Gageyisms...

Another fun writing assignment from a great blog, Making Things Up!  This week's assignment is about how you are feeling, and you have to answer in six words or a series of six words. So much fun-- at least for an English major!

Make me laugh, make me smile.
He shouts, he asks, he laughs:
I don't want to grow up!
Can grown-up girls lay eighteen babies?
My elbow can touch my nose!
I want birthdays but stay "wittle."

I crave more of these moments.
Chances to laugh, chances to smile.
Asian husband says I baby them.
But what's a mom to do...
When time is fleeting and flying?

Pumpkin Patch Procrastination

Writer's Workshop time! From a great blog, Mama's Losin' It!: Photographs can turn a house into a home. Share a photograph that is not on your wall, but should be…if you weren’t so lazy about actually putting it there.

Procrastination. I had a meltdown last week in Denver with the husband about being lazy and procrastinating too much. "Where's my drive?!" I Cried  "Where's the initiative?!" I wailed and then hid under the covers. (Okay, maybe I wasn't quite so dramatic, but I'm sure most of us out there have had moments like this. Right? Or maybe I really am the crazy woman that Asian husband proclaims... But I digress.)

So this picture of little Gagey Goo Goo (I swear I will stop calling him this when he goes to first grade. When he goes to middle school. High school. College. At his wedding.  Maybe...) is Evidence A of my mastery of the art of procrastination. This perfect pumpkin patch picture (alliteration of the day) is about three years old. I remember thinking I was almost a professional with my little digital shot here. Let me pause for a moment to allow you to admire the composition, the lighting, the blending of subject and environment... (pretend for a moment I do know the first thing about photography.)

Since then I have often thought that I should print this out (on my printer that is about 10 feet away), frame it, and hang it up. What a great way to show off that cute little face immortalized, I mused. And yet the picture is still safe and sound on my computer's hard hard drive.

Which brings me back to my original rambling. Procrastination. I have often wondered what keeps me from taking the next steps with different goals I have, small and large. Is printing out a picture and putting it in a frame really so taxing? Is blogging more than once a month unconquerable?  Neither of these are at all, and what I have realized is it comes down to is fear. Fear of putting myself out there. To be judged. Observed. I have spent most of my life trying to be fairly invisible, and these kinds of things go against my grain.  I have a text reminder sent to myself each day that simply states 'Confidence and Independence,' but despite the reminder, I am only doing minor things to boost that part of myself that would much rather hide, so in addition to actually printing out this picture and finding the absolute perfect spot for it (baby steps), I am working on confidence in my writing, my thinking, and my blogging (big steps), which I hope contributes to confidence in my being (even bigger steps).

Natural Consequences

Just when I think that the past is really behind me, that I've moved on, grown, made strides, and learned something (any other cliches?), I realize that rather than growth and healing being a straight-lined journey, it is more cyclical, revisited periodically.  Coming on the heels of Father's Day, this current bout of understanding and reflection concerning the past has been fairly poignant.  I'm realizing that the process of blending a family is more complicated, more difficult, and frankly more work than I had been prepared for.  Given a variety of personalities, cultures, and family backgrounds, I liken it to throwing three different jigsaw puzzles on the ground and trying to come up with one coherent picture.  Not impossible, but also not easy.  We continue to work at it, diligently, but now with the knowledge that this work is true work, and it needs to be tackled each day with an awareness of the importance it holds.


It just so happened that for the past week, I have been converting old home videos to a digital format, which means that I have spent quite a bit of time immersed in my and the boys' pasts.  From the birth of Pacey to the time Gage was 3, their dad and I separated three times and finally divorced.  I went through several hairstyles (some good, some very, very bad).  I lived in four different homes.  Much of this was invisible to the camera's eye, but as I watched, I relived the backchannel story.  The anger and grief, the hopelessness and despair.  But I also saw our love for the boys despite the situation.  We laughed at them and with them, and it rejuvenated my soul to experience our relationships as a third party.  It made me glad that one day, when the boys are older and see the videos, they will see many happy moments that included all four of us.

In the midst of my personal reflection (and despite the fact that the boys didn't know I was watching the videos), Pacey intuitively told me that he wished that all four of us could still live together, so that way he could see me and his dad all the time.  In that moment, I realized that I owe so much to my little boy-os.  When making the choice to leave (time after time), I struggled with the impact it would have on them, and I finally found peace with the notion that if I had stayed, I would have continued to be unhappy and that would have impacted them in a much more detrimental way.  What struck me was that though I have moved on, and we have a new life with a new family, we will always be impacted by that choice.  The boys have ultimately lost something and will experience that loss daily-- when they wish to be with both parents all the time, despite the fact that they were so little that they don't remember us all living together.  I looked down at his head in my lap and saw a strength in him that I hadn't noticed before, and I realized the irony of divorce.  That in some way, in order for me (and by extension them) to be happy, I had to make a choice that would always make them sad.  And me too, a little, if I am being completely honest with myself.

