Categories: Mothering

Mother

Meditations by Elizabeth Nourse

"The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial,

an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute."

Honore De Balzac (1799-1850)

Rare

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Part Two: Nature

I

NATURE, the gentlest mother,
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest or the waywardest,---
Her admonition mild


In forest and the hill
By traveller is heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.


How fair her conversation,
A summer afternoon,---
Her household, her assembly;
And when the sun goes down


Her voice among the aisles
Incites the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.


When all the children sleep
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light her lamps;
Then, bending from the sky,


With infinite affection
And infiniter care,
Her golden finger on her lip,
Wills silence everywhere.


Emily Dickinson (1830-86)

Lily quit taking naps when she was six weeks old, so this is a rare glimpse of my child sleeping. She had been up all night at a sleepover and, although she fought valiantly, she finally succumbed to sleep in our backyard swing. As the sun slid down the sky, I began to wonder if she would continue there into the evening. She arose at dusk, though, never knowing I had taken her picture.

I'll Fly Away

Will, the girls and I are taking a little family vacation this week. I wish I could tell you about all the educational aspects of our little foray and include photos, but that will have to wait. We are first and foremost getting away to have some quiet time together as a family. Since the loss of my mother, I have been relentlessly pushing people away from me including my own husband and children. I haven't really cried about things, but I wouldn't even know what to cry about if I could.

My mother and I had a complicated relationship. I wish I could tell you what a wonderful mother she was because, in turns, she was. But then, it would feel like a half-lie. And a half-lie is almost always or usually very nearly a full lie. If I tell you of the other topsy-turvy, spinning turns of my life with my mother, I would feel like I was betraying the good in her. She was a woman living her life as best she could on this planet. How can I criticize that?

If I tell you how much I want my mommy right now, you would assume I meant my mother. I assumed I meant her. Now I am not so sure.

I feel so lost. I want someone to hold me, rock me back and forth and softly, through my great heaving sobs, tell me that everything is going to be okay. Someone who won't care that I am getting her shirt all wet with my tears. And I want to stay there as long as I need to stay there. Not until she tires of it all and plops me back down on the hard wooden rocker all alone. I want to be able to cry myself to sleep and wake up still in my mother's arms. But not really my mother.

My husband wants me to get on with my life. To buck up. To be the adult. I don't want to be the adult right now. I want to have a great, screaming meltdown in the middle of the supermarket floor just as the cart is already half full of groceries and everyone is staring and muttering that someone really should do something about this child.

My children want me to help them with their math problems. To fix their dinner. To clean the tub. I want someone to do those things, too. Someone to make sure I have fresh sheets on my bed and a clean dress laid out for tomorrow. Someone who knows where my shoes are.

Where is she? Where is this person called Mother. Who is this person called Mother? Why is everyone looking at me?

Hits & Misses

Blogger Friend School Assignment # 12

As we begin the New Year 2007, let's look at what were our Hits & Misses for 2006. This could include anything at in your life. Perhaps you tried a new curriculum, a different approach to discipline, a new cookbook, a better (or worse) way to organize your time. Maybe, you joined a new group, or tried a new class.

The assignment for this week is make a List of "HITS" and a List of "MISSES"!

Extra Credit (from Training Hearts Mom): Take your favorite Homeschool item and write Raving Review! Be sure to share from the heart and be honest. In your review include the 5 W's and the H...Who, What, Where, Why and How!

As I was writing down a list of what I consider the "hits" and "misses" of my life this past year, I realized that for every hit there seemed to be a somewhat related miss. It suddenly just jumped out at me while I was looking at the list. While I don't think some of them are directly related; some of them definitely are. So here they are.

Hits	Misses
1. Our new puppy Banjo 2. Dressing more modestly 3. Greenleaf Guide to Old Testament History 4. Headcovering 5. Our new bed 6. My new kitchen	1. Spending time with my girls 2. Reading my Bible 3. Wise Up! Wisdom in Proverbs 4. Pleasing my husband (a.k.a. keeping up with the housework) 5. Getting on a good sleep schedule 6. Cooking better meals more often

Now I shall explain.

