Better Make It A Double

thoughts just before preschool

 (this was written Saturday, but I had computer issues then.)

The boys and I spent an idyllic Saturday morning running a couple of errands and visiting yet another playground. J teaches on Saturdays, so it’s just the three of us, but I have so enjoyed these morning this summer. We’ve made it a mission to explore all the playgrounds within a couple of miles of us, and we still aren’t done—this city is simply full of great playgrounds.

 

Today’s stop was at one of the nicer city parks, just beyond the highway, right between the hospital where the boys were born and the apartment Joel and I lived in after we were first married. It was also right next to the dog park where I sat in the sun with a large cup of decaf after being liberated from 13 weeks of bed rest. Sitting on that bench watching Joel play fetch with Ivy was one of the happiest days of my life. We’d just come back from the doctor, who remarked that the boys would come any time now, but that they’d be fine. We knew then that the worst of the fear and difficulty was probably over, and after an entire winter inside, our Spring was here.

 

As the boys played on the equipment this morning, I kept looking one direction toward where my life with J began and the other where our life with the boys began. After we shared a snack on a shaded bench, we took a hike in the direction of the hospital. It was a bit too late in the morning to walk all the way up to the hospital, but the boys were pretty interested to hear that they were born in the tall building we pointed to. We made it as far as a bench facing the river, and I sat down while the boys played with sticks and acorns. Three and a half years ago, Joel, my mother, and I brought O to that same bench for his very first time outdoors. He’d been officially discharged, even though we all stayed in the NICU “family room” we’d been given to stay in until N was discharged too. It was an early Spring, and on our walk, I was amazed to see the late March greenery already emerging. I was still on a walker due to weakness from bed rest, too unsteady to carry O that far, so J had O in a sling, the proud daddy going down the elevator with his newborn baby son in a sling. O was still tiny in that blue cotton sling, yet so round and robust compared to even a week earlier. The three of us were almost giddy to have him there, to be doing something so normal, without machines, wires, or nurses. I remember sitting on that bench, looking at him, taking him from J and holding him against my shoulder and my mom and J stood overlooking the river, thinking, “Look what we pulled off, what we have been given.”

 

The things we do for our children before they are born are an act of faith. Sure, we bond with them in some way during pregnancy, but we also go into wanting or not wanting to have children based on an idea, a preconception that seeks to justify one direction or another taken. Some of us even have lists of pros and cons—we can’t really help but do it. But parenthood just doesn’t look all that good on paper, and if we were really honest, the pros wouldn’t add up to enough for a lot of us. In reality, the love we have for a child, the reason we might be willing to sacrifice a lot to become parents is nothing like that, nothing so rational or easy to explain. Nonetheless, some tiny part of many of us seems to know and take the risk that we’ll really want this thing we somehow want more than the world, on some level we can't quite understand in advance. And then, to have this child (or children!) born, and know that that drive indeed led to this—this miracle! I always wonder if a parent’s love for a child is perhaps like a tiny taste of what God’s love for us must be like – extravagant, complete, there no matter what we do, not based in any way on reason or merit, but on something divine that transcends all of that. Parenting can have incredible highs and lows, but I never doubt that my love for my children is unconditional.

 

Today, N and O spied a chipmunk, and following my advice to stay still and quiet if they want to see wildlife, they lay on their tummies and watched excitedly. They chattered back and forth, laying there in front of me, and I started to cry, first a little, and then a lot, grateful for their immersion in something other than me so I could just deal with my messy self and get it together. I did, eventually, but only after realizing that one of the greatest gifts of that difficult time (and there are many, and sometimes I’m still learning about both the gifts and losses) was realizing from the beginning that these kids are resilient and strong. After they finally came home with us three and a half years ago, I didn’t worry that they’d perish in the night like so many new parents understandably do. I didn’t once stand over their cribs and wonder if they were still breathing. I followed the rules, lay them on their backs in approved bedding, but after everything we’d already gone through, I just felt like they’d be OK, that we’d be OK, that we can handle what comes our way. And we are, and we do.

 

Today, three and a half years later, I had the same feeling I did before: "Look what we pulled off, what we have been given.” These big, healthy boys full of stories and questions and laughter, such good company to each other, so easy to love even when they’re maddening. And now, the four of us aren’t just surviving anymore, trading off care and sleep; we are also a family that enjoys each other’s company. What could ever have been asked of me that I wouldn’t do for this, right here, right now, or for the laughter this morning as the four of us ate breakfast, for the chance to sing to them before a night’s sleep? An overwhelming thought, but full of gratitude all the same.

 

Eventually, I wiped my unexpected tears, and initiated our going home game. “What are you going to have on your sandwich when we get home, boys? I think I’ll have a gravel sandwich.” In turn, they responded with the same creative silliness, linking their hands around each of my thumbs. “A toilet paper sandwich!” “A screw and nail and bolt sandwich!” “Snails on toast!”

