Going Back

Today is the very last day of my son’s summer vacation.  On Monday he goes back to school.  Here at home, my life goes back to normal.

In fact, it will take me a week to get things back to normal.  At the top of my “to-do” list is clean the house:  wash down walls, vacuum along the baseboards, dust light fixtures, scrub the grout in the shower, de-grease the hood over the stove.  I’ve actually deliberately been accumulating dirt and mess so that my thorough housecleaning will be even more satisfactory.  For example, somebody left chocolate pudding fingerprints on the bathroom wall this week.  I haven’t washed them off yet.  I’ll do it next week, when everything gets put to rights.

I’ve also begun revolving in my head my next writing project.  All my ideas seem so brilliant, so inspired.  It will take me several days of reviewing old notes and brainstorming through some new ideas to settle down to something.  It will be another week at least before I really get to work.  It will take my son a few weeks to settle back into his routine, too. 

Like the school building that stood empty in June and July, my “normal” life has stood, uninhabited these last months, waiting for me to move back in.  I’m ready to go back.

Summer Spent

There is one week left of summer vacation.  We have accomplished everything on my summer to-do list.  We pushed through the mid-summer slump.  My son still prays, “Thank you, God, for a good day with Mommy” when we gather at the dinner table.  I’m proud of myself.

In these last days, my son and I have fallen into a pleasant lazy idleness.  He watches an hour of Pokémon after my husband and daughter leave for work and preschool, while I might do a little light housework.  (Just a little, very light.  Visitors are encouraged not to look too closely and certainly not to run their fingers along the mantelpiece.)  It’s ten o’clock before we determine what we’ll do that morning, perhaps run an errand or ride our bikes.  Lunchtime is getting later and later—twelve thirty, one o’clock—and after lunch we lounge on the couch and read fantasy novels together for an hour or so.  Eventually we’ll be ready to stretch our limbs, and then we’ll meander out to the yard or maybe as far as the park.

Having used up his enthusiasm for soccer, basketball, Frisbee, swings, and slides, my son has begun making up games of his own.  One day he spent an hour hacking down dandelions with a scythe-shaped stick he found.  Another day he spent thirty minutes diligently gathering crabapples to rain down from the top of the jungle gym like fifteen-second fireworks.  Yesterday we hung a Frisbee from a tree branch so my son could throw balls, pinecones, and small sticks at it.  In boredom is a kind of freedom.  My son is enjoying wandering over the grass, noticing ladybugs and unusual rocks, expressing his energies by throwing, hitting, and destroying in harmless ways.

My son doesn’t need me to hack dandelions with him, so I’ve gotten a lot of my own reading done lately.  I’m just finishing Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native.  I neglected Hardy in college and graduate school; now I’m rectifying that.  The narrative is stately, and very little happens, just like the passing of my own days.

Although I am willing to keep it up, to keep planning little outings and fun activities, my son doesn’t want to be entertained anymore.  His boredom is not restlessness, yet.  He is exploring boredom, probing it, and nurturing within himself the readiness for the next big adventure—second grade.

Our Family Vacation

Friends who are interested can view photos from our recent family vacation at our online photo album.  A family vacation was the last thing to check off my summer to-do list.

Sing, Sing a Song

I spent a lot of time in the car last week listening to my daughter sing.  I don’t usually use the car so much.  In fact, days go by when I don’t use the car at all.  Last week, however, my daughter and I were in and out of the car multiple times every day.  We took my son to day camp on Monday and Tuesday and picked him up again.  (On Wednesday my husband took my daughter to preschool, so she was spared the trip to day camp.)  One day we ran errands—a donation to the thrift store, a quick stop by church, library books into the dropbox, a cup of tea and a blueberry muffin, “a couple of things” at the grocery store.  We were in the car for over an hour that morning.  My daughter sang along with Lisa Loeb’s Camp Lisa.  On Thursday I picked her up early from preschool and brought her back home for lunch, then I drove the kids to their doctor’s appointments.  My daughter bopped along to songs from Sid the Science Kid. On Friday morning we headed up into the mountains for a little family vacation.  My daughter sang through Camp Lisa again.  Then my husband asserted his turn, but later my daughter listened to songs by Elizabeth Mitchell on the iPod.

I love listening to my daughter sing.  She can’t always quite keep up with the music, and she wears such a look of concentration on her face.  I’m amazed at how many songs she knows.