Numbers One
On January 5th of 2006 our sweet little Boston Terrier was born and we were able to bring him home in early March. Banjo has turned out to be a wonderful addition to our family. He's been a breeze to housebreak and has such a good temperament. God has really blessed our family with this puppy. On the other hand, I have had a strong desire to spend more time with my girls and feel like I haven't done as well as I possibly could have this past year. This is not because I have given all of my attentions to Banjo, but it did seem superficially related when I was drawing up my list. It is a hard thing to explain to non-homeschooling moms how you can spend just about each and every hour of your waking day with your children and still feel like you haven't spent time with them. I miss the days when they were younger and schoolwork didn't seem as pressing. Now that Lily is in high school and I have to think about what her transcript will ultimately look like, I suddenly miss the days of tent-building in the middle of our living room and of paper dolls. I want to play games with my girls and read to them. I find myself resenting the shadow "college" has cast over our days.

Numbers Two
Now this year I have had a good deal of success and satisfaction in dressing modestly. I am far more comfortable in dresses and I feel like it has been a blessing in my life. On the other hand, I have felt like a failure at spending more time in God's word. When writing up this list, I realized that, as satisfying as it may be to be dressing modestly, it is a small thing compared to keeping nigh unto God. It almost makes me feel like a hypocrite. I feel like a beautiful vase that remains empty.

Numbers Three
This year I decided to pull out a Bible curriculum that I bought a couple of years ago for Lily, but decided wasn't really for her. I thought, for some bizarre reason, that I should give it a try with Clara. It is a very nice study of Proverbs, but it is a workbook. We don't like workbooks. We really, really don't like workbooks. So, after several attempts at using this curriculum, I dug out our Greenleaf Guide to Old Testament History and asked Clara if she would like to snuggle up and read the Bible with me. She agreed that this would be a great thing and we are all very glad.

Numbers Four
For several years now I have felt like I should wear a headcovering. Nobody in our congregation wears a headcovering, so whenever I questioned 1 Corinthians 11, everyone would say they thought that a woman's hair was the covering mentioned in those verses or that it no longer applies to modern day Christians. I kept having a nagging feeling that that wasn't enough. I read and reread this scripture and studied the Greek words that were being translated until I understood that God wanted me to wear a headcovering. I do not bind this on other women. This is between me and my God. I do not think that women who do not wear a headcovering will not have their prayers answered. I don't think it is a salvation issue. I just feel like it is an issue I needed to address in my life. I started wearing a headcovering in the spring of 2006 and have felt many blessings come from having chosen to do so. It has made me more aware of my place in God's plan for my marriage. I can see how it has changed my heart attitude in many ways. The other side of this though, the "miss", is that I know perfectly well what pleases my husband and I continue to neglect those things. I know that he is happiest when we have a tidy home and I am in the bad habit of letting things slide around here. I want to work on that this year.

Numbers Five
I have been having sleep problems for quite some time. I know that I need good rest and that I can let my sleep schedule get completely turned around in a matter of days because I tend to be a night owl. My beloved husband took me out shopping for a new bed this summer since we had been sleeping on the same one for twelve years. He felt that a new bed would help to alleviate some of my sleep problems. He had me lie down on several mattresses until I picked the perfect one. I felt like the princess in The Princess and the Pea. I have never slept on a mattress such as this. It is absolutely dreamy. It was a hit, for sure. Getting myself on a regular sleep schedule, however, has been a terrible miss. It is after one in the morning as I type this.

