Weekend

I always look forward to the weekends.

As a mother who works from INSIDE her home rather than OUTSIDE, it would seem that Mondays through Fridays would run together with Saturdays and Sundays. And, believe me, sometimes it does.

But Saturday mornings I always run a longer run and then I come home and make blueberry pancakes for my family. Chad is home and he helps with the girls, sitting in front of cartoons in the morning. Sometimes we have errands, sometimes we have a date later in the evening, but usually Saturdays are spent playing and resting.

When I come up on a weekend like this one coming up and a month like how this March is scheduled, I get a bit discouraged. We are busy, and I don't seem to have set aside anytime to let our minds rest and play. We have good things and necessary things on our schedule, time spent with people we love, but I always long for time at home.

Seems strange because I stay home during the week.

My mind needs to rest. I need to put away the Kindergarten backpack and my gym bag. I need to have time to actually do my hair rather than pull it up into a ponytail. I need to roll around and tickle my girls rather than feel the guilt of a table not wiped or dishes not washed. I need to have time to bake a batch of cookies with Hope, slowly and with the messes that come with a six year old helping. I need to play. Not for long, just a little.

Its difficult not to have the time to reset and renew and put one week away to welcome a new one. When this happens, I feel like I begin a Monday on a half-tank of gas, hoping that it will last until the following Friday. I need time for the lessons and trials of the week to marinate in me and to make new choices for the upcoming week.

I am hoping to find a piece of rest, a portion of quietness before our week begins again. I know its there, I just have to find it.

Blonde Pigtails

I never thought I would be brushing blonde pigtails.

I had always figured that with my dark hair, whomever I married (blonde or dark or anything in between), his genes would sucumb to my dominant ones and I would have brunette children running around. Never would I have thought that I would comb and wash the hair of two little girls, one with a perpetual slid-out auburn ponytail and the other with wispy blonde hair drooping over her eyes.

Never would I have believed I would have been blessed with such love from a tiny person who just wants a morning at the park with a stick and a rock and almost infinite space to run. Never would I have thought I would glean so much joy from chasing blonde pigtails around the playground.

Life just turned out better than I could have ever thought up by myself, with more joy and closeness than I would have written into my own story. But I guess, I am not the only One with a pen.

Unrequited

It was one of those things that other mothers told me about parenting and I heard it spoken about in moms' groups. A friend experienced it with one of her twins, but not the other.




It is when my baby doesn't want me. It is when she decides that her daddy will be her comforter or her grandmother, or even her sister. Anyone but me. She calls out for him in the night...DADDY! She asks for him when she wakes up. She begs for him to put her to bed.



When I go to pick her up or hug her or kiss her cheek, she squawks and pushes my shoulder and says...NO MAMA NO MAMA NO MAMA NOOOO! She screams when I hold her, she runs to her father to read her a book, she doesn't want to sit on my lap. For weeks she has been doing this.



How deep is that hurt?



I know young children will cling to different parents at different stages; their affections ebb and flow and it is vital for their development. They grow out of phases and stages and who knew it, I'll turn around tomorrow and she will love me again and push her father away. Blah, blah, blah.



I know this....brain stuff sometimes doesn't drip down to engulf my mother's heart. I ache for her and want her to be close; to smell her face. When she trantums and screams, it makes it doubly hard when she isn't coming to me for comfort after she has worn herself out. She should be screaming and yelling (two year olds do) and then when it is all said and over and done, she should come pat my face with grubby fingers and sigh, MAMA...



But she isn't patting my face. So my heart is open and gaping and wounded. I feel like my love for her is unrequited, unreturned.



What keeps me going are the glances into her own baby-heart. She's been created with a capacity for love that is growing and changing and she is learning how to be a person. She will get through this stage and she will love me again.



The windows into her are there...she will grab my hand and say...COME ON, MAMA, COME! And I follow her and I smile and I know that she is in love with me on the inside. I can feel it and I can see it, even if in glimpses.

Photo by Misty Matz.

Imperfect

This is what I want for my girls: it isn't perfect but it's ours only.

It is a sisters' world of vacation memories and questions and shared cousins and family. It was baby dolls and early morning cartoons; it was waffle syrup on our nightgowns. It was a few summers in the northern midwest with humid nights and tiny frogs and chasing chickens. It was watching MTV when our parents weren't home.

It was crying and hurt feelings and old words. It was was the difference between friends-who-were-boys and boyfriends. It was no privacy and no apologies and NO-READING-MY-JOURNAL! It was the paradox of loving and irritation only sisters feel.

It was riding in the back of pickups and weekends in the mountains. It was laughter.

It is growing up and growing out and silence. It is renewed friendship, better understanding and new love. It is adult give and take.

It is spending 4 hours in the car together last Thursday and having so much to talk about. It is giggling about being not-so-young anymore.

It is far from perfect, but it is ours.

Ocean Swell

The sea always evokes something. It asks a questions and begs an answer. For me, this morning, the ocean is healing.

