Category Archives: Parenting

Reading

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One of my favorite things about raising kids was getting to read to them, even when we were reading the same book over and over again. When boy number one was only a couple of years old, he would come to me with his current favorite story, for example the Little Golden Book, My First Counting Book and when I finished, he would take it from me, climb down from the chair and go over to his dad on the couch to have it read again. Then, back to me  and so on. Other huge favorites included The Big Red Barn, and The Large and Growly Bear. Kid number two loved dinosaurs and animals beyond all reason and so the two of us hit the nonfiction hard for years. I do GREAT Sesame Street voices–I rocked both The Monster At the End of this Book as Grover, and Cookie Monster’s Book of Shapes as the title character. Reading separately at bedtime was a ritual the boys and I enjoyed until we started finding books they both liked and reading those together. “Mom, can you come up for stories?” was a plaintive call I heard nightly after all the teeth were brushed. Some nights I almost couldn’t bear it, I was so wiped out, but I never regretted dragging my butt upstairs. Remembering their bright little faces as we climbed onto my bed to read Lloyd Alexander books, or Varjak Paw, or King Arthur legends twangs my crusty old ‘Parent of Teen Boys’ heartstrings like you wouldn’t believe. One day, when my mother-in-law happened to be visiting, she heard me read a couple of chapters of Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis to them . When the reading was done, she looked at me with surprise and said, “You did that really well!” She was not a woman given to compliments, so it was kind of a huge moment.

But kids grow up. They broke it to me gently: “It’s okay if we don’t read tonight, Mom,” and “We’re kind of done with that.” It took a long time to find another outlet. I had often thought it would be awesome to do voiceover work with the ultimate ambition of recording audiobooks, so I made a demo tape last summer and sent it to some talent agencies, who either didn’t get back to me or were so flush with talent they were uninterested. Dead end. After listening to me bemoan that state of affairs, my friend Kelly, writer and radio personality extraordinaire (see her at Hot off the Wire and So Then SHE Said,) suggested I check out State Services for the Blind [SSB]. I did. They train volunteers to record leisure and text books for people with print disabilities, including vision impairment, learning disabilities and a horrifying thing I’d never heard of: paper allergies. It was the start of a new kind of reading for a new audience. I had to audition, and then I had to be trained and let me tell you, these SSB people are TOUGH. Now I dedicate 3-4 hours once a week (plus commute) to try to bring the written word alive for people who cannot just flip open a book and dive right into education or escape. I don’t always love what I am assigned; I don’t get to pick my own material, but I know that someone out there requested each book specifically and so I always do my best. It is both a noble calling and a way for me to do something I enjoy. It might be something you enjoy as well. If you think it might be, I encourage you to look into your options, perhaps through your local library.

Hey Moms! Let’s Put On a Show!

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After completing two trips to the high school and two trips to Target today, all before 9:30 a.m., I found myself in the car, singing, “This is just how I’d hoped my life would go!” I was being ironic. This kind of morning is not at all what I thought my life would be like, back when I was young and life was ripe with possibility. However, the experience did open my eyes a little. I have realized that what we need in this country right now is a musical devoted to the humorous and painful life of the at-home mom. I don’t have a title yet, but here are some titles for songs that I think would work:

Tears in the Dishwater

Morning Chardonnay

(When You Say Bland) You’d Better Mean Delicious

A Letter From the Teacher

A Small Dose of Prozac

There’s Poop Where?

Dog’s Haircut “What should I think, when the bill makes me blink, and I see the dog’s haircut cost more than mine?”

If God’s a Woman, She’s Got a Quirky Sense of Humor

I envision all music genres used here. “Tears” could be a ballad, “Chardonnay” kind of a boozy waltz. “Bland” I see as a  powerful rock anthem. I keep hearing “A Spoonful of Sugar” when I think “A Small Dose of Prozac,” so it is good that I won’t be writing these songs myself; I’d only get into trouble.  Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and their Hollywood-cast pals would put on a show to raise money to save something or get something…I don’t know the details; that was before my time. My point is our musical could raise money, maybe for therapy! Or a retreat that moms on the edge could take turns in. I’m flexible. I’ll help with the writing and the set design, and I don’t think we’ll have to worry about refreshments; someone will bring cookies or muffins. Are you in? What job do you want?