I have no regrets for the choices I made that brought us here.  I know that I am much happier, much more fulfilled and much more myself in this marriage to an incredible man.  And that all translates to me being a better mom, which brings me back to the blending family issue.  Through all of this reflection and revisiting of the past, I have realized that I need to create a new definition of family for myself.  I have naively believed that simply by the merit of us all living under the same roof, we would immediately feel and function like a single, biological family.  I have wished that all of the kids would just be ours, and that it would feel like what I had only glimpses of in my previous life.  But through that wishing, I have ignored the reality of what blending a family and step-parenting means-- we are not a biological unit, and it is completely natural to feel that loss, but it is also equally important to know that the boys and I and the husband and the princess are a part of so much more as long as we are open to finding it.  We are a blended family, and though the journey that comes with creating and maintaining this kind of family is more intentional, less haphazard, and littered with remnants of our pasts that require careful navigation, I know we will be up for the trip.

Real Tears

Seeing pain in your child's eyes and being helpless to fix it is one of the hardest moments parents face.  As we grow with our children, we quickly learn to look past the pouting, temper tantrums, and upsets over missing toys.  Hopefully we teach them to understand and deal with disappointment that comes with growing up-- from losing games to losing friends, it is our job to help our children understand how to grow from those experiences.  As with every other task that comes with parenting, we continually become more adept at these moments until moving our children through them becomes close to second nature.

What we aren't prepared for are those first, real tears.  The tears that speak to the realization of the sadness that can come with being human.  The gradual loss of innocence that begins from birth is sped up in these experiences and the child's heartache that accompanies this painful part of growing up is even more heart-wrenching for the mom watching it unfold.

While I was cooking dinner tonight, Gage was quietly playing alone upstairs.  I was hearing the Leap Frog learning pad and the Lincoln Logs, but eventually he was quietly reading a book we checked out from the library earlier this week.  This book was an afterthought, a book that Gage crammed into the stack as I was diligently looking for level 1 readers for him.  The cover must have caught his eye-- brilliantly illustrated in deep blues and greens with a lone hippo floating in the ocean.  As I added it to our books, I didn't know how much it would impact us.

It is mostly a picture book, with the only word being "mama," but in those pictures, a poignant story is told.  One of love and loss, one that changes perspectives and brings understanding as a hippo family is separated in the Indonesian tsumani of 2004 and the baby hippo finds a new "mama" in a 130 year old turtle.
 
I was finishing dinner when Pacey told me that Gage was crying upstairs, and I frustratedly thought, "what now?!"  Lately, they have been in a phase of arguing and hurt feelings, so I was sure that I didn't want to hear whatever it was that had brought about the tears this time.  When Gage wouldn't reply to my calls, I went up the stairs to see what had happened.  I found him curled on the couch in the loft, the book by his side, tears silently leaving tracks on his cheeks.

As I held him and let him cry for over an hour, I realized what he had come to understand.  The loss that is inherent in life, the fear of being without a loved one, the mortality we constantly evade.  My tears chased his as he looked pleadingly at me, his eyes questioning mine, imploring me to take back what he had discovered.  I knew I could do nothing but let him cry in my arms, for that moment a safe haven.  As I held him, I saw the baby he once was.  The little line of peach fuzz on his nose, adjacent to the red mark on his nostril.  His legs curled into his stomach.  His lips soft and round.  His eyelashes long and thick.  The only difference was a fear in his eyes that I haven't seen before, a fear that I have known well.  I was 6 when I started worrying about my grandma dying and would cry in her bed at night as she stroked my forehead like I was stroking his.  With each motion, his eyes started to drift off.  I felt his body relax and twitch as he gave into the fatigue that an hour of crying can bring.  I held him there, still running my fingers through his silky hair until bedtime when I carried him upstairs to tuck him in.  He choked out a few sleepy sobs and as I covered him up with his favorite blanket, he seemed to take comfort in an old, familiar friend.

I came back downstairs and cried at the harsh reality of love and loss.  If we let it, life will pass us by in a flurry of activity and forgotten tasks. If we are lucky, we find occasional reminders for gratitude and awareness. When we are open to it, the chance to live in the moment with our loved ones presents itself. 

