Last week, I watched my 9 year old swim out to an anchored platform on a lake, climb up the mossy ladder and jump off again. By herself. Two days later, I took this picture. It was 9:30 pm and the water was pitch black, but their feet did not falter. They flew off the end of that dock like there wasn’t a giant lake monster lurking just below the surface. Then they taunted the monster by swimming out another 50 feet and diving down to see how deep it was. Their laughter echoed across the lake.
These kids. They’re not scared of monsters. They’re going to be alright.
Which is why I am going back to work.
You can imagine the amount of prayer that has gone into this. Staying home with my kids has been the greatest gift of my marriage. I feel so blessed and grateful to my husband for making these 5 years happen.
But I always knew this was a season. My babies aren’t babies anymore. They jump off docks into dark water with complete confidence. We’ve given them a solid foundation of me. Now they need to learn about we. How a family is a team and works together to get things done. How this mama is more than laundry and dishes and coffee dates. I have loved that life. I have seen the bounty and goodness of that life.
But it’s time to move on. Jump into the dark waters. Dive down and see how deep it is.
She died on Mother’s Day, with her son by her side. It was sudden and shocking and we are bereft.
I feel like a rat trapped in a maze. Life needs to be lived, so I get up in the mornings and I live it on that very specific plane of existence where laundry gets done and kids get picked up and dinner gets cooked. But then I’ll turn a corner and bam. I hit the wall of her absence. And it hurts.
Two days ago, it was when Annie got her haircut and I started to send the picture to Sue, who is her godmother.
Today, it was five seconds ago when I typed that sentence and used the word “is”.
I remember this from when my grandparents died in the car accident. Hitting the wall of grief. I know that as time passes, the walls get padded, and hurt less. And that one day, they won’t hurt when I hit them. They’ll send a cascade of love and gratitude over my heart, that I knew her and loved her and was loved by her.
But not yet.
The walk through grief is just like any other journey. No way out but through. And something else: the amount of pain in the hole she left in my heart is directly proportional to the amount of light she was in our lives, and will be again, once we get past this part.
In the meantime, we do the sacred work of sorrowing.
If you don’t get in the pool, you can’t hurl your one year old across the pool. But look at her face!
Yesterday I spent four hours at the official opening of the neighborhood pool, which we joined for the summer. There were at least 200 people at this party.
You know how many moms got in the pool over the course of four hours?
Six.
At one point I counted the number of moms wearing suits: 15. Every other mom in the joint was wearing regular clothes, huddled up with a friend or hunched over a phone while their children frolicked with dad. Or alone.
This was not a weather issue. It was gorgeous. A high of 81. I spent the whole time in the sun with SPF 50 and hardly got any color.
No, I’d bet my bathing suit top–a significant bet, trust me–that it’s more of a bathing suit problem.
And ladies, let me be clear. I HEAR that. Me and bathing suits go way back and not in a friendly way.
But that will not stop me from getting in the water, for three reasons.
1. I’m a So Cal girl and I love the water more than I don’t like the way I look in a swimsuit.
2. I gave birth to three children who are half fish.
3. Two of them are girls and I would rather poke my eyes out with my big toe than make them feel that only women who look the “right” way or wear the “right” size deserve to be seen in a swimsuit.
Sometimes, I can can rock the suit out of the gate. And other times, like today, I take a deep breath and fake it til I make it. Today that moment was when another mom leaned over and said “I am so glad that you swim. So many moms don’t swim.”
I mean, they may have been looking at me when I was screaming, laughing, splashing with my kids. Or doing the Chicken Dance on the pool deck—that’s because I do a mean Chicken Dance.
But they aren’t looking at us like that, like “Who does she think she is walking that fat a** all over this pool?”
Not the nice ones anyway, and who gives a flying fig what the mean ones think?
Your children will love it. When you get your hair wet, and do cannonballs and partner up for the water balloon toss. You’ll be that mom, the fun one. And if you think they won’t remember, they do. I do.
My mom got in the water with us and played hard. You ain’t seen nothing in this world until you have seen your mom come down a water slide head first and shoot through the inner tube hooked on the end.
I can’t tell you what she was wearing or how she looked in it.
But I can see the grin on her face and hear her scream as she hit the water. WHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
So what if this summer, we made a pact to do it differently? And what if I could promise you that all of the following are true:
We went to Lake Tahoe for Easter. We stayed with cousins. We went to the sno-park and had a seafood dinner and there was ice cream and swimming and prime rib and an Easter egg hunt.