I run for over an hour, beginning at one far end and run as far as my time will allow. The sun is high even though it is early because we are inching toward spring. I forget that sometimes the clouds are blown away from the shore and the sky is clear and blue over the water. It has rained for a week and this is the first dry morning; the sandy-footprints of yesterday's rain-puddles are left on the cement. The water is dark green and tipped with white and the waves rise and crash over again.

I am almost alone. A few walkers and cyclists. The surfers are watching the waves, no wetsuits, just wearing their soft boots, sweatpants and sweatshirts holding their coffee...maybe the waves are too big? Maybe they are just too broken by the storm-summoned surf. Some of them are old and tanned and grey-headed, and some look like they are on their way to high school.

A crowd has gathered to watch the waves. There are men in busines attire who have stopped on their way to work. They are still tucking in their button-downs and are straightening their ties with their shiny coffee mugs. There are mothers with babies and other runners like me. There is a homeless man that looks like he's my age. It makes me feel strange and sad to see him next to the shiny mugs. So many people, all looking in one direction...southwest, to the sea.

Conversations between people are lost in the roar, and a news helicopter flies over to broadcast a shot of the surf for the morning show. And I think and I run and I listen to Jack Johnson sing about monsoons and angels and Monterey Bay.

My own life's ocean swells are forgotten for an hour and my hard get-it-all-out cry from last night is distant. The ocean, in it's grey veiled beauty, speaks to me again, faithful always. And in it, I hear God and I smile because I feel silly not to have heard him before this minute; that I needed the waves to show me His words, and His thoughts toward me.

Present in the Blessings

The spotty rain made a potential zoo trip this afternoon impossible at worst and a bad idea at best. So we stayed home, with the shutters wide to let in as much natural light as possible on a grey day. It seems colder outside than it actually looks, though, but it is surely because of the damp. A carrot cake is in my oven and the pizza man is on his way. The sun is setting, I'm sure, but there is no way I can see it beyond the dark clouds. No California sunset tonight, just a steadily deepening sky.

And we are warm and dry inside tonight. We are aware of the blessings in this home, even though the terrible-twos are racing through here like a train and the toddler seems manic in her affection or repulsion. The emotional outbursts of a six-year old girl are events in their own right and she wavers between giggles and distraught hysteria almost by the minute. We are united as a family in our love for one another, even with the sometimes frenzy.

We are inside, and warm, and will sleep on clean sheets in safe beds tonight. We can lock our doors and cozy together under blankets to watch a funny movie or just listen to the rain.

We are reminded that there are so many people who don't have warm places and don't have safe beds. We are reminded that others don't share our peace and our blessings. We are reminded, simply watching the rain, and we explain this to our daughter who is old enough to understand this. Her face darkens a little, like the sky, and she says...

We ARE blessed, aren't we?

Yes, we are. And it makes me wonder how we can remain aware of this, as well as teach her to be present in her own blessings as well.

Be thankful, and be present; be aware of the warmth even when it feels like your second skin.

Tribute

Congratulations to my father on completing 40 years with the same organization, 40 years working in youth ministry, 40 years in service to God and others.

Congratulations to my father who began this work in 1967, the year after he graduated from high school knowing only that his heart was with young people, and discovering his calling. In 40 years, he has seen many people come, fly high, and burn out. But he has remained, like a marathoner, one step in front of the other, even when it hurts and even when he's been thirsty. It has been really hard sometimes, and perhaps more than he bargained for. But, he is dedicated to the goal, confirmed in his quest and will never stop because after 40 years, he's built the endurance.

He has been witness to failure, and to success. He's seen people love, and marry, and others fall and weep. My father has been a part of different iterations of ministry and seen phases and seasons and cycles, but always the same thing at the core: help students become excited about God. He has been mentor, writer, developer, visionary, teacher, and implementer, as well as janitor, chef, bicycle repairman, carpenter and painter. Above all, however, he is an inspirer and a friend.

Congratulations, Dad, for your amazing accomplishment! I am proud of you.

Drizzly Afternoon

I made her spend an hour and a half by herself in her room yesterday afternoon. Her sister was sleeping in the next room, and I sensed that she needed some time to rest, some time by herself.

I piled her books on her bed and instructed her to rest, read and play quietly, but not to come out of her room. I equiped her with some water, a banana and a cozy place to spend the early afternoon.

Normally she would fight me on this, but yesterday I think she understood too the importance of quieting oneself.

She played isolated from the real world and became quietly lost in her own. I came to collect her after about 90 minutes. Her miniature horses were lined up facing the door to her room, dozens of them, belly deep in the carpet pile. She was arranging books around a reading nook she'd created out of pillows and stuffed bears and looked up at me smiling.

Is it time already? Have three half-hours passed?

Yes, honey. You can come downstairs now if you want.

But, can I stay here longer? I just started reading.