Numbers Six
Now you are going to wonder how I ever came into such a blessing with my husband when I tell you this. After living in our home for ten years and having to cook in a kitchen that was fifty years old, my husband took me out to pick all new everything for my kitchen. New cupboards and cabinets to replace the cupboards with doors that were falling off of their hinges and drawers that were without fronts. A new counter top to replace the one with cracks running through it and awful black, bubbled burn marks on it. And, no, I didn't create these horrific burns. He even got a new stove with a convection oven and a microwave above the stove and a new refrigerator. And a new sink and a garbage disposal and...Okay, I will stop now. I got a brand new kitchen because my husband loves me like no other man could ever even come close to trying. And, for several months, I cooked like I had never cooked before. I discovered Allrecipes.com and never have to wonder how to cook another piece of meat again. At some point, though, I quit. I am not sure why. So the kitchen was a hit and my cooking turned into a miss.

So there you have it. My wonders and blunders of 2006. I suppose I could use the "misses" to create a nice little New Year's resolution list. I've never made a New Year's resolution list before. What do you think?

Even So

I have been pretty sad this week. My mother is in the end stages of an Alzheimer's-like disease. When I was growing up, my mother had seizures that couldn't be diagnosed as having been caused by anything that her doctors could find. About ten years ago, it became obvious to me that something else was going on with my mother. Two years later, she was diagnosed as having Alzheimer's. She was eventually tested and found to be lacking the gene that is normally found in Alzheimer's patients. None of this really matters to me anymore. I am just telling you so you will know.

I have grown up with a mother who has never really been well. Physically, her body was typically quite healthy, but something has never been quite right with her brain. Knowing exactly why doesn't seem so very important. When I speak of my mother's illness now, I just say that she has Alzheimer's because it is easier. Nobody asks for the particulars and nobody would be able to tell the difference anyway.

My father takes care of my mother at home. In August, he suffered a heart attack and had to have emergency, quadruple bypass surgery. My father actually drove himself to the doctor's office that afternoon and was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. By the time my sister was notified and got to my parents' house, my mother had fallen out of bed and was on the floor of their bedroom. She had been there for quite a while.

I went to stay with my father after he was allowed to go home from the hospital. My sister was taking care of my mother at her own home since she lived in town. I had planned on staying with my father for a few weeks hoping to help him get well. In the middle of my first week there, I called my husband on his cell phone since I couldn't reach him at home and it was late in the evening. He was with our daughter in the emergency room. Eight hours away from me. As it turned out, Lily had to have an emergency appendectomy. I thank God that my husband is such a wonderful and capable father and that he has such a good relationship with our girls. I can't imagine how I would have been able to bear to be so far away from my child during such a major event in her life if he hadn't been with her the entire time. She had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days and my husband stayed on a cot near her bed the entire time. As soon as she was safely in the care of some of our good friends, he came to get me. He was exhausted. I was torn between wanting to care for my family in two different places at once. I ended up only staying with my father for a week. My mother came home a few days before I left. My father would not hear of her going into a nursing home.

As it turns out, my mother can't even stay in a nursing home because she doesn't have a "medically treatable" condition. So my mother is at home right now. She will not eat. She cannot see or walk or speak. She just screams all the time. My father, feeling defeated and exhausted, finally tried to get my mother into a nursing home, but they only let her stay for a few weeks before they sent her home.

I am tired. I told someone recently that "it is well with my soul". And it is. It is well with my soul. This is just such tiresome business. This living.

Bereft

It is not an easy thing to lose your mother. Once, when I was three, I lost my mother in a grocery store. I remember looking at a row of canned food and then looking up for my mother and she was gone. She was there and then she was not. I can't tell you how I felt at that moment because there are no words adequate for the feeling a three-year-old has at the loss of her mother. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to get any easier with age.

For the past year or so now, I have felt that three-year-old curled up inside of me crying inconsolably, "I want my mommy." I do, too. I want my mommy. I want her so bad and I can't find her anymore. And, this time, she's not looking for me.

