, disguise, and we might again ask the questions, What is beauty, anyway?  and Why and for whom are women trying so hard? But so many of us have asked and answered that. Why do it again? I won't try.

On rare mornings, Oldest or Middle will walk past the bathroom as I stand in there, fumbling around with eyeliner, and ask me, "Mom, why are you putting on makeup?"  They ask as if I ought to defend this position, as if applying makeup is the most unnatural thing in the world for their mother to be doing. I never have a good answer for them.  I mean, I have honest answers--that either they wouldn't understand or that would belie my own conflicted feelings.

-Because I think I should.

-Because makeup is a kind of social marker.

-Because rightly or wrongly, makeup says to a lot of people that I care about myself, that I've got my act together (whether I really do is another matter).

-Because I want to look good/pretty/nice/professional and makeup can help in that regard.

-Because I have lines on my face from sleeping on my pillow.

-Because I sometimes like how I look when I'm all done.

-Because once a little girl I knew longed for big hair, and this is as close as she's gonna get.

Raven Street Notes # 3

Because it's been a while since I've taken notes.

*
Winter is wearing on me, yet when I look outside the sun reflected on the four-foot piles of snow is dazzling, blinding with the light of a hot July day. It should be occasion for cheering one's spirits.

Oldest spent all summer long moaning for winter to come, and now that it has, she too bemoans its chill, its depth of snow, it's wind and ice, also the too-puffy coat, the too-many required layers. Middle follows suit and will not go outside alone. But yesterday they both were tempted outside for 15 minutes after the biggest snowfall of the year. When they disappeared from window's view I got worried.  The snow was past Middle's waist in parts; she might be stuck, belly-button deep in snow between here and the neighbor's house.  I donned jacket and boots, gloves, hat, and passed Oldest in the adjoining yard. She was on her way in, squealing over her foot, which had landed in snow after slipping out of her boot.  Middle, however, was farther behind, on her way home from the neighbor girl's house, and trudging so slowly she might not have made it home till March.  I grabbed a long red sled and waded out to Middle, instructing her to climb on, and then pulled, zigzagging over the neighbor's hilly, snow-flooded yard, my lungs aching from the cold and the extra effort of all that swimming in snow.

Today they have not even considered venturing out, but since finishing their school work have been playing with Barbies for hours in the basement.

Tiny and I, when the big girls are occupied, have a pretty predictable rhythm. I try to keep her entertained while cooking dinner, putting laundry away, sending emails and making phone calls. By mid-afternoon I want to take a nap with her, but I don't. There's too much I could lose track of by going to sleep.  These early morning heated yoga classes I'm taking sure don't disperse the fog of sleep deprivation, but I'm plugging away at them anyway.

So that's it. And there is the Tiny now, rousing from sleep. I'll change her, feed her, maybe watch Oprah in closed captioning so as not to distract her. And I'll try not to fall asleep.

I Resolve

It's January. How cliche of me to be blogging about exercise and weight loss. Really, how unoriginal.  And then, on top of that, resolutions. Yes, how utterly un-countercultural I am. Yet, you see, my year was not the norm. It just so happens that last January a new chapter in our family unfolded that required so much attention and energy both mental and physical, that exercise...well, exercise schmexercise. And then came Tiny, and sleepless nights, and exhaustion, and finishing my MFA and beginning a new year of homeschooling and going back to church as part-time staff and generally just-keeping-my-head-above-water until now, a year later.  And I have these twenty baby pounds I'd like to shed. And I have some  muscles that I would very much like not to atrophy before I turn 33.

I had an eating disorder many moons ago, in a world far far away, one I can hardly even remember, yet it's shadowy remains remind me all the time how little I want to do things like count calories or weigh myself very often because, well, that road led to a very bad place.  But always, since my late teens, through my twenties and into the early thirties, I've exercised--walked, yoga'd, pilate'd, run (occasionally)--and I've been in reasonably good shape. I was no Jane Fonda, mind you. No Susan Powter (but do you even remember her?).

These days, I have no desire to run or jump around in a room at 5:30 in the morning with a bunch of spandex-garbed Iowans and our free weights in the local Body Pump class. Done that. The music is too loud and there are too many mirrors.  But after a bit of researching I found there was a yoga/pilates/barre-work studio just about a mile away from my house. They teach all the classes in rooms heated to 101 degrees. It sounded amazing so I went, and went again, and went a third time and took a friend. The yoga was lovely. I felt alive again. My muscles were abominably sore, but in a happy way.  Then last night I went to the pilates class for the first time. I was surrounded by 20-something college girls who'd never had their abdominal muscles stretched out the size of two watermelons.   They could do things with their core muscles I could not. The peer pressure to keep up became almost unbearable. My neck was screaming at me, my lower back too.  And it was 101 degrees. I wanted to walk out of the room, but saving face forbade it. 