 

The boys start preschool next week, and I’ve been a bit more emotional about all of it than I expected to be (can you tell?) The boys are on the cusp of a new kind of independence, one that involves a whole world that we will only see a part of. We have chosen a good school with good people who will given them a particular experience that we cannot. It’s been easier to feel like they’ll be fine when they’ve been in the care of dear friends and family, but this type of separation is new for all of us. Our boys are resilient and strong, even kind and curious and ready for new experiences. They are ready, and even if it takes a little reminding in the way of a park bench under an oak tree, J and I are too.  

last days of summer

Some parents like to debate whether age 2 or 3 are harder (me: neither -18 months was hardest), and while it's true that the fussiness and drama do not disappear with the "terrible twos", I also really love this age, with both boys. I love to hear them think out loud, to reason, even empathize, to see them collaborate (and they really do get along very well), and to have long conversations with them. Even if some of those conversations are now about death, or human reproduction. I love to see them ride trikes (yes, O too - this week, he just took off peddling, and straight up a hill), hop, and hang from the monkey bars. Ask me how I feel again in a couple of months, but right now, I love age 3.

Yesterday, N was trying to get O to sing a song with him ("Go Now In Peace", a sweet little round they learned in church that we often sing to each other as we leave the house), and O was going a little too fast for N's liking. N said, "You are going much too fast, Ollie! Is that necessary? I don't think that is necessary!" Today, Ivy was barking in her kennel, and I said that I'd be right back after I went to get her. As I was putting on my Wellies (Rain! We finally have rain!), O said, "It's OK, Mama - she fell silent." Is it obvious that we read a lot of books?

Last summer, I was still doing the twin mom head-bob at the playground much of the time: one-two-one-two, always counting kids and putting out fires. This summer, I bring a book or a magazine, looking up regularly while keeping my place with my finger. Last summer, a trip around the block still took at least 30 minutes, and we still used the stroller much of the time. This summer, we often leave it at home, and J and the boys take buses and trains all over town. They ride trikes, and Big Wheels, and even a two-wheeler with training wheels. A trip around the block can happen in minutes.

Of course, O is just as interested in examining the bike as riding it...

Last summer, no nap meant brace for an afternoon of mayhem and tears. This summer, they can usually roll with it, and they often just play in their rooms anyway. 

Especially if they can eat cake instead. I love how they sit all up in each other's business and not minding a bit. I wonder if they'll ever stop doing that? Will they sit together on one bed in their room when they're teens, 90 degrees to each other with one boys' legs on top of the other's? I can kind of picture that.

Both boys adore corn. Tonight I was brushing N's teeth, and he asked me to "leave the corn in, please". Um, no. Both boys just saw the dentist, who said they have fantastic teeth, both in surface and structure, and that they could well get through childhood without a single cavity and no braces. I don't want to mess that up.

Here is N trying to play in the sandbox, which is being overtaken by our "volunteer" squash. The plant has 8 acorn squash on it - all due to a stray seed that apparently didn't quite make it into the compost pile. I wish more things worked like that: Didn't quite make it to the bank? Free money for you! Miss the laundry hamper? Have some free socks and underwear!

N has a habit of playing just beyond where the swings would konk him in the head - a habit I've been trying to break all summer.

Compared to years previous, the boys have little interest in toys, at least at home. They prefer sticks, and rocks, and leaves, and straws, and pretty much any tiny random object. When they're really lucky, Daddy will even help them fashion these random objects into vehicles. This one, of course, requires direct supervision. Daddy drives way too fast if you don't watch him.

O is a diligent corn shucker. N was upset I wouldn't let him use our hairbrush to brush the silk.

We had a huge National Night Out party a few weeks ago. From the boys' perspective, this meant that all the grownups on the block went crazy, blocked off the street, made all the cars go away, cooked a bunch of good food, and played in the middle of the street. Their wooden shoes were very popular. Rarely a day goes by that a boy doesn't mention that amazing day that we all hung out in the middle of the street.

And here we have N going "tomato hunting", which he often asks to do after naptime. It gives me visions of him shooting yellow cherry tomatoes with a teeny little gun, like from the Playmobil sets my brother used to have as a kid...The boys start twice-weekly preschool next Friday, the Sunday School year starts next Sunday (and I'm teaching the K-2 kids this year), and their early childhood class the week after that. Busy, busy, but I know that we'll all be happier having someplace to go as the colder weather comes.

A far cry from leisurely playground afternoons in the sun, though.

home economics

The state of the economy has been hard on a lot of us here lately. If you're not in the U.S., it’s hard to describe what a dramatic change it has been compared to a year ago. Not a week seems to go by without someone in our church announcing they’ve been laid off. Foreclosure and For Sale signs dot the neighborhood, and we’ve had people come by the house looking for work. People are taking the contents of their house outside to sell in “garage sales” that are really desperate attempts to come up with a mortgage payment in time, or selling their wedding rings on company bulletin boards. We’ve been somewhat personally affected as well – we’ve lost tens of thousands in equity in our home (just about everyone has), and it’s been hard to keep a full piano studio, lessons being a luxury that not as many can now afford. I managed to dodge a round of layoffs recently, but not all my colleagues did. The cost of food, gasoline, health care premiums and heat are up dramatically, far beyond yearly wage increases, and unemployment is at a thirty-year high. We are getting by, but times are lean for almost everyone we know.

