He said,
“When do you ever have time to walk by a giant chess set and decide, “Hey, let’s stop and play!”
That is a gift.
The gift of unscheduled time.
Let us give it to one another more.
The Gift
Parenting
Mother
“And yes it makes me crazy to think that my kids can go days-or maybe weeks-without me. If I’m not needed, if I’m not busy, if I’m not an overstretched, overwhelmed, underslept, (…) mother . . . What exactly am I?”
I snapped a photo of this quote from Kristin Hannah’s book Fly Away as I thought, “I don’t want to be her.”
I don’t want to be that person so consumed with her kids that she has no sense of self, otherwise.
And then I thought,
Who am I?
What defines me?
What do I want to define me?
The truth is, they are my muse.
And I have learned more about myself in the role of “mother” than I could have ever hoped to have learned in a lifetime.
I thought I knew the depth of Love’s Well once I met Emmett.
But I soon learned it ran much deeper upon the birth of our first daughter, Aurora.
I thought there could be no love greater than that of our first child,
Until I had my second, then third, then fourth.
My children have humbled me, sometimes out of sheer necessity.
Because of them, I will always fight over flight.
I don’t have all of the answers but I do have a greater will than myself to live.
What am I?
I’m a mother.
And there ain’t no shame in that.
Listen and Learn
If I had a dime . . .
For every time I heard a senior tell me to cherish these days . . .
After awhile, I just started listening.
In the end, aren’t we yelling at our children for the same infraction?
LISTEN.
Why do I gotta wait until I’m 70 to learn?
Instead, let’s do this now!
Not miss a beat.
Not miss a moment.
Let’s enjoy these days to their fullest.
Like they always said we should.
Let’s listen and learn.
Letting Go
Well, that was a first.
My child had a full-blown panic attack.
I could feel her fear when she said she couldn’t breathe.
That her heart hurt.
She was climbing onto me, spiraling out of control, desperate for me to save her.
“You aren’t dying. I know it feels like you are but you aren’t. This is a panic attack. Look at me. Take deep breaths.”
Ironically enough, her father and I had just spent an hour the night before discussing the need for our family to spend more time listening to one another.
Sure, we go, go, go! We love adventures and experiences. We spend quality time swimming, playing and exploring.
But how much time have we set aside for listening?
We are living during a historical time- a pandemic- yes, this will be one for the history books.
As much as we all have tried to buck up and just keep on, keepin’ on, many of us are silently suffering.
And you know where it shows itself?
At the zoo. Late for a train.
Suddenly, it’s just too much.
And we cannot any longer.
So tonight, during our first, nightly family meeting, we opened the flood gates- offering our girls to let it out.
It’s a process.
When you’ve spent so much effort keeping it all in, it takes time.
But we are committed to giving our children and each other the space to do just that.
Let It Out. Let It Go.
A Story for the Ages
Did I tell you about that time I was robbed in Italy?
This morning my second daughter asked if Olive Oil tasted gross, since it is the only oil I use to cook our fourth daughter’s meals.
And with reverence I exuded my enduring love for olive oil, ever since visiting my family’s olive tree farm in Calabria, Italy.
I wish I had words to describe the experience of existing amongst an olive oil tree farm, being in the presence of literal tanks of fresh olive oil. Olive trees as far as the eye could see.
When I took my first taste, life, as I knew it, would never be the same.
Think, eating a fresh tuna off the boat versus tuna fish in the can.
There is no comparison.
I was 18 and for my graduation, I had asked my biological father to take me to his homeland.
I had never lived with him, we had shared a roof only one weekend before but it was important to me to know my roots.
He was first generation American and I had never known my grandparents.
So, he agreed.
Our first hotel in Rome was a closet. Talk about zero to one hundred. We had rarely spent a night together, nonetheless nearly touching!
I love yous had never been said, instead, as a child, he would grab my ear lobe and look at me with endearment. Like he loved me so much he couldn’t even believe I was real.
But there we were. Father, Daughter.
We traveled to Naples and Pompeii and then on to the olive tree farms in Calabria, meeting my grandfather’s relatives.
They, speaking only Italian, welcomed me like they had known me my entire life and served me a lasagna for a table of 15 that I will never forget.
My cousins threw me on the back of their motorbikes and whipped me around the mountainous roads as I learned to scream, “ay-aya-aya-ay!!!!!”.
We left in our rented, bright-blue Mercedes for my grandmother’s homeland of Licodia Eubea, Sicily with only a few days of our trip to go.
I stood in the room my grandmother was born.
I am 38. My dad is 90 this year. My grandmother was born in the 1800s.
This was major.
And then we were robbed.
We were lost in an alley in Sicily when a motorbike blocked our rental car’s way, while a thief on foot opened our back car doors and stole our backpacks containing nothing but nine rolls of film, my journal and a legal pad with the names and contact information of all the relatives we had met along the way.
In other words, our memories.
We left Italy with one roll of film.
And a story for the ages.
Carry
“Carry me.”
I remember.
I distinctly remember my thinking,
“This is it. This is the last time.”
The heaviness of her footsteps.
Her arms wrapped tightly around my back, my legs around her waist.
She struggled but she persevered.
“Mom, I can walk.”
“No, honey, I’ve got you.”
We ascended the stairs to my bedroom, something she had done for a decade, but this time was different because now
It was the last time.
I was getting too heavy.
I took note of the banister, wanting to remember its rich, brown, smoothness.
The way I had always slid down it on my way to school.
The security I felt in grasping it.