Saving face is indeed a danger to me because it means avoiding embarrassment at all costs, and sometimes the costs are quite costly. Saving face means forcing myself and then hating a pilates class afterward not because there was something wrong with the pilates class but because I got through it dishonestly and doing so hurt, literally. If I'm to get through this whole fitness endeavor honestly and with a chance of succeeding, I'll have to stop and wipe my forehead, drink a half cup of water, and modify modify modify.

And anyway, I'm sick and tired of all the face-saving wrangling I've done in my life.  That's what the eating disorder was all about in some sense: let me get so small that you won't notice and can easily excuse the sorry mess of my existence on this earth. Let me get thin for you; let me make up for all my deficits. And in pilates Tuesday night, the refrain was not so different: let me force my way through this even if I need ice and a chiropractor afterward because I want you [insert name of instructor I just met and fifteen anonymous college girls] to like me, I want you not to reject me for being on the brink of muscular atrophy.  It rings of fabulous mental health, does it not?

So as of today, January 19, I resolve to modify. I resolve to listen and care about what this 32-year-old, thrice post-partem body is telling me. I resolve to look in those yoga mirrors and not force myself to do what hurts, not force myself to do what I cannot.

Tiny Things

Oldest and Middle pooled their Christmas giftcards this week and purchased a ginormous box full of Barbie home furnishings and accessories.  This kit was complete with staging for bathroom, living room, kitchen, and (of course?) a dressing table/toiletry-type room. While things-Barbie do not usually catch my fancy, I was drawn in by the plastic kitchen tea kettle, no bigger than my thumb, and the round dinner plates, the size of my thumb's pad. In addition, I was mesmerized by the pink toilet, with a real flip-lid, and the pink plastic-crystal chandelier that hung from a stand. It puts me to recollecting my own Barbie kitchen accessories. The year was 1988. The items: pink plastic coffee maker and off-white "electric" kettle. I dissolved instant coffee granules in warm water inside that plastic coffee maker, and I let tiny shards of uncooked spaghetti soften in the kettle with the hottest water I could get from the tap.

I have always loved tiny things, including the dollhouses outside the pediatric clinics at the University of Iowa Hospitals.  Some of them have been on display since 1988, too. That year and many after, I stared, mesmerized, through their plexiglass cages at minute woven rugs and ceramic kittens lapping up ceramic puddles of milk.  Memory tells me there were gold forks on the table, different floral papers wrapping the walls of each room, a newspaper rolled and perched on the front step, and a rickety old bicycle leaning against the side of the house.  I imbued all tiny things with special powers; I lent them an air of innocence.  That miniature newspaper possessed the gift of being insubstantial, unlike the real Community News Advertiser that came to my parents' front door every Wednesday, a paper full of rank black ink and advertisements indicating that real people somewhere nearby wanted--jobs, food, babysitters, lawnmowers. And my tiny coffee pot and electric kettle were so light and insignificant that there was never even a remote possibility that they would bear what my mother's Pfalzgraff gravy boat, say, had to endure, all that passing on ritualized days of the year, passing between hands belonging to people who argued, cried, hated, mourned, laughed, teased, married, divorced, and got back together. The gravy boat could get stained, chipped, dropped, thrown. My electric Barbie kettle would not, not if I had anything to do with it, because tiny things have never had to bear the burden of being connected to gritty human drama. They signify an ideal; tiny plates belong to dolls whose happy histories can be dreamt up, whimsied up, by tiny humans, now by my Tinies. These girls, my girls, look at a fragile plastic plate, as thin as a sliver of almond, and think something as simple as food with a joyful and satisfied squeal of delight. They look at a pink chandelier, and exhale pleasure at its ode to prettiness. And they stage a "room" full of furniture with perfect feng shui mastery; there is no clutter to concern themselves with, no muddy shoe piles by the back door, no markers on the floor, no strands of yarn or scissors lying askew, no parents tensely posturing at one another.

I'm drawn to order as much as they are. Some days I want to hunker down on the floor and set up the coffee pot, the long-handled spoon, the vase with flowers. Usually my real, life-sized washing machine and dishwasher and kitchen table interrupt such fantasies. But that's okay; I had my turns with tiny things when I was tiny. Tinydom offers peace, a roomful of order for tiny people, a way to practice for real life, a field guide for Where Things Go and How Things are Used and By, For, and With Whom so that if, in real life, they ever get mixed up, they'll know it and put things to rights as best they can.