That said, I’ve been thinking lately about some of the good things that come out of times like these, at least for the ones like us who are still managing to get by. If nothing else, lean times teach good habits, and they also force people to take advantage of collective resources. We’ve actually had a wonderful summer. The libraries and farmer’s markets are bustling. Neighborhood festivals and campgrounds are the place to be this year.

Less people going out of town meant more people out and about in the neighborhood, attending National Night out parties in record numbers and chatting over fences. I no longer feel like an eccentric puttering in my vegetable garden, because everyone seems to be giving it a shot this year, trying to offset skyrocketing food prices. Even chicken permits are exploding.

Picking pound after pound of delicious homegrown vegetables feels like being showered in abundance amidst scarcity.

This summer, we saw no big-screen movies. Like many people, we are driving less and using public transportation more. We didn’t hire babysitters –instead we swapped childcare with friends from church and in the process, got to know the other families with young kids much better. We didn’t go to many restaurants, but we had many lovely picnics and dinners with friends.

We didn’t go to the water parks, but we took full advantage of the parks and kiddie pools we pay for with our tax dollars.

I can’t imagine having enjoyed the past few months more if we’d done things differently – I really can’t. The neighborhood has never felt more like a community.

There are, of course, many people in America who are notgetting by, who are making up the increasing amounts of request for assistance coming through my desk at work, who are losing houses, and going bankrupt, or homeless, or sitting on a street corner with a sign, asking for help from a stranger. Homeless shelters are overflowing, aid and jobs are scarce to non-existent, and times are truly desperate for a lot of people. I see it everywhere I go, and we don’t have much of a safety net in this country. We tend to rely on charitable programs to do that in America, but of course, giving is down in this economy too.

What it comes down to, is that I feel oddly fortunate – fortunate to be able to hone habits that will serve us through lean times and not, but also fortunate not to be among those who are losing homes and dreams and any kind of security. It’s an odd feeling – both sad and hopeful. I’m not sad about the fact that my local thrift store shelves are picked clean –it means that Americans are finally starting to get real about consumerism and its true cost, even some of the ones who have other options. I’m not sad about the fact that the buses and light rail cars are packed – these are habits we must embrace if we are to be realistic about the future. Those high energy costs aren't going anywhere. I'm certainly not sad about the fact that the libraries and parks are full of people enjoying what they have to offer.

But I look down the street at the For Sale signs, and wonder what will happen for the family behind those doors. I wonder what will happen to my city’s tax base, to the schools my kids will attend in a few years, to the people whose unemployment finally runs out. I wonder what will happen when too many people’s credit card bills finally overwhelm their incomes in a formula that applies to many of America’s households and spells a recipe for ruin. I wonder how much longer our country can run on empty, on credit, on deficit spending, on waning reserves of oil. Our own finances are being put more or less in order, but ultimately, we are all in the same boat, even beyond our nation's borders.

 

separation (again)

The past couple of weeks has been one of those quiet times where I'm all in my head with nothing much to say, in a slight blue funk that won't be defined precisely and won't go away despite time to read, or write, or eat iced cream. Sometimes when I feel this way, I wonder if my days as a mommy blogger are somehow coming to a natural close, that maybe I ought simply focus on other kinds of writing, that the pressure to say something meaningful about mothering my boys is glopping up my creativity. I've felt this way often enough to know that if I just wait, this blog will beckon me like the old friend's it's become –that you've become. Sit down. Breathe. Write, vent, list, chronicle. Share. Feel better (usually).

 

The truth is, I'm a bit embarrassed to even write about how I've been feeling lately towards my children. I know: you probably think this will be another post about dealing with rage, or frustration, or tantrums, or willfulness. No, the way I've been feeling towards my children is so full of love, I tear up to think of it; so full of round, embracing love, it may split me wide open, with fissure that erupt into tears. It is painful, vulnerable, and draining. I am a mess, and I cannot account for myself right now. I choke up while reading to them at night, boys like bookends leaning into the book with a finger each in their mouths. I watch them play "dentist", or "ground beetles searching for aphids*", or some other imaginative game, and I think that this must be the most beautiful thing anyone has ever witnessed. I scoop them up after a fall, and am slightly grateful that I can hug them that hard, because I want to anyway.

 

Parenting can be so unbelievably hard – so emotionally demanding it can leave me feeling like a withered plant begging, unseen, for water. Parenting requires limitless patience that no-one can reasonable be expected to muster indefinitely without either respite or loss of patience and temper.  It can be repetitive, boring, and even gross. But it can also be this – a love so powerful it almost hurts to feel it, so powerful that you also cannot imagine having ever lived without it.

 

My boys are going to preschool in mere weeks, and it is on my mind a lot. Feeling this way is bugging me, because it is a bit at odds with my professed values, with my identity as to what kind of a mother I am. I am the mother who lets her kids go high up in the playground, who teaches them to be independent, who isn’t afraid to let them experience a little character-building adversity. I am the mama who hugs big, brushes them off, and tells them to “go play”. I am not a helicopter mama, and not a hoverer, though I am warm and engaged with my children. Apparently I’m also the mama who gets all flutter-bellied and sad at their going off to preschool.

