Half Way to Hemingway

This weekend, Aaron took the kids with him when he ran errands. Everyone got to pick out a treat at the store. Emma and Carys bought candy...Cooper bought a composition notebook and a pack of pens. When I asked him why he wanted school supplies in May, he answered, "Mom, I need a place to write down all my stories."

Be still, my heart.

He wrote his first story this weekend. Along the way we had very serious conversations about writing - the process, the subject matter, editing, revising, the works:

"Mom, I want my book to be a collection of animal adventure stories - what's a good name for a squirrel?"
"How about Gerald?"
"I was thinking Robert."

After composing two sentences, cross-legged on the floor of the laundry room while I folded laundry, he furrowed his brow and said, "Mom, do you ever get stuck when you're writing your blog? Like you can't think of what comes next?" I said, "All the time! It's called writer's block." He sighed deeply and said, "Well, that's what I've got right now."

He brought a draft to me and asked me to look for mistakes. He seemed very bothered by the spelling errors, until I reminded him that every writer made mistakes and editing was part of the process. The mom in me was delighted at the innocent creativity of his first adventure story. The English teacher in me was thrilled to find that he had correctly punctuated his dialogue.

He put the finishing touches on the piece on Sunday. I told him I would make sure his very first story got published...so here it is. The photos are for authenticity and to showcase his beautiful penmanship that would put some of my juniors on notice; the transcript is so he can have the pleasure of seeing his creation come to life in glorious Times New Roman.

Robert and the Hundred Nuts!

One day a squirrel named Robert was on a mission to find 100 nuts in one day. If he does not, the squirrel tribe will not have enough food for the winter. So at 5:00am he started to look.

He took with him: one bag and a long pole to get the hard to reach ones. Almost instantly he found 10 in his back yard then found 5 in a tree. "I'm off to a great start!" said Robert. Robert climbed a giant tree and used the long pole to knock 25 down. "I am doing awsome," said Robert as 6 more fell down.

He found 6 in the sand and 4 in the dirt. "That's 10 more," said Robert "44 to go!" He looked at his watch. "Oh no it is 1:00pm!" he said.

Robert ran and found 3 stuck in a tree. Then got 10 from shaking a tree. Robert found 20 in the woods. He got 5 floating in a river. Then got 5 from a hole in a tree. He looked down his watch read 10:00. NOOOO! he sat down by a tree and cryed. "I only needed 1 more!" he sobbed.

All the suddenly something hit his head. He looked. A nut! He ran back as fast as his legs could carry him. He made sure no nuts fell out of his bag..

When he got back, he showed them to the chief "You have done well," said the chief. "Thank you." Robert said.

1 Year Later

"We are not going to have enough food!" said the chief of the squirrel tribe. "Robert, can you find 100 nuts today?"

For the Record

I have 118 text messages in my phone from my mom. I clean out my text folder from time to time, but of course I can't delete that thread, no matter what. I'm worried that someday when this phone dies I won't have them anymore and then what will I do? It's the last set of direct correspondence that I have from my mother. I can read her actual words to me, in her conversational tone, asking me all the everyday things she always asked me. I'm going to try to take some time one of these days and transcribe them so I have them in writing somewhere forever.

Every time I open my message folder, I see my Mom's picture next to that thread, with her most recent message highlighted. It actually reads this: "Worvfvjrdtitr    Worchestid e sauce. B N pp P."

I had asked mom why her sweet and sour ham always came out differently from mine. I'm pretty sure Worcestershire sauce is what she meant to say. Reading that message makes me feel so many things; I giggle a little bit because she could never say that word correctly, much less spell it, and it was always a little laugh we had between us. "The W sauce," she would say instead. But it also makes me so so sad, because she sent me that message on June 14th of last year, and it signaled the end of her fine motor function. In a few messages before it, she said she was having trouble texting. Only a month before that one, she detailed the outcome of one of the doctor visits - the one where the doctor said she had blocked eustachian tubes and they would get a plan in place to "fix" the vertigo. Of course, they couldn't fix the vertigo. It wasn't blocked eustachian tubes, it was CJD, and all those endless visits to specialists and ENTs and audiologists and physical therapists were a huge, gigantic, waste of time.

Sometimes I can function pretty well when I think about my mom in generalized ways. I feel sad, but it is manageable. When I look through those messages, though - the back and forth banter, the questions about my day to day happenings, the things that are as simple as sharing a recipe - I feel this crushing weight of sorrow; I can barely breathe. I can miss the idea of mom, and be okay. But missing my actual Mom is maybe the worst feeling I have ever had in my whole entire life.

