mud: the work that is real

We found the sun this weekend, or more like she found us.  The kids tumbled in from outside, all smiles and flushed cheeks, never ending stories and runny noses.  They peeled layers off, cheeks flushed red with fresh blood, and smiles that seem to burst forth from deep inside their bellies.  Before I could throw out a reminder about their boots, the mud that had spread into the treads of those boots  and darkened their knees was already loosened and coloring the white tiles of my kitchen floor.  Their story varied over the course of the weekend, but their excitement had something to do with digging deep in the dirt and making soup. Or Chinese Food.  And there was an extravagant  delivery system involving dump trucks.  Our back door was wide open, and I demanded that breeze to exorcise  my house of all of winter’s ills.  I welcomed the familiar sound of the metal spring stretching out and then the heavy thwack of the wood door landing hard back in place.  But it was the constant presence of the dirt, the thick clay-like coolness of the mud, that sticks with me.  Yesterday, as the rain came heavy and fast from the sky, I watched the kids’ fresh dirt trenches fill with water, rivulets of mud soup navigating through the backyard.

The work of the world is common as mud.

This line is written on my tiny patch of chalkboard paint in my kitchen.  When we replaced our oven a few months back we had to rework some of the spacing of our cabinets and I was left with some odd wall space.  One wintry day, I claimed it for myself as a place to write out words so they can be a regular part of my visual landscape, even though I’m not quite hip enough to make it look stylish (and I’m okay with that).  The work of the world is common as mud, it says.  These words, from a gorgeous poem by Marge Piercy, have been following me around now for weeks.  They will not let me go.  (If you are my friend of Facebook, you know this, because I couldn’t keep these words to myself!)  My work these days in nothing if not common.  Like mud, the work of mothering is not unique to me, but is the work of families this wide world over, timeless and spaceless like little else.  Though my quest this year is to see the Story swirling around me, some days the only story I can hear is the one of dirty dishes teetering way-too-high in my sink.  These days it’s easy to feel the quicksand pull of this work,  hearing only the slurping sound of suction as I try to rise above it, futile in my resistance to it’s gravity.  The poem continues:

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

Some days my efforts feel like dust, crumbled and falling through my outstretched fingers.  Holding no shape, the work of my mind, the toil of my hands, only seems to tell the story of dirt pressed deep into my fingernails.   The common mud-work of dinner making, crumbling to nothing as the picky eaters of my table push their plates away, upturned noses wanting only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I make dust through my own self-talk of patience, grasping for the right words in the middle of mind-battling the Eldest.  It is the stink of old mud, left brittle in the sun, when I am again revising sleeping arrangements, desperate to carve out a space of solace for myself, my husband, in this house too small and so full.  I scrub at my hands, and mostly my heart, all smeared with the day’s dirt and dust.  I’m looking for a cleaner version of myself, but the grime remains.  The end of each day finds me exhausted, over saturated with tiredness, and yet with a look back over the day I produce nothing to say: see, this, here.

But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
-”To Be of Use” Marge Piercy

Here’s where I take solace: the amphoras that are now in museums, adored for their sensual shape and their glow of beauty, must also have sweat pressed into their clay.  They bear the invisible finger prints of someone so long ago who maybe didn’t think this vessel was beautiful at all.  It was simply useful.  And that is beautiful.

Like that pitcher, I cry out for work that is real.  Water, oil, wine — all poured out with significance in blessings, celebrations and renewal.  Even the kids, with little care in the world, create real work for themselves, out of nothing but mud. The trick is in seeing how real my work actually is. This work of raising people, teaching and tending, feeding and mending, bodies and souls, can be shapeless and formless, not so clean and evident. But maybe another way to look at it is this: “Work is love made visible,” says Kahlil Gilbran.  Today I may have trouble seeing how my work, with this particular color thread, will appear in the tapestry of my story.  Without a sense of the big picture, it can be hard to understand the importance of this daily, common work of mud.  I want to remember that this, above all else, is the thing worth doing well done.