Of course she could and I told her how much I understand the need for solitude sometimes, and how reading is so perfect for that. I closed her door and stepped out. She rejoined us about 20 minutes later, calmer than when she entered and with a remade joy that she hadn't had before.

photo by Misty Matz.

Living Interrupted

I am speeding through Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. She talks about writing and life and creativity and characters and everything speaks to me now, where I am. She speaks to me in my uncertainty about writing and in the newness of it all for me.

I told my husband that I could read it cover to cover once a month and still find the richness in it. I would be inspired to sit down with my computer by the window and write by the natural light, or to take a walk in the hills listening to the spring come.

She says to write every day, at least 300 words to train your brain and your hand in the art...it is something I am already doing. She is writing 14 years ago, before the weblog-explosion, which in fact, is what has caused me to fall in love with the craft again.

So I write, and I read, and I am wondering what comes next. I write and I am interrupted almost by the minute by toddler feet thundering through the hall, and by the cat, and by the fact that I am writing on my laptop hunched over sitting on the floor of my bedroom. I am surrounded by a mound of clean-unfolded laundry and by toast-crusts from this morning. I am makeup-less with wet hair and I am thinking about the craft store errand I must run in a few minutes. I am thinking about Hope's 100th day of Kindergarten and the 140 goldfish crackers I must deliver to her room.

I am thinking about the fact that I have carved out a writing area for myself in our loft but I haven't had the chance to sit near the window and create. I am here, in the messy room with my books piled at my feet. And it keeps nagging at me this morning that I can't find the newest, most interesting one I just bought: a series of most intruiging writing exercises that I've just begun to bite into. It's here, I am sure, but I probably won't find it until I fold all the clothes.

So I live, interrupted, for now. I am at peace with it because in the center of all the interruptions is a small child who needs a healthy snack or a husband who needs to hold my hand. And I am quite alright with the disruptions, because, in the end, it gives me something to write about.

Good Night

Tonight, at the end of chaos, before the safety of bed, I am also at the end of my words. I've wasted them with meaningless requests, I've sung them to new songs. I've used them to express frustration and I've spoken today to show empathy to a teary six-year-old.

First, I thought that it was impossible to write tonight because I am sitting in front of the silliness of American Idol. I do have things to say. Watching bad singing isn't my problem.

I am out of words.

Usually when I run out of words, the sentences I do form in spoken thought become unfeeling, or weary or caustic. I say things to loved ones I don't really mean to say...I lose my tenderness.

When I run out of words when I really WANT to write something profound or startling or perfect or beautiful, or just plain REAL...maybe that is when I should just close my mouth. Or quiet my hands.

Time to retire to the ease of sleep. Time to reset the word counter to begin at zero. Time to refresh my mind with a dream.

In which case, I should probably just say Good Night.

Small and Mighty

This one, she's a fighter. Behind those vibrant blues of hers is an ardor and toughness that could be a worthy opponent for any adult willing to carry her away, wailing and arching, from anywhere she wants to be; and for anyone foolish enough to try to box her in.

She fights with a committment to the task at hand. That is more than evident to anyone who witnesses one of her age-two-level tantrums or screaming fits.

We took the family to Disneyland today, just for the morning, for the Presidents' holiday, and near the end of our time, every transition melted Naomi into a blonde-puddle on the dirty theme-park ground. Riding the train back to the exit, my father and husband claimed that she would be alright once the train began to move again, because every parent knows that movement equals contentment in a child.

But this child has staying power. In England she spent 20 full minutes screaming in a London taxi and about 25 wailing on a Cambridge train. The last time we went to Disney, she hollered for the complete 7 minutes or so it takes to ride the tram back to the parking structure. During each of these matches, we were moving and she continued to scream. She doesn't like to give up.

I'm not sure what she really wanted this morning. Even though she can talk quite well and can repeat nearly everything, tears and a runny nose don't offer the best platform to explain yourself, especially if you are two.

She cried even as we put her in her carseat and gave her a snack. She cried until she saw the cheese stick and asked for the CHEESE, PEEEASSE in the sun-warmed car. Then she relaxed. Her seat was soft, her books were there and her environment was her own.

She gripped her favorite book with two toddler hands and turned the pages to see her familiar friends. She was grasping the book so tightly that I thought for sure she would make it until we got home without falling asleep. And then I saw her eyes begin to flutter and she fought it thoroughly, with her little but mighty spirit. She bobbed, to the left and then to the right...all the while clutching her book. Her eyes closed completely and she was deeply sleeping in seconds. She fought it and gripped her book tightly, even to the end. Even when she finally let her eyes go, her hands still were strong and tight.

A few minutes later, Hope gently reached over and softly took the book from her hands so that she wouldn't wake her. And she didn't.

Naomi slept. And she is still sleeping now, 2 1/2 hours later, a much longer-than-normal nap for her. All the fighting must have worn her out (I know it exhuasted me). But her mid-day rest will soothe her and reset her heart and mind. She will most likely wake soon with a new smile and renewed might in her little body.