 

The boys start preschool in two weeks, they are excited about it, and they're going to a wonderful, nurturing school. They are ready, or at least, I have good reason to believe that to be very likely. It is only five hours a week, for Pete's sake. I am painfully aware that my issue with sending them there is more about me than it is about them. If I'm honest with myself, I think there are a few things going on here.

 

The boys, (though mainly O), have started comparing each other a lot more lately. N kind of plays with the idea in a braggy way, but O does it all the time –he wants to know who's taller, who's faster, who's feet are bigger, what have you. While I've been more likely to worry about N when it comes to separation, O is in kind of a vulnerable spot right now. He's less likely to make social overtures than his brother, and he's pouty and sad when his brother makes a friend at the playground or anywhere else. Watching him sulk is heartbreaking – he's already jealous of having to share me all the time, and now someone wants a piece of his best friend too. He's been so needy lately, so easily hurt. Sometimes he looks at me and says, "I'm just feeling so sad". O isn't quite riding a trike yet (at 3.5 – should I be worried about this?), but N is, and now O won't even try. We’re low-key about it, but he isn’t. I've been trying to help him identify his strengths, which are many, but it's all such a tightrope of not wanting to get stuck on being a chirpy cheerleader, full of empty praise, but also wanting to be reassuring and encouraging. Really, I just want to hug him and say, "You're fine, you're wonderful, you're brilliant and competent, and I love you, sweet boy, and I wish it was enough." Sob. See? – I am a mess.

 

N is a worrier (no idea where he gets that) and I do think preschool adjustment could be a bit rocky, but I'm also pretty confident that he really needs it. He's so exuberant and friendly right now that he's a bit of a live wire, and transitions are still tough. He has an enduring need to control things down to the last detail. I am hopeful that preschool will teach him a bit more about social expectations, about self-control and making transitions as a group. Lord knows I don't want to do it alone. I think that sending a high-energy, somewhat rigid, extremely friendly little guy like N straight into kindergarten could be trouble. The school is very intentional about helping to facilitate social skills.

 

The tricky thing about N, is that he's not the least bit shy, but he is nonetheless drained by lots of social interaction (the true definition of an introvert). He tends to lose it later among the people he trusts most. I think he's going to be pretty darn spent after an afternoon of no nap and lots of people, and those late afternoons and evening could be really rough. We plan on a really early bedtime for the two days they go to preschool, but I think some quiet time after we get home might even be good too. I try very hard not to describe my twins as opposites, but O is indeed the other way around here- somewhat shy (and he relies on his brother as social cover), but being around people fills him up. He'll love it, probably, if he isn't in the shadow of his brother and he feels like he has a friend or two.

 

I think about preschool, and I imagine the two of them sitting in circle time, each with a buddy, or discovering their own interests at the discovery stations. I imagine them learning to be more independent, connecting with each other and separating throughout the day, playing with art, and experimenting, trying on new roles. I try not to imagine N feeling totally overloaded by all the stimulation, acting out, or getting too loud, or wondering when we're coming back already to take him out of there. I try not to imagine O standing on the sidelines, watching his brother play with his friends, falling apart over trivialities, measuring himself against his peers and coming up short in his own estimation, feeling tiny in a vast world of new things.

 

But it is really their mother who feels tiny in a vast world of new things, who has enjoyed the tremendous privilege of having her children only in the care of people that truly love them and always will. It is their mother that needs to be brave, to allow her children to falter, to grow, and to separate. It is their mother who needs to trust her children to the world and the good people she's chosen to help guide the, beyond the limits of her care. May God help me to do that.

*Some kids play "Cops and Robbers". Others play "dinosaurs" or "Circus Animals". Mine play "Integrated Pest Management".

that about which I cannot stop thinking

My grandmother’s house sits squarely in the center of her land, no small bit of land for

Holland

, that verdant country of things built close together on the sea’s intended floor. There are tall, lean places within her garden’s ring of hedge, trees that have seen a few generations, dropped beech nuts on children now grandmothers themselves, the first of them my own mother.

Scattered hens dart between us, the visitors from overseas, here only rarely now, and in my memory there is no distinction between generations of clucking birds, scattering into bushes, then flocking together again like waves of fowl sweeping over moss-covered ground, over tended, edged lawn, piles of brush and leaf mold, between wildflowers and low boxwood. Here, there is wildness allowed into the boundaries of careful cultivation.

A tiny, brown playhouse nestled in the center of the woods was built for me, for the grandchildren. All of it was: the small shelves and table within, the cast-off pans and dolls brought to visit, pretend meals cooked and served, the tiny oilcloth waiting, as a careful surprise, when I came, with my little suitcase, to stay for two whole days. More than once, my Grandmother remarked that my grandfather, the Opa only I, the eldest grandchild, remember, would never have had time or patience to build such a thing during my mother’s childhood. He died, a decade later, leaving behind hidden liquor bottles in outside places, not found for some time, the liquor still within them, waiting.

