the underneath

The strings are getting twisted and the knots are piling up.  My fingers pick at the threads, trying to tease them apart, but all I can feel are the hard balls that force a staccato stop.  Sometimes I can manage to get a fingernail hold into one and I dig and pull, grasping onto the loose ends, following around the twists of color, but somehow end up tying myself back in again.  It’s a mess.

This, here, is the underneath.  This is the back side of that beautiful tapestry that we’re weaving, the sweep of rainbow glory of my life, my colorful breath, stitched and spun and taken up into a braid upon braid.  But right now?  Right now, it’s tangled and ugly.

But it’s the story that I’m humming to myself as I spin those tazmanian-devil-circles around my kitchen, cutting up food into bite-sized pieces and peeling another banana and picking up the water bottle from the floor for the umpteenth time.   I may have lost track of the narrative, and I may not remember which scene I’m in anymore.  I can’t remember who the good guys are, and where the ogres live.  Because honestly – the Littlest, who just wants his mama, cries when I have to put him down for the two seconds I need to cut the onion, or grab the bag of groceries from the car. (And I’ve almost learned how to chop an onion one handed, because sometimes it’s easier to hold him anyway since he moves at the speed of lightning, don’t you know, and has almost the same effect, too).  And I’m moving as fast as I can to just do the very next thing (and there’s always one more next thing) and I don’t even realize the knots I’ve made out of it all until the end of the day when I collapse on the couch.  (I’m pretty sure my eyes lids fall closed before the little ones’ do).  The underneath is not so pretty.

So while my challenge this year is to see the Story of it all – to hold it, to create it, to tell it, to teach it – right now the only story I can see  has no great character development.  It’s lacking  plot twists and a climax.  There is no great resolution.  But I know it’s only because I’m underneath it all, and I just can’t see it yet.  And it seems like too much work for me to even make some greater sense of this mess.  But, maybe, just maybe, at some point I’ll be able to turn this piece over, feel it’s weight, understand it’s breadth and it’s size.  I’ll get to see it’s edges.  And what about these knots?  The other side of this tangled web of my everyday mess, and theirs, and yours  – it’s all in there, too.  And it will be something to behold.

the struggle of snow

It seemed like a good idea.  Watching the pearly fluffs of snow fall quietly from the kitchen window it was hard to resist the tug of the luminescence calling us outside.  It is a Spring snow, afterall, and possibly the last of the year.  But it is only moments later, standing in the basement with the Littlest clamped between my legs, wrangling the Middlest into her gloves, that I am questioning my sanity.

It is a battle I know too well, one that is more physically demanding than I ever think it will be.  On the surface it doesn’t sound that hard: Ok, kids, grab a jacket, and let’s head outside.  But the reality is much grittier. The basement, our point of departure, is full of all the things that a basement should be full of, including a furnace and water heater, and flotsam of former stages of life.  All this is naturally inviting for any explorer worth his salt, and this Littlest of mine is no exception.  His speed isn’t hampered until I get his boots on, and then he can barely stand upright anymore.  The bigger two kids are surprisingly helpful at finding jackets and hats, gloves and boots, but even their fortified desires for self-reliance crumbles at the thought of snow eeking into a potentially exposed crevice at the wrists.

Snow pants, boots, jackets, hats, gloves: check. I shooed the big kids outside, promising to meet them momentarily.

Though I don’t even have my jacket on yet, my body temperature has risen, and with it my blood pressure.  I’m frustrated at myself for being so frustrated.  I’m ready to cancel the whole endeavor, because I’m already sunk in the task of making it outside, and I can’t even begin to see how, once we’re out there, it’ll be any different.  Every 0.35 seconds I’ve scooped the Littlest away from untold danger and he’s using every morsel of strength he has to fight against putting his arm into his jacket.  After practically dislocating numerous joints, both his and mine, we head outside, desperately seeking that cold blast of air to cool me down.