Truth

My friend captures with her camera and light, what I hope I can capture with my words. Anne Lamott says that good writing is about telling the truth; that we are a species who wants to understand who we are.

Truth does this.

Misty takes photos, and through her lense, she can see things that others cannot. She sees the half-adult/ half-child in the eyes of my daughter and brings it to light in the form of a photo. These things are already here; they are truth. Misty, with a skilled eye and understanding of light and shadow, sees this and then allows us to see it too.

Words can do the same thing. This is what I strive for.

Photos by Misty Matz.

http://www.mistyphoto.com/

Flying Horses

This is a six-year-old's creation, with the aid of a website as well as a keen sense of what she prefers. I helped her navigate the different settings and strange effects for photos, and this is what she came up with. Together we searched my computer for a the perfect picture from which to begin. We found it from half-a-year ago, which in the lifetime of a child or a youngish mother, is also half-a-lifetime.

Hope is brushing Blondie, one of the horses she rides for her lessons. Blondie is real, with her actual blonde mane and auburn tail. She is just a sweet horse that is afraid of garbage trucks and has a smooth, warm back. But to her photo, Hope adds graphics of peony-colored flying horses and imaginary dogs that only loosely resemble the live-action dogs we encounter weekly at Fran's. She adds a faint sun in the corner and some flowers for Blondie's neck.

There is no doubt she wishes she could give Blondie the imaginary roses and candy boxes; that she could see wings sprout from the back of a horse; that she could pull the sun down from the sky and place it in the corner of her world.

Hope's imaginary world sometimes seems as alive as her true one. But I can sense she loses a little of the wonder each day she reads new books and studies new words; every time she looks up toward the sky and doesn't see the flying horse that she can so clearly see in her mind. Each of these things add up to prove to her that the imaginary is just, well, imagination.

But I laugh with her, and giggle as she stretches the yellow dog to make him big...I print out her photo-creation for her. I tape it up in her room near her bed to remind her that she is young today, and tomorrow she will be older; perhaps to remind her that she should keep dreaming of peony-flying-horses and that they might, in fact, be real.

Sweet Tasting

At night, I search for something sweet.

I scour my kitchen cupboards, both refrigerators, a freezer, then back to the cupboards for something to quench the sweet craving that has come over me. Sometimes I scoop some ice cream. Other times, I get in the car and drive to the frozen yogurt shop to buy the tasty goodness that is Golden Spoon (to assuage any sugary-guilt). But then I usually feel just as guilty about the four dollars I've just spent on something that is so silly and airated.

Sometimes I try to satisfy it with something healthier like an orange or a bowl of cereal. Even then, my tooth still aches sweet and the only thing that helps is actually going to bed.


I realized this morning that, like my night-cravings, my craving to create is only satisfied by writing. I've lived with a starving heart for so long. And I've tried to feed it with other creative-type ventures whose only remnants remain in boxes in my garage. I have a crocheting and knitting box (I made some decent scarves once upon a time). I have a scrapbooking box (I did a dozen or so pages for Hope when she was a baby). I have a homemade card box (actually, there are two boxes).


It isn't as if I am bad at any of these things. But, I am in love with none of these so none of these has had any longevity in my life. And I've always had a hunger to create; I've just been pointing it in different and wrong directions.


Until I found that I could write again. Until I found my words.


Daily writing has statisfied the sweet-tooth of my creativity. It has been the honey-goodness of ice cream or the luxury of a corner of chocolate. It has kept me full and been the recent metaphor for my life. And I am in love with it.

Blue

One of my little valentines has taken the form of a grumpy two-year-old with a possible ear infection. I love her with everything that is inside me, though. Her blue eyes are so clear and sane. She is solid and true, and drinks life in gulps. She tosses her affection like a ball and anyone who is lucky enough to be close to catch will surely be a recipient. She is beautiful, even in her craziness and runny nose.

Bigger Things

In my heart, I know there are bigger things out there.

Anne is in Uganda. Linda is working on a book. Tiffany lives in the UK.

And me. Here I am. I pretend I am a writer. I feel like I barely function as a mother and wife. I try to keep our budget under control while paying our outrageous mortgage. I dust my shelves and wash my dishes. I go to Target. I live in a protected county in a nice neighborhood. I walk my toddler to the park and my Kindergartener goes to a private school. I buy my milk from Trader Joes. I try to contribute the the larger world by posting to this blog every day. But...

I feel little.

I feel normal.

I feel insignificant.

I am not saving children from starvation in Africa. I haven't been courageous enough to pitch a book idea to a publisher and be accepted. I haven't left every person I have ever known and taken three kids across the Atlantic to live in another country. I am not doing any of these things.

Yet...even as little as I feel tonight, something nags in my soul that I am not meaningless. There are bigger things out there, yes, bigger than my little house in my little world. There are important things, political or moral things, things that history will hang things upon. These things are not here.