Image embedded from: http://www.amazon.com/MAMA-story-which-during-TSUNAMI/dp/0152054952

Break-Ups and Bottoms

Boys are an enigma.  And let's face it: a bit weird.  The whole parenting things is hard enough, but when you add to the mix that I had three sisters and was never around boys all that much growing up, things get a little bizarre.

An always present issue?  Volume.  Why is their normal voice decibel what most of us would use at a concert?  Directly in front of the stage by that absurdly large speaker.  The husband and I thought we were being so non-traditional when we decided we wanted an open floor plan-- it was a deal breaker, we'd agreed.  I think that now I would pay money to have Holmes on Homes come and throw up some walls just for some sound barrier.

But beyond the volume (I swear I told Gage 25 times today that we were inside, so we need to use our inside voices. Choose to read those italics as a stressed word or a screamed word-- up to you.), I'm continually finding that raising two boys is an adventure, especially when one is an 8 year old in second grade.

What exactly happens between sending the sweet, round-faced little boy off to kindergarten and being shrugged off by a somewhat sarcastic, thin second grader? Yes, I've gotten the shoulder-nudge hug, and most recently, the fake ha-ha-ha laugh when I made an outstandingly funny joke about the wind blowing us away because it was so strong. Of course, it was a funny joke, and I knew he was flexing his new found sarcasm, which I'm sure he didn't pick up from me-- must have been some kid at school.

Pacey has never been what you might call even-tempered. Start with the 6-hour screaming fits as an infant, the mega temper tantrums as a toddler, and you really can't expect much different from a second grader, I'm coming to find.

One day, he was upset because he and his friend broke up. I tried to nonchalantly engage the conversation and get down to what we all really wanted to know-- who is this little harlot and when exactly did this relationship get started, let alone progress enough to end?! I was fighting this internal battle when he finally told us that Connor told him he didn't want to be friends anymore. Connor. A boy. His lunch table friend. I was enamored with his innocence and attempt to use "grown-up" words to talk about something as commonplace as severed second-grade friendships. I gave him a hug and offered some mom-perfect words of consolation as he ran off, leaving me wistfully wanting to bottle that innocence and sprinkle it around when he hits the dreaded teens.

I was thoroughly enjoying that mom-fantasy when I was rudely ripped from my dreamland as Gage ran by shrieking (loudly, of course), followed by Pacey yelling (again, loudly), "Smell my bottom, smell my bottom!"

Which came from the boy who just moments earlier was crying about a break-up. I think I will need that bottled innocence just a bit sooner.

S is for Strength

Christmas was a fun time at the Rock House-- filled with family and fun and all of the traditional Christmastime activities.  I have always made cookies with the boys at Christmas-- the first time with a 2 year old and a newborn.  Sprinkles and frosting decorated more of the table and floor than the cookies (notice Pacey is squeezing the frosting directly onto the table), and I know they don't remember it, but to me, it was an important time because I had never made my grandma's press cookies on my own before.  It had always been a Christmastime ritual to go over to Grandma's house and decorate the trees, wreaths, poinsettias, and dog cookies with candied cherries and sprinkles.  Baking with Grandma was one of my favorite pastimes, and since that first foray into independent cookie baking, which went beyond press cookies even, I have baked her cookies with the boys each year.

It always feels like more than just baking-- when I dig through my recipe box, find a recipe, some in my grandma's handwriting, pull down her KitchenAid mixer and set to work.  Reconnecting with the past, imagining simpler times, and creating something with the boys casts a warm glow around the process.  This year was especially meaningful because the boys and I made her S cookies, which were always my favorite.  The two-day recipe always had intimidated me, so I never tried it, but as the boys and I shaped cookies into S's, I felt perfectly at ease and content.  I held Gage's hand as he turned the handle of the grinder to chop the almonds the same way my grandma did with mine.  As we dipped the cookies into almonds and sugar, tears filled my eyes because I could feel a connection with my past that will allow my grandma to live forever in my kitchen, and it is moments like this that I can ask for nothing more but to continue baking cookies and building memories with my boys.

My grandma always said that I was determined and could do anything I set my mind to.  I'm not sure that I believed her when I was young, but the boys have changed my mindset as I strive to give them traditions, memories, and a warm family environment.  They will always remember these moments with me in kitchen, and I know that with every S, wreath, and tree she is smiling down on me and the Rock House family, pleased with the cookies, the continuing of Christmas traditions, and our happy life together.

