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.