Breaking Night: A Readerly Response

I've had this readerly response to Liz Murray's memoir brewing in me for months now. But I'm too busy and burned out from school papers to get all academia on ya. Let me just say I so wanted to pluck the kid-Liz-Murray right out of the Bronx apartment she shared with her drug addicted parents and her sober sister, Lisa.  The story is that Liz's Ma and Daddy spend most of Ma's disability check (Ma is blind and schizophrenic) on cocaine, which means Liz and Lisa go hungry for about 28 days out of the month. Ma and Daddy are so caught up in the cycle of drug binging that nothing is done about their daughters' empty stomachs, or the increasing filth in the apartment, or the water in the bathtub that won't drain for months, eventually turning grimy and foul, or the facts that Liz is not sleeping and that she's ditching school and DHS workers are showing up with increasing frequency at the door.

With no adult supervision and with basic needs unment, kid-Liz-Murray does what any other resourceful kid in her situation would do: she skips school most days and goes out to look for food or money for food. Somehow she averts the clutches of DHS workers long enough to pass each grade through to high school, at which point Ma is so desperate to get out of the drug cycle that she leaves Daddy and moves in with a new boyfriend ("Brick"), but not before revealing to Liz that she (Ma) is HIV positive. Soon after, Liz is taken into custody by child welfare and sent for a time to a "diagnostic residential center" before she is released into Brick's custody. What seems like a fresher start for Liz, Ma, and Lisa takes a rather downward turn as Ma continues to drink heavily and decline from AIDS and Liz lapses into truancy from school. Rather than risk being caught by DHS again, Liz decides to head for the streets where her life takes on a rhythm of uncertainty against the backdrop of friendships with other homeless youth who are also struggling to survive. Sleep comes when she can cajole a friend into letting her stay on a bedroom floor, or else on the subway or when she can find a stair landing in an apartment building somewhere, alone or with friends.  Kid-Liz-Murray's life gets more complicated with a drug dealing boyfriend from whom she finds herself needing to escape, and then Ma actually does die, from AIDS, in the middle of what should have been kid-Liz-Murray's high school career.

In case you haven't guessed it, Breaking Night is a My Horrible Childhood sort of book in the vein of Angela's Ashes or The Glass Castle.  It was almost too awful to read at times, and I found myself shaking from trauma by proxy.  But you haven't seen the subtitle of this book yet: It's this, and it's a doozy: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard.  Indeed. This has a happy ending.  So happy, in fact, so redemptive, you'll wonder if Liz Murray has been on Oprah, and in fact, when you Google, you'll see that Murray was the recipent of Oprah's "Chutzpah Award" (did you know this existed?).  We find out from the book jacket that, today, Murray is the founder of Manifest Living, a company that helps grown-ups realize their potential and reach for their dreams.

But how did she get here? Well, kid-Liz-Murray had a revelation one homeless night that her friends would never be able to pay her rent. At that moment she realized she needed to get an education. What ensued was what I'll call a courageous attempt to get herself enrolled in an alternative high school, while homeless. Only two years away from turning 18, Murray managed to complete all her high school credits with high honors in those two years. She won a New York Times Scholarship, received much press, and was accepted to Harvard. Since then, she wrote this thoughtful, well-crafted book, and o yeah, her story was made into a movie on Lifetime.

If this were fiction it'd be an awfully predictable read, all-loose-ends-tied-up sort of read, but I forgive Murray the closure. The story was so riveting, well-written, and awful that, in fact, I sincerely celebrated its redemptive pieces, and wished for her only more happiness. And maybe another Chutzpah Award. Hell, I'd even watch the movie on Lifetime.

Driving the Tinies

At 16, I drove like I didn't have a future, or not one I particularly cared about.  My driving disposition was fancy free, cavalier. I thought nothing of violent accelerations that would catch me up, change me lanes, get me there faster, pass a slower driver. My rattly '79 Toyota Corolla--oh, I named her "Molly" by the way, sweet in an early 90s sort of way. So, Molly's engine might overheat on my way from rural Iowa to more rural Iowa.  I fretted and hoped for the best; staying home never occurred to me as a viable alternative. On cold mornings, such as those of late in Iowa's December, Molly was skeletal, a tin shell, and conducted cold as well as most tin does; I jittered and shivered my way through town and country even if, at the same time, Molly overheated. And car maintenance--I could neither afford it or know what it was. Probably why Molly blew a gasket and I sold her for $75 because I couldn't pay the $600 to have her fixed.

