kids at play

close your eyes fall into pleasant recklessness.  feel the sting of every scrutiny, the tick of every clock, and the weight of every bill lift away....
laughing at the ridiculous seriousness of it all.

picture freedom...
feel the caress of a clean breeze and get caught away in it, only to crash down, feet catching random divots of earth, running wildly with no goal, no intention, eyes closed and head thrown back...happiness welling up, ready to overflow into every sweet, warm crevice of your being.

that is play.


children are children because they have little accounting.  they are boundless and grow loose and wild in a world they constantly redefine.

anything can be anything.
anyone can be anyone.
they revel in their defiance of what is, and they take liberties and create, and make light and life and dreams wherever and whenever they please.  it's a power they have, and they own it because they take care to believe it.

i envy their ability to leave the world behind.
i envy their oblivion.
i envy their belief in what is "real."

they live light and untethered.
they don't fret for food.
they don't scrutinize their possessions.
they don't fear for the future.
they don't know the power or oppression of a dollar...
for if they did...
they would not be children at all, they would be victims, robbed of the essence of innocent youth.


 "play," (verb) to amuse or entertain; to take part in a game."

my kids are geniuses at play, rambling around in a loose reality that often blurs and folds into the actual substance of life.  red-faced and breathless, they crash upon me, excited and high on their exertion.

***

"love" must, undoubtedly, be the first "high" in life....making "play"  second.  ("accomplishment," perhaps, the third...)

***

and what becomes of us, 20, even 30 years later?  we take what personal time is left to ourselves, even our family to "veg,"  and we sit, glazed over, with sofa and screen, and a stranger is paid handsomely to entertain us with sport (play) or an act (a play).  and, so, this begs the question:  what happened to our own "play"?

"play," (noun) the performance of a story on the stage."

life has often been compared to a stage.
so...what's the title of my play?
"The Mom-Jeans Chronicles"  "Chaos in the Midwest"  "Doldrums and Dollhouses"
where is my plot going?
are the motions of my life pulling and tugging my limp marionette body beyond my control? 
would i rewrite any of the scenes?
thankfully, i am the playwright.

I hold the script and must decide...
is there room for a little whimsy?  more imagination?  more laughter from the belly over nothing important, but everything that matters?  at times, the "scenes" unfolding have become rote and dull, and it's time to release our white-knuckled grip on the tedious and expected duties that have done nothing but turn us into stiff, ashen, dry, respectable, clean, predictable, fresh-smelling, upstanding, sunscreen-wearing, boring "grown ups," and find that hazy place where reality and fantasy blur...where our children are waiting for us...
and
play.

Summer

Summer...
The word hisses with heat,
rumbles from the mouth,
lingers on the lips.




Summer is light.  Eager, brilliant light stretching higher and higher still, proud and formidable, fingering through trees, beads of crystal cascading around silhouettes.  



Summer is life.  Life growing so wild it must be tamed.. rich and thick and dense, thriving, but challenged by inevitable heat and thirst.








Summer is sound...buzzing, humming, cooing, chirping, splashing, echoing from the outside in, beyond dusk and into the rich, thick darkness.



Summer is red-headed and runs wild, inexhaustibly, through thick, woolen days that ramble on endlessly. She is young and dangerous and free, and her freedom is intoxicating.  She is inspired and propels untamed toward unknown beauty and dances to the music of the sounds that fill the honey warm air.

Summer belongs to children.

And, while the sun bronzes and bakes their skin, glistening with sport and play, they hum and swarm, and the wild crawls inside and runs deep into their veins, and they pulse with the fire and the light, and their laughter soaks into the hearts of mothers and fathers who only sigh...sigh because they know how quickly the flame of summer is burnt, and the brilliant, sparkling light is soon to fade away.

the bees knees

Bees are, in fact, busy.  They are motion.
The "buzz" an audible metaphor of industriousness.
In a honey bee colony, all the worker bees are female.  Hmmm....
Makes you wonder...
or does it?

 I often wonder what my neighbors must think when they see the minivan swing into our driveway for four and a half minutes, only to whip out onto the street again, squealing away toward the next destination.


