At Target this afternoon, my shopping cart kept getting log-jammed by inconsiderate shoppers who clogged the aisles. So many people were crowded into the Easter candy section, bunched together like platelets that I, the red-blood cell, could not push my way past them, so I kept backing my shopping cart up and circumventing the clot.

I found a rectangular block which will allow me to buff my own fingernails. It cost $1.87. I felt so smug, so vindicated when I purchased it and shined my own thumbnail.

I am the Queen of Bargains. Really. I’ve never been one of those women who can buy two grocery carts full of food and pays with $2.32 and ten thousand coupons, but I do know my way around a thrift store and the Marshall’s clearance racks. Tomorrow, Easter Day will find us clothed head-to-toe in bargain apparel. The beauty of it is that no one will know that my twin sons’ brand new Ralph Lauren striped polo shirts cost $3.00 and $5.00 each. I splurged on YoungestBoy’s shockingly bright yellow Gap shirt ($12 on sale), but I found a pair of Gap khakis at Value Village for only $2.99. The twins will wear new jeans from Nordstrom ($11.00 each).

I’ll be wearing a lilac silk frock ($40–original $159.00 tag still on it) and Ralph Lauren patent leather pumps ($18.00). Babygirl’s hot pink linen dress with its white Peter Pan collar and belt cost $3.50 at Value Village.

The challenge tomorrow will be to say “thank you” when people comment on our appearance. What I want to say is, “Three-fifty, Value Village,” when the Church Ladies compliment Babygirl’s dress.

The most holy of all Christian holidays will find me in the church nursery tomorrow, hobbling on my spiked heels. It’s my day to be the official volunteer attendant, so I’ll be watching over fifteen to twenty little ones dressed in their Easter finery. After church, I’ll create a fancy dinner just for us. My husband will nap with Babygirl and the children will nibble at their solid chocolate Easter bunnies. The mundane mingles with the breathtaking memory of that morning so long ago when the woman crept to the tomb, only to find it empty.

Tomorrow, serving is my spiritual worship, and I will do so with the full awareness of my risen Savior, even though I am so easily distracted. I will not complain (as usual), but I will remember that Jesus paid full price when He paid the ransom for me. I will miss singing hymns and hearing the choral arrangments during the worship service, but my service in the nursery and in the kitchen will be my personal worship service, a celebration of Life’s triumph over death and the grave.

Rejoice.

Where’s Babygirl?  

Apparently, she’s practicing her technique for avoiding the paparazzi.

I and my glowing thumbnail were very busy today. We attempted to sleep in, but Babygirl woke us at 7:20 a.m. This is an early hour on a Saturday, yet a full two hours later than my normal wake-up-and-walk time, so I tried not to be bitter.

Saturday morning tradition at our house involves donuts. I combined a trip to the donut shop with a trip to Target to purchase a birthday present and film. Babygirl accompanied me and my glossy thumbnail and although she is darling and cute and fun and all, I much prefer running errands on my own.

At 11 a.m., Babygirl and YoungestBoy and I were standing in the parking lot of our pool club, waiting for the Easter Egg hunt to begin. The twins are officially “too old” for Easter Egg hunting, so they stayed home with my husband. The rain had stopped and I commented to another mom, “Wow, aren’t we lucky? I thought it would rain all morning.” The cold rain resumed, however, the second the kids began hunting for eggs.

But what’s a little precipitation among friends? Babygirl and another two year old were the only ones in their age group, so they each easily scooped up a basket full of plastic eggs. YoungestBoy filled his bucket, too.

We were home long enough for me to clean up the kitchen and start a new load of laundry. Then I took YoungestBoy to a birthday party, this one at a YMCA swimming pool. While the other kids his age frolicked in the safety of life-jackets, he swam underwater, bobbing up for air. This kid loves the water.

When he jumped into the pool, I found a seat on the bleachers with another mom. I didn’t know this particular mom, so I introduced myself. She told me she was Lauren’s mom and I remembered how YoungestBoy had a crush on Lauren in kindergarten. We chatted as moms on the sidelines tend to do and then I said, “So, do you have other children?” and the second the words escaped my mouth, I remembered with dismay that this was the mom whose two-year old daughter died not long ago.

I said something like, “Oh, I’m sorry. I just remembered–you lost a child, didn’t you?” We got past that awkward moment and then I gently asked, “How are you doing?” and gave her the opportunity to talk about her daughter and her loss.

The two year old had a liver disorder, of unknown cause. She had surgery as a newborn and doctors told her parents she’d eventually need a liver transplant. When she was two, they found a perfect match and proceeded with the transplant. Things went terribly wrong and two days before Christmas, she died of complications. The doctors had assured them that there was a ninety-eight percent chance the surgery would be a success, but she died anyway.

