Tag: motherhood

Love, Friendship, Faith

Kate is making her First Communion with four of her good friends. So the moms hired a photographer and on Sunday we dressed them up, took them to a pretty farm and took pictures.

Officially, to mark the importance of the occasion.

But in the far-reaching, planner’s part of my heart, it’s so we have these pictures to show at rehearsal dinners when they are all bridesmaids in each other’s weddings. We do live in a small valley. You never know.

IMG_45681
These three met at our house to get their hair done. By the moms, none of whom qualify as “hair people”. It required wine…

We hired the magnificent and magical Tonya Poitevint, who did our family pictures last Fall. She was amazing, like a mother hen with five snow white chicks following her around. She has such a way of coaxing beautiful smiles.

IMG_4589

We shot at Orchard Home Bed and Breakfast , which has breath-taking grounds and the afternoon light was just…just.

IMG_4574

In the middle of the shoot, it came to me what we were really doing.

We were guiding our girls to the next place. We were doing it together and they were doing it together and Tonya became part of our together. It was this amazing, prayerful feminine energy and it was powerful.

These five beautiful girls, with their arms around each other, laughing in God’s sunshine.

FullSizeRender (2)

And the mothers, who have brought them this far in keeping with the promises we made when they were baptized, but really before that, when they were whispers of hope in our hearts.

As our mothers before us. And before them. And back and back and back.

All of this to say: You are a beloved child of God, and of mine. And it is your province as a woman to wear these things as symbols of who you are and celebrate what is holy and sacred.

This is what it means to be a woman and a mother in our church.

Love, friendship, faith.

received_10209367666649631 (1)
Tonya Poitevint Photography!

 

No Excuse for Relative Pronouns

IMAG0132

I read a post the other day about the North Carolina transgender bathroom bill.

A mom in the comments said she stood in support of the bill because her young girls shouldn’t have to see THAT. And after she took a solid challenge from other readers, she signed off by saying that we are really screwing our kids up and IT is sad.

THAT and IT.

They jump off the page at me. Old habit. All English teachers know what I’m saying here. In the beginning of my career I would write little notes to my students in the margins, encouraging them to be more precise. By the end, I just circled the words, and drew a big question mark. On a poster board in the back of the room was a key to my corrections:

? = WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU SAYING???

When I read her comment, I thought What the heck is she saying? What is THAT and what is IT?

I played it out in my head:

A transgendered woman comes into the women’s room to pee. Regardless of how long she lived as a he, someone taught her that it’s not polite to pee in the sink. So off to a stall she goes.

How does my daughter even know what is happening behind those closed doors?

Or a transgendered man comes into the men’s room. The urinals are not an option—I actually know this from personal experience, it’s a physical impossibility—so off to the stall he goes.

My son would assume one thing: serious business. And he would get out there as soon as possible to avoid the smell.

All good so far.

What WOULD cause an uproar is the reverse of that. There’s a McDonald’s in Redding where the bathrooms are reversed. Usually the women’s room is on the right. THE RIGHT. Annie had to pee and the door needed a token and no, I didn’t look at the sign.

The guy at the urinal sure did shriek like a woman when I rolled in there with my preschooler. Safe to say that he didn’t want to see me any more than I wanted to be there.

In my world, it will be a few more years before my little people notice things that may be seem different to them. I stand firmly by my “Need to Know” style of parenting. I’ll find the words then.

Because I have never once thought how I would explain transgendered to my kids.

There it is.

Maybe this mom who commented was her older self, with kids who are asking questions that need answers. Maybe she’s watching her babies take giant steps towards adulthood and suddenly all  those hard words she was going to find on a far-away tomorrow have to be in her head today.

So she’s freaking out and using relative pronouns.

Sister girl, I can relate to THAT.

But I don’t want to live in a relative pronoun world. And I need to stop punting to my older self because I’m tired now and my older self, the one with teenagers, will be tired and old.

So I’m going to remember that we are people who believe where we stand on the important things in life is not as important as how we stand. We stand in love.

