Blogging By Moonlight

This must be what writing a boring blog after the kids go to bed looked like in 1901.

On Thursday it will be one month since IC and DJ's first day of school.  E started his classes for this semester a week after them.  Surveying everything that has changed since then, I think that I am finally starting to see all of this come together into that magical comforting place I call a routine.  I am a very regimented person, but unfortunately that is not the type of life I live, as much as I try to make it work that way.  I am a homemaker, which is a term I prefer over "stay at home mom" because it sounds more active and intentional.  My job as such is to serve as the manager for the day to day needs of four other people, each with a great difference in what those needs actually are.  The problem is that my desire for routine leads me to try to set things up for myself so that I can take care of each one's needs proactively, but three of these four who I care for change on a daily basis, and change their lives completely every few months. I've mentioned in the past that I have really struggled with finding any sort of comfort zone with my husband's schedule ever since he started nursing school a year ago.  The difficult part about E's life and IC's life and DJ's life is that they are always changing.  It takes me the full sixteen weeks of E's semester to get comfortable with when he's here and when he isn't, and to know how I should react to both.  Then, of course, the semester ends, and it changes again.  IC's and DJ's changes revolve around the changing seasons of after-school activities.  Currently I am trying to figure out how to balance our weekday evenings: Mondays- no activities, but double homework to prepare for Tuesday; Tuesdays- get dinner on the table before kids arrive home, pick up kids, feed them dinner, straight to soccer, then bring IC and HT home while E takes DJ to cub scouts; Wednesdays- 1st and 3rd of the month- allow E to care for kids while I attend church, 2nd and 4th of the month- take IC to brownies, every week it's double homework to prepare for Thursday, etc. It makes my head spin.  I'm realizing though that there are a few things that I can rely on that will probably be present everyday.  Everyday, E will get up as soon as the first child wakes up, even if I offer to let him sleep in like a bajillion times.  Every night E will claim he has to stay up and study when instead he will fall asleep on the couch and accomplish nothing.   

In all of this I always put my own desires about how to spend my time last.  I am not whining; I do this by choice.  It is simply easier for me to know that I am caring for my family if I know that I at least can be the flexible one, even though I am the last person you would describe as being flexible.  None of my plans are ever set in stone.  I am not a martyr, because I do my best to keep careful track of my most pressing needs and when necessary I will take care of them.  I don't skip meals, I catch a nap or sleep in when I'm feeling sleep deprived, and I chat on facebook or attend a church event when I need some social time.  But if those particular boxes are filled or close to filled, I move on and continue to manage everyone else.  

Generally I'm perfectly content this way, but never for very long, because sooner or later something will start to itch.  Sometimes music calls me, and I feel as if I will never be satisfied with my life again until I can start taking voice lessons again or sing with a professional choir.  Other times it's travel, something I have never done.  Lately I've been getting the itch to move again; thinking that if I don't get out of this city and experience a new place, like, tomorrow, I will never be able to go on.  Today the writing bug bit me, and it's itching.

My women's Bible study group labored over the choice of a new book to read this morning, and happily they chose a book that I suggested, Breathe by Keri Wyatt Kent, who is one of my favorite authors.  I was excited about it, although of course there was the necessary side dish of guilt ("Did I push it too much? What if everyone hates it and it's a waste of their time?").  Anyway, I hadn't checked out Keri's facebook page or website recently so I took a quick glance and ran into something kind of new and that's when the bug got me.  Keri and twelve other female writers have founded the Redbud Writers' Guild, a group dedicated to "fearlessly expanding the feminine voice in our churches, communities, and culture".  My heart was clicking my internal "like" button a million times when I saw it.  I read through a few pages of blog posts from the members, all so different, yet all so thought-provoking and reflective.  Oh the joy that would be mine to belong to such a circle, to have my words read and respected with the likes of these.  And then I noticed that one can actually apply to join this sacred circle.  My heart was dancing. A writer! Me! I want to join! Ooo, Ooo, pick me, pick me!

Stop, deep breath.  You are a lowly blog writer who has a whopping eight followers, only one of whom it not a personal friend (and thank you to that one, you give me hope!). You write your blog at around midnight on the nights you even get that far, and you fight to stay awake while you do it.  You will never be eligible for this.  I looked at the membership application, and it is pretty certain that I do not have the prerequisite experience for this group.  There was a large space where one was to list all the books and articles she has published in the past.  Although the button at the top of this page does say "publish", I doubt that a free blog is what they have in mind.  I have never published so much as a classified ad.  