The playhouse sits now, half-rotted and leaning against a woodpile, containing a part of my three-to-six-year old self still within it.. She calls to me, that girl, as I poke my head inside through cobwebs, and then she runs off in sweaty rubber boots or clogs to mossy paths, twining, headlong, left, then right, her back wet with hours-old rain smacked off of shrubbery. She stops abruptly in front of red current bushes, and those tiny, translucent balls of sourness are eaten, pop after pop between her front teeth in the low rays of June’s late dusk.

Grown-ups laugh a distance away, over drinks and savories in small bowls passed around and around, and they are right where she likes them to be, close, but not seeing her, except for a moment, when they wonder where she is. After a time, they laugh more often, and they do not wonder, and she hears, in the road behind the thick hedge that lines the property, the careful, neat clip-clop of hooves, the compost delivery wagon, perhaps, done for the day, and the rhythm of hooves grows more distant. She hears her grandmother’s radio, opera maybe, and she knows that her grandmother is in her kitchen, moving busily with a tiny, thin cigar between her lips, adding garnishes, counting aloud the plates, the knives, the glasses.

The girl knows all this without seeing it; knows also that she will soon be called, licks currant juice from her wrist and fingers, having once again picked too many at once, and wanting to conceal this. And she does.

 And I, now, the visitor from overseas, stand here in front of current bushes, under the picture window, just as then, but taller, and know I am expected to sit at the table and accept the drink of wine, and pass the savories around and around; pickled things, crackers with smears of meat or French cheese, peanuts, radishes, and explain myself, eyes on me, now the guest, again and again, when I cannot. When I only want to go into the woods and lean against the woodpile, hearing them in the distance, hens my only, and indifferent, witnesses, wind moving in high trees and taking, in time, all of us with it.

mechanics

O has always been rather mechanically inclined and focused. At a year, that meant an obsession with keys and locks. At 2, he became infatuated with gears, and the pipes in our house, and motors. When he turned three, his favorite book—he even slept with it sometimes—was the Reader’s Digest Guide to Home Improvement., especially the whole house layout of how all the pipes fit together. He will gladly spend an hour or so inspecting the inside of the toilet tank, (something I’ve had to make very clear is a supervised activity only).

A month ago, I took both boys to the grocery store, and it was O’s turn to take the little kid-sized cart around and N’s turn to ride in the big cart. I lost O for a second, and turn back one aisle to find him sitting in the middle of the aisle, inspecting the upside-down cart to see how it was put together. He couldn’t figure out how the wheels turned every which way and the cart still went straight. Just this afternoon, he woke before his brother, and looking at me conspiratorially, asked to go look at the pipes and ducts in the basement. We examined the water heater, the furnace, the laundry machines, and all the pipes and ducts. We looked at the “special box only for Grandpa” (the electric box). Hog heaven for this boy. Later, I pulled out a cooler and told him I was going to put ice in it to keep our food cold for our camping trip this weekend. He said, “But I thought the freezer keeps the ice cold. You are saying the ice keeps the cooler cold! That will not work, that’s what I think.” Lest you think this boy is destined to become an engineer of some sort, I should add that his interest in how things work extend to the natural world as well. He wants to know about the bugs and the plants and the birds too.  And the bees. And plumbing. Do you get where this is going?

Right now, with amazing regularity, O thinks the time to lay a big question on me is between bedtime story number two and three. “How did I get in there, mama?” he asks – jabbing his chubby little hand at my stomach. The first time he asked, I just told him he grew from something so small you couldn’t even see it, and focused on how big he grew. The next evening, he repeated the question, this time with a hint of irritation. Ah, well, umm. I explained a bit more of the basic mechanics, trying to keep it simple.

Both boys are also in the common three-year-old phrase of asking absolutely constant “why” questions, and also asking the same question overandoverandover again. It is maddening sometimes, and exhausting. O’s questions seem to be pretty nuts-and-bolts, while N’s are often more about rules, or emotions, or things of a spiritual nature. Regardless, when they are together they talk over each other until my head spins, and then both get upset at not being heard. I can handle that—I know it’s healthy and normal to be full of questions at this age, and a lot of the time, I love to hear what they come up with. I can even do a pretty good deadpan off-the-cuff explanation of how babies are made if pressed. What I have a little more trouble with is O asking me about the finer points of human reproduction while in the checkout line at Target, wanting to know if human organs fit together like puzzle pieces.

 But learn he will, if his persistent and inquisitive little mind seems to need to, at least the basics, and framed within our family’s value system. Hopefully, he will learn those things along with learning a little bit about what we do and do not discuss with cashiers at the store. I’m a little surprised that it came up this early, but we can roll with it. Incidentally, I was seven when I knew as much about the birds and the bees as my boys now do (how you ever pulled that off, I’ll never know, mom and dad). My brother was exactly 3 years, ten months, and ten minutes younger, because I explained my new knowledge to him in detail at the very first opportunity. I wasn’t going to keep that to myself. Apparently, O isn’t either, and if there would ever have been a reason I’d put off talking about sex with my kids, it would have been that, at least in retrospect.