When I go to her house, I open her drawers and find things arranged just as she left them. Her neat, little address book tucked away in a drawer with her pens and pencils and envelopes. I read the entries in her address book written in the neatest handwriting you have ever seen. Some addresses or phone numbers carefully erased with new ones penciled in. I try to find the most recent changes. I realize what seems like yesterday was actually several years ago. My mother. Always so neat and organized. I feel like I am peering into a time capsule. Like I am being ricocheted back and forth in time. Just a few years in time, but seemingly a lifetime apart.

I run, crying out for my mother, but she is not there. She was just there a minute ago. I just looked away and she was gone. Somebody help me find my mother. I want my mother. I want her now. I run up and down the wide aisles and I can't find her anywhere. She is not rearranging her pantry. She is not busy decorating a wedding cake. She is not sitting quietly on the couch tatting. She's not sitting at the dining room table carefully writing a letter to an old friend. She's not out in the yard talking across the fence to a neighbor. She's not bringing the clothes in from out on the line or ironing shirts or watering her plants...

When I was five, I watched my mother leave me. I was the oldest of her four children and we all had pneumonia while my father was away on a business trip. When he came home, she told him that she couldn't take it anymore and she was leaving. And she left. I watched her from the kitchen window as she walked down the side street and away from our house. Away from me. I don't know where she went. I don't remember when she returned.

I'm looking out that same window now. I know where my mother is going. I know she won't be returning to me. I want to cry out and bang on the glass, but she is too far away now.

It is not an easy thing to lose your mother.

What To Say??

I hope there are still some of you out there patiently waiting for my return. If so, here is your reward.

I have been missing in action for the past month and a half because of a combination of spring fever and post-puppy elation. Spring is finally here and I have a new baby to coo over. Banjo has been doing extremely well since he made his entrance into our family. He has gone from three pounds at nine weeks to eight and a half pounds at sixteen weeks. He is expected to max out at twenty pounds. He loves his little crate/den and sleeps through the night there. We haven't had any nighttime accidents since we brought him home and put him in the crate at night. He hasn't had any daytime accidents in a while, either. Banjo knows how to sit, stay and is doing well on his leash. I have to say... I LOVE this dog! I wake up in the mornings and I can't wait to see him. His crate is in the living room so I don't have to go far. I am afraid I have a serious case of puppy love. If not for my very determined husband, this baby would be in bed with us just like our natural children were when they were babies. Did I tell you that I love this dog?

Okay. I will try to think of something else to say. Hmm...

I love this dog. I love this dog. I really, really love this dog.

Bread and Jam

Here I sit eating bread and strawberry jam at a totally unreasonable hour of the night. Mmmm...Bread and jam. If I had a cup of tea with cream and sugar, I would be so happy. Instead, I drink my Aquafina. My keyboard is getting rather sticky.

I am in training. I must stay up as late as I possibly can because I cannot fall asleep tomorrow night. I know that many of you will bristle when I tell you this, but tell you I must. Tomorrow night is our congregation's youth group lock-in. Yes, there will be boys and there will be girls and they will be spending the night under one roof. I know, I know... Oh, please, let's not even go there. I have a child, though, who wants to stay up all night long with her friends. And since my house cannot accommodate such an event, I will be spending the night with my daughter at our church building. My daughter is not interested in boys in any way except as potential friends. She abhors the implication of anything else. I don't know what the other girls or boys are interested in, but I am going to be there to protect my daughter's interests. I am also bringing along her ten-year-old sister since my husband has to be at work very early the next morning. If my husband didn't have to work, most likely we would be there as a family.

I remember clearly what it was like to be a thirteen-year-old. My parents were very different parents than Will and I are. I know we grew up in a slightly different world than our children are growing up in, but it wasn't that different. What were my parents thinking? I don't think they were thinking the world had changed very much since they were growing up, perhaps. I don't know. I look back, though, and I see parents who were too tired for the challenge. They were seduced into abdicating their authority over their children by sending us to both public and parochial schools. I believe that.