But, there are two little-big things upstairs asleep, exhausted from an emotionally trying day. One is two-years-old, resting in her crib, forming new sentences in her dreams. Another is six, and she has fallen asleep before her bedtime, wondering if she will ever be able to control the too-big feelings for her body.

When one of these looks up at me with her little-girl eyes, I know that there are much larger things out there, but I am drawn to the minutiae here at home. I know that the energy I pour into these two little souls will make the big things bigger somehow. I can help launch revolutions and evolutions by mothering two strong and tender someday-women.

These daughters I have been given are my big things.

At least for now.

Six Year Old Grace

I've been under pressure. I admit I need some kind of a break.

Confession: I've been irritable and I've yelled at my kids. I've been frustrated and my stress leaks into my words. I speak to my family and my voice sounds strained. My smile has been slow to appear and my eyes have been tired.

My girls and my husband don't deserve this. Even if my morning IS filled with dumped-out-toy boxes and pilfered Crayola markers (a lost marker is a scary thing when it is a 2-year-old who has made off with it); even if my afternoon is napless and my car is a repository for half-eaten goldfish crackers and cheese sticks; even if my evening must be spent folding laundry so I can actually walk through my bedroom without tripping...even so, my family shouldn't be where I deposit my annoyance.

It really was a day I should have asked for forgiveness from my oldest daughter. I spent the afternoon in a half-yell, it seemed, which was followed by feelings of guilt at my own frustration. Even before I had a chance to ask her to forgive me, that I am a mommy and I should have more self-control than to let the day get the best of me....even before this, she had grace for me. She was the recipient of the bulk of my irritation today and she had the most grace.

Closing in on eight-o-clock, the time when she would go to bed, she asked me to stop running and wanted me to just sit with her. She wanted me just to cuddle. I put down the laundry and the pile of bills I was leafing through, and I stopped.

I wrapped my arms around her, closed my eyes for a few minutes and let the grace of a six-year-old engulf me. And I was thankful.

Jasmine

In Southern California we really don't have a winter. We gently sweep from fall to a colder fall that happens sometime in December, and then by January it is as cold as it will get here. We hover in the 50s and 60s during the day and some nights it will be in the frosty 30s. But we really live in a temperate zone bursting with moderation.

February is usually cool, but sometimes hot. Like yesterday, and what is forecast for today. 80s? Really? In February? We question and balk every year, but many years it can be hot during this month. The year that I had Naomi, I remember the hospital attendant wheeling me out to our car as I carried my newborn and after being inside for about 2 1/2 days, I was suprised to feel almost 90 degree heat on February 9th!

Our summers stretch from about March to October, and the remaining months are usually just less warm with some grey days sprinkled throughout.

I took the girls to a nature center yesterday, and the recent rain had created green blankets of grass over the usual brown. The oak trees seemed fresh and alive, not dreary and hot and tired like they do in the summer. The jasmine hasn't bloomed yet, but the cascading vines were a thousand blossoms ready to open. A few had already bloomed and I stopped for a second to smell the jasmine. The scent was even evident through the closed petals. Hundreds of tiny, pink-white flowers just waiting....

The girls splashed in the water in the yard after we got home. Not because it was so hot they must, but it was so nice that they could.

Summer isn't here, not nearly. It will rain again many times and it will still be chilly in the mornings before we swing fully into spring or summer, but the sun on my skin makes me wish and lets me pretend for an afternoon.

Stolen

This is my Naomi, with the power to look perfectly beautiful even when she isn't looking at me at all.

This is my girl who carries joy like a handbag and wears laughter like a pair of sparkle shoes. She steals my breath, even now.

And I've stolen this shot of her, taken a peek even when she didn't intend her eyes for me. I watch her when she isn't aware...I see her when she plays by herself. And I know her - know her soft arms at my neck and her gentle sighs; know her whines.

She steals me, everyday.

A Day Outside

We emerged from our sick-den on Friday to go to Hope's field trip with her class. It was against my better judgement, but the zoo had been held up all week as something to strive for, it was what we wanted to attain. We tried to get better so she could go.

She was still coughing and was still weak. She nearly slept in the car on the hour-long ride there. A couple times I wondered if I should just turn around and take her home.

Something happened when we saw her friends. A group of little six-year-old girls stood together and when they saw her, their eyes lit up! First one tapped her friend's shoulder and whispered...

Look, Hope's back...

Yeahhh, Hope's here!!

And that is when I saw it on my own daughter's face: joy and acceptance and love from here peers; they were truly happy to see her and bombarded her with bony-armed hugs. She just giggled (then coughed) and smiled and seemed a little embarassed. But I was able to witness the elation in her heart.

We walked for several hours through the zoo, trying to keep pace with the boys (who seemed twice as fast as the little girls who liked to linger at an exhibit).

The zebras, the giraffes, the sea lions and the spider exhibit. We sat down to lunch and Hope bravely took her cough syrup in front of her classmates. She was determined to make it to the end (and that was our deal - that she would take her medicine). She did and she ran ahead with her friends, coughing the whole way.