No matter, I will have to start small and dream big.  That's the advice I'd give one of my children.  Figure out how I get there from here.  Take the first step, write the blog, and explore ways of getting it out there.  But where?  I'm not even ready for that question yet.  The bigger question for me is when.  Maybe I want to write because I am imagining these ladies sipping tea on their porches and typing on their laptops while they listen to the birds and smell the flowers.  I don't even drink tea.  I don't even have a laptop, now that E has commandeered the one we own for his schoolwork.  I write on an iMac that is situated between the kitchen table and the Jumperoo.  Yeah, I am so not a writer.  Just like I was never a singer, or a missionary.  So many intentions, so much time spent gearing myself up to take the first step, but questioning in which direction I should go.  

But I'm not ready to stop believing that any of these things could happen to me.  Heck, all of them.  I did sort of manage to bundle them all together in the ethnomusicology program I was doing.  But how do I break this down so that I can know what God is trying to tell me with all these desires to do things that right now seem so vague and beyond my reach?  What is it that I really want to do?  

I want to speak (or write) words that someone will hear or read, and it will change their life.  I want to look someone in the eye and offer them the love of God, like a gift wrapped up and given just for them.  I want to do things, say things, and write things that will shift someone's perspective so that they will think deeper, see God's love for them clearer, and love themselves more in the process.  I want to offer someone mercy and encouragement, even if I will never completely understand their situation or their struggle.  I just want to love someone.

And just like that, just as I type it out, I realize that I do that everyday.  Maybe it's not on the scale that I dream of, and it's not in the format that I would like to speak from, and maybe I don't succeed all the time.  Maybe I need more practice.  But I do all those things.  I do them when I explain to IC that the reason she must try the Trader Joes potstickers I made for dinner is not only because she will be rewarded with a restaurant trip on Friday, but also because eating a variety of healthy foods is essential to her body feeling healthy so that she can do all the things she wants to do.  I do them when I button up DJ's cub scout uniform while he's changing his clothes in the car, and I tell him that I can't wait to see all the exciting things he will learn and do this year.  I do them when I hold HT after he suffers yet another bump on the head from his overly eager efforts at learning to walk.  I do them when I remind E that he will make mistakes as a nurse, and that yes, his mistakes could kill someone, but that even then he needs to be able to go on and still know that he is good at what he does and that he does it out of a God-given desire to care for others.  There's four people right there, over and over again, in one day.  I'm not saying that this satisfies all these itches that I keep getting, but it does tell me that one day I will accomplish grander things, because right now I have these four people to practice on.  And most of the time, these four people seem pretty happy, and feel pretty loved, so maybe I'm doing a good job.

A Mothers Day Message For My Children

To my oldest:  I love you for your tenacity and perseverance.  You were born from the belief that parenting was a divine calling, and that creating good people was a blessing we could bestow upon the world.  You were born to a mother who despite years of playing grown-up, was still very much a child herself.  You were born under the assumption that it was possible to parent the right way, and that each and every move I made was shaping you forever.  You came as you grew and as you live --with endless hard work, painful moments that gave way to pure joy, and a reluctance to embrace what eventually become your passions. Your parents were poor but blessed, and brought you home to a one room apartment where your crib sat next to the refrigerator.  Your screams in the night were like the moment just before a car accident.  You forced me to learn how to rock a baby and use the toilet at the same time.  You challenged me past the point of insanity, and left me wishing that I'd never taken this path, yet knowing all the while that you were also one of the greatest things that would ever happen to me.  You taught me that it is possible to love so much that you ache, that you want to run away from it because the desire to be perfect and to live up to what it deserves is so much that you know you will be forever a failure.  You made me question whether I would ever be able to care for you, whether you'd be better off without me.  You made me see that there was so much in me that hurt, that needed to be healed, that needed attention.  That it's possible to scream along with your child and mean it.  You taught me that it's possible to give all of oneself and have it still not be enough.  You taught me that it's OK to ask for help, to admit that you are trying to do something completely beyond your power even when it is in fact your responsibility.  You lived through a suicidal mother, forced feedings, never ending diaper rashes, and horrific blood tests.  You showed me that it's possible to live on toast and noodles for years and still grow.  You showed me that sometimes you have to be pushed kicking and screaming into the best possible place you could be.  You showed me that one simply can't raise a child on her own.  You are showing me what it's like to love people deeply and still have no idea how to speak with them.  You are showing me that relationship doesn't have to be about conversation.  You are showing me that it's OK to back into a hug, to retreat to the reading corner, to cover your ears at unpleasant noises, and to need your food made just the right way.  You helped me know who my friends were, and who they weren't.  You've shown me what it's like to be deeply connected to someone you don't understand. You showed me that a school with broken toilets, no air conditioning, and a dilapidated and partially flooded building in one of the worst sections of the city might be exactly where you need to be left everyday. You entered school at barely three years old, unable to speak without repeating phrases from children's videos, unable to drink from a cup, to use the toilet, or to separate from me for even a few minutes.  Now, at seven, you read and write superbly, you have friends who play with you as an equal, and you tell stories about your day. You also chew your shirt sleeves and eat dirt. Once I thought you might never grow up, and now it is happening so quickly that I look at you and wonder if I'll ever have the kind of relationship I really want to have with you.  Where have you gone, my beautiful, squalling, train wreck of a child?  You are beginning to look and act like a mature girl, and I have done nothing to bring you this far.  I can take no credit for this person you have become; everyday you work harder than any of your friends will ever know to simply move and live in a world that you don't have the right instincts for.  At times it seems that you do it effortlessly, and at other times I watch you struggle and become sad and angry, faced with the hard work you must go through just to have what everyone else takes for granted.  You inspire me to look at every person I meet as an amazingly unique and complex child of God, and have taught me not to judge in any situation, ever.  You are my only girl, my precious one, my thinker, my sage.  It is possible that you have taught me more than any other person on this earth.