And then the magic happens.  It’s like stepping through the back of the wardrobe into another realm entirely.   The brightness of the still-falling snow is almost blinding, and the corners of my mouth turn upwards instinctively.  My shoulders sink back away from my ears, releasing a tension I didn’t even know I was carrying.  The kids are spinning circles, dizzying themselves with their heads thrown back and pink tongues thrust out and lined with white dots of snow.  Any disappointment they had when I came out without the sleds has faded away and they have created a new game, rolling themselves like hot dogs down the hill.  Popping up out of the snow when they reach the bottom, the snow shakes off of their heads and their shoulders, and I’m struck by the sturdiness of their bodies racing each other back up the hill.  Layered up like a miniature abominably snowman, the Littlest can hardly stand in balance, let alone take carefully calculated steps, but he is content enough to make a snow angel or two.  Then, hoisted onto to my hip, he points me all around the yard as I become the battleship he steers, his voyage a mission to explore this white land.

The magic is there until it isn’t anymore.  The Middlest’s gloves just won’t stay on anymore, and now her wrists are cold and sticky-wet.  The Littlest has commanded this mother-ship around and around again, and is only frustrated that he can’t command his own body in the same way.  Now it’s the tug from the other pole: the hot chocolate and dry comfort that draws us back inside.  The wet mess of shedding layers is an exacting mirror of our earlier struggles to piece it all together.

And what I see is this: I see this pattern of sweat and struggle interspersed with beauty and magic in large and small ways.  The magic of life’s beautiful moments may be fleeting, but in order to see it at all, you have to be there.  You’ll never get the magic if you don’t show up.  Those few moments of pure joy, for both the kids and I, in the snow, showered by today’s sparkle, was hard-won.  It could’ve been easy, halfway into the hide-and-seek of mismatched gloves, to abandon the program all together.  But in pressing on, we had our hands open, palms up, the magic lighting on us the way the snow illuminated their tongues.  And it’s these glimpses of beauty that keep me pressing on, day after day.  Because so much of it is a struggle: it’s a struggle for bedtime, at the end of the day, each at the end of our shortening ropes, with the clock ticking off a world of crazy when all I’m seeking is quiet.  It’s the hard work of listening through the whining, the tears, and the tantrums to seek out what is underneath it all.  It’s a struggle to find time – carve it out, really, chiseling in to one thing or another – for all that is important.  It’s a struggle to learn, again and again, to love each other and do it well.

And this is what I need to remember, when I break out in a full body sweat in the middle of the struggle.  It’s effort; it’s work.  But that is where the magic is found.  This is the whisper that I want to sink deep into the wrinkles of my brain. Right there, in the middle of the struggle, there are moments of beauty – the magic of sleeping bodies, hearts and souls that connect, joy for joy’s sake, and laughter snorted through tears.  I only need to step out into the snow to see it.

 

broken car mirrors

I was backing out of the garage the other day, my body yanked around to see the view behind me, when I heard it.  “What was that, Mommy?” asked the already-anxious-about-loud-noises-in-the-car five year old.  And just like that, my careless precision had not just bumped the side view mirror (which I may or may not have done countless times before) but smashed it to pieces of plastic and glass.  In my frustrated haste to successfully get all three Little Ones, with shoes and jackets and school bags, into the car, I was careless.  Isn’t this the danger then – that these things become  too familiar (like backing out of my garage countless times a day) and I get numb to them?  I wasn’t paying attention.  I was wrapped up in the chaos of our morning routine, tired already with the day looming ominously large in front of us.  I called Mark and cried into the phone with him, not because of the broken mirror (though there’s that), but because I knew what this broken mirror was reflecting back to me.  In those shards of distorted light, I saw that I needed to slow down and pay attention.  I need to take care.