My driving disposition should have changed a long time ago--maybe about the time I got married, or began thinking about having children.  To be honest, it didn't change fully until Tiny arrived.  I think twice about getting in the car with three children in five degree weather--hats, gloves, coats, boots, check? One hundred and fifty-thousand mile maintenance, check? Oil change, check?
Also, the enormity of the act of simply getting on the Interstate with or without children in the car bears down on me.  The fact of three lives depending on me from day to day is enough to wear off any residual cavalier and shine on some sober.  Driving is serious business. I am Someone's Mother.  I am Three Somebodies' Mother. I am a M.A.D.D. and a mother against texting-and-driving, mascara-and-driving, sight-seeing-and-driving. I'm also a mother against sibling-arguements-and-driving because sometimes I use the rear-view mirror to referree the drama in the way, way back of the minivan, only to look up--when? 30 seconds later? I never know--and exhale sharply in relief that the truck before me didn't brake unexpectedly, that the light was still green.

Of course choices on the road always had forever-implications, but I didn't know Oldest and Middle and Tiny before--three lives on the cusp of bloom. And I didn't know what it would be like for my niece to live without my brother, who died because of a car, some alcohol, and the exhilaration of driving too fast. He and she together had a lot more to accomplish in this life before he left it.  I look at my girls: They have Christmas programs to sing in, snowmen to build, easels to cover with paint, dances to tap out, piano lessons to review. They have friendships to forge, books to read, wisdom to search out and wield.  Maybe, too, they have their own Oldests and Middles and Tinies to beget.

I don't drive in fear, but I do drive like a surgeon who knows she must pay careful, uncompromising attention.  Also, like a woman shaped by relief and gratitude that so far none of her miscalculations have cost her or the Tinies anything, not anything at all to speak of.

Hold the Applause

I’m not feeling terribly creative in a writerly way these days, but maybe that’s because all my energy is getting used up trying to be a decent sleep-interrupted mother/friend/sister/auntie/teacher/church worker/baker/chauffeur.
The energy is so used up, in fact, that I’ll admit to wanting just a hint of applause for a few small things I’ve given myself to on behalf of the Girls:

1. Oldest requested bread today. Not from a store. The homemade bread I make, weighing out the flour, kneading, letting rise, punching down. I made it tonight, and not only that, I taught her how to make it because someday, I reason, she will be able to make bread herself and I will be eliminated from this process altogether. Teach a girl to fish, right?

2. Middle requested games. I am not a game player by nature. I played a lot of Rummy with my brother and my mom in the winter of 1988. And last December I played a video game. For about a week straight. In the off years I’ve embraced a round or two of Boggle, my passion fading quickly when I realized I was never going to beat the husband at a word game. But this is neither here nor there. Middle is an avid lover of games (card, board, and video) and she’s smart enough now for challenges beyond Dora Candyland, which I could get through without paying a whole lot of attention. Now, she is pulling out games like Blink, Monopoly Junior, and Go Fish, which require not only counting, but rolling, sorting, interrogation, finger dexterity, mental focus, and the necessary referreeing of two siblings arguing over rules. But okay, well, only Blink requires finger dexterity. Tonight—wait for it—tonight I played not one, but one-and-a-half games with Middle. Indeed, I got through Disney Princess Go Fish and moved on to a less-than-rousing 15 minutes of Monopoly Junior, at which point I begged off on account I had so much church work to do and honestly I was sooo tired, and yes, church work seemed way more relaxing than counting out two dollars of paper money to watch imaginary fireworks on Dr. Doolittle Boulevard. Or whatev.

3. Tiny, well, she’s just full of requests, many of them having to do with my being up at midnight, 2, 3, or 4 AM.

4. I lied about all of the girls’ requests being small. This is not small. This is big: I, crazy I, have agreed to a CAROLING PARTY with dessert and hot chocolate at our house afterward. It is my penance for not doing trick-or-treating this year. A month ago, Oldest asked, “Mom, are there any other holidays where kids go door to door?” And I came up with caroling, yes I did.

They get to invite whoever they want. At this point, if the attendance rate is 40% of the invitee list, then we’ll barely be able to fit everyone in our house. And I’ve agreed to keep my mouth shut about all the kids they are not inviting who might feel left out because they aren’t invited. But who am I kidding? If we invited all those kids, we would need to borrow the neighbor’s house to fit them in. This is their party, I promised the girls. But that means we better get crackin’. There are invites to make and address. Song lists to create and print out. And by the way, will any of their little guests be able to read? And by the way, do children even know Christmas songs anymore? This concern led to my one stipulation about the guest list: PARENTS ARE INVITED. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’m going to be singing Christmas solos for the neighbors while supervising a flock of 20 kids on a dark December night. No, I’m not. So, parents, please mark your calendars (er, if your child is invited).

Well, now, I guess that’s all I really wanted to say, and now that I re-read what I just wrote, I can see that none of this merits applause. In fact, it might merit a smackdown. My children are healthy, wealthy (in a North-American-Middle-Classish sort of way), and wise (as far as 6 and 8 year olds go). We suffer no terminal illnesses, homelessness, or poverty. I am not working double shifts to make ends meet. I'm doing what a lot of middle class Midwestern parents are doing, and our lives are full of privilege and favor not afforded to much of the world (Um, we're having a freaking caroling party). I suffer only from mental boredom, busyness and, it seems, a bit of parental selfishness. (Would it have killed me to finish Monopoly?)