Moms buzz a great deal of their days away.
Most days become a blur, a blinding repetition of weekdays and weekends that rush to conclusion so quickly, and I wonder where it all went and what was even done.


Now, deep into summer, what does a busy mom do when children thirst for perpetual activity? 

All wired with ADD and hopped-up on multiple "G's" streaming and "fi-s" "wi-ing," we don't handle silence well as a society.  The multi-tasking capabilities of mothers have snowballed toward a multi-tasking of multiple tasks, and we become restless without the stroking of perpetual accomplishment or achieving a life-long goal on a daily basis.  Life expectancy is the longest in history, and we have only managed to feel claustrophobic with free time and suffocate without "something to do."

Our children will fare far worse, I'm afraid...

With "much to do" on one side, and "boredom" on the other, I feel I'm on a teeter-totter of  summer obligation.  I experienced actual panic the last day of school, becoming ever aware of the concierge service I was to provide for these children anxious for a summer to remember.

As I bead with sweat to accomplish and serve, I cast a gaze on the bodies draped on the sofa.  Such taunt skin, glowing in youth, nary a callous to mar the buttery velvet...  Muscles sculpted for bursts of play....  And, the energy we covet as middle-aged adults, energy conserved for the indulgence of pure recreation.... 
I blink hard against the 3:00 lull.  I fight the longing to close these tired eyes, while the kids lick their chops for me to entertain.
Am I breeding a colony of drones, bumbling about with little purpose and even less practical assistance?  Why am I doing all the buzzing?

I have surfed the tidal wave of their presence for so long.  Children leave a path of destruction I have long attempted to remediate like a Superfund site.  As they grow older, I wonder how long I should clean up after individuals for whom I could literally wear their clothing.

This queen bee is ready for some "workers," and they aren't all female in this colony!

I don't want my children to recoil from work and the lessons such work teaches.  It would be a failure on my part to shield them from the basic responsibilities expected from a viable adult.  So, this summer, I have decided to meet their boredom with fun, yes....and a realistic dose of work.

Dishes are washed and put away.
Laundry is stuffed in drawers and hung askew.
The van is combed and emptied.
Beds are proud to face the day.

We attack these chores together, in small spurts throughout the day.  It usually involves 10 minutes of time, as a group, and we are then ready to move on to something more enjoyable.  It may not be done with strong attention to detail, but, honestly, that can come in time.  I'm so outnumbered that any help becomes a compounding savings of time and energy for me, rather than an exponentially amassing snowball of disarray mounting and piling.

Of course, the suggestion of these new expectations were at first ignored, and then balked.  But, they are part of a busy colony to which they should contribute, and why not expect something from them when they unabashedly expect so much from me?  They are growing up before my eyes.  What a shame it would be if they only grew in size and age, but not also mature in a way that illicit respect. 


Though once infantile and helpless, children are amazingly adept, resilient and perceptive.
To witness their growth toward adulthood and to feel the comradery of colony working together...
and, that's the bees knees!

The gift of the present.

My husband has some kind of nerve asking what I'm "doing today."
The last time I checked, he wasn't a detective or some sort of adult truant officer, peeling back the monotonous layers of my domestic routine to uncover the unsavory recognition that I might not be performing brain surgery or saving a species or negotiating a peace treaty.

I always brace myself for this question because it's tiresome to admit that the answer is always, basically, the same.  I'm pretty much doing a version of what I did the day before.... 

While I know he is asking from a place of curiosity, even concern, my jaw still tightens and I must confront an accountability of sorts.  To answer for my time.  To outline the efforts I am making for my children, my family.  I sense an immediate need to create an image of activity that lends credibility to my time and expenditure of my energy. I huff about chores and obligations.  What else would I be doing?  Working my fingers to the bone!  Should I admit the potential for boredom?  Could there be a whisper of laziness?  Indulgence between loads of laundry and the shuttling of his progeny? 

Before I go any further, my husband is well aware of the tedious, ongoing work I do every day, without a doubt.  I also acknowledge the freedom I have to decide how I spend my time and dedicate myself to activity I see fit.  Something, however, unsettles me to account for ambiguous time.