In our cabin overlooking the lake, we were “unplugged”—there was no cd player to slip a cd of lullabies into at bedtime.  I sang my kids to sleep for the first time in years.  I know three songs by heart:  “Amazing Grace,” “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and “The Rainbow Connection” from The Muppet Movie.

I am a good enough singer that I don’t feel like I drag down the church choir.  I sang in the concert choir in high school and was in the show choir, too.  My brother and sister played in the marching band.  My husband, although a great music lover, can’t carry a tune very far, and my son isn’t showing much musical talent, either. Singing is my thing, even if I am only a good enough singer.  I used to wonder if I would be envious of my own kids if they were better than me at the things that I was good at, those things that are part of my sense of identity.  Listening to my daughter sing in the car, I realize with surprise (and relief) that I am not.  If my daughter goes from the back seat to back stage, with a star on her dressing room door, I will be nothing but thrilled.

Perhaps I will take a little credit.

A Beautiful Morning

Yesterday morning when I woke up I found the front door open and my kids’ breakfast missing from the kitchen counter where I’d set it out the night before.  The kids had carried their cereal and sippy cups out to the front step where they were having a picnic breakfast.  I was invited to join them with my fruit and yogurt.  It was lovely to sit there in the cool of the morning, listening to the birds and being quiet with my children.

I was surprised that they had the idea to take their breakfast outside.  I cannot guess what inspired it.  I am pleased, though, that they knew it would be okay.  I never explicitly gave them permission to have a picnic breakfast—why would I have thought of that?—but they reasoned that it did not break any rules, it did not put them in any danger, and it would not have any negative consequences.  That is the kind of decision-making I want to foster in my children. 

 

A blue sky, leaves shimmering in the breeze, children who are learning to think for themselves—it was a beautiful morning.

It's A Boy

My daughter is the type of little girl I was.  She likes babies and dolls and can play with them for hours.  I’ve always felt I have less in common with my son, who is more like his dad.  My son likes puzzles and robots and building with Legos.  This summer, however, I have discovered new affinities with my son—and released the seven-year-old boy inside myself.

I like to climb rocks, to run in the grass, to throw a Frisbee, to shoot hoops.  My son was not much into sports before, but last year’s P.E. class turned him on to basketball and soccer and taught him not to duck when things are flying at his face.  Now he is eager to play games that I enjoy, too.  To my satisfaction, I am just enough faster than him that I can still catch him in tag.  Next summer he’ll get away.

I also enjoy adolescent fantasy adventure novels with dragons and elves and magical quests.  (It’s no wonder I married my geeky comic-book-reading scientist husband.)  My son likes fantasy novels, too.  We read them together.  We’ve read all of Cressida Cowell’s How To Train Your Dragon series, Elmer and the Dragon, Cosmic, about a twelve-year-old boy who travels into space, and Dragon Rider, about a boy who travels with a dragon in search of the Rim of Heaven.  When my son’s a little older I’ll introduce him to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and Harry Potter.  I can’t wait.

Of course six and a half years ago I didn’t care if my baby was a boy or girl, as long as it had ten fingers and ten toes.  Now I am glad that I have a son who can be a little boy with me.

Summertime Black-and-Blues

I bear the marks of motherhood—not stretch marks or gray hairs but black-and-blue shins, scratched ankles, and a farmer’s tan.  Motherhood is taking its toll.

New Shoes

This week I bought myself a new pair of sandals.  I’d wanted to replace my old grungy brown sandals since the beginning of the summer, but I never had an hour to myself to run into the shoe store.  I didn’t miraculously get an hour to myself this week, either; I finally just dragged my son along to the shoe store with me.  We had a deal, that after I finished shopping we would go to the play land there at the mall.  Bribery has its limits, of course, and he couldn’t be a patient good boy forever.  I had to work fast.  That diminishes the pleasure of shopping, but at least I got it done—and we had fun at the play land.

The sandals I bought are impractical for a stay-at-home mom.  They are open-toed with crisscrossing straps, which immediately get filled with sand or rocks at the park, and they are leather, not ideal for wading across a creek.  They’re so cute.  So far this week I have managed to devise outings on which I can wear them, such as playing at the playground that has a rubber surface rather than sand or pea gravel and going for a walk to the grocery store for “a few things.” 

 

Today, however, I am wearing my closed-toed, durable-soled, water-proof adventure sandals.  Parenting is a compromise.

Rain, Rain...