To my middle child:  You arrived in the middle of the worst moments of my life, bringing with you an equal mix of hope and trepidation.  You were unplanned, unexpected, and I was unprepared.  When I learned that you were inside me I cried in fear of the type of mother you would have when you were born.  I felt sorry for you even before I knew you, believing that I could never be a good mother to you.  With your birth I realized that God expands our hearts in direct proportion to the love He places in them. You came as you have grown and as you live --fast and furious, with unrelenting waves of pure energy and enthusiasm.  With you in a sling and your sister on my hip I stood barefoot in front of my doublewide trailer, yelling at my husband, and wondered when I'd become everything that I never wanted to be.  From birth you had to make accommodations to a family whose life had been full before you arrived.  You did not have a bedroom until you were two.  You slept next to me on a mattress on the floor.  You taught me to laugh.  You showed me that parenting could be fun and rewarding, that it was OK not to be perfect, and that sometimes the best way to handle the unexpected is to embrace it with a hearty smile.  You threw the sofa pillows into the tub with your sister, and I laughed.  You rubbed tomato sauce and ricotta cheese into your hair, and I laughed.  You pooped all over yourself and your father and I laughed like crazy.  You brought joy to a family that needed it desperately, and you continue to infuse every moment with a vitality that is absent without you.  You showed me that I can have and raise a normal child, and that no child is normal.  You showed me what it's like to be amused and exasperated simultaneously.  You have an insatiable need for attention and knowledge.  I have lost so much of your earliest years to exhaustion and traumatic memory loss, but I know that with you came a ray of sunshine, a hope for new possibilities and a future that was bright and beautiful.  You cherished me.  You wrapped your arms around me when you saw me cry, and you smiled and asked, "Are you happy, Mommy?" and then jumped for joy when I said yes.  You have moved me forward and kept me going when I wanted to give up.  You have renewed my energy when it seemed like I had nothing more to give.  You light up every room you walk into, announcing, "I'm here!" and the people inside are as happy about it as you are.  You've taught me that maturity isn't all it's cracked up to be.  So much of my joy is entangled in your person.  One day I lost you, and in the ensuing moments of terror I wondered if anyone else would ever be able to show me how to be happy.  Your favorite color is orange, which in a way defines you by itself.  You were my skinny, baldheaded, big-earred baby boy and now you are becoming the little man we have always called you to be, who shows us the fun in everyday life.  As your first teacher said, you are enthusiastic about your yes and your no, and you never cease to challenge us.  Where have you gone, my sweet little Manny Man?  You have become the spitting image of your father, and are a constant reminder of the love that brings us all together.