I met a pediatric oncologist the other day.  She also is a wife and mother, and I bet nobody asks what she is doing for the day.  If they did, they would get trumped.  "Just saving the lives of children..."  It doesn't take much to trump me...What are you doing today?  "Well, I thought I would do some housework in my pajamas and find a little time to work on that mystery stain on the couch..."

This all begs the question of how we value time.  What we esteem as important and how we utilize the precious moments we have to spend with our family.  Is there any glory in the everyday repetition of our lives?  Better yet, can there be found joy?

I find that I have a deep, ongoing struggle to live in the present.  As I become swallowed in mindless activity:  scrubbing, pushing a vacuum back and forth, back and forth... I sometimes fall into a black hole of pondering the past and pulling it into my clean, bright present.  And, like a cold front darkening the horizon, the clouds roll in and I anguish over events I cannot change, and darken the possibilities of today, feeling that it is somehow forever tainted.  I also have the tendency to plague my present with the future, of all the things that must change and upgrade in order to sense a proper level of satisfaction with my life.

I found a quote that resonated with me, and I find so much inspiration in it, and really couldn't express it better myself, so I wanted to share...

I “believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without ever realizing it.
I don’t want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That’s the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don’t even see it, because I’m too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting.
I believe that if we cultivate a true attention, a deep ability to see what has been there all along, we will find worlds within us and between us, dreams and stories and memories spilling over. The nuances and shades and secrets and intimations of love and friendship and marriage and parenting are action-packed and multicolored, if you know where to look.
Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you’re having for lunch on the coffee table are profound" in it's sustenance. "This is it. This is life in all its glory.... Pull off the mask and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted.
Your life, right now. t  Today. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is.
You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending.
You are more than dust and bones.
You are spirit and power and image of God.
And you have been given Today.”
― Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life

In an ongoing effort to rehabilitate my "present," I am determined to live this summer presently, and find the beauty in it.  To feel the connection to the only thing that really is:  now. 

last day of school

I don't know who is more excited about the end of the school year...the kids, or me...





I have a little bit of hippy-mom in me and truly, truly love the indulgence of free time, free thought, free play.

School is a necessity.  And, I've learned--not overnight, mind you--that routine and expectations are essential to the proper development of a child.  I thought I would be the mom who would let them skip school, at least once a year, just to have a fun day with me.  Rollin' like a couple of fugitives.  Eating cake for breakfast and dodging police cruisers in the park...the only evidence of us being the echo of our laughter against the trees as we duck out of sight onto trails thick with brush (and probably poison ivy).

Reality is the ultimate "stick-in-the-mud," however, and I found I could never find the appropriate day to which I would voluntarily allow them to slip behind, or miss art class, or even believe that I could justify the sugar content of cake so early in the day without at least an egg or a multivitamin to compensate for my lapse in good parenting.

Nope...no skipping school.  Although, I did pick up my kindergartener early once this year to buy the first spring flowers of the year.  I did this with a clean conscience because kindergarten is not legally required in the state of Indiana, and I was only taking her out one whole hour early.  As we crept  away from the school, inconspicuously in a mint green minivan, she explained to me that she told the teacher she had to leave early to go to Lowe's to get flowers.  I kinda grimaced at the expose, but shook it off quickly in exchange for the feeling of brazen rebelliousness.  Born to be wild...yeah...that was us, with our potting soil and daffodils.

It didn't take long into their school careers for my kids to sense my disregard for homework.  Maybe because I waited until bedtime to ask if they even had any.  Maybe because I huffed and rolled my eyes at the sheer audacity of it.  Maybe because I realized that homework for them was, in all actuality, homework for me.  In the elementary grades, I've found they don't always know what they are supposed to do with the worksheet crumpled in the bottom of their backpacks (and, yes...they do have a folder for such things).  So, we parents smooth out the wrinkles, furrow our brow, and read the instructions, trying to decipher the current, super-optimistic-love-to-learn-K-12 vernacular.  What is a lattice?