I hold on to these messages with a fierceness I don't recognize in myself. I hold them because they are a tangible receipt of our relationship; physical proof of the closeness we shared. Sometimes I need the physical proof of it, when vague and cloudy memories don't suffice. They are also a record of her illness, in a roundabout way. In the early messages, she updates me on this doctor visit, or that one. This diagnosis; that prescription. As they go on, she gets more frustrated, and also more brief. When they stop altogether, at the W sauce, the abruptness of it reminds me once again how it felt to have her taken from us so early. She wasn't ready. I wasn't ready.

I wish more than anything that I had had the foresight to record more moments with her. I wish more than anything that our daily back and forth wasn't reduced to 118 messages, some of which are simple exchanges with only a word or two. I hope this blog, and the words I record here, will stand up over time. I hope someday my kids will read them and FEEL me. I hope I can remember to leave all the things here that they will need. I hope I can leave them enough of myself so that when I'm not here they won't have to miss me so much. 

It's the Little Things

Most days I'm pretty sure I'm doing this parenting thing all wrong. (I can list a hundred examples from last week alone.) But every now and then, a little glimpse of something promising comes through, and I get to feel kind of warm and sunshiny for a few minutes.

I came home from the store, and Aaron met me at the front door whispering rather cryptically, "Would you please go help Cooper? He's upset."

Cooper has this way about him; sometimes when he's mad or upset, he won't talk at all, he just broods in a corner with a dark expression of discontent. He also has a knack of telling you only so much at a time. Getting information out of him is a little bit of an art form, so I didn't ask Aaron anything further. I just hurried into the kitchen where I found my son at the sink, wringing a giant sponge in a bucket and sniffling. 

"Cooper, what's wrong?" I asked.

He was so flustered and upset, he just kind of frowned and kept wringing.

I tried again: "Cooper! What's the bucket for? Is something wrong?"

He turned to me with the most worried expression and sputtered, "Mom, I was playing frisbee and I threw it and the wind took it."

Hmm. That seems to be no big deal, so I'm a little puzzled at the tears. I ask for clarification: "Did it hit something?"

"No." Sniffle.

"Did you lose it in the lake?"

"No." Sniffle.

"Well, where is it?"

"It landed on the neighbor's deck!" Big, worried eyes.

"Okay. Did you go and get it?"

"Yes." Sniffle. Sniffle.

"Then what's the problem?"

"I walked on to the deck to get it, and my shoes were muddy and I left big muddy footprints all over her deck!"

Oh.

"Did you wash it off?"

"Mom, I tried to wipe it with my hands, (presents filthy, muddy palms that match the smudges of mud that I am now noticing on both his shirt and pants) but it just smeared everywhere!" Deepening frown, and we are nearing tears. "Will you help me?"

Of course I will. We walked out to the back yard, and sure enough, four kind-of-smeary size 3 tennis shoe prints were clearly visible on the neighbor's wood deck. He slipped off his shoes (which didn't occur to him the first time, apparently) and scrubbed the deck clean. It only took a few minutes, but I could visibly see his worry lines ease and the tension leave his shoulders when it wiped off easily.

I don't know how many kids would worry about this kind of thing, but I'm kind of delighted that he worried enough to make it right. I'm pretty sure our neighbor wouldn't have thought twice about the footprints, but at least Cooper is pausing to consider his effect on his surroundings. I really wish he would transfer those same feelings of responsibility to keeping his room clean or remembering not to leave sticky plates on the living room floor, but hey - baby steps. I may be failing all over the place otherwise, but in the category of teaching them how to be a good neighbor, I have at least one mark in the win column. 

As You Wish

Some time ago, my dad made a promise to Carys. I can't remember exactly how or when it began, but Grandpa promised that someday he would sit down and introduce her to The Princess Bride. She has speculated wildly these last months - wondering how Andre the Giant could possibly factor in to a movie about a princess. (She learned about him during a WWE feature story, in case you were wondering. If you're wondering why she's into WWE, I can't even possibly speculate because I do not know. Ask her dad.)

Anyway. Carys has pressed me often for more information about this mysterious movie, intrigued by the artwork on the DVD that Dad gave her for Christmas. I've refused to tell her anything...I just told her that her Grandpa promised to watch it with her Someday, and she would have to wait until then. Well Someday finally came yesterday. And I had forgotten just how much I love that movie until we were all piled together in the family room watching it.

Every genre of literature is neatly packaged in that wonderful film - drama, comedy, satire, tragedy, poetry. I hope they never remake it, and we can forever associate the fantastic characters to the legends who portrayed them first. The movie is timeless. It came out in 1987 and my kids were still glued to the screen despite its lack of animation, digital enhancements or CGI elements. I don't know how much meaning they drew from it the first time around, but I'm sure we will be watching it again and again. I'm going to pull out every metaphor, every allusion that I can, and quote this movie over and over until they know it as well as I do.