Fitness Mama

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Exercise is my anti-depressant. This has been true my whole life, but I spent years undervaluing and even avoiding exercise until I became an at-home mom when my kids were one and a half and four years old. People, I am not proud of this, but I was TERRIFIED of falling apart when I gave up my responsible and mentally stimulating job to face a completely different set of demands at home. I pictured myself weeping in the closet or drinking at all hours, or becoming a snappy, angry monster. To avoid this, I joined a fitness center that offered two hours of child care a day for people working out. I got into a very good groove of two-three workouts per week and stopped freaking out about becoming Joan Crawford. The time to myself gave me a little peace and the workout endorphins lifted my spirits. I fell in love with indoor cycling and became an instructor there, and also ran the outdoor group for the short cycling season we enjoy here in Minnesota. I built my confidence, even trying some competitive events, seriously toned up when I started Pilates, and made a lot of friends. After the kids went to school, and I started working part-time, my workouts fell off until the only class I went to was my own, and I gave that up, too.

Now I work out at BRX fitness, a small studio nearby. I have been friends with the owners for years, and they are fun, challenging, supportive and innovative. I have been introduced to Kettlebell,  Zumba, TRX and many objects of torture crazy fun fitness there. If you are ever in a class with me, I am probably the one complaining and making jokes to help get through the tough spots. They use a twisted sort of vocabulary, for instance saying, “Doesn’t that stretch feel wonderful?” when it is clearly excruciating. Despite the groans, I am never sorry I went. I can always tell when I have slacked off my preferred two to four intense workouts per week. I get morose and want to simultaneously punish and comfort myself with sugary fats. Or fatty sugars. Mmmmm. Moving on. Today I went to Kettlebell. Kettlebell makes me feel like a rock star, even if I occasionally overdo it and end up walking strangely for a couple of days (my hamstrings and quads lock up like like a sack of fists.) My odd waddling gait is accentuated by the squeaking sounds I involuntarily make with each step. Usually I know my limits well enough to stop before it gets to that point.

I pretty much need all the tools available to keep my sanity intact. My faith is very important, as are my relationships, but most women don’t find many barriers to developing faith practices or relationships. Society supports and expects that. On the other hand, I know a LOT of women who say they would like to exercise but can’t take time from their families, jobs or other commitments for themselves. Now that I have years of proof that exercise is key, I  want to preach a gospel of self-care that includes exercise, not just for weight maintenance or muscle toning, but for stress relief. The saying goes, “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t NOBODY happy.” I really, really want you to take care of yourself for your own sake, but if you can’t do it for you, do it for the people around you. Go ahead, pop an endorphin anti-depressant. Be a rock star.

Wrath Averted

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It was several years ago that a friend called me, asking for my help. “I have a problem,” she told me. She worked at a high school and a family of one of the recent graduates was demanding an apology because their graduate’s diploma wasn’t available at the ceremony. It had been withheld because the student had some library fines, which the family said they had paid. My friend agreed the fines were paid, but not in time to get the diploma inside the folder for the ceremony. The student felt humiliated, and the family was aggressively seeking payback and even threatening litigation. The school wanted my friend to write an apology to make the incident go away. My friend, who is very intelligent and empathetic, had had it. “I am so upset I can’t even think, anything I come up with would just make it worse,” then she schmoozed me, “You are so good with words, can you come up with something?”

My friend was more than capable of coming up with the words, but she had lost the objective distance she needed to frame her response to the family. It is so difficult to overcome our own feelings of pain or anger, especially when we are feeling attacked. Like a contagion, retaliatory instincts had spread from the student’s family to my friend. It happens between people, people and institutions, cultures, and governments. I often wonder how much litigation, property damage and even death could be avoided if it was easier for people to slip out of their own experience to see and feel events from another’s perspective. When I was a little girl, weeping in sadness or frustration over troubles with my friends, my mom would urge me to look at the situation from the other girls’ point of view. It was highly unsatisfactory. “Why aren’t you on my side?” I wailed, picturing myself adrift on a raft of self-righteousness in the stormy sea of injustice. (Even for a little girl, I was very dramatic.) Eventually, I caught on to her philosophy and over time became more analytical about conflict. It helped me “simmer down,” as my dad would say when my temper threatened to boil over (which is helpful because I had inherited a temper that is constantly threatening to boil over.)  I felt that I had some of the skills needed to help my friend out.

