of haircuts

I wouldn’t call it a rash decision or a thoughtless action.  No, there was a lot of talk for a number of days leading up to it.  But I will have to say: my reaction to it came as a surprise.  Yesterday Mark perched the Eldest on a stool, and with the hair clippers buzzing, cut off his curls.  He dragged them with ease over the outline of the Eldest’s head, staccato motions of transformation.   Large clumps of his golden-straw hair dropped on the patio. And I immediately felt that I clearly had not thought this through.

 

For one, I was certain that he wouldn’t possibly entertain the idea of something so loud and buzzing so close to his ears, his face.  Yet, this time it didn’t faze him.  Already knowing that this is how Daddy gets his hair cut, and so choosing to follow that very same path, he is brave beyond any flicker of uncertainty.  Even given the choice to leave his hair at the longer setting or click it down once more for a closer cut, he choses the closer cut to resemble Mark.  Yes, this boy admires his daddy so.

Mark stands back to look, comes in closer again for one or two more finishing touches.  With pride, the Eldest pop up off the stool, eager to see the results.  I feel a roll in my gut, because I know that I’m not looking at any sort of small toddler, no glimmer of baby here.  With his hair cropped close to his head, he looks all arms and legs.  His physical body demands to be seen for what it is: a boy child, four and a half years proud.  Even my touch to him signifies as much.  I rub my hands up and down his peach fuzz with playfulness, different from smoothing curly locks out of baby eyes.

It catches me throughout the day, this new look of his.  As I turn from the dishes in the sink to ask him to set the table, I’m startled by this lanky boy-face who answers me.  The stark reality of his porcelain face, his forehead no longer hidden behind careless curls, forces me to swallow hard, tears stinging the corners of my eyes.  It’s not as though I haven’t been aware of his growing up, hard and fast.  I watch it minute by minute, day by day.  But maybe that’s why: those are the bits and pieces of growing up, the sands that shake down into the larger picture.  What stands before me almost seems like a leap out of one frame and into another, so abruptly.

This dear boy, though, is every bit as much my baby as he was the day he was born. It’s now late afternoon; I wake him from a nap.  This is itself a tender moment, not occurring very often, but today after joining his brother and sister playing with Mark in the Littlest’s room, he wants nothing more than to curl his long legs into my body and let me hold him in the rocking chair.  It is just as much a reminder to me as it is to him of where we stand with each other: we belong, always, even in the growing.

And I, too, forget that each day he marks out more of his own life for himself, less reliant on me to do so.  He has things he likes; opinions all of his own.  How he wears his hair is less my choice now and more his.  It is just hair after all, and back it will grow, quicker than I can imagine.  And maybe he’ll let those curls come in, spill over his ears and forehead in time for the fall, to keep the chill away.  Or maybe he won’t.  Mostly, I’m just glad that as he stands in front of the mirror, rubbing his head in exploration, he smiles wide when he catches my eye.

WD 40: a story of two tractors

He is so excited to show my dad, his Grandpa Jack, his tractors.  The Eldest had rediscovered this brother-pair of model tractors, about the size of twin shoe boxes, both given to him as gifts a few months back.  Like most shiny things, they had lost their glimmer, but were making the rounds back into play, old toys polished back into newness again by the small hands and attention of this four year old.

“This one here: that’s a Ford,” explains my dad, the arm of his glasses pressed between his lips as he lifts the tractor to his now bare eyes for a closer inspection.  He fingers the axel with his surgeon precision.  ”You can tell by the red and gray.”

The Eldest nods solemnly, so as not to appear too eager or juvenile, but inhaling every word Grandpa Jack says.  He brings the trailer close, leans over the hitch to line it up just right.  ”Look how it hooks together!” the Eldest can’t help declare his enthusiasm.  He loads the trailer up with the hay bales, turns the tractor up the carpet.  ”I hook this one up instead, because that one doesn’t steer well.  And it makes a squeaky sound.” he shows Grandpa Jack the tight steering of the green and yellow John Deere.  Grandpa Jack lifts this one next, flicks the wheels, gives the steering a try.  Indeed, a whiny squeal cries softly as the tractor pushes against the floor.