With echoes of Jane Austen's Lady Catherine in my head, I ask that you withhold your compliments, for I deserve no such attention.

Little House on Raven Street

Now that winter is coming, the Little House books are easier for me and the girls to identify with. We can hear the wind roaring around our little house on Raven Street and snow is just around the corner, soon-to-be drifting at our front door. There are no wild panther screams, however. No trips to the barn to milk the cows and feed the horses. We’re feeling rather lucky, lying around on our recliner couch, reading about girls in faraway days in not-so-faraway prairies. Oldest and Middle are recovering from strep throat, and the Tiny and I are holding strong against bacterial infection and fevers. But the Tiny is fussy and congested and everyone wants to be petted and held and snuggled more than usual, including me. In the midst of the snuggling, I’m still trying to get work emails sent, plan budgets and sort through laundry and grocery lists.

In addition to reading the Little House books, we’ve also been watching the TV episodes where the bright, wholesome face of Michael-Landon-as-“Pa” beams the kind of sincerity that makes me squirm uncomfortably. But, between you and me, the husband and I will simultaneously giggle and shed a few tears over the tops of the girls’ heads when Michael Landon is on.

Once, when Laura was chastized by “Ma” for inappropriate behavior, she nodded and chortled brightly, “Well, I reckon you know best, Ma.” I reckon that those words will never be uttered in our house. (Do real seven year olds possess such profound wisdom?) But, now, I guess there are a few truths about the world that the girls have grasped, and Oldest’s questions this week suggested as much. For instance, when I informed the husband about the amount of “drugs” (aka Amoxycillin) needed for her dose, Oldest (overhearing) fired out: “Street drugs or regular drugs?”

And then, when I asked to clarify a statement Oldest made and then paused, taking in her meaning, she felt sure my silence indicated amusement. “Are you going to put that on Facebook?” she wondered aloud.

Indeed, no, I was not scheming to document her words in my Facebook status (although I ususally am). I did write on Facebook in the aftermath of getting lunch warmed up, children fed, and the Tiny soothed later in the day. During all that commotion, my very introverted self had been very locked up in her own head, sifting through the contents of emails, phone calls, and schedules. The Tiny had been crying, so unhappily sitting in her infant seat, so forlorn, that I went in search of something to soothe her. And a few minutes later, after she was suitably soothed, I updated my status in the third person:

“[Heather Truhlar Weber] realized she was trying to juggle too many things today when she found herself trying to insert Tiny's pacifier into the 6-year-old's mouth.”

It was true. Tiny was crying and Middle was chewing on cornbread at the kitchen table when their mother wriggled a rubber Nuk against Middle’s lips and waited for her to part them. Middle looked up at her mother with a look of utter anthropologic curiosity, perhaps surmising the act an unseen-before ritual of mothering. But no, Middle was certain that most reasonable mothers would never have confused the Tiny with the Middle. This was a was a moment to reckon that Middle--not Ma--knew best. And you know, I think there may be a lot more of them.

Happy Birthday to Middle

Dear Middle,

How can it be that you are six years old today?  Your age, slipped in between the ages of Oldest and Tiny, has caught me by breathtaking surprise. You are short enough to look like a preschooler, but oh you possess such verbal skills, the ability to set the record straight, explain the rules, detail an injustice. "Just for you to know," is how you often begin a dialogue with me.  "Just for you to know, I'm leaving my Barbies out while I get a snack and then I"m going right back to playing."  You have a knack for anticipating my responses and you understand how our family works, how I work. You know I'll see those Barbies scattered all over the floor and request their return to the box they are usually stored in.

Rare are the days anymore that you get in bed with me in the morning, throwing an arm around my neck. But, once in a while, you return pajama-footed to what was never a family bed, asking for a sippy cup full of warm milk. And you recline on our pillows, the cup in one hand and a lock of hair twirling between the fingers of your other. I know now that if I repose with you for long, you'll take advantage of the opportunity to ask for a story. If I'm sitting, if I'm lying down--it is story time. Your interests run deep, meaning lately we read the same story over of Sir Lancelot's boyhood and coming-of-knighthood.  Initially, I replaced the more obscure phrases like "courtly arts" with words such as "reading" and "writing," but after our fifth read, as  you've begun to appreciate the scope of the narrative, I returned to its original wording, which now, I can see by watching your face, you grasp unblinkingly.  You laugh at the ridiculousness of Lancelot's arrogance and furrow a brow at the death of his parents because your heart is enlarged enough for indignation, empathy, pathos, and compassion.