Helicopter Tendencies

First, let me apologize to my blog for being so neglectful. I really did intend on keeping up with it after summer was through. And here we are in December and my last post was in September. Oops. Well, moving on!

With the harried beginning of the school year that includes three birthdays, three kids in sports, Halloween, a fun map project, and Thanksgiving, I am tired. The dust has settled and now we are home most evenings and weekends, and I have been finding myself feeling a little annoyed at that hurried kind of lifestyle and searching nostalgically for some simplicity. The other day synchronicity took over, and I happened upon a fabulous article from Time Magazine, entitled Helicopter Parents: The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting. This article playfully, but poignantly, looks at the out of control trend of parents to overparent. Hiring tutors for a five year old, buying hypo-allergenic socks, and baby kneepads are a few of the outrageous sounding practices that are running rampant in today's society. The article put it best-- Parenting has become a form of product development. This caused me to think about my own helicopter tendencies...

We live at the end of our elementary school's walking zone-- about .3 miles. At the beginning of the year, I required Pacey to wait at the crosswalk for me to pick him up. It just wasn't safe, I insisted, to allow an almost 8 year old walk home by himself. I must have been thinking in line with many of the local parents because the area around the crosswalk is quite the happening spot with mini-vans and SUVs lined up, ready to pick up their cargo and drive safely home. After a week of his pleading, I gave in and allowed him to walk, but I would drive by everyday and ask him if he wanted a ride. I think he acquiesced twice. Once when it was raining and once when he was coming down with the flu. Otherwise, I got the half wave, half blow off as he exercised a small bit of autonomy that to an 8 year old is huge. Yet, I continued to drive by, thinking that I was doing a great thing by checking up on him and making sure he didn't feel forced to walk all that way home. Until last week that is, when I realized I was a helicopter parent, a mild one, but a helicopter parent nonetheless.

The great thing about the Internet is where it can take you. I know that may sound cheesy, friends, but really, think about it. When is the last time you started to read one article, saw a link to another, read that one, saw another link to a related video, watched that, saw a link to another article, (need I continue?)... It's just amazing! So while I was reading the Time article, I happened upon the blog of who I found was once labeled "the worst mom in America." All because she allowed her nine year old to ride the subway in New York City alone. She was on morning shows and took severe lashings from the American public (mostly helicopter parents, I would guess) for her reckless methods of raising her children. This prompted her to start the Free-Range Kids blog, which led to a book, which has really created a movement in getting back to the roots of parenting our children. Her premise is not reckless; she maintains that safety is always important, but she brings to light the craziness of our generation in trying to lock down our children's every movement. Yes, there are awful things that happen everyday, but to live in fear is to not live at all. And to instill that constant fear in our children is a great disservice.

I looked up from my computer, almost in tears. The thought of letting them play in the front yard alone without feeling like a total slacker was so liberating! The idea of not feeling required to script all of their activities and to actually allow them time to just be kids, be free was even more liberating. I almost felt like burning my bra-- but I figured that I should probably keep myself in control since I was reading at my desk at work.

I started to see all of the irony in the things that I have always felt I had to do to be a good parent. The "neighborhood" soccer league that required a 15-20 minute drive through bad traffic three times a week was hardly a neighborhood program, now was it? Does that mean I will take the fun of playing soccer away from Pacey? No, but I will be calling the people in charge and request a change of coach/team to a place that is at least close to our neighborhood. Will I not put Gage in swim lessons like he asked? Well, no, I won't, but I decided how much more fun it would be if we all just went swimming at the rec after school once a week? Everything doesn't have to be a structured, two-times-a-week-right-in-the-middle-of-dinner activity, now does it? No, I am seeing now that it doesn't, and that doesn't make it wrong, it doesn't make me a bad mom, and it doesn't mean my kids will be less successful for not having needed a Google calendar to manage their schedules and five activities each at the ages of 6 and 8.

I want to have the time to take them to the rec for fun, free swimming. I want to take them to the Farmers' Market to get fresh fruit. And I want them to be able to come home from school and play. With their toys, with each other, with me, with the neighborhood kids. Because that is what kids should be doing. And not just in the summer when we have time off. I stopped driving the long way around to the house, so I could make sure Pacey didn't need a ride. Instead, I meet him at home because those ten minutes of freedom and autonomy are teaching him to be responsible and independent.

So even though I don't usually make New Year's Resolutions, this year, I am making a New Lifestyle Resolution-- to live more simply, less fearfully, and more fully. The boys deserve an old-fashioned childhood that is full of freedom to explore and experience their lives-- not under the guise of schedules and continuously organized activities.

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