And then, less than three months later, I had to ask, “So, do you have other children?”

I thought of other friends I know, how they hate that people are afraid to talk about their lost children, of how people shy away from them, afraid of saying the wrong thing. I can only hope that I did the right thing, said the right thing, listened the right way. If Babygirl died today, I’d want to die, too. But if I lived, I’d want to talk about her endlessly, about the fine blond hair that curls just so above her ears, about the repetoire of songs she sings when she’s supposed to be napping, about the way she dances and urges me to dance, too.

Some days are like this post, I guess. You complain because you can’t sleep in and joke about your smooth thumbnail and before you know it, you are looking into the sad eyes of a mom with a loss like a giant black hole. Where do you possibly go from there? At the end, you thank God for the children you are so tired of picking up after, rub your thumbnail as if it will cause a genie to appear to do your bidding (“Pick up this mess! Finish the laundry! Wash the windows!”) and go to bed, whispering an extra prayer for the mom at the pool who’d give anything to have her daughter back in her arms.

I was unable to get Blogger to cooperate with me yesterday, despite my pleas. I hope you didn’t miss me too much. (Blogger Support assures me they are working on their issues, but I’m not holding my breath.) By the way, if you are unable to comment using the comment feature, feel free to email me at melodee at gmail dot com.

I “interviewed” two blogging friends. Jan answered her interview questions over at Happy Homemaker. Be sure to say hello and let her know I sent you.

Wash Lady answered her interview questions, too. Check out her answers at Life’s Laundry. Again, tell her hello and enjoy her site.

A couple of others are working on their questions, too. I’ll post links to them soon.

I’ll be back later (God-willing, if the creek don’t rise and Blogger cooperates) with something to say. I think. I just might run away from home. I don’t like twelve year old boys much today.

As we dropped off his brothers at church for youth group at 6:11 p.m., 7 year old YoungestBoy, remembered that a magician would be performing at his school at 7:00 p.m.

I quickly adjusted my plans and YoungestBoy and I dropped off video games at the rental store, made a quick stop at Target for diapers and microwave popcorn (the essentials). As we shopped, YoungestBoy peppered me with one question after the next. He noted, “Mom, I have hundreds of questions in my mind.” As the owner of an already cluttered mind, I find this terribly distracting, yet I play along.

We dropped the diapers off and arrived at the school in the nick of time. The magician did a great job of handling the rowdy little crowd of kids. YoungestBoy was picked to be a helper and not only did he grin at the crowd, but he played along with the magician, exaggerating surprise at the way the magician created a peanut butter and jelly sandwich even though the jars were set on tables six feet apart. (It’s complicated. Just trust me on that one.) YoungestBoy is a born performer. He relishes being on stage. I’m a little scared. (But then again, maybe someday he will be able to afford to buy me a house with a pantry.)

Here is the only question I can remember out of the non-stop barrage of curiosity flowing from his brain: “Mom, would you rather lick a slug or touch a great white shark?”

That’s easy. I’d touch a shark any day. Under no conditions would I ever lick a slug. At least I have some answers to some of the questions. That’s a good start.

He was thirty-three years old and had already been married fourteen years. He and his wife had survived bankruptcy, twenty-five cross-country moves, cancer, job hirings and job firings and mostly lean times. They had three children in four years and then the surprise baby who arrived five years later. For quite a few years, the marriage had been stale. He quit conversing with her. They exchanged few words, fewer looks, no affection. They’d promised to love forever, but forever stretched so far past the horizon that he finally gave up. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life trapped in this beige box of discontent. He couldn’t endure this. It was no way to live, he said. He wanted to be free.

He bought a big yellow do-it-yourself divorce book. And without warning, the divorce grenade hit our family and blew up the life we knew. It was as if our parents agreed it would be better to demolish the house that was our family, in order to rebuild houses somewhere else out of the scavenged materials. They thought it would be better for us somehow. Blow it up. Sort the debris. Rebuild.

The problem with blowing a house to smithereens is that you aren’t left with much but a hole in the ground. Once the debris settled and the dust cleared, we barely recognized each other. The jokes we shared were obliterated along with the walls of our house. We were all so badly injured by the blast that we curled in upon ourselves, determined to live or die alone. I was eleven then.

Neither our mother or our father were able to salvage much of what had been our family. They started over with new people, leaving us to pick through the scattered remains of our yesterdays. My brother and sisters were badly damaged and suffered lifelong emotional disabilities from the divorce. I emerged fairly unscathed and managed to find healing when I forgave my parents for their mistakes when I was twenty.

But I still don’t understand how anyone would choose to blow up a marriage instead of finding a way to remodel it. Unless a house is unfit for habitation, doesn’t it make sense to remodel? Or to add on? Why toss a grenade?