I carried her almost-too-heavy body for a little while, and I might have carried her even if she wasn't sick.

It was good I took her to the zoo. If her class had not had a field trip planned it would have been another day of resting for her on the sofa in front of another movie. But I took her regardless and second-guessed myself several times. Would this make her worse? Would her fever come back?

But it was the opposite. She still has her cough (as this horrible respiratory ailment has a tendency to stay long after it's welcome has worn), but she was not worse for her field trip; in fact, I think the fresh air and activity did her well. As did her friends. I could see how merely spending time with people who loved her began to heal her heart in a way that another day spent inside could never have.

Grey

The single grey hair I plucked from my own hairline last month was a fluke.

The second one I found last Monday was, I assume, a trend.

I am settling into my mid-thirties a little squishier than last year, with a few more joint pains after my runs and apparently, a greyer head than I had when I was 32. if that is what I must endure, however premature, for a youngish life being well-lived, then so be it.

I knew it was coming. Longevity runs in my family but so does grey/white hair. I kept waiting. For a couple years now I've begged my hair stylist to tell me as soon as she notices anything less than brunette sprouting from my head. I guess I am my own best critic because, of course, I noticed it first. I told her and she just sweetly giggled.

I could have been blonde, like my 30 year old sister, because when she turns 33 or 34, or 35, any pale hair will blend nicely into her light-colored locks. She won't have the lone hair springing at an unatural angle screaming its color against a sea of dark.

But my two grey hairs (now in the garbage) signify more than old age to me. I could fight it (and I will at least with hair color), or I can let age lull me and love me and whisper its wisdom into my ears. I know that with my age has come heartache (learned from) and bad choices (also learned from).

I think that instead of stirring me up with fear, I will let the grey hair (now and again for awhile) remind me that I am earning my age-hair, and that I am leading a well-lived life, hopefully a little wiser than each year before.

Cupcake Party for Three

What do you do when your big sister is too sick to go anywhere on your birthday?

Instead of eating it, you smear a ripe banana all over the carpet and your new dollhouse this morning while watching Curious George. Maybe it was the whole monkey/banana thing, I'm not quite sure.

You play outside in the yard, get really muddy, and steal a warm cupcake before it's frosted. You pull on your mother's sweatpants while she is trying to ice the little cakes and then you run outside again to take one more trip through the mud.

I spread our table with a cupcake party for three. You choose the purple cupcake after lunch and suck the lavender frosting off of the top (because, of course, you've already had your cupcake earlier).

You play bouncy horse on your sister while she is trying to rest and when it is your turn for a nap, you play for an hour in your crib (no doubt stimulated from all the abnormal morning sugar). I get you up and take you downstairs.

I ask you if you are a big girl or a baby. You say, BABY... But, your request for a snack: "fishie, peeees" has turned into a distinct "goldfish, please Mama", and I don't think you are right. You aren't a baby anymore, but a big girl.

Then you settle into an easy afternoon (for you), because after all, it IS your birthday, goldfish in hand and a cupcake-stained mouth. What a perfect day.

Sleeping Cobwebs

"Mother, oh mother, come shake out your cloth!

Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,

Hang out the washing and butter the bread,

Sew on a button and make up a bed.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?

She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking!

"Oh, I've grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue

(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

Dishes are waiting and bills are past due

(Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew

And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo

But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.

Look! Aren't her eyes the most wonderful hue?

(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

"Oh, cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,

But children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust, go to sleep.

I'm rocking my baby. Babies don't keep.

by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

(first appeared, Ladies Home Journal, October 1958 as "Song for a Fifth Child")

You won't let me rock you any longer, but you will let me tuck you in.

You won't let me feed you anymore, but you will let me make your lunch.

You won't let me hold you for long, but you will rest on my lap so I can read you a book.

You are teaching me to laugh more, and worry less. And you are showing me how to dance.

Happy birthday, Naomi. You are my song, my joy and the blissful reason why the cobwebs must sleep.

Measured

In my post-half-marathon haze, I've taken up indoor cycling once again. Running every day and feeling grooved into the need for mileage took a toll on my motivation to exercise at all. So, for the past couple weeks I've been able to take an early morning spin class 2 or 3 times a week. I am up early and am home before my husband must go to work. I still have been running on my days in between and the every-other-day rhythm is perfect for my fatigue level and motivation.

For one hour on Wednesday and Friday at 5:30 in the morning, I take a class. For this hour I stand, I sit, all on a stationary spin bike in a darkish room with about 20 other really tired people. Sometimes we cycle quickly, sometimes it is much slower with a resistance knob turned up to simulate climbing a hill, and sometimes there are speed and tempo drills. But, the hour period is measured in the sequence of songs the instructor decides to play - each song having a different speed, beat or tempo with which we match our cycling.