Tonight, I finished story number two (another George and Martha story), and wondered if I was in for another big question. Would he ask if we all have to die, or why he can’t see God? Would he wonder why we don’t eat horses and dogs, but we do eat cows, chickens, and pigs? Nope. He jabbed his little hand at my stomach again, and said, “How did I get out of there, then?”

Limbs

(a poem, at Andromeda's request)

Limbs

My husband’s mother

Walks with the ghost

Of a marionette within her.

Multiple sclerosis

Her choreographer,

She chooses most

Of her own steps,

She will not

Dance them all.

 

She walks with the whisper

Of that ghost contained,

Marionette with strings

Unevenly stretched.

A limp, a thrust toward two-o’clock,

Her dance a lilt, a dirge, a jig.

She stares slightly

Off to the side,

Sometimes heavenward,

Or straight at you with a

Slightly cocked chin,

Never longer than a moment

Between points,

Between steps.

 

My husband’s mother

Moves on the axis

Of her own gravity,

Drawing the circumference

Of decades

Contained within her,

Extending around her

Through generations

Of children,

Through meals

Around long tables,

Faith shared

In bowed heads,

A worn bible,

And showing up.

 

Her stiff upper body

Moves as of a piece.

Thin hand outstretched

For firmness of wall,

Grip of a doorway,

The shoulder of

The person closest.

We know this.

We believe we are ready.

 

In this way we hold her up, slightly

Leaning into her, quietly.

The lines and muscles

Of her mouth betray her,

Straight and clenched,

Righting herself,

To be the light in the world,

How to serve, how to lean?

 

My husband’s mother

And I, three miles apart

We stir like a soup,

Entwine our roots, graft

To the long and the short

Of years;

Mix gardens, and meals,

Genes, worries,

Households and loves,

Milestones and memory;

Pain of body, world, origin.

 

In front of our house,

Marionette strings slacken,

And her hands open up to the sky.

Watching grandsons play,

Laughing, easily, she and them both,

She throws her head back

And laughs,

And only the tips of her fingers

Stay curled,

Watching those children

That run

With scooters,

Wobble, and glide.

Their young bodies

Growing stronger,

Unfurling into long, lean limbs.

 

Her arms recoil,

One reaching

Toward down,

The other folded

Over her chest,

As she chooses her steps,

Wobbles her own way

Down, bit by bit,

To the ground to bend

Over the untied shoe

Of her grandson.

Stay still, young man,

Stay still.

 

© All Rights Reserved

 

summer in the city

Our 2 little characters have been busy, busy, full of bug bites and scraped knees, sweat and dirt. We've had a nice stretch of gorgeous weather, and have been eating out of the garden, splashing in pools of all shapes and sizes, and generally enjoying all summer has to offer. I think I will always remember this summer as the summer the boys discovered that being a twin is really pretty awesome. They are best buddies, almost always together, and they'd be the first to tell you they like it that way. Their parents don't mind it either, because they play together for long stretches, amusing us with their games, and sometimes even letting us get a thing or two done.

(Mama's t-shirts to bed is a big treat)

N is a diligent bean-snapper.

I won't say the name of O's game here, but you can probably guess.

Raspberries are plentiful this year after an inch of chicken compost last spring.

The white chicken above turned out to be a rooster. When we brought him back to trade him for hen, the guy working at the feed store called to his co-worker to come help us by yelling, "Steve! Gussie's a Gus!"

The Farmer's Market playground (and the "twin slide"),

There are some very interesting cars at the Farmer's Market. There are a group of people who hang out there every Saturday morning and, umm, do things to their cars. Sometimes N or O will pick up a random object in the house and ask if we can glue it to our car.

The music is also always a hit.

As are picnics (coming home to a clean kitchen = awesome).

And wasn't it nice of these men to come and bring all their equipment and chop down a tree for our amusement? (Actually it was due to Dutch Elm disease, which is taking down all the gorgeous elm trees one by one). The tree had been marked with a orange "N", and when N asked what it meant, I told him I didn't know. He thought about it for a bit, and then said, "N, for no more tree."

Wishing you lots of summer goodness.

reading and writing

Sorry – It’s Wednesday, and I’ve left you hanging. Well, as I told Caro yesterday afternoon at the kiddie pool, I got in the car Thursday afternoon and told myself that I have four hours of road trip and good company to get over it. Feeling guilty and intimidated is one thing, but letting those things wreck an amazing opportunity is quite another. And I did get over it, mostly, and  it was an amazing opportunity. I wrote for hours. We read poems and prose aloud, talked, ate meals together, and workshopped pieces, but when we weren’t doing any of those things, we pretty much wrote or slept.

The retreat took place in a beautiful setting, full of wildness, a place on the edge of the places people make their insistent mark. I could have done nothing at all there, just listened to the loons, swam, hiked. Instead I worked my ever-loving tail off.

On this high, surprisingly comfortable old bed, I made myself a cocoon of pillows propped myself up, and wrote and wrote and wrote. I brought my computer and I had the front porch to myself. I wrote poems and prose, revised and revised. I took risks. From the two instructors, both accomplished poets, I received inspiration, direction, and validation. I was challenged and I was encouraged, in just the right balance for this scaredy-cat who nonetheless wants to have her work honestly appraised and learn from that.

