Category Archives: Parenting

My third grader came home from school Monday afternoon and told me all about their school-shooting drill they had that morning, how they’ve been prepared with special hiding spots, how he was chosen to be in the group that gets to climb to the top of tall shelves, how the bell will ring when they are in Lockdown Mode, how to survive something that has knocked this country to its knees.

I wept. Or I should say, I weep. Because I haven’t quite stopped since Friday.

When he showed me how they were taught to hide in bathroom stalls, curled into tight, tiny balls on top of toilets, a fury boiled within me. The tears I cried then were hot and red, righteous in their anger.

I am not okay.

I sift through the senseless and scavenge for meaning, for justice, for change. I listen as my heart beats a subtle unsteadiness as we near the school doors where I drop my son off and away and into the world ripe with heroes and villains, with uncertainty. I fight the urge to stay put just outside those doors, my arms poised open and ready to grab him back, molding him into my chest where it is safe, where I am not blood and bone and breakable but steel and unyielding, where no one will claim him from me.

My daughter twirls clumsy pirouettes in her favorite skirt, and the beauty of it, of her innocence shatters me. The brittleness breaks through and I am sobbing at the sight. Her cheeks are pink and feather soft, her hands warm and sticky. I tuck her under my chin for as long as she will let me, spreading kisses all over until her skin smells like my breath. I don’t care that she has crumbled pretzels in my bed or trailed crackers up the stairs. She is vivid and alive and that is enough.

I am not okay.

My children, with tiny nail polish-chipped fingers and growing feet and apple-scented faces tasting of caramel kisses, are subject to the brokenness and the meanness of this world. And with that I am not okay.

I wonder how this could happen, how black this world can be, and then my hatred and my bitterness grow fierce, my judgment unwavering, my wrath filled with poison, and that is when suddenly I know. I crawl through the tunnels of my own darkness and realize the only thing that tempers it is love.

I am not okay.

In the lulls of constant chatter, at stop lights, when they wake up, when I tuck them in, when I make them grilled cheese sandwiches and ignore the pile of vegetables untouched on their plates, when I read their favorite story though it’s thirty pages long and well past their bedtime, with every fresh box of new crayons, in every squeeze and kiss and touch and fingers tickling backs of knees and in between ribs, I love them. I tell them over and over and in every which way, I hold them until they squirm, I whisper it when they’re sleeping because I never want them not to know.

I try to make that love louder than the noise that threatens to drown it out, the noise that circles the earth and prowls outside their windows and roars inside my own temper.

If I love louder, then maybe it will be okay.

My kids know I love them, right? Internet strangers spending five seconds on this here blog know I love my kids. It’s not a secret.

Lately my sweet two-year-old Bean has begun to really understand what those words mean when we say I Love You.

It’s beyond understanding what red and bwue mean, or that a circle is round and squares have pointy edges; that cows moo and pees, daddy? will get her almost anything.

She knows these words when she first wakes up and when we tuck her in at night. She knows they are not just for her but for her brother and for mom and dad. She knows they taste and feel good, often wrapped around a hug and kisses.

And she knows that when she says them back, it makes me melt.

To this young but growing mind, the words I Love You are moving past something to say. They are building into something bigger than ritual, larger than necessity. They are words she is learning to attach to that swollen feeling in her chest when completely encompassed by her daddy’s arms, when resting against her mama’s shoulder, when clinging to big brother’s back.

They are words followed by affection given freely and without hesitation by a little girl with exaggerated kisses and wriggling hugs.

And watching as she shifts from knowing love to knowing love is breathtaking. And all I can do is stare speechless and try not to crumble when she wraps her arms around my knees and declares, Wuff you, mom.

Yesterday was one of those days.

The kind of day you wish you could just start over. Start from scratch.

I mean, I knew things were beginning to get out of hand when I started talking about The Starving Kids in Africa! to prove a point about whining over playing video games.

Those days are rough. And unfortunately, they come around too often.

By mid-morning, I was wondering just how much more…accomplished, I guess would be the word…my life might be once both kids are grown and gone. Or at least old enough to both be in school all day long.