To my baby:  You are my prize, my reward, my sweet relief.  I prayed for you to come into my life for months, loving you even before sperm and egg united inside me.  With you I wanted the chance for a new beginning, an opportunity to fix the mistakes I've made in the past, to enjoy each moment of babyhood and not be in a constant hurry to achieve the next milestone.  I revel in you, I breathe you in, I hold you a little longer and remind myself that anything else can wait, but you will grow up and not be this smiling, needing, warm little bundle that you are now.  With you the pressure is off.  I have already seen myself a parenting failure, I have already seen myself make every mistake I said I would never make.  I have already seen myself say and do things that I would judge others unfit for doing.  With you I know that I am who I am, and God has put you in my life to refine me.  I know that much of the beauty of your growth will not result from anything I have done for you or any choices I make in raising you.   I know that you will still love me if I am not always a good mother, and that you will not cease to trust me if I leave you to cry for a few moments while I use the bathroom or finish my lunch.  I know that a baby can get a few bruises without suffering permanent damage.  I also know that, as they say, the days are long and the years are short, and in no time you will be grown, living a life that I know little about.  So with you, I will try to capture each moment, each portion of time that I am close to you.  I will look into your eyes as you suckle my breast; I will sing silly songs to you in public and not worry about what other people think; I will laugh when you make messes, and I will dance when you dance.  I will do my absolute best not to begrudge you your need for closeness to me, and every time I lug you around for hours until my arms hurt, I will remind myself that it will only be a short time until I wonder if I've hugged you enough.  You have brought simplicity into our life.  You came as you live --with a straightforward ease, uncomplicated by the world you have entered.  With you I have found my peace with motherhood, and I can exhale, knowing that I am being and have been the mother God called me to be --sometimes good, sometimes terrible, yet growing and living out a very gradual and clumsy movement toward integrity.  With you I will know that mothering is not a job, but a role, a calling to the constant creation and sanctification of relationships.  With you I will be imperfect and exactly what you need.  With you, our family is complete.  Where are you going, my years of stretch marks, weight gain, sling wearing, and constant breast-feeding?  You have grown into a family that will grow and love and learn and do amazing things long after I am gone.  You have become my legacy, the part of me that will still be here when I am with my God in my eternal home, the part of me that will linger in the hearts of generations who will forget my name.  You have become the greatest gift God has given me.

IC, DJ, and HT --Thank you for where you've been, who you are, and who you are becoming.  I love you.

A Declaration of Dependence

It's been awhile since I posted.  Since Easter I've felt very busy, and for a long time it seemed like there was just one problem after another.  My children had their spring break from school this week, and I feel like I spent all of it putting out fires, rather than investing that time in quality moments. I argued with my mother, I argued with my husband, and I almost lost my son. I am emotionally exhausted, which makes it hard to write.

In the middle of all of this, E took his finals, and he is finished with his first year of nursing school.  His spring semester has been a nightmare for me, though I can't really understand why I have had such a negative reaction to his new career choice.  We had a long discussion about it last night.  I feel sorry for my husband.  I struggle so much in so many areas of my life, and he loves me, so he is caught in a position of feeling the need to help me all the time.  Just to maintain a loving friendship with me, he must act as my lover, best friend, counselor, advocate, co-parent, leader, follower.  Added to that, he voluntarily takes on the role of cook and food shopper in our home, cares for and/or cleans anything I don't wish to take care of, and never complains.  He also does at least as much parenting as I do.  Obviously we do not have anything remotely close to traditional roles in our home, and this is both a comfort and a concern for me.  I don't wish to change the balance we have, and I find our ability to communicate and care for each other soothing and beautiful.  We understand each other so well that a casual observer might think we engage in some kind of telepathy.  Sometimes I will think, I'm a little hungry, and immediately E will begin making me a sandwich. Sometimes a friend will say something that hurts a little, and E will take my hand.  I have told him many times that we've been doing this for so long that I can no longer tell where I stop and he begins.  If once he was red, and I was blue, we are now purple.

I've realized too that it would be healthy for both of us to develop separate friends, activities, and interests.  Without careful attention it would be so easy for us to nurture no relationships but our own.  Sometimes it feels like he and me against the world.  But life is hectic and difficult and broad, and we need to have other people to rely on.  E seems to want very much to be all I need, and many times he is, but over the years I can see the burden this is on him, though he bears it so willingly.  He has become more easily hurt by me, yet more careful about hiding it.  Sometimes when things have been stressful and painful for a long period of time, I can see him shut down and build a wall between us relationally, and I imagine that this is his only option.  He simply can't bear the weight that my emotional neediness puts on him, so he shuts me out in the gentlest of ways.  All of these are why I am really happy that he felt comfortable enough to come to me and tell me he wanted to make a drastic career change.  Now that he's begun nursing school I am finding that there are aspects of this that are challenging me, and it's unexpected.  The schedule changes, new responsibilities, and new views of the future have brought the the forefront my internal battle with dependence, independence, and interdependence.