Ten minutes ago I was standing in my kitchen packing an elaborate picnic dinner (grilled chicken breast with roasted red pepper, spinach leaves, and goat cheese on toasted Italian bread; broccoli salad; blueberry buckle for dessert) while rain fell outside and thunder rumbled, jeering me.  It’s not unlikely that the storm will pass before dinnertime.  But if this picnic is rained out, it will be the second picnic we’ve eaten at our dining room table this week.  When should I just give up?

Halfway, Part II

On the first Saturday of every month my husband has a “free day.”  In the winter he goes skiing on black diamond slopes, and in the summer he takes sixty-mile bike rides.  These are not activities that the family can do together.  I occupy the kids for the day, and in exchange my husband gives me the evening off.  The family usually goes out to dinner so I don’t have to cook, and my husband puts the kids to bed.

At least that’s the deal.  In truth, however, I often end up putting the kids to bed.  This isn’t because my husband reneges on his offer.  Sometimes I just feel like it’s easier for me to do it.  If we’ve been out to dinner, it’s probably late.  The kids need to get right to bed, and I’m faster at marshaling them through their bedtime jobs.  Even though I’ve been alone with them all day, doing all the work of parenting myself, I can manage another half-hour of child care.  I can do it.

Looking over the remaining weeks of summer vacation, I think, I can do it.  If I am feeling brain dead because I am not working (writing), if I am getting tired of having fun, if I am longing for a few hours to myself, I know that I can bear up and plow through a few more weeks.  I can do it.  I can pack picnics, arrange an outing to the reservoir, ride bikes, and kick the soccer ball until school starts again and my days are mine. 

 

Fortunately, I like being with my son.  He is good company.  He doesn’t drive me crazy or irritate me or bore me.  I’ll try to be good company for him for another month.  I know he’s anxious for school to start, too.

Halfway

We are halfway through summer vacation.  To be precise, thirty days have passed since my son’s last day of school (not including weekends), and there remain twenty-five days to fill until school resumes.  I don’t count the weekends because he wouldn’t go to school on the weekends anyway.

There are two weeks left of the library’s summer reading program.  I don’t know why it doesn’t continue until the start of the school year.  I suppose we can still go the library on Thursday afternoons even after summer reading is over.

My son is registered for one more week of summer camp.  Also, we have plans to spend a long weekend in the mountains on a short family vacation, so there’s that. 

We have not been swimming at the reservoir yet, nor downtown to play in the fountain and eat ice cream from the vendor’s cart.  I’m disappointed in myself for letting so much time pass, and now I’ve lost my enthusiasm.

My son and I haven’t been on a bike ride in a while.  We haven’t kicked the soccer ball around in a while, either.  We haven’t played any of our new games lately.  We’ve finished all the books we got at the school’s end-of-the-year give-away.

We did go on a picnic once.  We went on a nature walk with our wildflower field guide, too—but I only remember one of the flowers we identified.

Despite all my plans, it’s becoming a slog.

It’s time to dig deep.  I’m planning a hike and a picnic supper this weekend (cold fried chicken, potato salad with blue cheese and crumbled bacon, crudités, fresh berry salad, brownies), and I’ve promised to take the children swimming on Monday (weather permitting).  My son wants to go to the farm the weekend after that, and we’ve rented Mary Poppins from the library for a family movie night.  I won’t give up on having fun.

Last night at dinner my son prayed, “Thank you for the good day I had with Mommy.”  So there’s that.

Into the Kitchen

When we are away from home I think I enjoy letting other people cook for me, but as soon as we get home the first thing I do is make a grocery list.  I can’t wait to cook for myself and my family again, to make meals of my choice and to experience the pleasure of chopping vegetables, measuring ingredients, seasoning to taste, and turning out a dish exactly as I imagined it.  This week I’m going to make pasta primavera with julienned carrots, pea pods, and broccoli, garnished with shaved parmesan cheese and cashews; chicken marsala with green beans amandine and hot rolls; and salt-and-pepper shrimp with stir-fried spring vegetables (asparagus, snow peas, and leek) and sticky rice.  It’s great to be home.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Here are some things I like about visiting my parents (besides seeing my parents):

It is very dark at night.  There are no street lights outside our bedroom window; no cars pass.  It is blissful.

There is a two hour time difference between my parents’ time zone and ours at home, and my parents have a satellite dish.  This means that I can stay up “late” without getting too tired and watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report with my husband.

 I have not gained as much weight since high school as the classmates I bump into.

At breakfast I can watch the horses gambol in the pasture beyond my parents’ back fence.

My pixie haircut seems unconventional and daring.

My kids are so happy to be here.