Your feelings at times fizz right at the surface--giddy delight or frustrated stubbornness. Most nights you can't remain seated at the dinner table for your excitement over all the stimulus surrounding  you. Tiny, in her little seat, smiles up at you, inviting you to entertain.  Or there is a squirrel at the window, or a picture in the living room  you have drawn and want so very badly to show us.  You are an oft-silent observer of the world, your curiosity revealed in a choice question, a slew of words that suggests prior reflection, like when you eyed my postpartum body the other day and, without judgment and with some nostalgia, asked, "Mom, when are you going to get skinny again?"  And that question is because your world has changed so much in the last year, your own mother has changed before your eyes and produced a tiny human who cries and smiles and spits up and laughs at you.  Sisterhood with the Tiny becomes you. You are a star, the apple of her eye, and you take great delight in falling over with giggles, dance-walking across the room, peek-a-booing until her face erupts with gratitude.

Sisterhood with Oldest looks different, as it should.  You are her mentee in many ways, emulating her drawings and her literature choices--everything but her blue jeans, which you flatly refuse to wear on account they "itch."  But that's okay because you are coming into your own--it's inevitable and subtle right now, but you are differentiating, deciding to play outside because you want to, even if Oldest stays inside to draw.  And there you go, off to jump on the rusted trampoline, off to rake leaves into an awkward pile in the front lawn, off to get the neighbor girl for fort play.

I said you were deep, and this is another reason I know: when something wounds you, either in body or in spirit, you keep silent while the pressure of your pain--and the shame you seem to carry for feeling it-- mounts unto bursting.  And then you sob, five minutes or several hours after the injury. You weep and choke and wheeze because you've held it all in for so very long. Then, I want to race backwards to that moment you remained silent, when  your lip quivered and nobody noticed, and when your eyes grew red with tears yet unsprung. I want to hold you in that place, assure you there is enough comfort to go round, and convince you that wounds are not suffered better in silence. And perhaps I will  yet. That's part of my job, and there is still time.

You're only six,  you know?  (Don't, please, try to grow up too terribly fast.)

So, Miss Middle, I raise a glass of apple juice to toast in your honor, in reverence and celebration of all you are and all you are to become.

[Trumpets blare. Confetti scatters through the air. I lift you high in a great big hug.]

Falloween Nights

I grew up with a mother who, on Halloween nights, occasionally made us sit in the dark basement while she prayed in tongues and the doorbell rang with trick-or-treaters who wouldn’t be getting any treats from our house. Her idea, I think, was to communicate her disapproval of Halloween by not participating in what she saw as a demonic, devil worshipping ritual. Every year I heard stories of satanic ritual human sacrifice, blood-thirsty covens, and witches casting spells in the deepest night. To combat the forces of evil at work in the world, she prayed in her otherworldly language and kept my brother and me cloaked in the darkened house, as if to protect our spirits from the evil that floated by outside the door. But other years, my mother seemed less threatened, and she adopted a proactive attitude toward the trick-or-treaters. Seeing as how Halloween was a prime opportunity for evangelism, she handed out pencils and stickers on which the words Jesus Loves You smiled up at the recipients.

I have only one memory of trick-or-treating as a child—probably about the age of five, before my mother developed her stance against the holiday. I dressed up as an angel, gold pipe-cleaner halo circled about my head. From there, the years ticked by void of trick-or-treating, and by the time I was 23 and pregnant with Oldest, I felt seriously deprived. I needed to make some magic happen—better late than never—so I dressed up as Josie (of Josie and the Pussycats) and, guitar case in hand, paraded around our neighborhood with friends who were also too old for trick-or-treating.

Aside from the ever surfacing awkwardness of being a pregnant 23-year-old dressed as a pussycat-slash-rock star who finagled free candy from elderly residents in the neighborhood, trick-or-treating was all I hoped it’d be. Candy. Lots of it. Free. Mine.

I have to admit, though, that since then I’ve become rather grinchy about Halloween. I can’t say that I’ve adored the holiday in its total Halloweeny essence (this dislike having nothing to do with the Halloween religious hysteria of my childhood). Pumpkins, yes. Dress up, okay. Candy, not so much (!) anymore since Fair Trade labeling and Food, Inc. And the elaborately designed graveyard markers in my neighbor’s front yard don’t really float my boat. Nor do the mock lynchings in the yard on Friendship Street. And the historic old barn on the Scott Blvd extension, the one that gleams rustic red in the October sun, is desecrated by a petroleum-based 8-foot-in-diameter black-and-blue spider and scarecrow bodies with sunken eye sockets and shriveled-up gray heads. Plastic skeletons are tethered to the split-rail fence and another faux corpse hangs by the head from the peak of the barn’s roof.