I think that parenting can be a very tiresome business. It requires you to be constant at all times. We are encouraged to let go of our children and scowled upon when we seem to pull them close. I don't believe it is our children that we are really being asked to let go of. It is our authority over them. We are told that we should gradually let them go so that they can be independent young men and women. Someone once said that during a ladies' bible class and it struck me as wrong. My girls were only toddlers, at the time. I looked up and said, "I don't think God expects me to bring my children up to be independent. I think that God expects me to help them to transfer their dependence on me to a total dependence on him." I truly think that God put those words into my mouth that night because I am just not that wise. They are words that I have kept close to my heart all these years. So, I will not let go of my authority over my children. I will not relax. I love my children and I love my God. It is foolish to think that raising children should be easy. But I can tell you that it can be joyful.

Ah, bread and jam.

World Breastfeeding Week

August 1st-7th is World Breastfeeding Week! Click here to find events in your area. I breastfed both of my babies for two and a half years --- five years straight. I feel blessed by the nursing relationships that I had with my babies.

Breastfeeding can come easily or it can occasionally be difficult for various reasons. My firstborn took right to it and I had no difficulties nursing her. My second baby was born with an extremely short frenulum (tongue-tied) and it took a lot of time, effort, and too many tears to count to establish our nursing relationship. If she had been my first, I might have been convinced that I wasn't able to breastfeed. That is why I hope that anyone reading this and contemplating whether or not breastfeeding is right for them will educate themselves and realize that obstacles in breastfeeding aren't the norm nor are they insurmountable when they do arise.

Breastfeeding your babies is one of the greatest gifts you can give to them. If you are not convinced, read this.

Sorrow & Thanksgiving

It would be so much easier if I could find a poem that could tell you of the ache that is in my heart, but that would be too easy. It wouldn't be creating something that was mine to turn over and over in the sunlight and in the rain. Such things as this may seem like silliness to most readers and, indeed, I keep reminding myself that it is silly to cry over such things. Yet, still I weep.

I have two beautiful girls. While crouching around in the cramped, hot attic today trying to find the boxes of summer clothes for my girls, I stumbled upon a great cache of little girl clothes. I have been handing down my girls' outgrown clothes for years, but I knew there were a couple of boxes still up there that I could never seem to locate. Today I found about five boxes of clothes. Big boxes. They were right there like they were mocking me for not having seen them before. Boxes full of baby and toddler clothes. Sweet little church dresses, colorful play dresses, little bubble outfits with snaps for easy diaper changing. Oshkosh overalls with little flowers embroidered into the material. And matching shirts. Onesies and thick, cotton training pants. My little girls' clothes.

How did these manage to escape the grand parade of handed down clothes that is still marching out our door and into other homes? I know. I know all too well and therein lies my heartache. These were clothes for my next baby. For the one to come. For that sweet little child that would smell of something not quite of this earth. Something like the smell of warm sugar cookies and that heavenly smell that you aren't sure whether it begins with you and ends with the baby or begins with the baby and ends with you. Or if it has a beginning or an end at all.

When I first found the boxes and brought them down from the attic, I was so happy for my friend. She just had her sixth child and I knew that the hand-me-downs were starting to get tattered in that family since the last five babies were all girls. I kept telling my friend that I thought I had some stuff up in the attic. And, of course, I did. I said it casually since I have been handing down clothes for years without too much thought. I have seen God bless me in so many ways that it wasn't difficult to know that he would always provide for me and my family. Everything I have is God's and I often consider the fact that he might redistribute things at any time, but I don't worry about it. Why would God quit taking care of me now? This doesn't have anything to do with my faith that God will provide for me in any situation. If I were to tell you of all the ways God has blessed me and carried me through the storms, I wouldn't be able to finish this post. Perhaps I should think of posting about such things in the future. It certainly would keep my blog more frequently updated.