It’s a story of longevity, and I’ve got time.  This type of beautification comes with age, and with wear.  I’m not ready for that high museum shelf yet.

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.

5 – and then some

Your fifth birthday was not unlike the day of your birth five years ago.

Five years ago, as the contractions came with the momentum of a runaway train, I puked.  This year, it was your stomach revolting.  You were brave, but really, it is a terrible way to spend a birthday.

That night, when you arrived in the quiet intensity of a cold December labor, I didn’t sleep a wink.  That one day stood still in time, breath upon breath adding up to make a day that seemed endless and holy.  The days that followed were hardly days but a series of naps and nursings.  In fact, the whole month of December came and went, and somewhere in there was Advent, with it’s waiting, and Christmas, with it it’s celebrating, but we were still high on the smell of new flesh and fresh love.

The eve of your fifth birthday was sleepless, too.  But without the hormonal charge to keep my eyes wide open, and now with  two other children to care for, the fall-out from this sleeplessness felt more like falling on concrete and less like  rolling topsy turvy through clouds.

Your due date was scheduled for December 1st, and we did what everyone had suggested that we do: make plans.  We never expected to see you on this day and so we were going to get our Christmas tree, busy ourselves with a different kind of waiting.  But you were punctual, to a T, and instead of a tree, we brought you home instead.  And this day, five years later?  That was part of our plan, too, for the day. One of things to do on your birthday was to show the Littlest how we go to the farm and stick our noses in these evergreens until we find one to take home with us.  We should’ve known better.  Our traditions are often fuzzy in the making, and this one is no different.  Your body was still recovering from your long night of sickness, so instead we stayed home in pajamas, sipping ginger ale.  Five years ago, the month of December marched on but that tree never appeared, subsumed as it was by that first month of your baby life. This year, though, we adjusted plans.  A few days later than planned, but we now have a tree – though it may be unadorned for an untold time, and we see the glory in it’s plainness.

There are other themes that string the distance of five years: the awesomeness of the human body – strength and resilience beyond  my mind’s capability to comprehend, whether in sickness and recovery or the hard work of bringing a baby to life in this world.  And yet within that strength, the particular delicateness of it, too – how intricate this system is, how just-right everything needs to be.

As your birthday drew to a close, you began feeling better.  Mark and I decided to at least give you your gift.  Of course you were happy to see your new bike, but your body was still so tired, all of your reserve having been spent, that you could do little more than sit on the seat and play with the handlebars.   The next day, once your body was done reworking itself, you were ready to celebrate your birthday properly. You wanted to take your bike out for a spin, then be with those who love you, a circle bigger than just this family of five.  Only by then, you were watching the rest of us, one by one, fall to the same sickness that had just prevailed in your body.  Instead of lifting our glasses and our voices to celebrate you, we each hovered through the worst until we landed days later out the other side.  We cancelled plans. In some ways, it feels as though this milestone has skittered in without a blink of notice.

It has been a terrible birthday, really.  You are now a whole hand – all four fingers and a thumb.  There is much to recognize, so much to notice of who you are becoming.  Yet, this milestone has barely been noted, let alone lauded and honored.  Your birth five years ago was life-changing for me in the very deepest sense of the phrase, and every minute since I’ve been catching up to you, dear Eldest.  I have not missed a single moment of it, I have not been absent from a breath of your being.  Each word that you learn to read, each drawing that you create, more detailed than the last.  Each worry that you’ve confided, each nonsensical sentence that bursts from your mouth in moments of silly.  Each skinned knee, each try, and try, and try again.  I’ve held these moments, for you, with you.  I’ve turned them around in my hands, felt them on all sides.  You are five, now, and then some.

Hear me now: we will celebrate you, taking you out to dinner, as you’ve requested.  We will light candles and sing to you.  And one by one, we will gather with those who love you.   Just like the December five years ago, this one will stretch out with time only lightly glancing off of these harsh boundaries.

Happy fifth birthday, Grant.

full hands, full heart

I hear it at least four times a week, I would bet, maybe more.