"Everyday Math" has helped me to appreciate my archaic education.  When numbers had an indisputable value.  A value that was.  It didn't change.  You didn't just keep guessing numbers until you eventually reached the answer, that interestingly enough, had a concrete value to begin with.
I digress...

The point is:  even though education has changed a little over the years, I'm not making a comment on the efficiency or effectiveness of the current system, I just know what school means to my life now, as a mom.  And, after 180 days of packing lunches and dropping and picking up and being the enforcer for the teacher that sends work home, it's nice to get a break, for all of us.

When the end-of-year testing is complete, and field day pumps warm blood into their atrophied muscles, and heat rolls in steady and thick, and the long days cry out for exertion and basking and rambling...  Aimlessly....  Indulgently....
Then it is summer.

 The grind has reached a brief hiatus.  And, we slow with carelessly.  We race to activity.  We pulse with excitement to drip with heat and stomp in the dew and chase fireflies and burst with light and dance with the color of every long-awaited summer day.

happy family

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy

Happiness is hunted and pursued, sought diligently, maybe even recklessly. It has become a commodity, packaged and marketed to those desperate for fulfillment and contentment and peace.  The more happiness is pursued, however, the more fleeting it seems to become.  A hunt is not equivalent to a journey.  A hunt looks for blood, but a journey is a quest for discovery.  As people search for happiness as if it were an acquisition, it begs the question:
Is it possible to "acquire" happiness?

I believe the general consensus is: no.  We can not purchase happiness or manipulate happiness or contrive happiness.  It just is.  Not accidentally nor arbitrarily....especially in family.

I'm always on the prowl for families that work.  Every family has
ups and downs, but some families avoid unnecessary drama, some families continue to find ways to grow together and stay together.  I know I have little to teach and much to learn.  I have always longed to be a student of others success.  When I come to know a family that works, I plague them questions.  I want to know how they "tick."  I want to know if it's just for show, or pulses deep within their family dynamic.

This is what I have come to determine:
Successful families have one consistent quality: respect.  Regardless of circumstance or age or culture or economic status, they respect one another.

Respect, as defined in the dictionary is:  "esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability."

I suppose there could be little other goal of a family than to recognize and value the excellence of one another, and to bask in that recognition in return.

Respect, then, weaves a tapestry with threads of love and positive communication and validation.  Respect becomes a platform for all to excel, and when all excel, meeting or even exceeding potential...that is success.

To compare or contrast ourselves with others can lead to reflection, and reflection is good because we must challenge ourselves, our comfort zone, our pride or our crutches.  Acknowledging the success of others creates an honesty, when excuses fail to perpetuate vicious cycles that could continue to eat our own families alive.

Parenting is ever evolving and I think that is what makes it so exhausting...nothing is ever "figured out."  And, the point isn't that I want to become another family.  The point is:  if I can celebrate success, and give pause to the genius of others....if I can be willing to admit that anyone of pure motive can be my teacher...if I am humble enough to see beyond ourselves...
we could, in effect, stand on the shoulders of giants and find our way a little closer to the stars.

spring rain

The Spring rain falls
like tears
that cleanse the cluttered soul.


I crack.  I cry.  I spill my guts to my husband.  I go to bed.

And, when I stir in the morning, still thick and groggy, I drop my feet to the floor and begin padding my way forward toward the day, before thoughts can crowd my mind...before reluctance can slow  progression toward the kitchen, toward the cat food, toward the washing machine as water begins to cascade into the basin.

Sometimes it all seems like too much.
And...what is "it all"?
"It" is anything.
And, "all" is a lot of it.

Too many demands and expectations.  Too many voices telling me what to be and how to look and what to cook and how to re-purpose an old dresser from the neighbor's curb. My "own skin" feels too boring, too ordinary.  Too many children needing personal, academic, artistic, therapeutic, medical, and disciplinary attention.  I sense the unraveling...  A thread of emotional distress tied to the female pendulum of emotion, hormones and fatigue colliding into one another, until something silly and inconsequential becomes the proverbial "straw" that breaks the momma's mind....oh, wait...I meant "back." 