Some of life's biggest lessons can be found there, along with some of the best one-liners of all time.

"People in masks cannot be trusted." If there is a bigger metaphor anywhere, I'd like to see it. Sometimes the toughest adversaries are the ones who come wearing the mask of friendship. How many times in our lives will we misread the intents of an acquaintance? How many times will we be fooled by appearances? Painful lessons, yes, but important ones.

"Inconceivable!" This is going to be my new go-to response whenever the kids ask me if they can do or have something.

"Hear this now. I will always come for you." If there's anything I want my children to know, it is this. Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them, if they need me, I will always come for them. My parents gave this gift to me; they rescued me from deep pools and shallow ones. They came, every time I called for them, and every achievement I ever made, every risk I ever took, every failure and every success was possible only through the security of that safety net.

"We are men of action. Lies do not become us." This. Just - this. Even when the truth is hard to hear, truth is still what develops our integrity and defines our character.

"This is true love - you think this happens every day?" It doesn't. It really doesn't. And sometimes you think you have it, and you don't. And sometimes, you don't recognize it when you do have it. A tricky thing, love. But when you find it for real, and you know it for real, hold on real hard.

"There's not a lot of money in revenge." I hope my kids develop a sense of pride and integrity that prevents them from ever seeking revenge for an injustice. I hope that I can model that always for them, and live an authentic life free from the desire to hurt when I have been hurt. It just begets more hurt, and there's no recovering from that terrible cycle.

"Rest well, and dream of large women." Okay, this isn't a life lesson. It's just the funniest thing ever to say to your 9 year old when you are tucking him in at night.

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." Oh yes, life is pain. Sometimes it hurts a little, sometimes it hurts a lot. I'm finding as I get older that the parts that hurt a lot are the parts I've come to value most. We learn the most from our biggest failures and heartaches; sometimes the heart aches with the loss of something so good, so wonderful, that the pain is a reminder of what we were able to experience, if only for a little while.

And, finally: "Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a little while." True story.

Ask And Ye Shall Receive

It's true that you really have to be careful what you wish for. When Emma was very young, maybe 2 or 3, she was a little bit of a handful. Precocious, curious, fearless. Carys came shortly thereafter and complicated life even further...she was a master escape-artist, highly sensitive, emotional, and prone to meltdowns of gargantuan proportions. When I found out we would be having baby #3 a mere 10 months after baby #2 showed up, we might have panicked a little. As we adjusted our parenting game plan from a man-to-man to a zone defense, I am going to admit that I might have been praying fervently for a child that was going to be a little more predictable. I might have asked for obedience. I might have even asked for a rule-follower.

Well guess what? God listens. Because I got it. Cooper is a scientific, analytical, black and white little rule-follower. And it is driving me crazy.

Some examples: if you say off-handedly that you plan to leave for the store in ten minutes, that kid is dressed in his jacket and shoes and waiting by the front door in nine. Doesn't that sound awesome? Except that both girls (and even me, sometimes) don't function like that - we're usually ready in 15. And those six minutes that he is waiting by the door become eternally long and his mood begins to darken considerably. By the time I get there, he is CRABBY. I am learning to be less specific about timelines.

If I make one of those idle threats that parents sometimes make, like, "If you don't eat a good enough supper, there's no dessert tonight." I better prepare myself to follow through. If Cooper doesn't THINK he has eaten a 'good enough' supper, he will turn down dessert no matter what, because Mom said it, and he must comply. This is so maddening to me - I usually say these things because getting Carys to eat actual food is like trying to solve climate change. But Cooper takes it to heart, and he will flat refuse to put one bite of dessert in his mouth if he deems his commitment to supper as less than ideal. Even if I say later that he did, in fact, eat enough supper, he will say, "No, I didn't finish, so I shouldn't have dessert." I am learning to say what I mean and mean what I say.

This weekend we went up to Bloomington to watch Emma play basketball. Cooper was supremely difficult the entire weekend. At the hotel he remarked that he was really hungry. We wouldn't have time to go anywhere before Emma's first game so I offered to buy him a sandwich from the hotel lobby. He picked one out and on the way up to the desk I commented to Aaron that $11 was sure a lot for a sandwich. And that was it, he didn't want it anymore. Mom said it was too expensive. It took me almost fifteen minutes to persuade him to eat it, and we were almost late for Emma's game in the process.