“Boy, you sure have your hands full!”  Usually it comes out of the mouth of  someone holding a door open for us, the checker at the grocery store, or perhaps the person behind us in line at the post office.  I smile, chuckle halfheartedly, and respond with something ridiculous and corny like “Full of blessings” (which is better than the snarky quip that I want to unleash) and I move on as fast as I can. That is, as fast as a mom with a babe strapped on her belly and two curious kids hanging from each arm can.

I get it, really – we must be quite a sight.  I’m sure that we are not quiet.  I know that we take up some space.  Sometimes we scatter a trail of Cheerios, just in case we need to Hansel-and-Gretal our way back from whence we came.  At one point I used to think I must look too young to have these kids, but I can’t fool myself with that one anymore.  Nope, I look like a mom of three little ones, creeping gray hairs and all.

But are we that much of sight?  Have you never seen a mom out with her brood before?  I have a hard time parsing out the sentiments behind this statement. Sometimes, I can’t help but feel that it is a backhanded way to offer some sort of critique.  Hear something long enough and the words seep into the tiny cracks of uncertainty and insecurity, the places where I feel weak and inadequate.  Even words that seem innocuous. Mostly, these words make me feel self-conscious. I immediately take stock: are the kids acting out? Are they being inappropriate? Is someone missing pants today? Do I have peanut butter in my hair?

No.  Almost always no.  Here’s the thing: my kids are good.  My kids know to hold hands in a parking lot; they know how to hold a door for strangers; they say please and thank you.  But they are kids.  The can get loud really fast.  They have selective listening.  They have strong wills and big smiles.  And sometimes, they just will. not. put. on. a coat.  No matter how cold it is outside.

Just yesterday, at the grocery store, the Middlest crawled under the shopping cart onto the rack usually reserved for jumbo packs of toilet paper or 20 lb. bags of dog food.  I was bagging up our groceries and I heard her crying down below.  Her knee was stuck.  With a little bit of a mommy tug and some kisses everything was better, but it sure takes us a bit longer to get through the check out line.  But you know that.

This is my gang.  These little ones go where I go.  We are a pack, a tribe, a flock, even.  The grocery store, school, the post office, Home Depot. We went to our local fire station at the beginning of the month to exercise my civic privilege and cast my vote to choose our next president.  I colored in my bubbles while answering questions from the curious almost-five year old, kept the ten month old from eating the pen, and stood still long enough for the three year old to spin circles around my legs.  And at the end of it all we were invited to take a look at the fire engine. (How lucky am I that my polling place is the fire station?!)

Together, we’ve all been in the lobby at gymnastic class, looking through the plexiglass window at the twisting and flipping acrobatics while we wait for class to begin for the Eldest.  I served my duty to as school-wide aide with the youngest strapped on my back and the Middlest coloring next to me while I cut out stars and bells and snow flakes for class projects.  Sometimes I feel like superwoman.  But I know what every other mother of young ones knows: these are the blessings.  This – that we gathered together, tight like a bouquet of flowers, living life in close proximity of each other.  If I have to run to the post office anyway, I’d rather do it with some entertainment and company.  I am never short on either.

My hands ARE full, yes.  My days are full, my house is full, my car is full, my head is full.  And my fridge almost never is.  I know this.  And I don’t need  you to tell me.

Here’s what I need instead:
“Boy, you have a beautiful family!”
“You certainly are blessed”
“Hang in there, Mom, you’re doing a great job!”
“Let me get that door for you.”

Best yet: the melody of wisdom that comes from the moms who have been here, right here where I am.  The moms who look at me, our eyes telling each other that we know the secret – we’re in on it together.  The moms who, not wistfully, but earnestly say: “I remember those days.”

These are words that encourage.  Who wouldn’t want to receive these words?!  There is no room here for misinterpretation – I don’t have to read between the lines to hear what you are saying.  These words might be the only adult conversation this here mom may have had all day.  These words can speak compassion, offer grace and love to a mom who spends her time giving grace and love to others.