When Oldest was in preschool, she was scared by all the songs about witches’ brew and ghosts and boo and monsters. And I wanted to cover her eyes and her ears when we set out from the house anytime between October 1 and mid November.  

I’m a bit standoffish when it comes to most commercialized and holiday-themed lawn décor, and you won’t find an inflatable reindeer/Santa/Easter bunny/leprechaun in my front lawn. Ever. You won’t even find a flag on the Fourth of July or Veteran’s Day (not that I don’t value our freedom or our veterans). However, none of those put me in a foul mood the way the sight of that beautiful barn swimming in all that deathly plastic crap does. Call me prudish, innocent, naïve, “too good” (as Jane Austen’s Lizzie calls her sister Jane). I'll take whatever label you want to dole out.  I just can't get behind all that death.

"Happy Halloween!" strangers at the grocery store sing out to my children and Oldest fires right back, "We don't celebrate Halloween" in her precocious, smart, 8-year-old way.  My face flushes and I duck my head away from these strangers who size me up, likely wondering how I could deprive my children of  the likes of the holiday.  I stutter and sometimes explain our alternate activities, what Oldest has begun calling Falloween: a kick-ass treasure hunt with clues and suspense and little gifts along the way, culminating at Grandpa's house for more (and better) gifts, apple cider, and oatmeal cookies. Sometimes we cut apart pumpkins, scooping their inner fibrous centers out onto cookie sheets and roasting the seeds.   Occasionally, the girls look longingly at the trick-or-treaters, but other times they're so busy with the fun of our hunt, giggling at the clues we've rhymed and written up, that they just don't care. 

Hopefully they won't ever feel deprived to the point that impending motherhood will create the need to re-enact childhood lost. If I ever see Middle or Oldest, round-bellied and wearing cat ears on Halloween night, I guess I'll have my answer.

Raven Street Notes # 2

1.

This week, I am thankful for fall weather and leaves and that Oldest and Middle are big enough now to rake and not only rake, but actually get the leaves curbside where the city’s leaf vacuuming machine will suck them up. I’m thankful for the Tiny and how she smiles at me almost every time she sees me anew, and then some, and how she responds to my voice and does this little laughy cry that sounds like heh heh heh heh when she wants to get some milk.

I’m also thankful for good friends—one A.B.G. who spent time with me last night—and good conversations.

2.

This morning, on my way out the door, Oldest sized me up and with a quizzical expression on her face asked, “Did you already get ready for the day?”

Nice.

I’m wondering if I have some serious work to do in the Department of Appearances, Social.

3.

Two years ago this fall, I was miserable for a good reason. My brother had died. I didn’t know how to put together all the pieces of myself that seemed to have fallen apart. Even though I love fall, I think of Henry at this time of year simply because of the association of seasons, simply because that when, two years ago, the leaves were falling off the silver maples in the front yard, I stood at the window and cried.

There were many people who condoled, sent cards, visited and cried with me. One was a woman in her forties named Ellen. She was Oldest and Middle’s preschool teacher. She had a master’s degree in education yet chose to spend her time with 3- and 4-year-olds making very little money because she loved kids that much. She was smart and she was nurturing. When she heard somehow that Henry had died, she sent me a card and in it she told me how she’d lost one brother in childhood, another to the attacks of on the World Trade Center. She was part of the constellation of brotherless people I was beginning to map out in my life, and she and I struck up more conversation, more emails, and I found comfort in knowing there was a person like Ellen out in the world—someone who’s integrated loss and grief and continued on to parent her own children well, to give back to the community in life-affirming ways. Since then she’s kept tabs on Oldest and Middle, and came to visit when Tiny was born, bearing gifts for all three children.

On Tuesday of this week I got a call that Ellen had died. No one knows why. She didn’t come to the preschool and she didn’t pick up her own daughters, elementary- and high-school-aged, after school. She was found at home, in bed. Today, I went to her memorial service and found it nearly impossible to tolerate the fact that her daughters have lost their amazing, devoted mother. I cried for them and prayed that these little chickies would somehow be strengthened to move and grow into the women they were already on their way to becoming—strong, life-affirming, and joyful—before their mother slipped away.

Bidding Adieu to Mrs. Bennett (thoughts on church)

I grew up attending lots and lots of charismaticky church services. By the time I was 8 years old I was used to sitting around with coloring books in hotel all-purpose rooms while grown-ups whooped and hollered under fluorescent lighting during church services. They spoke in tongues, screamed at demons, fell down on the floor, shook, wept, roared, and ran in circles around the building.

On into my teens, I was accustomed to these sorts of manifestations of the faith, yet knew that a church service such as what I've described was the sort of place that would utterly alienate most of my friends. Eventually, even I felt alienated.