Later, he asked for a few dollars to go get a slice of pizza. They were out of pizza. So he put the money back in my purse. Never mind that he was really hungry - he wouldn't buy anything else because he had told me he would buy pizza with it. I authorized pizza. If pizza is gone, we must therefore return the money. Who does that? Seriously, WHAT KID DOES THAT? When I found out about it, I persuaded him to come with me to get something else. He said, "maybe a smoothie?" Lo and behold - smoothies are gone as well. Crap. I tried again: "They have Gatorade...?" No. "Nachos...?" No. He chose to go without. And the hungrier he got, the crabbier he got, so that was super fun.

When we got to the gym the next morning, he asked right away if he could get a smoothie before they ran out. I said, "You bet." I gave each of the kids $4 and they stopped off at the concession stand to get one. We walked into the gym and sat down. Minutes tick by, and no Cooper. Finally, Carys comes running in to tell me that Cooper is refusing to enter the gym because there is a sign on the wall that says "NO FOOD OR DRINK IN THE GYM." Never mind that I am surrounded by people with nachos and pizza and hot dogs and Starbucks and even one lady that I'm pretty sure was drinking a whiskey/coke. Never mind that there are garbage cans all over the place expressly for the purpose of throwing away all the garbage that people are bringing into the gym. Cooper is standing dutifully outside the door, sipping a smoothie by himself. I walked over there to get him. He pointed to the sign and wouldn't move. I tried explaining, I tried persuading. I really wanted him to come sit down with his buddies near us and not be left alone like a parent-less vagabond, but that kid was not moving. Finally, I physically brought him into the gym and over to our seats. Where he proceeded to throw away the entire remains of a four-dollar smoothie because it was against the rules to have it.

This isn't an all-the-time thing, by the way. He's highly selective about where he applies this philosophy, and I'm beginning to think it might be centered on places where he feels he might elicit the biggest response from his mother. He has no problem skipping a homework assignment or two. (He claims he knows all the answers, so it doesn't matter if he actually does it or not.) He could not care less about how often he showers, whether his jeans have holes in them, or what time he needs to be in bed. He DOES care that his math tests are timed (why does it matter how FAST I can do them, as long as I can do them?)

I know that raising kids is no walk in the park, and I'm sure I'm in for some interesting years. Emma is probably doing too much, Carys is probably feeling too much, and I guess Cooper is probably thinking too much. My goal is to get through these next few years without drinking too much.

Present Over Perfect

I'm one of those few people in the world who is lucky enough to call my school administrator my friend. In the spirit of friendship, he offered this read to me, mentioning that it held great meaning for him and wanted to pass it on. This wonderful book, "Present Over Perfect" by Shauna Niequist, is a must-read for anyone who wants to "Leave Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living."

I'm only half-way through it, and already feeling profoundly affected. I find myself writing page after page of reflection, applying bits and pieces of the wisdom within to my own life. This is one of those books that, while it doesn't fit me exactly to a tee, is full of little pieces of truth that is changing the way I look at the world, and the way I identify my place in it.

If you know me at all, you know I'm a "yes" person. I thrive on moving, constantly, and giving myself and my time to anyone who needs it. I'm not so great at giving to myself. When I do for myself, I feel selfish, and I feel like I'm letting people down. I invent ways I've let people down in my head, even when I haven't. When I'm using an afternoon off for myself instead of calling someone, or catching up, or planning some activity, I feel immensely guilty. I have long defined my value by what I can give to other people.

I think I might use this post as my litmus test for success: a year from now, I'm going to look back at the blog and see how far I've come on some of the goals I've decided to set for myself. The idea of saying "no" to the world and "yes" to ourselves is not a new one...but this book gives a little "how-to" plan that I seem to have been missing. It is difficult to give ourselves permission to turn down invitations for fear of disappointing people, but "to do this, though, you have to give even the people closest to you - maybe especially the people closest to you - realistic expectations for what you can give them. We disappoint people because we're limited. We have to accept the idea of our own limitations in order to accept the idea that we'll disappoint people. I have this much time, I have this much energy. I have this much relational capacity." That paragraph - that one - I have to photocopy it and glue it to my mirror.

So. We're always learning, aren't we? Thank you, Andy...it's exactly what I needed right now.

A Love Letter

In a year that has been difficult and sad, it hasn't been easy to find my cheerful positivity long enough to write anything of real substance. I'm careful not to fill up these pages with too much heartache; I think we'll all remember the tone of this year without too much of that. Our family keeps going, from silly moment to happy moment to crazy moment with a few somber pauses in between as we navigate the absence of the one who held us all together. Joy, the reckless and free kind, has been a little hard to come by, it's true. Mostly I just walk around having a pretend life while I wait for Mom to call.