Thoughts

We are visiting my parents.  In their basement I found a box of old papers I’d written in college and graduate school.  I remembered several of them; I still think those things about those books.  Maybe my thinking has not matured at all, but I believe that they were just good thoughts. 

The distance between those papers and my reading and thinking today seems very short, shorter than my experienced life.  Those papers seem less long ago than marrying my husband, moving west, having my babies.  Each of those life events is fixed in time.  Thinking, on the other hand, is always instantaneous, at this very moment in time.  Although each paper was dated, the ideas are not past.  They are still immediate because they are still in my head.  My thinking about new things incorporates those ideas, too.  Every moment contains every thought I’ve ever had, even ideas I’ve discarded and opinions I’ve changed.  I felt that those old papers are not part of my past, they are part of my present.  It was a relief to feel that I am still a thinking person, even though I am not doing hard core literary analysis anymore.

I threw the papers away.  I’m not interested in rereading them; I’m not going to reuse them.  The only thing that matters about them is that I started thinking once and haven’t stopped.

The Contents of My Fridge

In my refrigerator is a box of baking soda, a jar of green olives, a bottle of salad dressing, hot fudge sauce, eleven eggs, and a lovely broccoli salad with red onions, raisins, sunflower seeds, and crumbled bacon.  My son helped me make the salad with the last of the vegetables in my crisper.  I’ll serve it for lunch today.  Then we’re leaving town.

What I Learned From My Son

When my son was two, he was totally into dinosaurs and construction trucks.  They enthralled him.  Already the nerd that he promises to be, he wasn’t content to identify a few familiar specimens.  Dump trucks and stegosauruses did not satisfy him.  No, he wanted to learn the names of every type of construction truck and every species of dinosaur that ever existed.  He likes information, and he likes to be precise.  We got books, and I learned more about construction trucks and dinosaurs than I ever wanted to know.  We borrowed a dvd from the library called “Twenty Trucks.”  The theme song asked, “Can you name twenty trucks?  Well, I think you can.”  My son and I could.

Now dinosaurs and construction trucks have lost their fascination.  My son has mastered them.  His latest obsession is Pokémon.

The allure of Pokémon is both the fantastic creatures and the categorizing of them. There are different types, each with different powers.  They can gain new powers in battle, and they can use their powers in unexpected ways.  They can evolve into different forms, depending on various factors.  And there is always a new one to learn.  At lunch yesterday my son regaled me with hypotheses about the outcomes of possible match-ups and his explanations of the different types.  I was asked to weigh in on the likelihood of one Pokémon beating another.  I have to keep up.

I admit that I am proud of my knowledge of construction trucks and dinosaurs.  Occasionally I get to show it off, at the science museum or in the sand box.  I’m not sure who I can impress with my knowledge of Pokémon, but maybe someday I’ll dazzle seven-year-olds at a birthday party.  Being a mom has taught me more than I ever thought I would know. 

Dressing the Part

A stay-at-home mom has to dress the part.  Here is my stay-at-home mom costume.

• Wide-brimmed sun hat—ideal for picnics, playing at the park, hikes, and the beach
• Gray cotton t-shirt—breathable on long bike rides, loose fit for climbing trees, doesn’t show dirt
• Skirt—wrinkle-free, dries quickly, hidden key pocket
• Sandals—closed toes keep out rocks and sand, water-proof, heavy-duty soles for long walks

 A mom has to be prepared for anything!

Feeling Sentimental

On Wednesday we got a wedding invitation in the mail.  We don’t get many of those anymore.  Old friends who were single when we met them have pretty much married off by now, and most of the new people we meet are the parents of our children’s friends.  We met our soon-to-be-married friends at church; they are in our Bible study group.  It’s nice that they invited us to the ceremony.

Unfortunately, the wedding is in North Carolina, and we won’t be able to make the trip.  I wish we could.  It would mean a lot to me to be there.  I am so happy for our friends and so much believe in their future together.  I realize (rather shame-facedly) that I am getting sentimental about two young people starting out their life together.  Maybe I’m getting old.

Certainly when I was younger I didn’t realize what marriage meant.  My husband and I got married anyway, in faith and love.  Almost fourteen years later, I know what marriage holds for our friends—the blessings and the challenges, the compromises and the sacrifices, the joys.  

I bumped into them at church one evening this spring, coming out from a pre-marital counseling session with our pastor.  My husband and I had pre-marital counseling, too.  It was hard to feel that our pastor’s advice applied to us, when we hadn’t faced those conflicts and disappointments yet.  Now we have.  I know they are also in store for our friends.