I am a much better essayist than I am a poet, I think, but I am just as interested in learning more about poetry as I am in learning more about writing in general. Sometimes I almost wish this weren’t the case. This is no small thing—there is just so much to consider, so much to learn. I am a beginner, and in working through that muck, I cannot escape having all my amateurishness laid bare when I dare write poems at all. I've been skating around the edges of this for a while now, and it is sometimes a painful place to be. I don't think it would be if I were 18 or even 25 but I'm 34, with no plans to go back to school anytime soon. For now, the only cure (partial cure) for that is reading and writing, reading and writing, along with finding ways to take a class or workshop here and there. I will be in this place for a long time, perhaps forever. I need to do it anyway.

I am easily intimidated. I still use writing to vent, to feel like somewhere I can make sense, have my complete say. But, since starting to write again three years do ago, something has changed. I started out needing to get some difficult and transformative experiences out of my system. A diary or journal wasn’t enough either, I needed to communicate about those experiences, connect with other people. I am so grateful for the fact that I was able to start writing again by blogging. Slowly though, I wanted to accomplish something more than just venting and commiserating, valuable as those things are. What’s changed is this: these days, my primary motivation to write is a profound enjoyment found in the work of writing itself.

And now my head is full of words, so many words that I am utterly distracted, perhaps even prone to walking into traffic, or, as I did yesterday, putting random objects in the fridge and leaving the faucet running. The words come to me in dreams,  in the car, in the grocery store, streams of black text and letters arching over my vision, entrenched in sensation and memory, rearranging themselves again and again, forming silently on my tongue until my fingers ache to type. I am distracted until I kiss my sweet husband, or fold my boys into my arms and read with them, feeling the weight of their little bodies against my chest. This, even the sweet normal, is the stuff of poetry and prose.

I am distracted until I stand in the garden at dusk and just breathe, or write again, late at night, forming the words, crafting the sentences, certain that I want few things more than to do this as often as possible for the rest of my life.  

retreat

On Thursday afternoon, I am leaving to go on a three day writing retreat at the edge of the Boun*dary Waters Canoe Area. It is being organized through a wilderness retreat center connected to my denomination (Mennonite). I hastily applied to go to this retreat before I left on our trip to the Netherlands, and while I was gone, I checked my e-mail to hear that they’d be delighted to have me. I was thrilled, elated, amazed I’d be granted this opportunity. Now, mere days away, I find myself as nervous as a schoolgirl – a bundle of intense insecurity and general fear of the unknown. That, and I’m overwhelmed by the mother guilt that comes unbidden at everything from leaving the work of childcare and the household to J and his mom for that long, to leaving the boys themselves (especially N, who is already declaring tearfully that he’ll miss me so much), to spending money on gas and the registration fee. I’m trying not to regret signing up, trying to believe that I deserve this time somehow.

As my boys grow older and we’re moving solidly out of the baby and toddler stages, I find myself interested in a bigger world than the one I was living in a couple of years ago. It is a world that contains a more expansive definition of motherhood than all the milky, heavy labor that goes into the first couple of years or so, one that also desires engagement with people who aren’t necessarily in the exact same stage of life. I find myself thinking more about spiritual matters these days, about the natural world, and about issues and politics. Contrary to how that might sound, this isn’t a way of moving further away from my children as it is of the three and sometimes four of us all being in a place to move into that wider world together. Poems, and God, and nature, and even simple politics are a part of my children’s’ experience now, and so it feels right to engage in learning about those areas again with and without them. Going on a retreat, though, is about me. There’s no way I can justify this as being for the family somehow. True, I’m saner if I get my own needs met, but that doesn’t really require a 4 hour trek north to be with renowned writers does it?

But. J only really has one full day extra with the boys, and my MIL isn’t doing too terribly much either. I’m prepping meals, making arrangement for when I’m gone. The cost was sliding-fee. One of the facilitators of the retreat is a poet I really, really admire, and there is a focus on spiritual memoir in some of the sessions, which I’m so interested in exploring further. I feel drawn to both poetry and memoir in an intense way lately, and there are so many areas of my own messy faith story that I’ve never written about at all. And that scares me too –my unconventional faith story is quite likely going to be very different than that of a bunch of people who are most likely both cradle Mennonites and way more credentialed, or at least formally educated, than I am. There is an indignant, almost mocking voice within me lately that says, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, anyway?” There’s another voice inside me, sometimes only slightly louder, but louder all the same, that says, “You couldn’t stop writing now if you tried, if you had only a stick and sand, if the tide wore away your words every single day”. And I know that this is true.

All the same, one can’t have everything, especially not all at once. I’ve already been on one retreat this year –a silent retreat a few months ago. I worry that my intense desire to have real time to write and be alone, and also to interact with writers, is not in balance with all the roles I have to play in life right now. J’s needs aren’t getting met in some real ways –he doesn’t have the time he needs for the things he cares about either. I need to figure out a way to give him some of that. I just don’t know how to make it all work except to say no to some of these things, and I kind of wish I’d never looked at the brochure handed to me in church and then later dug out of my diaper bag.

