You Might Want to Skip This

I remembered tonight the time I tried to talk someone out of getting an abortion. She was twelve weeks pregnant, ready to vacuum her uterus clean, while I was trying desperately to get pregnant.

I wonder if she still hates me.

I thought of my dad today. He’s been dead for almost sixteen years. Since he’s been gone, computers have become mainstream. He once built one from a kit–and programmed it with cassette tapes. He died before everyone had cell phones in their pockets and video cameras in their closets. There are a few mysteries. For instance, what ever happened to his handgun? I found bullets, but no gun. Also, what was in the locked briefcase that I willingly handed over to a woman friend of his–she told me it contained letters and pictures from her children to my dad. (He’d been a mentor of sorts to her children.) I never quite believed her and I wish I had pried the lock open instead of giving the case to her.

When the phone rang at 10:00 p.m. and he’d leave the house, where was he going? Who left roses at his grave every week for the first year after he died?

These are things I wonder.

I remember tonight that winter day in college when I rode in van full of my friends. We were taking a fellow student, our friend, to the airport. He’d been kicked out of Bible college for drinking with my friend, a girl of seventeen, who was underage. The underage part wasn’t why he was kicked out, though. Drinking alcohol was so against the rules at that midwestern college. I sobbed on the snowy days and for days after wept, wondering what just happened. He had been a potential boyfriend–we’d danced around the idea for almost the entire year before–and then he picked up my friend, the one who’d attended that college based on my recommendation–and they’d gone out, drinking.

Betrayal, loss, stupidity. That was a bad year for me and not such a good year for him, either. Our friendship flickered on and off for a few years after that and died a sudden death before my wedding. I wonder if he still hates me.

A local church just built a new building. The plan was to expand their existing food bank which served almost two thousand people a month, but not enough money came in for the project, so the food bank, which has existed for years, was shut down. I wonder what Jesus would think about that. I know people who’ve had to use food banks and sometimes, a food bank is what stands between you and your kids going to bed hungry.

What a cheery post! To bed I go, hopefully to dream happy dreams and not dreams filled with mysteries and faces of those who aren’t fond of me.

Light In, Light Out

My almost-year old daughter has begun protesting bedtime. A week ago, instead of turning off the light and stretching out in her crib without a fuss, she cried. Every bedtime since then has been an annoying, yet heart-wrenching portrayal of Girl Who Hates Sleep.

Actual tears roll down her cheeks and she cries, “I don’t want to go nighty-night in my crib!” Then she does that thing where you change the emphasis on each word.

“I DON’T want to go nighty-night in my crib!”
“I don’t WANT to go nighty-night in my crib!”
“I don’t want TO go nighty-night in my crib!”
“I don’t want to GO nighty-night in my crib!”
“I don’t want to go NIGHTY-NIGHT in my crib!”
“I don’t want to go nighty-night IN my crib!”
“I don’t want to go nighty-night in MY crib!”
“I don’t want to go nighty-night in my CRIB!”

After each recitation, I repeat after her. I’m trying to empathize. But the fact remains: she has to go nighty-night in her crib and her tears do not affect me. Much.

My husband put her to bed last night and his solution to her sorrow was a nightlight. He found one and plugged it in, but when he did so, he had to unplug her cassette player.

Tonight, she wanted music, so I unplugged the nightlight. For some reason, we can only plug in one or the other. (We have stupid outlets in our house.)

She cried–wailed, actually–when I closed the door and he went in to soothe her. He said she wanted the nightlight, so he unplugged the music and plugged in the light.

It’s one or the other around here, and not just lights or music. I can do one thing, but not everything. At least not all at once. And that’s why I feel like a rotten mother. Time’s ticking away and I can’t do everything I want to do with my children or by myself, either, for that matter.

This summer, I still want to go to the ocean. I need to visit my 99-year old grandmother. (She lives close by.) I keep thinking about driving up north to visit my dad’s grave–the sixteenth anniversary of his death is approaching. I’d hoped to catch up on my scrapbooks this summer. The weeds are maturing and dispensing even more weed seeds. We promised a trip to Wild Waves Waterpark. We have missed every single Concert in the Park and we haven’t been to the beach once.

Too much to see, too much to do, too much. I am frustrated.

Staring at Myself

My daughter is almost three years old and prefers to keep me within arm’s length. I told my husband today that if she were my boyfriend, I would break up. I need more space. I am totally not kidding.

She stands on the bathroom counter while I dry my hair and put on my make-up. Mostly, she peers at herself in the mirror, scrunching up her nose, pursing her lips, baring her teeth, flirting with herself. Today she was posing, a la Paris Hilton.

Then she noticed I was looking at her and she stopped her self-examination and grinned an embarrassed grin at me.