My parents spent the fourteen years after their divorce regretting their decision. They each remarried vastly inappropriate people. They were each divorced again. My mother remarried two more times; each man was more horrific than the last. (Shotguns, bruises, too much alcohol, unemployment–fill in the blanks.) My sisters and brother and I were taken care of on a purely physical level, but our hearts were crushed. When we came home from school each afternoon to an empty house, we each retreated to our own rooms and locked the doors. We came out for dinner and then disappeared again to our safety zones behind closed doors. My brother and one sister battled drugs and made a series of scary decisions.

Every day was not a horror, of course. We had happy times. We celebrated birthdays. We shared some hobbies, long-distance bicycling, mostly. We gardened together. I excelled at school and busied myself with volunteer obligations and church activities. We might have seemed to have adjusted well to our new blended family. But I always figured that at any time, our family might derail and I knew that I couldn’t count on any of the grown-ups to rescue us. It was every man for himself.

That’s what my parents’ divorce taught me. I learned that the only person I can really count on is me. Promises mean nothing. Parents may or may not stick around. Expect nothing. Guard your heart. Keep a distance.

Should my parents have stayed in an unloving, dull, unfulfilling relationship? No. They ought to have remodeled that relationship, reframed it, redecorated it, paid attention to the structure of their life together. Grown-ups get to make those sorts of decisions and they have an obligation to their children to grow up and to realize that life is not just all about them anymore. And life is not all about being “happy.” “Happy” is not the point. I’ll take commitment and promise over “happy” any day of the week.

My dad died a mere fourteen years after he divorced my mother and exploded our family. My mother was in the room when he died, holding his hand, crying, despite everything–all the subsequent spouses and houses and divorces–with him until death parted them. He loved her in his flawed, imperfect way. She loved him. They hurt each other and instead of holding on, sticking together, figuring it out, truly growing up together, keeping their promises, they burned the bridge our family stood on.

None of us knows the last scene of our lives. That moment may be distant or it may be around the next bend. Situations and relationships are fluid, changing, always in flux. What looks foreboding and simply impossible today might seem like a small challenge tomorrow. That scarred landscape ahead might be bordered by a delightful path along an ice-cold river. You just don’t know until you get there.

But don’t blow up the house when rearranging the furniture will do. Remodel, don’t demolish. For the sake of the kids. Because I promise you, the house built from broken boards and shattered glass and torn shingles will never seem like home to the kids, even if you love the new skylight and figure everyone will forget the old home place. The kids never forget.

I found a new blog to read, Present Simple, written by Badaunt who lives in Japan (by way of her native New Zealand), where she teaches English. Anyway, because I commented on her “interview post,” she is now interviewing me and after I answer her questions, I’m suppose to play along and then interview you, too, at least the first five of you who ask.

And now, without further ado:
THE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:

1. Who was your favourite teacher at high school, and why?
Mr. Ibea taught advance math courses. He was elegant and handsome and spoke with the trace of a mysterious accent. I adored math–numbers are so obedient and consistent–and he had a wry presentation. He made cryptic comments on my papers when I’d offer a geometric proof with a leap in logic right in the middle. Anyway, I loved math and I loved Mr. Ibea.

2. What do you remember as your finest moment, and why?
My finest moment? This question tripped me up. “Finest moment”–what does that mean? The day I married my husband? Or the day we adopted our twins? I could be cliche’ and say that my finest moments were the births of my younger children. (They were born at home–the first after a 43 hour labor–and the second after a 6 hour labor. To participate in the ordinary miracle of pregnancy and childbirth was a privilege to me after years of infertility.)

But, I’m going to have to go with one of my finer college moments. I performed a song about dead butterflies at the school talent show. (Yes, I even wrote it myself.) I wore an orange polyester dress and white vinyl boots I purchased at the local thrift store. I carried a tacky white handbag and in the handbag, I hid a mannequin’s hand . . . at the appropriate moment of my dingbat/airhead act, I pulled out the hand, making a lame joke about the hand-bag. If I weren’t in such a hurry, I’d scan the picture from my yearbook and show you.

All joking aside, I don’t have a defining “shining moment” in my life. Does that mean I am dull? All my moments are pretty ordinary, I think.

3. If you could move anywhere, money no object, where would you go?
I’d love to live on the Oregon coast. I fell in love with the ocean when I went on a long-distance bike ride with my stepmother, brother and sister when I was 14. We rode from Seattle to San Francisco. I don’t even want a big fancy place, just a cozy cottage with a view and the sea breeze.

4. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I’d change my hair. It’s curly and I’d like it to be straight, please. And naturally sunny blond.