“I’ll tell you just the thing to do for that.” Grandpa Jack sits back on his heels, his eyes holding steady with the Eldest’s, ready to present this key, this pearl of hard-earned wisdom.  ”Have you ever heard of this stuff called WD-40? I’m sure your dad has some around. Let’s have a look.”  He heads down into the basement, pokes around Mark’s work space, and a moment later is back, revealing the blue and yellow aerosol can.  Grabbing a handful of paper towels on his way through my kitchen, my dad nestles back onto the floor, invites my son in close.  Together, teacher and student, grandfather and grandson, they get to work.   Grandpa Jack squirts some of the lubricant on his fingers, offers them up to the Eldest for a smell.  The Littlest and I are nearby, in the wings of this stage, but even from where I sit the almost rusty smell of WD-40 fills my nostrils, brings me to a basement of my own growing up.

He teaches the Eldest how to point the red straw in towards the tight joints.  He lets him press the nozzle and when he does he releases way more lubricant than practical.  They chuckle together; they wipe up grease together. The Eldest is beaming, his smile stretches from ear lobe, across his ivory chin, to the other ear lobe; I think mine does, too.  I know that Mark will interupt this, in a moment, stepping out of his post-work-day shower. I pause for just a second; wonder if he may feel on the outside of this lesson.  But I know Mark, and I know that, though he has all this wisdom to share with his boy, lessons marked out with mottos like “measure twice; cut once,” I know, too, that he is generous.  He will give this gift, freely, to both Grandpa Jack and the Eldest.

Soon, Grandpa Jack gets off of his creaky knees, ready to respond to the next call.  The other Little Ones crowd out the scene, and there are phones to answer, dinner to be made.  But that night at bedtime, I tuck the Eldest in to with both of his tractors, and he whispers,  ”Mama?” I lean my head to the side, look at his fresh eyes.  ”This one is a Ford,” he tells me, definitively, holding out one hand.  ”And this,” he says, offering the other,  ”the John Deere works now.”

I say good night, make my way down the stairs.  Later, as I’m cleaning up the kitchen, remembering my own version of the day, I hear the hollow sound of tractors being pushed across the wood floor above me.

Really, it was just ten minutes, sitting on the family room floor.

and the living {ain’t} easy

It it “glazing” hot, as the Eldest has been known to declare.  The Littlest keenly focuses his eyes on his big siblings.  Those bigger ones know how to keep cool: they romp and run and dunk and splash in a cheap blow-up plastic baby pool.  The shade shifts; I adjust the Littlest and I to keep us out of that strong sun.  I declare now: this is how we will spend our summer.

It is the first time in days that I let my shoulders fall back in ease, release the breath I didn’t even know I was holding.  This picture of summer, alive in front of me, is familiar with echos of my own childhood.  I know how the blades of grass get stuck on wet feet.  I know that taste of sunscreen as it migrates with sweat and hose water to my lips.  I need this afternoon of innocence.

We were in our second car accident in a month last Wednesday.  Both times were not my fault; both times I had all three kids with me.  (Yes, we are all fine).  Since last Wednesday, I’ve been wrestling with my words, choosing carefully how to talk about all of this with the Little Ones.  The Eldest, with his tendencies towards worry, is afraid to get in the car again.  He tells me, frankly “But Mommy, you said a few weeks ago that we weren’t going to have another accident for a while!”  Of course I did.  I thought it was a safe assumption: in his four and a half years of driving in the car with me, we have never come close to being in a car accident before. The Middlest tells me “Mama, I don’t like car accidents” with a quiver to her voice.

So we talk about it.  The Eldest takes his job seriously, telling each new person in detail exactly what happened.  His words are concrete, his hands full of action.  With each telling, he gains strength over his worry: he begins to own this tale.  But in the quiet moments, his fear is undone.  I want to smooth his hair, hold his hand and tell him that there will be no more car accidents. I want to assure him that it will not rain and there will be no storms.  I want to promise a life full of sunshine and playing in the pool.  But that’s not life, is it?  And if I’m honest with myself, I know that my little boy knows that already.  He knows heartache.  He knows sadness and worry and he knows that life can be hard, and scary.  My best bet here is to sit in his worry with him.  To hold his hand through the sad and scary and hard.  To walk it out with him.  And in that, to show him my footprints through the tough stuff, sometimes as a guide, but more than that to show how it’s possible to come out the other side.  Addie Zimmerman says this:

“The world is infused with pain and with evils of all shapes and sizes, and they will encounter it, our children. It will get under their fingernails, on their toes. And in the end what I want most to do for my children is to teach them to walk well in a world that is sharp and hard and broken. I want them to love bigger, to love stronger, to be able to stay healthy when they encounter dirt of all kinds.”   Safe for the Whole Family

This accident we had was just that: an accident.  The man who rear-ended us has his own story; his own dirt and his own hurts.  I will forgive him for not paying attention.  I will forgive him for creating a mess of the car I was driving.  And yes, I will forgive him, too, for the burden of worry he helped heap onto my Little Ones.  I will forgive him for making my ten minute trip to Target feel painfully long and difficult because of the mind-game that we now play just to get in the car.  I will love bigger and stronger, because I’m teaching my Little Ones to do it, too.