Pay attention to this: the 13 month old who grows like a fairy tale weed right before my eyes.  I can’t say he toddles so much any more because it’s more sturdy and sure than any toddle ought to be.   He finds ways to play his own games with me, games that tell me to pay attention, to him, right now.  He pushes the buttons on the dishwasher and then make those flirty eyes with  me.  He laughs, throwing his head back exposing that kissable neck, and runs away as fast as he can, daring me to catch him.  (Don’t worry, I do.)  Or he finds just the right laundry basket, because goodness knows there are plenty around.  But he finds the one that has all of the folded clothes inside.  And one by one, he takes them all out, making a display on the bedroom floor.  And when I push him in the direction of all the unsorted, unfolded, un-everything clothes at his disposal?  He lays his body full out on the ground, kicking his feet and offering up his best imitation tantrum.  If I’m honest, these baby tantrums turn me to mush, and I love him all the more dearly for his ambition.  So, yes, love, I’ll pay attention to you.

And this: see these bodies, unabashedly naked, small but not so tiny anymore.  Our bath times have become circus like, as you can imagine, all three kids in a regular ol’ bath tub.  The new trick last night was from the Littlest, who stood proudly sticking out his belly and patting it with such pride.  And then there’s the lemonade station (please, oh please just pretend yellow, right?)  in the corner where the Eldest is brewing and pouring and serving it up to anyone who will answer.  The Middlest is lost in her own world, which I can’t believe is even possible in this arrangement, but she is singing and humming and la-la-la-ing to herself, letting herself feel the water.  I’m slowing down, taking notice to this, because I know that it’ll be all too soon when everyone needs their own space, their own privacy.  Their bodies won’t be mine to marvel at, and we’ll be hustling them towards showers to move along to the next thing.

And there’s the Eldest learning to read; and the Middlest making friends.  There is the Littlest pushing furniture around and blowing kisses.  There are more arts and crafts projects that I ever could have imagined, and I worry that someday I will be help responsible for the number of trees we’ve used up. There are scraps of paper everywhere.  On good days, I pick them up and smile at the experiment of it all.  Other days, I grumble over the tedium – scraps, everywhere.  I’m paying attention, but maybe to the wrong thing.

Here’s the thing:  I don’t usually think of myself as the kind of person who needs to be reminded to slow down.  My gears are set pretty low.  I’m more of an ambler, a putz-er, a mull-er.  But then it happens:  the daily grind wears me down.  It’s like the game that Grant likes to play, outside at the swing set.  He spins the swing around and around, and it lifts higher and higher until he can’t crank it up any more.  Then: let it go and watch it fly.  The swing spins, uncontrollably, barreling around back down again, with no regard to anything in it’s way.  I can unravel carelessly, too.  If I’m not paying attention, mirrors break.  And sometimes that’s a good thing.

I know that I’m not unique in this.  I need to pull back and see the bigger picture.  I need to take the long view, and see the panorama.  Because without the bigger story, I can’t make sense of the baby tantrums, let alone the big ones.  But when my nose is stuck on one particular page, in one scene of the story, it’s easy to get careless and forget to notice.  Or worse yet, to notice the things that don’t matter (the unsorted laundry, the uneaten vegetables).

Tonight, Mark is picking up a new side view mirror for my car.  And if all goes well, I will have the full view by morning.

my very own once upon a time

I stood over the sink, my hands raw and red, burning from the the hot water.  Bits of pasta, small pieces of green beans, and leftover coffee grounds collected in the bottom of the basin. I hummed a sing-songy nothing to myself, making music alongside the gurgling water.  The kids were all tucked in for the night, and I was pretending not to hear their going-to-bed-noises.  Instead, while I leaned my hip against the wet edge of the counter, and dumped the water of the pot, I went over the day in my head, pouring out each event like that water, and conjuring up the story of the day.

For the past two years I’ve picked a word for the year.  I’ve used this word like a rudder, to steer myself, or like a map, to help me determine my course.  I’ve used it like a mantra to help me stay focused and like a lens through which I see the minutiae of my life.  I’ve learned the consistent pace of my own self when I chose breathe.  I’ve learned about how my cracks only make space for Glory to shine through when I chose enough.  This year my One Word is Story.

There is story all around me, if I can just hear it – the old t-shirt that I sleep in tells a chapter and verse of the story of us, for instance.  Or there are stories, worn smooth, rubbed down with each telling that the words now are more like family folklore than an actual recount of events.