But a couple weeks ago I found myself in one of those moments of magic; the kind where time stopped and I felt it again; glimpsed the fiery sunshine through the fog and clouds. How do I explain this without sounding ridiculous? I'm not sure I can. You're probably anticipating some major life changing event, right? Well, sort of. I went to a concert. But not JUST a concert.

I went to Church.

See, me and Church, we have this thing. We have this thing where he writes all the songs that tell my life story and then I get to find myself again in all the words. He tells me all about my life; who I was, who I am, who I am becoming. Nobody really gets this about me - except maybe my brother. My brother and Stevie, maybe. I think she probably gets it. But this music is more than music for me, and the concert was a literal return, at least for a few hours, to a carefree happiness I've been missing lately.

So this is my love letter to Church.

{You can laugh - go ahead - take a minute to fully appreciate my return the teenager I used to be and apparently still am, on some level.}

I met Eric Church in 2006 when my brother sent me a three word text: Sinners Like Me. I downloaded the first album promptly. John and I have this connection - I can't really explain it. We speak sparingly; there's no daily phone call or email. But we can sit next to each other in a room and have an entire conversation with each other in complete silence. We're built that way - two sides of a coin - and when he sends me a word or two over the phone, I know what he's telling me without asking. Music filled our childhood, and we both resonate with the same devotion to it, constantly sharing bits and pieces of anything that comes our way and means something to us. I didn't see anything truly profound in Two Pink Lines, which is as far as I got in that album before I got distracted by something else. So it was really in 2009 when Carolina came out that John sent me a link to Those I've Loved and then I was hooked.

Thus begins an eight year love affair with Church. He's so diverse; I'm on top of the world when I have a Drink in My Hand, and feeling like I might never leave the house again when I'm Holdin My Own. I am seventeen years old again during Springsteen and Talladega takes me right back to my best friends in college, remembering a particular road trip to Milwaukee.

So on one gorgeous January Saturday night, I made my way to Sioux Falls for his concert - the first time I've managed to secure tickets. To use one of Cooper's favorite expressions: it was epic. He had no opening act. He played two sets; 37 songs, 3 hours and 39 minutes. The average fan got to sing along to a popular hit about once every four or five songs. Those of us who really know him, though, were treated to deep cuts from every single album sandwiched in between the radio singles.

Music has such a way of pulling us backward into our memories...it was so good to feel lightness of being again, and remember some pieces of my past that I've been missing. It was so special for me, and I have to have a minute to explain just one more reason why. Aaron and I went to this concert together - this is worth noting because he is NOT a country music fan. But he went because this is one of those times where he gets me for real. I think being there under any other circumstance just wouldn't have been right. I wasn't there for the usual concert experience - I wasn't there to be loud and rowdy or to sing along at the top of my lungs. I felt positively reverential, and I wanted to FEEL that, the whole time. Anything else would have kept me from what I really wanted out of my first Church concert. If I couldn't be there with my brother, then Aaron is the next best thing, because he really gets me, and he knew, I think, what it was going to mean for me.

We were surrounded by a heavily intoxicated stadium crowd (South Dakota, remember.) It was loud and it was rowdy and there was a flannel shirt and boots memo that we must have missed. Aaron hates country music, but he loves me. And I know it because he didn't suggest even once that I take someone else with me. (There are plenty of times when I need my friends, and he's usually more than happy to send me off with one of them when he's not all that excited about my plans.) This time, though, he came with me. And then? Then he just let me be...no talking, no dancing, no drinking, even. He listened to the music, watched me have a 14-year-old fangirl moment when Church took the stage, made sure I had a Drink In My Hand at exactly the right time, and when Record Year came along and my heart seized up and stopped beating for three minutes and eleven seconds, he reached across my lap and took my hand. That song has me hard - it's Mom's song. I've never said that out loud - I've never told him that. I guess he just knows.

Between sets, I was texting John and Stevie, sharing heart emojis and song lyrics, and feeling like they were there with me, instead of in Nashville and Philly. I felt the thin golden threads of our connections stretching between us, and it made it feel even more special; like we three have this secret and not even one of the other 12,000 people there could possibly feel it like we feel it.

By the time we were headed home, I felt such a peace, such an exhilaration - it was a bucket-list concert, and I couldn't have asked for it to be any better. The next one will be icing on the cake, and THAT one will be a party.

I think I really needed that.

Now I can return to my very responsible, very busy, 42-year-old self. It should make the long weeks of basketball and gymnastics and play practice a lot more bearable until the sunshine comes back out and Spring finds her way back to Minnesota.

And just so I never forget, (as if!) but anyway, just in case...I'll just leave this right here. 💗