I might actually get back into shape. I might actually write a novel. I might be able to keep the house clean for longer than 14.73 seconds. I might be able to take a shower every day. The possibilities are endless!

And then I’m yanked out of that daydream by an eight-year-old asking for the infinitieth time if he can turn on the television even though I JUST said, “Not until your room is clean”, or a two-year-old pitching a full-blown tantrum because I won’t let her play with safety pins.

But here’s my secret: though I raise my voice and huff in frustration, I am silently glad.

Glad because I’ve been crouching in my darkness, waiting for their behavior to cross into “undesirable” so I can dole out punishments with justification. I’ve been feeling small and petty and bitter, and finally, I have a reason for those feelings to manifest themselves in all their ugliness.

And I harbor the ugly with ease. I nurse it. I let it hide beneath the excuse that we all have those days, I let it grow restless inside the partial truth that they’ve earned the threats and restrictions and harsh words. I let it loose outside the bigger truth that they are small now and learning. Learning from the best that it’s not only okay to feel frustrated and disappointed and angry, but that it is okay to express these things with smallness, pettiness, and bite.

I let the ugly swell bigger than the beautiful, heavy weight of growing this boy and this girl, of witnessing their intelligence and kindness. I let it thicken more solidly than the fragile hearts beating sweetly in their chests. I make it more real than the impossible, short time I have to parent them before they leave me behind in their glorious dust.

Yesterday was one of those days when I was reckless with the gift of motherhood.

But I am lucky that I can do it all over today with two who really do make it easy.

She woke up crying, but I stalled. The chapter I was reading had not ended, and besides, her nap had not been quite as long as they normally are. (And the chapter was really good.)

So I waited for her to settle back in to sleep.

But she insisted, her cries growing more anxious (and distracting), and I couldn’t finish the chapter anyway; and besides, the story would be there still tonight, and she was quickly moving from impatient to indignant.

So I crashed into her room, all smiles and songs, hoping to cheer her up and make her forget all about my most recent neglect.

With a scoop and sway, I cradled her, offering a snack or some juice or a toy to play with, a trade-off for absent mothering.

But all she wanted was me.

So I listened (this time) and let her snuggle against my chest, felt her press her cheek into my shoulder. Her fists squeezed beneath my arms, tucked against my side, and we rocked back and forth to almost-sleep, two pieces fitting neatly together.

I never know how long these moments will last. But I know eventually that they will end altogether.

And with that knowledge, I refuse to watch the clock tick from 4:24 to 4:57, refuse to remember that I should be thinking of what to cook for dinner, but before that, I should run to the grocery store, but before that I should dry the load of wet towels in the washer, but before that it’s almost 5 o’clock and I haven’t even made the bed.

So I refuse and remain in the moment, all the while knowing that before I can cook dinner and shop for groceries and dry wet towels and make the bed, she will grow restless. My shoulder will grow too sharp, her cheek too warm, her body too still. She will have rested, and she will want to spend that energy somewhere other than curled like a cat above my breastbone.

But in the time it takes for her to crave that freedom, I will focus on her lashes fluttering against my jaw. I will tap out a silent song with my fingertips along the slope her nose makes, her quiet heartbeat my rhythm. I will listen to her breaths, deep and effortless, in and out without a care.

Strangely enough, though the clock ticks on, this moment we are lying in is timeless.

And for a little while, within this small moment inside of 4:24 and 4:57 on a lazy afternoon, I can pretend that we are infinite.

Happy birthday, my magical Beanie-bell.
You have no idea how sweet you make this life.
L o v e ,
Your lucky, lucky mama

It’s easy to feel forgettable.

And being forgotten is terrifying, isn’t it?

I don’t want to be left off the email list when someone is organizing a play date. I don’t want my friends to wonder what I’ve been up to lately. I don’t want my blog to fall under someone’s “Read When I Have Nothing Else To Do & I’ve Already Watched All the Reruns of Law & Order: SVU on TBS” folder. I don’t want to be written out of my parents’ wills. (Just kidding, Dad.)