My sorrow comes from the fact that, as I sort through these clothes, I see my babies nursing, cooing, smiling, crying, rolling over, sitting up... Looking back at me with their sweet blue eyes and chubby cheeks. My sorrow comes from the fact that ten years ago I had my last baby and I didn't even know it. She was born on Fathers' Day. There was no sorrow that day. I woke up a little after nine that Sunday morning and four hours later, I had a ten pound three ounce baby girl. Chubby little Clara. A little sister for Lily.

I wish I could be as happy today as I go through these clothes. Some of them still smell vaguely of the soap I used back then. That's just not fair. But it is what it is. I am washing them for my friend. Washing out the smell of my babies. Some things you just can't get back.

Books that Sit and Books that Prick

For those of you who have asked about my progress in reading the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, I must confess that I haven't gotten past the first chapter. I promised our preacher I wouldn't start reading the books without him and it seems as though we just can't find a convenient time to start reading simultaneously. He is either in the middle of a book or I am. Well, usually I am in the middle of several books, but there are only so many I can juggle at a time. I am beginning to think that I am just going to jump in to the first book of the trilogy, The Bridal Wreath, without my friend.

One of the reasons I am bringing this up is because I have just updated my "literature" links. There are a couple of other books that I've been reading that may interest some of you.

I have been reading Home-Making and it has really been both pleasurable and painful at the same time. I suppose one might call it convicting. I find that the author is telling me exactly what I know to be true about creating a home and, although I have longed for this affirmation of what I believe to be true, it stings a little to see in print many of the ways in which I have fallen short. I don't say this to discourage you from reading this book, though. It was written by a nineteenth century man by the name of J.R. Miller whose eloquence and obvious love takes most of the sting from what he has to say. But not all. And that is as it should be. This book would be worth very little if it just affirmed what we already knew to be true without pricking our hearts into further action. This book is also not just meant for wives and mothers. It is meant to be read by the entire family. Miller is very careful to let the burdens of keeping a Christian home fall where they should. He has words for both husband and wife as well as for the children. We plan on reading this book as a family as soon as I am done with it. I think it will be a very humbling experience for me, but a necessary one.

Raising Maidens of Virtue has been a good read so far. I am pre-reading it before I read it with my girls. I bought it to read with them since they have been coming to me with concerns about modesty, male friendships and what it really means to be a Christian young woman. My girls are still young, but not too young to be talking about such things. I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, but I have found it to be rather good at covering all of the areas that I feel my girls are desiring instruction in. We are one of only a few homeschooling families in our congregation and we were the first ones to start homeschooling. Thus, my oldest is the oldest homeschooled child in our congregation. We are having to make decisions on an almost daily basis that both put our faith to the test and set precedent for those who follow in our footsteps. I find it comforting that my daughters are coming to me with concerns that most girls wouldn't even think twice about in our culture. Part of me, though, was concerned that the answers that they were craving wouldn't fall easily from my lips to their ears. I think that this book will be of great service to us in this area.

Which leads me to a whole series of thoughts that I want to share, but they must wait until some other time. I have a dress that must be ironed before tomorrow morning and it is getting late in the day.

Lost and Found

We just had a thunderstorm pass over here and there is a mist rising up from the ground. It is evening. Someone is grilling. I can smell the sweet smell of cooking meat mingled with the smell of damp moss and tree bark. I'm alone at home. Will has taken the girls to a baseball game with several other families from our congregation. Time alone is a rare commodity for me. And, yet, my heart still feels a tug towards my children and my husband when we are apart.

One of the nice things about being alone is that I get to listen to "mommy's music". Right now, I am listening to the Guster album Keep It Together. I'm eating a banana and drinking orange juice. Is life really supposed to be exciting? I surely hope not because I don't know if I could handle it. I take comfort in the peace. In the familiar.

Now I am wondering where that mentally retarded man went to. The one who used to ride his bike to the curb across the street from our house and merrily ring his little bicycle bell. He had a nice smile. I haven't seen him in quite awhile.