Sometimes it's never enough.
"It" would be any natural or material resource.
And, "enough" would be a black hole of deficit.
Never enough time, energy, creativity, patience...money....

I cherish order.  OCD is in my DNA, and I face an uphill, no...up-mountain battle for order every day.  My world is not sterile.  It is a moving, sticky, sizzling, bubbling, muddy, snotty, bloody, oozing, groaning, moaning, laughing, squealing, crying, barking, meowing, engines revving, feet stomping, bicycles flying, roller skates spinning, cars crashing, milk-spilling kind of world.  I feel like I'm holding back a tide of chaos while simultaneously attempting to facilitate an enjoyable, pleasant arena for relaxation, discovery and, even, adventure. 

Talk about juggling:
To paint without getting it in someone's hair....
To encourage learning and achievement without engaging in a battle over school work.
To play board games without tears of losing dampening the joy.
To take the family out for a meal, for a day at the beach, for a weekend at your sister's home without taking out a second mortgage....

My biggest complaint with social media, at this point, is the perceived concept of a community of friends and family in perpetual nirvana.  It begins to feel like my family is the only one that is bored and ordinary, or my children are the only ones that whine and argue, or our home is the only one that wouldn't be featured, bright and glossy, in House & Home. 

And, so it goes...
too much and never enough.

"Never be afraid to fall apart because it is an opportunity to rebuild yourself the way you wish you had been all along."  -Rae Smith

There are so many encounters, challenges, deliberations in life that seem to slowly erase the person I know I am deep within.  She is free and light and clear and driven.  She was present in my younger days, to the point of being my very identity.  But, as my identity has become more Schizophrenic as a wife and mother, I have occasionally lost the reference point to the me of which I'm most proud.  The part that isn't riddled with doubt or insecurity or fear.

When I want to tear away all obstacles that seem to stand in the way of seeing myself, knowing myself, I suddenly realize that they are the very things that identify me more than anything could.  My responsibilities will speak to my commitment.
My husband will speak to my friendship.
My home will speak to my gratitude.
My income will speak to my ingenuity.
My friends will speak to my individuality.
My pets will speak to my tolerance.
My bank account will speak to my priorities.
My work will speak to my pride.
My children will speak to my sacrifice.


Take stock of who you are and what you have, and smile.

When the tears have shed their weight, and all is new, I find refreshment in a life that is all my own.
 

The Spring rains fall,
like us all,
and puddle...
to reveal a depth and reflection to ponder.

wave length

"Mom, my worm died!" my three-year-old cried, as I jammed his freshly laundered and balled socks into the dresser drawer.

"yeah, yeah....I'm sorry, honey..."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but you get used to that with kids.


"Kennedy said she's going to bring me fifty dollars tomorrow."
       "Oh, really?! Well, that's great..."
"Sydney says I can't be a diver because the sharks will eat me."
       "Sydney!  Just let him dive already!"
"Mom, I need to cut out your feet for school!"
        "Uhh....okay...."  (What does that mean?!)

Children will collapse in emotional distress over the most insignificant things, at least, insignificant to those of us paying bills.  And, when they come to me for refuge or resolution, I admit, I tend to be pretty lame with the whole sympathy spectrum, especially for the obscure topics of seemingly little relevance.  Kids surprise you with relevance, however... 

Slowly, I came around... The mulch bed in the corner of the drawer came into focus as I followed his eyes toward the eventual worm death-bed.  Now, two weeks later, I am embarrassed to admit that the habitat is still in place amidst his socks and pj's, and the worm has never been discovered, probably because it has never been sought.  Poor worm...and, I flashback to a scene, the day before, as I dug into the soft ground with great eagerness to landscape, handing worms to my son as we discovered them in moist lumps of crumbling earth.

Same son was playing in the large utility sink in the laundry room, and came in search of help with what should have been crocodile clean-up: irrelevant.  But, no...the sink had been plugged and water was cascading over the edge, flooding the laundry room quite well: relevant.