And then on Sunday afternoon, when I wanted to hit the shops before dinner, one of my lovelies threw a fit: I don’t want to go shopping. That’s not fun for me. Can I stay home?
Sometimes, when we do stuff, I see my kids grow and learn and I think “This was worth it.”
But sometimes I think “We give them too much for nothing.”
I’ve talked about this before—my worry that the life we give them because we are older parents with more working years and discretionary income under our belts comes with a cost.
My kids have travelled a lot. Shea and I like to travel and make it a priority. But there are moments where I see that the children have come to expect certain things.
At 4 am that troubles me.
In the middle of a condo in Lake Tahoe on Sunday, my head exploded.
That’s not fun for me.
I think teaching our kids gratitude may be the hardest of all parenting lessons. It’s so big and goes on for so long. First, say please. Then thank you. Wait your turn. Share. Be a good listener. Let others go first.
Those are the easy ones.
The older kids get, the more conceptual gratitude becomes. It’s not enough to say please and thank you. Some of the rudest pre-teens I know always remember to say please and thank you.
So here’s what I said: “Life is not all about you. It is not about what’s fun for you. It’s not about you at all. It will never be about you, not ever, ever in your whole life. Unless you are the Grinch and live in a cave with your dog. Even then, you will have to think about the dog. But if you want a family, friends, a job and general happiness, then life will never, ever, ever be just about you. EVER.”
It was a moment. Such a moment that I thought maybe I had cut off too big a slice of truth for their ears. I retreated to my spiritual mom guilt cave and thought about it. For like, 20 seconds, because mom guilt is not my thing and the cave is small.
For five of those seconds my mom ego yelled But these kids ARE special and there should be whole years dedicated to their specialness and one day if we just love them and protect them and write their college entrance essays, they are going to RULE THE WORLD!
I shut her up fast because that is the wrong thing. Jesus wrong, kindness wrong, other people matter wrong. Wrong.
Teaching them that they belong to and are responsible for each other? That’s right. It’s not too early either, because the secular world is selling a different message and selling it loudly. We have to start today so by tomorrow they will realize how connected they are to others and that decisions have rippling consequences and those ripples can be positive and turn into waves and help them CHANGE THE WORLD.
Much better.
In the immortal words of my dad, Papa T—parenting is a marathon, not a sprint. Which means start early AND stay the course. We can’t stop at please and thank you and think we’ve done our job.
Some people may have seen a giant oak staircase coming down out of the ceiling and thought “That is a really big staircase in the middle of the room.” In fact, Shea was some people. He said “That is a really big staircase in the middle of the room. What do you do with that?”
Same with the wood walls and all the millwork around the doors and windows. The 5 foot wide gold trimmed mirrored closet doors. And the beast of a red brick fireplace.
What do you do with that? You call some people.
I found Bethany and her husband David. They are the owner-operators of Reclaimed Cottage, a business they grew up in Beaumont, Ca—which is close to where we used to live—before it moved up here to the Rogue Valley last Fall. Bethany refinished the kitchen of my friend Michelle and came with glowing recommendations so before we even offered on this home I sent her a Facebook message with pictures of the house that said “Do you see all this wood? I know we can do big things with all this wood. Are you in?”
And she said “YES!”.
And then I said “My name is Jen and I am a friend of Michelle’s”. She just rolled with it, which is how I knew for sure that she and I were going to do big things with all this wood.
I said “I want to white wash the brick fireplace.” She said “Yes.”
I said “I want to paint and distress the wood behind the fireplace so that it looks beachy-cottage-y.” And she said “Yes.”
I said “I want to paint these stairs white, except for the steps, which I want to stain the color of the new laminate.” And she said “Stain is a thing. Takes days and smells up the house. What if we brown wash the stairs with paint?” And I said “Yes!”
We chose wall paint colors—Refuge, Meditative and Sleepy Blue from Sherwin Williams. They’re all shades of blue. It’s now my signature color.Call me Shelby.
We decided on matte white for the bedroom wood wall. When you paint stained wood white, you discover all kinds of holes and imperfections that blended in before. David offered to fill them, but I liked the character so we left it.
I think the stairs turned out amazing and I can’t wait to decorate for the holidays.
We have miles—of doors—to go before we sleep in a finished home. New interior doors. A new garage door, which was unanticipated. And I think new front doors. The old ones are in fine and refinishable shape, but there’s these eagles on them.
If I paint them red or black, is that too “Make America Great Again”? Or do they just have to go?
Thoughts?
Stay tuned for the next installment of Reclaimed 1980s Modern Ranch House: “Mom, where’s the milk?!” and other challenges of small kitchen storage.
Full Of Graces 