Though my adult self can get wrapped up in worry, it is often triggered by these small bodies carrying more than I feel that they should.  As a child I was not a worrier.  Maybe it was my sweet acceptance that the world was no bigger than my backyard, my problems no bigger than practicing hard to run  faster than the neighborhood kids and earn those bragging rights.  One thing I know is that God can use these soft hearts that my Little Ones have: He can break their hearts for the things that break His.  He can use their hearts to move their hands, their feet in loving this broken world.  And this worry that they carry can be a window for them to see God: to see how He walks with them, to see how He answers prayer, making the sad things come untrue.  To allow them to know His faithfulness.

I want for my Little Ones to remember running hard in the backyard, hair matted down with sweat around their foreheads.  I want them to remember the force of  their strong round bodies jumping and landing in five inches of water.  But it is just as likely that they will capture the scary moments, too.  I want to honor it all.

We gather up our bags, and our courage, and hustle to the door.  I hoist long legs into Daddy’s truck, click car seats and buckles into place.  Before I turn up a little Johnny Cash to ease the drive (the Eldest’s request), his brave voice beckons from the back seat: “Mama, can you pray?” And so I do.  And we pause a little longer at our stop signs, look one extra time before making a turn.  But we together we sing loudly, and come home to put on our bathing suits again.

fortress

It is standard dinner conversation: “Tell me about your day, Daddy?” the Eldest asks, in between bites of burrito and giggles of nonsense.  The interruptions, routine: the Littlest spurting protest cries, demands to be picked up.  The dance-call, familiar: I’ll hold the Littlest while Mark eats a few bites, then pass him over the table to into Mark’s grasp, taking turns holding this family together, and dishing out seconds.

It is this common family life that is now settling back in our house.  Mark has finished the work project that had him tied up with night shift. Now I eagerly peck him on the lips, barely awake to wish him well as he heads out the door to work at 5:30am.  This is familiar to me: knowing that he will be at our table for dinner.  The Little Ones run down the front steps to greet him in the driveway when he comes home, still covered in the day’s dust.  They, too, are thankful for his presence at the table.  They rejoice in their father’s hands tucking them in to bed at night. I take comfort in him by my side when I’m turning lights off, locking doors for the night.  I sleep easier when he is the last thing I see before I close my eyes.

We are now in transition, though.  When Mark was gone, I couldn’t rely on our old rhythms to get us from one shore to the next.  The benchmarks of how to mark time no longer made sense.  We needed new structure: the day was divided off differently, now.  New routines were created, new rhythms established.  And I built a fortress: a tower to protect myself.  Brick by brick, slowly, daily, I stood these supports together to steady myself in the darkness of parenting alone.  Mark is back now, and I have a partner again, but I find myself stuck, still alone in this fortress that I made.  I didn’t have an exit strategy in mind.  Now we’re doing the hard work, together, of knocking down this tower.  We’re reconstructing our home.

These past two months of upended family life have pushed me to my edge, and at moments passed it.  I did what was necessary to keep our family going, not always with grace or finesse, not always thriving.  And that’s the thing, isn’t it?  We want more than survival — we’re made for Life, Abundant.  And it’s not enough to hold my breath, wait until this one stress-test-of-life passes, because there’s is always another.  I’m beginning to understand more what it means to fix my eyes on Jesus, “the author and perfecter of our faith.”

Tonight, it’s bath night.  We’ll have dinner together.  I’ll try to hear about Mark’s day, in fragments.  The Little Ones and I will tell him about ours.  We’ll set the table together, fold laundry together.  We’ll hand Little Ones around, corralling and cajoling; admonishing and teaching; praising and encouraging.  Together, we’ll take down my fortress, fight through the hard conversations, step on each other’s toes more than we care to.  Together, we’ll hammer these new beams into place, build new rooms, with windows for the view.  Together, we’ll remember what makes this our home.

how boring

There are new words that are coming out of the Eldest’s mouth, with increasing frequency:  ”I’m bored.” Today in the shoe store searching for work boots for Mark, it was its common variation: “this is boring.”  I guess I should be surprised that it took this long in his life for him to complain, really.  But let me be honest: I have such little tolerance for this.  Life is full of have-to destinations; shoe shopping wasn’t my idea of a brilliantly fun morning either.  But I have to wonder: when did my Littles embrace the idea that they are entitled to be entertained every minute of the day?