In choosing “story” I’m choosing to focus on not just the events of the day, the many things that happen and check lists that are accomplished (or not) from sunrise to sunset, but instead to see the narrative that holds these things.  A story has themes.  A story develops characters.  Lessons can be learned, right and wrong meted out, justice served.   Beauty is writ out of the work of living.  Stories are meant to entertain.  We each have our own “once upon a time.” What is mothering if not the moment-to-moment development of character (the little ones’ and mine)?  And isn’t it my work too to see the beauty in the work of life?  Goodness knows, there is plenty of entertainment in my days!

In her book Storycatcher, Christina Baldwin writes “Story is the narrative thread of our experience — not what literally happens, but what we make out of what happens, what we tell each other and what we remember.”  Every day my story is written, but not in the literal happening of my life, but in how I see it, recall it, tell it, remember it.  This year, I want watch my story unfold, not just within the narrative of my life, or even the larger story that is family history.  I want to watch my story be braided into the tapestry of the Big Story, too.  Sometimes that’s not easy, because it often can look like the underside of that tapestry – the rough, tangled mess of dull knots.  I want to learn to turn those tangled knots over and see the other side, to make meaning out of folding the laundry and putting the dishes away.  Our story is woven, strand by strand.  It is the warp of bath time and wooden block towers,  the weft of singing together in the car on the way to school and running trucks after dinner.  Alone, these things threaten to be trivial and mundane, but when seen as part of a bigger story, they serve the purpose of adding color, and texture; they advance the plot, they get us invested.

I am writing story.  I am being written into story.  As I come to see my life in the scope of the Big Story, too, I can watch the work of the One who holds my story.  I can hear of His grace at work, I can see His gentle touch of guidance.  This year I want to see each misstep, each adventure, each heart swell, each struggle as tale to be told.  I want to hold the stories of my family’s past, to pass them along down the line, add ours to the fabric of folklore.  I want to be the one they all come to and say “Tell me a story, Mom.”  I want to always be ready with a story.

On the podcast, The Moth, as they sign off they exhort their listener to “have a story-worthy week.”  I’m going to spend the next year with story on my lips, story in my heart.  I’m going to have story in my steps, and story in my eyes.  I’m going to be the one saying “well, that’ll make a great story some day.”

Today’s story was one of turning siblings into friends, and, still standing over the sink, I’m pressed with the image of all three of the Little Ones chasing after each other, trucks in hand. I finish up the dishes, sat the last pot to dry, and wring my hands through the dish towel.  Mark had come to the kitchen now, and we were  finishing up the nightly dance of setting our house right again after the undoing of the day.  The quiet had settled in over the house, not thick but gauzy, and my mind turned over the day once again, listening for the story told.

 

one trip around the sun

It sure feels like we do a lot of celebrating around here.  And it’s easy for one celebration to bleed into the next, and to get all celebrated-out and forget even what we’re doing.  But, whoa, tomorrow is a whole ‘nother thing.

Tomorrow, dear Littlest little one, is the day we celebrate you. You probably didn’t even know that such a thing existed, but only that you’re swept up into the latest pile of goodness, and yes, that’s true, too.  But there is day marked out just for you.  This birthday of yours, this January 9th, is all for you.  One whole trip around this sun.  You’ll have had all your first days, now, and you’ll just start to accumulate more.  It’ll be your second first day of spring, then, and you’re second Thanksgiving.  Then comes thirds and fourths and you have your whole life full of days to look forward to.

Oh Littlest – you have never seemed little!  Oh, yes, you are my peanut, smaller than even your brother was, but I laugh, because I know the secret inside that smallness: “Though [s]he be but little, [s]he is fierce!” (You see, this is my secret, too).  And I see that fierceness, every day, as you refuse to sit back and watch your brother and sister carry on without you.  You were my earliest one to crawl; earliest to walk.  And that walk didn’t take long to turn into a run – for months, now, you’ve had me scrambling faster to try to stay one step ahead of you, though I am barely successful.  Faithfully observant, you never let an opportunity pass: if I have forgotten to pull up the dog’s water bowl, I know it within seconds because you’ve upended the whole thing and are blissfully splashing in your puddled creation. And if it’s not the dog bowl, it’s the trash can. If not the trash can, the CD player.  It’s always something with you, kid.  You’ve tested the sharpness of my reflexes far more times than those other two.