I want to spread my words so they resonate with people, ringing in their ears long after. I want others to remember me, even if they’re just remembering to invite me to the splash pad.

I don’t want to be forgettable; I want to leave a legacy.

My daughter has taken to rocking her dolls and stuffed animals to sleep. Earlier today I caught her doing that to a tower of Legos.

She walks around with a toy cradled in her little arms, gently swaying it back and forth whispering, “Hey, hey, hey, shhhh.”

The comfort she is copying, the softness in her voice, the way she presses her cheek against a pink bunny or multi-colored blocks all remind me of the way I cradle my own children, smoothing down their baby fine hair, nestling them in that sweet, safe spot between my chin and my chest, that spot that tells them they are loved beyond measure, and not just by the arms encircling them.

And as I watched my daughter carefully tuck her stuffed elephant in beneath a tee-shirt-turned-blanket, I caught a glimpse of my legacy.

It is the small and the mundane that undo me.

It is the shade of my son’s eyes, hazel and bright, as he rambles excitedly on about an upcoming field trip or summer camp.

It is the smallness of my daughter’s hand when I place a cracker in her palm, her fingers tiny but her grasp tight.

It is the lightness that is evident across my husband’s shoulders when he walks through the door, his spent energy renewed at the sight of a boy and a girl tearing across the kitchen floor, dropping whatever it was they were doing to bask in their father’s attention.

It is the faintest dusting of freckles across my son’s nose that grows deeper as the sun grows hotter.

It is the scent of sunscreen and sweat that fills the car as we drive home from a play date at the park, my daughter too exhausted to make it the three miles home awake.

It is the Saturdays when I can be selfish with my family, hoarding them from work and school and a thousand other commitments, hiding beneath the covers until a hunger for pancakes drives us out of bed.

It is the small and the mundane that undo me, because I am caught off-guard, waiting for the milestones and the benchmarks, the moments for when I make sure my camera is charged and ready, the bright color-coded entries in our family calendar that brightly and colorfully remind me how my children are growing.

But then I am sucker punched in the heart, and I am quite certain my ribcage is about to explode, just because my son leaned into the front of the car to kiss me unexpectedly before darting out and joining his friends as they march into school, or because my busy, busy toddler took a moment from her life of growing independence to crawl into my lap and lay her head on my chest.

It is the small and the mundane that I am unprepared for, and because I am unprepared for it, this love seems that much larger.

My heart breaks constantly because I can capture moments like these and fall under the illusion that I am actually able to freeze time, but by the time I look up from admiring the snapshot, they are off and running, moving faster and farther from my reach.

The boy you see towering over his little sister is smart and kind. He is goofy and patient. His laugh is contagious, his imagination relentless, his curiosity unquenchable. He is cautious and self-aware, but has an uncanny ability to march into any situation with a straight back and a joke on his lips.

He is a blur, a whirlwind, a tiny tornado of noise and dirt and a thousand questions and twice as many answers. He is a brain, drinking up information about presidents and ocean habitats and multiplication tables.

He is my heart, the part of me that wonders how I got so lucky, how the whole of him is so much greater than the sum of our parts.

And then there’s the girl, content in her brother’s shadow. She is funny and sweet. She is quick and affectionate. Her smile is heart-warming, her brilliance evident, her curiosity insatiable. She is daring and adventurous, but can be watchful and quiet when things are quite unfamiliar.

She is pure charm and magic, a tiny ball of giggles and sticky kisses, generous with her cheerios and squealing laughter. She is a funny bone, showing off her latest trick and making sure you are amused.

She is my heart, the part of me that aches to be near her at all times, that aches to slow down time, that aches beneath the weight of a love so heavy it steals my breath.

This boy and this girl, they are my heart, the part of me that wants to write poetry and sing songs and watch clouds drift by. They are the part of me that is better, that is inspired and awake, the part of me that knows what the grass smells like after it rains, the part of me that dances barefoot in the kitchen.

They are the part of my heart that is most fully aware of a grand and generous God.

Photography by Anna Wamsted

I’m a goner.

It all started with our church service on Christmas morning. Innocent enough, right?