On another note, sometimes it's not the bewilderment as to what they are talking about that reaps disaster, as it's the losing track of what they are into.  Moms turn their backs.  There!  I have revealed the deep, dark secret to which every social worker is well aware.  We're not even talking about the cooking-home-made-meth kind of neglect.  I'm talking about cleaning-oatmeal-out-of-the-stove-grates, or camping-in-the-bathroom-while-you-potty-train-a-3-year-old, or nursing-your-newborn-while-trying-to-keep-crumbs-from-falling-on-her-face-because-it's-the-only-chance-you-have-to-eat kind of negligence.  These are the moments that afford opportunities for those with fast feet and uninhibited curiosity.

Once the silence is so loud and the pit in your stomach so deep, you must address the foreboding truth and find the children that have disappeared, only to uncover the science experiments or survivalist training or alternate uses for everyday household products.  Tonight, we had to confiscate switch blades from our older children, hopped up on "Man vs. Wild."  They had constructed a crude lean-to and carved spears to combat the small birds and bunnies that frequent our backyard terrain.

Children are definitely on a different wave-length from us, but that's what makes them so surprisingly charming and, frankly, intriguing to observe, as they slowly come to terms with truths in life like physics and water damage and tensile strength and irony and the definition of the endless objects and ideas flowing freely in and out of their minds and imaginations.

So we sow..

It's planting season.

When the minerals of earth and a trickle of rain will feed new life again.  Gardening can make a mother of anyone in the bringing plant to life and sustaining it, despite climate or pest.  A seed enveloped in an earthen womb, breaks through a new creation.  It is splendid in bloom and reaches for maturity, and finds a means to reproduce for a very chance at eternity.

It is never an ordinary thing to discover delicate shoots of green emerge from hibernation, commanding a presence to stretch upward and outward toward survival.  For the perennials that return, I rejoice for their appearance and erase the doubt I had harbored as to their viability after a long winter.  They claim ownership of the land they take root in.  It is grand to behold.

Cycles are everywhere in nature, cycles that endlessly, effortlessly perpetuate themselves.  And, how can we deny the design in a beginning, middle and end....with an end that holds a key, or seed, to another beginning?  The beginning is so thrilling and new, so tender and compromised, yet it must survive for the sake of the next phase to come.   Youth is brilliant and vibrant, but it goes on to bear something better once time has ripened it's potential, and, so goes the production:  the birth of fruit and grain and vegetable, the true glory of the plant.  The plant is all about the produce now and funnels all it's energy toward it.

I noticed in the drought last year, however, that the produce was quickly squelched for the sake of the plant.  The strain of the oppressive heat and the lack of rain compromised the ability to bear any more.  The plant survived a time.  Some of the plants survived the entire summer, however, the harvest was weak, if nonexistent.

I could think of myself as a plant, bearing fruit.  The fruit is sweet and bright and full of promise.  Life is the circumstances we keep, like the elements that feed or oppress us.  Sometimes it is copious and bountiful and other times are harsh and lean.  Some of these circumstances are beyond control, and others, I, in fact, perpetuate.

As time marches this family onward and upward, I have felt the moments of channeling pure goodness to my children.  However, it has become more hectic than I would like at times, and precious energy becomes diverted, even wasted.  It gets to be a place of survival and no longer production and bounty. So, I must account for that.  I must find a time to water when there is no rain.  I must provide shade from a scorching world.  I must synthesize light, and purify the air and become a place for my tender new growth to thrive year after year, displaying their beauty to the light of the sun.

The sucess in failing.

It's difficult to write about motherhood when slapping frantically through a tidal wave of uncertainty.  It cycles from time to time.  A once confident mother stops running long enough for the blurred peripheral to come into focus and realize another life is happening around her while she has been hectic with the driving and cleaning and shopping and cooking.  I buck against the concept of "mommy guilt," but at times....a mood, an action, a comparison to another mother can wash insecurity over any fortress.

Some parents are deeply committed to providing the best life for their children, come what may.  I would like to think myself one of these.  To nourish a fetus, to bring baby to breast, to crawl aside the infant rocking and teetering on hands and knees, to release the pinky-hold of a toddler to toddle on their own.   I've sat deep in the sofa sounding words to my children waiting for the brilliant moment:  to learn that letters  become a word, a sentence, a story, an adventure....until, one day, they are able to scratch out the most true and tender any story could be: "I love mom."  "I love dad." 