All songs have a beginning and an ending. Sometimes at the end of a song we slow down and take a short break, sometimes we keep going straight through until the next one, adding or subtracting to the difficulty level on the bike. But each song eventually ends, as does the class itself.

By 6:30 am, I've finished my workout and the class has kept me interested and motivated for the entire hour. Usually.

Sometimes, like this morning, I check the clock between each song and watch the minute hand slowly creep closer to the end of the hour.

5:37...
5:51... (not even half over?)
6:02... (really?)
6:12...

Each song seems like an eternity, sometimes, and each leg-revolution seems more difficult. Sometimes the only thing that gets me to 6:30 is that I know it will evenutally end. It can't go on forever. The time is measured.

At about 6:15 this morning, our instructor told us our last song of the class would last 9 1/2 minutes, and that after that we would cool down. 9 1/2 minutes. I can totally do that. Except, the song he chose was an unbelievably fast, thumping crazy-sounding indescribable tune (that really had no tune at all). At about 5 minutes in, he told us that we'd come half way, that it would be done in about 4 minutes. Four minutes could have been forever at that point as far as I was concerned.

But it ended. As all cycle classes do. And I was done, for today anyway. And I felt good because I worked hard all the way until the end. I didn't climb off my bike early and go home.

With my my daughter being so sick this week, I feel like I am in the middle of a 9 1/2 minute song. I know that this flu will eventually work its way through her body, she will fight the fever without medication, and her smiles will return. I know I won't be stuck in this house forever. I know that she will get better, at least for awhile, until something else strikes our home. Her time being sick is measured and my time being the mother to a sick child is measured also.

All of our time is measured, in fact. We are measured. Our hour will eventually be over, and I guess what matters is how hard we work during the endurance drill, how we accept the long, seemingly unending song. My babies will one day grow up and out and their time with me is measured. The almost-neverending time at home with them will have, in fact, a precise end someday.

My question is this: How will I spend the 9 1/2 minute song? Will I work hard? Will I enjoy the disciplined drill, head-down, sweat-pouring, legs-aching?

I am going to live within today's moments.

Bubble Bath

Thank you, Mama, for taking care of me today. And thank you for my perfect bubble bath...

As far as six-year-olds are concerned, Hope is polite and thoughtful; she learned her "thank-yous" early on. This was one of the first times she has thanked me for something like this.

Like many families lately, the flu has hit our home, first smacking my husband last week right between the eyes. And then, it fell on my oldest daughter last night like a bucket of bricks. Her fever was almost immediately followed by a hideous sounding chest cough during the night.

We were home today, hiding in our semi-permanent living room sheet-and-chair tent watching Mary Poppins and a My Little Pony movie.

My toddler hasn't contracted it yet (crossing-fingers, knocking-on-wood, praying...) and she happily played indoors all day, joyful not to have to be strapped in her carseat for any reason at all.

Hope willfully took the medicine every six hours that kept her fever hovering at about 100. And this evening, when it was time for baths, I filled my own bathtub especially for her, covered her in lavendar bubbles and let her soak without her baby sister clamoring for the toys. She sat, looking so little in my bathtub, feeling important, and letting her arms float on top of the water.

And now, I, mother to this household-kingdom, am exhausted. Its me, I think, who needs the bath.

But after I prayed with her tonight, as I was walking out of her room before I turned out her light, she turned over and thanked me for taking such good care of her and making a wonderful bubble bath for her. She was truly grateful, all six-years of her, and it meant something amazing to me.

It meant that little things I do, folding socks, scouring sinks, administering fever-medicine, these all add up to my girls feeling cared for and loved. She felt sick today, but she knew I was going to take care of her. She even asked me how long I would take care of her. I told her, Forever.

Splintered

Years ago, when I was a little girl, my father would bring home balsa wood toy airplanes. They were a treat in our home, an add-on to a Saturday morning spent at the park with our roller skates or an afternoon diversion while camping.


Until I married my husband, my father never had a son, so the assembly and flying of toy airplanes might have been his gentle foray into the mechanical world he never was able to share with his two daughters (he did teach me about the combustion engine for a "systems" project I did in high school). He'd bring home 3 or 4 airplanes, he'd make them with us and we'd fly them for a single afternoon.


Balsa wood gliders are cheap, unbelievably light and easy to assemble. At least when I was a child, no glue was needed, nor tape. Merely slide the wing and tail section into the body, weight the front and the flyer is ready to take flight. Part of the appeal is that balsa wood cut thin is almost as light as paper; however it is stiffer and holds it form better. Also unlike paper, it can crack and break if it isn't handled gently.


As a little girl, once in a while, I would find a glider in the back of a closet or beneath my bed, long forgotten after a spring morning at the park. The wing or body, no doubt, would be broken. Splintered. Fractured.


Halved, the thin airplane would splinter like wood, not bend or fold like paper. Balsa is flexible, but does break and leaves its jagged edge. It is too disposable to be repaired. One would never spend the time or effort to fix such a inexpensive toy; it is easier to spend another $0.49 at the hobby shop or air museum.