Then I’m going to call my girlfriends and invite them for coffee but really it will be a brainstorming session called “What to tell our kids when”. Together we will buck up and find the hard words because fear is no excuse to use relative pronouns.

But also.

For the love of God, can we build children with hardier hearts? Children who aren’t so fragile that they will need twenty years of therapy at the sight of a woman peeing standing up? Or whose faith in all that is good and holy will not fall to pieces in the face of a man who appears to have boobs? That’s a house of cards built on shifting sands and I am not interested in that.

I want mighty warriors.

If I’m doing my job well, they will see things different from their idea of right and wrong and say “Huh.” Then go about their holy and sacred business of standing in love.

 

 

10 Years

It was a Monday. I was scheduled to work for three more weeks. And my department was having a happy hour baby shower for me. So twenty minutes after the bell rang, I left the piles where they lay, grabbed my things and headed out the door.

I tried really hard to get the waitress to serve me a margarita, but the belly gave me away. “How far along are you?” she asked.

Thirty six weeks, on the button.

I had onion rings for dinner. I laughed with my colleagues about how the room wasn’t painted, the baby clothes weren’t washed, the bag wasn’t packed and we had two more childbirth classes to go.

“Cutting it close” one of the guys said.

“Nah, we have time” Shea told him.

“Are you ready?”

“I was born ready” I said.

Before I left the restaurant, I hit the bathroom. My chones were wet, which was weird because I had not been a leaker up til that point. Last month, I thought to myself.

Except on the way home, I felt some more leak.

So I called my sister in law, who’d had my nephew 9 months previously.

“What does it feel like to lose your mucus plug?”

“Like a glop.”

“Let me go check.” I handed the phone to Shea and went to the bathroom. When I sat down on the toilet, there was a whoosh of liquid and I yelled.

I could hear her yell back at Shea “DID HER WATER JUST BREAK?????”

I went upstairs, sat on the bed and started to think of all the things left undone on my desk.

180 essays. A stack of homework. Lesson plans for the next twelve weeks.

I’m not ready.

When Shea came out of the closet with a duffel bag, he said “Are you going to take a shower?”

No.

“Are you going to change your pants?”

I already took my pants off.

“Are you going to put some new pants on?”

No.

“No???”

No. I’m not ready. I’m not having a baby tonight.

He got my mom on the phone. She called me Jennifer Margaret and told me to get in the car. She said she’d be there as soon as possible.

Right, then.

I toyed with the idea of delivering naturally and made it all the way to 7 cm. That’s when we found out that I am one of those people whose blood pressure bottoms out with anesthesia. I revisited my onion rings. I pushed for three hours before calling it quits. I was occasionally awake.

Gabriel was born by c-section at 7:54 am, 7 lbs even, 21 inches and with a giant bruise around his right eye.  He’d been trying to see his way out.

Yesterday, he turned 10. My preemie boy who struggled to eat for the first month of his life, is now 5’1” tall.

That younger me on the night of March 6, 2006, the one who felt not ready—she was ready and Gabriel’s early arrival was only the first lesson in parenting. All of the medical issues we faced in the two weeks after his birth, the jaundice and the weight loss and the blood tests and the weigh-ins. They were our parent bootcamp.

They taught us that life wasn’t going to look the way we imagined.

Life was going to look the way it was, every single joyful, messy, scary, exciting, daunting, exhausting minute.

And now I know I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Cheers to ten years of parenting.

IMG_20160308_080608

No Drama, Mama

IMG_20131102_182049

 

I was on the receiving end of a shaming attempt last week.

The mama took me unawares because I know I have a big “I don’t care what you think because I’m minding my own business” sign over my head. Well, maybe it says something a little bit different…but either way, other mamas do not usually come at me like this.

My mom could have saved her the time, too. Shame hasn’t worked on me since I’m four.

But she didn’t know. So first there was a long and angry text, thinly veiled as “friendly”.

This mom was upset that we–myself and three other moms–had pulled our kids from a school where we do not support the decision-making anymore. She said that our kids were talking smack about the school–smack they must have heard at home from their parents. In whom she was now “disappointed” and from whom she “expected more”.