I've held them fevered.  I've rushed to the hospital.  I've pulled teeth dangling by a thread.  I've cleaned gravel from a flap of skin...gross, I know...  I've run alongside bicycles, stripped of training wheels, wobbling down the street.  I've cleaned sheets and underwear that should have been thrown away, and some I have thrown away.  I have been paged to report for duty at every hour of the night, including the research of countless ailments online by the glow of a laptop in an otherwise dark house, including standing in the shower desperate to help my baby breathe with croup, including the pee the puke and the nightmares.

I have sat with a child, tears rolling fat and heavy from the frustrations of homework, still urging them to resist failing themselves.  I've reassured them of the purity of their beauty, the charm and dazzling wits and incomparable spirit I see, even when others speak harshly or leave them forgotten.   I've been an audience to their every performance, clapping excessively... embarrassingly...  

I'm always on the hunt for new adventure, another experience to taste and savor for the first time together.  To me, THAT is the glory of parenting a child: to witness life unfolding and to have the privilege of having a stake in it, to guide or direct it to something whole and good.  A human life taking breath and shape, the luminous awareness of all that is art and the music of language, the germination of thought---to behold the inception of logic and paradox and irony.  Intelligence, sparkling with imagination and discovery and desire, eventually driving the child, the person, to inherit character and will.  And, they stand, with a name you gave them, a name to identify a somebody who carries some of your DNA, some of your good, some of your bad...someone unlike anybody else.  Someone you love unlike anybody else.
It is a miracle.  It is a privilege.

With all this talk of everything "I've" done, it hasn't been alone, and I haven't done anything that any other mother doesn't.  Funny, though, how it's still feels like it's never enough.  Sometimes I lie awake, plagued with a gnawing sense that I fall short.  Like a wall of clouds creeping from the horizon, a front closing in with rain and storm, my shortcomings hit me fast and hard.  I don't want to deny the room I have for improvement.  I may want to deny how large that room feels sometimes.

I suppose reevaluation is like Spring, a rebirth of life gone dormant.  And, like Spring, it gets muddy and messy and violent, sometimes.  Warm air, breathing life into fragile growth, moves in to clear out the cold....and...growth is needed, if I want to continue to take shape and still realize all that can still be new and inspiring, perpetuating what my parents witnessed budding in me so many years ago.

If I didn't feel that I was failing sometimes, then I truly would fail.  The most devastating mistakes I could make would be to resist change and resent failings.  It is a reality, as a mother, that I should never deny because it is the lives of my children at stake, and not just the living, breathing part...but the feeling, believing and daring parts that become all their goals and dreams, their possibilities, and their very ability to inspire their own children to come.

Nighty-night, Sleep tight....

Bedtime....
Parents pine for it.
Children resist.
They battle, for some inexplicable reason, this precious opportunity for rest and recuperation. While there must be a plausible explanation, it continues to evade and baffle exhausted parents to this day.
Does the paranoid mind of a child feels panicked to relinquish conscientiousness?
Do they suffer from separation anxiety?

Very, very early on, I would guess as early as day four of life, once the brain-compressing trauma of entry into the world has passed, a baby begins to convey opinions regarding how, where and when they will sleep.
And, so it begins...
Any parent who believes they will draw a line in the sand about how a baby shall sleep, will immediately be tested as to their resolve.  Baby wants held, carried, swayed, bounced, rocked, driven in a vehicle at no less than 49 mph sans stop lights...  Baby can only sleep swaddled, or in a Moby, or car seat, swing, Boppie, mommy and daddy's bed....  Baby needs binkie, blankie, stuffed orangutang, music, air purifier, a mobile, an aquarium, and lets not forget: a breast...  You name it, baby wants it, or will develop the preference for it, if not throttled or squelched.