 

Superman

I know. Maybe I don’t come across as the type that would put her two kids in Superman costumes. You know, crunchy, pacifist, no TV or licensed characters, etc., etc. But I'm neither as rigid nor as virtuous as I might come across sometimes. As I sit here eating from a 98-cent bag of marshmallows, I don’t quite know how to explain it, but seeing O put on the cape we got from a friend and then the costumes to go with it was different for me somehow. O just loves costumes, and he loves the idea of superpowers and men that fly, and all the parts of the story I’ve dared share with him. I think he thinks of Superman as some sort of powerful do-gooder, there to save the day through kindness and superior abilities. “I saved you from the water!” he says. “I just flew right in and did that – you almost drowned!” Today he said, “There’s a kitty in that tree! Don’t call the fire truck – I’ll fly up and get it down!” Being more shy than N, O is so often in the shadow of his exuberant and socially confident brother, but with his cape on, he has just a little more spring in his step, a little more confidence. He appreciates the extra attention he gets, and he’s quick to add that he can fly when people greet him as “Superman”. He 's worn  just the cape as often as not for weeks, even in Europe, and we've just let him.

We have Superman costumes in both 3T and size S, and today, both boys put them on—one costume too small and the other too big—and we went around the block on their scooters. N was mostly disinterested after the initial excitement about matching. He was more busy exclaiming over the wonders of balloon flowers and counting all the green tomatoes. O, on the other hand, was in his glory, scooting along faster than he ever has before, telling me before bed that night that he’s Superman even in his pj’s, because he can fly in his dreams. Just don’t call him Superboy. He doesn’t like that one bit.

three year olds

Three year olds are extremely emotional, moody, and demanding. They can be clingy, saucy, and defiant. As our pediatrician gently pointed out at our three year appointment, anyone who thinks that this all ends with the “Terrible Twos” has another thing coming.  She put it this way: three-year-olds are smarter two-year-olds with a year of experience. And I love this age best of all so far.  

I don’t love it every day, and certainly not every hour, but oh, there are so many good things about this age despite the challenges. I can’t remember ever being so exhausted by their demands and also completely in love with my boys at the same time. Maybe when they were babies, but I think I love interacting with preschoolers even more than I love spending time with babies. Every parent seems to have a stage that they like especially well, and I think this is mine, at least so far. I love the conversations we have, about how things work, places we’ve gone, what they’ll be able to do when they get older, what my life was like when I was a little girl, and how our extended family fits together. I love the sweet, almost shy way they share their affections, with words to back up their devotion. We are still so physically connected – so constantly in touch with each other, more so, in fact, than when they were two. While the clinginess can be overwhelming at times, I mostly love their cuddliness. There are worse things than to be completely adored by two sweet little boys, to have long, sometimes sticky arms always reaching for you.

I love the fact that the books we read now have plots, that they love funny poems (and try to make up their own), and jokes. I love reading a story after naptime, the three of us snuggled under a blanket all in a row—my lap is too small for two boys now—a warm boy on either side of me, leaning against me with my arm around him and helping finish the sentences of the story. I love their enthusiasm for music, mostly children’s folk songs with daddy and hymns with me, many of which are requested by name. I love being privy to their intense and loving relationship—watching the two of them play “storekeeper” or “sailing to America” or any of the many elaborate games they play, saying “I love you, brother” at bedtime. Watching them negotiate with each other, and being able to just wait a moment longer to work things out between them. Far more often than not, they do, using the skills we’ve taught them. They lose their tempers with each other on occasion, getting too bossy or rough, but their motivation is overwhelmingly just to be together, to play in relative harmony. At mealtimes, in the car, or just sitting together, we often talk about important things, about God, the world we live in, what we can do to make it a better place for everyone, what it is to be a friend.  Most of the time, they initiate the conversation. They are starting to show real empathy, for me, for each other, for crying kids at the park.

They amaze me all the time right now – that they know so much, are learning so fast, can do so many things. They climb like monkeys over the biggest playground equipment, run full-stop, somersault, hop, leap, and they jump off anything they ca, landing on both feet, fists clenched in concentration. They are so proud of themselves when they succeed and get so much pleasure out of simple things – watching a tree being cut down, a tractor sweeping the beach, an anthill, a bumblebee, a book full of pictures of sea creatures, a couple of laundry bins and a few feet of rope. No Disneyworld could be better than any of these things.

When we’re not having a day that completely overwhelms all of the above, filled with tears and fits and general crabbiness (and these days do happen), I love being with my three year olds better than anything. Lately it just feels like it’s going so fast, like they’ve grown overnight. I confess that most of the time, I haven’t felt like I wanted to stop time, preserve the stage they’re in. I’ve loved them all along, loved things about all the ages and stages, but I’ve also been pretty excited about the prospect of being able to ditch the diapers, get past the tantrum stage, have a real conversation, be able to run errands more easily, finish a sentence with another adult, and get a break now and then through preschool or school. But right now, I do feel that way. I sit on the couch with the two of them wriggling around me, and I just want to stay like this, just like this, for just a little longer.