Things are always changing around me without my consent. Sometimes without my knowledge. I suppose this is for the best. Maybe God just likes to step in and remove some of the clutter for me while I am otherwise occupied. I do this to my children's rooms every so often. They don't really need to form a bond with their Happy Meal toys. Sometimes they remember something, though. Something that wasn't a cheap piece of plastic, but I cleaned it out anyway knowing that there was another child out there who needed it more. I wonder if that is where that man went. To another one of God's children.

I suppose that is part of this life. Time keeps moving me forward and I lose things without even noticing. Some people spend their lives striving for something they can't quite put their finger on. I know what I am striving for. I just keep misplacing little things along the way. Funny how I assume they were really mine to begin with.

Part Four: Time and Eternity

XXXVI

I LOST a world the other day.
Has anybody found?
You'll know it by the row of stars
Around its forehead bound.

A rich man might not notice it;
Yet to my frugal eye
Of more esteem than ducats.
Oh, find it, sir, for me!

Emily Dickinson

Real Life

I know, I know... I haven't been very faithful in posting lately. Someone please flog me.

When I first started this blog, I wanted it to be an outlet for the side of me that I felt I had been neglecting for too many years. In my younger years, I had dreams of becoming a writer and a photographer. I preferred writing poetry to prose and I loved toting my Pentax K1000 around with me wherever I went. I have a few poems and many photographs that are near and dear to my heart from those years. As the years flowed forward, though, I quit taking the time to write down the little word songs in my head. I always thought that I would remember them later, but with two small children running around my thoughts were nearly always replaced with more necessary mental and physical activity. Fortunately, the camera was never so displaced during those years. I have beautiful shots of my children as they experienced the world for the first time. I am thankful for these.

As my children have grown a bit older, though, I have found myself wondering and longing for the dreams of my youth. Of course, they seem so much more enchanting than climbing mountains of laundry, collecting tumbleweeds of dog and cat hair, disrupting the natural cycle of dust in my home and other such futile tasks. I wanted to create a place where I could separate myself from these things. A place where I could be "me". And, so, here I am.

The problem is, I am not only more than a mountaineering, tumbleweed-collecting, dust displacer. I am the mountaineering, tumbleweed-collecting, dust displacer. I have been cutting myself into parts that are never equal to the whole. The simplified and idealized version of myself doesn't acknowledge the parts of me that are just as valuable and create a clearer picture of who I really am.

Why did I ever want to create an outlet for only a part of me? I know that there is that part of me that has been neglected for a long time, but it has been by necessity. It does not mean that it is dead or that I have to separate it from the whole for it to survive. How on earth, could it survive without the whole?

So, today, I am here to tell you that I am a homeschooling mom of two beautiful girls. That I am a wife. That I engage in seemingly futile work like laundry, vacuuming and dusting. That my house is never clean and I am more often teaching math lessons than taking photographs. That I am more likely to write a grocery list than a poem. That you will find me more often at our church building than at a photo gallery or a poetry reading. That this is not just a photo blog or a poetry blog or homeschooling blog or a mommy blog. That this is about my life and, from now on, it is as real and complete as it can be.

Having said that, here is a picture I took yesterday:

Lullabies

Our preacher gave a sermon this morning that began with what has been in the news as of late. He did not want to go into politics or finger-pointing, but made a point that has really triggered a lot of feelings I have had for a while. He commented that many Americans are justifying the torture of Iraqi prisoners by saying that the American soldiers weren't doing anything compared to what the terrorists have already done to "us". He pointed out the Americans that have been executed over in the Middle East and the many thousands that we lost here on 9-11. We have people in our congregation that were at the Pentagon that horrible day.

A member of our congregation and a friend of mine was the first to die over in Afghanistan. I have cried many times over his loss, tried to comfort his wife and children and sung sad lullabies to his baby. And, yet, I do not hate "those people". As our preacher pointed out, we are not to compare ourselves with other people, but to God. It doesn't matter what other people have done throughout history or even that they may have actually done these things directly to us. God is our standard, not other people. How many times have I had to tell my own children this? You don't set your standards by what others do.