It's not that I didn't believe God was present in the midst of all of the ruckus-y parts of charismatic church life. I think God is present everywhere and moves through a multitude of cultural expressions. I believe God can be found in the seemingly foolish, the seemingly unwise. I often found God in the midst of the ruckus, and sometimes I was part of that ruckus. Most importantly, I believed that what mattered most was the content and meaning, not necessarily the form.

But sometimes the ruckus had little discernible meaning behind it. Charismatic culture was often a little too much like Jane Austen's Mrs. Bennett (a la the A&E version of Pride and Predjudice). Mrs. Bennett's family loved her and were loyal, but there was no reasoning with her hysteria. Her children scrambled desperately to cover over the shame of their mother's rudeness, impolitic judgments, and her almost theatrical episodes of "nerves."

This week I went to a conference with a line-up of speakers from all over the world. I was excited to hear one in particular, who always, in my estimation demonstrates great intellect coupled with great faith. But the other speakers, who I had not heard of nor heard speak before, were quite different, and shockingly so. For no discernible good reason, one of them began screaming a prayer that lasted 15 minutes and made the Tiny look quite nervous. While the speaker screamed, he encouraged others to do likewise. Some people in the room seemed excited by all this commotion, energized even. But I just felt tired. There were other instances like this at the conference, too tedious to detail at length. As I backed away slowly from the room full of shouting pastors and other church leaders, I realized how little tolerance I have for Mrs. Bennett these days. I don't want to sit at her bedside and make sense of her hysteria. I don't want to play audience to her drama or find myself in the situation of having to explain or defend her at all.  She makes everything simply too complicated.

But I feel a as if I've experienced a death--the death of a very distant great-aunt. Old Aunt Bennet, who I haven't visited in so very long, has passed on from the accumulated eras of my life.  And I bid her adieu with a heart full of small regrets. I was not successful at making her make sense. Or of making sense of her for myself.

The Bucolic Plague (a readerly response)

The answer to why we bought the Beekman could fill the entire paper. Because we wanted a place to get away from the city. Because we wanted to grow our own food. Because the place looks like it belongs on the cover of a magazine, and we wanted a life that looked like the cover of a magazine. Because no one else in the area had the means to take care of such a high-maintenance historic building, and it seemed like a generous task to take on. Because I’m turning forty next year and wanted something to show for it. Because we’re vain, kindhearted, ambitious, shallow, deep, humble, trendy, old-fashioned, rich, poor, proud, and vulnerable. Those are merely the beginning of the reasons we bought the Beekman.

    --The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir

Josh Kilmer-Purcell and his partner Brent are disenchanted New Yorkers. Purcell, a former-drag- queen-turned-advertising-exec, and Brent, a trained medical doctor who works on staff at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia as her resident expert in health and wellness, stumble upon the two-hundred-year-old Beekman Mansion during one of their weekend countryside excursions. Enamored by the mansion’s history and charm and the draw of a country life, the men find themselves suddenly caught between their New York City world and the world of Sharon Springs, where they experiment with raising chickens and goats and start their own vegetable garden. The financial demands of the mansion’s upkeep, however, grow increasingly urgent, and the men find themselves hardly able to keep up with basic farm maintenance, even with the hired help of local Farmer John.

At Christmas time, a stroke of genius inspires the men to gift Martha Stewart with homemade goat’s milk soap, straight from the Beekman farm goats. Martha loves it so much that she invites Brent and the goats on her show, just as the men are feverishly strategizing ways to save themselves from financial ruin. Such exposure ignites a slew of goat milk orders, which provides a slow trickle of revenue to the partners, and spurs them to launch a web site featuring various aspects of farming life, from gardening to recipes to pie baking. It’s not enough, however, and as the recession worsens and both men lose their jobs in the city, the story becomes the struggle to maintain their hold on the mansion and their relationship with one another.

The Bucolic Plague is a charmer that pulled me in with its descriptions of the historic Beekman Crypt; the colorful residents of Sharon Springs; Josh’s attempts at heirloom vegetable gardening; and the insider scoop on Martha Stewart, the comical foil against whom Josh and Brent judge their own domestic and bucolic adventures. And while the author’s given lines of dialogue are the best in every conversation and witty, perhaps, to a suspcious degree, I came to care about the pair and found myself rooting for their success.  If you like memoir with long subtitles (I do!), memoirs that tell you how somebody got from point A to point B (me too), or memoirs that wouldn’t exist without the book advances that funded the author’s point-A-to-point-B experience (sometimes), you’d probably enjoy this book. It’s a little bit The Year of Living Biblically. A little bit Eat, Pray, Love. And it’s definitely Animal, Vegetable, Miracle meets what Kilmer-Purcell calls “farmer drag.”