Sometimes, that’s how blogging feels to me. I started my first blog as an experiment with a few friends. “We’ll share our journals,” we said, “And see how the others live.”

The first time a stranger commented, I freaked out, a quiet, private little freak-out. Another time, I emailed a commenter to demand, “Who are you? And why are you commenting on my blog?”

Most of the time, though, I write with abandon, pretending I’m alone. I feel a little self-conscious when it’s all about me, me, me–but only when I picture the whole Internet watch me as I stare at myself.

And when I catch you looking at me, sure, I feel bashful for a moment. But I’m going to pretend that it’s just me here, and fifty of my closest friends who understand and won’t laugh at me behind my back.

And now I will commence the navel gazing.

All I have to say today is that I feel deflated and bummed out that my twin 12-year old boys are so often the target of bullies. Why are some kids such cruel brats? At the pool today, my husband noticed several boys mocking my twins during a game of water-basketball. He intervened, but was incensed afterward. A little later during “Adult Swim,” I walked to the grassy area to see what was going on–a cluster of kids had gathered out there–and just then, I heard a bony girl with bucked teeth say to my son with a sneer, “I don’t even know your name.” Then her cross-eyed brother said, “He’s stupid.” I strode up to that kid (the same boy who last year slapped and pinched my youngest son–but I’m too tired to find that post and link it) and said, “EXCUSE ME? DID I JUST HEAR YOU SAY SOMETHING UNKIND?”

He shrunk back and denied it. Then I said, “Good. Because we would not want to say unkind things here, would we?” That group of kids broke up and I told my son he should move away. And as we walked away, I told that skeleton of a girl my son’s name, not that she even realizes what a snot she is.

My boys just don’t seem to read social cues with any savvy. It’s disheartening, but at the same time, a week ago at Vacation Bible School, they did a great job of interacting with younger kids and adults, too. They were volunteers with excellent attitudes, so I have to hope that they will ultimately be fine, despite the bullies who dot the landscape like dog doo left behind by inconsiderate dog owners. Sometimes you have to scrape your shoe off and watch your step so it doesn’t happen again. I hope I can teach my boys that lesson eventually.

In the meantime, we’ll continue schooling them at home, away from the stench of people who have nothing better to do than pick on other kids.

Afternoon Fun!

I read the newspaper because I am a grown-up. I eat fishsticks because that’s what the kids ate and a few remainded scattered on the cookie sheet. When the phone rang at 12:11 p.m., I was doing just that, reading and eating.

The woman on the telephone asked if I’d be home, if she and her husband could stop by at about 1:00 p.m. I said in a calm, measured voice, “Sure, that would be fine.” Then I gave her directions to my house. I hung up the phone and sprang into action, enlisting the aid of my sons who wander around in the summer, looking bored.

Fortunately, the family room carpet was freshly vacuumed, thanks to army-crawling CuteBaby whose new mission in life involvs gnawing on power cords and eating specks of paper and licking the carpet. I only had to clean up the lunch mess, put away a few reminders of our recent trip to Florida, sweep and hide away the basket of clutter that sits in the kitchen taunting me.

By 1:00 p.m., sure, I was a little sweaty, but my house looked presentable. The doorbell rang and there stood Happy Little Family, mom, dad and baby girl. I’ll start watching the baby next week, just afternoons, four days a week. I saw Dad stealing glances at my desk, which sits in the family room. A landslide of papers covers the entire left half of the desk. And Bloglines kept beeping as blogs on my list were updated. (You really must check out Bloglines. Oh! The organization! The time-savings! The little beep that brings joy to my day! Someone has updated something! I must log on and check it out!)

Anyway, they left. Naptime arrived. At 2:15, CuteBaby and DaycareKid were sleeping. Babygirl? No. She was resistant, in fact, told me in no uncertain terms, “I do not want to go night-night!” I insisted that she did and she would . . . but she didn’t. It was 3:15 p.m. when I gave up.

But I wasn’t happy about it. Mommy stays sane around here by taking little breaks here and there. Lunchtime, while the kids nap, is one of those times. So, downstairs I tromped and she trailed behind me. I went straight to the kitchen where I poured myself Diet Coke with Lime (thank you, caffeine, you are my friend). She stood near me and touched my pants gently. “I love your pants! I love your shirt! I love your shoes!” she said in a sweet voice.

How can I be irked, really, when my curly-haired girl spreads the compliments as thick as chocolate icing on a birthday cake?

She never did sleep. She played in the sand and then she turned on the sprinkler and got drenched. She ran upstairs to put on dry clothes and came down wearing a pair of purple stretch pants and a pair of blue Osh-Kosh overalls. No shirt. My 7-year old son played in the sprinkler, too, and left a trail of soggy footprints all the way up to the bathroom–which doesn’t seem possible. Shouldn’t the carpet have dried his feet off at some point?