I congratulated the student on reaching the milestone of high school graduation. I thanked him for paying the fines. I commiserated with his disappointment that the process didn’t work out in time for the event, but celebrated that he had had experienced a beautiful ceremony with his friends to mark the successful completion of twelve years of hard work. I thanked him for letting the school know his concerns and wished him well. It was easy for me to do because I knew all those things were genuinely felt, even by my frustrated friend. “Yes! This is perfect!” she said. She still had a kind regard toward the student, but it had all been choked back behind fatigue and anxiety in the face of the family’s umbrage. Was the family satisfied? I have no idea, but there was no lawsuit. Is it fair when only one side acts compassionately? As Dad was fond of saying, “life isn’t fair,” and as I would say, “that’s not the point.” Even if it doesn’t feel fair, it is best. I sometimes think it is only simple proverbs like ‘Walk a mile in another’s moccasins,’ and ‘A gentle answer turns away wrath,’ that keep the world from bursting into flames. It can sometimes feel like humanity is forgetting these ancient approaches; I know that I do at times, but I hope that there are still parents in the world aggravating their children by pulling them along to a higher road, one we can all travel together.

Teen Life: Then/There and Here/Now

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I was driving around town yesterday and I realized for the first time that I might not know how to adequately parent my suburban kids. Adequate parenting isn’t a new concern for me–that goes back to prenatal days, but raising teenagers in a big town on the outskirts of two large cities brings a whole lot of possibilities and challenges I never dealt with growing up.

I grew up in De Smet, a South Dakota town with a population of about 1200 when I lived there. De Smet started out as a railroad town (as chronicled in By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder,) and later was blessed by being at the crossroad of two state highways. That crossroad had the only traffic light in town, a flashing yellow on Hwy. 14, and a flashing red on Hwy. 25. A glorified stop sign, really, nothing like my driver-in-training needs to contend with, which is how this whole train of thought got underway. Teaching a kid to drive where I live now is so different than where I learned. Here there are more people, more traffic, higher speeds in tighter quarters, and infinitely more complicated intersections. In De Smet, back in the day, other drivers not only probably knew who you were, they often also knew something about your driving. If you were very new at it  (or very old,) you were given a little more berth and a bit of wry courtesy as you took a few precious seconds to figure out what you were doing. A few months ago my son was screamed at by another driver for going too slow, 28 mph in a 30 mph zone as he was approaching a stop sign. The same thing could happen in De Smet, but talk would go around, and that driver would soon find herself with a reputation as a hothead and on the short end of the neighborly goodwill stick. Karma can work quickly in a small town.

Driving isn’t the only area of difference, naturally. My graduating class was small, even for De Smet, with 25 students. If you wanted to help with yearbook, be in track, participate in choir, the all-school musical and be on the prom committee, that was fine. You probably didn’t even need to be particularly talented to get a spot, and yet De Smet produced very competitive athletic, musical and theatrical teams. No matter what group you were in, you more or less had known everyone for years. In a suburban high school of over 2,000 kids it could be easy to look at the masses of other people and think, “Let them do it; there are probably one (two, three) hundred kids that have been training since third grade to do that activity and I don’t know any of them.” In De Smet  you almost felt obligated to join, somebody’s got to do it, right? I tried a lot of things and found my niche in some. I am highly amused to this day that I was an officer in the Future Homemakers of America club. I had no intention at that time of becoming a homemaker, I was going to be a big deal in international business or with the United Nations. I was going to eat out and have my laundry done for me. But all my friends were in FHA, it was huge, and we had the best times. I don’t know how to translate those experiences to the world my sons live in today. They must find their own way. Maybe it is less about parenting and more about wanting to hold on and stay connected to my children’s lives. It seems I am reaching the end of “Do the best you can,” and am entering “and then let them go.” Terrifying. Sad. Amazing. Life.