He has always been the type of little boy who loves interaction.  He thrives on the engagement that comes with friends, with visitors.  He delights when my sister is here to spoil him with her ferocious love; he can’t get enough of his grandparents. In fact, I would even accuse him of sometimes monopolizing their time with our family. His sister is so happy to play independently with her own imagination that this is even possible.   But the Eldest, he seeks engagement, always  - he is built up with feedback:  ”Look, Mama, at this letter I made. What color should I chose next?” It could easily be argued that his love language is heard in words of affirmation.

Combine this personality with his position within the family as the Eldest, the one whom had all the attention for some 22 months before he had to share; the one who is paving the way for his siblings in so many arenas, and I shouldn’t be surprised.  My life as a new mother revolved around his, as I learned my bearings and began to claim motherhood as my own.  He taught be how to mother in those early times as we figured life out together.  This is still true today, as we navigate our way through difficult patches, these out-of-bounds-fours together.

I was reading the classic children’s book,  Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day to my Littles just yesterday, and was struck by how normal and unexciting this typical day is for Alexander and his family.  It’s breakfast cereal around the kitchen table, carpool to school.  It’s packed lunches and dentist appointments.  It’s school shopping and sibling rivalry.  It’s bath times and bed times, and mostly it’s about family being family.  It’s not about trips to the zoo and dance recitals.  Sure, it’s the day that Alexander wishes he didn’t have, but it’s the day we all have (even in Australia).  It was also written in the 1970s when these children, arguably, had less structured activities, and felt less entitled to be constantly entertained.

And I understand, truly, that much of our life these days has not been exactly fun.  A trip to the grocery store, an errand to the shoe store.  Folding laundry, dusting bookshelves, sorting summer clothes.  Pulling weeds, mowing the lawn.  Drive to school, bath time at night.  It’s daily maintenance of family life, and yes, it’s mundane, and it’s not always thrilling.  The fun activities that used to be more commonplace now are used as punctuation instead of the building blocks of our time.  I miss a bit of that, too.  I guess that’s just what happens as Littles get older, and our family continues to grow.  Our responsibilities and time constraints grow, too.  The work it takes to make our home grows.  And we do make time for the extraordinary: a rightly-timed day of hooky a few weeks ago, and we enjoyed a family day at the zoo, though admittedly the best part of that day was our picnic lunch on the banks of the river afterwards.

Maybe I have no one to blame but myself.  There was a time a few years back when I complained about feeling like a cruise director, always making sure we had something entertaining to look forward to, something that would bring us together as a family, provide some educational fun, and of course create lasting memories. True, I was motivated by the crazy-making  long hours alone with just one toddler that stretched ahead of me at the time.  But now, a bit of activity burn out and a few years of mothering later, and I know that nothing beats the gift of time and unscheduled activity, and actually, the gift of boredom, to turn these years into forever memories.

We’ve given our Littles every chance to be bored, unscheduled, and embrace the blank slate, the day wide open before us.  Mark and I are mostly not planners by nature, and though grown-up family life dictates a bit more predictability, we often let things happen a bit more organically.

And, honestly, I’m ready for life to be a bit boring.  Much of our life, unexpected recently has not been the good kind of interruption.  It has had to do with sickness, and death.  With working way too much, way too hard, for too little return.  It’s been the surprise of car accidents and broken furnaces.  So I’m okay with it if days are a bit more tedious, tending towards mundane.  What it lacks in suspense it makes up in stability.

And then it happens: those golden glimpses that remind me that I’m on the right track.  Sunday morning, I was inside nursing the Littlest while Mark had taken the bigger kids outside to play.  When the Littlest and I made our way into the cool dampness to join them, Mark was standing back, drinking his coffee, watching as they reveled in their own play, entirely of their own creation.  I joined him and together we watched them take turns helping each other into the wagon, and aim it down hill.  With a simple nudge, and a peal of smiling laughter, they careened in that wagon down  our yard, then eagerly hopped out, raced back up the hill to catch the next ride.  Simple, oh-so-simple: a small plastic wagon from Target, some mediocre weather, sibling companionship and a good ol’ hill, and the right opportunity, left open to be bored.  This is likely to be a memory that paints a more accurate picture of our family life than a more thoroughly orchestrated event.  And as, with everything, it’s balance: their play lasted for a bit, and then they were ready for someone to push them on the swings, and play catch.  And I was ready to play, too.