Let me be clear. I support our troops and our President. While my friend was over in Afghanistan, he wrote to his father that we needed to support our troops even when the bodies started coming home. Especially when the bodies started coming home. Little did we know that his would be the first.

I ordered a CD a couple of months ago and, while I don't necessarily agree with the politics of the man who put this CD together, I fell in love with the music on it. It is a CD of lullabies from Iran, Palestine and Iraq sung by native singers.

I take some small comfort listening to the lullabies that are actually being sung to the babies in the heart of such sadness. It makes me remember that we are all human. We need to treat each other humanely even in the midst of war, as much as that is possible. I walked and sang sad lullabies to the baby of my friend who died. A little boy who will grow up not ever having had the chance to know his father. I feel a connection when I listen to the soft, often sorrowful lullabies sung to the babies of Iranian, Palestinian and Iraqi mothers. Unfortunately, war is sometimes necessary and in war there is almost inevitably death. I think that we will ultimately be measured by how we treated the life left over.

Twelve + Thirteen

I was going through some pictures the other day. Pictures that I had neatly packed into a clear, plastic tub in an effort to be more organized. Unfortunately, the tub was thrown into the spare bedroom that is the home to all the homeless things in this house. Lily wants desperately to have this room for her very own. She dreams of it every day. I, on the other hand, find that this room looms as something I would rather run from than challenge. There are boxes and papers and boxes of papers and books and outgrown clothes and things I am even afraid of in there. Lily, though, has visions of what this room will be. It will be uniquely Lily. Unfortunately, uniquely Lily doesn't really seem to go over well with those who actually pay the mortgage on this house. I am fairly flexible, but I have had to dissuade her from such color options as all black, red with various horrifying trim colors and dark blue with equally horrifying trim colors. This is a small room with one window. It needs all the help it can get in the lightening and brightening department.

Lily will be twelve this summer. While going through the pictures in this plastic tub, I came across a picture taken when I was thirteen. My best friend, Dee Dee Fortin, took it and it is dated May 1979. I looked long at this picture. It was familiar, but suddenly I was seeing it through a different lens. My mother had redecorated this room and moved my sister into a different bedroom so that I could have a bedroom all my own. I remember her bringing wallpaper books home to peruse as she redecorated the entire house. We lived in an old Victorian house on the nicest street in town. A street lined with huge elm trees and wonderfully different, but equally nice houses from the same era.

I vaguely remember how it all came to be, but I really have no recollection at all of choosing wallpaper with columns of what appear to be blue cabbages up and down them. Neither do I remember choosing a glaringly blue carpet or a powder blue bed ensemble with more ruffles than any dress a Southern belle might wear. What I do remember is coming home from school one day, when I was twelve, and my mother opening the door to what was now my bedroom. I remember the feeling of freedom it evoked. No little sister muss and fuss. Just me and my Donny and Marie eight-tracks playing as loud as the player could manage. (Mind you, these were given to me by a friend who was a Donny and Marie fanatic and, at the time, I was under the impression that one must play what one has available. I actually much preferred Rod Stewart.) I felt like I was in some heavenly realm and I never wanted to go back to sharing a room with anyone. Of course, when I went off to college it became a necessity. I then married Will and now only occasionally dream of having my own room.

I decided to set this picture aside to show Lily what I looked like when I was about her age; hoping to give her some insight into the fact that I was not always a thirty-eight-year-old mother. When the girls came home from their piano lessons, I brought out the picture to show them. There I was, posed on the window sill of my bedroom. Thirteen. Skinny. Wearing my favorite shirt and framed by columns of blue cabbages. I was wondering what Lily's response would be, but unprepared for it. Lily was speechless. I looked at Clara and Clara spoke what Lily was unable to.

"Mommy, you had boobage!"

Now I think I remember why that was my favorite shirt.