It isn’t the hardships that I have in mind, though, when I think about their upcoming marriage.  I have no advice to offer nor warnings to give.  I am just so glad to think that their lives will be happier, more blessed, more wonderful because they are living them together.  This is what I know now, after fourteen years of marriage.  How sentimental weddings will make me when I really am old.   

Make New Friends

Yesterday I dropped my son off for his first day of day camp.  He signed up for “Junkyard Robots.”  My son is naturally shy, and I knew that a roomful of unfamiliar kids was a daunting prospect.  Nevertheless, he never hinted that he didn’t want to go.  He packed his backpack (with a snack, water, and a Philips screwdriver) and put on his shoes without any hesitation.  His eyes turned red when I hugged him good-bye, but he didn’t actually cry.  At the end of the day he reported, “It was good.”

He is learning how to make new friends.  Last week at the park another boy sidled up to him and fell in with his project of digging the deepest hole he could.  The pit evolved into a fort built from sticks the boys carried up from the creek.  When we moms finally decided it was time to go, the other boy asked us to meet him at the park again this week.  My son is eager to keep the appointment.  I don’t know if the other boy’s mom will agree or remember, but we’ll be there, just in case.

I am proud of my son for overcoming his shyness.  I foresee that soon I will have to overcome mine.  Once my son makes friends at day camp or at school, he will want to have play dates, sleep overs, “Can Tanner come with us to get pizza?”  I don’t mind dropping him off at day camp or keeping a casual rendezvous at the park, but I am terrified of calling other moms on the phone.

Of course I want my son to grow up having faithful and stalwart friends.  Nevertheless, a part of me preferred the days when he just wanted his grandma and grandpa at his birthday party.

Actually, though, my daughter has already led me into the fray of birthday parties, tea parties (with lemonade), and a proposed outing to a farm.  It began with impersonal e-vites, standing around on the fringes at Gymboree, and then another mom’s suggestion that we make a play date for our kids.  We coordinate by email, which I find much less intimidating than the telephone, and, to my surprise, I am making new friends.

I just have to pack my backpack and put on my shoes and be brave.

Sunday Morning Cold

On Sunday mornings when my brother and I were kids, we would wake up early and go down to the basement to play.  My dad had built me a huge Barbie doll house and my brother a Matchbox car city with roadways and little buildings.  Never mind that Barbie dolls and Matchbox cars are on two different scales; my Barbies and his cars were neighbors.  We played and played until my dad called us upstairs for waffles. 

Now my kids are up early on Sunday mornings.  We don’t have a basement for them to play in, but they drag their Fisher Price Imaginext robots and their Polly Pocket dolls out to the living room and convert the furniture into a landscape.  Their toys are more correctly proportioned to play together, except for the 11” Tinker Bell doll who looms over them all.

I am beginning to wonder how long their friendship will last.  Their interests are diverging.  For now futuristic robots and fashion plates can co-exist, but already I see them playing in parallel rather than together, reverting to the parallel play of toddlers who haven’t learned to interact with others.  It will be sad if my kids forget how to interact with each other.

After Barbies and Matchbox cars, my brother and I stopped having much in common.  In high school he was in the band; I was in the choir.  He played football; I was on the speech team.  We went to the same college, where he joined a fraternity and I served as a chapel deacon.  My mother used to worry that we wouldn’t have any reason to get together after she and my dad are gone.  Now I understand.

Please, Please, Ask Me For My Advice

I have plenty of parenting advice to offer.  For example, I think kids should make their own choices whenever possible.  This minimizes battles of will and teaches children to make decisions.  Also, kids should face the consequences of their actions.  Parents should not swoop in to change the outcome, otherwise kids will become adults who think that someone else will solve their problems for them.  Parents need to set limits and enforce them.  Parents should not (usually) give in.

Mostly I discuss my philosophy of parenting with my mom, who completely agrees with me and consistently commends me and my husband for the great job we’re doing.  That’s very satisfying.

But, oh, how I wish someone who really needed my advice would ask for it!  There’s so much hard-earned wisdom I have to share.  It pains me to see another mother struggling or stressed out.  It saddens me to see a child deprived of an opportunity to choose, to try something new, to fail, to learn, to grow in independence and self-confidence.

Alas, I have discovered that it is impossible to offer advice until it is sought, and then other parents do not ask the right questions.  Last night a friend asked me when we started letting our children eat sweets (as my children shoveled down ice cream, while she passed for her son).  That was not the question I wished she would ask.  That is not the advice I wanted to give her.