Our society applauds independence.  We judge a person's value and ability based on their level of independence, or how much they can do without help.  We celebrate our children's successes when we see them master a skill without help.  We bundle this value of independence with the more modern American value of individuality, and we expect that a person should strive to function independently of help from others, so that ultimately any relationships he or she chooses to have are there by choice and not necessity.  In my lifetime of almost thirty years I have seen independence become the goal, with relationships being made by choice. In many cases we only maintain and nurture the relationships that encourage our independence.  Without looking up the statistics, I see more and more people in my culture choosing to keep all their relationships on a comparatively superficial level of intimacy.  Single children instead of big families.  Child-free living instead of families.  Co-habitation instead of marriage.  Single living instead of intimate relationships.  The people of my generation seem to be increasingly afraid of relational commitments.  We have been taught to be independent, and we are living that out.  Growing up, I remember a friend's mother, who was happily married, telling me that I should seek to be successful and build a lucrative career so that I would never have to stay with a man because I needed his income.  We are the children of modern feminism.

Twenty years later that is exactly the position I find myself in, and I'll be honest, it scares me.  I have been thinking of getting a part time job, not as the insurance policy my friend's mother implied that work should be, but because I feel like there is a need for independent, worldly success running through my blood.  I feel a need to know that I could make it on my own, without E.  I wonder about trying it.  I wonder about running away, changing my name, and building a career as if I could have a clean slate.  I wonder about taking the children and moving into a cheap apartment, getting a job and enrolling them in school and day care.  Or I wonder about getting a full time job right here, dropping the baby off at day care early in the morning and hopping on the Metro with my heels tucked in a tote bag.  I could do it.  It would take some rearranging for childcare and housework, but it could be done.  But why do I dream about this when I have so many friends who live that life, and wish they could be where I am?  And why would I want to do anything that upsets the balance I have with a husband who can sense me, read my mind, feel my feelings? For goodness sake, we're like Eliot and E.T.

Please don't try to speculate which of us is E.T.

As much as I love E and as much as I know I've been given a more wonderful husband than I could have dreamed of, he is not perfect.  It's hard to describe the problems we have to other people.  I think people tune me out if I say anything negative about him.  I understand why.  It's hard to get past the fact that I have a husband who does all the cooking and grocery shopping, more than his share of parenting, supports me in everything, listens to me, and looks the way E does in a pair of jeans.  I hate myself whenever I have a thought that even slightly resembles a complaint.  But E's willingness to jump at my every need is sometimes the problem.  I have no idea if I could live without E.  I imagine that if we were separated, and I had to function on my own, I would fail miserably in the practicalities of my life, and that emotionally I would wither and die, just like E.T.'s flowers.  I have never lived as an adult without E.  We met when I was only 17, became engaged shortly after I turned 18, and married when I was 20. I had my first child a few months after I turned 22.  I have never worked a full time job in my life.  I have no idea what it would be like to do so, and to have to do it.  It's a charmed life, and I have nothing but appreciation for my God who has put me here, and my husband who works hard so that I can focus on our children, our home, and our relationships.  But like my friend's mother expressed twenty years ago, being this dependent on another flawed human being is a risk.  If E left me, I would have nothing.  E won't leave me.  He's said so repeatedly.  As bad as things got last semester, and as many times as I told him that I wanted to leave and taste freedom and life without a caretaker, E never wavered.  He would have let me leave if it meant my happiness, but he would have never stopped waiting for me to come back.  Last week, when the semester was almost over, and my burning need for independence seemed to be climaxing, he said, "You will not remove this ring from my hand without cutting off my finger."

So how do I reconcile this?  I wish I could be a person who could simply choose to enjoy this, and never wonder how it could be different.  I would like to think that E and I live in a state of interdependence; that while our talents and abilities and strengths differ greatly, we have found a way to live that brings them all together in harmony, that allows each of us to gain from the abilities of the other, where neither of us takes advantage of the other, and both receive equal benefits.  But it's hard for me to imagine what E is getting from me.  At worst, I imagine that I am nothing more than free childcare and an organized home.  Even then, the definition of "free" is limited; E more than pays for my services with all that he does for me when he is here, and with all the hurt I put him through in my emotional and psychological struggles.  What is it that he sees in me?  Why is he so committed?  He doesn't express it in so many words. I ask constantly, and the best answer I get is that he is happy and feels loved.  He is loved, and I would love him forever, even if he stopped doing all these things for me.  It doesn't seem like something I can control; I love him even when I wish I didn't.  I need to love him the way I need to breathe.  In the end it has nothing to do with all the things he does for me.  I love him because he is the person I was designed to love.  He says the same.  Mutual dependence seems inevitable, and when I look at it this way, it seems so much more lovely than freedom.