Yes, my hands are full, and so is my heart.

turning three

My round faced, wide eyed, Middlest: you, dear, are turning three.  Mark and I sat across the table from each other a few nights ago, while you were tucked into our big bed, singing your heart out even though your lights had been out for nearly an hour.  He said to me, “Can you believe she’s going to be three?” And I said, “Yes.” Emphatically, yes.  Because you haven’t been a two year old for a long time, now.

No, you weren’t long to stay a baby.  That’s not because you were rushed out of that cozy part of life, but because you just stood up and took yourself right into the fun parts of being a bigger kid.  Even this week, in the hallway of school, walking with your big brother and a classmate of his, you refused to be left out of their giddy laughter and silly boy banter.  While the classmate’s younger brother clung to his mother’s hand, you dropped mine in order to run in the circles of the big boys.  This year was your first to go off to school.  You walked triumphantly into that classroom on the first day, never looking back.  Your enthusiastic chatter when I pick you up is musical, and the world is glorious through your eyes, your words.  I’ve never mourned the fact that you are not a baby any more because it is just simply too much fun to watch you grow up.

If last year I was delighting in your imagination, this year I am even more awestruck with the way your brain creates.  You have grown past the need to imitate the life you see around you, and though what you witness certainly informs your play choices, you take command of your world of play with fresh creativity. Some days you demand that I call you Christopher, short for Christopher Robin, and when I may veer off course and slip, accidentally referring to you as Renee, you call me to task.  Often you will assign me a new persona: sometimes I am Owl, others days I’m Rabbit.

More recently, you want to be called Wilbur, and you’ve been asking for a little pig for your birthday.  And, boy, it can be hard to say no to you.  Though we haven’t had a cat for about a year and a half now, you still pray every night for our kitty cat.

You are a caretaker, always.  At home, often you want me to tuck one of your guys into some baby carrier to be held close to your body, or teach you to swaddle one of them up tight.  At school, you have taken sweet Thumper, a stuffed bunny, under your care, and are sure to wake him up, dress him, and tend to his needs while you are there. At Romae’s, it’s Pooh Bear that you push in the shopping cart, making sure he is well fed (but not before you get glammed out in your jewels).   I’m pretty sure that when your little brother was born, you thought he was a gift just for you.  You still beg to hold him, though he will hardly sit still for even a kiss.

You wander around our house in whatever shoes you can find.  Sometimes you shuffle around with daddy’s slippers on your feet, other times you pull my boots up to your thighs and you look like you’re walking on the moon.  Even when friends come over, leaving their shoes near the door, you like to slip those sneakers that are not yours.

And, sweet one, the faces you make!  Your face is so expressive, those eyebrows saying more than most people can with words.  You’ve taken to creating and demonstrating your faces: happy, sad, sleepy, surprised.  While I was nursing the Littlest recently you sat across from me and showed me your “stormy face.”  How I love that stormy face!  We’ve called you a walking cartoon.  True to your character (I would expect nothing else), you will not perform those faces on any command other than your own.  Our family pictures this year will testify to that.

You are a collector, of things great and small.  Rocks, sticks, flowers, stickers.  I tried to foster this by giving you a box for your special things, but one box quickly became two, and I became a vigilant curator of your collections.  Our hikes are more meandering explorations of the world than they are fitness endeavors.  You remind me to slow down, check things out.  Some of my favorite moments this year have been walking hand in hand with you down a crunchy path, my eyes forward, only to have my entire being yanked backwards and down because something caught your eye and you refused to let go of my hand to get a closer look.  Your dad says you are not to be trusted with stickers.  Though it is true that for weeks after any particular incident I can still find remnants on the bottoms of shoes or the underside of water bottles, it brings me joy to see you covered head to toe with stickers, telling me an elaborate story to go with your creation.

No, I’m not sad that you are growing up.  My heart is bursting in all of the ways that I know you now that I didn’t know you even just a year ago.  Dear one, I am honored to celebrate three years with you.  We will light the candles on the vanilla cupcakes of your request, sing our loudest joy, and praise Him who created you.