You’ve been running trucks with the big kids now, hands gripping the edges of the yellow plastic Tonka, body bent over your vehicle, “vrrrmmm, vrmmm-ing” as you hustle to catch up.  Sometimes you stop, mid-stride, to clap for yourself.  Often I’ve thought to ask for your birth certificate, pretty sure that you’re pulling one over on me here, seeming more aged than I remember. But I was there, oh-yes-very-much-so-there, at your birth. Still, I have a hard time understanding it all – this compact little body, so capable; this little mind, understanding of so much.

But you are the littlest of three and though sometimes it’s easy for us to sweep you up into the fury of this family and expect you to fall into place, I know that there is so much glory that you see.  There is so much life happening all around you.  It’s all you can do not to just throw your legs over the rungs of your crib and shimmy down (if you could, though I wouldn’t put it past you), turn up the volume and start dancing like a fool, not to be left out of any family-style dance party.  That, or find your seat at the table, grab a few crayons and became your own Picasso.  Or play football, to throw your body on top of that pigskin that is bigger than you.  You refuse to be left out (even when the Middlest is determined to put boundaries on your play, yelling “No!” in you face).

Though you command us to pay attention to you,  it’s not in any attention-grabbing way.  You are not there to steal the spotlight, no.  It’s actually the opposite: you are content to just march on, find your place in line, watching long enough to figure out the beat, and once you’re confident you’ve found the rhythm you just jump on in, never allowing the jump rope to tangle, or the song to stop.

It’s these moments of family rhythm when I am so glad – so glad - that we are a family of five.  Though I’m not ever sure that I will feel, as some claim to, that our family is complete, I know for certain that it was not before you came.  I was so nervous to add to what we had before you, so worried to upend any delicate balance that I thought we’d achieved.   But I just didn’t know.  I didn’t know the joy; I didn’t know that fullness.  I didn’t know that families are not scales to be made still, striving for perfect balance.  I made it about me, somehow, but it isn’t.  It never was.  It’s about you.  And I’m so glad that I’m getting to know you.

It is always with a sense of sadness that I take in the breathless wonder of my babe’s first birthday, and yours is no different.  I am proud of us, proud of you for doing all the hard work of growing this first year.  But there is no turning back the clock.  Those precious firsts are now memories, snapshots of photographs, a mix of sound bites and hazy impressions to be called upon later.  I’ve had a glimpse of the good that is to come; I’ve seen it already with your brother and sister, and I know you’ll have your own shade of this.  But I also know that you’ll never be so small again as to fit tucked in to the crook of my arm.  Babies don’t keep.

As we, you, throw ourselves into the centrifugal force of turning the curve of a year, I wonder how you will show me more of you.  What kind of toddler will you be (for I know for certain that you are baby no longer)?  Inquisitive and non-stop, I’m sure, but will you settle into moments of quiet, too?  Will you learn to grab a book and back yourself into my lap like you’ve seen the big kids do?  Will you be a chatter box, your mouth simply the overflow of the work of your brain? Or will you keep that noise to yourself, turning the sounds over in your head until you are ready to share with us?  Will you be an adventurous eater, tasting everything set before you? Or will you cultivate a sophistication, a palate of your choosing?  I don’t doubt you’ll keep that sense of humor, that laugh that bursts forth in a contagious explosion, mostly directed at your brother and sister. And some how, some where I know that eventually (eventually!) you’ll sleep a full night.  I do not worry with you the way I did when I was new at this.  You have that, dear Littlest: this is not my first rodeo, and you benefit from my experience.

Oh, Littlest, you were laughed in to this world (I’m certain that I broke my waters  because of a night of deep belly laughs at dinner with far-flung family).  Let’s keep on laughing together, okay?

Happy first birthday, little man.