I bit my tongue and ate my dessert.

I’d Rather Sacrifice a Goat

Yesterday after church, our family drove up to Estes Park to spend the afternoon.  We ate ice cream, browsed through a few interesting shops, and played on the playground.  I bought a banded onyx bowl that I’ve admired for years.  My daughter missed her nap, but she was still cheerful and pleasant.  We had a very nice day.

That is why nothing is coming out right today.  The kids were up before 6 a.m.  By 7:00, when I returned from my morning walk, they had completely disordered the piles of clothes (hand-me-downed to us by a friend) that I’d stayed up late sorting.  It was 8:00—I’d been up for two hours—before I finally had my breakfast. 

 

We had plans to go shopping this morning and eat lunch at McDonald’s.  Inevitably we were done with our errands well before lunchtime.  I couldn’t go back on my promise to take them to lunch, though, and I thought of taking them to the park to fill the time.  Naturally I hadn’t brought any sunscreen or sunhats or bottles of water with us, so we dashed home.  I hate zigzagging across town, burning gas and spewing pollutants.

Anyway, they had fun at the park, and we went to McDonald’s for lunch as promised.  The toys were a disappointment—actions figures from the movie Kung Fu Panda 2, which my kids will never see.  When we got home, I smashed my daughter’s fingers in the car door.

This afternoon the kids ran through the sprinkler, fulfilling the other promise I made to them today, although of course it was not hot and sunny like it was this morning but was instead overcast and humid and not really good weather for playing in the water.

Hera is demanding her due.

Ice in My Veins (For Kat)

A friend tells this story about me:  One Sunday morning I was serving in church as the liturgist.  As I stepped up to the pulpit to read the Scripture lesson, a baby began to cry loudly from the nursery.  It was my daughter.  Everyone in the congregation knew it was my daughter; she was the only baby in the building.  From the pulpit I could see the mothers’ and grandmothers’ immediate concern, their hands flutter to their hearts.  Without hesitating or even glancing toward the side door, I proceeded with the reading.  My friend concludes that I have ice in my veins.

My friend doesn’t mean that I am heartless or indifferent to my daughter’s unhappiness.  I think she means that I am not easily upset.  In that particular instance, I knew two things:  first, that my daughter was in the care of a trustworthy nursery attendant so that I didn’t need to rush to her and two, that she was not hurt.  It was an angry cry, the kind of outburst from which babies quickly recover.  Nevertheless, I prefer a different image than ice in my veins.  I like to imagine peace flowing through my veins like a river.

Ice is hard, and, to extend the imagery, an icy landscape is barren and unwelcoming.  A flowing river suggests a pleasant meadow or woods; the river offers refreshment and invites rest.  (Just this morning I read The Lost Seal by our friend Diane McKnight to my kids.  Diane is a limnologist who studies rivers on Antarctica; she would probably imagine ice and rivers somewhat differently.)

As a parent, I do not want to have to harden my heart for battles of will, to tough out irritations or frustrations.  I want to disengage from conflicts.  (You don’t want to wear your coat in forty degree weather?  That’s okay.  You’ll live with the consequences.)  I want to rise above irritation and frustration, or drift through it.  Do I always succeed?  No.  But I try to visualize peace flowing through me, and that helps.  That’s what I wish I’d had time to say to Kat.

A Lament

When my son was born, I had no sense of sacrificing anything to stay at home with him.  We had just moved across the country; I had already given up my job, said good-bye to our friends, relinquished my responsibilities.  Whatever challenges I faced being a stay-at-home mom, missing the rest of my life wasn’t one of them.

Slowly, as my son got older, I begin to reassemble a life for myself apart from my son.  I joined the church choir.  My husband volunteered me to serve as the editor of the church newsletter, and I agreed.   I wrote and co-directed the children’s Christmas pageant.  (My son, not quite walking, was dressed as a sheep.)  After my daughter was born, I also began writing.  Writing has become so important to me, so much a part of my life, that my very understanding husband even agreed to enroll my daughter in an extra day of daycare last fall so that I had more time to work.

Writing takes a lot of time and solitude, which I do not have this summer while my son is out of school.  For the first time I feel like I am sacrificing something to be home with him.  I miss that other part of my life while I’m being a full-time mom.  (Blogging is a consolation, but it’s not the same.) 

Anyway, I’ve made up my mind to enjoy summer vacation with my kids.  We’ll make lemonade.