Splintered. Broken. Disposable.


I've been splintered. I've been cracked clear in half, and perhaps considered disposable.


But, I've been put back together - jagged edge fit with matching jagged edge. And mended, perhaps even stronger than before. Like the balsa plane, the breaking was inevitable. But unlike the toy glider, I could be mended, and I was worth mending. I was fixed: the harsh edges and splinters lovingly pieced back together.

SomeOne saw fit to mend a disposable, fractured toy plane, unworthy to fly again, it would seem. But He repaired it even so.

Cold Feet

There is enough rain outside right now for everything to be saturated; our fire-scorched hillsides are drenched and heavy. The mist is gathering on everything, like little ice droplets that have come instead of the rain.

And its almost as cold. My grandmother sent me a snow-laden photo from her yard in Indiana from last month: the white is piled high on the fence posts and the tree limbs. A sunrise or sunset glows on the snow, pink and orange. It doesn't look that cold, with the warm light, but I know it is. It almost seems colder here with my dreary grey sky than the warm-looking Northern Indiana photo.

My toes are cold even through my socks and with the heater in the house blowing out its 70 degree air. My blood must just be thin from living in California; I must not be used to sincerly cold Februarys, like Idaho or Alaska or Novo.

I am working this morning before church on paperwork that has needed attention for a few weeks: bills now due, papers for school to be filled out and turned in, work for our business. It all begs for my attention. I lay out the paperwork in neat little piles on the floor of my bedroom, the door open to the downstairs so I can hear the conversations of my husband and girls. There are a few arguments, but for the most part, there is laughter.

Laughter on a Sunday morning. My feet are cold still, since I crawled out of bed a few hours earlier to the sound of my toddler singing our names, and won't be truly warm again until I shower. But the sounds of the happiness and even the frustration that carries from downstairs, those are enough to warm me, even to my toes.

Monkey Bars

She usually isn't scared by much. But when she is, she freezes and there is horror on her face.

Monkey bars.

We went to a different park today, and on this cold, February morning, we had the playground to ourselves. Naomi ran and ran and sang to herself as she did. Climb, one step, then another, and slowly but confidently up to the highest point, and then down the slide, grasping her drink under one arm like a football.

Hope, however, wanted to tackle the monkey bars. A feat of upper body strength and a rite of passage by young elementary school girls, she's attempted them before, but these were different. They were higher than normal, and the bars themselves were attached by links that made them unstable.

She could have done it. I've seen her scale the normal monkey bars before. She has the strength, she has the experience, but for some reason this morning, she was just scared. I yelled over to her from the other side of the playground that I knew she could do it! She didn't need to be scared; if she needed help I would be there in a minute; if she didn't think she could finish, she could just drop; she'd land on her feet.

She made a worthy attempt. Grabbing the first rung with both hands, she hung for a second then dropped. She climbed back up and did it again. I'm just trying to see how far it is!

But she was still stuck. She couldn't get past the first rung.

I continued following Naomi around the park while Hope tried to work through the fear in her own head. She climbed up, waited, and tried, and waited some more. I yelled over to her again: just swing your body and grab with your other hand....

She couldn't do it. She eventually lost interest and found excitement in tossing her bottle of water down the spiral tube slide. We left the park to go home to eat lunch without her having swung the monkey bars.

I know she will someday, and perhaps someday soon. She'll complete something new that she has had the skills to do but has never truly attempted, never given all of her energy to. She'll surprise herself, but she won't surprise me; I knew she could have done it all along.

After-Dinner Raisins

There is no picture to describe what happened last night after dinner. I will have to use words because the photo, had it been taken, would be too ugly to post. Let's just say it is a good thing my almost-two-year-old daughter can actually pronounce (well) compound words and short sentences.


It is nothing new. I know. This has happened to every family, I'm sure, in a myriad of different scenarios with innumerable items of choice. In our case, it happened to be a raisin.


Just like every mother has a need-to-throw-away-the-carseat anecdote, I now can add one of these to my reperetoire.


My daughter, as she sat after dinner on my husband's lap calmly reading a book, he noticed a strange disturbance in her nose. Her beautiful, unsullied baby nose looked a little distended on one side. She was breathing normally, it would seem, out of her tiny nostril. He asked her anyway, almost jokingly, if there was something in her nose.


As clear as day, she said RAIS-IN, and tried to blow it out of her nose herself.

His eyes wide at me, no words were needed. I took the stairs two at a time to get the tweezers and he tipped her back to see how far in it had gone. Using the mini-LED flashlight on my keychain (the ONLY time I've used it but it turns out I needed it after all), he managed to pull out the now green and wet raisin and place it gently in my hand. Like all good mothers who take their children's spit-out gum in their palm without a thought, I took the slimy thing to the garbage.

WHY children put things in their nose, I'll never know. I do know I won't be giving her anymore raisins until she's 13.