My house still retains the remnants of the noontime cleaning spree and for that, I congratulate myself. Tonight? I’m channel surfing while I read magazines . . . unless Bloglines keeps calling out to me. Beep! Beep! Beep!

Taking Pictures

Back when we only had the twins, I was careful to take frequent pictures. If I took a photo of one twin, I immediately took a picture of the other twin. I kept all my scrapbooks up to date.

When my youngest son was born, I zoomed in on him and photographed him extensively, to the neglect of my older boys, I admit. Taking pictures of three kids was tricky. And six-year old boys aren’t thrilled about being still, especially for a photograph.

Since my daughter was born almost three years ago, my picture-taking has dwindled. She is an uncooperative subject, ducking her head like a celebrity avoiding the paparazzi. Last year, when I attempted to photograph all four children (at the same time!) for a Christmas newsletter photo, this is typical of what happened:

And now, I’m behind in all my scrapbooks. Instead of documenting their lives through photographs, I’m running behind, trying to keep up.

By the way, I have to say that I find people who are videotaping experiences instead of experiencing the experiences kind of make me shake my head. At Disney World, for instance, more than once, I saw someone videotaping something instead of just opening their eyes wide and watching it. What’s the point? (That also goes for children’s school performances, though in that case, I can see why you’d want to get it on videotape. Simple reason, really. Blackmail.)

Winning the Real Race

When I was fourteen, I rode my bicycle from Seattle to San Francisco in five weeks. I used to dream about riding across the country. Can you imagine Iowa on a bicycle, all that flat land? Or the Rocky Mountains? Or crossing the Mississippi River? Dipping your bicycle tire in the Pacific Ocean and then triumphantly dipping it in the Atlantic? Well, I used to imagine that.

Then I went off to college and sold my bicycle and never pedaled more than twenty miles on a bicycle again. And then I got married. And then I had kids.

But Lance Armstrong! What an inspiration! Overcoming cancer, training his wrecked body, pushing himself up hills and winning, winning, winning. Getting married didn’t stop Lance Armstrong. He got married, too, you know, in 1998–after he survived testicular cancer. He had the forethought to bank s p e r m, so he and his wife were able to conceive their children (a son, born in 1999 and twin daughters born in 2001). None of this stopped him from his professional bicycle racing career. His wife was by his side when he won his first Tour de France in 1999.

She wasn’t by his side this time, though, for his triumphant seventh win in a row. No. Now, he appeared with his children and his girlfriend, singer S h e r y l Crow. He divorced his wife in 2003 and hooked up with Ms. Crow soon thereafter.

So here’s the thing. When I see Lance Armstrong on television, crowing about his win, grinning about his achievements, basking in the glow of admiration–all I can think is that he couldn’t even keep his marriage together for five years. Five years. His children are now shuttled from home to home, place to place. His children are the ones who pay the price for his inability to keep his marriage together.

And sure. I know. It takes two people to make a marriage work and there is no possible way we can assign fault. Marriages, even celebrity marriages, are private. Who knows what happened behind closed doors? But I can’t help myself. When the world showers confetti on someone for grit and sheer determination, I can’t get past wondering what the ex-wife thinks about all this. And how the children feel seeing daddy holding hands with someone who is clearly not their mother.

That’s the legacy, I suppose, of my own parents’ divorce. I’m much more impressed by, say, Cuppa and Anvilcloud’s thirty-five years of marriage than I am by one guy winning seven bicycle races in a row. I imagine that the Armstrong children, the almost 6 year old boy and the almost 4 year old twin girls, know what I mean.

White versus Black

I realized with a spark of joy yesterday that my favorite babysitter now possesses a driver’s license. And a car. So I called her and at 8:00 p.m., I left my house.

I wanted to see a movie–any movie, really–and so I saw “The Island.”

I hope I don’t spoil it for anyone, but here is the gist of the movie, the take-away kernel of truth:

Black pants truly are more slimming than white pants. In fact, even if you are Scarlett Johanson, your backside will look like a huge pear if you wear white pants coupled with a white body-skimming shirt.

Bok Choy!!!

In my house this morning, my 7-year-old son has been stomping around, chasing the preschoolers and riling them up by hollering, “BOK CHOY!” CuteBaby is 8-months-old now and is mobile. He scoots around the floor, delighted to see, touch, and taste every toy. My carpets have never been cleaner, in anticipation of his newfound skills.

I’m thinking of calling my babysitter tonight–the one who now drives herself around in her own car–and seeing a movie. Just the thought makes me tingly all over and makes me want to scream with joy, “BOK CHOY!”

(Yes, I know it’s a vegetable, but my son thinks it is a fine proclamation anyway.)