I was outgrowing clothes and shoe sizes but until that moment I hadn’t realized,
I’d outgrown my mother.
“Carry me.”
A cry for help I would continue until I carried my own.
“Carry me,” my nine-year-old pleaded tonight.
I wondered,
Does she know?
It’s time she carried herself?
That Time We Homeschooled
Today was our last day of homeschooling.
And I feel a mixture of relief and heartache.
A year ago, I tossed and turned at night, wondering what to do about the upcoming school year.
My children were breaking down over their zoom meetings- unable to come to the computer, overwhelmed with tears over the strangeness of virtual learning.
I knew Covid was only going to get worse in the winter months and feared what the school year would bring. But I also feared how we would cope and adapt to homeschooling. Would my children miss their friends? Would they become hermits? Would I lose my mind?
Ultimately, I went with my gut and in September, we dove right in. Pre-K, 1st and 3rd grade.
In the course of this past school year, I’ve taught my daughter in Pre-K how to read, helped my first grader graduate from a beginning reader to fluently reading chapter books and taught my third grader multiplication, division, and through rich literature, discussed real-world issues like racism and poverty.
In other words, I killed it! We nailed it. We had the absolute BEST time homeschooling, usually in our pajamas, ending by noon every day to spend the afternoon outside swimming, biking and playing. Better yet, my husband was working from home so we had lunch together almost every day. In so many ways, I want to freeze time and keep on, keepin’ on.
But time continues to pass. My children are growing older. Our babysitter is off to college in the fall (for real this time after deferring her first year because of Covid) and my husband will likely return to the office soon.
I struggled over the decision as to whether to continue homeschooling next year or to return them to our beloved public school in the back of our neighborhood. But as amazing as this past year was, continuing to homeschool next year felt like holding onto a relationship that had passed its prime. It was good while it lasted but my gut tells me it is time to move on.
Life is a work in progress. A series of never-ending surprises. Having four children has taught me to roll with whatever comes my way and in the midst of it all, revel every moment. And this past year, we did just that. That time we homeschooled. A year we’ll never forget.
Freedom!
NINE-AND-A-HALF YEARS.
I have been changing diapers for 9 and 1/2 years straight.
Until now.
My fourth and final daughter is fully potty trained.
For the first time in 9.5 years, I cancelled my diaper order.
For the first time in 9.5 years, I did not reorder the baby wipes.
And I’m-a-tell-y’all-what.
It is a LIBERATING feeling.
Nine-and-a-half years, no breaks.
One adorable baby butt after another.
But the time has come to say SEE YA!
Time to pass the buck on to other adorable baby butts- just not mine!
We made it!
Freedom!
Top Right “Emma” Danielle Ice Photography- Bottom “Elizabeth” Captured by Katie McCracken
After
What happens after?
Do you remember when you tasted something for the first time?
The equal mixture of excitement and apprehension?
That’s how I am feeling these days.
Just when I thought things with our youngest couldn’t get any harder, they hit (what I hope is) rock bottom back in December 2020. My husband and I were surviving on fumes- every night wondering if we should take our daughter to the hospital to find some magical cure for her nightmare flaring skin. I was in the bathtub with her nightly at 2 am to help calm the itch and waking up at 7 a.m. to homeschool her three big sisters, thanks to the pandemic. We knew we could not survive much longer.
So we prayed. We asked everyone we knew to pray and add her to their prayer list and we searched. I spent hours and days and weeks and months researching and meeting with specialists of every kind from Virginia to Pennsylvania to Michigan and California to find any possible relief as we all, particularly she, continued to endure a living hell.
We changed her diet, we had her relentlessly tested for multiple issues and within the last month, she has improved.
But what happens after?
What happens once you emerge from trauma?
I’ve been waking up with Elizabeth every night for three years and even my pregnancy with her was ridden with weekly appointments due to concerns with her growth.
How do I adapt to “normal”?
I’ve been changing diapers for over 9 years nonstop and now she is potty training.
What happens when I’m not?
Who am I now?
What taste is this?
Tooter
It began innocently enough.
“Mommy, tell me a story.”
As a writer I realize this sounds unbelievable, but I always dreaded the day my child would ask me to make up a story on-the-spot. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I never thought myself capable.
I’m not sure I ever allowed myself to explore my imagination to those depths. I’ve always envied those storytellers who were able to, so seemingly effortlessly.
But my child was working through some hard feelings and I desperately wanted to pull through for her, so I leapt.
The first character that came to mind was an old beat-up truck named “Tooter”. I knew that name would make her laugh, and it did.
Next, had to be a yellow convertible, Tooter’s wife Tulip. Harper loves yellow and I could just see her wavy blonde hair blowing in the wind.
And finally, Cooper (and later, his little sister Pinky), their son.
Over the past year, we’ve woven an entire collection of Tooter stories together, taking turns filling in the blanks, covering every major moment of Harper’s life, particularly what is relative to that day: jealousy, joy, loss, fear, surprise, excitement, perseverance, truthfulness, goodness and more.
“Mommy, tell me a Tooter story.” She pleads.
Seconds after I’ve spent an hour lying on the floor of her youngest sister’s bedroom, in the final minutes of the day. The moment I am more spent than any other in the last 24 hours and yet, I dig, scraping the depths of my reserves to pull through for this little girl, looking to me for answers and peace of mind before bedtime.
Tooter’s family has become our medium of communication on topics that are too sensitive to discuss directly.
And we are both better because of them.
New Leaf Parenting 