5. How would your children describe you?
They’d probably say I’m a mean ogre who yells too much. They’d say I hate messes, that I have too many rules, and that I never let them have any fun or take them anywhere. My boys probably couldn’t describe my physical appearance if a police detective asked them for a description, but my daughter (bless her heart) would say I’m pretty. (I recommend having a two year old girl around who offers compliments without prompting.)

Hopefully, when my kids grow up, they’ll think of me as a fun mom, a good mom, a mom who took them to the video store more often than they deserved and didn’t care if they ate in the living room.

Thanks, Badaunt, for the questions.

Now, if you, dear readers, wish for interview questions, comment below and be sure to make you email address available.

Overnight, I turned into the Wicked Witch of the West Coast. Babygirl’s typical whines grated on my sensitive nerves. YoungestBoy’s desire to built a fort from his comforter before school provoked an eye roll from me. The twins’ typical non-stop, nondescript noise caused me to clench my jaw. And I skipped my walk because I’d been awakened at 2:30 a.m. by a sad Babygirl standing in her crib, where she has ready access to the light switch which explains why the light shone in my squinted eyes at that grim hour. I only rocked her for five minutes, but when I returned to my bed, I couldn’t sleep and so decided at 3:30 a.m. that I would not, could not get up to walk at 5:20 a.m.

Next time, I will override that decision. No decision made at 3:30 a.m. is a wise decision.

So, I was crabby today. The day progressed fairly well, though, until this afternoon when TwinBoyA sassed me one too many times. He’d been yelling at his brothers and friends to fix the tent-city in the dining room and I finally rebuked him. He told me to “BE QUIET!” I did not take kindly to this back-sass (as my boys used to call it) and gave a finger-waving, glaring lecture which included the threat of an early bedtime and no trip to Hollywood Video (source of rented GameCube games) for a “very, very long time!”

He kept interrupting me. Somehow, he’s never noticed that when he interrupts, I just rewind the lecture and start back at the beginning. This enrages him and enrages me and soon we are locked in an epic struggle for power. Just like when he was two, only now he has a bigger vocabulary. When I left the room, he threw the pillows from the couch and attempted to dig himself deep into the furniture. His cries were loud and dramatic.

I left the room to tend to CuteBaby and a while later, when I rounded a corner, we nearly collided. He said to me, “Mom, I hope you end up in hell.”

I said, “You hope I end up in hell? Really?” I could not have been more surprised. Where does he get these things? Not from anyone in this household, nor from any media as we are selective. I think he actually thought of the worst possible thing he could say to me and then said it, thinking it was an original thought. His ingenuity impressed one tiny part of me and floored the rest of me. He said, “Yes, and I HATE YOU!” So there.

I said, “Oh. So, you hope I END UP IN HELL and you hate me? Well, very nice.” I did the Bill Clinton pursed-lips thing and said, “Okay, then. You hope I end . . . up . . . in . . . hell . . . and you hate me. Thanks. Great.”

Not long after that, he approached me and said, “Mom, I’m sorry,” and I said, “Well, great, but I don’t think I will ever forget this day when you told me to go to hell.” And he crawled under the tent and bawled.

As you can imagine, I was perturbed and not quite ready to let this go. A better mom might have embraced him and forgiven him immediately and sometimes I do wonder why God didn’t give this child to A Better Mom, wherever she is, but I sighed and walked away again.

Then later, much later, he hand-delivered this note:

 

We had a rational talk about the disrespect of his words. I accepted his apology and formally forgave him.

I wonder what I did to deserve a mouthy, snotty, sassy child like TwinBoyA. He’s been this way since before he could talk or walk. He’s a fit-thrower, an impulsive child who has a short fuse and an Elvis sneer. I might blame myself for his behavior and attitude, yet I have three other children who are vastly different. I might blame genetics, since he has no genetic link to me or his dad, but what point is there in blame? TwinBoyA is who he is and it’s my job to mold his resisting, harder-then-stiff-clay self into a decent human being. On bad days, I figure he’ll be an inmate somewhere, someday. On good days, I know that he’ll be just fine, even though raising him might just kill me.

There is really nothing like having kids to bring you face to face with your own flawed self. I’m not really enjoying that close-up view today.

What crime must I commit to be sentenced to house arrest? At Martha’s house, I mean.

If they really want to punish her, they should have sentenced her to house arrest at my house.

Blossoms cover the trees. Daffodils bloom. Hyacinths scent the air. The neighbor’s forsythia is bright yellow. The lilac buds are ready to open and the robins hop around looking for worms. Clumps of crocuses dot nearly every yard in my neighborhood.

I know it’s early, but spring has sprung here in the Pacific Northwest.

I hear it’s winter some places. How’s the weather where you live?