I didn’t tell her about my sobbing daughter or how she didn’t sleep much the night before or how we don’t lie to our kids and so yes, my daughter knew the truth of why she was leaving and probably was saying it out loud to process it through and who could blame her.

I don’t know why my decision was causing so much trauma for this woman, but I do know it would have been fruitless to explain or argue.

So I firmly but politely told her it was none of her business and didn’t require her input. And I kept saying that every time she poked.

I didn’t give her what she wanted: a fight. Neither did the other moms, which upset her most of all.

And that’s the part that got me thinking: What’s really going on here?

I wish we would stop taking one of the most sacred jobs on earth and using it to beat others about the head. Or to make ourselves feel seen or heard or important. When we lash out at others in an attempt to look or feel better, we show the world our unhappiness in a way that makes it very hard for anyone to care.

That’s not cool in the sisterhood, where we’re all just trying to hold it together with duct tape and prayer. For reals, mamas. Every single one of us is a dropped shoe away from needing all the help.

So no more shaming. No more drama.

Let’s mind our business and pray for our sisters.

 

 

Tales From the Third Row

 

IMG_20140721_140413

I’ve been doing after school care for my neighbor whose sweet kids go to the same school as Gabe. This means that Tuesday-Wednesday, I have a full car. My mom has always said that she learned everything she needed to know about our lives by driving us around with our friends. I get it now. It has been fascinating and funny. If you follow us on Facebook, you know that last week, they worked together to figure out how old I was in dog years.

The next day, there was a conversation about Minecraft. I was not really listening to it but then I heard this: “It’s not that bad. Not as bad as Slender Man.”

I broke every smooth mom rule by screeching “WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY???”

The children went very still like robots powered down into sleep mode. The rest of the conversation happened under duress, a cross between “You aren’t in trouble” and “You WILL tell me”.

Luckily, their knowledge of Slender Man was playground level. The child who brought it up was throwing around a name he’d heard enough to know it was bad. Probably a little showing off. No way did he expect me to lose my mama cool.

Then another child in the backseat said “Well, if you think that’s bad, you probably don’t want to know how many kids at school play Five Nights With Freddie.”

What in sam hill is THAT? I thought to myself.

Five minutes on my phone told me that it’s a “point and click survival horror video game” where you are the security guard in a pizza joint that becomes over run by murderous animatronic animals at night.

The goal is to survive the night. And then the next one. And so on.

This game is described as a “point and click survival horror video game” where the one thing everyone agrees on is that you will be scared out of your shoes.

I’m all for corrective behavior fairy tales. But this is something else. Now the monsters have come to life with Facebook pages and Twitters.

Awesome.

I sat on my phone on the drive home so that I wouldn’t text my friend in the middle of her meeting. There was no good way to tell her our kids had more than a passing knowledge of survival horror video games, especially one infamous for attempted murder committed by 13 year olds in its name.

But I definitely felt like I was sitting at PARCon 4 all by myself.

I know that the kids have got to walk in the world. And I am confident that we are doing all we can to grow them with strong warrior hearts for Jesus.

But that doesn’t stop me from dreaming of a world where I am in charge and all parents have to do what I say, like pay stricter attention to the games their children play and follow the age limitations and not let 8 years old have phones and emails and Facebook accounts.  Just in case.

The next day it was business as usual in the back seats. My friend’s son has decided to pool all his money and buy donuts for when he and Gabe play their 30 minutes of Minecraft. And not one donut each, either. As many donuts as $20 will buy.

No, he hasn’t run it by his mom. I told him I wasn’t saying no, but he should ask his mom first and then have her come talk to me about it.

Then he wondered if they should get cookies instead, maybe to make it more palatable to the mamas. Or maybe cookies and donuts? Or maybe–

“Hey, what do you call a donut crossed with a cookie?” he asked Gabe.

“A DOOOOOOOKIE!!!!!” Gabe yelled. And the backseats erupted into raucous laughter.

I put my head on the steering wheel and thanked God for the attention spans of 8 and 9 year olds.

#talesfromthethirdrow