One would think a creature in need of no less than 20 hours of sleep per day, wouldn't want to put up much of a fight.  One would also think a baby, weighing less than a bag of potatoes, with the eyesight of a mole, would be easy to control.  Did you know that a young child may fire an estimated 1 quadrillion synapses per day in their abnormally large heads?  Why wouldn't they just pass out from utter mental exhaustion?  What's the deal?  Why can't they just be like a cat and curl up to the fat laziness of it all?  It's the only time in life that a person is entitled to sleep their days away--the only time people around you will beg for you to nap.

I started training my firstborn to fall asleep on her own on day five of her life.  Standing beside her bassinet, to reassure her of my presence, patting and soothing, I faithfully followed the guidance of a "baby whisperer"...at least that's what the book called her.  Grandmothers stood outside the bedroom door, pacing and wringing hands at the absurdity of leaving an innocent, newborn--their newborn, mind you--to cry and flail.  But, eventually she did it.  I could lay her down, tip-toe out of sight and admire the sight of a baby drifting quietly to sleep.

Still...it didn't last forever.  She got older, gained more awareness and increased her mobility.  By the time she was school-aged, she developed a weird sleep-walking thing and wandered a lot during the night.  We developed an awareness of where we stepped when we got out of bed so as not to step on her body curled and twisted with blankets on the floor.

Still, all my kids have slept through the night since they were eight weeks old, that is...when we manage to get them to bed.  They're not babies anymore, so we don't physically carry them to bed.  They use their own legs.  Legs that apparently need a GPS to find their bedroom.  And, while we do have an established bed time...it still doesn't mean much, not in practical terms anyway.

Asking the children to "get ready for bed" usually falls on deaf ears.  Not to get off topic, but the ears of a child are fascinating in their function.  I can whisper from the opposite end of the house a plan involving family fun, the misbehavior of a child, or the topic of dessert, and they crawl out of the woodwork, tipped-off from their super-human hearing. When I test the hearing of my children, I simply say "ice-cream."  I will say it randomly, as a normal adult would speak in a library, and it never fails to expose the perfection of their young, tight eardrums.

Bedtime is not a Hallmark commercial around here.  We would literally have to start the bedtime "routine" at 6:00 to make the soft-lit-bedtime-story-giggle-and-tickle-in-a-quilt-made-by-grandma moment with four children.  I often wonder how many parents literally "tuck in".....every night.  We are probably failing our children in this regard.  Our "tuck in" process isn't exactly consistent or "tender."  It is random and contingent on circumstance.  Some days end too late.  Some days are too fatiguing.  But, some nights we cuddle deep in blankets and read and talk and pray.
 
Getting to that place, though, is only after the period of time in which they bump around confused, splintering off and dividing to create diversion and chaos, so that two parents find it challenging to herd them all in the same direction.  It buys them time.  They are so young that they have enormous quantities of time to burn.  Time is the one true advantage they always have over us.  No one on the planet has more time ahead of them than a baby or young child.

More often than not, we prod and plead for the children to go to bed....with clean teeth, which is usually way too much to ask.  And, once the bathroom sink and mirror are adequately splattered in toothpaste and spit, and clothes, still warm from their bodies, are strewn about the bedrooms, we make our parental appearance to button up the process and inspect for pets or siblings hidden in unauthorized beds.  Cheeks and foreheads are kissed and shoulders are hugged, love expressed and requests for water denied.  This is when they reveal an injury or illness that has suddenly become too much to bear.  We will inspect for fever or pus, but, otherwise, relegate such matters to the light of morning.

It's quittin' time, that's what bedtime is.  The official end of a parental work day.  I announce, "It's quittin' time, people!  I don't get paid overtime, so no getting out of bed!"  But, they do.  I'm always amazed at their brazen need to interrupt the only time we have to ourselves, although I have also told them it's "party time," when the cake and brownies and ice cream, oh, yes, ice cream comes out, and dad and I party while they lie captive in their rooms.  Sometimes this is true.  We have been known to bust out some snacks, fire up the internet, with a book at our side, and by the flicker of the TV, we end up dozing off in our exhaustion, until we pull ourselves up and stumble off to bed.  Grateful.  Falling head-first into the down and Egyptian cotton of our bed, only to wake up in the morning, anticipating bedtime to come again.