But in between singing “O Come All Ye Faithful” and hearing one of three Christmas sermonettes, I glanced down at Bug sitting beside me doodling a rocket to the moon and was suddenly and violently aware of the smallness of his hands.

And how the smallness of his hands yesterday morning was nothing compared to the smallness of his hands seven years ago. Or even last year, for that matter.

As he gripped his pencil, his left hand splayed out across the page, twisting and turning the paper as his imagination explored and mapped the “eye of the moon,” I couldn’t help but reach down and fold my fingers around his, our palms nearly the same size, my grasp in mourning, his impatient.

A boy, growing impossibly fast, with no signs of slowing down, the only signs a sharpening wit, a pair of shoes a hair’s width smaller than mine, a vanishing lisp fading away with each permanent tooth emerging.

My boy. My baby. My firstborn.

Every parent will tell you that the days are long, but the years are lightning fast. That’s on Page One of the handbook the nurses send you home with after giving birth.

One minute you are rocking a newborn to sleep at three in the morning, foolishly longing for the day when that baby sleeps through the night (as if that automatically means you will, too). And then you blink, rubbing the sleep from your eyes just in time to catch a glimpse of the seven-year-old karate chopping his way up the stairs to take his evening shower, brush his teeth, and read himself a chapter of The Hardy Boys before a brief kiss and an afterthought for his mom.

The boy who spent his entire first night home from the hospital cradled in my arms. The boy who didn’t nap anywhere but against my chest until preschool broke him of that glorious habit. The boy who nestled snugly against my hip, who fit neatly beneath my arm, who tucked in effortlessly within my heart.

The boy who kicks off the blankets, who is too old to slip into the bed between Mom and Dad, who doesn’t need naps, just a juice box and a tree to climb, who asked Santa for a microscope and a pair of rollerblades, whose head reaches up to my chin, whose socks I sometimes confuse with my own, whose hands are a breath away from being larger than mine as he draws rockets to the moon.

Truly.

A goner.

I haven’t gotten much sleep this past week. I’ve consumed more coffee and chocolate than I’m willing to admit. I’m on the brink of loopy-ness thanks to the combination of sleep-deprivation and caffeine-intake.

Example? Despite my exhaustion, I had a hard time falling asleep last night because I couldn’t get over the fact that Charles Schwab couldn’t decide between using cartoons or real people for their commercials, so they ended up using a weird unappealing hybrid.

This is where my brain is going, people. Hence, a repost.

———

Photography by Kathryn Clark

I look at my daughter and my heart breaks.

It shatters, because it simply cannot contain something larger than the words love, adore, cherish, treasure.

I stare at her and wonder where I am in all of that beauty.

I hear her giggle, delicate and ladylike, and hope it is a hint to her disposition. I watch her discover, finding and feeling things unfamiliar, and hope it is insatiable. I recognize her sense of humor while she growls or dances or peek-a-boos over and over, as long as she has a captive audience, and hope it is unchanging. I marvel at her growing confidence, and hope it is unstoppable.

I know what I want for her.

I want to take the very best parts of me and give them to her. I want her to be witty, intelligent, honest, and affectionate.

I want to take my ugliest pieces, trade them for something shinier, polish them to perfection, and plant them in her. I want her to be meeker, wiser, sensitive, and hard-working.

I want her to be better, to be brighter. I want her to be lovely. I want to take what precious little I know I’m doing right, and teach her to do it right, too. I want to take the overwhelming amount of things I think I’ve got a grip on, and help her figure out how to do it more gracefully. I want to take the stuff I’ve gotten hopelessly wrong, sweep it out from under the rug, and scare her straight with all of my scars.

I want to teach her how to hide her heart in God. I want to teach her to speak with significance. I want to teach her poise and elegance and dignity. I want to teach her to be unapologetic and uncompromising in character. But I must learn these things first.

I want to teach her whose opinion really matters. I want to teach her that laughter heals. I want to teach her patience and gentleness and tact. I want to teach her to be flexible and forgiving in circumstances. Because I learned these the heart-breaking way.

I want her to know, to know, that she is capable and destined to be infinitely more magical.

I want her to know that she already is.